#wendy replies

[musashi]

@temporary-temporal-temper nnnope! you should not for any reason see private asks on your dash. they stay in inboxes and cannot be posted.

you are likely just encountering asks where people have reblogs turned off. op can turn reblogs off on any post they desire. watch this!

[musashi]

this is the only answer i will accept

[musashi]

granted that i only really see it in the twitter/tumblr sects of the AA fandom i really just think it is a product of two things:

1. the black and white thinking prevalent in these spaces, the absolute lack of nuance

2. abused kids projecting onto miles, because miles has canon PTSD and is SO deliciously easy to relate to if you are neurodivergent in any manner. he really is made for Us.

i have FEELINGS about how meta this all is, and i don’t know if i can put them into words, but i want to try.

its SO fucking interesting because ace attorney is literally a deconstruction of the first point? it could definitely be more radical in how it treats retributive justice, but it does a pretty good lukewarm job at driving home the core point that the criminal justice system is inherently flawed and often fails to account for nuance, simply falling into a dichotomy of bad / good and perpetrator / victim. nuance is an intimidating thing, scary to face head on, and black and white thinking is much easier--there are monsters in the world, and they deserve to be punished. to challenge that and think otherwise is terrifying.

that... is miles’ fucking character arc? THAT IS MILES’ CHARACTER. these people who... so clearly see their own pain in him, are stuck right on the precipice of when he breaks free and finds his truth, his peace, his joy.

i have talked in depth about my own complex feelings on retributive justice and specifically karma as a force. but tl;dr as a person coming from a place of repetitive abuse, retributive justice and black and white thinking was like this armor for me--no matter what horrible things happened to me, all i had to do was be patient and wait for the universe to thrust it back upon them. the hurt was all worth it so long as they would be punished, not by me but by something greater and bigger than me that saw and memorized all the horrible shit they’d done.

and this is miles’ solace, too. there is so much trauma inside of him that he cannot erase or unravel, but what he can do is protect others who might be in his shoes. miles becomes a prosecutor because he personally wants to see to it that no one suffer the way he does, he wants to be this divine hammer of punishment that casts due suffering onto the worst of the world. this is easy, this is work that makes him feel good, this is a way for him to protect his younger self in protecting others. miles is an abused kid with a gentle, overflowing heart. he is not a bad person, not in the slightest.

but! he’s wrong. it’s not about bad and good, it’s not about black and white, it’s not about monsters and their victims. at the end of the day, crime is about neglect and tragedy and missteps. people do not do terrible things because of some inherent evil, they do terrible things because they didn’t have someone to offer connection and support. things are not always what they seem on the surface, either, and in all miles’ pain he lost sight of these facts, tunnel vision in his prosecuting career as a crutch for his own pain.

that’s game one--he fucks off, he processes it, he comes back better. he heals. miles makes great strides in understanding all of this, about himself and about the world. 

BUT DO YOU SEE WHY IT’S ALL SO IRONIC... i feel like the people who write these takes about manfred are truly just. they SEE miles and they RELATE to miles and they miss everywhere he went after his trauma. they miss the healing he did. they miss the truth he came to and the way ace attorney just holds up a big sign that says ‘THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM IS FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN, WE NEED TO HUMANIZE CRIMINALS AND REHABILITATE THEM IF WE’RE TO MAKE A BETTER WORLD’ 

and still i read so much AA fic where the perps are just mindless monsters, catalysts to the abuse of others. manfred and dahlia are the worst by far, it’s like they’re stripped of their humanity entirely and exist only to cause pain unto others. it’s such a fucking uninteresting take, for me--if manfred von karma is a monster, then there is little to no narrative weight to everything he does to miles in the eleventh hour. if you make him a loving father and mentor, there is immeasurable fucking weight. 

i. yelling

[wendeeee]

maybe Alice x reader (established relationship) where Alice is trying to protect the reader from Tommy and everything but in the end the reader ends up sacrificing herself for Alice? <3

ok i know you sent this yesterday soz💔 moment

[wendeeee]

do you write for Alice from fear street?

yes I do!

[wendeeee]

mommy

no

[wendeeee]

mum

no

[wendeeee]

i like clit clit clit clit

oh