get kestreled bozo
Okay, I’ve been considering it for quite a bit and I think that if Tumblr existed in Japanifornia… most of us would probably not be aware of the series’ main characters.
Like, lawyers just don’t tend to be high-profile publicly-known figures. Even within True Crime communities or the coverage of high-public-interest cases, people don’t tend to focus on the lawyers as much more than a representative of the defendant and the legal system as a whole. And yeah, you can say this is just because real-life lawyers are Boring and if they did the kind of Bonkers Shit AA Lawyers do we would pay attention to them… but we do actually have textual evidence that Japanifornia treats lawyers not-too-differently than real life.
Mia’s murder, and probably the uncovering of all of Bluecorp’s dirty dealing, was highly talked about, but Phoenix’s actions in court went kinda ignored. And note that this is the case where Phoenix literally defended himself and broke the Demon Prosecutor’s five years winning streak, and that wasn’t enough to draw eyes to his part in this whole case.
And that’s also generally consistent with how characters treat Phoenix throughout the rest of the games. By the AJ Trilogy era, it’s clear that Phoenix has made quite a name for himself… in the legal world. If you are yourself a lawyer or another sort of legal professional or just unusually interested in court proceeding, you know the name ‘Phoenix Wright’
But if you’re just a regular person who cares about the law the Regular Amount, you probably have no idea who this is.
So I’d guess most of Japanifornian Tumblr would probably be aware of a lot of the cases in the games, especially considering how many of them concern, like, corporate corruption and organized crime and legal corruption and international politics and the entertainment industry and other such stuff that makes it likely to get national/international news coverage. And also so many of them are so bizarre and wacky and are thus prime meme fodder…
But most people wouldn’t necessarily know the name of the lawyer the Nickel Samurai blackmailed to defend him after he ordered an assassin to kill the Jammin’ Ninja, or even how involved that lawyer actually was in Matt Engarde’s downfall.
But there would probably be a small mini-fandom of Tumblrina Lawyers and other legal nerds who are ABSOLUTELY obsessed with the WAA, and trying to collect any piece of info they can find about their adventures.
(That’s also another aspect to consider, the general public in Japanifornia does not have full knowledge of everything we get to see in the game. News coverage of the smaller cases would be extremely minimal and very regional - and even the bigger cases probably won’t give you a full line-by-line record of everything that happened in Court. Apollo Justice was, like, the Biggest Phoenix Wright Stan in the Universe and he had very choppy and partial knowledge of the Gramarye Trial. We have to consider that even folks who are trying to keep track of the AA Lawyers in-universe would not get the full picture from the media. And that’s before we get into fake news and rumors.)
And meanwhile, the rest of Tumblr would probably treat that Fandom the same sort of bemused delight we give to, like, the extremely dedicated gimmick blogs. Like, you’d probably see less posts about Phoenix and Co. as you’d see posts memeing about the fact there’s a Tumblr Fandom for ‘some random law agency in Japanifornia’, they’d be like five thousands people in the notes going “There’s a Tumblr Fandom for WHAT? WHY IS THIS THE FIRST TIME I’M HEARING ABOUT THIS??” and then one person from the WAA fandom going “NO YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THIS IS THE GUY WHO UNCOVERED THE PHANTOM HE’S JUMPED OFF A BURNING BRIDGE ONCE YOU LITERALLY TALKED ABOUT A TRIAL HE DID YESTERDAY YOU JUST DON’T KNOW HE WAS INVOLVED”.
Now, that’s all for the Defense Attorneys. The Prosecutors have a bit more publicity. I mean, Phoenix literally heard about Prosecutor Edgeworth on the news.
But also… I do think this publicity is highly regional. Like, Phoenix ended up stumbling on newspaper coverage of Miles because he lives in the same city as him. I’m guessing that most of the series’ Prosecutors are at least casually known not just to Legal Folks, but also generally to people within Los Angetokyo and people involved in Japanifornian Politics… but also not much outside of that sphere either. Again, the series does establish that they are not that well-known amongst laypeople even when they are famous amongst other lawyers
And are generally recognized by fellow legal professionals and journalists and people involved in criminal activity. So the situation with them won’t be that different than with the WAA, they might be a tad more high-profile, depending on how many Tumblr users are specifically from Japaniforina and wanna make memes about the local politics… but those who will get really invested in their misadventures won’t be that different from the kind of people who’d get really into Phoenix Wright.
Klavier is the obvious exception. Like most Famous Lawyers, he’s actually primarily famous for something other than law. It’s just that in his case, instead of politics, it’s being a world-famous rock star. There’s plenty of textual evidence that the Gavinners are an actual household name and they’d probably have a pretty sizable Tumblr Fandom, but… well… while I assume any casual Gavinner fan knows that Klavier is also a Prosecutor, I’d guess only the insanely dedicated fans and the Haters looking for something problematic would actually start digging into the records of the cases he worked on. But then again, Tumblr does have a lot of insanely dedicated fans and Haters, so maybe Legal Misadventures Involving Klavier would be kinda mainstream on Japanifornia Tumblr.
BOTD: Bare-legged Owl
"A charming owl with large dark eyes, bushy white or buff eyebrows, and a buffy mustache. At night hunts woodlands or open areas with large trees; during the day roosts in tree cavities or caves. Its song is a distinctive accelerating soft 'hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo…' that has a 'bouncing ball' rhythm; occasionally gives a screech."
- eBird
I've been stitching some cicadas lately. This year is going to be a big one for the screaming bugs!
For those unaware, Super Mario Maker for the Wii U disabled uploading levels in March of 2021, and is shutting down its servers entirely in April of this year. I don't know if there's a good estimate on how many levels have been created in SMM's lifetime, but in 2016 Nintendo reported about 7.5 million levels created by players, so the number is High.
In the meantime there is a community dedicated to taking every level that has yet to be cleared for the first time, and clearing it. Some of these levels take 6-10 hours of attempts to beat, and some of them use obscure glitches that no one else has discovered. Nevertheless, as of a few months ago there were less than 20,000 uncleared levels and currently there are less than 1,000.
Nothing remains but the most difficult platform experiences you can imagine. The community is confident they can "beat Super Mario Maker" but the deadline is fast approaching. It will be a tight race, and this is shaping up to be a potentially historic moment.
As of yesterday, all levels uploaded in 2016 have been cleared.
There are now 10 levels left.
We're looking at a full clear by Friday.
It is Thursday, Ides of March Eve, and there are 3 levels left before every single level in Super Mario Maker has been beaten by someone.
Imagine being the person that made a level so hard that literally every level ever made in this engine has been beaten except yours and 2 others.
Additional update, March 15th. There is now 1 level remaining.
This image is the entire level. The end goal is at the red door at the right, which is connected to the red door at the top left. Meaning if you follow that little zig-zag upward to that door, you beat the level.
The level takes 17 seconds to beat. Or it would, if anyone but the level creator had ever beaten it.
At the exact time of writing this post there have been 92,333 attempts at beating this level across 1,115 players. That means on average each person has made 83 attempts at this 17-second level. According to youtuber/Mario player Grand POOBear, yesterday it had somewhere around 50,000 attempts, which means that over the course of about 24 hours Mario has died 40,000 times to this one level.
my official stance is a pregnancy is whatever the pregnant person wants it to be. if it’s a 4 week old clump of cells and they want to call it a baby it’s a baby. if they're 20 weeks and they want to call it a parasite it’s a parasite. if they're 39 weeks and call it a fetus it’s a fetus. “why are you so sad about miscarrying at 6 weeks it was literally just an embryo” because that was their baby. “how can you get an abortion at three months” because that wasn’t a baby. hope that helps.
This meme population has persisted in the pre-internet ecosystem since 44 BC, but for over a millennium the meme remained at very low population levels. Introduction to the theater habitats of England in approximately 1599 by an early meme ecologist (also notable for the introduction of such memes as Damned Spot and To Be Or Not To Be) caused a population boom that has led to the continued stable population of Ides of March despite the extinction or near extinction of the Ides of other months and all known Nones and Kalends.
The Ides Of March, like many other calendar memes such as April 25th (The Perfect Date), Thursday The 20th, and It's October 3rd, has a life cycle that can confuse amateur memeologists. These memes benefit greatly from the presence of scheduled posts in the ecosystem, appearing absent until their highly specific time, when the memes all bloom simultaneously and dominate the dashes of many users.
The annual bloom of the Ides of March meme is almost here!
For those who are new to the tumblr ecosystem, it can be overwhelming, but even for the rest of us, it's a sight to behold! This Ides of March, remember to take a few minutes to stop and smell the refreshing aroma of emperor blood. Spring is here!
Maybe this strange and interesting plant displayed on my blog will attract followers.
WOW. WHAT A STRANGE AND INTERESTING PLANT
real life society: we need to ban tiktok because china is evil
my ideal society: new species of deer was just discovered in Peru. it is shown on all news channels and the entire population spends the day discussing & reflecting on life's diversity, people are let off work early
FEBUZOIC DAY 4
Queensland, Australia - Ypresian stage, 55Ma before present
300,000 years ago, the planet experienced a short, geologically speaking, spike in temperatures that caused somewhere between 5-8C of warming. This spike marked the transition from the Palaeocene epoch to the Eocene, and although the event is over, the already hot world of the Cenozoic is slowly getting hotter. Dawn breaks on a greenhouse planet.
As the light touches the shores of lake Murgon, the last of the bats retreat into the shadows, and the crocodiles, giant snakes and odd wading birds that line the shore are revealed. The plethora of water-loving insects begins to hum in the suns rays, but their noise in punctured by a new sound; birdsong. A small, relatively unassuming looking bird hops along the rocks of the shoreline, stopping occasionally to produce short bursts of complex vocalisation. He is a one of the first passerines, a group that in the modern day contains around half of all bird species, from crows to blackbirds to the New Zealand rock wren.
Birds, the only dinosaurs to have survived the extinction event 11 million years ago, have exploded in diversity and are now fulfilling a huge number of roles in the ecosystem. There are now a huge amount of birds calling to eachother in the dawn, and the songs of this little bird pick it out from the crowd of not just other bird species, but other birds of the same species. As time passes, the evolutionary process will select for more and more intricate songs until they arrive in the Holocene in their beautiful modern form.
Owlbear, but it's a variant that mysteriously happens to look just like it's part pigeon
-2626
There’s a tale in Greek mythology, of a land of people known as the Lotus Eaters.
Their home was a far-off isle, where they led lives of indulgent indolence, anesthetized by the diet of narcotic fruit that gave them their name. Their existence was blissful, thoughtless, selfish.
Travelers to those shores were often tempted into tasting the lotus themselves—upon which they would lose not only their capacity to care about the wider world, but also their memories of it.
The Carolina Parakeet was a creature doomed by its appetite. The bird preferred to pick seeds from fruit rather than consuming the flesh, and a flock of hungry parakeets, tearing into the hearts of unripe apples on an early summer day, could spell ruin for a farmer. They also had a taste for the corn that was beginning its monopolization of American fields. No amount of helpful bur-clearing could make up for a lost harvest, a lost livelihood.
Our parakeets were beautiful, unique, cheerful, made tame companions, and brightened up the drab, grey days of winter. But they were a threat to human agriculture and economy, and, so, they had to go.
The people who shot and trapped the flocks probably felt like they had no other option. And maybe they didn’t. Maybe you or I would have done the same—willing to sacrifice a few ravenous birds to make sure our families wouldn’t be the ones to starve instead. (What are the concerns of a different species, when your own children cry out in hunger—whether man or parakeet?)
But to remember that a bird called the Carolina Parakeet existed—to remember what we did to it, what we’ve done to hundreds of other lost creatures, and those that continue to vanish every day—is a decision that is fully in our own hands. Yet, less than a century after its extinction, this remarkable bird, once known across the continent, has already slipped from common, collective memory.
To forget is a choice that no one should stomach.
The title of this painting is ‘To Each According to His Appetite’. It is gouache on 18x24” paper, and is #8 in my series focusing on the extinct Carolina Parakeet.
Some thoughts on Tarkin, Vader, and Palpatine and the colonial order of things from Luceno’s Tarkin
He began to pace again. “It has come to my attention that a certain being present has failed to grasp that his recent actions reflect a flagrant disrespect for the Emperor. His brazen behavior suggests that he actually takes some pride in his actions. But his duplicity has not gone unnoticed. We are pleased to be able to make an example of him, so that the rest of you might profit at his expense.”
-Tarkin (James Luceno)
Note the politics here. Vader is essentially shipping criminals to the Outer Rim where they can work with impunity, more or less (avid capitalists get sent to the Corporate Sector, which is run by conglomerates). That way all the disorder and chaos is sent away, and then everyone in the Core can look over at the Outer Rim as lawless, and get behind even more militarization and draconian measures of control. The Empire doesn’t really clean up anything, it just shifts things around to encourage systems of inequality in order to feed its war machine.
Interestingly enough, this represents only an intensification of the conditions during the Old Republic. As @blue-mint-winter mentioned Tarkin, Vader, and even the Emperor himself are from worlds marginal to the Core. Luceno brings this up in this text early on a couple of times. First between Tarkin and Palpatine:
“Turn the galaxy inside out?” Tarkin said more strongly than he intended. “Quite the opposite, my lord. The populations of those worlds wreaked havoc. They must earn the right to rejoin the galactic community.”
“And the ones that waver or refuse?”
“They should be made to suffer.”
“Sanctions?” the Emperor said, seemingly intrigued by Tarkin’s response. “Embargoes? Ostracism?”
“If they are intractable, then yes. The Empire cannot be destabilized.”
“Obliteration.”
“Whatever you deem necessary, my lord. Force is the only real and unanswerable power. Oftentimes, beings who haven’t been duly punished cannot be reasoned with or edified.“
It’s a intriguing to ponder Tarkin and Palpatine as products of an earlier colonial regime (where they are elites) reaching it’s highest form in the Empire (indeed the text itself puts this in Palpatine’s mouth, as in these are the worlds that formed them). It can’t be a coincidence that the enforcer of the regime is Vader, born a slave in the colonies himself. The Emperor underscores this in a conversation where Vader is much less smug than Tarkin is above:
Vader said nothing.
“Come, Darth Vader, you of all people should accept that some are born for greatness. That some are larger than life.”
Vader remained silent.
“Yes, Lord Vader-Tarkin.” Sidious softened his tone. “You are a true Sith, Lord Vader. Your dedication is unerring and your powers unparalleled. Perhaps, however, you are under the misimpression that only Sith and Jedi have trials to pass.”
“What trials has Governor Tarkin passed?”
“Have you never been to Eriadu?”
“I have.”
“Then you know what that world is like. Venture outside the safe haven of Eriadu City and the land is every bit as bleak and hostile as Tatooine. That land forged Tarkin in much the same way Tatooine forged you.”
Vader shook his head. “Tatooine did not forge me.”
Sidious stared at him, then grinned faintly. “Ah, I see. Slavery and the desert forged Skywalker. Is that what you mean?”
Vader left the question unanswered. “What trials did Tarkin endure?”
Sidious took a long moment to respond. “Trials that helped transform him into the military mastermind he has become.”
Trials is an imprecise way of putting it of course. It’s more like subscribing to a framework where it’s really survival of the fittest, where self interest is at such a premium to the point that everyone else means nothing. It’s not that this happens only at the Outer Rim, it’s that its *blatant* in the Outer Rim because it is legitimized as the normal state of affairs.
Drawing American Woodcocks to revitalize my life essence.
snowy owl observations (conclusion: paws)