This is a strange stretch of time, the chronology of which is a bit muddy. It also wasn't exactly a single continuum like the last two eras, but it had its own flavor distinct from what came before and what came after. 2007 was the year I graduated high school, the year I got my first job, and the year I left for college, originally to study graphic design (though I ended up getting my degree in animation).

The end of high school and the ensuing summer began as an unusual period where my art wasn't based on fandom or other feelings, but then curiosity struck I believe when I dug out an old laptop with AIM still on it. I got back in touch with that mod from MFG, and rejoined the forum in July 2007 as PixelDragon. We were both single this time, and mutual feelings arose. I ended up choosing a different college in a different state than I had originally planned on so I could move close enough to him to visit.

It was fun while it lasted (and offered a respite from shitty student housing) but in the end, the relationship didn't stick, and I broke up with him in late 2007. I can't remember if this is also when I left most of my old DB/anime stuff at his house. Honestly a lot of early college is a blur, especially the sequence of events beginning in late '07/early '08. Some of that could be down to all the relationship nonsense and potentially deliberately deleted information/art and some could be down to hard drive crashes (there is record of one in November 2007 according to an old email).

There is a gap of time from March/April 2008 wherein a lot is conspicuously missing, which while it is known that this has nothing directly to do with DB (it was the tiny window of time where I was fixated on Death Note), I may have reconnected briefly with the now-ex from MFG in some capacity. I honestly don't remember apart from feeling that he was involved in some way, and an email exists indicating that I joined the forum again under the name Kinarii in April 2008. I have no evidence any of this went past that spring.

One surviving thing from April '08 is this college assignment. Amidst the randomness and Death Note references, there is at least Piccolo!

In August of 2008, I met what would become my main friend group in college. They were a bunch of nerds, of course, and I went to a local anime convention with some of them that September. I have no idea what my fandom focus was on at the time (if I had one) or what I may have bought, if anything.

Beyond all of that tenuously related nonsense, 2008 actually did leave behind a bit of DB art later in the year. Some of it was revisits of old things from 2004 to test out new art skill/style. Curiously, in the deviantART descriptions for some of these, I am a bit cagey about what they’re redraws of, or in Puka's case, describe her in a negative manner and adamantly reassure the hypothetical viewer she won’t appear in fanfiction. Clearly I had entered that stage where I was cringing at what came before even as I was using it as subject matter for practice. Being 20 was weird.

Revisits of the Vegeta dragon in my late '08 style I discovered there is a plant species called the pink monkey flower - so naturally I had to pair it with the silly dub line!
Style experiments with my OC - some of these weren't on dA so they could be from either year
This is an odd one also with an unknown age. The colored version is a scan of a printout - the original digital files were lost even then (maybe in that late '07 crash), and it was lucky I randomly decided to print this or else it wouldn't exist at all

A final thing to cap off this era was a set of Christmas ornaments I made by painting plain glass baubles a translucent yellow-orange and making/painting/wiring together a whole bunch of polymer clay stars to hang inside them, thus becoming a set of dragonballs. I still have these!

A photo of the dragonballs from Christmas 2008