#i started playing aai1

[periwinkla]

Final NRMT poster with all panels! Print here <3 Did anyone notice... anything about the bottom right panel? It's not too obvious but I wanted it to at least be noticeable within the poster itself that something is... 'off' if you compared it with the other panels. And there's a reason. Honestly it's just about a silly headcanon of mine, and it is also a silly way for me to include it but... I'm silly myself. Under the cut, the hanakotoba notes for the flower panel... and other stuff. The other stuff isn't important really but it was funny for me.

Already talked about this in the flower panel post - but these are the main things I took into consideration when choosing the flowers:

3 sunflowers specifically mean 'I love you' - so I also added 3 chrysanthemums to complement them. By the by, among other things, sunflowers mean 'passion', 'love', 'adoration', 'I only have eyes for you' - while white chrysanthemums mean 'truth'. Red chrysanthemums signify 'love' but I opted against them in favor of the following flowers.

The small blue flowers are forget-me-nots, which, other than the obvious, mean 'true love' in hanakotoba. 

The pink flowers are Japanese primroses ('sakurasou' - they get their name because of their resemblance to cherry blossoms), which mean 'first love', 'longing', 'purity', 'youthful love', 'the beginning of youth and sadness'...

Also, here the nmweek24 tag on the blog to see the posts for the individual panels with additional info/behind the scenes: https://periwinkla.tumblr.com/tagged/nmweek24 note: there are a few minor adjustments I made for the final poster compared to the individual panels (you probably won't even be able to see them honestly) ---Sentimental story time--- The reason I wanted to do something special for nrmt week was because tomorrow (the 8th) will mark the day I first started playing AA1. And I'm so happy I got into it! Funny story: my first exposure to AA was the anime (almost 10 years ago!) I got to the end of the first 12ish episodes, obviously was very confused because it's not meant to be consumed by someone who didn't play the games, and promptly abandoned ship and forgot all about it. Completely. I even forgot I had watched it! until I got to Turnabout Goodbyes because I had a vague recollection of having seen the boat photo. But other than that, complete oblivion (my memory is quite terrible in general). Basically, last year I had finished Detective Pikachu 1 and wanted something similar because I usually play classic jrpgs and needed a change of pace... AA1 was my choice. As I mentioned, I remembered absolutely nothing from the anime (I had no idea Mia died, so, imagine the shock). I went completely blind till I finished with AJ and AAI1-2. Honestly, it's a beautiful experience when you play games without knowing anything about them. It feels like the good old days. I absolutely don't believe that study that says spoilers don't spoil the experience. Also I find it nice that I got into nrmt without outside prompt, because I find it funny that my brain needed to play through 6 games in order to see it. I seem to have prosciutto on my eyes (Italian idiom). In my defense I usually don't look for romance in stories and ship stuff unless it's very obvious. Nrmt comes too close to it to ignore. Ok, end of nostalgic sentimentality. ...And here's the 'other stuff': This print was the thing I said I had hidden 'in plain sight'. It has been on the print shop since... Thursday. 'It was there all along'-well more like half-along really <3

[snapscube]

i finished AA investigations 1 btw :3 tier list update time!

All in all: Investigations 1 was pretty tough to get through unfortunately. Not that it was like BAD or anything but i really lost the drive somethin fierce with this one. The writing just did not feel even remotely as sharp or fun as the best of even AA1, though i don't think there was ever a low point as low of some of the first trilogy's worst. The very definition of "mid" overall, and I don't mean the new kind of "mid" that actually just means bad.

The last case of AAI1 was actually really good though! Really picked up the pace, it was nice and long and very fun to put the actual mystery together. It tied together the underlying plot of the entire game very nicely, one thing i think Investigations actually did really well overall. I liked how tangibly connected pretty much every case felt, even if the individual stories lost my interest often.

I will say though in regards to the final case, holy shit it goes off the rails near the end. I think there is legitimately 5 instances in a row of the murderer going "okay im going home now" only for some character to rush in at the last second and extend the investigation because of some weird asinine piece of evidence that is infinitely less valuable than everything we've already discussed. I think that final 3rd or so of the case is particularly egregious about treating previous evidence as inconsequential at the slightest bit of opposition in a way that started to really exhaust me by the end. I know that's kinda the whole bit with Ace Attorney, but usually there's a bit of balance in the more well rounded cases. This might be the worst I've seen of it so far, so it left somewhat of a sour taste in my mouth. Still enjoyed it a lot up to that point though, so it gets a solid A rank :)

Sorry I didn't post a lot of screencaps or anything when playin this one, I would have been taking them but my Steam Deck (where i play these most often) has been acting kinda buggy w my controller's screenshot button. It'll work once when I boot up the game fresh and then just not register any of my screenshots after. Hopefully that'll be fixed soon :) Time to move onto AAI2.... sometime in the near future! Maybe tonight! Maybe next week! I dunno! WEEEEE!

[ashenwyvern]

I had a random thought, only five AA games are actually the story of their protagonist. Those being Justice For All, Dual Destinies, Spirit of Justice, and TGAA1. (AAI2 is in a weird place but I’ll explain that at the end so spoilers for that game as well)

Like, I know each protagonist is important to the story, but it’s still not their story.

The original Ace attorney is all about the consequences of DL6 (Red White and Mia’s death, Miles and Von Karma) and Miles’ redemption. Phoenix is just the catalyst for it all to start unraveling.

Then Trials and Tribulations was the story of the Feys and how Misty’s disappearance and the inter-family politics destroyed the lives of so many. It’s also Diego’s story to a lesser extent, of him learning to grieve and let go of his anger. Again, Phoenix is just the one being dragged into this mess due to his connection with Mia and Maya. (I would argue that dealing with your evil ex is definitely your story, but that part is so completely overshadowed by the family drama that it is a side plot.)

Apollo Justice was the story of the Grammaryes and the Gavin brothers and how one family destroyed itself while Klavier realized just how fucked up his brother is and the part he had to play in Kristoph’s schemes. Not to mention Phoenix and his disbarment and him learning to trust Apollo, going from practically taking over the defense from him in case 1 to trusting him with winning the Misham case in case 4.

AAI1 is the story of Kay Faraday and the legacy of the Yatagarasu. Miles is there because he happened to be the one with the necessary information and ability to solve the case when it became an international incident, but he does not go through any character development during that time.

TGAA2 is the story of the Professor killings, and Kazuma and Van Zeiks’ families, the misdeeds of Lord Stronghart and the the tangled web of lies that was woven in order to protect the corrupt system. Ryunosuke went through his character development of growing into a proper lawyer in the first game so he’s free to be the catalyst here.

AAI2 is weird however, it is Miles’ story, of learning what it truly means to follow his father’s legacy and learning that he can do that in his own way as a prosecutor. But it is equally the story of Simeon and his misguided revenge, and how authority and the system can so completely fail a person that it drives them to extreme measures. AAI2 is two stories borne of the same tragedy.

[cyandreamzaceattorney]

✯ Ema, Kay and Maya ✯

So instead of doing the drawing for a fanfic that was done be beta read yesterday I instead drew Ema, Kay and Maya together based off a kinda unhinged hc that might disappear after I get back into played aai2 (I started playing it a bit but had to stop because, woah the beginning is very cool but very overwhelming for me!) but I don't care because this might be my favourite aa fanart I've made!

Idk why it is, but I had a lot of fun drawing this (even though I was outside for most of this drawings process and the sun is so fucken hot now, even though it's only SPRING!!!), I think it's because I kept on thinking about the hc that spawned this fanart, which I'll now explain!

Spoilers for aai1 and aa1/3/6 for rest of post

So at the end of aai1 Kay says she's not going to form the Yatagarasu until she finds two more members who are also cute girls her age and immediately my brain thought "wait Ema and Maya are around Kay's age what if..." and the more I thought about it the more I can see it working! Since Kay of course has little theif and a lot of knowledge from her Dad, Ema by aa6 is a forensic investigator and Maya is the head of the Kurain village spirit mediums which apparently still means something as sister bikini did say spirit mediums still had powerful ties after DL-6 (they just aren't as open about it).

Plus Maya is good friends with Phoenix, a lawyer, and both Kay and Ema are kinda co workers/friends to Miles, who's of course the cheif procecutor (though I feel like he'd not be as helpful as Phoenix lol so idk how useful this connection would be).So I feel like this trio would work really well as the next gen Yatagarasu trio XD but, because I haven't finished aai2 I am prepared for that to throw a wrench into my hc, but in that case this could always be an AU :3

[folkdances]

hiiii my darling ^_^ just out of curiosity….if i WERE to start playing ace attorney. what game should i start with and roughly how much time would i need to invest in playing it ? :)

HI JULES i would suggest you start playing with phoenix wright: ace attorney because that's the first game in the series and also (IMO) one of the best ones so if you enjoy playing through it you'll probably like the rest too ^_^ plus it sets up the, you know, entire rest of (minimally) the trilogy.

i don't think i'm very good for giving a time estimate though 😓 i think maybe 2-3 hours per case? i googled it and most places say something like 60 hours which is definitely not true lol i think it's more something like ~15 especially if you're a fast reader.

if you have a 3ds you can get the games off of hshop, and if you have an android phone you can use @prosecutors-gambit's collection of apks linked here (hi stefan). if you want to play on your laptop you can just download the roms also off of hshop i believe and play them on the citra emulator (this is what i did when i had a chromebook, too!). you're kind of screwed if you only have an apple phone (piracy) games-wise but you could cheat and watch the anime which covers the original trilogy (pw:aa, justice for all, and trials & tribulations). @key-lime-soda compiled the (subbed) version of it on a google drive here, but the dubbed version isn't very hard to find.

(if you want to do things legally, you could buy the games off of steam, on your switch, there's app versions on the play store and app store, i think probably xbox one, or you could shill like 500 dollars for a game cartridge for the ds.)

there are a lot of games though so i'll list them out chronologically here. for your perusal:

the great ace attorney chronicles - takes place in victorian london and follows phoenix's ancestor, ryunosuke

phoenix wright: ace attorney - aa1

phoenix wright: ace attorney - justice for all - aa2

phoenix wright: ace attorney - trials and tribulations - aa3

miles edgeworth: ace attorney - investigations - aai1

ace attorney investigations 2 - prosecutor's gambit - aai2

apollo justice: ace attorney - aa4

phoenix wright: ace attorney - dual destinies - aa5

phoenix wright: ace attorney - spirit of justice - aa6

bold = "mainline" games

???. professor layton vs. phoenix wright - crossover game that kind of floats around outside of the timeline

if you want the official timeline, capcom put together this little webpage :-)

[oodlyenough]

finished turnabout serenade this week. i have to say, i know this case isn't particularly popular so i was expecting something dire, and case 3 is always the weakest of the lot anyway. but tbh it was probably better than most case 3s and also every case in aai1, so i enjoyed it

no spoilers for whatever comes next plz

more thoughts:

FIRST UP ... did i understand correctly that the magic trick solution was that the lamiroir on stage at the start of the performance was in fact valant in drag ??!?!??!?!?!! i feel we skipped over that way too quickly! i watched that VHS fifteen million times against my will and his contour game is unmatched. perfect replica. fey level shapeshifting. magic is real

"the window was closed" made me insane why didn't they just make it a window that can't open 😭

why'd they make daryan look like that lmao. what was the theming. why the phallic skunk hair with a shark hoodie. what is this telling me

how many other band members are in the gavinners. are they in the audience like uhh... soooo... about the tour...

one upside to having played aai1 first was borginia was already a known entity to me and for some reason that made all of this much funnier. where's cammy meele we have some wingdings to translate.

boriginia, an idyllic eastern bloc paradise with an isolationist culture that hoards magic cocooons on penalty of death because, apparently, poison is more valuable than a magic cure and is definitely not something you could get from any undergrad at ivy u's pharmacology dept ...?????!... desperate to know the state of geopolitical affairs in this world. tell me everything

business as usual for ace attorney but it had me on the floor how both lamiroir and machi lied nonstop about everything lmfaoo ofhgklhg. she in particular has such a sad downfacing woe-is-me face every time she's like "you don't believe me? just because of all the lies? 😞 i didn't mention i was in the ceiling because it seemed irrelevant" ok girl put that sad sprite away

kristoph and nick, alita and wocky, daryan and klavier... apollo's 3 for 3 on court breakups so far

very bold of japanifornia to be horrified by borginia's death penalty smuggling policy, like they weren't ready to hang a 9 year old for an accidental discharge

it's interesting to see this game tackle "hey this system we have sucks huh". yeah dudes that was pretty obvious back in like. 1-1. wasn't expecting us to confront it lol. i don't... really know how i feel about it, tbd. I mean, of course the system sucks, their system is insane lmao, but the gameplay hinges on it. also lmao @ the judge like "wow i never thought about it before"

[pitter-patt-art]

Ace Attorney AU August oops-august-has-been-over-for-a-week Update!!

Hiiiii well okay first and most importantly of all! Happy investigations collection day everyone!!!! My copy is supposed to arrive by 10pm although I'm not sure I'll be playing it right away, but, hey, once it arrives I'll have in my possession at least one physical copy of every game in the series (2 for aai1, woohoo)!!! *Coughs* uh except all of the OG Trilogy which instead I own like 2 times over digitally (3 in T&T's case, thanks Wii) lmao. Ah well.

NOW the actual post. Yeah it's not August anymore but I've been recuperating or w/e so shhh, better late than never!

Overall I wrote over 50k words (actually in August itself) and posted 5 fics (with many more in progress), which is honestly just, wild???? That is so cool. Apparently the way to overcome writer's block is just overcommit to a month-long prompt list, who knew!

Here is my post about the first 17 days/AUs! And over here's my Ao3 series for these! Below the cut I'll wrap up the last 14 days of AUs, some thoughts, etc!

I am setting the goal for myself to actually finish writing these before the end of the year even if they're not technically "AU-gust" qualified anymore by the time I get to them sooo ...wish me luck!! In the meantime I am proud of myself for (tbh completely unnecessarily and to my detriment lmao) coming up with actually a full 31 solid AUs based on the prompts that I feel inspired by.

This post is gonna be a bit more rambly than the last one because I definitely did more of my writing last month the first 2 weeks rather than the last 2, but nevertheless--

Onto the remaining AUs!

18 - Space Travel

So, I actually started a draft at the airport before my vacation where I got wayyyy too sidetracked getting detailed about this one and thus ended up not being able to finish the post before takeoff lmao. I'm not sure whether it's annoying or interesting to include all of that here, but it's my post so fuck it, here's August 21st patt to tell you aaall about it so I don't have to: The Martian AU (I've only seen the movie and not read the book but i *did* literally just re-watch it because this thought crossed my mind lol. (Hello! It's future me popping in to say: fun fact, rewatching this movie literally ended up being the reason I knew a bar trivia answer last week lmao. Huzzah for the powers of Ace Attorney refreshing my movie quote knowledge.) Be glad this one occurred to me because my first inclination was to lean into the dark past of my vld phase (I'm super joking I had a lot of fun with it before the last few seasons haha sorry idk what to tell you friends) and see how much I'd retained if i tried to make that work but the martian sounded more fun in the end). Apparently my Thing™ is a) poisoning Phoenix and b) putting Apollo in an insane situation in which he's completely on his own--which all things considered is probably far meaner lol. I think Phoenix is to blame for creating his own problem here for choosing to eat the stupid necklace but I fully blame Capcom for all the BS Apollo has gone through after AA4 (bc...the stuff IN that game is. coincidentally also Phoenix's blame to claim. lol). That said I'm part of the problem teehee. Apollo can be Some Guy from the real world who gets isekai'ed and he can also be Mark Watney :P (sorry bud I love you but you have just the Worst case of unavoidable main character syndrome). ((Which is QUITE funny actually because I'll never get over Capcom calling 4,5,6 the """"Apollo Justice Trilogy"""" (it's really not and it's frankly insulting they're trying to say it is.) Like he's. Y’know. The main character in exactly one of those games...... so.)) What was I talking about? Lmao oh yeah so Apollo is left on Mars (not sure he actually has much in the way of Botanist™ vibes but the indomitable, never-say-die, highly sarcastic vibes.... ye haha that's my boy right there). Omg wait sorry I'm writing this and realizing this whole thing actually fits the 18th AND yesterday's (the 20th) prompt as well. Whoops.

Clay as the captain (let him do something, says I)

Trucy as I think the pilot ONLY because I am literally constantly on the lookout to make a Wright Flying Brothers joke, sorry

Klavier aaaas. Uh. So the German astronaut in the film is the chemist and navigator and I know Klav's not necessarily supposed to be actually German canonically but there IS something funny about it

Athena as the flight surgeon and EVA specialist (for a couple reasons but mostly so she can be a doctor lol. I imagine she also can be there for psych stuff too, like, it's a long ass space voyage, that does shit to your brain)

Kay as the SysOp and reactor tech, tbh mostly because for some reason i really have a thing for hacker/programmer Kay, i guess?

Ema I want to be there also lol so that would be exceeding the actual number of OG astronauts but eh it's my AU. The rest of these I'm just directly comparing to a crew member from the martian but I think some of the titles and tasks could be redistributed a little to allow an extra person as a treat for me.

Originally i kind of wanted Sebastian (....SIGH. or...Eustace. (I fear even though it's AAIC release day today, I truly may die on this hill forever, falling on my sword of devotion and gratitude to the fan translation team... That said, while I think Eustace is, like, a Deeply Fine name, I have to say that Excelsius is a fucking knockout name lmfao, that one took me out. Anyway, ahem: "I wanted Seb/Eustace...")) to be there too but I think that's getting into too many cooks territory just specifically bc I'd have too many voices to play with lmfao. So instead I think he's the operator who works the satellite and realizes Apollo is alive, I think he'd fit that well. NOT THAT that needs to be. Included. In the AU. I have...so much self control.

Anyway I have too many thoughts about it, it's a problem, ironically I think I would prefer to focus on the crew and not Apollo himself, so that would at least make it more than just a rehashing of the movie/book. (Or, the movie at least. Does the book spend more time with them? I should read the book.) ...I did, Of Course, also came up with a funny, pseudo-future-science-y way to do a Sibling Reveal in this one, so there's that, too, haha. OKAY AND, SCENE. Snatching my mic back from myself. I'm actually so devoted to the Martian AU now hahaha, I really didn't think I'd let that happen to myself but here we are... You'll see in a bit, but I for-better-or-worse do truly have an extended universe going on for it now, eheh... (Help.)

19 - Spies

Franmaya?? Franziska POV??? Here's the deal: I cannot BELIEVE I got this many days into the month and STILL hadn't come up with a franmaya-centric AU, it's terrible. Also I need a Maya POV if I want to hit my self-set, self-indulgent goal of having POV of every "main" character I can (did I exactly accomplish this no but that's perfectly fine obviously haha it was just a side achievement I had my eye on). So to that end, I ended up with something here that I'm not COMPLETELY sure I won't end up changing when I sit down to actually work on it, but in short: semi The Princess Bride vibes but with spies instead of pirates! Or uh! So um okay full disclosure lol I got all excited about an AU of this kind and then like an hour into daydreaming it into existence I realized I was heavily relying on / leaning into ASSASSIN territory rather than SPY. Which are notably different things. (Wait lol should I blame Spy x Family?? Totally Endo-sensei's fault and not at all mine, boom, take that.) ...And not to go even harder into sxf territory, whoops, but my idea was something along the lines of like, since Kurain School Channeling changes spirit mediums' appearance entirely, I was going to have Maya be something of an expert in disguise, and Franziska I was almost more or less going to let retain her actual position of international prosecutor with Interpol, although perhaps I'd lean more into a James Bond-esque intelligence agency sort of thing than what we see them do in-game, I'm not sure. Maya gets "killed" for real in 2-4 except she actually just becomes an international assassin(?) apprentice. Does this make sense? Probably not lol. But is it a little funny and a little sad? Yes, yes it is, and that's always my sweet spot as a writer. The only problem with this premise is I can't stop myself from considering what Phoenix would do / be doing in the background, because the problem with Maya "dying"-only-being-secretly-alive leaves at least twofold problems in justifying why Nick hasn't gone full conspiracy theory board stop-at-nothing-to-find-her, in that a) If she's not dead, Pearl can't channel her, and knowing Pearl I have to imagine that would be her first move to try tbh, and b) even if that weren't an issue, if the police were never able to track down Maya's body at all, I fully believe Nick would still throw himself at the problem until he's able to find answers irregardless, so. This ain't about him though!! So we'll just all have to deal with knowing he's taking reaaally really bad care of himself while he single-mindedly tries to figure out what's going on ahaha...ha. He's most absolutely the drowning child in the facebook post meme. Don't worry about him.

20 - Crossover/Fusion

Soooo. Okay. First may I say, I'm not the most crossover-fic-y person in the world neither as a reader nor writer. HOWEVER. Unfortunately. My one undying weakness has proven to be Ace Attorney x Legally Blonde (and more specifically Legally Blonde the Musical, the best version, though I do love Reese Witherspoon's performance ofc it's iconic but the musical is just MWAH ugh. One of my all-time favorite musicals and definitely the one I've listened to the most esp the past couple years hahaha.) The problem is, I've joked about so many slight variations / one very Long Intensive specific AA/LBtM crossover AU ideas, that trying to limit myself to a one-shot I could conceivably finish within a day proved too much for my decision paralysis and I didn't end up writing any of them lmao. Alas. Mostly, I just think it would be funny to see the characters interact in something of a vacuum just for fun, the problem is just that I happen to be uniquely terrible at not thinking through a Crack AU until I can, ahem, "crack" it, so to speak, to make it actually justifiably function. So in theory all I want to write for this day is some combination of like, Elle and Phoenix interacting and Miles and Emmett interacting, or the four of them having a conversation that goes something like "omg wait me too!! i also went from a creative undergrad degree directly into law to chase after some guy!! what are the odds teehee" while Emmett and Miles watch in horror, and also alternatively Emmett and Phoenix mostly bemusedly watching Elle and Miles geek out over like, fancy ass high class (pink) clothing like "uh yeah i have no idea what any of those words mean. she bought me this suit and i honestly wouldn't even be able to find the store again. oh no way he bought you yours too?? man, wild." Etc. (If anyone's interested in really watching me suffer and spiral: my longer and more intensive idea for an AU with them is to have them be tackling parallel cases where either of them (Elle and Phoenix) has specific knowledge that is helpful to defending the others' client, and they get like place-swapped through dimensional shenanigans somehow also related to the cases. And Phoenix has to abide by, like, nominally-accurate US trial law (I know he wouldn't really be licensed shhhh) -- by which I mean Emmett is sitting as his co-council and exercising the most restraint possible to keep from bashing his head into the table every two seconds. And Elle has to abide by guilty-until-proven-innocent Japanifornia trial law ("wait WHAT omg what do you MEAN the prosecution can just, like, not submit their evidence before the trial???? wait what do you MEAN we should just TAKE THAT that is EVIDENCE AT A CRIME SCENE--"). On the bright side, Elle gets to experience being one of the most normally-dressed people in a courtroom and not at all being looked down upon for her general vibes and wardrobe (like tell me she wouldn't fit right in in the ace attorney universe and seem completely ordinary), and Phoenix gets to experience a real jury (take that jurist system trial that Capcom would like to never ever talk about again) and also the judge going "so, Prospective Juror No. 103, do you understand that the defense in this criminal trial does not need to say a single word in order to be doing their job? the burden of proof lies entirely on the prosecution the entire time and the defense and defendant could choose to remain silent every day of trial and that would be completely within their rights, do you understand that? are you okay with that?" etc etc, shout out to my jury service a couple month ago and the kinds of questions a real life California judge asks jurors that would seriously blow the minds of every single character in Ace Attorney lmfao can you imagine? Anyway.) So yeah idk. Also something something, spirit mediums and the whole Greek Chorus bit from the musical... "School Spirit"... much to think about in crack AU land hahaha.)

21 - Absurd Tragedy

To be honest with you, this is the entire series lmao, so much so that I had trouble even thinking of an AU to be "alternate" in any way here, hahaha. What I sort-of landed on and have vague outline notes about in my doc is (not to make another excellent-musical-adaptation-of-an-already-top-tier-movie-which-is-itself-a-highly-unfaithful-adaptation-of-a-fairly-obscure-book reference) a Shrek the Musical "I Think I Got You Beat"-style debate about whose canonical absurd tragic circumstances are the worst, lmfao. Granted, this then turned into a "wait what if I use said argument as an absurd way in which to make Apollo and Trucy have a siblings realization completely on their own, which both compounds the fact they've both already lived such tragedy to begin with but also could touch on Phoenix knowing about it and not telling them about it", and uhhhhh lmfao a debate specifically between them is OBVIOUSLY not the romantic flirting banter of the song between Shrek and Fiona lmfao but like still, the general premise, just in a sibling bickering coat of paint instead. Also was toying with it being an Athena POV just to sell home / for the additional absurdity of the experience of "you've gone over to your friend's house to hang out and suddenly they're obnoxiously arguing with their sibling and their parents are nowhere to be seen and you're not exactly sure what you're supposed to do with yourself except awkwardly wait for them to be done" lmfao. Which I've most absolutely experienced from both ends multiple times hahaha. The alternative option for this prompt is just for me to write an excessively long essay debating and attempting to personally rank the main cast's level of absurd tragedy compared to each other, lol.

22 - Orphan

I wrote 324 words (slash one physical lined page in my actual notebook) of this while I was on vacation, lol. AU where Miles invites Phoenix to go watch one of Gregory's trials (or Phoenix invites himself, or Gregory invites him while Miles tries to hold the landline phone away from him, lol) and I mean of course the trial he goes to is The Trial (like, Jeffre... AW CRAP wait I don't actually know what Jeff Master's or Kate Hall's official names are lmfao uhhh. Well you know what don't worry about that. Happy AAIC day once again..? Lol. Anyway, the concluding day of Gregory's last trial, obviously, ignore the defendant's name.) Like, basically, here's my thought. AU where Phoenix is also there, and not only does that mean he knows what happened to Miles and Gregory but also, like, it's Phoenix. Tell me even at 9 he wouldn't be insisting on taking care of the poor kid who just lost everything and has nowhere in the world to go. Tell me he's not like, begging his parents they need to help him, lol. I think really this is just sort of an AU to explore one of my several personal headcanons for what Phoenix's parents are like, because I've spent a lot of time on a different version of them (coughs for the last AU on this list...coughs) but I also have a version of them which I find fun / funny where they're like, kinda hippy-dippy and like very hands-off (tbh almost all of my hc's about the Greater Wrights is they're very hands off, just in different ways) but in more of a "we want our child to experience the beauty and wonder of the world on his own time and not influence him or set rigid standards to conform to" kind of philosophy. Anyway my point is they like adopt/foster Miles somehow before Manfred can actually get his hands on him (he's still too busy dealing with the fresh bullet wound I guess?) This is just a gen au of course, not only because they're 9 lol but also the logistics of being adoptive/foster siblings gets weird quick lmao, but mostly I just find it interesting to think about what might have happened if Miles was in an environment where people paid more attention and cared more (and weren't explicitly influencing and manipulating him to exasperate the problem on purpose), because I have to imagine examining his nightmares a little more closely a little more quickly might have led someone (say, Phoenix who was also there in this AU) to find something slightly off about it or like start putting pieces together quicker, idk. I, uh, I'm not gonna lie to you, I don't actually remember how I intended to end this one hahaha ;; I started it but I was on vacation and neglected to outline / summarize the rest of my ideas the day of, so I guess I'll just have to see where my mind takes me when I get back to it.

23 - Musician

So my FIRST thought for this day was to use it as an excuse to finish my First Ever Ace Attorney Fic, which has been in WIP stasis for...uh.... 6. Years. i--SIX????? Shit. lmfao. yeah uh. I guess I created the first version of the doc (on my OneNote, god) back in 2018. So. Yeah. Hm. Omfg. This fic has partially existed since before Phoenix Disbarment Day. That is so. Wow. Damn. Y'all we're so close to aa4 time (2026) what the hell??? Ahem. Pianist Phoenix. That's. My point lmao. I know the original thing that sparked me loving this concept was actually some tumblr post I saw apparently a LONG long time ago, hahaha, and I know there's no way I'll find it with tumblr's abysmal search function, but just know it was not a completely original idea of mine when I say i fucking LOVE the headcanon that, you know what actually Phoenix CAN play the piano, he just chooses to do it as shittily as possible because that's kind of what he's like post-disbarment and he'd absolutely get a kick out of fucking with people like that even if they have no way to know they're being fucked with. It's like, he's no virtuoso or anything, but he can passably play the piano! He's just being an ass on purpose! It kills me every time lol. I won't say I think that's necessarily true in canon so ofc it's not like an end-all-be-all hc for me or anything but it's just sooooo funny to me that I like to break it out any time I possibly can. Look me in the eyes and tell me he wouldn't. Honestly, look me in the eyes and tell me if he actually put his mind to it in any meaningful way he wouldn't be able to get decent quickly regardless, considering the fact he became an accomplished lawyer on more-or-less a total whim. This to say: that was my intention, to finish this fic I've had brewing that was about Phoenix actually being able to play the piano and hiding it for a really long time but eventually being found out by Miles by chance. Except then I sat down on the plane and started writing a Pearl POV instead? In which she finds out about more or less the same exact concept but from Iris--also by chance, but less actually catching him playing and more being asked, "Oh, does he still play? He was always good at that." And then bc it's Pearl (Pearl I love you), of COURSE she goes and confronts him about it. Pearl might be the single most confrontational character in these games tbh which is SO FUNNY to me. Like I'm kind of exaggerating obviously but also am I? I know she has psyche-locks you have to break through multiple times throughout the series but stiiiill. Everyone else is so repressed and weird about anything remotely vulnerable, I stg. Props to Maya for making sure Pearl turned out pretty okay I guess, lmao. Anyhow yeah that's sort of the AU I ended up with. Pearl POV where she and Iris know they're sisters (don't get me started on this I have so many thoughts about the amount of information I'm positive Maya and Pearl are NEVER given skjflj) and Pearl visits Iris in prison regularly and on one such visit maybe she mentions Nick's job at Borscht and Iris makes a totally innocuous comment to the effect that Pearl learns he actually knows how to play the piano and she goes to get mad at him about it because he's definitely been pretending he can't and Pearl's pretty sure he's told neither Maya nor Trucy the truth and that cannot be left to stand.

24 - Pretend Hate

Okay, this exists in a similar realm to the Orphan prompt, except instead of Phoenix being there for the trial or the Wrights taking Miles in before Manfred can, it's more just AU where Miles doesn't actually cut all contact and he and Phoenix successfully end up exchanging correspondence (in semi-secret) during the time they're separated (i.e. they remain friends and close during the 15 years they're separated in canon). "Semi-secret" because they--esp Miles--somehow hide who exactly it is they're talking / writing to all the time but don't necessarily hide the fact they are doing that. Like, a fake cultural / language exchange program or something? I feel like there could be a world where Manfred really doesn't give a shit what Miles is up to as long as he's being molded into "someone Gregory Edgeworth would hate" (I don't think he would lol but that's another AU) and becoming a model von Karma protege prosecutor and such. He obviously goes to lengths to cut Miles off from everything he's familiar with in that he takes him to Germany, but I've always thought it's way more on Miles feeling guilty and blaming himself and thinking he's unworthy / pushing people away being the reason why they never talked before aa1 despite Phoenix's "attempts to contact him," whatever those may be specifically. And, yeah, I've watched that one episode of the anime but tbh I don't really use anime canon for almost anything besides maybe some of the fun visuals, haha, so I'm kind of disregarding that anyway. ANYWAY. My point is. The "pretend hate" part is that--sometime over the course of exchanging correspondence, Phoenix starts thinking something's weird and gets it in his head to "investigate" himself, since he's still in LA / has access to the scene of the crime and stuff, and then as a combo of him just plugging away at it until he has enough (circumstantial) evidence to be like "Miles I think you're wrong about this" and also a younger, slightly less repressed, slightly less in Manfred's pocket Miles actually being somehow willing to consider alternatives a little--they're able to put their heads together and eventually come to the (correct) conclusion ahead of time, before the 15-year statute of limitations, that it was almost certainly Manfred who did it. And then they work together to figure out how they can possibly PROVE that but they haven't thought of anything foolproof by the time aa1 events start rolling around (or at the very least, the 5-years-ago sections of aa3? It might make more sense if it's as soon as Miles returns to Japanifornia, and also I think Phoenix has way less reason to fall for Dahlia/Iris so hard if Miles is around and *coughs* available lmfao. Anyhow). So, in the hopes it'll keep Manfred from getting suspicious of Miles, they publicly pretend to hate each other, putting on a show of more of the canon attitude Miles esp. has before 1-4, but behind the scenes they're actually working together trying to think of a way they can definitely get a conviction to stick that Manfred won't be able to worm out of. And that's the AU! Idk, in terms of additional thoughts, I couldn't decide what to do / what would happen to Mia in this AU either, which doesn't super matter but did give me pause. So she might live, idk, depends the exact timeline. I do also think a scene where--Dahlia still hits on Phoenix in the reading room/courthouse library but he's like, actively there waiting for one of Miles' trials to conclude for a covert meeting, so when Miles gets there and is like "What are you messing with over there?" Phoenix is like "Oh, hey, check out this weird bottle some girl just gave me because apparently she fell in love at first sight, haha, isn't that so funny--" and then Miles recognizes it from the Fawles trial and they catch Dahlia earlier or something, idk. Or alternatively Phoenix was AT that trial so HE recognizes it. Or maybe it's funniest if he was there but doesn't recognize it until Miles does lmao, this is not the point of this AU but I can't stop myself from considering this part of it.

25 - Scientists

So THIS is the day I sort of alluded to earlier, many many words of post ago, where I got so invested in my The Martian AU that I started accidentally worldbuilding about it. What I've started and have about 400 words of (slash one notebook page, again from the plane after my vacation), is like, AU where it's NASA instead of law and I can make Phoenix go "What, like it's hard?" only it's about literally rocket science this time hahaha. Basically for this fic I just thought, well what if Phoenix just shows up as a flight tech or engineer or something (idk I don't really know that much about real life astronautics) as Miles is preparing for some space mission or something and he's just like WHAT are YOU doing HERE. I know I know I made Apollo literally be the titular martian and yes he ALSO has a (or tbh probably has a WORSE) canonical debilitating fear of heights, so, shhh, but I do like the idea that Phoenix is like, oh, who, me? In the flying metal death trap? No fucking thank you, I will be down here watching and talking directly to you through a headset or something. You cannot escape me however i can at least escape the building I'm in. No interest in seeing the Earth from above, thanks. Actually iirc Miles also doesn't love heights but meh whatever I'm fairly certain Phoenix talks about it the earliest in the series so there you go. Anyway, this would all be a mission prior to whatever mission it is that Apollo & Co. go on to Mars for the first part of the AU, so I guess you could consider it a prequel? And probably a fairly shippy one. I have other reasons for which it's fun for me if wrightworth is at least together if not outright married before the events of the "The Martian" part of the AU, so this one would be, like, about how exactly that went down.

26 - Victorian Era

Okay, once again, this just. IS. Literally. Dai Gyakuten Saiban / The Great Ace Attorney. Lol. That said, I've always loved the fanart I've seen of like Ryuunosuke and Phoenix (and respective Co.'s) interacting, or like, one or the other ending up in the other time period somehow, so I thought it'd probably be fun to try my hat at that. I feel like I've neglected the tgaa characters anyway, considering I actually somehow managed to reference PLvPW already, which is obviously significantly more of a spinoff and also just largely non-canonical, lmao. Also tgaa is just SO GOOD, augh. I'd love to have the multi-witness cross examinations from both of those games back sometime again, and I had so much fun with the jury in tgaa too, excellent mechanic. What was I talking about? So, I never completely decided on a concrete direction to take this, but even before AU-gust had started I'd already been toying with the idea of an AU where maybe Maya or Pearl channels a character from tgaa specifically because some documentary or special or something comes out talking about the real-life Herlock Sholmes (as opposed to the Totally Fictional "Sherlock Holmes" who Phoenix references in that one trilogy line, because I really think that's the funniest possible explanation for the discrepancy) and they're arguing over how that cannot possibly be a real person and no one was named that and etc etc and then to prove once and for all one way or the other Hurley is channeled and also for bonus joke content "recognizes" Phoenix at first (idk pretend his eyesight got worse in his older age, I know Phoenix and Ryuunosuke look, tbh, less alike than Ryuu and Apollo do, lmao, but again that's another AU) and then I get to play with Phoenix's mom's maiden name is Naruhodou and his middle name is Ryuuichi or such to that effect, because that is also a favorite headcanon of mine (not in small part because I can project my own life onto him by making him half-Japanese from SoCal, lol). So that's an idea I'd had that was already decently fleshed out and the ONLY problem is that if I'm having characters actually be channeled then there's a very real limiting factor of how many spirit mediums exist, and also that means Maya and/or Pearl don't get to interact with them, which for the sake of not overwriting would be good but for the sake of my love of a chaotic group conversation would be bad. But, uh, hopefully I do manage to hold myself to a less broad cast of characters, ideally, instead of bringing a bunch of them over to the other time period to see how they'd deal with that and interact en masse. Ha. Haha.

27. Younger / De-Aged

So here's another AU I'd already had idle thoughts about before AU-gust had even started! I...will get into this later, TRUST I will, lmfao, but I do have an extremely involved AU already in which Time Travel of the "regression" type is involved, i.e., they have their memories of the "future" but are thrown back into the past including their own younger bodies however-many-years-ago. So I've got that type of thing covered, I promise I do, haha. And additionally, I've actually already written them "younger" for my colorless AU way back on day 2, so I did think perhaps I'd just continue that one and say it was for this prompt (a smart person thing to do. this is the objectively correct option). On the other hand. I find pre-DL6 Phoenix and Miles reacting to how their lives actually turned out in the end HILARIOUS. Tell me it's not funny. And tell me it's not, like, some sort of depressing-yet-ultimately-hopeful for the older/current them to look at their child selves and be like Kid, Oh, You're Going To Go Through Some Shit, but also reflect on how they did make it and things turned out okay and life goes on etc etc. My problem with this kind of thing is that it's hard to come up with a justification for and that's not a problem in itself but it is a problem in me not knowing how i'm going to end a fic, which often gets me decision-paralysis-ed into not being able to start it in the first place, which did in fact happen to me here, haha. I think ideally I'd just do a quick "wait, was that a dream?" kind of thing where they (Miles and Nick) have a short conversation with themselves, but... Uh-oh, what, did you think that was all I had? You clearly don't know me at all. OTHER au option where young Phoenix is in the future/present and rather than himself and Miles it's the Wright Anything Agency who like, idk, find him roaming the streets of LA (fun fact! I actually came up with this AU one day while I was quite literally roaming the streets of LA myself at like 3am-ish. Do with that what you will). He is of course wearing a hat or beanie or something at first because come on, that's way more fun, and no matter how much Trucy, Apollo, and Athena are like "hm idk something about this kid seems familiar" I just don't think my first thought upon seeing some vaguely familiar kid alone on the street would be, like, "Oh, that's obviously a child version of my father/coworker/boss!" So. I'm not really sure that one has an end point either, though, so the same problem still stands, haha. The bad, someone get a spray bottle to spritz me, option of this is, obviously, to combine the two, so it's like the WAA find him first and then are like UHHHHH we need an adult (never mind actual adult-age-ness between them) and somehow end up getting Miles there too, but idk. I... should not. Overcomplicate. I shouldn't. Even, even if...august is over...so theoretically there's no longer any sort of On-Time component since it's late either way........ definitely not.

28 - Caretaker

Here are my exact notes / entire doc for this day. Ahem. And I quote: i brought up the lighthouse keeper thing but i dont know where that would be going exactly maybe this is a thing i could do franmaya for??? since i still havent gotten there? actually lol that as a lighthouse thing is funny. ghost romance? my three tropes rattle End quote. Anyway, shout-out to my friend hailstorm for being the one there to brainstorm "lighthouse keeper" with at the self-same bar trivia that I mentioned previously, lmao. I actually think that was even the same exact day as the The Martian quote was a relevant answer to a question. So yeah, even though I already kind of have franmaya planned for the spies day, that's both kind of sort of a darker AU overall and--WELP well, okay, so, i do, you know, recognize maybe a ghost romance isn't, uh, necessarily the fluffiest kind of AU lmao. Don't mind that. My point is, I love the vibes of a lighthouse keeper AU, and I generally like ghost romance as a trope, so that does feel like a viable option. Honestly, I kind of separately wanted an excuse to practice writing miego also, so maybe the Feys are just all chillin' in this lighthouse for...Some Reason, and that's side-plot relevant somehow, idk. I know Franziska and Godot exist in the same place for a minute in 3-5, but I honestly can't really remember them interacting? I think she'd fucking HATE him though lmfao. He'd think she's funny but I actually think she'd be too reactive for his most preferred teasing/fucking-with-people dynamics, haha. Regardless, if he is there at all, it's a very minor B plot, I think, 'cause this ain't about him, lol.

29 - Forced into Hiding

Achtung, baby, 2566 words of this are written! Lol. So uh, yeah. In short, AU where Klavier gets hounded by fans on the street while he's also having just a bad personal day, and the closest and best place he can think to hide from them is at the WAA. I, um, actually hadn't realized I'd written quite this much of this, haha, it was supposed to be short and fairly silly but then it turned into Klavier having a little bit of a panic attack maybe and getting consoled by Apollo, sure, of course, but then also having to deal with and experience some amount of closure / reach some kind of understanding with the Wrights, also. It's kind of part Klav character study, kind of part complaint against freaking Capcom for neglecting him (boo, I love him, stop ignoring him, or, yknow, worse, whatever the heck turnabout academy was supposed to do for him, which honestly almost felt like a step back to be quite honest). Okay, also, taking a slightly closer look at what I've already written, the REASON I'd thought I'd written way less than this is definitely because he hasn't even GOTTEN to the Agency yet, never mind spoken with any of its members, lmao. That would do it. In any case, I like the idea of Klavier having a bit of a vulnerable moment, and I also like the idea of him and Phoenix actually, like, talking for real, instead of, once again, whatever Turnabout Academy and DD was meant to tell me, which seems to be less than nothing. I kind of like the fact that it gave him a law mentor? I mean, she was very dead, but I have a very meaningful Use for her in later-to-be-announced-AUs-I-keep-teasing, haha. I of course considered other people and times when people in AA might be forced into hiding, but this felt like a silly but also meaningful way to do that without it just being an exploration of Miles and his not-suicide note (which wasn't exactly "forced" anyhow, he did that all on his own) or like, Zak Gramarye (who also completely did that to himself but w/e). Making it about Klavier completely escapes the bounds of canon, because canon is a weenie about talking about any of his actual feelings EVER, so screw you Capcom, I'm doing it for you. Don't worry about it. Trucy commiserating with him about still Loving someone, perhaps the very closest person biologically related to you you've ever known and depended on in your life, who not only did you very big harm personally but explicitly used you in a very real and participatory way to perpetuate the harm elsewhere and all the complexities about Feelings For And About Them Therein, and Phoenix somehow having enough self-awareness to recognize that shutting down completely and isolating yourself away doesn't actually do you any good even when you're at your lowest, and recognizing that Klavier doesn't exactly have a "Trucy" to be a focal point to draw him out of that, and that therefore he needs to be a bit more open to his peers. (Insert joke about "Well, I'm really definitely not suggesting you go adopt an entire child, that's really probably, uh, not the way to go, actually, but, you know. Everyone needs people, that just makes us human." Etc.)

30 - The Beginning of the World

So, hm, as it turns out, I got extremely sidetracked this day thinking about the next day on the docket. Whoops! Unfortunately this ultimately means my ideas for this day as of now are relatively uninspired: I had the thought that I could explore the beginning of Troupe Gramarye, which is its own sort of world, or else, maybe something about the beginning of the series itself but from the somewhat unconventional POV of a one Mr. Larry Butz. Yes, that's a bit self-serving in that it lends toward trying to complete a list of "main, recurring characters' POVs" that I've had as a sidequest all month, but, still. That said, just exploring actual canon through Larry's POV isn't exactly what I'd classify as an "AU" necessarily, so I feel like something would need to be different here. Okay, wait--not to draw inspiration a dang week late to the party, BUT. Now that I'm typing this up, I'm thinking, okay, maybe, what if. The "Beginning" of the series, technically speaking, is basically the fact that Phoenix gets put on (class) trial for stealing Miles' lunch money--which notably only happened because Larry himself picked it up when it fell on the floor. So, perhaps, what about an AU where he doesn't do that? I mean, I guess it would just turn the entire world of AA into something of a terrible series of tragedies with no real closure about them, lol, rip, but it could possibly be interesting? I dunno! (And, yes, I know DL-6 itself is more or less the basis of the series, if we're being ticky-tacky, but Phoenix wouldn't have been involved without meeting Miles, and that somewhat necessitates the class trial, and without him none of canon would get resolved, so. I will say, I do love going back to the earliest points to see how and how much you can make canon deviate or stay the same--reasonably speaking--via minor tweaks and butterfly effect and all that, so this could be interesting, although I once again must say I think it really just means a bunch of innocent people, Miles included, are going to be put away and possibly executed over murders that weren't their faults, lol. Hm. Much to consider.)

31 - Two(+) of the Above:

Beginning of the World + Younger/De-Aged + Canon Divergence (+ Feat. Jokers: Guardian, Everybody Lives)

With all of this, the ONLY prompts I've actually missed on this list become Animagus which I swapped for the Wings joker, and the last joker of the four, Thriller, which was never exactly a priority of mine because I'm not sure I'd write that sort of thing particularly well, so! Wild! Completionists everywhere almost rejoice, haha. SOOOOO. For the eagle-eyed readers out there, I'll bet you're just dying to know what this one AU I've been teasing all post could Possibly be to warrant such a build-up, right? (...Right?) The answer is the at-ow! (Phonetically, lol. I've been calling it that instead of out loud saying all the letters in AATTAU out loud every time.) My friend Ben can attest to the fact that this behemoth AU (her word which I'm stealing) has been in the works for, uhhhh... months?

MONTHS. AHAHA. Ha. That. Sure says March! It sure does! And it is not lying. Lmfao. (Ignore the time, I was working overnight then--my beloved work schedule whomst I miss dearly--so that's a perfectly reasonable discord-ing hour for March-me.) Also, once again, I'm choosing to blame Ben for my extensive AU problems, she sent me a very cute time loop AA fic that utterly destroyed my entire mind because it got the mere idea of "Time-based AU" caught in my endless void-idea-hole. So. Here's the real rub. The literal reason I started doing this AU-gust challenge in the freaking first place was that I was absolutely Desperate to find a way to overcome my writer's block. And one of the (admittedly many) reasons I wanted to do this was because I have been ITCHING to write this stupid behemoth AU for real. I have a massive outline doc already, I have a whole slew of scenes planned, I have lots of character archage, I have sooo many things I want to say and explore about them all you have No Idea. It's extremely self-indulgent and absolutely my personal magnum opus for all my very specific favorite AA headcanons and ideas and thoughts. And obviously, it worked! I did indeed overcome my writer's block! And I had so much fun doing it!! And I'll admit, from the very beginning, I had been eyeing that "Everybody Lives" joker prompt, because...that's it! That's basically the point of the AATTAU (Ace Attorney Time Travel Alternate Universe, if that wasn't clear, haha). I don't want to let myself get TOO into it, because Oh Boy, I sure will! If you let me! Haha. But basically the premise is EXACTLY what I stated in that very first discord message I could find about it. Maybe not so much "time travel" technically speaking than it is "gaining memories of everything that happened in canon right as the DL-6 earthquake happens", so it's more regression than actual time travel since they're in their own younger bodies and everything, but still. It's basically my excuse to treat canon like it did happen and YET allow for everybody to survive and for the very fun cocktail of traumas and joys that come from remembering what happened but having the chance for something different (and all the effort that goes into making something different happen in the first place).

Now, as far as AU-gust goes. I was obviously not about to even pretend I could remotely start this during August itself or justify connecting any of it to the series and the prompts I'd already written for it, lol, but I also couldn't get the idea out of my head, so I got it in my head I really wanted to end the month with SOMETHING that somehow tied into my AATTAU, if only to motivate myself to actually get on it and start writing out instead of solely outlining everything that's been in the works all these months. So to that end, I saw the "Everybody Lives" and the "Beginning of the World" prompts, and an idea came to me. I'd been dancing around the justification aspect of this AU for most of the time I've had it because let's be honest, it's just a very self-indulgent idea and it does not NEED "justification" to serve the purpose I want it to serve and be what I want it to be. But the AU-gust prompts gave me some actual inspiration and an Idea as to a way to solidify my unnecessary "justification" but in a way that it doesn't need to be directly part of the final product of the AATTAU (like, I could make it a separate one-shot and either just link it to and from the AATTAU fic itself, or if it all ends up being a series, then I could just include it in the series but it wouldn't be necessary to read to understand what's going on. And so, I present! The Ami Fey one-shot special I came up with just to fit these prompts :3 ...And by "i present" i mean, uh, I wrote 4k words of it on the 31st and didn't even come close to what I wanted to cover, because I suck at being concise. Lmfao. (Shocker.) Basically, I used Ami Fey as a semi-self-insert kind of godlike figure to reason out a semi-plausible way to make the concept I want to explore happen, happen. And I had a lot of fun, but I do still have a bunch to finish, but either way, I'm very pleased to have a (somewhat silly but ultimately fun for me) reasoning as to the gears ticking behind the scenes of my idea! To be somewhat less vague, the whole AU is predicated on the idea that, Phoenix and/or Miles (who remember from the beginning / from December 28th, 2001) meeting the other characters at-or-after the time they originally met in canon are able to recall their memories of the "original" (i.e. canon) timeline. I've used some magatama shenanigans to have some fun with this, and I'm now using Ami Fey and magatama shenanigans to explain how and why this is A Thing, even if it isn't necessarily the objectively most logically sound argument I've ever made. It's still a good one, in my book, and more importantly I like it, so that's all that really matters.

To briefly explain the "two" (by which I mean 5?) of the "above" I'm using here:

Beginning of the World: This fic specifically would show the beginning of the "world" of this AU specifically! Woohoo! Go Ami Fey, creating a whole new set of problems for our beloved little Guys to go through, hahaha. I think I may have based her character a little too much on Maya mischievousness, but, oh well. Let's just say that's where she gets it from.

Younger/De-Aged: As I've already kind of expressed, the premise of this AU is mostly just them being their own younger selves except they also have the memories of all of canon (and maybe a year or two after the fact, I need to confirm a couple dates).

Canon Divergence: I feel like this is decently self-explanatory, but then again maybe it's a bit cheesy to include this here, since it basically diverges from nearly the first major event of canon (DL-6), but that's not the only time things go almost-canonically but diverge a bit in some way, so I think it really does fit here.

Guardian: This one is a bit multi-fold. It somewhat refers to the way I'm making Gregory Edgeworth the de facto guardian (as in, legal guardian) of mostly everyone I possibly can because I love him and he would be great at it. But also, guardian in that, Mr. Savior Complex Phoenix Wright himself has literally all of the information at his disposal to try to "save" the potential Happy Lives of literally every person he loves, and, well. He does a pretty good job about it; not without cost, haha, but I feel like I can definitely call him a "guardian" of others in this AU. And, as for specifically the one-shot Ami fic, she is essentially the guardian of the entire Fey lineage, in this AU at least, so that also totally fits and is most immediately relevant.

Everybody Lives: I think this one is pretty self-explanatory at this point, lol. But for the one-shot: Ami is essentially trying to secure an "everybody lives" scenario, even if it hasn't been achieved yet, so it's more an aspiration at that point, but ultimately it is indeed successful. Now, "living" does not mean, like, "totally healthy" (mentally or physically), so there's lots more to it, but in short, yes, they live.

And......that's basically a wrap on that!

I mean, it isn't actually at all, since I still have to finish 26/31 fics, lmfao, but as far as the idea generation stage goes, and the use of the AU-gust prompts, that's what's up in my world! Somewhere out there maybe there's an AU of my actual real life where i finished more of these on time, but i'm still pretty pumped by all the work that's already been made on making so many AA fics a reality for me. I've come a long way since starting that first AA fic in 2018...!!

I still have all the aforementioned 26 fics to finish obviously, and I also have AU continuations planned for at the very least, day 2's colorless prompt and day 3's dark academia prompt (let alone day 31's, lol, but that's its own monster entirely), but I'm optimistic!

Thankfully I actually finished using nano to word track for me before they, you know, doubled down on AI and called everyone "abelist" (???) for not supporting it, which, uh. Well. But for my own posterity and if anyone's curious, here's what my word counts looked like throughout the month of AU-gust--admittedly including some planning and outlining:

It ended up being 51,377 words total in August on these AU prompts alone!

I feel like I wanted to say something poignant and meaningful at the end here, but it's almost 9:30 and I work at 4am tomorrow, so I'm going to go ahead and wrap this post up here, haha. If you read all of this, thank you very much for joining me on my little journey!

Once again, here is the Ao3 series where I'll post anything more that gets done, so if you'd like to see how any of these AUs turn out, feel free to keep an eye on that!

And here is the previous post with the 1st half+ of the AUs if you missed it and are interested now!

My copy arrived literally as I was writing this up so I've spent the last several prompts of this post listening to the AAIC soundtrack in the music collection, and, oh man, it's seriously so surreal this exists??? I might be an old fogey who has and will for an indeterminate amount of time continue to have trouble letting go of the fan translation names I've lived with for the past decade or whatever, but it's seriously so awesome the entire series is finally available internationally!! Let's hope for my sake AA7 doesn't come out before I finish any of my AATTAU, because that would really throw a bit of a wrench in my decision-making process, lol.

Bye for now!

[dirtbra1n]

curious as to what you think about asogi & ryuunosuke then, if you’ve played dgs and if not then what about lang & shih-na

hey anon can we make a pact to pretend the reason I haven’t gotten to your ask until now, four months later, is because the investigations collection announcement from last month came to me in a dream a full calendar season ago. could we do that for me. I’d really really appreciate it Okay thank you

what I’m going to do is come back to asoryuu at an even later date because there’s a history there for me personally that I want to maybe polish some more. and to a more relevant point That investigations collection announcement from last month sent me into an ace attorney fugue the likes of which I haven’t had the opportunity to really revel in since I was probably 12 years old. so we’re covering lang and shih-na since my feelings are still fresh from my rush playthrough of aai1 uhhh three days ago.

should go without saying that there are spoilers here. this is my formal request of anyone who has not yet played through or watched a playthrough of Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth to do so before continuing to read. because it’s good. these are good games I would not lie to you about this

without going back to review the way I was initially playing by the ask game (loosely) I’ll say plainly I both understand lang and shih-na and buy into it. SOOO much. so much I’m so sick with it. I love tragedy! I love crying into my hands! like Jesus christ

so honesty hour. besides watching a playthrough of investigations 1 probably about halfway through a few years ago I hadn’t gone into investigations besides my usual autistic osmosis. the calisto yew—shih-na reveal was news to me, miraculously. after this many years Like eight years. delivered through a comic I need to hunt down EDIT: I FOUND IT. going into investigations hot on the tail of this understanding meant I got to experience the plot twist retroactively, at its best.

that shit hurts bad!!!!!!!! so fucking bad So so fucking b

like I know you get it this is why you asked me about it. but jeeesus christ What if you were introduced to the worlds most likable man who hates your guts Presently and his girl best friend-slash-subordinate-slash-partner in crime. prevention. and what if in the span of some of miles edgeworth’s most exhausting days on record you learned that this man views all of his subordinates as family, all like 99 #1s of them, and their extended families as family. and what if in that context shih-na, as his own personal private #1, who goes everywhere with him and assists him in everything and points and removes her sunglasses in perfect tandem with him, What if she was accused of a murder.

he’d defend her, right? obviously. he’d believe in her innocence and grin in your face as he proclaims this, because he’s not kidding and not lying, not anything less than fully dead serious. she’s his number one. he strives to be hers in turn.

what if you caught her in a lie, an inaccuracy. what if she started slipping, sweat beading. what if she cracked into a person he’s never met before. what if you were right and he was wrong, and she was guilty of murder*, and she pulled a gun on an innocent girl—whom she had earlier tried to pin the crime on—and was now holding her hostage.

let’s put the hypotheticals from the outside-in aside:

you are shi-long lang. a detective you look up to, worked under for a time, is pointing a gun at shih-na’s back. you know now the full weight of the things she has done.

this is the only option.

you place yourself between the gun and her back. you wrestle the gun pointed at that girl’s head elsewhere.

a bullet shoots into your thigh.

like taking a step outward again shi-long lang is going to carry a physical scar in his leg, for all intents and purposes from her, for the rest of his life, and it was put there because he put himself in the line of fire FOR HER. it is not going away. despite all her betrayal and deceit and the gun to kay’s head she was still his subordinate, and his family, and someone he loved, so he would take a bullet for her and he took a bullet from her.

I'm sorry, Detective Badd, but no matter what sort of past she may have had... ...or even if she is a spy, it doesn't change the fact that she is my subordinate. And as long as she is, I can't allow any harm to come to her, not even from you!

it is not going to go away.

so if you see me throwing up everywhere. that’s why.

tldr

[detectivegumshoepals]

I don't know who cares about this, but I'm going to start AA replay posting soon (probably tomorrow). I'll tag the games and cases, as well as #Zuzu's AA replay. I plan to play AA1-2-3, then AAI1-2, then AA4-5-6 in that order. This replay is mostly so I can refresh myself before writing fanfic again. Because it's been a hot minute since I've written for this fandom, and I miss it dearly.

Whoever wants to follow along, please feel free! I have no idea if I'll have any takes that haven't been said already, but I hope to have fun anyway!

[trubbishrubbish]

Ok I'm going to make a few blog updates. Some very long overdue blog updates.

I'm going to retire the "Kirby's Gamer Anxiety" tag and replace it with a "Kirby plays x" tag. This way I have a proper tag for any specific game I am playing. It can be used for games I am playing blind or playing casually.

I'm doing this as I want to give people a way to hide my tags for games that they don't want to be spoiled on if they follow me. And another reason is that I hate typing the word "anxiety" becuase it's hard to remember how to spell it. I'm not good at spelling...ahghhh it's so hard. Spellcheck is a crutch I use daily otherwise I would sound incomprehensible.

For Ace Attorney Investigations, I'll use the tag "Kirby plays AAI1" for the first game and "Kirby plays AAI2 for the second game. I'll retag all my AAI1 posts with this new tag.

Another tag change: "Kirby's Text Time" will be changed to Kirby.txt and the "Kirby's Text Time" tag will be retired. Reason for this is similar (I had to use spell check to spell similar btw) to retiring "Kirby's Gamer Anxiety." It takes too long to fully type it but also the apostrophe in the tag is weirdly different when typed in the mobile app compared to PC. I don't know what this is the case but it results in the tag being new. This dumb quick discouraged me from making text posts on mobile. I should have made this change way long ago but I was lazy and stubborn.

I probably won't retag all my "Kirby's Text Time" posts to the new tag as they are all very inconsequential. I'll just start all my text posts from now on as "Kirby.txt."

One last thing. "Kirby's Extra Blog won't be retagged. I will still use that. There's too many posts of mine that have that tag and I still want people to use it to see all my content. So it's staying.

That's all the blog updates. Maybe I'll make a new pinned that has these tags.

[aoxizu]

every time i try to write ratio interacting with aventurine it somehow turns into wrightworth. i have no idea how it happens. aventurine isn't that similar to phoenix. he's actually completely different, but it's just ratio who is single-handedly forcing their dynamic into an echo of narumitsu that is so similar that i can only watch on in horror as the urge to purchase and play the ace attorney investigations collection rears its head again

anyway i suddenly want to actually play through all of aai1 and the second half of aai2, which i started but did not finish

[snapscube]

hi penny! i played the ace attorney games as a kid (although there were a lot less of them back then lol. it was aa1-4 and aai1) and started replaying them with my partner whod never played them. we'd just finished aa1 when you started playing them and its been really fun to see all your posts about the games that ive also been playing at the same time!!! my partner loves your videos but doesnt have tumblr so ive had to show them when you make a good post lol. thanks for sharing the good time you're having!!

thank u so much this is so nice :)

[cyandreamz]

Just finished case 5 of SOJ (will be starting the DLC case soon though idk how long that'll take cuz I do be a slow gamer :P) and honestly I am surprised to say I like SOJ a lot more than DD!

More thoughts under cut

I'm surprised because the first case I HATED, it almost turned me off finishing the game! But than I loved the second case (would be S tier if Phoenix wasn't a shit Dad!). 3rd case I found to be overwhelming and too long but, really liked the ending and Maya is still a super cool character, she has grown but, in ways that make sense imo. 4th case I loved Simon's dialogue with Athena and Nayuta but found it to be super mid, I felt completely indifferent to the case itself and it's characters. 5th case was a LOT and felt like a two for one deal but, even though it was so loooooong it was very nice, I loved how it wrapped up the story, the fun Edgeworth and pearl fan service (I guess they both affect the plot but they both felt like they were only there for fans, I don't care cuz I'm fans and they're my faves!), and where it leaves Apollo off I quite enjoyed!

I also loved the new story characters, Rayfa and Nayuta are both so fun and, I was surprised by how much I also ended up liking Datz, Dhurke and especially Ga'ran! Not my favourite aa antagonist (that's Morgan Fey fun fact) but, she's definitely a fun villain and horrible person, she's basically a better Manfred (compared to his appearance in aa1, yet to play aai1-2 plz no spoilers for those) because unlike him she is the law! Until she wasn't because she can't sprit channel lol.

Plus new models! Phoenix and Trucy look so much better, shame that Apollo and Miles still look... weird :/

Though I do definitely have strong points of dislike. For one, the overall story is very "look guys our legal system is so good and perfect, because this fictional country has a ridiculously dystopian legal system that can only be saved if they do what we do!" and look, I expect all aa games to have a stance on law I disagree with (as I don't respect the law at all) but, it was frustrating enough to see Phoenix and Miles being like "our legal system was perfect... before the dark age of the law" in DD, when I don't feel like they'd think that? (Also how did the dark age of law not start with how Edgeworth v state ended when all it took for it to start was a lawyer forging evidence and a procecutor being accused of murder? Though this rant is unlrelated to SOJ... sorry) but they really lean into not just those two but EVERYONE thinking American (Japan in original version of course) has a perfect legal system and I really dislike that (especially since it kinda goes against AA4's message).

Also this game pacing was so weird, like case 1, way too long! Why did I have to talk to white Jesus for so long!? I know he's the killer! Case 2, perfect imo. case 3 too long again! Case 4, kinda short??? Case 5... long is an understatement -_-. Only reason I don't completely hate this is because it's better than DD as that game felt like it dragged on and oooooon (to be clear I don't hate DD! Though it is my least favourite of the aa games and found every case but the DLC case to be mid, DLC case I did enjoy quite a bit and glad I played it 3rd and not last like many recommend :D).

Also fuck insight, I'm sorry but I just hate it.

[angerybabydino]

I have successfully converted all of my two friends into AA lovers and I couldn't be happier. One was just because she likes puzzles and crime-related things. The other was because I talked about how fucking gay these games are. But I'm also doing some ✨experimenting✨ too. My one friend, she's played/watched AA1, 2, 3, AAI1, a bit of 4, 3 cases of AAI2, and almost done the fourth case of DGS1. The other, they just started DGS1 tonight as their first AA game. As an English major who reads into all the symbolism and foreshadowing the games give, I want to see how much my friend can pick up from the lineages when they get to mainline games since we're playing the English versions (so no easy Naruhodou cop out). Because I see so much of their descendants in them when it comes to their animations, not just their appearances (chronic sweats for the Naruhodous, arms crossed and finger to the temple thinking for Kazuma/Miles, too many mannerisms but Susato and all of the Fey girls, over dramatics with van Zieks/von Karma) and I wonder if it'll give away some of the story, specifically JfA.

[blazersolaroid]

Welp, I finished AAI1 Great game honestly, though I did spoil myself on some things by accident. Thankfully it wasn't anything too important. As for the second game, I'm gonna take a sizable break before I start it(just like I did when I played the original PW trilogy)

[oodlyenough]

now that i've finished dual destinies here is how i'd rank the aa games that i've played.

this started as a bulleted list but then as always i ended up rambling forever, so, some of it is under the cut. spoilers for AA1-5 & AAI1. anything not listed is a game i've not yet played

1. Ace Attorney (1)

can't beat the original. ok so maybe the first time i played turnabout samurai i got so bored i took a 3 year break. that's not the point. i was weak. i think this game is the tightest and as the introduction to the concept and the characters it does a surprisingly good job of balancing and developing all of them. pretty satisfying arcs and relationships for every major character. also 1-4 and 1-5 are two of The best cases ever.

2. Ace Attorney 3/Trials and Tribulations

this one coasts on the strength of the dahlia throughline. all three of her cases are great. the fey lore develops so well and so interestingly, i loved getting a chance to play mia, dahlia is the best AA villain, bridge to turnabout has so many great things going on, edgeworth v franziska rules, phoenix investigating with franziska rules. it had some of my favourite puzzles and puzzle solving. the weak points that lose it top spot for me are that i didn't like how edgeworth and franziska evaporate from 3-5 in the second half, i wish maya had a bigger role in 3-5, and i don't enjoy anything about godot. also the two middle cases bored me to tears

3. Ace Attorney 2/Justice for All

this is a messier game than the above two for sure and i also thought it had the worst puzzle writing of the original trilogy. the magatama's use here is a bit clunky. i also think the way edgeworth's disappearance and return is handled is not quite as satisfying as it could've been for such a big emotional thing. the execution of the start of 2-4 with maya's kidnapping and engarde hiring phoenix could've been done much smoother.

BUT: i love the expansion of the fey lore, introduction of morgan and pearl and kurain, and franziska is my specialest little girl and i love that she's here. and 2-4, especially as it goes on, is such a good interesting case and some of the BEST character stuff for phoenix and edgeworth and truly made me unwell about the ship indefinitely. edgeworth hunched over his desk with bugged out eyes through gritted teeth "the prosecution... rests..." ??? peak romance

4. Ace Attorney 4/Apollo Justice

this is a really fun game that has the difficult task of introducing a lot of new characters and it pulls that off fairly well. apollo, trucy and klavier are all really fun. it's super interesting to see phoenix as an NPC and see what a mysterious galaxybrain he is when you're not given a front-row ticket to his scattered thoughts. i think the mystery writing here was coherent and pretty tight and i had fun solving the puzzles. 4-1 is one of the best tutorial cases for sure.

downside is that it's underbaked and you can tell. the new characters, while likable, barely get a chance to shine or really develop. apollo is not really much more than an avatar, the story is still about phoenix. and even when i'm enjoying the game, it just does honestly feel kind of... mean... the way the game drops every character from the trilogy and does what it does with phoenix.

5. Ace Attorney Investigations 1

fun pixel sprites, some fun new characters, it's cool to be able to walk my lil dude around and click on stuff. some of it is pretty funny. there's a surprisingly large variety of new female characters in different kinds of roles and personalities and designs and i always appreciate that.

the mysteries are not very good and the puzzles are frequently frustrating. the lack of trial day structure means the pacing feels wonky in many places. the returning characters are not written very well, franziska in particular is a flanderized shadow of herself, and most damning of all: edgeworth, the main character, is not written particularly well. the bratworth flashback in particular shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the character established by the trilogy imo.

6. Ace Attorney 5/Dual Destinies

this game had most of the same flaws as AAI and it didn't even have nice art or fun investigation banter to save it. i like athena a lot, i love aura and canon lesbians, it's nice to see phoenix as a lawyer again and get some confirmation edgeworth and the feys didn't fuckin die off screen. aa5 klavier is fucking hilarious. some of the new NPCs are funny s/o to the orca and plonco and robin.

the non-chronological plot was unnecessarily convoluted, the dark age of the law was emphasized so much only to be totally underdeveloped, the phantom plot twist was cool for three seconds and then pretty stupid in retrospect. apollo's storyline is a disaster. trucy has been replaced by an automaton that talks about panties. the lack of being able to investigate scenery makes the investigation days short, hurts character development and contributes the pacing that makes every final trial day feel interminably long and infuriating. too many plot twists rely on the game simply not providing evidence until the last second, at which point the twist becomes obvious. the nicest thing i can say for dual destinies is that it didn't irreparably break anything i loved in the previous games.