![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[balance application don't read this]
MAYA FEY: C'mon, you know! Like, how after you solve a puzzle you're all "tick, tick, tick.... CHING"! And then.... "insert catchphrase here". | |
| APP HMD PERMISSIONS PLAYER |
Character name: Maya Fey
Age: 18
Canon: Ace Attorney
Canon point: The ending of Justice for All!
History: Wiki link
Three key adjectives: Optimistic, tenacious, playful
Influential Events:
Fey Clan & DL-6;
Maya comes from a prominent clan of spirit mediums, where only women can inherit the power to channel spirits, and only one woman can inherit the title of Master, the leader of the clan. The woman who becomes Master is the most spiritually powerful of the sisters (typically the eldest), and her family becomes the Main Family while the spiritually inferior sister and her descendants become the subservient Branch Family, and so on and so forth. This horrible setup has lead to a longstanding history of betrayal, infighting and family-on-family bloodshed. Such was the case with Maya's mother, Misty Fey, and Morgan Fey, her older sister. With Morgan losing the title to Misty, their relationship was extremely contentious and things only got worse when Misty was asked to channel the spirit of a victim in an unsolvable murder case. The man the victim's spirit (through Misty) named was proven innocent, and when a blackmailer named Redd White got hold of his information, he leaked it to the press, causing Misty to be seen as a fraud and for her to abandon her two children, Mia (12) and Maya (2). Their father also died around this time and their hometown, Kurain Village, was disgraced and deteriorated heavily along with its reputation. On top of this, the matriarchal system had men leaving in droves and leaving broken families everywhere, and Morgan resented the two girls she had to raise. Maya's childhood was not really a happy one.
Though Maya was very young and has little recollection of these events, the circumstances that resulted shaped her whole life. Misty never returned to Kurain or made contact with either of her daughters, Mia Fey herself left the village several years later to find out what happened to her, leaving Maya with the position of Master and the fate of Kurain weighing on her shoulders. A person that has been missing from Kurain for twenty years is legally declared dead, meaning that Maya's entire childhood and teenagehood was spent hoping for her mother to return and knowing that if she didn't, everything was on her to restore Kurain. On top of this, Morgan had a daughter with immense spiritual power, and began hatching plots to get rid of her niece to restore her own bloodline as the Main Family. While Morgan and Maya's relationship is not shown much, Morgan herself is a shoe-in for a Disney evil parental figure and Maya has very deeply ingrained insecurities about not being good enough as a spirit medium and potential Master, as well as tendencies to be ridiculously harsh on herself and to take other's disappointment in her extremely hard, so the implication here is that Morgan is a big part of the reason she developed this way. The pressures from the position of Master and what Misty left behind left a huge impact on her too -- it weighs on her heavily throughout the games and her character arc is about her accepting her duties, even though she's scared of her crazy murderfamily and doesn't feel like she's good enough.
In spite of all these events, Maya has an extremely resilient spirit, a naturally optimistic personality and an inherent selflessness that's stuck with her throughout everything. She has a tendency to put aside her own feelings to act cheerful for others even if she's hurting, and always tries to be positive even in the worst of situations. She also has a big zest for the little things such as food and TV shows (ie: Steel Samurai and all its spinoffs) stemming back to childhood and her positive memories with her sister. A lot of it is just her natural personality that's weathered all the tragedies -- she has a childlike sense of wonderment and innocence that never really goes away -- but it's probably safe to guess that it's a coping mechanism, too.
Turnabout Sisters & Wright and Co Law Offices;
Subverting the normal contentious and murderesque sisterly relationships, however, was the relationship between Mia Fey and Maya Fey, which was very loving and supportive on both ends. Though Mia left Kurain Village when Maya was a child to become a lawyer and find the truth about Misty's disappearance, they stayed in contact in the years to come. Mia became a famous defense attorney and often entrusted evidence to Maya for safekeeping, while Maya continued to look up to and hero worship her sister, maybe a little too much. Maya has a strong sense of justice and believes wholeheartedly in helping people who have no one to help them-- something that likely originated with Mia, as Mia’s creed was always about protecting the innocent and believing in her clients. Mia was also known for being strong and independent to the point of recklessness -- characteristics Maya also inherited as she can be bullheaded and try to take the world on her shoulders.
Mia Fey had a mentee, as well, a rookie defense attorney named Phoenix Wright who similarly looked up to her. But more tragedy struck. As mentioned, Mia had been hot on the trail of Redd White, the blackmailer who had ruined their mother, and was about to take him down --- when he murdered her and framed Maya for the crime. Phoenix, despite having no experience, was the only one to believe in her and take her case -- promising her he wouldn’t abandon her. Maya is an extremely loyal person once won over -- and Phoenix makes himself a friend for life in that moment.
The case takes twists and turns -- including Phoenix Wright going up against his former childhood friend, Miles Edgeworth, and for Phoenix himself to be later framed for Mia’s death, with Maya now becoming his sole ally. Together, with the help of Mia's spirit (who Maya is able to channel because her desperation to help Phoenix awakens her true powers) they take Redd White down. Mia leaves Maya a message to look after Phoenix --- and the two of them become an inseparable partnership, starting up Wright and Co. with Maya as Phoenix's assistant. While their relationship is clumsy and at first and Phoenix doesn't see her much more than a means to get spiritual advice from Mia, with time they develop an extremely close and devoted sibling-like relationship as their partnership flourishes. They banter and bicker and Maya often annoys and/or confuses Phoenix with her impulsive and mischievous antics, and/or drains his money, but he fills the emotional void that Mia left behind, and he grows dependent on her support and optimism to keep him going when things are (always) stacked against him. Their partnership is where Maya’s best (and weirdest) qualities shine -- as Phoenix follows Mia’s creed of believing in one’s client (but can drag his feet), Maya tends to bully him into taking cases and gives him the pushes he needs to defend innocent people and fight against the corrupt and frankly terrible guilty-until-proven-innocent system.
Turnabout Goodbyes;
As it turns out, Phoenix’s former childhood friend turned rival/ruthless prosecutor ends up framed for murder too! What a world. With no one else to defend him, Phoenix volunteers, and, despite the fact that Edgeworth had prosecuted Maya for Mia's murder in a universe where the death penalty is applied to every murder case, Maya instantly agrees to it with no grudge whatsoever. It's a difficult and uphill case, both because the prosecutor (and actual killer) holds an insane amount of power and is able to get away with intimidating the judge and also literally attacking the defense team, and because Maya is unable to channel Mia. Phoenix, increasingly desperate and singleminded about saving Edgeworth, consistently pressures Maya to channel Mia and kind of treats her like she's useless when she's unable to, leading to the aforementioned insecurities to rear their head and for Maya to eventually break down in a very bad way because she believes she’s no good to him, but, on the flip side, it lends to Maya taking charge herself to save the day. And she does -- she gets herself arrested in contempt of the court for standing up to the evil prosecutor, she finds decisive evidence and even physically fights back against the prosecutor when he threatens and attacks the two of them with a stun gun to steal the evidence they had on him. Yikes. The staunch defense she gives of Edgeworth that gets her arrested moves him and the lead detective to tears, and is a good example of how her heart of gold (™) and sheer determination wins people over. They win the case, but Maya still feels like she’s useless and tries to flee in the night, believing that she can only be useful if she strengthens her spiritual powers to channel Mia more. Phoenix catches her as she's leaving and convinces her, with evidence, that she is not useless and that she helped him all by herself. Maya is moved to tears but leaves anyway, promising him she'll be back once she's a full-fledged medium so she can help him. Again, these insecurities are really deeply ingrained, and even with Phoenix encouraging her and being a positive influence, it’s still slow going for Maya to accept that her own worth outside of her spiritual abilities.
Reunion and Turnabout;
About six months after this, Maya has been doing rigorous training and is feeling more confident. She has a client (an asshole doctor) lined up for her first official channeling (apparently her sister didn't count), but her one criteria is that Phoenix is present. So, Phoenix goes! Upon arriving in Kurain, he meets Morgan Fey and her youngest daughter, Maya's cousin, Pearl, a sweet and innocent prodigy at spirit channeling. Once again subverting the typical bad blood in the Fey family, Maya and Pearl have a very close sisterly relationship, with Pearl looking up to Maya, and Maya doting on and supporting Pearl without a single trace of jealousy, even though she considers herself to be inferior. Morgan, on the other hand, takes this channeling as an opportunity to get rid of Maya -- she teams up with a woman named Ini (Mimi, actually, it's complicated) Miney to kill the doctor during Maya's channeling in a convoluted plot involved drugging Maya, Ini pretending to be the spirit channeled in Maya's body, and Morgan manipulating Maya into believing that she is directly responsible because she's not good enough as a spirit medium and that this makes her a murderer. Yikes. Even though Phoenix proves her completely innocent and staunchly argues with her every time Maya tries to blame herself, this incident leads to Maya starting to seriously avoid Kurain and becomes afraid of channeling and (more) afraid of her family. She also becomes Pearl's main guardian when Morgan is arrested, and, recognizing how difficult this is for her little cousin, shoves her own pain aside to support Pearl and take care of her. She falls neatly into her regular pattern of acting strong and smiling for the sake of others. It's also important to note that while deep down, Maya herself was always aware of Morgan's sinister personality and the blood feud, she pretends she isn't and tries to convince herself that Morgan cares about her, even during this case, right up until Phoenix exposes Morgan. After everything is out in the open and she can't lie to herself anymore, Maya is not angry and does not hold a grudge, she is hurt and laments losing someone she cares about. Maya’s always quick to get defensive of other people that are downtrodden, but it when it comes to her own struggles, she just accepts it and keeps on keeping on with her positive attitude. It’s kind of a mixture between inner strength and also being resigned to bad things happening.
Farewell my Turnabout;
The pain doesn’t end there, either! The next major event in her life involves her getting kidnapped by an assassin during one of Phoenix's highest profile cases. The man Phoenix defends is an actor in the popular children's show Nickel Samurai, Matt Engarde, who had a very bitter rivalry with another actor, and as it turns out, Engarde is an extremely manipulative evil guy who drove women to suicide and hired an assassin to kill his rival, unbeknownst to Phoenix, who believes Engarde is innocent. This assassin kidnaps Maya and holds her ransom to ensure Phoenix gets Engarde declared innocent, and thus begins one of the most emotional cases of Ace Attorney, where Phoenix eventually discovers Engarde's true colors and has to decide between letting Maya die for the sake of justice or condemning an innocent woman to get the death penalty in Engarde's place. In the meantime, Maya is starved for the duration of the case, but refuses to be a victim or lose hope so she focuses on being as much help to Phoenix as she can. Maya proves her resourcefulness by nearly escaping on her own, as well as gathering evidence and cleverly using spirit channeling to pass on information about her location and the case itself to Phoenix, even leaving evidence for him. Although she is terrified for her life, her main priority is always helping Phoenix, and she leaves him a letter telling him that he has to get Engarde convicted no matter what, and that she'll be fine. Phoenix, with lots of help, does manage to save the day --- he proves Engarde betrayed the assassin, who turns on him and lets Maya go due to Assassin Honor (™), and Engarde is successfully convicted. Then, Phoenix, Maya and Pearl have a very touching heartfelt reunion and Maya's back to her usual antics, despite the fact that she almost died, again. That’s not even the end of her trauma. But, the main takeaway from this is that while Maya is human and does have her down moments -- ultimately, she is extremely resilient and doesn’t let anything, not even almost dying, being attacked by her own family, or losing said family, keep her down. Aside from being insanely optimistic, she has a lighthearted and happy-go-lucky personality -- it may come off as naivety or flippancy, but it’s anything but. If anything, because Maya has suffered so much and knows what it’s like to keep losing everything, over and over, that she refuses to give into the negativity, instead staying positive, staying silly, and being true to her very weird personality. Part of it is a front for the sake of herself and others, part of it is her own coping mechanism, but it speaks to how downright tenacious she is that she can still be her quirky, obnoxious, excitable self after everything she’s been through.
Chosen path: Warlock
3 Abilities: Otherworldy Patron (a fey spirit, if possible.... winks), Pact of the Tomb (Teleportation), Necromantic Touch.
Why this path?: For funsies! Warlock is the closest class to her canon occupation and ability, spirit channeling, and her vaguely defined canon powers fall in a similar category. Also, I enjoy the irony of a five foot nothing overly cheerful teenage girl being strongly associated with dark powers. Personality-wise, she is charismatic despite being an oddball, and that cheeseburger quote definitely applies.
blurb code by photosynthesis