Why Black Blanks Beat White Tees at Cons

Okay, my unpopular take, white blanks are not the default clean choice for con days, I don’t care what anyone says, I sweat through a white tee in the Comiket West Hall queue by 9:40 a.m. and spent the rest of the day looking like a damp paper towel, which is honestly the worst. Black United Athle 5001-01 blanks, ¥1,200 at my local shop, hide the gross bits and make the print pop. Right now my go-to is a thick black base screen print, plastisol-ish, matte, low-cure, on 5.6 oz cotton, my last run was ¥2,500 setup per color plus the blank, so one front-chest Karasuno crow print landed around ¥4,500 total. Wait, no, scratch that, I mean that’s what my last run came to, not every shop, but yeah it is not cheap at all. I stopped touching polyester heat sublimation after a shiny transfer caught the con flash and turned my Hinata chest print into a white reflective blob in every group shot, ugly, just ugly, I don’t even know why people still do that.

Specific fail, Aoba Johsai teal-green dye in a hotel sink, I rinsed it, hung it, and the white towel looked like a cursed lagoon by morning. Now I dye in a plastic bucket with gloves, or I just pay the print shop, because hotel irons are cursed too and I am not doing that again.

Specific fix for cons, safety pins through the inside collar seam, double-sided tape on a popped placket, and a tiny sewing kit with black thread. I fixed a side-seam blowout at a campus con with dental floss once, not proud, it held though.

Also can we roast the just buy a cheap white tee and iron on a PNG crowd, glossy transfer paper is a scam under con lighting, like it looks fine in your room and then the con flash turns it into a shiny mess. And the whole white is more versatile thing assumes you aren’t sprinting between halls with a wig and a prop sword, you know what I mean. My Nekoma Kenma back print works better on black because the red cat reads cleaner and sweat stains don’t win. I still keep one white blank for indoor shoots, but it’s not my con shirt, hotel irons are cursed.

Anyway.

Also con bathrooms always run out of toilet paper at the worst time and my phone battery dies and it’s too hot and I don’t even know why I’m complaining about that here, but yeah, back to the shirts. I need to reprint my Karasuno front print in a smaller chest size because the current one sits under my lanyard and gets rubbed raw by the strap. My bag still has safety pins, double-sided tape, and a stain pen, that’s the whole system.