About This Place

Thank you for visiting. This is my digital shrine dedicated to Sync the Tempest from the 2005 Bandai Namco video game Tales of the Abyss. It's sort of an archive, and sort of a diary, but overall it's a love letter. If it looks bad, that is because I learned web development in order to make this. I made it from scratch, and this is my first website. My intention is to keep working on it for as long as I can, so hopefully it will get better over time. I made it because I wanted a place online that is mine, that I have full control over, separated from modern social media, where I can archive my efforts in peace.

More than that, now and when I am gone, I want to have created a place in this world that proves that he was loved, and that I loved him.

As a warning: this place, and especially here in the library, there will be spoilers for Tales of the Abyss. Please play the game for the story as it was meant to be experienced.

Links are this color red. Differently colored text will sometimes have a message if you mouse over it. But not always. Sometimes I just like to add a little flair.

This Library

This is my personal collection of information pulled from various official sources. Please observe the credits given to the people responsible in each case. I have uploaded everything here for archival purposes only and claim no rights or responsibility unless otherwise stated. I make no money off this website. I only want to keep everything in a place where I know it won't be deleted. If I have uploaded something here that you feel I have stolen unfairly from you, feel free to email me (my email is at the bottom of the page), and we can work something out.

My intention is to archive canon information only (except for the gallery, in which case the bar is "official non-parody art"). Some things are more iffy than others (the light novels were written by Yajima Sara rather than Miyajima Takumi, the manga series is often inconsistent with the game, and the letter is of a personal nature), but all of it is necessary and fits into my definition of canon. I am avoiding the mobile games altogether, except for artwork, because they are alternate universes and I prefer to keep my focus on the singular canon Sync that appears in Tales of the Abyss PS2/3DS and official supplementary material set in that universe and timeline. I also fundamentally disagree with Bamco repeatedly resurrecting him for the sake of content.
As of right now, I am not going to be cataloguing merch. This shrine is intended to show love for him not as a character, but as a person. Because that is what he is to me.

If you have something I'm missing that you think would help complete my collection and you would like to share it with me, please do! My email is at the bottom of the page. Please include where it comes from and where you found it (if different from original source).

I don't know how to use a scanner (yet), so any images taken by me are not going to be the best quality. I might fix that someday and reupload them.

Shiro no Ashita

This is Ion's chapter of Yajima Sara's light novel "Shiro no Ashita". I couldn't find the full translation anywhere online, so I decided to do it myself. I could not have translated it alone, so I hired translators Kanako Miura and Justin Jones from Fiverr to help me. Additional thanks to my sister Amy for helping me edit it. I poured my blood, sweat, and tears into this project, and it means so much to me. I may continue to make minor edits in the future if I see anything that needs correcting.

Ion Gaiden

This is the Tales of the Abyss other story chapter about original Ion and Arietta. These are not my scans or translations. Credit to AEFALLEN for the scans, JU-DA-SU for translating, and MIKEN-CHAN for editing. Original taken from Mangadex. Pictures of the concept art sketches from the back of the volume were taken by me. Uploaded here for archival purposes only.

Sync's Scenes

Maybe it's a little redundant to include the script for every scene in the game in which Sync appears or is mentioned, but I like to have references for these things. It makes the archive feel more complete to me.
Script reference taken from Souya's site.

Character Episode Bible

This includes pictures of Sync's chapter of the Tales of the Abyss Character Episode Bible and a translation of his short story. Short story translation by mysticarte.
I took the pictures and did the translations for the other pages.

Gallery

This is where I put all the screenshots and official art of Sync that I have. He's great to look at! Click on an image to see a larger version. Open the image in a new tab for the full size.
Please observe the credits provided in each case.

Lore Extras

Here is where you'll find assorted pieces of information such as scans, the content of Daath's library, and interviews. There is also a very special interaction I had with Miyajima Takumi. It's personal, but it means so much to me, so I want to keep it here.

The Chapel

At the Chapel, you will find the Altar of my devotion. This is where I keep all my art and writing. Not canon to Tales of the Abyss, but canon to me. I'm not particularly proud of most of it, but I want to keep a record of it anyway. Since I keep doing stuff like this, I might as well use it.

Poetry and Whispers

Don't read these if you're some kind of literature buff. I write a lot of stuff like this because there is not much else I can do. I do not have a full record of every poem I wrote for or about Sync, because a lot of it was written on my childhood laptop that I no longer have, and I didn't back most of it up. I remember being happy with the old ones, and there were so many, so I'm a little sad about it. It's not really that bad, though, because the old poems I found are actually not very good, so I'm probably just misremembering how good they were. I also omitted quite a lot of poems for sucking majorly. Not that I think these are any good. I just wanted to do something with them, because they keep piling up.

The whispers are not quite poems. They're more like pleas. They're incomplete on their own, but I think they add to the bigger picture.

Fiction

This is where I put the fanfiction that I wrote. I only have one, but I feel like it's better off here than getting lost somewhere in the sea of poems. Who knows, maybe I'll write more someday. It's difficult for me to assume how he would react to anything, though, and I'm not much of a storyteller.

Anniversary Sentiments

I only started doing these in the ninth year, so I don't have one for every year, but that's fine. It's a tradition I picked up from my time in "waifuist" (self-shipping) communities. On their anniversary, people would always throw together some dramatic words to signal to everyone else how much they love their waifu. Usually it would accompany a commission. The anniversary art that I drew is going to be in the art section rather than here, though.
These are kind of embarrassing, but I put effort into them, so I might as well archive them. Especially since I'm planning to continue the tradition and keep saying more dramatic and embarrassing things every year.

Art

This is the gallery of art that I have drawn about him. It goes back a while, but I didn't include everything, because that's a lot of old and bad and useless doodles and other embarrassing things. As if what I decided to upload isn't already embarrassing enough. Content warning for blood on some of them.

I shouldn't have to say this, but please do not reupload any of my art.

Symbols

Clovers

In the language of flowers, white clover means "promise". They are small, and many, and they are classified as weeds. Even so, they're my favorite flowers. Every year, they bloom faithfully, and I'm reminded of the promises I made to him whenever I see them.

The Ring

The image on the tab.
He dropped this after the fight in the core.

The one I have isn't exactly the same, but I have worn it for years.

Contact

If you have a good reason to contact me, email me at yelhigher@gmail.com. Just please don't tell me stuff I don't want to know.

_changelog