Silly Bex, the only thing Mike cares about is shark friends
jk he cares about judging everyone
Speaking of shark friend, Kalla is off doing god knows what
Happy Halloween to US friends… it’s been another stressful and busy month but my anthology KS is over soon, so I’ll post another update on Friday.
SPEAKING OF Electrum it ends in less than 2 days
We actually ended up fully funding a few days ago, which was a huge relief. This project is not as universally sexy as say, depressed shitty dudes in caves, so I wasn’t actually sure that it would make goal. Now that we’re definitely safe, just focusing on trying to upgrade the book a bit, so if you were wanting a copy now is a great time to jump in.
In other KS news, I can also say that I’ll be sending out the Mare KS backer surveys in November in order to facilitate safe delivery of book PDFs. Been a while coming! This year has been a shitshow in ways that, taking my own comic’s advice, I don’t actually need you to understand, but honestly the temptation to prostrate myself at everyone’s feet so you don’t think I’m a major asshole is hard to resist… but I’ll do the stolid Bex thing and rely on your compassion and understanding and hope a gust of wind doesn’t blow me off this metaphorical cliff.
Anyways, eat loads of candy regardless of where you live, and see you Friday
22 Comments
Oh Bex, don’t you know that no man’s an island! She should parley on the ever so great Kalla instead of Mike.
Ahh another swell page!
Is Bex quoting something? I love the phrase and tried googling it, but I wasn’t able to find a source. A beautiful sentiment!
Thanks! And no, it’s original, haha~
Prostration not necessary! I have been waiting eagerly for updates and am so excited, and also totally understand you’ve been swamped. Getting to read your work is a privilege, and I’m sure many of us out here understand that it’s a thing that just takes time. Thank you for creating such wonderful works! I’m so excited (and tearful) to finish reading MI, and thrilled your other KS has met it’s goal <3
The abyss is just trying to be buddies! The best way to conquer it is to bring scones. They go well with Abyss tea.
No, silly, Abyss tea goes best with Abysscuits!
I’ll show myself out.
I felt physical pain from that one. Well done. :)
God, I love Bex. She just feels so real.
AHHHHHHHHHH PAGE
AHHHHHHHHHH MI KS BACKER SURVEY!
I HAVEN’T EVEN EATEN ANY HALLOWEEN CANDY YET
PS bex we love you girl. damn though the relatability of that statement in panel 2.
Going back to the corresponding page in chapter 1, it’s actually established that she zoned out staring into the abyss :o
okay this is getting so relatable that it hurts to read. but god, I guess it’s true.
This page hurts because I get it. I absolutely get where Bex is coming from, what she is looking for and what she wants. Incredible work.
Congrats on Electrum being funded! I know you’ve been working your ass off, I’m glad to see your projects being fruitful
Ah, I’m glad for this. I feel like I have a better understanding of her thought process now. I still don’t think what she did was right, but neither does she. Both options cut her deeply. She could stay and try to be a mother despite not having the mindset for it and perhaps even feeling growing resentment for her family with every passing day or she could leave in order to satisfy what was compatible to her mindset and be the one to suffer the hatred and resentment from her family. She’s consigned herself to the doom that is self-hatred with the only agency of what the reason behind it will be. The misstep that may have averted all this was years ago and it’s far too late to correct it now. I feel terrible for her kids more than anyone else since they don’t even get that amount of agency in this situation. The relationship might still be repairable, but that is reliant solely on the people involved, Bex especially. If Bex chooses to be selfish, at least she is aware of it. I just hope she is attentive of the full consequences. I’m not talking about relevant to herself only. I’m talking about her children as well. Is her ex-husband a good father to compensate? What if anything should happen to him? Do they have reliable, loving extended family who could be depended upon to take care of them? It’s easy to make a sacrifice if you are the only one who gets hurt, but not when there will be others who suffer the fallout. I suppose, if no such thing comes to pass, it’s a non-issue. But I wonder whether or not she can reclaim herself from that darkness if it does.
I got the distinct feeling he pushed Bex into the pregnancies in the first place, and for sure dismissed/minimized her fears and pain while she was pregnant.
She may not have had such a problem with parenting if her role hadn’t been defined with so much misogyny wiping out her personhood.
It’s so true to what I’ve heard from young mothers of color struggling with societal expectations for them.
Bex is saying a lot of what I’m afraid of… I’m not a mom yet, but my husband really wants to have at least one kid, and I’m really afraid I’ll hate it, and never have time to draw again. I think I need to have him read this comic.
I’m so excited to see the finished stuff from the Mare kickstarter… and SO excited for the Electrum anthology!!! Been sharing that as much as I think of it the last week or few. I really hope it makes it to the inner pages upgrade!! :D
Serious question, how many hours a week is your husband planning to put into parenting? Will he split it with you at least half/half, and deal with being able to do less of what he wants, too?
Lot of men who really want children when the potential mothers don’t really want to, it’s that they haven’t even thought about it as something they’ll need to put work into too. If he wants ’em, he should be willing to work at it.
If your husband really wants a kid he should want one regardless of your role in its life. Ask him if he would be ok being a single father. Raising a child without any help from you. Ask him to imagine what he would do if he was raising a baby without you. Especially a newborn who would need 24 hour care. Would he be ok being a stay at home dad and raising the kid for several years? Putting it through school by himself from elementary to college?
I personally think only people who think they want children should have children just like only people who think they want to be a doctor should go to med school.
Still if you are unsure there are foster programs where you look after children for a limited amount of time. Or student exchange programs where you can host a child who is studying abroad. Maybe you could look into those options.
With the first panel when Bex says “…That would be enough”, I instantly thought of Angelia Schuyler from Alexander Hamilton XD
I really love Bex; she is so well written and just a wonderful character that found herself within an un-fixable situation. One of the reasons why I never wanted kids is that I would lose myself and it would be all about them, and I am not the type of person to be content with that. Even though I am no where near a smart as Bex, my career is important to me, and so are my hobbies.
She feels terrible about what she done, but I agree with some of the previous comments that there existed NO good options for her.
Sorta “divorce” with kids. And since kids are healthy and wealthy, I doubt that distance would actually be a problem. Correspondence, viedo chat etc. work pretty well. Maybe if they spoke of it in this key they’d not be so dramatic. Things might also be _way_ better if Becks had spent more time being a scientist and talking to her kids of her field of interest and representing herself as a person who’s not only an organic being caring of successful upbringing of her breed (i.e. “mommy who’s always merely devoted to family and kids”). I suppose no adult in her family would have appreciated this “I’m not _only_ a mother” approach, but kids actually could. Life is an exciting journey with so many things to do! And once you have a chance you’ll never have again, you just GO AND DO WHAT FEW PEOPLE IN THE WORLD ARE CAPABLE TO DO. Becks is a world-class scientist, or no one would have paid for her life on Mars. She really may do no one else would have done even given the same resources and conditions. That’s the freaking vanguard of human knowledge! That’s earth’to’skies high mom who’s devoted to her mission and doing no one else ever did! If this is a _bad_ behaviour model, I wonder if any good ones exist. TBH I’d be pretty _proud_ of such mother. But I’m probably just too injured with Soviet science fiction read by me and _both_ of my parents :D
P.S. I actually feel sorry for my mom who married and bore me “like people do” instead of looking for another workplace in another lab. She’s a person literally _designed_ for science. Everybody can reproduce. The same person can do it “now” or “then”. And if you feel perfect when you study tons of books and make practical studies, you may be lacking it throughout your whole life. Not that she ever complained, but in my eye she’d be more content and happy if she continued doing it than she is now doing just “this or that” even when it is well paid and\or important. She is successful in many things. AND she’s a very good mom and a good teacher as well. But. If someone ever said her, “why not to look for a good place right now rather than have _some_ place?”, things might be so different.
Bex has essentially stated a fundamental truth of human psychology. We judge ourselves by our intentions, and everyone else by making guesses, based on their actions, about what their intentions might be.
We don’t know the intentions of others. We can’t. It is out of our reach. We can make guesses, sometimes accurate ones (and usually wildly inaccurate ones) but we can never know.
Bex expects others to judge her on the purity of intentions that only she will ever know, that those others are mentally incapable of knowing. Praying that they will understand is futile. Acting as if they should understand is insanity. They can only ever judge her by her actions and she is, as her only human companion has stated, a prick going by those actions.