Fallen Brides: Sasha — Well, It's Christmas, I Guess

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Well, I really had planned to have a bunch more updates by now, but thesis writing sort of intervened. I do have another 5,000 words for you now, though, and that brings us to a bit more than halfway through Sasha's chapter.

I know I don't have the best track record for this, but you can genuinely expect another update around New Years and at least one more significant one in January.

Fallen Brides: Sasha — Well, That Escalated Quickly

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It'd been a bit longer than I'd originally planned, but I'm back with the first 7,000-odd words of Sasha's chapter (a little more than a quarter of it). This one moves at a much faster pace than the previous two, to the point that there are two full transformation scenes by the end of this section.

I recommend reading the text below rather than on Pastebin because there are a lot of significant italics in this one.

I hope to post shorter sections on a more regular basis for the remainder of this chapter, but I'm in the middle of my master's thesis at the moment, so I can't really commit to a definite schedule.

Fallen Brides: Mimiru — Complete At Last

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Sorry for the long delay. My attentions have been divided between scanlation projects and moving back into grad school as the new semester starts up. To make up for it, though, I've got the final part of Mimiru's chapter for you — a little under 4,000 words. I do plan to go through for some more editing in the future, but I'm still trying to make time to finish edits on Wilmarina's chapter (which needs them much more), so that may be a while.

In the meantime, I plan to make a start on translating next chapter, which is Sasha's. You can probably expect the first bit of that in a month or so, because I like to get at least ten pages done at the start of a new story before posting it.

The ebook files contain a scan of the KC illustration for this chapter.

Fallen Brides: Mimiru — Questionable Metaphors

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Sorry for another long delay. I've been busier than expected in Japan, and I've also been trying to get more work done on other translation projects (mostly Shut Hell). My desk here is also not super comfortable for sitting at typing, so I've gotten a lot more done in draft on paper than I have typed up to post. There have of course also been... other considerations. (Did you know that Ninja Slayer is significantly longer than A Song of Ice and Fire?) The good news is that I'll be done here and back in the states in about a week, and I have the whole story drafted now, which should make getting it ready to post here fairly quick.

So, without further ado, here's 5,000+ words to make up for the month of waiting. The transformation scene is over, and this chunk starts us in on Elt's encounter with the new Mimiru, conspicuously unspecified weapon in hand. Only about five pages to go now, although MGE novellas use very large pages (figured in terms of word count, Fallen Brides is actually roughly as long as Infinite Jest).

Next up will be Sasha's chapter, possibly interspersed with some shorter pieces.

Fallen Brides: Mimiru — Even More Tentacles

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Well, it's a little later than I'd planned, but here's another installment of Mimiru's story. This part finally brings the transformation scene to a close, and brings us close to the end of the chapter.

I'm now settled in Japan for the summer, and while my work here should keep me fairly busy, I expect to have this story finished before too long. The next chapter of Fallen Brides is Sasha, but I may make another detour into the other novellas before I start work on it. The short story at the end of Fallen Maidens is on the short side and adds another perspective to the Lescatié story, and I've also acquired a copy of the latest novella, After School Alice Tale, which deals with some of the Wonderland monsters and also has relatively short chapters. Let me know if you have a preference.

Fallen Brides: Mimiru — Literal Brain Rape

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Well, that was another delay longer than I would have liked, but I have another 3,000+ words for you. There are now 15 pages left to go in this 50 page story.

This update finishes up the scene with Mimiru and Lucella from the end of the last one, and raises the question whether we will ever see a transformation scene that does not involve tentacles, despite a significant portion of both world guides being devoted to other weird things that turn people into monsters.

As for future updates, the pace really should pick up again this time. I do, however, leave in a little over a week to spend most of the summer doing research in Japan, so I can't say with certainty what that will do to my schedule yet. I'm hoping to get another short update up before I leave, and I'll try to acquire copies of the few MGE books that I still haven't got (including the new Wonderland-themed one) while I'm over there.

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Fallen Brides: Mimiru — Tentacles Again

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My apologies for the long delay — seminar paper hell continues, but will shortly be at an end, and then I hope to make up for lost time. In the meantime, here's another 3,500 words or so. As you can probably guess from the title, this part concludes the wizard fight and brings us to the start of the transformation scene.

Now seems like a good time to explain my translation of spells. The name of each spell in the Japanese text consists of kanji expressing the spell's function, and furigana indicating an entirely different katakana reading. As I have been unable to find sources for most of these readings ("Electric Wall" is to be read "Ohm," which seems reasonable, and "Corrosion" is read "Fenrir," so they are likely not just fantasy gibberish, but aside from those two almost none resemble words in any language I know or yield search results on google or in dictionaries), and as the kanji often serve as the only explanation of a spell's function, I have elected to provide translations of the kanji names in my English text. I plan to add footnotes with the katakana readings in a future update.

The only other translation detail of note (minor spoiler) is that Mimiru's while socks are described as turning into a "deep green ooze," all other descriptions of this ooze have it as deep purple in color, and I have consequently altered the single instance of "green" under the assumption that it is an error.

Lastly, thanks to Dan, who offered some assistance with my apparent inability to read the Blogger interface, you can now read the story so far with correct formatting (including, most importantly, italics) after the break.

Fallen Brides: Mimiru — Build Up To a Wizard Fight

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We're up to almost 10,000 words now. This is the part where the monsters really make their entrance, so the next update will begin the parts I imagine most of you have waiting for. Sorry for the somewhat inconsistent update schedule, but I'm currently in the thick of Seminar Paper Hell.

There isn't much to say as regards the translation this time around, except that I've opted to let musical notes replace punctuation (as they do in the Japanese) rather than follow it this time. It definitely looks better on paper, but let me know if it makes any lines harder to parse.

(Just so everyone is clear, the Pastebin link at the top of the post contains the text of the story.)

P.S. If anyone knows how to cut off how much of a Blogger post is displayed on the main page, please tell me. I'd like to post the full text here as well so that you can see the italics on Mimiru's internal monologue, but I don't want it to take up an inordinate amount of space for people who haven't clicked on the post.

Fallen Brides: Mimiru — FORESHADOWING

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Here's another 3,000 words or so of Mimiru's chapter. It continues to move at a significantly faster clip than Wilmarina's, and the last bit gives you your first glimpse of how Deruella acts when she isn't summoning tentacles.

I would like to note that Lucella speaks with the diction of an old professor. I'm not sure I was entirely successful in bringing that across.

Also, this particular part of the development of Mimiru's relationship with Elt is something I describe to my friends in order to elicit laughter. You will hopefully see why.

Fallen Brides: Mimiru — Reports of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

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First of all, I apologize for my prolonged absence. I'd meant to start posting this back in December, but I got very sick, and then a combination of grad school, video games, and work on scripts for the various manga scanlations I'm helping with kept me very busy for a while. I hope to resume weekly updates following this post.

Here are the first 4,000-odd words of my translation of Mimiru's chapter in Fallen Brides. I actually have a draft of nearly the entire chapter written out by hand, but typing it up and going over it to tighten up the translation and improve the flow of the English has been slower going than I'd anticipated.

As usual, there are no monsters this early in the story, which will probably disappoint several people, but they will be making their entrance earlier in this chapter than in Wilmarina's. This chapter also includes some description of what Deruella's invasion actually looks like, as well as an honest-to-goodness wizard fight (from which Nicholas Cage is regrettably absent).

Please note that italics and margins are actually semi-important to this chapter, so the Pastebin regrettably loses something of the original formatting. As usual, I will be releasing an ebook version of this translation once this draft is finished, and that will include both full formatting and images. A second draft of Wilmarina's chapter is still in the works.