3028 The Speed Of Memory.

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In manga when a flashback starts the visual shorthand is usually yo make the guttering black. Guttering in comics is the space between panels. I’ve always presented my guttering as filled in black, so I briefly considered making it white, or doing traditional panel borders. Ultimately I didn’t like the look of it, so I just did what I normally do plus a little transparent Thomas. I’ve often ignored cartooning guidelines when making my own work, likely to my own detriment, but doing things my own way is a lot of why I do this at all. So I guess it is, as they say, what it is. I also almost presented these images in a more hazy, incomplete, way; so as to mimic how I see memories in my own mind. I decided to skip that for the sake of visual appeal and clarity. When I was young the images I would see in my head as memories were very vivid. As I have aged they have softened quite a bit. I can usually only hold a clear image in my mind for a few seconds now, and they tend to be moments that I call “save points”. Which are memories I have in a moment when I suddenly become aware of reality in an abnormal, hyper aware way. These are usually the kinds of memories that come, unbidden, randomly throughout a day. This is sort of what I’m trying to present here. My memories used to be consistently in the third person, as though I was watching myself, but in recent years they have shifted to being from the actual perspective I experienced them in. I decided to do that with this series of pages, rather than having Thomas in the scene. This is more of a cinematic presentation than what would happen as Thomas experiences it since as soon as he saw Rulette he would begin having flashes of memories about here, much like I do when I see familiar faces, things, or what have you. From the moment she spoke to him he would have been remembering the things that triggered him in the first place and made him react with mild hostility. Trying to present that experience in a work like this would be very strange, and far too complex.
I’ve never really thought about how each of the cast members experience sentience. I’ve always just written them as though they all have internal monologue, memory recall, and whatnot, that I do. In some ways I’ve always assumed that the kind of people I get along with experience life in more or less the same way I do, which must contribute to why we get along at all. That said, I don’t think I’ve ever asked any of my friends the specific questions required to find out for sure. It’s possible that some of them have no internal monologue, can’t bring up images of the past into their mind’s eye, or have no visual imagination at all. I don’t even have the same brain I had when I was young either. I’m not sure if I would have survived if I hadn’t learned to alter how I experience life. A lot of the time in my youth it was all nearly too much. It’s just barely less than that now. Quieting the noise has always been a struggle, but survival depends on it. At the same time everything that is what I am is what also makes me able to do what I’m doing, so I don’t want to be completely different either.
I know that my mother and I have very similar brain functions because she has said as much when I’ve tried to explain things to her. Maybe that’s why I’ve always gotten along with her so well. She understands the traumatic experience that is having this kind of brain. It’s certainly very different from my father’s. Although over these many years I think he’s come to understand the struggle of being how I am more than most people, and he also appreciates the positives that come with it, because it’s certainly not all negatives. In any case I’ve had enough of explaining myself for now, and it’s past time to post.

I hope you have a nice Wednesday and will see you again on Friday if fate so wills it. Until then, master a retro game.

44 Comments

Oh that last one is a bit creepy.

Sounds like she’s been into him forever and didn’t know how to really get him to ask her out, which seems to be what she’s trying to do.

I agree with Pinkk, and I figure she’s probably been hinting for quite a while and Thomas has been, as is our wont as men, completely oblivious. And, as such, she’s just being incredibly direct because otherwise Thomas won’t actually notice.

It would be much creepier if she said it the first time they met, but since this is clearly after they’ve known each other for years, in context it’s not as bad (unless you’re very skeeved out about age differences, which I’m not overall).

I think the age difference is the main thing in this particular case, at least for me. She said at the beginning of this current conversation that their age difference isn’t such a weird thing “now.” So in the past I feel like for a young thomas it was a lot bigger deal for him. Also I dont know how intentional it is, but just based on like, these being thomas’s memories, in theory shes looking at him and its his point of view were seeing from. So like, look how short she is in the current, and where her eyeline is looking at him/the frame. small. – that and her literally saying “you are kind of young” at that moment. age differences really only skeeve me out especially when someone’s age starts with a 1.

I get the feeling it’s a 4 year difference. It feels like Freshman-Senior in the first panel, so may Thomas is a Junior in the third panel. Which is where I would have jokingly told her to piss off if I was Thomas after that remark.

I’m not “overall” concerned with a few years of age difference either…except when both parties are young enough that 3-5 years is a massive proportion of their lives. And even then, I actually don’t think it’s always terrible. But if the older one is acting like THIS, and the younger one is maybe 15 (not sure if that’s the case, maybe not, I’m just guessing), then it does at least start raising concerns. Maybe some people will think I am marking a distinction without a difference, but I personally can understand a mature teenager pursuing a slightly older individual who wasn’t expecting to be interested, far more than I can overlook a college-aged adult hitting on a teenager.

We’re seeing a lot of Patty’s childhood, this week.
Did we ever see what Thomas’s childhood was like?

Just had a thought what if you have ovaled out the last two panels keeping the corners black like how the whole left side past the transparent Thomas is or placing another transparent Thomas on the right of the last panel as like the end of the thought/flashback to transition back to reality? Just a thought you’re the boss

Since you said on the last comic that this is taking place at “about” a perpetual 2004, Patty’s sideshave in the first strip indicates that she was probably into the riot grrl subculture at the time; sideshaves like that didn’t become more mainstream until the 2010s at least.

…or it’s just a comic and I really should just relax, either way.

Firstly, it’s not perpetual. That’s just about the time the comic starts.

As far as the haircut goes they happened much earlier than 2010. Being mainstream is another argument, but they certainly happened long before the grunge era which was when I was in high school.

Not that it matters particularly. I regularly insert anachronistic things if I feel like it.

Eh, one could find those haircuts in punk, emo, and goth sectors and all three of those were around in the early 2000’s. Even in semi-rural areas in Kansas. I should know, I fukkin’ live there. Plus even if something is not super mainstream, there is also possible for someone to be an “early adopter”.

The first side shave I can remember was in the mid 1980’s. She would have been in her mid 20’s or there about and was rocking the Cyndi Lauper look. Ditto the cropped T-shirt. I think in this case it is mostly a means of distinguishing patty at different ages.

I just appreciate seeing Thomas’s brain, cause yeah a lot can go through a mind in a moment, and it goes into even if Patty doesn’t get it her “innocent flirting” screwed with stuff

So what were the ages of Patty And Thomas in each frame?

Thomas could easily be as late as 14-15 in the last panel. Later is certainly possible but from 16 onwards most of us would be increasingly okay with it. In the first panel Patty could be an early blooming 13 year old. The middle panel could be just about any mid point between the first two.

I think she’s one of the oldest in the cast, at least older than mid 20’s, as indicated in the first interaction between Ed, Mike, and Roulette. First panel here really depends on how old Thomas was when he first started going. 9? 12? It wasn’t my scene as a kid, but I’m assuming 11-14yo. I always got the impression that Roulette’s roughly 2-4 years older than the rest, like late twenties. It’s enough of a gap to be weird to bridge as teens, but as adults it wouldn’t really matter.

I’m guessing the first kiss comment was made before he started dating Dawn. /comics1/1143-rage-quit It might’ve been at least a year or two before they started dating?

Patricia is currently 29. There’s roughly a 4 year gap between her and Thomas.

My read on the ages in the memories is that she’s about 15 in the first panel, 18 in the second, and 19 in the last one (can’t be any older than that, since it’s been almost 10 years since they were friends).

With her pushy in-your-face personality, and his quiet fade-into-the-background nature, that last panel is kind of creepy for a 19 year old girl to say to a 15 year old boy. And it would explain her comment a few days ago when she said “our age difference isn’t weird now.”

Not sure I would’ve found 19 with 15 year old that weird.

That would be like a freshman in college with a sophomore in high school. I think it’s tricky at best when it’s a time of such rapid development, prepping you for adulthood, being on your own and finding your place in the world (at least the first steps). It’s a bit of a gap because 15 is still young, impressionable, and a minor so yeah, at least a little weird. Granted, Roulette’s known him for a while and before she became an adult, so less weird to come from her than if she were any older.

I remember in high school 20 yrs ago it was still found to be a little odd among us for seniors to date freshman, at least where I was (not a huge school either).

What a lot of other (web)comics do when it comes to flashbacks is put a hue over it to bland out the colors if they have a vibrant color normally.
Like a sepia filter, but not completely, so it’s just a transparant sepia colored hue over the regular colors so that they become less vibrant and immediately show “this is retrospective”

Hate to tell you youngsters, but side shaves and mohawks have been part of punk culture as long as there’s *been* a punk culture, which is back to the late 1970s. For the last half century, there have been some people doing that.

As Jackie says, “mainstream” is another argument, and I’d say side shaves still ain’t that, although tattooes and piercings are.

I think what you were going for is “sapience.” It and sentience are confused and conflated a lot. Sapience is the cognitive faculty for abstract reasoning, wisdom, and self-awareness. Sentience is the very basic capacity to experience sensations, perceive, and have emotions. That is animal-level, and some say plants have it also.

I know you probably don’t care, and it makes little to no difference in the long run, but my editor’s nature compels me.

I’ve always seen sentience used interchangeably with sapience and consciousness. If that’s incorrect I certainly want to know. It changes my understanding of some phrases and makes at least one not make sense.

I learned “sapience” while reading this strip from the GPF webcomic: http://www.gpf-comics.com/archive/2005/01/18 , and now I cannot ever forget that animals are sentient and humans are also sapient, no matter how much Star Trek I watch.

Did you (and you guys) ever read General Protection Fault? The one with the programmer main character, slime mold characters, and sometimes they went into VR? I haven’t had it on my mind the times that good webcomics have been the topic of conversation of these comment sections, but it apparently made it from 1998 all the way to the Corona times.

An easy way to keep the words “sentience” and “sapience” straight is that “sentience” sounds a little like “senses” (it does come from the same root word). Sentience is nothing more that the ability to experience things using our senses. It is the state of being conscious. It is the most basic quality that separates animal life forms from plants and rocks.

Sentience uses memory recall to connect the sensations with what they mean (does that sensation of pain mean something is hot, or sharp, or is something crushing your hand?). All three conditions will make you instinctively withdraw your hand, but sapience goes one step farther when you can formulate what to actually do next.

Recalling events from your memory resembles sentience, in that you experience the memories, except your senses don’t actually have anything to do with it. You’re remembering what you had sensed at the time, not sensing it again. It is primarily a funtion of sapience, because it involves cognitive thought to form the memories into an actual event that happened, not merely a “feeling” that you can’t quite put your finger on.

With 3027, I now want a rehab arc for Wes. OK it was a long time since we saw him so this may be a bit off brand. But it gives him a position he can respect himself, at least, which is a good start.

Start the arc off with him sitting smoking at the loading bay and meditating. “Those happy-go-lucky idiots are building up a house of cards and they don’t see what’s coming. Even that damn Reggie is getting pulled along now. Not me. I’ve seen it before. When you look up, it’s all gone. Next thing you know all your friendships and relationships have moved on and scattered all over the state. Again. Just keep it a job, Wes.”

I’d like that too.
:D

I’d also like to see some scenes about- the home life, + the casual…life events, of the shoplifting [girl?], from the shoplifting trio.

This is the girl +/or person with the short, blue hair. :D

“In some ways I’ve always assumed that the kind of people I get along with experience life in more or less the same way I do, which must contribute to why we get along at all.”

I agree with this, and personally think people under-appreciate this observation. It reminds me of the “double empathy problem” as proposed by Damian Milton, which is more specific and applies to autists vs. non-autists, but which I feel could probably be generalized.

Overall I believe that people have a tendency to think they understand each other better than they actually do, and I appreciate how your comic captures that.

I’ve pretty much completely accepted that extremely few people experience life like me. I’ve learned to adapt to them. But it is certainly true that most people don’t ever think about this sort of stuff. It’s not helping that we seem to be increasingly moving towards a “I feel things so therefore they are true” standard, which only makes it even more difficult to understand other minds, since you can maybe learn to understand how they THINK but you can’t feel what they feel.

It’s always interesting which memories we hold and which we let go, to not even go into how every time we recall a memory we slightly overwrite it, a memory Ship of Theseus that causes that sense of confusion when something doesn’t quite fit right, or you see a recording or get another’s recollection and it doesn’t quite line up. Will be/would be interesting to see how much of this is accurate recall and how much has potentially been marinaded and flavored over years of the rest of Thomas’ life experiences.

Wow. I hadn’t ever heard of “The Ship of Theseus”. Thanks for mentioning it. I looked it up. IMO-it is a fun idea.

Yeah- it would be fun to see: if Thomas tells Patty about these 3 ideas, + then Patty + some others tell Thomas, factually, something like: “Those are some very, interesting memories, Thomas. But were sorry, Hun…those events have never happened.”
Hm.

Reading Patty a little more and thinking about some of the comments, she reminds me of a woman that I was friends with and briefly dated in college. It is probably just as well that we didn’t date seriously as we were ale to remain friends through college. During the time that I knew she blew off relationships with three or four other guys who were, in retrospect pretty good relationship material. After we graduated and went out separate ways she hooked up with one of her students and they got married after he graduated high school. The age difference was about the same as with Patty and Thomas. that relationship lasted long enough to produce a couple of kids and I don’t think she has had a sustainable relationship in the nearly 40 years since. Granted I am projecting personality traits both ways but I wonder what dynamics she and Patty would have in common.

I don’t even know who you’re talking about, and I can tell you the biggest thing she and Patty have in common. And they have it in common with far too many other people nowadays. They have the desire to do whatever makes themselves happy in the moment, without any consideration for whether someone else gets hurt in the process.

I have two ex-wives and two ex-girlfriends who all turned out to have that same quality. Promises they made meant nothing to them. All they care about is their own immediate satisfaction. But in the long run, they are perpetually UN-satisfied.

Yeah, part of the issue when it comes to these age differences/age of consent questions is beyond just the age, it’s really the maturity and control. And fact is, even if you are interested in a teenager, the fact that you’re unwilling to restrain yourself is precisely proof that you’re not mature enough for a real relationship anyway. In theory, it’s entirely possible for such a relationship to work, in an abstract sense, and maybe it even does once in a blue moon. But in practice, generally, if you’re this emotional or hormonal or self-centered or lacking in perspective that you start banging highschool freshmen, you’re not ready for a serious relationship anyway, so this is purely for self-satisfaction, meaning there isn’t much to really gain from it but alot of potential harm that could come from it.

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