Oh whoops I already made a miniblog post about this. I rambled for nothing... aaaa...

Hot diggity damn, it's been forever since I made one of these. I have multiple drafts lying around for what the next journal was gonna be, but I have a nasty habit of beginning to write something before I just sorta forget to finish or hit a road block and silently give up. ADHD moment. Soooo I made a zine and released it the other day and it was an experience. Kind of a crazy one, actually.

First, we'll start with how the project started. It all started in mid-April where I sorta "rediscovered" zines - I've known about them for years and never forgot about them, but I started getting interested in them and their process. I wanted to do something cool and groovy that was Sunshine Lovers related to celebrate Shunsuke "Kiddy" Kida's birthday like I did last year. The year before, I made acrylic pin designs for myself and now those pins are proudly displayed on my itabag. The stars aligned and I had my eureka moment - I needed to make a zine.

I thought it was gonna be a lot simpler than how it all turned out and boy howdy was this a process.

Here's something you gotta know about me: I am a perfectionist and a half and I'm not very quick with drawings. Pretty much everything I make is slow and deliberate and takes forever to get done. I envy anyone who can fart out a fully-rendered piece in just one afternoon. Planning poses and composition can take hours or even a full day before I even start the sketch, which itself can eat up an entire day or two. I have dysgraphia so I cannot sketch very fast - it's why I absolutely struggle in games like Drawful or Gartic Phone (sidenote: it's also a big reason I use a chalky style for my lineart, which people always mention when complimenting my work. Thanks - my overall style is basically one big workaround with my limitations haha). I don't thumbnail very often either due to this as well. Thumbnail sketches are supposed to be purposely quick and rushed, but I can't physically do that and most attempts at thumbnailing turn into working on the actual sketch. That's not great if you are working on a project that requires that sort of planning and it contributed to a lot of the growing pains.

The very beginning of my process was probably the toughest. Lemme tell ya, having all the artistic freedom you want for a project is a double-edged sword. Yes, you can make whatever you want and you call all the shots, but also you'll end up having more ideas than you can put down and it can feel frustrating to get one idea down but not another. The first things I did was do research on other zines and look up references. I'm one of those people who will just stare at Pinterest boards all day. I felt very frustrated when I was spending more time observing than drawing, since that's how it went for the first couple of days. Word of advice, do not feel bad about that! Breaks are good and you should give your brain time to process what it sees and knows what ideas it latches onto. I eventually did get a rough idea on what to do; I wanted to make something that had the vibe of a fanbook/anthology but in mini-zine format. Alright, cool. I knew what I wanted some illustrations, a comic or two, and... I dunno lol

(Tangent: I hate people calling those 60-smackaroo glossy Genshin fanart compilation books with artists hand-picked based on popularity "zines." To me, and a lot of people, it kinda takes away the original meaning of zines and I'm a curmudgeon who likes words actually meaning what they mean. Call them what they are: fanbooks or artbooks or anthology. To me, it ain't a zine if you're doing it for large sums of money and popularity)

Okay here's where I panic-flailed. I've been never good at making comics. I'm not good at writing nor planning them out, and I struggle with thumbnailing, which I've mentioned why before. That was fun. I even had a small meltdown because I was beating myself up over it so hard (... and mood swings, meltdowns crop up during That time the most for me). I had my friends Jenna and Gracie calm me down and they even offered some ideas. I thank them greatly and I kinda feel bad I ended up not using their ideas - they were great and if I ever decide to make a second Sunshine Lovers zine, they are still on the table.

I actually almost scrapped the traditional-style comic idea for something Gracie suggested, which was the gang at random locations. An idea I had for a page was a collage of photos I took but with them drawn over them. I was already partaking in a server event with that premise so I was like "oh sure, why not?" I even had some photos of Radio City Music Hall from a trip I took to see First Aid Kit there. I was gonna edit them into black and white (like the high contrast way. Originally there was supposed to be a panel where it was the advertisement screen and Surf Rock Judy and Piano Rock Rie-chan and Papyrus looking at it. It was a cool an ambitious idea that maybe I'll revisit, but I ultimately came up with cute comic ideas all on my own and went with them instead.

The Radio City Music Hall idea wasn't completely lost though! The snazzy cover art is the remnants of the original plan! The background is indeed Radio City and the tour advertisement screen is based on the ones that are on the building. I love when artists add local flare to their work - it gives art personality and a tiny bit of insight about the artist's life.

The Ted=Pete drawing with the burst of color was actually an idea I had before the zine's inception - originally planned as one of the birthday drawings I was gonna do for him.

Now for some detours! First off, the template I was originally using was the wrong size - it was A4 while I needed to use US letter paper. When I realized that fuck-up I already finished sketching the comics, almost done with the Ted=Pete illustration, and nearly done on the cover art that was already taking days to complete. I let out a hardy AUGHHHH like you'd hear in a Peanuts cartoon. I hopped to it and got myself a US-letter zine template and I even worked the pixel resolution of each individual "page." The Ted=Pete illustration was easy enough to fix, while the cover and ESPECIALLY the comics were a pain in the ass.

After I finished the cover, back, comics, and Ted=Pete illustration, I made the thank-you page. Nothing too note-worthy about that. All the names mentioned are people who helped me when I was down. The page itself was inspired by cute Japanese memo pads.

CW: mental health shit, abuse mentions

The second thing was because I was so dead-focused on this zine, that it gave me so much more time and room for thinking. Around this time, the art commentary community was on fire and I'd quietly follow it - I needed the background noise after all. I wouldn't recommend using that kind of thing for it because it can really ruin your day. One of the people involved turned out to be a very vile abusive person who refused to get psychological help and... oh man.

Whenever I went outside for a walk to get fresh air, I'd think about what I was hearing and it'd HURT. Throughout 2014-2021, I knew I had mental health issues and refused to get help. I simply just didn't want my family knowing my issues and I thought I could fix them myself, and in the end it made things worse. Fellas, if you can afford help and have a good support system, GET IT.

I was a genuine asshole and did some very hurtful things. I won't go too deep into them here, but it was bad.

The final straw was in 2020, when someone and I tried to reconcile with, he found out I was being a douchebag behind his back and when I apologized... Well, I acted like a little shit entitled to forgiveness. I was sorry and regretted it, but Wow what the fuck was wrong with me? I bragged out all the new friends I made upon then recently joining the Cookie Run community. Honestly? I don't deserve them after that and I'm shocked that they're still around after I treated them like trophies (I recently apologized to them for this and assured them that they actually mean something to me). My mindset at the time was that I had just recently gotten out of an extremely volatile co-dependant friendship that had some really unhealthy found-family aspects that made it worse... Yeah. Not an excuse for being a dick though.

Besides obvious pandemic anxieties, I spent a majority of 2020 and 2021 feeling like shit about that little stunt. In late 2021 I had a breakdown so bad that it lead to me finally getting the help I needed. Therapy, diagnosis, meds, and generally gaining a new understanding of how I operated was what I needed to find my path of self-improvement. I believe early 2022 is when things really started to pick up - it's also when I fell in love with the Sunshine Lovers so I guess that's sorta symbolic. There have been peaks and valleys, but I've been trying to make the best of it. Sometimes a bad habit will slip, but if it's caught, I try to squish it.

But yeahhh seeing someone who fucked up in the way I did really reopened old wounds, and I don't mean that in a self-victimizing way. My wounds are the kind you get from running into glass wall like a dumbass. I did a shitload of self-reflecting while hiding away from everyone else.

Final sidenote: while pacing around the kitchen one day while I was working on the final illustration, my mom came down to tell me about a job offer for me she received, and it's something that I could feasibly do. I've been on disability since 2021, so having an actual job instead of just living off that seems like another step. I dunno. There's just something that feels right about wrapping up your biggest personal project ever, having a huge bout of self-reflecting, and getting a good life opportunity all close to each other.

Oh yeah, I mentioned the final illustration, the one that that's up two pages. That was actually not the hardest thing to plan out - I had a pretty decent idea of what I wanted that to be from the start - a group shot with a trippy pattern. The outfits are obviously inspired by Sgt. Pepper because of course.

I also finished the "poster page" - a page you could see if you unfolded the zine and flipped it over. That's the one with the chibis and windows. I based that off an Eeveelution folder/notebook/thing I found in the Pokescans Tumblr.

After that (and several nitpicks), I was done with the zine... Kinda. I went the library to print the first test copies. There was no way in hell I was gonna use my mom's work printer for printing stupid little zines of gay hippies and it turned out my laptop doesn't connect to it anyway. Things went a lot less smoothly than anticipated. It has been years since I used a library computer and I had to ask the librarian a lot of stupid questions - I felt so bad for bugging her.

I also had no idea how to use Adobe Acrobat, which is what the computers used for PDFs. Oh and the biggest pain in the ass? Remember the "poster" page I mentioned? Well, I couldn't figure out how to make it so one side had one page and the other had the... well, other page. You wanna know what this meant? I ask the printer to print on both sides and asked for 4 copies. Instead of four copies with the pages on one side and the poster on the other... It was two sheets that had the pages on both sides and two sheets and two sheets with the poster on both sides. What the fuck? I kept making this mistake every time and I'm convinced it's an issue with the printer itself. I gave up on my copies having the poster - the zine itself looked nice even without it. It was super annoying there were white borders and apparently you need the premium version of Acrobat to remove those. That's balls. But hey, I had scissors anyway, so I cut those away and got a cute little zine - and there's a cafe at this library, so a little coffee and cookies hit the spot.

After the test copies were done, I realized I forgot W.B. Rose's lipstick in the Thank You page so I quickly fixed that - but that also meant I had to make new personal copies. I went back to the library a few days later and made the same duplex mistake I made last time. Bruh. Buuut besides that goofup, I knew my zine was finally done and ready for distribution. On my way home, I actually got so giddy that I involuntary started slipping into my age regression - which actually hasn't happened in a while. The moment I got home I drew a boatload of babey doodles - I had a lot of.pent up ideas, haha!

Finally showing the zine off was exciting! I got some sweet compliments and that always means the world to me. It was a load of hard work but I think it was worth it. It'll be a while until I tackle something big like this again, but I'm proud of how it all came out! Anyway uhhh thanks for putting up with my silly antics! I'm going to Connecticut for a weekend trip to see a family friend, so that'll be a nice mini-vacation.

This journal has been deleted due to it being fueled by very unhealthy, anti self-expresion views that I frankly no longer want to hold onto. I'm sorry that I've hurt people with this.

I've been thinking about something recently; it's about dynamics between two (or more) characters. I think they're cool and fun, but I do want to be critical for just a moment and I think some people need to calm the fuck down sometimes.

I'm saying this because when aspects of shipping culture are criticized, people get a lil' nutty. (ex. Someone saying "hey the Hobie age discourse is kinda overshadowing discussion about Spiderverse" and someone else responding with "seems like an attack on queer culture" - yes I saw that, wish I was kidding! Had some big "I like pancakes" energy.)

I just wanna make some take on some takes. Lesgo.

"If you only talk about your ship or you change the characters to make your ship work, make your own OCs!!!"

You don't get to dictate how someone expresses their love for a piece of media. I mean, think about artists of a fandom who mainly just draw one or small bunch of characters. Just because I mainly draw the Sunshine Lovers, it doesn't mean I don't care about other aspects of Pop'n Music. A lot people draw Nyami and Mimi, MZD, the Deuil gang, etc - I just like filling my own personal niche. That's what shippers are doing - they are filling a niche that makes them the happiest. Often times this due to a hyperfixation or even a projection via fantasy. I thought we were over this when we realized it wasn't cool to harass kids over their self-insert art of an OC with Shadow the Hedgehog or Sans.

Also it's not so simple to "just make OCs" for a lot of people, and I'll explain why. Sometimes it's because they kin or even are fictives/IRLs (not trying to say these are all the same experiences, I am bad at describing things OTL) and want to use the characters they wanna use because of that deep connection that can't easily be lifted. It's either that, or they don't want to have to make an entire universe just to ship two characters they like. I've tried to make OCs to replace Avocado Cookie and Matcha Cookie to have a ship I like with their vibes without their garbage source... but then scrapped my ideas because it meant I'd also have to make bootlegs of other characters and lore-pieces involved in my AU.. and I'm sorry, not gonna do that just so I can have my funny blacksmith x funny geisha mage ship. I got other things to draw.

Oh, yeah, that's another valid reason someone might tweak characters to fit their ship! Sometimes a source someone once loved went to shit but there's still a hardcore attachment to aspects of something, and again, they may not want to have to make their own version of something to enjoy said aspects. I think it's morally okay to flat-out "steal" characters you like as long as you're not trying to publish your work to a company. Avocado and Matcha are my OCs. Who the fuck is Devsisters?/j

Basically my point is "let people enjoy media however the hell they want as long as they're not being toxic!"

Also, mildly tweaking how a character acts ("making them OOC") when they're in love ain't a cardinal sin. How people act and present themselves often changes depending on who they interact with. We aren't writing one-note Saturday morning cartoons. My example would be how I portray Matcha Cookie. In canon, she is a chaotic gremlin who wants to overthrow her older relative and accidentally knocked out a kid. While I do stay true to that, I also portray her as someone traumatized by her poor treatment and she opens her heart when given kindness by Avocado Cookie. This is due to having my own narrative and self-projection - I kin the hell outta Matcha and project heavily onto her due to some traits of her reasonating with me. Honestly, the only time I think where its bad to change the characters for a ship is if the piece of media is explicitly telling you "THIS COUPLE IS NOT A GOOD IDEA." Like, if you're completely writing out that Sangwoo is an abusive monster or that Frollo is a genocidal maniac, that's an issue because it completely goes against what the story is about and essentially could be seen as justifying the actions of someone genuinely terrible. Baby Boy Billy making Shadow eventually opening his heart so he smooch Sonic isn't the same thing as that.

""People who say we focus on ships too much are no fun!"

I have mixed feeling on this. On one hand, yes, if you have a healthy fixation on a ship, nobody should tell you to stop talking about it. Don't like that AvoMatcha is the only Cookie Run thing I draw? Too bad. Bite me.

Buuuut a lot of the time when people say that, it's not meaning "QUIT HAVING FUN." Often times it's referring to people who take shit too far, as in the Voltron fandom harassing voice actors and writers over Klance, or the writers behind the new Spiderverse movie getting hounded about Spider-Punk age for the sake of shipping him and discussion of that pretty much overshadowing the movie. I don't know anything about your radioactive arachnid people, I just know there's someone named Hobie and people wanna ship him with someone. I don't even know who!

If "don't harass the writers" means "quit having fun" to you, screw your head on tighter and get better reading comprehension skills.

"If you can't handle darker subjects, you're boring!"

Bro fuck off lmao. Not everyone is into your AO3 omegaverse crap. Hell, some people may not want to even depict a couple arguing. That's fine and valid. Fiction is a fantasy, an idealized version of reality.

As someone with divorced parents who also had their own garbage relationships, couples going through dysfunction behind "gdi you forgot the milk ya goober" is not something I'm comfortable depicting. I don't care if my fluffy head-over-heals 24/7 ships aren't realistic and they're too boring for you. I'd rather eat a mug of Cheerios than a mug of rusty nails (yeah I eat my cereal in mug lol).

Also... you can depict darker subjects without the couple being objectively terrible to each other. My ships' stories contains themes of trauma, ableism, and queerphobia as things the characters go through, but there's also bonding through said trauma and personal redemption. Not saying this the only way to portray darker subjects, but I'd rather they not be something to add some smexy spice to a ship. I get that some of this shit is because it's a coping mechanism... Still doesn't mean I can't be uncomfortable and PERSONALLY think there's better ways of coping. I won't harass you over it, I'll just not interact with you.

""Fujos (the non-mlm ones, not the ones who can reclaim yaoi) make better content than gay men"

YES I HAVE SEEN THIS TAKE. FROM A LESBIAN, BY THE WAY. LIKE... FUCK OFF??? If a queer man ain't comfortable with your fetishization of gay men, that's in his right. If a gay man writes cute fluffy slice-of-life, let him enjoy and let the people who like it like it.

Hell, sometimes I worry that I, a lesbian, am not portraying my MLM ship right. One of them is clearly a lot more feminine than the other and I'm worried people will mistake that as some sort of stereotype or fetishization. I've asked MLM friends if I'm doing shit right because I actually care about what they think. I've fucking seen MLM/masc-leaning NBLM get harassed over expressing discomfort with content made to fetishize them (hint hint Cream Unicorn's VA). That shit ain't okay. You fucking high or something???

uuUU maybe I'll add more when I think of more.

---

Here's another topic I want to get into; non-romantic dynamics. Honestly? They deserve the same amount of respect and love as romantic ones. I wanna see people make itabags and fanzines and stan accounts about their favorite platonic buddies. I wanna see people ramble on and on about their comfort character and their child, whether they're their birth-child or the orphan they found during their adventures. I wish there was a cute name for a non-romantic dynamic. (also, yeah QPPs also should get the same amount of respect too - they're not "just friends" but they're not a romantic relationship. They are deep and meaningful in their own way.)

My current biggest comfort dynamic between two characters is actually my headcanon dynamic between Prince M and Really. I envision them a groovy space dad and his even more groovy virtual child he found while in space. Something just feels sweet about that. I dunno, something in me just finds dad + child dynamics incredibly endearing. Drawing art of these two together brings major comfort to me, like as much as a lot of you feel about a ship. I very heavily kin Really and my art of them together is projection of that, especially when it comes to my age regression. I've drawn a lot of aged-down Reallys being taken care of by Prince M - who doesn't want a sweet alien prince taking care of you? HOOOOOWEVER I have seen people who ship them as a couple before and... holy shit that pisses me off. That's a child and an adult, my guy. I've had my art of them together mistaken as ship art which just upsets me. If you look at my art of them together, you can tell there is nothing romantic going on. I wish there were more people who did things like this - just being enthusiastically happy about two characters together without people defaulting to "OMG A SHIP!"

Honestly, there'd be less kids getting unfortunately roped into becoming a proshipper if they realized that you can be over the moon over a dynamic between family members without shipping them. I've seen that happen and it's sad. No, kid. Just because you like your dynamic of Poison Mushroom and Licorice doesn't mean you gotta ship them. You can just give them a sweet sibling relationship, I promise people won't think you're weird if you're not weird. Found family AUs are fucking awesome and my favorite thing ever.

Anyway that's my ramble, I don't know how to close this sooo [fart with extra reverb]

I desperately needed something positive because I really want to stop dwelling on feeling like garbage, so lemme just talk about the ships I adore! Personally, I think having rarepairs that you pretty much have to yourself is a really cool feeling. I'm not really someone who cares too much about having ships that the most content in the world - besides, that just gives me more motivation to draw more of it myself!

Avocado x Matcha (AKA AvoMatcha AKA GuacTea)

This is the one you probably know me for! I've been obsessed with them for nearly four years of my life. I love them so fucking much. This is just a very flexible and interesting ship to me. On the surface, it's a very goofy ship. Avocado tells jokes, Matcha goes hehe. There's more to it than that thanks to the dynamic I've formed in my head. Matcha to me an is a character I heavily relate to - she was born to be a second Dark Enchantress but then got tossed aside for her seemingly lack of compotence. In my story of AvoMatcha, Matcha is found by Avocado when she in a very vulnerable state, alone and scared after what's supposed to be her family abandoned her. Avocado also has her own trauama, losing her friend (Dark Choco) to the dark side and seeing their downfall and feeling responsible for what happened. The two of them bonded over their trauma over Dark Enchantress and eventually fell in love.

These two made me realize that my favorite kind of romantic dynamic is "their lives sucked and they made it not suck for each other." I always personally found stories about overcoming trauma to be a million times more interesting than stories that glorify terrible and unhealthy aspects of relationships. They also made me realize I like ships that are very versitile. AvoMatcha can two silly middle-aged women who are constantly giggling at each other, but because of Matcha's background, it can be a story of someone moving up from their toxic environment while falling in love with someone also affected by their trauma.

No matter how shitty I think the Cookie Run franchise itself has become, I still adore these two to a degree where I believe my work is seperated enough from Devsisters. I treat them both a lot better than the games ever will. I guess you can say I reclaimed them as my OCs. Hell, I've tried making OCs to replace them to further remove them from their source, but both attempts never really panned out. I just love my girls that much.

W.B. Rose x Ted=Pete (AKA RoseyBones AKA "Gay Old Men" - thanks Tommy)

Admittedly I've shipped these two together since I first started really developing my Sunshine Lovers lore. It was sort of a natural progression. It started off as "oh they're just insanely close friends who trust each other with everything." Then on of my pages I wrote "they're like a married couple but not actually married" I quickly realized "wow that's... kinda gay lol" - in December of 2022, I was like "fuck it, ship time."

Kinda similar to AvoMatcha in regards of how I view their dynamic. In my story, Ted=Pete got the shit end of the stick his entire mortal life; he was a starving artist who grew up in an environment where he couldn't truly be himself and was very bitter and close-minded due to it. Upon dying and coming back to life, he became motivated to make things right, improve himself as a person, and most importantly, take full advantage of his second chance at life. On the other side of the pond, there was W.B. Rose, who had his own trials; constantly judged by his peers for how he presented himself. However he never gave up on his ambitions. For every insult and slur that was thrown at Mr. William Blake Rose, it only pushed him to do more for his local queer community.

The two crossed paths while both of them were trying to make it somewhere in life. Ted had his poetry, W.B. has his voice. They decided to work together, which turned into forming a groovy band with other groovy pals. They're sort of the father figures to said band and... I dunno, that's just sweet to me. I like to imagine these two as a very artsy couple, the kind of that will be at a museum for hours or cuddle while watching old movies or something. Of course, music and poetry are the things that they love most!~

Not gonna lie, making headcanons about Pop'n Music characters is great because the vast majority of characters have no story, so you can make whatever crazy bullshit you want and ship whatever the hell you want (unless it's Objectively Bad of course). Reminds me of the early days of Cookie Run - miss that shit.

So I finally made a journal page, which is something I've wanted to make for a while now. Anyway I'm a fucking mess!! What a great first entry, huh? Okay so I've kinda abandoned my site for a while due to being hyperfocused with my art. Not too bad, but I've come to terms it's been getting to an unhealthy degree. I relapsed back into a chronic Twitter user which has proven to be absolutely detrimental to my mental health. Speaking of mental health, I'm currently in fucking shambles, hooray!!!

It all started with a health scare in the family - we thought my stepdad had lung cancer, but thankfully it turned out that to just be an infection that's easily fixed with medication. Didn't stop me from realizing I'm absolutely worthless without my parents, being a mentally disabled adult. I've been hating every single aspect of myself as a person since then.

I also have been increasingly angry at the world, whether it be because of idiot children trying to cancel creators for making edgy jokes 5 years ago, proshipper dumbfucks getting increasingly more obnoxious, or... y'know, republicans basically wanting to commit a slow and painful genocide and nobody's doing shit about it!!!

(this section has been redacted because any fucking opinion I leave about a certain something gets me to get my shit kicked in)

Honestly I feel so fucking disconnected from just about anything. I can't relate to anybody anymore. I'm never into the latest flavors of the month and feel like I have to be in order to be accepted into society. I am in full disassociation mode. I'm just scared I'll become a toxic bastard like I used to be and I'd rather die than to be like that again.