CHAPTERS
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CH10P13

Sorry to the ladies who thought we were in the clear... This was just the start of a pattern U_U </3

6 thoughts on “CH10P13

  1. Love your attention to details on Jacob’s onesie and his papoose-like baby carrier. That eye to detail helps the panels feel complete despite the background being rather simple for emotional reasons.

  2. aah i feel like you captured a v real dynamic that forms bw overworked, overstressed mothers & their daughters who are adultified too early as a result πŸ™ on a brighter note, jacob’s little baby carrier sling is v cute πŸ™‚

  3. The fact you have Josie consistently apologizing to Jaden just BLOWS ME AWAY… maybe I already said that in one of my other comments but I’ll say it again because I truly, deeply value this.

    Things changed with me and my mom when she started to say sorry.

    & like. I am CHILDLESS and will be forever unless that child is four-legged furry and of a different species *kisses my cat* but like, I have to imagine to some level it’s not easy to apologize to your child. This little living person who you are The Boss of, this little person who often doesn’t listen to you or understand what’s going on. A lot of people take saying sorry as some level of. idk humiliation. Like very few of the parents I know would ever say SORRY to their kid, they want to be seen as Always Correct Authority. I LOVE to see Josie doing better then that. Josie does understand Jaden is a human person, not a little robot…. of course Josie still does make mistakes, but gosh

    It would be so easy to write Josie like a villain. RAH RAH EVIL MOM DID BAD THINGS. and I think a lot of people are prone to blaming their own parents a lot too, it’s just… Easier to have a villain, sometimes. But you’re not about that, nah nah! You write all these women with nuance… I love to see Josie is trying so hard, trying her best. she does subject Jaden to a lot of awful sexism. She made serious mistakes. Horrible mistakes. But wowie! I sure hope this apology trend continues! I’d love to see Josie at one point apologize to adult Jaden, and give her a hug. MMMM MOM-DAUGHTER RELATIONSHIPS HEALING IS SUCH A DREAM TO ME…

    of course to some level, I’m sure Josie apologizing does make things a little more complicated for Jaden, HA. Like I said, sometimes it’s easier when a person is a villain. Jaden gets to be very aware that her mother LOVES her. So Jaden doesn’t want to rebel against that. She doesn’t want to be ungrateful. Like I’m worried at some point when we jump to the future Jaden might be like

    πŸ™ i should not have yelled at my mom she was just worried about me πŸ™ i yelled at her because she was worried about a bruise? sheesh πŸ™

    Like a person can really see why Jaden doesn’t push very hard against Josie in her childhood…. Josie makes it clear she has sincere love for Jaden, and Jaden is smart and knows the strain their family is under is not mom’s fault. Mom suffers a lot. Like of course she’s going to have so much crazy guilt when she tries to leave home. Her mom isn’t an egotistical jerk parent who’s easy to leave behind. Mom is humble enough to say sorry to a little kid.

    If Josie wasn’t the kind of parent who says sorry maybe Jaden would have flown free way earlier on

    But yeah my main point is THANK YOU for writing Josie having a habit of apologizing to Jaden. I love to see it (and hope maybe at some point we can see more. more more more i love apologies)

    1. Oh you definitely are thinking a long the same lines as me re: Jaden and Josie’s relationship! I want Jaden’s arc with her mother to be all about breaking the cycle. In the present time of the story, Jaden is 24. With some math you can find – Josie was 24 when she had Jaden. And in turn, Nana, was also 24 when she had Josie. Nana was fiercely protective of Josie, but also didn’t respect a lot of the choices she made in her life (see: marrying Jacobus and moving to Australia with him), they butt heads, but stuck together in the worst of times. But due to Nana’s dementia, they’ll never get closure about many unresolved tensions, and Josie is left holding onto that hurt, caused by the same person she’s been tasked with caring for.


      Josie is fiercely protective of Jaden (See: making the principal sweat his ass off for trying to get Jaden in trouble for reading, and doubling down that she would come for his ass again if Jaden said the word. Also see: that murderous glare in chapter 9 when she asked ‘who did this to you?!’, was absolutely not for Jaden, but for the sorry low-life who hurt her. If Jaden had given a a name, you better believe Josie would have gone on the hunt for her baby), but she also doesn’t agree with life choices Jaden has made. Jaden spent a lot of time (as seen in her child), playing second parent, and elderly carer for her mum. But she’s left the situation – despite the guilt she feels. She’s got a ways to go about making peace with her decisions, but. She made the first step to breaking the cycle. There’s definitely some long over-due sorry’s to be had in order.


      Thank you so much for the thoughtful comment, got me excited and rambling!!

      1. oh my gosh….

        It is such a TREAT to have the creator of a piece of media “ramble” (idk if ramble is the right word, does ramble imply some level of the words being inane or pointless of something) about her work. I love analyzing things but I definitely don’t pick up on everything by any means. I loved to scroll through your tumblr and see when people picked up on something I missed, and I love hearing about your story intentions. You really are a phenomenal writer. By gosh. The double whammy of talent to be both such a good writer as well as a fantastic artist. I wish you could just do this as a job. boo to living in a patriarchal culture that wouldn’t be keen to monetize a real and incredible women-focused story like this.

        Josie didn’t get closure because of the dementia…….. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGGGHHH

        Seriously thank you for that, what a delight to read. Feeling very Blessed in this comment section tonight. I hope you’re sufficiently proud of your work on LeaseBound. really amazing thing you’re making here. such good. THEMES and. oh its so good. to think about the absolute garbage trash works that males put out and get held up as masterpieces that don’t have half the awesomeness as stuff women create. I swear women are so much better at creation then men are. Female authors make stories that are so much more well put together

        THIS COMIC IS A MASTERPIECE. I AM NOT JOKING. It is not “too much” to say that, just think of the male-written crap you were forced to read in school. leasebound is so much better then so many male works that get called Important and Culturally Relevant and blahdeblah

        I hope you’re able to create your whole life long, and I hope creating this feels even better then reading it does.

  4. This right here is my favorite page of leasebound.

    It’s such a small situation, overall, and Josie apologizes for overreacting… But it’s the way you can already tell that Jaden is learning not to ask for help, not to take up too much space, not to be a burden.

    And yet, can you truly fault Josie? She is stuck in a terrible situation, constantly exhausted, still grieving, and doing the best she can. This page really manages to encapsulate a lot of complicated feelings that most of us end up having towards our parents, I think.

    Sometimes I remember being a child and I think: You should have done better. And then I think about my mother being twenty-one years old with a baby and I remember BEING twenty-one and I think. I couldn’t have done a better job. She did amazing.

    So there isn’t an easy answer, ever. And this page really does a good job at showing exactly why.

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