Character Information for Siren's Pull
Updated July 15th, 2011.
Player Information
Name: Tash
Age: 18
AIM SN: go fool yourself
email: lythdan[at]gmail.com
Have you played in an LJ based game before? Yes!
Bonus: How did you hear about Siren's Pull? app_this_plz
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Ace Attorney
Canon Format: Video game
Character's Name: Franziska von Karma
Character's Age: 21
Conditional: If your character is 13 years of age or under, please clarify how they will be played. n/a
What form will your character's NV take? A cell phone! This cell phone, specifically.
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities: No superhuman ones to speak of.
Conditional: If your character has no superhuman canon abilities, what dormant ability will you give them? Franziska’s dormant ability will be the power to keep track of people’s locations, as her controlling personality has meant that she has used technology to do so in the past. However, her ability will only develop through continued interaction with a person, meaning that she will need to know a person well to be able to keep tabs on them, at first, at the very least. She will always need to have met someone in person to have the ability to track them. She will also be able to choose not to keep track of someone even when she becomes aware that she possesses the ability to: the development of her moral code means that she would be unlikely to use this power unless she deems it truly necessary. She will also only be able to truly keep track of one person at a time.
Her power will manifest itself as a quiet beeping that only she can hear; which gets louder and louder as she gets closer to the target she is focussing on. The noise itself is quite irritating, which is another reason why she may not choose to use the ability unless it is needed. Naturally, such a power might interfere with the plans of other characters/players in the city, so if/when her power manifests itself, I’ll put up some sort of permissions post.
No longer will she get headaches and loud noises that correlate to the physical proximity of other people, but instead, she will be able to perceive imperfections! Well, not that she was ever incapable of perceiving them, but now she'll find them even easier to spot and even more difficult to ignore because they will glow fluorescent yellow until they are corrected, or are no longer perceived as imperfect.
As for the definition of imperfect, and what triggers the glow, it all very much depends on Franziska's perception of/opinion on her surroundings. For exaxmple! On say, a bad hair day she may glow when she looks in the mirror because her hair style is something that needs correcting, but if she's feeling generally confident about her appearance it would be unaffected.
Also, to expand on imperfections being easier to find: for example, when correcting a word document, no matter how good you are if you're doing it immediately after the fact there's still some typos/missing words that tend to get skimmed over. But for Franziska and her new power, the errors will glow out at her, making them impossible to miss!
So, basically: imperfections glow! To stop the glow, she has to either completely convince herself that they're perfect the way they are, or correct the imperfection itself.
Weapons: Her whip, which she is usually never seen without. While not being a particularly useful tool in actual combat (one cannot impede the path of bullets with the lash of a whip), she likes to carry it around for intimidation purposes/berating fools, etc.
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History:
Franziska was born in Germany in the year 1999 and lived there for the majority of her childhood. Her primary role model in life was her father, Manfred von Karma, a perfectionist who was one of America’s greatest prosecuting attorneys who managed to maintain a forty-year long case-winning streak. Nothing is known about her mother, apart from the fact that she was not a major part of Franziska’s life.
Manfred raised Franziska to follow in his footsteps, resulting in her starting her prosecuting career at the bright young age of thirteen. This was possible due to her dedication to living up to the expectations that being her father’s daughter created, and also her natural intelligence. In fact, when Franziska introduces herself to people for the first time, she often calls herself ‘Franziska von Karma, the Prodigy’. It also helps that she carries a whip on her at all times to intimidate people and control those who she considers useless fools.
She has two siblings; an older sister that not much is known about, apart from the fact that she is married and has a nine-year-old daughter, and also her ‘little brother’, Miles Edgeworth, who is actually seven years older than her and was brought to Germany from America and into the family when Franziska was two and a half after Miles’s father was murdered. Franziska’s father raised Miles to become a prosecutor as well and thus they spent their childhoods chasing towards the same goal. Both Franziska and Miles eventually started their careers in the same year; Miles, however, started before Franziska, which would always be a sore point for her due to their (well, more like Franziska’s) extreme competitiveness. In fact, when Miles was chosen as a replacement for a trial whose prosecutor has been removed, Franziska turned up unexpectedly at the courthouse when she heard the news that her father had chosen Miles instead of her as the replacement, insisting that she would do a far better job than he would. Unfortunately, due to circumstances that lead to the deaths of the previous prosecutor and the defendant, Miles’ first trial does not come to fruition, and is instead declared a mistrial. Franziska and Miles ask to examine the crime scene, which Franziska quickly turns into a competition to see who can discover the truth behind the murders first. This shows that despite her young age, she was more than comfortable with dealing with the requirements of her upcoming profession.
Miles still started his career before Franziska, however, he practiced law in America while Franziska would remain behind in Germany. They started to drift apart then, both too busy with their respective careers to keep in touch beyond what was necessary, and indeed, they would not reconcile properly again until early 2018, nearly six years later when Franziska was 18, nearly 19.
After the start of her career and her brother’s relocation to America, the next major event to happen in Franziska’s life was when Miles was arrested for murder when she was 17. In Franziska’s eyes, Miles hadn’t been doing too well lately as he’d lost his first case ever earlier that year to a rookie defense attorney by the name of Phoenix Wright, and the both of them had been raised to believe that nothing less than perfection was ever satisfactory. However, in this case, Miles was the defendant. The problem was that the prosecutor for this case was Franziska’s father, Manfred von Karma, who, like a perfect von Karma should, had never lost a case and certainly would not lose on purpose to save his adoptive son; especially not to the rookie defense attorney who Miles had suffered his first loss to months earlier.
…Of course, it turned out that Manfred had actually orchestrated the entire murder and attempted to frame Miles for the entire thing. After this revelation was revealed, however, the memories of the current case brought up a case from fifteen years ago-the case where Miles’s father had been murdered in an elevator. It was eventually revealed that the murderer was Manfred, who had shot Miles’s father from outside the elevator through one of its glass windows.
Manfred von Karma was convicted, and Franziska lost her father and was betrayed by her ultimate role model.
A month later, Miles was involved with another case, where he learned that he had been given false evidence by detectives earlier in his career. This revelation, combined with the stresses caused by the case where Franziska’s father was convicted, caused Miles to quietly leave the country after resigning from his job, leaving behind a note: ‘Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death.’ Franziska, however did not think her brother is dead.
It was ultimately this note Miles wrote that caused Franziska to come rushing to America, although her father’s conviction undoubtedly played a part of her motivations at that point in time. When she faced off against Phoenix Wright, the man who ruined her father’s and brother’s perfect win records, for the first time, she cited her reason for coming to America as ‘revenge’. Naturally, everyone assumed she wanted to avenge her father, but her real reason for coming to America was to find her brother and bring him back to the path of perfection by showing him how prosecution should be done-perfectly. This was the real reason she wanted to defeat Phoenix: to prove she was better than her brother, and to a lesser degree, her father, by doing what they couldn’t do: beat Phoenix Wright. …Too bad she lost her first case against him, huh?
Her own perfect win record now in tatters, she fixated on defeating Phoenix the next time she faced him, and in her mind, she declared Phoenix’s first win against her as a farce. The second attempt was not any more successful, and when Miles, who unbeknownst to Franziska, had been in Europe the entire time, heard how his sister is faring, he came back to America. He had been on a journey of self discovery, and had learnt that winning wasn’t everything, and wanted to help Franziska realise this. Franziska, of course, still wanted to show her brother who was really better, and the first time they ran into each other, she hurled abuse at him about how he had brought shame to the Von Karma name. The next morning, however, when Franziska was prepared to do battle against Phoenix Wright for the third time, she was shot in the shoulder by a then unknown gunman, and Miles, who was luckily nearby, dragged her unwillingly to hospital as Franziska would have otherwise determinedly prosecute her case with blood dripping down her arm-that was just how much she wanted to prove her worth.
Due to her injury, however, Miles took over Franziska’s case - they ended up needing her help the next day and she provided it, running it at the last moment with vital evidence. Miles won his first case against Phoenix Wright and Franziska was unable to deal with the fact that her brother won and she was unable to do what she set out to: prove herself better than him. She was also unable to accept that Miles has changed his philosophy on prosecution, and by extension, life and didn’t need her help anymore. She stormed away from the courthouse, intent on running back home to Germany, but due to the fact she accidentally had a tracking device left on her and Miles had the receiver, he managed to confront her at the airport and eventually, a teary Franziska admitted that she had always felt that she had been walking in Miles’s shadow but that “the battle begins here”- she will not give up! She boarded her plane back to Germany, intent on trying to figure out her own life.
Almost a year later, she returned to America at her brother’s request to help prosecute a case. Franziska assumed that this case will be against Phoenix Wright - but instead, her brother was masquerading as a defense attorney. She didn’t dob him in; although she was disappointed not to be facing Phoenix, Miles was the one she really wants to prove her worth to. The case was taken over by another prosecutor, Godot, against Franziska’s will the next day, but she continued to help in any capacity that she can until the final verdict was decided. After the events of that case are cleared up and the truth is sought and found, Franziska returned to Germany where she quickly picked up a new case, targeting an international smuggling ring, which, naturally, required quite a bit of international travel and co-operation. She worked together with several Interpol agents, such as Agent Hicks and Agent Lang, over the course of the next month to try and gather information about the operation. When Agent Hicks flew to meet Franziska in person so they could collaborate further he was murdered by a member of the smuggling ring and those arrangements did not go to plan. Miles Edgeworth, who happened to a be a passenger on the flight, was suspected of the murder, but under Franziska’s (and okay, Miles helped too) investigation, the true murderer was revealed to be a member of the smuggling ring Franziska was chasing down, stationed as a flight attendant on the airlines. They had another conversation at the airport where Franziska shared her growing realisation that she wants to be known for her own merit, rather than building her reputation on “the name and fame her invincible father built”, and reiterated the fact that she refused to lose to Miles any longer. Slowly and steadily, Franziska had been trying to forge her own path in life and figure out what she wanted to achieve and who she was fighting for. She continued working on the smuggling case, and in fact, a major lead came two days later, and Franziska, Miles and Agent Lang worked together to hunt down the ringleader and his assistant; Franziska received the opportunity to prosecute the ringleader once he was discovered and he was brought to justice; this emphasis on finding the truth, rather than being perfect, is one Franziska is just beginning to realise as important for its own sake, rather than as competition.
Point in Canon: Post-Ace Attorney Investigations, pretty much immediately after prosecuting the case against the ringleader of the smuggling ring.
Character Personality:
Franziska was raised by her father to be a perfectionist and that anything that was less than perfect was a sign of failure and weakness. Because of this, she is extremely tenacious and head-strong, especially in courtroom situations, where she is in her element. This, however, has an unintended drawback: when she is cornered, she will continually persist with her opinion because changing her mind would be perceived as backing down. Due to her stubbornness, she tends to prolong conflict where a much calmer person would have long given up.
She is also extremely intelligent, which is evidenced by the fact she became a prosecuting attorney at the age of thirteen and managed to remain undefeated for five years. Like a lot of child geniuses, however, she can come across as extremely pretentious and has difficulty relating to other people. Her social skills are mainly limited to the lines of her work - while she does have a habit of employing violence upon subordinates, her colleagues and even the judge in charge of the courtroom, it is (she considers) merely a method of hastening proceedings. When it comes to people she has a mutual respect for, such as her workmates for the cases she undertakes with Interpol, she is perfectly capable of holding a civil and functional conversation. She also feels the need to be constantly in control of her surroundings, and usually enlists the help of her whip to maintain this. Loss of this perceived sense of control would cause her immense frustration, as she is very used to ensuring that events always occur in the manner she means them too, and that everything she does is planned out perfectly.
Franziska also likes to present herself as an intimidating, formidable person-that despite the fact she is young, on the short side (although she wears ten centimetre heels to combat this) and female, she can take care of herself, thank you very much. While this is usually accomplished through the use of her whip, which she carries with her almost every where, it is also obvious in the way she dresses. As well as the aforementioned shoes, she also wears a short skirt (supposedly to make her look taller) and a blouse with extremely puffy shoulders - presumably to hide how petite she really is.
She is used to lashing out with her whip or harsh words before she can get hurt, as she is actually quite easily flustered by people who manage to break her defensive barrier. Once this is done, however, she is extremely short-tempered and easy to ire, which can often result in violence, and overuse of the word ‘fool’. Case in point: ‘I grow tired of the foolish foolery of the foolish fools of this foolish country...’ She is also rather fond of alliterative insults in general. Another verbal quirk of hers is that she addresses almost everyone by their full names, although she considers it ‘impertinent’ when other people do so.
Despite it being in her nature to involve herself in conflict, she does know when to pick her fights. Because of her superiority complex, and the fact that everyone inferior to her is indeed a fool, she is often unable to deal with people who are willing to fight back without showing any sign of weakness. In these situations, she is known to take her anger out on people who she thinks she can control rather than directly at the source.
Underneath all her bravado, however, there is an insecure girl who is not sure how to live up to everyone’s expectations-or even if she wants to do so at all. It is because of this that she resorts to her intimidation tactics-she is so determined to prove her own self-worth that she feels she needs to make herself appear more threatening to be a more formidable opponent. Naturally, this insecure side is not one she broadcasts to the world, as even she is largely unaware of it. In fact, she has a strong tendency towards denial of unsavoury circumstances, whether it be pretending she has no idea what Miles is talking about when he tells her that her (previously incarcerated, and now dead) father is not invincible, or outright denying the fact that she has ever lost to Phoenix Wright, openly claiming that her win record is perfect.
Most people who come across her consider her openly hostile and try to avoid being injured by her. A lot of her personality traits stem from her childhood where she was still following in her father’s (and Miles Edgeworth’s) footsteps and thus, she doesn’t quite know how to be her own person, but it’s something she’s currently trying to figure out.
Character Plans:
Upon first being thrust into a strange new world, Franziska’s going to want to find information; she’s very obviously unused to not being in complete control of her surroundings. Once that basic discovery is over, she’ll most likely want to become involved in the search for some way to prevent the Pull or at least return everyone home…while at the same time maintaining her own stringent moral code, which she’s only really started to develop on her own terms…at the very least, it’ll prove to be interesting.
Appearance/PB:
She was probably a frill-necked lizard in another life or something, idk.
Writing Samples
First Person Sample
[A woman’s face appears on the screen, her eyes narrowed and her mouth set in a small frown.] Hmph. It seems like this city has, at the very least, a sophisticated communications system in place. It would then be foolish of me not to take advantage of it in my search for information. I have been here for a day and a night already, and compel anyone with detailed knowledge about, but not limited to: the economy and opportunities for employment, the current socio-political climate and the general layout and locations of facilities on the island.
Do not waste my time with irrelevant comments and remarks; I have no patience for such fooleries.
Third Person Sample
Franziska had not visited the ocean in several long years as her busy work schedule back home had not allowed time for such trips. However, now that was she on this strange island, she was surrounded by nothing but water.
She hated it. She hated being trapped in such a foreign environment, so separated from everything she had ever known, in a society that seemed crude and lawless compared to the one whose rules and ideals she had worked so hard to uphold. At least she still had her whip, she mused, fingers tightening around the handle almost automatically, a comforting gesture that momentarily eased her current trepidations. Just because she was here, standing on the edge of nowhere with the salty scent of the sea in her nostrils didn’t mean she had become a different person; life had just taken a rather unexpected turn, one which Franziska would do her utmost to uncover the cause of - after all, any obstacle could be overcome: wasn’t that what it truly meant to be a Von Karma? To be perfect in every way? Maybe she couldn’t experience that unless she had been tested in a variety of circumstances.
It was as she looked out over the horizon, over unfamiliar waters, that she realised that this would be the ultimate test; away from the legal community that had given her family name such prominence, she would be able to put her actual skills to the test instead of resting on her father’s laurels. Of course, it was a test that she would not fail, as Franziska von Karma never failed.
She turned her head away from the ocean then, brushing loose strands of hair behind here ears, to glance down to look at her phone. It was foolish of her to have come out here, really. There was no time to waste on such idle reminiscences; there was much to study and explore, and she would not allow herself to fall behind on current happenings: to do so would be to render herself obsolete, useless, and she could never allow that to happen. She would make the best of this undesirable circumstance, and forget about this silly seaside musing - after all, what else could she do for anything but do her best to be perfect?
Knowing what she had to do didn’t make her hate the island or its society any less, but she would simply have to deal with that. A scowl formed on her face as her fingers clenched even tighter around the handle of her whip, knuckles turning almost white underneath her gloves. There would be no mercy for anyone who got in the way of her goals.
Player Information
Name: Tash
Age: 18
AIM SN: go fool yourself
email: lythdan[at]gmail.com
Have you played in an LJ based game before? Yes!
Bonus: How did you hear about Siren's Pull? app_this_plz
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Ace Attorney
Canon Format: Video game
Character's Name: Franziska von Karma
Character's Age: 21
Conditional: If your character is 13 years of age or under, please clarify how they will be played. n/a
What form will your character's NV take? A cell phone! This cell phone, specifically.
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities: No superhuman ones to speak of.
Conditional: If your character has no superhuman canon abilities, what dormant ability will you give them? Franziska’s dormant ability will be the power to keep track of people’s locations, as her controlling personality has meant that she has used technology to do so in the past. However, her ability will only develop through continued interaction with a person, meaning that she will need to know a person well to be able to keep tabs on them, at first, at the very least. She will always need to have met someone in person to have the ability to track them. She will also be able to choose not to keep track of someone even when she becomes aware that she possesses the ability to: the development of her moral code means that she would be unlikely to use this power unless she deems it truly necessary. She will also only be able to truly keep track of one person at a time.
Her power will manifest itself as a quiet beeping that only she can hear; which gets louder and louder as she gets closer to the target she is focussing on. The noise itself is quite irritating, which is another reason why she may not choose to use the ability unless it is needed. Naturally, such a power might interfere with the plans of other characters/players in the city, so if/when her power manifests itself, I’ll put up some sort of permissions post.
No longer will she get headaches and loud noises that correlate to the physical proximity of other people, but instead, she will be able to perceive imperfections! Well, not that she was ever incapable of perceiving them, but now she'll find them even easier to spot and even more difficult to ignore because they will glow fluorescent yellow until they are corrected, or are no longer perceived as imperfect.
As for the definition of imperfect, and what triggers the glow, it all very much depends on Franziska's perception of/opinion on her surroundings. For exaxmple! On say, a bad hair day she may glow when she looks in the mirror because her hair style is something that needs correcting, but if she's feeling generally confident about her appearance it would be unaffected.
Also, to expand on imperfections being easier to find: for example, when correcting a word document, no matter how good you are if you're doing it immediately after the fact there's still some typos/missing words that tend to get skimmed over. But for Franziska and her new power, the errors will glow out at her, making them impossible to miss!
So, basically: imperfections glow! To stop the glow, she has to either completely convince herself that they're perfect the way they are, or correct the imperfection itself.
Weapons: Her whip, which she is usually never seen without. While not being a particularly useful tool in actual combat (one cannot impede the path of bullets with the lash of a whip), she likes to carry it around for intimidation purposes/berating fools, etc.
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History:
Franziska was born in Germany in the year 1999 and lived there for the majority of her childhood. Her primary role model in life was her father, Manfred von Karma, a perfectionist who was one of America’s greatest prosecuting attorneys who managed to maintain a forty-year long case-winning streak. Nothing is known about her mother, apart from the fact that she was not a major part of Franziska’s life.
Manfred raised Franziska to follow in his footsteps, resulting in her starting her prosecuting career at the bright young age of thirteen. This was possible due to her dedication to living up to the expectations that being her father’s daughter created, and also her natural intelligence. In fact, when Franziska introduces herself to people for the first time, she often calls herself ‘Franziska von Karma, the Prodigy’. It also helps that she carries a whip on her at all times to intimidate people and control those who she considers useless fools.
She has two siblings; an older sister that not much is known about, apart from the fact that she is married and has a nine-year-old daughter, and also her ‘little brother’, Miles Edgeworth, who is actually seven years older than her and was brought to Germany from America and into the family when Franziska was two and a half after Miles’s father was murdered. Franziska’s father raised Miles to become a prosecutor as well and thus they spent their childhoods chasing towards the same goal. Both Franziska and Miles eventually started their careers in the same year; Miles, however, started before Franziska, which would always be a sore point for her due to their (well, more like Franziska’s) extreme competitiveness. In fact, when Miles was chosen as a replacement for a trial whose prosecutor has been removed, Franziska turned up unexpectedly at the courthouse when she heard the news that her father had chosen Miles instead of her as the replacement, insisting that she would do a far better job than he would. Unfortunately, due to circumstances that lead to the deaths of the previous prosecutor and the defendant, Miles’ first trial does not come to fruition, and is instead declared a mistrial. Franziska and Miles ask to examine the crime scene, which Franziska quickly turns into a competition to see who can discover the truth behind the murders first. This shows that despite her young age, she was more than comfortable with dealing with the requirements of her upcoming profession.
Miles still started his career before Franziska, however, he practiced law in America while Franziska would remain behind in Germany. They started to drift apart then, both too busy with their respective careers to keep in touch beyond what was necessary, and indeed, they would not reconcile properly again until early 2018, nearly six years later when Franziska was 18, nearly 19.
After the start of her career and her brother’s relocation to America, the next major event to happen in Franziska’s life was when Miles was arrested for murder when she was 17. In Franziska’s eyes, Miles hadn’t been doing too well lately as he’d lost his first case ever earlier that year to a rookie defense attorney by the name of Phoenix Wright, and the both of them had been raised to believe that nothing less than perfection was ever satisfactory. However, in this case, Miles was the defendant. The problem was that the prosecutor for this case was Franziska’s father, Manfred von Karma, who, like a perfect von Karma should, had never lost a case and certainly would not lose on purpose to save his adoptive son; especially not to the rookie defense attorney who Miles had suffered his first loss to months earlier.
…Of course, it turned out that Manfred had actually orchestrated the entire murder and attempted to frame Miles for the entire thing. After this revelation was revealed, however, the memories of the current case brought up a case from fifteen years ago-the case where Miles’s father had been murdered in an elevator. It was eventually revealed that the murderer was Manfred, who had shot Miles’s father from outside the elevator through one of its glass windows.
Manfred von Karma was convicted, and Franziska lost her father and was betrayed by her ultimate role model.
A month later, Miles was involved with another case, where he learned that he had been given false evidence by detectives earlier in his career. This revelation, combined with the stresses caused by the case where Franziska’s father was convicted, caused Miles to quietly leave the country after resigning from his job, leaving behind a note: ‘Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death.’ Franziska, however did not think her brother is dead.
It was ultimately this note Miles wrote that caused Franziska to come rushing to America, although her father’s conviction undoubtedly played a part of her motivations at that point in time. When she faced off against Phoenix Wright, the man who ruined her father’s and brother’s perfect win records, for the first time, she cited her reason for coming to America as ‘revenge’. Naturally, everyone assumed she wanted to avenge her father, but her real reason for coming to America was to find her brother and bring him back to the path of perfection by showing him how prosecution should be done-perfectly. This was the real reason she wanted to defeat Phoenix: to prove she was better than her brother, and to a lesser degree, her father, by doing what they couldn’t do: beat Phoenix Wright. …Too bad she lost her first case against him, huh?
Her own perfect win record now in tatters, she fixated on defeating Phoenix the next time she faced him, and in her mind, she declared Phoenix’s first win against her as a farce. The second attempt was not any more successful, and when Miles, who unbeknownst to Franziska, had been in Europe the entire time, heard how his sister is faring, he came back to America. He had been on a journey of self discovery, and had learnt that winning wasn’t everything, and wanted to help Franziska realise this. Franziska, of course, still wanted to show her brother who was really better, and the first time they ran into each other, she hurled abuse at him about how he had brought shame to the Von Karma name. The next morning, however, when Franziska was prepared to do battle against Phoenix Wright for the third time, she was shot in the shoulder by a then unknown gunman, and Miles, who was luckily nearby, dragged her unwillingly to hospital as Franziska would have otherwise determinedly prosecute her case with blood dripping down her arm-that was just how much she wanted to prove her worth.
Due to her injury, however, Miles took over Franziska’s case - they ended up needing her help the next day and she provided it, running it at the last moment with vital evidence. Miles won his first case against Phoenix Wright and Franziska was unable to deal with the fact that her brother won and she was unable to do what she set out to: prove herself better than him. She was also unable to accept that Miles has changed his philosophy on prosecution, and by extension, life and didn’t need her help anymore. She stormed away from the courthouse, intent on running back home to Germany, but due to the fact she accidentally had a tracking device left on her and Miles had the receiver, he managed to confront her at the airport and eventually, a teary Franziska admitted that she had always felt that she had been walking in Miles’s shadow but that “the battle begins here”- she will not give up! She boarded her plane back to Germany, intent on trying to figure out her own life.
Almost a year later, she returned to America at her brother’s request to help prosecute a case. Franziska assumed that this case will be against Phoenix Wright - but instead, her brother was masquerading as a defense attorney. She didn’t dob him in; although she was disappointed not to be facing Phoenix, Miles was the one she really wants to prove her worth to. The case was taken over by another prosecutor, Godot, against Franziska’s will the next day, but she continued to help in any capacity that she can until the final verdict was decided. After the events of that case are cleared up and the truth is sought and found, Franziska returned to Germany where she quickly picked up a new case, targeting an international smuggling ring, which, naturally, required quite a bit of international travel and co-operation. She worked together with several Interpol agents, such as Agent Hicks and Agent Lang, over the course of the next month to try and gather information about the operation. When Agent Hicks flew to meet Franziska in person so they could collaborate further he was murdered by a member of the smuggling ring and those arrangements did not go to plan. Miles Edgeworth, who happened to a be a passenger on the flight, was suspected of the murder, but under Franziska’s (and okay, Miles helped too) investigation, the true murderer was revealed to be a member of the smuggling ring Franziska was chasing down, stationed as a flight attendant on the airlines. They had another conversation at the airport where Franziska shared her growing realisation that she wants to be known for her own merit, rather than building her reputation on “the name and fame her invincible father built”, and reiterated the fact that she refused to lose to Miles any longer. Slowly and steadily, Franziska had been trying to forge her own path in life and figure out what she wanted to achieve and who she was fighting for. She continued working on the smuggling case, and in fact, a major lead came two days later, and Franziska, Miles and Agent Lang worked together to hunt down the ringleader and his assistant; Franziska received the opportunity to prosecute the ringleader once he was discovered and he was brought to justice; this emphasis on finding the truth, rather than being perfect, is one Franziska is just beginning to realise as important for its own sake, rather than as competition.
Point in Canon: Post-Ace Attorney Investigations, pretty much immediately after prosecuting the case against the ringleader of the smuggling ring.
Character Personality:
Franziska was raised by her father to be a perfectionist and that anything that was less than perfect was a sign of failure and weakness. Because of this, she is extremely tenacious and head-strong, especially in courtroom situations, where she is in her element. This, however, has an unintended drawback: when she is cornered, she will continually persist with her opinion because changing her mind would be perceived as backing down. Due to her stubbornness, she tends to prolong conflict where a much calmer person would have long given up.
She is also extremely intelligent, which is evidenced by the fact she became a prosecuting attorney at the age of thirteen and managed to remain undefeated for five years. Like a lot of child geniuses, however, she can come across as extremely pretentious and has difficulty relating to other people. Her social skills are mainly limited to the lines of her work - while she does have a habit of employing violence upon subordinates, her colleagues and even the judge in charge of the courtroom, it is (she considers) merely a method of hastening proceedings. When it comes to people she has a mutual respect for, such as her workmates for the cases she undertakes with Interpol, she is perfectly capable of holding a civil and functional conversation. She also feels the need to be constantly in control of her surroundings, and usually enlists the help of her whip to maintain this. Loss of this perceived sense of control would cause her immense frustration, as she is very used to ensuring that events always occur in the manner she means them too, and that everything she does is planned out perfectly.
Franziska also likes to present herself as an intimidating, formidable person-that despite the fact she is young, on the short side (although she wears ten centimetre heels to combat this) and female, she can take care of herself, thank you very much. While this is usually accomplished through the use of her whip, which she carries with her almost every where, it is also obvious in the way she dresses. As well as the aforementioned shoes, she also wears a short skirt (supposedly to make her look taller) and a blouse with extremely puffy shoulders - presumably to hide how petite she really is.
She is used to lashing out with her whip or harsh words before she can get hurt, as she is actually quite easily flustered by people who manage to break her defensive barrier. Once this is done, however, she is extremely short-tempered and easy to ire, which can often result in violence, and overuse of the word ‘fool’. Case in point: ‘I grow tired of the foolish foolery of the foolish fools of this foolish country...’ She is also rather fond of alliterative insults in general. Another verbal quirk of hers is that she addresses almost everyone by their full names, although she considers it ‘impertinent’ when other people do so.
Despite it being in her nature to involve herself in conflict, she does know when to pick her fights. Because of her superiority complex, and the fact that everyone inferior to her is indeed a fool, she is often unable to deal with people who are willing to fight back without showing any sign of weakness. In these situations, she is known to take her anger out on people who she thinks she can control rather than directly at the source.
Underneath all her bravado, however, there is an insecure girl who is not sure how to live up to everyone’s expectations-or even if she wants to do so at all. It is because of this that she resorts to her intimidation tactics-she is so determined to prove her own self-worth that she feels she needs to make herself appear more threatening to be a more formidable opponent. Naturally, this insecure side is not one she broadcasts to the world, as even she is largely unaware of it. In fact, she has a strong tendency towards denial of unsavoury circumstances, whether it be pretending she has no idea what Miles is talking about when he tells her that her (previously incarcerated, and now dead) father is not invincible, or outright denying the fact that she has ever lost to Phoenix Wright, openly claiming that her win record is perfect.
Most people who come across her consider her openly hostile and try to avoid being injured by her. A lot of her personality traits stem from her childhood where she was still following in her father’s (and Miles Edgeworth’s) footsteps and thus, she doesn’t quite know how to be her own person, but it’s something she’s currently trying to figure out.
Character Plans:
Upon first being thrust into a strange new world, Franziska’s going to want to find information; she’s very obviously unused to not being in complete control of her surroundings. Once that basic discovery is over, she’ll most likely want to become involved in the search for some way to prevent the Pull or at least return everyone home…while at the same time maintaining her own stringent moral code, which she’s only really started to develop on her own terms…at the very least, it’ll prove to be interesting.
Appearance/PB:
She was probably a frill-necked lizard in another life or something, idk.
Writing Samples
First Person Sample
[A woman’s face appears on the screen, her eyes narrowed and her mouth set in a small frown.] Hmph. It seems like this city has, at the very least, a sophisticated communications system in place. It would then be foolish of me not to take advantage of it in my search for information. I have been here for a day and a night already, and compel anyone with detailed knowledge about, but not limited to: the economy and opportunities for employment, the current socio-political climate and the general layout and locations of facilities on the island.
Do not waste my time with irrelevant comments and remarks; I have no patience for such fooleries.
Third Person Sample
Franziska had not visited the ocean in several long years as her busy work schedule back home had not allowed time for such trips. However, now that was she on this strange island, she was surrounded by nothing but water.
She hated it. She hated being trapped in such a foreign environment, so separated from everything she had ever known, in a society that seemed crude and lawless compared to the one whose rules and ideals she had worked so hard to uphold. At least she still had her whip, she mused, fingers tightening around the handle almost automatically, a comforting gesture that momentarily eased her current trepidations. Just because she was here, standing on the edge of nowhere with the salty scent of the sea in her nostrils didn’t mean she had become a different person; life had just taken a rather unexpected turn, one which Franziska would do her utmost to uncover the cause of - after all, any obstacle could be overcome: wasn’t that what it truly meant to be a Von Karma? To be perfect in every way? Maybe she couldn’t experience that unless she had been tested in a variety of circumstances.
It was as she looked out over the horizon, over unfamiliar waters, that she realised that this would be the ultimate test; away from the legal community that had given her family name such prominence, she would be able to put her actual skills to the test instead of resting on her father’s laurels. Of course, it was a test that she would not fail, as Franziska von Karma never failed.
She turned her head away from the ocean then, brushing loose strands of hair behind here ears, to glance down to look at her phone. It was foolish of her to have come out here, really. There was no time to waste on such idle reminiscences; there was much to study and explore, and she would not allow herself to fall behind on current happenings: to do so would be to render herself obsolete, useless, and she could never allow that to happen. She would make the best of this undesirable circumstance, and forget about this silly seaside musing - after all, what else could she do for anything but do her best to be perfect?
Knowing what she had to do didn’t make her hate the island or its society any less, but she would simply have to deal with that. A scowl formed on her face as her fingers clenched even tighter around the handle of her whip, knuckles turning almost white underneath her gloves. There would be no mercy for anyone who got in the way of her goals.