I've been doing artist alley at cons since 2017. My first con was a small college run convention called Akumakon in Galway. I started off with prints and stickers which I cut out myself at home. At my first con, my setup was terrible. I didn't even have a tablecloth, everything was laid out flat on the table. I already had a lot of friends who did artist alley. I was in a row with a group of my friends, also doing artist alley, and I already knew a lot of the other artists there too!

Over the years I've really grown as an artist. My style has changed and evolved, making different kinds of merchandise has become easier, my work has become higher quality. I've published two original comics with my girlfriend. I'm working on a visual novel.

I've gotten to travel to so many countries, meet a lot of wonderful people and make new friends, and share my work with so many people. I love attending conventions and meeting fans of the same media as me. I love being able to draw fan art for niche visual novels and meeting fellow fans. I love drawing Vocaloid fan art and talking to people about it for ages. I love when people are interested in my original works and stories and come back to me and tell me their feelings on them. There is a lot I love about doing Artist Alley and it's made my life so much better. I was always extremely shy, and also was undiagnosed (at the time) autistic. I was just generally weird and offputting and didn't know why. Through cons, I've become so much better at socialising and made so many great friendships.

In recent years, however, doing AA has gotten much more popular. Making merchandise and digital art has become much more accessible and doing AA has kind of become a "business" itself. And I don't like to use the word "competition" when it comes to AA, because fellow artists are my peers and friends and not competitors, but we are all competing for limited tables and it has gotten harder to get them.

I kinda have two major issues I'm gonna touch on. Environmental and ethical concerns, and then some personal feelings around the community and some stuff I've been through recently. This is going to be pure stream of conciousness, don't expect a well researched essay, I'm probably going to repeat myself a lot and sound crazy so if you decide to read, good luck!

Ethics and Artist Alley

I know this is ironic for me to say considering I technically am a "business", but I am anti-capitalist. I hate consumerism. I hate how to survive, I have to keep producing and producing product and people have to keep consuming. It makes me feel disgusting. I love creating things but there is always a lingering sense of guilt whenever I create a new product, whenever I make a sale and take money from someone. It feels like dirty money. I have a gut wrenching feeling that I'm doing something wrong and immoral all the time.

At the same time, most artists I know are not from a place of privilege. A lot have disabilities or illnesses which prevent them from working regular jobs, most are LGBT, a lot are POC. Cishet men are a minority in the scene. Compared to all of my experience in retail, where my coworkers were mostly misogynistic men, I just feel safer and more at ease.

But what’s my alternative? Going back to my retail job (which doesn’t actually exist anymore, rip) where I am selling shitty plastic under someone else and working with sex pests who won’t get fired? Get a job in comics or animation like I actually studied for, with the state of the industry the way it is now? Do I just starve? Do I move 6 hours away from the life I have built here and go back to my hometown to live with my parents in a miserable little town, and live 4 hours away from my gf?

I can’t go back to a job where I have to work with men making misogynistic comments all the time. I can't go back to a job where I have to listen to men defending their sexual predator friends or work with sexual predators themselves. The thought of it makes my chest feel tight. I can't go back to having a man telling me what to do and looking down on me. With what I do now, I don't have to hear my coworkers talk about how actually, women deserve to be assaulted if they wear skimpy outfits. I don't have to hear my manager talk about how "yes my friend sexually assaulted a woman but he's always been nice to ME so idc". I don't have to hear my coworkers go on rants about trans people, I don't have coworkers telling me "well sex you have with your gf isn't REAL sex because there's no penis".

But I care about the earth and want to do better. I want to be mindful about what I create. I don't want to take advantage of exploited workers.

I'm aiming to cut down the amount of acrylic products I make, and in the future hope to cut them out completely. Right now, acrylic goods and plushies are what have kept me afloat for the past few years.

Honestly, the past year - since about last November? I have hardly made any new acrylic goods in an attempt to phase them out. I wanted to make more paper goods, comics and zines, prints and stickers. And it has been going terribly, I have really been struggling. Charms are still my best seller. I think it will be a slow process to break away from them.

I've had to sell a lot of my belongings to make rent and keep up with bills in recent months. It's been really horrible and making me very depressed. I was supposed to go for a weekend holiday after 1 year of non stop work between uni and cons, & to meet Ryukishi07 at a con, but ended up not going because I was so broke and struggled to even make rent. Maybe petty & selfish, but I'm still pretty devastated about it. I hope I can get another opportunity.

My goal is ultimately to focus on original works, visual novels, and comics. I think once I become a “game dev” and have visual novels under my belt, they will sell well! I'm optimistic about it being a future career path!

For now though, I'm going to have to lock in and grind.

I hate that so much work in this world is built off the exploitation of others. I know there is some discourse surrounding discussions of manufacturers in China as ‘exploitative’ and that it may be xenophobic to believe in the idea they are all sweatshops, and I do agree with this sentiment. But regardless of the treatment of workers, what of the products themselves? Are they really necessary? Yes I like anime keychains and collect them myself and love creating itabags and shrines, but I wonder how many end up in landfill? How many just get tossed and end up as waste? Who really needs them?

Is it right for me to hire someone else to make these things and sell them for a profit? For more than they cost to make?

I want to preface this next paragraph by saying I think artists who have “low skill level” or are just beginners should always have a place at conventions. I think conventions should first and foremost be a place for fans to have fun and connect with other fans. No matter your skill level, if you are a passionate artist or creator and love what you do, I think you deserve to be at conventions.

However. It makes me wince when I see artists who are just beginning or have a lower skill level blowing money on lots of acrylic goods. I love to see artists like this selling prints, zines, comics, and stickers. But I just hate seeing them insist on having so so much acrylic goods. When I started out doing artist alley, I had a lot of ugly prints and stickers. People who bought them all those years ago probably binned them by now. Which is fine! Paper is biodegradable, it can be recycled, it can be re-used for other purposes. But what is a customer to do with an ugly acrylic charm? What if back then I had made some of my ugly stickers i to ugly acrylic charms? They would become landfill. They would have to be tossed. And with manufacturing being so accessible now, I am seeing this a lot. I am not trying to knock artists for having “ugly” art - honestly ugly is the wrong word to be using at all, because art is subjective. But I'm sure you get what I'm saying. When I see stuff like that all I see is waste. Something that will eventually be binned by the consumer, or will be left unsold and binned by the seller. I hate it! I hate seeing people creating wasteful things! And I always reflect, am I creating wasteful things? In a couple of years I could look back on my keychains and think “Man that was ugly, what was I thinking printing that!”, and my customers could look back on my keychains like “Man this thing is ugly, why did I buy that!”.

Sorry this blog post probably sounds insane. I'm not thinking too hard about what I write here, it's purely a stream of consciousness. My thoughts as unfiltered as possible, but also kind of filtered because I don't want to offend any artists potentially reading this.

I hope people understand, I'm not saying “if you have a low skill level you should give up and have no place in artist alley”, I just think people need to be extra mindful about what they create when it is something that can not be recycled so easily. Regardless of skill level, I think this statement should apply.

I've seen beginner artists even branching into bigger, more complex projects such as plushies lately. And straight up I think some of them should not be doing it. Not just because of the artist's skill level or because of poor design, but because I have seen people rushing to make plushies of whatever thing is popular at the moment. I saw people rushing to open pre-orders for Mouthwashing plushies, and plushies of that blue tiger from KPop Demon Hunters. Mouthwashing is an indie game !! They allow fanmerch to an extent and have guidelines, which plushies definitely go against !! I just wish people would stop and think for a moment about the ethics and longevity of these items before rushing to make them !! Some of these artists even open up preorders before even having a sample product to take photos of, which is absolutely ridiculous and just irresponsible. At least have a product you can show people who are preordering!!!

Maybe this is hypocritical as someone who makes plushies. Though I am also cutting down on plushie projects for reasons stated above, and Strahm and Billy will be my final big plushies project. But when I make plushies, I take into account the following: Is it necessary? Does a plushie of this character already exist, and if so is it accessible? I usually make plushies of horror characters, which definitely do Not have cutesy plushie designs. Longevity - Will people still care about this in 10 years? Is it just a flavour of the month type fandom?

I also limit my preorders to MAXIMUM 200pcs. I would rather create an item that ends up being sought-after later than create something I end up having excess of and struggle to sell. If only 200 of these exist in the world, a customer who grows tired of the product can easily sell or give it away. It will always have a place with someone.

Again I am not hating on beginner artists, I think they just kind of feel pressured to match the pace of those around them. I think cons should be a space for people who are passionate fans to meet and connect. I would prefer a low skill artist with a passion for the fandom they're drawing for have a table at a con, than a more "businessy" higher skilled artist who makes hundreds of acrylic keychains based on a single template of a million different fandoms. It isn't so bad when I go to cons in the EU, but it's a bit soul-sucking going to UK cons and seeing grifters, people who are just Business and TikTok Marketing etc etc. Where is your passion !! Where is your fanzine about that one fictional ship you're obsessed with !!! What is that one niche video game or anime that you personally love !! How do you interpret your favourite fictional character, where are your original characters and comics !?!? I think absolutely every artist should have at least One zine/comic at their table. Idk it's a bit frustrating seeing people who just picked up an iPad and figured this would be a get rich quick scheme or something.

Business is evil. A business can not exist without profiting from someone else's work. And that's what we do as merch artists. It feels gross and evil. But we live in a capitalist world. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism and all that. We need to make money to survive, to eat, pay rent, feed our cats. But I think we all need to take a step back and think about what we are doing. I'm not saying you should never ever make acrylic keychains ever or you're evil, I can't afford to cut them out of my catalogue yet either, but just like... Idk I wanna be mindful about what I am putting out into the world...

I want to be an artist. I don't just want to be a merch illustrator. I want to create art that is worthwhile and that makes people feel things. I want to create stories and characters.

But I need to pay my rent.

Community Gripes

Since I've been doing artist alley since 2017, I've shown my face at a lot of Irish conventions every year. I also have been showing my face at EU cons such as Dokomi and Japan Expo since 2021. I've grown a lot as an artist since then. My audience has grown a bit too. I'm still a very small artist, I still haven't even reached 10k followers on any platform, but slowly but surely it is growing. Over the years I've become a consistent face at conventions. Even before tabling at cons, I have been attending them since 2010. I've made a lot of amazing friends, within Ireland and at EU cons, and I'm very lucky to know these people. I have always been a very shy person so it's been a really great way to make friends.

The past year or two, though, I've been having some pretty bad interactions… People spreading lies and rumours about me, trying to talk shit, clout chasing, social climbing… A lot has happened. I can't go into specifics about it, I don't want to name people or call anyone out or make anyone feel bad. Nobody involved will read this unless theyre on a whole other level of cyberstalking me, which I don't think they do anymore, but still, I want to remain vague.

I don't even have a big following, I am not a celebrity, but it feels like people over the past few years have been seeing me as something I'm not. I feel like people haven't even been seeing me as a person with feelings.

It has driven me to tears with frustration. People have made things up about me, posted on their stories about me publicly, said crazy shit to me and about me, tried to use me for clout or social climbing, and I have had to sit here and stay silent. Because I'll be the bitch if I stand up for myself. Because if I stand up for myself, it just draws attention to the issue and makes things worse.

I've had to be the one to apologise to people who STARTED problems just to get them to stop. People who have had parasocial relationships with me, whom I had never spoken to, made up a fictional version of me in their heads. Some people have been straight up homophobic and have been saying some insane crazy conservative talking points and trying to frame me and my lesbian partner as groomers/pedos for defending a gay man for drawing an adult character from a kid's show shibari style. I can't go into specifics with that one but it was bad and I was really hurt. The whole issue of calling queer people "degenerates" and "freaks" for creating nsfw artwork, implying they are pedos and groomers, is a WHOLE other discussion which I can't go into right now because I have very strong feelings on it and a lot to say, but it's just so vile. In this era of censorship, in this era where being visibly queer is becoming increasingly scary, to have FELLOW lgbt people trying to spread this rhetoric is just so disheartening. I think bi/pan people who have only ever seriously been with opposite sex partners and do not have any experience living a visibly queer life need to very seriously think about how they talk about gay and transgender people. This is not a dig at bi people - I am bisexual - but life is very very different when you are dating someone of the same sex vs opposite sex. And I just think people who do not have that experience do not know how scary it is and don't realise the weight of their words. I just think if you are queer but in a comfortable straight relationship, and are giddily trying to frame a lesbian couple as perverted freaks with your friends, thinking you're in the right... You need to do a lot of reflecting. (Luckily this person is no longer in the convention scene at all, and will probably never read this, so it's the only instance where I will go into this much detail.) Again this is not a dig against "bi girls with bearded boyfriends", it just happens every person involved was one.

I used to follow everyone back when I was younger. Now, I prefer to only follow my friends and some artists I like. I have my DMs completely closed so only mutuals can DM me. I prefer not to follow people I don't know so they can't DM me. I get quite overwhelmed with private messages and struggle to even make time to talk to my CLOSE friends nowadays. But people take me not following them back personally. They think it means I'm cold, a bitch, or that I hate them, when it is not even the case.

I just feel so hurt and used. I'm autistic and struggle a lot socially, but still try my best. I have had to be so strong and keep it together for the sake of other people, whose feelings I constantly have to keep in consideration. When people hurt me I had to broach the topic as gently as possible, or choose not to talk about it as all, to spare people's feelings. But these people have not had the same consideration for my feelings at all. If I have accidentally or unintentionally hurt someone, it was a huge issue. If someone hurt me and I gently broach the topic, it's like a nuclear bomb.

I've kinda been less open the past few months, and am gonna stay this way for a bit… At least with other artists. I just want to make friends who are into the same things as me and have fun.

I think people see me hanging out with “”popular”” artists, twitch streamers, or youtubers and think I'm something I'm not. I've been friends with a lot of these people for over 10 years, before a lot of them became “popular”. If I befriend a popular artist it is not because they are popular and I am clout chasing it's because we have common interests and are friends!! Majority of my friends don't even do artist alley, a lot of my closest friends are barely even at cons, they don't have social media presence. They are people you'd only know about if you actually Knew me. But that's the thing, so many of these people don't know me and just make things up.

I think people see me as much more “successful” than I actually am. I don't post my Ls online a lot. If I'm going through a hard time, if I'm flopping, I don't post about it. Online, this blog is where I have been the most vulnerable, and still I hold back. This blog post is the most vulnerable thing I will have written online. But people who follow me or don't know me very well will only see what I post publicly or for them to see. They'll only see me having fun and going to cons and travelling and hanging out with people they perceive as “popular”. People in Ireland really suffer from a crab bucket mentality - Irish people hate to see others succeed and would rather tear people down.

People have either wanted to tear me down, or get "in" with me and my friend group. And if they can't have that? Then they want to tear me down. One thing that has been particularly breaking my heart is that people have been trying to use my friends to get to me/my girlfriend. They've been trying to talk to or get closer to my friends, who are amazing artists in their own right, and are also PEOPLE with FEELINGS, and use them as a stepping stone. And it's so horrible. It makes my friends feel like shit. It makes me feel like shit.

I don't think anyone who has done this, or any of these things, will ever ever read this post, but I hope they know that what they are doing is very obvious. I'm not stupid. I know I am nice and I try my best to be chatty and kind to everyone who speaks to me at conventions, but I can see through things. My friends report back to me on things. If you treat my friends like they're nothing more than a stepping stone, I'll only ever keep you at an arms length. You will not get what you want.

I don't want to go into more specifics. While I doubt anyone will read all of this, I don't want to give away any information. I've already spoken to my close friends about all this in detail and that's enough. But if you think this is about you: trust me, it isn't, you would not believe what I have had to deal with that I have kept private.

I wish people would respect my privacy and my space. I wish people would realise I am just a human. I try my best to be nice. I can get mean, selfish, or jealous, just like every other human. I understand feelings of inferiority, and desperation, I understand the want to succeed, I understand it can hurt seeing someone have what you want. But my politeness and understanding can only go so far.

On a positive note...

This post has been pretty overwhelmingly negative, so I just want to end with some more positive words.

I hope my previous paragraph doesn't put anyone off talking to/befriending me because that's not my intention at all... I love befriending new people and talking about my interests. Going to conventions is so inspiring for me, especially going to EU Cons like Y/Con and Dokomi. I always feel so inspired to create. I don't know what I would be doing right now if I couldn't be an artist like this. Grim to say, but when I worked a regular job full time, I was very suicidal. I've struggled a lot with my mental health for a very long time. But I am in a much better place now than I was 5 years ago. Things are very very tough right now, but I am so much happier being a broke artist than a financially stable but suicidal retail worker. I love travelling and meeting new people.

Most of all, I am so grateful and lucky to have so many amazing friends. I feel like, since last year, I have not been very fun to be around... I've been so stressed and overworked and tired, but my friends and my girlfriend have stuck by me. Even if I go for weeks without seeing anyone, we can meet up and have a good time like no time has passed. I know what I'm going through right now is a rough patch.

I'm taking it easy right now and just spending time with my closest friends. I'm probably going to delete this post after some time. But feels good to get it all down in writing!