Cut to Edward standing over Lydia. She is wearing Willow’s normal hairstyle, which is big and black and emo. Her hair is ironically twice the size it had previously been.

“I love it,” says Lydia, flatly.

Edward and Lydia immediately start headbanging to the chorus of “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” by My Chemical Romance, and the video ends.

I posted the video to YouTube but never told Willow about it. I don’t know why. Maybe I was afraid she would make me take it down. Maybe I was being selfish. Like, I wanted this one special thing all to myself.

Either way, the video exploded. A thousand views in its first week. Ten thousand views its first month. Today, “Edward Scissorhands Gives Lydia Deetz a Haircut” had over a hundred thousand views.

There was a fire inside me, and I hadn’t realized it until that moment. I had to make more videos. ESGLDaH was a spur-of-the-moment experiment, but I quickly fine-tuned a formula, consisting of things that I liked:

1. Johnny Depp characters.

2. Extravagant costumes.

3. Catchy lines.

4. Acting.

You’d think, at this point, I would have milked Johnny Depp for all he was worth. But that wasn’t quite true.

Not just yet.

Johnny Depp was famous for collaborating with Tim Burton, who facilitated his need for weird roles. They were a match made in Weirdo Heaven. But my all-time favorite Burton/Depp collaboration—my favorite Johnny Depp role, period—was the criminally underrated Ed Wood.

God, I loved Ed Wood.

Ed Wood (1994) was the (mostly) absolutely true story of the eponymous cult filmmaker of the 1950s, often referred to as the “worst director of all time.” Filmed in glorious black-and-white, it told the story of Ed Wood as he attempted to make several really bad films, leading up to his distasterpiece, the so-bad-it’s-good Plan 9 from Outer Space. It was a tale of friendship (namely his friendship with iconic Dracula actor Bela Lugosi). It also explored Ed Wood’s fondness for wearing women’s clothing. He was straight as far as the history books were aware, but man oh man, the guy liked himself a nice angora sweater. Tim Burton was famous for humanizing marginalized characters, and Ed Wood—in all its quirk, kink, sincerity, and odd charm—was his magnum opus. On its surface, the film was about delusion and self-denial, but at its core—its beating, human heart—it was an ode to personal artistry in cinema, to being true to oneself, to being happy.

Despite its being my favorite Johnny Depp role, I had yet to deliver the inevitable Ed Wood video. Because if I was going to do Ed Wood, I had to do it dressed as a woman. I had to. It was not up for debate. This was a matter of necessity. And even though my YouTube channel was a secret, it was an open secret, with over ten thousand subscribers in on it. The pressure was real.