Yoko's Asterisk 🏳️⚧Hey did you know I have a newsletter? I DO! It comes out once a week, it's free, and it's my most provocative thoughts on pop culture, SFF, queer stuff, or my own life experience. Topics have included #DoctorWho, writing, internalized transphobia, and the truth about "cancel culture". I would consider it a personal kindness if you would subscribe!
Here are a few of the past newsletters that you probably missed (which I'm still super proud of!)
A celebration of the special education teacher who saved me from slipping thru the cracks when I had a severe learning disability:
https://buttondown.email/charliejane/archive/the-teacher-who-saved-my-life-and-made-me-a-writer/
An essay about my late father and his journey toward accepting my transition:
https://buttondown.email/charliejane/archive/the-story-i-like-to-tell-about-my-father/
"The story I like to tell about my father doesn’t end with his death."
Seven wrong lessons that everybody learned from the success of Game of Thrones:
https://buttondown.email/charliejane/archive/7-wrong-lessons-that-creators-learned-from-game/
"If you actually go back and watch the first episode of Game of Thrones, you’ll be startled by how friendly and cheerful a lot of it is. People smile and show affection."
To survive COVID, indie bookstores had to reimagine what it means to be a bookstore:
https://buttondown.email/charliejane/archive/to-survive-a-year-of-covid-indie-booksellers-had/
A heavily reported piece about all the creative strategies indie booksellers figured out to get through a uniquely challenging time. Support local bookstores! <3
Here's a tribute to John Ostrander, one of the all-time great comics writers who co-created Suicide Squad and Grimjack, and did amazing work with Batman and Star Wars:
https://buttondown.email/charliejane/archive/if-you-like-the-suicide-squad-you-ought-to-love/
"The best word I can come up with for Ostrander’s writing is 'humane.'"
Three Factors That Make a Community Fall Apart in the Face of Disaster
https://buttondown.email/charliejane/archive/three-factors-that-make-a-community-fall-apart-in/
"People are capable of so much generosity after some disasters — but when it comes to covid and climate change, we're hopelessly divided and plagued with denial."
All The Steps That REO Speedwagon Took In Their Unsucccessful Attempt To Fight This Feeling
https://buttondown.email/charliejane/archive/all-the-steps-that-reo-speedwagon-took-in-their/
"They attempted to form a multilateral commission to explore forming a united front against this feeling."
A Few Ways of Thinking About "Cancel Culture"
https://buttondown.email/charliejane/archive/a-few-ways-of-thinking-about-cancel-culture/
"I increasingly think it's not helpful to say of someone, 'They have been canceled.' Passive voice lets people avoid accountability for their actions. The phrasing I prefer is, 'They have disgraced themself.'"
morriJ.K. Rowling and "Separating the Art from the Artist"
https://buttondown.email/charliejane/archive/jk-rowling-and-separating-the-art-from-the-artist/
"This hypothetical separation of the person from the thing they created always rankles me a little bit — because I don't think marginalized creators, including trans creators, ever quite get that luxury."
OK that's enough for now. Maybe I'll post more later! <3
Cassandra is only carbon now@charliejane I wish that one wasn't so perennially relevant.
Bearded_Pip@charliejane It never felt right to separate the two, but this point is an even more important reason not too.
D. G. Marshall"Separate the Art from the Artist" is the business plan of all companies sacrificing Artists to their "A.I.".
Michael W Lucas 
Back in the 1980s when I was working on my English degree, we discussed "Separating the Art from the Artist."
It's a postmodern technique for literary analysis, and intended for use by professional literary criticism. Not like the criticism you see in the newspaper or magazines or review sites, the sort of criticism that gets published in professional journals that use MLA format and get peer reviewed by college professors. The general public is supposed to consider art in the context of the artist, and did so for millennia.
Today, it is used to excuse commercial art by horrible people.
Put SAftA back in literary criticism, where it belongs.
[I might have given this rant at you before. If so, my apologies. The entirety of SAftA pisses me off royally.]
@mwl Yeah basically, "Il n'y'a pas de whore text." :P
Charlie Stross@charliejane Hell, *nobody* gets that luxury of separation unless they're so boringly privileged they're a placeholder for the default point of view imposed on us by the ruling elite.
(Who are increasingly visible and easy to recognize these days, rather than fading into the background, due to the post-2008 race to grab all the money before the end of the world.)
AngieWith JK Rowling, you can separate the art from the racist, by reading the authors she stole every single solitary aspect of her books from instead.
Noah@angiebaby @charliejane I'm undone. I've read the best thing on the Internet today and nothing else is going to possibly beat that comment.
Theriac
Ampelios@charliejane Yes. There are works I enjoy while also noting that the author is a POS (henlo William S Burroughs) but the works have to work EXTRA hard to overcome that, you know?
Not just be something mediocre that was inexplicably popular in middle school.
Tell me one, ONE thing from HP that's so uniquely great. You can't.