Ha-zu-ka-shi-i!

Remember my whole rant on scanlations? And I mentioned how ANViL did Sailor V scans? I neglected to mention that they indirectly mentioned me no less than THREE TIMES throughout all three volumes of the scans. Yup, they referred to Project: Sailor V (now part of Souten Scans), and in the Chapter 11 intro page, they said that in 2003 (when they were scanlating that chapter), they heard PSV was starting back up again! o_o; I know PSV had its ups and downs (mainly due to me being the only one that had access to the damn books, but not a scanner at the time), but yeesh!

I feel very embarrassed and guilty. I applaud ANViL and GT Fansubs for getting the scans out and distributing them far and wide... but to be honest, even if I have to go at it ALL BY MY LONESOME (and it would be challenging and tiring and all that... but dammit, I KNOW I COULD DO IT), I will get the re-releases of Sailor V done. As it was meant to be-- with honest-to-god good editing, good translating, no substitutions! As I've been going through the chapters, there's a few things that I notice:
* The scans are low-quality. I mean, low-quality even for a scanlation. Still readable, but... yeah. (Then again, this is GT's fault, not ANViL's)
* The translations are not always accurate, and sometimes when they are lacking in translation, they substitute in inappropriate things. Sometimes it's funny, but it's still not in the spirit of scanlating what was really there.
* The text-setting and editing is pretty bad at times. Especially with sound effects. Some things (like those little "notations" that often appear in a more hand-written font than in a type-face one) are left completely untranslated.
* They don't have translations AT ALL for the liner notes. Liner notes often tell more to the story than what can be interpreted, and they are Naoko's true words. I think now, more than ever, Naoko's liner notes are available translated, but even if they weren't, I would try and do them myself. Wanting to read the real manga is part of the reason why I started studying Japanese. I think that's true for a lot of other people, too.
* The overall quality isn't that great. Pages could stand to be leveled a few more times, and the text often sits on top of a very obvious "paint brush bubble." I think scanlations should be neat and clean, but still give people a reason to buy the original.

So yes, I will be starting up PSV as soon as I get the chance. It's probably the only one I can really do on my own anyway, given that DMG has yet to finish providing me with the Gospel of Truth HQ scans (though admittedly, it's not as rare as I thought, and I could probably buy another copy of it... or even the new Sailor V releases, break the binding, and make my OWN HQ scans. But seriously, it's NOT easy to do that, and I would much rather NOT spend the time or money if someone else already did it and is willing to help).

If you're interested, head on over to souten_scans. Check out the website while you're at it, and sign up. I don't think there's a ton of members (I do have all the people that filled out forms via the website), but if I can stay on top of one project, PSV would be it. I hope.

Off to a great start! (not)

Today sucks already. I don't want to be like "Oh, it started out terrible, so the rest of the day must be going to hell, too." I'm a realist, not a pessimist! But to begin with:

* My alarm clock didn't go off (stupid cell phone. I must have accidentally disabled it sometime last night, but the damn indicator icon was still on, so how the fuck was I supposed to know? I'm seriously considering seeing if T-Mobile will let me trade in my RAZR v3x for one of their new RAZRs that's actually supported. None of this European gibberish funktastic broken-but-not-really crap).

* Because of that, I woke up 5 minutes before I was supposed to be in class. Reeking, I decided to take a shower. Hungry, I decided to eat breakfast. Hopefully doing the somewhat-smart thing (even if it meant missing a vocab quiz, no matter what), I decided to ditch class in favor of working on my monstrous essay for Mass Media-- the class that won't count for anything at CSUN except 3 units.

* The essay which I've already written the bulk of... on Spider-Man alone! So I redid the outline, printed it out, and will start writing a more organized (hopefully) essay as soon as I'm done venting in this entry.

My sleep schedule over the course of the winter vacation and this past weekend has been horrible. So it's no surprise that when my back started hurting horribly yesterday (yay, sciatica), I also happened to run out of painkillers. So I decided to slam some Midol (hey, they have acetaminophen AKA Tylenol in it!) and sleep... and sleep I did, for several hours. And obviously while sleeping, I did not eat. Thus, when I woke up many hours later, I was a complete fruitcake.

And nobody likes a fruitcake.

Well, so I tried to get things done, tried to eat, blah blah... but then when it started getting late, even though I KNEW I should sleep, I wasn't tired. My mind just kept wandering back to all the things that I have yet to get done. And excuse after excuse poured into my brain about why it hasn't gotten done. I hate making excuses.

I also hate having to vent on my LJ because I have no one I can really tell all this to in person, get some honest, IRL feedback from. I hate sticking myself in my room all day and really porking out in front of my computer, because even when I'm at work (school; CSUN) doing it, when people come into the walk-in center for help, it's a breath of fresh air! It's not just mindless-Mer staring at a computer screen, clacking away, even if it is somehow productive.

And my chest has been hurting so much lately, I wonder if I'm setting myself up to have a heart attack. Shit, it runs in my family. It's not like I eat fried food all day long, but I'm not exactly Miss America, here. Oatmeal, Cream of Wheat, and the occasional veggie platter do not a healthy cardiovascular system make.

At the very least, I'm a ball of stress, and I'm worried that I won't get anything done, or I'll get everything done half-assed with people mad at me, or some mixture inbetween where I'll end up doing damage somehow. I had such a hard time sleeping last night.

I really hate complaining though, instead of making any changes, so I'm back to working on my essay... which, by the way, crashed about 5 minutes ago, but at least Word makes use of the Recovery feature. So I guess that's one LESS thing to be stressed about.