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We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming for some krusie

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In the way

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They’re going to save the world btw

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Krusie’s take on the Kiss + some bonus Krises

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I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything though

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"But the evil is necessary"

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You may also have the Krusie doodles, as a treat.

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deltarune chapter 3 + 4 spoilers under the cut!!

if susie wants to be a box, she will.

the universe can scribble down all the tragic endings it likes. destiny can draft all the plans it pleases.

but if there's a spot next to susie where you belong, that's where you're going to be. prophecy be damned.

susie's never been one to confine herself to prescribed roles.

you really think she’s gonna start now?

doesn't matter who’s doing the talking - teacher, tyrant, time itself. if the call is for unquestioned submission, she’s already halfway out the door.

she can’t burn the pages, can’t erase the words or scrub out the subtext.

but she can drag her heels across every sacred line. love so fiercely the glass begins to fog. care so loudly the plot forgets its course.

the ending may be scheduled. might already be rounding the corner, actually. 

still, i believe susie can stall it. trip it up. make it stutter. doubt.

susie is resistance, knuckles white.

susie is hope, everything bright.

watch her grab hold of someone's despair and shake it until it rattles apart. 

watch her look at inevitability and laugh until it gets nervous. 

watch her plant her feet on ground that was supposed to give way and discover that some things are more stubborn than gravity.

the prophecy longed for order. dutifulness. clean lines. it wanted "heroes" who stuck to the script, who saved the world quietly, who knew their role and stayed in it.

and for the most part… that was ralsei.

the one who guides, who heals, who smiles no matter how much it hurts.

he's never asked for more than what the prophecy offered. never reached beyond his lines.

ralsei's lived his whole life like a beautifully penned footnote - important, but never central.

he believes being good means being useful.

he doesn’t ask. doesn’t want. doesn’t dream.

his room is empty... because no one ever told him he was allowed to want something just for himself.

his desire has always been to be needed, never to need.

he bakes for us. sings for us. sews for us.

keeps giving and giving and giving,

believing that is what earns him a place to stay.

but... susie doesn’t keep him around for what he offers. she does so simply because he is ralsei.

because conversations are more fun when he's in them, because someone's got to groan at his terrible attempts at sarcasm, because someone has to look him dead in the eyes and tell him he is real and can't be cast aside.

susie is hope. blinding, blistering hope.

every time she batters her way through the destined writ, her friends get another moment to exist and be by her side.

every bone she picks with fate is one more heartbeat they get to feel.

and that. that is all she needs. 

you don’t have to be chosen to choose. frankly, susie doesn’t give a single, solitary, shining blue fuck about what’s been foretold and decided for us. the second destiny tries to threaten those she loves - she’s already standing in its way.

this world seems hellbent on racing toward a single ending.

but if that’s where it ends up, it’ll only be because susie isn't letting it go anywhere else.

and if you spend enough time beside someone who refuses to stay in their lane.... you start wondering why you ever stayed in yours.

if susie wants to be a box, she will.

and soon... ralsei will too.

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i wonder if its the same in the original japanese script or not. cuz i mean, having this whole "untwist" is so anticlimactic, when the game wouldve felt so much better if they or at least phoenix thought he was dead. its like theyre performing? for an audience that yes, exists, its us, but they dont know that. "we both know hes alive but lets make it ambiguous so the player is led to believe hes dead". its crazy just how consistent the parallels between the cases and this over-plot are..... only for it to fall apart.

i guess u could argue this is just an even more meta reveal, aka for the game to not have a satisfying overarching plot, but..... idk it just doesnt feel right. i feel like thats just me making excuses, in denial over how good this game couldve been in this one aspect, and then wasnt. :/

The thing with this whole question, "did Phoenix and Franziska believe Edgeworth was dead during JFA," is that, while the game does make both of them answer it somewhat straightforwardly, the narrative itself seems to want it two different ways at once.

Edgeworth's disappearance, for all first three cases of JFA, is treated as a mystery. We don't know what happened; Maya tries her best to get Phoenix to tell her, but Phoenix seems too drowning in anger and grief to answer her. Then we finally get an answer to that question - Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death. Suicide? No, Franziska immediately says, no, he's still alive. The next in-game day, she's proven right; we see a very alive Edgeworth on the phone with Gumshoe. And then he of course comes back for Farewell, the whole case develops, we learn about the truth and fighting for more than personal pride and not being heroes and saviours, just men.

My question is: if it's that straightforward. If Phoenix unambiguously wrote off a very alive Edgeworth because he couldn't accept that real-life Edgeworth didn't resemble the Edgeworth in his head. If Franziska's certainty that he is alive doesn't stem from the denial of grief, but simply of her knowing so. If the only one fooled by this whole thing is the player, then why does the game make such a mystery of Edgeworth's death in the first place?

It would have been far more efficient to clearly establish Edgeworth being dead at the beginning, show Phoenix grieving him, in all his anger and rejection and blatant misinterpretation of Edgeworth's reason for doing what he did - and use it to foreshadow the real twist, not the fake one. Franziska's insistence that he is alive would also have felt even more like mere denial - while giving us our first actual hint that she is, in fact, right. His return would have been a true surprise, properly woven into the story, unhindered by the confusion of mixed messages, and we could have had the masterful conclusion of Farewell clarifying everything, putting everything in its right place just like it does in the original game.

Instead we get two cases wracked with loss, with grief, with betrayal and revenge. And in the middle of all that pain, the mystery above our heads, "what became of Edgeworth," is looming. It seems unavoidable that we will have to accept he is gone, but the game doesn't tell us why or how, it pushes it back, seemingly waiting for the most emotional moment to hit us with that painful truth.

But when you put the two together, it doesn't really work all that well. Three out of four cases in the game seem to set up the revelation of Edgeworth's death, then the fourth case is about how he wasn't truly dead, when we... barely had any time to react to him being dead in the first place. It's a double twist, but instead of the second making the first more meaningful, it just kind of cancels its emotional impact instead.

I think this is why there's such a confusion about whether Franziska and Phoenix believe Edgeworth was dead. Because it would have worked bloody well better if someone was allowed to. Phoenix and Franziska are grieving so openly, in such a raw manner - and no one will tell us why, and when we're finally told why it's not even the truth. So maybe we're searching for a bit of truth there, anyway. Edgeworth's "death" didn't have time to hit us before being subverted, so what should we believe? The first three cases, or the last one?

Besides, Franziska's statement can easily be read as denial.

I don't believe it. He's still alive. I'm sure of it... Somewhere in this world, he's still alive.

Phoenix's is a little more clear-cut, but even his words can be interpreted as grief for someone's suicide:

(You really let me down...) When you disappeared, I felt... betrayed. The reason I decided to become a lawyer to begin with... Was because I believed in the things you said to me, all those years ago... And you... You betrayed your own words. That's why... one year ago, I made up my mind. I decided that the Miles Edgeworth I knew had died... ...At least, that's what I told myself.

Note that he never says "when you left" he says "when you disappeared." Edgeworth is the one claiming Phoenix can't forgive "the man who went into hiding," Phoenix doesn't confirm or deny it. Being "let down" or "betrayed" are actually also feelings people have been known to experience regarding a suicide, even though it's very unfair to the person who died. Even "at least, that's what I told myself" is a relatively ambiguous statement - is "Miles Edgeworth is dead" the thing he told himself knowing it wasn't true, or is it "You betrayed your own words by leaving/disappearing/apparently killing yourself, and I decided that's why you had no longer been the person I'd once known"?

The way it's worded does make it feel like the authorial intent is that neither Phoenix nor Franziska actually believed Edgeworth died. But not to the extent that it would be completely out of the question for them to be saying the exact same words had they believed it. Especially when for most of the game, we see them react in pretty much the exact way you'd expect from people grieving an actual suicide. Especially when in its very construction, all the way up until Edgeworth's return, the game had genuinely seemed to gear up to tell us he had truly killed himself.

The themes of the surrounding cases are also extremely ambiguous as to what they're trying to make you believe. In Reunion and Turnabout, you have a sister claiming to want revenge, before the case's turnabout reveals that revenge was not her motive at all. You have Mimi, who everyone believed died in a tragic accident that may or may not have been caused by guilt and outside pressure, revealed not to be actually dead, but to have become someone else in order to start over in life; furthermore, Mimi actually did lose her sibling. Putting her story aside Edgeworth's and Franziska's thus rather lends credence to the theory that he was truly believed to be dead. Morgan, Maya and Pearl's situation parallels almost exactly Manfred, Miles and Franziska's, with Reunion being the Fey's version of Turnabout Goodbyes, but no sudden disappearance ensues here, and so it brings us no insight on this question, though it is very interesting in other ways. In Turnabout Big Top, you have Regina, a young girl stuck in denial, incapable to realise her only family is dead. You have Acro, blinded by grief and rage for a sibling, driven to revenge against a target that doesn't deserve it - and it is worth noting that the conversation we have with Franziska, where she reveals her "revenge" is not for her father but for her brother and accuses Phoenix of being the reason he's gone, happens right before meeting Acro for the first time. Bat is not dead, but he may as well be, plunged for six months in a deep coma, and Acro states that his only reason to keep living is the hope of seeing him open his eyes again, which again, may or may not be denial - in this case, the comparison can be taken both ways. And of course the most obvious parallel is in Farewell, my Turnabout, where you have a woman dependent on her mentor and destroyed when she died - by suicide, the very reason we were told Edgeworth had "died" by, something that's briefly touched upon in Acro's case and heavily explored in Adrian and Celeste's. The game itself draws the parallel between these two and Franziska and Manfred, in that Franziska was "dependent" on Manfred's tactics, but it's completely transparent Adrian and Celeste's situation could also parallel Franziska and Miles, or even Miles and Manfred. Hell, Edgeworth puts his own words in Adrian's mouth.

Andrews: Please! Please STOP!! I beg you!! If people find out [about my suicide attempt]... If people find out... I... I'll... Edgeworth: If you're going to say you would "choose death", that is of no concern to me.

That seems pretty on the nose to me.

All the themes of Phoenix having to accept his saviour complex is a flaw, of Franziska having to accept the pursuit of perfection is unhealthy and unsustainable, of the both of them needing to confront this new Edgeworth who doesn't conform to their expectations, they still work if they truly believed he was dead, too. It's quite common for suicide to be unexpected, for people not to be able to believe someone could do it; that was already something they would have struggled to reconcile with the person they thought they knew, upsetting their whole idea of him in ways they may not have wished. Furthermore, Edgeworth spends an entire case confronting the both of them with the new him anyway, telling them "look, I'm not the person you thought I was, I have changed" while they struggle with their own worldviews falling around themselves, the way it happened to him a year earlier. Their beliefs prior to that don't fundamentally change anything to those themes. So it's not like this interpretation is breaking anything anyway, it is just a different colour to the overall same story, and one that can, in fact, also be read within and between the lines of canon.

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the five homoerotic love languages:

- intimate stabbing

- outright obsession

- confused pining

- "no one knows me like you do"

- lifelong promises that always sound suspiciously like wedding vows

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Mami’s cafe has Maid Mondays…

Happy Kyouko Day! 3/9

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Lain in the wires

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* (Oh, these parentheses I keep opening?

* (I'm collecting them.

* (Right now, I'm 1,762 parentheses deep.

* (Oh, my precious parentheses... (I don't ever want to close them!

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the sequel that was asked for but . now when theyre not such bigshots the slop continues

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world is noise

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Sound on