#and not just for nrmt too but the other ships i write for

[velourfant]

i don't care abt t/b dynamics much but sometimes i wonder if my sfw fics give away my preferences for narumitsu in particular. is it even possible to tell? wht would give it away?

[author-main]

Welcome back to Author Takes the Romance out of Wrightworth just to Put It Back Later. The reason why I do this is because, I'm a relatively newer fan, haven't been here for super long. And I wanna share my thoughts and opinions as a fan who got into the games because of nrmt/mtnr. I (personally) think a lot of the meaning in the characters' dialog gets kinda lost in fanon. So today, I will discuss how:

Phoenix becoming a lawyer for Miles isn't THAT extreme when you learn how easy it was to "change his life" to do it.

By that, I mean... it wasn't THAT big of a change.

Point One: Phoenix did not change his entire college course for Miles, nor did he need to.

I should start with: becoming a lawyer is no joke, no matter where you live. But since I'm American, we'll follow the localization.

In the U.S. you're required to obtain your Juris Doctor (J.D.) to take the bar exam. What you need to start working towards a J.D. is any bachelor's degree. Phoenix was 21 and still an art major (April 2014), even after knowing for up to over a year (February 2013) that Miles was a prosecutor. He is said to have taken law classes, that could mean three things

Law electives

Law minor

double major

Note: The double major is the least likely in canon, because if that was the case, his character profile in 3-1 would've mentioned it.

Given the timeline of events, I believe that Phoenix was already a graduating senior at by the time of 3-1. Not a super important thought, just a "he's pretty much ready to get into a grad program anyway" thing.

Point Two: Larry Butz is his other reason in becoming a lawyer.

And not so many people ship them now do they? Most people either see Larry as just a friend to Phoenix, or they outright forget him (which is why I have to point him out NOW). Phoenix knew Larry for his entire life, longer than he knew Edgeworth. And he's the reason they all became friends in the first place. But he's even more important than just being the reason he and Miles became friends.

Phoenix wanted to show his gratitude to Miles and Larry in the exact same way, by defending them in court. This isn't romantic, this is wholly platonic. This is his way of showing how much they actually meant to him, how much their friendship meant to them. He's trying to show them what exactly they've done for him. They changed him as a person. Showed him that he should follow his convictions and intuition, to believe in people and defend them especially when the rest of the world is against them.

Point Three: "I'm the only one who knows the real Edgeworth": You NEED to pay attention to the entire conversation to understand why he said this. (though I obviously can't share it all here, but here are the most important parts for this post)

Probably the most seemingly obsessive part this of is: "He's in pain… And no one's on his side. I'm the only one who knows the real Edgeworth. I'm the only one who can help him." But you really need to actually consider what he's saying here. Phoenix knows that the world is cruel and that mob mentality can form no matter the demographic. He knows that whether it's a class of elementary school kids, or full-grown adults in suits and ties; if the world thinks you did it, you're discouraged from defending yourself. If the world thinks you did it, you'll start believing it too. If the world tells you to apologize and take responsibility, you're going to do it, even if what they accuse you of isn't true. And Phoenix knows what it's like to not be able to defend himself. He knows that he needs to defend the seemingly indefensible. That's why he became a defense attorney. That's what the class trial taught him, what Miles and Larry taught him.

"I'm the only one who knows the real Edgeworth." -> "I'm the only one who knows what it's like to be in Edgeworth's shoes and I know for a fact that he's innocent. I know that no matter what happened in the past, that he doesn't deserve this."

Extra: The other reason why I decided to write this is because of Xitter lurking

This was all part of a conversation but I'm only sharing my own opinions

[kill-vonkarma-again]

hmm i make one too. don't have any crackships sorry. i'd write on the picture too but i have WAY too many specific thoughts on these shits to be able to cram it in with my shitty built in photo editor. more under the cut

nrmts and klapollo: self explanatory greatest of all time. maybe they're boring choices but idc they mean da worl to me

lanamia is definitely up there for me i just don't have the rfta galaxy brain like exaltedfuzz so i tend not to think about them much...... but they definitely had something going on. (if i'm being honest most of my brain power for both lana and ema go to their familial relationship because those always make me way more emotional and insane than romantic ones. same for mia and maya)

franmaya is a huge one but i think i kind of agree with the assertation that there's not a lot of canon backing for it... they don't interact much at all which is really really sad 😔 they're absolutely perfect foils for each other

gumworth VERY cute. i love edgeworth and his giant gay lap dog who wants him to take better care of himself

krisnix is something that 100% happened and they went insane over each other in only the way you can when you need to kill that other man /x but i don't give it as much brain space as i think i should. i'm sadly not the biggest on toxic yaoi lol

LARRYNIX WOULD BE FUNNY... i don't think i have much more to add here tho

dickbutz is conceptually really fucking funny and i think they would get along if given the space. come on gummy dick butz down

gumdot.... my eyes have been opened i think gumshoe could fix him. he has a good shoulder to cry on

blackquill/sahdmadhi + fullbright: i dunno these guys very well but apparently they're doing some crazy (sometimes evil) gay shit to blackquill. good for them. get that emo hunk

phoenix/mia: ehhhhhh. i'm not gonna say that you're wrong but i very much think that the boss/employee thing would make it awkward. and it'd be kinda one sided on phoenix's side imo. maybe in another life

trucy/pearl: there's nothing especially wrong with this one per se but 1. kinda feels like a pair the spares ship 2. i personally see their relationship as being closer to sorta-maybe-cousins than i do girlfriends. but that's just me you do you

ema/klavier: i see where you're coming from but ema is a dyke and her dislike of him is genuine and not tsundereisms in my eyes. i think they could be friends if you locked them in a room together and forced them to open up to each other but not much more than that

klavier/blackquill: you're probably right i bet klavier annoyed his way into blackquill's space like an especially persistent small dog with a half feral cat. and blackquill can dish out three times as much sass as klavier can take. i don't think enough about blackquill to think more on it though

godot/mia: don't hate me for this one i just think their writing was really crap. like the one time they try to write a canon loving het relationship and it's just this

narumayo: i've said it before and i'll say it again but this one is less deplorable to me and more just a sign that we are interacting with this story as a whole in extremely different ways. i think it's a really obvious and boring conclusion to come to. yayyy the boy gets the girl. barf

apollo/athena: i think apollo is slightly too old for her. it would be a little weird to me. some people seem to disagree with me on that though so i guess whatever. similar complaints to narumayo too though

phoenix/apollo: don't be fucking weird

athena/blackquill: don't be fucking weird... 2!!!

bonus from my beautiful beautiful mind:

[trlvsn]

I hope you won’t mind elaborating, please ignore this message if it makes you uncomfortable, but I am terribly intrigued by the correlation between shipping narumitsu and having attachement issues, and I would love to hear your thoughts - either on the pattern you’ve noticed, or on why you think one would lead to the other? Sincerely, a sceptical of the idea that our fictional preferences reflect who we are (who also just happens to ship narumitsu lol) (this is all /lh and /genuinely interested btw my signature is meant to be tongue in cheek not passive-aggressive)

this doesn't make me uncomfortable at all! in fact, i'm happy to elaborate. i would, however, like to start this by saying i meant the case majority of nrmt shippers, not every single one, so if this doesn't apply to you - honestly, great news for your future and present relationships with people.

anyways. when i started reading narumitsu fanfiction, i noticed a pattern. people tend to make the characters pass the "i will find you and help you" role like a hot potato between the characters depending on the time of the events in the fanfic - if it's feenie or aa1 era, phoenix is the one who writes endless letters and seeks miles out, if it's aa3-aa4, edgeworth is the one who flies across the ocean to see wright or helps him financially and emotionally during the disbarment. each time, that borderline obsessive behavior gets romanticized and turns into the basic formula of "i'm in pain, closed off and not who i really am - let me help you despite your constant refusals - okay i'm better now. i love you also". i don't mean to say it's inherently bad to write stuff like that or that it makes the relationship toxic, i'm simply hyperbolizing and making an overall point.

another thing about those fics is that the hurt/comfort is usually centered on the one who needs the comfort. if phoenix helps miles get over the turnabout goodbyes trial, holds him after an earthquake or saves him "again", it's usually a miles-centered fic, and the disbarment ones are a phoenix study. it can be the other way around, of course, but the ones described earlier made me have a realization.

as i've stated in my nrmt analysis post, what they would have had before turnabout succession is just... not that healthy in my eyes? not long term healthy, at least. so i feel like nrmt fans tend to have a warped sense of what love and relationships are, constantly defining phoenix and miles by what they do for each other and what they mean to each other, not by their individual growth. phoenix often gets too much credit for saving miles, miles gets assigned the role of the one who was always there during the 7yg and helped take down kristoph, etc. again, not bad!! just interesting.

and with all of that being portrayed as this big romantic thing, i just feel like the narumitsu fans can be divided into different groups. if you like phoenix-centered bratfeen and aa1-3 wrightworth, you are likely to disregard your emotional needs for the sake of another person, idealize then, and to have experienced parental neglect or betrayal and abandonment of some kind, which can lead to an anxious attachment style. the people who like aa1-3 wrightworth with explorations of miles and disbarment fics about phoenix might have an idea in their head that no one understands them and never will, have a tendency to isolate themselves and have an avoidant attachment style. it might get mixed up too. of course, this is no way scientifically credible or well-spoken, it's like two am for me, what am i doing. but anyway, with the way nrmt shippers practically tie these two together by their identities... yeah.

again. absolutely no shade or hate or anything similar. i'm a huge narumitsu enjoyer. i have 333 bookmarks on ao3 and god knows some of them are exactly what I described above. but a girl has to speak her mind.