1101 I Can’t.

by

I am not going to be in town for the 4th. In fact I won’t be near my computer for a couple of days unfortunately. I may not have access to the internet. If this turns out to be the case I won’t be able to edit this post, or post another story chunk. Rest assured, however, that we are in the home stretch as far as this family nonsense is concerned. Hopefully we will all soon be able to settle into a routine that allows me to give my work the attention it demands. I will try to make this rough patch all worthwhile, you sexy readers.

53 Comments

….I know that feeling of not being able to allow the memories into your conscious mind….far far too well….

Glad I’m not alone in that regard.

I consider myself pretty lucky in that I never had a “Phase” I grew out of. Everything I liked 10 years ago I still enjoy now, and anything new I like just gets added to the list.

And I really shouldn’t be surprised that Thomas liked anime a lot, he’d pretty much HAVE to in order to hang around dawn for any length of time. Plus the action figures sorta hint I guess.

I know she knocked him last panel, but man she suckerpunched him there with that smooth changing of subject. Now he’s getting grilled and stammering.

Love the dynamic between these two. They bicker like an old couple.

I figure Tom’ll get his bearings back. He has a great support structure. his friends genuinely care about him, and Carol was able to rally him when he was down.

but it’s good to see him have a vulnerable moment now and again.

A man who has given up on anime has given up on life. :D

I’ve come to realize that people often overgeneralize a topic, and thus blur the line, and as such say they hate an entire media (“I hate anime”, “I don’t watch TV”, et cetera.) The best course of action? Show them a mold-breaker. Someone says they hate ’80s music? Bring up something awesome from that time period. Someone (like a certain person I knew) say they hate all anime because, and I quote, “the story is weak”? I went to town.

In short, BREAK A MOLD. Make someone see that an entire form of media is not to be dismissed- every hole contains something worthwhile, and there are dirt stains on every pile of gold.

OUCH. Wasn’t he hating on all those Anime geeks not too long ago? Comic-time wise, I mean.

Did he seriously subconsciously edit out an entire huge part of his life? I mean, damn. That’s some serious issues.

Okay, found it.

/comics1/54-ah-nee-may

…probably should of done that before I posted.

No, Thomas, you ARE the weaboos!

This comment provoked an archive dive that went back through that first marvelous Tom-Carol kiss. Thanks.

A fact useful to the current comics: “Constance Willowbrooke” is self-published.

I wonder if she put her book up for kickstarter… that might explain why she’s so adamant that people will show up.

So, this isn’t really relevant to this particular page, but I can’t find any damn contact info so I’ll just ask it here: what happened to the links page? I need to know what was on it to complete my data.
…Don’t ask what I meant by that. On an unrelated note, this marks almost exactly 100 pages since I started reading Between Failures. Woo! Yeah, I showed up here and saw comic 997 on the front page and I told myself “I’m going to catch up before page 1000 goes live.” Wouldn’t have been my craziest archive binge ever; I mean, I finished 1/0’s 1000-strip archive in an afternoon. And I almost made it, too. Sadly, when I finally caught up, I found myself staring at 1001.

I feel sorry for you. I was lucky enough to find the comic last week and had more than enough time to catch up before any updates were made. I really do love webcomics. Any other webcomics you know of that are good?

Yeah, I can recommend a few. You got three hours to spare? It’s a long list! I kid, I kid. One hour, max. Seriously though, I do have a list of about eighty, and I’d have to know what you’re looking for to recommend any. I’ve got every kind there is.

If you know of anything like this comic or of one like homestuck I’d like to read it. If not, I’d go for the top of the list.

Well, Sluggy Freelance is kind of like Homestuck in that it started with being about some guys’ (un)usual lives, and rapidly escalated to a grand adventure involving science, magic, time travel, etc. And it has over 5000 comics in the archive from over 15 years. Then there’s Questionable Content, which is, at times, a charming semi-sci-fi slice-of-life with great characters, but it has the drawback that the first few hundred pages are poorly drawn and full of dick jokes. Well worth it, though. And top of the list right now is probably Slightly Damned. It’s a fantasy about a woman who arrived in the afterlife to find that she hadn’t been quite evil enough to go to proper Hell. Stuff happened, she escaped, now she’s undead and traveling the world with a naïve demon and a shy angelic warrior who turns into a bunny when she’s nervous. And don’t go assuming things just ’cause the characters have fur. I assure you there’s nothing sexual about it (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I don’t know WHY everyone assumes that, but they do.

…Sorry that was so wordy.

The links page got lost in the last wordpress update. I don’t have a backup of it. A lot of the comics on it stopped updating years ago. Almost all of the ones that still do are on Hiveworks, so the links bar covers them.

Did his grudge drill so far into his head that it blocked off his memories?
…
Do all his grudges do that?

Sometimes, it’s a matter of feeling that remembering will completely devastate your sanity and stability, which you would never want to go through in public, especially with that person right there in front of you.

I may be way off on that being Thomas’ issue here, but think about all the charged emotions that happen during a relationship, especially a long term one. All the happiness, sadness, triumphs, and failures, and the ultimate loss of the person you dedicated a lot of time to loving and making them happy. It’s like blowing up a dam and letting it all hit you at once if you’ve had to block things out to still be able to function as a human being, and it can be really overwhelming.

I’m pretty sure he’s just trying not to remember how much of a a dumb fanboy he was when he was younger. Althena knows I’ve done it more than once myself.

Anger and Shameful memories…

Dawn seems very ignorant of the way Thomas feels, or maybe she’s actively trying not to address the elephant in the room.

I don’t know how successful she’ll be in that regard, As thomas and Nina have made it their mission.

you’d think she broke up by text message.

I’ve really only had one real relationship. Sort of two, but not really. The way both ended were not particularly pleasant.

Nevertheless, it is my life ethos to try to learn something from everyone. I don’t consider bad endings to be all bad. There is no grudge to me. Misunderstandings taken way out of proportions, usually.

For me, time really does take away the sting. With these two relationships, I’ve been able to move on pretty well. Heck, even with the Marine Corps. I’ve been out for a little over 10 years now. Sometimes when I talk about my time in the Marines, it’s like I’m telling someone else’s story. I just know it intimately, for some reason.

It’s as though I read a book, but that book is my past.

Hard to read tone. Is he being sarcastic? Does he really remember and not want to? Or does he genuinely not remember?

Firefox users: Is anyone else getting attack site warnings for this page?

It’s been going on a while for me, at least four or five updates.

I trust the site, but I have to wonder why it’d be raising red flags. Does anyone know what’s going on, and if everything is fine, how do I add an exemption or whatever?

There’s actually a lengthy explanation of the whole thing a few blog posts back. I forget the actual day, but the short answer is it’s fine. Also make sure you’re not linking here from the dot net version of the site. I don’t have time to repair that version of the site and it will be some time before I can.

I had the same problem. If it’s Panda Cloud, then you need to use your task manager to find an aberrant process, trace it, and delete it. It is adware, and will ask you to buy the program.

Okay, theory:

This is where this webcomic takes a dark turn. Within the next few pages we will learn that the Thomas we know is not TRULY Thomas, but a deranged madman who murdered the real Thomas, could not stand the guilt, and instead molded himself after various journals and photo-albums around his house to become the NEW Thomas.

Man, I just can’t WAIT.

Once again a fan falls into the trap of writing the comic for me. AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!

This isn’t the EXACT thing Andrew Hussie would do at all. *(He said sarcastically)

Seriously though; I love the comic, and these kind of almost insane moments when this kind of thing happens. It shows it is a good comic.

the next bit off the story will be filled with darkness so black much like the hear of that guy just broke his favorite rare limited edition limited production figurine that he spent a small fortune….not into anime as much as i used to be still watch it though was really big into drawing it failed horribly :P SOME MEMORIES MUST BE PURGED

Is Thomas one of those guys who’s so obsessed with being ‘cool’ that he can’t just be himself?

If so, is this holding him back from his own creative aspirations?

God, it’s so painful to watch him twist there, with his worst bile being deflected by his ex’ naivete.

I just realized it from the way she changed the subject in the first panel.

She doesn’t even care if this book signing is successful. She just wants to reconnect with an old friend. Oh, the drama. It hurts! And is soooooo addictive.

The interesting thing here is, while Dawn is a painful memory, she is (or should also serve to be) a motivator for him to reach his true potential.

I think she wants to be that for him, which is why she wanted him to see her success, but the edge that a positive relationship would have offered her is lost.

Also Women tend to have a lot more emotional control than men. Men may dwell on stuff for weeks, months and so on, not knowing how to express the emotion in a healthy, yet masculine way. Women will usually express themselves and resume normalcy, free of such inhibitions.

one question I want answered: where’s the father of that bundle of joy? this seems like a big day for her, and I figure he outta at least be stopping by.

another thing: how’s he feel about his woman seeing – no wait… insisting to see her ex? and working with him? for an entire day? while he’s not present?

several red flags SHOULD be raised here…

unless she’s been artificially insemenated, in which case, disregard all of this.

There are any number of reasons that the father of the child may not be present. He’s working and can’t get away, he died, they broke up… etc.

Also there is nothing to be jealous of, you either trust your mate, or you don’t. If you trust her then you have nothing to be fearful of or insecure about. If you don’t trust her, then why are you with her to begin with?

I mean seriously, think about it, in a healthy relationship that is built on trust and understanding, you don’t have anything to worry about. You should know that your partner is not going to up and cheat on you or leave you for someone she used to date. After all, she had him and it didn’t last, and she chose to be with you.

Trust me on this one, my mate and I have been together for 23 years, married for 16 of those years. I know that he will never leave me for another woman, and I would never leave him for another man. I’ve never met a better man than he is, so I don’t get jealous when other women check him out, and they still do check him out. He usually doesn’t notice, and I wind up telling him and pointing them out to him.

The only thing it makes me feel is pride that he chose to be with me. I know that he feels the same way, he’s told me any number of times just how proud it makes him feel when he sees other men check me out, because I chose him.

I agree, and am similarly blessed. I like your expression of what goes into a healthy relationship. It’s the echo of an unhealthy one that I think is being narrated here – and perhaps Dawn is now in the healthy relationship she needs. This may have allowed her to drop the emotional aspects of her prior relationship with Thomas (i.e., to heal!) and could explain why she wants to be so chummy and walk down memory lane with him, whereas he, as is clearly stated in past panels, has been hanging onto the old painful emotions and wringing them out for years. Thus, he simply cannot be asked to traverse the same emotional fields as Dawn. She’s deactivated all the landmines, but they are still live for Thomas.

That is how a relationship should be. I may not have found that person for me yet, but I have years to find her, seeing as I am only 17, to be 18 in september.

I don’t want to seem rude, and assume *you* don’t know the word “subvocalize”, but it seems odd to me that Thomas doesn’t… it’s used (partially correctly, though usually carrying the wrong connotation) in cyberpunk and the like, so it’s usually a thing I’ve found geeks to know, especially since Johnny Mnemonic.

So… I could see not adding it because it’s not a common word, or because he might not know it, or because most people don’t know it… I’m just curious as to which it is (and if you don’t know it, well, there’s a word for that). I couldn’t right this in a way that didn’t seem dickish, but I wrote it five times and the words won’t come for me. It’s far too early for this, methinks… sorry about that.

I don’t see why you’re bringing it up, to be perfectly honest. Why should he be using it in the first place? Is it on this page? Another page? It seems like in your quest not to be a dick you forgot to mention where the fuck I should be placing the word in the first place.

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