Empatheias App

[bewrightback]

⌈ PLAYER SECTION ⌉
Player: Gore
Contact: goreo
Age: 27
Current Characters: Steven Universe (jamminshield), Gundam Tanaka (hamnation)


⌈ CHARACTER SECTION ⌉
Character: Phoenix Wright
Age: 35
Canon: Ace Attorney
Canon Point: After Case 5 of "Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice"

Background: Wiki Entry

Personality:

"No one is as sad as a person without any friends. I know... I've been there. A long time ago. Why did I become a lawyer in the first place...? Because someone has to look out for the people who have no one on their side."

Phoenix Wright's life has undergone some upheaval over the years, but at its core he's remained the same person: a defense attorney who likes to stick up for underdog clients who are wrongly accused of murder. Throughout his career, he's tried to live up to the ideals passed down to him by his mentor: to always believe in one's client, to keep fighting for them until the bitter end and to keep smiling even during the worst of times. He's a somewhat nervous fellow, although relatively less so than he was in his rookie days. He'll often get sheepish when uncertain about the conclusions he's making or when he's anticipating a counterattack. It's easy to frighten or intimidate him general, but when times are dire he can find the strength to stand up to the most intimidating of opponents. When the people he cares about are in danger, he can be capable of remarkable things, as shown when he tried running across a burned-out bridge despite a fear of heights out of concern for Maya's life. In his most recent cases, he has even put his life on the line in the Khura'in courtroom, where he submitted to the Defense Culpability Act in which defense attorneys will be subject to the same rulings and punishments as the people they defend. Phoenix has also built up a strong confidence over his defense career, and when he's sure of his evidence, he can get quite smug about it.

Phoenix is also known for his internal monologue, which both summarizes events and presents a lot of internal snark. While he often trudges forward with an optimistic demeanor, that internal snark acknowledges that he has a cynical side too, and it is rife with sarcasm that he usually keeps to himself. He's a very long-suffering person, too, enduring a number of humiliations both in and out of the courtroom. It's usually been easy for people to walk over him, as reflected in how often his wallet went towards causes like feeding Maya Fey. He's very plain (or boring and "old" in Maya's opinion) and chaste in his tastes in general, which can make him an easy target for teasing. Phoenix is also known for having a very varying intelligence. At some points, he can fumble in his reasoning and miss out on obvious connections, which is often balanced out by the observations of the more intellectual prosecutors. One notable example would be that Mia Fey had to come back from the dead just to tell Phoenix to flip over a piece of paper to find something that helped his case on the other side. At the same time, he is sharp enough to point out contradictions in witness's testimony and is capable of making brilliant deductions that even the more intelligent opponents overlook. And sometimes he uses what wit he has for dumb puns, such as his first case ending with him dubbing Frank Sahwit "Frank Did It".

Throughout his life, Phoenix is someone who has easily been influenced by others. His drive to be a lawyer is rooted in an incident in his youth, when Miles Edgeworth defended him in a class trial. He decided to pursue law years later after he heard that Edgeworth had become a prosecutor who was was associated with cruelty and accusations of corruption. Phoenix was driven by a desire to save Edgeworth, and in doing so, in a sense he lived out Edgeworth's original dream of becoming a lawyer, and this put him in a position where he could look out for others in the same way that Edgeworth had looked out for him as a child. Phoenix was guided in this path by his mentor, Mia Fey, who helped to shape him on the basics of being a decent layer and passed down to him the sayings recalled in the first sentence. Afterwards, he's always been influenced or driven by the people around him, and was only after he regained his badge that he started stepping up into a position of authority over others, while still depending a lot on his emotional connections.

Once Mia died, he gained an assistant in the form of her sister, Maya Fey, and she helped to inspire him in taking on cases, and Ema Skye briefly helped to fill that role when Maya was away. Through his job as a lawyer, Phoenix built up a number of reliable friendships. Although they bantered a lot, Maya became one of the people Phoenix cared about the most, and he always wound up being pushed to his limits whenever she was endangered. Edgeworth became a valuable ally as well after Phoenix helped to save him from Von Karma's darkness, and in turn Edgeworth has helped Phoenix to understand the complexities associated with the truth, including the fact that the truth is not always pretty or convenient. This was shown in the one trial which Phoenix lost, where he reluctantly had to face the fact that for once, he was defending a client who was truly guilty.

He is a very emotionally driven person, as reflected in how easily he was driven by his childhood memories. It was also reflected in his embarrassing college phase of dating 'Dahlia Hawthorne', in which he acted pretty much as fluffy as one could possibly be in a relationship and showed blind devotion towards her. Her betrayal did leave a mark on him, as he came to consider poisoning and betrayal specifically as the two most cowardly and inexcusable tactics that one could use. Embers of that torch still lingered years later and were ultimately redirected towards Iris, who turned out to truly be the one he had cared for. Big shocks in general can take their toll on Phoenix, and on occasions he's fainted or almost fainted in reaction to shocking developments, especially when it affects those he cares about. There are times when he still puts his emotions to the side to focus on a case. At one point in the games, he remarks that he can only be so calm and collected because "Pearls is doing the crying for both of us".

As a lawyer, whenever the evidence stacks up against him, he relies on his belief in his clients more than anything to try to forge his way towards victory. This has resulted in his infamous habit of 'bluffing', a very hit-or-miss tactic where he presents confidence in unlikely possibilities in order to try to find a new lead or just to stall for time. Connected to this is his habit of 'turning the tables'. This usually happens when Phoenix is at the end of his rope and seemingly has nowhere else to go. At times like this, he usually thinks of Mia's advice to return to the basics and then tries to rethink the situation from another angle. This thought process ends up giving him a new angle to pursue in his arguments - one which usually seems impossible and thus could be mistaken for a bluff - which often gives him the edge he needs to win cases. Phoenix's belief in people leads him to try to pursue the truth as far as he can, and he is unwilling to accept compromises especially when it means someone will be guilty for something that he knows that they can't be guilty of. In some cases, his emotionalism has resulted in negative behavior, however. He gained quite the attitude after Edgeworth was believed to have committed suicide, wherein he was reluctant to take on cases, was angry at Edgeworth for his decision and had assumed a jaded opinion on all prosecutors being uncaring. It was ultimately Edgeworth's return and Phoenix's defeat in the Engarde trial that slapped sense back into him.

"To be honest, I was pretty lost those first few days. Thinking back on it, it was a pretty dark time in my life. But Trucy... happy, smiling Trucy... she was my light."

During his years of disbarment, Phoenix's behavior underwent some changes. He assumed a much more cool-headed demeanor through which he showed almost no signs of his former, more easily nervous self; he went from easily flustered to being essentially shameless about all of his actions. He also became a lot more of a troll and said aloud the things he normally kept to his monologue. He generally acted like a jerk more often and was very jaded about the law system. He even actually forged evidence once, although he did so only to get a conviction for the person who had framed him years ago. His changes also connected with becoming a 'father' in adopting Trucy Wright. Although he was initially clueless about taking care of a daughter, he has ended up acting as a very supportive father. He and Trucy joke around with a lot of light-hearted banter, and her wellbeing has become one of his priorities. He often acts like a concerned father to her, although sometimes he seems to play up his behavior for laughs. He actually trusted in Trucy's independence from a very young age, and the two usually regard each other as equals, with Trucy's strong drive for business being the saving grace of Wright's office over the course of the disbarment years. He even picked up gambling and showed himself to not be above using his daughter or what she taught him about tells to cheat at winning his games, although to be fair he did not play for money and this may have been a gambit to lure Trucy's biological father out of hiding.

He also gained a knack of being very secretive when he felt that he needed to be, which he originally applied to the details of his disbarment case and later applied towards the truths he learned about the Gramarye Troupe. Many times, he would simply ignore or handwave his way around questions with an overly cheery and often airheaded-seeming demeanor. Despite these changes, at times when the player is control of this 'hobo' Phoenix, his internal monologue shows signs of him still being the same Nick underneath. Additionally, it is known that he underwent several trips to Europe in his hobo years at Edgeworth's request and learned a lot about the legal systems there. This helped him to gain a more worldly view on the courts and also meant that he was "never that far from the courtroom". When Phoenix regained his badge, he started acting more like his "original" self, but it was not a complete reversion. His dynamic with Trucy is still largely the same, he still retained a lot of the light-hearted, cool-headed air that he had gained in his 'hobo' years, and he also kept some level of being unorthodox in his methods due to failures in the court system. The latter was most notably shown in the Themis Academy case, where Phoenix insists on examining the crime scene before the police arrive or before informing the academy, because he was afraid of the crime scene being tampered with.

Phoenix's return to the courts has come with a proactive stance towards reforming the courts and combating the so-called 'dark age of the law'. In fact, one of the reasons why Phoenix finally re-applied for his attorney's badge was because of Edgeworth's request that he take on another case that was connected with the foundation of this 'dark age of the law'. He seems to feel at home being a lawyer again, with his experience practically giving him a 'seen it all' attitude when it comes to unusual witnesses and eccentric prosecutors. His return to the court has also come with him adjusting to the role as a mentor, as he has two fledgling lawyers as subordinates now. He's come full circle to being a mentor just as Mia was towards him, and so he's sometimes struggled with wondering if he really has been the best mentor that he could be, especially considering how troubled Apollo and Athena were in the last cases of Dual Destinies, and how he temporarily lost both of them. Ultimately, Phoenix was left in a more content and confident place for himself. The names of both Blackquill and Athena were cleared, his employees returned to him with their troubles behind them, and a vital blow had been struck to the dark age of the law. And in the following crisis, he reached the point where Apollo could take the lead, and where Phoenix could truly admit that he had grown into a capable and respectable lawyer. It's been a long and harrowing road for Phoenix, from disbarment up to fighting off the dark age of the law and then even further towards helping Apollo to challenge the legal system at the Kingdom of Khura'in, but things turned out Wright in the end.

"I'm a lucky guy... My office has the best, most capable lawyers around!"

Abilities: Just an ordinary human. (Aside from being oddly fortunate enough to survive seemingly deadly situations with relatively minor injuries/afflictions). However, he will bring with him a Magatama, which is spiritually charged and can detect when someone is lying.

Alignment: Peromei. Through his various trials and tribulations, Phoenix has repeatedly experienced both the despair and the hope that comes with defending clients against insurmountable odds, and he has teetered between both feelings when trials ave been at their bleakest.

Other: I'm hoping that he can arrive with several special items on his person: the Magatama, which, as said above, can act as a spiritual lie detector (and will only be used with permission); and his hobo hat, which has a hidden camera in one of its buttons.


⌈ SAMPLE SECTION ⌉
Sample: Test Drive (I was not as on top of emotions in threads as I should have been, but to save you the trouble of looking through every thread, here is one segment with more emotional focus!)


Questions: None!