The Rise and Fall of John Phoenix
I have gone on a deep dive into the bowels of the Internet, and seen too much of the Abyss, and tumblr is about to come on a journey with me. Let's begin.
So. I'm Erlkonig on FFN and Gheyn on AO3, but I mostly read on AO3. Today, I went to FFN to see what Ace Attorney stories it had, and one unfamiliar name kept popping up.
Who is this character? Apparently, a lawyer who is Phoenix Wright's British, green-suited nephew. Most works involving John Phoenix are short and satirical, and seem to view the character with derision or outright hostility.
Bizarrely, John Phoenix seems to span several authors: Just on the first page (most recent, see screenshot), I see Konrad Kross, barrylawn, and HoboSix. Farther back, the username HomelessSeven (likely a pseud of HoboSix) appears, as well as hexeptafan, LosAngelesttorney, and LockedAttworney. There's also a raft of users specifically with John Phoenix in their name!
John the Tudors Last Non Alt
JP The Tudor Fandom Conqueror
. . . and so on. There's also what appears to be shared accounts Acquittal Central and Amazon Johngle. (More on Acquittal Central later.) Amazon Johngle's profile raises some further questions:
Who is the "evil troll" mentioned? When scrolling through these, a few more names pop up with some regularity.
Storm Sente - This appears to be a character from Acquittal: Induction, an unreleased game similar to Ace Attorney. It was demoed in 2017. He appears to be the inspiration for the author SineSententia and JohnSententia (possibly pseuds?). Storm Sente and John Phoenix crossovers seem pretty popular. It's possible that John Phoenix originated as a crossover character: a Phoenix Wright relative in the British Acquittal: Induction universe. Indeed, the account Acquittal Central mostly contains stories in the Acquittal: Induction universe, rather than Ace Attorney.
Dylan Fitchar - I honestly couldn't find anything about him, except this on the same wiki as Storm Sente (https://winecellar.fandom.com/wiki/Acquittal:_Induction). Apparently he is John Phoenix's nemesis.
The other recurring name is dakoolguy.
There are 16 mentions of dakoolguy in story titles or searches, a whopping 13 of them by Enemy of John Phoenix. We're seeing one side of what may have been a feud, although it's hard to tell if the feud was mutual or whether the hatred was one-sided.
There appear to be no stories written by dakoolguy. A search of username dakoolguy produces an empty page.
However. . . I'm pretty sure I remember seeing a bak-and-forth between dakoolguy and barrylawn in the past. A two-way feud in which they both wrote mean-spirited stories about each other. Help me out, Wayback Machine. . . .
(https://web.archive.org/web/20200518004609/https://www.fanfiction.net/u/13100066/dakoolguy)
At the end of all this, John Phoenix is the OC of dakoolguy! It appears that dakoolguy has since deleted all their works, although the Wayback Machine records some twenty-odd stories from dakoolguy's side of the feud, written in April and May of 2020. Among their oldest works is the feud with barrylawn, as well as a complaint in Feb 2020 against r/AceAttorney the subreddit, and a May 2020 complaint against AO3.
Clearly, dakoolguy had a long list of enemies. And without reading into all the works and constructing a timeline, its hard to say whether that was earned. Whatever happened, by September 2020, dakoolguy had deleted all their works, and their user sometime after that. The John Phoenix fan forum listed in their profile is also empty, although the Wayback page shows that the same barrylawn from the feud was a prominent presence on the fan forum. I was unable to click into any topic, not even through the Wayback Machine, to see whether barrylawn's participation there was friendly or antagonistic.
A closing note: The Wayback page of dakoolguy's FFN profile shows that they were at one point da_kool_guy on AO3. A search of AO3 turns up no such user. However, it does turn up a small handful of John Phoenix stories. Somehow, AO3 was able to escape whatever went down on FFN. One story in particular catches the eye. . . .
The Adventures of John Phoenix, by keysmash, which appears to be a repost of the first chapter of the original 58k-word fix written by dakoolguy on FFN. And within the repost, there are three kudos. . . one from barrylawn. And within barrylawn's own list of works. . . is The Birth of John Ryuunosuke.
What is the relationship between dakoolguy and barrylawn? Are they rivals, friends, or bitter enemies? A glance at barrylawn's AO3 profile holds some clue.
Dylan Fitchar! Could it be that John Phoenix's ex-nemesis was based on barrylawn all along?
In closing, although dakoolguy's may have chosen death for John Phoenix, he lives on through the works of his worst enemy, and through the collective memory of FFN, its pages an eternal tribute to the man, the myth, and the legend.
Update: @barrylawn thanks for writing in! I've become Herlock with flawed deductions lol. Barrylawn clarified that they first introduced Dylan Fitchar into the John Phoenix fandom, and that Dylan Fitchar is from the game Last Window: The Secret of Cape West.
