An Unfinished List of Rules
Sects is back up! I suppose I should provide some kind of explanation for this tentacled baby now squalling upon your birthing mat; it’s been long enough since I conceived it.
Owing to the fact that I have a head full of bad machinery, the world whose stability you have only recently begun to doubt has always looked like a howling wasteland to me. This COVID thing got started and all I could think was: “You say the outside world is a terrifying, isolating hellscape in which all social interactions are fraught with fear and confusion, and all the news reinforces your feeling that all the world’s powers are bent on making you, specifically, suffer? Welcome to my cult, new friend, have a taco.” Between CPTSD, OCD, and ADHD, I’ve been watching this apocalypse coming for a long time, tinfoil hat firmly in place.
The funny thing about undergoing therapy for all of the above acronyms (just bristling with Ds) during an apocalypse is that my poor therapist keeps trying to provide sane, sensible advice that would be terribly pertinent and helpful… if we were still living in a sane, sensible world. Unfortunately, we’re living in an evolving fascist death-spiral out of the fondest wet dreams of the world’s most boring white man, and a certain amount of paranoia, suspicion, and eldritch preparation seems only prudent.
Sects: A Young Girl’s Illustrated Primer is an attempt to convey a glimpse of the wasteland I’ve always seen out the window. You might be starting to find it familiar, and if that’s the case, there might be a few things I can offer. When you let go of any hope that you can save the world - when you accept that it ended a long time ago - the non-Euclidean logic of it can be followed. It’s possible to navigate here. Not with your head on straight, no, but… when have I been accused of that?
Now that I’ve irreparably muddied the waters, here it is. We’re through the Introduction and about half the first chapter, I’d say, but… there’s also a decent chance I’ll end up re-drawing half the first chapter along the way. Never know. World keeps on endin’.