Mya & The Merry Mavericks

 

GROUP NAME: The Merry Mavericks

STATUS: Split-up

YEARS ACTIVE: 2020-2021, 2021-2022, 2022-2025

FINAL LINEUP:

Top, left: Derrin Cros

Bottom, left-to-right: Kyata, Luxes, Mya, Kane, and Star

PAST MEMBERS:

Top, right: Dawn

Sana (not shown here)

ventus (not shown here)

Celeste (not shown here)

Gea (not shown here)

CREATORS - CHARACTERS:

Mya (founder) - Mya Hojo

Crim - Luxes, Marble

Coleiosis (me) - Kyata Tetsuyami (I have many more characters, but I'll simplify it here for now)

khlover - Star, Hikari

Jacarius - Kane, Hiku

Derrin (or at least that's how we've always referred to him as) - Derrin Cros

Dawn - Dawn (self-explanatory)

Sana - Sana (also self-explanatory)

ventus - ???

Celeste - ???

Gea - River

MEMBERS' ACTIVE YEARS:

Mya - 2020, 2021-2024

Crim - 2020-2021, 2023-2025

Coleiosis (me) - 2020-2025

khlover - 2020-2021, 2023-2024

Jacarius - 2020-2021, 2021-2025

Derrin - 2020-2021, 2022-2025

Dawn - 2020-2021

Sana - 2020

ventus - 2020

Celeste - 2020

Gea - 2021

The Merry Mavericks were a roleplay group formed in May of 2020.  The roleplay itself was never really known publicly.  When it first started out, it was publicly posted with the hopes that it would attract more members.  It worked, and I was one of them.  When the numbers got big enough, the roleplay became private to keep the group more organized.  So this will be the first time in over five years that anything about this group has ever been put out into the public.  I want to do this so that all of what we have done and how far we have come will not be just a memory.  I, Cole "Coleiosis" Bezotte, will tell the story of the formation of the Merry Mavericks and how we evolved over the years.

Please note that it is currently October of 2025 as I write this.  Some of these things may be subject to change sometime down the road, in case anything new comes up and I can add some updates.  I have a lot of traces of past moments with the group, though some of them are gone completely, and I am only able to tell the story with everything else I've been able to recover, and from memory as well.  For now, let us read on...

Formation and early days

    It was the first half of 2020.  I had already gone through plenty of crap throughout the rest of 2019, having met some of the strangest individuals and founding my independent record label Coleiosis Records (under its original moniker Coleiosis Media).  2020 started off nice and easy, so I thought things would finally look up for me.

    Nope.  COVID-19 began in the spring.  Don't let me get started with that.

    And during that time in quarantine, I would chat every day with this girl I met online.  Her name was Trinity.  She was real sweet, I thought we'd be perfect together.

    Nope.  I eventually lost contact with her and did not hear from her again, at least for another couple months.

    So what was I to do?  I was having one of those moments where I just needed a distraction.  Of course, this was before I had Facebook, Instagram, or other such platforms.  What I DID have was an obscure platform that not a lot of people know about: Amino.  It was quite populated back then, so I had plenty to scroll through and more activity to see.  These days, barely anyone uses Amino, and plenty of communities have come to a halt, considering that so many users have moved on.  One community in particular I scrolled through was Kingdom Hearts.  I had taken interest in the franchise in 2019, so I wanted to see what other fans were up to.

    So there I was doing it again, on May 27, 2020, scrolling through the KH community on Amino.  I came across a particular post that caught my attention.  It read...

    "Roleplay anyone?  I like to make it up as I go along but if u have a storyline you want tell me!  I would also like more than one users in the roleplay!  I'm gonna be my oc, Mya.  You can be anything- your choice..."

    As you can guess, that was posted by Mya, though her Amino username was previously "Its Demyx Time!!!"  She had already started things off, though I wasn't familiar with who else was involved at the time.  When I read all that, I remembered how I used to roleplay with Trinity when we talked more often.  Now, I don't know what prompted me to leave a comment on Mya's post, but I said something.  Maybe it was the autistic 21-year-old in me, but I commented, "I would, but I've stopped after suddenly losing my girlfriend".  I feel like an idiot, looking back at what I said.  I feel like I was just looking for attention.

    But to my surprise, Mya responded to my comment with "Awwwww- sorry that happened to you."

    Then I said, "Ah well, the future is unpredictable.  What happens to me next is a mystery...maybe."

    And she said, "Agreed", with a thumbs-up emoji.

    Now, I didn't expect her to actually look at my profile and take interest in me at all, but she did.  That same day, she even went out of her way to draw this for me...

    Yep, you're seeing it very clearly.  KH's Sora and MegaMan's Lan Hikari.  I don't know why I thought this concept was cool at the time.

    Upon uploading this doodle to the Amino, Mya posted with "This is a drawing for my newly found friend!  Thanks for the idea and I hope you like it!"  She chose to be a friend to me when I wasn't going through the best of times.  We continued to talk for the next few days until I finally worked up the courage to join the roleplay and meet everyone else.  Before I did, Mya had already been roleplaying with a few other members, those being Crim (under his old moniker Luke), Sana, ventus (obviously nicknamed after the KH character), khlover, and Celeste.  When I joined, however, ventus and Celeste were not present.  I think they had already left before I came along.  Some of Mya's other posts mentioned those names as she drew a couple scenes from the roleplay before I joined; it's the only proof I have that there were other members present prior to my entry.

    The group did not have a name upon formation, but that was not our main focus at the time.  I remember when I introduced myself to the rest of the group, Mya responded by texting "clap, clap"; she seemed quite enthusiastic.  As I grew acquainted with everyone else, I chose my character to roleplay as.  And this was a character I created in early June of 2011, not necessarily for a franchise, but as more of a hybrid kind of thing.  My character was Kyata Tetsuyami.

Kyata, drawn by Mya on February 4, 2022

    For Kyata's debut in the roleplay, I wrote him as a traveler who ran a record shop in Traverse Town.  Since we were doing this within in a Kingdom Hearts community, we of course wanted to harness the lore of Final Fantasy and (ugh!) Disney.  The fact that I wrote Kyata running a record store is much like how I run a record label in real life.  I put much of myself into my character, yet Mya really admired that.

    I then got to know everyone else there and their characters.  I think Sana was the first of the others I met, with her character named after herself.  She was perhaps the most active when I stepped in, and she gave off friendly vibes right away.  Then Crim trickled in with his character Luxes, and khlover with her characters Star and Hikari, who were twin sisters.

    After a few days of continuously roleplaying with the gang, I actually started to enjoy it.  I felt my spirit had somehow been given a new lift.  I then went out of my way to draw a "group photo" of our characters, which you've already seen at the top of this post, though the lineup was slightly different when I initially drew it.

Initial version of my "Shine On" doodle.  Note Sana is here before eventually being replaced by Kane.

    As for why I didn't make Kyata smile in the picture, I may still have felt like not everything was looking up for me.  I honestly feel dumb for it at this point.  A smile would have made the memories better.  When Mya saw my doodle, she even made one of her own...

Mya's group doodle, drawn June 9, 2020

    For the roleplay itself, Traverse Town was usually the "hub world" for our characters to meet up, hang out, or train.  Their adventures would take them to other KH locations such as Destiny Islands, and even under the sea through Atlantica (yes, the undersea kingdom from "The Little Mermaid").  As much as I did enjoy writing Kyata into these little adventures, there was one thing everyone else had that he didn't have: a Keyblade.  As much as I did play and enjoy some of the KH series, I never thought about what kind of Keyblade Kyata would have, nor did I build the proper lore for him for this kind of universe.  Looking back, he seemed to just be this strange boy trying to blend in with a different kind of world.  No one really seemed to mind, though.  Perhaps they knew I just needed to warm up to the roleplay setting more.

    Later on, new members started showing up.  A user by the name of Rendrix (though originally under another moniker that I forgot) introduced himself and his character Derrin Cros.  However, I've always referred to Rendrix as "Derrin" to keep track of him easier.

Derrin Cros, drawn by Derrin on June 5, 2020.

    Then came a girl under the username "Dawn mei Hinata 358/2", whose character was also named Dawn.  She, however, did not have any drawn artwork of her character, and usually customized her on the Gacha Life app and some avatar creator games from Rinmaru.  So, when I drew the character Dawn on my "Shine On" doodle, I basically used her custom avatar as a reference, but based her hair and outfit on what she was given on Gacha Life.  I think it came out quite crudely, but at the time I was not a very picky artist, especially since I was still only drawing traditionally.

    Sana eventually left the group, for reasons I can't remember, though I think it might have been due to a disagreement.  Currently she is banned from that KH community for violating the Amino guidelines.

    But soon after Sana's departure, one last user took interest in the roleplay.  Now, I don't remember what his Amino username was, since he deleted his account on October 7, 2024.  But I know him as Jacarius, and the character he brought on board was Kane.  At the time, Kane did not have a fully-drawn design, and I wasn't sure what to imagine him looking like.  All I basically did was look at this anime character Jacarius had on his profile picture and stick with that for the time being.  In fact, that was the reference I used when adding Kane to my "Shine On" doodle.  I drew him on a separate sheet of paper, then cut him out and plastered him over Sana on the full art piece, since she was no longer with us.  Funnily enough, if you flip over the paper of the artwork, you can still faintly see Sana on the other side.

    After the addition of Kane, I was starting to feel a bit overwhelmed by how many members we were at, especially since some members would use more than one character.  We talked about it for a bit, then we agreed to make the roleplay chatroom a private one, where the seven of us could carry on.  And upon doing so, I thought about coming up with a proper name for our group, since the chatroom's name was just our usernames listed.  I suggested (you guessed it) "The Merry Mavericks".  Yes, the name was my idea.  Nonetheless, everyone loved it.

    But if you start to wonder where I got the name in the first place, let me tell you.  I was always a fan of the Three Stooges, and one short in particular from 1951 was titled "Merry Mavericks".  I don't know why, but the name of that short really stuck out to me at the time.  I thought it would have been a nice idea since the early days of the roleplay had a mix of adventure and humor (not that we had any intention to slap each other or poke each other's eyes).

The inspiration for our group name

   We spent the next several weeks roleplaying these scenes with our settled lineup, though most of it at that point was just our characters going places to hang out rather than going on new adventures.  I remember we would make our characters in Gacha Life, place them in backgrounds and take screenshots.  Sure maybe there wasn't an ongoing story plot set in motion, but we still saw it as making good memories nonetheless.

    Not long after, Mya disappeared, due to technical issues.  We were not entirely sure what happened to her, yet we didn't bother trying to figure out what the problem was; all we did was wonder.  We still carried on the roleplay for the next few months, though it wasn't anything really interesting.  It was basically just Kyata inviting everyone else into his shop, or they would go on smaller trips, or whatever else we could conjure without really trying.  I felt like Kyata wasn't really making himself useful aside from offering hospitality to his friends.  Since I still never gave him a Keyblade, I gave him a pure power to still make him a "fighter".  I wrote a lore that he was a god of fire from a realm known as Eternus.  I'll admit, it didn't sound anything like the true Kingdom Hearts lore, but I felt it was better than nothing.

    As we continued to make up all these boring scenarios for our characters, I would also star Kyata in my audio drama project "Naruto & The Missing Ninja" on YouTube, October 18, 2020.  The lore I had for Kyata within that project was obviously different, but I was grateful to be using the character in the first place.  That, of course, is a different story.

The new era

    2021 had rolled around.  The roleplay started to slow down even more.  It's like we lost that touch we had when we first began.  We had the commitment, but not the energy.  Since Mya started the roleplay in the first place, we felt like she had the true leadership to get things going the way they should.

    But then, before I knew it, I got word from her.  On February 12, 2021, she commented on one of my posts (one that showcased some of my Gacha screenshots of our characters) explaining that she had issues with Amino on her end.  She had to create a new account on a friend's phone just to get back to me.  She commented...  

    "Cole! This is mya, im so so sorry i left. I just wanted to say bye. You luxes dawn, derrin everyone on the group were some of the greatest friends ive ever had."

    I was relieved to hear from Mya again.  It gave me a feeling of motivation to move forward, especially since she was the friend I made when I was going through a rough time.  That positivity I had felt before had returned.  In the above comment, Mya explained that she was going to tell us earlier on that she had to leave momentarily since the Amino app was causing issues on her phone, and that soon she would get a new one and rejoin me and the rest of the gang.

    In late March, Mya reached out to me again and pointed out to an online mobile game she had been playing with Crim.  They both had customized their characters in Kingdom Hearts Dark Road, and I eventually did the same to join the fun.  After our first adventure in the game, they then mentioned they were keeping in touch on Discord, which was perfect for me since to this day I am still a huge Discord user.  That was where we agreed to continue the roleplay, only we forgot to mention it to the others at the time, so it was just the three of us for the next few weeks.  We picked up where we left off in our KH-based setting, starting new adventures that had more depth than before.

    When April rolled around, however, things took a dark turn.  I had a rather nasty conversation with someone I had worked with in the Christian underground metal scene at the time.  I won't mention his name or his project (not that it will do anything now since he's already been exposed before); all I'll say is that it was someone completely self-entitled whom I had been warned about for months, though I ignored those warnings until I figured out his true colors for myself.  And after I finally realized everyone was right all along, I felt absolutely terrible.  But looking back, I shouldn't have let out the frustration into the roleplay.  I had again entered a moment where I needed a distraction, though the situation was harsher than last time.

    After I reconciled with Mya about my behavior and told her everything, she understood completely.  We then decided it would be a good idea to start a fresh, new storyline for our roleplay, only it wasn't related to Kingdom Hearts at all; this time, we began something completely original.  The main location was a town called Kawata; the record shop was still a thing, only Kyata also ran it with his father and mother, Koruda (god of thunder) and Katrina (goddess of fire).  We had to write a way for Kyata, Mya, and Luxes to reintroduce themselves to each other.

    In May, we then realized that after all the commotion we went through, we forgot to invite the rest of the gang to the Discord group chat to rejoin us.  khlover had been messaging us through the Amino group chat with "Hi" throughout the rest of February and some of March.  So we finally told them where all the action was, and Jacarius and Dawn eagerly joined us on Discord; unfortunately Derrin and khlover did not have Discord accounts, and they said they were not able to create one for the time being.  Until they were able to, we had to wait ever so patiently.  Ironically, Mya, Jacarius, and I were the most active in the roleplay in general, with Dawn popping up only once in a great while.

    Throughout the summer that same year, Mya had an idea about putting our characters through a story based on "The World Ends With You".  As it suggests, our characters would be killed off and would reawaken in the Underground with no memory of themselves or what transpired before, and forced to participate in the Reapers' Game.  It went on like that throughout some of July, though it was only with Kyata, Mya Hojo, and Kane.  And as we went along, Mya introduced us to a friend of hers named Gea; she was the one who let Mya borrow her phone to make contact with us again in February.  Gea showed some interest in joining the roleplay and used her character, a female named River.  She did not participate much, however; from what I recall, Gea only really involved herself when our characters finally made their way back to the real world.  As far as a design goes, the only trace I have of that is a little sketch Mya made later that summer.

Whereas I drew "Shine On", Mya made something of her own called "Smile", drawn in the summer of 2021.

    Unfortunately, Gea left the group abruptly that fall.  To this day, I still don't know where she is.

    In August of 2021, Dawn and Crim left the group after a strange disagreement.  Jacarius and I talked much about it afterwards, trying to understand the mindset of those two.  We didn't speak with them directly, not to my knowledge.  We soon just turned our attention back to where it was before; it was just Mya, Jacarius, and me from that point, at least for the next several months.

The strange shift

    Things went rather smoothly up until April of 2022.  I hit another problem that took me a long time to recover from afterwards.  And until I fully recovered, I needed some time away from the roleplay to get myself back together.  During that time, on August 3, 2022, I received a friend request on Discord from someone whose username I did not recognize.  When I asked who it was, he showed me a doodle of Derrin Cros from 2020.  Derrin had finally created a Discord account and reunited with us.  He involved Derrin Cros in the storyline soon after we resumed the roleplay; although this storyline was completely original unlike the previous one, Kyata still recognized Derrin and hoped to see him again after every encounter.

    Eventually, khlover reunited with us as well.  On April 28, 2023, she messaged me on Amino again to say hello after a long time.  I was at the drive-in theater watching The Super Mario Bros. Movie at the time, and I replied to her saying I would chat with her the day after.  Then, before I knew it, she sent me a friend request on Discord.  I invited khlover to the Merry Mavericks group chat soon after, which she gladly accepted and brought back her twin characters Star and Hikari for a while.

    But what was perhaps the most surprising return was that of Crim.  On November 29, 2023, he dropped a few messages in our old Amino chatroom, expressing how much he missed the times we had when he was originally part of the group.  He reconciled with us, and we let him rejoin us in our Discord group chat.  It seemed the old lineup was coming back together, or at least the lineup from my "Shine On" doodle, minus Dawn (I am still unsure where she currently is as well).  Upon rejoining us, Crim introduced a new character he had been working on, a female named Marble, who wore a Japanese fox mask.  Her lore seemed to have been deeper than Luxes', and Crim roleplayed as her even more often than as Luxes from that point on.

    I don't remember much of what else happened throughout 2022-2023.  The roleplay slowed down quite a lot as some of us had more responsibilities to tackle and other personal things going on.  We tried getting back into the swing of things in January of 2024; ALL of us continued the story with the old character lineup, but with a new part of the lore that has been there since.  Kyata, Kane, and Luxes became instructors for the Secret School for Hidden Heroes, a place where young heroes would hone their special powers and learn the responsibilities of using them.  One of the instructors was Kyata's cousin Taeko Tetsuyami, an electric-powered superhero under the alias "AtmosGirl".  This lore in particular had Kyata and Taeko as cousins, though I wrote them as siblings in a different storyline outside the roleplay.  Then we had a few students for the school whom we focused much on: Andrew Harrington (a water-based hero also named Shark Man), Satori Iwaka (an elastic hero also named Tōchaku), and finally a strength-based hero named Hiku (created by Jacarius).

    The last time Luxes and Mya Hojo ever had an appearance in the storyline was January 14, 2024; Kyata went out to dinner with them for old time's sake.  Strangely, although Crim continued to roleplay with us with his other character Marble, we never heard from Mya again since that day.  This did not seem to be another technical issue as the rest of us thought it was.  Mya's Discord account was still there, and we were still able to message her, but we never heard back.  In fact, we didn't even notice just how odd it was for her to suddenly be silent until over a year later.

    I moved into my current apartment on February 29, 2024.  The rest of the gang congratulated me as I made the move, then we (minus Mya) continued our roleplay throughout the spring and early summer that year.  We didn't talk much afterwards, but then we picked things back up around the same time in 2025.  I've recently noticed we have only really been able to roleplay in the spring and early summer of the past couple years.  I guess that's what happens when we grow up; we have to take on more responsibilities and other areas of life.  I remember all the other members were in their late teens when we began in 2020.  We're all adults now, though if I'm not mistaken I'm the oldest of the group.  Like I said, I was 21 when I joined, so I was already an adult.  I am currently 27 as I write this, and I honestly feel like I've watched everyone else grow up.  I am still in contact with everyone else, though we don't say much anymore.  Only once in a great while will we say something to break the silence and catch up for a bit, and we try to make the most of it as possible.

    To be honest, when we started roleplaying all those years ago, we never had the thought that someday we would not be doing it anymore.  We were younger, more energetic, and we didn't have anything better to do.  The roleplay was how we spent our free time, and we had a lot more of that back then.  We would treat every session like a TV serial, where an episode would end with the intention of instilling excitement into the viewers to make them hope to see more the next time.  We never thought about ending the storyline at all; in fact, the current state of the storyline is still much like a cliffhanger, as we thought we would soon pick up where we left off.  That was June 11, 2025.  I honestly don't know if we ever will write a conclusion to the storyline at all, considering how inactive we currently are.  But I think it would be best if we didn't, especially since Mya still hasn't spoken to us for almost two years; it wouldn't actually feel any better to close up everything without the WHOLE gang present.  Besides, it would be quite sad to write an ending to something we were passionate about for over five years.

    That leads me to my final thoughts.  Although Mya has been silent since early 2024, she is still currently active on YouTube.  As much as I could ramble about it all day, this is really not the place to do that.  There are more details and possibilities I could list, but I don't want to go too deep, not here.  All I will say is that I am still trying to figure everything out.  I have yet to see the bigger picture, and I am doing everything I can to try to see it.  I will continue to pray for her and hope that she's alright.  I don't necessarily want her back for the roleplay; I mainly want her to remember everything we talked about from the past few years.  We chatted often throughout 2021-2023; Mya would tell me I was like a brother to her.  At the same time, however, she showed signs of insecurity, and I would help her with words of encouragement and prayer.  I am hoping that someday I can help her again with whatever she may be facing.  For now, all I can do is wait.

    I named this post with the intention of showing just how special this story is.  I named it "Mya & The Merry Mavericks" because, although I came up with the name for our group, that doesn't take away from the fact that Mya founded the roleplay in the first place.  She is the reason we all came together.  She is the reason we all became friends.  And she is the reason that I am still talking with everyone else.  She deserves the credit.  I hope to see her again soon.

The end

    It is now December of 2025 as I write this update.  Amino was shut down on December 17, so all traces of our past chats and posts on the platform are now gone.  And as for the Merry Mavericks, what happened to us was bittersweet, and I never saw this coming.  But considering the circumstances, I probably should have.

    My nephew was born on December 11, 2025.  I shared the exciting news with the rest of the gang in our group chat.  The following day, however, I was caught off-guard to see that Jacarius had left the group chat.  I messaged him about it, asking what happened.  A couple hours later, Derrin left as well.  I was confused.  I thought I might have unknowingly done something wrong.

    The next morning, Jacarius finally messaged me back saying nothing happened.  I had to take a guess that it was due to the months of inactivity.  It took me a while to fully understand.  For the past few months, I would only say something once in a great while; but we didn't really have the energy to roleplay or even converse.  In October, I thought about asking everyone's opinion on closing the roleplay entirely and just keeping the group chat as a way to catch up with each other or simply say hi; however, I never addressed the idea, nor do I believe I even had the guts to do it.  But now that Jacarius and Derrin had both left, there's nothing more we can do.

    It's now over.  The Merry Mavericks are no more.

    Five years is a long time.  And like I said, we did not foresee an end to the story we wrote.  I think it's best that we leave it as it still is.

    But for now, I want to give a great big THANK YOU to everyone for all the good times we had and for sticking together through thick and thin.  It's been a real pleasure.  And I wish them the best of luck for whatever comes their way next in life.

    SHINE ON!

R.I.P. Merry Mavericks

May 27, 2020 - December 13, 2025

Artwork gallery

    Take a look at this collection of artwork of our characters and some colorful scenes!  I saved as much of it as I can, with their dates as accurate as possible.  What I will NOT show, however, are the Gacha screenshots.  We've been more creative than that.

    All here was drawn by Mya except where noted.

The first doodled scene from the roleplay, Luxes and Mya watch as Star, Hikari, ventus, and Celeste pass by, drawn May 28, 2020.

Mya Hojo, drawn June 20, 2020.

Luxes, drawn June 22, 2020.

Kyata paints a picture of Mya, drawn by me, March 2021.

Mya and Kyata walk through Traverse Town with sea salt ice cream, drawn March 20, 2021.

Kyata, Kane, and Mya outfit designs for our "The World Ends With You" sessions, drawn by Mya's sister, July 10, 2021.

Kane, Mya, and Kyata Christmas postcard, drawn December 3, 2021.  The kid with the elf hat is Arashi, one of Mya's other characters.

Kyata, Kane, and Mya Christmas postcard, drawn December 24, 2021.

Kane digital render, drawn February 4, 2022.

Mya digital render, drawn February 4, 2022.

Mya, Kane, and Kyata, drawn February 5, 2022.  We still use this as our chatroom photo.

Kyata and my cat Wilson (R.I.P.), drawn March 30, 2022.

Kyata, drawn April 22, 2022.

Mya and Kyata sketches, drawn August 5, 2022.

Derrin Cros, drawn September 13, 2022.

Kyata celebrates Christmas at home, drawn December 24, 2022.

Kyata and what looks like Naruto Uzumaki, drawn October 4, 2023.  I think Mya was attempting to draw Kyata's first design back when I fleshed him out as "Takeda".