Kaomel: a snappy kaomoji picker for Emacs

I always liked kaomojis, but I never liked using the mouse to pick an emoji of any kind. Actually, I just don't like using the mouse. So I thought I could access the kaomoji world through Emacs keymagic. What started as "wouldn't it be nice to have a kaomoji picker in Emacs?" became a journey that would consume more weekends than initially planned.