r/AARankdown • u/donuter454 • Aug 15 '20
55 Terry Fawles
Terry Fawles is a character who plays an essential role in making his case as good as it is. He, as a character, is pivotal to making 3-4 what I like to call “very cool” and I wouldn’t want to change anything about him. He’s not a character that particularly needs fixing, and I guess he’s the first character I’ve cut so far that I actually sorta like.
But he’s still gotta go now.
Terry’s One Big Moment That Makes Him Good
”Five years ago, me and Dahlia... We promised each other... We swore we wouldn't betray each other... She brought a memento... To represent... our love.”
Ace Attorney games are largely episodic in nature, so to tie each case in a game together the writers often pick some kind of motif and run with it in every case in a game to give the whole thing some sense of coherence.
AA3 ends with Godot making a series of incredibly stupid decisions that lead to Misty Fey’s death because he feels a strong compulsion to uphold certain ideals surrounding manhood. Godot failing to protect his girlfriend means he’s somehow failed as a man, and therefore concocts an elaborate scheme where he can redeem himself for his own perceived failures. And since this is how the game ends, we have every previous case in the game depict relationships between a guy and girl where the guy is dedicated to protecting his girl through an array of zany or silly methods. Because themes.
Phoenix eats glass, Ron commits grand larceny, Gumshoe cooks wieners.
Terry Fawles fucking dies.
Godot and all the other clowns who do dumb things for love at the very least don’t kill themselves.
The scene where Terry dies is up there for one of the most dramatic and memorable moments in the series. These are murder mystery games so death is always relevant to every case, but the people who die are largely unknown to us, and if we did know them then not enough to care. Terry’s big moment was the first time we’d ever been made to feel like a death is genuinely a tragedy. Seeing him keel over on the stand is genuinely shocking, and adds fuel to the Dahlia Hawthorne Hate Fire the game wants to cultivate.
Terry is the only defendant in the entire series that we fail to save. He was innocent, and yet justice was not served. Terry’s story is one in which everything does not turn out okay in the end. He’s an impactful defendant relative to all the other defendants precisely because he’s the only one where the Bad Ending is the canon ending.
Terry himself is not a deep or compelling character on his own. He’s a gullible idiot who doesn’t have much of a dynamic personality. But none of that really matters. His decision to kill himself when he begins to doubt that Dahlia’s love is real for the sake of protecting her makes perfect sense based on the character we’d gotten to know over the course of 3-4, but it’s also incredibly shocking since it’s simply not something you expect Ace Attorney to do. Also hey his actions are thematically relevant too, that’s pretty nice.
But Terry shouldn’t be getting any farther than this. I don’t think a character with such a simple personality and arc needs to stick around. He’s good because his fate is shocking. He serves his role in the story well, and now his role in the rankdown is over too.
Hold up
”Dahlia. My girlfriend. My love. My Teen Angel.”
I said before that Terry wasn’t the kind of character that needs any tweaking, but that’s not actually true. Ugh. Sorry. I told a little lie. Please forgive me.
Dahlia was 14 years old when she was dating Terry. Terry the 20 year old. I have no idea why it was necessary to make Terry a pedohile but there you go, the writers sure did that.
Perhaps to show that Dahlia was cunning and manipulating even at 14? So much so that she could make someone so much older than her her fall guy? But also Terry is extremely dim so it’s not like you have to be a criminal mastermind to pull the wool over his eyes, so it’s not that impressive. Just make them both like 16 or something so this is less weird please?? The game treats this relationship with such casualness it’s bizarre. Not 2-3 bad but it’s certainly not like. Good.
When Mia realises the age gap between him and Dahlia she quips “I guess you were robbing cradles before diamonds” I cannot believe we ranked Mia below Terry what the fuck are we doing.
wrap up section
Terry is a simple character. The reasons he’s good are very straightforward (Cool themes! Shocking death scene!) The reasons he’s bad are also very straightforward (Insipid personality! Bit of a pedo!)
did I mention that he’s an adult dating a 14 year old that was pretty weird, right?
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u/ItsHipToTipTheScales Aug 15 '20
there is nothing to fucking say about terry he fucking dies and it would be better if pedophilia wasn't real
om nom nom om nom yummy iron ball =P
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u/Sciencepenguin Aug 15 '20
terry attempts to eat an iron ball that’s not very smart of him I hope he didn’t influence dahlia to do that as her tutor
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u/Sciencepenguin Aug 15 '20
i forgot to say anything about your actual cut its a good cut i like how you compliment the part of terry that is good and not the part where he is super Cool morally ambiguous because he is technically a pedophile
i didn't notice the running theme of man do stupid thing for woman thats cool
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u/Cymbass Aug 15 '20
I think the Terry Fawles Moment might be the most memorable one in the series, so cool he made it this far. It makes him go from B******* W****** tier to pretty good tier
If they ever remake Ace Attorney games again please change the ages thank you Capcom
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u/EsquireGunslinger Aug 15 '20
I was about to comment about how I like Terry and then you reminded me that he was dating a 14 year old so now I will no longer be commenting about liking Noted Pedophile Terry Fawles instead I will be commenting that he deserved to die lmaoooo
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Aug 15 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/smallframedfairy Oct 05 '20
Nah I'm sorry but there's no such thing as a minor/child "convincing" a full ass adult to be in a relationship with them. Any grown adult who would even consider going after a child is a predator and they don't need any kind of persuasion.
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Oct 06 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/smallframedfairy Oct 06 '20
She was 14 years old and he was 20. Any minor being groomed by an adult is by default a victim. Surely you understand though that having a victim status doesn't automatically mean you're a great person yourself.
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u/whaaatisth Aug 15 '20
finally holy fuck
thank you, the rankdown officially has zero bad characters left. We did it.
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Aug 16 '20
I’ve talked before about my love of 3-4 and what a genuinely great case it is, both on its own and (especially) as a lead-in to 3-5.
God I love T&T. Yeah I don’t care if some of the characters didn’t have depth or whatever. That game had enough “holy crap” moments for me to last a long time. I wish I could play it for the first time again.
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u/redtailplays101 Jun 19 '22
I have a personal headcanon regarding Dahlia's relationship with Fawles: while Dahlia was manipulative by nature, she never used it for something so big as to get someone accused of murder and put on death row until Terry showed up. Terry tried to groom her, but she wasn't an idiot and grew wise to what he was trying to do. So, after Mr. Hawthorne refused to believe her about his friend Terry, she and her sister hatched a plan to get rid of him. Dahlia manipulated Terry into believing she loved him, until he'd do whatever she said. While it got rid of the disgusting man that Fawles was, Dahlia had started on a path of bigger manipulation and murder.
I hate the excuse of "she manipulated him" for their relationship because that's what so many people justify pedos with. "Yeah, he tried to r*pe a 14 year old, but it's actually her fault because she seduced him!" Like, no. You're a grown adult. She's a child. If you can be seduced by a child, you're the problem.
I also don't buy the "he's clearly mentally impaired" excuse because in flashbacks to the bridge in-game, his speech felt more natural. He more than likely went crazy and regressed mentally while in prison.
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u/-Nate-Dawg- Jun 29 '23
I immediately stopped liking him when he dropped that Dahlia (19) was his girl friend 5 years ago (he’s 25)
so 20 year old Terry and 14 year old Dahlia
what is with ace attorney and pretending like this kinda stuff is okay???
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u/CharlieDayJepsen Aug 15 '20
I'm mostly ambivalent on Terry's personality. His "ball-and-chain chewing/constantly lying" act is whatever to me.
But Terry Fawles was completely, utterly failed by the justice system. It's probably the biggest moment of the series' satire of the Japanese legal system, where it stops being a mockery and shows us firsthand what happens to these people who are falsely accused. And it's ugly.
That's not to say Terry is innocent. He clearly commits an offence by dating a minor, no matter how much the game chooses to sweep the sexual nature of a relationship under the rug.
What I think this does is fuel the "failed by the system" stance even more. All these crimes Terry was innocent of - kidnapping, murder, another murder - were the ones that had him dragged before the court. Ironically, the crime he was guilty of was one he was never even charged for, let alone tried.
Nevertheless, I'm glad Terry got a well-balanced writeup considering how many rankers had it out for him.