“In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know that you’ve had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.”- Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything
The quote doesn’t really relate to the theme of the comic, unhappiness, but the phrase feels particularly poignant when it comes self-reflection. It is a deep and unsavory realization that Brump has of being shackled and chained to the unhappiness of the past, one must also not forget of the present too. It is a truly depressing and humbly thought to think of the time wasted unhappy. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so tortuous if it wasn’t it being for so long and uninterrupted periods. Even though this comic is from Brump’s perspective, it could also have been from Stoke’s perspective. One variation even had it with both Stoke and Brump at the bottom of the panel, but with nothing indicating who was thinking, instead leaving it ambiguous (perhaps this would have been an even more powerful version). In the end though, I don’t think Stoke really cares about happiness, there is too much nihilism and meaninglessness in the universe for something as trivial as personal happiness. Instead Brump is turning out to be the one most concerned with happiness, think back to the comic Dear Creator, both of achieving it and the lack of it. Honestly at this point Brump doesn’t even know what would make him happy… I do though, it is nothing more than a trivial amount of ink and a few strokes of my pen! – Zachary