Month: February 2022

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The Deeds of AbyssalEros. Activity Report 2021 – Part 3

Some of you know that in 2020 I translated the episodic kinetic visual novel Elsa‘s Nightmares, written by Tlaero from Tora Productions, into German as my gift for her un-retirement.

And later in September the same year, I informed you that I also translated their game Life Changes for Keeley.

However, since then, I have translated many more projects of them, which I have not told you about. So, here is the follow-up of everything I have translated so far.

In October 2020, Tlaero published her first text-based short story, Rain God, which is a sort of follow-up of happenings of Life Changes for Keeley.

Still in 2020, namely November, Tora Production started to publish another episodic kinetic visual novel, Elsaverse: Transitions, whose sixth and last episode was published in May 2021.

Already in July 2021 followed Westbank, another short story taking up the arch from Rain God.

In between, I worked on translating Mortze’s solo project, The Warrior’s Heart, of which, up to now, I translated roughly half of it.

On the 15th of December, Tora Productions published their next big game within the Elsaverse, Chasing Beth, and I had roughly 13 days of head-up time for the translation. As you might already assume from what I told you in the first two parts of my activity reports, I was not able to start working on the translation in December at all. And this bothered me immensely. Do not get me wrong; Tlaero and Mortze have never given me a deadline or demanded anything from me. In fact, they told me more than once, I could take my time.

Thus, the game was initially published without a German translation.

And already on Xmas eve, Tlaero told me that she had finished the next short story and was about to publish it very soon.

So, after all the troublesome times of last year and right after my birthday on Janus‘ Day, I set myself down to translate the short story, Sister, which is again in a continuity of the previous short stories. I finished this translation on the 6th of January, but it was published much later, namely on the 2nd of February, despite the original intention.

Right after that, I started with the translation of Chasing Beth, and I needed the rest of January to finish the translation of the impressive script (over 33.000 words on 79 pages) so that the German translation was published on the 30th day of the year 2022.

As you see, I spent a lot of time and effort on translations for Tora Productions, and that I did, because I really have high regard for them, so if you have not checked them out yet, do it now. And if you happen to be German-speaking, try the translations and tell me what you think of them.

However, I realized I cannot do that anymore, as I need the spare time I have to work mainly on my own projects, which naturally includes the projects of the Society of Lust. And thus, I wrote with a heavy heart on Thursday a letter to Tlaero and Mortze that I cannot translate their future projects anymore into German.

I am happy that they understood my reasoning and bear no ill-will for telling them right before they are about to publish their next project that I will not translate it, as I did with all their projects for the last two years.

However, now I reached the second page of my report once more, and therefore I close it with my well-wishes for them and all of you.

Sincerely yours
AbyssalEros

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The Deeds of AbyssalEros. Activity Report 2021 – Part 2

So, what else is there to report that I wouldn’t bore you with?

Perhaps we’ll risk a look at my battling windmills over the past few years. While karma has been screwing the world at large since the beginning of the Pandemic, my problems actually started much earlier. I don’t want to whine or be pitied; I just want to explain how it nearly came to my retreat from digital art.

Actually, I only joined an adult content creator, who later became my friend, as a writer back in the days when Patreon wasn’t ashamed of this clientele when it simply took our money without hesitation and just let us do our thing.

I am not condemning some regulation regarding intolerable, because clearly illegal content, but, what Patreon has done since those days, and continues to do, is clearly a kick in the guts for any adult content creator.

While adult content creators were already hidden behind a reasonable soft barrier (you had to confirm as a user that you wanted to see adult content first), additional mechanisms were later introduced or existing ones abolished (like the suggested creators). Unfortunately, ultimately those changes led to smaller adult content creators, like us, going completely unnoticed, as simply no one can find them on Patreon unless they have a direct link to them.

This alone makes it challenging to build a following, let alone one willing to pay for content.

And here we are, of course, already at the even bigger problem, the missing content. As you probably know, my friend Grabiobot was already thoroughly screwed by fate before the Pandemic. So I will not repeat this here.

Sure, it all sounds like whining, but it isn’t supposed to be. I’m actually trying to say that the Society of Lust couldn’t get content in the form of a game off the ground for a long time. Yes, I could have written and written and written. And, in fact, I did just that. But without artwork, no visual novel, or any other game! It’s just that simple.

I tried my best to acquire the necessary skills to create digital images myself in the little time I had available. However, since I started from scratch, this was quite a long and rocky road that I still tread.

Last year, after feeling empowered enough to do so, I was faced with the choice of either working on My Life with Laura, Night of our Graduation, or Books Make Dreams Come True to deliver that content for the Society of Lust.

In the end, I chose the latter because it was the shortest and, in my opinion, the most straightforward project I could do on my own while gaining more skills and experience for the other ones.

My Life with Laura was obviously skipped because we won’t be developing this game for Ren’Py, but for Caligine, our own game engine. However, I’m considering making the introduction a teaser for Ren’Py. In any case, the text has been ready for a long time.

Night of our Graduation seemed a bit too scary for me as the first visual novel to be done almost entirely on my own.

Books Make Dreams Come True progressed reasonably well, even though I faltered at one point or another and had to delve deeper into certain DAZ Studio features than I had before to solve problems that arose.

At the same time, I tried to keep the Society of Lust alive and posted more or less regular content on Patreon. Sadly, this is mostly only possible behind the enforced paywall for adult content and is almost impossible for anyone to see. And to be honest, I almost gave up because of the lack of enthusiastic reactions – or any at all. After all, we only had less than a handful of patrons left.

DeviantArt — and in a certain sense also Slushe — let me continue because I got encouragement for my artwork, at least from this side. Unfortunately, Slushe developed in hindsight into a poisonous sting that caused self-doubt. But I have already talked about that in the first part of this Activity Report series.

Books Make Dreams Come True is a kinetic visual novel in nine chapters (rather sense or scene divisions), out of which for six, the images are already completed. Chapters 8 and 9 are relatively short and do not contain all that many images. Chapter 7, however, is the chapter that provides the so-called main adult content and will require some serious work on my part.

But enough for today, I bored you enough, I fear.

I will keep you posted on the development.

Sincerely yours,
AbyssalEros

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The Deeds of AbyssalEros. Activity Report 2021 – Part 1

It’s been a long time since I’ve written an activity report. And don’t worry, I’m not going to write a multi-page pamphlet. At least, I hope not.

In fact, it’s been so long that I don’t even know where to begin. So do I just start where I think it would be a good place to start, or where it almost came to a messy end?

I think I should start at the possible ending, though.

However, I need some introductory explanations for that.

As you know, I’ve only recently – though recently, as I was shocked to realize the other day, is actually the wrong adverb – taken up digital art, namely using 3D assets to render images.

Since I have a full-time job (even though I hate my job abysmally, as it just makes you dumb and drained), I have pretty little time to devote to what’s really important: My hobbies.

Of course, my most important hobby is my girlfriend, and in order not to upset her, I naturally have a few things to do at home, like our nameless protagonist of “A Very Small Business” once had to do, besides the obligatory cuddling.

If we add an average of 5 to 6 hours of sleep, I have no more than 6 hours a day to indulge in my hobbies. But, of course, that is if my nerve-racking work hasn’t completely worn me out.

Most of the time, it’s not even these 6 hours that I can muster.

But why am I telling you all this?

The answer is that I try to put as much as I can into this meager free time to improve myself and my skills, but I regularly get to the point where self-doubt gnaws at me about whether I’m imposing too much on myself and that my digital works are just bad.

My self-doubt got worse and worse in the last quarter of the past year until I was on the verge of saying goodbye to digital art completely in December to focus only on writing.

Of course, this also affected my mood and made me quite discontented. And this also led me to stop working on the visual novel “Books Make Dreams Come True,” although I only still had to render the images for the last 2 or 3 chapters. But more about “Books Make Dreams Come True” another time.

My girlfriend, Farra and Grabiobot, and other good friends, especially Willibrordus, eventually managed to convince me not to give up.

Moreover, in the meantime, I was also able to locate the main sting of my self-doubt and consequently pulled it out of my flesh.

I made the mistake last year of posting my images on Slushe as well, but since they don’t match their usual subjects, I misinterpreted the disregard I received there through their feature system.

Since I left Slushe behind in December and was able to give myself enough confidence again by reworking old images (e.g., the image series “A Photo Shooting with Rose“), I’m also doing much better.

This is to say that as soon as possible, I will continue working on “Books Make Dreams Come True,” and from then on, my priority will be this project.

Well, here I have already reached the second page of text and have not nearly dealt with all the topics that would have to be addressed. But I think I have annoyed you enough for today.

See you soon, and thanks to all of you for your support.

Sincerely yours,
AbyssalEros

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