redgoldsparks
Redgoldsparks
Maia Kobabe.
@redgoldsparks on instagram. Pronouns: e/em/eir. Author of Gender Queer, A Memoir
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Last Seen Blogs
bunmurdock
bunmurdock
lanjin-wang
仿生海星赛博划水
itsakindoffunnystories
... all I know we'll meet again some sunny days.
cass-brews
Cass Brews
victory-candescence
Always a self portrait.
Photo
Noor Hindi, ode to friendship
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I've got a book launch event for BREATHE: JOURNEYS TO HEALTHY BINDING coming up at 1pm on Saturday May 11 at the Barnes and Noble in Santa Rosa (700 4th St). Say hello if you'll be in town!
Here's the info from the Barnes and Noble event page:
We are beyond excited to announce that we are hosting Maia Kobabe, author of 'Gender Queer' I.E. 2023's most banned book in America, for a Discussion/Signing of 'Breath: Journeys to Healthy Binding' by Maia Kobabe and Sarah Peitzmeier, PHD. 'Breath' is a graphic novel comprised of real-life stories and research-backed advice on the subject of binding. Maia will also be joined by local LGBTQIA+ non-profit, Positive Images, who will be setting up appointments for binder sizing while also handing out free binders and other goodies. We will also be having a bookfair with Positive Images that will allow a portion of all event sales to go back to the organization so they can continue to help the LGBTQIA+ community.
The book discussion will be open to all who would like to join however, one of Maia's books will have to be purchased to receive a wristband granting you access to the book signing line after the discussion. LIMITED WRISTBANDS AVAILIBLE so it is encouraged to buy your books before the event begins.
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Hey everyone, please consider buying the 2024 itch.io Palestinian Relief Bundle- it's 373 games, game-making assets, tabletop roleplaying games, zines, and comics for a minimum of just 8 USD! They have a goal of 100,000 USD, and as of the time I'm writing this post, they have 8 more days to reach it.
Link will be in the reblog!
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Here's another Sandman related story which didn't make it into Gender Queer: in high school I had a really cool English teacher, Mrs V, who lend me her copies of the Sandman series when she learned I liked comics, sometime around 2004. They completely blew my mind. Later, for an assignment in her Mythology class, I drew Death from Sandman as the Death Tarot card. On the back of the drawing, she wrote "A+, Can't wait to read your first graphic novel" which was the first time any adult ever expressed confidence in the idea that someday I would write and draw a graphic novel. Mrs V's encouragement planted a seed. I don't even know if I yet believed I could finish a graphic novel, but Mrs V wanted to read it, so I had to! I started to take my comics more serious after that. In 2019, Mrs V came to one of the stops on my Gender Queer book tour and I signed a copy for her and I was able to tell her how much that support meant to me <3 Thank you forever to Mrs V for putting Sandman into my hands and also thank you to @neil-gaiman for the inspiration!
(two pages from a comic I drew in 2018 about things that encouraged me to keep making art) instagram / patreon / portfolio / etsy / my book
Hello Mister Gaiman!
I'm currently reading "Genderqueer" by Maia Kobabe for one of my university classes on Queer Embodiment, and found this little gem. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
Morpheus helping out a questioning genderqueer person on their journey to self-discovery sounds about right!
It really does.
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One of my very favorite webcomics is BACK after a hiatus and I had to draw FANART! This is Lucian (left, fuckboy scientist) and Ezra (right, gay sentient android trying to solve a murder mystery in his past). They are the main characters of the wonderful story ELECTRIC BONES and this week I can say congrats to my friends Bell and Hazel @hazeldrop for launching ACT TWO! You can read the whole first act of this story and new pages starting this week on their website, webtoon, or tapas and follow updates here on tumblr, twitter, or insta. If you back them on patreon you can read pages in advance ✨
I really love this story and I'm so excited to see where the mystery goes next!
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The #ConnectingGaza campaign supplies E-Sims to people on the ground in Gaza, allowing them to circumvent internet disruption/blackout during the siege and continue connecting with the wider internet. A digital SIM card (called an e-SIMs) works the same as a physical SIM Card, providing data and SMS for a phone number. E-Sims are one of few resources that can be directly accessed without blockage by people on the ground in Gaza.
Artists will be offering art in exchange of the value of the donated e-SIMs. Visit https://cartoonist.coop/esims4gaza to learn more.
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My second book, BREATHE: JOURNEYS TO HEALTHY BINDING, written with Dr Sarah Peitzmeier, will be released in the first week of May from Dutton. That same week, audiobook editions of both BREATHE and GENDER QUEER will be released by Penguin Random House Audio! They can both be pre-ordered now, or put them on hold at your local library <3
I read the narration for Gender Queer- my first time in a professional recording studio!
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I will be in conversation with the poet Gabrielle Calvocoressi at the University of Colorado on Thursday April 18 from 4:00pm - 5:30pm! The event is free but registration is required.
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Gender Queer is the most challenged book in the United States for the third year in a row, according to the American Library Association's new report.
Here's a 2 page PDF of info graphics on 2023 challenge trends.
Actions you can take to counter book bans and challenges.
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When absolutely 0 of Biden’s accomplishments have made any kind of news, and we’ve been fed a steady diet of fear and panic for 3 years, no one gets to be shocked when he loses the next election to Donald 2.0.
Posting anything positive about the president here will get you called a capitalist bootlicker.
What do we expect to happen?
Anger sells better. Anger feels better, it feels righteous.
It’s easier to protest against a president you don’t like then to actually remain in charge and keep pushing ahead, even if small, consistent accomplishments are all you receive.
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happy birthday to my best friend grey 🐇🩵🫂🛌
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March Reading and Reviews by Maia Kobabe
I post my reviews throughout the month on Storygraph and Goodreads, and do roundups here and on patreon. Reviews below the cut.
Delicious in Dungeon vol 4 by Ryoko Kui
I'm reading these books so fast I can barely remember which parts of the plot happened in which volume but know that I am still having a great time!
Delicious in Dungeon vol 5 by Ryoko Kui
Oh, this story has taken a darker turn, and also just introduced a whole bunch more characters. Will I be able to keep track of them all? I hope so!
Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb, read by Anne Flosnik
Unfortunately, this is definitely the weakest Robin Hobb book I've read so far. I was expecting to like it less than the glorious, 5-star previous trilogy, but I actually think I'm going to skip the rest of the Rain Wild Chronicles and read summaries online to get to the next Fitz books. This book follows five main POV characters. This works fairly well for the first half, when the characters are all in different physical locations. However once all of the characters meet up, we start getting the same scene from multiple different POVs, which feels extremely repetitive. Also, almost EVERY SCENE includes a flashback, often a lengthy flashback, sometimes to something that happened only the previous day and could have been told as present-moment action. This writing choice baffled me. It's something I can't remember struggling with in any of Hobb's previous books, but by the end it was driving me up a wall. The book also moved very slowly; the stakes feel lower, and the character far less emotionally true than in the two Fitz trilogies. Disappointing, but I will keep moving forward towards the next part of the series I want to read.
Delicious in Dungeon vol 6 by Ryoko Kui
Damn, a lot of characters get murdered in this volume! Good thing almost everyone who dies in the dungeon can be revived. Also, very excited to finally meet the cat ninja I've been seeing fan art of since before I even started the series :3
Delicious in Dungeon vol 7 by Ryoko Kui
I am still completely caught up in this series. I love the glimpse of Senshi's past revealed in this volume, and the lore of the dungeon that is still being revealed. There was a line in here about how the dungeon leaves you alone if you don't ask much of it, but that if you have strong desires it throws even more obstacles into your way. Our heroes have such big goals right now, but they're marching ahead regardless!
School Trip by Jerry Craft
A satisfying new installment in the New Kid series from funny, talented, charming Jerry Craft! I appreciated how this volume started to complicate some of the students who had been left a bit one-dimensional in previous books. Several people stood up to and called out a bully; new friendships were built; and Jordan Banks left Paris even more inspired than ever to follow his dreams of becoming an artist. This series has a lot of jokes, but also a lot of heart!
A Frog in Fall (and Later On) by Linnea Sterte
Minor frog is less than a year old, and is dismayed when winter begins to steal all of the light and warmth from his world. Instead of bunking down safely with his mentor to wait for spring, he sets out on a journey with two vagabond toads passing by on a quest to make it all the way to the tropics. They tramp through the Japanese countryside, encountering tree spirits, new friends, dangers, and views the likes of which minor frog had never even imagined. This is a gorgeous book; every page worth pouring over, an economy of line and detail building a beautiful and mysterious world of talking animals and miniature packaged foods. Made me want to draw.
Dark Rise by CS Pacat read by Christian Coulson
In 1820s London, orphaned Will tries to earn enough as a dockworker to survive- and evade the killers pursuing him. Violet dresses in her half-brother's clothes and sneaks onto a ship in the Thames to watch a man be branded with his master's mark. Katherine excitedly anticipates her engagement to one of London's richest and most mysterious lords; his gallantry nearly makes up for the fact that he's twice her age. And in the bowels of one of that lord's ships, James tortures a man for information. All of these characters are 16 or 17 years old, but all of them are tangled in an ancient conflict between the Light and the Dark which stretches back into an age of magic before history.
This is CS Pacat's YA fantasy debut, and it contains a lot of tropes very familiar to both YA and high fantasy- there are shades of both Tolkien and Rowling in this. Its fast-paced and action-packed, but especially in the first third of the story, the characters all felt fairly thin. None of them have quirks, hobbies, career hopes, relationships outside of immediate family, school, or work; or much more than a brief sketch of past. It took until the mid-way point for what I consider Pacat's major strengths as a writer to emerge: intense, homoerotic interpersonal sparring between characters operating under major power imbalances. Every scene in which the seductive, manipulative, powerful evil gay faced off against the good boy chosen one crackled with energy. Unfortunately, there were only four of these scenes in the whole book. It ends on a cliff-hanger, because of course it does, with a tempting set up for book two; but that doesn't entirely excuse the fact that the first 50% felt like set up. I will definitely keep reading, but long-time Pacat fans should take note that this is toned down version of what I expected based on Captive Prince.
Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls (re-read before event)
What an accomplishment! I savored every page of Feeding Ghosts, absolutely floored by the labor and courage that went into the writing of this book. The inking is gorgeous, the history is clear, digestible, and devastating. This book threads the line between honesty and compassion in a way that I appreciate so much in any memoir, but especially one dealing with family. Hulls lays out the story of three generations of women starting with her grandmother, Sun Yi, a Shanghai journalist who faced intense persecution during the rise of Communism in China, who penned a popular and scandalous memoir and then suffered a mental breakdown. This left her only daughter, Rose, a student at an elite boarding school with no parental figures and no other family to lean on. Eventually Rose earned a scholarship to an American university and in the end moved her mother into her California home. Sun Yi haunted that home during the author's own childhood. The unexamined trauma and codependency of Sun Yi and Rose drove the author to the extreme edges of the Earth, seeking freedom from their ghosts. But in the end, she stopped running from her family history and turned, instead, to face it. Shelve this book with Maus, Fun Home, Persepolis and The Best We Could Do. Re-read it for a second time and got even more out of it on a second pass.
Delicious in Dungeon vol 8 by Ryoko Kui
Laios and company realize that their encounter with changling mushroom rings had more consequences than they'd realized- its the body swap episode! This visual humor is contrasted against increasing dangers from both above and below, as nastier monsters and political machinations begin to close in on our heroic adventuring party. I'm now over halfway through this series and almost feel like I should start reading it more slowly to savor it, but I'll probably just keep devouring it instead.
Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang and Leuyen Pham
High school senior Val grew up knowing her family was unlucky in love; for generations, relationships in her family have ended in heartbreak. Her childhood love of Valentines Day ends with a shocking family revelation and what feels like the beginning of a curse. Then her Vietnamese grandmother sweeps her off to a Lunar New Year celebration in downtown Oakland and a pair of cute lion dancer boys catch her eye. Could one of them break the spell on her heart? This story offers a classic and satisfying rom-com, with Val torn between an outgoing, rich, but flaky boy and a broody, shy, loyal one. The story takes several kdrama style twists and includes ghosts, saints, red envelopes, confessions, fights, reunions, tears, and kisses. For a comic, its wordy; the pages are dense with small panels and thick with dialogue, but also illustrated with such warm, humor, and realism. I really liked that the story included as much of Val's relationship with her family and best friend as romance. And the lion dancing scenes practically leap off the page with color and energy!
Witch Hat Atelier vol 10 by Kamome Shirahama
This series remains as visually stunning as ever but I'm struggling with how every single book expands the cast. There are so many characters now that I don't care about that much, and have trouble remembering from volume to volume. I wish the story line would stick more closely to Coco, her classmates, and their main mentors!
Delicious in Dungeon vol 9 by Ryoko Kui
Oh the stories are all converging! The savior at the bottom of the dungeon is probably a demon! Ituzumi saves the day! I am still having a great time reading this series.
A Dowry of Blood by ST Gibson read by Abby Craden
A short, very queer, very poly retelling of Dracula focusing on his coven of enthralled lovers. I liked the way the book breezed through history, as the dysfunctional little family moved from one major European city to the next, with snatched moments of glittering joy interwoven with violence and plague. The story is fairly simple, and has a happier ending than I expected, or honestly think the characters deserved.
City of Dragons by Robin Hobb
I DNFed the previous book in this series and just read a summary online before skipping ahead to this one. I think that was a very good choice for me. This third one was more engaging and a bit more action packed, with some cool discoveries about the city of Kelsingra and the nature of Elderlings. But the Rain Wild Chronicles as a whole do not stand up to the quality of the Farseer books. There are so many POV characters that a few of them get only two or three scenes in this whole book. I don't feel that I deeply know any of these characters; while at the same time watching Hobb pair them off at an extraordinary rate- in the last book five sets of characters got together and in this book an additional two couples are developing feelings for each other. Between this and a kidnapping, a birth, a murder, and a lot of blackmail, this series feels like a soap opera.
Delicious in Dungeon vol 10 by Ryoko Kui
Almost two TPKs in this volume, yikes!
Delicious in Dungeon vol 11 by Ryoko Kui
You know shit's getting serious when the character who has been the series main villain up until now is partially devoured by a different, worse villain. Exciting changes coming to this dungeon under it's new lord and master!
Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Lisa Sterle
When Becca gets invited to sit with the popular girl clique at her new high school, she's thrilled. But the friendship turns bloody and complicated when she learns that her new friends are actually werewolves who need to kill and feed on a human once a month. If she joins them, Becca will gain superhuman strength and a pack; she'll never have to fear a male predator again, because she will be a predator herself. I loved the queer rep and the twist on werewolf lore; I wish it had been a little longer and more developed. Give me multi-page transformations sequences!
Delicious in Dungeon vol 12 by Ryoko Kui
I love seeing all these plot lines come together! Building towards a wild climax.
Delicious in Dungeon vol 13 by Ryoko Kui
I went out and *bought* vol 13 of this series because my library didn't have it yet, that's how hooked I am. And now I have to wait until JULY for the final volume! (But also, thank goodness I didn't get into this series any sooner or I'd have a much longer wait).
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Spring is very beautiful this year, so I drew a comic about the moon behind plum trees for my Patreon (where I post wip)♥
It was inspired by the great song from Sam Lee.
Also, I wanted to draw flower fairies, with no typical "beautiful" look... designs inspired by real flowers that are sometimes just weird, but so rich in their shapes and variations! ♥
Maybe I will draw more bout these tiny characters ♥
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just wanted to post about the books unbanned initiative — it allows teens/college students to get library cards in the following cities:
brooklyn public library (ages 13-21) — email [email protected] to get your free card
seattle public library (ages 13-26) — sign up here
boston public library (ages 13-26) — sign up here
la county library (ages 13-18; california only) — sign up here
san diego public library (ages 12 -26) — sign up here
brooklyn public library, seattle public library, boston public library and la county library all use libby, whereas the san diego public library uses cloud library.
there's also the queer liberation library, which is a free digital library you can sign up for here. anyone with a US mailing address can apply for this one, and there's no age limit!
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Had a lovely chat with @madeleinejubileesaito this morning on the first day of spring and remembered this comic I made back in 2020! Happy equinox :D
instagram / patreon / portfolio / etsy / my book
inspired by Madeleine Jubilee Saito aka @madeleinewitt
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There's a giveaway running for my short nonfiction book about chest binding as a trans healthcare tool running on Goodreads for the month of March :)
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Last year I worked for the first time as the writer half of a writer-artist team on a short comic! Tessa Luicart aka @that.artist.tess on insta illustrated this story for the Columbus College of Art and Design Spitball anthology. Our collaboration can be found in volume 9. You can find these collections for sale at spitballcomic.com or at CXC every year. Transcript below the cut.
instagram / patreon / portfolio / etsy / my book / redbubble
Page 1
Like many young writers raised on diets of Eurocentric fantasy stories my first attempt at long form fiction was sudo-medieval fantasy. I did an astonishing amount of visual research for this comic, seduced by the aesthetics.
Page 2
But I struggled with what felt like an unmanageable plot. At times, thumbnailing this story felt like wading through mud. Other times, I pictured myself hacking a path through a jungle.
Page 3
I labored and sweated to clear a passage through the wilderness. I felt as if I was uncovering a path, a plot, that only I could see. I didn’t question whether writing needed to feel like so much WORK. When a well respected literary agent told me the story was half-baked and unpublishable, I was devastated. I’d already drawn over a hundred pages.
Page 4
After much hard thought, I decided to set the story aside. In my newly freed creative time, I started to write memoir. I was shocked by how quickly it flowed out of me. It wasn’t EASY exactly- but the pages poured out of me like water.
Page 5
Instead of wading, I was skipping easily from scene to scene. Now, I pay attention to how it FEELS to work on a story. If it feels like I’m back in the mud, I have taken a wrong turn. Or else the story isn’t ready yet to be told. When the story is READY the path reveals itself.
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