New Culture

So, this morning while half asleep, I realized that the Corp universe has the tech to actually make Quiddich games. Matt responded with, "Well, Harry Potter is probably classic literature. That and Shakespeare. So it makes sense to actually start a league if you want."

Now, that doesn't appeal to Sosie, but it got me thinking, what other cultural items are around? What TV shows, what books are big, what music, what games, etc etc etc. (It also made Matt and I talk about how great a new cultural corp book would be.)

So I propose a thread to put new and hilarious potential Corp World cultural items. Matt or popular opinion can decide what's really canon.

No ideas as of yet, but given that my back up character is a former WF social assasin (I wanna be a geisha strain metahuman) who, when they were exposed to outside culture, gained a taste for it and is fed up with Tex, I probably should think of some.

What's In That Box?

A popular game show that takes place in a TV Studio on Miller-Urey, know for its iconic theme song* and prizes that seem to have no coherent pattern.

The player in a What's In That Box official red jumpsuit stands on a platform with the host, where they have a few minute interview. Players of the game can be anything from agents to high ranking UIG officials to depersonalized freestaters. The host, Clive Elna, is a charming and smooth talking EI TV personality who dotes on every player without getting too upset at the results of the game. After an discussion long enough to give the audience a feel for the player, the boxes are revealed.

A set of LARGE twelve boxes in various colors are suspended on plinths in a large see-through Game Box. The player then crosses inside. The rules are simple; the player opens a box, and gets to keep what is inside. Should the player survive, they have the choice of opening another box or leaving with their prizes. Only twice in the history of the show has someone opened all 12 boxes. Only one of those survived. This player is now a high ranking EI Agent/Executive. (Matt told me to add this, so it's canon as SHIT.)

The boxes contain a mix of "prizes". They can be as simple as a box of slip, a new KAC rifle, a real goldfish in a bowl, or even the ultimate prize of 30 UIG rank points. Boxes can also contain timed grenades that go off when exposed to studio lights, ravenous clouds of flesh devouring nanites, or poison that fills the Game Box at a furious rate. Sometimes the plinths the boxes are on are hollowed out to accommodate larger prizes. There can literally be almost anything in there. Everyone's favorite is when a box contains a BIO, and its popularity means almost all games contain one. Killing the BIO allows the player to choose another box, though this is a rare occurrence made even less pleasant when a player opens a box containing a Kittenalate, an impossibly cute fluff-BIO creature that exudes a pheromone that makes people want to pet and love it.

If a player has not dealt with their box within five minutes, due to screaming rune disease or inability to stomp on a kitty, they are shot till dead.

Depending on the length of game, each show has one to five players displayed. Players are chosen from a pool of applicants who fill out the form online. The desperate, crazy, or hardcore fans are the vast majority of candidates. The show has a dedicated following, and is an underground favorite with active WF agents.

There is an active betting community around the show, with people compiling probabilities on box color, type of player, placement of box, and basically every other traceable statistic. The boxes do seem to be completely random, though many gamblers feel differently. There are several conspiracies revolving around the show, such as that the EI uses it to publicly get rid of dissidents, or that the producers of the show plant certain things in boxes to drive ratings. No conspiracy has had any real proof.

Survivors of What's In That Box receive a free What's In That Box Survivor T-shirt. These are quite rare and there is some market for them from collectors.

(*The audience screams WHAT'S! IN! THAT! BOX! to a jaunty guitar riff.)

The Comoros Corporate Orchestra.

During Comoros' expansion, they brought several musical instrument building companies After the Corporate Wars, the scarcity of wood drove the prices of old instruments up, and, luckily for Comoros, they had by far the largest stock left.

Most of these, those that are not playable, currently reside in various Comoros run museums around the world. However, thanks to modern technology, some of the old instruments were preserved enough to be in a playable condition. These became the CCO (The only exception to this was a working banjo, which was sold to the Western Fed and is the basis of Tex's theme music, as well as other high profile agent shows).

The CCO is the only full orchestra left in the world using pre-Corporate instruments. They are therefore heavily in demand, both by culture lovers wanting concerts and people wanting to steal the valuable instruments. This risk means that most of the players in the CCO are actually highly trained telepaths, often agents, fully capable of defending themselves from attack.

Another reason for the high combat capabilities of the players is their infiltrating ability. Although the other corporations are loathe to allow them into their areas, particularly the Spire, UIG law forbids them from disallowing private citizens to hire the CCO. This gives them easy access to sensitive areas, and a ready made alibi for any incidents that happen when they are there (They simply have geneshifted duplicates of the infiltrating team take the stage for a while, then slip back when done) This ensures Comoros continues to fund the group, as well as the money it brings in. In true Comoros style, they also often do charity performances.

Dr J. Berryweather.

Dr Berryweather was a scientist working for EI on Urey-Miller who rose to fame after he filmed some of his private projects and sent them to Bright and Sunny Media in the style of an old nature documentary. EI promptly attempted to `discipline` him, only to find that he had made contacts with representatives of the other factions on the research base and had disappeared. So began his film career, which has two main parts. The first is his nature documentaries; being very well trained on the subject of BIOs, his shows are very commonly shown in the evenings as family viewing. This part is mostly supported by Comoros, who often use his material in science classrooms.

The second part is usually shown later on at night, and mostly consists of bloopers from the earlier show where the bios he has been examining turn nasty. Fortunately, Dr Berryweather is also a very competent cyberboxer, and backs this up with items such as knucklebombs and plasma claws, allowing him to tussle with BIOs and come out on top, particularly with his array of in built toxin filters.

So why can he do this? Well, mainly because the Corporations let him. Any top secret BIOs are kept far away from the filming area, and he is mostly only allowed near things that make the Corporation look good, such as new food crops or interesting new creatures. He therefore fulfils two roles on the planetoid, being excellent PR for whoever is hosting him, and also being an extremely competent cleaner for when BIOs go wrong. The only exception to this is EI, who would dearly love to kill him, but can't due to the protections he has.

Dr Berryweather is an extremely large man with a British accent, who generally wears an old fashioned explorers outfit, complete with hat. His camera crew are well trained agents, often from the WF marketing department but he is careful to ensure that he shows no obvious signs of Corporate loyalty or favouritism. Each Corp sends him a list of things they would like to examine at the beginning of filming each season, and he generally tries to accommodate them all.

Just a Minute is still running, still chaired by an ancient Nicholas Parsons kept alive on experimental longevity drugs (and definitely not cloned, honest) and still recorded in the preserved BBC Broadcasting house in front of a live audience. They even transmit a radio version for authenticity.

Plodder and friends!

A thinly veiled, yet legally watertight, parody of UIG in the form of an incompetent police officer, Sgt. Plodder. Most of the episodes involve Plodder attempting to either mess up the other character's plans, which are all shown as perfectly reasonable, mainly because they are all stand ins for the Ai Jinn and the Ai Jinn makes the show, or else Plodder trying to help out and making things worse. Other stereotypes, including Rex, an extremely stupid gunslinger who has a running gag of hurting himself by running into things behind doors, and the Callison twins, two rich idiots who constantly lose money thanks to the Ai-Jinn characters outsmarting them also occasionally show up.

Obviously mainly shown in Ai Jinn terroratory, it has a surprising fanbase in both the UIG and EI, on the grounds that "We all know a Plodder/Callison in our department!"

Dreddoth Dredcore

The mines of Dreddoth are grim and dismal places, filled with a hopeless and damaged people. However, in these grim places, a new type of music has hit the scene hard, known as dredcore.

Dredcore is a subgenre of grindcore, chaotic and noisy, known for the distinctive drum and bass beats underlaying discordant high pitched instrumentals. For most, it is incredibly upsetting to listen to, both jarring and because the screaming lyrics seem to hit a low part of the brain that triggers flight or fight. However, the music is very popular with the miners themselves, since the sounds are said to mesh pleasantly with the rhythmic noises of the mining equipment and tinnitus. It's not easy to dance to, but miners who listen to it at work seem more balanced than their coworkers.

Most of the tracks are made by loners on computers on Earth and Dreddoth, with popular composers being DJ Drillbit, Cancerous Tumor, Bloodsplash, and Multymeathook. A few live bands have formed on Dreddoth and gained some following, such as the more mathcore of dredcore The Architecture of Haste and Desperation, Cliffs of Pain, and Clamp Ire.

Kalari agents with a penchant for theatre uncovered a series of films known as "Fast and the Furious" Given their own enthusiasm for fast cars, it wasn't long until they took to reenacting and "improving" the scenes from the films.

Thus was born the Fast and Furious Flash LARP.

At a predesignated street, bridge or similar high traffic density region, the Kalari drivers will swerve into position, and begin reciting lines from the film over loudspeakers while recreating particularly daring stunts from the film. The more UIG cars they can get to chase them and subsequently lose is considered another major factor in the successfulness of a given LARP.

While traditionally performed by junior or lower ranked agents, there will generally be at least one senior agent driving nearby, holding a video camera.

Kalari LARP videos are particularly popular on the World Data Network, as well as an excellent source of crash scenes for explosion montages.

Ballard of Jericho.

Originally the brain child of Brother Gabriel and Sister Bethany of the One True Faith, Ballard of Jericho was, in the first few films, an over-enthusiastic mess of a film series that told the story of Brother Jericho of the Order as an attempt as an evangelising tool. Unfortunately, although Gabriel and Bethany were eager and had their hearts in the right place, they were not film makers, and the result was cheesy and over bearing. It gained its fans, but mostly it was regarded as an amusing division, not what they had originally planned.

This changed when celebrated film maker Ami Rao, as well as the screen writer Jason Black converted to the Faith. The film, and the idea of using it to spread the word of the Faith, intrigued these two brilliant minds, and they offered their expertise and guidance to the cause.

The result is known as the Walls of Jericho trilogy, a three part masterpiece that drew rave reviews from all corners, chronicling Jericho's struggle with the harshness of the reality of the Corporate world and his struggle at keeping his faith, leading up to a final climax with his rival the SY swordsman Sakaki Sato in the ruins of a Shinto temple. Over the course of the series, many different theological ideas were explored, but it is most famous for the `weathering the storm` speech, which is Jericho's response to Sato's attempts at breaking his faith. The film was applauded by the Western Fed for its depiction of the joy of hard work and achievement, the Shi Yukira for the depiction of Sato as an honourable opponent for Jericho, as well as several interesting insights into his character, and the UIG and Comoros noted that although it isn't afraid to look at the darkness of reality, it is ultimately positive and focuses on what people can do to make the world better.

EI being EI, it won the `best comedy` award, but that's rarely mentioned.

Most importantly to the makers, it served as both a good source of income for the Order and an excellent witnessing tool, with many members attributing the film as not the defining thing that converted them, but what interested them in investigating the Order.

Harriet Rainchild

Harriet Rainchild began as an e-book author from England. She wrote a wildly popular YA series know as `Bioline`, focusing on a group of kids who were kidnapped by a mad scientist and experimented on, giving them the power of BIOs. They use these to begin to police their city from an organisation working in the shadows known as ELDRITCH.

The series started off dark and got darker as it went on, ideas about transhumanism and replicant rights seeping into the prose.

Then, after volume 58 of the series, the finale, Rainchild went off the deep end. She stopped writing for a year, spending that time drinking and taking drugs, dancing in clubs that were considered sleazy by EI standards, and generally being a hedonist to challenge even EI agents. Her work at this time is filled with drugs and sex, focusing on the highs and lows of the nightlife, filled with ridiculously graphic descriptions of acts that she had probably tried out herself, and with a strange fixation on the existence of artificial life forms used in these pursuits, her most famous work being told all from the perspective of a sapient sex robot in an EI brothel.

Now, Rainchild appears to be calming down. Her more recent works are closer to her origins, stories analysing the difference between human minds and machine minds, old concepts that had taken new meaning in a world run by AIs. It is rumoured she is involved in the harbouring and trafficking of rogue replicants, but no one has yet found any direct evidence.

In truth, the original Harriet Rainchild never typed a single letter of her stories. They were all written by one of her Replicants, who went rogue around halfway through the Bioline series. Jealous of her mistress' pleasure filled life style coming from the funds that rightfully belonged to her, her chance came when she was contacted by a mysterious rich benefactor who provided her with the means to take over Rainchild's life, even including a jackal band which allowed transference of the ID chip. With her kill switch removed and wearing her former mistress' face, she threw herself into partying and pleasure until her money ran out, at which point she started writing again to pay the bills. Age has mellowed her, and she is now an underground campaigner for other rogue Replicants who want a new life.

None of the above paragraph is publicly known.

Wheefil!

About 70 years ago, an EI-based online skit show made a fake advertisement for Wheefil!, a new type of meat. The "ad" showed a pink and blue swirled cubed meat substance in a crunchy exoskeleton that the three "teenage" actors in the skit treated like a drug. Upon placing the chunk of meat in their mouths, the actors began to laugh and moan and writhe in pleasure, seeming to "trip balls". Their behaviour over the course of the skit grew increasingly erratic, featuring them mugging an old lady for money and cooking the meat over a flame on a spoon, and eventually overdosing in a scummy drug hangout warehouse.

The "ad" immediately went viral. The bright colors and hammy acting were a hit with people who didn't catch on to the subtle satire poking fun at Multymeat's new Egg-U-Like rebranding. Wheefil! became synonymous with over the top marketing, addictive products, drug use and "kids these days". As time passed however, the word that entered the common parlance with such a negative image became a stand in for foods in movies and TV shows. Some of this was done to continue the joke, some because writers had no better wood for food, and others because it could be used to get a cheap laugh in comedy programming.

The most successful movie of 2495, "Nutrient Underground Infiltration 6: Meat For The Masses", featured a scene in which the villain (who is trying to poison people with tainted meat) hosts a feast, where the main course is roasted Wheefil!. It is portrayed as delicious, decadent, and is stolen by the forces of "good" after the ensuing battle. Lauded as the most well written and moving scene in the franchise, the "heroes" feast while the main character, Grim Shadedark, confesses that he longs for a better and more comforting time, when nutrient underground infiltration units will no longer be needed.

The popularity of the movie and the scene caused Multymeat and EI to join forces to create an actual, edible, pink and blue meat product in a crunchy carapace by the name of Wheefil!. Originally created to satirize the food monopoly, Wheefil! was used to reinforce the brand--and the Nutrient Underground Infiltration franchise--with cross marketing and the new logo, "Multymeat: Wheefil you up!"

The only problem with making this meat, of course, is that the iconic feast scene itself describes the meat as "not like chicken", "heavy in the belly", "like smoke in the mouth", "fragrant like a flower", "not salty", "not sweet", "not fruity", "not creamy", "nor bitter" and "truly satisfying to eat, which makes you go back for more". The eventual product appears to transcend taste, though through the use of mild brain altering drugs and not actual flavor. Still, it makes a fine accompaniment with rice or conana, and remains a popular flavor for Multymeat products.

GM EDIT: The product was banned after less than six months when reports of actual erratic behavior were occurring in the product's most heavy users. Use of the psychotropic drug built up in the system and caused permanent brain damage. The UIG was not pleased. It has since been removed from the market, and yet reminds culturally significant.

RoADe TRippeeee!

RT (The spelling is important) is the chronicles of a group of EI agents who decided to go on a roadtrip. EI style.

Renting three oil trucks and filling them with various kinds of alcohol, they set off on a six month bender across EI, Comoros and Ai Jinn territory, while sticking live feed AV bugs all over the trucks and themselves, and uploading the resulting footage to the World Data Net.

It slowly became a viral hit, combining the action of WF style agent shows and the human drama of relationships forming, breaking up, hiring prostitutes, getting back together (on one notable occasion, while both parties were still having sex with prostitutes.) and generally watching a bunch of super powered killing machines be idiots.

EI high command noticed this, and began to secretly send the team missions for when they were in Comoros and Ai Jinn territory, which, of course, they carried out while still pissed, uncovering illegal activities of both Corporations live for the world to see.

But the real finale was to come when they were finally caught by the UIG. EI, not wanting to miss a step, made the entire trial into a kind of clip show, where every crime and rank bonus received were displayed along side the footage from the show of the event in question. Finally, the verdict was handed down, and the formerly rank 5 or 6 team of agents lost a stupidly large amount of rank points. However, due to their work exposing illegal activities, they gained a lot of rank points as well, with the end result that they ended up with 1 rank point each, an absolutely bizaare state of affairs that left the court and the net in up roar.

When asked about it, the leader of the division said "I remember we went to Joe's for a few drinks...then I remember nearly driving off a cliff in Ukraine...then I was buying more booze in Cape Town...and we were very, very drunk." before stumbling off to the nearest bar.

HypnoMagnetic Patterns

When you can synthesize any fabric in any color in any weave for pretty much nothing, to do pretty much anything, it's hard to really cause a shock on the fashion scene. Up until five years ago, fashion was stagnating. Every style of dramatic or conservative cut had been done. Augments and lights had been used, flesh and metal, fluids and trapped gasses. There was nothing new.

However, a recent trend has developed that has the potential to amaze. By using a mix of light, weaves and subtle patterns in the material, the new EI company of Lefevre & Grosvenor has created a fabric that seems to move and shimmer even when still. They are utterly lovely to behold, but their appeal is much more than aesthetic. There are no cybernetic components, not chemicals in the weave, but different patterns evoke feelings in the looker. The first show caused the audience to openly weep without knowing why. There have been several more that have evoked peacefulness, joy, anger and even forgiveness and obedience.

The patterns look like crushed shapes, a slight shifting geometric shadow on any color and an ever expanding range of material. The effect is anything but subtle, and their first appearance caused such a stir most people can recognize it when being shown. When threads are dissected to find out WHY it has such compelling properties, none can be found. They do not contain subliminal suggestions, pheromones, robotics, hidden messages, and ESPECIALLY nothing hypnotic or magnetic. Attempts to recreate the fabric always fail. Since no working knock offs have been created, L&G are very rich and are obviously very protective of the secret. Items of any emotion of fabric are very, very expensive. Very expensive.

Resticen concerts.

Resticen Industries is a small independant company that primarily focuses on relaxation and sleep, producing products such as electric blankets, electric beds and mild sleeping pills.

This may not sound like a particularly obvious company to produce a series of concerts, but Resticen concerts are rather unusual. Often prescribed to insomia sufferers, each concert go-er is placed into a special pod, large enough to hold even heavily augmented humans, while a band plays a series of specially made lullabies. On the roof of the pod, above the comfy bed (softness of mattress, volume of music and temperature are fully in the customer's control), a series of relaxing patterns with some hypnotic qualities are played. Some have suggested that this is actually a series of Resticen adverts, worming their way into the subconcious. The company was cleared of this in the UIG hearing of 2498, but suspicions still abound in some areas of the populace. Despite this, the concerts are still very popular, so much so that in some spires, the company has rented permantent space to perform them.