mortalvyses

We chatted with a Japanese to English translator known as mortalvyses, who has asked for other details of their identity to remain anonymised.

QRM: Can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do in the games industry?

mortalvyses: I moved to Japan last year and have been striving to deepen my study of language since then. I studied like a maniac, watched a crapton of non-subtitled anime, and played a ton of Japanese games, meanwhile working on solo fan translations of some short visual novels. As of now, I'm working on what I hope to be my last VN fan translation and talking with several makers about working on localization of their games.

QRM: How long have you been involved in the game industry, and what projects have you worked on? What are you working on currently?

mortalvyses: I released my first really dinky fan translation in 2012, but I got serious about it last year, finishing a full patch for a VN and starting to work on commissions of short stories/individual scenes from games. My current project is a fan translation of a very brutal nukige.

QRM: What inspired you to get started in the games industry?

mortalvyses: Well, I enjoy long-form stories centered around a single person's vision and I feel manga and visual novels are the most high-budget version where that's still truly possible.

Why did I specifically decide to go pro? The answer is a bit more petty. I've seen news coverage of several companies, but particularly SakuraGames, butchering the innards out of a bunch of games with lazy or negligent localization. I still do have a lot to learn, but I passed the JLPT N1 on my first try in July 2017 and I darn sure gave the game characters and the themes of the works TLC when writing fan-translated dialogue. I processed all that and thought to myself, "**** these guys, you can do better." Also, I happen to have a job that has few hours and high hourly pay. I don't have to make games to earn a living, so I can pick my spots and not be desperate. In my short amount of life experience, I only make good decisions when "I will do this" and "I will not do this" are both legitimate choices.

QRM: In what ways do you feel your experiences as a queer person manifest in the games you work on, and influence the work you do?

mortalvyses: In general, I'm a translator, so once I'm on a project, I'm bound to do the best I can to reproduce an author's intent. What I have the luxury to do is to choose not to work with people who include openly transphobic/homophobic/ableist insults or, worse, entire storylines. It's a fact, in many ways a regrettable one, that the amount of translatable media will always outstrip our capacity to localize. That means that it's always somebody deciding what manga or games you see up for sale. I want to make a tiny dent in the existing flow of localization economics.

Kink is kink and has nothing to do with sexual or gender identity. Keep that in mind when I say the content I work on contains a lot of 18+ femdom. Drag/forced feminization is frequently used as one of several forms of humiliation in this genre. There are simple things one can do to translate scenes of that nature without disrespecting trans people in general – big things like avoiding the t-word ("otokonoko" or even "femboi" works just fine and both are a lot less hurtful), and small things like using sincere vocabulary when people compliment a crossdresser's appearance.

I mean, there are a lot of verbal ways to increase awareness and zest of a situation without explicitly insulting entire minority groups, and a lot of Japanese creators make use of them. Here's five (mostly) harmless ways to increase someone's awareness they're in clothes they don't normally wear, bonked out of my head in 20 minutes.

For female clothing: "See, high heels are tough to handle. But you'll be a natural in them soon enough." "I can't believe it's your first time putting on a bra." "I think you look very cute in pink." "See, it's not just me. Everyone's enjoying the view." "You may be a princess, but the queen makes decisions here."

For male clothing: "Hot, hot, hot. Every girl's going to be jealous while we're holding hands on the train." "You're missing the best part. Zip and I can just reach all the way in. Didn't even take 5 seconds." "Wow, you look like one bad boy. Leather was so the right choice." "Isn't it so much easier to run now?" "It's already got 50 likes. People are asking if you do meetups in butler cosplay."

Well, something like that. Nothing's ever perfect, but I try to have an open mind with sensitive ideas and concepts.

QRM: Do you have a favourite queer character—in games or media more generally? If so, what is it about them that makes them your favourite?
Question asked by @kamienw.

mortalvyses: The name that always comes to mind first is Nathan Seymour/Fire Emblem from Tiger and Bunny. That show has the usual anime problems with the main relationship between its two protagonists forever ambiguous between friendship and love, but Fire Emblem is a revelation – they're a literally flaming queer af superhero who owns their own company, which sponsors their TV appearances, and are respected by others as a professional. They also get to be the primary focus of the second franchise movie, with the main point being how everyone loves them, dysphoria is largely an artificial concept inflicted by demonstrably bad people, and being genderqueer specifically makes one invincible. It's as much as I could reasonably ask for from a smash-hit media property.

I kinda like it when queer characters are just there and unambiguous in major media properties where identity isn't the main theme; this year has been really exciting in that regard with Dragon Quest 11 and Precure A la Mode. Ideally (for me, at least), queer people are just gonna be all around doing all manner of heroic and mundane crap with everyone else and nobody will bat an eyelash.

QRM: Have you ever encountered roadblocks in trying to include queer characters in games? What do you think is preventing greater diversity within games?
Question asked by @dustinalex91.

mortalvyses: I personally haven't worked with games containing queer characters so much. I prefer stories that subvert gender roles in a general sense and have focused on those, so I don't have an informed creator's opinion here.

The most I can say is I've discussed, in a basic way, my specific biromanticism and asexuality with one of the Japanese creators I've built up a friendship with (a straight and very kinky guy) and it hasn't ended the friendship or prompted rude questions.

QRM: Why do you think it is important that queer audiences are able to see themselves represented in the games they play, and in the developers who make the games they see? What can we do to improve the industry for queer audiences and devs?

mortalvyses: When I was young and still struggling with all aspects of my identity as well as general teenage angst, one of the things that saved me in my worst moments was the protagonist of a comical battle anime. (His superpower was essentially recycling.) He was a particular take on the "hero who does right no matter what", and regardless of the simple nature of that trope, I wanted to be like him: doing right and helping others without worrying about my reputation or long-term consequences. Putting aside whether that's actually a good goal, having this ideal/model image of a hero in my head let me cut through a lot of bullshit and at least take action to make my path forward.

Anyway, the point of all this is I think it's important to depict not just realistic queer people, but awesome, competent role models in positions of power. I needed Nathan Seymour in college to get through dweebs yelling out "It's a tr*p!" at anime screenings while I was too in the closet to object just as much as I needed that do-right battle protagonist back then.

QRM: Have you ever mentored somebody in your role in games, or been mentored? If so, what made these experiences worthwhile for you?
Question asked by @pepelanova.

mortalvyses: I've never been a mentor, but I have followed, been mutually followed, and solicited advice from people on social media. Trying to make it in a big creative industry is daunting, and, like with academia, you face a lot of questions Google can't answer. Having someone around who's willing to give you basic self-editing tips or say which companies make good partners is truly invaluable. So I think that sort of engagement can be useful, though using social media for PR is a whole other, more dangerous animal. (Related note: my twitter account is very private.)

QRM: In what ways can non-queer folk increase and support queer diversity present within games, as well as in the industry more broadly? How can we all work to support intersectional approaches to diversity, and why is this important?

mortalvyses: Cash money matters and so does positive feedback if you want people to stay in an industry.

It goes for all kind of niche stuff, but buy the game if you want to see more like it, ESPECIALLY if it's from a small studio. Everybody in the industry wants to make more games, and the small studios are going to make games without a crapton of executive BS. If one is working on the small-scale margins, a few dozen copies can make the difference in persuading the money people to give in and fund junk.

Speaking personally, one positive comment about how much someone enjoyed or appreciated my translation is like a day's worth of peanut butter and chocolate pretzels—the more detailed, the more tasty it is. Take the time to write a stupidly positive paragraph to your favorite creator about how much you liked their most recent work.

QRM: Is there a message that you would like to share with the queer game players, game studies researchers, and other interested folks who comprise the Queerly Represent Me community?

mortalvyses: Jalen Rose always says the following: "You never get what you deserve, only what you have the leverage to negotiate."

For people trying to break in, specifically for those who don't plan to start a family right away, here's my advice. It's not too late to get into games after trying another career, and it can be an advantage to have a job—one you'd be okay working in for another 3 years—when looking for games work. All games jobs are fundamentally low-odds bets. You will experience rejection a lot. This will eat at you. So the first time you get an offer (and you will get an offer if you keep applying for jobs while improving one or more desired skills) the urge will be to bite. This can be a bad idea for a number of reasons; you don't want to end up harassed or crunched into a breakdown. If at all possible, make sure you know that saying no to your first offer and continuing your search is something you can do. That way, you're more likely to end up in a good situation.

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