#but i don't remember if there was any specific episode that had a real focus on him

[wen-kexing-apologist]

Last Twilight: Ep 12

The TL;DR of this post is just... Sincerely what the fuck?

I remember posting after Episode 1 that I was keeping a suspicious eye on the mention of the eye donation because while I do think in real life disabled people have the right to manage their disability any way they want to and would support someone's choice to get a cornea transplant, real life is not fiction and fiction is designed to pull messages and themes from. Episode 12 from almost it's first moments completely undermines two and a half month's worth of messaging about learning to accept a new reality. I don't think it is foolish of me to assume based on the set up of the first episode that Last Twilight was supposed to be an exploration of grief as told in conversation and parallel between someone who lost a loved one and someone who lost their vision.

If this story had continued in the way it started out the first half of this show, I honestly think it could have been a 10, those first few episodes I was enjoying so much I was worried it might knock out Moonlight Chicken as my favorite Aof offering. Now I have rated Last Twilight as a 3, I will never suggest it to anyone and I will never rewatch it. Why?

Because from a fictional narrative perspective, having Day gain his vision back at the end undermines the entirety of the show's messaging from the first 11 episodes. Every single lesson, every single message just absolutely obliterated by every moment of Episode 12.

Day getting his vision back right as he and Mhok get back undermines the narrative in the following ways:

Rewarding Day for managing to create a successful and happy life as a blind person (literally like "hey you graduated and ran a bookstore while blind! Congrats you get to be normal again!)

"Rewarding" Mhok by insuring that he never has to do any caregiving for Day going forward so we don't get any navigating or expectation of Mhok and Day being in a longterm inter-abled relationship

We eliminate all chances that the subject of pitying Day re-enters any future fights, meaning there is now zero risk for Day maintaining a relationship with someone he worries might infantilize or pity him

It absolves Night of any remaining guilt he may be carrying from thinking he caused the accident that made Day blind

It absolves Day of any remaining anger at Night thinking he caused the accident that made Day blind

Mhon's ableist fucking ass gets her "normal" son back the way she confided in Mhok she'd hoped for after the first failed cornea transplant

It undermines the theme of the in universe Last Twilight novel and the conversation that Day and Mhok have about Mee being turned in to a statue on the top of the mountain and how that was hopeful because her father had found a sight so beautiful he couldn't think of anywhere else Mee would need to see and instead turns the message essentially in to: "there is hope, you can be cured"

It dismantles their cute couple thing of the one palm distance which also makes the OST that they played all the fucking time completely irrelevant

And most importantly, it undermines all the growth that Day went through while processing his grief and the two, TWO separate occasions where he came to terms with his disability

And that's just the disregard for the narrative messages, giving Day his eyesight back is incredibly ableist in the case of this story because of certain ableist through-lines woven in to the entire show. Namely:

While Day is blind, there is no reciprocity of care. Mhok is always taking care of Day, I cannot think of a single instance where Day really took care of Mhok in a significant way. By focusing so much on Day, and abandoning any strong focus on Mhok's grief over losing his sister, Day is never given an opportunity to be a support system for Mhok. Which is fucking ableist. Disabled people have so many things to offer the world, and while they might have specific support needs that does not mean that they can't offer support in return.

Mhok doesn't introduce Day to his family at their graves until after Day has his vision restored, and it is only then that Mhok says he has someone to take care of him. Able-ist!

Day gets his vision back almost immediately after a conversation with his mother where she says he wants to be normal and the fight he had with Mhok is normal.

Handling the entire story this way, with the break up, and a three year time gap, and then Day having his vision restored literally hours after he and Mhok get back together does not allow for any exploration of Mhok and Day having to figure out the differences between Mhok being his caretaker and Mhok being his partner.

We shunted literally every part of Mhok's backstory completely to the side, which in and of itself is fucking ableist in my opinion because it implies that able bodied people who are caretakers for or who are in a relationship with a disabled person don't have any time for themselves, to deal with their own shit or to have their own needs because they are too busy taking care of a disabled person.

With this being, what, the first main character in a BL with blindness, you want to go for the cure route after acceptance? Like you are rewarding someone for their bravery of handling their disability instead of allowing the disabled person to remain happy and thriving in the life they have built for themselves while they continue to be blind?

I'm not blind, so forgive me if I am overstepping at any point here but in my opinion, if you want a narrative that gives Day back his eyesight, that story that not be written by a sighted person. You need blind writers, people with the lived experience having control over the story so the narrative is better able to navigate the complexity of a decision like that, to reverse a character's blindness. I just think blind people would be able to minimize how much returning someone's eyesight might come off as ableist in a story like this. Additionally going the cure route is not a choice I think anyone should be making with the first BL that focuses this heavily on blindness. This world is so fucking ableist, if you want to make a story with a disabled main character with how slim of pickings there are, it feels much more responsible and subversive to go a disability pride route.

And these are just the issues around disability in this show, I have problems with the classism in this show, I have problems with the absolute ridiculousness of Mhok and Day's breakup and their reunion. MHOK APOLOGIZES, MHOK THANKS DAY FOR BREAKING UP WITH HIM, DAY DOES NOT APOLOGIZE FOR BREAKING UP WITH MHOK OR BLOCKING HIM ON SOCIALS FOR THREE YEARS BECAUSE MHOK PITIED DAY ONE (1) TIME. I get not wanting to be pitied, I get it, but seriously it is so much less compelling to have Day just completely abandon Mhok after all of the positive experiences they've had together because he messed up once rather than reel himself back in and have an adult conversation about what happened and try to get back to a balanced state.

Anyway, fuck this show. I am so disappointed that this is Aof's last directed piece for who knows how long. He could have gone out with a bang after Moonlight Chicken and now I am just fucking thankful I won't have to see anything else from him for awhile.

#last twilight #last twilight the series #let me reiterate that real life is different than fiction #disabled people have all the right in the world to handle their disability and any associated treatments however they want #this is fiction #and fiction reaches a wide audience and therefore has a responsibility in its messaging #last twilight meta #last twilight analysis

[decepti-thots]

☕ MTOs & specifically what do you think they were going for with that?

MTOs are an interesting narrative thing to me in the sense that they really are so localised to only one part of the canon; they're very clearly Roberts' idea and only really matter, inasmuch as they do matter, in MTMTE. It's pretty clear to me that's the case for one specific reason: they'd actually fit SUPER well into the narrative arc of exRiD, especially early-to-mid RiD, but they basically never come up! You'd think 'neutrals and soldiers stuggling to cohabit socially and politically' would be prime fodder (lmao) for taking advantage of a narrative about mechs born of and into war coming back to a civilian life on a planet they really don't know. And yet.

What they're doing in that comic, in MTMTE, is a little headscratching to me at times. It feels, to be honest, somewhat like worldbuilding put in to make the texture of the backstory of the war feel grander than IDW had really managed up to that point in actual on-panel stuff, without a lot of thought when doing so in the moment as to the knock on implications going forward. MTMTE does this a few times, tries to use vague gestures at important sounding stuff to bring a greater sense of history and depth to the war in the face of the actual stuff we saw in phase one being. Mmmm. Basically just twenty dudes we already know shooting at each other across parking lots. LMAO.

(Sidenote: I know for a fact Roberts watched original flavour nuWho, and this is PEAK Russell T Davies doing worldbuilding when he was on Doctor Who, and I fully believe he was cribbing from that playbook. Every damn episode RTD would make them just sort of say stuff about the Time War that made it sound incredibly vast and textured and complex but which, crucially, never made any actual fucking sense. Good examples of stuff like this would be the Crucible, the Simanzi massacre, etc. This is, to be clear, a neutral observation, not praise or criticism per se.)

I say this because MTOs should probably be a bigger deal in terms of the impact on our cast, and their outlook on life and reasons for joining the quest, than they wind up being. An MTO is a character with no experience of living in peacetime at all, likely no experience of Cybertron, no sense of kinship or home necessarily to the planet they came "back" to. All of this provides a really clear motivation, given the implication most surviving non-neutral Cybertronians are now MTOs due to huge numbers of deaths, to join a quest like the Lost Light's! But it tends not to come up much, and I think it's because it wasn't really part of the plan. Later on, there's room to slot in some details here and there- Riptide talking about his experiences with being infodumped at by the 'training' comes to mind- but it takes a while for the comic to come back round to that.

The two big exceptions, of course, are Getaway and Brainstorm. The idea is definitely interacting with their characters more, though again, it... tends to come up later. Especially for Getaway, who I'm not convinced was originally conceived as an MTO, but had it slotted in a bit later as 'well that works' stuff tbh. (And it does, so that's fine!) Which leaves Brainstorm, who lies about being forged to throw off suspicion, who it's implied never got the time of day from Quark in a way I wouldn't be surprised we're supposed to assume is some kind of remaining bias, perhaps. Who didn't see a future for himself 'back on Cybertron' and so concocted a very weird plan to avoid having to. Who never got a choice about his 'side' in the war, and wound up with no real loyalty for anyone.

I think if there's any avenue I'd have liked to see more about MTOs via, it's Brainstorm. I wish there'd been more room to focus on that instead of (I'm so sorry shippers) his thing with Perceptor as the way to talk about his sense of inadequacy, tbh. What did it feel like, lying to Chromedome about remembering a pre-war life he never got a chance to experience? Being made to shoot people and be shot and escaping the fate of having that be the only thing he ever knew by the skin of his teeth? Not being able to imagine an end to the war, so all he wants to do is save one guy and run off with him as a pipe dream? That seems like the character where a lot of this stuff should naturally lie, to me. And I think it's a shame I've seen very little talk in fandom about it!

#ask meme

[zoe-oneesama]

Speaking of Frightningale, what do you think of the episode?

It's a filler episode, but I liked it. There's not that much I would change about it.

I liked the akuma and it was only a matter of time before we had a dance themed akuma (Yes I've heard the knock off Harley Quinn jokes and yes I agree with them, but I don't consider that a bad thing). Clara's reason for being akumatized feels real and Chloe's in top form. The teamwork between Ladybug and Chat Noir in defeating Frightningale is adorable and fun to watch.

There's only three things that stand out to me in a "negative" way, but they don't really take away from the episode:

The "lesson" in this episode for Marinette was about protecting her identity - she willingly took the role of Ladybug when it was about to be given to Chloe and by giving into her anger, she almost put her identity at risk. I did like her giving up the role initially to both be responsible with her identity AND to not ditch her friends, so it was satisfying that Tikki praised her for not "giving into temptation" and for friends to praise her for giving up dancing with Adrien just to stay with them. And even when she takes that back just because she can't stand the idea of Chloe representing "her" in any way, I can't blame her and don't think that should take away from the praise she got.

But this does bring up two of my "negative" things.

First, Marinette is the focus of the identity problems, but Adrien is in the same boat - the only difference is that Adrien didn't take this job willingly. But that's where I think they could've done something better - they could've made Adrien fight back harder. Adrien not standing up for himself or his friends, not fighting back for things he wants to do - this at least makes sense as he could see it as selfish, which he doesn't want his father to see him as.

But his identity should be something that he protects above everything else, not just to his dad but to the general public. It's not selfish, it's about the greater good. He should be arguing up front and when he can't come up with a good "reason", he should be sabotaging himself - hide the mask, sure, but also pretend he can't follow choreography or that he can't act like Chat Noir - just doing more.

They made Marinette choosing to take the Ladybug role a problem when Adrien was in the exact same spot as her.

(They didn't harp on it much so it's really not THAT big a deal. I just think they could've sacrificed some of the akuma time to show a different side of Adrien).

Second, and this is only a problem in hindsight, is this episode makes "Chameleon" and subsequent episodes like it more infuriating. Here we had open character acknowledgment of Marinette putting aside an opportunity with Adrien JUST so she could stay with her friends. Twice she is hugged by her whole girl entourage for expressing how she loves them and has the most fun with them.

Yet no one will even listen to her when it comes to Lila because she's "jealous", okay.

And then my last complaint is with Chloe, or more specifically, the scene of her threatening to call her mom.

My problem with it is that it's just not in character with Audrey at all. This was the first time Chloe's mom was directly mentioned and it's Chloe threatening to call her mother to complain to her about how Chloe's "dreams were shattered" because Andre wouldn't cancel the music video shoot outright, followed by Andre grabbing the phone, insisting they not bother their "queen", and that he'll figure something out.

Based off just this? Wouldn't one assume Audrey is like Andre but worse? Indulging Chloe's whims, coming down hard on any who stand in her daughter's way, and probably coming down harder on Andre for not taking care of things in the first place.

More realistically Audrey wouldn't even answer the phone.

It's just a confusing scene in hindsight. The Audrey WE meet doesn't even remember Chloe's name, she certainly wouldn't care about whether or not she's the lead role in a music video. At most she'd be annoyed to be interrupted from whatever SHE thinks is more important, so again, she probably wouldn't even answer the phone.

So it's not bad, it's just...weird.

#frightningale #my opinion #writing salt #adrien salt #I guess? It's writing ABOUT Adrien so just to be safe

[how-queerious]

been seein lot of posts calling the cast weird for the way they/their characters are being with the whole "destined" aspect of callowmoore but like consider who does and does not seem to outwardly ship it that way.

maybe there are things and dynamics i've been missing but to me there is a clear division between which characters (not actors) are pushing it and which are not; The main people seeming to push for it are FCG, Imogen, Laudna, and Fearne. The main people just watching and not really swaying either way are Orym, Chet, and Ash. Here's my thoughts on the possible motivations for that from a character perspective. With that in mind, I have focused on the PCs here; I have all the love in the world for matt as a DM, but to untangle the intricacies of his character work in literally even just one episode at a time is a whole other post. Accidental essay below the cut y'all.

broad strokes are that the camps are divided primarily* by who has and hasn't had extensive adult romantic relationships. Laudna, Imogen, and FCG are all experiencing what seem to be their first real adult relationships, and have had notably, explicitly little experience with romance at all beyond that. Fearne herself, despite her age, also seems to have had very little experience with romance and love (remembering that casual or platonic sex is not romance). They have all been starry-eyed and naive about love in prior episodes, and Laudna in particular has a childlike view of it. To compound this, Fearne has been lonely the vast majority of her life, just her, her nana, and their companions of questionable sentience and willingness. Exhibited in some of the darker episodes, and stated by ashley (at some point), she is literally just learning how to feel as mortals do in the prime material plane. Many of us as young shippers were drawn to the allure of the "Soulmate AU" for a lot of the same reasons.

On the other side of the coin, we have the three opposed or neutral. Chet and Orym, unlike any of the others, have both experienced long-term mature romantic relationships. Though Chet often focuses on the sex, and Orym tends not to focus on anything if he can help it, both have shown in their character choices and interactions with people from their past that they have the understanding of mature and healthy(ish) romance. As a contrast to their knowledgability, Ashton has only ever been burned by what should have been love in the past, and has not experienced romance. They have spent their whole life fighting fate, and will continue to do so for at least the time being. He is just learning to let themself love platonically, of course they don't want to follow "fate" to a romantic relationship with someone as chaotic and beautiful and terrifying as Fearne. They'll do the cool combos with her, and he'll flirt and tease, but anything else is unknown territory in a field already littered with the casualties of their past attempts to trust.

Though they may seem to be pushing for this fated dynamic in a way that feels very off for CR, there are genuine and realistic character motivations for them to do so. Perhaps I'm putting too much thought and faith behind it, but I think the specificity of who is or isn't pushing speaks great volumes to the fact that these are all people who have a wealth of theatric and improvisation experience and knowledge behind them. They are all actors with more than my lifetime of hard work behind this "silly game" they play, and I think we ought to consider that.

#like idk them personally but c'MON #aside from their DECADE of play experience #they are all professional actors nd improvisors #i feel like we should give them a little more credit here #long post #in this essay i will #critical role #i do kinda ship callowmoore as fuckbuddies btw #i am projecting my maybe-aro-ness onto fearne about it tho #gimme gimme gimme #callowmoore #callowmoore positive #ashton greymoore #fearne calloway #fresh cut grass (cr) #launda #imogen #southern gothic (cr) #orym of the air ashari #chetney pock o'pea #not to interact with the disk horse i was in the trenches of 2017 broadway and 2018 voltron #but i just had thoughts i hade to give to the universe

[imminent-danger-came]

Yeah, David Breen had to write a tweet when the fan translated version of the Mandarin version of LMK came out. People were freaking out about Wukong being a deadbeat dad and debating on whether it was a d*ck move or Wukong recognizing that he had sh*t mental health and was not in the proper head space to take care of baby MK.

Also that memory? That was a vision MK had in Episode 3. He was helping Tripitaka with magic circle stuff, the vision broke in and interrupted the ritual, and all hell broke loose. It isn't an actual flashback to his childhood.

Thank you to the person who shared the screenshot in my notes! You're a real one. I'll put it here for easy reference:

First, I wanted to clear up that I didn't mean my questions in a "this is why it can't be true" way—cause it is true—but in a "these are the questions I have!" sort of way. I think that's how one person interpreted it and I'm like OH NO. MY QUESTIONS MEAN I'M INTRIGUED/WANT TO KNOW MORE I SWEAR.

Next, the visions in 4x03, 4x04, and 4x05 are different than what I think is a memory:

(4x03 The Great Tang Man) (Sending the curse one because like. what the fuck. what the fuck!)

-

(4x04 Pig Napped)

-

(4x05 Court of the Yellow Robbed Demon)

-

These are the visions of Sun Wukong trying to find MK in the scroll. They're different from what Subodhi presses MK to remember ("Tell me of your childhood, your parents." "You do not remember?" "And what else?"):

See the difference?

Every vision MK has includes the same scenes, except this one. That's why I think it's a memory; that and the way it's framed, with MK closing his eyes in focus. The other visions from 4x03, 4x04, and 4x05 all are unprompted, being forced upon MK. Why make this last "vision" so different from the others? Why show Guan Yin (?) making the stone monkey? That would be because it's a memory—be it MK's, something from the scroll, or a mix of both.

Monkey King not being MK's dad doesn't equate to him not being involved—MK being born from the stone means that he doesn't have any biological parents, it's a weird grey area. I also just can't imagine that Guan Yin (if it was her) made MK on top of flower fruit mountain and that Monkey King was none the wiser (edit: lol it was NOT on top of flower fruit mountain. Anyways, carry on!). I also don't know what other reason Sun Wukong would choose MK to be his "successor".

"Monkey King was ripping his way through memories looking for MK, but kept coming back to the stone. He doesn't know why."

I'll be honest, "he doesn't know why" is SUPER vague (which is good, can't have a writer spoiling the whole show on twitter lol). So, Monkey King doesn't know why he kept going back to the stone...what does that mean exactly? It's vague and up in the air, and it's phrased in such a specific way that I can't help but feel like Breen is being purposely misleading.

Either way, I don't really see the problem with Sun Wukong being a dead beat dad. Like he's not MK's dad, but if he were I don't understand what the issue with that is. Sun Wukong is an interesting character, he means well but he can also hurt others through the distance he builds around himself. In 3x05 Amnesia Rules he literally says "Can you imagine what I would be like if I didn't have friend's? I'd probably turn into a manipulative jerk!" Well, currently all of his past friend's are dead and he is a manipulative jerk. And I love him.

Sun Wukong is nuanced. He doesn't make the right choice all the time. The way he treated the main gang in s3 was fucking shitty ("how could you lead us into this fight without a real plan!?"). But he also doesn't intend to hurt people. He always has his own reasons. And, when he finally realizes the pain he's caused, he tries to make amends and put himself on the line. People "freaking out" about Wukong being a "dick" (which he kinda has been this whole time, he's a little shit and I love him) just reeks of purity culture.

AND THE FUNNY THING IS, WUKONG SPEAKS DIRECTLY AGAINST THAT:

“Point is, mistakes happen, but so long as you leave the world in better shape than you found it, then it’s all good. Right?” (4x01 Familiar Tales)

Wukong makes so many mistakes all the time. I don't know why in this instance it would be one step too far.

There's also just so much we don't know. We don't really know anything about MK's origins, or why he was created, or who created him, or what everyone knows/doesn't know. But I will say, whatever it is I'm excited for it!

#I am of the opinion that leaving MK with Pigsy was the right move (if that's what happened) #I also think Monkey King ''gave up'' his spot with his friends (or their reincarnations anyways) to MK. Like in general. #On god I had no idea there was discourse about this asfasfd #Man I didn't even get into the ink bullshit spread in those fucking visions. #LIKE. OKAY SURE MK WAS SEEING SWK SEARCH FOR HIM IN THE SCROLL. BUT. WHY THE CURSE THEN. HELLO??? #The ink MK over his shoulder in 4x03. Then the ink sun wukong (?) in 4x06. #What's going on man #I'm just saying ''It was SWK looking for MK'' isn't all there is to those scenes. IT'S DRIVING ME MAD #lmk #lmk analysis #lego monkie kid #monkie kid #lmk mk #lmk swk #lmk sun wukong #asks #I wish I had a more fun ask tag #something like ''thanks for asking!'' #but I'm in too deep to change it #my gifs

[runwayrunway]

Hello my fellow resident of the world! How did you get into planes, if you don't mind my asking? I've just started my interest in aviation (thank you Admiral Cloudberg) and would love to know how you went about learning what you know. (Also, converted all my friends to PSA lovers this afternoon. I am still a JetBlue stan for the airplane names.)

Joke answer 1: I generally board planes through the aerobridge just like everyone else.

Joke answer 2: When they give you your autism diagnosis they tell you to pick a vehicle.

Real answer: is going to be under a cut, for length (seriously, it's long) and for rambling (seriously, it's incoherent) and also for being my life story rather than blog content proper (seriously, I talk about my grandparents) and also for discussing morbid things like plane crashes, so be advised.

I'm not totally sure. I mean, I moved across an ocean as a young child, my grandfather was a microelectronics engineer who worked in aerospace, I've spent most of my life living directly nearby an airport, but I don't think any of that is it?

I think it's a combination of factors. A major one was my first flight in a propeller plane and realizing that I really enjoyed it. Also major was an interest in air disasters. I'm a huge enjoyer of the Admiral's work as well, I think she has among the best coverage of air disasters out there (definitely in terms of narrative content, at least) and I find her writing style in general very inspirational, but I didn't discover air disasters through any specific media. Rather, I actually was very struck by certain crashes in the news (particularly the 2011 Lokomotiv crash, which I heard a lot about because my family are Russian expats).

I was a morbid kid. I've just sort of always been like that. I'm a second-generation goth who lives across the street from a cemetery with immediate family members who've survived some pretty awful things and aren't shy about it, it might be weirder if I wasn't kind of curious about mass casualty events. Like, one of the earliest things I remember is the Columbia disaster. For a long time I thought I had a weirdly specific and irrational fear of tsunami, nightmares and all, and then I remembered that I lived in Japan until the tail end of 2004. Also, my grandfather thought war stories were appropriate for three-year-olds. So I heard 'awful plane crash' and went 'oh cool. Let's look up what happened'. And then my family got talked to because I didn't own a computer and thus had no choice but to frantically search "Air France 447 CVR" in my school computer lab.

And then I got older than my nebulous age at the time of "child" and became a far different type of person and learned about politics and human people and the like. Frankly, if I were more of an active member of general avgeek communities I would probably spend literally all of my time yelling at people because of my very strong feelings about the callous ways people discuss these crashes, the uselessness of the concept of "pilot error", and pop coverage and 'memeification' of air disasters (again, another reason I enjoy the Admiral's work is that she does not do this). Discussion of air disasters is frequently done by a type of person I will describe, bluntly, as smug racists too afraid to admit that human nature is fucking up and that means they might have crashed the plane too if they were put in that situation.

While I consumed the normal air crash media (Macarthur Job's books, Air Crash Investigations (very hit or miss depending on the episode), Mentour Pilot (recommend) and the like) I'm actually a history student with a focus in archival science, so I like to do these dramatic dives into researching specific things and a lot of the most formative media to me is individual documentaries and books about specific crashes that probably isn't worth listing out unless someone wants a source about something specific, and the same sort of thing about specific models of planes and airlines. My point is that I kind of started just getting wrapped up in it, and it's been an on-and-off fixation ever since.

Like I said, though, I'm a history student, so I wasn't going to limit myself to one area of aviation. Like I mentioned, air disasters are a focus of mine, as are, obviously, liveries and branding, but neither of those are enough on their own to understand aviation as a field, the way it evolved - all of these things, wake-up calls to industries, changes in regulation, the evolution of airline marketing and structure over time, shifts in technology, they're all part of the same broader story. So while I have things I know more about than other aspects, I like to understand at least a little about everything. I like pulling these threads out of the cloud of information I don't know until I've unravelled it as much as possible.

At this point I have a solid working understanding of the physics of flight (though I'm also very interested in astrophysics so I expect that played a part), the history of airlines, the way they developed in the US and in Europe and also in other places that didn't start out with the same infrastructure, the role they play in society and propaganda and the avenues they open. I have a lot of blind spots. I don't really know how engines work and I think it's unlikely I ever will. But I'm always learning and I like that about aviation. It's just a gigantic field. You never run out of reading material. And that's even despite the fact that I simply do not care for military aviation (unless it's really strange/niche things like the SR-71, but I just don't really care about how many missiles you can strap to the Boeing Foreignguyblaster 9000 or the like).

I also sort of have an advantage over most people in that Soviet aviation is an entirely separate and deeply interesting subject that often gets reduced to jokes or 'well isn't that weird' and I have a secret weapon for researching it called "my first language is Russian" and a second secret weapon called "I can ask my grandmother and she'll just tell me about how she remembers the Miracle on the Neva happening and walking past the plane before they got it out of the river because she lived right nearby".

I also just like planes. I think they're pretty. I think it's incredible that they're real machines that humans invented. I don't know anything about computers and I never will so this is sort of the main avenue I have to be awed by the scale of human engineering. We put a giant metal thing in the air and then we painted a smiley face on her nose.

I not only am not a pilot, but cannot be a pilot. I have a seizure disorder and also the potential to get very lightheaded very suddenly, so I cannot fly and that's fine. A lot of people hear this and try to argue with me about how I could get an exemption or find a loophole and I get the idea but it's very misguided. Some people shouldn't be pilots. Causing plane crashes is bad and the reason aviation is so safe is because it refuses to take risks. The thing about being disabled is that you aren't able to do things. And that's fine, I have no choice but to be fine with it. But it gives me a lot more incentive to research and to planespot and to discuss aviation with other people, and I think paradoxically I would probably not know or care as much about the history of airlines if I were spending all this time out there doing figure-eights in a Cessna Whatever.

And I just sort of don't have the capacity to like something a little. I either don't care or I've looked into it enough that I could run some sort of blog about it. Aviation is important to me even though I can't directly participate in it. And I wanted to write about it. And, to be honest, not only is this a niche that's not often covered, but the backstory to this blog is exactly what my intro post is. I was at the airport with a friend and we had this conversation:

Me: oh my gosh, look at that Lufthansa plane. It's basically white. Him: yeah Me: why are all airlines painting their planes such boring things nowadays. This sucks. They're bereft of both whimsy and character Him: yeah Me: I feel like I could complain about this for years Him: yeah Me: has anyone written a blog about this Him: probably not Me: would you like someone to?

Is it the most elegant genesis out there? No. And I'm sorry I don't have a more coherent explanation for how I got super into planes than "I have access to a large library and also an autism diagnosis", but I'm sort of an earnest person and I like thoroughly answering questions.

If you want general recommendations for informative civil aviation content I recommend the youtube channels Mentour Pilot and 74gear, which are both run by actual pilots, and also just digging around at any libraries near you and seeing what you can find. You might be surprised by the depth of the research people have done into very specific topics, and also because you can find some good overviews written by very passionate people. If you want specific recommendations about any defunct airlines or old planes or major historical events, shoot me a DM. Also, if you know any pilots, ask them, because pilots are the only people worse at shutting up about planes than me.

Sorry this got so long. Much like my inability to hold a tepid interest in a subject, I am very bad at answering questions in a way that's not perhaps too forthcoming and thorough. I hope at least some of this feels like a satisfactory answer to some of your questions, though. Thank you as always for reading my silly little blog about airplane outfits.

#off-duty #transmissions #the man behind the cockpit door

[itsana004]

I have to ask for Droite for the character meme! (Or if you already got an ask for her, then Gauche?)

Ahhhh, first of all thank you so much for the ask! 💓 This one is special because it's about a minor character I care about a lot, and did for literal years and I'll do my best not to make this a paper scroll long (can't make promises). So let's roll! Here lays my truest thoughts on Droite/Dextra

•How do you feel about this character

You'd be surprised to know, but I did not like her character at all when I saw her for the first time.

She looked so... cold, had a lack of personality, unlikable boring character? Or maybe it was the fact she looked much older and more mature than the other main cast at the time, especially when she was strict? I can't pinpoint the specific reason, but there was really a time when I saw her as most viewers of Zexal see her as: an uninteresting boring minor character.

So how come I changed my mind? And got so attached to her to the point literal years passed and I still love her character?

The first time I ever saw Zexal episode per episode was probably when I was 10-11 years old on the TV, and Zexal was pretty popular in Italy back then, and I distinctively remember this character made an impression on me on episode 54 in her duel against Tron, with her solid strategy and clever tactics (and it was very unique compared to any other character), cause let's be real, this show is about dueling, if the character weren't good duelists, they really didn't stick to me in the long run (and Droite sure didn't give her best duel at all in that Droite and Gauche Vs Yuma duel, it was generic and boring to me), but Droite was doing very well against the main antagonist of that season, Tron (and it even made me root for her!) and the way he got around her strategy and the cards he used felt very oddly specific because of the nonesense rule that Yu-Gi-Oh women cannot win, so we can forget a minor character woman actually beating the main antagonist of that season (I understand the plot was needed to be driven forward with Tron as the main antagonist ofc lol but I have more thoughts on how they could have handled it better but I don't wish to digress) - anyway this duel stuck to me and as I said, Zexal was fairly popular in my town and I was talking about it to my friend, a frustrated naive young me saying how she felt about that the butterfly girl with purple hair losing and for some reason I didn't catch her name and my best friend told me it was "Drua" (from Dorowa but fandom decided it was Droite and I was confused but I found here in the end!), and then I searched her name on Google and saw a gorgeous fanart of her holding a butterfly and you could say my spiral started then (so in a way I am the way I am because of my friend, it's all her fault). From that point on I started to form an attachment to this character and pay attention to every time she appeared on screen, but boi young me was in for total disappointment because from that point on Droite was never given this kind of focus, or any development nor deliver a duel like that ever again (In Italian dub from 4kids they censored Droite and Gauche being homeless orphans being picked from Mr. Heartland so extra less scene 🤬). Young me also kept wondering, what happened to all those feelings she poured in ep 54? And I figured in the end that's a question only god knows, cause Zexal writers definitely don't, and so fanfics gave me much better answers. As years passed, I have to say I only grew to love her character more and more, I just kept learning new things about her and appreciated her character paying attention to every time she appeared from the limited screentime she had and I'm going to list some things I really love.

I was glad to learn that dueling wasn't something she was forced herself to learn for the purpose of training or for the sake of becoming stronger like Kaito, but it's something she enjoyed ever since she and Gauche discovered Duel Monsters when they were homeless orphans living in the streets (I feel like this adds more to her personality), and for them being only kids struggling to live day by day, found a little joy in their lives, and it even became their star of hope, something to look forward to in their hellish life (MY POOR BABIESSS I LOVE THEM MUCH).

I also love the fact Droite and Gauche treat each other as equals, they must have helped each other to get stronger by dueling one another, there is no air of superiority between them like Shark is towards Rio when it comes to dueling, so I assume Droite and Gauche have always one up the other to the point they have the almost same number of wins and losses against each other, and they must have spent their time mostly support each other as well. I love how she recognizes Gauche's move against Esper Robin instantly showing how close they are. WE NEEDED MORE SCENES OF THOSE TWO SQUABBLING, ACTUALLY, WITH THOSE THREE WITH KAITO, I NEED THEM TOGETHER IN ON LINE OKAY.

Also can we talk about how this girl had endured powerful electric shocks?? And joined up to the top 3 in elite duelists with Kaito and Gauche like the QUEEN SHE IS???

Also girlie just tasted tomato juice which was implied to be blood so casually what's up with that????? (That scene is so funny it will always be one of my favorites).

This woman is such a girlboss!!! Droite can casually fly a helicopter, run around the Tower like she owns it, being assertive in general a force to be reckoned with throughout the little time she appeared in Zexal, and humble her man to back away (THE NOTORIOUS NUMBER HUNTER TOO) and catch this man in his lies then HUMBLE HIM AGAIN IN THE W.D.C. AND YEET HIM FROM HER LANE (PLEASE THIS SCENE WILL ALWAYS BE FUNNY TO ME) .

Idgaf that she lost against Vetrix, she manhandled him in this duel, and not even his crest power from Barian world worked on her THIS IS QUEEN BEHAVIOUR RIGHT THERE.

Despite her lack of appearence in the second part and the complete abysmal decision to make her lose TWICE MORE LIKE IT WASN'T ENOUGH, I still appreciate the little contributions she was allowed to make.

I guess, a part of me is still attached to her for what she could have been? How she could have been used? (I brainrot about that every day) and it's painful to love a character that isn't very liked or even recognized while also completely understanding why, but I guess I still love her character and that doesn't seem it will change for a while.

•All the people you ship romantically with this character

I ship Droite with Kaito and no- I don't care what anyone says, if Zexal writers sent an announcement right now saying they will never be canon, I would still ship them because fanfics convinced me, cause some fans will always be better at writing romance than Zexal writers would ever dream to. I really love picking up from what was left and actually putting them to use by adding more things to the table to fix the mess, and I'm gonna die on this hill.

I also don't mind any other ships with Droite (as long as they are not problematic...) but one of my favorite rarepair has to be Droite x Akari (my comfort ship <3) - they haven't interacted once but they are both girl bosses and hot and I don't need any more reasons.

•My non-romantic OTP for this character

Just like I said in Gauche's one, this has to be Droite and Gauche. I refuse to see them through a romantic lens. It is true they share a lot of care for each other, but canonically Droite has romantic feelings for someone else and familial/platonic love exists, and interpreting them that way makes their relationship much sweeter and deeper in my eyes. Gauche being the only family that Droite has in a world where she was born with none will always be more meaningful and deeper to me than them being in a romantic relationship will ever be.

Another fact I forgot to mention in Gauche's one is although they don't have a specific label for each other in the sub, the Italian dub seems to be the only one where they actually refer to each other as "Fratello and sorella" (Brother and sister) - Kaito says "It's right that his sister duels", and although dub changes are not always for the best, I am fine with either one, in one they have a label for their relationship where it isn't left blank and it enforces their familial bond - (Droite says along the lines of "I'm his manager so I have to pull him out of this" in the sub - of course, she's not just a "manager", but at this point what do they even refer to each other... there is no label, and for two people who literally grew up together and spent so many years together, I find it odd - but on the other hand, these two never knew what the word family even meant when they were orphans living in the streets, and that being the reason for the lack of label to their relationship is just─

•My unpopular opinion about this character

She best girl─

•One thing I wish would happen/had happened with this character in canon

(Omg this part will be so long I'm so sorry)

1 - In episode 54, I wish instead of Droite giving up and losing because of her own free will, they could have made it so that she couldn't handle the power of the crest and collapses right after she draws a card, after trying so hard to resist it as long as she did - first, it doesn't make her look incompetent or make her look bad and still makes Tron a threatening villain. Second, it leaves the outcome with "No result" and still leaves it ambiguous than a straight "Lose" because of the notorious "female characters cannot win because they suck" awful rule the Yu-Gi-Oh series has created that screams sexism and misogyny from the writers - and no - the fact that the audience for this show is mostly boys does not excuse it.

2 - She should have won the duel together with Yuma in episode 104. Zexal has a really tedious habit of making strong female characters sacrifice themselves to show their valor and significance - no - that's not good enough when it is done again and again (Rio for her brother, Anna for Yuma, Droite for Kaito and Gauche and... Yuma?) and god I hate this so much, they could have found plenty of ways to show that without making Droite lose, we already know how dedicated and devoted Droite is for the people she loves/cares about, she tried to call Gauche back to conscious several times and took the fall for Yuma several times, they didn't need to kick her out of the duel to reinforce that same pathetic excuse again.

3 - Droite, Gauche and Kaito are the three people who have the most connection with Mr. Heartland (than Yuma will ever be) as well as having actual reasons to retaliate against the late Mr. Heartland, as they were exploited and have suffered hell from him, so why on HELL Yuma and Astral were shoehorned into that frecking duel - I do not care they are protagonists - I do not care people love the touching moment between Astral and Yuma before they transform into Zexal III - they could have animated that exact scene in their battle against Don Thousand or any other duel - there was no reason at all that would explain this decision in terms GOOD WRITING - to rob Kaito from that duel - imagine: after Kaito wins the duel against Mr. Heartland, since Droite and Gauche were already in Heartland City because of Yuma's friends understanding the world was in danger, Mr. Heartland in his last efforts could have pleaded Gauche and Droite to help him and manipulate them telling them how he saved them as orphans and they are here today because of him. But to his surprise, they don't, instead they use their ace monsters to attack him instead and send their farewells, and Mr. Heartland meets his demise - heck, they could have been the ones to take over after Kaito collapses - no matter what anyone tells me, either of the two ways it's how it should have played out because all of those three characters meet a proper closure with this man, but zexal writers do not give a sh8t about any other characters except their precious main and that leads to bad writing.

4 - I'm not really a fan of Droite being Gauche's manager? My reason for that is Droite spends most of Zexal serving/helping/sacrificing for other characters and is never her own person, and to me this is one of many examples. It's fine that she's his manager but what I wish would happen is Droite starts to miss competitive dueling and feels confused about her feelings of doubt towards her current job, and so for the upcoming W.D.C. Tournament (becoming a yearly event) that everyone including all our beloved cast will participate in it, Droite takes it as an opportunity to seek answers she needs through this Tournament and is encouraged by Gauche as well to "get a piece of the action", so she participates as a competitor together with Gauche - it lets her be her own person instead of being a "cheerleader" for Gauche (she can still be supporting of him while being a competitor) + it shows Gauche and Droite will support each other no matter in what they do and there are no ill feelings if Droite decides to resign from being his manager.

5 - The complete lack of development or scenes between Droite and Kaito, heck, it might be as dry as the sahara desert, and for me to say it is very concerning, luckily for me fanfics exist! So for the "what I wish would have happened", there is a fanfic called "I'll Always Be With You" by AquaMagic.389 (is my canon now, and in the second chapter I WEPT) - yeah, that's what I wish had happened, it's just adding the little things in the flashback that can slowly build up overtime.

Fun fact: In the Japanese W.D.C. 3DS game in Shingetsu Rei's route as Droite is her opponent, Yuma tells some things about her to Rei and he literally blurts it out for everyone to know about Droite's feelings in public to piss her off lmaooo - and later with Kotori's help Droite confesses her feelings properly but we don't know what happens after that (damn I-) so another I wished is them having actually some development post-canon, who knows, maybe through a Tournament (my brainrot from "La puissance de zexal" fanfic from griffon chap 20 is showing) yeah I'm gonna stop right there.

6- Finally, the last point. Every anime ever has a beach or light-hearted episode, why couldn't we have that like a field trip?? Also, I always found it interesting Hart and Droite's love for butterflies, I wish I could see them having such a cute moment where Hart admires her deck and it reminds him of those peaceful days when his big brother and he would chase butterflies and would share about those days with Droite it's just-

I'm so sorry this post turned into a paper scroll after all, if you ever reached until here then thank you and sorry for making you read all that, take care and have a good day! And again, thank you so much for the ask 💖

#zexal #ygo zexal #yugioh zexal #droite #dextra #dolowa #droite zexal #dextra zexal #character breakdown #zexal asks

[dittomander]

How does the education system in the Everrealm even work. Elena, Mateo and Naomi are not in school even though they are secondary school age. All we see is primary school for Isabel, the StF kids

I imagine the different Kingdoms have their own approaches to education, like how real world countries have different education systems. I'm assuming most of the kingdoms require primary education and have varying degrees of requirement for secondary education, with access to tertiary education for those that would need higher education in more specialized subjects.

Enchancia we know has Royal Prep and the village school for primary education, with the former being specifically for royals from a variety of kingdoms. The other kingdoms presumably have their own village schools as well for non-royal folks. Royal Prep and the village school have different curriculum, with RPA teaching magic and the village school teaching construction, as examples. Hexley Hall is a magic academy that seems to cover primary, secondary, and tertiary education for sorcerers considering Cedric says he studied there for 15 years. Other primary schools introduced in StF include the Junior Knights Academy and Westloch.

I don't think we really see any secondary school students in StF, but we do learn a little about secondary education, at least for the upper class, when the Royal Prep students get sent to pick a school to attend after RPA graduation in The Royal School Fair. Like Royal Prep, these schools don't seem to be restricted by kingdom. So at least in the "Eastern Hemisphere" EverRealm, royals seem to be educated together for primary school before being split up for more specialized secondary school.

I don't remember if its ever made clear how secondary education works for normal kids, nor how admission into Hexley Hall works as opposed to just going to a regular school. Considering StF is entirely focused on primary school aged kids, it makes sense that we wouldn't learn a whole lot about what happens afterward.

We learn even less about education in the "Western Hemisphere" EverRealm in Elena of Avalor, since unlike StF, EoA's focus isn't on the characters being in school. Royal education doesn't seem to be as centralized in Avalor as it is in Enchancia (& Enchancia's neighbors), since Isabel was being privately tutored in the castle before going to school. There also doesn't seem to be a specific school for royals, since when she does start attending school, she just goes to the regular school in the city. We also know Avalor has tertiary education in the form of the Science Academy, and there are presumably other specialist schools as well. Esteban mentions a "royal academy" when he says he's bringing in professional dancers for Naomi's birthday in My Fair Naomi, but this is never really elaborated on.

As to why we don't see the teens in school - I touched briefly on this in my magic in Avalor post, but my headcanon is that education in Avalor is only required through lower secondary education (through the end of 9th grade for Americans). This is based off the fact that upper secondary school was only made mandatory in Mexico in 2012. Elena presumably had private tutors growing up (seeing as Isabel canonically did), so we wouldn't see her going to school even if she was still studying. Mateo and Naomi, then, would've been upper secondary school-aged at the start of the show, so it's possible that they just dropped out once they got their jobs at the palace.

It might also be possible for them to just still be in school during the run of the show. We don't see every detail of their lives, and the school day in a lot of Latin America tends to be structured around the morning, with classes ending early so students can go home for lunch. They could be going to school in the morning and then heading to the palace in the afternoons, and the episodes where we see them hanging around at other hours are weekends or holidays. I mean, the show starts during summer break, so it wouldn't be an issue for a few months anyway.

#elena of avalor #eoa #sofia the first #stf #ditto answers #I was originally gonna add some school-related amigo headcanons at the end #but this post is already very long lmao

[running-in-the-dark]

I've got an appointment with my psychiatrist/neurologist tomorrow and I think I'm going to mention all my weird sleep issues. I've had multiple people tell me it kind of sounds like narcolepsy, and then a few days ago I listened to a podcast episode where someone talked about their sleep issues - they sounded exactly like mine, and the story ended with them being diagnosed with narcolepsy 😬😬

I'm really nervous about bringing it up (because how could I have something relatively rare, I just can't sleep, that's perfectly normal right 😬😬) but I'll try (I won't say 'hi I think I have narcolepsy', I'll just explain the symptoms I have).

Just to sum it up for myself, here's a list of my sleep issues:

without the antidepressant I'm currently on that makes me sleepy, I wasn't able to fall asleep. it's always been hard but for about 6 months before the meds, it took me 1-4 hours to fall asleep every night (sometimes I just couldn't fall asleep at night at all)

... and I'd also wake up at least three times a night

I'm always tired/exhausted - I need at least 9-10 hours of sleep to feel slightly rested, but I could basically sleep all day and still feel tired (I do regularly sleep 12-14 hours, and usually sleep through any alarms I set too)

I have very vivid/real-feeling nightmares that often wake me up (that's much worse now with my meds)

I get sleep paralysis somewhat regularly (also worse with the meds), and now usually feel like my whole body is shaking when it happens too.

when I'm half asleep I often can't tell if something really happened or if it was a dream. I wouldn't call it a hallucination, I think? though sometimes when I fully wake up later I'll ask my husband if he came into the room and said a specific thing earlier and he usually says no, but I know I was awake when that 'happened', so. who knows.

if I'm sitting down and not actively doing something, it's pretty likely I'll fall asleep (like when I'm watching TV, reading, listening to an audiobook, in the car as a passenger etc.) - but it doesn't happen if I'm the one driving or anything that means I'm really alert/tense/active like that

I've fallen asleep in class/similar situations many times, but I think that's normal? like, that feeling of trying really hard to stay awake and focus because you can tell you're getting very very sleepy and it takes like a few minutes but eventually I just doze off (for a few seconds I think? obviously I can't tell because I'm not awake...)

that happened very frequently when I did my apprenticeship (it was awful - I'd be entering client's receipts and fall asleep over and over again while doing it. it was a problem because obviously I made some pretty big mistakes and people weren't happy...) - that was when I slept about 12 hours a night because I was too tired to stay awake once I came home from work.

I've fallen asleep in the cinema several times too (usually during movies I was really excited to see)

I dream even when I only sleep a few minutes. like if I fall asleep on the couch for five minutes I'll still dream. apparently that's not normal?

also if I'm watching something, for example, I'll fall asleep over and over and over again, each time for a few minutes. then I wake up, rewind what I was watching, and immediately fall asleep again. that goes on for hours sometimes and it's very frustrating because I try so hard to stay awake.

I don't know what this is exactly, but it sounds a little bit like very mild cataplexy... I think? sometimes I'll just suddenly be really really weak like my muscles aren't working. I can't grip/hold anything, can't lift my arms or legs, can't move/hold up my head (it feels too heavy), can barely speak, and just have to stay sitting/lying down like that until it passes. but I can't remember if that was because of intense emotions or anything like that because I had no idea that could be related. I think it does often happen when I'm really scared/anxious but I think that's just because that's exhausting?

my hands especially do often stop working right when I'm really stressed/overwhelmed. like I can't grip anything/use them properly. it's especially bad when someone is watching me write/do anything else with my hands - I get so anxious that my hands don't work right. and my knees/legs go really weak when I'm standing and I get very anxious (like during a presentation). but that's just anxiety I think?

I did fall to the floor when someone scared me once because my legs gave in, but that was like 20 years ago so it probably doesn't count (and isn't that normal anyway?). though, now that I'm thinking about it... that has actually happened at least twice after that 🤔 (my nephew scared me once, my legs gave in so I fell down, and he did it again another time because he thought it was funny)

oh yeah and I was so scared during my driving test that my legs stopped working and starting shaking uncontrollably while I was trying to park, so I had to wait a minute or more until it passed

okay I just googled what cataplexy really feels like because I just don't understand it at all, and apparently going super weak from laughing really hard isn't normal?! that can't be right. that happens to everyone, doesn't it? like when you laugh really really hard and your arms are like giant useless noodles? (that actually sums up that muscle weakness that I get pretty well: my limbs are like floppy noodles that I can only sort of control)

(I've seen several people give tickling as an example now.. but everyone goes completely limp when they're being tickled right?? like no one can move in that situation right?? lol this list is so stupidly long now that no one will get to this point but if you do, please tell me if that's normal or not.)

I don't know. It's probably nothing. Or maybe it's something else, like sleep apnea? Or I'm just overly sensitive or whatever.

I usually just put all of this weirdness down to 'oh my brain is just being weird again'. But I guess it can't hurt to at least mention it? 😬 It seems like a long list when I actually write it down but I tend to exaggerate things, probably? I guess most of this is normal anyway, so I'm sure it's nothing. But it is very annoying either way so I will at least mention it once.

#personal #cw medical #maybe? #I just spent like two hours thinking about this and writing it down and reading other people's experiences #it does sorta sound like what I experience but eh I still don't know #could be anything could be nothing could be me being stupid who knows

[banzoin]

wanted to talk about moon knight, as coming from a system.

most of this is copy pasted from a twitlonger i made, but i wanted to add some more here

tldr: moon knight was an incredible display of did and i'm glad we have media depicting it as such. however too many people refuse to research into it after watching, yet insist upon making jokes about it. it's tiring.

okay apparently im fucking stupid and you cant add a fucking post break from mobile so just take it all as is

very personal input

while i can't speak for the comics, i absolutely completely and thoroughly enjoyed moon knight.

media depicting did/osdd is few and far between and what we do have is... well we have never seen any that are /actually good/. so i was extremely apprehensive so start watching this but ended up enjoying it so much that i watched it (almost) all at once.

before i continue, as of writing this, this is san. there is someone in cofront but he doesn't care to add anything. the others may want to add their input later (specifically i want lira to write some because our relationship feels much like steven and marc), but i can't say for sure. so anyways — onto how i personally feel about moon knight and it's depiction of did.

marc. i understand marc to an almost startling degree — to the point where episodes 2 and 5 sent me into a panic attack but that's just... i have problems. amongst the six of us i know of, i can say undoubtedly that i am... disliked, to put it mildly. the end of episode 2 really struck a cord. i can't say i ever felt what steven did — anger, fear, disgust? but, that feeling of being trapped is one that i definitely know. when steven tells marc that he's ruined his life, he's terrible, he wished he wasn't there, etc. it was very personal. there have been many times in which an attempt to help — we focus heavily on kali and keeping kali feeling safe and stable — just didn't work out the way i thought it would. there are so many times that my attempts to help (and still most times i think whatever it was i did was the right call) were met with "san is ruining our life". the way they portrayed marc's anger, confusion, hurt, etc. to steven thinking that about him was... very, very well done. episode 5 too was... sheesh. marc's desperate attempts to keep steven from remembering the truth of what happened to them — not wanting to ruin the balance that they've created, the freedom of having a 'break' of sorts from stress through steven... yeah. Yeah. "you were never supposed to know. you got to live a carefree, happy life. isn't that enough?"

serious points aside, i think the banter was very nice as well. i like the cofronting approach to writing because it's something that i personally understand well because that is our constant. personally enjoyed moments like "if it comes down to it... kill the hippo, steal the boat" "NO?" because it reminds me deeply of lira and i. i think early on, the way steven so desperately tries to deny what is happening upon discovery and hating the idea of marc, is very... much like how i know kali still views me.

i can not comment on their relationship with/views of jake because, well, if we have alters we don't know of as well then... there's no way for me to write about those. heart emoji

i might remember more i want to say later, but for now my final topic will be: the way layla treats them when she learns about the presence of steven. i, personally, think it's very, very sweet. there is a level of understanding there that i so desperately wish we had received in the past. the initial "you must be lying to guilt trip me" response is understandable after all that happened between them, but i love how when she realizes that oh. no, this is for real. there was no teasing, there was no passive aggressiveness, there was nothing negative. there was this understanding that the man she loved went through something horrible and this is part of him. she never blamed steven either for when she thought marc killed her father, she never blamed him for anything the other did.

also i lied the final topic will be how i need people to stop babying them. using one of the scenes where steven fronts after marc has a literal breakdown in the street after being forced to confront his trama as a aww the poor baby:( type of scene. making jokes about "marcs other personalities".

im sure i will remember more things specifically that bug me to hell and back so i will edit this. i will add more. i will have the others add more too

#i fucking hate using tumblr on mobile by the way #anyways #moon knight

[catboyrichardkarinsky]

alright since one person (@coffeelovinggayidiot) asked for it i will now talk about a group of ocs i will probably never do anything specific with but who i really love and never really talk about

So at the center of the story we have Mike and Sprout. Mike is a 15 year old trans guy who loves music more than anything, is going through a bit of a depressive episode mostly from school and being a bit of a social outcast and is generally not the most pleasant person to be around at the beginning at least. For contrast we have Sprout who's a little elf guy who got transported here from his little town in the middle of some magical forest mysteriously. He is very caring and simple and wholesome and basically the embodiment of a cozy children's book. That's really my best way of describing him. Naturally he drives Mike crazy but they do end up forming a deep bond eventually.

Most of the "story" (aka the part i focus on the least I'm a character centric person) really just focuses on trying to get Sprout home which is hard because he himself doesn't exactly remember how he got here (there was a storm on the day he was transported but he knows that couldn't have been it and his memories are really foggy) I also kind of want to add an additional mystery but I don't know how seriously I want to focus on this story because I prefer it just being a fun thing for myself. I might add it one day.

Anyways my real favorite part is the side characters. We have:

-Dominic (Dom for short), who's Mike's best friend/kind of crush. he's openly gay but Mike still doesn't think he has any chance with him because he's kind of a popular kid while Mike is a loser (evne though they constantly hang out). he's a bit of a himbo, and definitely a dork. He's really kind and makes friends easily. He plays basketball and takes it very seriously. He doesn't believe in cringe culture, he LOVES hallmark christmas movies for some reason. and bad 80s movies. actually 80s everything

-Irene, Mike's childhood friend. She wants to be cool and mysterious but is mostly just the most chaotic person ever. she smokes weed in her room and her mom doesn't realize somehow. she's an absolute troublemaker. her most important characteristic though is that she loves painting and created an oc named Luna who she just thinks of as the moon's human form. who's a beautiful girl. like really beautiful. like really really beautiful. like r- yup she fell in love with her oc. she totally owns it though, so much so her she her online alias is Pygmalia after the greek myth of the sculptor who fell in love with his own sculpture. Yeah she's one of the characters i really had fun creating. she's a lesbian if i didn't make that obvious by now. She does end up having a real human crush too also.

-Kitty, Mike's old classmate and other crush. They're autistic and their special interest is a fictional anime I made up for this story which is basically about a bunch of students who have fruit names for some reaos who go to space and it has about 6 seasons if i remember right and they end up saving the universe with the power of gay. lots of She-ra and Toh vibes. probably voltron too i never watched that one. Kitty's favorite character is Apricot who other than sharing a name with another character I made and also having a suspiciously similar design to said character, starts off as a villain but ends up falling in love with the main character. i ended up just infodumping about this anime. but i feel like that's on brand for an autistic character like if i was a fictional character I would want someone to just end up talking about falsettos instead of describing me. anyways they're generally kind if a scaredy cat and love cute things a lot and have a lot of plushies. but they do have a darker side. They also only watch anime dubbed because they have dyslexia so they can't read subtitles well although they started learning japanese because that's the power of hyperfixating. Oh and they have an oc for said anime.

-Ally, Kitty's and Dom's mutual friend and later Mike's friend through them. She's the mom friend, she has 3 younger siblings so that makes sense honestly. Her parents are divorced, she prefers being at her dad's place who owns an animal hospital near a forest with a lot of foxes. her favorite animals are foxes. along with cats. she has a cat for herself. she also loves ice skating. her ex best friend betrayed her for the popular girls which is a sour topic for her so she doesn't like people bringing it up too much.

-Seth, Irene's best friend and kind of crush. xe's a.. complicated person. xe can be intimidating at first glance with the amount of tattoos and piercings xe has. xe's a tattoo artist actually. not a drug dealer despite what people assume. xe ran away from home nrc of unsupportive parents but xe misses xir little sister and sometimes writes to her. xe has a secret dream of starting a rock band. xe's generally really introverted and doesn't like to talk a lot which adds to xir mysteriousness. oh and xe LOVES snakes a lot. because of xir gender fuckery xe says a lot that anyone of any gender can be attracted to xem but it does make them queer by default.

-and finally Jordan. Jordan is. he's a bully and a jerk and a homophobe. until he realizes he's bisexual. he has a bit of an obsession with comic books specifically one gay superhero book. which he refuses to admit publicly. and of course he starts to crush on Seth around this time. So definitely a complicated character.

that's it this post is way too long.

[sockhatingsapphic]

my thoughts on buddie as "toxic shipping"

i recently read a post that discussed "toxic shipping" of mlm ships by straight women and their main/first example was buddie so i wanna talk about that. i won't be linking that post because i don't want people to hate on the op and clog their notes unnecessarily.

more thoughts and correct capitalization under the cut:

However, I do want to say that people often assume that the main shippers of mlm couples are cishet women and that is very often not true. I can't say this definitively, of course, and I've heard horror stories of middle-aged cishet white women who literally write mlm fanfiction but aren't cool with real life gay people (especially lesbians). However, as a (cis, white) lesbian I have many other queer friends who enjoy mlm fanfiction.

Okay, now more specifically with Buddie. I don't remember the exact points in this critique, but I'm going to try to focus on the ones I do remember. Hopefully, if that op finds this, they won't think I'm completely twisting their words. The first thing I want to say is that I don't know if the op has watched the show or just interacted with the fanbase. Either way, I have done both and want to add some insight.

Firstly, a big problem with non-canon mlm shipping is when fans hate on the real female love interests in the source material. Buddie fans definitely do this, but I want to give a bit of defense, centering three of the most important female love interests of both Buck and Eddie.

Abby Clark (Buck)

I don't have beef with Abby as a person or a character, but she very much hurt Buck and the way she left was a bit of an asshole move. I haven't seen a lot of criticism of her other than that and I think criticizing that is fair.

2. Ana Flores (Eddie)

Ana does get an unreasonable amount of hate, but it's still not that much from my POV? Most of what I've seen of Ana hate is just fanfiction where she is extremely OOC, and she doesn't show up enough on-screen for the audience to truly know her character. I think people mostly use her as a plot device, which is unfair but also kinda what happens to her in canon too. I also want to mention racism in connection with people hating Ana, as I am sure it (both consciously and unconsciously) affects how she is perceived, but as a white woman who has not done a lot of research I'm going to leave it there for other people to dig deeper into.

3. Taylor Kelly (Buck)

Oh Taylor Kelly. She is a much more active character than Ana, and even more than Abby simply because she's been in more seasons. Taylor has a very dynamic character on the show, and she gets a lot of that "canon female love interest of half of an mlm ship" hate. But also, Taylor Kelly fucking sucks! In canon, her and Buck have finally broken up, so I don't see a problem in saying that they were not right for each other, plus she did a bunch of really shitty stuff to the firehouse. She was literally introduced in an episode where she filmed the 118 while they were non-consensually drugged! And left after an episode where she made a promise to Buck about keeping their privacy and then immediately broke that promise for her job. Okay, I don't want to make this just a Taylor Kelly hate post, so that's all I'm gonna say about her. I understand that she has her own motivations and trauma but she's still done a lot of bad things and I am glad Buck broke up with her.

OKAY DONE WITH THAT

The other main point that the op had was that it's shitty to call a ship queerbaiting if there are already queer people/couples in the show, and representation of other diverse peoples (paraphrasing, please don't attack them). This is... kinda obviously not true? I mean, one of the best (worst for the audience) examples of queerbaiting is Sterek, which comes from a show with a Latin lead and at least a few queer side characters. Another good example is Supernatural, which does not have any main characters of color or queer characters (as far as I remember, and I'm not including Castiel because he was queer for like 5 seconds before dying), but has several POC and queer side characters, including some recurring characters like Charlie (and others, idk i don't watch spn sorry).

"But Zoe, those are different! 9-1-1 has main characters that are queer and POC!" This is true, but the importance of their queerness and/or race is rarely touched upon. Think about it: Hen and Karen get about 2 episodes per season that actually focuses on them and their relationship, and one of the first ones is literally Hen cheating. Not really fantastic representation. Also, like, queer people often flock together, so having more than one queer main character is not "unrealistic" or whatever the problem is.

Lastly, I want to talk about Buddie itself.

I don't really think it can be called full queerbaiting, because I think that has to go beyond the screen and include promotional footage (like Sterek) and cons (like Destiel), which I haven't seen any of. However, I am fairly new to the fandom, and only found out Oliver Stark is British like two months ago. So maybe there have been outside hints that could make Buddie queerbait if it doesn't become canon. Either way, there's definitely something there, and I don't appreciate the way outsiders have gaslit fandoms for several years into thinking they've just "put on shipping goggles" or something like that.

We all saw Eddie's entrance to the show, right? When "What A Man" starts playing as Buck slow-mo turns around to see Eddie half-naked? I don't think this ship is the end-all be-all of TV romance, but it's definitely got a lot of hints in there that were purposeful by the actors, directors, editors, and crew. If not queerbaiting, they have definitely participated in some queer-coding/romance-coding of this couple and we are not insane for noticing that.

ANYWAY

that's it, and I hope I didn't accidentally co-opt a discussion of a deeper topic, but I want other shippers (god I hate that word it sounds so juvenile) to know that we're not insane or seeing things no one else does.

thanks for reading and also all the fish!

#buddie #long post #discussion #shipping discourse #shipping discussion #mlm ship #queerbait #queerbait discourse

[nocturnalswarehouse]

I was tagged by both @thequeenofthewinter and @blossom-adventures. Thank you both!

Relationship Status: Single

Favourite Colour(s): Pink, but specifically a pink that's a mix between Barbie pink and dusty rose. I can't totally describe it, but I have a travel mug that's the exact colour

Favourite Food: Uhhhhhhhhhh, good question. This constantly changes, I'm a big foodie. I will say my favourite cuisine is Korean.

Song Stuck in My Head: Nothing atm, but I've been on an Anastasia (the Broadway musical, not the Disney movie) hyperfixation lately.

Last Thing You Googled: Whether or not Carly Shay and Freddie Benson are end game or not. I'm watching the iCarly reboot and just got to the episode where they faked a relationship.

Time: 7:36pm

Dream Trip: PERU PERU PERU. I've been wanting to go since grade 4 and I have not been able to shut up about it. I LOVED learning about Inca mythology and I want to go learn more about it in its birthplace.

Last Thing You Read: A reading for class. Some experimental essay thing that was interesting, but confusing to follow.

Last Book You Enjoyed Reading: It's been MONTHS since I've read for enjoyment over school. And I don't remember the last book I read, but I LOVE They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera. It's the saddest book I've ever read, and such a beautiful story.

Favourite Thing to Cook/Bake: Literally any cookie. My friends are obsessed with my matcha chocolate chip cookies, I make chai chocolate chip cookies using my family's chai spice, and since the holidays are approaching, I'm getting ready to bake eggnog cookies!

Favourite Craft to do in Your Free Time: I don't have a specific craft that I do in my free time, as in my free time I normally focus on media I need to catch up on (yes, need XD if I'm to go into the film industry I have to keep up). But when I absolutely can't focus and need to do something, I'll find a garment of mine that needs mending (currently have a pant leg I need to mend, but I can't find my thread and it's driving me nuts).

Most Niche Dislike: Okay, so I work in a kitchen and absolutely hate it; I'm hoping to switch to Front of House soon (I know I am for sure, I just don't know when). You must continue cooking one of the dishes I make until the sauce is thoroughly soaked into the noodles. Most of my coworkers, when helping me on my station (we've been getting slammed on panfry lately, to the point where I'll get 10 dishes at once, and the menu launch stresses me out), will shut off the stove and plate when there's so much sauce it almost looks like a ramen. I absolutely HATE that.

OH! Also, when someone doesn't tuck in their chair at a table. I got that from a summer camp I went to for three years where we had to tuck our chairs in or the supers (supervisors) would get mad.

Opinion of Circuses: If it's Cirque Du Soleil? I absolutely LOVE it. If you don't know, Cirque Du Soleil is a cruelty-free circus where all the performers are trained gymnasts, dancers, and musicians. I love going to the shows, and I've seen most of the travelling shows. I've seen a few that are set in specific locations (Mexico, Disneyworld). The one I want to go to the most is "One," the Michael Jackson Cirque in Las Vegas.

Do You Have Any Sense of Direction: I like to call myself a "human navigator." If I've been there enough, I know exactly where to go. In a mall back home, I'm the GPS because I know where every store is. If I've never been there, you want me to have the map because I can quickly figure out maps to real life.

#ask game #get to know me #get to know the blogger

[riverstardis]

warning: long ass rant ahead

It doesn't help that I'm still disappointed with Saturday's ep but something about the lack of Ethan in that trailer seems to have set something off in me because now I'm mad about how dirty they've done him, not just recently, but over his whole time on the show. Because--and it seems weird to say now because since Cal's death he's become one of those characters that gets a lot of storylines (with the exception of s33 where he seemed to disappear off the face of the planet for a bit ofc)--before Cal died he hardly ever got any time to shine. Cal always got the focus and had storylines of his own whereas Ethan never had a proper storyline of his own, even the Huntington's storyline was mostly focused on Cal until the very end. It's kinda funny because it's canon that Ethan always felt in Cal's shadow but that doesn't mean they had to recreate that in real life!!

I remember in the fandom, among Ethan fans specifically (duh), when we found Cal was going to die we were of course sad about that but we were also hopeful that it would finally give Ethan his time to shine, and while yes it did do that, it didn't last very long because they soon started writing him completely out of character!!!

And then of course that lasted for years until somehow they managed to get his character back on track (obviously he's still very different to what he used to be like but I do think that what he's like now is realistic character development from what he used to be like given everything he's been through, unlike whatever the fuck happened in the middle there). But by the time they'd sorted that out, the quality of the show in general just wasn't as good. It has started to get better and it looks to be on the right track but now Ethan's leaving and by the looks of the trailer he's not going to have any focus until his exit storyline which seems like it might be around Christmas (so autumn or winter trailer maybe if they do them)?

I don't think I would be as mad if I thought that it was George Rainsford's choice to leave but I really don't believe it was.

And all this means that Ethan hardly has any rewatchable storylines, because the majority of storylines he's had that have actually been about him have been while they were butchering his character or while the show was suffering from covid restrictions. His stuff from s36 has been good but super depressing, and other than that he hasn't had a single storyline I would ever enjoy rewatching since s31, and if his next storyline's his exit, that's never going to change. (So basically yeah he's leaving in s37 but really he's been lost since s31.

I'm assuming his exit is going to be HD related but even then you'd have thought they would want to do as much as they could possibly do with it up to then while they still could but apparently not (I'm just going off the trailer here ofc there could be stuff not shown in the trailer). Like, so much for raising awareness, they've only brought attention to one (1) symptom. They could easily explore the cognitive and psychiatric symptoms while he's still able to work. Or they could give him a storyline that's not tragic and depressing for once in his damn life idk.

Anyways basically I'm sad Ethan's leaving, I'm mad at Casualty for not doing him justice, and I'm annoyed that despite the fact that he's been on the show for almost 9 years, it might as well have only been 4 years and even during those 4 years he was constantly overshadowed.

PS Classic Casualty is on s28 now which not only makes me feel very old, but it also means they should be reaching Ethan's first episode in a couple of weeks if anyone's interested.

#i really need to get a life #or go outside and touch a lot of grass #or magically become neurotypical #anything #bc why tf is this taking up so much of my headspace #or maybe i just need to be banned from making tumblr posts in the middle of the night #Bee's Middle of the Night Rants™ #bc apparently this is a recurring thing now #grammarly told me the tone of this post is gloomy and disapproving and yeah #sounds about right #@ fellow ethan fans reading this: come be miserable with me please #i'll make a proper post about my trailer thoughts tomorrow #ethan hardy #bbc casualty #rant #casualty

[libraryofbaxobab]

UPDATE TO MY PREVIOUS POST December 5, 2023:

I lied. I forced my way through it. Turns out, the first half of the book is the equivalent to a jogger finding the body in the cold open of an episode of Law & Order. I had to suffer through all of that for next to nothing, because the part that I consider to be the actual story picks up decades later with different characters. That said, once that part actually starts (way too late!) it picks up right away and becomes almost as fun as I hoped it would be. It's exciting and gross and there are guns and explosions and motorcycles and other cool shit.

I stand by my criticism of giving the slime mold anthropomorphic thoughts. The narration goes out of its way to explicitly state that it does not actually have thoughts. And yet, it has POV sections where it wants, it decides, it learns, it remembers, it actively problem-solves-- not to imply that it's gaining sentience like I thought but in direct conflict with the book's own insistence. This leads me to believe that this author just does not have the mastery of language to phrase it any other way. That's pretty embarrassing.

Here's a thing that I liked! The mind-control portions. Those were the kind of horror I wanted and the intrusive thoughts/ instructions were delivered in a pretty spooky voice by the audiobook narrator, who otherwise totally sucked. (Seriously, he narrated in almost complete monotone but then inexplicably did some characters' voices as a Hank Hill impression like wtf) Random weird thoughts that are not the character's own? Yes please.

Next, the characters are going to be... divisive, for some. The main guy (again, once the real story starts) talks manically and nonstop and it's super annoying. He is self-aware of this quirk, but it does make him hard to deal with as a voice. He's an exhausting character that starts out hard to like, but I ended up coming around after seeing he is making conscious efforts to better his life. It's actually really interesting to see someone in the early stages of taking responsibility but not quite getting it right yet. I liked the romance subplot (A sentence I never thought I'd type!!) and thought it was weirdly sweet. It was much slower and more thoughtful than the dreadful horny triple-threat in the "cold open."

Not to belabor that again, but after some more thought, I realized that this book actually has two "jogger finds the body" set pieces. We shouldn't forget that the three characters from the insufferable beginning half are already investigating a reported death, which brings them to the remote village where the fungus originated-- a village that the book once again goes out of its way to note that it is specifically reclaimed indigenous land. That's not important to the plot in any way, but it would be mildly interesting if it didn't mean that the book kills off twenty-six indigenous people offscreen just to focus on the actual experience of the white people (or, in one character's case, white-passing Latino. And yes, that he has a Hispanic name but looks "white enough" is actually a plot point in the book, which makes it even more suspect that in the movie adaptation coming out next year he is played by Liam Neeson and given a different name. Oop!). That just feels weird to me, to have gone on and on about the legality of returning indigenous lands for no reason if we weren't going to use any of those characters' perspectives. They were literally set dressing to show the white people how gruesome the consequences of contracting the contagion would be. They're the unnamed "killer's previous victims" on a bulletin board in the "jogger finding the body" analogy.

One of those three cold-open characters comes back later with a plan to save the day because they've ~seen this before and know what it can do~. Except, no they don't. They barely investigated the village at all and left immediately with a sample. This character has a comprehensive list of difficult-to-obtain materials that are absolutely necessary to containing this threat. Much time is devoted to this list but in vague terms; we are not privy to the specific items on that list, presumably until the moment they are used. But rest assured that every single item is totally of the utmost importance to this plan and they have thought of every possible- just kidding they bring, like, a gun. Why is there even a list, other than of course to waste a bunch of time to make the stakes seem higher to the characters who are trapped and awaiting rescue? Why is this book so interested in wasting my time?

I think ultimately this book shows that the author doesn't grasp the writer's mantra of "show, don't tell" which is wild considering he has written a bunch of famous and exciting movies. This might be his first crack at a novel, and since he can't rely on visual shorthand, he compensates by just insisting to the reader that certain things are true, even when the action shows us the opposite. The list is useful because he says it's useful, don't worry about how little it gets used. The fungus isn't sentient because he says it isn't, don't pay attention to all the active thoughts he's given it. The guy from the offscreen inciting incident died horribly because a character says he died horribly, you don't even need a description. It's not even clever unreliable narrator shenanigans, it just comes off as an inexperienced novelist demanding that you believe him no matter what you've seen.

#whatskenyareading #books #reading #library #horror #audiobook #cold storage #long post #rant #fungal #fungi #fungus #pathogen #infection #illness #disease #action

[fioras-resolve]

ace attorney series review

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: genuinely really good, but not just for story reasons. it's a really solid work of mystery adventure game design that still delivers on the original promise of ace attorney better than a lot of the most lauded games. and manfred still carries the most threatening presence of any prosecutor throughout the series

Justice for All: I think this is better than people say it is, i think it's fine for the game to be mostly episodic and focus on cases about just some guys rather than furthering The Plot, but i also can't deny that it has a lot of bad design habits that the series wouldn't overcome for a long time, specifically bullshit testimony puzzles that undercut the actual appeal to cross-examination. that said, it introduced us to the magatama interrogations, and still has the most compelling of those in the series.

Trials and Tribulations: this is of course a classic and an amazing resolution to the trilogy. 11 year old me had to physically go outside after the ending and process everything that just happened. but it's worth noting that i was consulting a walkthrough for the entire back half, because the bullshit testimony puzzles being so frequent meant i couldn't trust the game to be straightforward with me. it's better as a visual novel than as a game, and that's a real shame

Rise from the Ashes: incredibly solid all around, definitely my favorite of the original trilogy and also just some of the best ace attorney the series has seen? it's not just that 10 year old me saw all of the forensic gimmick and thought "wow, cool toy!" it's that it genuinely expands the scope of what ace attorney can be. it's not just that i can view objects in 3D, but that examining these things reveals new information, or just gives Phoenix and Ema an excuse to banter. it's not just that spraying luminol is fun, but that you can spray it anywhere, and find bloodstains in unexpected places that have nothing to do with the case but are just funny or flesh out the world. it's an ambitious case that makes good on all that ambition.

Apollo Justice: this game takes rise from the ashes and removes everything i liked about it. look, people have talked about this game to death. the basic complaints i have are 1) the bracelet mechanic sucks and relies on either guesswork or a walkthrough, 2) the 3d evidence examination has lost all of its charm in favor of raw function, 3) there's a large sense in both the minigames and the fact everybody else already knows what's going on, that you're just going through the motions of doing what the writer wants you to. like, it sucks, for sure, i don't like it. BUT, it was at least a setup for what could've been a great second trilogy. it takes ace attorney into a new direction that could have promising! shame the rest of the trilogy didn't follow up on it.

Investigations: so like, gonna be honest, i don't remember a fucking thing that happens in that game, and i only played it a couple years ago. the actual plot slid off of me. but the characters left an incredibly solid impression. i'm probably never going to forget tyrell badd, shi-long lang, calisto yew, and especially kay faraday. they're such cool characters, and i love the energy of the game, even though it's basically junk food entertainment. it's a great time the whole way through, and i especially like how it deliberately removes testimony puzzles in the way that every rebuttal has to end with presenting evidence. but i think this also marks the point where the series stopped living rent-free in my mind. i have strong memories of the original trilogy, and apollo justice, but from here on out i think the series just stopped leaving as much of an impact on me.

Investigations 2: i played this game in high school when the translation was finally done, and it was cool as hell. it escalated the stakes of the series to something i'd never seen before, and it takes a genuinely darker turn that i really liked at the time. it's incredibly solid as a game, but my memory just isn't what it used to be. i should play that game again sometime, it was really refreshing to see these familiar characters again.

Professor Layton Crossover: it's been a while since i played this one, i had a pretty good time with it. i like both of the games it crosses over, and i like the dynamics between its main characters, but i also think the court sections rely way too much on pressing leading to there basically being no tension. i was honestly disappointed in shu takumi for writing the game this way. it feels like he's just too enamored with fun mechanic ideas, and doesn't consider how it will feel to play them. but it's still a really nice court drama, and what really makes it for me is the presentation. the use of animation, music, voice acting, etc all creates a compelling drama that feels elevated above much of the series. like, footfalls of turnabout is one of my favorite songs in the series, because no other game in the series has a song that does what it does for the story. i would absolutely recommend this game if you wanna see how to use music to make a drama more compelling.

Dual Destinies: a cowardly game, seemingly made in response to people who didn't like apollo justice, choosing to walk back everything interesting it did. i think it's a pretty entertaining mystery procedural, like each case is a compelling story. it just doesn't make an impact like the original trilogy did, and that's a real shame. i will say that i've forgotten how well this game uses 3D for its character animation. like yeah, the mouth flaps would be better as sprites, but there's a lot of really nice or funny animation that would have been a pain in the ass to do in sprites, like ted tonate dis/reassembling a bomb, scuttlebutt pushing a tabloid out of her little box, or just cosmos spinning in his segway. like, it's really nice.

Spirit of Justice: this game was fine. i think i appreciate it because it kind of makes an aesthetic out of having no identity anymore. like, there's just too many characters, settings, plot threads, and mechanics for any of it to cohesive, so instead it's all sectioned off. this part is in the style of the original trilogy, this part features athena, and the choice to have the entire last case from apollo's perspective is a bold one! wouldn't have been so bold if this was actually just The Apollo Justice Trilogy, but nonetheless! i think for the cowardly direction this series took, this was the best direction they could've gone with it. but it's also a jumped shark, and that's really sad.

Great Ace Attorney 1+2: i can't really appreciate it on its own, because it's just so wrapped up in the context of the rest of the series. the best story beats mostly feel like shu takumi chasing old glory, the summation examination feels like it's trying and succeeding to one-up the main series, like "look, i can do jury trials, why didn't you?" it uses 3D evidence examination in a way that actually fleshes out the story, but it keeps doing the thing where it thinks it's clever by making you check the other side of a piece of evidence. like wouldn't it be funny if you had this mechanic in turnabout sisters? sigh anyway, it's pretty good, but i feel like i just can't like it as much as modern aa fans do because i've just, been here the whole time.