My guess is you're subscribing to internet calendars - the internet calendars to which I subscribe do not fade either.

But I'm looking to manage multiple calendars locally. I want a personal calendar that my family can subscribe to, so that they know what's going on, but they don't care to have every class I'm going to - so I keep separate calendars for class, work, etc. like I said.

I've fooled around with all of the settings I can think of (and all the ones you mentioned). If I look at the calendars in side by side view, they're fine, but since they're all personal calendars, this view makes no sense - I always use overlay view. Regardless of checked or unchecked, view, etc. if I have more than one locally managed calendar checked, all but one are faded. I can change which one is faded by selecting a different calendar, but the one I had selected then fades.