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Valley of the Silk Sky: The Long Run - Chapter 13 - inks complete!
I have finished inking all the pages for chapter 13, and there are some Faces going on, I tell ya.
Next up: coloring all this mess. I will be discovering which of my markers have dried out, which paints are salvageable and which will need to be replaced/remixed from the ground up. But I did want to give a progress report so you're up to speed on the status of things!
Taxonomically Unbound - Taxognomically Unbound
And if you give said tinkerer a cute nickname, have you bestowed upon them a cognomen?
Im enjoying the longevity of tumblrs recontextualization style of humor. a seemingly innocuous post followed by like "posts that a gnome would make" or like "are you a phone"
More from the notes:
I love this post
The horse thinks as it scratches an itch
never forget about katherine hepburn's tboy swag
yknow what aggravates me is how both hepburn & pauli murray (and potentially LM alcott although I know less about them) are people we, i think, can generally consider part of transmasculine history based on how they described themselves. we can't know what modern words they would have used, but they share many experiences with people who today identify as transmasc, so they should be recognized as part of our history. and both are credited for their anti-patriarchal actions and defying of gender roles. & with both I see this assumption that if they were cis women, every act of gender non conformity and defiance of stereotypes around women was them fighting for women's rights– but if they were transmasc, then their motivations must have been entirely selfish and essentially feminist on accident. they just appeared feminist because they were cis men in the bodies of women, basically. the experience of cis womanhood is seen as a valid motivator for resisting patriarchy, but not transmasculinity. why? why is it assumed that transmascs are selfish and keen to go along with the patriarchy, or only resist based on the notion that they think they personally shouldn't experience misogyny because they aren't women?
if someone puts on pants and defies misogynistic demands put on women and they are a cis women, they are a feminist icon, but if they do the same thing and are transmasc, its... a disapointment? patriarchal? i wish so badly that we can get to a point where people can appreciate transmasculinity as something radical and which can be a powerful motivator for feminist action in and of itself. i wish we can get to a point where transmasculinity and feminism are not treated like oil and water, where transmasculinity isn't seen as a corrupted failed version of proper womanhood (whether that's being a housewife or a "womyn-identified womyn").
and it especially hurts when it comes to those two figures because neither of them were able to be openly transmasc. pauli murray was labeled schizophrenic and nearly institutionalized for trying to seek HRT and by the time transmasc healthcare started being more widely performed, they were under heavy scrutiny already as a civil rights activist working in the government. hepburn's entire career was, ultimated, based on them being a beautiful actress. i will never stop thinking of how many transmasculine ancestors just... held those feelings close to their chest and played the role of woman for the sake of their spouse or their children or their job or their politics. and how we're expected to celebrate this as the ultimate feminist gesture which any possible transmasculinity threatens the legitimacy of.
cis woman ≠ feminist icon. it's not "was this person a feminist icon or transmasc?" because it can be fucking both. cis women– and women in general– do not have the sole claim to feminist knowledge or action. transmasculine history is part of feminist history. we have been here the whole goddamn time. we have been fighting alongside you the whole goddamn time. transmascs have been inspired by cis women who resist patriarchy; why are cis women incapable of being inspired by transmascs?
i mean just look at this guy
#i’ve done some dives into both jimmy and lou . and i feel incredibly confident they were both men.#jimmy had relationships with gay men and women that he noticeably did not consider sapphic#lou dressed up as a man at parties. his father called him son. his family called him brother. he said he has a man’s soul.#our history is so rich you just have to dig and dig and dig through everyone who does everything in their power to obsfucate it
on this note. there are already so many rules for when you are "allowed" to describe a historical figure could be transmasc (even though that term is extremely broad and includes many kinds of identities). there is such a SPECIFIC kind of narrative we are taught to expect from transmasc history. masculine cis-passing heterosexual man (9/10 white) completely disconnected from his childhood or past living as a woman, who lives a life near indistinguishable from a cis man until he's outed.
one can't help but wonder just how much transmasc history gets buried and erased and "we just can't possibly say!"-ed because trans men&mascs are not allowed to exist outside of a narrative that makes misogyny a footnote at best.
like, i saw another post on Jimmy in which someone in the notes basically summed up their perspective of their gender as "maybe she was a trans man maybe she just didn't like the expectations of women." i mentioned the pauli murray thing above. its always always always "trans OR feminist" "trans OR navigating misogyny" and with Jimmy, Lou, and Pauli, all three of them could very easily have been transmasculine people who simply did not / could not run away and start an entirely new life completed dissociated from anyone who ever knew them and spend their entire life hiding.
misogyny keeps transmasculine people in the closet & then our transmasculinity is pitted against the misogyny we experience! your experience and even identity as a transmasculine person can be fundamentally shaped by living in a society which actively works to trap you as a submissive obedient housewife, and then you have people debating over whether you had negative feelings about being forced into that role OR if you were a trans guy (and thus implicitly fine with / unaffected by misogyny). HELL WORLD!!!!!!!!
Valley of the Silk Sky - The Long Run Chapter 13 pencils complete
Hello there. Hi. Yes. Ahem.
How are you?
I just finished penciling the final page of chapter 13 of the Long Run, that graphic novel I've been serializing for awhile.
It's been on hiatus while I worked on various other projects, bouncing from deadline to deadline, spending six months in physical therapy (while still hitting deadlines), and then having a burnout crash for what are probably obvious reasons if you read the first part of this paragraph.
ANYWAY.
I will now move on to inking these pages, and then coloring them, and then posting them for you to actually read at long last. But I wanted to let you know that VotSS is not abandoned, and shall resume ere long!
You may want to reread the previous 12 chapters to remind yourself what was going on. (I probably have to reread them myself, TBH.) You can do that from the archives of this tumblr blog if that suits you, or you can go to the website in my profile info (does Tumblr still suppress posts with links? I have no idea, but am erring on the side of caution).
But yes. Valley of the Silk Sky shall return in short order, and at long last!
Geological horror. You find a geode and crack it open and the crystal lining its walls is human blood that can't be genetically matched to anyone. You find a human skeleton but every one of the bones is made from rock, a rock that you know can't be whittled into those shapes. You find layers of clay and loam that sport ancient fossils at the top and the still-rotting corpses of modern animals at the bottom.
This reminds me of the blood river in Antarctica. For like a century scientists had no clue why this river looked like, acted like, and felt exactly like blood. Turns out it’s just really high in iron.
"Blood River in Antartica" yeah right there's no way a river looks like bl-
...nevermind
Blood Falls isn't just high in iron, it's the byproducts of extremophile bacteria that have been isolated under a glacier in a iron- and sulfur-rich anoxic brine for the past 5 million years.
Does anyone think I could fix my iron deficiency by drinking it
The. The brine?
Forbidden spring-water for vampires? 🤔🤔🤔
Also, goddamn Antarctica is so cool… it’s full of weird shit like this!
Taxonomically Unbound - Pixelove
This is one of those puns that may well appeal to only a small slice of folks, but obviously playing to the masses here would miss the point.
Taxonomically Unbound - Altar of Bureaucracy
Beware: those jumbled stacks of paper can be deadly! A deadly deadline
Taxonomically Unbound - Dairy Detectives
So I have this comic series, Taxonomically Unbound, which consists mostly of single-panel comics illustrating ridiculous puns. It has lain dormant for a number of years, but I recently started making new TaxoUnbo toons, and I am choosing to inflict them upon you now.
Casein point: this comic right here!
The Ides of March is my HRT Tranniversary and I did indeed get stabbed
The photo of me on the left is from February 2002, slightly less than a year after I'd started T. The photo on the right is what I look like today, 25 years after I started T.
While I continue to struggle with ongoing burnout that is impacting my ability to make comics, I've been doing a lot of prose writing, largely in the form of non-fiction essays. For the most part, I have no interest in sharing these publicly at this time; they're not particularly polished, and are more about organizing my thoughts than anything else. Some of them, though, veer into memoir, specifically relating to the early years of my transition a quarter of a century ago. Given that today is the 25th anniversary of my having started the HRT segment of my journey, I thought it would be worthwhile to share a piece I wrote about navigating that experience, and my impressions of the dangers we navigate today.
-----
"I don't think you're quite there yet ..."
It's early 2001, and I'm sitting across from my endocrinologist for an appointment I had hoped would end with me getting a prescription for testosterone. My anxiety spiked as these words left his mouth. It had taken me several months of determined effort to get here, winding my way through legal name change, therapist appointments, doctor referrals, and the gathering of various official letters from various medical providers as though they were quest items. All of it just to arrive at this very appointment, each piece of paper a key to open the next gate.
Dr. F had been recommended to me as a trans-friendly endo by the guys from my FtM support group. We operated almost entirely by word-of-mouth when it came to navigating the medical establishment, which still had many long miles to go to reach its current (drastically better, but still far from perfect) state of trans acceptance.
Other trans men I knew had worked with Dr. F, and he referred to HRT as "the medicine," so he did frame trans medical care as the appropriate treatment for dysphoria. But he was still a cis gatekeeper, and something about my presentation wasn't quite meeting his standards. Did I cross my legs too much? Did I not swagger enough when I walked? Did I move my hands excessively when I spoke? Was the cadence of my speech not enough of a flat, grunted monotone?
These thoughts raced in my mind as I wondered if I'd have to start over with a new endo (would I even be able to find one?), or if I just needed to butch it up a bit more to get him to open the gate. Or maybe this was as far as I'd ever get, officially designated Not Trans Enough by the medical establishment, no transition for me. Locked out.
"I don't think you're quite there yet ... but I believe you'll get there soon enough, so I'm going to go ahead and write you a prescription for the medicine."
I never did find out what it was about me that didn't quite pass muster with Dr. F. I never bothered to ask. The gate was creaking open, and I wasn't about to jeopardize my opportunity to sneak through by asking too many questions. On March 15th, 2001, I officially started testosterone injections, and have never stopped laughing about celebrating the Ides of March by getting stabbed (even though I have long since switched to gel).
Crossing this barrier was a major milestone, and it was common practice amongst the trans guys in my support group to have a T Party to celebrate the occasion. I went to a restaurant with a group of maybe 10 friends, for an event that felt as much like a birthday celebration as anything, and in a way it was. A communal acknowledgement that you'd managed to survive thus far, and a wish for continued survival.
I have been thinking a lot lately about what it meant to survive as a trans person then, and what it means to survive as a trans person now, and all that has passed (pun intended) in the intervening 25 years. It's very rare these days for me to meet a trans person who transed before I did. This is not because I was an early adopter - trans people have been around for as long as humans have existed, and medical transition was practiced by trans people who died of old age long before I was born - but rather because so, so, so many more trans people have come out in the intervening quarter century. And it's not because we were ever a newly-invented trend (I've been hearing variations on that nonsense for the entire time I've been out as trans), but because more people were able to access this piece of information that made their whole lives make sense. The gift of uncovering a vital truth that was hidden.
The trans community has utterly exploded in size in the last 15 years. A rumbling that began around 2010 or so got a boost a couple of years later when the words "nonbinary" and "cis" broke containment and rocketed into the mainstream, affording a great many more people an opportunity to rethink their relationship to their gender, to examine that previously-hidden truth more closely. This ultimately snowballed into the Great Egg Cracking of 2020, when the isolation of pandemic lockdown offered even more people the chance to take a break from their rote performance of assigned gender and ask why they were doing what they'd always been told they must do, and maybe did they want to try something else while no one was looking.
When I go to indie comics shows and zine fests now, trans people abound as both attendees and vendors. I've been to trans punk shows at mid-sized venues packed with trans fans who weren't born yet when I transitioned. The people in the audience in my age range were the parents chaperoning their trans children to the concert. Trans pride flags abound at protests. This future would have been inconceivable to my own baby-trans self.
Living now in that future, things are both more hopeful and more scary than they've ever been for trans folks. We have a much, MUCH bigger community to offer support, more allies than we have ever had, and informed consent has made accessing medical care dramatically easier than it has ever been (though, and I cannot stress this enough, it is still not easy, just easier). At the same time, we face a concerted effort by extremely wealthy and powerful people who wish to eradicate us altogether. This is not physically possible to achieve, of course, but they're trying all the same, and will inflict as much damage as they can in the process.
The anti-trans push of post-2015 bears a striking resemblance to the anti-same sex marriage push in many ways, probably because it's literally the exact same groups funding and promoting it. And the attack is met with the same milquetoast mealy-mouthed support from supposed liberal allies ("can't you just not play sports?" is the new "can't you just settle for civil unions?" - can't we just compromise on your rights?). Throughout the first decade of the 21st century, state after state passed law after law to block marriage rights queer people hadn't even won yet.
It was always extremely obvious in the 2000s that the right-wing freedom haters never intended to stop with preventing same-sex marriage. They always meant to steam right on ahead to eradicating queer people altogether (this is not physically possible etc.). When they ultimately failed to make same-sex marriage illegal, they openly announced their plans to fall back, attack trans people as a smaller and less powerful group, and once they'd gotten rid of us they'd resume their efforts to get rid of the rest of the queers. Oh, and women's rights, too, those are also on the chopping block. You don't have to read between the lines. They say all of this out loud themselves, using their gigantic megaphones made of money and institutional power.
How to persist when you're outspent and outgunned? The same way we always have, with the help of our community and our allies, sharing knowledge and resources freely, offering assistance as we are able with no expectation of reward or payment, doing what we need to do to survive. This has proven to be a tactic our opponents cannot seem to get their heads around: sometimes people just help each other and show kindness because they care about other people. For all the violent, selfish, genocidal warmongering of the right, altruism and cooperation are the reasons the human species has persisted as long as it has. And I see it suffused throughout the trans community (yes, despite the inevitable infighting), a community which is far more vast and far more openly, unapologetically, proudly, resolutely trans than anything I have ever seen before.
Deep in my heart, I know we can win. I know because I see trans people continue to come out even now, even as the attacks against us reach a fever pitch. I know because the truth that is unlocked by coming out is too powerful to destroy. The war rages on, and the danger has not passed, but the tide is turning, and our defiance is a big part of that. Just as it was in the 2000s when queer people refused to accept bullshit compromises that would enshrine us as second-class citizens. Just as queer people in the 1980s refused to acquiesce to the genocidal monsters who sought our destruction then by allowing HIV to run rampant. We have a strength our enemies cannot possibly understand, based in our truth and our compassion and our fierce determination to survive. So do that, trans people. Survive. And help whoever you can to survive, too. And, whenever possible, make that survival a party.
NEW - Muscle Cat star-shaped vinyl sticker
My newest sticker is of a swole cat. Why? Well, because one of my sticker vendors was offering yellow vinyl stars, and I thought it would be funny to have a bright yellow star featuring a beefy feline. (Said cat has not responded to allegations of excessive catnip use.)
I've listed them in my Etsy store if you seek such a sticker!
Acquire Muscle Cat stickers here
I keep the Feeps all-ages, and so I will have to use this space to drop my unofficial name for this sticker, which is Tomcat of Finland, har har
NEW ZINE! – TrannyToons Presents: Annotated Trans Comics of the Early ’00s
TRANNYTOONS PRESENTS collects my earliest comics on Transgender topics, which were originally created in 2000-2006. From silly single-panel jokes to trans superheroes, I made these comics with a contemporary trans audience in mind. Since trans culture has changed so dramatically in the intervening quarter century, I have included annotations to highlight deprecated terminology and explain cultural practices that have fallen by the wayside. If you’re interested in trans history, or archives of underground comics, this is the collection for you!
THRILL to explanations of deprecated terminology, descriptions of cultural practices that have fallen by the wayside, and learn why I was mad at Norah Vincent in 2001.
Some comics in this collection were originally published by The Nib and Trans-Health. Others have been reprinted in FTM Newsletter and No Straight Lines (Fantagraphics, 2012).
16 pages, color cover, black and white interior, 5.5″ x 8.5″
You can snag a copy of your very own from my Ko-Fi
Why yes, I *did* fail to notice that I'd repeated a couple of clauses here before posting, a catastrophic editing fail from which I shall never recover. But I refuse to delete and repost, so forever they shall remain, a harsh reminder to check your drafts, lest ye suffer the same fate!
NEW ZINE! – TrannyToons Presents: Annotated Trans Comics of the Early ’00s
TRANNYTOONS PRESENTS collects my earliest comics on Transgender topics, which were originally created in 2000-2006. From silly single-panel jokes to trans superheroes, I made these comics with a contemporary trans audience in mind. Since trans culture has changed so dramatically in the intervening quarter century, I have included annotations to highlight deprecated terminology and explain cultural practices that have fallen by the wayside. If you’re interested in trans history, or archives of underground comics, this is the collection for you!
THRILL to explanations of deprecated terminology, descriptions of cultural practices that have fallen by the wayside, and learn why I was mad at Norah Vincent in 2001.
Some comics in this collection were originally published by The Nib and Trans-Health. Others have been reprinted in FTM Newsletter and No Straight Lines (Fantagraphics, 2012).
16 pages, color cover, black and white interior, 5.5″ x 8.5″
You can snag a copy of your very own from my Ko-Fi
Pride in Panels and New Zine
I'll be tabling at Pride in Panels at the San Francisco Public Library on Feb 15, 2026 (this Sunday!), and will be on the Up From the Underground: Queer Comics Pioneers panel from 2:00 - 2:45 PM.
I first started making trans comics over 25 years ago, but I didn't actually have any kind of print version of my very earliest works. I don't even have them on my website anymore; I'd taken them down when I streamlined my site to be more of a portfolio and less of a giant dump of literally every comic I'd ever created. The art style of these early comics doesn't reflect my current style, and over the years the topics I'd covered in them have drifted out of contemporary relevance.
But I'm a strong believer in archiving artifacts of marginalized communities. Jokes about binding from a quarter century ago might not be relevant to a young trans person's experience today, but it might well be of historical interest to a young trans person who wants to know more about what trans folks of previous generations had navigated.
So I decided to put together a zine of those old comics, but with annotations to offer more context for those now-outdated topics. Explanations of deprecated terminology, cultural practices that have fallen by the wayside, and why I was mad at Norah Vincent in 2001.
This zine will debut at Pride in Panels, and after the show is over I'll add it to my online store so you can snag a copy, should you be unable to attend PiPFest!
New Feep Art Emerges!
I was busy prepping a whole mess o' art to list in the Feeping Creatures Esty Store. I had hoped to have it all listed in time for any holiday-related sales, but then I apparently decided to have a Flu Vacation instead. Sigh.
Anyway, it's all in there now, all the things what you see here, and more besides! Mostly flat art pieces, with several glow-in-the-dark options, as well as a couple of pieces that have been waiting a very, very long time for me to find the executive function to process the photos and craft the listing haha ahem (cough).
There's also a new vinyl sticker I had made a couple of months ago and just go around to listing, a pixel rat in old school monochrome computer monitor colors for that vintage vibe. (Yes, this is the same pixel rat as the one I deployed for my now sold-out run of socks.)
Anyhow, since I wasn't able to get this set up in time for holiday sales, I decided to offer a discount code, good through 31 January 2026, which you can use for 10% off your order. Simply use the code FEEPMASPAST10 in the ol' Etsy Store when you check out. Neat!
Random curiosity question:
do you remember learning how to read?
yes
no
Why yes, it IS Asexual Awareness Week. Time to share this comic I made about the many and varied flavors of asexuality, and the distinction between aromantic and asexual identity. This is a brief overview of a complex topic, obviously (I have not yet managed to solve all the world’s problems with a half-page comic, for which I apologize), but you get the idea.
