#an analysis?

cause presumably they would’ve already been divorced for Jodie to be dating scam in the first place.

and we don’t have a conformation for how long they dated but I’m pretty sure they started dating before they initiated code purple so they were probably going strong for a few years.

When he left Jodie couldn’t really go back to Morgan because she moved on. (honestly good for her)

Here’s the thing though. This is probably one of the first times he’s attempting to make a joke, in decades, if not EVER. The Nein are his first group of friends. I think it’s safe to assume that in his adult life, Essek has never been in a position where he made jokes or had people make jokes around him until he met the Nein.

The only other person that he maybe would have joked around when he was younger would be Verin. And we really don’t know anything about their relationship aside from Essek saying that he trusts Verin. That’s it. We don’t even know if they’re still in touch or on speaking terms. The fact that you trust someone doesn’t mean that you have a good relationship with them after all. So if Essek ever did joke it’s very likely that it was not in the last couple of decades.

Anyway, TLDR: The man just legit does not know how to make a joke or maybe even just what qualifies as a joke. But he sees how the Nein interact with each other and constantly make jokes even under the most dire circumstances and he’s making such an effort to be part of that dynamic because for once in his life he has friends. And he’s learning what that means. After 120 years of solitude.

Inspired by this post, give it some love y’all.

I am a whore for Ace Attorney (specifically Klavier Gavin, sir I am looking respectfully). This is news to nobody who knows me because since I’ve started replaying it I have not shut up about Miles Edgeworth. The game is excellent, especially in terms of their characters, which also isn’t news to anyone but I want to particularly talk about Jake Marshall.

Obviously, SPOILERS for mainly ‘Rise from the Ashes’ from AA1, but I will mention things from previous cases so warning for that. Also, DISCLAIMER: these are just my opinions and my interpretations of this character and the case he appears in.

First and foremost, SL-9 is a tragedy. Seven lives were irreparably damaged due to one man’s greed and hunger for power. The whole case had such potential to be a victory and instead became a bitter defeat for almost everyone involved. So, let’s look at the characters who were a part of this:

Angel Starr - She was an excellent detective and interrogator to the point where she was known as the ‘Cough-Up Queen’ (iconic) and evidently was passionate about her work, judging by her intense hatred for the prosecutors who got her laid off.

Bruce Goodman - Most of the information we get about Detective Goodman is related to his murder which says a lot, in and of itself, but I think it takes a certain kind of pure-hearted naivety to ask the man who closed up the very case you have suspicions about to open it up again.

Miles Edgeworth - SL-9 was his first big case and he took the evidence he was given trustingly and produced a verdict in court that he was almost certainly exceedingly proud of, only for it to be the source of the rumours that plagued him for the next two years (and what followed - Mr Edgeworth I am so sorry).

Ema Skye - Despite having locked away a lot of her memories of the case, the event was extremely traumatic for her without even considering her age at the time and the aftermath of it resulted in a rift between her and her sister, her only family, even causing her to alter the course of the rest of her life by dedicating herself to forensic study (an absolute queen).

Neil Marshall - The man had been a promising prosecutor, his talent probably only comparable to Edgeworth, the youngest ever to receive the ‘King of Prosecutors’ award (I think) and, in his earnest and successful effort to save Ema Skye from the serial killer, Joe Darke, he is murdered (nooo don’t die ur so sexy aha) by Damon Gant to further his career and influence.

Lana Skye - A genius detective, Lana was well on the way to becoming one of the best prosecutors in history as well as a well-liked and well-respected figure among the police and lawyers alike, only to be manipulated into obeying the whims of Gant for two years due to her love for her sister.

Jake Marshall - Two years ago, Marshall had a promising detective career who had an extremely close relationship with his brother and he lost both of these violently, didn’t get closure for two years and became cold and obsessive over the case as a result.

This case follows the classic (and also favourite) premise of mine where a cast of grizzled, worn down characters are brought together by one of them, usually by the most driven or focused, to re-explore their shared past to uncover the truth. In this story, we still have the common tropes (the good man murdered to set the events in motion, the flirt with bitter anger, the easy-going hiding their darkness, the figure of authority succumbed to evil and the treasured character whose death still haunts them all) written with the familiar, winding narrative of Ace Attorney where characters of varying depth all lead to the character at the crux of the story, usually hiding behind a front.

So, you might be thinking, that character, that’s Lana Skye, right?

Wrong.

It’s Jake Marshall.

Don’t get me wrong, Lana is at the centre of this case. It’s well-established from get-go and, as we, the player, find out more and more about SL-9 it keeps coming back to Lana Skye. So why does the narrative hinge on Jake Marshall?

Mainly because, if it weren’t for Jake Marshall, the case wouldn’t have happened to begin with. He needed closure for the death of his brother that he knew was tied up with some sort of foul play but he never got the chance to prove it, having been cast aside as soon as the trial of Darke was done. Much like Lana, he changed after that case, became colder and more obsessive behind his easy-going façade, focused solely on SL-9. For two years, along with Angel, he tried to get the case opened up again, becoming increasingly desperate as it came closer and closer to transferral, and finally begged Goodman to help him. This set off the chain of events that became ‘Rise from the Ashes’.

Jake is an extremely guarded character, using his cowboy persona almost as a shield, and this is evident in the first few parts of the case where we can barely get any information out of him until we call him to the witness stand and slowly unravel his story. And with that, he unravels too.

The day after the trial, we see almost a completely different man - he’s resigned to his fate, all the desperation and adrenaline he’s held onto has slipped away, leaving behind an incredibly sad person. His kindliness shines through a bit more which was introduced in the way he speaks to Ema, but now he offers it to Phoenix as well in both appreciation and respect for what he’s undertaking. Jake gives him his story and quietly leaves to turn himself in because he doesn’t see the point in fighting anymore - the straws he was grasping at have fallen out of reach and now he sees someone else probably with the same purity and fire that his team had had during SL-9 that he can pass the mantle to.

I think that this is where the true tragedy of the case lies: once Phoenix discovers the truth and frees the people who worked on SL-9 from their chains, they change. Lana smiles for the first time, Angel’s snappy banter softens into friendly teasing,  Jake, although only for that one moment, opens up a little, and Miles Edgeworth has a midlife crisis (understandable but you did NOT have to do that to Phoenix). And once we see this, we see how badly this case affected all of them. We see what people they used to be before they were broken down  by SL-9, the friendships they had (Jake and Angel feel like the epitome of bisexual solidarity, sue me), and in particular, at least for me, Jake’s grief at the loss of his brother. Because, for all the focus on injustice and the truth, an innocent man died and no one really got the chance to grieve in their determination for retribution. It’s only in the moments before Jake turns himself in that we see him even speak about his brother in a way that isn’t related to the truth that they’re all searching for. And that’s just so sad.

I get that I’m a couple of years late for this, but I just finished listening to the whole thing at 4:12 this morning haha. I actually really liked the ending! And apparently many people did not! So I’m going to talk about why I liked it!

DISCLAIMER: this is obviously not the general consensus about the matter and I’m not invalidating or criticising it because my opinion is totally different. And SPOILERS... duh.

Firstly, I wanted to talk about the change in structure to season 2 - I know a lot of people preferred the the radio show format of season 1 and, honestly, I also really liked it. But, apart from the fact that our beloved radio host got kidnapped at the end of season 1, the change makes sense from a storytelling perspective. The first half of the show was a question of ‘what’ and ‘how’:

What was Limetown?

What happened to all the people who lived there?

How did it happen?

Once all of these had gotten answered, the question was now ‘why’. Why did it happen? And the answer to this question is Emile Haddock. Of course, as the answer is a person, the way to achieve it is going to be a very personal journey, so the recordings (although unexplained in canon) do showcase that journey very effectively.

This does move on to my next point quite nicely: there are quite a few loose ends at the end of the story, and that’s not a bad thing. The big one, of course, is that we have no clue what happened to Lia Haddock. It can be inferred from the ending that “Charlie” (it could also be “Charley” - Wikipedia uses both) found her after Daniel gave her Lia’s location and handed her over the company that Lenore worked for, that they are the ones who asked about her dreams in the final minutes of the season 2 finale. Their questions about her dreams could possibly mean that she’s been given the contact, but I honestly haven’t given that part enough thought to come to any conclusions. Please give me some of your theories though!

Anyway, the second loose end is “Charlie”. Up until the end of the episode we think we’re learning more and more about her as Emile gets her to talk more about her family, but that’s all revealed to be a fabrication. In the end, the only concrete information we have about her is the fact that she worked for the same company that Lenore and Daniel did. Everything that we’ve built emotionally with “Charlie” throughout the second season is completely null. We’re left only with a façade.

The final loose end is, of course, the contacts. The tech that was the fruits of Limetown’s horrific labour, that Emile destroyed hundreds of lives for. We don’t know what’s happening with it, other than the fact that it’s going to be released to the public... soon? What happens next is anyone’s guess. It’s a wave building up and up and up on the shoreline and it’ll never crash.

These three things are the cause of much frustration for many listeners because they are left wondering. But I think that that might actually be the point. See, the centre of this whole thing has always been Emile Haddock and season 2 of ‘Limetown’ tells his story. He’s the eye of the storm, the man that they were all there for. It’s essentially a third-person perspective of Emile and it’s certainly not omniscient, so, as he grieves the loss of Lia in that movie theatre, wondering about “Charlie”, about Lia, unsure and confused, we the listener are there with him. He doesn’t care about the tech anymore, he cares about Lia - just like the listeners. He’s in shock, lost in a state of unknowing that he’s never had to face before. And the writers of the show passed that onto us beautifully - we’re learning the truth as he does.

Yeah, I had some problems. But, that comes with DISCLAIMER: this is in no way directed at the people associated with the show and these are just opinions that I'm throwing out there. Also SPOILERS.

So! I'm mad about the sword. It was so close to being the symbolism for Heron's character arc and it ended up being a macguffin. Which sucked because it was a cool concept. Of course, I understand that the show is called 'Blood of Zeus' and so it's all about Heron accepting his parentage which is what happens when he gets his glowing eyes in the season finale, but that kind of leaves the sword as an empty plot point. It also kind of invalidates the whole moment in episode 2 where he rejects Zeus's help and the sword by throwing it away. The season finale moment could have happened with sword in hand to show that growth of character.

A second point about the sword: with Heron and Seraphim being the core rivalry in the show (the gods are very much part of the bigger picture), their clashes really could have been focused on more, especially since it only happens a couple of times in the show, not including the final battle.

The next point is characterisation: they made Hera a bitch and Hades evil. Which is a personal pet peeve of mine. But they did make Apollo canonically bisexual, even if it was in a threesome, so that was pretty nice. I get that Hera is definitely the villain here, but Zeus got way too heroicised as a result even though he fully acknowledged that it was his fault too in the show. There should have been proportional amounts of blame placed on each of them. And Hades! Our favourite god of the dead got characterised with the dark connotations that are stereotypical of his role.

Also Zeus died. Zeus. A god. King of the gods, to be precise. A fucking immortal. Died. What was that about?? While we're here, I feel like the gods should be far more powerful than they're portrayed. They're incredibly powerful deities but, when Apollo and Ares fought, Apollo gets knocked out so incredibly easily and there's barely any destruction to the surrounding area. It's as if they're only slightly powered-up humans. The Wikipedia page also says that Apollo 'died' after that fight which... well, you know my thoughts on that.

Oh and why do Zeus and Hades look so alike while Poseidon looks like someone out of MHA?

I don't like the pacing either. Because some of the writing is really, really good, only to be skewed by how much is pushed into only 8 episodes. 2 seasons for this arc would have been perfect. For example, Seraphim's character arc was so good! It just happened so fast that it seemed like he was swinging back and forth like a weather vane in a storm. Alexia, Kofi and Evios were pretty underdeveloped - but, this is something that can be remedied if there's a season 2.

Finally, what was up with the random, nameless gods hanging around on Olympus? And why are there so many Pegasi?