2025 Summer Recap

Final Year and Seraph Syndrome

In May, I finished up with my final year of Uni! Despite having such a crazy busy year, I managed to submit all of my assignments on time! During my final year, I had to travel for conventions nearly every month. The school year started off with MCM London, Y/Con, ThoughtBubble, and MCM Birmingham, and in between it all I had presentations and deadlines for uni. On top of it all, we had a new comic to work on which we wanted to debut at ThoughtBubble. I was struggling pretty badly to juggle being a full time artist, paying rent, moving house, and working on my visual novel + finishing uni. By the time May came around I was completely strung out. But I did it!! I submitted a fully finished, coloured animation, a demo for my visual novel, and all my other assignments!!!! Before leaving for Dokomi, I had to set up a display for my end of year show. I unfortunately had to miss the end of year show because of Dokomi, but my friends told me my work was really well received!

Dokomi 2025 (6-8 June)

Pretty much straight after finishing my uni deadlines, I went straight to Dokomi. I didn't get accepted at first (for the third time in a row lmao) but my friend K (shockpinkrosary) was really kind to share their booth in the 18+ area with me! They had a large booth with 2 tables.

Honestly, coming up to Dokomi this year, I considered pulling out of it. It's one of my favourite conventions to attend, but I was so exhausted and really not in a good place mentally. I was super stressed out about the fact I hadn't made any new merch in months as well - majority of my time drawing had been spent on uni work, so my stock for this year was not too different to last year. I was just getting in my head about it and feeling like my booth would look shit and that I'd look like I put in no effort. But everything had already been paid for, and my girlfriend convinced me to power through.

Dokomi is usually a super social convention for me, I love going to the rave with friends and meeting different friends for dinner every evening. I love getting to see my friends in mainland Europe who I don't get to see as often, and usually I'd have a friend take care of my booth for some time so I can enjoy some of the conventions events. This year though, I kept things very lowkey. I didn't go out with any large groups of friends, I mostly just stuck with my girlfriend Sarah after the con. Even at the rave, it was just the two of us, and we didn't stay for the whole thing.

We did meet up with our friend Komo for hot pot though !!

It's always fun going to dinner after conventions to see which little meow meows people bring out at the table. I got this little Gumi plushie from Internet Co just a couple of weeks before going to Dokomi. I pre-ordered her just cuz I collect everything Gumi, I thought she was a little bit weird looking. But the moment she arrived I became so enamoured with her. I took her everywhere with me during the summer. Sarah brought the little fella from Roses and Champagne (which I haven't read) and Komo brought Oosaki and Shimbashi from Ooe (which I have played fully now, but I had only gotten through Ariake's routes at this stage). Even though I wasn't feeling great over the weekend, fujoing out with friends was good for the soul...

The con overall was fun, but in terms of sales, I didn't do as well in the 18+ area compared to being in the regular artist alley. Last year was my busiest Dokomi ever, and this year didn't quite match it. It was still very good; my NSFW works were well received, I was able to have them out fully on display. All of our comics sold out completely, which was great. But I really didn't feel I had enough 18+ work to justify being there, and I had so little new stock compared to last year.

Even if a convention isn't crazy money wise, though, it's always worth going to meet fellow fans and see my friends who I don't get to see often.

It's also super refreshing and inspiring going to cons like Dokomi. Conventions in Ireland and the UK are largely corporate, and can be a little bit soul draining at times. There are a lot of grifters in the artist alley scene and people who aren't really passionate about fandom,just drawing whatever stuff is popular or they think will make money, and you see a good bit of tracing and even AI slop now. People are also much more prude and weird about NSFW artwork, and will make weird or rude comments or mock NSFW artists pretty often. That's not to say the convention scene is bad at all - there are lots of indie cons run by colleges that are amazing, and especially in Ireland there is an insane amount of talent for a small country. But it is very nice to go to Dokomi and see passionate artists from all corners of the globe, and being able to see people freely displaying their NSFW artwork. I was so burnt out from working on my uni project for so many months, it really made me inspired to create again.

Like where else could I get something like this?

Sometimes I see merch and I'm like "DAMN! I wish I thought of that first!!!". These stickers are scratch and sniff. You scratch their ass and it smells good. There are some people in Ireland that might want to kill me if I made something like this. I really want to create something inspired by these though!

This was everything I got in the end! Most of it is from trades, I was pretty broke this summer so I didn't really do a lot of shopping. I did splash out on this beautiful hand printed zine by Moosaic though (top left)! They had a limited amount, so the moment I had earned €80 I got a friend to take care of my booth and ran to get it.

On Monday then, we returned home to Belfast, because our next con was 5 days away and practically at our doorstep!

Q Con (14-15 June)

QCon in Belfast has been one of my favourite conventions in Ireland for a long time! I have done artist alley every year since like, 2018? It's always a really fun time and since it's in my home country, so many of my friends are there. This year, we also invited our friend Cley to visit from France! I'm always looking for an excuse for my friends to come over and visit, so I told them to apply the moment applications went up hahaha

Q Con this year was... Interesting... I honestly was not super chatty or energetic at it either. Maybe because I still hadn't recovered from uni and Dokomi and was exhausted? A lot of other personal stuff had been happening which was stressing me out too. But what definitely didn't help... Was the con layout... I had never been so squished in my life in artist alley. I'm pretty forgiving for college run cons, but there were way too many artists squeezed into a small room to the point where it was dangerous. I was in the middle between Sarah and Cley, and 3 artists were behind us also. Except, the artist behind me wasn't exactly behind me - our tables were squished so close together that I was sitting beside the person behind me. And once I sat down, that was it - I couldn't get up and leave without making like 4 other people move. It was really really uncomfortable and I spent all my time at the con excited for it to end, which was a shame because I really do love this event.

Even though the convention itself was tough to be at though, I had lots of fun with my friends! On the Saturday after the con, we had a bunch of friends over to hang out at our place and we played smash or pass. Basically I just make everyone fill in characters they wanna fuck in a form and then make a powerpoint presentation of them all and people yell at their favs.

The highlight of Q Con for me was having Cley over and showing them around Belfast! It was fun being a tourist in my own city and going to the Titanic Museum, going to restaurants, seeing the salmon of knowledge. We went to the fancy cinema to watch Final Destination, bought blind boxes in HMV, went to Fresh Garbage to get emo clothes, watched my shitty old DVD of Peter Jackson's Braindead - it was like being an emo teenager again. We also went to my uni so I could finally check out the end of year show before it closed up!

My heart is so full from time with friends!

Sunnycon (27-29 June)

This year I attended Sunnycon for the first time! It's one I've seen praised a lot by UK congoers, so I was excited to check it out!

The entire leadup to this con... Was very stressful lol. Sorry it seems like I've only been complaining in this blog post about how stressful this summer was. But omfg. The moment Cley headed home, me and Sarah got to work deep cleaning out old house - our lease was up on the Friday and we had a lot of stuff to clean and move, and we wanted our deposit back!! So straight away we spent the whole week cleaning and cleaning and going back and forth between houses. On top of it all, I had to go into Uni that week to take down my display and take it home, plus we had to do our con prep for Sunnycon. I make some of my stickers, and all of my badges, from home by hand. So it was just non stop work. We were cleaning that old house right up until the Thursday afternoon - our flight was at like 10pm that night - so it was a rush to pack and press badges. And then!!! To top it all off!!! The guy at the airport was being really weird to me about my baggage. My suitcase was caught in security, and usually they'd just search it? But this guy sent it through again. And it got caught by the scanner again. So he was like 🤨 what's in your bag? And I was like... "I dunno, clothes, a hair straightener maybe?". And he said "Did you pack it? You should know what's in it". And I was like !! IDK!! SORRY I'VE HAD A STRESSFUL TIME AND DONT KNOW EXACTLY WHAT'S IN WHICH SUITCASE!! Anyways he eventually did search it and I had me and Sarah's comics in the front pocket of the suitcase... this comic... Not only did he look through every page of the comic, he looked through every page of ever COPY of the comic... PEVERT!!!!!! Anyway that pissed me off lol. But eventually we got to Newcastle and got to our hotel and I played Ooe for the rest of the night.

The convention started on the Friday then! It was fun! The attendees were super nice, and I had a good few friends tabling there too who I got to chat with!

It was really nice to go get dinner with my friend Nat (NatalieHaku)! I don't do many UK cons so it's always really nice to get the chance to see her. I love meeting people who are as obsessed with Vocaloid as I am because I can just yap and yap and yap... Like everyone likes Vocaloid. But I. LOVE!!! VOCALOID!!!!! Nat got to see the Blooming tour - the First show of the blooming tour, Teto's FIRST time performing with Miku at a CFM concert like that, so I was just grilling her for information so I could live through her lol.

I mostly had a chill time at the con though and stuck with Sarah. We were so tired we would just go get dinner then hang in our room and Sarah would scroll on her phone while I played Ooe. Most of my memories of that weekend are me lying on the bed playing Ooe in my underwear.

Our hotel was super close to the Chinatown area, so we were sorted for food at least!

One of the restaurants we ate at had a lot of toys in the front window, it was so cute.

Sunnycon was fun! But I don't think I will go to it again for next year. June was so packed and busy, while I liked the con, I think the time would have been better spent resting or drawing new stuff for the bigger cons I had coming up. We flew home on the Monday morning, had a nap, and then went straight to the cinema with my friends lol. I wanna bring it up cuz it was a really cool screening in my city focused on internet horror!

I had seen pretty much everything before aside from some of the Atraxia entries. It was great to see them all on the big screen! No Through Road and My House Walkthrough were definitely my favourites though. The creator of My House Walkthrough was super excited about having his work shown in a cinema, we all hyped him up on twitter afterwards and he followed us back haha. I hope he knows he has friends in Ireland...

Japan Expo (3-6 July)

Next up was another big event, Japan Expo in Paris!

So... Japan Expo is a difficult convention. It's very difficult to apply to - they are VERY strict, and require a lot of paperwork and personal information. They're so anal about their paperwork, I ended up without an exhibitor pass for Sarah by mistake so I had to go and buy a normal attendee ticket and we took turns using it.

We had 2 days between coming home from Sunnycon on Monday, then traveling to Paris on Thursday. We were absolutely exhausted. When we got to our hotel, we couldn't check in yet, either, so we had to nap in the lobby. I was so tired and gross and stinky. And then while I was trying to nap, Sarah kicked me and pointed behind me and fucking Junji Ito was standing there.