frannie the relatable girl by adazaster
this post will contain some light spoilers!
i read this while lying in my bed for two hours after waking up from a series of very distressing nightmares involving the death of my parent. i have a nightmare disorder that is exacerbated by grief. frannie, the protagonist of frannie the relatable girl (the daily struggles of frannie, a girl who is very normal and relatable) also has frequent nightmares exacerbated by grieving her parent. this comic immediately spoke to me as soon as i identified frannie for what she really is (the comic itself is not trying to hide what she is) as an avoidant, absurdly anxious hikineet trying to stop feeling like a little kid pretending to be an adult.
i think that this comic is really, really well done. i think that it is a startlingly relatable depiction of a girl who is desperate to be relatable because she is terrified at the idea of being a freak. im autistic like frannie, i have extreme social anxiety like frannie and immediately connected with her debilitating fear of leaving her home. she's in deep denial about being a pervert. she has horrible self esteem. but she's willing to listen to others and try to be helped by them. she's trying her best even when she feels herself falling apart. i connected so much with her experience of talking to herself and finding comfort in her otaku interests as a coping mechanism to get through the day. the depictions of loneliness leading to her constantly talking to herself felt really compelling to me.
frannie is a mess and reminds me a lot of myself a couple years ago. some of it is hard to read because of that, but what kept me reading is the author's skill at showing bit by bit more about frannie's psychology. there's so much intrigue about how she developed and what she has gone through to cause her to behave the way she does. her dissociation is much more extreme than mine, and throughout the comic she experiences symptoms of dissociative identity disorder that i was really excited to see shown in the comic. there are hints and pieces of the puzzle for the reader to put together along the way, and as she slowly, gradually improves her mental and physical health you get to see more and more sides of her.
i want to see frannie get better. i want to keep seeing her experiencing new things that are good for her, and see her become a stronger person who can keep trying to believe in herself. i feel proud of her, after seeing her struggle so much for 277 pages as of the most recent update. and i really, really want to see more of the story.
please read this comic so that i have more people to talk about it with. there's a lot of details i left out in this post to avoid giving too many spoilers.
i love you frannie... as they say in the comic... ganbate (sic)...