Spoiler: My Blackbright feels, let me show you them talk to me about that AU though all the manipulation and abuse of Blackquill's trust of canon, but with added angst about having to do it, increased by the growing belief that this jailbird is a far better person than he'll allow anyone to think and deserves so much better (also on a shallower level I just want to see more of those fucking electrified shackles I mean seriously)
(Tangentially, while I'm only two cases into SoJ, I really appreciated that in case 2 they went for "make the system even more rigged and unfair" but didn't do it by making even more of the people involved in the justice system corrupt. Because they've reached the point where they're having to make up new groups to have corrupt members of, like the PIC in AAI2 and Themis Academy in DD, and it's getting kind of ridiculous. And so to instead have your client get smeared in the media because some TV sleazebag has a grudge against her and a financial interest in seeing her go down is such a welcome break from, like, the nefarious schemes of the head of the Bar Association or something.)
LEAVE TRUCY ALONE okay but for real i cried during that case like. a lot. and i'll barf up an essay about how much i love trucy and shit like that here someday. when i feel like writing 20 pages of meta.
Yeah, it does an excellent job of making you want to strangle the douchebag. But I was also kind of "thank you, writers, for having someone different be hideously unfair for once."
Oh yeah no I agree LOL. Trucy is my stan character where I'm like "LEAVE HER ALONE SHE HAS DONE NOTHING WRONG" and when I get to writing that meta essay I got things to say about how she was manipulated by the adults who should know damn better in her life >:(((
Spoiler Can we talk about the fact that everyone who talks about how Nick is an asshole in AJ brings up what a manipulative douche he is to Apollo, but not the fact that he had Trucy hand-deliver forged evidence to an unsuspecting lawyer A SECOND TIME?
Spoiler GOD that raises the question if she even KNOWS about the first time it happened, if she'd do it if she did know, and what she feels about everything she's had to do since a very young age, including pay the bills and help Nick cheat at a very high-stakes, very illegal gambling game. Omg. Omg. I will admit I don't like it when people write Nick off as abusive because of what he does in AJ, but he's shady as fuck that entire game for sure. Oh my god. Oh my god. BUT YES THAT PISSES ME OFF TOO WTF
Spoiler Trucy's a smart kid- I'm sure she'd figure it out, or at least suspect, even if Nick tried to hide it from her so she didn't feel guilty. I've seen people suggest that Nick in AJ was originally supposed to be a new, different character but marketing made them shove Phoenix in because they didn't think people would buy the game if it was all new characters + Ema. And then it didn't get rewritten to sound like Nick because, well, it's AJ, and it oozes "ran out of time and budget" from every case but the first one.
Spoiler Is that the rumor? Never heard it, but it makes a hell of a lot of sense. More sense than most. Though, for the sake of canonicity that, hey, we have Nick, we have to deal with this out of character Nick, I just say it was extreme circumstances that caused him to become a totally different person. I imagine AJ!Nick as the kind of guy who hangs out in bars in the dead of night until last call and gets dingy motel rooms in the middle of the night with Maya or {insert ship of choice here} so ANGST. Tune in at 8 for more angst, suffering, and me shoving my grimy little hands into AJ and trying to make it as dark and twisted behind the scenes as possible, because if you're forcing me to suffer through this version of Nick goddammit I'm gonna take it all the way to hell.
Honestly, the impression I get is that the two 3DS games consist in large part of desperately trying to fix the mess that AJ made. Spoiler "Look! Look! Phoenix is back to looking and dressing and acting like Phoenix and is only slightly an obnoxious snarky trickster mentor!" "Look! Look! We're acknowledging that characters from the first three games exist!" "Look! Look! We gave Apollo more of a personality and character arc!" "Look! Look! Black Psyche-Locks actually mean something now and aren't just a random thing for shock value!" And I'm not far in SoJ, but it's already done, "Look! Look! Spirit channeling is back!" and "Look! Look! Ema's not bitter and stuck in a job she hates anymore!", and I know it tries to clean up some of AJ's dropped plot threats.
Spoiler Honestly I love Spirit of Justice but it becomes a mess in later cases too, not on par with AJ but pushing the line. So just. Prepare yourself.
tbh i always took AJ!Nick as incredibly-depressed!Nick and it ... didn't strike me as too far off the mark. (i wonder if that says more about my mental health at the time...)
Spoiler: that stupid fucking trucy essay: long, probably forgetting facts Okay but fr, Trucy is probably one of the most tragic kid characters in the series, in a series where every character has the surname “TragicBackstory”. And it upsets me that the canon never really addresses some of the more serious shit she’s been through or her feelings about it, or if she even knows (though it can be implied through how intelligent she is) what really went down when she was little. But, like, the biggest thing is that for most of her life, ESPECIALLY her developmental years, have been marked by manipulation from the adults in her life. At 8 she was an accomplice in her own orphan status by helping her father disappear from his trial. While she wasn’t reluctant to do this, because of his promises to her that he’d return, those promises fell short when he failed to follow up for 8 years, and through no fault of his own, died before he could. Kristoph-fucking-Gavin used her, a probably scared little girl being raised by a single father, to discredit Phoenix and make him lose his job. And, fuck, that raises the question, then, how prominent was Kristoph in Trucy’s life? Did Phoenix immediately suspect him and keep him at a safe distance or was there a period where Phoenix was leaning on his friend for support – allowing Kristoph to get close to his newly adopted daughter? Kristoph was a good enough liar to slip past Trucy’s perception skills, did he at all try to use her to get to Phoenix and ruin his life more? Did Kristoph see her as a threat to be rid of? I NEED TO KNOW, CAPCOM. GIVE ME THE JUICY BITS. Nick is no saint in Trucy’s life, either. He became borderline alcoholic and resorted to dubious techniques just to make ends meet so that they wouldn’t end up on the street. Most of the responsibility fell on Trucy for her magic shows and her perception. Did Nick using her to cheat at poker ever get the two of them in trouble with other sketchy characters? They moved around a lot it seems, considering Trucy has stated she has had to switch schools numerous times and was vehemently against the idea of doing it again once Apollo came along. For the longest time Nick seemed to completely be unaware of her emotions and feelings, and went so far as to hide her father’s death and will from her, forcing her to figure out the former for herself in court with a near stranger, where she wasn’t able to react properly or even process what was happening, cause she had to be good co-counsel to the man she had been made to give forged evidence to for the second time in her life. Imagine, if she had figured the first time out by now, how scared she must have been for it to be presented to the court as legitimate. And then, after all that, she is finally able to move on and start her own career. Of course, there’s still the issue she doesn’t know her mom is alive despite already having met her again, and that she doesn’t know Apollo is her half brother, and that as of the end of SoJ she is probably told this after Apollo has already left, because, once again, two people she should be able to trust to be objective and straight forward are doing the exact opposite. But. Nevermind that. Now, she has a steady career and is making a name for herself, and that’s when Roger Retinz comes along with a grudge against her dwindling, near non-existant family, and decides to take it out on her. He plants Betty and Bonny under her wing and convinces them and another co-star to pull a prank on her. A prank that ends with a dead body and the blame on Trucy’s head. The name she has made for herself crumbles overnight as the media picks up on the murder, and she can do nothing about it except defend herself in a courtroom that has already made their decisions about her character. Once again, at the hands of someone she had a reasonable expectation of trust with. Despite her being able to fight through it and come out on top, albeit with probably a damaged reputation from the people who don’t accept the facts (as there always is), she is further treated like a naïve child when it comes to other aspects of her life. Despite being a valuable asset and ally in serious situations, she is shooed to the side and forced to stay in Japanifornia, forcing her hand to smuggle herself to Khu’rain, where, instead of her help being accepted, she gets denied, this time permanently (for the duration of this stay). At the end of it all, she is unable to help, has to watch with Athena as her dad and brother face a death sentence, and when all is said and done her brother, the man she sees as such despite not knowing, leaves again, unknowingly and perhaps unwittingly leaving his little sister behind in a world that seems out to get her at every turn. Trucy, the little magician girl who had to grow up too fast fighting against a corrupt system. Unable to ever say goodbye to her mother properly. Constantly having information hidden from her as if that has ever actually worked. Being taken advantage of for her skills and her kind and forgiving nature. And always pushing it down and fighting it with all she haves until she breaks down in the detention center, perhaps for the first time in front of other people. Basically, TRUCY WRIGHT DIDN’T DESERVE THIS.
Having finished the final case, I am even more baffled as to why Edgeworth wasn't exhibiting some serious deja vu! Spoiler: DD spoils The child of the murder victim in a case officially solved years ago expresses vivid memories of having Done It. It turns out they instead struck the real killer. The wound the child inflicted is key to identifying the culprit. A third party was originally deemed to have Done It. There is a very short time limit on sorting this out. Someone embarks on a career in legal defense for the express purpose of "saving" a prosecutor they knew in childhood. The prosecutor doesn't particularly want to be saved, but the attorney persists. (Slightly more of a stretch, but) Someone close to the prosecutor Did It, and significant evidence has been compromised due to passing through this person's hands. There is an adorable nonhuman witness. I don't mind that they're essentially remixing DL-6, I actually thought it was pretty cool. With the actual Wright and Edgeworth seemingly moving into more of a "Big Good"-like role, it feels right to see this next "generation", so to speak, going through some of their experiences. I just could have done with a little in-universe acknowledgement, I guess?
Spoiler I think Edgeworth's radio silence on the subject is owed to the fact that canon has never expanded on the thoughts and feelings of the character's we're not playing as since we don't have their inner commentary to go off of, doubly so on characters who tend to hide their own emotions outwardly.
There's another deja vu case in DD, too. The DLC one. Spoiler It is, in pretty much every particular, basically "Turnabout Big Top, but good."
