Time's Path

This is quite a neverending discussion topic, heated war in scanlation world, if you're following.

This is the latest hot topic at MangaUpdates since a while ago. It's talking about how an old manga scanlation group closed down because of a specific online manga reader didn't respect her wish not to host her scans. Nothing special? Yeah, nothing if the group is not a group as old as 11 years. Yeah, they have been scanning since 2002, I was still a crybaby.

The situation is nothing new. Our relationship with online manga readers/manga aggregators have always been like that. The same point from all of us is that we are doing something illegal. The scanlation groups are scanning and translating many mangaka's works without permission. And the online readers hosted them, acting as a database. The only difference I noticed so far is the fact that these readers got an income, while scanlators didn't. Even if we did ask for donations, it would be for buying raws and do yet another illegal work. And all these illegal things were born from our love and passion towards manga. We didn't get anything except the happiness and satisfaction of telling others that there are amazing titles you need to check out. While I have no idea of a specific online manga reader's income is enough as a job to feed someone on, I don't care and I don't want to know either; the fact that he and friends gained money by hosting our works (meaning we do the works, not he and friends is what I have a hard time accepting.

We are often called hypocrites. Probably we are. No, indeed we are. As I said, we're all doing illegal works here, we're going against copyright. So why are we still doing this? If you're often into manga world, you know what we say as "an effort to make less popular manga widely known to the world". From my current manga reading list, almost all of them I never saw published in my country, and probably never will. How much more out there, only God knows maybe. That's just one me. What about billions of other readers living at other countries but Japan? Who can't read Japanese? Who can't buy things online?

We are hypocrites. Whatever, I don't care. While I do feel bad for the mangaka, I'm not gaining any profit from doing this. Neither did readers/visitors who visit scanlators' website or the online readers. Heck, in fact we lose more than we gain. At least we stop scanlating when the series is licensed to be released internationally. At least we remove all those files when license comes around. Unlike some other bunch.

Inside Scanlation, a website dedicating itself to the history and development of manga scanlation world, wrote that some series and mangaka gained popularity because of online scanlations. I have no idea if that is true or not. And I have no idea if we're actually helping mangaka spreading their works too. I do believe it has an impact, a balance between positive and negative, because you can't achieve perfection of good things only in this world.

So I'll keep on going, until the day I'm too fed up with this to continue.

My tab died. Literally. And now it caused such a strange sound that won't stop no matter what I do. Well, I haven't tried throwing it to the wall, though... And there goes my last chance of getting proper internet connection until I return to boarding house tomorrow. :P

Aside from ^ that ^ which made my day like hell, nothing big happened. I played around most of the day, even though I was planning to study after I finished my notes and an event report last night... Look at how lazy I am. This class is rather troublesome so I should be pumped in studying, but instead... It's so hard to gather motivation lately. Maybe because this is already my third year, or I'm just that lazy now. But I'm not really in mood of reading manga or watching anything... I just want to have nothing to do, to be lazy around. Bleh.

Tough week is coming. At the end of the next week there will be a biology competition for high school students my organization hosted, and I'm part of the committee again. Work, work. And preparing lectures, of course. ... Wait, 'prepare' isn't the right word, lol.

From what is supposed to be a week, lol.

Finally the national event my batch created in name of our faculty ended last night. I'm glad it ended, and I bet my friends who had more problems felt even happier that it ended. It was quite an exhausting week for me, running here and there taking care of many things, coming home late, too tired to do anything else even though the week was free from any academic activities. There were problems here and there... But all in all it was a fun experience. It's nice to be able to do something like that once in a while.

Even so the projects didn't end there. I have another national event I'm taking part in the next two weeks, and my batch still has another social project which will take place in the next two months, I suspect. That means we'll still be busy.

Oh, well. At least I managed to watch some drama and anime, although I made no progress in continuing my Japanese and little progress in scanlating.

Last night I was thinking to return to Wordpress. Not that I'm very unsatisfied with how Dreamwidth is, but I was bored and I didn't find a theme I really like to use. I decided to go with this one ('Belledona') and too lazy to convert or export all the content here to new Wordpress. There is no easy way, lol. So I guess I'll stick to using this place~ Haven't been very successful in blogging ever since I closed my first blog, lol.

It's already Sunday, geez. I'm sad, really. Haven't done anything yet... So I'm thinking about how I'll spend my last free Sunday evening. After going to church. Nyahaha.

Last Saturday I went to Eru's concert, a Korean singer. He also invited some artists he had collaborated with, among them was Ailee, one of my idols. Thank God I finally got the chance to, I thought for sure I wouldn't go since my mom was too worried. I went there solely to check Ailee, though. And it was AWESOME. Here's what I wrote on AngelicAilee, an international fan forum for Ailee.

P.S.: I love you, Ailee! <33333

Hi, guys!

I don't want to brag or anything, I just purely want to share my experience meeting Ailee for the first time live in concert. Why is it special? Because it was Ailee, because it was the first outdoor live concert I went to, because I was never like this no matter how much I'm a fan of some certain idols.

I didn't go there without some troubles. From parents mainly because it was my first experience and even I was scared a bit. But thanks to the help of my friends too, I finally got the permission to go, safe and sound.

We waited quite long since picking the ticket until the gate opened, waited for another half an hour until the concert actually started. Of course since it was Eru's concert he appeared first, presenting some of his songs, which I thought were pretty good. Then the background screen changed, a "NEXT STAGE" teaser was shown, and I hardly noticed the girl on the screen until an Invitation album cover appeared. Since I came for Ailee, I had been waiting for this, so I screamed all over and shouting Ailee's name.

She started with Heaven. Just one first line of Heaven, fans already screamed like crazy. I was preparing to take photos and videos, but unfortunately I was too short, and it was so hard to just be able to look at Ailee directly. So I gave up and decided to sing along instead. Other fans sang along too, which was awesome. I truly loved her clothes, the simplicity of pink and black made her shine in the night, lol. Of course, the greatest experience was when she hit those high notes like piece of cake. At that moment I thought, "This idol is real. She has real talent." ~

After Heaven she greeted the audience. She said few lines, among them mentioned about how she was surprised to see lots of her fans here, mentioned about how she liked Indonesia, and praised Eru for being an awesome singer and older brother. She also said she'd love to visit us again (I think), and with that she sang I Will Show You. Undoubtedly fans sang along even harder than Heaven, shouting and such.

The stage turned dark, Baechigi appeared, and together they sang Shower of Tears. Hard to sing along with this song, lol, since there are lots of rapping part. I love how Ailee improvised her part to make it more natural. Great job from both.

After that performance I went home, unfortunately, since I wasn't allowed to go home too late and was afraid of traffic jam. So I didn't get to see her closing performance with the others. And now I feel kinda angry at myself for not trying to take any photos or videos of Ailee. *sigh*

Well, I just wanted to say that her talent is real, and that we are correct for loving her because she's just that awesome.

To those who weren't able to visit the concert, don't be sad, don't give up. I believe now Ailee is aware that she has more fans worldwide than she imagined before, probably, so once she's ready with more songs to entertain us, I'm sure she'll have concerts here and there. There will always be a chance to meet her again. (Of course, I'll try hard to be there again when she comes, lol~)

GO AILEE!