cool, I’ll drive you there

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

3.18, “Something to Talk A-Boot″ - The Life and Crimes of TJ Kippen, Aged 14

It’s great that this whole story starts off with TJ and Buffy again. This is their last big interaction in the series and it’s a wonderful way to show how far they’d come. I don’t know how intentional it is, but it’s a really nice touch that their conversation on the field has TJ sympathizing with Buffy because she can’t play basketball. Their relationship in this series starts with him trying to prevent her from playing basketball and ends with him doing something kind for her – to his own detriment – because he knows she can’t play.

I like Buffy mentioning how far TJ had come at The Spoon as well and Cyrus taking a small victory lap. It’s a nice reminder that Cyrus spent a long time defending TJ and it paid off.

It’s also a little bit of foreshadowing because he, very literally, ends up having to defend TJ again, when he learns TJ’s in danger of being severely punished for doing something good. One of the constants of their relationship throughout the show is when Cyrus feels TJ is being misunderstood, he won’t hesitate to stand up for him. He knows who TJ is as a person and he’ll fight to prove it to others.

The court scene is, admittedly, very silly. It’s Cyrus turned up to 110%. But it also comes off as sweet because he, in his own Cyrus way, is giving his all to help TJ.

I enjoy their retelling of what happened. It’s that sort of trope where a team of two who work so well together try to fast talk their way through a situation, bouncing the story back and forth.

I like TJ’s reaction to Cyrus cross-examining himself. It’s mostly reads like, “Oh God, I’m definitely getting suspended and kicked off the team” but it also has a little bit of, “I can’t believe this is the kid I’ve fallen for.” When Gus asks if there’s any chance this could be sped up, TJ is just like, “Nope, this is Cyrus. You just gotta let it be.”

The plot wraps up in a pretty silly way as well. Anytime a story ends with the heroes failing and slipping out of trouble because the antagonists go, “Ah, there was never actually any danger to begin with!” you kind of tend to roll your eyes. But it started from a sort of wacky premise, so you can forgive it for ending that way.

The joke about TJ asking Cyrus to visit him on the inside got a lot of play because that is like the thing you say to your spouse when you’re going away to prison. It’s kind of a surprisingly gay joke for him to make.

But I think beyond that, why I also really enjoy that exchange, is because it shows again how TJ and Cyrus get each other. The first thing TJ does after being freed from the fear of suspension and being kicked off the team is launch into a bit with Cyrus. And Cyrus jumps right in with the clever line about the hall pass hidden in a cake.

Both of them have a pretty great sense of humor. TJ tends to be more sarcastic, but he isn’t afraid to be goofy, especially not with Cyrus. Cyrus tends to be goofier, but can be cutting with his sarcasm when he wants to. The key is that they know how to match each other and play off each other so well.

If you can find someone like that, who shares your sense of humor, who will follow you on things and play with you in bits, who can make you smile and make you laugh, then you’ve found someone who’s on your same wavelength. And, honestly, I think that’s one of the most important things you can have in a relationship. Someone who gets you.

So, was this whole storyline pretty silly? Yes, absolutely.