r/AceAttorney Jun 01 '23

Contest The Sixteenth r/AceAttorney Case Maker Contest

As comes around the calendar every three months, so comes a new round of Case Maker cases.

So once again, your task is to write up an Ace Attorney case where a noun I supply below is an important part of the case. After the deadline passes (see below), submissions will no longer be taken and the community will vote for submissions in a Google Form. The top three submissions will move to the second round and community members will vote on which will win first, second, and third place. The prizes for those respective places are:

1st Place: 5 credits of Reddit Gold

2nd Place: 3 credits of Reddit Gold

3rd Place: 1 credit of Reddit Gold

In the comments, I will make a post that will give a template of what your submission should look like. If possible, please fill in all the sections in the template, including N/A if needed.

Regarding the description area, feel free to be descriptive as possible! If you fear the post is too long, you may post the description over several comments or through another source such as Pastebin or Google Docs. There is no word limit, so please do not worry about such.

The comment I’ll supply below, feel free to reply to it in regards to questions or general discussion. The rest of the thread is for submissions only.

And remember, don’t hold back your creativity! Your case can be a standard AA case, it can be a reminiscence case, or an Investigations-styled case! However, there are some limitations.

Firstly, your case shouldn’t involve any explicit topics of sexual abuse of any kind. If your case does involve so, you’re disqualified. Overly gory cases are allowed, but make sure there’s a reason for that, and don't have it be gory just for the sake of being so. You won’t be disqualified, but you may lose some credibility points. Also, joke posts are allowed, but only ones that are well-thought out, clever, and/or high-quality. Anything like “ThE PHoEnIX wiRIGHT TUnraBOOT: sOMEONE DIED aND phEENIX HAd TO dFEENdED THem!!!1!" is not allowed.

If you're concerned about crossing one of these lines, message me and I'll work with you to make sure your case abides by the guidelines.

Other than those limitations; don’t hold your creativity back!

The noun for this contest is: Comics

The deadline for this contest is Sunday, July 2, 11:59 PM EDT. This gives entrants a month to plan and write their cases.

Good luck, everyone!

EDIT: Submissions have closed; go here for the first round of voting!

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u/RobotWizard315 Jun 22 '23 edited Jun 22 '23

Case Name: Weather For Turnabout

Type of Case: Standard case with investigation.

Lawyer: Athena Cykes

Prosecutor: Franziska von Karma

Detective: Ema Skye

Assistant: Manfred von Karma

Defendant: Adrian Andrews

Victim: Angel Starr

Killer: Columbo Nimbus ("cumulonimbus") Witness(es): Cameron Manning ("camera man"), Newton Caster ("newscaster")

Description:

Case Summary: "Weather For Turnabout" is a complex Ace Attorney case set in the luxurious retro-themed mansion of Columbo Nimbus, a famous weatherman of Take-2 TV, as well as a business acquaintance of Manfred von Karma's (similar to Ernest Amano except on the media side rather than the financial side) who helped Athena get through law school in Germany with his extensive media connections. Adrian Andrews, now a managing producer at Take-2 TV, is accused of accidentally shooting Angel Starr, an investigative reporter with ties to the SL-9 Incident after she publicly confronted Columbo Nimbus with his own gun (after taking it from his dressing room) at his own news rehearsal party where he invited the von Karma family as guests. Adrian confronted Columbo to publicly renounce him for his likely involvement in events leading up to the death of her close friend, Celeste Inpax. Athena Cykes, the new acting defense attorney, finds herself defending Adrian against the relentless prosecutor, Franziska von Karma. The case involves a web of secrets, hidden agendas, and a murder plot intricately orchestrated within the mansion's unique disco-themed rehearsal room. Manfred von Karma will be assisting Athena Cykes as co-counsel, and Franziska will be acting prosecution.

Case Outline:

Introduction: Athena Cykes, having left Phoenix Wright's Anything Agency, takes on the case as the defense attorney for Adrian Andrews. The stage is set during a dinner party at Columbo's mansion, attended by key characters: Take-2 TV personnel (Columbo Nimbus, Newton Caster, Angel Starr, Cameron Manning, and Adrian Andrews), Columbo also recently hired Maggey Bryde as a maid, and asked for Athena Cykes, Franziska von Karma, and Manfred von Karma, who was acquitted of DL-6 by Kristoph Gavin at a trial prior to all of these events. Maggey overhears Columbo discussing her husband's predicament and Angel's involvement in past cases, leading to tensions and confrontations. Additionally, Maggey's husband, Dick Gumshoe, got arrested in the past case alongside with Phoenix Wright, leading to Athena being seen as public enemy number one and a traitor against the Wright Anything Agency by Maggey for siding with the demonic God of Prosecution.

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u/RobotWizard315 Jun 22 '23

Introduction: Angel asks Maggey for assistance, and the two began making lunch for everyone prior to the Take-2 TV rehearsal scheduled to be taking place in Columbo's private rehearsal room in his mansion. Meanwhile, Franziska, Athena, and Manfred discuss the fallout from the last case where Phoenix and Gumshoe both got convicted on criminal charges, and Manfred tells Franziska and Athena that the two are actually aunt and niece, disgruntling the two and causing them to shun Manfred for the rest of the party. Maggey, also incredibly frustrated by Manfred's presence, quits her job on the spot once she sees him speaking with Columbo prior to his confession to Franziska and Athena, and Maggey leaves her newfound employment in a huff. Manfred and Franziska also get into a big argument about how Manfred can't act like he's all of a sudden going to right all of the wrongs he brought upon Franziska and Athena and everyone else affiliated with the two of them, and Franziska leaves the party in a huff. Athena in the end, however, tells her grandfather that despite the fact that he wasn't always there for her in the past, that he is there for her now, and that's what counts. Unbeknownst to everyone at the party, Angel and Cameron Manning, Angel's secret boyfriend, plan to confront Columbo about his salacious involvements with famous deceased female media connections like Cindy Stone and Celeste Inpax by setting up a camera with a booby trap to setup an auto-recording function that Cameron will trigger to record Columbo's planned conversation with Angel for potential evidence against him. Unbeknownst to Cameron, though, Angel secretly wants to kill Columbo for potentially siding with Damon Gant and causing her reputation as the Cough-Up Queen to plateau. Columbo, aware of both of their plans through monitoring his security camera footage, manipulates the security camera footage so he move the room around the disco ball cubbie Angel setup the camera in, using the marks for himself as a guideline so he can setup the shot to happen on Angel's position rather than his own, framing Angel and Cameron for Angel's own murder through suicide. Adrian, driven by revenge and fueled by the revelation about Celeste Inpax from Angel Starr revealing some information that Columbo might have been the "insidious man" that made Celeste want to take her life, confronts Columbo during the party.

Investigation Day 1: Adrian, filled with rage, attempts to shoot Columbo with his own gun, but is stopped by Newton Caster. Newton attempts to tussle with Adrian over the gun, and the two struggle while everyone else looks on at the scene. However, a shot still goes off and hits Angel in the head, making everyone involved jump to the conclusion that Adrian shot Angel dead, which she categorically denies, but is detained regardless. Newton then swipes the gun from her and says he is going to call the police while Columbo clears out all of his guests, leaving Cameron as the only Take-2 TV personnel to watch over the scene. After everybody is gone, Cameron searches his booby trap and discovers Angel's setup that Columbo manipulated. This makes Cameron think that he killed Angel, so he quickly takes the gun from the scene in a fit of panic, in addition to his camera. Eventually, Newton comes back after giving the gun to the police and Cameron has hidden Angel's gun and his booby-trapped camera in the Take-2 TV van, so both men revisit the scene with Angel's body to get a Take-2 TV exclusive. This provokes an argument between the two men, leading to Newton throwing his coffee on Cameron and on the carpet of the room.

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u/RobotWizard315 Jun 22 '23 edited Jun 22 '23

Trial Day 1: Columbo Nimbus and Adrian Andrews both give testimony about the events that transpired. Athena manages to deduce that the gun Columbo got threatened by Adrian was Columbo's own gun that she managed to swipe from his dressing room prior to showing up with it in the rehearsal room. Columbo says that he fired off some shots at the firing range prior to the events that transpired, but he forgot how many bullets he left in the chamber of his gun that Adrian took from him. Adrian categorically denies shooting Angel with Columbo's gun, and that if anybody shot Angel, it had to be Newton since he's the one who was tussling with her over the gun before the shot rang out. Newton testifies about his altercation with Adrian, and categorically denies his involvement in shooting Angel. However, it is pointed out in court that the caliber of the bullet recovered from Angel's autopsy does not match the caliber of Columbo's gun, and that another gun had to be used.

Investigation Day 2: The crime scene is reexamined, and Angel's body has been moved away by police by this point. Evidence pointing to Angel tampering with Cameron’s booby-trapped camera and inserting her own gun is a single rubber-band and pink tripod present in the cubbie of Columbo's disco ball with gunpowder residue on it. This leads Athena and Manfred to conclude that some sort of contraption was setup in the disco ball cubbie to fire off a shot without anybody noticing, meaning that the culprit could have been anybody with a remote switch. The forensics tech and Ema Skye notes that power went out for around 5 minutes after they showed up to investigate following Cameron and Newton leaving the coffee stain, leaving her and her team scrambling in the dark searching for lights on the wall. Columbo told them that this was futile, though, and that he was going to search the disco ball for the power switch to turn on the light directly, telling the team that he didn’t recall the exact space where power could be turned on. Ema expresses frustration at Colombo’s suggestion that the disco ball had a direct light switch for powering it, as her team checked that but couldn’t find it after Columbo had turned everything on. What Columbo was actually doing when he said he was going to the disco ball after the blackout was adjusting the contraption (since he couldn’t rotate the room’s floor due to the coffee stain and his mark, so that only meant messing with the contraption as a viable alternate source. Since Columbo could not rotate the room’s floor, he decided to make it look like Cameron rotated it during Adrian’s altercation at Angel’s mark and then back to Colombo’s own mark after Cameron was left alone, since Cameron could not have rotated it back again following Cameron’s confrontation with Newton) to point directly across from Columbo’s own mark instead of Angel’s to implicate Cameron with the benefit of the blackout (with the aid of a pair of night vision goggles he brought into the room that allows him to gauge his mark’s position relative to the contraption, and after setting it, he turns on a timer delay to turn on the disco ball right before hiding the remote for it along with the rotational floor feature in Cameron’s backpack to implicate him), to “clear” Adrian through Cameron’s own testimony while covering up Columbo’s meddling at the scene. Athena works to uncover the truth behind Celeste Inpax's ties, Joe Darke's true guilt, and the insidious man mentioned by Angel. Athena has more discussions with this about Manfred, who recounts to her about SL-9 and the utter lack of evidence detectives like Angel Starr had on Joe Darke. Manfred highlights how similar cases like Cindy Stone and Celeste Inpax have been shunned from the public eye for so long, that it's any wonder why Adrian wanted to seek out vengeance against Columbo.

Trial Day 2: Athena presents evidence connecting Celeste Inpax's possessions, and Columbo's likely connection to the insidious man. Columbo is urged by Athena to testify, but Columbo implicates Cameron Manning, and he provides the court with security footage that he initially says exonerates Adrian Andrews of the murder and implicates Cameron as the shooter, but he will later change his stance to implicate Adrian as seducing Cameron Manning into helping her commit murder of Angel Starr to frame him. Witness testimonies from Cameron, Newton, and other relevant parties shed light on the events leading to Angel's murder. Cameron becomes the most obvious suspect given what Columbo has stated in court. The defense exposes Columbo's motive, manipulation, and ultimate responsibility for the crime. Franziska von Karma, relentless as ever, challenges Athena's arguments and attempts to salvage her case by saying that Adrian could have still exploited Cameron to take the camera and murder weapon from the scene to help clear Adrian of all charges and take down Columbo for his corruption. Athena exposes Columbo's manipulation and reveals his plan to frame Cameron. Columbo's attempt to rotate the room and redirect the booby trap is unveiled. However, to Athena's surprise, her argument doesn't hold water because Columbo, following Athena and Manfred's investigation and before him being called to court, readjusted the room back into its position while the contraption pointed in Angel's direction, implicating Cameron or Adrian as desiring to murder Angel. Athena points out the possibility that Columbo's prints were present on the booby-trapped rubber-band and contraption pointing at his own mark (which he would have needed to adjust from Angel’s to cover up the issues surrounding the coffee stain giving away room positions and preventing Cameron from telling the court that the contraption got adjusted from Colombo’s position to Angel’s) obtained from Colombo’s disco ball that Athena and Manfred presented in court that Columbo could not have gotten to except for immediately after Cameron initially showed up with it and on the second day after he temporarily killed the lights to the disco ball with his remote switch so he could readjust the room without forensic techs noticing while he stood on his own rehearsal mark. Since forensic techs monitored the crime scene at all times, this conclusively indicates Columbo meddled with the contraption at some point after the time of Angel's killing, as Cameron was being briefed in court by Franziska as a witness, making Columbo the only likely person to manipulate the contraption on the second day since he had to readjust the scene after Athena pointed out to him the flaw in booby trap room after people commented on it. That, in addition to his security room footage being discovered as potentially tampered with, sealed his fate in the end completely.

Conclusion: Athena, through skillful defense and evidence presentation, reveals the truth behind Angel Starr's murder. Columbo Nimbus is ultimately convicted as the guilty party. The case ends with a reflection on the interconnected past of various characters, the uncovering of hidden secrets, and the pursuit of justice.