rhie
april 6, 2025
you probably didn't notice, but the date written on the comic is for january of 2025. that's cuz i initially sketched and drew the bubbles in january. i didn't really know if i wanted to finish the comic at the time because i wasn't sure how to explain it. writing comics about how i conceptualize my identity requires a pretty long measure of explanation when exactly zero percent of what's happening in the comic is literal.
what inspired me to draw this was, at the time, i was remembering what it was like to be myself when i was 18. i heavily dissociated during pretty much all of college. it was a uniquely miserable time for me, while also having many bright spots of joy sprinkled in here and there. it was probably the most contrasting emotion i've ever dealt with in my life. but i did kind of repress a lot of those memories because it WAS very painful. i didn't really remember what "Rhie" was like. she was my "truesona" when i was an teenager (she existed alongside Funnelcake), so she was more literally me. because i dissociated so much, and because that was a weird time in my life, i almost never think about those days or, frankly, her.
i feel like Rhie's existence was fully ended by the time i returned home from my first semester of college. so, you can imagine how shocking it was for me to realize that i could summon up what it felt like to be her after spending years assuming i'd buried that experience too deeply to ever recall it with any clarity. if there was any period of my life that felt truly "dead" and unreachable, it was that period.
basically, in this, i wanted to express how, when i was a child and teenager, people around me would often talk about me like i wasn't in the room. or they would talk AT me like they didn't expect or even want an answer, the way someone talks to a dog. i found that the way i'd been thinking about Rhie was in a similar way, and i thought that if she was real, she would be unbelievably pissed off by that. she's mostly just quiet and sad, but i've always had a temper, so she can get pissed, too. whitewood and starling reacting to her the way they do is just me giving voice to my surprise that i was still capable of summoning up those old memories.
i think maybe you can sort of start to understand how i transmute my feelings and memories into literal depictions based off abstractions. i don't know why, but using character interaction and personality development to synthesize my jumble of thoughts into something that can be followed like a story is just how i cope with being who i am.
it was only recently that i realized that i'd developed a strong aversion to thinking about my life in that way, like it's fictional, or a story, when it's just something i've done all my life. there's nothing wrong with it, and my experiences aren't cheapened by this behavior. i like to understand myself, i like the little people i've created, and i like to draw them, too.