[CE][T] Paint Ghosts Over Everything ●

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ikuzonos
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[CE][T] Paint Ghosts Over Everything ●

Post by ikuzonos »

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Made for the Butterfly Effect competition, hosted by Awesome2464 and DJJ6800. As such, this case takes place in an Alternate Universe. Spoilers for all of AA4, and implied spoilers for AA5.
Part One
Part Two
Spoiler : Screenshots :
ImageImageImageImage
Spoiler : Credits (Minor Spoilers) :
Playtesting: sundiance
Additional Sprites: Yuneia, ApolloGrimoire (Pearl), AABattery, ApolloGrimoire (Trucy), enigma, ApolloGrimoire (Fulbright), SuperAj13 (Apollo)
Backgrounds: Umineko Console (Gavin Law Offices, Courthouse Hallway), Lind’s Background Pack (Alleyway), Court Records (Various in-game backgrounds & images)
Other: Starora (Photograph), Court Records (Bottle, Letter, Smith Profile)
Spoiler : Walkthrough :
Disclaimer: This case is less of a mystery and more of a character study. In other words, it’s not hard. This walkthrough displays exactly what you need to do to continue, and nothing more. I highly recommend examining and presenting (or pressing in court) whatever you can.
Opening
Exhaust talk options (3)
Office
Examine the desk.
Borscht Bowl Club
Exhaust talk options (2)
Examine bottles
Move to alleyway
Alleyway
Talk.
Move to Detention Centre
If you don’t have the option, double check the Borscht Bowl Club.
Detention Centre (2)
Exhaust talk options (3)

Trial
Either option
No
(Summary) Press statement 3
What was the scene like?
Press harder
(Before the Murder) Press statement 1
Number of people
Something fishy
Go through with the trap
(Moment of Truth) Press statements 2, 3, 5
(After pressing statement 5) Present Deadly Bottle
Hold your ground
(Obey: Bad End.)
(Two Phone Calls) Press statement 5
Central Prison
Present Photograph
Talk.
Do as you are told.
Spoiler : Bonus :
If the world of this case intrigues you, consider reading Atroquinine is Thicker Than Water, a series I'm writing that goes into significantly more depth about this universe and the characters in them.
Last edited by ikuzonos on Wed Nov 29, 2023 6:49 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: [CE][T] Paint Ghosts Over Everything ●

Post by Awsome2464 »

This was a fun alternate universe to explore through and worth playing. I'll be sure to check out the more in-depth fan fiction, as this universe is definitely one that seems to have a lot of thought put into it.
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Re: [CE][T] Paint Ghosts Over Everything ●

Post by DJJ6800 »

You mean to get the full story, we have to...READ?! I mean I know that we're already technically doing reading with these fancases but...that's just...too much...WORK! /j

But seriously, this is a fun little case to play. And I'm always a fan of Kristoph so...check it out!
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Re: [CE][T] Paint Ghosts Over Everything ●

Post by ZekromFan57 »

This was a fun case overall! While I usually prefer cases that have more of a focus on puzzles/contradictions, I really enjoyed this case because of its intriguing story, which drew me in to the point where, when it ended, I was extremely disappointed that it had just ended there...
Spoiler : :
until I saw that there's a continuation fanfic! I guess I'll be reading through another Kristoph fan fiction, since I'm addicted to this character.
I would highly recommend this case to any Kristoph fans out there, as this is a very well-crafted and believable AU.
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Re: [CE][T] Paint Ghosts Over Everything ●

Post by drvonkitty »

I just finished playing through this, and it was a neat little game! A bit on the shorter side, but I'd recommend it to anyone intrigued by the premise. Some thoughts in the spoiler:
Spoiler : :
I can tell you're a writer based on the strength of your dialogue. Writing believable dialogue is one of the hardest things to do successfully in an AA game, and you clearly have a great grasp of it. All of the characters were generally in character as well, though with a few issues that I'll elaborate on later.

I'm not sure how many other cases you've played on AAO, but this case reminds me a lot of DWaM's later works. The point of the case is to tell a story—about this world in which Trucy was adopted by Kristoph—and the AA gameplay medium is used as a narrative device to convey the story you want to tell. As such, we're not really playing through this trial like a typical game. There's no mystery to solve, and the player isn't particularly challenged to figure anything out. This isn't a bad thing by any means, but there are some issues with how you execute it.

The point of a trial in AA is generally this: the prosecution presents a rock solid argument, and we have to go through evidence and testimony to fight against their argument and try and prove our client's innocence. That formula isn't really possible here, because Kristoph is guilty! But because of this, the way you have the trial segment structured doesn't really work.

The problem is that the prosecution never really presents a compelling case. We have several prompts early on (during the opening statement!) in which Apollo points out explicitly how disorganized the prosecution's case is. We don't even get to the actual proof of the murder until the third cross-examination from Orly. This causes the case to feel oddly disjointed, which I think is the opposite effect than you would want in this situation. The reason I say that is because you have a really interesting premise grounded in dramatic irony: Apollo is trying to prove Kristoph is innocent, while we know all along that he's guilty. Since that's the case, why shouldn't the prosecution's case be decisive? Having us witness Apollo desperately try to fight the prosecution's case, while we are fully aware he's going to fail, would be a lot more effective in my opinion. To do this, the prosecution's case shouldn't be disorganized—it should be brutally effective. The opening statement should be decisive, and really, I think you only need two testimonies. Orly to testify about the murder occurring, and Phoenix to testify about the victim's bald head. As it stands right now, Gumshoe's testimony and Orly's first testimony... well, they don't really have much purpose. The only gameplay is pressing statements and selecting "there's a problem" to get Apollo to point out an issue. This isn't really that engaging for the player! For this kind of trial (where it's really just a narrative device), I would recommend to keep things highly simple and only have one or two evidence presents. Here's how I would do it:

von Karma presents the basics of her case. We have two pieces of evidence: the deadly bottle, and a photograph of the crime scene that contains the two pictures (the one with Zak in his hat and the one with his bald head). She tells the court that Kristoph Gavin struck Enigmar with the bottle and killed him. They have two witnesses who can prove this. Around this point, Kristoph mentions the cards wreathed in blue flame, which will come up later. Apollo notes how strange that statement is. First, Orly testifies. It's basically the same as the current second testimony. She states in her testimony that the bottle was cracked, as well as the fact that a card was missing. After the testimony but before the CE, Franziska tells us about the ashes found at Kristoph's home, and Kristoph objects and makes the argument about his daughter. Next, in the CE, Apollo points out the contradiction to the bottle in evidence. Rather than do this through a press, Apollo should just present the bottle on a statement where she says the bottle was cracked.

This leads to the investigation of the crime scene, and Kristoph objects. Apollo presses on despite Kristoph's opposition, we get a recess, and then back to the trial.

Phoenix testifies, and when we press the statement about what Kristoph said, we're offered a prompt to present the crime scene photo to show how Kristoph shouldn't have known about the victim's bald head. This is when Apollo starts to realize that Kristoph is guilty. He thinks back to what Kristoph said earlier about the blue flame, and asks Phoenix about the color of the cards. Phoenix tells him blue, and Apollo has his breakdown as he realizes that Kristoph is guilty.

The bottle comes back, and we prove Kristoph is the real killer. The trial ends with a guilty verdict.

I know that's a pretty significant restructuring of that part of your case, but I think it would be substantially more effective for accomplishing what you want to do narratively. Plus, it would be relatively short and sweet. You have lots of prompts in the current setup of the trial, but I would actually suggest against it. The point of the trial section is to advance the narrative--all we really need are those couple of basic evidence presents to accomplish that.

Now, on to some other matters. Re: characters, I think Trucy and Kristoph need some work. Trucy's main problem is a lack of screentime. We don't get enough time with her to really sense how being adopted by Kristoph changed her personality. There's definitely some hints there, but I really think the case would benefit by spending a lot more time with Trucy. Re: Kristoph, he's just a bit too... stoic, maybe? He's the coolest defense in the west, but he feels less confident and cool and more robotic and stiff. I'd spend some time focusing on his dialogue in AJ and see if you can adjust it a bit. It's not bad by any means, but it felt a little off as I was playing it.

In terms of the overall story... to be honest, it's just too short. I know you have that fanfic (which I hope to get around to reading sometime!) that goes into a lot more depth, but this case just doesn't give us enough information about the world. We get some flashbacks to Apollo and Trucy's meeting and how their relationship progressed, and I found myself wishing that those flashbacks were actually shown to us as full sections of the game. You also reference Trucy being accused of murder at one point, which I assume is explained in the full story, but it feels a bit jarring that it's dumped on us here and never really explained.

I think you could add a lot more to this case, and if you do, you'd have something really interesting on your hands. One thing you could consider doing is telling a dual narrative--something cool about the editor is the ability to transfer variables between cases. That way you could have a "Present" case (currently part 1) and the "Three Years Ago" case (currently part 2), and we could switch back and forth between them. That way, you could slowly unravel the story and explain the nature of this AU. Of course, that'd be a lot of work, and you may just want to keep the details contained to your fanfic, which is fine. I just think you have the potential to write a really compelling case if you expand upon it.

A few other random details. You could benefit from using some more sound effects, more shakes, more flashes, and more variations in the text speed. All of these are minute, but they can build up to really improve the presentation of your case. The way you use fades is a little strange as well--you only ever include fade ins, but never fade outs. Usually, fades occur in two parts, where we fade the screen out and then back in on the new character/bg/etc. This is a fairly easy way to improve presentation. In a couple places, you use asterisks for emphasis like *this*. I don't believe this is ever done in the canon games--usually, the text is either capitalized or in orange to show emphasis. Generally, I'd recommend you check out this guide by Enthalpy. It contains lots of little tips and tricks about presentation that can go a long way.

Alright, that's all I've got for now. This ended up being a lot longer than I expected, lol. Overall, despite all my comments, I really enjoyed this! It was especially impressive for a relatively new author on AAO. A lot of cases fail in the basics, and your case avoids a lot of the common pitfalls I'm used to seeing from new authors. Overall, great work!

By the way, I noticed you never have a wide shot of the courtroom when the audience is talking. If you'd like, I can make the miniature sprites for you to add. Since you're only using canon characters, it'd actually be pretty quick and easy for me to do. Feel free to shoot me a PM.
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ikuzonos
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Re: [CE][T] Paint Ghosts Over Everything ●

Post by ikuzonos »

Awsome2464 wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 8:08 am This was a fun alternate universe to explore through and worth playing. I'll be sure to check out the more in-depth fan fiction, as this universe is definitely one that seems to have a lot of thought put into it.
DJJ6800 wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 8:45 am You mean to get the full story, we have to...READ?! I mean I know that we're already technically doing reading with these fancases but...that's just...too much...WORK! /j

But seriously, this is a fun little case to play. And I'm always a fan of Kristoph so...check it out!
ZekromFan57 wrote: Fri May 14, 2021 10:42 pm This was a fun case overall! While I usually prefer cases that have more of a focus on puzzles/contradictions, I really enjoyed this case because of its intriguing story, which drew me in to the point where, when it ended, I was extremely disappointed that it had just ended there...
Spoiler : :
until I saw that there's a continuation fanfic! I guess I'll be reading through another Kristoph fan fiction, since I'm addicted to this character.
I would highly recommend this case to any Kristoph fans out there, as this is a very well-crafted and believable AU.
Thank you! I've put a lot of time and work into this universe, and I appreciate the interest in both the case and the rest of the written work. I did want the case to span a greater period of time and cover other aspects, but ultimately, AAO's casemaker is not the best medium for the full story I plan to tell. This is the first case I've finished (and the second one I've even started), so I leaned into my strengths for it; I'm planning to have more puzzles and contradictions in my next case, now that I have a decent understanding of the editor.
drvonkitty wrote: Sat May 15, 2021 12:23 am I just finished playing through this, and it was a neat little game! A bit on the shorter side, but I'd recommend it to anyone intrigued by the premise. Some thoughts in the spoiler:
Spoiler : :
I can tell you're a writer based on the strength of your dialogue. Writing believable dialogue is one of the hardest things to do successfully in an AA game, and you clearly have a great grasp of it. All of the characters were generally in character as well, though with a few issues that I'll elaborate on later.

Thank you, that's nice to hear. I've been writing for about seven years now, but I was still worried I'd end up butchering everyone.

I'm not sure how many other cases you've played on AAO, but this case reminds me a lot of DWaM's later works. The point of the case is to tell a story—about this world in which Trucy was adopted by Kristoph—and the AA gameplay medium is used as a narrative device to convey the story you want to tell. As such, we're not really playing through this trial like a typical game. There's no mystery to solve, and the player isn't particularly challenged to figure anything out. This isn't a bad thing by any means, but there are some issues with how you execute it.

The point of a trial in AA is generally this: the prosecution presents a rock solid argument, and we have to go through evidence and testimony to fight against their argument and try and prove our client's innocence. That formula isn't really possible here, because Kristoph is guilty! But because of this, the way you have the trial segment structured doesn't really work.

The problem is that the prosecution never really presents a compelling case. We have several prompts early on (during the opening statement!) in which Apollo points out explicitly how disorganized the prosecution's case is. We don't even get to the actual proof of the murder until the third cross-examination from Orly. This causes the case to feel oddly disjointed, which I think is the opposite effect than you would want in this situation. The reason I say that is because you have a really interesting premise grounded in dramatic irony: Apollo is trying to prove Kristoph is innocent, while we know all along that he's guilty. Since that's the case, why shouldn't the prosecution's case be decisive? Having us witness Apollo desperately try to fight the prosecution's case, while we are fully aware he's going to fail, would be a lot more effective in my opinion. To do this, the prosecution's case shouldn't be disorganized—it should be brutally effective. The opening statement should be decisive, and really, I think you only need two testimonies. Orly to testify about the murder occurring, and Phoenix to testify about the victim's bald head. As it stands right now, Gumshoe's testimony and Orly's first testimony... well, they don't really have much purpose. The only gameplay is pressing statements and selecting "there's a problem" to get Apollo to point out an issue. This isn't really that engaging for the player! For this kind of trial (where it's really just a narrative device), I would recommend to keep things highly simple and only have one or two evidence presents. Here's how I would do it:

I've played a couple of DWaM's cases, and now that you mention it I guess I had some inspiration there. I definitely understand where you're coming from here; flow of trial logic has never been my strength. Thank you for your feedback on this.

von Karma presents the basics of her case. We have two pieces of evidence: the deadly bottle, and a photograph of the crime scene that contains the two pictures (the one with Zak in his hat and the one with his bald head). She tells the court that Kristoph Gavin struck Enigmar with the bottle and killed him. They have two witnesses who can prove this. Around this point, Kristoph mentions the cards wreathed in blue flame, which will come up later. Apollo notes how strange that statement is. First, Orly testifies. It's basically the same as the current second testimony. She states in her testimony that the bottle was cracked, as well as the fact that a card was missing. After the testimony but before the CE, Franziska tells us about the ashes found at Kristoph's home, and Kristoph objects and makes the argument about his daughter. Next, in the CE, Apollo points out the contradiction to the bottle in evidence. Rather than do this through a press, Apollo should just present the bottle on a statement where she says the bottle was cracked.

This leads to the investigation of the crime scene, and Kristoph objects. Apollo presses on despite Kristoph's opposition, we get a recess, and then back to the trial.

Phoenix testifies, and when we press the statement about what Kristoph said, we're offered a prompt to present the crime scene photo to show how Kristoph shouldn't have known about the victim's bald head. This is when Apollo starts to realize that Kristoph is guilty. He thinks back to what Kristoph said earlier about the blue flame, and asks Phoenix about the color of the cards. Phoenix tells him blue, and Apollo has his breakdown as he realizes that Kristoph is guilty.

The bottle comes back, and we prove Kristoph is the real killer. The trial ends with a guilty verdict.

I know that's a pretty significant restructuring of that part of your case, but I think it would be substantially more effective for accomplishing what you want to do narratively. Plus, it would be relatively short and sweet. You have lots of prompts in the current setup of the trial, but I would actually suggest against it. The point of the trial section is to advance the narrative--all we really need are those couple of basic evidence presents to accomplish that.

I see, thank you! I'm not sure if or when I'd be able to go back and edit things, as like you said it would be a substantial restructure and with how much I like to fiddle around, it could take me a really long time. Despite this, I'll keep your feedback in mind for my future cases. You make a lot of excellent points and your help is deeply appreciated.

Now, on to some other matters. Re: characters, I think Trucy and Kristoph need some work. Trucy's main problem is a lack of screentime. We don't get enough time with her to really sense how being adopted by Kristoph changed her personality. There's definitely some hints there, but I really think the case would benefit by spending a lot more time with Trucy. Re: Kristoph, he's just a bit too... stoic, maybe? He's the coolest defense in the west, but he feels less confident and cool and more robotic and stiff. I'd spend some time focusing on his dialogue in AJ and see if you can adjust it a bit. It's not bad by any means, but it felt a little off as I was playing it.

In terms of the overall story... to be honest, it's just too short. I know you have that fanfic (which I hope to get around to reading sometime!) that goes into a lot more depth, but this case just doesn't give us enough information about the world. We get some flashbacks to Apollo and Trucy's meeting and how their relationship progressed, and I found myself wishing that those flashbacks were actually shown to us as full sections of the game. You also reference Trucy being accused of murder at one point, which I assume is explained in the full story, but it feels a bit jarring that it's dumped on us here and never really explained.

I think you could add a lot more to this case, and if you do, you'd have something really interesting on your hands. One thing you could consider doing is telling a dual narrative--something cool about the editor is the ability to transfer variables between cases. That way you could have a "Present" case (currently part 1) and the "Three Years Ago" case (currently part 2), and we could switch back and forth between them. That way, you could slowly unravel the story and explain the nature of this AU. Of course, that'd be a lot of work, and you may just want to keep the details contained to your fanfic, which is fine. I just think you have the potential to write a really compelling case if you expand upon it.

Duly noted on all counts. As much as I wanted to get deeper into this, I didn't have enough time on my hands to fully reconstruct my entire narrative in the casemaker (or at least in a way that I'd be proud of). Again, restructuring the whole thing would take me a lot of time, but I'll definitely consider it.

A few other random details. You could benefit from using some more sound effects, more shakes, more flashes, and more variations in the text speed. All of these are minute, but they can build up to really improve the presentation of your case. The way you use fades is a little strange as well--you only ever include fade ins, but never fade outs. Usually, fades occur in two parts, where we fade the screen out and then back in on the new character/bg/etc. This is a fairly easy way to improve presentation. In a couple places, you use asterisks for emphasis like *this*. I don't believe this is ever done in the canon games--usually, the text is either capitalized or in orange to show emphasis. Generally, I'd recommend you check out this guide by Enthalpy. It contains lots of little tips and tricks about presentation that can go a long way.

Believe it or not, this released version has significantly more sound effects etc than it did right when I first submitted it. Even so, I'll see about adding more for polish. I was struggling with getting all the fades to work properly (still learning all parts of the editor), which lead me to cutting the problematic fades entirely to avoid that headache. I'll have to look deeper into it to see what I was doing wrong. Asterisk use is noted; I'll take that out eventually.

Alright, that's all I've got for now. This ended up being a lot longer than I expected, lol. Overall, despite all my comments, I really enjoyed this! It was especially impressive for a relatively new author on AAO. A lot of cases fail in the basics, and your case avoids a lot of the common pitfalls I'm used to seeing from new authors. Overall, great work!

By the way, I noticed you never have a wide shot of the courtroom when the audience is talking. If you'd like, I can make the miniature sprites for you to add. Since you're only using canon characters, it'd actually be pretty quick and easy for me to do. Feel free to shoot me a PM.

Thank you! It means a lot that you spent the time to fully review my case. I knew it would be far from perfect, but I did my best to avoid falling into common traps in casemaking. I still see the Debug menu when I close my eyes sometimes. Also, that's an incredible kind offer of you, and I may take you up on your offer if and when I make major edits.
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Re: [CE][T] Paint Ghosts Over Everything ●

Post by Vats »

WAIT WHAT PEOPLE STILL USE THIS FORUM IN 2021 AHHHHHHHHHHH
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Re: [CE][T] Paint Ghosts Over Everything ●

Post by Enthalpy »

I gave the game a play. I only figured out what the case was trying to be after playing it, so I thought the case was alright on a first playthrough but would probably enjoy it much more on the second. I can spoiler this if ikuzonos wants, but here's some non-spoilery guidance on how the case "works."

This case isn't about "finding the truth". First, this case shows us the basic premise of a much larger fanfic, and there are plenty of plot points which I assume are only explained in the fic. Second, although this is technically a trial, the logic of the trial is simple and the trial is paced as if the player already knows how the facts go. (Which the player does.)

Instead, the trial is the inner story of a frame story. Although the inner story is where we spend most of our time, the real emotional weight is in the outer story, and the case depends heavily on the reader to interpret events in the present based on the flashback, both in terms of facts and the emotional significance.

If you're in the mood for a character study, give it a try! I'm honestly impressed by the characterization: this is a very good Kristoph. This one deserves much more attention than it's gotten.
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Re: [CE][T] Paint Ghosts Over Everything ●

Post by ikuzonos »

Enthalpy wrote: Sat Oct 30, 2021 7:18 pm I gave the game a play. I only figured out what the case was trying to be after playing it, so I thought the case was alright on a first playthrough but would probably enjoy it much more on the second. I can spoiler this if ikuzonos wants, but here's some non-spoilery guidance on how the case "works."

This case isn't about "finding the truth". First, this case shows us the basic premise of a much larger fanfic, and there are plenty of plot points which I assume are only explained in the fic. Second, although this is technically a trial, the logic of the trial is simple and the trial is paced as if the player already knows how the facts go. (Which the player does.)

Instead, the trial is the inner story of a frame story. Although the inner story is where we spend most of our time, the real emotional weight is in the outer story, and the case depends heavily on the reader to interpret events in the present based on the flashback, both in terms of facts and the emotional significance.

If you're in the mood for a character study, give it a try! I'm honestly impressed by the characterization: this is a very good Kristoph. This one deserves much more attention than it's gotten.
Thank you, I appreciate your feedback! I think this can stay unspoiled; it's definitely not a traditional AAO case and people should probably know that going into it.
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Re: [CE][T] Paint Ghosts Over Everything ●

Post by GuardianDreamer »

Hello, I finished playing through this case. Thought I would do some rambling brain thoughts that came to my mind.
Spoiler : Case spoilers :
Before I started this case, I had this thought in my mind that I'd examine what Paint Ghosts Over Everything even means, as a title. It briefly led me down this strange path where I tried to figure it out. It can be shortened to PGOE, which doesn't immediately call anything to mind, but then my brainrot led me to think that it kind of looks similar to POG if you rearrange the letters. Finally, I've uncovered the secrets! My brain then went off on a completely unrelated tangent about a VTuber who frequently says "pog" a lot that I won't even try to replicate in text. ... Then I remembered that search engines exist and I quickly found out that the title most likely comes from a poetry book that I haven't read. Yes, that probably makes more sense than where my idea was going, doesn't it?

So this was an interesting little AU, and it made me think of the idea of "closure" and how it's used in a lot of stories. I feel like a lot of people believe that closure is ultimately very good in stories, with perhaps some loose ends here and there being acceptable. But I've enjoyed stories that had sort of the opposite of closure before. That were virulently opposed to telling themselves cleanly and giving the satisfaction of closure to a reader. Sometimes I wonder how much of this is a cultural storytelling thing, since the idea of "closure" being an ultimate "good" in stories is one that I've seen people disagree with before, while others hold it as a basic writing tenet. I think now I lean more towards the idea of it being a cultural storytelling thing, since I can think of some classic stories that would probably deeply upset anyone looking for any kind of closure, and that I believe would be made much worse if they tried to conform to that.

The reason I'm rambling about this is because Paint Ghosts Over Everything sort of does this, and sort of doesn't. I'm well aware that the AU continues on in a fanfic that you wrote, and maybe with that in mind all this talk will seem a bit silly. I don't mind seeming silly though. It's not like Paint Ghosts Over Everything is aggressively against the idea of providing closure at all times, as much as it chooses key things to not provide clean closure on. Chief among them is just about everything that has to do with Kristoph's mindset and what influenced his actions, whether he held any real affection towards his adopted daughter in this AU (even if it was twisted by him being, well, Kristoph) and the assumptions we might default to knowing what Kristoph is like in the canonical Apollo Justice story. Even in canonical Ace Attorney, I think there's room for interpretation regarding Kristoph's character, and the fact that they kind of stopped focusing on him after AJ means there's a lot of room for fanfiction to explore those ambiguities. That's pretty neat, isn't it? Oh yeah, and there's also the fact that Apollo and Trucy know they're related, but within the case itself we just see a brief flashback to that. I found the lack of "closure" there pretty interesting too.

Despite the fact that this case is told from Apollo's point of view, I actually found myself thinking of Trucy's point of view much more. It's probably where this idea of "closure vs. lack of closure" came into my mind while going through this case. Due to the way the story is structured, we only get to see brief snippets of Kristoph being channeled. But even if Trucy gets the full conversation that we aren't exactly privy to, it's not like she ends up knowing that much more than we do. She still ends up wondering about what Kristoph's motives were and doesn't really get the peace that she was probably looking for. All she can really do is make an earnest attempt to connect with him, try to figure things out, and then move on once that ends up being very very messy rather than something clean and clear-cut that fixes everything. I found this aspect of the story pretty interesting, hence why most of my thoughts are about it (directly or indirectly). Because it's certainly true that in reality, that sort of proper "closure" with someone doesn't always happen, and the fact that the Ace Attorney-verse has magic spirit channeling powers doesn't help all that much. Many stories end up like Trucy's, where she ends up with more questions than answers. Perhaps she defaults to the idea that Kristoph was just using her all along, but there's always that bit of doubt, isn't there? Human relationships are super complex.

I acknowledge the fact that like I said before, all of this might seem silly, since the fanfic based on this AU probably provides more closure or whatever (or maybe it doesn't, ask future GD who's read it). But the fact remains that you are (I assume) aware of the fact that some people who play through this case will experience it by reaching the end of it, and deciding they've had their fill of this AU and not pursue the fanfic, so I think this idea of "closure" still stands for me. Come to think of it, now I wonder about what this story must be like for people who read the fanfic while never playing through the case (I have no idea, ask alternate universe GD who read through the fic first and probably came up with something entirely different).

Minor nitpick: I found the presentation a little confusing at times. More specifically, the use of "Three Years Ago" in timestamps was fairly confusing. I recall a moment near the end of the trial where a timestamp said "three years ago" and I thought for a brief moment that it must have been set three years further back once again (so six years from the "present"), until the fact that it was a conversation between Apollo and Kristoph in his cell discussing the trial made it clear I was mistaken. That might just be me though.

Best of luck with your future projects, I've been going through them in a weird order (I played what was out of Last Chance first, now this, and I plan on playing Fragments next which is probably an odd way to experience your work). Thank you for making.
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Re: [CE][T] Paint Ghosts Over Everything ●

Post by Tibi1234 »

A pretty interesting fan case and look into an alternate universe to Apollo Justice, and I will look out for your future projects. I also spend quite a while trying to wrap my head around the fan case's title before it all making sense while I played it. I recommend this to anyone interested in an interesting alternate timeline to Apollo Justice.
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