you should. tell me your thoughts about ray shields
OH GOD OH FUCK OKAY IF YOU INSIST. I hope you’re ready cause hooooo boy do I have some for you HERE WE GOOOO
Where the hell do I even start. Raymond Shields…my ray of light. My hotshot wonder. My weirdgirl king. I guess before anything else I’ll tell you about how this man absolutely blindsided me—Uncle Ray put your friend Mel through a turnabout of her own and she’s gonna explain how it happened so buckle in. I’ll try to make this as coherent as possible but I need you to understand this man has way too much power over me and a single fleeting thought of him can melt my brain into mush so. Apologies if this comes out as completely nonsensical it’s his fault not mine
I’ve been in the Ace Attorney fandom for a little over a year and had a couple of things accidentally spoiled for me as a result (some of which was my own fault, admittedly) but when I started Investigations 2 last September all I knew about Ray was his name and (sort of) what he looked like. Like a lot of English-speaking fans, I was initially put off by his portrayal in the localization. This immediately stuck out as odd to me because my personality is such that I don’t have a lot of characters I genuinely dislike, especially if they’re part of the main cast—even if they’re not my favorite I can almost always find something to love about them. It made me wonder if maybe some of his quirks got lost in translation somewhere (and I did find out later that this was indeed the case), but I didn’t actively seek out that information at the time for fear of being spoiled, so I just suffered through the early parts of The Imprisoned Turnabout doing my best to ignore what I perceived as questionable behavior on his part.
However, if I’ve learned anything from my time in this fandom it’s that nothing in Ace Attorney is surface level—one of my FAVORITE things to do when playing this series besides voice acting the characters is figuring out what makes them tick and speculating character motivations as the game progresses using the little hints scattered by the writers here and there—I was already somewhat intrigued by Ray’s apparent grudge toward Miles but when the revelation of his partnership with Gregory dropped my brain immediately went BRRRRRRRRR. I started wondering what that experience of working for him was like and how it affected him (and if his unwavering loyalty to Gregory was related to his grudge toward Miles). I started exploring the whole WEB of parallels between him and Gregory and Miles and Phoenix and Mia and Maya and Kay (and probably more but those are the main ones). I fell in love with the beautiful mentor-student relationship he developed with Miles, even if in the moment I was baffled by the weirdly flirty things Ray sometimes says to him (like the line about swapping clothes in the Winter Palace. What the fuck was that about sir) and VERY confused/worried about whether Miles had met him as a child or not (I still don’t know/can’t remember if the game ever gave us a concrete answer on this btw—if any of you know please do enlighten me). And above all I knew—I KNEW that he was hiding a boatload of trauma regarding the DL-6 incident; made even more clear to me by the contrast between his teen and adult selves once I got to The Inherited Turnabout. I knew he was using humor as a mask to hide the pain of what happened. I knew from the fact he still had Greg’s old coat and wore his hat every day that he hadn’t moved on. This, I thought to myself, is a deeply emotional man deathly afraid of emotional vulnerability haunted by the ghost of a loved one. And let me tell you, as someone who’s been in a similar position myself, to say that really struck a chord with me is an understatement.
AND THEN THE THIRST. Oh boy. If I’ve sounded really eloquent up until now that shit’s about to go out the goddamn window because SWEET MOTHER MARY I AM DOWN SO BAD IT’S EMBARRASSING. I recorded my playthrough starting from Chapter 2 (just for fun—I’m not nearly brave enough to post any of it on the internet except maybe some short clips here and there) and you can literally see the clear turning point I had after hearing his Objection voice for the first time. I started making innuendos left and right (IT’S NOT MY FAULT his dialogue lends itself really well to that sort of thing ok). In true Ray Shields fashion it started half as a joke but devolved into absolute chaos. This coupled with the fact that I was slowly but surely becoming more invested in the inner conflict of his character? I was beyond saving at that point. No hope for me. Nothing left but to leap into Uncle Ray’s arms and let them wander where they will. “Ride that stallion into the sunrise,” as it were. I could go on but quite frankly the things I want that man to do to me (and what I want to do to him) are too unholy for this world so I’ll leave it there.
And that’s the story of how Raymond Shields permanently infected my brain. It’s been an absolutely wild ride but I hope you enjoyed the journey—glad we can share our love of this silly disastrous emotionally repressed paper-eating man together <3
