11 rad things I wrote in 2021

I don't think I've had a worse year than 2021.

What 2020 was for a lot of people, 2021 was for me. It was a real "chickens coming home to roost" year, as a ton of stuff I'd figured out about myself amid 2020's quarantine took root and started to send up bleak, unruly shoots. I took two weeks off in January and February for mental health reasons, and I probably should have taken more. There was a point in the year's middle where I wasn't sure if I would make it out the other side.

As such, it was probably my least productive year since I started writing professionally. I don't know if anyone who's not my long-time editor or me would have noticed, but I felt stymied at every turn by things that should have been simple.

For example, we released an Arden miniseries of miniature episodes in December. The goal had always been to release it in late summer or early fall, and the deadline kept getting pushed back, mainly because my brain just wasn't willing to buckle down and write four-to-six page scripts. (One could also argue this is because I have no idea how to write anything short, but you know what? Quit being a jerk, subconscious Emily.)

Still. I wrote stuff. I wrote a fair amount of stuff for Vox, I generated a newsletter most weeks, and I even coughed up an episode of somebody else's podcast. Then, as the year ended and my trauma therapy started to really bear fruit, I felt my ability to generate stuff coming back full force.

This introduction runs the risk of being too navel-gaze-y, but the longer I am in cognitive processing therapy (about which more in the Matrix link below), the more I realize that my need to be constantly writing is an echo of a time when I needed to do anything I could to escape an abusive situation. Writing is something I'm good at, and every time I have needed an escape route from a bad situation, writing has provided it. But I started to worry writing and my need to constantly generate content were crutches actively holding me back from a fulfilling life.

The more perspective I gain, the more I realize that I turned writing into a crutch not just because I'm good at it but because I enjoy it. There are few things I like more than working on something big and complicated, and there is nothing quite like when a story starts to make sense after a long period of feeling lost in the fog. I love doing this work, and I hope to keep doing it for many years to come.

I just might not do as much of it.

The best thing I wrote in 2021 still hasn't been published, and it might never be. It's in a weird limbo where nobody is quite sure what to do with it. I hope you get to see it in 2022.

In the meantime, here are 11 other things I think are worth you checking out if you haven't read them already!

Our conversation about anti-trans laws is broken (Vox, April 2)

I don't know if you know this, but 2021 was a lousy year to be trans in America, thanks to many state legislatures that decided to legislate our right to exist, especially the rights of trans kids to exist. I am trying not to get involved in every aspect of this story, but its weight eventually got to me. I wrote the conclusion of this piece while screen-sharing with a friend whose comments had accidentally spurred something. If this is the last thing I ever write about being trans... that might be okay.

Those who question the stories of trans people — especially trans youth — rob us of our autonomy to define our lives. They argue, sometimes implicitly and sometimes explicitly, that cis people are the true arbiters of who we are. They suggest that when trans people advocate for our interests, both as individuals and as a community, we are being selfish, naïve, and uncompromising. But it is not selfish to say you have a self, it is not naïve to believe that you know that self better than others, and it is not uncompromising to insist that you should live a life of dignity the same as anybody else.

The Underground Railroad is a towering series about the ways slavery still infects America (Vox, May 13)

I am realizing how many of these pieces are things I remember the circumstances of writing. I'm writing fewer TV reviews every year, but I had to say something about the titanic Underground Railroad adaptation. I wrote this piece in a frenzy in a hotel room at 2 am. It had eluded me for days, and then it came to me all at once. Sometimes, writing is just waiting for the right moment.

So I want to tread carefully in discussing The Underground Railroad, a 10-episode adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning 2016 novel. In its portrayal of Cora (Thuso Mbedu), a slave running less toward freedom than she is running away from slavery, the series tells a story about systemic racism and the perniciousness of white supremacy, offering an uncompromising look at the lasting and ongoing burdens of white America’s inhumane treatment of Black Americans. In no way should it be hailed as a story anyone can see themselves in.
But director Barry Jenkins (who won an Oscar in 2017 for his screenplay for Moonlight) finds a way to encompass all of humanity in his work without so much as hinting at easy forgiveness for those who either do great evil or are complicit in great evil. The Underground Railroad made me feel things about my own life and personal pain very deeply, while never letting me forget that while I could relate to aspects of this story, it is not my own.
This series is a specific story about the treatment of one specific group of humans in one specific country. But it’s also a story about humans, and Jenkins gives you space to find yourself in it without sacrificing the focus of this story — even if you might not like what you see.

Unseen Midsummer Special: "Midsummer, Highland Falls" (June 24)

Arden was dark this year, which meant my scripted writing was mostly confined to this one-off special written with my writing partner Libby Hill. We were so excited to be able to work with the folks at Long Story Short Productions, who are some of the best in the audio fiction game. I'm deeply proud of this creepy little ghost story Libby and I came up with.

Listen here.

Janie: There are only three known facts about Tom’s disappearance. Fact one: On June 21 one year ago, Tom and Janie Lynnwood rowed to the middle of West Bay Lake for unexplained reasons. When morning came, only Janie returned to shore. Fact two: The dogs found evidence someone else had been there. Who that someone was, no one could say. Fact three: All that anyone found of Tom was his arm. Detached right at the shoulder. It washed up on the shore later that morning. And I know what you’re thinking. I was on the boat. I should know. But I don’t. I have no idea. Both stories I’m about to tell you are true. Neither story I’m about to tell is true. There’s only one thing that’s certain: One moment Tom was there. The next, he wasn’t.

How to Make Rainbow Cake (Episodes, June 28)

I adore writing the newsletters where I get to check in on Emily Rogers, the cis version of myself from an alternate universe who is a recipe blogger. I have had to make a rule that I'll only do it two times per year. (You might be seeing her again for Valentine's Day...) This tale of Emily's sexuality and her daughter's journey as a trans girl is, I think, the best Emily Rogers entry yet. [Hey, thanks, Emily! -- EmRog.]

That night after I hung up the phone, I walked all through that first apartment David and I shared as a married couple, and I felt deeply, desperately sad. Whatever had happened between Beth and me felt incomplete and unfinished, even though we had just talked twice in one month, the first time we had talked to each other in nearly 10 years. I knew whatever I thought was missing between us was something I could repair. And I did. I did repair it. Beth and I spent all of the Covid-18 quarantine having a weekly Zoom check-in. It was wonderful. I feel almost closer to her than I did when we were kids, which I didn't think was possible.
But I lost something, too.

How Twitter can ruin a life (Vox, June 30)

By far the most read piece I've ever written that wasn't about Marvel or Game of Thrones, this story about the aftermath of a Twitter mob descending upon a trans sci-fi writer """started a conversation""" or whatever. I'm just glad I got to know Isabel Fall, whose thoughts echo in my head to this day. This thing went through draft after draft after draft. It was worth it.

The conversation around gender “is dominated by those who can tolerate and thrive in it. It is conducted by the voices of those who are able to survive speech and its consequences,” Fall says. “But it is a conversation that is, by necessity, reductive. We need teams and groups and identities, not just to belong to, but as mental objects to manipulate and wield. If we tried to hold 10 million unique experiences of gender in our mind they would sift through our fingers and roll away.”
Such a conversation around gender is not particularly conducive to those who are figuring out their gender in public, as all trans people must do eventually. It’s especially not conducive to artists who are exploring their gender in their art, under even greater degrees of public scrutiny. Which is to say: That conversation is not conducive to people like Fall.
“We make boxes that seem to enclose a satisfying number of human experiences, and then we put labels on those and argue about them instead,” she says. “The boxes change over time, according to a process which is governed by, as far as I can tell, cycles of human suffering: We realize that forcing people into the last set of boxes was painful and wrong, we wring our hands, we fold up some new boxes and assure ourselves that this time we got it right, or at least right enough for now. Because we need the boxes to argue over. I do not want to be in a box. I want to sift through your fingers, to vanish, to be unseen.”

Dear Olivia Rodrigo: Ignore the internet. "Originality" is overrated. (Vox, July 1)

While the Isabel Fall piece was blowing up, I also published this series of thoughts on the very brief summer argument over whether pop star Olivia Rodrigo is a plagiarist. It allowed me to crystallize some thoughts I've been having about how often people treat "originality" as some sort of sacred aspiration when it's usually not worth worrying about. Also, this is just a great lede. I'm sorry. It is.

How do you do, fellow kids? It’s me, your friend Emily VanDerWerff, here to rap at ya about the concept of “originality” in art and why it’s overrated.

M. Night Shyamalan’s Old, HBO’s The White Lotus, and the existential terror of right now (Vox, August 6)

My long-time editor Jen Trolio, whom I had worked with since 2015, moved on to another job late this year, after six and a half years of developing the kind of writer-editor mind-meld that is so rare to find in journalism. I miss her terribly. (She took another job at Vox Media, so I can still bother her all the time. Don't worry.) A piece about how Old and The White Lotus are kind of the same thing is the sort of story I would pitch to her almost as a dare. She would enter the conversation a skeptic, then help me whip my latest bizarre idea into shape. Did I mention how much I miss her?

Both Old and The White Lotus were produced under similar Covid-19 safety protocols (an isolated location, a small cast of actors, lots of filming outdoors). Both are informed by their respective filming bubbles, and both are also interested in the ways the world feels a little less “normal” with every day. Both are soaked through with pre-apocalyptic dread, and both prominently feature an ocean that looms in the background, occasionally sweeping a smartphone away or washing a dead body onto the shore. It’s not that far a stretch to suggest those moments are provoked by anxiety over rising sea levels.

The ghost (Episodes, October 4)

I love this newsletter because I can write rambling personal essays in it. I don't know any other platform that would let me knit together college theater ghosts and trans identities and adolescent trauma, so I'm glad I have this one.

Every college theater department has a theater ghost, and South Dakota State University's was no different.
Our ghost was named George, and he haunted Doner Auditorium, the lonely old mainstage theater where we put on most of our shows. (Before you ask, it's pronounced like the word "donor.") Built in 1912 and originally intended as a space where all students could gather at once, Doner was a quirky place, with terrible sightlines and a number of audience seats behind poles. The only way to load in scenery was to lift it up over an outdoor fire escape, then squeeze it in through some double doors. Doner was never meant to be a theater, not really. But we all learned to mold ourselves to its shape.

The four F’s of trauma response and the four Roy kids of Succession (Vox, November 14)

This article was another one that proved unexpectedly enormous. Viewing Succession via the lens of abuse has been a fruitful critical process for me, and lots of other people have found it helpful, too. I kind of hate how quickly the internet boiled this article down to "this Roy kid equals this trauma response," when I really did try to include all the nuance I possibly could, but that's just how the discourse crumbles.

“Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn” are sometimes called the four F’s of trauma or stress responses. What’s fascinating about this breakdown in Succession terms is that there are also four Roy siblings, and each one of them corresponds to a different F almost exactly. You can trace the siblings’ individual F responses across the run of the show, but they’re especially visible in “Retired Janitors of Idaho.”

The modern family (Vox, November 25)

This piece is the last article Jen and I ever worked on together. The headline is hers, and it's one of my favorites. It also benefited considerably from Vox's main features editor, Lavanya Ramanathan, who convinced me to cut an entire section. (She does that a lot.)

We are, in 2021, somewhat more acquainted with the ways that concepts like toxic relationships and gaslighting can warp families beyond recognition and turn these bonds sinister. Many people are conscious of the idea of setting boundaries, and understand that the definition of family can be elastic enough to include, say, beloved friends. None of these ideas are new, but the language we’re using to talk about them has a clinically detached vibe that allows us to confront incredibly painful experiences with some degree of distance. It feels precise; it captures an inexact idea we know to be true in our bones: Sometimes, family isn’t worth it.
But what do we mean when we say that? Just what is a family anyway?

Too many movies right now are “about trauma.” The Matrix Resurrections actually does the work. (Vox, December 24)

At the start of this piece, I mentioned that there were times when I felt like I might not make it out of 2021 alive. Those feelings got particularly acute in the summer, and when the first trailer for The Matrix Resurrections came out, I was at my lowest ebb. I ended up fixating on the movie as something to look forward to, waiting for me at the end of the year. If I could just make it to December, I would get to see a new Matrix movie. And wouldn't that be cool? My therapist Melissa agreed it would be very cool.

I made it to December. The demons started to lift, ever so slightly. And when I finally saw Resurrections, I was shocked to learn that the exact kind of trauma therapy I had been through was featured in the film. It felt, for all the world, like the universe handing me a gift on a silver platter.

I have made a point of publishing weirdly personal pop culture riffs on Christmas Eve in recent years. This one is my favorite.

But I also don’t understand the goals of CPT, not really. My therapist is currently using CPT to help me move past some pretty severe childhood trauma stemming from abuse. I know it’s working. I know I’m exiting 2021 in a much better place than I entered it. Maybe that should be enough. But I also feel a primal need to know what’s happening.
I have done enough research into CPT to understand what my therapist is doing, but reading about these techniques is very different from experiencing them. The effect of CPT is very much like talking yourself out of believing the simulation is real because that’s what’s really happening. Your brain has conjured up something terrifying; you talk yourself out of the past and back into the present.
So when Neo’s therapist uses common trauma therapy techniques to convince Neo that his experiences in the Matrix are just traumatic hallucinations and regurgitations of past events he really doesn’t understand, when we know he’s stuck in the Matrix, just what is this movie trying to say about trauma therapy?

And that's a wrap on 2021!

There will be some changes to this newsletter in 2022, to help me keep a more consistent publishing schedule. I'll send out a missive to that effect next week.

In the meantime, thank you so much for reading. Knowing you're out there has kept me going, sometimes literally. I'm so glad to have you all in my corner.

—Em