heroine roster

🌸 created: april 2020

🌸 for: animal crossing (new horizons)

🌸 about mei: a dedicated resident representative who cares about each of her co-islanders' well-being. she finds a lot of meaning in her role on the island – so much so that not much is known about her life before everbloom.

🌸 made to ship with: kidd

🌸 ship tag: i don't know yet. and their names aren't very combinable... i call 'em kiddmei for now

🌸 tropes & tags: long-distance communication, crushes, friends to lovers, interspecies

🌸 comparable dynamic: huntlow (the owl house)

🌸 lore: kidd and mei are virtual pen pals before they are neighbors, but it's only after they meet in real life that they realize that. it's smooth sailing transitioning from email friends to irl ones, but uh-oh. feelings!

🌸 commentary on mei: for a very long time mei (the heroine) was just a vessel, but as everbloom's lore expanded, i've started thinking about her as her own person. of my heroines on this page, mei is the most Y/N out of all of them – like the earnest, normal fem protagonist of a popular webtoon. there's nothing wrong with that, but i'm excited to develop her more!

🌸 commentary on kiddmei: i have five smugs on my island rn so i know all about dialogue repetition, but kidd still manages to come off as the shyest and cutest one, who feels most comfortable around mei. i want them to have a quiet, easy romance, transitioning easily from friends to lovers, like it's as natural as breathing.

💝 created: january 2021

💝 for: pokemon

💝 about milly: born and raised in hearthome city’s contest culture, she gave it up to start her trainer journey! eventually became the fairy type gym leader of chiffrou city in the (extremely made up) lyros region. also a well-loved travel & beauty vlogger. genki gyaru-type personality.

💝 made to ship with: piers

💝 ship tag: spotlightshipping / pimi (abbreviated) / nzrs (JP ship name). no fancy tag yet.

💝 tropes & tags: friends to lovers, opposites attract, slow burn, mutual pining, stupid adults not talking about their feelings until the last minute

💝 comparable dynamic: hades/persephone, elle/emmett (from legally blonde the musical, not the movie!)

💝 lore: milly partners with galar’s tourism department to do videos on the different cities, and meets with piers at the opening event for the galarian star tournament. he joins her for the first spikemuth video and they hit it off, leading to them making excuses to work together more… the rest is history.

💝 commentary on milly: i took a few too many creative liberties in designing a gym leader sona and ended up making her LOL. she's SO much fun!!! i have fun leaning into being exciteable / social / peppy when i develop her story. she cares a lot, and i think that helps balance her chaotic energy—she knows how to adapt to different personalities, and has a bit more depth than i originally designed her with.

💝 commentary on pimi: fluffy one + spikey one is a dynamic i will never abandon. i wanted to make a character who you'd expect to be at complete odds with piers but surprisingly gets along with him well! also despite milly's outgoing nature, she's just as shy as piers when it comes to romance... mutual pining's a fun trope to give characters who seem like they wouldn't be scared of confessing their feelings lol.

💍 created: january 2022

💍 for: encanto

💍 about emelina: the youngest daughter and successor to a jeweler family business in the encanto. likes it just fine and takes her role seriously. hardworking and hard to get close to, but sweet and quietly playful if you make it past her polite outer shell.

💍 made to ship with: camilo

💍 ship tag: a curse and a crush / camiemi

💍 tropes & tags: childhood friends to lovers, age gap, miscommunication

💍 comparable dynamic: claude/byleth (fe3h)

💍 lore: she and the madrigal cousins are family friends; she grows up more with them than with her own much older siblings. camilo has loved her from day one, and she’s always had a soft spot for the kid, but things get complicated as they get older and closer, and ema has to deal with what feels like a moral dilemma.

💍 commentary on ema: i know i wanted to make an onee-san type figure, but surprised myself making her so close to the family... she's much calmer and more stoic than i am, and is not as clear about what goals she has for her life, which is really fun to play with. she seems a lot more mature for her age, but she's still a bit of a mess on the inside!

💍 commentary on camiemi: i have no problem shipping unrepentantly "problematic" fiction, but i think realistically, someone like ema would struggle with liking someone she's always seen as a little brother. i gave them both relationships outside of each other for the drama, but i'm a sucker for an "it always had to be you" sort of storyline. i've never had a childhood friend stay close into adulthood, so it's been a fun thought exercise to imagine how camiemi's dynamic changes over time!

🍇 created: september 2023

🍇 for: pokemon

🍇 about lina: a city girl prior to moving to paldea, she's adventurous, resourceful, and confident in an understated way. very well-adjusted as far as youths go, but sometimes she forgets that not everyone is like her.

🍇 made to ship with: kieran

🍇 ship tag: leave me in the dark / linaran

🍇 tropes & tags: teenagers fucking!, miscommunication, friends with benefits, friendship breakup

🍇 lore: lina and kieran get very close doing their project together in kitakami. kieran assigns way more meaning to their intimate encounters than lina intended, and feels extra betrayed when he realizes how cavalier she was about the whole thing. it's messy, it's juvenile, and lina just wants her friend back.

🍇 commentary on lina: you might notice that she looks like ema because i modeled my violet player chara after her LOL but personality-wise they are quite different! i like that despite lina's "worldliness," she's still kind of an idiot about predicting kieran's responses. to her it's out of left field, but like, of course the virgin boy caught feelings for his first kiss. what did you expect girl

🍇 commentary on linaran: i wanted them to be very different from each other! the contrast makes them think the other is very exciting (almost exotic), and the fact that they can connect feels doubly satisfying because of the contrast, but eventually that difference comes to a head. i want them to both be at fault for how things play out, even if kieran is arguably worse about it. teenagers...

💗 created: august 2023

💗 for: tmnt (mutant mayhem / tottmnt)

💗 about moira: born and raised in new york; goes to high school at eastman high with april and the turts. draws comics for the school paper and has a modest following of other teens on her artstagram, where she signs off as "em". terminally online and opinionated.

💗 made to ship with: donnie

💗 ship tag: snark and sass / i just call them dee & em

💗 tropes & tags: teen romance, endless banter, friends to lovers, interspecies

💗 lore: they get seated next to each other in class come the start of the turtles' first official school year and start talking when donnie spots her notebook covered in doodles. they're fast friends due to similar interests and start spending a lot of time together :)

💗 commentary on moira: she's just me if i grew up in nyc LOL. i think she's the closest to a "self-insert" i have – a lot of her is based on the kind of bitch i was in high school, with a bit of current me sprinkled in – but still ultimately a heroine. it's kind of hard to imagine myself a high schooler in the year of our lord 2023/2024, but i'm doing my best.

💗 commentary on dee&em: it's been so much fun revisiting the embarrassing annoying unrefined cringe romance only high schoolers can have. the lack of boundaries, the unmanageable feelings... love it! i like that donnie's characterization in mume is "weeb geek and cocky about it" bc it reminds me of people i knew in high school too – it's very natural for me to draw interactions between dee and em as a result. i think they're a good pair. (i wonder how my conception of them will change when tales of the tmnt comes out...)

🔖 created: december 2023

🔖 for: rise of the tmnt

🔖 about mona: goes to art school in new york and part-times at a kinokuniya-type bookstore, but trying her best to break into the design industry. a child of immigrants, she puts a lot of pressure on herself to be the daughter she thinks her parents deserve.

🔖 made to ship with: leo

🔖 ship tag: idk yet! i call them lemona. 🍋

🔖 tropes & tags: friends to lovers, slow burn, interspecies, mutual pining

🔖 comparable dynamic: jake/amy (b99) when they're not antagonizing each other lol

🔖 lore: leo, wanting to learn japanese after meeting karai, goes to the bookstore mona works at to find japanese comics. over a series of visits and recommendations, they become an informal comic book club of two. after the krang, they finally become out-of-bookstore friends and get closer.

🔖 commentary on mona: i initially designed her to be a corporate girlie and now she is just (checks notes) doing her best. LMAO. i wanted her personal struggle to be strengths-related (kind of in the same way leo's leadership struggle in the movie is!) – there's a lot of "trying to force a role that doesn't fit her" that juxtaposes leo's "trying to avoid a role he could easily grow into." i think i developed her to teach myself that the "good on paper" success is not necessarily the best kind.

🔖 commentary on lemona: it was important for me to make someone who could be leo's friend first and foremost, and not an immediate romantic interest. i also just really wanted to explore leo's insecurities about being nothing without his family, so i gave her that – mona doesn't see leo in the context of his family for a very long time, and i think the fact that she likes him so easily on his own bodies him. it's also impt to me that she's totally separate from the non-normal aspects of his life, so she's kind of a reprieve when being a mutant vigilante gets exhausting!

📘 created: may 2024

📘 for: ducktales

📘 about maggie: the youngest daughter in a renowned corvid family of brilliant overachievers, maggie purposely avoids taking charge or standing out for fear of earning something only for her family name. guarded on first meet, bright and engaging when her guard's down.

📘 made to ship with: huey

📘 ship tag: girl idk. if you combine their names you get huggie which is kind of cute spelled out, but the ambiguous pronunciation aggravates me, so i've been calling them huemags

📘 tropes & tags: friends to lovers, neurotic4neurotic, slow burn

📘 comparable dynamic: ben/leslie (parks & rec), and a smidge of brettsarah (the argument (2020) I KNOW THIS IS NICHE...)

📘 lore: huey knows maggie as a quiet classmate of violet's, but really gets to know her when pointing out her Legends of Legendquest pin prompts her to invite him to a youth club for their shared favorite game. they're fast friends and slow lovers.

📘 commentary on maggie: my impostor syndrome daughter...! she was originally designed as more intense, like an bulldozey type-A girl, which makes sense given her family. but a) that makes her a bit too similar to webby in personality and violet in excellence; and b) i was excited by the idea of her having a Formative Experience (also related to her family, but indirectly!) that scared her into laying low. her whole thing is about learning how to believe in her abilities again!

📘 commentary on huemags: they are so drama-free it's crazy, but i'm not mad bc 1) i'm still a sucker for a fluffy relationship whose only conflict is "we are scared to confess" and 2) i have SO much fun playing with their neuroses and how they complement each other. huey is solution-oriented where maggie would fearfully disengage, but maggie is composed when huey spirals out, etc etc... they're both really neurotic individuals, but balance each other out, which is perhaps my ideal relationship. i just like them matching each other's freak.

🌺 created: may 2024

🌺 for: ducktales, again

🌺 about ruby: moved to duckburg from hawaii when she was a kid. she works part-time at her family's grocery store when she's not at school. strikes a balance between being a good daughter to her parents and an unbothered, daring teen girl on her days off.

🌺 made to ship with: louie

🌺 ship tag: no fancy one yet. i call them louby (i know this is one letter off from the webby ship but it works so well)

🌺 tropes & tags: age gap, inappropriate levels of closeness, reunion, secret relationship, infidelity, happy ending :)

🌺 comparable dynamics: romangerri, and just a little bit of wendip

🌺 lore: louie and ruby are friends but lose touch when she moves away for college. they unexpectedly run into each other ~20 years later and the weirdly close relationship they had years ago has transformed into something like chemistry. the only problem is that ruby is married.

🌺 commentary on ruby: i am having so much fun with her because she is such a freak... the kind of person who appears normal (conventionally accepted, charismatic, etc) and will never realize how much of a freak their ways of thinking and/or behaviors are. anyway, it's fun for me to write someone with such a unique way of operating, and who is so much more easygoing than i am. i'm also glad i get to make her an older teengirl and later a milf-type (no kids, but milf in spirit).

🌺 commentary on louby: ruby was just supposed to be an incidental part of louie's childhood, but my best friend and i accidentally came up with a future arc and i haven't stopped thinking about it since. from the time they get close as youths, they have a close, weird (but mostly above board) dynamic that they can't recreate with anyone else, and louie in particular never forgot about her. i like the idea of him behaving in ways that surprise him when they reunite and that chemistry is there... like, he can't let her go a second time!