Issue 20, Page 27
Hold me close.
Transcript
1: Julia sits up. She pushes the hybrid creature to the side, though their bodies leave thick strings of connected, black fluid.
Julia: That… pretending is all we have…
If we’re not ourselves… Then no one is anyone. There’s just… nothing.
2: The hybrid hangs her head low, lamenting.
[BlackFennec]: What’s so special about being “someone”? Is life so precious?
3: The two huddle in the black landscape, lit by the red horizon. The hybrid hangs over Julia’s shoulders, pressed to her back as if comforting her.
[BlackFennec]: Life is so painful. Hard decisions, mistakes, regrets. Life hurts. Everything is on you, on your shoulders.
An endless responsibility, your whole, entire life.
4: The two stay holding each other, in the red background, a large lumbering shape is seen to shift and move in the distance.
5: Julia lowers her head. The ‘beast’ behind them has mostly left the frame.
6: They sit together as the creature in the background shambles on.
Julia: Life is so fucking hard…
Woo, pink hair is still there!
Hold her close, but… Perhaps you two really do want different things. Julia seems to lean more towards needing comfort.
…
Wait… If “Sedjet” is there…. And Julia is there…. Then who the hell is metaphorically “driving the car” right now? Can “Sedj” be in more than one place simultaneously in this astral world?
If they want different things, they’re different people. Which they’re only pretending to be. Tentatively pretending, at this point. One big being (or maybe non-being — is it conscious in a comparable way?) choosing to locate its self-doubt in Julia and its nihilism in Sedjet.
Is it just doing that out of habit? Are whispers nudging it to do that? Or does it really have self-doubt and nihilism which feel compelling enough to reify and give mouthpiece to?
An interesting thought on what may be going on in TOWC’s mind.
Personally, I still don’t trust the idea completely, however, it definitely has supporting evidence.
IS it TOWC’s mind, though? Or is TOWC just a spectator vast enough to be the very scenery for Sedjet & Julia’s minds running on recently reconfigured hardware?
As far as I can tell, TOWC – not its agents, mind you – has so far been completely *inscrutable*.
The most we have is that it seems to only absorb the dead or the willing, and only kill obstacles.
But we also know nothing about the non-flesh gods, either.
Sounds like ANTs; Autonomous Negative Thoughts.
That little voice that tells you ‘everyone hates you’ and such.
She’s not wrong.
Well finally.
All that time, Sedj hogging the thoughtspace.
On a different note, I’m glad it’s just the 2 of them for now.
Suddenly having/noticing new senses and resonating with an entity of cosmic proportions is overwhelming enough even without the emo crises. Having to deal with a crowd at once would not be very therapeutic.
I don’t think this is Sedjet talking to her. Julia is talking to herself… or at least, the part of her that is TOWC. She’s talking to her infection, it’s trying to reason with her. Sedjet is that space around them. Fully taken, fully gone. Or at least, that’s how this whole interaction seems to be playing out.
Interesting point, oh oozy one. Yeah it’s hard.
Let me tell you about something a lot of mortals do for fun. It’s a called ‘Dark Souls’…