Dramatic Story – Fan Mom
Cleo feels frustrated because she thinks her fourteen-year-old daughter Rita is too rebellious recently. She tells Rita to eat more vegetables during dinner, but Rita ignores her words and only eats meat from then on. Cleo tells and urges Rita to study hard, but she goes from getting class-average grades to failing and posts her F-grade test paper on her bedroom door. This night, Cleo recalls that when Rita was little, their happiest time was watching animation movies together. She invited Rita, “Baby, I know a new animation movie is very good, do you want to watch it with mommy?” Rita said, “No, I don’t trust anything you think is good.”
All of Rita’s rebellious conduct starts as Cleo tears up Rita’s comic draft. As a mother, she wants Rita to become a doctor or a lawyer. The reason is that she has suffered a lot from her low education and ends up working in a low-wages and tiring job, as a dishwasher in a small Asian restaurant. She does not want her daughter to repeat her life, so she pays a lot of attention to Rita’s school grades. One day, she finds that every cover of her daughter’s seemingly workbook is full of comic drafts inside. She remembers that she had done the same thing in middle school age. At that time, she also likes to draw and had delusions that she would become a painter, but in the end, she could only work as a dishwasher with little wages.
Then, Cleo is furious and tears up Rita’s comic draft in a fit of anger. Rita looks up at Cleo, tears flowing from her eyes and her face full of aggression and disappointment. Then, Rita slams her bedroom door and cries in her room. Cleo stands outside the door and picks up the comic draft that she has torn and dropped on the floor, but finally can’t bear to throw them away, so she finally hides them in a drawer in her room. She sees a name in the corner of the comic draft scraps “@cartoonistrita”. She searches this name on Instagram and, surprisingly, sees an Instagram account with 200 thousand of fans and thousands of likes and comments. The sending location and occasional selfies show that this is Rita’s account. She is surprised that Rita has so many followers and has been a famous comic blogger. She looks at the posts one by one and sees that the cartoons are really good. She has a trace of guilt arose in her heart, thinking that she had been too strict with her daughter.
Cleo calms down and begins to reflect on herself, thinking she should get to know her daughter, so she registers a new Instagram account, follows @cartoonistrita, and becomes an active fan. She often chats with Rita as an online friend. One day, Cleo sees that Rita is blamed as a plagiarizer. Rita’s comment section started to see a lot of accounts cursing her. Rita’s fans became less and less at an extremely fast pace. What triggered the question of plagiarism is the draft of the comic that is once torn down by Cleo. Cleo puts the pieces of the comic draft together, carefully glues them together, and takes pictures, which is what is being edited for this post. This post can prove that the comic is created by her daughter originally. Cleo looks at the post she is editing, hesitating. If she does not release the evidence online, her daughter may pay more attention to studying rather than wasting time on comics. She thinks, isn’t that what she wanted? Thus, she stops, and this crucial evidence has been put in the Instagram draft box.
However, one day, Cleo saw a delivery box on the house’s doorstep. She opens the delivery box and is instantly shocked by the bloody horror inside it. It is written, “@cartoonistrita, fucking plagiarizer, go to hell”. She is furious and remorseful all at once. She thinks how could she have tried to hide the evidence? If she did release the evidence, her daughter would never be wronged and blamed. So, she picks up her phone and firmly taps the send button to send the post.
Friday night, Cleo is busy in the kitchen, but she unconsciously turns her head to Rita’s room. She knows Rita has already seen her post. Later, Rita comes out. The atmosphere is awkward until Rita asks her what’s for dinner. After dinner, Cleo says, “I heard a new Animation movie is very good. Mommy bought a DVD, do you want to join?” Cleo said, “I still don’t trust you, but ok.”