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Craig Norris

Oct 2115 min read

Cheaters, Musicals, and Space Suits

Episode 84 - With host Craig Norris

First Broadcast on Edge Radio, 16th August 2024.

In this episode of Media Mothership, we highlight key developments in media culture. Escape From Tarkov now rewards players for reporting cheaters, enhancing community integrity. The Death Note musical addresses significant narrative challenges from the anime. Scientists have created a Dune-inspired stillsuit to help astronauts recycle urine in space. Sci-fi writer Robert J. Sawyer has made the cult DOS app WordStar available for free. Chinese officials are urged to stop playing the poker-like card game guandan, labelled as "decadent." Alien: Romulus director Fede Álvarez references the Alien: Isolation video game with phones that create jump scares. Join us for a discussion on these intriguing stories and their media impact!

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TRANSCRIPT

This is an AI-generated transcript of the audio and it may contain errors. We may update or correct this transcript in the future. Please contact us if you have any questions about the information in this transcript. The audio is the official record of this episode.

Audio file

084 Podcast Media Mothership Podcast - 2024-8-16.mp3

Transcript

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You are about to experience the knowledge and insights of the medium mothership.

Welcome to media mothership. Here on Edge Radio, 99.3 FM broadcasting out of Nepal. Luna, Hobart TAS on media mothership. We explore how media can shape our understanding of the world around us and your host. Doctor Craig with the PhD. And we're streaming on edgeradio.org dot AU as well as on YouTube and Twitch. If you want to see the show with images and video, you can find us on YouTube and Twitch just by searching for media mothership. We're also on the. DAB, the digital audio broadcasting network as well. If you have any questions while the show is going on, feel free to drop us a message on the Twitch stream. Or SMS US on 0488811707. And without further ado, let's jump into some news. Alright, we'll set it up with this little audio grab here.

Article 7 Section 3 allows for a citizen filibuster. If I stand here and refuse to yield my time, you are prohibited from voting on the bill. Let the filibustering begin. As many of you have noted. That used the Internet. It has been announced that Disney has required the rights to the Star Wars franchise, and in the summer of 2015 we will see the release of STAR. Wars episode 7 here with is my proposal for the plot of that movie. Begin with standard title sequence and John Williams fanfare, followed by a scroll to be written. I would like to mention that Brian De Palma wrote the original opening scroll for Star Wars Episode 4, a New Hope. I think it would be a nice nod. To the franchise, if he were to write this opening scroll, then pan down from the twin sons of tattooing, we are now close on the mouth of the Sarlac pit after a beat, the gloved Mandalorian armour gauntlet of Boba. Neck grabs onto the sand outside the Sarlac pit and the feared bounty hunter pulls himself from the maw of the sand beast and we we and we realise that he survived his fall during the battle at Jabba's Palace ship. Then do a hard cut to.

OK, this is exactly.

All right. That, of course, was the delightful actor Patton Oswald from Parks and Recreation and comedy series.

In Season 5, who had to do a filibuster during a local council meeting and decided to kind of freestyle this unusual Star Wars? What if story? What's amusing about this is how? Again, one media takes influences another. Here we have parks and rec comedy series with a kind of comedian, nerd Patton Oswald doing a a riff thing. It got a huge amount of media attention at the time. Unbeknownst way back then, with the Parks and Recreation episode talking about that famous. Return of the Jedi scene where? Bubba Fat is killed ignominiously in the sarlac pit. It sets up this this future moment we're in now, where of course, we've had the book of Boba Fett series. So that's the series set after return of the Jedi, featuring Boba Fett. And revealed now or a few weeks ago.

That indeed there was a inspiration from the Patton Oswald piece that that it. It's it totally nails. It's totally correct in terms of what went down in that. Netflix series the book of Effets, where Buffets Dead but surprise surprise, it started the episode. We see the gloved. Boba Fett arm appear out of the sand as he pulls himself out of the sight pit, just as described by Patton Oswald in the comic Parks and Recreation scene. Where he does the Star Wars filibuster. Really kind of. Prescient. There, a kind of accurate retailing so that that's been picked up through. A report from Collider. That in that episode, season 5, episode 19 of Parks and Recreation, that dream scenario of how Boba Fett had escaped the Salic Pit in his filibuster at the time, of course, he wouldn't have realised at all that he was spot on with how they would premiere the first episode of the Book of Ever. That is, Lisa with that very scene that Patton Oswald described. And you know, there's a number of huge tubes now circulating where people have done side by side comparisons of Patton Oswald's filibuster prediction and the actual opening scene from that series. And it's. Hilarious how close they are and you know Patton Oswald. Recently, there's a lot of media kind of amusement about that part done. Also himself responded saying how delighted he was at the time that this kind of unscripted piece of. Ah. Flow of consciousness that he did. You know, when he did that scene in Parker recreation, Oswald says that there wasn't anything. In the script. And the writer, director comes up and says, you know, just. Do whatever you want. And so he he just kept going on and on about this fan fiction piece, starting with over fat forever. So. Fascinating again, you know, fandom being able to put one and one together finally, even though this this book obetz few few years ago now too, at least that that came true. Alright, let's move on now to the next piece of work that we've got. That's interesting that we can unpack and. This was a piece a video game piece of work from the video game Escape Escape from Tarkov. There's an interesting article on Kotaku headlined escape from Tarkov, puts bounties on cheaters, rewards players for reporting them. So this is the. Battlestate games company, they've enlisted their own players, help to squash its cheating problem in this third person shooter game. Is it a cute idea? Again, the article starts with the question what better way to incentivise players to keep the community clean than by offering. Up a reward. So there are plenty of games which have. A cheating problem. You know everything from the notorious years back problem of gold farms in China for World of Warcraft to the people using glitches like the what was it? It was the baby Yoda, Zoidberg. Which in Fortnite to troll people in this case, sometimes developers need players help to track down these cheaters. The article goes on to say so. That's what this game escape from Tarkov has done, where the developer Battlestate Games started offering players. Rewards from in game currency that they could get from reporting. Cheetahs that they came across while playing the game and they laid this out. There's some patch notes there explaining that players are going to receive this in game currency compensation for reporting that leads to blocking the violator. Those who successfully report were receiving game messages confirming the individually. Submitted that has been blocked and then find some in game cash in their account. Right. So it's a really interesting idea implementing this idea hopefully doesn't result in kind of lynch mobs, witch trials and. You know, hopefully. You're recruiting some good white hats, you know Cowboys. To help clean up this game. Yeah, it's yeah. Hopefully we'll see. We'll have any, any people playing escape from Tarkov. Feel free to message in if this has worked. If you've been able to collect some bounties by reporting players for cheating, do you think it's a system that way? Uh. You know the the the. It does ruin games, you know. They're they're often very finely crafted to go between challenge and reward and yeah. Cheating. Just kind of. Messes that that rhythm up. Sadly. So yeah, yeah, that would be intriguing. Again. I like the idea of, you know, turning your game into the Wild West and recruiting people to come and sort out your problem for. The next little bit of news that is interesting is again talking about how multiple versions of media texts affect themselves. So earlier on we had the. Patton Oswald. Parks and rec prescience. Boba Fett story polygons reporting on the enemy series death note. And now currently there's a musical that's. Gaining some popularity and the article is praising it for finally fixing. The enemy and in their point of view, becoming the superior adaptation in the death note space death note of course, began as a. Manga then turned into an anime, then a live action series. It's now a musical. We've had movies death note for those that don't know is interesting premise of demonic creature who is tasked with kind of almost a naughty. Naughty list of of of killing people on this list, the Death Note that death note falls into the hands accidentally of a human who then begins using writing names in that death note to take care of people he dislikes, and there begins a kind of. Detective cases the hero L Light tries and find out who's seriously killing these people. The problem the article identifies is the final third act always falls flat. In their opinion that it never adequately. Brings to a conclusion such a fascinating premise of pitting these two characters against each other. The Death Note, murderous character, and the detective type Lie L. But I won't spoil it for those people that are keen to explore death note, but the article praises the fact that the of all the adaptations. The anime the live action movies and now the musical the musical's the one that has altered the ending to deliver a more satisfying concluding third act with our. Face down of the hero and villain. So yeah. Intriguing how sometimes the adaptation again, what I liked about this article is a case of the adaptation. A version of the original. Being the best one. SMS no. Or feel free to leave a chat if you yourself have a feeling that maybe you know the reboot of Battlestar Galactica was better than the original. There are cases, yeah, where the adaptation becomes the superior adaptation, the one in which that is the version which. Finally, corrects the previous version. I mean video games often is the case that sequels improve. And becomes superior GTA each GTA addition to the franchise is considered superior to the originals. All right. Another little piece about science and media in this case. Media affecting science, or at least media, being able to explain science article in IGN talking about how scientists are working on a real June steel suit to help astronauts pee in space. The subheading is building a real life steel suit was still a bit of a dream. Interestingly, Frank Herbert's sci-fi epic Dune has within it the depiction of this steel suit. The suit that. The people of the Dry desert world, maracas where so that every drop of their bodies moisture is recirculated for reuse so that it prevents moisture loss. With these still suits it philtres the body sweats and urine. Two in the movie be able to provide drinkable water and this of course allows the Freeman the kind of characters that are trying to rise up against the shackles of their purses. To thrive against the harsh sun on Arakis, so scientists now are trying to harness this similar technology to improve the life of astronauts embarking on arduous space walks. So they've referred to this idea of still suits. As a way to explaining the challenge they face in space of a I guess the expense of shipping all this fresh water to the International Space Station. It's incredibly. Expensive and life support systems are kind of trying to become more efficient at recycling the cruise waste so that some of that expense can be alleviated. Particularly yeah, when during, as it points out in the article, space walks where astronauts have no choice but to relieve themselves. In the high tech adult diapers known as maximum absorbency garments the mag. And they're used. They're worn in the suit. And yeah, less than ideal, right? I imagine it's pretty unpleasant. And yeah, not the most hygienic or comfortable to just be having to use these diapers. Especially because, yeah, these space walks will take a long, long time to to probably. Please. So again, they're trying to draw inspiration from these still suits from science fiction spaces like June to create ways in which astronauts can more efficiently. Relieve themselves as well as potentially recycle that liquid. Fascinating. So there. We go, there's. You know, science fiction, popular culture, affecting the way we see reality. How do we solve this problem? Maybe sometimes during upon what they do in science fiction can. You know, help crystallise the possible solution. Alright, continuing on from the world of science fiction. Cute little story. Here I want to talk about regarding. The software the old software programme, called Wordstar, right? This would take people back ages in time to early word processing technology in media. Worldstar, you've got a lot of kind of media buzz. Few years ago, when George RR Martin. In an interview said that he refuses. To use new modern bits of software like Microsoft Word, and still clings to this ancient bit of software word star to write his books with you know, the Game of Thrones books and the ones he's currently working on. So it's interesting this this piece of software, Wordstar, that kind of, you know, was last updated way back in 1992. That's when it was last updated. You know, so this, this, this precedes 92, but the last update it received was way back in 1992. Still has many fans, many fans. Interestingly, in fantasy and science fiction at the moment, there's the reason why there. Wood style is getting a bit of hype at the moment is that it's being re released, so of course this is way back in the day where you know this software is basically a DOS bit of software. For those that you used DOS, any Commodore 64 fans out there or? Early Amigas you'd use DOS, and this app would only run in a form of DOS or kind of a DOS app or emulator. So this guy, this author Robert G Sawyer. Who's an award winning science fiction author himself who's been using this software? Has re released it. He's treated it as a bad way. He's been working on compiling the ultimate updated version of it, given its last official update. It was in 92. He's been busy. Trying to sift through and philtre through, not necessarily a a modern version of it, but at least the best version possible given its last update was 92 with copious amounts of README guidance that one can do to run this kind of DOS version. Of Wordstar 7 revision D. So it's up there on the Internet. If anyone is feeling frustrated with their own writing. And maybe the trick is you haven't used word. Start the last updated 1992 bit of word processing software. Search the Internet word *7. Revision D is the ultimate version it seems, and it's abandoned web. It's it's a wonderful term abandoned web, so it's circulating out there. You can grab it. Same software that George RR Martin's using. And yeah, maybe that's what's going to unlock the exciting. Writing that distraction has been keeping you from achieving, so there you go. Word star, word star. All right, a. Little bit of media panic. This article is about games and ABC News is reporting Chinese officials are urging people to stop playing. A decadent poker like card game. Gun done not Gundam GUANDAN gundan. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that. Correctly, probably not. So to briefly explain what's happening. Chinese state owned newspaper Beijing Youth Daily is leading the charge in down announcing a popular poker style game. So. This game called Gundam. Which translates the article says as throwing eggs. Has become incredibly popular in China, particularly among party officials, the article says. And in the business community, so it's the game of, you know, you're powerful. But there's concerns that this game is, you know, too distracting, too influential, and and needs to be stopped in some quarters. So fascinating it's it's worth checking out from what I can understand the. Game involves you. Having a huge hand of cards and much like poker needing to collect them into sets or kind of poker variations and then get rid of these cards before your opponents. But but the images look fascinating, right? One of the images of a number of tables with a kind of people, four people seated around the table. But there. There's a. There's a kind of barrier, so you can't see over the top of two teams of two people, so it seems to be, yeah, highly competitive, highly, you know, secretive in a way. And yeah, yeah. Media panic though, right? Sense of as. Games which become super hyper popular, that it's it's, it's addictive. It's distracting. Yeah. So fascinating though. I've not seen it around here. Be interesting. Maybe there's some some local throwing eggs, games going down some. One done games that are there. OK, well, you know, there we go. We'll have keep an eye out. Let me. Know if you see people. Playing kind of poker but with huge amounts of cards in their hands and. Sheets between them? Unusual. Alright, last bit of news ish is new movie Alien which I will be going to see tonight, so I might be doing a review next week on the show. Alien Romulus is currently screening. I think today is its launch in Australia. Alien Romulus. There's articles talking about how. It's taken inspiration from another media too much like we talked about. Parks and Rec and the berba fat influence. And there's still suits and astronauts. Water recycling. Romulus, alien Romulus. There's a lot of discussion about the fact that there's a influence that the video game Alien isolation has on this latest movie, Alien Isolation is an interesting game. Got a huge amount of praise for being one of the best video game. Contributions to the Alien franchise, a case of a video game really nailing the property. It's extending many people loved, and I've played a little bit of alien isolation. I can totally get why it's so popular, because it really does. Ramp up that sense of dread and horror and jump scare of that alien environment. And within it are these kind of retro looking phone boxes and the fascinating thing about these phone boxes is that that prop appears in the new movie, Alien Romulus. You'll see the exact. Distinctly noticeable. Kind of old school phone with like a that the. The handset that you pick up with one big circular thing on your ear and the other one you talk into are in these movies or in this movie, Romulus. And just As for gamers, you'd know the significance of this phone system because basically that's the only way in the game. You can save your progress. So you find one of these phone stations, you save your progress, but you quickly become acclimatised to the fact that those emergency phone. Often occur at moments where the game is about to kill you, where the big bad alien is about to RIP you apart. So as soon as you get those phones, you're immediately triggered into kind of a state of massive. Concern and paranoia and these have kind of consciously been put in by the director into the film to to kind of give a tip to those people that know the game that you know, hey. We're about to have a scary scene, so I'm fascinated to see that I'll be watching it tonight and I'm gonna try and keep my eyes open for the phone boxes. And then prepare myself for a possible horror or jump scare. Or maybe fake psych out jump scare. So it'll be fascinating to see how, how, that. Objects, right? So it's fascinating to me how sometimes a prop or an item can have a kind of cognitive impact in storytelling. Many people point to the example of. The paper origami Unicorn in Blade Runner, another great Ridley Scott film as a significant object. Because it suggests that decade is a replicant, right? The decade himself in the movie Blade Runner is an alien because he dreams of unicorns, and in the very last scene of Blade Runner theatrical release. We see. Or is it directors release and his directors release we see the the the? Other Blade Runner. Leave a origami Unicorn in front of his door as a tip off that he knows. Decades memories. He knows the programming that decades had because his replicant. Similarly here. Yeah. Be interesting to see if these phones and their engagements and location in the environment are linked to the creature, the Xenomorph and kind of tips. Of the scare. Unlike a movie like a video game, of course, watching it live as a movie, I can't just save the movie. Go have a drink and come back once I'm feeling karma. I will just. Have to sit there and weather the the increasing fear and terror that's about to. To occur in that movie, but an interesting, interesting example of video games influencing movie design there, with the phone design for Alien Romulus appearing as a kind of brace for impact moments. In in the film drawn from the video game, the fact that you'll see that that phone number in that old emergency phone in the. In the video game. Fascinating. Alright, little bit of audio now. It was going over some DVDs I've got at home and yeah, recognising that I love. Of the fact that DVD commentaries are there, so in next week's show we're going to dive into the significance of DVD commentaries. In particular, we're going to collate some of the most hilariously awkward meltdowns that actors directors have had. While they've been doing DVD commentary, so listen in next week for media mothership, we'll be diving into DVD's, the kind of, I guess, most hilariously awkward DVD commentary. Next, keep listening though to Edge Radio coming up soon. We'll have some other gear. I notice Taylor is making his way in to do Kpop Unlimited, so I'm sure some great Kpop will be around the corner.

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