since my last blog post, i finished made in abyss and justice for all so i'll talk about those two things here! spoiler warning ahead for made in abyss and ace attorney - justice for all!

first up, i'm gonna talk about made in abyss. if you've heard basically anything about this series, you're probably aware of this already, but major warnings for Everything (fictional blood, gore, torture, abuse, sexual assault). riko and reg are really cute, but also really good main characters, and nanachi coming in towards the end of the first season makes them one of my favorite character trios ever! originally, i had no idea the manga was still going, so i kept expecting them to reach the final layer by the end of the second season lol (and now i'll probably be waiting a few years for the next season to come out T_T). i was somewhat spoiled on a few things, since i'd watched some clips of the series on youtube a while ago, but knowing the actual plot made those scenes hit way harder (like mitty and vueko's deaths). basically everybody in this series is fucked up and traumatized, but prushka and vueko are especially tragic characters.

prushka lived under bondrewd thinking that he was a great dad, while being blind to how he was literally torturing other children, and being unable to see the outside world. then, like the other kids, she ended up being used like a pawn for her dad, having her body taken apart and used as a cartridge to ward off the abyss curse (and the love bondrewd showed to prushka was only so he could receive the blessing of the abyss from her cartridge). the cartridges themselves are also horrifying because the child inside is still (technically) alive and suffering in pain and mental anguish. in the second season, we get vueko, who is the epitome of trauma. the first scene we see of vueko is her being abused and assaulted by juroimoh (the man raising her, since she was also an orphan). eventually, she leaves juroimoh and joins ganja, a suicide corp led by wazukyan, to travel into the abyss. she meets a young girl named irumyuui (who was abandoned bc she couldn't give birth), and quickly becomes attached to her. anyways, irumyuui and some members of ganja get sick, irumyuui is given an artifact to make a wish, she transforms and is able to give birth (but her babies die after a day and are used as food to cure the sick members). irumyuui eventually transforms into a village, and vueko tries killing herself from the guilt of irumyuui's suffering, but wazukyan stops her and imprisons vueko inside irumyuui's head. years later, when riko frees vueko, she ends up suffering the sixth layer's curse and loses her humanity before dying. i left some things out there, but the point is that vueko deserved better :'( . despite all of the suffering (or maybe because of it), made in abyss is still a great story and i had a good time, so i encourage everyone to watch it if they can stomach the extreme content.

for a total change in tone, i finished phoenix wright: ace attorney - justice for all! this game introduced 'psyche-locks', which were kind of a struggle for me at times, but they're actually a pretty fun mechanic, and i think some of the cases and characters in this game are way better than the first game as well! i mentioned her in the end of the last post, but franziska von karma is introduced in this game, and she's probably my favorite prosecutor so far. the first case isn't too notable, but maggey is cute, and wellington is definitely gay. however, things get really interesting in the second case, and the psyche-locks also come into play here. i did not expect ini miney to be the murderer, and the situation involving her stealing her dead sister's identity was crazy (also, this series really has a thing for tragic sisters, like this is the third case involving such a thing). the next case was also great, although i'm surprised there weren't any localization changes to regina's age, considering that several adult characters wanted to marry a 16-year-old lol. the best part of justice for all is, of course, the last case: farewell, my turnabout. as said in my first blog post, this case helped get me into ace attorney and, although i was a bit spoiled on it, i can't understate how awesome it is. engarde is a great culprit, and i'm glad we get to change things up by finding one of our own defendees guilty. andrews and inpax were basically doomed yuri, and andrews as a character reminded me of boxdog from my previous post, since she has low self-esteem and latches on to other people easily. i love engarde, but he's also a terrible man and i wanna do terrible things to that fag dude :3 . i'm really excited to start the next game, trials and tribulations, since i'm pretty sure it goes into wright's past, and i've heard very good things about it as well!

so, i watched/read/played several things this week, and i'm gonna talk about em. although, first of all, my webamp (music player) is back :D the host i was using for non-images (filegarden) was somewhat down for about a week, but the issues have been resolved now (i'm so glad i just chose to wait for things to resolve instead of changing links or moving files around lol)! also, i finally got caught up on every frienddex request recently (for context, some of the early requests had been waiting for nearly a year)! now, onto the 'media' section.

two nights ago, i finally got around to watching I Saw the TV Glow. yes, it did make me cry a little and absolutely break my heart, but it was also a bit inspiring. i don't want to spoil anything, since i think everyone reading this should go watch it now, but even though it was heartbreaking, the message of "there is still time" has stuck with me. if you live as someone you aren't just because other people want you that way or you're scared of the truth, you won't be free, you'll be suffocating, but there is still time. no matter how late you do it, there's always time to transition and live as who you truly are inside, regardless of what anyone else tries to force upon you.

a day or two before watching that, i spent about an hour reading a webcomic called boxdog. if you plan on reading it, major warning for sexual assault and abuse throughout the whole thing. before talking about the story, i wanna mention that this is one of those rare webcomics that (like the last days of foxhound) started in the 2000's and managed to finish its story without ending on a forever hiatus, being deleted/abandoned, or just being cancelled and forgotten. one thing it also has over several other old webcomics is that there's a lack of slurs or 'offensive humor' (aside from abuse jokes, but the abuse still gets treated seriously). boxdog is about a homeless girl called 'boxdog' (despite not being a dog) who's been through hell, and goes through even more hell after she starts living with a guy named scrimmage. boxdog obviously has little to no self-worth, which leads to scrimmage isolating and mistreating her, leaving boxdog with no friends aside from a rat named cancer. the ending hit me really hard, so i won't say much more about the plot because i recommend reading through it yourself (since it's not a really long comic, it only took about an hour for me to read).

onto the things i'm currently watching/playing. after finishing azumanga daioh, i started watching made in abyss (real tone shift lol) since i'd been thinking about watching it for a while, but had been uncomfortable with 'certain aspects' up until recently (realized that it's all just fiction, and 'those things' aren't doing any harm here). if you're reading this, you've probably at least heard about made in abyss since it's a fairly well-known series. i'll talk more in-depth about it after watching the remaining episodes and movies. since my last post was about ace attorney and how i finished the first game, i started playing the next game (justice for all) right afterwards. right now, i'm already on the last trial (farewell, my turnabout), the one i mentioned that involves matt engarde. again, i'll be talking about the whole game in my next post when i finish playing (shoutout to franziska von karma btw, love her).

it's been a while since i've finished a game in less than a month, but today i completed phoenix wright: ace attorney (the first game of the ace attorney series) after less than two weeks. just like metal gear, ace attorney is one of those series that i never expected to get into, but i'm so glad i did. i'd like to talk about the game itself, but first i wanna talk about what got me interested in the series.

i've been on tumblr since late 2016, so of course i've seen a ton of ace attorney fanart and, since i was also becoming a fujo/fudanshi at the time, i became kinda familiar with the ship narumitsu/wrightworth. for several years, ace attorney was just one of those things that i enjoyed seeing fanart of, but wasn't entirely familiar with the series' lore. in 2020, a twitch streamer i like (alfred of paperboxhouse) started playing justice for all (second game in the series) accompanied by his friends, after finishing the first game, although i hadn't started watching his streams at the time (most of the vods can be found here, pls don't subscribe/follow his channel unless ur at least 18 tho). later, around 2023, when i was now following his channel, he started playing the last trial of the game, one involving a character named matt engarde. this was probably what started rolling the ball that got me fully interested in playing for myself, and it all has to do with this guy who could do absolutely nothing wrong, right?

2023 was also, coincidentally, the year i started getting interested metal gear solid after watching some youtube videos, mainly the gay compilation. of course, being the freak i truly am, i started reading mgs fanfics on ao3 and eventually came across someone who had uploaded nsfw fanworks of both mgs and ace attorney. this artist/writer had several hardcore works focused on matt engarde, and there was one comic in particular they drew that i really loved, especially since engarde was an ace attorney character i was familiar with after watching the aforementioned livestreams. for a while, i was uncomfortable with some other things the artist was into, but i changed my opinions for the better on such things recently, so i decided to start looking through more of their ace attorney works last month, and that was likely what pushed me into starting the series for myself. (no i won't share the artist's name here bc i don't wanna be at all responsible for any minors looking at hardcore nsfw art. if ur an adult, u can go on ao3 and search for them urself.)

now, onto the game itself, phoenix wright: ace attorney. i'm not the best at making reviews, but i'll try my best here. this game is absolutely perfect in every way. all of the characters in this game have such interesting personalities and motives, the trials are so thrilling and suspenseful, and despite being a visual novel, there is some highly unique gameplay and interactivity featured here! i did in fact shed a few tears at least once, during the final/fifth trial of the game (although i won't be saying why to avoid spoiling anything). if you're looking to start the series yourself, there are plenty of ways you can play, due to the trilogies/compilations. i played the first game through the ace attorney trilogy on the 3ds, but all of the trilogies are available on pc and basically every major console currently. if you plan on emulating the 3ds version, make sure you have a working mic to use, you can't exactly get through that version without one. if you'd rather not play/don't have any means to play, i recommend watching videos of other people playing, like the paperboxhouse vods i linked to earlier ^_^