#game in the timeline… I take it as canon bc we have nothing else really | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

slightly-gay-pogohammer · 7 months

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As a non homestuck, what deos that mean👀

ough i wanted to be vague and quick but no i wasn't im so sorry fnsdmag tw for transphobia mostly i guess

homestuck ends. it's a somewhat open ended ending and they dont show the "proper" final battle, but it was implied in the comic already how it was going to go. a lot of people remained disappointed in that, but i personally think its a good one

people keep pestering hussie, creator of the comic, to continue the story

hussie, well known troll (haha) who more often than not both praised and made fun of the fandom directly in the comic, writes the epilogues. they're mostly awful and they're the umpteenth big fuck you to the fandom really; one is the "shipping" ending where everything goes bad bc everyone focuses only on shipping, the one is the "fighting" ending where everything goes bad and everyone fucking dies basically. it has some good ideas, there's more fourth wall breaking, but overall its an inconsistent sexist and misoginistic mess made out of spite by someone who clearly didn't want to work on homestuck anymore

it also features character assassination, be it "this character who's entire plot was about not wanting to be alone anymore is now a sex-crazed maniac who doesnt take no as an answer", "this character who was groomed all her life to be a dictator actually becomes hitler" or "this character who a lot of people hc as mtf is now ftm, but specifically in a timeline, in the other they still identify as female". you could argue it's bc the story is about one of the characters having a villain arc and managing to take control of the story and rewrite them, but he's also regressed to be someone who's obsessed with a character we were told he wasn't in love with anymore AND also says transphobic stuff so.

hussie actually opens the epilogues with one of the character saying pretty clearly that they're "beyond canon", and makes sure that everyone known that anything written outside of the comic itself, including sidecomics, videogames and the epilogues themselves, is as canon as you want it to be. unfortunately homestuck fans cant read and that + the fact that the epilogue end in a cliffhanger, homestuck 2 has to happen

hussie wants nothing to do with it and leaves the project to someone else. they give little to no details of the plot if not a few plotpoints, one of which being the fact that a character must be named yiffany

one of the people who was supposed to work on hs2 and the tie-in visual novel games "friendsim" starts fights with readers on twitter and is later on outed as a really bad person of the biphobic and ableist variety

on a minor note, some updates are patreon exclusive, and not in a "they'll eventually be posted" way, but in a "either you follow the patreon or you dont get the whole experience" kind of way

the story also has to follow the aformentioned sexist transphobic racist bullshit, to which they add terribly written "bury your gays" plot and also cheating!! no matter the timeline my girl kanaya gets shafted and cheated on and by now im gonna be real it really smells like lesbophobia in here

also futa jokes. like we all agree that the candy jade situation is fucked up right

in all of this, "what pumpkin" actually starts drama with a youtuber or something. idk. it's the team that sells the hs merch it's even more complicated. oh and also the videogame being so delayed that's a whole can of worms too.

anyway hussie actually says that they dont give a shit no more about homestuck and sell the rights to someone else. first thing we're told is that they're going to drop the 2 from the title of homestuck 2, turning it into homestuck: beyond canon. pretty much openly saying that no, this has nothing to do with homestuck, and it's officially Not Canon.

#gio replies #i love shitting on anything homestuck after homestuck

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torchickentacos · 5 months

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gonna be controversial. drew x brianna 👀

LMAOOO OH WHAT A FASCINATING CHOICE IRA KSDJSKDJ /positive (for the ship ask game)

So, uh, I don't think my opinion of it lies within 'i do/don't ship it' tbh! I DO ship it but in a 'let's watch this unfold like a car wreck' way and not a 'i want them to live happily ever after' way. But it's NOT a hateship thing. I REALLY DON'T HATE IT! I just think they're very "I can make them worse". I'll try to take this ask really seriously, as much as i know we meme about it in server shenanigans. Under cut bc I am a wordy individual.

Ok, so i'll just answer every part of the ask for this. side note that i get PERSONALLY icked out by shipping canon ten year olds at ten, so this is answering like, for ten years in the future. None of my opinions here are for the canon pokeani timeline because, uh, not my thing. I do not care to know what ten year olds are doing with their romantic lives. Love pokeani as a foundation for ship stuff but i don't work within the canon timeline for shipping. They're ten. they should be learning about photosynthesis or george washington or some shit.

Ship It

What made you ship it?

Again. It's the watching a car wreck in progress thing. I appreciate drama and mess and chaos and I FULLY think these two would bring that. It's kind of giving 'coordinating pr relationship' honestly. Don't think it would be that but the energy is there. I like ships that give me interesting stuff to work with, and with these two you've got two of the most interesting/messy personalities in Hoenn to mix like a live wire in a puddle of water, or kerosene and a faulty lighter. It's just INTERESTING and has a lot of potential to explore things like jealousy, longing, feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, settling, something doomed from the start, etc. again, not in a hate way. I do not say this because I prefer contest- not at ALL. I genuinely think, separately of any other biases, that they're just perfect to explore in a more messy context, especially if we want to factor in coordinating fame bullshit.

What are your favorite things about the ship?

Chaos aside, I do think they'd bring out different sides of each other that we don't see much of. They're both very... two-sided, not in a bad way, whereas characters like May tend to be pretty May no matter what. May's just herself all the time kind of, but Drew and Brianna act differently around different people.

Brianna, super soft and anxious and reverent around Drew as opposed to her insane competitive streak and go-getter mentality with May. Drew, kind of quiet and, uh, shockingly normal and polite around Brianna. It's genuinely interesting to contrast and mess with those sides of them and how they shift.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

I think entertaining this ship in any capacity counts as an unpopular opinion tbh DNKsfjhkjHKJDFHJ

Don’t Ship It

Why don’t you ship it?

They would make each other and everyone around them SO much worse /positive. I ship and do not ship it for the exact same reason. I ship it the way one would ship hazardous materials. My contest bias plays very little into this tbh, I just cannot see them making it long term at all. It's giving 'summer fling but in a flinging themselves into therapy' way.

What would have made you like it?

Answering this one really genuinely- I think if Brianna had decided to become Drew's direct rival instead of May's, opting to get involved that way. It would have made more sense. Since in canon Brianna knows Drew likes May, I don't see how beating May would make Drew like Brianna more? I don't see her logic there honestly. But if Brianna saw that Drew had a thing for his rival and decided she could be his rival, too, that could have been more interesting than 'let me beat up this chick he likes' if nothing else.

I think it would have been super interesting to see Drew with another rival (Harley counts but like, not in this context). We could have compared and contrasted the dynamics in the rivalries more instead of it just being this:

Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?

Answering this one as intended as well. I think, assuming I had to look at it in a traditional happy ship way, I like the subversion of it. I think it would be great to give Brianna more of a focus in general. She's a FUN character with two very opposite sides to her and I'd have loved to see that personality shine more, minus the Spontaneous Combusken of it all /affectionate. Love that episode. It's a fucking mess. But yeah- I like it because it would give us more Brianna. She's FUN. Unhinged, absolutely, but fun.

TWO FINAL NOTES:

1.) Kind of way fucking funnier if Drew/Brianna/May goes the mako/korrasami route though, ngl lmfao.

2.) My opinion on them regarding the sims (iykyk) is that I need to kill that sentient wishing well. by the way.

#okay to rb but like. why. /half joking #taylor's tag #NOT putting this in any tags LMAO #any strongly worded disagreements from any side can be sent to my inbox /fully joking pls don't ily

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ranger-kellyn · 1 year

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tears of the kingdom has made me desperate to revisit my age of calamity fic, if nothing else so i can start working on a aoc timeline telling of totk and AHHH

idea musing below the read more, but endgame/major spoilers for totk

i've been vaguely wondering how i would work in the totk story line into the age of calamity timeline, and honestly??? i think it's going to be fairly easy. at least...leading up to it lol remembering to work in all the characters who are now still alive will be the main challenge lol

i hear a lot of youtubers saying that "zelda was a dragon for 10,000 years" but i'm pretty sure that that it was actually way longer than that. 10k years ago was the last time calamity ganon broke out, when the sheikah created the divine beasts and guardians. the founding of hyrule, when zelda turned, was an "unknown" years prior to that.

at least, that's how i'm working with it. when i am working/thinking about anything regarding breath of the wild, age of calamity, and tears of the kingdom, i am not at all considering any of the other games. to me, this is it's own contained thing within and around these three games. (mostly bc i never played any of the other games so i wouldn't be able to draw from them easily/fluidly) ((and yes i figure things that were similar to other games happened, but not those exactly))

all that to say, in my head, this is the timeline i'm working with: ganondorf, the original One True Evil™, was sealed away in the hopes that one day in the distant future, link will rise to kill him for good. (a good chance i'm wrong on some of the "canon" of what i'm about to say, but i haven't fully explored totk and won't for a while but w/e i'm Workshopping) hyrule castle was constructed atop ganondorf and rauru mostly as a way to safeguard that chamber until link could get there to take care of things. i still haven't worked out why the sky islands exist now, because rauru even makes the comment if you talk to him atop the first area with a view of the temple of time, "though in my day, this was all on the ground".

but on my initial descent into the depths of the castle to get back down to the sealing chamber, that whole area of downward stairs that seemed to just go on forever and ever, that i just...fell through rather than walked and dealt with all the monsters-- i kept that in mind thinking about how long it must have taken link and zelda to get down there. i remember in the initial trailer for the game, they had a huge ass ox and cart, so even though they got rid of that, it all still sets the tone that it took them...a while. to get down there.

i thought about it on my second playthrough that i started last night, and really looking around at the stairs and cave walls, and i just...i really got to thinking a little harder than i needed to about it.

i thought about what it would take to actually seal something like that away. it gets a pass because it's a Magic World, but realistically, good god the work that would take. our world 10,000+ years ago was nothing like it is now. we were still what? mostly hunter-gatherers. google says "pre-pottery neolithic B". so like, the world is constantly changing. the tectonic plates are always in motion. volcanoes erupt and make a whole new top layer of soil and earth. tsunamis regularly wash things completely away. earthquakes...fires...drought.........

like. hyrule has at least one active volcano, glaciers, is near the ocean--

if i played with even a few of our real world...whatever...to hyrule-- that sealing chamber probably would have caved in at some point, or at the very least, the stairwell leading down to it, along with the murals, and all the other tunnels and whatnot, would have to be rebuilt...pretty often, all things considered.

it's something i'm trying not to stress about while writing, but it will. bug me. lol i'll get over it

ANYWAYS

back on track.

thinking through the botw -> totk timeline:

i am going with the idea that like...Calamity Ganon??? didn't. exactly. Actually. exist. like, sure, ganon did plenty of damage and razed the land, but like...it was only...a manifestation of ganondorf. a way of pressing against rauru's aging seal.

the "first" time calamity ganon rose, meeting the sheikah army, the hero and princess-- getting defeated by them? that was all a part of the plan. and by that point...the general population??? completely forgot about what was actually sealed below the castle. that's well into the "nobody is to ever go down there not even the royal family--NOBODY". too steeped in tradition/fear/whatever-- ganondorf has been "forgotten" about. their focus is calamity ganon. which, at the very least, they all know will return again.

the sheikah get "too powerful" (probably reminiscent of the zonai's god-like powers--who at this point are probably nothing more than legend). the banishment happens, they seal away all their tech to appease the hylians, things...go quiet.

then, the events leading up to botw happen. calamity ganon rises again, and i honestly...think it was in the plan to lose. extra 100 years or not. 100 years is a drop in the bucket in the face of thousands. calamity ganon didn't need to win. calamity ganon needed to get the castle to fall into disrepair as a part of the final act.

zelda mentions something about if you talk to her on the way down; since the calamity, the castle fell into disrepair. then the gloom started leaking out from the depths.

ganondorf needed the ground to be shaken up enough to where the castle part of the seal would be broken enough for more of his powers to really be able to seep out into the world.

the giant pig monster of calamity ganon-- still part of the plan. tear up the ground. rip up as many of the devices that were set to contain calamity ganon as possible. (it's at least what i'm generally going with to explain what happened to all the sheikah tech)

SO.

with that in mind, i figure the "totk" events for the age of calamity timeline...happen very similarly. only a few years after the initial CG event. the castle was shaken up enough. the castle seal was broken. the gloom will start leaking.

but now thinking more in age of calamity terms. botw!zelda and aoc!zelda are....in my mind, different zeldas. very much the same in every way, but i think it's more of a "nature vs nurture" situation. their natures are the same, but i think they had different nurtures. botw!zelda was not a fighter. she was not the "take up a weapon" sort. she had different shit going on. aoc!zelda is a fighter. she's the one who figured out how to weaponize the sheikah slate. she's the one who refused to stand by while link and impa did all the heavy lifting in the breach of demise. she had just enough differences in her life that she could at least take that up while still unable to awaken her sealing powers. BUT STILL. at the end of the day, they're both ARE fighters, just in different ways. i'm honestly struggling to figure out if aoc!zelda would have the mental fortitude to take on draconification. i figure the whole 100 years imprisoned with ganon thing really is what helped botw/totk!zelda be able to do that.

so while i work through that, at the very least, on my drive home from work today, while sitting in traffic, i just...I saw the opening of my fic for the age of calamity sequel. all because i thought something along the lines of, "you know...that was an odd question for zelda to ask her father? 'what is below the castle'? why would she question there was even something down there in the first place? why would she ever wonder if anything other than like...a crypt or something was down there?? it seems like a very...pointed...question...a question that gets asked if you saw something you maybe shouldn't have..."

in my age of calamity fic, the endgame pairing for zelda is zelda/impa, so. obviously. impa will be going with them down into the depths as part of the first change. (really want to get back into drawing so i can try to explain the "future" design for impa more-- bc i'm loving what i'm seeing in my head. same hair length but braided, at least one new piercing, some more ink-- girl looks Good)

and knowing that, i've been trying to figure out "is impa staying the present with link and everyone else?? or am i sending her ass to the ancient past, too?? if i do?? how do i??? what do i??? do with her????"

as much as i would love some antics with "yOURE CLEARLY NOT MY WIFE" from impa with all the Shmelda's running around in the present...i don't think that's the route i will go. (i could prove myself wrong later who knows i haven't finished the first fic lmao)

BUT SO. i had an idea to completely change up how i have impa and zelda originally met. instead of them not meeting until their late teens, i had this idea of them being small children, right around the time of the death of zelda's mother. impa and purah are the children to the king and queen's advisors, and zelda had been good friends with them all her childhood. (for my work, impa is a year older than zelda, and purah is about four years older than impa) after the queen's death, little zelda had been inconsolable-- absolutely shut down, not taking, not emoting-- nothing. purah and impa are both desperate to make their friend smile again, so purah decides, "hey!! why don't we sneak you down to the secret tunnels! there's all kinds of cool stuff to look at down there!" and what she MEANS is the like. staff tunnels and whatnot that are all around the castle for staff to move about unseen. the secret escape tunnels-- things like that.

impa...was less keen on the idea, knowing damn well they're sneaking where they shouldn't be-- and teleporting around with the princess??? it's one thing to endanger your sister. it's another to endanger the crowned princess--

purah presses her, and when it's the first time zelda has shown any interest in anything since her mother's passing-- impa caves.

so down they go. impa's powers have always been strong, but they're definitely less graceful at that age. they "poof" around the tunnels, going down to the docks, around the tunnels, sneak somewhere where they can probably find the three of them treats. zelda has fun for the first time in...a long time. so impa doesn't really stop. they keep going, and going, and going...and going...

and eventually.

the three of them realize they're...in a part of the castle they've never seen. they're too young to be able to put into words how it's different, but it's a combination of just how stale the air is. the architecture. the color of the stone in and around everything-- in front of them is a huge slab of text. it's ancient hylian-- something only zelda can read a few words of. but she knows the words she needs to know from it.

she grabs both their hands. "it says stay out," she says with a gulp.

purah squeezes her hand, not bothered. "that just means there's something really cool behind it! c'mon, impa!"

impa hums, putting her hand on the cold slab. "i don't know...that's...really thick...I can't poof unless I have a perfectly clear path...at least, not yet."

purah, curiosity getting the better of her, needles her. childish taunts of her being a big scaredy cat, big cucco, bawcking at her until she's red in the face and is just like "FINE!!" and then smacks her forehead "but i'm stealing your energy to do it!!" in a manner similar to what she would need to do to sap energy for symbol clones.

she then is able to get them on the other side and it's....even more different. they're at that huge stairwell. the air isn't stale it's old. purah is too busy complaining about how much it hurt to have her energy sapped that it's a few seconds before she realizes that impa and zelda are both...terrified.

the endless stairwell shaft that looks like it goes down to the center of the earth-- this is where impa's fear of heights starts.

absolute silence between the three of them as they stand near the edge, zelda having a death grip on the railing.

it's so quiet, the only thing they hear is one another's shallow breathing...their own pulses-- they don't have to even see a trace of ganondorf, the sounds of their own pulses echoing in their ears is more than enough to terrify them.

zelda, tears in her eyes, "we're gonna get in trouble--"

holding back her own, impa grabs both their hands again and gets them the hell out of there, wearing herself completely out by the time they make it back to somewhere they're allowed to be.

impa almost collapses, so they all sit together against the wall of wherever, not saying a word until she's caught her breath.

weakly, impa finally says, "we can never talk about this ever again."

zelda nods.

purah doesn't even tease her a little about it.

and so they never do talk about it...but they all never entirely stop thinking about it. zelda asks one day "what is below the castle" and gets that cryptic answer from her father. she doesn't even dare try to tell impa and purah what he said.

probably around that point as well, i'm going to have the king dismiss his advisors, their presence reminding him too much of the queen. they head back to kakariko or something idk. but zelda won't reconnect with them for a long time, right up to the point where they originally did for my fic (so about 5 years before calamity ganon awakens in the game)

my fic goes how it goes, and then there's relative peace afterwards, like in botw/totk.

the kingdom is rebuilding, a bright future looks to be ahead of them--

then the gloom. the gloom that they quickly realize is coming from the depths of the castle. depths that has zelda concerned. she meets with purah and impa first. [i'll probably have terrako rebuilt by this point too] "do...either of you remember when we were children, and we went too far down in the castle? When we found that...horrible stairwell?"

impa wraps her arms around herself, visibly tensing. "i try not to remember."

purah grimaces. "i unfortunately remember..."

zelda opens her mouth to speak, but the words aren't quite there yet. eventually, "this has to be coming from there..."

and from there, they agree to meet with the others, the king is strongly against her going down there, but is eased by the fact she'll at least have impa, link, and terrako with her.

from there. i think i'm going to send impa back to the past with her. i think i'm going to use a little author liberty, and--

in the past, after zelda has committed herself to draconifciation, mineru pulls impa aside. "impa...there is something i must tell you," she says between coughing fits. "There is another secret stone. one even my brother didn't know about." (she's the older sibling--girl's got secrets i'm sure of it)

so impa learns of a stone, hidden away, deep on an island, off the southeast coast of hyrule. on a map, she will recognize it as Eventide Island. in person, it's...a completely different island. much larger, and even more dangerous, fraught with all kinds of trials for her, unlocked thanks to mineru--

she gets her own secret stone, and from there...i have two routes, and i'm not sold on either, 100% yet. the title "sage of shadows" keeps jumping out at me, but idk entirely what to do with that. i could either have her go immortal dragon as well, or...i could have her be the one who teaches the people who will become the sheikah that stasis power they ended up using to seal themselves away in the shrines to later test link for the calamity. thanks to her own prowess, and enhanced by the secret stone, maybe she'll be in a different kind of stasis. hidden away in a shrine of her own making, deep within the depths, waiting...waiting...waiting...

but shadow dragon DOES sound pretty cool.......(I like the idea of her dragon mirroring zelda's perfectly, just in the depths rather than the sky)

idk. that was. A LOT. of word vomiting. all to just be like "this is how much my brain crammed into the span of maybe 5 minutes during my commute)

no clue which way i will end up going. i kind of need to. uh. write the first fic to bEGIN WITH....but still. it's nice to like. be writing again, even if it is just word salad.

#if you read this near 3k of nonsense i'm love you #and if you don't: i respect u #writing tag #totk spoilers #zelimpa

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woodswolf · 2 years

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really really long thoughts on aini and how it could've been made WAY better if they just changed a few little things with regards to its "background canon" i.e. from ai 1. full spoilers for ai 1 and aini, minor (ending) spoilers for the zero escape series.

the worst part of aini is really just that uchikoshi really wrote the most compelling emotional found family drama plotline EVER that's as close to perfectly executed as it's possible for anything to be and SO much better than everything else around it and then said "actually that was an offshoot timeline and didn't technically happen! this much more underwhelming series of events (but where the characters figure out Exactly What Went Down) is what Really happened."

its like... yes in Any Other Case with Any Other Series this would be pretty obviously the only option. zero escape for instance couldn't continue from anything but the true ending for each game because that series presents itself as brute-forcing meta progress in order to unlock the full truth. like, if you take any "ending" in zero escape, you're still not getting the full story? e.g. dio end in vlr still isn't THE END in bold font with a period at the end bc they still have to actually figure out how to get everyone out with their lives, which can't happen without forcing all of the progress in the morphogenetic field by getting all the endings. even if they WANTED to it wouldn't make sense to make a sequel to dio end - most of the cast would be dead or dying and they're Still trapped so its just. yeah. it just wouldn't really work. the only exceptions of endings they could make sequels to are like, the safe ending in 999 (bc SOME of the cast survives to theoretically escape - there's a really cool fic series that explores this (part 1 / part 2) by spacedaydreamer on ao3), ztd's true end, and ztd's pre-vlr end (which they kinda literally did make a "sequel" to lmao). nothing else would really work due to the setup constraints.

but aitsf as a series is fundamentally Built Different and in that sense it's very very smart. the fact that it's built up like a serial with each game focused around a single case unrelated to any others means that it's very modular - you could reasonably make a sequel to ai 1 that's set after ANY of the endings (minus like, annihilation, where basically the entire cast is dead, and iris ending bc thats the only other end where a (likeable) character from the first game explicitly dies) because there aren't any pressing constraints on chronology that couldn't be overlooked or brushed aside for the sake of keeping it modular. like, saito is DEFINITELY still alive and running around killing people after ota's ending, which would naturally lead to it becoming annihilation... 2!!! if we got to see that actually play out - but that happens off-screen, so we could just Ignore It Tm and have the gang move on to the next case after the new cyclops killer "mysteriously disappeared" or whatever. same thing for iris - she could just eventually wake up as her normal self because we're never explicitly told that so sejima is in iris's body after ota's ending. just ignore it in favor of preserving a good character! aitsf isn't like zero escape where a potential plot hole like this could ruin the whole series - capitalize on that to carefully pick and choose the best elements of each game to make permanent "background canon". it doesn't HAVE to make COMPLETE sense or fit together EXACTLY - just cherrypick the best and most memorable moments that you want to keep as core canon.

which is the biggest problem with aini being set after ai 1's resolution route - nothing of what happens in it is really built on. and yeah, it makes sense - everyone who got the most development in ai 1's resolution route (i.e. date, iris, hitomi) is reduced to more side character status here - but i don't care about things making sense as much as them being good. and ai 1's resolution route is... fine. it's fine! but the writing quality on the right half of ai 1's flowchart is Not As Good compared to the left half and it really shows on repeat playthroughs. (the feels-like-it's-two-hours-long recap of falco's entire backstory is really shit to have to sit through when you already know all of it - and that's only ONE of the problems with the resolution ending, there are WAY MORE.) there are only like three things that are explicitly carried over from the resolution ending:

iris being Definitely Alive and Still Herself (which like, yeah, this is the only ending where that happens, but ota's and mizuki's endings still have her body being alive, and with the "just make it a plot hole" scheme that i outlined earlier they could literally just Ignore That and have her still be alive. AND they could give her a cool AIball that she could be soooooo normal about on her twitch streams like this is literally perfect ok)

so sejima being Definitely Alive and Still Himself (for all of the TWO scenes he's relevant for like wow good job. DEFINITELY couldn't have filled his role with a new sleazy politician character instead no sir )

datomi real (which like, Yes resolution is the only ending where this is Really set up, but it honestly could've happened after any ending (except annihilation bc hitomi's obviously dead RIP). those two took one (1) look at each other, shot the Autism Beams into each other's eyes, and then fell in love (as you do). it was just kinda Bound To Happen Anyway, the only difference would be how much they know about how date was falco yadda yadda and honestly imo i liked the idea of datomi better before i knew date was falco but this post isn't about that)

that's... really not a lot? and considering that all of this has to do with characters that are reduced to like, background status at best if even that (iirc hitomi LITERALLY only shows up for three scenes, one of which is over in like 30 seconds; iris's appearance count is in the very low double digits at best; and date is still important but only when NEITHER of those characters are in the room) it just. aini being set after ai 1's resolution ending doesn't really Add anything, and i would further argue that it's actually actively bad compared to the other and most obvious option!

let's stop kidding ourselves; you all knew when you clicked in here that i was going to talk about this, the only reason i started writing this is because i wanted to talk about this, and everyone is tired of ignoring the elephant in the room. so let's stop beating around the bush: aini is made actively worse by not being set after ai 1's mizuki ending, and almost everything about the game comes off like the whole development team knew this and still chose not to go through with it.

where to START with how fucked this is, honestly - though i guess the best place is probably the beginning for multiple reasons. if you didn't know about this already (because you're an epic gamer who managed to avoid all of the evil Ryukis during the parts of the first psync where they're chasing you - i only got hit by the last set on my first playthrough), now's a good time for you to go replay the first psync in aini and see what happens when you hit all of the ryukis instead of avoiding them.

through ryuki's repeated reverse psyncs, we get to see that, on some level, mizuki still remembers the events of her ending from ai 1. the "do you know the culprit" room is straight-up the setup from PSYNCIN' IN THE CAPTaiN, down to the bowl of soup and adorabbit cursing mizuki forever, with various memorable imagery from PSYNCIN' IN THE PaiN scattered about the room. and from there, getting caught by the Ryuki chases gives us four "scenes":

the merry go round column's door

the left birdcage from PSYNCIN' IN THE PaiN with the picture taped back together

adorabbit dangling from balloons

the setup from the end of PSYNCIN' IN THE CAPTaiN with date vs shoko and renju, with the models replaced by the neon "anonymous person" figures

this is obviously the events that happened during mizuki's ending in chronological order - mizuki hides in the column, date and aiba help her in the psync, mizuki thinks about all that date's done for her (shown abstractly through adorabbit), and finally the ending of PSYNCIN' IN THE CAPTaiN.

this is like, really good. it's exactly the kind of throwback reference that works with or without knowledge of the first game and still has an effect. for players that haven't played ai 1 it's "damn, what does all of THIS mean and why is one of the main characters thinking about it? i wonder if there's a bit of background material where i could learn more!", and for players that have played ai 1 it's like "aww, mizuki remembers all that happened in her ending on some level, that's sweet <3".

but it's like. do you see the problem with this. i SHOULD just be able to say something like, "oh, that's a convenient throwback/recap!" or "it must've affected her real bad for it to be the first thing that her somnium calls up even after literal years :(" but i don't get to say any of that. instead, we as the audience are left to wonder how she even remembers any of this FOR it to be in her somnium because none of it even happened in this timeline!

and like, yeah, aini's whole point is all the meta shit, or at least it is significantly more so than it was in ai 1. theoretically it could make sense that mizuki remembers everything she was present for in ai 1 whether it technically happened in this timeline or not because we're the "frayer" and she's one of the "frayer characters" (though ryuki fulfills his role as a "frayer character" slightly better than mizuki does because he's so fucked up with the meta levels) and therefore knows a bit more than she realistically should, the same way date did a few times in ai 1. but something being "theoretically possible due to meta shit" is nowhere near as compelling as "this actually happened to you over half a decade ago, and you're still not really normal about it because you CAN'T be normal about it because it kinda-sorta-maybe messed with your mental state just a little bit because it was a really important part of your development as a person that ultimately ended in tragedy (i.e. date's "death" in the cathedral) despite your own best efforts (i.e. PSYNCIN' IN THE CAPTaiN)". one of these explanations is not like the other in that it positions mizuki's character on much stronger footing that could be further built up on her side.

now we go from the part where this changes from passively bad to actively bad, which is basically right at the end of the game. mizuki day 5: they all find the corpse in the freezer, and then mizuki sees date and gets to talk to him for the first time in 6 years... and this is what happens:

i hate this SO MUCH because it was SO CLOSE to being good. and literally ALL it needs to be good is to be set after the mizuki ending (with minor rewrites to match).

now maybe this doesn't FEEL that bad. but think about This version instead (changes in green):

Date: What? Do you have more insults to hurl at me after missing six years of your life? Mizuki: No, it's not that... Bibi: Maybe she just wanted to hear you say... Bibi: "Mizuki, you've grown so much," or something emotional like that... Mizuki: No, not that either... Date: Ah, right. For you, it's been six years. Date: For me, it's different. Date: I've been back for four days, dressed like this. I've been watching you guys the whole time. Date: So I don't really have anything sappy to say... Mizuki: I told you, it's not that! Mizuki: You already know what I want. Date: ... Date: All right, okay. Date: Let me try this again. Date: Mizuki... Date: ... Date: I'm home... Mizuki: ... Mizuki: Welcome back, Date... Mizuki: But I had something else I wanted to say, too. Date: ...? Mizuki: I threw away all your porno mags. Date: Nooooooo!!!

just LOOK at how this already reads so much stronger. it gives mizuki so much more emotional strength - exactly the kind of emotional strength that she had in the mizuki ending, because she's already had all of this development before. the last change is rather subtle and hard to convey through text alone, as it'd be much more through the facial expression and voice direction, but that line would be much better if it was read as "shit-eating-grin-but-also-trying-not-to-cry" emotion instead of kinda timid and almost tense like how it actually is in the game.

this conversation just plainly and succinctly reveals everything fundamentally wrong with setting aini after ai 1's resolution route instead of mizuki's ending. the way that mizuki just doesn't have the words for what she wants from date, the way that aiba has to call her out on what she wants and then mizuki is just... shocked?

which really just brings everything around to the core reason that aini is made so much worse by not being set after the mizuki ending: mizuki doesn't have the character development that she got during her ending and it makes her character a lot weaker overall. and, because of the way things have been set up, she can never get that development again unless it's off-screen.

which is really sad! like, SO much of what everyone liked about her in ai 1 was specifically the development she and date got during her ending, and she's the protagonist of this game so you'd think that they'd let her keep that good development! but mizuki gets shafted for the entirety of ai 1's resolution route, and as a result she and date never really had those moments where they CHOOSE to be family. which just... really flattens her character. and it affects WAY more than just this scene.

now's about the time where i say how i would rewrite aini to fix all of this, and honestly, very little would have to actually change in a meta sense - it's just the smallest tweaks and rewrites of single lines in a few places. the way id have it play out would be like this:

on mizuki's side, on the days where we're playing as mizuki instead of bibi, mizuki would be more openly Not Happy that date "died" six years ago in the cathedral and coping pretty poorly. like she's not weeping over him in every conversation, just every so often when he gets brought up she just kinda Stops Talking or gets teary. the general impression should be that this was a really deep wound (which like, after everything that happened in the mizuki ending and then date ACTUALLY DIES? YEAH NO FUCKING KIDDING) and that she'd only just started to heal only for it to be violently ripped open again with the return of the HB case. aiba should be acting as mizuki's crutch and parent figure - and it should clearly help, because mizuki and aiba actually know each other and are family in the mizuki end instead of never even being introduced in the resolution route.

meanwhile, on the days we're playing as bibi: bibi obviously isn't torn up about date's "death", both because it hasn't happened yet and also because bibi and date barely even know each other - so of course bibi doesn't want nor need aiba's comfort about this. aiba and bibi will seem slightly more distant as a result, because they barely know each other, either. until the reveal of the chronology twist, the player will think that this is just one of the days where mizuki is coping better with what happened and trying to focus on the investigation - and it can simultaneously be another hint toward that chronology twist, and make the "mandela effect in real time" that happens on mizuki day 4 stand out even more as "wait, there's obviously something wrong here".

barely anything else would have to actually change. and what do we get out of this? well - a lot.

for one, the "spoiler toggle" is no longer necessary at all, or is barely necessary. the characters barely know anything of the truth in the mizuki ending. date is still in saito's body and he doesn't even know saito's name, he doesn't remember anything about falco, he didn't discover the body-swapping secret. and considering that absolutely zero of that matters in aini anyway and it more often causes problems (like with date's "mask" - like, yes, the implicit confirmation that date experienced MEGA dysmorphia after ai 1's resolution route was good because i'd called that back in 2019, but it's not ever brought up nor touched on again and could be written out without anything changing), setting aini after the mizuki ending just removes a lot of the clumsiness around this and makes everything... smoother.

the only thing that's slightly off about this would be that, obviously, iris is technically already dead in the mizuki ending in ai 1. but, as i said earlier, this is such an obvious and acceptable handwave that i would be mad if that was the reason they chose to set aini after the resolution route. aini already does other handwaves like this, such as everything around mizuki being adopted by shoko and renju, and this would be a handwave for a worthy cause! iris is such a good character, and because they never figure out the body swapping twist in the mizuki end, it's very easy to handwave that she's Still Definitely Herself Tm and keep a really good character. worst case scenario you can stick something in the appendix like "technically iris would already be dead in the mizuki ending but SHUT UP!!! this is an offshoot timeline where the mizuki ending happened but she's still alive just enjoy the story <3".

(and like. iris having an AIball after she loses her eye in the mizuki ending would be SO funny. she wouldn't even be a psyncer she'd just beg pewter for one and pewter would be like "Fine. Ok Fine." it'd be pink with a rainbow segment and its eyeball form would look like a TBH and it'd play multiplayer shovelforge and/or kusemon and/or towerday (fortnite) doubles with her. LITERAL comedy gold potential here.)

i could write a lot more about how this would specifically improve things, but i think this just about sums up most of my thoughts in general. tl;dr aini's main plot could be so much better if they set it after ai 1's mizuki ending, though it still wouldn't be a perfect game bc the side routes minus shoma and komeji's have Other problems that this wouldn't fix. aini is also still overall better than ai 1 imo because it just builds and earns its climax better than ai 1 does. in ai 1 you can get the best ending in the first 8 hours and have everything else be all downhill from there, but aini just always gets bigger and better and its resolution route actually earns everything it does. both games still have problems though, and i think 999 is still overall a better game than either of them even if i like ai's characters a lot more. so yea!

(also someone PLEASE draw iris being soooooooooooooo normal with her AIball this needs to exist so bad)

#aitsf #aini #nirvanai #aitsf spoilers #aini spoilers #zero escape spoilers #i started writing immediately after i reblogged that mizuki end post yesterday RIP #my posts #date mizuki #mizuki date #okiura mizuki #mizuki okiura #this is ok to reblog btw #also fixed some of the formatting on pc

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chemicalbrew · 1 year

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choose violence ask game 6 bc we both know where this is headed (cough all of them cough)

YEAH YEAH YEAH YIPPEE [immediately turns reblogs off]

6. which ship fans are the most annoying? [interpreting as romantic ship]

so. let's start with what we both know

Katana ZERO

As I said in DMs earlier, I think the only worthwhile KZ ship is Zero x the receptionist (preferably one-sided, but I think someone really smart could make it mutual. I certainly wouldn't be mad if it was confirmed mutual in canon, but I seriously doubt it - one-sided is way funnier, anyway.). I also kind of sort of in theory respect the hustle of people trying to write V and Snow (rarepairs... been there), but I think I could never see it that way; what we have in game of them is barely good enough for anything, which is what makes it hilarious. That said, the most annoying shit here is, as we know...

150 150 150 150 150 !!!!!!

Even their stupid ship name cracks me up. Like, I understand, you can't have a good portmanteau or anything when your ship has numbers, but half the ship is literally Zero (hehe another reason Zerocep[tionist] wins), however... the way you read it is not even conducive to a shipping read. One fifty? One hundred and fifty? Even the number doesn't want them together <3

There was a post somewhere in my KZ tag that actually puts my feelings better than I myself can, but I'll try anyway. Due to the way this game's plot\timeline is framed, all their past interaction is basically implied. They don't really get to exchange any words, no matter how awkward (compare this to the receptionist having the tiniest of character arcs, but still an arc, between the hotel and bunker stages) - Fifteen just shows up, confirms he's the real Dragon, kills the shit out of V, and leaves, and that right there is the closest we get to an interaction (surely you won't say Zero walking in on a conversation later counts?).

How the fuck can you wrangle a ship out of that?

'But muh implications' that's all they are, implications. Not a very fertile ground to build upon. And even then, what they imply is far more like camaraderie than anything, which, while a solid and even necessary (in real life, at least) foundation for a relationship, doesn't MEAN it has to be romantic!! Give me traumatized war buddies that aren't making out with each other, pleeeeeeease...

'But you're reblogging art with them together' YEAH BECAUSE THEY LOOK HANDSOME TOGETHER AND THEIR DESIGNS ARE PERFECTLY COMPLEMENTARY. THAT'S THE ONLY REASON. I'M LITERALLY OBSESSED WITH HOW WELL THEY MATCH IN THIS ASPECT. This is why they should just be fighting together and nothing else <3

Xenoblade (gonna try and be a bit more rapid-fire about the rest of this post, unless the wrathful mood strikes me again)

Shulk and Fiora do not make sense romantically at all to me. They're family, ffs. Same for Shulk and Reyn, if not doubly same. But the fans keep insisting otherwise and often. (Libra, if you're reading this, this doesn't apply to you or other friends of mine that like Shiora. You're the only ones I trust with these two, I just want no part of it myself)

Shulk and Alvis are amazing, but need to be viewed through a lens more complex than typical shipping to be fully appreciated (something I'm still somewhat guilty of and recovering from. Jesus, wider XB1 fandom can be the worst sometimes).

Shulk and Melia as a ship by itself does not offend me, but the fans that weep about how Melia never had any good shit happen to her, and say Shulk not returning her feelings makes it worse... can die in a fire :)

I don't understand how people can take Reyn and Sharla seriously together tbh... but I guess it's more acceptable than the stuff above?

Rex and Nia (on their own, without Aegis in picture) never needed to be anything more than friends. The way Nia gets over being ''''friendzoned''' (hate that word) canonically is better than anything fans have come up with regarding this matter.

Lora and Jin have barely been interpreted by anyone in the wider fandom correctly (that I know of - key word 'barely'). Just stop at this point <3

...I won't be talking about XB3 ships because I heavily dislike XB3 and haven't read anything shippy for it, not even for NoahMio.

PS. Morag and Zeke should get more attention (personally I'm still guilty of somewhat ignoring this as a ship, but if I ever replay\rewatch, I'll be sure to analyze their interactions more, especially bc they're fun no matter how you look)

misc.

I have seen people interpret Ares and Dela (Brandish series) as a romantic ship, and I'd like to see just how much their brain has rotted.

Olivier and Mueller (Trails in the Sky) are very fun as a ship! I'd just like to see people view their relationship through a more neutral lens sometimes. However, the fact that Estelle x Kevin fics exist is the real mind-bender here. HOW? It's called being playful and keeping up a front!! (Also, Estelle x Anelace is slept on the same way as Zerocep and Moragzeke <333)

Frog x Magus and Lucca x Magus (Chrono Trigger) make equally little sense, and yet seem to be popular. Ew. Not even mentioning my personal beef with Frog x Lucca. Don't.

Midna x Link and Malon x Link (Zelda series) were actually my first NOTPs, largely because of annoying fans. I see now I was in the wrong and am largely 'thog dont caaare' about it, but still, important.

Ace Attorney series... tbh its fandom is weird about ships as a whole, but I'm guilty of falling into the Blackmadhi trap, so I can't speak. Almost everything other than Blackmadhi, though, is a tough sell largely bc of fandom.

Any ship involving Stocke from Radiant Historia has to be included in here. I am by and large respectful of most popular stuff with him (especially Stocke x Rosch and the Stocke x Sonja x Rosch OT3), I just think it's more fun to have him not into any of it. Very similar situation to Zero KZ, honestly.

#zero.txt #yippeeee

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celamoon · 2 years

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🂱anon!! this concept has been microwaved in my mind for 4 months now so!! i wana tell you all about it!!

so reader (abbreviated. to reed) is part of class 77-b before the apocolypse. and reed has a very smart talent (ult inventor, scientist whatever. a pretty general smart jack-of-all-trades talent) but ohno!! junko is a bitch and ends the world!! so after the events of sdr2 reed uses their talent!!

to build a time machine!! and is doomed repeat the whole cycle over and over and over trying desperately to save their friends.

MAYBE vecuase of v3 and how fycking meta and scary that was reed becomes self aware and realises thwir in a game. (like how games have different routes and shjt?? ljke that. mayve even with their means of timetravel being save files. undertale style yk??) and whoosh!! reason to live out the window!!

but thennnn they rember gud times!! cracking cold one w/ the boiys yk!! finding cool rocks!! plus their s/o!! and they have a reallll eye opener abd realise. that shit was real!! to eveyrone else it *was* real!! and everyone else deserves a happy life and if reed has the power to do it they *should* and they do the cycle ouroboros thing and all that shit.

i think the concept would be really jnterestinf with nagito izuru or if we *really* push canon, junko or kokichi (tho tbf the timeline is already a spaghetti noodle mess lmao.) personally i dont simp for any of the above characters i just think tje dynamic would be interesting.

good lord i talk alot

anyways. um. thoughts?

🂱 NONNIE!!!! YOU ARE SOOO BIG BRAINED!!! Reader who time travels back and is stuck in the cycle!! I loveee fics like that omg nothing like putting poor reader through hell for character development *wink wink nudge nudge

But I also think it's vv realistic for reader to end up all depressed from the time travel! I don't think V3 takes place in the same universe or timeline as dr1-3 but I think it'd be terrifying if reader finds out in one of the investigations that they invented a time machine and kept trying to save everyone bc ohh that would be good fic material

But I think it'd be really cool to see a reader who does end up time travelling to try and fix this mess and at some point Junko catches their ass red-handed and tortures them or smth

That'd be a fun way for reader to fall into despair phew

#🂱 anon #☾.asks #keep sending these ideas!! they're vv fun to chew on n digest

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actualbird · 2 years

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luke drives a motorbike in canon and it's a crime we havent seen it yet but also i cant decide which among these two motorbikes i want him to have most

wc: 1k

at the end of main story 2 when mc is escaping from the many media people tryna talk to her after her first big High Profile case, luke swoops in on a motorcycle, tosses mc a helmet, and whisks her off to safety

main story 2. thats so early in canon we were given the info that luke drives a motorbike

and we

have not

SEEN IT

frankly i dont think thats fair cuz //gestures at artem and vyn and marius. artem really likes driving and hes got two illustrations already of him driving fast (SSR Entwined Fate, SSR Wandering heart). vyn likes horseback riding and hes got SR Gentleman's Game with polo as a premise along with all card evolution images wheres hes riding the horse. AND while i dont have this card, marius in SR A Dance In The Clouds has him in the first evolution image as behind the "wheel" of an AIRCRAFT HE KNOWS HOW TO PILOT

(sidenote: marius, youre 21 years old. recently for work ive had to research aviation schools n timelines and. it takes many years. how the FUCK did marius von hagen have the time in his busy busy short life to get a pilot's license. what. how. it's hilarious but also HOW)

POINT IS, all the boys have been shown driving a vehicle (horse counts as a vehicle) of their specialty

except

LUKE!!!

PEARCE!!!!!!!

thats why this is a crime but i'll move on now, just had to get that off my chest

before i go into this i gotta tell ya, i know nothing about motorbike or motorcyle stats. i dont even know the difference between those two terms so i dont know what constitutes as a Good Motorbike. im going off of vibes

and one vibe from luke that both these options go into is his love for old stuff and antiques. stellis in the year 2030 has shown vehicles being slightly more futuristic (see: interior of car where theres no recognizable steering wheel, drives me NUTS) than what weve got now. but i dont think luke would go for an advanced looking model, i think he'd be drawn to more old style models liiike

option 1: classic harley davidson

my reasons for this are the following

it's old school so it fits with luke's affinity for things styled in the sensibility of past eras and also it's COOL. IT'S A COOL GUY MOTORCYLE. and i hate to admit this cuz it infuriates me sometimes, but luke is a cool person

i dont have to enumerate his coolness just //gestures to his long grocery list of skills that are cool and also dashingly masculine

the masculinity is also a factor bc while luke isnt tryna be Manly Man or anything (imo none of the boys are, thankfully) and is shown to not a give a shit about what ppl past his circle of loved ones think of him so yes he will spend a whole afternoon enraptured by a stray cat, his skills r still pretty skewed to societally seen Dude Activities. buncha sports, being the most physically strong person in stellis maybe, shooting, THE LIST GOES ON. so it wouldnt be outta place for luke to gravitate to whats societally seen as a Dude Motorcycle

so this fits imo and my last justification is the simple self indulgence: luke would look so frigging hot driving something like this. and im a simple luke stan, ok

show me luke pearce being hot on a cool guy motorcycle

option 2: a vespa

HUGE SWERVE IN VIBES I KNOW BUT HEAR ME OUT

for all that luke pearce is Cool (infuriating) he is also DORK (AFFECTIONATE, LOVINGLY, I AM LOOKING INTO HIS EYES WITH HEARTS IN MY OWN EYES)

the catalog of his dorktitude is as endless as his grocery list of coolness. a tinker and inventor, collector and enthusiast of antiques, was apparently so smart he went off to a top university at 16 yrs old which was earlier for everybody else in his age bracket, viddy games, and on and on and on. hes a nerd and it is delightful because enthusiasm is always so beautiful but im especially happy to see enthusiasm in things that arent always seen as "cool"

delightful but not "cool" is, i think, the unofficial tagline for a vespa

it's a WONDERFUL MOTORCYCLE. classic as well so it fits with what i mentioned earlier. and also it's reminiscent of movies where characters drive through quieter provinces and theres no action in the movie at all, the film is more focused on this vibe of like, enjoying the sunlight and grass and stuff

//points at luke pearce. for all that hes a literal action hero, he shines so brightly in moments where he enjoys the little things in life. the vespa, in my humble opinion, is the perfect motorbike to do this with

also he'd just look so cute driving it. //puts my face into my hands

in conclusion

im torn. i cannot decide. i want luke pearce cutting through stellis traffic on a harley davidson looking like the coolest person in the entire city. but i also want luke pearce stuck in stellis traffic on a vespa and everybody who sees him---sunshine boy on a sunshine motorcycle---finds a smile pulling at their lips

maybe he could have both? maybe theres garage space somewhere in that building he owns? why must i choose?

oh also, whatever motorcycle luke has, hes deffo modded to be Better, to be Optimized

so no matter what, there will be scenes where luke is doing infuriatingly attractive mechanic stuff. yknow, with the towel over shoulder, tank top outfit, expression of deep concentration and when mc calls out for him and shakes him outta The Zone he turns to her hes got a streak of grease on his face he didnt notice and mc will HAVE to come over and wipe it off and feel extremely flustered doing so

im not sure i made a point in this whole post. mhy, i want to see his motorcycle please

#tears of themis #luke pearce #tot luke #tears of themis headcanons #xia yan

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zombolouge · 3 years

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⭐⭐⭐!! I'm behind on catching up with Indefensible (bc I am also in the US and have been Big Overwhelmed too, so sending positive mental health vibes your way as well), so I will leave it to you to pick a part of a fic that you are most dying to discuss!

AH bb take your time catching up, there’s no rush!! It will still be there whenever you’re ready <3 I will send some positive mental health vibes right back at you, lord knows all of us in the US really need them lol

Okay, so my pick for this...hmmm, why don’t we talk about TRAUMA. I’ve had a lot of people comment about how I handle everyone’s trauma in the series, so I figure that’s a solid point of interest :)

I knew I was going to be writing this fic before I had actually played all the games, which gave me a bit of an advantage from a writing perspective because I actually took a HUGE amount of notes while I played. The most important of these notes were pages that I called “Lists of Trauma”. And I had one for every character. I would set them up every time I saw something in the games that would have been potentially traumatic, including backstory stuff that came to light. Then I’d write down what the trauma was, when it occurred, and how I felt it would affect them (both immediately and long term).

Pretty much everybody gets that Miles Edgeworth is traumatized. The game does a decent job of showing some of that, by giving him PTSD and mentioning his fear of elevators, using his recurring nightmares as a plot point, etc. But Miles is by FAR not the only one in the series traumatized. Pretty much every case is enough to send someone to therapy for a hell of a long time, but it’s not always highlighted as much as Miles, and I think it’s easy to brush everyone else’s trauma under the rug because their coping methods were a little more understated. I do think the evidence is there in the games, but it’s not obvious (Capcom puts a lot more subtlety in there than I initially would have expected. Either that or I’m adding subtext on my own and giving them too much credit. EITHER WAY, it did give me a lot to study and pick apart.)

One of the biggest themes in my writing is addressing and processing trauma (lol can you tell I have trauma I have worked on processing? hahaha). I tend to lean towards doing it in healthy and productive ways, as well, so I was HYPERFOCUSED on all the events happening to each individual character. By the end of the canon storylines, I had a pretty solid idea of what people still needed to work through and how things were holding them back, which is honestly how I arrived at some of the plotlines I did. They’re all engineered to be ways to push the characters where they need to be in order to heal. Or at least to grow (full healing is gonna take decades and y’all I can’t be writing this for the rest of my life haha)

In some cases, like with Phoenix and Miles and their relationship, I knew that it was going to involve a massive breaking point to get them anywhere. It’s been decades in game-time and they haven’t taken very many steps forward, which tells me that repression is so ingrained you basically have to make them completely snap and land in a place of “nothing left to lose” before they’d take any more steps. Hence the remote location and the cold temperatures and them working together and the closet scene and the hot tub scene and the spit-take scene and the obvious trap and...etc. Really had to slam their damn heads together repeatedly for this one.

But their trauma, while being some of the most obvious, wasn’t the only kind I wanted to address. Like, seeing everything play out with Apollo and Dhurke, I just kept thinking how fuckin badly that would mess someone up, and that isn’t even considering what he’d gone through BEFORE that (former boss was a murderer, and the ways he found out weren’t the softest. Best friend murdered, and the circumstances around it ended up with him getting physically injured TWICE. There’s a lot going on with that poor boy.) And Maya, who is forever cheery in the games, always struck me as someone who hid any negative emotions at all costs, and holy shit she has to have a few. She’s been accused of murder, manipulated by family, her sister was murdered, she had to raise her cousin from a young age, she’s been kidnapped MULTIPLE TIMES, had her body taken over by someone that DEFINITELY wanted to kill her and her best friend. On top of that, the first games make it pretty clear she has some inferiority issues, and alllll those traumatic situations would have only fed into it. I think she got really good at covering that up rather than really good at feeling confident.

Pretty much all the characters got trauma’d at one point or another, and the timeline over the span of canon basically meant that nobody ever had much time to recover before some other bullshit was happening. It’s why many of the characters in Indefensible, sometimes more than once, have opined about it being neverending or how they were losing hope that they’d ever have a whole year that was just normal.

I’ve included so many scenes where they are just breaking down and talking about feelings, because holy fuck they all need to. lol It’s also why I ended up jumping on the FranMaya bandwagon so hard because the way that the pair of them are traumatized and how they handle it is very complementary to each other. I think they’re both able to pull the dark out and soothe it within one another, keep each other from overthinking things, and provide a sudden rock to lean on when things get difficult again. If they didn’t have each other, I think the second half of Indefensible wouldn’t work as well, because Franziska absolutely would have snapped irreparably. But, uh, that won’t make as much sense until later. ;)

Anyways, this was long and rambly and I could probably make a separate post about each individual character’s trauma and how the fic is designed to shine a spotlight on it and get them to start processing it. I THINK ABOUT THIS STUFF A LOT, OKAY?

Link to the fic if anybody needs it: Indefensible

#zombolouge writes #ace attorney #indefensible #fanfiction #talkin bout trauma #I spent SO MUCH TIME picking apart their behavior in relation to their trauma #hopefully it's paying off as people read hehe #Anonymous

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foxwatchesanime · 4 years

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Kageyama meta incoming:

What I find really fascinating talking to some HQ fans is that when I make the age old joke and meme of “Kageyama never did a single thing wrong in his life” (bc stan, and YES I say it in the jokey way, I am aware that people do things wrong in their lives), the response I usually get after some chuckles is, “to be fair he was a bit of a dick at first”.

Like, it’s not said in an anti way, it’s just said very matter of fact.

And that’s so interesting to me, and granted, I have the gift of hindsight and of having rewatched HQ several times at this point and I’m also very invested in Kags, so I’m much more interested in the meta of his story rather than the surface level.

But to me, it always seemed obvious that Kags’ behaviour, as unfair as it was on his teammates, was never ever done out of purposeful malice or spite. He was never out there to hurt people’s feelings, he was never saying things or doing thing to in order to be a dick.

And sure, just because you don’t MEAN to hurt someone’s feelings, it doesn’t mean much when you do actually end up hurting someone’s feelings.

But look at the expression on his face after his outburst during the game:

He looks almost shocked by his own tone, the things he’s saying.

Even when we see him earlier in the timeline during the game with Hinata and his team, to me he looks more frustrated, stressed and anxious rather than cruel or dickish.

And so even though I get why some of the characters in universe thought he was a bit of a twat, I’m surprised that people watching the show also thought that at one time.

Because look at Kags when he’s “at rest”. He’s quiet, focused and a little awkward. He barely talks to people unless he’s directly brought into a conversation unless it’s about a play or tactic. The only time we see him blow his top on a regular basis is when he’s bickering with Hinata and then it’s mostly hyped up for comedic value. He literally only ever bites when he’s backed into a corner or when he gets too anxious to realise what he’s saying before it’s too late (like in the above example).

What I find DOUBLY interesting is that some people thought THIS was considered dickish behaviour even when we have a character like Tsukki playing off of Kageyama, who (IN MY OPINION GUYS SO DON’T @ ME) is ACTUALLY behaving like a total asshole from day one. He’s proactive in trying to rile people up, goes out of his way to make people feel small and like shit and is generally very petty in his attitude to certain characters. Regardless of whatever has happened in the past to make him that way, he is very aware of it and he KNOWS that he behaves this way on purpose. Even someone like Oikawa, who I stan with my entire heart, does the things he does WITH PURPOSE. Every comment he makes and everything he does it calculated and checked and if it looks like he’s being a dick, it’s because that’s what he wants you to think.

In Kageyama’s example, what I find even more heartbreaking is that the people who nonchalantly go, “oh yeah I mean tbf he was a bit of a dick in the beginning” don’t ever seem to mention his ACTUAL asshole coach who did nothing while Kageyama was clearly struggling mentally for a prolonged period of time. You don’t go from innocent happy Tobio eating a riceball in his first year, to “Mr King of the Court” in his final year without there being a trajectory.

And again, I know MOST HQ fans are aware of all this, it just always surprises me when I hear these sorts of takes on his character when, even when I didn’t know anything about HQ and never knew that I was about to enter the “I would give my life for him” stage of loving Kageyama, the second I saw those flashbacks, I knew he wasn’t a dick in any sense of the word. He was someone who had been brought to breaking point with pressuring himself and someone who couldn’t deal with the stress. Not to mention what comes out later on about his difficulty in communicating with others.

WHICH IS WHY when THIS happens:

I LITERALLY BURST INTO TEARS.

Because to me, this was the show telling us once and for all, that Kageyama is NOT an asshole and he’s never been one. That the way he speaks to people and the way he comes across is not a result of ill intentions. It’s not even a result of how he sees OTHER people.

The reason for his abruptness, his harshness and whatever else that makes him seem mean, is all a reflection on how he sees HIMSELF.

More than anything, what I adore about this scene (and what I’ve heard some fans be critical of) is that not only Hinata, but EVERYONE else on the team, never once suggests that they need to change him. That his personality and yes, his anxiety, is something that he needs to get rid of in order to make him a better person. This is WHO HE IS.

And the fact that they took what was once thought to be the “ugliest” part of himself and the thing that made everyone see him as “evil” and “bad”, and literally CROWNED him for it, still shakes me to my core. That they said, “no, we want and love you for who you are and ONLY for who you are. You’re not an asshole. The fact that you have bad days doesn’t matter, you’re no different to the rest of us. We won’t leave you for it,” is, in my opinion, proof IN canon that Kageyama doesn’t need to change, because he’s never been bad. He’s been the victim of poor circumstance, bad mentorship, stress and misunderstanding.

The long and short of it is: I personally don’t think Tobio Kageyama is an asshole or a dick, not yesterday, not today, not tomorrow, and I adore him with my entire heart. This was a rambly post written in like ten minutes so please forgive me if I didn’t go into enough detail, I just felt like writing down my thoughts and I didn’t think Twitter was the most productive place to do it.

#meta #haikyuu #hq #tobio kageyama #kageyama tobio #kageyama #haikyuu meta #kageyama meta #karasuno

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juni-ravenhall · 3 years

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my opinions on mistfall!

under a cut bc spoilers and/or not everyone wants to read :D

overall experience:

its fun that there IS a sso cartoon now even if its not exactly amazing quality, and im happy to see if there will be more series or movies after this. it was fun to watch and see sso things in cartoon form too and i wish that we had more already (of sso animation in general). imagine if there had been a ssl cartoon? i also kept thinking throughout this, that it wouldn’t be hard for me myself to make an animated series with around the same length episodes and in a similar quality to this (aside from voice acting and music production), which made me feel a little inspired.

favourite scene:

skye taking photos of blaze and hanging out

positive points:

i like the background art a lot, i think the style of it, and the colour schemes, helps give the series a specific vibe that fits for an sso series in my opinion.

i like the concept art (i assume) illustrations which we saw in the recipes and other posts on sso ig, i think it looks a lot better than the characters in the series, but thats normal for concept art!!

the music is really good quality (whether or not its your taste, the quality is good) which is ofc bc its sso - theres already good music and not something they only did for the cartoon but something they care about in all of the starstable media.

i think skye is a nice character (despite the series’ overall low quality writing) and i like her design. i also think rania’s cartoon design (visually) is cute.

skye and rania being a teensy bit gay (minus points for sso if they dont end up really gay in later canon)

i like that blaze wasnt actually like... mean or anything to skye, and i like that shes a mare since typical stories like this usually have stallions. but i just like that there wasnt really any “ooh difficult horse” things between skye and blaze in the current time of the story, blaze actually was sweet to her most the time. blaze seemed pretty charming whenever there wasnt “omg fire” drama.

the animation itself (not meaning the details of the drawings or scene timing, just the actual frame by frame / puppet movements) was fine! not amazing, but absolutely fine.

points i have constructive criticism for, which doesn’t mean that i expected more from the series, but that we’re all allowed to discuss the quality and our opinions of media regardless of the target audience, budget, etc:

the writing was childish and rushed - this is not to be rude, but a matter that affects a lot of “media for girls / kids”, and a topic talked a lot about by Lauren Faust (creator of the FiM reboot of MLP) who wanted to show that a show about rainbow ponies “for little girls” didn’t have to be badly written, and could be engaging and interesting. if you watch the older MLP cartoons and compare to the first season of FiM (where Faust was still on the team) you can see a huge difference in quality of the storytelling, characterisation, etc. Mistfall, so far, did not subvert any expectation in the quality of what typical “cartoons for girls” are like, and is reminiscent of stuff like “The Ranch” (french horse cartoon) which imo is so bad that its hard to watch. (and ofc... that goes for a lot of “cartoons for girls / kids”, but doesn’t have to be like that.) in order to improve on this, the writer has to study more on storytelling and study from better writers.

on the topic of being rushed: no, it’s not an excuse that the episodes are short: - you have to ADAPT your storytelling and writing to the length of the episodes, not do a bad job and blame the episode length. being able to adapt to different types of media is a necessary skill if that’s what you work with. this comes down to proper planning and structuring the story and writing in a way that works for the length of the episodes. i don’t think that was overall done well here (at times it was okay), and bc of that, it feels rushed and has exposition thrown in your face instead of being shown through better storytelling. the classic thing with exposition is “show, don’t tell”. this is what the writers/directors should study, or pay more attention to.

the timing (length of shots, length of scenes, or parts of shots, etc) was rly bad at times and overall unimpressive - this comes down to the skill of directors and editors. to improve this they have to study more on the topic. bad timing and pacing can really ruin a good scene or a good story and make it feel disconnected and hard to immerse in for the audience.

the artstyle of characters and horses is fine at times, but appears very low quality at others (skye’s childhood scene really bothered me bc her kid-self had really badly drawn eyes in my opinion). this, like everything else on this list, is ofc something that appears in almost every single “cartoon for girls” that ever existed. to improve on this, most likely it’s not a problem with the artists but with the budget and the production timeline (allowing the artists more time to produce better quality art and animation), and it can also be a problem with the art direction, if the art directors aren’t very skilled or experienced (i don’t say that they aren’t, im just giving examples of what could cause these problems.)

the character design for all characters that aren’t skye, rania, or blaze was very lacking. none of the not-main-3 characters looked interesting or fun to look at, they looked very dull and like the most boring NPCs you could think of. even though its understandable that the mainest-main characters would have the most interesting designs, that doesn’t mean everyone else has to look that boring. this is an issue with art direction or character design. i think most likely there was just very little time (equals money) put into designing the other characters.

the horse design could be improved for a cartoon that focuses on horses this much. like, horses are a big part of the selling point here, so make sure that their designs and art/animation is good. at times even blaze looked awkward and uninteresting, as did the other horses.

“alonso” looks nothing like sso alonso and i don’t like that they used his character if it’s not going to have anything to do with him. they should have given this character a different name if they wouldn’t make him seem like he had anything to do with the sso character aside from being a male ranger. (also in the game he’s like 22 or something, skye is 15...?)

why did they add a “he’s cute” dumbass fucking stupid hetero comment for literally no reason other than adding a dumbass fucking stupid hetero comment?

considering that they “can’t confirm whether a sequel is happening or not”, it seemed very meh to throw in druid cult magic stuff and not really connect to it and now the series ended? you would have expected to find out more about the cloaked people, the runes, the magic that the ranger guy did, and blaze’s magic in general, and skye herself, why her mom is “a witch”.... thats a lot to throw in while saying that you can’t say if there’s a sequel coming to answer all those questions. (it wouldn’t have been a criticism from me if they said “we’re working on season 2″ or “there will be a comic book that continues the story” or anything that told us that these questions, in this particular iteration of a story in jorvik, will actually be answered. - and i assume they ARE working on the continuation of the story, but i dont agree with that they’re not upfront about it, when they left so many questions unanswered.)

at times rania’s blindness was handled stupidly and i think they should have gotten more consultation from actual people with visual impairment, but i think its still good to HAVE a blind character in the main cast and that it’s not a big dramatic story thing but just an everyday thing. at some points it was fine though; and i personally don’t think the scene with rania being able to see blaze was necessarily a problem - because - a lot of blind ppl can see sharp contrasts in light and dark, and this seemed relatively realistic to me when blaze is on fire. (however, the way it was drawn as if she could see the whole shape of blaze and skye could be criticised for sure, and makes it feel more like “i can see because of magic” and not “i can see bc THIS MARE IS ON FIRE”).

personal opinion which i said before, but i don’t think rania’s voice fits her at all, and it’s not the voice actor’s fault (i’m sure they’re lovely) but the casting and the directors. from the sso character, rania would seem a lot more lively, quick and adventurous, and not as calm and gentle as she appeared here. she seemed a lot too sort of motherly or just adult, instead of an adventurous teen who runs off on her own to do whatever she feels like. compare in-game rania going “MC, thats a jorvik wild!!!” and alonso going “stop talking nonsense” (paraphrased), to Mistfall rania going “jorvik wilds are really rare...” (calm, sort of disinterested, doesnt seem like she cares that much about adventures)

the voice acting overall was meh. i see this as a direction problem, not an individual voice actor problem (and the writing didnt help - it’s hard to provide good quality acting with a poor script unless you can just toss the script aside and improv, if you have good actors). it felt childish and uninteresting at most points and generic low quality for “cartoons for girls”. from a voice acting perspective i think skye had the best result. anyway, the way to improve this is for the director in charge of voice acting to not direct the actors to perform in this childish manner. (again, refer to cartoons with better writing and better voice acting, that have a very similar target audience.)

ok, i think that was everything that i wanted to write about for now, might think of more later lol

#star stable mistfall #opinion #text post #long post

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vanityloves · 4 years

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Slick or Marvus for the ask game? 💘

clown time...

-What made me like them

The Ultimate Child saw that I was looking for himbos to f/o and they humbly offered me Marvus, so after like… 3 days i decided to watch his route bc i will not pay money for things I guess and I was like UH...👁👄👁 he's disgusting, I want him. His route was a trip and it sent me into fight or flight mode tbh.

Something I really like ab Marvus is that, despite him being a celebrity, I feel that he genuinely cared for the players safety? Pulling them up on stage and telling them to play dead, which I'm sure was mostly to entertain the audience but he could've just, killed them and continued as usual so 😃 plus the whole 'dubiously canon, time paradox' ending kinda fucked me up? Bc with no cameras around and nothing to gain, he risked his life to keep the player safe, which again, may not even count as canon but im takin it bitch.

In that ending he's shown to have understanding of different timelines and breaks the fourthwall and everything, but lmao the range… he said i have galaxybrain ab music and time and thats it, no further questions please ❤

-My favorite thing about them

Pretty much what I stated above! He's shown to care about the player whether cameras were on him or not, and I'm one of those dummies that like to believe be really does care about the mistreatment of the lower castes and wanted some change, deep down (which is Wrong, considering how many are culled at his performances that are probably influenced by chucklevoodoo and yadda yadda. but its my f/o and I chose the Plot Device). I talked to a friend about the idea of Marvus, helping out unfortunate lowbloods escape whatever situation they were in by faking their deaths and getting help from outside sources (yeehaw s/i time) since the show must go on.

I digress, the fact he's just a weird fuckboi is funny to me too but it's kinda upsetting thinking abiut how much security he has to hire in order to get around safety without being bombarded by raging, horny fans.

-Nicknames we have for each other

@ Marvus: Bubby/Bubba, Bud/dy, Tiny, Smalls, Stinky, Baby, Superstar

@ Midori: Mimi, Babe/baby, Ma, Sugar, Buttercup, Oatmeal

-A headcanon of our relationship/friendship

He's kinda self centered, not on purpose, but he's used to getting all the attention and having things go his way that sometimes he gets, fussy(?) When I don't automatically agree - although thats definitely a reason why he likes me, since I'm not really afraid to disagree and share my own opinions on something. He'll his hum and nod, kinda brushing it off at first but over time, he gets used to disagreements or comments and tries to listen rather than ignore it, simply because he realizes I'm definitely not against him; rather, I'm trying to help him and he begins to recognize there's a give and take in a relationship.

Even if he is self centered, he still tries to keep my feelings in mind. Although, I'm fairly easy going, as is he, so there's not too much to disagree with when we're just chillin - dates are easy, as I go along with whatever he suggests and he surprisingly, doesnt mind helping me out when its time to wrangle up restless grubs and laughs at the lil guys. He sometimes comes off as uncaring bc of relaxed and indifferent he is and it's definitely bc he's conditioned to remain calm for the cameras that is kinda hard go break him out ofbthat habit - despite that, without the act up, he's still fairly relaxes but he more prone to laughing and smiles a lot more which is contiguous and I Am Not Immune To BF Smiles

-My favorite image of them

no explanation 😃

-Anything else!

Marvus is the instagram bf that still acts that way when cameras are off like "baby look at me..... ur so pretty" like for no reason, I have to stan.

he highkey looks like a walrus i wanna cry

#self ship #self insert #my headcanons #my writing #s: clownfish #ask reply #this was like 700 words. why.#sir ily. gb. *shoots him #brie!!!

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tacittherapist · 4 years

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((HS2 Spoilers under the cut!))

((For all the shit I give the epilogues, it does have its moments. Specifically highlighting this bit of dialogue here: ROXY: you think you choice mattered so much that no one elses could measure up? ROXY: n then what ROXY: did u get what u wanted? ROXY: did your life end and the points got tallied and you came out on top or like what? ROXY: still p much seems like were movin to me ROXY: and you sure dont seem like ur winnin so wheres all this good shit you got that you gotta go around handin out apologies for? ROXY: also damn dude while were at it!! ROXY: u forgot to actually say sorry in that apology! JOHN: no, i didn’t — i just meant... JOHN: i’m sorry for fucking up your life, or making it not— ROXY: i like my life!!! ROXY: i mean it aint perf and i got my share of fuckups n mistakes in there but you dont get to tell me its fucked up ROXY: or that it isnt real or somethin ROXY: its mine!

First: criticism. The writers wield this little section like a crude cudgel. They use it to underscore the weight of ‘canon’. This is the ‘candy’ timeline, so it supposedly ‘weighs less’ than the ‘meat’ timeline, but its characters still have meaningful thoughts and emotions. Here, John supposedly makes a choice that supposedly invalidates a bunch of supposedly important events, and Roxy here blows it all out of the water by claiming she made these choices too and that part of the blame rests with her in the direction her life has taken... which is total dogshit used to justify a bunch of really overt swings in character thematic. Continued here: ROXY: you wished i was one way the whole time we were married ROXY: but i wasnt ROXY: but now that youre all convinced ur the only real boy in a crowd o puppets ROXY: here i am bein me just like you ordered only i did it without your help ROXY: widen ur zoom my man!! ROXY: im not actin like this now because you want me to or bc you dont want me to ROXY: i was bad at standin up for myself then and im learnin to be good at it now ROXY: ive got my own self actualization train ROXY: ur just pullin in to one of my many roxy figures some shit out stations right as i built it JOHN: but... JOHN: you were never like that before i... ROXY: dude ROXY: where tf do u get off trying to decide what is or isnt me being “like me” enuff ROXY: do u think ppl stay the same their whole damn lives or what JOHN: you’ve really never felt like anything about our lives here was... off? ROXY: off from what exactly?? JOHN: the way things should be? ROXY: what does that mean???

Roxy here argues that there is no ‘one right way to be’ as a half-baked wink to the audience that all this gross mischaracterization is intentional and that it diverges so grossly from the established character arcs in order to demonstrate that nothing is set in stone. While technically true, this also makes for some pretty terrible writing.

Roxy was a caring, almost too involved individual before the epilogues. Her ditching Calliope for John and this messy marriage business and just letting Jane warp into a full-blown dictator makes no sense, even couched within the idea that ‘characters change.’ Yes, characters change, but there’s generally a reason for it! And not a shitty deus ex machina reason such as ‘John makes a choice!’ What even fucking happened to Candy Calliope anyway? She just fucked off somewhere? How do you sincerely throw a character away like that and then have the gall to wink at the audience as if what you’ve done makes sense? Changes in character are generally brought on by catalysts in their life! Trauma, joy, death, new settings, new ideas, events! Not... John deciding to eat a plate full of candy. If we had insight into Roxy’s thought process behind ditching Calliope and marrying John and having a kid on a whim, this might be saved. But we don’t even get a glimpse. Instead we’re pawned this shitty excuse for a very glaring departure from what we knew about Roxy. Character development is just that -- development! As in to become more complex or advanced! Roxy has made wrong choices in the past, yes, but her reasoning was laid bare in such a way that those wrong choices made sense for her to make. She then makes different decisions later because she learned from her wrong decisions. This is development! Her character is learning and changing behavior because of the things they’ve been through! Her reasoning for this awful series of bad choices is just... not explained, despite going against a ton of shit Roxy has learned. It’s slipshod. It’s careless. It’s sacrificing the tree to showcase the topper. The audience isn’t vested in this Roxy because she’s seemingly robbed of her agency, and then they’re trying to foist this idea that she somehow still has agency on us as if they didn’t preface the entire timeline with ‘well, all this shit is going to happen because we decided it and no other reason!’

Now: the praise. This bit of dialogue has huge implications for ‘non-canon’ dynamic. No, not ‘non-canon’ in the cheeky way the epilogues and HS2 claim to be ‘non-canon.’ I mean ‘non-canon’ as in this blog that I run and all the blogs that you, the reader, are writing and reading as well. Roxy’s insistence that characters change can swing the other way, too. Characters can develop in bad ways as well! Not bad as in bad writing, but bad as in flawed character reasoning! Suppose what Roxy learned from her time in HS1 was that most things can be solved by unvoiding fix-all solutions into existence? Then we might be able to see her trying to fix the human-troll-population issue by just... making more planets! Or unvoiding some sort of device trolls could wear that inhibits hivemind tendencies! That would be interesting and perhaps morbid to write about!! It would at least track with her past experiences!!! Or better yet: perhaps she actually takes a side against Jane (as she has done in the past) but instead of using their friendship as the moral plating, she went right into sarcastic arguments FOR eugenics to demonstrate how bigoted Jane was being? That’s a very Roxy thing to do!! She could have made the argument that if trolls need eugenics to suppress their violent tendencies, then so should humans! Having read about the Condesce’s eugenic practices during her formative years, this should have been fairly obvious to Roxy that what Jane was suggesting was from the same playbook, at least.

But I digress. What this bit of dialogue really does is give credence to us, the audience, in exploring these stories we’re currently writing for these pre-established characters. YES, canon Rose likely didn’t dabble so thoroughly in game magics, and she likely didn’t have as much anxiety as my Rose. BUT I prefaced my Rose’s current state with a bunch of events that make sense! She missed her rendezvous with the others! She had to float adrift, alone in a broadcast satellite, for nigh on a decade! She’s had a long fucking time to develop all these anxieties and mental illness because that’s what happens when you’re isolated for years! It is a tool I use to express my own anxieties and explore how someone might somehow overcome them! And most importantly: she’s still Rose. She has unprocessed mother issues. She cherishes her friends. She’s more than a bit gay. And she knows when the meta is using her and when it’s not, because she’s had a traumatic experience being used by Doc Scratch as a plot device. And that trauma isn’t going away (well, unless she gets therapy, but given the setting we’re writing... not likely), so she’s going to be overly cautious when it comes to big decisions involving her friends. What she’s not going to do is suddenly abandon everyone she’s departed from because uhhh Jade ate some bread the wrong way or whatever.

tl;dr: What this section of the epilogues/HS2 (well, really just this bit with Harry Andersen, Tavros, and Vrissy that is somehow more interesting than virtually EVERY OTHER PART of HS2) is telling us, the audience, is that it is good to diverge from canon. Non-canon characters will still have very real feelings and face very real consequences for their actions. Just... don’t do it like they did it. All these characters we’re writing for and all these events we’re writing around them... they’re valid! They matter! Just because they’re not canon doesn’t mean others are willing and wanting to read them, and that makes them important! Unfortunately, this also means the epilogues/HS2 are important, but let’s ignore that for now. What I’m trying to say is: be indulgent! Write the things you want to write! As long as they’re well-reasoned, they’re good writing! Characters can be overpowered! They can be cliche! They can have teenage problems as an adult! Just... give them a good reason.))

#ooc #hs2

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musaeon · 4 years

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okay so this is going to be a very long post of how i’m handling p5r on this blog now that i’ve beaten it! it’ll be under a cut for length/how much content i’m talking about and for spoilers of course!

the tl;dr of this for people that haven’t completed p5r are this: i’m tagging any and all content involving royal (especially third semester + the endings) and i’m no longer going to be tagging spoilers for vanilla p5.

with that out of the way, for those of you that have completed p5r, it’s time to get right into it!

okay starting with the most obvious the two muses on my blog that are the most affected because of p5r are akira and akechi, primarily because of third semester content, but ann, yusuke and futaba are affected mostly because of their third tier personas (and showtime attacks + futaba being able to cause all out attacks) and their choices of what they want to do in the true ending! but for the most part their personalities are remaining the same so there’s no real noticeable changes being made to them for royal verses

as for akira and akechi...akira is mostly staying the same as how i write him in vanilla p5 (other than a bit more emphasis on his relationship with akechi in practical because yeah, akechi does mean a lot to him especially looking at third semester) but as for akechi...oh boy.

akechi is staying the same as how i write him during vanilla p5′s events but as for third semester...akechi is not dealing with his ‘pleasant boy’ personality during this point bc yes, akechi have very valid reasons for being as ‘feral’ as he is during third semester. i don’t 100% agree with some of the stuff that he does during this time (manly just that yes, he has a reason for being as feral/anger as he is, and he has no reason to hide behind pleasantries at this point in the game’s canon unless it’s necessary re: right at the beginning of third semester events but he doesn’t enjoy killing as much as the game/mostly the battle dialogue would suggest but uh. that’s a topic for a another day. the tl;dr of this is yes, i’m keeping him being genuinely pissed/angry during third semester but no, he’s not as feral/bloodthirsty as the game says he is)

and for well...that stringer at the end of the true ending’s credits, i am going with yes, akechi did survive and that the akechi we see during third semester is the real akechi. how he survived is something i’m unsure about since canon doesn’t give us much but what i’m going with is that akechi doesn’t remember how he survived bc he himself says during the 2/2 conversation that he has a gap in his memory from the fight up until meeting up with akira again (on 12/24 aka when he turns himself in for akira), so really, he doesn’t know. so he’ll be vague but in post true ending scenarios, all he’ll be able to say for sure is he remembers what happened in shido’s palace and the events of third semester. (also just as food for thought with this - canon does establish that memory loss is a common side effect for those that get put into a psychotic breakdown berserk state and just what does akechi do to himself during his boss fight? here’s a meta post for just some more proof)

(also as a sidenote to this post a lot of the meta posts/translations i get are from that blog and they’re what’s helped me to make my decisions so just throwing that out there for reference!)

now, moving onto my muses relationships with sumire/maruki! (and time for me to break my formatting bc why can’t i do bullet points and block quote thanks for nothing tumblr) so first up: sumire!

for ann and yusuke: they both don’t hold super strong feelings towards her other than she’s around the same age as us and she’s like us. really, it just that yes, they she her as a friend and teammate, but that she’s not someone they’ve known for a long time, so they don’t have the same level of friendship/attachment as say, akira does.

for futaba: she does see her as a friend and teammate, and tries to be casual with her since they’re the same age for most of the game. she’d like to talk to her more and honestly, she’s one of the few people i can say that futaba might get a crush on so i do ship them.

for akechi: the devs already said that quite frankly, he doesn’t care for her that much. the literal term they say is to death (also here’s a post that translates about the royal trio and akechi’s feelings toward both sumi and akira) so really, unless they seriously talk then akechi isn’t gonna be as friendly as some of the other thieves with her. he’ll be polite if he has to but we know that he can be quite blunt and no nonsense as seen in third semester.

for akira: he does care about her, as a friend and teammate. he’s the only member of the thieves that’s really talked to her for longer than the time in third semester + the christmas/new years stuff and the ending and he does want to support her. he wants to help her, to see her regain her courage and strength and she here become who she was again (especially in third semester, he wants to help her become strong so she can live as sumire and not kasumi) and if he has to help her, he will.

and in terms of shipping, she’s neutral for ann and yusuke, liked for futaba, notp for akechi and for akira...somewhere in being neutral to notp.

and now for maruki!

for ann, yusuke and futaba: they’re firmly neutral in terms of opinions. yes, the stuff he did during third semester does make them mad but they’re also mad at themselves for giving into his dream world and turning their backs on akira during this time. plus they all talked to him and yes, he’s not a bad person but also his actions in third semester are just...a lot for them to deal with (especially with the whole falling into his dream world) so while they can’t forgive what he’s done, they do think that his goals are well...not entirely moral but they’re better than the other adults they’ve taken down.

for akechi: oh boy. most of the reason why he is so pissed off in third semester is because of him. akechi during third semester does harbor something akin to anger towards him, especially because he’s the one that created the dream world, and for as far as he knows is the reason he’s alive and hasn’t committed any crimes in this world. akechi states that he refuses to be a puppet on a string (again, mind you) and this dream world? it’s basically everything he hate because yes, he’s done so many things wrong and deep down, doesn’t believe he deserves to be forgiven for what’s he’s done. he’s going to crave his own path, and not have it handed to him or be a puppet to someone else (again). i do think that post p5r, if he got the chance to speak to him, while he wouldn’t be able to forgive him for the events he caused, he wouldn’t be so openly hostile towards him.

for akira: out of all the thieves, he’s probably the most reluctant to truly agree to stopping him because maruki has a point. he wants to help others and save them from suffering. but his methods in doing so are just wrong. the dream world created is both something akira wants to give into but also can’t give into. because it’s not right. it’s not right to him, or any of his friends because while they’re happy, they also didn’t go through what caused them all to change and grow. plus akira helped him with his research and knows that yes, maruki is not a bad person but what his methods are will not help out everyone in the long run. i will say that akira almost folds on 2/2 from stopping him because of that conversation (and well...also because of his relationship/feelings with akechi but that’s a story for another time) but ultimately stands up against him because taking his offer is taking the easy way out. and akira has never, not once taken the easy way out at any point during his time as a thief. plus in the end, even when maruki said he was done, akira still leapt to save him (which ties so heavily into the savior complex/chronic hero syndrome - it’s one of the two i swear- i write akira with aka wanting to help people no matter what) because yeah, you can be hurt but you can move on and heal. post p5r while akira can’t forgive his actions, he’s probably the most willing to talk to him and try to reestablish some kind of bond with him again.

and well...as for verses i’m adding because of royal, i’m technically adding four but i’m really adding three because one of them is so selective but there’s a part of me that wants to write it anyways so yeah! i’m adding verses for main p5r canon, third semester, post p5r’s true ending and (selectively) bad ending verse (aka when you accept maruki’s deal - but for akira and akechi only as they’re the only ones that will know the bad ending isn’t right.) i will say i vastly prefer the true ending to the bad ending, the bad ending is something i think would be fun to explore. all of these verses will have their own tags and i will be using the p5r spoilers tag for all of these posts which brings me to...

...how i’m tagging spoilers! basically, everything involving something exclusive to royal will be tagged, and all royal verses will have the spoiler tag, crack posts being throwing into the tag as well (because honestly, i can’t help myself) but basically, if it’s in royal, it’s getting tagged (especially third semester and post true ending). also i’m not going to be tagging spoilers for vanilla p5 anymore. the vanilla version has been out for three and a half years in japan and three everywhere else. my rules will be updated to reflect this soon enough. (and as a sidenote to all of this, to keep myself from spoiling the truth about sumi, i’m referring to her as kasumi in my image tag for her and on the pages for my muses for shipping but in threads, if they’re in anything other than canon timeline (aka before third semester and the truth comes out) she’ll be referred to as sumire. otherwise she’s kasumi so i don’t spoil anyone about that twist!)

and one last point to this very, very long post! i’m working on a post for a headcanon of mine i’ve had since the game released in which royal is ng+ to akira. it’s a very headcanon heavy and in some ways self-indulgent verse but something i hold dear to me and want to write really badly. however it isn’t my default verse for akira when it comes to royal content. i don’t want to force people to write this verse with me but i want it to be an option because it means a lot to me and it also makes sense within p5r’s canon.

anyways! if you’ve read all of this post thank you so much for reading it because of how long it is but i felt it was important to get all of this out on the table now that i’ve completed p5r!

#p5r spoilers #✿ [ ah look up at all the puppeteers // out of character ]

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stxrlightdreams · 6 years

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The timeline no one asked for bc I want to keep my thoughts organized this is basically for only my blog bc there's not really a Canon timeline. Also I haven't played all the games (looks at rainbow curse bc I dont know shit about that one) but I tried. I also have no idea where to place star dream soul os, even though I know the extra modes aren't actually Canon I want to try at least. There are some missing, like star stacker and dream course, as they would take place before Kirby's Dreamland. And with Galacta Knight being an asshole and jumping timelines this isn't easy.

Honestly tho. I was just fucking bored at work.

Kirby's Dreamland:

Kirby's first adventure. Dedede did his thing and was the first ever final boss. Nothing too odd here.

Kirby's Adventure/Nightmare in Dreamland:

The second adventure where Kirby first meets Meta Knight. Kirby accidentally frees Nightmare, but thanks to King Dedede and the star rod, he manages to defeat the wizard.

Kirby and the Amazing Mirror:

Kirby is split into four and sent to the mirror world. Meta Knight is trapped inside the amazing mirror by Dark Meta Knight. During the final battle, Kirby is given the Master Blade by Meta Knight. After Dark Mind's defeat, Meta Knight leaves the sword in the Mirror world to be used should evil arise from it again. Meta Knight leaves on a journey afterwards to seek Galaxia.

Kirby's Dreamland 2:

Dark matter appears for the first time and possesses the king. He is defeated by Kirby with the Rainbow Sword.

Kirby's Dreamland 3:

Dark matter appears again, this time with the first incarnation of Zero. With help from Gooey and Kirby's animal friends, Zero is destroyed.

Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards:

Kirby finds Ribbon, and helps her find the shards of the Crystal that was shattered. At the end of the journey, he and Ribbon face Zero Two and win.

Kirby Super Star/Super Star Ultra:

Spring Breeze: History repeats and King Dedede repeats his first mistake. He steals all of the food in dreamland. Kirby shows up to stop him.

Dynablade:

Dynablade caused some trouble, however upon her defeat, Kirby found that she had children to take care of. So he helped by giving the hatchlings food while their mother was unconscious. Dynablade and her children flew away soon after.

The Great Cave Offensive:

Kirby falls into a cave and has to escape. He finds all of the treasures there before escaping.

Gourmet Race:

Dedede challenges Kirby to a race. Kirby wins easily.

Revenge of Meta Knight:

Meta Knight returns from his journey, carrying Galaxia with him. Using the battleship Halberd, he attempts to take over Dreamland. Kirby gets help from Dynablade and takes down the battleship. Meta Knight escapes.

Milky Way Wishes:

Marx caused the sun and moon to fight and tricked Kirby into space and summoning the Galactic Nova. This is where the timeline split happens. Should Marx survive the battle, the following events do not happen: Revenge of the King, Helper to Hero, the True Arena, Dedede Tour and Magolor does not become Magolor Soul. Should Marx die, the arena, Meta Knightmare Ultra, and Crash Deluxe does not happen. And the Marx summoned by the dream rod in Star Allies is the Marx from a different time.

MARX SOUL TIMELINE:

Revenge of the King:

Wanting a final battle with Kirby, King Dedede challenges Kirby to return to the castle. Kirby finds that all the enemies on the way are much more powerful for some reason.

Helper to Hero:

Kirby's helpers take on the arena. But someone changed the final boss to Wham Bam Jewel.

The True Arena:

Before the events of the Revenge of the King, Marx attempted to save himself by absorbing Nova. Only for the clockwork clock to take over his body. Marx Soul went on to attempt to kill Kirby at the end of the True Arena that Dedede set up as a tournament for Kirby to give a try. Marx Soul summoned Galacta Knight for the tournament as well as gave Wham Bam Rock power to become Wham Bam Jewel again. Upon the knight's defeat, Kirby was dragged to a dimension that the soul created. Upon Marx Soul's death, Kirby was returned to Popstar.

MARX TIMELINE:

The Arena:

To celebrate Kirby's achievements, all of the enemies Kirby faced set up the Arena to face him again. Upon defeating Marx again, Kirby is crowned the most powerful warrior in dreamland.

Meta Knightmare Ultra:

After his defeat in the Arena, Meta Knight decides to follow Kirby's steps to see what made him so powerful. In the end, he revived Nova and Nova summoned Galacta Knight for him to fight. Upon Galacta Knight's defeat, Meta Knight gains full control over Galaxia.

BOTH TIMELINES:

Kirby Squeak Squad:

Meta Knight rebuilt the Halberd and fought Kirby again. The squeak squad also ends up fighting him. Kirby ends up accidentally freeing and fighting Dark Nebula.

Kirby Canvas Curse:

Drawcia curses all of Dreamland and turns it into a painting. She also curses Kirby and turns him into a ball. The wielder of the paintbrush that helped Kirby is unknown. No matter what, Drawcia becomes Drawcia Soul during the final battle and dies.

Kirby's Return to Dreamland:

Magolor crashes the Lor Starcutter. With help from Kirby, he manages to fix it. However, Upon laying his hands on the Master Crown, he betrays Kirby.

MARX TIMELINE:

Magolor is defeated and teleported to another dimension upon the shattering of the crown. Popstar knows peace once more. At least until something else comes up.

MARX SOUL TIMELINE:

Magolor Soul:

When he was about to fight Kirby, Magolor used up as much of the Master Crown's power as he could. This is because he knows that Kirby can and will kill due to what happened to Marx. Magolor having met Marx Soul before the events of the True Arena. However due to how much power he used, upon his defeat Magolor exploded and died. Only for the crown to take over and revive him as a dead husk known as Magolor Soul. Upon Kirby defeating Magolor Soul, Magolor is freed and dies.

BOTH TIMELINES:

Kirby Triple Deluxe:

Mistaking him for the Hero of Dreamland, King Dedede is kidnapped by Tarazana. Kirby goes to save him and all of Dreamland. Upon defeating Masked Dedede, Tarazana is almost killed by Sectonia. Kirby fights the queen, and wins. Even if she becomes Sectonia soul she is killed. There is no way to save her like Drawcia.

MARX SOUL TIMELINE:

Dedede Tour:

The king goes on a trip, and in the end, fights Dark Meta Knight. The amazing mirror is shattered once and for all in this battle, closing off the mirror world from the rest of them and vice versa.

BOTH TIMELINES:

Kirby Rainbow Curse:

Dreamland is cursed again. This time by another painter and everything is turned into clay. Kirby saves the day again.

MARX TIMELINE:

Kirby Crash Deluxe:

Another tournament is happening, and Kirby teams up with Bandana Dee to win. Magolor has returned, swearing off of his traitorous ways and wishing to just live in peace.

BOTH TIMELINES:

Kirby Planet Robobot:

Dreamland is invaded. Meta Knight attempts to hold off Haltmann's minions but is disarmed and captured. Kirby rushes to his rescue. Clones of Dedede, Sectonia, and Dark Matter Swordsman are created. Kirby fights Mecha Knight twice, the first time he thinks that he accidentally killed his friend, but the second time he manages to free his friend. He fights Haltmann after Susie failed to defeat him with Mecha Knight. He wins, and Haltmann attempts to use Star Dream to wish for the death of Kirby's species. Susie appears last moment before Haltmann can finish the wish. She steals the helmet he was using, and accidentally fuses the machine and Haltmann's soul. Susie attempts to make a wish of her own, but Star Dream attacks her, and lifts off to destroy all life. Realizing her mistake, Susie summons a suit of robobot armor for Kirby to use. Meta Knight returns with the Halberd, and with his help Kirby manages to destroy Star Dream.

META KNIGHT TIMELINE:

Meta Knightmare Returns:

If Meta Knight managed to not get captured, another separate timeline is created. Upon reaching Haltmann, he finds that Star Dream is there, and it summons enemies for him to fight. Galacta Knight being one of them.

ALL TIMELINES:

Kirby Star Allies:

The Jamba hearts fall to Dreamland, and Kirby tries to follow them. Old friends join him to help, And Marx finally reappears should he have survived his fight with Kirby. The dream rod can be used to summon his friends, or a memory of one that can't help anymore. Upon defeating Hyness, Void Termina is revived and Kirby and his friends go to fight it. Halfway through the fight, if Void Termina didn't kill them, Hyness and the generals are freed from Void Termina before he changes into his bird form. From there, Void Termina's core is destroyed by Kirby in one final struggle.

VOID SOUL TIMELINE:

If Hyness and the generals are killed, the core instead becomes a soul thanks to their sacrifice. This soul may one day become a friend after it's defeat, or it may have went back in time and became one we already know of.

MORPHO KNIGHT TIMELINES:

Star Allies Go!: Guest Star ???

there are many possibilities for this timeline to exist, and it all depends on which character is chosen. Either way Galacta Knight is summoned by Hyness, And that knight ends up becoming Morpho Knight after Morpho lands on his lance.

#jjesus Christ this took me forever to write #out of character #i was bored so I figured why not fjdkdnbfnsmskdj #headcanons //#do not reblog

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earthdeep · 7 years

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ok this is really starting to get on ludicrous levels but... can we quit with the aa5 hate a bit? like srsly? y’all are gettin waaaaay too aggressive abt ppl liking this game. half the time it’s shit over nothing! it’s not like ppl are out here praising this as a masterpiece of writing. srsly the only times I’ve seen what y’all are insisting stans are doing is for aa4 (usually guessing at what was intended for future sequels that actually continued on from it) and shipping (especially narumitsu shippers? some of u are REALLY invested in subtext like wow). 99% of the praise I’ve seen for aa5 is for the characters. which is more than fair! in case u forgot, aa5 introduced us to the entire blackquill/cykes group, in all their lovable glory! and fleshed out the universe with the wonder that is lawyer highschool (which, listen, if ur accepting 13 year olds are allowed to prosecute, this isn’t actually incompatible with the depths this fictional justice system will sink) that also managed to connect parts of aai2 into the timeline as well! ffs apollo’s single friend only exists in canon bc of aa5!

and u can say everything’s clumsily implemented all u like. but, uh, in case u hadn’t noticed, aa5 isn’t the first time it’s gone weird. have u seen t&t lately? dahlia and godot were soooo clumsily integrated. I’ve ranted on godot’s mary sue qualities before, but ugh. both have the same problem of “oh by the way did I ever mention that INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT ex of mine who is totally irrelevant btw haha oh wow they’re suddenly relevant how about that”. fucking jfa has the same issue with franziska aka “woah now there’s ANOTHER von karma? and she’s even MORE challenging than the last one?!” srsly let’s not pretend her sudden arrival made sense for a prodigy who is also next of kin to the most infamous prosecutor around. nick not knowing who manfred was was clumsy too. what I’m getting at is that the aa series does not in fact have the smoothest writing, to the point where nick and later apollo appear to live under rocks in order to lose out on what should be common knowledge in their situation. srsly apollo how did u never notice that there’s some frontman in a rock group pushed by the literal police who looks scarily like ur boss, has the same last name as ur boss, said band is literally called the GAVINners. like christ I’m not into music but I at least recognise the names of 1d members. in all honesty I am so glad athena did not end up like those two pebble-dwellers and had actually p good reasons for either not knowing shit (hello l’belle and his private company) or keeping quiet (hello the entire space station situation). athena is good at this.

and u know the biggest plus that kinda ties into the character situation? NO STOCK FUCKING PERVERT CHARACTERS. WE ALL HATE THEM. BUT CAN WE NOT OVERLOOK THE FACT AA4 HAD TWO. BOTH STICKLER AND HOTTI/HICKFIELD BOTH APPEARED IN THE SAME CASE. BOTH INVOLVING A FIFTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL. I HAVE THE SCRIPT. DO NOT FUCKING TEST ME.

there’s other stuff I’ve seen too specifically abt the satire that started the series. yes, gyakuten saiban was created to satirise the unbalanced nature and unbelievably high prosecution rates of the japanese courts. gyakuten saiban 4 was written in reaction to the real life introduction of the jury. (srsly if u have time, go on a research trip. there’s a lot of interesting stuff surrounding the background of the series.) but, forgive me if I’m missing something, what the FUCK were 2 and 3 satirising? as far as I’m aware, takumi was asked to continue the series bc ppl liked it. and it made capcom money. takumi eventually got totally sick of it and left the main series but please don’t act like this is something new from capcom. not everything in the series is pure political commentary. some of it is just regular stories. this is true for almost any satirical series ever. it doesn’t make them unenjoyable. besides y’all are content to shit on soj anyway for being a cheesy take on of a corrupt government system so maybe u just don’t care and just have a hate on for anything tangentially related to aa5.

and on whether it’s unenjoyable? nah man aa5 is fun. monstrous turnabout was a bit slow I reckon, but everything else moved at a nice pace, had fun characters, had those good good friendship moments. it was a bit wobbly in places, but we sat through turnabout serenade and turnabout succession! would u like my list of plot holes in serenade alone? bc I have one. I had to make one to break down the damn thing enough to write an au version of it. and with aa5 and the phantom? apparently that’s largely on the localisation team deciding western audiences wouldn’t accept ‘yokai’ as the answer and then just... not... putting anything else in? literally could’ve been solved with one word being swapped out or jinxie mentioning said yokai in one of her lists which... yeah that one’s on the game. idk maybe in the distant future when the games are all remastered for the new new new nintendo 3dsi that’ll be fixed too. or maybe the miracle never happen. who knows.

like probably the only other thing I can’t argue with on criticism is the art style. yeah, I’m not keen on fuse’s faces. nuri suffers with a certain level of same face too, but (as shown in dgs) the other parts of his design are pretty and managed to shine through in 3d. but the colours are way better come soj now the main team is getting into the swing of it, and anyone who doesn’t think khura’in is pretty as hell can fight me.

but srsly there are actually a lot of good points to aa5. it is not the antichrist. personally it is far from my favourite game (with my own fave as aa4 bc dem characters tho... barring the perverts) but many of its flaws are not new to the series. and while it has lost potential in various parts such as several important characters being dead on arrival, let’s not forget it left behind some especially nasty parts of the series and appears to be CONTINUING to leave those behind. mmm just look at that lack of literal canon pedophiles we’re supposed to feel sorry for... sorry every time I remember aa3 I like it less and less. which is a shame, bc young!mia is still the most relatable protag ever.

anyway, let’s not become the dicks who shat on anyone who liked aa4 back in the day, yeah?

#phoenix wright #apollo justice #athena cykes #ace attorney #dual destinies #sonic lawyer adventures #earthdeep does life #csa cw //-;-(;-/#bc thanks a lot aa 1-4

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