#transwriters

I told you: "I am afraid to stain you with the sorrow I leak."

You responded: "Then stain me, I do not care."

“The fact that queerness is still taboo here sends us a very clear message; studios are either afraid or biased” 

Wonderful answer this week, written by artist @smol-maeglin

Thank you for your thoughts and views on representation. 

Stay tuned next week for more answers. Don’t forget to message or reply if you are interested in getting involved. 

Care to help me worldbuild by asking me questions about my world, cultures and whatever you want. Inspired by the above map. I have included an excerpt from the novel I'm currently working on. It follows a documentarian as they record oral stories, compile diary entries, letters, and more into a record of the new age that has just begun. 

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To my dear readers

 The year is 876 of the age of Roshgyr, or I suppose it was until yesterday morning at 6:47AM. The news of the emergence of “The Rock” has ushered in a new age. One day a massive airsea spans from Harrandin all the way over to Roshgyr and down to the Gellard Democracy, yet as one very stressed deep cloud schooner saw, A new plateau poured from below the clouds, striking up into this new, unknown land between us all.  So now the year is year 1 in the age of the rock? Well I suppose until a better name than “The Rock” has been found.

 Enclosed will be stories from the recent years at the end of the last age as well as new experiences from the world as it changes around us. I already have an agent on a landship roster set to document some of the first exploration on “The Rock”. As well as agents on each of the major plateaus to chronicle how they change with the new age. We know nothing thus far except for the history from the dawn of each previous Plateau, to consider the next few years to be ones of trepidation would be of wise advice. 

I look forward to providing a primer and raw historical document to the dawn of a new age across all the plateaus. I make no promises but I do endevour to not let you down, I understand the gnawing itch that curiosity can spread and as we have heard again and again from any perennial with a soapbox, these times of change can see nations painted red with blood. However they can also quickly ensnare us in unity, community and a spark of life that makes life such an adventure. 

Gemma Dirkminster 

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Apologies for the rough state of my map, it's still quite rough as I flesh it out. I'm usually a screenwriter so adjusting to the new medium has been an amusing challenge as well. But I suppose one has to suck at something before they don't suck, so here we are.

This week on the blog: BOOKS!

I've shared often how important book were to me when I came out at fourteen. There was so little queer representation to be had in the late-nineties and early oughts. Most of what could be found on screens wasn't great. Books were one of the few places I could find positive representation.

There is a current conservative movement to censor books with queer characters because queerness is a threat to the status quo. Having access to books that show there is more to life than a rigid gender binary and compulsory heterosexuality saves lives. I cannot ever express how meaningful and important it is to read characters who reflect your own experience of the world.

I'm tired of remaking social media accounts. I've been starting new social media accounts since 2003-ish. It's exhausting, man. I just want to have a platform and build it.

I spent 12 YEARS on Twitter building my following, but got so tired of being attacked by strangers for nothing at all, seeing "she who must not be named" trending nearly every day for anything other than her damn books, Elon trashing everything great about that platform, and even bringing Tr*mp back.

I left because it felt like the best choice, and the site would come down on its own. But what about all my writing friends? The people I wanted to see updates from? I fear not being on that platform will mean they disappear. It was the only way I could explore who I was in a really safe way without people who knew me in real life.

Manor: Butler?

Butler: Yes Manor?

Manor: Could you make me a sandwich?

Butler sighs: Ok sir.

Butler gets up and after a while comes back with a BLT.

Butler: Here you go sir.

Manor: Thank you but...

Butler sighs loudly: What sir?

Manor: I think you should taste it first.

Butler: Okay..

Butler takes a bite of the sandwich: This is really goo-

Butler's face looks like he ate something sour: W-w-whats i-i-in t-this?

Manor laughs: Toxic Waste!!

Butler: L-Like t-the c-c-candy?

Manor: No... Of course the candy.

Butler: i-isn't that the most s-sour t-thing in the w-world?

Manor: Yep! I got you!

We're so excited about our next book Theories of Performance by Jay Besemer! These poems emerge from continued engagement with the issues living in and through a queer, trans, sick/Disabled man’s body. They explode the multiple valences of “performance”—of gender, of expectation, as a type of art—and the theories around them. Pre-order it now!

Joyelle McSweeney, author of Toxicon and Arachne, says, “Jay Besemer’s tensile lyrics palpate the many ambiguous and ambivalent spheres by which a person becomes known both to themselves and others—the public, the private, the domestic, the intimate, the bodily, the verbal." 

And Daniel Borzutzky, author of The Performance of Becoming Human, says, “Theories of Performance pulses with urgent jolts that lead us to consider the many ways in which we are always putting on a show. . . . along the way we revel in the sound poetry of the pharmaceutical industry, in the known and unknown territory that is our guts, our lungs, our feet, our brains.”