#rookthots

something i really like about franziska is that even after everything that goes down in turnabout goodbyes, she rarely addresses her father or what he meant to her, but she also never renounces the von karma name or demonstrates in any way that it means less to her personal identity than it did before. she still prides herself on being a von karma. while she occasionally acknowledges her father's talent or standards, she never states that her goal is to live up to HIM, or prove her worth to him, or avenge him, or anything like that (in fact when phoenix and maya make that assumption in jfa she shuts it down). i have a lot of thoughts and feelings about franziska's unseen journey and any decisions she made about how to approach manfred von karma's stained legacy. but the thing i like most about miles' theme (that it takes elements of von karma's identity and changes them to make them his own) is also the inverse of the thing i like most about franziska's theme (that it doesn't). franziska does not take her father's legacy and reshape it or try to make it her own. she doesn't try to distance it from its sullied roots. she is a von karma. she acknowledges her father's contributions to the legacy and she clearly still feels some level of love or affection for him (calling him her 'papa' in big top for example). at the same time she does not try to defend him or step into his shoes. she is not trying to become her father. she is trying to prove herself as a von karma. it's interesting because the creed itself has not initially changed in jfa: it's still about perfection, it's still about a flawless win record, etc. but it's not about manfred anymore, it's about herself. while the creed of perfection evolves as the games go on, it's not franziska's response to her father, it's her response to herself and her learnings in the law. she is not trying to remake the legacy. she doesn't feel like she needs to transform it in order to make it her own. she simply took it from her father, because it is her own. and now it's exclusively hers.

phoenix

in the darker times and early stages of his disbarment, i imagine he held a lot of resentment for klavier. klavier had maybe one evening of warning about the forged page but still (i assume with kris' pointed assistance) tracked down drew misham and convinced him to testify in the event that the page was presented and needed verification. that's a lot of effort to go to to verify a piece of evidence that hasn't been shown yet - so if i were phoenix, i would resent that klavier were willing to go to that kind of effort to prove phoenix a fraud but not apply it to investigating any reasonable doubts about how the page was commissioned or how kristoph could possibly have known about it. i mean, phoenix was only put on the case at the last minute - it stands to reason he wouldn't have had the opportunity to commission such a detailed fake, right? some interrogation of misham about how long it took, how much it cost, etc, should have uncovered at least that much doubt. we've previously seen that when phoenix was hurt by edgeworth's disappearance, he redirected his ire to "all prosecutors are evil not a single one of them is good" and i think despite his growth since then it would be realistic for him similarly to be bitter here that klavier clearly is approaching this from a position of zero faith in people and zero doubt in accusations, which is the worse side of approaches to prosecution in aceatt. so i do think initially he resented klavier.

however i think over time he pulled away from that for several reasons

first, recognising the depths of kris' character, it's obvious that klavier is also a victim and was in a uniquely vulnerable position

second, recognising that no matter what failures there were in klavier's investigation and no matter what corruption led to the objective disproportionality of phoenix's penalty, the fact of the matter was that phoenix erred in presenting forged evidence. especially without doing his due diligence as to where the evidence came from. but even if it wasn't phoenix's fault, it's still a serious thing to have happened given the potential consequences ie that an innocent person could be found guilty. so phoenix over time comes to accept that even if klavier's actions were inadequate (didn't investigate enough), they weren't really wrong in themselves (had to point out a known forgery), and klavier did not orchestrate the disproportionate fallout.

third, klavier was young. aceatt is insane about their youth prodigies but 17 is young. it was klavier's first trial. there's no fair way for phoenix to blame him for not doing everything right in such unique circumstances.

(i also just think phoenix isn't as great at holding a grudge as he'd like to be.)

by the time of AJ:AA i do think phoenix has largely let go of his resentment. that said. i don't think he's fully comfortable around klavier. i think part of him remains bitter even though he recognises it's not fair. from that i think he sometimes takes the opportunity to tease klavier a bit, which is mostly harmless but admittedly sort of unkind, because he knows klavier is tense around him.

i also think phoenix feels guilty that klavier was used as a weapon to hurt him, as well as how much klavier loses in the fallout while being kept in the dark for really the whole time. so beyond the teasing i think phoenix eventually makes an effort to ensure klavier understands there are no hard feelings. and then resumes fake hitting on him whenever apollo is in the room.

klavier

iiiiiiii think. klavier carries a ton of guilt. i think he starts out righteous and angry at phoenix for what he's "done", triumphant, arrogant, etc, and then slowly doubt begins to creep in until it's something that haunts him but that he can't look at or figure out until apollo arrives on the scene. after AJ:AA i strongly believe klavier would make a concerted effort to avoid phoenix for a long time (thinking phoenix hates him, rightly in klavier's opinion) and is visibly uncomfortable in his presence. i also think he's uncomfortable with edgeworth for a long time for the same reason and is tense at work. (this is in the fic im working on too so ill leave this here.)

however i also think (see the ficlet i linked) klavier would ultimately be the one to approach phoenix first. he's an honest person who is okay with doing damage to himself if it means he doesn't have to live with a lie, so i think once he's processed enough and just can't live with the uncertainty and guilt anymore, he would be the one to go to phoenix with an apology. it would blindside him completely that phoenix doesn't hate him. klavier carries a lot of guilt for kristoph's wrongdoing, i think, and no matter what he has to say about it i think he always carries a silent burden for struggling to unlink himself from his older brother's legacy. i think it would take a long time for klavier and phoenix to really be friends but by the time of the 3d games i think they have a mutual respect and care for each other that almost counts.

and we can see this very clearly. at the end of the pwaa trilogy phoenix feels like he has changed and grown significantly from the beginning of the trilogy, because he has endured things that have very specifically challenged him, his worldview, values and ideals, beliefs, his relationships, his approach to the law. all the major cases he goes through test him as the protagonist. he's learned and unlearned lessons, he's had his relationships tested, and by bridge to the turnabout when you get that iconic image of him carrying on mia's spirit, you BUY it, because you've seen him growing into himself.

apollo's games suffer from a much broader scope where he is not the only protagonist, and in fact is quite rarely the protagonist, and even the cases where he is the protagonist just do not often center him as much as they need to. he hasn't had the opportunity to develop in that way because the story just is not about him. so the result of that is that while i love apollo and i actually love all three games in the ajaa trilogy, he basically starts a new character arc in each game and never gets any of them resolved in a particularly satisfying way. id actually argue dd does the best job out of the three of having anything resembling a self-contained character arc for apollo, because we didn't know enough about his past at the start of the game to contradict a new backstory, and his new challenges are raised and resolved fairly well by the end of the game. ajaa leaves both the gavins and the gramarye plots dangling for future resolution. soj brings up khura'in, dhurke, and nahyuta in a very clumsy way that is difficult to reconcile with

i hit this sloth by accident fucking whatever you get a sloth now

that is difficult to reconcile with what we already know about apollo. i have a whole other thing about how the apollo&nahyuta's past thing is clearly trying to recreate the success they had with phoenix&miles. they did this with athena&simon too and it arguably worked better than apollo, but none of the later games ever actually captured the reason why phoenix and miles' complex past and journey to redemption worked so well narratively speaking, so it just doesn't land. ask me about that for a separate thesis i guess.

the point is that it's difficult to articulate how i feel about apollo staying in khura'in at the end of the game when for the entire game im struggling with his khura'inese lore to begin with, from its very introduction. the lore just is not incorporated in a particularly graceful or well-written way. it FEELS like a retcon. and my frustration with this is actually that my problem really is just with the writing, not the content. it is not impossible to conceive of a world where apollo did come from khura'in and had a past with nahyuta and dhurke, without it feeling like a retcon. i am actually very on board with that premise. but it's sort of a messy idea and it would need to be written very delicately and skillfully to integrate it into what we already know, and i just don't think it was. it could've been done, it just wasn't.

as a result, and to finally answer your question after this entire fucking wall of text about nothing: i have no objection to the IDEA of apollo moving to khura'in at the end of game 6. i think if i bought the lore, and more importantly, if i felt that apollo's story had been sufficiently wrapped up by the end of his trilogy, i would've been really happy to see him move on and start his own firm in a place where he's more needed. as it is, i'm left unsatisfied, because he still has unfinished shit back in japanifornia and i never really got to see him go through a complete character arc. so instead it just feels like when a sequel doesn't know what to do with a beloved horse that you just spent two movies bonding with so it goes "if you love something set it free!" and sets the horse free even if it doesn't really make much sense or feel that necessary, like toothless in httyd, or elsa in frozen. apollo is a horse.