This... is gonna be a sad one. McKenzie is one of those people who has left the group since I started this series, but she's such a vital part of the group's history that there was never any doubt that I had to do an entry on her anyway.
I guess I'll start with the bad news. In January of 2024, McKenzie told me and Naty that she didn't want to be friends anymore, just to continue collaborating on TAPAS stuff. Over time, we came to realize that wouldn't work -- her artistic output was just as unreliable as it had always been, and in the absence of her friendship and affection, it wasn't worth it anymore. In October of 2025, we asked her to leave the group, and she did so gladly, admitting it was a load off her mind.
I'll try not to speculate on her motivations, they're baffling to me and I don't want to turn anybody against her. The only thing she said that made any sense was that she feared she was becoming abusive, and it's true that she said a lot of very nasty things to me in the last few months of our relationship. I don't get why she couldn't just... stop doing that.
So what's the good news? I guess that's the story of the time we had together. McKenzie was a member of the chat room of artsy animation fans that came together in 2013, where I met Naty and many other good friends. By the time I started TAPAS in 2018, McKenzie had grown into my very best friend, and the person I credit most with making me believe I could really create the things I was aspiring to. Along with Naty, she was one of the central members of "Team Salmon", what I call the core group of TAPAS, those who were part of that original chat room.
Here's a picture of McKenzie, myself, and Naty, the first time the three of us came together to meet in person. We were an inseparable trio.
McKenzie was the central creative force on... just about everything we did. She storyboarded, she did character concept art, she had so many ideas for piecing the stories together. And then suddenly things went cold in 2023, a few months before we were scheduled to visit her at her home for the second time. We tried to be absolute model guests to mend whatever rift had grown between us, but it failed miserably, and having us at her home drove her over the edge, and she broke it off with us.
I'll never understand it and I really don't know how we're going to do this without her. While she had difficulty completing her art tasks on time, she was always on the ball with world-building and character motivations. When I finally manage to arrange all my notes together... part of me hopes I can get her back for the writing staff, if it's at all possible for her to work with Naty again after all the tension... Naty resents her departure very much.
There would be no TAPAS without McKenzie Eby, and I hope that, once I get on my feet a little more, there doesn't have to be a TAPAS without her, ultimately. I'm probably just fantasizing. All the writing and directing tasks that still have her name on them will probably have to be passed on to someone else someday. I'm still not over it. It's been a rough couple of years.
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