I think it's also meant to be a depressing display that for some people that feeling never goes away. Not everyone will find the place that's right for them, and we can go through our entire lives feeling like we don't fit in and that's just a tragic aspect of life. Platitudes are a wonderful system to help cope with reality, but the truth is that sometimes it doesn't get better.
Edit: nevermind, it's a recurring character from his comic. I don't know if that was the intended meaning at all.
I think you have a good point though. Everything can't always work out ok for everyone. Somebody is having the worst life somewhere on Earth. Sometimes things are bad or hard or unfair without a magical resolution that makes it all worth it. Some people really do live their whole lives in misery and then they die.
Doing my damnedest to not hold that misery either. But damnit if I'm not woken up and reminded of my health issues as I work on gaining enough motor function to get by in the day...
Therapy's really been helping out though, I recommend it to everyone really
I think you have a good point and the merman being a recurring character doesn't negate it. I know I'm not the artist. I assume you are not the artist. We don't know all that the artist had in mind, but art exists between the work and the viewer. If it's speaking to you, then that's your experience and it's a real experience.
Haha, how did I notice the fin (I thought he had webbed feet) but not the tail? I was like, “My guy, maybe things would be a little better for you if you wore shoes ever.”
I think that’s part of the tragedy of it, for some people there’s that equivalent of what the ocean would be to this character, a chance to thrive, but they never get their chance to find their ocean
He molded to society's expectations, but there was no real fulfillment for him doing so. Dude was meant to be in the ocean (i.e. a purpose more befitting him), but he likely was too busy following the script to see it as an option.
Comic at least prolly serves as a reminder to actually explore and be curious about life because the one you're living might not be the one for you, and you should find the one for you before you're gone.
I feel like a big tragedy is that we really don't have that sort of deep-dive examination available of all your strength and weaknesses
There was this one fella - William Walker. He did an insane feat: he shored up like half of Winchester Cathedral
He did it for years, in the old school diving gear, basically in pitch black darkness because the water was so full of sediment the lamps did absolutely nothing
"Between 1906 and 1911, working in water up to a depth of six metres (20 feet), he shored up Winchester Cathedral, using more than 25,800 bags of concrete, 114,900 concrete blocks, and 900,000 bricks.
Before his work, the cathedral had been in imminent danger of collapse as it sank slowly into the ground, which consisted of peat. To enable bricklayers to build supporting walls, the groundwater level had to be lowered. Without intervention, the removal of the groundwater would have caused the collapse of the building. So, to give temporary support to the foundation walls, some 235 pits were dug along the southern and eastern sides of the building, each about six metres deep. Walker went down and shored up the walls by putting concrete underneath them. He worked six hours a day—in complete darkness, because the sediment suspended in the water was impenetrable to light."
(Wiki)
The thing is, this man seems like he was a nature-born diver. He found his Main Calling and fulfilled it to the brim. And he started at 30 when he was already a Senior Diver at a prestigious diving company... And by then he was already such an outstanding diver that he was teaching Royal Marines to dive - including future King George V.
Sometimes people find their One True Calling. Maybe some don't have it, but it's also possible that your One True Calling is "darkwater cathedral shoring"
Damn, that’s pretty cool. Does he have like a statue or plaque or something there? How’d you learn about him in the first place, if I might ask? Our society focuses so much on the ruling class that fund those kind of projects, so it’s a bit surprising to see a focus on the actual workers out in the wild.
I always like to see those references, though, like “This cathedral was completed in 1802 based off of plans that Hans the Master Mason drafted in 1340.” It really humanizes the untold, forgotten workers who contributed to literally everything around us.
Jacques Cousteau is a really interesting history read that’s been on my radar for a while now. Semi-related Epic Rap Battles of history did one between him and Steve Irwin that has some good references
There was a society in an episode of start trek tng that could identify talents, abilities, and likes at a very young age and guide you in your dream profession. As an aimless drifter, I always deeply wished that was real.
I met a 20 year old who was a home owner and had regular world wide vacations from Amsterdam. I asked how she did it. She said "In 4th grade and then 7th grade we took a test that matched our skills with a profession and you could do that or you could go to college and be whatever you want. I wasn't good in school so I just did the trade program my school offered and by 18 I had this job. It's highly specialized, I solder a specific type of roof joint. When someone is about to finish a roof, they call me, I do it, and that's it. I can't build a roof but I do one thing they showed me how to do and I do it well." And I don't know how much what she said was actually true, but since then I always wished I was born in Amsterdam, because it seemed ideal. You didn't HAVE to do what you were assigned, you could still go out and be what you wanted if you had a dream. But if you didn't, there was a path to a sustainable life: a home, stable employment... so if you chose to "do nothing" and just went along with the default, you wouldn't be jobless and on the streets. In America (I say this as someone who was chronically homeless) it feels like the default, if you're ever unsure about what you need to do next or what you want to do next, is to be homeless working a minimum wage job. I remember taking a similar test in 7th grade. It said I should be a dentist. I think I would have made a great dentist... but I had no path to get there.
Your read is very much correct. The Godot tombstone confirms it.
"Waiting for Godot" is a play by Samuel Beckett. It's an absurd piece, which actually addresses the missing moral reaction by European society towards the holocaust & WW2. But since the play is absurd and there are just 2 people waiting for something to happen which never will happen, people understood it as an existential, unavoidable wait. Therefore, the phrasing "waiting for Godot" (the entity those 2 protagonists are waiting for) became a saying with it's own meaning aside from the actual play. It got a meta, and this comic now is the third layer.
Why must there be something to get. The main issue leading to this type of tragic end is not letting go. Let go of there needing to be a reason. Just live, there are bad times a plenty, cherish the good times.
I think the greatest act of defiance in an absurd world is to make your life meaningful. Do what makes you proud of yourself, build up any part of the world around you, and create something that will outlast you.
For life is quite absurd
And death's the final word
You must always face the curtain with a bow
Forget about your sin
Give the audience a grin
Enjoy it - it's your last chance anyhow
Always look on the Bright Side of Life, Monty Python
That's very beautiful, I think the greatest act of defiance would be to set myself on fire in a public space after texting to everyone i know "I'm doing this because it's better than living among you all".
It is all about perspective isn't it? I see both described acts of defiance as exercising your ultimate right to be selfish in this world, but one of them feels more self flagellating than the other.
I've been operating out of spite for this system we live in, because I want to enjoy what life has to offer outside of our mired and instilled systemic greed. Too many look at my past and current life, and are envious I can be strong enough to hold myself together to do the creative works that I am despite being in constant agony and all. Gotta remind them constantly that we all face our own battles, it's just up to ourselves (and external help is never a bad thing to work through it) to punch through.
Being an optimistic realist, I see how things are and want to better it. Unfortunately it makes others feel insignificant since they compare their lives to mine. Nah fam, push forth out of spite for the system and operate together as a community. We all love each other for who we are, and want what's best for everyone else. That's why society developed things like mental health treatment (or just medical health treatment in general), social welfare programmes, etc. Societal altruism never dies off, and I'll be damned if I let the capitalists win with their systemic maltreatment inflicted on me (because health insurance is a huge scam and prevented expedited improvements to my health). So I try to set a positive example that reguardless of who you are, I'm looking out for you out of spite and passion in my own funny way. And I think others could use a similar lesson
While true, you are also only the product of what you know.
The guy in the comic has a mermaid tail, so probably would be pretty happy if he got to swim.
But if no one ever told him there was a place to swim, or if he was shamed and ostracized into not swimming, he might never do it, simply because that's the only thing he knows.
It's the whole Plato's cave thing.
You don't know that you're stuck in the cave if all you've ever seen is the cave. And the shadows and falsehoods around you might as well be real to you if you've never seen otherwise.
So it's easy to say "make your own choices", but that doesn't work on a wider scale when human existence in the modern world ranges from complete ignorance and lack of education to having all the world's possibilities and knowledge at your fingertips.
What applies to you cannot apply to everyone.
The World owes you nothing. But we owe everything we have to the compassion of others.
But what happens when humanity has no compassion? Surely we owe something to ourselves and each other. And others owe us the compassion we should be growing together.
Agreed. I do believe the world owe us nothing, but that humanity owes each other everything. We cannot survive without each other. That's why "giving more than you take" is so important to me. And it's exhausting when people have the "everything sucks so I might as well take what's mine, and/or destroy what's around me if it's not for me" attitude.
Sometimes things just really suck...but very rarely does EVERYTHING suck. Enjoy the shape of the clouds. Enjoy the flowers. Enjoy the baby in a stroller that smiles at you when you make a funny face. Enjoy the animals. Enjoy the color of a stranger's eyes. Find something, anything, to do in what little time you have that makes you feel proud. It could be drawing or writing or making music or even something as small as stacking pebbles as high as you can. There is always something good if you look hard enough.
Even if you cant pay rent, even if youre sick, even if you feel alone, theres something good, no matter how small, so find it and enjoy it.
Same. To me this reads like a tragedy about a man born to live in the water forced to live on land and having a miserable life because of it. I'm into it.
That's where my mind goes too.
This is probably not the point... But my mind goes to nerodivergent people. We say they have conditions like ADHD and autism (not denying those things are real, they are) but there's nothing wrong with them. They just have brains that work different. They just live in a world not designed for them, and get treated like they don't belong.
I don’t know if it is my ADHD diagnosis or not, but I could always relate to a feeling that many other people grasp a certain something where I ‘just don’t get it’. Usually it has to do with some form of people/social skills (even though I have other issues like with memory and finishing tasks). It probably doesn’t help either that I grew up in a very introverted and almost hermitic family. By sheer coincidence and not by design, all my close friends, my gf and my ex have ADHD.
Can social skills be learned? Of course. And in fact I know some ADHD people who focus a lot on observing and copying others in order to compensate. But I think, as an illustrative example — once someone told me in frustration that “I just don’t get you. For me, it’s just an instinctive easy thing, I have an instinct about how I come across, and what everyone else is thinking or might think. It’s like a survival instinct, for how to act and what to say at what time, and so on”.
Well I don’t have that. I can remember individual rules and principles, but I don’t have some kind of ‘people instinct’. I like tasks and like improving at tasks, and I can handle clear simple guidelines on how to treat others the way they want to be treated, but there is no vague ‘people instinct’ in me.
I can almost relate to the comic, because I can understand the temptation to mimick the ‘typical life path’ in one’s culture— in some vain hope that making external gestures of ‘fitting in’ will work backwards, that those conventional life decisions will integrate you into whatever mental and emotional wavelength many other people operate on. But that’s not how it works, and you might just waste your life still ‘not getting it’.
This is my general impression as well. My only criticism of this interpretation and the comic is that maybe the character should look a little happier in the womb, given that he’s suspended in amniotic fluid, which could be construed as a natural environment for the merman. And only after he leaves it should he be miserable.
Edit: Though, on second look, perhaps the pollution in the womb makes it a bad environment. And, is that a knotted up umbilical cord? That’s just sad, and indicative of how some people suffer injuries before they’re even born.
From what I remember of my Irish literature class, Godot = God is a possible lens to view the story through. They’re waiting for divine intervention, waiting for something to happen to them, when the opportunity to leave and take charge of their own lives is right in front of them. But there are other interpretations, including the more nihilistic “everything is pointless”, I just liked that one.
OP - I really enjoyed this comic. I get why others saw it as a fish out of water story or a life is miserable story, but I felt something different reading it.
There were so many moments of potential joy in your character’s life. Graduation is an accomplishment, getting married is a celebration, having a job provides stability and comfort. But his expression never changed. He wasn’t open to the world around him - he was dissociated and moving through it waiting for it to tell him its meaning.
I have experienced that feeling and I’ve experienced the opposite - a sense of complete presence and deep emotional connection to what I’m experiencing. You captured the deep discomfort of not sharing in the emotional experiences of those around you really well.
This really resonated with me as a cautionary tale about not being curious and open to the world around us. Thank you for sharing it.
I just realized in my second read that he's half fish.... He's literally a fish out of water that never found an environment that he could thrive in. Great now I'm sad. But good job on the art thing
Ive always wondered if catholic school was somehow the default for a lot of people in the entertainment industry or maybe there was a time when the only real boarding/private schools were catholic and thats what ended up in entertainment. Cool comic just made me think about that for the first time in a while.
Oh, I know a lot about this one since I took a film studies class at a Catholic college!!
Visuals and aesthetics. Catholic Churches and schools are highly theatrical in thier own right. Gothic architecture, wood paneled halls, crucifixes, plumes of incense, theatrical ceremonies, music, etc. It all provides instant mood and atmosphere that’s instantly recognizable to the audience before you even get to the costumes…..kids in crisp white shirts, plaid skirts, ties, sports jackets, polished shoes. All made to be uniform and create a blank canvass from which individuality or rebellion can be easily depicted. Adults get priest and nun clothes and others in tweed jackets and leather patched elbows….which can easily show what their role is.
Built in character types and story lines that come together simply by taking characters out of expected roles. The coming of age story, the rich kid poor kid story, the hip liberal teacher in a strict environment story, the priest as a hero against the forces of evil story, the individual vrs the institution….the structure of the Catholic school/church world is so rigid, it’s full of storylines when characters bump against the rules and creates some type of friction.
On a more practical or political level, in the early film and tv days there was strict censorship in Hollywood and they had things like the Hays Code which dictated what was considered decent and acceptable to show on film. The enforcement agency was headed by a devout Catholic and was heavily influenced by the “Legion of Decency” a Catholic organization that would lead protests and boycotts if they thought content was unacceptable….most filmmakers bent over backwards to portray Catholic institutions/priests/nuns/students in a positive or heroic light. When times change and the code fell apart, all the filmmakers who grew up with this pristine trope of a Catholic world, all of a sudden started to experiment with nuanced and satirical forms that played on and worked with the previous tropes.
I don’t think it’s that people in entertainment automatically went to catholic school, so much as Catholic School leaves so much of an impression that the people that happen to work in art and entertainment can’t easily escape the influence and bring it into their work.
He was born different and with a tail, struggled because of it, was bullied for it, it made his life hard, and yet he kept doing what he was supposed to do and stayed miserable instead of ever finding where he belonged (the ocean). Could either be that he had never seen the ocean and didn’t ever have to idea he could actually belong somewhere, or that he was too scared to take the plunge. I interpreted it as being about being queer, trans, or different in other ways and just never exploring the paths or communities that’d actually give you fulfillment, belonging, and meaning.
I, as a neurodivergent person with persistent depression, anxiety with a bit of disassociation. I unfortunately relate to this comic. I swear I feel I don't belong in this world, obtaining and truely feeling real happiness is kind of like trying to make clothes out of dust and air.
Did you ever get sick at school, so they called your parents to come get you?
My entire life has felt like sitting in the front office, trying not to puke, waiting for someone to take me home. Just a long purgatory of "get me out of here."
Here’s my hot take as to why he never got a chance to swim: because he struggled with walking so much, to keep him “safe” they obviously wouldn’t let him in the water and possibly drown. It’d be seen as simply something too dangerous for him. And he’d agree with it, because that’s what all the authority figures around him said.
I was waiting for the panel where he’d like, embrace the fish tail and go swimming or literally anything to make him happy. Not sure what the meaning of this is other than “sometimes life sucks and then you die”
Thank you to everyone who commented. Was beyond what I expected. You've all given me a lot to reflect on, a lot of it I hadn't considered when creating this. I'm glad it gave people an opportunity to talk about life and all that comes with it. And thank you for encouraging whatever this is. Very kind of you all.
Absolutely crushing. 10/10. This is what I absolutely dreaded my life would be like, in my lowest points. Even if I pushed through, it would just be a string of miseries until I died, always feeling out of place, always feeling like I was missing something obvious. Luckily I turned things around, but in the moment, it can feel absolutely inescapable.
Dude looks as miserable on his graduation day as he does on his firing. He looks as miserable on his wedding day as he does on his divorce. Doesn't seem to matter whether there's positive or negative to focus on.
You know, I kept wishing and hoping things would get better for this character, and was sad when they didn't. I could talk about my interpretation, but maybe I will just say that it made me think perhaps I should try to love or help myself the way I wished another character would love or help the character in this comic
I think about this any time I help a hatchling turtle get to a pond. I'm sure lots of them don't make it to the water, dying before they truly know what their life is supposed to be like. Makes me wistful.
It’s interesting that you chose to not have him have children. I’m curious why that was left out? A lot of events in his life seem like things he did not want to do (no sign of happiness when getting married for example), but did anyways. Married couples often get pressure to have kids.
Was not having kids the one thing he did choose that also went against social pressure?
Or is it just because he’s a mermaid and his wife was not, so conception not even possible?
He's a character from the comic, this being let's call it a sort of outtake? Different comic with him in it, not necessarily 'canon', riffing on an idea? If that makes sense?
Didn't think to add kids, interesting question. Some of it was to keep it under 50 panels, but maybe it never even crossed my mind b/c as a parent that was a little too far for me even.
Honestly I respect this take; you’re too good of a parent to do that to even a fictional child.
I was a nanny, and now I’m a server; most adults are just big children stumbling around
I’d love to see if he ever did get to swim; I bet chlorine would fuck with him physically, and pollution would hurt, but I would love to see if he ever got to even try — if only for the child he used to be.
I’m getting egg vibes. Unhappy all the time, doesn’t know why, while the answer staring all of us viewers in the face. Fish gotta swim, but this poor thing is forced to walk on 2 feet they don’t have
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u/YWN666 1d ago
Idk why, but this guy looks like courage the cowardly dog if he was a human. To me at least