Okay, so… this page.
 
In the original version of all this, the muffled yelling ended with what was the clear sound of Cozy’s mother being struck. Cozy would see her later on with a mark on her face, and ask if her dad did that. Her mom would deny it, giving the “Ran into a door” explanation, and Cozy would say that her dad hit her sometimes, too. Cozy’s mom then denies that as well, and Cozy tries to insist, to which her mom says they just need to try not to make him mad.
 
Obviously I was going into the whole ‘abuse victims often blame themselves, not the abuser’ issue. But, for a number of reasons, I decided to cut all that out.
 
If you want the really bland reason, it was cut for time. That would have been another five pages, which would mean five more pages for the other two and therefore an entire other chapter. And honestly, this thing is kind of too big already.
 
There are some rather more serious reasons, however.
 
One is that that would make things kind of dark. Like, this is pretty bad already, I’m honestly kind of surprised I didn’t get any private notes complaining about it. But there’s a definite limit on how far I wanted to take things, and on reflection that was past the line.
 
But probably the best reason is… I just don’t think I’m capable of handling that kind of discussion. It is an extraordinarily serious subject, and I just don’t think I can do it justice. I think the phrase that best fits me is, I know just enough to be dangerous. I know that abuse victims often accept the abuse, to blame themselves, to say that if they just did better the abuse would stop. But like, that’s just something I picked up through osmosis off the internet. I’m just a graphic designer/web programmer, I have no sort of training or learning on this subject whatsoever. I’m not the right person to be leading a discussion on this, and I know that, so I’m not going to try.
 
And kind of tying into the previous point, I don’t think this is the place for that kind of discussion. I think there are far better places where that can take place than a stupid little fan comic on the internet that some random person draws.
 
So, with everything taken together, I decided to remove all of that.