something's thoughts on TOL

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russy read the first half of blankets. & ♬ ♬ ♬ real love by big theif

i miss tol i miss santiago. it gives me such a specific feeling it makes me weordy nostalgic anad melancholy . i was thinking about santiago on the bus he feels so familiar to me, it all feeels so familiar to me. i Get it. its like comics i grew up around but it Gets me and i get to see it being made. its growing up with me its being a young adult in my 20s with me. santiago's Like Me, hes like me when i was a teenager and Hated myself, the inking is so familiar its like home ro me. its a comic that feels like home to me. it just feels like. idk i cant even describe it properly. like all these things that mattered to me and shapd me and even metatextually the author being in the ssame sphere as pollovy amd shit? i loved pollovy im middle school. i used to semd her anonymous asks saying how much i loved her art like every day. whatever i feel for oconnell is like an extension of that; i never really changed. im still the same at my core and i still read comics about confused young adults flailing to make something, some sense, of their lives. now im the young adult flailing, too, and i wonder if my story is 'wprth telling'. my life thru the lens of narratove. i miss TOL. i know its goimg to get sadder because i know the comics it pulls inspiration from and i don't want to go too much into that RN. it all feels connected and i feel like ive been in the same orbit of the same things my whole life, im the same person at my core ive just been scrambled by what i KNOW would constitute as abuse technically but i dont want to think of as such. god, thats fucking weird, isnt it? a person can have the best intentions but still abuse you. it doesnt make sense. i grew up going to TCAF and having playfates and watching movies but also crying on the basement staircase frozen in fear at the kitchen table selecting and deleting memories that were too much to process.

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its hard to explain that it doesnt just feel like a 'comic i like' it feels like a weird. mirror. of me. and other people can read the story and see the,selves or whatever but its not just the story or the characters its the Style its the Author its the Timeline its the Context its all the red strings coming off of it that i was alrewady tangled up in for most of my life and im tied up with it wether i want to be or not. it doesnt feel like a piece of media i can just 'put down' when im done with ot or walk away from to the next thing when ive had my fill becuase its not like that. i dont 'like' the comic . in a way its almost like looking at myself. its like looking at who ive been and who i want to be and what i want and what im scared of . sometimes if i think too hard about it i just feel So Weird. its my dad picking me up from DSS on a saturday in 2014 to see kazu kibuishi give a talk. it's being like 10 at home probably sick reading the copy of Seconds from the library. its supermutant magic academy in my primary school's comic bin in the library, spending every recess or lunch at the school library reading comics becasue when i go outside people [memories redacted]. its being in quarantine breaking down the paneling of Crush to my online friends. its ttrying to kill myself with a big rock to the head because i saod something wrong. its being too much, dming artists i love to say Hi! thank you i love your work! do you want to be friends? but always being a Weird Kid to them rather than someone worth actually respecting. its rereading all my comics over and over when i was forced to stay in my room every day. its the bag of comics that used to be in my family's old car that i would read and get carsick. its me being sent to therapy and not knowing how to talk to the therapist so just shoving my sketchbook in her hands and sitting curled up in the corner its me saying i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i'm sorry, over and over forever for years

and i look at it and it saying im sorry, i'm sorry, i'm sorry, and i don't want it to feel like i did. like i have. like that. i dont want that to be how things are. i dont want that to be all there is.

its something reaching its hand right into my chest to grab at the heart beating in there like its saying 'you're here and you always have been and you will continue to be wether you like it or not.' and i'm so scared. I'm so scared! something looking at me in the eyes as i stare back with an uncertain expression but it won't let me grab its heart in return. but its not like i need to, i just don't know what else to do in response, how else to react. maybe you're jus supposed to let something do that to you? you're just supposed to let it happen? but its like the eye of a storm of amelia rules pages and scott mccloud pages and ink i spilled on the desk and making-of bonus pages in the back of Copper and me looking at me.
me looking at me who's not me, who's some other guy, but i'm some other guy to myself anyeays, so maybe it's all me or none of it is about 'me' at all but it has to have been at some point. comic that makes me want to cry just by being in existence, or something. comic that's like walking through a museum dedicated to yourself but made by someone who had never met you and didn't know you existed.

i just dont want to be where i am right now. its really really hurting me, im afraid to admit its killing me but it is. i'm going to die here if i can't leave and that's terrifying and there's so little i can do to save myself. i try what i can but i run and run and run and run and trip and skin my hands and knees and crawl back up and limp forward until i collapse.
and i lie on the pavement twitching until i work back up the reslove to get up and run and run and run and run again but its slower and more desperate than the last time until i trip again and i consider just not getting back up again but for what? if its gonna hurt either way might as well get back up again and keep going on the off chance something could work out. but i can never run fast enough to get away.

i'll never know whats truly happened to me or not or who i truly am and all ive ever had thats consistent is the animarion circles i orbited around, that i loop back to over and pver, some shattered kid trying to glue himself back into one piece using the artists and work i admire like kinsugi. nov 2025

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Pub: 21 Nov 2025 23:17 UTC

Edit: 22 Nov 2025 20:58 UTC

Views: 32