Last of the short, first three chapters. The others are much longer, so I guess they'll take me more time.
Let's start off with a link before going onto the rant. Here.
A huge rant below, you have been warned.
Now, as for the rant... I'll just comment my thoughts on the sprouting happening that is people "asking" for donations for their translations. I won't comment on the quality of some of these people, which is tragic... because that's a topic for another rant, someday.
I do think that these people don't deserve a single cent. A single yen. That's a blatant attempt at using someone else's hard work, someone's else's story for your own profit. Even more so that some people go as far as to do a disservice to the original story by doing it in shit quality.
When I started my fan contributions as a manga editor, the environment was slightly different. There wasn't as much money-mongering among the manga communities aside from certain TAZMO incident and such. Since the beginning manga translations (there were no LN translations back then, or were almost non-existent) were by FANS and for FANS. No more no less. They weren't done for money, nor used to earn money (yes, I mean you, mangafox). Actual fans of a story did do their best to share the story with other fans who were unable to read it due to language barrier.
Even now I still abide by: from a fan, for the fans. That's why I promote purchasing original books instead of trying to make money off things, that's why I promote the system of supporting singular books I personally AM fan of, for the people who are or might become its fans. I strongly oppose the recent trend of treating books and stories as fast food - the more the better approach that's been rampant lately.
In real world, if you had 75$ a month to indulge in your book-reading hobby, you would go to a bookstore and purchase the books that you like, their continuations or similar books then put them on the shelf and pride yourselves in having them in the collection. On the net, people started to treat books as something to read and forget. That is disrespectful to the book, the author and everyone else who worked on it.
It's gotten to a point where one guy came here a while ago and commented with something like this (quoting from memory, it's been long deleted from the archives, it was about OSO): "I think this book is shit I hate the main character for being bad, but I read it because there's nothing else".
That's how far it's gone. I do think a serious turnaround in the mentality among the LN community is needed. People have become drunk with sudden increase light novels and web novels availability, they forgot everything else other than absorbing more and more.
I'm going to continue working on my series and promoting the LNs I like, encouraging people to buy the original. I never got a single cent from working on either manga or light novels, neither from ads or donations. Nothing. I spend my own money and I'll continue to spend my own money on the domain, books I translate and other required things.
Well, it seems like I deviated from the topic, while it was about making money off translations at first, it turned into one about the state of LN community and mentality of the people reading it... I'm ashamed.
I'd like to thank all the guys who are honest fans of the light novels and thank twice the people supporting authors and the publishers.
It's been a while since I made a huge rant, it always ends up like this... I try to make a small comment and it turns into a humongous rant. Sigh.
Well then, since I already wrote it, I won't cut anything out. If you liked it and want me to comment on other things on how LN's translations state currently is, I might consider it.
You're free to disagree, you're free to hate as haters gonna hate. That is my own personal opinion.
——Krytyk
