Charlie Jane Anders's Blog, page 13

Don't Say Characters Lack "Agency." Here's Something Talk About Instead.

There's one common term that I was pretty careful not to use in my writing advice book, Never Say You Can't Survive: "agency." As in, "characters in a story should have agency."

Because, as I explain the one time I mention this term:

The concept of “agency” is very culturally loaded, and rooted in a lot of Eurocentric cis male notions of “rugged individualism.”

Of course, in the very next sentence, I do go on to say that as a general rule, if it's a story about searching for the magic bidet of t...

Here are Some of My Favorite Trans/Non-Binary Books!

Some amazing folks, led by author Sim Kern, are launching a Trans Rights Readathon starting today, to raise money for trans organizations. I meant to tweet out a list of books by trans/non-binary authors that I recommend, but the past couple weeks have been extra challenging due to a family crisis and a bunch of other stuff. (Don't worry, it's all fine.) Want to know more about the Trans Rights Readathon? See here.

Before I get into it, a couple pieces of housekeeping. First, I'm not going to pr...

The First Article I Ever Wrote About Trans Issues

I've written countless articles and essays about trans people over the past twenty or so years, including some recent ones in Teen Vogue, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Washington Post. But lately, I keep thinking about the first time I ever wrote about the politics and meaning of transness.

From roughly 1999 to 2002, I was on the editorial staff of Anything That Moves, a magazine for bisexual folks, which also did a surprisingly decent job writing about politics, gentrification, transphobi...

Writing Comic Books is HARD. Here's Why

I've heard prose authors say stuff like, "I wish I could just write comics. You just have to write some dialogue and sketch out some action, and the artist does everything else."

Needless to say, this has not been my experience of writing comics. I found comics to be a really challenging medium so far, and I wanted to share a little bit of what I've learned. All of the images in this post are from New Mutants: Lethal Legion #1, which comes out on Wednesday. You can get it at your local comic bo...

7 Hot Takes About Star Trek

1. The Federation is most interesting when it has an ideological foil.

The original Star Trek pitted Captain Kirk against fake gods, rogue Starfleet officers, and sadistic computers, but the show was often concerned with a Cold War-style rivalry between the Federation and two warlike powers, the Klingons and the Romulans. The Federation seldom needed to demonstrate its own peace-loving, liberal values — it just needed to appear in contrast with civilizations that were bent on domination and con...

J.K. Rowling and "Separating the Art from the Artist"

In case you've been living under some kind of magical rock, there's a new Harry Potter tie-in video game out now, called Hogwarts Legacy.

I honestly wasn't going to comments on this game at all, because others have already spoken up with way more eloquence and insight than I could ever muster. This review from Wired gives a pretty good rundown of how disappointing the game actually is, even if you don't care that some of the money from the game will go to notorious transphobe J.K. Rowling. And o...

I Still Loathe The Concept of "Careers"

So I used to have a rant that I spouted off sometimes, about how much I hate the idea of having a "career."

Back in the day, I was lucky enough to have a day job that didn't eat my brain or wreck my nerves, so I could spend a lot of free time making art and being a flagrant weirdo. I became pretty dedicated to the notion of screwing around as a way of life — which, to be clear, was only possible because of the aforementioned day job.

My rant about careers went like this:

The whole notion of a c...

Everything you need to know about New Mutants: Lethal Legion!

I've always dreamed of writing superhero comics. I love how colorful and earnestly weird they are, and how well they lend themselves to a mixture action and soap opera. So I've been utterly delighted to have the chance to do some writing for Marvel Comics lately!

Right now, I'm writing a miniseries called New Mutants: Lethal Legion. The first issue comes out March 8, but the deadline for comics retailers to order copies of that issue is on February 6 — coming up real soon. After Feb. 6, you'll...

Interview: Assigned Media's Evan Urquhart Explains Why We Need Trans Journalists

Lately I've been so grateful for Assigned Media ( assignedmedia.org ), a new outlet where journalist Evan Urquhart keeps track of transgender news, and provides a corrective to transphobic media coverage. To find out more about Assigned Media, I reached out to Evan, and here's what he told me.

What was your motivation for founding Assigned Media?

Like all good journalists, I am highly motivated by spite. See, last year I applied for a writing job. I really wanted it, and my interview went great,...

Some Ideas for How to Save Short Fiction!

Hey, thanks for reading my newsletter! I don't charge any money to read Happy Dancing, but if you would like to support me, I would be super grateful if you could pre-order my upcoming Marvel miniseries New Mutants: Lethal Legion , and/or the third book of my YA space opera trilogy, Promises Stronger Than Darkness . Pre-ordering either of those things will help me keep creating and goofing around, and would mean more to me than I can possibly say.

Short fiction is once again in crisis. After an er...