FFN: Year of the DIY holo network

Excerpt from VidThreat Magazine
2187 In Review: Year of the DIY Holo Network

By Heath "Cornrow" Cummings

As the galaxy rebuilds from the Reaper attack, the entertainment industry has slowly recovered alongside it, with remarkable parallels. Just as no one in 2185 could have foreseen the state of current civilization, no one could have predicted the meteoric rise of 2187's premiere holovision network, the Dwick Dwickcast Syndykyt. How, one wonders, did a lone krogan with a dream and a camera drone manage to carve out a niche at the top of the totem pole?

To understand the machinations that led to the DDS's success, one must first understand the madness of the holovision industry.

Part One: Success To Complacency To Hubris

Despite more visceral, prevalent events (for example, unstoppable spaceships tearing civilization apart) it was hard to miss 2186's ill-timed surge in advertising by the Tyche Vidcast Syndicate. Totally undeterred by the onset of the apocalypse, Tyche launched a multimillion-credit ad campaign revolving around an upcoming fifth season of their smash hit 'social experiment' The Life Egregious - extranet advertisements, holovision commercials, and an enormous, space-visible banner on Mannovai (which, infamously, was a shot of the show's new logo, accompanied by the text "Looks like the single tear of a penitent Reaper," and never mentioned holovision at all). The advertisements were met with confusion by the holo-watching public, mostly because they had bigger, more genocidal priorities on their hands, but also because the show's cast had repeatedly disclosed in press releases that there were no plans to film another season.

As it turned out, the cast was as surprised as the public. Having holed up in Nos Varda since the Reaper attack on Illium, they had been focusing on relief aid and city defense, and had not been contacted about the new season. Reached for comment in the war-torn outskirts, show regular Phaedre "Phobia" Kyala stated: "I'd kinda like to deal with all this when we're not all at risk of being [emphatically] exterminated, you [person of poor judgment]. Yeah, it's [unfortunate business practice] that Tyche's trying to [cheat] us, but there are bigger problems at the moment." Chloe "Pirouette" Beauchesne and Jarak "187" Shar'teil expressed similar sentiments, while John "Eightball" Sackpresident declined to comment due to being heavily intoxicated on red sand.

In place of the originals, TVS had hired an entirely new cast chosen through a whirlwind two-week audition process, one that, even from a first glance, was obviously chosen for its similarity to their predecessors. (Particularly obvious was Hervun'Gathi nar Thundercats, aka "Elvis Junior", who eventually turned out to not be related to the late Jak'Gathi, nor even a quarian - just an asari in an envirosuit.) It was evident that the execs behind TVS intended to move on regardless of multi-season contracts or Reaper invasions, and that they were willing to ignore the indignation of their alumni in order to do so, betting on the show's longevity and name recognition to rejuvenate their profits.

Their confidence was admirable, but naive - having dealt with the original cast for four seasons' worth of programming, TVS should probably have anticipated what was coming.

Part Two: Tyranny of the Majority

The Tyche board of directors had underestimated two things. One was the interconnectedness and high activity of the holovision community. Ironically, this was what they were banking on to carry TLE S5 to success - practically the day after the first few relays were repaired, advertisements were filling the extranet and the few channels available on basic holo. More than a few pre-war celebrities reported offers of credits or employment in exchange for raising awareness about the upcoming season through social media outlets. Having survived the Reaper invasion with far more resources and personnel than many frontline news networks (for obvious reasons), and totally uninhibited by anything resembling ethics, Tyche was poised to take over the airwaves.

They had not, however, counted on their own methods being used against them. The original cast of The Life Egregious were well-liked (having participated heavily in the war effort on Illium) and commanded the rapt attention of several billion fans, all of whom were starved for entertainment in the aftermath of the Reaper war and reconstruction efforts. This was the second factor underestimated by Tyche, who were clearly caught off guard by the sudden and vehement onslaught. History has preserved for us the first shot fired in that conflict, via Chirpr:

@mostpremiumsackpresident
sonideros, do not misbelieve that our most premium team of holovision superstars will be letting the tyche vidcast slights pass by unhindered. from henceforth onwards we begin a most rigidly righteous protesting movement that will pre

@mostpremiumsackpresident
okay not all of the last chirp went out I am not sure what is happening with the limitation of characters on this thing. anyhow we are starting #TorpedoSeasonFive, in which we will make the tvs so hell of destitute a volus covets

@mostpremiumsackpresident
and this will be done via the refusals of holovision watching when the premiere comes out. 187 will totally disseminate currency to you guys if you participate in #TorpedoSeasonFive

@OneEightSeven
@mostpremiumsackpresident Hang on WHAT

Fueled partly by the hope of acquiring 187's money and partly by righteous indignation over the soulless avarice of the TVS executives, the campaign launched with a vengeance. Although it started as a primarily extranet-centric venture, Torpedo Season Five quickly spread to local news media, with several prominent backers (including noted Tyche competitor Terminus Holobroadcasts) running advertisements and sponsoring flash mob movements. By the time the Season 5 premiere of The Life Egregious launched, the number of households tuning in was a record low, drawing a 0.5 rating galaxy-wide and a storm of negative media feedback (during which the words "derivative", "soulless", and "I miss Tethys Reave" were used a record number of times). The few brave (and morbidly curious) souls who tuned into the premiere reported that it was quite possibly the least humorous thing in the history of broadcast media, including Emily Wong's live coverage of the Reapers' destruction of Earth.

Having gambled and spectacularly lost, Tyche was left crippled and bleeding out by the proverbial wayside. Unwanted shares floated around the stock market like plague-ridden pariahs, network executives quietly removed certain entries from their resumes, and the name "Sçççandalous" became a punchline for dinner parties and late-night talk show acts. It would seem that the seven episodes still due to air would be a waste of resources, considering that public opinion had shifted even further towards the Torpedo Season Five movement. TVS had sunk as low as it could go, and the only remaining question was whether anyone cared enough to pick up the pieces.

Enter Jorgal Dwick.

Part Three: A Dwicksight's 40/40

Singer, engineer, slave, politician and a veteran of countless armed conflicts throughout the galaxy, Jorgal Dwick is a true Renaissance Man and one of the most spectacular cases of self-made wealth to grace the galactic stage. Born the only son of Jorgal Fouck in the barren Kraangh Valley of Tuchanka, Dwick was struck in his infancy by Poclis encephalitis, a congenitive disorder that wreaked havoc on his secondary nervous and endocrine systems. Krogan medicine in the 1100's being stunted by the Genophage, the clinically-retarded krogan would have been euthanized per Jorgal custom had it not been for his half-brother Kafok, who smuggled his body from the Valley and onto pre-Morning War Rannoch. There, serving as the bodyguard for a quarian birth control mogul, he tended to his kin's ailing body until he could fend for himself.

Dwick fondly recalls Kafok as being one of his most positive childhood influences; in a tearful interview with ThreatVid correspondent Tis Wikfor, he called Kafok "The best...example of Tuchankan [valor] anyone could have...A selfless, yet enterprising man, who regularly donated nearly all his income to charities across the galaxy." While this would later cause Kafok to declare bankruptcy and reveal debts to Sublyme traffickers in the 1317 Bloodbath of Ytar, Dwick still recalls how it was his half-brother who flayed him back to fighting strength – and indeed, the one who gave him his first video camera.

That, according to the media mogul, was the day that everything changed.

Almost from the moment the man tore the device from its container, Dwick found an insatiable appetite for filmography. Evidence of his love of the stage appear as early as 1322, where financial records for the now-defunct Fifth Eye Media Distribution Network reported a skyrocketing demand for bandwidth – as well as ghost images from his first-known video, "Krogan faling [sic] down stairs." Details of his early film career remain sketchy, of course, in large part due to Dwick's cagey "It'll make for a good story" attitude, but both he and his pseudonyms can be found in bit roles throughout the Krogsploitation boom of 1325-1387 - most notably, the roles of "Angry Enforcer #3" and "Krogan Vagrant (Background)" in the megahit Lucid Dreams production of Black City 2352.

Since then, Dwick's life has been a whirlwind of careers, both in and out of the film industry, punctuated in large part by an unending video blog chronicling his experiences and battles in the Abyss, the Traverse, and even in the terrorist group Cerberus' attempted 2186 Coup of the Citadel. Throughout it all, assisted by a considerable stream of revenue from his millennial portfolio, Dwick found himself facing an ever-growing desire - one that he expressed most lucidly to his unnamed volus compatriot in his broadcast during the final Offensive on Illium.

==

Excerpt from [DWICKCAST EP. 2186: BALLZ OF WAR]

[DWICK] "Y'know, Vents, dere's somethin' I've always wanned t'do. An' if I survive this wit' my oodles an' oodles of money, I'M GONNA DO IT."

[The ground next to Dwick evaporates under a Reaper's particle beam as they run forward.]

[UNNAMED VOLUS] "NOOOO WHYYYYY"

[DWICK] "See, what I really wanna do..."

[UNNAMED VOLUS] "AAAAAAAAUGH NOOOOO"

[DWICK] "...Is direct."

[UNNAMED VOLUS] "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

==

Yes, direct. And with his favorite media network falling to pieces, Dwick and his partner smelled an opportunity. As Tyche Vidcast's net worth plummeted, a mysterious entity known only as "Lenny" made its presence known on the Illium Stock Exchange, snapping up shares at pennies on the credit. The speed was terrifying; within days of the Reaper Armistice, an inexplicable duet stepped out to meet its subjects: CEO Jorgal Dwick, and his recently-crowned CFO, Ihaba "Terrorbyte" Naem.

What happened next has been hotly debated. Indeed, we may never know whether it was a conspiracy on the part of Dwick and his associates, or simply the bewildering whim of fate. The facts, however, are indisputable: whether by mistake or sabotage, the prop department mistakenly replaced a container of red sand with a jar holding a sample of ashes from original cast member Tethys Reave (who had supposedly been killed by Reapers during the invasion of Nos Astra). Cast member Marco "The Money Guy" Sulejmani (also known to viewers as "Marco from the Tropojë System") opened the jar, and the literal second after Dwick's acquisition of Tyche Vidcast Syndicate was confirmed, audiences were treated to the following scene, presented here in transcript format:

==

Excerpt from [The Life Egregious: S5E02 - "Hindsight's 20/20 (so a Dwicksight's 40/40)"]

[Eighteen Going On Murder] "Marco, you've got to stop using so much red sand."

[Standing atop the table, Marco ignores the batarian's plea and attempts to twist off the top of his red sand jar. A gleeful logo on the lower left reminds the viewer that this sequence is being taped "LIVE," evidence of one of the company's many attempts to recoup ratings.]

[Marco] "Negatory, my shimmering shoq. I must do all the red sands, for you see, I have a chemical dependency...of partying."

[Sçççandalous] "He's right, EGOM. You shouldn't impinge on his right to get down with his bad self."

[Elvis Jr] "Furthermore, I'm Batman."

[Sçççandalous] "Go die in a skycar accident, Junior."

[Everyone pauses for laughter.]

[Marco] "In a matter of moments, I aim to get mucho sandblasted, my friends. Behold!"

[He wrenches the jar open and raises it proudly over his head, causing tinted dust to spill forth and swirl around the room in a scarlet cloud.]

[Marco] "Within many of the picoseconds, there will be so much red sand in this room that.."

[The cloud coalesces on the floor, and begins to assume a vaguely humanoid shape.]

[Marco] "Er...I am not certain if this is supposed to--"

[A moment later, a bubble of red, biotic energy envelops and drags him, screaming, into the cloud. Liters upon liters of blood splash against the room's walls in a violent arc, and the dust coalesces into the familiar shape of Tethys Reave.]

[Reave] "At last! At last, I am unleashed once more! Kirel narak!"

[Sçççandalous] "Who the hell is that drell?"

[Reave] "I am the unraveling of all that has been created! Gaze, sniveling blue worm, upon the eternity of suffering that awaits you and DESPAIR!!!"

==

Six minutes of gory, extraordinarily violent footage ensued before the network could cut the feed, and in those six minutes, seventy-seven billion viewers tuned in to The Life Egregious.

Part Four: From The Ashes

It was a perfect storm of good fortune for Jorgal Dwick - even beyond their usual thirst for violence, the holovision-watching public was rabid for the blood of the Season 5 cast. The episode's ratings broke several galaxy-wide records, and Tyche stock surged through the proverbial roof almost overnight, making Dwick's newly-acquired company one of the hottest commodities in entertainment.

Furthermore, the PR difficulties that had plagued his predecessors were a non-issue for the krogan, since he sought out the original cast and crew of The Life Egregious and integrated many of them into his burgeoning network as staff writers, on-air personalities, or social media liaisons. This showed that Dwick's business skills were more shrewd than his seemingly-simple nature implied: he neutralized the threat that had taken down Tyche and turned it into an asset for himself in one fell swoop. Even as TVS underwent a month of downtime in preparation for a relaunch, he kept public interest high by releasing behind-the-scenes footage and promotional shorts for upcoming features, all of which were shot in his trademark amateuresque style.

At the time this article goes to publication, it will have been exactly two months since the relaunch of the rechristened Dwick Dwickcast Syndykyt, and it's safe to say that the holovision industry has turned completely upside-down in that time. Never has a lone krogan held such sway over the entertainment of billions (unless you count Threshmania's brief dominance over the red metal scene in the 2140's). DDS programs consistently hold a top three slot in the weekly audience measurement ratings, and no hydrodispenser conversation is complete without discussion of this season's lineup, including the Hargh Show of Holovision, husk-themed gameshow Beat the Reap, or noteworthy network-jumper News With Curr (The News Vorcha).

As for the man of the hour himself, it would appear that fame and fortune have done nothing to change Jorgal Dwick. Still a patron of the arts, he has channeled his love of holovision into public works and ambitious industry-related projects. In his keynote address for this year's annual Sand 4 Saviors Charity Gala (co-hosted with Executive Producer John Sackpresident at the latter's Nos Varda nightclub, Casa de Cachaça), Dwick reaffirmed his commitment to quality HV programming: "We're going to make holovision our [expletive]."

Mr. Sackpresident did not deliver his scheduled followup address, due to once again being heavily intoxicated on red sand, but I personally have no doubt that he stands with the rest of us in our support of the Dwick Dwickcast Syndykyt, and of all its future projects.

...

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...

Dwick lives and owns the largest HV network in galaxy?

I think I'm crazy. Yes, that's it. I've lost it. Veritas! Make room in your sanatorioum for me!

I just saw Dwick dolls in a kiosk! I didn't recognize it at first but it's him...

Well, didn't see that one coming.

THAT'S RIGHT

WE RICH BIATCH

Well, there is a reason for me to not watch HV ever again.

edit: Or at least this network.

...

With the lack of better words..


Wow.

holy shit yesssssssss

omg i missed reality holovision

... wait a minute.

Unnamed volus?!? I don't even get fucking shrelling goddamned credit in this article? UNNAMED VOLUS!?

DWICK, GET YOUR FAT FUCKING ASS ON THE HORN WITH THE MEDIA DEPARTMENT

I'M BUSY

WHAT, LIKE I'M NOT

I JUST SIGNED OFF ON A RECEIPT FOR 200 JARS OF MARSHMELLOW FLUFF

WHY DO YOU NEED 200 JARS OF MASRHMELLOW FLUFF

I'M DOWN IN ANIMATION WIT' NUMBERS

DIS CARTOON AIN'T GONNA RUN ITSELF, YA KNOW

THAT DOESN'T EXPLAIN THE GODDAMNED MARSHMELLOW FLUFF

I THOUGHT WE HIRED THE VORCHA TO DO THE ANIMATION ANYWAYS

There are times I yearn for the simple focus of the Reaper Wars.

Whoa there, Charlie

This is hell of libelous, I was making the good faith effort to deliver my oratory to the waiting Gala-goers when security disseminated to everyone that I was 'three sheets to the wind' and most forcibly abducted me to the back with terroristic orders to 'sleep it off'.

With that said I will forgive this cornrowed slanderman for his assertions because he has mucho praise for my obese obrigado Dwink and the rest of the fine populace at DDS. It is most generous of him to utilize my colleagues' numerous holo-logical talents for his own gain because otherwise, in the interest of keeping the party going, I would have to hire them and keep paying them credits for hanging around my Most Premium Nos Astra Nightclub.

Venceremos!

WELL HOW DA FUCK YOU THINK WE PAY DESE NUMBSKULLS

...Congrats, I guess.

WELL, SHIT, IF WE'RE PAYING THEM IN MARSHMELLOW FLUFF, AT LEAST GO FOR THE CHEAP SHIT

THESE ARE VORCHA, THEY DON'T NEED THE TOP OF THE LINE STUFF

BASIC FUCKING ECONOMICS, MAN


YOU'RE GODDAMNED RIGHT YOU'RE CONGRATULATING US

I think my brain just exploded.

Well, I know which channel to block from my subscription from now on.