dicot.moe

about this web­site

di­cot.moe is the per­son­al port­fo­lio web­site of Va­lerie Hal­la and Drools Cute­ly, who are the same per­son.

Va­lerie Hal­la

I’m a car­toon­ist, writ­er, musician, and programmer. I start­ed post­ing art un­der the pseu­do­nym Va­lerie Hal­la in the fall of 2014. My first (and short­est-lived) we­b­com­ic, Port­side Sto­ries, gained a sur­pris­ing amount of trac­tion im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter it de­but­ed, and I’ve been at this ev­er since. If you know me for any­thing, it’s prob­a­bly my sec­ond we­b­com­ic at­tempt, Good­bye to Ha­los, which I worked on for six years.

I like to write sweet sto­ries cen­ter­ing queer and trans char­ac­ters. Gen­er­al­ly those sto­ries are not ex­plic­it­ly about be­ing queer or trans; in­stead, I’m big in­to the idea of queer mun­dan­i­ty.

By that, I don’t mean sto­ries where the pre­sen­ta­tion and ex­pe­ri­ences of queer char­ac­ters are “nor­mal­ized” by mak­ing them in­dis­tin­guish­able from those of non-queer char­ac­ters. That’s the Cow­ard’s Path. What I mean by “queer mun­dan­i­ty” is that I like to write sto­ries where the thoughts, feel­in­gs, and bod­ies of queer and trans folks are high­light­ed and drawn up­on so uni­ver­sal­ly that they be­come mun­dane.

When you do that, you leave the au­di­ence no es­cape hatch. The read­er is forced to in­hab­it these char­ac­ters and feel their feel­in­gs, be­cause they’re giv­en no non-queer per­spec­tive from which to ob­serve them: a can­dy-sweet Saw trap of non-ne­go­tiable queer em­pa­thy.

It’s a lofty goal, but peo­ple seem to be in­to it, so you could say I’ve found my eco­log­i­cal niche.

So­cial me­dia links:

For busi­ness types:

Drools Cute­ly

This is an­oth­er pseu­do­nym. I used to use it to separate out my erotic work from my “mainstream” stuff: a fool’s errand if ever there was one. With the launch of CURSE/KISS/CUTE, I’ve decided to retire the name.

To be honest, I’ve always felt that the distinction between “porn” and “not porn” was illusory. Fiction is at its best when it’s free to explore the whole range of human interests without fear of crossing some un-recrossable threshold into Pornography. As queer and trans individuals we find ourselves under the thumb of a ruling class which increasingly considers our very existence to be Pornographic: I’m just gonna go ahead and post boobies on main, if it’s all the same either way.

With CURSE/KISS/CUTE, one of my goals is to write some erotica that stands on its own as a fun and engaging work of episodic storytelling. If I succeed, I won’t be the first or the last. The lines have always been carved in sand, and the wind has always been blowing. Girls literally just want to have fun, OK?

al­so there’s a dis­cord serv­er

If you’re 20+ years old and you can chill, then come check it out! Twit­ter’s kind of a drag these days, so I tend to be most ac­tive on Dis­cord.

what’s a di­cot?

It’s when a ba­by plant has two leaves like this:

I just think that’s moé.