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Analysis: Why Dahlia Hawthorne is one of Ace Attorney’s Worst Characters

Posted by u/MetalCicada on r/AceAttorney

Original post via Teddit

Trials and Tribulations. A much-beloved game in the Ace Attorney series, and one that I’ve got quite the history with. Previously, I used to be a massive fan of T&T, praising it as the peak of video game storytelling, and also storytelling in general. But upon reflecting upon the game, I’ve been thinking about it and realizing that much of it doesn’t quite hold up to me, especially the game’s main villain: Dahlia Hawthorne. So, how exactly did we get here?

Starting this post off on a positive note, the first thing I remember loving about Dahlia’s writing was her commanding presence as a villain. This is something I think I’ll always respect about her role in T&T, really. Dahlia’s existence is a dark specter of history that haunts Mia Fey and her protégé Phoenix Wright throughout the entirety of the game, an unshakeable remnant that continues to resurface every time these characters try to move on from the past. And honestly, this is kind of a genius way to write a villain in a game structured the way Ace Attorney is. These games are episodic by nature, and as such, attempting to write a ‘main villain’ over any span of time exceeding a single case puts you in a bit of a tricky situation. Every case in the series is designed with one feeling at the forefront: the satisfaction of solving a mystery against all odds. It should go without saying that writing an *overarching villain* is a contradiction of this structure on a basic level; if you can’t catch the killer, there’s no lasting feeling of satisfaction from solving the crime in the first place. This limitation has seen the Ace Attorney series struggle many times against the concept of the ‘main villain’. At the very bottom of the barrel, we have Matt Engarde— someone who’s literally never relevant before or after he appears as the culprit. Then there’s our circumstantial villains, the kind of bad guys who contribute to the circumstances present throughout the game, but are only actually confronted for their wrongdoings in the final case. These are your Manfred von Karmas and so on. The most common attempt at a ‘main villain’ type of character in this series is a twist villain: someone who appears to be a non-villainous character who gets characterization throughout the entire game, but in the end turns out to have been evil all along!!!! Twist villains are basically always the best villains in the series on average; they get to be fleshed out as people through every point they appear prior to the reveal, and then recontextualize it all in an evil and screwed up way. Which... also means that they get no time to actually *be* the villain before their final confrontation. Huh.

Dahlia Hawthorne is the one and only solution Ace Attorney has ever had to all of these problems.

Memories of a First Impression

Dahlia is introduced in the very first case of her game: Turnabout Memories. She debuts as the girlfriend of Phoenix Wright from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, except he isn’t an Ace Attorney yet; he’s just a lovestruck idiot who’ll defend his girlfriend to the bitter end, no matter what it takes. Hey, doesn’t that way of thinking sound familiar? That’s because believing in people to the bitter end is Phoenix’s exact ideology as a protagonist. This is how Turnabout Memories sets up Dahlia’s villainy in a clever and effective way, by having the crux of her Evil Plans rely on taking this lovable trait from our lovable protagonist and exploiting it as a character flaw. I think this is great at establishing her most prominent traits as a villain and doing it in a way that feels like it has a lot of weight. Her getting away with manipulating Phoenix Wright of all people— the Ace Attorney himself, able to spot any lie from miles away— not only feels incredibly personal, but also gives the striking impression of her having a talent for deceit far above your average culprit. It’s also just really cool to see Phoenix’s previously unquestionably heroic trait being portrayed in a way that functions equally well as a character flaw. However, that’s more of something that makes Phoenix good than something that makes Dahlia good, and she’s mainly just a facilitator for this. I won’t say she’s not good at what she does here, as I think Turnabout Memories is probably her best appearance, but I think her role could plausibly be filled by any other talented liar. Maybe that’s best saved for a later section, though.

Anyways, there’s one other thing I want to mention about Dahlia’s writing in this case before I move on, and it’s what I feel truly introduces the player to how unique her presence in the game is when compared to other series villains. Before she steps into the courtroom, Mia mentions that Dahlia was involved in another murder case that occurred six months prior to this one, and that she believes Dahlia’s actions in the current case relate to the previous one somehow. This isn’t an especially new thing for an Ace Attorney villain, or even a first case villain when considering later games, but it is a great way of deepening both the character and the overall plot, regardless of originality. We know the setup by now: introduce the culprit, imply that there’s something more going on to their story that informs their characterization, and spend the rest of the game exploring that backstory after they’ve already been caught. Dahlia even outright tells Mia Fey at the very end of the case that victory is only hers *for the time being*, and that they’ll somehow cross paths again in the future. Seems like a pretty standard setup.

The unique part is when Dahlia Hawthorne shows up again, looking as good as ever.

Beginnings of the Murderer

Okay, it isn’t like she comes back *after* being arrested. Her next appearance in the game, Turnabout Beginnings, is the earliest case in the game chronologically. She doesn’t just escape from her arrest; the game shows her involvement in a past case that she didn’t get arrested for. But honestly, that’s perhaps *more* valuable than the alternative.

First of all, there’s the sheer rarity of Dahlia being present in another case. There has only been one other game in the series in which the same character has appeared in multiple cases as the culprit, and many consider him a significantly worse character. (I think those people are wrong, but lol.) The fact remains: Dahlia stands out among Ace Attorney’s cast for this reason, and it’s a great distinction to have. Having a character appear in more than one case as a central figure is not just an effective way to give them further exploration— it’s also effective for its ability to put said character in a completely new context, thus being able to show sides of them that weren’t able to be shown before. Turnabout Beginnings smartly realizes this and uses its opportunity well, making Dahlia feel like a much more effective threat than she was in her debut. You’ve already been told that something horrible happened to Mia in her first trial as a defense attorney— something that made her unwilling to take up another for months. Her opponent in this case is Miles Edgeworth, someone who canonically never lost until facing Phoenix Wright years later. And Dahlia Hawthorne is at the center of the incident. All of this combines to give Beginnings an air of hopelessness, even just from seeing these characters exist in the same room as each other. And it doesn’t stop there. Throughout the case, we learn of the relationship between Dahlia Hawthorne and Terry Fawles, which immediately calls to mind the most recent relationship she’s had with someone. A relationship that, of course, ended in murder.

Beginnings does a great job of building up the nature of the relationship between Dahlia and Terry, gradually revealing an increasing amount of layers to it that all scream warning signs at the player. This use of dramatic irony gives the unfolding events the impression of watching a trainwreck in motion, all building up to the climax, where all hope is lost for any of the passengers involved. You catch glimpses of it before it happens. Terry’s coughing, groaning, as if he’s in pain. Dahlia stands by his side, innocently imploring him to trust in her. And he really does love her, he says, so much so that he made a promise to her. A promise to drink the contents of the vial necklace she gave him, if ever he doubted her. Uh oh.

Terry Fawles, right in front of you, starts coughing up blood as whatever determination he had to hold himself together exits his body. He never believed he could be saved. The moment he started doubting himself, he had already thrown away his life to the person he wanted to trust the most in the world. And now he can live the last few moments he has left in ignorant bliss, believing in his angel to the grave. Thanks for the coffee...

Terry Fawles dies.

The lingering atmosphere afterwards is really unlike anything else in the main series. Instead of ending on the reaction from the characters themselves, the screen fades as Mia gives a somber monologue of the following events. No one walks away from this trial the same as they were when it began. No one wins. No one... except for Dahlia. And with that, Turnabout Beginnings comes to a close.

Bridge to the Climax

The following case is what many consider the culmination of the entire Ace Attorney Trilogy, and incidentally, it’s also the culmination of everything which makes Dahlia Hawthorne who she is. However, neither of these things are apparent at first. Bridge to the Turnabout opens like pretty much any other case, with Maya and Pearl about to begin one of their usual impulse adventures, this time inviting Phoenix to travel with them to a temple for spiritual training. Phoenix declines the offer, saying he’s not really interested. That is, until he sees the picture in the newspaper article. It’s a picture of Dahlia Hawthorne. HUH???????

I respect this moment quite a bit for all of the effects it’s able to have. In contrast to the prior episode’s approach of creating dramatic irony through the gap in knowledge between the player and the characters, you’re likely to be just as shocked as Phoenix is here. And beyond that, I think it’s what really establishes Dahlia as this haunting, omnipresent force within the game’s plot. She’s killed anyone who tried to get close to her, she’s ended the first trial of Miles Edgeworth and Mia Fey in tragedy, and now as her old lover Phoenix Wright journeys towards the dead spirits of the past, she’s risen from the grave to drag him back down with her. Or so it seems.

When he arrives at Hazakura Temple, this mysterious girl is introduced not as ‘Dahlia’, but ‘Iris’. This only deepens the mystery surrounding her existence, especially considering that she seems to know Phoenix somehow, but I’m not interested in re-explaining every step of the mystery here (considering that if you’re reading this, you’ve already played Bridge to the Turnabout). This person isn’t Dahlia at all, but in fact her twin sister Iris, who’s been staying at the temple for as long as she can remember. And this is where the writeup diverges from being about its original subject, because understanding Iris is critical for truly grasping Dahlia Hawthorne as a character.

A Whole Different World

“Well, I have to admit it is a whole different world up here...”

“I’m glad to hear you say that.”

“Huh?”

“Talking with dead people... Who does it help anyway? ...I hate it.”

Despite having lived at Hazakura Temple all her life, Iris holds nothing but contempt for the practice of spirit channeling. It’s one of the first things you learn about her. Even before finding out that she knows Phoenix somehow, the above quotes are from the first real conversation they have with each other. Regardless of how important this trait is to her later characterization, this is by definition one of the things her writing is founded on. I think it’s pretty interesting.

Let’s be real: the Ace Attorney series is defined by murder. Every story the games try to tell revolves around it. This is made (relatively) reasonable by the constant introductions of new settings, ensuring that no one part of the world feels like too much of a homicide magnet. That is, unless you deliberately reuse a part of that world and make it intrinsically connected to the overarching plot. That’s when you end up with the Fey clan.

The Feys are messed up. An element of the world that has to lead to murder scenarios over and over again is one that will inevitably be horrific on a fundamental level, but I feel like not enough people bring this up, both in-universe and out. Yet Iris’s character is seemingly founded on this, and it’s something that drives the entire plot of Bridge to the Turnabout. The clan’s hierarchy “functions” under the rule of a Master, whose family is known as the ‘main family’; all other families are known as ‘branch families’, who are deemed eternally inferior to the main family and must serve them forever. Naturally, this has resulted in a blood-stained history of the branch families attempting to rise to power by way of murdering the main family. Even in the present day, the cycle of violence continues, with Morgan Fey attempting to both frame and outright assassinate her niece Maya Fey, all for the sake of foisting the title of Master onto her unwitting nine-year-old daughter. That alone would make anyone justified in having a grudge against the Feys, but Iris’s history with them runs deeper than that. After all, both she and her sister Dahlia are products of that violent cycle.

As explained to Phoenix in the second half of the case, Dahlia and Iris are the twin daughters of Morgan Fey. They were born not out of motherly love, not to have futures of their own, but as vessels for Morgan’s anger against the Fey clan that had denied her the title of Master. The only purpose they served to their mother was as tools, to facilitate her dream of attaining the glory of the main family. Neither of them were born as the people they became, nor did they deserve to suffer through the lives forced upon them. They were literally just kids. Innocent, impressionable, *vulnerable* kids, with no choice other than to take all their mother’s leftover hatred and bitterness. Makes complete sense why they feel all this resentment towards the Fey clan now, doesn’t it? Even so, this is only the beginning of Dahlia Hawthorne’s life of hell on earth.

“...My sister... I felt sorry for her. She was abandoned by our mother and never got any love from our father either.”

“Yes, but... it was the same for you too, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but at least I had Sister Bikini, who was like a mother to me. If only Dahlia had come with me to Hazakura Temple...”

Upon realizing Morgan couldn’t ascend to the position of the Fey clan’s Master, her husband no longer saw value in their marriage. Taking their daughters with him, Mr. Hawthorne eventually remarried. We don’t have a lot to examine in terms of the kind of person he was, but what little we do have depicts him as being a pretty unambiguously terrible guy. He divorced his wife because she couldn’t claw her way to power and influence for his sake. He left one of his daughters behind at an old temple because he considered her a liability. And as for his other daughter, he never loved her in any meaningful way. Mr. Hawthorne only cared about his relationships with people as long as he got something out of them. So doesn’t it make complete sense that Dahlia became convinced that she couldn’t live for anyone but herself? After never receiving love from the people she needed it from the most? After only ever being seen as an object through which others could attain their dreams?

While living with her father, Dahlia Hawthorne was introduced to Terry Fawles, the man who would become her tutor. During this time, although the specifics (including who began the relationship) are never mentioned, Terry fell in love with her. An interesting fact you may not know about this relationship is that Dahlia Hawthorne was 14 years old at the time. Terry Fawles, her tutor, was six years older than her, at age 20. Sweet, innocent, pure little Terry Fawles from Turnabout Beginnings is... an unapologetic pedophile.

Doesn’t that make it much easier to understand why she couldn’t trust him, why she wanted him to take the fall, and why she would plan to steal away the most valuable possession of a father who never saw any value in Dahlia herself? Isn’t all this a perfect explanation for why Dahlia hates Mia and Maya so intensely, the very embodiments of the system that created her? Hasn’t this game made a perfect argument for why Dahlia Hawthorne did what she did only because no one loved her, no one saw value in her, no one was there for her, and because her entire life was defined by other people trying to use her for their own personal gain?

I think so. But I don’t think Trials and Tribulations agrees with me.

Distant Traces of Beauty

I mentioned at the beginning of this post that I consider Turnabout Memories the best of Dahlia’s appearances, but this is really only as long as it exists in a vacuum, unaffected by the rest of her presence in the game. It’s not really that I think Dahlia does anything particularly amazing in this case, either. Instead, it’s just because I think it’s the only part of the game that, when taken by itself, is free of her otherwise self-defeating writing.

To give an example of what I mean, I’d like to talk once again about her best quality in Memories: the way she plays off of Phoenix and takes advantage of his natural strengths, turning them into weaknesses that work to her benefit. It truly is impressive to watch her cause this subversion of Phoenix’s usual character writing, where his endless unconditional belief in his loved ones becomes an antagonistic force that you have to fight against. He’s on the *bad guy’s side* here. Not knowingly, but still. He’s fighting as hard as he can to defend a woman who doesn’t care about him in the slightest, all because he *genuinely believes* in her, and will take that belief to the bitter end, just like he does for all of his clients. And the conclusion of Turnabout Memories is that his belief is misplaced. His ideology is flawed. If he had stayed true to his undying belief in Dahlia, not only would he have gotten himself killed, but he would have let a murderer run free. I think this is awesome, because not only is it unrealistic and dangerous to treat unconditional belief in others as this ultimate moral good, it’s also simply boring to have a protagonist with no flaws, who never gets meaningfully challenged as a person by the experiences they go through. Taken by itself, Memories seems to recognize this by presenting a scenario where all of this is displayed in full force.

That would be pretty cool. But I’m tired of pretending that this is the actual intended message of Turnabout Memories.

At the very end of Bridge to the Turnabout, there’s one final reveal that changes everything we thought we knew about Phoenix’s college relationship. Iris arrives at the stand, and before her verdict is to be decided, she turns to Phoenix and apologizes to him. She explains that the person he was in love with for those six months in college wasn’t actually Dahlia Hawthorne. It was her, Iris, *pretending* to be Dahlia Hawthorne. And after getting hit by that twist, Phoenix utters this line: “You really are the person I always thought you were. Even after Dahlia Hawthorne was found guilty... I still believed in you.”

Some people might think this twist is romantic. I, on the other hand, think it is stupid.

The ending of Bridge to the Turnabout completely erases the idea that Phoenix Wright ever could have had flaws, or that he was ever wrong for believing in someone. He was actually believing in the *correct* person all along. The only mistake he made was that he mixed up two identical people, but his belief itself was always founded in a good place. As the curtains close on the trial for the murder of Misty Fey, Iris blushes cutely at Phoenix, and he’s reassured that he was always right for believing in people. Trials and Tribulations was only *pretending* to create nuance and conflict in the protagonist’s ideology so that it could lead us to the grand conclusion that those things didn’t actually exist.

So where does that leave Dahlia in Turnabout Memories, then? She wasn’t there to do anything with Phoenix’s character, despite her presence being entirely reliant on her relationship with him. And her own characterization isn’t anything to write home about either, being simply that she killed someone to cover the tracks of her past crimes and then lied about it. Ultimately, that means Dahlia’s existence as a case 1 villain is for the sole purpose of being an evil villain that you have to arrest for her evil crimes. There is essentially as much depth to Dahlia in her debut case as there is for Frank Sahwit.

Interpreting this case as generously as possible, one could argue that Turnabout Memories is meant to represent the end of Dahlia’s cycle of suffering, where she becomes so obsessed with self-sufficiency that she uses someone that she *should* be close to (according to their relationship status) as simply a tool to achieve her own goals, just as her parents used her. Unfortunately, not only do I not have enough faith in Shu Takumi to believe he would write this, I also have evidence from the rest of the game to suggest this interpretation is unfounded.

Robbing Cradles Before Diamonds

I’m pretty sure most Ace Attorney fans by now have heard the complaint about Terry Fawles being a pedophile, whether it’s been from me or from anyone else. However, I don’t actually believe that pedophilia has absolutely no place in a story like this. That’s of course not to say that I don’t think it’s an incredibly immoral and disturbing thing, but murder mysteries are constantly attempting to explore the frames of mind that lead people to do immoral and disturbing things. Indeed, I think Turnabout Beginnings would be a far better case not by *removing* the uncomfortable romance, but by deliberately commenting on it and integrating it into the story, as I think it would have fit perfectly into the kind of narrative Dahlia’s character could have been written to explore. Sadly, though, this writeup isn’t a rewrite of Trials and Tribulations. Thus, I must address the core problem with the game itself here. Turnabout Beginnings forces Dahlia into a clearly disturbing and tragic scenario, yet it not only frames her as being at fault for everything, but also pretends that everyone around her is an innocent party when that’s in no way the truth.

First things first, the case starts in the defendant lobby, with Mia giving an internal monologue about how she never should have accepted Terry’s case and that she feels like dying. This is in no way relevant to my analysis, but I would like to mention that this is incredibly relatable, and does a great job of immersing me in her role. After this, Terry Fawles himself is introduced, and the writing already lays it on thick that you’re supposed to think he’s the most adorable blameless little guy ever. No exaggeration, Mia goes into the courtroom thinking “When I saw those overflowing eyes and heard that simple, child-like voice... I just had the feeling that he was telling the truth.” Everything about this feels unearned to me, but I’d like to specifically take note of the “simple, child-like” part, as well as the fact that Mia just instinctively *knows* he must be telling the truth here. Dahlia hasn’t been brought up at this point, but it’s important to keep in mind for later.

Dahlia first appears in this case as ‘Melissa Foster’, a seemingly unrelated party to the crime. The judge immediately takes the opportunity to say

“Hmm... Ohh... When I look at you... How can I put it...? You look as scrumptious as a double-double and a dozen doughnut holes... I feel like I want to hurry up and hand down a verdict just to have a bite”,

which definitely isn’t creepy at all, but whatever. After a few cross-examinations, Mia becomes convinced that ‘Melissa’ is the culprit, but has no motive to prove it with. Needing information, she turns to Terry once again for information about the incident he was arrested for five years prior, during which he allegedly threw a fourteen-year-old girl off a bridge. And so, he starts explaining.

Five years ago, Terry Fawles kidnapped his girlfriend, Dahlia Hawthorne. She was, as he puts it, his “Teen Angel”, at only fourteen years old. He did this to obtain a diamond from Dahlia’s rich father as ransom. However, he claims that this was all planned by Dahlia and her sister Valerie, and that he was “betrayed” by the two of them when Valerie shot at him for kidnapping her 14-year-old sister (who, need I remind you, was also his girlfriend). This incredibly convenient story is one that nobody other than Terry himself can verify, and one that just so happens to set up his grooming victim as the ultimate bad guy who deserves all the blame. Mia Fey believes him completely.

WhHDSFSFJHDGYRmVXB;SFDGBDAJSHDSFj,d What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What?

I don’t know if this was the writers being clueless, or if they genuinely believed there was nothing wrong with the implications of this, but wow. This is the absolute worst possible conclusion they could have their protagonist come to. Even though the issues with this seem painfully clear to me, it bothers me to the extent that I have to rant about it regardless.

Mia’s response to this situation is irresponsible and dangerous even in a solely in-universe context, but it also sets an awful precedent in its handling of the very real subject matter it involves. Like, okay, I know that the rule of Ace Attorney is to always believe in your client and fight for them when they have no one on their side, but there’s a line where you’ve stopped fighting the good fight and are just jumping through hoops to defend someone with obviously murky morals. Terry Fawles crosses that line. He’s a child abductor, a pedophile, a convicted criminal, and even when taking him entirely at his word, a co-conspirator in a plan to steal a large sum of money from a stranger. Yet in spite of all of these red flags that would give any sane person reason to doubt him, Mia not only takes his word as absolute truth, but makes extreme moral judgements on others because of it. “Is Dahlia Hawthorne an angel, or is she really a [demon]”, she wonders. The only justification she’s given for buying into Terry’s absurd and unprovable scenario is that he looks “simple” and “child-like”, and at that point, what exactly makes him more trustworthy than Dahlia? Why does Mia get to think the judge is a moron for believing in a shy, scared little girl, while somehow Actual Child Predator Terry over here is 100% reliable because his eyes are just *overflowing* with innocence and purity? The very first scene in the game featuring Dahlia has the judge note that she “radiates a glow of complete sincerity”, and Mia gets ticked off. But how is the baseline Mia uses for trusting Terry different whatsoever? Lucky for us, then, that the protagonist is always right. Lucky for us that Mia Fey can put her trust in anyone she wants for the flimsiest possible reasons, and everything will work out because the plot bends to her will, even when that requires said plot to skirt around a 20-year-old being head over heels for a child over half a decade younger than him.

But I digress; this isn’t a Terry Fawles post. This is about how the narrative treats Dahlia, or more specifically, why I don’t think she deserves the generous interpretation some fans give her of being involved in anything actually meaningful. Turnabout Beginnings isn’t just about excusing your client being a terrible person with nothing more than a throwaway joke line about it. Turnabout Beginnings is *also* about how the person on the other side of the relationship with him is the most pure evil human being in the world. It’s here that I’d like to mention that Dahlia isn’t someone Mia knows anything about at the time of Terry’s backstory dump; she still thinks ‘Melissa Foster’ is someone else entirely. The only information that she has to work with regarding Dahlia Hawthorne is the highly unreliable recollections of Terry Fawles, and yet she comes to the decision of judging this child’s whole moral character on this basis. But like, even based on what we’ve already been given, isn’t it weird that Mia feels no empathy at all for this girl?

Let’s look at this from the perspective of someone who knows nothing about the events of Turnabout Memories yet - in other words, Mia’s perspective in this scene. What we currently know about Dahlia is that she was a relatively young girl who fell into an icy river and presumably died, and at the time, her adult tutor was madly in love with her. If said tutor is to be believed, she planned this out so that she could frame him for the crime. This... pretty strongly invites empathy? Like, okay, planning out her own death and framing someone else for it is without a doubt not the ideal choice to make here. Even so, there is a very recognizable and understandable line of logic behind the way she acts. Terry is someone Dahlia hates and wants to get rid of (and the reason why is clear, considering that he’s obsessively and uncomfortably in love with her, especially taking her massive trust issues with authority figures into consideration). She wants to get rid of him because he is an active detriment to her life, something that should be easy to pick up on considering his immoral relationship with her. It is not uncommon or unreasonable for a child grooming victim to want to escape their horrific relationship by any means possible, even if framing someone for murder is of course never the answer. Dahlia’s motivation for framing Terry is *human*, incredibly so, and to make her into the sole guilty party here would require Mia to completely ignore the immorality of Terry’s involvement in the situation. Hey, wait a minute... she does do this!

Okay, can we just talk about the throwaway line Mia has about Terry being a pedo? I wanted to move on to the next section after that last paragraph, so this will be a bit of a non-sequitur, but I couldn’t find any place to put it until now, and I don’t feel satisfied writing this essay without talking about this part. Right after Terry himself tells Mia that Dahlia was just 14 years old, she reacts in clear shock, looking at him and thinking “I guess you were robbing cradles before diamonds.” I’ve tried to view this line from so many angles, but I can’t see it as anything other than Mia plainly judging her client for perpetuating this relationship. So like, what’s the point of a line like this when the rest of the case proceeds to act as though Terry is nothing but pure-hearted? Is it supposed to be a lighthearted joke, not meant to be taken seriously?? Are the writers trying to legitimately comment on this issue, just with no self-awareness about how the entire rest of the plot is set up here??? Either possibility is equally frustrating to me, and Mia acknowledging my biggest complaint with the case for a fleeting moment before going back to business as usual feels like I’m being mocked. Like the game is rubbing it in my face and taunting me about it. I am trying to write this analysis in a composed manner so as to convey my opinion on Dahlia Hawthorne with dignity, but I cannot possibly overstate how much this frustrates me, so please imagine, if you will, someone screaming and crying behind the computer screen - just overall having a rather large temper tantrum. Thank you. Let’s move on.

Sins of the Father

Terry Fawles wasn’t the only factor in Dahlia’s life that contributed to her fake kidnapping plot. Here we move away from Mia’s perspective and back towards the larger scope of the game’s narrative, as understanding how Dahlia’s father shaped her actions requires us to be acquainted with the whole story at hand here. Unlike the way Trials and Tribulations wants us to view Terry, Mr. Hawthorne is never depicted as anything other than a bad and harmful person. He’s a rich and greedy jeweler who sees the people around him solely as personal sources of value for him, having no qualms with treating them that way, either. This is foundationally connected to Dahlia’s motivation for the fake kidnapping, as explained by Iris in Bridge to the Turnabout: “She didn’t do it for the money. It was revenge. On our father.” And there you have it. Dahlia’s plan wasn’t made out of pure greed, but rather, out of a desire for vengeance against the man who had abused her.

There’s an additional layer to all of this that I’m waiting for later in this writeup to talk about, but even without touching upon that, this is an incredibly sympathetic and understandable motivation to devise her plan. Ace Attorney depicts so many of its culprits much more empathetically than Dahlia despite giving far less relatable motivations for their actions — to name one, let’s go with Acro from Turnabout Big Top, who attempts to murder a completely oblivious child because she indirectly caused an accident that put his brother in a coma. To be entirely clear, I think the motivation behind Acro’s crime is actually very well-executed and emotionally resonant, but I’m not going to pretend that there’s any degree of rationality to it. Meanwhile, Dahlia commits a significantly less egregious crime and is spurred on by infinitely more unfortunate circumstances, and yet Mia Fey is content to literally call her a “demon woman”. I don’t understand it! How can this series give its protagonist the driving motivation of wanting to “help those with no one on their side” and yet indulge itself in nothing but hatred for someone who has had the entire world against her from the second she was born? How can Ace Attorney base its ultimate power fantasy in defending people, empathizing with them, and then turn a blind eye to a girl whose very existence is defined by the suffering she’s had to endure? How have I not even started talking about the actual events of the case yet?!

Valerie Hawthorne

I think the best way to introduce the plot events that occur in Turnabout Beginnings is by talking about Valerie, the case’s victim. Poor Valerie, honestly. Dahlia and Iris are both discussed endlessly by fans, but Valerie is always left by the wayside, a corpse forgotten in the trunk of a stranger’s car. But now’s my chance to bring her legacy back to life, by becoming the first ever person with a tangible opinion on Valerie Hawthorne.

As I’ve thought at length about the way Dahlia is portrayed in Trials and Tribulations, I’ve become increasingly negative on not just Dahlia herself, but everyone surrounding her as well. I wanted to wait until I started talking about Bridge to the Turnabout again to address this part of Dahlia’s character, but in order to give Valerie the analysis she deserves, I’m compelled to mention something that I feel holds Dahlia back more than almost anything else about her writing: anyone who empathizes with her is treated as a poor fool being helplessly manipulated. I’ll expand upon this in greater depth once I finally get to talk about Bridge itself, but the reason I bring it up now is because it absolutely applies to Valerie in particular. However, unlike any other character who gets treated this way, Valerie’s relationship with her sister is in no way diminished by this. In fact, even despite how much I dislike everything else involved in Dahlia’s story, I’ve come to realize that Valerie is a hidden gem of moral complexity buried within an otherwise poorly written plot.

Valerie was a police officer. Presumably, this means she had a strong attachment to justice and a desire to do the right thing. Even so, the first chronological action we know she performs is helping to stage the kidnapping of her stepsister Dahlia. I would assume this implies Valerie believed that staging this kidnapping and placing all of the blame for the crime upon Terry Fawles was the correct thing to do; if that isn’t true, then she has no real motivation to become an accomplice to Dahlia’s crime, since she didn’t get anything else out of it. As I’ve said, anyone aware of what Dahlia was going through would have good reason to be disgusted by it, and it’s very easy to believe this is exactly what Valerie felt when agreeing to the fake kidnapping plan. This is a concept with a lot of potential that sets up her morals in an interesting way. As the years went on, and as she continued to serve in the police force, it weighed on her that what she’d done wasn’t right. Even if she did what she did to protect her stepsister and put a child predator behind bars, she had orchestrated her own crime in the process of trying to bring about retribution. Unfortunately for her, she would get her chance to confront that crime five years after the original incident, when Terry escaped from prison and contacted her, telling her that he just wanted to talk. Left with no choice but to comply if she wanted to retain any control over the situation, Valerie acquiesced and planned a meetup with him atop Dusky Bridge. Fed up with having lied to the world for half a decade, Valerie Hawthorne planned to do one thing above all else: “Talk to Dahlia. Tell her this time, the whole truth must come out.”

There’s a good number of things to dig into here, but first, I’d like to elaborate upon the reasoning Valerie used to justify staging her stepsister’s kidnapping, and there’s a surprising amount of ambiguity present. The motivations behind Valerie’s involvement with her stepsister’s plan are never given by the game, and therefore, it’s up to the players to interpret for themselves. I think the easiest thing to explain is why she agreed to steal the diamond in the first place. Mr. Hawthorne, their father, is portrayed as a terrible person, and it’s simple to assume that Valerie felt he deserved punishment for his actions. The matter of Terry Fawles, however, is more complicated. It’s easy for us, the readers, to look from the outside in and say that Terry was framed because he’s a creep who engages in disgusting behavior. However, Trials and Tribulations seems to have difficulty comprehending that pedophilia is a bad thing. It certainly *could* be argued that Valerie set Terry up for a false conviction because she genuinely realized he wasn’t a good person, but because he’s consistently treated by the rest of the plot as a morally pure victim, this interpretation doesn’t mesh very well with the more positive reading of Terry’s character that the game wants its players to have.

Really, there can only be one possibility as to why Valerie acted the way she did. She was manipulated into believing that Terry deserved to be punished, undoubtedly by Dahlia. And do I think that Valerie being ‘tricked’ into throwing Terry under the bus, as opposed to her acting on a genuine belief that he’s a bad person, weakens her character writing? Surprisingly... no! It would have been nice if T&T realized that the bad pedophile is bad, but whether the driving force behind Valerie’s decisions is seen as truth or lie by the game doesn’t actually matter to why her characterization is effective. Valerie is motivated to act on her belief because she thinks it’s the right thing to do, and whether her belief itself is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ isn’t something the game thinks it needs to make a concrete statement on. This does nothing but enhance Valerie’s writing, providing a refreshing oasis of moral grayness in a desert of black-and-white character judgments. Despite this amount of complexity already being standout within its context though, I wouldn’t consider Valerie a legitimately impressive character without the other component of her characterization: the way she handles the truth.

As I mentioned before, Valerie’s ultimate goal above all else seems to have been ‘doing the right thing’. Yet this of course doesn’t mean that she was always *able* to, and the fact that she achieved ‘justice’ by breaking the law and lying about it ate away at her over the years. She couldn’t reconcile her goals and her actions with each other, and when Terry Fawles broke out of prison to request one last conversation with her, she decided to do the only thing she could to clear up her own guilt by telling the truth, roping Dahlia into the meetup as well. This is a terrible idea for everyone except for Valerie Hawthorne.

Firstly, given Terry’s relationship with Dahlia, reuniting the pedophile with his victim and forcing said victim’s hand to confess the ways *she* wronged *him* is just obviously a bad plan. Again, framing the dude for murder was definitely not the ideal play for Dahlia to make, but he was a child predator and she had pre-existing trust issues, so it’s at least comprehensible why she would do what she did. Even without taking Terry’s contentious morals into account, forcibly piling all of the responsibility onto Dahlia to explain how she was the bad person in the situation, regardless of whether or not it’s the right thing to do, is only going to exacerbate the trust issues she has with others. Valerie has to be aware of this. Dahlia placed her trust in her older stepsister and harbors no regret for her actions, so being betrayed and pressured into the role of the guilty party without even any prior warning will unquestionably send her into a panic, but that doesn’t matter to Valerie. In addition, this plan’s not just a bad idea in regards to what it means for Dahlia — telling the truth has essentially no value to Terry, either. For half a decade, Terry has lived as a criminal, having lost everything and everyone important to him. Even if the truth does come out, there is absolutely nothing he has left to return to, no one who will jump for joy over well-known criminal Terry Fawles being abruptly exonerated after five long years. Even the opening of the case states that no one wants to believe in him. And even beyond that, Terry doesn’t *want* the truth to come out in the first place, because he would demonstrably rather die than stop believing in Dahlia’s innocence. So, if the truth has lost all meaning for Terry, and will no doubt be outright rejected by Dahlia, what’s the point of doing this in the first place?

Well, isn’t it easy to see by now? Valerie wasn’t planning to tell the truth for the good of anyone other than herself. Her inability to bear the weight of her own criminal past alongside her dream of serving justice is what drives her actions leading up to the plot of Turnabout Beginnings, not a selfless desire to save anyone, because from the very start she knew that saving anyone other than herself was impossible. Maybe if she had done something earlier things could be different, but it’s been five years since she stained her soul with the crime, and nobody cares what the real truth is anymore. The only thing Valerie can try to salvage at this point is her own conscience, and that’s why she still wants to have the truth brought to light. It’s nothing but a meaningless platitude, and yet Valerie needs to cling to it, because it’s the only thing she has left to convince herself that she’s still capable of being a good person. She let a man rot in a cell for 20% of his life over a crime he didn’t commit, and now she wants to pretend like she can still live the life of a protector of justice. Then she gets stabbed to death by Dahlia before she can even try.

Valerie Hawthorne is someone who makes a bad decision in worse circumstances and spends the rest of her life running from it, trying to bury her regrets by playing the part of a champion of justice when she knows she’s betrayed the very ideal of justice she’s holding herself to. She gets torn apart by her conflict between what she wants to be and what she’s already become, the dissonance only growing stronger with every passing year. Her final moments are spent trying to act the role of the good guy for an audience of no one but herself, all until her sins finally catch up to her and her performance is finished for good. And the truth dies with her.

She might be my favorite character in the game.

This Woman is a Demon

Wait, right, I’m supposed to be talking about Dahlia. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I don’t think she benefits a lot from her stepsister, whose interesting qualities rely only on Dahlia being evil enough to set up a scenario where Valerie can exhibit said qualities. It’s a one sided relationship, writing-wise. Dahlia is less of an active beneficiary in this dynamic than she is an instrument being used to make the other party more compelling, and honestly, no matter how positively you view her relationships with Terry and Phoenix, they both have this problem as well. They don’t reveal anything about Dahlia because they were never designed to; because the only thing she seems to be good for is propelling the development and exploration of others. The only thing she seems to be is... an evil villain that you have to arrest for her evil crimes.

I’m now going to focus on that a little more. Dahlia isn’t just considered ‘evil’ the way other culprits in the series are. Instead, the perception the story wants you to have of her is that she’s literally *demonic*. This isn’t an aspect that’s focused on very much in Turnabout Memories, but it really starts becoming apparent by the end of Turnabout Beginnings, with Mia repeatedly saying things like “This woman is a demon” and asking herself “Who can testify to that demon woman’s crimes?” There are a lot of reasons why I think this worsens her writing.

First of all, I don’t even really get how Dahlia’s actions leading up to Turnabout Beginnings are more despicable than a lot of the other culprits in the Trilogy, or even in Trials and Tribulations itself. To recap, she conspires with two other people to steal a valuable gemstone, frames one of them for the theft, then kills the other and blames the same person for that murder. You know who else ropes an innocent person into a plan to steal *multiple* valuable gemstones, forces them to take the fall, and kills anyone who might let the truth come out? Luke Atmey. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t remember him ever being referred to as an embodiment of pure evil. He doesn’t even do this for revenge on anyone who’s done anything wrong, but for the simple purpose of attaining prestige and glamor. Yet once again, Dahlia committing a lesser crime driven by a more sympathetic motive somehow doesn’t stop the game from treating her as if she’s several orders of magnitude worse. Yes, I will concede that she later manipulates Terry into killing himself, which is worse than anything Atmey ends up doing (even though I maintain this is far less black-and-white than T&T wants it to be, given that Terry is a bad person on multiple levels, which the game refuses to acknowledge). But Mia doesn’t develop her extreme vendetta as a result of witnessing Terry’s suicide. She’s convinced that this girl is the worst person she’ll ever meet from the very first time she’s made aware of Dahlia’s existence. I guess this could be the result of the writers wanting Dahlia to be a more sinister presence, but I feel like working out these kinds of writing flaws should have taken priority over making her as single-mindedly evil as possible.

About two months ago, a friend mentioned something to me about the way they evaluate villain quality, and it struck a chord with me. According to them, the makings of a good villain can be broken down into five aspects: menace, active presence, philosophy, thematic relevance, and context for villainy, with each being more valuable of a quality than the last. This is pretty much the exact same way I view villain quality, and it’s also exactly why I think Dahlia’s showing as a villain is disappointing, even without considering everything about her that’s outright offensive or otherwise a waste of potential. Sure, at her best, Dahlia is an imposing and threatening force that the player wants to take down. But this isn’t something I think makes her impressive by itself — in fact, this is nothing more than the *baseline* of quality that a villain should reach if they want to be considered at all competent. The fact that Dahlia can only achieve the first two qualities a villain should have at her best is something that by default prevents her from being very impressive to me at all. However, I can already imagine the counterarguments to that assertion. “What about her childhood? Surely that adequately demonstrates the context for her villainy, with how T&T reasonably views her upbringing as awful?” My answer is “no”; that simply doesn’t cut it. It’s a nice argument in theory, sure. Unfortunately, “in theory” is all it’s capable of being, because this is demonstrably not the actual context for her villainy in the story.

Broken Hopes and Dreams

For the vast majority of this essay, I’ve been presenting Dahlia as a character who could have done the things she did for complex reasons, such as receiving no love from her family, being seen solely as a tool to gain power, and other such things. While this is a fascinating idea to entertain, it’s one that hasn’t ever been and won’t ever be reality. As I stated earlier, Dahlia is someone who the game does not allow anyone to reasonably empathize with, since anyone who does so is treated as hopelessly wrong, and indeed, Bridge to the Turnabout provides perhaps the most striking example of this issue. You may have noticed that a couple of lines explaining Dahlia’s sympathetic background and motivations have been quoted from Iris here, and while that seems like a clear example of someone else being able to empathize with her, this actually couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, the vast majority of these lines aren’t spoken by Iris at all, but by Dahlia herself, who is simply pretending to be Iris so that she can frame her. As such, the only person in nearly all of the story who is *actually* capable of empathizing with Dahlia is... Dahlia. Not a great position for her to be in, especially given that during this time, she’s still actively attempting to manipulate people for her own gain. But there are still matters to discuss here. Just because the game near-universally refuses to let others empathize with Dahlia doesn’t mean that what she’s saying about her childhood circumstances shaping how she grew up is necessarily untrue. However, the credibility of even that drops when taking into account that Bridge sets up several character parallels seemingly to show that the only thing to blame for the way Dahlia turned out is her own inherent evil.

First things first, let’s take Dahlia in comparison to the character she’s obviously meant to be compared to: her sister Iris. The contrast here is clear. Iris is the gentle and compassionate one, while Dahlia is the callous and malicious one. Notably, they grew up under the same circumstances, and yet Iris grew up to be a much kinder person. In the one scene where Iris is allowed to empathize with her sister, she describes her as always being so smart and strong, while Iris herself was weak, cowardly, and not “useful”. This phrasing I feel especially casts doubt on Iris’s sympathy for Dahlia being intended as reliable. With the knowledge that Dahlia has been consistently portrayed as a cunning manipulator up to this point, Iris defining her sister’s problems around how “useless” she was to her while also uncharacteristically insulting herself carries the implication that she internalized it as a result of Dahlia telling it to her. It’s certainly still possible to point to some of the things Iris says about her sister and claim them as evidence to support that Trials and Tribulations does empathize with Dahlia, but given the overall stance of the entire rest of the game prior to this (being that Dahlia is an irredeemable demon woman who is at fault for everything), it’s extremely difficult for me to believe that. That stance is only reinforced throughout the rest of Bridge to the Turnabout, in even clearer ways than this.

By this point, you might’ve noticed that I haven’t made much reference to Morgan Fey, despite her arguably being the most important factor in how Dahlia became the person we’re presented with. This is because Morgan’s impact is only really measurable in relation to the impact of the Fey clan, the hierarchy that she spends her life chasing after, and how that desperation affects everyone around her. It all culminates in Bridge to the Turnabout. Fortunately, they decided to take advantage of this opportunity by resolving every part of the Fey clan plotline in the worst way possible so that they could make absolutely sure the player knows Dahlia is VERY evil. I mentioned before that Iris speaks of spirit channeling as a practice she hates, but what I didn’t mention is that the rest of the cast laments the burden the Fey clan places on people as well. Bikini explains that “nothing has changed throughout the history of the clan”; that “it’s always the cause of tragedy.” Phoenix wonders: “Is the power of the Master worth this much bloodshed...?” Maya, out of fear and misery, tells him “The Fey clan... I don’t want any more to do with it.” His response is to think “Oh, Maya... The pain the Fey bloodline causes must be unbearable.” So, what does Trials and Tribulations do to resolve the unending cycle of torture that the Fey clan visits upon the world?

Absolutely nothing.

This is another part of the game where the larger Ace Attorney morals negatively affect the story it’s trying to tell, and in this case, it’s the moral that ‘the worst of times are when one has to force their biggest smiles.’ I won’t say that this moral is inherently a bad thing, because perseverance even when times are tough is an important thing to maintain all throughout one’s life. But there are also times when simply gritting one’s teeth and sticking it out is an outright bad decision. One that lets the problem fester and continue because simply enduring it is seen as the only solution. Nonetheless, Trials and Tribulations refuses to compromise on this moral, espousing it through the words of Miles Edgeworth. “Maya is a much wiser person than she appears,” he says. “Now is exactly the time when she needs to be as strong as she can.” In the end, Maya embodies this moral entirely, saying that she’s still happy even though her mother is dead: “My sis, my mother, Mr. Armando, Nick, and Pearly... If even one of you weren’t there, I’m sure I wouldn’t still be alive right now. That’s why... I have to be strong. For all the people that were there for me when I needed them.” And she’s praised for this. “I’m impressed... You truly are the daughter of Mystic Misty,” Bikini congratulates her. All of this is to say that the problems of the Fey clan are just something that Maya and her friends and family will have to endure presumably for the rest of their lives. If they don’t like that their lives are dedicated to bearing the brunt of a system that continually results in murder and tragedy? Too bad! They’ve gotta suck it up and deal with it. But any attempt to criticize the way things are, to CHANGE things? That just won’t do. Maya was being weak when she said that she hated living with the burden of the Fey clan. Iris was being weak when she said that the hierarchy of spirit channeling has ruined and ended countless lives. They should have just been stronger.

If this applies to our good guys, it follows that this also applies to our ultimate villain, Dahlia Hawthorne. If the endpoint of Maya’s journey with the Fey clan across the Trilogy is to realize that she has to be ‘strong’ for them, then the opposite can be said for why Dahlia is seen as a failure by the end of her life: because she *wasn’t strong enough*. She’s subjected to being used as a tool for power by her parents (which, may I add, is the *exact same thing we see and sympathize with Pearl for*). But instead of continuing to Smile No Matter What, she broke under the pressure and tried to take revenge on those who would hurt her. This is why she’s condemned by the game. She’s not allowed to lash out or do anything as a result of her trauma that isn’t completely morally correct, because this means that she isn’t being strong the way that the good guys are supposed to be. It essentially means that she’s not allowed to possess any kind of nuance, not in a game that believes any harmful action is the result of one’s personal wrongdoing rather than the negative influence of their environment on a larger scale. The Fey clan’s generational cycle of violence will never be permitted to end, because Trials and Tribulations doesn’t believe there’s anything wrong with it in the first place. It believes that anyone who does wrong by the Fey clan is personally at fault for being an evil human being, and that the only solution to this problem is simply to hope the next person will just take the violence in stride, not to actually make any significant changes. Trials and Tribulations is a story about a cycle of suffering which refuses to recognize that fact, because it simply doesn’t *want* to talk about the larger systemic issues that it accidentally made integral to its characters; it wants to be a story about people believing in others and doing good things no matter what. And it’s that refusal to acknowledge its own nuance that tears it apart.

For All of Eternity, You’ll Have to Remain as Dahlia Hawthorne

“And that’s exactly the punishment you’ll never be able to escape from. For all of eternity, you’ll have to remain as Dahlia Hawthorne. A miserable, pathetic, weak creature who can never win at anything... And for you, there is no escape from that. No hope of freedom.”

These are the final lines spoken to Dahlia Hawthorne by Mia Fey, the last words said to her before she has her breakdown and is defeated forever. By having her evil spirit (presumably) be sent canonically to hell. It should go without saying that I don’t think this is very good writing.

If there’s anything that proves Dahlia is a pure evil villain above all else, it’s this breakdown. I would try to describe how I feel about it, but I think one of my other friends already put it very nicely in a prior conversation we had, so I’ll just quote him here:

“It might actually be really dumb that the resolution to Dahlia Hawthorne is this bizarre punishment fantasy where Mia tells her that she’s the worst person ever, that nobody has ever loved her, then exorcises her to eternal purgatory. Like, even if she really was the least sympathetic character ever, I think I’d still feel like that was way too self-indulgent and extreme. Even disregarding the framing of how she’s portrayed, it’s actually bad how the game just tells you that you should hate her, all the protagonists hate her, and you were destined to do this from the start because she is evil. There is zero nuance to any of this lmao. The game just tells you she is evil, and she is, and you take her down because she is very evil. It’s also definitely strange how it is never recognized how she does hypothetically have sympathetic traits. This isn’t subtlety; it’s just the game being clueless and not being able to write an overarching antagonistic figure without them being a pure target for the protagonists’ anger and hatred.”

I agree completely with this, so there’s not much more for me to add here, but one thing I especially dislike about the breakdown that he didn’t mention is the extra emphasis on how Dahlia will *never escape* from her punishment. It’s not just about how she’s a bad person who’s hurt people. It’s about how Dahlia will *never be able to be anything other than a bad person who hurts people*. Trials and Tribulations flat-out tells you that there will never be a chance for anyone to empathize with or understand Dahlia because the only purpose she serves is being hated by others. Ultimately, I think that’s what makes me so negative on her as a character.

Now that we’re here, I’ve finally broken down what I think is everything about Dahlia Hawthorne’s character in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations. This is the perfect time to reflect on her by summarizing all of what makes her who she is. Her identity as a character.

Dahlia Hawthorne is evil. She commits crimes because she is a bad person. In order to get away with these crimes, she manipulates people by taking advantage of their sympathy. The ultimate message of her character is that she’s evil, and you have to defeat her, because she’s evil.

There is nothing more to her. She has a backstory, but actually it’s irrelevant to why she is the way she is, so this backstory only applies to the other characters associated with it. The only thing she can call a character strength is something that literally every single other Ace Attorney culprit who isn’t explicitly sympathetic also has, with the added bonus of practically always being more complex as people than Dahlia. The only unique character strength that Dahlia has is that she’s evil more often and more intensely than most other culprits are. Of the three characters that are improved because she exists, two are inherently undercut by the game forcing Dahlia to be at fault for everything that happens involving her.

At times, when I’ve shared my opinion on Dahlia with people who like her writing, I’ve been met with responses along the lines of: “The things you’re saying about her don’t justify her crimes. Regardless of whatever reasoning she had behind her actions, she still tried to kill innocent people over things that weren’t their fault, and that makes her a bad person.” Whenever I hear this, I feel like I have to make something 100% clear. I agree with that assessment of her character completely. Dahlia is not someone who is justified in doing what she does, nor is she a good person because her selfish and violent actions stemmed from tragic circumstances. But what she is, or at least what I *wish* she could be, is someone we could nonetheless just... *understand*. I’ve said this before, but characters act in ways that reflect the human experience because they’re designed to be understood, and they allow us to understand more about ourselves and the world around us in turn. My absolute favorite Ace Attorney characters are my favorites because they say so much about humanity and why people are the way they are. When Damon Gant commits the crime that comes to be known as the SL-9 Incident, the player isn’t denied the chance to understand why he made that decision, even despite it being a bad one. Because understanding Damon Gant’s crime means understanding the many layers of police corruption and legal disarray that contributed to his mindset behind it, and being able to learn from that situation to make the legal system a better place in the future. It’s a bittersweet, powerful story that’s honest about its world and has something truly meaningful to say. In comparison, what is the story of Dahlia Hawthorne trying to tell us? That abuse victims should just toughen up and take it? That pedophiles should be trusted before the children they’re preying on? That it’s impossible to receive empathy if you lash out at the world?

I don’t know.

Dahlia Hawthorne is a cartoon villain in a game with nothing to say. She sure is evil. Maybe there’s a version of her in an alternate universe where all of my hypotheticals are reality, and she gets to be a real fleshed-out person who’s allowed to be understood. But in the world I live in, the game I played doesn’t care about understanding Dahlia. So I guess I don’t, either.

The clear solution is to vote for Paul Atishon for mayor of Kurain Village! That’s right, he can solve all of the systemic issues plaguing this poor society! Vote PAUL ATISHON 2028! You there! Yes, you, reading this! It’s time to reclaim the glory of Kurain!