Talen Lee

@TalenLee

As Yet Untitled Work

he/him
press.invincible.ink/

I'm Talen! I make videos and articles and games and graphic designs and guides and messes and encouragement. Chances are you can find anything I do on my blog. I like it when you comment on my things, so please do!

Talen Lee @TalenLee6/30/2024, 11:45 PM

Irenes (many)@ireneista

Jes & Cin @jesncin6/30/2024, 12:03 PM

Lunar Boy and Queer Vocabulary

As Pride comes to a close, I want to celebrate Lunar Boy and talk about what including explicit queer terms in a middle grade graphic novel means.

This was really difficult to summarize in comic essay form haha. I had done extensive research while I was in school over how middle grade comics often avoid saying words like "gay" "lesbian" or "trans" and its connection with bans and censorship. While I was at school, it felt like Raina Telgemeier's "Drama" was the last time I saw a character say "bi" in a middle grade graphic novel, and that was published in 2012! Why haven't we built more from that bravery since then? So I vowed to make sure Lunar Boy wasn't going to be a kids book that talked around queerness,

As I continued to develop Lunar Boy, I realized how this would affect the larger intersectional context of honoring Indonesian history. And that led to another rabbit hole of pressures! Inter-cultural discourse, the way so many Indonesians don't have access to broader knowledge about our history, it's a lot!

Happy Pride, be nice to each other 🌈

#pride month #Pride #my art #comics #Lunar boy #books #graphic novel #queer art #trans art #ArtistsOnCohost #original art

Irenes (many)@ireneista6/30/2024, 10:51 PM

oh, what powerful thoughts

that's really well thought-out, seriously

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in reply to @jesncin's post:

Melinoë 🩸@melinoe6/30/2024, 1:41 PM

i'll stress often that our terms must be description, and never prescriptive.

that quality to our words is essential to making queer language liberatory and not assimilationist; to making our expressions of identity inseparable from each other, and uncontrollable to those who'd hurt us.

giving in to that policing, the way separating ourselves lets us be cut apart, is not just a material threat to our safety, but also feels like cutting out part of our own souls. you refuse that difference in human experience, you refuse part of what being human is.

so how can't i fall in love with this, and wish you that utmost love from so many more? god, pardon me while i cry even lol. there is next-to-no queer history for gaels and scots, whether it ever existed or was christianised out. though we're filling in some gaps. so it's honestly deeply, deeply healing to get to see others find that for themselves <3

Jes & Cin @jesncin7/1/2024, 2:10 AM

Aah you put it into words so well, thank you!

Policing really is like watching a community harm itself through resentment of its own roots. When I watched waria discourse play out online, I kept seeing this bitterness towards our trans elders who got us this far. Every term was expected to be clean and "unproblematic" so that anthropologists can write this pristine image of us. Adjusting our messy authenticity for their gaze.

Buhuhuh 😭 I'm always so hyped to learn about queerness from other cultures, thanks again for sharing!!

mirphy/juno/mj @voxphantasma6/30/2024, 4:41 PM

aah love to see the raina telgemier shoutout i read smile and drama over and over as a kid <3

Jes & Cin @jesncin7/1/2024, 1:55 AM

She's the queen of graphic novels right now haha! It's genuinely so wild to read a book where kids casually say "gay" and "bi" and see so little of stuff like that since then.

Tangleworm @tangleworm7/1/2024, 4:24 AM

Thank you for putting this into such beautiful words!

I'm reminded of a reddit comment by a now-deleted account that went:
"People are to labels what boxes are to cats. You try to put a cat in a box and it hates it and it hates you. You leave some boxes out for the cat and it will gladly sit in one."
Which really articulated a similar frustration I was feeling years ago, about the pressure to be "above" labels and names.

There are as many ways of experiencing and relating to gender as there are people on Earth -- of course language could never perfectly categorize and collect them all, nor should that be its goal. But when names aren't used for taxonomy, and instead for community and communication, they become beautiful. I no longer had to perfectly fall into the same "category" as someone to relate to them -- I could relate in all our prismatic multitudes because we had names for our experiences, not despite it.

Jes & Cin @jesncin7/1/2024, 11:26 AM

That's such a good analogy! Part of me also approaches it from the angle that "if these queer labels are so pointless, than why is larger queerphobic society so intent on making sure the next generation doesn't get a hold of them? Why do they appropriate them into insults?" Because they're powerful means for connection and community!

Cliff 🦖 Pervocracy @pervocracy7/1/2024, 8:20 PM

I think it's more dated to do the "I'm... not like other boys" thing! Indu has access to books and the Internet and queer community, it makes complete sense in the story that he would be learning both older and current terminology. It's both realistic and empowering to show queer people having outside resources to learn about themselves.

Jes & Cin @jesncin7/2/2024, 1:45 AM

So true omg! I'd totally get it if something was set in the past where terms where just being coined and harder to access, but to keep that kind of vibe into supposedly modern works doesn't hit the same.