Shout out to Thoth, Sobek and Heryshaf for having exactly the kind of amazing and ornate "divine being in human form" NPC character designs that they should've given Mountain Carver and Moon Shaper.
This arc has been really good for wonderful NPC designs in general, tbh. WDYM we get a cool dude in medieval robes and a robot mask?!
... fixes the only real problem I had with the first one: Tails' adventure with the Teen Titans was entirely offscreen last time! Everyone else got to throw hands with villains onscreen but the coolness of Tails and the Teen Titans vs Brother Blood got entirely cut for space!
Clearly Ian Flynn realized it too, because it gets a nice, sizable segment dedicated to this time, and is totally badass for it.
Though the highlight is Blaze's look of sheer confusion and disappointment when she realizes why Charmy Bee was actually involved...
I usually just to animation stuff on here, but this has over the years solidly become one of my favorite comics of all time, and sometimes I just have to appreciate how endearing and adorable it is.
Plus I would totally watch an animated series of this if it ever happened. Just saying.
Alright, Sonic Team. You've convinced me: if Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog ever gets a sequel, it needs to be a Detective P&C or Visual Novel starring the Chaotix.
My list of properties that could use more P&C or Visual Novel spinoffs is pretty large and getting larger, but with this and TMOSTH Sonic is propelling straight to the top.
Genshin: Random "A Space and Time For You" Thoughts
Since it's necessary (well, I could skip it, but I don't like doing that) to do the quest that just dropped, which apparently has Venti in it (can't delay that), I finally did the latest Interlude. Which means it had to be at least partly a Dainsleif story. And...
This might be my favorite of the Abyss Order stories so far - seriously, it's really good. But I think I've also finally got a good grip on why I feel Dainsleif is no fun.
The Dain / Sibling stories have been slowly building up a complex story around Khaenri'ah with a lot of interesting questions. "Did they deserve what they got?" "If they did deserve what they got, do they deserve to continue to suffer as they have?" "Were both Khaenri'ah and Celestia in the wrong, and if so what of the innocents caught in the crossfire?" "Is there any hope for them, and if there is is it worth it to sacrifice their own lives to obtain it?" (That last one is specifically from the "phlebotinum artifact that might cure the hilichurls but since it causes them pain we'll never know" arc).
And Dain's primary role is to edgily stubbornly go "nope. There's no story here. Stop trying to read a story here. Just stop reading and kill them all, like Celestia says you should."
He's not just, like, representing a side of any of those arguments or questions. His argument is that there shouldn't be any investment at all, which is boring imo. And given how the story keeps developing both through him and despite him (sometimes both at once) it often feels like even the story can't decide if he's right or not. He became the least interesting part of these in-between stories a long while ago, and it's not showing any signs of getting better.
It doesn't help that the Abyss Order's MO has hard shifted from the "eradicate modern civilization" vibe they had in their earliest appearances to "help the remnants of Khaenriah even if it endangers others," which does keep them evil overall but also makes their plans and motivations significantly more complex to delve through, and the Sibling's characterization and stake in the story continues to evolve into something even more compelling (this quest, in fact, does more for the Sibling's character than the entirety of the rest of their appearances, really - she now might be my favorite antagonist in the game), while Dain's writing hasn't been tweaked to compensate.
In short, he's still just a blunt object awkwardly placed into a complex situation. I honestly feel like these interlude quests have outgrown him.
As a gamer, a Star Wars fan, and a fan of pirate and sailor media - especially sea shanties - just popping out of return of Star Wars: Outlaws playthrough for a second.
The latest DLC Pirate's Fortune has a fun segment where you can infiltrate a pirate crew and explore around. If you stick around their tavern a longwhile, you can hear a pretty amazing sea shanty pop up from the crew. One of those slow, somber ones, a la General Taylor / Walk Him Along, Johnny. Dope to hear just happen during my playthrough. Too bad you can't get Kay or Hondo to sing along.
After Skeleton Crew gave us just the smallest taste of one - and being a huge fan of Twin Suns Entertainment (now the Bardfather) - I've been hoping to see more and more original sea shanties in Star Wars stuff if they give us more pirate content. Not disappointed on that front.
Just watched the 1.4 event "Invitation of Windblume".
This is a pretty good limited-time event, in that it's interesting but missable. It's the story of Mondstadt's holiday Windblume which is basically Teyvat's Valentine's Day, with small stories featuring various Mondstadt characters. There's also a larger overarching mystery concerning the true nature of the titular "Windblume", a special flower in the mythos of the holiday but that no one really agrees on which flower it is.
Thoughts:
Tone-deaf bard lives up to his fucking name. Barbara's stalkers leave her traumatically threatening clickbait to force her out into the woods where she'll discover their stupid-ass present, and Venti takes their side and starts talking shit about how it's the gesture that counts.
She literally thought they killed her sister. Fuck those guys.
Bennett dumbasses himself into a new best friend. Not only does he misidentify the location we need to go to, but he still goes to the wrong place after the right location has been stated in the same conversation. But now he gets to hang out with Razor so that's cool.
No idea what Rosaria's deal is. Rosaria is a character who I've seen around a few times but have been waiting for the event where we properly meet her and find out what her deal is. The 1.4 update added her to the game so I thought this would be her formal introduction but nope, she's still flitting around the edges of the plot acting like we've known her all along.
Amber and Noelle have a Meet Cute. Venti's waxing poetic about Valentines relationships and shit and brings up chance encounters right as we see Amber nearly land on Noelle from a glide gone bad. You know what, I'm here for it. The Knights of Favonius proper don't appreciate Noelle. Let her become an Outrider.
Jean and Lisa hang out. Honestly, this is my favorite part of the event. We see very little of it but Jean and Lisa buddy up and trade barbs off each other and it's great.
Meanwhile Barbara's crying in the church thinking that her stalkers buried Jean in a shallow grave across the lake and her god's like "Yeah but have you thought about how much they must like you to do something like that?" I would tell Venti to go jump off a cliff but he'd do it and then soar away to freedom or some shit.
Kaeya pranks himself and I do not understand why. He smooth-talks Venti into accepting him as a poetry student with that "Ahahaha I am 47 moves ahead of you in this 4-D chess match you didn't even know we were playing" voice and then just does the assignment fair and square.
Um. Huh. I hope you got what you were looking for out of this? I dunno, maybe Kaeya just doesn't know how not to sound like he's engaging in spy shit. Maybe he was being entirely sincere, and Cryptic Fuck is just his default tone.
These Windblume events are a godsend (no pun intended) for the early Mondstadt cast, since for most - though not all - of them, they're the most characterization they ever get.
The earliest (and I mean earliest - later Mondstadt characters don't generally have this problem) characters tend stay in a kind of bubble where they're still pretty one note anime-style character types without much more to them, with only some managing to continue on to have more to them, while the later characters are still character-typey but nearly all try to at least have a few things a story can do with them. Especially with recent stuff like the Anecdotes event, the difference in how the early cast is written is really noticeable. Venti's the standout exception from this crop who continues to have more to him, but the rest are struggling.
Heck, for some of them (like Barbara and debatably Lisa) this particular event years ago is arguably the most characterization they've ever gotten.
I don't think there's a single character in this franchise that I have as much a swing opinion of than Larry Butz. I'm not especially fond of him in large doses, but I love him in small doses.
The way he's not just extremely unhelpful when he's trying to be helpful, but when he's trying to be unhelpful he's also extremely bad at that too, somehow making things worse for both us and him at once until Phoenix has to make the court suffer through Larry facing the music, can all be extremely funny. The guy can become force of chaos just from standing in a room doing nothing. He pairs especially well with Edgeworth, who could use a little chaos here and then.
I remember not liking him sometimes in the original trio of games, where he could feel a tad overused with diminishing impact returns. If he's appearing in multiple cases a game, the ways he derails the story can get tired quick, but in a situation like Time Traveler where we haven't seen him for a while and he just drops into Phoenix' life and goes and throws the whole thing into disarray is gold.
Phoenix and Edgeworth's shared understanding and resignation that Larry Butz' involvement means they are in for a frustrating and unfulfilling time is one of the best running "defense and prosecution on the same page" gags in the series (as is Edgeworth generally visceral reaction to realizing he's present), to boot. Like:
Larry: Don't you believe me?
Edgeworth: No.
Larry: Niiiiick...
Phoenix: Nope.
"The plaintiff will sit down and be quiet!", says Apollo, to Phoenix!
Holy crap.
Between this and Apollo giving Nahyuta the business for having the gall to claim the moral high ground while continuing to try to condemn a child despite it being increasingly obvious at that point that she wasn't guilty, Apollo's comeback game is on point.
Both Phoenix and Athena get some good comebacks and barbs over the last few games, but I swear Apollo can get meaner than either of them and has some edge to him they don't.
Welp, we have another contender for "most traumatized kid in Spirit of Justice." Which is proving to be a surprisingly populated category.
Sarge / Armie Buff developing crippling agoraphobia, pyrophobia and regressing into a fantasy, then legit having a massive panic attack in court after losing both of her parents and having to relive the memory of her father to the point that Athena has to coach her back to lucidity and remind her who she's speaking to) is really something.
The bonus dialogue you get when you present the photo of Apollo's father to her a second time, where she breaks character and timidly asks Apollo to come visit her from time to time, is one of the sweetest, saddest dialogues in the entire franchise imo.
Is there some way the next game could have Phoenix adopt both Ahlbi and Armie, somehow? If Blackquill can set a hawk on people during trial, surely the defense could have a drone or two.
I may have to made a ranking list of Ace Attorney's opposing prosecutors, going over their strengths and weaknesses both as characters and as antagonists and how they all come together, because I may feel the need to explain why I wasn't especially fond of Simon Blackquill, and why I - currently almost finished with of The Rite of Turnabout - so far might be liking Nahyuta even less.
I thought we left this sort of "anti-logic guy just says whatever and refuses to budge" antagonist writing behind after the second game.
I'm sure he'll grow into a better adversary eventually, but I do hope it's during the game and not at some point after it like what happened with Edgeworth.
Ahlbi Ur'gaid is fast becoming my favorite new character in this game. C'mon, Phoenix adopts a lot of kids, what's one more?
All he needs to do is find some weird superpower Ahlbi has that has some vague application towards lawyering, puzzle minigames, and long-winded generational family drama. The Wright Anything Agency is basically the "Traumatized Kids With Superpowers" law firm, after all.
blakekathryn
kaledo-art
ellievsbear
dailybridgerton
kianamaiart
baratheonpilled
