History ComicBook / FunHome

* NoPeriodsPeriod: Averted; Alison gets her first period at 13, but doesn't tell anyone for several months. She also notes a fair amount of distaste for the experience, since her first few cycles look like "a slight, brown secretion".[[note]]This is often the case with a girl's first periods, and even later in life the blood from menstruation is often dark red or brownish-red, not the vivid color of blood from a cut or wound.[[/note]]
* NotMakingThisUpDisclaimer: Several little asides stress this, like "Yes, it really was a Sunbeam Bread truck" and "Honest to God, we had a painting of a cockatoo in the library."
* OhNoNotAgain: Helen's response to Alison coming out of the closet as a lesbian, and over the phone she reveals to Alison that her father was also gay.
* ParentsAsPeople: Bruce is a lousy excuse for a parent most of the time, but it's clear that he loves his kids, and sincerely thinks he's doing the right thing. Helen seems to have been a good mother for the most part, but raising three kids, dealing with Bruce, and trying to keep her own sanity intact is a near-impossible task, and it shows.

* TheDandy: Bruce is played [[IncrediblyLamePun straight]], he is obsessed with his appearance, as well as the rest of his family.

* AmbiguousSituation: Bruce's death; while he was doing yardwork, he leaped into the road and a truck driver wasn't able to brake in time. The coroner deems it was an accident. A part of Alison is certain that it was a suicide, because around the same time Helen had made the decision to leave Bruce, spurred by Alison's decision to come out of the closet. Part of the work grapples with the uncertainty that she won't ever know the truth, though writing about it allows her to come to terms with what happened.

* DoingItForTheArt: In-universe and out of universe examples:
** Helen sewing all of her costumes for various plays, refusing to use the same one twice, and recording every line in the play so as to memorize hers perfectly.
** Bruce hand-paints Easter eggs to match flower colors. Not to mention how he treats the house.

* ADateWithRosiePalms: Alison begins masturbating shortly after getting her period at 13.

** Out of universe, Alison spending several years working on the graphic novel, mainly working from photographs of herself in the characters' poses.

* PetTheDog: One genuinely nice moment between Alison and Bruce, when she begins taking his English class in high school, and it quickly becomes evident that she's the only one who actually bothered to do the assigned reading. Bruce genuinely appreciates Alison's attentiveness and intelligence, and she happily discusses the reading in class.

* PetTheDog: While it's downplayed, Bruce does show a capacity to be affectionate or cordial to his children, such as playing airplane with Alison or reading a bedtime story. Alison argues that this just even made the family tension more unpredictable.

* DrivenToSuicide: Bruce kills himself by stepping in front of a truck. As if this wasn't tragic enough, there's the strong implication that Alison herself is the one who inadvertently caused it.

* SuperOCD: Alison develops this as a young teenager; it gets so bad that her mother notices, first reading to her in the bathtub and then writing her diary for her.

* UnreliableNarrator: To go with the SuperOCD, Alison starts adding "I think" to her diary, even adding a shorthand symbol that makes her handwriting illegible.

* BitchInSheepsClothing: Helen's married life was full of this: Bruce swept her off her feet during their courtship, married her . . . and then revealed himself as a {{Jerkass}} BitchInSheepsClothing that cheated on her with other men, and sometimes ''underage boys''. She admits that she's not sure how he avoided so much trouble with all of his sneaking around. Part of the reason she's upset about Alison coming out is because of Bruce's actions, and because she knows that Alison will be walking around with a stigma and a "label".

* {{Corpsing}}: Alison finds herself unable to grieve normally when hearing of her father's death. She laughs when telling her librarian boss that her father died, unable to believe that Bruce can suddenly be dead, and at the funeral she and her brothers share eerie grins.

* AdultFear:
** Helen's married life was full of this: Bruce swept her off her feet during their courtship, married her . . . and then revealed himself as a {{Jerkass}} BitchInSheepsClothing that cheated on her with other men, and sometimes ''underage boys''. She admits that she's not sure how he avoided so much trouble with all of his sneaking around. Part of the reason she's upset about Alison coming out is because of Bruce's actions, and because she knows that Alison will be walking around with a stigma and a "label".
** Bruce was also not the nicest parent, tearing up library books, yelling at his children for normal childlike behavior, micromanaging Alison's dress style because she's the only girl in the family,
** One time Bruce did get in trouble, for "offering alcohol to a minor" instead of the actual crime, which was driving around with an underage lover at night. The judge was merciful on him and instead of making the family move, ordered that Bruce go for counseling.
** In the comic, while the children and Bruce went to New York, [[spoiler: John went wandering off by himself and a "chicken-hawk," or an older man that preys on younger boys, started following him. John got away safely]]. Bruce only says sternly, "Don't go out on your own again" before moving on with the trip itinerary and ostensibly going to hit on younger boys.
** For Alison, the fear that she may have caused her father's "suicide," if it was a suicide, because she was willing to come out of the closet when he wasn't. In the comic she wonders what it might have been like if he ''had'' come out and succumbed to the [=AIDS=] epidemic, making his death more painful.

* BlackComedy: The Bechdel kids playing in the coffins in the family funeral home, and the whole song "Come to the Fun Home" in the musical, which is a fake commerical with really dark lyrics.

!!! Book Only

!!! Both the Book and Musical
* CoolClearWater: Pollution makes rivers nice and sparkly.
* ComingOutStory: For Alison. Bruce, however, never attains one.
* ControlFreak: Bruce. From how the house looks to his daughter's drawing assignments, "he wants," "he wants." In the book Alison depicts him choosing her clothes for her, even complaining how "she looks like a missionary."
* DaddysGirl: {{Downplayed}}. Alison appears to be closer to Bruce than her brothers, but their relationship was so rocky, it's literally the basis of the comic and musical.
* TheDandy: Bruce is played [[IncrediblyLamePun straight]], he is obsessed with his appearance, as well as the rest of his family.
* DeadpanSnarker: Alison. Helen too, at times.
* DeliberatelyMonochrome: The "limited palette" version, overlapping somewhat with RealIsBrown. The art is black-and-white line drawings, sometimes augmented with a single shade of greenish-gray.
* DrivenToSuicide: Bruce kills himself by stepping in front of a truck. As if this wasn't tragic enough, there's the strong implication that Alison herself is the one who inadvertently caused it. Though, see AlternativeCharacterInterpretation.
* DysfunctionalFamily: They all have their own issues, but Bruce takes the cake. Hell, most of Alison and Helen's issues were ''caused'' by Bruce, accidentally or otherwise.
* FanDisservice: The naked, open-stomached corpse.
* FlyoverCountry: Beech Creek, Pennsylvania.
* {{Foil}}: Bruce and Alison, especially in the musical. Both grew up in the same small town, both turned out to be gay. Alison handled it considerably better than Bruce did, at least partially due to going to college in a time period that was rather more accepting of the LGBT community. Consequentially, Alison grows up to be a happy, well-adjusted, openly gay adult, while her father remains closeted his entire life, carries out several affairs in his marriage, and kills himself. To drive the point home in the musical, the two sing many of the same lyrics, with different contexts and meanings. In the book, this is acknowledged by Alison mentioning that an old-fashioned term for gay people was "inverts", and jokes that she liked it because they were like inverted versions of each other.
* ForegoneConclusion: Alison is gay. So is Bruce. Bruce kills himself four months after Alison comes out of the closet. The whole story is one big HowWeGotHere for all three of these conclusions.
* GallowsHumor: The kids ''really'' enjoy displaying this; heck, they even nickname the funeral home the "Fun Home".
* GayngstInducedSuicide: You can see the contemplation of her closeted gay father's death and its later ruling as suicide. She deals with this during accepting her own homosexuality. It aimed to be a heartwarming family story, but the musical [[https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/04/branding-queerness-the-curious-case-of-fun-home/479532/ was still nicknamed the "lesbian suicide musical" by its marketing team]].
* HappilyMarried: Bruce and Helen. At first. By the time the show starts, however, it's become a HappyMarriageCharade.
* HotForStudent: [[spoiler: Bruce had, at one point, slept with ''at least'' two of his students. The event was swept under the rug.]]
* NeverTrustATitle: It's short for ''Funeral'' Home, which is the family business. The home itself is rarely fun.
* NoPeriodsPeriod: Averted
* NWordPrivileges: Alison and Joan call themselves "dykes" multiple times. (TruthInTelevision - in real life, most lesbians have a "we can say it, you can't" attitude towards the word, and will understandably take offense if someone outside the community says it.)
* OhNoNotAgain: Helen's response to Alison coming out of the closet as a lesbian, and over the phone she reveals to Alison that her father was also gay.
* ParentsAsPeople: Bruce is a lousy excuse for a parent most of the time, but it's clear that he loves his kids, and sincerely thinks he's doing the right thing. Helen seems to have been a good mother for the most part, but raising three kids, dealing with Bruce, and trying to keep her own sanity intact is a near-impossible task, and it shows.
* PetTheDog: While it's downplayed, Bruce does show a capacity to be affectionate or cordial to his children, such as playing airplane with Alison or reading a bedtime story. Alison argues that this just even made the family tension more unpredictable.
* PlotIncitingInfidelity: Much of Helen's anguish is dealing with Bruce's numerous affairs. It's no picnic for Alison, either, once she finds out, which spurs her own exploration of the family and its issues.
* SarcasticTitle: Slightly subverted, as it is actually an in-family nickname for the family's funeral home.
* StylisticSuck: "Raincoat of Love" is deliberately inane.
* TheyreCalledPersonalIssuesForAReason: Bechdel's family was upset about her talking about family secrets.
* {{Tomboy}}: Alison during her childhood. Her cousins even call her "Butch".
* [[TomboyishName Tomboyish Nickname]]: Alison, aka, Al.
* TurnOutLikeHisFather: Allegedly the cause of Helen's discomfort with Alison's sexual orientation.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsNotDidactic:
** Demonstrated InUniverse during Alison's literature class.
** Arguably invoked by the way she tells her own story, giving away all the key elements of the story very early on, and then spending the bulk of the book analysing and re-assessing every memory of her father she has.

* AbusiveParents: {{Downplayed}}. Bruce didn't physically abuse Alison, but he was still an awful person to her at various points in her childhood.
* AdultFear:
** Helen's married life was full of this: Bruce swept her off her feet during their courtship, married her . . . and then revealed himself as a {{Jerkass}} BitchInSheepsClothing that cheated on her with other men, and sometimes ''underage boys''. She admits that she's not sure how he avoided so much trouble with all of his sneaking around. Part of the reason she's upset about Alison coming out is because of Bruce's actions, and because she knows that Alison will be walking around with a stigma and a "label".
** Bruce was also not the nicest parent, tearing up library books, yelling at his children for normal childlike behavior, micromanaging Alison's dress style because she's the only girl in the family,
** One time Bruce did get in trouble, for "offering alcohol to a minor" instead of the actual crime, which was driving around with an underage lover at night. The judge was merciful on him and instead of making the family move, ordered that Bruce go for counseling.
** In the comic, while the children and Bruce went to New York, [[spoiler: John went wandering off by himself and a "chicken-hawk," or an older man that preys on younger boys, started following him. John got away safely]]. Bruce only says sternly, "Don't go out on your own again" before moving on with the trip itinerary and ostensibly going to hit on younger boys.
** For Alison, the fear that she may have caused her father's "suicide," if it was a suicide, because she was willing to come out of the closet when he wasn't. In the comic she wonders what it might have been like if he ''had'' come out and succumbed to the [=AIDS=] epidemic, making his death more painful.
* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: InUniverse. Alison and her girlfriend were fond of doing this to classic childhood literature. "God, [[Franchise/WinnieThePooh Christopher Robin]] was a total imperialist!"
* AmbiguousSituation: Bruce's death; while he was doing yardwork, he leaped into the road and a truck driver wasn't able to brake in time. The coroner deems it was an accident. A part of Alison is certain that it was a suicide, because around the same time Helen had made the decision to leave Bruce, spurred by Alison's decision to come out of the closet. Part of the graphic novel and musical grapples with the uncertainty that she won't ever know the truth, though writing about it allows her to come to terms with what happened.
* AnachronicOrder: The book and musical jump back and forth between different periods of Alison's life as she deconstructs her relationship with her father and her sexuality. The musical makes this even more clear, as there are three actresses to represent Alison during various periods of her life, and their scenes are jumbled up in order with the oldest Alison commenting on them all.
* AudienceSurrogate: Alison's first girlfriend Joan is just as incredulous as the reader when she sees the Bechdel family home for the first time. "You described it, but I had ''no'' idea."
* TheBeard: It's never stated explicitly, but Bruce is hinted to have married Helen to cover his homosexuality, though the follow-up ''Are You My Mother'' does briefly acknowledge he could have been bisexual.
* BlackComedy: The Bechdel kids playing in the coffins in the family funeral home, and the whole song "Come to the Fun Home" in the musical, which is a fake commerical with really dark lyrics.
* BlandNameProduct: Averted. All the products shown are real brands (Sunbeam bread, Beech-Nut tobacco).
* BookEnds:
** Both the beginning and end of the book refer to [[IcarusAllusion Icarus Allusions]] and the imagery of flight.
** Likewise, the musical adaptation ends on the memory of Bruce playing airplane with her.
*** In a meta sense, the last line of the musical adapts a portion of the first page of the book.
--> Musical
---> "Caption: Every so often, there was a rare moment of perfect balance, when I soared above him."
--> Graphic Novel
---> "Caption: It was a discomfort well worth the rare physical contact, and certainly worth the moment of perfect balance when I soared above him.""
* {{Bookworm}}: One of the few things Alison and Bruce appear to have in common. Alison loves to read, to the point where what finally made her realize she was a lesbian was reading a book of interviews with LGBT people. Bruce, likewise, has a huge collection of books. At one point, they bond over their completely incredulous reaction when Alison's English professor interprets a book in a way they adamantly disagree with.
* BoyishShortHair: Alison as an adult and teen wears her hair this way. Lampshaded by Small Alison in the book and musical.
-->'''Bruce:''' Where's your barrette? Put it back in. It keeps the hair out of your eyes.\\
'''Small Alison:''' [[DeadpanSnarker So would a crew cut]].\\
'''Bruce:''' ''(DeathGlare)'' If I see you without it again, I'll wale you.
* ButchLesbian:
** Alison.
** Even more so, the delivery driver that young Alison sees in a diner, which is a turning point for her, seeing that a "butch" woman can be a valid lifestyle. (Her father thinks otherwise.) Turned into a memorable song in TheMusical, "Ring of Keys," which stole the show at the Tony Awards.

''Fun Home'' was adapted into a highly acclaimed [[AllMusicalsAreAdaptations Broadway musical]] which was released on April 2015 and received numerous Tony Awards nominations, and snagged Best Book, Best Score, and Best Musical. It notably is the very first mainstream musical to feature a lesbian protagonist.

!!! Musical Only

* AbledInTheAdaptation:
** Alison's OCD is cut, despite it being hugely disruptive to her day-to-day life when she was a teenager.
** Joan having a glass eye due to a childhood accident is also cut.
* AdaptationalAngstUpgrade: Alison in the book freely admits that she and her brothers didn't grieve normally when their father died. They instead grinned at each other during the funeral and she laughed while telling a friend. In the book, she has a matter-of-fact approach about analyzing his life. In the musical, Alison is screaming at her dead father, asking if her coming out of the closet spurred his suicide. She also desperately begs for her last memory of him to be more than an awkward conversation.
* AdaptationDistillation: A few things.
** Alison's experiences in New York, both the bicentennial she spent with her family and her early post-undergraduate career, are much less important.
** In a weird way, Regular Alison's captions. In the original graphic memoir, Alison's descriptions of her own life were [[PurpleProse highly ornate and literary]]-- in the musical, they're comparatively simple.
* AdaptationExpansion: Conversely, Alison's family gets more screen-time, mainly her brothers and mother, so that we see more CharacterDevelopment. We also get more screentime with Joan, who serves as an AudienceSurrogate when Alison receives the phone call and learns about her father having affairs.
* AdaptationalHeroism: Helen was a good mother, especially considering she had to run a household with a careless philanderer and three children, but she and Alison had a rockier relationship in real life and in the graphic novel than they do in the musical, which ''ComicBook/AreYouMyMother'' details. In the musical, she seems more worried than angry about Alison coming out and openly tells Alison to live her life the way she wants to, and not sacrifice her "days" for someone else or for an ideal.
** [[ZigZaggingTrope Zig-zagged]], as ''ComicBook/AreYouMyMother'' reveals in its later chapters that Alison believes that Helen "gave her the way out," much in the same way Helen openly expresses these sentiments in the musical. Helen's real-life letters were also very concerned about the effect of Alison's coming-out on Alison herself-- however, ''ComicBook/AreYouMyMother'' also indicates Helen took years to substantially express any open approval of Alison's choices, much less her lesbianism.
* AdaptedOut: As mentioned in AbledInTheAdaptation, some important events of Alison's childhood go unmentioned:
** Alison's lengthy experience with OCD is cut, as mentioned above-- despite the effect this also had on her record-keeping.
** Despite more appearances from Helen, her community acting career and simultaneous earning of her master's degree are also much less present than they were in the book.
* AdaptationalTimespanChange: As mentioned in PlotRelevantAgeUp, several events in Alison's life are moved from their points both in graphic memoir and from when they occurred in real life. In the musical, Alison enters Oberlin for a full four years as a freshman-- while not explicitly discussed in the book, Alison entered Oberlin College as a junior after earning an associate's degree at Bard College at Simon's Rock.
* AllMusicalsAreAdaptations: Adapted from the graphic novel of the same name by Alison Bechdel.
* AscendedExtra: Joan gets far more to do in the musical than she does in the book, though she's still not exactly a "main" character.
* BleachedUnderpants: [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed.]] While "Changing My Major" and other scenes explicitly discuss Alison and Joan's sexual experiences with one another while dating, the musical of course removes the outright depiction of sex that were present in the graphic novel.
* BSODSong: "Edges of the World" for Bruce in the musical, which depicts his last thoughts before his suicide.
* CompositeCharacter: Sort-of. In most cases it's more that pieces of Alison's life outside of the book are added on.
** Roy retains his book (and real life) position as the Bechdel babysitter and target of Bruce's affections, but also absorbs elements of the other similarly aged (and sometimes underaged) boys Bruce would have encounters with.
** Helen not only gains the above mentioned AdaptationalHeroism, but also seems to gain aspects of her real life character that were only ever really explored in ''ComicBook/AreYouMyMother'' rather than ''ComicBook/FunHome''-- such as giving Alison "the way out" of a life of regrets.
** Regular Alison, of course, exists in real life as illustrator Alison Bechdel. But Regular Alison didn't exist as a narrative device in the original book-- in some ways, her meta commentary and self-deconstructive thoughts on her own work run closer to the narrative framing of ''ComicBook/AreYouMyMother'', in which a Regular Alison (of-sorts) ''does'' appear to discuss the creation of the original ''ComicBook/FunHome''. Passing bits of Alison's later adulthood that are expressed through Regular Alison in the musical are also pulled from ''ComicBook/AreYouMyMother''.
* DarkReprise:
** Helen Bechdel's "Days and Days" in the musical is a dark reprisal of "Welcome to Our House in Maple Avenue."
** Allison also slightly reprises a line from "Party Dress" that Young!Allison said in the song "Telephone Wire"
-->'''Young Allison in Party Dress:''' I Despise this dress!/ What's the matter with boy shirts and pants/This dress makes me feel like a clown,/I HATE IT!
-->'''Regular Allison in Telephone Wire:''' Since like, 5 I guess!/I prefer to wear boy shirts and pants!/I felt absurd in a dress!/I REALLY TRIED TO DENY MY FEELINGS FOR GIRLS!
* DistantDuet: In the musical, there are moments where Alison finds herself singing across time with her late father.
* HopeSpot:
** There are a few moments when it seems like Bruce and Alison might be getting along, before something (usually Bruce himself) messes it up. One notable instance is Bruce trying to help Alison with her map project for school. He encourages her to practice more, and says she has the potential to be a real artist when she grows up... before going all ControlFreak and trying to make her do it ''his'' way, which understandably upsets her. Bruce then gets upset about Alison getting upset, and the whole thing ends with Bruce storming off, and Alison hurt and confused.
** In the musical, the scene just before "Telephone Wire" counts. Bruce is glad to see Alison, and seems to be getting along well with her new girlfriend Joan, Joan even helping him clean. He and Alison play a duet together on the piano and go for a drive together. The whole thing is painful for adult Alison to watch, since she knows it's the last time she saw her father before he killed himself, and they never fully bridged the gap between them.
* ImagineSpot: "Raincoat of Love" in the musical is Small Alison fantasizing about what she ''wishes'' her family was like.
* IronicEcho: "I might still break a heart or two..."
* ItsAllAboutMe: It's very telling that two of the most prominent lyrics associated with Bruce in the musical are "He wants" and "I want."
* IWantSong: "Welcome to Our House on Maple Avenue" is a "He [Bruce] wants" song. Then a more subtle straight example in "Ring of Keys," when young Alison, while having trouble articulating it, realizes she wants to be like the butch delivery woman.
* {{Leitmotif}}: Small Allison, Middle Allison and Regular Allison have a specific chord that is played in a song or dialouge bit that involves them. Depending on the version of Allison, it's either played by a piano, violin or clarinet, a mix of one or the other or all 3.
* MilestoneBirthdayAngst: Alison decides to start digging into her past to create the memoir specifically because she is now the same age her father was when he died (43).
-->''"There's you\\
And there's me\\
But now I'm the one who's forty-three\\
And stuck\\
I can't find my way through!\\
Just like you\\
Am I just like you?"''
* MoodWhiplash: Before the heartbreaking "Telephone Wire," which features Alison's last conversation with her father, she finds out how he made Joan one of the family; by giving her silverware to polish. Joan even sheepishly stops polishing and says her dad was very persuasive.
* PensieveFlashback: In the musical, Alison watches the show's events with the audience, often walking through the scene and commenting on it, sometimes even speaking directly to the people in them. However, no one from the past can see or hear her.
* PlotRelevantAgeUp: The events of the play are slightly timeshifted; one particular example is that Alison seeing the ButchLesbian delivery woman during "Ring of Keys" is played and sung by (at the time) eleven-year old Sydney Lucas; in real life, this happened when Alison was four or five.
* ShutUpKiss: Joan delivers one to Alison in the middle of Alison's worried ramblings, which leads to their first sexual encounter.
* StepfordSmiler: Helen is this in spades. When she breaks down during her DarkReprise, it's quite heart-breaking when she tells Alison not to repeat her mistakes.
** Another example shows up in Helen's Etude, where both Helen and Little Allison avoid acknowledging Bruce's crappy behavior: Helen with Bruce seducing a guy in their house while she is in earshot (or at least they can hear her playing the piano), and Allison avoiding a fight with her dad about wearing a dress.
--->Maybe not right now. Maybe not right now.
* TakeThat: ''A flair for the dramatic'' While not a song, has Allison calling out her dad to Joan after receiving a reply to her coming out letter believing that he doesn't know anything about what she's going through. Except it's before she finds out that her Dad is gay.
* UnreliableNarrator: Invoked when Alison says that she needs visual references to draw her family because she doesn't trust her memory.
* WhatTheHellHero: Retroactively, Alison does this to Bruce in the musical when looking back on her childhood and realizing how awful he was at times.

* GallowsHumor: The kids ''really'' enjoy displaying this; heck, they even name the funeral home the "Fun Home".

%% Administrivia/ZeroContextExample entries are not allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out. Add context to the entries before uncommenting them.

[[quoteright:227:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/funhome.gif]]

* HotForStudent: [[spoiler: Bruce had, at one point, slept with two of his students. The event was swept under the rug.]]

** Bruce's court summons for purchasing a minor alcohol around the same time, (and very likely attempting to sleep with him), his resulting consultation (and possible affair) with a psychiatrist, and the tension this adds in his marriage with Helen go unmentioned as well.

* AdaptationDistillation: Alison's experiences in New York, both the bicentennial she spent with her family and her early post-undergraduate career, are much less important.

** Big Alison, of course, exists in real life as illustrator Alison Bechdel. But Big Alison didn't exist as a narrative device in the original book-- in some ways, her meta commentary and self-deconstructive thoughts on her own work run closer to the narrative framing of ''ComicBook/AreYouMyMother'', in which a Big Alison (of-sorts) ''does'' appear to discuss the creation of the original ''ComicBook/FunHome''. Passing bits of Alison's later adulthood that are expressed through Big Alison in the musical are also pulled from ''ComicBook/AreYouMyMother''.

** Roy retains his book (and real life) position as the Bechdel babysitter and target of Bruce's affections, but also absorbs elements of the other similarly aged (and sometimes underaged) boys Bruce would have encounters with. (The scene in which Bruce attempts to seduce him is based on Bruce attempting to seduce an entirely different former student of his in the graphic memoir.)

** Bruce's court summons for purchasing a minor alcohol around the same time, (and very likely attempting to sleep with him), his resulting consultation with a psychiatrist, and the tension this adds in his marriage with Helen go unmentioned as well.

* CompositeCharacter: Sort-of.

** [[PlayedWithTrope Played with]] in terms of Helen. She not only gains the above mentioned AdaptationalHeroism, but also seems to gain aspects of her real life character that were only ever really explored in ''ComicBook/AreYouMyMother'' rather than ''ComicBook/FunHome''-- such as giving Alison "the way out" of a life of regrets.