Amanda Lafrenais
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A weirdly personal blog post, I guess: Why Love Me Nice is being re-written
🕑 Added 2022-01-29 15:23:51 +0000 UTCSo, as I've mentioned before, Love Me Nice is going to come back this year after I finish some rewrites. And I wanna talk about those rewrites, and why they're happening - not for any big reason, just to get used to talking again. After a divorce, friendships and dynamics changing, personal life ups and downs, I got very used to just not speaking about my writing or art beyond the surface level. To anyone. So I'm trying to shake myself out of that a bit.
The surface-level reason the remainder of the comic currently un-drawn is being rewritten is to shorten the story. I started it in 2009-2010, back when I assumed I'd never be a comic professional. I did not have high hopes or aspirations, I just assumed I would become a teacher or manage a restaurant and do comics as a hobby, while my then professionally-trained illustrator spouse pursued art as their career. I was happy to prop them up with my dayjob, and do comics as a fun thing for me. With that in mind, Love Me Nice didn't have to be anything specific. It didn't ever need to end up in a book or distributed, it didn't have to ever make money, so I wrote it to be as long as I wanted. I thought, "this is the only comic I will probably get a chance to make, so I better just explore everything I want."
What resulted is a comic that, if put into a book, would be like 800 to 1,000 pages long. Unwieldy for publishing and monetization, but fine as a hobby with nothing to prove. Then life changed: comics actually became a viable career for me. Maybe not the best paying, I've always had to supplement it with other things, like living with family or waiting tables. But enough of a career that I was presented with numerous story telling opportunities. Love Me Nice didn't have to be the sole vehicle for all of my creativity.
And then, I just got plain busy. My marriage dissolved, I got bounced around home to home, from one side of the country to the other and then back again, in a state of constant flux. I had to pursue paying comic jobs, and my free-to-read webcomic just couldn't justify its own existence, so it repeatedly got shelved or put on hiatus.
Now that I'm getting better paying gigs, and my mental health and life-situation has stabilized, I want to finally finish the comic. But the only way that will happen is if it's much, much shorter. I can't commit to 600-800 more pages of a free-to-read niche comic and take care of myself... but I can commit to a 200ish-page project. Love Me Nice could see it's narrative conclusion by 2024 if I do that, even as a hobby side-project. So that's what I've been doing, trying to figure out what to cut and consolidate to make it work and still be the same comic, and I believe I've got those kinks hammered out.
However there is another reason the rewrites are the best thing for the comic: I've changed a lot. This is actually the comic's second mid-story rewrite.
When I first started the comic, it was a much meaner-spirited story. I was 21 and in that phase of development where the seeds planted from a bad childhood hadn't really sprouted. Yes, I knew my life hadn't been good, but I didn't really understand it. I was too busy trying to run directly at the future without stopping - get a job, get married, get and apartment, "start my life." I did not know how large the shadow of my trauma loomed over me while trudging forward and putting down these foundations. If I talked about it, I would very easily tell you in way-too-much detail about it, probably talk your ear off about all the bad experiences. Probably more than made you comfortable. It's not like I was unaware of it, but I just assumed "it's over." I'm an adult! I'm married! I have a home, a job, a future to work towards. But that's not how it works. It wasn't that I was "past" it: it was still gestating. I was deeply unaware of the ways I was damaged and the problems that would only start to manifest the older I became.
How this relates to Love Me Nice is inherent in that mean-ass first draft. I didn't want to write a story with any happy endings, the tone was very "life sucks, deal with it." Not that that's a BAD tone for a story. It was, however, bad for this story, because it was meant to reflect my views that life, in fact, sucks and that's it. You just take your lumps and fuck off. It felt like "realism" to me, to take this fanciful thing and make it just mean and bleak. I was a bubble round rolly-polly of a person, hardly a goth or a nihilist. I just thought that this was "realness." The comic was gonna end with everyone just miserable cuz, sorry that's just How It Is.
But shortly after the comic started, right after Carolina's boob job as a point of reference, I felt different. Self-awareness kind of broke the surface in me for the first time around this point, and I became aware that I was writing something mean and angry not because that was realness: but because I was mean and angry. This was around the time that I realized something was wrong with me, it wasn't just "bad things happened in the past and I got sad sometimes but oh well." I had problems, ongoing problems that were keeping me from living any kind of life. The things that happened to me weren't just a bad old story from the past to talk about for sympathy or something, they were technically still happening. They'd never stopped. The long reach of my father and step-mother's neglect and abuse didn't end when I left their home and made my own, it continued for as long as my condition went undiagnosed and untreated. They were miles away, but a version of them lived in my head, had been living there the whole time, and I just was realizing that.
I got suddenly a lot more sympathetic to the characters, and my feelings changed. I wanted these unhappy assholes to have happy endings instead. So, rewrites started. The tone shifted, the biggest being around 2012, when I introduced Carolina's brother. Some readers noticed this and pointed it out, and back when I used to talk so much about my writing on tumblr I acknowledged and explained it a bit. This became a new phase of the comic, where I was trying to navigate how to get these characters to a place of closure from the bad start I put them in, to make them happy.
This added two fun new complications. The first was that I began accidentally writing about myself in ways I hadn't before. They say you should write what you know, but the other side of that coin is, without reflection or self-editing, you are already writing what you know. So by trying to make these characters work through their problems, and lacking awareness of the complexities of my own and how my own gears turned, I began injecting myself into them without being realizing. Each character ended up inheriting a problem I had, some that I kinda was aware of, and some I wouldn't fully understand for 10 more years. Kelly was a then closted lesbian who clawed out of a tumultuous straight relationship, years before I left my marriage and realized I was gay. In the newest chapters of Love Me Nice from 2017-2019, Claire began the journey of recovering from neglectful and narcissistic parenting, which made her seek it elsewhere and develop attachments to people like Roger that just perpetuated it, that'll be a through-line in future chapters, but I hadn't even realized I was dealing with that myself til literally 1 month ago after years of therapy, venting to friends and self-help books cracked that one wide open finally.
And then Mac. God damn, Mac became the hardest to write. This is less "I was accidentally writing about my own trauma," and more "life imitating art" in a really painful way. Like, in a "wow that's mean of you God, what'd I do to you" kinda way. As has been obvious to readers, something has been wrong with Mac's dad for awhile, and the newest chapter was going to be when that got more explanation, about a genetic condition. I doubt this is too spoiler-y, but it's not hard to extrapolate from the text Mac was reading that they're getting genetic tests done soon. There were going to be jokes about spitting into plastic test tubes, and tension and character arcs spun off from this.
I started that chapter in 2016, before my younger brother died in Oct 2016 from an unknown genetic condition. I'm not going to go into too much detail, anyone who's kept up with me on social media has probably been privy to a lot of this already. But it kicked off a whole new kind of trauma for me, it re-opened old family wounds and forced me to confront family I swore I'd never speak to again. We all had to go get testing done, I flew down to Texas even though I was dirt-broke to get MRIs and scans, get mailed home-tests of little plastic test tubes to spit in. Found out my other little brother had the same condition, that without corrective surgery could kill him in his sleep, just like our other brother. So a GoFundMe for funeral costs was met immediately with a GoFundMe for surgery costs, both manned by me cuz I was the only internet-literate person involved.
So when I'd revisit the chapter, I'd just hurt. I just couldn't do it, in 2019 I drew the page with the email about the testing and I thought "I'm fine I can do this" and instead I lost my marbles.
And me losing my marbles wasn't just because of the life-imitating-art thing: it was because I realized I wasn't equipped to GIVE these characters the happy endings I wanted to, because I didn't actually know what a happy ending was for them. I thought my planned endings were idealistic at the time, but realized they weren't really, they were pure fantasy. They were cute Hello Kitty bandaids. I couldn't actually write what a happy ending was for these characters, because I didn't really know what a happy ending for MYSELF was. I had accidentally dumped myself into these goofy shaped containers and thought, yeah I could resolve their problems and make them happy, when I don't even have the foresight or tools to do it for myself, the source. Rewrite 2 involved so many perpetrators getting their comeuppance, bad parties apologizing, the victims getting the final say. Karma, vindication. Closure was something you received from someone else. It was a gift, tithe or forfeit to you.
Disney-magic bullshit, ironically enough. Things I fantasized about for myself, so much. If I just got those things, I thought I'd finally heal.
So now I'm here, having mostly finished the second rewrite that can finally exist because: I know what a "happy ending" for me is. I won't go into details to avoid ~~SPOILERS~~ but this new story is, weirdly, way more idealistic and optimistic than the 2nd rewrite, because I actually know what closure is, what is "good" for these characters. I know that those fantasies wouldn't help me, so there's no way they'd help my characters. And I can actually visualize closure and betterment for them, because I'm writing what I know.
I don't think all comics or writing require the author to be at the place I am to be written well. My other comic ideas haven't really changed as I have. Love Me Nice, however, is a special case. I made it for me, then I accidentally made it about me, and now I'm intentionally using what I've learned about myself to fix it. I think it's going to be a better comic for it. Not just shorter and easier to draw, but I think it's going to end up being more "real" to me than that mean "life is suffering" 1st draft.
Again, I just wanted to write about... writing, again. I want to stop being in my weird little bubble where I do everything internally and in isolation. I don't know what form future talking will take - more blog posts? Personal comics? Discords? I got no clue.
Thanks for reading this long weird thing.
Comments
Julie Mason
I stumbled on your twitter somehow the other day, a few of my friends follow you, I guess and one of your posts ended up on my feed, I think? Anyway, your art style immediately caught my attention (What can I say, I love curves, and you draw curves beautifully), and I checked out Love Me Nice. I was hooked right from the start. As I continued, I realized from the comments that the comic had apparently gone into hiatus or been discontinued, and I could see how many comics were left, but I couldn't put it down anyway. Your artwork is simply gorgeous, the story is captivating, I have fallen in love with all the characters. When I saw you had a patreon I was going to support you even before realizing you were planning on picking LMN back up. Upon finding that out, I was ecstatic, and I'm more than happy to wait as long as it takes. I've waited far longer, for far inferior webcomics. :) I'm so glad you're in a better place in your life, and that it's helping you create a better story. I am thrilled to see how it all plays out.
Kai Kiser
Thank you for sharing so much of your personal journey. I adore LMN and can't wait to see where it goes.
