Dear Janolytes,

I’m fucking exhausted. On Kami Bro.

Exhausted as fuck.

Fuck Cottonfield 12 and this upgraded super slave season. No amounts of Yoga and sleep seem to be enough for the amount of Big Brown Cardboard Rape that I have experienced for the last few weeks and will face in the next few weeks. If you couple that with the stuff I have to do outside of work that pertains to my personal projects. It’s a never ending door of fuckery.

At least I got to see JID perform in the midst of all this box rape.

Here’s hoping for my freedom and that cottonfield 13 involves me working at a desk and I can do some tasks while I’m getting paid.

FUCK. I just need to be paid to exist. That is it. These trenches are pain Morty.

Anyway as Fionna Apple sings in the background, I type out what will prob be last issue of the year.

But Jano why?

Well it is December. Plus this was supposed to be last months issue, but ya know life plus slavery equals exhaustion.  On the bright side I won a Nintendo Switch in the Trenches today.  Yay.

I hope I can get my freedom now.

Anyway Adventure time come on tell a friend.

This Arc takes place in Spring of the disastrous of 2022. It was around my Bday and was casually scrolling and I saw my home boy cosplay as Akuma. Within the same time frame I saw this girl cosplay as Cammy.

*Wheels turned and light bulb starts to flicker on.

Hold up. Could I do that idea that randomly hit me in the summer of 2k16 when I was helping him move?

Jano what?

So back in 2016 I was helping him move to an apartment and while crossing the parking lot I thought about doing a Street Fighter shoot. The initial thought was an amalgamation vs match, someone from Street Fighter and someone from another anime.  But I let it pass, not sure why but here we are 6 years later…..which had the same calender year ……as 2016……interesting…….

I saw that they were following each other and messaged him about the whole idea and asking did they actually know each other.

The moment when you wanna do a shoot but you need to make sure that this random white girl knows at least 1 black person there.

Jano did you know her? Nah bruh. Following someone does not equaling knowing them personally  Spoiler Alert.

He got back to me and told me they were actually friends and would be down for the idea. Yeet. I messaged her and told her about my idea and that our mutual friend would be down. She was down too.

Heavy yeet bro.

My Birthday came and I Vibed out to Tyler the Creator’s concert. Kali Uchis has such a fat ass, OMG. But the day after I took a walk in the area that I thought would be a good idea to do this concept. Ironically it was the same area where I did a shoot in 2016.

Kinda.

I went further down the tracks than I did with my home girl cuz when intuition speaks you listen. The tracks led to a train yardsh area with a view of the city.

Ding Ding Ding we have a winner.

Side note, the Lorax would be upset with the amount of gentrification that had occurred in the 6 years since. had been there. Some of those apartments were not there when I shot her.

Colonizing fucks.

Anyway.

I emailed both of them of my findings and they were down. All we had to do after that was to pick a w.end to do it. Which wasn’t that arduous. I told them I wanted it to happen before Summer became full blaze as fuck since they were going to be in costume, preferably around sunset.

Side note, Summer doesn’t officially start until June BUT it gets summer hot around the 1st week May. Shout out to global warming for fucking us up in various ways.

It didn’t happen until  early June due to varying schedules. I let them know about where they could park and the meeting area.

I promise the most I give a fuck is when I am doing something for my art journey. Thats it. Coordinating skills are at max capacity on my skill tree.

The week of this shoot I had to choreograph this whole event and figure out how to make these regular people look like the characters I played growing up. Idk who needs to hear this, but regular niggas don’t have powers.

No Super Jumps, No Hadokens, No Glowing Kicks, Nothing.

I’m sorry if I busted your bubble bro.

I went online and studied the characters they said they were going to be and looked at their move set. I hate that I barely play video games anymore, I really do. I hate being an adult.

But I made a google document with the moves and notes of how I would present them on camera. Before the match would start I would have them do the pose for each move. For the aerial moves I had them pose on a step stool and hope they wouldn’t fall.

Jano you didn’t have this all figured out before this?

Hell No nigga. My toxic trait is that I procrastinate and tackle each project as I get close to it. Did I plan this in March 2022? Yes. But also I had 3 shoots prior,  prepping for vendoring events, plus other things around that time and still trying to work on my comic.

Don’t worry. I’m gonna be alright and the  results will be fine. Top tier bro.

The day arrived and I went to the location first  and let them know I arrived. Swole Cage showed up first and we caught up briefly since I hadn’t seen him since his Bday party in February. Good times. Cammy arrived shortly after and we began to walk to the area I had picked. I told them the same thing I told my home girl 6 years prior, that I’m pretty sure the track is dead but we shouldn’t walk on it just in case.

We were out there for roughly 2.5 hours. Both of them prepared their outfits and talked about how it was going to go. We decided the winner via coin flip.

Spoiler Alert it was 3 rounds.

I had them do poses for the character title card, then their super move poses. Then we proceeded to choreograph the 3 rounds.
Shit was fun.

We finished up right before it started to get dark. I told them I would have the images ready within a few weeks. The editing process was different this time because of special effects. I divided the images up by rounds and did the basic edits. After that it was the special powers. For all the moves I had them do I chose to get graphics from the 32 bit era of video games. X- Men vs Street fighter, Street Fight Alpha, etc. Whichever was on Sega Saturn and Playstation, yep I want that.

Bias as fuck.

I did have to go back to the area I shot them at to re shoot just  the area because I had compose some images with their powers interacting with each other.

After that it was character icons and health bars. I had never knowingly messed with a png file prior to this.

Yea it was a lot. I would come home from work after being unknowingly learn shit that was gonna be null in void real quick and come home to work on this. Flash backing on this period of time is hitting me with a litany of feelings considering how some things ended up.

Wait what?

Nothing.

Anyway the images for this shoot are here. Go Play have fun like Shredder said in TMNT 2 Secret of the Ooze.

I know following is important for people now, so here are Akuma’s  and Cammy’s Ig pages.  Shout out to the homes for helping bring this project to life. Miss ya’ll.

Moral of the Story, as Tyler the Creator said Everything is Figure out able. Part of me would do this again. Maybe I will one day, but right now prob not cuz of other projects I wanna do.

Plus I’m so over all the things I keep adding to my plate.

Like I said this will prob be the last issue of the year because of super slave season.

Fuck Cotton Field 12 and all fields similar. At least I got this Switch in the process.

Reparations.

Happy Holidays Janolytes.