weird web october is a challenge to make a fun/silly/creative/experimental website every day of october. it started in 2024, but i was too busy last october to join in — honestly i'm also probably too busy this october, but i'm going to try to do at least a handful of entries for it. i'm not putting any pressure on myself to do every single day, and i'm going to try to limit myself to about an hour per entry, just to (hopefully) keep it from taking up all my (extremely minimal) free time.

a few peoples whose sites i love participated last year & are big inspirations for me joining in this year — sweetfish.site & ribo.zone. both are participating this year too & i'm super excited to see what they make!

you can find the prompts list on the weird web october website, or on my own index page for my weird web entries. i've done the first 3 days in advance (though i've only uploaded day 1 for now); hopefully i can do at least a few more before i run out of steam! for day 1 (prompt: transparency) i did a little experiment with floating ghosts & css animations. try hovering over the ghosts to see them become more opaque and float slightly faster!

very worth it, though! flamecon was fantastic; it's consistently one of my favorite conventions to do. for those who've never been: flamecon is a yearly queer comic convention in nyc that's been around for 11 years. it was, way back in my sophomore year of college, the first big convention i ever tabled at, and i've done it every year since.

since it isn't a jury system, it's in some ways more accessible for artists just starting out with conventions to apply to — though their payment system for buying a table has gotten worse and worse every year (i think partially because more people are applying & partially because they keep trying to change what platform they sell tables through and it keeps ending up a worse platform), and tables aren't exactly cheap, so if anyone reading this is looking to start tabling i would definitely recommend doing smaller zine fairs/local fests/etc first. it was definitely a good first convention for me back in 2018, though! everyone there is always very nice, and it's cool to have a middle ground between the Comic Convention Experience (nycc, etc), a more indie/small press convention (spx, tcaf, etc), and the focus on lgbt community (which keeps away a lot of the worst type of person you run into at the previous two types of events).

overall, it was really good! i'm hoping to make a couple posts about flamecon over the next week or so — i also want to post my flamecon haul / all the stuff i bought there, as well as a post about running my first stamp rally. this post will be overall reflections on the con as well as sharing some new stuff i tried with my tabling set-up for this year! stay tuned for those posts soon, hopefully!

money/sales stuff

i've seen a lot of pushes lately for artists to more freely share things like what they earn for certain projects & how much they make at conventions, which i totally agree with, so i'm going to do that here! specific money stuff is going to be under a read-more link so if you're not interested in that you can scroll right past.

top selling items for this year:
stickers made up about 30% of my sales, which i would say is pretty average, followed by prints at 15%. (if you go by the amount of $ made from each category instead of just the number of items sold, they're at 18% and 26% respectively.) washi tape sold the least for me (2% of sales), but that might be down to not having it really prominent at my table in any significant way.

my convention sales tracking spreadsheet (which i'm hoping to make into a template to post for folks at some point) automatically tells me the top items by # sold & by $ made. by number sold, my best sellers were:

• tiny house mini-prints ($2 each, 32 sold) — whenever i had to print something out that didn't take up a whole sheet of paper, i added some mini versions of my haunted house illustrations in the margins, then cut them out to be little 2" tall prints packed in random sets of 3 for $2. i wanted to have something super cheap on my table this year especially, since i was doing a stamp rally (which i also want to make a blog post about!) where to get a stamp people had to buy things from each participating artist. also, i love a tiny object.
• too sexy to use chatgpt sticker ($4 each or 3 stickers for $10, 17 sold) — one of the brand new stickers i got made right before the con!

& by money made, the best sellers were:

• haunts ($30 each, 15 sold) — haunts is the highest priced thing at my table, so it's not super surprising it's the #1 by this metric.
• my chemical romance print ($15 each, 15 sold) — i drew this last week before the con since i've been feeling mildly feral about the current mcr tour, despite not being able to go to it. i was sort of surprised there wasn't more mcr art at flamecon honestly! the timing worked out really well for this one, since mcr just played in new jersey last weekend, so a lot of nyc-area fans went to see them and were still thinking about it while at flamecon.

i'm not a "rush to make merch out of whatever the most topical/popular subjects are at the time" kinda gal; my ethos when making things for conventions is that i only draw things i would want to draw regardless, since i feel like if you aren't passionate about the stuff you're selling, people can generally tell. that said, it's not super surprising that the anti-chatgpt sticker & the mcr print were two of my best sellers, since those are both pretty hot topics right now!

new booth set-up stuff

i put a lot of effort pre-flamecon into leveling up my display set-up. i get really perfectionist about my displays and often end up spending multiple hours before a con just making teeny tiny adjustments to how things are placed, which means set-up takes way longer than it should for a display system compact enough that i can fit it in a carry-on and a backpack. some of it worked & some of it didn't, or at least not as well as i hoped it would.

magnets on prints & display cubes

i've been using magnets to display prints for a while, but it's very annoying and time-consuming to put each print up one by one onto my display with magnets, and i can't just leave them on the display squares since i might want to rearrange which prints are where. i wanted this part specifically to go faster & be easier, so i taped magnets onto the display squares and the back of my prints. (i tried out doing this with velcro too, but it was way bulkier, so i stuck with the magnets.)

it took a bit to make sure they were centered and lined up correctly on both. i put them on the squares first (on the back, so they aren't visible from the front if i don't put a print on it), then put the prints face-down on top of the squares to line up the magnets before taping them down on the back of the prints. i had to use a couple layers of tape to make sure the magnets wouldn't stick together and come off of the surfaces i was putting them on; i'm sure there's sticky magnets you can buy, which might've made it easier, but i was trying to limit any new things i had to purchase for these set-up upgrades.

this worked alright for the most part — it was definitely way faster to set up, being able to just snap prints into place without fiddling with them too much. some of them did end up kind of wonky though — if the magnets weren't quite lined up correctly, the print bent/bowed a little bit out from the square, which looked awkward and wasn't easily fixable. (you can sort of see this with one of the prints on the right side of the picture of my table.) it also means that if i sell out of prints, i can't just sell somebody the display copy, since it's got magnets taped to the back. not a huge deal, though.

i also really should've put the magnets slightly closer together; right now, they're where the corners of an 8x10" page would fall in the center of the display square, but that didn't really take into account the fact that some of my prints are 8x10", which means the magnets for those prints had to be on the very corners of the paper, which was sort of hard to do.

overall: 8/10. i'll probably keep this one! (and not just because taking all the magnets off at this point would take a while.)

new self-serve sticker display

i officially have too many sticker designs to have them spread out flat on the table like i used to, so my solution was to make some clear pockets on two of my display squares. i've seen people use plastic business card/index card pockets (like this - sorry for the amazon link, i don't know where else people get this sort of thing tbh!) for a similar thing, but i didn't want to buy anything off amazon, so i tried a more diy approach — i cut some clear plastic bags i had for storing prints into strips, laid them across the display square, then taped them down at the bottom with clear packing tape & wrapped the sides around to the back to tape down as well. i then sewed a few vertical lines through the display square and the plastic to create individual pockets for the stickers, so they wouldn't get all jumbled up.

pros: this let me arrange my stickers before the con, so i didn't have to mess with them during set-up, and definitely saved a ton of space on my table. i like that it keeps the stickers organized; having them in piles on the table inevitably leads to them getting mixed together or turned upside-down, which isn't as much of an issue here. it also keeps stickers self-serve; i don't like having just one sticker out as a display and making people ask for the ones they want, which would be the other easy option for keeping stickers from taking up table space.

cons: the pockets weren't the most sturdy; one of them (the upper left corner) ended up tearing, and smaller stickers sometimes got a bit stuck in them and were hard to get out. also, i put these towards the front of my table so people could reach them, but that meant i couldn't really see them at all; i'm not someone who's super worried about theft at conventions, but i did wish i could see which stickers people were looking at to try to make conversation about them.

overall: 4/10. i'll at least have to fix the corner pocket that ripped before my next con, but i think just buying adhesive plastic pockets to stick on a cube would be both easier and more functional, unfortunately.

button display banner

my buttons are also self-serve & i generally just have a bowl/container of some sort people can dig through to find what they want, but i've got enough designs now that i wanted them to be displayed. this was also a good excuse to practice using my sewing machine! it's pretty simple, but it's double-sided & has a little loop at the top so i could also display it by running a ribbon or a stick of some kind through the top and hanging it. it should be pretty sturdy! i ended up attaching it to one of my display squares with binder clips at the top, which worked pretty well.

(also, because i'm just now noticing this: i took this picture after the con, and i sold the middle button on the top row during the convention, hence the weird empty space there. this is almost certainly not noticeable to anyone who isn't me, but i feel like it looks weird, so there's why.)

overall: 10/10. i want to change the price sign at the top to make it match the banner a bit better, and i could probably stand to iron it before the next con, but the banner itself turned out really nice, i think.

that's all i've got for this post, but stay tuned for my other flamecon posts coming soon, hopefully!

newsletter: 🔥 flamecon is this weekend! 🔥

posted Tuesday August 12 2025 #blaugust / what is blaugust? 

mirrored from my newsletter — subscribe here via email or rss or follow on my blog via rss!

hello all!

it’s been a while since i’ve written anything on my newsletter; i’ve had a very slow summer in some ways (not many conventions) and a very busy summer in other ways (lots of deadlines, trying to get my life together, etc), none of which have been conducive to remembering to write newsletters or update social media. i do have a bunch of updates to share, though, so without further ado…

flamecon!

flamecon is this weekend in NYC! it’ll be my 6th year tabling there, and as always, i’m super excited. come see me at table E54! (& don’t forget flamecon requires attendees to be masked! covid is spiking right now; wearing a mask is an easy way to keep yourself and everyone else safe!)

i’m also organizing the spooky stamp rally — you can grab a card from any of the participating artists’ tables, and if you collect all 6 stamps you get a special prize pack! it’s my very first stamp rally and i’m super excited about how it’s coming together.

buy flamecon tickets here!

shirts for gay ghosts

i put a new series of shirts up on my bonfire shop last month that i’m super proud of! i made these designs — a bunch of ghosts with pride-colored heart-shaped glasses — for stickers originally, but i liked them enough that i wanted to put them on something slightly more permanent. you can get the whole collection of gay ghost shirts as well as a bunch of other designs on my shirt shop!

visit my shirt shop!

blaugust

i’ve been participating in blaugust, a challenge where you write a blog post every day of august. i’m not quite hitting the “every day” goal, but i’m aiming for at least 15 posts by the end of the month / every other day-ish. check it out here!

new art

i briefly participated in this year’s artfight event, but only ended up doing two pieces for it. one of them was this little pixel line-up of my d&d party! i don’t do pixel art a lot, but i really like it, and i’m still super proud of how this turned out.

a very overdue piece of disco elysium fanart that i’ve been wanting to do since i finished the game 2-ish years ago. (prints here! i’ll also have prints of this & the next two pieces at flamecon.)

a commission of the cabin from yellowjackets. i keep forgetting to post this one on social media, so you guys are getting the first look at it!

another piece of fanart; this one’s inspired by the current my chemical romance tour, in which gerard way gets stabbed by a clown. i’m not kidding. (if you’re curious, i infodumped about the mcr tour on my blog a couple days ago.) (prints here!)

a few new stickers & a few restocks of old stickers! i’ll have all of them at flamecon (though the glittery house will be a stamp rally exclusive for now)!

recommendations corner

• music: the new hayley williams songs kill me & true believer; rent strike’s album möbius strip mall; pinkshift’s album love me forever; my chemical romance’s new 2025 mix of three cheers for sweet revenge
• games: mmolb (a sort of spiritual successor to blaseball); puzzmo (various daily puzzles)
• books: stars, hide your fires by jessica mary best; sick houses: haunted homes and the architecture of dread by leila taylor; the river has roots by amal el-mohtar

etc!

next month i’ll be in maryland for SPX! hopefully i’ll remember to send out another email before then, but just in case i don’t: it’s september 13th & 14th, you can buy tickets here, and i’ll be sharing table F7 with nur schuba!

i can’t think of an elegant segue here (sorry!) but i’ve been having a pretty rough time financially lately, so if you like my art and have some spare change to help me keep doing what i’m doing, i have a tip jar, as well as my print store & shirt store.

i know things are tight for a lot of people right now, so please don’t worry about it if you don’t have anything to spare! i appreciate you reading to the end of this newsletter either way!

that’s all i’ve got for now, and i need to get back to finishing up my flamecon preparations. i hope you’re all doing well. stay safe out there!

💖 - kaylee rowena

blaugust 10 / hobby log: felt pins

posted Sunday August 10 2025
#blaugust / what is blaugust? 

whoops, i missed a couple days of blaugust. i wanted to keep it going every day all month, but i've had a weird past couple days & didn't want to make another post that was basically nothing — even if this whole thing is an experiment in being less rigid in what i put on my blog, i still don't want to completely clog it up with nonsense posts. i gotta have some standards, i think, even if i'm trying to make them less strict.

i've been pretty busy trying to prepare for flamecon, which is next weekend — if you're in nyc, come say hi! one thing i've been making, mostly after i finish drawing for the day as a little winding-down nighttime activity, is these felt pins. i've done them for a couple cons in the past but i always forget to properly document them, so most of my previous ones are lost to time.

usually they're 100% hand-sewn; this time, i used some parts of a few of them as practice on my sewing machine, but mostly they're still done by hand, since they're pretty small and finicky. i'm hoping to make a couple more before flamecon, but getting all my other stuff ready should probably be more of a priority, so we'll see if i end up adding anything to this post later!

i'm trying not to skip any days for blaugust. the temptation to say "oh, it's okay if i miss today, i don't have much to write about, i'll just write something tomorrow" is extremely strong at the moment, but i know if i do that there's a really good chance it'll snowball and i'll simply never write a blog post again (or, at least, won't finish out this challenge, and then will feel weird about updating this blog for a few more months because i didn't do the thing i wanted to do.)

so even though i don't have a lot to write about at the moment, here i am! sorry this is a bit of a nothing post. it's been a bit of a nothing day, to be honest.

i got halfway through a new print for flamecon (a hint as to subject matter: it's been mentioned in one of these other blog posts!) that i'll be trying to finish up tomorrow. i started using a different brush for it than my usual & i'm really enjoying the texture of it. (it's one of the default photoshop vine charcoal brushes, i think. my usual default brush i use is a regular circle brush set to dissolve mode at various flow + hardness %s.)

convention prep has taken over most of my work time lately, which means i haven't been putting as much into my current graphic novel as i want to, but hopefully once i get through flamecon i can lock in on inking until spx.

exciting news of the day is that i got my copy of jacob geller's how a game lives, which i did some art for. the book is absolutely stunning irl, from the printing to the way it's packaged (and, of course, the essays inside — i need to sit down with it tomorrow and read all of it!), and i can't believe they let me be part of it. i've definitely talked about this before (though maybe not in this blog), but control, anatomy, and the legacy of the haunted house has been hugely influential on my own work, and it was a total honor to come full circle and be part of this new version of that same essay!!!

(please excuse the eternally shitty lighting in my room. i could've waited till the sun came up tomorrow to take pictures, but i didn't want to. maybe someday i'll get a decent lamp or something at least.)

that's all i've got for today, i think. see you tomorrow!

• currently there's a cat sleeping on my lap with her little face tucked into my arm, which is 100% ideal, and is also making it slightly hard to type without disturbing her.
• i just finished (like, several minutes ago) reading the river has roots by amal el-mohtar. the friend i'm currently catsitting for told me that while i'm here i should go vibe at the cafe/bar on the corner of her street & grab a drink and sit and read a book there, so i borrowed this one that i've been meaning to read since it came out & did that — it's super short, so it didn't take me long, but god, the ending really hit me. i love the two sisters folktale — my favorite musical, dave malloy's ghost quartet, has it as one of its main story threads (see: the wind and rain) — and the spin el-mohtar put on it here was lovely.
• i'm also enjoying the new hayley williams [album? collection of singles?] — fave so far is kill me, but i haven't finished all of them since i paused it to focus on reading.
• also now doing my daily puzzmo puzzles. i've been on a bit of a crosswords kick lately, despite being pretty bad at them.

i've been fighting with the composition of a drawing all day today, trying to make it a last-minute print for flamecon (which is next weekend!), but i think i finally figured it out, so hopefully i can get that done tomorrow! having a proper printer at home is giving me so much hubris, since instead of having to have prints done well in advance to order somewhere, i can just make them at home until the very last moment. (if i ever get a cricut/silhouette/etc machine & start being able to make my own stickers at home, i'll be the most powerful person alive, i think.)

i'm heading back home from catsitting tomorrow, which means i'll be back to trying to get everything ready for flamecon.

i have a foolish dream of also sewing myself a new dress before flamecon — despite only really having sewn one dress before (plus my halloween costume last year, which i still want to make a blog post about at some point), i've finally gotten around to learning my sewing machine, and i have this adorable ghost fabric a friend sent me a year-ish ago that i've been saving until i was slightly more confident with my machine. after sewing my last dress (which i don't wear very much because i don't really like how it ended up fitting, but it was a really good learning experience, and i'm trying to figure out how to edit it into a skirt or something to make it more wearable) i was like "okay, it was hubris to not just use a pattern and think i could self-draft my first ever clothing project, so next time i'll for sure definitely be using a pattern", but the only pattern i've found that seems like what i'd want for this project is like $30, so i might be foolish and try making one myself again. we'll see if i have the time/energy/confidence to even attempt this anytime soon, though.

posted Monday August 04 2025 #blaugust / what is blaugust?

about 80% of my brainspace today has been taken up by thinking about the current my chemical romance tour, so i'm going to talk about that for today's blog post, because it's my website and you can't stop me.

for anyone who's completely unfamiliar: my chemical romance is an american rock band that formed in 2001, broke up in 2013, and reunited in 2019. the lead singer, gerard way, went to the same college as me (though like 20 years apart, obviously) & also makes comics. they have four albums:

• i brought you my bullets, you brought me your love (2002)
• three cheers for sweet revenge (2004) (a loose concept album described by gerard way as a "pseudo-conceptual horror story" about a man bringing the devil the souls of a thousand evil men to bring his lover back to life)
• the black parade (2006) (a concept album about a man dying of cancer. their most popular album)
• danger days: the true lives of the fabulous killjoys (2010) (a concept album about a battle against an evil corporation in post-apocalyptic california)
• conventional weapons (2013) (a compilation of singles from a scrapped pre-danger days project, released right before the band's breakup)

i got into them in high school very casually — this was after they broke up, and everyone i knew in middle school kept telling me (a huge paramore fan at the time) to listen to them, which made me stubbornly refuse to for a while. i ended up getting into their music through the true lives of the fabulous killjoys, the companion graphic novel to their album danger days, written by gerard way & shaun simon and drawn by becky cloonan. (it's a great book and a great album!!) i got to see them live back in 2022, and it was absolutely fantastic & one of the best concerts i've ever been to, but that's not actually what this post is about.

this post is about their absolutely batshit current tour, long live the black parade. i won't be able to actually go to any of these shows, but thankfully, the mcr girlies (gender neutral) on the internet are livestreaming and liveblogging and theorizing about pretty much every aspect of it, so i've got the highlights, at the very least.

the bottom line of it, as my friend jordan said in our groupchat when me and another friend tried to explain all the lore to him, "You realize this is not like a concert but a jukebox musical," to which i said "no, it's a secret third thing".

there's two halves of the show — the first one is the one with a storyline, in which they perform all of the black parade in updated versions of the original costumes they wore for that album. in the second set/act/half, they come out in normal clothes and perform as themselves instead of in-character as the black parade.

the lore, as far as i can cobble together from, mostly, scrolling the tumblr mcr tag a lot:

• the story takes place in the fictional country of draag, ruled by the "great immortal dictator," who has shown up on stage in a big cowboy hat during one of the texas shows. shows open with the draag national anthem
• mcr performs as a band called the black parade, who've been [brought back from the dead? work-released from jail? both??] to be used as propaganda by draag's fascist dictatorship
• at some point in the show there's an election-execution (all the tumblr girlies are calling this the elexecution but i don't know if that's a real thing they say in the show or just a fun little portmanteau) in which everyone in the audience gets signs that say "yay" on one side and "nay" on the other and have to vote if 4 people tied up on stage are executed. it seems like no matter what the vote is they get killed.
  • EXCEPT! in the latest show (as of me writing this) (which was arlington tx on august 2nd) (if you're reading this in the future who knows where things have gone since then) one person survived!
  • "wait. hold on. oh, one of them didn't get hit. one of our guys missed. we shoulda got somebody from dallas to do it. ALRIGHT. WELL. LET'S SHOW HER WHAT SHE'S WON THEN!" and then on the screens appears a game show style prize-behind-a-curtain & gerard goes "it's a brand new 2009 baruva dart. gets great gas mileage, looks pretty sweet. what's in it? a brand new goat. in the back seat."
    • see: from mcr's song disenchanted: i spent my high school career spit on and shoved to agree / so i could watch all my heroes sell a car on tv / bring out the old guillotine, we'll show em what we all mean
• there's another character called the clerk (again, not sure if that's an in-show name or just what people online have decided to call him?) who seems to give the band orders from the dictator. at one point the clerk hands gerard a paper (an ad to read??) and gerard crumples it up and throws it away and the clerk slaps them.
• during the last song the clerk comes back out, but now he's dressed as a clown, pierrot-style. the rest of the band gets dragged offstage by draag soldiers, and the clown dances around gerard a bit and then stabs him! with a knife! and he dies! on stage! while singing a reprise of the first song from the album!
• the album's bonus track, blood, plays while gerard is lying dead on stage. the clown lip syncs to it and dances around. at the end of the song, the clown unbuttons his top and reveals a bomb strapped to his chest, and then blows up.
• end act 1, i GUESS
• i don't know how all of this fits into the story, but at some point there's also:
  • a little puppet/doll that gerard reads a bedtime story(?) about bugs(??) to
    • (which the clown then tucks into dead gerard's arms after killing them).
  • a person runs across the stage on fire at some point. maybe multiple points, who knows. there's definitely a lot of fire
  • also they added new lyrics to mama about a dagger
• the predominant theory seems to be that this tour the bridge between the black parade + danger days in the lore — that the story ends with the apocalypse that gets us to where danger days starts
• they've also started playing at least one song from the paper kingdom, a scrapped/unfinished 5th album from before their breakup that was supposedly "unsalvageable." the last time they released a new song was 2022 (the foundations of decay) so i've been feeling kind of insane about this

another cool note is that they teamed up with comic letterer nate piekos (of blambot fame) to make a whole fictional alphabet for draag caled keposhka. he's got a super interesting post about the process of creating it on his site!

their next show is august 9th in jersey (their home state!) & i can't wait to see what crazy stuff gets added. (all this is from only 4 shows on this tour so far, which is wild.)

this has been my mcr infodump. i hope you enjoyed it. i did not mean for this to be almost 1500 words! we'll see if i can clear up enough brain space to write about something else for tomorrow's post!

if you're reading this in your rss reader, please head over to my site to see the rest of the post!

inspired by loren's what if i wrote something every day?, i'm tentatively joining the "blaugust" challenge. i briefly wrote a ton on this blog back in march, and then got overwhelmed with other things & started overthinking the concept of posting on my blog again, despite my goals of it being a very casual, very low-stakes thing.

quoting from Blaugust 2025 is Coming!:

For anyone arriving here for the very first time Blaugust is a month-long event that takes place each August which focuses on blogging primarily and has started to include other forms of serialized content over the last several years. The goal is to stoke the fires of creativity and allow bloggers and other content creators to mingle in a shared community while pushing each other to post more regularly. Above all the goal of Blaugust has always been to prove to folks that they can in fact sit down every day and create something fresh and then share it with the world. Posting regularly builds a community and in this era of AI-slop content, our voices are needed even more than we ever have been at any point in the past. Our hope is to create a nurturing environment where Veteran bloggers can help those just getting started and the cross-pollination of ideas can create something truly spectacular. Your blog gives you a permanent foothold on the Internet that you own and have complete control of, and that is a really good feeling in the midst of shifting trends.

i like the idea that posting (anything, just as a human being) can help combat the amount of AI slop online these days — but then, maybe that's putting too much pressure on myself / this exercise.

i thought about making a separate page for blaugust to feel like i wasn't "cluttering" my blog with these posts, but that feels maybe counterintuitive to the goal of being more comfortable writing nonsense on my blog, so (for now at least) it'll be staying with all the other blog posts.

things i might try to put on my blog this month:

• finally posting some blog posts i've had in progress for months, including:
  • portfolio sites that inspire me
  • a list of coding resources
  • a list of rss resources / "what is an rss feed and why should you have one/follow them"
  • a digital garden / commonplace book
    • this would likely be its own page semi-separate from a blog, but i'd like to make a blog post about it too to document the process of making it!
• posts i don't have in progress but have had on my to-do list for ages, including:
  • a process log for last year's marie antoinette halloween costume
  • how i pack for conventions with just a carry-on suitcase and a backpack
  • delete your twitter/substack for the love of god
  • transparency on convention sales
    • i recently digitized all my convention sales tracking notebooks for the past couple years, so i could give a pretty decent overview!
      • i'd also love to clean up my convention tracking spreadsheet + make it a template to share with folks — i had to build it from scratch because i couldn't find any templates that did what i needed, but it might be helpful for people! so if/when i manage that, that can also be a post
  • a post about being an artist with aphantasia
  • a post about horror for kids
• miscellaneous post ideas:
  • short check-ins on what i'm up to on a given day
  • bookshelf tour
  • tutorial on the new stuff i'm trying with my convention display cubes, assuming it works at flamecon and doesn't backfire horribly
  • pictures of the little felt pins i've been making
  • sketchbook scans (i have so many sketchbooks that need to be scanned that i've been putting off lmao - maybe this will get me to finally do it?)
  • a q&a? if people have any questions they'd like answered haha

a comment on loren's blog post that i linked above that i found really inspiring:

Aristos: […] As someone who is very comfortable writing but never finds the time (read: excuses), I can say it's far more simple to approach once you realize there's no limit to what the blog can be. Perhaps a journal one day, a recipe you learned the next, sometimes a droning line of keysmash, other times a colorful rant.

bye till tomorrow!

i made 5 blog posts in march and then vanished for 3 months. whoops!

a little catch-up on what i've been up to since then:

• i've been tabling more local art markets/zine fairs/etc — i had to cancel TCAF but it's usually one of my big cons money-wise, so i'm trying to make up for that loss with more small events
• i also did the alaska robotics mini-con / comics camp last month! it was my second time there and it was such a joy!!!!
• i've gotten about half of the haunts second printing kickstarter fulfilled; it's taking longer than i wanted, largely because shipping costs have gone up and i don't have the $ to ship all of them in one batch right now, but i'm doing my best!!
• i'm currently in baltimore catsitting for a friend while they're camping!
• gearing up to hopefully do artfight (an original characters art trading game) next month if i have time amidst the comic inking i'll be doing!

i've been, to understate it, really really overwhelmed by [gestures vaguely at the state of the country/world] lately. being unplugged for a few days for comics camp (where there's no cell service or wifi) was really good for me, and i managed to keep that energy for a week or two after returning, but i'm slowly returning to the internet and instantly becoming overwhelmed again by the weight of everything. not exactly a unique experience, and i don't really have anything new to say about it. it just sucks!

ANYWAYS!!!

stuff i've been liking recently:

• dracula (which i finally finished reading back in april. did y'all know dracula's good? is anyone talking about this?)
• the new season of taskmaster
• sinners (which i've seen in theaters twice, a thing i haven't done since…. definitely pre-pandemic, but i truly don't remember the last time i liked a movie enough to see it twice in theaters.)
• saint catherine by anna meyer
• media club plus
• the phenomena podcast (which has for some reason been wiped from my usual podcast listening apps since when i listened to it like 2 months ago, but here's a link to it on podbay i guess???)
• mmolb (an online baseball simulator / spiritual successor to blaseball, which i was a big fan )
• circle breaker, the new album by the taxpayers
• live music — i saw the crane wives & rent strike, two bands i really like, recently!!! i'm seeing the taxpayers at the end of the month too.

for nyc readers: the mayoral election is coming up!!!

(sorry this info won't be relevant for the rest of you lol, but i live in nyc so this is important to me!!)

the deadline for new voters to register is in two days as of when i'm writing this (so june 14th!), and you can register online. early voting starts june 14th, and election day is june 24th.

nyc has ranked choice voting, which means basically that you don't have to settle for the lesser of two evils; a bunch of people are running, and you can rank everyone (or at least the top 5 people) you think are somewhat decent so the fascists (cough cuomo and adams cough) have less of a chance.

out of the candidates, i like zohran mamdani, who you've probably heard of if you live in nyc so i won't go on and on or anything. just don't rank cuomo or eric adams on your ballot!!

i think that's all i've got for right now! hopefully i won't disappear for another 3 months. we'll see!

leave a comment and say hi if you feel like it!

two local brooklyn ones:

may 31 xerox riot zine fest @ til death bushwick, brooklyn, ny

june 8 pride makers market @ footlight underground at the windjammer bushwick/ridgewood, brooklyn, ny

(and an event-not-coming-up: i've officially cancelled my table at tcaf this year since traveling outside the country is an increasingly stressful prospect. hopefully next year!)

gotta get back to writing blog posts soon!!!

i spruced up the styling on the index so it actually gives some info about the characters instead of just being a list of names, added a page for my very first d&d character, a space ghost tiefling named nessie, and made a page for the weird dynamic between 3 of my other ocs, who already have pages of their own that i didn't want to clutter with a million tumblr posts about toxic lesbian situationships.

i'm constantly super frustrated at how many conventions only post application info on instagram — i don't check instagram often at all, which means i miss out on most local zine fairs and art markets. these lists don't really make up for that, since they don't tend to feature super local stuff, but they're a good resource for bigger art book fairs, zine fests, and indie comic conventions!

when lists are separated by year, i'll be linking to the 2025 version for now, and hopefully i'll remember to update these links next year!

✸ sarah harvey patrick - 200 indie comic and zine fests
format: database / location: us & canada / info: location, event & application dates, what season applications generally fall in. also features an interactive map! sorted by location.

i wish there was a way to sort it by application date (some of the information is outdated, and it's hard to find what's current when there's so many entries), and i wish there were links attached (or that the website the database is on made it easier to copy-paste fields from the table to search for the name of a convention), but it's a huge collection and super helpful.

✸ nicezines - zine events in 2025
format: list / location: international, focus on europe / info: date & location, no application info. sorted by event date.

seems to be updated monthly (currently only has events through march). probably not the best for finding things to apply to, but defintely seems helpful to find events to attend or to have on your radar for the future! also includes zine workshops & online events.

✸ printed matter - book & zine fair bulletin
format: list / location: us & international / info: just a list of events with links, sorted by location. no info on dates.

✸ brokenpencil - zine festivals & small press fairs
format: list / location: canada, us, international / info: a list with links and short descriptions, sorted by location. no info on dates.

a lot of the entries here are outdated (in the nyc section i spot a couple events that have been defunct for years).

✸ stencil.wiki - fairs
format: database / location: international / info: includes links, dates, location, and (sometimes) application links or whether applications have closed.

probably the most up-to-date of the lists here so far, which isn't surprising since it's a wiki anyone can add to. includes art book fairs, zine fests, and comic events, focusing on events with risograph printers & publishers.

✸ con-mon
format: database & calendar / location: international / info: links, dates, application dates, calendar

describes itself as "a service to help cartoonists keep track of conventions." i just found this one while working on this post & it doesn't seem to be super up to date, but i really like the format of it and i'd love to see it more active. includes a way to submit convention dates & a calendar you can subscribe to (which is a feature i'd love to see more often). i'm going to go through and submit info for some conventions i have on my radar after i post this!

✸ subscribing to individual conventions via rss feeds
disappointingly few convention websites have rss feeds to follow, though it seems like a really easy way to consolidate info. a few i follow that do have rss feeds:
cake (chicago) cxc (columbus) flamecon (nyc) tcaf (toronto)

if you have any favorite ways to find out about cons to apply to, let me know in the commments?

(not putting the whole text of the post in the rss feed this time since i might delete the post later, so come read it on my site while it exists.)

i'm now using a slightly edited version of that code (adjusted so the button can only be liked once per person - the info on whether you've already liked it is saved in local storage in your browser, not anywhere on my end) for my like buttons. thank you so much, fritzi!]]>

want to code your own portfolio site, but not sure where to start? here's a super basic, customizable template you can use. (as a disclaimer: i am not an expert or even a professional at this, i just like coding & i think having a hand-coded website is cool, and i want to help make it easier for people to do that!)

this is, apparently, the most difficult thing anyone's ever done, coding-wise. i figured it'd be a bit complicated — i don't know all that much about backend coding / databases / etc, since i host my site via neocities and it only allows frontend code (html, css, javascript), but i know you'd need some kind of backend set-up to keep track of how many likes a post has and display it. there's tools for a lot of things like that — i'd generally prefer hosting things on my site itself, since who knows when various tools will go offline, but for things like comments sections / my guestbook / etc i use htmlcommentbox which has served me very well, and i know there's a ton of other tools for comments, too, so i figured like buttons must have a similar plethora of options.

i used to use tinylytics to add like buttons to my posts, but unfortunately the guy who made it was revealed as transphobic (see: "the inclusiveweb", "microblog"), so i've removed it from my site and deleted my account there.

for the time being, i'm using likebtn, though i had to fiddle with it a lot to keep it from giving awful "share on facebook and twitter and linkedin!" pop-ups when someone likes a post. i don't love it as a solution, and it feels sort of clunky to use, but it's what i've got for right now.

i also tried out open heart protocol (both via their built-in api & this code by benji.dog) and... could not figure out how to make it work. i'm at a point in my coding knowledge right now where i can usually fiddle with things until i've figured them out, but this one completely eluded me.

i also looked at lyket as an option, but it only allows up to 500 pageviews a month on their free plan - i don't really have any idea how many views i get on a typical page in a month, and it's probably less than 500, but i didn't want to end up surprised and get charged. i'm also not the biggest fan of how much tools like lyket and likebtn advertise how many statistics they're able to give - i want just one simple button, i don't need to know who's hitting that button or what my most-liked pages are, really.

i sort of know how to use google sheets as a backend via sheetsites (super interesting tutorial/concept!!) and i've been wondering if there's a way to incorporate that to count likes, but i'm not sure if it's possible to have the site directly impact the google sheet and not just the other way around.

htmlcommentbox has a nice little built-in way to like a comment, and i've been sort of wondering if there's a way to make it only show that "like comment" button, so i could have one actual comments section and another that only shows the 'like' button and number of likes. it'd be nice to be able to use a tool that i've already got anyways & limit how many new elements i'm introducing to my site, but it might also be way more work to try to do this.

anyways, it's super nice outside today (high of 65ºf!) so i'm gonna go enjoy that! more rambling to come soon, maybe. let me know if there's any tools i've missed, or any thoughts you have on this post! (and/or, assuming i've stuck with a method of adding likes: smash that like button.)