tacto

So it is official.. today will be remembered as a day lost and wasted in my life. Argg.. So angry.. I was feeling like crap since yesterday night and just zombied out the 24 following hours, contemplating the pile of work that should and could have been done during that time. And as if brooding destructive waves in my personal space was not enough, some of them broke through the protective spell around my appartment and went loose to wreck havoc elsewhere.. Namely Tokyopop's website. So I went to check if there were any more nice work to read up there at the Pilot's section and I end up paging through the most popular one. Mistake. Big big mistake. So what if that story is a rip-off of Hino Matsuri's Meru Puri? Why should I care?? Well, I do. Because some things I deem important and artistic personal voice is one of them. Because seeing people shamelessly replicate other creator's concepts and ideas and being applauded for it makes my angry forehead vein swell and twitch. Now the mistake part? Any other day, I would have grumbled to self and went on to something else. But today being bad as it was, I just had to open my big mouth and SAY what I actually think of this..... (And as if ripping off the story was not enough, there's also the graphic and character design  part : if you have time to loose compare last panels from this page (p31 of the Pilot http://www.tokyopop.com/product/2657/VeritasKiss/1 to this from Meru Puri http://www.onemanga.com/Meru_Puri/1/28/ - and if anyone dares tell me that just swapping the sides is enough of a difference, god help me!!! )
So, farewell, anorexic f-list, you probably won't see me again since I have certainly attracted flames and wrath of all the fervent fangirls who really couldn't care less if what they read is an original voice or not.  Huff huuff huuf....  Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to open the windows to let all the smoke and fire out.

I need to get used to using my LJ more regularly.. Yes. So I took that Christmas Tree theme down. March would seem like about the right time to do it,  wouldn't you say? So I take this moment to announce and shamelessly promote the news about RSom8 online voting - IT STARTED TODAY!!
It's HERE!! It will end on the 14th after what all the winners will be announced and move on to a happy anthology ending. So, if you got a moment and a cup of tea, go read the finalists entries (after all it's free fun stuff), enjoy the moment and maybe even give a vote to your favorite one. Yours Truly is in there with a wacky story called "Full Circle". AAND.. much more news are to come very soon about my first collaborative work with an elusive, but amazingly talented creator.. It would not be an exaggeration to say that it is the best work I have done so far and I certainly hope it is just the 1st in a line of several. More to be announced soon ^^

Whoa!! Second entry!! XD
I'll definitely have to figure out how to make this journal look a bit nicer... someday.. :)
Anyway, "Tacto's adventures" continues: after the gun-fire a month ago, now we got into a bomb alert...  and in the most unlikely of all places: Geneva's airport!! (the quiet Geneva, where nothing  terrible usually happens)  After 20 hours of travelling this was not even funny.. Anyway! XD
So now I am back home, getting fat as the goose before Thanksgiving day and not even feeling guilty... ahhhh... smelly cheese.... swiss chocolate.... fine dried meat... non-smelly cheese..... more chocolate.... XD
I haven't seen much of my friends yet, since everyone's working now and have mostly done administrative stuff that had to be done, but these next 2 weeks will be busy. And.. don't tell anyone, but I really miss all my drawing stuff... T_T is it called "mangaholic"????
I would also like to take more time to think about the plots of the different stories I have in mind, but it is difficult when I am not really at my place ^^;
However, another good point of being here is all the french-translated manga - for example, last time I bought all the volumes of Tensai Family of Tomoko Ninomiya (author of english-translated Nodame Cantabile) and now I got "I am not an angel" of Ai Yasawa - which is really sweet! So in 3 words: life is good! :D

As people say, "it's better late than never". So here I am posing my first journal on LJ. This was catalyzed by my meeting with Dee and Myung a week ago at Yaoi-con. It was also my first time meeting friends from the online/Wirepop community and it was a blast. Somehow, manga path doesn't feel at all as lonesome as when I first started on it a year and a half ago. So many wonderful folks out there and I really look forward to meeting them someday.

On the creative side, I am guilty of not updating "Inner Edge" for a month now. But this is a conscious decision to allow the necessary time to complete my Rsom 8 entry, and work on things that need more attention. So as our governator would say "I'll be back" soon enough.

On the paying work side, it is pretty busy, especially since we "lost" one of our team this week.. Rita, why did you have to go back home to Portugal???!!!! WHY???!!! Sigh, this is how things are when you make new wonderful friends in a place where people come to learn and go back home. On top of that, we had a 5.6 earthquake south of Palo Alto on Tuesday night, which resulted in me not being able to go back home and having to crash at another friend's couch. It was fun though - my first earthquake!

So I guess this was a week of a lot of "first times". Life is exciting!
:D