It is a collection of illustrations, writings, and recordings depicting the story of my childhood; a story of complex childhood trauma in the form of severe and prolonged bullying, and the health complications I face in my everyday life due to this abuse. I am formally diagnosed withborderline personality disorder (BPD), dissociative disorder otherwise specified (DDOS), major depressive disorder (MDD), and fibromyalgia – all caused by childhood trauma.

CHAPTERS are collections of illustrations that are all built on either a feeling, a symptom, an event, or a reaction that is connected to my experiences with bullying, complex childhood trauma, and BPD. CHAPTERS also include the blog articles accompanying the illustrations. For example, CHAPTER 8: HOSPITAL is about my experiences of staying at a psychiatric hospital in-treatment.

There are FIVE MAIN CHARACTERS and TWO BONUS CHARACTERS. The main characters include Ichigonya (my persona), the Kid (me as a kid), the Pain (my trauma and BPD as a person), the Friend (my abusers), and the Lover (my girlfriend). The bonus characters include the Victim (satirical representation of a bullied kid), and Mew (all the cats in my life). To know more about the characters, check out this Instagram post and the CHARACTERS page on the INTRO dropdown menu.

Fan art IS allowed when you follow these conditions:

🍓 NO SEXUALLY EXPLICIT CONTENT.

🍓 Stay respectful! Please keep in mind that the characters are very personal to me and my trauma, and should be treated as such.

🍓 NO REDESIGNS FOR: the Kid, Ichigonya, the Lover. Redesigns are allowed for the Pain, the Friend, Mew, and the Victim.

🍓 Cosplays are allowed, but NOT FOR THE KID. Do not cosplay her as she is me (the artist) as my child self.

It means that they are not characters with story backgrounds or fully-fledged personality traits. They represent/symbolize certain parts of me, certain people that have been impactful in my life, or abstract concept relating to bullying and mental health. Viewing them as traditional characters does disservice to the creative motive behind each of them.

The symbols can be divided into two categories: VISUAL SYMBOLS and VERBAL SYMBOLS. Visual symbols include for example elements in the character designs that symbolize something important in my lifetime (ie. color schemes). Verbal symbols on the other hand include certain stylized choices in typing (ie. the word "Friend" spelled with a capital F) and culturally significant elements in writing (ie. Finnish sayings and proverbs).

For the sake of identity protection. Having a pen name also allows me to separate myself from my work as an artist and get back to things that exist outside of the confines of being an artist and my artist persona. The real me is supposed to stay hidden from the public. Anyone who does know me personally I am asking to please refrain from bringing attention to my real self.