fresh meat, page 84

okay, let's see what i can remember about what i wanted to say about this page, because i happened to lose a few hours of sleep today specifically...

i moved a few things around in the rest of the story's structural plan, where lupe's wrap-up arc and development will both take place in this scene, since they basically function with the same purpose.
the reason i did that is not necessarily out of fear of repetitiveness, but actually because i removed a plot point at the last minute. in the original script, carmilla was intended to self-harm within the facility at one point for reasons that carmilla usually acts in general, and for a reason only alluded to on this page -- she wanted more blood. she was going to liken this to drinking your own urine in the desert out of desperation to preserve the delusion's suspension of disbelief, as a little note for those who wonder how a vampire could conceptualize having blood in their body and also being able to eat it.
it was definitely a rougher scene that gave me a lot of anxiety every time i reviewed it, so i decided to cut it within the past week. it's really difficult to write with anxiety for me because it's hard to distinguish what is giving me anxiety because it's a bad idea and what's giving me anxiety because that's just my default state. this one was just one i feel like was a bad idea, and became less cohesive as the characters were developed further in the story. the self-harm itself was not going to actually be drawn, but was definitely going to be acknowledged narratively.

it really illuminates how there are constant adjustments i make to a story, regardless of how new a plan or piece of writing is, for a variety of reasons. on one hand, it feels a little shameful, because it absolutely dispels all sense of sprezzatura, but on the other hand, it's just how i write and think.
it feels a bit like driving a car in that you always expect to go straight to where you point it, but in reality, you can rarely take your hands off of the steering wheel even momentarily, as it needs constant adjustment to stay on course.
during the end phase of a comic, i also feel a unique desire to cut as much as possible to bring down the already bloated page count.

in regard to lupe, this scene primarily develops her beliefs about people and their motivations, and her own motivations on the back of previous scenes with whittacker. because lupe was introduced later, she was never really meant to have an arc as full as the other cast, while still receiving a lot of development and an equal amount of sympathy if not more, loosening a sense of obvious, rigid narrative structure in the story and punctuating the absurdity of the relationships formed between the characters by making her different from the others in this way.
part of the way i wanted to do this was by having lupe be very rhetorically direct, and more subtle narratively by picking up whittacker's thematic baggage. that's a really convoluted way of saying that lupe speaks honestly, but you can see that a lot of the actual pathos to her character is the connections you draw about small personal statements she's made regarding her life without a whole spiel. mostly the reader is intended to make these connections simply because whittacker already established a connection between abuse and beliefs about control, and the narrative established a similarity between lupe and whittacker.
additionally, the time of day that these related narrative events take place is the same -- slightly before bedtime. i wish i could say that it was completely 100% intended, but it's mostly chance based on writing instincts.
regarding lupe herself and what she's actually saying in this scene, i'm fairly ambivalent. i generally think you can become addicted to anything if the circumstances are right, and what drives the addiction is based on personal preference, and also subject to change (transfer of addictive dependence from one substance or action to another is noted especially in people who develop alcohol dependencies). it's definitely not an uncommon view among self-harmers, especially older ones who find themselves unable to stop, and are further inundated with "individual responsibility" rhetoric that medicalizes predictable individual responses to environmental antagonism.
you can see here that she has extended her observation that autonomous control can be addictive to rationalize both mistreatment from others who want to control her ("evil"), and disappointing or confusing interactions with peers ("stupid"). from here, the reader's allowed to make a connection back to page 68, where she noted that she is aware that she's too forgiving or accepting of things that should make her angry.

camilla's coming on a little strong -- she's probably coming at this from a position where lupe already seems like a tryhard who wants her suffering seen through how badly she can self-harm. getting people to believe your pain without physical scars is very, very difficult and the difficulty is fairly pervasive, so she undoubtedly has some negative assumptions about it.

anyway, i had some more to say, but i think i'll just save it for the next page.