Xcomp's site is gone

The Twilight Mexican

The Twilight Mexican

Ex-SeeD-ingly good
AKA
TresDias
Well, not gone, but he's decided to take down the FFVII Web Novels page that had all his translations and various bonus content concerning Advent Children.

This is all you see when you try to go to the site now:

http://blog.lhyeung.net/ff7novels/

If you go to the linked Archives page, there's this message:

Thank you for visiting and for all the e-mails you have sent me during this time. It has been fun but it is time I removed the grey area content and used this space for other priorities.
Click to expand...

There is still a .pdf there you can download with his translations of the novellas, but stuff like his Before Crisis script translations, the 3N interview from the Advent Children Prologue book and the staff commentary from the Advent Pieces Limited edition of the movie are now gone.

Obviously, this decision breaks a lot of links from our site, and hopefully most of the lost content mentioned above can be recovered with the Wayback Machine (the Internet Archive is currently performing maintenance, so I've not been able to check) and hosted here on TLS if we can get Xcomp's permission, but for now, it's a sad day for FFVII fans.
 
Pixel

Pixel

The Pixie King
hmmm wonder if it was just a personal decision, or if SE asked him to take stuff down :/
 
The Twilight Mexican

The Twilight Mexican

Ex-SeeD-ingly good
AKA
TresDias
Pixel said:
hmmm wonder if it was just a personal decision, or if SE asked him to take stuff down :/
Click to expand...

It seems unlikely that they would ask him to yet leave us alone.

At any rate, we know now why he wasn't interested in being interviewed about his site.
 
Flintlock

Flintlock

Pro Adventurer
The fact he mentions "grey area content" suggests to me that there is a legal consideration involved. It's not unusual for a company, or their lawyers, to issue takedown requests completely indiscriminately, so the fact they haven't contacted us doesn't mean they haven't contacted him.
 
CameoAmalthea

CameoAmalthea

Pro Adventurer
You know, we should probably archive FFVII info websites in case things are taken down. I don't know what I'd do if for some reason Dark Angel's Gunshot romance vanished.
 
Shademp

Shademp

420
I've always been confused as to how one "archives" websites. Do I just click "Save page as" in the internet browser? =/

FFVII Excavation has a ton of stuff that must not be lost. Although it is listed under some official Square Enix site, I don't think that this site's content is safer than any other.
 
LicoriceAllsorts

LicoriceAllsorts

Donator
CameoAmalthea said:
You know, we should probably archive FFVII info websites in case things are taken down. I don't know what I'd do if for some reason Dark Angel's Gunshot romance vanished.
Click to expand...

I've copied and pasted most of it into word documents.
I've now saved word copies of all the OTWAS novellas, too.
 
Lex

Lex

Administrator
Look at us all, hunkering down for the site-pocalypse :P

Has anyone contacted XComp or will I do it? Indeed, is there anything else we might consider adding as a new page to our collection here that we should ask permission for?
 
Shademp

Shademp

420
Prince Lex said:
Look at us all, hunkering down for the site-pocalypse :P

Has anyone contacted XComp or will I do it?
Click to expand...
If nobody else has, I vote that you should contact him. Site Director and all :monster:


Prince Lex said:
Indeed, is there anything else we might consider adding as a new page to our collection here that we should ask permission for?
Click to expand...
The official English script of Lost Episode would be one thing. We currently link to FFVIIExcavation's page from here. We also link to related image galleries, but if we are to replicate the image galleries, Yop or Fangu first needs to fix the gallery viewing function. Currently when you click on an image you don't get the option to browse through a gallery. We used to have this function but it malfunctioned at some point.
 
Lex

Lex

Administrator
Will do, will update this post when it's done.

EDIT: And done. What is with all the Glaswegian fans of FFVII? I'll never understand it. I'd be willing to bet there are more people I know on or related to this board from Glasgow than any other city, and this isn't a huge city. It makes no sense to me.
 
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Shademp

Shademp

420
One more thing came to mind... Hitoshura has a gripe with the translation for the chapters in the OtWtaS series being "Case of" instead of "Episode". Hito is a huge authority, so we should at least consider that in the case of a republishing of the translations on this site, we rename them to "Episode <character x>".
 
Lex

Lex

Administrator
I'm fine with that. Incidentally, I'm still waiting for a response from XComp.
 
Lex

Lex

Administrator
XComp got back to me today. In addition to providing his permission to host what's now available on his site (someone download it if we haven't already, he's taking it down) he sent me the 3N interview and the Advent Children commentary in PDF format. Woop!

I'll put these up ASAP.
 
LicoriceAllsorts

LicoriceAllsorts

Donator
Well, it's good to know that it was his decision and not SE persecuting him over copyright issues, whicb tbh always seemed unlikely to me.
 
Shademp

Shademp

420
*downloads pdf document*

This is an awesome opportunity for us. Aside from hosting all the translations, we can use this as motivation to include a page about the history of the OtWtaS series (Franchise Page material most likely, as we want to keep the content index as short as possible).

Although Hitoshura adressed his opinion about the translation "Case of" in this here thread, when taking Pixel's audiobooks into mind I'm thinking that changing the titles to "Episode <Character/>" is not worth it. The 'Case of' heading has been used far too long and become pertinent English head-localization-canon. We can't demand that Pixel change the name of the audiobooks and it would cause much confusion if our translations were titled differently than the audiobooks.

That's my opinion. Though in a Franchise Page for On the Way to a Smile, we can easily add notes about the Episode/Case-Of translation issue, thereby still being academic, good FFVII scholars. :monster:

EDIT: I also still like the fact that we can distinguish between the Denzel OVA and the written version by referring to them as "Episode Denzel" and "Case of Denzel" respectively. ...Aside from just saying "the Denzel OVA", of course.
 
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AvecAloes

AvecAloes

Donator
^I completely agree with all of that. If someone were to search the web for the translations or audio versions of the OTWTAS series, they're going to use "Case of...", because, while technically incorrect as it may be, it IS what caught on in the West. I'd never know to search for "Episode Tifa", had I not read this thread. It should be noted, but I don't think we should go about changing them, until (and only if) the "correct" translation catches on a bit more. Although I guess you could always tag them both ways...well now I just don't know :monster:
 
Lex

Lex

Administrator
Well would you like to write the OtWtaS franchise guide page then Avec? Assuming Shademp doesn't have plans to do it already of course :monster:
 
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