Here's your 'very online conversation'

May 6, 2023 7:40 AM

Christopher Cantwell talks about a meeting with a trans fan, and how his conversation with her opened up and changed his views of his own work:

In January 2020, I went to Long Beach Comic-Con, did a panel, sold some Doctor Doom issues and copies of my books She Could Fly and Everything. Sitting at the small table, a young woman approached me.

She had come all the way down to Long Beach and bought a pass to the Con just to find me and tell me how much Halt and Catch Fire had meant to her, particularly in some more difficult times for her recently, especially when she was transitioning.

(This FPP title is a reference to the infamous soundbite from a recent Rowling interview re: - what else? - her transphobia and how it affects her Harry Potter brand, that the HBO boss tried to downplay the Discourse as "That’s a very online conversation, very nuanced and complicated and not something we’re going to get into." ⁠Cantwell's thread quote tweets a Variety tweet about the fallout) (Full thread in extended description below)

In January 2020, I went to Long Beach Comic-Con, did a panel, sold some Doctor Doom issues and copies of my books She Could Fly and Everything. Sitting at the small table, a young woman approached me.

She had come all the way down to Long Beach and bought a pass to the Con just to find me and tell me how much Halt and Catch Fire had meant to her, particularly in some more difficult times for her recently, especially when she was transitioning.

She said when she was feeling rough, she could go back to the show and the characters and feel comforted and connected in a way that she was having trouble finding in other ways, and with others.

What she had come all that way to tell me seismically shifted the way I see my work, but more this kind of work, and how what we create contains a multitude of resonances that affect people in ways we (or at least I) can’t even begin to fathom.

There are no transsexual characters in Halt and Catch Fire. But there are queer characters. There are isolated characters struggling to connect with each other & the world, afraid to fail, be rejected, who are roiling with the desire to change everything bc they are unsatisfied.

At times like this, when people in power say really stupid shit to cover up more obvious motives at play, I think of this person who found me. Who said we somehow helped her change, evolve, grow, have support that was lacking elsewhere. And how this person in turn changed me.

This didn’t happen online. It happened in person.

Halt isn’t a message. It’s a story. I say stories are mirrors and not messages. Because we can see ourselves in mirrors. Here I was writing about my dad, ambition, schoolyard angst, being a partner, a dad, a friend, an enemy, an introvert, & this woman watched and saw herself.

This conversation is not “very online.” This conversation is very real and very present and very pressing. You just have to actually pay attention, and be a human being with other human beings. No computers or internet is required for that at all in the end.

Joe, Cameron, Donna, Bos, and Gordon perhaps at first believed they needed people to help them build the tech, but underneath that they actually hoped that the tech would allow them to access others and their own humanity when they struggled to do otherwise.

The thing that gets us to the thing. The project gets us to the people. Halt got me to that woman & vice versa. And I’m better for it. Here, “Very online” sounds dismissive. “Divorced from reality.” Trans acceptance is certainly not. It’s right here. Now. In front of you.

So please look up from the spreadsheets and bottom lines and talking points, and actually see it. See them.

posted by Pachylad (10 comments total)

I really appreciated getting to read this. Thank you.
posted by brainwane at 7:48 AM on May 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

Note: Christopher Cantwell the comics and TV writer is a completely different guy from Christopher Cantwell the Nazi who posted a video of himself crying after being charged for assaults he committed.
posted by Jon_Evil at 8:06 AM on May 6, 2023 [33 favorites]

Mod note: Comment removed. We're all in agreement on Metafilter that trans discrimination is bad, unjust, and plain out wrong on every level, but let's avoid starting out the thread with name calling.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 8:09 AM on May 6, 2023 [6 favorites]

This was one of two pieces I read this morning that made me feel good as a trans person, and I thank you for it.

(The other was Zooey Zephyr and Erin Reed getting engaged last night.)
posted by mephron at 8:26 AM on May 6, 2023 [34 favorites]

I personally spent around 3 years working in the same building as Chris Cantwell (he was on the creative side and I was on the tech/project management side). I didn't get to know him very well at the time but two things stood out me which distinguished him from many other creatives I've worked with:

1. Even among creative folks he showed very wide-ranging imagination and capability. I wasn't at all surprised to hear later that he'd moved on to write and lead Halt And Catch Fire.

2. He was (like two other people I knew at that company who later went on to fairly significant notability in their respective spheres) generous with his time, even with a guy like me who had little reason to directly interact with him in the workplace.

I just wanted to say that for the brief time I was acquainted with him circa 2010, his thread above definitely seems like the kind of Chris I got to know a bit. I'm happy to have seen him be successful, and I'm extremely happy that he's seen what his work can do for people and is publicly making a strong statement for trans rights.
posted by tclark at 9:11 AM on May 6, 2023 [13 favorites]

What a lovely convo and a nice way to show the power of creativity and empathy. Thank you for sharing. :)
posted by Fizz at 9:28 AM on May 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

This is just to say
That halt and catch fire was fantastic, and I am forever happy that it introduced me to this song.
posted by kaibutsu at 10:22 AM on May 6, 2023 [6 favorites]

This was lovely. The only down spot was the final tweet referring to trans people as "them." I get why he did it, but it felt kind of othering.

I really liked what he said about stories being mirrors, not messages. It's a great way to think about how we related to literature of all kinds, and this story of how the trans woman connected with his work is a great example of that.
posted by Well I never at 1:43 PM on May 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Thank you so much for posting the full thread in the More Inside - I am so glad to have gotten to read that, and Twitter sometimes makes it hard for me to read threads these days.

This is a lovely and good observation, beautifully expressed, and I really appreciate Chris crafting that story, this story, and sharing it with the world.

Thank you so much for posting this, Pachylad. I doubt I would have seen it otherwise, and I'm very glad to know this story.
posted by kristi at 3:11 PM on May 6, 2023

mephron: “The other was Zooey Zephyr and Erin Reed getting engaged last night.”

‼

Yay!
posted by ob1quixote at 9:12 PM on May 7, 2023 [1 favorite]