translations & coffee

How do you pick the fonts for the Valentines cards? It's probably kind of just trying to approximate the character's writing between writing systems, right? I think your handwriting for Vyrn and Threo is awesome by the way lol. Is there anyone who has like, regularly shitty handwriting compared to disastrously awful like those two? I love the individual quirks and such. Thanks again, and I hope the future treats you well wherever u decide to go next!

Thank you very much! Evocative... I'm so happy to hear it. That was definitely one of my main goals with these song translations.

I have a lot to say about handwriting and translating that to the best of my ability. It does come down to deciding when something is good enough (if i really wanted it to be 100% in line, i'd be doing more of my own handwriting, but that would affect my pace a lot).

Looking closer, there are a lot of things to pay attention to when trying to translate handwriting, such as:

the type of the brush (specifically, does it look more like a marker, or sharpie, or fountain pen, or a stick, or something else)

the thickness and pressure of the brush (how thick or thin is it, do the letters keep the seem width or do they get thicker or narrower anywhere)

the stability (shaky, confident, extra flourishes, hastily, lazily)

the spacing and slanting of the writing, position on the page

the texture of the brush

the character of the writing (round, jagged, bubbly, fancy, tall, compressed, etc)

any extra quirks or effects (hearts, dotted i's, drawings, curls, smudges, fades, etc)

bonus: if there's existing text to reference, like signatures

bonus: things that do not carry over, but make sense. For instance, Andira's writing is very playful, but it's originally not connected writing like we do over here. To keep the theme of looping and playfulness and reference her signature, I made this choice for her. The same happens with more fancy writing. Having all letters be loose for cases like these would look really different!

Characters with regular shitty handwriting would probably be Orologia (I spared you guys a little on this one, the jp is worse), adult Nehan (also spared a little), Feather and Randall (one having huge writing, the other being compressed) and Sariel.

You can probably find out more in the replies tag, as I prefer not to say anything much if I don't have anything positive to say.

In summary, the story and design choices compounding over recent years have pushed me away. While I do see more connected events as a good thing, I no longer care for the content they push at this point. I also think that they've moved from releasing things I didn't always care about (which is fine, not everything will be to taste) to releasing more and more things I don't care about, and finally they started changing existing things around, including things I liked before or thought were fine.

It kind of feels like the new director was eager to leave his mark on Granblue, which is why he rushed Arc 1 to a conclusion and is changing so many things....

Can't fault anyone for disliking the new direction

Thanks for all that you did and do! And I'll be looking forward to where you'll find your footing next

Thank you!

Thank you! I'm sorry to hear I'm not the only one feeling down about the recent changes-- and i'm a little worried hearing this from an anon too haha... hopefully nothing too bad. As mentioned, I've been avoiding new content related to story or developments, but the general sentiment hasn't been great.

It always sucks moving on from a franchise, especially if there are still things you like or wish they'd retain (or, i guess in my dreams ive seen so many different ways they could've gone about it). I think it's much easier to blacklist whatever gbf is doing next in terms of story if i hope to maintain any love for the franchise, which is kind of sad. msq1 and everything that happened before that point will be the only canon i know, i guess!

Taking a break helped me push out a load of vday cards last month, but every update has felt like a slap in the face even when i'm not looking into the specifics. There are quite a few things I still want to complete, but I guess the pace will just slow down even more with my energy being this low.

Totally fine if not, I'm just curious about the poll winners

I guess you can always ask! I've been struggling to motivate myself to finish the remaining projects I already started. I do have other projects in mind I can shift to, but I feel somewhat obligated to at least finish the things I already got going. I do feel more and more estranged from the franchise much faster than anticipated, so I think before long the quality of my translations will also start to suffer.

I completely forgot about the anni skins and didn't even remember which characters got them this time around, but found out this morning it's vikala and seofon. I don't think I can pass up on that, so I'll have a look when the time comes.

バレンタインだと浮かれて菓子を食べるのは構わないが、歯磨きを忘れるなよ。虫歯になっても手当てはしてやれんぞ。 I don't mind if you celebrate Valentine's with sweets, but don't you forget to brush your teeth. If you end up with cavities I won't be the one attending it.

マフィア崩れを先生呼ばわりとはな……子どもの順応性の高さに驚くべきか、警戒が甘いと呆れるべきか…。 Calling a mafia washout a doctor… I don't know whether I should be surprised by the great adaptability of children, or astonished by their lacking sense of danger.

菓子が欲しい？ それならシスのもとへ行くんだな。お前のために準備しているか、さもなければ急いで買いに行くくらいはするだろう。 You want some sweets? Then you should probably head on over to Seox. He either has some prepared for you, or, in the event he doesn't, he will likely immediately run to get you some.