Sunday, February 21, 2016

It's been about a month, so I figured I'd post an update.

Still working on Not the Fall. Took a couple weeks break before starting but now I'm a couple thousand words into it. I intend on finishing it before doing anything else, as I don't see there being any more than 3 or 4 more chapters until it's done, but plans can change.

Bummed the writing competition over on the wiki still hasn't announced results, but I'll live. To be honest I'm not really expecting to win, I just wanted to see if I could fit a complete story in 5000 words. I think I did a good enough job of it.

After Not the Fall is finished? I'll probably go back to my novel. Not 100% sure though. I do kind of want to write some smut as I haven't done that in a while, but if nothing comes to me, then I won't really be able to get anything written. There's also a scylla doujin that was recently posted on dlsite that I grabbed. Might translate that, but I think this is less likely to happen compared to the other two options.

That's all for this update. Hopefully I'll have some real content for you soon.

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Things are moving along. Here's what's happening at this moment:

I'm writing a contest entry for the MGE wiki contest. Rough draft is done, editing next, then I'll be submitting it. Probably won't post it until the contest is over, but don't know for sure about that yet. I had a little trouble keeping it under the 5000 word limit but I think what I've got is good.

The Cheshire doujin, "Monstergirl Encyclopedia Damage Report: Cheshire's Welcome to Wonderland", has been cleaned and is ready for me to translate and typeset. I'm assuming no one else has already started to do this so that's what I'm working on. It's 25 pages total with 20 of that being actual content (not front/back cover, afterword, etc). As far as volume of work, KC has written a bit more text in this than the average doujin, so that will slow things a little, but he's also pretty good about keeping text in speech bubbles, which makes my life easier. Depending on how much of my time I put into this, I could have it done as quickly as a week or as slow as three. We'll see.

Next up I believe I'll be continuing Not the Fall. However, I also have a doujin coming in from Japan that has been neither scanned nor translated and I will probably want to work on translating part of it when it comes in. Not the Fall will probably take a backseat to that.

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Quick update about a couple of things.

First: my next writing project turned out to be a short story for the MGE wiki contest. I have the draft written, I just need to get it under the 5000 word limit. Should have that done in a couple days or so.

Second: Someone uploaded the raws of the Cheshire Doujin and I'm not sure if anyone else is planning on translating it, so I'm going to go ahead and start on that. I'll have to learn how to clean pages since it hasn't already been done, but as far as scan quality, it's pretty good, if a bit large (the whole thing is about 4.5 GB).

That's what's going on for now. Also got confirmation that my doujin order shipped, so another week and a half to three weeks and I'll have it. Next writing project still unknown, but I'm fairly sure it will be Not the Fall.

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Well, it's been a month and some things have happened, so it's time for another blog post.

First off, I have finished my next 25,000 word milestone on my novel. Whoopie! It took about 2 and a half months which is longer than I would've liked, but I got it done.

So the big question is, what's coming up next?

Just as always, I'm not completely sure, but I've got some ideas. Here's what I'm considering for right now (in no particular order):

1) Finish Not the Fall (I know I keep saying I want to do this then put it off, but that's not because I don't want to do it, it's because I can only choose to do so many things)
2) Another chapter of the dragon bounty hunter story, Fly High or Not At All. It would be similar to the first in that it would be its own complete story, allowing me to leave it alone or continue with a third chapter some other time if I felt like it. I wasn't really expecting to continue this at all, but I've had some ideas crop up and I might want to use them.
3) Something else. A trade? A one-off? I dunno. I've put a lot of thought into the first two options so I sincerely doubt this will happen, but who knows? It might.

Now that's for right now. I'll start on whatever I decide either Monday or Tuesday. However, I don't want to stop translating doujins so I plan on doing another one of those when I get the chance. There's nothing out there right now I want to translate, but I have ordered 2 from a guy who will courier them and scan them for me, so if nothing pops up, I'll be translating one or both of those. If the cheshire doujin is uploaded untranslated, I will certainly be working on that. (It's also one of the 2 I ordered. So if it shows up online, I may have wasted a little bit of money, but if it doesn't, I know for sure that I'll have it in another 3-4 weeks.)

That's all for now. I'll probably post another update when my plans are more concrete and I have something to report.

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

I saw this and felt the need to comment:

http://www.gomanga.com/articles/extraextra/seven-seas-educates-monster-fan-masses-with-license-of-monster-girl-encyclopedia/817

It's not very long, but in case you really don't want to wade through those four short paragraphs, it's an announcement that Seven Seas (the same people that licensed Monster Musume, among other things), has licensed Monstergirl Encyclopedia.

Lots of people are saying lots of things and I'm just another voice in the crowd, but this is a blog, and on a blog, people generally soapbox. So, taking into account my opinion isn't any more important than anyone else's:

It's probably not the end of the world. In fact, it's probably not a bad thing at all.

It's easy (and kind of fun) to doomsay and wail about DMCA's and bellow countless tales of normalfags taking over X hobby and now they're coming for monstergirls, but the truth of it is, we don't know much, and what we do know is at least a little bit positive. If you're an optimist, Seven Seas' licensing of MGE may actually be a great thing.

We know that, based on Seven Seas' past, they're probably not going to go around and try to take down all MGE content in order to secure their precious shekels. I personally haven't heard of them asking anyone to take anything down, nor have I noticed their licensing of MM interfering with fan translations at all. Yes, there have been some takedown requests leveled at Batoto, but according to Seven Seas, they had nothing to do with that.

Seven Seas has outright stated they will not pursue takedowns of any fanworks or alternate hostings of fan-generated content: http://ask.fm/SevenSeasEntertainment/answer/134324821138
While I would expect them to try and take down any digital copies of their own planned publishing of the hardcover Encyclopedia, I do not expect them to go after fan translations. They still may, this is simply my interpretation of their answer. That answer isn't political speak. It's stating, in no uncertain terms, that the licensing of MGE will not lead to their requesting takedowns of MGE content.

As for the content of the publication, Seven Seas has said it will be "uncensored". My gut tells me the truth of it is, "mostly uncensored". I find it hard to believe they won't censor or 'creatively translate' a lot of the stuff about the Sabbath and lolis. KC loves his lolis as much as America loves making laws about that kind of shit. To my knowledge, there are no federal laws against lolis, but I believe several states have laws against it.

Now, for the last, more nebulous concern: growing popularity and intersection of fandoms. It's impossible to say exactly what will happen to 'monstergirls' as a whole. It's possible that the publishing of MGE in a physical form with official translations will do... absolutely nothing. Monstergirl 'awareness' (god that sounds painful to say) may increase a little, but MGE is mostly aimed at people who are already fans of monstergirls. It's not really a pandering product. Then again, if the right sjw gets their hands on it, it could gain a LOT of attention. The wrong kind of attention. Of course, seeing as it's from Japan, a lot of people will redirect their ire at Japan or KC directly, or perhaps wave it off as another Japanese thing. Who knows.

As far as dilution of fans: yes, there will almost certainly be at least 1 more person who takes part in monstergirl stuff (media, discussion, etc) due to this publication. And of the people that do this, it's more likely than not that a fair portion of them will be normalfags. But normies don't go to infinitychan, and they tend to not last long in /jp/. They don't read or write smut about fucking monstergirls. Normies aren't going to flood the places you go (any more than they already do).

Personally, I think it's a bit more of a good thing than it is a bad thing. But whatever, I'm just one guy.

Time to go back to writing about humans fucking monstergirls.

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Considering it's been about a month, it's time for me to post an update on things.

Currently, I am still working on my primary project. I'm a little more than 15,000 words in, which means another 10,000 and I'll take a break to work on something else. That 10,000 will probably be done with in another 2-3 weeks, depending on how much time Christmas takes away from my writing.

I know I've had a while to think of what I'll do next, but I still don't know for sure. Ideas come and go, things crop up and disappear and my mind wavers from one thing to another.
-I'm still considering commissioning scans of a couple doujins then working on translating those.
-I really want to get Not the Fall finished. It's got maybe 2 chapters left.
-Multi-armed apophis trade might still happen. Unsure.
-Still really want to write Cheshire but I have a feeling any project with Cheshire will take a back seat to other things.
-Still want to write more manticore. I'm a bit more certain this will happen, it's just about when. I might do it first thing when I'm done with my primary project, I might put it off until after translations and Not the Fall. Dunno.

In other news, I have commissioned two different artists for two difference scenes from my stories. You'll know which ones when I post the art here.

Also, I added the name of my most recent translation. It's been done for a while, I just forgot to post the name of it on the sidebar.

Monday, November 9, 2015

I updated the list of monstergirl artists to commission here: http://rserenity.blogspot.com/2015/03/list-of-artists.html

Update on what I'm doing: more of my primary writing project. I've started another 25,000 word block and I'll probably finish up in a month.

Afterwards, there are a few things I'm considering:
-Commissioning scans of certain doujins I want to see but haven't shown up on the internet yet, then translating them.
-Finishing Not the Fall (I really need to do this)
-Writing multi-armed apophis (for a trade)
-Writing Cheshire
-Writing more manticore

But that's all just what I have in mind for now, nothing concrete. Who knows what will happen in the future? As for now, I'm focusing on my 25000 words.