#turnabout sisters

[exaltedfuzz]

Turnabout Sisters

[chubbypandas]

Another thing on Ace Attorney: the case progression in the first game is incredibly ballsy to me. Like the tutorial is so very normal, sets you up so well for a regular game of progressively more important cases with your mentor and love interest by your side, and then BOOM. Second case immediatly begins with said mentor fucking MURDERED, in your own fucking office, by a near-omnipotent psychopatic CEO who dresses like a cartoon background character. The game looks at you in the eyes and says « okay now that you know how this shit works, you just have to jail the most powerful guy in the whole country. Yes he can and will bribe everyone in the general vicinity of the crime. Yes he practically has the judge and the guy who lead ur law firm on a leash. Yes he can beat your ass then put YOU in jail. Oh and btw you will also face the best prosecutor in the business who never ever lost a case, and if you do lose, your mentor’s little sister dies. Good fucking luck my bitch ». And then the following cases go back to normal tomfoolery with regular stakes. The last case in the game is actually solving your love interest’s rival’s childhood traumas. Who made those choices

[confusiontown]

Who up Ace-ing their Attorney?🦔

[mia-fey-needs-a-drink]

It's so annoying that to so much of the fandom Mia is just "boobs" or "girlboss", she's got so much more going on:

-She really struggles to remember people's names which often causes people to doubt her engagement despite genuinely caring and engaging with their situation and the case (she's just like me fr I really struggle with names (for probably autism reasons) and people really don't like that).

-She has a tendency to just not talk to people about things, especially about herself or her life. depending on when you think Mia actually started mentoring Phoenix he was a significant part of her life for at least a year and probably since 3-1, yet he only meets Maya and learns about spirit channeling after Mia dies, she never mentioned Lana either, or Diego, or DL-6, and this isn't just to Phoenix, she never told Maya about Diego either and it's vague how much Lana actually knows about her, hell it's vague how much Diego actually knew about her, maybe Grossberg only told him about DL6 and the Fey clan after he wakes up from his coma. Ultimately she isolated herself from everyone in her life to some extent and it's kinda part of how she died, no-one knew the danger she was in and she didn't want people to know.

-Her ineptitude with technology. Phoenix and Maya also have this, but I feel like Mia's and Maya's are so linked to their background in the fey clan, they were raised in a society and culture where they didn't have access to these things and integrating into broader society comes with difficulties.

-Her entire life and career is just things repeatedly going wrong and her being fucked over: DL-6, her disaster of a first trial, Diego being poisoned and just as she's about to try and finally put Redd White behind bars he finds out and kills her. She had shit hand after shit hand and was basically doomed from the start, but yet she persisted and she fought for what she believed and for the people she cared about and to make the world a better place, and everything good that Phoenix manages to do throughout PWT is thanks to Mia and everything she worked for, she laid the foundations for a better world for the ones she loved that she wouldn't get to live in and yet I think if she knew that it would all end this way from the start she'd do it all over again. I think a little part of me thinks that some part of her hoped White would kill her so there was something definitive to pin him with (which comes with some darker implications for how well she was dealing with life).

-Mia has such an interesting relationship to the legal system and her own sense of justice. So much of her experience with the law is with it failing her, repeatedly. DL-6 is a disaster that stripped her mother from her, her first trial ends in the clearly guilty party that murdered her client getting away with it, her boyfriend's murder goes unsolved from the same murderer who she dedicates the next 8 months to taking down, and then there's 1-2, her own murder trial. Mia has again worked for years to try and get this man convicted, the deeply corrupt legal system making it a near insurmountable task, then in the last stretch he murders her. The police immediately just try to brush it under the rug, blame her sister and get the trial over with. Grossberg is too afraid of White to defend Maya and Edgeworth is a slimy piece of shit the entire trial. When Phoenix finally finds the clearly guilty White, he simply makes a few calls and her understudy is the prime suspect. White goes up on the stand and just repeatedly comes up with any old blatant nonsense and excuses and no matter how many times and how much work goes into Wright picking apart every mistruth and detail and how many pieces of evidence he shows nothing will convict White, the court is completely corrupt, you'll never be able to defeat him within the system. So, what happens? Mia and Phoenix have to work outside the established rules, even working outside the rules of death itself. White is only defeated after Mia straight up blackmails him into confessing, and yet this is more justice than working within the law ever would allow them. Mia also only gets Dahlia through pushing the law to it's breaking point, she was a step away from being disbarred. I feel like it's easy to see her as a strong believer in the law but if you really look at it, to her, the law is not sacred or worthy of much reverence, if something is unjust, to hell if it's legal, she will try and reach justice no matter what.

-Look I may be projecting my woke onto the game a little bit but I can't help but feel the routine misogyny Mia faces in both the cases we play as her in T&T is more than just "a product of it's time" and more showing misogyny as an extension of the system being rigged against her.

Loooong post but there's so much going on with Mia.

[nteabodies]

Phoenix wright: Ace Art Critic

[fallout-lou-begas]

So I started playing Ace Attorney but I accidentally started with the third game, Trials and Tribulations, and played the first case (Turnabout Memories) before realizing my mistake – but I did think, at the time, that it was a brilliant and daring design choice to start you out as Mia Fey, Phoenix’s mentor, in flashback, and play has her against several condescending, infantilizing, or even outright sexist court personnel in a drama that just so happens to feature the cool lawyer guy on the box in the most pathetic and embarrassing state imaginable before you even get to play as him. But then that “first” mission dovetailed into the actual first mission from the first game (The First Turnabout) perfectly, because Turnabout Memories is more or less a fanservice recreation and expansion of that first case, but by playing them in opposite order and immediately in sequence, it comes off instead as seeing right away via timeskip just how well that blubbering idiot you helped can handle himself in a court of law now, thanks to Mia’s tutelage – which is itself a continuation of Grossberg’s, as experienced prior. And every note is there, right down to your mentor getting stressed out to the point of exacerbating a medical condition, and opposing the same loser prosecutor.

And then the second case from the first game (Turnabout Sisters), of course, is about the death of Mia Fey that was foreshadowed at the end of Turnabout Memories, making it the first case where you (the player, mechanically) and Pheonix Wright (the character, narratively) are effectively on your own. You (as Pheonix) finally meet Grossberg again, and his staunch refusal to assist in the case is only made more concerning and significant by your firsthand experience playing as Mia under his wing in Turnabout Memories as the “first’ case, and you wonder immediately about their falling out. Maya’s introduction also keeps Mia in the world (including somewhat literally) by revealing more about the Fey family and Mia’s history, relationships, and legacy, and the thing is that I do have to say that playing Turnabout Memories first and getting that experience as Mia, and seeing her as a flawed and insecure rookie fighting for the win before we see her as the effortlessly cool and confident mentor figure, made for a much more narratively satisfying death of a woman than I think it would have been otherwise. You even get a line from Edgeworth in Turnabout Sisters where he calls Pheonix out for using “Mia’s style” of cross-examination – what he calls cowardly nitpicking of perfectly fine testimonies isn’t just how Pheonix does it narratively, it’s how you (the player) do it as the core mechanic of the game, because it’s how Mia does it, and while she is your guide in The First Turnabout, playing as Mia before you play as Pheonix and doing the same thing shows you firsthand that she’s taught him so well that even the prosecution can see it.

This accidental play-order of Turnabout Memories before The First Turnabout and Turnabout Sisters shows off an invaluable amount of Mia Fey’s character, agency, and development that combine to make her feel like the main character for a perfect and holistic three-act introduction to the series, where it doesn’t feel like Pheonix truly “takes over” until Turnabout Samurai – in which he literally does, in fact, take over the law office with Maya as his assistant. It left such a massive impression on me – much more of an impression, I think, that the intended play-order would, which I don’t think does Mia Fey a total disservice at all, but definitely relegates her to a relatively more one-dimensional mentor figure in Pheonix’s shadow for almost the entirety of her short on-screen lifespan if you don’t have the experience of playing as her in Turnabout Memories first. You as the player develop a much richer relationship to Mia that makes her death in Turnabout Sisters feel so much more personal, and the stakes of cracking the case so much more significant. It just enhances her character, and her role in these two cases, immeasurably.

And I mentioned it earlier, but it can’t be said enough that the player’s relationship to Pheonix benefits from this play-order, too – it’s because of Mia that he goes from the sobbing idiot who ate a bottle of poison on the witness stand for a girl who tried frame him for murder into the hotshot rookie lawyer through which you (the player) get to ask Mia for help during the trial in the first place! And she gives you that help because she has been in this same position herself and understands completely! You (the player) were there! The First Turnabout is also, honestly, kind of an underhand toss after Turnabout Memories (it's literally the first ever case so of course it's easy), but it only benefits the pacing of this play-order to have it as a second act before the much more complicated Turnabout Sisters. And when you, the player, are on your own after Turnabout Sisters and have to start Turnabout Samurai without her help, the only way that I can describe it is that you feel ready to make Mia proud.

[daredevil-vagabond]

Where are you going with that dirty money? - Shinigami // Kenshi Yonezu

[yipperbert]

The cycle repeats