Recently I've been working on animation short "Net buddy" which is about a girl playing around with a character who lives inside a PC game, and my work in progress (hopefully to be finished one day) comic, Cupcakes and Clubs, about a girl going to a high school where club activity is highly enthused and recommended,where the leader of the oh-so popular cupcake club is seeking to make the main character's school life miserable (and also stealing her crush while she's at it). Even though, I've only been working  on "Cupcakes and Clubs" for  only about 4 years now. It wasn't always the way it is now, Cupcakes and Clubs actually started out as a thing called "Just Friends". That was back in my younger Disney Create days, that site was the first place I uploaded some of my earliest drawings. I had known about Deviantart before (which I stumbled on upon when I innocently wanted to know what sonic's hands looked like, and let's just say that was a start of a journey into learning about different types of fetishes....ugh..) 

While trying to climb out of the odd rabbit hole I had gotten myself into, I stumbled upon a comic that was normal (thank god) with a very unique style at the time, One which I never seen before. It looked like Neopets, but these characters had human features, the style was also bright and colorful. The comic looked so inviting I wanted to look more into it. Luckily, at the time there was a group for the characters and they had their own little world.

Miles and Poppy were pretty big at the time around when I found them, I think the fandom was at it's highest of popularity, at the time the makers even had their own website souly devoted  to MaP. The Creators would frequently role play Miles and Poppy on the site and in the DA group. 

The two main characters were called Miles and Poppy (sometimes referred to as MaP for short). Miles was a nerdy, bookworm, sweet boy. The type to be found reading under a tree, while the other kids socialized, he was also seen as the smartest kid at school, and he came from a rich family. He also had a heart condition where it made things like sports and gym class not to favorable for him. Then there was Poppy she's almost the complete opposite from Miles. She's more outgoing, she's fun-loving, excitable, but she's really very caring. She likes making friends and talking to people, and she can draw really well for her age. Miles and Poppy were both in high school but Miles was older by a year.

Miles and Poppy were best friend since they were little, they even slept together in the same bed, and took baths together.  

There were more comics where Miles and Poppy would go on adventures together. I remember one of them I read alot was called Concert Close Call, where Poppy got her and Miles tickets to see their fave band LAWL live, the tickets came last minute so they had to rush to get there. When they got there they enjoyed the concert as usual, then Poppy went to  take a bathroom break. On her way back some creep tried to come on to her, noticing Poppy was gone Miles went to check on her. He saw what was going on, and stepped in (I don't really remember what happened) I remembered at the end Miles ended up with a black eye and the creep was caught, and the band gave poppy and miles free stuff. There were other misc. comics that flashed back to when Miles and Poppy were younger. Even though the comics didn't seem like it they all lead up to a big finale. 

Even though, the list said to read A Ruse For Rocket, in where Poppy finds out her little bro, Rocket is involved with drugs and uses a unique way to get him out of it. That one was never finished along with Poppy's surprise, where Poppy tries to find a gift for Miles (which I think looking at the description that one sounds a little like Gift Of The Magi) and Drama at the Dance  ( originally known as Discomfort on the Dance Floor at least I think) and Flourishing Friendship, I'll get to those in a minute.

Since Miles and Poppy were friends for so long, People started to ask the question if they had feelings for each other. This would always be hinted at every now and again, through fan art and ask blogs, artwork made by the Creators themselves,  and there was even a song some one wrote called Yellow World. They started to play with the idea of Poppy and Miles being together. I think with the comics Drama At The Dance, and Flourishing Friendship they were really thinking about exploring this some more.

Yellow World

From the looks of the MaP blog on the site, the two creators seemed equally excited about Drama At The Dance around this time, also this was where the updates started to slow down a little bit. Even though they weren't sure when they could update. This comic was also just going to be in black and white to save time, so they could  update more often. They published the first page in February of 2010, but went on a hiatus until  April that same year. Where seven pages were released at once to make up for the down time and also the website was going to be taken over by someone else, but the Creators still promised they were still working on the comics. The next month, with no new pages released from the creator, The last update was again apologizing for the lack of updates and such, and the struggle balancing work with hobbies, the site was suppose to be getting an overhaul and if anyone wanted more info and updates they should go to the MaP Twitter.

Drama At The Dance was going to be about Poppy being excited for the upcoming school dance, but Miles wasn't really interested until another childhood friend, Aron convinces him to go and ask Poppy, but just as Miles is going to ask, the new foreign exchange student asks Poppy instead and that's where it ends.The comic ends on a cliffhanger. After this point the Creators stopped all together. There was no more Poppy and Miles after this, I think around 2010 anyways was where the fanbase was slowing down which makes sense since the Creators weren't even putting out any art or sketches or role plays of the characters, there was nothing for the fans to go off of.

Flourishing Friendship was suppose to be the big finale to the series (I think). In that comic Miles and Poppy were suppose to go to the forest looking for a special  type of mushroom that glows in the dark, by this point in the series Miles starts to feel feelings towards Poppy that he never really felt before. Poppy also notices the weird way he was acting and it was teased if they were going to get together.(but now the world may never know)

I find this really sad because one, I like said I came at the height of the fandom, and I fell in love with the characters and their world. I liked how real the characters felt and how the Creators would show MaP at toddler, child, and their current teenage age. I couldn't wait to see how their love would grow and who would confess first, it was like a soap opera for me in a  way. I even downloaded one of the wallpapers for my PC, I took a break from MaP because I felt like I was becoming a little to obsessed with it, and I also wanted to take part of the fandom but I was only 9 at the time, and DA was for 13 and up (even though most kids wouldn't have followed that rule, but I did for some reason, and also my art skills weren't that good, so I stayed on Disney Create)

When I came back a few years later, the website was still up and I found the new Drama comic, and loved it and I wanted more. So, I waited patiently waited for more content that never came, soon the group was dead and it disappeared and then the website disappeared along with it.By the time I was old enough to go on DA officially, the Creators moved on and deleted most of the content related to MaP. It was like a part of my childhood was gone...

The second (and the saddest thing) was that The Creators (Nestly and Centchi') made MaP as a representation of their real-life friendship(one of them owns Miles and the other one owns Poppy), a friendship that they thought was so great that they wanted to share and show others. I read Nestly's old journals on DA, they were talking about how much fun they had at Centchi's  house and how welcomed she felt there. From what it seems like they had fun together working and collaborating on the comic and MaP in general (at least at the start), but somewhere down the line their friendship started slowly fading, and maybe the stress of working on the comic and keeping up with all the characters and stuff was too much. This all lead up to something big happening, according to the tweet on the official twitter the event was very dramatic for the owner of Poppy in July 2011. It must have been  huge fallout because in April of the next year there was another tweet saying the website was closing, no more faint reminders. So, since The Creators of MaP weren't friends any more. Poppy and Miles weren't friends anymore......

(Also the penultimate tweet was a start of a rant but the rest of the rant was lost because the older TweetDeck is no longer accessible) 

Like I said earlier, by the time I was old enough to be on DA both Creators moved on, Nestly moved on to make new characters and a new comic about cute animals and Centchi went on to be in the MLP fandom, but I didn't want to let MaP go, I liked it so much, I didn't want the characters to "die" like this...

While on my break from MaP before the big shutdown, I started my own comic inspired by MaP called "Just Friends" about two middle schoolers named Theo and Rose. Granted and admittedly Theo and Rose were a rip of Miles and Poppy, but unlike Miles Theo's hobby was making inventions, but Rose was exactly like Poppy. They had friends, but their friends were a mix OCs and straight up brand name characters like Polly Pocket (I mean I was only 12 at the time so..) and the friends would try to get Theo and Rose together. Once, I found out Miles and Poppy were "cancelled", this inspired me to make Just Friends more, but something about Just Friends didn't seem right.

 Like I was trying to be too much like MaP, and I wasn't adding anything of myself in there. Eventually, I stopped working on "Just Friends", and decided I should move on from MaP, it was fun while it lasted and I should just move on with my life. Later in my freshman year of high school, I wanted to join clubs, but every club I tried to join was boring or not that welcoming. I was frustrated and fed up looking for a new club, so I started thinking about wouldn't it be cool if there was a club that helped other clubs  with their issues and struggles. Like for one week that club would take part in the club they were helping out with, like they were special members for one day.  I started thinking more and more about the concept and before I knew it, I was already drawing the characters. Admiring the way the Creators of MaP put so much time into their characters, I decide to take time with them and think through about their personalities and interests. Soon enough, I had a whole cast of characters (and it's still growing), and the more I wrote about these characters the more, I started caring about them myself.

I did take some inspiration from MaP, but it was only a tiny bit this time, and I pushed the whole romance thing aside and made it more like a subplot more than anything. There were characters that have  a similar relationship to Miles and Poppy, but they probably won't be getting together anytime soon, I liked them to stay as just friends.

Soon, I went back to Nestly's page, and I had saw she had put up a new page of her all her older characters (including Miles), she gave Miles his own page.I was happy to see her acknowledge him after so long, but I was a little sad reading his new profile.

 It was kind of sad to see Miles like this,  it was as if this Miles was from a timeline were Poppy didn't exist and the only friend he had was Aron (which isn't bad I guess). It's just he looked so much happier with Poppy around, and I feel like if the comics went on to their college years I think Miles and Poppy would at least been a thing by then. It just seems like this Miles is missing a certain joy in his life that he used to have, like he lose his innocent and sweetness he used to have, and even the newer design is a stark contrast to the softer younger design of old. Maybe that's just an age thing though...

But maybe drawing Miles like this helps Nestly cope with the feeling of losing something as wonderful as a friendship, if this is her way of dealing with it, then I can't really get up set at her for it. Centchi very rarely acknowledges Poppy, she still has some old art of MaP, but most of it is just of Poppy, since the character was her's to start with (and also Poppy's friends and family). She seemed like she was going to do something with LAWL, the band that was in that one comic, but nothing came from it besides a few pieces of art work. I like how Nestly at least apologies for getting people involved with MaP then halting the project. 

Honestly, I'm not really mad at either of Nestly or Centchi to be honest. At first, I was super upset because of how fascinated I was with the comic, I gotta say that the both of them can make some really great art and can tell a pretty compelling story, and they both have a knack for making realistic characters. I wouldn't be surprise if one of them ends up having their own show or their own big fan base again. Looking back at it, if MaP where to continue even today, I probably wouldn't have made "Cupcakes and Clubs", I wouldn't never known I could make my own characters just as great as theirs. I probably would be too afraid to even tried to make a comic because I probably would have thought it couldn't be as great as MaP, or maybe some rabid fan would have said I was ripping off MaP. I actually should be thanking them, it's because of them I have these wonderful characters, and who knows the stories I could tell with these characters . To quote Dr.Seuss "Don't Cry Because  It's Over, Smile Because It Happened!"