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tjkiahgb · 5 years

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Episode Recap: 3.20, “We Were Here”

Guys, I’m sorry. I know the whole idea is, oh, tjkiahgb does his funny little recap and makes his jokes and all that.

I don’t know what to do about this episode.

I feel like this recap is just going to be a bunch of screencaps and me writing “I’m emotional!” underneath each of them. I’m going to have to do 15 paragraphs on Celia in a dinosaur costume just to have anything to say.

Alright, well, let’s see if I can pull myself together long enough to do this.

OH MY GOD, IT’S THE LAST “PREVIOUSLY ON ANDI MACK” WE’RE EVER GOING TO SEE. I NEED TO LIE DOWN!

Okay. I’m back. Let’s try this again.

For the last time, our episode begins at Celia’s house.

Celia’s all packed and ready for a trip. She gives Bex her orders and lays down the law.

Bex is like, come on, mom, you know we’re going to have a party.

And Celia’s like, yeah.

Consider this my wedding gift.

Celia departs for places unknown and...

OH NO IT’S THE LAST TIME WE’LL EVER SEE THE INTRO! HELP MEEEEE!

At Bex’s, Andi and Bex gather supplies for the party.

Bex is like, oh thank God we still have those. It’s not a party until the cheaply made SWAG sunglasses make an appearance.

They start making a list of the essentials for a party: food, balloons, glow-sticks.

Bex says she’s been meaning to get one of those. So, wait, she doesn’t already have one in the apartment’s emergency preparedness kit? What happens if there’s a natural disaster?

Bowie wanders in and they let him know there’s going to be a party. Bex and Andi start wondering what they’re going to wear to the party. Andi runs off to decide, but Bowie holds Bex back for a second to talk to her.

Bowie goes to retrieve a letter he brought in from the mailbox.

But, more importantly:

THE CAT! An appearance in the finale for The Cat! He’s been here since season one, he deserves it!

Bowie tells Bex there’s a situation. Andi has received a letter from SAVA.

The two wonder about the letter. Acceptance letters usually have a lot of paperwork and such in them and arrive in bigger envelopes. Rejection letters, on the other hand, are usually just a piece of paper that says “Thanks but no thanks.” on it.

They worry about how sad it’ll make Andi if it’s a rejection letter, and don’t want to ruin her night with that possibility, so they decide to keep it quiet for now.

Then Andi appears and Bex sits on the letter. Andi tells her she found something for her to wear, so Bex gets up and Bowie jumps on the letter like it’s a grenade.

Once he thinks the coast is clear, he gets off of it, but then Andi appears again and Bowie crumples up the letter in his hands to hide it and does this completely natural thing...

Oh, don’t mind me, just listening to my hands.

Andi tells him she picked out something for him to wear, too, and runs off.

Bowie examines the state of the letter.

On the bright side, if it is a rejection letter, you can always say this is how it showed up and trash SAVA for lacking the decency to take any care in mailing their letters. I mean, if this is how they mail stuff, imagine how little care they show in other places! Who would want to go to such a school anyway, right?

That night, everything is in place for the party.

Bex comes walking down the stairs in her wedding dress, which looks nice but feels impractical for a night of partying.

Andi tells her how beautiful she looks.

There’s a knock at the door. Andi lets Bowie in. He’s wearing his father’s tux.

Andi starts up some music and invites the bride and groom to the floor for their first dance.

And-- oh GOD it’s the song from the first season.

Well, we’re six minutes in and I guess this is going to mark the point of the episode where I start going under and just never recover.

The party is in full swing now. Cyrus finds Buffy watching Marty from across the room as he chats up another girl. Cyrus asks her if things are still weird between the two of them but she doesn’t know. He asks her what she would like things to be like between them.

Buffy feels that Marty doesn’t like her anymore. Like like. Cyrus doesn’t believe that’s true, but Buffy says Marty said it himself.

He’s like, you’re really going to believe the word of a known liar like Marty? If he’s so honest, what’s his last name? And don’t you dare say Fromdaparty.

Then TJ walks in and Buffy’s like, perfect timing, let’s get off my thing and onto yours, Cyrus.

And TJ’s like...

*waves in goofy*

And Cyrus is like...

*waves in goofy back*

Look, in fairness, there’s no way to wave enthusiastically without looking goofy. That’s why we invented that like, hand up thing, where you just put your palm out and hold it there for a second. But that’s for business scenarios and not parties. You’re at a party and see the boy you’re crushing on, you do a goofy, enthusiastic wave. It’s how it goes.

Then Kira walks in and the atmosphere instantly drops.

If some random kid came running in and shouted that they found a dead opossum on the floor of the bathroom, it could not have made the mood in the room worse. There’s a non-zero chance it could’ve made things better because at least we’re wondering where the opossum came from now.

Buffy assures Cyrus that the reason TJ is hanging out with Kira is not because he likes her, but he doesn’t agree. He thinks that ship has sailed.

So Buffy and Cyrus commiserate, both thinking they’ve lost their opportunity to get their man.

Later, Kira and TJ watch from the sidelines as the others dance.

How did Cyrus take and pass a dance class and get worse at dancing?

Kira asks TJ why he doesn’t want to dance. He says he just doesn’t want to.

Kira notes Cyrus dancing and starts to laugh.

TJ’s like, what’s so funny? Kira says look at Cyrus.

TJ’s like, yeah, he’s great, but Kira’s still laughing at him. TJ tells her she can’t do that -- laugh at someone for their dancing. Kira’s like, you thought it was funny. TJ’s like, no, I thought it was fun. There’s a big difference.

So, Kira’s like, okay, here we go again.

She says that if she made him pick between her and Cyrus, he’d pick Cyrus. TJ’s like, the fact that you’re even going to the place where you’d think of making me pick proves how wrong this all is.

Kira says that answers her question and exits the party.

The party continues on.

Electronic music starts, the lights go down, and the dinosaur descends the staircase.

Nice to get one last sentence in before the end where I can write what’s literally happening on the screen, take a step back and go, what the hell did I just write?

Everyone gathers round to watch the neon dinosaur dance. They chant “Go Andi! Go Andi!”

Then Andi shows up.

Their next guess is Jonah, but then he shows up, too. He couldn’t find the dinosaur costume because it had been stolen by the mystery dancer.

The music ends and the audience cheers for the dancing dinosaur, who finally reveals herself, ripping off her face mask like a Scooby Doo villain.

Everyone gasps. They’re like, uh oh, the party police are here and they showed up in a T-Rex costume for some reason.

But then Celia’s like...

Everyone wants to know what Celia’s doing back. She’s like, well, I got four hours out and realized I’d rather be attending one of these parties than on a vacation somewhere so I turned around and came back and snuck into the house through a second story window so no one would see me and inflated this dinosaur suit and put it on and waited for the right music to start and shut off the lights and came downstairs and performed this dance routine. Was it worth it? I spent the whole four hours on the way back practicing that “No parties, just kidding” thing.

And everyone’s like, yeah, it was alright.

And Celia’s like, okay, cool.

She’s like, I’m glad I tried fun. And then she walks off and that’s the last we ever see of her. From strict mom to dancing grandma in a dinosaur suit. What a ride. I hope she enjoys her vacation.

Later on, TJ has gotten on stage with a piano. He starts playing the intro to “Born This Way”.

TJ, NO! We don’t have the money for the rights to that song! Are you crazy? Can I interest you in some generic production music that can be purchased for a tenth the cost? Maybe something in the public domain? How about we all sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”?

But it’s too late. TJ, to celebrate his liberation from Kira, elects to come out to the entire party by showing he knows how to play the gayest song of all time on the piano by heart.

The whole party is like, oh, this is nice. He’s playing some music. And then Cyrus is like...

SURPRISE! I have a microphone and this is a performance now!

Amber starts singing, too. TJ calls up Jonah and/or Bowie to get on stage and provide some guitar, but then Bex is like...

SURPRISE! I have a guitar and I know how to play it!

Jonah and Andi get on stage and get thrown mics.

Buffy grabs a mic and joins in. The entire cast can sing! It’s a musical miracle.

Cyrus joins TJ on the stage and they sing together.

Bowie at some point also wandered up with his own guitar and joined Bex.

Everyone performs in the song, except for Marty, who just kinda sings from the sidelines like, “Eh, this is nice but pop’s not my genre.”

The song comes to a finish.

Everyone celebrates how good that was despite it never having been rehearsed.

A gosh-dang musical miracle, I tell ya.

Later on outside, Jonah finds Andi and tells her he has something for her. Andi immediately panics. Jonah reassures her it is not one of his famous terrible gifts, like the piece of rice with Andi’s misspelled name on it. He asks if that was the worst present ever.

Jonah says this isn’t a present anyway.

He found their bracelet. The one thought lost for so long. Well, he didn’t find it.

Oh, Judy Bartholomew, you never cease to impress!

Jonah offers it back to Andi, who promises to make it disappear forever. But Jonah says, he actually wanted to know if he could keep it. It’s a great bracelet and he’s always liked it.

Andi puts the bracelet on him. She wonders what things would’ve been like if they’d met when they were older and more mature.

Well, older, at least.

Back inside the party, Buffy finds Marty at his usual party position, hanging around the food table. She starts reenacting the conversation from their first meeting. They get to the “eat a live frog” bit and Marty can’t continue.

Buffy tells him that she didn’t think that. She found him funny. Marty warns her that she is dangerously close to complimenting him. She tells him it was a compliment.

Buffy wants to try having a conversation to see if they can. So they ask each other how their day was and both agree they had fine days. Marty asks her what the next step is and Buffy decides the next step is to leave.

Buffy heads outside, but Marty chases after her. He says he thinks he messed it up and wants to try the straightforward thing again. He tells her to go first.

Yep, that’s straightforward. Marty compliments her on how straightforward it was. Buffy tells him that’s all she wanted him to know, in case he ever changes his mind about liking her, but Marty’s like...

He goes in for a kiss.

They smile at each other and head back into the party.

Cyrus, meanwhile, heads to the backyard where he finds TJ sitting on...

T H E B E N C H.

Cyrus asks what happened to Kira. TJ says he poured water on her and she melted. Boy’s dropping Judy Garland movie references now. Really laying it on thick.

TJ says Kira’s not a nice person, but Cyrus reminds him people used to say that about him, almost verbatim.

Cyrus says he knows that, but there are things he didn’t know, like that TJ played piano. TJ tells him his mom is a piano teacher. Cyrus didn’t know that either. TJ promises he’s not that mysterious, just ask him anything.

TJ panics. He’s like, oh, you went right for the kill shot. He doesn’t want to say what his name is. He says there are only like five living souls on this planet who know what TJ stands for, and they are all of Kippen blood.

TJ’s really digging himself a hole here with Cyrus. The more you sell the mystery of this, the more a kid like Cyrus will want to know.

“My name’s only ever been said out loud once before, by the doctor who filled out the birth certificate, and then he disappeared, never to be seen again! Mythology says that my name used to be sung by the Sirens, who’d use it to lure unsuspecting sailors to their dooms! Legend says there’s a secret cave in the Gobi Desert, and that if you shout my name into it, a trap door will open revealing billions of dollars in hidden treasure! So surely you must understand, I can’t possibly tell you what it is.”

Cyrus says if he doesn’t learn what TJ’s full name is, he will literally die of curiosity. Now faced with the impending death of his crush, TJ realizes he must make the ultimate sacrifice to save his life and tell him what his name is. First, he swears him to secrecy. Cyrus swears.

TJ tells him his parents were way into music, so they named him after their favorite artists:

This is where I’d make a joke like, “It could’ve been worse, they could’ve named him...” but I don’t have a way to finish that sentence. I guess like, Beethoven Mozart, so then he couldn’t even use his initials or they’d be B.M.?

You know, though, it’s such an odd name, it becomes immediately endearing.

To Cyrus as well. They didn’t come all this way, accepting each other through everything, to be stopped in the finale by bad dancing or weird names.

TJ says his grandparents stepped in to intervene. They were like, this is preposterous and we’re not going to spend what short time remains of our lives on so many syllables! He’s TJ!

TJ asks if there’s anything else Cyrus wants to know and then he makes just the ever-so-slightest of hand movements toward him and I’m telling you right now, I don’t know if I will ever be okay watching this.

I’m serious. I don’t know when I’ll be able to watch this scene and see that hand movement and not get emotional. Definitely not now, and I can’t imagine anytime soon.

Cyrus sees his hand. He asks TJ is there’s anything else he wants to tell him.

TJ asks Cyrus if there’s anything he wants to tell him.

They grab each other’s hand.

And both let out this nervous exhale.

And they hold each other’s hand and smile at each other as the screen fades to black.

Just the two of them, together, in their own little world.

I get that people might have wanted more, more words, more actions, and I don’t necessarily disagree. I don’t think there’s a hypothetical version of this scene that has more and is bad or anything.

But, in my opinion, I think this is brilliant. In its subtlety and in its simplicity, this is one of the sweetest, most graceful, most touching ways I’ve ever seen two people express their affection for one another. That they’ve been through so much, and that they know each other so well that they can just look at each other and only need to say yes to tell the other one all they need to know, to tell each other everything? I’m not going to label two middle schoolers as “in love” because, look, they’re kids and it’s middle school. But what I will say is this: that’s what love is. When someone knows you so intensely and so intimately that you don’t have to say it. When all you have to do is look at someone to know. It’s a connection that goes beyond words. It’s beautiful.

Or, in other words, I’m emotional!

Later, after the party has ended, the GHC, Jonah, and Bex and Bowie hang out in the backyard, reminiscing.

Andi shares a picture of the GHC starting second grade.

From the day they met.

Buffy remarks how they’re still together after all these years. And Cyrus says they always will be. And Andi says...

They’re like, uh oh. Andi says she wants to show them something and leads them to Andi Shack, which has been stripped clean.

They ask why, and Andi tells them she doesn’t need the Shack anymore. She needs a studio because she got into SAVA, which makes her parents very happy, but bums out Cyrus and Buffy. They’re happy for her, but...

This is going to change things.

Bex remarks how a lot of life has happened in Andi Shack. We see some nice clips from over the years, and, if you liked those, you can see more clips by purchasing previous seasons of Andi Mack on your preferred streaming platform. (And coming to Disney+ this Fall!)

Bex tells Andi how proud she is of her and they hug.

Bowie hugs her, too, and tells her she’s going to do great things.

And then, like responsible adults, they decide to go clean up the house. We’ve all really grown so much, haven’t we?

Andi regroups with Cyrus, Buffy, and Jonah. Cyrus says they should be mindful of the moment because after this, we’re all going our separate ways. They all yell at Cyrus for this.

Andi reassures them all that no matter where they go or what they do, they’ll always be a part of each other’s lives.

And then they do this weird sort of group imagine thing where they actually manifest images of the future.

Where they’re all like, doing adult things, but also, still look like children? It’s, um... it’s a little odd.

But I’m going to retain my positivity and head for the finish line.

Andi asks Jonah to take a picture of the GHC standing together as they did on that first day of second grade. Then, Cyrus drops a Winnie the Pooh quote: “You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

The four share one last group hug.

Andi asks if they’re all going to meet tomorrow at The Spoon, and they agree.

Each one hugs Andi one last time before exiting.

Andi watches them leave, then heads inside Andi Shack to put up the pictures. She smiles and walks out.

And that, my friends, is a wrap on Andi Mack.

This isn’t goodbye -- I’ve got a little more stuff planned -- but I think this is probably the thing that will be read by the most amount of people familiar with my blog, so let me just say this here: if you’ve read any or all of my recaps, or even if you’re just reading this one, thank you. I have loved writing them and I have loved being a part of this fandom, and I appreciate all of you who took the time to be a part of it with me.

This show and this fandom have been such an amazing experience for me, and it has brought me so much joy this past year and a half. So, once again, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

I will truly never forget it.

#Andi Mack #Buffy Driscoll #Cyrus Goodman #TJ Kippen #Jonah Beck #Bex Mack #Bowie Quinn #Celia Mack #Amber #Marty #Kira #Andi #The Cat #Tyrus #Bexie #Muffy #Jandi #episode recaps

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a-room-of-my-own · 4 years

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quillette[.]2019/11/04/meet-the-gay-activists-whove-had-enough-of-britains-ultra-woke-homophobes/ 🙌

Are gay people allowed to meet and organise in defense of their interests? A hard yes, you might have thought. But some apparently disagree.

Witness the response to the London-based LGB Alliance, a newly created British group that asserts “the rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual people to define themselves as same-sex-attracted.” The group’s creation has sparked vitriol, not from the traditionalist Christians or social conservatives who might have opposed such groups in the 1980s or 1990s, but from the self-described progressive left.

Readers who aren’t steeped in the most fashionable iteration of identity politics might now be scratching their heads. Unless you’re taking cues from Leviticus, what could possibly be wrong with saying it’s okay to be gay?

The answer is that, in acknowledging the reality of same-sex attraction, you are indirectly acknowledging the reality and importance of biological sex as a driver of attraction. You are also indirectly acknowledging that members of the opposite sex are not members of your dating pool—even if they tell you that they share your gender identity. Which means you have effectively pled guilty to that grave modern thoughtcrime, transphobia.

If you are not on Twitter, have not set foot on a college campus in the last few years, and don’t read woke web sites such as Teen Vogue, where this sort of thing is taken very seriously, you may imagine that I am engaged in some kind of Swiftian send-up of identity politics gone amok. After all, just about every single person reading this knows quite well how sexual attraction works. But I am quite serious: Activist groups that brand themselves as mainstream representatives of the LGBT community not only preach the idea that true attraction is based on gender, they also have sought to de-platform and mob anyone within their ranks who points out that this idea is completely divorced from the way the human brain actually works. In this make-believe world, to be gay—in the way gay people actually experience being gay—is to be a transphobe.

This is not an entirely new development. As gay-rights groups pivoted to become “trans-inclusive” in recent years, this de facto homophobia has emerged in plain sight. Rather than simply combat violence, bullying and discrimination against trans people, and press for better health care and representation for them—all noble and important goals—those groups have taken on an ideological mission. One might even call it quasi-spiritual: They have replaced biological sex with gender identity—an indefinable internal essence that one demonstrates outwardly by adherence to masculine or feminine stereotypes—throughout their literature and activism.

Stonewall UK, for example, was set up in 1989 to fight Section 28 of the Local Government Act of 1988, which banned schools from “promoting homosexuality” and “pretended” (i.e., gay) “family relationships.” But that same group now defines gay and lesbian people as those who are “attracted to the same gender” (my emphasis), and that evidence of transphobia shall be taken to include “the denial/refusal to accept someone else’s gender identity.” The logical consequence of these distorted definitions is to define same-sex-attraction as bigotry. In 1988, it was conservative homophobes in government claiming that homosexuality was a dangerous, counterfeit identity. Now the homophobes are the progressives running organizations that claim to champion the interests of lesbians and gay men.

Of course, doctrinaire trans-rights activists might attack straights with equal vigour—since straight men and straight women are just as focused on the reality of biological sex as gay men and lesbians. But all bullies seek out the weak and vulnerable, which is why they now rail against the LGB Alliance with more fury than they direct at society as a whole. That’s why the LGB Alliance’s launch meeting was an invitation-only affair, held at a secret location—the sort of security precaution that one might implement when moderate Muslims break away jihadists. “This is an historic moment for the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual movement,” tweeted Allison Bailey, the criminal-defence barrister who chaired the event. “LGB Alliance launched in London tonight, and we mean business. Spread the word, gender extremism is about to meet its match.”

Based on the reaction from defenders of the new gender orthodoxy, you would have thought Bailey were a Cossack leader announcing a pogrom. “This is frightening and nasty. There is no LGB without the T,” tweeted Owen Jones, who is perhaps Britain’s best-known gay journalist. (This is not new behaviour for Jones, who often starts pile-ons against anyone he regards as transphobic—especially women.) Anthony Watson, an advisor to the opposition Labour Party, said he was “horrified and disgusted,” and described the Alliance as a “#hategroup.” Linda Riley, the editor of Diva, a lesbian magazine that proclaims itself “trans-inclusive,” adapted Martin Niemöller’s famous 1946 confession, First They Came, Tweeting, “First they came for the T…”—thereby suggesting that refusing to prioritize the artifice of gender ideology over inborn sexual orientation is the first step toward some kind of real or metaphorical Holocaust.

Trans activists also used a despicable tactic that now has become a common feature of these cultish campaigns: attempting to beggar those they disagree with. Gendered Intelligence, a non-profit group that works exclusively with trans people (and apparently sees no irony in attacking an organisation focused exclusively on the rest of the LGBT grouping), urged followers to write to Bailey’s law chambers in London, “expressing your concern with the barrister in question and with the new group.” This same mob also sent equally spurious complaints to JustGiving, which hosted the Alliance’s fundraising page. The company panicked and temporarily suspended the Alliance’s account.

The original mover behind the Alliance was Kate Harris, a lesbian and veteran civil-rights campaigner, who a decade ago was a Stonewall fundraiser. She had become increasingly enraged by the harassment of lesbian women that was tolerated, even encouraged, by such groups. Harris and Beverley Jackson, another veteran campaigner, had been writing to Stonewall executives for months, seeking a discussion about the malign impact of gender-identity extremism. They asked Stonewall’s chief executive at the time, Ruth Hunt, whether she was worried about the enormous increase in the number of teenage girls attending GIDS, Britain’s gender-identity clinic for under-18s, and what she would say to the growing number of “de-transitioners”—people who abandon their trans identity and return to an identity corresponding to their biological sex. Many of these girls (as most of them are) describe themselves, with hindsight, as having been motivated by internalised homophobia.

“What upsets me most is that this is all based on the legitimacy we created,” Harris told me. It was this anger that inspired her to gather a group of notables, some of whom had been involved in Stonewall during its early days, to draft an open letter to the group’s current management and board for publication in the Times of London on October 4, 2018. The signatories included Simon Fanshawe, one of Stonewall’s founders, novelist Philip Hensher, actor James Dreyfus, feminist campaigner Julie Bindel, and several trans people who regard Stonewall’s divisive approach as likely to harm the interests of the trans community in the long run.

“We urge Stonewall to acknowledge that there are a range of valid viewpoints around sex, gender and transgender politics, and to acknowledge specifically that a conflict exists between transgenderism and sex-based women’s rights,” the authors wrote. “We call on Stonewall to commit to fostering an atmosphere of respectful debate.”

In response, Ms. Hunt pretended that the letter writers were inventing some kind of non-existent tension. “The petition also asks us to acknowledge that there is a conflict between trans rights and ‘sex based women’s rights,’” she wrote. “We do not and will not acknowledge this. Doing so would imply that we do not believe that trans people deserve the same rights as others.”

A year after this fruitless exchange, it had become clear no change of direction was forthcoming. Ms. Hunt had stepped down, and Stonewall was looking for a new CEO. One potential candidate who was approached by a recruiter disclosed that exploratory questions about whether it might be possible to soften the organisation’s dogmatic position on gender were dismissed out of hand. Many of the signatories of the 2018 open letter decided it was time for a decisive break from an organization that, while pretending to represent L, G,B and T alike, had come to prioritize the most extreme T faction.

Despite all the harassment to which LGB Alliance already has been subject, the group still got off to a flying start. Its JustGiving page has been reinstated, and is on course to hit a £25,000 initial target. The attacks on Bailey sparked widespread outrage and sympathy. Gendered Intelligence deleted its outrageous tweet about her. (Such a personal and highly politicized attack is unlikely to have gone down well with the Charities Commission, which regulates non-profits). Even fans of Owen Jones think a witch hunt against Bailey—a black lesbian from a working-class background—was a low blow. Several publications have written about the LGB Alliance, painting it as everything from a saviour of left-wing politics from its own worst elements, to a front for U.S. evangelicals seeking to export America’s culture wars. The articles in praise were pleasant to read; those lambasting the group neatly underscored the urgency of its mandate. All in all, the Alliance can be said to have arrived. So what next?

Like many of us, Bailey saw parallels with the actions of an abusive spouse. “Just think about what this means LGB,” she Tweeted. “The T has said that this is a marriage that we cannot leave, even if the T becomes abusive. If we try to leave, we will be threatened. If we do manage to leave, we will be starved of cash.”

On its agenda will be protecting women’s sex-based rights—including the right to have certain services offered in spaces free of male bodies. The group will also be campaigning against legislative changes that would compromise female safety.

Stonewall and other trans groups frequently misrepresent Britain’s Equality Act of 2010, which states clearly that single-sex spaces and facilities are perfectly lawful provided they are a “proportionate means to a legitimate aim.” They insist, falsely, that separately stipulated protections against discrimination and harassment for trans-identified people ensure that they can access all spaces intended for the opposite sex. Under such false guidance, Girlguiding UK and Sport England have gone “trans-inclusive,” a euphemism used to describe policies that enable males and females to “self-identify” into spaces intended for the opposite sex. Anyone with even the faintest grasp of biological reality will see immediately why such policies impact most heavily on girls and women.

The Alliance also will lobby for a change of tack at GIDS, Britain’s gender-identity clinic for under-18s, which is under fire for being too quick to affirm children’s claims of a cross-gender identity. It will disseminate unbiased information on the risks of transition and the evidence that gender confusion in children usually resolves itself during puberty, so that young people and their parents have an alternative to a gender-identity narrative based wholly on mechanical affirmation of a child’s claims. It will also seek to give a voice to detransitioners, whom trans activists often accuse of never having been trans in the first place (a claim that completely contradicts these same activists’ insistence on a policy of unfettered self-identification, which equates thinking you are trans with being trans).

If the Alliance flourishes, it could help forge a new consensus on trans rights, one that doesn’t rely on a denial of the reality of biological sex or sexual orientation. And who knows? If sanity prevails, the LGB and T communities may one day find rapprochement.

Helen Joyce is finance editor for The Economist.

#Gender critical #LGB Alliance #Feminism #Uk #Long piece but good piece

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katewillaert · 5 years

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My Secret Origin (Part 1): How To Fail At Comics

[Above: Art from 20 years ago, when I was in High School.]

What do you want to be when you grow up?

When I was four I said “mad scientist.” It was 1987 and I was a big fan of The Real Ghostbusters and Doc Brown. My mom insisted “mad scientist” wasn’t a profession. And weren’t those characters are inventors? What did I want to invent?

Clearly I hadn’t thought this through.

My mom also informed me that all those cartoons I watch were made by people. Those were drawings, and there are people whose job it was to draw those.

This blew my mind. From that point on I decided I was going to be an animator.

Discovering Art

I don’t remember when I first started drawing. It seems like something I always did growing up. As far as my memory is concerned, I came out of the womb holding a pencil and began drawing before I said my first words.

In reality, I probably started in preschool when I was four, just before I discovered what an animator was. I remember my favorite subject to draw was the Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters. I must’ve drawn it something like 10 or 20 times.

My mom kept almost all of my childhood art, so in theory I could figure out when I started drawing from that...except the earliest drawings were ruined when the basement flooded.

After the flooding, my mom was condensing what was left, and I saw something surprising: a box filled with Ecto-1 drawings. I hadn’t drawn it 10 or 20 times, I’d drawn it 100 or 200 times. Repetitively, over and over, without consciously thinking about what I was doing.

It was practice without realizing I was practicing. I guess that’s how my art “leveled up” so quickly?

Later I discovered other details about my early development. There was a time around age 2 where I stopped talking. There were times when I liked to line up toys. My obsession before art was Legos, building complex shapes and stairs.

Today these might be recognized as possible indicators of autism, but this was the ‘80s.

Because I was shy and lacking in social skills, a teacher suggested to my parents that I might benefit from being held back a grade. I had a summer birthday, so holding me back would make me one of the oldest rather than the youngest.

Thankfully my parents didn’t take that advice. I would’ve been miserable. Despite being the youngest in my class, I surpassed everyone in terms of scores. A CAT test says I scored “higher than 99% of all 3rd grade student in the nation in total language.” 91% in reading. 90% in math. My reading comprehension was 98% in the nation, but was brought down by my reading vocabulary which was only 72%.

Yet this new information called into question a things about myself I’d never considered. Maybe certain things suddenly made more sense? In particular, the way I don’t have interests so much as obsessions. Any time I take an interest in a topic, it leads to an obsessive amount of research.

Discovering Comics

I think the first comic I ever saw was a Chick Tract some kid showed me in Sunday School. He was surprised I’d never seen one. It must’ve hadan impact on me, because I attempted to draw a tract-style comic starring C.O.P.S. (“Fighting Crime In A Future Time”).

I didn’t discover REAL comic books until a few years later. In 1991, Terminator 2: Judgement Day marketing was in full force and I thought it looked so cool. But it was Rated R, and I was only seven. My mom spotted a couple issues of a Marvel comic adaptation (drawn by Klaus Janson), and I guess that was the compromise until it was out on video.

I attempted to illustrate a comic imitating Janson’s cram-packed panel-per-page ratio. It was an epic crossover where Michael Keaton Batman encounters a Delorean driven by a T-1000, then the Ninja Turtles show up, and maybe the Ghostbusters? I knew how to introduce characters but not how to finish a story.

At this point I was still imagining becoming an animator, even though I barely knew anything about what it involved beyond some flip books I’d done. But all that changed when I discovered the X-Men.

X-Men and Batman: The Animated Series both debuted on FOX during the fall of 1992. I was a huge fan of the Tim Burton Batman movies and I’d seen every episode of the ‘60s show when it was revived in reruns, but I didn’t know the comics existed? I didn’t even know where to find comics.

My brother and I were both really into this new X-Men thing, and my brother was given a set of X-Men comics for his birthday. I borrowed them of course, and wanted to see how the story continued. My mom showed us a book store in the mall that had comics, and then we discovered the local comic store. That started my monthly addiction.

Now age 10, I decided I no longer wanted to be an animator. Comics were my true calling. And my dream was to break in at age 16.

Learning Comics

Age 11: I went from reading just Uncanny X-Men to buying the entire X-line, thanks to and event called Age Of Apocalypse.

Age 12: I started buying Wizard magazine. The first two issues I bought included life-changing information, like that you get hired by building a portfolio and showing it to editors. There was industry news, and art tutorials by Greg Capullo. I added the magazine to my monthly buy list. An X-Men 30th anniversary special gave me the entire history of the characters, and a run-down of the key artists and writers with examples of their work. It was like a Rosetta Stone before Wikipedia.

Age 13: I started buying most of Marvel’s output thanks to an event called Heroes Reborn. I never got into the Batbooks, I guess because the art didn’t look as cool? Comics contained ads for the Joe Kubert School, which became my backup plan if I didn’t break into comics on my own. I also discovered the internet around this time.

Age 14: My first year of high school. I spent every lunch hour in the library browsing the internet, since we didn’t have a computer at home yet. I discovered several comic art forums where pros and amateurs traded tips. During the summer I attended a week long art session taught at a local college by a professor who grew up on ‘60s Marvel. There I learned I’d been using paper that was much too thin to ink on, and I learned about the importance of Jack Kirby.

Age 15: I started buying Comic Book Artist magazine. I thought it’d be about drawing tips, but instead it was filled with fascinating comics history, which became an obsession of its own.

Age 16: A year of disappointment. I knew I wasn’t at the level I needed to be to get pro work, but wasn’t sure how to get to the next level. Nowadays there are all sorts of resources I could’ve used, but back then there was no Youtube, no social media, and few books about the craft of comics.

I was now certain the Joe Kubert School was the way to go.

Changing Plans

My family took a trip to Dover, NJ to visit the Joe Kubert School campus, and it was pretty disappointing. The town didn’t feel super friendly, and the school wasn’t accredited, which raised issues in regards to getting student aid. Plus the idea of spending so much money on a non-degree.

The guy showing me around tried to sell me by pointing out that comic companies don’t care about whether you went to college, they just want to see the portfolio.

I took this to heart and decided not to go to college. I was pretty crushed at first, because I’d had this dream plan for so long, and now I was plan-less. But eventually a new plan began to form.

It was time to start doing conventions.

A startup called CrossGen had a sample script and were taking submissions at SDCC 2000, so I went there. I still felt like my work wasn’t quite ready for prime time, but i was worth a shot.

And nothing came of it, other than a cool Crossgen rejection letter in a box somewhere. None of the other publishers could be bothered to even send that.

In hindsight, I was trying to enter at maybe the worst possible time in comics history. When I first started reading comics, they were at their peak during a boom period. When the bubble burst, the industry experienced year-over-year plummeting sales with no bottom in sight. No one was hiring.

But I kept at it, hoping for a lucky break. Top Cow was impressed that I did backgrounds (lol), and suggested I send in “background samples,” but I didn’t want to go down that route. But maybe that’s what a lucky break looks like? (On the other hand, many aspiring pencillers who start as inkers or colorists get stuck there.)

The next summer I went to Chicago with a Marvel sample script. I’d just graduated from high school, so I was really hoping. This time I got a critique from an editor who had actual advice to offer, and I learned a few things. But still no one was hiring.

I thought if I just stayed home and worked on art for a year, I’d eventually come up with pages so impressive that they’d HAVE to hire me. And if it didn’t work out after a year, I’d start looking for a college.

But now I was struggling with a new problem. I suddenly hated my art. I’d heard about a few professional artists who didn’t like looking at their own art, but I was certain this was different. After all, they’re actually good.

The year passed and I accomplished nothing. Based on things I’d heard, I was nervous that college might actually price me out of comics entirely. But I didn’t know that for sure, and I was super inexperienced when it came to money, since I’d never lived on my own before.

But I kept hearing how so many people have gone to college and they all turned out okay (this was before social media and before student debt became a crisis). I was clearly having trouble moving forward on my own, and Youtube still didn’t exist, so what choice did I have?

Choosing Schools

There were only a few colleges with comic art programs back then (maybe three total?), but one of them just happened to be over here in Minnesota. Art school appealed to me because all the classes were art-focused, so I wouldn’t have to waste my time with math and other BS.

And as I humble-bragged earlier, I’m good at math. But I hated it. At one point some kids from Math League asked if I’d join the team. “‘MATH LEAGUE?’ You mean you do math for FUN??”

I hated math so much, I took harder, accelerated math courses via a local college, just so I could finish math early and spend my last years of high school wonderfully mathless. If there’d been a similar way to graduate from high school earlier, I would’ve taken it. When I realized we were all graduating regardless of how much work we put in, I stopped caring so much about grades and let an occasional B+ slip in.

When I would see classmates busy studying for their SATs or ACTs, I was so glad I didn’t have to bother with that.

But the joke was on me. Because this art school didn’t just require a portfolio review (which I was more than ready for). It also wanted ACT test results.

I remember wondering if I should study before I take it, since everyone took it so seriously in high school. But I didn’t even know how to study. It’s not a skill I’d learned, because I never needed to. So I decided to wing it.

You’ll hate me, but without studying I scored in the top 96% for English, the top 94% for Reading, the top 96% for Science...but only top 87% for Math, because I hadn’t taken a math class in three years. That brought my total down 90%..

(Later, I had to learn to study in order to pass some horrifically-taught art history classes. That teacher made me hate art history, which is ironic given how much of my own writing is focused on history.)

So I got into the school, only to discover that even structured teaching wasn’t going to solve my new art problem. During my first year I told my mom that I don’t enjoy art anymore, and she thought it might be depression. I mean, that’s plausible, losing interest in your passions?

In hindsight, I now have enough experience with real depression that I can definitively say it wasn’t that. I mean, I was occasionally depressed back then, but hating my art was unrelated. It took me years to figure out the actual problem.

Dunning Kruger

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is named after a study which found that:

1) People who aren’t knowledgeable about a skill tend to think they’re better at it than they are, because they don’t know enough to know what they don’t know.

2) Conversely, people who ARE knowledgeable about a skill tend to think they’re worse at it than they are.

My problem went one level deeper. I’d learned a shit ton about every skill related to comic art, but I hadn’t put in as much time actually practicing. And now practicing was tough, because I was hyper-aware of how bad every line was as I laid it down.

In other words, the exact reverse of when I was four and drew repetitively on auto-pilot. Back then I was oblivious that I was practicing anything at all. Now I had the benefit and detriment of a critical mind.

But this realization came later. At the time I was just miserable and didn’t know what was wrong with me.

Halfway through art school, I realized I’d likely already priced myself out of comics, and I needed a real degree that would function back-up plan. So I switched majors. Instead of a Comics major filling my electives with design classes, I became a Design major filling my electives with comics classes.

In order to change my major, I had to explain it to the head of the school. This was awkward because it partly involved explaining how the comics industry worked, and he didn’t want to believe it. He told me I was being cynical.

I tried doing comic samples one last time after college, for a convention in 2006, but couldn’t even finish a page. Then sometime around 2008, I gave up drawing entirely.

How I got started again is another story.

You can also find me on:

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/katewillaert/?hl=en

Twitter - https://twitter.com/katewillaert

Art Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/katewillaert

History Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/acriticalhit

#comics #comic art #x-men #marvel comics

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