On Writing Begin Transmission: The Trans Allegories of The Matrix

Begin Transmission: The Trans Allegories of The Matrix was a project unlike anything I’ve ever written before. It wasn’t something I sat down and wrote all at once, or even chapter by chapter. It wasn’t even something that I sat down and decided to write. Although I did decide to do the sitting part, I mean… have you tried it? Sitting’s great!

But the book was such a unique creature all on its own. It began as a series of essays that I thought would only be one essay but somehow ended up being twenty-four. I feel that you cannot blame me for this explosion of essays, however. It’s not my fault the Matrix films are packed to the gills with the specificity, heart, and beauty of trans existence. That one’s on the Wachowskis.

When you’re writing for an internet or mobile audience, it’s not the same as writing for a book audience. They expect, and read, things differently. And though I’ve been writing weekly essays about trans existence for years now, writing non-fiction still feels like going to visit the new kid who just moved in down the block. Their house is weird and everything’s in a strange place and why do you keep your silverware in the wrong drawer? Things make much more sense in the scripted fiction home I live in!

So if I want to talk about the process of writing this book, I have to ask you to imagine watching the same movie for ten hours straight. Not with repeat viewings, mind you. Just one movie over the course of ten hours, because that’s what I did. I had to pause it so often to jot down notes, or questions, or do research on something that I wanted to understand better.

And what I’d end up with was twenty pages of half-sentences and vague ideas, questions to myself so cryptically worded I couldn’t decipher them, and a lot of doodles (okay there were no doodles, I typed my notes as I watched, but the doodles were there in my mind, I assure you).

I’d then begin the long process of sifting through them, figuring out not just what the movie was saying in terms of its allegory but what I wanted to say about what it was saying via its allegory. And I’d turn those notes into (hopefully) coherent thoughts and sentences.

And I’d then have to break them up and arrange them for optimum social media reading, and also find the places where I wanted to break for the week so that both I and my readers weren’t overwhelmed. 

And I had to repeat all of that four more times to cover every movie in the series.

And then (then!) I had to take those twenty-four social media essays and recombine them into a book, expanding (because I had more room) and explaining (because I don’t know if you’ve noticed this before, but books actually cannot link to articles and other internet ephemera for background or related information! Someone should get on that, books are so low-tech).

I’ve been so deep into these movies for so long, and have written about them, and then deconstructed my writing about them, and then reconstructed my deconstructed writing about them. 

Which seems to me a very inefficient way to write a book. 

I think it made for a very good one, though, and I’m not sure it could have been written any other way. I didn’t know there was enough for a book until I’d already finished writing it. I don’t think I could have sat down (well, again, the sitting I could do) and wrote this book as a book from the start. I’m not sure I would have even known how to begin.

Anyway, that’s the process I went through when I accidentally wrote a book without meaning to. And I never ever had to think “oh god I have to write more than sixty thousand words? I primarily write scripts for a reason, they’re short and snappy! This is cruel and inhumane!” 

Honestly, I can’t recommend not having to stress over that enough. It’s the tops!

And it leaves lots more time for sitting.

—

Tilly Bridges is one part of the trans woman / cis woman writing team (with her wife Susan) and creators of comics, screenplays, teleplays and audio dramas. On June 27 the , Bridges released BEGIN TRANSMISSION – The Trans Allegories of the Matrix, tracking one person’s transition journey — from Thomas Anderson, to Neo, to Trinity.
Making award-winning audio drama via their production company Pendant Productions since 2004, Tilly and her wife have had six shows crack Apple Podcasts’ top 60 scripted sci-fi shows of all time.” Tilly and Susan are also head writers of the 2023 Nebula Awards and are presently writing for the new Monster High animated series and the Star Trek Adventures an Fallout role-playing games. She lives in Los Angeles.

Begin Transmission: The trans allegories of The Matrix

Trans woman and screenwriter Tilly Bridges takes you through the trans allegories of the Matrix franchise, with deep dives into The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, The Animatrix, The Matrix Revolutions, and The Matrix Resurrections, tracking one person’s transition journey – from Thomas Anderson, to Neo… to Trinity.

Each movie’s allegory is deeply layered, building from movie to movie, and speaks to a different aspect of trans existence. You’ll learn how color is used to convey more than you realize, how Neo’s psyche is personified in the people around him, how no other mass media franchise speaks as truly, deeply, and honestly to the trans experience, and exactly why these movies are beloved and vital to the trans community (and their cis allies).

Free your mind, and see just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

BUY HERE

Category: On Writing