Character profile
PLAYER
NAME: Hope
AGE: 21(!!!)
PREFERRED PRONOUN: She
PERSONAL LJ: hopechan
TIMEZONE: Eastern Standard
EMAIL/MESSENGER(S): asyndeton@gmail.com
EXPERIENCE RPing: I RPed a little when I was fourteen, but can we tabula rasa that shit? God, 14-year-old self, you weren't awesome. In the intervening years, I've written a lot a lot of fanfiction (FF7, FF10, Xenosaga, Suikoden, a little Supernatural, a lot of Fullmetal Alchemist, ALL THE Code Geass), including some collaborations, which isn't nothing? My more recent/halfway decent writing can be found at caveat__lector.
CHARACTER
NAME: Miles Edgeworth
AGE: 24
GENDER: Male
ROLE IN CANON: Quasi-antagonist for the first half of the first game. Subsequently, somewhere between a protagonist and a supporting character, with later bits of antagonizing thrown in, but just because he wants to help lead you to THE TRUTH.
FANDOM: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
FANDOM MEDIUM: Game
TIMELINE PERIOD: Taken from just after the case "Turnabout Goodbyes," after he's started to rediscover the WOOBIE WITHIN. Except, you know. With bad end.
ABILITIES: Miles is physically unremarkable. He's not Fraily McCrumplepansy, per se, but fighting isn't his forte. It's argument that's his forte: he's one of the keenest legal minds of his generation, becoming a prosecutor at age twenty and maintaining an almost-perfect conviction rate thereafter, both at home and abroad - he speaks at least five languages and is perfectly willing to argue his case in any of them. He's incredibly intelligent, he's dogged, and he is not above a dirty trick or two.
CHARACTER HISTORY: The first half of Miles' history centers around one person: his father. Gregory Edgeworth had been a top defense attorney, a kind and loving man who believed in justice and believed in truth, trusted his clients and fought for them hard. He was an idealist. Miles idolized him. The boy talked constantly at school about how he was going to become a lawyer just like his father and defend the helpless. When Miles' money was stolen from his desk, he intervened for the accused because the class trial wasn't following proper courtroom proceedings.
That was actually how he met his first friend: he and Phoenix were, for the next six months, inseparable.
But only for the next six months. Because in December was the DL-6 incident.
Miles' mother had died when he was still young, and his father had to work long hours, so Miles frequently came into court with him. That day had started out with his father losing his case, but this wasn't anything especially new; Miles had watched his father lose before. After all, his father wasn't perfect, and not everyone was innocent, just as not everyone was guilty. No: the case itself was unremarkable. But afterwards, Miles boarded an elevator with his father and the bailiff Yanni Yogi. Then there was an earthquake, and the elevator stopped.
He doesn't remember much of what happened after that. He remembers Yogi panicking as the air supply dwindled. He remembers his father, tie undone, breath short, a ragged edge in his voice as he tried to keep the other man calm. He remembers huddling in the corner, watching in the dim emergency lighting as Yogi launched himself at his father. He remembers a scream.
And he remembers waking up in the hospital two days later to learn that his father was dead.
He was nine years old. The prosecutors bringing the case against Yogi depended on him, the only witness, but he couldn't remember anything. So they coached him, constructing an account for him to give based on the physical evidence at the scene and the testimony of a spirit medium, supposedly channeling the ghost of Gregory Edgeworth. He was supposed to talk about the fight. He was supposed to say he'd seen the shot fired. The prosecutors assured him that they would take care of the rest.
He testified that he'd seen the fight, and he testified that he'd seen his father's final moments. Hammond, the defense attorney, wasn't his father, but he was good enough. He pressed Miles hard, and he smiled as Miles became shakier and shakier in his story. Hammond later produced reports indicating that, judging by his client's current mental impairment, the oxygen levels would have dropped far earlier than the prosecution claimed, resulting in unconsciousness and brain damage. When the prosecution held up well-spoken, sad Miles as an example of how brain damage clearly hadn't occurred, Hammond had smiled condescendingly, quirked an eyebrow, and said, looking right at Miles, that this report came from very reputable psychologists.
Hammond wasn't Miles' father.
A week later, Miles watched Yanni Yogi walk out of the courtroom with a clenched jaw and a sneer, a startling contrast to the blank expression he'd adopted throughout the trial. He'd looked at Miles briefly, and Miles had met his eyes, and they'd been cold, angry. Miles had known in that moment that this man was guilty. He knew he was watching his father's murderer go free. (Because he also knew that if there were three people trapped together, and one was murdered, and one was innocent, then the third...)
He spent a little while in foster homes after that. He was just approaching his eleventh birthday when he was approached by Manfred von Karma.
von Karma is the man around whom the second half of Miles' life centers. He was a strange man, and quite unlike Gregory Edgeworth. He was haughty, distant. He was quiet, like Gregory, and thoughtful, and brilliant. He was serious like Gregory. But his rare smiles were cold and false, and he was cruel and vindictive. He was a prosecutor - the very same one Gregory had faced in court the day before he died - and he had a perfect record, and he believed in the fundamental guilt of every human being on this earth.
von Karma said, in his distant stiff way, that though he had disagreed with Gregory Edgeworth he had respected him, and that it had pained him to see the man's murderer walk free. He spoke of how he could only imagine how difficult it had been for the boy. Miles had quietly agreed, and von Karma had nodded and informed him that he wanted to take Miles under his wing, as it were - to teach him how to hunt the guilty and make sure they paid for their crimes.
Miles agreed. He wanted to see the man who had killed his father suffer.
So he went to live with von Karma and von Karma's young daughter Franziska. Life there wasn't like it had been with his father. von Karma demanded perfection in all things from both Miles and his own daughter, and he was chilly and unapproachable. Still, Miles grew, and he learned, and he sharpened his skills, and silently he thanked his mentor for affording him this opportunity to right the wrongs of the world.
He made his court debut at age twenty in a case that ended with the defendant killing himself to avoid punishment. There was a morbid sort of humor in it, and Miles later had sat and thought about the man who would punish himself. Maybe there was something noble in it.
He continued prosecuting for four years, maintaining a perfect record all the time. There were rumors about him, of course - that he was falsifying evidence, coercing testimonies...There were a few cases in which he had a few doubts, perhaps, but his cases all were honest. All he ever had to do was lay out the evidence and allow the defendants and their lawyers to stumble, incriminate themselves. There was so much guilt in the world - manipulating evidence wasn't even necessary.
But then Phoenix Wright passed the bar. Edgeworth had heard from his childhood friend a few times - absurd letters begging him to say that he was honest, that he was good, that he was true to himself. He hadn't responded. Phoenix, evidently, had either developed a passion for the law or gotten more absurd still, and Miles' efforts to avoid him were suddenly, irritatingly halted when he was assigned to prosecute a client Phoenix was defending. And, for the first time in his life, Miles lost.
Two cases against Wright and two losses, and Miles felt unmoored. Two cases, and two innocent defendants. Miles wondered, uncomfortably, absurdly, if maybe he'd been wrong - if maybe in all those trials, all those convictions, there had been another person, the true culprit, the...
He decided to never see Wright again.
But then one day - Christmas Eve, fifteen years after his father's murder, four days before the statute of limitations on that crime ran out - he got a call from Roger Hammond, the defense attorney, of all people, to come out to Gourd Lake. He hadn't spoken to the man in fifteen years. The man said he knew who killed Miles' father. But once there, Hammond hadn't said a thing: he'd just pulled out a gun and fired, two shots, and then he'd fallen into the water, dead. Miles had wondered, in that moment, if he was going mad.
He'd been arrested for the murder. Wright had come to him, of course, begging to be allowed to help him, but Miles had turned him down. He didn't want his friend finding out about what he'd done...With no defense attorney willing to represent him, he'd gone pro se. There was only so much he could do from prison - and only so much he could do against von Karma, his own mentor, who'd flown in specifically to prosecute this trial. It really had been a stunning coup from von Karma, a truly awe-inspiring case. He'd managed to prove not only that Miles had killed Hammond, but also what Miles had been unable to say, unable to think for fifteen years: that he had been the one to kill his own father.
von Karma had approached Miles the last day of the trial and, in deference to their previous relationship, he said, offered him a plea bargain. If Miles would admit to both crimes, he could avoid the death penalty, could avoid jail - would plead diminished capacity and instead go in for treatment for the psychoses that had driven him to kill. Miles had agreed.
It was really a very clean case.
CHARACTER PERSONALITY: Miles, as a child, had always been a little shy and awkward, a little serious and out-of-place among his peers. He had difficulty making friends. Still, he was kind, and he was caring. But he changed.
In court, he's a fearsome force. He's splendid and cruel. He's supremely self-confident well beyond the point of arrogance, eloquent and witty and nasty and devastating. He's quick with the insults and quicker with the sarcasm. He can easily intimidate the judge and the defense attorney (though he occasionally has difficulty with the witnesses, who have an odd reluctance to state their names for the record). His cases are always well-constructed, his traps well-laid, and he never falters for a moment in his convictions (or theirs - ba dump bump).
But outside of court, he's different. He's withdrawn. The boy who had difficulty making friends had turned into the man who convinced himself he didn't want any; he tries very, very hard to be elitist, aloof, proud, and unapproachable - every bit as removed from sentimentality and affection as von Karma always was. He's pretty bad at it, though. Mostly he's just gruff, sometimes just cranky, and it doesn't even take more than a couple of conversations before it becomes clear that Miles is still just as awkward and shy as he ever was, unable to properly express gratitude or affection, or really much aside from general irritation.
He also has a self-loathing streak a mile wide. His belief that he killed his father ranges from subconscious to fully conscious, and he's always worried that someone will find out. He believes that even if they don't find out, somehow he'll still manage to hurt them.
For those few people who actually manage to bypass all of this to get close to him, he actually proves to be quite a good friend - determined, quietly helpful, and even at times possessed of a wry and warm sense of humor. Unfortunately, "those few people" is limited pretty much to his dog Pess, and occasionally to Phoenix as well, on very very good days. And even when he's being nice he keeps up the sonofabitch act in court. You know, so his opponents, and friends, will stay sharp. It's a favor he's doing.
He also says "ergo" a lot.
HOW IS THIS CHARACTER APPROPRIATE FOR THIS SETTING: The setting of the game Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is generally fairly light-hearted. People die, but that's okay because they usually do so in pretty comedic ways. Edgeworth - traumatized, damaged - is really the darkest part of the game.
To be quite honest, he isn't outwardly crazy. He has issues, but he's not full-on nuts. But the world he's constructed around himself is fragile and tender and can be crushed easily, and he himself is proud and rigid and brittle, and it wouldn't take much to send him down the path to madness. Plus he gets effed in the ay by fate or chance or von Karma or whomever once every two and a half minutes so it's not a stretch to imagine this particular turn of the effing-in-the-ay screw. ...As it were.
WHAT WILL THEIR DIAGNOSIS BE:
Anxiety disorder. As a result of his early trauma, Miles developed a phobia of heights, of confined spaces, and mostly of earthquakes. The last of these is completely crippling: he is unable to act, completely unable to function, at the least tremor.
Post-traumatic stress disorder. He was trapped in a confined space and starved of oxygen for hours, only to be present at his father's murder which he later blamed himself for. Oh yeah, baby. That's what brings the waterworks. And the persistent gut-wrenching nightmares. Unf.
Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. Miles is a workaholic, is always prepared to the point of absurdity, hates being wrong, and is unwilling to accept help. Most of all, he has a need to see the world broken down into clear, opposing parts: "us" and "them," "the innocent" and "the guilty." He needs to see the world conform to his view of what justice is - in which he punishes the guilty in the hopes of eventually being punished himself.
Avoidant personality disorder. At the same time, he's afraid to let anyone close to him - his coworkers, his old friends - because he's afraid that they'll find out or somehow deduce what he's done and hate him for it. He avoids non-business interaction with others and hates being forced into any sort of social situation.
PREDICTED PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS: Depression, malaise. Prejudice against the other inmates. Possibly initial fits of anger, especially at anyone who might try to help him. Possibly later dependency if, against all odds, there is someone who manages to help him. Mostly just depression.
PREDICTED BEHAVIOR/PLANS: Miles presents himself as a together, successful, competent guy, and he'll start out determined to stay "above" everything that's going on. Removed, however, from the constraints of polite society, and mostly removed from the job that was his means of inflicting suffering upon others and himself, he'll start to crack apart. Having the truth of his existence denied, too - being told that his memories are false, that it's actually not even the year he thought - will go a long way towards contributing to that. He'll desperately want to get back to the outside world if to do nothing but prove he's right. He might even become desperate enough to try.
DANGER LEVEL: One.
SAMPLES
THIRD PERSON:
He knew that letters went nowhere at all. They were allowed to write, of course, even encouraged, but these letters were nothing better than therapy at best, a means of spying more likely. Even so he wrote them.
"I feel, at times, like the man who, wrongfully imprisoned, discovered theft and murder and his own criminality in jail," he wrote early on to von Karma, the man who sent him here. Perhaps he wanted to prove that he was still lucid, or perhaps he was simply nostalgic for his mentor's quiet and coolheadedness. "This place shall, with a hand quick and sure, drive me mad."
Later, he said to von Karma, "It is, however, pure. There is a beauty and a clarity in their methods. There is an elegance in their determination and single-mindedness. The world is become one dimension, and all days are the same. The guilty are punished; the guilty are punished; the guilty are punished; and then we sleep."
To Gumshoe, the Gumshoe in his head, he wrote these absurd reassurances. "The food isn't good, but at least there are three meals a day," he said. "I suppose that, in this small way, my lifestyle is better than yours."
"What do you think of me?" he begged later. "What did you think of me back then? Did you have suspicions all along? They all knew here from the beginning and they will always know."
He sat a long time, looking at the water-stain on the wall. Outside his door there was a clamor, another small period of swelling of the infinite noise that made his neck rigid, made his teeth tear into his fingernails. There was a stink like urine. He strained after his memory of the smell of fresh air, strained after his memory of the time when his stomach didn't churn with his sense of confinement.
Before him was the first and only letter he wrote to Wright.
There was a day in late September when I went over to your home. Your mom baked us cookies, the ones you slice off the frozen log of cookie dough, and she kept baking them as long as we were eating them, and I taught you and Larry long division. It was still warm that day, but windy. You had the windows open in your living room, and the curtains drawn, and it was warm where we sat in the sunshine, the television a quiet drone in the background, and it smelled sweet, like caramel and apples from the candles your mom burned, and like those chocolate chip cookies, and a little stale from the apartments around yours. Larry kept nodding off but you were so determined to get it. Every once in a while, from the window, there'd be this breeze that was almost uncomfortably cold. It got late. The sun turned long. You elbowed Larry when he snored, and he jumped, and I told him that since he evidently wasn't interested he might as well close that window. When he got up he bumped into the table and your glass of milk started to tip over but you reached out and caught it before it fell and then you never let us hear the end of it. Never as long as I knew you.
This place is lit fluorescent and it tastes like rust, and you said you would save me, and there was a time I believed you. Now I lick my lips and taste salt.
Best regards,
Miles Edgeworth
FIRST PERSON:
Present indicative: Gaudeo. Gaudes. Gaudet. Gaudemus. Gaudetis. Gaudent.
Imperfect indicative: Gaudebam. Gaudebas. Gaudebat. Gaudebamus. Gaudebant.
Future indicative: Gaudebo. Gaudebis. Gaudebit. Gaudebimus. Gaudebitis. Gaudebunt.
Perfect indicative: ...Ga...something sum. Ga-something. Gaudeo, gaudere...ga...Ga...
No. No. God. I can't...
[...Edgeworth is totally the kind of person who would conjugate Latin verbs to maintain his sanity, and then lose his shit when he can't remember the past participle form or something. LOL nerds.]
NOTES: Brevity is the soul of wit.