#deathofthetext

[specialagentartemis]

🌹📚❓

I give you Project Itoh's novelization of MGS4 so we can yell about what Itoh did and didn't get right about Naomi Hunter together lol

But also I give you The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed because I love it. Messaed up sci-fi VR lesbians of all time.

[garden-ghoul]

>👽?

mostly anguish, I assure you. you walk webs of it, smelling it outtugging a thread here or there.a soupçon of nuclear war,a dash of childhood trauma,but we all know what really matters:they were roommates. oh my g

[specialagentartemis]

franziska von karma for the ask meme? i recently redownloaded a ds emulator partly to get back to playing AA2 with my sibling so shes on the mind

for the character ask meme

Ooh fun. It's been a while since I've played the Ace Attorney games but they have a special place in my heart always

First impression

lol. Abrasive but entertainingly so. I was accustomed to the over the top zaniness so sure! This teenager is an Experienced Prosecutor who whips people. Why Not. Actually I think Franziska is the first character we're introduced to as the Absurdly Young Professional and I think I did think this was funny.

Impression now

I love Sibling Tragedy and Sibling Drama and Sibling Relationships and she DELIVERS. Tied with Edgeworth for Favorite Prosecutor.

Favorite moment

When she gets fuvking shot outside the courthouse and Edgeworth has to drag her, protesting all the way, to the hospital. And then she left the hospital Still Bleeding From A Bullet Wound to deliver the crucial bit of evidence to the courthouse anyway.

Idea for a story

I had a WIP a long time ago about Franziska teaching Adrian Andrews how to use a whip to feel powerful and confident. And they were slowly bonding and falling in love over that. I'm a Fradrian truther

Unpopular opinion

I don't see her liking or getting along with Maya at all, sorry.

Favorite relationship

Her weird sibling deal with Edgeworth! Ace attorney has so many excellent fraught sibling relationships but these two are my favorite. They were pitted against each other as kids. Franziska is the true von Karma but she felt like her dad gave more attention to Edgeworth. She needs to beat him in court. She was heartbroken and livid when she thought he died and came to America to take it out on the person she blamed for his death. She's the person he calls when he needs a prosecutor he can trust, and she charters a private jet across the Atlantic immediately and then insults him to his face when she arrives. They are both dealing with the fallout of the way Manfred raised them.

Favorite headcanon

When Edgeworth took the bar exam at age 20, Franziska was 13 and was SO INCENSED that he would get to be a full-fledged prosecutor BEFORE her and that would be UNACCEPTABLE so she demanded to sit the bar too. The same one as him. Yes she's 13. She can do it. SHE'S BEEN TRAINING HER WHOLE LIFE FOR THIS!

Whoever administers the bar in Germany tried to explain that 13-year-olds aren't allowed to be legal professionals but Manfred von Karma loomed and glared so threateningly that they let her.

[specialagentartemis]

for the fanfiction ask game: fake/pretend relationships? that either do or dont transmute away from fakeness, if thats not unfairly doubling up on tropes

Hah, yeah, this is two fundamental tropes for me

[F] Fake Dating Becomes Real Dating. They are faking a relationship/dating/marriage/etc. for Reasons and then fall in love for real. I find this INCREDIBLY boring, and so contrived as to just be irritating. Overall I find premises that contrive a reason for characters to get together romantically that is not "they have been spending time together, or going through an Ordeal together, and realize they want to" to just be boring tbh. It feels like a shortcut and rarely feels like it's based on the characters' personalities or relationship at all.

[B] Fake Dating Does Not Become Real Dating. If the fake relationship does NOT have them fall in love for real, my interest suddenly gets a lot higher. When played for comedy, this can be hilarious - two people who are absolutely not into each other have to awkwardly pretend to be - or drama, it can be intriguing - the Fake Dating ends up straining the actual friendship. I also like when characters who LEGITIMATELY do not like each other have to pretend to be shmoopily in love while going "I am going to murder you when this mission is over" and not in a teehee actually they like each other way. I think it can be funny or dramatic, playing at the surface performance scripts of Being In Love while truly not actually liking or wanting it At All. (Wow, I wonder why I would find that appealing as a narrative :P )

[specialagentartemis]

*running into heavy traffic again* hey if we're doing nonromantic relationships... bingo meme for snavid and naomi 8)

OPENING THE FLOODGATES

The thing is, "double murder sibling-in-law reacharound" doesn't really have its own square. Neither does "I fucked your husband as revenge for you fucking my brother" or "you are kind of the only person left alive who actually understands me" or "we're both terminally ill and I'm spending my last remaining weeks making that your problem while also saving the world behind your back".

I think in another universe where it WAS Philanthropy who broke Naomi out of prison she could have been a strong ally and she and Snake could have eventually had many deeply uncomfortable emotional conversations where they came to understand and respect each other. They didn't, though. It was Ocelot, and Naomi and Ocelot were playing double-cross-chicken with each other because they both had the same ultimate goal but didn't trust each other to actually carry it out. It was actually the same goal Snake had and I'm screaming tearing my hair out at Naomi making Snake's last days alive a collection of spiteful jabs while also solving the Big Problem He Dedicated His Life To Solving for him. She blames Snake for her brother's death, but her brother died saving Snake, so she can't kill Snake without denying her brother's memory. Snake meanwhile is an incredibly compassionate person and pities her, and I think she resents that, but also he DOES understand her and lied to her about Fox's last message to her to make her feel better.

However I am 100000% convinced she was planning to kill Otacon out of spite, but then she saw Sunny, and Sunny is just like her at that age (a war orphan, parents killed in conflict with the people who then adopted her, raised by lifelong soldiers apart from Normal Socialization) and I think Naomi saw that what she was doing was just continuing the cycle she had fed into and was now trying to break. She was trying to destroy the Patriots and their war economy, but was double-orphaning another little war orphan girl the way to do it? Was it really? Otacon only survived MGS4 because Naomi didn't want to make his daughter sad, and her revenge on Snake by not-killing-him-but-making-him-miserable was ultimately less important to her than the goals of burning down the world order that made her and letting something new grow in its place. Because at the end of the day she agrees with him professionally even if she doesn't want to forgive him personally. And he's dying and she's dying and god what is any of this for if we're just gonna keep killing out of spite.

Fox forgave Snake. Snake forgave Fox. Snake forgives Naomi. Naomi cannot understand any of this and can't forgive--can't forgive Snake and can't forgive herself--and I think that's part of why she marked herself as part of the Old Order that needs to be wiped out for the world to grow back healthy.

(*the reference to plastic dinosaurs is that when I was a kid I would have epic multigenerational battles between dinosaur factions and every time a dinosaur died the toy would be repurposed as a child born into the new generation who would continue the blood feud war. This is how I feel about these two)

As you can see the 'highly specific situations' is this extremely specific construction of her actions and motives that bears only a dubious resemblance to what was actually portrayed in the game. It's truer, though.

[specialagentartemis]

oh right for the bingo meme... hmmmm. snox :)

Snox... them...

They were in love. Or at least Snake was very much in Love with Gray Fox and I have said before and I WILL say again that all the themes of Metal Gear Solid ONLY make sense if you take as a premise that Snake was in love with Fox. I could and maybe someday will write pages and pages of meta about this. I do think Fox loved Snake too but clearly not more than his loyalty to Big Boss. the AGONIES

[specialagentartemis]

@deathofthetext I also think Naomi Hunter wasn't lying that she got into genetics research to try to understand herself more. Her genes the only thing she has left of her parents and her home. She doesn't even remember them and barely knows where she comes from. Frank doesn't answer questions about that.

HOWEVER when Ocelot and the President rolled up and asked her to create a genetically targeted bio-weapon she went 1) excuse you, I'm a doctor, that is not my department but 2) if I make this to kill who you want can I also use this to kill who /I/ want, namely Solid Snake, who punched my brother to death for homopsychosexual reasons? Yes? Cool I'm in

[specialagentartemis]

📂?

Solid Snake was in love with Gray Fox - wait this is both 1) not exactly headcanon because it is a valid reading of the text and 2) not useless because nothing in the text makes sense UNLESS it is true--

Anyway.

I choose to integrate the ending to the MGS1 novel where Otacon frees all the other Shadow Moses scientists from like, the bunker where Liquid locked them all up, and then he hugs them. That's adorable. That was super definitely happening in the background while Snake and Meryl were having their awkward "romantic" snowmobile ending.