#lutiastalks

Hello everyone! I finally have (almost) enough time and energy to give you some news (I say "almost" because I woke up less than ten minutes ago, it is already noon as I am writing this, and I feel like a zombie ready to just dive back into bed).

First off, thank you all for your messages and comments, my heart is melting even now just at the thought of it 🥺💖 I won't get into too many details unless you want me to, but just know that the PhD defence went extremely well!! I was sweating bullets the entire time and my laser pointer even ran out of batteries RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF MY PRESENTATION, but even with that everyone told me that not a single person had noticed I was stressed out the whole time. The best part by far for me is that members of my family, and notably a friend of mine who never studied any kind of science after the end of high school but still came specially for the occasion (<3), told me that even though they couldn't understand the technical details of my research, they were still happy to tell me that they were able to get the gist of what I was saying, that even though they got lost relatively often they also weren't lost for long, and that at the very least at the end they could look at the title of my thesis and go "ok now I know what this string of random words means." Being able to demystify science is one of my ultimate dreams, so having been able to remain relatively clear towards non-scientists even as my presentation's main audience was supposed to be bonafide researchers with more experience than me really felt like an achievement.

So yeah, all that to say, PHD WENT WELL (and yes I am now a doctor but me being a doctor doesn't mean that you should be calling me a doctor. even though of course everybody does IRL and online alike just for the sake of the joke). And though I am currently exhausted and will likely take a while longer than I expected to be really back in shape, I am happy as can be.

That being said, I believe this should actually be treated as good news, and not just good news for my personal health. Because, sure, the updates will not come out as often as I had originally planned to. But in the long run, I actually believe that since I no longer plan to force myself to only work on one thing (which has progressively been eating at my sanity on top of that because darn it this chapter is stupid and it just doesn't seem to END, + it'd be nice if I could finally get some content out that is my creation rather than somebody else's), it means that I will actually allow myself to post more diverse Layton stuff in the meantime.

Stuff like the Evan Barde post I made a few days ago, or other helpful-for-the-fandom stuff that isn't translation work, or… even maybe stuff like finally allowing myself to write SLS and draw random stuff again? Or even read other people’s fanfics and comics and AUs and stuff? (ok technically that last one would probably not lead to tumblr content but shush it means I would take time to look at YOUR content for a change)

The list of stuff I'd like to post in the future includes but is not limited to:

A tutorial on how I get my translation stuff done despite the fact that I do not actually speak Japanese. Best case scenario, this might even lead to some brave people among you to start helping me with this monumental task that is translating multiple novels and games from scratch while you're not even fluent in the language you're translating, and this would be a MASSIVE weight off my back. (spoiler alert: while I do use DeepL to check stuff and/or get inspiration, my work is NOT limited to simply copy/pasting sentences into it and then copy/pasting whatever it gives me back)

The Playthrough series! You had all forgotten about it, hadn't you? Yeah, me too.

Lore analysis stuff in general. I have a massive, absolutely insane project ongoing which is basically "Want to find some info about X? Just open that one (1) web page, enter a few tags such as a specific character's name or location, clich the Search button, and get a list of every single known fact which is related to all of your tags which is summarised down to the bare minimum fact, along with the exact source and quote directly taken from the source material."

Puzzle theory stuff. I've talked about it a lot, it'd be cool if I could finally get the stuff sorted and actually provide all the evidence supporting, refining or challenging it in one place. Above-mentioned lore analysis stuff should help with that.

More fancy shitpost such as the ones found in the #lutiasdraws tag. Let me join in on the fun pls it's good for my mental health to get some serotonin out of non-boring stuff. Heck, perhaps I might even do fanart/shitpost about some fanfics/AUs/others I find and enjoy.

Truth be told, so far I have worked a lot more on Mansion of the Deathly Mirror than on Illusory Forest (also don't get too excited the fanmade pleasant-to-read English translation is only done up to the first seven minutes of gameplay 😭 Blame that on me doing some additional CSS and brainstorming on how best to shape it into a simile of a "playable" walkthrough with links everywhere redirecting to other parts of the page)—but I do have the entire first chapter finished, which means that if the Prologue is posted this Saturday, I should have at least six weeks of buffer before reaching chapter 2.

I know "I" have been posting ED chapters every week and reblogging others' stuff every now and then, but regarding the ED chapters it's really just been the queue doing all the work haha. I'd actually finished writing the translation all the way back in August and decided to post a chapter per week in anticipation for these tough times when I'd be virtually dead online, just so this blog would be on some sort of life support in the meantime. I've been editing the PREV/NEXT links as each chapter came out (sometimes a day or two late because I forgor), but other than that I've only been browsing tumblr as a half-brained shadow 🥲

All that being said — I need rest. I've stayed up late up to 2-3am working and writing and drawing graphs way more often than my body would have preferred, pulled at least one all-nighter, and lost literally all sense of time (well, more than usual that is). I'm kinda writing this with the only brain cell I have left right now lmao.

So. After working on it since April, I finished writing my thesis. 171 pages, 49409 words with even more text that has been written and then scrapped for the current version, 58 graphs, 20 tables, 165 references in the bibliography, and tons of equations. Whatever am I going to do now?

...write even more words, of course 🤭

I know there's a lot of translation work to do, a lot of other work elsewhere, and just thinking of looking at my to-do list is making my brain implode. And you'd think that after writing so much to the extent that my eyes started burning 24/7, I'd be sick of writing. But... strangely it's the opposite lmao

All that to say, SLS hasn't been updated since April 1st, and this needs to be fixed. I miss these dorks so much and I need some self-indulgent fanfiction writing after all this.

When past me said that I had the entire first chapter as buffer and that it would amount to at least six weeks worth of updates… Well, that is technically true, but also that is only true if you want to consider the primary DeepL-only translation with the bare minimum of editing. What I realised upon giving it a closer look was that a lot of sentences are a bit hard to analyse and interpret correctly, at the very least during the scene which was supposed to be posted today. This first scene in particular is already extremely fast-paced and confusing as it is due to the sheer amount of action happening in it, so for this update more than for any other, translation accuracy really needs to be top notch. and the issue is that since I still do not speak Japanese, top notch 9/10 accurate translations take forever to make because I have to verify every word one by one.

The entire point of this second translation I am making is to have one that is better than the currently-existing Google Docs one on all aspects, mainly reliability and reading enjoyment (as much as I can make it since my own writing style is miles away from the Layton’s Book Club narration style). It would be hypocritical if my translation were just as half-baked as this first one from years ago, even if it would be of just barely higher quality thanks solely to DeepL being superior to how Google Translate was ten years ago.

So… If you want, you can read the first DeepL-with-minimalistic-editing translation directly on my transcription website in the meantime. And if you are even more impatient/curious, you can read here the Google Docs translation which was made by someone else years ago, and… really is lacking in a lot of important moments. But for Layton’s Book Club, in the end I decided to go for quality over quantity. And also this extra week will hopefully allow me to breathe a bit :')

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