Stream of Consciousness is based on the psychology term of the same name, in which there is a continuous flow of conscious thought. Often this is a rambling or wide range of disparate thoughts that stream together through one’s mind. Anyone who has spent time with their own thoughts has experienced this. My author’s notes for each comic is a form of a stream of consciousness. This itself is a stream of consciousness on the subject of steam of consciousness. Thoughts are the essence of a sentient individual, yet there are many aspects to thought and only a few of these are touched on in the comic. The comic starts in mid-thought and ends in mid-thought implying a continuous stream that occurs both before and after the comic (the end of the comic is based on something Kurt Vonnegut had throughout his novel Slaughterhouse-Five, ‘So it goes’). This comic is just a snapshot of Brump’s internal thoughts. With the Nihileafs floating non-stop they must always be thinking, something that is easy to overlook. One point I tried to get across, but probably didn’t do too well on was the fact that most thoughts we have are lost to ourselves as they quickly enter and depart (not to mention when we perish all thoughts go with us, even the ones we write down will one day disappear into nothingness along with the entropy of the universe). Another part of the comic comes from something Carl Sagan said and I always found profound (emphasis mine):
‘We live in the cosmic boondocks. We emerged from microbes and muck. Apes are our cousins. Our thoughts and feelings are not fully under our own control. There may be much smarter and very different beings elsewhere.’ –Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
It is humbling to think that we are our thoughts and they are often not under our control. A quirk I have is whenever a particular thoughts comes into my mind that I didn’t want to think or I would like to expel from my mind I immediately punch myself in my thigh a few times, a form of penitent self-flagellation. For the comic Brump is experiencing the phenomenon stream of consciousness while contemplating thoughts. The reason I went with Brump was because I imagined only Brump would think of thoughts in this way, particularly around disliking one’s own thoughts (again something everyone has encountered in their lives). In my mind Stoke is too nihilistic towards everything to give much consideration to thoughts and Mungi is too blissful to contemplate the limited and ephemeral nature of thoughts. Perhaps this comic will induce a stream of consciousness within a reader as they contemplate the passage. – Zachary
