Towards a Theory of the Tumblr Sexyman

https://www.tumblr.com/itsscaredycat/760002826385670144/so-ok-yeah-fine-i-watched-gravity-falls-again-and

Amazing sexy Bill Cipher art on tumblr.com 

    In this blog post I wish to define the fascinating phenomenon that is the tumblr sexyman. I will look at the various attempts people try to nail down this elusive concept, try to work out the logic underlying these attempts, and discuss their potential shortcomings. At the end, I will try to propose my own, hopefully satisfying, way of defining the tumblr sexyman. 

    It is worth noting that I am very much a tumblr outsider. Growing up, I was dimly aware of tumblr as the place to look at nice drawings of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes kissing, but even then tumblr has already passed its heyday. I was never on tumblr, I never participated in the fandom and the discourse, nor was I as a teenager shaped by my experience on the platform the way many in my circle were. My tumblr account was made on August 2024, and it is set up primarily as an extension of my instagram art account. It is for me a way to maximize the reach of my drawings, to "cover all bases".

     All that is to say, I come to the topic of the tumblr sexyman primarily as an intrigued outside observer who, while looking at the topic with a somewhat fresh point of view, also comes with many blind spots and lapses in knowledge. It is therefore not my intention to provide the ultimate correct definition of the tumblr sexyman, ending the conversation once and for all, but rather to contribute humbly to the existing discussion and offer some observations and thoughts. 

    My hope is that this post would at the very least provoke the reader to think about their own definition of the tumblr sexyman, and, better yet, go on to critique, elaborate, and refine the very rough definition I propose here. 

 

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      Let us begin with the most basic definition we can find. The definition of the tumblr sexyperson given by the Sexypedia (tumblr sexyman wiki) is as follows:

1. Proportionately large amounts of fanworks focusing on the sexyman (keep rules 3 and 4 in mind).
2. Proportionately large amounts of social media posts regarding the sexyman, usually with captions along the lines of "Hear me out...".
3. Fans shipping themselves or a character meant to represent themselves with the sexyman.
4. Fans shipping the nearest available character with the sexyman.
5. Humanizations of the sexyman or popular fandom-created designs for the sexyman.
6. If the sexyman does something morally wrong or questionable, fans defending them or simply ignoring what they did. This may cause controversy within the fandom.
7. Common shared fanon regarding the sexyman.
8. Fans focusing on one aspect of the sexyman, until it's their main personality trait within fan works (also known as Fanon Flanderization).
9. Fans creating their own characters based on the sexyman and/or the sexyman's design.

    The definition given here boils down to this: a tumblr sexyman is a character tumblr finds sexy and does fan-stuff with. Now while this is undoubtedly the most literal and correct definition of the concept, it is an empty and tautological definition that doesn't tell us very much about what sexymen are, what causes a character to be sexified, and what unites the sexymen as an object of study. 

     

    Yet any attempt to give a more concrete definition of the tumblr sexymen immediately runs into two difficulties. The first problem is that as the idea of tumblr sexymen becomes a meme, and as a result the internet becomes bemused by tumblr's propensity to sexualize seemingly random characters, it becomes increasingly hard to distinguish between sexymen that organically attract sexification and characters who are ironically sexified to parody that randomness. This is what I call the hear-me-out cake problem, after the phenomenon of influencers participating in the hear-me-out cake trend only to propose characters not out of genuine sexual attraction but out of a desire to shock and confuse (I know for a fact you do not find the quadratic formula sexy).

 

    As the distinguishing between genuine sexymen and ironic sexymen is outside the scope of this blog post, I will bracket the hear-me-out cake problem by taking Sexypedia at its word and limit the analysis to the sexymen that are categorized by the wiki to be in the Apollyan and Tiamat class –– that is, roughly speaking, the widely agreed upon sexymen that the general internet user can name. 

 

    The second problem with a unified definition of tumblr sexymen is the dazzling diversity of characters commonly understood to be tumblr sexymen. While the Once-ler and Alastor might have more in common with each other, the same can't be said about Sans Undertale. Yet any definition that excludes the behemoth that is Sans Undertale should immediately be discarded as a useless definition. Sans Undertale rebels against the usual characteristics of tumblr sexymen, yet he is unmistakably a sexymen (perhaps even the sexyman). In this way, Tumblr sexymen are similar to pornography, famously defined by US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart with a thought-terminating cliché: I know it when I see it. 

 

    Faced with an object as fuzzy and perplexing as the tumblr sexyman, it might be helpful to take a page from the analytical move made by Umberto Eco in his celebrated essay, Ur-fascism. In the essay, Eco demonstrates the slipperiness of defining fascism –– a set of ideas he describes as "a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions." Instead, he understands fascism in a similar way Wittgenstein writes about games, "A game can be either competitive or not, it can require some special skill or none, it can or cannot involve money. Games are different activities that display only some 'family resemblance.'" That is to say, a game is not define by any single trait, but rather a cloud of many common traits. Game ABC could be said to be similar to game BCD and game CDE, and has nothing in common with game DEF. But because both ABC and DEF are similar to BCD, a relation is established, and the entire set can be grouped together as one thing (game). With this understanding, Eco goes on to list the 14 characteristics that characterize fascism. A movement need not satisfy all 14 of the criteria to be called fascist, nor is every movement that displays these traits fascist. He writes, "These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it."

 

    Most of the attempts to define tumblr sexymen operates in this vein. Sexypedia has a 84 (!!!) point list of "tropes/archetypes", many of which includes further sub-points. These includes European, eye imagery, object head, etc. The fantastic video essay by Izzzyzzz, The Phenomenon Of Tumblr Sexymen provide a 10 point list of features –– popularity, evilness, skinny white anime boy, non-human, formal wear, powerful, monster body parts, supposed sex appeal, has tons of AU work, and eventually becomes hated.

    In an attempt to streamline the existing lists I've seen, and partly for reasons that will become clear later, I wish to propose my own 6 point list of themes/elements, possessing one or two of which a character might be sexified:

1. Leaves space for imagination and artistic expression: The character tends to require or encourage artists to actively work to make them fuckable. In the process of transforming Bill Cipher into a sexy white boy and designing the alter egos of the Once-ler, members of the fandom get to flex their artistic muscles in dialogue with the community's desire as well as exploring their own. Related tropes: non-human, fanon splintering, object-head.
2. Fun to draw: Related to the first point, the characters having elements that are fun and novel to draw –– clown outfits, glitches, puppet elements –– encourages artistic expression which strengthens social bonds within fandoms. Related tropes: animal theming, eldritch, monster features, clown, well-dressed.
3. Outcast/loner: This is usually the result of a dark edge or backstory. The character might be unbothered by their lonerdom, in the case of Bill Cipher or Beetlejuice, or deeply affected by it, in the case of Loki or the Once-ler. At any rate, the character is alone in a goth and dark way. Related tropes: angst, capitalist, knifemurder, pathetic.
4. Marginalized identities and coding: usually LGBTQ+, mentally ill and/or neurodivergent, as well as signifiers related to these identities. Related tropes: LGBTQ+, neurodivergence, angst, parental issues, artsy, distinct voice, alternative fashion. 
5. Privileged statuses: usually white, thin, and/or upper-class, as well as signifiers related to these statuses. Related tropes: European, Burton, pale twink, royalty, well-dressed. 
6. Confident and/or charismatic: sometimes but not always a result of immense social, magical, or cosmic powers. Related tropes: artsy, deadpan snarker, dominating, egotistical, power, royalty.  

    This is all well and good, we have a shifting cloud of definition for our object. However, the family resemblance model of tumblr sexymen, like Eco's definition of fascism, has the disadvantage of being quite unsatisfying. For one, a family resemblance idea of tumblr sexyman views the phenomenon as basically a collection of traits arbitrarily grouped together. We start with the project of trying to understand the tumblr sexyman as one singular conceptual object, but this definition essentially throws its hands in the air. It cannot grasp the centre that holds these traits together, nor does it wish to say anything about this centre. In this way, this cloud of definitions that could mark a sexyman, that might allow the character to be sexified, is only a slightly more sophisticated version of "I know it when I see it." 

Was Foucault a tumblr sexyman? (No)

    To make matters worse, there is a sense that not only does the centre exist, that centre lies somewhere outside of these disparate traits. A character –– say for example, French post-structuralist philosopher and historian Michel Foucault –– may well exhibit a large amount of traits in the list (He's fun to draw; he was an outsider in society due to his queerness and mental illness; he had a dark past –– alleged sexual abuse of kids in Tunisia; he was thin, white, European, and upperclass; he was well-dressed, intelligent, and charismatic), but my conviction would be misplaced if I, by virtue of this, confidently declare Foucault a tumblr sexyman.  

     A way to solve this problem is of course to fall back to our first definition (the tumblr sexyman is a man tumblr finds sexy) and make that the essential quality of the tumblr sexyman. Doing so, we're able to anchor the manifold incidental traits, relegating them as merely the shape in which the tumblr sexymen appear. This is in fact the way Izzzyzzz rescues and stabilizes their 10 points list in the aforementioned video essay. The video tries to "[compile] a list of 10 traits tropes that these characters usually have." adding the usual family resemblance caveat that "they don't have to have all of them, but they should at least have a few. " Yet they also posit the first point –– popularity among tumblr users –– to be an absolutely non-negotiable criteria. "There's no leeway here," they explain, "the character has to at least have like a thousand pieces of fan art. There's got to be ask blogs, role plays, fan fictions, pinterest boards all dedicated to this one character." 

    However, this opposition between the essential quality of the tumblr sexyman and the incidental and arbitrary shapes of their appearance introduces its own troubles. The problem is this: why does the sexyman necessarily take on these particular shapes described in our cloud of traits? Why is it that these traits attract sexifying from fandoms? The answer seems simple: The sexyman takes these particular shapes because these are the things tumblr finds sexy. The cloud of traits thus once again become the essence, the truth of the sexyman. In this way, the truth of the tumblr sexyman is caught in the oscillation between the sexyman in its singularity and its diverse manifestation. The tumblr sexyman is the cloud of traits that tumblr happens to make popular; tumblr makes a character a popular because they exhibit this cloud of traits. A circular and ceaseless shifting of emphasis that cannot get us anywhere close to grasping the tumblr sexyman as an object. 

    The point of all this pedantry is simply to say that the tumblr sexyman is both "whatever tumblr finds sexy" and "the cloud of traits commonly exhibited by the tumblr sexymen." And it is in the working out of how these two poles relate and how they unite can we finally be able to understand the tumblr sexyman as one singular object. And it might be quite obvious from the way I structured and laid out my 6 point list of traits, in contradistinction with how lists like this are usually laid out, that the way I am trying to establish the relationship between these two poles is through a somewhat functionalist understanding of the tumblr sexyman –– that is to say, trying to locate the definition of the tumblr sexyman not in what it looks like but rather in what it's doing. 

    What I am proposing is this: the tumblr sexyman is best understood as a process. It is a process through which the primarily adolescent tumblr users may try out desires and identities with the materials available on the 2010s online spaces. Through the tumblr-sexyman-process, the teens are able to fashion for themselves desires and identities in collaboration and negotiation with the community at large. As such, the tumblr sexymen condenses the desire of the community –– desire at it's most vague and unspecific –– with the specific desire of the burgeoning individual. It is at once mainstream and counter-cultural, repressive and transgressive, assured and anxious, included and excluded, bland and interesting. It is this process, this drive, that motivates the popularity of the sexymen and necessitates their manifold appearance. And if the list of traits appears fuzzy and contradictory, it is precisely because it is a process working at the intersection of the individual struggling to assert themselves, and society with its most mundane common denominator –– that is to say, the tumblr sexyman is contradictory because it is the contradiction of adolescence working through and captured on the internet. 

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    I think this definition of tumblr sexymen as process is a pretty satisfactory one for this blog post, but it is not without faults and shortcomings. Therefore, as a closing remark, I would like to point to a few of the more significant limitations with this definition that requires more investigation, thinking, and refinement.

    To start, this definition assumes the identity of the average participant of the sexyman process to be the stereotypical tumblr teen –– that is, generally speaking, the white, middle class, artsy, angsty, queer, and neurodivergent child. While this might make intuitive sense, it is something that should be and could be verified through surveys. If this assumption turns out to be true, it might be interesting to further articulate why this might be the case; if it is not, we would need to discuss why certain elements of the cultural hegemony (whiteness, thinness, class identity) are reinforced while others (cis-heteronormativity, neuronormativity) are transgressed. 

    Secondly, as this definition stresses the developmental function of the tumblr-sexyman-process, it would imply that people grow out of their need to sexify as they fashion more complex and individualized desires and identities for themselves. As such, the definition is dangerously close to pathologizing the desires and identities fashioned through the tumblr-sexyman-process, and perhaps even pathologizing adolescence itself. However, the fact remains that many adults continues to desire tumblr sexymen no less passionately then the so-called tumblr teens. 

    I can think of two ways of bypassing this problem, neither of which is ideal: 1) maintain the definition as it is and understand the adults who enjoy tumblr sexyman as being improperly individualized. This solution has the flaw of being judgmental and condescending. 2) Expand the definition to include the construction of all kinds of identities and desires –– tumblr sexyman as a macro process lasting one's entire life. As long as the individual constructs and negotiate their identities and desires with society (they always do, as desire and identity are always social), the tumblr-sexyman-process continues in perpetuity in a more and more defused form. This solution is a bit better, but it forgoes the specificity of the tumblr sexyman altogether. 

    Perhaps there are more elegant ways to address these shortcomings, perhaps these are no shortcomings at all, or perhaps these problems prove themselves to be so intractable it points to an opening to construct a more sophisticated definition of the tumblr sexyman. At present, I will leave these questions in the hands of more skilful thinkers to tackle.

Men Would Rather Write A Blog Post

    According to bf, my mental health has declined significantly since my last school year, and I think he might be right. I have been experiencing dramatic mood swings, pretty crippling anxiety, lack of motivation, etc. My phone addiction has gotten worse and I cry all the time. I am not able to bring myself to draw or to read or even to sit down and watch a movie or show. Everything is kinda boring to me right now and I live in a mess.

    He says I should look into therapy, which is a very harrowing idea to me. I have nothing against therapy. I think if you can and need it you probably do it. But there is a plethora of reasons I feel it is maybe not for me. I am very aware that most of these reasons are bullshit reasons. I am also aware that I am reacting the exact same way as my mom when me and my sister encouraged her to go to therapy ("therapy is cool and all it's just not for me"). I think it might help me think this through if I write them down in some kind of internet-friendly numbered list. Maybe I can bring these concerns up with the therapist when I do end up going; maybe by writing them down I can exorcise some of them. In any case, this is not an argument against therapy –– I think I will need to find a therapist some time in the future. Instead, this is an attempt to give a form to my many resistances to the idea of getting help. 

 

  ✷

 

1. Michel Foucault 

     This is not a real objection I think, because it is pretty easy to dispute. The objection is this: Foucault writes about institutions and body of knowledge like psychiatry, prisons, sexuality, etc. and discusses the way these relate to a modern form of power –– a power that, instead of working through an overt and visible imbalance of force between the sovereign and their subjects, opts to know the governed, to produce and distinguish different kind of persons, to discipline by penetrating deep into the subject in order to render their bodies docile and governable. I think this is just a smart sounding cover for my other, less radical and noble reasons to not go to therapy, and it is a flimsy one at that. Foucault not only writes about psychiatry and prisons, he also writes about schools and medicine. And I think the point of his intervention is not that you shouldn't go to the doctor when sick, that kids shouldn't go to schools, or, for our purposes, that people in distress should not get psychiatric help. We have the institutions that we have and we need to do what we got to do to live in a society. The point is rather to understand these institutions not as neutral and apolitical, but rather as organs of a larger logic of power. If you're starving and you only have black licorice, you'd have to eat the licorice while knowing you could be eating better things. 

 

2. Therapists on Tiktok

     Therapists are on tiktok and instagram making all kinds of content and I hate it. I do not want to see my therapist's snarky remark of my troubles on the internet, nor do I want other people to know what I am going through. It is not just the idea of potentially having the confidentiality breached that I am worried about - I think my becoming a material for content at all would be terrifying to me. I see many therapists posting about "common things clients are worried about" or "clients apologize after cursing when they don't need to." I do not want to see that if I just told them that I am worried about these things or if I apologized after cursing, I don't want to be a character on a learning material, it's invasive and scary and embarrassing. 

    Moreover, in my I research online, I repeatedly stumbled upon Kati Morton, the therapist in Shane Dawson's Jake Paul video. This does not boost my confidence for therapists as a profession.  If there's a possibility that I might walk into an office and be confronted by someone like Kati –– someone who feels  comfortable talking about sociopaths as "creepy" and "gross" and finds it appropriate to say that sociopaths do not "have a heart"–– that is very concerning to me. I do not want that. 

    On one hand, I understand that therapy is like any relationship, in that there are people you just don't hit off with and that is okay. But on the other hand I do not go around telling my secrets to people I meet on the streets. The therapists hold tremendous power over me and I think finding a bad therapist is a much scarier prospect then talking to some guy you decide not to be close friends with. 

 

3. If nothing is wrong with me, that would be very embarrassing 

     Pretty self-explanatory. If the therapist decides that I am depressed or something then all is good and we can deal with that problem. But if it turns out there is nothing wrong with me, I think that might say a few things about me, none of which are very good. 1) It could mean that I am in some unconscious way seeking attention, I feign sadness in order to talk about how special I am, to act out some kind of adolescent fetish about being the tragic and romantic melancholiac. 2) I am weak and lazy person that uses mental illness as an excuse to not do what I should be doing. Everyone else is doing it, but I, out of laziness and weakness, decide I should not do it. And as the only non-psychical reason of not doing it is mental illness, I mistake what I have as mental illness. 3) I am constitutively fucked up. The problem is not what I have but what I am. 4) All of the above. I really do not want to find out which it is. 

 

4. It's really not that bad

     I think there are many people that are dealing with much more serious problems than me, and there are many people that are in worse situations than I am but don't need therapy. This is of course not to say you have to be in the worst situation in the world to deserve help, but I kind of imagine it has to be a little worse than what I have. My life is at the end of the day okay. And to seek out therapy when everything is objectively speaking pretty good just feels like an over-reaction. 

 

5. All of the worst guys are in therapy

     I had a former friend that told me that they once ask their therapist why many people dislike them and why many of their friendships ended poorly. After discussing it with the therapist they came to the conclusion that they really don't care and don't need everyone to like them. Which is a fine thing to think I suppose, but I feel it ignores that the former friend is often is very antagonistic with people around them, and that might be the factor pushing people away. 

    I worry that therapy can be a way to excuse my flaws away. I don't really think I should sit in a room and blame everyone around me and my childhood for things I am ultimately responsible for. Now I have been told this is not really what therapy is like, but I feel that if so many people in the world are using therapy speak to evade responsibility, there must be some truth to my assessment, right? 

    Of course, many of these people are actively trying to shift responsibility, thus doing therapy in bad faith. And if I am not looking for resources to do that it might be different for me. But I'm not sure I am willing to place the blame solely on these "bad people." Even if people are willing to change, it is only normal for them to want to maintain a coherent and positive self image. Under this condition, isn't therapy a naturally seductive tool for you to unconsciously shield yourself from things that reflect poorly on yourself? 

 

6. What if the therapist uses AI? 

     Somewhat of a recent worry. It seems like outside of my very small milieu, AI is very much integrated into the lives and decision making of everyone on earth. It's people's go-to thing when they have a question, they use it to formulate every sentence, etc. In my perfect world, I would hope that therapists are better than using AI at all in their practices, but I worry that this might not be the case. I don't want my therapist to use AI because 1) I will feel very cheated. I don't want to pay real money to talk to someone assisted by ChatGPT, I can just do that at home for free (I won't). 2) Is that even allowed within client confidentiality? Are you allowed to just share my deepest insecurities with Sam Altman? It doesn't seem legal, right? 3) I hate AI on principle and don't want anything to do with it. 

 

7. I don't really want to talk to people that are paid to listen to me

    This one just doesn't make any sense because the fact that the therapist has no skin in my game is what makes the treatment effective (I assume). But I feel there is just something so perverse about talking to someone that is paid to care. I don't really want to be with people who are obligated to be with me, I would rather be with people that like me. I think this is so disorienting to me because I know how to act through other people's reaction to what I do, and if you are paid to stick around I just don't know if you like me or not and cannot act accordingly.

 

8. I might become a worse artist if I get well

    Probably not the case.

 

9.  Therapy is expensive

    It is. 

 

✷

 

    That is about it, or at least the ones I can currently summon from my brain. Once again, these are probably mostly bullshit reasons and I am will not argue for them that passionately if you disagree. (Although I continue to feel in my heart that these points make sense even if you attack them with sound and flawless logic.) Typing them out, these do seem like the ramblings of an unwell man, so that kinda settles that, but god are these points convincing in my head. THESE ARE LEGITIMATE WORRIES IDK WHAT TO TELL YOU!!!

More Junk Journaling and Sketches

    Some more pages from my junk journal! Mixed in are random drawings and sketches, as well as my frantically-jotted-down, spelling-error-filled notes from my ongoing Hegel class.

    This one is made with things collected during a walk in Chinatown with my friend Gracie. We went to the goth stuff and outfit store Doll Funeral, as well as the best comic book store in Toronto, the Beguiling.

 

    This one is from a day with my boyfriend at the Toronto Reference Library –– one of my favourite place in the city to hang out. We went and had a coffee and some snack at Balzac's, the library cafe. Then we spend a whole afternoon in the library reading and writing the script for my comic. I love the Reference Library soooooo much!!! It is such a romantic yet modern place. I feel like Obi-wan in that one scene in Attack of the Clones where he's in a futuristic library filled with information. Not only is there four stories worth of books, there's also many great seats for you to curl up in. It's wonderful. 

    The bookmark on the left is taken from the local second hand book store, Seeker's Books.

    I have become a little more involved with the guys teach me Hegel, designing their stickers and going to their events. Every Thursday evening they host a little lecture about various topics in philosophy and psychoanalysis, which I attend if the topic interest me. Afterwards, everyone goes to the local bar and has some beer which is very fun. This page is from the time I went to their lecture about Kant. During the bar time I sketched some of the people that are there.

 

    These are a cool communist flyer, logo of the group that teaches me Hegel (Res Futura), and a flyer for a local Jarty (jean party). I did not attend the Jarty because I am deathly afraid of making new friends and I dislike places with loud noise.

 

    The page on the left is from the day I visited my friend Emily. We went to her house and she made us some delicious shakshuka. After that, we visited the Secret Planet print shop where I got the free anti-ICE sticker. We then got some ice cream and went to Bidaasigae park. There, we looked at some birds and tried to identify them with a poorly designed bird identification app. 

    The page on the right is from a free print I found in the local Trotskyite bookstore. 

 

    On this day, I went to the zoo with my boyfriend and his mom. I woke up early in the morning to make Japanese mushroom rice, cherry tomatoes, and some jam filled cookies. I then met up with my boyfriend and we travelled on the subway all the way to the zoo. We met up with bf's mom and start looking. There was a new born giraffe but unfortunately it has already clocked out by the time we get to it. We did see many other cool animals like African penguins, gorillas, komodo dragons, ginormous cockroaches, and naked mole rats. 

    Afterwards, we went to an Indian restaurant (bf's family is from the UK) and enjoyed some delicious Indian food. Ever since then I've been looking at a bunch of Indian recipes, but I feel too anxious to try making any of them as they all include steps and ingredients unimaginable in a Taiwanese kitchen. 

    Around this time I got accepted to be a vendor at Toronto Comic Arts Festival (TCAF), which is the biggest comic event in the city!!! I was previously waitlisted, and considering that it was only two weeks away from the event I thought there's no hope for me, so this was a very pleasant surprise! However, I had already booked a market on the first day of TCAF which meant I needed to prepare two table setups. On top of that, I only have two weeks to prepare!!! I was freaking out and pacing back and forth in my room. The checklist on the left of the page is my attempt to keep my nerves under control. 

 

    This is my drawing of Saw Gerrera after watching three episodes of the Star Wars TV show, Andor. The show was great and I need to finish it. Page on the right is a card I picked up at the aforementioned comic book store, the Beguiling. 

 

    On the left side we have a beautiful promotion material for TCAF drawn by manga artist Battan, on the right is an old man I sketched at the reference library (I only go to a few places), a receipt of a comic book I took out, and my shopping list. 

 

    Another sketch done after a Res Futura lecture. This lecture was very good! The lecturer, Naseem, is a practising psychoanalyst. He talked about the epistemology of psychoanalysis on two levels 1) How does a psychoanalyst know that the theory is correct? 2) How does a psychoanalyst know that specific interpretations made in treatment are valid? It was very interesting and helpful because it sometimes feels like psychoanalytically informed theorists are just saying whatever. 

    The drawing is of a woman I saw at the bar. She does not look as wicked in person, it was just a bad drawing.

 

    TCAF was a two day event. On the first day, I also needed to be at another market –– Fierce and Fabulous Expo. Since F&F was only a one day event, I figured I should be there personally and go to TCAF on day two so I can be in both events for at least one day. I set up my TCAF table the night before and my F&F table the morning of. Then I dispatched my friend Gracie and my bf to sit at the TCAF table while me and my friend Jo sat at F&F. 

    The sketches in the page are done while I was at F&F waiting for costumers to come. F&F really sucked. Not only is the vending fee higher than your usual conventions, it also had much lower foot traffic than they promised. Moreover, they did not provide tables and chairs so I had to carry a 6 ft table and two chairs, as well as my merch, to the venue. The whole time there's a DJ doing an extremely loud set, to the point that I had to yell to my costumers. Just terrible experience all around. 

    Fortunately, my bf and Gracie are making A LOT of sales over at TCAF so I wasn't too depressed. (Plus I got a free yapsesh and chucklefest with Jo, which was a lot of fun.)

 

    Day 2 at TCAF was FANTASTIC. Complete night and day compared to F&F. I was making non-stop sales and did not get to finish even one sketch. I saw some old classmates that I've not seen since I graduated, and I finally met some of my Instagram mutuals, which was so fun! Because I was so busy selling comics I didn't get to walk around other people's booth all that much and only ended up getting two little prints:( But ultimately it was a very good and flattering experience. 

    Gracie bought me the sticker on the bottom left of Chiikawa as Mr. Mistofelees. Hilarious.