Cain, a Tatsumi/Tsuzuki and Muraki/Tsuzuki doujinshi by L'Acryma D'Anjou, was the work that inspired me to start scanlating. I looked at the art and I *had* to know what was going on. Making up my own story based on the intriguing artwork simply wasn't enough. I had to figure out the story, and I wasn't going to let the language barrier stand in my way.

And I'm glad I did, because a translated manga/doujinshi with text usually turns out better than what I conjure up in my overactive imagination.

So three years later, I think I'm done. There are a couple of errors that relate to the omake preface, but they don't have a major bearing on the gist of the story. If you know enough Japanese to pick up those errors, then surely you would've read the raw ages ago instead of waiting for the half-baked scanlation.


CAIN
Circle: L'Acryma D'Anjou (artist YAMAGUCHI Kanon)
Pairing: TatsumixTsuzuki, MurakixTsuzuki; appearances by Watari, Oriya, Touda.
Spoilers: Kyoto arc - manga volumes 7-8, anime episodes 11-13. Also minor spoilers for Gensoukai arc - manga volumes 9+
Genre: angst, yaoi, violence, comedy in omake
Scanlation status: complete (parts 1-2 and omake)
Summary: After the events of Kyoto arc, Tatsumi and Tsuzuki share a romantic Christmas Eve together. However, Muraki has been revived for a sinister purpose, and is hell-bent on luring Tsuzuki to his side once more. In the omake, Muraki is the victim of a crazy manservant curse.
Download
COMPLETE doujinshi (18.3Mb ZIP) Savefile | Mediafire | Divshare

I wonder what L'Acryma D'Anjou is doing now. I really loved how she could switch from humour to angst, and do both equally well. I admire that kind of creative flexibility, that ability to veer from one extreme to the other. She was very good at it.

---

Sekiguchi. Aguri. Pineapple juice. I have this strange urge to write Shibuya de Aimashou fanfic. I'm waiting for it to pass.

Thanks to georgiesmith's generosity, SoloVision is slowly being updated with some vintage tabloid magazine articles from the 1960s. She has kindly donated HQ scans of several magazines and clippings, and I'll try to host the actual scan AND provide a transcript.

In the past, I would've just cropped the photo and typed out the text to save webspace and bandwidth, but now I've come to realise that it's a lot better to have the actual pages available so people can see the article layout, the photos in context, and the funny ads that appear as well.

I guess what's fascinating for me, personally, is how these articles have filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge. I've heard fans allude to Vaughn's romantic past with unstable girlfriends and hints of scandal, and there have been much reference in recent interviews to his political ambitions. But to have it written in print, even if it's a gossip magazine article, makes things a lot clearer. I read and I think "Ohhh! So that's what they were on about!" I feel as if I've been given access to a whole new perspective on Mr. Vaughn. It's one thing to read an off-the-cuff remark; it's entirely different to read it in print in a commercial publication. For me, anyway.

The Man From UNCLE Can't Find a Wife: 'insider's account' of the relationship between Vaughn and Joyce Jameson. Tongue-in-cheek, entertaining (the couple are presented as funny, zany and fun-loving), and fairly sympathetic.

McCallum*Vaughn: The Stars from UNCLE: some of the Vaughn-related photoessays/articles. This filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge. It also explained why some first cousin fans have a strong dislike Vaughn/Napoleon too, because the writing has an element of smug malice that disturbed me. If I took it at face value, I'd come away with a very negative view of Robert Vaughn. But what was truly awful was the analysis of Joan O'Brien and her relationship with Vaughn. It was a hatchet job. Horrible stuff. I was in two minds about putting this up...but I'm hoping readers can recognise mean-spirited malice when they read it. And to think this was a 'fan' magazine...

Named: The Kennedy Teen in Bob Vaughn's Life: Hmm. The tone here is interesting: psychoanalytical pretensions of identifying the REAL Vaughn, and the REAL woman in his life. Its ominous tone makes it unintentionally funny. But the assessment of the various women, and the assumptions about a woman's role in society and marriage, make sad reading. What's sadder still is that the writer (the pseudonym anyway) is female too. Below it is a screencap of an article from the defunct website Vaughn Lounge, which provides a much more cheery and innocent take on the relationship between Vaughn and Kathleen Kennedy.

georgiesmith has provided a lot more scans and photos, so look out for more new old material in the next few weeks.

ETA: Happy Birthday, georgiesmith! Thank you so much for all the activities you've done to keep MfU fandom going, especially the sharing of rare footage and publications online. I and many other fans would never have had the chance to see these vintage media if it weren't for you!
(Thanks to st_crispins for the heads-up!)

I came across Daniela's fanart on the Russian YnM community YnM-Canon. She also keeps a journal: Dani-Tark.

Daniela's fanart really captures the likeness of the characters, particularly the way they appeared in the anime. Her colouring is very proficient to my appreciative albeit ignorant eye. They could easily double as anime stills. Her BW portraits are distinctive and interesting - there are smudged lines and shadows that convey a complexity of character that seems lacking in her more recent CG-coloured work. It's weird how her earlier CG work, with its hard lines and simpler colouring, seems more striking and intriguing than her beautiful later work with its static poses and blank faces.

She's done portraits of several characters with a preference for Tsuzuki, Muraki and Oriya.

I don't think she has a website of her own...but I don't think most artists seem to bother these days. It seems a lot easier to open an account at some online image archive and upload away. Unfortunately, it makes her art a bit more difficult to track ^^;;

I don't want to share her art without permission, especially as she's still active in YnM Russian fandom. So I'm going to make a list of artworks she has done so far, and link to them all in this post. All are colour unless otherwise indicated.

Oriya
- Kneeling with katana
- BW portraits: 1 | 2

Muraki
- Semi-nude surrounded by white feathers
- BW portraits: 1 | 2 - I adore the latent sensuality in this
- Muraki lying on bed dressed, reaching across to roses. I like how he looks displeased.
- Muraki with his doll. Displeased again. Yes!

Oriya/Muraki
- Oriya in Western clothes standing and Muraki seated | BW version. This might be in Muraki's highrise apartment.
- Muraki embracing Oriya from behind
- Oriya in Japanese clothes seated while Muraki undresses
- Dressed in trenchcoats and scarves against moon and red sky. Oh, what could've been...

Tsuzuki (alone and with non-major characters)
- seated nude on white cloth
- Tsuzuki and cute Byakko: the shading on Byakko's fur is lovely. Aww!
- Tsuzuki and mean Byakko: I really love the way Byakko looms behind and around Tsuzuki. It's visually striking, and seems to reference Chinese dancing lions with the exaggerated positioning of Byakko's body and head. A stunning piece.
- Tsuzuki with three shikigami and a kitsune fox spirit. No Genbu ;__;
- Tsuzuki asleep in bed
- Tsuzuki dressed sitting on bed
- BW Tsuzuki with flowers
- Tsuzuki happily eating cake
- Tsuzuki showing off his bird shikigami to Ruka/Luka
- Tsuzuki in smart suit with silk vest sunglasses on | sunglasses off. The glasses were better on. I wanted to see eyes that weren't so blank.
- Tsuzuki with unbuttoned shirt and gauzy violet curtain. Aha! That's more like it. Tsuzuki looks kinda manic with those eyes. I like it.
- Tsuzuki with feathered wings. Lines and texture beat airbrush when it comes to detail. These wings are the proof.

Muraki/Tsuzuki
- Standing side by side against autumn background - including cropped images! Judging by the stiff body language, somehow I don't think this is her favourite pairing.
- Muraki embracing Tsuzuki while surrounded by feathers. Faithfully follows anime.
- BW Muraki giving Tsuzuki a flower - I initially thought this was Tatsumi instead of Muraki, but I've been corrected by ismeranil
- BW Tsuzuki embracing Muraki from behind on bed.

Tsuzuki/Hisoka
- Tsuzuki, Hisoka and Gushoshin. I think the character on Hisoka's top means 'luck.'
- Tsuzuki with fuda, Hisoka with gun. A nice image of them as working partners. The colouring is faithful to the anime.

Tatsumi/Tsuzuki


Oriya/Hisoka
- Dual portrait with katana

I think she'll post more art in future on her journal, so that's the best place to go for updates: http://www.diary.ru/~dani-tark/

Blossoms and Blood, a long YnM fanfic featuring the Muraki/Tsuzuki pairing, has been updated. You can read it at my site or ff.net. If you use ff.net, please make sure you have a pop-up blocker activated (such as Adblock Plus for Firefox) because there have been reports of malware from ff.net:

Chapter 28: Assignment from Enma - Website | ff.net
Summary: Tsuzuki and Hisoka are sent on assignment. Hisoka confronts Tsuzuki about his clandestine investigation of Muraki.

Thanks to Gengkotsuya for her help!

---

I think my spelling abilities have worsened over time. I seem to be inserting more US spellings without thinking, and that annoys me a lot. In writing this fanfic, I make a conscious effort to use as much of my native English as possible, because it seems to be one of the few places I actually feel free to do so. But I have to keep ignoring the built-in spellchecker, so that means I do let typos through as well. Oh dear.

Writing Blossoms and Blood has become harder because there is a lot of plot to make sense of, and I think at times the plot appears contradictory. This is what happens when you tease the reader too much instead of getting on with the actual story. Some of the revelations have not gone down so well. Some readers may well feel cheated. It's tricky. I've had to reread it several times and tweak earlier chapters - just minor word changes, but of significance to me. I just hope nothing that is revealed here will come to haunt me later when I work on the rest of the story.

In the past, I would've labelled this as a yaoi fanfic. But I read this rant recently in which someone complained bitterly about the overuse of the word 'yaoi' and insisted that it should only be reserved for doujinshi featuring gratuitous sex between male characters. She preferred that animanga fanfics used the old citrus/lime/lemon rating, with acidity linked to degree of sexual content. The trouble is that I'm not sure that rating is in common usage anymore.

Actually, I've been caught out by the terminology sticklers before. It's rather troubling because I do believe in placing things in proper categories, and I don't mean to misrepresent or create confusion. Yaoi, shounen-ai, BL...I don't even know what terms to use anymore. I just know that whichever one I pick will annoy someone out there.

I've been able to update SoloVision more than usual, and it's mainly due to an avalanche of images becoming available online. With the increasing uptake of broadband, the availability of flatbed scanners, and the popularity of photo-sharing sites such as Flickr, photos are big. And 'vintage' photos seem to be the new 'in' thing.

Which is good for me, since all I do is nick photos from other sites and stuff them on my own site.

I also thought I should have more images of guest stars, in particular the female stars. There are lots of cheesecake shots of them out there, and I believe they deserve a spot on the site. As a slash fan, I tend to overlook the female characters, but they are integral to the appeal of MfU. Why else do their bosomy figures grace so many publicity shots and posters? They deserve their place too. So I'm going to keep hunting for images of Senta Berger (I don't recall much about her performance as Serena, but she looks stunning in photos), Luciana Paluzzi (cool, haughty yet extremely sexy - a real shame she wasn't able to get a proper main character role somewhere), Barbara Bouchet (she's taken off her gear a lot), Danielle De Metz, Jill Ireland, Janet Leigh, Anne Francis, Yvonne Craig...and whoever else I can find.

Here is a list of sites that have the best photos online:

1. Dr Macro's HQ Movie Scans: A fantastic site featuring a wide range of Hollywood actors, and the photos are huge. No McCallum or Vaughn section, but check out Senta Berger - some beautiful colour photos.

2. Vintage Erotica forum: You MUST make sure you have a pop-up blocker and up-to-date antivirus software before you visit this site. Then watch out for the porn ads on the right hand side. If you can do all that, then visit Classic Celebs and Vintage Elegance & Beauty for a treasure trove of female stars. This forum has a lot of generous fans, and they share the best images of female stars I have ever seen - dressed and undressed. A shame male actors don't have such a forum.

Why is it that photos with female stars are more interesting than their male counterparts? It may be the bias of the photographer at work - which I assume is most likely male. But the photos of women just seem more fascinating and alive - more human. Maybe it's the range of expressions they reveal to the camera lens. It's sad to think of the roles they were given for the time - not many had the chance to show off their acting potential.

3. LIFE Photo Archive: A lot of great photos. There is a big selection from a Return of the MfU publicity event in the 1980s.

4. Flickr.com: Look at the Vespa pin-ups from the 50s and 60s and The Scan from U.N.C.L.E. for some vintage images of the era. I'm thinking about transcribing the UNCLE gun articles.

5. Art.com: Have Photoshop, will try cloning out huge watermark. Dodgy work, but someone's gotta do it.

6. Sixties Seventies fashion: the site design is cool, the collection of photos is done with care and love - a wonderful blast from the past. The webkeeper Gippo also has an impressive gallery @ Picasa. I've been wondering if I should put some of his Sharon Tate shots up on my site...but Tate's role was so minor in Girls of Nazarone. Weirdly enough, she appears in a lot more publicity shots with Illya - yet they didn't have that much airtime together. Obviously someone in the publicity department took a shine to her. One of these photos appears on this novel cover. Another is this photo I need to recan in which Illya and her are in a convertible together. Fangirls, eat your heart out.

7. People Magazine archive: You can download PDF versions of the magazine from 1974 onwards. Don't use their search function to look for material, because it's crap. Instead, go to Google or Yahoo and type what you're looking for, followed by space and site:people.com. For example, to look for Vaughn material, type this in the search window:
Robert Vaughn site:people.com

I've been belatedly trying to sort through the SoloVision YouTube Channel, especially the favourites section. A number of songvids have been deleted, and several others have had music removed. Seems like TPTB have been busy pressuring YouTube to pull copyrighted material. Which is their right, of course.

Mind you, most of my online activities involve infringing copyright left, right and centre - and hoping the copyright holders turn a blind eye.

Anyway, I hope YouTube don't crack down on me. I won't mind if they do, but I hope they don't.

I've uploaded a couple of Vaughn interviews over the past few days. One is the O'Reilly Factor interview on Fox News dated Nov 2008. Now I know it has already been uploaded here, but the FLV version I nabbed from the Fox News site has improved sound and picture quality without that annoying tickertape at the bottom.

The other is a very recent BBC News Vaughn interview dated Mar 31 2009. BBC really go to a lot of trouble to conceal their video stream. I had to resort to using a program that captures the stream as it played to obtain the video. While I was exploring the BBC site, I found I had missed several Vaughn interviews:

1. Michael Ball's Sunday Brunch
Michael chats to The Man From U.N.C.L.E, Robert Vaughn. With Times columnist Peter Riddel reviewing the newspapers and an entertainment guide from Andrew Collins.
BBC Radio 2, broadcast on 22 Mar 2009

2.Shaun Keaveny
Shaun serves up the musical equivalent of a full English breakfast, featuring guests actor Robert Vaughn, plus John Torode and Gregg Wallace from Masterchef.
BBC 6 Music, broadcast on 26 Feb 2009

3. Steve Wright in the Afternoon
Mark Radcliffe and Emma Forbes are in for Steve Wright with Suggs from Madness and The Man From U.N.C.L.E Robert Vaughn. Plus Jeff Lloyd from Berkshire shares his CDCV.
BBC Radio 2, broadcast on 25 Feb 2009

Damn, damn, damn. I was mentally kicking myself. But it was odd how there was no mention of this from UK fans on LJ. Didn't they know? Maybe they did, but they didn't realise that BBC posts all its radio shows online for 7 days after broadcast. It's frustrating to think about the material I could've ripped, but missed. Arrrgh!

Well, thank heavens Radio 4 keep their shows on a RA stream for months after broadcast. I got hold of a Vaughn interview that I posted here on muncle. Over the weekend I'll make a proper page for it on SoloVision.

The big disadvantage about YouTube is the 10min limit for vids if you're a free user. The BBC News interview actually goes a bit over 10min, but I guess YouTube were feeling generous. For vids that go under half an hour, like the Protector episodes, I've been trying out Veoh. DivShare wasn't really working too well for streaming video. But Veoh seems to be pretty good. For vids longer than 30min, GUBA might be the best option - I've uploaded the lengthy Bloomberg Night Talk interview there.

There is a MfU YouTube vid that is puzzling me, and I wonder if someone out there can help me out.

So who are the fans who appear in this clip? There are two men and two women, and they don't seem to be credited for their input. I also get the feeling that the creator of this vid (he states he is a reporter) has spliced footage from eps and some other source (the MfU DVD set?) to create the video. Certainly he seems to be standing on a fancy set that is quite different to the simple backdrop used by the actors and the fans.

I've favourited the vid so that it appears on the SV YouTube page, but I'm a bit suspicious about the source. If he has taken interviews from the DVD to create the clip, then I'd like to know.

I tweaked the Oriya/Ukyou Scanlations site by removing the iframe and adding a new page called Extra Stuff. I didn't realise how annoying it was to read pages through an iframe until I took it out - it's the equivalent of looking at a room through a keyhole. Now it's so much easier to read the pages and view the book covers and the lovely gift art by anna_chiba, mangust and mash_mash

The Extra Stuff section is something I've been thinking about putting up for a while. I guess what inspired me to finally do it was when I discovered people asking about the Tatsumi sidestory scanlations. The KatCom link was no longer working! I posted about it on yami_no_matsuei, only to find that loveandpoison had already helped out someone else who asked the same question back in January!

So that got me thinking about creating a small page of YnM fan material from sites that are sadly 404, and that's all Extra Stuff is. You'll find the Tatsumi Sidestory scanlations (scanned by katsue_fox, translated by childofatlantis, and kindly reuploaded by loveandpoison). There are also zips of the two YnM drama CDs with translations that were once posted on the Tsuzuki Love website. Please note I DID NOT translate those drama CDs! I cannot make sense of spoken Japanese at all! All I've done is copy what was on the Tsuzuki Love site, fix what typos I could find, reformat a bit, and post to my site.

And last of all, there is a Real Media video of Miki Shinichirou and Hayami Shou, the seiyuu for Tsuzuki and Muraki respectively in the anime, talking about the series and the characters they played. There's no subtitles, unfortunately. However, it's a real pleasure to see them engage with the viewer and each other. (A must-see for Mu/Tsu fans!)

If you were involved in the creation of any of the material I've just posted and you wish me to remove them from my site, please let me know and I will do so. The aim of this page is not to take credit for other people's work - I simply want to keep alive the pages and fanworks I have enjoyed so that other fans can appreciate them too.

It frustrates me so much to see a site I've bookmarked become 404. Argh! It annoys me so much! I think of the sites that have been lost - fanart sites in particular - and I could kick myself for not downloading every single work I could find before it vanished. The moral is to save, save, save. Never assume something will be there tomorrow. If you love it, save a copy before it's gone for good.

Edit: Included are links to flash videos I've uploaded to my site.

Veteran mangaka Takaguchi Satosumi had a lovely gallery of online art in the early 2000s. I discovered some of them while trawling through the ever-useful Wayback Machine. It's such a huge shame so much of it has been taken down. Maybe she wanted to streamline her site and place more attention on her newer works...but no, that can't be it. After all, she has recently put up a big galleries of pencil sketches and art from Hana no Asuka-gumi, her popular girl gang series.

So it must be for site organisation. Her old website was a nightmare to navigate with multiple subdirectories dedicated to various series. Let's hope the missing colour art returns to her site in future.

Utsukushii Otoko (Beautiful Men), her BL sci-fi manga series that pays homage to Gundam Wing, had its own mini-site from mid 2002 until the end of 2005. The flash video at the site entrance was this neat tactical start-up sequence, followed by an intro featuring the four boyish heroes. Your cursor then turned into crosshairs, and you clicked on planets to surf the actual site. Really nifty.



Utsukushii Otoko - flash introduction


Below is the gallery - at least what I could retrieve on Wayback. The first four group shots feature the Dance Mania crew. The next series of shots of the guy with short hair is the hero M2 - a pilot so brilliant he was put in suspended animation by the Skaya Airforce. The last three shots feature Malloy, who befriends M2 when he awakens from sleep.



There were a handful that weren't saved by Wayback: some gold-toned portraits of the Dance Mania crew, some group Dance Mania shots, and a few featuring Malloy. So frustrating! I don't suppose anyone out there has saved the missing images? If you happen to know of any that aren't here, please let me know.

On the mini-site was also a flash video introducing the four main characters. It shows how the artwork is created step-by-step, from initial sketch to colouring and addition of background effects. Click on the image below to watch it - you'll be redirected to my site.



Utsukushii Otoko - flash gallery


Finally, here's a zip containing all the images here, plus the two flash videos. The videos should play in either Media Player Classic or your browser, depending on the Properties you choose. Personally I prefer Media Player Classic because you can resize the video. If you don't have Media Player Classic, grab the Combined Community Codec Pack with bundled MPC and you'll never have trouble playing a video file again.

DOWNLOAD: Mediafire | Savefile (2.8Mb)

And for scanlations of this manga, be sure to visit Aarinfantasy.

A long time ago I had to inject myself with a little needle. It was an educational exercise to demonstrate the difficulties people had with needle phobia. The needles were sterile, and the liquid we were injecting was sterile saline. We opened the sealed packs and drew up the liquid ourselves, so we knew it was safe.

So there I was, holding my little needle in one hand while my other hand was flattening the target area - my abdomen, in this case. Around me, other people were gingerly injecting themselves. So I had to do it too.

The needle hovered over my skin. There was no physical barrier preventing me from jabbing myself. My hand was steady. I wasn't about to faint or have a screaming fit.

But I couldn't do it. Something inside my mind was telling me, What the hell do you think you're doing? Are you insane? It'll hurt! Don't do it! Meanwhile, the other side was saying, Go on. The others have done it, and they're still alive. It won't kill you, you big wimp. Just put it in.

Eventually, I injected myself. It hurt, but not that much. And oddly enough, I don't remember the physical pain as much as I remember the mental battle I had with myself.

For me, to write about racism is to relive my encounter with the needle - except this time the target area is my psyche, and the needle is now a carving knife. A bit tricky. Not very pleasant. But perhaps there will be something in it a little amusing, a little enlightening. At the very least, it'll be a personal writing exercise for me.

---

When I was very little, a strange thing happened to me. Other kids would come up to me and place their index fingers on each side of their face at eye level. Then they would pull the skin back to make their eyes more slanted, and sing out "Ching chong! Ching chong!"

It would be pretty funny if someone did that to me now. Pathetic, yet funny. But at the time, it hurt. It hurt a lot. I didn't want to be different. I didn't want to be this slanty-eyed ching chong person. I wanted big deepset round eyes. I wanted to be normal like the people around me, like the people I saw on TV.

Fortunately, the kids who made fun of me for being Chinese grew out of it. And I grew out of my ambivalence about being of Chinese descent - at least I thought I did. Time heals all wounds, right? Those insults made me stronger, didn't they?

About a decade later, when I was in high school, I was with a classmate when we came across a man walking his dog - a bull terrier. Bull terriers have big jaws relative to the size of their heads, giving them a rather ferocious appearance. They also have a sloping forehead and small sharp eyes.

My classmate thought the dog looked cute. I disagreed, and tried to explain why:

"Look at them! They have those oversized jaws and mean-looking slanty eyes!"

Then it hit me. Who the hell was I to criticise a dog for having slanty eyes when I had slanty eyes? What was wrong with having slanty eyes? Why did I find slanty eyes ugly, anyway?

The sad truth is I have never forgotten those childhood taunts. Forgiven, yeah. But I never forgot. I internalised the beliefs, and subconsciously adopted them as my own. And in my off-the-cuff remark, I voiced them aloud and gave them life again.

It is impossible to escape one's cultural upbringing - and the baggage of unconscious prejudice that comes with it. The Chinese prize double eyelids, because they make eyes look bigger - less almond shaped. If you have the money, you can achieve the look with cosmetic surgery. Pale skin is much admired too. Whitening make-up products are very popular in East Asia. The populace see nothing odd with desiring a lighter shade of skin, because white = beautiful is so culturally ingrained that most accept it without question. And I am no different.

So I have sympathy for well-meaning individuals who unwittingly express ideas or themes that have racist undertones, because I've done it. I've done it a lot. I have experienced racism, and I have perpetuated racism. I have grown up in an Australian culture that is deeply terrified of the divisive issue of race relations. Which I understand, because I fear the hatred and vitriol that could erupt from it too.

Yet I also have a lot of admiration for those who have brought up the issue of race in the sci-fi/fantasy field, because many others probably had no idea it was even there. I must confess that if I had noticed it, I probably would have said nothing. When you've lived with the elephant in the room your whole life, you start to forget it's worth mentioning after a while. You internalise it, bit by bit. You forget why it mattered so much in the first place.

The best any of us can do is be aware, and not fear the charge of racism. Racism is subconscious and insidious, and permeates our lives in ways we cannot even begin to imagine.

There is a lot less to being racist than you think.

http://youtubemp4.com/

This is a very nifty site for downloading flash videos as mp4s. It's written in Japanese and English, and all you have to do is simply rejig the YouTube URL or get the site to do it for you. Amazing! Of course, the quality of the mp4 is only as good as the original flash video, so it's really no substitute for the original AVI/MP4 file. But that's too hard to find, then YouTubeMP4 can give you the next best thing - without the need for a FLV player.

As long as Bernard N and Ivan P send me scans, then I ought to update. The poor SoloVision server seemed a bit creaky - guess it wasn't used to being messed with. I think it may still be recovering from the shock of being updated. Or the problem may be at my end.

So in case you can't see the updates, I'll post them here as well via Photobucket.

1967 Venetian Affair publicity shot
Elke Sommer and Vaughn hold a white terrier. It's an adorable photo. Nothing like the film, which seems to be a gritty espionage thriller (see the trailer on YouTube). I first grabbed a blurry shot of this from Ebay years ago, and I'm grateful to Bernard for sharing this high-res scan.

---

1970 Julius Caesar poster
An all-star cast. If you hunt around on YouTube, you can even find clips of the film. This clip on YT features Vaughn as Casca, Jason Robards as the grey-haired Brutus, and Richard Johnson as Cassius. The comments feature some giddy praise from a few Vaughn fans. Again thanks to Bernard.

I suppose I should qualify by explaining that when I write 'America,' I'm thinking of the United States. In my mind, I think America, not U.S. I know that's not strictly true, but it's just how I've identified the country in my own mind for as long as I can remember.

When I watched scenes from President Obama's inauguration the other day, I was suddenly reminded of when I visited America in 2001. I stayed with janeterry, who welcomed me into her home like family even though we'd only corresponded online. She introduced me to her friends, and they too were most generous, taking me out and showing me around. mer1973 took me on day trips to DC and New York. Another young woman, whose name escapes me, took me to the Gettysburg Battlefields. And there were many, many others who showed me, a complete stranger, around like I was an honoured guest. I've had differences with a few of them since, but it doesn't matter. The disputes seem like silly squabbles now. It's their acts of generosity that have stood the test of time.

And this kindness isn't confined only to fans. There was that time in Houston when these people came to the door of my aunt's house and started belting out Christmas carols to the bemusement of me and my grandmother. My grandmother wanted them to keep it down in case they woke my newborn cousin, but I didn't have the heart to dampen their zealous Christmas spirit.

Then I remember sitting in a taxi in Hawaii, cradling my lacerated hand and feeling very sorry for myself after 'Mount Kilauea took a bite out of me' as the doctor phrased it. Harry the taxi driver joked and told me funny stories as he drove me back to the airport that made me smile, and the concern showed by the rest of the tour group - all Americans - was very touching.

In my rather limited experience of this world, Americans have shown themselves to be the most hospitable and generous of people.

But somehow I'd forgotten, and for that I feel ashamed.

I write about this now because something struck me while reading LJ posts about the inauguration and the responses of people in the crowd: people tearfully saying 'I never thought I'd see this day.'

The American people had forgotten too. They had forgotten the generosity of spirit within their hearts. They had forgotten the can-do, never-say-die ethos for which they were once renowned.

But Barack Obama did not. And in his speeches, with great eloquence and power and clarity, he reminded them. He reminded the entire world.

I saw images of the crowds filling the Mall, stretching from the Capitol to the Washington Monument, and the Monument looking pink-gold in the sunlight. I once stood against one of those lower balustrades and gazed across at a remarkably similar view, except there were no crowds - just commuters making their way home from work. And the only people who were on the steps with me were other tourists, snapping away at the sweeping view.

I remember touching the white sandstone, and marvelling at how the quartz grains glittered in the afternoon sun. The grand rotunda looms up from behind, majestic and imposing, radiating the sunlight. But never did it seem so alive and vibrant as when I saw it on TV, for once relegated to the role of backdrop, dwarfed by its millions of citizens who came to remember what America was, and could be again.

This virtual hamster comes from aBowman. It runs, it looks around, it drinks and even sleeps. It also follows your mouse cursor in the hope you'll click inside its tank and give it food. If you want it to start running again, click the centre of the wheel.

There is something soothing about watching it. Maybe there's a bit of schadenfreude too. I don't have the dedication to take care of a pet. Too neglectful and disorganized. So this really is the next best thing.

What's really fun is that you can even customise the colours. I wanted to have a black hamster at first. But the problem was that the eyes had to be pale for contrast, and it gave the hamster an eerie possessed kind of appearance.

Mr Bowman has created several other charming pets, although the hamster is the most interactive. The penguin family is another favourite. As soon as you wave your cursor in their pen, they pursue you with their waddling gait as if you're a tasty morsel of fish. Very very cute.

Blossoms and Blood, an interminably long Muraki/Tsuzuki WIP, has been updated.

Chapter 27 First Flight - LB*M website | ff.net
Tsuzuki learns to wield his new-found powers. Muraki risks all to see Tsuzuki transformed, but can he deal with the ramifications?

If you're worried about malware via pop-up ads, use the website link.

In case you haven't read the story for a while, the gist of it is fairly simple: Muraki is sex-mad and requires elemental energy to survive. Tsuzuki is sex mad and going through an identity crisis. They argue a lot. They have sex a lot. There's some other details about Metal and Wood and the full moon and candles and Muraki becoming a zombie now and then, but it's just window-dressing. So don't worry too much about it.

i

About two years ago I tried to scanlate two YnM doujinshi by L'Acryma D'Anjou called Enigma Seikon and the sequel Kinshijaku Enigma Seikon. At the time I was learning how to identify kanji using WWWJDIC. My knowledge of grammar was rudimentary. Handwritten text, especially kanji was a nightmare for me to make out. I was like a child in primary school attempting to read War and Peace by sounding out the words.

Since then, I've found some useful websites and books to help me better understand Japanese grammar. I have practised a bit more, and I like to think I've improved. So I decided to look back at the old translation I did, and try to retranslate sections that struck me as awkward. I also decided to finally take a stab at scanlating Cain, another YnM doujinshi by L'Acryma D'Anjou. This doujinshi features one of the worst fonts I have ever encountered - so thick that the ink bleeds and obscures details of the more intricate kanji. Sometimes radicals are also oddly shaped to fit the curvy font too. Very odd.

Pronouns confused me a lot two years ago. This person here, this person there, that person way over there...even now, I get muddled at times. The avoidance of 'you' is a major headache.

Yeah, there's a reason these scanlations are called Half-Baked.

But interestingly enough, Cain was pretty hard to work on as well. L'Acryma D'Anjou likes placing bits of a sentence over several pages. It's not immediately obvious that a phrase written on one page is part of a sentence that ends four pages later. The formality of the language used by characters such as Tatsumi also makes comprehension difficult. The vocabulary and word order is quite different to what I've come across in manga. My extra translating practice has helped me a little, but not as much as I thought it would.

I wish I had the time to do a full retranslation of Enigma Seikon and Kinshijaku. I suspect there are a lot more errors than the stuff I picked up. Never mind.


CAIN
Circle: L'Acryma D'Anjou (artist YAMAGUCHI Kanon)
Pairing: TatsumixTsuzuki, MurakixTsuzuki; appearances by Watari, Oriya, Touda.
Spoilers: Kyoto arc - manga volumes 7-8, anime episodes 11-13. Also minor spoilers for Gensoukai arc - manga volumes 9+
Genre: angst, yaoi, violence, comedy in omake
Scanlation status: part 1 out of 2 completed
Summary: After the events of Kyoto arc, Tatsumi and Tsuzuki share a romantic Christmas Eve together. However, Muraki has been revived for a sinister purpose, and is hell-bent on luring Tsuzuki to his side once more.
Download
Part 1 ONLY (9.3Mb ZIP) Savefile | Mediafire | Sendspace

Other L'Acryma D'Anjou re-releases (both complete):
Enigma Seikon and the sequel Kinshijaku - Enigma Seikon.

It's been widely reported that Youka Nitta, popular yaoi mangaka of Haru wo Daiteita and several other titles, has gone on a self-imposed hiatus after several of her artworks were found to have been heavily derived from fashion photography. Many describe it as 'plagiarism,' but that's not the right term for it. Plagiarism refers to literary works - clear-cut examples of copying and pasting text. And Nitta-sensei hasn't done anything like that. Her plotlines and dialogue are her own. It's just her art - in particular the cover art and illustrations - that have caused the controversy.

So what should it be called?? Why not just call it copying - detailed copying down to the clothing and backgrounds? And photo-manipulation of details from fashion photographs, incorporating them in her own artworks?

But that doesn't sound as catchy as plagiarism, huh? Plagiarism is 'bad' - everyone knows that. But copying the odd pose and bit of clothing isn't so bad, is it? Some of Nitta-sensei's supporters think it's just a beat-up - see here for a range of comments.

Hmm. I'm no manga artist by any means, but I am an admirer of manga art. And as an admirer, I do understand that artists may be inspired by photos and other art they've seen to the point that they incorporate aspects of it in their own art. Taking bits and pieces you like from elsewhere is acceptable to me. Hell, it's what I do as a derivative fanfic writer.

But there is a line to be drawn between incorporating elements (what I consider referencing) and copying. To my mind, if the final artwork looks like one particular source down to the colours and background, chances are you'll get in trouble.

For example, using fashion photography as references for poses is perfectly fine. Fashion photography is a wonderful source for dynamic and striking poses. Why not use them as inspiration for your own art? I think it's a good thing. Here are some nice examples of Youka Nitta art and the referenced poses done by models (links from nitta_crib):
1. Yin-Yang 1 - it's enough to give you a sprained neck, but it's a nice symbolic pose of opposites in harmony.
2. Yin-Yang 2
3. Katou showing off his chest - this was a YSL ad, so using the same pose could be regarded as a sly nod to the original. Fans know the character is an actor who does product endorsements.
4. Iwaki up close - from an Armani ad. Another sly nod, for Iwaki is another actor who would do such ads if he were a real celebrity.
5. Guys lying all over each other - potentially another nod, since it was originally a Gucci ad. The mangaka also added another guy there, which counts as original content.
6. Katou covering Iwaki's eyes - a subtle yet sensual depiction of the seme/uke dynamic between the characters (usually the first thing fans want to know). I've seen it used by other mangaka too - which is great.

It's clear that in a number of cases, Nitta-sensei was deliberately referencing the original photo. She wanted to blur the boundaries between reality and fantasy. Fans who recognized the original would've been in on the joke and got a kick out of seeing the characters in the same poses.

Sometimes this doesn't work so well - especially if the source isn't as easily recognizable. The image of Katou and Iwaki sitting in the desert puzzled me when I first saw it in the Kiss of Fire artbook. I remember looking at this big double-page spread and wondering what was the point. I thought it was a waste of ink and two whole pages. Both guys staring off into space, sitting in the desert - what did it mean? Had they moved to the US? Japan doesn't have desert, does it? Why aren't they at least looking at each other? Knowing that it came from a fashion ad explains a lot. BTW, I don't mind the way she's used the ad as her inspiration - I just found it a dull shot.

Then there are times that the photo referencing becomes too close for comfort. This time colors and backgrounds are taken from the source, and the mangaka's contribution is substantially less than before. It begins to look a lot like copying.
1. Iwaki and Katou kissing on a ledge - the work that led to Youka Nitta's downfall. The identical background details led to accusations of tracing line-art for which the mangaka later admitted and apologised.
2. Katou in furcoat - the clothing, the colours, the stool are identical. This looks photoshopped, and that's what makes it so damning. Photoshopping backgrounds is common enough in fanart, but photoshopping clothes in a pro work is something else. This one makes me cringe, because I was impressed with the texturing. Now I know how it was done, I'm not so impressed. The photographer deserved a co-credit.
3. Iwaki and Katou on a bed - I guess this could've been a nodding reference, since it's an DKNY homewares ad. But the pillows and curtains are obviously photoshopped from the original. When I saw it in the artbook, I wondered a little...but I never imagined the truth was this bad. An example like this convinces me that Nitta-sensei really had no idea about copyright violation and the reuse of images.
4. Iwaki and Katou on rocks - I feel this goes beyond a nodding reference because of the identical clothing, colour scheme, and background. Too much has been taken from the original. It's a lovely image, but the photographer deserved a co-credit.

There's many other examples that fall somewhere in between, and you can check them out at nitta_crib to make up your own mind.

I know there are some fans who aren't happy about that comm, and think it's run by 'haters.' Some fans even insist that what Nitta-sensei has done is not serious, that 'everyone' does it, and don't understand the fuss.

But it matters to me, a fan who paid money for a book titled "Kiss of Fire Artbook" by Youka Nitta. I purchase it assuming the artwork was thought up by Youka Nitta, drawn by Youka Nitta, and if any artists helped her, they're credited somewhere inside and/or rewarded for their efforts. The issue for me is not about copyright. It's about giving credit. The fact that Japanese fans are trying to find the photographic sources of Nitta-sensei's images and inform other fans means that it matters a lot to them as well.

And I resent the suggestion that 'every' mangaka does it. Such a claim casts a slur on an entire profession. It's grossly offensive. Mangaka referencing - sure. Mangaka copying to the detail and extent Nitta-sensei has over a number of years - I want to see proof before you throw around such allegations.

Late last year I made a series of posts featuring 'lost' Japanese YnM fan-artists - some of which were later found thanks to helpful input from others. Well, a major source for several of the artworks I found came from YnM-Canon, a Russian YnM community. I went through months of posts, hunting for any Japanese artworks that may have been posted amid the sea of Cyrillic jibberish. On and on I went, bravely clicking the older posts link...until I stumbled across Canaury, a Russian artist.

Canaury uses pencils. Her pencil work is beautiful. Too often pencil is seen as a draft medium - a means to draw a quick sketch before moving on to something else, but Canaury uses pencils to provide intricate shading and texture, and the result is a wonderful richness in detail that can never be replicated in CGI.

Her favourite character by far is Oriya. Next is Tsuzuki. A distant third seems to be Muraki - she enjoys pairing him with Oriya. She seems influenced by the hippy flower-power/gothic style of the 60s - there's a series of images from the manga in which she's superimposed floral patterns to create the kind of imagery seen on tattoos and adorning hotrods and motorbikes. (ETA: she has worked as a tattoo artist, according to inga_b - thanks for the info!)

I wanted to link to Canaury's artwork, but it's tricky to do so. She doesn't seem to have a gallery of her own. I tried hunting around her profile, and I couldn't see any link. Most of her art (fanart plus original fantasy) is in her album, but diary.ru doesn't make good thumbnails, and the site times out quite a bit.

So...after thinking it over, I've decided to showcase her YnM art in this LJ entry because I feel it deserves to be seen by a wider audience. I haven't seen a notice saying 'DO NOT REPOST MY FANART WITHOUT PERMISSION,' but I admit I can't read Russian and I'm depending on online translation tools. If you can read Russian and you see such a notice in her journal/diary, please let me know and I'll delete this post.

Please note that Canaury has done a lot more art, much of it fantasy-inspired and original, and you can view them in her journal and album.

The most suggestive artwork is hosted on Mediafire, and you'll have to click the LARGE view to see the work properly. I've had images deleted from Photobucket that featured people kissing while lying on a bed fully-dressed...so I'm guessing that PB's threshold for offensive content is very, very low. Let's see if Mediafire is any more lenient.

The last three column layout didn't degrade well at smaller screen resolutions, so I changed to another layout: a lovely simple gerbera layout from myljstuff. It was a toss-up between this and another lovely layout featuring berries, but this one won because it could expand out and shrink down according to browser size. Plus I really love that red-pink flower in the top left-hand corner. It makes me smile just to look at it!

The only thing I wonder is whether this layout is too good for me. It's so elegant and pristine and classy. I feel so unworthy in comparison.

It took me a while to find a layout that could look good at 800x600. Most layouts posted to freelayouts are designed with 1024x768 in mind. And I came across some really good Generator layouts that probably look bad in Firefox 3. It's weird how a change in browser can screw up a layout so much. All that careful coding is suddenly transformed into gibberish. It's a real shame.

---

My Tatsumi/Hisoka fanlist has had a few problems lately. A few months ago, someone managed to delete the entire database twice. The first time it happened I manually added members back on my own. The second time it happened I started wondering if someone had a grudge against the pairing.

I think I'll give it one final go. If it gets deleted again, I'll call it quits. For the past three weeks I've subscribed only myself to the list...and so far I haven't been deleted. Woo hoo! So over the next few weeks, I'm going to start adding a few members at a time. Let's see what happens.

I ought to make a new layout as well. Maybe something nice and simple, just like this LJ layout.

I installed Firefox 3 today and discovered my LJ layout looked awful. All the entries were shoved to the right under the sidebar. Poor LJ. Not much of a surprise, because it's the old S1 style that's no longer supported by LJ. So I decided to change over to this fairly muted S2 layout. I like the three columns, but the navy blue on grey look is a bit staid and depressing, huh? I'd like to see a splash of crimson or turquoise green - something like the old layout I had. Maybe later I'll get around to messing with the code.

---

For me, writing is a fairly solitary activity. I sit at a computer and type text via a keyboard. I imagine this is how most people write these days. It's about as thrilling to watch as drying paint on a wall.

However, to get to that stage of being able to sit at the keyboard, I need to prepare myself: gather ideas, look up material online, brainstorm via illegible diagrams that make no sense when I look over them a few days later. The idea gathering stage is crucial. As a derivative writer, I won't gain much by staring at a blank screen until my forehead bleeds. My imaginative power is not up to the task. So like a bowerbird hunting for sparkling objects to pretty up a dull nest of twigs, I rip shiny ideas off others. Anything is fair game: manga, TV, films, fiction and non-fiction texts, poetry, religion, the news.

I go through this process even when I'm writing a story-in-progress. At the start of each chapter of Blossoms and Blood, I have to go hunting around for ideas - although it's more like rediscovering ideas I found several chapters ago, played with a bit, then misplaced under several thousand words of arguments, fight scenes, and yeah, gratuitous sex scenes. A more disciplined writer would've known where to prune and where to draw the focus back, instead of minutely documenting every movement and word like an amateur filmmaker infatuated with the zoom lens.

My writing is slow because I'm becoming mired in my own verbiage. While I struggle for traction, the wheels of my imagination need to slow down before I dig myself in further.

Indulgence, Chapter 26 of the Yami no Matsuei fanfic Blossoms and Blood is now available: Tsuzuki encounters Muraki on the night he lost his eye. It can be read on LB*M here (you'll have to scroll a bit to find where the chapter starts).

It's also hosted on fanfiction.net, but I've just been told that ff.net has pop-ups with malware. So DO NOT read the chapter here unless you have a browser with a good ad-blocker like Firefox with Adblock Plus.

I know it's taken longer than usual to write. There have been a few messages and emails wondering about the delay. Some have been concerned, others openly frustrated. One individual has taken to writing very brief messages on a monthly basis to jog my memory.

I've replied to emails and messages where possible, but I wasn't quite sure how to communicate to those who've left messages without an email addy or username. Leaving some long-winded note in the chapter itself seems a bit rude, like a director appearing at the start of a film and apologising for going over deadline and over budget. It would be like hogging space that's really meant for the characters.

So I thought it best to keep the note at the start of the chapter brief, and leave a more detailed reply in LJ when I have more time on my hands. I'm not a concise or a quick-witted writer, and it will probably take a bit of time to explain. But I will do my best to do so in my next post.