til summer returns to me

viet version under the cut!

“SO BASICALLY THIS KID GETS HIS POWERS BY SAVING HIS CHILDHOOD FRIEND AND FORMS A COMPLEX RIVALRY WITH HIM DESPITE THEIR BAD HISTORY WHICH LEADS THEM TO CONSTANTLY STRIVE TO OUT-DO EACH OTHER IN THE PRESTIGIOUS HERO SCHOOL BUT THEIR OBSESSION WITH THE OTHER NARRATIVELY COMES OFF AS ROMANTIC SINCE THEIR DYNAMIC HAS AN OVERWHELMING AMOUNT OF PARALLELS TO OTHER CANON COUPLES THROUGHOUT HISTORY AND—“

im always a big fan of unlikeable protagonists but honestly I just. fucking hate when they don't make sense for the story. like I love a piece of literature where the tragedy or driving force of the story comes about from the main character's arrogance or bitterness or self-centered behavior and it makes for a rich story. on the other hand. if I'm reading a small town cozy mystery there is NO reason for the amateur sleuth to be an insufferable asshole and I will drop it so fast if she is

redrew an old oc for funsies bc i wanna revive her story and world

Ruriko Ishino - JUMP Stinger

Todays rip: 02/08/2023

Brothers ~ The finale is afoot!

Season 7 Featured on: The Year of Grand Dad Sound Selection [Side B]

Ripped by BigBadBlob

Tentative rip name: Bros. ~ The finale is afoot!

!! MUSIC SPOILERS FOR THE GREAT ACE ATTORNEY CHRONICLES !!

A rip less than a week old? Been a while since we featured such recency on here!

To celebrate the 2nd anniversary of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, the first-ever English release of two beloved Ace Attorney games, a mini-event was held on SiIva during July 27th in Season 7. This is an oft-overlooked part of SiIva that I haven't really brought enough attention to in the blog thus far - events aren't limited to extensively produced takeovers, and can sometimes be as simple as just a handful of rips for a day sharing a celebration. Regular uploads still continued as normal during this event and others, but four rips were uploaded to celebrate these beloved games in particular. This all wrapped up with Brothers ~ The finale is afoot!, a dream arrangement of two themes forever burned into my mind.

I'll try to keep it vague in case you didn't heed the spoiler warning - the source track that The Grand Finale is arranged into for this rip is one of the most exciting and heartfelt moments in the entire Ace Attorney series, and it warms my heart to hear it arranged in any shape or form. It just so happened to now be arranged to the instrumentation of The Grand Finale, a theme equally as burned into my mind due to the affection I have toward Bowser's Inside Story itself. The Grand Finale has an extensive history on SiIva in of itself - one I intend to cover one day, for sure - but this combination of the two themes simply hits different.

Part of me wishes I'd been a little more patient in making this post, because I wish to throw all the praise in the world toward whoever made this arrangement - it uses both themes to perfection, as much of The Grand Finale's backing instruments still remain to compliment the new arrangement's sound in an interesting way. It still has that triumphant sound, but now with a really interesting sinister undertone of a boss theme. On the whole, a breathtaking example of how effectively arrangements can change a song's entire atmosphere and feel.

I scrolled through the warriors Isekai Au tag and it feels like I’m missing some posts? Frostblaze is also a twoleg? Maggot exists? Was there a plot of the og book posted or something I’m so confused. This Au is very cool though and I love it lots

^ pictured: me trying to pull together a bunch of loose concepts and plot threads

I'M VERY GLAD YOU LIKE THE CONCEPT!!!!! you aren't missing any posts, i've intentionally kept the posts scattered because i'm still figuring out a lot of the world and the story i want to tell with what i've set up. For every "big reveal" (Frost being a twoleg, Maggot's existence), I do try and add a bit of build up to make sure they don't come from nowhere (Frost's odd behavior was highlighted in her ref and I've made some allusions to Maggot's existence in past posts) but, as you'll see, a lot of the lore is hidden in posts (not for any deep reason, i just think it's a fun way to approach the idea while i'm still developing it).

Sorry if it's a bit confusing, I promise you're not missing anything! My style of posting is just a mess lol there’s also a lot of info missing either because im very developing it or still need to figure it out

I’ve done two general overviews of the OG book plot here and here. If there’s anything you’re curious about, ppplease ask i get SO excited when I get asks regarding my oc stuff i know im bad at posting about it but i always appreciate it

so i have a story

ok, ive finally made up my mind and I'm gonna post. If it kills me.

So I have this story.

Set in a faraway land.

A desert land, a plains land, her people much beloved by the gods.

And, 100 years before the start of our story, there was a king of a desert land, the bridge between mortals and gods. He was much beloved, and loved much.... perhaps too much.

When his beloved was murdered, he despaired, and decided he could no longer bear the weight of living, and cut himself from the Land of Life, inadvertently destroying the link between the Godsrealm and the Mortal realm.

Now, there were many gods, that loved the mortals, and in the tradition of this country, they chose the leader from among their prophets, but now that they could no longer reach the mortals, and so the country languished. Bereft of both spiritual and political guidance.

The priests heard not their gods, and the Dreamers Dreamed no Dreams, and the Prophets saw not the future.

Into this gap, stepped a council of elders to be a regent until perhaps the elder gods could reforge the links

And so lived the country for several generations until not one remembered the Gifts of the Deathless Prophet-Kings, save in songs

Until a boy suddenly began to Dream.

its been a while since ive had a new story to develop fresh from the start im so excited <3

It is done!

So... I was thinking of making these all chapters of a larger fic. The Soji portion was a little over 1.5k words, the Raffi part was just over 3k. The Rios "chapter" is finished as a first draft and is currently at 6.627 words. ... I have a problem, people 🙈

(And the Soji one is at least as good as the others. It's just... so difficult not to indulge. But then again, I'm not writing these things fro the dense plotting... Ah well. We'll see what eventually ends up on AO3. But for now: here is a snip*!)

*(unsurprisingly, it's much too long to realistically call a "snippet")

---

Rios’s voice was a perfect imitation of Steward’s Southern Drawl, and Emil nearly gasped.

But the captain wasn’t done. When he spoke again, he was using a lilting accent that the EMH couldn’t place. “It’s like this, see, these programmers know where’n get the bestest voices. They’re smarter-er than youse would ever think. Or mays-be youse are just über-dim…”

Once again, and against his will, Emil burst out laughing. “What was that?”

Rios grinned. “Sixteen-year-old Tellarite. Or the equivalent age for their species, anyway. Teenagers. The UT had one hell of a time trying to translate their speech patterns. We tried to learn some of their expressions, but they informed us we were ‘depleted’, which I think means ‘embarrassing?’”

Emil shook his head. “When did you have a chance to observe Tellarite teenagers? I understand they don’t often leave Tellar before they come of age?”

“Oh, we were shuttling them around on a school trip. Some big interstellar youth debate competition — which they won, of course. Wiped the floor with the Klingon delegation; it was brutal.” Rios smiled at the memory. “They gloated the entire week-long trip back home and decided that newly-minted Starfleet officers were a worthy substitute target for practice. So we had plenty of time listening to them as they grilled us on the finer points of UFP diplomacy protocols. According to Vaasiir chim Ners, we’re all a disgrace to the uniform and should be retroactively failed for our Academy finals.” Rios’s smile started to fade as his eyes became unfocused, looking into the middle distance.

“Captain?” the EMH asked and reached out to touch Rios’s shoulder.

The captain shuddered at the touch, but he focused his attention back on Emil. His smile turned rueful as he said: “Sorry, I just… I guess I just realized she must be an adult by now… I wonder what became of her. And the rest of them…”

Emil was sure Rios was not just referring to the teenage Tellarites, but he could also see all the signs of rapidly growing exhaustion on the captain’s face. Probably best not to let him dwell on these particular questions.

He squeezed Rios’s shoulder and gave him an encouraging smile. “Wherever Ms chim Ners is now, I’m sure she’d be delighted to have left such a lasting impression. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to listen to Ian talk about ‘depleted’ plasma reserves with a straight face again.” Emil tried to imitate the way the captain had said the word, and Rios actually smiled even if there was still a wistfulness to it.

“That pronunciation was awful,” he said. “Don’t ever try to use it with a Tellarite teenager. They’ll mock you so fiercly over it, you’ll never be able to scrub it from your memory files.”

“At least I don’t sound like some ‘über-dim’ debate nerd.” Even as he said it, Emil could tell his accent on the slang term sounded nothing like it was supposed to.

Now, Rios was the one startled into a burst of laughter. “How are you so bad at this? We have the same voice, couldn’t you just copy the way I said it?”

Emil crossed his arms, suddenly feeling rather defensive. “I’m so sorry, I would allocate more of my processing to linguistic shenanigans, but unfortunately it’s bound up in all this pesky medical functionality. You know. Useless things like ‘how to keep your captain from dying of asphyxiation’ and ‘you should not tie your patient to the biobed no matter how many times they try to get up even though you told them not to’.”

“It’s okay,” Rios grinned and then continued in a pitch-perfect imitation of Emil’s own, crisp English accent: “We wouldn’t want you to overtax your fragile algorithms.”

For half a second, they both stared at each other, then, as one, they started laughing. Suddenly, their was barely any difference left between their voices.

There was another wince on the other end as he settles on what sounds like one of the parlour couches. "We can only deal with one problem at a time brother, and right now the witch is an actual risk while Saint Caroline is only a probable future problem."

Future fic, You feel too much and nothing at all.

astatatsu story planning going good 👍

So I made a new character

This time he’s a completely original character, not meant to be any (technically) pre-existing ones in the Layton series, so that was interesting. I started out by making a sketch of him on the memo feature in Diabolical Box. It’s not that great

But yeah anyways, so this was me trying to think of a plot for that hypothetical scenario where Layton and co go to a town where everyone wears bauta costumes, aka like what Descole wears, and this was one of the characters (actually the only one) I made for that. As of currently I don’t really have a name for him, other than my brain calling him Nikolai, but I don’t feel like that makes much sense considering he grew up in this town that’s supposed to be based on Venice with potentially some French influence considering the only actual character with design elements like that having a French name. So yeah as of now, I don’t know what to call him. But for the sake of simplicity, for the rest of the post I will be calling him Nikolai (If you have any name suggestions please tell it would be much appreciated)

So the design on the left would be his casual outfit he wears at home (and probably what we first see him in), while the one on the right is the one he wears when out and about in the city. He probably goes under a different name under that outfit as well, so as to protect his identity

Oh yeah also, he uses a cane (in both outfits), I just didn’t draw it. He does actually need it though, and also it has a sword in it

Gonna be honest, not too fond of the one on the right, I think I need more practice in trying to draw outfits like this. I used some paintings I found on Google as references, but I think I still need some better references, as well as just figuring out how that top cloak thing works

I’m thinking he might be the one to send a letter to Layton to ask for help here, but I’m not entirely sure yet

But it’s his past that’s more interesting here, as what I’m thinking is that when they were teenagers, he and Descole were dating, because while I may give him a wife, you cannot convince me that Descole has never dated or at least hooked up with another man.

Oh yeah so Nikolai’s supposed to be around his early 40s, same as Descole. Not sure if giving him that lighter streak made him look a bit older

Now here’s where we get to the potential plot of the story, which I honestly just don’t know what to do with. For these two, I want them to have had some sort of dramatic break up, but in terms of present day Nikolai’s chill with him (even if they haven’t seen each other in over 20 years). Oh and to be clear I’m going with the idea that Descole is in the city but with amnesia

Right now here’s the plot I’m working with: so years ago when the two were teenagers, they were exploring some mystery in the town (which also involved underground tunnels and rivers) and at some point when they were close to the reveal of it (or they had found it out) they were attacked by another person, and while it was two-on-one, the pair were in quite the struggle, as their opponent was stronger. (side note this may have been potentially the reason Nikolai develops the need for a cane) So they’re having their battle, and Descole sees an opening and attacks, and ends up killing their attacker. They don’t really know what to do about this so they just dump the body into one of the underground rivers near them and just elect to try and forget about it, even if it weighs on Descole, because while you can debate whether he’d regret killing in present day, he’s only a teenager at this point and I imagine the experience of actually killing someone would still be traumatizing to him. Anyways so a week later, things are going good, until the body ends up resurfacing on the, well, surface, and it becomes publicly known. Descole, feeling guilty and not wanting to ruin things for Nikolai should they be discovered, decides to leave town, thinking that he doesn’t deserve to stay there, and he never came back. Present day, Descole showed up but with amnesia (also he didn’t just walk into town one day, he was found on the shore unconscious) and Nikolai’s been taking care of him, trying to help him regain his memories. Meanwhile the present day problem is that this whole incident is coming back up again and Nikolai, hearing of Layton’s accomplishments (but likely not knowing his and Descole’s connection) calls him in to help with it

*oh yeah if you haven’t noticed, this backstory does contradict some of the things I headcanon for Des’s backstory. In this continuity I’m going with the idea that he was living in this town since he was left alone as a child. See, I’ve kind of got this thing where I try to keep my things as canon compliant as possible, and so if making a hypothetical continuation or retelling of events in a series, I will tend to throw my original headcanon for series of events out the window if I can come up with something better. Also I’m just indecisive and sometimes I come up with new ideas I like more. It’s never really bothered me but also I never really had to share it with people, so I guess just forewarning that I will retcon headcanons if it suits me

So what’s the mystery of the town? I’m not sure, but I’ve been thinking of it having something to do with memory loss, considering Des, but at the same time I’m also thinking that that could be caused by something else? Or is that reaching too far and I should just stick to it being related only to this story? And would he get his memories back, at least partially, or would nothing trigger his memories and alert Layton that something else is going on with his mind? Also going back to the actual town, this doesn’t really tie in to the whole thing about the town wearing masks, that seems like something you need to answer/address, or at least work into the mystery somehow

And if I’m being honest, I’m not sure about this story, because it’s essentially a murder mystery, but I feel like that’s more suited to an Ace Attorney game rather than a Layton game. And to be honest, I feel like that could make an interesting case for AA; a defendant with amnesia being tried for a crime they can’t remember, trying to prove they’re being framed only to find out they really were the murderer, except unlike other similar cases the defendant isn’t evil or manipulating things, it was an accident in self defense, so there’s basically no real villain to point to here. I feel like that’d be interesting, but would it make for a good Layton game?

Well anyways I think I’ve gotten off topic a bit, so just enjoy this character and ramblings about his story I suppose

Randon fun fact for the day: more people have been to space than to the summit of the K2 mountain. 377 people successfully summited K2, and 574 have been to space (587 if following the criteria of the US department of defense)

Random not so fun fact for the day: more people have died on the K2 than in space. Three men have died in space but 91 people lost their lives while trying to summit K2.

Please come back tomorrow for other random fun and not so fun facts.

snow mesa, colorado trail, july 2022

One of the biggest factors to keep in mind, too, for the Death Cycle

Is that as per canon every moment for the Endless passes at the same rate as for mortals. Death lives through universes ranging from tens of billions to trillions of years, approximately 100,000 of them. No matter how hard she tries things repeat in the loops and she is condemned to watch her family repeat mistakes that if not 100% identical are largely so, even when she tries to actively prevent them. Where she changes things it can at times boil down to her taking Destruction's canon niche as the person who truly held the family together (even when she believes her presence does tangible harm, for extra irony) because over the iterations she comes to know her family very well and even where they differ she can and does reach them in ways her canon self could not for a variety of reasons.

And then at the end of it, she leaves the universe and hopes never to be called back, only to be.

In other words, Groundhog Day but on a cosmic scale for an Endless. The chronologically first in order of writing if midway through the series on the whole sequence where Death breaks into hedonism and ultra-violence and two different takes on a relationship with Raven is when she gets to the whole 'that one scene with the groundhog' level breakdown.

There are very specific reasons for this, she has a creator who built her for a purpose that goes far beyond the DC multiverse and means in my original fiction cosmology she can and does appear under a very different name, if given enough visual cues that she'd be a lawyer friendly/LOEG style appearance.

She is in relative terms both the most experienced and the most powerful version of any equivalent of Death of the Endless and one of the few, thanks to having long experience with the loops, entirely able to obliterate her siblings' creations whenever it suits her.

So naturally in one AU that is going to be one of the next published this version encounters the rules of the 2022 show and immediately goes 'fuck this and the horse it rode in on, yes the horse too' when Desire sets the trap in motion with very chaotic effects.

i love hearing people’s little family stories, even when there’s no “point” or end to it!!!! i love elderly people telling me about their upbringings & their memories of their own elderly grandparents!!! i love people seeing a car & telling me their dad had the same one, or mentioning the name of a town in passing & they tell me their parents got married in that town!!! i love how happy it makes people when you Sit & Listen to their stories, & you don’t want to move around or get up & risk breaking that spell!!!! love love love