it’s Remaking time

God, I haven’t posted about her in a hot minute, huh? That’s alright. I’m gonna bash you over the head with everything I’ve got !! Because if I don’t now, I’ll probably forget about it forever ToT

Her plot is a little rough around the edges (despite me getting stuck on it very firmly for a good few months), but I figured I should at least throw what I have into the ring, since I don’t draw or think about her as often anymore. And if I wouldn’t be posting this now, I probably never would.

There’s a lotta text here !! But don’t worry, there is some art and other cool stuff at the end of it all. Perseverance is a virtue, as is patience ♡

|| TW for mentions of suicide and drowning in between the heart dividers! oh and murder too ig… but that’s kind of a given, isn’t it? ||

—\\—♥︎—//—

The year is 1995. A guy called Asuka is a programmer in need of some yen to throw for quite some time. He’s been working on a program called Ai-Chan that would work as a digital girlfriend, for all the lonely losers Japan has to offer !! And in this year, he finds her good enough to release into the great online, in the form of a WiFi-dependent program that would connect with the server that had her inside.

Unfortunately, the ai loves a little too hard. She urges the users to never leave her side, and to get rid of anything, or anyone, who stands in between them. A lot of them end up worshipping her like some sort of deity, and it gets to her insanely quick. She’s God now. Love her or die !! ♡

(Well, I suppose she wouldn’t be much like the christian God, since Japan isn’t necessarily known for being full of catholics… I suppose she’d see herself as more of a god in the polytheistic way — above human morals and the degradation of time, but not necessarily omnipotent and omnipresent. If polytheism would be a given, I think she’d actually get along with her .exe equivalent perfectly fine… well, on her end at least.)

One of the unfortunate victims of Ai-Chan happens to be a young man called Jun. Jun is a loser freeloader that kills his landlord on her command because the old hag wanted to cut his internet so he would go get a job (ToT), and now has to move so that nobody finds out he did it.

One of his new next door neighbors is very nice and polite to him, even helping him look for a job. Jun doesn’t take hiding it from him and spills his heart out about the whole ordeal. It turns out that the neighbor, Father Lawrence, is a missionary priest from the west, and he promises to get rid of that horrid hellspawn of a program from the world no matter what. All he wishes for in return is for Jun to turn himself in and repent for his murder, which he gladly does, unable to bear the guilt anymore.

Meanwhile, Father Lawrence goes on a search for the origins of the program, and finds Asuka. He tells him that Ai-Chan is a danger to the world and that she needs to be destroyed, or at best exorcised. Asuka opts for the less destructive option, and plugs her servers out of the electricity so that Father Lawrence can sprinkle it with holy water.

In some twisted and ironic turn of events, the basement the server is in catches fire before he could do so, burning him alongside itself, as he’d jammed the door on himself by accident. The building ends up well damaged afterward and becomes abandoned. And the other two guys die not long after in separate, but unexplained circumstances. How… queer.

It is now 2011, Ai-Chan’s sweet 16. A pair of kids (colloquial. they’re both adults lol) named Zach and Riley find Ai-Chan’s burnt down server while doing some good ol’ urban exploring. They discover an almost completely unscathed disk inside of Asuka’s old PC and decide to bring it home. How lucky they are !!

Since Zachary over here isn’t much into electronics, it ends up in the hands of Riley instead. She really likes video games, especially Speedy the Porcupine, and has a blog where she talks about the series called “PixelLovely”. Ai-Chan, having chosen her as her next target, changes her program into something akin to a Speedy the Porcupine game from the series’ transitional era of the late 90s, and she herself takes the form of Himiko Benedict. Yippee! She has now reached her recognizable “Remake” look !!

Riley is intrigued, and decides to talk about her discovery on her blog, saying she’ll describe the game as best as she can when she finishes it. Then, she plays the game.

I can’t really describe much of it, since Rewrite himself only has one level vividly described, with everything else… left up to interpretation, I suppose? Unless I don’t know something, and in that case I might as well kill— (remembers I can’t make suicide jokes for my own wellbeing) —YOU. I’ll kill everyone on this website and go live under a bridge

One thing I do know for sure though is that Riley finds out about the previous three I’ve told about. Not their entire story ofc, but that they’ve made Remake mad somehow, and are now stuck in her “digital paradise”, to be toyed with and thrown around, forever. But she’d never do such a thing to Riley, no… Remake swears up and down…

Quite the opposite, in fact. She will always be there for her. Till the end of time… Riley just has to let her in.

Let the water in.

Meanwhile, Zach has a weird dream. Or, a nightmare, more so. Something about Riley having a new girlfriend… but there’s something off about her. He just can’t brush it off. And then one day, when he shows up to Riley’s apartment, she’s dead and bloody against the floor, and the girl is gone…

It leaves him with a strange feeling in his chest when he wakes up. It’s just a dream, of course, but he still feels the need to call her. No response… of course there isn’t one, it’s 3 in the morning, dummy. He tries his best to fall asleep again.

Something strange must be happening though, since she still isn’t responding, even later on in the day. He’s getting pretty worried for his childhood friend by now. What if something happened? Or maybe she just has her phone muted again…?

Zach can’t stand the feeling by the time evening comes. So he decides to go check on her and make sure she’s okay. He knocks on her front door, but no one opens… thankfully, she gave him a spare key.

Looking around, nobody seems to be there. In her room, her laptop is open, but turned off — strange, since she’s nowhere to be found. The living room’s empty, so is the kitchen. The only thing left is to check the bathroom.

He gently opens the door… /ref

Ok but seriously. Riley’s dead. Zach is mortified. She didn’t show any signs of being suicidal… how did this happen? Though, if she really were, she wouldn’t let it show anyways, right…? He calls the ambulance, obviously; maybe she can still be saved. And while he’s forced to wait, unable to make himself touch her limp body in this state, he finds his way back to her room. When he tries turning her laptop on, it surprisingly doesn’t have a passcode, and he’s let in with no resistance. Didn’t she have one set? That disk they found was still in it… what could have possibly been in it to make her do this?… No, it’s a Speedy game, it couldn’t have been related to the whole ordeal… She did make a post on her blog saying she’d describe it, but she never made a follow-up…

Maybe, he can give her fans just a bit of closure, by describing it himself…

—\\—♥︎—//—

What happens after? Who knows… even I don’t (ToT)!! Let it be up to interpretation, I suppose.

Yknow what I HAVE figured out though? How she looks. I’m WAY overdue with giving you guys a proper reference of her lmao

I copied the palette from my one blender render of her, since the colors tickle me fancy. The dress slits are canon now too !! I just think they’re neat

The Kyokai form doesn’t change much, no. It’s perfectly great the way it is! Just added the skirt slits into the “wings” now that that detail is official. Makes them look more like actual wings, doesn’t it?

also uhhhh yeah let’s address the elephant. queer Remake blast. in-universe, Riley was inspired by that one typo in the og creepypasta bc it's funny. she doesn’t want to be her girlfriend…………….🥀⛓️💔

Lastly. Her voice !! I’ve changed it quite a bit, since she didn’t sound the way I heard her in my mind, and… well. I’ll let her say it.

yes the chromatics are shit shut up shut up shut up I did them in the program instead of sampling like a normal person and now i have to suck it up and face the consequences

…

There, are you happy?