Week 257 (Patreon)

THIS MARKS PAYMENT FOR THE WEEK OF 7/7-7/13.

Okay, well, I feel really awful and shitty about this, but... I couldn't even complete the sketch version of the next comic page in time for the end of this month. I tried to rush it tonight in order to try and make it, but my brain and hand were not cooperating in the slightest and nothing was coming out right very frustratingly, so I just have to bite the bullet and concede on only being able to give you guys script updates for this month's updates. I'm really sorry about this, it's really bad timing too considering the new generous patrons that have managed to sign up, I'm sorry your first month has this issue coming up. I promise I'll do everything I can to get the completed update up as soon as I can for you all and for the public. In the meantime, this is script update #1 for July, which is for page 451.

So anyway, yes, I'm somewhat fond of this monologue that Fox Kale makes here. Fox Kale is a lot of things; he has his own identity and personality and everything... he is his own character. However, this page speaks more to what Fox Kale really ultimately is: a part of Kale. Despite all the threats and fights and personal motivations and everything he's done over the years, despite how separate and different he may seem from the human Kale we know and follow, despite how much he has his own identity.. Fox Kale is still an aspect of Kale's mind as a whole. Specifically, he and the other mental characters like Liddy are inspired by several antiquated concepts from early psychoanalysis, like Freud's id or Jung's shadow (Lucy uses the Id/Ego terminology and their 'inky' appearances are meant to invoke images of 'shadows' of themselves), where a person's mental self is comprised of a collection of aspects (archetypes) that collaborate and combine to form the whole. This was all more or less explained early on in the Mindtravellers arc before they stepped out and started exploring other people's minds (page 343).

This page and speech, though, I think fully expresses how, despite how unusually separated Fox Kale is from Kale's conscious self, he still experiences and feels the same bad things Kale has, probably moreso than Kale's conscious self is even aware considering the Id is meant to be a person's raw emotions and instincts. Of course he's felt all the pain and anguish that Kale's conscious self has, even if he isn't handling it or dealing with it in the same way, and in fact all those emotions that Kale feels in the conscious world very well originate from Fox Kale himself. It's maybe not all that apparent most of the time that Fox Kale is still Kale, but this scene hopefully helps to punch that point in.