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I saw a post expressing some frustration with the state of f/f shipping in the Ace Attorney fandom, and there are definitely some elements they discussed that I agree with.
While I don’t feel that FranMaya is exactly a “crackship” per se, I do agree that it’s overly represented given the amount of time that the characters actually spend with one another in canon (which is next to nothing.) The pairing is largely speculative and results from Maya and Franziska being considered as sidekicks to or subcategorized to to their male counterparts, Phoenix and Miles.
It definitely comes off as very “pair the spares” to me– specifically in I feel like the pairing got started more because people ship narumitsu rather than finding Maya and Franiziska as having any chemistry in their own right.
The post I read was unfortunate also correct that a large subsection of the fandom will go off if you do pair either of them with anyone else. There tends to be a low tolerance in the Ace Attorney fandom in some ways for shipping outside of the main top pairings– this isn’t unique to femlash, people will come at you for the wrong slash pairings, or het pairings also.
Franziska and Adrian Andrews was brought up, which is a pairing that I personally find very compelling, and plan to write more of in the future.
I feel like if Adrian was less of a “one case wonder” and got more screen time that this could have developed into a fairly common pairing.
Another pairing discussed was another favorite of mine, Trucy and Pearl. This particular pairing I think suffers from the heavy infantilization of both the characters.
While in the last game, Trucy is 17 and Pearl is 18, both of them are introduced to the series as children, which I think makes many fans hesitant to write them in any romantic or shippy material.
However, I feel like the best way to combat all of this is the same as combating most fandom problems simply to keep putting the material out there that you want to see, in whatever capacity you enjoy, be that fic, art, edits, meta or just talking about the pairings.
The fact of the matter is as long as unrelated female characters don’t get any meaningful interactions with each other, their relationships will never be as meaningful to disect as their m/m counterparts. Heck, there are hardly any complex m/f relationships in Ace Attorney because it’s so allergic to giving women drive, personality, and/or conflict.
Like, I’ve thought so much about how good a foils Athena and Trucy are for each other, and how a relationship would highlight and exacerbate their most interesting traits. Athena can’t stand emotional dishonesty or shortcuts while Trucy is manipulative and pragmatic. How would Athena react when Trucy’s manipulation is the best way to do something? How would Trucy react when Athena forces her to be blunt about something?
But, like, the girls are designed like dolls. Their role in the story is to be tragic but sweet side characters. Giving them uglier, more interesting emotions or romantic/sexual desire with each other feels like it breaks the tone of Ace Attorney. Like one of those “OMG imagine if the kids in this kids show had PTSD!” fanfics.
I’ve written original stories before. I can invent complex WLW dynamics. But that’s not the fun of shipping, is it? I as a queer woman don’t get to play around with pre-existing characters and relationships. I have to make my own. And that’s more work for something that’s meant to be fun speculation.
I agree that the girl characters in Ace Attorney don’t get any meaningful interaction with one another. They are very much there to drive the male characters plots and motivations forward, which is definitely a big reason why they don’t get shipped with one another.
But I actually personally find the girls in Ace Attorney some of the most complex and interesting female characters in fiction, when you actually pay attention to their deeper motivations and experiences. Yes, the text doesn’t linger on them, but the details are all there. Maya, Athena, and Trucy are all honestly deeply complex characters with interesting backstories, motivations, and pathos.
The problem is that the way they’re sidelined and infantalized by the narrative bleeds into a fandom who is also happy to sideline and infantalize them.
If a person wants to dig into Trucy’s manipulative side, or Athena’s PTSD and autism, or Maya’s abandonment issues, suddenly the fandom looks at you like you’ve got two heads and you’re inventing these character traits from nowhere.
No, they’re there in the fiction. People are just used to ignoring them.
As for if that’s the fun of shipping or not, I wouldn’t know, because it is what’s fun for me. ^^;;
(to be clear I’m not disagreeing with your perspective here, I’m just sharing my thoughts!)
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