Hello, it’s me again. Yay! In the penultimate Human Being comic, someone said they wished there was more detail about the specific transition of Mike, from his desolation to his security, his peace.
It’s a good question, and prob one we all want the answer to, at one time or another (or constantly, sure). Hopefully the final comic approached the conundrum in another way and helped the single message I’m trying (and probably failing) to get across: Steph’s story of epiphany is identical to her dad’s, she just arrives at it in a completely different way.
The paths to the mysterious are, by definition, mysterious paths. (Think that’s another Rohr quote, tbh! I do have original ideas too, I promise …)
Just to spell out my approach to the matter, I’ve referenced this image before, because it’s a key one:
^ In this moment, Mike has broken through the ‘struggle’ and ‘fall’ phases (phase two and three as per my detail at the back of that penultimate comic) and is wholly entering the forth phase of Human existence. His path to that moment of epiphany, sees his short meeting with Ix changing the way he feels about himself. He stands up against the toxic men surrounding him. He begins to see that there is so much more to life than the hierarchy he’s been in. He has a tangible example of freedom and, contrary to the rules of the hierarchy, an example of his own deep, constant worth.
Mike’s eyes are on the sky. His elbow, projected above him, represents the pyramid/hierarchy he’s supposedly at the bottom of. But he’s lit a fire. He’s free of that hierarchy, free of toxicity, and now he has the proof – that he is both historically bad, but deeply good. His epiphany is a new understanding of the path of love, an epiphany that his worth cannot be taken. 
This may sound bloody obvious but so very few of us really, truly accept it. I’ve got to be honest, I don’t fully accept it, and I’m the one writing about it!
Does that philosophical point make sense to people? Do you agree with it? Disagree? It’s an interesting one, I think it affects so much else, it’s like a core values thing.
No wonder it’s immediately after this moment for Mike that, when offered a job in what he knows to be another toxic hierarchy … he takes it. “No problem. I’ll walk into hell again, sure. Death has no power over me anymore. Fear is irrelevant. Shame is processed, done. Maybe I can even pass on some freedom to these humans still stuck in it …”
In this series of comics, which initially lays the groundwork for the way we control and consume each other, I am trying to describe the exact epiphany transition for Steph, too. Mike goes through it first, in an abstract and under-explained way, to open the topic in the reader’s mind. I talk about the phase thing at the end of the comic – did you agree with that phase thing? It’s my own personal interpretation of Tolkien etc, so it might not be right. Then in the final comic, Steph goes through the exact same thing from a completely different angle, and tutored by God themself/s! I mean, why not, huh?
This, effectively, is the same picture as that of Mike, it describes the same moment:
^ she has began to actually accept the message of love. Her eyes are on the sky. Her elbows again representing the hierarchy, this time conquered and dropping below in what becomes another dimension (darkness of the water, this is a Skyfall moment: toppling the hierarchy, up-ending it). She transcends. True epiphanies do not just inspire us, it seems they free us from the dimension containing our shames or our bad habits or whatever. The stars are initially unreachable, reflections seen from below, but as her epiphany rolls out, she fully enters the realm of both darkness and sparkles. Her shadow self is left behind and she transcends into the realm of the sparkles – literally transported through time and space to be ready for Lithium comic 9.
Here’s me beginning to make the way for it, back in Lithium 8:
Steph’s transcendence also references Skylar’s powerfully naive beliefs, that all things are connected, and she demonstrates it increasingly through her kinetic powers (we’ll see more of those soon …). And Mike’s discovery that he seems to be connected to everything; in his case with real human relationships. He has learnt to transcend his shadow self, his ego, and naturally just finds himself connected …
Steph is transported by the ‘one photon’ that God mentions; light simultaneously one thing, many things, drives out darkness. Same as the message at the end of Telepathic Hentai Tentacle – learning to look up, learning to see the lights … “If we cannot give away, how can we love?” – Laryn asks. I’m writing the exact same thing in Lithium, too. And it was the same story in STFW, just similarly … completely different …
Anyway, as you may have guessed, the comics I write are semi-autobiographical; I think the best stories should be a little painful to write, a little close to the bone. It’s been a real joy to develop these stories, and they’ve gone in surprising directions!
Initially I put this scene in (pictured on the right, think it’s in Lithium 4 or 5) purely for giggles, and got such an overwhelming response in the feedback, people genuinely touched by the humanity of the troopers, the hope amidst the darkness. In the latest comic, it’s funny that the scene with God was most people’s favourite bits too, that that message of love struck so many so deeply.
Perhaps that recognition of some deep truths comes from something good, maybe that’s why people are affected by this stuff? If we weren’t touching on something real, we wouldn’t be so affected by stories like this, would we? That and the boobies, sure. Either way, it seems that we are all human, after all.
Pretty fucking good news, if you ask me 🙂
