#for that. and besides when godot ended up killing her own mother (who was Also innocent) for her sake she still said she believed in him

[cornertheculprit]

something i think is equal parts funny and sad is that in the bad ending of 2-4 phoenix says that he never sees maya again, and then goes on to say that a few days later is when he hears the results of adrian andrews' trial. like if you look at the phrasing it seems to imply that he hit the streets the minute he left the courthouse and didn't see maya for 0.2 seconds and then was like "i'll never see her again" because she didn't magically show up in front of him and then started avoiding him to obviously deal with the fallout of an innocent person getting convicted for her sake. it's mostly sad though.

[mekatrio]

complaining abt godot's role in the ending of 3-5 hur hur

it took me some rewatches some rereads and a whole lot of thinking, but i think i finally get what 3-5 was going for now.. basically, godot is supposed to be this tragic figure that was forced into being a killer in order to protect maya. the game is self-aware enough to point out the flaws with his actions, with how he was too prideful to ask for phoenix's help, how he may have been blinded by revenge against dahlia, etc. and while im still not the biggest fan of how the game executed this reveal, as i still think there wasnt enough foreshadowing to warrant the reveal that he was at the temple this entire time (which is also why it took as long as it did for me to rly understand the ending).. i have bigger gripes with his overall character arc, so atp its whatever. my overall main gripes w godot's arc is that im weirded out by how it kinda overshadows mia's and maya's character, while also being framed in a way im not particularly on board with..

i find it weird that godot had acted in mia's and maya's self-interest, yet he hadnt consulted or properly spoke to either of them at all. he didnt have any means to speak with mia, so my main criticisms are between him and maya. tho i do find it weird that tht a proper conversation between mia and godot didnt happen at any point.. but thats besides the point. anyways, its weird that he just let maya go to hazakura, knowing that this would put her life in danger, and didnt think to inform neither maya nor phoenix abt this. he just let that happen, thinking that he (along w iris' and misty's cooperation) wouldve been enough to protect her.. like what. like ok, the game at least makes it so he points out how kinda stupid this was of him, and that if he really cared abt maya's safety, he shouldve let either her or phoenix know. but its still like.. the reason he didnt tell neither maya nor phoenix was bc of his pride; he faulted phoenix for not protecting mia, and so he wanted to show him how protecting someone should be done. and bc he held a grudge against phoenix for not protecting mia, he didnt want phoenix's help at all. and so he kept both maya and phoenix in the dark bc of his own pride……

and its like, this wasnt just a silly little mistake he made, valuing his pride over practicality. no.. this ended up costing a person's life, and not just any person, but the mother of our dearest friends. which is terrible! but that on its own, isnt actually that bad, writing wise. a tragedy borne from a person's pride is a common tragedy, and when executed well, can be really really good. but the problem i have w how godot's character arc executed this is with the framing.. after we undress godot as misty's murderer, hes then surrounded with an air of tragic dignity. as though him killing misty was an inevitable, sorrowful, tragic thing…. and im sorry but WHAT??? WHAT?!??!

this dude… KILLED SOMEONE. he allowed maya to get caught in a dangerous situation, which he Knew about, didnt tell neither her or phoenix about the danger, and then had to Kill someone to protect maya, all bc he was too prideful!! he ended up in this situation where he had to kill someone bc of his pride! this is a tragedy, yes, but it is more senseless than it is tragic. this isnt a "this didnt have to happen" type of tragedy, this is a "why the fuck did this even happen to begin with??!?" type of tragedy!! and yet… it isnt portrayed as such??

instead of being portrayed as a shameful fool... godot is instead allowed to maintain an air of dignity?? why is that??? when i think back to the other killers we've convicted who maintained an air of dignity, i can recall vasquez, mimi miney, and gant. all three of them confessed on the stand, and express a grim sort of resignation at what they have done. vasquez killed out of self defense, miney to cover her tracks, and gant for a twisted sort of insurance. and yet, despite the resigned dignity that they carried with them, these guys still had an air of shame surrounding them! bc they were killers!!! so why was godot afforded a special type of tragic dignity…??? bc him becoming a murderer wasnt some sort of tragedy… it was just senseless!! and not just that, but i had to drag the truth out of him! he didnt just confess to what he had done, when he couldve.. LIKE…. i get its for the drama, and to fold up the dahlia arc first but still.. basically.. WHY THE FUCK DID I DRINK A CUP OF COFFEE WITH HIM..?!?!? WITH THE PERSON WHO KILLED MY BESTIES' MOM…. WHAT?!?!?

and!!! and why were mia and maya… so ok with this??? thats another thing, this game shouldve been abt mia and maya; the final case was all abt the fey clan women, we've played as mia for 2/5 of the cases, and the fact tht mia, who despite being such an important character, had been out of the spotlight for the overarching narratives of the past 2 games.. aa3 shouldve been the fey women's turn!! but instead…. its about.. Godot??!? and the thing is like… godot's arc is supposed to also be about mia and maya, right? bc hes closely linked with mia, and 'became a killer' to protect maya…. but instead, his arc, and by extension aa3 as a whole, is like.. about his dumb pride.. huh??!! its about what Godot thinks about mia and maya, but not about mia or maya themselves. and the fact that both mia and maya had tried to cover for him…. what even bro. not to mention! that the past 2 games had already gone over the whole "the courtroom shouldnt be a battle of personal pride, but for justice instead" schtick, and then godot comes belatedly shambling in trying to score a victory against us as a matter of personal honor, like what?? What!!!

but basically yeah um... for these reasons, aa3 is definitely the least favorite of the trilogy for me, and this isnt even going over the whole iris and dahlia deal which is another type of strange... 3-5's final trial was just. Strangeee to me. also since im rambling anyways, just to comment some more abt how i think there wasnt enough foreshadowing to godot's presence at the temple.. theres a moment when maya is on the stand, where you can press a statement that talks abt a storage room that godot couldve been hidden in this whole time:

and thats just like... what!!?? a storage room thats just. never been seen or mentioned... and its like. well then if this is all it takes for someone to have just been at the temple this whole time, then gumshoe couldve also been here this entire time, what!! and also godot being here this entire time meant that he just like, ignored pearl the whole time while she was stranded here... which is.. such a shitty thing for him to do... Huhhhh?????

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

I remembered a really goofy AU I dreamed up over the summer and I’m probably not gonna get around to doing all the art I wanted to do for it so let’s just talk about it instead. Let’s just chat about my Ace Attorney/Breath of the Wild AU.

(You all know me. You can’t be surprised by now.)

I have never actually played a Zelda game besides BotW, and I’ve cobbled this all together from only a few vague glances at the wiki. Just like, just work with me, okay.

THE MAIN CAST

Phoenix: a young Rito bard-in-training who leaves his training and the village in a quest to become a warrior and save his childhood friend, who he’s only now discovered did not so much “move away” as he was instead “kidnapped”. (Birdnapped? Hatchling-napped?)

Dahlia: a beautiful young Gerudo con artist who claims to be out traveling Hyrule searching for a husband, but has a tendency to rob men blind and leave them for dead - if she doesn’t leave them actually dead.

Mia: a Gerudo warrior who rescues Phoenix from Dahlia and takes him under her (metaphorical) wing to train him to fight. She’s out traversing the land searching not for a husband, but for her long-lost mother.

Maya: Mia’s sister, a young Gerudo magic-user training to become chief of all the Gerudo - all the ones in her tiny far-from-the-desert village, anyway. She is, how do you say, really fucking bored with it, and craving a life of adventure, she tags along with Phoenix.

Pearl: a very young and powerful Gerudo magic-user, and Maya and Mia’s little cousin. Maya rescues her from her cruel mother and takes her along with her and Phoenix on their world-traveling adventures.

Miles: a Rito warrior and Phoenix’s childhood friend, taken in and trained in the arts of war by his father’s murderer. That truth, when he finds out, shakes him to his core and sends him on a journey of self-discovery.

Franziska: a Hylian soldier, and Miles’ sister. The fact that her father is a cold-blooded murderer upended her life as well, but she loves her “little” bird brother more than her father and she herself has run off trying to track Miles down.

Gumshoe: a Goron traveler sworn to help Miles after Miles saved his life. He’s very friendly to Phoenix, Maya, and Pearl, and Franziska, but wishes they would all get along.

Godot: a Rito warrior forcibly retired and grounded after losing his sight in a fight with Dahlia. He loved Mia and resents Phoenix, thinking she wouldn’t have been killed if she hadn’t taken on dead weight.

-

Also I drew Phoenix

Anyway, so the main plot of this, as you may be able to gather, is that Phoenix, kind gentle and naive, finds out one day that his best friend from childhood actually wasn’t just adopted by a Hylian warrior who found Miles after his father was killed by monsters on the road. No, said Hylian warrior killed Miles’ father, stole Miles - thinking that having a warrior who is loyal to him and able to fly is a good deal - and just fucked off and got away with it all these years. Knowing this, Phoenix bids his home village adieu and sets out to learn to fight and find Miles and kick Manfred’s ass.

The first person that Phoenix meets is Dahlia, and they travel together for some time before she tries to pull her usual “rob him and murder him” modus operandi when dealing with a man, but Mia steps in and saves Phoenix. Phoenix thus ends up tagging along with Mia for a while, learning to fight from her, but she is unfortunately killed on the way back to her home village. Phoenix continues the rest of the way there to bring the news to her sister, and then he gets embroiled in some local Gerudo politics. (Like, local-local, like tiny village in the mountains on the other side of the continent from the desert politics.) 

After this detour, he sets off again with Maya and Pearl in tow, all three of them with a renewed vow to find Miles or die trying. They end up meeting Franziska, who really doesn’t like them, but they learn from her that she’s Miles’ adoptive sister, she and Miles both know the truth of Miles’ father’s death, and Miles ran away first and she’s also looking for him. They don’t stick together, but because they’re both on Miles’ trail, they keep running into each other and butting heads. Gumshoe is also in and out of the picture. 

Anyway eventually they find Miles and form the weirdest mercenary band anyone has ever known: two Rito, two Gerudo, a Hylian, and a Goron. Godot’s just dicking around somewhere in the background this whole time I don’t know when they meet him or where he ends up going.

Also, characters whose places in the story I haven’t thought out yet but I don’t want to not mention them at all, so. 

Kay: Rito

Sebastian: Goron

Lang: Zora

Ray: Rito

Courtney: Hylian

-

Stay tuned (or not) for the next-gen cast.

[ladyloveandjustice]

The Great Ace Attorney Replay: Continued Thoughts on Mia, Nick and Godot

Another thing that occurred to me during the replay is how utterly Godot FAILS at being Mia’s “avenger” whereas Mia like. successfully avenged his poisoning within a year no problem. And Godot would have been unable to do that if it had been Mia who had been poisoned. Imagine him in the same position.

One scenario is Godot would have, in his rage, tried to go after Dahlia himself and been murdered by her.

But imagine if it had been him trying to nail Dahlia for the thing with Phoenix . He would not have been able to win that trial for Mia precisely because he would have had zero patience with or trust in Phoenix. Like can you imagine hypermasculine Godot putting up with a boy who cries every five seconds. Older Phoenix already isn’t “manly” enough for Godot, younger Phoenix would absolutely drive him up a wall. He’d berate and scare Phoenix off within two seconds and the case would be over. 

Mia has a hard time being patient with being Phoenix too, but she was able to trust him and establish a bond with him and because of that he trusted her in return and that’s why they were able to win. Godot could not have bonded with Phoenix or won his trust, even with avenging Mia on the line. Godot’s intolerance would have lost them the case. In fact, we don’t see much indication Godot values trust in his clients the way Mia does. The stuff about believing in your client all came from her, he was mostly just like “lol ok” whenever she bought it up.

So Mia was able to successfully avenge Godot because of her willingness to reach out to her clients, her tolerance of her client not being the stereotypical epitome of masculinity and the fact she didn’t feel the need to make some big macho spectacle in order to corner Dahlia. She also didn’t act like Godot being poisoned was a personal failing on her or anyone but Dahlia’s part. Her goal was not simply to avenge Godot, but the save Phoenix and prevent Dahlia from hurting more people. She actually CARED about Dahlia’s victims besides the one she was involved with. 

Meanwhile, Godot comes back, and Mia has already been avenged. Phoenix, Maya and MIA HERSELF successfully put Mia’s murderer away. And Phoenix did this the same way Mia did with Dahlia- believing in his client (Maya), relying on Mia’s guidance, not making her death about HIM or getting carried away in anger, but focusing on cornering the culprit. Phoenix’s first thought on Mia’s death was not “I have to avenge her to prove I’m a man” but “I have to help her little sister, she’s all alone and I know Mia would want me to” and THAT’S what saved the day. Actually caring about what Mia would want and the living people who were in trouble.

So when Godot comes back there’s nothing for him to do. But he HAS to avenge her for his own ego so he fucking decides to torment the person who is ACTUALLY DOING THE THINGS Mia actually WANTS someone to do to honor her passing- continuing her work, providing emotional support for her little sister in her passing- he willingly puts her sister in danger (RATHER THAN FUCKING TELLING HER WHAT WAS GOING ON, OR PREVENTING THE PLAN FROM BEING COMMUNICATED SO NONE OF IT COULD HAPPEN) so he can “save” her, gets her mother killed and forces her sister to witness it and was willing to let an innocent get condemned for murder. So instead of avenging Mia, he ends up killing her family, putting her sister through severe trauma and berating and utterly wasting the time of the person who actually helped Mia the way she wanted him to. 

I don’t know how much of it is purposeful- I think at least some of it was because the game does contrast Phoenix and Godot at the end and Godot acknowledges he did all this for himself and would have been better off being like Phoenix and continuing Mia’s work. I think we’re not supposed to find Godot as UTTERLY CONTEMPTIBLE as I do, and I can’t fathom that. But Godot’s storyline in Ace Attorney, contrasted with Mia and Phoenix in similar situations, is one of the starkest examples of how utterly pointless, stupid and harmful traditional masculine revenge stories are and how they ultimately have nothing to do with honoring the deceased or protecting living people. And also a very stark demonstration of how rejecting anything that’s “not manly enough” or “too emotional” can be your undoing. 

[pinksweatergettingbetter]

// y’know since I finished DD I've been trying to puzzle out why the ending was so unsatisfying, and I think I’ve figured it out 

First off, I felt really uncomfortable finishing off the phantom; I actually ended up feeling bad for him during his breakdown. But why, though? His breakdown is actually pretty similar to Matt Engarde’s (cowering behind the bench in fright, tearing up his face). In fact they’re both quite similar villains: They’re both responsible for kidnappings in some way, both could be considered sociopaths  and both pretending to be innocent.

However, where I hate Matt Engarde and take great pleasure in making him cry as I threaten to put him in jail or leave him at the mercy of an assassin... I don’t really feel anything towards The Phantom. I acknowledge his crimes were bad, but they don’t make me feel the same hatred, so I don’t really feel especially good taking him down.

In fact, the person I felt the most hatred towards in DD was Aura Blackquill, and her take-down wasn’t satisfying at all. 

So I think the main problem with this ending is similar to the reason why everyone mistakes Dahlia as the arch-villain of T&T

Lets think about her for a second; Dahlia isn’t the true villain of Bridge; its Godot (as the murderer) and Morgan (As the person who put the evil plan in motion in the first place)

But we hate Dahlia with a fiery passion. Why? 

Because she's A) Really Unpleasant, and B) She visibly hurt someone we care about as an audience. 

Godot doesn’t register as the main villain because his actions (though stupid, selfish and fucking awful) were based from a good intention (not really though) and his victim was someone so peripheral that it hardly matters. Hell, we don’t even know who she is and how she affects someone we relate to (Maya) until quite late in the case. (tbh I actually don’t know why people don’t hate Godot more; he put every one of the Feys in danger for his own shitty revenge and he sucks. But I’m getting off track...) 

Morgan doesn’t register as the main villain because she only appears in flashback and doesn’t do anything material. She’s still disgusting for treating her daughters that way and attempting to have Maya killed, but she doesn’t appear for us to hate.

So our hatred is laser-beamed at Dahlia, who is nasty, smug, and most importantly: She hurt someone we care about. We can see how much her actions destroyed Phoenix over the course of the entire game; his misfortune is the catalyst for us to hate her, along with what she had in mind for Maya. Same for Matt Engarde and Manfred von Karma; both of them visibly hurt and endanger Maya and Edgeworth respectively, who are characters we’ve come to sympathize with and love.

Nobody cares about Juan Corrida, Robert Hammond or Valerie Hawthorne/Terry Fawles’ deaths all that much because we don’t know them. If they had been the villains’ only targets, we wouldn’t have hated them as much. What makes them an Arch-villain is how they affect a main character.  Redd White and Morgan Fey (in her first appearance) become closest to arch-villains in their one-off villain roles because of their involvement with main characters.

But, returning to DD, the Phantom doesn’t actually... do that. Sure, he killed Clay, who was Apollo’s best friend, and Metis, Athena’s mother... But they’re such non-entities that it doesn’t trigger my sense of sympathy. Now I’m not saying non-appearing characters can’t have weight; but the way to do this is to have their presence made known through the actions or words of more important characters.

We can feel Magnifi Grammarye even if we’ve never met him because of the effect he had on Zak, Valant an even Trucy. We can feel Misty Fey because of DL-6 lore and Maya’s own grief. We can feel Celeste Impax because of how broken Adrian is over her death. Or at least we can at least feel bad for Adrian and hate Matt because of it.

But they don’t do that in DD; they set up their expendable characters very poorly. Clay obviously means a lot to Apollo, and we’d probably feel his presence through Apollo’s grief....... if we were allowed to actually see Apollo’s grief. He’s basically shoved out of the story after Clay’s death to ‘investigate it on his own terms’, so apart from a couple of lines, we don’t really see how much it hurts him in depth. Meanwhile, (and this frustrated me to no end) NOBODY else seems to give two shits about Clay. Even Solomon Starbuck, his mentor, is more worried about Athena during the case. He basically has a line or two of how much it sucks to lose Clay, then he totally forgets about him. 

I love Clay as a concept, but he’s drowned out by all the other grandiose plot elements and never given a proper funeral. So I find it hard to care about his death.

Metis gets things slightly better as Athena doesn’t go missing halfway through the game... but her death also only comes up pretty late in the game and, well... Her memories aren’t altogether great. As much as Athena says she loves her, she also explains her belief that her mother had been experimenting on her, and didn’t care much for her. And it’s fairly obvious that Metis Cykes wasn’t the most attentive of mothers, no matter what Simon Blackquill says to the contrary. Anyone who lets their naive 11 year old daughter play with heavy machinery is not a good mother in my books.  So I loose sympathy for her.

Oh! And the person who grieves for her most? It’s Aura Blackquill, who is so bitter, cruel and selfish that I like Metis even less just by association. 

So our main reasons to hate the Phantom don’t really stack up. Besides that, his previous bombings don’t actually have any casualties, unless you count what happened to the HAT-1 and Starbuck. At the same time, if I remember correctly, that’s actually the fault of Yuri Cosmos and the Government who allowed the launch even when there were threats from a spy. Good going, you guys. (that might’ve been the HAT-2 actually but tbh my point still stands.)

There’s no story-weight behind his villainous deeds. Also, there’s no malice; the Phantom doesn’t kill for the horrible reasons the other villains do. von Karma killed out of twisted and petty revenge, Matt Engarde was a vain and utterly self-absorbed monster, and Dahlia (and Morgan) were both selfish and hateful.

But the Phantom kills for two reasons; orders from a higher-up, and to protect his own identity. Sounds a lot like our Other Assassin, Shelly de-Killer, who I’m not sure anyone hates, really. (I dunno. I never hated him all that much) That obviously doesn’t make his murders permissible or forgivable in any way, but it lacks the spiteful motivation that makes us hate a villain. Phantom was just ‘doing his job’. Perhaps we’d hate him a little more if we knew the origins of his mysterious contractors.... but we don’t. We don’t even know if they’re evil. They could be the country’s own government for gods sake. Hell, even knowing that would add some intrigue. But we know diddly squat. He’s a nowhere man, living in a nowhere land, making all his nowhere plans for nobody. 

In any case. The Phantom doesn’t provide us with evil personality traits or close-to-home crimes. Who does?

Aura Blackquill, of course! She’s highly unpleasant, her motivation is selfish hatred for a child, her actions are ridiculously overblown and ill-timed (could’ve done something a little earlier than the day before the execution, eh, Aura?) and the person she kidnaps?

Trucy. Our precious darling Trucy who we’ve had an entire game to get to know, love and sympathize with. 

Of course I love (read: hate) how the game tries to play this off like it’s no big deal; Phoenix barely worries about her (in comparison to his constant stress/anxiety/near panic attacks over Maya in Farewell) and when she comes back there’s like 2 lines of her being all “Nah it was cool i just did magic tricks lol” Along with Aura asserting that “none of this could have been accomplished without me”. Yes, thanks Aura; none of this could have been accomplished without terrorism and kidnapping. You sure are a grade-A hero. 

So we finally come to the final point of the Phantom; his lack of emotions. Or his semi-lack of emotions, or... Well. DD doesn’t explain it very well. Does he have emotions? Does he not? Are they very minor, or does he control them very well (...somehow? You can’t suppress an emotion so much that it disappears; by the Mood Matrix logic, they’d still be able to hear it easily underneath.) 

Phantom gives the cliché spiel of “emotions make you weak”, until the heroes insist that they don’t. And then... He doesn’t go down with defiance? He doesn’t go down cursing emotion to his grave. In his last moments, something in our heroes’ words touches him and in a moment of self-reflection he tries to ultimately remember who he is. Most villains show no remorse, but the Phantom seems very close to perhaps taking a step in the right direction. He renounces his lack of emotions and gives in to fear, and his end is really honestly terrifying to watch (at least it was to me)

This might partially be that I still associate him with Bobby, who’s been pretty much my favourite character in and motivation for finishing the game. Whatever the case, the Phantom doesn’t really make me feel smug for defeating him. Just kind of... uncomfortable.

 Then he gets shot by the most amateur sniper in the universe (unless this is just another plan) and carted off to the Police. And so, with that ONE SINGLE TRIAL, the Dark Age of the Law is vanquished. Because that’s how Trust works. 

TL-DR; the DD team did a poor job of setting up concrete reasons for us to hate the phantom, making his defeat not particularly satisfying. Also the whole plot is garbage and i hate it but meh