#honestly tho i think the racism thing is kinda hard to properly write in a way to have the bigot be properly redeemed and

[volvolts]

i love van zieks but kinda bummed that his racism is more of "one japanese guy betrayed my trust and now im a bigot even though i feel guilty about it" but then he also says he hates everyone as if the story felt the need to show that he's "less racist" by saying "i hate everyone but i hate the japanese a bit more so"

like he says he doesnt trust anyone or the justice system after the professor case but rarely do we see him deride the british justice system and when he does it feels more to discredit ryunosuke and it feels more that he's just being a bigot or "you think youre safe from me? i want the truth" but he actually enforces the law by doing this because the people he demands answers from people who use loop holes (being a juror, info is top gov secrets, stronghart said no) and van zieks is like "you cant hide from the law" and i feel if the narrative had it more of van zieks being "the british people always try to find loopholes or appeal to emotions to avoid the law and i feel that we let that happen too much" and NOT try to make it about the japanese somehow id feel that his trust issues would feel a bit less tacked on?

also i remember this part from that one tumblr blog that analyzed van zieks throughout the game (i cant for the life of me remember their blog name but its pretty good) where they said that it would have been better if some of van zieks' more racist sentiments came from stronghart and i think itd be really interesting because not only would it make van zieks feel less like he was ready to be racist just but needed an excuse but it also shows van zieks' and stronghart's closeness (which was alluded to but never felt fleshed out imo) and foreshadows stronghart's villainy. like if ryu and susato first come to england and stronghart says an offhand racist comment but it isnt acknowledge and then van zieks could say the same thing but meaner in the courtroom it could immediately add a connection between the two and set up for the second game.

#talkin #ace attorney #the great ace attorney #barok van zieks #this isnt barok hate btw if you have genuine hatred over van zieks thats ur opinin but i dont want your comments on my post please #honestly tho i think the racism thing is kinda hard to properly write in a way to have the bigot be properly redeemed and #lets face it ace attorney has never made a great redemption from a prosecutor #and because if constraints in the story we just have to accept that their redemption is good enough #it couldve gone worse but i feel that van zieks reaches enough redemption as he actually apologizes up front and actively tries #to change his prejudice with what little interaction he would have with ryu off court #and even though he could have he never makes a racist or petty remark to asogi despite #fully believing kazuma's father was a serial killer like i dont think he ever says anyting racist about kazuma #not even when he found out he was watching over a japanese man for 3 months does he seem pissed about it #so idk #but anyway if you only comment on this post just to hate on barok just dont #im not really in the mood to see one of my favorite characters get hate on my post

[transfemlogan]

👀 you definitely made sense! and i agree with the points you made, too. i was definitely having trouble articulating my point bc it was hard to properly explain what i meant, and still is honestly lol.

i definitely didn't mean to flatten lying. you're so, so right that it can be useful and good, and protective in certain situations, and that it's much more complicated than i had talked about in my last ask.

and hard agree about criticizing how our societies are set up. bc like,,,usamerican society is built on racism and ableism. and we definitely need to question and change that. i think all societies around the world have things about them that definitely need to be criticized and questioned, and changed for the better. so basically Big Agree!!

i think you pinpointed some of what i was trying to say tho. i think thomas was definitely having trouble writing exactly what he wanted to get across, and ended up muddying the message in the way he ended up writing it. it feels like he leaned in way too hard on janus's lying aspect and so the writing took a hit for it.

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you have chosen...

1) my concerns for the writer's room bc of specific segments in the five year anniversary episode

i know we're prolly a little past this but cw for alcoholism mentions

there are two specific segments: a) the stuff about wine and b) the end segment, when asking to categorize who's who in the "family" (these two overlap a little)

a) wine/drinking

logan, specifically, seems to have become more obsessed with drinking wine. just remembered in the asides, wtit, logan also drinks wine in that episode, too. but anyway, in the fifth anniversary, every time we see logan, he's holding some kind of glass with wine in it. the joke being that his receptacle gets larger and larger every time they cut back to him.

and near the end, they mention how logan's the wine mom and janus is the wine aunt. and it makes me worry about really worry about the state of the writer's room bc iirc, the team said and promised that the fans having a say in future episodes didn't mean they were going to write episodes, but even the small influences fans have can have a huge impact

and my first example is the wine thing because casual alcoholism is such a cultural norm these days (esp so in usamerica and the uk)

logan's wine glasses, wine moms, wine aunts, social drinking, the normalization of drinking wine at 10 in the morning, the normalization of drinking a whole wine bottle in a day, casual mentions of drinking a six pack of beer a night, every night

that's not funny. that's alcoholism. it's not quirky. it's concerning, but it's often treated as a joke, as seen by many things, including in some of the most recent sanders sides content thomas has released.

b) who's who in their family (this might be where we differ, but i could be wrong lol. it could be also just be my wording, i'm reading over this and thinking,,,there might be better words for this but i honestly can't think of them)

trying to fit all the characters into a heteronormative family. it kinda really feels like something only a fan would suggest

like i know it's obviously supposed to be treated like a joke, and logan comments about gender stereotypes, but it doesn't really do anything for me. it's just ironic lampshading, which is not the same as satire. they weren't satirizing the heteronormative family dynamics, they're reinforcing them, even if they pointed it out. simply pointing something out, and then continuing to do it in a serious fashion, is not satire or criticism

the problem i have with it is: why do found families (in a sense, i know it gets complicated bc they're parts of thomas lol) even need heteronormative family labels? can't it be enough that you have found people you would consider family? does everyone in your found family need a label? can they not just be? why is there this obsession with fitting in to such stereotypical family labels? isn’t the whole point of found family, esp for those in marginalized communities, to move away from the heteronormative family that shuns and abuses anyone who deviates from the able-bodied, nt, cishet, white societal norms?

that's not to say if you'd like those labels, to not do it of course. and i can understand where that desire comes from.

the way thomas did it in the fifth anniversary felt off to me. again, both the wine and the labels just felt like something a fan would suggest bc they like the idea or the way it sounds. and it really muddies what's canon and what's fanon. i also feel like it really muddies the fact that these are all aspects of him. but i won't go into that too much, bc i don't want to impinge on harmless fandom fun, and i'm also not a system, so i won't be able to say anything meaningful about that, in that respect.

[was a little distracted, been a long day, so i hope this all makes sense]

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anyway, thanks for letting me write these essays in your inbox ^_^ i appreciate being able to have someone to discuss these criticisms with! it's been a lot of fun and very cathartic lol

SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG 2 ANSWER IVE BEEN LOW ON SPOONS LATELY </33

Also I WAS right abt our opinions being the same <3

The entire thing w/ Logan drinking wine makes me so uncomfortable. Alcoholism is such a serious topic. I have alcoholic family members and I have friends with alcoholic family members; watching it being treated like a joke just... leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Knowing how alcoholism can affect families, I don't understand why anyone would joke about that.

I also don't even know how you woule come back from that, if Thomas recognised how wrird and bad it was that he was including this in his series. The concept of him just... dropping it all of a sudden and acting as if it never happened doesn't make me happy, but the concept of him trying to tall about alcoholism in his show doesn't make me happy, either! I hold the same feelings in regards to Roman being lowkey ableist towards Logan in the jam ad ("mr. Infodumper"). I have to live with the fact Roman is canonically ableist!

I have to live with the fact that Logan is canonically an alcoholic and it's being treated as a joke.

I do agree with your points about the entire family thing! As soon as it was brought up in the video, I cringed.

Agree with all your points about the concept of found family and heteronormative terms to describe those families; isn't it enough that they just are a family? What purpose does it serve to make them fit into specific roles?

I do, also, want to bring up the concept of applying heteronormative terms to queer relationships. Of course, Thomas is a gay man, which I feel like makes my opinion as a gay man about what he is doing to his gay characters not that... important? I'm unsure how to explain. I know gay people aren't a monolith, but it feels weird to me to criticise another gay person about how they're writing their gay characters.

(I am still going to bring it up.)

Queer people are constantly asked "who's the man and whos the woman in the relationship?" The only reason some fans wanted to include the mom/dad joke is so they can have canonical shipping content, I will die on this hill. But because I know that's why fans wanted it, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

This fandom already has a big issue with fetishising gay men, watching it be shoved into a video made me incredibly uncomfortable.

I don't want to see Patton call himself the dad and call Logan the mom. Because its only there for shipping purposes. Heteronormative

NOW. Again, mixed feelings on their opinion because 1) (again) Thomas is a gay man. It's his series. It's his characters. But 2) I do like when queer people use different gendered terms than their birth gender. I like when queer people do not fit heteronormative roles and are actively queer.

I am a trans man. If I was a parent, I'd prefer the label "mom" over "dad". I much prefer when people call me handsome when I am doing "feminine" things like wearing makeup or skirts. Which is why I'm like... on one hand, YES! Janus preferring the term 'Aunt' over 'Uncle'? Heart eyes! Logan being the 'Mom' instead of another 'Dad'? Sign me up. Fem terms for the sides forever.

But on the other, it's hard to be excited over it when ... I know it was fans who wanted it. I know it was only for shipping purposes (no offense to logicality fans, I feel like I'm being mean to yo guys throughout all this). I know that it's just applying labels to something that does not need labels.

And of course, literally everything you said.

I don't mind heavily fandom centric media. 1 of my biggest SpIns as of right now is Blaseball, a horror baseball simulation. The entirety of that game is community and fandom driven; characters are only given a name and stats, fans make their design and personality and literally everything about them. The creators of the game have expressed that all fandom ideas about a character is canon due to the concept of alternate realities in the game. I could keep talking, but then I'd just be autistic-ly infodumping about Blaseball.

In short, there is nothing wrong with the mixing of fanon and canon, but Blaseball started off that way. That is a really big part of Blaseball. You get to do whatever you want with these characters, regardless of if you are in the fandom or not! You don't need to know anything about how the fandom treats a character in order to like a character and have your own headcanons about it.

Sanders Sides is a community driven series, but that's just because Thomas doesn't upload frequently! And this community is highkey dying out because Thomas doesn't upload when he should and because of how negative people are becoming and because no one in this fucking fandom knows how to support artists and writers!!

I WAS going to explain WAYY more and elaborate but as I started writing I lost less and less spoons and now brain fog is getting to me. But I am hoping you can just... figure out what I am trying to say.

I am also not a system, but you are right. I think that's a topic much more reserves for people with DID or OSDD to talk about, but Thomas talks sooo much about how it's not DID or having alters and then lowkey completely goes against that. (Of course, the subject about Sanders Sides and whether or not it is ableist towards systems has lots and lots of mixed opinions. I have system friends who like(d) Sanders Sides and don't view it as ableist and I know of systems who do view it as ableist, and etc etc.)

And, of course, I am glad writing these little essays was fun & good. I love criticising things w/ people & hearing other people's opinions ^_^

#i would love to hear more from people who are not critical of thomas but. #i am being blocked by all of them /hyp & sometimes they r mean :( #ask #long post