Finding your people

Okay, we don’t have to cry, but I did cry—as I always do—on a recent rewatch of Muppets Take Manhattan, my FAVORITE Muppets movie next to The Muppet Christmas Carol.

The movie begins with a group of college graduates (The Muppets) presenting their final performance at their school, a fun musical revue with a loose storyline about a young couple that fall in love and decide to make their dreams come true in the big city. The question is posed within minutes of the start of the movie about when they’re going to take it to Broadway, and then we’re off. Kermit, a lovable and talented frog, who seems thrilled to be allowed to attend college in upstate New York as an amphibian is forced to consider what it would be like to see a new dream (maybe an old one) fulfilled.

And he does it with the gentle bullying, support, love, encouragement, and assurance of his friends. What he initially dismisses as ridiculous or impossible suddenly becomes bigger than life, the crew taking off to NYC, employing the use of bus station lockers as living accommodations and setting out with a guitar and dance moves that can be adapted to any office space.

I could name so many parts that I adore, but I love this part for that initial enthusiasm, for the obvious (to us) big swing that they’re taking without having any knowledge of the industry, and the way their confidence and pride slowly dives until they’re down to literal pennies and can barely afford soup at a diner.

The group ultimately separates for a portion of the movie with Kermit still chipping away at the dream until they can all be reunited again.

Now we cry, because when the group departs, they sing, “Saying Goodbye”, which pulls at my heart every time and gives my family something to tease me about. (Funny, it’s not even the song that makes me cry the most in that movie)

Art—and The Muppets are definitely capital ‘A’ Art—has a way of changing on each viewing and as you get further away from it. A song I once thought of when I would do a show and find the little stage family I’d accumulated over six weeks drifting apart or when I graduated or even moved cities is one that has me thinking a great deal about community.

I’ve been writing in fandom for years and if you’re in it long enough, you see people fade in and out over time. People gravitate towards other things in their lives or they find new things to hyper focus on (a new fandom or hobby perhaps). Some of us hang on and keep going, grateful for that steady thing that still manages to stay afloat.

I found the Reylo fandom in 2020 when many did. I’d been reading the fanfic for a while, but having had an aversion to Twitter and other platforms for years, I reluctantly joined the social space after noticing how much artwork I was missing. Seeing that there was a place to interact with authors was an added bonus, and I reluctantly opened my first twitter account (okay, maybe the first one I actively used).

You learn several things very quickly in fandom spaces, one of which is how people often show their true colors well before they exhibit any “bad behavior”. I was always a fan of my granny’s saying “They’re tellin’ on themselves”. She would say it about anyone, even her own grandkids when they were being dishonest or sneaky, but I recall an incident at a restaurant when I was small and a man at a table next to us was horrible to a waitress. “He’s tellin’ on himself,” she said to my grandfather, who (sweetheart that he was) quickly stepped in and asked the waitress if there was anything she needed before finally getting the manager of the restaurant to help the waitress confront the bully of a man.

People tell on themselves all the time, and this is so true for fandom spaces. Obviously, you cannot possibly glean everything you need from a few interactions with a bunch of anonymous, internet strangers, but people who proceed with kindness are the ones I notice often.

It’s why I lurked for so long. I spent years and years in a field where my every professional move was expected to be out front and center for the purposes of networking and often found that it was full of one-upmanship I wasn’t interested in. I loved to talk about craft, but at the end of a long professional day, I wanted more than that. I needed someone with whom I could discuss personal triumphs and failures and whether that newest episode of Grey’s Anatomy was the worst one ever or if we’d all become jaded after [random character]’s death. (I haven’t watched it in YEARS at this point, so I couldn’t tell you what’s going on)

Fandom spaces have this too, but I’ve always been grateful for my lurking sensibilities. I discovered in my thirties that I’m neurodivergent and once pandemic hit and my needs for emotionally masking were no longer necessary the more we became isolated, I realized how little I wanted to do that in any space I occupied. I watched for the people telling on themselves and sought out the ones who were kind and open, friendly and supportive for the sake of being a good steward of the community and just a good human being.

It can be difficult to make friends.

Just going to let that statement stand alone for a second and BREATHE, because in any space, it can be difficult depending on your anxieties, your ability to socialize, and the baggage that inevitably exists the longer you take up space on this earth. I’ve had missteps along the way, but I think observing the people who make fandom and other creative spaces about joy and about the thing itself are a great start.

I started to wonder if there was something inherently wrong with me for finding friends in the comments sections of my fics. But these were the people that GOT what I was saying or trying to capture with my words. They were the people I didn’t have to explain myself to. They understood the vision and cheered it on. They were often other writers or artists that I admire, and beginning with that mutual admiration, friendships sprung from those comments and the back and forth conversations about what we were working on next. Interestingly enough, this is how my suspicions about a neurodivergent diagnosis were confirmed as I found other neurodivergent people that I connected with (cue that saying about ND people being like a wolf pack that love to find each other).

I take a great deal of comfort from writing, from being alone with my laptop and letting my ideas flourish under my fingers. After a childhood with a deep love of make believe and writing stories in my head, it feels good to live in that space and then share it. But it’s hard to create in a vacuum after a while. Fandom taught me the value of that immediate response you receive to your work. I found my first beta readers in fandom. People that champion your ideas and abilities in a way that it’s difficult for family members or other friends to achieve. I like to say that I sowed my wild oats on AO3, but I also sowed my oats as a writer in the sacred spaces of DMs and discord messages discussing storytelling and bouncing off ideas with friends that were happy to be along from the ride. My hope is that I’ve given them at least half as much as they’ve given to me.

We don’t exist alone.

Like Kermit, we need people to champion our ideas and feelings and needs. They exist in so many different capacities, whether it’s a partner that simply gives you the permission to be and tells you can do it or it’s the friend that gets your 7 a.m. texts when you were up too early with an idea or responds to your 20-minute voice recording about the changes you’re planning to make in your manuscript because sometimes “talking it out” hits a spot that taking notes never could.

Kermit’s friends, sensing the mounting pressure and the multiple failures to launch their show, step away and allow him time, venturing off to different parts of the country to find jobs and keep their friend from feeling burdened by the group’s failure. They let him grieve and find his way, which he eventually does, after a few hare-brained and delightful schemes. It’s not the new schemes that find him work, but the son of a famous producer who saw the group on their first visit that finally gives Kermit and his friends their big break. Excited to share and call his friends back to NYC, Kermit is hit by a taxi, which lands him in the hospital with a bout of amnesia.

He gets work at an ad agency with a few other frogs, floundering and trying to find his way through the sameness, while his friends relentlessly seek him out. In one of the more touching scenes in the movie, they finally spot him at the same diner where they last parted, Kermit clinking the melody of their opening number on the water glasses and signaling that there’s still a part of him in there.

It’s his friends, ultimately, that remind him of his purpose and his great love. And no, it’s not the part that makes me cry the most, but I get a little misty at a poignant moment when Kermit begins to remember them and himself, singing the line, “Look at me, here I am. Right where I belong'‘.

I’ve thought about this part a great deal recently as things hit highs and lows personally. I’m with a good doctor now who is listening to me when I tell them what I’ve been dealing with for more than a year, but even with better days on the horizon, the lows have been difficult when I have the days where my brain feels fuzzy and my desire to write exists, but I’m lacking the energy. I’ve relied on my little community a great deal in the last few weeks, holding those reminders of who I am and what I love close as I assess what’s next.

We don’t exist alone. We really can’t.

Beyond my family, I have friends that are flung far and wide, and I’m grateful for each one that sees me and supports me in a way that goes beyond what I write. It’s one part of who I am, and I’m so glad they’re with me to remind me when other circumstances make me forget.

Okay, the part that makes me cry the most, by the way? True to my romantic heart, it’s the song that Miss Piggy and Kermit sing to each other at the VERY end.