DoPE Show 12

The twelfth DoPE show, performed at Eurofurence 17, was titled "The Year of the Rat".

Plot summary
It is the year 2032. The efforts to reunify Hong Kong and the People's Republic while trying to maintain two separate ideological systems are unravelling the Chinese Government's dominance. The people themselves and the new economic powers are now demanding their say in China's future. Despite strict censorship and constant surveillance, a small but active underground hacker community is waiting for the right moment to turn the tables. Their curiosity is piqued when a 16 Terabyte encrypted memory stick is dropped in their lap on the same day that the CEO of Black Crescent Advantage, China's biggest investment company, kidnaps his own daughter and vanishes without a trace...

Authors

 * Cheetah
 * Eisfuchs

Director

 * Cheetah

Cast

 * Null (rabbit)
 * Voice: Eisfuchs
 * Played by: Eisfuchs, Tigerseye


 * Void / Cornelius (rat)
 * Voice: Lynard
 * Played by: Lynard, Kayjay


 * Wan Jiao Chan (white tiger) Wife of Cai Lung
 * Voice: TaniDaReal
 * Played by: TaniDaReal, Furvan, Kyron


 * Wan Cai Lung (Dragon) Father of Wan Yun and CEO of Black Crescent Advantage
 * Voice: Fairlight
 * Played by: Fairlight, Xan, Zefiro


 * Wan Yun (tiger) Daughter of Wan Cai
 * Voice: Pan Hesekiel Shiroi
 * Played by: Pan Hesekiel Shiroi, o'wolf, Runo

Additional puppeteers, voice actors & stage hands

 * CJ
 * kyron
 * o'wolf
 * Tigerseye
 * Xan (not voice acting)
 * Zefiro

Narrator

 * Shay

Returning characters (short appearances)

 * Lynard: Lionel C. Scruffycat
 * Eisfuchs: Loreena McFolkmanis (Lori)
 * Fairlight: Poke
 * TaniDaReal: Mika SaéSucasa

Editors

 * Pinky
 * Twll

Sound effects

 * Cheetah

Lighting

 * Jaryic
 * Darkwing

Backstage leads

 * Reesa
 * Zefiro

Intro videos

 * BigBlueFox
 * Tillikum

Poster art

 * TaniDaReal

Character design

 * Henrieke
 * TaniDaReal
 * Pan Hesekiel Shiroi
 * Xan

Puppet building

 * Furvan, Henrieke, Kyron, Nightfox, Runo, TaniDaReal, Tioh, Xan

Animatronics & special effects

 * CJ, Furvan, Mendra, Xan, Zefiro

Poster & set designs

 * TaniDaReal

Backdrops & prop building

 * Angus, Cheetah, CJ, Dhary, Djem, doco, EosFoxx, Furvan, Horsie, Jaryic, Kazzador, Kyron, Lynard, Mendra, Neo, Nightfox, o'wolf, Raji, Reesa, Reeve, Snowy, TaniDaReal, Tigerseye, Ysegrim, Xan, Zefiro

Special thanks

 * Horsie For providing the stage workshop facilities
 * Mendra & Zefiro For providing a large format printer
 * Reeve For translating the Chinese characters
 * Nightfox For providing his garage for the rehearsals and driving the trailer

Trivia

 * In one of the first scenes, actual fursuiters seated in the audience played a part in the show.
 * All four original characters appeared in the chase scene after Cornelius broke in to his own apartment and was caught by the fire department.
 * While loading, the bar scene had the song from Transformers 3.
 * Lionel and Lori appear in the virtual bar scene. Lionel gets himself in trouble center stage, Lori was drinking to the far right.
 * Lionel was hitting on Wan Yun the female tiger with two very bad pickup lines: "Girl you must be Jamaican. ...Because you are makin' me crazy." and "Hey baby, let's play house, you can be the door and I'll slam you!"
 * Null (the rabbit) said "Hello world. I always wanted to say that." 'Hello world' is almost universally used to test the output of a new programing project to see if things are working properly. New programs generally have a graphical interface and show text.
 * Null had various scenes inside his basement shown on the screens. These were NOT prerecorded and were done live at the right of the stage behind curtains.
 * The currency used in the bar was 'Lindens', referring to Linden Dollars used in Second Life.
 * The 'hack' used by Wan Yun on the bar keeper bot is an actual programming problem. When she subtracted the last person from the list to split the drinks with 2500 linden, it got divided by 0. As dividing by zero is impossible in mathematics, it normally crashes any program that was not written to cope with the exception.
 * In the last scene on the rooftop there was a companion cube in the window of one of the buildings.
 * In an ever excelling ambition this show had three quadrupedal puppets operated by three people each. Operated parts include 4 legs, tail, head, eyelids and mouth.
 * The dragon was mounted on to the shoulders of one puppeteer with its head being operated from a rod, and had electronics for moving the mouth and eyelids.

Black Crescent Advantage usb stick
Sponsors and super sponsors at Eurofurence got a special USB stick from Black Crescent Advantage. Using the password used in the show by Null the rabbit, it can be decrypted. The archive has a header looking like the ones you see on warez and the decrypted archive has a Linux directory structure. The password for the archive is the same as in the show: "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown!"

The stick played a role in the storyline as being the contents of BCA's root servers. In real life the stick contained:


 * Concept art for several puppets
 * Movies of the rehearsals
 * The PPS script
 * Poetry
 * Pictures used during the show (like the login icon for Void)
 * Screenshots of forum posts made by some staffers
 * Video animations used during the show (like the heartbeat monitor and the Windows 19 loading screen)
 * Wallpapers of the Standees and Convention Banners