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Rose and I settle in front of the custom-augmented Fenestrated Plane we’ve got set up in the command center of our sick as fuck Moon Base. I’ll have to remember to give you all the grand tour later, but believe me, it’s awesome. A proper villainous lair from which two dastardly antagonists can most effectively... well, antagonize. It’s got the old lab, bits of the Theseus, winding labyrinthian halls... when you’ve got an entire moon to work with, real estate is no object. There are chambers in here even I don’t remember putting in. But there I go rambling again. As I was saying, our first order of business after our triumphant return to the limelight is a little recap of everything we missed. Even omnipotent narrative gods need a little time to get their shit in order after ten millennia of hands-off timeskip, and in our rush to prepare a suitable end of act finale for you all, we decided it’d be better to let the story continue to run on autopilot in the meantime. Now, after a break in the action, the two of us have finally got a bit of time to properly familiarize ourselves with the fruits of our labor. I fire up the fenestrological interface with a practiced flourish, and we prepare to perform that most hallowed ritual, the scroll.

DIRK: Let's start with the most immediately obvious. I saw both species were present and accounted for during my little field trip, so it looks like we both won. Curious, and it should have been more or less impossible, but that's a mystery for another time. Care to engage me in a little sporting and mutually congratulatory fist-bromp?

ROSE: That reads to me more as a mutual loss, if anything, so I'll have to respectfully decline the fist-bromp until such time as it's warranted. Also I thought they were called bro fists.

DIRK: I'm not too big on that terminology, if I'm being real.

ROSE: Too loaded?

DIRK: All things considered, yeah.

DIRK: But back to your refusal to see this as a win: this is about as good an eventuality as we could have asked for, definitely as juicy as anything I could have written.

ROSE: A dissatisfying stalemate?

DIRK: A fully loaded cast.

ROSE: True enough. I guess it does lend more variety, more built-in cliques and alliances to exploit... societal divides ripe for dramatic leverage. Miscommunications and misunderstandings abound when alien cultures clash. Et cetera.

DIRK: Exactly.

DIRK: Hell, we've got uninvited interlopers here I didn't even anticipate.

DIRK: If only for a little while.

ROSE: Oh, how ominous. Do say more.

DIRK: Only ominish, and not worth getting into here. Let's focus on the good stuff.

DIRK: Now that I've succeeded in slickly convincing you to look on the bright side of this whole tie business, I'm gonna have to insist on cashing in that god damn fist-bromp.

ROSE: Pchoo.

DIRK: Jesus Christ, that was limp. You really need to work on that, but it'll have to do for now.

ROSE: Maybe it'd work better as a bro fist.

ROSE: That said, with increasingly diminishing due respect, do you think maybe we could go ahead and get on with this? I want to take a look around.

DIRK: You're the boss. Fire up the FENESTROLOGICAL COMMENTARIZER and let's get acquainted with these kids.

The perusal of commentarylogs is a trivial effort to those of our authorial oomph, but you audience-lurking lowbies might have a little bit of trouble with it. Many of you are asking yourselves what a commentarylog even is, I bet, which more or less proves my point. Well, it’s a log where you can view commentary on the story, obviously. The commentary of its true masters, I mean, not the warbling retroactive justifications and self-congratulatory giggling of the geeky misfits riding my coattails and pretending they own it. You have to pay for that shit, but out of the goodness of my heart I’ll give you access to the good stuff absolutely free of charge. You may be clutching your head in awe and struggling to contend with the psychological gravity of the enormity of my magnanimity, so I’ll do you a solid and remind you of this: when have people like Rose and I ever tried to hide our opinionated ranting? What you’re going to want to do is CLICK THE FANCY BUTTON I’VE PROVIDED BELOW. That’ll expose the commentarylogs of your betters to your ravenous appetites, and even add a fun little toggle in the settings menu so you can turn it off if, for whatever reason, you get sick of me talking. But that hasn’t happened yet, despite all your posturing, so I doubt you’ll need it. Still, option’s there. Anyway, here’s the button. It’ll get you situated nicely. Heads up, though, if you clear your cookies you’ll have to come back and click it again to get everything nice and visible. Why would you do that, though? Don’t you trust me?