The Nonbinary Writer

Charlie Dorsett (they/she)

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PERSONAL JOURNALS
UPDATED WEEKLY

My name is Charlie, and I am a Nonbinary Scifi/Fantasy writer and on this podcast we will be discussing LGBTQIA+ characters, Queer stories, and Human Rights with a focus on how these characters and stories are written and how to write them better. www.projectshadow.com

07/22/2024

Let's Talk about Our Solemn Hour

In this episode, Charlie, a non-binary sci-fi fantasy writer, introduces a new focus on sharing detailed stories and ongoing projects. Joined by their husband Brian, they discuss their work on a tabletop RPG called 'Fate's Hunter,' which ties into a sci-fi fantasy book series, Mask of the Gods. The game offers both group play and solo experiences using the Cypher system. Charlie also talks about their involvement in Worldbuilding Summer Camp, upcoming short stories to be published on Substack, and the challenges and excitement of their creative process. Support us on or buy me a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/cedorsett Become a patron of the arts patreon.com/cedorsett Find my world building at: https://www.worldanvil.com/author/cedorsett Read my stories on: https://reamstories.com/cedorsett 00:00 Introduction and New Direction 01:03 Meet the Author: Charlie's Sci-Fi Fantasy World 02:12 Project Updates: Published Works and Support 03:13 Deep Dive: Our Solemn Hour and Tabletop RPGs 04:51 Game Mechanics: Designing the Fates Hunter Game 16:31 World-Building and Future Plans 18:45 Bob and Superheroes 19:21 World Building Updates 19:46 New Short Stories 21:17 Publishing Plans and Platforms 23:04 World Anvil and Timelines 24:37 Mapping the Galaxy 27:52 Complex World Building 31:44 Podcasting and Future Projects 34:17 Final Thoughts and Encouragement Support us on or buy me a Coffee: https://ko-fi.com/cedorsett Become a patron of the arts patreon.com/cedorsett Find my world building at: https://www.worldanvil.com/author/cedorsett Create your own world on World Anvil: (aff link) https://worldanvil.pxf.io/DVM9ay Read my stories on: https://reamstories.com/cedorsett Publish your stories on Ream (aff link) https://reamstories.com/create/ps Plottr Pro (aff link) http://plottr.com/?ref=277 Check out my other podcasts at www.projectshadow.com My Music Channel @Project: Shadow My Mysticism Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkZaiZE7w5qERxiOehM_CdQ This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.projectshadow.com/subscribe

35 min
06/18/2024

Writing books, Building a world, and Making a game, Oh My!

Charlie Returns: New Projects and Adventures in Writing and Gaming Charlie, a non-binary sci-fi fantasy writer, updates viewers on their recent hiatus from creating videos. They discuss starting a new job, which consumed much of their time, but they now have free time again to reconnect with their audience. Charlie has continued worldbuilding and writing during their absence and has launched a Ream account where followers can access their older books for free. They are also excited about a new tabletop role-playing game called 'Fates Hunter' based on their 'Mask of the Gods' series. This game will be playable solo or in groups and is nearing its beta testing phase. Charlie emphasizes the importance of community support for creative projects and previews upcoming content for their channel. 00:00 Introduction and Channel Update 00:55 Where Have I Been? 01:48 New Projects and Ream Account 03:03 Tabletop Role-Playing Game Development 07:41 Creative Struggles and Future Plans 10:20 Community Engagement and Support 12:25 Conclusion and Farewell This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.projectshadow.com/subscribe

14 min
12/14/2023

When the Business and the Creative Clash

If it's not one thing, it's another. So, I finally decided to start podcasting again. I recorded the first episode of "The Nonbinary Writer," and YouTube has now made it easier for us to upload our podcasts on their platform. We can simply put in the RSS, and off it goes into the wild blue yonder. There it goes. It automatically makes the video for me, which is great because I don't have the time or patience to do that. So, instead of writing this week, since I started recording podcast episodes again, I find myself creating thumbnails for popular episodes. It's something I had never intended to do but thought might actually help me in the algorithm, because, to my surprise, people are actually listening to the podcast on YouTube. So, if you're new to listening to me and you're on YouTube, hi! How are you? And if you're listening to me through any other platforms, hi, hello. My name is Charlie, and I am a nonbinary writer. I really wanted to be writing this week, but one of the most important things that I think we have to understand as writers is that if we're not focusing on getting the word out, on building a platform, and finding a way for people to know that we exist, then the writing doesn't matter all that much. While I love to believe that good writing wins out, that all you have to do is write something great and the entire world will go, "Wow, this is amazing!" – yeah, that's not really how any of this works. What we actually have to do is buckle down and get the word out, build a platform where we can tell people that we exist, build an audience, and constantly do things to make people realize that we exist. Because that's the real work of being a writer. It's a double-edged sword, especially for LGBTQ writers like myself. The more I let people know that I exist, the more likely it is that people who don't like the fact that I exist are going to find me and tell me how much they don't like the fact that I exist. Yeah, that's not happy-making. That's not really what I want to be doing, and it's not really a good place to be in. So, I find myself in this endless struggle between doing what I know I need to do for marketing and putting stories out and basic self-preservation. I don't like it when I get attacked simply for existing. On the other hand, I really do like it when people read my work and get really excited about it. So, finding that middle ground, that place where I can tell people that my stuff exists, and they can go read it on Ream! Writing new material has to be balanced with this endless struggle to go out and tell people that, hey, by the way, I'm over here, I do things. And it's been really interesting to see what stories catch on, especially with the podcast reaching this new audience. As far as this podcast goes, the episode that is doing the best on YouTube right now is the obligatory nonbinary rant. It was the first thing I actually recorded for the podcast, though it's not technically the first episode. It's honest and from the heart, and it goes to show the one thing that I've always known about marketing: being angry and yelling and shouting is a good way to get attention, but it's not really the kind of attention that I want to get. It's not really the kind of work that I want to be doing. So, I don't do it that much. I try really hard not to be that person. I think there's enough negativity out in the world. I don't want to be a cause of more negativity. I don't want to just feed that pain that we feel. I want to make a change. I want it to be better. And that's the struggle that I find myself trapped behind. When weeks like this happen and here I am, just trying to play catch up. Getting all of my ducks in a row so that hopefully the podcast will do well on this new platform and I can build it up to monetization because, while it's gross and disgusting and I hate thinking about it, much less talking about it, if I don't make money off of what I'm doing, then I can't really afford to do it. So, I have to think about those things. I have to ask myself, what's the best thing I can do for the business right now? What's the best thing that I can do to make this grow? And whether I was right or wrong, making thumbnails for the episodes felt like the right thing to do. And now, I'm sitting here wishing I was writing, wishing I had written a lot more this week. And not having done any of that. I want to tell these stories. I want to be doing World Ember. But I haven't really done anything for World Ember this year. I haven't really written much this month at all. And that makes me sad. And I hate to just say it flat out like that; I should be more poetic about it, but I've been doing the business things. I've been setting up the Ream account, I've been working on a commissioned project that I'm doing that looks like I will be getting paid for, which, considering it started off as a volunteer project, kind of blows my mind. And I've got the podcast to do again. All the while, in the back of my mind, I see spaceships and wizards and magic and mysteries and stories that I want to be telling. Many times in the past, I've buckled down and tried to work on getting a schedule. Which doesn't always work out. I have a lot of physical pains and, well, chronic pain to be more general and specific. So, I don't always get to do the things that I want to do when I want to do them. But I think I really need to start setting aside morning time for writing. Get my pages in. I need to get my pages in. So hopefully next week I'll get to start with that, and I'll probably try to get back into the habit of going to the Dawdling Writer's write-ins on YouTube, and maybe even doing some of my own, because I miss hanging out with y'all while writing. Yeah, getting the work done is important. Even when it's the boring, business-y work part. But if I'm not writing, I'm not writing. And so that's where I need to put my focus. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.projectshadow.com/subscribe

8 min
12/13/2023

A New Introduction of sorts

Hello and welcome to the Nonbinary Writer. This is a reintroduction of sorts because I've been in a dark place for a while, and I'm not really going to go into that a lot here. If you want to know more, you can check out my other podcast, Project: Shadow, where I did an episode titled, Reawakening to Joy. But now. I want to focus on this podcast and what I'm going to use it for. Because my initial ideas for the Nonbinary Writer was to have a place where I could discuss being queer as a writer, being non-binary as a writer, and how the kind of fusion fiction that I write is different from a lot of the other fiction that I see out there. And I'm not alone in doing that. And I don't want anybody to think that I'm saying that I'm the only non-binary writer or the only writer who writes that kind of fiction. That's not what I'm saying at all. It's just that. I am often referred to as the non-binary writer or that non-binary writer, and I just thought I would claim it. Why not. I've been called worse things over the years, and it's a true descriptor of who and what I am and how my fiction works. That's what I want this episode to be about, and this podcast. I'm embarking on a very different journey for me. I'm going to start working. Towards doing subscription writing. So what is subscription writing? I set up a page over on Ream stories, and there I am posting my old back catalog of books, as well as new books that I'm working on. The first chapter is free. The next chapter for a lot of the back catalog is going to cost just a follow, which is also free. But the new stuff is going to be behind a paywall. For a little while, and that's where this gets really exciting. You see what I'm going to be doing over there is posting drafts. Early, early drafts of my content, of the books that I'm working on, the stories that I'm writing that those who are interested in paying $5 a month will be able to comment on, then help shape and make better. We're just get early access to if they're really into the story or into the work that I'm doing. When those stories are done, they're going to be re-released to the public, and the cycle will continue. And I'm really excited about this. The idea of being able to have this kind of a community is something that I've wanted for a really long time. But it's scary. It's really scary on a lot of different levels. One, sharing my drafts is kind of nightmare fuel. I do quite a bit of editing, and to let people see how things look as they pop out of my head is a bit terrifying. And furthermore to ask people to pay for that is also scary. And I don't know if this is a method that will work. And that's what this podcast is turning into. Yeah, I'm going to be talking about my books and my fiction and the stories that I'm working on. But I'm also going to be talking about process and how things work. I'm going to be taking you through my ups and downs and all the lessons that I'm learning along the way. Because I don't think this is going to be a particular easy path. It's one that I'm excited for, but it has its pitfalls. If a platform like Ream had been available 10 years ago, I can see an easy way to build this up. Social media, wasn't quite the nightmare. Hellscape that it is today, and building an audience wasn't as terribly hard. But now with all of the fracturing of society and everybody having to take sides on every issue. Whether or not, they actually have an opinion on that issue or not. It's a bit harder to do that. With the slow death of Twitter, now X, and the rise of competitors like Threads and Blue Sky, which he can find me on both of those I'm cedorsett on both, I'm hoping to find a new community. One that is interested in creativity, in writing, in sharing what we do together, in making something magical, together. That's what I've always wanted. When I have done my podcasts in the past, like Myth Weaving, I wanted to teach what I had learned about writing, and I'm going to be doing some of that here, and who knows maybe even some of that over there. But more than anything, I want a place where we can just commiserate. About what we're doing. So this podcast is being hosted on sub stack. And you can find it@projectshadow.com. There you'll be able to join into the comments and you'll be able to talk. And join in. With the discussion. And help us kind of shape. Where this future goes. Because I really do believe that we can. Get through the good place. If we all strive together to get there. But this isn't a podcast just for other writers. I hope that if you are a writer, you'll get something out of it. And you'll learn from my triumphs and my mistakes. But this is a podcast for anyone who is interested in the journey of creativity, the ups, the downs, the pain, and the joy that make it all so worthwhile. This is a podcast for everyone who has ever wanted to embrace their dreams, because writing has always been my dream. The problem is I don't like writing novels. I know that sounds like a weird thing to say, but novels are so distant. I locked myself away and write, and write, and write, and then I put it out in the world . Yeah, I can see how many people buy it, but I don't really have that connection with those readers. Over the years, some of them have contacted me. Some of them have come to conventions and we've talked about the work, but I've never really had that relationship with my audience that I would like to have. I'm writing the stories because I love these worlds. I love these genres. I love these characters. And I want to meet the people. Who also love these things like I do. And so that's what I'm going to be doing here. I hope that you will join me on this path. I hope that you will be okay with all of the craziness of the writing project, and the process that leads to a completed work. It's not going to be pretty, but it's going to be an adventure, and after all, aren't we all looking for a little bit more adventure in our lives. So, what am I going to be doing with this podcast? I'm going to say that it's a quasi daily. Podcast Monday through Friday. And I'm just going to share what I've been working on, what I've learned, what I'm doing. How different insights have changed the way that I'm looking at things. That may seem like a lot, but, hopefully, it will be worth the adventure that we're going to go on together. So what I mean, when I say semi-daily. I'm not committing to doing five episodes a week. I think that there's a good chance that will happen. I think there's a good chance that I might record multiple episodes in a day. Because I'll learn a little bit here, record something about it. I'll learn a little bit there and record something about it. And then schedule those on different days because sometimes putting too much information in one podcast episode is just overwhelming. Sometimes there will be short. Sometimes there'll be longer. But they'll always be honest. And that's my promise to you. The word is the year this year is authenticity. And I find that so funny because the more I look around at the world, the more fake people I see. Sure. There they're playing the role of authentic, but a lot of them really aren't. They know the right words to say they know the right way to get attention and, put things out. They're living brands. And that's something I just can't be. I'm neurodivergent and very queer, and so I don't quite see the world in the same way that they do. And so all of the things that seem to come naturally for them are things that I have to work for. Consistency and brand is not one of them. I have a lot of ideas, a lot of stories that I want to write. So I write space opera, epic fantasy, urban fantasy. I guess if it's a real genre of romantic fantasy or whatever, they're calling it is also something that I write. But I want you. I to come along on this path with me. And I want to learn more about your interests and what you want me to be talking about on here. Because I don't want this just to be a self-serving journal of my experiences, and what I've been up to. There's going to be a lot of that and I make no apologies for it cause that's the reason and purpose for me making this podcast in the first place, somewhere where I can share all of the things that I'm learning, all of the things that I'm going through, and how they can change our lives and our careers. But I also want it to be useful for you. So if you have any questions, Please ask them. Because I'm only going to talk about the things that I feel need to be talked about, and I published my first book in 2005. I've been doing online media for a really long time. So there are a lot of things that I might think are just common knowledge that aren't. If you have any questions. Just head over to project shadow.com. Ask them, and, I will answer them on the podcast. Together, we can make this journey one of discovery and joy, because the one thing that we're lacking in this world, Is joy. We are constantly bombarded by all of the terrible news that's going on around the world in a way that our ancestors couldn't have imagined. It's easy to feel that everything's hopeless when there's a financial benefit to keeping people terrified, afraid, and isolated from each other, so they just keep watching. In fact, the news, the 24 hour news network is the original doom scroll after all. So this is going to be hopefully more of a respite from that. Not that I won't talk about the struggles or the hard times, but I don't want to get bogged down in the endless back and forth and back and forth that haunts our world today. And who knows, there's a chance that I'll bring in some friends of mine and we'll have some group discussions about various topics along the way. Because I think that would be fun. And if you know anybody who'd like. It's a talk. Yeah, send them my way. Maybe we'll have them on. Because it can't always be my voice all of the time. Yeah. That's my brief little introdu

12 min
05/24/2023

But what if no one cares...

Do we share only to receive?Are our words just a gift?In the dead of night, we deceiveourselves into believing they are proof we lived. I know so many writers who dream of making a living off their words. I know even more who just want to gather up a crowd to listen to what they have come up with now. Disappointment fills their eyes and voices as they discuss the perceived failure of their work… but have they really failed? Having been on both sides of the aisle, I know what it feels like to sell thousands of copies of a book no one remembers and to sell only a handful of a book I will never forget. In their own way, both hurt, but given the realities of capitalism, one tends to hurt more than the other. I want to believe the propaganda that good stories will win out in the end, but the problem is, it isn’t the good stories or even the great stories that win the race. It is the story that hits at the right time and has just enough ruby dust sprinkled on it by the fairies that control the markets. story is not the hard part… Stories loom in the shadows like specters waiting to strike when we are least prepared to write them. They taunt us in our dreams and stalk us throughout our days, waiting for their time to strike us down with the true terror of the writing process… what if no one cares or worse, what if everyone hates it? The real enemy of the writer isn’t the story or even the indifference of the market. The real enemy is time. Do we have the time to market the story as much as we need to find a reader? Any reader, let alone the readers who will love the story enough to tell everyone they know about it and spread us into the community that awaits a story like the one we wrote. Time is our real enemy. There are so many stories… We aren’t the only ones writing. Not only are we competing against other writers, but against all the content farms and the poor fools who have fallen for the low effort book mill scams that promise an easy path to riches that will never manifest into reality. There are so many stories and only so many readers. Like spawning salmon, we send our books upstream through the dangers and difficulties where they mix in with the jumbled mess of all the other stories, desperately looking for a reader, a community of readers. Honestly, any bookshelf will do, but how does our story stand out? How do we find an audience? If I gave you a quick fix or a straightforward solution to the problem here, you would know that I am a liar. Yes, there are tips and tricks to setting up a sales funnel and things you can do to lure unsuspecting victims to fall down into the web, but there are no easy tricks to get people to read or even love your work. * Write with your voice, don’t barrow one from some else, it will not help you in the long run. * Love your work or don’t expect anyone else to even care. * Use every trick you can learn to make images, clips, videos, whatever you can that will entertain people, then share those. * DON’T ALWAYS BE SELLING… there is nothing more annoying than someone who only shows up to shill a product. * ALWAYS BE SELLING… no one will buy your work if they don’t know it is for sale. Okay, yeah, those last too are in conflict, but if you have problems with paradoxes and ambiguity, marketing and fiction markets might not be for you. Embrace the paradox That’s the devil’s bargain at the heart of the creative life. Certainty isn’t our business, and anyone who tells you otherwise is making their money off you. Disney makes it look easy, but when you have hundreds of millions of dollars to make a thing and hundreds of millions more to market it, it is impossible not to be noticed. We don’t have that kind of luxury. We can only do what we can to promote our work. There is only one tried and true, scientifically proven element that brings success, and that is persistence. Just don’t give up. That is simultaneously the hardest and easiest thing to do. Harlan Ellison once described writers as insidious hornets that buzz and buzz to attract attention and sting, injecting our ideas into the minds of others, hoping our words will haunt them for the rest of their lives. We have to buzz and with have to sting. That is who we are. The more we fight against our basic nature, the harder we make it on ourselves. Harlan will haunt my nightmares if I don’t also remind us we need to get paid too. Let’s write our stories and talk about them with all the joy of a teenager discovering a new song by their favorite band while we work on the next thing. What else can we do? We’ve written our names in fire on the book of creation. We have to fulfill our side of the contract. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.projectshadow.com/subscribe

4 min
04/14/2023

Hollowness and meaning: On Being Trans and Creative

Let's reflect on the struggle of being vulnerable and honest in a world where certain identities have targets on their backs. I discuss the difficulties of being open about their experiences as a trans person, and the fear that often comes with vulnerability. I also offer my thoughts on why some individuals, specifically TERFs, act out of fear, and encourage others to encourage them to overcome it. The essay ends on a hopeful note, emphasizing that existing as a trans person is an act of rebellion against the patriarchy, and that small acts of defiance can push the lines forward towards freedom. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.projectshadow.com/subscribe

15 min
02/08/2023

Paying the Queer Tax

It has been really hard for me to write lately. My mood and my creativity are low. It is hard to explain why, but I got an easy example of the problem. Yesterday, a stranger left a review of our restaurant, giving us one star and telling us they would never return because we are welcoming to “freaks and cross dressers.” Not long ago, I would have laughed and brushed it off as a bigot self-selecting out of our clientele, but given the current state of the world, I can’t let it go. Fear and anxiety flooded me. “Is this the forewarning a bigger problem, a threat, or just a Karen acting out?” I hate how much of my thought process is, yet again, focused on basic safety and security. Many of my friends say they wish I would move near them for my safety, but this problem is everywhere and nowhere is safe. The Invalidation of Identity The way I feel is why these people act out like this. They want us to be afraid, to be anxious, to be silent. Knowing that doesn’t help push through the fear. In some ways, it makes it worse. No one is invalid because a bigot says they are and no one is a failure for feeling fear, anxiety, or invalidated. It is difficult to keep going when the truth doesn’t matter to any party in this. Yes, it is true that most of the transphobes that speak out are broken and injured people that are acting out of their pain. It is also true that they are wrong on the science and the science is on our side. The problem is, this is not an argument about facts, no matter what they say, it is about emotional validation. Those in power don’t want to lose that power, so it is in their interest to make us fight amongst ourselves, so we don’t see and point out what they are doing. For cis, heterosexual people, they have grown up in the cultural default that supports and encourages them to see their experience of themselves and the world as normal and normative. This is even more true for those who are male and white. They never experienced their sexuality as compulsory or their gender as assigned. This world was made by and for them to justify and celebrate their existence. Anything outside these narrow, normative bounds is rendered invalid, aberrant, and repugnant. Anyone outside of these norms is taught to mask and deny their differences. They define us as the other, as a danger to the normative standard. Why? Control, I will not sugarcoat it. The sole purpose of this validation structure is to exert dominance over society as a whole. If a person or group can control individual gender roles and sexuality, they control the whole person. It is a powerful kind of mind control to gas light an entire population into suppressing their own innate characteristics to be seen as acceptable in society. Remember always that this is about policing identity, not actions. They may speak with disgust about or even legislate against particular actions, but those are used as evidence of the declared invalid state. Freedom is a virus The primary excuse for laws against queer people and activities is the old classic, “Won’t somebody think of the children.” Why? With the cultural defaults defined not only as normative, but nature, that requires them to believe that everything else is unnatural. If something is unnatural, then the only way it can propagate is through contagion. Somehow, in some way, people must catch the gay or whatever other queerness they are wanting to attack. The science has been in for a long time that homosexuality, asexuality, and transgender people are born the way they are and are not made that way through societal or psychological contagion. Honestly, that should be the end of the debate, but science denialism and grifting pseudoscience will always run to the rescue of power to elevate their own clout in the culture. Queerness is not contagious, but freedom and liberation are. This is why it is so important for them to double down on the hatred, the misinformation, and the demonization right now because all liberation movements are dangerous to the status quo. The Power of Freedom Fear is poisonous to freedom, and the best way to stoke fear while making money from the people infected. It is too easy to package fear in a box labled freedom to trick people into sacrificing one for the other. If your freedom is so fragile, it can be taken away because someone exists or you have to show them basic civility, your freedom is an illusion. Gender and sexuality are basic building blocks of all tyrannical hierarchies. Heterosexuality is flattened into a sterile system of control with dominant penetrators and submissive receptacles. This bolsters the misogynistic gender system in an endless feedback loop. Nobody wins in a destructive system like this. Queerness of every kind breaks gender and shows the lies built into cis heteronormativity at its heart. Just the idea of a submissive male and a dominating woman breaks the lie, but the more normative axioms you question, the bigger the threat you are to the system. Not all men are interested in women and not all assigned male at birth are male. Notice that the cultural focus is always on those assigned male at birth. Amab individuals are born into a place of power and privilege that it cannot allow anyone to set it aside or it threatens the entire patriarchal power structure. Queer liberation requires a deconstruction of this structure because it shows that the basic assumptions of the default class are lies. Culture is like the air. No one notices it if it isn’t pointed out. While homosexuals were a breeze, they could be heteronormalized into respectable queers who operate within the same patriarchal structures. Bisexuals and pansexuals were more like a rain shower because they don’t fit into the existing structures. Transgender and non binary people are a storm that blows away the lies that exist, Transgender people show the lie in the false gender binary because we are the proof that sex and gender are not the same. Gender nonconforming people and drag queens show the performativity of gender. I’ve always been surprised that it isn’t enough to show how gender is performed differently across cultures and time, but it is too easy for people to ignore as a result of racism and nationalism. Trans people are hard to ignore. So they point out that when one person comes out, others in their friend group also come out.. This is the danger of freedom. Once a person sees through the illusion of the gender binary and the default nature of heteronormativity, people are freed up to question and test their relationship to these cultural narratives. Before the nineteen hundreds when the word homosexual was coined and named as an identity, sexuality was viewed as an action and both men and women were seen as capable of partaking in it. Recent studies have shown that potentially as much as 52% of the population is bisexual. As they are offered more freedom, more people will realize they are queer. The Queerness Tax Versions of this rant play on a loop in my head all the time. Should I manage to push it to the side, something happens to bring it back in short order. It is hard to explain the creative paralysis this brings into my life. Is the work queer enough to represent my intensions? is it clear enough for people mired in cis heteronormativity to understand it? Is this the work that will make me a target of hate? Is it worth the follow up energy to make the post in the first place? So I either don’t write or record anything, or I don’t release what I have done. Most of the time, I just want to shout incoherently, with a rage so hot it would challenge the sun. This rage isn’t just fueled by outrages to my community, but the general state of dysfunction the world spirals down through constantly. I don’t feel safe, and I don’t think there is anywhere I could go to feel safe. States are targeting people like me with laws and politicians are whipping up a dangerous mob against us. I am not looking for pity, but understanding. Finding the motivation to do anything outside the fight, flight, or freeze reactions takes a lot more energy than I have when it is added to everything else happening in my life right now. I am not quitting. I am not giving up. I just have to bank up energy to do anything. It is tiresome. I am not going back into the closet to make the bigots happy, but I am reorganizing my life to deal with the state of the world. Be well. Be at peace. This too shall pass. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.projectshadow.com/subscribe

7 min
12/29/2022

What is the point of writing and talking on the internet?

Every year I get to this question- "What is the point and purpose of writing online?" This year, though, with the Musky Husky buying Twitter, and the collapse of meaning I see in the community I live it, the question feels more relevant this year than ever before. Usually, I brush off my concerns as burnout or something, but I am legitimately struggling this year with this question. I don't have an easy or even a flippant answer right now. The closest answer I have at the moment is stubbornness-- that I don't want to give up and give in to the postmodern nihilism devouring the world. Don't misunderstand me. I haven't lost hope. I have not succumb to the rampant nihilism stalking our world. I just cannot see what, if anything, I can do to make anything better right now. Headlines and Shallow Takes I've worked online for over 15 years and in that time I have watched as the nature of the comments changed. I get far fewer discussions about the topics at hand and more comments that take what I had to say out of context simply to support their own preconceived notions. So many presume the points I am going to make and comment in support or condemnation of thoughts I don't share, but they assumed I have based on a title or the first minute of video or audio. Honestly, it is tiring. I know the job. While I do my best to avoid clickbait titles, titles need to be punchy, provocative, and interesting enough to encourage people to click into the article, video, or podcast. The problem is, so many see the title as the summary of the content and act accordingly. Wow, I just sighed so hard I lost my train of thought. The Attention Economy Those familiar with me won't be surprised when I say that the problem here is capitalism and how it has turned everything into a marketplace where everyone is desperate to gain currency and build up as much capital as one can acquire. The bigger issue is that social media has changed the currency of the marketplace from Social Capital (charisma, rhetoric, and community building) to Attention Capital (number of likes, clicks, and engagement). Attention is a terrible metric and engagement is even worse. They have nothing to do with quality and are both very easy to gamify and trick. A good clickbait title and properly inflammatory content will harvest the clicks and engagement from the market with no need to put in any effort or work on the part of the content creator. Content is Hard Anything that we care about and invest our actual time and energy in drains us of our energy and creativity. These are wells that need to be refilled to keep the engine running. And if the well isn't bubbling with fresh water, it's almost certainly running dry. And that's where our energy really needs to be directed. The problem is that the algorithms only care about engagement and the quantity of content you can pour into them. They punish breaks and any attempt to refuel. It is difficult to operate on the internet making things you love without a background radiation from the analytics, how did the last bit of content go over? How do you make the next better? How do you satisfy an audience that is alienated from you by a wall of engagement that gives you no valuable metrics? Naive Nonlinear Action The only answer I have seen that comes close to an answer is from the metamodern construct Hanzi Freinacht, who encourages us to adopt a practical naiveté about the work we are doing an adopt a non-linear system to operate in. "The simplest definition of a non-linear system is that the output (outcome) is disproportional to the input (the effort made) (Hanzi Freinacht, .The Listening Society p. 145)." What that means is that we have to accept the essentially chaotic nature of the world and life and that every action does not necessarily lead to desired or predictable outcome, and the amount of effort put into the system is not proportional to the output that comes out. "Non-linear thinking often befuddles us; it just seems counter-intuitive. But our intuitions betray us. Without noticing it, we continuously and repeatedly squeeze non-linear phenomena into linear models that our minds are more comfortable with—a kind of analytical violence stemming from the crudeness and developmental simplicity of our minds (Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society, p. 146)." In other words, we force a narrative on events that are truly random because our minds reject the concept of randomness. This does not mean that there is no cause and effect, but that we often force unrelated and chaotic elements into our understanding that we then try to control when they are not controllable. For that reason, we cultivate a practical naiveté where we pretend that we will achieve our goals and do good faith work to move forward. "Metamodern activists relentlessly make naive efforts to do great things, things that are unlikely to occur at each attempt, but almost certain to occur in the long run, somewhere, somehow. This may feel a little bit pathetic and embarrassing at times. But it is a simple fact that the play-it-safes, in their villas, are not going to change the world. People who make repeated efforts at great things, working with good roadmaps, will (Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society pp. 146-147)." Because we practically accept the chaotic nature of the world and naively pursue our goals, we both embrace the chaos and plan a workable roadmap forward. A Nonlinear Roadmap There are times when we need to plan out a linear path in order to get something done, but we always know that the effort we are putting into it will have chaotic and unpredictable outcomes on the other side. More than anything else, though, what I am taking away from all of this, is that I need to not feel like I always have to start at the beginning. Sometimes the best actions to take is the chaotic one that jumps to the step you want to be on without taking all the steps in between. For example, most of the fandoms I am in are burning down from reactionary mobs of people spitting foul poison into the water to score points in a fictitious game that they made up themselves. I don't need to make rebuttals or to even acknowledge their issues. I can just jump in and start where I want. I don't have to reply or comment on homophobia or transphobia if I don't want to, I can just push forward with a practical naïveté to put forward the ideas and stories I want. This might sound like something obvious, but it isn't. It is hard not to respond to all of the lies and falsehoods that are out their in the world. So many things are said and done that I just want to shout about constantly. Fortunately, other people are doing that. Instead of reacting to the racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia in Star Wars fandom, I can celebrate the diversity that has entered the franchise and elaborate on the stories I am interested in. Nonlinear action does not absolve us of our responsibility, it frees us to take positive actions that are not mired in the muck reactionaries shovel on the path to prevent progress. That is what I am doing with Project Shadow.com and my various podcasts. I am going to talk about what I want and share my stories there. I chose to build all of this on Substack because their tools are geared toward building community and not chasing likes and engagement. Yes, most of my characters are nonbinary or queer, because those are the stories I want to see and read, and those are the stories I long to tell. This is the year I release a lot of fiction. I hope you come along for the journey. Join me in the Substack chat to talk about this and a lot of other things. Find out more about chat on http://www.projectshadow.com This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.projectshadow.com/subscribe

6 min
12/20/2022

The Obligatory Nonbinary Rant

Welcome to my new podcast, The Nonbinary writer. This is a place for me to discuss LGBTQIA+ topics and to interview and talk to my fellow queer writers. I try to keep the conversations friendly and productive, but if you have something to say about the world or your own life, let me know. I want this to be a podcast for the community. On the premiere episode, I am doing the Obligatory Nonbinary Rant, venting my frustration about the treatment of the community and sharing more information about me. I'll be honest, I wanted get a lot of this off my chest for a while, and needed a place to discuss this openly. I don't name names, and I won't so don't ask me. If I use a name, know that it is a pseudonym that covers one or more people. It has been a rough year, and the last couple months it has gotten worse. Between the stresses of my personal life, professional life, and everything going on in the country, I thought I would vent these issues because I feel like a lot of this is relatable to others. Hopefully, this is entertaining and cathartic, and in the end helpful in some way. I don't want the podcast to just be about anger. I want to talk about queerness in writing, in the books I read, the shows and movies I watch and how others are working to both represent our community and their experiences with in it. Welcome to the Nonbinary Writer. Learn more or comment on the episode at http://www.projectshadow.com This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.projectshadow.com/subscribe

24 min
11/21/2022

Thoughts on The Transgender Day of Remembrance

According to Pew, 90% of Americans know someone who is Lesbian, Gay, or Bisexual, but only 20% say they know someone who is transgender. Hello, my name is Charlie. I was assigned male at birth, but I am a nonbinary person. My pronouns are they/she. A transgender person is anyone who doesn’t identify with the gender they were assigned at birth, and our people are endangered right now. Today is The Transgender Day of Remembrance, where we remember those whose lives were lost to anti-transgender violence. These people were murdered because of who they are. They died from hate, fear, and ignorance. Many of their killers are proud of what they have done, and some even brag about it, but I don’t want to focus on murderers, but on the victims. Violence against my community is a regular occurrence, and it has gotten so bad that innocent people are being caught in the crossfire. As I was working on this, Boston Children’s Hospital was locked down again because someone worked up into a rage about my community called in a bomb threat based on lies and misinformation. Last night, a gunman injured 18 and murdered 5 at a Queer Nightclub in Colorado Springs. My heart and prayers go out to the heroes who rose to save their community and prevented further loss of life. Creation Spirituality calls us all to be prophets and to interfere with injustice. While I don’t expect all of you to memorize everything that I say, I hope you will come away from this understanding my community better and that hopefully you will have a better sense of your own identity as well as a better understanding of those different from you. None of this is new. Magnus Hirschfeld opened the Institute of Sexual Research on the 6th of July, 1919. He and his team pooled together research from around the world as well as conducting their own. They determined, among other things, that a small percentage of people identified as a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth. They even found evidence that some people were of a “third gender.” They developed medical protocols to help these people relieve their dysphoria and offered these treatments for the first time. On the morning of May 6th, 1933, the Nazi Student League raided the Institute, shouting, “Burn Hirschfeld.” They smashed up the building, beating up the staff. That afternoon, the SA confiscated all the records. Four days later, these records were burned in a mass book burning recorded by Leni Riefenstahl to be included in later propaganda films. Over the following decades, all of this research had to be redone. The conversation was cut off and delayed, which is why most people are only hearing about these topics now. First, we have to understand the difference between sex and gender, and sexual preference. Whether or not someone is Asexual (little to no interest in sex), Heterosexual (interest in partners of the opposite gender), Homosexual (interest in partners of the same or similar gender), or Bisexual (interest in the same and other genders) has nothing to do with someone’s gender identity. Biological sex is a characteristics someone is born with and the secondary characteristics that develop at puberty. Gender is socially constructed and prescribed roles assigned to people by their culture. Definitions of gender change from culture to culture and evolve over time. We know that in humans, there is a minimum of three sexes, Males, Females, and Intersex (people born with ambiguous and/or multiple sex characteristics). You may have heard about this third sex, which other insulting or inaccurate terms. The proper and accurate words in Intersex. Gender is different from sex. It is the manner in which someone lives their lives and presents themselves to the world. It is how you identify and feel on the inside as well as how you present yourself and perform your gender. Gender is a complex system of coded things, from hair cuts to clothing, mannerisms and ways of speaking, and pronouns and names, and sometimes even aspects of a person’s own body. So much of the conversation these days is about transition, or how someone changes from the gender they were assigned at birth to the gender they are, and when this transition can and should happen. Most of transition is social. It involves little things like hair and wardrobe. Sometimes it involves changing one’s name and pronouns that people want to be called. For example, I changed my name and pronouns. My name is Charlie, which is short for Charlene, and if you are curious, I named myself after Charlene Frazier from Designing Women. My old name is what is called a Dead Name, because it is not mine and I never identified with it. Never ask a trans person what their Dead Name is and if you do know it, you should refrain from using it. It is disrespectful and can drag up bad memories associated to when the person went by that name. Don’t worry if you make a mistake and call a friend or relative by their dead name by accident or if you accidentally misgender them. Being overly apologetic often makes the situation worse. If you feel like you should apologize, do so no more than once and show your support by using the proper language going forward. We Trans people don’t want to be the center of attention and just want to live our lives. We understand that some people have trouble remembering changes. Gender is a spectrum. In fact, it is two intersecting spectra. One runs from male to female and the other from agender to hypergender. The one that most of us are familiar with runs from male to female. If I were to name some points along this spectrum that you might be familiar with, they would be male, metrosexual, tomgirl, nonbinary, tomboy, female. There are a lot of other genders I can call out, but many of those are familiar to most people. The other spectrum runs from people who have no experience of gender or agender to people you work hard to exemplify their gender, or hypergender. Examples of the latter would be Kim Kardashian and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who both work hard to perform hyper femininity and hyper-masculinity, respectively. Traditionally, when a child is born they are assigned one of the binary genders, either male or female, then they are taught to perform that role as they grow up. Most of this is unconscious. It is done through the clothes they are dressed in, the haircuts they are given, the toys and games they are encouraged to play, and the media they are exposed to. For most people, there is nothing wrong with this. You see, gender is like a pair of socks. When they fit well, you barely notice you are wearing them, but if they are too tight or too loose, they are distracting and all you can think about. When it comes to gender, we call this discomfort dysphoria, which is the opposite of euphoria. Dysphoria can range from minor irritations to a painful soul extinguishing agony. Most people have experienced some level of gender dysphoria without knowing that is what they were experiencing at the time. From women being told by misogynists that their only role in society is to have babies and serve men to men being told their role is to be aggressive and domineering. In more subtle ways, it could happen when someone is told they are infertile, or that they have to dress a certain way or have a certain undesired haircut to have a job. These are all experiences of gender dysphoria mixed with other emotions. For a transgender person, we experience this dysphoria from far more things. The most obvious are names and pronouns. Some experience dysphoria from their voice and their body. Unlike the situational dysphoria experienced by cis gender people, trans people experience this dysphoria constantly. You might have noticed that I contrasted trans people with cis people. Trans is a Latin preposition that means “across or over.” A trans person is someone who moves from their assigned gender to their proper gender. Cis is the Latin preposition that means, “on the same side.” It simply means that a cis gender person stays in the same gender they were assigned at birth. Hopefully, by now, you can understand why some people go through all the work to change their gender. Living in a constant state of dysphoria is harmful to every aspect of life. There are many ways to transition, and most of them do not rely on medical interventions. Not all trans people want medical intervention, while others cannot afford them or physically cannot tolerate them. Many simply transition socially, like I did. I changed my name, my pronouns, my physical presentation, and my voice. Medical transition includes everything from hormone blockers to hormone replacement therapy to gender confirmation surgeries. Prominent voices in the anti transgender movement have been successful in passing laws in 15 states to criminalize social transition for people under the age of 18. It is a felony to offer them therapy, and many of these laws classify name and pronoun changes as child abuse, despite the fact that many trans people know who they are by the age of 5. The only medical interventions offered to trans people under the age of 18 is puberty blockers which is a medication that halts the onset of puberty and the irreversible development of secondary sex characteristics that come with it until a person is old enough to decide what they want to happen to their own body. Disinformation about this treatment is what has led to the bomb threats at several Children’s Hospitals and hostile mobs interrupting story time in libraries all over the country. It is also important to realize that trans people can be fired and kicked out of their homes simply for living their lives. Why would anyone attack and harass trans people? There are two main reasons. One, unscrupulous people spread lies and conspiracy theories about the community to whip people up into a frenzy for power and profit. There is a whole industry of anti transgender bo

9 min

10 Episodes

My name is Charlie, and I am a Nonbinary Scifi/Fantasy writer and on this podcast we will be discussing LGBTQIA+ characters, Queer stories, and Human Rights with a focus on how these characters and stories are written and how to write them better. www.projectshadow.com

Creator

Charlie Dorsett (they/she)
Years Active

2022 - 2024
Episodes

10
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© Charlie Dorsett (they/she)
Show Website

The Nonbinary Writer