#96: Wild and (rent) free
Hello responsible people,
The ducks are all in a row this week. Two cartoons, both unalike, but yet, strangely alike in the adultingness. Is adultingness a word? Who’s to say what is and isn’t a word? Certainly not adults.
This week we see a result of our modern struggles, and embrace freedom in the wild.
Jumping fences,
Chris
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Your first time here? Check out all the past posts for even more cartoons.
Caption: “My story? Oh the usual: rising prices, crippling debt, and I couldn’t work out the shower in my apartment.”
We all know this shower.
Maybe it’s a hair-trigger. Maybe the taps go the opposite way. Or maybe it’s one of those weird dials that I’m sure made sense to the manufacturer. Whatever the reason, showers can be like the great combination locks of the world. Punishing. Cold. And entirely unforgiving.
I would probably run away too.
A little artist’s note: I’ve witnessed my fair share of bad showers and, obviously, this takes it to a more extreme level. I’m not sure anyone would be driven to apparent homelessness because of a complicated shower, but I doubt if they would find the whole thing very pleasant either. Our shower, for example, is one that we’ve learned to live with for a while now, but that still completely baffles any guests. Too hot. You got it. Too cold. You also got it. Wherever that middle, Goldilocks, ground is, it’s going to be a whole other journey to find it.
Visually, this to me is defined by the way the characters are dressed. Do they need the eyepatch? Probably not. But it felt like that person needed a defining feature and that was certainly it.
And, obviously, homelessness is a horrible situation and people really are struggling, so I don’t want to downplay the obvious systemic societal issues there. However, our speaker here is instead overwhelmed by his own first world problem which, while obviously still a problem, isn’t one that would normally lead to this outcome.
Caption: “I’m free! And suddenly responsible for myself.”
We are all this horse.
Because, while we want to break free of those barriers, jump over that fence and roll in the hay (metaphorical or otherwise), once we get there, we realise pretty quickly that now we have to look after ourselves. That now we are responsible for our own safety and security. And that’s all kind of frightening sometimes.
Are YOU this horse?
A little artist’s note: Yep, this is obviously a metaphor for life and moving out and all of the things that real people do. But it’s also based on my very limited knowledge of horses, which is in itself largely based on the old Australian poem called ‘The Man from Snowy River’ by Banjo Paterson about ‘the colt from Old Regret [that] had got away’. And it kind of made me think about what the horse would think once it had fled captivity. What it would do with its time when it wasn’t serving its masters, so to speak.
Visually, this always had to be simple. A horse. A fence. A wide open range. All of the things. Of course, the challenge with all of those things is not the force or the range, but the horse. Because, horses are notoriously hard to draw. They’re weird and strange, and what we think a horse looks like is often nothing like what a horse actually looks like. Horses work off their own complicated logic and you can either copy that logic, or you can make your own logic and claim it to be your version of a horse. In this instance, I think I’ve done a bit of both, but my other horse cartoons were all the precursor to this.
And, because I know you’re asking, here are see some past horse cartoons. I’m pretty sure they’re all the same horse (FYI).
Thanks for reading The Mid-Week Squiggle.
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