MaxVolt!

i'm trying to motivate myself to make art and post it!

[glittergeek-blog]

Support Teukie’s Journey to Korea

Hi folks!

I’m a fat, queer, nonbinary, chronically ill Korean adoptee artist, writer and burlesque/queerlesque performer. I am planning a trip back to my homeland this fall to do language study at university. I am currently studying Hangul my own in...

[ofmaximumvoltage]

Teukie is my bestie and an all-around superstar! I am pleased and honored to be helping them raise funds to make this journey a reality. Please check out the link, pledge if you can, and reblog/signal boost!

[ofmaximumvoltage]

I decided to put on a ridiculous outfit to get me through the rest of the semester's work. I don't know if there's any logic to that but it was oddly successful? (and yeah that would be the semester that ended almost a month ago...)

[ofmaximumvoltage]

just having fun with the computer's drawing programs and idk feeling stormy

[image description: a blob of several swirls in shades of blue, ranging from light and purple-y blues to almost black.]

[ofmaximumvoltage]

just a small side project- i was trying to think through how shapes work and i drew janelle monae. 

[image description: a drawing in purple line (no shading) of janelle monae, from the shoulders up. her head is angled slightly to the left, she is looking to the left and up, her mouth is open and her eyebrows are raised. she is wearing a big floppy bow tie with a collared shirt.]

[loneberry]

One of the most difficult things you have to grapple with when trying to break free from a trauma bond is the realization that you may have attributed a “cosmic” quality to something that had very little substance other than raw attachment. This is a perfectly reasonable response since we need to…

[n4di4]

this is so real and so true… #healing

[ofmaximumvoltage]

[Discussion of abuse dynamics in this piece]

wow the amount of things that make sense after reading this...

[faitherinhicks]

I’ve spent my entire career obsessively trying to “learn how to draw” when I should’ve just been drawing. Always thinking “I just need to get a little better… and then I’ll start working on (insert any of a hundred personal projects)” The fact is that i’ve been good enough since my teens- and would’ve improved so much more rapidly had my study been in the service of any of those projects- and not in the dozens of sketchbooks pilled in my closet. Lesson: Don’t use “learning” as an excuse to avoid “doing”.

A-Shane Glines Link (via faitherinhicks)

reblogging this for a certain friend who needs it.

(via glittergeek)

ugh it's too true how much i need to remember this

[queerbookclub]

Queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick reviews books for Seventeen Magazine - when she was 13 years old. Click through image to read.

[ofmaximumvoltage]

physically incapable of not reblogging eve kosofsky sedgwick

[ofmaximumvoltage]

on anger and coping

[hey, this is like the first more personal post i've put on tumblr! it talks about institutions that treat people badly (specifically prisons and schools) and trying to cope with being involved in them with little recourse to change them. it might be kind of a lot (it is for me!) and i'm still aiming to focus on drawing here. i'm hoping to post some exciting (?) artwork soon.]

so during my last year of college i had a job as a ged tutor at a correctional facility (which was sort of like a cross between a prison and a drug rehab program, with a heavy emphasis on prison), and the place was really shitty (of course). i'd work with these guys and get to know and like them, and i'd hear about or witness the staff there treating them really terribly. the most i could do to help was to let the guys know i thought the stuff that was happening sucked and to give them all the tools i could to get out with a ged and like hope that would mean something-- i didn't really have access to the staff to be like "you suck" and the people i did interact with pretty clearly dismissed me as young and kinda weird anyway.  i was just really angry about everything and i don't usually express a lot of anger let alone wish bad things on people, but i started just wishing the staff there would have nightmares, would be tormented by the way they were being.

a couple days later, my bestie was like, "dude i've been having a lot of nightmares lately" and i was like "oh shit, i guess my ill will wasn't very precise..."

in the intervening few years i must have forgotten at least momentarily, because recently i heard about possible forest fires in colorado springs, home of focus on the family (a truly awful evangelical christian producer of media). when i heard, i said "i kinda hope after they evacuate, that the fire reaches just their building and burns up all their stuff." as soon as i finished the sentence, a firetruck, sirens wailing, pulled into our apartment parking lot. of course... i remembered my bad aim.

and now i have a job that, to perhaps put it cynically, mostly involves adults being shitty to kids and me doing what little i can to mitigate it. i come home some mix of livid and crushed pretty frequently. and i'm trying to hold it together and figure out what to do with all this rage... however coincidental my stories may be in reality, it doesn't feel like a good idea to try a third time something that backfired twice. but when i don't have some outward target, i beat up on me. and i just need a way to feel all of it and feel like these adults are in some way accountable, and do some good self care at the same time.

meh, i guess it's good i know i need it, it'd be nice to figure out what that looked like...

[glittergeek-blog]

occ lip tar in nsfw with illasmasqua intense lipgloss in stranger

omg perfection

[ofmaximumvoltage]

so hot

wanna photoshoot with you

...that may be a euphemism

[ofmaximumvoltage]

ahhh this is so romantic

from the wikipedia article on tananarive due, black science fiction/mystery/historical writer:

Due is married to author Steven Barnes, whom she met in 1997 at a university panel on "The African-American Fantastic Imagination: Explorations in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror".

it just warms my heart

[ofmaximumvoltage]

spent like 2 hours drawing lesbian vampire witches

glittergeek it's all your fault

[ofmaximumvoltage]

so i'm trying to build drawing skills that will roundabout-ly help with comic stuff...

what do you think are the queerest animals?

[ofmaximumvoltage]

my brain hurts too much to do the art i would like to right now

so please enjoy this platypus

[image description: a drawing in thin black lines of a platypus. the beak is pointed to the right and slightly down, and the eye is looking back somewhat coyly for a platypus i think. the front flipper-claw-things are resting atop a prominent belly, and the tail is sticking out in the same direction as the beak, under the belly and between the legs. the platypus looks to be relaxing in a self-satisfied sort of way.]

[ofmaximumvoltage]

uhhh so one of my old friends from high school referred to me as a "righteous womyn" on the fb...

i don't even know what to do...

it's especially weird because this is someone who i was like so in love with erm whose friendship was so important to me in high school and i'm just kind of bemused at what different planets we ended up on

[ofmaximumvoltage]

i'm really nerdy

so today i was just thinking. and i think i figured out what jasbir puar's critique of identity politics is all about (well ok maybe like a small fraction of it). i think it's like-- it doesn't really account for affiliation? like who people not just identify with but align themselves with? and somehow i think too it allows systems of power to like get lost.

so for an example that's close to home: identity politics has something to say about what it is to be gay. but like, if you're being the hrc or like dan savage or supporting that kind of politic, you're like trying to plug into systems of power right? and not forming the coalitions that break down systems i think. so that gay *identity,* yeah, it has *something* to do with privilege and oppression, but a lot is also what you're doing with that.

and focusing on identity can elide such important connections between plights-- maybe like what cathy cohen was saying in 'punks, bulldaggers, and welfare queens?' i dunno, it's been awhile since i looked at it, but like that what is a queer struggle has a lot to do with how systems of normativity impact a lot of people, not only folks who would claim a queer identity (the way it's kinda prominently thought of, anyway). (not trying to call people or movements queer that don't identify as such, more reframing what people who do work around queerness think of as relevant? i remember discussing whether cohen thought the word 'queer' had potential/usefulness or wanted to sorta avoid it... i've forgotten details.)

yeah so sometimes i can't figure out what's going on in the world and how things i care about are unfolding and then i think about theory and it helps I HAVE BEEN CORRUPTED FOREVER BY ACADEMIA WHYYYYYYY

[ofmaximumvoltage]

library spoils!

the stuff i'm most excited about:

dark matter: a century of speculative fiction from the african diaspora edited by sheree r. thomas (i've read it but wanted to revisit some stories and reference for names of authors to check out!)

the salt roads by nalo hopkinson (a novel. everything i have read by her has been brilliant. and she is so cool.)

filter house by nisi shawl (a short story collection. she has a story in dark matter, and she popped up in a sidebar when i searched for nalo hopkinson. so excited to try!)

the gilda stories by jewelle gomez (a novel. she also had a story in dark matter. it involved vampires in a good way. i think this book will too.)

i also found out that so long been dreaming: postcolonial science fiction and fantasy, edited by nalo hopkinson (!) and uppinder mehan, is due on my birthday! if i'm lucky, that will be a delightful present.

[ofmaximumvoltage]

i've been working on a 6-panel lil comic with my brilliant bestie, and the last 2 panels are giving me hell. every time i get frustrated, though, i know i have this face to look upon and be proud. i beat myself up over my skills a lot, but here i have achieved the most important things: this face is undeniably gay, and undeniably crushed.

[image description: the head and upper torso of a dude, drawn in black line. he is looking longingly and forlornly forward/to his right (viewer's left) -- his eyebrows are furrowed and his bottom lip is protruding. he has mostly short hair with a floppy bit in the middle and a big square chin. the collar of his leather jacket, his collarbone, and some chest hair are visible at the bottom of the image.]