The overarching mysteries surrounding the continent are starting to be revealed one by one…
TL: clover, eristol
ED: eristol
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“Sir Harlan, now I understand why you wanted to deploy your troops around Lindis.”
Eduard-oniisama turned to Harlan and said so.
Harlan, who was looking at the map, sighed deeply.
“I could somehow deduce it from those…
Sorry for taking a long time finishing this! One by one the mysteries/plot holes are resolved, but more questions arise in exchange.
TL: clover
ED: eristol
(more…)
Erica’s confession is here! Some throwbacks to the earlier arcs, and even excellently giving explanation to the ‘stupidity’ people are complaining about during the first arc. Sorry, I’m still salty about those complaints. Anyways, enjoy!
TL: clover
ED: eristol
Continue reading
IT’S HERE. ARE YOU READY? I’m still deciding whether to release the chapters about two days after the raw is released or just keep it once a week like before. Hmm.
TL: clover
ED: eristol
Continue reading
Artificial Spirits, commenced.
Dolores01, Complete.Dolores02, Complete.Dolores03, Complete.
Loading Meta Magic Spells.
Under the moonlight, the girls sang in a circle.Everything is like a phantom in an ephemeral dream.Still, you must make the best move.
Foresight processing…
“Everyone attending this evening party must disclose all secrets. If you are not in agreement, you may rise now.”
“It…
I went through the first mini arc like that and was able to release all six chapters in a week. I was really, really pumped up to get the chapters out. Fortunately, the reactions of the readers were good, and I got my first followers. And those made me feel very excited and happy when I translated the novel. I even received comments from someone who said they were the author’s brother and got snippets of the novel’s background and world building that weren’t told in the novel.
Of course, not all was good.
I made many mistakes in my translation; like some of the character’s age and name, the information in the chapters, etc. But everything became a lesson and experience to better myself and my translation. I edited all the chapters many times over. Everything was to give the readers a better reading experience so they could enjoy the novel the same way as I did.
This whole experience of being a translator had been amazing. I joined the translator community’s discord and they helped me when I got stuck. And I also got a translation checker (TC) when I started translating the third arc and an editor/proofreader after that. The three of us have the same goal of wanting to share our favorite series to a wider audience. Then we made a discord group for the novel, so that we can discuss it with our readers. And since the author’s brother also joined in, we made a spoiler channel for the exclusive info about the novel that he sometimes dropped.
In 2017, there were only few people who knew about the novel. And now, the LN has been licensed by J-Novel Club and it even got adapted to manga! When the first chapter of the manga dropped, I immediately contacted a scan group to request the manga to be picked up by them. After a few mishaps and discussions, now I help them to proof-read their translation of the manga because I’m ‘a super-fan of the series’ (their words, not mine) XD it’s really amazing where one impulsive decision to translate got me today.
I, and the other fans of the novel, hope that the series’ success in international community will help boost the original novel’s sale and push the publisher to help the author get the third LN volume out.
ALSO news! The next arc of the WN, the sixth arc, was initially going to be the last arc of the series. But it is said that the arc became too long, so the author will split it into 2 arcs. So the last arc will be the seventh arc instead. Plus, it is said that the sixth arc is pretty much done, and only need to be tweaked and edited here and there. As soon as the new chapter is out, my translation will also continue from its hiatus state. So expect that!
Now for the shameless plug:
read my fantranslation of the WN: https://starrynightnovels.com/dukes-daughter-and-the-seven-nobles/ (we already caught up to the latest chapter (ch 164, fifth arc. We also made a glossary for the characters, wands and spells, places AND a fanmade map of the continent)
read the fanscanlation of the manga: https://mangadex.org/title/52507/deathbound-duke-s-daughter-and-seven-noblemen
buy the official LN translation: here
So, it’s been years since I last posted in tumblr. I wasn’t idle and just twiddling my thumbs during those years. Since then I’ve graduated and got my degree in Psychology, got a job, and also tried my hands on translating.
Yes, translating.
I first got hooked on reading light novels when I read the LN of Duoluo Dalu. And since I am an avid reader, I quickly went through dozens of novels available in novelupdates. When I found that wasn’t enough, I also made an account on syosetu, alphapolis, and kakuyomu so that I can read other novels that unfortunately weren’t translated in English, even if I had to read them through google translate. And then I found a particular novel.
It was Shini Yasui Koshaku Reijou to Shichi-nin no Kikoshi. I found the novel in syosetu back in 2017, and I immediately got hooked. I wanted the novel to be known more by people and I wanted to share my excitement and love for the novel with other people. So I made a request in NUF for the novel to be translated by someone. But time passed and no one picked it up.
I decided that if no one’s going to pick it up, then I will do it myself.
And I didn’t know a thing about translating back then. My Japanese knowledge was only basic at most. And I didn’t even have a site to publish it.
Thus, with the feeling akin to stumbling through darkness, I made my own site in wordpress. The site’s name was inspired by one of Mamamoo’s song. I also came up with a tagline and searched for the suitable banner for it. For the site’s icon and logo, I asked my friend to make one. Yes, once I feel excited about something, I really give it my everything.
Then I got to the translating part. I was only armed with the novel’s JP raw, google translate, jisho.org, and my own literary sense. Basically, I first opened the raw and turned on the google translate function on chrome. Wrote the resulting translation on Word while also editing the translation so it made sense and flow better, and used jisho.org when I was really stuck to understand the meaning of the sentence better.
why do so many “icarus and the sun” artworks and stories portray the sun as a woman? do y’all know who controlled the sun? apollo. icarus is gay as fuck, y’all.
Oh, anonymous friend, I am so very happy to answer this question! In way more detail than you intended!
“Beta” is short for “beta reader,” which is basically a fanfic editor – a friend/fellow fan who reads a fic before it’s posted and suggests changes. This can range anywhere from “i liked it u should post it” (this is… not that helpful) to copy editing (helpful!) to workshopping the fic and making it much better (LIFE CHANGING).
This was EXTREMELY common in the Before Times (pre-Archive Of Our Own), when fanfic was largely housed on private archives. I have no idea if the term was used in the pre-internet zine days, but in the Livejournal Era you either got your fic beta’d, or you apologized profusely for not doing so in the author’s notes.
(Or you posted to fanfiction.net which, as always, was where you went to read fic when you ran out of fic and were so desperate you didn’t care that the characters were unrecognizable and Scully was always crying.)
Anyway! I’m most familiar with the Stargate fandom from this era. Many archives and most ficathons required that works be beta’d. A lot of the time this just meant a friend of yours looked it over, said “i love it!” or did some proofreading for spelling mistakes but then there were… the Good Betas.
Good Betas are the stuff of legend. Some Good Betas were also writers, but there were a lot of them who didn’t write fic at all, and editing was their contribution to the fandom. If one of them offered to beta for you, you fucking cherished them (and cursed them) because they’d spend days on your fanfic and come back with a laundry list of changes and argue with you and make you change the entire ending and basically, cared about your fic almost as much as you did. And yeah, it meant you finished a fic and sometimes waited WEEKS before it was officially done and ready to post, but it was so much better for it.
My Stargate SG-1 beta, besyd, basically grew me from a tiny ficwriter acorn who was terrified to post anything. Betas are so helpful for new fic writers, because it’s like having a Fic Mentor who can help you really think about your work and someone you can ask “hey I’m going for this thing here… does it work?” It elevates the whole fandom.
(Beta-ing is also fun and rewarding because you get to keysmash at an author you love Line By Line and make your author blush a lot. Good times!)
Anyway, the reason I was way too excited to answer this ask is because I would like to cast my vote in strong favor of old-school collaborative beta-reading coming back into fashion.
@dvswraatins was my very first beta when I was a wee baby writerling. She was also my first co-author! I honestly do not know where I would had she not been the wind beneath my wings. She actually led me to @tielan who was my second beta and a huuuuuge positive influence on my fanfics.
@tielan led me to @bethanyactually and basically all the other wonderful betas I’ve been blessed with up til now, so you could really say that I owe whatever success I’ve had in fanfic writer thus far.
tl;dr - like Little Red said, betas are important.
Really good, mean betas sometimes keep you from posting fic that doesn’t work at all. Really good, mean betas sometimes keep you writing to fix something that isn’t working to make it work. Really good, mean betas are worth their weight in gold.
Really good, mean betas tell you the truth. Sometimes your writing is crap and somebody needs to tell you that.
This is also really hard for a beta to do, at least until you’ve established a working relationship with the writer and you trust each other. But it’s scary to tell someone they need to go back and rewrite a lot, even if it’s badly needed.
(My scariest wasn’t actually a quality issue, but once for @ekjohnston I took a fic she’d written and suggested radically rearranging every scene. It wasn’t a big rewrite on her part, but the fic was going to look very different. I think my email boiled down to “please ignore this if you hate it, and also please don’t hate me for suggesting it.”)
Anyway, I usually aimed high for betas (asking writers of fic I really liked, hence @darthmelyanna‘s scary email several years ago. I imagine I did most of what she told me to!, and if I was reading a fic I liked that clearly needed some help, I would email all “Hey, do you have a beta? Do you want one?”), and it helped me a TONNE to get better.
Now, writing for Actual Monies, I have an editor, but before I sold my first book, it was my fic betas who read my stuff. They still do. When I’m writing about something I don’t know (ie what it’s like to be blind), I get an additional beta reader who does know.
Get a beta. Not just a copy-editor (someone who edits for spelling and grammar, though often in fic, that’s the same person), but someone who looks at the bones of your story and, possibly, suggests surgery.
It’s been many moons since I wrote fanfic (I was active back in the LJ days) and I also didn’t realize beta reading was less of a thing now in fandom world. I can testify though that all the published writers I know, including me, use beta readers. I think once or twice during my fanfic days I posted something without getting it beta’d first and I basically tore my hair out wondering if what I’d posted was OK. Beta readers provide an AMAZING service. Also beta-ing was how I made a lot of my first and best friends in fandom, so.
A shoujo story where you need to hide from (or kill) your generic bishounen senpai because you accidentally saw him in his man-eating monster state and the only way you can detect his presence is when you nosebleed when they have their eyes on you.
That Tumblr Mobile™ feel when you open the app after having it closed for a while and you catch a glimpse of a really good post, and you sigh internally because you just know it’s about to be whisked away into the abyss never to be found again as your dashboard automatically refreshes
