Official announcement!! Me and my friend @friedricecomic are making a teen romcom graphic novel with an asexual protagonist!
The Publishers Weekly blurb doesn't completely explain the vibes of the story, so:
Bee has never been asked out. Yet everyone around her seems to already be in relationship or is in the process of getting one. Though Bee loves all things romantic - the tropes, the thrills, the flairs and fireworks - she has never fallen in love, and has no idea how to even begin.
When one of Bee’s best friend asks for her help to secure the affections of the most popular boy in school, Bee finally has had enough of playing pretend and decides to get some real world experience to back her advice. Relying on her encyclopedic knowledge of romantic tropes, she randomly chooses a boy to crush on and undertakes a year-long experiment to win his heart, documenting it all on her Tumblr.
It works. Except Bee is slowly gaining feelings for her lab rat. When the relationship starts becoming physical, Bee begins to realise that there are some forms of romance that she cannot reciprocate.
Will Bee find her happily ever after, or will the fantasy come crashing down?
Bee is demiromantic asexual. I myself am demisexual, and my editor is a-spec. This comic is for us aces who long for the dream of love and to be recognised for who we are.
Most of the main cast is queer! Bee's best friend is aroace to balance out the sap, but the others... are B-plot spoilers. :)
The main cast is entirely AAPI.
Applied Romantics is inspired by late 90s - early 00s romantic comedies, and my youth pouring through teen magazines, blogs and shows. I really enjoyed the cozy whimsy of Y2K rom-com (my favourites: 13 Going on 30, Sleepless in Seattle, Pushing Daisies), and noticed how so many of them were epistolary i.e using the technology of the time, like e-mail, diaries. So I set mine during the hipster peak Tumblr era of 2008-2012, incorporating the ask box, MSN, text messages and blog posts.
Official announcement!! Me and my friend @friedricecomic are making a teen romcom graphic novel with an asexual protagonist!
The Publishers Weekly blurb doesn't completely explain the vibes of the story, so:
Bee has never been asked out. Yet everyone around her seems to already be in relationship or is in the process of getting one. Though Bee loves all things romantic - the tropes, the thrills, the flairs and fireworks - she has never fallen in love, and has no idea how to even begin.
When one of Bee’s best friend asks for her help to secure the affections of the most popular boy in school, Bee finally has had enough of playing pretend and decides to get some real world experience to back her advice. Relying on her encyclopedic knowledge of romantic tropes, she randomly chooses a boy to crush on and undertakes a year-long experiment to win his heart, documenting it all on her Tumblr.
It works. Except Bee is slowly gaining feelings for her lab rat. When the relationship starts becoming physical, Bee begins to realise that there are some forms of romance that she cannot reciprocate.
Will Bee find her happily ever after, or will the fantasy come crashing down?
Bee is demiromantic asexual. I myself am demisexual, and my editor is a-spec. This comic is for us aces who long for the dream of love and to be recognised for who we are.
Most of the main cast is queer! Bee's best friend is aroace to balance out the sap, but the others... are B-plot spoilers. :)
The main cast is entirely AAPI.
Applied Romantics is inspired by late 90s - early 00s romantic comedies, and my youth pouring through teen magazines, blogs and shows. I really enjoyed the cozy whimsy of Y2K rom-com (my favourites: 13 Going on 30, Sleepless in Seattle, Pushing Daisies), and noticed how so many of them were epistolary i.e using the technology of the time, like e-mail, diaries. So I set mine during the hipster peak Tumblr era of 2008-2012, incorporating the ask box, MSN, text messages and blog posts.
Quite a last minute announcement on this Tumblr, but I will be hosting a panel/conversation with Scott McCloud, Neil Cohn and Nick Sousanis pretty soon - as part of the Cartoonist Cooperative's Nib & Ink Festival.
Register here!
Join cartoonist and comics devices curator Reimena Yee as she introduces the work of comics scholars and educators Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics), Dr. Neil Cohn (Speaking in Pictures) and Nick Sousanis (Unflattening). Together they will discuss the exciting developments in comics academia, and how cartoonists and academics benefit from each other’s expertise.
Quite a last minute announcement on this Tumblr, but I will be hosting a panel/conversation with Scott McCloud, Neil Cohn and Nick Sousanis pretty soon - as part of the Cartoonist Cooperative's Nib & Ink Festival.
Register here!
Join cartoonist and comics devices curator Reimena Yee as she introduces the work of comics scholars and educators Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics), Dr. Neil Cohn (Speaking in Pictures) and Nick Sousanis (Unflattening). Together they will discuss the exciting developments in comics academia, and how cartoonists and academics benefit from each other’s expertise.
I am stuck at a place of limbo regarding how I want to approach my online presence since 2024 - somewhere around when genAI became a thing and online communities began to fracture.
The degradation of social media/the mainstream internet demoralised me so much in ways I never really realised until recently. I am reluctant to post art or my life publicly with the same naive freedom I used to have, which is negatively affecting my presence online. Look, I totally get that no audience is owed anything of my life or artistry and I don't have to feel obliged to speak blah blah - the problem is the level I was posting before the Degradation, in terms of frequency and content, was actually considered moderate and detached. Now I am forced to pull back further, to protect both my art and my own person from being exploited.
Nowadays I find it a chore to come out of my Lurker's Cave to post. Even if it's an update about my webcomic, or the events/projects I am doing/organising, or some part of my creative process. It sucks!! I used to love being so open about my process - and I still long to share thoughts and pieces of my craft. But I am too wary, too frightened, too tired. Every post comes with the fear that some techbro somewhere will retroactively take away my agency and subject my postings to "analysis" "improvement" "fodder", a fear which has been proven time and time again for the last two years.
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For the entirety of my online presence, since the days of Neopets and Deviantart, attempts to become viral or marketable had never appealed to me. Idk if that is due to my stubbornness, my deeply incurable Lurker's Syndrome, or some other curse. I am not what I would call an artist/person naturally poised to become the viral darling with the popular art style or webcomic, nor do I want to be.
I like to say "thank god I never became famous/popular", in reference to the fact that all throughout my teens and early twenties, my wish to become the Big Popular Number-So-Big Webcomic Artist was never fulfilled. Thank god I never became famous. I really like the niche readership that I've cultivated, which includes all of you here on Tumblr and reading this big block of text. I never have to worry about you guys, you get me. I am happy to stay at this level.
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I used to believe that once I entered traditional publishing, I'd never really need to hustle to grow my readership. I can tend to my existing niche readership, and the machine of publishing will handle the wider world.
The reality is, publishing is brainpoisoned by social media algorithm viral marketing and now they expect their authors to do all sorts of labour: get on Tiktok/some form of video content-making, make goofy meme videos, tropify their novels, post constantly, take on a hustle hypebeast always-so-happy persona. This is hell to me. There's a reason I became an artist/writer, and it's so I never needed to display my physical body in place of my work. I'm an introvert, a lurker, a homebody. Writing is my primary form of personalisation. I don't know how to market outside for a wider world, simply because I never really marketed. I just posted my posts in my normal tone of voice, with my typical rambling wall of text, and let fate take the wheel.
But outside forces are demanding me to show my face, my body, etc, to trim down my words into soundbytes or easy words or marketing tags - in ways that feel emotionally inauthentic to me.
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For the whole of 2025 I withdrew from social media, because of two things: needing to recover mentally/physically/spiritually from years-long stress, and a horrible creative block.
Actually three things. The third thing is the pressure I've felt regarding posting, which I've explained above. The fear of genAi and the fear of being forced to hustle-post: in essence, the fear of being exploited.
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This year I am feeling much better.
My horrible creative block has finally lifted. This block was the worst that I ever had. It came as a result of juggling my Masters, my ex-dayjob's internal crisis and my visa status in Australia. The stress of the last 3 years compounded, and in 2025 (more like, middle of 2025), I finally was given the room to decompress.
I had difficulty finding the motivation to write or draw: I still had the desire, but throwing down lines and sentences was a herculean effort. I would tinker a bit, then my mind became blank. The energy just wasn't there. I was incredibly fatigued. I doubted my ability to do storytelling, that I would ever finish a project.
I finished my first graphic novel script earlier this month (it's the Ace YA GN; you'll see the official announcement later). My desire to make things and my energy to fulfil that desire is now calibrated correctly. I am still somewhat ragged from stress fatigue (to the point where I worry I might have developed, or am on the verge of developing, an actual medical condition). Regardless I feel ready to come back and be myself again, except...
The withdrawal has made it harder to resume the habit of posting, even at the moderate levels... to return to the old online presence. That's not good when I have a webcomic rerun to promote and another two webcomics I am pulling out of hiatus.
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Maybe the strat is to pretend the degradation of the internet is unreal; that it is a problem that occurs elsewhere. Like, I mean, in the time I was away I've been lurking about the Alternative Web. Places like Melonland, Neocities, my own websites/blog/newsletter and what not. Hell, I'd even consider the ghost town of Tumblr as Alternative. All of the things I feared are almost non-existent in these realms.
Yet the strat feels inauthentic to me. I can't just pretend the context that affects my career won't affect me. It has real-life consequence. Even if I were to only post on Tumblr, there is Bluesky, Discord, Instagram etc.
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I consider myself an artist with deeply-rooted loyalties to the internet. My commitment to still making webcomics (instead of fully defecting to traditional publishing) pretty much seals that. I still can't let go of the idea of the internet I was raised on, that I actually got to live through for the majority of my time online. I am just demoralised by how far it has fallen. I don't know how to continue operating at this point.
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I don't really have a point or conclusion for my big block of text. These are just ruminations of the last couple of years.
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I guess I will just start posting more here? I still love Tumblr. OTL
Believe me when I say this is my first time intentionally designing a character for the role of being a love interest. Usually if a character ends up becoming another’s romantic interest in my other graphic novels it’s by happenstance. Dev on the other hand is different.
He’s a pretty unconventional atypical romcom lead in a lot of ways; maybe the closest archetype would be the boy next door? But he isn’t even that.
Still someone of his face and personality is not the subject of a 2000s teen romcom story set in the US, which is where my next GN is set in and inspired by. The idea behind him is that he is handpicked out of the high school popularity dumpster by my protagonist to be her “test subject” for a “Find Someone to Fall in Love With” experiment. So as a lab rat he has to be extremely ordinary and average. Or is he? Hmm.
This teen magazine spread is a very idealised drawing of him lol (seeing him through my protagonist’s eyes). The two Devs (Dev Patel and Dev Mohan) are pretty much the models I based him off, though those two are stupidly good-looking. 😅🤣
My shorthand for him isn’t very solid yet. Among the main cast he has been the hardest to nail down his character design. Mainly cos he veers extremely closely to my one of two types of male default designs, which are both reflections of my own taste (the Zeynel/redacted-character type and the Hephaestion/Ilias type). Kinda would like to avoid Dev falling into that quicksand… but I should prolly embrace it. Idk.
Commissions are open now! (More information on prices and how to book.) I will draw all kinds of animal companions, including bugs, reptiles and horses.
New illustration that works as an update for the Book One cover!! The old cover is more than 10 years old now and isn't representative of what Book One is: a sweet story about how our OTP got together!!
The idea behind this illo is to feature all of the carpets that are narratively importantly across the four Books. See which ones you remember! The big red one is the first carpet that Zeynel and Ayse sold together. Anyway, that idea means I have to draw carpets by hand... again. I just can't escape this particular brand of suffering. RIP
The lineart. Procreate 6B pencil brush for everything. This took like, 8 hours???
Colours in Photoshop. This took around 3 hours.
Part of the reason why I made this drawing, besides to celebrate/promote the completion of the Book One rerun... is because I have even more foolish fantasies about bookbinding. By bookbinding I mean, I want to bind the TCM graphic novel series myself for my own archive. This is meant to be the dust jacket for the individual book.
I appreciate the original English edition (now out of print cos of the unfortunate demise of the publisher), but I really want an edition outside of the French one that captures my book design ambitions for this webcomic.
So yes, I also have three more illustrations for the remaining books. I don't know when I will start the bookbinding - it's a skill I really want to learn.
Book One of my webcomic The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya just finished its rerun! Read the entire thing now on the fancy new site! (<-link)
The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya is an Eisner-nominated completed webcomic set in 17th century Turkiye and 18th century England. Zeynel, a former scholar turned carpet merchant, goes away on a business trip and is murdered by a suspicious traveller. He awakens to discover he has transformed into a vampire, just like his killer. Desperate to cling onto what remains of his humanity, Zeynel returns home to his wife Ayşe. It is their shared love and faith that gives Zeynel the strength to endure and to one day save the soul of the one who killed him.
Book One is a romantic story about how Zeynel and Ayşe met as adolescents, and the 25 years of marriage they lived through together - before the heartache that happens in Book Two.
The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya Volume 1 rerun
End of Book One
Mega Update 2 of ??
(READ the Latest Update, starting from this page)
Another mega update!
We begin this update with Zeynel confessing his worst insecurity: of being so studious and so malleable that he basically has no self image. He thinks his fate is to be a scholar just like the rest of his family, but something still bothers him about it.
Ayse is unable to resist getting Zeynel out of his shell. So she enlists her father, to speak to Zeynel's father - a frigid, intimidating professor. That doesn't go anywhere. So...
Ayse then enlists the help of his sister instead. She invites him into her family's workshop, to witness the world of being a carpet weaver/merchant for himself.
As the days pass, Zeynel grows smitten with carpets... and perhaps, quietly, a certain ambitious dreamer.
Despite his anxiety, he develops enough courage to claim a future for himself. Thus begins probably our (by this, I mean me and the OG readers') favourite sequence in Volume I: the 25 years montage of their relationship!! 😍 OTP!!!!
And that's the end of Book 1!!! So wild how time flies...
Book 2 will return mid-May!
I have tons of events upcoming to prepare for (you will see in a future post). And hopefully after that I will be better about posting the updates more frequently instead of in these huge giant batches. @_@
In the meantime, here is a preview of BIG illustration I am doing. New Book 1 cover :O
Note: The comics transcript is not available until end of the next week since I hadn't had the time to prepare them. Sorry!!
The completed 10th Anniversary PDF/ebook edition of The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya is available in my online shop!!
Read ahead of the webcomic updates. 600 + remastered pages of Volumes 1 and 2. In one handy PDF. Pay as you want. Get it for free or chip in some moolah. I appreciate the readership either way. :D
I'm 3/4 of the way into the script of my first teen graphic novel and feel confident enough to start drawing the character dynamic between the cast. Here are some mini-comics featuring them!! Will prolly reveal them more when the time is right.
BECOMING A DEATH DOULA FOR THE ALEXANDER ROMANCE
May 11 2026, 12-1.30pm GMT 0, Institute of Classical Studies (Online via Zoom)
Part of the CRSN/ICS summer series Overlooked/Undercooked: Classical Reception in Colonial and Postcolonial Southeast Asia
As a chronicle of one of history’s greatest conquerors, the Alexander Romance’s travels across time and space exceed even that of its much-storied subject. In her webcomic Alexander, the Servant & the Water of Life, however, Malaysian-Australian artist Reimena Yee ventures to ask if the contemporary world still needs a storytelling tradition that romanticises an imperial vision of conquest and bloodshed. Mustering a dizzying array of illustration styles to match the Romance’s diffusion to both ends of Eurasia and beyond, the webcomic depicts a chameleonic Alexander whose quest for immortality increasingly resembles a one-way trip into the afterlife. Yee, whose work on the webcomic is ongoing, will speak about why she considers herself a death doula for the Romance, which moments in the webcomic were inspired by her Malaysian upbringing and what she makes of the classical tradition’s language of inheritance. There will also be opportunities to learn more about Yee’s extensive research process and previous collaboration with the British Library.
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This composition was something I had in mind for a while. I was circling around the theme of the artist/author as responsible for the enduring image of Alexander… though now that he’s under my guardianship, we’re going to be doing things a bit differently.
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This academic series I am a part of is so cool!! It’s literally exactly the kind of occasion I created the webcomic for!! I am so excited to join my fellow ASEAN academics and artists in sharing our approaches in interacting with Greco-Roman studies and culture. Thank you to Dr Leslie Wong for the invite! 👀🤩
The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya Volume 1 rerun Mega Update 1 of ??
(READ the Latest Update, starting from this page)
I had every intent to diligently announce updates for the TCM rerun (in big batches like this), until life reminded me that I'm an extremely busy person juggling too many obligations.
Anyway I am back - from being a guest for my BFF's wedding, travelling back to Melbourne from Malaysia, opening the 2026 edition of the Melbourne Comics Art Jam, going to a Josh Groban concert, then immediately having to go to China last minute for a week-long author assignment, then back to Melbourne to recover for 4 days before many more work things. It's wild!! ARGH!!
We begin this update with Zeynel meeting his mentee, a highly talented rug artisan anxious over her ability to live up to her ambition.
We then flashback to the part of TCM we (the veteran readers) love: Zeynel and Ayse's meet-cute, 25 years ago when they were just fresh-faced teenagers!!
Ayse seriously doubts the compatibility of this random shy, anxious nerd that her family is hoping would be a candidate for a good husband. She is only interested in a marriage to advance her dreams of installing a carpet merchant business in the big city - how could a pencil-pushing scholar help her, especially when she realises he's hiding a secret behind that affable persona?
The website where these pages are will have more of my retrospective commentary, but I want to say that I really loved this set of pages (and future ones about the meet-cute). They represent the point where I finally got the hang of the story I want to write and draw. Hope you enjoy (re)reading them too!
Note: The comics transcript is not available until end of the next week since I hadn't had the time to prepare them. Sorry!!
The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya Volume 1 rerun is already out: read the first pages here, with commentary!
Pages will update in batches every Saturday and Wednesday!
We start with Zeynel in the middle of tempting a client with magnificent carpet wares, and with me contending with the fact that I'd be drawing so many elaborate patterns. @_@
The art I started TCM on looks so chunky now compared to how I draw nowadays xDD It's still pretty alright though - other than me not yet landing Zeynel's soft, elegant character design. Will get there!!
And then we end it with Zeynel closing a pretty sweet deal and getting back to doing what he loves the most: falling head over heels for his wife. :3
The 10th anniversary webcomic rerun of the Eisner-nominated graphic novel duology.
10 years ago, I launched THE CARPET MERCHANT OF KONSTANTINIYYA, and it changed my life forever.
To celebrate, the 10th Anniversary Edition of my very first completed webcomic will begin February 18, 2026 - updating every Wednesday and Saturday.
The prologue is up on the site right now!! The webcomic rerun will contain remastered pages, retrospective commentary and a transcript.
Please go give a read!! Thank you for your support!
(Long-time followers, please click the Read More)
YALL CAN YOU BELIEVE HOW LONG IT'S BEEN????
I remember the first time I posted TCM on this Tumblr blog. Things were so different back then. I was so different then too lol.
I'm so excited to share this webcomic again. Not just to relive the memory, but to honour my appreciation and gratitude for the community and opportunity this creative work has blessed me with. You guys were among the very first people to read and support TCM (and The World in Deeper Inspection)... I will never forget that!! < 33
I probably won't be posting the rerun updates on Tumblr unless it's a milestone. If you want to follow the rerun, please subscribe via RSS (copy and paste this link into your RSS reader).
