Kali’s Original Family — Two Siblings!?

This is a series of posts detailing old ideas for The Mannamong and explaining their changes or omissions up to the final draft.

Something I find fascinating, looking back on my old ideas, is seeing which ideas ended up being scrapped. As I learned how to write better over the years, I became more insightful about which ideas needed to be fleshed out, rewritten, or ignored for being inessential. Previously, I mentioned how Tontorus went through a complete rework of who he was and his origins. Kali hardly changed as a character, just fleshed out with defined traits as I wrote the plot. However, one of her most significant changes was her family.

The Omitted Members

I initially had planned for Kali to have been raised by an older sister instead of her mother. In addition, she also had a 13-year-old older brother with whom she was close. It was between these two she struggled to keep Tonto’s existence a secret. Especially her brother, who was suspicious towards her the most. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t give her parents, but I thought having siblings would’ve given Kali more interesting interactions within her immediate family.

Eventually, I changed the older sister into Vianne, Kali’s mother. And over time, I tried to think of ideas I wanted to take with the older brother character but decided to drop him when I thought he was redundant for the story by the time I was writing the first chapter. Also, I thought it would’ve been difficult for Vianne to raise both a teenager and a little girl together when I decided to make her a young mother, teetering on paycheck to paycheck while living a simplistic wilderness lifestyle.

The older brother would’ve eventually become aware of the mannamong and be strung along into Kali’s adventures, being the protective older brother to keep her out of danger. I also had ideas of him having his own character arc and stories, almost like a B plot. But Tontorus took priority over him in the end with these ideas. And he was more critical for the overall theme anyway as the primary focus of the mannamong. Plus, I needed Kali to be and feel all alone when tackling mannamong issues. At first, at least. Because it’s supposed to help shape her arc and would’ve spared me from continuously using a formulaic series of events of her trying to hide them from her family.

I thought maybe her parents passed away, which was why her older sister watched over her siblings. But the death of the parents had no impact on Kali’s upbringing and characterization. And honestly, Kali’s original absent, nameless parents were always an afterthought for me. And in time, so was the old siblings’ idea. So I reworked her family to be entirely focused only on her mother.

Vianne’s Role as a Mother

Because of how much of a blank slate the sister character was, she acted as a template for me to create Vianne, the mother of this family. Even though the sister idea was dropped, I kept the brother idea around much longer. I had initially planned to have Vianne’s age be in her mid to late thirties, at the very least, considering the ages of her two kids. But when drawing her throughout high school and college, I had difficulty finding the right look that fit her age and satisfied me. I’d either draw her looking too old or too young. I couldn’t find the middle ground for the age range I wanted because I was looking for a gentle, mature motherly figure that fitted Vianne’s character. Eventually, after I graduated from college, I decided on a younger look as I thought having her be a young single mother would add interesting context to her story. Canonically, she is currently 28 years old. By this time, I dropped the teenage son and had Vianne focus her motherhood solely on Kali. This decision gave Kali a far more intimate relationship with someone I felt she needed in the final draft.

As I said, the biggest hurdle that I kept running into when writing Kali was how to keep her life centered around the mannamong, separate from her family life. Merely because I wanted her to be involved in their activities. Reducing the family to just one parent helped, but that wasn’t enough. To make a compelling story, I had to make that divide more like a wedge stuck between what her life was like before and after. There needed to be an emotional connection to her ordinary life that was being interfered with the mannamong. And my old ideas for her original family didn’t captivate me until I focused purely on Vianne. She is meant to be the cornerstone of Kali’s development going forward. Like how real-life parents are supposed to be. And for Kali to grow, she had to be forced off the nest.

But more importantly, I figured that instead of completely detaching any connection to The Mannamong from her family, I decided she learned about them from her mother. And when her life is thrown upside down, she is distraught when her mother fails to notice the spirits she herself introduced to Kali in an ironic twist. It’s to be expected a mother and child are close, but the mannamong bedtime stories are the main connecting threads to their bond. So when I tried to come up with a beginning issue to kickstart the comic, I thought maybe the stories were something Vianne told to Kali when she was sick to make her feel better. To have hope in her recovery that guardian spirits may be watching over her. All built upon her mother’s attempts to comfort her.

Minimizing Kali’s family taught me a lot in reducing your cast and finding the relationships your protagonist needs to develop that ultimately matter. So, while it would’ve been interesting to see her have spats and tender moments with her older siblings, focusing on the mother became more important. Now, as for her father… That’s a subject I’m still working on for the possible future. So I’ll leave it at that.