Worst Toxic Workplace Polycule

Been watching a lot of House MD and Torchwood and I would like to pose a question to the good people of tumblr.

Which toxic workplace polycule is worse?

please rb for a larger sample size.

Not pictured: Mihawk out of frame like 👁️👁️🍷

with the apollo justice ports around the corner I finally made a concerted effort to finish AAI. there was a period where i thought i'd play both investigations games AND tgaa before now. lol. lmao even

fandom wasn't kidding that last case can long

miscellaneous spoilers and overall thoughts on AAI1. also it's very long

let's get some good stuff up top to start:

it was pretty funny

the pixel sprites were soooo cute, and most of the character art was nice in general

i liked seeing more of edgeworth and franziska together. this was 80% of the reason i played the game to begin with. stupid little details like the fact that she does, actually, still call him "miles" occasionally were nice to have, and i liked a lot of their bratty sibling interactions

callisto yew was the best lmao i loved her

kay's cute. i gotta disagree with the common fanon that she's literally edgeworth's daughter, on account of it's been two days and someone else has raised her to near adulthood, but being a teenager who shows up sometimes to bother him is a very funny thing for her to be, anyway

the yatagarsu actually being a toxic polycule was funny as shit lmao i love it. and kay at the end saying she wants to find 3 fellow teenage beauties to do it with her fhkldhglkhlfg yes girl end up on reddit queer housing discourse i believe in u babe

i didn't like lang all that much to begin with but once we got to the shih-na reveal i was all in, lmfaoooo. i joked "i hope he eats a poison necklace for her" and five minutes later he was taking a bullet. amazing. in all seriousness their relationship felt like much of what i enjoyed about dahlia and phoenix minus the stuff i felt was stupid. let's hear it for toxic workplace romances. edgey comes out of 3-5 like "well that was a lot" and then meets some new spiky weirdo to have homoerotic rivalry with only to discover that guy is also insane about some evil woman

cammy and ms teneiro were also great. lot of funny women in some of these cases. i like that.

this game could have attempted to sell me on some het romance for edgeworth -- it wouldn't have worked, but i wouldn't have exactly been surprised if it had tried, yknow -- but anyway instead it had miscellaneous women flirt with him while he was consistently baffled and/or oblivious and/or revolted. don't worry mr edgeworth i saw your magenta suit

i think broadly that covers the stuff I liked. which leads me to ... stuff I did not:

this game was... rough, imo. after i finished the trilogy this summer i was excited to play this, in particular because one of my few but key complaints with aa3-5 was that franziska and edgeworth just kind of disappeared and i was hoping this would give more exploration and closure to their characters.

that... did not happen. i felt like i was waiting for it to hit a point and get good for pretty much the entire game; it'd be like "well at least franziska is here soon" "well i want to meet kay" "well there's the baby franziska case" "well it's the finale surely it'll be fun!" and mostly none of that really materialized. largely i found it disappointing and anticlimactic.

i don't think i learned anything new about the existing characters -- edgeworth just kind of seemed to be reiterating lessons we already learned in the trilogy, and i felt they negated a lot of franziska's trilogy development and/or flanderized her a lot. the new characters are ok -- i LOVED yew/shih-na lmfao, and I like Kay, and I eventually came to like Lang once I saw him be unhinged about shih-na. but overall i felt the character work was weaker than I was expecting, and without the investment I have from the trilogy I doubt I'd have finished the game. the bratworth + baby franziska case was my fave of the game, because it was fun to see them together in that period of their lives, but even then I don't think how edgeworth was written makes any real sense with aa1 -- i think trilogy bratworth would take the easy conviction against gumshoe and be done with it. that was like. pretty core to the first three games.

I didn't find anything particularly emotional. I WAS interested in Callisto and her dead sister as compared to Kay and her dead father but, never mind, that was a lie. They tried to convince me KG8 was personal to everyone, but it didn't really feel like it for anyone but Kay -- who I like but met two cases ago, and whose connection to even Edgeworth is tenuous. Like they make it pretty clear Franziska is haunted by that case but ... why? Because she regards it as a semi failure I guess...? Like sure, I guess, but ... that's kind of remote. Compare to the trilogy finale stakes of defendant Edgeworth, Maya kidnapped, Phoenix falling off a bridge + Maya missing... the big threat here was that some guy we just recently met might go on to murder other people we've never met in foreign countries. Objectively yes that's bad, but it's not exactly emotionally gripping, imo.

I feel like the nature of the games and its place in the broader AA universe meant the stakes were off. edgeworth and his allies get accused of murder every five minutes in this game, but none of it ever feels real, because by "accused" they mean the police ask a few questions. in AA terms, this is nothing. there's no detention center or arrest or the threat of a 3 day trial and inexplicable death penalty. i've been saying for ages that i would love to see defendant franziska, everyone else got a turn!!, etc -- and technically this last case gave it to me except, well, she was one of about a dozen people accused over the span of the world's longest case, there's no real threat there, and frankly where's the fun in franziska being accused of murder if not for her to grudgingly accept phoenix as her representation. AAI's determination that everything happen pre-trial means that mostly none of it felt very serious; no one even gets arrested. maybe in a vacuum the threat of arrest would feel like enough, but in a series where you have Maya as Murder Charges Georg it just felt like nothing was really on the line -- what's the worst that happens, they get arrested and they hire phoenix? lol. don't threaten me with a good time!

this post is a million words long so I'll stop there. in conclusion, the worst ace attorney game I have played so far. fortunately(?) for AAI and unfortunately for me, i have not yet played dual destinies or spirit of justice, so stay tuned to see if it gets dethroned, lmfao.

i will, probably, eventually give AAI2 a try, if only to better understand everyone's fanfiction, but my hopes are pretty low.

Is there any content for like s3 era archive polycule. I want that toxic wreck of a workplace to be making out w each other

rules: tag 9 people (or so) you want to know better and/or catch up with, then answer the questions below! — I was tagged by @whitewyrmings !~

~Song~

The Mind Electric-- Specifically the Chonny Jash version.

Dear goodness has this song given me major earworms lately. Sure, the original is great! Amazing even. But this one tickles my brain in many ways. Not only is it satisfying to listen to, but my mind wanders to the "Bad End AU" plot thread for the Phantom Gang (Seph, Izulda, Angelo, Tempys, and Gelum... and technically Ignis?), and keeps associating the lyrics to different OCs. The feelings that the Phantom Gang has to come to terms with when they meet the worst versions of themselves.

~Ships~

I rarely indulge in fandom ships, because generally I can appreciate the chemistry people write between characters (as long as its not like... toxic or pedophilic or something)

Huntlow (Owl House... despite only watching the first 3 eps and I SHOULDN'T KNOW ABOUT THEM--)

Virgil x Richie (Static Shock)

And whatever the HECK is going on in Maya and the Three (the entire series I kept saying "is this a prophecy or a polycule?")

I do have some OC ships I am especially soft for, but that's so many to list, especially when considering friends and mutuals ;w; (looking at YOU, Greyscale)

~Books~

I haven't picked one up in a long time because I am DETERMINED to read the Amulet series before anything. I read the first book in middle school (so like, as of 2023, 10-12 years ago??), and it's been stuck in my brain since.

~Movies~

I rarely watch movies unless it's a Discord Watch Party Night, which I haven't done in a long time... The last movie that sticks out in my mind is Turning Red, which I found pretty enjoyable and brought me back to my old Flipnote Hatena days. Maybe it was the Sonic movies?? Which were also pretty fun. Just sadly, movies don't stick out like shows do.

~Cravings~

Well... I often crave meat and seafood more than anything these days. I'm diabetic, so ever since I've weaned myself off of excessive sweets, sugary foods like candy and soda haven't tasted the same, but at least chocolate is still pretty good depending on brand. I find that spicy sushi rolls such as crunchy rolls, spicy tuna/salmon/etc are safe bets despite the rice, because by now I've memorized the carb amount. Plus, the sushi guy at my workplace tends to make them special for us!

Outside of food, my brain is always craving drawing, writing lore, and RP. It likes being creatively stimulated, and I'm lucky my workplace is cool with me bringing my art supplies to keep myself entertained when I'm bored.

~Tags~

@jessebizarreart @juan-o-clocks @jorgedrawssomethings @hikaririnku-blog

sorry for the ping yall! but it might get yall more accustomed to tumblr lmaoo

The thing about the House MD toxic workplace polycule is that it's actually more like two workplace polycules, one is dramatically more toxic than the other, who occasionally team up, then whatever Kutner, Taub, and Thirteen have going on.