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Not my white ass locked in the duke’s dungeon again because I fucked his favorite jester 😩

I didn’t know he was so territorial over the silly little guy 🙄

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African elephant calves vs Asian elephant calves 

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The thing I've always loved most about aa4 is how much darker the tone is than the rest of the series in a way that isn't just edgy for the sake of it, but subverts your expectations from the original 3 games in a really interesting way. The trilogy was built upon the trust Phoenix had in others, and it was something we as players could almost always feel certain in. AA4 flips this on its head and makes it so Apollo effectively can't trust anyone but himself.

Your mentor, who the in the trilogy was a paragon of wisdom you could always turn to no matter what, gets revealed to be the culprit and sent to jail in the first trial and by the end of the game his list of crimes has stacked high but you still have so few answers on why he did any of it.

Your boss, the goofy protagonist of the trilogy, is now inexplicably a washed-up, disgraced, cheating poker player with an implied drinking problem who seemingly found a new hobby in evidence forgery and jury rigging.

He has a codependent relationship with his daughter, your assistant, who usually is a completely innocent and hapless victim of circumstance. She sees herself as the provider for the house and will help her father cheat at poker, or forge evidence, or guilt trip the poor attorney they knowingly screwed of out of a job into working for them for dirt cheap.

The detective, the only other returning main character, a previous assistant, is completely changed since we last saw her. In the trilogy she was chipper and bright despite the hardships she faced, and now she's unfriendly and burned out, turned bitter by the world. The scene we're first properly introduced to her in Apollo genuinely spends several minutes thinking his boss is making him bribe her with cocaine.

Every single defendant is a criminal guilty of something other than what they're charged for. Each case centers around an underground black-market poker ring, a mafia family and medical malpractice, a smuggling ring, and a family of forgers and an incredibly shady troupe of magicians. The one thing all of these people have in common is that none of them will tell you literally anything about what's happening, half of them clearly reveling in being as big of cryptic assholes as possible.

The only person who doesn't fit this description is, for once, the prosecutor. Usually your biggest obstacle and the most morally corrupt of the main cast, he's the only person who's both 100% on the side of truth and on the same page as you for the entire game. He's just as clueless as you, being used nothing more than a chess piece just like you are.

But the truly masterful thing about AA4 is how morally grey it is. These characters aren't just one note villains. They're not even villains at all. Most of them aren't even malicious.

Your boss, for all the low levels he stoops to, is underneath it all the same guy he's always been, doing everything he can to bring a criminal to justice and protect his family. Your assistant is a sweet girl who truly cares about you, she's just prioritizing herself and her fathers safety before anything else. The detective is the same passionate and kind woman under everything else. The rest of the defendants are genuinely well-meaning young people who got involved in shady stuff they didn't fully understand.

The game is filled with good people trying to make the best of bad circumstances. The game has just as many fun moments as the original trilogy. For all it's rough appearance, the game has a similar heart. For every unanswered question or unrighted wrong, there's a smile or a hope for a better future. For every bad action, there's usually someone trying their best behind it. The game is melancholic and dark, but isn't afraid to let good shine through. It knows there's no shadows without the light.

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You have to recognize your capacity for harm. You cannot omit the harm you've done to others to remain "good." Anybody can be a bigot. Anyone can be an abuser. Anyone can harm anyone at any time even those who have been harmed themselves. The world is not made up of victims and villains only, this is life, not a Saturday morning cartoon and you are a human being who can or maybe even has hurt others and you HAVE to acknowledge that to learn to be better.

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For those who celebrate:

Phoenix Wright has been disbarred for five slutty slutty years.

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one thing the human emotional range is lacking is the predator animal ability to stare at people while holding the limp, bloody corpse of your prey in your mouth

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hey boss i can't come in today it's a sunny day and there's a lovely breeze coming in through my window, yeah it's rustling the branches of the tree outside that's finally bloomed so it's pretty serious

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rawing people on couches is so hard yet most of my ideas involve that

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Fandom Problem #4801:

Antis: Ugh I can't believe people are MAD at us for being uncomfortable with gross shit 🙄

Also Antis: If your ship met each other as kids that's incest and pedophilia and you deserve the death penalty

Also Antis: Wow I'm so normal

#discourse

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Reposting Krispollo gift art from anon :)

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Reposting another krispollo art from anon 😈

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As a lesbian i will always relate more to trans women than cishet women. Made to feel disgusting and predatory in women’s spaces? Check. Berated and mocked for our relation to sexuality and womanhood? Check. Hated for our “deviancy from the norm”? Check. Every single essay about womanhood by a trans woman–and especially, especially by trans wlw–has spoken more to me than anything written by a cis straight woman ever could. T*rfs can take that to the bank.

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Taras Shevchenko and Ira Aldridge by Heorhiy Melikhov, 1963

Famous Ukrainian poet and artist Taras Shevchenko befriended the African-American Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge, while the latter was on tour to the Russian Empire in 1858. Shevchenko did his portrait in pastel. It is recounted that the two men got along very well. While posing for the portrait, Aldridge sang African-American songs to Shevchenko and in return, the artist taught him Ukrainian songs. 

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That's my take on them