g_uava | Snowflake Challenge 2019

Prompt: In your own space, talk about your Happy Place—the things that give you joy, calms you or keeps you sane.

After all these years, my fanworks blog (

juicedguava) will always be my happy place. I first created the sideblog to carve out my own little corner and focus on my ships/favs that make me happy.

juicedguava is where I got to improve my skills in graphic design. There's the first GIFset I made for Mari/Takumi from Kamen Rider Faiz, my first OTP from Kamen Rider. Some time ago, I wondered what I'd think now when I look back on this first GIFset, after making and posting about 200 more GIFsets in the following years. I expected myself to be critical about not using the optimal image dimensions, using X number of frames, looping my GIFs for X amount of seconds, writing my caption in a different way etc.

What I thought as I returned to my starting point was actually, 'Not bad.'

If I were to re-do this GIFset, I'd have made different decisions regarding its image dimensions/frames/time etc. Yet the application of my skill and experience matters less than the warm memory of creating something new that practically erases the fanwork's minor imperfections for me.

From consistent creating and posting on

juicedguava, I've learned a lot about myself as a creator. I've accepted that for most of my time, I'd rather only create for my OTPs and cater to myself and my fellow shippers first. I've moved on from worrying about the quality of my fanworks for the value of practicing my skills in public and sharing the love.

For the past two years, I've been more invested in working on my writing over creating graphics. When I embark on new graphics projects from now on, I can always look through my tumblr archive and draw from fond memories of

juicedguava to build another happy place for myself.