about a third of the way through episode 2 now (i assume), and i'm currently fascinated by Morgan's apparent lack of experience with love and sex.
in episode 1 she reacted with confusion to the apparent chemistry between Jessica and London, but i wrote it off as a lesbian being weirded out by heterosexuality. later in the nightclub, she was also clearly uncomfortable discussing whether David and Isaac were together. when Serra pressed, she quickly changed the subject. at the time, I didn't give this much thought either, since David had recently died, and he was a close friend of Morgan's.
but now, in episode 2, she meets Adelaide Han, who shows romantic interest in Morgan almost immediately. but despite Han's persistent flirting, not to mention literally giving Morgan her number on a business card, Morgan seems to not remotely comprehend she's being flirted with. she doesn't really acknowledge any of it, not even in her internal dialogue, and her narration on the business card states she doesn't even understand why Han's number is on it.
i'm finding this very fascinating. because we KNOW Morgan is attracted to women. she HAS to be, right? i mean, Emma's whole introduction in episode 0 is set up to spell out that Morgan is DOWN BAD for her. all of Morgan's last 6 victims resemble Emma. it's all but spelled out that Morgan has a psychosexual obsession with her rival. the game is marketed as "toxic yuri ace attorney" for crying out loud.
even here, in the early hours of episode 2, Morgan shows definite attraction towards a woman: Mirei. the second she enters the scene, Morgan's narration becomes uncharacteristically flowery, clearly sparking personal fantasies of being a noir detective meeting a femme fatale. she's transfixed.
so Morgan absolutely has an attraction to women, and yet she seems completely uncomfortable with any display or discussion of romance or sex whatsoever, and can't recognize when other women are interested in her.
i find it a very compelling character beat. an intelligent woman like her, who by her own account has spent a LOT of time learning about how humans communicate and interact, should surely be more familiar and comfortable with those topics, right?
and yet. and yet.
we do also know that Morgan can be embarrassingly unselfaware. that's half the reason Emma gets the better of her so hard in episode 0. and while Morgan is Clearly attracted to both Emma and Mirei, her narration never directly acknowledges as much. so is Morgan just... genuinely not aware of her attraction to women? is that even possible?
it compels me.
@alicerosebee dared me to voice this optional line of internal dialogue, since we didn't encounter it in our playthrough. please enjoy.
something I really like about of the Devil is the total devaluing of police detectives. y'know how in Ace Attorney every single case you do is handled by the same friggin guy, it's always Dick Gumshoe or whoever they replaced him with in the later games? in those games it's pure coincidence but of the Devil has an actual lore reason for that. it's because The Surveillance State has made their jobs near-obsolete. 99% of murders are solved on arrival because a camera caught it and no investigating even needs to happen. as a result there's extremely few actual homicide detectives left and the department is totally neglected. so all the unsolved murders in the entire gigantic city are handled by two underpaid chucklefucks and they're an old man with PTSD who thinks he's a cowboy and his adopted autistic chuuni tgirl. it works really well