Why This Coser Swears by Heavy Matte Black Con Tees

ok so I’ve been doing Comiket, local cons, campus cons as a coser for a while now, Hinata from Karasuno, Kenma from Nekoma, the whole wig-case-and-safety-pins life, and my con bag is literally safety pins, double-sided tape, and a mini sewing kit because I’ve popped a shoulder seam in the East Hall changing area more than once, which is honestly so annoying, I don’t even know why that seam keeps giving up on me.

For shirts I now go to a tiny print shop in Koenji: thick black 6.2 oz garment-dyed cotton blank, ¥3,200 per tee, ¥600 extra for a back print. Left chest gets an 8 cm crow, wait no, scratch that, I mean left chest crow and A3 Kenma cat volleyball on the back, I almost typed the sizes backwards. Water-based ink, two passes, cured properly. Heavy enough that a wig cap doesn’t show through the shoulders. Not soft-boy merch. Unpopular opinion: I want the print a little stiff. If it goes floppy and cracked after three washes, that’s not a shirt, that’s a tissue.

I used to buy polyester sublimation because it looked smooth in the listing, never again, flash photos turned the glossy heat transfer on my chest into a white slab, looked like I’d taped a receipt to myself, also white T at a July Comiket? the sweat situation under the wig and backpack straps is not a theory, I don’t care what the clean aesthetic crowd says, white blanks at a con are a dare.

Anyway.

The Aoba Johsai incident is why I’m paranoid about dye. Hotel sink, teal/blue-green mix, white hotel towel. Yeah. Towel turned a gross teal swamp color. I rinsed it for twenty minutes and still panicked at checkout. Now I dye-test scraps in a plastic cup, and if a blank bleeds, it goes back. On site I keep black thread for the shoulder seam, safety pins through the inside placket, and double-sided tape on the collar because a wig can fold a neckline all weird, which is dumb, I hate it.

Also why do con bathrooms always run out of toilet paper by like noon, I don’t need to be dealing with that while my wig cap is sweating off my head, and my phone battery dies every two hours at cons too, just constant 4% panic. But yeah, back to the shirts.

One small side rant: why do people shoot con photos with direct flash and then act surprised when glossy prints glare? My whole point is a matte black shirt that doesn’t blow out in the dealer hall. Screen print on thick cotton, matte ink, actual black. That’s it. If the print survives my sweat, my backpack, and a hotel sink, I’ll wear it to the next campus con.

my bag still has two safety pins stuck in the lining and a black thread tail I keep forgetting to cut.