Let me preface this whole article by saying this is not about me and my mom. My mom and I get along great. We have our quirks and complications, but I have the extremely rare gift of a good mother-daughter relationship. (And I’d like to keep it that way. She reads my stuff sometimes. :P )
I’m finally getting to drawing the scenes about the relationship between Vanessa and her mother. I had been putting it off because I knew it was going to be a rough one. We open on the aftermath of Vanessa’s disastrous speech. We open on a fight.
Vanessa, like so many of the people around me, has a frought relationship with her mother. I try to keep my finger on the pulse of life, on the feelings of the people around me. And a lot of folks from my generation have some mama drama in their lives. I’ve seen many instances of friends go No Contact on their mothers for their abusive behavior. I wanted to tell a story that reflects the world I’m seeing.
I wanted to use this mother-daughter relationship to underscore some generational trauma that leads Vanessa to make bad choices. Vanessa’s problems look a lot like her mother’s problems if you pay attention.
With Vanessa’s mother, I wanted to explore the trouble that can be caused when your mom is a Pick-Me, who centers men over her family members. In the animatic, we’ll start to see how Vanessa is affected when her mother has to choose between helping Vanessa through a hard time and managing the new family she’s started with a new stepfather. Vanessa’s mother isn’t evil. She’s just human. And she’s stretched entirely too thin for anyone’s own good.
If mothers don’t heal their trauma, they’ll pass that trauma onto their kids, and that’s what we’re going to see with Vanessa and her mother. Of course there is love and tenderness. But Vanessa’s mom has impaired judgment. She still reminds us that even a mother’s love has its limits. Especially in a world where women (still) aren’t allowed to heal from their generational trauma before cranking out a few kids.
Now, I know all this sounds grim. However, try to keep in mind, we get this quote in the next scene from Justice (the Obvious Self Insert):
JUSTICE
Punishment? On a tropical island? Your mom’s got a weird idea of how punishment works.
Her name is Justice for a reason.