Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

Since Thursday was my one night off, I stopped by the other side of town yesterday. Unfortunately, I had not realized that it was the release date of 4th-Edition D&D, so the clerk at the desk immediately asked me, "Have you gotten your books yet?" I made the mistake of telling the truth: that I had gotten a better deal elsewhere, which of course didn't make him and Carlos happy. They made fun of me for the fact that my copies hadn't been delivered yet. I neglected to mention (as a comeback, one of my principal weak points) the fact that, as over the last few months the Wizards have revealed more of their master plan to tell repeat customers to go to hell (as mentioned here), I wouldn't be buying them at all if I weren't intending to use them to save more than the money I paid for them.

Due to the fact that 4th Edition is trying its darnedest not to be D&D, there's also the problem of the theoretical chance of publishing my campaign setting. I have no intention of retconning it to the point of being 4th-Edition-friendly, so the only chance I would have of using the d20 System or something similar is if someone else ends up producing the books and allowing them, such as the Pathfinder RPG. The reason for this is that the d20 System requires you to note on each book that it requires the 3rd-Edition or v.3.5 Player's Handbook, which Wizards will obviously be discontinuing if they haven't already. The Pathfinder RPG is designed to allow people to continue to use v.3.5-compatible materials, so it would work with that, but I don't know whether they'll allow me to actually tell people to use it. I could instead use the OGL, but that would require publishing my own basic materials. Since this was designed as a D&D setting, that would mean either (a) repeating pretty much the same stuff that's in the Player's Handbooks and Pathfinder RPG or (b) changing the setting so that those have something original worth printing as well. The latter means completely reworking the setting, which may be a good thing considering that it's not very original so far, but it defeats the purpose of publishing something I've already developed if I have to go back and start from the ground up. Of course, the chances that I'll ever have the resources (money and name recognition) to do this are rather slim.

By the way, on the topic of the subject line, DUNKIN' DONUTS® CMs have nifty tunes, but the first two* have really dumb lyrics. The "doing stuff" one is pretty self-explanatory (as is the issue with this one, the one for which it's not the creators who are stupid), but as Ms. Maelwaedd noted, it's an odd strategy to tell customers, "We understand your idiocy and provide for it!" The thing about this is, as with every spoken language except English (as far as I know), French and Italian have simple, consistent rules for how every word is pronounced. (lokodraucarn once tried to defend his mispronunciation of "coup de grâce" by saying, "I took German and Russian! No silent letters!" Yeah (again, a very belated comeback), I took Spanish and Japanese. That doesn't stop me using an American English dictionary. When I play a game where I have to vocalize a term often, it makes sense to know how to pronounce it and what it means.) A more common problem is trying to figure out which language the word is, but that's often easy, too.

*As usual, I tried looking for the videos to illustrate, but apparently now Google™ Video BETA doesn't index them anymore and instead has hardcore pornography openly displayed. (YouTube had both.) I never got that before.

We were house-sitting for arifyn's parents, but not in any house I've known them as inhabiting. For some reason, there were numerous spiders infesting books in the building (despite the fact that books don't have empty space in them when closed), and I got in trouble when Mother got back and found that I had turned on all the lights to scare them away. Then we had to shovel snow in the yard. Also, there was an evil dictator at a war crimes court, and (unlike in the U.S., where trials are not allowed to be filmed and thus are reenacted from transcripts) he was displayed live on the multi-faceted side of a big-ass office building.

PayPal™ just informed me that my account has been hacked. I've been pooh-poohing the CMs (see subject line) because I didn't think such a thing was too dangerous since you can see any transactions on your bank statement. I also didn't expect the perpetrator would be stupid enough to buy something from somewhere that sends you automatic email confirmation. Still, the fact that I don't seem to have any way of prosecuting the culprit or getting my money back is somewhat irksome.

Right on the heels of what I didn't mention about my résumé last time, there's another guy who claims smokers are being persecuted by the hostile majority. Well, Mummert, I wish I lived in your country. In America, smokers are allowed to smoke anywhere on their own property and almost anywhere outside (and the police ignore the fact that they still smoke in the places where they're not allowed to smoke outside). In a democracy, people wouldn't have their rights to poison others for the sole purpose of poisoning themselves protected. At least alcohol can be used as an anæsthetic, and you're held responsible for the harm you do to others when you use it. Most other recreational drugs are completely illegal.

I know I sound like a broken record, but this shows that I'm not the only one.

When I first saw this, I assumed from the single star and the color scheme that he was drawing a comparison to other red republics, such as Union of Soviet Socialist and People's of China (in which case I'd point out that communism sounds good to me if it's what it takes to have freedom of religion), but it turns out that it's actually the California state flag. Now I don't see if he's actually saying anything, other than fact. Still, this did lead me to read a couple of other things that I had missed before on the same page (locally):

1. The First Amendment was quoted directly. Other than the fact that it's a crudely written run-on sentence, it brought to my attention the fact that I'm not clear on how the wording works. It says that "Congress shall" not do these things, but does that protect us from laws on regional levels, or regulations for individual institutions (like public schools) as well? Obviously, it should, but there are plenty of people who claim that we should always follow what the Constitution says, regardless of whether it's right or wrong.

2. Good point. It's important to be able to see who the bigots are.

On the original topic again, I noticed something not quite accurate about Ms. Morishima's comments in her first Yuri-Yuri Kembunroku about YURICON, where she was excited thinking "if ○○ and ×× went to America, they could get married!?" or some such. The problem is that such a marriage would only be valid in the place where it's legalized. According to my research, the only place where they say it's valid globally is Canada, and I don't see what difference it makes, since it would be odd if a place where it was illegal would recognize marriages granted by some other country. Of course, the point is rather moot, since Ms. Morishima is (as usual) talking about yuri; fictional characters don't need real-life legal status. I can only assume that no First-World country will stop you from having ceremonies and vows, although some people there will grumble about them.

As was the case with Spanish back when I thought I knew it, I'm planning also to publish official Japanese versions of my projects. (Of course, as I've noted here, my first one might be a bit heavy on the English even in the Japanese version.) I'm far from fluent, of course, but this way I can provide translations that are much truer to the author's intent than most. The expanded exposure this should provide would also give me a chance to come into contact with people who are fluent, which means I could have a chance to actually learn the language, and perhaps impose on someone to correct my work. (I think I'd have more trouble bothering to make the rest of the appropriate site bilingual to cater to these people.)

Another thing that I've pondered at times is that, since I'm going to have to learn to draw anyway, it would be really nifty if someday I could get one of my works published in my belovèd YuriHime S (not the main Comic YuriHime, as I don't imagine I'll ever manage to write works appropriately feminine or comedic for there—with Ms.? Natsuneko's work there, I might have hope, but it's nothing compared to Picard's, as I'll note later). If I did manage to achieve widespread popularity as noted above, they might let me do it cold turkey, but the more likely way is through the Ichijinsha Comic Taishō （「大正」ではなくて「大賞」） or other yomi-kiri (the comic equivalent of a pilot episode). The problem with that is that, as I've no doubt mentioned before, I don't think of many good one-shot ideas lately, as I'm so absorbed in crafting intricate webs of full-sized projects. (Even Project Cow Level, which was pre-planned to be a short, simple "practice" project, is expected to run to about one graphic novel's worth.)

And yet, oddly enough, I happened to think of an interesting one-shot idea yesterday. Although it relies on a lot of tropes, it has a major setting element that I haven't seen used for this before, and unlike some, the premise is distinctly yuri, not just a romance that happens to be between two ladies. (Oddly enough, the unusual setting for a yuri story may have caused me to have a dream last night about sleeping with a man (don't remember for sure). If so, at least I was the seme. . . .) Of course, as a short story, it doesn't have much to reveal without actually writing it, and I'd rather keep the good parts to myself just to avoid anyone else stealing them. (Yes, that's my delusions of grandeur talking again.)

If this somehow did come to pass, there's the problem that the format only allows 400 characters of commentary, much less than I'd normally use. I'd probably put most of it (and the official English translation) on the Web as a supplement to the published part, as Ms. Miyahara does. For the actual printed version, I'm thinking the essentials are along the lines of 「男で申し訳御座いません。いつか必ずレディーにもよろこんで頂けるまんがを描ける様になりますから、今は違った味でがまんして下さいませな。」 (although I haven't bothered to boot up Word to get a character count).

The "chigatta aji" bit overlaps with the question of how predisposed these Japanese folks will be to publishing stuff by some American git. I can't do much about that, but I might consider working in a more Japanese style than my own. For some reason, it seems to be coming out with a larger-than-usual proportion of pseudo-comical elements despite the fact that I don't have a sense of humor (perhaps to make up for the fact that romance is an alien concept to me), so it'll be an outlier in my portfolio in more ways than one (hey, more dovetailing with the post subject).

By the way, in the excessively megalomaniacal mōsō situation that I actually got to do a serial, Project AnthraXX seems at this point as if it would actually be palatable. Of course, it would be helluva Webcomic time in a quarterly mook. . . .

The article

My Score: 71.666...%

Apparently I'm better than average at guessing.

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.

The other two were a broken link and one I'd already done, so, while I'm at it, I may as well post this one as well. For those who weren't already on the 13-name list to whom I chained the email, this is my vain attempt to kill all the world's rapists on Saturday.

( Result spoilers )

Continuing from before, this one is supposedly based on what you have done, but degenerates into hypothetical situations early on. I imagine they're stereotyping "kick-in-the-door" styles as chaotic. . . . There are also (as usual) numerous questions for which I don't have my answer listed, but I don't blame them for the bully one, because it's not often you come across someone who was a reve (?) in that respect.

As you can see, it also notes the fact that D&D is unlike logic in that the universe has laws of morality and ethics, including some that are completely society-based, such as "eating sentient beings [something that doesn't harm anyone in physical life, or in D&D by the v.3.5 cosmology] is evil."

( Map )

Unusually enough for me, Project Cow Level has no sex in it, as I didn't have any interest in having such content in a story about tauren and dwarves. While I'm at it, I'm considering keeping the violence to (MPAA) PG as well. That may be difficult for one of my adventure-based (type B) projects, but we'll see.

Meanwhile, as I've mentioned before, Projects Umbra and Homuncupunk are coming to have more and more sex, while Project AnthraXX is coming to have more and more story, thus blurring the gap between A and B. Consequently, AnthraXX is probably the most ready of my original projects, owing primarily to the fact that its setting is heavily based on the real world, thus preventing me from needing to create mecha designs from scratch. Of course, it's still quite controversial, but at least there's plot to thin out the sex and I don't portray YHWH in quite such a bad light. I also think that the witches' and demons' subplot doesn't overpower the main story about the protagonist and heroine, but it's still tangential enough that I haven't completely thrown out the idea of making it a separate project.

In other previews, I've thought about vague subtitles for the three story arcs of Project Homuncupunk:

Part One: The Bounty Hunter
Part Two: The Prodigal Son
Part Three: The Emissary

I chopped the first two down to one word each for better parallelism. The subtitles reflect Jūzaburō's role in the story. ("So, what's with the second one if he turns coat at the beginning?" you might ask. Now that would be telling, wouldn't it?) Riku's backstory relates mostly to the first story arc, but the second half of it has a spoiler for something in the middle of "The Hunter," so where I include that will depend on how long each volume runs. I'm also not quite sure about the wording for the third part (and can't explain without spoiling it), but there's plenty of time to think about that.

I'm thinking of also making Project AnthraXX in three parts, corresponding with the three trimesters of Ms. Brown's freshman year. These would likely be short enough that one volume of the hard copies could be devoted to each, with one extra story as an extra for each. I don't have subtitles for the trimesters, as I don't know quite where the breaks will be, but the first two extras are currently known as "Time-Gilded Paradise Lost" and "The Dark of Gomorrah"; I'm not so sure about the third, as it doesn't really seem to add anything to the series.

As you may remember, I've always tried to posit that my intention with my projects is not to make anything realistic, but to create total fiction. I've tried to express this in recent drafts of the disclaimers. (I had them on the main page, but they quickly outgrew the 2-kB limit. I should probably put them somewhere else so you could access them without joining, but then I'd have to reword the second-to-last sentence. . . .) Of course, I have no knowledge of legal issues, so I just cobbled the document together arbitrarily. If you have any ideas on improving it, I'd be interested in hearing them.

I've also removed a couple of documents from the Project AnthraXX and Homuncupunk sections because they contained the most glaring misogyny on the site. Sadly, those pages were the main sources of information for those two. Hopefully, I'll get around to updating and re-uploading them sometime in the near future.

Continuing from previously (and noticing that my reference to bootlegs ended up being after the break):

You may have noticed that I haven't quit the horrible job that I have. The fact is, despite its horribleness, it's the only job I managed to get in a year of searching and working with Voc Rehab. I'm going to do my best to tough it out until I get something else.

"But if that's all you were able to get, how could you get something else, you stupid bastard?" I hear you ask. After all, I still have no usable experience, skills, talents, or work ethic. However, my previous job coach let drop the value of this job: that I get a good reference from it. Sad to say, but I'm one of the best workers in the department, and the chief supervisor (the one who doesn't smoke) has a very high opinion of me. Combined with the fact that I've been able to keep this job, this is of value to getting a better one.

Anyway, I don't know about specifics, but there are a few ideas I've seen lately that particularly jump out at me:


POLICE OFFICER

This was featured in the Star's "5 Jobs for Which You Don't Need a Bachelor's" (or something like that) a while back when I happened to read.

Pros: I'd be able to get good training and experience in assertiveness and tactical combat. I'd also most likely gain access to resources that would allow me to actually find out what the hell the laws are without having to hire a legal consultant. The only physical requirements noted were a test of agility, which is the least of my weaknesses.

Cons: I'd have to deal with bullying from coworkers and suspects, which I don't currently handle well. I imagine they wouldn't be receptive to use as a temporary job until I can find something better, or to having someone with such radical nonconformist views on the force. Perhaps most importantly, I'd be likely to be turned away because I'm diagnosed as "crazy" to human eyes.

Alternatives: A security guard job would be similar, but unlikely to provide training. It would also be likely to require graveyard shifts. The military would be even better training, but I hear that bullying is extremely bad there. Worse than that, in the military, I'd be required to fight whatever wars the government wants me to fight, unlike the police, which just enforces our own laws.


GAME DESIGNER/DEVELOPER

Although I haven't had the resources or conne to be able to play their actual games, I've been following Privateer Press's main setting for a number of years just because it's nifty.

Pros: It's a dream job, one that would actually be fun to do and give me useful experience toward my life goals. They specifically say that they want a positive work environment, so I doubt that there will be so much hatred toward game designers/developers in the office itself. I'd be able to work on what are, as far as I know, the best two wargames out there, and one of the best settings. I'd also get employee discounts on what is, as far as I know, the best miniature line in the world now that GW stopped being friendly to real gamers.

Cons: The biggest obstacle seems to be actually getting the job, since I have no published credits. I've put this off so long that I'm going to have to truck it to get the "design kung fu" submission in on time, which means probably no playtesting—although I do have quite a good idea, and they're not expecting a finished, balanced product. (Unlike last time, I can easily do these things because I know about the setting and thus can write things that I wouldn't be able to sell myself anyway.) I'd also have to relocate to the Seattle area, but that doesn't bother me too much, and I already have relatives and family friends there.

Alternatives: I would have a much easier time getting grunt work. It wouldn't be great, but it's likely to beat out my current one on points 1, 4, and * in the previous post. Also, the proximity might get me a foot in the door for another go at R&D. The main question is whether I'd be willing to relocate just for that. There were also openings at Fantasy Flight, but they don't accept rookies.

Anyway, Project Cow Level, which is coming to be my (solitary) internship for my hypothetical real job, has been delayed by research for the latter, the trip, and more comics. These should all be out of the way (other than my kansō) by the end of March, so I can get back to it. In terms of other short-term stuff, I'm considering at least one submission to Gamer Lifestyle.