#ko blogs

Brief 2025 recap

I'll dip into late 2025 here a bit too. I had wanted to do a big retrospective post about the sbms web events I participated in, but I've since decided I don't want to reveal too much about the inner workings of that space. It's not place to share it, and I still consider myself immensely lucky to have been accepted into it as an interloper in the first place.

All I'll say is that these events lit a fucking fire in me in the latter half of 2025. I put together my first fan artbook, created some new sbms merch, and figured out how to set up netprints. I know I've said it a few times on my twitter, but it was incredibly humbling to be able to participate in that side of the fandom, and to see so much support and interest in my work.

Early 2026

That said, I think doing these events in September - December took me out a little bit LOL, especially with the holidays and a local market taking up my time and energy as well. I actually wasn't motivated to draw at all in January and February. Which was weird, because I don't think I've had no desire to draw at all for years.

But I've learned that artblock, or whatever equivalent of it I was experiencing was going to be temporary, and so I tried to focus on other things. There were a ton of birthdays in January, I started taking a few pole dancing classes again, I went to see a few movies, and I was working on a cross stitching kit I got for Christmas.

Fic writing

I did post two fics to my Ao3 in February; one of which was written in a single day for a Valentine's Microcest prompt, and one of which I had been writing slowly since November. I posted an additional fill to the Pkmn kinkmeme that popped up in early January. I still have yet to post it to my Ao3, but it's the Cynthia/Caitlyn somnophilia one, if you've happened to peruse the thread. I'd been wanting so badly to write something for that exact ship and kink since I started getting back into Pkmn, and so when the chance presented itself, I couldn't resist… I posted two prompts myself, both of which have been filled (lucky me!!!). One of them was filled by a really good friend of mine too, which made it even more special!

Unfortunately, my fic writing slowed down again as the start of con season approached. I signed up for the Perished Pidove gift exchange and finished with a fic of around 7k words (more than I was expecting, truthfully). It was a fun opportunity to try writing some new stuff (namely nsfw pokephilia) and overall I'm happy with how it turned out!

As always, I have fics on the back burner that I pick away at, and I have concepts that I feverishly write out in my phone and then never touch again. I am trying to make sure two of these fics actually do see the light of day. Wish me luck ahaha.

Spring conventions

Speaking of con season, I was part of the CitrusCon artist alley this year, which was a really cool experience. It was my first time being involved in an event held entirely on Discord, so I was a bit nervous. Needless to say, it all went well — I thought it was incredibly well organized and I will definitely look into participating again, even just as an attendee if I don't get into the AA again. Unfortunately, it fell on the same weekend as an irl obligation, so I didn't actually get to experience much of it… Hopefully next year I won't have a similar conflict.

My usual two local cons went really well; I kind of ended up attending the first one last minute, since I wasn't sure if I wanted to go (it's the bigger and more "general nerd-dom" oriented of the two), but I ended up changing my mind to help out a friend running a panel. I brought back my Marina (Fear & Hunger) cosplay and debuted a very thrown together fem Emmet cosplay, both of which I got very excited compliments on. The weather ended up being miserable that weekend, driving a lot of people indoors, which made the con feel more crowded than usual. That said, it was cool to see the rennovations that had recently been made to the convention centre. Some of the stages are definitely closer in size to what I've seen at US conventions. Also had a lot of fun at the convention's maid cafe — a few of the maids recognized me from artist alley and from my past life in an idol cover group LOL, so it was really fun to chat with them.

The second con (my main one, the one I table at every year) went well, but it was definitely a little different this year. Normally, especially because of my tabling, I stay in a hotel room at the venue with a few friends, but that fell through this year, meaning I was driving in every day. Not a huge issue, it IS a local con and I'm not that far from the convention centre, but it meant I was getting up earlier for this con than I usually would to accommodate for the commute, and for the fact that the convention centre parking garage started to fill up like two hours before the hall opened. I did get to debut my new Volo cosplay at this convention, which I was worried about only giving myself two weeks to make and somehow finished it in only one. The wig I bought for it ended up being a total bust, but thankfully my days cosplaying Eichi Tenshouin from Enstars came in clutch. It wasn't long enough for the little bun at the back, but it was the right colour and bang length, and that was far more important LOL. This convention was somehow my most exhausting one yet, and I'm not sure how much of that was the early mornings and how much of that is just me getting older.

This summer?

Now it's almost a month after this convention has ended and I'm honestly kind of at a loss at what to do with myself LOL. My next tabling event isn't until September, and even the big web event I participated in last year has been moved to November this year, so I'm left with an awkwardly large gap of time to myself this summer. That void has at least partly been filled by all the films coming out this summer (I had a three week stint where I was at the movie theatre once every week LOL). Backrooms was a fun ride, Obsession has been haunting my brain for an entire month now, and a last minute invitation to the finale screening of The Amazing Digital Circus finally forced me to binge the series, which I ended up really enjoying. And now we've got a screening of the Utena movie and Leviticus coming up as well. The movie theatres are getting a lot of money out of ME this summer ahaha.