dylanfills Is Phoenix Wright copaganda? It genuinely feels like it, even though so often the prosecutors and police are painted as the villains and trying to bend the rules.
For stuff like police procedurals or just anything prominently featuring cops that aren’t critical of cops (and so it’s main break from general realism is that cops are not worthless psychopaths), I more or less just extend my suspension of disbelief to incorporate that the work must occur in a universe where cops actually do the things they are supposed to do.
Is it copaganda, is the question, though. I think it’s an interesting non-coincidence that a lot of fiction about police that occur in the Alternate Universe Where Cops Are Fine tend to be about detectives or investigators who are solving murders or catching serial killers. It’s always the shit that people think is what cops do, which is try to find and apprehend legitimately dangerous people who are an active threat. Of course, in reality what cops tend to do when serial killers are likely operating is just not believe communities or areas or groups who are targeted by serial killers when they beg for justice or even just basic protection, then maybe many years later said killer will make enough careless mistakes that they are caught, often incidentally. So I guess Alternate Universe Where Cops Are Fine is even more remote than I initially presented it as–maybe there are more fictional cops that do this kind of thing than real ones at this point.
Maybe what I’m trying to say is, if Phoenix Wright is Copaganda, then so is, like, Sherlock Holmes. And Sherlock Holmes ain’t even a cop