And it has to be said that of all of them, I feel the Ace Attorney fans are among some of the funniest, nicest and most open fans I have seen in a long time.
Anyone will tell you that shipping is always the many conflict in any fandom. More so than controversial character debates.
This mainly revolves around shipping habits. Due to the sheer amount of characters and next to no canon ships in AA, everyone is a level playing field. There is a lot of slash in the fandom, as in most these days, but its creators are rarely as bigotted or mean-spirited as other slash fans I have encountered in other fandoms.
Truth be told this is probably because an awful lot of them acknowledge that canonically, outside of fandom, their characters of slashing choice are either (at least) bisexual or canonically straight and they are simply playing with the source material as they see it. That is really nice considering that I have seen a huge amount of shippers in general (het as well as slash but most of the fandoms I have ended up in have been DOMINATED by non-canon slash pairings) have used misreading or damn twisting of the canon in order to justify beating down/scoring points with rival pairings.
Don’t get me wrong - every fandom has a bit of asshatery here and there. Ace Attorney does have those one or two people who just can’t help exploding over things that don’t matter… but it feels much more controlled than anything I have ever seen. I have to say that the combination of so many characters and shipping possibilities IS healthier for fans than anything else.
As a predominantly casual shipper who only writes het between non-canon pairings, I have felt so comfortable in this fandom and have felt the freedom to work and express art so much better than any other in a while.
