Citrus Con 2023

“Citrus Con is a virtual 18+ con for BL/queer media, shipping, and fanworks”. I attended this weekend, from August 25th-27th, as a Artist Alley vendor and just hangin' out.

This is my first time vending at an online convention. I applied for Citrus Con's Artist Alley sometime last year, because my pal spilly reminded us that it was happening. So we both applied, and we both got in!

The head of the Artist Alley was Ash, who was apparently a last minute replacement for the person before them, who apparently left a lot of things unfinished. The Artist Alley section felt a little hidden and bare (there were some attendees who apparently didn't even know it was a thing?!). But Ash was very courteous and kind the whole time before the event during my email questions, and during the event. That was very important to me, because I asked if I could invite my partner as an “artist role” to help me man my table. And my partner Shane was INVALUABLE cuz he handled questions directed at me while I was knocked out sleeping. So thank you very much to Ash for allowing that accommodation!

The process of “vending” was pretty smooth. A list of artists was visible in a discord channel, along with a visual map of the “tables”. There was an additional channel for “deals” where artists could promote themselves every 6 hours. And there was an additional channel for general Artist Alley mingling, where customers could ask questions and people could just talk to each other about the art. Basically all I did was hang out at the con like normal, talk to people, and sometimes post in the deals channel to remind people that I existed .

Pros:

• I didn't have to do anything. Very hands-off.
• I could enjoy chatting in discord channels without feeling like I had to baby an artist alley table.
• Much less stressful than an IRL convention where you have to set up your table and talk to them constantly.
• Free! The convention was free for everyone, and we didn't have to pay for a table.

Cons:

• The deals channel felt like we were constantly bumping each other off and vying for attention. Very busy.
• The directory of artists felt a bit barebones. It was text-only, in an alphabetical list, so it was very easy to completely scroll past artist listings and not even notice. Perhaps I would like a site version that would allow for visual banners to show off our art styles?
• The “visual map” was very slow to use, if it loaded at all (the con admitted it didn't work on Android phones and worked best on a desktop. I think most people use a phone to browse now..).
• Artist names were cut off on the visual map to fit into a tiny circle. For example, my artist name looked like (SCU). We need shapes that fit our names! And ways to distinguish ourselves since all our circles are the same shape and size…

I made sales to 10 people in 2 days, for a total of $106.53 after shipping fees are taken out, and not counting friends I already know buying stuff from me. That's about $50 a day. I know for many people who do conventions IRL, they consider that chump change. But for me, considering there were no fees, and all the stuff I sold was stickers/prints that I can make at home with materials I already have, it's free promotion! Basically a lil' vacation where I get to make a lil' money while talking about dank yaoi with pals.

I got like 5-10 new followers on twitter/instagram/tumblr LMAO. Which I don't really care about cuz I was only promo-ing my Aethy account in the soc-med share channel. Cuz I ain't socializing on twitter no more. If that sort of number matters to you, well, there ya go. It doesn't matter much to me. I'd much rather find more people who are into things I'm into than have numbers go up rn. So the real number is getting 2 more applicants to FujoFans! Which is a lil' smaller than I would have thought for a 900-attendee con, but 2 more pals is very cool! And I already recognized some people at the con from my directory ??

The new art I made for Citrus Con was Spongebob yaoi and citrus scale stickers. I'm very happy with the designs I made this month! They're things I am proud to have on my store and continue to sell. And I'm using the citrus scale designs for my current store organization of SFW/suggestive/NSFW/guro. I fiddled with my store design and flow overall before Citrus Con, and I'm happy keeping this design for this year (until I mess with it again for Halloween >:))

• The most popular item was the Citrus Scale Sticker Set. We sold 4 sets of those. Which is super cool, cuz that's not related to a specific fandom or character. It counts as “original art”, and corporations can't take that away from you. It's proof that you don't absolutely need to lean on specific fannish interests and ships even for a “fannish” convention. Sometimes there's something universal that we all love.. whether it's original characters or silly memes.

  • The 2nd most popular item was the Seme X Uke Spongebob x Squidward sticker sets! We sold 3 of those. Which is cool cuz it's a set of 2 stickers, and it's a very… oddly specific thing that I'm happy that 3 whole people were interested in! The homies who want Squidward in a latex fetish suit are real ones.
  • I promo'd my commissions in the deals channel but got no bites. Understandable, because my commissions start at medium-high rates for fandom, and since Citrus Con was a free convention people probably wouldn't have money for a $300 daki :P

  I'm guessing Ash did the best they could considering they were working last-minute on setting the AA up when it was passed to them a week before the event. And they admitted that they could do more for promotion for next year after some other artists expressed their feelings about not being seen, so… it's hard for a lot of fan events to admit that there are holes they could patch over, and it makes me feel confident that our feedback could be heard and worked on.

I would absolutely do Citrus Con again as an artist. They're prepping for Citrus Con 2024 already so… yeah! I can't wait to be prepped more too now that I have this experience of vending online!

As I wrote in my Aethy post, now with additions and edits for DW:

CitrusCon was cool! I missed out on a lot of panels cuz sleep, or discord not having captions (spoken words go in my ear and out the other), so I mostly hung out in the meetup chats for Baki and Old Man Uke ?? It was good to see people I knew, but didn't know were coming! The main panel I went to was the [[https://www.awsketch.com/resources/citruscon2023/|"accessibility in fandom" panel]] by Kai, where it became very obvious that.. well, Discord (the main hub for all the activities) lacked a big accessibility option of automatic captions on videos. So I hope in the future, pre-recorded panels will have captions baked in :D The panel itself was very nice to see point out that we use "accessibility" features every day, across multiple disabilities, and the options can help people even if they don't have a specific disability! The host described images on their power point verbally, which was very helpful to understand how alt-text works (not just to know what the image is, but how it relates to the context! Or who the characters are, or what series it is!). Also interesting: to see how yaoi and BL has become a relatively large niches! There's a lot of titles and publishers (some of them even sponsors...). I think the 2007 sorta scene I'm used to is making the same jokes about Loveless and Gravitation, and most yaoi is art and writing that we had to make ourself :p I'm still that way, I prefer making my own meals for my own tastes, or sampling homecooked meals from other indie artists... But very cool that publishers give proper BL fans a lot of choices! (Also hilarious to see how dominant omegaverse has become in the last decade... Yall remember when it was just supernatural fics?)

I'm 100% gonna ask for more accessibility options in the exit survey, to improve next year! I asked before the event if there were accommodations for deafness (as well as for us with audio processing issues), and the hosts all provided very thorough answers that admitted that they were lacking in captions for discord, but zoom and twitch both have auto-captioning options. Their answers made me feel like they would listen and change for next year.

I think this year was a very cool first year for a convention, and I'm happy to see more inclusive events that allow people from all over the globe to hang out and talk about anime dudes buttfuckin', with no judgement.

Oh! And I really liked the templates they provided to gush about your blorbos! Here's some of mine :D I have baki brain worms right now so…Please look at my buff baby-faced meat mountains.