#AA3 epilogue I love you

[science-lings]

Every single time I get done drawing something for my Fem!Pheonix AU I get another idea, it’s a never ending cycle…

[oodlyenough]

aa3 trials and tribulations

alright after dragging my heels to get four months out of a idk 35 hour game i have finished aa3. spoilery thoughts mostly about the last case bc i played the others months ago fjglhgkf

Positive stuff:

FRANZISKA... my mvp... I loved Franziska after aa2 but she was so great here, everything I could've wanted from her lmao. My best worst girl. I LOVED having her hang out with Phoenix fhlgfhgklf incredible, showstopping, spectacular. Their dynamic is sooo much fun and I also really liked seeing her interact with the witnesses outside of the courtroom, and how she tries to establish her authority but uses that authority to try and comfort them, etc -- she gets mad at Phoenix when he isn't complimentary enough of Sister Bikini lol, she takes control of the sacred cavern situation, she bullies Edgeworth into selfcare garden sulking after the earthquake, etc. It was really interesting and kind of sweet, in her way, it was nice to see that side of her. I can easier see how she and Adrian ended up with their weird gay thing although I have to admit Franmaya remains my Franziska ship of choice. (Just yesterday I was telling someone "I want Franziska to show Maya how to use her whip"... so close and yet so far Capcom.)

Defense attorney Edgeworth was awesome what a fun idea, and the Edgeworth/Franziska court battle ruled. I think I talked about it a lot at the time so I won't dwell much but lmao. wonderful. you're both sooooo bonkers

The Fey family drama! Cool af! Love a matriarchal society of women murdering each other. Amazing. I was spoiled for bits and pieces but not for Misty, which was a great surprise, I had expected they'd just leave that thread hanging but resolving it was the correct choice. I also loved that this game gave a bit more of a nod to Mia. I had said in my previous reaction post that I loved Mia having her own lil Moriarty in Dahlia and their showdown was so fun. Get her ass Mia. Pull each other's hair in the afterlife.

The actual plot mystery stuff in this case was great. I was able to do 3-4 and 3-5 without any walkthrough help AND without banging my head into a wall, which really does make it more fun, lol. You feel clever for solving it without feeling like it's being spoonfed. Or at least I didn't feel it was spoonfed :P and I guessed wrong about some things.

I loved Dahlia LMAO she was fr on the stand like "Your honour I was born evil and I died evil and I'm still evil now. Peace". I sort of expected she'd have mixed emotions at least about Iris but uh nope. Choose a way to born: Evil Baby. You could probably say something about AA returning to these cartoonishly evil villains to smooth over any of the ethical quandaries probably but tbh for the most part I just find it fun. Whatever. Cant a girl have hobbies (poisoning, failure).

Less positive stuff:

I was surprised and disappointed to not get a send-off epilogue screen for Edgeworth or Franziska 😔 they just kind of disappeared in the back end of the case, and while I don't have an issue focusing on the Feys in the end, the Edgeworth/Franziska stuff felt a bit unresolved to me, to not even get a few lines when Oldbag and Larry do. I guess Capcom wants me to play AAI (... sort of. not enough to port it or translate it :P).

Two finale cases in a row shelved Maya for a considerable portion. She got much more to do here, in the end -- her as Nick's last witness was very good, and obv she's central to the whole case -- than in 2-4, but I still felt her absence.

And I do wish we'd gotten to see more of Edgeworth and Phoenix interacting - they're sort if implied to be spending time off screen but I would like to see it.jpeg, I thought he was gonna be a more active part of the case after trial day 1. Since AA1 it often feels like the game is juggling characters so I can have like, one fave with me at a time but not more lol. Rude.

The Iris/Phoenix stuff was 🙄 I realize it's futile to be mad about like, token heterosexuality in a 20+ year old video game, but 🙄 lol. Also naturally I spent most of the game believing Dahlia had grudgingly put up with Feenie while dreaming of murder for 8 months and that's so much funnier than the truth turned out to be, lmao. Her eternal torment.

I couldn't stand Godot lmao I didn't like him at the start of the game and by the end I hated him. His gimmick was boring to me at best, I found him deeply condescending and sexist in the case with Mia, and then obviously 3-5 just sent all of that overdrive. The upswing was that he was the killer so that was satisfying for me lmfao. Throw the book at him judge.

Overall:

I see why this is often called the best game. The overarching stories all tied together well, I can see how the cases of the week led into the finale even if I hated one of em (mask de masque do NOT interact), the puzzles are good while being solvable, and there are some really really great fun moments of character stuff in here for almost everyone.

Having said that, I think the first game is still my fave. Its comparatively limited scope meant each major character got their moment, Maya and Edgeworth are my besties and it's the only time I actually got to have both of them around at the same time. And Turnabout Goodbyes is just so good and so is Rise from the Ashes.

I'm sad the trilogy is over 😔 while I wait for 4-6 to get ported I'll play TGAA and AAI, but not sure in which order, and in either case I'm gonna miss my best friend Phoenix Wright. Luv u buddy

[oodlyenough]

Another preemptive cut to spare some dashboards. Also I've definitely drifted a lot from the original thesis of this post so feel free to treat this as a conversational off-ramp if you like, lol. I just finished the trilogy this summer and am, clearly, bursting with unexpressed thoughts.

Eh, I think if AA really wanted to do a face-heel turn from its BL roots the writers would unabashedly make Iris and Phoenix reunite in the end, but it didn't happen.

Yeah, I don't want to spend much time re-litigating a shipwar that probably reached its peak 20 years and 6 games ago, and I don't have an issue with the prior relationship stuff or feel it takes away from the present. But some of the forward-looking lines did grate on me, especially ones they gave Edgeworth specifically ("seems like there's something between you two 😏😏😏😏") and the little closing epilogue scene with Iris mentioning with a blush that he "couldn't keep his eyes off her". The epilogue hinting at something going forward made the already-glaring absence of any similar closing scene with Edgeworth (or my best girl Franziska) feel more pointed.

But then AA4 flips the whole table anyway lmao so 🤷🏼‍♀️ It was a bit weird playing these for the first time now, and not really knowing the specifics of AA4-6 but knowing enough vague spoilers to know Iris/Phoenix was a nonstarter despite the 3-5 text suggesting otherwise. I would be lying if I said I left AA3 hoping to see more of her and Phoenix's relationship in the next game, but the fact that we don't is also why my original post describes the game/franchise as feeling disinterested in her.

Oh also one more thing, not related to your post, but I hope the god old "bashing a female love interest that gets in a way of a popular mlm ship" would just die in the fandom

I haven't actually encountered anyone being nasty about Iris myself, but I'm quite new to the scene (finished aa3 about a month and a half ago) and this fandom is huge and old so I am sure it is out there. I think it's possible to criticize a studio's decision-making without taking it out on the female character herself/descending into sexism. Generally speaking I'm pretty cynical about how studios handle queer fans/audiences/stories/subtext but homophobia (real or perceived) isn't an excuse for misogyny either.

Hmm, and I think it would be just a repeat of the Farewell's main punch.[...]

To me it would've been distinct enough because one is the crux of the final case and focuses on his professional life/career goals (part of being a defense lawyer IS defending the guilty, in reality) and the other would've just been background noise from 3-1 -- to be clear I think him still trusting Iris in 3-5 is fine, and Iris being innocent (of Misty's murder) is fine, etc, I just didn't think we needed to go back and change Feenie/Dollie to do that. Trusting Iris in spite of his relationship with Dollie rather than because of.

But actually mainly bringing up Engarde just made me wanna talk about 2-4 a bit, totally unrelated to Iris or Dahlia, because I found the first half of it kind of clumsy for... kind of this reason? When I played I was like "why does Phoenix have to be blackmailed when he would've taken this case anyway? it must be because the client is guilty" -> don't worry the magic rock says he's innocent -> just kidding the magic rock was wrong and the client IS guilty, lol. I like the end of that case a lot, and some of the broader beats, but I do still wonder if I would've found the beginning less frustrating had Maya not gotten kidnapped until, idk, day 2 or something -- maybe Phoenix maybe starts to suspect Engarde and wants to drop the case, or something... I dunno I just remember thinking all of that was a bit clumsy. So I guess I'm saying in my perfect world it would be rejigged and not feel like a retread, lol.

I've been thinking a lot about how fandom attitudes towards female characters shift, and how a lot of the outright hatred that was once prevalent now is replaced by "girlboss" "mom friend" "only braincell" type discourse... and also about the Hawthorne twins and what I see of them in fandom vs canon.

It's interesting to me that I see a lot of what feels like a fandom desire to rehabilitate Dahlia as a character from a feminist perspective, sometimes taken as a given that her canon material was bad, when ...tbqh I don't really feel that she needs it. If I think of characters wronged by their canon text, Dahlia wouldn't make the list. Even a surface-level reading of Dahlia is, imo, a compelling character, with clear motivations, consistent behaviour, agency. She's funny and memorable. You can dig deeper into speculation and headcanon territory with Dahlia (and I totally get the impulse, she's great and there's lots of potential there) but I don't think you need to do that to make her a solid character, I think she already is. I don't think she's any less complex than the other trilogy villains, and if anything she's a lot more complex already than someone like Engarde, and on par with Von Karma.

On the other hand, I think Iris got some paper-thin writing as "the good twin" and, let's be honest, a feeble attempt to set up a heterosexual romance for Phoenix which gets dropped in subsequent games anyway. There are interesting possible complexities to tease out of Iris, just as with Dahlia; Iris facilitates or participates in some pretty messed-up things, but Phoenix and the story are very forgiving, which just flattens her out further into Good Twin. I don't think the canon is very interested in Iris outside of her role as plot twist doppelganger and occasional blush sprite... and mostly it seems the fanon Iris gets in response is to quadruple down on those things. She's pure and kind and sweet, besties with Phoenix, their relationship is cast as something wholesome and innocent, despite the uh objective reality of it.

What about the Iris who helps her sister plan harebrained criminal schemes only to back out at last second, the Iris who fell in love with Feenie despite herself and yet continued to lie and place him in danger for eight months, who watched Dahlia get a death sentence without ever coming clean ... Those things are the aspects that would make her a multidimensional character, imo, but they're ignored and/or glossed over in the story and (what I've seen of) fandom. And I don't say this to mean that she's evil or irredeemable or something, she isn't -- just that the basic fact of her actions is a lot messier than is usually acknowledged, by canon or fanon. For the canon I think the reasons are obvious and not flattering; for fandom, I think the intentions are generally positive, trying to correct for the opposite end of the spectrum (and 20 years ago the attitude was probably quite different), but I still wish female characters were given more space to be complicated in ways that include being kind of fucked up actually.