Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

I decided to risk taking a shower while Mother was out.

As you may have noticed, I didn't catch up any on journaling. This is because I was too busy wading through the Penny and Aggie archives (thanks to Ms.? kyanited). It's not enough yuri that I'd buy it, but most of it is free, they don't try to be Japanese (much), and they have an RSS feed, so I may as well follow it. Still, I think I see more clearly why I had so much trouble watching the L word: because it deals with real-life issues and hatreds. I can deal with crime shows and action movies because they're so alien to anything I've ever encountered. (Of course, I've never had a confirmed sighting of a non-straight lady, either, but prejudices are pretty similar regardless of which minority they cover.) I'm thinking maybe I should publish all my stories set on "Earth" mainly in Japan, just to reduce the accusations of dealing with social issues.

As the ad suggests, this one is not known as "eHomophobia" (unlike the one I checked last time, as I later heard on CA$H CAB), but it seems like an odd niche. How many people specifically want to meet people of different races? (That sounds more like a sexual fetish to me, which doesn't seem like how they're selling this one, although I have seen ads for sites that offer that instead of actual dating.) Of course, there are very few people who are actually the exact same racial makeup as I (which is still better than Keanu Reeves). I went partially through the intro to see whether that was taken into account, and it said, "Your search turned up with over 297 interracial singles in your area!" (emphasis mine). The Web is strange.

More significantly to me, why does this show up on my gmail recommendations? The email was just about scheduling, and it didn't even say for what. I don't know what could be gleaned about me from it (other than the fact that I schedule things by email), except that the sender mentioned his "big ****ing LEGO Millennium Falcon." I suppose they may use information other than the currently viewed mail, but I've never seen anything to suggest as much before.

In any case, I can't vouch for how legit this place is, but you all know how the Internet works anyway.

Speaking of the ads, do you know why I always check and delete my spam before reading my real mail? Because if I go to the spam last, I get ads for spam until I open another message. You'd think they'd remove that from the possible search strings, as it's always related to the opposite one from the one I have, and everyone on their service has it.

I've mentioned before how on HGTV, they avoid talking about the relationships of two people of the same sex who aren't family but live together. Well, it's not much, but on an episode of CA$H CAB, they showed two ladies kissing on the mouth twice. (The episode synopsis is not helpful.)

By the way, I have no idea why DEADLIEST CATCH is supposedly "the most popular nonfiction show on cable." I already think no one's going to recognize the references to shows I actually do watch in my projects.

It was somewhat ironic that the two letters to the editor that were printed in the hard copy of the J&C for the 1st (the two at the bottom here) were both in praise of bigotry because Jesus says so (?). I decided to hurry up and type this one once I found out that they actually don't allow you to view articles for free after a week has passed (thus showing that my job isn't quite as pointless as I thought). This factor means that I have no way of looking up exactly the context of the latter letter, but the former provides much material for me.

( For reference purposes )

Admittedly, the writer is not hateful in any way, and in a way, this makes it even more disturbing. She believes that she is right, and that her policies are for the good of the people involved. She doesn't say anything about religion, instead citing that it's "unnatural" and that the solution is to develop new artificial drugs to make the "patients" natural again, and that it is the right way of the world to be horrified and devastated when someone you know turns out to be gay. However, her assertion that something outside the norm is unnatural makes it difficult for me to think that she believes in evolution, which narrows the field somewhat. (I just heard on TV a few hours ago that 39% of Americans surveyed claimed to be Creationists, and that was somewhat disconcerting to me.)

These beliefs that you are right based on faith are a sticky subject. By definition, you believe that your beliefs are correct, and in the case of many Christian denominations, that means you believe that anyone who disagrees is going to hell unless you save her. This means that it is only morally right to make other beliefs illegal. The remark about usurping the Constitution above is related to the popular opinion that the Founding Fathers only intended freedom of religion to include Christianity (despite many of them being Deists), a claim that is obviously impossible to prove either way at this point. Personally, I believe that rights apply to everyone except those who harm others, not just those who are believed to be harming others by certain people, and that if the letter of the Declaration and Constitution doesn't mean that (which I think it does), it should be amended so.

Another difficult question is the problem of how people come to have faith in the first place. By definition, it cannot be based on any physical evidence, which is also the argument against attempts to disprove religion. Consequently, the primary way people develop their beliefs is through what they experience, mostly through following what they're told by the people they respect during their developmental years. I'm not a scientist, so if I had been born one generation earlier on my father's side, I would probably be a Christian. My staunch atheism is based perhaps entirely on the fact that I was raised among people who relied on physical logic rather than spiritual things. This has of course been a problem ever since the first two religions encountered each other, so unsurprisingly, I don't have a solution for it just yet.

I also take issue with the assertion that an individual's coming out will always destroy those close to her. I can't see why this would be the case except if the kith and kin in question believe there is something wrong with it, which many do not. This thus ends up being another claim that other beliefs are wrong. I know I can't say much from personal experience, but in my narrow-diametered circle of acquaintances, I have seen half a dozen homes wrecked, including my own. In all but one case, this was because the straight man of the house had a different idea of fidelity than anyone else. (People weren't too straightforward about the exception, but I gather that it was already a same-sex couple.) I think that denying and suppressing what one is only leads to things getting worse, as I imagine is much of the problem with all those Catholic priests and Ms. Winfrey's school in South Africa.

As I've had in my notes for many moons and never gotten around to fleshing out into a post, it would really be nice if I could find a secular state somewhere to live. I know that wouldn't solve anyone else's problems, but at least I wouldn't have to deal with them. That's my answer to most of life, after all.

On a somewhat darker (or at least neutral) note, Ms. mizuno_youko just posted an interesting link.

As if I weren't busy enough with my application and more equipment training, apparently the stress caused my mind to wander, because I suddenly stumbled upon another really stupid coincidence (or Freudian slip?) that I should have noticed long ago. As you know, I have two projects that are set in a setting closely based upon the real world. You may not notice because of the omissions, but there are exactly three native Japanese characters among the many dozens of characters I'm currently developing for those two projects. And all three are lesbians.

「今さら何ほざいてんだてめえ」とは言われそうだから言っておくが・・・*

As noted in the first paragraph of the previous link, I don't write lesbian stories. I write yuri. Judging by the notes I'm keeping in my head, of those many dozens of characters, those are the only three lesbian-identified individuals I have planned. So how the hell did this happen? To tell the truth, in all three cases, I just made them Japanese because of the names I thought up for them. (It's not as much of a coincidence as it might have been, as the two from Project AnthraXX are connected in terms of their background.) As noted in the disclaimers, I don't have any intentions of perpetuating stupid stereotypes (even ones I accidentally made up myself), and I certainly didn't do this on purpose. It just goes to show that I don't pay much of any attention to how my projects end up looking, which means I'm just going to get even more flak as I release any of this stuff. I really need to look more carefully at these things before they are (hypothetically) published.

Meanwhile, as with the other night, I'm putting myself on a slippery slope trying to bring up half-remembered lines off the top of my head and using them as post subtitles. I've read both of those at least half a dozen times, but they're really dipping into the archives; I'm not sure if I've even opened either volume in several months, much less read those chapters. At least one of them I plan to check at some point to corroborate something else I vaguely remembered, so hopefully I'll use that opportunity to correct myself. Being obsessive-compulsive is rather dumb sometimes.

*Yeah, another line that I'm too lazy to try and figure out how to say in English. It's not terribly important to the so-called flow of my blabbing, so those of you who can't read it don't need to feel left out.

Edit (2008.05.03): Fixed vowel length and punctuation in the quote

Although Wikipedia has an entire article on wasei Eigo, the opposite (which is more significant to English-speakers) is not discussed in a centralized place. Some of them are included in this really long list, but it doesn't mention the one that I find most dangerous. This is noted briefly, however, in the article I've been avoiding, but they don't say anything about the actual movement; it's implied that it's just an insult.

Also significantly, it says that Japanese lesbians refer to themselves as "les." I'd heard that this was a pejorative, which is presumably why I have never seen it used self-referentially in lesbian media, only in yuri. I have something more to mention related to that in relation to another kansō, if I ever get around to it.

Although I don't comment on journals of people I don't know, I do read them regularly (except the parts about cooking). The former (along with her posts on lililicious and daily_yuri, where I don't even read the comments anymore because of the negative ones) is an excellent source of all sorts of yuri- and lesbianism-related information. (Although I didn't need the part about Hiper Radio!! because she told me about her source (which has RSS), it was good to hear about the fact that only a very small part of the audio file was relevant—and which part that is.) The latter contains interesting essays on the travails of an artist. Although I avoid art like the plague, I think this sort of thing is relevant to anyone in a creative field.

The few things I have in common with these people also mean that they occasionally remind me about things that I've forgotten, such as:

*I should reread the good parts of Lens no Mukō sometime. Apparently I don't remember much of anything about it. I'm very bad about remembering details (particularly in such non-flashy stories as these) from only going through them once. That was the reason that draskireis threatened to kill me once. . . .

*There was a regular character named "Redd Herring" in A PUP NAMED Scooby-Doo. As you may have noticed, I have a reason for the name for almost every character I create (both because I'm bad at making them up and because I love allusions and trivia), but rarely in such a heavy-handed (?) manner. Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that almost everything I ever make bottoms out at PG-13.

My readership appears to be at an all-time high (apparently at least two regulars!), but I've accumulated quite a lot of stuff during its absence, to say nothing of my sloth and the fact that I've built up a lot of new things due to year's-end-and-beginning splurging. So, I'd like to see if you have any requests or suggestions. What I've got in the works is as follows:

( Ridiculously long notes )

Most of you have no common interests with me, so you won't have noticed the fact that I removed myself from contributing to public sources back in late October. As you can see from ( my notes ), I was planning on typing up full reasoning behind the factors that contributed to that. Of course, one of the problems was the fact that I didn't get any response to what I posted here, either. I talked to blitzon and arifyn about that a bit, but even after they started communicating, it was quite a large project (as many of my planned posts that have been sitting in my notes for months, including most of the ones way back here), in addition to the fact that I was trying not to think about it because it was so depressing. Further, I don't think I should lower myself to the others' level by adding too much to the hate, so I'll merely give an overview.

I've already whined extensively on the topic of the geeks I've met in person and online who feel the need to régale me with how much they hate the games they play, the shows they watch, and the fact that I am allowed to have opinions that differ from theirs. Well, their griping was enough to destroy the campaign that my friend had tried to run. Meanwhile, while I was researching for Project Abdiel, I tried adding what I could to LEXICANUM, but ended up starting another fight and feeling be[i]tter about the fact that still no one had noticed that someone got on my ass for something I didn't say. All this negativity about my contributions reminded me of a long list of minor negative comments I'd received for what I gave to daily_yuri as well, and the fact that I have an awful job undoubtedly added to my deep white funk as well.

The result? Just like I did with the aforementioned campaign, I tried to avoid conflict as much as possible. I stopped contributing to LEXICANUM and daily_yuri. This also removed some of my motivation for watching videos, so, in my depression, I haven't used the rare chances I get, and I'm getting in trouble again for taking up hard drive space. It turns out that the chance of jobs at a place where people know me and actually have common interests was a false alarm, and they're even looking to downsize, so there's nothing to suggest that I'll ever have a home, and thus I will not be able to fully rectify this problem without giving up downloading videos.

Meanwhile, yesterday, I saw a rant on Irregular Webcomic! David Morgan-Mar's works are one of the few things liked by my other DM at Dungeons of Purdue that aren't hateful like he. For the most part, he only derides stupidity and inaccurate physics. It may be because he's hitting me where it hurts, but I don't recall any other time when he's been hostile enough to claim that other opinions should not exist and the entire English language should be dumbed down to the least common denominator. (Since he's a GURPS guy, he also failed to mention the choice I prefer, the one used by Wizards.) I found myself especially disappointed. The iron lining of this cloud is the fact that it was enough to motivate me to type this post. Now at least I've got that off my chest.

Another one, but this time there's a strong resemblance, so they may be related.

This evening, an episode of DESIGNED to SELL about two female homeowners with different surnames was aired. (Of course, the fact that they lived on a houseboat got more attention.) (They listed their home under the elder's surname.) I've seen such a thing on another show on HGTV before, and as with that time, they completely avoided saying anything about their relationship. (They didn't even say they were friends or anything like that.) It's interesting to see that they're treading so lightly, when I've seen a photo of two men kissing in the J&C. (I didn't think to read the letters in the subsequent issues to see who complained.)

Speaking of which, Mother was right about Clinton Kelly being gay. They're not allowed to talk about that on the show, either (even in the special where they covered the question of whether he and his co-host were an item). I find it rather odd that a queer guy would be a host of a show about conforming to society's expectations.

Please excuse the cheesy and derivative title (and its effects on the wording below).

Back when I first devised the Projects system, there were only two all-encompassing rules for the various works falling under that heading:

1. A project may not include nudity (by the TSR/Wizards submission guideline definition).

2. A project may not have a female character as the chief protagonist, except where this would conflict with the First Law.

The First Law is just a simple rule that I use to keep my content in check—It's the same system used in many cases by Japanese comics and TV series (although for some reason, they consider it to be all right to show small children), even the more risqué ones like LOVE♥HINA and Strawberry Panic.

The Second is more complicated. It was something I thought up at the beginning of the Projects system, and holds true for the first few I tagged: Artificer, Homuncupunk, and Deathshead. The reasoning was that I, as a man, could not properly portray a female mind, so I should not place such a chara in the spotlight. I kept this rule for quite some time. However, I eventually took a better look at my goals. I never intended to depict anything realistic, least of all human personalities. As such, an individual's sex makes no difference. Thus, I struck the Second Law from the record.

Some time while the Second Law was still in effect, I came across another thing that I decided I should regulate. In Project Artificer, I based one element of the ancient elven race on the Eldar from Warhammer 40,000: the concept that they treat both sexes the same; both sexes are of androgynous appearance, and they consider humans and their spawn (beastmen and ogres) to be hairy degenerates. It was only natural (or should I say "artificial"?) to expand to say that, other than the need for reproduction, they saw no need to prefer one sex over another as partners. However, I could see that it would be chauvinistic to show only one side of that, as I was well aware that ♀×♀ relationships were a sexual fetish among heterosexual males (and vice versa in Japan—in perhaps a less vulgar and more aesthetic sense, as far as I know, since I avoid such material as noted below). So, I decided:

3. For each female character with a female romantic interest, a project must include a male character with a male romantic interest, except where this would conflict with the First or Second Law.

So I included one of each. I kept it this way until I thought about it again and realized that LGBT issues are a serious topic, and one that an outsider such as myself should not be putting in his comics. So I amended the Third Law to something to the effects of:

3 (Revised). A project may not include any character with a same-sex romantic interest, except where this would conflict with the First or Second Law.

This was easy to fix: I just reversed the sexes of the two offenders. That worked just fine, right? But after I removed the Second Law, I also came to see that the same reason for repealing held true here too. After all, yuri is an element of media, mostly separate from (and sometimes conflicting with) the lesbian community. Also, I could suppose that pretending that such issues don't exist could be just as insulting as depicting them inaccurately. So, I removed the Third Law as well.

Of course, not having any rule to govern this element, my honne starts to show after a while. It's not that I have anything against ♂×♂ relationships—In fact, I support them as a logical alternative to my ideal. However, also as noted earlier, my formative years taught me that men were absolutely repulsive both physically and emotionally. Just as I prefer to keep the number of male characters to a minimum, I find it unpleasant to deal with their relationships. Chauvinistic, I know, but that's something about me that will never change, so I feel that it's best to be true to myself (to a point) and write what I like. After all, why do you think I made all these projects in the first place? If I can publish them and make money, that would be a nice occupational perquisite, but that's beyond the scope of what I can consider at the moment.