It’s over!
It’s been a year since the last update. You might have guessed that I’m no longer interested in updating this blog. You might have guessed correctly.
But I feel like I owe you answers. This final story arc was supposed to be the big finish, with everything laid out on the table and answered.
What is the blackish, holish thing? What happened to the humans? Will Inkie Ie ever get the kissu kissu?
Let’s find out.
Ranbo Das & Inkie Ie had already been on a long hiatus. Its big return, where Boogle the Dragon sacrificed himself to manifest the black hole, was intended to be the start of an interactive adventure game. It was also supposed to galvanise me into finally finishing off what I started, but it turns out enthusiasm cannot be manufactured.
The blog has always had a small, dedicated fanbase who ask excellent questions, so the plan was to use the following fifteen updates until Ask #300 to have a big finale and make revelations that long-term readers have frequently demanded. The first couple questions would involve experimenting with the black hole. I’d intended for one of the characters to be sucked into it – possibly Arity or Flush as Stormcloud – as well as Applack’s Big Mechintosh. At this point, Ranbo and Inkie would have gone straight to Twilt for an explanation or solution.
Operator L and Twitch would have arrived out of the Tumblrbot to deliver some much-needed exposition. L, a.k.a. Louise, would tell the gang that long ago, the white void they occupy was the planet Earth, and was occupied by humans. Operator L and the rest of the Tumblrbot’s crew – Overseer Celeste, Operator/Opulence Charity, Sentry, and characters based on Shining Armor, Cadance, etc. – were to be artificial humans grown from clone stock, and custodians of a large database that contained the disembodied consciousness of every human from before the planet was destroyed. This Inter-neural Network, or Inter Net, had been obliquely referenced by the Overseer, Louise, and Twitch a few times, and the implication is that the disembodied ancient humans living in a perfect simulation of real life and asking questions to fictional scribbly horses are you, the readers.
The Tumblrbot was designed for the purpose of being a protective measure against a doomsday scenario. It was one of many developments of a team of scientists on pre-apocalypse Earth, led by a grown-up Megan from the original incarnation of My Little Pony, and staffed by other grown up versions of tagalong kids from 80s cartoons: Matt Trakker, Penny Gadget, Daniel Witwicky, etc. The team’s other developments included a species of horse who beginning to show signs of sentience; these were the pre-historic ancestors of our main cast!
This present day Earth is then attacked by an eldritch horror that manifests itself as an insatiably hungry black hole that consumes everything in its path; this includes laws of physics and principles of perception, explaining the art style and peculiarly physical anomalies of the white void universe. The beast, which the scientists have codenamed Inky Eye after its appearance, consumes the majority of everything on Earth. The scientist team backs up all the minds of the human race from the pervasive social media of the actual internet to their Inter-neural Network, and then flee into the Tumblrbot, taking it into a series of alternate universes. (The interior of the Tumblrbot is in its own pocket black void universe.) With the Inky Eye’s hunger satisfied, its Earthly manifestation dissipates, and its true form slumbers in the gap between universes.
Generations later, the Earth is reduced to a white void, with only remnants of human technology and culture, and the void is populated by talking horses descended from the scientists’ sentience experiments. The Tumblrbot continues jumping through alternate universes until it finally reaches its destination: the white void. The occupants of its Inter Net begin asking questions to its inhabitants – this being the beginning of the Ranbo Das & Inkie Ie Tumblr – to collect information on whether this is the universe it originally departed from.
Eventually enough information is gathered; the Tumblrbot is home! But this is a mixed blessing. The questions asked by the Tumblrbot, the signal to Opulence Charity’s avatar, and the various fruit dispensed from the Hammerspace Generator all pass through the gap between universes, awaking the Inky Eye. The Inky Eye dispatches a spotted egg, intended to grow into its Spy Dragon and allow the Inky Eye to manifest again and finish its job of eating the universe.
And that is a lot of exposition for Operator L to deliver. But remarkably, Inkie Ie formulates a plan to stop the Inky Eye, claiming it is her destiny. Inkie severs the ties between the two universes by returning everything to its origin universe, like Twitch’s avatar. Then, she encourages the Tumblrbot to suck the entire universe into its Hammerspace Generator. The Tumblrbot does so, including consuming things like the blog’s theme and the panel boundaries, and everything goes white.
Then Ranbo Das wakes up. The white void is fine. Everything has been returned to its original place. Flying morosely through the air, she is upset until she finally finds Inkie Ie. Relieved, she finally gives Inkie a well-deserved, swooping, romantic kiss.
It transpires that, in getting the Tumblrbot to consume the universe, it also consumed the Inky Eye, which was essentially a naturally-occurring Hammerspace Generator for the true eldritch horror. The Tumblrbot absorbs the Inky Eye into the gap between universes; the Inky Eye was already a gateway into the gap between universes, and consequently the two openings become an interdimensional oroborous that winks itself out of existence.
With the threat gone, the Tumblrbot’s crew can finally finish their job of conservation. The Earth is restored and mapped onto the white void, with everything resuming the way it was before the attack. Ranbo and Inkie’s universe is now the one inside a flawless computer simulation, backed up from all of the asks and comics from the blog’s run. They can still receive questions from the original humans, as the original humans are now, as always, the readers. Inkie Ie saved you all from a monster from beyond, but from your perception it seems to have never happened.
And that’s where the story would have ended. Ranbo and Inkie had solidified their relationship, they were all alive in a computer simulation, and all continuity was to be discarded to allow the blog to be a soft reboot more accessible to new readers. It’s probably ironic that it was the most dense, continuity-heavy storyline that made me lose interest in continuing the blog at all.
But for the most part, I had fun! I’ve met a load of great people through drawing this blog, and it has greatly improved my art techniques, as well as taught me lessons about storytelling and ambition. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as well.