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)
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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.
Hey, former Shortbox participant here. I originally didn't really plan to reply to this message, but I kept thinking about it and it frustrates me deeply.
I'm sincerely sorry that your experience was so unpleasant. However, the hyperbolic way you're describing Zainab's behaviour and work ethic feel very misleading.
Shortbox Comic's Fair is indeed a one-person led project. I will point out that she isn't getting paid for it either. She does not take any share of the profits generated by the fair - the only percentage that's taken off goes to the website hosting fee. The entire rest of the money goes to the comic artists. Comparing her to a giant like Steam feels incomprehensible, she is not a mega corporation?? If you go and table at a comics convention, you have to pay a fee for your table - it isn't even the case here. You no longer have to pay as you enter the fair. And we as artists get a lot more monetary profit and visibility that she ever does.
The rules of the fair are simple and pretty clear. The comic you're presenting has to be a complete story. It is very clearly stated ahead of applying, once you've gotten in, and throughout the fair. If she did not tell you she agreed to amending them for you, then it feels very unsurprising that failling to follow them would mean not being able to participate.
She is one person, having to deal with 150+ different people. She has to keep things clear, succinct and organised. She cannot amend rules for each person participating, and I don't know if you realise how complicated it would be to follow up with each buyer for additional content. The minimum amount of pages asked (16) is an accessible one. If you were not able to finish your story in time, then it is on your ability to manage your expectations for what you produced, not on her. It does not mean you didn't work hard, I know how it is to want to show the best of what you can do for such an exciting event. It just means you have to have a clearer understanding of what is doable to make in the time you have to make it.
The rules of having to present a finished story goes towards a very simple goal, that is coherent with the rest of the Fair's ethic. Having a professional event, where you can find quality one-shot comics. In that spirit, it is not tone policing to ask of the participants not to disparage their own work?? It feels very young and unprofessional to be flippant and dismissive about the work you're making for an event that is all about loving comics. The instance I know of when this happened and Zainab had to send a reminder to people not to behave this way, the message was firm. It was not scolding. We aren't children. It isn't abuse to expect people to respect themselves and other people's work. From my experience, she's never policed how we talk about the fair either.
In all the emails I've exchanged with her during my two participations, she was to the point. She was never aggressive or unpleasant, I believe she simply has so fucking much to deal with, I do not blame her for being succinct while answering emails and queries from 150 people for months at a time.
She puts countless hours of work in making the Fair possible, and she's very upfront that she's doing it at a loss. She's always been accomodating within the rules stated, and was prompt to reply anytime there was a technical issue. In my eyes she was very patient as I, for example, sent her three consecutive emails, having changed the English title of my comic last minute when she'd already been putting things online.
I haven't been online enough or participated recently enough to know about her claiming she's being plagiarized by competitors so I can't answer to that.
It just feels very misleading to me to tell people that Shortbox is secretly an abusive environment to make comics in. It's a passion project. She isn't an all powerful abusive tyrant, she is someone who created an event that grew in popularity and became this big thanks to her work ethic.
All the people I know who participated had a fun time, for me it was a great opportunity to finish a comic and have it be seen and read by many more people that I would have reached otherwise.
Even friends who got in but didn't finish in time weren't critical of the event. Sometimes our eyes are bigger than our stomach and we expect too much of ourselves, and it's disappointing to not be able to complete something.
I'm glad you were able to share your comic later on, and hope that you keep enjoying making them.
reblogging to chime in, i participated in the SBCF 2024 and seeing all the following discourse has been really interesting because i see a lot of pretty black and white takes, so i wanted to put in my two cents about my own experience.
the biggest issue i had participating in the fair was communication, part of it was definitely my fault, i had just turned 18 and this was my first step into working with an actual publisher, indie or otherwise.
at this point in time i was still sending emails from my personal icloud account on my iphone, and this caused some confusion with zainab, who had asked me to resend important exhibitor information that she hadn't received despite me sending it. i resent the information, she thanked me briefly, and told me that she had no record of my email despite corresponding with me a couple times prior. after this email i didnt hear from her for two months.
i sent another email sometime during those two months about asking for a change to be made to a link on my exhibitor profile and didn't hear back, at this point i was getting pretty stressed as the final deadline was getting closer and i had no idea whether or not zainab had received any of the final files. (in hindsight it definitely was not as urgent as it felt at the time but again, i was 18 and this was a big deal! i wanted to make sure everything went smoothly.)
to try and clear things up a final time, i sent a brief email to zainab asking to clarify that she had updated my email and received all the final files.
(me saying i was frustrated was unnecessary but again, hindsight is 20/20)
two days later, zainab emailed me this in response:
which was definitely a uh, passionate response.
the same day i emailed her back an apology and told her i'd be more patient next time.
also around this time, zainab had posted a preview of my comic on all the shortbox social media pages using PNGs that had been so compressed they were completely illegible. genuinely it was impossible to see anything that was happening on the pages i submitted. she didn't send any kind of email alerting me to this issue, and by this point i didn't want to poke the bear and just let it be.
i wholeheartedly agree zainab is an extremely hard worker and has consistently hosted a really unique opportunity for artists to not only share their work, but profit from it. participating in the fair at 18 i ended up making around ~$600 in sales which at the time was the most i had ever made selling my art. it was really exciting, and i wouldn't have been able to do that on my own!
but that being said, having the organizer scold me like this in what was supposed to be a professional email exchange definitely felt a little weird. im definitely not a victim, i think what happened makes sense given the stress zainab puts herself under, lol, i just think that its a huge sign of one of the fairs biggest weak spots. i'm glad she is taking a break this year and hope that this means she will be a little more willing to accept help going forwards. as SBCF grows her running this fair alone becomes less of a way to keep expenses down and more or an irresponsible way to handle communicating with 100+ artists.
I am feeling a little crazy about this Shortbox post but I tried really hard to be calm and non confrontational in my response so I will not add to the post itself. But damn. It infuriates me that because this artist did not follow the rule and was mad that they were not accommodated, they're making it up to be an abusive environment and using all the internet language to make it sound so bad. Maybe they are young and don't have experience to understand it but like. Do you know how impossible it is to organise comic artists for an event that size?? The most notoriously unorganised and overreaching people there are (including me in the process)??
If the deadline wasn't strongly implemented the Fair wouldn't exist. If she accommodated every one who couldn't finish in time then so few people would actually submit their comic!! We need hard deadlines!! It's just common sense!!
It's due to 15 years of thankless work that this Fair is what it is, this is an audience that Zainab built with sweat and love for comics.
It's so so disrespectful to her to react this way. She works so hard, had such a sharp eye and because she doesn't sugar coat things suddenly she's abusive. Really she's the one being tone policed in this situation. None of us would have the reach she's giving us with this Fair, we're benefiting in so many ways from her curation. "Go buy from artists directly" and how do we find these artists?? The internet and algorithm make it so hard to be found!! Stop being entitled and own up to having messed up. This is not being mistreated it's just being asked to follow one simple rule urgh.
I think this is an extremely ungenerous take. The artist in question finished a 65 page comic and turned it in by the deadline. They asked how to adjust their ending to meet the organizers standard since it was unclear and they were not allowed to make an extended version... only to receive no response except an email asking for a dropout fee a MONTH later. To paint this as 'breaking rules and asking for special treatment' from a comic creating peer is sad. OP was asking for basic communication and how to abide by rules, I don't think that's an extreme ask under any other normal circumstance. What is a 'complete' comic in this case? Is 65 pages not enough? How should the ending feel? Are open ended endings not allowed? These are all fringe questions that are not clearly answered, and the artist seemed more than willing to abide by whatever guideline the organizer wanted if they could just receive some clarification.
I don't think running a show like SBCF alone is easy, it's extremely hard work and despite my personal shortcomings with the organizer I think that alone is something worth admiration. However, it's a point of frustration how often people use this to shield Zainab from all criticism and turn it against the creators for not being compliant enough. If you cannot respond in a professional manner, let your stress out in condescending emails, or cannot have basic conversation with fringe cases in your show, I think it is not the responsibility of the artists to just take it and grit their teeth, but rather should be a wake up call to the organizer that perhaps the show has outgrown the capabilities of one person and that to have healthier, smoother communication, you should expand your team. There have been plenty of free labor volunteers chiming in over the years. I think being the sole organizer is impressive, but not an excuse for bad behavior or treatment. I'm glad if you have not experienced this, but I hope you can accept and understand there's a reason why a lot of dissent exists against this organizer from both amateur and veteran creators alike.
While I may not agree with some of the OP's language or a call to completely boycott, I think it really makes me sad that their behavior is being painted as 'rule breaking, expecting special treatment' when they made a comic, turned it in on time, and then were told it didn't meet the guidelines when a month earlier they asked for more clarification on that guideline so they could finish to standard.
Also, considering last SBCF a Nimona fancomic was allowed in the lineup (no hate to the beautiful comic itself or the creator) after the website explicitly stated 'original IP only', how am I expected to respect rules if they are only arbitrarily upheld.
Role Reversal Concepts of Princess! Mai and Bodyguard/Assassin! Azula for Maizula Week… the actual piece probably won’t even be as dark lol but yeah I overthought this entire au so much…
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Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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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 fan—the True Pervert—jumps.
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 loner—but 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 community—and receiving that tolerance from others in turn—is 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 couldn’t easily share with other people in our lives. Cons still give me that feeling, but fandom is pop culture now, and monoculture is dead; it’s become too vast for a one size fits all to actually work as perfectly as it did before. I can’t 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 haven’t 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, you’ll 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"—that is, interaction among participants—meet. 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" (夜追い). 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 in—or rejection from—the 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 others—not just the authors, but also other readers—know 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 ✨slay✨in 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 (壁サークル) 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
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