Weekly Update - 291 - 10/6/25

Kiera and Skye... I REALLY never saw that coming, honestly. But who is actually playing who, there? Is it genuine? Or not? Also, in case you missed it, there's a new spooky season voting incentive up on TWC. Kind of a late last-minute thing I threw together because I felt like it suddenly. It's up on FA as well. The preview up there is the reflection that's in the knife, pre-flipped and pre-distorted.

Anyhoo.

This week's comic: God Slayers 236

Escapism: Age of Wonders 4

Ramble:

With the return of depression comes the return of the ramble. Huzzah. I know you're all excited to hear what I've been ruminating about lately.

I've been feeding the birds in our backyard lately. The cat enjoys watching them, and so do I. They're funny little creatures. Messy, but funny. The way they fight over the best perch on the feeder, the way they chase each other around on the ground. The way they hop along with their little bird legs and tease the neighbor's cat by keeping just out of her immediate range. The way they hang out in the shade of the trees, even when it's cold, seemingly just to hang out. Today, I watched as a hawk... (or is it a falcon? Eagle? Not sure) swooped down and caught one of those funny little birds, ending its life in brutal fashion, then proceeding to rip it to little tiny pieces right in plain view for us between the two bird feeders.

We've known the hawk was around. We've seen it circling overhead, casting its shadow on the land below. We've seen it swoop, watched it chase the birds around. It tries and fails to catch them all the time. And it's killed before, leaving behind only a pile of feathers as evidence of its hunt. This was the first time, however, I've actually witnessed it catching something in the moment, and the way he sits there, still, even as I write this, probably at least an hour later, still ripping that poor bird to pieces just for his own stupid benefit, ngl it kinda pisses me off. The cat doesn't care though, he's long since gone to bed. The birds are only of interest to him during the ~30 minutes a day he spends awake, just around sunrise. Oh to be a cat.

Now, I understand the nature of a predator-prey relationship. A hawk must eat to live, and sometimes it must prey upon those smaller birds to eat. It's only natural. And yet, there were dozens of birds back there, probably at least twenty, minding their own business, being no bother to anyone. When the hawk arrived, they all scattered in all directions in an effort to save themselves and I'm sure they will probably not be back for a couple of days. But it got me wondering, rather than scattering in all directions to save themselves like a bunch of fucking cowards, what if they ganged up to defend one another? Does that ever happen? There were enough of them they probably could have easily driven the hawk away if they chose to stand together instead. It wasn't a big hawk, and they weren't all small. Maybe some of them might have gotten hurt, but it would sure give that hawk something to think about the next time he tried to just show up and murder one of them without any consequences. Wouldn't that be better than just letting themselves get picked off one by one forever? It probably had sharp talons, but it's still just a bird, and any injury inflicted, even a small one, might prevent it from hunting for a long time, possibly even forever. So what is there to really be afraid of? Why should those littler birds be content with being prey?

Just a little while ago, while the hawk was still feasting on the bird it murdered, a chipmunk showed up to eat a bunch of the seed left behind by all the fleeing birds. He gave ZERO fucks about the hawk that was eating a bird like two feet away from him. Filled his cheeks to bursting and then he ran back to wherever he came from... hopefully the neighbor's yard. So the cowards that flew away lost twice, first they lost a life, then they lost their food. Seems the only way to win in nature is to have no fear.

The moral of this story, I guess, is that nature is super fucked up. And yet, the actual murder taking place in my own backyard is somehow still way less distressing than flipping my piece of shit phone over for 1/10th of a second. Maybe I should just ditch that shit in the trash.

Anyway. Forget all that... Forget I said anything. Everything's fine. Nothing is real.

Actually, I'm curious... does anyone have any theories about why so many of my characters have asymmetrical eyes? It seems like most of my characters are either missing an eye, they have one eye of a different color, different patterns around one eye, or hair that covers one eye... Or even Riley who is missing the eyelashes on her left side. It's weird right? I can't say I've given a ton of conscious thought to it, but it keeps happening regardless. All I know is sometimes I deliberately make a character extra symmetrical to suggest they are significantly more orderly than the average. IE. Snowball, Ash, even Reese (pre-scar, pre-rulership).