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Myriam Scuttlebutt
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Athena Cykes
So, the witness for the prosecution is... some weirdo in a cardboard box?
Myriam Scuttlebutt
Kahk-kahk! This disguise is how I get my scoops!

Myriam Scuttlebutt is a suspicious student at Themis Legal Academy who sneaks around collecting information while obscuring her features under a cardboard box. She is a senior in the judge course at the academy, as well as the only member of the newspaper club.

Picking up a "scoop"[]

Main article: Turnabout Academy
MyriamBox1

Scuttlebutt undercover.

When a mock trial was scheduled to be held at the school festival in October 2027, all judge course students were required to write a trial script and submit it to judge course teacher Constance Courte, who would select the best one to be used as the script for the mock trial. In order to prevent other students from sneaking a peek at her script, Scuttlebutt booby-trapped the envelope containing it with a spring-loaded blade that would cut the hand of anyone who opened it normally. Only Courte was told of the correct way to open the envelope.

After Juniper Woods' script was chosen to be used in the mock trial instead of hers, Scuttlebutt was furious. Using her status as the only member of the school's newspaper club, she started writing slander and lies about Woods and her friends, calling her a "she-devil." Scuttlebutt also overheard Hugh O’Conner telling Woods that, if he won the mock trial, he would confess something to her. She mistakenly took this as an upcoming love confession and wrote that the whoever won the mock trial between O'Conner and Robin Newman would confess their love to Woods.

On the morning of the mock trial, Scuttlebutt snuck into Woods' dressing room while the other students were in the school's lecture hall and found someone trying on the stage costume Woods had made for her performance of "The Guitar's Serenade" at the festival. Although the person in the costume was actually Newman, Scuttlebutt thought instead that it was Woods, and so started to follow her. However, the eager young journalist ended up tripping on her cardboard box and falling, thereby losing her target.

During the mock trial, Courte was found murdered. Woods was arrested for the crime and Scuttlebutt soon found herself being questioned by Woods' attorneys, Athena Cykes and Apollo Justice. Scuttlebutt began trying to pretend to be a friend of Woods in order to glean what information she could from the two lawyers, but Justice's bracelet soon revealed her lie.

A boxed-up witness[]

Scuttlebud Revealing Herself

Briefly revealing her face during the trial.

Scuttlebutt was called as a witness in Woods' trial the following day to testify about her visit to Woods' dressing room. Although she tried to claim that Woods had led her to the body, Cykes soon figured out that Scuttlebutt had not actually seen the body and that the person she had followed was not Woods, but Newman. Scuttlebutt was so shocked when Cykes called her a "failure of a reporter" that she accidentally threw her box up in the air and briefly revealed her face to the court.

Aftermath[]

MyriamBox2

The new box.

Later that day, when Cykes and Justice went to investigate the stage area, they found a depressed Scuttlebutt hiding in a new box and sitting on the stage. They considered talking to her, but decided against it and left her alone as they investigated the stage. After they finished, Scuttlebutt left the area. Cykes and Justice followed her to the maintenance area and talked to her about what had happened at the trial. Scuttlebutt had taken Cykes' calling her a failure to heart and was inconsolable, to the point of deleting her treasured photograph collection from her laptop, leaving only two remaining after Cykes sheepishly apologized. The lawyers learned that the only reason she followed and kept tabs on Woods, O'Conner, and Newman was because she wanted to be their friend. Cykes promised to lend Scuttlebutt a spare laptop from the Wright Anything Agency office, but only if Scuttlebutt openly asked the others if she could be their friend. In return, Scuttlebutt gave Cykes the two photographs she hadn't deleted, which proved vital to Cykes the following day in court and allowed her to prove that the real killer of Courte was Professor Aristotle Means.

After Woods was acquitted, Scuttlebutt slowly began to integrate herself into Woods' circle of friends. Woods told her new friend that she would need her help to end the so-called "dark age of the law". Scuttlebutt later found some "really sweet" cardboard boxes for her three new friends, but they refused to wear them. She wondered if this was because she herself wanted to be a legal journalist, rather than a lawyer or judge. She was also pleased that the school newspaper had undergone something of a revival after the trial, in that new members had joined. However, she was less pleased that the first thing they reported on was her crying so much during the graduation rehearsal that her cardboard box got soggy.

Personality[]

Myriam Scuttlebutt
Sss, sss, sss.
BggGgee

Scuttlebutt's mugshot.

Scuttlebutt is a secretive and inherently suspicious person, who is also socially maladjusted and solitary. She has a distinctive hissing-like laugh which sometimes gives away her presence despite her trying to remain discreet. She used to run the school newspaper entirely by herself, and took great pride in her articles, although most of them are nothing but gossip and slander. She takes Aristotle Means' teachings to heart and believes as he does that the end justifies the means. In her case, she uses any means at her disposal to find information for her article's stories, including leaving tape recorders all over the school. This was also seen in the script she submitted for the mock trial, which included allowances for the participants to bribe the judges and bring in fabricated evidence; she considered this a far more relevant script than Woods' in that it reflected the current "dark age of the law".

Scuttlebutt is not adverse to booby-trapping her belongings, as she rigged her mock trial script folder with a spring-loaded box-cutter. Although she at first appeared to bear a grudge against Woods, Newman, and O'Conner, she really just wanted to be part of their group; her laptop wallpaper is even a (possibly edited) picture of her with the other three students.

Scuttlebutt is not much in the way of a photographer, nor even a reporter. She uses a cardboard box as her method of obtaining scoops due to have no better ideas in mind, and only ever uses cheap disposable cameras.[1] Despite this, she has shown a raw skill in photographing and in being able to write and produce articles. She is also an incredibly passionate reporter; her legs are covered in band-aids that are covering "battle wounds" she has received in the "line of duty" and she wears knee-padding to protect her knees while she sneaks around.[1]

Name[]

  • Japanese - Atsume Uwasa (宇和佐 集芽):
    • Her full Japanese name means "rumor collecting" ("atsumeru" (集める) meaning "to collect" and "uwasa" (噂) meaning "rumor").
  • English - Myriam Scuttlebutt:
    • "Myriam" is a French given name that is the equivalent of "Miriam", an ancient Hebrew given name with an unclear meaning. Some meanings that have been suggested include "bitter", "rebellious", and "beloved". In Scuttlebutt's case, it may also come from the word "myriad", meaning "a very/indefinitely great number of things", as she may have a "myriad" of items hidden in her box.
    • Her English surname comes from the word "scuttlebutt", which is a slang term for rumor or gossip.
  • French - Cosette Lafouine:
    • Her French given name "Cosette" is of French and Greek origin and can either mean "Little thing" or "Victory of the people".
    • Her French surname "Lafouine" literally means "The weasel" and also comes from "fouiner", which means "to snoop." "Fouine" (weasel) is common slang to talk about a nosy person who will snoop around for information.
  • German - Loush-Ann Gryph:
    • Her German name comes from "Lauschangriff" which means "eavesdropping attack."
  • Chinese - Liúyàn Fēiyǔ (流雁 緋羽)
    • Her full Chinese name comes from the word "liúyán fēiyǔ" (流言蜚語), which means "rumor or gossip".

References to popular culture[]

  • There are a few references involving Scuttlebutt to the Metal Gear video game series, in particular the cardboard boxes often used in the series as mobile disguises. The first is when Cykes and Justice are discussing her, in which Cykes thinks, "So, this is the future cardboard box technology has afforded us, huh..." In a second instance, when Justice notices the box, he says, "Don't let it be a SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE" (due to Scuttlebutt's signature laugh), which refers not only to the code name used by the main protagonist of the series, but also to the phrase used in the Game Over screen in many of the games ("Snake? Snake? SNAAAAAAAAAAAKE!") The final reference is after Woods's acquittal, when Cykes thinks to herself, "Myriam's got this Tactical Espionage Action stuff down to a science..." This is a reference to the "Tactical Espionage Action" tagline commonly used for the Metal Gear series. Additionally, the name Myriam is similar to Meryl, the name of a character from the Metal Gear series, although this may be a coincidence.

Development[]

  • Despite having her actual appearance fully designed, Scuttlebutt was originally intended to remain entirely hidden from the player. The decision to give the player a couple of momentary glimpses at her face was a decision that occurred rather late into development. This decision came about due to the development team considering her face "too cute" to remain hidden entirely; particularly they figured that her "cute" face and reaction to being exposed would act as a surprise for players who have likely already formed a less then pleasant image of the "slimy reporter". This decision was also made in part out of a fear that players would assume the developers were keeping her face hidden because they hadn't bothered designing her without her box.[1]
  • The clips in her hair are "bulldog" paper clips, suited for tightly gripping stacks of papers.
  • Her camera is a type of disposable film camera mostly used for traveling.

References[]

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