C. : "we Haven’t Finished The Book.."

If they aren’t angels and aren’t demons, would that make them… dangels? 😂

Linktree | Prints will be available for purchase on April 26th!

There is so much more I could say about this, but there is not enough room. Remember to check with reality rather than believing conspiracy theories promoted, supported, and funded by white nationalist hate groups.

Missouri is proposing 20% of the nation’s anti-trans legislation this session. Gender-affirming care for young folks is on the edge of being criminalized (so much love to trans friends in states where that has already happened).

Please keep up with the anti-trans legislation in your state and combat it. There are lives at stake.

Transphobes do not touch this post.

Image ID: a 10-image cartoon comic featuring Joey, a boy with short hair.

Image 1: Joey, upset, gesticulates towards an open laptop. Text reads: The reality of St. Louis trans kids. Last week, a former (non-medical) employee of Washington University’s Pediatric Transgender Center was featured in a viral article about how the clinic was “rushing” kids into medical care and “mutilating” us. Every single thing she said was a lie, but the media loves it. Footnote reads: I wouldn’t give any more attention to this, but it is immediately endangering the lives of trans people. Missouri has launched a state investigation and is actively attempting to criminalize gender-affirming care based on conspiracy theories.

Image 2: Joey points to a map of the United States where Missouri is singled out, and a map of Missouri where St. Louis is indicated with a star. The text reads: The Transgender Center, located in St. Louis, Missouri, has been the target of hateful attacks from the far-right state legislature for years. It is part of Washington University Hospital, a branch of a prestigious private university.

Image 3: A younger Joey injects his T shot in his leg while someone takes a photo. Text reads: I can tell you that everything in the article is false because I received care at the Transgender Center beginning at 16 years old. My medical transition has brought me nothing but joy. What a gift it is to be trans!

Image 4: A younger Joey sits on a couch and stims with a tangle fidget toy. Text reads: No one is “rushed”. I sat on many waitlists, had to have 6 months of specialized gender therapy and a diagnosis of gender dysphoria before even being referred to the Center, and I was denied as “not ready enough” by an endocrinologist the first time I finally got an appointment. Footnote reads: If you’re curious about what it looks like to be a trans kid, I did another piece on that! Check out tinyurl.com/transkidscomictumblr.

Image 5: A colorful map of the United States shows how many states have a Negative Gender Identity Policy Tally and how many states have criminalized gender affirming care. Joey holds a credit card. Text reads: St. Louis’ Pediatric Transgender Center is the only one in the region, meaning the waitlists are extremely long. Plus, no one in the only industrialized country without free healthcare is getting medical care for fun. Many American trans folks have to fundraise for our care.

Image 6: Joey, distressed, sits on a couch while talking on the phone. The person on the other end says: “That’s me!” Text reads: This former employee spoke about specific cases, and patients have been able to identify themselves. She shared our private medical info and called us horrifying.

Image 7: This is split into two panels. In the first, Joey holds up a box of condoms and a packet of birth control pills. Texts reads: She especially hated trans men such as myself, saying that trans ideology was destroying “girls”. She lamented about hormones making us “sterile”, which is a complete lie. We trans mascs have to actively prevent pregnancy. In panel two stands a doctor. Text reads: Every time I had an appointment at the Center, doctors reminded me: Remember: testosterone is not a contraceptive! Footnote reads: The wonderful Erin Reed wrote a breakdown debunking all the lies in the article. See tinyurl.com/erinreedmissouri.

Image 8: Joey, masked, sits at a circular table with his brother, an unmasked boy with fluffy short hair. Joey’s brother is showing him his phone. Text reads: Major newspapers continue to platform these complete lies because they bring in engagement and money. The Washington Post tracked down my little brother’s personal cell phone number to try to get in contact with our mom – the president of an organization supporting trans kids in Missouri. Freaky, right?

Image 9: Joey, looking disgusted, leans against a door frame while talking on a cell phone. Text reads: But no one wants to talk with me, the adult who medically transitioned at this clinic as a minor and has not “desisted” in six years. The Washington Post reporter, who didn’t know anything about trans people, talked with me for 20 minutes and used a sentence of mine in an article about “both sides of the debate”. She didn’t mention that this former employee is being legally represented by a recognized anti-LGBT hate group, nor that all of her claims are unsupported by reality or science.

Image 10: Joey looks angry and gesticulates. Beside the drawing are two photos of Joey, one of him happy in front of a trans flag, and the other of him drawing up testosterone to take his first T shot. Text reads: There is no debate. There are trans people, and there are people who want us dead. There is truth and there are conspiracy theories. Where is my viral article in a major paper?

Published Feb 16, 2023. End ID.

whew ok, time to work! ..okay. okay. let’s get started. …,,okeyy ah lets do this. yep…. okay. yes sir lets do this. let’s get started….just gonna start now yep. ,,okay. okay. okayy. ok. …ok..okey…..alright ok.. right hhh

a lesson on nonbinary individuals and why we feel the way we do about numerous basic things, such as the mere fact of our existence and our pronouns.

twitter: youre passing people on the street eavesdropping on things you vaguely agree with

reddit: youre attending a fan club meeting where you can find and share any information as long as it sticks to one topic

instagram: box of 1$ assorted pokemon cards at a covnention and half are actually magic the gathering cards

tumblr: youre in your house cooking for a few friends and someone climbs through your window and demands your opinion on steven universe

today i am thinking about what we leave behind. in the store, on all of the bath mats, someone has drawn a heart or left a handprint. in the pen aisle, each page of the test paper is covered in names and little drawings and fuck covid and over and over again - hello hello hello hi hello. on the street i live, three houses have perfect hopscotch lanes carefully transcribed with rules and everything - jump here! now do a spin! graffiti of a deer on the side of a building, names scrawled into setting concrete. initials carved into park bench seats. n the bathroom, in silver sharpie - i hope you’re okay out there. i love you, you’re beautiful, keep trying. geocached tubes of trinkets, jackets left out in case somebody needs it. a note on my windshield - closed your door it was a little open have a great day and stay safe! my friends and i, fully grown adults, build a sandcastle on the edge of the ocean. 

inside of returned schoolbooks. inside of little secret pockets. hi hello hello hello. what a beautiful calling. you and i are in different times, and will never meet, but here is the greeting i’d owe you. if you never get to see this person, what do you say? hello! i love you. be good out there. be safe.

Random, but a really handy way to make things seem creepy or wrong in horror is to make them incongruously neat or clean:

In the middle of a horrific battlefield, you find one corpse laid aside neatly, straightened and arranged, its arms crossed neatly across its chest

As you walk through the garden, you gradually realise that the oddness you’ve been noticing about the trees is that they are all perfectly symmetrical

As you move through the abandoned house, you realise that suddenly that there’s no dust in this room, no dirt or cobwebs

You hear hideous noises coming from behind a locked door, screams and pleas, and visceral sounds of violence. When you manage to break down the door, there is no one there, and the room is perfectly spotless

In the middle of a horrific battlefield, a hollow full of churned mud and blood, you find five corpses cleanly dismembered, each set of limbs or parts neatly laid out in their own little row

You witness a murder, a brutal, grisly killing that carpets the area in blood. When you return in a blind panic with the authorities, the scene is completely clean, and no amount of examination can find even a drop of blood

You run through the night and the woods with a comrade, pulling each other through leaves and twigs and mud as you scramble desperately towards freedom. When you finally emerge from the forest, in the grey light of dawn, you turn to your companion in relief, and notice that their clothes are somehow perfectly clean

You hand a glass of water to your suspect, talking casually the whole while, and watch with satisfaction as they take it in their bare hand and take a drink. There’ll be a decent set of prints to run from that later. Except there isn’t. There are no prints at all. As if nothing ever touched the glass

You browse idly through your host’s catalogue, and stop, and pay much more attention, when you realise that several items on a dry list of acquisitions are ones you’ve seen before, and it slowly dawns on you that each neat little object and number in this neat little book are things that belong (belonged?) to people you know

Neatness, particularly incongruous neatness, neatness where you expect violence or imperfection or abandonment, or neatness that you belatedly realise was hiding violence, or neatness that is imposed over violence, is incredibly scary. Because neatness is not a natural thing. Neatness requires some active force to have come through and made it so. Neatness implies that the world around you is being arranged, maybe to hide things, to disguise things, to make you doubt your senses, or else simply according to something else’s desires. Neatness is active and artificial. Neatness puts things, maybe even people, into neat little boxes according to something else’s ideals, and that’s terrifying as well. Being objectified. Being asked to fit categories that you’re not sure you can fit, and wondering what will happen to the bits of you that don’t.

Neatness, essentially, says that something else is here. Neatness where there should be chaos says that either something came and changed things, or that what you’re seeing now or what you saw then is not real. Neatness alongside violence says that something came through here for whom violence did not mean the same thing as it does to you.

Neatness, in the right context, in the right place, can be very, very scary

And fun

The Nib ( @thenib ) is doing a whole month of queer comics and I was honored to contribute this one! You can read all of the other comics I’ve done for them here, and here is my comic from last year’s Pride Month. You can find more of my comics, including my Genderqueer series, on instagram and you can support me on patreon or on ko-fi if you’d like to help me keep making this work :) 

5 min tutorial for trcelyne, hope it helps!