In Celebration of Our 4-Year Anniversary: The Legend of “Steamy Heels”

July 31, 2013 marked four years of scanlation for the team. ┗(｀ー´)┓ ┏(｀ー´)┛ Let’s hope we’ll be able to keep going for another four! In celebration of our anniversary, I’d like to present a fairy tale for you. One that brings wonder, excitement, havoc and mayhem, and of course, many releases too!

[strums lute]

Once upon a time in a faraway land called the Kingdom of Steamy Heels, there was a lonely queen named Stiletto, who had an insatiable love for Josei. In order to feed her desires, she locked up a group of editors, proofreaders and translators in an extremely high tower with doors made of fire, and placed creatures called Josei-a-fans to guard the doors. These Josei-a-fans were infamous for traveling together like a swarm of locusts. Faceless and shapeless, they took the form of a cloud of dust, and whenever a work of art was created, they would swarm up and snatch it away for Queen Stiletto’s vault, leaving only a trail of Critique bugs in their place.

The editors who were trapped in this tower were forced to dream up art, and the proofreaders and translators writing, but the amalgamation of individuality created havoc within the tower, and it become a warzone of mismatched pieces and disconnected thoughts. With nothing but Critique bugs to feed their hunger, the editors, proofreadres, and translators became increasingly depressed.

The longtime editors were beginning to feel their limitations: katamari began karaoking to Beyonce (“Bey”) videos in her head; amatsu’sendless smiles and Go-and-get-’em attitude was beginning to lose its fizz; Kelpie and pirato4ka, who both felt largely ignored, began slowly disappearing; Flapper Girl’s mind was occupied with ’30s starlets, Gatsby, and hair jewelry;Lilanar of Dustbowlia, unable to control her daydreaming, would crowd the room with her wild imaginations, which belly-danced their way to life, disrupting everyone’s concentration; and Mine-of-Lauva, remained huddled up in her corner of the tower, suffering from tea withdrawal, muttering the words, “J’ai besoin de thé. J’ai besoin de thé. J’ai besoin de thé.” (But alas! Nobody could understand her, for she was from the Kingdom of Lauva.) The other editors, shuyiin, stellar, Gypsie, Jenn, Ivy, Gazechic, Betakoi, and SwirlyOwl could only look on in despair.

The translators and proofreaders suffered no less: Mimi, bubblesinmysuitcase, otaku_mel, octopus, Mo, niflheim, Miwachan, badtzphoto, kiraxjinwood and cheesecrayon spent the better part of their days fending off the attacks of the evil, script-eating creatures called Mangiwi and Kiwango, who were able to penetrate the towers through their distortion of shadows.

After several years trapped in the tower, these prisoners lamented their fate, but resigned themselves to it and continued to dream up their art and scribble away at their writing, while the Josei-a-fans continued cloud-dust-snatching their work to store in the vault, and leaving behind Critique bugs in their feeding bowl.

But as the days and months and years wore on, the Josei-a-fan guards began to notice the editors, proofreaders and translators. A few of them even fell in love. These ones began to gather up secretly and band together to train to free the imprisoned occupants of the tower. When the day for another Giant Raid finally came, the changed Josei-a-fans separated themselves from their usual swarm of yellow dust of Critique-bug-planting Josei-afans and raced to block their newfound enemies’ ways.

“What are you doing? Get out of our way!” their former partners shouted.

“Over our dead bodies!” the changed Josei-a-fans replied.

In the fierce melee that ensued the changed Josei-a-fans overpowered their enemies and turned out as victors, thus able to free the imprisoned editors, proofreaders, and translators, and destroy Queen Stiletto’s vault, removing all of the stories from within, so that every citizen of Steamy Heels would be able to experience in these exquisite delights:

Delight# 01: 3 AM Dangerous Zone v2, ch.9
Delight# 02: Ane no Kekkon v1, ch.4
Delight# 03: Kiyoku Yawaku v2, Act 3a
Delight# 04: Nigeru Otoko ch.5 — FINAL CHAPTER!!!
Delight# 05: Nobody Cry Story, ch.1 *new*
Delight# 06: Principal v3, ch.9
Delight# 07: Principal v3, ch.10
Delight# 08: Principal v3, ch.11
Delight# 09: Sekine’s Love v3, ch.14
Delight# 10: Torch Song Ecology v1, ch.1 *new*

P.S. An innocent typo from our new typesetter, Gypsie, gave birth to this story. So Gypsie, thank you for sending in an application wanting to join “Stiletto Steam.” And though you are probably clutching at your head going, “No, why’d you tell?!(;*´Д`)ﾉ”, we’d just like to say that we really did appreciate it. ^(#｀∀´)_Ψ

P.P.S. There were many more chapters planned, which did not fall through because of my deteriorating health. (I was down with a fever yesterday and could not finish checking over everything.) I’d just like to say that I appreciate all you loyal readers. We are working hard on more chapters from seemingly dead projects such as Futago, Heartbroken Chocolatier, Tokyo Alice, and Toribako House, along with new projects as well. We hope you will be patient and will continue popping up to check on us from time to time.