Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. Shez getting angry at her mom. And her face at the end. And the little ones in the background. And the name of the page 🙁
I really do love Meriam. She has so few choices and so many things (people) to protect and even now, with Shez yelling at her, she is still trying so hard to be gentle. She didn’t want to tell her this. She wanted to protect her from it.
The truth she is trying to explain to Shez here is a very unfortunate part of being an adult, and especially someone stuck in a bad relationship. This one really hit me hard.
You’re so good at storytelling. From the colors to the writing this story makes me so tense and emotional 😭😭 Shez is only 13!! I have nothing else to say I want to hug Meriam so bad
Oh god 🙁 This page and the last are absolutely devastating! Seeing the contrast between the adorable happy kids vs the suffering that Shez and Meriam are going through is agonizing.
I can’t blame Shez for being angry, she had enough to deal with already without there being another baby in the mix. But Meriam… god. It makes me wonder how many times this happened… I doubt she got pregnant from just one ‘encounter.’ God, the humility and harm this poor woman has been through…
I noticed her wearing her old maid’s apron on the last page, too – it makes me wonder if she hung onto it and put it on again for some sort of comfort and a physical reminder of when she was independent, or whether it was meant to be a throwback to her being a maid cleaning up Chris’ room… Either way it sucks. ;_;
😢😢😢😢😢😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 this wrecks me. Meriam’s self-sacrifice, Shez’s face when she understands, and words that ring hauntingly true for women.
Related: I like the way you draw crying faces, specifically women’s crying faces. Their eyes narrowed or squeezed shut, their teeth gritted, their faces squinched up where you can see the lines, the angles really show how much pain they’re in, the snot.
I think it’s typical for a lot of anime art styles to portray women’s tears in an almost voyeuristic way (there is a better word but it’s not coming to me right now), with their eyes either huge and doll-like or softly closed, and the teardrops shaded like sparkly gemstones.
Aside from how demeaning it is to portray women crying and showing serious emotion in an uwu cutesy way, crying should look gross and ugly because the characters are processing really painful emotions. In a situation as serious as this, it’s good for crying to look so appropriately gut-wrenching.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I has to pull lots of my own reference faces for these ones and I think it really paid off. I was going for shounen ugly crying – but applying it to female characters 💪
No parent wants to tell that truth to a child, definetely not one this young. In fact, this very moment represents Meriam making that same choice again: to remain silent and put a fracture into her bond with Shez or answer honestly, knowing that her kind daughter will feel the guilt for it…
I remember learning that lesson. Eleven, twelve, thirteen, and thinking you’re already meant to be an adult, and thinking this is how they will treat you, so fucking get used to it or you’re going to die this way. I remember asking myself if it was even fair to tell my friend to stay alive when this was all they would face.
Shez, you will get out of there, you may have to do it crawling, but get out.
Shez’s facial expressions are awesome. it’s an extreme sort of sadness that doesn’t often get portrayed for girls in media. snot coming out, chin wrinkled from how hard the mouth is grimacing. it’s not focused on being pretty or graceful or cute or funny, just on shez’s conveying pain. it makes me glad you’re the one drawing this sort of story.
and oof, the meriam’s words! such impact! poor shez might feel like it’s her fault that her mother got pregnant for her sake
Thank you! It felt good to be able to grant Shez ugliness when she cried. A sort of dignity to her pain, that like you said, is rarer for female characters in media.
something i like about this story arc is how human you’ve made Meriam’s choices feel.
Often, unsympathetic outsiders to domestic abuse situations would call women like her stupid, the choices she made unfathomable, and say she got herself into that situation.
But your storytelling shows that Meriam isn’t stupid. We can see that what lead her to this situation wasn’t Meriam being stupid, it was many outside factors and the cruelty of a man preying on someone vulnerable, and making her even more vulnerable under the guise of love and protection.
And especially this page, we see that her doing what she did wasn’t because Meriam was stupid. It’s because she was compassionate and cared for her child, and she had few choices left when faced with a predator.
And even if she was stupid, no one deserves that sort of abuse anyway.
Thank you. I love the way you ended your comment too. Because, even though there are typically extenuating circumstances and other forces at play, nativity or even stupidity do not make sexual abuse of any kind deserved.
Abusers love that they often don’t have to lift a finger to defend their actions, because so many are clamouring to do it for them, particularly when the victim is a woman.
I really appreciate that you show this sort of conflict in your webcomic, women rarely get to be imperfect in media and while it sucks seeing Shez take her anger out on Meriam here, women and girls are not immune to misogynistic bias, I think we’ve all fell prey too and had to unlearn this victim blaming at some point in our lives.
I remember thinking this way when I was a child, I would see those charity ads of a woman in poverty standing there with 10 children and a baby on her hip and thinking “if she can barely feed herself then why does she have so many kids?” I was too blind to see the bigger picture. Society often forgets that pregnancy takes two people when it doesn’t benefit men, reproductive control is arguably the foundation of misogyny and fear of retribution is a powerful influencer. Everything Shez is frustrated by here is technically true, Meriam did “choose” to get pregnant and it is a terrible “choice” to make in these circumstances, but when a woman is forced to choose between survival or submission how much choice does she really have?
A lot of mother daughter relationships end up tainted by generational misogyny and the unspoken resentment born from it, the relationship between Meriam and Shez is so refreshing, I love how open Meriam is with Shez and Shez in turn, how much they support each other, it just sucks that they have to support each other against this. None of them should have to learn this stuff.
Thank you, and I absolutely agree!
The world poverty advertisements are a great example too, I definitely remember having similar thoughts when I was younger.
Shez’s anger also partially comes from being so young. From her perspective, Meriam started acting really lovey-dovey to Chris, yelled at her and wouldn’t tell her what happened and kept shutting her out afterward. Then, several months later Meriam reveals (not even directly to Shez) that she’s pregnant.
So, her initial thought process was likely:
➡️ Meriam was giving up on escape
➡️Meriam wasn’t as committed to it as her
➡️Having Karissa and Crystal was a big reason why Meriam couldn’t take her to the hospital to get proper treatment for her eye, yet here she is having another one.
As an adult, Meriam knows this, which is also why she speaks so gently to Shez, when honestly, I wouldn’t blame her for snapping back. But the knowledge Shez has now is more painful than anything else she could have said anyway.
“Having Karissa and Crystal was a big reason why Meriam couldn’t take her to the hospital to get proper treatment for her eye, yet here she is having another one.”
I DIDNT THINK OF THAAAAAAAAT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
this update hit like a knife to the heart!!!!! i keep having to remind myself that shez ends up okay, bc i’m so sad for her and her mom. i rly love these characters, which makes this bit of their story more painful (which i mean as a compliment!) <3
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! SHEZ DID LOSE IT! so sad to see Shez yelling at her momma! There’s some of that abuser tearing apart the family stuff I was worried about!!! This could have gone so much worse but Meriam responded in such a calm and composed way while understanding where her baby is coming from. she shouldn’t have to. she shouldn’t have to carry this burden of managing the abuse of this awful man and trying to be composed and nuanced and understanding while she’s pregnant with a child she didn’t want but has no choice but to have. It’s so hard to be Meriam.
Trying to abort the child at home could kill her and leave her daughters alone with The Thing. Having the baby is the Least Worse option. And unfortunately I can Not imagine this baby Not Happening. I don’t think this baby necessarily came from the Incident where Meriam was protecting Shez. A man like Chris is going to feel like it’s his wife’s Duty to satisfy him, he would get angry and scary if she wasn’t doing her Wifely Duties. Even if Meriam is fine with facing violence herself, Chris would be willing to threaten the children to get Meri to do what he wants…..
I didn’t know if we would see the women in this family harming each other or not. It is very realistic, I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had these kinds of tensions and snapping at other family members while living with abuse. But sometimes Lease Bound can be unrealistic in the best ways. (we love you yonique) I didn’t know if you would go for realism or go for the like, happier outcomes that we women love to fantasize about. Where every woman is just Getting Along All The Time. They’re still okay tho, they’re all still doing well here, it’s natural for A CHILD to have such a hard time carrying all this rage inside her. And women can have conflict with each other while still loving and supporting each other. We’re all human. Shez is going to Lose It on someone who’s safe and won’t hurt her, instead of the true cause of her anger who could easily beat her to death………… She can’t express herself to the moid who deserves it. She can’t bottle this all up inside all the time. It’s sad but I do think Meriam will be thinking about moments like this forever. There is so much self blame and guilt going back and fourth between these two, while Crystal and Krissy don’t even know. 🙁
Your comments in response to our very intelligent Norm L Esbian got me worried. But it’s so realistic. It is so very realistic. There is a danger in not showing other women the truth, in covering up something trying to protect them. My mother did that for my father, and as I slowly got older it was more up to me figuring out my dad Did Not Care About Me on my own. My mom only confided in me about the truth of some of the stuff he was doing or NOT doing when I was a full grown adult. She told me she was trying to protect me. I wish she had been honest, because her honesty would have saved me a lot of pain. I kept hoping for my dad would begin to do things a little differently when I was a kid. If he loved me then he would pull it together, eventually all the random excuses mom gave like him being busy at work would stop, right? But I learned. I had the chance to get older and look at my mostly absent father myself with a brain that was more capable of analyzing and understanding. In the IDEAL situation, these women are going to leave and Chris will DIE!!!! While Crystal and Karissa are extremely young. So they really won’t know through first hand experience. All they will have seen are those happy childhood memories.
There really is no option to bring them in and help them understand, though. You can not tell kids that young “daddy is a bad scary man and we have to leave but SHHH pretend to be happy and don’t tell daddy we’re leaving!” hello????? they can’t play the mind games that Meriam and Shez are playing! Both Shez and Meriam have moments where they’re barely able to hold it together! But you know, at a certain point as they get older, it’s on Crystal and Karissa to figure it out themselves. Look at your mother’s behavior, look at your big sister’s behavior. Know how unwavering their support has been, how caring and how much they’ve scarified. LOOK AT SHEZ’S EYE! If they can look at Shez’s eye and still think Well Dad Was A Good Dad Tho 😀 well………. that’s on them… 9_9
it’s a very hard call to make, because unfortunately a lot of children internalize negative things said abt their parents— even if it is the truth and that parent is horrible or at fault, because that other parent is still ‘half of them’/‘part of them.’ which is horrible because obviously we know children are not their parents, but… so in some ways i worry for the little girls too, because trying to cope with ‘well he isn’t bad to ME’ is probably also in some ways ‘what does it say about me if my father was an abuser and a rapist?’ (along with overall social male worship re: moids get waved off of anything and anything— but it adds a layer if it feels like it could mean something about you) in abusive situations, children (ESPECIALLY daughters) are always just fucked over like this.
“Mom, why is my big sister names Shanzey?”
“Well, it means princess, and when she was born I thought riches and nobility were the most important thing.”
“Oh. And why are my other sisters named that?”
“… At the time I thought something else was the most important thing. Why all the questions about names, Nut Punch?”
33 thoughts on “CH12P14”
hale
holy crap,i was JUST reading the last page and this one suddenly popped it
thanks,Rusty! I adore leasebound
rustyhearts
😚🥰😚🥰😚🥰
Anita
Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no. Shez getting angry at her mom. And her face at the end. And the little ones in the background. And the name of the page 🙁
I really do love Meriam. She has so few choices and so many things (people) to protect and even now, with Shez yelling at her, she is still trying so hard to be gentle. She didn’t want to tell her this. She wanted to protect her from it.
The truth she is trying to explain to Shez here is a very unfortunate part of being an adult, and especially someone stuck in a bad relationship. This one really hit me hard.
Ada
Rusty
T_______T
T________________T
T______________________T
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Jaden's lover
You’re so good at storytelling. From the colors to the writing this story makes me so tense and emotional 😭😭 Shez is only 13!! I have nothing else to say I want to hug Meriam so bad
Normal person
Oh god 🙁 This page and the last are absolutely devastating! Seeing the contrast between the adorable happy kids vs the suffering that Shez and Meriam are going through is agonizing.
I can’t blame Shez for being angry, she had enough to deal with already without there being another baby in the mix. But Meriam… god. It makes me wonder how many times this happened… I doubt she got pregnant from just one ‘encounter.’ God, the humility and harm this poor woman has been through…
I noticed her wearing her old maid’s apron on the last page, too – it makes me wonder if she hung onto it and put it on again for some sort of comfort and a physical reminder of when she was independent, or whether it was meant to be a throwback to her being a maid cleaning up Chris’ room… Either way it sucks. ;_;
Norm L. Esbian
rusty i’m begging you to tell me the little girls aren’t in present time like “well dad was always nice to US” or else i’m gonna go crazy
rustyhearts
🤐🏃♀️
Norm L. Esbian
why are you running….. WHY ARE YOU- 🏃♀️💨
rustyhearts
Blais
😢😢😢😢😢😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 this wrecks me. Meriam’s self-sacrifice, Shez’s face when she understands, and words that ring hauntingly true for women.
Related: I like the way you draw crying faces, specifically women’s crying faces. Their eyes narrowed or squeezed shut, their teeth gritted, their faces squinched up where you can see the lines, the angles really show how much pain they’re in, the snot.
I think it’s typical for a lot of anime art styles to portray women’s tears in an almost voyeuristic way (there is a better word but it’s not coming to me right now), with their eyes either huge and doll-like or softly closed, and the teardrops shaded like sparkly gemstones.
Aside from how demeaning it is to portray women crying and showing serious emotion in an uwu cutesy way, crying should look gross and ugly because the characters are processing really painful emotions. In a situation as serious as this, it’s good for crying to look so appropriately gut-wrenching.
rustyhearts
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I has to pull lots of my own reference faces for these ones and I think it really paid off. I was going for shounen ugly crying – but applying it to female characters 💪
SBD
https://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/frozen-head-of-animation-says-animating-women-is-really-really-difficult-89467.html ⬅ It’s a bit old but Echoing your words. Agree so hard, suffocating how the beauty cage is present in repulsion, distress, in death, in fury… It’s dehumanizing in a different way, through idealization. “Never forget, anything you do, do it sensual, do it cute”
Its the same thing with real life women repressing and refusing to cry because it will “ruin their makeup”
rustyhearts
Gosh I remember when this article was going around back in the day! Such a shame it still rings true a decade later :/
Tyto
No parent wants to tell that truth to a child, definetely not one this young. In fact, this very moment represents Meriam making that same choice again: to remain silent and put a fracture into her bond with Shez or answer honestly, knowing that her kind daughter will feel the guilt for it…
rustyhearts
Yes 😔
Her life has been full of Bad or Worse choices 💔
five hundred beehives
I remember learning that lesson. Eleven, twelve, thirteen, and thinking you’re already meant to be an adult, and thinking this is how they will treat you, so fucking get used to it or you’re going to die this way. I remember asking myself if it was even fair to tell my friend to stay alive when this was all they would face.
Shez, you will get out of there, you may have to do it crawling, but get out.
rustyhearts
❤️🫂
Parniya’s biggest fan
No… 🥺
anonymoo
Meriam is so strong.
sea green
Shez’s facial expressions are awesome. it’s an extreme sort of sadness that doesn’t often get portrayed for girls in media. snot coming out, chin wrinkled from how hard the mouth is grimacing. it’s not focused on being pretty or graceful or cute or funny, just on shez’s conveying pain. it makes me glad you’re the one drawing this sort of story.
and oof, the meriam’s words! such impact! poor shez might feel like it’s her fault that her mother got pregnant for her sake
rustyhearts
Thank you! It felt good to be able to grant Shez ugliness when she cried. A sort of dignity to her pain, that like you said, is rarer for female characters in media.
charlie in a box
something i like about this story arc is how human you’ve made Meriam’s choices feel.
Often, unsympathetic outsiders to domestic abuse situations would call women like her stupid, the choices she made unfathomable, and say she got herself into that situation.
But your storytelling shows that Meriam isn’t stupid. We can see that what lead her to this situation wasn’t Meriam being stupid, it was many outside factors and the cruelty of a man preying on someone vulnerable, and making her even more vulnerable under the guise of love and protection.
And especially this page, we see that her doing what she did wasn’t because Meriam was stupid. It’s because she was compassionate and cared for her child, and she had few choices left when faced with a predator.
And even if she was stupid, no one deserves that sort of abuse anyway.
rustyhearts
Thank you. I love the way you ended your comment too. Because, even though there are typically extenuating circumstances and other forces at play, nativity or even stupidity do not make sexual abuse of any kind deserved.
Abusers love that they often don’t have to lift a finger to defend their actions, because so many are clamouring to do it for them, particularly when the victim is a woman.
Jay
I really appreciate that you show this sort of conflict in your webcomic, women rarely get to be imperfect in media and while it sucks seeing Shez take her anger out on Meriam here, women and girls are not immune to misogynistic bias, I think we’ve all fell prey too and had to unlearn this victim blaming at some point in our lives.
I remember thinking this way when I was a child, I would see those charity ads of a woman in poverty standing there with 10 children and a baby on her hip and thinking “if she can barely feed herself then why does she have so many kids?” I was too blind to see the bigger picture. Society often forgets that pregnancy takes two people when it doesn’t benefit men, reproductive control is arguably the foundation of misogyny and fear of retribution is a powerful influencer. Everything Shez is frustrated by here is technically true, Meriam did “choose” to get pregnant and it is a terrible “choice” to make in these circumstances, but when a woman is forced to choose between survival or submission how much choice does she really have?
A lot of mother daughter relationships end up tainted by generational misogyny and the unspoken resentment born from it, the relationship between Meriam and Shez is so refreshing, I love how open Meriam is with Shez and Shez in turn, how much they support each other, it just sucks that they have to support each other against this. None of them should have to learn this stuff.
rustyhearts
Thank you, and I absolutely agree!
The world poverty advertisements are a great example too, I definitely remember having similar thoughts when I was younger.
Shez’s anger also partially comes from being so young. From her perspective, Meriam started acting really lovey-dovey to Chris, yelled at her and wouldn’t tell her what happened and kept shutting her out afterward. Then, several months later Meriam reveals (not even directly to Shez) that she’s pregnant.
So, her initial thought process was likely:
➡️ Meriam was giving up on escape
➡️Meriam wasn’t as committed to it as her
➡️Having Karissa and Crystal was a big reason why Meriam couldn’t take her to the hospital to get proper treatment for her eye, yet here she is having another one.
As an adult, Meriam knows this, which is also why she speaks so gently to Shez, when honestly, I wouldn’t blame her for snapping back. But the knowledge Shez has now is more painful than anything else she could have said anyway.
Tenbelow
I love author/artist commentary in the comments.
“Having Karissa and Crystal was a big reason why Meriam couldn’t take her to the hospital to get proper treatment for her eye, yet here she is having another one.”
I DIDNT THINK OF THAAAAAAAAT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
rustyhearts
Angst🔪angst🔪Angst🔪angst🔪
werewol
this update hit like a knife to the heart!!!!! i keep having to remind myself that shez ends up okay, bc i’m so sad for her and her mom. i rly love these characters, which makes this bit of their story more painful (which i mean as a compliment!) <3
Tenbelow
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!! SHEZ DID LOSE IT! so sad to see Shez yelling at her momma! There’s some of that abuser tearing apart the family stuff I was worried about!!! This could have gone so much worse but Meriam responded in such a calm and composed way while understanding where her baby is coming from. she shouldn’t have to. she shouldn’t have to carry this burden of managing the abuse of this awful man and trying to be composed and nuanced and understanding while she’s pregnant with a child she didn’t want but has no choice but to have. It’s so hard to be Meriam.
Trying to abort the child at home could kill her and leave her daughters alone with The Thing. Having the baby is the Least Worse option. And unfortunately I can Not imagine this baby Not Happening. I don’t think this baby necessarily came from the Incident where Meriam was protecting Shez. A man like Chris is going to feel like it’s his wife’s Duty to satisfy him, he would get angry and scary if she wasn’t doing her Wifely Duties. Even if Meriam is fine with facing violence herself, Chris would be willing to threaten the children to get Meri to do what he wants…..
I didn’t know if we would see the women in this family harming each other or not. It is very realistic, I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had these kinds of tensions and snapping at other family members while living with abuse. But sometimes Lease Bound can be unrealistic in the best ways. (we love you yonique) I didn’t know if you would go for realism or go for the like, happier outcomes that we women love to fantasize about. Where every woman is just Getting Along All The Time. They’re still okay tho, they’re all still doing well here, it’s natural for A CHILD to have such a hard time carrying all this rage inside her. And women can have conflict with each other while still loving and supporting each other. We’re all human. Shez is going to Lose It on someone who’s safe and won’t hurt her, instead of the true cause of her anger who could easily beat her to death………… She can’t express herself to the moid who deserves it. She can’t bottle this all up inside all the time. It’s sad but I do think Meriam will be thinking about moments like this forever. There is so much self blame and guilt going back and fourth between these two, while Crystal and Krissy don’t even know. 🙁
Your comments in response to our very intelligent Norm L Esbian got me worried. But it’s so realistic. It is so very realistic. There is a danger in not showing other women the truth, in covering up something trying to protect them. My mother did that for my father, and as I slowly got older it was more up to me figuring out my dad Did Not Care About Me on my own. My mom only confided in me about the truth of some of the stuff he was doing or NOT doing when I was a full grown adult. She told me she was trying to protect me. I wish she had been honest, because her honesty would have saved me a lot of pain. I kept hoping for my dad would begin to do things a little differently when I was a kid. If he loved me then he would pull it together, eventually all the random excuses mom gave like him being busy at work would stop, right? But I learned. I had the chance to get older and look at my mostly absent father myself with a brain that was more capable of analyzing and understanding. In the IDEAL situation, these women are going to leave and Chris will DIE!!!! While Crystal and Karissa are extremely young. So they really won’t know through first hand experience. All they will have seen are those happy childhood memories.
There really is no option to bring them in and help them understand, though. You can not tell kids that young “daddy is a bad scary man and we have to leave but SHHH pretend to be happy and don’t tell daddy we’re leaving!” hello????? they can’t play the mind games that Meriam and Shez are playing! Both Shez and Meriam have moments where they’re barely able to hold it together! But you know, at a certain point as they get older, it’s on Crystal and Karissa to figure it out themselves. Look at your mother’s behavior, look at your big sister’s behavior. Know how unwavering their support has been, how caring and how much they’ve scarified. LOOK AT SHEZ’S EYE! If they can look at Shez’s eye and still think Well Dad Was A Good Dad Tho 😀 well………. that’s on them… 9_9
rustyhearts
You get it, you get it, you get it 😔💔 Truly so many amazing observations here, Essay Breastie Beloved 🩷
I am so, so pumped for you to see Wednesday’s page tomorrow.
Norm L. Esbian
it’s a very hard call to make, because unfortunately a lot of children internalize negative things said abt their parents— even if it is the truth and that parent is horrible or at fault, because that other parent is still ‘half of them’/‘part of them.’ which is horrible because obviously we know children are not their parents, but… so in some ways i worry for the little girls too, because trying to cope with ‘well he isn’t bad to ME’ is probably also in some ways ‘what does it say about me if my father was an abuser and a rapist?’ (along with overall social male worship re: moids get waved off of anything and anything— but it adds a layer if it feels like it could mean something about you) in abusive situations, children (ESPECIALLY daughters) are always just fucked over like this.
Mary
“Mom, why is my big sister names Shanzey?”
“Well, it means princess, and when she was born I thought riches and nobility were the most important thing.”
“Oh. And why are my other sisters named that?”
“… At the time I thought something else was the most important thing. Why all the questions about names, Nut Punch?”
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