#lutiasdraws

[lutiaslayton]

Hello guess who isn't dead. It has only been... seven months since the last update. whoops.

But for your enjoyment, here are 11k words full of fluff, happiness, and jokes, with three new characters on top of all that! If you take a peek, I hope you have a fun ride :D

[lutiaslayton]

His friend is finally out of the hospital!! He's so happy!!!

Someone had to stay behind to find enough room to park the stolen Targent ship and unfortunately paper beats rock.

(Rook probably shouldn't be in Targent clothes but unfortunately I'm too tired and didn't take the time to think up a different outfit)

Go send a like to this post if you too want a wholesome Bishop in your inbox! (Also I'm glad to see this one here! I was afraid you'd send it to my main instead haha)

[lutiaslayton]

Here’s my personal take on the “How the f* did they get that hint coin?” debacle. It’s simple, really: just think outside the box, y’all! It’s much easier, much less time-consuming, and much cheaper and eco-friendly in terms of rocket fuel.

Also, little update on my search for the truth on puzzles and hint coins: I regret to inform you that this Soft Magic system might, in the end, be nothing more than simply one of the many laws of physics that this world just happens to have. The Azran do not deserve to take credit for their existence, for ever since the dawn of the universe, puzzles have been a reality-bending force spawning semi-sentient entities that defy mortal comprehension and transcend space and time. The Azran just so happened to have been the first and only to fully harness their power to its full extent.

(PS: I can’t draw digitally this week because I don’t have Clip Studio on hand, so here’s a post-it sketch instead.)

[lutiaslayton]

For those who didn’t want to read yesterday’s shitpost-y theory about Puzzle Lore, here’s the TL;DR version:

These unused sprites from Diabolical Box are the closest thing we get to seeing what a puzzle looks like in-universe (at least some puzzles, since of course some others can simply be explained with someone just talking, or with in-universe mechanisms being shown):

To support this, we can also add the times when, upon tapping everywhere on the screen in search for hint coins, sometimes you will see dust particles with a “phwoop whoop” sound effects, and sometimes it’s a puzzle instead of a hint coin or a collection item (of which, by the way, I theorised are just items that are about to turn into puzzles anyway).

*

Also, some proof that puzzles are sentient at least to some extent:

There’s also that scene in Lady Layton where Kat solves a lost puzzle at a police station, but unfortunately I can’t remember where to find it. Just know that it’s the scene where the policeman tries to find the puzzle’s owner, and that after solving it, he says that “a name appeared.”

[lutiaslayton]

I had been wanting to complete the sketch I had made two months ago for a long while, so now it's done! It just felt weird to me to leave it unfinished like this haha, especially after I had put so much effort in the Rook & Bishop comic in comparison x)

Anyway, I am so sorry guys, life is hectic these days but I am SO hyped about what the rest of the fanfic is going to be. I just wish I could find more time to sit at my computer and spend long hours writing uninterrupted—that's the hardest thing to find.

Also, I found by chance that there actually were a few French Layton fanfics on AO3! So it motivated me to post the French version there as well, while I'm at it :p I don't dislike the website I used to post it on previously, but the fact that it didn't let me use HTML was absolutely a huge thorn in my side. I'll keep updating the fanfic there, but... Posting on AO3 is just so much more convenient on so many levels.

PS: If you found this post without context, this shitpost-y mini-comic is about my fanfic, Stable Like Sand! It's going to be a long, long series, and a wild ride all the way through, as this weird time traveller kid will try to fix random things, and in the process push Claire, Hershel and many others to gradually lose their sanity.

[lutiaslayton]

Here’s the timestamp for the in-game scene if you don’t believe me (which you shouldn’t)

I am going to scream

I am back to transcribing and translating what was left of Chelmey’s Casebook (for now, I just finished Part 1, so more or less the first half of the whole game), and for once the reality-bending soft magic system BS is blatantly visible in there.

As you can see, I am taking the reveal quite well, because it's not like I had been theorising about precisely this sort of thing being canon in-universe for the past few months or anything.

What is Inspector Chelmey’s Casebook: Special Recipe?

Just like the (somewhat) more widely known Professor Layton and the Mansion of the Deathly Mirror, Chelmey’s Casebook is a Japan-exclusive DoCoMo game. Basically, it’s a PL game that not only never left Japan, but was also considered lost media up until very recently, when someone kindly recorded and published a full playthrough of it. And BOY was I not prepared for this moment in the story when I saw it.

That aside though, it’s great to have a mini story where the protagonists are Chelmey and Barton, for once! This game’s story is about the two investigating in St. Mystere and trying to solve a certain case…

As I said, I still have quite some work to do before being done with the full transcription of the game, but you can read what has already been done right here!

[lutiaslayton]

This chapter is finally out, and I had once again to split it up lmao. But hey, if this fic got an entire chapter dedicated to Roland and Lucille, then these other two lovebirds also deserve to have their own chapter. Thankfully, we have finally reached the “Comfort” part of Hurt/Comfort.

[lutiaslayton]

Stable Like Sand has a new chapter!

What did you say? Updating on April 1st? Fishy?

Well, I can promise you at the very least that the chapter itself is 100% real. With Chelmey’s Casebook having taken all of my time recently, I wouldn’t have had time to prepare a proper April Fools joke in time if I wanted to! (Which is a shame, because even though it was a bit lame and obvious, I did have an idea of sorts for a troll SLS update)

But since I didn’t have time for a joke update, oh well, have the real chapter instead. I wish you a fun read!

(PS: I know it is technically April 2 right now in France, but 1) It is 00:30, I’m only thirty minutes late, and 2) As far as I’m aware it’s still April 1st at least somewhere else in the world. Let me have this.)

Just look at Clay. Look at this poor kid. They totally know what they’re doing with their life (and so does Hershel, for that matter).

[lutiaslayton]

Hey so, aside from that time I shared an excerpt from chapter VI a few weeks ago, I haven't posted anything related to SLS in quite a while. Earlier today I finally took the time to clean up my desk for the first time in forever, and I happened to find amongst many other things a few wandering sticky notes with SLS stuff on them! They're like. Many, many months old by now. As you can see in the one above, they date back to the times when I still thought I could fit everything into a four-part chapter IV (which explains why some chapter banners are missing, notably the one for chapter V.2). They're even old enough to date back to the times when I was still referring to the games as "PL1-6" instead of acronyms, wow.

Also hey, what's that? Seems like you get a free teaser for the upcoming chapter's banner 👀 I don't think it counts as spoilers, since just reading chapter V.2 (+ the excerpt I shared a few weeks ago) should be a big enough hint to make quite clear what chapter VI will be about.

---

Also, what's that thing on the right? Very good question. I'll let you guess :P It's completely unrelated to SLS, but it is Layton-related. I have zero idea what this thing is doing here though, past me was doing something in a context that present me has no remembrance of. But hey, that makes for a fun little puzzle if you want to try to figure out what these scribbles correspond to!

---

There's another interesting sticky note under the cut, but I'd rather keep it hidden so that people who are interested in the fanfic but haven't caught up to chapter V.2 yet (n° 011 in AO3 numbering) won't get spoiled. If you have read up to chapter V.2, you might have an idea as to what this means regarding its contents.

---

Boom. There it goes:

So, here it is! A sketch of what exactly was hiding inside Clay's pouch, as well as (as you likely all figured out by now) what Dimitri found in the lab amongst the debris of the time machine.

Regarding this specific sketch, I had actually planned to make a fully coloured version and share it in the end notes of chapter V.2, but alas, I was not able to finish that drawing in time, and it is still unfinished to this day. And now that the best opportunity to share it is behind us, I admittedly am unsure how to reveal it on AO3. I guess I'll make an announcement such as "btw I updated the author's notes at the end of chapter 011-V.2 with a drawing of what Clay's pouch contains, go check it out if you're interested" in the starting/end notes of a future chapter...? Either that or I'll wait for another opportunity, but that would be a shame.

I'll still let you take a look at the current state of the unfinished digital version, since I feel like this is still something you should have been allowed to see all the way back to April 1st:

If you read chapter V.2 carefully, you will notice that the part about the QWERTY keyboard is partially incorrect -- there's also a section with four arrows and a center "OK"-like button. So you basically need even tinier fingers to use that thing.

---

Aside from that, I do have more sticky notes, but they're all filled with spoilers -- so I obviously won't share them here. I hope that what I did share here was fun enough to satiate your curiosity a bit!

[lutiaslayton]

Guess who finally found the time to finish this chapter’s banner!

Anyway, um, ominous you say? Nahhh he’s just going to ask his parents about the weather that’s all

[lutiaslayton]

So uh. Hi, I finally made a decision I probably should have made a long while ago thanks to talking a bit on Discord: for the sake of my sanity I will not be keeping up the weekly schedule after all 😔 Layton's Book Club updates WILL be posted exclusively on Saturdays at the decided time, instead of at any random time in the week, and I will likely make a few heads up when we're on a lucky week during which you'll get an update, but I will not force myself to make it happen every single week. Simply because at least right now, it is physically impossible for me to do so. (Chapter 1 Part 1 of Illusory Forest is going to be the end of me, and not just because I am still questioning if the author was under the influence of some Folsense gas while writing it.)

That being said, I believe this should actually be treated as good news, and not just good news for my personal health. Because, sure, the updates will not come out as often as I had originally planned to. But in the long run, I actually believe that since I no longer plan to force myself to only work on one thing (which has progressively been eating at my sanity on top of that because darn it this chapter is stupid and it just doesn't seem to END, + it'd be nice if I could finally get some content out that is my creation rather than somebody else's), it means that I will actually allow myself to post more diverse Layton stuff in the meantime.

Stuff like the Evan Barde post I made a few days ago, or other helpful-for-the-fandom stuff that isn't translation work, or… even maybe stuff like finally allowing myself to write SLS and draw random stuff again? Or even read other people’s fanfics and comics and AUs and stuff? (ok technically that last one would probably not lead to tumblr content but shush it means I would take time to look at YOUR content for a change)

The list of stuff I'd like to post in the future includes but is not limited to:

A tutorial on how I get my translation stuff done despite the fact that I do not actually speak Japanese. Best case scenario, this might even lead to some brave people among you to start helping me with this monumental task that is translating multiple novels and games from scratch while you're not even fluent in the language you're translating, and this would be a MASSIVE weight off my back. (spoiler alert: while I do use DeepL to check stuff and/or get inspiration, my work is NOT limited to simply copy/pasting sentences into it and then copy/pasting whatever it gives me back)

The Playthrough series! You had all forgotten about it, hadn't you? Yeah, me too.

Lore analysis stuff in general. I have a massive, absolutely insane project ongoing which is basically "Want to find some info about X? Just open that one (1) web page, enter a few tags such as a specific character's name or location, clich the Search button, and get a list of every single known fact which is related to all of your tags which is summarised down to the bare minimum fact, along with the exact source and quote directly taken from the source material."

Puzzle theory stuff. I've talked about it a lot, it'd be cool if I could finally get the stuff sorted and actually provide all the evidence supporting, refining or challenging it in one place. Above-mentioned lore analysis stuff should help with that.

More fancy shitpost such as the ones found in the #lutiasdraws tag. Let me join in on the fun pls it's good for my mental health to get some serotonin out of non-boring stuff. Heck, perhaps I might even do fanart/shitpost about some fanfics/AUs/others I find and enjoy.

That being said, I apologise to everyone who was hyped at the idea of Illusory Forest updating weekly, but I hope you'll still enjoy the stuff I'll be posting here. If not, blacklisting tags is a thing! I tag everything diligently so for example if you're tired of seeing me ramble about stuff (I do that a lot lately, sorry for that 😭), you can just block the #lutiastalks tag. Yes I finally decided to make #lutiasreplies exclusive to actually replying to asks or reblogs, and use #lutiastalks for random news stuff. yay to self-care and cleaning up my house, head, and tumblr blog.

[lutiaslayton]

This is the actual reason why NPCs care so much about getting their puzzles solved, and nothing you will say or do will change my mind. When they say that a puzzle has been keeping them up at night, this is what they mean. After all, why else do the puzzle guardians keep saying things which imply that (at least some) puzzles are sentient?

I had initially intended to keep this comic canon compliant, and thus take an NPC whose puzzle dialogue actually says that a puzzle has been keeping them up at night for days or something... But I then thought of Rook and Bishop and went "you know what, screw it, this opportunity is just too funny to pass up."

This thing took forever and I have had so many regrets the moment I started actually coloring it. Past me did not account for the fact that I would have to draw Bishop twenty-four times in a row.

But also? Worth it. Hope you enjoy this shitpost because it too has been torturing me for a week lmao

[lutiaslayton]

Okay so I recently read about @multiversal-madness‘ AUs, as well as the first chapter of the Shattered Future fanfic, and then my brain went on a bit of a tangent-

[lutiaslayton]

Stable Like Sand is my ongoing Professor Layton fanfic, which is settled ten years before Unwound Future. If you found this little shitpost funny, feel free to go take a look!

[lutiaslayton]

I’ve been wanting to draw PL-style banners for my fanfic’s chapters, and I think I've found the style I want to go for :D

Fun fact, did you know that out of all six main games, only Unwound/Lost Future’s chapters start with an animation? PL3 has an intriguing and poetic page turn, but all other games only have a fade in/fade out from a black screen.

[lutiaslayton]

Chapter IV-2 of Stable Like Sand is now available!

Dimitri is not having a good day, the poor man.