more fluff and domestic narumitsu moments!!

Narumitsu commission for our dearest @tarmahartley! Based on her fic “Caged Heart”, where Miles is a Royal prince and Phoenix is a magic bird able to transform himself into a human.  A beautiful fairy tale!!!! :D

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Meanwhile Edgeworth, living under von Karma’s roof probably never got to go to any sort of events which involved anything sort of fun. 

Yang’s Ship Graphic >>> Narumitsu | Happy Stories

so please reblog this post if 95% of your posts are

Like I can understand when people dislike him or don’t care about his arc, because it just doesn’t resonate with them. And the writing in the games for him isn’t always the best either. But there’s also an active sense of ‘he’s a jerkass, why does he exist’ in regard to AA4 or ‘LOL, look at that moron, bumbling through all of his trials’.

I get it. Ace Attorney 4 has its problems and was never resolved. But it’s just- fandom often loves the ‘dark and mysterious and jerk’ trope for men. But Phoenix isn’t actually like that trope, is he?

He doesn’t have big secrets or a mysterious past except for some of the details of his disbarment and after. He isn’t cool, never was. He is average. And he isn’t particular ‘manly’ / doesn’t flaunt his masculinity.

He is the real underdog with little money, no prestigious background, grand aspirations, or much advantages in his field, so he struggles in his job a lot. He’s also open, tries to be nice while dealing with lots of resentment due to how he was and is treated, and works to silence his selfish instincts to do the right thing.

Phoenix is also soft, emotional. When we read his thoughts, it’s of an anxious, passionate person who cares too much when his emotions gets involved. He isn’t afraid to cry or show his affection in front of people. The same goes when he’s angry, ranting at Miles about that infamous note, from a point of - ‘you hurt me, I’m so angry at you that I don’t know what to feel because I’m also happy you’re still alive, but you still pretended to be dead’.

That is the crux. All those are qualities men are still derided for nowadays if they exhibit them. If he was ‘manly’, he would have punched Miles for this ‘infraction’ while shouting him down for the sake of putting him into place. Or he would have acted cold and distant like Miles* used to do in the first game. Since he fails to ‘perform’, his quirks are played up while his competence is removed and his characterization gets skewed. I see the same to some extent with Apollo’s treatment, who doesn’t act traditionally cool either.

(*Miles who is often put as ‘better / superior’ to Phoenix in parts of the fandom - likely because he seemingly fits the ‘dark and mysterious and jerk’ persona and appears to be more manly - which he isn’t, either. It’s partly his natural tendencies, partly his mental illnesses like PTSD, partly the abusive upbringing he suffered under as his mentor forced him to act in a certain way and exacerbated his mental illness).

Phoenix’s accomplishments thus don’t matter. People ignore that he managed to win several trials as a rookie against accomplished prosecutors in a corrupt system, or that he found obvious discrepancies in the case others ignored, or that he’s the most dangerous when backed against a wall, or that his infamous bluffing on the spot takes skill and intelligence, like everything else what he did- instead, they put it as dumb luck.

But come AA4, and he is like Ray or Godot - hiding behind a jackass persona to further his goals. He doesn’t show his emotions anymore. But unlike Phoenix, their first appearance was as these jackasses, and their complexities were later revealed.

With Phoenix? Here it’s like, how dare this person be angry and hurtful, when they used to be so soft before - also the butt of fate’s jokes and so many of their surrounding’s derision? Which, you know, is how women and girls are still treated, because apparently they aren’t allowed to be nasty, even after they were hurt. Their accomplishments are dismissed, belittled, and made smaller compared to men’s actions.

It’s like, Phoenix isn’t allowed to both have flaws and perform amazing feats, make mistakes and display strengths. That he isn’t allowed to be weak or struggle with what is obviously a severe depression, before he turns inwards and hardens and pushes people because he’s a flawed, complex human being who is afraid of being hurt gain.

It makes me think that underneath, people maybe don’t realise they’re saying, ‘how dare this person have a perfectly normal human reaction! they’re supposed to be blemishless, divine, without sin, unable to do anything wrong! They were supposed to be my unproblematic fave, how am I supposed to love them now?’.