Moving on: The Sweetheart Project

29 Dec, 2025

I had more to say from my last blog post, but I tried not to gush too much about TSP on an Untitled related blog post. It felt mean to the kids! So I'll be doing it here LOL

Not that long after I started playing Love and Deepspace, I got a story idea. Basically, I wanted to take the 'self aware love interest' trope and play around with that. Traditionally in fic, usually it means that the love interest turns yandere and tries to bring the player into the game to 'be with her forever', or whatever (I eat it up every time).
I wanted to do something different. I wanted to make a story where it ended up being cute! So I started from there, and made Dante. Instead of taking Bonnie into the game, Dante would come out of it, into the real world!

I took heavy inspiration from LADS and kind of injected my love for the game into it. For those who don't know, I'm a veteran otome game player! I don't play every otome, but I've played my fair share of them. Love and Deepspace pulled me back in the fray in a way that I didn't expect!

I had gotten kind of bored the last one I was playing (The Ssum, for those who are curious. The successor to Mystic Messenger), and Our Life (the only other visual novel I'd been obsessed with in recent years) was in development with the second game. So outside of updates for that, I was in a bit of a drought. None of the otome really captured my interest otherwise, and the only other otome-like game I played, Uta No Prince Sama: Shining Live, had been sunset 😭.
Once I found out that you could be a person of color in LADS? I downloaded it immediately. (I was going to play before cause it seemed interesting, but due to the sheer size, I never got around to it. I'm glad I decided to redownload BlueStacks.)

But anyway, we're getting off topic.

Pulling my love and hyperfixation for the game, I poured that energy into Dante. I wanted to create a boy that I felt I would have gone after if I was playing his game, not JUST basing him off of Xavier and Caleb (which I did 😊).
I decided then and there that I wanted his love interest, Bonnie, to be black like me! I also just wanted to push for it because otome from overseas do not often cater towards black and brown folks especially, so growing up I didn't really see myself in the MC until LADS. After further deciding on making it a manga, I felt even more of a push because black shoujo enjoyers deserve their self insert :)

I decided on a manga, mostly because I was getting back into manga (and by extension, anime, but not as much). I've always loved manga and it had a huge impact on me growing up. For whatever reason, the style makes me happy and I often naturally pick up more manga than graphic novels.

Considering I was already down the path of this series being an entire love letter to my love for otome, I decided to also pull inspiration from one of my favorite manga as a teen— Absolute Boyfriend. I can't say there's a whole lot of overlap, but thinking about Night and Riiko's relationship in comparison to Dante and Bonnie's just makes me feel like I'm reliving that story all over again.

To be honest, I've been itching to work on TSP since conception. I have, in writing, but thinking about drawing the pages and watching them come to life on the page has really made me excited to work on comics again. It's been so fulfilling! But because Untitled was the priority, I didn't wanna stray too far yet.

I don't wanna pit two bad bitches against each other, but something I noticed in regards to the way I saw the two series was interesting.
Usually when I make a series, it's kind of from thin air onto the page, with no real intention in mind. With the advent of TSP, intention was baked into every part of it. The characters, the designs, the setting, I wanted everything to have a touch of love into it. I wanted to actually push to make an environment for them to live in and paths for each character, and I was excited to work on another romance (for reference, all my old stories had romance in them, even Robin and Ethan used to be romantic interests before it got changed!).

I really wanted to go into this with intention. At the time I worked on Untitled, I felt like I wanted to turn it into a franchise that would have a bunch of different facets to it. Not quite to make money or anything, but at the time I enjoyed having my hands in several pots. From April Fools day chapters, to comic dubs, to podcast recaps, to trailers and art books, books, and animatics. I planned so much!

Even looking back on it now, I don't know how I would have ever gotten it done within the original time frame that I'd set for myself. To say I overestimated myself would be the understatement of the decade.

In comparison, outside of maybe a JP translation, a book, an animatic or two? I don't really have much planned for TSP. And to be honest, I prefer it that way.

In the ways Untitled was almost meant to be a project that had a life outside of me, The Sweetheart Project is a story that I hold close to myself as a love for things that I incorporated into what made me, me! This isn't to say I had no love for Untitled, however. I love those kids very much and I love the journey that they go on. I just unfortunately cannot be a part of that anymore. I used to think that stories I made were stories brought to me and my role was meant to work with them as the vessel to tell their stories... but TSP has reminded me that the reason I started creating was because it was rooted in self indulgence. Being able to have that part of myself again because I've felt an unshakable love for something again has been an exhilarating feeling, to say the least.

I don't wanna sit here and say 'TSP/LADS saved me', or anything, but the way I've created this year has overshadowed the way I've created in quite some time. I've definitely drawn a lot in previous, but while I've drawn less this year, what I have drawn has been self indulgent and purposeful. It's healed a part of myself I think I'd forgotten about, honestly.

I'm not sure what 2026 will hold, but I know that Bonnie and Dante will be fun to work with :)

#comics #thoughts