#or just is always there lbr

[aceattorneyrambles]

( Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice spoilers ahead! )

Trucy making the effort to ensure Apollo and Dhurke spend time together during the first part of Turnabout Revolution was a cute little goofy Trucy moment at the time but upon reflection it ends up being a little sad in context.

This is a girl whose father abandoned her for years, and that same father dies before they can meet again. Is it any wonder that Trucy sees Apollo and Dhurke’s situation and pushes for it to go better for them?

(How does it affect her, I wonder, to find out that Dhurke died before meeting Apollo again as well? What does she think of how Dhurke’s main desire upon getting a second chance was to see his left behind son one last time? Does she ever think that, if Zak got the same opportunity via spirit medium, he may have come to see her?)

[t00thpasteface]

i'm so relieved that people like my retrobat stuff bc i can tell tumblr definitely prefers two very specific batmans: Tortured Diesel DILF and Edward Cullen But Cooler. meanwhile i'm out here like

[khattikeri]

maybe a controversial opinion but while i really love jiang cheng as a character he is deeply self-centered as a person. and seeing people fight tooth and nail claiming he isn't, or is just misunderstood, or that he has genuine valid reasons to be selfish when plenty of other characters make the difficult choice to forego status and opportunities for what they believe is genuinely right to do (read: wei wuxian, wen ning, wen qing, lan wangji, jiang yanli, mianmian, etc.)

it's just odd to me. especially if they're talking about the novels.

mxtx didn't give jiang cheng the name "sandu shengshou" as a quirky coincidence. there's a REASON she named him & his sword after the 3 poisons of Buddhism (specifically ignorance, greed, and hatred). it's crucial to the story that jiang cheng is NOT selfless and that wei wuxian IS.

it's important to accept that wei wuxian is, by their society's standards, not morally gray; he represents several Buddhist ideals in direct contrast of jiang cheng and multiple people attest to wei wuxian's strong moral character, which is a lot of why jiang cheng even feels bitter about him to begin with.

it's crucial, because by the end of the novel jiang cheng realizes the extent of this and begins to let go!

the twin prides thing wasn't jiang cheng wanting them to 100% mirror the twin jades. he does care about wei wuxian, but he wanted wei wuxian to stay his right hand man, in part the way wei changze was for jiang fengmian.

and if there's one thing you can notice about wei changze in the novels, it's that literally nobody talks about him. he is only ever mentioned when his cool mysterious mountain sect wife cangse-sanren is mentioned, or (even more rarely) when they discuss him as a servant to jiang fengmian. regardless of jiang fengmian's own feelings, wei changze was considered lesser to him and didn't seem to outdo him, since nobody's out there years later still waxing poetry about wei changze's skills.

it may not be the only thing jiang cheng wants out of a twin pride dynamic, but it is a big part of it. regardless of his parents' intentions in taking wei wuxian in and treating him certain ways, this twin pride right-hand man thing is what jiang cheng has felt owed since childhood. he gave up his dogs for wei wuxian, people gossip about his sect heir position with wei wuxian there... jiang cheng wants the reciprocation of what he views as personal sacrifices.

he is ignorant to the depth of what wei wuxian must've suffered for over 6 years as a malnourished orphan child on the streets. he hates how wei wuxian's intelligence, witty charm, and cultivation abilities are naturally stronger than his own. he does care about wei wuxian a lot and want them to be together as sort of-brothers, sort of-friends, sort of-young master and sect servant...

...but if it's between that unclear (yet still caring) relationship and being able to save himself just a little bit more, jiang cheng nearly always manages to clam up in the face of danger and choose the latter, which ultimately benefits himself most. maybe it's a stretch to call that sort of thing greed, but it certainly isn't selfless.

there are of course plenty of justifications for this. it's his duty as sect heir. his home and sect was severely damaged by the wen attack and subsequent war; he had to protect himself, etc.

but doesn't that prove the point?

wei wuxian may be charming, but in terms of pure social standing, he is lower and far more susceptible to being punished or placed in harm's way by people who have more power and money. to protect wei wuxian, yunmeng jiang's long-term head disciple and semi-family member, even in the face of backlash and public scrutiny would've been the selfless thing to do. this is what wei wuxian does for the wen remnants in the burial mounds.

jiang cheng does not choose this. it's not even an unreasonable choice for him to make! nobody else in the great clans is doing such a thing, stepping out of line to take on a burden that could weaken them in the long-run. wei wuxian himself doesn't hate jiang cheng for it; he lets go of these things and focuses on what good he can do in the present.

jiang cheng thinks further into the future - what would happen to him if he continued vouching for wei wuxian and taking his side? what about jiang cheng's face, his sect's face? would wei wuxian even care to reciprocate somehow? everyone expects him to cut off wei wuxian for being dangerous, for threatening his position, for...

do you see what i mean? to call jiang cheng selfless for falling in line with exactly what people expected him to do after the war is not only wrong, it's foolish.

"but they faked their falling-out!" okay. why fake it to begin with, except to protect jiang cheng and the jiang sect's own face? is that selfless? who does it ultimately serve to protect? wei wuxian canonically internalizes the idea that he stains all that he touches, including lan wangji, and agrees to the fake fight because he doesn't want to cause the jiang sect harm. regardless, it eventually slides into a true falling-out, and in the end jiang cheng is more or less unscathed reputation-wise while wei wuxian falls.

that isn't selfless. it's many things! it's respecting his clan and his ancestors, it's making a good plan for the future of his sect and cultivation... but it isn't a truly selfless in the interest of what's right rather than in the interest of duty and what's good for him and his family lineage.

that brings me to my next point: even though wei wuxian hid the truth of the golden core transfer, jiang cheng spent nearly 20 years believing that the golden core "renewal" he was given was a birthright gift of wei wuxian's from baoshan-sanren, an immortal sect teacher of wei wuxian's mother's and a martial elder to wei wuxian.

of course we all know that's a big fat lie, but jiang cheng believed that wei wuxian gave up a critical emergency use gift to him for decades! he was lied to, yes, but jiang cheng immediately agreed without even needing to be convinced. the light in his dead eyes came back with hope the moment wei wuxian even said baoshan-sanren's name. he accepted wei wuxian's offer to give that up to him and take it via identity theft without missing a beat.

with how mysterious and revered baoshan-sanren is, that's obviously not a light sacrifice to just give up to anyone, no matter how close they might be to you. pretending to be wei wuxian to take the gift could even be considered dangerous. what if she found out and got offended? could wei wuxian be hurt by that?

jiang cheng doesn't even hesitate. wei wuxian is the one who mentions that if jiang cheng doesn't pretend to be him, the immortal master could get angry and they'd both be goners. and funnily enough, the day they do go to "the mountain", jiang cheng is the one worried and suspiciously wondering if wei wuxian was lying to him or had misremembered.

of course they've both been traumatized like hell prior to this point. but still: it speaks to how broken he was at the moment as well as to his character overall.

i digress: jiang cheng "gets his golden core back" via what he believed was a gift that should've been wei wuxian's to use in serious emergencies. rather than use it for himself, wei wuxian risked his own safety and gave it to jiang cheng... and jiang cheng still ends up embittered and angry, believing that wei wuxian is arrogant and selfish.

if he truly views them as 100% brothers and equals with no caveats, why would he think that way? it's not like he needs to grovel before wei wuxian for doing that, or to reciprocate... but this is what i mean when i say jiang cheng feels he is owed things by wei wuxian. wei wuxian's actions hold a very different weight in jiang cheng's mind, and jiang cheng himself doesn't ever act the same way, except once.

is it wrong for him to feel like he is owed something? it depends. many asian cultures, including my own, feel that a person owes their family in ways that may not make sense to westerners. for example, it's considered normal for a child to owe their parents for giving birth to them, or to other caretakers for feeding, clothing, sheltering, educating them, etc.

however, something like verbally saying "thank you" or "i'm sorry" to family is considered crazy- why would you owe that? you're supposed to inconvenience your family; saying thank you or sorry is the sort of thing you say to a stranger or acquaintance. i get half-seriously lectured by my elders on this a lot even now, even though they know such phrases are just considered good manners in the US.

this muddies up the idea of wei wuxian being jiang cheng's family vs his family's charge or servant even more. jiang cheng wants wei wuxian to be close... but ultimately doesn't really choose to use what power he DOES have to protect wei wuxian. he considers himself still owed something that in his mind wei wuxian flagrantly never repays.

this isn't even getting into how despite spending a majority of his time with the yiling patriarch he never once noticed that wei wuxian stopped using any spiritual power-based cultivation. even lan wangji, who met them far more rarely, realized that something was wrong and that wei wuxian had taken some sort of spiritual damage, hence the "come with me to gusu".

of course manpain is fun and i'm not immune to the juicy idea of them reconciling and talking things out... but jiang cheng is deeply mired in his own desire to be "above" wei wuxian in multiple ways, and doesn't realize the extent of wei wuxian's actions, the intentions behind them, and the consequences wei wuxian knowingly faced for them.

to not recognize this about jiang cheng, especially in the novels, is really revisionist if you ask me. i reiterate that i really do like him a lot. he's flawed, angry, traumatized and has poor coping mechanisms, an overall fascinating character... but he is not selfless nor ideal, and i seriously draw the line at people saying he is.

wen ning shoves this all into his face at lotus pier to disastrous results. it is the reason why jiang cheng's a total mess at guanyin temple, and the reason jiang cheng ultimately doesn't tell wei wuxian about the fact that he ran towards the wens on purpose.

for that one last act of his to have really been selfless, he needs to not seek anything in return. he did it purely because it was right to do to protect someone else. if that means wei wuxian never finds out about it, so be it.

that moment that ended up causing jiang cheng irreversible harm is not a debt that wei wuxian owes him. it hurts, but no matter how bitter it is, that realization is so important to him changing in the future.

[klanced]

the virgin lance who has never run afoul of the law & is now spiraling into existential dread

the chad keith who does not respect the police, knows his rights, and is about to give the dead-father-missing-brother-absent-mother-sympathetic-orphan performance of a lifetime

[deadmegumi]

As always. they really used to say it's an honor to meet the great copy ninja kakashi. and then whoop his ass.

[mobydyke]

I know lots of people after a breakup cut their hair or get an impulse tattoo, but I think it's extremely on brand of me to be looking up getting scuba certified rn

[autistic-beshelar]

ah yes dungeon meshi, the manga where an autistic man gets repeatedly bullied by people he thinks are his friends and not a single person supports him

[loanonlife]

anyone else deeply underwhelmed by the switch 2 announcement? lol

[tvckerwash]

I've seen a couple of posts here and there about the "sigma tortures tucker for 10 years in 10 seconds" scene, and I've gotta say I didn't realize so many people interpreted it literally. not to say that e!sigma couldn't have tortured tucker for 10 years, but I personally don't think that was the intended interpretation (unless it was specifically stated that it was meant to be taken literally but I'm operating under the assumption that it isn't).

restoration built upon epsilon's previously—and continuously—established unreliability as a source of information post caboose's churchification, and how he pushes his personal biases onto the people around him. we saw it with e!tex, we saw it in the memory unit, we saw it on chorus with carolina, and we saw it all throughout s15-19, assuming one chooses to see everything post chorus as a series of simulations.

epsilon doesn't know anything about sigma or the meta beyond secondhand information, so as far as he's concerned they were an ex freelancer turned power-hungry killing machine by an evil ai that wanted to reform the alpha and be one again, and that he psychologically manipulated maine to do so (which isn't entirely wrong, sigma is shown to be a manipulative jerk several times in s10, but I personally think the situation between maine and sigma is far more grey than that, as most things involving pfl are—in s9 maine was just as willing to kill a teammate as he was to put his life on the line to protect one).

with that in mind, I think it's pretty clear that e!sigma didn't literally torment tucker for 10 years in 10 seconds or whatever, in universe he only messed with tucker for 10 seconds, but he tricked him into believing that 10 years had past because epsilon thought to himself, "yeah that's pretty fucked up, totally in character for the version of sigma I've created." out of universe however, that was just the writers acknowledging the pain of the audience, as we were left hanging for 10 years on potential meta tucker angst and all we got was a 10 second scene for it lmao.

[batsplat]

@matchvedev I'll find actual presser clips at some point, but here's jorge bringing up race bans at le mans 2013 (race after jerez)

and more mention of it after aragon 2013 (where marc caused dani to crash)

and in the context of assen 2015 (obviously not one of the instances where jorge brought it up, but still narratively kinda fun so I'm including it)

and for old time's sake, jorge did bring it up again after argentina 2018

[starbuckaroo]

I think I would be happier w bucktommy all these episodes down the line if Tommy still interacted with or asked after Eddie. I know there’s a lot the show doesn’t put onscreen so there’s no reason why it couldn’t have plausibly happened or couldn’t still happen (and I hope it does), but Tommy was Eddie’s friend first! They hung out a lot!

And yet, since he got together with Buck, we haven’t gotten to see them interact.

Granted, there hasn’t been a lot of screen time for Tommy and that’s fine, it’s a short season w very little room to breathe. This isn’t some sort of angry anti bucktommy tirade. But it does make me just a tad uncomfortable the way things are at this moment. Bc it’s not a stretch to theorize that maybe Tommy was hoping things Eddie might go somewhere and when they didn’t, he tried with Buck. I don’t think that’s supported by the text, but it’s also not negated, either. Idk. It’s not a huge deal at the moment, just a little snag?

Listen I am a buck fan but I am an eddie fan!!!!!!! And I am so so sad for eddie this season it’s been rly fucking rough on him! Not like buck needs to change anything (except not be a jealous freak and lash out physically if he can’t use his words), like I said I’m here for bucktommy I think they’re great. But like. Where’s the awkward “hey how do we hang out now that you two make out sometimes” or whatever?? We deserve to see that tbh! It’s a more common issue in queer circles, that ppl have to slip in and out of romantic/platonic interactions when people partner up or break up. It’s also the first time either of them have dated anyone within the LAFD and so it’s the first time this could ever have even come up!

Idk man. Just I keep thinking about how happy eddie seemed when he was hanging out w Tommy and maybe it’s just bc that ep was meant to be from Buck’s pov but i don’t know what’s worse, thinking it WAS real and now he doesn’t get to have that friendship anymore or that it WASNT real and he was never actually having that good of a time.

MY REAL POINT is that anyone who WAS or IS a buddie shipper or anyone who likes Eddie at all has to acknowledge how important buck and eddie are to each other, right? Which means that in any relationship that either of them ever have, if they want it to be serious and have long term potential, they actually need to integrate their partner with their best friend.

Maybe this is too weird for some ppl? It’s always seemed like a given, like if there’s someone new and important in my life, I def want my best friend to meet them and like them bc I want us all to be able to spend time together! I don’t want to feel split between them all the time! And esp with Tommy already having connections with most of the 118/main cast, and particularly Eddie, it would make sense for us to see them interacting!

Idk. I’m probably wanting too much from my network tv show lol I just. I will literally never take bucktommy seriously as a pairing if they don’t manage to address the Eddie of it all. And not in a “address the fact that buck loves him” contrived jealousy nonsense. I mean address the fact that their lives are bound together! And it predates anyone that either of them will ever date! Plus imagine the character growth it would take for Buck to send Tommy to Thursday basketball with like a plate of cookies and orange slices or something but not show up himself. Be like “have fun with the boys, slap Eddie’s ass for me” or whatever 😂 I would believe Buck was finally on his way to being ready for a long term adult relationship if they managed that, is all I’m saying

[grayintogreen]

Okay I’m having sn absolutely exhausting day at work, SO!!

[funforahermit]

i am once again terrified that one day a celebrity i really care about will turn out to have done horrible things

[lenievi]

funny thing about early season 1 is that you can sometimes read more emotions on Spock’s face than on McCoy’s lol

[malkaleh]

I keep trying to write an update and then being embarrassed about it and feeling like I’m trauma dumping on people by updating and I just..I know it’s on me to manage my crap, I know. I am trying (not very well but I’m trying) and it’s just…I don’t know. I don’t even know.

[sigurdjarlson]

Remember when they had demon Medivh stand like practically pressed up against Khadgar’s back saying shit like “embrace your desires” that sure was something.