There’s just something extremely touching about watching Izutsumi work through a wide range of emotions when she sees Marcille cry for the first time.
She’s sleeping on Marcille’s lap when it happens—something she hadn’t willingly done since her human consciousness was subdued in the Golden Country.
Izutsumi was initially very embarrassed when she remembered showing Marcille such unbridled affection when her monster (cat) side had full control in Melini. But now, shortly after, she did it again without any fuss, seemingly over this embarrassment.
But when she notices Marcille crying—not crying expressive tears over a situation with low stakes, but tears of real sorrow and loss—Izutsumi physically recoils.
She reacts with the childlike fear and panic that one feels when someone they heavily rely on and trust (like a parent or teacher) shows vulnerability, doubt, or weakness. She lashes out, trying to use words of reproach to get Marcille to stop crying. Or, in childlike terms, to try to force Marcille’s pain go away.
When that doesn’t work, we see her physically struggle as she tries to sit by and wait it out. But Izutsumi can’t do it.
Marcille’s pain causes her so much intense distress that Izutsumi immediately offers physical affection as a response—something she has not done for anyone up to this point.
When Senshi told the party about his traumatic backstory, Izutsumi did not touch him. She did support him, tried to offer words of comfort, but she did not embrace him like the others did. Maybe she didn’t know how; maybe she didn’t have a proper example on what comforting someone looked like. But she saw all three of them reach for Senshi, she saw them hold him in their arms, and anchor him as he cried.
This is the first time another party member has cried out of sadness since that moment. It’s possible that she saw how the others helped Senshi, and maybe, subconsciously, she saw that it worked. That it made him feel better.
She is clearly unused to it, and has her own rollercoaster of emotions as Marcille gratefully accepts the comfort Izutsumi is offering her. But it helps. It helps Marcille immediately, and Izutsumi knows this.
These acts of vulnerability are foreign to her, and thus make her feel uncomfortable, but she lets Marcille lean on her afterwards anyway. She wanted Marcille to be okay, wanted it so badly, that she accidentally overcame an emotional obstacle she never even knew she had.
I attended a Dungeon Meshi themed dinner last weekend and wanted to share what was brought/devoured! Enjoy the comparison of what the dishes looked like irl vs the show
I love you "secretly mean to everyone" Phoenix
I love you "team dad sunshine in a bottle" Phoenix
I love you pan Miles
I love you ace/demi/gray Miles
I love you gay Phoenix
I love you bi Phoenix
I love you sexually experienced Miles
I love you touch starved Miles
I love you "head over heels for Dollie and wanting to try it out officially with Iris" Phoenix
I love you "I was just trying out being with a girl when I dated Dollie and it didn't work out" Phoenix
I love you "I'm still experiencing trauma from my childhood and my father's death twenty years later" Miles
I love you "the past is the past and I've got therapy and I'm happy" Miles
I love you "Dollie severely traumatized me" Phoenix
I love you "Dollie was just a bad ex and I'm fine" Phoenix
I love you "we've been dating since the first game" Wrightworth
I love you "it's post-Spirts of Justice and we still haven't got together" Wrightworth
I love you "I sent letters to Miles from the moment he left for Germany" Phoenix
I love you "I had no idea where Miles was and couldn't send him letters while he was in Germany" Phoenix
I love you "actually living with von Karma wasn't so bad he mostly took good care of me" Miles
I love you "von Karma was some flavor and some degree of abusive" Miles
I love you "I knew Miles wasn't dead and I was just pissed that he left so abruptly" Phoenix
I love you "I thought that suicide note was real and I'm pissed you fooled me into thinking you were dead" Phoenix
I love you "My note was obviously just about going to find myself and I'm not sorry" Miles
I love you "My note was serious but something changed my mind" Miles
I love you "I was aware I've loved you since I was nine" Phoenix
I love you "I just am now figuring out that maybe going to law school to save a guy I knew for half a year wasn't platonic and I'm in my thirties" Phoenix
There are so many absolutely fantastic variables to tell this story with and I love them all.
I love you, Ace Attorney fandom, for providing me with so many lovely stories with which to wile away my time, probably more than I should be wiling it away.
i knew it. phoenix is a bottom.
Based on this post by @malaierba !!
Modern AU but Shuro has short hair and Namari mistook him for her dad: the aftermath
i love you forever and ever girldad chilchuck
i headcanon that gabe and emilie would want to create a sentibaby that's a mix of their own DNA--which, why can't they do that? Dusuu's got to use some sort of genetic material
but what if they wanted to test the possible combinations of their DNA before deciding on their perfect designer baby? what if you're adrien agreste model 1.0? it's a little weird when you come into the world, fully grown, and the first thing you're asked to do is turn around slowly on the spot. there's some lady in a mask and a peacock dress, smiling as you stand there, awaiting judgement. her counterpart, standing behind her, seems uncertain. but you don't think much of that. there's no time to think much of that--not when all of a sudden you're sitting at a desk, with pages of equations written on them. problems you're meant to solve.
somehow, you know you've learned this math somewhere--even if you don't remember when or how. but they keep watching you--scrutinizing every line of your pencil. you finally dare to ask them about it--because it's weird, right? and god, if they could just leave you alone for ten minutes, you could probably finish this easily. but your examiners' lips turn down at your outburst. and you're snapped away before you even manage to look back down at the page
what if you're adrien agreste model 13.6, and everything you do elicits little whoops of joy from the peacock lady? in your several hours of existence, you've spoken five different languages and carried out a slew of endurance, agility, and cognitive tests. and most importantly--although you don't know why your examiners seem to praise you for this--you never talked back once
the peacock lady claps her hands together, and even the man behind her--who you've come to realize isn't nearly as easy to crack--can't seem to stop smiling. and you don't understand why something about that fills you with dread, but it does. it's a sort of all-consuming, impossible to shake dread. but you smile through it anyways
you don't know that once you disappear, a smaller version of you will come forth into the world. or that, years later, you'll feel that same sort of sick feeling in your gut
you're adrien agreste model 13.7, and you don't know there's anything weird about the way you came into this world. you don't realize your mother sometimes misses 6.8's dimples, or that your father often wishes they'd gone with 11.2--who would have had a real head for business
and you never do figure out why something always feels just a little bit wrong
how to (not) court a defense lawyer
Hang in there, Marcille.
Bonus Izutsumi ver: