#becuase that’s the game. you ghost. and you trick.

[transannabeth]

Are the buttons in ghost trick really ghost and trick /gen

i would never lie to you about the ghost and trick buttons. you ghost or you trick you trick or you ghost

[jupitermelichios]

On a more possitive note, I’ve started watching Sword Art Online. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen (and the last film I saw in cinemas was Cats to give you context for the scale i’m working on here) and I kind of adore it in much the same way I love garbage like Smallville or Twilight. It’s so stupid on so many levels. You could challenge someone to write the worst anime, and it would almost certainly be better than SAO. It’s almost hypnotic how terrible it is.

No one should watch this terrible terrible show so I therefore don’t feel at all bad that I’m about the spoil absolutely everything, but honestly if you do also hate-watch this please come talk to me about how terrible it is. I don’t know anyone else who watches it.

Highlights of Season 1 include:

everyone is trapped in an MMO, and if you die in the MMO you die IRL. but if you were a beta-tester you’re probably fine because they just let them keep all their levels and items from the testing, so they’re all massively OP and everyone just accepts this as a normal and non-game-breaking thing

it’s a fantasy MMO but there’s no races, no magic system, no weapons except swords and maces, and not even an option to dual wield - literally all you can do in this fucking game is stand in front of an enemy and mash the attack button. I’m pretty sure they’re trapped there because the devs realised no one would play this post launch-day otherwise because it’s boring as shit

when the villain traps everyone he also just changs all their avatars to look like they do IRL for absolutely no reason, like actually none, he doesn’t even say he thinks it would be funny, he just does it and no one questions it and it is literally never mentioned again because this is the worst TV show ever animated.

in the second episode the main character deliberately witholds information about how to defeat a boss, indirectly causing multiple deaths. there is absolutely no reason for him to withhold it, he was just being a jerk because he doesn’t like people

in the third episode they reset his entire personality and he’s now a selfless hero pretending to be a lower level than he really is so people will find him more relateable and be his friend because all he wants is to help people. this is not a consequence of episode 2, they just decided they didnt like the character as he’d previously been written.

he makes some new friends who are all objectively terrible people who have decided for no season that the twelve year old who doesn’t really know how to play and keeps having anxiety attacks about the very real possibility of death has to be the guild tank. the MC is high enough level to be functionally immortal in like half the levels, but doesn’t tell anyone this he just lets them go on bullying this child

none of his friends survive that episode, in the game or IRL. which is also a christmas epsiode. a child dies in battle because she’s a terrible tank and then a man commits suicide out of guilt, so then the main character murders santa to try and bring them back from the actual dead but it doesn’t work because again, this is a video game and they are dead IRL, so then he walks off into the snow alone. Christmas!

we meet the best character in the entire show in episode 4, Rosalia, who has gone evil and started just straight murdering people because she’s sick of being an attractive adult woman who can’t get a date because she’s surrounded by lolicons who are only interested in the preteen characters (not a joke, that comes up, the show is firmly on the side of the lolicons)

in the same episode we get an extended bra and panty sequence staring an actual fucking child, like canonically this character is maybe 13 at best. this is one of only 2 occaisions when they feel the need to undress a character and it’s the fucking 12 year old, it’s so gross it reads like a parody of itself

literally every single named female character aged over 8 who talks to the MC falls in love with him after like 5 minutes (and in season 2 this includes his actual sister). he shows absolutely no interest in any of them (including his sister, thank god) until...

the main character gets engaged to a girl he only knows from an MMO after a virtual single date (he doesn’t actually win her in a PVP match but only because he looses the match, he 100% canonically tries to win her in a match, which she is apparently fine with). he then doesn’t bother to ask for her real name until the final episode, he just calls her by her screen name

(that’s okay though becuase it turns out that this moron of a love interest used her real name, on a local server, in a game where your character looks like you do IRL, because apparently getting doxxed is her hobby)

they then get in-game married off screen. there’s not even like a still of a wedding photo. nothing. the main character proposes and then the show immediately jumps to the honeymoon, it’s fucking bizarre.

they find a creepy child dressed all in white with no memory alone in the woods a week into their honeymoon who starts calling them mommy and daddy literally seconds after they first meet her, and they don’t suspect anything suss is going on and adopt her

for hilarity bear in mind the main character may only be 15 at this point (he says he’s only just turned 16 in the last epsiode, but his actual birthday is never mentioned), and his virtual wifu is 16, but no one ever questions the marriage or the adoption, even though ‘hey marriage in a video game is as important and meaningful as marriage in real life’ is an actual conversation people have multiple times. also they think the child they adopt is an actual IRL 8 year old who thinks these randos she met in an MMO are her mum and dad and everyone just goes with that like it’s a totally normal thing

a character called ‘Thinker’ agrees to meet an enemy faction leader for peace talks. the “peace talks” take place in a high level dungeon and he is told to come alone with no weapons and no fast travel. he does this. no one ever comments that his name is ironic, and in fact they seem to think that being betrayed and trapped in a dungeon with a boss is a totally unexpected turn of events Thinker could never have planned for

they take their new baby into the dungeon to rescue thinker, because they went to the jean grey school of baby rearing, and she imediately reveals that she’s actually a magical maggufin with infinite power, murders the grim reaper, and then dies. In literally the second episode she’s in

after she dies the MC hacks the admin account of the game, converts her corpse into an in game item, and saves to the local storage on his console, with the intention of bringing her back to life as a robot once they’re saved from the game. I’m not joking, that’s an actual thing that happens.

the fact that the main character can just access the main admin account and make massive game-breaking changes isn’t used again in that game and he never thinks to try and use it to force log people out or give himself infinite life so he can just rush the game and free everyone. nope, convert a corpse into an item and then never think about it again.

there’s an entire episode where all they do is go fishing. its the only filler episode in the season, and it immediately follows the death of a small child. it’s the most tone-deaf beach episode in writing history

it turns out this game, this game where they didn’t bother coding in any difference races, weapons, or any kind of magic system, was intended to have fully sentient AI therapists, because why the fuck not at this point honestly

oh also the game has PVP and you can trick the game into thinking a sleeping player is in PVP with you in order to actually murder a real person without it flagging in-game as a murder making the crime impossible for the real life legal system to investigate even though you just murdered a person. and they expect us to believe this game had actual beta testers. at least cyberpunk wasn’t played on microwaves you connected straight to your brain (also not a joke, the VR consoles canonically work by sending microwave radiation into your brain, no wonder VR never caught on)

the set up for the show is that they have to reach level 100 of a dungeon in order to win. At level 75, the writers got bored and the show just ends.

it turns out the power of love allows you to just break the fucking game and the main villain literally has a line about how ‘love allows you to remove debuffs, huh, we didn’t think to plan for that’ because again, there’s no metaphors in this show, everything is 100% literal including the fact that falling in love with another player means you’re immune to the paralysis status effect

power of love also allows you to very briefly become a poltergeist after being killed, but only for like 2 seconds. again not a joke or a metaphor, main character is killed but then gets to hang around as a ghost for a little bit to enable him to defeat the boss. he also doesn’t die in real life despite that being the entire fucking premise of the show, again because power of love.

the bad guy literally has no plan, he’s just doing shit for the sake of having something to do. His actions directly cause the deaths of more than 4,000 people, and it’s not even in aid of anything. they ask him why he trapped 10,000 people in an MMO and allowed them to slowly die, and he’s just like ‘huh, i forgot i did that, random’ and then just fucking peaces out

the fact that he committed one of the largest mass killings outside of war never really comes up again, as far as we know he doesn’t even go to jail. i think the show actually kind of thinks he’s a good guy, which is a fucking WILD moral stance to take on the deaths of 4000 completely innocent people for absolutely no reason

If this sounds hilari-bad but you don’t want to invest the time to watch a show which is objectively garbage, it has an abridged series which is famously better than the show it’s parodying (i’m dead serious, people have character arcs, the getting married after one date thing is properly addressed, the mc has to deal with PTSD because of all his friends dying in epsidode 3, they don’t immediately follow the death of a child with an extended fishing montage, the villain has an actual plan). It’s mostly actually pretty good, but this is the internet and it’s an abridged series, so while there are a lot fewer yikes moments than most it still has enough that I’m not comfortable recommending it without the caveat. that said I still enjoyed it a lot, although possibly not at much as pointing and laughing at the garbage that is the actual show.

[thoughts-of-a-bibleophile]

Oh my god, it’s time to scream about Kasumi.

Welcome to me being Back on My Bullshit, featuring Persona 5 Royal and hella spoilers until October. On this episode, we’re going to talk about Kasumi Yoshizawa and her awesome awakening scene because I have QUESTIONS.

So, we just going with her being a magical girl now? Because that transformation scene was unnecessarily over the top and ridiculous and I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT.

Is this just the play on her being Cinderella/Cendrillon, with the fancy transformation and such? Does she have a time limit in battle or like a recharge time? Or am I thinking too much about this? Or is this just foreshadowing for future Persona games and characters to get magical girl transformation scenes? Because I am down for that. Give me DLC of Akira transforming into his Phantom Thief outfit with a good slow pan of his clothes and his hair doing the cool floopy floop in the imaginary wind. Give me magical girl Akira dammit.

The real question, though, is how she got into the Metaverse in the first place. This is all speculation on my part becuase I’ve only just gotten past her awakening scene, so I’m just theorizing what happens. Please don’t spoil anything beyond October for me. You can tell me I’m wrong about my guesses, but please don’t spoil what actually happens. Please.

Anyway, I’ve rewatched this scene a few times and paused the video to check the screen and there’s no Nav there; it’s just starting up by itself. So it makes me think there’s some sort of intervention going on that’s pulling her there because she’s supposed to meet Joker and Mona and her dead sister/her cognitive self? (And if that is her sister, that was morbid as fuck like Jesus Christ just damage the poor girl even more with a ghost of her dead sister why don’t you?) If it’s her cognitive self, then I suppose it was incentive to further step away from her perfect honors student persona (pun unintended.) Perhaps she’s another player of the game and it’s not just Akechi and Akira? She’s been way too important story-wise to just be an outside third party in the endgame. Adding on to that, the Shadow purposely killed the cognitive person in front of Kasumi, as if further pushing her to transform. And then the Shadow taunts her as well, not only with its own scorn but with the echoes of everyone’s comments. So clearly someone wants her to be a player in this game.

I just can’t tell if she’s on last boss’ side or the Thieves side in the end? Because from the first moment you meet her in Sae’s Palace, she’s not a member of the PT and doesn’t seem like she’ll be joining you either, but she also doesn’t seem antagonistic toward you, so I’m not sure what they’re going to do with her. I’m excited for whatever comes, though, because she’s been such a great, compelling character to follow. And it doesn’t look like they can really screw her up like Haru, either, even if you don’t befriend her, because she’s such an integral part of the story.

Also! It’s so weird that she doesn’t bleed at all during her transformation scene. That’s typically what happens when you rip off your mask - you bleed because you’re tearing away the mask on your heart and accepting the person inside, hence the persona. But...she just does her magical girl, yellow-eyes transformation instead. So either she has already somehow accepted her persona and is getting some weird transformation? Or maybe this was just a trick of the palace itself, making Mona and Joker see what they think they should see, another Phantom Thief? But then again she fought with you, but I accidentally saw a video titled “reawakening,” so now I can’t help but think this is all just a weird trick somehow or that Cendrillon isn’t her real/original Persona, like Robin Hood isn’t Akechi’s.

And the yellow eyes thing... Oh my god, she’s not just a part of the velvet room, right? She’s not a spirit sent down to watch over the protagonist and judge them, right? She’s clearly a human, but so was Teddie and he’s a Shadow, from what I understand. Did her sister not die actually? Or are they twins and Kasumi is taking her place in competitions and such so that they don’t fail? She did say “our dream,” after all... but then switches to “my dream” in reality. Whose dream is it? Logically it’s her and her sister’s, but i suppose it could be her family in general? Or...Maruki? Since she’s so close to him? And she’s clearly upset when he’s involved... Oh my god I really hope she’s not just some ghost that disappears at the end or whatever. DON’T DO THAT TO ME, ATLUS.

So now...I just have a lot of questions.

Anyway, I love one (1) girl and it’s Kasumi Yoshizawa. Thanks for reading and tune in next time for more screaming about fiction characters.

[dragongambler]

A Final Problem

"By my command seal, I bind your will to mine, Heroic Spirit James Moriarty! Save yourself!"

"You... left... them?!" Sherlock's hands wrapped around his collar and in that moment, James felt fear. It was worse than being stared down by an enraged Berserker. This was a harsh thinking man. Normally, he could talk his way out of this, but...

"Now, now, Sherlock. Let's not be too cruel to James. He was ordered to flee." The soft sound of Raiden's coughing, their way of screaming that they were there, but far away from the kidnapper. She had thrown together this terrible game to test their wits. "Now, solve the case and hurry up. I can hear wheezing." Sherlock dropped the silver haired male, spinning to the table.

"Give us some context on this folder." He stated, ripping it open. Black leather gloves rested on the edge of Sherlock's vision as Moriarty leaned over the table, prompting him to slide it to him.

"It's a folder.-"

"-Well, that's bloody obvious.-" Both of the males looked at the other, a look of annoyance and surprise on their face. Yet, it was ignored. Even as it was flipped open.

"I'm the only one who's solved it." Ignored as they studied the pictures.

☆☆☆

Thin cloth stuck to skin, the cold triggered long forgotten breathing issues, and their dark head rose. There were stars out. Oh, God. They were scared. Were they going to die here?

"A servant!?" Raiden had been tricked, panic and instinct making them turn to scream at Moriarty. To summon him to their side.

If only they had talked him in to not wandering off, then they wouldn't be the bait, the thing making Detective and Criminal work together.

"The stars are nice..." They whispered to the world, hearing their strained voice echo back at them and a huff, the ghost of their normal laugh, slipped free. "Maybe... Maybe I should rest."

"Raindrop! Don't!" The sound of their boyfriend's voice snapped them out it for moment, giving them a moment of clarity before the fog returned. Their eyes slipping shut and sleep rushed towards them, unhindered by their normal insomnia.

☆☆☆

"Are they breathing?!"

"Of course, they are, Moriarty! I know that they won't die that easily." Maybe it was becuase they'd spent so much time with him, but Raiden was certain that the second part was meant to comfort himself more than the other male. They opened their eyes, squinting against a bright light.

Was it Sherlock's Noble Phantasm? If it was, it was being used in a way they weren't familiar with and as much as they wanted to reach out, to grab onto the familiar gloves of one of them, sleep was pulling them down and the odd warmth pressed to their side made them slip peacefully into it.

☆ @musical-selfshipper ☆

[lilietsblog]

GHOST TRICK: THE BIG FINALE

so I finished the game yesterday all on my lonesome without internet

why yes I am perfectly fine and not emotionally compromised in the slightest

enjoy my screaming

IT'S GHOST TRICKING TIME which is to say it's ghost tricking time without internet so I'm doing this in wordpad tumblr really needs an 'import rtf' function >_>

SO from what I remember, when last we left off I was about to try to figure out how the fuck a knitted cap and a helmet are going to help me stop a bullet LET'S DIVE RIGHT BACK INTO THIS FOLKS

I still love how Sissel just ignores the dog's little 'WHATS A HOSTAGE O NO' instead of digging into explaining it

oh thank god the game DOES remember ive read this text before

...oh, I forgot how I did this the last time O WELL

all right, so I remember swiveling the lamp and dropping the hard hat, then when the knitted cap is over here I can swap it with the book and get it on the hook but how did I get the knitted cap over here

aha, he looked away for a moment, the helmet part is done what the fuck do i do now

AHA okay, so now i very quickly cart the ladder back and forth, I think I remember this

fuck, he noticed me, okay don't swivel the lamp while he's watching, swivel it while he's still looking away

I gotta note the 'I don't know why you're wearing my face' part HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

fuck, nope, I can't swivel the lamp back at that moment because he notices it clattering and turns right around FUCK OKAY LET'S TRY TO DO IT WITH THE LAMP THERE

ugh, if only I could do shit during the cutscene while he rolls away >_>

OK I SHOULD HAVE HAD MORE TRUST IN MISSILE HE IS GREAT AND A VERY GOOD DOG AND CAN AIM FOR SPLIT SECOND TIMING OF A BULLET BEING IN THE AIR OKAY

haha, and the knitted hat still hit Cabanela with enough velocity to knock him over I love this and I particularly love his dramatic leg up in the air he doesn't evne know what's happening he just aims to be the most dramatic possible at all times and it's really helping us out <3

'i love knitted hats... so warm, and most of all, so SOFT' <3 <3 <3

god Missile is so good this is pain IS THE DAWN DEADLINE A LIE MAYBE DID RAY JUST SAY THAT TO GET SISSEL'S BUTT MOVING I DON'T KNOW

oh yeah Cabanela's still got broken bones all over I kind of forgot about that

oh ok, looks less like broken and more like just really fucking bruised, becuase in that movement he's put pressure on all limb bones and nothing bent out of shape, so that's good

lmao and Cabanela's just like 'BUT IF I WAS KILLED IN THAT EXPLOSION THE SITUATION WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER' I I don't think it would necessarily work out that way, considering how much difficulty our protagonist was having saving just the professor :x

oh hey we've got our next source of information! should be quite a wellspring if Sissel remembers everything he should ask

yeeep Cabanela you FUCKED UP

oh, the gun :x

HON IM PRETTY SURE THE FIRST PART IS MORE IMPORTANT THE PART WHERE YOU TRIED TO SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF HIM CORNERED RATS BITE THIS IS COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY YOUR FAULT, ALL OF IT

aha, those cases, okay

and Cabanela was doing the thing because of Jowd that makes sense -_- kind of

yep, that one little snag kind of puts a question mark on the whole thing alright, that almost makes sense? kind of? makes Cabanela kind of a selfish butt doing this for his own obsession rather than for personally Jowd but makes sense

ok, the bringing him to justice minister to buy time thing actually does make a lot of sense it wasn't A LOT of time that he bought but it was just enough and that's what counts

oh hey, this guy used to have the job that the blue fake stole? (and yeah sounds like blue guys are just foreigners -_- bc they couldnt find spies that didnt stand out visually or anything)

hum not a scratch, huh regenerating dead body, okay

oh come ON Sissel don't be surprised now that part was obvious from the moment he said the corpse disappeared the meteorite's radiation, okay, quite interesting :D

"it was like a meteorite had struck me on the head" so, has that been a cause of death today yet, because if it hasn't, this looks like foreshadowing -_-

hum, so the gun would have been loaded because he controlled Kamila, which she then wouldn't have a clear memory of makes sense

HI LYNNE JUST IN TIME

arrest her to keep her safe, that actually makes perfect sense IF ONLY IT HAD WORKED LMAO no wonder pigeon guy roasted him for that in the deleted timeline XD

"while he was at it" <3 <3 <3

awwww pigeon guy was friends with him too <3

hee right on top of his striped jumpsuit honestly he looked less escaped-from-prison-ish in the paint-splattered robe thing XD

a present, huh?

awww see Sissel you don't feel lonely and that's what counts

ALRIGHT THEN :D LET'S FUCKING GO :D AND, UH, DO SOMETHING, I GUESS I love how out of proportion Sissel's powers are rewind time, talk to dead people... and move small objects a little

so, uh, Sissel, are you sure there's answers for YOU over there or did you just get into habit of telling this to yourself to feel better

okay well how the fuck did Jowd infiltrate a fucking SUBMARINE like, I just want to know the physics of how this happened?

omfg the bullet had a radio transmitter well, I have a newfound respect for Cabanela, I gotta admit like I already respected him but I just figured he shot the guy out of a desperate 'can't do anything else might as well try this' urge to do SOMETHING but nope he had a plan (which would have worked even with him dead)

wow, and he actually gave the thing to Jowd beforehand n i c e

wow, okay, that's stealthy

aha, and he can totally leave his body and wander around freely I think that was already confirmed but it's nice to know for even surer

wow, okay, what the fuck re: that thing reaching up from below that definitely looked like... something else for a moment there 0.0

aand okay the meteorite is possible to extract from his body I wonder if evil!Sissel actually knew that... or if that actually did anything to him :D

okay, what the FUCK and how many more people are dead now

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW MISSILE IS HERE TOOOOOOOO

the phone is ringing, how convenient :D

ooohkay this is tricky

so, why the fuck were there baseball and basketball balls hanging in nets under the ceiling on a submarine ... ... you know what I don't want to know

wait, Kamila can't hear him? oh, right, over the phone ghosts communicate by close range telepathy

aaand this makes the FIFTH time Lynne's dead tonight! or is it sixth? did i lose track somewhere?

AWWWW THIS SCENE IS LIKE AN OVERDOSE OF CUTE

'i wonder what happened THIS TIME' yep lmao

no actually 'i dont remember what happened after that' sounds like evil!Sissel to me, personally

but do you know what this wheel does Sissel are you sure turning it is a good idea

"I just sort of blacked out, the next thing I knew, I was dead" <3 <3 <3

"now it's all making even less sense than before" AND THAT'S SAYING *SOMETHING*

but actually okay yea this does kind of sound like an explosion that killed Lynne and knocked Kamila out

aaand nope I was absolutely correct )=

can this guy only puppet one body at a time? couldn't he have just possessed Lynne and had her slit her own throat or shoot herself or hang herself or something? that sounds a lot more productive than having a little girl fight her I mean, even if he only can puppet one body at a time, puppetting Lynne would have been a lot more productive overall, is there a reason he can't?...

or does he just love to do things in the most convoluted and roundabout manner typical to villains everywhere -_-

"nobody ever calls the dead" ARGUABLE a number of phone calls has been made this night specifically for the purpose of putting our!Sissel on the line

aand okay :D looks like the blue assholes saved Lynne just in time, sort of ...for a certain definition of 'saved'

so anyway this guy said something like 'you cannot possibly comprehend my suffering' so it would be funny if he was just a random dumbass that a bad thing hapened to one (1) time, which granted also killed him, but all the misery since then has been of his own making and he's put every single person involved in the events through worse just over the course of tonight, and simply has no sense of scale, perspective or proportion I think that would be great if the story went there XD EDITOR'S NOTE IN RETROSPECT: the story didn't go there and that was not fucking okay (it's dead women in the fridge again!)

and Sissel can't understand revenge as a concept SOUL TWINSIES WITH ME OR WHAT

lmao Lynne is starting to get touchy about how many times she's needed rescue lately XD

OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE WHY CAN'T I REACH FOR ANYTHING YET also, interesting to note that in the 4 minutes ago past, neither Lynne nor Kamila have a core looks like Sissel's interaction with this realm is limited after all, and not only by phones there's v interesting existential fuckery going on here, of the exact sort I ABSOLUTELY LOVE

oh THERE we go 'nobody ever calls the dead' ARGUABLE again and I love Lynne's signature instant-snap-into-hands-over-head animation + pose Good Reflexes

ALRIGHT, FIDDLING WITH RANDOM SHIT WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT IT MIGHT DO TIME ...and that sure worked fast

hum, a random mechanic, alright

oh hon that's a, um, what's the opposite of exaggeration I know this word in Russian >_> over...littlification? that 'restless ghosts onboard' THAT'S ONE WAY TO PUT THAT

lmao that was one odd fate change

alright, found the temsik fragment capsule, I see yay unexpectedly strong wastebucket lids (seriously, that's a whole freaking basketball, there's a reason the nets worked like that lmao)

alright, just watching the cutscene for now, that's fair this guy sure looks like he's going to abandon his entire crew and blow up the sub or something

"farewell, sir" WELL THAT DID NOT SOUND QUITE RIGHT

alright, and we're left in the capsule rather than the fragment which apparently did not have a core of its own for some reason

OMFG THERE'S A LITTLE RAT IN THE TORPEDO ARE WE GOING TO HAVE A RUBE GOLDBERG MACHINE INVOLVING A SMALL RODENT AGAIN BECAUSE THOSE ARE THE BEST KIND BUT ALSO THIS IS NOT HOW TORPEDOS WORK BUT ALSO HI RAT!!!

yeah exactly thanks Sissel! how the FUCK did it get here also I love that the characters DO pay attention to the wellbeing of innocent rats in this game <3

well, you COULD just try to get it to blow up earlier, in the water you'd be stuck but you'd be heroes, or something well, Lynne would go back to her body, Sissel would be stuck :D oh, and the rat would die, that's the bad news

YEAH LET'S SAVE THE RATTIE FIRST if this time the rat is going to be in the way rather than helping, well, I REALLY DO RESPECT THAT LET'S SAVE THE RAT

alright, after some trial and error I DID manage to get both weights in the same position (mostly by luck) and throw off the rat NOW TO SAFETY

alright, this looks promising OKAY IT ALSO LOOKS LIKE KAMILA AND LYNNE MIGHT BE SAFE FROM EVIL!SISSEL NOW THAT'S GOOD NEWS

yusss caring about rats ftw <3

that's what missiles do, huh they're unstoppable i dont know who it is i hear there but Missile is great yes

well, whatever this is, our!Sissel just turned it on maybe it's pumps to remove water!... not that they'll do much against an unplugged breach but

aha, okay, won't move for long

this movement through a machine's gears feels like the purest expression of the game's premise since the junkyard tricks at the very beginning <3

the way Kamila's speech kinda fades in from white? that worries me

...eeeyup

god but I love this game's animation. this little one of Lynne hoisting Kamila up on her back? it feels, like, PERFECTLY balanced with their weights and Lynne's strength and everything <3 <3 <3

oh my god Lynne why couldn't you just... be able to swim not that it would help much with Kamila unconscious but

oh my god Lynne is literally right here why do I still have trouble moving around freely???

oh, found it!

wow, she's climbing one-handed while carrying Kamila, that's some serious upper body strength <3

W E L P

YEP THAT'S SOME SERIOUS STRENGTH THAT SHE DIDNT JUST FUCKING FALL NOR DROP KAMILA

yeeep okay WOW

ARE YOU BOTH GOING TO DIE NOW OR WHAT okay, no, just fall, and not even in the water that's good news

LYNNE THIS IS NOT A POSE YOU WANT TO BE IN RIGHT NOW unless you're actually holding yourself against that shit in the background with your left hand and I just can't see it I guess

...nope, she was holding her chin LYNNE NO

MISSILE HURRAY

okay, the fan thing makes sense

now to swap around a bunch of broken pipes so they don't get in lynne's way, got it

FOR FUCK'S SAKE I REALLY DON'T SEE A WINNING COMBO HERE

aand I fucking lost but at least I got Sissel in position -_-

alright, now with one pipe turned off it actually works out easily it just... took me really long to realize I'd need Sissel for this one -_-

Lynne honey but have you considered: you have no fucking clue what's behind that door although presumably submarine has only been breached in one place and it's this room?

holy shit with the hook Sissel managed to hoist the combined weight of Lynne and Kamila now THAT's a nifty trick

SISSEL FOR FUCK'S SAKE SHE CAN'T MUSTER LEVERAGE FOR THIS BECAUSE SHE HAS TO HOLD HERSELF AND KAMILA UP AND SHE'S TIRED SHE CAN ASK FOR HELP EXCLUSIVELY IN SWAHILI SWEARS AND IT'D STILL BE A WAY THAT YOU HAVE TO PUT UP WITH

aww, someone's saving us!!!

someone who commented on unstoppable missiles earlier, perhaps?

right, the truth... that's still relevant. while on a sinking submarine. yep

haha sinking submaries i have just been playing oxenfree haha

oh wow that's an improvised mechanism made out of garbage sticking in a close range telekinetic field nifty shit

oh oh okay that explains absolutely nothing evil!Sissel is not evil now, or what?

lmao this is getting more confusing, but like... in a very satisfying way <3

evil!Sissel still seems to have SOME amount of powers, at least, though possibly not the manipulating humans ones? but this amount of telekinesis is still incredible

so okay our Sissel's name possibly IS Sissel, but this dude's isn't I'm more confused than ever before I doubt there are three of them, so...

ahh, Lynne making Kamila more comfortable <3 <3 <3 and again, animation is fucking excellent. just, the timing of everything? it's better than 90% of all 3D animation I've ever seen in games

power and time, okay, got it so the dawn deadline IS real, just not for him wait, possibly not for Sissel and Missile, either?

I see he still fell in his signature ridiculous pose it's less funny now, overall

ah, okay, so the time effect is different too it seems to have been the same for Sissel and Missile though? is this a personality powers deal?

I love that Missile is perfectly comfortable with weird shit because as a dog, that's about the amount of understanding he has of his everyday surroundings, too <3

oh, hum so the moment this guy actually 'died' is the moment that blue guy took out the fragment?

wipe out everybody, huh

okay, so the shooting is as we knew, kind of

the first shot missed the mark, huh? quite curious, quite curious stray bullets are known to be deadly :D

alright, so that's a conversation that mostly confirmed what we already knew we have a new ally though, sort of

aand Lynne's empathy saves the day -_- like I said earlier, this guy's feelings aren't like... unique or anything, he just sucks at theory of mind

Kamila!!! so hey kiddo this guy in front of you is the guy who killed your mom

anyway, I'm still pretty sure Sissel hadn't yet introduced himself to you when you started calling him "Sissy" so there's that lead

and Kamila makes herself comfortable <3 I love this Little Lady so much <3

AWWWW THE RADIO THING <3 <3 <3

'and what about a torpedo' WHAT ABOUT A TORPEDO LYNNE THIS SOUNDS EXTREMELY UNSAFE

KAMILA ARE YOU KIDDING ME YOU'RE TOUGH AS FUCK

OMG IT'S A GRAPE SERVING MACHINE I LOVE THE LUXURIOUS FUCK THIS WAS MADE FOR

alright, torpedo room, that works

swap  the switches to get them unstuck!!!

so I'm going to guess everyone there died, too, and Sissel's going to have to prevent that, too that makes perfect sense

that 'understand exactly how he feels' thing our!Sissel and evil!Sissel are really fucking different in this particular respect :D

awww and the girls convince the doggo <3 <3 <3

so, does Kamila know about the dawn deadline for all ghosts, or

oh thank god I didn't need to control that hop this game really has a policy of not having a permaloss option <3

Yomiel, huh so that's his name

alright, and 'Sissel' is an alias ...I'm just going to keep using it for the protag, just to make things slightly less confusing

ah, so this guy had access to national secrets, and that's how he did the singer thing

and he was proven innocent offscreen <3 <3 <3 stylish

stylish animation, nice

didn't help anybody? did you ever try? because our!Sissel sure figured that shit out quickly

welp, the blue guys are assholes but then, they were also kind of dealing with an asshole I can imagine why they didn't think he was reliable to deal with :x

awww, I like the leaflet guy so much <3 <3 <3

I love how Jowd's like 'well, I'm dead, are you happy now' and Sissel's like 'so anyway about that' FUCK death not tonight, not when Sissel's here <3 <3 <3

alright, and this guy's a robot that still doesn't quite he's pretty human-like >_> I am not a fan of the blue guy in charge is all I'm saying also lmao I nicknamed this one 'iron man dracula' i didn't mean it that way but

ah, remote-controlled, alright that 'farewell' was odd then

'your country's use of technology is just plain off' I LOVE THIS

could there have been two pieces of meteorite in this guy's body? okay, nope still!

OH WOW FOUR MINUTES BEFORE HIS DEATH THAT'S THAT'S ACTUALLY EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED FROM THE VERY BEGINNING EVEN THOUGH I THOUGHT THIS BODY BELONGED TO THE WRONG 'WHOM' THIS IS SOMEWHAT MORE AMBITIOUS THAN PLANNED BUT

...okay, no, his 'death' would actually be before the control room was launched, not all those years ago STILL THIS IS THE -EXACT- THING

alright anyway this is plenty of buildup WHO THE FUCK IS OUR PROTAGONIST it's funny how so far absolutely 0 of what we've seen has pointed to that I have plenty of odd thoughts in my mind ofc 'that guy from another point of time' being the prime one as a homestuck, the possibility of there being multiple ghosts of the same person doesn't faze me in the slightest in fact it seems like an intuitive conclusion BUT THEIR PERSONALITY SURE IS DIFFERENT

anyway, :D :D :D

Final Chapter

...aha! so it counted ten years ago after all! dang :D

aha, I see that mascot thing I see baby Lynne!!!

I note how for someone threatening to shoot the kid, Yomiel's gun sure is pointing in the wrong direction AND he's holding out the kid to the side, not between himself and Jowd SOMEONE sucks at hostage taking lmao

a kitty, huh

and then a meteorite, okay

I note the lamp

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Yomiel is thinking 'so maybe I'll die in another way and all this will have not happened, that's a better outcome anyway' isn't he god his faces are Sissel faces and look this game knows EXACTLY what it's doing with its visuals exactly one facial exression of Yomiel's has not matched Sissel's I doubt it's because of lazy artists

alright, so a good plan would be swapping the mascot and the lamp

but seriously, WOW Yomiel sucks at taking hostages this game's animation is always stellar and brilliant, there's NO fucking coincidence there he was absolutely not willing in any way to put baby Lynne in actual danger, even if he pretended he did and it worked on Jowd

anyway how the fuck do we get to the lamp

'we can talk about all this later' ARGUABLE TBH the entire, like, THING is going to change oh man is everyone going to go back to their bodies 10 years ago with their new memories because that's fucking hardcore was Kamila even BORN yet

augh I DONT KNOW I CANT REACH I THINK I CANT REACH ANYTHING WHAT DO I DO MISSILE IS IN THE SWEET POTATO ON THE FOUNTAIN SISSEL IS IN THE NOZZLE BUT NOT THE CENTRAL ONE AND CANT REACH THE CENTRAL ONE WHAT DO I DO

okay sounds like I missed my chance let's try that again

ghhhh okay I think I have figured this sequence out even though I have to rewind again 1) rock the basket 2) jump into nozzle to launch the potato 3) Sissel jumps into the potato and then from the potato to the central nozzle 4) Missile jumps into the potato 5) launch the potato x2

okay, Mino fell into the fountain, not that I know how this can help because AGAIN, Missile can't reach Mino from the lantern :x and Sissel can't do absolutely fucking anything

annd the finale is a cutscene alas

alright, let's try that again...

hum we didn't get a FATE CHANGE registered after dropping Mino might this mean we have to do something right in the process?

AW YEAH THAT DEFINITELY JUST HAPPENED LMAO

are we going to kill everyone by dropping Mino on them instead XD

trick time, huh Sissel still can't reach anywhere Missile can swap two identical lanterns, not that this does anything he can talk to Sissel, for what THAT's worth

aha, the lantern dropped, Missile can move around now, that's good

Sissel still can't do shit though

well, that's the detective's LEG, not... anything else or anything

oh man, yeah... YOUNG JOWD IS A DUMBASS man, even Yomiel isn't aiming at him anymore, he's like 'hey dude are you okay' so the theory that Sissel is alternate!Yomiel is really gaining steam in my head not that it wasn't the primary one all along but

AW FUCK YEAH MISSILE THE BULLET CATCHING BADASS DOGGO!!!

anyway sweet potato?

BOO YAH um or not

OR YES ACTUALLY THAT WORKS

OH MY FUCKING GOD YEP THE LAMPPOST FUCKING MINO

awwwwww and finally the trauma of remembering your death is brought up!!!! Sissel cares <3 <3 <3 (and Yomiel doesn't at the moment NOT THAT I CAN'T UNDERSTAND THAT IN CONTEXT) (then again I'd understand it if Sissel didn't either but he's the purest being in existence so)

awwww Yomiel is finally going to contribute!!!

omfg lmao "Make it spray as if your life depended on it!" "Uh, I'm dead though" Yomiel is winning ALL the sensitivity awards tonight <3 <3 <3

I I think that Yomiel hasn't done anything yet oh, okay, we're still winning time

holy FUCK Yomiel that was definitely a thing you just did

dear Young Jowd, Yomiel is the one who saved her. Not gods

awwww and he gave baby Lynne a detective's badge <3 <3 <3 he's so good with children <3

so, can Yomiel be alive please :x ALRIGHT, HE IS THAT WORKS

THE KITTY DID THE METEORITE KILL THE KITTY

wait wait wait is is Sissel the kitty is that why he has no idea how guns work or anything else like that that that is truly fucking incredible f y'all's i AND I GUESS IT FITS WITH HIM AND MISSILE JUST GOING AROUND SAVING PEOPLE TOGETHER LIKE A BADASS DUO AND IT FITS WITH HIM GETTING KILLED BY LYNNE'S FIRST SHOT ON ACCIDENT I HONESTLY CONSIDERED A RAT OPTION FOR LIKE A SPLIT SECOND THERE

OMG OMG OMG OMG YE S AND HIS NAME REALLY IS SISSEL

god jesus fucking christ this this fucking game i just im howling this this definitely is a thing that just happened it owned me so hard im so fucking owned right now

yep hes the cat he's Yomiel's cat

aaaaaaaaaawwwwwwww there's a good reason he had identity confusion in all this they WERE confusable as one being for a while

'her' huh?

oh man wow THIS particular part of the story sucks

so Sissel was a girl's name all along? okay

but also, FUCK no wonder he went bonkers specifically about being unable to die

'his powers couldnt help anybody' more like they couldn't help ONE SPECIFIC PERSON

so that bag is a kitty carrier huh and Lynne's miss accidentally killed the kitty

LMAO THE PART WHERE WE ALL THOUGHT LYNNE HAD KILLED THE PROTAG WASN'T WRONG

I DAMN FUCKING REMEMBER THAT CAT JUST FOR YALLS I I ABSOLUTELY REMEMBERED THERE WAS A CAT THERE I JUST NEVER LINKED IT TO ANYTHING I JUST THOUGHT IT WAS A VERY PRETTY RANDOM STRAY

anyway Yomiel that's what you get for playing with guns they're deadly weapons and result in death you're fucking welcome

so anyway who the fuck is Ray

but anyway kitty Sissel saved everyone...

okay but hold on hold on hold on I didn't quite get the implications about the fiancee the first time around WHAT THE FUCK CAPCOM i was just recently thinking how fucked up it was that I remembered the last name of Polly Jenkins, just because of how much her brief story shook me

and uh I think is that also the implication here because that's not fucking okay

anyway so did Yomiel die as the result of that or nay bc that looked fucking deadly if not instantaneously so

god but this ffucking game

this fucking... game

oh Missile I'm pretty sure YOU are going to see HIM alright lmao wasn't Jowd taking him home

but also damn the original events of these ten years, as remembered by - a dog and a cat - Detective Jowd and Kamila (but not Alma, who never was brought back to life directly) - Lynne - Cabanela - the medical examiner - the minister of justice AND NO-ONE ELSE ...wait, no ALSO THE GUY FROM THE FUCKING PARK ...yep that's a thing we're doing

so another important thing is that the rock star kid is going to be okay and the curry guy, too nothing bad happened to them in this timeline, right?

ALRIGHT HI RAY WHAT/WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU

(right now my bet's on 'a rat')

oh, Sissel also killed two people tonight, that happened

lmao and in this version of evens Missile died in the presence of Temsik

omfg and Ray is alternate!Missile this is fucking amazing <3

lmao his ghost aged and lost its powers?

also the dawn deadline was a lie he just wanted to get Sissel's butt moving I FUCKING KNEW IT

I love how Sissel's just "I DID WHAT" even though he's been doing that all evening this time around too

yup doggie's a fucking liar the only real time limit is the lifetime they would have had if they were alive huh damn

but seriously I called that before I started this section of the liveblog even if I think I never actually made that post 'what are the odds Ray is a fucking liar' I don't think I ever wrote that I kept getting distracted but yep I fucking called this

THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART GOD I AM ;U; THIS DOGGO

anyway one participant of the events who definitely wasn't born yet 10 years ago is indeed Missile 0.0 how's that... gonna work...

but I do love that just... the justice minister, of all people, is also going to be in possession of those 10 years

OH MY FUCKING GOD LYNNE IS ABOUT TO HAVE A FUCKING HEART ATTACK I KNOW THERE'S NO GUN BUT JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

KAMILA WHAT THE FUCK DON'T FUCKING DO THAT THAT'S ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING

aawwwwwww IT WORKED THIS TIME AROUND

'nice to meet you' OH BOY OH BOY I GET HOW IT WORKS NOW I THINK ...uh, I'm not sure how Lynne knew to flee from the junkyard then, but either way it looks like they're only getting back their memories at the PRESENT and that's why Kamila didn't fUCKING KNOW AND REMEMBER WHAT THE FUCK WAS WRONG WITH DOING THAT JUST NOW

LMAO SOMETHING'S GOING TO EXPLODE TONIGHT

oh, nevermind, it's not that yet :D but it really does sound like it's going to :D right... about... dawn? :D

aww Jowd actually carries toy badges with him everywhere <3 <3 <3 'child handling tools'

still a kitten, huh yeah, that whole Temsik thing :D

aww, and here's her, all alive and everything

SO BIG MEMORYSPLOSION PLEASE

(at dawn) (it's fucking coming that's my headcanon and you can't beat it) (a bunch of people are going to become really fucking traumatized tonight)

hey!!! Missile!!! Cabanela brought him, huh

so, what's up with Yomiel, anyway

COME ON SISSEL MAKE NICE WITH MISSILE HE CAN'T CLIMB UP THERE

that guy's imitating Cabanela lmao

Memry <3 <3 <3

very best customer, huh

AWWW ITS THIS GUY HI GUY YOU'RE OKAY NOW WITHOUT YOMIEL TO RUIN EVERYTHING YOU'RE JUST FINE

hah, and these two

.............................................yup. they died

'the indescretions of a minister perhaps?' I LOVE THIS FUCKING LADY I LOVE HER I LOVE HER

ah, these two what deal is it this time

the little rock sinter guy!!! yeah!!!!

hi medical examiner guy <3 guess you're not doing medicine after all huh

HI LEAFLET PARK GUY YOU ARE STILL CUTE

HI BAILEY

oh man oh man Yomiel :D hey are talking about Yomiel :D

SHOW ME HIS FIANCEE YOU COWARDS

lmao he's the painter this time even the robe sits the same

SO SHOW ME

OH YEAH OH YEAH HE REMEMBERS THATS THE PICTURE OF THE FUCKING CAT AND NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT

YUP YUP THIS IS IT lmao that crane i sure do remember it well it murdered two people tonight <3 <3 <3 kitty <3 <3 <3

aw yeah! in that picture with Missile!!!

[aceattorneymeta]

Why Ace Attorney has lost its potency

this blog isn’t done or open yet but i was talking to a friend about this a bit ago and i felt like i finally put together some thoughts i’d had floating around for a while so i just wanted to jot them down here :0

and i know that title sounds clickbaitey but i honestly, truely believe the series has. Ace attorney started off as the passion project of top tier writer shu takumi and his team of seven other people. it was a game project used to train new staff, and they weren’t given a lot of time to make a game as amazing as ace attorney is. But they did! And i firmly believe the reason they could was becuase it was grounded in three things things: strong characters, clever mysteries, and most importantly: social commentary.

If you aren’t a huge ace attorney obsessor like I am, or you just don’t know a lot about law in Japan, let me give you a basic rundown of what I picked up while doing research on the series. In Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright is the perfect prosecution’s punching bag. obviously, this is for comedic effect, no prosecutors in Japan bring whips or hurl coffee in court. But in Japan, especially at the time when Ace Attorney one was in development, Prosecutors ruled the court. It was expected that prosecutors not loose cases. It was expected that your client go to prison, as a Defense attorney. Prosecutors were infamous for forging evidence and forcing confessions, even leading testimony was common practice, and it even sometimes had a blind eye turned to it. So that’s what ace attorney was- a big, cartooney exaggeration of a very real problem in japan at the time. Phoenix is the defense attorney who cannot win, edgeworth and franziska are the “anything for a guilty verdict” prosecutors, adn the judge is the blind eye of the japanese justice system- a justice system that did not have a jurry in it until 2009.

So why is this gone? Ace Attorney one has overarching themes of the innocent deserve help, as well as biting critical commentary of Japan’s legal system at the time, the villinization of the prosecutor (something completely reverse from most american courtroom dramas, where the defense attorney is portrayed as evil) the innocent, hard working down on his luck defense attorney, the desperate, sympathy garnering clients in a place that so often paints them as villians (just look at Yanni Yogi, as well as Yomiel from Ghost trick, for example on that, albeit dramatic ones) Ace Attorney two is about the conviction of people who are ultimatly good- once again making sympathy where there often is none (i feel bad for ini, don’t you?) and then turning that on its nose with the scum bag client. AA2 was about how we understand innocence and how we need to look past it to create a good legal system. Finally, AA3 is about prosecution and defense working together to fix things- like takumi believes a courtroom should work. We see this carried over into apollo justice, which also has a more likeable prosectuion who actually cares about getting the correct verdict, it shows a step in the right direction, ESPECIALLY with takumi’s push for the jury system in this game (Apollo Justice was made in 2007, just two years before jury was reinstated in japan. clearly takumi was following this a lot)

 I’m not going to touch on AAI1 and 2 becuase i frankly dont feel like i understand their context well enough to, and I haven’t play AAI2 (plus theres no official translation that worked with the staff, and while i worship the fan translators it runs the risk of missing very subtle themes if they didnt work with the producers directly) and I’m not going to touch on DGS (completely different historical context) or PL vs AA (not as serious a game) becuase theyre in a different situation than main game ace attorney

But in Ace Attoreny 5 and 6, this is just... gone. i didnt really enjoy ace attoreny 5 just... in general, it had weird writing and stuff but on top of that? it doesn't have a cohesive theme to tie it together aside from “athena is traumatized” and we’re in the “DARK AGE OF THE LAW” which was about... fake japanifornia law and (as far as i know) was not meant to criticize any other law systems. Ace Attoreny six some how took this one step further by setting everything in fake tibet and then criticizing a law (the culpability act) that has NEVER BEEN INSTATED anywhere?? as far as i can find? certainly not in japan, and certainly not right now. it felt like a hollow imitation of 1-4′s biting social commentary (especially in 1, tbh) and it fell very flat. I had plenty of other issues with this game that I’m sure I’ll talk about too, but this post is long enough

If i’ve missed anything, espeically about real world stuff b/c my knowledge of ace attoreny is 100% better than my knowledge of law in the real world, please feel free to talk to me about it, or disagree, or set up a dialogue! This is a jumping off point and I’d love to hear other’s thoughts :)

thanks for reading!!