What inspired the whole premise of the fic? You mentioned before that you were really surprised that Nenilein's Complete Turnabout was similar to TGDST, as you never came across it before writing your fic
I’ll just address both asks since you both ask a similar question.
My inspiration. It’s actually funny, I am new to the Ace Attorney fandom. I started texting @coolman229 about my ideas in May of 2017, when I barely started playing Trials and Tribulations for the first time. More ideas flew into my head the further along I got into Ace Attorney but I always knew I wanted Apollo and Athena and Trucy in the story even if when this idea first came about I hadn’t gotten to their games yet.
Basically the idea sprang from a lot of “swap” aus. Like in Voltron where they swap the roles of characters like “X character is the fugitive survivor with the robotic arm and Y character is the tech genius and Z character is the altaen royalty, etc”. Or how in Miraculous Ladybug they do Kwami swap AUs. I was seeing a lot of fanart for that on my dash. Then it got me thinking what if we had lawyer swaps? Like Phoenix is a prosecutor and Edgeworth was the defense attorney? I started creating in my head what would be different in this universe, why they would be that way and how they got that way, who would they associate with, and how would that overall effect the Ace Attorney universe with this change. It kept doing a domino effect one after another.
For example, DL6 never happened, because it never happened Misty never disappeared and raised Mia and Maya, met Gregory Edgeworth and they got married and now Miles has the Feys as his step-family. This of course dominos into other things you’ll see in my story because of it.
I kept thinking of multiple “what if x case never happened and what would be the effects of that?” or “what if x case still happened but went about differently”.
It was a lot of fun brainstorming that.
So I started a foundation of this alternate universe.
Well THEN at the same time texting the concepts of this fic to my friend, I was rewatching some of the DCAU, specifically Justice League.
And I got to one of my favorite episodes:
The Justice Lords episodes, not only does it explore an alternate universe, but it swaps the characters. Putting the Justice Lords in the main universe and traps the League in the alternate universe.
It leads to some great interactions as well as debates as if things went differently WOULD our own canon heroes do the same as them? This is a question that went on to be explored in later seasons of Justice League.
But it got me thinking…what if this alternate Phoenix I created ended up in the mainline game universe, while our Phoenix ended up in his counterpart’s universe!
How would the other characters react to this different Phoenix? How would the two Phoenixs adjust to these circumstances? How would the alternate worlds affect them and how would they effect the alternate worlds…etc?
Then I decided it was gonna be a body swap AU on top of an alternate reality au. Because it was too interesting to explore to not think about. I felt just a simple role swap AU wasn’t gonna cut it.
Then I told more of these ideas to @coolman229 then later @just-absolutely-super.
@witchqueenhecate I came across Nenilein’s fic during most of my ideas were finished. By the time I started reading her fic I had already finished most of the outlines and notes and even some basic drafts for future chapters for my fic. So while it didn’t influence my story it was fun to find out something that had a similar premise. If anything it motivated me further to publish my different take. Because Complete Turnabout is a fantastic fic and I do recommend it, however I do disagree with a couple of things here and there but I think that is interesting how a similar premise can create different conclusions. So her fic wasn’t an inspiration but it does motivate me to work hard because her fic is popular and she clearly worked hard at it, and I want to be able to work just as hard as her and hopefully be as successful. So if someone wants to read a similar premise but makes a lot of different choices from me then go read Nenilein’s Complete Turnabout.
But I digress, it was too good of an idea to just stay as an AU that I text to Tim and Janie. I’ve texted multiple “what if” aus to my friends but they just stay that, fun texts but never more than beyond emailing notes and mini chapters to them of these concepts. This one finally saw the light of day because my friends loved it so much it convinced me to make it into a fanfic.
