Thank Your for the On-going Support!

I just want to steal some of your time before I give you the bonus chapters to express my gratitude to you especially for the past few months where things have been absolutely hectic for me, I just chose not to say anything because (A) I just didn’t want to waste time talking about it and this will be the only time I mention it, and (B) because I don’t want the guy with a sob story. I hate sympathy. Plus, I don’t want to bring my negativity here and spread it just to make everybody else feel crap.

If you just don’t care for what I have to say (you’re not obligated to read), feel free to scroll down to the bottom and get the next chapter link for yourself.

To those still reading, let me start on a positive note.

Thank you to my patrons who are allowing me to build toward making this something I can (hopefully) eventually do full-time and toward helping eventually build this place out by getting licenses and bringing on more series. The goal being to become an official English translation portal for SFACG’s series. Thank you to the people who are continuously looking out for me by helping me spot mistakes and make corrections like Chris, Dead Man, Crisp Ramen (who chased me down for 2 chapters to point a mistake out) and more I just can’t list you all. While some may take offense or even dislike being corrected because it hurts their ego and they’d much preferred to be told they’re perfection, I appreciate that you take time out of your own day and go out of your way to help me make things better and improve, instead of thinking that you’re out to maliciously attack me. I take the responsibility of translating seriously. Just as a coach should always being looking to expand their knowledge and their coaching service, I strive to improve what I deliver whether it’s the translation itself, the grammar, the vocab and whatnot (fixing my asshole personality isn’t part of it). You guys make it possible. I don’t want to be the translator who never improves and is there just for the money. Before someone has to quote me out of context, I always said I was after the money. And lastly, thank you for the positivity most of you bring. It’s a breath of relief after being in the manga and manhwa world where I’d be rolling my eyes at things. That world just wasn’t for me.

When a patron donates, or even those who donated toward the bonus chapters, I see that as “Here, I trust you with $X this month”. I have a duty to make sure I live up to their trust. It’s not “hey, thanks, I’ll reply when I feel like it, and take days off when I feel like it, here’s my excuse: I got a runny nose but my hands are fine.” When you read here instead of aggregate sites, I do my best to make sure there are no intrusive ads, the reading platform is nice as my tech-skills allow me, to make sure the promised chapters are there in some format, and to bring the best I have to the table.

You screw the source creator over, you screw yourself over. You screw the translator over, you screw yourself over. This doesn’t just go for me. Imagine if people started passing chapters around or if everyone started that shit they did to me on Patreon in the early days to get the chapters, trying to make fake donations (these idiots resources so the site drops and then they expect more chapters), or some other trick I haven’t being able to think up like them. So I appreciate the people trying to lift this whole thing up instead of trying to make things hard.

I hate the saying “self-made”. I don’t believe anybody successful or anything successful is self-made. I can’t do this as a one-man show, and I’m sure Ren didn’t build WW to where it is today by having snakes trying to screw him over.

Moving on. If you frequent the comments, you probably knew how I ended 2017 in financial debt. Not a huge sum, but at the time, it was like a guillotine slowing cutting through my neck. Next thing we know, we get a call from overseas and they say “your grandma only has 5 hours left, she won’t make it”.

So, we decide that we should at least let my mother attend my grandma’s funeral overseas. This was toward the end of December 2017, so I’ve got that existing debt, but then this came up and we go “ok, we’ll get at least my mother back since we can’t all go and I can’t resurrect the dead.” We went and got another loan, this time,2k+ because it’s holiday season and we’re trying to get tickets urgently. She heads overseas and by some work beyond my comprehension, my grandma survives. So after 4 weeks overseas, my mother comes back.

During the time she was away, obviously I’m tanking all the debts and trying to stay afloat. At this same time, if you look back, that’s when I began the road to more advanced chapters for patrons. So what my mother was handling at home previously fell on my shoulders too, great fun. It wasn’t like it was a massive difference since my mother is partially disabled and unable to do most physical things in the first place.

Upon arriving back here, three days later, we get a call from overseas. This time, the message is “she’s gone” (please don’t ever make comments like “I’m sorry to hear that” or “my condolences”, they sound insincere from my pov and outright pointless). The funeral is only held once, and my mother only has one mother, so we decide to let her go back a-fking-gain. This time, just $1800 loan on top of the rest. So great. This is late January by the way.

Where’s my father you ask? I don’t know, he kicked us out of the home when I was ten. Fk him. Don’t ask.

So by now, I’m thousands in debt and I’ve got more duties on my plate than before. She’s now returned and I will soon have the debts paid off in full by grinding.

Despite all that shit going on, I don’t recall ever making a complaint here or anywhere else about how “real life” was in the way. I didn’t let that stop me from training and I didn’t let it affect translating, on one occasion, translating five chapters in one day because I had an off-day.

Some of you already know that I work two part-time jobs on top of this. At the moment with the goals I have to deliver the massive amount of chapters for the higher tier patrons and to grow it since I don’t have a wish-fulfilment story to sell you, I have to grind. Because the jobs are shift work, sometimes I get home at 1AM, wrap up, be in bed at 2AM-ish and nap for 2 hour- ish and then get up at 4AM to post chapters for patrons. They know how sometimes I just fk up when my brain is just not there. Honestly, sometimes I get up and grab my hair and cuss at myself to quit whinging about being tired because I’m wrestling with my brain that’s telling me to sleep and post the chapters. Then I stay around for an hour or so just in case there’s an issue so I can be there to fix it right away. Due to shift-work and duties imposed on me by life and myself such as taking care of a disabled person or translating X number of chapters, I need to split up my sleep with a nap here, and another one there. I’ll do what it takes to get the job done, no complaints.

If you make a promise to translate X chapters per week, that means you also have a duty to ensure you are looking after yourself so that you are healthy enough to translate X chapters per week. I try to control every facet I know can be controlled to ensure I can deliver the promise. I don’t understand how “real life” is an excuse to cop out on a promise. Is your promise in “isekai life” or something? I’ve stuck to my word every single time, holiday, not-holiday, sick, not-sick, poor, not-poor and I’m still not where I want to be

I can’t take medicine when I’m sick ‘cause I’m so bad I make medicine sick. On a serious note, I just eat concrete when I’m sick so I harden the fk up.

I once heard “life happens” as a reason to not be better or do more. Life is always happening, you can’t control when, what or how it happens, but you have a choice in how you react to it. You either be complacent or you tackle it and evolve. Guess you could talk about how you “would’ve” or “could’ve” too. That will guarantee some cred with your buddies down at the coffee shop who have the same issues you do.

Because of these decisions compounded with the things outside of my realm of control, I haven’t studied hardly any Korean the past month, and that’s the one thing pissing me off besides my poor recovery. Every waking moment recently that hasn’t been doing some legitimate work is spent translating, and on off-days, that’s anywhere between 12-17 hours of sitting at the computer translating, proofreading (admittedly a shabby job of it) and uploading. Maybe I should research a way to sleep less and do fine?

Surely you didn’t think the 3-4 chapters in a single day, or 15-16 chapters per week came from talking about it or texting the internet about how alpha and badass I am behind a fake profile, a fake identity and a non-existent track-record.

Having the health and living condition to translate, having people who can bring positivity and being able to earn money from it is a privilege. All of this is a privilege to me. I don’t consider myself a superior being because I’m the translator and you’re the reader. I don’t measure my self-worth with that. My self-worth comes from my ability to stick to my principles, keeping my word, my expectations for myself and my work-ethic. I don’t derive my self-worth from other people.

I didn’t say all of this to have a whinge, boost my ego or beg for sympathy. The point is to let you know how much I appreciate the positive energy from the majority of you guys, the on-going help with making me better at this, and that you can be capable of doing a lot more than you probably think. I could’ve whinged, given up, been complacent or made excuses. “Would’ve”, “could’ve”, “if it was me” never showed up at the arena. Genetics didn’t translate for me. Genetics didn’t make me do more. Genetics and luck didn’t grow my Patreon. Begging and swindling didn’t grow my Patreon. I put my head down and worked for it with no complaints and no excuses. If I can do what I did despite my circumstances, you can do the same if not more. I believe I have room to work harder somewhere. Maybe my Patreon would’ve grown a lot more back then if didn’t whinge about having only 4 hours of sleep. Looking back, maybe I should’ve sticky-taped my eye-lids to my forehead to stay awake for another hour or two.

While writing this, my right arm is still giving me grief from overuse, but what can I do? The world isn’t going to wait for me. I don’t have the rights so someone might take up the series if I slack. Success isn’t going to wait. Time isn’t going to wait. A better life for me, the family and her isn’t going to wait. I could complain and point at everybody else better off as being lucky, but that’s not going to do anything for me realistically. Attributing their success to luck when I don’t even know what they do is even ruder and more ridiculous of me. While it might be true some people reached greater distances than me with less effort and time, I chose this route, so I have to bear the consequences of it with my chest. I’ve made it a habit to consider the sacrifices I’ll need to make when I want something instead of just thinking about “I want…, I want…”. I don’t want anything to do with that crowd or be associated with it. That sounds important, write it down?

Some think that the patron tiers are ridiculous, and that’s fine with me, I don’t somehow find these statements offensive. At the end of the day, it’s a question of value 9/10 times. Some don’t feel the hours I dedicate to this or the series is worth it, and that’s totally okay. It doesn’t make them bad people. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, unless it’s about Nier, in which case, my opinion is superior to all.

It’s the same logic as me spending $250 for 90 minutes with a coach to work on foot mechanics and identify issues with insufficient internal rotation at the shoulder and finding it worth it (posted about it on my Instagram for those interested). Others might call it crazy and never spend that much for that. I’d drive pay to drive a Mazda with a body I like over a brand new Tesla for free. Different people, different perception of value.

If anything it might just mean that I should’ve chosen to go with Xianxia, offer fewer chapters per dollar and do less instead.

There are people who are unwilling to spend as little as 5 cents for a manhwa chapter (less in some cases), instead, deciding to feed people ripping it off the creators. That’s one of the things I appreciate about the novel translation community as far as I know it.

At the end of the day, it’s my decision to stick with these series instead of dropping them and taking up QI’s offer or the other new company who reached out to me which would put me in a position to earn more right away, so I’m not so bigoted that I can’t recognise I’m part of my own problem.

If that makes me greedy, so be it. I don’t see that as a bad thing. More power to you if you don’t want to have the bridge to more things, more education, a better life for your family. Maybe you don’t have to pay for your food. I envy you then, but I also enjoy working for every inch of it.

And I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again because it’s actually annoying when I keep hearing it. I don’t get offended or hurt or have any negative emotion toward you if you say to me “I don’t want to donate”, “I don’t feel it’s worth it”, “You’re ugly and aren’t whoring yourself enough for me to donate”, or even “Fk you and your Patreon”. I’d probably laugh if you said that last one but otherwise, I don’t feel a particular way towards these kinds of comments. What’s annoying is when someone has to insult my intelligence by saying “I can’t afford $1” or “I can only afford $1”. If that were true, you wouldn’t be reading this or the series. You’d be working your ass off away from this place for every dollar because you got a serious life-and-death issue on your hands. If you have time to be reading 10 novels, mangas, watching anime etc. You have plenty of time to make one more dollar per month. Case in point, I had debts, so I went and got 2 part-time jobs right away. You know as well as I do that it’s just not true so just don’t. It’s insulting to yourself and to the listener. Nobody else wants to say this because it might cause backlash, but I don’t shy away from speaking my mind. Somebody has to say something to improve things.

I’m so physically tired and my minute mental capacity is barely enough for me to keep up with what I absolutely have to do, so I don’t have any spare resources to hate someone I don’t even know. I agree I’m an asshole and if I can mindfk you when I’m not even there in front of you, I’d say I’m pretty OP.

I’m going to digress for a moment and bury this myth once and for all. I don’t care for ratings of series. I don’t know where the whole “Translator (me) dislikes lows ratings” came from. I’ve never seen the value in them unless you have a very defined criterion for the rating. It’s not like there are set parameters like a science report in uni you get assessed on for a grade, so who cares. I’m honestly too stupid to figure out where 35% or 75% percent is. I only know where 0% and 100% are. So in terms of stars or number ratings, I completely disregard them. It’s either I want to read or don’t want to read. I only speak to comments that aren’t opinions like rectifying false information. Imagine causing someone to miss out on something they might’ve enjoyed just because someone decided to spill false information. And here I thought I held the record for most egotistical dick on the internet.

I have plans to return to the competitive physique stage this year. I don’t compete to participate. Just as I aim to be the best translator, I get in the ring, the cage and onto the stage to win. If I’m going to be flipping burgers at McDonalds, I’m going to make sure I’m the best burger flipper there. So I have to grind hard now to make it possible to get to Korea later in the year to compete. And honestly, as things currently stand, there’s no way I’m going to be able to physically handle comp-prep. I’m just going to do what I can there.

I’m veering off topic now so I’ll wrap up quickly.

Thank you for the support and sticking with me for all this time (especially in the last 3 months), the donations, the positivity, the comments that show understanding of series content (anybody catch that comment where someone went and said “the MC could’ve used the knowledge in his previous life to kill the Earth Dragons”? We had Earth Dragons in this world? Since when? lol), the help with pointing out my mistakes and shortcomings and helping me correct/improve them. I hope you can continue helping me improve and to show my appreciation because I hate just talking about being grateful, I believe gratitude is expressed through action, click below to get taken to your bonus chapter.

Who you like, follow and support is a reflection of your values. If you support people with integrity and not people who take advantage of other people or make excuses, you end up with more people with integrity and commitment instead of the latter. My goal is to be the former, just like how I’m GTA-ing both series behind the publisher’s back.

#MostWontIWill