#lutiasreplies

[lutiaslayton]

SO ABOUT THAT PHD DEFENCE

Hello everyone! I finally have (almost) enough time and energy to give you some news (I say "almost" because I woke up less than ten minutes ago, it is already noon as I am writing this, and I feel like a zombie ready to just dive back into bed).

First off, thank you all for your messages and comments, my heart is melting even now just at the thought of it 🥺💖 I won't get into too many details unless you want me to, but just know that the PhD defence went extremely well!! I was sweating bullets the entire time and my laser pointer even ran out of batteries RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF MY PRESENTATION, but even with that everyone told me that not a single person had noticed I was stressed out the whole time. The best part by far for me is that members of my family, and notably a friend of mine who never studied any kind of science after the end of high school but still came specially for the occasion (<3), told me that even though they couldn't understand the technical details of my research, they were still happy to tell me that they were able to get the gist of what I was saying, that even though they got lost relatively often they also weren't lost for long, and that at the very least at the end they could look at the title of my thesis and go "ok now I know what this string of random words means." Being able to demystify science is one of my ultimate dreams, so having been able to remain relatively clear towards non-scientists even as my presentation's main audience was supposed to be bonafide researchers with more experience than me really felt like an achievement.

So yeah, all that to say, PHD WENT WELL (and yes I am now a doctor but me being a doctor doesn't mean that you should be calling me a doctor. even though of course everybody does IRL and online alike just for the sake of the joke). And though I am currently exhausted and will likely take a while longer than I expected to be really back in shape, I am happy as can be.

Once again, thank you all for your support, whether from before or after the defence. It really means a lot 🥹

[lutiaslayton]

So many compliments in a row, how dare you stab me like this with so much kindness? 🥹

Overly saccharine false advertising aside, I will just make it completely clear that I do not have anything to do with the AU itself! All the plotting and drawing is on her, and I have not helped at all in that regard. I have no clue what she has in store for it in the long run, for that matter.

All I get is the priviledge of seeing the pages in both French and English and react to them ahead of time; and then I list the SPAG mistakes I see in the English version and/or sometimes offer alternate ways to word a thing or two (having the French version helps figure out times when she may give an English version that has a slightly different meaning than the original one -- so when I see it I point it out to check whether or not it was intentional).

So yeah, I sometimes do comments and speculation in her DMs alongside the grammar suggestions, but I have no say in where the plot is headed, and I do not know where it's going more than one or two chapters ahead.

(Best proof is that if I did have a say in the plot, there would be Jeremy Campbell thrown in the cast and a lot more Lovecraftian puzzles roaming around /j)

Hello again. How are you doing, today? So, I would like to ask. How did you and your friend, @lutiaslayton come up with the idea and concept for the university au fancomic inspired by the Professor Layton franchise? Just curious!!!!!!👀🧐🤨 I would like to know, please? Thank you.

Hello ! I had a beautiful sunday thank you :D I actually met @lutiaslayton while drawing the comic. She saw all those spelling mistake and was like "bro, you need help." And she super kindly took some of her time to help me with the translation of dialogues. You absolutly have to chek her work and art ! She has so much talent and her story are fascinating (a huge big brain energy there, I'm telling you )Also, she helps with a lot of translation around the Layton fandom ! For real, we all owe her so much (it's insane) ! So go subscribe to her work >:(( Anyway, I got the idea after the NWOS announcement which throw me back on my Layton obsession (I never truely left, but I wasn't active on it anymore) And... I don't know, I thought about how it's hard to lose a friend, especially during teenage years and realise that just after that, Hershel went in an other town, away from family and he's supposed to met Clark, Brenda Claire (and pretty much every adult of the frenchise there). So I started a little comic, it was suppose to be just a one shot and I sent it to my sister who really enjoyed it. So I thought about posting it here :) Then I started to have a lot of different ideas and headcanon... And Bam, here we are :D

Have a beautiful day everyone !

[lutiaslayton]

I'm pretty sure that nobody asked, but I shall answer nonetheless. To all fans who don’t own the book, you may have been a bit curious as to what I meant when I said that the only way to access the letter was to "rip apart" the guidebook. And if you look at the scan post's reblogs, there are a few happy owners of the guidebook who, despite having it in hand, never were able to look at the letter properly because they were too afraid of damaging their book.

Rightfully so. Very, very rightfully so.

Have a best-off of my reactions when I got to it:

Anyway as you know, I eventually succeeded well enough to give you all high-quality scans earlier today! (it just took me a long while to get the scans, transcript and translation done, that’s why the screenshots date back to May even though the scans were only done this week.)

I even got to do the same to the entire book and all of its 128 pages, in fact. As I mentioned in the last post, it's just that editing the scans is going to take a little while, and I'm not yet sure how the scans will be shared. Perhaps (because I don’t want to push it) I'll only share a fan-translated version—aka, the scans except the Japanese text was edited out and directly replaced with an English translation. We'll see.

...How is my guidebook doing now, you ask? Uhhhhh...

...fine. Good as new.

I am not that interested in collecting merch—not nearly as much as I am in getting digital preservation of the content and in making the lore accessible to the fandom. Sacrificing this book was for a good cause, and the bonus is that this makes it easier for me to read (the binding made me a bit frustrated due to how it sometimes made it a bit hard for me to appreciate fully the art that was too little too close to the middle of the double-page).

The reasons why the ED novel didn’t get the same treatment is because only a dozen pages out of the 200 are worth scanning, and I'm lazy. I wasn’t going to de-spine another book just for ten pages that were already present on my transcript web page haha.

[lutiaslayton]

Hello! You seem to be knowledgeable about Japan-exclusive Layton stuff so I wanted to ask if you knew how many chapters were there in Mansion Of The Deathly Mirror? I tried to look it up myself but I couldn't find an actual answer

Thank you for all your translations btw I really appreciate them!

Hi, and thanks! <3 There are six chapters in total. For more info, I will simply give you (and anyone else who reads this) a Reddit post:

This post explains everything we know about Mansion of the Deathly Mirror and how to deal with the fact that this game is lost media.

That link aside, I have a transcript planned for Mansion of the Deathly Mirror just like I did with Chelmey's Casebook and London Holiday, but I don't even have the full first chapter completed yet, so I'll have to catch up whenever I have the time and materials to do so. I haven't had the time to work on it in many months, but don't worry, I haven't forgotten about it and I WILL make a better, FULL version of the translation, as soon as I can get to it (but right now I'm kinda supposed to be preparing for my PhD defence hahahahaha).

Now for some ramblings related to the above-linked Reddit post. Long story short: we have chances of securing the game. But for that to happen, we need to be patient, and we need to be silent. If you ever find footage of the game on youtube or elsewhere, no matter what you do, leave the player alone.

Let them upload at their pace and gather the crumbs as they fall off the table, because asking for them to let you eat the whole cake has never worked in the past. By that I mean: asking someone who owns the game "hey can I see your cool shiny thing asap plz plz plz" will result in that person blocking you, no longer posting any footage or content related to that cool shiny thing, and possibly disappearing off the face of the entire internet forever. I am neither joking, nor exaggerating.

I'm not talking that much about MotDM because we don't want to get too much attention drawn to it for the time being. But don't worry, if this game ever is found (and we have a whole team searching for it, we're just secretive on purpose -- for the reasons I mentioned here and for those that are explained in more detail in the Reddit post), we WILL make sure that the fandom knows about it. It's mostly just that right now, the only person we know who has the game and is somewhat willing to make a playthrough does not want any unwanted attention, and this person is not a friend of ours. They will stop uploading if people ask for them to upload faster, and they already threatened once to delete all their videos when someone asked them if they could "share the ROM." (No. No they won't. And even if they were willing to, we can't even make anything out of a ROM yet because of the hardware being stupidly complicated anyway.)

---

So there you have it -- your answer is "6," and I could have left it at that because I have no strict obligation to say anything more since you didn't ask for any other info haha.

Unless you want to dive into this endless rabbit hole, I highly suggest you just keep that answer, leave it at that for now, and go about your day minding literally anything else. We will get back to you and the rest of the fandom once we have real news about it! It's just that for now we're all stuck in limbo hahaha, there's some stuff done in the shadows but nothing worth hyping about until we're done with it. I mean -- we can't do anything until the one (1) person who owns the game decides to upload more footage of it. Given how desperately lost this game is, we should actually be happy we get to have anything at all, even if even NWoS might come out before it.

[EDIT] Needless to say, the player who is sharing some gameplay footage does NOT know that I have a website with the beginning of a fan-translation, and if they learn even so little that it exists, they are going to have a heart attack and will likely delete their entire playthrough. And nobody wants that.

I personally won't celebrate and heave a real breath of relief before footage of the full game from start to finish with as much content as possible is secured, which is why I don't talk about it a lot. I'm just paranoid that something might go wrong like it already has multiple times in the past hahaha

---

DO NOT show my website link around at random until I say it's ok to do so. And if you share it with friends, ALWAYS mention that I am the one running it. That way if you or your friends have questions, you know who to ask for explanations.

[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]

I've fallen back into the PL hole after years and it's been such a treat going through your archives and resources! Thank you so much for collecting them. It's been really fun going through your tags and theories

You're welcome, and thank you! Sadly I have slowly crawled out of that hole myself since the beginning of the year 😅 But I will always keep this blog available anyway for those who seek it, and I'll still try to help with a few projects here and there from behind the scenes.

As a warning, the Github Pages website is still up for now, but since I won't be updating it anymore (or not nearly as much as I used to), it is going to be moved to a different collaborative Github account sometime in the future. That way the work will still be here, and others will be able to keep it up to date in my stead! It's just that it'll have a different URL.

It's been hard to try on and off writing a whole post here saying that I'm stepping away from the fandom (even though I'm still keeping a little toe in, just a discreet one), but rest assured that the future of PL archiving and preservation is bright. Even though I'm taking an indefinite hiatus, a ton of other people are cooking, and they are cooking HARD >:D Game preservation and recreation, more translation projects, new and improved wiki, and more!

[lutiaslayton]

Hello!

I come to ask you a question, as you are the leading researcher in the field of puzzle lore, and also a scientist! (Once more: congratulations!)

Apologies if these thoughts seem a bit.... messy and much. Feel free to just ignore.

I am currently writing a little story/fanfiction that includes puzzles, and first I wanted to ask if it is okay with you if I use your theory for that.

Second:

You already said that Puzzles, or rather Hamanier Particles have the ability to allow time/space travel, and that they allow clairvoyant abilities.

Puzzles/Hamanier Particles seem to be already used to research time and space travel, as your theory says.

Could puzzles have even more possible "applications"?

Is the main reason why the Azran were so advanced that they fully understood how to "use" puzzles and their supernatural-seeming properties?

Do you think they could also be the cause of other weird happenings and traits humans, plants and animals have in the series?

Could puzzles possess living things too and change them?

Flora Reinhold has the mole in the shape of an apple, that only appears when she is happy/laughing.

That isn't really possible, but perhaps that is caused by some sort of puzzle possession?

Could this also be an explanation for the nonsenical dusguise abilities Don Paolo and Descole have, that they might partially be literal shapeshifters (or something in that direction?)

A shapeshifting-like thing could also explain how Don Paolos hair works, why it is able to move around and shape itself in ways normal hair shouldn't (LF, the scene where he got his horns

Do you think it is significant that in/around puzzle shacks, plant seem to grow in strange ways (there is almost always a tree around, often growing indoors), and that other plants such as the sunflower in LF being able to store/attract puzzles.

(i also find it strange how flowers grow underground, at the grave of Viola Reinhold. But that might not be caused by puzzles, I think at least)

Could puzzle possession be able to alter genes/bodies? (here it becomes apaarent that my biology knowledge is not advanced enough yet).

If they potentially create little "weird traits" such as Floras apple-shaped mole, or even shapeshifting, then they might have the potential to do even more.

The animal experiments in LF were probably meant to test the time travel-capabilities of Hamanier particles.

But apparently, the exposure to them was what caused Subject 3 to become so strangely human-like, apparently altering his body(?) and making him able to "walk".

This might go to far, but regarding Animals being experimented with and becoming strange/humanlike-

The dog from LMJ, Sherl, was also implied to have been experimented on in a lab, and that is why he got the ability to talk.

Another Hamanier Particle experiment, maybe?

So, maybe puzzle experiments are not very uncommon in the Layton-Universe.

And that was... it, I think.

I don't know enough about science (yet) to properly understand the implications that Puzzles might be experimented with/have the capability to change living beings and allow "supernatural"-seeming phenomena to happen.

So that is why I wished to ask someone who knows way more than me.

Apologies if it wasn't understandable.

Hi, thanks! And, wow, that's a big one indeed xD

A few disclaimers ahead of time:

The theory is still a work in progress, in the sense that I won't be 100% confident in its solidity before I'll have had time to confront it to basically the near-entirety of the lore in the game. Which, obviously, is going to take a lot of time and work. So while I do believe that the current state of the theory is rather reliable, at least as a headcanon, I cannot claim with confidence that a few details here and there won't change in the future due to my finding out something else in the games/novels/other that I didn't know or had forgotten about, and which contradicts part of the theory.

I believe you likely saw this post already, but I link it just in case. I had tried in that post to make the theory's assertions as clear as possible, but the wording in some of your questions makes me wonder whether there might have been a few confusions here or there. If you or anyone else have questions regarding a specific part of the theory and/or you're not completely sure what X or Y means, don't hesitate to ask me.

Now, on to your questions:

Is it okay if I use the puzzle theory for my own fanfictions/fanart/other?

To you, and to anyone else who will probably ask again sooner or later (you're not the first one haha): YES. The puzzle theory by itself is something that I was stupid/crazy enough to come up with, but since the evidence that led up to me thinking about it came directly from the official content, it doesn't feel to me like the theory really "belongs" to me! It's as if you had to pay royalties to Albert Einstein whenever you wanted to write E=mc². Kinda stupid if you ask me (and even stupider in my case because the puzzle theory isn't nearly as fundamental to the progress of humanity as real world science is).

Also what fun is there in finding a lore mechanic that is so wide, could have SO many applications and implications, inspire sooooo many fascinating storylines and AUs, only for me to then go "nah I'm the only fanfic author who's ever allowed to use it. Get screwed, fandom." For real, the reason I share this theory at all is because I WANT the fandom to know about it and have their own fun with it, if they decide that it's a toy box worth adding to their collection of headcanons!

If anything, credit is appreciated if you want your potential readers-who-are-also-writers to read about the puzzle theory in turn and get inspired to also write about it; but it is absolutely not required.

However, one thing that is required (not really but I would love if you could do it): please do send me the link of your fanfic once it is written and posted because I absolutely want to read it 👀

TL;DR: Yes, it is ok, and I want to see it. Go wild, and have fun!

Hamanier Particles have the ability to allow time/space travel, and they allow clairvoyant abilities. Puzzles/Hamanier Particles seem to be already used to research in time and space travel, as your theory says. Could puzzles have even more possible "applications"?

I believe that imagination is our sole limit! (like, literally, since Hamanier particles are basically what constitutes complex thoughts in the Laytonverse)

That, and more importantly the fact that what scientists within the Laytonverse truly know about how Hamanier particles work and how to harness their power has yet to be defined in detail. They have mechas, Descole's machines definitely use puzzle shenanigans, and Dimitri was able to build a pair of glasses which can record a person's memories (aka also related to Hamanier particles). But on the other hand, the average Layton NPC's daily life (Layton himself included) isn't using technology that is more advanced than our own, far on the contrary. It seems that whatever it is that humanity knows about puzzle physics at the time of the main six games, the ability to actually control Hamanier particles remains rather niche (and it seems like Steam Bison might actually give us quite a bit to think about, especially the part where, allegedly, "solving more puzzles will cause the city to evolve technologically").

It's a bit like how humanity has known that electricity existed for aeons (without necessarily understanding how it works), but that it took a while between the moment when the first inventions which were capable of generating/relied on electricity were built, and the moment when every house in the country required electricity for powering nearly everything. I believe the Laytonverse is sitting in that phase where a few scientists in isolated labs were able to find the means to control Hamanier particles, but that due to the costs, or because it's tricky to implement in terms of engineering, or for other reasons, the knowledge of how to control them is either not well-spread just yet, or people just aren't jumping on the hype train to use puzzle magic to power everything in their daily lives because they don't see the point (at least not yet. Once again, let's see how Steam Bison appears when we get to see it in its full glory).

So, applications for puzzles/Hamanier particles in a daily Layton NPC's life? Well, let's see...

First off, something which is kinda used in canon but would deserve to be expanded upon a lot more: using puzzles as basically weapons for delaying someone, like a smoke bomb of sorts (could be offensive, could be self-defence). The dialogue from Luke after you solved London Holiday's Puzzle #009 has him talk as if he just physically had a jog walking on bridges in a tropical archipelago, all the while (as far as we know) he did not leave the confines of Layton's office. So did the puzzle make him hallucinate that? Was Luke temporarily sucked into a pocket dimension until he solved the puzzle??

I'd personally go for the former since the Folsense gas is a thing (and this interpretation does not require to find proof that a) such pocket dimension exists, and b) find an explanation on how it works, where it is located, and how it was created. In short: hallucination wins over pocket dimension thanks to Ockham's Razor). At least some puzzles seem to thus have the ability to trap the person solving them into some sort of trance until they're solved, which depending on the circumstances, could put the person in a rather vulnerable position where they can't interact with their surroundings.

So, list of possible uses:

Weapon for trapping someone inside their own head until the puzzle is solved (no technology required, just fetch a feral puzzle and yeet it at the person's face like a poké ball). Arguably already used in canon, notably with Bishop or Plover in Azran Legacy, and probably in dozens of other cases. It can be of note that their response after the puzzles have been solved is often along the lines of "what the heck! how did you solve it that quickly???", which could be interpreted as some form of "wtf bro it's like if my smoke bomb only lasted two seconds how do you expect me to have the time to make any use of it"

Time travel/teleportation, the former of which we know has been attempted, with near success, only to have the project abandoned. It is more or less likely that the same could be said of the latter; though there is no time paradox to worry about, I do believe that the main mechanism is the exact same as for time travel: it's just that you don't want the other end of the vortex to be set in a different time. So, in short: a bunch of scientists managed to make it work, but as far as evidence shows, they're not to the point of being able to make it safe and practical for everyday use. I'd compare Dimitri's time machine to the real world LHC: humanity's top scientists can do it for science, but the world is absolutely not ready to popularise the technology and have every layman get to buy and play Candy Crush on their own toy LHC (for a number of reasons, and the one asking "How can you even play Candy Crush with a particle accelerator?" comes with the lowest priority).

Speaking of teleportation, it is however possible that some characters actually already use it to some extent...? I'm thinking notably of Granny Riddleton or Keats. Or... perhaps that's also why Pavel is never able to explain how he ends up in the most random places. In any case, I believe that those instances are caused not by Laytonverse steampunk technology, but rather because of these characters' clairvoyance, or because of wild puzzles being particularly feral and kidnapping them across time and space. Poor Pavel must have made a few of them very angry. Or he's psychic and doesn't know it.

There totally is some illegal hint coins trafficking going on in the suburbs of many towns and cities, where most of the buyers are students during the week before their finals.

Scotland Yard and other police forces have a branch dedicated to puzzle-related problems. My personal headcanon is that Colby may actually be stationed in the reception room and rarely ever allowed on the terrain because the times when he is allowed on the terrain, it's because it's an eldritch shenanigans level of puzzle issue.

...

Layton's trunk, which is capable of holding a whole fish tank (just kidding. probably.)

Is the main reason why the Azran were so advanced that they fully understood how to "use" puzzles and their supernatural-seeming properties?

Yes. In Azran Legacy, we have the following quote: "We were masters of technology and science. There was no puzzle we could not solve." Now, of course, it could be coincidence. I could be reading into it too much. But in the light of the puzzle theory... Why couldn't we take it literally? It's not like all this glowing shifting stuff (which is somewhat reminiscent of Descole's Detragigant anyway) wasn't screaming "arguably supernatural" anyway. Also the fact that they can resurrect the dead (no I will never let that one go).

More seriously, the Azran basically turned the Illusory Forest's Ancient Tree into an immortal clairvoyant cyborg who records knowledge about the entire world by using a network of plants worldwide in order to absorb what is basically brain juice (aka Hamanier particles). That thing alone revolves around using puzzle magic to acquire knowledge.

TL;DR: Yes. Definitely. Absolutely.

Could puzzles also be the cause of other weird happenings and traits that humans, plants and animals have in the series? Could puzzles possess living things too and change them?

Believe it or not, that is one of the questions that will either be raised in Stable Like Sand (my own fic) at some point, or has at least been written and will just end up in the pile of cut content that didn't make it in the fic if I can't find a place for it to fit properly. But to paraphrase my notes: "That's usually what the immune system is for."

That being said… We do have a few canon phenomena: Folsense's gas and Labyrinthia's ink causing hallucinations/having strong powers of suggestion, Labyrinthia's water causing people to faint if they hear the sound of a bell made of pure silver… It could also be argued that at least part of the "unknown incurable illnesses" that afflicted quite a few characters throughout the series, sometimes leading to their death, are a result of puzzle decay/possession gone wrong.

It is possible that some in-game puzzles involve fauna or flora having been physically altered for the sake of a puzzle, but I do not recall any specific example, so take that with a grain of salt. I do however remember that Colby, a constable from Scotland Yard, has his chin get longer whenever he smiles (as in it's not just me overanalysing his sprites, it's literally written down on his in-game profile description).

TL;DR: Yep. And the more you think about it, the more horrifying it gets.

Flora Reinhold has the mole in the shape of an apple, that only appears when she is happy/laughing. That isn't really possible, but perhaps that is caused by some sort of puzzle possession?

Yep 👀 (and, unfortunately, this is also why I believe that both her parents died because of puzzle decay/possession)

Could this also be an explanation for the nonsenical disguise abilities Don Paolo and Descole have, that they might partially be literal shapeshifters (or something in that direction?) A shapeshifting-like thing could also explain how Don Paolos hair works, why it is able to move around and shape itself in ways normal hair shouldn't (LF, the scene where he got his horns)

I wish I had an answer for that. For the time being, I am stuck at the stage of raising my fist at the sky and growling "I will figure out a scientifically valid mechanism someday. SOMEDAY. JUST YOU WAIT LEVEL-5, I WILL FIND AN EXPLANATION FOR YOUR CARTOON PHYSICS."

To give some more details: I can say at least that Descole and Don Paolo's disguises don't seem to work the same way. Don Paolo canonically uses latex(?) masks and extra clothes matching the person he's disguised as, which he leaves behind for Luke to collect and try on during the credits of Diabolical Box and Unwound Future. This... would be simple enough if it weren't for the fact that he's the one who somehow managed to disguise himself as Flora.

Meanwhile, Descole… just puts on his hat, and boom there we go the entire cast of characters and the audience alike just went from "A platypus?" to "PERRY the platypus???" So current guess is that instead of a full disguise (although he might still be using some kind of disguise to some extent, I don't remember the mention of latex masks or extra clothes in his case), he instead uses some sort of illusion/hallucinogen mechanic. I wonder whether he ever went to Folsense/Labyrinthia (or other location with similar properties), found out about the gas/other, and managed to weaponise it in order to trick people into seeing and hearing him with a different identity.

By the way, what if the hallucinogenic something that Descole uses is the reason why nobody in-universe was able to see how similar Desmond Sycamore looks to Descole, and why he could just get away with basically wearing the exact same clothes (or at least shoes)? Huh. Perhaps for all we know, he doesn't even bother trying to mimic other people's voices when he's "disguised" as them.

Last minute addition by @toy-pigeon: "i mean if his cologne is so strong that whatshisface in phong gi was able to smell it, maybe THAT'S what the hallucinogen is"

And now back to Don Paolo... I guess his hair could be similar to the examples of Flora or Colby, now that you mention it.

...Maybe one of his experiments made it worse and he actually can somehow fit inside those disguises.

...Oh darn I believe that might be an option and if it's the result of one of his engineering experiments gone wrong you've got even more reason for him to be the way he is, with the diving into super villain mode on a whim and all.

Thank you, I hate it, and I need some ibuprofen because my brain is boiling.

(Man, imagine writing a PL fanfic with a shapeshifter in it and only figuring this stuff out a year and a half later)

Do you think it is significant that in/around puzzle shacks, plant seem to grow in strange ways (there is almost always a tree around, often growing indoors)?

By itself, I wouldn't call that weird or supernatural. There is vegetation everywhere, and it is precisely what the Illusory Forest's Ancient Tree uses to collect knowledge from across the world. Also, Granny Riddleton has her shack inside the Molentary Express for a bit... The miniature tree could be fake, or could take its roots in. um. somewhere...? (it probably makes more sense if it's fake, but I did say earlier that Granny Riddleton may be capable of teleportation, so. there are a couple of hypotheses that may need to not be discarded just yet. but the tweezers I'm using to hold those hypotheses are the size of Clive's fortress.)

If it has any significance at all, it would be related to the Ancient Tree's shenanigans, not to the local laws of physics.

(i also find it strange how flowers grow underground, at the grave of Viola Reinhold. But that might not be caused by puzzles, I think at least)

Also not particularly supernatural looking to me, iirc there was sufficient light in her basement/grave for vegetation to grow relatively well. The sight does not shock me; in fact, a lot of flowers benefit from having sunlight, yes, but not direct sunlight.

If you want an unambiguously unusual example though, look at collection item #13 of Azran Legacy: "Bashful Sunflower - This healthy plant runs contrary to the laws of nature by turning away from the sun." And the original Japanese version if you want it: 「はにかみヒマワリ｜貫録あふれる花と葉をたくわえていながら、おひさまから目をそらすほど内向的な性格」 (Translation: "Bashful Sunflower - Despite its sturdy flowers and leaves, it is so introverted that it turns its eyes away from the sun." So this flower is sentient and extremely shy.)

(It's easier to see if you look at its 3D model in-game, but it is literally using its leaves to hide itself from the sunlight)

…and other plants such as the sunflower in LF being able to store/attract puzzles.

I'd connect that to the Ancient Tree, personally... But it's also basically implying that the plant itself is indeed having strange properties, which may have been developed in its species aeons ago due to exposure to puzzle weirdness (it would be, after all, the explanation for why the Ancient Tree itself was born. Simplest explanation is very simply that the Ancient Tree is a clairvoyant plant, on the same level as Granny Riddleton for example. It just also happens to be a tree, but as we saw a paragraph above, plants also can be sentient in the Laytonverse).

Could puzzle possession be able to alter genes/bodies? If they potentially create little "weird traits" such as Floras apple-shaped mole, or even shapeshifting, then they might have the potential to do even more.

As TL;DR for this whole part of the ask, I will just quote an excerpt from my notes which tried to summarise the puzzle theory in as few words as possible (I now realise that past me had not added this paragraph to the list of screenshots in the post I mentioned at the beginning of this reply. My bad, I believed that it was not that relevant at the time since it wasn't really about puzzles themselves):

The animal experiments in LF were probably meant to test the time travel-capabilities of Hamanier particles.

But apparently, the exposure to them was what caused Subject 3 to become so strangely human-like, apparently altering his body(?) and making him able to "walk".

I would argue that adult Subject 3 doesn't look that much different from his baby self from before he was experimented on. Same for Sherl, he doesn't look particularly "human-like" physically speaking, and doesn't look that much different from other dogs aside from "main character design" syndrome.

(Beasly, on the other hand... Well, seems like Level-5 conveniently baited us by having a whole cutscene where he said he had a whole backstory explaining how he came to be the way he is, only to be silenced by Puzzlette. But I'm putting him aside. And also -- just like Sherl, not every human can understand him. If you try to talk to him while Luke is missing, Layton and Flora don't even acknowledge his presence, let alone are able to understand what he says.)

I'm just going to quote again the screenshot from just a paragraph above, but "Plants/Fauna are WEIRD" in general. Plants are sentient and acquire information that they then convey to the Ancient Tree, animals have some level of sentience regardless of whether they have been experimented on (otherwise Luke wouldn't be able to hold complex conversations with them such as the ones he has with Toppy or with the other rabbit from the Miracle Mask minigame), and they too are able to solve puzzles, once again regardless of whether or not they have been experimented on.

TL;DR I don't believe that the time travel experiments that Subject 3, or the Parrot (Subject 1) suffered from had any significant changes on their body or psyche, other than being traumatising events by themselves.

As a reminder by the way: regarding Sherl, just like Subject 3, Beasly, or other animals, only a couple of humans are able to understand them. In the main six games, Luke and Clark Triton are the only ones canonically known to understand animals (and feel free to watch the Subject 3 scene and the Beasly cutscene from Unwound Future, in both cases Layton really is just standing motionless in the back, metaphorically fumbling his thumbs and waiting for Luke to come back and translate; and once again, when Luke is gone from the group, it is possible to go talk to Beasly... or rather, try).

In LMJ, it seems like Katrielle and Ernest are the only ones able to understand Sherl (unless some other NPC that I don't know about showed up occasionally and everyone went "you can understand him too?????", I did not watch all 50 episodes of the anime yet). Interestingly, Ernest is shocked that he could understand Sherl, so it seems that while Ernest is Special™ somehow, he is not able to understand other animals. And though Katrielle was barely surprised when Sherl showed up at her door, it also doesn't seem like she can understand other animals either. Whatever it is that Ernest and Katrielle have in common with each other but not with anyone else, for them both to be able to understand Sherl... I honestly have no clue (none that even remotely makes any sense, that is).

Aaaaaaand I believe I addressed everything! Phew, that was a lot, and it actually did give me a few things to think about that I had not given enough thought to until now.

So the big TL;DR:

Yes please do use this theory/headcanon in your fanfics/fanart/comics/macaroni collage and please give me links once it's done because I want to see it and give it love.

Puzzle weirdness has a lot of uses indeed, with the only limitations being Laytonverse humanity's current understanding of their own laws of physics (for mad scientist use) and general society's interest for puzzle-based technology (for widespread daily use). It is extremely likely that they do not understand most of the puzzle theory and that they just shrug it all off because it's normal to them. It's just like our own world: do we all commonly understand the entirety of physics? Heck no! And yet it interferes with our lives daily. Physicists in our world are figuring stuff out to this day, sometimes figure out that stuff everyone believed to be obvious in the past is completely wrong, sometimes figure out new stuff that nobody knew was a thing. It's the same thing in the Laytonverse, whether with "regular physics" (assuming those still work the way we know it) or with puzzle physics.

Absolutely-not-widespread uses include but are not limited to: St Mystere's robots (if they are sentient, they most likely rely on Hamanier particles stuff. Also the part about altering Dahlia's memories... Well, just take a look at ->), Descole's Detragan, Dimitri's time machine and mind-reading glasses, probably Descole's mechas in general (on the basis that they are likely inspired from Azran technology to some extent)...

The Azran had totally figured out how puzzles worked, to the extent that they even knew how to resurrect the dead and (allegedly, probably on accident) create an entire race of sentient robots. Go figure.

This post contains a lot of Illusory Forest spoilers (not that they're new to be fair, I've been talking about it for a while and I'm happy I finally get to start sharing the translation with you guys).

Puzzle decay/possession affecting living beings, including humans, is a horrifying subject that I want to tread with caution; but I do believe we have enough instances where it seems to be the simplest explanation, to conclude that it is an unavoidable consequence.

So turns out Descole using a hallucinogenic gas of sorts similar to Folsense or Labyrinthia for his disguises could be an interesting way to explain how he can just put on his tricorn and °magic poof° now he's Descole (whereas Don Paolo needs a bit more time to physically remove his disguises).

How dare you plant into my mind the idea that Don Paolo MAY ACTUALLY(?) have some relatively limited(??) shape-shifting ability(???) I hate how I cannot in the present times come up with a better explanation. I prefer the times when I was just aware of the issue and trying to postpone it for later, meekly hoping that future me would be able to find a rational explanation. You have opened my eyes on the fact that I need to get out of my denial phase and face the issue head on. Even if it means throwing my hands in the air and giving up. I tried looking for a different explanation. I really did.

I believe fauna and flora are Just Like That from the start, because animals in the wild are just as weird as the ones that were experimented on, with the sole exceptions being Sherl, who is more in a grey area than completely sticking out of the norm, and Beasly who is. an interesting case to say the least. (an interesting case I have little to zero clues about for the time being. perhaps he's Subject 2 and what you said about Subject 3 actually applies to him instead. perhaps it is something else entirely.)

To conclude with your last few sentences -- if you intend to study the research aspect of science, good luck and have fun with it! (as much fun as you can have that is-- jk don't worry we're having a lot of fun even if 80% of our job is experiments or simulations not working and us crying because we have no idea what went wrong)

In a weird sense, I like to think of the puzzle theory as a way to introduce a simple enough way to go through the "scientific method" for research: you find something weird, you look for an explanation; and while looking for evidence in favour AND against your temporary explanation (*), you try your darn best to avoid that annoying confirmation bias among many other traps your brain will lay against you. The hardest part is to manage to respect Ockham's Razor (since the "simplest explanation requiring the least amount of assumptions" is surprisingly not always the most obvious one at first glance) and impartiality (because of the above-mentioned confirmation bias, notably).

---

(*) It is very important that we also look for evidence that challenges, or even outright contradicts our current hypothesis on how the thing we're studying works. After all, if your hypothesis is "all raven in the world are black," you can't be 100% confident in that unless you check every single raven in the world and make sure that you don't stumble upon a white one! And if you do find a white (or green with pink polka dots) one, instead of looking away and pretending you didn't see anything, you will adapt your hypothesis: from "all raven in the world are black," it will become "most raven in the world are black; we have looked at a thousand ravens so far and found two white ones, therefore the current state of our research leans towards the conclusion that there are 99.98% of black ravens and 0.02% of white ravens in the world."

[lutiaslayton]

Hi! I really love your timeline analyses and have been thinking about them a lot as I try to write my own Layton longfic. (I hope you don't mind me referencing your timeline and puzzle research for it ^^;) It's very well done! I have a hard time figuring out so many details at once like that, so it's been a huge help.

...I don't want to be annoying or overly nitpicky when I point this out, but I just thought I'd mention something.

We know that Dropstone was founded on August 12th (by the JP version) and Layton travels there on its 50th anniversary (also August 12th). In your deduced timeline you have that arrival date down as Wednesday the 12th, 1963. The year with a Wednesday on an August 12th is actually 1964. In 1963, the 12th falls on a Monday.

I don't know if the day being a Wednesday specifically matters at all, or if Layton's days of the week aren't in sync with ours, but from what I understand, your timeline might be 1 year behind. (Or that date was meant to be Monday the 12th...?)

I figured with SLS (one of my favorite fics ever, by the way!) being in 1953, a detail like this could be important to you, but you can totally ignore this ask if I'm wrong! I just wanted to let you know just in case.

Hi! The fact that you picked up on this is a true testament to your dedication and rigorous work, congratulations!!

I haven't touched this timeline in a long while for a number of reasons (far too many other projects + "um actually I think there might be multiple timelines and you can't put every single game/novel/manga/movie/other in the same chronology but it becomes soooooo much more interesting if you start placing them in multiple ones, also puzzle theory makes that not only plausible but also quite probable"), so sadly I have forgotten most of the details of how past me from over a year ago reached the conclusions that she did. From what I remember, however, the quick answer to your question is simple: yes, the days of the week in the Laytonverse are out of sync with ours.

(I kinda like how I take it as a bigger reminder that the Laytonverse really is disconnected from our world's History in a number of ways, from the mention in the novels of kings and queens that do not exist IRL to the simple logical fact that there is no way History happened the same way when mechas are a thing, the Azran happened, Targent happened, and also puzzles break the laws of physics daily. But that's just personal preference.)

I think what started it was the fact that London Holiday takes place on a Sunday and that I could not find any way to make the whole "a few days ago" for both Curious Village and Diabolical Box work alongside the "They arrive in Dropstone on August 12th." I won't redo the math right now because schedule and to-do list and other stuff (+ I trust you more to check it since your brain cogs are already warm and revving in the middle of it, so you would be more efficient at figuring it out as well as more critical than present me), but if memory serves, this was the best I could manage at the time, and I never went back later to recheck the math. I really just stopped at "Yes, there is a desync, so what? That's not supposed to be the real world anyway. Also huge kudos to whoever notices."

---

My mind is set on the fact that the Layton timeline places the original trilogy on the year 1963 because of the promotional UF artwork implying that UF would take place during the winter between 1963 and 1964, but that part is personal preference since I know (and stated on the timeline web page iirc) that in-universe, this date does not appear in the game. I know other people use for example the "Year 1960" unused artwork which had been datamined from Curious Village. I also know that the World of PL interview just says "There is no official date, it's inspired from the 1960s but we are never going to give a date because we don't want to." I also also know that some others, who consider the PLvsAA crossover canon, take the Ace Attorney timeline and thus completely yeet the "1960s" part into oblivion.

So the choice is ultimately up to personal preference, and you're free to choose a different one! The only reason I put 1963 in the timeline instead of "Year YYYY ; Year YYYY - 50 ; Year YYYY + 1" and such is for obvious readability reasons... and because past me had not thought that perhaps there could be a Javascript way to say "hey put here the year you'd like the original trilogy to take place in," have the user click on a button, and make the whole page do the calculations and display the new dates according to the user's chosen year of reference. darn it now I'm going to be nagging myself into implementing that but it would also be so tedious.

---

Anyway TL;DR yes I was aware of this, and past me either forgot to mention it or thought "Eh it's not like anybody will notice/care" hahaha. Rather insensitive from past me admittedly, I do now wonder why I didn't add that as a small paragraph in the preliminary notes... Most likely reason is that the thought just didn't cross my mind at the time.

Good luck on your own longfic, don't hesitate to send me the link (no promises on reading it the day it comes out because there are SO many fics already on my to-read list, but nnngnfhghh I wish I could read other people's works as well as continue working on SLS), and thank you for your ask! Even though I was personally aware of it, you can absolutely feel proud of having picked up on it, and don't hesitate to come back to me (and make me sweat cold bullets) if you figure out a way to make "1963" + "London Holiday on a Sunday" + "No week day desyncs with the real world" work. Thanks to you, other people can now be made aware of this detail which I had apparently forgotten to explain explicitly!

Lastly, I don't remember whether I mentioned it here or not because it's still far from done and isn't going to be truly useful before a LONG while, but just in case what little info is on there could still be useful to you or someone else in any way: among many other things, I'm working on a Lore Map. Imagine having the ENTIRETY of EVERY SINGLE CANON FACT we have been given, in a single web page, with a whole list of tags so you can filter only the trivia that is relevant to your fanfic research <3

---

(Now this paragraph is completely unrelated to your ask, I'm going to leave this here for a different person (or not? would be good luck if you're the same anon): I am so sorry to the anon who asked me if I considered the LMJ ARG event canon or not, I uhhhhh... got carried away and I don't think the answer will be posted anytime soon, because for the sake of answering it in an exhaustive way I wanted to re-read the entirety of what has been preserved of it + add every bit of trivia I could find to the Lore Map mentioned earlier. And I'm juggling between many other projects too so progress is very slow. TL;DR version of my personal opinion so far: as for everything else it is up to personal preference, but I could theoretically see at least parts of it being canon. The trickiest part I found by reading just the introduction of the ARG is the fact that Kat would apparently make livestreams. Which implies the existence of the internet or a similar technology, the existence of streaming platforms, and the fact that she would have a decent-ish enough following for her random viewers from all around the world to want to help her. And if we go with the hypothesis that there could be multiple timelines, I could see that happen in an Ace Attorney-based timeline such as the one in which the PLvsAA crossover is canon, for example! I don't know enough about AA to be able to speak about it with confidence, but I think that 20+ years after the original AA trilogy, internet technology is indeed quite advanced enough for this to be possible? anyway. Just thought I'd give you a first short answer so you don't have to keep holding your breath and/or think I completely forgot about you. I'm sorry :'D)

[lutiaslayton]

It’s coming.

Hellooo, just giving you all a little update and teaser regarding the event I have mentioned for a while, and which is finally about to begin!

Yes, it is finally time. To reply to an earlier reblog I saw some time ago: yes, I guess we are going to Dracula Daily the Layton novels now. Or at least I will try to keep this up for as long as I can. I am very much hyped too 👀

The Eternal Diva novel will be cut into about twenty parts,

so this will be a twenty-week journey (unless one part happens to be extremely short, then maybe I’ll merge it with the previous or next one for example). And after that, hopefully by then the transcript of another novel will have progressed enough to start all over again with a different story! So far, a French friend (who doesn’t have a tumblr) is helping me make a transcript of the Illusory Forest novel; so fingers crossed, as this might be the next in line! Yep, for those interested in my theories, it is the very same novel that I’ve talked about for so long, and it is arguably the craziest of all. Just the way it starts is an absolute roller-coaster.

Also, I lied. Updates are going to be on Mondays now.

I was not ready to post yesterday, Sundays already have their Layton-related weekly event, and since I am too impatient to wait until next week, I thought I might as well make this a thing for Mondays instead. Gotta end the first, universally depressing work day of the week, with something uplifting, am I right? :3

I am going to give you a warning, though: as much as I’d like to keep the translations as close to the originals as possible, I am also, unfortunately, a fanfic writer, and the novels’ writing style is very different from what I usually write. Also there’s some weird stuff such as verb tense consistency in Japanese… Ohhhhhhh dear this part is such a nightmare. You can have verbs in the present tense and others in the past tense in the same sentence. You can have a sentence in the present tense and another in the past tense right after. I hate this. I hate everything about this.

So, I will try to restrain myself (because if you already took a peek at SLS, you already know what my writing style is really like), but I sometimes couldn’t help but add a sentence or two, cut a sentence into multiple ones, make the dialogue less robotic and more lively, that sort of thing. For example, if there’s a lot of dialogue going on and on without any narration in-between, I might sometimes add a sentence or two just to break it up a bit and make the scene sound less static. That sort of thing.

I will try my best to make it sound similar to what the official game translations did, in the end! The Japanese dialogue is usually rather bland and repetitive, but the official translations added a lot of details and quirks that are completely absent from the original text, but which also make the characters feel like, you know, themselves as we know and love them.

So here’s a reminder that if you want to know what the real Japanese text says, do NOT take this fan-translation series as a reliable source. I spent months writing a transcript of the real novel precisely so that people willing to know what the original Japanese text says (including me) would be able to check it out and compare, regardless of what anyone else translating it will say. Even without speaking Japanese, you can copy-paste the Japanese sentences into a translator such as DeepL, and so you’ll be able to see which parts exactly are in the novel, and which parts I pulled out of my magic hat. The “9/10 accuracy, WhatTheHeckIsThis/10 readability” translation is going to take a LONG time to make, but it will also come eventually (though don’t expect much before at least something like 2024).

So now, with all that being said:

See you all tomorrow at 6PM (France time) for the first chapter of our reading journey!

Though if you have preferences for how you would rather see things (e.g. better time that fits the majority), then I am open to suggestions! I can easily rename a tag or reschedule my queue.

[lutiaslayton]

I'm sure you've heard it before but I just wanted to say thank you so much for your attentive documentation, translation and obvious adoration for professor layton! Your work is truly a treasure trove for the series and it's incredibly generous of you to share it with everyone! Very excited to see your translations of the novels :) !!

Thank you so much for your message! There are indeed some times I look back on how it started-- Initially this really was all just for the sake of my personal fanfiction research, but whooooo boy did past me have no idea of the size of the rabbit hole she was about to dive into.

It's such hard work that it simply felt natural to share it and spare others the trouble! Especially if it also could give others the chance to not only use my finds for their own fan content (be it encouraging people to draw the underrated obscure character Jeremy Campbell, or... having people genuinely create content inspired from my puzzle theory??? guys it will never not be so, so flattering and wholesome 😭💖), but also maybe, just maybe, encourage them to give me a hand just a little bit hahahahaha. At the very least, I'm glad that my lore analyses are getting your brain cogs running every now and then, giving you new ideas and sharing with me deductions and observations I had missed!

I do wish I had more time to myself right now, because I am admittedly spending way more time than I'd like on stuff that is all at the same time tedious and Layton-related, but that I also can't "really" share here because it's mostly background tasks such as doing research on lost media and doing some coding and cleaning up my local files for the sake of making it easier to find X and Y content + sharing it ASAP... But the thought that it's all going to be worth it the day I get to share it with you all and that this is for the better good of the whole fandom is keeping me going <3

I do think I might need to make a priority that post I planned to write about how I do my translation work without actually being able to speak Japanese. Perhaps if I finish and publish that post some of you guys will be motivated to help me translate things faster 👀

[lutiaslayton]

Good luck with your defense! We’re all cheering for you!!

🥺💖

Anon for real how did you know I would wake up early with my body screaming with the physical symptoms of stress, go "perhaps browsing Tumblr for a few minutes will help me calm down so I can go back to sleep one more hour," and IMMEDIATELY see this.

Thank you so much, I'll do my best!

(Everything should be fine, it's just those few slides here and there in the powerpoint presentation that get rather technical so I really need to make sure I don’t accidentally have Freudian slips on the technobabble, forget to talk about X or Y, or start rambling because I forgot my speech and started panicking)

[lutiaslayton]

Bahaha alright, alright, you win

Heads Up, Seven Up!

Rules: Post the last seven lines of your current WIP.

I was tagged for this at least three or four times by now, but never actually committed to doing it. Today's tag was from @wordsofawanderingsoul, but if memory serves I was tagged at least once by @101flavoursofweird, probably twice. So since you are so insistent... Welp, guess now's the time to play along, for a change: here's an excerpt of the WIP I have been working on for the past week!

...What? These ARE the last lines from my current WIP, I even submitted the complete chapter to my PhD directors just Monday for beta-reading! (because it most likely sucks)

Hm, I see, I see. You were expecting something fandom-related. Well, here goes nothing:

Oh wait, I didn’t actually write those. Well, I mean, yes I did write that, but I was just transcribing the official novels, so it's not like I wrote wrote those. Oops.

Uh... Sigh, I guess there is no choice, huh? Well, since the last SLS chapter dates back to April 1st, I guess I will indulge you with an excerpt from Chapter VI, The Dining Philosophers Problem. Stop reading here if you want to wait for the full chapter to be complete!

---

Unbeknownst to Hershel as he was lost in thought, Brenda studied him up and down, her irises evidently moving like a yo-yo as she evaluated the exact height of the item of her attention. “For someone so shy and discreet, it’s quite unexpected to see you with a hat like this. It looks funny—” She saw him startle as he was brought back to reality, then lower his eyes and shoulders in embarrassment when he processed her words, so she instantly corrected: “—but it suits you, Hershel, it really does!”

“It compliments your face,” Clark added with a light shrug.

Claire’s smile grew wider, as she regained some of her energy and playfulness. “Yes— This is exactly what I thought when I saw it. It just looks so perfect on your head! And I thought you needed a little something to give you a confidence boost,” she explained as she sneakily elbowed her boyfriend. He looked like he wanted to argue, but words were failing him. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the red flushing through his cheeks ended up speaking in his stead.

Clark gave a short, amused huff. “Outside of class, sure. But if it’s about the moments when you’re teaching, I don’t think you’ll need a ‘confidence boost.’”

“Well, he is a lot younger than what most expect of professors, and you can’t exactly tell me that he naturally reeks of authority,” Andrew retorted bluntly. Turning back to Hershel, he added: “The hat makes you look taller, so it will definitely help you command respect in the class. You’ll need it.”

His eyebrows arched in an embarrassed, slightly beaten up expression. “Thanks… I suppose.”

“Ah, don’t mind me, I’m just messing with you,” he immediately corrected while waving a dismissive hand. “You love explaining things, and you love having an audience. You will do great.”

This caught both his attention and confusion. “Me? An audience?” He frowned and blinked. “You make it sound like I enjoy being the centre of attention.”

“Hershel, don’t lie to yourself,” Brenda piped up with a sassy grin. “You totally have a taste for the dramatic.”

Clark crossed his arms, adorning the same expression. “One of the reasons you will make a great teacher is that you’ll keep your class at the edge of their seats. As soon as you’re about to explain a new find, you always have to act in such a cryptic way. Always keeping the suspense for as long as you can.”

His eyes were now trying to look at anything but the table. Grabbing the brim of his hat and slightly lowering it over his face ended up being quite the effective solution. “I’m— I’m not? What are you all talking about?”

“You are, Hershel,” Claire laughed softly. “And that’s another thing I love about you—you’re not even doing it on purpose. You just love telling stories, and you don’t even realise it.”

---

And since I need to play by the rules, I hereby tag @alex-r-kingston, @spyrothefox, @the-river-of-light, @magicwhiskers29, @stormflute, @furtiveseal, and whoever reading this who wants to share excerpts from their works!

Anyway I hope you don’t mind the longer post, I figured that since I had been tagged more than three times by now, I might as well do it three times in one /j

[lutiaslayton]

The timeline thing is a godsend!! Is there any chance or you creating one that is year based, instead of days? This is more intuitive than any other writing/plotting timeliness I've been able to find.

Hi, thank you and I'm glad this is (somewhat) helpful to you!

To be entirely honest, the timeline I am using for my own story purposes got even MORE insane with even more options, and I've been wanting to share that template as well. But unfortunately... Making it "I don't know how to code 😭" friendly is insanely hard (even more so because now I'm using a python script to automatically generate the main HTML file out of sub-files + a number of parameters that can adjust things such as which time period is shown, how wide/thin the time scale is, custom elements for the size of icons and such, etc, and ALSO by far the most important detail, my timeline now actually has a smooth transition between day X and day X+1 instead of having a blank that creates an offset every time the clock strikes midnight, I'm so sorry that the currently downloadable version has that issue in horizontal mode), and unfortunately I just don't have the free time to make that right now (<- PhD student with way too many side projects).

I could try sharing the current state of my timeline as it is now, but I don't want to do that because it's like. full of spoilers for my own fanfic for obvious reasons lmfao. So for the time being I guess I can just share a screenshot of what it looks like and just how insane I am:

Regarding your question on the time scale: you could change that yourself by changing the contents of the svg file named "scale.svg" in the chr folder. It is actually a text file, not an image, and hopefully the logic behind it can be guessed easily enough! So if you know what exactly you want, and if you're willing to risk tinkering with it yourself, you can make a backup of that file, remove/change a few lines of code in the scale.svg file (don't rename it or move it around, change exclusively the file "scale.svg"), then reload your main timeline HTML page in order to see what that does.

The numbers in that file are X/Y coordinates for the most part, so by adding/moving/removing vertical bars, you could transform that 24-hour scale into a year scale. I guess it's convenient that a day has 24 hours and a year has 12 months! You could start first by deleting one in two hour bars and renaming the labels from "XX:XX" to month names. After that if you want to add the days... Well, it'll be trickier, but hopefully you'll have figured out a bit better how the logic of that file works so you'll be able to add these smaller day marks through a bit of trial and error.

......After looking at the state of my SVG file actually that might be a bit trickier. However, I have good news for you: you can copy-paste the code into the website SvgPathEditor in order to make your editing process much easier! All you have to do is copy-paste only the part of the code that looks like "M0 20 0 50M300 20 300 50M600 20 600 50M900 20 900" (the logic here is "M 0 20 0 50" = one vertical bar that starts at coordinates (0, 20) and ends at coordinates (0, 50), so it's just a list of the vertical bars one after the other. Sorry it's much less clear than I remembered it ^^')

(EDIT: I just hope you don't need to account for leap years, because due to the way the timeline is coded, I don't think it can afford to do that unless you make your scale so that it works by four years instead of only one. And let's not even get started on the "sometimes it's a new century so there's no leap year but some centuries do start with a leap year anyway" rule.)

All that being said, thank you again for your kind message, I'm sorry I can't do more than that for the time being (and you shouldn't hold your breath waiting for an update, I honestly don't know when / if it will ever have the time to happen :')), and good luck! I hope what I gave with the current zip file + this reply's advice will be good enough for you.

(EDIT²: For people who never heard of the original timeline post, here it is! It's a tool I made forever ago that lets you create a timeline in order to keep track of what each character does at what time in your own stories.)

[lutiaslayton]

aaaaaaaa Thank you so much 🥹 I haven't actually done much in the past twenty-four hours aside from sleeping and watching Youtube, so unfortunately despite my plans I have been hit by the train of procrastination fjdksjfm. Still hope to get that sorted out soon, it feels so weird for me to not have done anything concrete by the end of the day

so far I think the most I've done since yesterday was get back to my favourite out-of-bounds spot in genshin, draw a most likely completely inaccurate graph of how an electron interacts with quantum fields, and sort through my Zotero library and clean up the section about particle physics because I am a hopeless nerd

but yes I think the one thing I will be doing that I have missed the most in the past few weeks will be touching grass. and fighting procrastination.

(also no need to start calling me doc in 2024. please don't xD)

[lutiaslayton]

Hi! I’m just curious: how do you pronounce Lutias? I’ve been reading it like loo-TEE-ahs, but I get the feeling that isn’t right 😅

Bahaha oh me oh my, thanks for your consideration, that sure is a question I was not expecting to ever be asked! 😳

The real intended pronunciation would be [LU]-[tee-ah-s], in two syllables and with the French way of saying "u"... But unless you are French yourself (and/or you speak a different language which also has the equivalent of the French u alongside its phonemes, and/or even if your native language doesn't have it you have learned to speak a language that does and you've grown used to knowing how to pronounce it), I don't think you have high odds of getting it right spontaneously. Which is sort of why I don't ever really expect anyone who isn't French to get it "right" lol, and I'm okay with that.

Saying it [LOO]-[tee-ah-s] (and trying to make it so that the "tias" part is as close to only one syllable as possible, it's really meant to be "Lu-tias" with two syllables) would be closest to how I've been reading it, and nailing the French u would be the cherry on top that I don't expect any English speaker to get right haha. The French u simply isn't a sound that shows up in English, so that's why most English speakers struggle to say it correctly right off the bat.

---

And now if you're curious about why I have a French-sounding name even if I am terminally online and most active in English communities, it's simply because I have had that name ever since I discovered the internet... back at a time when I barely even was able to speak English, and only was about to interact with French websites and communities.

Historically, the reason why this name stuck with me for almost fifteen years by now (holy shoot I'm old?) is because when I came up with it (I was like, what, eleven or twelve maybe?), my mom asked me what internet handle I had found, I read it aloud for her, and she said happily "Oh, that's very poetic, it sounds a bit like Lutèce!" (Lutèce being the old name of the city that would later become Paris, aka the capital of France if you didn't know)

Now, I was not getting a lot of compliments from my family back in that time (other than "nice, you're good at school, not that we were expecting anything less. Why'd you make that one mistake here? You could've avoided that easily"), let alone compliments related to my creative side of things (but dw we're good now, we learned to communicate and it's all good <3). So basically, my mom actually liking that name, a name I had created by myself, and her saying spontaneously that she liked it, really stuck to me, haha. To the extent that I'm still keeping it to this day.

(Also, her comment should give a bit more insight about how to pronounce it haha)

(and nobody needs to know that it actually was me fusing the names "Lugia" and "Latias" and that it ended up with the French "u" because I didn't even know that Lugia, even in French, is meant to not be read with a French u. nobody needs to know that. Twelve-year-old me had totally intended for it to be a reference to Lutèce all along. Kokorico.)

[lutiaslayton]

Hey just a heads up, I think you might’ve accidentally put spoilers in that post, assuming that that’s Clay at the top there. They look very different from the last time we saw them. If it isn’t just ignore this.

You saw nothing.