Completely Agree - Blog Posts
Fuck you man- "in moments of survival humans will regress into our base instinct to survive and throw anyone away to do so"
Literally proven not true when Seong Gi Hun's loan shark ally gave up his life in Rock, Papers, Scissors, Death to save the other guy. Who is the type of person the VIPs and the Frontman consider "Trash" and "rats" of the earth. He saw him as a friend and a brother, officiated his wedding, despite being a piece of shit he sacrificed himself, while the Frontman straight up shot his actual kid brother.
They cannot predict how people will react, they can just create the worse situations and hope it causes strife and conflict. Which it does. But it also creates friendships and loyalty, and thats a phenomenon that continues to confound and intrigue them. They believe it's a fluke, the humanity shown despite the horrors seen. Love so overcoming you strive for someone else's survival over your own. The outstretching of a hand despite the possibility of being bit. But really I believe its a core factor of our survival, and of the show
I'm gonna ride the wave here and talk about Rise from the Ashes and why, even though I think it's a good retcon and doesn't involve any contradiction either factual or thematic, I believe it is still undeniably a retcon.
The crux of the matter, I think, is the definition of retcon. Here's what Merriam-Webster has to say about it:
the act, practice, or result of changing an existing fictional narrative by introducing new information in a later work that recontextualizes previously established events, characters, etc.
It has to change the narrative, not the events of the story themselves. It has to recontextualise the events in question. And I'd argue the case does those exact two things by establishing that Miles Edgeworth not only never willfully forged evidence, but was morally against it in the first place, even though the contrary had been implied in the four first cases of the game.
Here's how Miles Edgeworth is introduced in Turnabout Sisters, in the first conversation we have about him with Gumshoe. There are two dialogue options, one where you can say that yes, you do know him, or one where you say that no, you don't.
Here's what Phoenix has to say about Edgeworth if you pick "I know him":
I know him. He's a feared prosecutor. He doesn't feel pain, he doesn't feel remorse. He won't stop until he gets his "guilty" verdict.
And here's what he has to say if you pick "I don't know him:"
(Of course I know him... I was just playing dumb. He's a cold, heartless machine who'll do anything to get a "guilty" verdict! There are rumors of back-alley deals and forged evidence...)
The words "forged evidence" appear only in one of the two options. They're only rumours; there's nothing established. However this is the first discussion of his character; this is the first impression we get of him. The idea we are supposed to get from him is someone ruthless and without scruples, who "hates crime with an abnormal passion."
Later on there is of course the case of the updated autopsy report. The new report is entirely legitimate and treated as such. However it is presented by the narrative as an underhanded trick, with Phoenix exclaiming against it, and further establishes Edgeworth's lack of limits in his prosecuting ethics set up by the conversation with Gumshoe - confirming our bias. We're still talking about narrative intent here, not merely the facts of the story. The updated autopsy report is not an instance of Edgeworth forging evidence, however it showcases his ruthlessness, which by extension serves to corroborate the rumours Phoenix was talking about with Gumshoe - making you believe Edgeworth would indeed tamper with proof without showing him doing so. Edgeworth coaching the witness's testimony and withholding the wiretap has the same effect.
Right before the second trial day, we get to talk with Edgeworth himself, who has come to warn us that even though he knows Phoenix, Phoenix shouldn't expect any mercy from him. Here's what he has to say:
Edgeworth: [...] whatever Mr. White says today, it will be the "absolute truth." No matter how you try to attack his testimony... If I raise an objection, I have it on good faith that the judge will listen to me. Phoenix: (What, does White have the judge in his pocket, too!?) So... you're saying I'm going to be guilty. End of story? Edgeworth: ... I will do anything to get my verdict, Mr. Wright. Anything. Maya: Why... Why!? How can you torment an innocent person like this!? Edgeworth: "Innocent"...? How can we know that? The guilty will always lie, to avoid being found out. There's no way to tell who is guilty and who is innocent! All that I can hope to do is get every defendant declared "guilty"! So I make that my policy.
There is also the climax of the case, where Edgeworth tries to request the trial to be extended one more day:
Edgeworth: Ergo! I would like to request one more day before Phoenix Wright is granted his freedom. I need time to make one more inquiry into this matter. Judge: Hmm...! Phoenix: (Another inquiry...!? This isn't going to be another one of those "updated autopsy reports"! This guy just makes up evidence as he pleases! This is bad...!)
This heightens the stakes and creates tension as Phoenix puts his foot down and requires for the trial to come to an end on that day - and it does thanks to Mia's intervention. Once more Edgeworth forging evidence isn't shown, but is implied in a way that we are meant to take as fact.
So that is the image we have of Edgeworth by the end of case 1-2, our first confrontation with him. Someone ruthless, someone who will do "anything" to get his guilty verdict - even if that involves shady dealings (such as, but not limited to, tampering with evidence). Someone without limits.
Then 1-3 happens, where in the course of the trial Edgeworth realises Will Powers is innocent and helps us corner Dee Vasquez into confessing to being the true killer, therefore throwing his trial and helping us win against him. This is a big deal. This is a cornerstone of the arc of game 1, of Edgeworth's redemption arc. After that we get the infamous "unnecessary feelings" scene, where Edgeworth confirms it: he was shaken by the events of this trial and his first loss in the previous one. This is something new for him.
And afterwards of course is 1-4, where we get to the bottom of Edgeworth's vitriolic hatred for criminals and discover his backstory. We get to meet his mentor von Karma, "twenty times as ruthless as him," and witness him pull all the stops to prevent us winning and making our life really difficult. Interestingly he, too, skirts the line of forging evidence, but that fact pales in comparison to everything he does do: orchestrating a murder and framing Edgeworth for it, destroying the letter that incriminated him, hiding the evidence of DL-6 so that Phoenix cannot have access to anything to solve the case.
(On a side note: von Karma using "faulty evidence" against Gregory Edgeworth is actually an established fact, and I think the way AAI-2 retconned that to introduce Blaise was quite clever, but maybe I'll make a similar post about Manfred after the AAI Collection comes out in September)
So that's Edgeworth's arc, where he is confronted to a world where getting a "guilty verdict" isn't always the morally correct choice to make, and where his worldview is entirely deconstructed to allow him a redemption arc. His return in 2-4 continues that arc with his new motto of the "truth" being the most important thing (implying that hadn't always been at the centre of his considerations).
Now compares this with what he says in 1-5.
Edgeworth: Of course not! I didn't touch the evidence. Yes, I will do anything in my power to win a trial. However... I do have a code, and I follow it faithfully.
This is the first time we hear of Edgeworth having a moral code. This is the first time we hear of Edgeworth having limits to what he allows himself to do to earn his guilty verdicts. Up until now all we heard was "anything," as well as justifications as to why defendants deserve and need to be punished - "anything," by essence, implies not having limits.
It's not a contradiction. But it's a recontextualisation, and therefore a retcon.
I'm not going to give quotes or we'll be here the whole day, but we all know what 1-5 then does; SL-9, the Joe Darke killings, Gant's involvement.
By giving the rumours of forged evidence about Edgeworth a tangible starting point, the case reframes them, from something that he was previously implied to do routinely to a single event, one that was orchestrated behind his back and that he had no bearing on or even any idea it was happening. By establishing that Edgeworth does follow a moral code, his image of fearless prosecutor is deconstructed even further; where in 1-4 we were given a reason for his actions, now we are actually being told his actions weren't as severe as hearsay (and Phoenix's bias) led us to believe.
The case also introduces the idea of "working with the defence" and the search of the truth to Edgeworth, which plants the seed for his eventual return in 2-4 and deepens his character arc a little more.
Thematically, I personally think 1-5 inserts itself very well into the larger narrative. It plays with both themes and facts established by game 1 and teases themes and facts that will come in the next games (2-4, all of game 4). However it does recontextualise Edgeworth's arc by establishing he never willfully forged evidence, contrarily to what was previously implied, and giving him a retroactive caveat to his policy of "anything to achieve his guilty verdict" that hadn't existed before. Therefore, it is a retcon, albeit one that works, in my opinion, well within the larger arc of the games and with Edgeworth's character.
random but i've been thinking about tcomc again and how i find it sort of disappointing that adpatations, when picking which conspirator to build up as edmond's ultimate adversary (which i sort of dislike in the first place tbh), always choose fernand, when if there is one that fits that role better it's villefort. usually mondego ends up as the more prominent of the enemies because he's the one with the most personal motivation, and ends up as mercédès' husband and albert's father. he's the one "closer" to edmond, being the one who somewhat "takes his place" in life, becoming the husband of his fiancée and the father of a son that mercédès says "should have been ours". plus, focusing on the love triangle is easy. but in the text of the novel, the conspirator who gets more space and is, in my opinion, a more definite foil to edmond, is villefort. edmond is arrested at his engagement/wedding party, villefort is picked up from his own engagement party to go interrogate him. both edmond and villefort are strongly motivated in life by their bonds with their respective fathers, though for wildly different reasons - and villefort keeps his disabled father in his home, while still resenting him, when edmond will never see his father again because villefort condemned him to protect his. both of them lose their first love, though in different ways. it's villefort's daughter edmond has to save from the mechanism he set in motion himself because his own surrogate son, maximilien, is in love with her. benedetto is villefort's son but spends some time believing his father is actually monte cristo. villefort's defeat is the only one that edmond (and the reader) doesn't enjoy, because inadvertently by destroying him he also causes the death of his innocent child, and that is what leads him to realise he may have gone too far. villefort ends up mad, when he'd hoped edmond would go insane in the chauteau d'if. and both of them of course have an intense and complex relationship with the concept of justice. and i could go on
Tumblr's all, "we need stories where victims don't forgive their abusers," this and, "more stories where victims take revenge on their abusers," that but when I, Maxim de Winter —
Robert Kendo, for all he was only in it a few moments, played a very important role in RE3. And that role was to show us the real Jill Valentine.
Jill, for most of RE 3 is furious. She’s spent months being beaten down mentally, both from the events of the Spencer Mansion, Umbrella’s watchdogs, and Irons sweeping it under the rug. Now her home, the place she’s sworn to protect, in being destroyed all around her and she helpless to do anything about it. And now the only people she has to work with work for Umbrella, they very company that not only caused the outbreak, but have been tormenting her.
It’s no wonder through the game her anger radiates from her. And because of that it’s easy to write off that anger as all Jill is, the Hollywood ‘strong female character’, displaying her strength through anger and violence.
But when she sees Kendo, that anger melts away. This is the first person she’s really gotten to talk to that’s not a UBCS person besides Brad, with whom she barely has time to do more than react. And she’s friendly, encouraging. She praises his skill and talks about when they get out, with more hope than we’ve seen from her yet. And you realize this is Jill on a normal day. This is what she’s like with people. She’s not just a machine of snark and survival.
It shows us that Jill as a character is much deeper than her anger. And that’s something that so easily could have been overlooked