[T][CE]NEW FANGAME!!! Ace Attorney: Athena Cykes - Wisdom at Law

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Msipp26
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Re: [T][CE]NEW FANGAME!!! Ace Attorney: Athena Cykes - Wisdom at Law

Post by Msipp26 »

I enjoyed the case! no worries!
:dekiller:
just a guy with a lot of ideas but who isn't very good at executing them.

THERE ARE MYSTERIES OTHER THAN LOCKED ROOMS, YOU GUYS. NOT EVERY CASE HAS TO BE A LOCKED ROOM MYSTERY.

comment "Danganronpa chapter 3" on any trial with more than one murder
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GuardianDreamer
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Re: [T][CE]NEW FANGAME!!! Ace Attorney: Athena Cykes - Wisdom at Law

Post by GuardianDreamer »

I've been teasing the idea of writing some Words about this for a while, since my review for this during the comp was intentionally vague and I couldn't do a deep dive like i wanted to. So, here we go.
Spoiler : Full case spoilers :
There's a strange fascination with "so bad it's good" media that a lot of people share, including me. In one of my friend groups, we have movie nights where due to our tastes we often seek out movies that are highly niche, ones that would be called "bad" by a lot of other people but that we keep memeing is peak kino cinema. And while there's a certain level of irony around throwing those terms around, the joy we feel is very very real, and we do end up liking those movies in a strange sort of way. Of course, that brings to mind the question: what is it like for the people who create those pieces of fiction? Some people very intentionally set out to make a "so bad it's good" work. Others do it very accidentally. And it can come across a little mean-spirited to call a work "so bad it's good" if the author earnestly put a lot of effort into creating something they believed was good, right? But then again, the joy that work inspires can still be very genuine. But it's a complicated feeling, isn't it? Unless you know the person involved, people often have a very limited perspective on what goes into creating literally anything. Even if you do know the people involved, or they make a tell-all documentary about its making, you still get a certain skewed perspective. I'm not saying all of this to go like "and here's the ultimate answer behind everything" because I think there probably isn't an "answer". Creating media and reacting to it is something that people will always do in their own unique, beautiful, ugly, messy, and strange ways. Trying to "solve" that is kind of missing the soul of it, I think.

While not as talked about much now, playing through Wisdom At Law made me think about "so bad it's good" classic fanfics, such as My Immortal. I bring up My Immortal specifically not due to any similarities to Wisdom At Law, but because there's often an argument people have about that fanfic where it's argued whether it was intentionally written as a brilliant troll fic, or if it was 100% genuine. I think perspective has gradually shifted towards believing it was an intentional troll fic in hindsight, but that might be biased by the groups I hang out with, and there's no doubt that a ton of people take it as a serious attempt at writing (just look at all the dramatic readings of it, or the drinking games people have come up for it). However, My Immortal did inspire a lot of imitators and people trying to write fics in its style, and those are definitely intentional "so bad it's good", to varying degrees of success. But at least you have very clear answers from the authors in those cases rather than it being something that can be argued about.

I think there's a strong difference between reactions to these types of words made with affection, and those that kind of just dunk on it and feel very mean-spirited. There's a very fine line, of course. What I might perceive as good-natured fun ribbing could come across to someone else as extremely mean-spirited, or the other way around. This kind of goes back to the "soul" of creating and reacting to media that I was talking about before. It's only natural that people with different experiences would react to things in a different way, that's kind of self-evidently obvious when you put it like that. But my point is that at least for me, I like reactions to these works that feel like they have some affection, while tending to avoid reactions that I perceive as overly mean-spirited. After all, no matter how "bad" these works are, they're often released for free and written by very young people. Or in the case of indie stuff that gets labeled as "so bad it's good", then even if it was released for-profit there's definitely the idea that it was a passion project to someone and that ridiculing someone for their passion feels inherently cynical and pointlessly mean. Meanness should have some kind of point if you have to do it at all, I think.

Huh. Am I talking about anything at this point? I should probably talk about the game, yeah?

I've sometimes mentioned that this was the most "GDcore" of the entries, and I don't just say that because I've also written meta stuff about creating things before. There's an affection here for first-time passion projects that never felt mean-spirited to me. I didn't outright ask the authors, but I felt like it was probably inspired by some near-universally shared experiences when first seeking to create fanfiction of any kind. A lot of people will seek to make a long epic, or a five-case fangame. They do this because of their affection for the original: a lot of people plan for four or five cases not because it fits with the structure they have in mind, but because they think "well the Ace Attorney games do it and I've got to match them because I love them so much". Of course that often leads to burnout. Abandoned fan projects. There are a lot of those. I've got a few myself, especially if you expand the scope to just "stories I've made literally anywhere". But while it's easy to look back on a younger GD's writing and go like "why didn't you try making a short thing first, why did you make this decision, was anything here even planned out much" I still look back on my earliest attempts at making things with fondness, even though they're long since gone from the internet. Because that passion and desire to create something "genuine" was very real, and something I still seek to maintain. It's not wrong to want to create things, and the awkward lessons learned from those early projects are often what cause creators to improve.

My point here is that I think a lot of people have their own personal "Blaze Maverik", whether that's their own original character or an existing character that they chose to write a lot about. Occasionally I see a very fun drawing prompt go around online, where artists try to recreate the first piece of art they ever made, often of their very cheesy OC. And even if the original doesn't stand the test of time or whatever, those artists clearly still have some affection for their "Blaze Maverik", with some even bringing them back and reinventing them. I've written a lot of original characters, and there's a few older ones who I've pulled from the back of my brain because I thought it'd be fun to give them another chance. And there's often this thought I sometimes have: the characters I'm writing right now, the ones who seem so fresh to me... One day they too will seem like "older OCs" to me. In just a few years, I might think that current!GD's works could stand to be improved a lot, or that I'd do them differently. I know this for a fact because it's literally already happened. And that's just a few years. What about ten years? Twenty? Creators don't live in a vacuum, they absorb things from their own personal lives, they get inspired in their own unique ways. A character I write now with so much affection might end up seeming a lot less well-made to me years down the line, but I hope to always maintain that lingering affection for my OCs. Creating is beautiful, after all.

Of course, a lot of people don't bring back their older characters in a literal sense, and that's okay too. Even if they're not literally brought back, if you use the lessons made from them when creating new characters, I think that still counts as honoring them and holding affection for them in its own right.
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GuardianDreamer
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Re: [T][CE]NEW FANGAME!!! Ace Attorney: Athena Cykes - Wisdom at Law

Post by GuardianDreamer »

This is very delayed, but I noticed that the walkthrough for this case wasn't posted up after seeing someone struggle with one of the puzzles. With permission granted, I'm copy-pasting the one the guide sent to me when I was co-hosting for the Ticking Time Bomb comp.
Spoiler : :
Choose "Her clothes"

**The First Testimony**
Cycle to co-counsel conversation
Present Autopsy Report on statement 3

Present New Evidence
Point to purple text
Point to the author

**My Next Testimony**
Press Statement 2
Choose "You took that photo yourself?"

Click the top of the screen
Present Alice Jamie
Hosted The Year of Luigi competition (and here's the awards ceremony).
Current AAO projects (to be completed eventually, probably, hopefully): A Silly Little Dream (hopefully 2024), My Dearest Direst Disgrace (hopefully 2025)
Stuff I've made on here: QotU
Make My Life Worse
Malleus Maleficarum: The Witch of San Ignacio
The Six Transgender Lesbian Goddesses of Love Are Having A Petty Argument, So They Try To Settle Things Alongside The Three Transgender Gay Gods of Flavor
Defend Him, Not Me!
The Guardian and the Dreamer
I was a guest judge and did a bit of writing for the TICKING TIME BOMB competition.
My Twitter is here
Avatar is of Marth from Fire Emblem, commissioned from @PiyoStoria on Twitter.
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CodingAnt
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Re: [T][CE]NEW FANGAME!!! Ace Attorney: Athena Cykes - Wisdom at Law

Post by CodingAnt »

Spoiler : :
Blue and Masq gaslit me into thinking this was for real, so I went into it not expecting any of the meta elements. Somehow, that remained true even once supersauce and XanDogg started talking. I just thought it was part of the comedy... :gumshoe:
Anyway, this case is equal parts funny and heartfelt. I enjoyed it.
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Re: [T][CE]NEW FANGAME!!! Ace Attorney: Athena Cykes - Wisdom at Law

Post by casewriter »

I'll admit, I actually thought this was just another first case that wouldn't get off the ground, and stopped playing after sometime. But then it got a good place at the awards ceremony, so I replayed it, and ooh boy, that was a ride. Really threw for a loop, good stuff.
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