and what is your relation to mr are'bal
it was the summer of 2019........ the air was hot..... childrens laughter tumbled down the street.... and i was inside, roleplaying ace attorney on twitter
my muse order was detective gumshoe - furio tigre - daryan crescend with some tiny muses scattered in between, but by this point i was tired, i needed something new, something ZAZZY
and my friends were like, "hey you haven't played aa6 yet right? please, there are like two aa6 muses in this entire rp space, we are so lonely" and i was like okayyy ^_^
lured in with one specific promise. there is a character named datz are'bal and he is very weird uncle and gay for dhurke sahdmadhi (we already had a dhurke sahdmadhi writer) (no doubles)
so i went in. i had to meet the weird gay uncle. i think it was like august... what else is there to say? i met him... he was beuaitufl....
but meeting him wasn't enough. of course i picked him up as my next writing muse and then it all got very out of hand. i was obsessed. brainrot isn't a strong enough word
as the aa roleplay scene died out my longest writing partner and i moved to discord and spent another three(?) years writing dhurke and datz... any permutation we could think of...
and i slowly taught myself how to draw- not just datz, but humans in general, because as of that point i was entirely a furry artist. i needed to capture his 46-year-oldedness
oh but this was not a mere 3 year endeavor. five years later, as i am currently writing this, i have not stopped thinking about This Weird Man
BUT WHY ???
HOW COULD I NOT LOVE HIM? YOU TELL ME. of course, check the analysis tab for more info about his actual character... :)
but for me, it's about three things. four maybe.
-one, he is an Absurd Character. he is entirely jokes. ace attorney is an unserious series, but datz is, i would argue, the most unserious man behind sherlock holmes. i don't think datz out-sillies him, but it's very close! he is always Doing Some Shit.
-two, despite this silliness, he is So Loyal. it breaks my heart. he's the most devoted loyal man, and anyone who thinks about him for five minutes will come to the same conclusion... his dedication to the sahdmadhi family AND the revolution is so. clear. oh my god DATZ
he's what made me realize i adore the "devoted right hand man" character trope so much...
-THE GAY UNCLE ASPECT REALLY IS GETTING TO ME. it's not technically canon but it's way too easy to see. he's "your dad's single friend who was around a lot when you were a kid". he helped dhurke raise those boys. like. He's so. And the. Hneufghdlfkg. Uhehuldnfgd!!! HE LOVES THAT FAMILY SO MUCH! and thinking about how good he'd be with kids... :(
-also he's just cool objectively? he's soooo badass and capable and serious when he really needs to be. the revolutionary part of his character is genuinely so awesome to me. i love rebels and freedom fighters. he's an unabashed political character (which, ace attorney is inherently political, but still..!) who pushes against the idyllic "tourist" view of khura'in we're given by the time we meet him. i love how he fights for the cause and it's the only time he really locks in, no jokes, when he's talking about the defiant dragons and their cause... and his cool kukri and his cool wilderness man vibe... being a paratrooper who carries around a knife and makes his own firecrackers... he's sooooo cool!!
-the last thing, and possibly most important, is THAT he's so unappreciated, this drives me to think about him and speak about him. all the main characters have people who think about them and analyze them, but who will think of little ol' datz? every side character needs at least one obsessed fan and i was put on this earth to be a datz are'bal scholar
...? that's five things. and honestly don't feel like i expressed it well enough. read my mind ok? or just read the rest of this shrine. hopefully my love for him comes through ^_^
