#Incongruent

[il3x]

[Footnotes provided for non Reboot fans.]

There are very many Kenzie in Reboot bad endings, as you might imagine when one dumps Kenzie (girl who tried to sell herself to a serial killer online because the serial killer seemed lonely) in a city with major Circle (international human trafficking ring) presence, plus one million organ harvesters and murderers and rapists and suchlike. However, there is at least one feasible good ending, and it starts like this.

Kenzie gets portalled into the outskirts of the slums. Looks around. She looks enough like a city tourist that she doesn't get immediately mugged and kidnapped, just lightly pickpocketed. Runs into Bernie* and gets scammed five times in five minutes, but very quickly runs out of things to trade thanks to the aforementioned pickpocketing and ends up tagging along with him as an assistant. I'd have to re-listen to Bernie's appearances to see how that plays out.

Within a fairly short timeframe (few days? depends if I can wrangle them into an interesting and enjoyable dynamic) they run into the PCs and start trying to sell them stuff. Eve** (this is mid-S1) sees Kenzie and her must protect instincts click into gear. The PCs become aware of Kenzie's Tinkering abilities (she probably tries to sell them something she's made), and turns out that cameras are just what they need for their latest quest, but they need one made to particular specifications. They commission Kenzie's help (motivated in part by Eve's protectiveness) and she heads back with them to Ugly's Motors***.

Kenzie is eventually taken on as, like, a child/little cousin/apprentice by Eve and Incongruent****. Collaborates with Pr0***** on various tracking and surveillance projects, but I don't think their personalities would mesh very well. Speaking of, putting a kid who's desperate for parental love and has no concept of boundaries and is codependent to the point of damaging everyone around her and herself together with a nurse bot whose trauma and programming intersect to make her desperate to look after a baby, and who has also been alive for about two months and so has barely any knowledge of healthy interaction herself... well... this is going to go terribly. Or really, really well! Here's hoping Incongruent can mediate the situation.

Kenzie also accompanies the PCs into the city to meet the Clements family, which is where she meets Uriel and her personal plotline (spy vs spy plus rescue-mission) kicks off.

*NPC. Slummer and salesman. Comparable to Cutting-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler from Discworld, but less successful.

**PC. Sentient nurse bot. Or ex-nurse bot? Fun fact, drones become sentient by experiencing something both impossible to process and unthinkably traumatic, so she's got her own neuroses around children on top of her programming. She's awesome and I love her.

***Home base, kind of.

****NPC. Another sentient robot, though most PCs don't know that. Romance with Eve, later on. Ignore his remarks about puny fleshbags and the fact that he could crush your head like a grape, he totally doesn't mean anything by it, and it's not like he has justified reasons to oppose humanity... right?

He's chill, though, I promise.

*****PC. Hacker. Circle survivor. My favourite. Has done nothing wrong ever in his life (I say as the narrator asks his player whether he wants to make a Ganger or Human Trafficker skill check).

[prokopetz]

I love it when old sci-fi television seemingly has a huge budget for sets but fuck-all for extras, so the alien planet or whatever has lots of different locations, but no matter where the main characters go there are always the exact same three dudes hanging out in the background.

[dapurinthos]

forever annoyed at the lack of non-woven jedi garments. excuse you, fibrecraft is the basis of society. where are they getting their cloth from? are they weaving it themselves? are they spinning it themselves? where is the knitwear. you cannot tell me that there are no sweaters in the jedi order. there are probably hideous sweaters made from fourteen different colours of yarn because they're made from the wool leftover from other projects. all of the colours manage to clash. and embroidery is just too good for teaching patience. hand-sewing in general is good and meditative.

these people are going to be darning their own socks, patching holes in their robes. they are going to have needles and thread in their survival kits and know how to hold the cloth tension just right with the force so they can re-weave the bigger holes by using tiny, straight sticks to hold the warp in place.

[mikansei]

from the trailblazer's perspective:

we met some weird guy who wears a statue on his head, who was kind of a dick to us, but then we went on a little entomological field trip where he was oddly encouraging. surprisingly nice to us afterward for all that he literally interrogated us first. but herta runs around as a doll and we're plenty weird ourselves, so dr. ratio is whatever, i guess. we probably think of him as "that weirdo who was on the herta space station once," which is an association i'm sure he'd hate - but hey, at least we don't call him "scholar king."

from the trailblazer's perspective:

we met some flashy IPC guy because we accidentally held him up in line at the hotel check-in, himeko tried to negotiate and it turns out he's a professional cutthroat negotiator, but it all worked out and he gave us his fancy room. he also loomed over us with freaky glowing eyes and maybe threatened us, but it was kinda vague and it's not like he really hurt us. well... until he did. the trailblazer gets the opportunity to be verbally sore about that, but the fight didn't really feel like cocolia, like phantylia; like aventurine had gone mad and wanted to take over and/or destroy the world. his grandstanding didn't make any sense to us at the time, though, and fighting him sucked ass. but we lived and - as we found out eventually - so did he.

then the trailblazer boards the radiant feldspar, and we see aventurine's hologram talking with ...boothill? okay. who explicitly says they're working out some kind of shady underhanded deal to find oswaldo schneider which, subtlety thy name is not boothill, but that's none of our business i guess. but aventurine's there(-ish) and alive and not cackling mad, which is an improvement.

then we go into the next room over and see that herta space station weirdo, dr. ratio.

huh???

and the first thing he says to us is "no wonder that gambler likes you so much."

huh???????

everything about this is news to the trailblazer. since when is dr. ratio not only on penacony, but in the dreamscape, aboard the exclusive invitation-only dream cruise ship? since when does he not only know of aventurine, but was apparently on this mission with him? since when does aventurine like us??? we just got done mutually trying to kill each other! his hologram didn't seem sore about it, which is great for us, but doesn't exactly translate into "like!"

why are we hearing this from him and not aventurine? why does he know aventurine's thoughts on us in the first place?

dr. ratio really just shows up, yaps about aventurine unprompted, recommends us reading material, complains about the crowd and then is like "k i'm done here. ur dismissed."

the trailblazer had bigger things to think about but i, the player, do not. the fandom at large may feel like 2.3 fell flat, but the fall of the roman empire is still within the wheelhouse of my roman empire. i never left the radiant feldspar. i am still aboard this fucking ship.

[valtsv]

i think my favorite kind of amv makers are the ones who make animatics for like. prestige shows and classical literature and stuff. there's something so absurdly charming about seeing those ostensibly serious lauded titans of pop culture being turned into little cartoon drawings and set to a marina and the diamonds song or something.

[swingstep]

just what are you?

[phonoix]

I'm so tired, I'm so so tired.

Watching TV shows has become the most tiring thing in this dystopian, late-stage capitalistic hellscape.

It doesn't matter how much we love those shows, how much we talk about them, how much we promote it online. Big streaming services will just cancel them on a Friday night and then let them slowly fall into oblivion. If by SOME MIRACLE the show doesn't get cancelled after the first season, it'll just decline over the years, some crazy writer will cook up a poorly written plot, or they'll just lose interest in the project and then leave the fans in the trenches.

Big corporate streaming services just think that views are gonna materialize out of thin air??? They barely promote their new shows and they DEMAND high views just to let them keep going? It's THEIR JOB to promote shows, but obviously they couldn't care less, they only care about money, and they leave the promoting job to the fans which is batshit insane if you ask me.

Streaming services were supposed to be the solution, the chosen one if you will, but they turned out to be the villains.

Owning a movie or a show is now absolutely impossible because God forbid they release DVDs anymore. Streaming services will just randomly DELETE their cancelled shows and movies from their platforms. Fans are now supposed to be PR teams for Netflix, HBO, Prime and whatever other stupid streaming apps out there because they couldn't be bothered to,,, idk,,, do their job and promote their own shows!? They're literally acting like villains.

It feels dystopic really.

I know I probably sound like a person yelling at a cloud but it's starting to become exhausting.

And I know that there are far worse things out there, that there are more important matters to focus on, but I'm so tired.

They're killing art. There are so many people out there that put all their love and all their passion and skills into creating amazing shows that SO MANY other people love and they feel represented by, but they don't care.

This is literally my last straw.

They're killing art with their greed.

[yeowninefive]

Incongruous House of Pancakes

"All you have to do is say when."

(World Goth Day was a few days ago, apparently? Moreover, this is an old concept on the shelf I had back when "Femboy Hooters" and its derivatives took off a couple of years back; with "Goth IHOP" being one of them. More to the point, it's sort of a sequel/spinoff of this art of Gumm and Taffy by @fernal-red / @fernalredart. Felt the previous "holiday" was a good opportunity to put it to use.)

[coldshrugs]

i wanna be the only one for miles and miles except for maybe you and your simple smile

[badnewswhatsleft]

(x) men giggling about severe back problems

[fishcemetery]

If this was not the intended dynamic for those three, the hell then Chucklefish was even doing with their legacy lore

(mon dieu, the legacy lore...)

[sciderman]

Gwen Stacy was 100 gazillion percent not dead before Peter’s web reached her??? What killed her while she fell? THE AIR????

and here begins one of the more hotly debated topics in spider-man comics canon - what killed gwen stacy?

(i could make a video essay about this)

goblin says that the shock of the fall alone is enough to kill her

and honestly, i don't think that sounds fake. like i mean, i've never been thrown off a bridge before but like, the shock of that could probably kill me. i don't think that's fake at all. i'd have a fucking heart attack mid-air. yeah.

but there is the pointed. snap.

so, really, regardless of whether gwen was already dead or not, the snap is a reality. if she was alive or dead, it doesn't matter, so if the shock of the fall didn't kill her, the snap would've.

i kind of don't know why norman would say she was dead before the webbing reached her. it seems more in norman's diabolical brand to double down and tell peter that his webbing IS what killed gwen. but i think maybe this is another case of the writers and artists not being on the same page - same as how it's described as the george washington bridge

but the artists didn't get the memo. that bitch is not the george washington bridge.

that bitch is the brooklyn bridge!!

headcanon that i guess in 616 the brooklyn bridge is called the george washington bridge. sure. why not.

i figure the gwen "snap!" thing is another instance of the writers and artists just being on distinctly different pages. there's this very funny workflow in comics where they kind of give the artist a rough outline of the plot and the final dialogue isn't actually written until the comic is pencilled so there's always, always miscommunications between the writers and artists. where the artist draws the brooklyn bridge but the writer thinks it would be fun if actually it was the george washington bridge after the fact because get it. norman loves money. but in the synopsis it didn't actually matter what bridge it was so the artist just drew whatever the fuck bridge!!

so. i think it's the same with the snap. in the synopsis it probably says "gwen dies in the fall" - artist interprets it as whiplash, and draws it so. writer has the idea that actually, it's the shock that kills her. synopsis says "dies in the fall" and it doesn't actually matter how. point is she dies! however the fuck!

i'm honestly so obsessed with the running gag in spider-man comics where you know the writers and artists are on different pages. in two separate rooms doing two separate things. rereading the comics is so funny when you know that weird workflow and you see a scene where the art is saying one thing and the words are saying another. almost like a 4kids dub.

that's why you get such great moments such as the panel that has caused the most outrage in my activity feed. the brown/blue pants debate.

HIS PANTS ARE BLUE!!

[alienandstrange]

another ricky&rog bc i like them. #sorrynicky #notsorryDave

[habeascorpseus]

"just dont lose yourself, okay?"

"i cant. i've tried to."

"Don't forget to enjoy this, today. Cuz if you lose yourself in trying to hurt the people who took it, you might....just don't forget the good stuff, okay?"

"i cant. i've tried."

godddd cellbits recurring motif of "i cant. ive tried." whenever someone tells him not to lose himself, both the bad and the good is so.. the implication of a perpetual fruitless spiral of turning man to monster and monster to man, and failing at both because loves too deeply and instinct is ingrained into him deeper than the carvings in his knife. he cant fucking stand himself. he can't stand how he can't be normal and has to rely on drinking copius amounts of coffee to stay awake enough to not lose it. he can't stand how even in the depths of his desire for vengeance, he hears the pain in his loved ones' voices and still stops to listen. these two parts of him have to be incongruous, because he knows he was happier when he was one without the other. and yet, time and time again the people who care about him tell him not to lose himself like they view him as whole. and again and again, he tells them that he can't. because he's tried to break himself in half and it doesnt fucking work like that. and he'll continue until he destroys himself because hes fucking Tired of being whole.

[thegoosiestlucy]

i finally watched andrew scott’s hamlet, and god he plays hamlet so young; but then you see the gravedigger scene and hamlet’s actually been alive for thirty years and then it’s just: oh. we never do escape being a child when we’re around our parents, do we; we can leave, play at being adults, but the minute we come back we will always be ten twelve fourteen eighteen and our parents are flawed and perfect and broken and untouchable; and all of a sudden thirty doesn’t seem that grownup at all

[mildmayfoxe]

series of meals