Weekly Update - 309 - 2/9/26 (Patreon)

EDIT: Accidentally posted this as a free update, it's usually just for subscribers. Oh well! Enjoy the free post. Hopefully. And if anyone is confused about all that shit down below, Rambles are my sort of stream of consciousness self-therapy that I sometimes write to try and keep myself sane.I actually ended up drawing a lot of extra stuff last week! I went on a crazy spree. I'll probably finish some of it. Probably.Donno and KIERA ended up winning the poll. You fiends! What a pair they'd make. It's probably Kiera's worst nightmare (and Kiva's too, for that matter). I'll try to get that art done... roughly around this weekend. So it isn't too late for Valentine's Day.

Comic this week - Solipsus - Page 29

Playing: WoW, mostly.

Ramble:

I had thoughts for a ramble when I woke up today, but they're gone. I think it was gonna try to be something positive. That's probably why it left me. Then all that was left was the idea to write about nihilism, detachment, dissociation... but... eh. Let's talk about having hope in a hopeless world.

It's one of the core themes I keep trying to circle around for God Slayers, from the very start: hope in a hopeless world. And, before I expand upon this, I won't say I think I'm necessarily succeeding at that in any regard. But that's what I'm trying to do, and also hoping to accomplish it some day. When the world has already ended, when everything's gone to shit and everything is already as bad as it can ever get, sometimes hope is really all that can keep us going. Kiva's all about making his shitty life just a little bit less shitty each and every day, and it's hard, but it's a perfectly noble, honest, and entirely attainable goal for him and for each and every one of us as well. I think having hope for a better future, or even hope for a better tomorrow or afternoon is a lot more potent a message when compared to some alternative states of mind that might seem optimistic on the surface, but are more destructive than they are actually helpful.

So let me deconstruct some examples so you get what I'm talking about: "How could things get any worse?" I use this jokingly sometimes, and in certain moments it might lighten the mood if used in a humorous way. But if we're being honest with ourselves, if we're alive and in relative good health and we're capable of communicating with others and if we have stuff, things could ABSOLUTELY get worse. Like, without question. And in the Year of Our Lord 2026, they probably will. It becomes harmful though when these sorts of thoughts -- that things cannot get any worse -- circle inside of our heads nonstop, normalizing the idea that things are ALREADY as bad as they can possibly be. Imagining that whatever the current state of our reality is equivalent to the absolute worst possible state, and as we ruminate on this, we might start to believe it. As a result, it might help us momentarily cope with how things currently are, which feels okay and feeds into the loop, but then it's even more devastating when things actually DO get worse, even slightly, because we've set up this internal expectation that they could not.

"Well, things aren't really as bad as they could be." Almost the opposite frame of mind, but just as harmful to get into, imo. This sets up the expectation that things could get worse, and sure, it might even help us mentally prepare for when that happens, but it also normalizes how things currently are, which kinda gives us an excuse to not do something about it. Then if things get worse, we get used to that as well. And so on. And so forth.

So whenever I talk about hope, and about the importance of trying, even when you don't know what you're doing or when you're afraid of making mistakes or of failure, the whole point is to encourage whoever I'm speaking to (mostly myself), to become convinced there's something better around the corner, and that something is worth trying to reach even if it's hard. Because the truly worst possible thing in this world is giving up, shutting down, growing comfortable with despair when there's probably some way to make our shitty lives even just a little less shitty right now, maybe even in this very room.

reaches for coffee, takes a sip, it's still toasty

Nihilism? No. Every little thing matters.