#and the turnabout on that is good shit.

[jicklet]

The way I interpreted it is, so we know Klavier's rolled back into town to pick up prosecuting again specifically because some rookie defense attorney took down his brother, and he's come to see what's up. While he likely had no way of knowing Apollo would stumble into being assigned to this case, I think he did look him up beforehand and recognized him when he popped up. So when Trucy mentions they have a letter of request, he lets them in on purpose because he wants to face this guy on equal footing to see what he's made of.

It's not spelled out so I could be wrong! But it is in line with how Klavier says he shared the prosecution's evidence for the Gramarye trial with Kristoph for the same reason (this was mistranslated to the other way around in english augh), and how he's completely unsurprised to see Apollo in court the next day / showboats about trying to get the measure of his skill.

wait why did it just occur to me that Klavier just lets Apollo and Trucy into a crime scene without asking who they are or why they want to investigate a crime scene. did he just see apollo and go "oh hes cute, yeah i can let him and his sister into the crime scene"

[relicsongmel]

As a musician I will never not be obsessed with the plot of Turnabout Serenade. Like what do you mean a professional guitarist gets accused of murder by Some Guy and one of his bandmates backs it up because he's upset the dude couldn't play a fucking quarter-note triplet correctly. What do you mean he uses that as evidence he did the murder. WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE WAS RIGHT

[cringefail-clown]

May we get snipped of the aulpha Strider household? Is Hal there 24/7 or wandering like Sawtooth did and only occasionally showing up? Did Squarewave and Sawtooth make it to the future, or did Dirk never built them at all?How is Daves relationship with Hal?

had this sketch stitting around so i finally cleaned it up a bit for this ask sjdjdk

sawtooth and squarewave are there ofc! theyre helping as best as they can, i imagine dirk build them for a different purpose but then was like "wait actually leaving hal alone with a toddler in a postalocalyptic future in the middle of the ocean is a very shit idea" so he left them in stasis with hal to act as a moral support lmfao. daves having a blast with squarewave, its a rapoff 24/7 in this household, and sawtooth isnt around too much like in the canon, but when he shows up he keeps an eye on both of them (very youngest-middle-oldest sibling dynamic with hal as a tired robodad). also hal and sawtooth are in a constant argument about how to best raise this human child (theyre both probably kinda garbage at it but theyre trying their best)

[old-skyguy]

Look.

Ace Attorney fandom.

I know why people don't like Turnabout Bigtop. I am among the people who dislike Turnabout Bigtop.

But I GET why people like the case. I'm not going to be one of those annoying people who just blindly dump on it because I hate those mfs too.

Thing about Bigtop isn't that it sucks. Thing isn't the weird grooming stuff (though that is a huge part of it). It's not that it could've been good.

It's that - in my personal OPINION - it could have been *great*.

I think it had the potential to be one of the best third cases in the trilogy. It had everything; a fun and goofy setting fit for a pretty dang goofy lawyer game - where the environment itself had jokes and quips and one-liners and mishaps and tomfoolery written all over it, it had the previous case introducing a very interesting and important plotline that gave background for one of the more well-loved characters while also introducing an equally fucked up and lovable new one who was a child forced into a shit childhood of naivete in a CIRCUS with another character who was very naive and childish - whose interactions could have been funny and cute and reflective of said shit from the previous case (seriously she becomes such an important character in the 4th case, WHY would they not include her in this one for some character development? How did they fuck up letting a CHILD explore a CIRCUS?? That would have made the interactions flow MUCH better).

They had a pretty good, sympathetic killer imo, a morally dubious victim, an asshole of a client (who was pretty flat admittedly in-game, but I like his weird, topsy-turvy reasoning for it in the anime. Also, I think Max being kinda a dick would have bode well for the themes of Farewell since most of his clients up to this point have been like...nice? Not nice, but sympathetic, but him having to defend someone who's innocent but a prick would have shown him that just because someone is an asshole, doesn't mean they deserve to suffer for it and that they have the potential to grow as people, which is almost a complete foil to what Matt was. Ultimately, I would have loved the contrast of them as clients and I think it would have also served as character development for Phoenix, especially with his low-empathy tendencies).

They just didn't think that far ahead. They just didn't execute it well enough. They just decided to make three of the adult characters fight for the hand in marriage of a teenage girl. (Bat's part of the story was actually kinda good if he was just YOUNGER, I think him doing that for Regina would have been a stupid thing someone in the circus would do to impress their crush. Damn you Ace Attorney and your weird treatment of underage girls!!)

It just flopped and that's ok.

Even though it kinda sucked, it can still mean something to me.

Also I'm a Moe Curls apologist. I liked him, shut up.

[irlkisukeurahara]

headcanoning a canon disabled character as ableist purely for the sake of angst for your uwu autistic gay boy is NOT cool or based 😕☝️

[emdotcom]

Hisuian Zoroark is one of the sickest designs in pokemon, but the model on that bloke is FUCKED. It's really bad. If they bother to port her over to other games, you know they ain't changing that model, either, 'cept to make the textures paler & duller.

I continue to despise pokemon, despite being a pokemon fan, I fucken guess. At this point, I gotta go all in on summat else, like Cassette beasts.

[snapscube]

I FINISHED TURNABOUT BIG TOP! Which means here is my updated autopsy report ranking for cases and characters!

Both have actually shifted around quite a bit so you may find it an interesting update. I'll explain some of my current thoughts on the new placements as well as my thoughts on 2-3 in general below a break if ur curious.

Okay so first thing let's just address the elephant in the room: We have an all new category on the character ranking!! One that I sure wish I didn't have to include but unfortunately Big Top made some... very Interesting decisions with specific characters. It would be one thing if this content was featured and then addressed, but it was particularly off-putting and frustrating to me that everything was played entirely straight?? So yeah. New lowest of the low category for a couple freaks who are actively courting a 16 year old!!!! yayyyyyy

OTHERWISE, I do have to say.... I was really pleasantly surprised at 2-3 as a case. I can say now I completely understand people having a distaste for it especially in regards to the unsavory age gaps, but literally..... almost everything else in this case was well put together and generally on-par with the quality of the rest of the series? As an overall package I actually still find Turnabout Samurai infinitely more dull. Like, maybe it's just because the lead-up to actually playing it was so uniquely frustrating for me and forcibly lowered my expectations by a ton, but there was so much good shit in Big Top. Maya, in particular, is in top form during this case. She is so fucking funny. I loved almost every word that came out of her mouth and it really solidified her top spot in the character ranking for me at present. But past that, I think the second half of this case is EXTREMELY strong compared to its opening half. I'll admit during the first trial section I was getting kinda tired with it and finding it hard to care given how much I just do not root for Max, so I had tentatively placed it at bottom of C tier. But then once von Karma arrives in the investigation section and then Acro's storyline enters the equation I really think it finds its footing. I actually found the last few scenes of the trial very emotionally effective, especially Acro's breakdown at the witness stand and mentioning how he couldn't follow through with taking his own life to escape his crime due to his desire to see his brother wake up. Like... I legitimately teared up.

And FURTHERMORE.... von Karma. Oh my god. I don't know if I'm picking up on anything here, nor do I want to know until I maybe see it for myself, but something about her conduct in the final trial really spoke to me. I feel like a surface read makes it apparent that she's just as frustrated as she is because she's losing the case to Wright again, and I do think that's a huge factor still to her reaction... but I don't know, I felt something else with her. Particularly when it came to her reaction towards Acro's attempted murder of Regina. I felt like she came across as PARTICULARLY disgusted towards that revelation and towards her own client in a way that subtly humanized her and had me just CHUCKLING AND CHORTLING in evil anticipation towards potential character arcs. I really hope I've grasped onto something here because... I love her so much. I love the idea that in spite of her reputation we're still gonna get to see this spark of humanity light up. AHHHHH.

Okay. Anyway. In summary:

I understand why people have a distaste for Big Top now, but it does not change the fact that I desperately wish I had been given the chance to experience the story myself going into it without that baggage. It genuinely did not help my experience in the slightest to just have that cloud of expectation over it and it is generally irritating that I couldn't even bring up that I was playing it without people jokingly apologizing to me or telling me that I wouldn't be able to handle it or whatever. Really not a great vibe.

As a case, it has a couple MAJOR, GLARING points of discomfort but I'm still really glad I gave it a chance and was able to find a lot of good in it anyway. It inspired me to unfortunately lower some of my other rankings because this is what I kind of consider a more middle-of-the-road quality for the series now. Solid B tier. I have played much worse.

Maya Fey is a god damn treasure.

As for some of the other character shifts, particularly in relation to some of the characters who got bumped from S to A rank, that's less because I decided I like them less now than I did when I first ranked them and more that I decided my initial interpretation of my feelings was incongruent in some cases. Like, for example I LOVE Mia I really do she's great, but in no way at this current time is she on the same level as Maya or Lana for me. So I just needed to adjust the ratios a bit.

Anyway, I'll be back eventually with posts about the next case and the last one of AA2! :3 I hear it's pretttyyy long but pretttyyy damn GOOD. Can't wait.

[readymades2002]

something i think is an interesting quirk in the aa games is that it really hammers in that miles’s thing is The Truth and Finding The Truth, and given that aa is mostly detective games this is not too weird, but what DOES make it weird is that aa takes place in the world of law partially as a way to differentiate it from other investigation games. and so while miles is presented as simply Searching For The Truth, the role he is ACTUALLY playing is the person who gets to decide what happens after finding the truth

this would be an interesting character trait if aa was interested in that i think, however aa is really bad at having its protagonists suck in a way that is acknowledged in the text. (even the adrian stuff ends with her going youre so right i will simply not have a personality disorder anymore and the next time you see her she’s someone else.) miles going “i want to find the truth” while he is investigating the truth as a detective, while he is punishing people as a prosecutor, and while he is clearing names as a DA is a cool idea to me. where he has to reckon with that. i ignore most things after aa4 but i think the idea of miles being the one to get phoenix to become a lawyer (and SPECIFICALLY a defense lawyer) again is RICH in this context. miles and phoenix usually have to be working together to find The Truth and a lot of that searching means neither of them are doing their job. they are both opponents and collaborators! while you are giving your opponent a brainbuster you’re also folding them in half and cushioning their neck so they don’t actually have their spine telescope.

its like this: miles needs to have a collaborator in the courtroom or he cannot find the truth he claims to be seeking. he needs someone planted in the audience to volunteer for his next trick or it won’t work. he is trying to be judge, jury, and executioner, and this means he is kind of unreliable wherever he goes, or at least this is the case as long as he is investigating from a position obligated to act on these findings. being a lawyer does not make you a neutral investigating party!!! it is just this like. act of...cognitive dissonance? maybe? that arises from the aa games being very weird about law. aa loves being a character drama and an investigation game and where those two things meet it gets Real Weird and i just kind of wish it interrogated the effects of the setting on these characters more because that is what i am into. anyway ive been watching bcs lately and that has been a lot more fulfilling on this end and i know its funny to compare an amc drama and this 7+ ds game and go “These Are Very Different” but well they are

[jinxedshapeshifter]

Decided to continue my (second) replay of Apollo Justice (I'm still on Turnabout Trump) and I'm being hit by how much Kristoph is treating Apollo like an attack dog. Like I fucking hate it but it's also really interesting that only after Phoenix testifies about Kristoph's presence at the Borscht Bowl Club does Kris start manipulating Apollo (because yes, that's what he's doing; I wouldn't quite say he's gaslighting him but he's definitely having a Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss moment).

Like for context this is what had me like "holy shit, Kristoph's just using Apollo as an attack dog" (dunno why I didn't get hit in the face with "Apollo is just Kristoph's attack dog here" the first two times I played AJ:AA tbh):

And he states it like it's a fact. He's doing this to confuse Apollo, who's been conflicted the entire trial about whether his loyalty should stay with Kristoph or with Phoenix, from both a personal and a legal perspective (as he's torn between loyalty to his mentor and loyalty not just to someone he looks up to, but also to his client). Kris is using that to his advantage; he knows Apollo trusts him, and he's taking advantage of it and using it to manipulate Apollo (to be fair, I wouldn't be surprised if Phoenix is also using this conflicting loyalty and the fact that Apollo looks up to him to his advantage, but he's not manipulating Apollo to do so, or at least he doesn't until the forged ace comes into play).

He ONLY does this once Apollo starts questioning the authority he doesn't have in this case. He's been calm the entire trial but here he starts losing his cool and it's made obvious through his dialogue. Apollo starts questioning whose side he should be on, Kristoph's or Phoenix's, and Kristoph starts manipulating him and putting him in a position where he's going to start doubting Phoenix.

It genuinely makes me think Apollo's just another pawn to him. If any part of Apollo's apprenticeship (internship?) with Kristoph was genuine, it was because Kristoph wanted Apollo to become a great defense attorney for selfish reasons; if Kristoph had to tie up loose ends, he'd have a skilled defense attorney who's already incredibly loyal to him, making him easy to manipulate (and had Phoenix not been the defendant of this case but all other details were the same, I doubt Kris would've been caught because part of Apollo's loyalty conflict in Turnabout Trump comes from Phoenix helping him figure out the details of the case even before Kristoph is accused of Shadi Smith's murder). It makes me wonder what Apollo's time working under Kristoph was like; how manipulative was Kristoph, and what did he do to ensure Apollo's loyalty?

It's a good thing Kris got arrested for Zak's murder too; if he hadn't been, I doubt Apollo would still be around, given Kristoph's tendency to murder literally anyone who wronged him unless it's more beneficial to keep them around.

Anyway, Kristoph's attitude shift after Apollo goes against how Kris wants the trial to be done is not talked about enough. He IS manipulating Apollo during Turnabout Trump (and while it was subtle, he does it throughout the entire trial because he's a paranoid bitch).

I could go further into how this parallels Phoenix's actions in Apollo Justice (because Phoenix ALSO uses Apollo as a pawn, as well as Klavier and Ema in Turnabout Succession) but this is long enough and I REALLY want to finish Turnabout Trump lol

[lazycranberrydoodles]

its prosecutor jiang wanyin!!!! oh fuck!!! / gifs + au rambling below the cut / follow for more mdzs x aa crossover stuff :3

all the gifs i made (poses traced off franziska):

hes so similar to franziska when you think about it. theyre both deeply insecure tsundere adoptive younger sibling of successful main characters. who carry whips. something something edgeworth choosing death and wwx actually dying also

his share code is HWFEFF if you wanna use him in a trial! you can't share backgrounds but heres the scenery from the donghua i used.

the easiest way to put custom stuff into objection.lol is to send it in discord and then use the link from opening it in your browser :)

a whole lot of AU stuff

the art im making is for if mdzs was an ace attorney game, playing from WWX's POV to solve various mysteries/cases over the course of the plot. so this scene would be from turnabout goddess, which would loosely cover the dafan mountain mystery.

cases include:

Turnabout Revenge (Mo Manor, quick introductory first case)

Turnabout Goddess (Dafan mountain, the good times flashback)

Turnabout Saber (the man-eating castle (omg hiii nhs))

The Blind Turnabout (Yi City arc)

Turnabout Deviation (the Koi Tower conference, Empathy on NMJ ala turnabout memories or beginnings. opening cutscene is his qi deviation)

The Blood-Soaked Turnabout (second Burial Mounds siege, flashbacks: Xuanwu, Sunshot, YLLZ, Nightless City massacre)

Turnabout Lotus Seeds (testimony about JGY, tree scene, golden core reveal, bathtub scene. opening cutscene could be JGS' death but that would make it canon rather than ambiguous)

Turnabout Confession (Guanyin temple)

the problem with splitting novel!mdzs into turnabouts is that flashbacks are a huge chunk of the book but they don't have mysteries/ cases to solve so they've gotta be lumped together with present day stuff. imo? many of the flashbacks would likely have to be abridged so they could be retold ala DL-6, SL-9, or the fourth grade incident, where characters talk about it over some pieces of art. this is really difficult when theres a metric ton of unspoken, complex, and signifcant history between every character lmao

there's not as much of a problem with the cql timeline but i have not finished it. so.

the opening cutscenes in ace attorney always show the murder and/or the murderer plotting. the first cutscene of the game would be MXY summoning WWX, muttering about getting revenge on his family (it would also be good for him to mention the yllz being dead because that's how the novel starts.) cut to WWX's POV as he wakes up covered in blood and the investigation segment begins.

for investigations of monsters (goddess, saber, etc) the cutscene would be a scene of some poor throwaway cultivator getting their shit wrecked.

it would be cool to make a breakdown for JGY but again I need to review that scene cause I don't know who I'd base him on. maybe Vasquez or Dahlia.

tell me your thoughts!! i'm working off of a mdzs summary/ skimming the novel because i don't remember it too well so if i get anything wrong please yell at me

Jin Ling's sprites & Nie Huaisang's sprites / masterpost

[tossawary]

I think it was a good idea to save Edgeworth as an "enemy" for the second case in "Ace Attorney", because players are going to be distracted in the first case by just trying to figure out how the game works, and players are also going to be focused on other important characters like Mia and Larry. Larry's case is a fun tutorial level and slow story setup before the game throws you into the deep end of "Turnabout Sisters".

But, in hindsight, Edgeworth being utterly absent from the first case has the potential to be both incredibly angsty and incredibly funny. Like, Edgeworth is obviously not the only prosecutor available and probably just wasn't assigned to this particular case, but let's read into it anyway!

He's probably capable of calling in a favor to hand off a case if he really doesn't want to take it, and he's apparently been dodging all of Phoenix's attempts at reaching out to him, so it's possible that Edgeworth intentionally avoided this first case. But why then show up for the second if he didn't want to see Phoenix again? Why break radio silence? One interpretation (beyond just being assigned to this case and cynically doing his job) is that Edgeworth genuinely thinks that he's helping Phoenix and pursuing justice in the second case. Mia Fey is compared a couple times to Gregory Edgeworth. I think that Miles Edgeworth must have at least an unconscious desire not to have Phoenix Wright go through what he went through: seeing his idol's murderer walk free, whether or not it was an accident, whether or not the young defendant cannot be "fairly" tried.

(Miles was prepared to wholly blame himself for his father's murder despite, from his initial perspective, it being an accident when he was only 9 years old. If he's that brutal with himself, then he's not going to go easy on Maya.)

Another possibility is that Miles had already resigned himself to facing off against Phoenix Wright eventually and had decided to let fate happen when it happened, but then the first AA case was assigned to him and he saw that LARRY BUTZ was the defendant. I like to imagine that Miles handed that shit off to Payne immediately, like, "I'm not touching this case with a ten-foot pole."

[cringefail-clown]

i love the new emergent genre of turnabout ships that's just targeting june with an orbital laser. dave's got a crush on your nanna, his bro is flirting with your dad, can't have SHIT in paradox space

shes NOT having a good time

[crplpunkklavier]

this has probably all been said before but people who act like phoenix only started lying in aa4 or post disbarment make me laugh. the trick he pulled with the trump card was to present a piece of evidence as something its not, to trip up the killer and make them stumble into a confession. WHICH, YES, isnt exactly GOOD conduct. but its literally not the first time he has done that EXACT same scheme.

Tigre: I can see straight through you, Phoenix Wright! That ain't the bottle with the cyanide in it. Phoenix: No, no. This is the bottle we found traces of the poison in. Tigre: Don't mess with The Tiger or you're gonna get ripped to shreds! The cyanide bottle was brown. And it was made of glass. That cheap piece of trash don't look nothin' like it!

sure, he didn't forge that piece of evidence. but he took a piece of evidence from the scene and presented it as something it wasn't, and they very kindly call it a "bluff" in recipe for turnabout, but it is a straight up lie. phoenix went on record in a court of law saying that this is a bottle of poison, while he and the prosecution and the judge verifiably KNEW that wasn't true. it was a means to an end and it worked. but phoenix lied.

obviously it was a real dick move to give apollo that card and risk HIS career for his own agenda, but that's not exactly new behavior either? this guy formally indicted wendy oldbag of murder in the very first game to buy himself some more time. and yeah, he needed that to win the case, and we all thought it was haha funny because it's just wendy oldbag. but if you translate that into real life, can you fuckin imagine?? they took her into custody. she lost her job after that trial.

he's always been a bitch bastard is what i'm saying. i love him dearly. none of that shit was okay. it's just more noticable in aa4 because he stopped wearing a suit while he cons people. and also because apollo punches him in the face for it

[xerith-42]

I think the reason a lot of people are wrong about Franziska Von Karma is because they take Phoenix's judgments of her as gospel. Even if it's made apparently clear that Phoenix doesn't know shit about her in JFA, and is basing all of his judgements of her from a purely antagonistic perspective. The whole fucking point of the final case is proving that Phoenix is Wrong, that he can't always assume his clients are purely innocent, that sometimes he'll have to defend guilty people.

And it proves that he was wrong about Franziska when he talks to Edgeworth. Phoenix talks a big game about Franziska only wanting her perfect win record for purely selfish reasons. Which is wrong. Franziska has consistently helped Phoenix because her goal is not victory, it's Justice by any means necessary. In Turnabout Big Top she ends up being the reason that Acro gets found out. It takes a few leaps in logic to get there, but her sudden search of his room is the reason that Acro confesses. When she questions why she did it, it's because Franziska believed something similar to Phoenix about herself.

In her mind Justice = Perfect Win Record, because that's what she was taught. Because Franziska loves her father and emulates him in court, but does it with her own flair and style. But all Phoenix can see her as is another overly aggressive prosecutor who wants innocent people to go to prison. It is in the third game that he finally starts to understand her a little more and they establish their wonderful dynamic, but I don't think some people take her role in that game as seriously as they should.

Both Phoenix and Edgeworth make sweeping statements about Franziska as if they know her, but they don't. Edgeworth may be her brother, but he hasn't been around for a while and literally died to her. She's a different person from when they last met, and I doubt that Phoenix has seriously considered how the outcome of DL-6 coming to light really effected her. And because of this, the audience doesn't either.

The audience is only ever really encouraged to think about this through the lens of Franziska's grief over her brother and how strangely she's handling it. While you absolutely can and should think about how utterly destroyed Franziska was to learn that the father she loved was secretly a monster, the games don't encourage you to do that because Phoenix doesn't think Franziska is a good person. Not until the end of JFA, and her emotional journey isn't a focal point in Trials and Tribulations.

It is in the epilogue of JFA, but that's a scene for Franziska and Edgeworth, one that the audience does see, but I think some people take for granted. They still view Franziska through the most antagonistic lens because well... Well because people say they want more complex female characters but then can't handle a physically assertive 18 year old wearing shoes too big for her.

[ot3]

🔥 Mia and Maya Fey? Also i really enjoyed your op liveblogs bc all the things you complained about were things I also noticed but noone else seemed to be talking about. I thought i was going insane.

i think people go way too easy on mia for how she treated maya! its definitely Correct that mia had no obligation to be a surrogate mother for maya and had the right to get out of her extremely sticky family situation, but the thing is it's Not like mia got out of her family situation, she was in it the whole time. she spent her life trying and failing to track down the mother that abandoned her, and even after her death she is Still working to perpetuate her family's bullshit.

the fact that during 2-2 she's covering for morgan to the point where you have to break her psyche locks about it is CRAAAZYY!! girl! what's up with you!

aa1 also kind of gives the sense that most of the time when mia is hitting maya up its because she needs her to be a mule for evidence and maya feels really lonely living by herself. here's a snippet of maya and mia's phone convo at the beginning of turnabout sisters:

???: Mia! What's up? You haven't called in a while. Mia: Sorry, I've been so busy. How you been? ???: Well, LONELY. And it's all YOUR fault. Nah, I'm just teasing. I've been great! I'm finally getting used to having my own place. Mia: That's good to hear. Actually, I'm calling because I have a favor to ask. ???: I know, I know. You want me to hold evidence for you?

two thins are going on here that don't really track with what we know about kurain village: 1. maya is talking on her cell phone, but there's no cell reception in kurain. 2. maya talks about having her own place, but presumably in kurain would be living in fey manor alongside morgan and pearl. logically this is pretty much guaranteed to be because they didn't fully know what they were going to do with the fey family stuff so it's a retcon, but that said my personal headcanon is that mia was paying for maya to have an apartment somewhere between the village and the city.

this way maya could be a bit away from the family shit and get some level of formal schooling, and she could be closer to mia and easier to contact. i think maya only went back to living full time in kurain after turnabout goodbyes when she decided to fully focus on medium training, which we know she hadn't really been doing up to that point.

which i think was in many ways the best mia felt she could do in terms of taking care of maya and keeping her safe but it didn't provide maya with any kind of emotional support that she definitely needed. the "i'm LONELY and it's YOUR FAULT haha jk" is pretty transparent.

[sunbedo]

!!!!!! BIG DUAL DESTINIES AA5 SPOILERS BELOW!!!!!!!!! SCROLL QUICKLY TO AVOID SPOILING YOURSELF IF NEEDED!!!!!!!!

UGHHGGGGGGHHH im watching someone play through the cosmic turnabout and like. during the first investigation they make a point to be like 'wooowww detective fulbright is being super cooporative its weirdddd like hes almost a different person. lmao.' and im SO MAD. its such a good setup for him being replaced but then theyre like. 'noooo hes been dead for like ten years or somwthign woahhhh what!!!!!!!!' LIKE. CHOOSING SHOCK VALUE OVER GOOD WRITING. If we've just been talking to the phantom the whole time what the fuck was that bit with the shoes during the monsterous turnabout???????? its either like. a. the phantom was worried about playing fulbright's character. like. for whom????? none of us knew what he was really like??? and it couldve easily gone unnoticed??????? or b. they really just fucking didnt notice. terrifying international superspy murderer. okay

"its to make sure that we know that this is definitely someone else!!" okay? edgeworth shows up and is like we found bobby fulbright in an abandoned warehouse or some shit and all dna and everything matches. woah that guy on the stand is definitely not detective fulbright. "its to show just how horrifying the phantom really is!!" okay???? so maybe they found him like tortured and ab/used and shit. and then its still really horrifying because we actually!!! know!!!!!!!!! fulbright!!!!!!!!!!! and how goofy and kind he is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! wow this guy is a really actively serious threat and a fucked up evil person. and now the player wants them dead for hurting this golden retriever of a man so badly. "but isnt it so fucked up that this great and super kind guy you've been talking to this entire game is actually dead??!?!?" yeah sure but once again we. dont. know. the real goddamn fulbright!!!!!!!! we dont know what he was actually like and the phantom couldve been portraying him completely differently!!!! sure a few lines of dialog tell us hes a good man. but other than that all we have to go off of is the phantom's act!!! people dont think about it that deeply and take the phantom's portrayal at face value but like?????? come on dude

and if you still want that sweet angst over him being dead, what if when they find him hes almost dead. like the phantom meant to actually kill him (because of how horrible they are!!!! its the same effect!!!!!!!) and it adds a new layer of tension during the trial after that because hes on death's door! is he gonna pull through??? will the phantom win in the sick twisted way of taking yet another life, but this time it's worse because we ACTUALLY. KNEW. HIM. and how good of a person he is??????? and its way more angst in the way of characters cause like Simon has someone actually close to him to potentially mourn! again! because of the phantom!

and if you still want the betrayal factor, i got that too! maybe the real fulbright was being threatened into being an informant for the phantom!!! or was even accidentally giving away information somehow, which still gives him consequences for the 'betrayal' while also being a 'fulbright being stupid' moment at the same time. just this time it's a whole lot worse because it put actual lives at stake and Clay got killed. boom! angst!!