o/

This is going to be a rather long post, which many will not read all of, but I'm typing it up regardless. The whole of the message can be found after the jump.

I'm sure ZeroDC, VIS and many others will deny and combat everything I am about to say, but everything below is what transpired, and I would not have acted like I did without confirming it.


As many are already aware, and for those who are not already aware:

I did indeed delete files off of Village Idiot Scans' MF account and FTP. I had no intention of hiding this. I made it obvious for them on purpose. Most that find this out at first, will just immediately condemn myself and my group. Most will continue to do so, even after finding out my reasoning. Whatever the case may be, I was and am fully prepared for any and all consequences afterwards.

I do not regret my actions. I would do it all over again if given the chance.

However, as much as people may not believe me, I did not delete everything of theirs. I am not the only person who has their MF and FTP information and has something against ZeroDC and/or VIS itself. I've talked with many of these people in my time as a scanlator. The only person I have anything against in VIS is ZeroDC. In fact, there is someone in my own group that does work for VIS, and I've worked with several other VIS members and had a good relationship with them. The only files I removed were series that he himself managed. I even backed said files up, as I plan to do something further with them. VIS works are split under two admins, Zero and Noah, and as I was a member there once, I know which he works on. If there is anything else missing like they seem to be claiming, it was not me who did so.

I have two reasons for doing what I did:

The first reason is not the majority reason, but it needs to be explained first. After joining VIS myself I was warned by quite a few people that ZeroDC is not someone I should work with, and he was generally just a grade-A douche. I was never really given any specific reason as to why, and for some time I ignorantly continued working largely under Zero because I had no problems. This was however, until I first decided to make my own group, and I was looking for someone to translate a series for me, Haruwaka. I asked in VI's staff IRC room if anyone would be willing to translate a series for me. Several people were active in the room at the time, including ZeroDC himself. Nothing was said to me about me asking. About 30 minutes or so later, Purr-Nyan contacted me and told me he would be willing to do so. We moved along through the series, however upon ZeroDC finding out that Purr was doing this for me, be blew up. And I mean, blew up. He treated Purr-Nyan like he owned him, basically saying that people in his group were not going to work on anything he does not agree to. He forced the project to be called a joint between RZK and VIS, and while I have no problems with joints, the way he went about it rubbed me the wrong way.

We continued along without any issues, that was until I was moving around and did not have constant internet access in June. I was unable to do very much work at all, for any of the groups I was a part of because of that. Shortly after getting to my destination, I was able to get a some more stable internet access from the local library. This allowed me to do some more work, but still not as much as I'd like. As I was not assigned to any one series there, to do work I had to ask for it, and I would do so every day. Despite doing so, there was really no work that needed to be done, so I was never given anything. Until I was finally given the script for Kanade chapter 6 to proofread. As at the time, chapter 5 had not been released (and to this day, still hasn't), I did not make it a top priority, but I was working on it, and they knew this. Two days after being given Kanade 6, ZeroDC fired me for being "lazy". While I have little issue with being fired, but those who know me know I am the farthest possible thing from lazy. Anyone who follows this group knows that. For the past several months, I have basically dedicated my life to scanlation. Whenever I've been on a computer, I've been doing work on some series, for some group I work for. What I took issue with was what happened afterwards. Which I was not aware of, until the situation with IMS arose. It was revealed to me inadvertently by georgi, that ZeroDC had been spreading lies about me. He told IMS, and likely other groups he is associated with, that not only was I lazy, but I steal staff from other groups. This by itself, while a complete douche move, is not what made me decide to do anything.

The biggest reason was because of what I found out ZeroDC did with VIS itself. ZeroDC himself, was once simply a mere member of VIS. He was nothing but a typesetter. He knew how to do absolutely nothing else. He is still rather incompetent when it comes to other things. Anyway, last year at some point, the 2 leading admins of the group at the time had been away for about a month. He went to an IRCop for IRC Highway, and told them "I think Satoshi (previous admin) is neglecting the channel, and I want to take over." And at the time, there was nobody around to stop him, so he became the de facto leader. Following that, he covered it up, making it seem like he was meant to be the leader. He pushed off all the work onto others, and basically brainwashed the rest of the members he's the leader of the group and he knows best. After some time, another admin there, elcausa, knowing full well how much of an ass Zero is, simply didn't care and would also cover it up for Zero. Some time after, he even blatantly lied, and said "I was FORCED to become leader by Oren." When people had spoken with Oren (who at this time had quit scanlation), Oren himself did not want Zero to become leader and was against him being such.

So, there you go. It might not seem like much for those who have no dealt with ZeroDC first-hand, but for myself and several others who I have talked to, they were all supportive of what I was doing and why I was doing it.

Also, for those that have seen the image that they've passed around, yes, they did not actually take any projects we were doing, or plan on doing so, but they were however in the process of sniping 2 projects from 2 other groups. Omamori Himari from Vortex, and Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou. There were raws and translations for both series on their FTP. I didn't take a picture of the Monster Musume stuff, but I did however grab pictures of the Omamori stuff.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/60724232/01.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/60724232/02.jpg

While like I've said before, I do not regret my decision and I would do it again if given the chance, many will not understand why I did it, and this has resulted in my burning of several bridges. While I absolutely love scanlating, this whole thing will likely result in my disappearance from scanlation slowly over time. As much as I love scanlation, I have spent months of my life doing nothing but, while getting nothing back. I don't quite mind getting nothing back, but it became a job, and while still fun, was becoming less enjoyable than it was when I first joined scanlation in January.

The status of several of our projects is currently up in the air, but people can still expect releases of Sexual Hunter Riot Ch1, Soukai no Eve 10.5, Who Killed Cock Robin Ch5, Sora no Manimani Ch23, Hagure Yuusha Ch2, Oda Nobuna Ch1, Sakurasou Ch3, Seven Sisters Ch4, and several Nogizaka Haruka chapters.

Commence flammatory comments, I suppose?