#Also the sprites referenced for everyone were

[freakyfranklin]

This is how Frank's court scene in s2 went, right y'all?

Anyway Im trying my damnedest to get back in the flow of drawing again, and the concept of Daredevil in the AA universe is one I've always liked thinking about.

[starberriemilk]

Quick Analysis of New Sinclair EGO

I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS EGO AND I REALLY NEED TO TALK ABOUT IT!

First of all: This EGO MUCH more hopeful in comparison to Hong Lu's, it's clearly about Sinclair breaking out of his egg.

Sinclair is hopeful, Hong Lu is hopeless.

Sinclair spreads his wings and the whole animation is so cinematic and it focuses on that part, making it really clear to me that it's about Sinclair hatching out of his egg.

With the addition of his wings being similar in shape to a cain mark, it makes it even more clear.

There's also the thing with antlers I said before: someone pointed out that they're young dragon's antlers which shows Sinclair's immaturity. They have blood on them, which makes me think about how they grew out forcefully - a sign of Sinclair being forced to grow up faster when he wasn't ready yet, because ones that took care of him died.

The blades which, in my eyes, represent burden, representing Sinclair carrying that burden of his trauma, but he uses them as his wings to let himself soar and let go of his past.

It's a big contrast to Hong Lu, who's being dragged by the lance that he's impaled with. Like I said, these EGOs are opposites of each other and parallels a lot. With Sinclair soaring and letting go off his trauma, and Hong Lu sinking down and looking totally out of control in his EGO. It makes me think of how their toad EGOs parallels, with Sinclair wanting to take everyone's pain away, sacrificing himself in the process, while Hong Lu is bottling up his own pain until he explodes… I just think the contrast is VERY interesting, and the parallels are very visible, especially in this EGO.

Another thing I wanted to talk about Sinclair's eye in contrast to Hong Lu's. While the area around Hong Lu's eye looks like a wound or scar, the are around Sinclair's eye looks like it's covered in feathers/fur(?), and instead of an eye, he has a flower there. People have said he has a missing eye but to me it looks like a flower- unfortunately we won't know for sure until we get better quality of the sprites in a few weeks, but with assumption of it being a flower, I think it's a reference to Lin Daiyu, Hong Lu's love interest in The Dream Of Red Chamber, who is very heavily associated with flowers (I am theorizing that Sinclair will get her identity but that's a topic for another post). It could also be a reference to Sinclair being the Rose from Little Prince.

This might be a stretch but with the way Hong Lu and Sinclair are presented in the EGO, Sinclair's eye is visible in a lot of the sprites meanwhile Hong Lu's eye is very hidden, which in my eyes represents their trauma and how visible it is. Sinclair's eye is visible, just like his trauma - he literally started having a visible panic attack and threw up when K corp was merely mentioned in his canto. Meanwhile Hong Lu? A lot of people in the fandom assume he doesn't even have trauma, that's how good he is at hiding it. The sweepers event was probably the first time he talked about his trauma in a more serious manner - just how his eye in the whole animation is very obscured.

Lastly, I want to talk about Sinclair's line.

This line is clearly a reference to Daiyu's line in the beginning of Dream of Red Chamber, when she is still Crimson Pearl Flower:

"The only way in which I could perhaps repay him would be with the tears shed during the whole of mortal lifetime if he and I were to be reborn as humans in world below"

Now, compare this to parts of Sinclair's line, particularly this part: "Earthbound have I become" is referencing how for Daiyu to repay her debt of tears, she had to descend to the mortal realm and thus she became bound to Earth because she is reborn as a human. And then there's "To embrace you, I endure this endless descend", because Daiyu's whole purpose of descending and thus enduring all the pain and sadness that came with being reborn as a human and being earthbound, is to one day reunite and embrace her true love, Baoyu, which Hong Lu is based on. The descend felt endless because the debt of tears is not something that can be repaid in a single night. It would have taklen her the whole lifetime of a mortal, but she would endure it just like Sinclair, to embrace her love and repay the debt.

But besides that, I think the line has other meaning, connecting it to Sinclair's own story, let me break it down:

"Earthbound I have become" - reference to how Sinclair fell from the world of light, descending to the world of darkness. The wording also, "earthbound", references how he's like a bird that can't fly, because he's still in an egg.

"But to embrace you" - the "you" i think he's talking about might be Demian, I'll explain later why. What he means by the wording "to embrace", i think is "to accept (a belief, theory, or change) willingly and enthusiastically." (from dictionary)

"I endure this endless descent" - the descent into the world of darkness feeling endless, because he lost everything. His parents, his sister, even Demian. He was completely alone and it feels like it will never end, but he endures it, because he knows that it will be worth it.

So to put it all together, this whole sentence means that Sinclair had fallen into the world of darkness, which feels endless, because of everything he lost and all the pain he goes through. However, he endures it all and doesn't give up, because he knows that if he wants to embrace Demian again, he has to go through all this, and all this pain is necessary to let him break out of his egg.

That's all I have for now, if anyone has any other ideas and theories recarding this I'd love to discuss!!

[bubbleddisasters]

I know considering what we just learned in Caters dream this may be unlikely but:

I feel like Treys dream is just going to be everyone got fucking therapy. And something to do with dentistry and/or a bakery. Like thats it.

Just everyone actually works together in a safe, effective and healthy manner, Che’nyas an NRC student and is able watch over Riddle and keep watch/the dorm in line when Trey can’t and Cater opens up to him.

Like thats it. Everything else is status quo.

Ace and Deuce are still fucking around as usual, Yuu is the mediator, Leona finally got meds for his depression and some therapy so he’s not sleeping around as much, the majority of students are less manipulative and self absorbed, all is fine and dandy.

Ah yes, and You’ve predicted correctly, another Blue Che’nya Rant incoming under the cut lol:

———-

I need Che’nya to pull out his fourth wall breaking shenanigans again. He referenced Yuu’s mirror in Book 1 before Yuu even knew about it? AND The Cheshire Cat has Shapeshifting abilities and is literally the strongest creature in Wonderland only second to TIME ITSELF.

And what do Cats hate? Mice and Birds.

And who, pray tell, gets Alice out of Wonderland?

THE 👏CHESHIRE 👏CAT

You cannot tell me Che’nya was NOT the one who Mickey saw. Che’nya is already mildly hinted at being ridiculously OP.

Think also about Grim. Who has the same color palette and Blue fire as Ignihyde, and the only other character besides Che’nya to have a Cheshire esc grinning sprite. Also, a directly CAT based appearance, not a Lion like Leona, but your average joe cat.

Judging from Grims Design, role in the story and Bow, he’s likely based on Alices Cat in Alice in Wonderland that is unintentionally left behind by Alice when she falls through the Rabbit Hole.

Oh, and the Cheshire cat in the live action? DARKISH GREY AND FUCKING BLUE.

And Che’nya? Who conveniently appeared in both books with Tyrant in the name, conveniently has the ability to slip past NRCs barrier that took S.T.Y.X THEMSELVES SEVERAL HIGH POWERED ANTI MAGIC SHOTS to get through? Without Crowley noticing aswell? And likely teleporting the length of probably a SMALL COUNTRY just to go and fuck with Heartstabyl every other Tuesday or something? WITH NO VISIBLE MAGESTONE ON HIM.

Who randomly knew about our Mirror before we did, and DIRECTLY REFERENCED MICKEY/SOMEONE/ANOTHER WORLD BEING IN OUR MIRROR FROM THE START?? Who has had the ability to FLY, GO INVISIBLE, CONTROL HIS OWN GRAVITY AND LIKELY TELEPORT SO MUCH THAT TREYS SIBLINGS ASSUMED IT WAS CHE’NYA OPENING THEIR FRIDGE AND NOT THEIR OWN DAMM BROTHER, AND POSSIBLY DETACHING HIS OWN LIMBS, SINCE AGE FUCKING NINE (all seen/referenced in manga) , WHICH WE LEARNED SHOULD HAVE PRACTICALLY EXPLODED THE AVERAGE CHILD FROM ROLLO.

BRO HAS BEEN DOING FEATS WE’VE ONLY SEEN LILIA, CROWLEY AND MALLEUS DO.

Lastly, who could’ve followed us throughout our entire journey without notice?

In the Manga, a clone cater got LITERALLY impaled. Theres no way in hell every single person survived an overblot fight with, according to Ace, ���A Couple Bruises” without some guardian angel bs happening.

WHOS ALSO THERE FOR ALICES ENTIRE JOURNEY AND PLAYS THE GUARDIAN ANGEL WHEN ALICE NEEDED AN EMERGENCY ROUTE OUT OF WONDERLAND WHEN SHE WAS BEING CHASED??????

THE 👏CHESHIRE 👏CAT

And theres only one person that can pull that role off without detection even if they slipped up, as if Crowley did so and suddenly accidentally became visible or smth, it’d draw more questions. Like wtf he’s doing his job????

For Scarabia, We basically had a magic shield (Floyd) and a Direct Target (Kalim), so Yuus less likely to catch Strays. Plus I wouldn’t put it above Floyd to work with Che’nya and just not fucking mention it. They seem like they’d get along well actually ngl.

Ignihyde is both the most suspicious and kinda hard to piece together, but why did Riddle end up the ONLY one to get oldified when they were likely similar distances to Tartarus. Something that conveniently forced him to pull out of the fight?

Also, you CANNOT tell me, no anti-magic necklaces or not, the magepens would be magic summonable. Thats way too risky and an obvious thing they’d have a backup for. Someone had to unlock it and I have my doubts it was Idia/Ortho, because that raised their fail rate probably quite higher.

Same goes for the Lightning Bolts. I heavily doubt Idia or Ortho would give them access to that at its full ability, especially pretty right off the bat, if the off chance of all three being used against them at once was on the table, since it would practically be the equivalent to a 3-1 hit K.O cheat code or 3-1 Instant D-20s in a row. 3 possible instant K.O shots per team, and 3 teams, totaling up to 9 POSSIBLE INSTANT K.O SHOTS. Thats way too risky. One? Maybe. Two? Eh. BUT NINE? BEFORE THE FINAL BOSS FIGHT? WITH THE MAGEPENS TOO?

Also, if someone had the batshit Idea (cough Epel or Rook cough) to jump down the tower, since it’s literally just the worlds deadliest spiral staircase, and summon some cushioning for their fall and jump to the last floor platform, they could speedrun directly to them with the fully charged bolt, and if they got the rest of the groups to do that, things would go to shit for Idia pretty fast.

They also had the equivalent of a trained sniper with them. If Rook finds major vulnerabilities and tells everyone where to hit them all at the same time, its probably over.

I can mildly see the possibility of OB! Idia getting too cocky and doing so, but I find it doubtful, as I feel he would label it an “endgame” reward considering how OP it is.

It’s been proved before that NRC has it basically on sight with RSA, which works in Che’nyas favor, since they focus on the fact an RSA students on campus rather then HOW he got there.

That, and the Overblotee or more logical guys will probably be like “Riddle/Trey sent Supervision? Yea all things considering that tracks honestly.”

We see this in the game and manga, but in the manga, we can see in the Heartstabyl Finale image that Che’nya never actually left after we see him get “chased out”, and has literally been chilling in a bush watching the group the whole time, meaning he’s likely pretty experienced with faking his departures.

So we can’t hear him, can’t see him, no footprints or footsteps, he can literally clip out of existence to miles away up a mountain on command??? And can unexplainably slip past 500 year old arcane barriers without breaking a sweat???

Bros got The Guardian Angel/ Spy package Deluxe.

Anyway thats just a bad theory but yea

Thats the end of my rant for now I need to eat lunch lol.

[1moreff-creator]

DRDT CH2 EP15 First Impressions

46 minutes. Closing Argument inbound.

It’s time.

Spoilers for CH2 EP15. CW: Hanging, murder, references to eating disorders, strangling, blood and wounds.

I actually wasn’t home when this started airing, but I got there literally five minutes after the hour so… Wee!

Before I jump in: I think the time frame of 46 minutes points to Ace NOT being the culprit, since it feels too long for just him, but it’s impossible for us to know yet. I’d say I still think he’s more likely than Eden, but only barely.

Ace: “Are you kidding me?” Isn’t that a different sprite from the end of Ep14? Hilarious if true.

“That’s so inane-“ Big vocabulary words!

Eden: “No… It must have been Ace. The more I think about it, the more I’m sure.” GIRL WHY ARE YOU SO SUSPICOISY?!?! (<- I noticed the typo but it illustrates my mental state atm).

“He was the one stalking me!” Huh? Wait so that wasn’t just Teruko? Wait wait wait how long does Eden think Ace was stalking her for?

“I always had the feeling that someone was following me around.” For how long? Ace was unconscious in the referenced scene!

[Rose agrees with Eden] Everyone’s jumping too fast I don’t think Ace is the culprit chat. It might be Edenover actually.

Ace: “That was not me, and you have no way of proving it.” I know! Everyone’s jumping way too fast to this conclusion!

Teruko: “There’s a very narrow window when the fish could’ve been taken” (Paraphrased). FISH ALIBI! But it’s way too early to be decisive, there’s forty fucking minutes left. Still, I want to know; Nico, did you eat with Hu and Eden or not?

“Any earlier, and Nico would have noticed the missing fish.” How many people know about Nico’s account btw?

Veronika: “And isn’t that why you took the fish at all? To frame Nico?” Yo that’s what I thought! Vero and I think alike! (<- This means bad things for me).

Veronika: “Yes true.” Look at that little smile :)

[J and Levi discuss Ace’s mindset to take the tape] Yeah this is the hardest part for Ace!Culprit.

Eden: “He did run off very quickly…” asjgeb (I’m losing the ability to form coherent thoughts).

“Ace had a whole day to figure out the murder.” (P.) Me and Teruko think alike again!

“Why *were* you in the gym…?” I’ve heard this question before! Teruko thinks like thebadjoe! Different context sure but they’re both smart so it checks out :)

[Levi rebuts] Yeah… the tape-taking’s still weird.

Ace: “…” Ooh, someone’s still feeling things at being defended by Levi!

“No one can prove this but yourself.” True, that’s the main issue with this line of reasoning, and why I haven’t been putting much thought into it.

“…you took the tape for first aid.” ivibells thinks like Teruko! (Check comments of linked post). Was not expecting that particular line of reasoning to show up. I wonder if Teruko’s been forced to use tape for first aid in the past? Would make sense.

“I do it all the time.” Oh yeah she does lol. Shit that happens with this format of reaction post :p

“Devil’s Pubes” Okay funny, but is “Devil’s Proof” a commonly used term? Reminder to me to look into a thing.

{Looked into it. Yes it’s a commonly used term. Proceed as normal}

“(visibly shaking)” New Whit sprite! Also super funny.

“Tch…” Ooh… New Ace sprite! And it’s cool!

Interesting lines around here, just don’t have much to say.

Teruko: “Show me your neck scars.” What the fuck is she cooking?

Ooh, now Ace is looking super sus…

There was blood on Ace’s hand, not just a saturation glitch! Good catch venus-is-thinking and accirax!

Teruko: “Even if you’ve been pretending that you’re fine, it still hurts. Right?” No genuinely where the fuck is she going with this.

I noticed this in the last episode too, seems like the dev’s grown fond of chest closeups for emotional moments. Interesting!

“…you would know to tape Arei’s hands…” Teruko this isn’t evidence. Like, you may be 100% right, but this isn’t evidence.

“That’s the dumbest bullshit I’ve ever heard!” Honestly yeah. Teruko’s reasoning here is sorta crazy.

“You seem stressed. They’re only wounds.” Veronika is being a good ally to Teruko out of nowhere but we love to see it.

Yay unhinged Vero laughter! I love that voice clip.

Nico: “…” “Sorry” as a voice clip? Huh? I thought they weren’t sorry-? I’m confused, I’ll maybe look into it after we get through the main event.

Also the more time passes without explaining the pieces of evidence left, the worse it’s looking for Ace.

[Teruko backing down.] Actually pretty cool character moment. Yeah she would understand almost dying sucks, and with the way things are going, her word would always go kinda uncontested at this point in the trial.

Ace: “Woow, Ace is actually being helpful!” The sass is immaculate. I have no idea where this trial’s going yet!

“There’s something wrong with thinking the murder was done to frame Nico.” (P.) Oh shit is he gonna bring up the fact that taking down the pulley system and hanging Arei from the swing set makes no sense in that context?

“There’s no way I could have accessed turpentine…” Ah, so not that. Bad line of reasoning my guy, imo. Still curious to see the answer to this debacle.

Hu: “You’re always attacking Nico like this!” Bro.

Nico: “I still have the turpentine in my room. I’m sorry.” Kinda huge. Also, they did apologize to Rose when they didn’t apologize to Ace. Nice character building and huge W for the Rosenico enthusiasts.

“Obviously.” First David line and he’s already calling someone an idiot! Fun stuff.

“I-di-ot.” Why does David get so many good lines?

“You are a jockey. And that’s a fact.” Charles with the groundbreaking revelations!

“That means you strong.” (P.) Yeah according to strength chart the guy is the third strongest cast member. Even above Arei. Hmmm… Foreshadowing or not?

Ace: “If it wasn’t arm wrestling against Xander, nah I’d win. Wait that’s not the point!” (P.) Fucking hilarious character this guy!

“You could have strangled Arei unconscious.” (P.) Yeah I never got the argument that turpentine was required for unconsciousness. The hanging would have covered wounds on her neck.

“Full offense, but Ace is too much of a wimp to kill with his bare hands.” (P.) David’s funny and that’s not new. What’s also not new is him being confusing even when he’s not actively stirring up shit. Do you want to lose the trial or not? Do you think Ace did it or not? Why are you like this?

Charles: “Your [David] input is unnecessary.” I’m gonna miss Charles when he gets poisoned by strychnine in CH3.

Interesting discussion around this part, I just don’t have much input and it’s been an hour and I still have 30 mins of video to go :v

Nico: “Why was Arei hanging from the swing set?” Thank you.

Teruko: “Pinning the crime on Nico is plan B but also the main plan.” (P.) I figured, but how smart are we assuming Ace to be again?

Eden: “Is Ace even capable of doing a feat of strength like that?” And THAT’s innocent behavior. It MIGHT be Aceover.

[Eden continues defending Ace] It’s Aceover.

“If you can talk, the neck wound isn’t so serious.” (P.) We’re back with another round of “character speaks with way too much authority about something super weird!” How many neck wounds have you seen, Teruko?

Rose: “Isn’t Ace kinda weak?” Why are we roasting him- Never mind it’s Ace he gets roasted daily. Proceed.

“He was beaten by Xander-“ Yeah ‘cuz Xander’s a freak- “and he’s small and doesn’t eat a lot.” (P.) Uh… Rose… did you forget what his secret was or did you not realize that this might be a bit insensitive?

J: “Seconded. He’s a scrawny little guy.” While dunking on Ace is kinda funny, if Ace can’t hoist Arei up with the spinny thing, then we’re kinda fucked unless Levi!Accomplice rises from the ashes from out of nowhere.

J: “Isn’t Ace… too stupid?” I love that this is an actual argument that not only the fandom used, but the characters brought up as well :p

Ace: “…” PFFT-

The voice acting in the following section is fucking fantastic all around. Also Ace accidentally fucking himself over out of anger at being insulted is hilarious.

Ace: “…What?” Another new sprite, and I still have no idea where this is going in terms of culprit! How?!?!

Again all the voice acting is just fantastic. And also this is kinda funny.

Charles: “I disagree with Ace.” Yeah “he’s weak and stupid” isn’t great reasoning.

Whit: “Plus you call me stupid all the time.” Charles tsundere confirmed?! (Trick question: It always has been confirmed).

Charles: “When other people [judge with intelligence bias], it truly gets on my nerves.” Interesting character tidbit here, wonder if there’s a bigger reason for that or not.

“I’m the only one reasonable enough to do that.” (P.) Oh there was a reason PFFT-

“Will you test his IQ…?” (P.) Charles really hit them with “nice argument senator, why don’t you back it up with a source?”

[Charles and Levi team up to explain jockeying] Interesting team up, and good points! I guess Teruko’s been hogging that brain cell a bit too much these last few episodes, so it makes sense for it to be Charles’ turn, huh?

Whit: “The Kuning-Dooger effect…” Charles: “Not what it’s called.” HHAHAHA!

Charles: “Ace is the killer. Don’t refute me unless you like being incorrect.” (P.) Wow that is certainty goddamn!

“Then simply do not be wrong in the future.” Yo why’s he so funny for?

My brain is kinda fried as Ace and Levi continue to argue the point, but “between you and me, we both know who’s really a murderer” is kinda crazy.

[Non-Stop Debate] WOOO!

[Truth Bullet: Laundry Ball] Oh? Are we gonna talk about getting the rope over the rafters? Or am I wrong to assume that’s how this was used?

“In the context of Nico’s murder” (P.) Love the little arrow to Nico xD

“Nico hung Ace by stepping on a stepladder…” (P.) I think I know where this is going!

[Truth Bullet Fired] YEEAH BABY!

We’re putting the image in a fifth post! >:D

“If you starch it up with laundry starch…” (P.) Aww… there goes thebadjoe’s idea on the starch. I kinda liked it, but this makes sense too. At least I called it as a possibility in that post I linked before! Kinda…

“How could I have thrown it?” (P.) Slingshot idea coming in? I don’t know how the episode still has like twenty minutes left if that’s the case. Maybe the Closing Argument is much longer than I’m expecting?

Arturo: “But there’s other evidence you threw it up there.” Oh yeah I kinda forgot the lights were part of it :v

Ace: “Bullshit.” It’s Aceover. Breakdown! Breakdown! (<- Reference to the theory that the JoJo’s song from the playlist refers to Ace).

The Ace shouting scene (that doesn’t narrow it down but you know what I mean) is fantastic, since the voice acting is on point as usual. We’re really spoiled in that aspect. And Ace’s victim complex is on full display, it’s really cool.

ARGUMENT ARMAMENT?!?!?! OH IT’S SO OVER! The art is really cool! :D

By the way, I’m gonna call that the final attack will be the elastic band thing Ace took from the gym in CH2 EP2 for the slingshot idea on the ball of clothes.

All the lines here are pretty standard, but I like them!

[Using a slingshot] Wooo! Last minute theory was correct! Shoutout that Reddit user who figured this out around the same time I did (again linked in the “select two” post I’ve already put a link to). Great minds think alike!

Teruko: “It’d be impossible for anyone to throw the weight…” (P.) Yeah right who would believe such a thing (<- Genuinely argued Eden could have potentially done it).

“Specifically, you could have made a slingshot out of this.” [Shows elastic band] Teruko where were you keeping that? Up your ass? Who brought this to the trial room?

[Levi explains, mechanism shown] Oh that mechanism makes significantly more sense than anything I was coming up with :v Still got three main idea though!

Ace: “You’re lying to verify Teruko’s made-up story!” Oh oh, someone’s desperate…

By the way the glove has yet to be explained and I find this very funny.

Ace: “Where would I have stored the water jugs?” (P.) …In the playground with literally the entire rest of the mechanism?

“SHUT UP, ACE!” SLAY TERUKO!!!

“We determine who lives and dies by majority vote…” (P.) New sprite? New cool sprite? Also, this line reminds me; do y’all think Teruko will received two votes again? I think she will.

“The point of the trial…” Also a new sprite I think? And I’m loving Teruko here, but how is this gonna lead to a Closing Argument? :v

“Are you silent now?” So many new sprites! New Ace sprite right after too.

[Ace giving up] Didn’t wanna comment because augh… this hurts… My heart goes out to all you Ace stans out there. I know you guys have a reputation as some of the most dedicated fans around, so I hope y’all are doing alright. I liked Ace quite a bit too, so this also hurts a lot on my end, but damn…

“Who do you think I am, you?!” Well at least he got one last good shout at Hu in :,D

Veronika: “What do you mean?”

Ace: “I’m definitely gonna die if I don’t escape. Everyone hates me, right?” (P.) Oh, wasn’t Veronika who told him that? That constantly picking fights would get him killed? I wonder how she’s gonna feel about that, if it’s explored. Genuinely curious, Vero’s hard to read.

“Veronika was right.” Yeah I really should let the dialogue play more often, huh :p? What I said stands though.

“A part of me wishes Nico had succeeded.” (P.) AGH!-

“But still!” New sprites going crazy!

This entire trauma dump is more or less what I imagined Ace’s motive would be. Super sad still, goddamn I can’t wait for his Bonus Episode if he gets one. My guy needs to talk to Good Person Mai stat.

“…I’m a coward who can’t fight my own fate.” FATE THEMES GO INSANE!!!

Eden: “But that’s so selfish!” Man I’m actually really glad I can stop reading Eden’s lines with suspicion now. I always kinda felt bad about it even if I thought the evidence against her merited it :v

[J’s response] You know, accirax and venus have been counting the amount of times J has been anti-murder and they were (as usual) cooking hard. I don’t know why she gets all the “murder’s bad” lines, but it helps build my “J will become primary support” agenda so.

“I know that.” Auch.

“Arei… She was a piece of shit, too.” Is he about to reveal he heard the last of the Arei-David conversation.

Also “good person” drop! Probably one of the last of the chapter!

“But at least she was trying. […] I really am a piece of shit, huh?” So. Much. Pain.

“Oh my. How tragic.” Holy shit Veronika smiling after no one denies Ace sucking is crazy. I know it’s far from the most concerning thing she’s done but this feels so sinister. I guess she doesn’t even care that she might’ve planted the idea of murder in Ace’s mind, huh? I love her <3

“… just vote already!” Are we even gonna have a Closing Argument at this point? Who the hell is gonna ask for a full recap? Eden for the memory of Arei?

Teruko: “Allow me to go over the case…” Ah alright. Protag knows she’s gotta protag I guess xD

“Sorry. But it has to be done.” Okay she actually has trope knowledge what is this.

4 Minutes for the Closing Argument… about the same as last time I think? Maybe a bit shorter?

Also the glove is just straight up not going to be explained huh. I imagine the scuffs on the floor will be shown but you know.

[Ace overhearing Eden+Arei] Btw I know some people missed this: the note sent to Arei explicitly mentions what secret Eden got, which didn’t get brought up in Arei-David. Yes, Ace has to have overheard both of them.

“He was originally planning to kill Eden.” …Nice argument senator why don’t you back it up with a source?

Like genuinely where did that deduction come from? Again, Eden never said how long she felt she was being followed for. It could have only started after this. It’s apparently not wrong, but it’s still a pretty large assumption on Teruko’s part.

[Mechanism Images] Yoo high quality ball over the rafters picture!!! It became canon!!!

[Jug picture] Oh that’s how that worked. Yeah I always had a bit of trouble imagining exactly how the jugs would have been tied to the rope.

[Arei follows the note] Oh she went out without her glove! She just never put it on that morning! For no particular reason! That is the funniest possible conclusion to that particular mystery xD

“Ace cut her free…” …With? I guess he just bit the rope lmao. (He probably just had like a knife or something.)

[Ace over the swing set] PFFT- Okay to be honest, the question of “how do you even physically get Arei up there?” had always bothered me a bit (it’s a lot harder than you might think to visualize), and I was expecting it to be a kind of “don’t think about it too hard” situation. But seeing this as the actual solution is fantastic.

[Trial Close]

Wait are we not gonna talk about the- the scuffs on the floor? I- Wait- How did-

I guess I was right to just assume they were supposed to be a vague indication of struggle as opposed to anything more specific xD

-

General Thoughts

I feel a sense of… weightlessness. It’s over. The mystery’s over. Levi!Accomplice, Eden!Disguise, J-Arei Swap (I’m assuming that’s dead don’t quote me on it), J!Culprit via the screening room with the remote, “David manipulated someone into murder,” all the other theories that came of this… all shall pass on as fun AU ideas that never came to be. Alas, Ace!Culprit reigns supreme.

The episode was awesome. Less of a roller coaster like the last few have been, more like a linear plunge into sadness. I’ve run out of words to describe how incredible these episodes are, but all the praise I gave the other episodes applies to this one as well.

The star is obviously Ace, and man, despite how horribly sad the Ace fans must be feeling, at least we got fed this chapter. Genuinely felt bad for him even though as J said what he did is pretty unjustifiable. So many interesting things to explore all around for him, and quite a few other characters as well. Just… a feast. I’ve been considering making a fully cohesive post talking about the entirety of CH2 PT2 in more detail than I’ve gone over in these reaction posts, and I’m pretty sure this episode cemented that as a really solid idea.

Theory Discussion

Well the crime’s solved, but since I am the “Local Min Jeung Kinnie,” maybe it’d be appropriate to grade myself on how well my theories panned out?

I will skip talking about the Nico-Ace situation because my ideas for it were completely insane as a result of the vast amounts of evidence that just… didn’t matter. I was right that Nico was the only attacker, but I shared this opinion with like half the fandom at least, so.

The Arei murder is the main course, and frankly… I’d say I did pretty well! All things considered.

Looking back at my Eden!Culprit Levi!Accomplice theory from a year ago, although I got the complete wrong culprit and threw in an accomplice that didn’t exist, the method itself was strikingly similar provided you correct the oddities that removing an accomplice brings. Hell, a lot of the deductions from my very first post on this came true. Crime happened in the morning, ball of clothes over the rafters for the lights and setting up the pulley system, done with the handlebars of the spinny thing (kinda missed what the tape was for, but at least I knew it was there), water jugs to weigh down Arei, scuffs on the floor indicating a struggle to subdue Arei before hanging her, and while the exact method of stopping the fall was a bit different, using a stopper rope is similar enough to tying a knot that I’m willing to give myself partial credit.

I still stand by the fact that, at the time, it was unreasonable to assume Ace could have picked up the tape. Yes, it’s what happened; doesn’t mean that it seemed horrendously unlikely with what we had at the time. Still, once Ace was officially brought up as a suspect in Ep14, I’m going to give myself partial credit for last-minute switching (sort of I was only suspecting Ace over Eden by a hair) to the real culprit and figuring out the slingshot trick alongside the aforementioned Reddit user.

So, I’ll say I passed! Am I bragging? Maybe. Deal it.

You truly were magnificent, DRDT CH2 case. I shall never forget you for as long as I live.

If you made it this far, congrats. Now let us cry together, for our favorite horse boy is about to leave us forever… after he says his secret quote (which is probably next episode) and the Bonus Episode with Mai hopefully.

(Dammit it that means we still won’t get context on the Eden Mai quote I was kinda looking forward to that T_T)

Thanks for reading! Bye!

[getvalentined]

I love when folks ask me Fandom Old questions and I get to be like "Yeah, uh, that's from my old online RP group, no it's not canon at all, yes we just made it up, no we did not claim it was canon but the mid to late aughts were a strange time."

It's honestly a shock to realize how often this has happened. I mentioned earlier that Reno's fanon surname came from this same group, but that's not even the half of it. I once made a bunch of screenshot manips based on the most ridiculous ships anyone could think of—someone slapped a random line of text onto one of them and to this day it's used as a "cringe FF7 fandom" meme. I saw it on the twits a bit back and almost fell out of my goddamn chair.

If you've ever heard Scarlet referred to with the surname "West," read about Tseng fighting with metal fans, seen Elena's older sister being called Anna instead of Emma, come across Vincent portrayed as having a PhD in spite of being a Turk, or caught references somewhere to Grimoire experimenting on Vincent as a child, that started with this group. That was us.

One of the funniest examples of this, for me specifically, is that we don't actually know which arm Veld is missing? The fandom generally goes with his left because that's how I drew him in the first picture of the guy ever posted on devart way back in 2005, but it may very well be his right. I've seen people offer "proof" that it's his right based on a scene in the opening cutscene, but you can't tell there either, and with BC's graphics there's literally no way to tell on his sprite.

Hell, this year we found out everyone's assumed timeline of the Kalm fire is wrong, and that's our fault too because we made some assumptions about Felicia's age for an LJ RP that were entirely wrong. She's around Zack's age, not Sephiroth's! She's old enough to run with a terrorist group in BC, but she was a child when Kalm burned, and that happened in 1997—we know this because NPCs in Rebirth literally refer to the fire in Kalm having happened "just ten years ago." Veld has only had his prosthetic for three years when BC starts. (This also implies that, contrary to popular belief, Veld may actually be younger than Vincent. Vincent may have been the senior partner, and that's why he was sent to Nibelheim alone while Veld was left at headquarters.)

We were really wrong on this! But we were working with what we had. There's no canon evidence for the vast majority of these things (the most notable exclusion here is Vincent being educated) but we weren't claiming there was. We were filling gaps, and canon was so sparse that we had a lot of gaps to fill. So if it turns out that Veld lost his right arm, then I'll just have to start drawing him that way—because losing his left was never canon.

Tragically, there's nothing any of us can do to make people stop assuming these things are canon at this point; there aren't a lot of us still in the fandom, and it's not like any of us have those old chatlogs anymore. People from this RP group have DIED since those days. It's been over 20 years since most of us met, and around 15 since most of us were in a public fannish space together.

"Prove it," people say, and I literally can't. Do you know how many computers I've been through since then? 75% of the platforms we used no longer exist. This all started on a BBCode forum! There is no proof!

But...there's no evidence any of these things are canon, either, so maybe think about that? The Kalm fire, Tseng's weapon of choice, Veld's arm, character surnames—none of these are retcons because there was no lore there to retcon. We made it up for our specific purposes, and it escaped containment in an era when there was really no way to do online contact tracing.

It's just one of the weirdest feelings in the world to see younger folk arguing about A or B point in canon, about X or Y retcon—referencing something my friends and I thought up at like 10 o'clock at night on a now-defunct IM client in August of 2005, because we needed something to refer back to for a specific scene in an RP and the source material had nothing to offer.

Absolutely fucking bonkers.

[theharmonious13]

Trial of the Pheonix

Watari's death sprite being coloured a dark red... aww

~~~

The way the trial room people are set up there's two opposing sides with no gaps between them:

Wada, Ojima, Hiroaki and Tamba in one corner

Mai, Yanagi and Hama in the other (+Hasegawa but he's standing between two deceased students)

IT BETTER NOT BE HASEGAWA BASED OFF OF THE VISUAL SET UP-

~~~

Hiroaki saying tell em' Yanagi is the new Byakuya saying 'Tell them Naegi' 😭😂

Obviously Watari didn't write the notesTM

If Hiroaki is the first sused out person it probs means he wasn't the killer, there goes 1/2 of my predictions 😩

I hate every time lack of supporting emotive evidence or evidence that isn't easily accessible pushes back the trail... it makes sense but irks me to no end 😩

Friends don't kill friends and that's final gdi (ignore Chapter 2 😭)

Oh wait I just realised, Yanagi's concussion finally went away, yay! 😂

Mai wants to look after Yanagi 🥺

Switching podiums doesn't matter? Omg they could've been with their friend groups this whole time 😭😂

Gdi Hiroaki don't accuse Wada just because he likes computers 💀

Omg I only just looked at Okazaki's face sprite, that's crazy disturbing/cool 😳

Mai logic vs Hama emotion - the saga (I love it sm but also Hayashi please defend Watari my shipper ego needs it 😭)

I accidentally spoiled myself on which half of the cast definitely survives, goddamnit Tetro thumbnails/YouTube algorithm 💀

It's either Mai, Wada, Hama, Tamba or Watari, I'm praying it's my dumbass Tamba theory 😭

Hama and Wada are fighting noooooo, it's like Haishigeki all over again 😭

Wada is mute because he's terrifiedTM

Hiroaki defending Hasegawa is peak 🔥

Everyone cornering Hasegawa is giving me anxiety for some reason? 😭

HASEGAWA SELF HARMED FOR LIGHT? 😭

Bruh they DIDN'T CHECK THE BUNSEN BURNERS OMG 😭

Tamba shut tf up, stop blaming other people

Tamba was on the move and tried to lie? 👀

Why is it Tamba and now Hiroaki saying 'you're not being risky Mai, you're letting us down' -_-

Thank you for shutting them up Hama

Ojima IS GOING THROUGH IT, he wouldn't have a testimony anyway 😭

Ojima does hurt himself though... zoinks

Ojima is REALLY anxious damn

Why is he saying that...? This is so ominous I'M SCARED

Oh it's about Hasegawa reading the profiles

Hiroaki being so soft and gentle with Ojima right now 🥺

Poor Yanagi... he's like a hurt puppy rn 😭

Why are we CONVINCED it was Watari's writing? Why CAN'T someone else have sneaked in to place the note? I want her to not be incriminated so bad

Trial intermission is fast approaching I'M SCARED

The way Hiroaki says Tamba x6 is iconic

Poison is back on the table baby, lmao

Poor Yanagi...

HASEGAWA HOW HAVE WE BEEN LOOKING AT THIS WRONG?

Bro NO WAY THAT'S SO SMART HASEGAWA

I'm so done with Tamba in these trials 💀

Everybody about to freak tf out over the arsenal, and we thought Okazaki having a gun was bad 😭

Waiting for Hama to leave is DIABOLICAL

IF EVERYONE'S ALIBI IS SO SUS WHY DO WE STILL THINK WATARI DID ALL THIS?

Wait was she suicidal and wanted to help everyone out? She would get executed for property damage anyway right...?

Mai is referencing Spicy with such sombreness oh my heart can't take this

OH SHOOT THE FIRE DANCE HINT I CAN'T EVEN

Oh Watari's talent... workstation... oh no...

THE SUS PIECE OF METAL THAT WADA AND YANAGI FOUND-

WAS SHE HIDING BEHIND THE DOOR!?

It was darkTM

I want exploding paper now too Tamba lol

Wait Hasegawa what?

Oh buddy Hiroaki, that makes ALOT OF SENSE

Hasegawa relating so hard to wanting to die for someone else...

My heart is sinking NO WAY HAMA GETS EXECUTED IF HE WAS SET UP

THAT SCARED SPRITE HAS ME TERRIFIED THOUGH

PLEASE DON'T DO THIS TO ME

9 Volt BATTERY IS THIS PROJECT EDEN'S GARDEN THE SECOND TIME? WHERE WERE THE BATTERIES AGAIN???

MY HEART IS ATTACKING ME

WAS THE BATTERY ON THE DOOR!?

NO FUCKING WAY HAMA GETS SET UP

I KNOW I SAID JUST BECAUSE HAMA'S FRIENDS DIED DIDN'T MEAN HE WAS SAFE BUT COME ON MAN

Oh

Hasegawa shut up?

This is HEART BREAKING

My heart is SINKING

WAIT NO THIS CAN'T BE FINAL

HAMA DON'T GO, THIS IS FUCKED UP

Wait so she wanted Mai to die as well? She made a sacrificial choice?

WATARI I WISH I COULD REVIVE YOU, THIS CHAPTER SHOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED

HARADA AND HAMA GOING OUT THE SAME WAY

HIROAKI LET HAMA LIVE LONGER PLEASE

WAIT OMG SIBLING SYMPATHY

Hama praying on the way out THIS IS SO CRUEL

MAI REALLY LOVED HAMA PLATONICALLY TOO

YANAGI SENSES THE UNFAIR JUSTICE AS DID OJIMA

WE LOSE SO MANY WONDERFUL CHARACTER DYNAMICS WITH HAMA GONE

WHOEVER MADE THE TETRO AFTERLIFE AU THE SOFT ANGST IS GOING TO BE SO REAL BETWEEN WATARI AND HAMA

He has to convince himself he killed Watari right then and there after being in such crucial denial of his involvement and Watari's actions THIS HURTS SO MUCH

I DON'T WANT HAMA TO BE EXECUTED

MAI AND WADA, AM HURTING SO MUCH

HIS POOR FAMILY

CHIBA MENTION 😭😭😭

THIS VOICE ACTING FROM HAMA IS SO AMAZING AND PAINFUL

GIVE HAMA HIS MUM BACK

[ggren-mainz]

Umineko - question arcs playthrough -> ep 2 - 12 - final

last part - All parts and episodes - next part

The Maria part hit so hard auuughhhhhhhhh MAAAAAARIIIIIAAAAAAA

Yeah, I said this before too, you can not know happiness without sadness and joy without anguish.

Ah so the classic 'hurt people hurt people'. Because she was abused she unconsciously became the abuser herself, thinking that Maria deserved to go through the pain she had gone through.

Yeaaa...i had a feeling she was either going to be eaten or eat her siblings. So the banquet was made for her?

siiiiiggghhssssss....but innuendo aside, so in this novel the age you become an adult at is 19? What even is that, like i thought maybe 21 but I've never heard of 19 before.

one google search later it seems the age at which someone was considered an adult till 2015 was 20 so that's probably what this is referencing.

WAIT. THIS JUST MADE ME REALIZE. WHAT ABOUT THE SHANNON/GEORGE RELATHIONSHIP??? I mean I always assumed it was a thing like the age of consent back then/there was way younger/16 but this just confirms that it's not. It's 20. And how old was George??JESUS 23??!! I recalled him being like 21, not 23!? Well um...this puts a very new perspective on it. Not like I didn't think it was weird at first as well but like I assumed it was at least moral in their world. Not that its like even more immoral in their world.

You see, they were right when they said every word in thos novel has to be analyzed. Every innuendo has its meaning, thank you Battler Ushiromiya for the 'Maria the 9 year old let me eat you out when you become legal' joke. Much needed. At least he's a feminist who eats women out. He's also into dominatrix. So like that's cool ig. He'd have he/him in his bio.

yeah i did hear Lambda's voice at one point. No sprite but I'm sure she pops up next episode or maybe int this ???

Anyways didn't have much to say this tea party, but I'll see how the ??? goes and then write down new theories and pink truths.

yepp here she is! And she has to have some connection to satoko, she just came in and she sounds like her and said her exact laugh. she even looks a bit like her (as in is blonde)

what is it what is it...this weak point i can't quite put my finger on it. I'm losing myself in the details, when i should be looking at the big picture. ugh

RIIIIIIKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

ahhh lambda is so cute!!! I'm already loving her

Anyways theory time. Let's start with my so called pink truths.

Beatrice is not only one person, but perhaps more and sometimes even a concept. There is a chance she doesn't exist, and perhaps never existed.

Witches exist but they aren't the ones who committed the crimes, and there is no magic in the events that take place on Rokkenjima. They only exist in the ??? plane.

We cannot take most of the events we see as truths. That doesn't necessarily make them lies just not true.

Beatrice had some very bad experiences with love. They are possibly related to Kinzo.

Kinzo hurt/abused Beatrice in a horrible way.

The Narrators are unreliable and as I have mentioned before, we cannot trust half the things we see.

There's more to George and Shannon then what we've been shown.

I suspect we'll see a lot more about these 2, and about Shannon and Kannon in general in the future. I am also eager to see more of Beatrice, she is one peculiar little thing. Anyways, as always, here is the tier list!

The hate line has been cleared as i find almost everyone interesting. With Rosa it's so interesting because in the middle there's usually the character's i don't have a strong opinion on. but i have many strong opinions on her, it's just that they clash so much i can't put her anywhere else. Oh well.

next part

[elfdragon12]

The fact that IDW1 Prowl--the incredibly shallow "he's a table flipping prick" reading you're referencing which is then echoed and made worse by newer fans--has become so pervasive in fandom is the problem. It's so pervasive that it's even infected the tfwiki pages for the G1 cartoon Prowl and Marvel Prowl. I have screenshots. In chatting about Prowl with a fan continuity creator, they have said that they've gotten messages from people claiming that Prowl is "supposed" to be mean. A good chunk of "continuity soup" creators have an IDW1 flavored Prowl because, besides TFA, that's the main Prowl people talk about and, of course, it's the shallow "table flipping prick" and ignores all of the character development that led Prowl on his downward spiral. There were people wanting Earthspark Prowl to be a version of IDW1 Prowl.

When I got to reading IDW1 comics, I learned that "hey! Prowl isn't even uniquely mean for this continuity! Everyone is so terrible!" But you wouldn't know that looking at the fandom. Prowl's body was modified against his will and forced to combine with the brutal Constructicons then, as Devastator, attack the people he was trying to help (not all that well). And then immediately afterwards, the Autobots were ejected from Iacon and then he was ostracized from the Autobots, so of course he spiraled! But you wouldn't know that looking at the fandom. Because the fandom typically does not look for nuance. Fandom wants funny jokes and simple ideas. They're easy to parrot and you don't have to think about those things too hard.

It's especially rough when there is a good chunk of fans whose main exposure to IDW1 was James Roberts' MTMTE/LL and he is a writer who was actively in flanderizing Prowl flipping tables. He also wrote Megatron, the guy who had Prowl mind controlled and then modified, making fun of Prowl with no pushback. So fans take this and run with it, making it even worse.

Prowl is very much a victim of fandom flanderization.

Also, you can't rely on tags because so many people tag their stuff objectively wrong. There are non-Beast Wars fics in the Beast Wars tags on AO3 right now. Plus, Eartshpark fans who think that, because their Tarantulas shares a name and appearance with BW Tarantulas, their posts should be tagged with BW (they're about as similar as Sprite and Everclear).

I think a major part of the Prowl Problem™️ is that there is a portion of fans who are less interested in the Transformers franchise and more interested in the Transformers fandom.

Some folks watch or read one Transformers stories, maybe two or three if they're ambitious, and then spend the rest of the time reading fanfiction. This isn't strictly a bad thing. I enjoy some fanfiction, write it myself, and think there are some really insightful writers out there. However, there is a lot of fanfiction that isn't particularly good and has a lot of mischaracterizations. Fanfiction writers are hobbyists and often teenagers or young adults without a whole lot of writing experience. Because of this inexperience, nuanced characters with a lot of depth get flattened to caricatures or basic tropes, some of which having little to do with the original character. I started writing stories when I was about 13. That's how it goes. The problem comes up though that a certain portion then become so caught up in fanfiction that they start taking it for canon. Prowl is often written by fans as an angry table-flipping prick, so it must be canon that Prowl is always an angry table-flipping prick.

This is something we see a lot with young Optimus Prime, Orion Pax, a lot. Even before Transformers One, fandom has commonly depicted Orion Pax as a clueless ingenue in comparison to Megatron's more worldly nature... Except that's... Not really been true. The closest to that was Orion Pax in the G1 cartoon, but, even then, the guy wasn't some little waif. He was a blue collar dock worker. Young Optimus of TFA may have believed the propaganda, but wasn't depicted as especially naive otherwise, usually he was pretty intelligent. Aligned/TFP Orion Pax, during his amnesia, suspected that his "friend" wasn't telling him the truth after a fairly short time. TF1 Orion Pax may have been headstrong and reckless, but he was intelligent and curious. He knew something was wrong while D-16 was satisfied with the status quo.

Fanfiction is not canon. It can be fun and sometimes pretty insightful. However, it's written by fans and often does not reflect canon material.

Fandom Prowl does not speak for all 40 years of Prowl within the Transformers franchise.

[stardestroyer81]

Y'all want a Paper Mario-styled drawing of Micah Koopa? 💖✨⭐

[gb-patch]

Derek's Story is out now 💖💖💖

Spend wonderful summer days in the company of Derek Suarez during Steps 2 and 4! This is an optional paid DLC for the free game Our Life: Beginnings & Always.

Steam Page (Windows/Linux)

Itch Page (Windows/Linux, Mac, Android)

GOG Page (Windows/Linux)

For the launch week, the Derek DLC is 10% off! And all the older DLCs are at a 20% discount, too.FEATURES:

Unlocks 5 Step 2 Moments: Responsible, Lemonade, Soiree (Derek's Version), Siblings, & Boardwalk

Unlocks an entirely new storyline in Step 4

Allows you to form a deeper relationship with Derek Suarez (platonic or romantic) and get to know his family

Includes new character sprite art, background locations, and CG images

Provides even more options for adding custom qualities to your character. Is  your protagonist good with kids or is that way too much of a hassle?

Unlocks bonus scenes in the other Step 2 Moments, and in Step 3 Moments where what happened in these events is referenced and reflected on

Increases the overall playtime by multiple hours

The base game and all the DLCs, other than the voiced name DLC, were also updated with fixes/Derek related alterations. If you have the game already, please let Steam/GOG update those files or download the new updates yourself on Itch.I appreciate how patiently people have waited for this expansion. It's been great to finally let Derek have his time to shine, and I really hope everyone loves him, and his lovely family too!

[7grandmel]

Click here to see the 30 posts made before this one.

Todays rip: 16/06/2023

Snowball Park - Super Mario 3D World

Season 4 Episode 1 No Album Release (Read More)

Ripper Unknown

Here's a fun nugget of trivia to start us out today: Though we still don't know who was behind this masterpiece, according to SiIvaGunner team member OnBP, the rip was accepted and uploaded onto the channel "because its fucking hilarious"

Look, I know myself that a lot of my more recent shoutouts have had a kind of sappy energy to them, to show off the "humanity" behind SiIva. That's great fun and all, but it doesn't exactly paint a good picture of what the channel as a whole is like. Though those displays of genuine care and quality exist, we shouldn't forget that the main purpose of the channel is to surprise and be entertaining. In any way possible.

Ever since Snowball Park - Super Mario 3D World was unleashed upon the world its been shrouded in mystery. Though it was one of the first rips to be released in Season 4, the entire point of it is just to sound as bad as possible - worse than the regularly-scheduled low-effort Space Jam mashups that we were used to, this was an entirely new kind of awful. Its a mashup that interrupts itself as soon as it goes on beat, pauses in the middle of playing as the background track keeps going, randomly plays slowed down or sped up samples from the source its mashed up with, which is already an absolutely bizarre source to take from. Many of the comments on the original video even expressed concern over how the SiIva team was doing, it was nuts!!!

And through this intentionally bad sound, the rip's legacy has lived on! It continues to be referenced in other bad-on-purpose rips made since, its wiki page is a meme entirely in its own right, and it kind of solidified Sprite Cranberry as a mainstay joke on the channel entirely on its own. I think specifically because this rip didn't draw any attention to itself - it was just an everyday Super Mario 3D World game rip, after all - it got this bewildered reaction from everyone, where the expectation were low and yet people were still caught completely off guard. Its these kinds of rugpulls that continue to define the channel even in its later years that I can't help but respect. And I also can't get Sprite Cranberry out of my head.

[rebelsandtherest]

It had just been the two of them, back before Rome. Rhys had held Arthur as a baby when their mother couldn’t—or wouldn’t—care for either of them. He’d bounced him on his knee and held his hands while he learned to walk, telling him stories that wove myth and history together in indelible knots. Rhys had been idealistically determined to be a better brother than their older siblings, who seemed to enjoy killing each other for sport. He taught Arthur how to speak with the fae, where to find dragons and sprites in the woods. He’d even taught Arthur some of the magic he knew, back when Arthur was still willing to listen.  Then Rome had come to hunt them both. He’d found Rhys first, and his armies were too large for Rhys to repel with his magic. Rhys had told Arthur to run, and they didn’t see each other for a long time, until they dragged Arthur kicking and screaming to Londinium. He’d often cried into Rhys’ shirt in those days, when he was locked away, confined to his rooms or deprived of dinner, often after he’d taken a beating. Rome had always punished Arthur with more cruelty than he had Rhys; Romulus had always known Arthur was the greater threat. Everyone had. Their mother had seen it, Rome had seen it. Even Alisdair had seen it, warning Rhys in a rare moment of brotherly care after Ælfred had pushed the Danes away. Rhys had been young and lonely himself in those centuries, clinging on to the coddled, pleasant version of Arthur that lived in his memory even as the Saxons pressed him west past their island’s spine. Rhys had been as desperate as any of them, longing to have a companion against the dark. It had been foolish of him, and he would always regret his own naivety.  Still, even after Arthur demanded his submission at the tip of a sword, it had been them two, together.

- Hiraeth (read on Ao3)

Images generated using Midjourney. Artists referenced by name are Robert Henri and Malcolm T. (Skip) Liepke

I recognize AI-generated imagery is a controversial topic, which is a conversation I find really interesting. I’m using it for personal amusement in good faith, but I am more than happy to share my in depth thoughts on the topic and am open to different opinions, just hop into my ask box! You can also read my gut-check thoughts on the topic specifically in regards to copyright law here.

[ct-multifandom]

Assorted ML headcanons

This post is a mile long, so for that reason I’m putting a read more very early in. That being said, I got like, every character in the season four intro in here, all several times at least, and a few other characters, so come get y’all juice. If you read all of them ily and also which one is/which ones are your favorite(s)?

The semi-popular headcanon that Kagami and Ondine go to the same school and are jock friends? *chefs kiss*

There’s also that,,, not even headcanon,,,, but theory that Alix used to be friends with Chloe and Sabrina as a mean girl trio. It’s based on scrapped early concepts where Alix was the third mean girl, and their three names referenced the main trio of Totally Spies which Astruc worked on. Considering how ml likes to work its scrapped ideas into canon, I think it’s plausible that this could come up in the show, and it’d explain the interesting way Chloe and Alix interact.

Chloe can’t bring herself to treat Alix the way she treats everyone else because she’s intimidated by the person Alix used to be, or maybe she misses that Alix? On the other hand, Alix cut Chloe off completely when she became a better person, and she doesn’t feel bad giving her a taste of her own medicine, but she isn’t scared of her like everyone else because she’s seen her normal side.

Mylene has a little ukelele she plays sometimes while Ivan plays his hand drum. She knows the basics, and occasionally they sing too.

When Marinette was younger, she was obsessed with those popular crafts like lanyard and bead stuff, rainbow loom, and duct tape fashion. She made Tom and Sabine a duct tape wallet and lanyard keychain and they were like aww. One day they walked into her room to see a full ball gown made of duct tape and woven beads and were like AAA

*Marinette cocking a hot glue gun* “wanna know how I got these scars”

When Alya goes to art club she’s usually developing photos from candid street photography

When Max is there he’s either 3D printing little knick knacks or working on making games. His akuma fighting game was a street fighter-like 2D game with pixel sprites, but he’s trying to learn 3D modeling so he can make something more complex.

Marc and Nathaniel’s manga contains information about Ladybug and Chat Noir that they should have absolutely no way of knowing.

Kagami reads their work religiously, but she only noticed the dedication to Marinette in volume one after a few rereads.

Kagami in the locker room: Marinette, your conversation with Adrien a moment ago was just like when Reverser first met The Mightillustrator. In the book, they- Marinette: Marc and Nath? I’m the one who set them up in the first place. Kagami: W- Mari: they’re literally upstairs right now. Wanna go meet them? Kagami: Wh-

Alya and Nino are both massive film nerds. Nino is obvious (Horrificator, Queen Banana) but have you seen Alya’s insta? Constant movie dates with her bf and all the besties. (I counted. Six different posts plus two on Mari’s account and one on Alya’s about Nino making a new film) They watch almost everything notable that comes out and talk about the movies in that pretentious film bro way, but they’re both so into it.

Whatever is going on with Alix and Nath’s hair? They did that together. 2am, random scissors, box dye. That’s gotta be canon, there’s no other explanation.

Zoe listens to Girl in Red and Clairo and stuff (I say this as someone who doesn’t)

Sabrina is scary good at FPSs

Going on stupid one-on-one adventures with Kim is like Zuko Field Trips from ATLA. Truly a formative experience. Have you really lived if you haven’t followed Kim on a dare, messed around, and made some dumb choices? All his friends have.

You also haven’t lived if you don’t have a friendship bracelet woven by Rose

Alix can’t swim

Ivan gets all the tea in class. He sits there in unsuspecting silence minding his own business, but he’s in the perfect location to hear everyone’s conversations at once, even when they’re whispering. Don’t worry, your secrets are safe with him.

Nath chose to sit alone in the back so he could have personal space and privacy while he draws sleeps slacks off learns, but Ms. Bustier just had to put Lila right next to him. He quickly starts to dislike her not because he knows of her true nature but because she just never shuts up like oh my god how can anyone talk so much about nothing? He doesn’t know she’s lying, but that doesn’t matter because he stopped listening anyways.

Eventually, Nath moves into the empty seat next to bestie Ivan and Lila is left alone in the back.

Everyone always expects Juleka to be something goth and/or scary on Halloween, like a vampire or classic horror movie masked serial killer, but she loves dressing up as girlboss villains. Once she was Harley Quinn while Rose was Poison Ivy, and once it was the other way around. That Harley wig was revamped from her Junko Enoshima cosplay from years past. Recently she pulled off a Cruella design that made Marinette wish she came up with it first.

Chloe, wearing a bee costume that’s actually just a cute outfit with an antennae headband: In Girl World, Halloween is the one night of the year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it. Alix wearing a Meowth onesie: Meowth, that’s right!

Nath and Marc are Jesse and James. They came up with the idea.

Mylene is one of those girls whose insta story is always full of activism posts

Nino feels the need to appear cool and mature in the media he consumes. He’d be embarrassed if someone caught him listening to dance pop off the top 100 or watching the Ice Age movies. He leaves those movies out of his Letterbox, and he has one of those performative Spotifies where all his “cool” songs are organized by vibe in playlists with pretentious names and captions, and they all have matching aesthetic photography as the covers.

Adrien is the opposite. His Spotify is a mess of spontaneously made playlists of songs he felt like listening to in the moment as well as oddly specific playlists. He only makes them look nice if they’re for someone else, but otherwise they’re either cover/captionless with the default Playlist #n name or names like songs to appease the cheese demon, classical music to cry over algebra to, Ninocore, Chloe watch One Piece, and Persona 4 Dancing All Night OST.

Rose is so good at getting people gifts. She knows exactly what everyone would like, and if she sees something that reminds her of someone while shopping she’ll just buy it and hold onto it. Or not. Surprise present!

Mari, Kim, and Nino childhood friends headcanon my beloved

Zoe and Marc don’t refer to each other as friends, but rather as lab partners, which they are. The word “friend” doesn’t capture the frenemy bond between two people who are surviving Mendeleiev’s class together. Zoe keeps skipping parts of the procedure or accidentally messing up measurements like haha oopsie daisy and Marc’s like *deep breath* yeah :) haha :) oopsie daisy :) you’ll get it next time, though :) ...right?

He’s a perfectionist, control freak on a bad day. Falling behind makes him super anxious, but he also hates when his work isn’t as good as it could be if he had more time. He’s one of those people who hates group projects because he doesn’t trust the work of his group members to meet his standards.

Sabrina’s into murder mysteries and true crime. She watches documentaries late at night and tries to stay ahead of the narrator by analyzing the evidence.

Crime and mystery TV/movies, even the fictional ones, scare tf out of Chloe, as much as she tries to hide it. She makes Sabrina watch corny chick flicks, romances, and hallmark Christmas type movies when they have sleepovers.

Juleka would love to decorate her room with something super aesthetic like a bookshelf full of vintage tomes or a shelf full of candles and cool glass trinkets, but alas, she cannot because. Boat.

Luka doesn’t have this problem because he’s fine with few decorations. He likes the simplicity, open space, and natural light. He’s a minimalist, and he finds his twin’s maximalism overwhelming.

Juleka bullies Luka, but Luka can’t bully Juleka without feeling awful about it afterwards.

Juleka practices cosmetology on Luka, and she’s been doing it since they were little. She got one of those kiddy makeup things for the holidays once, and turned him into a clown, but these days the things she does are much more impressive.

Alix makes friends everywhere she goes. She’s like the “guy who knows a guy” of the group because she has connections everywhere. You thought Marinette meets every single person in Paris? Alix has met their pets and sends them happy birthday texts. Her snap score is insane.

Markov sees himself as mentally a bit younger than Max and his friends even though he’s physically less than a year old, yet contains more knowledge than they can ever hope to learn in a lifetime.

Markov emulates DS games and speed runs them. He’s always looking for new bugs to take advantage of. Despite his ability to do a ton of things at once, he can become so absorbed that he doesn’t pay attention to the things going on around him

Markov: *mindlessly following Kim and Max after school* *bumps into a pole* Max: whoa, Markov? Are you oka- wait. You’re speed running Super Mario 64 again, aren’t you. Markov: ... *blank stare* Max: yeah, okay. Please fly higher when we’re crossing the street, though?

Marinette has Operation Secret Garden code names for all of her friends, y’know, just in case.

Kagami is Nightshade, Zoe is Daffodil, Luka is Iris, Nino is Carnation, Kim is Morning Glory, Max is Hyacinth, Markov is Phlox, Ivan is Foxglove, Nath is Amaranth, Marc is Hibiscus, Chloe is Marigold, Sabrina is Zinnia, and Lila is Lilac (subtle). Good luck remembering who’s who now, Rose. I mean, Tulip. I mean, Rose.

Mylene is the secret prank master, but she doesn’t pull practical jokes very often, so she goes unnoticed. When Alix and Kim are in a heated prank war, Alix comes to her for help the way the hero of a martial arts movie will walk into an unassuming restaurant, say the secret code, and be ushered into the dojo basement to learn the ways of the hidden master.

Speaking of restaurant, the hc that Kim’s parents run a Vietnamese restaurant? Very good.

Nath is immune from pranks because he’s paranoid. No horror movies or weird unreality jokes either

Alya found Marc’s tumblr. She knows it’s his because it’s linked to his AO3 and she recognizes his writing. She reads it. A lot. His icon is Celestia Ludenberg over the rainbow pride flag. She will never tell him because if she did, he’d have a heart attack and die.

Chloe has a private spam insta that very few people are allowed to see

At first, Ivan and Adrien’s other friends from school are intimidated by Luka because,,, cool mature guy,,, but soon the tables turn and Luka is kinda intimidated by them because they could sit down, craft an elaborate bank robbery plan, carry it out successfully, and be home in time for dinner just for fun. They run around Paris doing dumb things and he’s trying so hard to mom friend them.

Marinette always uses the “class representative” excuse to be the leader of the group and take care of her classmates. Mireille is the class rep for Mendeleiev’s class and all she does on a normal day is take the attendance down to the office. Mari knows the details of everyone’s lives like Santa.

“I’ll start getting better grades if I just buckle down and study, really” “but I’m your class representative! Let me tutor you” “As your class representative, it’s my duty to attend your extracurricular sports competitions and performances” “Marinette, it’s a papercut. It’ll get better on its own” “what kind of class representative would I be if I let you walk around with the risk of infection? Let me clean that and put a bandaid on it”

Kim is really good at cooking. At first, nobody trusts him around sharp objects and fire, but he goes full dad mode at the stove. He loves the attention that comes with feeding a bunch of hungry teenagers and listening to their compliments.

If you’re feeling under the weather, Rose will be at your front door with a homemade care package as soon as she finds out.

I think this is canon? But Ivan shaves the slit onto his eyebrow ‘cause it looks cool. No scar or anything. Just badass aesthetic

Trans Nath trans Nath trans Nath

One of the biggest reasons why Max started building Markov is so that he wouldn’t be lonely at home when his mom goes to astronaut school, and later, space

Marc can get super competitive playing games. No one likes playing cards against him ‘cause he nearly always wins. Don’t even think about Monopoly. Full Nicole Watterson mode

Ivan’s family is Eastern European

Aurore is like the “Queen B” of Mendeleiev’s class, but her mean girl act is more sassy and iconic whereas Chloe is just a bully. Aurore can be self absorbed and entitled at times, but overall she’s pretty well liked. After she lost the weather girl competition, she started goin out of her way to be supportive of the people around her and hype them up.

When Ondine exists outside of the swimming pool, which she does, her street clothes are typically athletic, like leggings and jogging jackets. She wears a lot of flannels. Oh yeah, and canon reminder, she’s suuuper tall.

The canon idea that Juleka got held back one year is a result of retcon bs, but I like the hc that she was held back as a result of her anxiety. I also have an idea that Anarka noncommittally homeschooled the twins as kids, and Juleka ended up being a year behind the typical curriculum while Luka was fine.

Nath and Alix aren’t keen on going out with the whole friend group. They much prefer spending time with one or a few people at a time.

Adrien and Kagami are forced to go to all these rich people events chock full of Paris elite, and even though they’ve met all sorts of celebrities in person, they’re pretty done with them. They’re much more starstruck by their own friends than Jagged Stone, XY, or Prince Ali. Their autographed Kitty Section CDs (cover art by Marinette, burned onto blank disks on Max’s laptop) are more valuable to them than their autographed CDs of Clara Nightingale’s unreleased next album.

I have sooo many future headcanons that I think they deserve their own post, so I left them all out of this one. I will make a future hc post... in the future. >:)

If you made it to the end, here’s your virtual pound-it from me <3

[oumakokichi]

What are the differences between the original and localization?

Hmm, that’s a very simple question with a pretty lengthy answer! I did answer some similar questions in the past, but that was a long time ago, much closer to when the localization was first released. There are probably a lot of people whose main experience with the game has only been with the localization, and who don’t really know or remember those differences anymore.

For that reason, I’m going to go into kind of a “masterlist” of things that were changed in the localization in this post. This will be very long, but I really want to explain the whole story behind the localization and its differences from the original to people who might only be hearing about this for the first time. I’m going to cover full spoilers for the game obviously, so be careful when reading!

Also, please feel free to share this post around, as I think it contains a lot of information that might be interesting to people who’ve only experienced the localization!

Before I really get into it though, I want to stipulate that the differences I’m covering in this post are mostly going to be things that I believe could’ve been handled or translated better, not every single line that was changed verbatim in the game. This is because a localization’s purpose is incredibly different from a literal translation.

Where a literal translation seeks to keep as much of the original authorial intent as possible and has the leeway to explain various Japanese terms and cultural specifics to the readers in footnotes or a glossary, a localization is usually much more targeted towards a specific target audience, usually one more unfamiliar with Japanese culture or terminology. As a result, some things in a localization are occasionally changed to make them more understandable to a western audience.

So, for example, I’m not going to fault the localization for changing Monosuke’s extremely heavy Kansai accent in Japanese to a New York accent in the English dub. It’s much easier for western players to immediately grasp that, “hey, this guy has a very specific regional accent that the other characters don’t,” and it works really well as a rough equivalent. Similarly, localization changes like changing a line here or there about the sport of sumo to be about the Jets and the Patriots also helps get the point across to players quickly and easily without having to explain an unfamiliar sport to western players in-depth before they can get the joke.

That being said… there were some liberties taken with ndrv3’s translation which I don’t believe fulfill the point of a localization, and which changed certain deliveries or even perceptions about the characters in a way that I just don’t agree with.

Let me explain first how the localization team actually worked, to people who might be unfamiliar with the process. Ndrv3 had four separate translators working on the localization. When NISA first announced that the game was being localized, these four translators introduced themselves on reddit in an AMA, where they also mentioned that they were by and large dividing up the 16 main characters between themselves, with each translator specifically assigned to four characters.

Having more translators working on a game might sound like a good idea in theory, but it’s often not. The more translators assigned to a game, the harder it is to provide a consistent translation. Translation is messy work: often there are multiple ways to translate the same sentence, or even the same word between two different languages. If a translation has multiple translators, that means they need to be communicating constantly with one another and referencing each other’s work all the time in order to avoid mistranslations: it’s difficult work, but not impossible.

However… this didn’t happen with ndrv3’s translation team. It’s pretty clear they did not reference each other’s work or communicate very well, and the translation suffers for it. I’m not just guessing here, either; it’s a fact that various parts of the game have lines completely ruined by not looking at the context, or words translated two different ways almost back-to-back. I’ll provide specific examples of this later.

Many of the translators also picked which characters they wanted to translate on the basis of which were their favorites—which, again, isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but which does raise the risk of letting character bias influence your work. No work is inherently without bias; all translators have to look at their own biases and still attempt to translate fairly regardless. But because translators were assigned four characters each, this meant that while they might be really enthusiastic about translating for one character in particular, they were less enthusiastic for others. These biases do reflect in the work, and I will provide further examples as I make my list.

This system of delegation also leaves more questions than it answers. It becomes impossible to tell who translated certain parts of the game, particularly in areas where the narrator is unclear. For example, did Saihara’s translator translate Ouma’s motive video, as Saihara is the one watching it in chapter 6? Or did Ouma’s translator do it, since it’s his motive video? Who translated the parts we see at the beginning of certain chapters, where characters from the outside world make occasional comments? It’s really unclear, and I’m not even sure if the translators divvied up these parts amongst themselves or if only one person was supposed to handle them.

To put it simply, there were quite a lot of complications and worrying factors about the way the translation was divided by the team, and the communication (or lack thereof) between said translators. It’s impossible to really discuss the main problems that ndrv3’s localization has without making it clear why those problems happened, and I hope I’ve explained it well here.

With that out of the way, I’m finally going to cover the biggest differences between the original game and the localization, and why many of these changes were such a problem.

1.)    Gonta’s Entire Character

To this day, I still feel like this is probably the most egregious change of the entire localization. Gonta does not talk like a caveman in Japanese. He does not even have a particularly limited vocabularly. He talks like a fairly normal, very polite high school boy, and the only stipulation is that he’s not very familiar with electronics or technology due to his backstory of “growing up in the woods away from humans.”

Gonta does refer to himself in the third-person in Japanese, but I need to stress this: this is a perfectly normal thing to do in Japanese. Many people do it all the time, and it has no bearing on a person’s intelligence or ability to speak. In fact, both Tenko and Angie also refer to themselves in the third-person in the Japanese version of the game, yet mysteriously use first-person pronouns in the localization.

I wouldn’t be so opposed to this change if it weren’t for the fact that Gonta’s entire character arc revolves around being so much smarter than people (even himself!) give him credit for. He constantly downplays his own abilities and contributions to the group despite being fairly knowledgeable, not only about entomology but also about nature and astronomy. He has a fairly good understanding of spatial reasoning and is one of the first people to guess how Toujou’s trick with the rope and tire worked in chapter 2.

Chapter 4 of ndrv3 is so incredibly painful because it makes it clear that while Gonta was, absolutely, manipulated by Ouma into picking up the flashback light, he nonetheless made the decision to kill Miu of his own accord. He was even willing to try and kill everyone else by misleading them in the trial, because he thought it was more merciful than letting them see the outside world for themselves. These were choices that he made, confirmed when we see Gonta’s AI at the end of the trial speak for himself and acknowledge that yes, he really did think the outside world was worth killing people over.

Gonta is supposed to be somewhat naïve and trusting, not stupid. He believes himself to be an idiot, and other characters often talk down to him or don’t take him seriously, but at the end of the day he’s a human being just like the rest of them, and far, far smarter and more capable of making his own decisions than anyone thought him capable of.

Translating all of his speech to “caveman” or “Tarzan speech” really downplays his ability to make decisions for himself, and I think it’s a big part of why I’ve seen considerably more western fans insist that he didn’t know what he was doing than Japanese fans. I love Gonta quite a lot, but I can’t get over the localization essentially changing his character to make him seem more stupid, instead of translating what was actually there in order to more accurately reflect his character.

2.)    Added Some Slurs, Removed Others

It’s time to address the elephant in the room for people who don’t know: Momota is considerably homophobic and transphobic in the original Japanese version of the game. In chapter 2, he uses the word “okama” to refer to Korekiyo in an extremely derogatory fashion. This word has a history of both homophobic and transphobic sentiment in Japan, as it’s often used against flamboyant gay men and trans women, who are sadly and unfortunately conflated as being “the same thing” most of the time. To put it simply, the word has the equivalent of the weight of the t-slur and the f-slur in English rolled into one.

This isn’t the only instance of Momota being homophobic, sadly. In the salmon mode version of the game, should you choose the “let’s undress” option in the gym while with Momota, he has yet another line where he says, “You don’t swing that way, do you!?” to Saihara, using his most terrified and disgusted-looking sprite. This suggests to me that, yes, the homophobia was a deliberate choice in the Japanese version of the game, as Momota consistently reacts this way to even the idea of another guy showing romantic interest in him.

The English version more or less kept the salmon mode comment, but removed the use of the slur in chapter 2 entirely. Which I have… mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I am an LGBT person myself. I don’t want to read slurs if I can help it. On the other hand, I really don’t think the slur was removed out of consideration to the LGBT community so much as Momota’s translator really wanted to downplay any lines that could make his character come across in a more negative light.

This is backed up by the fact that both Miu and Ouma’s translators added slurs to the game that weren’t present in the original Japanese. Where Miu only ever refers to Gonta as “baka” (idiot) or occasionally, “ahou” (a slightly ruder word that still more or less equates to “moron”), her translator decided to add multiple instances of her using the r-slur to refer to Gonta specifically, and on one occasion, even the word “Mongoloid,” a deeply offensive and outdated term. Ouma’s translator similarly took lines where he was already speaking harshly of Miu and added multiple instances of words like “bitch” or “whore.”

To me, this suggests that the translators were completely free to choose how harsh or how likable they wanted their characters to come across. Momota’s translator omitting just the slur could maybe pass for a nice gesture, so people don’t have to read it and be uncomfortable—except, that’s not the only thing that was omitted. Instances of Momota being blatantly misogynistic or rude were also toned down to the point of covering up most of his flaws entirely. His use of “memeshii” against Hoshi (a word which means “cowardly” in Japanese with specifically feminine connotations, like the word “sissy” in English) is simply changed to “weak,” and when he calls Saihara’s trauma “kudaranai” (literally “worthless” or “bullshit”), this is changed to “trivial” in the localization.

Momota’s translator even went so far as to omit a line entirely from the chapter 2 trial, which I touched on in an earlier post. In the original version of the game, Ouma asks Momota dumbfounded if he’s really stupid enough to trust Maki without any proof and if he plans on risking everyone else’s lives in the trial if he turns out to be wrong. And Momota replies saying yes, absolutely, he’s totally willing to bet everyone’s lives on nothing more than a hunch because he thinks he’s going to be right no matter what.

This is a character flaw. It’s a huge, running theme with Momota’s character, and it’s brought up again in chapter 4 deliberately when Momota really does almost kill everyone in the trial because he refuses to believe that Ouma isn’t the culprit. But the localization simply omits it, leaving Momota to seem considerably less hard-headed and reckless in the English version of the game. If anyone wants proof that this line exists, it is still very much there in the Japanese dialogue, but it has no translation whatsoever. This goes beyond “translation decisions I don’t agree with”; omitting an entire line for a character simply because you want other people to like them more is just bad translation, period.

3.)    Angie’s Religion

In the original Japanese version of the game, neither Angie’s god nor her religion have any specific names. She refers to her god simply as “god” in the general sense, and clearly changes aspects of their persona and appearance based on who she’s trying to convince to join her cult. Everything about her is pretty clearly fictionalized, from her island to the religious practices her cult does.

Kodaka’s writing with regard to Angie is already a huge mess. It feeds into a lot of harmful stereotypes about “crazy, exotic brown women” and “bloodthirsty savages,” but at the very least it never correlated with a specific religion or location in the original version of the game.

This all changed when Angie’s translator, for whatever reason, decided to make Angie be Polynesian specifically and appropriate from the real religion of real indigenous peoples native to Polynesia. That’s right: Atua is a real god that has very real significance to tons of indigenous peoples.

In my opinion, this decision was incredibly disrespectful. It spreads incredible misinformation about a god that is still very much a part of tons of real-life people’s religion, and associates it with cults? Blood rituals? Human sacrifices? It’s a terrible localization decision that wasn’t necessary whatsoever and to be quite frank, it’s racist and insensitive.

As I said, the original game never exactly had the peak of “good writing decisions” when it came to Angie; there are still harmful stereotypes with her character, and she deserved to be written so much better. But associating her with a real group of indigenous people and equating a real god to some fictional deity that’s mostly treated as either a scary cult-ish boogeyman or the punchline to a joke is just… bad.

4.)    Ouma’s Motive Video

Some of the decisions taken with Ouma’s translation are… interesting, to say the least. In many ways, he feels like a completely different character between the two versions of the game. This is due not only to the translation, but also the voice direction and casting.

A lot of his lines are tweaked or changed entirely to make his character seem much louder, less serious, and less sincere than the original version of the game. Obviously, Ouma lies, a lot. That’s sort of the whole point of is character. But what I mean is that even lines in the original version of the game, where it was clear he was being truthful via softer delivery, trailing off the end of his sentences, and seeming overall hesitant about whether to divulge certain information or not are literally changed in the localization to him pretty much yelling at the top of his lungs, complete with tons of exclamation points on lines that originally ended with a question mark or ellipses.

Tonally, he just feels very different as a character. The “sowwy” speak, lines like “oopsie poopsie, I’m such a ditz!”—all of these things are taken to such ridiculous extremes that it feels a little hard to take him seriously. Even in the post-trial for chapter 4 when Ouma starts playing the villain after Gonta’s death, a moment which should have been completely serious and intense, the mood is kind of completely killed when the line is changed from him calling everyone a bunch of idiots to him calling everyone…. “stupidheads.” These changes don’t really seem thematically appropriate to me, but overall, they’re not damning.

What is damning, however, is the fact that Ouma’s motive video is completely mistranslated and provides a very poor picture of what his motivations and ideals were like. I still remember being shocked when I played the localization for the first time and discovered that they completely omitted a line stating that Ouma and DICE have a very specific taboo against murder.

Literally, this is one of the very first lines in the entire video. The Japanese version of the game makes it explicitly clear that DICE were forbidden to kill people, and that abiding by this rule was extremely important to them. By contrast, the localization simply makes a nod about him doing “petty nonviolent crimes and pranks,” without ever once mentioning anything at all about rules or taboos.

This feels especially egregious in the localization considering Saihara later uses Ouma’s motive video as evidence in the chapter 6 trial and states there that Ouma and DICE “had a rule against killing people,” despite the game… never actually telling you that. It not only skews the perception of Ouma’s character at a crucial moment, it also just straight-up lies to localization players and expects them to make leaps in logic without actually providing the facts. So it winds up sort of feeling like Saihara is just pulling these assumptions out of his ass more than anything else.

I actually still have my original translation of Ouma’s motive video here, if anyone would like to compare. Again, translation is a tricky line of work, and obviously not all translators are going to agree with one another. But I consider omitting lines entirely to be one of the worst things you can do in a translation, particularly in a mystery game where people are expected to solve said mysteries based on the information and facts provided to them.

5.)    Inconsistencies and Lack of Context

As I mentioned earlier, there are many instances of lines being completely mistranslated, or translated two different ways by multiple translators, or addressed to the wrong character. This is, as I stated, due to the way the translation work was divided by four separate people who appear to have not communicated with each other or cross-referenced each other’s work.

One of the clearest examples of this that I can think of off the top of my head is in chapter 3, where Ouma mentions “doing a little research” on the Caged Child ritual, and Maki in the very next line repeats him by saying… “study?”

On their own, removed from any context, these would both potentially be correct translations. However, it’s very clear that the translators just didn’t care to look at the context, or communicate with each other and share their work. The fact that characters aren’t even quoting each other properly in lines that are back-to-back is a pretty big oversight, and something that should have been accounted for knowing that four separate people were going to be translating various different characters.

This lack of context causes other, even more hilarious and blatantly wrong mistranslations. At the start of the chapter 3 trial, there is a line where Momota mentions that he couldn’t perform a thorough investigation on his own “because Monokuma disrupted him.” In the original, Ouma responds and tells Momota that he’s just using Monokuma as an excuse to cover for his own flaws. However, what we actually got in the localization was… this.

I don’t even have words for how badly this line was butchered (though I could make several hilarious jokes about Monokuma “over-compensating”). Presumably, this happened because Ouma’s translator saw Ouma’s line without any of the lines before it or the context of what Momota was saying, had no clue who Ouma was actually supposed to be talking to, and just ad-libbed it however they could, even though it literally makes no sense and doesn’t even fit into the conversation.

There are other similar instances of this, too. For example, did you know that the scene after Saihara faints in chapter 2, just before he wakes up in Gonta’s lab, is actually supposed to have Ouma talking to him? The narrator is unnamed, but there are several lines just before Saihara wakes up where Ouma tells him “come on, you can’t die on me yet!” and keeps prodding him and poking him to wake up. This is never explicitly told to you from the text… but it becomes pretty obvious when you look at the context and see that a huge CG of Ouma looking over Saihara as he starts to wake up is the very next part of the scene.

In the localization, however, Saihara’s translator pretty clearly had no idea what was happening or who was supposed to be talking to him, because they translated those lines as Saihara talking to himself, even though the manner of speech and phrasing is clearly supposed to be Ouma instead.

I could go on and on listing other examples: Tsumugi makes a joke in the original about Miu being able to dish out dirty jokes but not being very good at hearing them herself, but it’s changed in the localization to Tsumugi saying “I’m not so good with that kind of stuff,” and a line where Momota protests against Maki choking Ouma because she’ll kill him if she keeps going is instead changed to him saying “you’ll get killed if you don’t stop!” In my opinion, the fact that this is a consistent problem throughout the whole game shows that the translators weren’t really communicating or working together at any point, and that it wasn’t simply a one-time mistake here or there.

6.)    Edited CGs and Plot Points

I have made an entirely separate post about this in the past, but at this point I don’t think anyone actually knows anymore: the localization actually edited in-game CGs and made some of them completely different from the Japanese version of the game. I’m not accusing them of “censorship” or anything like that, I mean quite literally that they altered and edited specific CGs to try and fix certain problems with them and only ended up making them worse in the process.

In chapter 5, Momota gets shot in the arm by Maki’s crossbow when trying to defend Ouma, and Ouma gets shot in the back shortly afterward when attempting to make a run for the Exisals. These injuries are relevant to how they died, but they’re not actually very visible in the CGs of Ouma and Momota shown later in the chapter 5 trial.

There are a whole bunch of inconsistencies with the CGs in chapter 5 in general: Momota gives Ouma his jacket to lie on under the press, but is magically still wearing it when he emerges from the Exisal himself at the end of the trial (I like to think he snuck back into the dorms Solid Snake style to get a new one from his room before joining the trial), the cap to the antidote is still on the bottle when Ouma pretends to drink it in front of Maki and Momota, etc. None of these things really deter from the plot though, and so I would say they’re fairly unimportant.

However, for some reason, NISA decided that “fixing” at least some of the CGs in the chapter 5 trial was necessary. They did this by adding bloodstains to Momota’s arm while he’s under the press, to better show his injury from the crossbow…. and in doing so, for some completely inexplicable reason, they changed the entire position of his arm. Here’s what I mean for comparison:

This is how Momota’s arm looked in the original CG from chapter 5, shown when the camcorder is provided as evidence that it’s “Ouma” under the press.

And this is how the localization edited it to look. I can understand and even sympathize with adding the bloodstains, but… changing the entire arm itself? Moving it to be sticking out from under the press? To put it nicely, this change doesn’t make any sense and actually makes it harder to understand Ouma and Momota’s plan.

The whole trick behind their plan was that nothing was supposed to stick out from under the press, other than Momota’s jacket. They waited until the instant when the press completely covered every part of Momota’s body, arms and all, and then performed the switch to mislead people. But the edited version of the CG in the localization just has Momota’s arm sticking completely out, hanging over the side, meaning it would’ve been impossible for the press to hide every part of it and the whole switch feels… well, stupid and impossibly easy to see through in the localized version.

Again, this shows a total disregard for presenting the facts as they actually appear and actually makes things more difficult for English players of the game, because they’re not being given accurate information. I really don’t understand why these changes were necessary, or why the bloodstains couldn’t have just been added without moving Momota’s entire arm.

7.)    In Conclusion

This has gotten extremely long (nearly 10 pages), so I want to wrap things up. I want to specify that my intention with this masterlist isn’t to insult or badmouth the translators who worked on this game. I’m sure they worked very hard, and I have no idea what time or budget constraints they were facing as they did so.

Being a translator is not easy, and typically translators are not very well-paid or recognized for their work. I have the utmost respect for other translators, and I know perfectly well just how difficult and taxing it can be.

I am making this list because these are simply changes which were very different from the original version of the game, and which I believe could have been handled better. Personally, I disagree with many of the choices the localization made, but that does not mean that they didn’t do a fantastic job in other places. I absolutely love whichever translator was responsible for coming up with catchphrases and nicknames throughout the game: little localization decisions like “cospox,” “flashback light,” “Insect Meet n’ Greet,” and “cosplaycat criminal” were all strokes of genius that I highly admire.

I only want to stress that the Japanese version of the game is very different. Making changes to the way a character is presented or portrayed means influencing how people are going to react to said character. Skewing the information and facts presented in trials in the game means changing people’s experience of the game, and giving them less facts to go off of. Equating fictional gods to real-life ones can cause real harm and influence perception of real indigenous peoples. These are all facts that need to be accounted for before deciding whether a certain change is necessary or not, in my opinion.

If you’ve read this far, thank you! Again, feel free to share this post around if you’d like, since this is probably the most comprehensively I’ve ever covered this topic.

[eliotquillon]

HIVE TIMELINE TWO, ELECTRIC BOOGALOO (Updated and reworked for Bloodline; spoilers ahead!)

It's a year since my original HIVE timeline (which you can read here and is obviously pre-Bloodline), and how things have changed. Well...kind of. I was expecting more of my timeline to crumple under the weight of eight years' worth of continuity errors but, unlike most of my pre-Bloodline fic, my 2020 timeline has stayed somewhat intact. However, in light of Nessa's excellent post that used the Bloodline prologue to figure out Raven's birthday with a scary amount of accuracy, I've decided that somewhat intact just isn't enough. Lo and behold...find the C ottomalpense new and improved H.I.V.E. timeline under the cut. This is just my interpretation of the canon timeline; because Walden contradicts himself constantly when it comes to age and continuity, most of these dates are educated guesses and any other interpretations are more than valid. Bloodline spoilers below.

PART ONE: RAVEN

In my original timeline, I used two anchor dates: Otto's 13th birthday being August 29th 1993, and Raven being 16 in the 'fifteen years earlier' Hong Kong flashback, making her 31 in Aftershock/Deadlock. Using the age difference between her and Otto, I counted backwards to give Raven a birth year of 1979. Otto's birthday still holds up, but Bloodline has since made it clear that Raven was 15 in Hong Kong. Therefore, several options presented themselves in order to salvage the rest of the timeline.

Option 1: Raven was indeed born in 1979, and Hong Kong takes place in 1994. This would make her 27 in H.I.V.E., given that she has a September birthday and H.I.V.E. takes place between September-December 2006. However, this means Raven that if Raven is 30 in Aftershock/Deadlock, there are only three years between the first seven books....something that canon vaguely supports given Shelby's "I've waited three years for you two to get together" comment to Laura and Otto in Deadlock, but feels very, very unrealistic given the number of time skips and the sheer volume of things that happen in the first seven books. My original timeline was created to get rid of the stasis in canon and give a better sense of the progression of time between books. Keeping Raven's birth year as 1979 undermines that.

Option 2: Raven was born in 1981, Hong Kong takes place in 1996, and she is 25 in H.I.V.E., meaning that there's exactly five years between H.I.V.E and Aftershock. This supports my earlier placement of Aftershock being the start of fifth year, but 25 feels kind of...young? It also hinges on Raven knowing her exact birth date before she finds out that Nero is her father, which I personally don't think Bloodline supports - Nero didn't know her birthday, and I think if Raven did know, she would've told him pre-Bloodline.

Option 3: Raven was born in 1980, Hong Kong takes place in 1995, and she is 26 in H.I.V.E., but, because she doesn't know her birth date, she celebrates her birthday on New Year's Eve. So while Raven would technically be 31 in Aftershock, she would still consider herself 30 until the end of the year, as would Nero. This gives a little bit more leeway with her age, reduces the number of changes in the overall timeline, and accounts for the overall unreliability of both Raven and Nero's narration in the flashback scenes - given that one of them had been traumatised so thoroughly that she had recurring psychotic episodes just months before that scene, and the other had his memory tampered with to the point where he misremembered the date of worst day of his life.

I personally opted for Option 3, making Raven's new birthday 3rd-6th September 1980. She is 33 in the Bloodline epilogue. Therefore Hong Kong still takes place in 1995.

PART TWO: OTTO

This is just a rehash of my last timeline, but for clarity's sake: Otto being an August 1993 birthday makes him one of the youngest in his year, meaning that everyone else (Lucy, Wing*, Nigel, Franz, Shelby, Laura, and Penny) were all 1992/3 babies. Bloodline takes place right at the end of his final year (meaning I correctly predicted that it would be set in 2012), making him 19. Something I forgot to mention in my original timeline is that Tom is described as being a few years older than Penny in H.I.V.E., but given that Tom isn't really alive for long enough to present me with an issue timeline wise, I'm just going to let that one slide. The Bloodline epilogue thus takes place in 2013.

As always, I am ignoring Rogue's claim that Otto is 13, because it doesn't make sense in any context (if Otto really is 13, it means he magically ages three years in Zero Hour and Aftershock according to Walden's own implication that Otto is 16 by Aftershock...which I'm also ignoring, but whatever). Laura still choosing between universities in September 2013 is weird, because either she is very, very late for the 2013 academic year, or very, very early for the 2014 one, but, again, I am ignoring it. Essentially, nothing meaningful has changed for any of the student ages between this timeline and the 2020 one.

PART THREE - NERO

This is where it gets interesting. This time last year, my Nero section was just speculation. I was, uh, very off, and did not account for how early Nero knocked Elena up. That was on me. My bad!

Nero is in his early 20s when Elena is murdered. If we take the year to be 1980, and early 20s to mean anything between 20-24, we can get an approximate birth year of 1956-1960. I'm going to average that to 22, making Nero's birth year 1958. He's a practically spritely 48 in H.I.V.E, and 55 in the Bloodline epilogue.

(Also, I am treating the 'thirty years' in the 'thirty years ago' flashback to be an estimate. Nero has memory issues and also thirty years has a much better ring to it than thirty-two.)

PART FOUR - DIABOLUS

We can't talk about Nero without mentioning Diabolus because I, for one, have been haunted by the knowledge that Nero taught Diabolus for years. However, assuming Nero immediately joins the H.I.V.E. teaching staff in 1980 following Elena's death, he is 22. If Diabolus is a first year student, we can give him a birth year of 1966/7. That said, I tend to think Diabolus is a little bit older than that, given how close he and Nero are in Hong Kong, so if we age him up to a third year in Nero's first year of teaching, that makes him 15/16 with a birth year of 1964/5. There's only 6/7 years between him and Nero, leaving plenty of time for them to become close friends by Hong Kong, during which Nero is 37 and Diabolus is approaching 30. That means Diabolus had Nigel at 27/28.

PART FIVE - THE OVERLORD INCIDENT AND XIU MEI

The Overlord Incident (henceforth the OI) is the bane of my existence. There's no mention of Raven in the original flashback in the Overlord Protocol, implying that she wasn't around yet, but it's referenced as still being a work in progress in Hong Kong. Again, this is a rehash of my previous timeline, but the Deadlock interpretation doesn't work; regardless of anything else, Wing was definitely born in 1992/3 in order to be in the same year as Otto, and either Wing or Raven would be too young for the OI to occur after Hong Kong (Raven was only 13 in 1993 in this interpretation of events, and this is one that puts her on the older side - there's an argument to be made for her being born in 1983, which would make her 10). Ergo, in this timeline, the OI precedes Hong Kong.

As mentioned, Wing had to have been born in 1993 at the latest, and the evidence suggests that he's most likely one of the older kids in their year, pointing to a 1992 birthday, meaning Xiu Mei got pregnant by January 1992 at the earliest. There must be time allowed for the following to occur between Wing and Otto's births and the OI: survivors of the OI to start going missing, Xiu Mei and Wu Zhang /Cypher to marry and move to Japan in order to escape persecution, and Overlord to get enough soft power over Number One to convince him to start trying to produce a clone of himself to be his successor. At earliest this can be 1991. I, however, think that it's more likely to be January 1990, given Overlord's comments about how much Number One initially resisted having his brain hijacked. This is the same as my previous timeline.

Unlike my previous timeline, however, I'm also going to attempt to estimate the year of Xiu Mei's death. While the Overlord Protocol does not explicitly state this, it can be inferred that Nero receives Xiu Mei's locket and letter after she is murdered by Overlord for investigating the Renaissance project. Nero receives the locket "many years" before Overlord Protocol (which takes place roughly in Spring/Summer of 2007), but Xiu Mei was also presumed "long dead" already when he received it as a result of the OI. This puts 17 years between Xiu Mei's faked death and Nero's reminiscence over the locket and letter in 2007 after the assassination attempt in Vienna. Xiu Mei can't have died before Wing was at least 5 years old, given the strong memories he has of her and the fact that he made a promise to her not to kill anyone, so I'm tentatively putting Xiu Mei's real death at 2001, when Wing would've been 9. This leaves just enough time for Cypher to establish himself as a thorn in Nero's side, and for his relationship with Wing the deteriorate to what we see in the Overlord Protocol.

PART SIX - OTHER

I've been meaning to do the maths on this for a while, but H.I.V.E.mind was officially brought online April 10th, 2006! (He'd been online for four months, three weeks, and two days by September 1st.) Nero really was paranoid after the OI.

Brexit doesn't occur in the H.I.V.E.verse, because Duncan Cavendish (David Cameron) resigns in 2010, AKA way, way, before the rise of UKIP and the 2016 referendum. The Iraq war, however, does - Tony Blair is heavily, heavily implied to be the prime minister in 2006.

Not really timeline related, but the fact that both Otto and Raven are Virgos is enough to make me shudder.

TL;DR - THE (FINAL???) TIMELINE

1950-59: The Furan siblings are born at some point. Two siblings are twins, presumably Elena and Anastasia or Anastasia and Pietor. At some point, they are owed a blood debt by the Sinistres.

1958: Nero is born.

Early 1960s: H.I.V.E. is founded, most likely by Nero's mother.

1964-5: Diabolus Darkdoom is born.

Late 1970s: Elena and Nero start their affair.

1980: Elena is murdered by Pietor. Raven is born. Nero has his memory of Raven's survival forcibly erased by Francesca Sinistre, clearing the blood debt between the Furan and Sinistre families.

1980s: Diabolus Darkdoom and Duncan Cavendish attend and graduate H.I.V.E. Diabolus and Nero become friends.

1989: Raven runs away from her orphanage.

1990: The Overlord Incident takes place, leaving three named survivors: Nero, Xiu Mei, and Wu Zhang. Overlord begins to assert control over Number One.

1991: Raven is found by the Furans and brought to the Glasshouse. Wu Zhang and Xiu Mei marry and immigrate to Japan after survivors of the Overlord Incident start going missing.

1992: Presumably the year Raven claws out Pietor's eye and gets shot in the woods, it is also the point at which Overlord/Number One most likely starts considering cloning himself. In the final quarter of the year, some students - most likely Wing, Shelby, and possibly Laura - are born.

1993: Otto and the rest of the students in his year are born.

1994: Likely the year Dimitri's escape attempt fails, and Raven is forced to murder Tolya. Also presumably when H.I.V.E.'s Icelandic location became dangerously compromised, and Nero starts seriously considering plans to move. At this point his mother is dead.

1995: Nero and Diabolus go to Hong Kong to meet with the Architect, and thwart Raven's assassination attempt. Raven eventually defects to G.L.O.V.E., and the first Glasshouse burns.

1996-2000: Construction on H.I.V.E. 2.0 is completed. Nero starts work on the emergency Zero Hour protocol.

2001: Xiu Mei is murdered by Overlord for asking too many questions about the Renaissance initiative. Wu Zhang becomes Cypher. Nero receives his half of the amulet, and Xiu Mei's letter.

2001-2005: Lucy's parents die of unknown causes. Diabolus Darkdoom falsifies his death to escape execution for getting too close to the Renaissance initiative, possibly after divorcing his wife first. Otto drops out of school and starts scamming local business to repair St Sebastian's. At some point Pike convinces Nero to try AI again. Number One's will is entirely consumed by Overlord.

2006: H.I.V.E.mind goes online. Pike's experiment to give Ms Leon the same reflexes as her cat goes horribly wrong, leaving them both trapped in the wrong body. Shelby becomes the Wraith and makes headlines for stealing millions of dollars' worth of jewellery. Laura is caught hacking the nearby American air base's early nuclear warning system. Otto hypnotises the current prime minister, allowing Duncan Cavendish to come into power. During a failed escape attempt from H.I.V.E., several hundred million pounds' worth of damage is caused to H.I.V.E. by Nigel's experimental crossbreed plant, Violet.

2007: Cypher fakes his death as Mao Fanchu in order to lure Wing to Tokyo, and the Contessa betrays Nero. Nero keeps Cypher alive, unbeknownst to Number One, and starts to have suspicions about Number One/Overlord for the first time. By the end of August, everyone is fourteen, and first year is over.

2008: H.O.P.E. is formed, and Nero is captured in either April or May whilst meeting with Gregori Leonov. Three months later, he is rescued by Otto, Raven, and the gang. The Contessa and Number One/Overlord die. Laura and Otto kiss, but nothing comes of it. Diabolus resurfaces from the dead to be elected head of G.L.O.V.E.'s ruling council. At some point in late August to early September, Otto, Wing, Shelby and Laura first encounter the animus fluid on a train to Paris whilst on a mission to recover a stolen thermoptic camouflage suit. As a result of the Contessa's death, Lucy Dexter is transferred to H.I.V.E. at the start of third year, at which point everyone is fifteen. Following the hijacking of Dreadnought, and an encounter with Pietor Furan, the animus fluid, and the Disciples, Otto is captured by American forces after saving Air Force One and the US president. He is then turned over to H.O.P.E.

2009: Assassinations of key members of G.L.O.V.E.'s ruling council take place at the hands of Otto, now under the influence of animus. Raven is given executive privilege to kill him if necessary. Otto confesses his love to Laura. Following a confrontation in the Amazon jungle, Cypher, Ghost, and Trent all die. H.O.P.E. is destroyed. Otto feigns memory loss of everything that occurred under animus. By the end of the year, everyone is sixteen.

2010: Laura's brother, Douglas, is born. Otto has continual and repeated nightmares and is the subject of rumours. Overlord takes control of the Advanced Weapons' Testing Facility in Colorado. The Zero Hour protocol is activated. Wing and Shelby get together. Chief Lewis and Lucy Dexter die. Pietor Furan is killed by Raven. Nero becomes head of G.L.O.V.E. Duncan Cavendish is forced to resign. The Architect is contacted by Anastasia Furan through a proxy, and construction of the new Glasshouse is completed. Following the appointment of Security Chief Dekker, Laura is blackmailed into betraying the location of the Hunt after Tom and Penny's recruitment to H.I.V.E. Joseph Wright and several former members of the ruling council are offered the help of Disciples'. All of the Alpha stream save Shelby, Otto, Franz, and Wing are taken captive. Otto is expelled, and joined Raven on the hunt for the location of the new Glasshouse. By the end of the year, everyone is seventeen.

2011: Raven and Otto take down several Disciples, most notably visiting Dubai, London, and Paris. In Venice, they are pursued by the CIA after tracking down the Architect with the help of Diabolus Darkdoom. Tom dies. The new Glasshouse is stormed and destroyed, again. Laura is given the choice as to whether she wants to stay at H.I.V.E. or not, and decides to stay. Anastasia Furan is taken hostage in Nero's basement storage facility. The Disciples' countdown for the new batch of hostages starts at 99 days. By the end of the school year, everyone is eighteen.

2012: The majority of Otto and the gang's final year goes smoothly. Franz starts working out and loses weight, becoming conventionally attractive. A few days shy of graduation, the clone known as Anna becomes loose. Otto reconvenes with the CIA and is allowed access to the last remaining batch of the animus fluid. Francesca Sinistre dies. It is revealed to Nero by Anastasia that he is Raven's father. Raven kills Anastasia. Otto stays behind to destroy H.I.V.E. and dies. His consciousness is transferred to a cloning vat by H.I.V.E.mind. Everyone is nineteen.

2013: Construction on the new H.I.V.E. facility is already underway. Raven finds out her birthday. Shelby and Wing set up an orphanage, implied to be in Africa, for war orphans in Otto's honour. Franz is an instructor at the temporary facility. Laura gets in to MIT and Oxford. In early September, Otto shows up on her doorstep.

[askaceattorney]

Dear Asexual-Deesasters,

Mod Edgeworth: 

If you want to know the answer to that question, go to this link.

Dear Skibot99,

Co-Mod: I’m fairly certain it was The Mod, but I don’t know for sure.  He actually had another one before it, made from an old Ace Attorney musical animation.  I haven’t been able to locate that video, unfortunately, but here’s the old banner:

Ah...  Those were good days.  Good days.

Dear Dawsongfg,

Co-Mod: It’s fine.  Besides, it won’t be too long before those letters are accepted, so maybe we’ll hold onto them until that time.

Dear skibot99 again,

Mod Edgeworth: The Lost Turnabout hands down. All logic is thrown out the window the moment Phoenix had amnesia. It’s clear the Judge knew something was wrong with Phoenix, so why didn’t he call for a recess or check on Phoenix? Not to mention Wellington was annoying. He’s probably the only character I would be hesitant to play as when answering letters, if only because he was so unbearable.

As for Turnabout Ablaze, I do agree that it is a drag to get through in the end, though the entire game of AAI was boring, aside from the game mechanics. As a case by itself, I wouldn’t put it as my least favorite, if only because I did get some funny parts out of it.  It also contributed to the overall story, whereas The Lost Turnabout could just be taken out and it wouldn’t effect the overarching plot.

Co-Mod: I’d probably have to go with Turnabout Big Top.  I honestly couldn’t figure out the part where you have to present Max’s poster without consulting a walkthrough.  Why couldn’t we just present Max himself?  Besides that, the ending was largely underwhelming -- the murder weapon was hidden under Acro’s blanket the entire time, but instead of seeing a screenshot of it there, we just have to imagine it.  Maybe it was a filler case, but that was no excuse for it to end so poorly.  Not to mention one of the witnesses was a literal puppet.

It’s hard truth, Trilo.  Live with it.

Dear skibot99 and Anonymous,

Mod Edgeworth: I… think I heard from her when the localization of DGS was announced? I know Mod Kristoph and Mod Maya introduced themselves when I came into the group. There’s a third person, but I only heard from her once. As for what’s going on with her… I don’t know.

As for the flooding the inbox, it’s fine. I won’t promise a letter or two won’t be deleted, but we may make an exception and I’d hardly consider 4-5 different letters flooding the inbox. However, I do highly suggest lowering your letter sending to no more than three a day to prevent deletion of your letters. The only time I’d say your letters are flooding the inbox is when you’re sending 10-20 of them, especially of the same letter, and we have to scroll down for a while to get to the next letter. We will only choose three out of that pile and delete the rest.

And yes, we do have a few that send us 10-20 of the same letter to multiple characters in the span of five minutes. Geez.

Co-Mod: Mod Paups has had to remain absent for personal reasons, and sadly, has recently communicated to me that she wishes to leave the blog entirely.  Thanks for all you’ve contributed to this blog, Mod Paups, and best of luck in whatever you do next!

(Referenced Letter)

Dear mungeondaster,

Mod Edgeworth: Since I answered this one, I shall answer your letter.

(^ Why do I always use this sprite? ^) Actually, the localization never specified if Manfred Von Karma was born in Germany or not. In fact, we never knew the German part until Justice For All when Franziska Von Karma was stated to have flown all the way from Germany. It never specifies any reason for this and fans were quick to jump to the conclusion that it means the Von Karma family were German, which… isn’t entirely true? Manfred Von Karma never said he lived in Germany and, for all we know, Franziska could’ve lived in Germany to study law or something.

Now, the OG does give us more specific detail on this, being why I answered this the way I did. In the OG, both Von Karma’s were born Japanese, but lived in America or at least have an estate there. It specified that they were originally born in Japan, which would be translated to LA, California in the localization. While using the OG canon isn’t normal here, I will use it, if the localization doesn’t specify things. In this case, it never specified if the Von Karma’s were born in Germany or if Manfred Von Karma lived in America. Since he had to wait out the Statue of Limitations for DL-6, we can assume he lived in LA for 15 years or more. That means he’s American.

I am still getting the hang of writing letters, but I try to stick to canon as much as possible. If you believe we’ve made an error in our letters, feel free to let us know, but also show proof, if we go against canon. We’ll be sure the letter is sent to the right mod or else fix it.

Dear  Bluedragoncody,

Mod Edgeworth: I... don’t know how to feel about that.

Also, I accidentally deleted your previous letter before this one when trying to post it on here. I’m so sorry about that. If you could remember it, would you send it again?

Co-Mod: I’ll just respond to this with an old classic:

Dear Aceattorneyismyjam,

Mod Edgeworth: I-I’m not a pro! I accidentally deleted an important mod question from bluedragoncody, because of my inexperience. Oof! Again, so sorry!

Granted, I am good with digital art and writing essays, but I’m still trying to get the hang of being a mod here. Believe me, I do get corrected on several mistakes I do here. I can’t really call myself a pro just yet. I’ve only just started becoming a mod here last month lol

Dear Dahlia,

Mod Edgeworth: I thank you for your support of this blog and my essay. Manfred Von Karma is also my favorite villain and someone I do feel is underestimated as a one dimensional villain. I think people hate him so much, because of how he ruined Miles Edgeworth’s life without looking at the bigger picture. They focus on the bad things with their black colored glasses without dissecting Manfred Von Karma’s character as a whole. 

One thing I love about this blog, even before becoming a mod, is that no one here ever portrayed Manfred Von Karma as the one dimensional villain. He can be snappy at times, but as proven in many of our previous letters, he’s also portrayed as being calm when threatened, polite at times and absolutely loves his wife and children. Yes, he’s a terrible person, but that’s what makes him so interesting. He’s a bad, evil person that does good things from time to time. It doesn’t justify any of his horrible deeds, murder included, but it does make him human.

Co-Mod: I’m...going to assume you’re a different Dahlia.  (I’m grabbing a Magatama of Parting just in case, though.  I’m sure you can understand.)

Anyway, thanks for being such a loyal follower!  This blog’s been through a lot of changes since it began, and since I joined it back in 2017, so I’m glad it’s still a good source of enjoyment for you.  I’ve seen all sorts of cringe by now, by the way (some of which I wrote myself), so don’t worry about it.

I’m also glad that the characters still sound like themselves and not like us.  The hilarious personalities and quirks given to them by Capcom’s writers, as well as the humanity in so many of them, make them easy to relate to, and thus fairly easy to mimic.  I may have said something like this before, but I see myself in a lot of them -- in Athena’s fear of inadequacy, in Apollo’s desire for justice in a world where it’s hard to find, in Sebastian’s confusion about where to go next after his world falls apart, and possibly even in the von Karmas’ desire for perfection.  I of course identify with their positive feelings as well -- Phoenix’s smugness when he gets things right, Athena’s joy after pulling off a victory in court, Adrian’s pride after her self-confidence is restored, etc. -- but there’s something about the struggles they face that make them easier to relate to, on top of being that much more awesome in the end.

Unfortunately, I can’t promise anything about this blog continuing on in perpetuity.  For one thing, I don’t plan on being around forever (I’m fairly certain the other Mods don’t, either), and for that matter, there’s also no telling how long Tumblr will be around.  All I can promise is that I’ll give my best while I’m here, and that the love from you and everyone else who shares it here is sure to be what keeps us going.  Thank you for your contribution!

Dear TurqouiseJavelin,

Mod Edgeworth: Hm... not bad ideas. Though, we mods choose our own mod names under the condition that it doesn’t match anyone else’s mod name.

Co-Mod: What Mod Edgeworth said.  Choosing the name “Mod Athena” may or may not increase your chances of being hired, though.  *wink, wink*

Dear Anonymous, 

Mod Edgeworth: Actually, Gregory was stated in the Autopsy to have died by a gunshot. However, you do bring up something interesting. If Gregory Edgeworth realized he was dead and last remembered Robert Hammond strangling him, he wouldn’t think “I died by the shot of a gun.” Since the Detectives weren’t aware that victim had died unconscious, they’d assume the victim would recall being shot and killed. This makes me wonder if Gregory Edgeworth was channeled, but never brought to court to be cross-examined.

There are still holes, but I do like your aspect on DL-6.

Co-Mod: Dang...  No matter how many times you come back to this game, there’s always something new to think about.  I honestly hadn’t considered those details about Yanni Yogi’s trial.  Your explanation makes the most sense to me, but there’s one other possibility regarding Gregory’s testimony -- he may have chosen to lie about who murdered him in order to protect his son from a murder charge.  That’s all open to interpretation, of course, so your guess is as good as ours.

It’s a good thing we’re not actual defense attorneys, huh?

-The Mods