[T][C][CE] Make My Life Worse ●

[GuardianDreamer]

Make My Life Worse

This is basically what this story is like

Here's the link for it: https://aaonline.fr/player.php?trial_id=144414

Spoiler : Synopsis :

It's the year 2022, in a world where a few people suddenly started developing superpowers during the 20th century. This is highly rare and still not fully understood. Some use their powers for good, some for evil, and some just use it as a tool for daily life or in their careers. Marnie Yao happens to be one of those rare few who has a superpower. But she doesn't really care about any of that. No, what's really important is that she's heartbroken after finding out her favorite VTuber is ending activities, and in that sad state of feeling miserable about it is where our strange tale begins.

Gameplay Note: This case has no penalties, even if you make mistakes. Present the Badge all you want.
Also, while I won't force people to read the content warnings, I will say that while this case has a lot of goofs in it, it does go into some dark and uncomfortable territory at points and I'm very fond of the balance between serious and silly. You could view this as a serious trial with far too many goofs, or a comedy trial that takes itself far too seriously.

Author's notes are at the bottom of the credits, but should only be read after finishing this story.

Spoiler : Content Warnings (spoilers, but click if you need it) :

- Discussions of self-harm and suicidal ideation (no onscreen depiction, but it's a key part of the story)
- Self-loathing and mental health struggles
- Homophobia and transphobia (mainly backstory, referenced but not depicted by any onscreen characters)

Spoiler : Credits (major spoilers, please don't click until you're finished) :

Made by GuardianDreamer (any/all), a known fujoshi and otokonoko lover.

Made for the Red Truth competition, hosted by eerew, Trybien, and Spongesonic. Thank you to all of my fellow competitors and everyone involved in the competition as well.

Thank you to all of my friends and loved ones for supporting me throughout my life.

Music sources: Liese's introduction: Fire Witch I (Boogiepop and Others anime)
Detention Center theme: Secret (Symphonic Rain)
Sydney's Theme: Nanasaki Ai's theme (Amagami)
Cecil and Lynette's Room: Break Time (Slow Damage)

Flashback, first encounter with Liese: Low (Boogiepop and Others anime)
After the flashback: Sabishii Kyoku (Amagami)

CE Moderato: Bell of Avici - Moderato (Shin Gyakuten Touhou 3)
CE Allegro(?): Bell of Avici - Allegro (Shin Gyakuten Touhou 3)
Objection: Chains of the Fallen (Noel the Mortal Fate)

Final testimony: Fire Witch II (Boogiepop and Others anime)
Putting things together at last: Hisomu Kage (Aokana)
Lynette's speech at the end: Fire Witch III (Boogiepop and Others anime)

Plays during a joke option once: Shadows Rising (Final Fantasy Stranger of Paradise)

Ending conversation with Liese: Heartfelt (Slow Damage)

Credits theme: Shuffle Shifting (Hachimitsu-Lemon × Aftergrow, based on Reimu's theme in Lotus Land Story)

Healing and Loading Complete sound effects from Shade BGM Collection Volume 3.
Dieman's objection voice clip is taken from the sound effects thread and is originally performed by J. Michael Tatum as Rintaro Okabe in Steins;Gate.

All sprites taken from the AA OC Collection Thread.
Marnie Yao, Aminta Guerrero, and Lynette Vio's sprites by Hess.
Anneliese Yorks' sprites by Fen.
Sydney Carrion and Cecil Rozen's sprites by SuperAj3, originally created for Colton Owen: Ace Attorney.
Dieman V. Evilheart's sprites by Ceres.

Backgrounds taken from the Locations thread. Thank you to Lind for the background for Cecil and Lynette's Room and Mr. Incognito/Ceres for the "outside" backgrounds during the first scene and the flashback scene, as well as the background for Marnie's office. The apartment building background where Sydney's located in the investigation is from the 900+ anime backgrounds pack, if anyone knows where it's originally from I'd appreciate knowing to give better credit.

List of notable influences on this work:

Floral Aroma in the Shrine
Blacktea with Moon
Touhou Project
SeaBed
Their Story by Tan Jiu
Soulmate (manhua)
Heaven Official's Blessing
moon: Remix RPG Adventure
UuultraC
Lemures Blue's 2 A.M.
Aviary Attorney
Conviction (SRPG)
Fate/stay Night
Boogiepop
The Caligula Effect 2
13 Sentinels
I'm In Love With The Villainess!
Vestaria Saga II: The Sacred Sword of Silvanister
SaGa Frontier
Devilman Crybaby
Slow Damage
Embraced By Autumn
Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star
Rose Seed Replica
Because We're Here ~Mohnblume und Blauerose~
Extraordinary Attorney Woo
Birushana: Rising Flower of Geppei
Atelier Ryza 2
Yakuza: Like A Dragon
Pretty Boy Detective Club
Yuri Is My Job!
Love Me For Who I Am
Christmas Tina
Needy Girl Overdose
I Belong To The Baddest Girl In School
Classmates (BL anime movie)

Author's notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xIq ... sp=sharing

Spoiler : Walkthrough :

Some buffer images in case you accidentally clicked on this, the guide is just below them.




Investigation
In general, the investigation is a very basic "exhaust talk options and then move when prompted" type of deal, but here are the exact steps.

Detention Center: Select the talk topic "You said destruction of property, right?" and then the talk topic "Can you tell me about the arrest?". Once you're done with that, you can move to the Apartment Building. Go ahead and do that.

Apartment Building: Choose the "What can you tell me?" talk topic, then the "Where did the other two go?" talk topic. This will give you access to Cecil and Lynette's Room. Move there.

Cecil and Lynette's Room: Choose the "What happened, from your point of view?" talk topic. After that, select the "Do you have any questions for me?" talk topic. Marnie will mention that she should talk with Liese after that, so move back to the Apartment Building and then move to the Detention Center.

Detention Center: A new talk conversation called "I've finished my investigation." will have unlocked. Select that, then confirm your choice (you're given the option to back out in case you want to hunt for more optional dialogue).

Note: The investigation has unique dialogue for every piece of evidence and profile that you can acquire during it for everyone you can talk to. Examining a location will bring up a menu of four options of what Marnie should do. This is all optional and you don't need to present or examine anything to continue, but I encourage reading as much as you can/want to.

Trial

Note: During each testimony, there's a unique conversation for presenting the Attorney's Badge on any statement, as well as a separate unique conversation for presenting the Yuya Merch on any statement. These change with each testimony.

CE1: Press all of Sydney's statements.

CE2: Present the Earbuds or Lynette's profile on statement 5, 6, or 7 (any of them work).
- Choose "The earbuds you were wearing before were noise-canceling", though you can choose any of the other two options and it'll loop you back to pick another choice.

CE3: Present the Cough Medicine on the fifth or last statement.
- You can choose either option on the follow-up question, though "It's about the listed side effects..." is the actual correct answer.

CE4: Present the Script on the fifth statement.

CE5: This CE has the most possible potential ways of proceeding through it, though they all lead to the same outcome.
Option 1: Present Lynette's Letter, the Superpower Analysis, or the Destroyed Camera on Dieman's second theory.
Option 2: Present Lynette's Letter, the Superpower Analysis, or the Destroyed Camera on Lynette's statement.
Option 3: Go to the end of the theories, select "I could come up with my own theory..." and then present Lynette's Letter, the Superpower Analysis, or the Destroyed Camera.

EDIT FROM 3/31/2024: If you'd like, I also wrote a couple of the characters from this trial elsewhere. More specifically, I wrote Cecil Rozen and Lynette Vio as the hosts of the Year of Luigi awards ceremony on AAO, a case competition which has a thread you can find in the Case Competitions section. While this is obviously non-canon to MMLW it does include a short prologue that IS canon to it and I like to think their interactions in the trial are true to the spirits of the characters anyway. https://aaonline.fr/player.php?trial_id=146345

[eerew]

This case is badass. You should play it NOW.

[Sonnie Celanna]

I'm going to play this as soon as I wake up, since it's four in the morning right now and I cannot appreciate it fully with tired brain.

[icannothinkofaname]

I don't have the full capacity to write a full on review (it's still early in the morning for me) but I enjoyed this case a lot. The serious stuff was well handled and the jokes were a lotta fun, as were all the side characters. And I really liked the dynamic between the two main characters. I don't wanna spoil anything by being too specific, but their interactions really felt genuine, especially when it was getting into the heavier stuff. I've always admired stories that talk about mental health and illness in a candid way, which is something I've really enjoyed in the other cases of yours that I've played. (idk if enjoyed is the right word? I guess it's more that I appreciate it?)

But, yeah. Good case. I'd recommend it, and can assure anyone reading this that it won't actually make your life worse.

[Trybien]

Made my life better, I hate false advertising

[DeathByAutoscroll]

Go play it. I don't have the energy to explain why. Just do it.

Spoiler : Low energy explaination with spoilers :

This is not so much of a review as more of a summerisation of ramblings from an SoC.

• It has a fun cast of characters that feel like they're making rational decisions, and actually are characters developed in the world capable of making their own decisions (noteably Marnie refusing to press some points)
• Like a hot jam pastry, it grows from very sweet to burning your tounge with a very well handled handling of some serious mental health issues, and then back to being sweet but still leaving the impression of a burnt mouth, especially during the final convo (This is all praise btw, just to be clear)
• Optional presents are all accounted for. There is flavour text everywhere that can flipflop from hilarious shenanigan like sillyness to extremely dark, like a laughing person being stabbed. Go wild!
• It's a GD case. It is extremely well written, and the mystery is executed rather well as well. The only negative thing I can possibly say is that the evidence that leads to the final solution when initially presented isn't commented on at all until the very end.

[GuardianDreamer]

I don't have the full capacity to write a full on review (it's still early in the morning for me) but I enjoyed this case a lot. The serious stuff was well handled and the jokes were a lotta fun, as were all the side characters. And I really liked the dynamic between the two main characters. I don't wanna spoil anything by being too specific, but their interactions really felt genuine, especially when it was getting into the heavier stuff. I've always admired stories that talk about mental health and illness in a candid way, which is something I've really enjoyed in the other cases of yours that I've played. (idk if enjoyed is the right word? I guess it's more that I appreciate it?)

But, yeah. Good case. I'd recommend it, and can assure anyone reading this that it won't actually make your life worse.

Thank you so much for the kind words, this was a very fun cast for me to write so I'm glad to see people enjoy them. Of course I really wanted the main duo to stand out, but I'm extremely fond of the rest of the cast too... And yes, I basically write stories that appeal to me, and also stories that I wish a younger version of me had gotten to read. So that probably explains a lot.

Made my life better, I hate false advertising

Don't lie it made it worse, you can't say one thing on Discord and then another thing on here.

Go play it. I don't have the energy to explain why. Just do it.

Spoiler : Low energy explaination with spoilers :

This is not so much of a review as more of a summerisation of ramblings from an SoC.

• It has a fun cast of characters that feel like they're making rational decisions, and actually are characters developed in the world capable of making their own decisions (noteably Marnie refusing to press some points)
• Like a hot jam pastry, it grows from very sweet to burning your tounge with a very well handled handling of some serious mental health issues, and then back to being sweet but still leaving the impression of a burnt mouth, especially during the final convo (This is all praise btw, just to be clear)
• Optional presents are all accounted for. There is flavour text everywhere that can flipflop from hilarious shenanigan like sillyness to extremely dark, like a laughing person being stabbed. Go wild!
• It's a GD case. It is extremely well written, and the mystery is executed rather well as well. The only negative thing I can possibly say is that the evidence that leads to the final solution when initially presented isn't commented on at all until the very end.

Thanks for the comments and the reactions in your playthrough DBA, I appreciate it! And about one of the things you mentioned...

Spoiler : Spoilers for the case as a whole :

Yeah, admittedly I struggled quite a bit trying to think about how to handle the "trick" behind the crime. Lynette's Letter is, weirdly enough, probably the piece of writing in the case that I spent the most time revising both for character voice reasons and mystery reasons. Mainly because I was worried it would either lean extremely hard into being impossible to figure out, or blatantly obvious, and I'd rather lean onto the obvious side of things if I have to err on either one. I don't plan on editing the case to revise dialogue, but another version of myself might at least have thrown in some token Marnie thoughts about Lynette's letter (I think the main thing stopping me is that I wanted to let the player go ahead and read it whenever they felt like but maybe I could have shifted stuff around to account for it. Oh well).

[DeathByAutoscroll]

Go play it. I don't have the energy to explain why. Just do it.

Spoiler : Low energy explaination with spoilers :

This is not so much of a review as more of a summerisation of ramblings from an SoC.

• It has a fun cast of characters that feel like they're making rational decisions, and actually are characters developed in the world capable of making their own decisions (noteably Marnie refusing to press some points)
• Like a hot jam pastry, it grows from very sweet to burning your tounge with a very well handled handling of some serious mental health issues, and then back to being sweet but still leaving the impression of a burnt mouth, especially during the final convo (This is all praise btw, just to be clear)
• Optional presents are all accounted for. There is flavour text everywhere that can flipflop from hilarious shenanigan like sillyness to extremely dark, like a laughing person being stabbed. Go wild!
• It's a GD case. It is extremely well written, and the mystery is executed rather well as well. The only negative thing I can possibly say is that the evidence that leads to the final solution when initially presented isn't commented on at all until the very end.

Thanks for the comments and the reactions in your playthrough DBA, I appreciate it! And about one of the things you mentioned...

Spoiler : Spoilers for the case as a whole :

Yeah, admittedly I struggled quite a bit trying to think about how to handle the "trick" behind the crime. Lynette's Letter is, weirdly enough, probably the piece of writing in the case that I spent the most time revising both for character voice reasons and mystery reasons. Mainly because I was worried it would either lean extremely hard into being impossible to figure out, or blatantly obvious, and I'd rather lean onto the obvious side of things if I have to err on either one. I don't plan on editing the case to revise dialogue, but another version of myself might at least have thrown in some token Marnie thoughts about Lynette's letter (I think the main thing stopping me is that I wanted to let the player go ahead and read it whenever they felt like but maybe I could have shifted stuff around to account for it. Oh well).

I can understand the struggle of that particular bit of writing (and also another section you mentioned in the discord playthough), and your reasoning for why you decided to do that (and why you'll leave it as is) is well-thought out, and I agree it should probably not be changed.

[Jofe]

Finished. Congratulations for respecting deadlines, for start.

Spoiler : Small review :

To be honest, I'm someone who prefers more "classic" projects (95% investigation to solve, in short). So the starting premise was not for me. I have nothing against stories of depression (apart from the fact that of course it's sad to be unhappy), I didn't expect it to be such a BIG part of the trial. So in summary: I am absolutely not the audience for this.

Which is not to say that I hated it or that it was bad, far from it. It's well written and the characters are overall fun, though the constant focus on Marnie and Liese makes other characters seem non-existent (think Dieman). As for the crime to solve, I basically guessed the solution from the start. Because inevitably, when the characters insist that there were only three of them, that no one else had powers etc, ironically the impossible mystery seemed to me to have only one possible solution. But I have the impression that in the end, you wanted to tell a human story above all, which is very well told.

So in the end, I didn't have a bad time, quite the contrary, in particular thanks to the characters who are types of characters that I generally like (notably Lynette). So congratulations. Now I will do a T-pose to asserte my dominance on this discussion.

[ikuzonos]

Highly recommend MMLW to anyone who can handle the content. It's funny and heartwarming and heartwrenching and I adore it. 10/10 would cry over again.

[GuardianDreamer]

Hello everyone.

Just a quick post on this thread to point people in the direction of more stuff featuring the characters from this trial. I recently finished hosting the Year of Luigi case competition and chose to write Lynette Vio and Cecil Rozen as the hosts of the awards ceremony for it, giving out the awards and interacting with guests from the cases there. While the ceremony obviously isn't canon to MMLW, I still had a lot of fun writing Lynette and Cecil again. There's also a short prologue included in the awards ceremony which is canon to Make My Life Worse, expanding on the first time that Lynette and Cecil met.

For those who are curious about this and haven't seen it yet, here's the link. You can think of it as a fun sidestory of sorts if you'd like: https://aaonline.fr/player.php?trial_id=146345

[risefromtheashes]

Hello everyone.

Just a quick post on this thread to point people in the direction of more stuff featuring the characters from this trial. I recently finished hosting the Year of Luigi case competition and chose to write Lynette Vio and Cecil Rozen as the hosts of the awards ceremony for it, giving out the awards and interacting with guests from the cases there. While the ceremony obviously isn't canon to MMLW, I still had a lot of fun writing Lynette and Cecil again. There's also a short prologue included in the awards ceremony which is canon to Make My Life Worse, expanding on the first time that Lynette and Cecil met.

For those who are curious about this and haven't seen it yet, here's the link. You can think of it as a fun sidestory of sorts if you'd like: https://aaonline.fr/player.php?trial_id=146345

(Sunny, they/any)
Highly recommend playing the awards ceremony even if you've never been part of the case comp side of things. (Ideally do it playing after MMLW, though!) The ceremony, and prologue especially, are beautifully self-indulgent and it's very clear how much heart and soul GD put into them.

Play it. I dare you.