Unnecessary Feelings

Zine
Title:	Unnecessary Feelings
Publisher:
Editor(s):	cirates, livinglittlelie, meganedoodledog, rshinystars
Date(s):	2020
Series?:
Medium:	Print, PDF
Size:	52 pages
Genre:	Slash
Fandom:	Ace Attorney
Language:	English
External Links:	Tumblr, Twitter
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Unnecessary Feelings is a SFW for-charity zine featuring fanfiction and fanart for the pairing NaruMitsu (Phoenix Wright/Miles Edgeworth) from the video game franchise Ace Attorney. Despite significant delays in shipping physical orders, the project was completed successfully.

About

An interest check for the project ran from August 5, 2019 to September 5, 2019, while moderator applications were open from August 10, 2019 to September 5, 2019. Contributors could submit applications from September 19, 2019 to October 19, 2019. Questions about the application process and the zine project itself were answered directly on the project's social media accounts. To maintain engagement, the social media account regularly engaged with followers about their opinions about the games and showcased work from the mods and accepted contributors.

Preorders opened on March 16, 2020 with the following pricing tiers:

• Digital Zine ($10 USD)
• Physical Zine ($15 USD)
• Mystery Bundle ($20 USD) - Physical Zine, Random Charm, Random Stickers, Bookmark
• Merch Bundle ($25 USD) - Acrylic Charms, Stickers, Polaroid Prints, Bookmark
• Full Bundle ($35 USD) -Physical Zine, Charms, Stickers, Polaroid Prints, Bookmark

When 70 Orders were made, the physical zine was upgraded to hardcover, and when 100 orders were made, all full and merch bundles would get an additional acrylic stand. Preorders closed on April 19, 2020, but the digital zine remained available for purchase up until the end of the project.

Shipping was slated to begin in late 2020, but due to signification delays caused by communications issues with the shipping mod, physical orders only began shipping in early March 2021 to July 2021. Leftover sales began on August 27, 2021 and ended on September 6, 2021. The project announced on October 11, 2020 that $328.42 USD was donated to the Innocence Project as promised at the beginning of the project .

Project Timeline

	Start	End
Interest Check	August 5, 2019	September 5, 2019
Mod Applications	August 10, 2019	September 5, 2019
Contributor Applications	September 19, 2019	October 19, 2019
Preorders	March 16, 2020	April 19, 2020
Shipping	March 7, 2021	July 29, 2021
Leftover Sales	August 27, 2021	September 6, 2021

Shipping Delays

On July 14, 2020, the zine project announced on Twitter that the shipping mod had fallen ill, presumably with COVID-19 . The rest of the mod team informed customers that they would attempt to contact the shipping mod, and that shipping of physical orders would be delayed.

Another update, this time on the project's Tumblr account and linked to by the Twitter account, arrived on September 17, 2020. The team reported that they were unable contact with the shipping mod, who had not been responding to email, chat, or social media. The update added that the "communication between them and the mod team has been so bad that [they] had to manually check all tracking numbers to know if any of the bundles had been shipped". The shipping mod later responded and explained their computer broke and their phone had been stolen weeks earlier. The team took the shipping mod's explanation in good faith and promised their customers that physical orders would get shipped.

The next update arrived on October 10, 2020 with a change in the team's tone about the delays, now acknowledging the shipping mod's behavior as ghosting and discovering the mod's communication failure to fulfill their responsibilities on other concurrent projects. This particular update is as follows:

Hello everyone!

Sorry for the lack of update; things have been rather hectic behind the scenes, but since we had no conclusive updates to give, we decided to put this announcement off until we could give you a proper answer on what’s going on. We still can’t, not really, but we thought it was time to come out in the open again.

We have some rather upsetting news about our shipping mod, Mod Erine. As we said in our last update, the conversation with them has been spotty at best since the end of July, to the point of completely ghosting us in September and October. Doing some digging, we discovered that we weren’t the only ones affected; two other zines have had issues with communication with Erine, and also have their products withheld at Erine’s house without going through with shipping.

Our estimations on how much Erine is holding onto, both in merchandise and money, is about $6000 worth. That is considering only the projects that we know of, of course.

The Unnecessary Feelings Zine has been in touch with another one of the affected mod teams to try to brainstorm any solutions to get back our products, and we have managed to reach out to someone who personally knows Erine IRL. Five days ago, we finally received a response from Erine, asking for forgiveness and justifying their actions with health problems we hadn’t heard of until this message. They also promised to get back on track with everything, get in touch with all the other zines affected by their silence, and promised to either ship all the UF packages that same day or within the week. You can see the email here: 

Hello yelhsa,

I hope it's ok if we contact each other through email. I'm really sorry about everything. I should have been more upfront with you about my health. I was trying so hard to get better faster that I ended up making my health worse. I wanted to return to social media, but I don't think I have the mental space for that right now and I'm not sure when I will be better. My mental health is shot right now and I'm in a constant state of exhaustion due to my worsened insomnia. I was hoping to go on leave from work, but that doesn't like it's possible. I just finished my final exams for this term so I'm going to try to get back on track with everything. I'm really sorry, and I'm going to try my best to make it up to everyone. I'm going to be emailing via & moon later today. If I'm amble to I would like to ship today, if not it will be sometime this week. If you want a better explanation, I can do that, I just don't want to unload everything on you. Again I'm really sorry for all the trouble I caused. I never meant to cause any of you any stress.

Please take care.

None of these promises has been fulfilled. None of the other mods have been emailed, and to our knowledge, no bundles have been shipped. Erine is once again ignoring our messages, and we’re very frustrated and angry by this whole situation. We would love to say “f*** it” and restart production, but with the funds we have now it’s impossible. Not only we wouldn’t have enough money to donate to charity; we wouldn’t have enough to even fulfill production for a second time.

These past months, we’ve wanted to give Erine the benefit of the doubt, but we’re tired, and we don’t want to keep protecting someone who doesn’t follow through with their promises. For now, we will keep pestering Erine until they answer and either show proof of sending the bundles or send all the products to us, and in the meantime, we will research which further action we can take. 

We’re terribly sorry you have been affected by this situation, too. We would love to say this situation is fixed and you will receive your bundles soon, but at this point, we’re unsure about everything. What we can promise is that we will keep fighting until we get back what’s rightfully yours, and we will deal with shipping as soon as we get them. 

Thank you for your support, and we hope our next update is a happy one.

Sincerely,

The Unnecessary Feelings Mod Team

On November 2, 2020, the mod team updated customers on the situation and their next steps to issue a C&D letter to the shipping mod for withholding the products:

Hello everyone!

As you’re aware, we’re having issues contacting with our shipping mod, Mod Erine, who has completely ghosted us with all the products in their posession. Our efforts of reaching out to them have been fruitless apart from that one message that we already showed in this blog, so we’ve decided to go through our next step.

In collaboration with another zine team also affected by Erine’s absence, we’ve written a C&D that we will send shortly as certified mail, detailing all the products they’re withholding as well as their total cost. In case we get no response from that either (which is likely, given their track record) we will be discussing the possible next steps.

Thank you all for your patience, and we’re terribly sorry it has come to this. 

Sincerely,

The Unnecessary Feelings Mod Team

The mod team updated customers on December 4, 2020 that the shipping mod ignored the C&D and continued to hold onto the product, prolonging the standstill. With their offline contact related to the shipping mod, the mod team planned an in-person meeting and move the products out to a different team member's location. Moderators added that they would resort to getting a lawyer to send a demand letter if this meeting failed. The next update on December 17, 2020 confirmed that the shipping mod agreed to a meeting and would hand over the products on January 8, 2021 . The meeting was later pushed back to February 6, 2021. The merchandise was successfully reported to be retrieved on February 8, 2020 and would be sent to the finance mod, who now took over responsibilities for shipping.

Not all of the boxes made it to the new shipping mod's location. On April 26, 2020, one of the boxes containing prints and sticker sheets were reported to have been lost in transit. The lost merchandise had to be reordered, adding further delays in shipments .

Contributors

Artists

• A. Greenleaf (honystarsnyoom, spacebvcks)
• Arbit (arbitrarydelight)
• Celeste (mochiiknight)
• Crimsonfire3
• Cross (crossexamisan, hellocrossan) - Cover Artist
• DanTheVampire
• Elisa (elusive_elisa, kolpis)
• Felix
• Ghiramaita
• Grey (grey_owl22)
• hadronhaze
• Himemocchi
• Juju (waifujuju)
• Juliewithaxe
• Kathi (drawingaqua)
• Keto (eggtoast)
• Luchichu (luchichufer)
• Mango (islandofmangoes)
• Mat_Riales (mat_riales)
• McKenna (zolfik_art)
• Mika (sooshkaa)
• Nikukurin
• orcawhvle
• PD (pdthedaddy)
• Pyohato
• Rin (MadameRinRin)
• Sebun (seb7un, seb7n)
• Shan (shanblackrx)
• Squeaky (squeakyninja)
• Taz (tazisthemaster, tazatouille)

Writers

• Coslyn (pheenick)
• Lia404
• Nicky (nickyfics)
• Sonora (synthpop)

Mods

• Cirno Avery (cirates) - Graphics
• Livinglittlelie - Social Media
• Via (meganedoodledog) - Finance, Production, Shipping
• Yelhsa (rshinystars) - Organization

Former Contributors

• Erine (kurahii) - Shipping

Gallery

• 

  Full Bundle Listing

• 

  Zine Cover by Cross

Fan Reception

The following are samples of posts retweeted, reblogged, or answered by the project's social media accounts about the shipping delays.

[Anonymous]

i'm sorry you're dealing with these issues, but the fact that a person with such a bad track record could get a mod position is very concerning to me... this should not have happened, and them using 'mental health' as an excuse not to respond or ship is beyond alarming

[narumitsufanzine]
As far as we know this is a first for this mod. They were communicating and cooperative right until shipping. We did not expect these issues to take place and up until this point the entire zine has been a perfect experience, even for us experienced mods.

Remeber that fanzines are fan projects, and while they are a business adventure they are also brought together by strangers on the internet. There are no business contracts to sign or resumes to read. We put faith in our contributors, our mods, our buyers and hope that everyone is remaining true to their word. Saying that this “should not have happened” is taking a shot at the leftover mods and contributors who are still working hard to make this project happen. We understand the situation and we have no intention of letting the mod go without taking responsibility. If you are frustrated and upset by this we promise you we are 10x more upset.

- UF Mod Team

[Anonymous]

I think there’s a kind of irony in a lawyer game-based zine needing legal help. Best of luck to you and your efforts!

[narumitsufanzine]

We think so too :’)))))))))) but yeah, let’s hope the amicable, irl approach works out before we have to step up on our game

The following are samples of posts retweeted, reblogged, or answered by the project's social media accounts after the orders were shipped.

Chio wrote on Twitter

my merch from the @ZineNarumitsu arrived! still sad i was too slow for the actual zine but... the merch so cute 🥺💕

moonliel wrote to the project on Tumblr

Thanks so much for all your hard work, dedication and persistence. I sincerely applaud you all! I absolutely loved my book and merch. I was so surprised that it was hardcover bc I honestly forgot it was so it was just so lovely. Im excited to read the stories as I go to bed and the keychain is already being used. Again, thank you so so much <3 !!

Anonymous wrote to the project on Tumblr

I just got my order in the mail today and I love it! Everyone did an amazing job!!! I know everyone put in a lot of effort to make and ship it so thank you from the bottom of my heart!!! 💖💖💖

Luchi wrote on Twitter

I also received my copy of @ZineNarumitsu a few days ago! I’m so excited, everything looks amazing 🤧🤧🤧 And well a sneak peek of my page hehe 💜

Lia wrote on Twitter

This is super moving. Unnecessary Feelings was the very first zine I wrote for and it was a ride. HUGE KUDOS to the mods who did an astounding work and never gave up. Seeing it coming to a close, with such a nice donation, is wonderful. Thank you so much, and congrats!