#(anyways i know some of you havent seen it so: brief context)

[lacomandante]

I know there’s much higher quality clips from the Sharpe series on youtube now, but back in 2017 this was the very first clip I had ever seen with Teresa, as there weren’t many in general. (Though this one cuts off the first part of the scene). I had only ever seen pictures at that point. I’m very fond of this video and this moment in Eagle and I remember being so surprised to hear her voice for the first time!!  I loved her accent and the way she spoke and the tenderness in the scene HOOKED me. So yeah have a little snippet of Sharpe’s Eagle <3

[lesbianmarth]

it’s been a while since i posted about aa but i just finished soj in its entirety tonight. here’s my new list so far

i still have to give thoughts on cases 4 5 and dlc so that’ll be under a cut. spoilers!

6-4: this was such a filler case, almost shamefully so. i don’t know why they thought they could manage to do this in the 4th case when every game with 5 cases has been pretty consistent about making the 4th case plot relevant, sometimes literally just a preamble to case 5. so yeah i think this one was kinda ass

the two things it had going for it: one, athena. in 6-2 i actually got confused about why i ever liked her, because in that case she felt like she was just acting the part of the Peppy Teen Girl With a Rowdy Streak that makes up almost every assistant character. But then as SOON as she started bantering with Simon in 6-4 i was like “oh, THAT’S why i liked her!” was nice to take control of her again.

two, uendo toneido. while i don’t think you can say the DID was portrayed with quite the necessary respect or kindness, it was handled better than i’ve seen other media handle it-- at least it’s not completely demonized. other people have written more on that in better detail so i’m not really the judge, but the basic point is that this witness was mad fun to read, and even the dumb jokes like the changing number of floor cushions were entertaining. thus why this case is in the “hard carried by one side character” tier.

especially since there was like nothing else going on. no connection to the main plot, only two other characters besides uendo, and for some reason the clown tits girl was here instead of the magic show case (and to be honest, she wasn’t enjoyable for me even BEFORE she did the standard aa female villain thing and changed her speech pattern as soon as she fell under suspicion). just a weird, nothing case stuck right around the point aa games usually enter endgame. And especially weird because...

6-5 part 1: inexplicably there are two separate cases in the final chapter and each gets one day of investigation and trial. such a weird setup, and it really shouldn’t work... but i think it kinda barely does. barely. it would still have been better to split it into case 4 and case 5 though.

i have a hard time articulating much on the first case bc it sort of blends together for me. the main thing is that the concept of it being a civil case where apollo and phoenix face off is really good. it was a good change of pace, even though you knew it was gonna be a murder somehow anyway. sarge was reasonably nice, i guess, paul atishon had some good animations and quirks (my favorite being when he tries to just walk away from the stand to avoid answering a question), and the logic of the actual murder was good enough.

but i especially got those strong “oh this is a FINAL case!” vibes during the segment in the cave, and that added so much to it even if not much of it was relevant in the first half of the case. the adventure feel reminded me of some of the (out of context bc i still havent played it) scenes i know from 3-5, which is a good association to invoke imo. and it did a lot to give apollo and dhurke time to bond.

speaking of which, dhurke, holy shit. what a KING. i don’t think i’ve ever liked a dad character in ace attorney this much. he’s so genuine and like down to earth that it’s impossible not to start liking him and believe how much he cares for his sons. the bit where he rescued apollo from the cave flood... i felt it in my heart

6-5 part 2: let me just get this out of the way: ga’ran sucks. her design after she goes full evil is so bad, she’s so malicious that it’s immediately obvious she’s going to be the culprit, her breakdown is ridiculous and just embarrassing to watch, and inga had already established way more charisma as a villain when he did the “those were orders of execution actually” bit in 6-3. with that said,

i actually liked it for the most part. the spirit channeling stuff was excellent imo-- they probably use it to similar or greater effect in 3-5 but as someone who again has not played that, i was surprised and almost impressed by how well it was applied. maya was relevant for something! it feels like it’s been ages!

rayfa was a little underutilized, i think-- her moment of determination where she stops letting ga’ran have control over her was alright but it fell flat bc it didn’t have any weight during the moment. i kept hoping she would like, wordlessly take of her shawl and do the little verbal preamble to the divination seance while ga’ran kept yelling at her to stop, but no, the script can’t be good like that, i guess. and since she didn’t get to be the investigation assistant for long, none of her charm in that role carried through.

but DHURKE!! oh my god! in a game almost devoid of emotional impact, his involvement in this case really hit. the way they painstakingly animated his death, the scene where he makes a promise with maya, and then the weight of knowing in hindsight that everything he did in the first part of the case was after he’d already died and just wanted to see his son again before passing on for real....... it hurt. i felt something during that section. this case would also be hard carried by him if not for the fact that i really liked the murder bits.

amara was good too--liked how they made her suspiciously serene and accentuated it with the lightning strikes to make her look like a hidden murderer character about to reveal herself, only to walk it back and confirm she was being forced to act that way. i thought it worked. nahyuta was boring though, i’m sorry-- i get the motivation with having to be a bastard bc his sister and mom were basically held hostage, but the only time i found him compelling in that mess was the bit where he removed his one fingerless glove and revealed he still has the dragon tattoo. that was it. athena was also completely unused the whole case (not even a single mood matrix? really?) and trucy one again went without any role of importance.

the ending also... yknow, a friend said they had to end it this way bc they never figured out what they were going to do with apollo (since following up on what they started in aa4 clearly wasn’t an option???) and just threw him on a bus to get rid of him. i agree with that-- he really feels thrown to the side, and with that i think trucy’s officially stranded with no hope of any character advancement. and the way they ended the game with phoenix and lamiroir deciding “yeah, maybe NOW we should finally tell those two they’re related” honestly felt insulting lol

but maybe the dlc case will let things go out on a high note...?!

6-6: it was okay.

it would’ve worked pretty well as a filler case in an older aa-- honestly i think it’d be one of the better filler cases, certainly worth replacing the shitty ones like 2-3 or 3-3 or, hey, 6-4. but whether i’d say it was worth paying for... eh.

the time travel conceit was done well enough, i think. the way they tied it back to sorin and pierce’s backstories was nice, and the twist about having two receptions was good, although they needed to treat that as a real twist with much more gravity. when the truth comes out it just feels like “oh of course that’s what happened” rather than a big surprise worthy of the Confessing the Truth theme. it’s sort of important because the case becomes a lot less interesting when you take out the time travel element.

far as characters are concerned, i think they needed more side characters to sell the whole thing-- another sprocket family member or another servant of the household. it felt a little limited-- sorin and pierce are pretty good witnesses and i like their quirks and their secrets, but the only alive woman (ellen) has very few traits and no connection to the deeper story of the case, so she falls really flat. the old aa characters didn’t add much- maya and edgeworth were just there for fanservice, ema didn’t get to do much other than acknowledge for the first time in years that she’s a big edgeworth fan, and larry is annoying as hell like he always is.

and oh my god i actually forgot while i was writing that, how they put in athena and trucy but only used them for brief slapstick where trucy would try to set athena on fire and shit. again-- no mood matrix? couldn’t even try once to fit those two characters into something?

i did like pierce’s transformation into his surgeon form though-- that was really cool. loved him doing surgery on a robot, taking xrays of the lawyers, and his breakdown was fantastic-- he would make a really good culprit if they didn’t whiff the last bit of pathos at the end. i don’t think he should’ve been aiming for revenge on sorin; it would have hurt much more if he was still loyal to the guy and never intended for him to be in danger, but the final “why’d you do it?” talk in the trial just felt flat and one-note, much like the one in 6-4.

... so that’s spirit of justice! not a super positive experience but i’m happy to say it’s done. as much as i want to go and replay dgs, i think when i do go back to ace attorney i’ll be replaying the trilogy for the first time since high school

[yeoldontknow]

Thank you for your time in writing your response. I understand it more now. Thank you for being patient and thorough and not dismissive. It means the world to me :)) I downloaded the criterion app and was a little overwhelmed and didn’t know where to start and I remembered brief encounter being your favorite film. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.

eeee omg of course! truly talking about films is one of my deepest passions and pleasures, and helping people understand why certain classic films are classic or formative brings me unprecedented joy. im so so happy that the explanation really helped you understand the motives laura and alec operate within. it really is just...not necessarily healing for me, but its an emotional release. an explosion of all the emotions we suppress to function or operate in our day to day, which is another really important reading of the film. ugh. thank you so much for watching it!

ahhh!!! the criterion app is amazing, and i definitely am offending a lot of my film professors and colleagues when i say what im about to say: a lot of the films on the criterion app will be difficult, and not necessarily accessible. accessible meaning easy to facilitate connection with unless youre watching them in the context of film history, cultural history, or understanding the onus of their existence. for that reason, if you dont mind, id like to recommend some films i really love that might be on the app to get you started. i might have spent years studying film, but that doesnt mean i loved absolutely everything i saw. a lot of what i had to study was hard, and dull, and generally outside of my interest. so! here are some films i had to study that i really DO adore:

Cleo From 5 to 7 (Agnes Varda) - the fact that this film was directed by a woman and is associated with the predominantly male dominated french new wave makes it iconic in and of itself. she had an incredibly powerful relationship with french new wave, which really has been wiped from history because she was a woman. she SHOULD be listed among godard, resnais, and truffaut, and she even married jacques demy; varda deserves to have her work witnessed and understood. cleo is her most popular film, and it is a blend of documentary and fictional narrative techniques, which makes it absolutely compelling to watch. it follows, not just the actions but the texture, of a woman living her life in 1960s paris. i actually wrote about this film in my cinema and city class, because it presents paris under the female gaze which is a perspective so rarely disregarded in cinema.

Hiroshima Mon Amour (Alain Resnais) - yes, i mentioned resnais in my diatribe above, but this film presents the impact of other cultures on french new wave. alternatively, french new wave had an impact on the filmmaking process of other cultural cinemas, this film primarily being the catalyst of it all. it follows a french actress and a japanese architect who have an affair amidst the ruins of hiroshima. time and time again, this is lauded as the first modern film of sound cinema (yes, i know people will argue for citizen kane, which, sure but...we can do better), and presents, boldly and with intensely stark contrasts throughout and anguished sense of the future. and if the future is anguish, what does that mean for love?

Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa) - the boys of all my cinema classes would scorn me for this, oh wow i can hear it now. youre choosing ikiru over seven samurai? i bet you havent even seen ikiru, youre just being iconoclastic ~~ fuck off. ikiru is a masterpiece, and infinitely more engaging than seven samurai. i had a hard getting through seven sumari the first time i watched it. its an acquired taste. i personally dont want to acquire a taste for a film, i kind of just want to watch it and love it enough to see it again, you know? anyway, this is a great example of what i mentioned above with hiroshima mon amor, how french new wave was inspired by the filmmaking of over cultures and, conversely, inspired others. ikiru, while not necessarily completely engaging in that theory, touches on a lot of thematic points we would eventually see as the backdrop for french new wave films. the story follows an ageing man with stomach cancer who is desperately trying to find meaning in his final days. there is so much unfettered humanism in this film, its very hard not to have a clarity of vision of your own life as the film comes to a close.

In The Mood For Love (Wong Kar Wai) - @kyungseokie hi. i know you love this film so. here i am, talking about why i love it too. oh man. does cinema get any more hypnotic than this? this is fundamentally a story of longing, not necessarily love, in 1960s hong kong. in many of the same themes, you could equate this passion, longing, and love to the kind experienced in brief encounter, but in one of the most cinematically profound and devastatingly human ways imaginable. the framing of each scene is precise and determinately evocative in its many visual repetitions that you are left relying on instinct to manage the story. this is a story of love itself, how love renders logic unnecessary, reason a relatively transient and inconsistent illusion of permanence. how, at the end of it all, love is what lingers even if the bodies are gone.

[levyfiles]

we all know how chaotic shane is but i havent seen anyone discuss ryan's most chaotic moments. thoughts?

Oh, nonnyb, you come like a whisper from god himself..

I mean, of course, we must discuss Ryan’s most chaotic moments. The thing I love most about Ryan is that his chaos comes in two different incarnations. The first I’d like to highlight is what I like to call his ‘Messy Chaotic Baby too Messy For Society”. This is the side of him that awakens my cute aggression jsyk. The side of him that literally had a gross looking brown suede couch that looked like it had been rained on his apartment for what I’m sure is Years. The side of him that Shane once described as sitting wilfully silent while their friends were chatting and having fun because he was hungry and just wanted to look at pictures of popcorn on google to remind himself that he was going to eat soon. 

We see a real good hint of it actually in the video The Mysterious Death of Biggie Smalls. I once saw a post talking about this moment and it really resonated with me because it’s such a hilariously stupid moment but chaotic Ryan made that much funnier. Let me just break it down even though it should be so simple. They are touring around the city and streets where the shooting took place, he, Brent and Daysha and all the while it appears that Brent was driving because we see this part here.

This is typical Ryan being his catty self but then Brent gives him this look

And EXPOSES HIS ASS

Which if you’ve recently watched the episode, this comes entirely without context until the very end of the episode where I’m sure Brent insisted be included because Ryan is a little shit and he needed to be Called Out. 

I mean…unless you’re rocking a Tesla, babe; your vehicle runs on fuel which you need to replenish before you hit the highway (for the record i was in this exact situation just last month so I have little place to talk. Thank god for middle of nowhere gas stations 15 min away from your actual destination).

ANYWAY, Ryan is SHOOK and Brent is clocking his time in amused tones and it results in one of the funniest few seconds of the ‘Brent Arc’ of Unsolved. 

Ryan breathing like he’s about to give birth to a brick, cheeks puffing in and out and huffing like a freight train as if that’s going to help them make it but

Then the Mad Screaming/Cackling that follows between shouts at traffic 

Chaotic Hilarious. What makes this funnier in hindsight is the fact that the whole of the two part special showed Brent driving which is almost as if this incident which almost got them stuck in the middle of the California desert highway got Ryan demoted from driving altogether.

NOW the second incarnation of Chaotic Ryan. What I have noticed about him is that during the actual location shoots barring an interesting moment on the top of a set of stairs with a flashlight and A Pair of Hips, Ryan is pretty lawful Panicked during the episodes. I think it wasn’t until they got to New Orleans that Shane brought out a really interesting side of Ryan that I’m particularly fond of. That is, the second incarnation of Chaotic Ryan which I call,  ‘I am a Good Wholesome Guy but I will describe your impending death in graphic detail as if I were the architect if you so much as square up. I got weapons and I will spend the better part of my days weight lifting so when I come for you, there’ll only be a streak of red left.” 

We’ve all seen the show. We know what those moments look like so I won’t spam you with screenshots (right now anyway) but this moment, short as it is, is in the William Desmond Taylor Q+A. Shane begins to read a question that literally plays out like a headcanon post you’d see in the tag anyday by some of the ingenious blogs we’ve got around here. (Who did it?!) saying What if Ricky Goldsworth is a demon that Ryan picked up during his supernatural adventures. Ryan gets this face

It’s weird. I recognised that face the moment I saw it and couldn’t figure out why, but the camera began panning in as the headcanon went on in great detail and I was watching Ryan closely as Shane began to narrate a universe in which Ricky the demon finds a glimmer of sin in Ryan and cleaves to him and Ryan’s smile just increases its wattage

Shane continues to read out this elaborate fic prompt where the demon slowly begins to overtake Ryan’s heart and Ryan is just like

And I’m like “Why do I find this expression so familiar?? Why is this leaving such a strong impression with me; the smile, the way his eyes are glimmering with excitement. What is it.” And then after a brief interruption in which Ryan reassures us that while Ricky the demon might not be into wearing underwear, he definitely is– this happens

IT WAS WELL WRITTEN AND IT HIT ME! 

I’ll be going down my dashboard and once in a while I’ll come upon a post. That One Post with a delicious story unfolding in a descriptive and unique set of plot points that pull all the stops for great storytelling and characterisation that makes me quake with absolute glee and that’s it. My face and Ryan’s face were the same! His face journey while Shane literally reads out this beautiful and dark fic prompt where he’s being slowly engaged with a terrible demon that turns him into a criminal. Ryan is enamored and can’t help but admire the actual prose of the question and that rings such a big Chaotic Mood for me. 

Let me tell you, nonnyb; there is nothing more chaotic than a babe that enjoys a good read about their favourite characters being impacted by demons. Prove me wrong

[dazaiapologism]

i think ive finally established enough context here that i want to discuss kakashi and yamatenzo but under the cut bc i want control over whether this post stays up ok

i absolutely dont want to come off here as defending “age is just a number” type arguments but i really think they are on more level ground than they would be normally. my rationale here is that the tenzo mission is the first time we see kakashi break anbu character and decide to show uh, some mercy i guess? for someone he respects. obviously we havent seen any of the period between minato dying and the start of that mission but we do know that he’s totally terrifying to everyone, even his own teammates, so i dont think its an unreasonable jump to say that this was a big moment for him. i think maybe it was seeing another kid who was normally root anbu (even more emotionless than normal anbu) want to cling to the chance to be a kid for a while, but idk.

anyways he gets like, this brief moment to see that even if you are totally sucked up in ninja life its not impossible to be something outside of that. theres a good plants growing in the most hostile places parallel here. and like you can tell that stuck with him because he really really does not want to kill tenzo later on, even once it’s been established that tenzo is ready to kill him. he even shares like. the honest truth about what happened with rin, which i cant imagine he’s ever discussed with ANYONE outside of like, minato. i’d also imagine it’s dangerous for an anbu person to say that they would ever be willing to go against orders and even turn on the person who gave you those orders.

meanwhile tenzo only knows him as like, the killer anbu that, on the wildest whim, let him go that one time. danzo’s probably up to date on all the terrible shit kakashi has done too, so we can assume tenzo’s image of him is not great? but they have this big literal life and death fight and realize they actually understand each other really well. then they both go against orders in really dramatic ways with dramatic consequences (tenzo fakes a wooden sharingan eye, kakashi gets into a fight with root guards). the only reason they dont both get in serious trouble is because hiruzen does something right for once in his goddamn life and excuses both of them.

and that’s where they start as teammates and as friends. kakashi is captain because he’s been captain before so it makes sense to put him in charge. but like, i feel like they both came from having absolutely no sense of self to realizing that they’ve just been shoving it down, so they do kinda start on equal footing. the biggest difference is probably that kakashi knows more about what it means to have a normal life at the start, but i think they both work through a lot of their anbu trouble at the same pace in the same cadence. i also think they both would’ve ended up getting killed if they hadn’t become friends. something something youre stronger when you have someone to protect or whatever

in conclusion this is why kky is valid imo and its ALL based in my personal interpretation so other people’s feelings on the matter should still be respected also still dont write gross shit when either of them are teens jesus christ its not that hard