Category: Blog

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Art Blog Journaling Writing

Back and bold

Yeah it’s been almost 2 years since I posted last 🤷 I’ve but given up though! I’ve picked up some new skills and outlooks, and I’m ready to go at it again!

One of my new(ISH) hobbies is creative journaling and I think some of the pages would make great art prints – I’ve written a substack article about it if you’re interested in taking it up, I’ve also got a pilot podcast episode recorded. Trying this new thing called “radical self acceptance” where I stop expecting too much and enjoy what I can do. Wild, right?

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Art Blog Game Dev

Nebulous Rivals

Nebulous Rivals is the next big game likely to come to fruition – the idea is to drawer 2 cards from a mixed deck each turn and then trade them in for suns, planets, asteroids, and tiles which you use to build your own patch of space. The finer details of how it’s going to be scored are still a mystery to me, but I’ve begun getting all the kit in to build a prototype deck, which is never a cheap endeavour when you’re on a low income. I looked into buying marbles but it was estimated to come out at £20-£30 per game which is unsustainably high, and so I’ve decided to make them myself – I prefer to keep my big projects as hand made as possible because mass production is inherently unethical (the only labour I’m exploiting is my own!)

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Art Blog Game Dev Writing

Update 2024 New Year

Last year was pretty fucking rough, and amazing. While the year started with a violent encounter with a bigot, it then went on to acting for the first time, creating new art, and enjoying the smallest moments. Healing my body and mind held me back me from a lot of things, but I’m feeling ready to to tackle life again with a fresh perspective, Ngl the nature of my life means things get in the way nearly constantly so I can only do my best, but I’m happy with that.

The writing club I run (Friends of Penelope) ran a poetry competition in December and I sent it off to acclaimed author Molly Potter for judging – The results just in! I was not the winner, but I think we all did great work and I’m excited to release it as an anthology by printing some copies in house and selling them at markets or via local book shops. Title tbd. I’m feeling more able to write again following the traumatic incident of last year, and so I’m hoping to publish a few anthologies of my own this year – one poetry and one short story. I say hoping, that’s because of several influencing factors and I don’t want to put excess pressure on myself, that’s the death of motivation (and more importantly, enjoyment) for me. Those will be available on this website.

I’ve decided that I love working on games and will be pushing that as a large facet of my career from here on out – See creatures will have a second go at a kickstarter campaign early/mid 24, after I’ve managed to get some travel sized versions out to reviewers. (Travel sized because I’m on an extremely low income and have to do what I can manage). If you want more info on that amazing game (not that I’m biased!) go to seecreatures.co.uk. It’s part of my Deep Sky game series – the heading under which all my games will be published. There is talk about setting up a gaming co-operative under Queer City Gaymes, but only time will tell if that’s going to actually happen. I’d like it to. All info or links to my games can be found on this website.

I also plan to sell some of my art, I’ve done a series on Trans Masc bodies (18+) that I’d like to sell, and I’ve done another based on my experiences during the summer.

And that’s not even mentioning the choirs I’m in or run, nor the personal music I’ve been working on, combined with my work in the community and training workshops I’m hoping to see the results from my efforts really grow this year.

Check out my socials for more info!

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Blog Game Dev Plays Trans Activism

Update

The last 7 months have been quite trying, hence my website being quite. In a nutshell my partner and I agreed to be in a documentary about trans issues, we had a lot of distress over this decision as we were worried about the final content of the show (which we haven’t seen yet), we also didn’t want to make a commodity of trans day of remembrance for other people’s entertainment but felt the desperate need to do what little we could to try and stave off the waves of hate trans people face. We, ultimately, didn’t want to be in it at all and have been plagued by anxiety and distress. The final outcome of the show remains uncertain for us, and channel 4 have been grossly misrepresenting it’s contents in publicity statements.

This was followed by an attack by far right extremists in the park during an art rally I held against section 35, which resulted in my getting a broken nose and concussion trying to pull an attacker off of an innocent by-stander. There has been no justice on that matter, only polite words of concern.

This has lead me to take a step back from several facets of my life while I nurture my mental and physical health.

Not everything has come to a halt however – I’ve been working on a few creative projects! The first is a book called “Irreversible Joy” which is about finding happiness from the perspective of someone who’s gender diverse (spoiler alert, there’s a lot of it to be had!) and a card game called “See Creatures” which is a bright and lighthearted game about making creatures for points and to inconvenience the other players with their effects – another update coming soon!

I also have been working on a thriving theatre life, I started a new protest singing group which has become a tightly knit group and we also do writing and acting – our current project being around the history of gender diversity, which crosses thousands of years. I also have a (thankfully small!) part in a community theatre production in a nonbinary role, which is on during late June and early July.

Hopefully going forward things will continue to improve!

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Blog Plays

SOHAP

The official run of Songs Of Hope And Protest ended mid June, but we’ve continued to perform scratch performances at a couple festivals, all to raving reviews – even the one where last minute doesn’t quite cover it! The cast played into the mistakes and the audience loved the authenticity. There are murmurings that SOHAP might continue to do one off shows, mostly condensed to just the songs, and I’m hopeful it will continue!

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Blog Pride Trans Activism

Pride Appearence

At Norwich Pride this year I conducted an interview for the Natasha Curson talk, a memorial event commemorating a woman in the trans community who helped start up Norwich Pride. It was my pleasure to conduct an interview with Adrian Sweeny, an up and coming social media influencer who has been recording his transition for roughly ten years. The interview was translated through BSL and there were graphic story boarders who have recorded the talk – it was a fantastic and fascinating experience, and hopefully I will be the regular interviewer from now on!

The Graphic Notes of the event
Following the interview was a 4 way panel discussion!
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Blog Plays

Songs Of Hope And Protest

I’ve been engaged lately with The Common Lot’s original production based around the history of the British protest song, both singing in the choir and offering some scenes and my crafting services. I’ve made a few protest signs for use in the show and I’m most proud of this one, which I’ve made to look like community zine with misplaced ink.

Featured in the show will be a section on police abuse of LGBTQIA+ people, and a new trans verse for “Glad To Be Gay” (updated by Charlie Caine) and a reference to the conversional therapy ban fiasco. Many minorities have been represented in the show and I’m excited to see the final piece on stage and perform with the choir.

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Blog

Protest On The Radio

We’re thrilled by the amount of coverage we’ve gotten for our protest recently – as LGBT+ people we are, naturally, a little wary of the media but the reporters who attended/wrote about our event were very positive and didn’t give a platform to anyone who opposed the rights we were advocating for, which is rare and very appreciated!

Here you can listen to the interviews Charlie and I did as well as some audio from the protest, at the 50 minute time stamp.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0bzh6d1

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Blog

Protest In The Papers

The Protest against the exclusion of trans people from the conversion therapy ban went very well, roughly 200 people turned up – twice the amount of the last protest which also went extremely well – and there were some amazing speakers there, both trans people and cis allies. The run up to the event was somewhat draining for me and so I feel like my speech as chair of Norwich Pride’s Trans Advisory Group could have been a little better, but it still seemed to go down well. We had a fantastic song performance on acoustic guitar, and some fantastic on the fly speeches during the open mic session. Charlie and I also did interviews with Amy from BBC Radio Norfolk which will be coming out soon and I’m excited to share.

My Personal quote: “The government’s exclusion of trans people from the ban is deliberately malicious, but acknowledging that people deserve to be protected, they’ve admitted that they either don’t care, or want us to be mistreated with torture and abuse.”

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Blog

Conversion Therapy Protest

I’m working with Norwich Pride in my role as the chair of the Trans Advisory Group to put together a protest this weekend, we’ll be protesting the governments complete lack of regard for trans welfare and their propensity for lies. Having agreed to ban all conversion therapy they then decided they wouldn’t (not the first time they’ve decided to renegade on a promise), eventually relenting to protect Lesbian, Gay, and Bi people under pressure – but having publicly admitted that it’s a torture that needs eradicating they refused to protect trans people despite them having a higher chance of being subjected to it. It’s clear, then, that they either have such disdain for trans people that abusing us is either a good thing in their view, or that we don’t qualify as humans and therefore it doesn’t matter if we’re horrendously treated.

There have been a lot of protests lately around this subject, huge ones that have real impact and I only hope that ours will uplift and inspire our local community, and assure everyone that there are people out there dedicated to equality and human rights.