Page 807 – The Prize Inside
Ugh. Well, it took friggin’ forever, but the biggest stinking Conventional Wisdom update I’ve ever done is finally finished. Now I can focus on other things… like everything I was SUPPOSED to get done over the weekend and didn’t… such as this comic.
Obviously, what I’ve posted right now isn’t the final version, but seeing as how it’s already a whole day late, I figured I’d better go ahead and get SOMETHING up as soon as possible. I’ll have the colored in version plus a new Voting Incentive done as soon as I can (followed shortly by all the Patreon stuff that didn’t go up over the past few days)
Thanks for bearing with me through all this mess, guys. I promise the upcoming Triad Anime Con update won’t disrupt things anywhere NEAR as much. It’s a shorter con, much closer to home, and with a lot less stuff to cover. I just gotta get all this LATE stuff done in time to get the EARLY stuff done before I leave. Cross those fingers!
(Historical Notes: One of your clever buggers mistook the viewscreen’s top-down diagram of The Exposition facing the approaching ship as POV shot of a second ship with the exact same shape as The Exposition, resulting in a VERY detailed rundown of the alternate universe Far Out There from whence the second ship must have come. I love me a good mirror universe story!)
@Historical Notes: Oh! In the likely case that has no spoiler or other problematic things, could you repost it in the comments here? That sounds as if it would be fun to re-read.
Let’s see if I can fit all this in a single comment:
That ship on the display looks just like The Exposition! That must mean they’ve encountered their Alternate Universe Duplicates!! (Because all sci-fi series must have an Alternate-Universe-Duplicates episode, it’s a rule.)
We get to meet Alternate Layla, who is generous and charitable and hates money (she had a great relationship with her mom, but didn’t get along with her dad at all). She usually wears a shirt that says “YES”. Her boyfriend, Kevin, is an ambitious, hard-working sort who hates TV, and then there’s his siblings: cruel, mean, spiteful Jenna and sweet, adorable little Megaweapon. Blip is the intellectual, thoughtful one on the ship. Gregarious, friendly Cap’n Crosby, always willing to give a free ride to anyone in need. There’s Pacifist Stilez, and boring, stodgy Tax, who is studying to grow up to be an accountant (a Tax Accountant, of course) Evil, cruel, world-destroying Mad Scientist Tabitha and her two minions (it’s not like she thinks of them as kids, I mean they’re not even real people, right?), timid, bookish Bridget and tough badass Alphonse. Alt-Tabitha only wears frilly, elaborate dresses. Avatar is the same as in our universe. Because in every alternate universe there is supposed to be the one character that for some ironic reason isn’t really different at all, or only superficially. Maybe she’s a brunette, so we can tell them apart. I’m not sure about Trigger, Ichabod, and Vengeance, they’re a bit harder to inverse. Maybe Vengeance is replaced by a kitten.
And, of course, they ALL. HAVE. BEARDS. Dun, dun, dun…..
In an alternate universe, sometimes there’s a character missing, or one who died in the real universe is still with the cast. In this case, alternate Trigger is not with the crew. Alternate Lowelem’s warming project didn’t get started early, it is still frozen, and alternate Trigger’s bosses had called on him to sabotage the project, so he actually got to use his skills. He was successful, and “saved” Lowelem from the climate change “disaster” and was hailed as a planetwide hero, so he was no longer there when alternate Ichabod arrived. Alternate Ichabod just invited Alternate Layla to travel with him as an apprentice nitpicker because she was such a nice, polite, respectful young lady and he felt bad for her after her dad kicked her out and her mom died in a freak counterfeit-popcorn manufacturing accident.
After further consideration, I have decided that Alternate Universe Ichabod is still a Nitpicker, but that in his universe the Nitpickers Guild, rather than just a benevolent professional support organization for nitpickers, has instead become a vast shadowy organized criminal mafia-like syndicate!
Corrupted by all the vast knowledge and wealth that came with Nitpicking, they first branched out into the protection rackets – charging companies *not* to come in and nitpick their business into oblivion, charging politicians *not* to publicly expose their corruption (huge money there!) by nitpicking their devious plans, etc. From there it was only a short step to branching out in to all sorts of criminal enterprises, and with their influence and meticulous attention to detail (free unlimited access to their own nitpicking services!), the Nitpickers Syndicate prospered greatly as a criminal enterprise.
As one of the Godfathers of the Nitpickers Syndicate, Don Ichabod took the opportunity of Layla’s Mom’s untimely passing to swoop in and take over the smaller Quartment Crime Organization for the Nitpickers Syndicate, which is where he managed to pick up the young Ms. Quartment as his new apprentice.