• Member Since 7th Feb, 2015
  • offline last seen 35 minutes ago

Krickis


I’m like a literary siren, feeding off the negative emotions of fictional characters. Patreon

More Blog Posts320

  • 5 weeks
    Digitized light novels

    Howdy, y'all. A while ago I made a blog that I was working on digitizing some .hack// light novels, and I have the first two of them up on Archive.org now! Get them here, if you want. Read below for some of the process of this.

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    6 comments · 97 views
  • 8 weeks
    "A Girl Like Me", a short Christmas Special sequel to "Tension Points"

    Hey, y'all. For those who don't know, I once wrote a Deltarune novel called "Tension Points". Well, now I am trying to finish a short Christmas special sequel to it, titled "A Girl Like Me". If you're interested in either, take a look! If you're wondering about "Just a Pony" then read on.

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    1 comments · 93 views
  • 11 weeks
    Leaving Tracks: Wanting to Want

    Today's update is brought to you by the letter b for bats, who wrote a blog post that largely pertains to me in many ways as well! Go read that if you want to hear about some sorta lesbian domestic life or whatever (but I'm sure that'd be of no interest to my average reader :raritywink:

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    10 comments · 182 views
  • 22 weeks
    Signal boosting

    Howdy, y'all. Real quick, not much of my situation has changed since last blog post, but I should clarify my blood pressure is doing a little better and I should be able to go back on the med that was working when it's in a better place. Now, the point of this post.

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    0 comments · 244 views
  • 23 weeks
    No clever title, this just sucks

    Guess who got am on a new ADHD med that finally works and was writing again? Guess who also got taken off it because of her blood pressure?

    So if you need me I'll be here crying instead of writing!

    11 comments · 142 views
Jan
9th
2025

Digitized light novels · 12:15am January 9th

Howdy, y'all. A while ago I made a blog that I was working on digitizing some .hack// light novels, and I have the first two of them up on Archive.org now! Get them here, if you want. Read below for some of the process of this.

So I got back into .hack by watching .hack//SIGN with bats, and then went insane for a while and bought every .hack book in the first phase of the series (pre-GU). And because I'm well adjusted, I bought two of each book, actually. Then I dismantled one copy of each of the AI Busters and photographed all the images.

Neat, right? Well, see that's yellow tinted for a few reasons. So then into photoshop where I learned in real time how to color correct back to a sharp black and white for...

Except boy howdy that is not perfect because if you stare intently at the top right corner you can see the paper grain and I wanted this to be a seamless PDF, something that looked like Bandai themselves released it using original art assets. I don't know why I'm like this...

But wait there's more! So this is the final version of that image, exactly as it appears in the book, as well as the opposite page of text.

A few things to nore: That header is above every left side page and had to be recreated as an image in GIMP. The footer also matches that of the original book. The font is a perfect match to the book. Where every line breaks is a perfect match to the book. If you looked at page 58 of the book, it would start exactly where this page does (My brain ran...) and end at the exact same spot (...began clapping). In fact, here:

So yeah, very meticulous. So how was this done? Well, I typed it. All of it. I typed the whole fucking novel. I got a see through ruler so I could measure the spacing on the book and make the margins the exact size, make sure text is the same size, make sure every conceivable detail is as close to the book as I can possibly make it.

But Wait, There's More! .hack//AI Buster uses a pixel font to display in game text.

And yet...

Yes, the pixel art is also entirely recreated to the exact pixel! This part is actually one of only two areas I had help with. A friend of mine, who goes by the name Helba (yes it's obviously based on the .hack character lmao) created the pixel font from scratch so every single character and pixel would look flawless.

So yeah. I made the best damn PDF of .hack//AI Buster we're ever likely to get, and then I did it all again on AI Buster vol. 2. Then another person who has chosen to be annonymous made the PDFs into epubs because I didn't know the best way to do that (the second area where I had help) as well as did some proof-reading of the text for me (typos within the original books were preserved, these are meant to be 1:1 after all, but since I hand typed the whole damn thing I did make some mistakes)


I'm tired just recounting all the work I did on these things! So yeah, if you want them, here's that link again. And I still have seven light novels and five manga to go on the digitization front :pinkiecrazy:

Comments ( 6 )

And because I'm well adjusted

Aren't we all, who deal with the wonderful world of print? :derpytongue2:

Man, it's been literal decades since I last watched .hack//SIGN...:applejackconfused:

5825226
Listen I'll have you know I'm very well adjusted and don't write about gay horses learning to overcome trauma as a coping mechanism at all (lying)

5825227
It's aged well but the translation is a little rough. The theming is on point though.

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

5825309
Lmao I just finished with another light novel too! So the insanity never stops...

That's really cool. Honestly if any of today's isekai fans watched .hack//sign it would be that 4chan meme of an anime fan finally reading a novel and crying. The "we can't build this cathedral anymore, we forgot how".

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