Deathwraith said:

"Rape is unheard of."

This expression makes me extremely uncomfortable. Because I hate Japan more than anything, because in Japan, rape is almost unheard of. Because no one listens. Because if a teenage girl gets molested in public, no one helps her. Because rape does not get reported to a police, because being known as a victim of molestation would turn a teenage girl into a pariah, a target of bullying from all directions, in Japanese society. That's why Japan has one of the lowest official rape rates in the world, even though Japan is associated in the minds of foreigners with rape. "Rape is unheard of." Oh man, I hate that phrase.

I like how you immediately figured out the truth behind that statement.

"That said, human nature is human nature is still human nature."

Like I said, the reason why Sarah has such a fucked up idea of love is because she was gangraped (spoiler alert), and NO ONE BELIEVED HER ("Are you sure?" "You were probably disoriented by the fire!" (this is relevant) "You didn't see a Monster, did you?" "What were you wearing?"). The guy who led the assault was one of her classmates, and the son of a Red Shield* Executive (in the same royal branch as the Empress, who happens to be her mother, but she doesn't know that).

Her group is the first group of humans to see Xenomorphs for 1000 years, and NO ONE believes that a monster like that exists (none of the other monsters reproduce, they just "pop up" according to the government).

By the way, I seriously am going to reply to you about the whole Xeuss thing, I've had half a reply written for about 12 hours now.

*Red Shield is the name of the worldwide government, and is mainly militaristic.

Edit: Oh, and she was raised in District 6 (Japan), of all places.

So I'm go a guess this will be about as lewd/gory as elfen lied

I haven't seen Elfen Lied, but if what I heard about it is true, then, I guess so.

@DW (in regards to Xeuss): That was EXTREMELY fascinating and insightful. I'm not kidding at all. Your understanding of the human nature is incredible. That's gotta be one of my favorite posts in the last 5 years, on any forum, and I hope I do your character justice. It puts a lot of pressure on me, but at the same time, I don't care, because I feel like writing Xeuss will help me grow.

My version of Xeuss prior to reading that was actually kind of like that. I wondered just how much of yourself you wanted to be in your character, and I just decided to base him as much as I could off you rather than make up my own person. He was never a traditional leader or hero, he just really cared about the underdogs, even though, yes, he's extremely disconnected with a majority of the people he knows and finds them "expendable," even a majority of the DBO soldiers (which is why he doesn't mind mercenaries). The only person he could consider a best friend was Lucifer (if only because Lucifer is the only other original hybrid), who actually dies not long before the beginning of the story and is replaced by the woman called Helena Gaspar (the last character on the other page).

What you said about women (more specifically, how he protects them) is extremely relevant. The reason he's invested so much "overkill" into the Combat Suits is to protect his soldiers, more than half of which are female (at least, in the DBO). The reason he chooses Helena to replace Lucifer as General #1 (rather than promote Jim or Kevin) is because he sees a lot of potential in her, but the position she was previously in was a threat to that. She's probably the best strategist he's seen since the World War (or, the last 20 years), and she just knows how to survive. General #1 absolutely requires that - he sees both Jim and Kevin as expendable. Not in a "I don't care about you" way, I hope you understand that (which you probably do, because again, your post was amazing).

Among the protagonists, the order of importance is Sarah>Kiira>Helena, and it's amazing that you say Xeuss would find Sarah and Kiira fascinating and try to keep them alive and all that, because that's also what he's doing with Helena.

A little bit about Helena, if you guys care (since I've spoken nothing about her prior to her debut on page 23):

- The position of her character has been established since Sarah and Jim's were, but she was originally male and had no name. So, although she looks new, she's older than everyone else.
- She was 11 during the World War, which makes her 31-32 by the beginning of the story.
- She's the youngest General in any of the military branches.
- Because of this, she's been universally mocked (What's a kid gonna do? Where's your experience? Why are you so happy, you must not have been fighting the monsters for long. Wow, they make anyone a General these days. You know you have human lives in your hands, right?)
- She's actually not happy, at all. Unlike Vera, her cheeriness is a complete act. This aspect of her is based on the way my best friend used to be, who was honest-to-god suicidal. Helena is the same way.
- She's so sad because she wants to change the way she is, but she wants to be true to herself, which so many adults hate (and the media loves).
- She begins to honestly see all of her soldiers as her children, and, like Xeuss, is so fierce to protect them.
- She's actually the best Mobile Suit Pilot in the story, simply because the stress of handling the suit doesn't bother her at all, meaning she can always think rationally.
- Despite all this, she might eventually kill herself. I don't know what I have planned for her, though.

This might be a long shot, but in case it's not, here's another good way for you guys to get involved:

My characters come from a lot of different places. Among the main characters, there's Finland, Great Britain, Australia, Japan, France, Korea, Germany, the Philippines, Nigeria, etc. What I want to know is the specific cultural differences between all these places:

Slang, different names for common things (icebox/cooler/bin, etc), general attitudes (like how America and Britain are High-Independence while places like Japan are the opposite), maybe you can tell me preferred foods, what the general view on hunting/war/violence/racism/gay rights is, etc.

The only reason I ask is because I know some of you guys are actually from some of these places, or you know a lot about the people that come from there (mostly Australia, UK, Korea). I can always just Google this (and will for the places you guys can't help with), but I feel like I'll get more accurate info from people who actually come from these places or know the country's people well.

Which countries have always been friendly with each other? Which ones haven't? It's just small things like that I'm wondering about, because those small things will give this more depth. Again, I could ALWAYS look up these differences, but I'd probably end up incorrectly writing them.

I feel like some of this stuff is dependent on the person's class, so I'll provide that below.

SARAH - Lower Class (farm) - Japan
NANCY - Royalty/Princess - The Capitol (Europe)
KIIRA - Upper Class/Military - Finland
VERA - Middle Class - Australia
SAYA - Upper Class/Military - Japan
CORAZON - Upper Class - Started as Lower Class, the Philippines
HELENA - Upper Class/Military - Started as Lower-Middle, Great Britain

KAI - Upper Class/Military - Korea
HAJI - Royalty - Started as Lower Class, France
KEVIN/TDN - Upper Class/Military - Started as Middle Class, (non-French) Canada
PETERSON - Upper Class/Military - Started as Middle Class, USA
MEBBER - Middle Class/Military - Germany

JIM - Upper Class/Military - Started as Lower Class, Nigeria
JULIUS - Upper Class/Military - Great Britain
ARGIANO - Upper Class - France
ANZU - Royalty/Empress - Japan
GEORGE - Upper Class - Started as Middle Class, Japan
LEWIS - Middle Class/Military - Jamaica
DAVID - Upper Class/Military - Germany
JULIA - Upper Class - Started as Lower-Middle, Finland

Make the font in the quite a bit bigger, please. It looks blurry to me because it blends in with the background and I can't read it very well.

Anyway, what I can tell you about Korea, off the top of my head, is this:

- A lot of Koreans hate Japan due to several issues, such as the wartime "comfort women" controversy, the dispute over Dokdo Island, or the monument Mimizuka. An ethnic slur that Koreans use to refer to a Japanese person is "jjokbari", which is composed of "jjok" which means "direction", "bal" which means "foot" and "Yi" which means "two", referring to the traditional Japanese sandal, which separates their big toe from the rest. Basically, the term says that their foot is split like a pig's hoof.

- The upper class in Korea is represented by the families of the CEOs of the big conglomerate companies known as "chaebol" such as Samsung, Daewoo, LG and so on. I'm not sure if the top positions in these companies are, in fact, inherited in the family and have been so for generations, but such is the conception about them in pop culture.

- In Korea, the social pressure is incredible. There is pressure on students to always be the best, because their performance in college will actually affect their chances of getting a good job, unlike in the rest of the world. This comes from the strong influence of Confucianism on Korean society, due to it having been the state religion for ~500 years, a period during which there would be national exams with results so important that they allowed anyone, no matter how lowly, to become a government official if their results were among the highest. After college, people are supposed to immediately get jobs and get married as soon as possible; practices such as blind dates or arranged marriage are extremely common and I doubt there is such a thing as a NEET, since gamers there make more money than pop celebrities.

- Koreans mostly don't call each other by name, unless they are friends of the same age, and for friends that are older than them use an appellative that means "older sister" or "older brother", as follows: a female will refer to an older female friend as "Unnie"; a male will refer to an older male friend as "Hyung"; a male will refer to an older female friend as "Noona"; a female will refer to an older male friend as "Oppa". This also applies to lovers. Of course, if they have to mention a list of people, they will mention the names followed by the proper appellative each time. Also, the Korean equivalent of the Japanese term "senpai" is "sunbae" and it means exactly the same thing, because both come from Chinese.

- Being pretty is much more valued in Korean society than being talented. Bae Suzy has received pretty much all the acting awards possible to receive in Korea, even though she's a below average actress. Because, I mean, look at her, how can you not give her ALL OF THE AWARDS? Because of this, they are, as a people, addicted to plastic surgery and if you ever see a group of Korean women and think that they all look the same, it's not because you're insensitive, it's because they had the most popular features sculpted unto their faces, so they all have basically the same face. It's pretty scary sometimes.

- Koreans, like the Japanese, are rather cross culturally insensitive. They are not very tolerant of homosexuality, they still practice blackface and other stereotypes for humor or for celebrating diversity on public television and festivals and one of their most popular pop groups Shinhwa has lyrics like "You niggaz better know" while they dress like actual fairies. Speaking of which, it is virtually impossible to become a pop celebrity in Korea if you are not Asian.

- Holy Sweet Mother of My Dick

I am going to write out a response, But in the mean time when are we going to get more looks at our fine feathered friends?

@DW: Awesome. Again, very helpful. Considering all that, I have to ask, how are orphans treated? Because the one major Korean character I have is an orphan whose parents died because they got into some stupid shit with gangs. He was also adopted by a Japanese person of all people.

Also yeah, I'll just use the normal white text from now on.

Remember guys, just straight up tell me what's wrong with whatever I'm doing. The small blue text never bothered me, so I've been using it for a year. I didn't know anyone else had problems with it because no one bothered telling me till now. (I'm not mad. Actually, this'll make it a hell of a lot easier to revamp Art Crap, not having to deal with as much coding bullshit.)

@CH: Very soon. I'm going to shorten the gaps between updates (probably WEEKLY THIS TIME WOW), but this means we'll only have at least 2 characters at a time. There's gonna be, like, 4, this time, but I only have 2 done so far, so maybe 3.

You guys are gonna see a "special" friend, hopefully you guys are alright with the fact that I'm including them. They're special in that they're in that same category as the Chiropterans, Xenos, etc.

Edit: I forgot to mention, even though this takes place more than 1000 years from now, the cultural differences of our time are important because a lot stuff happens and makes people really serious about cultural preservation, which, as you might guess, actually kind of hinders societal evolution. Even with early classes in communications/tolerance, people are still people and can be assholes sometimes, just less so. This isn't the perfect world that I'm going to initially show it off as.

Well the blue thingy has never bothered me until now. It must be because of this monitor, I didn't have any problems reading it on my own monitor.

Hmmm, I don't know how orphans are seen, they might not be treated badly simply because they don't have parents, BUT I believe adoption is frowned upon. I can't word this properly because I just woke up, but it's the lineage thing, they always want an heir, much preferably a boy, just like in China. Which reminds me of another thing, which is that in marriage, the woman doesn't take the first name of the man, but the children do. And the father's parents are to the children simply grandfather and grandmother, while the mother's parents are referred to as "outside grandfather" and "outside grandmother", because the wife and the wife's family isn't part of the man's lineage, like the children are. So yeah, I'm not sure about how orphans are treated, but because of the fact that I've never seen any idol ever talk about orphans, I'm inclined to think that they're simply not an issue of public interest.

Oh, and about xenophobia, you might want to read this. I don't know how true it is, but it's definitely plausible.

Eh, I'm still gonna just use white text, just in case people have weird monitors.

Anyway, I tried writing a response to that article, but I honestly don't know what to say. It just makes me want to be even more careful about how I handle racism in my story. That issue unfortunately is overshadowed by life/death/sex/family, although it plays well with another common question I pose: "Who is REALLY the enemy?"

Kai (the Korean character) is adoptive siblings with Saya (on page 23) and initially hates her because it was a Yakuza syndicate that got his parents killed. Their adoptive father is a retired General, and is also japanese.

Kai's probably the main person through which I constantly ask "Who is the enemy?" He's just a confused boy. He thinks the Predators are enemies at first (they're not, really), that the Chiropterans are inhuman wastes of space (they're much more innocent than that), that all Japanese people are bad (he becomes the most protective of Saya in the end), and thinks Xeuss is an asshole for putting him on the team that he's on (his team becomes his family).

Really, he represents both the common citizen and the audience, even though he's not the main focal. I'm excited to write him.

Edit: It might be hard to write this without seeming racist: his family name is Cheong and keeps it in memory of his parents, but switches to his adoptive father's name later on to both honor his death and because he realizes his parents were stupid assholes. He realizes his adoptive father was more of a parent than his birth parents ever were.

That's it, there's no race involved, other than the fact that he stops being racist. But I'm afraid people will twist it to make it look like "Wow, so the Korean guy is led to believe that Japanese people are better than Koreans?"

Also, there's the fact that he's KOREAN, and it just so happens that a JAPANESE mafia fucked him over. Should I change it to him hating military, with a military group killing his parents? (People are forced to serve the military for however many years, which explains why he's in the military.)

It's funny that he hates a Japanese girl because the Yakuza killed his parents, because look http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuza#Ethnic_Koreans

Also, another thing I wanted to say was that Korean enterprises go by the idea of "eastern way, western technology". So they really are conservative and hold on to their traditions very tightly. Especially after they escaped from under Japanese rule, they've been clinging to absolutely everything they could find that would justify their cultural independence, like their alphabet. And they've been adding fucking everything to UNESCO as national heritage. I mean they have an island, castles, songs, even people.

Wow, I could probably make that part of his backstory, then. Yeah, he thinks Yakuza killed his parents, but it turns out they WERE Yakuza, and were just assholes.

This guy's in for one hell of a shock.

Hmmm, about his family name, you would be better off spelling it as Jung or Jeong. It is exactly the same name, 정.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chung_(Korean_surname)

The Jung romanization is more popular among young people, because it looks better and, when read by an American, it sounds pretty close to how it should sound. The consonant ㅈ only sounds like ch when not preceded by a vowel and even then it's not a sure thing. Otherwise it will sound mostly like the j in "jam", but it can even sound like a softer, french j. It all depends on the person's mood when they're speaking, really. They don't distinguish between the same sounds we do.

Yeah, I admittedly just picked a random version of the name, but I'll go with Jung.

Would it be realistic to think of Korea as one place by the time this guy is born, because I've been referring to his home as just "Korea" rather than North or South (would most likely be South, though).

I don't know, I seriously doubt there's any chance of unification for as long as big nations like China, Russia and America fight over influence. Even if the Kim regime is overthrown in the North, the country would probably still be known as North Korea to the rest of the world. I mean, the countries themselves are called Hangook (South Korea - of which "gook" means "country or "land", and this "han" means something like "morning calm") and Chosun (North Korea - exactly the same name as the dynasty before Korea split), even though the south refers to North Korea as Bookhan, meaning "North Han". And the actual name Korea comes from an ancient nation called Goryeo that used to exist on the peninsula.

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh right, even if the Kim regime is overthrown, the distinction between the two countries would likely only grow, because North Korea is really 100 years behind South Korea in everything, so even if China and Russia wouldn't work at that point to keep them separate, unification is unlikely. Nowadays, most people refer to South Korea when they simply say "Korea". Either that, or they think both countries are the same thing. But I mean, people who don't, will not say "I'm going to Korea" and mean "I'm going to North Korea", or "my Korean friend" or "a Korean Starcraft player", it's pretty obvious that they mean South Korea, because North Korea does not allow free access to tourists, does not have Internet, rarely sends students to foreign countries and barely have computers capable of running Mario, which they keep in a museum anyway. So right now, by saying "Korea" you will most likely be understood as talking about South Korea. But if North Korea becomes a normal country, then the distinction will become more necessary, so in your future, either Korea is a single nation across the whole peninsula, or South Korea and North Korea are two distinct normal nations, or South Korea comes to be referred to simply as Korea and North Korea becomes the distinct nation of Chosun.

Either way, they have the same language, the same history until the split, the same traditions and mostly the same values and culture. Speaking of which, there is another type of "han" in Korean culture, one that has nothing to do with the name of the country and refers to a national feeling of frustration, resentment and sadness, which they say is expressed by the sound of their single-chord instrument haegeum, which you can hear here because I can't find the traditional song I was looking for.

"I seriously doubt there's any chance of unification for as long as big nations like China, Russia and America fight over influence."

I'm gonna call North Korea "Chosun," which will make Kai's home just "Korea." I'll look up what that means.

In-story, not every country survived when the The Hive assimilated the planet, but something tells me "Chosun" would survive somehow. The big 3 you mentioned are still pretty big in this future. The 2 dominating countries are Britain and Japan, since this entire new world started with the reign of Weyland-Yutani (which would eventually become Red Shield).

1000 years is a long time, so even with the "unification" of the world and the preservation of our society norms, Chosun and Korea will be completely different places (not that they aren't already). I wonder how I should tackle that.

Oh, by unification I meant unification of Korea, not unification of the whole world. I meant that even if the two Koreas are willing, it probably won't be done due to foreign influence, as is the case with Romania and Moldova. Just trying to clarify, because I know I was pretty sloppy with my train of thought in that post.

You have to take into consideration that even though they are two nations, they are one people, so no matter how different they become, they can't be THAT different and the feelings of fraternity would likely not fade, especially in a formerly Confucian society, where they use words that denote family members to refer to their friends, and the word "friend" to refer to a stranger.

Nah you're fine, but it was good of you to reexplain Korea's unification because I didn't catch it that way the first time. That's interesting - maybe they won't be so hostile to each other in the future, and they're just separate because of other countries.

Unrelated to Korea: Each country is really, really close to each other. I keep saying there's a planet-sized hive because there is - the entire human population has been reduced to about 500 million people, and they all live on either Australia or some other island big enough to hold all of them (which I don't think Great Britain could, sorry to not use it, CH).

The settlement is made of 7 States that represent each continent. Within each state is a number of districts that each share the name of the country it's based on. The settlement is in a circle shape that encloses the entire continent within it, including some ocean.

The Americas are the thick, defensive outer "wall," which is used to surround and close off the actual continent from the rest of the world. About 200 million people live in North/South America. N. America is the home of Alpha Draconis. This wall wasn't made by man.

Australia is the next layer. It's thinner and houses most of the "office type" middle class. There are 50 million people.

Africa is next and, along with Australia, houses most of the surviving wildlife and rural areas. One of the most technologically advanced cities is located in Africa, however, and it's where the universal train station began. There are around 70 million people.

Asia is next. The entire State lies on an artificial "wall of mountains," so they see a lot of snow. This is where most of the technological advancements are made. District 6, Japan, is notable for being the home of the current Empress. Along with Africa, Asia has the most farmland. Asia contains around 100 million people.

Europa, the most dominant State, houses some of the most popular and largest cities in the world, as well as some of the most powerful people. It's extremely similar to North America, except there's much more snow. It contains around 65 million people and is home to DBO HQ, in Great Britain.

Next is the "Ocean State" of Antarctica, which is just a huge mass of water that surrounds the continent's Capitol, Acheron. There ARE some settlements in Antarctica, but they're all owned by other States. Otherwise, it's just a tropical place with many islands akin to the Caribbean where people (mostly Europeans) go on vacation. Antarctica contains about 5 million permanent residents.

The City-State Capitol, Acheron, is in the very center of the continent. Slightly smaller than New York, it contains 10 million and has the same vibe as Europa.

Europa and Acheron are the main settings of the story.

I'll probably draw a map soon because I got carried away.

I tried making the helmet look all sketchy, but it just looks like I was lazy. I'll stick with the smooth style.

Engineer:


Humans:




The first one is the Korean guy I spent the last two pages talking about.

The second one is the Secretary of War as well as being the Empress' personal adviser and guard (hence "Praetorian").

The last one is Sarah and Nancy's mother, the Empress of the world and the main antagonist for a majority of the story.

*puts dick away*

Yeah, no wallpapers yet, keep that shit locked up. But in all seriousness, there's only 6 more important humans to do, so I might as well start the wallpapers in between those.

Edit: I'm just gonna give up the fact that the white haired guy is the real "big bad," if it wasn't obvious enough (white haired/red eyed pretty boy zealot, his forum name is SPACE JOCKEY, he was "born" in ACHERON, he looks punchable, etc).

I wasn't expecting any questions about him unless you already knew that, anyway.