Results 211 to 240 of 1496
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2021-06-12, 12:27 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2013
- Location
- Bristol, UK
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
I have occasionally seen the bottom break out of drinking vessels due to themal shock. It doesn't happen often, but I broke a mug that way a couple of years ago. That was an interesting one, the mug looked almost okay when it was empty, but it leaked from a crack most of the way around it.
The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.
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2021-06-12, 01:21 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2006
- Location
- England. Ish.
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
Ah yes, that's always fun. Not managed that with kitchenware, but have killed a few beakers and crucibles in various labs.
Warning: This posting may contain wit, wisdom, pathos, irony, satire, sarcasm and puns. And traces of nut.
"The main skill of a good ruler seems to be not preventing the conflagrations but rather keeping them contained enough they rate more as campfires." Rogar Demonblud
"Hold on just a d*** second. UK has spam callers that try to get you to buy conservatories?!? Even y'alls spammers are higher class than ours!" Peelee
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2021-06-12, 02:42 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2010
- Location
- right behind you
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
"Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum"
Translation: "Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe."
"If you don't get those cameras out of my face, I'm gonna go 8.6 on the Richter scale with gastric emissions that'll clear this room."
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2021-06-13, 05:31 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2004
- Location
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
I don't think it would be that sanitary, robot skin is probably not food grade, and even if it were, would it really be safe from some bisphenol A type of scenario where "oh you know that thing that has been used in every plastic bottle and food packaging for the last half century, well turns out it's an endocrine disruptor and a carcinogen, woopsie!"
Hark! An avatar drawn by Kate Beaton!
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2021-06-13, 05:57 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2006
- Location
- Germany
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
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2021-06-13, 02:33 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2015
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
I'm not getting what you are referring to by "it" here. If Iris just enjoys the aroma of the brewed coffee for a couple of minutes before passing it on to a human, there wouldn't need to be any physical contact with the coffee at all. If this is still hazardous, it probably isn't safe for the humans to be room-mates with Iris, either.
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2021-06-13, 04:07 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2013
- Location
- Bristol, UK
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
The end of what Son? The story? There is no end. There's just the point where the storytellers stop talking.
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2021-06-13, 06:04 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2015
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2021-06-14, 12:58 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2014
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
You know, I was wondering what sort of place sold a robot body that needs to plug a connector from itself into itself before using a call function.
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2021-06-14, 02:12 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
In a war it doesn't matter who's right, only who's left.
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2021-06-14, 04:25 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2007
- Location
- England
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
Is it just me, or does Pintsize's new body continue to sabotage May's arc?
Okay, sure - an ex-convict who is out on parole may not want to have dealings with sketchy guys named Internet Jerry, but between the comic and the sub-tag we now know of at least two places where AI can go to buy a reliable, reasonably priced, second-hand chassis like they're just sat on the kerb waiting for someone to come and make an offer on them.
It's kind of like Marigold offering to sell her collectable hentai in order to donate money to May's fund, only for us to find out days later that she's a hugely successful streamer with more money than time to spend it. The Foundation did a big charity drive/gofundme and raised thousands of dollars, and then Roko and Beepatrice spent their loyalty points to top it up to the approximate tune of MORE thousands*.... And then Pinsize walked down the street and picked up a perfectly suitable body from the equivalent of a flea market or garage sale.
* -ish? Maybe.
I'll certainly change my tune if it turns out that Pintsize's new body is an utter dog and needed it's 50k mile tune-up 130k miles ago or something, but it doesn't appear to be heading that way so far.Last edited by Wraith; 2021-06-14 at 04:26 AM.
~ CAUTION: May Contain Weasels ~
RPG Characters What I Done Played As (Explained Badly)
17 Things I Learned About 40k By Playing Dark Heresy
Tales of a Role-Play Gamer - Horrible Optimisation
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2021-06-14, 07:24 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- May 2016
- Location
- The Lakes
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
It is one thing to suspend your disbelief. It is another thing entirely to hang it by the neck until dead.
Verisimilitude -- n, the appearance or semblance of truth, likelihood, or probability.
The concern is not realism in speculative fiction, but rather the sense that a setting or story could be real, fostered by internal consistency and coherence.
The Worldbuilding Forum -- where realities are born.
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2021-06-14, 02:36 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2010
- Location
- Tor zur Welt
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
Last edited by Agi Hammerthief; 2021-06-14 at 02:37 PM.
* my emphasis
http://dmreference.com/SRD/
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/
Things that don't kill me make me strong
Things that do kill me leave me dead
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2021-06-14, 02:50 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2006
- Location
- England. Ish.
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
More to the point, Pintsize literally got his off the back of a lorry. There's likley no guarantee of provinence at all. It's a bit like the old Computer Fairs of years past, where you could buy all sorts of stuff, usually very cheap, but despite the paperwork effectively had no guarantee (sometimes the real internet 'ain't a lot better).
Pintsize seems to have a lot of shady contacts...
On the other hand, May, Roko and Momo all got their chassis from reputable dealers.Last edited by Manga Shoggoth; 2021-06-14 at 02:51 PM.
Warning: This posting may contain wit, wisdom, pathos, irony, satire, sarcasm and puns. And traces of nut.
"The main skill of a good ruler seems to be not preventing the conflagrations but rather keeping them contained enough they rate more as campfires." Rogar Demonblud
"Hold on just a d*** second. UK has spam callers that try to get you to buy conservatories?!? Even y'alls spammers are higher class than ours!" Peelee
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2021-06-14, 04:04 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2007
- Location
- England
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
Reliable? He's had it for all of a couple of hours and nothing appears to have fallen off or caught fire. This is literally all May needed to just get about her day, and even if she then had to spend more on repairs she's better off because she would have had to do that anyway and now she's not crippled while trying to do so.
Reasonably priced? Pintsize's finances have always been of questionable source, but all he does is rent out his processors to crunch numbers - I can rent a dedicated server right now to do the same thing for ~$200 per month, for comparison - and he's never had a job so probably has no real credit history for a formal loan. How much did his chassis cost? No idea, but he managed it on nearly half of minimum wage, in cash, apparently on a whim so it probably doesn't compare to the brand new off-the-shelf models like Roko's.
Second hand? Yeah that's a guess, but we know there is an after-market for chassis (Momo and Winslow both donated their old ones to charity rather than sell them), and if it's not priced like a new body then it may well just be a slightly used one. It's not a huge leap, as assumptions go.
Bottom line: May was at any given moment apparently 30 seconds away from her head falling off and the stump of her neck bursting into flames; assuming all she needed was to find a chassis that definitely wasn't stolen property to make sure it didn't upset her parole, how picky did she really need to be whether it comes with a warranty, or tazer-fingers, or was the colour of old nicotine because it's previous owner worked in a bar?
Anything not actively on fire that would run for a few months to a year or so without her leg dropping out of socket was all she needed while she saved up for a better one, and apparently they're traded just like old cars and apparently with about as much fuss.
I'm not saying it's an obvious, immediate and consequence-free solution to May's problem, but it's just a really weird path for the comic to take. May had a multi-thousand dollar charity drive set up for her, got the seal of approval for AI civil rights from Hannelore's Dad, and got Roko and Beep's pooled loyalty points to get her a new body... Or apparently they could have fronted her a couple of hundred dollars for a runner like Pintsize's and kept a couple hundred more back for Union Robotics to give it a 30k mile service and make sure it wasn't going to crap out on her.Last edited by Wraith; 2021-06-14 at 04:08 PM.
~ CAUTION: May Contain Weasels ~
RPG Characters What I Done Played As (Explained Badly)
17 Things I Learned About 40k By Playing Dark Heresy
Tales of a Role-Play Gamer - Horrible Optimisation
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2021-06-14, 06:44 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2010
- Location
- right behind you
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
Even assuming your 200 a month is accurate, he has zero bills. He doesnt pay rent, he doesnt pay for electricity, his money is all profit in his pockets for whatever zany thing he wants to do. May meanwhile is paying for constant repairs to her terrible body, rent, and is limited in what she can do while on parole. Her pay is basically eaten up instantly for everything she needs to support herself. If I may use my car as an example. Its an old cheap piece of garbage and I would like to replace it. However, I will have to save up for months to make enough to buy even another cheap car and thats assuming nothing comes up (I already need new brakes and rotors. /sigh)
"Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum"
Translation: "Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe."
"If you don't get those cameras out of my face, I'm gonna go 8.6 on the Richter scale with gastric emissions that'll clear this room."
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2021-06-14, 10:51 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2011
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
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2021-06-14, 11:21 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2015
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
Compared to Pintsize, May's additional expenses are modest rent - she splits the cost with Dale on a place Dale managed to afford by himself working a bunch of mostly low wage jobs - and body maintenance. That's it. No AI appears to pay any significant amount for their electrical charge (Lemon's comment about nuclear reactor AIs suggest the QC world may be awash in cheap nuclear power).
Meanwhile, the minimum wage in Massachusetts is 13.50 an hour. Assuming May manages to cobble together 40 hours a week (and since there was no discussion of her trying to find a second job or additional hours this seems reasonable), she'd gross 28,000 a year. Pintsize, making 200 a month would only make 2400 a year, less than 10% of what May brings in. Therefore, in order for Pintsize to be able to afford a body while May cannot her taxes+rent+body maintenance would have to set her back 90% of her income. This is rather absurd, especially given that May is likely to earn almost as much in a tax refund - an ideal source of a down payment on a new chassis - than Pintsize does in an entire year.
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2021-06-15, 04:39 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
(bolding mine) I think this is the key point here concerning buying things from Internet Jerry: a guy high on LSD selling things from a van around some abandoned mall. Does that sound legit? You can almost bet that body just fell off a truck or something.
At any rate, I still agree that Jeph is pretty bad at keeping consistency in his work.In a war it doesn't matter who's right, only who's left.
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2021-06-15, 07:20 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2015
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
I've gotta hop on the "Pintsize's new body is weird for May reasons" bandwagon. On one hand, if he's better off than her financially (and I won't go all armchair-accountant here), sure, I see no issue with him getting a new body Just Because. Basically everyone except May has had the narrative freedom to, so why not?
On the second hand, I find myself wondering if maybe this should have come before that event, so there could be even more reason for May to be irritated and desperate for the new body. Sort of a "Damn it, even Pintsize can afford it easier than me, that's how expensive this lemon is." type of scenario.
Also, the whole streaming thing came out of literally nowhere and I'm not super here for it as a concept. It feels weird and sort of tacked on to ClaireMom's whole schtick, which I thought was funny enough on its own. But hey, I'm not the author.
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2021-06-15, 08:48 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2010
- Location
- right behind you
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
We got a brief intro to streaming from skullmaster, master of skulls, as she was buying equipment to do it and marigold was there for that part. Then like 16 years pass by and its never mentioned until suddenly she is a super rich streamer. So yeah, it feels a bit tacked on, but its not ENTIRELY unforeshadowed, just mostly.
"Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum"
Translation: "Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe."
"If you don't get those cameras out of my face, I'm gonna go 8.6 on the Richter scale with gastric emissions that'll clear this room."
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2021-06-15, 08:59 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2011
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2021-06-15, 09:07 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
In a war it doesn't matter who's right, only who's left.
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2021-06-15, 11:51 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
Yeah, it really does cheapen/question the stakes of May's body problems. Which is too bad, because that arc was probably my favorite one in the last several years.
My money's on "Jeph thought it would be funny for Marigold to get rich streaming, so he threw it in on the next strip." QC's plotting seems to run on Jeph's whims right now, which is not necessarily bad, but he does not seem to show a lot of restraint when it comes to making all of the new characters & plots ultimately pay off.
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2021-06-15, 02:00 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2004
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
Meanwhile, I'm going: wait what? Why is what amounts to: it's a plot hole that there's a really poor person in the general vicinity of people who aren't really poor, suddenly a common criticism? Pintsize is not May. "Pintsize has the money to buy a new body on a whim" only creates problems with May not being able to if you think Pintsize's money is May's money, but whenever the comic has dealt with Pintsize and money, it's featured him casually throwing disposable money around--including when he had an entirely unexpected contribution to the "May's new body" fund.
One could say Pintsize should have bought May a new body, entirely, out of the goodness of his electronic heart, but [this part elided because there's no way to not get into politics here].Orth Plays: Currently Baldur's Gate II
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2021-06-15, 02:01 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2015
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
Well, the thing is, in the real world the US only has 86 operational nuclear power stations at present. Almost all of them commenced operations prior to 1990, making them extremely poor candidates for AI management. So if there's a substantial population of nuclear power operator AIs in existence at all, even a few dozen of them, that implies a huge construction boom in nuclear power plants from 2000 onward compared with the real world.
It should be noted that there have been occasional references to the world of QC diverging increasingly from the real world outside of the tiny pocket of New England college town that insulates the core cast. For example, Steve commented 'the thing the robots are building in Halifax is crazy' or something like that after returning from a trip thousands of comics ago. A clean energy revolution - and probably high capacity battery breakthrough as well - is almost a necessary prerequisite considering the kind of power draw an AI chassis - especially a heavier chassis like Bubbles or Crushbot - must output.
I mean, consider that your average Tesla has a battery pack that weighs over 1,000 lbs and will run the car for maybe around 6 hours of constant activity if you're really lucky. A QC AI chassis is heavier than a person of equivalent volume but not cripplingly so (they don't crush people they fall on and we see humans drag them around, if with difficulty) and most of them (May's old body being an exception) seem to be able to last all day on a charge.
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2021-06-15, 02:57 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2015
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
I think the argument is that if the guy who is never seen working can go out and buy a body on a lark, then they must be cheap enough that May could have found something she could afford in her price range (or the very least some of her friends could have scratched together enough to do it, without resorting to the extensive fundraiser). Of course that doesn't have to be true (plenty of assumptions in the middle there), and it should be noted that we don't know that her friends couldn't have scraped together a couple grand for her to get a beater body better than what she had or something (that option was skipped right over in favor of a hopefully 'forever home'-level body).
I don't have a horse in this race. I treat QC as a sitcom, and loose continuity where vignettes are relatively separate most of the time. I'm used to scenarios where (ex.) Joey gets a great new acting job and spends it on fancy animal sculptures in a great new apartment and it isn't seen as rubbing it in the face of Phoebe/Rachel, which whom he was commiserating of their shared poverty a couple episodes prior or where Barney beats his drinking problem in time to save the Simpsons kids one episode, and is back to being a drunkard next time we see him. Mind you, I think series that can manage ongoing continuity to a greater level (think Arrested Development) are genuinely better products, and I will agree with the critique that if Jeph were doing that I'd consider the strip high art instead of a decent little gag a day strip.
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2021-06-15, 03:12 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
For me, it's a combination of "AI chassis are routinely depicted as very expensive, and now it's whatever, who cares" and "this new Pintsize development isn't really doing anything for me, narratively speaking."
Momo, Winslow, Roko, and now May have all had a moment in their chassis-purchasing arcs where the price was mentioned as being very, very high. Especially for May, this was repeatedly mentioned as a big hurdle for her to get out of her personal cycle of poverty. I laughed at the panel of May reacting to Pintsize's purchase, sure, but May's arc was one of my favorites in recent years and it just feels like there's suddenly a lack of consistency with that entire premise.
Pintsize suddenly has the disposable income to drop on a new body, out of the blue? The overall situation is just giving me "okay, whatever I guess" vibes. As someone else said, maybe having him get his body first, before May, might've helped that weird pacing.
And that bleeds over into my other gripe about this new storyline. It doesn't feel like any groundwork was laid for it; just another thing that got chucked into the story haphazardly. I know we're only a few weeks into this story, but I don't honestly feel sold at all on this being character development for Pintsize.
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2021-06-15, 03:42 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2007
- Location
- On Paper
- Gender
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
There's a few things to consider
1) May has been working a minimum wage job, and, since she's had a humanoid chassis this entire time, has been paying rent. Pintsize, with his small chassis, as far as we know has been freeloading off Martin for some time.
2) May's ability to save up for a body has been severely hampered by her need to pay for repairs to keep her current body going.
3) Unlike May, Pintsize has the ability to take out a loan for a new body. This kind of goes against the idea that he bought it from a shady guy in a van, but if a Chassis is similar to buying a Car, then it's not unreasonably that Pintsize could have gotten a loan from some AI-Bank that would have laughed in May's face. I'm begin generous with the worldbuilding here, but I wouldn't be surprised if banks had loan programs for AIs that wish to become fully embodied (Whether they lived in server farms, or toasters, or AnthroPCs).
4) All bodies we've seen have been purchase firsthand from a major dealer. If Pintsize is telling the truth about getting his from a sketchy guy in a van, that's a different story.
Winslow and MoMo wouldn't be the type to buy a Chassis secondhand from a sketchy guy in a van. May might have been, but the fundraiser came in with enough cash to get a top-line model from a reputable dealer.
Finally, Pintsized has been a non-entity in the comic for so long that I wouldn't be surprised by basically any revelation of his financial situation. Jeph could have him mention that he got rich of Cryptocurrency and memestocks and I'd believe it.Last edited by BRC; 2021-06-15 at 03:48 PM.
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2021-06-15, 04:46 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2013
Re: Questionable Content XVII: "My Brain Is Trash And I Live On The Internet"
Heck, that's what he should have done. Have Pintsize mention that he made a mint off of Dogecoin or something equally ludicrious-but-fictional (Hentaicoin?) and the explanation is easy. It's perfectly Pintsize to invest in an obscene cryptocurrency and would explain his funding.
As it stands, I wasn't invested in May's quest for a new body and I'm still not sold on Pintsize's new body situation.
I went back and looked at the "Sam starts a Let's Play" storyline and noticed that there's a really weird sequencing in the timeline. We first see a timeskip with Claire complaining about how cold it is, then we see Marigold talking to Sam. Then we get a montage of Faye working at the robot arena and getting buff, implying that this is a second time skip we're seeing...only the next strip is right after Marigold left Sam and is now talking to Hannelore about the situation.
Why stick the Faye comic in the middle there? Move it to the start to show the timeskip, then have Claire announce how cold it is to drive home the timeskip. It's a weird place to put a "Faye gets buff" montage and it confused the heck out of me just now when I was trying to re-read it.
Linear time, how does it work?