Author: JennyTrout

Merlin club is a weekly feature in which Jessica Jarman, Bronwyn Green, and myself gather at 8pm EST to watch an episode of the amazing BBC series Merlin, starring Colin Morgan and literally nobody else I care about except Colin Morgan.

Okay, I lie. A lot of other really cool people are in it, too.

Anyway, we watch the show, we tweet to the hashtag #MerlinClub, and on Fridays we share our thoughts about the episode we watched earlier in the week.

I wish this wasn’t the first post of 2015. I wish there wasn’t a reason for this post at all.

You’ve probably seen the name and story of Leelah Alcorn, the teenage girl who committed suicide when her parents refused to accept that she was transgender. After being forced into conversion therapy with Christian psychologists who called her selfish for not accepting the gender assigned to her at birth, Leelah posted a suicide note on Tumblr that begged for a change in the way we treat transgender youth and laid the responsibility for her death directly at her parents’ feet. The suicide note went viral, sending shockwaves through the LGBTA+ community and reaching mainstream media in way that shone stark light on the child abuse perpetrated against transgender children and teens by their parents.

That Alcorn’s suicide note has been so widely read is nothing short of astonishing; many victims of suicide leave no explanation of their actions, or their posthumous statements are read only by close family and friends. In making such a personal, vulnerable moment public for the world to see, Alcorn left a powerful legacy. There would be no erasing and denying her identity, no matter what her parents put on her tombstone or told their community. Her suicide letter has become a beacon of hope in an otherwise hopeless situation, encouraging the world to reach out to transgender teens at risk.

Teens who, writer Sarah Ditum asserts, will use Alcorn’s suicide as a template to humiliate their parents. In her piece for The New Statesman, “If you believe trans lives matter, don’t share Leelah Alcorn’s suicide note on social media,” Ditum worries that the world-wide dialogue Alcorn began breaks important journalistic standards and will cause stress for Alcorn’s family:

Along with a sense of basic dignity and respect for the grieving family, they are the reason that journalists should always take into account the Samaritans’ best practice media guidelines. 

The lack of basic dignity and respect that caused Alcorn to take her own life isn’t a concern for Ditum, who dismisses Alcorn as an unreliable source in her own death:

The guidelines tell journalists to “avoid the suggestion that a single incident […] was the cause”: the report doesn’t discuss any possible underlying causes, but presents the reported hostility of Alcorn’s parents to her trans status as the sole contributing factor.

Ditum goes on to further doubt the veracity of Alcorn’s account of the experience that caused her take her own life:

“Consider the lifelong impact that a suicide can have on those bereaved by a suicide,” says the Samaritans; Alcorn’s parents are mentioned only as villains, based on a single source, and their grief is not acknowledged.

No outside source could bear witness to Alcorn’s mental anguish better than she could, but Ditum dismisses her as an unreliable narrator.

Ditum fears copycat suicides, not because the loss of another transgender child is a horrifying and unacceptable prospect, but because the abusers of these teens might be cast in what she perceives to be an unfair light:

 The message an unhappy, isolated trans kid can take away from this is that death will bring you all the validation you’re missing in life. Your last words will be republished around the world and your parents will be punished for their failure to understand you. The reports even include a proven method you can follow.

Her concern isn’t for future suicide victims, but the prospect that they might be given a voice in death. She defends the Alcorns from the public scorn they’re facing on social media and in the press, saying:

And there’s another disturbing aspect to the public reaction: Alcorn’s parents, and specifically her mother, have been directly harassed by those who blame them for the death of their child. It is hard to imagine much worse that burying a child, but to lose a child by suicide must bring an almost unbearable degree of self-reproach to the loss.

Considering the fact that Alcorn’s mother persists in describing her daughter as her son “Josh” and referring to her with he/him/his pronouns, it seems unlikely that “self-reproach” is a term that has even a passing acquaintance with the Alcorns’ grief vocabulary. They deny that their daughter committed suicide, stating in a Facebook status update that their son “Josh” was accidentally struck and killed by a vehicle during an early morning walk.

Ditum ignores these facts in favor of lavishing sympathy upon Alcorn’s abusers and offers what appears to be a thoughtful, philosophical view of the nature of life and death in the media:

 Human are messy, overlapping things, however we live and die. We are tangles of love and mistakes. All of us are more complicated than the flat symbolism of the martyr, and all of us deserve to be seen in our full untidiness – the kind of untidiness that would never make for neatly consumable news copy.

Yet one important component of this story is missing from Ditum’s piece, and that is Leelah Alcorn herself. Instead of recognizing her as the “tangle of love and mistakes” and the “complicated” human being that she was, Ditum reduces Alcorn and other suicidal transgender teens to petulant brats throwing fatal tantrums in manipulative bids to ruin their parents’ images. The impact Ditum fears is not that more transgender children will kill themselves, but that the parents of these abused children might come off as unsympathetic in stories where they are, incontrovertibly, the cause of their child’s death.

Leelah Alcorn asked the world to see her as a woman, as a person, and as someone worthy of being loved just as she was. Sarah Ditum asks the world to see her as a liar and wants us all to stay silent out of mock concern for transgender lives. Perhaps a better title for Ditum’s piece would have been, “If you really want to inspire transgender youths to commit suicide, here’s a how-to guide.”

Another year has blown straight on by. Does anyone else feel like they’re careening toward the grave? Just me? I’ll call my doctor.

Last year, I made some resolutions. Let’s see if I kept them:

1. I did knit the 4th Doctor’s scarf. It took me eight months, but I managed to finish the scarf in the car on the way to Authors After Dark in Charlotte. It turned out fantastic:

2. I spent more time doing fun stuff. In addition to knitting, I actually slowed down to read non-work related books, play World of Warcraft, spend way too much time on Tumblr, and, most excitingly (is that a word?) for me, I started learning how to draw. Here are some of my favorite pictures this year:

3. I stopped worrying about whether or not my house was spotlessly clean. I kind of fudged a little on this one by hiring a cleaning lady once a week, but I’m not kicking myself over the clutter and the utter nightmare of ripped up dog toys on the floor as much as I was before.

4. Wear a bikini.

So, there you have it. I, Jenny Trout, achieved my New Year’s resolutions.

Now, with 2015 upon us, I have a whole new set of resolutions.

1. Write another goddamn vampire novel. For personal reasons, I don’t do much talking about about my pre-Jenny Trout work, but my career started with a series of vampire novels. My plate is pretty full with two series right now (and the addition of a third barreling down on me), but I desperately want to write some vampire YA. Mostly because if there’s a genre that’s losing steam, I want to be sure to jump on the tail end of it and make absolutely no money. But what I lack in business sense, I make up for in passion and dedication, and right now my heart is telling me that I want to return to some vampires. By the end of 2015, I want to either have completed, or actively begun work on, a YA vampire novel.

2. Run the Mackinac 8 Mile. I got lazy and stopped doing something that made me happy. I’m going to start again, and I want to celebrate my return to running in 2015 by racing around the beautiful shores of Mackinac Island.

3. Draw a tattoo for myself. This year, I’ve gotten tattoos that other people have drawn. I’d like to get a tattoo that I drew. I don’t know what it will be of, or even if I have the skill to pull it off, but I’m going to keep practicing until I get it right.

4. Legally change my name to Jenny Trout. Do you have any idea how liberating it’s going to be to go from eighteen letters to ten letters? My name will finally fit on forms. I might even change my middle name, too. If anybody has any good ideas, let me know. Maybe we’ll have a vote on it or some shit.

I’m only making three this year, because I have a busy schedule with three books to complete and tons of travel in 2015, but let’s see how it goes!

I give up. There will never be aliens.

This year has been some year for me, let me tell you. So many exciting things happened, and I got to write about it all! So I’ve gone through 2014 and found my favorite posts (and got surprised at how many of them actually came from this year and not years past, as my faulty memory would have had me believe. These aren’t necessarily my biggest posts, but the ones I enjoyed the most.

January

January started off strong with this twitter story about Robert Plant being eaten by a bear, the Huffington Post article that made Anne Rice briefly not hate me, and the beginning of #MerlinClub. But I think my favorite post for January (and a strong contender for favorite post of the year) was the one in which I recapped the weird love story of the Nescafe Gold couple.

February

February was a wondrous time for me, dear reader, as I completed the last of my 50 Shades of Grey recaps and never have to read about that guy (that fucking guy) again. I also got a puppy, and my first YA novel Such Sweet Sorrow debuted.

March

Neil Elwood and Sophie Scaife returned in The Bride, and I wrote about Jennifer Weiner’s controversial statements on diversity in YA at the Huffington Post

April

April was the month when the author who was the single largest influence on my love of books and writing called me names, and Disney’s Frozen saved me from suicidal thoughts.

May

In May, I realized that every song on One Direction’s Midnight Memories album was ripped the fuck off from other artists, and I got real about authors who have “I was first!” syndrome.

June

Halfway through the year, I made good on my resolution to wear a two-piece. I also shared my very first television appearance (before I had any idea that there would be more), made fun of the biggest assholes on the internet, and The Afflicted premiered on WattPad.

July

Shit got crazier in my career than I have ever experienced before. My Huffington Post essay about my bikini experience went viral as fuck, leading to an appearance on HuffPost Live. I went on Good Morning America, got tired as fuck of fat shaming bullshit, and an angel in a candy store fulfilled one of my childhood dreams. And then my friends turned that dream into a pornographic nightmare.

August

I went on NPR to talk about the song that shall not be named (but I’m including it because how fucking cool, I went on NPR!). I also went on a local daytime show, which was really cool because I got to meet local anchors, which always feels somehow more famous than meeting big time celebrities. I wrote about the celebrity nude photo leaks at the Huffington Post and debated Beyoncé’s feminist cred.

September

It was the month of authors showing their asses, especially in the wake of the Ellora’s Cave lawsuit. I founded a new spirituality, and for once a TV adaption of a book I like didn’t brutally disappoint me.

October

A bunch of reviewers joined the Taliban without realizing it, an author received tons of praise for stalking, and Steve Harvey gave me the surprise of a lifetime, aided by fifteen brilliant women. This month also marked the founding of the Jealous Hater Book Club

November

Neil and Sophie came back in The Ex, I wrote some more about The Prophet, and I scattered the ashes of my love for Amanda Palmer to the wind.

December

And here we are again! Konrath thew a hissy, I made some motivational Doctors, and we came together as a family to help those in need (submissions for that post are still open, by the way, until New Year’s Day).

It has been an incredible year, and I’m so lucky to have you guys in my life every day. Here’s hoping 2015 is fantastic for all of Trout Nation.

If you stop by That’s What I’m Talking About today, you can read a brand new Neil and Sophie Christmas scene and enter a contest to win a book!

On Wednesday, Sony pulled the plug on the latest Rogen/Franco buddy comedy, The Interview. The trailer promised a Jonathan Ross-esque TV host and his producer bumbling through international espionage on a quest to kill Kim Jong Un. As the film’s release date approached, a Sorkinsian plot of email hacking, bomb threats, and business decisions all careened downhill like the Grinch’s sled. The top five theatre chains in the country declined to screen the movie, and Sony, realizing no one was going to see the film in a mass release, spurned DVD and VOD, took its toys and went home.

And oh, the firestorm that ensued. People took to Twitter to lament that they’d planned on seeing the movie, and now “the terrorists have won!” Artists in all fields decried this “censorship” and warned about the doom that awaits on the horizon for all creatives. And of course, many insisted that the way to topple Kim Jong Un’s regime is through relentless mocking, pointing to the anti-Hitler comedies during World War II that helped bring the Third Reich to its knees.

Excuse me if I look past this for a second to concentrate on something that appears to be missing from this conversation. It seems to me that in all our demands for “free speech” (a phrase that has been tossed around needlessly; the United States government did not censor The Interview), we’ve overlooked the people of North Korea, and how our American thirst for jokes erase them from our consciousness.

Movies like The Interview and Team America: World Police don’t often show the realities of life in North Korea and the human rights violations perpetrated by the government there. The joke is often, “Check out this guy! He is short and portly, and he thinks he’s important! His country lacks the basic luxuries we take for granted!” We find these dictators hilarious because they seem to be lacking self-awareness, a cardinal sin in our culture, which demands everyone know and understand their place. Our enjoyment of mocking Kim Jong Il and his successor, Kim Jong Un, comes from a mild second-hand embarrassment that anyone would think they were influential when their country is so backwards by U.S. standards. We’ve depicted these men as powerless bunglers throwing useless temper tantrums and dreaming up Acme brand schemes that never pan out. But the punchline is never that either dictator committed atrocities against their own people. We stick to digs at physical appearance and inflated self-importance, and top them off with offensive “Asian” accents straight out of Breakfast At Tiffany’s.

Maybe it’s too difficult to make involuntary human medical experimentation and multigenerational prison sentences a catchphrase. Within his own borders, Kim Jong Un is far from powerless. He and his cabal of generals and high ranking officials have continued in his predecessor’s footsteps with regards to mass executions, paranoid surveillance, and other assorted atrocities. Our popular media seems largely unconcerned with this; we’re only interested in a dictator whose evil springs from harmless, grandiose self-vision and funny foreign outfits.

Occasionally, the horrors of life in North Korea do show up in our American satire. 30 Rock, for example, featured a running plot line in which a major character’s new bride was kidnapped by Kim Jong Un and forced to serve as the anchor of an all-propaganda news channel. Viewers could chuckle at allegations of torture, dismal living conditions, and the poor quality of life that comes from living under constant government surveillance, as long as we were assured that it was happening to an American character whose rescue was in the works.

In that way, life imitates art; we only seem truly concerned with the atrocities in North Korea when Bill Clinton is flying over to rescue a United States citizen from them.

Some have argued that films like The Interview or Team America: World Police serve the same purpose as the Warner Bros. and Three Stooges comedies about Hitler. It seems like an apt comparison, until you apply context; Larry, Moe, and Curly were lampooning Axis Powers while the Allied Forces were fighting them. Franco and Rogen are assassinating Kim Jong Un while the United States continues to ignore the real abuses the North Korean government perpetrates against its people. It’s hard to imagine that Bugs Bunny tormenting Hitler would still be a point of pride today if we’d continued to let the Nazis murder millions of people without lifting a finger. If we aren’t going to do anything about Kim Jong Un’s government, what purpose does our satire serve, beyond providing American audiences with cheap laughs at the expense of people who are suffering tremendous injustice?

Cries of censorship are equally puzzling. Sony pulled the movie when major theatre chains, concerned about possible terrorist threats–or the effect rumors of those threats might have on their weekend take–refused to run the movie. Already embroiled in conflict over hacked emails and facing projected financial losses as a result of their December movies being leaked online, Sony made the decision to pull the film. While many are pointing to this as a battle lost in the war on freedom of expression, Sony has acted in their own self-interest, influenced by the actions of, but not due to a direct threat from, North Korea. Meanwhile, U.S. retail super giant Wal-Mart openly exerts pressure on the recording and publishing industries to produce content and packaging that fit strict criteria in line with the company’s moral standards. When record and book companies bend to their whims, we have no problem seeing it this as business as usual, not capitulation to conservative Christian terrorism. We simply accept that no major corporation will throw away potential revenue; The Interview will likely release in the future to overwhelming commercial success.

Maybe this is, as Newt Gingrich prophesied, America’s first loss in a “cyberwar.” Or it could be a strategic move to draw out the controversy and boost the film’s box office totals when it ultimately does release. But one thing is certain: it took the threat of losing Christmas day with our two favorite stoners to make many of us give a damn about North Korea and their evil, freedom-crushing ways. Whatever counteraction is taken, it will be in the name of U.S. commercialism, without a thought to the people suffering the brutality of Kim Jong Un’s regime. So you’ll have to pardon me if I’m not up to waving a banner for my imperiled American freedoms right along with the rest of the crowd.

Merlin club is a weekly feature in which Jessica Jarman, Bronwyn Green, and myself gather at 8pm EST to watch an episode of the amazing BBC series Merlin, starring Colin Morgan and literally nobody else I care about except Colin Morgan.

Okay, I lie. A lot of other really cool people are in it, too.

Anyway, we watch the show, we tweet to the hashtag #MerlinClub, and on Fridays we share our thoughts about the episode we watched earlier in the week.

Much in the way Hobbits celebrate their birthdays, we too can celebrate the season by giving unto others. And while Trout Nation is a land rich in snark and friendship, our main export is shit-stirring and that doesn’t pay for much. As such, I am inviting all ye Troutfaithful to email me your URLs with the subject line “FUNDRAISER” (don’t leave them in the comments section or tweet me, because I’m afraid they’ll be missed and not added to the post) in the hopes that those among us who can will spread the generosity of the season.

There’s a catch: I’m not posting any links to fundraisers for commercial or artistic projects or anything like that. There’s a time and a place for those, and this post is strictly for those in need of things like food, shelter, medical procedures, pet shelter donations, etc. We’ll do another Kickstarter post after the New Year.

I’ll keep adding to this post until New Year’s Day. If you can’t give, promote the post and get the word out!

• Disabled and homeless mother and daughter seek funds after eviction
• A coupon card business to help families in need stretch their budgets (this is one of the few business enterprises I’ll list, because it’s meant to help people in need)
• A wife seeks funds to help her husband immigrate to her country
• A transgender man is fundraising his top surgery
• A single mom needs to provide for her three kids as she looks for work
• A high school teacher needs a car to get to his rural students
• Two dogs are trying to move to New Zealand with their owners
• Sex worker faces 10-25 years for prostitution, can’t afford an attorney
• Woman needs money for IVF
• Couple seeks ADA accessible living situation
• Patient with rare auto-immune disorder needs help with medical bills
• Disabled and facing eviction
• College senior has lost financial aid one semester before graduation
• Apollo the horse needs surgery
• Help Duane’s family with his funeral expenses
• Family needs assistance with deceased infant’s medical bills
• Diabetic dog needs food, medicine
• Parents need funeral expenses, medical bills for deceased infant
• Single mom facing homelessness wants to graduate
• Help a disabled person get their vandalized car in driving shape
• Disabled man needs to replace roof
• Disabled transgender woman seeks GRS
• Cat rescue!
• Help pay for Seth’s funeral
• Help an Uber driver fix her car and avoid eviction
• Stop hunger in Appalachia
• Non-binary transgender person needs to leave abusive parents

Keep sending me links, and I’ll keep adding them!