Ryuko-Rose

✨Logo was done by TechnicolorBarenzu , coloring was done by me ✨

Soooooooo...we made a. a thing in our Discord server in January and um

This may or may not be the end result-

Anyways hi! We're creating a fan zine in order to celebrate the Lilo and Stitch franchise's 20th anniversary, and we're calling for anyone who's interested in contributing whether that be through art, writing, or even just talking about the franchise's impact on them. Any kind of contribution is welcome, and a few different creators are collaborating on comics as well!

This is a celebration of all iterations of the franchise from the original movie to the anime and Stitch and Ai; please DM AngoraRam , TechnicolorBarenzu or myself if you're interested in contributing and we'll set you up with further details in our Discord server!

...Given the severity of the last of these I feel I owe another telling everyone I'm okay. I had a nervous breakdown last year, but by now I've learned to handle the intrusive thoughts it created. I don't think I'll be back to "normal", at least not in the sense where I'm the same kind of person I was before the break. I have a new "normal" now and I'm still getting used to it. I'm mentally healthy again, don't worry-it's more I have a deeper understanding of what I want out of life and who I'd like to be as a person.

I'll be graduating soon, amidst my grandmother passing just last week. I'm as alright as I'm going to be, just feeling a bit more down than usual. Over the years I've become much more guarded on here; the panopticon of the Internet is a bitch but I'd like to not swing back in the opposite direction and share nothing at all.

So, here we go:

🌸I'll be uploading the rest of Suzume no Namida next week.

🌸I have plenty of work to do on the 20th Anniversary zine, so I'll be hitting the ground running once graduation and summer payment's cleared away.

🌸I also plan to buy a new Wacom Cintique tablet and it's something I'm looking forward to-I know my iPad art does better than my CSP stuff, so I'd like to see what happens when I basically fuse the two together.

🌸I may also be getting Core and changing this username. That I'm not too sure about-we'll see on it.

I write this in between final project work, so that's fun. I'll post more regularly once the week's over.

“You’ve always been a perfectionist; you see all the dirty areas of who you are, and now you’re angry and scared because you couldn’t clean them before other people saw.”

Hi.

I’ve been quiet for some time, and if anyone’s noticed erratic behavior within these past few days, the reason is...quite serious.

I had a severe mental breakdown, and I’m still not doing well. It had to do with a predatory abuser I dealt with back in 2018, and then, it spiraled from there. There are some reading this who likely know what I’m talking about, and I’m free to talk in private about it by now. Just, fair warning, I’m still a little mentally unwell as I write this. I developed delusions that I was being stalked and had hallucinations and paranoia. During this time I started to trash important docs and deviations, became afraid that people were staring at or secretly hated me and wanted to hurt me, and started deleting years old comments and posts.

It was bad, and I’m still not out of the woods yet. I’m still depressed and very ashamed. Depressed about my bad qualities and toxicity when I first came here, depressed about how I used to lash out and say mean things to and about others and pick fights, and even though I’m trying hard to not be that person anymore, I’m still very upset that I did this in the first place, and I also realize that I...did not come away from that 2018 situation without trauma.

I realize now that I was a hurt and angry person lashing out at...everyone, and I don’t like that I did that. I often don’t feel like a good person; I try to do good things and make up for the bad, but I have problems forgiving myself and I tend to not feel like I deserve anyone or anything good. It’s to the point where any nice comment can make me emotional, if not for how I don’t usually hear things like that in my daily life, just for how I’m personally very hard on myself. A bad trait of mine is that I assume the worst about everyone, and that includes myself. At one point during all of this a part of me told myself I deserved the breakdown as compensation for my past behavior. Disturbing, but that is what it’s capable of towards me when I dislike myself enough.

I had my reasoning for being cruel back then. I’m Japanese. I'm the ethnicity people thought was funny to laugh at and make horrible comments about during the anime’s run, and I still have trouble trusting people here because of that. But I was responsible for my behavior then, and I’m responsible for it now. And I choose to not be that toxic and distrustful person I was. I’m just going to focus on my art and my writing and just. Try to be better than I was at 16-17. I have been to be honest, but this time around I basically got mentally thrust into every negative detail about myself from that time, and I'm thoroughly done with being that person.

All I ask for is boundaries. As you can tell from reading this, I’m a really flawed person. We all are. I’m not someone you should be putting on a pedestal and I’m gonna ask for your own sake to not view me that way-as someone who did make that mistake when I was younger. This doesn’t mean we can’t be friends or you can’t speak to me, but...be aware I am a person like yourself. As someone who didn’t originally see the personhood of others, please don’t make my mistake; it doesn’t lead to anything good.

I’m also getting Core and changing my username in the future. I haven’t decided on a new name yet, but I want a fresh start. I chose this name because I didn’t want attention for my raging out at the time, but I don’t need it anymore, nor do I want it. I may even remake because to me, there’s a lot of regret here right now. I’ll update again if it comes to that.

As for the docs and journal entry I put away, as it’s dealing with a genuinely horrible and predatory person, I don’t know if I’ll put them back up for my own sake (and this person has been gone for years). The memory of the incident surrounding them triggered this whole thing, and it’s high time I leave that situation behind for good. I want and need to move on, and part of this included thinking he’d come back and hurt me or my friends again.

I’m unsure how to end this. I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting as to who I was and what I want for myself going forward. I have a lot of regrets about how I acted; the road to hell is paved with good intentions and I think I’m an example of that. I wanted to help people-and myself-but I was too angry, bitter and scared to really do anything at the time besides just lash out. I was also a kid and... I was scared I was going to be racially attacked and hurt just for who I am. And I have been in my time here. I can handle it but it doesn’t make it any less depressing. And even though I’ve grown, I still find it very hard to forgive the bad parts of myself and obviously I’m still not doing the best as I write this, so. My mind likes hurting me right now.

Oh also the quote is something weirdly profound I wrote by accident and thought was weirdly profound enough to put out here, it’s not from a book. That’s me

I’m working on fanfic right now and trying to get my college in order; I’m making art as well, but it may take a while to come out. I am almost out of the woods with this, so things’ll probably be back to normal for me by the end of this coming week. Hopefully.

Skip if you want, the title should say it all; TL:DR, I am unlearning a lot of things and struggling to think I'm safe after being in a bad environment.

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I'll keep this short. If I have a weird hangup here, I'd really appreciate it if people would be at least sympathetic.

I'm not a healthy person. I'm actually very unwell both physically and mentally from personal trauma and health conditions. That will come out sometimes. Maybe on here, maybe somewhere else. I'm not your uwu crazy angry content creator who's a "rabid" Heat fan and occasionally draws Madoka art. I'm a person who will make mistakes and have really ugly moments.

I don't have the best relationship with the Stitch fandom. I was a lurker who hated the anime, ate up every single rant on it, and got exposed to a lot of really horrible things as a result. Add to this my being half Japanese (people could be quite racist about the anime) and the lack of pushback at the time, and I ended up feeling very unsafe in the community. Both because I became the person pushing back, and because of things I couldn't control about myself like my ethnicity. The reflection I put away was another instance of all my old hurts over that resurfacing. I'm afraid of the community, and I'm terrified of being hurt like I was in the past.

The things I picked up take a long time to unlearn. I often feel like I still have to be the person fixing everything, and obviously that's a really unhealthy place to be. I never wanted to be that person or worry about it, but I've become that. And now I realize I need to not be that anymore. But it's hard when I sometimes feel just as alone as I did when I first came in.

It's a different landscape now, thankfully. But I'm still scared. In some ways I'm justified, but in others, I'm not. I'm glad people don't hurt each other over stupid things like the spinoffs, but I always feel like something could go wrong. And it would negatively affect me or my friends on here. I don't want 2012 Stitchdom. Dear lord. The truth is that I am struggling to truly realize it's improved and that it's safer to exist here than it was back in those days.

If I act odd on here or make something weird or make vent art, it's not anyone, it's that I am probably working something out, or I'm overwhelmed. All I ask is that people understand that and not say I'm overreacting or something. Like someone chose to do.