Ahaha

So I tell Jane to bring her boy over to a bbq I'm having and she can tell him she's trans at my place surrounded by queer and trans people who love her and will support her if he ends up being awful.

She waits till the end of the bbq to tell him the news, by which point the rest of us have learned that Jason is a kind, friendly, empathetic, hard working, dummy. So we sit down, all of us a little worried about this gym bro's reaction when she tells him she's trans, and that she understands if he doesn't want to keep dating her it's no big deal.

He's baffled, so we explain what trans is, and after the disclosure that she hasn't had bottom surgery yet...

"Oh you have a dick?"

"... yeah."

He look's around at the room full of people with baited breath, his clearly a little afraid girl friend says

"Oooohhhh! I get it! You think- don't worry Babe! Watch this!"

And ya'll this man jumps up, runs into the kitchen and returns with one of the bratwurst we had for grilling and proceeds to tilt his head back, put it down his throat, hold it in his mouth for a moment, and spit it up without even a whisper of a gag and then looks around at the group absolutely beaming with pride.

"Honey, I must tell you, i am in fact trans and I have not had bottom surgery."

I just read a book by one of my favorite authors whose plots are essentially airtight, but the MC was walking on a country road on a cold winter night and she was knocked down and fell into a drainage ditch covered in ice, broke through and got covered in icy mud and water.

Then she had a “miserable” 3 more miles to walk to the inn.

To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995)

If you’re younger, you may not know Patrick Swayze; he was Taken From Us in 2009. But Patrick Swayze was an icon of masculinity. Men were willing to watch romantic movies because Patrick Swayze was in them.

Patrick Swayze was fucking beefcake.

And this man didn’t just agree to do a movie where the only time he’s not actually in drag is the first three minutes, which involve stepping out of the shower, doing make up, and getting Dressed. He has ONE LINE that is delivered in a man’s voice, and it’s not during those three minutes.

And if you watch those three minutes, you see a stark difference between his portrayal of Miss Vida Bohéme and Wesley Snipes as Noxeema Jackson. (I am not criticizing Snipes’ performance. They were different roles.) Noxeema was a comedy character. Chi-Chi was a comedy character. But Miss Vida Bohéme was a dramatic role, played by a dramatic powerhouse.

When Vida sits down in front of the mirror, she sees a man. And she doesn’t like it.

Then she puts her hair up, and her face lights up.

“Ready or not,” she says. “Here comes Mama.”

And while Noxeema is having fun with her transformation (at one point breaking into a giggling fit after putting on pantyhose), Vida is simply taking pleasure in bringing out her true self. And when she’s done, she sees this:

And you can FEEL her pride.

“I grew up in the ‘70s and even within the street culture, there was a lot of flamboyancy,” Snipes told TODAY of his perception of drag before filming. “Pimps wore the same furs as theprostitutes wore.

“Some of the great musicians of the world, like Parliament-Funkadelic, were very androgynous. So it wasn’t really new for me to see men dressed as women or men dressed as drag queens.”

Snipes attended the famed LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts and then State University of New York at Purchase. He wasn’t a dance major, but most of his friends were. “That exposed me to the world of glam, vogue, drag, transgender and gay people, LGBTQ… but it wasn’t in fashion those days. But it existed and I was around it.”

Not only did “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” pave the way for “To Wong Foo,” so did films like the 1968 documentary “The Queen” and “Paris Is Burning,” the 1990 doc that chronicled ball culture of New York and the various Black and queer communities involved in it.

Even though he was known for his action roles, Snipes’ portrayal of Noxeema wasn’t the first time he played a drag queen. In 1986, he made his Broadway debut in the play “Execution of Justice,” playing Sister Boom Boom, a real-life AIDS activist and drag nun who acted as the show’s voice of conscience. Snipes pointed out, “Sister Boom Boom did not have Noxeema’s makeup kit.”

On whether he got any pushback for stepping into Noxeema’s pumps, he said, “Not so much professionally but the streets weren’t feeling it, and there were certain community circles. The martial arts community… they were not feeling it at all.”

“In fact, when the movie came out and they would come down the street, I would see them in Brooklyn sometimes, they started listing all my movies. I noticed they would always skip that one. I would correct them, ‘Now you don’t got the full count!’”

Lesser-known than his co-stars at the time, Lequizamo didn’t really anticipate becoming a transgender icon, but he did know that they were working on something special when they started filming.

“Drag didn’t really exist in movies,” Lequizamo, who was nominated for a Golden Globe for his portrayal, told TODAY. “There were straight men pretending to be women to get out of trouble or into trouble but this was not that. I was trying to make Chi-Chi a real life trans character and Patty and Wesley were trying to be real drag queens.” Never fully articulated in the film, Chi-Chi Rodriguez has always been perceived as transgender, something that ending up making an indelible mark on LGBTQ people in the late ‘90s as trans representation in media was limited.

“Chi-Chi was a trans icon, but she also showed us that gay men and trans women can both perform and work in drag side by side, and that those relationships are symbiotic,” Cayne explained.

“It was a powerful thing. I get lots of fan mail from LGBTQ teens telling me how my character helped them come out to their parents,” Leguizamo said. “They didn’t feel like they were seen, so that was a beautiful gift from the movie.”

Lequizamo also articulates that if “To Wong Foo” were cast today, a trans actor should be cast in his role. (And that just may happen, since Beane is developing a musical for Broadway.) “Anybody can play anything, but the playing field is not fair that way,” he said. “Not everybody is allowed to play everything. So until we get to that place, it is important for trans actors to get a chance to act which they don’t. In the project I’m doing, I’m making sure that the person playing trans is a trans person so we can make it legit, make it real. That just needs to be done right now.”

it was formative for modern society, too.

there are a lot of action fans out there who learned from their idols that respect doesn’t cost a damn thing to give. i know plenty of people who aren’t queer saw trans women and drag queens presented as people to them for the first time in wong fu. suddenly, strange and foreign queer identities that had only been presented to them as jokes if they’d even heard of them, seemed a little more relatable, and very human.

we’re all just people.

And when I say that movie changes my life, I mean it.

As a closeted queer kid in a bible belt, never had I seen people like that represented anywhere.

Drag queens amazed me.

It was as though they had this superpower to seamlessly glide through gender. To be male or female at will. I was fascinated.

Vida also had such a massive impact on me as a person. I cannot stress that enough.

She was the first true role model I remember aligning with as a proud queer person. It amazed me how fearless and powerful she was.

This movie changed my life.

It became my favourite movie as a kid, I knew all the songs, and I rented it so much from that convenience store that they eventually just gave me the copy as I had “more than paid for it”. I remember being so enthralled by that.

Anyway, this film was a magic discovery for a queer kid in the Bible belt. And even beyond that, Vida taught me so much in that film about how to love and accept other people exactly as they are.

Vida forever.❤️

this guy was often one of the first people on the scene following a suspected arson, once emergency services had done what they needed to do. at times, there were also civilians on the periphery. often, they were freaking out, and understandably so; their home or workplace had just, quite literally, gone up in smoke

this investigator wouldn’t try to calm them down. he wouldn’t comfort them or be a shoulder to cry on.

instead, he’d walk up to the person most visibly losing their shit, hand them a fire extinguisher, and say “hey, can you keep an eye out for any other fires, and if you see one, can you put it out with this?”

of course, there was no actual risk of another fire. he wouldn’t be on the scene investigating if there was even a chance that the fire wasn’t completely put out. but the bystander didn’t need to know that

because that person, without fail, would immediately pull it together, take the fire extinguisher, and stand guard. they were, at least temporarily, calm enough for this investigator to do this job

morpho books

figure drawing for all it's worth (+ creative illustration)

framed ink

will eisner comics and sequential art

will eisner graphic storytelling and visual narrative

understanding comics (+ making comics)

folder of various animation production art

burne hogarth drawing dynamic hands

perspective for comic book artists

michael mattesi force drawing

the animator's survival kit

color and light james gurney

very young kittens don't have the ability to withdraw their claws! adults can fold them up like velociraptors (and for the same reason as velociraptors - to keep them off the ground and sharp) but newborn cats are pathetic worms

they don't even have the musculature to keep their eyeballs straight, which is how you get faces like this

I've had this idea for a zine for the longest time and I finally made it! Inspired by and dedicated to all of my fellow fangirls* :')