A. M. Herrington

Online, you can find quite a lot databases for photography in the public domain that you could use (always check their specific rules regarding commercial use), like Pixabay, Unsplash, or Pexels.

But, even a tad more charming, there are also hundreds of thousands of paintings in the public domain. If the artist has been dead for over 70 years, the image is (typically) in the public domain and can be used however you want it. This is not a new concept, big publishers like Penguin and the Oxford’s World Classics do the same!

When you use such images, always make sure that 1. the painting really is in the public domain (sometimes the art itself may be in the public domain, but not the photograph you are using!), and 2. that it is an appropriate image. Sometimes, an image may look innocent and fitting, but would actually cause irritation, like accidentally using a painting of siblings for a romance or using a controversial image for different reasons.

Some places you can find art in the public domain (always double check!): National Gallery of Art, Artvee, Public Domain Image Archive, and most websites of bigger museums.

Even when I was “cis” I had an incident where my gf at the time, a drunk cis white woman, literally spent an hour trying to pin me down and rip off my clothes to fuck me as I was trying to care for her, despite repeated refusals. It reached the point I had to leave the room after escaping her and hold the door shut until she gave up, and any time I mentioned it to others back then the concern was not her trying to sexually assault me, but that if she had succeeded I’d have been at fault for being a Black “man” having sex with a drunk white woman.

he told me point blank that if I called the cops, he'd lie and say I was the abuser. we both knew who they would believe. I was more scared of losing my cool and fighting back than I was scared of being hit. I preferred being hit to the screaming.

it didn't start out like that, of course, he started out by guilting me about the fact that I didn't want to fuck him. I didn't fuck him because he was abusive about other things. it's always stuck with me that sex was essentially the last thing he got abusive about before I left, I think it took him that long and had to start slow because he was protecting his image of himself as a victim.

he had to build that protection up before he could try to actually force me to fuck him. he did not, of course, ever threaten me before I said no. that would've made things too clear to ignore, it was always a day or a week later. it always started as "I feel undesirable because you don't want to fuck me".

you understand that this is rape, right? I waited until now to mention that we were both "cis" at the time because "husband beating his wife" is understood differently than if the genders were the other way around, especially for transfems.

i am a trans woman, but i only realized this two or three years ago.

i am a single mother with sole custody of my 7yo daughter.

do whatever bioessentialist math u gotta to parse this situation.

my ex could give classes on ignoring boundaries. i recently saw the movie obsession, and to say it was triggering for me would be an understatement. i was never allowed even a moment to myself. she would hover over me at all times, and every miniscule thing that i did was noted, logged, and tallied against some master formula in her head to determine whether i was being a sufficiently good "boyfriend". failing this metric would lead to bouts of screaming, sleep deprivation, psychological torture, and physical violence. i still have the scars.

the *only* reliable way for me to mitigate the damage being done to me, was to fuck her. at first i could avoid the fights this way. then i could only interrupt them. eventually this became simply a consequence. she would scream at me until i was too dissociated to properly understand my situation, and i would wait for the tone shift that meant i should get ready to... be raped.

and then i discovered in the worst possible way that she had been lying to me for months abt being on birth control

i wasn't given any say in the situation. she ran back to her family some 1500 miles away and told me i could either go with her or have no presence in my child's life. the things i suffered there were worse. it took years of legal action for me to get away from her with my child. this informs my relationships to this day, nearly a decade later.

for years. YEARS. i was unable to understand what happened to me as sexual assault. because trans women aren't oppressed before they come out. because tops can't be assaulted. because the big strong "man" can never be a victim. because there simply isn't vocabulary for these experiences. because because because.

the first time i ever read the phrase "self-inflicted corrective sexual violence" i spent hours sobbing uncontrollably. this doesn't come close to capturing the essence of all my experiences, but it does fit several of them. the idea that not only were such things possible but also that *what happened to me WAS sexual assault* is the only thing that's allowed me to start healing.

THE ONLY THING because not a single person in my life even considered the notion. my mother berated me for not thinking abt the consequences of *my* actions. my friends laughed abt how it was too bad i got "baby trapped". my subsequent relationships constantly pressed for more and more details digging for the part where i must have done something to deserve it. even my therapist at the time suggested that it was "fear of impending fatherhood" that gave rise to these feelings.

none of that is true. i was repeatedly raped, in a way that resulted in a child, that i now am solely responsible for. she's the light of my life, and the best kid i know, and none of this is her fault. i'll do anything to make sure she has a better life than me. that's the only way i'll ever rlly make peace, i think, with the fact that i will never fully recover from this trauma. there's only so much healing to be done. the rest is scars.

so please. please. please understand that just because i was "topping". just because i was "stronger". just because i was a "man". doesn't mean that it could never happen to someone like me.

I'M NORMAL AND CHILL ABOUT MY BEST FRIEND AND I TOTALLY AM NOT MAD THAT WE LIVE 6000KM APART (<- me when i lie through my fucking teeth)

I was among the participants that were going to exhibit my comic at Shortbox Comic Fair 2025. I applied to this fair due to its reputation and very few, almost no bad press about it. The only example I could find is the organizer's anti-competition statement here. Only during the course of participating in this fair, I learned why the Shortbox brand was so clean: the sole organizer, Zainab, would often send out emails to participants, scolding them and telling them to NOT say anything bad about their own Shortbox comics, or say anything against her decision throughout the fair. She was dictating our tone in both public and private spaces. 

As for my case, I only communicated with Zainab via email. I tried to be as transparent with my progress as possible, though I was often met with a dismissive tone. One month prior to the deadline, I asked Zainab if my comic could have an 'extended' version, which I can link to Shortbox' customers after the fair so they can access it for free. She didn't comment or review my comic, but copy-pasted a statement from the participant guidebook about "exhibiting work post-Shortbox" (to summarize, we're not allowed to lower our prices or put up the comic for free immediately after the fair ends, an example can be seen here). Instead of a vendor fee, 2025 SBCF participants would have to deal with a 'drop out' fee, which applied to me later.

The five months after the Lunar New Year in March 2025, the comic for Shortbox was my entire priority. I took no breaks to finish the comic as fast as I can. During this period I didn’t have any income from commissions or freelance, I wanted to put my all into the comic even if the sales in October were close to nothing. All the risks were on the artists who couldn’t get any pay for the comic making period, while the organizer had little risk on it if there were only a few of us who couldn't make it to October. 

I submitted my comic in 65 pages, all proofread and sent in at the end of July which was the deadline. My comic previews were even posted on Shortbox page. In mid August, Zainab got back to me to tell me that my comic is ineligible for submission because it's 'incomplete', and she demanded a drop out fee from me. It completely took me by surprise. It was incredibly frustrating because I had already brought up the extended version of my comic beforehand, and I had asked for the organizer's help in amending the ending to fit her 'completion' criteria. Therefore I told her she would have to wait for the 'drop out' fee that she demanded from me. During this period, she had proceeded to erase all of my involvement with SBCF'25. I believe this is a silencing PR tactic she had used with other artists with smaller voices.

As for my comic currently, it's already done and has been translated into Vietnamese, since I'm planning to sell the comic at my local conventions (Ho Chi Minh City). Please note that I had to abide by the Shortbox rule to not sell my comic anywhere during the fair period - October 2025 - that I had to skip participating in the only one artist alley we had in this city. Conventions in Vietnam are... very sparse especially for art and comics people, to put it lightly.

If this happened in gamedev, it'd be much easier for me to find outlets to speak out. I feel especially annoyed... and angry that artists have been such pushovers that we allow any level of micro or macro-aggressions to happen to us and just let the abuse continue. When I saw how much support and also pushback from the public when Horses gamedevs spoke out when their game wasn't allowed to be on Steam, I felt the same way: people turning a blind eye to Steam’s monopoly and their first reaction being "You'd have other vendors/publishers to pitch to". While SBCF is not a monopoly, it’s still the most well-known online comic fair in English. Artists have very little to no avenue to pitch their comic, especially if they’re new to the scene, and are not well informed on the existence of other online events if not already blacklisted by Zainab. She insists on claiming that others are plagiarizing her format, that they’re trying to become SBCF’s ‘competitors’ while in reality, these are organized by people who simply liked the idea of having more comics.

While sympathizing with Zainab's background - a brown Muslim woman who has experienced the worst parts of the comics industry - her mistreatment towards the artists who have built the reputation of the fair is, to me, intolerable.

I’m making this statement to warn other artists who are new to the comic scene, that if you also happen to get starstruck when being accepted to this seemingly prestigious fair. This is to remind long-time supporters of Shortbox the kind of behavior Zainab has behind the scenes, how she treats your favorite artists, and why so many of us decided to keep silent: it is to protect ourselves but also to protect the reputation of Shortbox.

Don’t apply to Shortbox. Support the artists directly when they post on their storefront. A lot of us posted our SBCF comics for free or at a discount after the fair was over. At the end of the day, we just want people to read our comics, and that’s good enough.

Cheers,

The following has been copied over from our new Substack.

Dear reader,

OFIC Mag is back! Here’s what we’ve been up to:

We ended our print run with issue #13 last October. It was not an easy or willing choice for us. Being a print publication was part of our initial vision for OFIC. Unfortunately our subscription platform of choice was Patreon, which eliminated its “per creation” billing option last fall. We publish three issues per year, so we charged three times a year. With that change forcing us to reconsider our workflow, we decided that the complications of printing and distribution were no longer conducive to our long-term goals—our long-term goals being: keep going for as long as possible.

Initially I intended to pivot to a fully online publication with stories posted on our website, because that’s how most digital lit mags work. But I started doing research into how other mags operate, and I discovered that while I love the aesthetic of many of them and the work they produce, I really hate how they’re organized. Namely, you click a random title of a random piece and start reading. With print, you can just turn pages; there’s an inherent order to it. But with online magazines presented as tables of contents with no information but a work’s title and its author, there’s nothing that really encourages you to read.

What I found myself thinking repeatedly was, “Just send me a story. I just want to read a story.” I don’t want to click on a link to a page with the story on it. I don’t want to click on a link that takes me to a page of other links, especially if those links are just author names I don’t recognize. I don’t want to be met with a paywall after three paragraphs. I just want a story, in full, in my inbox at regular intervals.

Then I thought, “Hey, why don’t I just...do that?”

And here we are.

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From the article:

After decades of ecological decline, China’s Yangtze River, Asia’s longest and one of the most degraded waterways in the world, is showing hopeful signs of recovery. According to a new study published in Science, fish populations in the river have more than doubled in just two years following the country’s sweeping 10-year fishing ban introduced in 2021. The research, led by Fangyuan Xiong of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, highlights not only a boost in fish biomass and diversity but also an encouraging rebound of several endangered species. Experts say the results demonstrate how large-scale, well-funded political decisions can successfully reverse damage to freshwater ecosystems. “It is really fantastic news. It is one of the first times that we can say that government measures have not just worked, but have really improved things,” said Sébastien Brosse, a biologist at the University of Toulouse and co-author of the study.