#major aai2 spoilers

[thewormsdontstop]

This was one of the first cards I had planned out when I started this project, and it's one of my favorites so far

18- The Moon

previous card

next card

[sceebybeeby]

⚠️MAJOR AAI2 spoilers⚠️

absolutely awful he killed the only guy that could truly match his freak

[pcholkachai]

major aai2 spoilers

it's so funny for me to be obsessed and draw emo art with this guy like yeah.... this is simeon.... he... he holds grudges.... and idolises his favorite assassin... and kinda kills people sometimes... embarrassing i know

anyway. monkey paw symbolism anyone

[notforclimbing]

||AAI2 MAJOR SPOILERS ||

Wip (lost motivation) but do you see the vision....

[elyvorg]

The Most Significant Change in AAI2’s Official Localisation (according to me)

Ace Attorney Investigations 2 finally has an official localisation! This is kind of mind-boggling to those of us who played the fan translation and have loved it in that form for years, never expected an official localisation to happen, and now suddenly have to get used to everything about it being Just Slightly Different.

Having played the official localisation in full, I can say that for the most part, it’s even better than the already-excellent fan translation! Most of the lines have just a little bit more colour in them now, and there’s a bunch of small nuances that went over my head before that are emphasised better in the new version. There are some lines I prefer in the fan translation, but they’re vastly outnumbered by all the lines I prefer in the official version. All in all, strongly recommend fans of the fan translation to check out the official version in some form.

However, among these minor lines here and there that I prefer in the fan translation, there is also this one small but much more significant thing from the fan translation which is not present in the official version. I happen to care about this small-but-significant detail a lot, so here is a post explaining exactly why this is a Thing that Matters (to me, at least).

(This will mention major spoilers for the game! Do not click the readmore unless you have experienced the entire story of AAI2 in some form.)

The Thing is this: In the fan translation, Simon refers to his friend as “Knightley”, all the time. Meanwhile, in the official localisation, Simeon always calls him “Bronco”.

Now, I get why the localisers did this. It’s a Japanese cultural thing – in Japanese, it’s common for even close friends to address each other by their surnames, and indeed, Sim(e)on referred to Knight(ley) by his surname in the original Japanese game. This is usually changed into friends using each other’s first names in English localisations, because it feels strange in English to see two close friends addressing each other in what feels like a distant and formal kind of way.

(For example, in The Great Ace Attorney, Ryunosuke and Kazuma addressed each other by their surnames in Japanese, and this was – very correctly – localised to them using each other’s first names in English. It would feel wrong to an English speaker for these best friends not to do that, even though they are still characters from Japan.)

So it just makes sense as the obvious localisation choice to have Simeon refer to his friend with his given name, rather than his surname.

However! In this particular instance, I firmly 100% believe that this was the wrong decision.

See, Simon calling Knightley by his surname in the fan translation isn’t just an awkward holdover of a somewhat more direct Japanese translation – it actually means something. It’s a subtle hint that Simon doesn’t actually see Knightley as the friend he supposedly is; he’s distancing himself from his friend by talking about him in this more detached way.

This is subtle enough that it isn’t a spoiler, either! On my first playthrough of the fan translation, I never batted an eye at Simon using his friend’s surname. Some people in English-speaking countries do just prefer to go by their surname, even to their friends – particularly when their first name is kind of awkward. It felt perfectly natural that Knightley might prefer to be called just that even by his best friend, instead of “Horace”, which sounds somewhat old-fashioned and dorky.

(And this would go double, surely, for someone whose first name is freaking Bronco of all things. It’d make plenty of sense that he’d rather be called Knight!)

Knightley himself probably didn’t even question it. I imagine Simon would have called him Horace while they were kids at the orphanage, but then when Simon reappeared in his life years later after his disappearance and was calling him Knightley instead, Knightley probably shrugged and figured, yeah, Horace is kind of a dorky name, he’s not a kid any more, “Knightley” is way cooler. (Especially with his obsession with chess, not to mention his whole white-knight complex towards Simon.)

The biggest reason why this means something is that Simon calls him Knightley almost the entire time, with one single exception. In the flashback to their impromptu nighttime meeting in the prison, in which Simon knows he’s about to get his “friend” killed and this is the last time he’ll ever see him, the final thing he says to him is, “Goodbye, Horace.”

He uses Knightley’s first name, for the only time in the game’s present. And so, precisely because he’s used his surname every other time, this simple line becomes an achingly telling sign that Simon still cares about his best friend despite everything, despite the fact that he is literally getting him killed. It’s like he’s remembering the happier times they had being friends at the orphanage before everything turned sour, like a part of him wishes they could still have that, and it breaks my heart.

(This is the same in the Japanese, too – he uses his friend’s given name, which is a sign of extremely close friendship in Japanese and would have even more of an impact to Japanese-speaking players.)

This implication isn’t there in the official localisation, because it can’t be. Not when Simeon calls him Bronco all the time anyway, even when he’s revealed his true colours and is no longer pretending for the sake of Edgeworth and company. Which means that he simply did call him Bronco the whole time, even after they reunited, even while secretly wanting him dead. In that context, using the name Bronco when saying goodbye to him in the prison means nothing in particular. It’s just the name he always uses.

…Okay, granted, it’s not like that flashback scene has no emotional weight in the official version. It still is Simeon coming to talk to his friend one last time when he doesn’t really need to, which still means a lot on its own. But the final line itself isn’t a particularly notable part of it. In the localisation, it’s “Goodbye, Bronco. …And farewell.” The added “farewell” mostly just serves to make it obvious that he knows this is the very last time they’ll meet, but I suppose there is at least something to the fact that you wouldn’t usually say that to someone you didn’t care about. I don’t think it hits nearly as hard as calling him Horace for the first and only time in twelve years, though.

It seems like either the official localisers didn’t notice the significance of the given name in that line there, or they did notice it but they decided that localising Simeon to use his friend’s given name the rest of the time, like localisers normally would, was worth losing the impact of that line. And I firmly disagree that this was worth it. There’s nothing inherently wrong about Knight going by Knight even to his best friend, even if it might feel a little awkward in principle, and the emotional impact of the final thing his best friend says to him would have absolutely made up for that.

[rivalsforlife]

played the aai2 portion of the demo today!! it's been a while since I played aai2 properly so I probably missed a lot of translation nuances aside from a few that stuck out to me. I love the new minisprites their little expressions are so cute. I missed the music so much. I missed Kay Faraday. It's going to be so interesting seeing mini translation differences and I'm going to point out a few of them but under the cut in case anyone doesn't want specific translation / general aai2 spoilers:

The one major disappointment to me so far is they translated de Killer's "the most important thing about making ice cream is honor" line to change "honor" to "a virtuous heart". "Honor" made way more sense to me as a callback to his motivations in JFA so I was disappointed that they changed that. (Maybe that was more a fan translation insertion but still it was good!!)

I also think they changed "I won't rest until I've inspected every suspicious-looking nook and cranny" in the scene where they're investigating the stand. Which is very weird to me since iirc that line came from AAI's translation. I'm wondering if they changed it for this game and if so why they would have done that? They changed it to "I must scour the scene and investigate anything that catches my attention" which is weird.

I was also interested in the "key individual" line because iirc that was originally "curious individual" (curious being the same character for monkey that's in Sarushiro) which the fan translation changed to "key" for Keyes. But in this one it's "a certain someone" which I didn't even catch. It's a sad loss but I'm not sure how you could do a pun on "Simeon Saint" anyways. Unless somehow "someone" is supposed to correspond to "Simeon" but that's a stretch.

There were some good Edgeworthisms though. The chess scenes, especially the introduction with Knightley, were as delightfully cringeworthy as ever. Him calling the person in the red hood "My Little Red Riding Hood" would have been an instant hit for Nerdworthbot. And I do love Kay calling herself "your best pal in the world" too. I missed her so much.

Anyways. The vibes of the translation feels a little different but it also has been a while since I played the game so that might be part of it. I think some of the misses to previous game references (particularly the "honor" line and ESPECIALLY the nook and cranny line) are weird. I get that the AAI translation was over a decade ago and the JFA one was even longer so maybe they forgot that but I kinda assumed they would have been referencing the previous games? Or at least Janet Hsu is always so involved in these translations that I'd think that would be something they'd be careful about referencing? Or maybe they didn't do those lines and it was someone else? Or maybe it's not the highest priority? It'll be interesting to see how this continues on - there's the part of the game at the very end that quotes stuff from AA1 where if they mess that up it'll be veeery strange. and iirc they have other Lang quotes from AAI that I hope they preserve. I recall an interview with Janet Hsu where they said they didn't have time to go back and redo the AAI translation so I wonder if they were really pressed for time BUT STILL!! NOOK AND CRANNY IS ICONIC!! janet hsu answer my emails

[warblogs17282]

I love the small details contained within the ace attorney key art they make.

Other than looking cool as hell they sometimes have details that you might've missed.

Warning for major AAI2 spoilers:

I just noticed that in the key art Eustace Winner is looking at Simeon Saint, the mastermind of AAI2

[sage-nebula]

I'm on the third case of AAI2 now (for the first time ever, so no spoilers thank you), and I think that -- at least so far -- I agree with the consensus I've seen that it's a better game than AAI1. Note that I still do NOT agree that AAI1 is a bad game or hard to get through; I think that people are way too harsh on it, especially when they call it the worst game in the Ace Attorney series. (That dishonor goes to SoJ, in my humble opinion, and you cannot change my mind on that.) But I think I know why the cases, at least so far, flow better in AAI2 and why they're easier to feel invested in, in comparison to AAI1. As in, not only can I say, "here is what the narrative problem is," but I think I can say, "here is why this narrative problem exists."

So, I don't know how many people in the fandom today know this, especially since people join the fandom anew all the time, but I think it was . . . fairly common knowledge? fourteen years ago when AAI1 first came out. (And good god the fact that it came out fourteen years ago . . . hello darkness my old friend . . .) The "it" I'm referring to is that when it was first conceived, Ace Attorney: Investigations was not meant to be a game starring Miles Edgeworth. Instead, Ema Skye was meant to be the primary protagonist. You were meant to play as her, investigating crime scenes with all of her forensics tools, talking to witnesses, et cetera.

However, executives at Capcom worried that the game would not sell very well, because Ema Skye wasn't seen as a very popular character. At the time, the only game she had featured in as a main character was AJAA, and before that she'd only appeared in 1-5 -- a case that was only included in the DS version of the first game (and subsequent re-releases after that). So at some point in the development process, the decision was made to scrap Ema as the main character and replace her with Edgeworth, since he was one of the most popular characters in the franchise aside from Phoenix himself, and so they felt that even if the concept alone didn't excite fans, the idea of playing as Edgeworth would.

Now, I don't know if it was ever revealed when in the development process this was made. But having just replayed AAI1 in preparation for playing AAI2 for the first time (because although I've been a fan of the series since 2007, I always held off on playing the fan translation of AAI2 and avoided spoilers in the vain hope that it would one day receive an official localization -- and look, it paid off!!), I have to say that I feel like it was after at least a good chunk of the cases were written. At the very least, when the majority of them were outlined. Because here is the thing about the cases in AAI1: You could replace Edgeworth as the main character, and almost nothing about the stories themselves would change.

Let's review the court record, shall we?

Case 1: Edgeworth goes to his office late at night to discover that a cop has been murdered there. First Gumeshoe, then Maggey is accused of having done the deed. Yes, it's Edgeworth finding the body in his office -- but it could have just as easily been Ema being called to Edgeworth's office as the investigator when he called the police because he found the body there. Instead of Edgeworth investigating the crime scene, it would have been Ema instead. If the game was set right after she failed her forensics exam (which would make sense! I can't remember if we were told when in Ema's life this would take place), then she could have been assigned as a rookie working under Gumshoe in the homicide unit. Either way, very little would have to change here.

Case 2: A murder happens on an airplane, and Edgeworth is accused of being the murderer. He has to prove his innocence. Again, this case has absolutely zero personal ties to Edgeworth. Even though Franziska shows up and she does know him due to the fact that they grew up together, that only gives us some fun interactions that we instead could have with Ema either having previously met Franziska when she was studying in Europe, or meeting her for the first time. Either way, perhaps this flight was Ema's flight back to the States from Europe (or back to Japan from the States in the Japanese version), rather than a trip back to the States from Europe for Edgeworth for his own "foreign legal system studies." You could swap Ema for Edgeworth and nothing would change.

Case 3: Edgeworth agrees to help Mr Amano rescue his kidnapped son, gets taken hostage himself and then realizes that someone got murdered. Edgeworth's reason for wanting to help Mr Amano is that Mr Amano helped him get in with foreign governments to study their legal systems, which . . . never made a lot of sense to me, to be honest. How does he do that if not through criminal means? But you know what would make sense? If Mr Amano bankrolled Ema's education in Europe after Lana went to prison, because all the Skye sisters had was each other and perhaps they didn't have very much money, but Amano was hoping that he could use funding Ema's education as a way to blackmail Lana when she got out of prison, and Ema -- not realizing that's why he was doing it -- took him up on the offer, and thus felt gratitude to him and wanted to help him find his kidnapped son. Badabing badaboom, we still get the same case, with just slightly changed backstory reasons because Edgeworth's "personal stakes" in this case really weren't that personal.

Case 4: This is the only case in AAI1 that seemed like it was written for Edgeworth personally, what with the appearance of Manfred von Karma, little Franziska, and the origin of why Gumshoe is so loyal to Edgeworth. This one clearly had the most work done on it to make sure that it fit in an Edgeworth game, and it's probably why most (including myself) regard it as the best case in the game. But I still feel that most of the changes are superficial. Because when you get down to it, the case still isn't about Edgeworth, even though it was his first attempt at prosecuting a case. The case was about Kay, Calisto, Byrne, and Badd. Edgeworth and Franziska were simply there to provide flavor text and investigate. It could have just as easily been a case where you played as Lana Skye with baby Ema as the assistant, perhaps shortly after Lana switched to being a prosecutor (if that worked with the timeline; maybe Lana would have still been a detective, I'd have to go back and look at it). Instead of Gumshoe, it could have been Neil or Jake Marshall under fire, or even Angel Starr. It could have been Damon Gant instead of Manfred von Karma, so on and so forth. Yes, it was Edgeworth's "attempted first case," but not in a way that really mattered for him. Not in a way that couldn't have been very easily written for someone else.

Case 5: Edgeworth goes to the embassy with Kay to see if Calisto Yew will show up; she does, a guy gets murdered, and they bring down the smuggling ring with the help of some others. Once again and for great emphasis, Edgeworth could have easily been replaced with Ema in this case and nothing would have changed, because there were no personal emotional stakes for Edgeworth in this story. And that could very well possibly be because it wasn't originally written to be his case, but Ema's case. But then they had to change it, and they changed it just enough to make it "his" case, but not enough to make it really his case.

Now, to be clear: there's nothing wrong with having the main plot of an Ace Attorney game not revolve around the lead attorney. The original trilogy of games really isn't about Phoenix. The only game in the trilogy that could arguably be about him in any way is the first one, and even then, it's only really about him in the sense that it's about him fighting to save Edgeworth. Otherwise, the original trilogy is very much about the Fey clan, and that actually does start in the main trilogy, where we meet Mia and Maya, and learn about Misty Fey's disappearance during the DL-6 incident. (Cue music and picture of That Damned Elevator.) Phoenix is there so that we can experience that story as a result of his relationships with Mia, Maya, and Pearl. Yeah, it's his name on the game box, but it ain't about him.

But the problem with the cases in AAI1 is that they were clearly written with a different protagonist in mind at some point -- namely, Ema -- and then they had to be changed. And they were changed only just enough so that they end up feeling generic, "you could slot anyone in here and it wouldn't make much of a difference." As I showed above, you could put the originally conceived protagonist in AAI1 and nothing of any significance would change. The only one that would have to change to any degree is the fourth case, and even then, the main plot would stay the same. As a result, there's a certain feeling of disconnect between the protagonist and the cases, and we as the player feel a degree of disconnect ourselves.

(Of course, this could have been fixed had they allowed AAI1 to properly be Kay's story, as arguably should have been, instead of restricting her appearances so heavily as they did -- but that's a discussion for another day.)

So all in all, while I know that there are some who blame the change in lead writer for why AAI1 has narrative struggles, I think that this is the real reason: it wasn't supposed to be a game focused on Miles Edgeworth, yet was forced to be partway through development, and the hasty switch led to a game that wasn't quite sure what it was supposed to be. There's a narrative disconnect as a result, and it's a problem that -- at least as far as I've played -- doesn't exist at all in AAI2.

Again, I am only on Case 3. But so far in AAI2, it is impossible to see this as anything but a Miles Edgeworth focused game. To be fair, the first case is not as personally tied to him; it does take place on Gourd Lake, and there is flavor text about the boat shop if you examine the sign; but missable flavor text does not a deep personal connection make. The first case, tutorial that it is, doesn't feel like it was written for him, and thus could have the same disconnect as the cases in the first game.

But the second case flips that all on its head. We meet an associate from the law firm that Edgeworth's father owned, Eddie Fender. We start to learn more about Edgeworth's childhood, about his father, and he's extended an offer to quit being a prosecutor and to instead go back to work at the practice that his father started -- the one that still bears his own name above the door. (And I'll be honest, it hurts that it's a foregone conclusion that he won't do it; part of me wants so badly for him to.) Then in the third case, which I've only just begun, we play as his father investigating his very last case -- the case where he got Manfred von Karma the penalty that von Karma murdered him for, and then took Miles so that he could turn him into the Demon Prosecutor.

Cases 2 and 3 couldn't have been written for another protagonist. And it makes sense, doesn't it? Because going into AAI2, they knew from the get-go that this was going to be a game featuring Miles Edgeworth as the protagonist. As such, all of the cases could be tailored to him. They could incorporate his backstory and history in much deeper, more meaningful ways. They didn't have to make what were essentially, for him, a game full of third cases that were interesting, but didn't do anything too deep for him. Again, that doesn't excuse how Kay was treated, since AAI1's story should have been about her in the same way that the original trilogy was really about the Fey clan instead of Phoenix -- but it does still explain why AAI1's cases felt like such filler, whereas AAI2's cases don't. It explains why AAI2's cases feel like they have so much more weight, so much more to lose your mind over in terms of lore and foreshadowing for things that you know are to come after the flashback case concludes. Because unlike with AAI1, they had a clear idea of what they were doing from the start, with no need to change protagonists partway through production.

Anyway, I'm not finished with AAI2 yet, so who knows; maybe it will do something that will massively disappoint and infuriate me and my entire opinion will change. But these are my thoughts right now. Once again, please do not spoil me on ANYTHING regarding Investigations 2, because I have never played it before and avoided all spoilers for all these years because I was just that dedicated to my fantasy of an official localization, thank you.

[shslargue]

MAJOR aai2 spoilers

I guess it runs in the family

[ficking-capitan]

in honor of AAI2 officially being localized, here is my Simeon Saint/Simon Keyes (subject to change) playlist that I've been sitting on for a while

Major spoilers for AAI2:

please enjoy :)

[aimeeisdead]

aai2 names more or less confirmed and i have Thoughts on them so. Here. Spoilers i think

eddie fender - i mean me personally i wouldnt name a supporting character a name u would expect from a background character who happens to be a defence attorney but its also like not that bad like. it looks like a name that could exist probably.

verity gavèlle - 10/10 gorgeos no further comments

eustace winner - that is a name he would be called.

simeon saint - i think this is peak (fully biased) just bc it isnt drastically different + ur supposed to think he's just Some Guy who didn't do anything wrong in that case.

di-jun wang - pretty much the same as fanmade one so. yeah. idk i dont have any thoughts on this guy in general

tabby lloyd - massive win actually i really like this. like that is a really cute name i think.

bronco knight - chat this is my eustace winner. im not fucking calling him that.

bastian rook - close enough welcome back sebastian.

rocco carcerato - major improvement i would say

fifi laguarde - she looks more like a fifi than a patricia to me at least. like maybe laguarde is too obvious however i dont care here.

bodhidharma kanis - the kanis/dog part is obvious however i would have no idea what the rest of it meant without having someone on twitter explain why its peak.

samson tangaroa - same as above like i would also not have any idea if there was a joke or reference here. however there is and i think it works really well.

judy bound - i think it grew on me a bit but at the same time i do not like it. maybe if it was a nickname like i can see her as a judith.

paul halique - literally just the same as it was originally no comment

artie frost - i mean. the foreshadowing is good. i think artie should've been a nickname instead tho tbh.

carmelo gusto - i think gustavia sounded better as a name but i think they're about the same to me. It ok

delicia scone - aai2 fan translation sole survivor. i mean ik why she's called that in both of them i just think its funny

florence niedler - they cooked a bit too hard on a minor character i think. this isnt a complaint i really like it

hilda hertz - she also looks like a hilda more than a bonnie i can respect this. also hertz is funny.

rosie ringer - it is one half of a joke + the better half i think

excelsius winner - that is also a name he would be called i think.

shaun fenn - fenn/marsh connection was more obvious to me actually. idm it tho he looks like a shaun.

alf aldown - close enough welcome back deid mann. that is a pun first and a name second i think.

[4ragon]

So I just reblogged another aa fanfic masterlist, and that seemed like a cool idea. SO, since so many people are migrating to here from Twitter (and especially since this is the only place where my name doesn't match my AO3 account) I thought should put a list of my AA fics together! (I'd do the other fandoms but I don't think I'd have a substantial enough list)

So here's the JJ Ace Attorney fanfic masterlist:

Long Fics -

The Miraculous Disappearance Of Phoenix Wright (107,213 words)

Phoenix Wright wakes up in a world where he never existed. What will he do when he's trapped in a world where everything he's ever loved is gone? Minor narumitsu. My first AA fic, and the fic that got me back into writing for the first time since I was a shitty teenager.

(Also please read the tags, this one has some heavy subject matter and a LOT of spoilers)

Singderella (28,103 words)

Apollo decides to try his hand at a singing contest, held by a certain ex-rockstar, for a chance to win some runner-up money. He didn't want to win the dang contest. And he sure as hell didn't want to become Klavier Gavin's mysterious disappearing muse. This one is Klapollo and this one's Silly As Hell.

Vacation All I Ever Wanted (111,197 words)

Six lawyers and a magician spend a week at the beach. One condo. Six lawyers. Seven secret plans. What could possibly go wrong? Established narumitsu, getting-together klapollo, platonic Athena and Simon, and Trucy Wright in all her glory. (Also has some AA4 and 5 spoilers)

also @/ministarfruit drew me fanart and it made me cry

Shorter Klapollo fics -

Google Search: how to turn off a gaviners alarm clock

Google Search: off button on gaviners alarm clock Google Search: how to end my suffering Google Search: please god i just wanted to sleep in

No I did not write this as a thinly veiled excuse to complain about my roommate's alarm clock what are you talking about

Also fanart from @/lycheestew

Don't Get Too Comfortable

Apollo gets caught in a rainstorm, so Klavier invites him to wait it out at his condo. Written for the Klapollo Unfolding Melody zine. I'm really proud of this one!

Either Way

It's Klavier's first week back since the Misham Trial, and Klavier had yet to gather the courage to see Apollo Justice. At least, until Apollo Justice grabs him in a panic and shoves the two of them into a broom closet.

(Klapollo Week 2021 - Protection)

Atroquinine My Love (Accoustic)

When Apollo asks Klavier for guitar lessons, Klavier is more than happy to oblige. Written for the 2021 Klapollo minibang, featuring lovely art from the wonderful @/nhuquyen

Half-and-Half

Klavier and Apollo go on their first date. That's it. That's the fic.

(Klapollo Week 2021 - Firsts)

Of Petals and Punctuality

Klavier forgets about their anniversary. That's also it. (Everyone also says this fic makes them sad but I thought it was fucking funny when I wrote it)

(Klapollo Week 2021 - Flowers)

Just A Quiet Morning

Apollo Justice wakes up to make breakfast on his wedding anniversary.

(Klapollo Week 2023 - Domesticity)

Schatz

“Hey, Athena, what does ‘shots’ mean?” Pre-dating, Athena and Phoenix mess with Apollo.

(Klapollo Week 2023 - Nicknames)

Narumitsu fics -

Procrastination

Prompt: Pre-dating narumitsu pinning and yearning for each other and all their friends and family trying to find a way for them to be finally be together

This was for a secret santa.

The Gentleman Always Gets the Girl

Sorry, Mr. Edgeworth, but the gentleman always gets the girl.

(Narumitsu Week 2023 - Foreign)

But I Thought You Hated The Mall

Miles takes Trucy to the mall. This does not go as planned.

(Narumitsu Week 2023 - Family)

Gen Fics -

A Different Kind of Lullaby (Warning, major AAI2 Spoilers)

“Hi Mr. Edgeworth, do you think Pops killed my mom?”

@/ehlihr drew the coolest fucking comic btw holy shit

Baking and Entering

Kay and Sebastian break into Edgeworth's house to bake a cake. This one was for the Dadworth Lion Lillies zine and I'm also super proud of it.

Juniper Dumped Me

Wait, wait when were Juniper and I dating?!

In which Juniper dumps Apollo, who absolutely knows what's happening, don't worry about it. Minor Junithena, literally the stupidest thing I've ever written. Dedicated to my discord friends who helped me come up with the idea.

Home Is Where The Heart Is

Kay Faraday has a secret and Miles has to get to the bottom of it. Also has some AAI2 spoilers.

Another Trip Around The Sun

Apollo Justice's first birthday without Clay Terran. Minor klapollo. It's a story about grief and I did cry while writing it.

Just a Roll of Stamps

It's been a year since Phoenix officially adopted Trucy, and Phoenix is starting to worry that she hasn't made any friends.

(Wright Family Week 2021 - Friends)

Bet On It

Apollo and Athena vs. Trucy and Phoenix. Whoever beats the escape room first wins. Whoever loses buys noodles for a year. But…it can't be that simple, right?

(Wright Family Week 2021 - Scheming and Hijinks)

Dear Runo

Phoenix and Trucy decide to clean out their spare room, and discover an old cardboard box labeled Grandpa Ryuu. Inside, they discover some old books, some letters, and possibly an old secret?! (Or maybe not). This one was for another secret santa exchange.

First Class Accomodations

After the events of Investigations 2, Sebastian Debeste is invited to spend a few nights at the Courtney residence while he figures out what to do next.

This was written for the AA Writer Zine and I am very proud of it.

Tumblr Original Ficlets

Ficlets include narumitsu, klapollo, and a few junithena, and one (1) blackmadhi.

Anyway, I think that's everything. Y'all super don't have to read these, I just wanted all of them in one place. If you do read them, though, feel free to let me know if you liked them! Comments and stuff make my day.

[morphogenetic]

Mediaposting 2024, #5: Dai Gyakuten Saiban 1/The Great Ace Attorney Adventures

Completed: March 26th (main game) / March 27th (escapades/the bonus video content)

Time spent: 37 hours (main game) / 39 hours (including bonus content stuff)

Rating: 8/10 (but with caveats because of it being the first of a duology) thoughts under the cut because there are many and a lot of them are spoilery. but the tl;dr is that they were clearly still kind of finding their footing with this game but The Game Is Good. and the reasons i'm giving it an 8/10 are mostly because i need to see how dgs2 deals with some of the loose ends before i go higher

first, the positives (and I suppose the neutrals):

first of all, on the game design side of things, the music slaps. as usual for an AA game honestly but there does not seem to be a single miss in this soundtrack which is rare. can't wait to hear the inevitable remixes and reframing of themes in dgs2.

it took me way longer than i expected to warm up to the main cast, but once I really got into the meat of the game, i found that I do really like all of them (and I mean ALL of them, including the more minor characters. except mcgilded but fuck mcgilded). this kind of suprised me because I don't think i've come close to that in any AA game except maybe the first one and t&t. also maybe aai2 but that's pushing it. like this game reminded me why I like AA at all after the absolute slogs of 5 and 6. (and the absolute 'i remember fucking none of this' of apollo justice)

the character design of this game as a whole is INCREDIBLE. there is not a single character design that I don't like in some way. from the really good student uniform designs, to susato's kimono, to iris and sherlock's outfits.....and those are just the main ones. a lot of the witnesses and even some of the jury members are memorable just on character design alone. even the designs i think are kind of ugly (coughs. mcgilded) are clearly ugly by design and not by accident. it's a feat. hope that dgs2 keeps up the good work but based on the one (very big....oops) spoiler that i know, i'd be surprised if it didn't.

the parallel between ashley graydon and gina as kids raised in poverty in the last case. mwah. magnificent. chef's kiss. 10/10 no notes

dgs sherlock is such a good interpretation of the Man The Myth and the Legend

also i really adore ryuu as a protagonist. i can't quite put my finger on why, it might honestly just be because of how fucking distressed he is all the time LOL, but i like him in a way that feels a bit deeper to me than the way in which i like phoenix. he's clearly making the best of a bizarre situation and his Law Skills are more of a matter of natural talent rather than training

the ending is. man. it's good and a very good sequel hook but can you fucking IMAGINE if they had never gotten the money to make a sequel to this game. what a hell world that would be. imagine just dropping a major hint that three characters you already know of are involved in a huge fucking conspiracy and then never getting to explain why. vlr/ztd interface level catastrophe.

and then the few negatives i have which unfortunately drag this down a little bit for me, enough to the 8/10 level...primarily the first one:

this game has WHACK pacing. having essentially 3 separate tutorials is a wild game design choice to make. the pacing felt off to me to the extent that the end of case 4 felt like it was the middle of the game, and case 5 was almost half of my playtime at 16 hours out of 37 so i think it was close to LITERALLY being halfway through. i don't have a good idea on how to fix it, given that this game has to introduce both the new dance of deduction mechanic AND the weird jury summation examination mechanic, but....there should have been something. it really made it difficult for me to fully Care about the characters until i was into case 5. and I'm glad that case 5 was ultimately good enough to make me care about everyone (e.g. i didn't really care about gina in case 3 at all), but it's pretty rough. i genuinely don't know HOW you fix the pacing issue while also keeping the overall plot outline the same, though, especially because cases 2 and 3 are so crucial. the only thing i can really think of is introducing some of the background london information in case 4 instead of 5, but.......still. or making case 4 happen more than a single goddamn day after case 3. just something to make the pace not feel nearly as weird. sighs. idk. it needed substantial tweaking but I don't have a good idea on what tweaks needed to be made. i've heard dgs2 has much better pacing from someone whose opinions i trust on that kind of thing, so i really hope it pulls through there.

more minor critique: a lot of the cases, barring 5, are weirdly easy with very rare (and also weird) spotty difficulty spikes. of course it's always hard to strike the balance in an AA game, and i wasn't expecting the tutorial to be hard, but...case 4 just kind of dragged for me because of how long the trial goes on. 5 actually did have tricky moments for me thanks to eggman graydon wanting to hide the truth and the sheer amount of evidence, but yeah. still far more challenging than the dr games just giving you all of the facts at the very beginning of the trial, though...at least shu takumi knows how to write a mystery LMAO

asougi really needed a little more lead time before getting killed off, because i like him but, without the escapades, it's probably not as much as I think the game wants me to like him, and ryuu being his best friend is not super convincing to me even though he shows that a lot more in later cases. i'm not tooootally sure how i would have fixed that, maybe keeping him alive a bit in the first half of the 2nd case? doing some more slice of life stuff with him and ryuu? or making ryuu's reaction to his death a little bit more shocked? idk. i'm REALLY glad the escapades exist because they help a lot in fleshing him out, but i really think parts of them should have been in the game proper =========== all that said. if a game gets me to write this many fucking words about it..which took me a goddamn HOUR to write jesus christ i just checked my computer clock.... it's clearly doing SOMETHING right. honestly, if the pacing wasn't so bizarre, i'd probably bump it up a full point. i am absolutely playing the second game but im already worried its gonna hit full on zero escape and raging loop level catastrophe fixation (positive) once im done so…i'm honestly putting off starting dgs2 a little bit because i'm worried that it's gonna distract me to the point of my grades/job suffering a little LOL. i haven't had that happen in a while so, at least in that way....congrats dgs you won me over. i will never stop calling you dgs because thats how i was introduced to you 7 years ago as my best friend's first new-fixation when i first became friends with her. sorry it took so long for me to get around to you.

[kbots]

now that the @aabadendingzine is out, here's my posted piece! MAJOR aai2 spoilers in this one and i'd like to issue a personal apology to my beloved son sebastian debeste for what i've done to you

huge, massive, neon-lights flashing shout out to my WONDERFUL spot artist Amber who made me cry with the piece she came up with for this fic so check her out! she's crazy talented

[notforclimbing]

||AAI2 MAJOR SPOILERS ||

Thought about Simon a bit today (smiles through the pain)

[gumdefense]

please get into your aa2 rant i beg

Oh thank god someone (idk if it’s rude to tag ? Or to not tag ?) reblogged that post from me saying some great stuff and also saying to go into my aa2 rant and I didn’t know how to reply, like do I reblog from them again, but then that might annoy the op, or do I make a post and tag them but then that might be weird— I don’t understand tumblr etiquette. Even though I’ve been here for years. But yeah whether you are that person in which case hi !! Or another person in which case also hi !! Thanks you solved my problem

How do I start. Basically, I don’t agree with a lot of the fanon surrounding Edgeworth’s "death", mostly in the way that it’s basically all about Phoenix. When the fandom talks about how evil and terrible Edgeworth was for that, I mostly just see Phoenix being brought up, when to me it’s a lost worse for Franziska. To her, her brother disappeared because of what her father did and after learning he used similar tactics as him (the tactics they must have been taught), deciding to kill the prosecutor in him (a major part of their identity and their relationship), abandoning her again, something that is a huge issue for her (aai2 spoilers under the cut)

Her world is in prosecution, their family is in prosecution, and as far as I remember she has issues over Edgeworth leaving her behind to pursue his career at 20, though I can’t remember when that’s discussed, I hope it’s not fanon blending into canon in my memory. What I’m trying to say is, Edgeworth’s fake death had a huge and deep impact on her, and is a very important step in her character

Anyway in short, I find it disappointing ig that most discussion of the repercussions of Edgeworth’s absence is about how Phoenix is so sad his boyfriend is gone and rarely ever about her. General issue across all fandoms to obsess over a male character and leave a female character behind. I go more into the Phoenix stuff under the cut bc I also have a rant about that and I’ve started and I can’t shut up now lol. Tldr Phoenix is deeply flawed and I love him for it and I wish we talked more about his flaws

I mean this is how she reacts when Edgeworth gives up his badge

I sound very negative of Phoenix’s part in this lol— I’m not, how it affects Phoenix is SO important, which is something I’m very passionate about and is… another thing I mostly disagree common fanon with sorry. Phoenix feels very much like the fandom golden boy in a way ? He’s our perfect little guy who has never done anything wrong. And yeah he is my perfect little guy who has never done anything wrong, but actually no he’s my really imperfect little guy who has definitely done wrong

Aa2 is the game that made me fall in love with him, because of how it goes into his flaws. He can be a dick who lashes out, he can be really bitter and angry, and his idea of justice is/was incredibly black and white. I find Phoenix’s character writing in aa2 just brilliant and it saddens me that it gets reduced to "he was really sad about edgeworth". I mean he was and it’s a massive part of his character writing but I don’t see much discussion on the character part beyond the saviour complex thing. Which is great but Justice for All is about, you know. Justice for all. It’s not perfect, I wish the concept of guilty clients was explored more afterwards beyond evilest man alive Matt engarde, the closest we get is aa4 with clients that are guilty of other crimes but still deserve proper defense instead of being dismissed, but I’m getting off topic. Phoenix’s black and white thinking being challenged and him learning he was wrong is so important, but I feel like we’re allergic to discussing the negative parts of Phoenix or something ? Like I said he’s the fandom golden boy. And I get why but the parts of him that suck are the parts that made me adore him and ig I’m disappointed it’s rarely acknowledged or analysed so he can remain our perfect little boy who’s just obsessed with his school crush. Sorry to be such a negative Nancy lol but yeah. Phoenix is such a well rounded deeply flawed character, aa2 has such great writing and so worth analysing, but like all fandoms we have "shipping first and foremost" on the brain

ALSO. Phoenix and Franziska’s arcs are so intertwined the Parallels how they’re both representative of different types of idealism and what loss can do to you and yet are also so similar. They’re soooo aahnnbgbgngcjkn. I’ll just put these here again. Thank you Acro for understanding them

For the record I’m not saying analysis through ship is bad, or that shipping is bad, if you’ve seen my blog at all you’ve seen lots of ship stuff— I just have a general tiredness of ships being the main focus of everything ig lol. I’m stopping now it’s 2am and I can tell this has gone into completely incoherent rambling, I hope this made sense and was fun to read !