#in all seriousness if she was male her and larry would be shipped like no tomorrow

[charcadett]

i just think shes neat!

[multimetaverse]

HSMTMTS 2x08 Review

Most Likely To was the best ep of S2 so far and ended one ship while launching another. Let’s dig in!

Gaston was super fun, a very nice showcase for both Larry and Matt. This is the kind of energy that early S2 was lacking. Also feels like the first ep where East High might actually have a shot at beating North High. Covid restrictions played a role but we really needed to see more rehearsal scenes and scenes of the wildcats just being theatre kids. This also may be one of the last times we see EJ perform as a student in the musical so I’m glad we got this.  

EJ has been criminally underused for most of S2, he’s marketed as part of the big 4 along with Nini, Ricky, and Gina and Matt Cornett’s name is listed 3rd in the credits but in the early eps of S2 you’d think he was guest star. Lately he’s started to become more important and tonight was an excellent showcase of why he’s such an interesting character. I’m not gonna check but this feels like it’s the most EJ screen time in a single ep that we’ve gotten all season long. 

Of course, the main reason for EJ’s increased screen time is because of Portwell. I’ve been neutral on them but tonight they really won me over’ their scenes were so sweet that they warmed even my cold black heart. Matt and Sofia are good friends irl and that shines through in their easy rapport and great chemistry. Gina snorting at EJ’s joke was cute and I loved the shot of Gina accidentally walking into the shot for EJ’s confessional. As an aside, they’ve been doing some fun stuff with the confessionals lately which helps add a bit of the metaness that helped make S1 so great.

The real big Portwell scene tonight was EJ and Gina talking on the couch at Ashlyn’s. Lot’s to love there. Gina’s speech to EJ about what she sees when she thinks of him was sweet and her saying that EJ tried to do the right thing and often failed but kept trying echoes what she said of herself during her confession to Ricky. Also when EJ asked Gina if she understood the feeling of having her life mapped out she replied, ‘’not really’’ which is almost certainly the inspiration for Gina asking a question to EJ and him responding ‘’not really’’ in their pre S2 face time call on the hsmtmts instagram. 

EJ is still wracked with guilt for the guy he used to be but Gina reminds him that he’s grown and is a good guy which leads to her slip up about her seeing him that way vs the rest of the gang hinting that she’s beginning to catch feelings for EJ. Which leads to EJ complimenting her and them having a moment that could well have led to a kiss if Ashlyn hadn’t come home. And they cap it off with Gina falling asleep and EJ covering her with his Duke sweater. 

It’s been nice not seeing Gina upset over Ricky these past two eps and it’s a damning indictment of the poor writing and pacing of S2 that her story in the first 6 eps can be summed up as Gina being upset over something Ricky said or did. Not only has Portwell allowed EJ to rise in prominence but also it’s allowed Gina to escape the rut her character was stuck in pining for Ricky. 

I hope after S2 is over that we get an interview where Tim explains how the Portwell plot came to be. The S1 finale set up some possible interest between them as did the pre S2 face time call but nothing came of it during the first 4 eps, they stood next to each other a lot but barely interacted otherwise. Notably in 2x01, which Tim himself wrote, EJ tries to grow a beard and tells Ashlyn that he says her as so young which is extremely jarring now that we know that EJ is crushing on Gina who is Ashlyn’s age. 

Was Tim not set on doing Portwell until he realized he needed to give Gina something else to do other than hopelessly pine for Ricky? Narratively, it made sense after Rini got together in S1 to put the other two Big 4 characters together in S2 but did Tim not want it to seem so obvious to the audience so he deliberately kept Portwell apart until 2x05 where EJ’s feelings make for a nice plot twist? Was he just reluctant to plug EJ back into the love square due to how much more complicated it would make things but later felt he had no other options? Or was it just plain old bad pacing and writing?

Of course, I wish that there wasn’t such a large age gap between Sofia and Matt but there are no Gina ships that avoid that problem, there’s also an age gap between Sofia and Joshua, just as there was between Olivia and Joshua and Matt in S1. Depending on when they film S3 there’s a good chance that most of it will be finished before Sofia even turns 18 which is deeply unfortunate. There’s a broader issue of teen girls being cast in mostly age appropriate roles while their male love interests are older adults and in particular it often affects female characters of colour. Netflix has a really bad track record with those kind of age gaps but Disney has problems too as we’ve seen on HSMTMTS and on GMW where by the end of S3 they had 18 year old Peyton Meyer as the boyfriend of 14 year old Rowan Blanchard’s character (not to mention canon Joshaya which didn’t have such a bad age gap between the actors but was problematic regarding the ages of the characters themselves).

A knock I’ve seen on Portwell is that EJ is just gonna leave for university next year but that was never gonna happen, Matt’s under the same 4 season contract as all the other mains and he’ll be sticking around in some capacity much like Sharpay ended up doing in the movies. It is true that EJ will probably have to move on at the end of S4 while Gina still has her senior year left but that will also happen with her and Ricky since he’ll be graduating at the end of S4. It was a big mistake to make EJ a senior but it also may end up being a big mistake to make Gina a sophomore. It would have been too messy to retcon EJ to be a junior but Tim probably should have taken the chance to retcon Gina into being a junior in S2.

That Rini breakup was so sad (missed opportunity for gotta go my own way). They managed to get in a Troyella reference with the treehouse. This was inevitable they just have not been communicating well though now that we know that Ricky thought Nini left YAC for him some of his desperation to spend as much time together as possible makes more sense. I think Rini is endgame if the series has 4 seasons but it wouldn't shock me if we never seem them dating again and they only get back together in the series finale. It also wouldn’t surprise me if Nini never dates anyone else for the remainder of the series or at least not seriously. 

We’re not even halfway through the series so it’s way too early to permanently slam the door on Rini though this time apart will probably help Joshua and Olivia move on from their own bitter break up before it bleeds too much into their performances. I do wonder if Tim really has a clue what he's gonna do with them for the remaining 24-28 eps of the series, assuming S3 and S4 have 10-12 eps each. 

Roman Banks killed If I Can’t Love Her and the montage of all the couples or ex couples was great.

It was nice to finally meets some parents other than the Bowen’s and Salazar-Roberts’. Kourtney’s mom was played by Dara’s actual mother and their dynamic was great as expected. It seems from their conversation that Kourtney's father is dead which I don’t believe has been mentioned before. Cash Caswell.... well it gets what the character is about across. He really looks and sounds like a rich Utah republican, I bet he knows Mitt Romney personally. I liked EJ going to tell his father that he’s not going to Duke and recognizing that he wants to build his own life on his own merits. 

We saw a bit of that S1 Miss Jenn energy tonight which was fun though I didn't like how curt she was with Seb nor did I like how rude Carlos was to Seb although we know that blows up in 2x10. 

Jazzara rising! I really liked how Jazzara and Portwell are sort of mirroring each other and since Mazzara knows about EJ’s feelings for Gina it wouldn’t shock me if helping EJ out is part of him showing a softer side in 2x12.

Of course Ashlyn is VP of the Nostradamus society. It's clear her family has some kooky new age beliefs (her parents are probably members of some naturopathic medicine group on Facebook that doubles as a gateway into Qanon)

It was nice to see Big Red being such a good friend to Ricky and the return of Ricky’s infamous pillow hugs. Lmao at Ashlyn just chilling while Big Red is comforting Ricky

Also Miss Jenn saying sexy and Big Red referring to pillow talk, the writers are adding a bit of spice when cooking up these scripts.

Looking Ahead: 

Looks like Gina may be wearing EJ's duke sweater next ep according to some posts I saw. Jack presumably is there to somehow help Gina decide what she wants with Ricky and EJ though him having wanderlust might also feed into Gina’s thoughts on settling down in SLC or moving with her mom around the country.

Let's see what mom of the year, Lynne Bowen, has up her sleeves. Ricky’s bedroom at her place in Chicago looks much nicer than the apartment Mike Bowen has so perhaps she makes a lot more money than he does. 

Not looking forward to the Zoom portions of the ep but I guess it was inevitable. 

There’s only two paths for Gina’s story to go in the remainder of this season; either she decides to move on from Ricky and give EJ a chance or she decides that Ricky is worth trying again and squelches her budding feelings for EJ. The former looks much more likely after tonight’s ep but either way it needs to be handled with care. Inevitably Gina and Ricky need to talk about what happened between them but if Tim really wants Ricky to continue being a viable love interest or even a good friend to Gina then he needs to really have Ricky apologize and show a thoughtful, kinder side of him that’s largely been missing this season. 

What I think Tim is doing is setting up Portwell getting together in 2x12 but Ricky pining over Gina until Portwell break up late S3 and Rina get together in the S3 finale before they break up later in S4 and Ricky gets back with Nini near the end of the series. If I had Tim’s ear I would tell him that he should pick which ship he wants to do, Rina or Portwell, but don’t do both. He wants canon Rina? Great then end Portwell before it starts and have Rina happen in S3 and introduce other obstacles to them getting together rather than having to damage EJ’s character and make him lose another girl he likes to Ricky. He wants canon Portwell? Great then have Gina and Ricky’s conversation be closure for the both of them and have Gina and EJ get together and break them up without Ricky being a cause of it or waiting in the wings to get with Gina soon afterwards. Doing both will be a disaster and I truly hope that Tim Federle carefully thinks over his mistakes in S2 and really plans out the remaining 2 seasons of the series while there’s still time to prevent things from going really off the rails like GMW and AM did thanks to the bad decisions of Michael Jacobs and Terri Minsky. 

Until next week wildcats. 

[accidentalharrie]

Look, Harries usually have problems with Harry dating ANYONE because he won’t date THEM. But they have projected (based on the tiny tiny percentage of his life that we’ve seen in the past few years) that he has a Type.

Rail skinny, platinum blonde, twenty-something, MODEL. And while Olivia is thin and has light hair, she doesn’t fit his profile. People joke about him liking older women but aside from Caroline, we never really saw him REALLY DATING OLDER women. It was always a handful of years (5, 4) older, an age difference that nobody would say is an age difference if it was the other way around (I’d say most male attracted women date men 4/5 years their senior at some point in their life).

Olivia is not a model. She’s approaching 40, she has a gorgeous body but when the Daily Mail posted photos of her in a swimsuit last summer, the comments were the kind Harry’s alleged “type” would never get. She has two children, a prolific and remarkable career, and a LOUD voice of her own.

These people hated the girls Harry dated/was linked to, but they could project themselves onto them. Does that make sense? You just have to read some Y/N fics and you’ll see. “You’re a model and meet Harry in...” They could dream of pursuing a career in modeling, become and up and coming model, meet Harry at a gig or an industry event, and become Mrs Styles.

How do they project that onto Olivia Wilde? Aside from the fact that she’s probably almost 20 years their senior (because these girls are in their late teens, early 20s at most). Being a single mother of two, with a 45 year old ex, is not something they aspire to either.

Olivia is a triple threat for them:

1. She’s currently with him, which means he’s not single, not available at all.

2. She’s older, settled. The creeping fear they have is that he’ll *gasp* settle down with her. They see that as a possibility. They would lose him FOREVER then. (So of course they try to overcompensate their fears by laughing at how he’s just getting a quick dick in and can’t possibly have feelings for her. Which, let’s be clear, I have no idea what their commitment type is and I’m not gonna guess. But that’s the point: we have no clue. None of us. Including them). In the very early days of the main Harrie hate blog, all the messages were about how “if Gemma or Anne follows her I’m gonna throw up. It means it’s serious-serious.”

3. She reminds them that, well, he might not actually go for people like them? That he looks for more substance in a partner. That he falls for the people’s essence aside from their external beauty (which I’m sure entices him as well, don’t get me wrong. As much as these brats want to act like she’s not, Olivia Wilde is one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood). That being a skinny platinum blonde model is not automatically a ticket to get into Harry’s bed. That they might be lacking some essential ingredients to actually capture him (and considering what they spend their days doing, I can guarantee them that they, in fact, do lack those ingredients).

So she’s getting a special brand of hatred that nobody else got so far. With that said, I do see a lot of growth in his fanbase. I’ve been here for 9 years already. In the Haylor Heyday, NOBODY pushed back on the hatred (it’s easy to believe they had support back then by seeing the amount of people that ship them now. But if anyone back then shipped them, they did it VERY quietly because it was OVERWHELMING hatred). Nadine never had support. Kendall never had support. Camille... she had entire troll accounts MURDERING her. I remember “Hamille convos” where they would re-enact alleged conversations Harry and Camille had, where she was desperate for his attention and he hated her... from 2014ish onwards I’d say that tumblr started to be more vocal about defending Harry’s partners, and there were “update accounts” that were supportive on Instagram and Twitter. But they were almost exclusively followed by people who just kept tabs on them to celebrate when they broke up. I would say that (tumblr aside) 1% of the fandom was supportive of Harry and Camille.

Now, I do see some support, even outside of tumblr. Twitter pushes back A LOT on the hatred, there are accounts on Instagram that are quite cute about them. There’s still a portion that 100% seriously hates Olivia (and I’m not counting Larries here. They’re not part of our fandom. I’m talking about a portion of Harries), but there’s a lot more neutral people who will jump in to defend her, and I want to highlight that because it gives me hope.

Sorry for how long this was 😅

I’d like to caveat that you’re obviously only speaking to Harry’s straight, female fans here but you raise some good points! 

[hlcreators]

AUTHOR REC: mediawhore / @mediawhorefics 

Be sure to show some love and leave kudos and a comment!

The Murmur of Yearning (93k)

Four years ago, Harry Styles was forced into a marriage of convenience to enrich and ally both his and his promised's families. The sudden, and slightly suspicious, death of the Marquess of Haxshire, however, brings great disturbance to Crescentfield Hall and, as his late's husband's closest male relative, Harry unexpectedly finds himself the head of a family he never felt he belonged to. Between a meddling distant cousin hellbent on inserting himself in Harry’s life, his wicked and mistrustful mother-in-law and his late husband’s advisors refusing to help or take him seriously, Harry struggles in the fight to keep what he’s earned and make the Estate finally feel like home.

Luckily, he doesn’t stand completely alone and finds himself an unlikely ally in Mr Tomlinson, the elusive Land Stewart who has been taking care of the property in the shadows for years. Louis Tomlinson is caring, patient, and unlike everyone else, he doesn’t seem to think Harry committed a murder.

‘Sup (6.7k)

Gemma really wants her little brother to sign up for a dating app and get back in the game after a messy divorce. Harry thinks he’s way too old to swipe. They compromise to devastatingly embarrassing results.

Meanwhile, all Louis wants is to finish the play he’s been commissioned to write, but one of the regulars at his local coffee shop keeps distracting him.

ft. older larry, pushy gemma, harry being a disaster gay and silver fox louis.

Tired Tired Sea (113k)

As a B&B owner on the most remote of all the British Isles, Louis Tomlinson is used to spending the coldest half of the year in complete isolation, with his dog and the sea as sole companions. Until, one day, a mysterious stranger on a quest to rebuild himself rents a room for the winter.

The Blood of Words (33.7k)

Louis Tomlinson hasn’t sworn off relationships per se. He just doesn’t think he’s quite ready for one yet, despite his therapist’s encouragements. He’s comfortable in his position as editor for Styles Publishing and he’s happy to focus on his career while he gives himself more time to heal.

Enter his CEO’s brother, a boxer with a heart of gold who is determined to carve himself a space in Louis’ life and, more importantly, his heart.

Peace In Your Arms (1.5k)

The happily ever after ... Or a series of TEC codas 

the dead things we carry (25k)

September ‘49 He hasn’t seen him since that day in France, that horrible muddy day where for one terrifyingly long second, Louis really thought he was going to die. He winces with the phantom pain, the hand not holding his cane going to his stomach automatically, remembering the franticness, the tenderness, of Harry’s hands while Louis was bleeding out.

This is the man who saved Louis’ life.

For one second, Louis fears Harry won’t recognise him, but his eyes widen when he turns to his left and they meet Louis’. He takes a step forward, reaching for him with a shaky hand before stopping himself.

“Louis,’ Harry says with a shudder and Louis doesn’t think his name has ever carried more weight.

This is the only man Louis ever thought about kissing for real.

“Oh,” Mrs. Padley says, clearly taken aback. “You two know each other?”

There are some things people never fully come home from. Until, one day, if they’re lucky, home comes to them.

Things Gone Cold (24k)

"your heart is warm for things gone cold.”— Sophocles, Antigone

With his soulmate’s thoughts about him written on his skin and the world’s eyes trailing his every movement, Harry Styles is having a bit of a rough time releasing his second album in peace. And that’s not even counting the breakup. Or the car crash.

Through Eerie Chaos (102k)

For as long as anyone can remember, Old Hillsbridge Manor has always been believed to be haunted. Everyone in the village agrees and keeps a respectful, fearful, distance. New in town after a bad breakup and an internship that led to disappointment rather than a permanent job, Harry Styles figures taking pictures of the decrepit building could be a great new creative project. Or at least a much-needed distraction while he searches for a job and crashes at his parents’ new house. No one warned him about the apparitions though; about the music, the laughter, the people who flicker and vanish when you call after them, the echoes of a past that should be long gone… Harry has never believed in spirits but even he can admit that there’s something weird going on. What starts as mere curiosity evolves into a full-blown investigation and soon enough, Harry finds himself making friends with an aristocrat from the 1920s and struggling with finding the best way to tell him that he’s dead.

The Ghost Hunter AU where Niall lives to prove ghosts are real, Zayn is a skeptical librarian and Harry gets caught up in a century-old mystery and catches feeling in the process.

Sleep It Off (844)

I've felt better ! Hello 2017 !!

What do you mean he’s coming? (15k)

When Harry accepted to be his sister’s Maid of Honour, despite how non-traditional of a choice he was, he didn’t think writing a speech for the wedding reception would be this hard. Now, not only does he have less than two weeks left to find something moving and inspirational to say, but Gemma just confided in him that her old childhood best friend is going to be in attendance. The one who moved to LA and they haven’t seen in fifteen years because he was too busy becoming an Academy Awards winner. But hey, no pressure. It’s just Louis Fucking Tomlinson.

Harry is screwed.

a fully armed battalion (to remind you of my love) (5.6k)

“He was flirting with you by the way,” Niall says casually once he’s finished saying goodbye to Louis and he’s joined Harry outside.

“No he wasn’t,” Harry replies automatically, feeling his heart clench at the thought. Was he?

Niall simply raises a mocking eyebrow in response before wrapping his scarf twice around his neck.

“Not that it matters!” Harry says quickly, eyes widening. “I wouldn’t care even if he did because he’s awful and the worst.”

Everyone at Hogwarts knows that Professor Styles and Professor Tomlinson absolutely despise each other. It's too bad that they're in love.

Coax the Cold (86k)

England, 1897.

English Professor Louis Tomlinson’s passion for the occult has been a source of mockery and derision for most of his life. When he hears whispers of a travelling freak show newly established in London claiming the existence of a monstrous sea hybrid, half-man, half-fish, Louis sees it as his ticket to credibility amongst his peers. The summer he spends undercover working on the show, however, gives him much more than that.

All These Lights (34.8k)

“People vote for alphas because they’re strong and they’re not only beautiful but also mesmerizing. They make you want to give them all of your attention, make you want to beg for some of theirs back. They’re shiny, oozing sex appeal and a commanding presence, and people always want more and more. Omegas are enticing too for sure, but it’s not the same. It makes people uncomfortable. It doesn’t make them want to root for you.”

the canon fic where Harry is an omega and dreams come with a price.

wash him deep where the tides are turning (3.7k)

"When Harry finally tells Louis about his family’s curse and the true love spell that broke it, they’ve been dating for seven months, nineteen days and about twelve hours and Louis’ cock is buried deep inside his arse."

Part two of a practical magic au.

a long way down (to the bottom of the river) (24k)

“ Most people would call Harry silly for believing in curses. Childish would also be a probable insult thrown his way. In their little town full of little people, Harry’s whimsical nature and beliefs mean that he’s subjected to frequent judgemental looks and whispers. It doesn’t usually bother him. Most people don’t know about the magic thrumming through his veins or about how powerful words can truly be. Most people don’t carry around their ancestors grief like a burden. They don’t have to pay for deeds hundreds of years old like Harry and his family have. They get to love freely without fear.

Harry and his kin aren’t so lucky.”

a practical magic au in which Harry and his sister accidentally kill her abusive boyfriend with magic and Louis is the D.I working the case.

loose lips sink ship all the damn time (not this time) (39k)

“Louis Tomlinson is gay,” Fiona announces and she sounds calm at least. “That’s not a scandal,” Nick replies automatically even though he feels slightly sick. He needs to call Louis back. Now. “No,” Fiona agrees quickly. “But his underage gay sex tape is.” The one where Louis is outed via a sex tape he made before the X-Factor and Nick can't resist flying to America to give him a shoulder to cry on. Told through flashbacks, this is a story of getting together and getting back together.

all that i’ll ever need is in your eyes (4.2k)

Louis has known he's going to marry Harry Styles since he was eighteen years old. Five years later, he has the perfect proposal planned. Too bad he can't help blurting it out while they're detained at the mall.

hi hater, kiss kiss (3.8k)

Nick has had a crush on Louis Tomlinson ever since he first saw him perform on the x-factor. Almost four years later, he's finally accepted that their ongoing, unstoppable feud is the only thing the two of them will ever share. One game of Call or Delete with Niall Horan, however, starts to shake this belief.

your bones illuminate (5.4k)

High School AU Snapshots of Harry and Louis' relationship through their last year of sixth form. Warning: There is no plot. Only fluff.

the last people standing (at the end of the night) (7.4k)

Sequel to the greatest pretenders (in the cold morning light)

A year after his undercover assignment ended, Louis should finally feel at peace. With Cowell & Co finally dead or behind bars, his life is more simple than ever. It's too bad his feelings can't be buried as deep as the people he's lost.

An undercover cops AU

you think fashion is your friend, my friend (fashion is danger) (27k)

"Louis has one rule, and one rule only, that he simply refuses to break. He forbids himself to be attracted to anyone he might work with. No wanking to models who might wear his clothes! It’s hardly fair, considering he spends 95% of his time working with the most attractive men on the planet, but his career is more important. Besides, in Louis’ experience, it always leads to disaster. Harry Styles makes respecting the rule really damn hard though and Louis is not quite sure why."

the one where Louis is a famous British designer and Harry is the clumsy, most likely straight model that makes his heart race.

the greatest pretenders (in the cold morning light) (41.5k)

undercover cops/the departed au

Louis and Nick are on two different sides of the law and mobster Simon Cowell is not the only person they have in common. The one where Louis is an undercover cop and Harry is the court-ordered shrink who refuses to prescribe him Valium.

[doug-meat]

Ace attorney no nuance November-

The rite of turnabout is an interesting concept, but with incredibly underwhelming character designs that somehow make the character’s personality not as exciting. I also didn’t like how we pretty much didn’t figure out the case on our own. It just felt... randomized and turned out to be right- I’ll get back to that sentence in a couple points. Also, Maya Channeling tahrust is absolutely terrifying.

The 3D games are actually quite good! Just bc they aren’t 2d doesn’t make them bad, a lot of work went into them and it’s obvious.

I love hobo Phoenix, but I feel like the plot of AJ would have been better if the disbarred lawyer wasn’t Phoenix. It felt out of character.

Back to the randomized idea- Bridge to the turnabout would be higher on my favourite cases list if the ending didn’t feel so thrown together and out of the blue- Phoenix just randomly accused the prosecutor and turned out to be right. I needed more leading up to that.

Athena deserved to be the main protagonist of DD. Phoenix and Apollo’s cases should have been Athena as the lead lawyer.

Similarly, Athena felt really babied in DD and SOJ, like they didn’t believe in her- she’s 18/19 and passed the law bar exam. She’s a genius, take her seriously.

Narumitsu and Klapollo are popular, but some shippers take it way too seriously and need to understand that none of them are canonically gay and straight ships/other ships in general are allowed with the characters.

Any ship in which the older member canonically knew the younger member when the former was an adult and the latter was a minor (although stuff like 17 and 19 is fine, that’s 2 years) is disgusting and invalid, and the fact that they’re both adults now doesn’t matter bc of the huge age gap and much healthier ships out there (examples: Narumayo, C*kesquill, Edgeworth x Kay)

Just because a ship is heterosexual doesn’t make it toxic? I’m looking at Klema and Naruhiro shamers

Turnabout academy is the best 3rd case.

The biggest problems with turnabout bigtop are Acro, and the relationships between 3 different adult males and Regina, a 16 yr old. Fix that up, and we’ve got an okay case.

Larry Butz needs therapy. He deserved way better than what he got throughout the whole series.

And leaving with a question: Where on earth was maya when Phoenix got disbarred? What?

I think that’s all for now

[stina-is-a-punk-rocker]

becky albertalli’s ‘simon vs. the homo sapiens agenda’: a review, amongst other things

I walked into Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda fully prepared to hate it. I’d read it a grand total of one (01) time before, way back in December 2019, with very high expectations that were dashed to smithereens halfway through. On my first reading, I found it terribly cliché, vapid and utterly undeserving of the multitude of four- and five-star ratings on Goodreads.

I’m still iffy about those ratings (it’s a solid two-point-five, three at best for me), but I didn’t hate it as much the second time around. Maybe it was because my expectations were so low that the only way it could go from there was up. You could say that I almost… enjoyed it.

That didn’t stop me from scribbling a page of complaints, though.

I’ve seen many reviews hailing the book as a win for the LGBTQ+ community, for BIPOC, for YA fiction. And Albertalli’s certainly done a better job of writing the character of a homosexual male than certain others. Simon’s whole coming-out crisis is definitely relatable, and it’s definitely a relief to have a character who’s accepted their sexuality instead of one who spends roughly 200 pages whining, “bUt HoW cAn I LiKe BoY wHeN I aM bOy??”

And yet it can be so tone-deaf in other parts.

The most glaring example is at the start of the book (I doubt this constitutes as a spoiler), where Simon says (lmao), about lesbian and bisexual girls: “I think it’s different for girls. Maybe it’s easier. If there’s one thing the Tumblr has taught me, it’s that a lot of guys consider it hot when a girl is a lesbian.”

Yes, the really says ‘the Tumblr’. And it’s not the last time, either.

I find it hard to believe that Simon, a gen-Z if my calculations serve me correct, has a Tumblr account and doesn’t know about Phan, Drarry, Destiel (RIP), Larry Stylinson (yikes) and the other staple gay OTPs of gen-Z Tumblr culture. If there’s one thing the Tumblr has taught me, it’s that there are way too many gay male ships with a brunette and a blond, with predominantly female fans.

Granted, Simon’s talking about their school’s gossip blog in particular, but that can’t be the only blog he follows.

Because fetishization is so easy, am I right, ladies?

You might bring up the ‘death of the author’ paradigm; Simon’s views ≠ Becky Albertalli’s; Simon is a teenage boy and teenage boys are generally idiots- and yet it feels like this is something the author genuinely believes, because she’s also included Simon being A-okay and even flattered by his friend Leah’s gay fanart and fanfic obsession. Yeah… no. Fetishization of queer people is creepy and dehumanizing and I’ve yet to meet a single queer person who’s on board with the idea of cishets doing so.

Also, the fact that he warmed up to Martin even while he was being blackmailed is something no actual closeted queer would do, ever. I’m pretty sure I’m speaking for loads of queer people when I say that being out to someone you don’t trust is a literal nightmare- even worse when they use that against you. And this motherfucker’s all like, “Well yeah, he’s threatening to out me to everyone if I don’t set him up with my best friend, but he’s kinda funny :) I think we could be friends.”

Simon- fuck you, you smoothbrained numbskull.

Another thing I found cringey was how many pop culture references were thrown in. Why, on god’s green earth, would you name a dog Bieber? For one, that’s a godawful name; for another- Justin Bieber? Really?

I consider myself a pretty avid fan of Harry Potter (here I will insert the obligatory ‘fuck you, JKR’), and whenever I see a reference thrown in, I feel like that one Spider-Man meme. And yet there were way. too. many. in this damn book. Seriously. We get it. Simon’s a Potterhead. That’s enough.

Also, I’m obligated to cancel anyone who likes Reese’s cups. They’re fucking vile.

Other attempts at gen-Z-ing that made me want to fling myself into the nearest black hole: every time Simon said ‘I can’t even’; a pop-punk band called ‘Emoji’ (!!! the way I cringed !!!); ‘the’ Tumblr (yeah, I’m never letting that go); Nora unironically saying ‘OMG’ in a verbal conversation; the absolute LACK of One Direction references (see, this is why I love John Green); amongst others.

Simon’s got zero personality outside of his sexuality. In case you didn’t catch it the eight thousand times it was mentioned, Simon is gay. And… that’s about it.

Leah’s annoying and yet I’m ashamed to say I can sort of see where she’s coming from (I’ve had a long and illustrious history of being left out and ignored by my friends, but this is neither the time nor place to discuss my childhood trauma, so I’ll leave it at that). Her enmity with Abby was unnecessary and uncalled for. Nick’s… a Jewish guitarist? And that’s about it? Abby’s cute and quirky and lovable and I love her. Martin’s a bag of dicks plus more. It was pretty obvious to me who Blue was; if you’ve read a YA book, ever, it’s the easiest thing to guess.

The characters were painfully one-dimensional. I can imagine them existing in that particular story, but I couldn’t tell you a single thing about them outside of it. It’s like they don’t exist outside of those pages- they couldn’t be actual people, if that makes sense (it probably doesn’t, but humor me).

The family dynamic between the Spiers was believable and pretty well-written (says me, who has zero siblings). I liked how the diversity didn’t feel contrived- just enough information to tell you that Abby and Bram were black, Nick was Jewish, Blue was half-Jewish, amongst others (funnily enough, when I first read it, I thought the exact opposite). The dialogue between characters felt pretty natural, too.

In conclusion: was Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda a perfect LGBTQ+ novel? I’ve read objectively better works on Ao3 (seriously, those of you who look down on fanfiction are missing out on some quality stuff), but it’s a pretty standard Wattpad-worthy story. It has its issues, and it’s far from the best thing I’ve ever read, and it’s not going on my favorites list anytime soon. You’re not missing out on anything if you choose to not read it, I can guarantee you that. But it’s a decently fun read, and perfect if you want something to while away an afternoon- it’s hardly going to take up too many hours to get through.

And would you look at that- I finally managed to write a review without a single spoiler (admittedly, there’s nothing to spoil outside of Blue’s identity, but let me have this).

[quonit-aceattorney]

2.4 Reaction

Rules:

Q = Me, Quonit.

BF = Bardic Feline, the friend that made me spend 30 dollars on the game and whom I am messaging

I don’t use those when I send the messages close enough my username doesn’t appear.

Any typos (unless they are funny and part of the conversation) will be fixed.

x Notes x

This case is why i bought the game. I comment on it a lot more than the others so it is much longer.

Index

—

:moments after completing 2.3:

Q: I CAN PLAY FARWELL MY TURNABOUT NOW

Q: dammit you're probably asleep

what is this

who is me

nobody cut the moon in half that's silly

where is the murder

where is Juan

WHERE IS EDGY

Q: hi powers!

BF: hahaha no I'm awake

Q: yay!

I am very excited

hi pearl!!!

BF: and you've actually already seen Juan, he just hasn't been named as such

Q: ???

what???

well ill have to figure it out

BF: I'll give you a hint: he was one of the dude's on stage

BF: one of the competing hero guys

Q: interesting!

I'm not old I just have a different taste.

BF: hahah it's not hard the game is about to tell you anyway

Q: pearly why :(

alright!

BF: PEARL THE MERCILESS

Q: SHE IS!!!

AND I AM RAISING HER APPARENTLY!!!

bright red guitar... Juan!

BF: hahah WELL SOMEONE HAS TO, HER MOM IS IN JAIL AND HER DAD NOWHERE IN SIGHT

and yep

Q: :D wait no he's gonna die :(

BF: SADLY, YES

the ceremony was the closest you come to actually seeing him alive during the game! Not counting flashback shots.

Q: AND I WILL DRAW HIM NOT NOT HIS FORM THE LADYVERSE

Juan x Sha is weird Like Juan is a character that does nothing in a lawyer game that Zarla got attached to. Years later, due to an accidental pallet share of two jerks one form lawyer game and one from some weird zombie game, she decided to add Juan. THEN you were interested in him and Zarla drew him a bit more, THEN YOU ADOPTED THIS VERSION OF HIM. NEXT WE HAVE TO GO INTO THE HISTORY BEHIND SHA. This time he's an original character that you for some reason decided "Hey! I like this character, and I like the curedverse, he'd do good in there sense he already has one scar!" and because you were already attached to this weird Juan person, you decided to have them both know eachother. AND THEN YOU SHIPPED IT AND WROTE FANFICTION THIS SHIP IS WEIRD

i wonder if Powers and Gumshoe would get along

matt!!!

MATT

MATT

I FORGOT OTHERS ARE HERE TOO

Q: THERE WILL BE MATT, THAT ONE BROWN HAIRED GIRL, AND BLOND ANGIE

FRICK

BF: hahahaha THAT'S....LEAVING SOME DETAILS OUT BUT YES, IT IS A WEIRD SHIP WITH A WEIRD HISTORY

Q: With details it makes it weirder

BF: Actually, Sha's involvement is even weirder than all of that

Q: i wanna hear more! I've only done a little research on Sha so I don't know much... Fire mage OC. At one point you thought about why people default to male so you contemplated Sha's gender. That is all I know.

white scarf red guitar I like Juan :(

BF: Okay, so there's a DIFFERENT fic I did in the earlier days of Lady Fandom that's basically...they characters become aware they are characters in a story and end up in a place full of characters from OTHER stories who are ALSO aware of their own fictional nature (and it actually allows Hunter and Smoker to bond more in the end)

Q: and so matt killed him

I THINK I READ THAT. They went to some bar and it was Zarla's mind and there were all of her OC's (or adopted characters) and a DDR machine.

BF: During the course of the night, Smoker has a conversation with a handful of my OCs, one of who happens to be Sha and they strike up an odd friendship. and yes, DDR

Q: :O I need to read that again.

Also Matt sucks

BF: ANYWAY, one of the rules of the metaworld is that characters in it can pop in an out of other universes, but a lot of times visiting another place means getting forced into its narratives and being forced to conform to its rules.

Q: I wonder what your metaworld looks like... 

 I wanted to like him (Matt) at least a little bit but then I thought back to the few comics I saw and he sucks Zarla made an AU where they date and it's terrible for Juan and now I hate it more >:(

BF: So if you have magic in your own universe and go visit a place that doesn't have it, you know longer have magic while you are THERE

Q: huh!

BF: Awwwww

POISONED THE MATT WELL EARLY

Q: IM GOING TO TRY AND LIKE HIM

BF: this is going to be interesting

Q: and that is why i decided to show my reaction

time to flash my badge at everyone before i go to the hallway

alright now to the hallway

BF: ANYWAY, so I started (but never got far into) a scenario where Sha and his friends decide to pop in on Hunter and Smoker just to see what their world is actually LIKE for some reason and they basically get sucked into the zombie apocalypse and all three end up infected

Q: very interesting

do you have drafts for that fanfic still haha

BF: here’s where it gets weird. in that little scenario, I imagine them getting out or getting rescued or something and being majorly shaken up by the experience...

Q: huh... I would read this!

I wanna continue but I know if I do time will move and Juan will die

Dangit

i have no choice now

BF: but then I went on to do a thing (only the first part) where a team of Assholes (Griffin, Sparkles, Mousey and...because I needed to fill out the team and he was available...I wasn't that interested in him yet...Juan) find zombie Sha where he'd holed up

Q: ORIGINAL PLANS

BF: (basically one of his teammates locked him in a room when he felt himself starting to turn as a last ditch attempt to protect him. it...failed.)

Q: Game stuff: Dangit the ceremony is starting and Juan is gonna get killed

Q: POOR JUAN

Q: POOR JUAN SERIOUSLY I MISS HIM ALREADY

BF: So TEAM ASSHOLE finds Witch Sha and through sheer luck they manage to capture him alive instead of killing him or being killed

Q: THANKFULLY AFTER THIS IS OVER I CAN HOPEFULLY READ ABOUT AN AU WHERE HE LIVES

THAT ISN'T FULL OF EMOTIONAL ABUSE

RIGHT???

RIGHT????

I think I remember something about that... not sure where I read it but I remember that!

BF: and they decide to put him on a leash and take him with them because Male Witch, that's weird, maybe some medical examiner will be interested in this or something right

BF: I didn't write past them leashing him up and taking him away BUT fast forward and Zarla started the Cured AU

Q: I remember them arguing about it or something... but I remember thinking this:

"Juan meet your new boyfriend"

I don't remember seeing past that in the fan fic. Where the heck did i see it?

BF: And I basically ALREADY had Sha lined up as a witch at that point, so it was easy enough to just jump forward to him being a Cured.

Q: ...I should go to the hotel lobby…

...BUT I DON'T WANT TO!!!

interesting!

BF: hahaha.

Q: help me go to the hotel lobby

...BUT I DON'T WANT TO!!!

interesting!

BF: hahaha.

Q: help me go to the hotel lobby

BF: DID YOU EXAMINE EVERYTHING IN THE HALLWAY WHILE YOU COULD

Q: i can't press A I feel too bad

BF: YOU HAVE TO PROGRESS

Q: NO I DIDN'T ILL GO DO IT NOW

BF: YOU MUST

Q: NO I MUST EXAMINE EVERYTHING IN THE HALLWAY

BF: Hehehe

all the flowers in front of Juan's door

Q: dangit I already have everything in here

ya... It's like they know his funeral is coming

Q: the Japanese text, going by Google translation of it, suggested that some of the flowers were from SIBLINGS of his

Q: NO

SO MANY PEOPLE LOVE HIM

I CAN'T KILL HIM

D:

BF: the English translation just says Family, but the Japanese suggested he has siblings we never get to meet

I LIKED TO IMAGINE HIM WITH A BUNCH OF SISTERS

Q: I THOUGHT I WANTED TO PLAY THIS BUT I DON'T

I DON'T WANNA KILL JUAN

BF: YOU MUST IF YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT EVERYONE

Q: ...I guess i have too...

Q: but-but I like Juan mroe than everyone else!!!

BF: it's an interesting plot!

Q: alright imma go

im going

Q: dammit

I PRESSED A I AM SCARED

BF: You can do iiiiit

Q: Juan please

please don't make me feel too guilty...

SHIT HE'S ALREADY DEAD???

BF: hahah that said, when you get through, the closest thing we have to happy Juan stuff right now is some stuff I did for Alt 2-4 future settings

and the Frozen AU.

Q: I wanna read those instead :(

BF: Juan is comparatively better off in the Frozen AU.

Q: Juan is dead...

he is dead :(

BF: Now if you want one that will TEAR YOUR HEART OUT AND STOMP ON IT, read Somebody That I Used to Know

Q: D:

BF: but only after this case hahah

it's like a perspective change on the events of this case.

Q: Soon i will unlock what I bought this game for

and i don't even know if I want to

oldbag what are you doing here

BF: YOU MUST. YOU HAVE TO

being awesome!

Q: FINE

hahaaha

BF: She's a Juan fan, that'makes her great

Q: oh okay i like her now

hey um what happened to Juan can I like break in and yell at Matt even though im still not 100% sure he did it

I mean he's terrible from what I've seen and heard from both stupid comics and this game so

PLEAD THE FIFTH

OH I FORGOT ABOUT EDGY

DO I GET TO SEE HIM

whatever i wanna punch matt

Q: phoenix you're a lawyer sense when have the questionings ever been useful to you? Fuck the police! Let's go find Matt and punch him!

BF: EDGEWORTH WILL APPEAR

Q: YES

Q: THE NAMETAG SAID BELLBOY AND I THOUGHT THE OTHER ONE RETURNED

but... who would call her?

WHO IS SPEAKING IN CAPS

LOTTA HI

HI GUMMY

BF: hahahaaha yep she's back!

Q: I like these two

BF: and you can't have a case without Gumshoe!

Q: no you can't!!!

He feels distant this second game... THIS WILL CHANGE SOON

WELL YA HE'S MATT

LET'S TALK ABOUT JUAN

what is that picture

what

BF: Fun fact: in the stage play version of this case (which, sadly, did not get an official translation anywhere because it actually gives Juan some lines and it makes him into the MOST ADORABLE DORK YOU HAVE EVER SEEN), and the anime version of this case both give Lotta's role to LARRY

Q: Do you recommend the anime???

MATT SUCKS

THAT PICTURE MAKES HIM LOOK NOT AS EVIL AS HE IS

BF: It has it's good points and it's bad.

Q: alright, I was wondering if at one point I should try watching some of it

BF: the art can be wonky as hell at points, and it feels oddly fast paced because it tries to cram all of the first and second games into one 24 episode season

Q: ??? why would they make it 24 minuets!! That was a bad choice.

BF: 1-5 and 2-1 don't get adapted at ALL (which kind of make sense but)

24 EPISODES

Q: WHAT

this is a weird anime

they should try again but better

BF: HOWEVER they add a whole flashback episode between 1-4 and 2-2 showing Edgey, Pheonix, and Larry as little kids

Q: :O I WANNA WATCH IT

Q: they ramp up the subtext between Phoenix and Edgeworth quite a bit

and they make the silly court dramatics even more over the top

Q: I might enjoy that..

yessss

maybe at one point I'll look at it, it sounds like something I may find funny.

BF: and they did a lot to reduce the parts of 2-3 that people didn't like.  (they cut out nearly all of the stuff with people chasing Regina for instance)

Q: Dangit the episodes should've been longer

BF: and they put more emphasis on how the whole circus gang ultimately comes together in the end in spite of their differences.

Q: dangit. Well hopefully it's nice enough.../

BF: More emphasis on Regina realizing that she'd done something wrong and hurt someone, even if it had been an accident

and it kept the fun parts, like Phoenix having to fight a monkey to get his badge back hahah

Q: Gumshoe we're not rivals we're friends

right?

BF: heheh oh Gumshoe

Q: The anime does sound like something I'd enjoy, I'll check it out at some point

BF: SO ULTIMATELY I LIKED THE ANIME BUT IT HAD IT'S ISSUES AND IT WAS WEIRDLY PACED

Q: ALRIGHT

I should record my live reaction to that too haha

BF: on the other hand, it confirmed, after all of these years, the color of Juan's jacket

Q: It's still probably wishful thinking but I still think that one of them saw maybe a snippet of one of Zarla's comics and maybe even just subconsciously used that to make the decision that it was the exact same shade of blue.

WHATEVER

Q: aww man gumshoe do you need some money to buy some fruit maybe

Q: How do I progress I'm stuck with gumshoe, talked about him with everything, and showed him everything

nowhere else has updated

KIWI

Q: Dangit i wanna progress

Q: oh hey a conversation topic i missed

MATT WAS ARRESTED FOR EXISTING OF COURSE

BF: hahaha of course.

Q:

BF: hahaaahaha

Q: I DON'T WANNA DEFEND MATT

DANGIT HOW TO I PROGRESS

hey the lobby updated!

I'll defend Matt if there is somebody worse like a serial killer around

Q: why is the radio person >:(

who

crap mything is beeping

ya im here... what do you want from me...

WHO KILLED MAYA

Q: OH MY GOD THERE IS A SERIAL KILLER HERE

HAHAHAHA

BF: MAYA ISN'T DEAD hahahah

Q: OH MY GOD

i know but

THERE IS A SERIAL KILLER HAAHAHAHA

BF: also this game seriously misuses the term 'serial killer"

lololol no this guy is an ASSASSIN, there's a difference. XD

Q: OH MY GOD

WHAT THE HECK

Q: I SAID I WOULD ONLY DEFEND MATT IF THERE WAS SOMEBODY LIKE A SERIAL KILLER AROUND

OH MY GOD HAHAHAHA

WELL MATT YOU'RE WITH ME NOW

BF: (I say it misuses the term cause they kept calling Joe Dark in 1-5 a serial killer...but he was more like a spree killer. If you use a really liberal definition of THAT word.)

YOU GOTTA SAVE MAYA

Poor Phoenix

Q: (True, i was misusing it)

NO I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THAT THE PERSON WOULD APPEAR I JUST SAID IF THERE WAS A MURDERER AROUND THAT WASN'T HIM I WOULD DEFEND HIM AND THERE IS AND IT'S SO FUNNY

but ya... Pheonix is having a bad time...

Q: i think this is just so funny

HOW DID I GUESS

de killer isn't a name it's a title.

Q: PHOENIX I HAD A DEAL THAT IS ANOTHER KILLER WAS AROUND I WOULD PROVE MATT INNOCENT, AND BY SOME UNSPEAKABLE CHANCE THERE WAS SOMEBODY. MATT IS INNOCENT.

hey we're not at the perspective is Phoenix

this is weird

oh so the bulter is the person who did it

BF: hahaha IT'S ALWAYS THE BUTLER ISN'T IT

Well, nothing else for it, you gotta defend Matt!

Q: I DIDN'T EVEN THINK OF THAT JOKE

I am still shocked

BF: hahaha isn't this case great already?

Q: IT IS

BF: it gets you from the very start!

Q: Juan is dead :(

it does i love it

BF: POOR JUAN

Q: poor Juan indeed... but ZARLA ADOPTED HIM SO EVERYTHING IS OKAY

Q: SOMETIMES

oh my god

MATT WHAT THE HELL

Well uh hi I'm Phoenix and for some reason you look a bit too innocent.

nope I don't like him

Q: you know what I'll like him

for somebody's sake I'm not sure who's but it isn't Maya's

Q: matt probably can think and if he can he thinks evil thoughts

Q: baby powder that's it

I was trying to figure out what he reminded me of

Q:

Me: :shows picture of Juan: Matt: Man, too bad he's dead TOO BAD GEEZ WELL I GUESS THAT'S TOO BAD THAT HE DIED WELL I GUESS IM FIND NOW HOOPDEEDOO

Q:

Matt: So apparently that warrant does exist after all Phoenix: Ladies and gentlemen I think we may be making some progress here! Phoenix is my favorite character not only because I'm allowed to project myself onto him but because half of the time I don't need to

Q: 

Matt: Don't let some disemboweled voice boss you around Yes tell me more about this because you believe so strongly I shouldn’t

I can't believe this is the same matt

nooo don't gooo

I don't know if I hate the matt I saw from the comics or this matt more eh they'll collide eventually I know it

Q: Mr. Juan

dangit

Q: crap ya you're right you're both 21

Q: :D

YA THE MAGIC ROCK

:O

he is innocent! INTERESTING

BF: THE PLOT THICKENS

Q: BUT

BF: hahaha I love the line about disembodied voices

coming from the guy who's constantly calling someone or another for advice

Q: UH HUH PLEASE TELL ME WHY I SHOULDN'T LISTEN SENSE YOU THINK SO STRONGLY NOT TO

Q: wait frick I am projecting onto phoenix

oh well :/

oh ya i forgot about save points

Q: FINALLY WE TELL PEARL THAT WE AREN'T DATING

BF: hahaaha

I DO LIKE HOW SARCASTIC NICK CAN BE

Q:

Pearl: nick! stop it! don't hide your feelings from me!

Fine Pearl I’m gay

(sorry crackship I think it's fun)

yaaay that should continue MORE SARCASTIC NICK

too the hotel!! I remember this date it wasn't even that long ago...

SHE IS FAN OF JUAN IM ON HER SIDE NOW

Q: Phoenix Juan is good!!!

Q: It's an hour past when I should sleep but I have no reason to today

but should I stay up

Q: wow 4 locks a new record

Q: Lotta help me!!!

why i thought you liked me lotta

finally a pun with Lotta's name. I was waiting for that.

Q: Oh come on Lotta!!! Everybody please stop lying to me!!! Why is Matt the best one here???

HEY I CAN GO INTO THE HOTEL ROOMS NOW

I need to sleep...

but I wanna snoop though people's stuff...

flipping a coin one moment

BF: hahahaaha

Q: heads is play tails is sleep

where is a coin

BF: THE ROOMS WILL STILL BE THERE IN THE MORNING

Q: BUT- BUT I WANNA PLAY NOW MOOOOM

I hid my wallet somewhere and I can't find it

BF: uh oh

Q: this is bad

BF: where do you remember last having it?

Q: I remember hiding it somewhere in the desk

Q: but this is a big denk

BF: hmmm

but it's got to be in their S

OMEWHERE

Q: Somebody might've stolen it though

they're in this house but dammit

BF: So you can start by checking the most obvious drawers and stuff, like the ones you'd open first without even thinking

Also you can go through and straighten stuff up

Q: cleaning gets you to find stuff

BF: exactly!

Q: I really wanted to find my wallet but I found a penny so I flipped it and it said tails and I am upset.

BF: awwwww

Q: Case is interesting, I'm sad he died, I think Matt is fake and he actually is evil, Maya is fine, Peal needs better parents, Lotta finally gets a name pun, Gumshoe is suspicious and I DON'T WANNA FIGHT EDGY IN COURT BECAUSE IF i WIN THEN HE'LL HATE ME FOREVER BUT I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF HE'LL BE THE PROSECUTION ER BUT HE PROBABLY IS AND I'M SCARED I JUST WANNA BE FRIENDS

Q: I'll drop the game but I'm talking to you till I can get the other stuff I need done done.

Q: The anime sounds like something I'd probably like. Sure flaws and weird poses but I make fun of the poses and all of the other stuff sounds great

My biggest problem sounds like the timing... but I can probably live with that if I find it funny enough

Q: i didnt say much cool now I can sleep. Also hope house is good. This case's summery is "The plot thickens."

BF: haha okay

Q: Yesterday I thought "okay even if Matt didn't kill Juan this guy doesn't feel like the person who would constantly argue with him"

Oh hey I can go to the detention center again

Matt for you I will let just sign and ask what you we

Q: You want. I don't like you but I'm game I don't have a reason to hate you get

YET

Q: Well I don't have anything else to say to him so whatever. More looking.

Q: Oh ya I can look in the rooms!!!

BF: yessss

Go snoop in the roooms do it

Q: Look at all of the bears... His family must be liked him a lot :(

Hi gumshoe. I'm mad at you right now.

BF: Family, fans...

Q: Poor phoenix... Thanks gumshoe for asking

Q: I wanna give him a teddy bear!

Thank you gumshoe!!!!!

Pearl gotta map!

Don't worry pearl I'll read it for you

Dead Juan picture :( I want a picture of alive Juan

Q: I feel really bad for this juan... I hope one of the characters does too

Matt was set up, as much as I hate to admit it

Q: ya well if Franz tried to hurt you gumshoe I will kill her... But sadly I can't

Q:

Gumshoe: listen here pearl. Never pick up a whip, OK? Don't even think about it

Best advice in the game

Q: Awww well what kind of stuffed animal should I given Juan if he doesn't actually like teddy bears?

BF: lol, honestly, given how many he has and how cluttered his room is right then, i'm willing to believe that teddy tumbled into the waste basket by mistake

how many he HAS bleh

Q: I thought that may be the case too

Crap Franz is here

Well gumshoe I think I found all I need to and I really don't want you to be caught by Franz

Q: I still have Matt's room to search but now I am scared Franz is a there

Q: IT'S BLOND ANGIE

BF: Hai Adrian

Q: Well ANGIE is brown haired Adrian because ANGIE came second

"Why do you call Adrian blond angie" because that is what I first thought when I saw a drawing of her

Haha I like Adrian

Q: HEY stop right there Adrian pearl wanted to come!

Phasing for lunch

Q: YES Pearl watch Juan's show instead

Q: aww

Q: 

Phoenix: Yeah, I would love to go back in time and relieve a few of the good things... *chuckle* I'm sorry Phoenix what do you mean by that

hey looks like Will knows Adrian!

Pearl you should help this love story you like those right

Q: Matt can you tell me something about your manager

no? How dare you.

Q: hi gumshoe i haven't talked again with you for a but so

So apparently Adrian is really popular No wonder Zarla decided to make her love interest a woman

Q: Going in Juan's room just makes me sad... look at all of the bears... :(

BF: Oh that’s not the only reason she’s almost exclusively shipped with ladies

By the majority of the fandom haha

Q: Interesting, I hope I'll be able to find it when it appears

Q: yess i found a new conversation topic, and it's on Adrian!

Q: I don't think they're dating because Juan is dead

Hey Adrien so they're saying you were dating Juan but he's dead so

pfft no responce okay

HEY LOTTA

HEY GUMSHOE

I bet Juan named all of the bears tbh

wonder if matt will say anything to it

hey he will!

alright well that was fun time to go and figure out what else to do

Q: don't think i can get any of the locks yet but i could try :/ i'll fail though

Q: wait I think the Adrian gossip could have something to do with it!!!

she did say she wanted to do something with taking photos of celebrities

I broke a lock!!! I wonder if I can get the other!

all I have is a newspaper clipping :/ I don't think i have enough info yet but at least I saved before!

hey I did it!!!

:D

Q: now that I did something a room might've updated

Q: I know matt's hiding something and I'm mad

i know I can't but I wonder if I can break any other locks

Q: nope alright Phoenix let's go

Q: dangit im stuck

Q: might as well mourn for Juan while I am

AH

FRICK I EXAMINED SOMETHING AND FRANZ IS COMING

RUN PEARL RUN

WE'RE LEAVING NOW

CRAP

GUYS NO

YOU SHOULD'VE RAN

NOOOOO

I'LL CALL THE COPS ON YOUR FOR HURTING US WITH THE WHIP

YOU'RE DAD IS SHIT AND YOU'RE LAST NAME SOUNDS DUMB

D:

I will treasure this autograph forever ...but I think I'm supposed to use this to get oldbag to talk... :( I don't wanna give it up though

Oldbag's name is Wendy! Dammit! I have no choice >:(

Q:HAVE YOU'RE DAMN AUTOGRAPH FROM JUAN BACK. BUT ONLY IN EXCHANGE FOR INFO

THEY'RE ALL GONE IN AN INSTANT :D

YESSSS

goodbye atougraph

Q: oh one more

nvm

Q: I knew matt was evil!

BF: hahaha

Q: BUT HE IS

MATT I HOPE I CAN STILL GO VISIT YOU SO I CAN KEEP STARING AT YOU ANGRILY

STOP SMILING IM MAD AT YOU

there isn't anything here anyways may just talk to the more likable characters

Q: well i can visit the police station...

I feel really bad for gumshoe :(

Q: hi gummy im really sorry about Franz do you mind if i go to punch her in the face?

BF: I think Matt is hilarious, personally

and poor Gumshoe!

Q: he's gonna pull a knife on me i know it

Franz you cant win please stop torturing my friend

again Matt was set up

BF: oh definitely

Q: Maybe somebody dressed as him or something I dunno that's happened before

HEY

WAS THAT WOMAN BY ANY CHANCE JUAN'S WIFE

Q: no? WELL IT'S THE BROWN HAIRED GIRL HEY I KNOW HER

WHY DOES SHE ALSO HAVE TO BE DEAD

YA I WANNA LEARN MORE ABOUT HER

oh go away Franz

FRANZ NO

WHO SAID THAT

EDGY

OH MY GOD

EDGY I MISSED YOU SO MUCH

EDGY YOU'RE BACK!!!

:D

Q: HE'S DOWNTALKING FRANZ THIS IS THE BEST

EDGY!!!

:D

AND HE ISN'T MAD AT ME!!!

Q: PHOENIX YOU WERE ANGRY ABOUT HIM BECAUSE YOU WERE SAD ABOUT HIM AND HE SAID THAT YOU'RE HATRED IS ONE SIDED AND HE'S BEING NICE PHOENIX THIS IS THE BEST

:DDDD

PHOENIX STOP BEING MEAN >:(

BF: To be fair, he is under a ton of stress right now haha

Q: ya. Poor Phoenix, angry and try

Q: D: Nooo Adrian tried suicide

BF: yep. and this, by the way, ties directly into why she's pretty much universally viewed as a lesbian

Q: alright so that is why the fandom thinks she is a lesbian and why zarla ships her with that person

ALRIGHT

BF: SHE WAS VERY VERY VERY DEVOTED TO CELESTE

Q: noooo Adrian

BF: Zarla also ships her with Franziska, which is hands down the most popular ship for either of them hahah

but yeah...POOR ADRIAN

Q: what hahahaha alright I can see that as a funny ship

Q: EVERYBODY IS SO DEPRESSED IN THIS GAME

BF: and while it's partially his fault, POOR JUAN. I mean yeah he screwed up, he screwed up BAD.

but he was 19 years old and he was the one to FIND THE BODY

Q: DANGIT WHY IS EVERYBODY SO SAD

BF: IT GETS EVEN MORE MESSED UP. you'll seeeee

Q: "POOR PHOENIX", "POOR GUMSHOE", "POOR ADRIAN", "POOR JUAN", POOR EVERYBODY

yaaay i can't wait this case is very interesting

dang I wonder where to go next

I should probably go to adrian

Q: OH PLEASE DON'T TALK TO FRANZ PLEASE BE ON MY SIDE PLEASE I WANNA GIVE YOU A HUG

so they interacted this gives a little more of a reason to ship it

>:( EVIL DON'T PUT THAT THING IN GUMMY

Q: pffft shipping those two alright

i'll try to talk to her before presenting that I know about her attempted suiside

nvm

wonder if i can unlock the thing

BF: I THINK you should have enough to do it...I think. have you talked to Will?

and Lotta?

I know you've talked to Oldbag

Q: I have talked to will

though not recently i probably should

nah ill try to unlock it

BF: just check to make sure you have everything from him

OKAY

Q: fine

BF: I think you should be good

Q: OKAY

YAY

Q: didn't start it yet I'll go ask will

ya i already have averything from him

WHATEVER HEY ADRIAN

Q: frick im stuck hmm

BF: hahaha One detail I love is that there was a vague implication I picked up from Will that he and Juan were on good terms with each other

Q: huh!

Q: ADRIAN I FEEL BAD FOR YOU I WANNA GIVE YOU A HUG BUT I NEED TO COMPLETE THE LOCK THING FIRST

Q: i wiiiin

I like her though I don't wanna say she is the killer

oh ya pearl was listening to all of that

no wonderPhoenix brings her to fun places all of the time!!!

No Miss I wanna give you a hug I think you are great

Q: and I don't wanna be the reason you die!!!

goodbye adrian...

hey the hallway reset!

Q: HI ASSASSIN WHAT DO YOU WANT

BF: TO SAY SOMETHING OMINOUS.

Q: YES

I'm writing that down

Q: oh so the card is the assassin's card okay

Dammit Adrian!

Q: oh boy I escaped

hahaha oh my god i feel so bad for phoenix already

save point!

Q: Hi matt...

I'm sorry about being mad at you i don't think you did it anymore... well, I didn't really in the first place. I felt like you were resposible though, and even if you weren't, you're terrible anyways If you do anything though I will revert back to my pervious opinion for not have a pat on the head

Phoenix uh the assasin is calling you

Q: pfft hahahaha

I THINK THE ASSASIN IS FRAMING MATT

wait where is the prosicution

WHAT

SOMEBODY SHOT FRANZ

I AM ANGRY AND I AM SHOCKED

WHY AM I ANGRY SOMEBODY SHOT HER

ASSASSIN WHAT THE HELL

hiiii eeedggyyyyyyy before you ask i didn't do it

:D

Q: GUMSHOE YOU'RE FREE NOW

OH MY GOD THERE IS NO WHIP WE'RE FREE FREEEEE

:D

edgy is great'

hey the guitar case had something to do with it

I don't know what yet but it has

With Franz gone i feel like a weight i had no idea was there has been lifted Assassin, you get a pass at the moment.

Q: ya no if anybody in this entire game is gay with the game full on actually agreeing and making a few jokes out of it it's Adrian

Q: i think that something is wrong and that it's the assassin's fault

why does matt have hair over half of his face anyways he looks suspicious

Q: IM FINDING EVERY REASON TO HATE HIM BUT FOR NOW HE IS FINE I GUESS

Q: Still bothered that the matt im talking too doesn't seem like somebody who would fight with everyone

Q: Ya Phoenix that's what matt told you, that he didn't see Juan as a rival

like i beleive him

Q: oh ya i forgot to say what i was doing

Q: "Alright so I've learnt this a few times"

"When you don't know something about the evidence ask that peice of evidence" it works very well for some reason

Q: dang then I better save before the evidence tab pops up!

Q: Wait Juan was killed by... wait gumshoe said something about the scarf on his neck. It has to do with that.. was there blood on the scarf? Was there any blood on it? Why was another knife stuck in his chest later? Was that knife this knife?

what the hell is up with the wineglass of tomato juice?

Q: Why would Adrian drink tomato juice out of a wineglass if Juan is the one who loves the color red

Q: >:( Then why didn't you wonder if Adrian was the killer!

Q: dangit why oldbag

oh my god she kept the nickname edgey-boy

EDGY REALLY DOESN'T LIKE HER IT SEEMS HAHA

I am reminded of that picture I drew

Q: all you two have in common is the appearance for the most part and the same first name (well ladyverse Juan is Rivera which is Ace Attorney Juan's last name in a different translation I'm pretty sure so also kinda last name but it's not like they'd know that) as well as a red guitar and an interest in music... and a friend that looks like Angie/Adrian and like 6 other things but it's a coincidence

DOODLES

BF: hhahahahaah JUST LET IT GO MR. JUAN

Q: I feel smart

Probably just me being scared for life by Franz "I'm suspicious about Matt's face" "BUT THAT'S WHAT SHE WANTS ME TO THINK IT MUST BE HIS CLOTHES"

Q: oldbag stay behind the thing what happened

Q: ya but didn't Matt not know about that show afterwards

Q: wait but he didn't stab juan

what

ASK THE KNIFE

HEY IT WORKED

Q: ya but it doesn't make sense

why would he bring the knife if he didn't wanna kill him???

Q: To frame Matt!!!

Matt the rope is getting thicker but don't get your hopes up

Q: the autograph? Juan? Adrian???

Adrian!

Q: Ya but it'd seem reasonable is Adrian started talking with Juan after the brown haired girl (I forgot her name I'll call her R for now) died because he knew her. Then gossip spread.

This case is probably darker than that

...but i can't talk about her attempted suicide... Adrian :<

Q: ...Lotta knows!

I could probably do something with that... I really wanna help Adrian

Q: I knew oldbag stole the camera >:(

Q: um

sorry oldbag but i really wanna find Lotta's camera. Lotta visits me more and... she's just been the better friend. I hope you understand, right?

I knew it >:D

Q: ...who's room is the guy dressed at nickle samurai coming out of?

When did Matt say that???

Q: ...hmmm...

wait there is something wrong with it how dare the text block it

Q: And sadly, Adrian is small

why are we calling her the killer!!! D:

Q: 

Mia: He's just letting the trial run itself -- as if he's only along for the ride that's because he is

Phoenix he wants to see you succeed and to prove a point! Phoenix needs a hug

it's adrian... :(

Q: ...She did though...

...I'm sorry Adrian...

Don't worry Maya escaped Phoenix dangit

I wanna say wait im sorry Phoenix...

...dangit...

you know nobodyw ould care anyways if he did raise an objection

Edgy objected for me?? But you know nothing about her kidnapping!

Q: Phoenix is having a tough time I'm happy that Edgy is being nice to him

save point!

Q: Adrian I am sorry

Q: It won't be alright phoenix Adrian...

What if she dies??? D:

Q: how did the judge get his job

Q: but i don't wanna attack herrrr

"What if you think Angie is two people how come you never considered Adrian" They don't have the same glasses

Q: Adrian what about the guitar

did you think anything of that

Adrian im talking to talk to you in code

but what about the guitar

Q: i wanna know what happened to it

Q: ya but if you didn't wanna drink it then why did you get it in the first place

If you were shocked then how did you set it down before it existed

Q: Adrian please don't be upset

hey something about the guitar! What the heck happened to it!

hey I can talk about the guitar case!

Q: i wanna know what happened to the guitar!

ya but WHY was it empty?

why did you open it though? I know you don't know but why

Q: ...wait didn't somebody say earlier only Juan's figerprints were on it?

Dammit I really don't wanna keep saying you're lying Adrian

then if you were wearing gloves

then it'd prove you were the person in the picture!

Q: wait you weren't wearing gloves

SO EITHER you were the person in the picture, or you didn't have gloves and that wineglass was yours and you did tip over the vase!

Q: what else could be in the guitar?

case

Q: what if Juan opened it

probably not but somebody did stab him "after he was dead"

BF: hahah what could have been inside the guitar case? Well, we know it wasn't the GUITAR

Q: ahhh i don't knooowwwww and I can't save either

i pressed the wrong thing!

wait what

it's working???

Q: what is it a photo of???

what???

HUH WHAT OKAY

Q: what is it a photo of?

Q: It's of the pic off steel samurai show and Phoenix is saying the costume is in there and I am very shocked because I don't know what happened

ya but if she was wearing it while leaving then why was her in the costume shown going there

BF: hahaha well...okay I'm going to assume you have the photo of SOMEONE leaving Juan's room wearing Matt's costume Q: ya and i don;t like the idea of it being my frien BF: and that I'm not sure of. there's more than one problem with this case's timeline that I've seen because I've overanalyzed it to death BF: But right now you are going with the logic that it is HER in the costume leaving the room Q: huh! So there is a continuity error??? it being a spare would make sense... BF: mostly in the thing you just said...how did someone not notice her going into his room without the costume and leave wearing it Q: ah. Dangit i trusted this case BF: but that doesn't matter for the sake of your argument...the thing you need to prove is that it was HER in that cotume, and not Matt. Q: dangit but I like her more than matt! BF: Do it for Maya!

Q: but she's already escaped!

BF: she's not as free as you seem to think she is

Q: ya i know but

That looked like a basement so she must be in the same house i bet

BF: she's still locked in, that's all

Q: ah.

BF: OKAY but Adrian...and yes, the game is very much playing with your feelings...the key thing you need to keep in mind is that Adrian is TINY

Q: ALRIGHT

BF: she's like...5 foot four inches to Matt's almost 6 feet

Q: Wonder if there are canon heights posed for everybody somewhere

BF: if you keep THAT in mind...her HEIGHT...you should be able to spot the thing in the photo that proves it can't possibly be Matt in the costume

BF: and you can check it against the Nickle Samurai poster to see the contradiction

Q: Well I said earlier that the pants seemed much too long so it must be somebody small (Adrian)

BF: ding ding ding! you got it!

Q: yaaaay

Q: D: I feel bad for Juan

BF: and yeah, there actually are official heights for nearly everyone.  The Fan wiki for the game has everyone's heights (everyone who was given one) on their respective character pages

and I know right? :<

So that's how we know for sure that Matt was two inches taller than Juan. XD

Q: he should've won dammit then none of this would've happened

hey is that what happens in one of the AUs where he lives? that'd probably be a spoiler to the case.

pfft that's why Juan's hair is more poofy

BF: hee hee

Ummm...actually, no, I haven't done an AU where Juan wins the Grand Prix, and neither has anyone else, as far as I'm aware.

Q: oh well

BF: But weirdly enough, if Juan has won, that MIGHT have spared him. But I can't say why

Q: alright!

BF: In any case, I'm convinced the whole contest was rigged in Matt's favor, but that's just speculation.

Q: WELL YA

I hope soon i'll understand why Matt is evil

Q: yes but you see JUAN WAS KILLED BY THE SCARF not the knife!!! Why does everybody forget this!!!

BF: hahha poor Adrian just floundering at that point and going but...but the evidence that it was Matt...

Q: but... but Adrian the evidence that it WASN'T matt

BF: (I know you're having to be awful to Adrian, but keep playing...things are FAR from over.)

Q: (alright! I hope that she doesn't die!)

Q: To frame Matt@

M@ is apparently a thing now

BF: HAH

WHY NOT IT'S FUNNY

Q: it's not Adrian though!!!

I HAVE NO CHOICE AT THIS POINT

dangit

Q:

Phoenix: MISS ADRIAN ANDREWS, I CHOOSE YOU

haha

quonit

I AM SORRY ADRIAN

SHE'S GONNA START CRYING STOP IT

Q: Dammit Franz you're still hurting me

Edgy I know she didn't do it right now i just wanna prove Matt didn't do it

Q: I always felt like pleading the fifth was like admitting to something. Good job Adrian for making it ambiguous.

but mayaaaa

Edgy you DON'T UNDERSTAND

thank you edgyyyy

Q: Mia he's a good objection buddy that is what he is

Q: just let matt be not guilty but also let me defend her later

Q: that's because she didn't the killer!

Q: also does the lock thing not work in court

Q: alright i can see why Zarla and other people ship it

Mastermind is the person who kidnapped Maya god dammit

BF: You are FAR from done with this trial. >:3

Q: yaaaay

i need to sleep soon though

BF: hahah okaaaay

I am up too late myself hahah

:Next day:

Q: back to this question WELL requesting not guilty would make Adrian wanna testify so that she isn't founded of murder, but if i just made her testify she would give me one anyways.

Q: i flipped a coin and it chose to do the not guilty one so

IM SORRY ADRIAN BUT

EDGY NO SHE TOLD ME NOT TO TELL ANYBODY ABOUT THIS I SHOULD GO BACK AND CHOSE THE OTHER OPTION I FEEL TO GUILTY

i actually stopped the game i was too upset oh my god

now for the other option

this is so much better already

the coin hates me

nvm it's going the same

Q: I WILL HELP YOU ADRIAN I AM SORRY EDGY IS BEING LIKE THIS BUT YOU KNOW I KINDA HAVE TO DO THIS RIGHT NOW I'LL GET YOU A BOX OF COOKIES LATER

Q: alright thank you adrian

Q: but why were there no fingerprints on the case still???

Q: ugh whatever

Q: i wanna know Matt's weaknesses pleaaaseee

Q: well it's good Franz was shot

oh well too bad phoenix

EMPTY SEAT WHAT

poor phoenix D:

Q: Juan what did you do why do you have the assassin's card

WAIT EDGY DO YOU KNOW WHAT IS IT

save point!

Pearl with all of the talk of suicide and things like that please don't say stuff like that it’s really unsettling

HI GUMSHOE!!! Franz is gone :D You can be happy again!!!

ya work for me! Why not :D

Q:

Pearl: Even that woman prosecutor was better than that!

Pearl, let me introduce you to a man named Manfred Von Karma, also knows an Vampire the first.

Q:

Gumshoe: She almost looked like she was being tortured to death not being able to go to that trial today!

GOOD.

WHY THAT HOTTI CLINIC IT IT BECAUSE THEY ALREADY HAD DRAWINGS FOR IT

Q: I am a lot more upset than I thought I would be when I learnt she was shot so I guess i have a heart and should go visit her. Also i think she wouldn't be allowed to bring a whip to a hospital so

hey edgeworth are you here to say hi too

ha i still don't like this guy

Q: heeeey fraaanzzz imma make fun of you for being shot by my assassin friend

Q:

Franz: :whipps ''hottie'': HE DESERVED THAT THOUGH I AM WITH FRANZ ON THIS ONE

Q: What do you mean that kinda thing happens all of the time??? Do you regularly get shot???

I just realized she was shot in the right shoulder just like her dad haha

YES FRANZ WE KNOW YOU TOLD ADRIAN TO PLEAD THE FIFTH

Q: Franz thinks she has to one up me all of the time but really she can stop

Q: SHE'S SUICIDAL DAMMIT FRANZ YOU'RE TERRIBLE

I'm sorry i was mean to your honorary sister but she really is terrible

Q: Hey edgy do you think maybe shelly kidnapped Maya because uh

Q: SO THAT MEANS THE ASSASSIN KILLED JUAN I knew it but I still hate Matt

yaaay we can talk about maya to him

Phoenix: Stop trying to console me Edgeworth! I don't need your pity!

I feel really bad for Phoenix.. so much stress…

I KNEW IT

Q: MATT IS EVIL

WE CAN ASK HIM IF HE HIRED THE ASSASSIN

MATT HIRED THE ASSASSIN TO KILL JUAN BECAUSE JUAN WAS GOING TO REVEAL SOMETHING AND THEN ADRIAN MADE IT LOOK LIKE MATT DID IT AND NOW PEOPLE CAN FIGURE OUT THAT SHELLY DID IT

MATT YOU SUCK

Q: I really, really feel bad for Phoenix... all of this stress and then shock of edgeworth and then just being like "No i need to do my job" and he's mad at edgeworth because he needs to be mad at somebody because of the stress and

Q: hey! What does the assassin have to do with the brown haired girl!

most inaccurate thing in the game: A VSR. What even is that thing? Must be ancient.

hey Maya Matt's show sucks

it's a love Y story that is a blatant rip off of steel samurai that doesn't even include Will Powers in it. Also matt is evil.

dangit assassin go away

Q: To the detention center. Also i hate you Matt.

D: not a message!

he wants me to feed his cat ...the cat's probably innocent…

how do i get to his house though

ah down from the hotel, guess i have to go there

are you saying that i stole Edgy's heart and now you can't take it hahahahaha

i have a damn note let me look

Q: "Would you let this unsophisticated young person collect information?" HAHAHAHA

Q: hmmm i should go feed matt's cat but i wanna look around first

hiiii lottaaaa

Q: the game said that neither of them were there the whole time to maybe it isn't a continuity error?

Q: red-coat's my friend but phoenix is stressed out at the moment so not now

Q: WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE OLDBAG

Q: WAIT A SECOND did i just notice a RING on oldbag's finger???

WHAT

Q: Phoenix rivals can be friends but actually one of my firsts ships are rivals who became love interests so you can shut up

Q: well I guess it's time to feed Matt's cat

WHAt IS THIS HOUSE

After we will Matt can I adopt Shoe?

IT'S THE ASSASSIN

Q: HAHAHA SO MATT DIDN'T EVEN ORDER THE ASSASSIN THE ASSASSIN WAS ALREADY HIS BUTLER MAYBE THIS IS THE WEAKNESS JUAN I MISS YOU

Q: wait if Matt has a butler why would he want us to feel him ...to have his assassin butler kill us...

Q:

Phoenix: What is it with me feeling inferior today

It's okay phoenix :( have a cookie

HEY

MAYA IS AROUND HERE

D:<

im saving dammit

Q: AH

IT DIDN'T EVEN SHOW THE DARE BUT THE BEAR IS TELLING AT ME

HI ASSASIN WHAT DO YOU WANT

Q: the transceiver isn't broken i bet i just know that the assassin did this on purpose

Q: YOU CAN DO IT GUMSHOE

Q: this is fun i wonder what else is setting it off

THE EARTH IS ROUND BECAUSE OF GRAVITY DAMMIT PHOENIX YOU'RE A MORON

Q: I found it in the bears head!

Q: you can do it gumshoe!

HI EDGEWORTH WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE I'm going to start calling him Miles

Q: The buyer is Matt/assasin because he's evil and so is Shelly

imma go a bit ill be back

Q: back and dangit i can't find the charger

Q: yaaay my bro found it

Q: savepoint!

Q: I was talking with my brother and we decided the anime probably would've worked a lot better if the episodes weren't one entire case but savepoint to savepoint base

...9 isn't that late...

Q: HEY WENDY (sense you don't like being called oldbag) I WANNA CHAT

Q: Pffft fine Miles, next time i bump into wendy i'll tell her your exact location so that she can bother you instead

Q: I KNEW THAT CEL AND JUAN WERE A THING DANGIT BARDIC FELINE GOOD JOB NOT CONFIRMING DETAILS

Q: oh ya the butler does have stitches on his face...

Q: yesssss thanks Miles now i get to go YELL AT MATT FOR BEING TERRIBLE

Matt: I thought you said I was okay for now! MPW: NOT ANYMORE

Q: oh dang... Adrian is here... I wanna talk to her a lot more than matt

the real matt? YOU MEAN THE EVIL ONE???

Q: wooo only one lock

Q: talked with her on everything... I feel sad BUT ALSO I STILL HATE MATT

Q: I decided to save and just listen to the song a while

Q: Thank you Pearl for making a salad for gumshoe he's having a hard time as well, getting fired and all that

WELL PHOENIX GO BUY SOME LETTUCE

Q: but i don't wanan talk to matt unless I can stab him! Hey look i found powers let's talk to him instead

Q: BUT JUAN IS GOOD PHOENIX DAMMIT

...guess... I'm going to talk to matt now... *sigh*

Q: don't look at me like that Matt i hate you

die matt

5 locks! New record :D

Q: I'm done talking to this moron let's go

gumshoe! What is it?!?!

AND EDGEWORTH SAID IT WAS A DEAD END, HAH

PEARLS SHHHH HE FIGURED IT OUT ON HIS OWN WITH NOTHING ELSE TO GO OFF OF THIS IS IMPRESSIVE

YA WELL I ALREADY KNEW MATT BOUGHT IT ANYWAYS

Phoenix....

Q:

Phoenix having a really tough time. Edgy’s “suicide” being cause by him but he has to not acknowledge it and get to his job, raising Pearl, getting Maya KIDNAPPED, worrying about Matt, Edgy coming back and Phoenix is under enough stress and has to be angry at something (I MADE A NOTE ABOUT HOW IT SEEMS LIKE EDGY KNOWS PHOENIX IS UNDER A LOT OF STRESS AND HE’S BEING NICER TO HIM BECAUSE OF THAT) and Von Karma (just her whip tho), and the assassin and… I really wanted to give him some cookies to make him feel better.

Me going through Zarla’s very old 2-4 doodles: It seems we have very different opinions on Edgeworth in this case

cookies

Q: Matt I know there are 5 locks but I hate you and want to find your secret and then tell the newspapers

Q: OF COURSE YOU WERE WATCHING THEM THERE IS A STUFFED BEAR TRANSMITTER AND CAMERA >:(

Q: YOU BOUGHT THE DAMN BEAR

I'm sorry matt hey why do i feel pity for him

BECAUSE HE'S YOUR BUTLER

Q: FUCK IM SCARED I REGRET THIS

OH FUCK YOU I KNEW THAT YOU'RE HAIR WAS SUSPITION

I HATE YOU

Q: I miss the old Matt

I MISS OLD MATT

I don't wanna get back to the game anymroe i just wanan doodle my regrets away

BF: Hahahaha awww

Just had to scroll back a bit to see your reactions to other stuff

BF: I think I went straight up to the reveal wanting to believe that Matt was somehow innocent, and I’d been spoilered for his evil face.

IIIMMMMMM SOOOOORRRRYYYYYYY

BF: And I coulda sworn I...or the game...told you about Juan and Celeste earlier

Q: dangit

BF: Heee

Q: not earlier i suspected earlier and only recently did it tell me

BF: I have an elaborate theory that Celeste was murdered and it was made to look like a suicide but

Q: I opened the game again. I feel like crying. I'd like to hear more about this

I want to have Pearl punch him but she'll get hurt :(

BF: Admittedly, it’s partly cause I’m so biased in Juan’s favor (and I still acknowledge he messed BADLY) but what we know about the timeline that lead up To Celeste’s death is WEIRD

if only

Q: I wanna hear more but i think i will get spoiled

BF: Aaah okay. I’ll tell you the logic later hah

Q: REALLY PHOENIX IS SCOUNDREL THE STRONGEST SWEAR WORD YOU CAN THINK OF

REALLY

I'D GIVE YOU A LONG LIST OF WORDS I'D CALL HIM BUT IM AFRAID THAT AT THE MOMENT I WON'T PRIVATE MESSAGE THEM

BF: Heee...you can have some of the best doofy conversations with Matt right before god reveal

Before THE reveal, even

Q: >:( I MISS OLD MATT

BF: And I love some of the penalty messages for presenting the wrong stuff during his psyche lock section

There’s this bit where if you ask him that one question again before dealing with the locks, and he goes hold on dude, I gotta call my lawyer

Q: ya well too bad I was too mad to think "hey maybe i should get this wrong"

BF: Hahaha fair enough

Q: Well the game is called Justice for All so that means I may just have to prove my defendant guilty because he sucks

HAHAHAHA

BF: I didn’t doof around as much on my first playthrough cause I spent the whole thing worrying about Maya

But yeah...he pulls his phone out

And the next thing you know, Phoenix’s phone ACTUALLY RINGS

And Matt tells you, over the phone, that he knows nothing so stop asking

HE CALLS YOU WHILE SITTING RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU

AND NICK IS DOOFY ENOUGH TO ANSWER

And that mental image will never not be hilarious to me

Q: HAHAHA I REALLY WISH I DIDN'T MISS OUT ON THAT

BF: IT’S REALLY EASY TO MISS

BF: There’s a lot of optional dialogue in the bug sweeping part, too, which is easy to miss if you aren’t really thorough about scanning the room

Like one random thing I found in Juan’s room is a BREAD MAKER

Q: HAHAHA THE CAT PFFT WWELL TIME GO GO BACK TO THE HOUSE MILES COME WITH ME

Dangit one day i will replay this and I will find that dialogue

BF: Which had fresh bread still inside if it!

Lol Shoe gave them awaaaaay

Q: TO THE HOUSE

I remember finding that! Pearl was very excited 

I remember somebody who named their cat concrete

BF: So yeah...things that are canon about Juan that make me love him: the entire premise of his show (I would so watch a show about a singing fail ninja, I mean)

Q: SO DO I DAMMIT

MUCH MROE THAN SOME LOVE Y STEEL SAMURAI RIP OFF

BF: He apparently claimed in his OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY that he fought a bear. And won. And made friends with it.

BF: His whole weird thing with tomato juice and the fact that, if Adrian’s account is anything to go by, the fact that he sleeps SO HEAVILY that he can be taken for dead

Q: MILES HELP ME BREAK DOWN THE DOOR

I remember that!!! it was cute!!!

EDGY THE DOOR OPENED LET'S FIND THIS GUY

I wanna implement that into the ladyverse Juan haha

BF: His stupid mouth reed haha

Lol Zarla and I had a FIELD DAY with Juan and his heavy sleeping in the Frozen AU

BF: I love how weird and intense his rivalry apparently was with Matt, and I think it’s morbidly funny just how badly planned and half assed his actual revenge plot against Matt was when you know exactly what he was trying to do (it’s also pretty sad, but)

Like seriously nothing he tried to do holds up as a good plan if you think about the logistics of it like...at ALL

Q: dangit Maya don't die!

I feel bad for Juan...

BF: I DO TOO He was so young :<

Q: ADRIAN IM ON YOUR SIDE PLEASE TELL ME --- HE JUST WANTED TO GET REVENGE ON MATT!!! so young he died just because he was so desperate to get Matt back and didn't think him plan through...

BF: THAT’S THE WAY I SEE IT

BF: Even the most morally questionable thing he did (you’ll see) I see as being the act of someone who didn’t think his own words would be taken seriously

BF: Because who would believe anything bad said about a beloved actor when it comes from his bitter and angry rival

I think Juan got desperate:<

Q: that thing makes sense now... dangit I thought that picture was funny... --- :(

Q: ...time to save....

Q: Juan didn't deserve to die!

hey this is the the same dream from the begining of the game did i accidently reset i am scared

oh good i didn't accidently reset

phoenix do what Edgy has done before: Fail for justice.

Matt I hate you

go away im sad

Mia is Maya already dead

GUMSHOE HE'S UNDER A LOT OF STRESS RIGHT NOW NOT JUST WHAT HE HAD BEFORE BUT NOW BECAUSE OF MATT PLEASE FORGIVE HIM

Q: How much what this tip

Q: the face had a scar on it. Alright, but how much did Matt 'tip'?

Q :A BIG FAT ROLL. Hopefully the judge can understand this

Q: what the heck does "try to pull a fast one" mean

Q :...this statement still feels wrong..

Q:

Phoenix: ARE YOU SAYING THAT BASEBALLS ARE SUSPICIOUS BECAUSE THEY HAVE STITCHES??? 

How will I ever be able to trust a baseball ever again

Q: I apparently can't trust any sorts of sports balls now because of Phoenix huh

Q: fine. Did the hand on the end of that arm have brown figerless gloves?

find then. Whatever. what was the something?

Q: wooden statue... hm...

the bear.

BF: hahaha so much of Phoenix's arguments here are him pretty transparently stalling for time

Q: IT'S SAD but he needs to learn how to do what edgy does How could anybody hate edgy

dangit uhhh what now well i can save at this point

Well I'm kinda curious about the bear so

Q: uh how about the guy to got the bear? That could be helpful

Please tell me who took the bear!

nice he must've not wanted to get caught

Q: please hand down the verdict 

...Phoenix needs to know where Maya is first...

Mia we need to hear it i'm sorry

Mia don't worry maya is fiiiiINNNNNNEEEE haha

Q: ugh i bet phoenix is thinking of Adrian

Q: dammit we've already hurt her enough!

Q: Edgeworth's opinion is "Phoenix really i thought you grew" and my opinion is "PHOENIX IM SORRY ABOUT MAYA BUT IM WITH MILES ON THIS ONE"

Mia you told me to do this don't look at me like that

Q: oh fuck off matt

Q:

Gumshoe: Have you been hangin' in there pal?? 

me: NO HE CERTAINLY HASN'T

Q: ??: a tent! 

that is the most random thing wtf

MIA how is maya

BF: hahaah SUDDENLY A CALLBACK TO THE PREVIOUS CASE

Q: ALRIGHT SO MAYA'S BEING STARVED WONDERFUL PHOENIX LET'S MAKE MATT FUCKING PAY FOR BEING A *****

Q: LET'S GET A SLEDGEHAMMER AND BREAK THE BEAR OPEN DAMMIT

Q: Judge is doing the puzzle!

Q: Ya well WHAT IS INSIDE OF THE BEAR

Q: THE SUICIDE NOTE

WHAT THE FUCK ADRIAN

Q: frick i hope they find maya soon

BF: the were you responding to the fact that Adrian was planning on burning the note, cause if you are, I always found that to be really messed up

BF: like wtf yes I know you didn't want Juan to use Celeste as a way of getting back at Matt cause you didn't want either of them using her anymore but BURNING YOUR BELOVED MENTOR'S FINAL WORDS

Q: Well I already knew that I was also confused that IT EXISTED AND SHE KNEW WHERE IT WAS and it was brought to my attention yet again she wanted to burn it... AND AS YOU SAID, THAT IS REALLY MESSED UP

BF: Also, Adrian, you tried to use Juan's death as a way to try and get back at MATT.

Q: EXACTLY

BF: WHAT JUAN DID WAS BAD, BUT ALMOST NO ONE SEEMS TO DRAW THE COMPARISON BETWEEN THAT AND ADRIAN STABBING JUAN'S CORPSE

I mean christ if Adrian can be forgiven for that

Q: I AM STILL MAD AT HER FOR THAT!!!

BF: (I like to think that Adrian and Juan were way the heck more alike than she wanted to admit. and I say that while also totally understanding why she feels the way she does.)

Q: waaaaaaaa this case makes me feel sad

Q: ...BUT ON THE BACK OF THE PICTURE FRAME CEL WROTE SOMETHING RIGHT???

Q: "With love, Celeste" is all Celeste wrote on the picture hahah

Q: YA AND IT'S HANDWRITING

YESSSSSSSS A PHONECALL!!!!

BF: (I still have no clue why she dated Matt. like, Lady, why did you date your client? WHY DID YOU DO IT AGAIN WITH JUAN.)

Q: (AND NEVER ONCE DID SHE SEE THE BIG FUCKIN ASS SCAR I MEAN HAIR MOVES IN WIND RIGHT WHAT THE HELL)

HAHAHA I LOVE HOW THEY'RE PLAYING CATCH WITH THE PHONE

BF: hahahahaa HOW DID MATT HIDE THOSE

Q: SERIOUSLY I WAS VERY ANGRY ABOUT THAT EVEN BEFORE I KNEW HIS SCAR WAS THERE

BF: lolol Zar did a comic about that where Phoenix throws the phone and beans Edgeworth in the head with it.

Q: SEND IT NOW

EDGY THANK YOU

Q: hahha I'm used to that kind of silly anime flop bang, I didn't think about it.

Q: dangit was it colored???

BF: it softens his face, so it makes sense from a design standpoint.

Q: I THOUGHT ABOUT IT BECAUSE I DON'T WATCH TOO MUCH ANIME

Q: SEND THEM NOW GUMSHOE

FUCK HE GOT IN A CARCRASH SHIT

NOT GUMSHOE!!!

BF: GUMSHOE WILL LIVE

https://zarla.deviantart.com/art/Bad-reception-PW2Spoilers-59768674 and here

Q: MATT IS NOT INNOCENT AND NEVER WILL BE

Q: SAVE ADRIAN

I feel so happy thank you mia

Q: EXACTLY PHOENIX DO YOU UNDERSTAND NOW

Edgy is a friend!!!

BF: hahah

Q: I am still upset how the heck could anybody dislike him

(Edit: I felt guilty for liking him because of hearing Zalra’s not a big fan. I kinda felt guity over liking him because i thought in doing so i was being annoying or something??? it’s dumb but sadly enough i still have problems with it.)

I apparently just really like this character!

BF: hahahaha Edgeworth?

Q: YA!

BF: HE HAS NO SHORTAGE OF FANS IN THIS FANDOM

Q: true

BF: it's the people who DON'T care for him so much who are in the minority

https://zarla.deviantart.com/art/Bad-reception-PW2Spoilers-59768674 and here

Q: WAIT WE DO HAVE A WAY

DOES FRANZ STILL HAVE THE TRACKING DEVICE???

Q: I KNEW THE NOTE WAS FAKE

DANGIT BUT STILL MATT IS TERRIBLE AND SO IS ADRIAN FOR WANTING TO BURN IT

Q: HEY ASSASIN COME TO COURT WITH US

after this is over im going through Zarla's Ace Attorney folder

BF: haha yeah the old forged note thing. that's actually one of my reasons for arguing murder not suicide...cause i took that as 'he couldn't find a note at ALL"

Q: ah alright!

BF: (Also, I love the implication that he's got good handwriting...don't know why i zero in on THAT detail.)

but yeah...the forged note is the REAL thing I parallel to Adrian stabbing Juan's corpse.

cause it feels like the same basic intent

Q: (I took note of that too haha) UGH HOW DARE SHE

BF: (also I'm convinced, again, that Juan didn't think anyone would take anything he had to say about Matt seriously...but they'd listen to CELESTE.)

I STILL FEEL AWFUL FOR ADRIAN AND DON'T BLAME HER FOR PULLING A DESPERATION MOVE even though it made everyone's lives harder and just got her implicated for a crime she didn't commit

Q: ...I still like Juan from this case... he made mistakes and he didn't think about it all of the way through but I really think what he was doing what something that needed to be done considering...

Q: ADRIAN

I DON'T THINK IT'S HER STILL

DAMMIT WHAT THE LIVING HELL ASSASSIN HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO PROVE MATT GUILTY NOW

Q: MILES IM SORRY WHAT IS WITH ADRIAN

OH YA I KNOW YOU STILL WANT MATT FOUND INNOCENT

SO DAMN YOU IT'S NOT ADRIAN

Q: but i don't wanna go to the fandoooommmmm (eh)

IF SHE KNEW HE WAS DEAD THEN WHY DID SHE GET THE WINGLASS SCREW YOU SHELLY

Q: 

Judge: That was an awfully weak objection for the two of you ah so you know us by now I should've expected this

BF: hahaha the Judge even more used to Phoenix's shenanigans by game 5

Q: assassin your lies are easily seen through hahaha well considering how long of a time that is of course he is

Q: YOU SAID HIM WHAT THE HECK

HAHAHA

ASSASSIN YOU ARE SOMEHOW REALLY BAD AT LYING

BF: hee hee

Q :more obvious lies are coming

BF: WELL SHE DOES HAVE THE MASCULINE VERSION OF HER NAME FOR SOME REASON (the feminine version is spelled Adrienne)

Q: I don't think he saw it spelled to be honest, so either way even if it was spelled the feminine way then he wouldn't have known

BF: hahah TRUE

either way PROOF HE NEVER SAW HER

Q: ALRIGHT THEN WELL THE FIGURINE WAS INSIDE OF MATT'S HOUSE SO

AND IF HE GAVE HER THE FIGURINE SHE WOULD'VE BURNT THE NOTE

BUT GUESS WHAT

IT ISN'T BURNT

BF: (that probably works a bit better in the original Japanese. She has a kind of masculine sounding name there, and it's way way more likely to talk about someone without using pronouns at ALL in Japanese, so more likely he never heard her called a her.)

hahh YEP YOU GOT IT

Q: FUCK. OFF. MATT. NOW.

SO YOU KNOW I HATE YOU AND IF YOU PROVE YOUSELF GUILTY MAYA WILL DIE AND YOU WILL GET YOUR REVENGE ON ME FUCK OFF

I CHOSE TO MAKE MATT FUCK OFF THAT'S WHAT

BF: hahahahahaha

Q: FRANZ WHAT ARE YOU DOING HE'S GUILTY WHAT IS GOING ON

FRANZ DID YOU BRING GUMSHOE

OH MY GOD THANK YOU

YOU ARE HELPFUL

EVEN IF HE'S NTO HERE

YOU ARE NOTHING LIKE YOUR DAD FRANZ!!! :D

BF: Franzy is so much better hahah

Q: :DDD

BF: Though she never does get any good at admitting when she's wrong

Q: ya well at least she doesn't try to kill people over it

i really should sleep but this case is almost over!!

BF: YOU ARE VERY CLOSE TO THE END, IT'S TRUE

Q: BUT I'VE BEEN SAYING THAT FOR 3 HOURS

MATT WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU STILL HERE I TOLD YOU TO FUCK OFF RIGHT

BF: now whether or not you want to intentionally get the bad end or not just to see it is up to you...though I can't remember if the preserved the infamous typo that makes the bad end so memorable for the HD version

if THEY preserved, even

BF: (basically the bad end is super sad and dramatic...but they have a VERY noticeable typo on the dramatic final line that makes it unintentionally funny.)

Q: (pffft)

(I DON'T WANT A BAD END)

Q: I WANNA SHOW THE DAMN VIDEO TAPE TO MR KILLER DAMMIT "why" ILL EXPLAIN WHEN I DON'T FEEL SO RUSHED

BF: (hahah I MEAN FAIR ENOUGH. it's shorter than the good end. BUT THE GOOD END IS SO VERY SATISFYING.

heee jee

Q: (I WANNA SEE THE GOOD END DAMMIT)

BF: yesss SHOW DE KILLER THE PROOF OF MATT'S BACKSTABBING

Q: BACKSTAB BACKSTAB BACKSTAB MATT YOU SUCK FUCK OFF AND DIE

BLACKMAIL OF COURSE DAMMIT

Q: YEESSSSS

KILL MATT KILL MATT KILL MATT

MAYA IS SAFE!!!

Q: FUCK YOU MATT YOU BLACKMAILED THE ASSASIN AND YOU MADE TWO PEOPLE COMMIT SCIDIDE AND KILLED JUAN AND FRAMED ADRIEN AND MADE PHOENIX' LIKE TERRIBLE AND MADE ME GIVE YOU A ROPE FOR A LITTLE BIT (THAT SHIT IS EXPENSIVE) AND

NO I WILL NOT HELP YOU

YOU DUG YOUSELF INTO THIS HOLE AND YOU WILL NEVER GET OUT

YOU WILL BE BURRIED

ALIVE

AND WE WILL ALL CHEER

BF: and now you are about to see that Matt canonically has RAZOR BLADES for fingernails.

Q: HE IS GUILTY I HAVE LEARNT EDGEWORTH IS FRIEND oh boy give me a second

WOW

HOLY SHIT MATT YOUR FINGERNAILS OW

UM MATT STOP IT PLEASE YOU'RE MAKING ME UNCOMFORTABLE

BF: WHAT DID I JUST SAY

Q: RAZOR BLADES

ABSALUTE KNIVES FOR FINGERNAILS

BF: and yet there is still endless speculation about whether or not his scars are from a self inflicted wound or not. WHICH WE REALLY CAN'T BE SURE OF HONESTLY

Q: What do you think on it?

aww adrian!!!

(It’s like 1 in the morning now)

Q: Awww!!!

BF: I've heard tons of convincing theories for one thing or another, and I've never settled on a single one.

Q: Alright!

BF: Self inflicted is the OBVIOUS answer...but I've also seen compelling arguments that it was like...Shoe the cat. Or Celeste.

Q: Miles!!! Hello :D

Shoe the cat haha

Celeste makes sense…

BF: I have one very specific scenario where it was JUAN, but that's for one of the AUs

Q: :D yay!!! Maya is good!!!

Hi Franz!!! Well AUs

I lost and i am HAPPY because I got Matt to FUCK THE HELL OFF

BF: (and in that scenario, it was very much self defense...but cutting up his face was unintentional.)

hahahah YOU GOT THE RIGHT VERDICT THAT'S THE IMPORTANT PART

Q: INTERESTING

Finally Phoenix understands Edgy's side of the story 

Edgy is best

BF: hahah I'M AFRAID I CAN'T TELL YOU MORE THAN THAT cause it's major spoilers for an ongoing fic

Q: Fine!

Q: hahaha ONE DAY FRANZ, ONE DAY.

Franz: You are no longer worthy of being a Von Karma!

Franz: :with a smile: And neither am I!

:O

...the whip?

I FEEL SO HAPPY FOR HER

Q: MAYA THE BEST THING JUST HAPPENED YOU WON'T BELIEVE IT

BF: hahah SHE REALLY WAS JUST TRYING TO CATCH UP WITH EDGEY, HONESTLY

Q: EVERYONE HERE NEEDS A HUG

HAPPY FAMILY PHOTO :D

Edgy you can be part of the family too

Q:

Maya: A feast!

me: AND EDGY WILL PAY FOR IT!

Hi gumshoe!!! You're also in the family :D

AND LOTTA!

AND POWERS

BF: lol what make the most financially well off person pay for anything? In THIS GAME? don't be silly

BF: EVERYONE IS HERE YAY

Q: EVERYONE IS IN THE FAMILY

EDGY PAY MY RENT

Q: IN THE COAT POCKET

FRANZ IS NEAR?

FRANZ IS PART OF THE FAMILY TOO

WHEREVER SHE IS

Q: Pearl after watching that you still ship me and maya seriously I thought you knew what 'gay' meant

best crackship

Q: RIP PHOENIX'S WALLET, THE EPIC TV SHOW SERIES IT NEEDED TOO MANY SEQUELS TO BECOME A MOVIE SO WE JUST MADE IT A TV SHOW

Q: ALRIGHT IM SLEEPING I’LL LOOK AT THE CREDITS LATER GOODBYE

:After sleeping:

Q: Alright I'm back and looking at the credits

Q: Maya that's not a good thing

Pearl not only did you kill phoenix' wallet again you still fail to see the one true ship here Good job Gumshoe!!! I hope you get a livable amount of money now! Sure I can see Bryde as a waitress... but wait if she's so unlucky then... crap

Q: I wonder where the real hotti is

You can do it Max!!!

BF: She’s definitely coming back in the next game, haha. So is Adrian, but Adri has a far far better time of it that time around.

Q: Well she's fun enough so i don't find yaaaay Adrian :D

BF: Maggey is doomed to have awful luck and end up in trouble though

Q: dangit. MAGGEY IM SORRY FOR YOU

Wendy!!! We got the assassin to kill Matt and got Matt a guilty verdict for killing Juan!!! Are you proud of me!

eh who cares

awww thanks Adrian!

haha Adrian x Franz why not

Q:  goodbye de killer, have you killed matt yet?

hey look the date is showing!

hi Franz!!!

Q: back. had a thing

but franz it does matter! everything matters!

Edgeworth: Are you running away? Franz: Shut up! FRANZ DON'T BE SAD

Q: Franz: You can't possibly understand what is means to be Manfred Von Karma's daughter! ARE YOU ACCEPTING THAT HE IS THE ASSHOLE I KEEP TELLING YOU EH IS

You are a good person, unlike your father

Q:  this is sad I love her character though and it is cool seeing ehr develop

MORE ADRIAN X FRANZ OF COURSE

Q: AWWW SHE'S CRYING D:

BF: I know aaaah. Poor Franziska

Q: BUT SHE IS IN FAMILY!

Sad music!!! Poor Franz D: Don't leave!!! I love you though!!! You are good!!! You're father was terrible! You don't need to be perfect! No one is!!! You're good the way you are!!!

Goodbye Franz! I hope we meet again :(

???

Maya's drawing!

...to the third game!

D: I am scared

(Edit: This drawing was made around 2 months later but it was a drawing of me yelling at everybody that they are in the family so i might as well put it here

)

[the-face-in-the-mirror]

Cars Fandom Tag

Hello~ everyone! :3 I was tagged by the amazing @pixelthenerdcat In this Cars Fandom tag, and so I shall be doing it. Clearly :3

 For the Cars films, what is your…

 Favorite male character:

 Lightning, all day every day. Ever since I watched the movie as just a tiny child (which I still can't remember if I actually went to the theatre or not) he has always been my favourite. He just kind of has this certain degree of sass that I respect in a character 😎 Also, he's a cute little cupcake. That's also why 😎

Favorite female character:

Definitely Sally! :3 While I may not have understood how developed characters were supposed to be like when I was younger, I definitely get the message now, and Sally Carrera fits everything on the bill. Having such a well developed female character with genuine feelings and opinions and who's not just there to be a love interest *cue glares at various books which failed this* is really refreshing to me :3 

She is a sweet baby angel that I shall protect with my life.

 Least favorite male character:

Nowadays, I really can’t say that I have a least favorite character at all in these movies, since I’ve actually come to adore all of them... even if some of them are assholes with no hope of redemption B3

But if I have to pick one, I’d say Chick Hicks. Speaking from when I was a kid and watching these movies, I really didn’t like him. Mainly for the sheer fact that he was the ‘villain’ of the movie, and he did some pretty bad things. *i.e. crashing The King* But after some years away from these films, I’ve actually come to like him quite a bit. :3

 Least favorite female character:

Again, I don’t really have a least favorite character at all at this point; but if I have to pick one, I’d say Holley. I think she’s a good character overall, but I also think that she didn’t get enough development in Cars 2. She obviously has character, and is quite the badass when it comes to it, but in the end they just sort of made her out as a bit of a love interest. And not just because Mater kept saying that she was his girlfriend, and she agreed in the end.

 Favorite scene:

Of all of the amazing ones: when Lightning pushes The King across the finish line, forfeiting the Piston Cup in the process.

 This has been favorite scene for years, just because it really shows how much Lightning has developed over the course of the movie. At first, he was so determined to win it and become the first rookie who did, mainly for the fame and because he knew it would skyrocket his career. But, in the end, he let it go, because he knows that they’re ‘just empty cups’; and helping a (quite literally) broken person finish their last ever race is more important than fame. :3

Oh, what is this dripping from my eyes? TwT

 Favorite actor and their role:

Well, I don’t really know too many of the actors, to be honest... But, personally, I think Larry the Cable Guy (is this seriously his name? Like actually? o.o) would be my favorite. His role as Mater is absolutely perfect, and he just captures the character so well, like, I’m crying.

 Favorite Cars videogame (yes this includes mobile games like Fast as Lightning):

Please don’t judge me when I say that I really didn’t know that there were multiple games for this movie. O_O And even if I did know, I don’t know what they’re called. So, just because I favor online games more than anything else, I’m gonna say The World of Cars Online. Probably an unpopular opinion, buuutt... you know~ B3

 OTP:

Do I have to pick one? O_O

Well, in terms of straight couples... My OTP is definitely SalQueen! ^w^ Those two are just so perfect for each other, and just the ship itself is so well rounded by fanfiction, and fanart, and I love it! OwO

Now in terms of gay ships... KaCiao is my incomparable power ship B3

 BROTP or Platonic OTP:

Again. Do I have to pick one? O_O

Well, if we’re talkin’ friendships, then Lightning and Mater shall forever be my answer! OwO They’re friendship is so amazing, and beautiful, and pure, and my babies are too precious for this world help me TwT

And in familial terms: Doc and Lightning. Are. Perfect. Just the bond they have, and the mentor/student, father/son dynamic in there just melts my tiny little heart every time TwT

 NOTP:

Doc and Lightning. Like... No. Just no. Okay? They have a father/son relationship, we don’t need this. Okay? Now get that out of here o-o

(no offence to the people who do ship it, of course, but it’s just not my cup of tea)

 Why do you like the films:

*takes a deep breath in* *hands both movies and all the trailers to you*

Okay, but in all honesty, I just really love these movies because of the emotions its evokes, and the characters they’ve developed, and the messages put in them. Had I never seen these movies, I would’ve never imagined anthropomorphic cars, like, at all. So... Kudos, Pixar B3

 What are you hoping to see the most in Cars 3:

Pain. And tears. And suffering. Because I’m the most intense emotional masochist you will ever meet, and I love to watch my children suffer.

... That sounded weird. O_O

 Okay, now for some fandom related questions:

Favorite part of the fandom:

The fact that this fandom is just so small, with a really tight-knit community is probably my favorite part about it. It’s not too big, but it’s not too small either, and there’s hardly any problems, from what I’ve seen.

It’s really refreshing to come to a fandom that’s just so small and pretty well problematic. Especially coming from the larger fandoms, which I was mixed up in for awhile. The drama in those is actually overwhelming O_O

Favorite Cars fanartist:

Honestly? I haven’t been here long enough to have a favorite fan artist O_O

However, I have seen some art pieces here and there, and I really have to say: you guys are just all amazing, and I love you guys :3

Favorite Cars fanfic: 

*loud screeching in the distance* *pastes fanfic to the wall and points*

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12243009/1/Crash <---- This one OwO

Also known as Crash by @pixelthenerdcat who is an amazing fanfic author. And I determined to read all of her fics B3

What you enjoy putting out in the fandom (this could be anything, including rambly text posts):

Rambly text posts B3 Not very constructive, I know, but it sort of does something. Maybe. Sorta. Probably not B3

Do you think the fandom will survive after the release of Cars 3? (I know, evil question, but still >:D 

Uh. Yes! OwO I’ve seen quite a few people touch on his subject; about whether or not the Cars fandom will just sort of break up after the third movie comes out. But, honestly? I think that if you guys have managed this long, and are still a pretty tight group, then you’ll last for a good while after Cars 3. 

Especially since we’re gonna be havin’ feels for days! OwO And fanfiction that shall induce more feels! OwO And probably some heartbreaking headcanons that’ll ruin our lives, but you know how fandoms go B3

So, basically: Yes. I think the fandom will definitely survive after the release of Cars 3 

What made you become part of the fandom?

Actually... I can’t say anything specific for this O_O Maybe it was the knowledge of Cars 3 coming out, maybe it was seeing what a great fandom and community you guys are, maybe it was any number of things! I can’t say for sure, but I do know that it was for all the best reasons :3

 You guys are amazing, and I feel so honored to actually be a part of a community where people get me; even if I am fairly new :3

So, yes. I love you guys :3

[ciathyzareposts]

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

Fair warning: spoilers for Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers are to be found herein!

In 1989, a twenty-something professional computer programmer and frustrated horror novelist named Jane Jensen had a close encounter with King’s Quest IV that changed her life. She was so inspired by the experience of playing her first adventure game that she decided to apply for a job with Sierra Online, the company that had made it. In fact, she badgered them relentlessly until they finally hired her as a jack-of-all-trades writer in 1990.

Two and a half years later, after working her way up from writing manuals and incidental in-game dialog to co-designing the first EcoQuest game with Gano Haine and the sixth King’s Quest game with Roberta Williams, she had proved herself sufficiently in the eyes of her managers to be given a glorious opportunity: the chance to make her very own game on her own terms. It really was a once-in-a-lifetime proposition; she was to be given carte blanche by the biggest adventure developer in the industry at the height of the genre’s popularity to make exactly the game she wanted to make. Small wonder that she would so often look back upon it wistfully in later years, after the glory days of adventures games had become a distant memory.

For her big chance, Jensen proposed making a Gothic horror game unlike anything Sierra had attempted before, with a brooding and psychologically complex hero, a detailed real-world setting, and a complicated plot dripping with the lore of the occult. Interestingly, Jensen remembers her superiors being less than thrilled with the new direction. She says that Ken Williams in particular was highly skeptical of the project’s commercial viability: “Okay, I’ll let you do it, but I wish you’d come up with something happier!”

But even if Jensen’s recollections are correct, we can safely say that Sierra’s opinion changed over the year it took to make Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers. By the time it shipped on November 24, 1993, it fit in very well with a new direction being trumpeted by Ken Williams in his editorials for the company’s newsletter: a concerted focus on more “adult,” sophisticated fictions, as exemplified not only by Sins of the Fathers but by a “gritty” new Police Quest game and another, more lurid horror game which Roberta Williams had in the works. Although the older, more lighthearted and ramshackle [this, that, and the other] Quest series which had made Sierra’s name in adventure games would continue to appear for a while longer, Williams clearly saw these newer concepts as the key to a mass market he was desperately trying to unlock. Games like these were, theoretically anyway, able to appeal to demographics outside the industry’s traditional customers — to appeal to the sort of people who had hitherto preferred an evening in front of a television to one spent in front of a monitor.

Thus Sierra put a lot of resources into Sins of the Fathers‘s presentation and promotion. For example, the box became one of the last standout packages in an industry moving inexorably toward standardization on that front; in lieu of anything so dull as a rectangle, it took the shape of two mismatched but somehow conjoined triangles. Sierra even went so far as to hire Tim Curry of Rocky Horror Picture Show fame, Mark Hamill of Star Wars, and Michael Dorn of Star Trek: The Next Generation for the CD-ROM version’s voice-acting cast.

Jane Jensen with the first Gabriel Knight project’s producer and soundtrack composer Bob Holmes, who would later become her husband, and the actor Tim Curry, who provided the voice of Gabriel using a thick faux-New Orleans accent which some players judge hammy, others charming.

In the long run, the much-discussed union of Silicon Valley and Hollywood that led studios like Sierra to cast such high-profile names at considerable expense would never come to pass. In the meantime, though, the game arrived at a more modestly propitious cultural moment. Anne Rice’s Gothic vampire novels, whose tonal similarities to Sins of the Fathers were hard to miss even before Jensen began to cite them as an inspiration in interviews, were all over the bestseller lists, and Tom Cruise was soon to star in a major motion picture drawn from the first of them. Even in the broader world of games around Sierra, the influence of Rice and Gothic horror more generally was starting to make itself felt. On the tabletop, White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masquerade was exploding in popularity just as Dungeons & Dragons was falling on comparatively hard times; the early 1990s would go down in tabletop history as the only time when a rival system seriously challenged Dungeons & Dragons‘s absolute supremacy. And then there was the world of music, where dark and slinky albums from bands like the Cure and Massive Attack were selling in the millions.

Suffice to say, then, that “goth” culture in general was having a moment, and Sins of the Fathers was perfectly poised to capitalize on it. The times were certainly a far cry from just half a decade before, when Amy Briggs had proposed an Anne Rice-like horror game to her bosses at Infocom, only to be greeted with complete incomprehension.

Catching the zeitgeist paid off: Sins of the Fathers proved, if not quite the bridge to the Hollywood mainstream Ken Williams might have been longing for, one of Sierra’s most popular adventures games of its time. An unusual number of its fans were female, a demographic oddity it had in common with all of the other Gothic pop culture I’ve just mentioned. These female fans in particular seemed to get something from the game’s brooding bad-boy hero that they perhaps hadn’t realized they’d been missing. While games that used sex as a selling point were hardly unheard of in 1993, Sins of the Fathers stood out in a sea of Leisure Suit Larry and Spellcasting games for its orientation toward the female rather than the male gaze. In this respect as well, its arrival was perfectly timed, coming just as relatively more women and girls were beginning to use computers, thanks to the hype over multimedia computing that was fueling a boom in their sales.

But there was more to Sins of the Father‘s success than its arrival at an opportune moment. On the contrary: the game’s popularity has proved remarkably enduring over the decades since its release. It spawned two sequels later in the 1990s that are almost as adored as the first game, and still places regularly at or near the top of lists of “best adventure games of all time.” Then, too, it’s received an unusual amount of academic attention for a point-and-click graphic adventure in the traditional style (a genre which, lacking both the literary bona fides of textual interactive fiction and the innate ludological interest of more process-intensive genres, normally tends to get short shrift in such circles). You don’t have to search long in the academic literature to find painfully earnest grad-student essays contrasting the “numinous woman” Roberta Williams with the “millennium woman” Jane Jensen, or “exploring Gabriel as a particular instance of the Hero archetype.”

So, as a hit in its day and a hit still today with both the fans and the academics, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers must be a pretty amazing game, right? Well… sure, in the eyes of some. For my own part, I see a lot of incongruities, not only in the game itself but in the ways it’s been received over the years. It strikes me as having been given the benefit of an awful lot of doubts, perhaps simply because there have been so very few games like it. Sins of the Fathers unquestionably represents a noble effort to stretch its medium. But is it truly a great game? And does its story really, as Sierra’s breathless press release put it back in the day, “rival the best film scripts?” Those are more complicated questions.

But before I begin to address them, we should have a look at what the game is all about, for those of you who haven’t yet had the pleasure of Gabriel Knights’s acquaintance.

Our titular hero, then, is a love-em-and-leave-em bachelor who looks a bit like James Dean and comes complete with a motorcycle, a leather jacket, and the requisite sensitive side concealed underneath his rough exterior. He lives in the backroom of the bookshop he owns in New Orleans, from which he churns out pulpy horror novels to supplement his paltry income. Grace Nakamura, a pert university student on her summer holidays, works at the bookshop as well, and also serves as Gabriel’s research assistant and verbal sparring partner, a role which comes complete with oodles of sexual tension.

Gabriel’s bedroom. What woman wouldn’t be excited to be brought back here?

Over the course of the game, Gabriel stumbles unto a centuries-old voodoo cult which has a special motivation to make him their latest human sacrifice. While he’s at it, he also falls into bed with the comely Malia, the somewhat reluctant leader of the cult. He learns amidst it all that not just voodoo spirits but many other things that go bump in the night — werewolves, vampires, etc. — are in fact real. And he learns that he’s inherited the mantle of Schattenjäger — “Shadow Hunter” — from his forefathers, and that his family’s legacy as battlers of evil stretches back to Medieval Germany. (The symbolism of his name is, as Jensen herself admits, not terribly subtle: “Gabriel” was the angel who battled Lucifer in Paradise Lost, while “Knight” means that he’s, well, a knight, at least in the metaphorical sense.) After ten days jam-packed with activity, which take him not only all around New Orleans but to Germany and Benin as well — Sins of the Fathers is a very generous game indeed in terms of length — Gabriel must choose between his love for Malia and his new role of Schattenjäger. Grace is around throughout: to serve as the good-girl contrast to the sultry Malia (again, the symbolism of her name isn’t subtle), to provide banter and research, and to pull Gabriel’s ass bodily out of the fire at least once. If Gabriel makes the right choice at the end of the game, the two forge a tentative partnership to continue the struggle against darkness even as they also continue to deny their true feelings for one another.

As we delve into what the game does well and poorly amidst all this, it strikes me as useful to break the whole edifice down along the classic divide of its interactivity versus its fiction. (If you’re feeling academic, you can refer to this dichotomy as its ludological versus its narratological components; if you’re feeling folksy, you can call it its crossword versus its narrative.) Even many of the game’s biggest fans will admit that the first item in the pairing has its problematic aspects. So, perhaps we should start there rather than diving straight into some really controversial areas. That said, be warned that the two things are hard to entirely separate from one another; Sins of the Fathers works best when the two are in harmony, while many of its problems come to the fore when the two begin to clash.

Let’s begin, though, with the things Sins of the Fathers gets right in terms of design. While I don’t know that it is, strictly speaking, impossible to lock yourself out of victory while still being able to play on, you certainly would have to be either quite negligent or quite determined to manage it at any stage before the endgame. This alone shows welcome progress for Sierra — shows that the design revolution wrought by LucasArts’s The Secret of Monkey Island was finally penetrating even this most stalwart redoubt of the old, bad way of making adventure games.

Snarking aside, we shouldn’t dismiss Jensen’s achievement here; it’s not easy to make such an intricately plot-driven game so forgiving. The best weapon in her arsenal is the use of an event-driven rather than a clock-driven timetable for advancing the plot. Each of the ten days has a set of tasks you must accomplish before the day ends, although you aren’t explicitly told what they are. You have an infinite amount of clock time to accomplish these things at your own pace. When you eventually do so — and even sometimes when you accomplish intermediate things inside each day — the plot machinery lurches forward another step or two via an expository cut scene and the interactive world around you changes to reflect it. Sins of the Fathers was by no means the first game to employ such a system; as far as I know, that honor should go to Infocom’s 1986 text adventure Ballyhoo. Yet this game uses it to better effect than just about any game that came before it. In fact, the game as a whole is really made tenable only by this technique of making the plot respond to the player’s actions rather than forcing the player to race along at the plot’s pace; the latter would be an unimaginable nightmare to grapple with in a story with this many moving parts. When it works well, which is a fair amount of the time, the plot progression feels natural and organic, like you truly are in the grip of a naturally unfolding story.

The individual puzzles that live within this framework work best when they’re in harmony with the plot and free of typical adventure-game goofiness. A good example is the multi-layered puzzle involving the Haitian rada drummers whom you keep seeing around New Orleans. Eventually, a victim of the voodoo cult tells you just before he breathes his last that the drummers are the cult’s means of communicating with one another across the city. So, you ask Grace to research the topic of rada drums. Next day, she produces a book on the subject filled with sequences encoding various words and phrases. When you “use” this book on one of the drummers, it brings up a sort of worksheet which you can use to figure out what he’s transmitting. Get it right, and you learn that a conclave is to be held that very night in a swamp outside the city.

Working out a rada-drum message.

This is an ideal puzzle: complicated but not insurmountable, immensely satisfying to solve. Best of all, solving it really does make you feel like Gabriel Knight, on the trail of a mystery which you must unravel using your own wits and whatever information you can dig up from the resources at your disposal.

Unfortunately, not all or even most of the puzzles live up to that standard. A handful are simply bad puzzles, full stop, testimonies both to the fact that every puzzle is always harder than its designer thinks it is and to Sierra’s disinterest in seeking substantive feedback on its games from actual players before releasing them. For instance, there’s the clock/lock that expects you to intuit the correct combination of rotating face and hands from a few scattered, tangential references elsewhere in the game to the number three and to dragons.

Even the rather brilliant rada-drums bit goes badly off the rails at the end of the game, when you’re suddenly expected to use a handy set of the drums to send a message of your own. This requires that you first read Jane Jensen’s mind to figure out what general message out of the dozens of possibilities she wants you to send, then read her mind again to figure out the exact grammar she wants you to use. When you get it wrong, as you inevitably will many times, the game gives you no feedback whatsoever. Are you doing the wrong thing entirely? Do you have the right idea but are sending the wrong message? Or do you just need to change up your grammar a bit? The game isn’t telling; it’s too busy killing you on every third failed attempt.

Other annoyances are the product not so much of poor puzzle as poor interface design. In contrast to contemporaneous efforts from competitors like LucasArts and Legend Entertainment, Sierra games made during this period still don’t show hot spots ripe for interaction when you mouse over a scene. So, you’re forced to click on everything indiscriminately, which most of the time leads only to the narrator intoning the same general room description over and over in her languid Caribbean patois. The scenes themselves are well-drawn, but their muted colors, combined with their relatively low resolution and the lack of a hot-spot finder, constitute something of a perfect storm for that greatest bane of the graphic adventure, the pixel hunt. One particularly egregious example of the syndrome, a snake scale you need to find at a crime scene on a beach next to Lake Pontchartrain, has become notorious as an impediment that stops absolutely every player in her tracks. It reveals the dark flip side of the game’s approach to plot chronology: that sinking feeling when the day just won’t end and you don’t know why. In this case, it’s because you missed a handful of slightly discolored pixels surrounded by a mass of similar hues — or, even if you did notice them, because you failed to click on them exactly.

You have to click right where the cursor is to learn from the narrator that “the grass has a matted appearance there.” Break out the magnifying glass!

But failings like these aren’t ultimately the most interesting to talk about, just because they were so typical and so correctable, had Sierra just instituted a set of commonsense practices that would have allowed them to make better games. Much more interesting are the places that the interactivity of Sins of the Fathers clashes jarringly with the premise of its fiction. For it’s here, we might speculate, that the game is running into more intractable problems — perhaps even running headlong into the formal limitation of the traditional graphic adventure as a storytelling medium.

Take, for example, the point early in the game when Gabriel wants to pay a visit to Malia at her palatial mansion, but, as a mere civilian, can’t get past the butler. Luckily, he happens to have a pal at the police department — in fact, his best friend in the whole world, an old college buddy named Mosley. Does he explain his dilemma to Mosley and ask for help? Of course not! This is, after all, an adventure game. He decides instead to steal Mosley’s badge. When he pays the poor fellow a visit at his office, he sees that Mosley’s badge is pinned, as usual, to his jacket. So, Gabriel sneaks over to turn up the thermostat in the office, which causes Mosley to remove the jacket and hang it over the back of his chair. Then Gabriel asks him to fetch a cup of coffee, and completes the theft while he’s out of the room. With friends like that…

Gabriel is turned away from Malia’s door…

…but no worries, he can just figure out how to steal a badge from his best friend and get inside that way.

In strictly mechanical terms, this is actually a clever puzzle, but it illustrates the tonal and thematic inconsistencies that dog the game as a whole. Sadly, puzzles like the one involving the rada drums are the exception rather than the rule. Most of the time, you’re dealing instead with arbitrary roadblocks like this one that have nothing whatsoever to do with the mystery you’re trying to solve. It becomes painfully obvious that Jensen wrote out a static story outline suitable for a movie or novel, then went back to devise the disconnected puzzles that would make a game out of it.

But puzzles like this are not only irrelevant: they’re deeply, comprehensively silly, and this silliness flies in the face of Sins of the Fathers‘s billing as a more serious, character-driven sort of experience than anything Sierra had done to date. Really, how can anyone take a character who goes around doing stuff like this seriously? You can do so, I would submit, only by mentally bifurcating the Gabriel you control in the interactive sequences from the Gabriel of the cut scenes and conversations. That may work for some — it must, given the love that’s lavished on this game by so many adventure fans — but the end result nevertheless remains creatively compromised, two halves of a work of art actively pulling against one another.

Gabriel sneaks into the backroom of a church and starts stealing from the priests. That’s normal behavior for any moodily romantic protagonist, right? Right?

It’s at points of tension like these that Sins of the Fathers raises the most interesting and perhaps troubling questions about the graphic adventure as a genre. Many of its puzzles are, as I already noted, not bad puzzles in themselves; they’re only problematic when placed in this fictional context. If Sins of the Fathers was a comedy, they’d be a perfectly natural fit. This is what I mean when I say, as I have repeatedly in the past, that comedy exerts a strong centrifugal pull on any traditional puzzle-solving adventure game. And this is why most of Sierra’s games prior to Sins of the Fathers were more or less interactive cartoons, why LucasArts strayed afield from that comfortable approach even less often than Sierra, and, indeed, why comedies have been so dominant in the annals of adventure games in general.

The question must be, then, whether the pull of comedy can be resisted — whether compromised hybrids like this one are the necessary end result of trying to make a serious graphic adventure. In short, is the path of least resistance the only viable path for an adventure designer?

For my part, I believe the genre’s tendency to collapse into comedy can be resisted, if the designer is both knowing and careful. The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes, released the year before Sins of the Fathers, is a less heralded game than the one I write about today, but one which works better as a whole in my opinion, largely because it sticks to its guns and remains the type of fiction it advertises itself to be, eschewing goofy roadblock puzzles in favor of letting you solve the mystery at its heart. By contrast, you don’t really solve the mystery for yourself at all in Sins of the Fathers; it solves the mystery for you while you’re jumping Gabriel through all the irrelevant hoops it sets in his path.

But let’s try to set those issues aside now and engage with Sins of the Fathers strictly in terms of the fiction that lives outside the lines of its interactivity. As many of you doubtless know, I’m normally somewhat loathe to do that; it verges on a tautology to say that interactivity is the defining feature of games, and thus it seems to me that any given game’s interactivity has to work, without any qualifiers, as a necessary precondition to its being a good game. Still, if any game might be able to sneak around that rule, it ought to be this one, so often heralded as a foremost exemplar of sophisticated storytelling in a ludic context. And, indeed, it does fare better on this front in my eyes — not quite as well as some of its biggest fans claim, but better.

The first real scene of Sins of the Fathers tells us we’re in for an unusual adventure-game experience, with unusual ambitions in terms of character and plot development alike. We meet Gabriel and Grace in medias res, as the former stumbles out of his backroom bedroom to meet the latter already at her post behind the cash register in the bookstore. Over the next couple of minutes, we learn much about them as people through their banter — and, tellingly, pretty much nothing about what the real plot of the game will come to entail. This is Bilbo holding his long-expected party, Wart going out to make hay; Jane Jensen is settling in to work the long game.

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As Jensen slowly pulls back the curtain on what the game is really all about over the hours that follow, she takes Gabriel through that greatest rarity in interactive storytelling, a genuine internal character arc. The Gabriel at the end of the game, in other words, is not the one we met at the beginning, and for once the difference isn’t down to his hit points or armor class. If we can complain that we’re mostly relegated to solving goofy puzzles while said character arc plays out in the cut scenes, we can also acknowledge how remarkable it is for existing at all.

Jensen is a talented writer with a particular affinity for just the sort of snappy but revealing dialog that marks that first scene of the game. If anything, she’s better at writing these sorts of low-key “hang-out” moments than the scenes of epic confrontation. It’s refreshing to see a game with such a sense of ease about its smaller moments, given that the talents and interests of most game writers tend to run in just the opposite direction.

Then, too, Jensen has an intuitive understanding of the rhythm of effective horror. As any master of the form from Stephen King to the Duffer Brothers will happily tell you if you ask them, you can’t assault your audience with wall-to-wall terror. Good horror is rather about tension and release — the horrific crescendos fading into moments of calm and even levity, during which the audience has a chance to catch its collective breath and the knots in their stomachs have a chance to un-clench. Certainly we have to learn to know and like a story’s characters before we can feel vicarious horror at their being placed in harm’s way. Jensen understands all these things, as do the people working with her.

Indeed, the production values of Sins of the Fathers are uniformly excellent in the context of its times. The moody art perfectly complements the story Jensen has scripted, and the voice-acting cast — both the big names who head it and the smaller ones who fill out the rest of the roles — are, with only one or two exceptions, solid. The music, which was provided by the project’s producer Robert Holmes — he began dating Jensen while the game was in production, and later became her husband and constant creative partner — is catchy, memorable, and very good at setting the mood, if perhaps not hugely New Orleans in flavor. (More on that issue momentarily.)

Still, there are some significant issues with Sins of the Fathers even when it’s being judged purely as we might a work of static fiction. Many of these become apparent only gradually over time — this is definitely a game that puts its best foot forward first — but at least one of them is front and center from the very first scene. To say that much of Gabriel’s treatment of Grace hasn’t aged well hardly begins to state the case. Their scenes together often play like a public-service video from the #MeToo movement, as Gabriel sexually harasses his employee like Donald Trump with a fresh bottle of Viagra in his back pocket. Of course, Jensen really intends for Gabriel to be another instance of the archetypal charming rogue — see Solo, Han, and Jones, Indiana — and sometimes she manages to pull it off. At far too many others, though, the writing gets a little sideways, and the charming rogue veers into straight-up jerk territory. The fact that Grace is written as a smart, tough-minded young woman who can give as good as she gets doesn’t make him seem like any less of a sleazy creep, more Leisure Suit Larry than James Dean.

I’m puzzled and just a little bemused that so many academic writers who’ve taken it upon themselves to analyze the game from an explicitly feminist perspective can ignore this aspect of it entirely. I can’t help but suspect that, were Sins of the Fathers the product of a male designer, the critical dialog that surrounds it would be markedly different in some respects. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether this double standard is justified or not in light of our culture’s long history of gender inequality.

As the game continues, the writing starts to wear thin in other ways. Gabriel’s supposed torrid love affair with Malia is, to say the least, unconvincing, with none of the naturalism that marks the best of his interactions with Grace. Instead it’s in the lazy mold of too many formulaic mass-media fictions, where two attractive people fall madly in love for no discernible reason that we can identify. The writer simply tells us that they do so, by way of justifying an obligatory sex scene or two. Here, though, we don’t even get the sex scene.

Pacing also starts to become a significant problem as the game wears on. Admittedly, this is not always so much because the writer in Jane Jensen isn’t aware of its importance to effective horror as because pacing in general is just so darn difficult to control in any interactive work, especially one filled with road-blocking puzzles like this one. Even if we cut Jensen some slack on this front, however, sequences like Gabriel’s visit to Tulane University, where he’s subjected to a long non-interactive lecture that might as well be entitled “Everything Jane Jensen Learned about Voodoo but Can’t Shoehorn in Anywhere Else,” are evidence of a still fairly inexperienced writer who doesn’t have a complete handle on this essential element of storytelling and doesn’t have anyone looking over her shoulder to edit her work. She’s done her research, but hasn’t mastered the Zen-like art of letting it subtly inform her story and setting. Instead she infodumps it all over us in about the most unimaginative way you can conceive: in the form of a literal classroom lecture.

Gabriel with Professor Infodump.

The game’s depiction of New Orleans itself reveals some of the same weaknesses. Yes, Jensen gets the landmarks and the basic geography right. But I have to say, speaking as someone who loves the city dearly and has spent a fair amount of time there over the years, that the setting of the game never really feels like New Orleans. What’s missing most of all, I think, is any affinity for the music that so informs daily life in the city, giving the streets a (literal) rhythm unlike anywhere else on earth. (Robert Holmes’s soundtrack is fine and evocative in its own right; it’s just not a New Orleans soundtrack.) I was thus unsurprised to learn that Jensen never actually visited New Orleans before writing and publishing a game set there. Tellingly, her depiction has more to do with the idiosyncratic, Gothic New Orleans found in Anne Rice novels than it does with the city I know.

The plotting too gets more wobbly as time goes on. A linchpin moment comes right at the mid-point of the ten days, when Gabriel makes an ill-advised visit to one of the cult’s conclaves — in fact, the one he located via the afore-described rada-drums puzzle — and nearly gets himself killed. Somehow Grace, of all people, swoops in to rescue him; I still have no idea precisely what is supposed to have happened here, and neither, judging at least from the fan sites I’ve consulted, does anyone else. I suspect that something got cut here out of budget concerns, so perhaps it’s unfair to place this massive non sequitur at the heart of the game squarely on Jensen’s shoulders.

But other problems with the plotting aren’t as easy to find excuses for. There is, for example, the way that Gabriel can fly from New Orleans to Munich and still have hours of daylight at his disposal when he arrives on the same day. (I could dismiss this as a mere hole in Jensen’s research, the product of an American designer unfamiliar with international travel, if she hadn’t spent almost a year living in Germany prior to coming to Sierra.) In fact, the entirety of Gabriel’s whirlwind trip from the United States to Germany to Benin and back home again feels incomplete and a little half-baked, from its cartoonish German castle, which resembles a piece of discarded art from a King’s Quest game, to its tedious maze inside an uninteresting African burial mound that likewise could have been found in any of a thousand other adventure games. Jensen would have done better to keep the action in New Orleans rather than suddenly trying to turn the game into a globetrotting adventure at the eleventh hour, destroying its narrative cohesion in the process.

Suddenly we’re in… Africa? How the hell did that happen?

As in a lot of fictions of this nature, the mysteries at the heart of Sins of the Fathers are also most enticing in the game’s earlier stages than they have become by its end. To her credit, Jensen knows exactly what truths lie behind all of the mysteries and deceptions, and she’s willing to show them to us; Sins of the Fathers does have a payoff. Nevertheless, it’s all starting to feel a little banal by the time we arrive at the big climax inside the voodoo cult’s antiseptic high-tech headquarters. It’s easier to be scared of shadowy spirits of evil from the distant past than it is of voodoo bureaucrats flashing their key cards in a complex that smacks of a Bond villain’s secret hideaway.

The tribal art on the wall lets you know this is a voodoo cult’s headquarters. Somehow I never expected elevators and florescent lighting in such a place…

Many of you — especially those of you who count yourselves big fans of Sins of the Fathers — are doubtless saying by now that I’m being much, much too hard on it. And you have a point; I am holding this game’s fiction to a higher standard than I do that of most adventure games. In a sense, though, the game’s very conception of itself makes it hard for a critic to avoid doing so. It so clearly wants to be a more subtle, more narratively and thematically rich, more “adult” adventure game that I feel forced to take it at its word and hold it to that higher standard. One could say, then, that the game becomes a victim of its own towering ambitions. Certainly all my niggling criticisms shouldn’t obscure the fact that, for all that its reach does often exceed its grasp, it’s brave of the game to stretch itself so far at all.

That said, I can’t help but continue to see Sins of the Fathers more as a noble failure than a masterpiece, and I can’t keep myself from placing much of the blame at the feet of Sierra rather than Jane Jensen per se. I played it most recently with my wife, as I do many of the games I write about here. She brings a valuable perspective because she’s much, much smarter than I am but couldn’t care less about where, when, or whom the games we play came from; they’re strictly entertainments for her. At some point in the midst of playing Sins of the Fathers, she turned to me and remarked, “This would probably have been a really good game if it had been made by that other company.”

I could tell I was going to have to dig a bit to ferret out her meaning: “What other company?”

“You know, the one that made that time-travel game we played with the really nerdy guy and that twitchy girl, and the one about the dog and the bunny. I think they would have made sure everything just… worked better. You know, fixed all of the really irritating stuff, and made sure we didn’t have to look at a walkthrough all the time.”

That “other company” was, of course, LucasArts.

One part of Sins of the Fathers in particular reminds me of the differences between the two companies. There comes a point where Gabriel has to disguise himself as a priest, using a frock stolen from St. Louis Cathedral and some hair gel from his own boudoir, in order to bilk an old woman out of her knowledge of voodoo. This is, needless to say, another example of the dissonance between the game’s serious plot and goofy puzzles, but we’ve covered that ground already. What’s more relevant right now is the game’s implementation of the sequence. Every time you visit the old woman — which will likely be several times if you aren’t playing from a walkthrough — you have to laboriously prepare Gabriel’s disguise all over again. It’s tedium that exists for no good reason; you’ve solved the puzzle once, and the game ought to know you’ve solved it, so why can’t you just get on with things? I can’t imagine a LucasArts game subjecting me to this. In fact, I know it wouldn’t: there’s a similar situation in Day of the Tentacle, where, sure enough, the game whips through the necessary steps for you every time after the first.

Father Gabriel. (Sins of the fathers indeed, eh?)

This may seem a small, perhaps even petty example, but, multiplied by a hundred or a thousand, it describes why Sierra adventures — even their better, more thoughtful efforts like this one — so often wound up more grating than fun. Sins of the Fathers isn’t a bad adventure game, but it could have been so much better if Jensen had had a team around her armed with the development methodologies and testing processes that could have eliminated its pixel hunts, cleaned up its unfair and/or ill-fitting puzzles, told her when Gabriel was starting to sound more like a sexual predator than a laid-back lady’s man, and smoothed out the rough patches in its plot. None of the criticisms I’ve made of the game should be taken as a slam against Jensen, a writer with special gifts in exactly those areas where other games tend to disappoint. She just didn’t get the support she needed to reach her full potential here.

The bitter irony of it all is that LucasArts, a company that could have made Sins of the Fathers truly great, lacked the ambition to try anything like it in lieu of the cartoon comedies which they knew worked for them; meanwhile Sierra, a company with ambition in spades, lacked the necessary commitment to detail and quality. I really don’t believe, in other words, that Sins of the Father represents some limit case for the point-and-click adventure as a storytelling medium. I think merely that it represents, like all games, a grab bag of design choices, some of them more felicitous than others.

Still, if what we ended up with is the very definition of a mixed bag, it’s nevertheless one of the most interesting and important such in the history of adventure games, a game whose influence on what came later, both inside and outside of its genre, has been undeniable. I know that when I made The King of Shreds and Patches, my own attempt at a lengthy horror adventure with a serious plot, Sins of the Fathers was my most important single ludic influence, providing a bevy of useful examples both of what to do and what not to do. (For instance, I copied its trigger-driven approach to plot chronology — but I made sure to include a journal to tell the player what issues she should be working on at any given time, thereby to keep her from wandering endlessly looking for the random whatsit that would advance the time.) I know that many other designers of much more prominent games than mine have also taken much away from Sins of the Fathers.

So, should you play Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers? Absolutely. It’s a fascinating example of storytelling ambition in games, and, both in where it works and where it fails, an instructive study in design as well. A recent remake helmed by Jane Jensen herself even fixes some of the worst design flaws, although not without considerable trade-offs: the all-star cast of the original game has been replaced with less distinctive voice acting, and the new graphics, while cleaner and sharper, don’t have quite the same moody character as the old. Plague or cholera; that does seem to be the way with adventure games much of the time, doesn’t it? With this game, one might say, even more so than most of them.

The big climax. Yes, it does look a little ridiculous — but hey, they were trying.

(Sources: the book Influential Game Designers: Jane Jensen by Anastasia Salter; Sierra’s newsletter InterAction of Spring 1992, Summer 1993, and Holiday 1993; Computer Gaming World of November 1993 and March 1994. Online sources include “The Making of… The Gabriel Knight Trilogy” from Edge Online; an interview with Jane Jensen done by the old webzine The Inventory, now archived at The Gabriel Knight Pages; “Happy Birthday, Gabriel Knight“ from USgamer; Jane Jensen’s “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. Academic pieces include “Revisiting Gabriel Knight” by Connie Veugen from The Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet Volume 7; Jane Jensen’s Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers: The Numinous Woman and the Millennium Woman” by Roberta Sabbath from The Journal of Popular Culture Volume 31 Issue 1. And, last but not least, press releases, annual reports, and other internal and external documents from the Sierra archive at the Strong Museum of Play.

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers is available for purchase both in its original version and as an enhanced modern remake.)

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