About this journal
Hi there. I'm Clare, and I like writing. A lot. I also like playing games and reading books and comics and manga and watching films and tv shows and anime and consuming as many media products as I have time for. A lot. And I especially like writing about them. A lot
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I am from pit-village Yorkshire but I currently reside in the Town That Time Forgot, just inside the Lancashire border *makes crucifix sign*.
Ah, Wilde and Waugh. I should probably add Forster, Bronte and Hardy to that list - the latter three most likely inform my writing more than the former, if I am honest - along with a selection of poets, gritty British dramas and Quentin Crisp XD
Amusingly, someone wanking about one of my RP characters recently described my writing as "like the worst parts of Brideshead Revisited". I am probably the only person in the world who immediately thought "wow! That's actually.... a massive compliment!"
I'm always amazed when people read or comment on my fic because I am well aware that my characters go in non-typical directions (for example, I gave Miles a sex life before and after Phoenix and Manfred didn't abuse him for it OH NOES) so thank you XD
And please feel free to blather at me about Klavier any time. I have struggled to get to grips with him despite long conversations about Kris and Klavier with princeoffools and RPing with Shahni.
And now I shall return to working my way through your fic!
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You know, I'd have taken that as a compliment too! But then, Brideshead Revisited is one of those books that left a deep and lasting impression on my suggestible teenage self (I have to admit that in a fit of fancy and romanticism I applied to Christ Church partly because it was Sebastian Flyte's college).
I gave Miles a sex life before and after Phoenix and Manfred didn't abuse him for it OH NOES
I love you for this, seriously. I was talking with Shahni a while back about how frustrating it is that so many writers don't give Edgeworth a life outside of Phoenix - when there's no reason to assume that Phoenix, although obviously a huge part of his life, is the beginning and end of everything for him, and in fact, a lot to suggest otherwise. The fact that unlike Nick, for example, who works alone or with his collection of plucky girl sidekicks, Edgeworth has canonically spent 4 years or so working as part of the larger organisation of the Prosecutor's Office - and can't possibly have kept himself to himself the entire time; similarly, the fact that what little we're told about his time away from canon suggests him to have been working within universities or other research institutions - whether he's comfortable with it or not, you can't deny that Edgeworth has plenty of opportunities to form professional and personal relationships with people other than Nick, more than Nick himself has, I think. I don't even think that what we see of his personality precludes that - emotional distance and personal baggage does not necessarily imply complete asociality, imo, although obviously it can. /pet subject
I'd be happy to talk about Klavier, whenever you like - he's my second favourite character in the games, after Edgeworth, and I think he's much more interesting than a lot of people give him credit for (or than he's characterised as in a lot of fic). There's two tensions in his personality that fascinate me about him, and I guess that define him to a great extent for me - the first is the dissonance between his obvious good-naturedness and integrity, and a thoughtlessness and probably unconscious self-centredness that comes through, I think, strongest in his dealings with Ema, to a lesser extent with Daryan, and sometimes just generally when you see him in professional contexts. The second, and sort of related, is the faultline I think you can see between his obvious confidence, and the insecurity implicit in his equally obvious desire to be constantly showing off and impressing people. The other thing, then, that interests me about him is how growing up in the shadow of what Kristoph did has shaped him - specifically, how far he was controlled, either directly (by any efforts at manipulation on Kristoph's part), or inadvertently (i.e. by his desire to please and impress his brother), by Kristoph for those seven years, and how that might have led both to the desire to rebel, act out and express himself you can see in him as a performer, and to the IRON control he clearly has over his emotions (is there a sinister and even tragic edge, in other words, to his relentless, unwavering, usefully mask-like and depthless charm?). That's why I adore writing him, at least - to try and explore some of that.
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Obviously, I totally agree about Edgeworth in general. The treatment of Miles frustrated me in the extreme when I started reading fic in the fandom. There is practically none from his point fo view, and what there is mostly didn't hit the right notes for me. Very little of any of it from any POV granted him any kind of life outside the game. ...Well, unless to portray him as some bizarre figure permanently clad in frills, angsting over his victimhood, with every item of clothing a matching pink to his suits and a complete lack of ability to deal with people on any level. This was utterly opposed to what I had come away with from the game based on the same things that you mention above.
Then I went away and thought about it and I figured well, I guess it's because we don't SEE him outside of legal settings, and there does seem an awful lot of reliance on what we see in game that to me, makes NO SENSE in the real world and when dealing with real people. I have had it claimed to me, for example, that he must have known that Manfred was guilty because of his lack of reaction to the events of 1:4. That makes my head spin. No, he did not break down in court, but does anyone seriously think he walked away from that with a shrug and an "oh well, shit happens"? I mean, really. XD
And... I guess it was somewhere around there that I decided to fic from his point of view and not from Phoenix's by preference. So I sat down, and I wrote down what I knew about him from canon, and played join the dots. I went backwards and forwards in his life and tried a multitude of different possibilities until I came up with a history I was comfortable with and that I felt fitted into canon, fitted his personality in game and his history as recounted, but that also satisfied my desire for realism. I wanted people to identify with Miles for different reasons other than the "poor Miles" stuff that I kept happening across in fic.
I knew practically no-one in the fandom at the time, so I was unwittingly dangling my arse in the breeze a bit when I started hacking away at the majority fanon about him. I laugh about it a bit now but hell, I really *was* indignant on behalf of the character at the time! OUT went perfect Dad Gregory in favour of means well but workaholic Dad Gregory; OUT went abusive Manfred in favour of cult leader Manfred; OUT went virgin at 24, in went gay and sexually active; OUT went lack of social skills; in went someone who could go through the motions perfectly well; OUT went cold and unfeeling, in went emotional powerhouse; OUT went pink and in went jeans and shirts... the list goes on. I am still astonished I didn't get savaged for it - I thank my lucky stars the readership for my stuff is relatively small and seems to consist of people who ALSO want Miles to get a fair deal and who like him for reasons other than the aaannnnggggssstttt. And I think that is the base of it, really. I like him for being a SURVIVOR. I like him because no matter what, he ENDURES, and he LEARNS and he EVOLVES. He's the strongest character in the first three games, to my mind, with Manfred and Maya close seconds.
Klavier... now he's an interesting one. Kris was undoubtedly the main focus of my attention (someone else that I think is generally badly done to in fandom) and damn, I think Valant deserves some attention BUT... Klavier. I think the thing that really DID leap out to me was that in 4:4 Klavier is kind of... okay with the fact that Kris killed Zak. It's kind of like... "he's still my brother!". It took he details of 4:4 to shake that and it... surprised me. And I have to say that it was that alone that made me think "there's more to this character that meets the eye, isn't there? He's a nice guy on the surface but there's more going on than meets the eye." I have just struggled to pinpoint what. I guess where Edgeworth sort of clicked really fast, Klavier hasn't, so I welcome any insights as I'd like to use him in a fic and never have.
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I have a total grudge by proxy against Magdalen because they didn't make my best friend an offer. But SUCH a gorgeous college. It is so very easy to see Miles at Oxbridge, or at least at the Oxbridge of my experience - half neurosis-inducing solitary pressure-cooker, half beauty and history and amazing intellectual stimulation. I'd be tempted to have him there in my head-canon, too.
I think you're so right about his strength, absolutely, and his growth too. I was talking to someone on fandomsecrets of all places (I think sabinelagrande?) a while back about how central Edgeworth's character arc is to the plot of the first three games, and how far you can say that secondary, obviously, to the overarching Fey plot, showing Edgeworth gradually growing into an identity both in himself and in relation to the other characters in the game in which he is comfortable and secure is the main subplot of PW:1-3. It speaks to phenomenal strength and depth of character (both in the sense of in Edgeworth himself as an imaginary person, and in the sense of the skill on the part of the writers) that he gets from who he is in AA to who he is in T&T - self-aware and self-critical, knowing his weaknesses, but also with a new security, in what he thinks, in what he wants, in how he relates to people, and in what is important to him, and just a general sense that he knows who Miles Edgeworth is and is starting to be him - and it's a truly fascinating trajectory to write and read about, if done well. Partly because of the magnitude of what he goes through (which really can't be underestimated, and is presumably why people seem so tempted to write him as uber-victim), and partly because of the complexity of the context in which he has to deal with it - in terms both of the constraints of his own personality dictating what coping strategies he is and is not comfortable taking recourse to, and in terms of the other people he comes to factor in as influences on and parts of his life (Phoenix, of course, but also Franziska, the Feys past and present, Gumshoe, even Larry). He really is a great character, and fantastic fic material - difficult, though, to do justice.
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So I guess the way I approach Klavier, then, is to take these unrealistic, discordant cues from the game and try and find some kind of coherent psychology behind them - trying to figure out, for example, what are the psychological causes and ramifications of his perpetual showmanship, or of his desire to please everyone, or of his refusal to show any real emotion. And I write him interacting with Kristoph and Daryan (Daryan especially) because I think that as well, obviously, as being interesting characters in their own right, they're brilliant foils for exploring what makes Klavier who he is - not to mention, the pair of them are the two people in the canon that he's presented as being closest to, so they're almost certainly the people (that we know of) who have had the biggest influence on who he is. I think also that in the game, it's these two that bring out the hints that Klavier is a real person behind the charming, glamorous rock-star prosecutor construct - Shahni and Jess have both pointed out to me, for example, that Daryan is the only person in the game that we see Klavier not bothering to hide his emotions with (excepting such times as he's under EXTREME stress - which, incidentally, tends to be when either Daryan or Kristoph are involved); he's willing to snap at him, bicker with him - and he turns that right off (and happy!Klavier back on) as soon as Apollo and Trucy are around. His behaviour in both Daryan and Kristoph's trials, meanwhile, definitely reveals cracks in the image he presents (and in his professionalism, as well - Edgeworth, Franziska and Godot can all be seen as using trials for some kind of personal agenda, but there's a much stronger sense in 4-3 and 4-4 that Klavier's trying to figure his own shit out more than he's trying to prosecute) - there's a brittle kind of self-delusion game he plays in Daryan's trial (like he's torn between pushing for the truth and trying to convince himself either that Daryan didn't do it, or that even if he did, he's never going to get caught), and the astonishing aggression of his devil's advocate game in 4-4 is really telling, I think, especially in the context of what Trucy says about Klavier still wanting to impress Kristoph, not just convince himself that his brother wasn't what they're saying he was.
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And damn don't get me started on Kristoph. If there's one character whose fanon characterisations frustrate me most, it's Kristoph. In particular, I have such a hard time buying characterisations of Kristoph either as sadist or as supervillain and master of manipulation. At the risk of coming across as a terrible person, I think it's because I actually recognise weaknesses of my own in Kristoph (although I swear to you, I also have a perfectly functional moral compass, sense of perspective, and respect for the lives of others XD) - so I think I'm more inclined to see the human, 'realistic' side of Kristoph's character flaws, and characterise him accordingly. It seems to me that what defines Kristoph is serious control issues - and the inevitable corollaries to that: obsessive perfectionism, strong tendencies towards jealousy - and coterminously, that very volatile trait of high-but-fragile self-esteem. Add to that an apparent complete inability to put things into perspective (I think this, actually, is the real psychological dysfunction he has - and it just exacerbates all his other weaknesses to the point of pathology and apparent supervillainy), and a seriously FUCKED moral compass, and voila! State vs. Gramarye, and the seven years in between T&T and AJ. That just jumps RIGHT OUT at me from his behaviour - even little stuff like being so desperate to maintain his reputation that he's willing to sabotage his little brother's first trial. He doesn't do what he does because he enjoys it - he's not even particularly good at it - he does it out of reaction to an event that hits pretty much all of his weaknesses, and everything else he does, he does in an attempt to tidy up the consequences of that initial reaction. I think he hurts people when they hurt him - it's revenge, and an attempt to regain control over his life. I think his relationship with Klavier was almost certainly unhealthy (what with Klavier's clear tendencies towards hero-worship, and the fact that he was implicated enough in State vs. Gramarye for Kristoph to need to be constantly keeping a paranoid eye on him), but not gratuitously abusive. I have no doubt that he hated Phoenix, because I have no doubt that he lacks perspective enough to take the slight that Phoenix indirectly represents on his talent and character as deserving of hatred.
Oh my word, I talk too much. I think anyone looking to friend my lj should be faced with a warning dialogue box: by friending this journal, you are putting yourself at risk of extreme tl;dr. Proceed? Anyway, I hope at least some of this was even vaguely interesting :D I've really enjoyed reading your thoughts on Edgeworth, and hopefully I've managed to get across some of why Klavier fascinates me so much in return.
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I've read your thing on Kristoph, and you've got a very good grip on him, I think. I agree with the control issues being his main problem, and I agree 100% on the "high-but-fragile self-esteem". You've got him characterized very well, and I agree with you...about most of it.
I disagree that he is not a sadist, however. I do not mean in the sexual sense, but in the sense of actual sadistic personality disorder. I can check at least three of the criteria for the disorder off of that list simply by how he treats Klavier in 4-4. I'm not even looking at the "pain" bits here, but the parts of the disorder that specifically deal with demeaning and controlling people close to them.
Could just be me, but it's a thought. Then again, I characterize Kristoph as having several personality and mental disorders that all tie into the control issues. I also tend to play Kristoph as being very manipulative BECAUSE he always needs control over everything. He's not an amazing brainwashing god, he's just good at playing to people. ...but he's still amazingly full of fail. He gets a bit blinded by the whole "REVENGE!" thing, and makes stupid mistakes when he's in the moment.
YMMV, however. I'm just speaking from the characterization that I play with when I write or RP him.
Also hi my name is Kelley and I'm a dirty american. Pleased to meet'cha.
Edit: And this is why I should not comment when tired.
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Anyway. On to manipulative bastards (short "a" or otherwise).
I actually think what you say about Kristoph having sadistic personality disorder is extremely interesting and, from a cursory look down that list of symptoms (I'm no psychologist, I have to say), very plausible - I can imagine it could be made to work very well indeed. I have to admit, I used the word sadist in a decidedly non-clinical, colloquial way in my mini-rant, and I hadn't given much thought to the idea that you could take such a characterisation in a much more careful, serious, thoughtful way - it's an appealing idea, and I'd actually be very interested to see your RPing to see what you do with it.
I think you and I are on the same page as far as his manipulation is concerned - both in terms of why and how he does it. My frustration, I think (and I think this is what I was trying to get at with my dislike of "sadist" Kristoph), is when he's presented as doing what he does for its own sake, if that makes sense - because while you could, of course, construct a plausible and coherent psychology around that, I just think there's a lot of other, more likely explanations for his behaviour. Mostly, like you say, related to the control issues.
If you've the time, I'd be really interested to hear your take on what personality disorders you think Kristoph has. That's definitely the weak point in my characterisation of him, I feel - there's a bias in my approach to him towards a non-pathological take on his character traits, because like I said, that's what I understand and sympathise with. But it's also glaringly obvious that he has, on top of and behind his flaws, exacerbating them, an array of psychological dysfunctions - and that's not something I have as clear an understanding of. I lean towards seeing him as having narcissistic personality disorder, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks so much for this, anyway; I'm glad you dropped by! Definitely food for thought, and much appreciated, seeing as I'm actually trying to write Kristoph at the moment.
Hope the fic doesn't disappoint, if you do decide to give it a look :)
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As I've said, I tend to err on the side of personality disorders and such for Kristoph, and I actually have him being forced to undergo psychiatric evaluation after the end of GS4. I tend to go with dissocial personality disorder, on the whole. Another interesting thing that pointed me to full-on psychopathy for Kristoph is the concept of "The Mask of Sanity" that most psychopaths exhibit. They're charming, intelligent, perfectly sane on the outside, but it's completely different in their minds.
That said, as a psychopath, I do characterize Kristoph as being completely uncaring of others and self-absorbed and self-deluded. This also plays to Klavier- I do not see him as loving his brother, which I know that most people don't agree with me on. It's not that Kristoph is only manipulating Klavier, to me, and he has convinced himself, to a degree, that he actually DOES care for him. I believe that he did love Klavier when they were younger, before all of his CRAZIES set in, but I cannot see him loving Klavier and still uncaringly manipulating him just to get revenge on Phoenix.
I also throw in narcissistic personality disorder to cover his vanity and his need to lash out when he's slighted. This also covers his whole "I AM AMAZING THE WORLD REVOLVES AROUND ME THE REST OF YOU ARE MOUTH-BREATHING MAGGOTS". My Kristoph, along with other things, believes that people are out to get him because they are mostly jealous and envious of how AMAZING he is. Kristoph is SPECIAL, the rest of you are beneath him, etc. This bit pulls him out of the "lack of goals" and such that most psychopaths tend to have. You see, since he is so special and above everyone else, he must show it, and part of that is being an attorney. As I have him, he's got a perfect win record, as well, and he does anything to win- from simply manipulating the court to outright forgery, as we see in the game. I think that, were he actually have lost cases in canon, we'd have a string of mysterious prosecutor deaths on our hands. XD
EDIT: SORRY FOR ALL OF THE EDITS.
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I have also used borderline personality disorder for an AU Kristoph that I have written (who gets regularly wanked on for being wildly OOC, so eh), as I see borderline personality fitting as a "lessened" form of full-on psychopathy. Said AU Kristoph has spent years in treatment for his disorders and is, as we have found, clocking in at about Edgeworth levels of "WHAT IS THE EMOTION I DON'T UNDERSTAND IT OH THIS IS WHAT THEY CALL BEING HAPPY".
Like I said, my Kristoph is like a wonderful Katamari of mentally ill, as I simply DO NOT see a normal person acting as he does, or having psychotic breakdowns on the stand when he looses control over something.
And yes, I know, Wikipedia for links is hardly the most comprehensive research guide, but the articles explain the disorders clearly and briefly enough for me. XD
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That said, as a psychopath, I do characterize Kristoph as being completely uncaring of others and self-absorbed and self-deluded. This also plays to Klavier- I do not see him as loving his brother, which I know that most people don't agree with me on. It's not that Kristoph is only manipulating Klavier, to me, and he has convinced himself, to a degree, that he actually DOES care for him. I believe that he did love Klavier when they were younger, before all of his CRAZIES set in, but I cannot see him loving Klavier and still uncaringly manipulating him just to get revenge on Phoenix.
I don't disagree with you here, tbh. My issue with people writing their relationship is less that I want Kristoph to be shown as caring for Klavier, and more that I dislike him shown as actively and purposefully hating Klavier - my take on his actions before State vs. Gramarye (and presumably, such other measures as he took over the next seven years to keep Klavier from suspecting anything) is that he manipulated Klavier and used him to his own ends not out of a specific, targeted hatred of his brother, but simply because at that time, Klavier was the person standing in the way of things going the way Kristoph wanted them to go. The person most important to Kristoph is Kristoph, and I imagine that he's indiscriminate in his behaviour no matter who it is that is deliberately or unwittingly threatening his world. I always imagined that Kristoph did care for Klavier, but in a complex and conditional way - a way that was always more about what Kristoph thought of him and wanted from and for him than about what would ever be best for Klavier (and which, consequently, could be compromised and overriden whenever Klavier is perceived as a threat or as otherwise falling outside of what Kristoph thinks are acceptable paradigms of behaviour). Which, I suppose, you could argue isn't caring at all, just deluding himself that he is - which is why I think that in the end, I agree with what you've said above.
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I simply DO NOT see a normal person acting as he does, or having psychotic breakdowns on the stand when he looses control over something.
So true, and I really appreciate you giving me your thoughts on why exactly he does behave like this. The thing I find most difficult and interesting about Kristoph is that I can see echoes of my own weaknesses in his basic character traits, but obviously, I know that I would never ever behave and act like he does in the situations in which he finds himself - so I'm constantly fascinated by trying to figure out what it is about him that pushes him over the edge from a flawed person that I understand and recognise to, essentially, a severely dysfunctional person that I don't, and this diagnosis of him is just so, so interesting to me in that respect.
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The problem with Kristoph and having the mental disorders that I characterize him with is that he is completely deluded and convinced that HIS IS KRISTOPH. HE IS PERFECT. NOTHING IS WRONG WITH HIM. He's actually rather perfectly functioning, and covers up his flaws obsessively. I do think that between the two main choices with him- picking between Kristoph being mentally ill, or just plain evil, this is almost the kinder approach. I'd like to poke Mob's Manfred Von Karma here- he is PERFECTLY SANE and honestly scares me more than Kristoph ever would (as I go with the "mentally ill" choice).
Kristoph's basic flaws are just that, and I do think he works as a villain because some identify with his basic weaknesses. The problem is that he's sort of a man of extremes- be it fashion and fine living all the way down to braining a man for mildly slighting him. I should mention, in my headcanon, the murder scene in 4:1 is much messier- it takes a lot of rage to bludgeon someone to death, and I think this also says a lot about Kristoph, and is why I tend to slant him toward having a great deal of anger. (I'll mention here that the aforementioned AU Kristoph strangled Klavier and almost killed him. I tend to think that bludgeoning and strangling are intensely personal and rage-driven ways of attacking someone. Oddly enough, the two brothers don't talk to each other as much in that AU, but they have a more healthy relationship than in canon. XD)
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HE DOESN'T LIKE IT.
:|
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No argument with any of your points about Edgeworth and yes, he IS challenging to write, as I have found, but terribly rewarding at the same time when you finally finish messing with a piece of text and go "YES, THAT'S HIM, NOW I CAN SLEEP". It's an ongoing joke among Edgeworth POV ficcers (we seem to seek each other out) that insomnia, wacky eating habits and greying hair seem to accompany any attempt to live in his head for any great period of time. I think you have to be slightly mad to even try it XD
But, I'm incredibly fond of him as a character now, and strangely I tend to see Phoenix through his eyes these days, which made me even fonder of Phoenix than I already was and to the extent that GS4 almost made me cry in places (although maybe not the most obvious ones) *facepalms at self.*
I absolutely love to spend time considering his relationship with other people - and particularly with Maya, Gumshoe and Franziska. I can't underestimate the importance of Franziska to him in my headcanon, and I have always thought it highly notable that during GS2 it is GUMSHOE that he chooses to remain in touch with. Not Phoenix, not Fran (although I have ficced him as at least meeting her once in that period), but GUMSHOE. And also that it is MAYA he takes advice on his social behaviour from - in my fic she's the reason he buys That Car.
I love these little aspects of his character and playing with them to flesh themn out from canon, and all of it has encouraged me to spend more time thinking over my treatment of other characters too, where they dovetail with his story as well as with Phoenix's.
As I most often RP him, he's an extension of how I wrote him in IN BETWEEN DAYS, which is to say that he is a thirty-six year old man, now living in Paris and working as a law professor; estranged from Phoenix since shortly after State vs. Gramarye and having been forced to make a life for himself again from the ground up.
And guess what? He managed it. Yes, it cost him to do so - leaving the Prosecutor's Office, leaving LA permanently, HAVING to learn to deal with people on a one-to-one basis a lot more effectively and comfortably. But he did it. Maybe he will never be entirely happy, but he has friends, a sort-of-partner, the capacity to be content, and he is extremely dedicated and successful in his chosen career. Teaching is something I feel he shows a calling for in 2:4, and Manfred's influence here is surprisingly benign when blended with that of his father. I strongly believe it is a real cereer possibility for him because of its relative efficiency - it enables him to influence more people to the path of Truth and Justice and prevent the kind of abuses of the courts that he and Manfred were responsible for. His students go on to teach by example and so on, and he is able to start making amends for his past on a wider scale.
He'll never be completely right in the head, and he'll never be completely happy or settled or able to completely give of himself to others - I don't think you ever fully recover from trauma and emotional abuse of the magnitude he suffered. But he'll never stop TRYING to overcome it, and to truly live - for his own sake and out of what in my opinion is a sense of duty to Phoenix for saving him from death, one way or another (and that works just as well whether you like them as a couple or just as friends, I find, having ficced them both ways). To me, though, this makes him less of a tragic figure and much more of a noble one, which probably leads into the fact that I tend to admire his singelmindedness and determination rather than pity him because he'll never QUITE get where he wants to go. To him, I think the TRYING is the important thing - he already learned that perfection is a hollow aim.
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He does still have the nightmares and the phobia of earthquakes and elevators, and I think he always will to some extent. There are reasons that he doesn't try harder to be free of these and even better reasons why he eschews drugs.
All this is hugely open to interpretation of course - it's just what *I* have pegged as being most likely for the Edgeworth *I* fic, because I know what makes him tick to make him do what he does in game.
Most recently I have been RPing the same character as a younger just-post-=3:5 version, involved briefly in an intense relationship with Phoenix, and it's a weird but very distinct step to make to write him - it's like I can feel the claustrophobia then compared to now despite the overtly happier time he's having. Most odd.
ANYWAY.
KLAVIER.
I did find him very troubling from the point of view of being extremely un-reactive to events throughout. Compare him to Edgeworth, who once he discovered he had caused false evidence to be presented in court, immediately CHOSE DEATH.
There's no smiling Miles in the credits at the end of GS1, although Manfred and Gant are in jail and the justice system has been saved HUZZAH! And yet there is Klavier, smiling and laughing despite having been shown to have been used to ruin an innocent man's career and quite possibly to commit murder - not to mention having a brother who most likely was just as bad as either VK or Gant in terms of how he handled himself as a lawyer.
I tend to have mostly adopted a lot of Kelley's feelings on Klavier, simply because the one thing that I came away with very strongly from GS4 was a sense that Kristoph DID NOT love Klavier. Not that he hated him, but that he definitely did not love him.
He may have once loved him, but it was an entirely one-sided relationship by the time of State vs Gramarye. I simply can't see any way that someone who loved his brother would coldly use him IN HIS FIRST TRIAL to get revenge on Phoenix the way he did, risking Klavier's disbarrment if it went wrong just as much as Phoenix's if it went right.
And nothing from 4:4 spoke to me of love when the two Gavins were on screen. Maybe from Klavier's direction, although I wasn't even sure about that to be honest - it seemed much more a desperate kind of hero-worship or living in the past than actual accepting and unconditional love. And certainly not from Kris, who was constantly needling at Klavier, alternating between apparent disppointment and compete scorn. In a peculiar way, I got more of a sense of depth of feeling between Phoenix and Kristoph (although not in a sexual way, sorry Hobo/Kris shippers!)
I find Klavier often RPed as too NICE and I think that even when done well, that bothers me, as I think he comes over as a lot more sexually aware and a lot less entirely pleasant in game. Yes, he wants TRUTH and JUSTICE and all that crap in court, but I had to wonder if he wants that for redemption, not for its own sake. And like you say, he doesn't come over half as nice when you see him in a candid moment with Daryan or Ema. And with Kris in 4:4 he's barely holding his shit together and doesn't seem to know what the hell he wants (IMO).
I may be way off, but that's how I felt about him. But I did struggle to piece him together much more than that and you've given me a lot more food for thought here, thank you very kindly! I would love to write a realistic-ish Klavier one day as Prosecutors in burgundy clearly fascinate me XD
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