Do not reupload my art on any other social media, especially reddit
Name: Camry
Pronouns: she or they
I made a tag for my art! -> #camrydraws
My casual doodles/old art that I might've put my whole pussy in at the time, but I don't quite like anymore and can't QUITE bring myself to delete -> #camrydrawnt
My Bluesky (more active right now)-> camry1918
My multi-genre rando drawing practice Twitter (after the pro-AI update, I've been reluctant to use it!) -> camry1918
My reblogs are tagged with #reblog.
My textposts are tagged with #camrytext.
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Please note: I randomly rotate through my interests like dim sum dishes on a lazy susan. My current interest(s) are:
-My own OCs!
-Nintama Rantarou (Ayabe is my #1 blorbo)
Previous interests:
-Badeni from Orb: on the Movements of the Earth (and also Oczy x Badeni or Okubade)
-Noncanonical BLEACH hetero (you know the ones)
-Trustshipping (Kaiba x Ishizu from Yugioh)
-Jayvik (Jayce x Viktor from Arcane)
-Various ships and characters from Golden Kamuy (Oripa, Usao, Tsukitsuru, Yuuo/Oyuu)
Art Fight 2026 team cards! Use these to advertise yourself and your characters - post them on social media, on your Art Fight profile page, or in the #target-hunting channel on our Discord server.
let's go to fanime pt. 2: the unbearable lightness of fujoing out
I went to Fanime and Manga Ichiba and all I got was a bunch of thoughts about what it means to be in a community.
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Despite having been an anime and manga fan for most of my life, I have only been to two anime conventions prior to going to Fanime (and one of them was as a panelist, though it has been over a decade and I can no longer remember what for). Part of it is because I have always been Your Most Employed Oomf and prone to saving my vacation time for international travel with friends and family. But the other part of it, if I'm being honest, is because of shame.
In another life, I wrote about being a person motivated by shame, who hides the things she loves so that it is easier to maintain a normie persona for over forty hours at her job each week, who never tells her coworkers exactly why she's going to St. Louis or Los Angeles or that she once rescheduled her honeymoon so that she could watch the League of Legends esports world championship in Shanghai, because then she'd have to explain the entire concept of esports to people who are at least ten years older than her and/or have multiple children and have never heard of, much less ever accessed, Twitch.
Well, seven years later (and it has been almost exactly seven years since I wrote that blog post), I still have not changed. I am still that girl, motivated by shame and the desire to "pass" as normal. Though I have a sticker of Hoshi-sensei from Onna no Sono no Hoshi on my phone (which people routinely mistake for BTS merch), and though I have a "Let's Go to the Family Restaurant" keychain on my work bag (which people never notice or ask questions about), I still lie when asked about my interests. What do I do in my free time? "Oh, movies," I say with a smile. "And I cook." Not, I read approximately ten hours of BL manga a week, probably, and if I'm lucky, sometimes I write about it.
Recently I have been thinking about this a lot, because recently I have been trying to make peace with another revelation about myself: I am not One of the True Perverts.
By this I do not mean sexual perversions (though I am mind-numbingly boring in that area as well). I mean that I do not love things vehemently, depravedly, abnormally, the way a True Pervert does. Instead, I am apprehensive in my enthusiasm for things, a cormorant who furtively dives into the water before reemerging to, motionless, spread its wings in the sun, as if to say, nothing to see here. To be clear, I am not (as the kids might say) a tourist or a larper. When I love something, I am genuine and effusive in my praise for it. For better or worse, my tastes have always been too idiosyncratic to ever risk me becoming a bandwagon fan. But I live in fear of being consumed by something. I do not ever want to seem perverted by my love, derailed from some nebulous path that is cousin to "respectability" and a relative of "sanity." I fear the abyss, over or into which the true fanâthe True Pervertâjumps.
The end result is that I am always in awe of my fandom compatriots who do throw themselves headfirst into the abyss. I'm jealous of friends who have favorite idols, series, pairings, authors, dynamics; who have, for lack of a better word, A Personal Aesthetic; who can easily list their influences and formative experiences and pinpoint when and how they first fell in love with [x], whatever [x] is; those friends whom you associate with that One Thing and their love of that One Thing is cleanly obvious. From my chilly vantage point, they are the SS+ heroes, whereas I am the lonely F-ranker who can only love things like a normie, a side character whose soul has a limited capacity for true love, who perhaps does not even have a soul with which to love, and thus does not love anything at all.
The point is, at Fanime, I was surrounded by the True Perverts. They were my friend and her long-time cosplay friends, who not only invest hours into costume design and makeup and wigs and prop construction, but also travel with boxes of costumes and book themselves for eight photoshoot sessions in a single day. They were the couples in detailed handmade outfits interpreting characters from series that have long fallen out of mainstream attention. They sold and bought body pillows of the lads from LADS. They traded stickers, and fan goods, and tips on which artist was selling unusual merch, and memories, and in-jokes, and a deep, vast understanding of characters from games I had never even heard of, much less played. In some cases, they were the True Perverts that Drank the Miku Feet Juice, and on that, I have nothing at all to say.
When asked if I had fun at Fanime, I kept saying that I had a great time, only it was just a little overwhelming. At some weeks distance, I think that statement was a lie designed to protect myself. In fact, at Fanime, what I felt was an abstract loneliness. I had learned in my many years of fandom life to be too self-sufficient, internalized too strongly the admonition to not seek validation from others.
What I have sacrificed, in return, is an openness to belonging.
Belonging is not the same as blending in, or getting along, or making friends-for-the-time-being, all of which I consider my strengths. I have friends (she says, well aware that having to say such a statement out loud makes it automatically suspect) and have never considered myself friendless or a lonerâbut to have many personal friends is not the same as community.
In fact, in some ways, to belong to a community is diametrically opposed to being enmeshed in a personal network of friends. It requires both an allegiance to and a responsibility for and an ownership over perfect strangers. Belonging is not about a total erasure of discomfort, alienation, or resentment; community is not and was never meant to be utopia. But it is a recognition that tolerating others in your communityâand receiving that tolerance from others in turnâis important in the face of some grand cause, which can sometimes be simply belonging itself.
This may be controversial, but I believe community should be in service to some greater cause, and as a result, it is a disservice to be "in community" with everything you like. To create belonging is no small undertaking, and is an obligation that should be taken seriously. It's okay to not treat your fandoms or your hobbies like your community (which is not the same as saying it's okay to be rude!), if you don't feel like they are in service of a cause, or a cause that is important to you. I find it enormously difficult to believe in bestseller charts or streaming numbers or awards or rankings as a grand cause. This is probably why I didn't survive for long in kpop fandom (and also perpetually find myself cheering for the worst team in every league).
And this is probably why I have not found it important to find community in anime or manga. I have been lucky enough to have friends, and to have found belonging in other ways, and to carve even in my fandoms little gatherings of fellow sickos who dive into the same waters and sit on the same logs and spread their wings beside me, enjoying the same sun. I haven't discovered a grand cause worthy of devotion. But then again, I haven't needed to.
At Fanime I thought for the first time, what would I need to be in community here? Who would that community be with? And what could we possibly be in service of?
In Fai's post about their experience at Manga Ichiba, they wrote about how their experience of kinship with other anime fans has changed:
Fandom now is bigger and more varied than ever. Anime is mainstream. When I first started going to anime conventions as a young adult, the most exciting feeling I had was kinship. I could be confident that everyone near me knew the same jokes, watched same shows, heard the same songs, and these were all things we couldnât easily share with other people in our lives. Cons still give me that feeling, but fandom is pop culture now, and monoculture is dead; itâs become too vast for a one size fits all to actually work as perfectly as it did before. I canât turn to the person sitting next to me and talk about the best anime ever made (Fullmetal Alchemist) because they may not even know what that is (ouch); they might be only into Gacha Games, or Vtubers, or TCGs, or Danmei, or Webtoons, or they might have only watched Demonslayer. And you know what? I havenât watched Demonslayer. That puts me at an extreme disadvantage.
On the bus to Manga Ichiba, I knew that the people sitting around us all liked doujinshi. That was the same kinship I used to get in AA, when it was hard to get official merch of any kind of your favorite anime unless you went to a con. If you read my post about prepping for Manga Ichiba, youâll know that in the midst of my busiest drawing time I decided to take a week off in order to go to Final Fantasy XIV Fanfest, an official convention for the MMO video game. The kinship was overflowing there.
Recently, I've been listening to a lot of Rian Phin's video essays on fashion, not because I am particularly interested in fashion but because it's clear her mind moves a hundred miles a minute tying together art and philosphy and the search for both in our daily lives in a way that is catnip to me. In one about the different interpretations of Y2K fashion, she talks about how it's easy to assume that people wearing mainstream costume-y interpretations of trends don't care about authenticity, but we must recognize that there is psychological safety in numbers and in the comfort of being clearly legible to others. It is disheartening to not be understood, so to interpret a trend differently, even if that different is "more realistically" or "more authentically" or "more deeply researched", is a risk that you have to be willing to take. In doing so, you signal that it is important to you to find others with those small overlapping circles of interest. There is social value in being seen and understood, not just seen.
I am going to state the obvious: Being an anime or manga fan (and, similarly, being a fan of BL) is not at all like being into fashion. You participate in fashion, whether or not you want to be, simply by wearing clothes, but being an anime or manga fan is largely a cryptic fandom. The choice to identify as such is wholly intentional; you cannot accidentally demonstrate interest in being an anime or manga fan (though you could be a fan of an individual anime or manga without the rest of the identity attaching on). Thus, when faced with an opportunity to gather as a group, I think many of us (especially older fans like me) have not left the early mentality of wanting to embrace everything and everyone, of thinking about ourselves as belonging to the same community of nerds, even though we have long outgrown that as a useful mode of organization. I think spaces like Fanime still inherit this old-school purpose of being a public place where you could be, above all, seen and understood as an anime or manga fan. It is a no-judgment zone, a show-and-tell lovefest where all your interests are accepted, all your faves valid, All Perverts Welcome.
But to do so in an age where we have access to so many anime and so many manga (and so much bl and so much danmei!), we end up flattening our fetishes. Our safety in numbers is safety in the easily legible, and our commitment to tolerate each other is a genial kowtowing to the Intellectual Property, because that's the only way to communicate. Oh, you like Dark Souls? I also like Video Game. Oh, you like SVSSS? I also like Danmei. Oh, you like Chiikawa? I also like Cute Things. Oh, you like Umamusume? I also like Horse Yuri. When we left the convention spaces and walked the streets of San Jose, we were an undifferentiated smoothie of cosplay and fursuits and itabags and anime merch. We are all Perverts of the Same Kind, and in being so, we are no perverts at all.
Well, all this is an overly long prologue. I went to Fanime, my first anime convention in decades, not because I suddenly wanted to experience the community of my fellow anime and manga fans, but because I wanted to be a part of the inaugural Manga Ichiba, the first ever dedicated doujinshi market in the United States.
And it probably comes as no surprise that at Manga Ichiba, I was delightfully shocked into feeling the sense of community I didn't realize I was looking for. What I found at Manga Ichiba was this unapologetic expression of the subversive, the risky signaling of the in-group that Rian Phin espoused, the rejection of the need to buy everything simply because it is There and part of the General Anime Intellectual Property, replaced by the passionate drive to only participate in the very specific thing that made you a True Pervert. Weeks out from the event, I can't stop thinking about all the True Perverts I met at Manga Ichiba: the one artist during the Saturday morning session of Manga Ichiba who was selling, of all things, a Boogiepop Phantom doujinshi and was excited when I approached their table to talk to them about the 2001 anime, the free pamphlet encouraging you to watch all 100+ episodes of the slowest and most body-count-heavy space opera ever written (Legend of Galactic Heroes), all the variety of original comics I saw that ranged from demoted MyReadingManga incest tags to short, plotless adventures with longtime OCs that, understandably, no one recognized.
None of these were profitable ventures, and they were not trying to be. They were little lighthouses on lonely shores, shining a beacon out into the darkness, hoping to be seen and understood, and we were all boats paddling furiously towards each artist's table. You could not be there in that space as a lover of manga and not feel a kind of a protectiveness, an anxiety over the precarity of the event's existence, but also somehow a delirious hope that it might go on forever and ever, spreading all over the United States.
Comic Market, still (?) the largest doujinshi convention in the Japan and thus the world, is famous for its motto that "there are no 'customers' at the Comic Market." In the eyes of Comiket, we are all simply participants. While the circles provide works and concepts, the general attendees participate as readers and supporters of the creative works.
I love this conception of the doujinshi market, because firstly, I love the Weird, the works where you can feel the creator's soul moving like the spirit of God over their work of art, where something is so imbued with the individuality of its maker that you know it is off-putting to someone. To encourage this kind of art, the reader cannot be a "customer," to be serviced and pandered to. Instead, the artist and the reader must be co-conspirators, participants in a crime of self-expression. And at Manga Ichiba, I was a participant in many crimes.
But Comiket's explanation of the doujinshi holy trinity does not end there. The doujinshi market is where "creativity," "collection," and "community"âthat is, interaction among participantsâmeet. And importantly, the reader participates not just through their purchasing of doujinshi but also in their "interaction."
What does it mean to be a non-artist participant outside of simply buying? Comiket seems to posit that there is an obligation unique to the reader that extends long after money and doujinshi have exchanged hands. In other words, it's not the buying that makes a reader part of the community. It is the reader's interaction with the doujinshi.
Nowadays we favor the term "BL" over "yaoi," but a part of me has always been drawn to the playfulness of "yaoi" as a word, even more so when I realized that it was a self-deprecating in-joke based on one artist's friends reading an original doujinshi she wrote literally titled "Yaoi" (ć€èżœă). To me, this is the essence of yaoi, and with it, doujinshi: an exercise in whimsy, an act of bringing forth art and weirdness and selfhood into the world, but also something that can only spring into existence through community participation, through its creator offering it up for presentation, the readers recognizing its existence and commenting on it, and its placement inâor rejection fromâthe commercial world.
"Yaoi has been called 'masturbation fantasy,' but its pleasures are nevertheless meant to be shared," Patrick W. Galbraith wrote in "Moe Talk: Affective Communication among Female Fans of Yaoi in Japan." I have posited before that the yaoi/BL/slash fiction space is so unique but also prolific with its very specific tropes and formulations of narratives because the lines between authors and readers are so porous. BL creators tend to also heavily consume BL, both amateur and professional, and often inspired to create by comments from their readers, even citing suggestions or overwhelming responses from their readers as inspiration for their work, while readers often become inspired to create their own work.
I think, then, if we are to have a community, our readers must read, and let othersânot just the authors, but also other readersâknow what they have read, how it made them feel. Not in a product review way, or like a customer reviewing a restaurant on Google, no matter how glowing such a review may be. But in a way that reflects the reader's own self-expression, that reaches deep into the reader herself, and leaves her a little vulnerable. Yes, that's why I ended up writing a post blurbing every doujinshi I bought at Manga Ichiba. And it worked! It was a labor of love in every way, and writing it made me feel like I was giving back to the authors in a way separate from money, like I was helping Manga Ichiba in its journey to continuation and proliferation, like I was actually contributing, opening myself up to be seen and understood.
I realize it's incredibly self-centered to write a three-thousand word post that basically boils down to, "I went to an event full of wonderful artists and had a realization about Me." But I'm so thankful I went to Manga Ichiba and that it made me think about the reader's place in community, my place as a reader, my obligations to the wider yaoi community. I believe we have a grand cause: self-expression. I believe every day we live in this world, with its constant commercialization and domination by corporate interests and consolidation of capital in the hands of increasingly robotic and soulless men who do not see the value of art, that cause is under attack. I believe in the power of the True Perverts, of the appreciators of the Weird, of necessity of self-expression in all its forms. And I believe we can all bring forth the whimsy that is Yaoi in the World, as readers and creators both, as participants, as partners in crime.
Some personal notes about Fanime 2026 and Manga Ichiba
I had the unique opportunity to table at the inaugural Manga Ichiba of Fanimecon during Memorial Day weekend of 2026!
I also enjoyed the con as a regular attendee (I cosplayed!).
Note: this is less about Manga Ichiba and more of a personal diary entry. I wish I took better daily notes, but the bottom line is that I will return given the opportunity.
Chapter 1: Yeeting my application to Manga Ichiba
I logged into Twitter one day and found that there was an open call for artists looking to sell their doujins at Fanime for a manga-focused event. Prior to this, I had been a frequenter of local zine fairs and have found a paucity of fanzines being sold, so I was very excited! As I live across the country from Fanime, I wasn't sure if I would go even if I got accepted, but I thought, why not! and decided to submit my application with my circle name, "Passerby C".
I introduced a tag "#camryportfolio" to the tumblr posts that I wanted the curator of MI to look at, and included that as the "website/portfolio" field for my application. Or, so I thought. I accidentally inputted my regular degular art tag, "#camrydraws" into the field. Mind you, this tag had EVERY art I had ever posted on my 11-year old tumblr, including the rough sketches followed by paragraphs of text. In a panic, I edited every single art post I had ever made on tumblr to remove the "#camrydraws" tag if it didn't pass QC; and for those that didn't pass QC, another tag "#camrydrawnt" was introduced. We're off to a great start.
Despite my initial blunder, I got the email for my acceptance in December. At that point, I was still undecided about whether or not I wanted to table or not. The requirements were that I had to have a >= 8 page manga that I had drawn myself. I knew I already had stuff to print, like my 20-page Jayvik comic, my 16-page Tsukitsuru comic, and my 30something-page Hawks comic... I just didn't know if I wanted to actually do it. Because no matter how I spun it, as I was flying cross-country and staying all 4 days of the con, I knew the hotel and flight costs could not be recuperated in a 6 hour timeslot. I would be doing this for the love of the game--
and also as a reward to myself! <- This will be made clear later.
Chapter 2: Con prep (and other things)
Below are the calendars that I was using to keep track of my Fanime prep, which includes handcrafting my Golden Kamuy (Asirpa) cosplay as well as the prep for Manga Ichiba, which was basically formatting my books and redrawing any panels that needed reworking.
Since I was borrowing a friend's sewing machine, I decided to prioritize the Asirpa cosplay over printing my zines. (I can make a separate post about the cosplay making process if there's any interest).
I was initially planning to also print the Hawks comic (link), but during the editing process for my main two doujins (Jayvik link) (Tsukitsuru link) I became so tired of looking at my own art and decided to not print that one. It was made in 2023 and my artistic tastes had evolved way beyond what it was then TvTb. Actually, even looking at my Jayvik and Tsukitsuru which were newer was torturous. I put my whole pussy in these comics at the time, but when I look back at them now, the flaws stick out to me like neon green paint. Artists, I'm sure you understand.
Now, you may be wondering: if you're not keen on printing your old art, why didn't you make a brand new comic? Great question. For this I have a great answer.
This:
This was my graduation day. I was being awarded my Ph.D.
This meant that family was in town for the early part of May, and that January ~ April was dedicated to finishing my dissertation and preparing for the oral defense. This, on top of my desire to âšslayâšin my cosplay, meant that I had no time to prepare anything substantial other than 1 new sticker design and 1 new minizine.
This was what I ended up bringing to Manga Ichiba:
Oh well. Let's hope I have something new for next time.
Chapter 3: Fanime Day 1
I arrived to my hotel (strategically I booked the same location as MI) a little later than I expected due to a flight delay, and opted to grab dinner instead of trying to squeeze in badge pickup at the last minute. I realized on Friday morning that this may have been a grave error on my part: I had picked up my badge and went circled back to the DoubleTree around 11:00 AM after picking up a Subway sandwich. I thought, surely, there would be plenty of books left just one hour after the A slot had started... and was devastated to know some of the doujins I coveted were sold out! I proceeded to acquire as much on my shopping list as I could. I was a little too shy to introduce myself at this time to the artists I bought from, and truthfully, I didn't want to be presumptuous and accidentally initiate a nonconsensual zine trade, so I just snuck around like a regular attendee.
As 2 PM neared (the time at which artist alley opens), I went back to my room upstairs and put on my Asirpa cosplay so I could wander the main con and be first in line to complete this Houseki No Kuni stamp rally. There was one guy ahead of me, though, and I saw him on a different day buying up stock at a table in the night slot of MI that I was also in line for. He doesn't know this, but he is my rival now.
I safely completed the stamp rally, and was finally able to relax. I wandered outside of AA to catch my breath and ran into some fellow Golden Kamuy cosplayers! We traded Instagrams (note: I hadn't updated my art Instagram since 2022;;) and decided to meet for an impromptu photoshoot. It was amazing.
I was headed back to the con, but as I was contemplating on getting in the gigantic line for the shuttle, I got a text from my friend (who I roped into the trip even though she is not a big anime person) saying she was on her way. Due to my friend Ubering me for free, I got to skip the gigantic line for the shuttle and make it in time for the opening of the Friday night slot. The night slot was even more popping than daytime, which may be due to the traffic to night market but also people were there for specific doujins and artists. I remember lining up for the circle "durian soda" (@dohu) who had a line about 30 people strong.
I am nosy, so I eavesdropped on some attendees' conversations. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that they were here specifically for certain circles and doujins, and not just because they happened to be here because of Night Market. One attendee I overheard was here specifically for every Hollanov doujin, and another was here specifically for durian soda's originals as they had been following her since her Kuroko no Basket days. I thought that was so sweet, and I hope durian soda-san had time to speak to the attendees even though the longer the line gets, the greater the (perceived) pressure is to move as quickly as possible and not make small talk.
After I got the books I wanted, I ate the rest of my Subway footlong for dinner.
Chapter 4: Fanime Day 2 (in which I didn't go to Fanime)
On Saturday morning, I touched a lot of grass with my friend. She and I went to the Santa Cruz mountains and despite an agreement to "keep it easy and chill", we ended up walking in rugged terrain for 7 miles.
We also got a flat tire on the way home, which meant that I was not going to make it to the tail end of Manga Ichiba's B slot. When we finally made it back to the hotel, my legs were tired, not so tired that I couldn't browse the Saturday night portion of MI. This was where I ran into my aforementioned "stamp rally rival" again while lining up for a huge line. I don't remember who the artist was, but I *think* they were situated near the central staircase/bathrooms and had tables to their left and right. As a result, the huge line (and curious onlookers) was blocking access to the nearby artist tables until MI staff started doing traffic control. The attendee behind me was getting agitated, saying "are people cutting in line up there?! Why's it taking so long?" to which I said "I think the artist is taking time talking to the attendees" to assuage them. I know the lines can get long, but the best thing about events like these is the opportunity to yap about your specific interests! The artist also had several books at their booth, so I would presume that once people got to the front, they had to peruse through the choices, which may have added to the wait time. I was, again, surprised: it was only day 2 of a first time event... and attendees were already getting... competitive about obtaining their books!
While in line, I was reminded of the concept of "wall" circles (ćŁă”ăŒăŻă«) at Japanese doujin events, in which popular circles are strategically set up on the periphery for easier traffic control. Durian Soda and this particular circle would have been a "wall" circle, and the thing is, they were set up against a wall. In fact, most of the circles had a wall behind us just from the layout of the event.
But since we were set up in a concave space, if the line got too long, it could impede traffic/visibility for adjacent booths. If MI were to be held in the same venue next year, placing the more popular circles at the tail end (booth 20-21) might not be a bad idea.
After I acquired my books and ate dinner with my friend (the Original Krung Thai btw, iykyk), I hobbled back to my room and died on the bed. My legs were in so much pain from standing on my feet all day -- so much so that the thought did cross my mind that I wouldn't be able to table the next morning.
Chapter 5: Fanime Day 3 (it's time...)
I woke up around 5:30 AM for some fucking reason. Thankfully, the ache in my legs had subsided. I knew I only had 30 minutes to set up my booth, so, trying not to disturb my sleeping friend, I made these.
I was giggling to myself as I cut these up. Others who visited my table found it funny, too. It gave me so much joy to see people pointing to these and reading it aloud.
My table setup was minimalistic, with 4 doujins and 1 free mini-zine that I was using in place of a business card, but overall I think I did a decent job filling up 6ft of space. I don't think the attendees cared all that much about an eye-catching setup. They also didn't really care about the quality of the paper. They didn't really care if a zine was printed on copier paper or had a color cardstock cover -- they just wanted the damn books. I had a plan to sell the zines with the slightly torn covers at a lower cost, but I completely blanked due to stress and just started dipping into the damaged stock at the same cost as the good copies... sorry... TvT
My stock was low to begin with. I had brought with me 8 Ichiruki, 11 Usao, 16 Tsukitsuru, and 30 or so Jayvik doujins. I thought Jayvik would be the top seller since it was crowned the most popular ship of 2025, but to my surprise, the demand for Golden Kamuy was higher! I sold out completely of my Usao, Tsukitsuru, and Ichiruki zines despite two of these being printed on my home laser printer. I actually had intended to print 15 Ichiruki, but my printer was plagued with misprints and I ended up with just 8.
For the Usao zine, I also intended to print more, but I ended up changing my mind about the dimensions halfway through the printing process and felt so guilty about using MORE paper that I just... stopped at 11. lmao.
As for the Tsukitsuru zine, I thought, surely, a zine about old man yaoi from a series that hasn't seen much popularity outside of Japan -- surely that would only beget ~5 sales max at the event? And ordered a conservative 11 copies initially: 10 for sale and 1 for display. The initial print order from MCE had a tear along the spine of the booklets, so I had them reprinted and I had 22 copies total. I decided to bring only 16 of the stock because I didn't anticipate much demand. I was pleasantly surprised. I think the demand came from the fact that I was the only circle selling Golden Kamuy stuff and that I was a non-R18 circle.
Another thing that surprised me was that, when I ran out and started telling people "it's available to read on tumblr for free", an attendee responded "I know, but I want the physical copy to hold in my hand." I also love flipping through physical pages, but part of that is still driven by a desire to know the full story, and that desire wanes if I have the option of reading it online. I am deeply flattered that people find my physical fancomics collectible enough to pay me a fee for it, even though they are free to print it themselves for personal use.
Since the crowd had started to die down by ~1 PM and I wanted to browse artist alley and watch the Masquerade at the main con, I cleared out around 2 PM instead of staying for the whole duration of my tabling slot. I still had a lot of Jayvik stock (again, surprising!), but I didn't feel confident in moving any of it, as I imagine those who really wanted the doujin would have dropped by earlier.
At the con, I was in full Asirpa costume trying to find Ogata, who was supposedly there as well, but to no avail! Next year, we must plan an actual Golden Kamuy cosplay gathering.
Chapter 6: Some personal reflections and lessons learned
Truthfully, I didn't quite keep good track of what happened on what day. This whole convention experience was just one big blur of happiness.
It may help to mention that before I moved cross-country for graduate school, I had spent most of my life in the SF Bay Area. I am a first generation Japanese immigrant: I moved from Japan to San Jose at an age when acquiring a second language was as easy as losing the first. In my youth, I yearned for anime and manga. There were no subscription services back then, so we borrowed manga from a store in San Jose Japantown and rented VHS tapes of Crayon Shinchan from a video rental store attached to Mitsuwa Marketplace. When I reached high school, however, it became less and less acceptable in my mother's eyes to "still" be into anime and manga. Despite her trying every year after I turned 16 to convince me to "graduate" from otakuism, I am convinced I can still speak, read, and write Japanese fluently because of my love of anime and manga.
Manga has allowed me to make new friends with fellow artists, cosplayers, and even the guy sitting next to me on the flight home who noticed me reading manga on my iPad. I reunited with old friends and attached faces to mutuals' usernames. I obtained more art than I had ever done at a single event in my entire life. I have always loved drawing, but this trip has only solidified in me that I am utterly in love with manga and art itself, and has shown me that there is an entire community of people who feel the same way.
I'm so glad this event exists. Previously, I had one small, low-stakes attempt at artist alley in 2018 at Kinyoobicon. I didn't cater my table to things that were "in" at the time and had a table full of my specific interests: Hunter x Hunter, Kpop, Daiya no Ace, and Ping Pong the Animation.
Admittedly, this was a trial run: I just wanted to experience what being on the other side of the table was like, and it was definitely fun to practice my setup in my room, but at the event, I just kind of sat there the whole day and didn't have a whole lot of fun. I didn't feel like I was a part of a community, and I also wasn't sure I wanted to spend my time creating more marketable merch to fully commit to being a part of the artist alley community. Even printing out my prints felt inauthentic to me, and looking back on it, I'm glad I just continued to pursue my specific interests.
Fast-forward to 2021. I started graduate school during the Covid lockdown era, and since I spent most of that time indoors, I had more time to dedicate to art. Since all of my Japanese art mutuals at the time were night owls, I would join voicecall sessions in the mornings to motivate myself to work. Eventually, I became inspired by their passion for fan manga, and because I was also very VERY invested in my Tokyo Revengers rarepair, I decided to draw my own! I had no idea what I was doing and worked in a B5 size, which is a little bigger than what I usually go for these days. After 6 months of hallucinating dialogue during my daily walks and pressing CTRL+Z, it was finished. I was very proud of it! You can read it here if you want. I printed exactly 4 copies with Mixam: one for myself and three for my friends in Japan. Since this was such a rarepair, I knew from the start that printing and distributing this doujin widely, especially in the US, would be unrealistic, but there was a small part of be that was jealous of my friends in Japan who got to attend doujin events in person with their rarepair books. Nonetheless, after I moved on from this ship, I continued to make little fancomics for my hyperfixations.
When the lockdown had ended, I began attending local indie comics festivals and zine fairs instead of anime conventions, as they were all free for general attendees and I was trying to save as much money as possible, graduate stipend and all. I gravitate toward a manga-adjacent art style, and I didn't quite find what I was looking for most of the time when I attended these zine fairs: from the hauls people have posted, I think I would probably find more of my vibe at Comitia, for example. In 2025, I attended a local anime convention and found myself amongst a sea of prints and wearable merchandise and virtually no comics or zines. I like buying prints and wearable merchandise to an extent, but I am not inspired enough to want to be on the other side of the table creating and selling these items. I have thought about applying to the zine fairs in my area, but many have a >50% originals rule, which I currently do not satisfy as 100% of my existing comics are fan comics (this will hopefully change in the future. I'm working on it!). With fan comics, I can dedicate 20 pages just to Portray A Vibe or a Capture A Specific Moment without thinking about worldbuilding and character design. I can just use these premade characters and build off of them, so I find it much easier than originals... I'm trying to make an original comic now, and it is so much fun, but so challenging. Anyway -- back on topic.
When Manga Ichiba was accepting artist applications, I felt, "finally! Somewhere I can unabashedly be behind a table filled entirely with fancomics!" And I say "being behind the table" instead of wanting to "sell my fan comics". I would give them out for free if I could, but unfortunately, it takes money to make things. Like, I just wanted the experience of being able to share something with the art community IN PERSON. With Manga Ichiba, I was finally able to feel a sense of community with both the artists and the attendees there. The artists were a part of a Discord group and seeing everybody's WIPs and process pics leading up to the event made me feel so excited and inspired. I loved small talk with the attendees while we were waiting in line. I loved being able to assign human faces to online avatars. I loved being able to slide my chair over to my table neighbor while she showed me her doujin on her iPad that she ran out of time to print!! I loved trading books with people. I loved laughing with the attendees when they noticed my silly signage. I loved the ease of just... running over to the other artists' in my tabling slot with my apron full of cash and pulling out a bill I literally just got from an attendee to buy their thin book of hyperfixations.
With that being said, I made some mistakes. I, stupidly, left stock at home not based on luggage space, but based on vibes. I listened to the demon in my head going "no one's going to want this". It's always better to have too much than too few, especially if it's already been printed and there's space in your luggage. Additionally, I priced and spent at the event based on, again, vibes and gave up way too soon on trying to be financially sound. This was the first event of its kind and I was admittedly treating myself to a vacation to celebrate my graduation, so yes, this is a bit of an anomaly --but I want my participation in future US doujin events to be long-term: whether this be investing in a better home printer and hand-binding zines or sacrificing a little bit of comfort by sharing hotel rooms with more people, I'd like to investigate cost-saving measures so I can keep my prices fair while having the revenue subsidize some of my expenses. I don't particularly want to make money off of fanwork, so I think as I transition into having more original work, I would likely price the originals a bit higher than the fanwork just because I would like to get paid for my original ideas. That's all in the future, though.
Anyway, TLDR: I loved it. Was fun. Will return. (with R18!? maybe?! and an actual budget) :3
if youâve been following me for 4+ years iâm certain you could make a chart of every character iâve gotten attached to and it would tell you more about me than any therapistâs notes ever could. but we donât have the time for that. there are other things at hand. do not even worry about it. next exhibit. weâre moving along. weâre walking
I got angry watching that one lady GET OUT OF THE CAR to let Whittaker take the wheel after a fucking 15 hour shift at the ER. What the fuck. KEEP DRIVING, SISTER.
YEAH YEAH I'm sure it was done out of practicality so that Robby could make direct eye contact with Whittaker as he drives off, but come on. Let Whittaker ride shotgun while he mans the aux cord...
Thank god karaoke MelSantos was there to salve my ick.
cool af drunk tsurumi post, i was yearning for a quiet drunk tsurumi content and now that i have seen yours it's everything i hoped for!
ahhh <3333333333 thank you so much!!! I think drunk tsurumi being quiet is such a contrast to how he is when sober, it's kinda sexy... and his men who are weak to gap moe will be staring disrespectfully >:)
I don't like just how much screentime he gets despite being a non-character. He also came out of nowhere as Robby's "cool biker friend" and I'm like -- Robby already has cool friends (work wives) and they are named DANA EVANS and JACK ABBOT.
Why are they spending so much time with this guy? To prove that Robby's "cool by association"? Robby's cool because he is saving lives every day. Duke's not that cool. He's impatient and denies having a heart condition and despite being warned by Perlah to not hit on the nurse with a boyfriend, he still quips about never changing that behavior. He also refers to motorcycles like they're his girlfriends. God, I can't stand this guy. Maybe I just don't like biker culture in general.
Bring that lady back who was roasting Robby for his motorcycle hobby, please!!
