Issue 39: Ringo nominations, SDCC's film fest, RWA, and Star Trek Celebrations!
It’s that time again.
What time?
Time for more Susan and Tilly talkin’ ‘bout writin’!
NEW STUFF
As you saw in the opening graphic, Star Trek Voyager: Homecoming is eligible in multiple categories in the 2026 Ringo Awards!
What you may not know is that anyone can nominate and vote in the Ringos, whether you work in the comics industry or not! And we’d sure appreciate your nomination if you liked what we did. Here’s the graphic again, with all the categories we’re eligible in!
You can nominate below. Nominations must be in no later than May 28, so you’ve got just over a week to get them in! Thank you for considering us. 😊
Our Robo Waitress Assassins cyberpunk action dramedy live pilot performance from the Joy Who Lived trans theater festival here in Los Angeles is now up for free viewing by everyone!
A huge thank you, again, to everyone who bought a live or livestream ticket and supported our art, and made it possible for us to pay our cast. You’re the best!
If you missed it, or you just want to see it again because it’s so effin’ amazing (immodest of us, yes, but true), here you go!
Long Away is an official selection of the Comic-Con International Independent Film Fest, and will be at this summer’s San Diego Comic-Con, the biggest comics/pop culture convention in the country!
We’re not allowed to reveal the day or time info until SDCC does, but it will screen and have a panel after as part of their festival! Stay tuned for the deets.
We were recently interviewed for Brands Untapped, which is apparently just a hub for creatives who work in the broad spectrum of licensed content.
They wanted to talk with us about Star Trek Voyager: Homecoming and even a bit about Monster High, so have a look if you’re curious. They… took some liberties when transcribing our call, so our quotes might not sound exactly like us, but they didn’t change the heart or content of any of our answers.
Deej Johnson
Tilly was also featured in the Trans Joy newsletter, which is trying to help trans people find bright spots to help them through these really tough (especially for the trans community) times we’re in. Check it out if ya wanna.
As a reminder, Star Trek Celebrations is out May 27, and we have an essay in the back on the history of queer and trans rep in Trek! Stop by your comic shop and grab a copy on release day if you forgot to preorder it, or… get a signed copy from our Ko-fi shop! They’ll go up for order there later this week. Sign up on the Ko-fi to be notified whenever we add new items, or keep an eye on our socials if you want to know as soon as we have them!
And the last little bit of new news is that we gave our writing website a little bit of an overhaul. It’ll still be mostly the same experience for you if you visit it, outside of small color and design changes, but it made our ability to update it much easier, so that’s nice. For us. And maybe for you, if you like us! And we presume you do, since you’re reading this.
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A reminder that Long Away screens in the FP Arts Short Film Fest in Scotland on June 25, you can get tickets at the link below! They also made a cool little trailer with clips from their nominated shorts, and Long Away pops up in there a few times!
Annnnnd here’s our continuing reminder that preorders are super important for books, so please grab one for our two books releasing this August!
Star Trek Voyager: Homecoming, the complete series collected in a trade paperback!
Cherish Chen
And our YA queer trans romcom, Just Another Summer, available in paperback and hardcover!
WHAT WE’RE WORKING ON
We’re kind of in a holding pattern right now. Tilly’s still working on the proposal for the big idea mentioned in the last newsletter, and pulling together a small team with a possibly even bigger name attached. And we have a little pitch we’re toying with but won’t really present to an editor until SDCC at the end of July.
We did come up with a new idea for a pilot, after the last one went bust, and we’re really excited about it. Which is good, and hopefully that holds and this one doesn’t fizzle out, too. We’ve never had that happen back to back before, but worrying is easy and free! In any case, we’ll be noodling that along into an outline.
We’re still waiting for our new graphic novel agent to return from medical leave and take our first project out, and to hear back on that short-turnaround pitch we mentioned in the last issue.
Oh, and Tilly got an offer from an online/print magazine to run a revised (to fit the different medium) version of one of her Trans Tuesday essays as an article, and the pay was actually respectable! So keep an eye out for news on that, should it actually make it through their process all the way to publication.
TRANS TUESDAY UPDATE
We dove into talking about two crappy things in a row, though the levels of crappiness between them are exponential.
First we dealt with TRANS PANIC. It’s along the lines of, “I learned this person was trans and I snapped, it’s not my fault I assaulted or killed them!” And the vast majority of our country has said, yes, that is a valid legal defense in a court of law. It’s horrific. Read all about it, and what we can do about it.
Tilly Bridges
Then we talked about PERFORMATIVE ALLYSHIP, using an example of something that happened to Tilly a few years ago. It’s when people who like to say they’re trans allies, and especially want to think of themselves as trans allies… will not do even the simple, most basic thing to actually be an ally. It’s some bullshit.
Tilly Bridges
RECOMMENDATIONS
In a first for us, we’re going to recommend a fifty year old movie full of basically nothing but non-queer cis white people. Who saw this coming?
A writer friend of ours recommended What's Up, Doc? to us, and said it’s one of the few things he has to stop and watch all of if he ever even catches a glimpse of it on a tv.
Despite being made in the 70s, it’s remarkably free of racism, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, and other stuff that often passed for “jokes” back then (and sadly still does, far too often). There is some garden variety sexism, of the kind you’d expect in a 70s comedy, but honestly we were surprised it wasn’t as prevalent as we thought it’d be.
In any case, it’s genuinely really funny, and (we don’t have time to research this yet so we’re not sure) may have been the source of a lot of comedy tropes that have permeated films, tv, and animation for the last fifty years? If you watch it, you’ll definitely see some things that make you think, “I can’t believe they’re doing this gag.” And then you’ll wonder if they maybe were actually the first to do this gag.
It’s very much in the spirit of Looney Tunes (the title is not a coincidence), and while it doesn’t take that quite as literally as something like Hundreds of Beavers does (a film we also loved and recommended in a past newsletter), it’s totally in keeping with that kind of absurdism and slapstick.
It was actually a really fun watch.
THE DIRTBAG DISPATCH
What the heck is going on here? This is too strange. What are they doing? What are they plotting?
Probably how to trip us when we’re carrying the bag of cat treats so they can grab it and run off.
What rapscallions.
WHAT’S IN THE BIG TIME VERSION?
Big Time issue 39 goes into the importance of you being the first audience you’re writing something for, and why it can make or break any creative project! You gotta love what you’re making, friendos. Also there's more exclusive Robo Waitress Assassins concept art!
Sign up for it at birdguestbroadcast.com! Only $5 a month, or $50 for a full year (though right now annual subscriptions are only $40 until May 24, what a deal)!
THE END
Hire us to make Robo Waitress Assassins.
Please?
It’ll be, like, so good. We promise.
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