'KAY. Brittany, feel free to edit the heck outta this journal, 'cause you know how awful I write. XD (Also, I don't know how that fancy format thing works...)
Anyways, I bring you the history of the Mocha in a (very large) nutshell!!
In the beginning, there was the Jelly.
And then one New Year's Eve, the authors said: "Let there be a comic whose characters have special abilities and are not based on the authors, so that their personalities and adventures won't be so limiting!"
And thus, The Pocky was born.
The Pocky (also once referred to as the ORIGINAL original Mocha) was the comic that launched the wonderful world of The Mocha. Kept in an orange binder (instead of the usual spiral notebook), this short-lived series had four main characters, one made by each of the authors: Melanie Narroh (
Angel-Star727), Kale Ronero (Caitlin (aka mysterious third writer)), Rina (
FlashofMauve), and Kaiya (
aquamarinepaint).
"Kaiya?" you say, "Who is this Kaiya person? I've never heard of her!" Well, YEAH you've never heard of her; she isn't in the Mocha at all! Kaiya was a spunky character with multicolor hair (blue, purple, red, the list goes on) and she could FLY. The reason she could fly is 'cause she had these HUGE ginormous dragonfly wings on her back; they were actually quite pretty and sparkly. However, she never made it into the Mocha because… well, we'll get to that later.
Kaiya wasn't the only difference between the Mocha and the Pocky. Kale was actually more mature and and kick-butt in the Pocky, kinda like Prince Aikka from Oban Star-racers. Also, the Pocky had a different storyline: Just like in the Mocha, it all started with him crashing into Earth, and Melanie and Rina (and Kaiya) finding him, but that's about all the similarities. Kale was on the run from the law (can't remember what he did, but it musta been pretty bad), so these really ugly alien things came down to Earth to arrest him (and ended up arresting Rina, Melanie and Kaiya as accomplices). Then, they were sent to gladiator-type arena where these VICIOUS FUZZBALL-THINGS tried to EAT THEM!
This is where we learn that Kale not only has a cool personality, but he can turn into a
DRAGON!! everybody gasp at once!And that's where the Pocky ends.
I told you it was short-lived! Problems arose because one of the authors,
aquamarinepaint, did not go to our school and thus, could not write in it as often as we could.
And then, the Mocha was born. This time, for organization purposes, there were only us three authors writing and drawing it (
Angel-Star727,
FlashofMauve and Caitlin) because we all went to the same school and it would be easy to pass the Mocha between us. Because there were only us three, though, Kaiya didn't make it into the Mocha because we didn't know enough about her for her to do anything. Kale quickly went from 'super-awesome fighting character' to 'adorable naive alien just trying to figure out the ways and customs of Earth'. Melanie was given longer hair (before, her bangs went to her shoulders and the hair in the back was *incredibly* short) and an older brother. Rina didn't change much, except she talked a bit more (before she was nearly mute).
Because our fellow peers had seen us writing in the Jelly for so long, the Mocha soon piqued everyone's interest: people would borrow it for days at a time to read it, classmates would take the spiral notebooks from under out desks to catch up on the latest few panels, and I even had a teacher who wanted to read it.
However, every rose has its thorn: As the Mocha rose in popularity, people would come up to us in the hallways, asking things like "Can you put me/my character in the Mocha?" "Can I write in the Mocha?" "You should add this in the Mocha!!" We told all these people the same thing: NO! The days of the Jelly are gone; you can't be in our comics anymore! Stop telling us what to add; the story isn't up to you! No more authors; we have enough already! (except, you know, we were nicer about it)
The crowd grew more persistent, and soon they took matters into their own hands.
As usual, we'd let them borrow the books so they could catch up on the latest story. THIS time, however, when we got them back, there would be writing in the margins, or even drawings where the next panels were supposed to be! We weren't sure what to do, so we didn't really do anything about it… until they started writing obscenities in pen. The notes on the sides went from normal comments like "Wow, that lady is crazy" "This is my favorite scene" etc, to obscene comments talking about how Melanie was a tramp and rude stuff like that (I honestly don't know where they got those ideas about her, though).
This upset Melanie's creator, who then vented her feelings to her friends (who in turn got very upset). Next thing we know, there's an angry letter stuffed in the front pocket of the Mocha from one of the note-writers saying how he's gonna beat us up if we sick our friends on them. (WTF??) Anyway,
Angel-Star727 wrote a nice letter back to them, explaining the situation and why she felt angry at their rude notes. Eventually, the whole thing calmed down, but I think a few of them stopped reading the Mocha. (Not much of a loss.
)
After that little mini-war, the authors started having problems of their own. Caitlin had been friends with the angry note-writers and soon began drifting away from
Angel-Star727 and
FlashofMauve, and it showed in the Mocha. She would borrow it for days at a time and bring it back with only one panel written, or nothing at all. The things she did write were drawn so lightly, they were barely readable. The things she wrote no longer made sense: The character designs in her style blurred together, the grammar was terrible and the sentences were random and nonsensical, and she would take gracious liberties with other people's characters, often changing their designs and making them act out of character.
Not wanting another 'Pocky', we pulled through and eventually finished the Mocha. Shortly after it concluded, though, we went through comic withdrawal and desperately tried to make a Mocha sequel, called the Toffee. The Toffee was made up of the Mocha characters and their children, and its story was incredibly organized in timeline form on a piece of paper. However, since the timeline was so detailed, there was hardly any room for artistic freedom. Soon, the Toffee became boring to write in and it died.
And THEN, 'bout a year later, as Brittany and Hannah were hissing and looking through the pages of the Mocha, we decided we should post it online! So we didn't have to explain the story every time we posted a deviation with a Mocha character in it. AND, since the drawings were so terrible, we decided just to redraw the whole thing 'cause we love it that much.
Caitlin no longer draws in the Mocha because we hardly see her anymore. D:>
Aaaad that's the history of The Mocha.
THE END!!!
PS: Not only are we posting our old crap, but later today I'll be posting the new pages.
