#like tbh it actually doesn't make sense

[itsaboon]

FINALLY!

SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS!

here me out, milk in a bag...

*sigh*

[qoldenskies]

i think its so funny when people take the way donnie acts at face value even though its a horrible lie because he's a horrible liar, while understanding leo is bullshitting very well despite him actually being GOOD at bullshitting. many such cases

[ind1c0lite]

(Basic context is that AU of Duel Desinties where the phantom impersonates Phoenix to get him found guilty of Clay's murder, I talk more under the cut abt it jkhlj)

-Basically meant to be a parallel to turnabout trump, cause if you can have ONE boss get found guilty of murder, why not a second one?

-OK basically: everything in DD happens normally until like- a day before clays murder, Phoenix gets yoinked by the phantom somehow (he is still alive, just being held captive), Phantom is still Fulbright, but they've decided to be silly goofy (target Phoenix and get him found guilty of murder, escape police custody and then murder phoenix and make it seem like Phoenix accidentally died while on the run, thats why they didn't kill phoenix right away unlike the real Fulbright) there is an imposter amo-

-I dont have the logistics as to how this affects solving Metis's murder, and how it effects what evidence is used n whatnot and turnabout for tomorrow as a whole, so im just going nuts HGJKHLJ

-Originally I was actually imagining this taking place during turnabout for tomorrow and I wanted that case to be apollo v klavier instead of phoenix and edgeworth and thats why klav is in here instead of Simon (I decided that Simon got badly injured and couldn't stand in court for the retrial, so klavier was asked to step in)

-The courtroom bombing still happens the same way it does normally, but Apollo decides to take up the case again instead of taking a leave, instead of like, you know, healing from the traumatic event that just happened, turnabout countdown still happens as well

-Apollo and Athena do not find out about the phantom's existence until well after this trial, so they have no idea that Phoenix could've possibly been replaced, though simon, after hearing about the trial, might be suspicious about whether or not that was the real Phoenix

-The Phantom had been not only keeping an eye on Simon for a while, but was also stalking Phoenix and Edgeworth after they both started looking into UR-1, so they were able to impersonate phoenix so well that not even his own daughter thought that anything was up (though while Trucy did find him a *little* bit off, but she figured that it might've been the bombing that caused him to act ever so slightly weird, so she didn't pay much mind to it until she heard about his confession in court and realized it might've been because he possibly, ya know, killed someone)

-it's pretty much just switching Athena being framed for murder with Phoenix, and instead of the trial ending on a cliffhanger, it continues on (probably with Klavier insisting on it) ending with soloman being found innocent and Phoenix being declared guilty

-There's a couple days inbetween the end of the cosmic turnabout and the start of turnabout for tomorrow, so Athena, Apollo and Trucy all get a little bit to process the fact that "oh god my boss/my dad killed someone" (simons execution date is pushed back a bit in this au) and they probably get to talk with Klavier and eventually a lil bit with Simon after he gets out

-Im not sure how it all winds down in turnabout for tomorrow (Phoenix escaping and being at large is basically the perfect cover for the phantom to resume being fulbright for that trial) but they do eventually realize that the phoenix who confessed wasn't the real one and now there's a search on going to find out where the real one is being held captive, hes fineeee just ready to take a week long nap and a good vacation (along with every other waa member)

-I dont have anything else to add on rn but if you want to add something or just throw in a scenario feel free to!! this idea has been bouncing around my head for like a month now and Im very happy to finally show yall it

[bearimba]

Silver doesn't need another father. He's already got one of those, technically, but the man turned out to be a weak, cowardly bastard who couldn't face his own problems let alone raise a child. The way he sees it, there's no need to set himself for more disappointment. He's got a roof over his head and food to eat, and that's far more than he could ever depend on in the last... however many years he'd been living on the streets. Lance and Clair are annoying as hell, but while he's training in the Dragon Den, he doesn't exactly have much room to complain. Not out loud, anyways.

Lance doesn't particularly want to be a dad either. He's already got too much responsibility on his plate as Champion, and this kid clearly needs so much more emotional support than he feels like he can provide. Simply convincing him to move into his guest room was enough of a struggle, and it only really worked because Lance had promised Silver he could "earn" his keep. What the hell is up with that, anyways? He's not sure what Silver's past looks like, and he's not about to go prying, but the bare minimum he can do is make sure he doesn't have to rough it out in the woods anymore. At least Clair seems to be having fun training him...

Clair is more than ready to be an aunt. The other two refuse to admit to caring for each other, but unlike them, she's not afraid of something as stupid as her emotions. The brat's slowly but surely been mellowing out during his training, and her idiot cousin has actually been taking care of himself for once in order to be a "good example." Silver has even caught on to calling Lance "old man" like she does, on account of those ugly-ass reading glasses the all-mighty Champion has to wear, and she couldn't be prouder. Best part is, she doesn't have to spend a dime except to treat the kid every so often! That's a win in her book if ever there was one.

[intuitive-revelations]

Hmmm....

Thematically i kind of liked that.

But man that plot was... not good.

[charlesemersonwinchesteriii]

YOU ARE SO WRONG YOU STUPID TWINK. GET FORESHADOWED IDIOT.

[silusvesuius]

n*loth not being able to bag anyone over the (human term) age of 25-30 at most is the only logical and real conclusion to me because it can be just explained away as him wanting to prove and control everything and anyone (Cus he's a man!) but being stuck in that demographic because his unbearable and vile personality is a force that nobody can look past once they've outgrown the possible fear and idolization period of anyone but also n*loth in particular.

[trashcanwithsprinkles]

Mmm. In the cyanide narwhal verse. How do you think stuff happens with Yanfei? Like. Ajax told Guizhong that Firehopper is gonna have a kid. I’m just curious how the little half adeptus would be received when she eventually shows up. Does Guizhong remember?

guizhong would absolutely remember. she'd be side-eyeing fire hopper in secret for like- every single important thing the guy does. gets a girlfriend? guizhong's paying attention from the sidelines. breaks up with her? guizhong worries a bit. gets another girlfriend? guizhong considers asking ajax what yanfei looks like so she can suss out who the mother will be. she doesn't. hundreds of years and many girlfriends later, guizhong is starting to grow worried. she eventually does ask ajax and he's like oh no yeah fire hopper's daugher is half-adeptus (i think ajax never told them this part) so his wife's going to be a human. and yeah it should still be a bit, don't worry about it

so guizhong is like oh ok. and when it does happen she sort of looks at ajax trying to gauge whether this is the Correct Child, and sees ajax is as happy to meet little yanfei as he is to meet all the other random people he's been planning for (the blorbos) guizhong is like ok i guess this is it. holy shit

[elizabethrobertajones]

I could be your angle... or yuor devil..,

[milowing]

"in the original myth medusa was a rape victim!" i'm literally banging my head against the wall

[dayabot]

character/ship playlists are truly a lost art it's very tragic

[blacknovelist]

(one piece wano arc spoilers)

So like @guardianlioness and I were talking about one piece and thematic stuff and generally losing our minds and we were talking especially about like

How Zoro and Sanji and Luffy are a Trio but also how Zoro and Sanji are explicitly also painted to be a duo to Luffy, right, like. They're the "Wings of the Pirate King". Together, they protect and look after the crew, but also their captain. They are, effectively, equals in what they do, "official" roles IN the crew itself aside. Zoro, with his high physical power as their physical defense and Sanji, with his high empathy and compassion as an emotional bulwark

And

Like

Okay. Here's the thing. Here's the proverbial problem. Cause right now, as it stands, Oda's introduced an unbalance to the duo. We were specifically talking about how frustrating it kind of is that the imbalance exists.

Because Oda gave Zoro conqueror's haki. He and Luffy share this— but it leaves Sanji as an odd one out. Thematically, it makes no sense to end with this like... off kilter seesaw. Why would you build these two up to BE on even standing only to take that away from them? Don't get me wrong, Zoro having conqueror's haki is a delicious character choice that I think adds fascinating complexity to Zoro and his position in the crew. He's a powerhouse, he's exerting his will over reality, and he follows his Captain the future Pirate King without question. Haki. Love it. Brilliant. But it makes no sense in the overarching thematic line between him and Sanji in regards to Luffy.

Giving Sanji conqueror's naturally wouldn't fix the issue, because frankly that defeats the entire purpose OF the char building that's been established in whole cake island. Sanji rejected the line of noble, of royalty, of power. It makes no SENSE for sanji to have it, he's not someone looking TO conquer or overcome the way Zoro is, it doesn't FIT him. And saying the stuff with his raid suit and the Germa augmentation rearing its head is the balance point is nonsensical for the same reason. Sanji already rejected all of that power and what it means and reclaimed it in a new way. Explicitly, directly, he denounced these things, directly ASSOCIATES them with a loss of humanity and his very self, wants nothing more to DO with it. Not only does it not make sense, but going back on it would be a slap in the face to all the development Sanji's gone through up until now, even laying aside the fact that it doesn't parallel Luffy at all so the unbalance isn't really addressed in that case.

But you know. Conqueror's Haki isn't the only thing Luffy has to proverbially offer. Conqueror's Haki is the overt, the direct, the loud and forceful. There's a lot we don't understand, between the stuff we do. It bears down and exerts over reality, makes demands of it. It tells you to listen.

What do we know about The Voice Of All Things? Not a lot. We know it seems to enable one to hear not the words, but the intention, the truth of other living things and even in objects, especially those with will like the Poneglyphs. We know Roger had it, Zunesha has it, the Kozuki line seemed generally to have it. The Three Eyed tribe may be capable of awakening it in themselves. We don't know if it's purely something you're born with or not. We don't know what it means, if anything, except for this: to hear the voice is to listen to the world around you and understand its heart.

When Luffy enters Gear 5, the only one who can tell at first is Zunesha. Zunesha can hear his heartbeat, and conveys this through the Voice to Momonosuke.

The anime conveys it more clearly, but it's in the manga text, too. Immediately after Zunesha realizes this... Onigashima is shaking. No one quite knows yet what's going on, other than Kaido is here and the world around them is trembling. Those on the battlefield, they've got front row seats to witnessing the transformation, what comes next.

Zoro and Sanji have finished their fights. They're conked the fuck out post battle, like usual... or they should be. But here's the thing. Right after Zunesha calls for Joyboy, from a room distant to the fighting, offset from the war waging outside...

Sanji's part in the major battles is over by this point. If they wanted to emphasize a "the crew knows their captain" moment, why not showcase the other strawhats too? The ones not on ground zero? But it doesn't show anyone else. It focuses. on. him.

Sanji, who's a deeply compassionate and kind man. Sanji, who stopped and paid attention even to the biological relatives he couldn't stand when he could've walked free without a care. Sanji, with his skills in Observation, in already listening to and feeling out others' intentions...

Zoro having conqueror's haki doesn't make sense on its own. It unbalances the duality of the Wings of the Pirate King. But give Sanji the power to hear the Voice Of All Things or something damn well close... that's a pretty good parallel to each other and their roles to Luffy, don't you think?

[cdroloisms]

Okay, here’s a question for you that my brain has randomly summoned: If Dream and Punz were experimenting with their own lives before the prison, why would it not show it in the video we get all about the Revival Book?

Because we didn't really need to know, tbh? Like, we really didn't. Most of what we know about c!Dream is always revealed at the latest possible moment: think the revive book, the staged finale, the vikk and lazar experiments, yes, and the Plan in entirety. There was reason to tell us that c!Dream and c!Punz had already tested the book after the prison break, because part of the question pre-staged finale reveal and pre-prison break was how much of c!Dream's ramblings about revival to c!Tommy were genuine, and the fact that he had tested the book before to some degree quite solidly confirms that all his whole "ooh now we know it works! now i can use you as a guinea pig to test revival mwahahaha" moment after reviving c!Tommy was for show and not genuine. On the other hand, we were still entirely in the dark on what c!Dream and c!Punz's goals were at the point of prison break, which iirc was around when that lore video came out. We really didn't need to know that they were testing the book on each other yet, especially because that reveal would only really hit the hardest in the finale where it was looped into the themes of self-destruction and self-sacrifice that followed c!clingy. Keeping that reveal until it'd actually mean something rather than just making it an earlier lore drop kept us guessing for longer and worked better for the story that was being told in those final four streams

[agirlinthegalaxy]

It's been rolling around in my brain the last few days for some reason, but I still hate the family backstory reveals for Sophie and Eliot. I've seen some of the meta for it, but quite frankly, it still makes no sense. If it had been something actually thought of and intentional in the original, I think it could have been so fascinating. I mean, Sophie's willing abandonment of Astrid to contrast with Nate's loss of Sam or Eliot's adoption in contrast with Hardison's and Parker's? Could have been excellent! But they came out of nowhere in Redemption and don't work with these characters.

Sophie was still actively using the fucking alias that she met Astrid under! She met with someone from her past on the show! Like. Quite frankly, that one is unequivocally bullshit that they made up and threw in and pretended could fit with the established canon. (And I'm sorry, but the idea of Sophie abandoning Astrid and never telling Nate about her just... So much of Nate's trauma was rooted in the loss of Sam, and I think that introducing this element after he's gone and unable to respond to it taints Sophie and Nate's relationship in a way bc I'm not exactly sure how Nate would've responded to learning about this but I think that it's something he'd have needed to know. I don't know how to fully express my thoughts on that but yeah.)

As for Eliot, I don't like the adoption aspect literally at all. The way that he would interact with his family and the memory of his family would be different, and I think that it's flat out ridiculous to think that he'd have never mentioned it to the team in the original show, especially when dealing with the kid cases. (I also dislike the biracial adoption as its own element because if Eliot was actually raised by Black parents in the... idk what 80s/90s? That just. doesn't feel congruent with how they write Eliot interacting with PoC, not necessarily in a bad way, but babe, he's written like a white southern man raised in a specific kind of culture that does not jell with that. It also makes Eliot look... really bad that he was apparently raised with the knowledge of how fucked up the military was and his parents' history and made the choices that he did.) Like the show may not have explicitly stated it but the implication of that relationship was vastly fucking different throughout the original show.

Just. These were not backstories that were congruent with their depiction and characters in the original show, and they're also just moves that I don't particularly like or find interesting directions for those characters. There's also something to be said about how it was apparently unacceptable for a woman to not have kids or someone not reconciling with their biological family when that was something that the original show handled a lot better. Out of all the directions to take Sophie and Eliot's stories, that's just not really one that I think was a good idea.

[kashilascorner]

Oh ok. I get now why a lot of people didn't vibe with the ending.

All and all: excellent manga, overall very good final act, too rushed final 2-3 chapters but weak and honestly mediocre epilogue, which makes the high of the ending kind of leave a bitter taste. I think Noda had a good steed and suddenly he had to finish and had to rush all. So the ending in the sense of the final arc was good but the ending proper (final couple chapters) + epilogue......... Not so much

[josies-not-suicidal-now]

I think I would totally identify as a demiboy and demigirl if I believed that cis people were somehow more legitimately their genders than I am mine, but I'm just far too skeptical of all gender to think that anyone is """Really""" a man or a woman, everyone is pretending actually, doing a bad job of being your gender is actually the only thing anyone ever manages, may chaos take the world <3