plzplztalk2me: Moss Angel Witchmonstr
Welcome back to plzplztalk2me, a semi-regular feature in which I talk to people who want to talk to me about stuff they want to talk about.
Recently, I e-mailed back and forth with Moss Angel Witchmonstr. Moss Angel Witchmonstr is author of four books, most recently Sea-Witch v.1 (2fast2house, 2017). She is a scorpio & a transsexual & lives in Portland, Oregon. Follow her on patreon at http://patreon.com/monstr.
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Moss Angel Witchmonstr: hiiiii
p.e. garcia: Heyyyyyyy! How are you! I’m excited to talk to you! What are you up to these days? Tell me everything (you feel like telling).
Witchmonstr: I got my balls cut off today (as a trans surgery thing) and i’m super jazzed about that. I’m also zoned the FUCK out on this oxy they gave me and it is amazinggg. I also decided today while on oxy that I am changing my name to Moss Witchmonstr, so that is exciting. My girlfriend who lives in Seattle is coming into town in a few days to see me and my girlfriend who lives here is coming to spend all day with me tomorrow while I recover.
Yesterday I did a bunch of work so I could save up to afford to take time off while I recover, since I can’t work with stitches in my junk. I’m a sex worker, so my junk is kinda key to that being able to happen. Today my friend Chloe drove me to the surgery and then came back and hung out with me all day and we made out and watched anime and ate pizza while fucked up on oxy.
garcia: I’m glad to hear about your balls! Good riddance to bad balls. And I love your new name. I like the idea of having as many names as possible–I was just telling someone this. It’s an amazing thing to be able to go by as many different names as you want. Moss Witchmonstr is a pretty fucking good name.
What anime did you watch? And what kind of pizza? How are you feeling now? Recovering well, I hope. How long will it take you to recover, you think?
Witchmonstr: Thanks!! I just decided that my middle name is going to be Angel so my full name is Moss Angel Witchmonstr, which has a great rhythm to it. It’s six grouped syllables that are basically in waltz time.
We watched Revolutionary Girl Utena until we ran out of streaming links for it and then switched to Neon Genesis Evangelion, which I hadn’t seen until last time I was on pain killers, which was at 16 after I had my wisdom teeth pulled.
garcia: I love the name Angel, and I like that your initials spell MAW, which is one of my favorite words. My initials spell PEG, which is also a pretty good word. I’ve seen neither one of those shows. Should I watch them?
Witchmonstr: My initials used to spell SJW which is one of the reasons I wanted to change my name. MAW is actually amazing. I’m so glad I have better initials now.
You should watch both of them. They’re amazing. Utena is an incredibly gay show about how gay girls are magical. And in my personal reading of the show, Evangelion is about a closeted trans girl named Shinji.
garcia: How’s the new name treating you? I ordered Sea Witch vol. 1. and am superrrrr excited about it. How many Sea Witch volumes do you expect? Or is that a dumb question?
Witchmonstr: Not a dumb question! I’m starting to write volume three right now, so at least three volumes. Maybe five. I’m not entirely sure yet. I guess I’m just gonna keep writing until I find an ending or until I burn out, whichever comes first.
The new name is treating me well! I love it a lot, though I’m still getting used to it. I get excited and surprised when someone calls me Moss. It’s fun though. I hope you like Sea-Witch!!!
garcia: I’m sure I will! Who are some writers you’re into these days? Who isn’t famous but really should be
Witchmonstr: Oh gosh, so many. PDX writers like Jamondria Harris, Ines Falco, Prairie M Faul (who is in New Orleans right now but we still claim her), Manuel Arturo Abreu, Jenna Marie Fletcher. Also ppl from elsewhere. Fucking Claire Grey Alexandria, whose unpublished book I’m reading right now & its blowing me away. I just started reading Yemaya’s Daughters by Dane Figueroa Edidi and Am Very Excited & Interested In Where This Is Headed. Probably my favorite writer right now is Renee Gladman. I haven’t read her new book yet but it’s on my amazon wishlist. Her book The Activist is one of my all-time favorite pieces of creative matter that exist in the world. Another one of those would be The Skin Team by Jordaan Mason, who I love. Um. I like a lot of sf/fantasy & afrofuturism stuff. Nalo Hopkinson is a fave of mine. Octavia Butler. Nnedi Okorafor, though I’m still a little bit hurt by how badly she bungled the trans character in Lagoon. Kokumo is fucking exciting. Sybil Lamb. Casey Plett. Nevada. I love all the stuff we publish at The Wanderer, which is the magazine I co-edit with Colette Arrand, Raquel Salas-Rivera and Ginger Ko. I love Nikki fucking Wallschlaeger. She’s the person who I have facebook set so it shows me her posts first. It shows her and my girlfriends and that’s it. Is that creepy.
garcia: That’s not creepy! (Unless it is?) Nikki is the best and def one of my favorite people to follow. How do you find out about new writers and folks? How is PDX? What’s your favorite thing about the PDX scene? What do you wish it had more of?
Witchmonstr: Its not actually creepy. I’m not very creepy. I think I get too easily overwhelmed to effectively obsess over anyone enough to be really creepy.
I mostly meet new writers online just through mutual friends. I hate the pdx scene though. All my favorite Portland writers are very much not part of the cishet white pdx scene, which is mostly awful and made me feel like I was some kind of fucking alien for being trans. I don’t really show up in those spaces anymore. But I’ve run into various ppl I do like while I’ve been here, mostly other marginalized writers who also feel not comfortable in that scene.
garcia: What keeps you surviving?
Witchmonstr: Other people. Especially other trans girls. I never felt like I made sense anywhere until I hung out w other trans girls.
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The plzplztalk2me logo and other art by p.e. garcia. If you want to talk2me about something, hit me up: plzplztalk2me@gmail.com.
Tags: 2fast2house, Moss Angel Witchmonstr, p.e. garcia, plzplztalk2me, portland, Sea-Witch, trans