September 3, 2024 • 60 mins
Transcending Comics had our first ever live show at Flame Con 2024! We were lucky enough to be joined by some incredible panelists, including Maia Kobabe (Gender Queer: A Memoir), Kim Wang (Of Thunder & Lightning), Ben Kahn (Elle Campbell Wins Their Weekend, Renegade Rule), and Daniel Falco (Transphoria)! We absolutely loved the input from each of our panelists, and the audience had some great questions for the creators. We also want to give a special shoutout to our friend Sadie for capturing and editing the footage of this event, she even managed to good audio of the audience questions, which we couldn't have managed without her! Stay tuned for more from our trip to Flame Con!
Music: Intro: A Little Soul by Carlsin
Outro: You've Been Starrin by Carlsin
Check out more of his music on Carlsin.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:18):
This is Tommy here. This week's episode of Transcending Comics is our first
ever live panel, which was hosted by FlameCon in New York City.
If you're a queer fan of comics, or a fan of queer comics, I really cannot recommend
this convention enough.
We met some incredible creators and collaborators there, and you'll be hearing
more interviews from the trip in the near future.
But before we get into the episode, I want to give a special shout out to our
(00:41):
friend Sadie for capturing video footage of the panel, which will be going live
on YouTube the same day as this episode.
She did an incredible job with the filming and editing, and she even managed
to grab some good audio of the audience questions, which I would not have been able to do on my own.
But that's enough from me for now, so just sit back, relax, and enjoy our first ever live panel.
(01:04):
Hello everyone, and welcome to Transcending Comics, our podcast dedicated to
trans representation in comic books, manga, and webtoons.
And on this panel, we're going behind the scenes. I'm your host,
Tommy Trimbath, and joining me today is more queer talent that I think can be
safely contained in any one room.
First up, from Lifeline Comics, we have Daniel Falco.
(01:27):
He's a writer and editor. Their work's been featured in anthologies like By
Visibility, Still By, and the recent Kickstarter campaign, Transphoria.
Welcome to the show, Daniel. Thank you so much.
Next up, we have Ben Kahn. One of my favorite podcasters that regularly challenges
the sexy vampire, sexy werewolf binary on the Progressively Horrified podcast,
(01:48):
and the writer behind several badass graphic novels like Captain Lazerock, Crushing Love,
Renegade Rule, and Mr. Muffins, Defender of the Stars.
Good to be here. Ben here, they, she, and glad to be a part of this panel.
Also joining us is Kim Wong, the writer and artist behind the incredible graphic
novel of Thunder and Lightning, as well as webcomics like An Eye for an Eye
(02:10):
and O Radiant Devil, O Whispering Angel. Welcome back, Kim.
Hello again. And finally, we're joined by the Stonewall and Ignatz award-winning
author and illustrator behind Genderqueer.
As well as Journey's Guide to Healthy Binding, and many other zines and short comics by a co-babe.
Hello! I'll be kicking us off here with just a number of questions for the entire
(02:34):
group, and then we'll dedicate the second half of the panel to questions from the audience.
But to start us off, just to help everyone else out there that's as bad with
names as I am, if you could just remind everyone your name, your pronouns,
and tell us your favorite thing you've seen at the con so far,
we'll take it from there. All right, I'll start since I'm next in the lineup.
Hi, everyone. I'm Daniel Falco.
(02:54):
I use he him pronouns. And I've worked for Lifeline Comics on a few anthologies
that are very queer specific and walking around this flame con.
There have been so much good art around. I like picking up a lot of indie books.
But I think my favorite thing I passed was somebody who focuses on reanimator
and Jeffrey Combs filmography pages, which was a very culty 80s horror movie
(03:17):
with insane practical effects.
So finding one of my favorite bad, bad in quotation marks movies around was
very special for me. Ben, how about you?
Yeah, I'm sorry for jumping the gun on the panel format there. Again, my name is Ben.
My pronouns are they, she, I do the Progressively Horrified podcast.
I've done comics for Scout, Dark Horse, Simon & Schuster, Tokyo Pop, Oni Press.
(03:43):
And I wrote a middle grade prose novel for Scholastic called El Campbell Wins Their Weekend.
Uh, yeah, I mean, one non-binary seventh graders quest to escape in Saturday
detention and trek across town to meet their celebrity hero.
And, you know, I can't, I've lost count of how many flame cons I've done.
And what keeps me coming back year after year is just the people and the energy.
(04:05):
I mean, it's, it's not just like the costumes and the merchandise fee and the
merch bin books people make. It is just crazy.
To have an environment where we can fully embrace not just our nerdy interests, but our identities.
I mean, there's plenty of places that are queer accepting, but only FlameCon
(04:27):
is queer assuming, if that makes sense.
Thank you, Ben. How are you, Kim? My name is Kimberly, or you can call me Kim as well.
Kim Wong, and my pronouns are they, them. My favorite thing that I've seen at
FlameCon today, someone gave me a sticker that says, let's go to the Yuri Aquarium.
(04:49):
And I want to go. Let's go to the Yuri Aquarium.
Hello, everyone. My name is Maya Kovabe. I use the pronouns E-M-AIR.
I have seen so much good stuff, but I think definitely seeing my friends and
their newest works is very exciting. So I collabed on a K-pop fanzine,
for example, that is at Hazel and Belle and also Kat and Kendra's table.
(05:12):
So getting to see that resagraphed and in person was very special after collabing completely online.
But I'm also really into those beanies that look like an orange with a little
leaf at the top. So might buy that before the end of the weekend.
Now, in this panel, I actually marks about the one year anniversary of Transcending Comics.
(05:33):
I appreciate everyone that's been involved in the show so far. our listeners.
To kick off our proper questions, I wanted to ask about, like,
when I first started researching comics for the show,
I was immediately overwhelmed with how present and influential trans creators
have been in the world of webcomics, literally since their inception.
(05:53):
So for those here that partake, I'd love to know how you feel that webcomics
have influenced you both as a fan and a creator in the medium.
I mean, I was definitely around reading a lot of those 2000s web comics,
which is now made by trans women in the 2020s.
I mean, I got my start. I mean, my first comics were, you know,
(06:16):
stuff like 8-Bit Theater.
I don't know if anybody reads Something Positive, but that is a really,
really great web comic by Randy Milholland that has run for over 20 years.
That's a fantastic one. I got my start in web comics my first comic I started
when I was 15 I made a Kingdom Hearts sprite comic,
I took the sprites from the Game Boy Advance game
(06:39):
and with Microsoft Paint I didn't even have Photoshop with Microsoft Paint I
would put them together in these little four panel strips please don't look
it up it was shot comedy made by a 15 year old in the 2000s raised on Chappelle's
show in South Park it did not age well.
And you were making this for sprite the drink yes that's exactly right yeah
(07:02):
sprite comics you know sprite comics right yeah okay i knew there was okay late in the convention.
So like like that was my first start was you know i did that for i made 700
of these kingdom hearts little on a reality show dumb little strips but like
(07:22):
it was great practice for dialogue you know I didn't have original backgrounds I had.
Characters with pixelation too low to have expression so they
just had some like rote body language poses so
the only thing that was original and the only way to really
communicate any tone was uh solely through dialogue which i can now look back
on and be like yeah that was some pretty spectacular training in that regard
(07:46):
yeah i think probably many people in this panel maybe many people in the audience
will relate to the fact that we all went to web comics looking for queer stories
that we couldn't yet find in the bookstore or the library especially when i was
a teenager and i was like so hungry for like any
scrap any crumb of a queer narrative and i
definitely went online to find that stuff and a lot of the i
mean some of the earliest queer comics are people
(08:08):
like people upstairs are still they're still upstairs and they're making comics
even if it's like a difference much different they've abandoned the early web
series but they're doing something else now so there's
a web comic i don't know if anyone there's one of those classical little
keen spot type comics i remember heard called misfile where an angel misfiled
somebody's identity and they and a boy just wakes up suddenly and is a girl
(08:32):
and you know read that for a while and you know i was like oh wouldn't that
be interesting if that happened to you.
Now, I know that everyone here has in some way put into their comics representation
of their own gender identity or at least exploration of gender.
So I'd love to know how your gender experience has influenced the way that you
(08:57):
write your characters, both queer and otherwise.
I feel like growing up, I was mostly introduced to a lot of coming out stories
or coming to terms with your identity stories.
And my experience was much slower. is less like a jump into water and more of
like wading in and out and in coming out in some facets of my life and coming
out in other ways and then retreating back.
(09:18):
So I think when I'm now writing my queer characters, I want to hone in on specific
slower details of what's happening.
Like for Transformer, I was writing about the hormone replacement therapy aspect
and the trials of having to go through all the misinformation that's out there.
And I think it's my gender experience has helped
me slow down with how i want to create characters create a story and what i
(09:43):
want an audience to get out of it so it's been helpful not just to like get
to know who the character is but the pacing of the theme what i want to actually
be trying for me i definitely.
A lot of the ways that i kind of started figuring things
out or the ways i came about the terminology that
(10:03):
uh helped me was you know a lot of it came from
stories you know uh movie as
comics shows what have you and as much as real people in my life have been very
impactful um fiction was very much a way that i kind of came to start understanding
my identity and that's kind of turned into a bit of a recurring theme of some
(10:27):
of my writing um you know very
much the case for l campbell for l and l campbell um
you know i cared who had no idea what non-binary was until
their favorite until the star of their favorite tv
show became not you know was uh non-binary and
i kind of also just in the story i made
for transphoria but just um people kind of finding
(10:48):
themselves in stories and both
the power and frankly the limitations of
that has ended up kind of becoming a recurring
uh i think motif in my work i think
being non-binary and like figuring out what your gender means to yourself often
(11:10):
when you don't fall in those pre-existing categories you start comparing to
what you thought was automatic and should be associated with like.
Either your gender or biological sex and realizing there's so much that is like
(11:31):
a system that you kind of just go through.
And then once you have one or more identities outside of it, you feel like.
It you're you're really questioning your relationship to
a lot of things that you're like is that even actually like it doesn't sound
like it should be related to gender but actually it really is it like like it'll
(11:53):
be a whole um pepe civil pinboard to tell you this but like this really is connected
for me and um so i think even though some stories many of the stories i
write are not necessarily about my characters going
through an explicit gender journey it is still like part of their relationship
(12:14):
to the the they're often going through some kind of system or institution and
their relationship with gender is uh part of that as well.
I love that and that of course makes me
think of the some of the non-human character android
droid characters written but who are so so human and like the emotions
(12:35):
are so real um i think for me writing
is a piece of uncovering my identity and writing
is like one of the main tools i have to figure out myself figure out what's
going on with me and i actually had tried to write a short fictional story about
a non-binary junior high student before i wrote genderqueer and it unfortunately
was really unsuccessful i showed it to a couple of friends and everybody was
(12:58):
like like, this is not working.
And I was like, oh, dear. And I think I had written in like some of my own sort
of like internalized issues were like not resolved enough to sort of address them in fiction.
And that story being so like unsuccessful made me realize like,
I think I have to sit down and write about myself.
And I have to figure out when I talk about gender, what am I actually saying?
(13:19):
And be really clear on what I'm saying and what I mean before I try to re-approach
this in fiction, which is part of why I felt like I needed to write a memoir
was just to like figure out what my actual stance was.
So much of l campbell is just me writing this and just being like damn what
what might it have been like what what would i maybe have been like if i had
(13:40):
figured my shit out at 12 instead of 28,
there's so many stories i read from when i was like in high school or junior
high where i'm like oh this was a trans story before i realized this was a trans
story and that's what happened with the by visibility story i read about a vampire
can't see a reflection it was
very much a dysphoria story. And that was a story I wrote when I was 16.
(14:00):
And they were not trans at the time. And I'm reading it again,
when I found that I was like, oh, this, there's some deeper layers here.
And I was able to workshop it again. But looking back, it's always interesting
to see how much you didn't know and what you know now.
Now, I noticed kind of a recurring theme of us not really seeing the stories
we needed when we were figuring ourselves out at that young age.
(14:23):
And I think a lot of us had to project ourselves onto the media we did have
or like find allegory, even if it wasn't intended.
And I'd be curious to hear like within the realm of comics or other just nerd
media, like what intended or unintended queer or trans narratives like really drew you to them.
(14:44):
And I'd also like to explore how other creators can avoid falling into the common
pitfalls of things like this,
like using monsters as metaphors or mutants as minorities and failing where
so many of those often do in trying to represent us.
Well, in terms of the series that I like for, uh, yeah, the,
(15:07):
the story that was unintendedly very trans Ron Mahalf.
I really like Ron Mahalf. I also, there was, I don't know, one's going to know
this, but there was an old series dragon nights that I read in the school library
growing up were in the first like two chapters.
The main characters crossed just for plot reasons, like three times.
(15:31):
And that really changed my psyche, I think.
Yeah, I just have to reiterate the Ranma. I mean, it's so trans. It's so trans.
Very, very trans. That was the author's intended message, but it's what we received.
And then, yeah, I mean, I definitely related to like every single story of any
(15:52):
female character who dressed up as a boy,
generally to try to like either um you know
study as a knight or access some sort of job or career
that was not open to the character and their birth gender
so alana um the tamora pierce series huge and then just like every single other
version of that narrative ever but of course to me it's always very disappointing
that at the end of the book the character doesn't go oh and now i have a realization
(16:13):
about my identity and who i am they all generally sort of go back to their birth
gender and sometimes it's like it's still a good story because it's like oh
maybe the society has become
more progressive and now women are allowed to be knights or doctors or whatever
um but i really love i don't know if
people have read the deep and dark blue by nicky smith where nicky
smith literally took that narrative like oh i have to cross dress for plot reasons
and then says a woman the character realizes they're trans because of that and
(16:35):
it was like so fulfilling to read that as an adult because i was like thank
you for like closing the circle of this like childhood need for the story to
end this way and making the one where it does end that way thank you i spent my middle
school years watching over and over again you know but i'm a cheerleader and
saving face and stealing every one of my parents entertainment weeklies that
(16:58):
mentioned the l word on the cover and then i just went like yep this is a very
normal cis boy thing to do no nothing to read into here.
Sorry, what was the beginning of your question? I asked about your favorite
intended or like unintended queer trans allegory.
Just because I mentioned it in the first question, Reanimator is one of those
movies that a lot of trans masculine people who love horror like.
(17:21):
And it's very much based in Frankenstein.
So I think any Frankenstein movie, book, comic book, illustrated version is
going to have trans themes unintentionally. know, there's a lot of trying to
get control over the body recreation.
It borders on obsessive, but the desire for something more control.
(17:42):
And I think that's the themes I like to touch on and why I love horror so much.
And when it comes to, you know, the motif you mentioned of, you know,
monster out of the minority, I, because I like horror, that's generally a motif
I like a lot. I like to see that.
And I think, you know, of course, you don't want to perpetuate any
stereotypes but the best way to go about it if you are
(18:02):
into horror gothic stories like that is to
just do it sincerely i think as long as sympathy and
earnestness are embedded in it the people are going to love the monster anyway
i think on the topic of the the monster to to not dehumanize trans characters
through that kind of allegory um i'm also someone who's uh inclined
(18:27):
towards stories that take the side of
the other um and so i kind of like when
monsters are the main character and whatnot but one i think
is a classic advice is to have more than one i think that's a that's an easy
start of you know characters that have different beliefs on and different relationships
(18:47):
to other themes their own gender and whatnot to show that there is this variety and this spectrum.
And also I want to echo what Daniel said with to really approach writing with like,
yeah, empathy, earnestness, and recognizing when this instinct to portray something
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as an other is coming out and questioning, like what...
You're putting into that and what tropes are
you falling into in order to like
is it necessary to portray like this flat other
as well definitely my favorite examples of those
type of stories are where it's so clear that the author is like this
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character who is seen by society as monstrous is me like
i am this character and i love this character and i'm gonna
make you also love this character and so then like the one
in in the story they maybe are otherized but like the relationship
that the narrative has to it is of like of like this is the
beloved character i'm always struck by just like when
like metaphor is useful and when like there's limitations because.
(19:51):
Especially you know trying to figure out
in terms of like being non-binary um what
i struggled with was the sense of like well i don't feel
cis but i'm not sure if i'm a binary trans woman
but those seemed to be the only options and it
took a yeah it took a lot of my life just to even know
(20:12):
that there was like other options that there was
embracing masculinity and femininity that
there are people who use they them pronouns
because that's what fits best i mean it's so
funny because again so often we're up against censorship or
limitations that you know depicting you
know having sci-fi or fantasy uh as
(20:34):
a way to explore that concept i
think can be so useful but i think it's just very important to
pair it with regular mundane human beings who also identify as non-binary just
because it's what they identify and feel the most as i think there's a risk
of if you rely entirely on metaphor or fantasy sci-fi.
(21:00):
And again, in isolation, this doesn't apply to any particular use.
This is only in the grand aggregate of representation that if it's too overwhelmingly
fantasy or sci-fi based, I think there's a bit of a risk of saying like,
oh, being non-binary isn't...
Inhuman experience it's not something people identify
(21:21):
with because it's how they feel it's because there must be
a ghost computer involved somewhere so
i i think it's i think it's really important to just pair both to not lean too
far into one way or the other just because you know that's the one there's not
a ton of non-binary representation to have too many negative tropes But that
(21:42):
is something I sometimes know is like, again, in isolation,
each individual use is totally fine.
It's just sometimes it's like, yeah, if you have like, okay,
you have seven non-binary characters, but none of them are just like a human being.
What are you saying about humans and non-binary identity now?
And so, I don't know, just the use and limits I always try to keep in mind.
(22:06):
Um i made like this whole sci-fi book and honestly it was one of the things
where i had the whole script written the artist was working on it uh the character
had one set of pronouns and then i figured out my shit and figured out i was
non-binary and two days later.
Emailed out the rsm i'm like hey this character is non-binary now kim i really
(22:27):
like what you said about making sure there's like not just one instance of like
representation stories and And I think that's been something that I've really
noticed helps determine,
like, how drawn to a queer piece of media I'm going to feel.
Like, is this a case where there's only one character like that and it's just
all about, like, gee, it sure sucks to be different.
(22:49):
Or do we see, like, how it usually is in real life that there's usually not just one queer person.
They usually are friends with other queer people or have some sense of queer
community or they find that as they grow older.
And I think that's been really important to me as I navigate,
like, okay, what kind of queer media do I want to recommend to people when they
ask, like, what should I be looking toward and what should there be?
(23:12):
Like, I think when reasonable or whenever possible,
there needs to be some representation of trans joy or, like,
joy in community and what it's like not just to realize you're different,
but to be able to celebrate yourself because of that. Mm-hmm.
One of my hopes is that we'll get to a world where there's so much queer stories
(23:35):
out there that it no longer really constitutes as a genre in and of itself,
where instead of someone being like,
oh, I need to find queer stories, someone would be like,
oh, I want a comedy.
Look at all these queer comedies. I want an action movie. Look at all these
great action movies, like queer action movies.
Because we deserve to see ourselves and tell our stories in every genre and
(23:58):
tone under the sun. And I look forward to the day when.
We've told ourselves and all in every genre there is to tell.
Now, jumping on that, like what you hope to see in the future with queer and
trans media and finding it like multiple examples and multiple genres,
I would like to know what you hope that people draw specifically from your works
(24:22):
or the way that you've represented queer and trans identities in your comics
and novels and even other works you've just contributed to.
I think the main thing for me is that I try to communicate that you don't have
to have it all figured out and you don't need to find a specific label.
You can just move towards whatever brings you joy and that any kind of identity.
(24:44):
Whether actually you still identify as cis, but I hope that every single person
explores different ways you can present in your gender.
And you know whether that's fashion or pronouns or
yeah community or you know hairstyles or or creative expression
and just just treat it like a buffet
of life and just pick out all of your favorite most tastiest little morsels
and make a collection of everything that you love and don't worry so much about
(25:06):
it fitting into any specific label or box um i think for my work as uh writing
Writing about like topics that are different,
but trying to include queerness as like very normal or like standard,
despite like it doesn't all for my work.
(25:27):
It doesn't always have to be the A plot.
So portraying characters with many different relationships to their own gender,
being on different, you know, different plot points on the spectrum of gender.
And so it's the the
normalization and then also on a
(25:48):
thematic point going back to this idea of the other and recognizing that like
to see yourself in other even if people don't look or choose to present in the
same way as you to still find that mirror in them.
I would say if someone's reading like my own queer
(26:09):
work and what i hope they take away from it i
would say i guess it depends on the audience um you
know if it's uh if it's a audience that already knows who they are and what
they're all about i just want them to have a good time with a story that sees
them and puts them front and center if they're questioning and trying to figure
(26:30):
out especially stuff like my novel El Campbell.
I really hope it offers a path maybe some answers. I hope it's,
the kind of story that probably would have helped me figure out a lot of stuff.
And maybe for, you know, for your well-meaning straight readers who,
God bless them, they got the spirit, but they're, and they want to do their part.
(26:55):
I would say, I hope from my work that they take away a recognition that,
you know, the coming out and the figuring out what you are isn't the end of the story.
It's really the beginning of it. yeah similar to
that and a few things i think uh anyone reading it if
you are questioning i think it's good to hear one
trans experience one trans voice especially because i feel
(27:16):
like in comics and all media trans characters are usually side characters one-off
characters not really given the main platform so seeing them as main characters
getting that voice at least get you into one side of an experience of what it
means to come to terms with one's identity,
what is involved in any sort of transitioning process.
(27:38):
I think also in most of the things I write, I would hope any audience,
whether they're cis or trans, would see that trans people can belong in any genre.
We talked a lot about genre already, but just seeing how well trans themes can
fit into other genres thematically,
horror, fantasy, sci-fi, there are so many fun elements to play with there that
you You can have fun with a trans character who is out as trans and it's part
(28:02):
of their identity explicitly, but also you could play off of the fun elements that are there.
So I think that's what I enjoyed about seeing a lot of web comics,
that endless possibilities, endless opportunities to do strange things that
anybody could come up with.
And I would hope somebody could see that reflected in what I would write or create.
I know this is outside comics, this is more television.
(28:25):
As much of a fucking motherfucker as the past couple of years has been for our community,
I have been a little heartened on TV seeing more trans actors getting chances
to not just play trans actors, but just to get, not just trans characters,
but to just get to show their talent.
(28:45):
Talent and what they you know uh she hulk
had an episode where a trans woman is getting married
and no attention is ever raised that she's
trans it's just an incredibly funny actress getting
who is cast as the bride in this um you know
kobe in the live action one piece is played by
a trans man played to perfection so i am heartened that you know at least on
(29:10):
that side we are seeing more where people just be recognized and get opportunities
for their immense talent and not just those rare scraps when something fits our identity.
Ben and Dan, both your answers kind of touched on the target audience and what
they're looking for and what they see in your work.
(29:30):
So I think this makes that as good a time as any to open the floor to audience questions.
Yeah, folks just want to like raise your hand or shout something out and feel free to get rowdy.
But yeah any takers on questions okay um so as stuff to your creator i would
love to see you explore more characters exploring their own gender but in a
(29:51):
sense that you don't want people other creators by using it so at the same time
you don't want to influence your own gender identity.
How do you go about exploring things that are out there with this culture on,
let's say, issues or anything like that, and not in the face of other naturalist creators?
(30:12):
Oh, I'm probably bad for this because I posted damn near every photo of my social transition online.
Couldn't stop shutting up about that. Yeah, I obviously think that people of
any identity should and can and do write trans characters very well.
And it just comes down to doing your research. And if perhaps you have some
of that in your identity as well, even if you don't want to be public about
(30:33):
it, maybe the research is very close to home.
And it's pretty easy, actually. um but yeah
i of course i know there's a real push for own voices stories which
i do think are really important but sort of the flip side of own
voices especially in the queer community is that it has sort of forced some
authors to come out before they were ready to do so and that's a real bummer
and that's why we should just take people writing any identity at good faith
(30:55):
and not you know make them show receipts or something but just say did this
character relate like jedi as a reader relate to this character whether or not
the author seems to share the identity and
try to leave it at that and not poke into people's personal lives.
Well said about taking people at face value.
I don't know how familiar people are with the Isabel Fell, what happened with her.
(31:16):
So I think we, as a community, you know, creators and readers have a responsibility
to take people at face value and, you know, work to make sure we don't let that
happen to another creator.
And I think I also want to emphasize, like,
You doing a story doesn't subtract somebody else's story.
(31:38):
This is additive. You adding your voice does not silence anyone else's voice.
So don't feel like your crafting stories takes away from somebody.
We are in community and collaborative.
And it is a big pool and the water is fine.
(31:59):
Yeah, jump in. Yeah. And I know I've heard this advice repeated countless times elsewhere,
but like having some level of trusted sensitivity reader, like if you feel like
you're writing about something that's out of your conscious lived experience,
like have someone you trust that would be more informed on that.
Give it a read and give it feedback.
(32:20):
It by no means has to be the person in your life, but just someone who you know,
you trust their feedback or they have the same goals in mind for the art you're trying to create.
And i've noticed too like as
i've been running the show and meeting a lot
of cis creators that have done great jobs like celebrating
(32:41):
the trans community or celebrating trans people in
comics like i think that word is the thing to focus on like celebrating it and
not just writing as this is something that is afflicting a person but just a
condition of this person and a lot of other things happen that have nothing
to do with that this is just a state of being for a character.
(33:03):
Hi i'm curious to know how uh it's kind of connected to the earlier question regarding,
your gender experience influencing your narratives
but uh like how do you how does your gender experience and transness influence
your world building like the way you are portraying the world and the way that
(33:26):
your just your contemplation on gender on transness on fluidity is experienced
by non-trans characters.
I know I have the least published comics experience on this,
but y'all mind if I take the lead here?
So I have a comic on Kickstarter right now that it's taking everything I loved
growing up and kind of exploring how discovering one's own identity affects
(33:51):
those around you. It's called When We Transform.
It's very Power Rangers inspired because that's what I loved.
And that's ultimately what I want to do is tell trans and queer related experiences
through the realm of things that look like Power Rangers.
I think it's important to focus on like how this will affect people other than one character.
(34:14):
How does this affect family members? How does this affect their world and like how they approach it?
Not to say like, oh, yeah, let's explore all these negatives. Right.
Oh, hey, this is going to change some things. things it's going
to change how this person navigates the world it's going to change
how they approach certain relationships it raises
a big question of how they break a certain major piece
(34:35):
of news to other people and hey if
you don't like your initial character design it gives you a real good
opportunity to do a second chance at that so yeah
I'd say just like really put yourself
in the shoes that character and think of like what are the tough
conversations that would have to be had and maybe even
more importantly like what would it be like to be someone on the other side
(34:58):
of some kind of sci-fi fantasy or even slice of life trans-roided situation
for whatever fits the story um for the original question is about uh gender
expression affecting world building right Right.
Um, so I don't always have this explicitly in my work, but I feel like it's
(35:22):
often, I like it as like a little extra point to figure out, um.
Like a character's relationship with maybe a theme that's going on or some other
categories that they have relationships to.
So and that doesn't always make it into the text for me, at least.
(35:43):
But for example, for my graphic novel, the main characters are magical.
They're like pop idol magical girls fighting for a corporation.
And so they are the premise of this world building is that they are tools for this company.
(36:04):
And so how I write them is that everything is there. They're constructed for this job.
Right. And so actually, they personally do not have a relationship to their
own gender because they are not like manufactured to think about that.
So that's like and that's i
(36:26):
feel like thinking about that as like an option of like not just what gender
are they but like what kind of relationship do they have to that um if you're
a tool for for a corporation maybe you're not allowed to have a relationship
with yourself and your own identity and so that manifests as like,
It's not so much my gender is girl, so much as my job is magical girl,
(36:50):
is how I personally think about that story for myself.
I mean, as someone who spends way too much of their life as a tool for a corporation,
no, you are not allowed to have a relationship with your gender.
Unfortunately, the nail polish comes off on Monday.
I don't have any published sci-fi or fantasy or speculative work yet,
so I haven't been able to show this in my own writing.
(37:12):
Actually well at least at the book length but i wanted to mention
two different novels that i think that doing this really
interestingly and one is the ancillary justice series by
yeah and lecky where there's a whole empire of people who don't think gender
is very important and also take like an implant that basically is like a birth
(37:32):
control type implant that they only turn off very specifically if they want
to have children later on so it kind of just like
neutralizes a lot of gender stuff for the majority of the character's lives.
And every single character in this empire uses she, her pronouns, but I wouldn't say it.
And it's a way that they all identify as feminine. It's just that that's the
neutral pronoun of people. And it's kind of like, nobody thinks about gender very much.
And I, and then people outside the empire think that they're total weirdos for
(37:56):
doing this, but because it's from this character's point of view,
it's normalized like within the society that you're reading about,
which I think is very, very cool.
Oh my gosh, I mean, I forget. I mean, obviously, Ursula K. Le Guin's Left Hand
of Darkness is like a classic, a classic.
I had another example now and then it slipped away. Kind of related,
since writing my own sci-fi book, I went back to kind of discover more sci-fi
(38:23):
prose that I found interest in.
And there's, I haven't read Left Hand of Darkness yet. I really need to but
there's a whole like category of books you you read like three pages and you're
like you know that they love Ursula K. Le Guin's Hand of Darkness and so,
ancillary justice that series was a lot of fun um i really like the murderbot
(38:47):
diaries which is the novella series and the main character is uh it's a tool of a corporation.
And has is oh sorry yeah i mean so the author is martha wells if anybody's looking
down at home and the main character uses like it it's pronouns very deliberately
and it's like do not put gender on
(39:07):
me gender is very gross it's like about their relationship
to this idea of being human um
and in like they want to be a person uh they're trying to find agency but are
they human uh to be quick um i think oh there's another one but i know i had
another example but it fell out of my head so for the people keep talking maybe
(39:28):
it'll return yeah uh just about the world building aspect just
way more general writing advice for anything that pops up where it's like,
oh God, that's part of the story now.
Just advice is to reframe how you think of it and use it as an opportunity.
Like, oh, now I get to expand this and think about this new world in a new way
(39:49):
and all stories are driven by conflict.
So how you wanna play with that, it doesn't have to be our world equivalent,
but what's this new way we could think about it to make the story either more
interesting or add something to
a character, or add something unique that makes you excited to write it.
It shouldn't be something that drags you down or that you dread,
which is very easy when you succumb to writer's block a lot.
(40:13):
So reframe that to an opportunity is my general advice for most things.
Thank you for that question. That sparked a lot of really good answers.
What other questions do we have?
Getting to the point where we're covering that metaphor in her explicit premise,
obviously it's over time hopefully easier
to be explicit and use actual terms but
(40:35):
where do you think there's still like specialty value
that either metaphors or subtext without i mean
i think there's always value in
it i just think it's it's just a measure of a balance influence of moderation
i think there's i think even things that you can be explicit about uh there
(40:58):
might still be a great power in metaphor and the wider applicability or ability to create,
understanding i i think it's just a matter of making sure you got more than
just a hammer in your toolbox so every problem doesn't look like a nail yeah
i'm thinking of a another example it's outside of comics,
(41:19):
but a young adult novel called Out of Salem by Hal Shreve, who also has a just
successfully kickstarted a comic too that I'm excited to read.
But this this book is it's like a teen, you know, it's like a teen coming of
age story. But the main character is non-binary.
And they are also a recently they recently died in a car accident and were revived
with sort of a zombie like spell.
(41:41):
And they're still so going through their day to day life, but with their body
actively decomposing while they try to continue living in it.
And it is very much a metaphor for gender dysphoria.
And it is so successful. Like I read that and I was like, yes.
Sometimes you feel so horrible.
It feels like your body is rotting around you but you
still like have to go to school and you still have
(42:01):
a crush on a hot werewolf girlfriend and etc like
you know and it's it's both it's like
it's both explicit and a metaphor because the character is non-binary and uses
they them pronouns in the story and is misgendered by their
surviving family members so it's not subtext it is
text but then the metaphor is there to kind of show
both like be relatable to a reader who can relate to
(42:21):
it and then maybe like yeah an interesting window into an experience
for a reader who doesn't wait to it of like this is like this
is the visceralness of this feeling so that's
a book that i think does both it's like metaphor it's text and
subtext it's all it fits together really nicely yeah
so no surprise the author is trans so they
know what they were talking about i i think a risk in
(42:43):
in not making things literal and
explicit is that you open up a.
Possibility of people especially maybe um people
from outside the community whether accidentally or even
willfully not understanding the message
um i remember i watched matrix resurrections and
wow that was the most blatantly non-binary movie
(43:06):
of all time like sure they didn't say it but
come on like these characters are coded as non-binary they talk about breaking
a game called binary the movie is about neo being a non-binary sapphic and i
remember watching them like this movie felt like it was delivering all those
messages with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
(43:28):
And then i'd go on youtube and see some like straight boy
film essayist going like i don't get this movie
what was it trying to say i don't really understand what i didn't
really pick up on it i'm like
what was the message in trinity's prison being
this heteronormative marriage what were they trying to say
with that i don't get it yeah i
(43:49):
think kind of touching on maya and kim's answer
like i i've really felt drawn to stories that uh rather than being a full-on
allegory of like this is this it's more the intersection of like how does trans
being trans interact with this like uh blue delaconte is a great web comic called
(44:09):
a oh human star that explores like.
Being trans and also being an android and that
gives opportunities to talk about certain
things like clocking other people like androids can
identify other people really easy uh but it
also affects the way they interact with
their own gender and i think that's that's
(44:32):
a subtle thing that can lead to a lot of problems if it's missing
like when it's just okay yeah minorities are
mutants or something like instead of interacting well what's it
like to be a trans mutant what's would like to be a mutant of color so it's
like okay well minorities are mutants and also mutants
can blow up a school by accident like there's a
reason people are afraid of them and so i think just
(44:53):
finding like okay this isn't the replacement thing this just gives
us something that adds an interesting way to explore
this element of a character or a world yeah that's where
you get like the limits wherein so much like mutant is a
very useful metaphor but if you take it too far are
you be like okay but we would be a little different about people that could
blow up like people's heads with their eyes right like
(45:14):
um no in terms of something that uses that i think struck a really great balance
that uses both a metaphorical concept in this case it's androids but also treats
um feelings of gender identity very explicitly and literally i'd really recommend
and a comic made in Korea,
(45:34):
written by Jeremy Holt, who is a non-binary writer.
It's a heavy book. It deals with some very intense themes, so something that
comes with a very strong content warning for that.
But that is a book that uses the metaphor of a robot child, but uses that to
(45:55):
explicitly explore being transgender and gender identity.
So like you know it it starts with the metaphorical but then uses that to springboard into the literal.
I'll recommend something that sounds like it's on the opposite end of like safe
for children spectrum, which is the Bat Cat series by Maggie Ram.
(46:16):
There's two I think out so far. And it's about a little pink round creature
that is half bat half cat.
And it lives on a little magical whimsical island and like has to solve little
problems like a ghost is eating all of my food.
What do I do about that? And this Bat Cat on especially in
the first book goes on this little journey and encounters both cats and bats
(46:37):
both of who say like you don't fit in our little group and
has to really be like who am i and where do i fit and then
comes to realize like i can be equally a bat
and a cat and have a good time and
the author is non-binary this is very much like it's
another one of those where it's like it's a metaphor because it's two animals
but then the character also again uses they them pronouns as is written by a
(46:58):
non-binary author and is very much written for young non-binary readers like
we're talking like six eight year olds to have a character that they can relate
to and also maybe practice using pronouns for a character in a book.
And like, it's again, working on kind of, I would say two, really successfully on two levels.
I think it's important as a really rich, just introduce that there are these
options and the pronouns.
(47:20):
I mean, when I was doing El Campbell, the full title is El Campbell wins their weekend.
And that was something I was very insistent on is I want a they,
them pronoun in the title.
I want it to be undeniable. not that it
stopped assholes on goodreads from misgendering the main
character throughout the review but at least i
feel like well you would did this intentionally there's no
(47:41):
way you could have missed what the whole big book about being
non-binary uses they them pronouns i
think we have time for probably one more question before we wrap
up actually we'll make time for two casper you
want to go first yes i find often child especially modern
bright civic society we really yeah better made
them and trying issues to hit it against each other
(48:03):
um this is about portrait so i'm wondering
it as writers and creators you have experience trying to maintain a true intersectionality
whilst dealing with this weird political system if you have any experience that
directly trying to make sure that stories still feel genuine to more finery
so there isn't people but also to include the challenge ones that we all know
have experienced directly yeah i mean i definitely know that like.
(48:26):
Just in my personal level, I became a feminist when I came out as non-binary.
And so for me, feminism and like, you know, trans rights are completely interlinked.
And I try to represent that as best as I can in my work.
And I briefly mentioned a short story that wasn't working before I wrote Genderqueer.
It was because I hadn't figured that out yet.
It was I wrote a story that was trying to be from a AFAB non-binary perspective.
(48:49):
And it was riddled with like trans misogyny because I hadn't figured my shit
out because I was reacting, I was including my sort of negative experiences
with femininity, without acknowledging that like, femininity is like a beautiful,
powerful gift for many, just not one that suited me.
And so then I wrote a second little comic called Gifts, which is about wanting
to give away sort of the pieces of femininity that I was born with,
(49:11):
but acknowledging that they are like very good and powerful things that I wish
I could like hand to someone who really wanted them.
And so they would be like valued, not like thrown away as
like discarded as like unimportant and i think
writing that comic helped me sort out like so that
by the time i got to like writing my memoir i was like okay i
now i know what i'm saying which is that like that like we're not trying to
(49:34):
like throw away pieces of gender because we think they're like bad it's that
we're trying to find the ones that give us joy and we're trying to move towards
joy and away from sort of like control and shame so that that's sort of like
what i've come to in my work.
And I'm still I hope that I include this in all of my fictional work as well.
But I really kind of feel like I worked it out in my memoir stuff.
(49:55):
And I hope to show it in my fiction in the future.
I think the question is really interesting with like, it's definitely a topic
that is a bit adjacent to a project I'm starting to like develop with this idea of femininity.
And And I guess my angle on it
with my personal work is how people's relationship with their femininity,
(50:21):
how that can express different relationships with where else they feel like they fit in the world.
So a hyper feminine character that might that expression of hyper femininity
might tie into needing to feeling like she needs to perform a role elsewhere.
(50:42):
And this is how that's expressed here.
Yeah, I mean, I'm, for my reasons, I guess I come from a more trans feminine
angle of my experiences.
So, you know, usually if I'm exploring my own identity or something like that,
you know, it's usually coming at it from an angle of embracing femininity and
(51:05):
trying to become more feminine.
So, I don't know. I don't have a great answer to this one, I'm afraid.
I don't know. Just in my experience and my own ways of working through things,
I think so much trans misogyny just hurts trans women. It hurts cis women.
I think writers need to take more of the opportunity and more of the time to
(51:25):
understand the harm that trans misogyny does to all people.
I think a lot of trans misogyny ends up reducing cis women and trans women down
to body parts that I feel like contradict a lot of beliefs that they think they have.
And there are so many great comics that exist that support trans women,
include trans women in the themes that they deal with, with the power that comes with womanhood,
(51:48):
girlhood, bonds between women and how it ties to the story.
Story two very different stories I'm thinking of
are Andy Stevenson wrote Lumberjanes along with
other artists and writers that names are escaping
me right now but there is a trans character in that
in this group of girls and then the other one I was
thinking of was Safe Sex by Tina Horn a lot of
(52:11):
casually trans and queer characters all working together in a kind of like dystopian
conservative society and they portray you know trans women and cis women and
all kinds of gender representations just together and in a way that supports
queer rights, trans rights, sex workers' rights.
And it supports the story. It aids the story. And I think if you approach writing
(52:34):
a marginalized character in a way that doesn't do that, you're ultimately doing
harm to all sorts of causes.
Really quickly, something that I thought of is that often when feminism meets
transmisogyny, they're usually treating a certain trait as sacred and untouchable.
And that is really worth investigate.
(52:57):
If you run into that as a writer, I think that's really worth investigating.
Narratively, but also your own feelings.
I have, I feel like a lot of my work looks at like systems and institutions and stuff.
And so naturally that kind of marries into each other of like,
this is seen as so natural and so sacred.
(53:18):
Let's examine that. Let's really think about that.
Now uh last question towards the back
yeah so i love to ask because of how
covid kind of changed how people meet and interact where
do creators kind of go to find other creator qualities to like
collaborate and help each other because there's got to be a better place than
twitter and just peeing at conventions um as far as like networking and finding
(53:43):
other creators within the trans community uh blue sky has been a really good
alternative to twitter so far i'd really
recommend that just from my own personal experience i know
that's where some people on this panel are often most
active um also as for like finding collaborators there's a number of subreddits
you can look into that you have to be kind of sharp because sometimes they get
(54:07):
overrun with bots and scammers but like i found artists on reddit like r slash
comic collabs or hungry artists,
just look into people's past work.
But yeah, there's certainly communities out there. And those are the two I'd first start with.
There are a lot of Discord groups out there. I mean, there are a lot of Discord groups in general.
(54:30):
But I find that with social media kind of scattering, Discord groups seem to be more popular.
Maybe it's among just like a certain demographic, but I've definitely seen a lot of people there.
At the very least, I'm part of the cartoonist co-op as an example,
and I'm sure there are gender and trans-specific groups that you can find.
(54:56):
It is a little bit of a hassle that it's like you have to join the group before
you can see anything and see if it's your vibe, but that's the times right now.
Yeah, I would second the cartoonist co-op discord, which I'm also a part of.
And it has about 1000 members at this point.
And it's trying to do some of the work that a union could do.
(55:16):
But it's so hard to unionize comics because it's such a we're such a scattered
freelancing based field.
But there's a lot of resources, they're trying to build things like discounts
on say, like self printing companies for members.
And there's a lot of people asking, you know, technical questions, advice on things.
And I don't know that there's a specific place where people are actively trying to find out.
Collaborators but i think just being active in a space like that
(55:39):
and sort of getting to know people from chit-chatting you might
develop realize that you have common interests or common creative goals
with someone and then maybe you can sort of take it into the dms and
see if you have the time and interest in making a
project um there's been a lot of really great and wonderful uh queer and trans
comic anthologies lately and you know so those are a lot of people who are starting
(56:03):
out making and names them, putting out some of their first work.
And again, that's a whole anthology is full of queer and trans creators.
And this is a community where most people in this business are...
Are really friendly no matter how much we're shut in nerds
we really are friendly so you know really like
(56:24):
check out some of those anthologies look up who the creators involved are where
they're at i mean that's uh you know these anthologies are kind of nice built-in
uh rosters of community of people that are you know on the same journey you
are both in terms of queerness and in creating if you've got
(56:44):
a few friends also start project of
your own i uh co-ran an anthology a
gay girl gay vibes anthology with my former roommates
and so that's been going on glimmer yeah
as someone who's really bad at keeping up with social media uh finding those
uh like discord groups the small communities you could find and also conventions
(57:07):
are a great place you can probably ask anyone who's here for a business card
or where you can find them online for more direct contact,
but try to stay as active on social media as possible because that is a really
good way to connect with people.
Unfortunately, yeah, social media and conventions are really good ways to meet people.
Now, in our last few minutes here, I just wanted to give our panelists all a
(57:29):
chance to plug their own ongoing and upcoming work.
So, yeah, starting with Daniel, what do we got in the near future?
What do we got that's available now? Wow.
Transphoria, it was a Kickstarter campaign. You could still get it now.
You can find it by just Googling Transphoria Kickstarter. It's an anthology.
It has 17 different trans stories of different genres. So I definitely recommend checking that out.
(57:52):
And I do that through Lifeline Comics. And there are new campaigns almost every
month that you should go check out for that too. Also on Kickstarter.
Yeah. And I have a story in that. I have a story about how Jojo's Bizarre Adventures made me gay.
You can find me at benconcomics.com, benconcomics on Instagram and Blue Sky.
(58:14):
Blue Sky is where I spend most of my time social media-wise.
I co-host the Progressively Horrified podcast where we review and analyze horror
movies through the lens of progressive politics and themes.
New episodes every Friday. And then my next graphic novel is currently available for pre-order.
(58:35):
Mr. Muffins, Defender of the Stars from Oni Press is about a young boy dragged
into an intergalactic war when he discovers that the cosmic spirit of light
has been reborn as his pet corgi.
You can find me at social media at Kimberley, K-M-B-R-L-E-I at most sites,
(58:55):
except for Twitter, which is Raven and Blue.
And you can find my book of Thunder and Lightning in bookstores and through
the Silver Sprocket website.
You can also find my book in bookstores, which is so great.
Gender Queer, a Memoir is my first book.
(59:16):
I have this one out. Now, Breathe's Journeys to Healthy Binding was a short
nonfiction book about chest binding is an aspect of transmasculine health care,
but more generally about thinking about ways that you can transition that are
gentle on your body, but positive for your mind.
I'm working on a third book that'll be out someday. And you can find me at Red
Gold Sparks on Instagram and Tumblr, which is my favorite social media.
(59:40):
Or you can Google me. and if
you don't mind a little self plug my own first very trans
comic when we transform is currently live on
kickstarter we're about 80 funded at the moment so thank you yeah feel free
to check us out uh we're doing some cool stuff we have a color changing special
edition of our comic book that no one's done before and yeah we could use some
(01:00:04):
help hitting that 100 goal but otherwise Otherwise, thank you so much,
everyone, for joining us today.
Dan, Ben, Kim, Maya, you've all been incredible and I've loved your answers.
Thank you for having us. Thank you, everyone, for coming.
And one last thank you to the audience for sharing your questions.
(01:00:24):
If you want to check out our past episodes, you can find us online as Transcending Comics.
We're on most social media sites and podcasting platforms.
So, yeah, we'll see you next time. Thank you.
Music.
Music.
(00:18):
This is Tommy here. This week's episode of Transcending Comics is our first
ever live panel, which was hosted by FlameCon in New York City.
If you're a queer fan of comics, or a fan of queer comics, I really cannot recommend
this convention enough.
We met some incredible creators and collaborators there, and you'll be hearing
more interviews from the trip in the near future.
But before we get into the episode, I want to give a special shout out to our
(00:41):
friend Sadie for capturing video footage of the panel, which will be going live
on YouTube the same day as this episode.
She did an incredible job with the filming and editing, and she even managed
to grab some good audio of the audience questions, which I would not have been able to do on my own.
But that's enough from me for now, so just sit back, relax, and enjoy our first ever live panel.
(01:04):
Hello everyone, and welcome to Transcending Comics, our podcast dedicated to
trans representation in comic books, manga, and webtoons.
And on this panel, we're going behind the scenes. I'm your host,
Tommy Trimbath, and joining me today is more queer talent that I think can be
safely contained in any one room.
First up, from Lifeline Comics, we have Daniel Falco.
(01:27):
He's a writer and editor. Their work's been featured in anthologies like By
Visibility, Still By, and the recent Kickstarter campaign, Transphoria.
Welcome to the show, Daniel. Thank you so much.
Next up, we have Ben Kahn. One of my favorite podcasters that regularly challenges
the sexy vampire, sexy werewolf binary on the Progressively Horrified podcast,
(01:48):
and the writer behind several badass graphic novels like Captain Lazerock, Crushing Love,
Renegade Rule, and Mr. Muffins, Defender of the Stars.
Good to be here. Ben here, they, she, and glad to be a part of this panel.
Also joining us is Kim Wong, the writer and artist behind the incredible graphic
novel of Thunder and Lightning, as well as webcomics like An Eye for an Eye
(02:10):
and O Radiant Devil, O Whispering Angel. Welcome back, Kim.
Hello again. And finally, we're joined by the Stonewall and Ignatz award-winning
author and illustrator behind Genderqueer.
As well as Journey's Guide to Healthy Binding, and many other zines and short comics by a co-babe.
Hello! I'll be kicking us off here with just a number of questions for the entire
(02:34):
group, and then we'll dedicate the second half of the panel to questions from the audience.
But to start us off, just to help everyone else out there that's as bad with
names as I am, if you could just remind everyone your name, your pronouns,
and tell us your favorite thing you've seen at the con so far,
we'll take it from there. All right, I'll start since I'm next in the lineup.
Hi, everyone. I'm Daniel Falco.
(02:54):
I use he him pronouns. And I've worked for Lifeline Comics on a few anthologies
that are very queer specific and walking around this flame con.
There have been so much good art around. I like picking up a lot of indie books.
But I think my favorite thing I passed was somebody who focuses on reanimator
and Jeffrey Combs filmography pages, which was a very culty 80s horror movie
(03:17):
with insane practical effects.
So finding one of my favorite bad, bad in quotation marks movies around was
very special for me. Ben, how about you?
Yeah, I'm sorry for jumping the gun on the panel format there. Again, my name is Ben.
My pronouns are they, she, I do the Progressively Horrified podcast.
I've done comics for Scout, Dark Horse, Simon & Schuster, Tokyo Pop, Oni Press.
(03:43):
And I wrote a middle grade prose novel for Scholastic called El Campbell Wins Their Weekend.
Uh, yeah, I mean, one non-binary seventh graders quest to escape in Saturday
detention and trek across town to meet their celebrity hero.
And, you know, I can't, I've lost count of how many flame cons I've done.
And what keeps me coming back year after year is just the people and the energy.
(04:05):
I mean, it's, it's not just like the costumes and the merchandise fee and the
merch bin books people make. It is just crazy.
To have an environment where we can fully embrace not just our nerdy interests, but our identities.
I mean, there's plenty of places that are queer accepting, but only FlameCon
(04:27):
is queer assuming, if that makes sense.
Thank you, Ben. How are you, Kim? My name is Kimberly, or you can call me Kim as well.
Kim Wong, and my pronouns are they, them. My favorite thing that I've seen at
FlameCon today, someone gave me a sticker that says, let's go to the Yuri Aquarium.
(04:49):
And I want to go. Let's go to the Yuri Aquarium.
Hello, everyone. My name is Maya Kovabe. I use the pronouns E-M-AIR.
I have seen so much good stuff, but I think definitely seeing my friends and
their newest works is very exciting. So I collabed on a K-pop fanzine,
for example, that is at Hazel and Belle and also Kat and Kendra's table.
(05:12):
So getting to see that resagraphed and in person was very special after collabing completely online.
But I'm also really into those beanies that look like an orange with a little
leaf at the top. So might buy that before the end of the weekend.
Now, in this panel, I actually marks about the one year anniversary of Transcending Comics.
(05:33):
I appreciate everyone that's been involved in the show so far. our listeners.
To kick off our proper questions, I wanted to ask about, like,
when I first started researching comics for the show,
I was immediately overwhelmed with how present and influential trans creators
have been in the world of webcomics, literally since their inception.
(05:53):
So for those here that partake, I'd love to know how you feel that webcomics
have influenced you both as a fan and a creator in the medium.
I mean, I was definitely around reading a lot of those 2000s web comics,
which is now made by trans women in the 2020s.
I mean, I got my start. I mean, my first comics were, you know,
(06:16):
stuff like 8-Bit Theater.
I don't know if anybody reads Something Positive, but that is a really,
really great web comic by Randy Milholland that has run for over 20 years.
That's a fantastic one. I got my start in web comics my first comic I started
when I was 15 I made a Kingdom Hearts sprite comic,
I took the sprites from the Game Boy Advance game
(06:39):
and with Microsoft Paint I didn't even have Photoshop with Microsoft Paint I
would put them together in these little four panel strips please don't look
it up it was shot comedy made by a 15 year old in the 2000s raised on Chappelle's
show in South Park it did not age well.
And you were making this for sprite the drink yes that's exactly right yeah
(07:02):
sprite comics you know sprite comics right yeah okay i knew there was okay late in the convention.
So like like that was my first start was you know i did that for i made 700
of these kingdom hearts little on a reality show dumb little strips but like
(07:22):
it was great practice for dialogue you know I didn't have original backgrounds I had.
Characters with pixelation too low to have expression so they
just had some like rote body language poses so
the only thing that was original and the only way to really
communicate any tone was uh solely through dialogue which i can now look back
on and be like yeah that was some pretty spectacular training in that regard
(07:46):
yeah i think probably many people in this panel maybe many people in the audience
will relate to the fact that we all went to web comics looking for queer stories
that we couldn't yet find in the bookstore or the library especially when i was
a teenager and i was like so hungry for like any
scrap any crumb of a queer narrative and i
definitely went online to find that stuff and a lot of the i
mean some of the earliest queer comics are people
(08:08):
like people upstairs are still they're still upstairs and they're making comics
even if it's like a difference much different they've abandoned the early web
series but they're doing something else now so there's
a web comic i don't know if anyone there's one of those classical little
keen spot type comics i remember heard called misfile where an angel misfiled
somebody's identity and they and a boy just wakes up suddenly and is a girl
(08:32):
and you know read that for a while and you know i was like oh wouldn't that
be interesting if that happened to you.
Now, I know that everyone here has in some way put into their comics representation
of their own gender identity or at least exploration of gender.
So I'd love to know how your gender experience has influenced the way that you
(08:57):
write your characters, both queer and otherwise.
I feel like growing up, I was mostly introduced to a lot of coming out stories
or coming to terms with your identity stories.
And my experience was much slower. is less like a jump into water and more of
like wading in and out and in coming out in some facets of my life and coming
out in other ways and then retreating back.
(09:18):
So I think when I'm now writing my queer characters, I want to hone in on specific
slower details of what's happening.
Like for Transformer, I was writing about the hormone replacement therapy aspect
and the trials of having to go through all the misinformation that's out there.
And I think it's my gender experience has helped
me slow down with how i want to create characters create a story and what i
(09:43):
want an audience to get out of it so it's been helpful not just to like get
to know who the character is but the pacing of the theme what i want to actually
be trying for me i definitely.
A lot of the ways that i kind of started figuring things
out or the ways i came about the terminology that
(10:03):
uh helped me was you know a lot of it came from
stories you know uh movie as
comics shows what have you and as much as real people in my life have been very
impactful um fiction was very much a way that i kind of came to start understanding
my identity and that's kind of turned into a bit of a recurring theme of some
(10:27):
of my writing um you know very
much the case for l campbell for l and l campbell um
you know i cared who had no idea what non-binary was until
their favorite until the star of their favorite tv
show became not you know was uh non-binary and
i kind of also just in the story i made
for transphoria but just um people kind of finding
(10:48):
themselves in stories and both
the power and frankly the limitations of
that has ended up kind of becoming a recurring
uh i think motif in my work i think
being non-binary and like figuring out what your gender means to yourself often
(11:10):
when you don't fall in those pre-existing categories you start comparing to
what you thought was automatic and should be associated with like.
Either your gender or biological sex and realizing there's so much that is like
(11:31):
a system that you kind of just go through.
And then once you have one or more identities outside of it, you feel like.
It you're you're really questioning your relationship to
a lot of things that you're like is that even actually like it doesn't sound
like it should be related to gender but actually it really is it like like it'll
(11:53):
be a whole um pepe civil pinboard to tell you this but like this really is connected
for me and um so i think even though some stories many of the stories i
write are not necessarily about my characters going
through an explicit gender journey it is still like part of their relationship
(12:14):
to the the they're often going through some kind of system or institution and
their relationship with gender is uh part of that as well.
I love that and that of course makes me
think of the some of the non-human character android
droid characters written but who are so so human and like the emotions
(12:35):
are so real um i think for me writing
is a piece of uncovering my identity and writing
is like one of the main tools i have to figure out myself figure out what's
going on with me and i actually had tried to write a short fictional story about
a non-binary junior high student before i wrote genderqueer and it unfortunately
was really unsuccessful i showed it to a couple of friends and everybody was
(12:58):
like like, this is not working.
And I was like, oh, dear. And I think I had written in like some of my own sort
of like internalized issues were like not resolved enough to sort of address them in fiction.
And that story being so like unsuccessful made me realize like,
I think I have to sit down and write about myself.
And I have to figure out when I talk about gender, what am I actually saying?
(13:19):
And be really clear on what I'm saying and what I mean before I try to re-approach
this in fiction, which is part of why I felt like I needed to write a memoir
was just to like figure out what my actual stance was.
So much of l campbell is just me writing this and just being like damn what
what might it have been like what what would i maybe have been like if i had
(13:40):
figured my shit out at 12 instead of 28,
there's so many stories i read from when i was like in high school or junior
high where i'm like oh this was a trans story before i realized this was a trans
story and that's what happened with the by visibility story i read about a vampire
can't see a reflection it was
very much a dysphoria story. And that was a story I wrote when I was 16.
(14:00):
And they were not trans at the time. And I'm reading it again,
when I found that I was like, oh, this, there's some deeper layers here.
And I was able to workshop it again. But looking back, it's always interesting
to see how much you didn't know and what you know now.
Now, I noticed kind of a recurring theme of us not really seeing the stories
we needed when we were figuring ourselves out at that young age.
(14:23):
And I think a lot of us had to project ourselves onto the media we did have
or like find allegory, even if it wasn't intended.
And I'd be curious to hear like within the realm of comics or other just nerd
media, like what intended or unintended queer or trans narratives like really drew you to them.
(14:44):
And I'd also like to explore how other creators can avoid falling into the common
pitfalls of things like this,
like using monsters as metaphors or mutants as minorities and failing where
so many of those often do in trying to represent us.
Well, in terms of the series that I like for, uh, yeah, the,
(15:07):
the story that was unintendedly very trans Ron Mahalf.
I really like Ron Mahalf. I also, there was, I don't know, one's going to know
this, but there was an old series dragon nights that I read in the school library
growing up were in the first like two chapters.
The main characters crossed just for plot reasons, like three times.
(15:31):
And that really changed my psyche, I think.
Yeah, I just have to reiterate the Ranma. I mean, it's so trans. It's so trans.
Very, very trans. That was the author's intended message, but it's what we received.
And then, yeah, I mean, I definitely related to like every single story of any
(15:52):
female character who dressed up as a boy,
generally to try to like either um you know
study as a knight or access some sort of job or career
that was not open to the character and their birth gender
so alana um the tamora pierce series huge and then just like every single other
version of that narrative ever but of course to me it's always very disappointing
that at the end of the book the character doesn't go oh and now i have a realization
(16:13):
about my identity and who i am they all generally sort of go back to their birth
gender and sometimes it's like it's still a good story because it's like oh
maybe the society has become
more progressive and now women are allowed to be knights or doctors or whatever
um but i really love i don't know if
people have read the deep and dark blue by nicky smith where nicky
smith literally took that narrative like oh i have to cross dress for plot reasons
and then says a woman the character realizes they're trans because of that and
(16:35):
it was like so fulfilling to read that as an adult because i was like thank
you for like closing the circle of this like childhood need for the story to
end this way and making the one where it does end that way thank you i spent my middle
school years watching over and over again you know but i'm a cheerleader and
saving face and stealing every one of my parents entertainment weeklies that
(16:58):
mentioned the l word on the cover and then i just went like yep this is a very
normal cis boy thing to do no nothing to read into here.
Sorry, what was the beginning of your question? I asked about your favorite
intended or like unintended queer trans allegory.
Just because I mentioned it in the first question, Reanimator is one of those
movies that a lot of trans masculine people who love horror like.
(17:21):
And it's very much based in Frankenstein.
So I think any Frankenstein movie, book, comic book, illustrated version is
going to have trans themes unintentionally. know, there's a lot of trying to
get control over the body recreation.
It borders on obsessive, but the desire for something more control.
(17:42):
And I think that's the themes I like to touch on and why I love horror so much.
And when it comes to, you know, the motif you mentioned of, you know,
monster out of the minority, I, because I like horror, that's generally a motif
I like a lot. I like to see that.
And I think, you know, of course, you don't want to perpetuate any
stereotypes but the best way to go about it if you are
(18:02):
into horror gothic stories like that is to
just do it sincerely i think as long as sympathy and
earnestness are embedded in it the people are going to love the monster anyway
i think on the topic of the the monster to to not dehumanize trans characters
through that kind of allegory um i'm also someone who's uh inclined
(18:27):
towards stories that take the side of
the other um and so i kind of like when
monsters are the main character and whatnot but one i think
is a classic advice is to have more than one i think that's a that's an easy
start of you know characters that have different beliefs on and different relationships
(18:47):
to other themes their own gender and whatnot to show that there is this variety and this spectrum.
And also I want to echo what Daniel said with to really approach writing with like,
yeah, empathy, earnestness, and recognizing when this instinct to portray something
(19:08):
as an other is coming out and questioning, like what...
You're putting into that and what tropes are
you falling into in order to like
is it necessary to portray like this flat other
as well definitely my favorite examples of those
type of stories are where it's so clear that the author is like this
(19:30):
character who is seen by society as monstrous is me like
i am this character and i love this character and i'm gonna
make you also love this character and so then like the one
in in the story they maybe are otherized but like the relationship
that the narrative has to it is of like of like this is the
beloved character i'm always struck by just like when
like metaphor is useful and when like there's limitations because.
(19:51):
Especially you know trying to figure out
in terms of like being non-binary um what
i struggled with was the sense of like well i don't feel
cis but i'm not sure if i'm a binary trans woman
but those seemed to be the only options and it
took a yeah it took a lot of my life just to even know
(20:12):
that there was like other options that there was
embracing masculinity and femininity that
there are people who use they them pronouns
because that's what fits best i mean it's so
funny because again so often we're up against censorship or
limitations that you know depicting you
know having sci-fi or fantasy uh as
(20:34):
a way to explore that concept i
think can be so useful but i think it's just very important to
pair it with regular mundane human beings who also identify as non-binary just
because it's what they identify and feel the most as i think there's a risk
of if you rely entirely on metaphor or fantasy sci-fi.
(21:00):
And again, in isolation, this doesn't apply to any particular use.
This is only in the grand aggregate of representation that if it's too overwhelmingly
fantasy or sci-fi based, I think there's a bit of a risk of saying like,
oh, being non-binary isn't...
Inhuman experience it's not something people identify
(21:21):
with because it's how they feel it's because there must be
a ghost computer involved somewhere so
i i think it's i think it's really important to just pair both to not lean too
far into one way or the other just because you know that's the one there's not
a ton of non-binary representation to have too many negative tropes But that
(21:42):
is something I sometimes know is like, again, in isolation,
each individual use is totally fine.
It's just sometimes it's like, yeah, if you have like, okay,
you have seven non-binary characters, but none of them are just like a human being.
What are you saying about humans and non-binary identity now?
And so, I don't know, just the use and limits I always try to keep in mind.
(22:06):
Um i made like this whole sci-fi book and honestly it was one of the things
where i had the whole script written the artist was working on it uh the character
had one set of pronouns and then i figured out my shit and figured out i was
non-binary and two days later.
Emailed out the rsm i'm like hey this character is non-binary now kim i really
(22:27):
like what you said about making sure there's like not just one instance of like
representation stories and And I think that's been something that I've really
noticed helps determine,
like, how drawn to a queer piece of media I'm going to feel.
Like, is this a case where there's only one character like that and it's just
all about, like, gee, it sure sucks to be different.
(22:49):
Or do we see, like, how it usually is in real life that there's usually not just one queer person.
They usually are friends with other queer people or have some sense of queer
community or they find that as they grow older.
And I think that's been really important to me as I navigate,
like, okay, what kind of queer media do I want to recommend to people when they
ask, like, what should I be looking toward and what should there be?
(23:12):
Like, I think when reasonable or whenever possible,
there needs to be some representation of trans joy or, like,
joy in community and what it's like not just to realize you're different,
but to be able to celebrate yourself because of that. Mm-hmm.
One of my hopes is that we'll get to a world where there's so much queer stories
(23:35):
out there that it no longer really constitutes as a genre in and of itself,
where instead of someone being like,
oh, I need to find queer stories, someone would be like,
oh, I want a comedy.
Look at all these queer comedies. I want an action movie. Look at all these
great action movies, like queer action movies.
Because we deserve to see ourselves and tell our stories in every genre and
(23:58):
tone under the sun. And I look forward to the day when.
We've told ourselves and all in every genre there is to tell.
Now, jumping on that, like what you hope to see in the future with queer and
trans media and finding it like multiple examples and multiple genres,
I would like to know what you hope that people draw specifically from your works
(24:22):
or the way that you've represented queer and trans identities in your comics
and novels and even other works you've just contributed to.
I think the main thing for me is that I try to communicate that you don't have
to have it all figured out and you don't need to find a specific label.
You can just move towards whatever brings you joy and that any kind of identity.
(24:44):
Whether actually you still identify as cis, but I hope that every single person
explores different ways you can present in your gender.
And you know whether that's fashion or pronouns or
yeah community or you know hairstyles or or creative expression
and just just treat it like a buffet
of life and just pick out all of your favorite most tastiest little morsels
and make a collection of everything that you love and don't worry so much about
(25:06):
it fitting into any specific label or box um i think for my work as uh writing
Writing about like topics that are different,
but trying to include queerness as like very normal or like standard,
despite like it doesn't all for my work.
(25:27):
It doesn't always have to be the A plot.
So portraying characters with many different relationships to their own gender,
being on different, you know, different plot points on the spectrum of gender.
And so it's the the
normalization and then also on a
(25:48):
thematic point going back to this idea of the other and recognizing that like
to see yourself in other even if people don't look or choose to present in the
same way as you to still find that mirror in them.
I would say if someone's reading like my own queer
(26:09):
work and what i hope they take away from it i
would say i guess it depends on the audience um you
know if it's uh if it's a audience that already knows who they are and what
they're all about i just want them to have a good time with a story that sees
them and puts them front and center if they're questioning and trying to figure
(26:30):
out especially stuff like my novel El Campbell.
I really hope it offers a path maybe some answers. I hope it's,
the kind of story that probably would have helped me figure out a lot of stuff.
And maybe for, you know, for your well-meaning straight readers who,
God bless them, they got the spirit, but they're, and they want to do their part.
(26:55):
I would say, I hope from my work that they take away a recognition that,
you know, the coming out and the figuring out what you are isn't the end of the story.
It's really the beginning of it. yeah similar to
that and a few things i think uh anyone reading it if
you are questioning i think it's good to hear one
trans experience one trans voice especially because i feel
(27:16):
like in comics and all media trans characters are usually side characters one-off
characters not really given the main platform so seeing them as main characters
getting that voice at least get you into one side of an experience of what it
means to come to terms with one's identity,
what is involved in any sort of transitioning process.
(27:38):
I think also in most of the things I write, I would hope any audience,
whether they're cis or trans, would see that trans people can belong in any genre.
We talked a lot about genre already, but just seeing how well trans themes can
fit into other genres thematically,
horror, fantasy, sci-fi, there are so many fun elements to play with there that
you You can have fun with a trans character who is out as trans and it's part
(28:02):
of their identity explicitly, but also you could play off of the fun elements that are there.
So I think that's what I enjoyed about seeing a lot of web comics,
that endless possibilities, endless opportunities to do strange things that
anybody could come up with.
And I would hope somebody could see that reflected in what I would write or create.
I know this is outside comics, this is more television.
(28:25):
As much of a fucking motherfucker as the past couple of years has been for our community,
I have been a little heartened on TV seeing more trans actors getting chances
to not just play trans actors, but just to get, not just trans characters,
but to just get to show their talent.
(28:45):
Talent and what they you know uh she hulk
had an episode where a trans woman is getting married
and no attention is ever raised that she's
trans it's just an incredibly funny actress getting
who is cast as the bride in this um you know
kobe in the live action one piece is played by
a trans man played to perfection so i am heartened that you know at least on
(29:10):
that side we are seeing more where people just be recognized and get opportunities
for their immense talent and not just those rare scraps when something fits our identity.
Ben and Dan, both your answers kind of touched on the target audience and what
they're looking for and what they see in your work.
(29:30):
So I think this makes that as good a time as any to open the floor to audience questions.
Yeah, folks just want to like raise your hand or shout something out and feel free to get rowdy.
But yeah any takers on questions okay um so as stuff to your creator i would
love to see you explore more characters exploring their own gender but in a
(29:51):
sense that you don't want people other creators by using it so at the same time
you don't want to influence your own gender identity.
How do you go about exploring things that are out there with this culture on,
let's say, issues or anything like that, and not in the face of other naturalist creators?
(30:12):
Oh, I'm probably bad for this because I posted damn near every photo of my social transition online.
Couldn't stop shutting up about that. Yeah, I obviously think that people of
any identity should and can and do write trans characters very well.
And it just comes down to doing your research. And if perhaps you have some
of that in your identity as well, even if you don't want to be public about
(30:33):
it, maybe the research is very close to home.
And it's pretty easy, actually. um but yeah
i of course i know there's a real push for own voices stories which
i do think are really important but sort of the flip side of own
voices especially in the queer community is that it has sort of forced some
authors to come out before they were ready to do so and that's a real bummer
and that's why we should just take people writing any identity at good faith
(30:55):
and not you know make them show receipts or something but just say did this
character relate like jedi as a reader relate to this character whether or not
the author seems to share the identity and
try to leave it at that and not poke into people's personal lives.
Well said about taking people at face value.
I don't know how familiar people are with the Isabel Fell, what happened with her.
(31:16):
So I think we, as a community, you know, creators and readers have a responsibility
to take people at face value and, you know, work to make sure we don't let that
happen to another creator.
And I think I also want to emphasize, like,
You doing a story doesn't subtract somebody else's story.
(31:38):
This is additive. You adding your voice does not silence anyone else's voice.
So don't feel like your crafting stories takes away from somebody.
We are in community and collaborative.
And it is a big pool and the water is fine.
(31:59):
Yeah, jump in. Yeah. And I know I've heard this advice repeated countless times elsewhere,
but like having some level of trusted sensitivity reader, like if you feel like
you're writing about something that's out of your conscious lived experience,
like have someone you trust that would be more informed on that.
Give it a read and give it feedback.
(32:20):
It by no means has to be the person in your life, but just someone who you know,
you trust their feedback or they have the same goals in mind for the art you're trying to create.
And i've noticed too like as
i've been running the show and meeting a lot
of cis creators that have done great jobs like celebrating
(32:41):
the trans community or celebrating trans people in
comics like i think that word is the thing to focus on like celebrating it and
not just writing as this is something that is afflicting a person but just a
condition of this person and a lot of other things happen that have nothing
to do with that this is just a state of being for a character.
(33:03):
Hi i'm curious to know how uh it's kind of connected to the earlier question regarding,
your gender experience influencing your narratives
but uh like how do you how does your gender experience and transness influence
your world building like the way you are portraying the world and the way that
(33:26):
your just your contemplation on gender on transness on fluidity is experienced
by non-trans characters.
I know I have the least published comics experience on this,
but y'all mind if I take the lead here?
So I have a comic on Kickstarter right now that it's taking everything I loved
growing up and kind of exploring how discovering one's own identity affects
(33:51):
those around you. It's called When We Transform.
It's very Power Rangers inspired because that's what I loved.
And that's ultimately what I want to do is tell trans and queer related experiences
through the realm of things that look like Power Rangers.
I think it's important to focus on like how this will affect people other than one character.
(34:14):
How does this affect family members? How does this affect their world and like how they approach it?
Not to say like, oh, yeah, let's explore all these negatives. Right.
Oh, hey, this is going to change some things. things it's going
to change how this person navigates the world it's going to change
how they approach certain relationships it raises
a big question of how they break a certain major piece
(34:35):
of news to other people and hey if
you don't like your initial character design it gives you a real good
opportunity to do a second chance at that so yeah
I'd say just like really put yourself
in the shoes that character and think of like what are the tough
conversations that would have to be had and maybe even
more importantly like what would it be like to be someone on the other side
(34:58):
of some kind of sci-fi fantasy or even slice of life trans-roided situation
for whatever fits the story um for the original question is about uh gender
expression affecting world building right Right.
Um, so I don't always have this explicitly in my work, but I feel like it's
(35:22):
often, I like it as like a little extra point to figure out, um.
Like a character's relationship with maybe a theme that's going on or some other
categories that they have relationships to.
So and that doesn't always make it into the text for me, at least.
(35:43):
But for example, for my graphic novel, the main characters are magical.
They're like pop idol magical girls fighting for a corporation.
And so they are the premise of this world building is that they are tools for this company.
(36:04):
And so how I write them is that everything is there. They're constructed for this job.
Right. And so actually, they personally do not have a relationship to their
own gender because they are not like manufactured to think about that.
So that's like and that's i
(36:26):
feel like thinking about that as like an option of like not just what gender
are they but like what kind of relationship do they have to that um if you're
a tool for for a corporation maybe you're not allowed to have a relationship
with yourself and your own identity and so that manifests as like,
It's not so much my gender is girl, so much as my job is magical girl,
(36:50):
is how I personally think about that story for myself.
I mean, as someone who spends way too much of their life as a tool for a corporation,
no, you are not allowed to have a relationship with your gender.
Unfortunately, the nail polish comes off on Monday.
I don't have any published sci-fi or fantasy or speculative work yet,
so I haven't been able to show this in my own writing.
(37:12):
Actually well at least at the book length but i wanted to mention
two different novels that i think that doing this really
interestingly and one is the ancillary justice series by
yeah and lecky where there's a whole empire of people who don't think gender
is very important and also take like an implant that basically is like a birth
(37:32):
control type implant that they only turn off very specifically if they want
to have children later on so it kind of just like
neutralizes a lot of gender stuff for the majority of the character's lives.
And every single character in this empire uses she, her pronouns, but I wouldn't say it.
And it's a way that they all identify as feminine. It's just that that's the
neutral pronoun of people. And it's kind of like, nobody thinks about gender very much.
And I, and then people outside the empire think that they're total weirdos for
(37:56):
doing this, but because it's from this character's point of view,
it's normalized like within the society that you're reading about,
which I think is very, very cool.
Oh my gosh, I mean, I forget. I mean, obviously, Ursula K. Le Guin's Left Hand
of Darkness is like a classic, a classic.
I had another example now and then it slipped away. Kind of related,
since writing my own sci-fi book, I went back to kind of discover more sci-fi
(38:23):
prose that I found interest in.
And there's, I haven't read Left Hand of Darkness yet. I really need to but
there's a whole like category of books you you read like three pages and you're
like you know that they love Ursula K. Le Guin's Hand of Darkness and so,
ancillary justice that series was a lot of fun um i really like the murderbot
(38:47):
diaries which is the novella series and the main character is uh it's a tool of a corporation.
And has is oh sorry yeah i mean so the author is martha wells if anybody's looking
down at home and the main character uses like it it's pronouns very deliberately
and it's like do not put gender on
(39:07):
me gender is very gross it's like about their relationship
to this idea of being human um
and in like they want to be a person uh they're trying to find agency but are
they human uh to be quick um i think oh there's another one but i know i had
another example but it fell out of my head so for the people keep talking maybe
(39:28):
it'll return yeah uh just about the world building aspect just
way more general writing advice for anything that pops up where it's like,
oh God, that's part of the story now.
Just advice is to reframe how you think of it and use it as an opportunity.
Like, oh, now I get to expand this and think about this new world in a new way
(39:49):
and all stories are driven by conflict.
So how you wanna play with that, it doesn't have to be our world equivalent,
but what's this new way we could think about it to make the story either more
interesting or add something to
a character, or add something unique that makes you excited to write it.
It shouldn't be something that drags you down or that you dread,
which is very easy when you succumb to writer's block a lot.
(40:13):
So reframe that to an opportunity is my general advice for most things.
Thank you for that question. That sparked a lot of really good answers.
What other questions do we have?
Getting to the point where we're covering that metaphor in her explicit premise,
obviously it's over time hopefully easier
to be explicit and use actual terms but
(40:35):
where do you think there's still like specialty value
that either metaphors or subtext without i mean
i think there's always value in
it i just think it's it's just a measure of a balance influence of moderation
i think there's i think even things that you can be explicit about uh there
(40:58):
might still be a great power in metaphor and the wider applicability or ability to create,
understanding i i think it's just a matter of making sure you got more than
just a hammer in your toolbox so every problem doesn't look like a nail yeah
i'm thinking of a another example it's outside of comics,
(41:19):
but a young adult novel called Out of Salem by Hal Shreve, who also has a just
successfully kickstarted a comic too that I'm excited to read.
But this this book is it's like a teen, you know, it's like a teen coming of
age story. But the main character is non-binary.
And they are also a recently they recently died in a car accident and were revived
with sort of a zombie like spell.
(41:41):
And they're still so going through their day to day life, but with their body
actively decomposing while they try to continue living in it.
And it is very much a metaphor for gender dysphoria.
And it is so successful. Like I read that and I was like, yes.
Sometimes you feel so horrible.
It feels like your body is rotting around you but you
still like have to go to school and you still have
(42:01):
a crush on a hot werewolf girlfriend and etc like
you know and it's it's both it's like
it's both explicit and a metaphor because the character is non-binary and uses
they them pronouns in the story and is misgendered by their
surviving family members so it's not subtext it is
text but then the metaphor is there to kind of show
both like be relatable to a reader who can relate to
(42:21):
it and then maybe like yeah an interesting window into an experience
for a reader who doesn't wait to it of like this is like this
is the visceralness of this feeling so that's
a book that i think does both it's like metaphor it's text and
subtext it's all it fits together really nicely yeah
so no surprise the author is trans so they
know what they were talking about i i think a risk in
(42:43):
in not making things literal and
explicit is that you open up a.
Possibility of people especially maybe um people
from outside the community whether accidentally or even
willfully not understanding the message
um i remember i watched matrix resurrections and
wow that was the most blatantly non-binary movie
(43:06):
of all time like sure they didn't say it but
come on like these characters are coded as non-binary they talk about breaking
a game called binary the movie is about neo being a non-binary sapphic and i
remember watching them like this movie felt like it was delivering all those
messages with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
(43:28):
And then i'd go on youtube and see some like straight boy
film essayist going like i don't get this movie
what was it trying to say i don't really understand what i didn't
really pick up on it i'm like
what was the message in trinity's prison being
this heteronormative marriage what were they trying to say
with that i don't get it yeah i
(43:49):
think kind of touching on maya and kim's answer
like i i've really felt drawn to stories that uh rather than being a full-on
allegory of like this is this it's more the intersection of like how does trans
being trans interact with this like uh blue delaconte is a great web comic called
(44:09):
a oh human star that explores like.
Being trans and also being an android and that
gives opportunities to talk about certain
things like clocking other people like androids can
identify other people really easy uh but it
also affects the way they interact with
their own gender and i think that's that's
(44:32):
a subtle thing that can lead to a lot of problems if it's missing
like when it's just okay yeah minorities are
mutants or something like instead of interacting well what's it
like to be a trans mutant what's would like to be a mutant of color so it's
like okay well minorities are mutants and also mutants
can blow up a school by accident like there's a
reason people are afraid of them and so i think just
(44:53):
finding like okay this isn't the replacement thing this just gives
us something that adds an interesting way to explore
this element of a character or a world yeah that's where
you get like the limits wherein so much like mutant is a
very useful metaphor but if you take it too far are
you be like okay but we would be a little different about people that could
blow up like people's heads with their eyes right like
(45:14):
um no in terms of something that uses that i think struck a really great balance
that uses both a metaphorical concept in this case it's androids but also treats
um feelings of gender identity very explicitly and literally i'd really recommend
and a comic made in Korea,
(45:34):
written by Jeremy Holt, who is a non-binary writer.
It's a heavy book. It deals with some very intense themes, so something that
comes with a very strong content warning for that.
But that is a book that uses the metaphor of a robot child, but uses that to
(45:55):
explicitly explore being transgender and gender identity.
So like you know it it starts with the metaphorical but then uses that to springboard into the literal.
I'll recommend something that sounds like it's on the opposite end of like safe
for children spectrum, which is the Bat Cat series by Maggie Ram.
(46:16):
There's two I think out so far. And it's about a little pink round creature
that is half bat half cat.
And it lives on a little magical whimsical island and like has to solve little
problems like a ghost is eating all of my food.
What do I do about that? And this Bat Cat on especially in
the first book goes on this little journey and encounters both cats and bats
(46:37):
both of who say like you don't fit in our little group and
has to really be like who am i and where do i fit and then
comes to realize like i can be equally a bat
and a cat and have a good time and
the author is non-binary this is very much like it's
another one of those where it's like it's a metaphor because it's two animals
but then the character also again uses they them pronouns as is written by a
(46:58):
non-binary author and is very much written for young non-binary readers like
we're talking like six eight year olds to have a character that they can relate
to and also maybe practice using pronouns for a character in a book.
And like, it's again, working on kind of, I would say two, really successfully on two levels.
I think it's important as a really rich, just introduce that there are these
options and the pronouns.
(47:20):
I mean, when I was doing El Campbell, the full title is El Campbell wins their weekend.
And that was something I was very insistent on is I want a they,
them pronoun in the title.
I want it to be undeniable. not that it
stopped assholes on goodreads from misgendering the main
character throughout the review but at least i
feel like well you would did this intentionally there's no
(47:41):
way you could have missed what the whole big book about being
non-binary uses they them pronouns i
think we have time for probably one more question before we wrap
up actually we'll make time for two casper you
want to go first yes i find often child especially modern
bright civic society we really yeah better made
them and trying issues to hit it against each other
(48:03):
um this is about portrait so i'm wondering
it as writers and creators you have experience trying to maintain a true intersectionality
whilst dealing with this weird political system if you have any experience that
directly trying to make sure that stories still feel genuine to more finery
so there isn't people but also to include the challenge ones that we all know
have experienced directly yeah i mean i definitely know that like.
(48:26):
Just in my personal level, I became a feminist when I came out as non-binary.
And so for me, feminism and like, you know, trans rights are completely interlinked.
And I try to represent that as best as I can in my work.
And I briefly mentioned a short story that wasn't working before I wrote Genderqueer.
It was because I hadn't figured that out yet.
It was I wrote a story that was trying to be from a AFAB non-binary perspective.
(48:49):
And it was riddled with like trans misogyny because I hadn't figured my shit
out because I was reacting, I was including my sort of negative experiences
with femininity, without acknowledging that like, femininity is like a beautiful,
powerful gift for many, just not one that suited me.
And so then I wrote a second little comic called Gifts, which is about wanting
to give away sort of the pieces of femininity that I was born with,
(49:11):
but acknowledging that they are like very good and powerful things that I wish
I could like hand to someone who really wanted them.
And so they would be like valued, not like thrown away as
like discarded as like unimportant and i think
writing that comic helped me sort out like so that
by the time i got to like writing my memoir i was like okay i
now i know what i'm saying which is that like that like we're not trying to
(49:34):
like throw away pieces of gender because we think they're like bad it's that
we're trying to find the ones that give us joy and we're trying to move towards
joy and away from sort of like control and shame so that that's sort of like
what i've come to in my work.
And I'm still I hope that I include this in all of my fictional work as well.
But I really kind of feel like I worked it out in my memoir stuff.
(49:55):
And I hope to show it in my fiction in the future.
I think the question is really interesting with like, it's definitely a topic
that is a bit adjacent to a project I'm starting to like develop with this idea of femininity.
And And I guess my angle on it
with my personal work is how people's relationship with their femininity,
(50:21):
how that can express different relationships with where else they feel like they fit in the world.
So a hyper feminine character that might that expression of hyper femininity
might tie into needing to feeling like she needs to perform a role elsewhere.
(50:42):
And this is how that's expressed here.
Yeah, I mean, I'm, for my reasons, I guess I come from a more trans feminine
angle of my experiences.
So, you know, usually if I'm exploring my own identity or something like that,
you know, it's usually coming at it from an angle of embracing femininity and
(51:05):
trying to become more feminine.
So, I don't know. I don't have a great answer to this one, I'm afraid.
I don't know. Just in my experience and my own ways of working through things,
I think so much trans misogyny just hurts trans women. It hurts cis women.
I think writers need to take more of the opportunity and more of the time to
(51:25):
understand the harm that trans misogyny does to all people.
I think a lot of trans misogyny ends up reducing cis women and trans women down
to body parts that I feel like contradict a lot of beliefs that they think they have.
And there are so many great comics that exist that support trans women,
include trans women in the themes that they deal with, with the power that comes with womanhood,
(51:48):
girlhood, bonds between women and how it ties to the story.
Story two very different stories I'm thinking of
are Andy Stevenson wrote Lumberjanes along with
other artists and writers that names are escaping
me right now but there is a trans character in that
in this group of girls and then the other one I was
thinking of was Safe Sex by Tina Horn a lot of
(52:11):
casually trans and queer characters all working together in a kind of like dystopian
conservative society and they portray you know trans women and cis women and
all kinds of gender representations just together and in a way that supports
queer rights, trans rights, sex workers' rights.
And it supports the story. It aids the story. And I think if you approach writing
(52:34):
a marginalized character in a way that doesn't do that, you're ultimately doing
harm to all sorts of causes.
Really quickly, something that I thought of is that often when feminism meets
transmisogyny, they're usually treating a certain trait as sacred and untouchable.
And that is really worth investigate.
(52:57):
If you run into that as a writer, I think that's really worth investigating.
Narratively, but also your own feelings.
I have, I feel like a lot of my work looks at like systems and institutions and stuff.
And so naturally that kind of marries into each other of like,
this is seen as so natural and so sacred.
(53:18):
Let's examine that. Let's really think about that.
Now uh last question towards the back
yeah so i love to ask because of how
covid kind of changed how people meet and interact where
do creators kind of go to find other creator qualities to like
collaborate and help each other because there's got to be a better place than
twitter and just peeing at conventions um as far as like networking and finding
(53:43):
other creators within the trans community uh blue sky has been a really good
alternative to twitter so far i'd really
recommend that just from my own personal experience i know
that's where some people on this panel are often most
active um also as for like finding collaborators there's a number of subreddits
you can look into that you have to be kind of sharp because sometimes they get
(54:07):
overrun with bots and scammers but like i found artists on reddit like r slash
comic collabs or hungry artists,
just look into people's past work.
But yeah, there's certainly communities out there. And those are the two I'd first start with.
There are a lot of Discord groups out there. I mean, there are a lot of Discord groups in general.
(54:30):
But I find that with social media kind of scattering, Discord groups seem to be more popular.
Maybe it's among just like a certain demographic, but I've definitely seen a lot of people there.
At the very least, I'm part of the cartoonist co-op as an example,
and I'm sure there are gender and trans-specific groups that you can find.
(54:56):
It is a little bit of a hassle that it's like you have to join the group before
you can see anything and see if it's your vibe, but that's the times right now.
Yeah, I would second the cartoonist co-op discord, which I'm also a part of.
And it has about 1000 members at this point.
And it's trying to do some of the work that a union could do.
(55:16):
But it's so hard to unionize comics because it's such a we're such a scattered
freelancing based field.
But there's a lot of resources, they're trying to build things like discounts
on say, like self printing companies for members.
And there's a lot of people asking, you know, technical questions, advice on things.
And I don't know that there's a specific place where people are actively trying to find out.
Collaborators but i think just being active in a space like that
(55:39):
and sort of getting to know people from chit-chatting you might
develop realize that you have common interests or common creative goals
with someone and then maybe you can sort of take it into the dms and
see if you have the time and interest in making a
project um there's been a lot of really great and wonderful uh queer and trans
comic anthologies lately and you know so those are a lot of people who are starting
(56:03):
out making and names them, putting out some of their first work.
And again, that's a whole anthology is full of queer and trans creators.
And this is a community where most people in this business are...
Are really friendly no matter how much we're shut in nerds
we really are friendly so you know really like
(56:24):
check out some of those anthologies look up who the creators involved are where
they're at i mean that's uh you know these anthologies are kind of nice built-in
uh rosters of community of people that are you know on the same journey you
are both in terms of queerness and in creating if you've got
(56:44):
a few friends also start project of
your own i uh co-ran an anthology a
gay girl gay vibes anthology with my former roommates
and so that's been going on glimmer yeah
as someone who's really bad at keeping up with social media uh finding those
uh like discord groups the small communities you could find and also conventions
(57:07):
are a great place you can probably ask anyone who's here for a business card
or where you can find them online for more direct contact,
but try to stay as active on social media as possible because that is a really
good way to connect with people.
Unfortunately, yeah, social media and conventions are really good ways to meet people.
Now, in our last few minutes here, I just wanted to give our panelists all a
(57:29):
chance to plug their own ongoing and upcoming work.
So, yeah, starting with Daniel, what do we got in the near future?
What do we got that's available now? Wow.
Transphoria, it was a Kickstarter campaign. You could still get it now.
You can find it by just Googling Transphoria Kickstarter. It's an anthology.
It has 17 different trans stories of different genres. So I definitely recommend checking that out.
(57:52):
And I do that through Lifeline Comics. And there are new campaigns almost every
month that you should go check out for that too. Also on Kickstarter.
Yeah. And I have a story in that. I have a story about how Jojo's Bizarre Adventures made me gay.
You can find me at benconcomics.com, benconcomics on Instagram and Blue Sky.
(58:14):
Blue Sky is where I spend most of my time social media-wise.
I co-host the Progressively Horrified podcast where we review and analyze horror
movies through the lens of progressive politics and themes.
New episodes every Friday. And then my next graphic novel is currently available for pre-order.
(58:35):
Mr. Muffins, Defender of the Stars from Oni Press is about a young boy dragged
into an intergalactic war when he discovers that the cosmic spirit of light
has been reborn as his pet corgi.
You can find me at social media at Kimberley, K-M-B-R-L-E-I at most sites,
(58:55):
except for Twitter, which is Raven and Blue.
And you can find my book of Thunder and Lightning in bookstores and through
the Silver Sprocket website.
You can also find my book in bookstores, which is so great.
Gender Queer, a Memoir is my first book.
(59:16):
I have this one out. Now, Breathe's Journeys to Healthy Binding was a short
nonfiction book about chest binding is an aspect of transmasculine health care,
but more generally about thinking about ways that you can transition that are
gentle on your body, but positive for your mind.
I'm working on a third book that'll be out someday. And you can find me at Red
Gold Sparks on Instagram and Tumblr, which is my favorite social media.
(59:40):
Or you can Google me. and if
you don't mind a little self plug my own first very trans
comic when we transform is currently live on
kickstarter we're about 80 funded at the moment so thank you yeah feel free
to check us out uh we're doing some cool stuff we have a color changing special
edition of our comic book that no one's done before and yeah we could use some
(01:00:04):
help hitting that 100 goal but otherwise Otherwise, thank you so much,
everyone, for joining us today.
Dan, Ben, Kim, Maya, you've all been incredible and I've loved your answers.
Thank you for having us. Thank you, everyone, for coming.
And one last thank you to the audience for sharing your questions.
(01:00:24):
If you want to check out our past episodes, you can find us online as Transcending Comics.
We're on most social media sites and podcasting platforms.
So, yeah, we'll see you next time. Thank you.
Music.
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