that is a great name! i love that name! you do?

do you remember how in kindergarten, how you’d meet a kid and know nothing about them, then ten seconds later you’d be playing like you were best friends, because you didn’t have to be anyone but yourself?

for carlos, meeting ej for the first time felt like that. and maybe the feeling was more than reciprocated.

chapter 1/3

Andi: Spends all day making crafts and DIY stuff!! Pretty much redecorates her entire room. She also facetimes her friends pretty much everyday. Her, Bex, and Bowie are all really bored one day, and they construct a gigantic pillow/blanket fort with all of the pillows and blankets in the house. Loves playing the new Animal Crossing. 

Buffy: Plays basketball in her backyard. Constantly complains about being bored and missing her friends. Movie marathons with her mom. Just wants to go out and do something, but she can’t, so instead she tries to find new hobbies (it doesn’t work out too well). Listens to lots of music while dancing and singing along. 

Cyrus: Checking the news for updates 24/7. He is constantly lecturing his friends and family on social distancing and protecting themselves. Is always washing his hands and wiping things down. Anxious all the time. He talks on TJ with the phone for hours at night even though they don’t really have anything to say to each other. 

Jonah: Really worried about his friends and family getting sick (cue his friends comforting him). Gets claustrophobia from being inside all the time and ends up going into his backyard to just chill. Writes lots of songs and practices guitar. He also watches a bunch of Youtube videos. 

Marty: oblivious at first to social distancing (until Buffy and the others tell him about it), plays video games with Jonah and TJ a lot. He’s also addicted to the new Animal Crossing. Makes a lot of tik tok videos and blogs a bunch of stupid challenges. 

TJ: Feels lonely, just wants things to go back to normal. Watches a bunch of conspiracy videos until early hours in the morning. Has a super messed up sleep schedule. Practices basketball trick shots in his yard and sends them to Buffy (only for her to send one back that’s better). Learns to bake. Finally gets to listen to his vinyls that he never has time to listen to. 

Amber: Dresses up and puts on makeup for fun, does mock photo shoots. Sends her looks to Andi (and Andi sends some in return). She cuts and dyes her hair pink one day for a change. Still works at The Spoon and is lowkey nervous about getting sick. Her parents are still fighting, so she feels upset and alone sometimes. 

This post is scheduled to go up on August 13th, 2019, at 8:20 PM. It only feels right that I retire this blog on the one year anniversary of that moment.

Okay. It’s not that dramatic. I’m not deleting my account or logging out forever or anything. I’ll be around. I’ll check in and like some posts and hang out like the kid who graduated high school but won’t leave. He keeps coming back and acting chummy with the teachers and it’s like, doesn’t he have better stuff to do?

The point is, my queue is depleted, my drafts are empty. I don’t have a shift in fandoms planned. I don’t have anything planned. It’s time for me to turn my attention to other things and stop thinking about this show and writing about it and working on this blog.

So that’s basically the tl;dr of this whole deal. I’m going to write some rambling personal stuff so if you don’t care, which most people probably won’t, then thanks for reading and thanks for all the memories. It’s been fun.

Okay, lemme ramble. And if you’ve read this blog for a while, you’ve probably heard some of this already, but whatever, this is my goodbye post.

Way back in October of 2017, I came across a post on a website for TV news that said “Disney Channel to Feature Its First Gay Main Character in Andi Mack Season 2″. I didn’t know what Andi Mack was, and I hadn’t watched Disney Channel in well over a decade. I remembered reading about the two moms on Good Luck Charlie when it happened, but I also remembered that it was, you know, mostly nothing. A lot of controversy for what was just a quick little thing. But this headline noted that it was a Main Character. And I’m reading the article and it’s talking about how he’s going to have this journey in season two and the producers had talked to GLAAD and other groups to get it right, and I’m like, wow, this is pretty cool, this really seems like they’re putting some respect into this. (I’m also thinking about how much young, closeted me would’ve killed for something like this.)

So I set my DVR to record it not knowing what to expect. Mostly thinking it was just going to be your standard Disney Channel show: cheesy and corny and bad jokes, but I’ll catch the coming out scene and it’ll be cool to see how they handle it and that’ll probably be that.

And then I’m watching the episode and I’m like, this is… not bad? In fact, more than not bad, this is way better than it has any right to be. And then I got to the coming out scene, which was so well done, and I’m just… shocked. This is like Pixar. Like, it’s for kids, but I can watch it as an adult and pick up on themes and subtleties. This is not like the shows from my childhood. Where was this show when I was growing up?

Next thing I know I’m watching the next episode. And the next one. And I’m starting to care for these characters. I can forgive a lot of issues with plot if I care about the characters and what this show did, maybe as well as any show on television, is made you care for the characters, from top to bottom.

So now I’m watching the show regularly. At some point, I went back and binged through season one on DisneyNow. I’m in, as a casual viewer at this point at least.

And then I get to 2.11, and the swing scene happens, and I watch it wordlessly, and it ends, and I feel like I’m losing my mind. I could not believe what I just saw. I thought for sure this show was just going to have a couple of coming out scenes and that would be the end of it. Had I really just watched a scene that was hinting at a gay romance?

I wanted so badly to talk about it with someone else to see if they were seeing what I was seeing, but, as you may not be surprised to learn, none of my adult friends were watching Andi Mack. So I started looking around online. And I eventually found my way here, to this site, to the tag. And people were seeing what I was seeing. And people were excited about it, and I was like, okay, cool, I might’ve found my community.

So I started lurking around here. And I would check in after 2.12 and 2.13, and I was really starting to enjoy it. Most of the stuff I watch that I care about I’ll watch with friends or family and talk about it with them, so I never really thought being a part of a fandom would be worthwhile. Plus, I’d hear about shipping wars and other nonsense like that, and I’m like, I’m not going to make an account to argue with people over fictional characters’ relationships.

But what I was finding about this community was that it was more positive than that. There were arguments, sure. You’re going to get them in any group of people. But for the most part, people just seemed happy. They were posting theories and memes and gifs and jokes and fanfics. And they were celebrating the characters and developments. I don’t know if that’s special to the Andi Mack fandom or not, but it seemed special to me.

That’s around when I started thinking about making an account, during that hiatus between 2A and 2B. But I was like, do I want to commit to this? What’s the point of my account? What do I want to say? And at some point in the hiatus, I was checking the tag, and I saw a gifset. It was by an account, since deleted and gone, but who, at the time, was very prominent in the fandom. And the gifset was all about attacking Tyrus. It was trying to take everything nice about what had happened between TJ and Cyrus and stomp on it. Tyrus was like a little baby ship at this point. People were just starting to get into it, the numbers weren’t that big. There wasn’t even really a name for the ship back then. The Tyrus tag was mostly that professional wrestler and the CJ tag was even worse. And this account had decided they were going to use their platform to try and make this small group of people in the fandom feel bad about liking their ship. I just remember thinking, why? Why be like that? It just seemed so unnecessary. And for the briefest of moments, I thought, okay, maybe I’ll make an account to be a troll and argue this stuff. And then I was like, nah, that’s just going to make the tag worse. When you see someone trying to ruin things for other people, you can give them attention and power, or you can just do your own thing.

So what I decided to do instead was to make an account that would add to the positivity I had been seeing. To just be one of the many voices doing fun stuff to drown out the bad. I could put out dumb posts to hopefully make people laugh, or eventually start writing recaps to give people something to do after watching the episode. There wasn’t really any bigger goal than that. Kill some time while celebrating the show and making the tag a more fun place, if only incrementally.

I’d like to think I did that. That I haven’t written or made too many things that have bummed people out and that most of my posts have hopefully made things better for people who wanted to hang out on here and talk about the show.

That’s all. At the end of everything, that was all. Just try to leave a net-positive wherever you go.

So that’s why I joined tumblr. Here’s why I stayed.

I am an unemployed writer. I’m an employed something else, but I would like to be an employed writer and I am currently not. And what that really means is I’m an unread writer. It means I write stuff and I try to convince people to read it and buy it, but most of the time they don’t. Most of the time, my stuff sits around waiting and hoping to be read. And when that’s the case, you can start to feel doubt.

What I didn’t realize when I started this account was that I would also be getting positivity back. I mean, I probably should have. It was the whole reason I started this, because I liked the positivity here. I guess I just didn’t expect it to be returned to me.

But it has. It has tremendously. Just writing this silly stuff that I do and putting it out there and getting feedback on it has meant so much to me. People saying something I’ve written is funny or interesting or just saying that they enjoyed it is such a confidence boost. You feel like, okay, people like my jokes or the way I think or whatever. There’s an audience for me somewhere. People who will get me. I just need to stick with it.

That’s what you all have been for me this last year and a half. More than just making this a fun place to share our love of this show, you’ve made this a place for me to feel seen.

I try not to tie too much of my self-esteem to the amount of interaction my posts get. (Seriously, don’t do that, it can be really unhealthy. I’m like, if a post flops, it flops. No biggie. Move on to the next one.) But every note I do get on something I’ve written lets me know I’ve done something right. The reblogs, the likes, the follows, the nice messages in my inbox, the comments on the posts. Any of it. All of it. It lets me know I’ve been read. It makes me feel like I’ve made a connection. And that means the world to me.

So thank you, to any and all of you who participated in this thing with me. Thank you for reading. Thank you for being a part of my experience on here. Thank you for being so cool that I wanted to join your group in the first place and thank you for being so great afterwards that I’m eternally happy I did.

It’s meant more to me than you could possibly know.

Keep the positivity.

-Jay

3.20, “We Were Here” - Is There Anything You Want To Tell Me?

I started writing this post a while ago.

I started writing it way before the episode aired. Before I even saw the bench promo.

I started writing it because the truth was, whatever ended up being the culmination of this story, however that manifested itself in the final episode, as long as it respected the characters and got them together, it didn’t matter as much as the fact that this all happened in the first place.

Don’t get me mistaken. The bench scene blew me away. I think it’s perhaps one of the most beautiful scenes the show has ever done. I still choke up thinking about it even now.

It starts with the two talking about Kira and TJ says she’s not a nice person, but Cyrus reminds him of their past: there was a time when people believed he wasn’t a nice person either.

TJ says that sometimes there’s a nice person on the inside trying to get out. He wasn’t happy when he was a jerk, not genuinely, because he wasn’t being himself, in multiple ways. He was actually, deep down, a nice person, but he was trapped in this shell of anger he’d built for himself as a defense mechanism. And he didn’t have an escape. He needed someone else to see it, to look past his shell and see him as a person. He needed someone to give him the push to start bettering himself, to start letting that nice person out.

Cyrus says he knows that, but, really, he’s always known that. He’s always believed that about people, TJ most of all. He wouldn’t have spent so much time being there for TJ and defending him if he didn’t know that to be true.

They move on to the next thing: TJ’s name.

On the surface, this seems like a silly conversation, but there is so much more to it. This is TJ’s big secret (except for, you know, the other one). It’s something only his family knows because they know by default, but it’s something he’s never told anyone else because he’s never been close to or trusted anyone enough to tell them what TJ stands for.

But here he is, staring at Cyrus, and Cyrus is making him smile again by being Cyrus, and he decides, okay, this is the person I can tell this to. And he makes Cyrus swear, and Cyrus does, and because he trusts Cyrus so much, he decides to share.

He tells him it stands for Thelonious Jagger, and for a second it seems like he might regret it, but of course Cyrus isn’t going to judge him for his name. In fact, he loves the name, not just because it’s unique and unusual and has a story behind it, but because TJ chose to tell him it. He chose to entrust him with this knowledge.

So TJ has just shared this secret with Cyrus. A secret he’s had since pretty much three days after he was born. A secret that he’s had some shame about. And what happened? Cyrus was nothing but positive. And he’s looking at him with this warm smile on his face, and TJ realizes, this is it. I have to go for it. I have to know if he likes me like I like him.

It’s one of the scariest things in the world to put yourself out there like that. To take a leap of faith. Even more so when you’re gay. More so when you’re closeted. More so when you don’t know if the other person is gay, too.

But TJ knows that even if Cyrus isn’t gay, he’s not going to judge him. He never has and he never will. So he finds the bravery to make this little hand movement towards him. A subtle but unmistakable gesture. So small, and yet it requires mountains of courage.

And Cyrus sees it, and smiles. His doubts, his fears that he’s been deluding himself, that he’s fallen for another straight boy who’s not going to like him back, they disappear. And he looks at TJ and asks him if there’s anything he wants to tell him.

And TJ says “Yeah.” And that “Yeah” is everything. I want to tell you everything. I want to tell you how much it means to me that you always knew there was a nice person inside trying to get out. That you saw me when no one else did. That you did something as simple and as nice as inviting me to your Bar Mitzvah when you didn’t need to. When I hadn’t given you a lot of reason to. That you helped me accept my dyscalculia. That you pushed me to be a better person. That I’m constantly trying to make myself better because I just want to be the person you’ve always seen in me. I want to tell you how long I’ve liked you and how much I want to hold you hand right now. I want to tell you everything. Is there anything you want to tell me?

Yes. I want to tell you everything. I want to tell you how much it means to me that you taught me how to stand up for myself. That you pushed me out of my comfort zone when I needed it. That you showed me how to somersault. That you gave me confidence and you never judged me either. I want to tell you how much it means to me that you’ve made amends with my friends and that you keep striving to be a better person. I want to tell you how long I’ve liked you. I want to tell you everything.

But they look into each other’s eyes and they know they don’t have to say it. They don’t have to have this conversation because they’ve already had it a dozen times in their lives. He’s with me. You know where to find me. I’m there. There is nothing wrong with you. I can help you with that. You think you know someone. Blueberry macadamia. I talk about you. You’re the only person I can talk to like this. Of course I came. I have an idea for costume day. I’ll drive you there. They don’t have to say anything because they’ve already said everything. They’ve been saying it their entire relationship. They just didn’t know for sure until this moment that the other person was saying it, too.

But now they do, and the only thing left is to hold hands and let go of that breath they’ve been holding in for so long. That breath that contained all of their fears and anxieties about rejection and loss and not being understood. The kind of breath you let out after taking the biggest leap of faith of your life and landing safely on the other side.

And the camera pulls back and retreats into the house, leaving them framed by doors as if the camera’s watching them from afar, like it once did from behind a tree as they sat on the swings in the park. It leaves them alone, just the two of them, in their own special world. They have each other, and that’s all they need.

It’s brilliant. It’s subtle, it’s emotional, it’s stunning. It’s an achievement in writing, directing, editing, and acting. It’s one of my favorite scenes the show has ever done.

But beyond the scene itself, this moment was the end of something truly remarkable. Something I sometimes have a hard time believing really happened.

Cyrus. The gawky Jewish kid. The awkward boy who spent season one being comedic relief and quietly pining after the cool kid. And it’s not like he was a bad character – he was still written and performed well – but he wasn’t a character you would say you’d never seen before.

And then he looks back. And then he comes out to Buffy.

Could you believe? Not just gay-coded. Not just one dimensional comedic relief. A real gay character. A gay character with depth. A gay character who has way more attributes than “being gay.” On Disney Channel of all places.

TJ. The angry jock. The bad-attitude basketball team captain and certainly not a character you would say you’d never seen before.

And then you learn he’s dealing with a learning disability and an internal shame about it. And maybe he’s actually got more depth than you first gave him credit for.

And could you believe this angry jock with dyscalculia takes a liking to the awkward gay kid? Not just for a quick gag. Not for a forgettable c-plot where they’re thrust together to finish a project for Spanish class. A storyline. A storyline that starts with a muffin and blossoms with a chance encounter where they form a bond. A true bond. An unbreakable friendship birthed out of two people helping each other when they needed it the most. And maybe – and, my God, could you believe it, maybe – if you squinted… something more?

And could you believe that storyline would continue? That they would keep helping each other. Teaching each other things. Making each other better.

The angry jock becomes less angry. The awkward gay kid becomes, well, not less awkward, but at least more assured in his awkward self. And the whole time they continue growing closer. And the gay kid moves past his first crush, opening the door to a new world of possibilities. And the jock gets redemption by apologizing through, and talk about unbelievable, a rap.

And could you believe, when that was all said and done, the jock would look back, too? Was it ambiguous? Yes. And yet, for all the immediate ambiguity, for all the doubt we might’ve had in the moment, the thoughts that maybe it might be something else, that we might be heading down a road of disappointment too many of us had been down before… we knew. We knew this wasn’t that. Because we had put our faith in this show before and had been rewarded. We knew this was a sign. A sign for those paying attention, an indication that what this all seemed to be was exactly what it was. The formerly angry, now redeemed jock looked back at the gay kid who had come to mean so much to him and suddenly, there were two gay characters on the show. On Disney Channel of all places.

And then, a season of trials and tribulations, ups and downs, being split apart and coming back together. Growth. Conflict. Surprises. Humor. Basketball tryouts. A gun. The swings. A jersey. A challah. A Shrek reference. A somersault costume that never was. A shirt. A trial. A stolen golf cart. A musical performance.

And a bench.

Could you believe? A year and a half plus of waiting and watching and hoping.

Could you believe it paid off? Could you believe it was worth it? Could you believe we actually got a gay couple?

A gay couple! A gay couple featuring two real characters. Not a one time guest spot. Not a gay character content being alone. Not a bland character who could blend into the wall and fly under the radar. Not a character introduced last minute just to do it. Important, gay characters. Characters with goals. With victories and setbacks. With bright spots and flaws. With backstories. With depth. Main characters. Main, gay characters.

And on the Disney Channel. Just a few years ago, you could barely expect to get anything on the Disney Channel.

And yet, here it was. Of all the places in the world to find this story. This beautiful, emotional, moving, deep, rich, and fulfilling story about two gay kids finding each other through improbable and wonderful circumstances, we found it on the Disney Channel.

3.20, “We Were Here” - Nothing Like You

I was doing okay through the first couple parts of the finale. The opening with Celia, and the stuff about party planning and SAVA, and I was thinking, okay, maybe I can make it through this.

And then this scene happened and it broke me and I don’t think I ever recovered.

This is the first of four scenes in the finale with the major couples on this show, and each one of them is just phenomenal in how perfectly they capture the essence of these relationships and display so beautifully their pasts, presents, and futures.

This scene starts with Bex descending the stairs to the party in her dress, clearly reminiscent of the first party, when Andi did the same.

When the first party took place, Bex was recently returned. She was still living at home, she’d just took a job at the Fringe, and she was just beginning to adjust to being Andi’s mom while still behaving a bit too much like her fun older sister.

And Andi was meeker then – she had lived a pretty sheltered life under Celia’s protective watch – so you can feel that she’s nervous as she comes down the stairs and sort of symbolically enters this new world: a wild party where she’s trying to put herself out there more. Andi asks how she looks and Bex makes the “You look okay… You look amazing!” joke to give her the encouragement she needs.

This time around, the roles are reversed.

Where Andi was wearing a flashy yellow dress, Bex is wearing a wedding dress, which, if not symbolic of settling down per se, is, at the very least, one of the classic symbols of entering a new stage in one’s life.

And she truly is. She’s grown so much since the first party. She has her own home now, she owns a small business, she’s fully embraced being Andi’s mom and she’s now also a wife.

But you can still sense she’s nervous, as Andi was, and not just about how she looks in the dress. She’s entering a new world, too. This one, though, one of maturity.

And this time, Andi makes the “you look decent” joke, which is a cute throwback, but to me the better line is her telling Bex, “If you only knew how beautiful you look.”

I think that sort of nicely calls back a line in the pilot, when Andi is putting herself down after playing frisbee with Jonah for the first time and Bex tells her she can’t see herself. Or, basically, if only you knew how amazing you are. What Bex is telling her at the time is that she needs to know how great she really is, and if Jonah doesn’t see that, someday Andi will meet someone who does see her for how amazing she is.

Like, as Andi points out in this scene, how Bowie sees her.

Andi goes to let Bowie in and he walks in through the same door to Celia’s he used to first walk into their lives once upon a time.

But he, too, has grown. He has a steady job, a place to live. He’s no longer the unreliable, wandering musician. He’s a husband now, and a beloved father, like his father before him, whose tux he now wears.

And Bex and Bowie meet and just look at each other with such a sense of love and amazement and gratitude that this has all worked out as it did.

And through all this, I was still keeping it together. It’s so well done, but I’m like, I’m okay, I’m okay.

And then Andi gets them to do their first dance, and she plays that song, “Never Seen Nothing Like You”. It’s such a sweet, soft song, and the lyrics are so perfect, it’s like it was written just for them.

And I’m remembering the first time the song was played, in Bowie’s video, where he said how important Andi was to him and basically stated his desire to be a part of the family.

And the second time the song was played, following the birthday party the whole family threw for Bowie, and after Andi calls Bowie “dad” for the first time, and basically says without saying “you are a part of this family.”

And now, here it is again, in the finale. And they are the family.

The same song. The same people. The same house. Three different, important points in all their lives and in their journeys.

Bex and Bowie are together now, and Andi is with them, and they are finally the family unit that once seemed so improbable given where they started.

It just so beautifully, wonderfully comes full circle.

Jonah: hey what kind of animal is the Pink Panther