Steps to Love TL Progress (End of November)

As of now, I'm at +16 percent translated on Sachiko's route for November. So that first draft is 36 percent done thus far.

Some pretty scattered end-of-year-ish thoughts:

-There haven't been as many big budget VNs in the femdom niche this year. Sakuseishi no Oneesan and Escalation were probably the most notable of that bunch. The former was excellent and is my game of the year. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to play the latter due to technical issues (shame, because it even got an official EN translation and I hear from folks I trust the script/content is quite good).

-On the other hand, audio has been fairly fun. I want to make a specific note that I've been impressed by all four major works from new circle Hit-and-Away since they debuted in February. Each has a creative premise, solid audio work, and strong voice acting.

-My livedoor blog has definitely not been as active of late. I was planning earlier in the year to maybe use it for an in-depth review of a memorable older game or two (Hidden?, Mugen Kairou?), but just haven't had as much time. 

--That's something I can live with, for the moment. One perspective I try to come at decisions with is impact, and a review of something is more impactful to the overall economy of games when it's just recently been released. (In the long run, everybody quits or retires, so the "more of this!" message is best received quick.)

-The whole short story writing venture that kicked off in February has been a lot of fun (for me, at least). Couple of reasons:

--I've been able to meet those self-imposed deadlines and word count requirements on a very consistent basis, which is encouraging.

--One main thing I'm impressed with, now, is the length of scenes that eroge writers manage to churn out on a fairly consistent basis. Writing whole scenes has really hammered home the point that the *short* scenes in a given Sadistic Women patch were around 7500 words. (Only one of my stories got anywhere near that, and it had to include a couple weeks' worth of time progression to do so.)

--Insofar as it ties back into translation, a good TL project is a collaboration between a translator and author, and you're trying to find a "voice" that fits both the author and the characters they create. I understand things better once I experience them, and I feel like I have a better grasp now of the fact that, while translation is work that requires practice, skill, and education, but so is writing! Gives me another talking point for whenever the next time is I have to interact with a creator face-to-face, and also a good reminder to respect the material being worked with as the fruit of a whole lot of effort.

--Unlike a translation project, where it's apparently somewhat common practice these days for folks to sign away the right to credit, I'll always know this writing work is a thing I can keep. That matters to me.

--I'm considering getting a few scenes I liked from this year's stories illustrated. I'll loop people here in if that's something I decide to follow through on.

--It's really important to eat in the morning if you're planning to sit on a toilet at night. Similarly, it's really important to do stuff, read stuff, and watch/listen to stuff before creative work kicks into high gear.

--Some of the prompts people selected wouldn't have been my gut choice, but that's allowed me to venture outside of my comfort zone and try some things, which was another goal. I do appreciate people who have voted in those polls.

-I'm going to take a 1-month break from activities in general in January. Nothing drastic (February onward will be business as usual, and my current plan is to keep translating things), but I haven't been able to travel and I need something resembling a real, honest vacation. If not a trip, then at least a break from thinking about deadlines or work.

--Related: I wanna go to a movie theater so bad! But I know it's a bad idea and I'm resigned to waiting until vaccines finally drop and I can go roughly four nights a week for the first glorious month. I'm also renting videos at the store a lot less frequently, which doesn't help. Both at-home and silver screen movie watching are normally where I get a lot of the juice that goes into creative stuff, which I put translation under. And I'm repeating a point made above here, but that intake is important to get to a good level of output.

--Also on the (eventual) to-do list: spacious hot baths. Miss 'em.

-On a closing note, the sequence of Steps to Love I'm working on right this minute is really emotionally thick, layered material. The material encourages me to try hard and rise to the challenge of translating it. Put another way, when I saw this game won the poll, the section I'm going to be working on in December and February were what immediately came to mind and made me smile. They're also the specific reason why I landed on the title I'm using, so there's that.

Anyways, hope people have been holding up alright! If you feel like you haven't done enough, remember that most people couldn't reasonably be expected to adapt to events bad enough to upend society as a whole.