Raven the Pirate Princess is Sinking

princealigorna:

princelesscomic:

I despise doing posts where I ask for help, but here we are.

About two years ago I started a new creator owned project.  It began as a spin-off of Princeless, but the reality is this - Raven The Pirate Princess is its own thing altogether.  I knew this from the first issue and if you’ve been reading, so have you.

Sure, the first few issues of Raven: Pirate Princess had that heroic lady feminist banter for which Princeless has become known both among its fans and detractors.  I mean, Raven had this scene:

and issue 1 had this scene:

But perhaps much more importantly, the first issue of Raven had this:

but that wasn’t where that ended.  This is a book about a community of diverse queer women actively claiming their place in the world and taking what’s theirs.  It’s about Raven, who is desperately in love with her childhood best friend Ximena

It’s about Ximena, a girl who was held captive for years by a pirate king who pretended to be her liberator.  Who fell in love with the pirate’s daughter, only to be left behind by that father when she outlived her value.

About Sunshine, the thief that chose the wrong target and ended up falling in love with a woman already hopelessly in love with somebody else.

It’s about Katie, the bisexual second in command who’s motivated by honor…and occasionally beating the snot out of a dude or two

Oh and in case I forgot to mention, Katie is also incredibly muscular:

And Jayla, the asexual science genius who’s tired of being treated like a little sister

and Cid, the deaf engineer who quietly keeps the ship running

and of course, these two:

The socially awkward poet and the angry sword fighter who couldn’t stand her who have somehow become these two:

But here’s the thing: this comic is failing.  It has a very dedicated and exuberant but at this point SMALL fanbase.  Today I had a hard conversation with Action Lab about the reality of the numbers on this book versus what it costs to produce this book and, suffice it to say, Action Lab isn’t ready to cancel the book, but they aren’t ready to greenlight year 3 either.  After Year 2 #13, Raven is set to go on the shelf until numbers can support continuing it.

This is where I need your help

If you care about this book full of queer pirate ladies and you want it to continue, we need to find a way to spread the word about it.  We don’t need to sell single issues (it would be nice) but ultimately we need the trades sales that back up the continuation of this big YA Pirate/Revenge/Adventure/Romance thing.

Digital copies can be bought instantly right on Comixology: https://www.comixology.com/Princeless-Raven-The-Pirate-Princess/comics-series/46971

You can buy the physical volumes on amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B01BF7U91Q

In fact, if you’ve already purchased volumes 1-4, volume 5 is available for preorder there right now! 

Maybe you’ve bought all the issues already.  Thank you!  If you still want to support Raven, you can review the books on Amazon or other retailers, you can share, reblog or retweet this post.  You can tell a friend about the book! 

If you have a comics review site or, say, a blog where you talk about LGBT media, contact me for review links or interviews.  Please, help us save our ship.

I’ve gotten on Jeremy’s shit for one particular MLP arc that I fucking loathe, but he’s a good man and Princeless and Raven I feel are good books. Show him some support, please!

My brother.

Thirty two years kept hidden by someone who thought her existence made him a monster.
In the end, it did.
Now she’s living in his old house, trying to redecorate the memory of him away.

Belief

I don’t believe in god, but I do believe in the power of belief.
So I hope you all believe in something that leads you to be a better person.

After the Eclipse (a poem. 1st draft)

For you life when on.
For me it stoped when the sun died.
And after the sun returned,
You said, “wasn’t that was amazing”
While I realized I didn’t know you.

We build our stories with the greatest care,
Born to comfort our fear,
And each unique in its place and time.
How foolish must we be to tell a story together,
And expect that it can stand?

How can I grieve when you won’t acknowledge the death in the family?
You say “I’m right here”
But I can’t see who you’ve become for the memory of what we were.

Maybe you cannot see the corpse,
When I’m done grieving, will you still love what’s left?
“I’m right here”
The living can’t see the dead, and the dead can’t see the living.

Help me plant seeds in the body of what we were.
I want to remember how love grows.
And learn again, that it is not the telling of the story,
but letting go,
That we do together.

Coming out of my depression.

And I’m terrified of what happens next.

I just learned that late spring and summer is the classic bipolar suicide season.
I think I’m through this one, but it will probably happen again next year.
One day I might actually do it 😕 For now I have to figure out what do to get back to some level of normalcy in my life

I love it when

I’m really struggling to stay alive, but people be reposting my porn shots.

This is what my bipolar looks like today

I’ve been struggling with Trans identity for as long as I can remember.
Fighting against a clinical delusion is hard, and in the end I let it win because I knew facing the truth would lead to me taking my own life.
But I’ve realized that my life isn’t worth the pain my being Trans causes the world.
I’m done being an insult to both real men and women.
I realize some people just weren’t meant to be alive.

At least that’s what I’m afraid of.
It’s also what I’m trying to believe.
Because it’s easier to believe the worst about oneself.
I know I’ll never really believe that I’m a woman.
Not with all the hateful noise, or the indifferent confusion out there in the minds of cis people.
I will never be what I want so badly to be,

Real.

I want everyone to hate me, I want my words twisted by terfs and held up as yet more proof that I’m not real.
I want trans people and queers to hate me because I no longer believe in the fight, because I’m a traitor.
I want killing myself to be an easier choice than it is.
I want to extinguish the child who still wants to live.

Turning away from suicide is so very very hard.
Easier to just push onward until I reach the final goal.
Turning away means turning to face the shame.
The shame I feel for dragging everyone I love though the misery that knowing me brings, shame for being something so revolting as it is to be trans, shame for not being able to carry through on ending myself, shame for how awful I am to my myself, because turning back means perhaps I am worthy of love, and god I find that though unbearable. Shame for being wrong.

If only
If only
If only

For all the world to hate me such that I knew one thing for sure, that in the moment of ending my own life, I might do one good deed.

In the closet

So, for about the last year and a half I’ve been in the closet.
I didn’t set out to be.
I moved, got a regular job for a bit, and realized that in the world outside, no one knows I’m trans.
I’d just assumed that after a few days, anyone who was around me regularly would figure it out, yet to the best of my knowledge, no one has.
They certainly haven’t said anything.
At first it came as a pleasant surprise, but now I’m realizing I hate it.
I get to overhear so much more unpleasant shit from people who I know are outwardly tolerant.
It’s made me distrust almost every cis person in my life, and I feel like I’m constantly living a lie.
I hate myself so much more than I used to.
I’m pretty sure at one time I was proud of my transness.
Now I find nothing to be proud about.
I keep my mouth shut when things are said.
I was reading a comment to the effect of “stop being mentally ill, there are only two genders”, and you know what?
To the extent that gender is a social construct, that person was basically right.
I don’t want to be trans, never have.
But I am, and nothing I can do will make me cis.
There is no happy ending here, because what I want is to not be me,
And as long as the majority consensus is that trans isn’t real, I’ll never want to be me.

Everything looks like a vulva

Except my vulva, which still looks like a fucking penis!
*sigh*

I hate my transness, and yours too.

Happy fucking pride.