#pretention

I. The Love Square: all’s fair in love and plot

Let’s start off our analysis with the obvious: the Love Square is meant to be. You know it, I know it, everyone is Paris knows it. Most importantly, the writers have known it since the beginning; and it is their job to sell us their romance, through compelling interactions.

Part of this effort was to make Chat Noir fall in love with Ladybug almost immediately, and be very forthcoming about his interest — something she rarely reciprocates during the first seasons, because if she did, the show would have ended years ago and I would not be writing this instead of loading the dishwasher like I’m supposed to. Chat Noir’s infatuation with the spotted heroine takes the form of many many many MANY flirty comments, outright love declarations and, on a couple of occasions, unwelcome kissing attempts.

It wouldn’t be fair to argue Ladybug is 100% closed off to his attempts. But as the seasons go by, and other scenaristic stakes build up, she does become more and more frustrated with them. To his credit, Chat knows when to back off when she expresses discomfort or states her love for “““another boy”””… But he is always quick to try his luck again, which in turns brings even more frustration, until Ladybug finally snaps in S4.

Does that mean we, the public, see Chat Noir as a dangerous sociopath? Of course not. For the most part, we accept that his insistence is amusing at best, and harmlessly annoying at worst, because that’s what the show wants us to accept. Concretely, this gives a situation à la Kuro Neko: the episode defends the idea that Chat Noir’s imperfections, including his misguided and at times overbearing love for his partner, is a crucial part of what makes them such a good team.

And let’s not forget Marinette herself! While several members of the Girl Gang (namely Alya) routinely and jokingly call her out on her stalking, we mainly get to reflect on how this affects her — not her clueless crush. Her obsession is always always framed as embarrassing, funny, and even cute — classic teenage girl behaviour, am I right ladies?

There miiight be a double standard between genders, which is also true with the antagonists — but what matters most is that we accept Chat and Marinette’s behaviour, or more precisely this framing of their behaviour by the scenario, for two main reasons:

Because they’re our heroes, and although they are flawed, they can’t be too bad!

Because the romantic endgame we all know is coming “justifies” their actions. If these two are meant to be together, does it really matter if they mess up along the way?

This second point is best exemplified by the contrast between how we perceive consent when it applies to the Love Square, and how we perceive it when it comes to Adrigami.

Having accepted her mother’s expectations, Kagami sees a future with Adrien and is therefore trying to push the relationship forward; she is not afraid to take the lead and generally does so through physical touch, attempting to kiss him before he’s ready and manually correcting his posture when sketching him.

Is Kagami crossing a few lines here? Sure; but it’s nothing a teenager wouldn’t do, and she is a lot less persistent than Chat. Yet we can’t help but notice and sympathise with Adrien’s unease… We perceive and react to Kagami’s behaviour differently not because she is a bad person, but because she is but a secondary love interest — a temporary distraction from the grand love story we’ve been invested in since the beginning. Adrigami is not a toxic or abusive ship, it’s just not going to work out.

II. The antagonists: red flags and black marks

In many ways, love and intimacy are the driving forces of Miraculous’ plot. After all, isn’t it grief over the loss of a spouse that started this whole debacle?

The heroes we root for on the battlefield are the same dumb teenagers we desperately want to see smooch; so naturally, we start to think of morality and romance as inextricably linked. For the writing team, this is a great tool to make heroes easily identificable and, conversely, signal to the audience that a new antagonist has joined the chat: this phenomenon can be observed from the very first episodes, and is best embodied by a character we all know and… uh… definitely feel some type of way about.

Let’s not tip-toe around the issue: Chloé, at least in the early seasons, is a typical mean girl. She is a bully, a pretentious and spoiled kid, and generally rude to everyone around her. But do you know what her worst crime is? She has the absolute nerve to be in love with Adrien!

Chloé and Marinette’s rivalry over the prettiest boy in school is central to their conflict, and shapes our initial understanding of Chloé as a minor antagonist. When the show repeatedly has her throwing herself at Adrien, calling him aggravating nicknames, and plotting to eliminate her pig-tailed competition, it isn’t trying to establish her as a viable romantic option; rather, it uses her disrespect of Adrien’s personal space to reinforce our conviction that she is bad news, and strengthen our sympathy towards Marinette.

In the grand scheme of things, however, Chloé isn’t a huge threat to our heroes. The real issue comes with the introduction of a major antagonist, one that has the motivation and brain cells to do some actual damage (take some notes, Hawkmoth).

Felix’s debut episode is… well, to be fair, I think it is brilliant in a lot of ways! Once you shine the Sentimonster light on his “gratuitous” and “petty” shenanigans, they take on a much deeper and more interesting meaning. But this introduction certainly doesn’t do Felix any favours from a moral standpoint, and that is absolutely done with a purpose: to convince us, the audience, that this boy Absolutely 100% Cannot Be Trusted, so that we don’t fall off our chairs when the Strikeback fiasco happens. And what better way is there to make us uncomfortable than having him (almost) forcefully kiss our heroine on screen?

Seriously, look at the way this scene is composed: the creepy look in his eyes, Ladybug literally having her back against the wall, the music, everything. Even younger viewers, who might not necessarily understand what is at play here, instinctively know that this is bad.

And you know what? This would be fair if Felix was meant to be this awful, terrible, psychopathic villain that kicks grandmas down the stairs and eats puppies for breakfast. But he isn’t, and that’s where you might lose your audience!

By the end of S5 (or the middle… these release dates are getting confusing), we are invited to look at Felix not as a dangerous, hardened criminal, but as a kid fighting tooth and nail to free and protect his fellow Sentibeings — in short, an abuse survivor. This explanation makes him sympathetic to us; his conflicting feelings make him a prime candidate for a redemption arc; and his true personality, which shines through his crush on Kagami and his impromptu musical number, make him an endearing character. So, we can all agree to like him now, right?

WRONG. Just because we understand the message S5 is trying to convey doesn’t mean we don’t remember what happened in S3, back when presenting Felix as an antagonist took priority over preparing his redemption arc. Many people still have, and will always have, major issues with his character because of this one scene and the very raw emotional response it successfully elicited. I, for one, adore Felix; but I understand how others may have trouble believing he is genuinely fighting for freedom and bodily autonomy, given how quick he was to disregard Ladybug’s. On the other hand, I can appreciate the message that abuse survivors, especially kids, can and will fuck up in major ways before learning how to actually be a person — but that’s my interpretation of it, not what this debut tried to convey, at least I don’t think so.

Closing thoughts

Like I said in the opening, I am sure there are many other situations to delve into, characters to psychoanalyse, and ways to interpret the examples I mentioned. An exhaustive essay would take pages and pages, and this is already way too long as it is, so let’s wrap up with a few personal impressions:

Is Miraculous bad / problematic / worth canceling over these scenaristic decisions?

The answer is no, obviously. Trying to overly sanitise kids’ shows is a dangerous slippery slope that has led to the cancellation of some of my personal favourite gems for “““arbitrary””” reasons (everyone involved in canceling The Owl House is on my personal hit list). But I do think it is important to take in stories with your critical brain turned on, and be aware of some of the messages they might be trying to convey.

In this case, Miraculous writers are less interested in consent as a real-life issue than they are in what it can do for their show, scenaristically and thematically. It doesn’t make them evil, but it does make for a sometimes contradictory, sometimes uncomfortable final product.

2. Does that mean any of these characters are horrible monsters that should be burnt at the stake?

Of course not! They are dumb 14-year-olds just starting to navigate life and love. Whatever problematic behaviour they’re exhibiting now is just par for the course: they will grow out of it. In fact, they are already starting to grow out of it, with some help from the plot and a chair:

Ultimately, what matters most is not where a character starts: it is how they learn from their mistakes and grow into a better person.

I am hopeful that all 4 of these kids are going in the right direction. Chloé is unlikely to make any progress given how Thomas Astruc feels about her, but hey, everything’s possible.

Content Warnings: Discussions of the holocaust / Shoah, mass death on the Mediterranean and English Channel, depression, suicidality, parental abuse

Rest on Your Oar began life in my green notebook, which also contains fan favourites such as every Silmarillion fic I’ve ever posted, and ‘An Ebb, a Wave, a Soft Crash.’ I write most things longhand first, and then type up the second draft. If something strikes me as having potential i’ll polish the second draft into a third, but not always. 

Rest on Your Oar wasn’t so much something that I wrote as much as something that created itself. It felt like it was in my hands already as I began to put it on the page, although that’s not to say I didn’t put a large amount of work into it. The longhand version follows the same structure as the published one, although it’s about half as long and it’s not as good. I don’t spend much time thinking about law in draft one, which is funny, because I think that’s the most important element of the entire thing.

If there’s one thing this fic is about about, it’s Modernity, and more specifically the space that law currently fills in our lives (one that might once have been filled by something else [God]). It is also about Europe, History-with-capital-H, [both of which are really just Modernity again] abuse, queerness, and depression. Modernity was when the disenchantment started: the scientific method and bureaucratisation came in - both forms of systematisation - as a result racism became codified by science instead of Religion, the individual conscience became king, and the King lost his head. And more!! 

Why yes, I have read Angels in America, thank you for asking.

This commentary will explain some of my thinking on this, as well as things that I would change, now. As I said, it’s been nearly two years, and they’ve been personally eventful. This is especially true of the focus on Europe.

I should have been clearer: the [ongoing] colonialism that has endured for the last six centuries and the current focus on borders, borders, borders make this place, at this moment, an Evil one. At this moment, we would rather maintain an absurdly expensive and brutal system of social murder, rather than deal with problems we ourselves have caused. If you’re looking for a cause to throw €5 to over the next few months - and God knows you probably aren’t, given the cost of living these days - consider organisations that come under the banner of the Calais Appeal (you can find it on instagram). Over 300 people have died in Northern Europe (France and Belgium mostly) trying to get into the UK. In 2021, according to the UN, 3,231 people lost their lives crossing the Mediterranean sea. These are people with beating hearts, inner lives, families and friends that love them dearly.It is international law that you can claim asylum in any country you want. The EU and the UK are breaking international law. There are NO LEGAL ROUTES into this place unless you are already a member of a privileged minority. The EU knows that this is the case and persists in these brutal policies regardless.

A final note before starting - Edgeworth is deeply depressed during this fic, and surprise! I was deeply depressed when I was writing it. Depression is very difficult to measure when it gets that bad, because your perceptions of everything, including time, are skewed and sometimes unreliable. I know now that I was deep into it, and this comes through occasionally in the writing and the language used. I want to say that I appreciate every comment - some of the loveliest, most gracious, best-written comments I have ever received are on this fic - and would like to let people know that I’m doing better now. In case you were wondering!

-

The title comes from an Eileen Ní Chuilleanáin (pronounced Eye-leen Nee Quill-en-awn) poem, “The Second Voyage.” It’s about Odsseus deciding that he hates the sea and must leave it, and then realising that he can’t, and must go back. I love Ní Chuilleanáin so much - she writes with an acute eye for detail. Can’t recommend enough. Anyway, you should read the poem alongside the piece, and bear in mind the ending. Is it happy? 

Is fanfiction literature? I’m going to ruffle a few feathers here and say that I’ve been reading fic for a good deal more than half my life, and I think the answer is usually not, or at least it’s not usually good literature. I’ve published more than 33 fics, which is quite a few, and even then, I think there are maybe three that I could possibly, possibly, with a lot of work, spend a few months editing and send off to a magazine. I write in the fanfiction genre and mostly, for me, generally, that precludes analysis or deep themes. Some people treat it differently. I approached Rest on your Oar differently. That’s why the references to the Holocaust and the Second World War are in here. If something is about the Law, and about Europe, then it is for me very important that we mention where the law in Europe can lead. However, generally I think it is absolutely inappropriate and wrong to trivialise the Holocaust by setting a fanfiction there. Like the new trend of novels that treat Auschwitz as a tragic backdrop in which characters can self-actualise, such fics show an absolute misunderstanding of what happened, and what was done. It was important for me to acknowledge, in my fic about a kind-of German lawyer battling with the legacies of his lawyer father(figure), that it was Europe’s celebrated legal and infrastructural machinery that made the murder of roughly 7,000,000 people (of whom 6,000,000 were Jewish) possible.

Anyway.

He’ll disembark at Bordeaux. A big enough city that the police won’t blink twice at an anonymous body in the treacherous river. He won’t upset anyone – he won’t make anyone he knows discover – it’ll be OK once he gets off the train

The fic starts with Edgeworth on the Paris-Hendaye high-speed rail service, in the midst of a full-blown break with reality.

By poetic licence, the carriage is empty. A last-minute ticket for the TGV on this line, in the evening, in first class (of course) would cost you about €173.00, if not more. Provided you could find one. Jesus!! You can get to Greece (by plane) for that!! 

Why the Basque country? Firstly, I lived near there for a few months and absolutely adored it. The Sea, the cliffs, the people (the people!!) the towns, winding roads, villages, houses all facing the same direction, Saint Sebastian, the language, the rain, the beaches that attract tourists and the constant wind that disappoints them, and again, above all, from everywhere, the Sea, the Sea, the Sea. I use the water as a metaphor in my writing, which is really original and unique of me. Why the Basque country? It’s old, and not German at all, easy to get to, and the seaside towns are very underpopulated during the Winter. A lot of empty houses, empty apartment blocks, and rain from the Atlantic.

The platform at Biarritz is drab and rain-soaked.

You ever get the impulse to stay on the train you’re on, and get off somewhere nicer? I don’t want to get off at Marne-la-Vallée/Chessy. So rainy and cold. And for what! Disneyland!?!? I’d rather be getting off in Avignon [ ;-) ]. This is not what Edgeworth feels, except for it is. I don’t know! He’s in the middle of a breakdown! Those aren’t coherent thoughts he’s having! I wanted to express here how tar-ry depression can be. All of your brain feels heavier, and whatever thoughts you are having are unclear and move like viscous. I imagine, for quick-on-the-draw person like Edgeworth, who may have spent most of his childhood very alert to his guardian’s moods and potential violences, that state is particularly alien. Does he want to die, or does he want to live? It can be surprising, for those who have not been there, how unclear that demarcation can be.

Corrupt.

Also I don’t forgive him the corruption until he decides that he’s going to fix it. It’s very illegal and absolutely morally repugnant, what Lana did to him. It’s absolutely the kind of thing that could mess you up for life, and I imagine would be fertile grounds for a civil case as well as a criminal one. But he’s still in a position of authority. Prisons are evil places in real life, and in Ace Attorney they seem to be mediaeval dungeons with Victorian hard-labour standards. One imagines Genet thriving in the environment. It’s on the prosecutor to think long and hard about what the truth of the matter is. Can we achieve true justice on Earth? Debatable. But Edgeworth’s approach sure isn’t helping!!!

And yet, I think it’s pretty obvious that he does, even at his worst, care about Justice.

At least there isn’t anyone they could call. Not one. The thought is freeing. He used to have Von Karma listed, but his office number, not his personal line.

Not having an emergency contact - it’s very difficult to live that way. You don’t realise how much you need one - pretty much for every job application, pretty much for every club you want to join, and certainly for doctors, dentists, and any other place where you may need insurance. For more on this, read the very beautiful How to Be Alone by Lane Moore.

Von Karma had been total

I hate it when people use political theories to describe interpersonal relationships, and vice versa, because it contributes to petty bourgeois philosophy about government spending and the worst excesses of liberal twitter, but here I present my take on parental abuse. Apologies, as ever, to Hannah Arendt.

He stumbles up the street, to the bright neon promise of an open hotel, its windows reflected in the puddles on the ground.

Anyway, I spent an enjoyable three hours looking for a fancy hotel that Edgeworth might check into. I can’t remember the one I picked but it was very white-plaster light-wood beams, healthy food, open all year round. I think to be truly in-character Edgeworth would go with the Hôtel Palace, which is just as baroque and expensive as you can imagine, but he’s not in character here, as also shown by his eschewing of the SUIT. 

Where does Edgeworth buy his fancy and boring clothes? There is a shopping centre in Gare Montparnasse, where the Paris-Hendaye service originates. So Levi’s for t-shirts, the Kooples, and so on. Some aspects of this fic are so unbelievably thought out, and some are completely symbolic and not realistic in any way. Don’t think too hard about it. 

To skip forward - here is where place Edgeworth visits in Biarritz (Le Rocher de la Vierge):

Places Miles and Franziska were brought as children for educational reasons

And the little village he settles in is one of my favourite places in the entire universe, that is, Guéthary, a little further down the Basque coast.

How gorgeous?!?!? Many a happy cigarette smoked on this harbour. Also a comedically dramatic tumble from a bicycle, ripping the knee of some nice yellow jeans.

For people who aren’t aware, there is ongoing conversation in the Basque country over the topic of independence. The Basque region encompasses some of France’s South-Western coast and also a large amount of Northern Spain. It skewed Republican (good) in the Spanish Civil War (a war so terrible that any amount of reflection upon it will have you pretty much despondent) and as a result suffered heavily when the fascists won. Picasso’s painting Guernica is based on the German bombing of the Basque cultural and market town of the same name. 

Up until fairly recently, this was a conflict, with armed group ETA on one side (pro-independence) and the Spanish police and the Guardia Civil [guilty of war crimes for sure, but no charges] on the other. The EU will not tell you this because they like to pretend there hasn’t been war since 1945. When they say this, they mean “literally tanks sent between France and Germany.” (I’m not anti-EU in principle but I am a mostly unemployed leftist so I have things to critique. To be clear this is not a Brexit support blog).

Philadelphia Story had been his favourite. His father had ruffled his hair and laughed when Miles said so. He said, why am I not surprised. My clever little boy.

Katherine Hepburn forever. Gregory Edgeworth in no doubt as to who his son is.

Larry didn’t like it so much – “Mulan’s for girls” he’d said, and Phoenix had looked down at his hands and agreed, albeit far more quietly than usual.

Miles Edgeworth runs up against male socialisation and it hurts. Also Phoenix lives with his aunt - why? Not for this fic to explore.

Past empty campsites, fields full of luxury white cuboids waiting for May.

Anyway I myself was a campsite worker, poisoning the air of the beautiful small town with my shouted English. Shame on me! I know.

But here, on this cliff - he wasn’t expecting this, either – he thought he’d seen the town’s war memorial – but here’s another one, stones turning their faces to the sea, and it’s blunter – it’s -

If your mother did a master’s thesis on French historical memory of the second world war, please hit me up! We can commiserate together. The effects of this thesis on me are manifold, but one is that I MUST find the war memorial in any town I go to and see who EXACTLY is memorialised. Obviously we have the First World War dead, which is as close to neutral remembrance as you can get in this sphere - and it’s important to look at the length of these lists in small villages and reflect!!!! And then more rarely, and always a much shorter list, you’ll have the lists of the Second World War dead. Usually resistants, but sometimes civilians as well, and generally it won’t say whether they were shot on the street or deported. 

So in Bidart (this memorial is in Bidart) that is not the case. It’s very stark, hence the flashback. My favourite war memorial is in Biarritz because it goes into a lot of detail about deportees &tc.

And speaking of memorials!!! 

This is the memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe on Hannah Arendt Strasse:

And this is the separate memorial across the road to the murdered members of the LGBTQ+ community

Both of these memorials are extremely powerful; Von Karma here weaponises this power to threaten and oppress. Power and aura, for art in everyday life, can be used for both affirmative and negative ends. Memorials to atrocities of this scale are complicated places, and while I think Berlin has done a phenomenal job at limiting the potential for misuse, it is still there. The memorial does not tell you what to think.

Similarly, you have to think about coming into an understanding of your own identity in a world where the visible, public and celebrated elements are monuments to oppression, illness, institutional hatred and . What does it mean to understand your sexuality, religion or gender through displays of public contrition and grief, or as sites of public debate before you understand it as what it means for you and your heart? 

To close out this section, consider the words of Primo Levi:

It happened, and therefore it could happen again; this is the core of what we have to say.

This is why we must reflect on the Law, and on current European fascism, and on current European migration policy. I hope at least that there will be memorials to the people we have lost due to the above.

-

On his mother’s birthday, it rains.

Who is Miles Edgeworth’s mother???? Assumedly just as dead as his father, but why the complete absence from the text? Misogyny, obviously, but why else??? When you think about it it’s a horrifically sad story. Edgeworth wanting to die (more actively than passively at this stage) on her birthday is a detail I added to make it worse!! One imagines she’s buried or memorialised in his hometown. Did they go to her grave? Did Gregory miss her out loud? 

She would have been 60. All the terrible people in the world who reached that milestone.

This is a reference to the fact that Henry Kissinger is !!! Still !!!! Alive ?!?!?!?!?

The ocean revolting against itself and the pure rage of its power

The sea is a neutral force. A neutrality that is still very powerful.

His first thought is I like that bicycle, with the pink streamers on the handlebars.

Edgeworth is starting to recognise his inner child. This will be, in the end, what saves his life, and possibly what saves us all. I once had a therapist that called herself an “early childhood development professional, only one that deals with adults.” She was the best therapist I ever had!! Miles Edgeworth needs to start feeling and healing!! And so do I, and dear reader, probably so do you! Also this scene was written two years before I met this person, but falling off a cliff is a real thing that can happen. I had a coworker that fell off TWO separate cliffs. Excessive? She certainly thought so!

A Portuguese nurse asks if he’s alright as he comes in (what a question) and he tells her no.

Because mental illness is actually quite common and I imagine Edgeworth is underplaying his symptoms, they don’t keep him in for observation like I imagine they probably should. In my country the healthcare system is so broken that they don’t have the money to do things like that, but in France it’s generally efficient and well-funded. What’s going on here? Maybe he doesn’t have his EHIC card or something. Anyway, prozac made me much worse! He should be on sertraline. And then, after all of that - all that agony and humiliation - he’s still just as bad as he was before, worse maybe.

He is fourteen and lying on his back. The parquet rubs cold against his legs

There is no worse age to be in the entire world alive than 14. Is the suicidality already latent in young Edgeworth, or is it that he is looking back with poisoned lenses? 

“Hello, detective.”

You can’t escape!!!!!!!! You may desperately want to - the love of your friends and family can be the most painful and heavy thing, the most awkward burden to bear - but you can’t escape it. Thankfully.

Ride your bike down to the sea and relish in the breeze blowing the hair back from your face.

“9 out of 10 days are slightly disappointing

But on the tenth, you see that light beckoning”

Annika Norlin, “Silent Night”

Transcendence is rare, but it happens. It will happen to you. You will come to a place where you will recognise the beauty around you and inside you, and you will know that you were supposed to make it here. You will not want the mire of mental illness anymore; you will know that you are better when you are freer. 

And then it will go, and you will forget the feeling, but not that you had it. As Elizabeth Bishop says: Somebody loves us all.

The wanting of the bad thing is a strange thing to explain. There’s no such thing as true freedom from it. It is always in the back of your head, there’s always another shoe that can drop, and there will be people and things said to you - Never Quite Free by the Mountain Goats, people, don’t ask me to explain more than that.

In the future, Phoenix Wright will run into the same stretch of sea…

See High Season

he shady tactics (not illegal), the withholding of certain pieces of evidence (not illegal), the decisions on what sentence to push for, and for whom, and when to take a case and when to decide against doing so

Be VERY cautious of prosecutors. I myself am absolutely anti-prison. I don’t see any reason for that kind of barbarity in our world. I can see that not everybody feels that way. But always remember: prosecutors in most of today’s systems are on very good friends with the cops. And the cops are never your friends.

Old man, Edgeworth thinks, old man, I am not ashamed

Edgeworth is gay and now he can say “i am gay” out loud to himself. This kind of brutal repression, that either abusive parents or abusive environments instil, is violence. That is, violence as defined by Johan Galtung: the cause of the difference between the potential and the actual, between what could have been and what is. 

Thank you not-Guéthary! We are moving on!

The Cévennes! Beautiful mountains, barely populated, old old old. And I believe a place where the Maquis (part of the French Resistance) tended to congregate. Resistance… potential changes on the horizon for dear M. Edgeworth. The town that I based this town on is Florac, another stunning location. Best avocado of my entire life. I can still remember that salad, all these years later. And a very lovely skirt, silk, in blue-grey!

Oh my GOD I have got to get back there. I forgot how beautiful it was. I wonder how much rent is. I could finally write my masterwork in peace.

The man at the till, tall and dark, smiles at him

When I was there there were no handsome Spanish men selling books but in all fairness I don’t have any use for handsome Spanish men, so maybe there were some I missed? 

Unusual for a Catholic church to be so unadorned

Edgeworth does not Find Religion here. Pity! I think there are some themes in Catholicism that could help him! Not Catholicism itself, but a few of the ideas within it. Not the devotion bit - he’s maybe had too much of that already.

He liked the moomins too, although he got the feeling the other children in the class would have the same reaction to that as they did to Mulan

I must admit to taking the shame of loving the Moomins as a homage to Philip Pullman, who wrote sweetly about the same thing in an essay which I cannot find (here’s a different one), but nobody picked up on it in the comments and so now I think it’s just plagiarism??? Help!?!

He has a Spanish accent; more Southern than Northern

Javi García Cortes is from Grenada

Von Karma had slapped him, once, hard, across the face

Von Karma physically assaulting him like this is deeply humiliating, and acts as a threat to Franziska as well, though I don’t think he would do the same to her.

The chasm it will open has been a spectre, his life since he was nine years old. The dark at the centre of the spider’s web.

So the “dark at the centre of the spider’s web” is a serious image that I am using seriously, but I was listening to an improv podcast by Paul F Tomkins where “Hans Christian Anderson” is being interviewed, and HE USES THE SAME IMAGE!! But it’s so funny! Truly one of my favourite jokes ever. This is a coincidence, but it’s ruined this paragraph for me.

He was an omnipresent threat of power and violence, and he shaped Edgeworth, gave him purpose and an appreciation for Handel and Bach.

If someone gives you art, knowledge, understanding and education, feeds you - you’re a real person at least partly in their image, and - it’s unbearable, that the person that was supposed to love you and nurture you not only didn’t care enough to do that, but also hurt you, maybe on purpose and maybe by accident. Apologies would never be enough, and Miles Edgeworth does not even have that. I mean, really put yourself in his shoes: you’ve found out that this man who was responsible for your growth and development and your choice of career actually hated you and wanted to kill you and it wasn’t even for anything he thought you did. (And then it turns out your trusted co-workers were responsible for you sending hundreds of people to prison). And then also you’re in the middle of a nervous breakdown and you can’t stop thinking about the last time you were happy. Which was when you were nine years old.

lying on the shore beside Javi García Cortes, who had just kissed him in full view of the road, the best kiss of his life

I love Javi so much.AO3 user Eggybaguette posted this absolutely incredible comment, which is such a good analysis and you’re so smart for this if you’re reading this, like genuinely you are so intelligent. “[Edgeworth] seeing himself, an anonymous body in a river in the beginning, and then letting himself be recognized and experience intimacy in a river with Javi,” as they point out, is an important character progression. It’s also important in terms of borders - rivers and seas are often sites of division. Here Edgeworth is allowing himself to broaden the horizons of what he thinks his body is for. This is also true of the scene where he goes sea-swimming.

He doesn’t get out of bed except to use the bathroom for three days straight

Oh God I forgot how horrible I am to this poor man in this section. Healing isn’t linear!

He loves this movement. He loves the clarinet.

Ah, Mozart’s Piano Concerto no.23 in A Major (K488). Truly I don’t know where this man got his genius from but he understood how to express light in music! The fête de la musique that Edgeworth is attending is an annual event that has musicians play in towns across France. It’s really great! I don’t know how good an orchestra from a tiny rural town would be, but let’s pretend it’s a good one for this.

And it was not The Law that stood in his way.

IS THIS A WHISPER OF REDEMPTION? I have been a sucker for a redemption arc since I recognised a kindred spirit in Zuko from Avatar, and to be honest I am so obsessed with Ace Attorney deciding that was something Edgeworth would probably undergo, but totally off-screen. So what changed? What was the “true meaning of being a prosector?” Is the system broken beyond repair, or can it be fixed? Choose carefully, because if something can be fixed, you might find you have an obligation to fix it… not that Edgeworth is there yet in his emotional journey.

The next morning, he’s feeling pretty bad, but he gets up anyway

HE IS ABLE TO GET UP IN THE MORNING AND FEED HIMSELF!!!!!!! Just as triumphant a moment as running down to the sea imo. This is the hard work of living. 

the teachings he had to impart made a certain amount of sense. They twisted the world around, so that they confirmed your worst fears, and the more you got the more you needed

More Wanting the Bad Thing.

Sometimes the two of them, miserable on the sofa together. Miles went to a lady to talk about it, sometimes, and the way he couldn’t really make friends

It was partly inherited all along :( The thing is sometimes something happens which explains it all, and sometimes it doesn’t, and often it is a combination. Gregory Edgeworth here being an exemplary father, meaning that when he noticed his son was more sad than the usual child he went and tried to sort it out.

Oh God, had nobody – the little boy who would sleep in single bed strewn with books and signal samurai pillowcases – had nobody thought, Manfred Von Karma will damage this child

Where are the child protection systems in Ace Attorney. Mr Phoenix sir I know you care very deeply for Trucy but you can’t just take a child back to your house without some kind of documentation. Von Karma should not have been able to randomly take a child out of his community to a different continent. As John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats says, though, “Take the character seriously.” So if this was the state of the issue - what the Hell would that feel like? Not good! Edgeworth is feeling the grief of realising that childhood and its moral simplicities are over, the fact that he has been forever damaged by his upbringing, and that he will never get to be nurtured by people who loved him. And also there are fifteen years of pain that he has not let himself feel, that are all now demanding their day in court. 

Well. Miles has always cared about justice, fairness, truth (whatever those words really mean for adult lives, there is something very clear and beautiful about a child’s perception of the concepts). Edgeworth is in a position to help with that.

Try and build a life that you would be proud to show to your childhood self. It doesn’t have to be the life that they wanted.

Phoenix cried for the whole thing, pretty much

Phoenix is deep in grief! 

as the river cuts a gash across the continent more political than physical.

Goodbye, Cévennes! I will miss you dearly!! 

But there will be time enough to return. Go on, go on, let the magnets and the engineers carry you forward.

Perhaps there’s something important good and connective about trains, as well? Maybe there is space to redeem ourselves? Maybe if we leave our own interests behind and join in common cause?

I attended the centenary of the 1918 Armistice on a footbridge across the Rhine on the France-Germany border. Then there were lots of jokes about how it was about time for Alsace-Lorraine to go back to Germany, and also tears of relief that such a war hasn’t happened since 1945. If there are no wars between France and Germany for so long then surely more is possible.

Borders are weird places.

“The architecture here is, like, really weird,” Trucy says, eating her solero and looking, unimpressed, at one of the Europe’s greatest achievements. “Is it supposed to look like a spaceship?”

Trucy is right. It is weird. I love it so much. I think Edgeworth is absolutely involved in the European Court of Human Rights. It’s a bit for show, a bit actually effective, and mostly a massive symbol for… something.

While he’s there the law will change, and there will be dancing in the streets.

The Law has enormous power. In the right hands, it promotes human justice, and allows for the truth to be codified. In more mundane light, too, it orders things you hardly think about. A number of years ago, it was revealed that a mix-up on my birth certificate means that I have two available names. It took a while to actually work out what this meant; for a while I thought that I was legally registered under a name that wasn’t mine. It was upsetting! And then for trans people, getting the right name of their birth certs and personal IDs is a concrete affirmation. According to the state and its laws, this is who you are. 

Sharp Objects says: I have returned to my childhood, the scene of the crime. This refers to real crime and also a more abstract one. 

Anyway I have no way to end this. Let me know if you have any questions?

The Prodigal

The brown enormous odor he lived by was too close, with its breathing and thick hair, for him to judge. The floor was rotten; the sty was plastered halfway up with glass-smooth dung. Light-lashed, self-righteous, above moving snouts, the pigs' eyes followed him, a cheerful stare-- even to the sow that always ate her young-- till, sickening, he leaned to scratch her head. But sometimes mornings after drinking bouts (he hid the pints behind the two-by-fours), the sunrise glazed the barnyard mud with red the burning puddles seemed to reassure. And then he thought he almost might endure his exile yet another year or more.

But evenings the first star came to warn. The farmer whom he worked for came at dark to shut the cows and horses in the barn beneath their overhanging clouds of hay, with pitchforks, faint forked lightnings, catching light, safe and companionable as in the Ark. The pigs stuck out their little feet and snored. The lantern--like the sun, going away-- laid on the mud a pacing aureole. Carrying a bucket along a slimy board, he felt the bats' uncertain staggering flight, his shuddering insights, beyond his control, touching him. But it took him a long time finally to make up his mind to go home

-- Elizabeth Bishop

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