#Game of Memory

[awkward-sultana]

"Just as his majesty thinks of you as a mother, I do, too." (Insp)

[zorangezest]

rafael the 12 year old of all time. he should’ve been on hypixel bedwars

soundwave was not in fact hacking

[uyunto]

childhood

[demi-pixellated]

Sonic 06 AU where Princess Elise is instead the dimensional equivalent of Blaze because none of this really matters anyway so why not

[undead-cypress]

What if instead of "duelist" they said "gamer" instead

[killerinstinctgold]

[chiangyorange]

the chain but on a scale of who says hooray yippee and wahoo

is this anything.

[mythboundcal]

The Garden Doesn’t Know She’s Gone Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Fanfic by MythboundCal

Zelda’s garden doesn’t know she’s gone.

It still blooms like she’ll be back any second—like the sunflowers haven’t noticed she stopped humming to them, like the lavender didn’t watch her vanish into light.

Link stands at the gate. The wood is soft with age, half-swallowed by ivy. The watering can rests exactly where she left it in Hateno. Rusting. Waiting.

He doesn’t touch it.

Not out of neglect.

Just… fear.

That if he waters the garden, it might forget her—that its roots will stop searching for her footsteps, its blossoms will stop blooming in her colors.

So he lets it grow wild.

The basil climbs the wrong wall. The squash vines curl over the porch. The chimes still sing when the wind hits just right, a song no one ever wrote down.

And her gloves still hang on a bent nail by the shed. One turned inside out. He doesn’t fix it.

Somewhere beneath the soil are seeds she never named. He won’t dig for them. If they bloom, they bloom. If they don’t… he’ll wait with them.

Today, he sits. The Master Sword leans nearby, but he doesn’t reach for it.

The porch creaks under his weight. He watches the marigolds twitch in the breeze, reaching for hands that never come.

The villagers don’t ask anymore. He’s glad.

Because how do you explain a wound that grows flowers?

Even now, he hears her voice on the air—light, scolding, fond. “Don’t overwater the rosemary, Link. It hates being fussed over.”

He doesn’t answer.

Just lets the wind rustle the leaves. Lets the garden carry the silence.

And when a white lily opens—out of season, out of place—he doesn’t wonder how.

The garden remembers.

So he doesn’t have to.

[eternvlsound]

PlayStation 2 Ocean Blue (2002)

[awkward-sultana]

"I will care for you with my own hands. I'll do whatever is necessary to help you gain your strength and return to our happy days..."

[r-retro-retro]

[watchingwisteria]

listen there really was just something about how in the book, snow’s 3-page descent from hesitant lover boy to deluded mfer happens entirely in his mind. lucy gray gives him no indication whatsoever that she suspects him, that she’s going to leave or betray him. he’s just sitting quietly in the cabin waiting for her to return when that seed of calculated suspicion, which he has needed to survive the capitol, takes a hold of him and chokes the life out of any goodness left inside him. it really drives home your terror as a reader that “oh my god did he kill her? did she escape? what happened to her? why would he even think that?” in a way that when the movie had to adjust for visualization it lost some of that holy shit this guy has lost it emphasis.

[moldwood]

in the urinal making all the other boys jealous that their urethras are like a cheaply crafted ancient teapot that splashes piss everywhere whereas mine is like a finely crafted ancient teapot that will cause no splatter regardless of the height of the stream.

[zipsunz]

a second wave of grief

(he had been one of your closest confidants. how could you forget?)

[fallout-lou-begas]

So I started playing Ace Attorney but I accidentally started with the third game, Trials and Tribulations, and played the first case (Turnabout Memories) before realizing my mistake – but I did think, at the time, that it was a brilliant and daring design choice to start you out as Mia Fey, Phoenix’s mentor, in flashback, and play has her against several condescending, infantilizing, or even outright sexist court personnel in a drama that just so happens to feature the cool lawyer guy on the box in the most pathetic and embarrassing state imaginable before you even get to play as him. But then that “first” mission dovetailed into the actual first mission from the first game (The First Turnabout) perfectly, because Turnabout Memories is more or less a fanservice recreation and expansion of that first case, but by playing them in opposite order and immediately in sequence, it comes off instead as seeing right away via timeskip just how well that blubbering idiot you helped can handle himself in a court of law now, thanks to Mia’s tutelage – which is itself a continuation of Grossberg’s, as experienced prior. And every note is there, right down to your mentor getting stressed out to the point of exacerbating a medical condition, and opposing the same loser prosecutor.

And then the second case from the first game (Turnabout Sisters), of course, is about the death of Mia Fey that was foreshadowed at the end of Turnabout Memories, making it the first case where you (the player, mechanically) and Pheonix Wright (the character, narratively) are effectively on your own. You (as Pheonix) finally meet Grossberg again, and his staunch refusal to assist in the case is only made more concerning and significant by your firsthand experience playing as Mia under his wing in Turnabout Memories as the “first’ case, and you wonder immediately about their falling out. Maya’s introduction also keeps Mia in the world (including somewhat literally) by revealing more about the Fey family and Mia’s history, relationships, and legacy, and the thing is that I do have to say that playing Turnabout Memories first and getting that experience as Mia, and seeing her as a flawed and insecure rookie fighting for the win before we see her as the effortlessly cool and confident mentor figure, made for a much more narratively satisfying death of a woman than I think it would have been otherwise. You even get a line from Edgeworth in Turnabout Sisters where he calls Pheonix out for using “Mia’s style” of cross-examination – what he calls cowardly nitpicking of perfectly fine testimonies isn’t just how Pheonix does it narratively, it’s how you (the player) do it as the core mechanic of the game, because it’s how Mia does it, and while she is your guide in The First Turnabout, playing as Mia before you play as Pheonix and doing the same thing shows you firsthand that she’s taught him so well that even the prosecution can see it.

This accidental play-order of Turnabout Memories before The First Turnabout and Turnabout Sisters shows off an invaluable amount of Mia Fey’s character, agency, and development that combine to make her feel like the main character for a perfect and holistic three-act introduction to the series, where it doesn’t feel like Pheonix truly “takes over” until Turnabout Samurai – in which he literally does, in fact, take over the law office with Maya as his assistant. It left such a massive impression on me – much more of an impression, I think, that the intended play-order would, which I don’t think does Mia Fey a total disservice at all, but definitely relegates her to a relatively more one-dimensional mentor figure in Pheonix’s shadow for almost the entirety of her short on-screen lifespan if you don’t have the experience of playing as her in Turnabout Memories first. You as the player develop a much richer relationship to Mia that makes her death in Turnabout Sisters feel so much more personal, and the stakes of cracking the case so much more significant. It just enhances her character, and her role in these two cases, immeasurably.

And I mentioned it earlier, but it can’t be said enough that the player’s relationship to Pheonix benefits from this play-order, too – it’s because of Mia that he goes from the sobbing idiot who ate a bottle of poison on the witness stand for a girl who tried frame him for murder into the hotshot rookie lawyer through which you (the player) get to ask Mia for help during the trial in the first place! And she gives you that help because she has been in this same position herself and understands completely! You (the player) were there! The First Turnabout is also, honestly, kind of an underhand toss after Turnabout Memories (it's literally the first ever case so of course it's easy), but it only benefits the pacing of this play-order to have it as a second act before the much more complicated Turnabout Sisters. And when you, the player, are on your own after Turnabout Sisters and have to start Turnabout Samurai without her help, the only way that I can describe it is that you feel ready to make Mia proud.