I don’t know if this is a controversial hot take or something a lot of people feel, but I’m tired of hearing people unironically describe Ace Attorney as being “about gay lawyers”. Because it’s not. Do the lawyers act gay? Yes. But that’s not what 99% of the playtime is about.
At the end of the day, Ace Attorney is a satirical story about the corrupt justice system in Japan as represented by a kind-hearted defense attorney protecting (mostly) innocent defendants from having their lives ruined by misguided prosecutors. Its goal was to flip the cultural narrative that defense attorneys are trashy scum who make money off of sympathizing with criminals. And they did this through episodic, goofy murder mysteries.
So where does the gay come in? They wrote some accidentally romantically-charged dialogue, fans were obsessed, and the writers decided, yeah it’s pretty good, let’s do more of that. So they proceeded to toss in more gay side-banter and whatnot amongst the homicide investigations and court sessions.
Now, it’s not like Ace Attorney is the deepest, most poetic social commentary ever written, but it still has a meaningful theme inspired by a real life issue, so it’s pretty discouraging seeing people either not process it or straight up ignore it in favor of “the gay lawyers”. And that’s not even getting into all the other meaningful, non-romantic character relationships that have way more presence in the plot.
I know there will always be uncritical, shipping-brained people in every fandom, but what gets me about how bad it is here is that people who only know as much about AA as what they’ve heard really think it’s “about gay lawyers”. I was watching Drawfee recently, and genuinely all they know about the games is contextualized by Karina’s gay lawyer ship art and brief plot description of how gay the lawyers are. My friend recently told my other friend that Ace Attorney is about gay lawyers to which he was like oh yeah I heard about the unnecessary feelings scene. This is all he knows about the games.
I don’t want to make this sound like a bigger deal than it is, but damn. It truly feels like a lot of people refuse to engage with media in any way that doesn’t involve smashing male characters together like dolls. If you comb through the entirety of the Ace Attorney franchise, you’ll see that such a small fragment of everything that happens is homosexual law, yet that’s the thing that gets amplified to ridiculous proportions. All I can do for now is focus on the posts from fans that love the games themselves just as much if not more than they love the ships.
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hi ari i do have a question - how do u imagine the giratina wings would work .. like would they be solid .. trying to imagine lunadri cuddling with the wings in the way
Hello friend!!! Thank you very much for this question ^-^
(I apologise for how long my answer ended up becoming ;w;)
To answer your questions/comments succinctly:
The wings work a bit weirdly because they're to do with the original Giratina, which I'm saying was Reborn-Shiny because so is the Arceus (I think). ..Don't ask me how she got tied up with it in the first place.
They are more spectral than properly solid, but you can still feel them (putting your hand through them will make it feel numb though, and it also feels weird to Adriana, so perhaps don't do that). They look more solid when she's in a New World.
We can work around them! It basically just means Luna can't hug Adriana from behind without needing to take them into account, but.. everything else is theoretically on the table. So, I like to think that works out ^-^
Okay, now for my actual initial very long-winded response to this.
Hmm.. I will admit that I hadn’t considered this. I think it would make sense if Adriana’s wings were at least somewhat non-solid, in that, like.. most things can pass through them, but with some resistance, to the point that you can probably push something through them quite easily, but if you just sort of threw something at them then it would probably just lose too much momentum and fall. Adriana will feel it if something goes into or through her wings, though (at least after they become fully apparent, which happens after the Giratina quest in postgame. Specifically:
Only Anna is able to see Adriana's wings to begin with, similarly to the other traits she perceives others as having (like Taka's own wings or Cain's pitch-black eyes), and Adriana cannot see or sense them whatsoever. However, Anna never properly specifies what they actually look like, just insists that she has them.
After becoming void-kissed (so, after the Glass Workstation), Adri starts very vaguely being able to sense her wings occasionally, and they also start sometimes appearing in glimpses in her shadow. Other than that, no-one else can see or sense them, though Luna definitely does her best to accommodate them from here on out, regardless. It still isn't clear what type of wings they are.
(Note that it's after becoming void-kissed that Adriana starts being able to perceive others as Anna does, so this means that this occurs with the exception of herself.)
Whenever she is confronting Umbral Trainers or Anomalies, Adriana becomes more aware of the presence of her wings, but is generally too caught up with what is going on in the moment to properly dwell on it like she wants to - and most New World areas are so shadowy that she can't really tell if they're constantly there in her shadow or not.
The moment her wings finally become visible and tangible to everyone is the same moment in which Anna starts mistaking her for a doll of Lin's - after she catches the original, Reborn-Shiny, Giratina that Zina sealed beneath Byxbysion. A comparison of this false perception versus the new truth is given below:
From this point onwards (which.. admittedly isn't that much more of the story, but still), Adriana's wings are spectral in the normal world, but fully-formed and solid whenever she's in a New World space. This is going to be my explanation for why they appeared solid during those old grand finale renders I made ages ago, but fade out on her other sprites and renders.)
It’s probably quite a strange sensation, both to Adriana and to someone else if they stuck their hand through them; I quite like the idea of anything that goes into or through the wings feeling very numb, rather than necessarily hurting or anything. They feel more solid, and the sensation is more intense, as you move closer to the part of her back where they look like they emanate from. I like to think the wings are solid enough (to Adriana at least) that she tries to take them into account when moving around, but also intangible enough that nothing can really affect them, necessarily - so, like, you couldn't grab them and use them to pull her towards you or anything, and she would also be able to put her back against a wall without too much issue (it might just feel odd to her). They also don't interfere with her clothing, thankfully. Such are the conveniences of spectral energy.
So, with all that said.. I do think that Adri’s wings would need to be taken into account to at least some extent when cuddling with Luna. However, it is not as much of a big consideration as it could be, simply because the two of us are already used to considering things when we cuddle, like making sure we don’t scrunch up our skirts for example. Adriana can also curl her wings fairly freely after they become fully apparent, so that helps, and they aren't that big to begin with (smaller than the ones Anna sees Taka as having, certainly), so that also helps. For example, I like to think that she would be able to lift them both so that Luna is underneath them, if we were both on our sides ^-^
Sorry for going on such a tangent there, oops ;w; I hope that this is still alright as an answer for you, friend! Thank you so much again for sending this in, it really means a lot~
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