What's with the community these days?

There's a rant down below, but I thought I'd throw out the typical tidbits of a progress update that I put over here as motivation to bother visiting before I hit you with that:
Kawase sequel chapter - ready to release
OtoBoku 16 - typesetting
Anal Angel 5 - typesetting
Mei is next in my queue, and Reversible! is after that.  Near Equal is being ground away at by a new guy, I'm using it as a project to kind of test him out and train him as a translator.  mosco is working on Maid in Japan, as always, and also as always, I don't get status reports from him and a script will just fall in my lap some day hopefully soon.  Kaichu! is still a joint, hopefully they're working on the script/TS for a release someday soon.


If you don't live under a rock, you've heard about some of the drama going on between scanlation groups these days.  It always bugs me when this shit happens, since (despite an influx of chapters at the start) it benefits no one, and readers always come away with a shitty impression of the scene as a whole.  There's a pretty solid example recently (perhaps more to come, I've heard stirrings), so I'll just use what's public knowledge about that to share my thoughts on all this.

Alright, Nozoki Ana.  This was the big shitstorm recently.  Apparently (I'm not following the series, so the history is a bit secondhand) a group called Blackwing was working on it, and experienced a period of slow releases.  Someone talked another group called XscansX into working on it, and they picked it up with a statement along the lines of: "We don't really want this series, we're doing this as a favor until the original group gets moving again."  Well, following that, Blackwing came back to life, released a full volume over the course of a day or so, XscansX got upset (I thought they didn't want it?), there was drama, and eventually things got settled into a joint-project agreement of sorts.  This, on the surface, seems like it turned out well for the fans, right?  They got a volume over the course of a day after having had slow releases for quite a while.  However, the guy from Blackwing was apparently still a little upset, and a (somewhat) unrelated thread on MangaFox going sour was enough to get him to rage quit, dropping eight series, and five more after another release or two.  The motivation to scanlate is tenuous enough for some people that causing a big shitstorm like that just leads to one less scanlator.

Now, I'll try to discuss my thoughts on this kind of shit while also responding to the typical counterarguments. Stealing other people's series' is a dick move, and that's usually what causes this kind of drama.  The response is usually "you can't steal something (pirating the manga) and claim ownership, that's stupid."  No, but what people can claim ownership over is the time that they've sank into the series already.  They can also claim ownership over their time in the future, and stop scanlating simply because that series was what they were interested in working on, not scanlating as a whole.  Any response to calling it a dick move to take a series out from under someone is silly in the first place, because the solution to the problem is really simple, it's called email.  Seriously, if people would bother to send emails and get in touch with other groups, 90% of this kind of shit would be prevented.
There's also the argument that it's alright to pick up someone else's series if they're going 'slowly.'  I've never heard a more vague word used as the basis of a self-justification.  Beyond the issues with that statement on it's own, the answer is as simple as the one I presented before: send an email.  You know, I really like Ookiku Furikabutte, and I heard that the scanlations had stalled out.  You know what my response was?  I emailed them, asked them what they needed in terms of help, pointed out to them that people are trying to get the series picked up by other groups due to the delay in releases, and loaned them an editor part-time.  They seemed grateful, I now feel more interconnected into the scanlation community (which I think is a personal quirk, lots of groups seem to dislike transparency and being connected with other groups for some reason), the fans will be happy once releases start rolling out - rather than jumping on their series, overtaxing our group, pissing them off, and slamming out releases as fast as possible and compromising quality just to spite them.  It's everyone wins vs everyone loses.  Simple to see which option is better.  Don't take any of this to mean I condone people quitting or raging due to that kind of drama, that's just silly - but in the end, it's their time, and it really isn't our place to demand that they spend it doing something for us in the first place.
I think my biggest issue with all this kind of shit is that it's a respect issue.  Getting worked up like this is disrespectful to the readers.  Taking on someone's project without saying anything is disrespectful to the other group.  Racing for releases and sacrificing quality or personal time is a lack of self-respect, and a lack of respect to the readers.  It's so fucking easy to send an email, I don't understand why so many people just can't muster up that effort.
Anyway, don't take this discussion to mean that we're interested in anything he dropped or anything like that.  I just felt like all the drama lately was frustrating me (there's been several smaller bouts, and a few clouds on our horizon that I managed to dismiss before anything happened) and felt like sharing my thoughts might get it out of my system a bit.

Still on a California Adventure

So, a bunch of shit happened, and last I left off, I was at Geif's house.  Well, a bunch more stuff happened, and now I'm up at my grandmother's place in Visalia for a few weeks.  It's a much more work-conducive environment, since I don't have my laptop set up out in public space where I'm easily distracted.  This whole trip has been kind of strange though, since I'm bumming around, fairly broke, with only casual clothes like t-shirts in my suitcases, and I keep ending up in pretty upscale neighborhoods.  Gief's place is in a gated-but-not-really-gated community, and it's really nice, it has several parks within the neighborhood, and a pair of pools.  Then I came up to my grandmother's place, which is in an actual gated community, all the houses are huge, they all have their own pools...  Luckily my uncle is a slob, so I don't feel too out of place around here.

As far as AX goes, there's a handful of things I'm really looking forward to.  First and foremost is Miku, of course...  but they've announced some guests that are exciting as well.  I'm not sure whether I care or not yet, but they announced the producer of Saihate as a guest of honor.  Some VN guys will be there, and while they aren't the autograph kind of guests, I'll be interested to go to the Q&A sessions and stuff, since that industry is pretty interesting.  Miyuki Sawashiro will be there too, and she's voiced a million characters I like, so it's going to be hard to choose what/who to have her sign (I'll probably get a print of one of her roles from the artist's alley).  They've also announced that the mangaka who wrote Kimagure Orange Road will be there, so I'll have to get him to sign something as well, that series is one of the great classics of the shounen romance genre.

I guess my goals for AX are the same as any other convention.  I'll go to the events that seem cool, take pictures of cosplayers, and scour the dealers hall and artist alley for merchandise of my froggy waifu.  Cross your fingers for me, Suwako goods are fairly uncommon.  I think my focus this time around is going to be on digging through doujin bins hoping to luck into a copy of "King of Moriya" or something.

In terms of WOW!scans stuff, obviously I've had my nose to the grindstone lately.  At the moment, I'm waist-deep in the script for the Me and Kawase sequel chapter, and either Mei or Anal Angel is going to be up next.  Prunus Girl comes out around the 22nd, so I'm going to try and at least get one chapter of Mei and AA out before then, and maybe Reversible too if I have the time.  I don't know if people realize, but I put in three eight hour days to get this past weekend's releases out; scanlation is a major time-sink even when I'm not getting the translation credits for a particular chapter.  In any case, just wait patiently and things will keep coming out.

Where the hell have I been?

Well, you may have noticed that not only have we been short releases (due mainly to my classes and the unexplained mass staff exodus), but my blog has been pretty damn sparse as well.  This is due to a bunch of random stuff, so I'll break it into pieces, since some may be interesting to you all.

First of all, there was the staff meetup at Fanime that we've all been looking forward to for quite a while.  Me and Holic got on the train in Washington on Thursday morning and rode for like a million years, finally arriving in San Jose on Friday morning.  The seats seemed comfortable at first, but by the ten hour mark, they may as well have been made out of concrete.  We actually were the first of the group to hit San Jose, and Yomi from our IRC met us at the station and walked us to the hotel so we didn't get lost.  Herp, who's QC'd for us under various names, flew in from Florida on Wednesday, and he, Koiz, Gief, and another friend from our ventrilo server all met us in the lobby.  The convention itself was kind of awful.  The cosplay, dealer's hall, and artist alley were all pretty good, but the organization of the convention was the worst I've seen yet.  In terms of content, things were pretty light from the get-go.  There were two good guests (well, FLOW was there, but the line outweighed my interest), and both got kinda screwy.  The Gainax founder who was supposed to be there cancelled.  Yoshiki's plane was late, but his Q&A was really awesome - but the dipshit staff wouldn't let him sign all the autographs, so only 40 (none of us) people got autographs.  The panels were really light on content and heavy on stupid stuff for 14 year olds like anime-themed games.  We almost got fucked on the one panel I wanted to go to (the Touhou panel) since they didn't have schedules printed for the first day, and when they finally got (not enough) copies made, they were inaccurate.  So, enough bitching and on to the highlights.  I mentioned that the dealer's hall was good; pretty sure everyone of us that has a waifu found goods to buy of our respective 2D spouses.  There was actually a small booth that was selling exclusively Touhou goods (we found out later that the guy running it went to Reitaisai earlier this month), so I was able to get a keychain figure of my frog waifu (Suwako) that I didn't know existed (amazingly well sculpted for such a small figure, too).  Then at the Touhou panel (which was really good, but ran out of time before the live mixset that someone was going to do :/) someone who apparently had been at the swap-meet on Friday was selling the rest of their Touhou doujins really cheaply, and I managed to get one of my waifu and 5 more for 7 dollars (all non-H).  Holic started out the trip with the statement "I'm not buying any figures, because I'm not a faggot," and ended the trip with 5-6 figures, a messenger bag, some art books, a poster book, and a few prints.  I was really happy to see him get over that hump and let himself really enjoy his hobby like that.  Other than the dealer's hall and the Touhou panel, the real highlight of the con was hanging out with everyone.  We all got along right off the bat and meshed really well, since we all act basically the same in real life as we have been for the year and a half we've known each other online.  All our inside jokes from vent worked just as well in person, and we had a shitload of fun even just during downtime in the hotel room.

So, I'm not writing this post from my house.  I'm still in California, staying at Gief's mom's house with him for the next month.  This was the part that actually threw a wrench into WOW!scans stuff getting done in a timely fashion...  Basically, we had talked about me staying down here until Anime Expo a while back, but decided it wasn't really worth the hassle.  Then they announced the Miku concert...  So Tuesday of last week I hammered out the details to make it a month and a half trip instead of a week long trip.  This meant that not only did I need to manage to pack for that long of a trip, but all that little shit that gets put off till "later" needed to be wrapped up before I left.  So now I'm sitting down here in Orange County, wondering whether I'll be able to get some shitty temp job through a temp staffing agency so I have reasonable spending money for AX...  I'll also see my grandmother that lives down here for the first time in a few years, so this trip should be pretty neato all around.  I'll figure out more that needs saying later, I'm sure I missed something.

Also, here's a bunch of pictures, sort by tags since I didn't bother to make volumes: flickr.com/photos/yamadaadtrapm6