#she was quite literally created to die in a backstory anD YET—

[rileys-battlecats]

girl help im becoming unreasonably attached to a minor character in my own story

[haladriel]

so now we know his backstory I’m going to make a case for why Saurbrand didn’t think twice about abandoning Diarmid to his death for his own gain, but for some reason, only days or weeks later, dove to save Galadriel.

We are shown in season two that Sauron is mercenary and super calculating; he sizes everyone up for the best way to use them to further his own aims. And the way he’s now treating everyone else shows how different he was with Galadriel.

Diarmid’s fate shows Sauron’s ‘default’ — despite all Diarmid’s done for him in giving him a new perspective and offering him a new direction, when the situation veers a hard left, he wastes no time adapting and thinks nothing of acting strategically and taking the pouch. After all, Diarmid’s conveniently dying, and unlikely to survive a shipwreck anyway, what else is there to gain in service of his goals and nature that’s worth as much as a royal persona to adopt?

When you set this against how he treats Galadriel (i.e. didn’t leave her to die, which he very easily could’ve done), you’ve got to ask: what’s going on in there?

Maybe he thought he could use her: she’s a lot more skilled and important than Diarmid. She’s certainly proven herself capable in the sea-wyrm attack, where he no doubt values skill and competence in service of creating perfection and order, and keeping someone as powerful as her close is a wise political move. He very likely thought he could manipulate her, although he didn’t know how, or to what ends, quite yet.

Maybe he was simply interested in her. A member of the Golden House of Finarfin, out on the open sea? Since when? He might’ve guessed at the reason why; knowing that she was in the right direction for Valinor. An elf who has turned down the opportunity to go home? Unheard of.

Maybe, it’s the beginning of seeing himself reflected in her, when she sympathises with him about all he’s lost. He found himself being honest with her, in a way that he later does with no other; their first exchange on the raft was the beginning of that pattern. Maybe he is attracted to her, in this way.

Maybe it’s because why the hell not. At this point in the (now filled in) backstory, he is down and out and taking chances. Because his plan is going so well. And maybe the sea (Valar) will reconsider obliterating them if he shows some sign of repentance, holds a hand up. Maybe he knows the storm is for him, and feels some kind of ire and vitriol — ‘up yours’ — towards the Valar (‘that’s unnecessary, you heavy-handed bastards’) that they’re taking her out, as a part of that.

Maybe, it’s all of the above. And also, maybe, it’s because he’s already seeing some of that light he’s so fascinated by. In her kindness, her offering of sympathy to a stranger. And also, at this time, finds that he resonates with things she’s saying as much as vice versa. ‘You’re running. Whether towards or from something, I haven’t yet decided.’ After all, at this point, he’s temporarily diverted from his own crusade to get revenge on Adar; possibly running to, or away, from the Valar.

‘The way I see it, it wasn’t elves that chased me from my homeland. It was orcs.’ Turns out, it literally was. He’s really pissed off with his old family at this point and potentially (even just a little bit) wondering if there’s a better way. When he tells her the enemy is in the Southlands… they are. His enemy.

When you were betrayed by your closest, and everything’s gone to shit, and you meet someone who feels so similar to you, but who radiates light instead… how could you not be fascinated?

When everything you irrevocably are can be used in a different way, for a different purpose?

So he dives to save her.

(contributors to this thought train @multifandumbmeg @scifitheywrote)

[piracytheorist]

Character ask : Anya Chichi

Anya Forger

First impression: Oh she looks cute. Hope she doesn't turn into a plot device. Impression now: My adorable chaotic gremlin who has more agency and control in the story than her spy and assassin parents <3 Favorite moment: I think I'll choose the moment where she rescues the drowning boy in episode 11. She's kind and selfless enough to risk her life to save him, and she didn't even hesitate to jump into the pool like how brave is that kid! And since she didn't want to expose her secret she took it all upon her to act and save him herself. Idea for a story: I think it'll be wasted potential if we never learn about the scientists who created her and their motives, so I think a story of her being taken by them will be interesting, albeit sad, until at least her parents come and kick ass to save her. Unpopular opinion: I don't ship Damιanya and that seems to be quite the unpopular opinion in this fandom... Even if they're aged up and Damian actually treats her decently, I still don't think they'd make an interesting couple. Favorite relationship: Anya with Papa and Mama. Don't make me choose! Favorite headcanon: I genuinely wonder if Endo is ever gonna explain why she has those little hats on her head, and I think it would be hilarious for them to be just hair clips that she wears literally 24/7. So my headcanon for that is that Anya is just stylish!

Loid Forger

First impression: LOL that's a way to break up with your girlfriend. Is he just gonna be one of those boring protagonists whose only character traits is past trauma and being OP? Impression now: If anyone hurts him I will commit several felonies. But please hurt him I want the whump :3 Favorite moment: Bench scene after Yor kicks the living daylights out of him. The vulnerable moment of him remembering his mother and opening up to Yor about that because we know it's real and not for the mission is unparalleled. Chef's kiss. Idea for a story: Okay okay hear me out. We know that he's a very disciplined spy so if he's ever caught he has to be caught in the act. Mere evidence won't do because he'll deny any involvement to hell and back and be pretty convincing about it. So he has to be caught red-handed. And an idea for that is, he's disguised himself as Yuri because for Reasons he has to infiltrate the SSS offices, but then for some reason the actual Yuri appears there too. "Yuri" and Yuri fight, and an incompetent officer finds them, aiming his gun at them. Twilight is silent, but Yuri tries to convince the guy that's he's the real Yuri and he should shoot the fake one. The guy says that "Only a spy would act like that" and shoots. While that happens, within a split second Twilight thinks "I have to let him die. I have to get out of here. I have to let him die." But he just cannot do that because he knows how much it would devastate Yor to lose her brother... so he pushes him out of the way and takes the bullet instead. Maybe not anywhere too dangerous, like his arm or something. But it's enough to slow him down as he tries to escape, and he's finally caught while still wearing a mask with Yuri's face. You can imagine Yuri's shock and horror when he realizes it's "Loi-Loi", who is a spy and tried to infiltrate the offices and also saved his fucking life. Because as many lies as he's said, Yuri has absolute proof that this man really does love his sister. I want this to happen so much you have no idea. Unpopular opinion: I've yet to read the manga and anything that explores his backstory but I think it's easy to think he'd abandon his spy work after he realizes he loves his family and wants to spend his life with them. Which yeah it's what we want for him but I think his desire for peace tops even his love for his family. He'd rather break his own heart along with theirs and leave if it means he can keep working as a spy and protect the fragile peace. Which is why I feel that the story cannot end without Ostania's government falling, and the new, more democratic government either signing a secure peace treaty with Westalis or uniting under one nation. Favorite relationship: Loid and Anya. Look I love twiyor as much as the next shipper but the father/daughter feelz was one of the things that hooked me into the show so it's the one I want more of. Favorite headcanon: I once read a post talking about how people from Westalis may have a different accent than people from Ostania, and now I cannot get that idea out of my mind. I think it would be interesting to see Twilight suddenly drop all pretenses and start speaking with the accent he grew up using, allowing himself to connect with that old part of himself he kept hidden. I doubt they'd do that in the anime (and since I watch the Japanese version I don't think I'd notice the difference) but it's still a very interesting headcanon.

(no manga spoilers please 😁)

Send me a character!

[tleeaves]

Thank you @luciehercndale and also @faithfromanewperspective (I am pretty sure you also tagged me and I forgot to make my reply then) for tagging me 🥺 It means the world, honestly, since I don't update a lot nor write too many fics, yet I'm still remembered.

When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 💖

(All of the below are in The Last Hours fandom)

Wasting Beats In This Heart Of Mine 136,108 words. Work in progress. This fic is my most ambitious and it is a various x OC story (James Herondale, Cordelia Carstairs, and Matthew Fairchild). It's my own take on how multiple universes of the same characters work and what would happen if a time loop was created by trying to save someone who is meant to die. Basically, it's the fracturing of reality, the occasional dose of heavy existentialism and derealisation/depersonalisation, fixing of some canon complaints I had, but it all takes place during Chain of Iron. It's a re-write of an earlier and now deleted fanfic of mine called Chain of Lies. Oh, and there's romance. Everything kind of revolves around that, one way or another, even in some rather dangerous ways.

The Rain (It Rains Every Day) 7,912 words. Work in progress. This is a Beauty and the Beast AU but greatly inspired by the myth of Eros/Cupid and Psyche, as well as earlier versions of the Beauty and Beast story (the French version, as well as some others under different titles like East of the Sun, West of the Moon, which is basically Cupid and Psyche in a different font). It's got James Herondale x Cordelia Carstairs, Lucie Herondale x Grace Blackthorn, and Alastair Carstairs x Thomas Lightwood. The setting is 1900, Greece in an alternate universe where a whole bunch of the TLH cast immigrated to the country or live(d) in Bulgaria or Persia.

A Diamond On Your Pillow 1,978 words. Complete work. A crack-ship fic about Christopher Lightwood x Lara Croft because of a silly joke I had with @thevagabondexpress. I still maintain that it is the most genius of my works, even if I did not get around to writing out any of the backstory we talked about. Also, it's the strangest ship in the fandom corner right now and I am proud of that. The moment someone takes my title, I will be publishing a James Herondale x Alastair Carstairs fic and no one can stop me. Not even your mother. Heed my warning because after that it might be Peeta Mellark x Cordelia Carstairs AND I WILL DO IT.

Love, We Did Our Best 3,354 words. Work in progress. A Matthew Fairchild x pregnant OC fic. I came up with the idea after a weird dream I had about IVF, but anyway. It takes place in France (past) and Tortuga (current story), 1906. Matthew has been travelling the world and generally avoiding Shadowhunters until he gets to Tortuga and meets a Nephilim woman with her marks stripped in exile there. She is a widow expecting to give birth to her first child in somewhere over three months. It only has two chapters so far, but it's supposed to be a cute murder mystery (..."cute" as in there's romance, but also the murder mystery itself is not actually cute, it gets quite dark).

Pride and Prejudice 2,460 words. Work in progress. It is literally just a Thomastair Pride and Prejudice AU. It has one chapter. I intend to continue it one day, but I have to refer to the book often so it's on the backburner because I am too lazy to refer to the book to write and this AU requires it. I'll get around to it eventually. Probably.

I am tagging @griddle-cakes, @sourlemons262, @zoyalannister, and @all-this-panic-still-no-disco (mostly because I know you're also fanfic writers, 3/4 of which have written also for TLH. You absolutely don't have to do this though if you don't want to.)

[neo-neos]

My BL journey so far

Okay kids gather round, get comfortable. This is a long one.

Disclaimer/background info: I started watching BL about a month ago-ish. I don't remember the exact date but I believe I started last month or maybe the end of the month before. So I am still a bit of a noob and trying to catch up with watching things. I am also a very chaotic person which you will probably find out by the way this is structured/written. Lastly, even though I do study/teach English for a living, it is not my first language.

Okay with that out of the way, let's dive in.

Backstory/introduction

Like any good story I feel like a bit of backstory/intro might be a good idea. Hi, on the internet I mostly go by the nickname Peach, however I created this blog when I got into BL and have adopted yet another fruit as a new nickname for this side of my personality/identity which is Lychee. I don't really mind which one you use. I'm 24 years old and I am Dutch (the Netherlands). As mentioned in the disclaimer I teach English but I am also still a student, I plan on studying more after this because I love learning new things and especially about languages and cultures. I am part of the LGBTQ+ community myself and mostly identify as Bisexual or Pansexual. I use she/her pronouns. When I was about... 13-14 ish I rolled into the K-pop fandom. I used to listen to bands like SHINee, Super Junior, EXO, BAP, Infinite, Girls Generation, 2ne1, Block B... I was a real fangirl if you ask me HAHA. In this time I also watched a Kdrama or two here and there. Favorites being: Heartstrings and Shut up flower boy band. (I was never too into Kdrama back then). I also used Tumblr back then, I have a literal 12 year old tumblr account with almost 50K posts that I used during my K-pop times. I stopped using tumblr quite a while ago too but that blog is still there. I would reblog gifs and pics and what not about my biases and ships. But as interests do sometimes, it faded into the background and I fully stopped keeping up and listening to K-pop. It has literally been 10 years now.

But then...

One random afternoon I was bored at home and wanted to watch something new. I randomly realized Kdramas existed and so my journey to find one began. I stumbled upon Semantic Error and almost by accident decided to read the little description and the tags that were with it. My eyebrows furrowed for a minute before I could feel my eyes widen: "WAIT THE TWO BOYS... IT'S... GAY???" I could almost not believe what I saw. Obviously back in my K-pop times every band had ships and pairings you fangirled over, Baekyeol or ChanBaek, 2Min, JongKey... You know what I mean...You fangirled over every random moment they were together but that was as far as that went. So you could maybe imagine my excitement when I realized that Korea has come far enough to actually make BL shows now. So without further thoughts I watched Semantic Error. And because it was the first BL I saw I fell in love with it, the story was good, the acting was good, the fluff was to die for. An all round great experience to start off with.

Little did I know...

After this experience I was obviously hungry for more. So, I turned to the internet to tell me where they had been hiding this secret stash of everything I ever wanted in Kdrama... And boy was I surprised with the results. This was the moment I found out that not only Korea but also Japan, Thailand, Taiwan and China made BL shows... And not just 1 or 2... The choices were endless. My journey continued with (either... I kinda forgor...) Don't say no and Love by Chance. This was my first experience with NC scenes too. I had no idea that Thailand already took the step to also go into a little more 18+ when it comes to BL and to be fair... I was kind of excited about it. Now that I have seen more BLs I guess you could argue that neither Don't say no and Love by Chance are the best BLs ever made but at the time I was completely hooked on them.

And so began...

An insane marathon sprint. By this time I wanted more more more and that's what I consumed. I watched some more Kbl, some Japanese BL and some more Thai BL's as well. Until I hit KinnPorsche and that's when I realized how hooked I actually was on this new comfort genre I had just discovered. KinnPorsche allowed me to put the shows I had watched for far into perspective. Most BLs have the university students falling in love drama vibe... KinnPorsche was something completely different and boy did I fall in love, and hard too. This show quite honestly changed a lot of things for me. I went from 'I'm just casually watching these shows' to 'Oh I might be a little obsessed now' and after finishing KP I realized I wanted even more and I could no longer deny that I was becoming a part of the BL fandom.

So where we are now...

In the past month I have spent every free second of my day watching shows. Binging one after the other. I was lucky to have a week off during this time too and I have managed to COMPLETE 32 BLs between then and now. 5 currently watching shows I try and keep up with and a TO WATCH list of 40+ shows. (aka: obsessed much?)

In the meantime I have made a BL twitter and a BL tumblr (this one) to find out more about the BLs I watched or am watching currently, but also to keep up with new ones coming out. I have realized that because of how badly I want to keep up with things I SUCK at remembering names. If the show did not leave a big impression on me I can also easily forget the whole storyline of some. This in addition to people talking about ship names but also IRL ship names using actors real names makes it quite hard to keep up sometimes.

The community...

I also made these accounts in the hopes to interact with the community. This part has been quite a challenge for me. I have never been the most extraverted person (both irl and online) but I am one of those people that is almost desperate to make friends (that sounds a bit sad but hear me out.) I love talking to people (< but you said you're introvert.. I know again, hear me out) but I have absolutely no idea how to behave in order to make friends. I am often too shy to interact with people so I just kind of pull myself back and hope someone reaches out first. As soon as they do there's a good chance I will latch onto them without mercy. I have realized that I am afraid I do not fit in sometimes within this community (mostly on twitter to be honest) I see a lot of very knowledgeable people when it comes to BL shows and I am too afraid to interact. Here on tumblr and twitter I also (after literally 10 years) realize how talented people are when it comes to making gifs, edits and translations. Something I did not really think much about when I was using Tumblr 10 years ago. I have so much admiration for what people make but at the same time I feel like being a cheerleader from the sidelines by reblogging/retweeting I cannot match up to them too. Now I am obviously very new to BL and the community and I have actually met some lovely people already. I guess I just want too much too fast haha!

BL as a whole... (Disclaimer: The things I talk about are not just directed at BL alone, the issues I list are VERY MUCH also alive in Hetero shows and I would like to see change there too. But to keep on the topic of BL I list them here with my reasoning)

Realizing how far these countries have come when it comes to even making shows about LGBTQ+ is an awesome thing to see. Like I said before I come from the time where all I could really do is ship two band members together and fangirl over them sitting next to each other basically. I am part of the LGBTQ+ community myself and I live in a country is supposed to be very accepting so it is nice to see the steps different cultures are taking as well. However I do feel we are not there yet in the way they portray things. Consent (this is obviously not only a BL problem) has been a bit of an issue for me in some shows. Power dynamics - My main issue show for this one was Cutie Pie (not very sure how to elaborate further) NC scenes - Still being quite unrealistic sometimes, you really cannot tell me that bottoming is something you do without preparation of any sort. Only gay for xxx -> Straight but gay for this one man is not exactly how sexuality works. I feel like it might kind of give off the wrong idea as well. I do see that some of these trends are turning to the right direction (Between Us being a good example for consent for example)

Now I obviously know that these are fictional stories so please don't come for my throat over this. I am just listing a few things I have noticed in my journey.

The shows...

Now I would like to use this last little section here to mention and give my thoughts (positive and negative) about some shows I have seen. Let's start with the good shall we.

KinnPorsche -> I have mentioned this show before but I would like to do it again. I fell in love with this show, the actors are amazing, the storyline is great, the chemistry between the couples, the diversity in the storyline, the humor, the serious moments... It has so much and the casting they did for this show is a legit 10/10 Apo is such an amazing actor, Mile is his perfect match for the role and don't even get me started on the rest of the cast I would probably pull up an entire powerpoint presentation.

Life-Love on the line -> Is a Japanese BL that I related to quite a lot. The entire story of how two boys fall in love and grow up together, one becoming more serious while the other stays quite 'childlike' hit me right in the feels (I don't want to spoil things) It was such a beautiful story to be fair.

Semantic Error -> My first BL and what a great start to have to be honest. Need I say more?

Bad Buddy -> I loved this one because of the storyline and the awesome chemistry between the characters. It showed an amazing story of how sometimes you need to put your prejudice thoughts aside to find something beautiful.

Blueming -> The way this story unfolds made me fall even deeper in love with Kbls to be honest. The way this was filmed was just so beautiful.

Roommates of Poongduck -> I was a little hesitant in the beginning of this one. The storyline description did not grab my attention and after seeing how KBL is often focused more on the story than on the passionate kisses for instance it took me a moment to get into it. But we have all seen the kissing scene (that they robbed us of to be fair) and the chemistry between the characters had me sobbing while having the biggest grin on my face.

I told sunset about you -> When I got a little deeper into my research the name of this BL kept popping up everywhere and it obviously got me curious. Boy oh boy this was such a beautiful story I cannot even begin to explain. The exploration of sexuality, gender, love and friendship in this one... Ugh ugh ugh.

Not me -> A masterpiece. The themes, the storyline. They touch upon heavy topics while also maintaining an entertaining series. It's so good.

Love in the air -> Okay so, MOST of the shows above have a lot of deeper messages or storylines and love in the air might feel out of place. WRONG. Sky's storyline shows quite a bit of deeper meaning and I think it was done really well. The other part of why I like this show is because of the actors. They really did such an amazing job with this one and I cannot wait to see more of them.

ChocoMilkShake -> (up until last ep) this was my comfort show. I kind of ignored the dark side of them leaving and just focused on all the cute stuff but I just love it. They better give me a happy ending though!

Between Us -> I have seen UWMA and I must say that although the story was very very beautiful and touching and heavy... I did not vibe with the insane drama as much as I would have hoped. I did however enjoy the WinTeam moments quite a bit. And then BOOM Between Us happened and I am having a blast with this one. Consent being a big plus. The storyline is good, there has not been (knock on wood) unnecessary drama (I was afraid this would happen with the overhearing half a conversation thing they were giving us but I am SO happy to see it was done in a mature way). I love it.

And now for some shows I would like to give a tiny piece of my mind. DISCLAIMER: These are opinions you can ignore, I am not shitting on actors whatsoever, this is mostly targeted towards writing/storyline. THE ACTORS DID NOTHING WRONG!! I am okay with people asking questions about it though (: I also do not JUST shit on the shows I talk about here, I point out some things and also say what I DID like about it

Lovely writer -> This show holds a scene that I find THE MOST frustrating one I have seen so far. "Let me explain" -Silence- "I can explain" -Silence- "Wait don't leave" -Silence-.... If you have seen the show you probably know what I'm referring to. This is what I mean with unnecessary drama. Characters being angry at each other for longer than needed or for a reason that does not make sense. The rest of the show was okay. I don't hate the show but it frustrated me more than that I enjoyed it.

Big Dragon -> The first episode had me screaming. The NC scene, the open kink representation on this one made me so excited. It felt like the next step towards representation for kinks within the genre... And then that slowly died off. The scene where Yai is with the girl that (I suppose) normally helps him with his kink and then the bathroom scene where Mangkorn orders Yai around were 10/10 too but then it was gone and we were back to quite the normal BL plotline again which I found very sad. In the later episodes I also missed the chemistry between Yai and Mangkorn. I fucking LOVE MosBank together like... They are legit amazing actors and I would love to see them again in something different. I am just a little disappointed in the storyline progression.

Cutie pie -> The power dynamic in this show was not really my style. The controlling BF type deal was a bit hard to watch at times. and I KNOW that this entire show is about breaking free of that but the fact that there it is needed in the first place and the lying and secrets.. it was all a bit much for me. However the casting was really good. The chemistry between the characters/actors is awesome and everyone played their role really well!

To my star -> NOW BEFORE YOU BEHEAD ME, HEAR ME OUT. I love this show. I actually love this show. It is really good. But there are some small things that made me frustrated sometimes. Talking about feelings is hard and I do get that 110% but it sometimes felt quite frustrating and left me with a little bit of a bad feeling. I really hope that this show teaches people that you can only really move forward by talking about your feelings instead of running away from them.

Together with me -> The controlling, dramatic, witch female role. Now again, hear me out. The show is great! The chemistry is there, the acting is 10/10 the casting is 10/10 but it has an element I would like to discuss that I have seen in multiple BLs as well. Now I get that the girl is mad, right. Her BF literally cheats on her (shame on u) but the entire master plan the girls come up with like... damn girls... That's all I really have to say about it. Not all women become murderous, petty witches.

TharnType -> From homophobic to being almost assaulted into a gay relationship. Again casting 10/10, chemistry 10/10. But I see this storyline quite a bit too in deluded forms. Consent is a BIG issue in this show for me. Then there is the "I am only okay with this gay guy" idea too that just kinda made me pull some faces at my screen at times.

If you have made it this far... I'm so sorry?

As for now, I think I have written enough about my BL journey so far, if you DID actually read this far and have any questions about it, feel free to ask. I am willing to discuss anything and everything as long as we respect each others views (:

This post is also an invitation to whoever wants to connect. I really do love making friends and my DMs (here and on twitter or if you want to connect on a different platform let me know) are always open. You can literally go in there without context and go: GIIIIRL LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT... and I will reply as if we've been besties for years I really do not mind skipping the awkward first stages of interaction.

My DMs (+replies) are also open for:

Show recs (dm me your fav show and a little description on why it's your fav show and why I should love it too!)

Questions regarding this post or me personally

FanFic recs (If you have written something pls show it to me I love to read!

Seeing my watched list, currently watching list or to watch list for the curious cats (: (��◔◡◔)っ ♥ Thank you so much for reading and for now I cannot wait to see what the BL community has in store for me ♥

[catboyebooks]

it wouldn’t be fair not to also do a post about nanami, and i actually do have a lot to say about her. i’m going to have a lot more to say about her once we get to dr3, though, and for now i want to leave the dr3 stuff out of it. earlier i think i said i was unsure whether the dr3 reveal that there was a real living shsl gamer chiaki nanami who went to school with the rest of this group was a retcon or not, but i’ve looked it up since, and it is a retcon. (it’s a retcon i completely approve of and will defend, for the record, and i think i might actually have a bit more to say about this once we get into chapter 6, but that’s getting ahead of myself.) so this isn’t going to be about nanami (virtual) vs nanami (actual), we won’t be talking about nanami (actual) at all. Yet. It will happen

anyway. (under cut again, this is like 1500+ words)

there’s something a little bit off about the way nanami is written. it can be hard to put a finger on, i think, because there are plenty of other characters being much more overtly weird at virtually any given moment — nanami actually tends to come off like the only sane woman a lot of the time. she’s the moral compass of the group, the voice of reason, the mediator, etc. on top of that, she’s a cute gamer girl who gets adorably excited over nerd shit, is kind to everybody but particularly close with the protagonist, dozes off a lot which i’m sure we all find relatable, sometimes does wacky things like eat glue off a door… my point is, nanami’s likable, she’s easy to trust, and she tends to come across relatively normal compared to the rest of the cast. there aren’t really any glaring red flags with her. and yet something is clearly Not Quite Right. i almost don’t know how to describe this except that to say that nanami feels curiously two-dimensional compared to the rest of the cast, like there just isn’t much to her. 

it makes sense in light of the reveal, of course, but before you know what’s going on it does create a strange impression. on the one hand, when it comes to the investigations and trials, nanami’s a big help and comes across as intelligent and levelheaded. on the other hand, in any situation less high-stakes than a murder trial, nanami spends most of her time dozing off and demonstrates a profound lack of knowledge about anything not directly pertaining to video games. and sure, it doesn’t seem weird that the shsl gamer acts neurodivergent about video games or that she’d be sheltered and awkward about relationships, but this goes beyond that — nanami doesn’t know milk comes from cows. she falls asleep standing up on a regular basis. whenever she talks about her life prior to the killing game it’s in the vaguest possible terms and it doesn’t even come across like she’s being evasive, it’s as if she literally has no backstory beyond “my dad was a programmer.” 

ages ago i remember reading some interview with kodaka where he said something to the effect of that when he wrote danganronpa, he wanted to avoid the common thing you see in detective fiction where certain roles in the story are filled by stock character archetypes — the tragic victim, the deranged murderer, the stoic detective, etc. — because if the characters are flat, their purpose in the story is obvious and the mystery is spoiled. he wanted the entire cast to feel well-rounded no matter what role they had to play in the story. overall i think danganronpa does well at this, even the more minor characters / those who die early on feel like they have some depth to them, and it makes the way nanami is written even more glaring. she’s not a minor character, she’s part of the main trio and plays a critical role in this game, so it’s strange that she feels like such a flat character compared to the rest of the cast. makes sense once you figure out she’s not real, though.

at this point, much like we haven’t gotten the reveal that they’re in VR, it has yet to be revealed that nanami is an AI, but i think this is the point where it becomes obvious to the player, if it wasn’t already. there really isn’t any other explanation for why she couldn’t tell them she was the traitor; she makes it clear she was unable to, and could only help hinata figure it out via implying it. in fact, looking back over how she’s behaved during investigations/trials throughout this game, nanami never directly solves the mystery herself — she raises relevant questions, drops hints, and urges the group to think it over more when they’re getting off track, but she never directly states what she thinks might have happened or who she thinks might have done it. i think it’s safe to assume that this is because her programming literally did not allow her to take a more active role in solving the mysteries; she’s not really a participant in the killing game, she’s not even a Real Person(™), just a moderator AI.

i didn’t get to complete all nanami’s FTEs before she died, unfortunately, and i’m going to complete everybody’s FTEs after i beat the game so i won’t get into it too much right now, but i do want to talk about her FTEs broadly because i think it’s important to my point here. if you do all nanami’s FTEs (and we did do most of them, so i think you get the general vibe) they play out like a dating sim route that meanders awkwardly before ultimately dead-ending. in fact, as revealed in her final FTE, nanami is bad at dating sims. i think this has to be a joke about the nature of her role in this game; nanami is essentially a dating sim route that can’t be completed. every other character in this game lives, and none of the time spent getting to know them was “wasted,” but this nanami never existed in the first place and hinata’s attempts at becoming closer with her were doomed from the outset. 

HOWEVER. and this is a big However hence my use of all caps. i think it’s overly reductive to say that this nanami is just a nonsapient computer program, and in fact that’s the opposite of what the game is implying. the question of whether an AI/robot can be considered a person / a friend comes up repeatedly in danganronpa (regarding alter ego in dr1, and regarding kiibo in ndrv3), and it’s never definitively answered but overall leans towards “yes.” the characters in dr1 view alter ego as their friend, which is used against them when junko “executes” alter ego by destroying the laptop, but alter ego still managed to save naegi in chapter 5 and did so acting of their own volition. we’ll get to kiibo later but he manages to act out against his programming in a way that suggests he’s his own person, even though he’s designed to act based on audience input twitch plays pokemon style. in nanami’s case, she figured out how to indirectly confess to being the traitor, thus defying her programming for the sake of saving everyone else. there’s actually another moment where she seems to be acting against her programming, too — it’s during her final FTE, and, again, i won’t get into it too much now since it’ll be the subject of another post, but the gist is that nanami attempts to have an actual date with hinata despite previous implications that she can’t date him thanks to her nature as an AI program. 

unless i’m extremely mistaken, we haven’t actually seen the last of nanami in this game; i’m nearly certain she shows back up in chapter 6 during the final trial. i’ll have more to say about her then, so i’ll wrap this post up. closing thoughts:

issues of identity and of past vs. present/future are a recurring theme in this game, most prominently so with the main trio. komaeda relies on his ideology regarding talent/hope to understand his place in the world, but has that ideology repeatedly challenged and learns he’s a former terrorist before anyone else here does. hinata can’t remember his (lack of a) talent and this makes him feel as though he doesn’t know who he is and can’t trust himself. nanami, by contrast, has very little identity and personality beyond her gaming talent and some references to a now-deceased programmer father… at least initially. but as the game progresses, as she becomes closer to the others (to hinata in particular) and as their situation becomes even more dire, she begins to push back against her programming in a way that suggests she might be developing a sense of personhood beyond her moderator role. unfortunately, the nature of her existence doomed her no matter what, as even if she hadn’t been executed she can’t exist outside of this VR program (something nanami herself is fully aware of).

i’ll talk about this more when i cover the rest of her FTEs but for now let me just reiterate: t4t hinanami real

[mindmeltonabun-blog]

Alchemy of Souls: Connection between the Legend of Chang'E and the Story of the Ice Stone

The legend of Chang'E (hint hint ... looks like "change" ) starts out like this. Back when the Earth was still young there were 10 suns. There was no such thing as night, it was super hot all the time. The people and their crops suffered greatly because of this extreme heat.

One day there was a skilled archer, Hou Yi, who decided he would end this extreme heat by shooting down 9 of the 10 suns. And so it was that only 1 sun remained.

The people no longer suffered anymore because now there was the cooling effects of the night, rain, and water.

For Hou Yi's heroic act, the goddess Xiwangmu, rewarded him with the elixir of immortality.

Though Hou Yi was grateful for the goddess's gift, he was conflicted because there was only enough elixir for one person. Hou Yi did not wish to be immortal if it meant his wife, Chang'e, could not remain by his side forever. He decided it was better to hide the elixir of immortality from Chang'e and remain mortal. In this way, they could be together until both of their mortal lives had ended.

As fate would have it, Chang'e found out about her husband's gift and decided to steal the elixir of immortality for herself.

She drank every drop of the elixir and became an immortal goddess of the moon. Due to her selfishness, both she and Hou Yi could never be reunited.

Connection To AOS

Now let's look at the characters in AOS. Which characters do you think is similar to Chang'e and Hou Yi? I would say would say Chang'e is Seo Gyeong and Hou Yi is Jin Seol Ran.

This is how I think events 200 years ago unfolded. Seo Gyeong had the elixir of immortality (Ice Stone) and wanted to share it with Jin Seol Ran, but she said no. Either because she did not want to live forever with him or she believed using the Ice Stone to live forever was inherently wrong. Remember that in AOS, you could essentially live forever by swapping your soul into different bodies multiple times.

Jin Seol Ran likely lived out her life and died of old age. Seo Gyeong however did not die. No my fellow readers, I'm pretty sure he's currently alive right now. Identities can be easily created when you have the ability to soul shift. You can change your face/body, create a new name, and backstory with a snap of a finger! Therefore, I'm pretty sure Master Lee's soul is actually Seo Gyeong's soul.

Master Lee on the outside looks pretty young even though his soul is like 100+ years old. Also keep in mind that no one living now really knows what Seo Gyeong originally looked like because they hadn't even been born yet (i.e Park Jin and Heo Yeom). The only person who supposedly knew him was his pupil, Master Lee. However, the whole Master Lee identity is actually something Seo Gyeong created himself.

Think about it. It puts a lot of things into perspective. Seo Gyeong/Master Lee drinks chaste tea so that he doesn't look at women and catch feelings. Why wouldn't he want to do that? Because his ass got butt hurt 200 years ago when Jin Seol Ran rejected him and his offer of immortality. He didn't ever want to feel those things again. He didn't want to look at women, fall in love, and get hurt all over again. In his mind, being burnt once was so traumatizing that it was better for him to drink his feelings away quite literally.

Just like Chang'e, Seo Gyeong/Master Lee chose immortality/power over love. Seo Gyeong/Master Lee believed it was better to choose power over love because love is fickle and can hurt like hell. If you think about the kind of pupils Seo Gyeong/Master Lee wants, you will see he only wants the ones who are willing to give up love for more power just like him.

The whole letter love clue was also another dead giveaway that Master Lee is actually Seo Gyeong. He only knew that it was a love letter not because he was Seo Gyeong's pupil, it's because he is Seo Gyeong.

Other Thoughts

In my previous post, I was wondering why Master Lee/Seo Gyeong is so interested in Jang Uk. I think I've finally figured out why. Master/Seo Gyeong has been testing Jang Uk to see if he can resist power. Why? Because in order to destroy the Ice Stone, you must not only be powerful, but also must be able to resist the power of the Ice Stone. This was something Seo Gyeong/Master Lee was unable to do some 200 years ago. He could not destroy the Ice Stone because he could not resist its power. Those who cannot resist its power will only be able to sealed it, but never fully destroy it. Anyone else getting the One Ring vibe from Lord of the Rings?

Anyways, love doesn't make one weak. It can actually make one quite powerful. Even more powerful than the Ice Stone. Jang Uk during his conversations with Master Lee/Seo Gyeong has already proven himself he would gladly choose love over power any day, this ironically is what makes him more powerful than even Master Lee/Seo Gyeong. Naksu/Jin Bu Yeon on the other hand will eventually come around to choosing love over power. Once these two stop being so extra, they can become one hella powerful couple.

So after both Naksu/Jin Bu Yeon and Jang Uk have literally become a power couple, they can simply destroy the Ice Stone right? No I don't think so. One must not only be powerful and able to resist the allure of the Ice Stone, but one must also be willing to do the opposite of what the Ice Stone offers. The Ice Stone offers immortality. Opposite is mortality. The ultimate cost for destroying the Ice Stone is that one must be willing to give up one's immortality aka one's soul aka dieeeeeeeeee.

Both Jang Uk and Naksu/Jin Bu Yeon are willing to die for the other. That's been well established. However, I feel like Jang Uk would not be willing to destroy the Ice Stone if it meant both of them could live. He would most likely say to just seal it instead. On the other hand, Jin Bu Yeon/Naksu had already seen the results of what happens when one simply seals the stone. She knows perfectly well there will come a day when another person comes around to unseal it again. Combine that with the guilt she felt from killing all those people in the past as Naksu, Jin Bu Yeon will probably end up making the ultimate sacrifice because she was a pure soul that had no malice.

Other Harry Potter and AOS Similarties

Love is most the powerful thing, it can defeat anything or anyone

What made Harry Potter more powerful than Voldemort is because he had love in his life

2. Finding the Ice Stone/Philosopher's Stone

Both Jin Bu Yeon and Harry Potter were able to find the Ice Stone and Philosopher's Stone respectively because they were pure souls. Both had only wanted to find the stones so that they could destroy it.

Ice Stone=Philosopher's Stone=Elixir of Immortality

[autobots-and-their-crazy-kids]

Why Sari is so loved, while Miko is a broken base...

Sari and Miko have similar personalities and hairstyles, yet they’re treated differently by the fandom... 

Sari is so well-liked and probably has the most fanart out of all the human characters while the fandom is split by people that either liked or hated Miko... 

Are there reasons for this?... 

I think there might be: 

Backstories: 

Sari: Sari is the 7-year old only child of famous inventor and scientist, Professor Isaac Sumdac. Although her father loves her, he is usually too busy to spend time with her. It gets to the point where Sari has to remind Isaac to take care of himself... 

So her dad created robots to both educate, entertain and keep her company. However, the bots weren’t actually alive or sentient. Sari was also home-schooled, had to spend most of her time in her dad’s building and most kids her age didn’t like Sari, cause they thought she was ‘too weird’... 

Sari had no real friends, until she met the Autobots... 

Miko: Back in Tokyo, Miko (who’s 15 years old) has loving parents, has two pet cats, went to the best school and took piano lessons. But Miko believed her life to be boring, so she temporarily moved to America with foster parents to find some excitement. Her past is never elaborated on after the first 5 episodes... 

We don’t truly know Miko’s past, except for what she told us. And there aren’t any later episodes that tell us something like; Miko’s parents are loving yet smothering and overprotective people that hate the things that Miko enjoys... or maybe Miko was lying and her parents were actually neglectful as well as strict... If TFP gave us details like these, then Miko would be more sympathetic like Sari and it would also explain a lot of Miko’s behavior and personality... 

However, we never know what Miko’s parents are really like, so it makes Miko come off as kinda ungrateful. There’s also how Miko treats her foster parents; she seems to think pretty poorly of them and ignores them a lot. But we also don’t know what Miko’s foster parents are like, so it makes Miko seem somewhat like a jerk in this situation. 

How They Interact With The Autobots: 

Sari: Sari views all the Autobots as her friends and family. (She probably views Bumblebee, Bulkhead + Prowl as her big brothers, while Optimus + Ratchet are her robot dad + grandpa respectfully...) 

She spends a more-or-less equal amount of time with all of them. She bonds with them as well as help teach them new things about Earth. She was like their guide on things about humanity and their culture. The Autobots also sometimes teaches her about their world. 

Miko: Miko cares about all the Autobots too (like her thinking Arcee is the coolest bike ever), but Bulkhead is clearly her favorite. She loves Bulkhead and is quite loyal to him, meanwhile Bulkhead is willing to literally die for Miko. However, their relationship does have it’s flaws... Like for example, Miko usually doesn’t listen to Bulkhead when he tells her not to do something and Miko also doesn’t seem to care about Bulkhead’s past as a builder (before the war), only likes that Bulkhead is big and can destroy things. 

Also, Miko never teaches Bulkhead how to create things like music or art, even though she’s both a musician and an artist (meanwhile Sari teaches her own Bulkhead about art). It sometimes makes me feel like Miko only loves Bulkhead for WHAT he is and not WHO he is as a person. 

When They Both Make Mistakes: 

Sari: Ever since Sari got the Allspark Key, she’s used it to help or heal the Autobots, but she’s also tends to sometimes overuse it’s power for fun. 

Which sometimes lead to trouble for her and the Autobots. Although it’s frustrating that the lesson to use her key less didn’t stick, I cut her some slack cause Sari is a 7 year old kid, who was isolated for most of her life and had no friends before the Autobots. So it’s kinda hard to blame her for wanting to use a magical key that can fix, control and transform machines to have fun. 

Also, Sari does eventually get her key taken away by Optimus as a punishment for overusing it in the finale episodes of season 1. Then after Sari gets her key back, she used it more responsibility from then on. 

Miko: Miko is known to sometimes sneak through groundbridges during important Autobot missions, which usually leads to a situation that almost gets herself and her friends killed. Although she does take responsibility for her actions, she never learns her lesson and never gets properly punished or scolded for her recklessness (unlike Smokescreen, who does get properly scolded). The closest thing Miko got to being scolded is when Jack got mad at her in a few episodes in season 1. 

 A few times, she even gets rewarded for sneaking off. (Like when she wanted revenge against an insecticon and when she stole the Apex Armor from Starscream...) 

I think if she was banished from the base for at least a week, she would’ve probably behaved better.  

Comparing Who They Were At The Start Of Their Shows To How They Are At The End:

Sari: Sari is a brave and sweet yet sassy kid, though she does have her bratty moments too when it comes to overusing her key. 

Then around the ending of season 1 and start of season 2, she goes through some trauma; She temporarily lost her key and then her father got kidnapped by Megatron once she gets it back and then later she got kicked out of her own home by her father’s jerky rival, who smugly tells her that she doesn’t legally exist. Sari became depressed because of this, but the Autobots stay by her side and keep trying to help her. 

Sari also goes through other shocking and traumatic things, but she fights through them and comes out a stronger person then before. 

Miko: While Miko is somewhat less bratty and aggressive in season 3, compared to how she was in season 1, she’s still basically the same and she still sneaks out (with Wheeljack’s help) to dangerous giant alien robot battles. 

Conclusion: 

Sari has more character development and character depth compared to Miko... Also, Sari is somewhat more mature compared to Miko as well, despite being younger... Miko probably felt like a knock off version of Sari to some people... (And it’s kinda hard to blame them, considering that TFP did technically borrow/steal most of the main Autobots from TFA...) 

Miko had potential to properly develop as a character too, but one of the problems with TFP’s writing is that they added too many main characters. TFA made a wise choice to only have 1 main human character instead of 3, cause it gave us time to see what Sari is like and it gives her time to properly change/grow. It was time that Miko was never truly given... 

If Miko was given the time (and the writer’s changed a few things), then she might’ve become almost as loved as Sari herself! 

❤💖❤ 

[rivalsforlife]

Phoenix Wright: The Truth Reborn: Oh No We’re Doing This Again

hi.

Nearly two months ago, I wrote an essay summarizing and making very wild conclusions about the second Takarazuka Musical. I did this about two and a half years after watching the first Takarazuka musical. As such I did not have the full context for many things from the musical and was relying mostly on my memory, which blocked many things from this musical for my own safety. However, just this week, I decided to rewatch it, because I enjoy tormenting myself. I said I wouldn’t write anything on it. Here I am writing something on it.

Here’s the youtube thumbnail so that you know what you’re getting yourself into. And here, of course, is the link. This is the HD version which may be slightly more pleasant to watch. Maybe.

It was not quite as cringe in a funny way as the second musical to me, and therefore this essay may be less funny, but I feel like I’m doing a disservice to people by providing a summary of the second musical while completely neglecting the first. Quite possibly doing this is even more of a disservice. I just eagerly await the day that the third musical is translated because *that* will be the day that I finally shuffle off this mortal coil. Either way, I want to write this stuff down so that I never have to watch the musical again out of curiosity.

The following essay will contain major spoilers for both the first and second Phoenix Wright Takarazuka musicals, as I will be using many points from this musical to argue my thesis of the second musical. ... like you were going to watch them anyways. 

This one broke 8k. I’m dead inside.

Introducing The Director

Again another disclaimer that I don’t have anything against the actresses or the theatre troupe. I DO have something against Suzuki Kei, who I recently learned is the writer and director of all three of the Ace Attorney Takarazuka musicals, and is quite possibly my mortal nemesis.

This man is the one who brought this monstrosity into the world.

This man, allegedly, cleared the first four ace attorney games *seven times* before sitting down to write these musicals. He played these goddamn games seven times and did not take in a single word. The man clicked through them mindlessly while watching a badly written legal romance drama in the background and got them completely confused. I genuinely have no idea how this man could have played these games more times than even me and yet managed to get so many characters (MAYA!!!!) completely and utterly wrong. This haunts me every day, truly.

This man played Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations, and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney seven times. SEVEN TIMES EACH!! and was told to create a musical based on the series. He played these games seven times each and you know what he said?? You know what he said?? “This sucks, I’m getting rid of all of Phoenix’s backstory, butchering half the characters, and writing Phoenix/Lana fanfiction, but also rewriting all of Lana’s backstory so that she was Phoenix’s childhood friend, and you know what, I’m changing her name for good measure.”

I think this man played the games seven times each and then hated it so much and was so sick of it he tried to write something that destroyed as much of the series as possible while still being vaguely recognizable. And then somehow it became a massive hit because people like me see this and go “what the actual hell” and watch it, or people who haven’t played the games see this and go “wow what a great musical!” and then he wrote TWO MORE, destroying EVEN MORE every time in his wake, until finally, finally, he stopped after making Edgeworth straight and time traveling into the past to face off against a corrupt Gregory. I guess that was the last straw.

I have to issue a disclaimer here that for legal reasons this is a joke. I don’t actually hate this man and would not punch him in the face if I met him because that would be rude, and he is entitled to his wrong interpretation of the games. I don’t know what his thought process was. But allegedly he did play the games seven times according to the wiki. This whole essay here is satire and not slander and I don’t want to offend this guy if he somehow stumbles across my nonsense tumblr post. At the same time: Suzuki Kei blink twice if you need help.

Anyways half the reason that I’m making this essay is because I want to share my fake ao3 page for this musical. The other half will become apparent later.

Sorry if that’s illegible because of tumblr quality it’s not really important. All you really need to know is that it’s a fake ao3 screenshot for the musical. Also in the author’s note I said he played the games four times but it was actually seven I just remembered wrong because I didn’t want to believe it.

at this point you may be like “Grace shut up and get to the actual musical” and okay, fine, let’s start this nonsense. Also note that I may be referencing things from my essay on the second musical very frequently; I’m not going to force you to go read that though because the fact that you’re reading this is enough of a torment already.

The Musical Begins

Unlike the second musical, this one opens with some narration from Phoenix.

Transcript:

Phoenix: I’m reviewing a particular case at the moment. To me, this case... is one I’ll never forget.

Immediately I think this is important because it establishes that this whole musical takes place in a flashback that Phoenix is reflecting on. Why is this important? Because we know, by the time of the second musical which takes place three years later, Leona is dead.

Knowing that Leona is inherently doomed to die of her Sad Woman Disease paints this whole musical in a different light. It’s not Phoenix reflecting on how he got back together with his lover; it’s Phoenix dwelling on their past together, and the opportunities they had, before her life was so cruelly and inexplicably taken away. We don’t know if Phoenix’s reminiscing takes place before or after Leona’s death... but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was after.

Phoenix, still in the present, starts to sing. “A wave appears on the horizon like a mirage, it trembles, then vanishes. Your voice, carried upon the waves, fades upon the shore, erasing the splendor of the past.”

This line actually shows up in the second musical, sung by Lucia about her imprisoned fiance quite possibly. It’s kind of hard to tell what the meaning of these songs even are. They’re too abstract for me I think. But this line appears very frequently in the first musical when Phoenix is thinking about Leona.

Then we enter the flashback time.

Phoenix inexplicably yells at a newspaper saleswoman. This is not relevant to anything whatsoever. Then Larry barges in to the office, looking for Maya. Phoenix describes him as “A real trouble maker, but you just can’t hate the guy”, the latter part of which I think many people would disagree with. 

Well, afterwards, Maya comes in. Phoenix describes her like this while making exaggerated “can you believe this shit” gestures.

Transcript:

Phoenix: She’s as ditzy as they come. Oh, and about the outfit... Apparently she comes from a family of spirit mediums. Try not to make fun of her, okay?

Suzuki Kei personally has it out for Maya and I can never forgive him for it. Maya in these musicals is here for pure comedic relief but it’s not even comedic because I just get so angry. How can you play the trilogy seven times and think this about her?? The girl who figured out DL-6?? The girl who told Phoenix to sacrifice her life in order to find the truth?? The girl who put on a brave smile in order to try and cheer up her younger cousin even after she saw her own mother murdered right in front of her eyes?? That Maya Fey?? Ditzy as they come??????

Ugh. Moving on.

Maya and Larry run off, leaving Phoenix to watch the American Broadcast.

Important things to note here are the Godot mug, the little line up of what I think are the messed up little ace attorney figurines beneath the screen, and the fact that while this broadcast is supposedly from and to America the screen is actually not at all showing America. Like literally almost everywhere in the world except North and South America.

The broadcast says that Leona Clyde, age 24, was arrested for murdering the senator Robert Cole! Leona Clyde -- that’s Phoenix’s ex-girlfriend! He runs off to the detention center.

She is not happy to see him.

Leona: Mr. Wright... I’m not the woman you once knew.

Let’s Play A Matching Game

Sorry for the abundance of screenshots that are going to be throughout this section. Phoenix convinces Leona to let him defend her. Some of the conversation seems... familiar.

Leona: No one would defend someone who admits to killing a senator. I’m waiting for a court-appointed attorney.

Edgeworth: Every defense attorney I’ve talked to has turned me down.

Phoenix: In that case, let me defend you.

Game Phoenix: Let me defend you.

Leona: Don’t be ridiculous!

Edgeworth: Don’t be ridiculous.

Phoenix: I’ll never accept that you’re a murderer. Let me prove your innocence!

Game Phoenix: Huh? Isn’t it obvious? I’m going to prove that Miles Edgeworth is innocent.

Leona: I’ve already confessed my guilt.

Gumshoe: He confessed that he did it! In court!

Leona: It’s foolish to think you can win this case.

Edgeworth: My case is near hopeless, Wright.

Leona: (in response to phoenix offering to defend her) No you won’t! Don’t ever come here again.

Edgeworth: Look, just go away, and leave me alone!

Phoenix: You of all people should know. Once I decide to do something, I see it through to the end.

Edgeworth: Once you start on something, you always see it through, don’t you?

Leona: I never thought that you’d be representing me.

Phoenix: Ah, who could have guessed this day would come?

Edgeworth: Not me.

Phoenix: You believed in me. You saved me. And this time, I swear... I swear I’ll save you!

Game Phoenix: Edgeworth believed in me, and I believe in him. I’m the only one who knows the real Edgeworth. I’m the only one who can help him.

I could’ve done a few more, but tumblr is already threatening to murder my laptop.

So long story short, Phoenix manages to convince his lover to let him be the defense on the case. Then immediately after swearing to save Leona, he starts singing a song, which I’m not screencapping because this is enough:

“As long as there are people in this world, there’s only one path I will follow! As long as there is love in this world, there’s only one path I will believe in!”

Edgeworth sings this in the second musical after saying that he returned to California because of Phoenix. Phoenix sings it now after swearing to defend Leona. You draw your own conclusions.

And then we finally get the opening credits. Eleven minutes in.

Just Pretend This Is Narumitsu Fanfiction

Following the credits, we see a beautiful beach. Couples (exclusively heterosexual, of course,) dance and embrace in the background for some time, before revealing Phoenix and Leona, in the Even Further Past, before the LSATs or whatever the ace attorney universe’s excuse for law school exams are.

Phoenix establishes his absolute hatred of change, an important characterization moment.

Phoenix: The view here never changes, huh?

Phoenix reminisces on when they were kids. Leona’s parents were both lawyers (they’re both lawyers) and sometimes they would be like lawyers with her when she was a kid. This inspired her to also become a lawyer after their tragic death of Sickness. They never specify what the sickness is that caused two people who must be relatively young to die while Leona was in her early twenties at the latest. It may be whatever sickness claimed Leona’s life later. Sad Woman Disease. (Sad Man Disease for her father, I guess?)

Phoenix also talks about why he’s becoming a lawyer.

Phoenix: Watching you chase your dream inspired me to become a lawyer too.

So, it’s not “my childhood friend looked sad in a newspaper” because I guess that makes no sense or is too gay or something. But this is another important piece of Phoenix characterization. His entire life so far has been focused around Leona. They’ve been friends since they were kids, and then Phoenix decided to become a lawyer solely because Leona was becoming a lawyer. Not even to try and get back into contact with her after she moved away or anything; just because he’s so obsessed with her that he wants to have the same career as her, then they can run a Mom & Pop Law Firm or something, years in the future, after years of happy marriage and a few children or like whatever the hell.

Well, there’s a few steps they’ll need to get to that. At this point Phoenix still hasn’t confessed his feelings for Leona. He does so here, on this beach.

Leona tries to protest.

Leona: But I’m pushy, selfish, and only care about my goals... You’d get fed up with me.

Phoenix: That’s what I’ve always admired about you. That’s who I’ve been chasing all these years. That’s the only person... I love.

Sooo, Phoenix, your type is pushy selfish people who only care about their goals...? In the first, older lower-quality video translation it was “only care about my work”, too. Hm. Things to think about.

They sing a little duet together. Then we go back to present-day of what’s technically still a flashback. Whatever. Murder is happening.

Back To The Murder

So some plot things to establish: Leona is the legal counsel of Governor Miller, who is running for president in the AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. After the flashback so that Phoenix has some time to change clothes, they show an interview of him talking about the murder.

Governor Miller: I vow to forge a peaceful country with my own two hands, and to prepare myself for whatever may lie ahead.

Reporters: Through thick and thin, he’s a friend of the people!

The Takarazuka musicals are not very good at hiding their killers.

Phoenix: Oh yeah... It’s almost time for the presidential election, isn’t it?

NEVER FORGET, WRIGHT. THIS IS AMERICA. LAND OF THE FREE! god what even was that line.

Anyways, we meet Gumshoe, who is incompetent once again. Maya runs around the crime scene, picks up the murder weapon, puts her fingerprints all over everything, moves things around, all while Phoenix is like “lol get a load of the world’s stupidest girl” or whatever. But who cares about that.

It’s time to get to the only valid part of this musical.

Edgeworth’s Gay Little Villain Solo

You may have seen this one before.

Edgeworth arrives, but not really. It’s like Phoenix heard Edgeworth was prosecuting and immediately entered a dream-like state, where Edgeworth is heralded by the sound of trumpets in Great Revival. He’s played by a different actress than in the other two musicals, since I think she retired in between the six or so months from this musical to the second. She still plays the role well, though, or as well as can be when you’re written in an ace attorney Takarazuka musical.

Shrouded in scarlet solitude... it’s Edgeworth.

Yes, those are six Edgeworths. Yes, they pick Phoenix up and carry him around and dance with him. Yes, it was probably not meant to be at all homoerotic.

He sings a song that’s called “My rule”. I only figured this out later, but it’s loosely based on a “catchphrase” of his in the Japanese version - in game 1 he says something along the lines of “All I can do is get every defendant declared guilty! So I make that my policy.” In DD in his dramatic anime introduction before the trial, he says “I intend to question the defendant with all I have. For that is a part of my creed.” “So I make that my policy” and “For that is a part of my creed”, to my understanding, are both translated from the same line, which I think is like, “sore ga watashi no ruru”, “That is my rule.” (If I’m wrong, please correct me.) In this song he sings about how he’ll reduce all criminals to ash and such, basically talks about his game 1 prosecuting strategy as “my rule”. 

It’s very fun and probably if you want to only watch one number of this musical, it can be this one. It starts about 26:10 in the video I linked.

Once the musical number is done, Phoenix and Edgeworth stare at each other, and the background fades into the courtroom, so court begins. I feel like I should note that Phoenix has not picked up any evidence or talked to any witnesses in this investigation except for Gumshoe, since Maya just moved some things around and then Phoenix had some weird fever dream about Edgeworth which presumably took up the rest of the day.

The Trial, Day 1

Edgeworth: Consider it a prelude to the poignant Greek tragedy that’s about to unfold.

Maya: The real tragedy’s your pompous attitude!

Those are the only screenshots I took of this trial day. Here’s a summary, though:

The trial starts off with Leona confessing, Phoenix says “no I think she’s innocent”, and since ace attorney doesn’t care about the defendant’s wishes he’s allowed to proceed. For some reason Leona lets him do this without complaint. 

Gumshoe is the first witness, he claims to have caught Leona red-handed at the scene of the crime, standing over the corpse. Phoenix tries to claim that since Gumshoe didn’t see Leona committing the crime, he didn’t actually catch her red-handed, to which Edgeworth responds “What do you think being caught red-handed means?” 

Once Gumshoe is dismissed, Lotta takes the stand. She has a photo of the actual moment of the crime, where Leona is holding a knife in the air in front of the victim. 

The Takarazuka musicals like to do this thing where the image is blurry and zoomed out, but then Phoenix will go “I’VE NOTICED A CONTRADICTION” and it zooms in really far as the resolution increases drastically in order to show you the contradiction that is impossible to spot for yourself, because they don’t want people figuring out the mystery in this musical based off of a video game where you have to solve the mystery yourself. Anyways Phoenix zooms in on this photo and sees that there’s blood on Leona’s hand, presumably before she stabbed the victim. How did it get there?

Edgeworth suggests the victim was stabbed multiple times. Phoenix says the autopsy report contradicts that. Edgeworth, uncharacteristically, does not update it to suit his argument. 

Phoenix concludes that this photo is not showing the moment Leona stabbed the victim, but the moment Leona removed the knife! ... Which somehow casts doubt on her having been the one to stab the victim. Because as everyone knows, anyone wanting to kill someone would never remove a knife, it’s not like they’d bleed out faster that way, or anything.

And this whole contradiction is confusing because presumably if the victim was stabbed and then the knife was removed, they’d know that happened, because then the knife would not be found stuck in the victim’s body, since the victim was only stabbed once. So this shouldn’t be news to the prosecution that someone removed the knife after stabbing. But the investigation was headed by the most incompetent version of Gumshoe ever, so. sure. I guess no one knew.

That at least manages to extend the trial another day.

This Totally Has To Be Illegal

After the trial, Phoenix goes to talk to Governor Miller, aka Mr. Totally The Real Killer. Phoenix asks him why he decided to hire Leona as his legal advisor.

Basically, it’s because her parents were both renowned lawyers. Her father was a Chief Prosecutor, and her mother was a defense attorney. ... a prosecutor and a defense attorney couple... who does that remind us of...

Phoenix points out that just because her parents were good lawyers, it doesn’t mean she’d necessarily be one. Miller says that, sure, but she is actually really talented, and her law school marks were spectacular. Phoenix says “WHY WERE YOU LOOKING AT HER LAW SCHOOL MARKS”, like it’s somehow? suspicious? for a government official hiring legal counsel to look at their law school marks?

Apparently it IS suspicious because Governor Miller freaks out and asks if this is an interrogation. Before Phoenix can press much further, he gets a phone call, and leaves Phoenix alone in a big room.

So naturally Phoenix behaves like a fully grown adult running a law firm.

If all he did was sit in the chair, lift up a desk lamp, and poke his finger on a pen, that’s one thing. But then he leans over, OPENS THE GOVERNOR’S DESK DRAWER, and finds a knife that’s just sitting there casually. It looks like a butter knife. It’s not anything major. Maybe the dude just wanted to butter his toast?

I mean I know Phoenix will dig around in stuff whenever in the games, but he has no reason to suspect Governor Miller at all, much less dig through his drawer probably full of confidential government documents to lift up a knife that he thinks is suspicious. It’s not even covered in blood or anything?

Naturally Governor Miller’s assistant comes in just then, and Phoenix puts the knife. in his breast pocket. 

bud. It may look like a butter knife, but putting knives up against your chest is not a great idea. Much less stealing a knife from a governor? 

Well, in his panic, he accidentally knocks over a bunch of books on the desk. The governor’s assistant helps him pick them up, and they find a photo. Look a little familiar?

The photo has the assistant, the victim Robert Cole, Governor Miller, and the victim’s brother who died in an incident two years ago. He’s the “Neil Marshall” of this musical, and he died in what was essentially the SL-9 incident. Same general premise, except it occurred in the courthouse, and the names are different.

AND FINALLY WE REACH THE END OF ACT 1. They do a musical number here which is a weird sort of mashup of the main opening credits song, Edgeworth’s Villain Solo, and the love duet between Phoenix and Leona. They are all such different songs that it sounds a little weird.

ACT 2, FINALLY

The act begins on a sour note with Maya playing with the knife and showing off her characterization, which is one of the most infuriating Maya characterizations you’ll sometimes see around the fandom by people who don’t like Maya.

Maya: Let me whip up my special spirit channeler hamburgers!

sigh.

But then we’re saved (?) by the arrival of EDGEWORTH, who is presumably just here to chat. He asks Phoenix if he’s defending Leona in hopes of winning her back, then says to keep out of it, since it’s a very important case and he can’t understand the gravity of it.

Then Phoenix says this.

Phoenix: Would you be saying that if you were the one on trial? The defendant is in a dark prison, reaching out for hope... Can you imagine the loneliness and sorrow of being ostracized?

CAN YOU IMAGINE IT, EDGEWORTH? CAN YOU IMAGINE IF YOU WERE ON TRIAL AND I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO WOULD DEFEND YOU AND BELIEVED IN YOUR INNOCENCE??

Edgeworth responds to this by essentially rehashing his speech in Turnabout Sisters about how he needs to find all defendants guilty because he can’t guarantee their innocence and all that. Maya gets upset and leaves so that Phoenix and Edgeworth can talk about their childhood in private.

Phoenix once again complains about how people change since nine years old.

Phoenix then says that he has something Edgeworth doesn’t: the POWER TO BELIEVE! Then Maya comes in and tries to spike Edgeworth’s coffee, so he leaves.

The Class Trial

Phoenix explains a bit about Edgeworth and his backstory to Maya. Namely, the class trial. Phoenix was accused of stealing lunch money, Edgeworth stood up for him, but instead of Larry, Leona stood up for him. I guess Suzuki Kei thought “oh the class trial, if Leona stood up for him, it would be so romantic, because she’s a woman, and he’s a man”, or something like that. 

Edgeworth wanted to become a Great Lawyer Like His Father! But then he turned cold as ice.

Phoenix: His father got too deeply involved in a case... and paid for it with his life. Edgeworth saw him murdered. He was never the same again. I bet he couldn’t forgive the criminal.

Yeah I bet he couldn’t ever forgive the person he thought killed his father all these years, Phoenix. I bet he really hates that person, Phoenix. I bet he has nightmares about that person killing his father or something, Phoenix.

Phoenix: He vanished, then returned without his mercy or compassion. He had become a monster. When he lost his father, he also lost the ability to believe in others.

So like... one of the most chilling things about this musical is that they never actually solve DL-6. This probably roughly takes place 15 years after DL-6, since they were about the same age when the class trial started, and at least Leona is 24 now. The next musical takes place three years from now, and in it, Edgeworth refers to von Karma as his mentor, implying he’s still around and doing things.

So, in addition to everything else going wrong with this musical, DL-6 still happens, but von Karma never frames Edgeworth for it fifteen years later. The statute of limitations runs out, and von Karma forever gets away with his crime. And Edgeworth has no idea.

What changes did they make to DL-6, though, you may ask? I’m desperate to know as well. In the third musical, which I’ve watched because I hate myself but am unable to fully understand because I don’t know much Japanese, there is a scene where Miles flashbacks to DL-6. It’s abstract, but he makes gun-throwing motions at Gregory, followed by a gunshot sound.

Therefore, in this musical’s internal canon, either Miles Edgeworth shot his father, or he believes he did for the rest of his life.

... moving on.

Phoenix: But he still has his humanity. It’s still there, deep down inside!

At least, if nothing else, Phoenix still believes in him. Even this Takarazuka Musical couldn’t touch that.

The Feenie Sweater

Right after this, Larry barges in, and Phoenix leaves him alone with Maya. The musical tries teasing Larry/Maya, but fortunately, Maya’s having none of it.

Maya: You’re barking up the wrong tree.

Props to this musical for not being as bad as it could have been.

After this, the two sit down on the couch, and Maya asks for more gossip on Phoenix and Leona. Larry launches into a story, which turns into a flashback that ends up being narrated by Phoenix halfway through. This one’s about Phoenix and Leona’s relationship.

This is an interesting line in here, “I’ll guide you to the future”, for it loosely referencing the sort of love ballad Phoenix sings with Lucia in the second musical which is about “I’ll take you to that radiant future”, and he later sings to the memory of Leona right around the time of his big spiral into despair.

I’m sorry if you haven’t read my other essay and just said “wait what” to what I just typed.

Leona was getting ready to move to New York to defend the weak “in the big city”. This is rather strange wording because it implies that California does not in fact have a big city. She says some things in her conversation with Phoenix that probably plant some of his later issues.

Leona: This is the first time we’ll be apart since we were kids.

Leona: We promised we’d always be together.

Leona: I’ll be waiting. Waiting for you to come to me.

Haha. Sure would be a shame... if something were to happen... and they wouldn’t be able to be together anymore...

So some dancers wearing black come in and take off their outer jackets, to symbolize the passage of time. They circle around Phoenix and Leona. In this, you can just barely see, Phoenix is wearing a pink sweater beneath his jacket.

“Oh,” I think to myself, “Is that the Feenie sweater? Are they including it here as a reference to the games?”

Then the dancers keep moving.

THAT IS NOT THE FEENIE SWEATER. That is a pink sweater with a sexily drawn woman on it.

This is the other half of the reason why I decided to go through with making this essay. 

This is so incredibly funny to me. Suzuki Kei Who Has Played The Games Seven Times has seen the hand-knit bright pink sweater with a giant red heart on it seven times. The sweater Iris, Phoenix’s girlfriend, lovingly knit for him that he wears all the time even though it is one of the tackiest, cheesiest items of clothing to ever exist. And so, when the costume designers were designing the clothes for College Phoenix Wright, they asked themselves: “Should we include the Feenie sweater?”

and “NO,” someone must have shouted, “NO, we can NOT include the Feenie sweater, it is PINK and it has a HEART on it and it’s TOO GIRLY. Phoenix Wright is a MANLY MAN. He would not EVER wear something PINK with a HEART on it.”

“BUT,” someone else said, “it’s a REFERENCE to the original games, where he DID wear a pink sweater with a heart on it! We MUST include it to pander to the fans!”

“WAIT,” a third person interjected. “I have a BRILLIANT IDEA. We can keep the pink... But to make it VERY CLEAR he is a heterosexual, masculine male... we put a sexy woman on it.”

And Person Three Got A Raise.

Thank god we’re finally halfway done this musical.

We Just Have To Go On With Our Lives Now

There’s plot or something happening. Leona breaks up with Phoenix inexplicably over the phone. Probably because of that freaking sweater. Imagine wearing that. God.

Eventually we go back to Phoenix talking to Leona, and he asks about the Jack Lyon case, which is the rip-off version of the Joe Darke case. Leona is pretty cagey about it, but Phoenix proves that she was there in the gallery that day. Leona refuses to answer, claims again that she killed the victim in her case, and leaves.

This makes Phoenix sad, so he starts singing.

Phoenix: I want to bring you back! I believe in you.

If this sounds familiar, it’s the part where I started absolutely losing my mind in the second musical because this line had never shown up before then, I’d forgotten it was in this musical, and Phoenix was screaming it alone in a red room, so I thought he was like desperately resorting to a necromancy ritual in hopes of bringing Leona back to life.

Instead, this line actually has CONTEXT, though it does just end up enforcing my theory. This is Phoenix mourning what he used to have with Leona, wanting to bring the “old her” back, because he’s devastated that people sometimes change. There are several flashbacks of their college days where he’s wearing his Sexy Woman Sweater. He does succeed in winning her back at the end of this musical. Before she dies, of course.

Phoenix in musical 2 still believes that he can bring back what he used to have with Leona... even beyond death. That’s something affirmed by this musical. I’m very grateful to it for somehow managing to enforce my nonsensical theory.

Doctor Ema

After this, Phoenix returns to his office, and meets with someone new.

That’s right! Only now, halfway through the musical, do we actually get to meet the Ema-equivalent to Leona’s Lana-equivalent. Her name is Monica Clyde. She has little rainbow heart stickers on her briefcase, which is the closest thing this musical has to acknowledging that gay people exist.

But what does this little briefcase contain, you may ask? Scientific investigation tools? No.

A full surgical toolset. Because you never know when someone’ll get sick, or when someone will need an entire operation in front of you. I guess.

So yes, Monica Clyde is not a forensic scientist in training, but a doctor! She decided to become a doctor because of her parents, who passed away of The Sickness, and so became a doctor in order to save lives like theirs.

Once more this has much darker and deeper implications than the musical is even aware of, because Monica is so anxious about treating sick people that she carries a full surgical toolset around with her at all times, scared to lose someone like she lost her parents... and then sometime in the next three years, Leona, her big sister, is going to die.

Of what? The strange Sickness that claimed her parents? A car accident? A botched spur-of-the-moment surgery? Whatever it is, Monica was unable to save her, even when she’d been training her entire life for it.

Monica is not mentioned at all throughout the second musical. It’s as if she does not exist.

Because unlike Ema of Rise From The Ashes, Monica is not at the heart of this story. She is, primarily, a plot device here to make Leona not trust Phoenix so that he can angst about their relationship. 

What a mess this world is.

The Trial, Part 2

Rather than try to prove Leona’s innocence, Phoenix wants to link the current case to not-SL-9, the Jack Lyon case. He does this by showing this picture.

Senator Cole, the victim, is in this picture. His younger brother whose name I’ve forgotten, the victim of not-SL-9, is also in this picture. They are brothers. It is apparently novel that they are in the same picture, and somehow makes their cases linked.

As well, Governor Miller is in the picture. I guess you could say like... Governor Miller’s legal counsel is the defendant, so that’s another link? Even though the Governor would presumably know a Senator, so this isn’t an unusual group. Right now Phoenix has absolutely nothing to prove that these two cases are linked other than “hey, these two victims are brothers”, but apparently it works. So they spend a lot of time talking about not-SL-9, since Leona has confessed to the murder on day 1 and there is absolutely nothing indicating that she can’t be immediately declared guilty.

They hid the fact that Monica was a hostage in this not-SL-9, meaning that some of the case records were forged. Here’s Edgeworth’s reaction when this comes out.

Edgeworth: This is an outrage! I’m the most influential prosecutor in America! There’s nothing I don’t know!

In RFTA, when Edgeworth learns he’d been using forged evidence to give a man the death penalty, he is devastated, his entire worldview is shaken, he sees himself as a monster who could end up becoming horribly corrupt if he isn’t stopped.

Musical Edgeworth goes “I DIDN’T KNOW SOMETHING???”

It’s certainly strange characterization, but I guess Edgeworth is further behind in his character arc than in RFTA, so... ugh. Fine. 

Phoenix calls Monica out as a witness to prove she was involved in the case. This causes Leona to panic, and try to dismiss Phoenix as her attorney, like Lana in RFTA, but Edgeworth interjects to call Monica in anyways. He and Phoenix have a little moment.

Edgeworth: You said to believe in others. I suppose I’ll try believing in you. Try to keep up.

Phoenix: Edgeworth!

So Monica comes to the stand to testify. We get to see this picture of Monica being held hostage, and not-Joe-Darke’s incredible eyeliner.

Lots of it is very similar to the actual RFTA, except instead of the victim being stabbed on the knight with the giant knife, he’s instead stabbed with a regular old knife. Leona still refuses to admit to what really happened, until Edgeworth convinces her to believe in Phoenix.

Edgeworth: Your attorney is a runaway train with a one-track mind. Yet he placed all of his faith in you. Believe in him. You owe him that much.

Leona testifies, and says that when she found the victim, he was stabbed with a scalpel.

Here is where things get weird.

Scalpels Can’t Kill People

So basically earlier in this trial, they talk about how Leona knew that the knife that stabbed the victim was double-edged despite being buried in his chest. The judge questions if this means Leona killed him, but Phoenix is quick to say no, she was searched when she entered the courthouse and couldn’t have concealed a knife.

Yet, Monica was able to bring in her surgical toolkit which contains several sharp knives, scalpels, scissors, etc.

This is the first major contradiction.

Leona continues to say that when she found Monica, and the scalpel stabbed in the victim, she also ran into Governor Miller, who if you haven’t been able to tell yet is the Gant-equivalent of this musical. He offered to help her with the cover-up, etc.

The next bit goes a lot like RFTA. Phoenix accuses Governor Miller, who barges in, says Phoenix has the decisive evidence in his pocket. This is the “butter knife” that Phoenix took from his office when he dug around in confidential documents and stole it for no particular reason. It has Monica’s fingerprints on it! ... And Phoenix’s and Maya’s too probably because they were handling it without gloves, but they don’t mention that part.

Leona cries about how she shouldn’t have trusted Phoenix because he was apparently now blaming Monica, Monica looks terrified, she and Leona have some good sister moments but it’s not as good as it could be if the story was actually about Leona and Monica like how RFTA was about Lana and Ema. But Phoenix has the decisive piece of evidence that can turn this around.

It is this:

Phoenix: Scalpels are made for medical incisions, not stabbings. So how did it stab the victim?

...

...

...

... What?

So like. Yes, scalpels are made for medical incisions. Medical incisions often involve cutting through flesh, very easily. As a result, they are sharp. Extremely sharp. As in: their purpose is literally to stab people, very specifically.

Yes, they’re easier to control, so that surgeons don’t regularly stab people how they’re not supposed to be stabbed, but it’s not like, impossible to stab someone in a killing way with a scalpel? Admittedly, I have never tried to kill someone using a scalpel. And I do not have experience using a scalpel for surgeries because I am not a surgeon. But I’m pretty sure, if you take a sharp scalpel, and you stab someone in the chest with it with a reasonable amount of force... they die.

Like, is this a particular kind of scalpel that is not very sharp? Is the problem that the blade doesn’t match up with the initial wound? But even then, we don’t have the original unforged autopsy report or even a picture, so how would Phoenix know what the original wound looked like to say it didn’t match up? And even then why wouldn’t Phoenix say that instead of SCALPELS CAN’T STAB PEOPLE???

This is his decisive contradiction and it makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE TO ME!!!

Well Darn I Guess Scalpels Can’t Kill People

This is such a decisive piece of evidence, that scalpels can’t kill people, coming from the man who thought “caught red-handed” does not involve being caught standing over a corpse with blood on your hands, that it causes Governor Miller to confess.

Unlike Gant, who created the murder with Neil Marshall both to ensure that there was decisive evidence to convict Joe Darke, a serial killer who had not left any decisive evidence behind, and gain control over the prosecutor’s office in order to pull similar stunts to get criminals convicted using false evidence, Governor Miller does not have that as his motive. After all, he’s not a police officer. Instead, he ended up accidentally killing not-Joe-Darke, and then set up the incident in order to get Leona on his side. As her parents were both influential lawyers and very respectable, having her and her parents’ reputation on his side could help him become President of America Where This Takes Place.

So, let’s just take a moment to run over some of the things that made the original Rise From The Ashes great, in my opinion. Just for fun.

1 - The heart of the story between the Skye sisters. Lana closing off to protect Ema, Ema wanting to get through to her sister and get back to the way things used to be. Phoenix, in this story, is more of a bystander to this plotline rather than in the heart of it himself.

2 - Edgeworth’s Character Development. Basically RFTA creates an interesting transition between Turnabout Goodbyes and JFA. It causes Edgeworth to re-evaluate everything he knows about being a prosecutor. So quickly on the heels of Turnabout Goodbyes, it crushes the last bit of hope in him. It compares him to Gant, who also hates criminals, and forces him to wonder if his hatred of crime will one day lead to him being a criminal himself. He’s already convicted one person on forged evidence; how many others could there be?

3 - The Ends Justify The Means. ... wait come back, don’t leave. What I found neat about this case was also Gant’s motive. At one point he was presumably an honest person who hated crime and wanted to stop criminals. But over time in the police force, he became corrupted. He wanted to have all criminals convicted. So what do you do when you don’t have the evidence to convict them? Joe Darke was a serial killer who has killed several people and may have killed more if he’d gone free. The only way to stop and convict him was by using forged evidence. Other criminals could hide evidence to get away with their crimes, so people like Gant would make it up to catch them; but then when do you stop? What happens if there’s no evidence because someone is truly innocent? When does the line between “this person is a criminal and I want to stop them” and “I just want to convict everyone I’m dealing with” become blurred? This is also something he shares with Edgeworth and helps to advance his character.

All three of these things are either lessened or outright ignored in this musical. Leona and Monica’s story takes a backseat to Phoenix and Leona’s Love Story, with Monica only showing up halfway through, and mainly as an excuse as to why Leona is withdrawn. Edgeworth doesn’t seem to blame himself for the forged evidence he used, and doesn’t have a crisis questioning his morality over it. And Governor Miller’s motive is purely power. Unlike Gant, who would have become Chief of Police whether he solved SL-9 or not, Miller needed Leona to win the presidency. And instead of asking her to help him with his campaign like a normal person, he just blackmailed her instead.

... How do you play the games seven times and miss this much?

The Case Finally Ends

god. we’re almost there.

The case ends, Leona is declared not guilty but will still face trial for covering up murders and such. Probably less of a sentence than Lana because she was not involved in ongoing police corruption? Either way she’s dead in three years, so she’s got something a bit more concerning coming up.

She’s led away. Phoenix sings a bit about Leona before being interrupted by Edgeworth... who has something important to tell him.

Edgeworth: You awakened within me those once-cherished emotions I had discarded. I see visions of a distant, nostalgic past.

So basically this is the unnecessary feelings of the musical. Something along the lines of “seeing you again and fighting for my former ideals is making me question many things about myself.”

How does Phoenix respond?

Phoenix: Edgeworth... Try talking normally for a chance.

Sure, we were all thinking it, but that’s a little cold, Phoenix.

Edgeworth tries a smooth recovery.

Edgeworth: I don’t do... idle chit-chat.

This doesn’t accomplish much. So he leaves to allow Leona to visit with Phoenix alone. He’s got to go change for something more important coming up.

Leona and Phoenix decide that they’re going to get back together once Leona is done her sentence! They make a promise that is very funny if you know she’ll be dead in three years.

Phoenix: I’ll be waiting. For you.

There are a lot of hugs here, I’m not screencapping them all. There are also several moments where their faces get very close together and like, their nose brushes the other’s cheek or something, but they never actually kiss. Is it because the actresses weren’t comfortable with it (valid), or they thought kissing would be too much for the musical (sure, whatever), or since both characters are played by women the show staff did not want two women kissing on stage (probably the real answer)? I don’t like watching kisses, but I kept bracing myself for one and then it never happened, so.

Phoenix ends the main part of the musical with one last musical number starring my personal favourite piece:

Phoenix: I want to bring you back! I believe in you.

I like to think that at this point, this is present-day Phoenix, after finishing his reminiscing, still desperately wishing he could bring Leona back from death.

But alas, he cannot. And so, after one last daydream of them dancing together on the beaches of California, singing about their love, the musical ends.

Dance Time!

This starts at exactly the two hour mark, if you’re interested in watching what is, once again, one of the only fun parts of this musical.

Seriously, Edgeworth’s actress kills it here, when I first saw this I went “oh, this is why I saw so many people being gay for her on twitter.”

Edgeworth’s song is an encore of “My Rule”, so it’s lots of fun. Afterwards Phoenix gets another fun piece.

Then we get to the love ballad part, which I can probably overanalyze, I feel like I haven’t done enough ridiculous over-analyzing in this essay in comparison to the other.

Uhhh so the fog represents how Phoenix feels lost in this world without Leona. You can see it in the second screenshot separating the two of them, representing the barrier of death between the two of them. Idk it’s midnight I’m getting worn out from having to think about this musical for so long.

But his mourning over Leona’s death becomes even more apparent in the credits, where Phoenix sings that one line again:

Phoenix: I want to bring you back! I believe in you.

I’m not fixing that screenshot, I think it’s oddly fitting, in a way. That’s me right now.

Then at the very end, he sings this song.

Phoenix: I’ll spend... this eternal life... soaring through... the heavens!

Technically, this refers to his name Phoenix, but let’s dig a little deeper. He spends the rest of his life soaring through the heavens... the heavens that Leona went to after her untimely death, perhaps?

Overall, the musical becomes much more interesting when you just see it as a prequel to the second musical. This musical establishes many core concepts of Phoenix’s character: his refusal to believe in the concept of things changing, for one, and also his extreme dependency on Leona who he was never separated from since they were kids and where he based his entire life around her dreams and ideals. All he can think about is her. And in the end, he promises to wait for her in California.

Yet, to paraphrase Miles Edgeworth, all that is waiting for him is her death. Their dream of opening up a Mom & Pop Law Firm will never come true.

Thanks again for bearing with me even though this wasn’t as funny!

[astermacguffin]

📓!!!

Okay this is fresh out of the oven (and when i say that i mean i Literally came up with this just this morning) so here we go.

Basically as we were getting my brother's uniform from the tailor i was reminded of that one deleted scene where human cas is mending his own clothes and i was like "GOD i bet an AU where cas is a tailor would fucking SLAP" and that's where this came from. Here's a bullet list of some of my ideas at the moment:

Cas is a tailor with a mysterious past. Dean (this is stanford era btw) is around town for a case. He passes by Cas while he's researching in the library and was like 👀 eyes emoji but eventually went back to focus on the case.

In one fateful instance, Cas' peaceful evening is interrupted when he sees a bleeding and nearly unconscious man at his doorstep.

When Dean wakes up, he finds that all his wounds have been neatly stitched up. (Suspiciously, he cannot feel the broken bones he was absolutely sure were broken last night, but hey, he's not complaining.)

He formally meets and thanks Cas. Dean starts giving excuses about his wounds but Cas assures him that he knows. When pressed about it, all he says was that he "used to be a hunter."

The case is done, Dean skips town. But every opportunity that he gets, he stops by Cas' place. Sometimes to ask for research help, sometimes just to hang out.

I have one fleshed out scene in my head which is the inspiration for this entire thing. I want there to be a scene where Dean asks him what he enjoys about creating and mending clothes so much. Cas shows him the stack of uniforms he's mending. "This one's for a sales clerk. This one's for an aircraft mechanic. This one's for a firefighter." Cas explains how he feels useful for touching the lives of these different people, even in just small ways. "They're all out there doing something for the world. I reckon it's the least I could do to pay it forward, to help them in all the little ways I can. Especially after I left my... previous occupation."

When his dad goes missing, Dean immediately goes to Cas first, only to find his store cleaned out and empty. He asks around town but apparently Cas has been planning to move out for quite a while, but they don't know where he's moving to.

And he never told Dean. Didn't even leave a number. Dean feels well and truly alone, this time. He immediately heads off to see Sam.

A few years later, while he and Sam are doing a case, he stumbles upon a very familiar face. It's Cas. Who seems to have barely aged after all these years.

So that's basically all I have at the moment. The more fleshed out backstory for Cas is under the cut:

Cas is a fallen angel, Anna-style. He asked permission from Jimmy's mom and told her who and what he is, where he hid his grace, etc etc. He then hitched a ride with Jimmy and became his twin.

He basically lived his entire life as a human, but when he's in his early 40s, Jimmy suddenly falls gravely ill and the current medicine at the time has no answers for him.

Their mom finally reveals to Cas his true nature and tells him about his grace. She tells him the same warnings that Cas gave her when he was still an angel: "You'll never grow old. You'll outlive everyone that you love." Etc etc.

Cas acknowledges the consequences and still takes his grace. His brother can't die yet, Amelia and Claire still needs him. He heals his brother.

They stay happy for a long while (with Cas secretly healing his family's illnesses here and there). But eventually the "I just age better than you" excuse grows tired, and Cas knows he has two choices: reveal his true nature to the rest of the family, or run away. His mother would respect either decision.

He decides the latter. He doesn't want to risk their safety by giving them knowledge as dangerous as knowing his existence. He keeps them in the dark and gives them the "I need to find myself" excuse and starts driving around in his motorcycle.

He eventually falls into hunting. After all, what's the use of this millenia-worth of knowledge if he's not gonna use it to help?

He sends his family letters from time to time but never shows his face ever again. (How can he even explain the fact that he didn't even age a little after a decade or so?) He couldn't even be there during the funeral of their parents, he could only watch from afar.

One day, tragedy strikes: he finds out that Amelia and Jimmy has been killed. (Claire is safe, Jimmy told her to stay in the basement.) Traces of sulfur tells him it's a demon.

He makes sure from afar that Claire is dropped off to a distant relative of theirs before he goes into his vengeance plot. After all, he reclaimed his grace for his brother's sake and it still ends up like this?

After a few years or so, he finally kills the demon (it's another Knight of Hell who caught scent of rumors of a fallen angel and started digging). He doesn't feel fulfilled.

Feeling remorseful for being so deep into his revenge plot that he failed to check on Claire for a while, he goes back to that distant relative only to find out that they're dead. He panics and starts looking for Claire's trail.

He finds out what happened to Claire after all these years (which follows nearly the same path as canon): relative dies, she gets thrown into juvie for a while, she escapes. This time, she meets a hunter while she was looking for who or what killed her parents. She becomes a hunter as well.

Their first reunion obviously doesn't go well. She resents him for leaving her alone at the time when she needed someone the most. He tells her what he is (because he had to assure he that he's not a shifter or a demon) and that he already avenged her parents.

She deflates after finding out that she spent all this time in a revenge plot that was already finished. It takes a long while, but they eventually reconcile.

A few decades pass even more, and even Claire eventually passes away of old age. Eventually, the only one left of Cas' family is himself. He eventually gets tired of the repetitive cycle of hunting.

After quitting hunting, Cas tries on different professions, but eventually settles into being a tailor. He skips town after a few years in order to avoid suspicion due to his unchanging age.

Over the years, he forms a network of connections with other supernatural creatures who just want to live in peace, away from any danger. They're the ones who help him when he needs a new location.

When he first sees the bright soul at his doorstep, he immediately knew he was in for some trouble. And still...he brought him in anyway.

[hiccanna-tidbits]

The RotBTD+ Gang Plays DnD! (Feat. my ships, sorry not sorry XD)

So highkey I’ve actually been wanting to do a “The Gang Plays DnD” type post for AGES now, but then I saw @hobie-brown and @ohlooksheswriting-wips do DnD AU posts for RotBTD, and then I was like “Ah shit, I really should finish mine, eh?” So thank you to both of you for inspiring me to get off my ass and actually write the post!!!

Hiccup DMs. He comes up with this super complex plot revolving around dragons (because of course) where the party has to dismantle this society ruled by evil knights who want to genocide all of the dragons. Imagine his chagrin when the party wants to do nothing but fuck around in towns and aggravate NPCs 90% of the time.

They usually end up playing at Jack’s apartment, mainly because Hiccup’s dad doesn’t really want a bunch of loud nerds yelling about 20-sided dice in his household while he’s trying to work, if he can at all help it. Jack’s sister regularly barges into their living room and roasts the fuck out of Jack and his friends for being such damn nerds and eats all of their DnD snacks they’ve set out. If they’re in the middle of a combat session, she always gleefully proclaims that they’re all going to die. While Jack is annoyed by this, the rest of the party finds it deeply hilarious.

Jack Overland plays the absolute mayhem warlock Jack Frost, who got his powers through making a deal with the archfey Prince of Frost and has absolutely no qualms about being an evil god’s mortal Sower of Chaos. He spends the vast majority of the campaign doing such useful things as creating ice slicks under annoying NPCs and freezing people’s drinks. He also plays a Tiefling because absolutely no one can talk this boy out of playing the creepy demon race.

Rapunzel plays a woodland nymph druid who is also the party healer (because of course she is). Her name is probably Sunlily or something else suitably hippie-esque. Whenever there’s downtime (or whenever the rest of the party is also dicking around, and she can get away with it), Rapunzel likes to go into the nearest forest and pick the best berries and nuts for the rest of the party. She also loves baking fruit pies and cooking the best nymph food for her companions when given the chance. Definitely the party Cinnamon Roll (every party has one!). She often will turn into cute animals to distract the guards while the party infiltrates a building.

Merida’s character is the party archer and general ranged weapon master, as well as a raging lesbian. Hiccup learns very quickly that any male NPC who tries to flirt with her will very quickly get impaled with an arrow. She can’t ever decide if she wants to be a ranger or a rogue, so she multiclasses in both for flare. She also plays a Tiefling, and continually insists that her character is both scarier and sexier than Jack’s. In combat, she either Leeroy Jenkins her way in with a sword and just starts slashing every which way, or just shoots 90% of the enemies with arrows before the fight even starts. There’s really no in between. She can get away with this because she’s highkey one of the party tanks, and consistently deals a shitton of damage.

Anna plays a human bard, basically having read over the class options and going “Wait, in this one I get to make stylish medieval music??? And wear dramatic and garish outfits and a dumb hat??? And cast wacky illusion spells??? And do silly little magic tricks??? And INSPIRE EVERYONE??? Hell yeah, I’m in!!!” She mostly uses magic attacks in combat (definitely favors Tasha’s Hideous Laughter), but occasionally when she’s out of spell slots she’ll just take to slamming enemies in the face with her lute. She also has WAY too much fun with Vicious Mockery, let’s be real.

Elsa, upon hearing Jack’s character concept, rolls her eyes so far up in her head she can see her damn brain, and vows to play his concept, but serious–solely out of spite. She rolls up a super OP elf Chaos Sorcerer, filled with lots of brooding angst about how uncontrollable her winter powers can get if she isn’t careful. She combines it a bit with Storm Sorcerer so she can create literal blizzards, and Hiccup ends up allowing it just because he thinks it’s cool. Although Elsa’s character is undoubtedly aggravated by the rest of the party’s antics, she starts becoming grudgingly protective of these idiots and can deal some pretty crazy damage when her companions are threatened. She also contains one of the party’s only brain cells.

Eugene of course plays dashing rogue master thief Flynn Rider. Although his high deception and lockpicking skills certainly come in handy, he’s the most chaotic neutral fucker you’ve ever met and will take any excuse to rob NPCs blind or cheat them out of every cent they have in a tavern card game. It’s nigh impossible to get him to cooperate with the rest of the party much of the time, and often Elsa’s character has to either bribe him with some of her family’s gold or threaten to freeze him to stop him backstabbing one or more party members. Eugene’s character forces Hiccup to add in many more heist plotlines than he originally intended. This delights Eugene immensely, and sometimes he goes a bit crazy planning elaborate heists.

Moana plays a sorcerer water genasi. She can control any body of water, but she has a special affinity for controlling saltwater (i.e. the ocean lol). She also requests an animal handling bonus, but only with marine animals, solely because she thought it would be funny. She’s also an ex-pirate who robbed a lot of wealthy merchant ships and freed their slaves back in the day, which Merida thinks is incredibly badass. Moana tends to get bored and unengaged when there are no bodies of water to play around with, so Hiccup ends up having to add a lot more lakes, rivers, and oceans to the campaign than he originally planned on. Moana also takes a sailing skill, and thus the party often ends up traveling by boat. Typically Eugene and Rapunzel will infiltrate and hijack it, and Moana will sail it. Moana probably contains the party’s only other brain cell.

Astrid plays a gigantic berserker orc barbarian who is never without his trusty axe. Astrid is hands down the party’s top tank, and unquestionably deals the most damage every combat session. Much like Merida’s character, Astrid’s character is absolutely a shameless power fantasy. Hiccup pretty easily picks up on this, but is too polite to say anything about it. Jack also picks up on this, but is hardly as courteous as their DM, and teases Astrid mercilessly. Astrid is not amused.

Rapunzel requests that her weapon of choice be a frying pan, her justification being that her character found a discarded one at the edge of a human village outside her woods and mistaked it for a highly-dangerous human weapon. Hiccup is like “…you know what? Fuck it” and rolls up stats for a goddamn frying pan. Jack has nigh-endless admiration for Rapunzel for choosing such a goddamn memey, absurd, yet oddly effective weapon and it definitely makes the poor boy even more smitten with her than he already is.

Eugene and Merida have a bet going on who can sleep with more sexy barmaids. Merida is currently winning, much to Eugene’s chagrin. She’s not even inherently better at seducing NPCs, she and Eugene have the same charisma stat–she just consistently rolls better than Eugene. Eugene is incredibly salty about this.

Anna and Elsa want to be sisters in-game as well, but neither want to change their race–so Anna decides her character was adopted. Hiccup and the rest of the party go along with it, mainly because there’s something deeply hilarious about a regular human bard being adopted and raised by a family of high-powered elf ice mages.

Astrid is absolutely the sort of player who tends to get bored and restless outside of fights, and tends to fidget and twiddle her thumbs waiting for the next combat session. Jack picks up on this, and purposely does more roleplay for longer just to piss her off. He’s also just a very dramatic fucker and highkey loves roleplay.

When she’s not causing mayhem around the town or sleeping with hot women, Merida tries to entertain Astrid between combat sessions by offering to spar with her. Unfortunately, this does not usually end well for poor Merida, as even the most hardcore and badass of tieflings is prone to getting dumpstered by an 8-foot-tall barbarian orc with an axe. Astrid is, nonetheless, grateful to have someone to fight.

Rapunzel, Elsa, and Moana will humor Hiccup and attempt to actually play the main plot. Meanwhile, Jack, Merida, and Eugene are a DM’s worst nightmare. They constantly derail the damn campaign to fuck around, cause mayhem, and do inane shenanigans in every. Damn. Town. They go to. Anna is kind of a wildcard–she’ll typically go with whatever group looks like they’re going to be doing something more interesting. Astrid will go along with whichever group is more likely to get into a fight–which, often as not, is Jack and his posse of terrible Chaotic Neutrals (who have definitely pissed off a number of NPCs into attacking them).

As the campaign goes on, Elsa and Eugene become the beleaguered Party Mom and Dad. Both are quite aggravated by this–especially poor Eugene, who just wanted to play a morally-gray charming rogue who stole everything and got away with it and then accidentally ended up caring about these idiots he got stuck with.

Anna initially joins the campaign because she has a planet-size crush on Hiccup, and inevitably is the one who dragged Elsa into it too. Being the hopeless romantic that she is, Anna writes a love interest into her backstory. Hiccup eventually has the party run into said love interest, and Anna is overjoyed. He starts flirting with her as the love interest, and it’s easily the best 30 minutes of Anna’s life.

Moana and Elsa also give Hiccup pretty detailed backstories, and he works in little subplots for them. Moana gets to bring water back to a dying part of the jungle in the middle of a draught, while Elsa gets to go on a whole sidequest to explore her family history and how they came to be sorcerers.

Jack, Merida, and Eugene also give Hiccup fairly elaborate backstories, but Jack’s and Merida’s are like 99% memes and Dumb Shit. Hiccup tries to give all of them backstory-related plot hooks, but inevitably any hooks he provides are either stabbed, robbed, or frozen. Honestly any plot hook offered to these 3 will be all but spat in the face of and tossed off a cliff.

The one relevant part of Eugene’s backstory is that he and Rapunzel decide they used to be partners in crime before the campaign started. Rapunzel would infiltrate and scout out places he wanted to rob as small, unobtrusive animals (her preferred Wild Shape is a chameleon) and later distract the guards as a bunny or kitten while he went in and took every gold coin in sight. In return, Flynn Rider would bribe builders to not develop into Sunlily’s forest. Rapunzel and Eugene partly came up with this For Funsies, but also it was Rapunzel’s sneaky way of tricking Eugene into having prior connections in the party so he’d be less likely to betray them. It works pretty well–although the entire party is protective of Cinnamon Roll Sunlily, Flynn is certainly especially protective of her.

Astrid does the absolute bare minimum as far as backstories go. She is literally just here to smash stuff, slice people, and beat some fuckers up.

Rapunzel has a backstory, but she’s typically so invested in the main plot and the other party members that Hiccup rarely needs to bring it in to keep her engaged. She’s highkey the party emotional rock, and probably the only one keeping them all together.

On that note, Rapunzel’s character is the ONLY one who can get Jack’s character to take the plot even REMOTELY seriously. Like he’ll be dicking around in the nearest tavern challenging the nearest orc to a drinking game, and Rapunzel will come in and ask him to help them on a Main Plot Quest. And he’ll be like “come onnnnn I’m having funnn” and she’ll be like “Jack pleeeeeease?” and you just. Can’t resist Sunlily’s puppy dog eyes. At all. Also, whenever Sunlily is genuinely threatened, any silliness immediately goes out the window and Jack Frost is OUT FOR BLOOD.

For better or for worse, Rapunzel is not immune to being looped into Jack’s shenanigans. Occasionally if either Merida or Eugene have a particularly hare-brained scheme she’ll go along with it, but by and large Jack is the most successful in convincing her to temporarily abandon the plot and cause mild mischief with him. They once wasted half a session creating an elaborate “ice theme park” for some squirrels in the forest.

Hiccup tries to get Merida to play the main plot by eventually having there be no more sexy female NPCs to seduce in the towns they go to. Unfortunately, this backfires–Merida just hooks up with Moana’s character instead. When asked to roll for how good the lay is, Merida gets a nat 20–and thus her character and Moana’s character end up hooking up regularly throughout the rest of the campaign.

Hiccup introduces a few Wise Old Mentor-type NPCs to guide the party throughout the campaign. While Rapunzel, Elsa, Moana, and Anna actually try to listen to them and take their advice, Merida, Jack, and Eugene absolutely refuse to take them seriously and mercilessly play pranks on them.

At one point, Hiccup gives the party the option to attempt to tame a group of wild dragons and use them as mounts. They all have to make animal handling checks. Anna, Rapunzel, Elsa, and Moana pass. The rest of the party fails, with Jack and Eugene crit-failing. Hilarity ensues.

Hiccup ends up bringing back Anna’s backstory love interest as an NPC regular. Anna thinks he’s just being a good friend and a good DM and trying to incorporate her backstory as much as he can, but really, he just wants an excuse to regularly flirt with her. He hardly has the balls to out-of-game.

Merida comes out as gay toward the end of the campaign. Everyone in the group is extremely supportive, of course, but everyone is also like “Merida…with the amount of barmaids you’ve banged…and the amount of times you and Moana’s character hooked up…this isn’t exactly surprising.”

Hiccup actually finds a way to use Jack and Elsa’s same-concept-opposite-execution characters to the plot’s advantage. He decides one of the main villains will have a prophecy saying he’ll be taken down by a powerful ice mage. The party manages to fool this guy into thinking this ice mage is Jack, and sends Jack to fight him. As soon as the villain sees Jack, he’s like “WHAT??? THIS clown???” (word has absolutely spread throughout the land of Jack not using his ice powers for anything besides mildly annoying trolling). Naturally, the bad guy lets his guard down after thinking he’s going to fight this literal joke, and then Elsa crashes in from the side and absolutely dumpsters him.

Jack tries to defeat the final boss by just annoying him so much that he leaves. Unfortunately, he just annoys him so much that he attacks Rapunzel’s character. Jack’s just like “oh HELL no” and attacks with absolutely nothing held back. Turns out he’s pretty terrifying when he’s not using his magic for Dumb Antics.

During the final boss of the campaign, the Big Bad tries to one-shot Moana’s character, and Merida’s character super theatrically jumps in front of her to take the blow instead. Rapunzel just barely manages to heal Merida’s character, but it’s a really close call. During all this, Merida is like “ah shit...maybe I’m NOT just in this to get fantasy-laid.” After the fight’s over, her and Moana’s characters have a big dramatic love confession and share a Big Damn Kiss in front of everyone. It’s pretty epic.

After the final session of the campaign, Merida drags Moana outside Jack’s apartment and sputters and trips over her words for a solid minute before she finally gets out that through all this nonsense...well...maybe it’s not just in the game that she thinks Moana is hot. Moana just gets this HUGE grin on her face and says “c’mere, Leeroy Jenkins” and just pulls Merida in and kisses her. Cue the rest of the party barging in on them. Merida and Moana freeze, and there’s a moment of terrified silence...and then the entire party starts cheering them on like “took you long enough!”

The entire rest of the party could detect the sexual tension. Literally all of them.

But Eugene is like “HA, THIS MEANS IF WE DO A SEQUEL CAMPAIGN I’M WINNING THAT BET! BECAUSE YOU’RE GONNA BE DATING MO’S CHAR AND THUS NOT ABLE TO SLEEP WITH ANY MORE BARMAIDS!”

By the epilogue session, Jack and Rapunzel are dating. Merida and Moana are also dating. Hiccup and Anna STILL haven’t figured out why they’re so prone to spending half the session flirting when Anna’s love interest shows up, and Hiccup STILL hasn’t figured out why he likes to have Anna’s love interest show up so often. Bless their souls. Maybe they’ll figure it out next campaign...?

Damn I actually really like this...maybe if people like it I’ll do some incorrect quotes or a drabble or something??? Or maybe some HCs from next campaign???

[pandoricpies]

SSO Horrors

A post diving into how dark this franchise’s storyline gets and ideas for a horror game that will never actually be created. SPOILERS for the SL books and SSO storyline.

This idea originally came to me after reading the second book of the SL trilogy, The Legend Awakens. Props to Helena Dahlgren for the Pine Hill Manor scenes in that book; I was completely left on the edge of my seat the entire time. Linda’s whole experience was definitely an unexpected thriller for the children’s genre; cutting her leg on a broken window, exploring an old creepy mansion owned by the centuries-old psychopath that was targeting her, her friends, and their horses, being chased down halls and having to barricade herself in rooms to be protected from the apparent non-human dark riders (not to mention the way Dahlgren describes the animal sounds and scratching that they made, chills), and, to top it all off, nearly dying from sepsis due to her cut becoming infected.... if that’s not horror game material, I don’t know what is.

If you can’t already tell from the title of this post, I am a huge fan of the horror genre. The suspense-packed and often deep moral stories are always a fun watch/read. I personally am currently making my way through some classic Stephen King books that I haven’t read yet which was sort of what inspired this post.

Taking a look at SSO’s storyline on the surface level, we see a classic dark vs. light story, with horses and female heroines as the main points. However, there are quite a few darker elements hidden among the story quests, most of which would only be noticeable to the eye of the older audience of the game. The potential for this plot to be upped to a more mature level as far as darker themes go is definitely there. Regardless, the already existing underlying themes have some heavy themes...

- Teenagers, around the ages of 15-19, have been tasked with saving the world from a demonic entity. They have been granted special powers to do this with. These powers however can be extremely dangerous, as we see with both Alex and Catherine with their Lightning Circle incidents, in which they almost killed living beings. These factors combined would no doubt take some sort of psychological toll on the Soul Riders, as they are so named.

- Brainwashing and cult-mindset was a huge theme brought up with Justin’s kidnapping. He was abruptly cut off from the outside world, had his memories removed, and his mind artificially filled with thoughts of Garnok and world domination. It’s clear when he is rescued and goes back to his home that he’s depressed; his Midsummer dialogue a year back was “My dad thought it would be good for me to get out. I don’t do that much anymore” (not exact but close enough). When he talks to his mother during the memories quests the first thing he jumps to seeing her pregnant with him is “I wonder if she’d would be so excited if she knew all the terrible things I did”. To add to that, upon getting Justin back home, Thomas tells our character “If he keeps having these dark thoughts, I’ll have to turn to the druids.” That in itself was pretty unsettling. All this dialogue was put there to draw attention to the mental affects of literally having your brain tampered with.

- Elizabeth’s story was probably one of the saddest in my opinion. She had to stand by while her friend group fell apart, one going on to die, one going missing, and the other two continuing to split away from her. She then felt it was her responsibility to make up for her sisterhood’s failures, staying with the druids and eventually helping recruit new Soul Riders. Seriously though, imagine that. She saw what pain the magical war brought to her and her friends; knowing that she was pushing four more kids into a situation like that would’ve been devastating (here comes the morals vs. duty idea). Our character must have been a whole other level of that feeling. She saw what Catherine went through with her magic - the fear, the near madness. Then of course she goes on to imprison her close friend’s son (it appeared from the quests that she was closest to Catherine so that just adds to the pain). And to end it all, she sacrifices herself to save a girl who she considered a daughter.... jeez. - Catherine is another issue here for obvious reasons. A teenage girl is entrusted with goddess-level powers, then nearly goes psycho from the inability to control them. You can clearly tell from her last few diary entries how exhausting that was and how happy she was to finally have a somewhat normal life with her husband and son.

- And finally of course we have the DC gang. Mr. Sands is a basket case all on his own, a man who has used mind control (arguably in my opinion one of the creepiest forms of dark magic out there) on numerous victims including his own grandson, a man who legitimately worships a demon, and not to mention has it out for a bunch of teenagers. His whole backstory with Rosalinda made me feel some sort of sympathy for his character (he watched her nearly be drowned to death), and I’m actually quite curious as to where they’re going to take that. Also, The Nightmare Institute? That could be a horror game within itself. All we know so far about that place is that humans and animals are tested on with dangerous materials (ex. Mr. Anwir). Let’s not forget to mention the dark riders who apparently have animal qualities now? (as it was described in the SL books) Ok so we can clearly see that SSO’s storyline gets a bit dark. But just imagine; a Pine Hill Mansion first-person POV game, where you’re in a situation similar to Linda’s, or even one in DC or the Nightmare Institute. Honestly this entire storyline could be turned into some Resident Evil plot lol.

But that being said, as much as it’s fun to speculate these types of things, I enjoy SSO’s storyline just the way it is. It’s enjoyable for me as an older player, but it’s also filled with great moral stories and motivation for young children, especially girls. I love the atmosphere of female empowerment, and it’s especially unique to SSO because around the time of it’s initial release, that wasn’t seen much in video games.

Might start during these ‘chat’ or ‘random things that come to my mind’ posts more often.

[badass-at-fandoming]

Just Little Ventrue Things ~

I finished a Camarilla Ventrue run of VTMB. Mostly, the only thing Ventrue these days know how to do is Dominate, run screaming, eat hot chip, and lie, and [high falsetto voice] here’s a list of other nonsense I discovered:

PC’s name is Christina; she’s a Dominatrix because I’m bi. Her sire was one of her clients, and she’s actually very, very angry about his death. She doesn’t mind being a vampire. She’s Wiccan and part of a coven

In this Camarilla run, I decided I would only do quests given by Camarilla members. My justification was that, while Christina is intelligent and curious about lore, she focuses on tasks that immediately relate to her and her goals. She’s not curious about others; won’t go out of her way to talk to them. She’s not a bleeding heart, like my other PCs, and she believes in the Camarilla’s laws. She just hates LaCroix for killing her sire. Her plan during the game is to curry as much favor within the Cam as possible and cozy up to LaCroix so she can stab him.

Enough backstory

Nonsense time

Smiling Jack laughs at you if you don’t eat a rat in the tutorial. LOL. The Ventrue dialog is like “I could barely choke down the homeless man: please don’t make me eat a rat!”

The blood in the Santa Monica haven’s fridge is now blue blood. Does regular blood make Ventrue sick? I was too scared to experiment.

[spots Mercurio] I am going to steal that ghoul

Rosa: The people you’re looking for are up there. Christina, assuming Rosa is a Cam agent: Okay, thanks, bye

Never spoke to the Thin-Bloods again (sorry Lily baby ;-;)

Everyone except Julius still leaves when the PC reaches Hollywood

If you try to feed on Julius, he WILL kick you in the head and you WILL glitch into the fire, be on fire; run away screaming in Prada

You can skip the whole basement of the Ocean House Hotel if you manage to jump over the hole in the staircase???? Like?? You mean the spookiest fucking level has been optional this whole time I”M

[ghost appears] [Christina smacks it with an axe] None of that.

Club girls speak to Christina and I’m on the FLOOR

Therese “kills” Jeanette, even though I had enough oompa to make that not happen.

Therese joins the Camarilla and says she’s in good position to be the next Prince??? Hello??? Where is our Prince Voerman ending????

Went straight to LaCroix, called him “sir,” and he name-dropped Napoleon.

LaCroix tells Christina to go visit the Anarchs. She blows the Anarchs off (Nines made a growly face, Damsel dialog yowl-exited out after I asked if she wanted to join the Cam; Skelter threatened to murder me twice). When LaCroix told Christina that, while he admired her Cam loyalty, she must listen to her enemies to understand what they wanted, it felt like he was actually being a good sire and mentor.

That’s weird.

When Christina asked for his history, he very carefully explained his lineage, like the important part of Ventrue culture it is.

Overall, I found LaCroix-being-nice-to-me extremely unsettling.

Sir. Stop smiling at me, sir. Stop being impressed I don’t ask for money. STOP MAKING ME UNDERSTAND WHY PEOPLE LIKE YOU, SIR.

In contrast, LaCroix sounded genuinely betrayed at the end

Also made it more obvious when he started to lose track of his marbles

Ventrue PC seems juuuuuuust tall enough for her forehead to glitch into the ceiling of literally any confined space

The dirty Elizabeth Dane policeman didn’t psspspspsp at Christina so the whole ship was 15 white-knuckled minutes of making police dance and scuttling about

There is!!! A lot less!!! Talking in this game!!! Than I remember!!! She is only good at talking and ordering people around i am bEGGING

All EXP goes to Dominate and making Christina extremely charismatic and buff.

Ventrue himbo????

Beckett un-himbo-ifies her

She insults Beckett on their first meeting, spitting out “What do you want, wolfie?!” I thought this was appropriate because she died like, 4 times on that warehouse mission and was Extremely Stressed And Under Duress

Beckett’s response of “Oh, you’re too young to have mouthed off to the truly old ones yet.” makes his later snide remark of “the young ones are so temperamental” 900% funnier. Yeah, LaCroix! Beckett thinks I’ve grown and am now more mature than you! XD

Missions involving sex workers hit different when you’re a sex worker.

Christina was incandescent with rage at the Brotherhood

Grout’s mansion mission was a lot of “I have no interest in this nonsense.”

For the first time ever, I didn’t kill anyone during the Museum quest! This is because Christina ran very fast and Dominated every guard as quickly as possible. Every single fucking guard knew she was there, but could do nothing about it, because they were dancing. The door to the sarcophagus locked (it will do this if too many guards are agro), but locked doors are no match for noclip hack.

Entertaining image of a tall woman absolutely blasting into this museum room and Beckett tackling her to the floor like wait! I must snark at you! You are legally obligated to speak with me!

Isaac is still somehow a pretty chill guy to work with if you’re Camarilla.

Christina didn’t visit VV or Ash. Interestingly, Ash didn’t show up at the hunter monastery later. Did he just die in his club? Is he still there, waiting, deciding?

Christina @ Andrei: what the fuck is this shit

“I don’t care. It’s ugly. Clean it up.”

SEWERS.

Not as bad as I was expecting

Did take shortcut, run away from fights, ducked out in the middle for a snack, and bring 7 blue blood packs tho

Gary threatened to shred her face with a cheese grater, which I thought was Toreador only dialog?? It must be connected to the Appearance Stat. Which Christina has maxed out.

When Heather became Christina’s ghoul, I was delighted because I thought this meant Christina would always have fresh blood.

No

If you ask to feed on her too soon after the last time, Heather says she feels light headed and wants to lie down. The dialog exits out

I love you, Heather bb

Perfected the art of nudging NPCs into corners

Mitnick’s quests now feature Enforced Nap Time for all guards

Seriously, Dominate is ridiculously powerful, hooooly shit. I get why people like it. I also like it when people do things I ask them to do.

Christina can’t sneak, but she CAN strongly encourage everyone to choke on their own tongues.

Very high contrast in the beginning of the game: 2 punches would knock her over, but anyone she spoke to would obey immediately and without question

Chinatown goes by ridiculously fast if you can’t sneak and don’t do any sidequests besides Mitnick’s.

For the first time ever, Zhao survived! This is because Christina made him take a nap.

He just told her to leave

You’re welcome, my good dude

IDK if it’s a game glitch, but Christina would vocalize? In battle, she grunts with effort and pain.

Got to the point where I kept expecting Dominate dialog in every interaction and would get disappointed if it didn’t show up. What do you mean I have to actually convince people? That’s lame.

Christina was polite and charming to Ming Xiao, who also conveyed a deeper betrayal than normal at the end. ;-;

I promise to give you a Ventrue boy toy soon, Xiao

Finale arc quests went by VERY FAST because Christina can’t sneak for shit. Just run in, Dominate blazing

You can skip the outside bit of the Hallowbrook Hotel if you find the open door on the top level what the fuuuuuuuuuCK

[“A Little Party Never Killed Nobody” plays while Christina wipes out the Sabbat in 10 minutes]

Andrei disappeared mid-fight and didn’t come back until I complained that only I was allowed to run away from boss fights

I’m categorizing “triggering the interaction to save Heather” as something quite difficult to do. The timing has to be just right. I’ve missed it twice now. BUT hacking into the game to save her is easy.

I love you, Heather bb

Final Beckett talk had the vibe of “You’re a very different person than me, but you’re also High Humanity and trying to do good. You don’t deserve to die.”

Damsel threatens to kick the shit out of Christina and is extremely reluctant to tell her where Nines is

“Out of all people, they send you? All right, let’s just talk terms.” - Nines because Christina was short with him one (1) time

WEREWOLF HARD

You can just?? Walk out of your haven?? Without speaking to Jack at all???

I didn’t do that

But I could have

[”Dust in the Wind” plays while Christina kills entire Camarilla hit squad in 3 minutes]

You can visit Mercurio and Trip on your way out of Santa Monica??

Mercurio makes no comment on the blood hunt. Business as usual with him. This is fine.

Christina: I’m SO going to adopt that ghoul. And perhaps Isaac can be convinced to part with Romero...

(For the first time ever, my PC boinked Romero. Twice, to receive the break up email)

This is definitely a glitch, but Christina brushed up against Caine, and a worried voice said, “Are you all right?” It sounded like the same voice actor, but a higher pitch?

Always nice to think about Caine demonstrating care

Christina asked Caine who he is, and Caine replied that he “gets people where they’re going. [He’s] a driver,”  which is a nice nod (lol) to both his literal job as a driver and as a shepherd/creator/god to Kindred. Caine creates and makes fate.

Caine triple checks with Christina that she’s sure Strauss won’t betray her. Thanks, Vampire Dad. :’D

For some reason, only other Ventrue guarded LaCroix’s tower. I wonder if this is intentional. Like all the other Camarilla Clans backed Strauss and left? So only LaCroix’s Ventrue lackeys remain? Anyway, it created some weird moments where Christina fought her double.

KILL YOUR DOUBLE

Sheriff laughed in haughty joy that he was to kill Christina. I don’t remember him laughing in other playthroughs.

Christina ruining Caine and Jack’s prank oh noes

[dawn-of-tomorrow]

shoutout to @punishing-gray-raven-ocs for this ask game!! (didin't expect to be tagged with one so soon lolol but i'm overjoyed~~ ｡ﾟ(ﾟ´Д｀ﾟ)ﾟ｡❤️❤️)

1) What made you even think of trying Punishing Gray Raven? What made you stick with it?

Funny story actually-- I've long heard about PGR, way back when it was first released even, but I just didn't give it a chance back then mainly because it was in CN and I couldn't understand shit (rather ironic given how I am now lmao).

As for why I decided fairly recently, a couple of months give or take, to give PGR a shot? It's mainly due to the fact that I heard that the Global version would be out very soon, so I thought why not dive into what I've missed so far... not knowing that I'd become THIS obsessed with the game, aha~.

The most obvious thing that made me stick to this game are the interesting cast of characters, the "fun" story, the amazing yet simple game mechanics, and etc. etc.

2) What problems, if any, do you have with PGR?

Honestly speaking, the thing that most VEXES me at the moment about PGR, specifically PGR Global, is the wonky translations. It feels like a group of half-assed fan translators and one official translator who's not doing a good enough job with reigning everyone in instead of feeling like a group of professional translators who know what they're doing. Hell, I've seen better translations from some of my twitter mutuals!

3) Who is your favorite Construct, and why?

Lee. There's no question about it, Lee is my most favorite Construct at the moment (and forever perhaps ohoho~). As for why, god, hold that mic for a bit, I'm gonna go on a fucking rant. Ehem.

First of all, let's start with the most basic of things, like his appearances; As Palefire, he looks like this suave, very aloof, super serious, unapproachable, and "gets shit done efficiently" type of person, and while that description certainly isn't wrong, it's also hiding more layers of Lee's overall personality; as Entropy, he certainly looks and feels bit more casual than before, along with feeling somewhat more, even if a tiny bit, more honest with his feelings and easier to approach than before.

Despite being a serious, no-nonsense, grumpy guy, he's prone to occasionally quip and snark at anyone at their own expense especially if they get on his nerves (see his interactions with Kamui, not even the Commandant is spared from this!). He's also not as cold and distant as he may come across, given that, early on, he quite literally jumps in front of Liv to take a hit that was meant for her with absolutely no hesitation whatsoever, he's almost always the first person to make comments on the Commandant's state as well as express his undiluted feelings (though not without hiding it on occasion behind anger/annoyance, thus making it a case of "anger born from worry").

You can also easily tell if you pay close enough attention to his dialogue and actions that he's not good with expressing his true feelings even to the people he cares about (thankfully Murray, Skk, Lucia, Liv, Kamui, etc. can usually pick up on what he really wants to say), is the type to often be misunderstood due to him being the kind of person who believes in "actions speak louder than words", that he's used to taking care of others instead of prioritizing himself even to his own detriment; while making it clear that he prefers to think and act in a logical and practical manner, he's not exempt to having emotions/feelings, as such, he can be pretty empathetic towards other people even if he doesn't look like it (he's even the first one in the Gray Raven squad to point out WHY EXACTLY the people they come across in Echo Aria refuse to leave their homes even with high risk of the Red Tide washing everything away, and fully understanding as well as getting it).

Alrighty I'm gonna cut that segment short now before this becomes too long for anyone to read through, ehe~!

4) What made you think of designing PGR OCs, instead of making yourself into a self-insert?

.... Actually, truth be told, both of my Skks are, in some way, self-inserts~. It's just that they start out as one before eventually developing into their own characters with only hints/traces of their self-insert origin. Though my Construct OCs are definitely not self-inserts, that much I can certainly say so!

I made them mainly because I really enjoyed the official cast so much I wanted to make characters that would get to interact with them somehow, though I take great care in making sure they aren't TOO out of character with how they're canonically portrayed.

5) What's your thought process behind creating your OCs?

Honestly, it usually starts of something like this--

"lol wouldn't it be funny if I made this type of character? Oooh, what if they interacted with this character? Or this character? Or that character? Let's see, what's missing... Backstory and profile, check. Appearance, I'll sketch one in a bit. Hmmm... I know! *drowns the OC in mountains load of angst*"

6) What's your favorite chapter from the main story?

If I'm limited to talking only about the main chapters currently released on Global then it would have to be Fallen Star, mainly because it's Watanabe's time to shine~. (*´∀｀*)

However, if we were to look at the overall chapters, then, I would have to say Imprisoned Sight.

7) What do you think of the new Liv shown in the latest stream? Where do you think the story is going with her? What do you think happened to Gray Raven?

With Liv, I have a really bad and somber feeling about what Kuro Game has in store for her, given how she looks almost complete different than what she's looked so far, as well as the vibe her new look gives off.

Fuck, I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to thanos snap her memories away as well like they did with Lucia, or worse, infect her with the Punishing and turn her into an actual enemy (for a while before we get her back).

As for Gray Raven, considering what happened at the end of Evernight Beat, wherein the Skk is in a fucking coma with a chunk of the Mother Structure lodged in their abdomen, while Lee and Lucia are in repairs along with Liv, and, if I recall correctly, the Merciful One managed to reach Babylonia and is now onboard the space station as well-- I have a feeling that the despairing Liv will be approached by her and be given a new frame.

8) Have you seen the animated shorts? What do you think of them?

If you're talking about the Panini anime then yes, I've watched them already! Still ripping my insides open from laughter everytime I watch them lol. Favorite episode has got to be the toilet episode, next to that would be the episode where Chrome takes Kamui to Karenina and Liv for training.

9) So do Constructs eat or not? (I'm really confused, especially since I saw Karenina sipping a drink in one of the shorts)

Oh they most certainly can! Fuck, it's even explicitly stated that Camu likes to eat and sample foods whenever he can (revealed in his secrets, as well as his affection stories).

As Camu explains, while they don't get nutrients from human food, they most certainly can still enjoy them and use them as a type of fuel.

10) Do you think Kamui and/or Camu will be a really pivotal plot device at some point, considering how the information on Kamui is so top secret?

Hmmmm.... unless the story at that point is revolving around Kurono Ops and how shady they're being, then personally speaking, the chances are slim.

11) Do you think, at any point, any of the Gray Ravens will die off?

Naaaaaah. They won't do that. Sure, they TECHNICALLY killed off Lucia, but she's still "alive" in a sense, so it both counts and doesn't count.

Besides, sometimes death isn't the worse thing you can inflict on someone/a character~.

12) Who is your least favorite Construct, and why?

I don't really hate/dislike any of the Constructs if I'm being honest. Though I hate how shitty of a unit Sophia is, and that it's kinda pitiful that she's become even more useless now that the new S-Liv is here; but I am in no way saying you should stop using her, keep using Sophia if you really like her! It's your choice after all, and I'm not about to contest you on that part, after all, everyone's enjoyment is subjective.

13) What part of PGR's lore really holds your attention?

The part of the lore that really holds my attention are the characters, and seeing how they react and act to the situations happening to and around them, especially concerning the Punishing and forces out of their control~.

[ramblings-of-a-mad-cat]

(sees another fandom that I can ask you about and cheers) Orphan Black! Thoughts? I don't know Dr Who but Tatiana is one of my favorite actors period.

Anon you are so sweet! I'm always happy to chat about fandoms and characters and whatnot, and I will never not appreciate the majesty of Tatiana's acting. That is one of the greatest parts of the show hands down.

Orphan Black, to me, is a show that had incredible potential, but didn't really live up to the excitement it created. (Loooong post ahead.)

The thing is, Orphan Black builds a chilling mystery and background, the world it gradually creates as it goes for about the first two seasons, got be very invested and made me wonder a lot about where it was going to go and what the answers were. The setup is brilliant, right from the start with that iconic cold open of Beth's suicide. The unknown is what really helped this show get as thrilling as it was, because the actual answers behind the unknown were kind of hit and miss, and it seemed like far too often, the show just wasn't interested in telling it's story. Hijinks where the clones impersonate each other in slice of life events? That's fun at first and it really works well as they're still getting to know each other. But after a while, it gets tedious, and it seems like the show would rather fuck around and have dance parties (seriously, that scene was such a #BigLippedAlligatorMoment) than focus on the story and the threat that the sisters are facing. Virtually all of Allison's plotlines are like this, they feel like they belong in a different show, and for some reason the writers insisted on giving her one of these storylines like, every season. After Allison passively murders her own friend out of suspecting that she's spying on her, I just don't feel like an arc about her running for some PTA office position even matters. It doesn't feel right.

Speaking of that, here's another example: Donnie. Why did the end of the first season suggest that he was this secret mastermind working for Leekie? The whole idea just deflates in Season 2 and doesn't really go anywhere. He just goes back to being the bumbling sweetheart he was before. Why even have him be the spy? Maybe it should have been Ainsley. Do you want to know the exact moment that I think Orphan Black went wrong? Like, the specific scene? When Leekie was killed off. The character who had thus far been the Big Bad, gets taken out in the stupidest possible way, a literal accident on Donnie's part, and it's even played for laughs. After that point, the show really struggled to regain it's footing, though I don't think it completely went off the rails until about Season 4, and it was still generally hit or miss. Like, some stuff was really good. The introduction of the Castor clones, the development of Rachel's character (I'll get to her, trust me.) and the reveal of Kendall Malone. But it seemed like so much else was just forgotten or otherwise not resolved. Whatever happened to Cal? Sure, the show wanted to focus on the sisters...but Kira deserves to know her father if she wants to. That's just one example. It's a crying shame because this show is sometimes incredible. The metaphor that I always use for situations like this, is a card game. The show has all the right cards in its hand, they're just not being played.

The two strongest characters, at least to me, were Rachel and Helena. One of these characters was superbly written and went through a devastating arc. The other was Helena. We need to talk about her. In Season 1, she really cemented herself as a memorable presence with her trademark accent, her scars, her whole damn personality (again, hats off to Tatiana) and of course, that iconic screechy theme music that accompanied her. Which at first made us jump, but eventually made us cheer. I adored Helena, and I loved the development of her relationship with Sarah. Who went from shooting her in Season 1, to being deadset on rescuring her in Season 3, being furious with Siobhan for betraying her. (This is unrelated but Siobhan has the same " twist villain fakeout" at the end of Season 1 that Donnie does, and it's quite frustrating.) And yet, I swear, the writers just didn't know what to do with Helena half the time. They put her on a bus for long stretches, including one point where she just up and leaves Allison's house in Season 4, for no given reason. And the characters just kind of...don't care. The same thing happens when she gets arrested. No one cares to try and find Helena, even though she's unstable and often a danger to those around her. Even though she's by herself with no real ability to function in society. Even though she's pregnant. There is no excuse for this, and no Sarah, that "I'm sorry, I avoided you" scene in Season 5 is not going to cut it. It's such an afterthought.

I'm being rather critical, but I hope you can tell that this is from a point of passion. I genuinely enjoyed this show and getting to watch it. Just that sometimes it didn't feel like the show cared that I was watching. However, this was not true whenever Rachel was onscreen. Look, I'm a Merula Snyde stan, so you can probably already guess how I feel about Rachel. Despite her crimes, despite her constant slipping back the dark side, I felt so bad for Rachel at the end of it all. That scene with Kira really sums it up. "Who hurt you?" "All of them." And no scene is more intense than when she stabs out the eye cam. Like, I'm sorry, I pitied Rachel pretty much from Season 2 on. Her parents were horrible to her, and I'm supposed to think Ethan is the good guy here? He kills himself in front of his own daughter, telling her that she doesn't deserve him. And then Sarah shoots a pencil through her eye, causing brain damage and requiring a long recovery. I'm not saying that Sarah was wrong to do what she did, just that if I were in her shoes, I'd still feel a degree of guilt for Rachel's condition. In the end, I'm devastated that she was barred from Clone Club, when she made the right decision at the point it mattered. But there's just too much history there, and Sarah won't ever forgive her. (Though again, I do feel as though there's blame to share.) Rachel is my favorite character and I never expected her to be. But she's just so complex. Side note: "Enjoy your oophorectomy" is so damn quotable. I don't know why but I love that line.

So, Rachel's my favorite. Who's my least favorite? It might surprise you. It's Delphine. I'm sorry, but I just...I couldn't get on board with C*phine. Not after Season 3. I was waiting for the point that the show would push to finally redeem Delphine for her turncoat role, for all of the hell that she put Cosima through. By Season 5 though? I realized that as far as the writers were concerned? She already was redeemed. Even though she did nothing to earn it, except be presumed dead by Cosima. The way she treats Cosima in Season 3 is actually disgusting. Her reasoning for breaking up with Cosima is circular. She has to love "all the clones" in order to be with Cosima, and the way to do that is to take over Rachel's job, which means they can't date anymore? I'm not the only one who thought that didn't make sense, right? Oh and let's talk about how she stalks Cosima's date, breaks into her house, and threatens her life. Red. Flags. Cosima even says the line, "If you're not going to be with me, just let me go." I'm sorry, that should not be something she has to beg for. Delphine's behavior made me want her to stay far, far away from Cosima. Who is, incidentally, a sweetie and I absolutely adore her. I legit have trouble remembering that Tatiana's playing her because she just looks and acts so different. That said, even though I immensely disliked Delphine, I am so very glad that they made one of the clones gay. Just like I'm glad that they made one of them trans. (Though...Tony wasn't handled especially well.)

In general, I do think the earlier seasons were stronger. The Brightborn arc, while interesting, didn't really contribute much to the overarching narrative. We got the backstory on Beth's suicide and finally learned the truth about her, I suppose. Still, even though Beth is one of my favorite of the clones, and I never expected her to be either...I feel like the actual reason given for why she took her own life was rather illogical. She apparently did it because the investigation was putting the clones in danger of another Helsinki. Okay, but just because Evie Cho says you should off yourself, doesn't mean you have to. You could just, like...stop investigating. And if you die under mysterious circumstances without explaining anything to the sisters, they're not going to be put off from the investigation. They're going to look into this even more, because they don't know why they're not supposed to. The reveal that she and Art fell in love toward the end adds an extra gut punch, but it also doesn't make sense because wouldn't Art have referenced it during the period that he thought Sarah was Beth? On the other hand, Season 4 also introduced MK. And I have such a soft spot for her. I adore that sheep-masked sweetie. Everyone always asks "Which clone would you date" (because fandoms can think of nothing else I guess) and I never see anyone give any love to MK. Her death absolutely tore me apart. I am glad Siobhan avenged her even if she went down at the same time. Side note, her last word being the affectionate "Chickens..." Broke me.

Season 5 was a strange beast. In general, it seemed like we were finally getting some answers to the questions that were hanging over us. Exploring the deep mythos. But then they kind of turned it around and made it just be a Wizard of Oz style fraud twist. Westmoreland isn't really inhumanly old, he's a charlatan. I don't know why that was necessary in a science fictional show. I've seen the interviews and I get what they were going for, it just feels like it would have been cooler and far creepier if he was actually that old. The puppet master pulling the strings the whole time. We also finally get some answers for Kira's superhuman healing abilities (though we never learn how she's telepathically connected to the clones) and I'm loving it, but the trouble is, it's inconsistent. Ethan "Why is this guy so popular, he's an asshole" Duncan told Rachel specifically that Sarah being able to have children was a fluke, that the clones were "barren by design." I don't know, the whole concept of Revival and of the "magical island" was really foreboding and tied in with the earlier references to The Island of Doctor Moreau. Especially that song about "Revival's Children" just...the shudders, man. But just having it be a regular old scam is...a letdown. I know it may be more realistic, but I don't always need realism in my scifi. The finale is interesting, in that it's mostly an epilogue. I'm glad the clones (sans Rachel) got to live happily ever after, but there are two gut punches right at the end that are total nitpicks but they bother me. Helena naming her kids after Art and Donnie? And writing a memoir that she names "Orphan Black?" Those two tropes can go die in a hole. They can enjoy an oophorectomy, because I'm so sick of them.

The potential of Orphan Black was practically infinite. The results of Orphan Black fell frustratingly short.

[durotoswrites]

For the writing meme thingy: 🍄how do you get yourself in the mood to write? 🍑 do you/would you write smut? 📒 any fics planned?

🍄 How do you get yourself in the mood to write?

Getting in the mood to write and actually wanting to sit down and start writing are two very different things, but they're connected, so I'll explain both.

To set into “creative mode” it helps me to do these things:

Listen to music that makes me think of a character/situation in my story/stories. I've got playlists separated by character and pairing. Sometimes I also just work on curating those playlists for fun and get my brain going.

Bounce overall ideas off of my friends and husband/editor (but he's my best friend, too 💗)

Reread old chapters or recent ones and future snippets based on what I want to do.

Once I actually want to put words down, I get a little more strict with myself. I get distracted verrrry easily sometimes and I have to fight the urge to open a million more tabs when researching a small detail.

I move to instrumental music (I have playlists for different moods like “emotional”, “soft”, “sad”, etc. I usually listen to “soft” as a general soothing background sound, as I can get pretty dang emotional when I write, especially with the stuff I've been churning out lately.

So, yeah, I need tissues within reach if I get upset. (Wow, I'm not making this sound fun at all, lmao)

After sound has been established, I like to eat a snack (something with protein) because I can be under for hours, lol. Eat it and finish it. Otherwise, I get distracted.

I also like to have drinks available. I always have a bottle of water, but I also like having a hot cup of tea. I think it's the time of year for me to switch to cold barley tea.

I write while seated on a recliner with my feet up. I have my laptop on a lap desk and it's a pretty cozy setup.

I basically try to remove any excuse I have to get up once I start writing, because I am the worst procrastinator I know.

🍑Do you/would you write smut?

Heheh... heck yeah, I do. Waaaaay more than most people realize. Stuff I've actually posted? It's pretty limited. I posted a couple pieces (Let Me Love You and You're Like the Sunshine) a few years ago, but I've been practicing ever since. One of my planned stories literally has what I refer to as a “smut dump” in the draft where I've been experimenting with writing different moods. I like the intimate scenes to play a role in the overall plot or have it be a bonding experience.

Despite that, I do have a shameless Gray x Mary story I should just get out there that has zero plot, just two cuties in love. In my mind it's so naughty and kinky and I get flustered thinking about it (Mary is hot, okay?), but it's probably hella vanilla, lmao. I really am grateful that people have been really supportive about my writing smut despite what I usually write, and they've been so encouraging, too! I honestly feel like the smut I've posted is really stilted because I was so self-conscious about it. I don't feel like they are terrible for first attempts, but I have definitely grown more comfortable writing it.

Will The Shy Newcomer become explicit? I kinda really want it to, but I might separate the chapters for those who don't care for that content. Overall, I'd like to write more and post more, and I want to write more than just male x female smut as well. I have some of those in my planned pieces (more about them later).

📒 Any Fics Planned?

Firstly, I'm super tickled more than one person was interested in this. I copied the answer I wrote earlier.

Short answer: Yes. I also plan to bring more of my stories over from ffn to Ao3.

Long answer under the cut, heheh. I rambled quite a bit.

Ask me about my writing processes and stories!

I have so many WIPs that haven’t been touched in years that I’d like to finish, so new planned fics aren’t posted yet. Some of them have more adult themes than most of the stuff I’ve been writing, so I get flustered sharing them. I’ve been at a crossroads, as I feel that you can’t have growth without changing things up. On the other hand, I feel like a lot of my readers associate my works with a specific “wholesome” feel-good mood. It’s kinda nice to be known for something, although that might just be my ego talking, thinking that people recognize my work as a “type”.

Regardless, in the end, I feel growth is necessary.

I don’t want to leave a lot of unfinished WIPs waiting because they stress me out and I have too many of them already, so I’d like to have a bulk of my new stories with a good chunk written before I decide to post them.

Among those include:

A longfic featuring Pete’s farm in Forget-Me-Not Valley (A blend of HMDS with the FoMT plugin and AWL). It takes place in the same universe as The Shy Newcomer (Claire in Mineral Town) and there are a few overlapping moments, although Pete’s story starts first. Pete’s personality is verrry different from Claire’s, and his story was kind of supposed to be the yang to TSN’s yin. Pete’s best friends in his story are Ruby (not sure if I’m adding Tim yet), Nami, and Rock. Readers will be treated to a poorly-socialized pre-Mineral Town Cliff (if you think he was bad at the beginning of TSN, well… heh… he’s a wreck here).

Another planned unpublished story is a crossover of Harvest Moon and the movie “In This Corner of the World”, based on a manga of the same name by Fumiyo Kouno. It was written as a gift for a friend. I have the entire outline figured out and have slowly been filling it in. My friend asked for an AU where Claire and Cliff have an arranged marriage and live with his family in Akiyama, the hometown I had created for Cliff in The Shy Newcomer. I took the opportunity to expand the characters in his family. I have it written during the same time period and society as “In This Corner of the World”, but had decided to write a spreading disease as an allegory for war, but then COVID happened and some parts of it just got really hard to write. There are also a lot of sexually explicit content as Claire slowly grows and learns from her spouse that it’s okay to express what she wants despite sex being a taboo issue. If there’s enough interest in the story, I’ll post it, but I worry it’s a little too niche for there to be many people into it.

Pastor Carter and Doctor Trent are one of my favorite rare pair ships. I’ve had a partial draft for a story about them for a few years now, especially focusing on Trent growing up and acknowledging that he has an unhealthy addiction for things that he knows he can’t have. There are some more adult/sexual themes in this piece, too, including the main character lusting after a married woman (who also happens to be his patient) and some lemons. (Does anyone call it that anymore or is it just referred to as “smut” nowadays? Haha) I always feel so bad for neglecting the folks at the clinic in-game and wanted to write a piece that focused more on them, Trent specifically. It’s a multi-chap fic, but I don’t think I’m going to let it get as long as some of my other pieces.

I also really want to write a short romantic oneshot for every marriage candidate in Mineral Town, around 1,000 words each. So far, I have one for Cliff and one for Gray. I want to write Claire with everyone, because I think it would be fun to explore all the different personalities.

I have more installments planned for A Single Day, including a day in the life of the following characters, all with drafts in varying degrees of progress:

Anna

Doug

Nora (yes, I’m writing from the point of view of the cat living at the inn)

More to come – I think Lillia and Thomas would be especially interesting to explore

I do still have that Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask piece I’ve been pondering where Link befriends the soul of the deku scrub child while possessed by the mask. I don’t have much written about it, but I really love the world of Majora’s Mask. Such a fun game.

I also think about the lead carpenter’s son in Ocarina of Time and that weird side quest involving the blue chicken and the son being lost to the forest. Then that unique-looking kokiri girl explaining that all who get taken in the lost woods become stalfos. Like, did the guy die? Was he sick? Did he want to die? There’s just so much going on there that would be fun to explore.

I also have played OMORI recently and have like… A LOT of feelings about it. I don’t know what I’d write, but I’m still damn impressed at how well the characters are developed in such a short game.

Other games I’ve had vague ideas about writing for include the following:

The Flame in the Flood: I’m thinking a survivalist/action story fleshing out Scout’s backstory a bit more and her thoughts as she’s traveling. I feel like she’s a very lonely person, but isn’t given the chance to really dwell on it.

Night In the Woods: I’d love to write more about Mae’s dreams and what they mean to her. She doesn’t really talk to anyone about them openly, so it’s really hard to tell her feelings about them in some regards. We know that she’s distressed about them, but I’d like to dive a little deeper. Do the nightmares end after the games does? What about Bea’s new nightmares?

Hades (Supergiant Games): I think it would be fun to write more about the events that take place before the game starts, like Zagreus’s duties in the house of Hades, and expand on the strained relationship with his father.