i'm gonna get sick or have another project i can't fucken deal w right now if i don't let it out, so
here's what id do different for the entire apollo justice trilogy
so, first of all, boot athena out and fetch her another set of games ALSO separated by a seven year gap from the second trilogy to the third, we are making phoenix an old man and that is my propaganda. and for god's sake, give her a normal suit that buttons and goes all the way down and tone down both her mood swings and hair; she needs to be a bland everyman protagonist like the other two and i'm not taking criticism on this.
second of all, the "dark age of the law" has always been a fucking thing in the games, remove any and all prefaces of it somehow being a New Thing from the series NOW, dpmo i swear to god. we can ramp it up slowly with every game and trilogy but it is not and will never be new information. OK? every prosecutor has been fabricating evidence and filing false charges ever since they were born, put some respect on their names.
"oh, but nolan, what's shocking is that the defense attorneys have started doing that now!" robert hammond would love to speak with you.
kristoph gavin will haunt the narrative, he will make apollo's life and several cases harder by way of being an asshole and setting "insurance" (traps and riddles and setbacks to finding the truth) while he was alive (i assume my man is gonna get executed considering his fucking crimes), opposite to how mia fey always helped phoenix solve his cases after death. streamline focus on the jurist system and how that brings hope amidst whatever other stuff kristoph has done before that sullies the name of all lawyers and law enforcers everywhere. all of this will revolve, once again, around our mentor, but in a decidedly opposite direction.
so. forget dual destinies, forget spirit of justice — those are phoenix wright games and we're done with phoenix wright. he deserves to chill out now. he's done. maybe he still retakes the bar exam, still takes cases to help people from the goodness of his heart, that is not what i have a problem with here. my problem is that he is not sidelined to focus on apollo and his cases and his cast's stories.
second apollo justice game, we bring in another woman prosecutor. because franziska was fucking awesome and it's a sausage party up in this house. what i had noted down was — opposite to franziska — she would be, of course, a handsome woman. we haven't the chance to switch the genders around for this trilogy because klavier gavin was already a prettyboy and too iconic to actually remove, so. gender presentation. and for anyone who might be confused as to why i'm focused on making opposites here, it's an apparent note that everyone in aa4 were supposed to be polar opposites to everyone in aa1-3.
allegedly, from the wiki, although maya and trucy are so similar that i struggle to say that's 100% true.
but work with me here. informal, gentle, friendly rough and tumble prosecutor who never threatens and never assaults, but is wearing basically like grunge fashion in contrast to her mellowed out personality. which, another thing i'd do, and this is personal preference as to what i find funny more than anything else — if the prosecutors in phoenix wright's trilogy only became more and more aggressive up until the point godot came back from hell to take revenge, then apollo justice's trilogy prosecutors would only get more and more unsettlingly friendly up until a prosecutor DIES in the third game to save him. gavin is a perfect first stone in this supposed pipeline because he still mocks and teases apollo, still acts as if they're "on enemy sides". he just also helps and flirts a lot.
i will say nayhuta could still potentially work for the third prosecutor because he allegedly sees the future of the fates of cases, and apollo recognized him first as opposed to godot knowing phoenix one sidedly, but i want to veto the country of khu'rain. that doesn't exist. that's never been spelt like that. ace attorney, by the way, isn't a story so grand it should've transcended international borders so quickly -- this religion was concentrated to a village in japanifornia, and if i had it my way, the cosmos space center would be a mid ass space center at BEST. everybody in ace attorney is POOR, save for definitely the von karma family and maybe the rest of the prosecutors.
clay terran should have been a defendant. apollo should have defended him, should have the time to speak with him, clay should have had the time to flesh out into a proper person we could care about, but i'm stating the painfully obvious right. let's go back a bit. first apollo justice game, case two, gumshoe should have been there. with ema as his subordinate that he's monitoring for her first ever case, or maybe he tells us she's coming in the second case, a new fancy recruit from overseas! wow! or he'd be straight up retired living it up on some other job, i don't fucking care, explain where he is. also, obviously, like. klavier should be important. right. i don't care if, opposite to phoenix and edgeworth (the GAY PEOPLE) klavier and apollo don't have history and aren't important to each other. he should still be an important prosecutor, right? there should be a reason people can call them "rivals" because as it stands, they never saw each other again after a few cases in 2025 or 2026 or whatever. they are acquaintances at best, and do most of their bonding off screen apparently because hooooowwwww the fuckkkkkkkkkkk did apollo know about professor constance courte huh? explain that shit to me. WHICH, by the WAY, perfect time to note that she is a PERFECT opposite to manfred and should have ALSO stayed alive longer to make appearances.
so, apollo should have a backstory to oppose phoenix's absolutely loreless background (bearing out of mind his gay first meeting with childhood best friend edgeworth over here) but you know what? what if nahyuta and clay were just fucking. in his neighborhood. what if they just hung out a lot — paralleling phoenix/larry/edgeworth, to not be totally the same it could've been that they all split up as opposed to edgeworth needing to move — and went to that mediocre space center and met frequently after school? that's the base, right, and then depending on what the cases are in the second and third games, a lot more stuff can happen in apollo's past to create the (probably extenuating) circumstances we see at present day. again. as opposed to phoenix. we can go a bit more ambitious with athena's trilogy, but i will never concede to an ace attorney trilogy where fucking, secret agents and spies and astronauts and tyranny systems get explored all at once in breakneck pacing.
i really enjoyed the unique way every single character in aa4 was intertwined with one another and into a bigger story and a bigger case and a bigger plot. and i know PLENTY of other people who feel the same way. so! i propose every game in this theoretically redone trilogy could follow in its footsteps to a certain extent. i propose lamiroir and vera misham and clay and brushel keep returning a la lotta hart and pearls and will powers and oldbag, and that every game we could potentially shift the circle of people and circumstance a little to the side to explore a related narrative. one of the few times in my life where i want to ask if this makes sense, here, because this will only make perfect sense in my own head, but so. as an attempt at an example. game one is the murder of vera mishams dad, the serial poisonings, the fabricated evidence in the gramarye case. second game is about the people lamiroir left behind in her past, vera's past clients whose fabrications might also have been brought to light through a murder case, stuff like that, yeah? and listen, i'm not good with themes so i'll leave that out, never been much of a "so what's this story about?" guy, i'm just here to streamline, chop up what we don't need.
we're nearing the end of this madness and my notes so i'll also lay down my theoretical squad for athena's trilogy now.
we need athena (of course, defense attorney), blackquill (of course, prosecutor), fulbright (real in her first game, dead by her second, detective), and maybe jinxie tenma for the weirdgirl role. considering trucy was friends with her and we never heard from her again. but to be fair, the weirdgirl role is confusing to come up with considering athena WAS the weirdgirl for apollo's trilogy. i'd say juniper woods would probably be the best candidate, if i'm really thinkin about it proper. it would be refreshing to have a weirdgirl who is very chill for once.
i wanna say that if i had to, i'd "insert" dual destinies into this trilogy. seven years after apollo's trilogy, and the legal world has kind of completely gone to shit. not as drastic as they make it seem originally, of course, but if you compared this to phoenix wright's trilogy, the whiplash would be lethal. because. of course. we have a death row inmate as a prosecutor. we have a (you know what? maybe she's fucken underage like franz was when she became prosecutor) defense attorney, we have a detective whose background is blurry (i want story for the real bobby fulbright, dammit, and i want him to also be shady but ultimately on the side of justice). i don't know, maybe the law has gotten so bad we're potentially looking at a single day court trial future.
i wouldn't put spirit of justice anywhere. i haven't finished the game but it puts a bad taste in my mouth that they'd just insert a country who hasn't had practically any actual court procedures for over twenty years in this "new dark age of the law" thing. that's not a part of that narrative. those bitches have been doing this longer than phoenix has been a lawyer. i quite like rayfa, though, considering that, so failing juniper for whatever reason, i propose she be athena's weirdgirl (and also have simpler clothes, jesus christ. what were they doing with spirit of justice's designs).
if you read through this whole thing, bully apollo in the comments or reblogs, do whatever you please. i appreciate you, thank you for entertaining me and being interested. how do you end a post. remember to like and subscribe
