Life update: Cons and moving drama
Apr. 26th, 2010 11:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rallamajoopHey everyone! How's things? Been having a bit of a month over here.
Since my last post I have attended a con, moved house and been separated from the Internet for nearly two full weeks. Granted though,, even if I had had Internet connection, I would probably not have had time to write this post.
Swancon
The thing about a con that you've been going to very nearly every year for the last ten years is that no matter how much you enjoy it, you start running out of things to say about it that you haven't said before. It would be nice to say they've gotten consistently better over the years, but more realistic to admit that the quality of any given Swancon is something of a random variable distributed around an average of 'a very enjoyable weekend', with Swancon 2004 at the far end (as the con that will very probably never be beaten, though Swancon 2008 does come a very respectable second), and a pretty strong correlation with whether or not the guest of honour is someone I'm interested in... anyway, the point is that at it's best, Swancon is awesome, at it's worst (excluding major con drama, which we will not talk of here), it's a long weekend spent in a big hotel full of other fans – many of whom are old friends we hardly see outside the con these days – and this one was solidly in the latter category. Nothing particular to recommend it (the committee did not seem particularly with it this year, the convener's speech at the opening ceremony was embarrassingly bad), but no drama and rarely too many gaps where there was nothing on we wanted to see. Generally a fun, relaxing weekend in good company.
A couple of memorable highlights, in no particular order:
1. The 'Iron Brain' competition. One of those old fannish traditions where the panel is challenged to read, out loud, passages of the worst fiction the organisers could find, winner is the one who cracks up last. Though Swancon's been hosting varients on these for years, usually late at night, this was the first I'd actually attended. This did involve the experience of looking around the room and going '...so much surprise? Hasn't everyone with the Internet laughed there way through their share of horrendous badfic before? Seen![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
weepingcock? No? Just me?', which is possibly this is a sign one has had the Internet too long). But the important thing is that the fiction chosen was truly hilarious, and I can finally vouch that the Eye of Argon really is as bad as its reputation holds it to be.
2. The Rumble of the Prose panel: Writers, amateur and professional, are challenged to write a short scene around a choreographed fight scene performed by a couple of local martial arts enthusiasts, audience voted for their favourite. Winner does so by producing a well received piece of very funny RPS (and practically canonical RPS at that). Winning writer happily declares he knows his audience well. (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rallamajoop checks another point off her 'things she never expected to see at Swancon' list.)
3. The Masquerade. As always. Not a great turn out this year, the dance floor was almost deserted by 10:30 or so, which is a crying shame because it was only after that that they played the best music. Goth-Loli Joshua for a costume again, which seemed to go down well even though no-one had the faintest idea who I was meant to be. Possibly it was the short skirt.
On the downside, the Doctor Who panel was rather disappointing this year, given that the no-spoilers policy meant that everyone wound up discussing the same things that have already been discussed to death over the last few years rather than being allowed to talk about new stuff. Several panels which looked interesting on the program turned out to be missing their main panelist, or to be being run by just one guy, which rarely works very well. And, as always, if there were ever just two things I really wanted to see in one day, you could bet they'd be scheduled at the same time.
Next year's con is sounding pretty promising, what with it being a Natcon year, which means a bigger budget and (finally!) a new hotel. Not keen on the organisers' policy of raising all their prices though – I mean, if it costs just as much to go to a Swancon screening of a movie as the regular ticket price (which yes, you get to see with other fans, but on the other side of Perth at an incovenient hour), then you've lost a big chunk of the appeal. You do not raise more money if your prices mean people don't bother to show up at all.
Speaking of Swancon, I was a little surprised after the con to randomly track down one of those online discussions I'd heard of in passing where people were discussing why they did or didn't come to the con, and found the main complaint seemed to be... Swancon is too clique-ish? Really? But then I have to admit I'm probably not in a good position to be able to judge one way or another, since my introduction to the con came from a group of people who already went each year (the old JAFWA crowd, back in the day when it was still a successful club), so I guess if there ever was a 'clique' it might well have been one I was in on before I got there. Still, I've made a lot of new friends through Swancon since then, and I've always felt that one of the best things about Swancon is the whole close-knit fan community feel to it – especially when compared to events like Waicon and Supanova, which certainly have their own appeal, but are so much louder and more commercial and generally feel more like a bunch of completely random strangers packed into the same building. If that makes things clique-ish, then I'm not sure it's something I want changed. Even the guests have been known to comment on it as a positive.
That said, there's no doubt they have a real problem with attracting younger fans. Nice as it is to see the older fans keep coming back, the con's doomed in the long run if it can't attract new people, and as one of the (relatively) younger crowd I'd hate to see it die with the older generation of Perth fandom. Which is to say I'm very glad to see that the 2012 bid by the team who wanted to base their con around 'fannish stuff that came out between 1970-1989' didn't get voted in. Nostalgia's all well and good, but really not the focus I feel the con needs at the moment. I am absolutely biased on this one given that the counter-bid was being run by friends of ours, but they're friends who are known to be very vocal on the issue of how to attract the younger batch of fandom, which sounds like a much better sign.
Then we got back from the con and had to start packing ASAP.
The Move
I guess the move went about as smoothly as could be expected. On our last move we were moving out of home for the first time – you'd think that would be the more daunting job – but we only had half as much furniture to shift back then, and no messy clauses requiring us to keep paying expensive rent to our parents for as long as it took to scrub everything squeaky clean in the hope of getting all our bond back. As it wound up, Saturday the 10th was moving day, most of the evenings of the week after were spent cleaning up the old house and moving the last few delicate odds and ends over, the following week after that was largely lost to catching up on uni work (ARGH PRESENTATION TIME), and my birthday, somewhere in the middle, was spent assembling all the new Ikea furniture required to give us somewhere to unpack things into. With luck, we may even be done unpacking boxes within another week or so.
It has, to put it mildly, been a bit of an adventure. But moving always is.
The good news is that the new place is just about everything we were looking for – newer, cleaner, much more convenient for current working situations – and, more importantly, lacks the one big thing we were emphatically not looking for, which is a massive garden which the landlords expect us to keep watered and healthy despite the reticulation not having worked in god knows how long. It is amazing just how novel it is for us to be living in a place where everything works. It's a little smaller than our old place, but since we've been down a housemate for most of a year we're not losing any space we desperately need. Took a couple of weeks to get Internet connection set up at the new place, but given that last time it took well over a month, we are not complaining at all.
Took a quick snapshot of all my props while I had them together; also to demonstrate why it took so many trips to transport everything over. While not all of them are so delicate they need to be nursed carefully for the full journey, none of them pack easily. Ordinarily, some of these are hung, or in one case tied, up in various places around the house, so having them all together is a pretty rare event.
From left to right, the Fuuenken, Paracelcus, Hiei’s sword, Syaoran’s sword, and Yuffie’s 4-Point Shuriken and the Conformer at the bottom, plus the Pipe Fox, just because.
Probably going to be having some kind of combined housewarming/birthday party in a couple of weeks time. Depending on how long it takes to get ourselves organised, and all that.
Since my last post I have attended a con, moved house and been separated from the Internet for nearly two full weeks. Granted though,, even if I had had Internet connection, I would probably not have had time to write this post.
Swancon
The thing about a con that you've been going to very nearly every year for the last ten years is that no matter how much you enjoy it, you start running out of things to say about it that you haven't said before. It would be nice to say they've gotten consistently better over the years, but more realistic to admit that the quality of any given Swancon is something of a random variable distributed around an average of 'a very enjoyable weekend', with Swancon 2004 at the far end (as the con that will very probably never be beaten, though Swancon 2008 does come a very respectable second), and a pretty strong correlation with whether or not the guest of honour is someone I'm interested in... anyway, the point is that at it's best, Swancon is awesome, at it's worst (excluding major con drama, which we will not talk of here), it's a long weekend spent in a big hotel full of other fans – many of whom are old friends we hardly see outside the con these days – and this one was solidly in the latter category. Nothing particular to recommend it (the committee did not seem particularly with it this year, the convener's speech at the opening ceremony was embarrassingly bad), but no drama and rarely too many gaps where there was nothing on we wanted to see. Generally a fun, relaxing weekend in good company.
A couple of memorable highlights, in no particular order:
1. The 'Iron Brain' competition. One of those old fannish traditions where the panel is challenged to read, out loud, passages of the worst fiction the organisers could find, winner is the one who cracks up last. Though Swancon's been hosting varients on these for years, usually late at night, this was the first I'd actually attended. This did involve the experience of looking around the room and going '...so much surprise? Hasn't everyone with the Internet laughed there way through their share of horrendous badfic before? Seen
weepingcock? No? Just me?', which is possibly this is a sign one has had the Internet too long). But the important thing is that the fiction chosen was truly hilarious, and I can finally vouch that the Eye of Argon really is as bad as its reputation holds it to be. 2. The Rumble of the Prose panel: Writers, amateur and professional, are challenged to write a short scene around a choreographed fight scene performed by a couple of local martial arts enthusiasts, audience voted for their favourite. Winner does so by producing a well received piece of very funny RPS (and practically canonical RPS at that). Winning writer happily declares he knows his audience well. (
rallamajoop checks another point off her 'things she never expected to see at Swancon' list.)3. The Masquerade. As always. Not a great turn out this year, the dance floor was almost deserted by 10:30 or so, which is a crying shame because it was only after that that they played the best music. Goth-Loli Joshua for a costume again, which seemed to go down well even though no-one had the faintest idea who I was meant to be. Possibly it was the short skirt.
On the downside, the Doctor Who panel was rather disappointing this year, given that the no-spoilers policy meant that everyone wound up discussing the same things that have already been discussed to death over the last few years rather than being allowed to talk about new stuff. Several panels which looked interesting on the program turned out to be missing their main panelist, or to be being run by just one guy, which rarely works very well. And, as always, if there were ever just two things I really wanted to see in one day, you could bet they'd be scheduled at the same time.
Next year's con is sounding pretty promising, what with it being a Natcon year, which means a bigger budget and (finally!) a new hotel. Not keen on the organisers' policy of raising all their prices though – I mean, if it costs just as much to go to a Swancon screening of a movie as the regular ticket price (which yes, you get to see with other fans, but on the other side of Perth at an incovenient hour), then you've lost a big chunk of the appeal. You do not raise more money if your prices mean people don't bother to show up at all.
Speaking of Swancon, I was a little surprised after the con to randomly track down one of those online discussions I'd heard of in passing where people were discussing why they did or didn't come to the con, and found the main complaint seemed to be... Swancon is too clique-ish? Really? But then I have to admit I'm probably not in a good position to be able to judge one way or another, since my introduction to the con came from a group of people who already went each year (the old JAFWA crowd, back in the day when it was still a successful club), so I guess if there ever was a 'clique' it might well have been one I was in on before I got there. Still, I've made a lot of new friends through Swancon since then, and I've always felt that one of the best things about Swancon is the whole close-knit fan community feel to it – especially when compared to events like Waicon and Supanova, which certainly have their own appeal, but are so much louder and more commercial and generally feel more like a bunch of completely random strangers packed into the same building. If that makes things clique-ish, then I'm not sure it's something I want changed. Even the guests have been known to comment on it as a positive.
That said, there's no doubt they have a real problem with attracting younger fans. Nice as it is to see the older fans keep coming back, the con's doomed in the long run if it can't attract new people, and as one of the (relatively) younger crowd I'd hate to see it die with the older generation of Perth fandom. Which is to say I'm very glad to see that the 2012 bid by the team who wanted to base their con around 'fannish stuff that came out between 1970-1989' didn't get voted in. Nostalgia's all well and good, but really not the focus I feel the con needs at the moment. I am absolutely biased on this one given that the counter-bid was being run by friends of ours, but they're friends who are known to be very vocal on the issue of how to attract the younger batch of fandom, which sounds like a much better sign.
Then we got back from the con and had to start packing ASAP.
The Move
I guess the move went about as smoothly as could be expected. On our last move we were moving out of home for the first time – you'd think that would be the more daunting job – but we only had half as much furniture to shift back then, and no messy clauses requiring us to keep paying expensive rent to our parents for as long as it took to scrub everything squeaky clean in the hope of getting all our bond back. As it wound up, Saturday the 10th was moving day, most of the evenings of the week after were spent cleaning up the old house and moving the last few delicate odds and ends over, the following week after that was largely lost to catching up on uni work (ARGH PRESENTATION TIME), and my birthday, somewhere in the middle, was spent assembling all the new Ikea furniture required to give us somewhere to unpack things into. With luck, we may even be done unpacking boxes within another week or so.
It has, to put it mildly, been a bit of an adventure. But moving always is.
The good news is that the new place is just about everything we were looking for – newer, cleaner, much more convenient for current working situations – and, more importantly, lacks the one big thing we were emphatically not looking for, which is a massive garden which the landlords expect us to keep watered and healthy despite the reticulation not having worked in god knows how long. It is amazing just how novel it is for us to be living in a place where everything works. It's a little smaller than our old place, but since we've been down a housemate for most of a year we're not losing any space we desperately need. Took a couple of weeks to get Internet connection set up at the new place, but given that last time it took well over a month, we are not complaining at all.
Took a quick snapshot of all my props while I had them together; also to demonstrate why it took so many trips to transport everything over. While not all of them are so delicate they need to be nursed carefully for the full journey, none of them pack easily. Ordinarily, some of these are hung, or in one case tied, up in various places around the house, so having them all together is a pretty rare event.
From left to right, the Fuuenken, Paracelcus, Hiei’s sword, Syaoran’s sword, and Yuffie’s 4-Point Shuriken and the Conformer at the bottom, plus the Pipe Fox, just because.
Probably going to be having some kind of combined housewarming/birthday party in a couple of weeks time. Depending on how long it takes to get ourselves organised, and all that.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 12:35 am (UTC)ahhh full of fail :(
happy birthday
no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 04:32 am (UTC)Thank you anyway. <3
no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 05:30 am (UTC)Happy Birthday!
no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 05:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 05:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-27 05:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-31 09:09 am (UTC)A brief list of just some of the stuff this setting gives you to work with:
- A/b/o is canon
Cutting before this gets too much longer- Being non-conned into things is basically Jensen’s full-time job
- Touched-starved Jensen
- Everyone (and at least one AI) who’s ever worked with Jensen has slept with him and/or seems to want to
- Does Jensen have a robodick? (discuss)
(I could probably go on, but I already seem to have several K's of touched-starved-Jensen sitting in a word doc here, so maybe that should get my attention instead.)I suppose you could argue the reason people are categorised into alpha/beta/omega in your heads-up display is just a gamified conversation mechanic based on outdated psychology. But then why is the next option it throws up a button-prompt to ‘release pheromones‘? Pheromones you can apparently tailor based on whether you’re speaking or an alpha, a beta or an omega, even? Fucking hell, Sarif has installed a mod in Jensen that lets him fake his way into being whatever a/b/o category will get him the best reaction with synthetic pheromones, how is there not all of the fic about this?
ALL the machine-kink is pretty much your free-space in a canon like this, but it’s also very canon that Adam Jensen (the main character, for the unfamiliar) has Special DNA that makes him Extra Augmentable, and everyone around him is into exploiting that without bothering to tell him. His girlfriend made her Big Scientific Discovery based on his DNA ([insert your own speculation as to how she got that sample here]). It may have been part of why she convinced her own boss to hire Jensen for security. It’s very probably part of why said boss decided to cut off and replace one perfectly good arm and two perfectly good legs while Jensen was unconscious in hospital, so he could augment those as well. We don’t even know how Jensen feels about that last part—he never reacts to that info. Maybe he just figures that’s his lot in life at this point.
Oh, and the actual Illuminati seem to be pretty interested in Jensen as well, for the same reason. In fact, the whole reason for the attack that left Jensen injured (and conveniently-augmentable) in the first place goes back to that research his girlfriend was doing on his DNA without his knowledge or consent. The sequel apparently opens with the revelation that someone has cut Jensen open again and installed even more hardware, and he doesn’t even find out why or who. The whole series is apparently a huge conspiracy with Jensen-the-involuntary-test-subject in the middle.
I am not sure it’s possible to whump this guy harder than canon has whumped him already, but someone should probably try.
So, from a slightly-less-horrifying angle on the whole augmentation thing: Jensen is a single man who went into work as normal one day, and woke up months later to find that all four of his limbs have been replaced with synthetic machine parts. We don’t really get to find out how well said parts mimic real ones, but that’s got to be the kind of experience that throws you, right? Quite apart from the obvious can-he-still-jerk-off angle, that makes him a guy who can no longer get any sort of skin-on-skin contact touching any part of his own body. How alienating could that be? How touch-starved and over-sensitive would that have to leave you? (I’ve seen a couple of fics touch on this, but not in nearly the sort of detail it deserves.)
Obviously, it’s a huge plot point that Megan Reed is Jensen’s ex, but then there’s Wayne Haas (the cop you have to talk your way past to get into the station) who seriously could not project Jensen’s Bitter Ex any harder ISTG (“You haven’t talked to me in two years and this is the first thing you have to say to me?”) There’s Jenny Alexander, who mentions your ‘cute butt’. There’s Officer Nicolas, who offers to buy you a drink sometime and hopes some of that “Jensen swagger” will “rub off on him.” Over at Jensen’s new job, there’s Tim Carella, who (in between worrying that “now I sound like his girlfriend or something” and “now I just sound desperate”) seems to think the HEAD OF SECURITY has enough of a soft-spot for him to help cover up he fact he’s been stealing drugs from his workplace. Pritchard treats pulling Jensen’s pigtails like a full-time job. Arie van Bruggen’s first words to you are “you’re not my type, man,” but I can only assume this is him negging you, because he 100% sounds like he’s about to demand some obscenely sexual favour in exchange for his help later (Jensen is only saved by an incoming SWAT team). And then there’s that AI who apparently ‘started questioning her programming’ only after meeting him... IT JUST GOES ON AND ON.
I can’t really blame them—Jensen is a very pretty man, but apparently he really gets around.
Additional follow-up question: what are the odds there’s any working robodick on the market that ISN’T the extreme-fully-vibrating-pounder 5000?
no subject
Date: 2022-07-31 09:11 am (UTC)A brief list of just some of the stuff this setting gives you to work with:
I suppose you could argue the reason people are categorised into alpha/beta/omega in your heads-up display is just a gamified conversation mechanic based on outdated psychology. But then why is the next option it throws up a button-prompt to ‘release pheromones‘? Pheromones you can apparently tailor based on whether you’re speaking or an alpha, a beta or an omega, even? Fucking hell, Sarif has installed a mod in Jensen that lets him fake his way into being whatever a/b/o category will get him the best reaction with synthetic pheromones, how is there not all of the fic about this?
ALL the machine-kink is pretty much your free-space in a canon like this, but it’s also very canon that Adam Jensen (the main character, for the unfamiliar) has Special DNA that makes him Extra Augmentable, and everyone around him is into exploiting that without bothering to tell him. His girlfriend made her Big Scientific Discovery based on his DNA ([insert your own speculation as to how she got that sample here]). It may have been part of why she convinced her own boss to hire Jensen for security. It’s very probably part of why said boss decided to cut off and replace one perfectly good arm and two perfectly good legs while Jensen was unconscious in hospital, so he could augment those as well. We don’t even know how Jensen feels about that last part—he never reacts to that info. Maybe he just figures that’s his lot in life at this point.
Oh, and the actual Illuminati seem to be pretty interested in Jensen as well, for the same reason. In fact, the whole reason for the attack that left Jensen injured (and conveniently-augmentable) in the first place goes back to that research his girlfriend was doing on his DNA without his knowledge or consent. The sequel apparently opens with the revelation that someone has cut Jensen open again and installed even more hardware, and he doesn’t even find out why or who. The whole series is apparently a huge conspiracy with Jensen-the-involuntary-test-subject in the middle.
I am not sure it’s possible to whump this guy harder than canon has whumped him already, but someone should probably try.
So, from a slightly-less-horrifying angle on the whole augmentation thing: Jensen is a single man who went into work as normal one day, and woke up months later to find that all four of his limbs have been replaced with synthetic machine parts. We don’t really get to find out how well said parts mimic real ones, but that’s got to be the kind of experience that throws you, right? Quite apart from the obvious can-he-still-jerk-off angle, that makes him a guy who can no longer get any sort of skin-on-skin contact touching any part of his own body. How alienating could that be? How touch-starved and over-sensitive would that have to leave you? (I’ve seen a couple of fics touch on this, but not in nearly the sort of detail it deserves.)
Obviously, it’s a huge plot point that Megan Reed is Jensen’s ex, but then there’s Wayne Haas (the cop you have to talk your way past to get into the station) who seriously could not project Jensen’s Bitter Ex any harder ISTG (“You haven’t talked to me in two years and this is the first thing you have to say to me?”) There’s Jenny Alexander, who mentions your ‘cute butt’. There’s Officer Nicolas, who offers to buy you a drink sometime and hopes some of that “Jensen swagger” will “rub off on him.” Over at Jensen’s new job, there’s Tim Carella, who (in between worrying that “now I sound like his girlfriend or something” and “now I just sound desperate”) seems to think the HEAD OF SECURITY has enough of a soft-spot for him to help cover up he fact he’s been stealing drugs from his workplace. Pritchard treats pulling Jensen’s pigtails like a full-time job. Arie van Bruggen’s first words to you are “you’re not my type, man,” but I can only assume this is him negging you, because he 100% sounds like he’s about to demand some obscenely sexual favour in exchange for his help later (Jensen is only saved by an incoming SWAT team). And then there’s that AI who apparently ‘started questioning her programming’ only after meeting him... IT JUST GOES ON AND ON.
I can’t really blame them—Jensen is a very pretty man, but apparently he really gets around.
Additional follow-up question: what are the odds there’s any working robodick on the market that ISN’T the extreme-fully-vibrating-pounder 5000?
(I could probably go on here, but I already seem to have several K's of touched-starved-Jensen sitting in a word doc here, so maybe that should get my attention instead.)
no subject
Date: 2022-07-31 09:27 am (UTC)A brief list of just some of the possibilities I've been preoccupied with since playing this game:
You could argue the reason people are categorised into alpha/beta/omega in your heads-up display is just a gamified conversation mechanic based on outdated psychology. But then why is the next option it throws up a button-prompt to ‘release pheromones‘? Pheromones you can apparently tailor based on whether you’re speaking or an alpha, a beta or an omega, even? Fucking hell, Sarif has installed a mod in Jensen that lets him fake his way into being whatever a/b/o category will get him the best reaction with synthetic pheromones, how is there not all of the fic about this?
ALL the machine-kink is pretty much your free-space in a canon like this, but it’s also very canon that Adam Jensen has Special DNA that makes him Extra Augmentable, and everyone around him is into exploiting that without bothering to tell him. His girlfriend made her Big Scientific Discovery based on his DNA ([insert your own speculation as to how she got that sample here]). It may have been part of why she convinced her own boss to hire Jensen for security. It’s very probably part of why said boss decided to cut off and replace one perfectly good arm and two perfectly good legs while Jensen was unconscious in hospital, so he could cram maximum augmentations into this poor guy. We don’t even know how Jensen feels about that last part—he never reacts to that info. Maybe he just figures that’s his lot in life at this point.
Oh, and the actual Illuminati seem to be pretty interested in Jensen as well, for the same reason. In fact, the whole reason for the attack that left Jensen injured (and conveniently-augmentable) in the first place goes back to that research his girlfriend was doing on his DNA without his knowledge or consent. The sequel apparently opens with the revelation that someone has cut Jensen open again and installed even more hardware, and he doesn’t even find out why or who. The whole series is apparently a huge conspiracy with Jensen-the-involuntary-test-subject in the middle.
I am not sure it’s possible to whump this guy harder than canon has whumped him already
but someone should probably try.So, from a slightly-less-horrifying angle on the whole augmentation thing: Jensen is a single man who went into work as normal one day, and woke up months later to find that all four of his limbs have been replaced with synthetic machine parts. We don’t really get to find out how well said parts mimic real ones, but that’s got to be the kind of experience that throws you, right? Quite apart from the obvious can-he-still-jerk-off angle, that makes him a guy who can no longer get any sort of skin-on-skin contact touching any part of his own body. How alienating could that be? How touch-starved and over-sensitive would that have to leave you? (I’ve seen a couple of fics touch on this, but not in nearly the sort of detail it deserves.)
Obviously, it’s a huge plot point that Megan Reed is Jensen’s ex, but then there’s Wayne Haas (the cop you have to talk your way past to get into the station) who seriously could not project that he's Jensen’s Bitter Ex any harder, ISTG (“You haven’t talked to me in two years and this is the first thing you have to say to me?”) There’s Jenny Alexander, who mentions your ‘cute butt’. And there’s Officer “Nicky”, who offers to buy you a drink sometime and hopes some of that “Jensen swagger” will “rub off on him,” (uh-huh).
Over at Jensen’s new job, there’s Tim Carella, who (in between worrying that “now I sound like his girlfriend or something” and “now I just sound desperate”) seems to think the HEAD OF SECURITY has enough of a soft-spot for him to help cover up he fact he’s been stealing drugs from his workplace. Pritchard treats pulling Jensen’s pigtails like a full-time job. Arie van Bruggen’s first words to you are “you’re not my type, man,” but I can only assume this is him negging you, because he 100% sounds like he’s about to demand some obscenely sexual favour in exchange for his help later (Jensen is only saved by an incoming SWAT team). And then there’s that AI who apparently ‘started questioning her programming’ only after meeting him... IT JUST GOES ON AND ON.
I can’t really blame them—Jensen is a very pretty man, but apparently he really gets around.
Additional follow-up question: what are the odds there’s any working robodick on the market that ISN’T the extreme-fully-vibrating-pounder 5000?
(I could probably go on here, but I already seem to have several K's of touched-starved-Jensen sitting in a word doc here, so maybe I should go on with that instead...)
tl;dr: I may be enjoying this game for all the wrong reasons, but I'm definitely having a good time.