It's Been A Half Year
So, the last time I made one of these was….
hold on gimme a sec
checks notes
June. Bloody June.. Damn. Time flies when you are…well, having a time.
I’ve been busy as hell, struggling more than I should, and now, six months after the last move, I am once again hundreds of miles away from where I was when I last wrote to y’all.
No, I am not joking. I’m no longer in Chicago. How’d I get here? It’s a real long and depressing story, but at least I drew some cool comics and we had a fun jazz marathon for charity while the depressing and long story was happening, and I’m still around to plug away at making more fun jazz and comics for all you Internet friends of mine. So I guess it shakes out.
We’ve got a lot of catching up to do, so without further ado, here’s all the…
Things I’ve Been Up To
Things I’ve Written
Clippings has kept going, and we’ve gotten quite a few strips done in the past six months. To speed-run through ’em:
respect trans mans or catch these fuckin HANDS
In July, I fell for one of the classic blunders and got Tilted At Discourse. I honestly don’t even quite remember what the discourse in question was, but what I do remember is that someone ran their mouth about our trans brothers and those of us who haven’t had access to or who have been denied medical transition, and as someone who has quite frequently fallen into that latter category and who has had many of my closest allies and friends fall squarely in the former, I took that fuckin’ personally.
And so, for the next three months, I made it a point to write about nothin’ but trans dudes. Up first was the father of what we now know as modern women’s rowing, the absolute legend Michael Dillon. You can check out “The Trans Man Who Shaped Rowing and the Trailblazers We Bury Along The Way” here.
inkin' in the Lou
In August, we had the second of Three Months Of Trans Dudes, which featured the tale of the patron saint of transmasc advocacy and his tireless search for belonging, companionship, and his own roots in the annals of history. Read “Lou Sullivan, Jack Garland, and the Search For Trans Liberation in the Writings of Those Before Us” here.
In September, the trilogy concluded with the tale of millionare playboy and godfather of queer history research Reed Erickson. And his beloved pet leopard, of course. Read “Reed Erickson and the Perils of Miracles, Ket, and Coke” here.
In October, I decided to lean into the spoopy season by writing about the godmother of dungeon synth and the queen of synthesizers, Wendy Carlos. You can read “The Life, Times, and Records of Wendy Carlos” here.
In November, we celebrated National American Indian Heritage month and World Aids Day alike (when the Trump admin refused to, I might add) by looking into the life of the two-spirit caretaker of the dying man in one of the most iconic photographs of the AIDS crisis. You can check out “Peta Church, Therese Frare, the Shot that Defined the AIDS Crisis, and the Two Spirit Healer Who Let the World In” here.
look dawg, sometimes I just wanna take a break and draw some weird shit
In December, I uh…I was fuckin tired. The news had been gettin’ to me, I was going through some shit (as I’ll discuss later), and on top of that I never do well with the holiday season. My orphan ass doesn’t quite get on with the whole “celebrating family and belonging” crap, as you might imagine.
And so, instead of celebrating ThE rEasOn FoR tHe SeAsOn, I decided to highlight some of the monsterous figures of Yuletide folklore, if for no other reason than I just wanted to draw some weird dudes. Turns out, the Church was involved in fucking up a lot of these pagan terrors and taking the teeth off of ’em, and on top of that it turns out that a lot of these spoopy dudes changed their genders over time. Color me shocked. You can check out “Krampus, Transmasc Icon; and Other Queer Yule Myths and Monsters” here.
And finally, we kicked off the new year with last month’s strip, which saw me writing about queer folk in the Civil War for absolutely no reason at all. Totally nothing to do with recent destablizing terror attacks committed by agents of a United States federal agency against its own citizens. Absolutely not. Anyways, read “The Service of Albert Cashier and the Incivility of the United States” here.
womp womp woooomp
It is worth noting that this is the second of only two Clippings strips that had the illustrations themselves drawn 100% digitally. The first was because I was in the process of moving to Chicago at the time; I was driving three hours from the Quad Cities to Chicago to work shifts in order to afford the income verification process to get into an apartment, crashing on couches if I couldn’t make the drive back without falling over, and working in coffee shops between shifts. I didn’t have enough time in the studio to physically draw that month’s strip in studio so after I typed up the entirety of the script and glued it to the board, I proceeded to ink the entire thing in one go at a coffee shop off Western Ave.
This second one was also due to the move, but for far stupider reasons. The word processors I use to rattle off the type-written text all use a Brother B199 typewriter ribbon, and in my infinite hubris I forgot to pack the damn spares in a box to take to the new place before I sat down in that new place, three hundred miles away from the old studio, to type out all those text boxes. Typewriter ribbon ran out halfway through panel 3, and suddenly I was up shit creek without a paddle.
Piper Bly's Personal Hell
And so, if the last few panels of “The Service Of Albert Cashier…” look a bit…off? Yeah no, that’s because I had to physically copy and paste, letter by letter, the typewritten characters from either earlier in the comic or in previous strips into a fuckin’ grid to reproduce how it would have looked had it came straight off the typewriter.
No, I will not use a font for this. Fonts are for cowards. I made a font out of my handwriting exactly once, and it looked ass. Honestly, at this point in my life, my official line is “computers should be touched as little as possible.” Hell, using a tablet and a graphics editor to fill in screentone greys feels both awful and like a sin unto itself, and I’d still be using Deleter film and a X-Acto if a four-pack of tones wasn’t like eight fuckin’ bucks.
A tangent to be sure, but quote me on this: 90% of digital art looks like it’s made of bitch from the jump, any tech-bro hype product that separates you from the struggle inherent in the creative process should be shoved in the toilet and have its circuits flushed, and the less computers you can use for any aspect of your daily life, the better you will be.
Hand-lettering in print.
Everyone has their line to draw, and for me, fonts are where it starts. I didn’t get brought in on vandalism charges in my teens for sprayin’ up walls and scribbling script in my blackbook to give up my handstyles or my agency as a professional illustrator in the service of the datacenters and the infernal machine.
No toy shit. Unclean lines are better than lost agency. Do it the hard way or go home.
That wraps up our Clippings strip recap up until now, but speaking of my weird little hard-line stance on digital workflows, I also had a piece in this year’s Little Village comics issue, complete with hand-lettered text boxes as God herself intended. You can check out a photo of it in print over on the right there, find it in newsstands around the Iowa region, or read the digital edition on Little Village’s website.
Finally, a rare essay of mine ended up in Assigned this past August, about the inordinately harmful legacy of Dr. James Dobson and my personal experience at the hands of his adherents. You can read that over here; trigger warning for descriptions of child abuse, weaponized Christianity, and homophobia.
Photos I’ve Taken
EVENT OF THE FUCKIN CENTURY
In July, I covered what is truly the most important story, nay, the most important event of my career: Polly went to Budacki’s and had her first hot dog. You, too, can witness to these Important Happenings here on Mastodon, and I will most likely also upload it on here in a photo roll at some juncture.
In August, I headed to the Trans Up Front rally in Daley Plaza to talk to advocates, parents, and rally attendees on behalf of our friends at Assigned Media. You can see it for yourself here.
Also in August, I went on a bit of a bike ride for my birthday. I do still intend on uploading all of those photos here on Da Blog (and will put a link right here once I’ve done so), but in the meantime, you can see them all on Mastodon or over on Bsky.
My ol' reliable bike, Dr. Alec Holland, loaded up with packs and lookin' towards the future.
In October, myself and the rest of the Assigned media crew covered the No Kings rallies throughout the country. My beat took me to the Chicago riverfront and the home city of the very recently deceased Charlie Kirk, Arlington Heights, to talk to folks on the ground about how they felt about the direction of the country, the state of trans rights, and the encroaching march of fascism. You can check out our joint reporting here.
I haven’t done much photography since October, but I have at least gone on one bike ride and photo trip since moving to the bike-and-park centric city of Madison this past month and change. You can see some of my lil’ photos here on Mastodon.
And finally, while this isn’t related to photos I’ve taken as much as it is photos I will take, I’ve finally replaced the light seals in the ol’ Nikon EM…which is good, because I somehow managed to break the second of my Nikon F-501’s winding levers and I don’t have too many of those poor girls left. Madison seems to have a solid enough camera store, and I do intend to get into home developing now that I’ve the space to do so, so hopefully I’ll be back to shooting film more frequently in the coming months.
Pictures I’ve Drawn
he's got your whooole towwwn, in his haaands
This year’s Jazzy Fuckin’ Holidays got itself a new poster for our fifth year running, and you can check that out down below in the “Other Things I’ve Been Up To” section. Sadly, other than that, I haven’t been able to paint or draw much for personal things, and I haven’t yet been able to open up commissions formally yet either.
I did, however, get to honor a very special commission this past month; a reader reached out to request a drawing of Krampus for his wife after reading our December strip, and I did my damnest to give him a piece that lived up to his vision. You can check that out over to the right there.
Commissions should be opening up this coming month; I’m holding off for now to formally announce until I’m fully settled in to the new place, and I do have a couple things I want to finish off first that have been on my drawing board for far too long.
I’d expect a formal announcement at the end of March, but if you really, absolutely, cannot wait to have me realize your vision…feel free to check out the rates and policies page on my main site.
Other Things I’ve Been Up To
Cinderella Suicide – Where Is The New Tape?
The only piece I’ve uploaded for the new Cinderella Suicide record got re-upped and nearly completed in September, with a good amount of re-vamped instrumentation and a nearly complete first half of the nearly ten minute opening track. If you missed it, you can listen in here.
I know I spent a good section of the January Clippings recap ranting and raving about the merits of the Butlerian Jihad, but as most of you probably know, I do not in fact play every single instrument in studio. My one compromise is using the biggest pain in the ass setup possible: using only Linux for audio production (a feat in and of itself) and using LMMS of all things to actually compose the inordinately lengthy and complex track lines. If you want to see self-imposed torture, check out what the stems look like in this video over on Bsky.
Took a portrait of my mum (the Mississippi River) for the cover art here. I think I caught her good side.
So, what’s taking so long on the rest of the record? Simple; the last half of the track requires vocals, I didn’t have anywhere in the city to record ’em without getting slapped with several noise ordinance violations, and then I moved and I still don’t have a place to record vocals. I plan on rectifying that this spring, even if I have to take my car out to a field in bum-fuck-nowhere and scream the entirety of the record directly into my Zoom recorder with no brakes and no filter.
…And, considering as I am in the middle of fucking Wisconsin now as opposed to Chicago, I suddenly am surrounded by miles and miles of bum-fuck-nowhere. So, if you happen to be at a rest stop in Waukegan or what-have-you and see some imbecile with foofy hair yelling in her car at zero-dark-thirty, please don’t call the cops. I don’t have bail money.
What I do have, however, is what will probably be the cover art of the final EP, as well as the title: Mother Tongue Undertow.It’s off to the left there. I’ve blacked out the track titles until I have them solidified, but expect them to be right down at the bottom there in the final print of the cover.
get Jazzy with it
Jazzy Fuckin’ Holidays: Year 5 In The Bag!
Our fifth year (which almost didn’t happen, as you’ll probably read below) deserved a brand-new poster, and despite working myself to the bone and dealing with some Other Issues At The Time (again, read below) I managed to slap together a new piece just for this year’s show. Poster itself is off to the right there. I’m fairly proud of it, to be honest.
I want to send a very late thank-you to everyone who tuned in, and an even bigger very late thank-you to everyone who donated to the two charities that day. As always, it was a blast spending time with all of you, and I genuinely hope the show brought a friendly voice and some quality company to folks who, like myself, might not have had one that day.
Solidarity forever, as always.
Speaking of the holidays, severe mental health outcomes, and complicated feelings…..yeah, there’s one more thing I should probably talk about.
On Expiration Dates And Wisconsin (Content Warning)
I haven’t had to use this little graphic since starting this blog back up last January, but for those of you who haven’t seen it before, this lil’ doodle of myself gettin’ squished by The Heavy Shit tends to indicate that whatever comes up next is, well, heavy shit.
With that stated, this section directly discusses suicide, mental health, job loss, and other things along those lines. If you aren’t in the headspace for that, that’s completely fine; just because it’s here don’t mean you have to read it. Feel free to skip ahead if you may be triggered by these topics.
I have not had a good life. This is probably obvious for most people familiar with my work, but in case you’re new here, hi! I make black metal and underground comics. I’m very depressed. Hell, I did just run a charity marathon for suicide prevention hotlines. Call me a subject matter expert, if you will.
The Original Plan (abridged)
For quite a few years now, I’ve had…let’s call it a “scheduled out.” As in, if things do not look like they are going to get better by this date, I’m headed out from this world. That day was November 25, 2025. I’ll keep why that was the date to myself, but the fact that it overlaps with three years sobriety and the fact that it’s near the holidays have nothing to do with it. Getting out ahead of those two now.
Obviously, things Have Not Looked Like They Were Going To Get Better. This isn’t even a judgement call about how my life has been going. Look at the news, look around you. Things have gotten exponentially more fucked since November, and if anything, this is all going to continue to get way bloody worse from here. I cannot look at the current board state and say that heading out as I had planned wouldn’t have been justified.
So, I did what I had planned. Went to the hardware store that day and got the things I needed to end it. Had a note ready, had a method, had multiple fallbacks. I was ready to go.
But clearly, I’m still here.
I’m gonna be real with you here, I have no good reason for why I didn’t take the long walk. I don’t have a happy story for you, don’t have a feel-good motivational sermon about how life is inherently sacred and how Things Will Get Better. You’re asking the wrong cat for that. I just didn’t do it. Didn’t even relapse, which in and of itself is surprising. I just went to bed miserable as piss, woke up on the 26th, stayed up till midnight, and started the Jazzy Fuckin’ Holidays marathon.
Major Depression Disorder, bitchesssss
Again, I’m guessing most readers (especially those who aren’t familiar with a good portion of my work outside of things like Clippings) are probably very, very surprised to read how disconcertingly cavalier I am about my own death. The cliff’s notes is that I’ve suffered with the kind of severe depression that swings from anhedonia to nonfunctional with no higher points my entire life, and on top of that I’m both a child-abused orphan from Missouri and an impoverished trans person in America. The numbness comes stock. Most of the best comedians have it.
I’ve spent a good portion of my career (it’s in my artist’s statement on my website) talking about my own experience with mental health, and again, I do spend a non-zero portion of my time on a yearly basis raising money for trans and queer focused mental health organizations. This is not a cause I commit myself to as an abstract idea, foreign to my lived expeirence. This is my lived experience.
As for why I’m being open about it now…there’s a few reasons why. First, I expect it to color whatever my oeuvre becomes in the years after this, and because it seems necessary and relevant to tell. This is not my first rodeo writing about depressing topics. Hell, I’ve made entire albums about it. I’m not here to paint things happy when they’re not.
me every time i get too depressed to mask my mental health (i am already intensely disliked for being autistic and having a fucky gender)
Second, I know at least one or two people were probably looking forward to the goofiness of the Holiday S.H.I.T. List, and I wasn’t exactly around for that this year. This is part of why. I wish I could have kept up with being more active during the last half of the year, I really do. Shit’s fun as hell to write. But on top of working twelve-hour shifts at a fancy-folk restaurant to pay the bills, I was also teetering on the edge of the abyss about to go say hi to my mom without a Ouija board for the first time. That kind of got in the way of jazz programming. Just a bit.
And third, because this all got worse, as it often does. I got sacked from that fancy-folk joint the day after Thanksgiving, so I could “focus on my mental health.” Your guess as to how that was supposed to help me with my mental health during the holidays is about as good as mine.
I’m sure most of my fellow mental-cootie havers are familiar with how this number goes, but to lay this out for everyone else; no, I was not openly talking about doming myself on the line. I just usually have a hard enough time trying to mask like everything is alright during the holidays (y’know. because Orphan), and it wasn’t like the current goings-on were helping me keep my head above water.
Some of my more affluent peers might wonder aloud how it is that they can just Do That, and let me tell you; there’s a reason I spent most of my twenties in and out of homelessness, and this is that reason. The US doesn’t exactly have labor protections worth a damn on a good day, these were not good days, and I don’t get to have the good career with the stable jobs. I was an at-will employee, and we can’t be having a miserable tranny bastard in a fast-paced customer-focused environment. Time for a jig back into the bread-line, sad girl. The song and dance of capitalism is never ending and we don’t give labor union protections to the help.
I applied for some other restaurants, but mid-December is the objectively worst time to be doing that in this industry, and before I knew it I was out of time. My lease was up in February, working twelve-hour shifts did not exactly leave me much time to build connections or figure out where the people who need a roommate for a sublet all hang out, and unless I wanted to crash in the back of my four-door sedan with my dog in the middle of winter I was running out of time to find anything resembling a roof.
My last remaining option was outside of the city; an old friend of mine was going through some shit as well, and while I sure as hell didn’t want to leave the place I had worked my ass off to get to I didn’t have too many other options. I packed my bags through December, played the Christmas edition of Jazzy Fuckin’ Holidays with a half-dissembled studio, and me and the homie spent January shuttling all of our shit into the only apartment we could find.
And that’s why I’m playing this terrible knock-off of a post-game (or at least the next year and change of it) in Wisconsin.
I’m not particularly happy about it, I’m gonna be real with you. Beer and burger land was not my first choice of residency as a sober vegetarian. But, that’s where I am, and like I’ve done with most of the other (objectively terrible) cards I’ve been dealt in my life, the only thing to do is play them and make the most of ’em.
At least Wisconsin has plant stores. I can finally grow my ivies again. Missed those little boogers.
What’s Up Next
Honestly? More frequent blog updates. I want to write more, I clearly do not want to do an entire six-month recap again, and I’d like to stay in the groove this time.
cat do be makin Biscuits. yes this is entirely vegetarian, and believe it or not that "sausage" is homemade. i'll have to give you the recipe sometime. you'll love it.
Obviously, as you can all just tell, I’ve had a reason to not be writing as much. But I’d like to change that. I’ve been promising y’all more photo rolls and more process shit for a good minute now, and it’s about time I deliver. Especially if I start shooting and developing film at home. I’ve a lot of scans to show you.
I’ve also been working on using Vim and my own home-rolled servers for editing and version control, respectively; re-learning how to customise the command line text editor experience has been incredibly rewarding for me. Turns out my Luddite ass likes computers a lot more when they’re kept simple and stupid.
And finally, I have been cooking quite a bit more at home. My new roommie happens to quite enjoy my cooking, and having someone to cook for has made me want to do it more. So expect some more recipe writeups – or even comic strips about food, if y’all happen to be interested in that. Lord knows I could stand to draw more happy things, and despite the heartbreak this industry gives me I do love the art of culinary creation, and I’d love to combine two of the things that make my life worthwhile and draw you all some recipes from my own cookbooks.
Besides, have y’all seen my chili dogs? Been makin’ black bean chorizo chili with mole recently. Homemade salsa, too. Whole dish is entirely vegetarian. Y’all ain’t lived till you’ve had a bowl.
phew Well, that was a doozy, but I think that’s everything! I’ll be aiming to type up the next “What’s Been Goin’ On” at the end of March, and I’ll be aiming for a bi-monthly schedule on these going forward. Here’s hoping I can stick with it.
Genuinely, if you made it through the end of this, thank you for reading. I know this was a long and hard read, but now that the holidays and all the rest are behind me I’m going to make the best of the time I have, and I imagine that’ll be a lot easier once spring hits and I have my flowers again.
I’ll be back tomorrow with a new write-up for The Jazz Program. Until then, and even past then, I hope you all have lovely days and enchanting nights.
You’re amazing and don’t let anyone tell you that you’re not. Have a good one.
–piper <3