I can’t remember the exact year that Plump the Post happened. But I think it was no later than 2018.
Plump the Post was a zine collecting art made by and for fat representation. For my entry, I wanted to highlight chubby genderqueer people because they’re valid, too.
(Also Hollywood has a tendency that even IF they highlight trans characters, they’re, 99.9% of the time, skinny.)
The model who served as inspiration for this piece was a friend of a friend, a chubby trans dude whom I am not naming to protect his privacy.
To see the other four reasons, check out this post.
So this post is being written one day after the US Election results, saying Trump is the new president. My thoughts on the matter are summed up in this pledge I posted on Tumblr.
I’m currently reading a fascinating book called Transgender Warriors by Leslie Friedman. It makes me think of The Yellow Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee in that both books are part memoir, part history books. The Yellow Lighted Bookshop is about the history of books as much as it’s the tale of the author growing into a mature librarian. Transgender Warriors is as much about Friedman as it is about trans people in history.
I recognized quite a few names of warriors in the first few chapters, as those people of history also appear in David E. Jones’s Women Warriors: A History. Women Warriors acknowledges that many of the women cross-dressed or exhibited more masculine qualities (like King Nzinga) but still has that gender binary. You have to infer that some women in that book were, in fact, non-binary. Maybe not “trans,” but definitely falling outside of man/woman dichotomies.
With that said, Friedman’s personal history is profoundly biased in one way: s/he was an active member, for many years, of the World Workers Party, a communist organization that was an offshoot of the Socialist Party in the USA. For all I know, s/he may still be a member.
Last week I was on the Nerd Perspective radio show (which was a LOT OF FUN). One of the guys hosting the show asked me, “I saw you post about The Legend of Jamie Roberts on your blog. What is that about?”
So, in between my webcomics and my day jobs, I’ve still managed to make some new sketches to develop some comics I have in the works.
I have them posted below. They’re not in color (yet) but I wanted to show you the (dare I say, gorgeous) line-work I used to draw them.
Jamie Roberts, Genderqueer Pirate.
The Woman of the Woods, Sorceress and Warrior.
Princess Rosetta and Amal Ahmad
A sample panel from the upcoming webcomic Seeing Him.
This last sketch is from a webcomic my sister Kia and I are hoping to get on KickStarter, called “Seeing Him.”
The story is about a young lady named Kate who wants to find Mr. Right. She finds him in Adam, a devilishly handsome OB/GYN who is also a trans man.
We both felt like there weren’t enough stories with trans men in them, and what few there are don’t necessarily portray them as, like, people. We hope that “Seeing Him” can help change that.
We tried running a KickStarter previously, but we didn’t meet our goal.
But this time, we learned: we’re going to lower the fundraising goal, and offer more digital rewards and custom commissions for backers.
The plan is to get the KickStarter up online on Saturday, but with my two day jobs deciding they want me to work full-time hours, I don’t know if that’ll happen.
However, if the project gets fully funded, I can actually QUIT one day job for a while. And that would be super cool to just make more comics more often, yo.