#I love Albert and Klint interaction

[a-stars-art-blog]

It kills me that Albert had no idea Klint was dead for all those 10 years :(((

[euporie-art]

Hellooo there!! I saw your blog description and I am a benbaro shipper who would like to interact with you please! My benbaro obsession has gotten well fed by wonderful artworks and correct thoughts such as yours (thank you!!) recently but I fear my obsession can never be completely sated...

So if you like, feel free to use this ask to express whatever is currently on your mind! Just ramblings or a headcanon or something about benbaro or Barok or Albert separately or TGAA in general that you have thoughts about; this is a free pass to let it out! I'm always curious about how my blorbos look in other people's eyes

OMG HI I have read all of your benbaro fics and they make me fucking AJDJFHWIJFKTOEMTK (a good thing) . I need to get hit by a car. I love them so much

prepare for a whole lot of fucking yap because I am insane about them so much. and I have no job so I kinda just stew them in my brain all day at the moment, among other tgaa pairings and characters

(i honestly very rarely fixate on ships within fandoms. but tgaa gave me 3 pairings I would die for. asoryuu, homumiko, and benbaro. they all make me insane I'm going to eat drywall)

I think about them a lot. I don't even know where to start.

so I'll go w some dumb headcanons. sprinkling in some pretty bad drawings.tbh (please ignore how inconsistent my art style is)

I think some time after tgaa2 he moves back to England and lives with barok, who obviously has more than enough money to spend on him, so Albert grows his hair out again (he has a very stupid hat/helmet thing he wears to protect his hair if he's working on something potentially dangerous)

First off I think Albert had long hair in university. most of the time when people draw him in uni he looks almost identical to his 2-3 design WHICH IS FAIR AND NOT BAD! but I have some thoughts of my own

pray forgive the discourtesy of this looking shit I drew it quite quickly. but. I think he had long hair in university and was a little more particular about his appearance. however i do think he had pretty bad acne in his late teens. the acne was just a hormonal teenager thing and cleared up by his 20s.

After moving abroad I think he cut his hair short because he had less time to look after it, and wanted to put any money he had towards funding his inventions, so he did pretty much the bare minimum when it came to looking after himself (I must clarify I do think that Albert is attractive, this is not me trying to "yassify" him. I have a soft spot for cute nerdy guys I'm dating one but he likes Elden ring instead of science)

because he's pretty much been alone for like. a decade. and basically just spoke in Law Words for half of that. I think barok is very direct and literal with how he speaks so he worries about not seeming "romantic" enough, so to compensate he's very physically affectionate and likes spoiling albert with nice food, gadgets and supplies for his inventions, and new clothes.

I think barok is extremely clingy once he gets used to having Albert around again. he's like a cat he'll just kind of bonk his head into him sometimes and sadly gaze at him until he gets attention. very cuddly and a bit melodramatic. I love characterisations of barok where he's really pathetic tbh. also him being shy is fun I enjoy it greatly

albert on the other hand I actually think he's the more bold/confident one (I hate when barok is portrayed as a dominant bad boy or whatever its so stupid he literally gets shy when his 10 year old niece invites him to dinner). albert talks baroks ear off about anything and everything, humours his clingyness, and drags him outside to have a life beyond his job and engage in whimsy and fun . he's also very verbally affectionate I think. he makes sure to try and help barok feel less alone, because I think he has lingering guilt for not being there during the professor bullshit and klints death. it may have been after he left England for Germany, and he didn't even know when it was happening, but i think he has a lingering, irrational guilt for not being there for barok at his worst hour

ALSO a lot of the time I see people drawing Albert talking a lot about science shit w barok listening happily, but I also think it goes the other way too! I think barok will rant about wine pairings and different types of grapes n shit. Albert stares at him lovestruck and adoringly the whole time. he has no idea what a pinot noir is (neither do I, I don't drink)

final thing or I will be here all fucking day: my boyfriend and I came up with a headcanon that barok has a really pathetic looking Italian greyhound named petunia, he likes dressing her up in little outfits. I think when albert starts living with him he starts calling petunia their daughter, and has the ability to make the exact same sad and pathetic expression as the dog

jk tiny bonus: I have a very dumb "100 years on" au stewing in my brain where everything is set in the 1980s and 1990s instead of 1880s and 1890s. in the 80s section, when barok and Albert are in university together, barok is a sulky and mopey trad goth and they listen to The Cure together. albert dresses normal and listens to talking heads i think. this is stupidly self indulgent because I like 80s fashion and clothing. I have not even thought about the 90s section because I don't want to 😊 (I HATE 90S FASHION.)

[euporiez]

Hello beloved mutual! For the ask thingie, maybe 6, 13 and 18 for Albert or Barok or both?

hiiii!! ^_^ always lovely to see you in my inbox

6. something I have in common with this character

barok- I am british and goth :3. I also used to have an older brother, but unlike klint, mine didn't die she just transitioned so now I have a sister instead. Whenever I have a wine glass I really want to throw it at something, but it's usually full of apple juice or irn bru. also I have paternal Dutch ancestry (admittedly very little connection to it)

I also get told I look off-putting or intimidating in person, despite being either very sleepy or entirely neutral and minding my own business most of the time. I wish I had Barok's cloak, I feel like it would really seal the deal

if I could have bats in my office, then I would have so many bats in my office

albert- from what I've seen of height estimations for Albert, he's 5'7, which is my height without shoes (I usually wear very thick soled boots or heeled boots though, so that's a little different) I also have a stutter and poor volume control when I speak lmao (my voice is very different from his otherwise but Albert with a staffs accent would be fucking hilarious)

strangely I get compared to him quite a bit by some of my friends and mutuals. I don't know if it's just because I really like him or if it's because there's actually any similarities. shrug.

13. What's an emoji, an emoticon and/or any symbol that reminds you of this character or you think the character would use a lot?

barok- I'm honestly not sure. if he was given a phone I have a feeling he wouldn't use emojis whatsoever, apart from maybe the odd heart for the few people he'd stay in contact with, probably a black one because he's like that 🖤

albert- I think he spams emojis like a 50 something year old who just got a phone upgrade. theyre like modern hieroglyphics to him. I think he'd use 🥺 a lot because he's just a little guy!!!! (33 year old grown man.)

18. How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire?

Hm, I'm not really sure if there's any I admire...? I'm not sure what that means in this context so I'll just say relationships that I find interesting and compelling. benbaro would be the obvious choice so I'll go with others for a change

barok- I absolutely adore his dynamic with iris. I knew about the twist of iris being his niece before I played the game (I was spoiled on most of the plot twists beforehand through my own impatience), but it still hit me so hard when he found out and was so immediately dead set on being a part of her life again. its incredibly sweet. barok is such a bleeding heart under it all, and any fan work of him and iris interacting makes me OUGHHGGGHAGAGHHHHH 😭😭😭

Sometimes I wonder how different barok would be if he had raised iris for those ten years instead of not knowing about her at all, and how different iris would be. it's been a while since I've played tgaa2 and I need to replay it so bad but iirc he immediately gets upset and says he would've raised iris if he knew the truth. I think about that a lot. even though he was torn apart with betrayal from what he thought genshin had done, and was mourning the loss of his brother and likely also Lady Baskerville, he still would've raised iris through the grief... I'm going to start gnawing on the walls. aughhghg

albert- I find his dynamic with enoch drebber utterly fascinating and I need them to either have a very visceral fight to the death or I need them to be best friends. both maybe. Albert is everything that died in drebber and it haunts him, he's like a spectre of everything that drebber wanted to be, and he fucking HATES IT. they are both so tied together by parallels, they were intelligent and hopeful people whose dreams got shot down by being taken advantage of in the wrong place at the wrong time in a scheme bigger than themselves.

I think a lot about how they were in the same university, but Albert was at least a year above him (despite drebber being older by 2 years). I'm working on a fic about them meeting in passing atm where albert congratulates him on the award he won. just a simple passing acknowledgement of respect. since drebber came from a poor background he likely had to work extremely hard to be allowed to go to university instead of taking on factory work or something similar, so I imagine acknowledgement of his intelligence would run thin, so a kind word from an upperclassman probably meant the world to him back then

and then there's the fact that even though drebber utterly fucked Albert over and potentially ruined his career forever, Albert still respects his intelligence and his opinion. for drebber, even though he hates Albert for everything he is, that probably brought him some kind of pride? satisfaction? idk I'm half asleep and bad at explaining things. long story short I have never been this insane over 2 characters interacting in a non romantic way. there's only 4 drebber & harebrayne fics on ao3 and I WILL be fixing this, even if I suck

[evievigilant]

OH YAY some very good points! I'll also keep this under a read more but these are excellent (and thank you for taking the time to read what I have to say!)

I also think it contributes to his sense of alienation and feeling inhuman, yes! It's also sort of a sense that he can look at people in the streets and recognize the emotions they might be feeling from their interactions, that he's felt them too towards others in the past, but he has this ache from him remembering what it felt like for himself. He feels so much worse knowing what he's missing out on and fears he might never experience such connections like that again.

The "getting a good grade in religion" part is pretty much exactly what I'm thinking! He's very proud of himself for it. In his head, it's a part of a petty sibling competition that he thinks he's winning (and meanwhile Klint is just having fun and is totally unaware of it).

I love when people incorporate some real world historical knowledge into their hcs for this game, so I really love the idea of Albert reading up on some Hirschfeld and generally being curious about humans like that. Him reading about how different people are and finding joy in that absolutely makes sense to me, and his accepting nature is definitely something that Barok needs in his life.

And I do love that there's a lot of ways to take the 10 year gap. It all just feels so right for them and speaks to what they were going through during that time

Hi so you asked about my demi Barok hc so I figured I'd just send it here if that's fine!

For starters, I think it adds to the loneliness and isolation he felt for 10 years. He's not really meeting anyone he forms a connection with after his trust in others has been so degraded, so I think it's a neat to see how he's been affected through his sexuality if that makes sense? Like his lack of attraction to anyone for sooo long showing how little he's actually gotten to know people.

Next, if we're to say he did have a religious background (which I do believe), I think him being demi makes it extremely interesting (and kinda funny honestly). So he's growing up religious and being taught about the virtues of waiting til marriage and resisting temptation when he's young, and for the most part he thinks he's killing it in that respect. It's real easy to resist temptation when you don't really have much! "This abstinence stuff is easy!" he might think to himself. And then somewhere along the line he'll get really close to someone. Romantically, he might be able to power through it (though if it's towards a man it'll be more distressing). A bump in the road for sure.

But then the sexual attraction comes.

And he's thinking to himself that this MUST be a test from God to resist his urges. Maybe he's felt this a few times in his life and anxiously tries to repress it each time thinking that's what God wants him to do.

And of course (since I like benbaro and this is bound to come up), he's felt this with Albert, who I wanna talk about next. I think it'd be fun for Albert to also be demi and have a wildly different experience with it than Barok. I think if Albert starts feeling sexual attraction towards someone, he becomes extremely interested in the circumstances that led up to it, and tries to pin down exactly what is responsible for this. Overall though, he welcomes it and has a much better relationship with his sexuality than Barok does. I think of him as the more sex favorable of the two, and he might even have it with someone he's not attracted to (to see what it's like, maybe he's just bored, etc., who knows!).

I also think both of them being demi has fascinating implications for both the 10 years they were apart and them reuniting. This part I don't have a set hc for since I think most directions you can take it in is quite good. Like, did they somehow manage to keep that bond all this time? Or did both of them lose it and it returned when they started seeing each other again? Or did only one of them lose it initially before it returned while the other was still pining for the other all this time? I think either way it's fun to sorta dissect their connection with each other like that :)

SO YEAH, I know this was long, so gold star if you read it all jksdfh thank you for asking about it!

Yippie demi Barok thoughts!! I really enjoyed reading them, thank you for leaving such a long message!! :D

Yeah, I think I see what you mean! That he is aware that other people do experience attraction and connections - he sees couples in public or in court, or even just friends hanging out as he walks about London - but he doesn't experience any of this because he doesn't have any connections to anyone anymore... I can imagine this contributing to Barok feeling even more alienated from society and "inhuman" (there is a line by Stronghart where he refers to Barok as "his" prosecutor that won't leave my head. I feel like people kind of stopped treating him like a person and considering his blatant disregard for his own safety and autonomy, I feel like Barok kind of internalized that. Anyway).

Oh, Barok absolutely grew up religious in my book, he makes way too many Christian allusions for me to not think that ("If that is my fate, let God decide", the sacrificial lamb line, him saying Kazuma is to "crucify" him in 2-5's trial).

BUT YEAH HE'S JUST LIKE "What temptation lmao, I'm going to get a good grade in Religion, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve!" He witnesses Klint (who I think is actively bisexual) flirting with someone and thinks "wow skill issue".

I 100% agree on the test from God thing. Especially because he doesn't experience such attractions consistently, so he never really reaches a point of "I can't help it anyway, so it's no use resisting". And with his "If that's my fate, let God decide" line, it seems like Barok doesn't feel that he is in control of his life and just lets things happen to him because it's God who's doing it.

I also 100% agree with your view of Albert's view of sexuality! I feel like he sees sexuality in general as something that is simply human and harmless most of the time, it's the repression that is harmful (a while ago, I've been reading through publications by Magnus Hirschfeld where he medically described natural deviation from the binary understanding of afab and amab bodies and the "subsequent" deviations from heteronormativity to argue that because it's naturally occuring, it's normal and should be respected, so I'm taking some inspiration from that). And because the human experience is so complex, he wants to understand it! Through scientific methods of course.

I'm trying to think of how Albert developed this for his time rather radical viewpoint when everyone around him is insisting the opposite is true. I think it's because to me at least, he seems like the type of child/teenager/person who would constantly ask the "why" of things. I mean, why do people think sex that results in children is good but sex that doesn't is bad when children are often seen as just another mouth to feed? And if it's so bad, why is it apparently so good that people write and make art about and take pictures of it? So I believe just because they're not logical, Albert deviates from social norms a little and arrives at such viewpoints whereas Barok just kind of accepts things because that's what he's supposed to do.

I think Albert just telling him that he doesn't have to believe everything people say would fix so much. That other people don't know him better than he knows himself. That just because they don't appreciate his sexuality or the lack thereof doesn't mean that they're correct and it shouldn't be cherished and it cannot make him happy.

And I also don't really settle on one interpretation of their relationship during that ten year gap because all of them are so interesting to explore! Feelings kept small and silenced for so long suddenly bursting open like a dam or old feelings blossoming again and it would almost feel like nostalgia if it weren't for those feelings to be joined by newer affections.

[tiecladartist]

Barok for the Character Headcanons! :D

Coming from you, this feels like the ask came from Barok himself!

Character Headcanons:

1: sexuality headcanon - May be projecting for this one, but I see him as either ace or demi. At the very least I don't think he'll even be thinking about relationships until he's better worked through his trauma (losing your ability to trust others for several years makes being vulnerable with a S/O a little difficult methinks).

2: otp - Barok X Arts and Crafts. I'll be honest, even though Albert/Benjamin was the first character to pop into my head, I didn't really see them as being romantically involved. And so, this is my OTP. I see making the diagrams for cases as something almost therapeutic for Barok. Considering he spends a lot of time tense and on high alert, I feel like it's probably nice to be able to just sit and work on something like that in the safety of his office. He'd take pride in all the little details, perhaps so focused he doesn't notice when he gets some paint on his face from moving his hair out of his eyes (wiping it off as soon as he notices though because an English gentleman can't walk about with a dirty face). I just want Barok to be able to relax from time to time, and art (even for the sake of work) is a nice outlet/distraction.

3: brotp - And this is where Albert/Benjamin comes in! I loved their dynamic. That belief Barok had in him, defending the instant kinesis machine so much because even if it was utter nonsense it was important to Albert/Ben. Not to mention sending his only real friend back to Germany despite having the opportunity to catch up and have some positive and happy interactions for once, all out of concern for his friend's safety? Like, Albert was more or less all he had left from his happier past (I know Tobias was there too but they seemed to interact on a mostly professional bases now), Albert/Ben was someone Barok knew he could trust in a world filled with perceived enemies. He was someone that genuinely made him happy! And yet, Barok was willing to put his own happiness and this chance for one good day aside because he was so worried the Reaper's curse would take Albert/Ben away and it'd be Klint all over again. He cared about his friend that much!! I have many many feelings about their friendship and how great it is but I am going to stop myself now xD

4: notp - Barok X Sholmes - As entertaining as it is to see the dynamic of serious/closed-off and "I'm just here to start s***" I could never do this to Barok. I feel that over time the two of them could have the occasional evening of fun debate, or maybe even intellectual discussion with the right topic, most likely because Iris is pushing for them to get along better, but it would probably only work if it's in small doses, so a relationship would be out of the question.

5: first headcanon that pops into my head: This man sleeps at a desk more often than a bed. Office aside, I feel like back at his home he gets ready for bed, glass of wine in hand, bed ready to go, and thinks "I'm not quite tired yet" and heads to his writing desk instead, working on paperwork, or perhaps reading a book that's caught his attention. Then, before he knows it, he wakes up with his pen in hand or a book on his lap. I feel like it started when he was taking his break, since he was no longer on a work schedule, and perhaps the poor sleeping habit stuck around. Or alternatively, it's a result of him not wanting to be alone with only his thoughts before bed. He needs to keep his mind distracted or he begins to think of Klint, or the curse, or if he'll be taking a safe enough route to get to that meeting tomorrow, perhaps he's less likely to get jumped if he takes that street instead? or...

6: one way in which I relate to this character: Barok seems to try to avoid getting close to people. It took two whole games and a jailcell for him to open up to Ryu about his past, and even that took some effort. While it's not to the degree of our wonderful god of death, I also find it difficult to trust or open up to people out of a fear of it hurting more when they inevitably leave. I'll say what's needed in the moment, what's expected of someone in whatever relationship I have with them, but I find it hard to properly open up about my feelings and allow myself to be vulnerable despite seeming honest on the outside. And then, just as he did in the final case, one day someone with enough persistence crosses that invisible threshold and I'm like "alright time to exposition dump if you're clearly sticking around anyways"

7: thing that gives me second hand embarrassment about this character: His "passive aggression" (to put it mildly) to Ryu is probably the biggest culprit. I could go on for hours analyzing the causes of, mindset behind and thematic purposes of his treatment of Ryu, but it doesn't change the fact that he does say some pretty rude and uncalled for things at times. Explanation does not equate to excuse after all. Though, I don't remember it being as bad as the fandom portrays, so I'll be paying more attention to it on my Twitch playthrough. (At the very least, he isn't physically assaulting the defense like some other prosecutors, as low of a bar as that is to reach). That being said, I also appreciate the fact that the characters in this game have flaws! People aren't perfect, and the less appealing sides of the Great Ace Attorney characters make them feel all the more real.

8: cinnamon roll or problematic fave? Enemy of his liver, Old Bailey janitors, Japanese Lawyers and his own emotions, I have to declare him a Problematic Fave xD