Cringetide

If you don't like current arrangements, you dissent. If you dissent, though, that's an energy. That energy can be bought and sold as a commodity. That's what the Cringetide is. It's the uneasy feeling that any objection or resistance will just be folded back into the system. The same feeling plays out, refracted, through different character lenses.

Mairead and Fion fight. Mairead wants to evade the system that's put her in deep gambling debt. Fion wants to anticipate a normal life; she wants to surrender. Nikki the conditioned maid watches the fight from her own position of surrender. She's the ultimate Desire Horror figure here. She's embraced her own subjugation to an unsettling degree. It plays out in the massage sequence. Nikki's enthusiasm and Mairead's reluctance throw the whole system of compliance into sharp relief.

The CEO of Neuroplex, modelled on the worst that the tech industry has to offer, enjoys the whole spectacle. The listener might as well, which is why they're implicated. Olivia interrupts, raising the stakes with shame and horror. It's the disciplinary stick that backs up the jouissance carrot. Mairead is directly disciplined in the Crow's Nest, in a sequence that unsettles as much as it titillates.

The Yo Ho Hos take this process to the next level. The solidarity of the crew and their shanties is repackaged as the worst karaoke you've ever heard. Sorry, Kitten Azazel, but the cringetide is rising here. It's really the essence of cringe. Trapped on an uncanny ship, the protagonists don't even have the dignity of horror. When the system collapses, it'll be set to the worst bounce pop ever imagined.

Series artwork for this arc was created by Echo Doll in collaboration with Neural Nets and Pretty Patterns. Deep Dream State uses human art at every stage of the creative supply chain.