Feb. 2025 Newsletter: What I’ve Been Up To
Welcome to this month’s newsletter! Each month, I try to share what I’ve been up to, what things I’ve published that month, and exciting news if there’s any to be shared.
News and updates
NEW Crisis Resources page! With everything going on right now, we know LGBTQ+ folks are in need of more support. This page lists many great options for LGBTQ+ people in crisis, across different identities, ages, and other focuses. It will be updated as needed, and will remain as a static page. (If it isn’t in the site’s menu yet, it will be soon.)
Also, we are both working on even more resources and ways to help folks thrive during the next four years and beyond. Next month we should start rolling out new hub pages, so stay tuned for more information on those sometime in March! Along with that, we will be working on updating the categories found on the site, so bear with us as we work out some bumps on that path.
Blog posts from this month
Ashton has been thinking a lot about LGBTQ+ students since the new year, even more so than usual. This month, they shared some reflections on their own schooling experiences as a queer/trans person and some tips on surviving and being kind to yourself. I Know It’s Scary: Surviving as an LGBTQ+ Student.
Rachel has been doing a lot with the book Unlearning Shame recently. Different Changemaking Paths for LGBTQ+ Activists (and Their Allies) reflects the output of a conversation we had in January, plus further reflection. In it, we push back against the traditional narrative of resistance and present many ways to be a changemaker and contribute to movements that are important to you.
Things that have brought us joy recently
From Rachel:
I’m loving my current Dragon Age: The Veilguard playthrough, in which at last I get to play a trans main character! Included are a couple of links about being trans in Veilguard if you want to read more. Rather than describe trans and nonbinary themes in the game (which has been pretty well covered), I want to give the long view of how remarkable this is!
When I was coming out in the late 1980s, there were two books in my local library about lesbian lives. I had access to one image of sacred androgyny in the Tarot. Over the next few years, I managed to find a few more books (in libraries and bookstores)— almost all of them lesbian and gay. I believe the first time I saw any sort of kind of trans rep on television was in 1993 with the character of Dax on Deep Space Nine. (Dax was not portrayed as trans, though she did get called “Old Man” by the captain.)
When my novel Being Emily was published in 2012, it was the first Young Adult novel to feature a trans girl as the viewpoint character. In the thirteen years since then, there’s been an explosion of positive trans representation. There’s still awful representation too—and we fight that, along with book bans—but it heartens me to play Dragon Age: The Veilguard as a towering and gloriously trans Qunari mage.
From Ashton:
Avowed finally released this month! I’ve enjoyed getting to dive into a fantasy universe I haven’t experienced before. Getting to play as a character that uses they/them pronouns is a huge bonus, and unlike Bethesda’s Starfield, Obsidian worked to correctly and thoroughly implement those pronouns. While I’ve grown up with more queer and trans rep than Rachel did, my sources of nonbinary representation have been exceedingly few.
Plus, Avowed’s magic system is really cool, and I love the flexibility but also the importance of stats. It feels like a good balance of a lot of potential playstyles. I only wish I didn’t have to kill so many spiders :/
I’ve also started reading Jonathan Sims’s Thirteen Storeys. This supernatural horror novel takes place in Banyan Court, a building of luxury apartments combined with the “slums” in the back for poorer residents, all owned by the mysterious Tobias Fell. One by one, residents experience strange phenomena and begin to break down, soon realizing that “the only way out is up.” After loving The Magnus Archives, I was hungry for more of Sims’s work, and this standalone book does not disappoint!
Stay tuned next month for more blog posts, resources, and another newsletter. Thanks for being a reader!
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