spiritofgs4

[spiritofgs4]

i come and post here for the first time in weeks (months?) to risk the ire of a fandom that seems to be growing ever-shittier in the wings

but i’mma need y’all to take a step back when it comes to nayupollo.  and i say this as someone who is VERY exposed to jp fandom, mostly on twitter, when i say: it is a very popular ship in japan because it falls very squarely into the childhood friends trope library, with backup from word of god that their relationship is like that of “old friends” with no mention of sibling-hood in sight.

listen okay, shipping incest generally Isn’t Good. i’m not about to pull a values judgement on the idea as a whole bc people exist who DO ship it for coping, and i refuse to be the one to pull that backstory out of someone. but yes, i agree, shipping incest is bad.  this extends to non-blood-relatives, because it’s not fair on anyone to suddenly say that’s okay just because two siblings don’t share parents.

but this is where you need to pull up miles and franziska, who are definitely not blood related (like apollo and nahyuta) but who are treated as siblings in the canon and refer to each other as such on multiple occasions (UNLIKE apollo and nahyuta).  i think there is a lot of worth in trying to figure out how canon and the creators themselves treat characters and their relationships, because it adds a lot of depth and forces us not to make snap judgements on these things.

in terms of other fandoms, i’m most familiar with ons and toz. mika and yuu constantly yell about family, but it’s probably the most popular ship in fandom. sorey and mikleo were raised by the same man and have been CALLED 兄弟同然 (just like brothers) BY CANON SOURCES and yet the English fandom calls them some of the greatest non-straight representation in video games in recent years. so i’m trying to figure out what’s happening here.

do i ship nayupollo??? no, actually, i don’t.  i straight up like the family interpretation of them, because that’s what i’m a sucker for.  but i also firmly believe that is AN INTERPRETATION of them, because the game itself has so little weight in that direction.  in fact, i got blindsided when ga’ran straight up referred to them as brothers because it was the first time in the game--i had to stop and make sure she was actually referring to apollo and nahyuta.  in a game that so carefully makes you feel the sibling bond apollo and trucy have without actually saying it (lmao spoilers), and in a game that paints nahyuta’s entire motivation in terms of his love for his own younger sister, i think it’s worth noting that this family relationship was NOT painted between apollo and nahyuta themselves.

i write all of this to say one thing: nahyuta and apollo’s relationship is, in my opinion, very up to interpretation.  the canon as it currently stands paints them as reunited childhood friends (and believe me, they fall under that set of tropes REALLY hard), so a more sibling feel OR a more romantic one are EQUALLY PLAUSIBLE IMO. so just. stop being assholes oh my g od.  why you telling ppl to kill themselves over a ship as vague as this one, i sure hope you don’t like suremiku or mikayuu ya hypocrites.

[spiritofgs4]

don’t judge a book by its wanted poster

[spiritofgs4]

Anything for you, Dad.

[spiritofgs4]

If I bought the kindle aa6 book from amazon jp, how do I open it / what app should I use and how can I extract the pages from it?

With.....the kindle app???

Also you can’t really extract pages from a kindle file as far as I’m aware, you just have to open it in a kindle reader.

I think you can also read it on the Kindle Cloud Reader on your computer.

[spiritofgs4]

squalleonhardt replied to your photo “I WASNT READY”

WHEN THALASSA GOT HER SIGHT BACK AMD SAW APOLLO SHE PROBS KEELED OVER

omfG PROBABLY....JEEZ I FIGURED THEY’D BE ALIKE BUT HOLY CRAP

[spiritofgs4]

I WASNT READY

[spiritofgs4]

THEY ARE IMPLYING THAT APOLLO COVERING ONE OF HIS EYES AND PUTTING THE JACKET ON HIS SHOULDERS IN GS5 WAS HIM BEING SUBCONSCIOUSLY INFLUENCED BY DRUK

[spiritofgs4]

mitamaru gets his own god damn page and he’s 22cm long why did they include this

[spiritofgs4]

nayuta’s lil profile blurb by his character art says he and apollo are 旧知の間柄, which basically means their relationship is that of old friends.

[spiritofgs4]

so my (physical) fanbook copy came in, and the comments about the front cover are that it’s a kind of post-game scene, and there’s a comment saying that apollo would likely take nayuta and rayfa with him to visit japan and i’m so ;A;

[spiritofgs4]

So the artbook just came out! Are you going to be doing scans of it like you did with DD and DGS?

I...didn’t do DGS, did I??? Or did I (my memory doesn’t exist).  They weren’t scans, but screencaps! Bookwalker has the PDF up, and it DOES have an English site, so it’s possible it will allow foreigners to get it...

I’m definitely gonna talk about stuff I noticed, though!  Just probably not for a couple days, bc *stares at credit card* *faints a lil*

[spiritofgs4]

Reminder that the AA6 DLC won't be free until much longer! It will be paid DLC on the 20th, I believe. So if you haven't downloaded it already, I recommend doing so!

yup, i downloaded it a day or so after it was released!

a lot

has happened....i just haven’t had real time to sit down and play, everything else has taken higher priority

tbh this DLC case offers even less to entice me than gs5′s did??? it feels p much like “trilogy, but a decade later”, and i’ll be honest with you that’s 100% not my thing. i wouldn’t be surprised if i didn’t get to it until it was out in english lmao

[spiritofgs4]

Considering it just came out, will you be liveblogging Turnabout Across Time?

I will! But probably not until two things happen: the JLPT is over, and I finish playing Zero Time Dilemma.

I’ll probably also (finally) get to the Gyakuten Theater DLC at about that time

[spiritofgs4]

umm quick random question, nick never became a prosecutor right? he was still a defense attorney in case 5, albeit it was a fight between defense attorney's about a property/evidence?

Right! that was a civil trial, so attorneys each have their own client with a certain claim.  what phoenix and apollo did was 100% normal...though they did wind up solving a murder on the way to figuring out the conclusion of the civil trial, which is probably a little less normal

[spiritofgs4]

So, weird Case 4 question, but what is the relationship between Bakufuu (rakugo master victim), Puuko (April May the rakguo clown) and Bifuu (DID guy)? I ask because they all have the same last name... ~Fenrir, an AA wiki editor

Their last name is related to the practice of Rakugo, I believe.  I don’t actually think they’re related at all, but rather it’s more that they belong to the same Rakugo tradition.

You can see a real life example in cases like, say (jp name order) Katsura Bunshi VI, who’s last name on stage matched that of his master even before he took up his name completely.

[spiritofgs4]

What's the whole deal with Apollo and Nayuta's relationship? Are they brothers? I'm seeing different people say various things and would like to hear clarification from someone who has played the game.

I’ve seen a lot of it too....a little too much tbh, Eng fandom is a lot more *angry pitchforks* than anything I’ve seen in JP fandom, especially regarding this.

...actually this is probably a good, general opportunity to talk about that whole family mess, bc have you seen Apollo’s wiki page?? W R O N G

So to start with Apollo and Nayuta: I feel like their relationship provides a LOT of room for interpretation, for a metric fuckton of reasons.  For me personally?  I LOVE dumb family shit.  I love thinking of the WAA is a big ol’ family, and that (more than age difference tbh) is why I don’t like shipping Phoenix and Apollo together.  Phoenix and Maya fall into this for me as well.

So for me personally, the family angle for Apollo and Nayuta is fun!  But is shipping them incest??

Nah, don’t think so.  I feel like Nayuta and Apollo’s story is a variation on the Very Popular childhood friends deal.  They’re also very similar to characters like Mikleo and Sorey (Tales of Zestiria) or even Yuu and Mika (Owari no Seraph), who grew up together and (especially in Yuu and Mika’s case) sometimes even consider each other as family, but fandom kinda goes nuts shipping them anyway.

From Apollo’s end, it’s probably also worth noting that the length of time he grew up with Nayuta and Druk amounts to about 9 years at MOST (assuming Druk took Apollo in immediately, and that Nayuta was disinherited and went with Druk just as immediately) and he spent at least 10 years not just physically, but emotionally distant from his past in Khura’in.  There’s a lot of focus on what Apollo thinks about Druk, and whether or not he thinks of him as a father-figure, but he never spends this time focusing on his relationship with Nayuta.  They never call each other brothers.  And Apollo seems to distance himself from this family unit as well, constantly referring to Nayuta as Druk’s real son (in as many words).  For Nayuta, he’s very very adamant on protecting Rayfa and obviously thinks of her as his sister, but there is no similar mention to Apollo.

So like, sure, I like the family thing a lot.  But that comes from a place of Apollo trying to reintegrate himself into thinking of Nayuta as his brother, or seeing if he can find a place in the Sadmadhi family.

But here’s the thing, about that.  I don’t think he has any reason to, and I don’t think he WOULD either, and this is where we get into the rest of this family mess.

GS6 has a fairly large focus on family toward the end.  On the one hand, we have Apollo being reunited with the man who raised him during his childhood, and as a direct result growing curious about his biological parents.  And on the other, we have Nayuta’s entire motivation, and the lengths he’d go to to protect Rayfa’s place on the throne.  These stories are connected by virtue of Nayuta and Apollo both having been raised by Druk, but this in no way, at all, ever, means that all parties involved are related, ya dumb dumbs.

Apollo’s wiki page lists Druk and Nayuta as adopted relatives--sure, okay, I can buy that, though it’s probably more like an illegal or otherwise under-the-table fostering situation, and Apollo knew from a very young age that these people were not his biological family.

Apollo’s wiki page also lists Amara and Rayfa as adopted relati--wait, WHAT.

What????

Nah, man.  Nah.

Amara had no hand in raising Apollo; he has absolutely no personal family connection to her whatsoever, and he was likely out of the country by the time Druk found her again.  I hesitate to call her his adopted mother by this standard, as really, she’s no more than a stranger to him.

By this same token, Rayfa wasn’t even BORN YET when Apollo was still in Khura’in, and they never spent even a second in the same room before Apollo traveled back there.  There is no sibling bond between them.

Amara and Rayfa are as much Apollo’s adopted family as Phoenix is Apollo’s adopted family, which is to say, not at all.  And I don’t think Apollo would see any reason to try and forge a familial relationship now.

I mean, I guess if you wanted to go by the letter, sure, why the fuck not? But things here are a lot more complicated, and I kind of highly doubt Apollo considers Amara and Rayfa to be family, especially given how he treated Nayuta and Druk and the general distance he put there.

And that’s not even getting into how real families can be complicated.  Some people with half- or step- or adopted-siblings really feel that connection of family with each other.  Some people....don’t.  Which is exactly why I feel that, in Nayuta and Apollo’s specific case, interpretations are actually allowed to be different, because there is plenty of wiggle room to take their relationship as anything you please.

Which is to say: are they brothers? Sure. Are they not brothers? Also sure.  My personal stance is that they feel like childhood friends that were once really close, but that fell apart due to time and distance, and because I’m a sap for “found family” I’d like if Apollo could find some kind of place with him and the others of the royal family while he’s in Khura’in, but lord...shipping them isn’t incest, and any family connections he could ever conceivably have with Nayuta/Rayfa/Amara are something that would probably have to be mostly built from the ground-up starting now.

(as a side note: It’s so, so funny how often I’ve seen JP fans on twitter be all ‘oh my god they aren’t siblings, thank god,’ but I’ve also seen fans that like to put Rayfa/Nayuta/Apollo/Trucy together as a family, which is to say: INTERPRETATIONS, bc honestly I enjoy both of these sentiments and I don’t necessarily think they’re contradictory or mutually exclusive.)

[spiritofgs4]

Hey hey, I've been going through all the case 5 things again but I can't quite find the answer to something I was wondering. What exactly was the connection between the Feys and Khura'in royal family, if there was one? You'd think there was, considering Maya has the royal family's powers, but was it ever said (or implied) who the Founder of Khura'in was? The sacred orb thing only makes it extra confusing.

You’re right about the orb thing...but no other than Phoenix guessing that the Feys and the current royal family of Khura’in have a common connection back on the family tree at some point, there’s no concrete answer as to where that connection is.

The only other thing we know is that all Kurain Masters have gone to Khura’in to complete their training, but they all keep their powers a secret during their stay