#I wrote so many essays for an art college

[n3pt0-0n]

Just applied to my dream college if I don’t get it I will blow up 😁

[sagaubeloved]

I don’t know if this is something I READ or something I thought of in passing and just kept forgetting about, but the basic idea is that the things the Creator comes into contact with (mainly literature) is recreated within Teyvat.

But it was more in the sense that even if the Creator hadn’t read the book it would still appear. However, those books that weren’t read would be faded, barely there scribbles that are not discernible and thus not as important to the Creator in comparison to the things they have read.

In that way, I thought how funny it would be that if-and-due to the Creator being a college student there are all these various poems, post-colonial literature, plays, biology, communications, etc just popping into existence and the people of Teyvat believing that the Creator really enjoyed knowledge and the arts.

(Maybe that can cause a long standing argument between Sumeru scholars and those who prefer the arts?)

Would this include the things the Creator writes? Essays and such? Yes, because it is something the Creator interacted with, and no less created themselves!

For me I really like essays, but it also depends on what it is the essay is going to be about, that’s where it can turn from an essay of 10 pages easily or a trudging essay with blurbs. (Just imagine seeing your school essay glorified somewhere as fact and your just there trying not react because you wrote that one thing while sick, and high as a kite at 3 am on a school night; wtf is it doing in that glass casing for all of Teyvat to witness??)

Similarly, if the Creator enjoys reading in general, all those things come into existence even if those things existed by way of technology only, ie. Fanfiction.

So imagine when the Creator descends they are at first confused and then upset because I still have so many things to read! I still have so many things to write! I had a project due in a week! And then stops in bewilderment because —

Wait, isn’t that… isn’t that the novel they had in their To Read list?? Wait isn’t that a story they already read?! Oh no, everyone is witness to your reading habits!!

[who-is-page]

Digital Bloodsports and Inked Paws: What I Love About the Alterhuman Communities

This is an essay from my website that I wrote in 2021 for my alterhuman NaNoWriMo project, about the things I appreciate and adore in the alterhuman community. I wanted to post the edited, finalized version on here, too. It's a little over 1,600 words long and about an 8-minute read.

It’s easy to talk about what I find aggravating or difficult to deal with in the alterhuman communities—complaints are a dime a dozen, especially since I’m rapidly approaching my ten-year anniversary of activity (is that the barest hint of salt-and-pepper I spy in my muzzle?) But even with all my criticisms, there’s a lot I love about the various parts of the alterhuman communities. There are more wonderful quirks in these groups than I think we ever realize or genuinely acknowledge.

And if there’s one thing that I don’t think the alterhuman communities are given enough credit and love for, it’s our collective ability to never shut the fuck up.

In these spaces, people are always doing, or saying, or creating something. In some ways it reminds me of college, with something always happening somewhere, no matter the weather, time, or day. Whether dead of night or coldest winter day, you’d always be able to find a party, or a study group, or a sportsball match—and in the same way, wherever you are in the alterhuman communities, there’s always something going on: a debate or discussion, a convention (big or small), a newbie asking for help with their identity, a bunch of older alterhumans shooting the shit, a new term being banged out, art and games and comics being created and commented on, collaborative projects or surveys or groups being advertised. The list goes on and on—someone, somewhere, is always dipping their paws in ink, it seems.

Our community thrives off our interactions with one another, and that’s fundamentally shaped both the subcultural elements—such as the way we so highly value content creators and writers, and people who have been in the community for long periods of time and can share stories and experiences that we might otherwise have no knowledge of—and the bizarre forms of (n)etiquette and discourse that we constantly see evolving and changing. It’s a beautiful thing to witness in real-time, watching the customs and terminology and language we have change and shift over the years, and watching the wheels of discourse turn their spokes into previously uncharted waters, a new subject to be written and examined by an invested collective.

It’s a testament to the diversity and fluidity in alterhuman experiences and identity, the fact that so many people with so many different experiences and different explanations can come together time and time again; space and space again; all to hash out their ideas and their thoughts and their differences and their similarities. All to share in the beauty of being other with one another. It’s a sight to behold, like an ocean of a thousand different blues all forming wave after wave of colors, and I get to be a lucky painter who’s too stunned to even figure out where to look first.

Our community’s perchance for debate (or, more accurately, for digital bloodsports) is also something I absolutely adore. Maybe I’m just a young hooligan who’s ready to fistfight the first person who comes through my door at any given moment, with my Ye Olde Discourse days still singing through my veins, but I love the willingness of so many people and groups in this community to throw down over what they believe and their opinions. It’s an admirable fighting spirit that I see in so many alterhumans and, whatever the reason for it, it’s something I feel a deep kinship regarding.

People in these communities care with their whole chest. It gets us in trouble often, but I don’t think these groups and subcultures and identities would be the same without it: we’re loud. We’re stubborn. We inevitably butt heads, but it’s what makes us, us. But it’s more than just our tenacity that I’m talking about here. Being alterhuman, at least in the spaces that I personally find myself in, is about being unabashedly yourself, in whatever wacky, interesting, bizarre, wild, feral way that might translate to.

It’s reminiscent of the queer spaces I’ve been in previously, both in how it harnesses a sense of aggressive pride sometimes, with attitudes of “Yeah, I’m not human—if that’s a problem for you, get lost!” and in how it just purely makes me feel unafraid and unashamed to be nonhuman. This is something I’ve experienced especially at Howls and other in-person group meet-ups.

When I spend time in-person with other alterhumans, it’d be silly to say there’s outright some sort of spark on connection or feeling of family—but there is a feeling of recognition. Of not an “us vs. the world” spark, but of an “we can all be ourselves here,” understanding. It’s so much less dramatic than some accounts I’ve heard, but it’s still a powerful, comfortable, enjoyable feeling. It’s knowing that you can go chasing after a squirrel with reckless abandon without getting judged, or can stop to roll in a pile of especially crunchy leaves just for the sensation of it, and isn’t that its own form of freedom?

And then there’s the beauty of individual identity. One of my favorite parts about my archival work is getting to learn and hear about identities that I’ve never seen before, especially if someone’s written a lot about the “how”s and “why”s. I love getting to not only see how other people experience things differently than I, myself, do, but I love getting to watch the gears in their brain turn as they explain how they got to one conclusion, or other possibilities they’ve considered, or any number of detail-oriented information. Getting to hear about shifts, especially shifts from identities we don’t often see like species-specific fictionkin, conceptkin, machinekin, and phyanthropes, is always such a treat. Hearing how it feels to experience phantom shifts as Southern Live Oak tree, or getting to read about mental shifts from an Alolan Marowak, or any other number of things I’ve been lucky enough to learn about in these communities, is sincerely, genuinely just the absolute coolest. Group experiences and concepts are amazing, but individual experiences are just as, if not more, spectacular.

And speaking on individuals…as a young, teenage nonhuman, I probably would have included a section about how much I admire or value the efforts and works of older alterhumans who are still in the community, and how much I especially enjoy getting to see their content in the communities. How they’re such “inspirations” for me and other such cheesy words. But that feeling has grown and changed a lot as I’ve gotten older: while I still appreciate all the greymuzzles and oldfruits in the community (shoutout to all you grey-furred and grey-scaled rapscallions out there), I feel like the individual age group I particularly appreciate is a lot of the younger folks and ‘new blood’ I’ve seen pop up in the communities.

It’s such a strange feeling to look at someone and go, “Oh man, you’re going to be an absolute force to be reckoned with when you’re older!” but that’s something I’ve definitely experienced. It’s a strange mixture of wistfulness, thinking about my own budding years in the alterhuman communities with probably rose-glassed fondness, and of before-the-fact pride, watching how passionate people are and already being proud of them: for achievements they haven’t yet made, and goals they haven’t yet realized, and selves they’re just now discovering.  It’s genuinely great to see the new, uncharted directions that a lot of the older teenagers are starting to pull and shove the communities in, bringing up old ideas in new ways or just throwing out new perspectives entirely. It makes me feel excited, filled with anticipation for what the future holds and how everything will look like in ten, twenty years.

It also does make me feel a little left behind and out of the times, admittedly, but that’s not a wholly bad thing: times change. Communities change. Our communities are based almost entirely on evolution, where they either continuously change, or they stagnate and die out. The fact that I’m feeling a little out-of-place more and more these days just means I’m settling into the aspects of my identity and the language that I grew up with for describing it is falling more out of use—it just means that I’m getting older and taking on a different niche than I inhabited when I was younger. When I was still a teenager in the community, I was the teeth-bloodied, hot-headed discourser who was willing to shout down and fight anything with a pulse, who was always in the thick of it no matter what “it” was. Now, I think I’m a lot closer to a scholar; jokingly a warrior-scholar, like my patron, if you had to reference the way I came into these communities, but overall, I’m a lot more content to sit it out on the sidelines these days and focus more on my own research and creation.

I wouldn’t stick around these community spaces if I truly didn’t want to be in them, but there’s so much I love wrapped in them that I don’t want to go, anyways. For every physical shifter that drives me up the wall, there’s a million more things that make me want to keep interacting with other nonhumans and alterhumans and that makes me want to keep being a part of specific alterhuman spaces. I love getting to be here, getting to watch how these communities evolve, getting to hear everyone’s stories; I’m glad I get to be a piece of it all, and I count myself lucky for any positive changes I can help affect just by being here. I would do better to remind myself of that more often.

[jupejumble]

i wrote this for a college admissions essay, but then i reread the question and this does NOT answer it at all. so here you go

Art is a pure form of human communication and connection. Things like drawing on a friend's hand, performing a song, or painting a mural; all these things are forms of human connection. The way people express themselves to others is incredible. Drawing a smiley face on a dusty car window, drawing a heart on a note, and engraving something in the sand. There are so many ways in which humans connect. Sometimes, art isn't to connect; there is also private art. Things such as poems that will never be read by others other than you, drawings that are raw and are hidden away. Even in that, art is human. I love that. The skill level doesn't matter. Art is still art. I spend a lot of my time drawing. I love it. It's something that I put my all into. I once spent nine uninterrupted hours drawing; I hadn't even realized that time had passed. It was only when my mom said it was time for dinner that I realized how much time had passed. The ability to create things that connect to others is amazing. Art is an essential part of being human, whether its consuming art, or making and sharing art, its still human connection. A song's lyrics that speak to you, a sculpture that reminds you of your mother, or a smiley face that you drew on a friend's hand. It's all art and its all connection.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Thomas Chatterton Williams

Published: May 19, 2024

We’d gathered that day at the cafeteria’s “Black” table, cracking jokes and philosophizing during the free period that was our perk as upperclassmen. We came in different shades: bone white, tan and brownish, dark as a silhouette. One of my classmates, who fancied himself a lyricist, was insisting that Redman, a witty emcee from nearby Newark, New Jersey, was the greatest rapper ever. This was the late ’90s, and for my money, no one could compete with Jay-Z. I said so, and the debate, good-natured at first, soon escalated in intensity, touching on feelings and resentments that ran far deeper than diverging claims about artistic merit.

“How can you even weigh in?” I still remember the kid fuming. “You ain’t even the pure breed!”

With that, there was nothing left to say. Friends separated us, the bell rang, and I headed home. A short time later, I went off to college, where I would meet a wider assortment of Americans than I had realized existed. But over the years, I have been reminded of that boy’s slicing racism, the lazy habit of mind that required no white people to be present but would nonetheless please the most virulent white supremacist.

Recently, two public controversies spirited me back to the suspicion and confusion of my high-school cafeteria. All spring long, an unusually nasty feud between the rappers Drake and Kendrick Lamar has been captivating audiences, both for the quality of the music it has engendered and for the personal and malicious dimensions of the attacks it has countenanced. Much has been written about the fight, in particular about the two men’s treatment of women, which I won’t rehash here except to point out that it’s a little funny that they both portray themselves as enlightened allies while also acting as if the ultimate disparagement is to call another man feminine. Less has been said about the potency of the racial dimension, which feels like a throwback to a time before Drake’s pop-culture dominance—indeed, to a time before the historic hybridity of the Obama era—and like a distillation of the skin-deep racialism of the current social-justice movement.

Drake, who grew up in Toronto, is the son of a white Jewish mother from Canada and a Black father from Memphis. Since the release of his 2009 mixtape, So Far Gone, he has been not only the most successful visibly mixed-race rapper—and arguably pop star—but also the most visible Black male musician for some time now. Anyone at the top will attract criticism. But not even a white rapper like Eminem has been subject to the kind of racial derogation that has been hurled at Drake.

Back in 2018, the rapper Pusha T released a diss track about him for which the cover art was an old photograph of Drake performing in a cartoonish blackface. The image makes you cringe, but—as Drake explained—that was the point. Drake began his career as an actor, and he wrote that the photograph was part of a “project that was about young black actors struggling to get roles, being stereotyped and typecast … The photos represented how African Americans were once wrongfully portrayed in entertainment.” But presented without context, it appeared to be a self-evident statement of inauthenticity.

Another rapper, Rick Ross, calls Drake “white boy” again and again in his song “Champagne Moments,” released in April. In an op-ed for The Grio, the music journalist Touré explains why the insult is so effective: “We know Drake is biracial. He’s never hidden that, but many of us think of him as Black or at least as a part of the culture … On this record, Ross is out to change that.” Touré calls this “hyperproblematic,” but his tone is approving—he admires the track. “We shouldn’t be excluding biracial people from the Black community, but in a rap beef where all is fair as a way of attacking someone and undermining their credibility and their identity, it’s a powerful message.”

In a series of more high-profile records, Lamar has built on Ross’s theme, both implying and stating directly that racial categories are real, that behaviors and circumstances (like Drake’s suburban upbringing) correlate with race, and that the very mixedness of Drake’s background renders him suspect. It is an anachronistic line of ad hominem attack that is depressing to encounter a quarter of the way into the 21st century.

Lamar’s most recent Drake diss is called “Not Like Us,” and reached No. 1 on Billboard Hot 100. It goes after Drake’s cultural affiliations with the American South. “No, you not a colleague,” Lamar taunts. “You a fucking colonizer!”

It’s hard to hear that and not remember that Drake’s mother is Jewish, and that this is the same invective used to undermine Jews’ sense of belonging in Israel. Such racist habits of thought have become potent rhetorical weapons in the progressive arsenal.

The second (if smaller) controversy followed an essay on language and protest published in The New Yorker earlier this month. The novelist Zadie Smith, who is of European and African descent, argued—carefully—that it is too simplistic to regard the world as sortable into categories of oppressor and oppressed. “Practicing our ethics in the real world involves a constant testing of them,” she writes, “a recognition that our zones of ethical interest have no fixed boundaries and may need to widen and shrink moment by moment as the situation demands.” This was an attempt to take seriously the tangible fate of Hamas’s victims on October 7, the broader implications of anti-Semitism that can at times be found in criticism of Israel’s response, and the ongoing tragic loss of Palestinian life.

Despite praising the protests that have engulfed college campuses and describing a cease-fire in Gaza as “an ethical necessity,” Smith was derided on more than intellectual grounds. One widely shared tweet, accompanied by a photo of Smith, stated the criticism plainly: “I feel like Zadie Smith uses black aesthetics to conceal her deeply pedestrian white middle-class politics. People see the head wrap and the earrings made of kente cloth and confuse that for something more substantive.”

This was not the first time Smith had been regarded as a racial interloper. The author Morgan Jerkins once wrote of the emotional “hurt” she felt reading another thoughtful essay Smith published in Harper’s asking “Who owns black pain?” Smith’s transgression here, according to Jerkins, was “intellectualizing blackness” from a distance instead of feeling it. “Do not be surprised,” Jerkins warned, “if a chunk of that essay is used in discussions as to why biracial people need to take a backseat in the movement.”

The retrograde notion that thought and action necessarily flow from racial identities whose borders are definable and whose authority is heritable is both fictitious and counterproductive. “Something is afoot that is the business of every citizen who thought that the racist concepts of a century ago were gone­—and good riddance!” Barbara and Karen Fields write in their 2012 masterpiece, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life. “The continued vitality of those concepts stands as a reminder that, however important a historical watershed the election of an African-American president may be, America’s post-racial era has not been born.”

Of course, the first African American president was, like our nation and culture, himself both Black and white. One of the most disappointing—and, I have come to realize—enduring reasons the “post-racial era” continues to elude us is that it is not only the avowed racists who would hold that biographical fact against him.

==

This is why we call it neoracism, not "antiracism."

[celestie0]

i’m kind of obsessed with kickoff reader. i wanna know more about her. aside from films, what are her hobbies? does she bake? does she like to cook? what inspired her to pursue film? did she used to make silly little films when she was younger? (and if yes, is it uploaded to an obscure corner of youtube where only Gojo can find one fateful night and never stopped making fun of her for it?)

- maybe i am kickoff Gojo

omg 👁️ kickoff gojo what r u doin here…u r not alowed out of ur cage go back to google docs

thanks for being interested in readerrr :””) oof aside from films n the photog i think she is DEF a HUGE baker n tbh i can see her having a side hustle of being like a food content creator or something where she makes aesthetic baking vids bc she’s got that film background 😭 maybe she has a secret instagram accnt that’s actually very popular 👀…..but she’s too shy to share 🤣

i think she knows how to cook 🤔 she’s not like pro level chef or anything, but she isn’t surviving off instant ramen either haha. most days of the week she just pulls stuff together w whatever her n mina have in the fridge but then every other friday she’ll go all out n make pasta from scratch or sear some lobster or sumn hahah. she is perfectly mediocre at cooking. and although she is known to be a bit more tomboyish w her style, she loves to wear a cute apron every now n then (｡･ω･｡)

omg inspiration for film is a greaaatttt question!!! i kinda want to explore that in main storyline now!!! i think when she was younger, she was a bit more of a quiet kid and was always the english teachers’ fave student bc she was really emotionally intelligent n had great vocabulary and in general a great eye for art n literature, so that academic praise kinda got her into writing stories n watching films, she studied a lot of old hollywood classics n from there she became really interested in film as a whole. i think it became a form of expression for her, since she had kind of a whacky childhood (will uncover more of this in later chaps) i like to think before she applied to college, she wanted to be an english major n become an english teacher but she knew deep down that film was what she really wanted to do and even though her family was reluctant, she went ahead n applied as a film major anyway (btw utokyo is hard to get into for film bc they only have a few spots for their program which is one of the best in the nation so i think she did well for herself :) it’s also why she wants to get into utokyo’s film masters specifically!!)

PLS THE OLD SILLY FILMS IS 100% ACCURATE i mean she has her short films on youtube now n they’ve done decent w views but yea i can see her having older videos that are parodies or i imagine she made a horror film when she was in middle school n looking back on it now it’s so corny n not scary at all 💀🤣 gojo would 100% tease tf outta her for that HAHAHAHA

DAMN I WROTE AN ESSAY IM SORRY i just don’t get many questions ab reader so i indulged a little bit haha tysm bb for the ask!!! (🤨 unless u rly are kickoff gojo, then in that case GET BACK TO CH10 I NEEDTO FINISH EDITING YOU)

[burningvelvet]

"since his wife Mary tried hard to acquire all the portraits of him"

how many portraits are there of him? What are they? :0 The only one I know of that was made of him when he was alive, all the rest I've seen seem to just be attempts to make Currant's painting look nicer lmao

On Percy Shelley's appearance: portraits and descriptions

Existing portraits include: sketches by Edward Ellerker Williams, some reprinted in Newman Ivey White's Shelley biography, a drawing by Mary Shelley (sometimes said to be by Williams), some portraits of him as a child, some missing or unidentified portraits mentioned in Mary Shelley's letters, portraits by Marianne Hunt (Leigh Hunt's wife), the sketches and painting by Amelia Curran and their many copies you've seen.

Williams' sketches, from White's book:

Marianne Hunt's portraits (sculpture from the Eton College library, shadow silhouette portrait from I don't remember where, but these shadow silhouettes were made from tracing the subject's shadow, so it is the most accurate likeness):

Mary's supposed drawing (screenshot of a prior post of mine, source incl.), child Percy from the Morgan library:

child Percy by Antoine Philippe, duc de Montpensier (Bodleian library), a sketch by the same artist at the National Portrait Gallery, and a portrait of him by an unknown artist from the National Portrait Gallery - there are possibly other portraits of him as a child considering his family was rich:

Many of the portraits don't resemble each other, which as an artist myself I can only assume is a reflection of the skill of the varying artists, some of which were only beginners. Curran was a practicing art student and apparently threw her Shelley painting into her fireplace and nearly destroyed it at one point lmao. I personally struggle to capture likeness myself and if I made a portrait of Shelley it would probably look nothing like him.

Then there are some extended descriptions and anecdotes on him, his personality, and his appearance. The best ones are given in the memoirs of his friends Medwin, Hogg, Trelawny, Hunt, Hazlitt's essay "On Paradox and Common Place," the 1863 essay by Thornton Leigh Hunt (Hunt's son) titled "Shelley: By One Who Knew Him" (a favorite of mine), Claire Clairmont's letters and journals, a description from "the life and letters of Joseph Severn," Horace Smith in his 1847 essay series "A Graybeard's Gossip About His Literary Acquaintances" (essays No. 8 and 9), Benjamin Haydon's autobiography, Sophia Stacey's diary excerpts published in "Shelley and his Friends in Italy" (another favorite of mine), and letters by his sister Hellen Shelley published in Hogg's Shelley biography (some of the most interesting anecdotes).

Then there are miscellaneous reports mostly colleced in the Shelley biographies by Richard Holmes, Newman Ivey White, and James Bieri (these are the best and most comprehensive Shelley biographies with Holmes "Pursuit" in first place and Bieri a close second).

Mary Shelley's letters and journals are filled with memories of him, and she wrote about him in the editions of his works she edited: Posthumous Poems (1824), The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1839), Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments (1840). It's so fascinating to read her intelligent analysis of his work knowing she was there when he wrote most of it, and to see her share some of her anecdotes about their life and things that inspired specific works of his. She always focuses on his writing and philosophies more than his personal life because of how much slander they had received due to their scandals, etc. (adultery, radical politics, atheism, the custody battle with his first wife's parents, etc.) -- I can't recall if she ever wrote an extended account of his appearance. She saw him as a soulmate and exalted his powerful inner spirit above all else, and described his physical frame as being a weak sort of chain which had bound him to the world, reflected in his poor health and restlessness.

[notapersob]

I wrote an essay on this topic, which is what the comic is based off of. If you care to read it it's beneath the cut , as well as my works Cited, and alt text.

This was a college English assignment, first the essay then the multimodal project. I wanted to share it with the internet people on my phone because this is something that is important to me. (i added it up and i spent roughly 40+ hours on this comic in two weeks, guys, the carpal tunnel is coming for me...)

i would also like to give a huge thanks to some of my best friends for helping me, @ellalily my wonderful talented friend who i love so much and adore their work. (i love her art so much). I know you'll see this, love you king <22223333.

and my partner, @totallynotagremlin . amazing artist and the person i admire every day. thankyou for helping me with this and listening to me rant about this project. i love you so much *kisses you on the forehead.

If anyone reads this, please go check out their art.

THE ESSAY

If you're not paying attention you could mistake AI art for art made by real artists. Many people use AI without much knowledge about it, thinking it's something harmless and fun. However, AI art has a real impact on the art community. AI art is largely harmful to the art community because it negatively impacts artists by stealing and plagiarizing their work.

Knowing how AI generators create art provides important context in understanding the negative impacts of AI-generated art and why it is bad. In an article by The Guardian, Clark L. explains, “The AI has been trained on billions of images, some of which are copyrighted works by living artists, it can generally create a pretty faithful approximation”. On its own, this doesn't sound that bad, and many fail to see the issue with this. However, the corporations training these AI art generators use artists' work without their knowledge or consent. Stable diffusion, an online AI art generator, has provided artists the option to opt out of future iterations of the technology training. However, the damage has already been done. AI is ‘trained’ by being fed images. It analyzes them. It works by being given large amounts of data and input codes. In an article by  The Guardian, written by Clark L, there is a quote from Karla Ortiz, an illustrator, and board member of CAA, concerning this issue. She says, “It’s like someone who already robbed you saying, ‘Do you want to opt out of me robbing you?”.

Another article by Yale Daily News has several categories, the first being, “How does AI generate art”.  As the heading explains, the first section of the article explains how AI text-to-image generators like DALL-E2 and Midjourney create images by “analyzing data sets containing thousands to millions of images” (Yup K.). In the same article, they cite an artist, Ron Cheng, a Yale Visual Arts Collective board member who is against AI because AI fails to obtain consent from artists before stealing their art. Cheng says “There are enough artists out there where there shouldn't really be a need to make AI to do that.” (Yup K.). The article says Cheng views AI as a tool but not at the cost of the people who spent their lives developing artistic skills.

Many artists feel that they should be compensated or that this should fall under copyright laws but because proving this machine-made art has taken elements of their style is so difficult, the AI companies get off with no consequences. For an artist to take action against an AI image generator, they would have to prove that one of their art pieces had been copied into the system which can be difficult. They would have to prove specific elements of their personal art style have been directly copied and prove that their art has been used and imitated without their consent. Many artists feel that this technology will take their jobs and opportunities in the creative field of work. Kim Leutwyler, a six-time Archibald Prize finalist artist, expressed her issues with AI companies stealing her art in an ABC news article.  Leutwyler said that they had found almost every portrait they created, included in a database used to train AI without their knowledge or consent. They said it “feels like a violation” (Williams T.). 

  With AI art relying on, often, stolen artwork, and creating an interpretation of what it sees, it blurs the line between what is copyright infringement and what is not. In a BBC article by Chris Vallance,  Professor Lionel Bently, director of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law at Cambridge University said that in the UK, “it's not an infringement of copyright in general to use the style of somebody else” (Vallance). Another point to keep in mind is that not many artists have the means to fight these legal battles for their art even if they wanted to. This same BBC article speaks about the Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS), an organization that collects payments on behalf of artists for the use of their images. One quote helps illustrate their point, “I asked DACS’ head of policy Reema Aelhi if artists’ livelihoods are at stake. “Absolutely yes,” she says” (Vallance).

Another concern about AI mentioned in this article is deep fakes, porn, and bias. “Google warned that the data set of scraped images used to train AI systems often includes pornography, reflected social stereotypes, and contained “derogatory, or otherwise harmful associations to marginalize identity groups.” (Vallance). These are all important things to consider when using AI because an AI system can harmfully replicate biases and negative stereotypes because of what it learned. For example, if you input the prompt criminal, it is more likely for the image to be of a person of color. On the other hand, if you input the prompt, CEO, it is strongly probable that an image of an old white man in a suit will show up, not a woman, or a person of color. These stereotypes go much further and much deeper than just these two examples, but the AI recreates what it was taught and can follow patterns that are harmful to minorities.

Another concern many artists have is about their jobs and livelihoods. With how AI art has progressed in the past few years, it is starting to take opportunities from real artists. “It’s been just a month. What about in a year? I probably won’t be able to find my work out there because [the internet] will be flooded with AI art,” Rutkowski told MIT Technology Review (Clarke L.). Many of the articles I researched mentioned the Colorado State Art Fair, where an AI-generated image won first place. The BBC article written by Vallance talks about how a man (Allan) entered an AI-generated image mid-journey and won. Many artists were outraged by this and suddenly aware of how AI could take opportunities like these from them. The artists who entered this competition spent hours and hours on their pieces. As you can imagine they were angry, rightfully so, that an AI-generated piece that took no more than a few seconds won. There is a level of unfairness to this and many artists feel that AI should not be allowed in art competitions like this. It feels like they got cheated out of something they worked hard for. Nobody would let a robot compete in the Olympics or a cooking competition, so why should a machine be allowed to enter an art fair? AI could start taking jobs from artists working on animated projects, or taking commissions.

With AI’s ability to imitate a certain artist's style, some people may feel that they no longer have to pay an artist for work when they could just input a few words into a machine and get something done in seconds. There were artist and writer strikes in Hollywood, in part because of this. These creative people wanted to be paid fairly and have better working conditions, as well as a promise that not all of them would be replaced with AI. When SORA AI came out, I saw many artists online who aspired to have jobs in the animation industry, losing hope and motivation. A soulless and emotionless machine can rip away a lifelong hobby and passion.

Many artists were upset but Allen, the winner of the Colorado State Art Fair, stood by his point and said, “It's over. AI won. Humans lost” (Clark L.). The article quoted a game and concept artist, RJ Palmer's tweet, “This thing wants our job, it's actively anti-artist”.  The article speaks of how artists often take inspiration from other artists, “great artists steal”, but Mr. Palmer said, “This (AI) is directly stealing their essence in a way”. In an article by The Guardian, Clarke L. writes about how AI art has raised debates on just how much AI can be credited with creativity.  Human art has thoughts, memories, and feelings put behind it and takes a lot of skill, whereas, on the opposite end, AI art can't handle concepts like that. AI does not experience life like real people do. It does not have feelings or emotions and it can only think with the knowledge we give it. Since it cannot have these emotions, the art it creates will never have the emotions that art made by real artists has.

Cansu Canca, a research associate professor at Northeastern University and founder and director of the AI Ethics Lab said, “It is important to be mindful about the implications of automation and what it means for humans who might be ‘replaced’” (Mello-Klein, C.). She went on to say that we shouldn't be fearful but instead ask what we want from machines and how we can best use them to benefit people. The article says “With the push of a button, he was able to create a piece of art that would have taken hours to create by hand” (Mello-Klein, C.). Some artists said, “We’re watching the death of artistry unfold right before our eyes” (Mello-Klein, C.). In an article by the New Yorker, Chayka, K., started by giving three reasons why artists feel wronged by AI image generators that are trained using their artwork. The “three C’s”, they didn't consent, they were not compensated and their influence was not credited. The article states how it is hard for copyright claims based on style to get picked up because in visual art “courts have sometimes ruled in favor of the copier rather than the copied” (Chayka, K.). This applies to music as well, where some songs can sound similar but nothing will be done about it because they are different enough, or the source material was changed enough not to be seen as a complete copy. The article said, “In some sense. You could say that artists are losing their monopoly on being artists” (Chayka, K.). Some people are even hiring AI to make book covers instead of hiring artists.

While I am personally against the use of AI art as well as many of my artist friends, all people have their own opinions about the technology. The article by the New Yorker, written by Chayka, K, quotes Kelly Mckernan, who said they watch Reddit and Discord chats about AI. This provides opinions on some everyday people who aren't in the art field. on the situation and said, “They have this belief that career artists, people who have dedicated their whole lives to their work, are gatekeeping, keeping them from making the art they want to make. They think we’re elitist and keeping our secrets.” (Chayka, K.). I remember an acquaintance of mine said that he used AI art because he could not afford to commission an artist. Not everyone can afford to commission an artist and pay them fairly for their time. However, this does not mean artists should settle for less than their work is worth. Art takes time and that is time the artist could be doing something else. 

Northeastern Global contacted Derek Curry, an associate professor of art and design at Northeastern, who gave his thoughts on the subject and he does not believe AI art will ever replace humans because technology has limits. “The cycle of fear and acceptance has occurred with every new technology since the dawn of the industrial age, and there are always casualties that come with change” (Mello-Klein, C.). The article goes on to say how auto-tune was once controversial but it has become a music industry standard. It's used as a tool, and AI art could be similar. It is true that with new technology, people always fear it before it is accepted. For example, the car. People feared it would take jobs and replace people, and this did happen, but it offered more convenience and opened up more jobs for people than it took. Now cars are used by everyone and it is almost impossible to get around in America without one because it wasn't made for walking, it was built around roads. There are many more examples of people fearing a new technology before accepting it, so this could be the case with AI, but for AI to be used as a tool and aid to artists, greedy corporations have to change the way they think about the technology. They have to see it as, not a replacement, but a tool. Big animation companies want to replace a lot of their human artists, who need their jobs to support themselves and their families, with AI. This prospect is something that is discouraging to artists who want to enter the animation field, which is already competitive.

The Yale Daily News (Yup, K.), cites Brennan Buck, a senior critic at the Yale School of Architecture. He uses AI as a tool to colorize and upscale images. He does not think AI is a real threat to artists. This is a very different take from most artists I’ve heard about and talked to. I can see how this technology can be used as a tool and I think that is one of the only right ways to use AI art. It should be used as a tool, not a replacement. Another way AI art can be used as a tool is to learn how to draw. New artists can study how art is made by looking at colors and anatomy for inspiration, though it should be taken with a grain of salt because AI tends to leave out details, and things merge and some details make no sense. These are all things real artists would notice and not do in their pieces. Young artists could also study the process of real artists they admire. Getting good at art takes years and practice. Seeing all kinds of different art can help with the learning process. On the topic of some people feeling like AI is not a real threat to artists, some people feel that eventually the technology will fade in popularity and will become more of a tool. Only time can tell if AI art will take the jobs of artist.

  With everything being said, AI art is actively harming artists and the art community. Even if some artists like Brennan Buck feel that AI isn't a real threat to artists, presently, it is taking opportunities and jobs from artists and it will only get worse as the technology progresses. We need to prioritize real artists instead of a machine, a machine that will never be able to replicate the authenticity of living people's art that reflects their experiences and lives. Some artists use art to express and spread awareness of real-life issues. I have neurodivergent, transgender and queer friends who create art to show what it feels like to experience the world when it seems everyone is against you. I make art to reflect the beautiful things I see and read. I too am queer and fall under the trans umbrella term and I'm autistic, and I use art as a way to express myself through these things that make up my identity.

AI could never put the emotion that real people put into the things they create. Art is a labor of love and pain. Art like Félix González-Torres free candy contemporary art piece cannot ever be replicated by AI and have the same meaning. He “created nineteen candy pieces that were featured in many museums around the world. Many of his works target HIV”(Public Delivery, n.d.). The opinions and views on this, relatively, new technology differ from person to person. Some artists view generative AI art as a tool to utilize in their art while others see it as a threat and something that is taking away from artists. AI art can be used for bad, as it has and will be used to make deep fakes unless limitations are put on it. The AI systems are trained on thousands of images of real people and of art made by artists, all without their consent and most of the time, without their knowledge. On the other hand, some artists use it to aid their process and don't see the issue. Based on what I have learned, I do not think AI art is good, nor should it have a place in the creative job fields. Companies should not copy and steal work from artists. Artists work their whole lives to learn to create, and that should not be replaced by a machine.

ALT TEXT (I didn't know where to put the alt text, sorry, also, this is the first time I've ever done alt text so I'm sorry if its not the greatest, i tried. if you have feedback though, that would be greatly appreciated)

Page 1

“AI art is NOT real art” under  a picture of the letters AI, crossed out in red.

“AI text-to-image generators like DALL-E2 and Midjourney create images by, “analyzing data sets containing thousands to millions of images” (Yup K.)” 

Beneath the test is a set of polaroid photos strung up, with a black crow sitting on the wire. There is a computer with a few tabs open and two ladybugs near it.

“AI art generators are trained off of artwork used without the artist's consent.”

To the side of the text is a small person holding up something they drew. There are lines leading from their drawing to an ai recreated version of it.

Page 2

There is a picture of Kim Leutwyler 

“Feels like a violation”

“I found almost every portrait I've ever created on there as well as artworks by many Archibald finalists and winners”

Kim Leutwyler

(Williams T.)

There is a picture of Tom Christopherson

“I didn't think I would care as much as I did. It was a bit of a rough feeling to know that stuff had been used against my will without even notifying me.”

“It just feels unethical when it's done sneakily behind artists' backs… people are really angry, and fair enough”. 

Tom Christopherson

(Williams T.)

There is a drawing of Ellalily drawn by them,  with their cat sitting on top of the bubble they're in.

“AI sucks the life out of art… there’s no love, no creativity, no humanity to the finished product. And that's not even scratching the surface of the blatant violations put upon artists whose work has been stolen to fuel this lifeless craft” 

EllaLily

(@ellalily on tumbrl)

There is a drawing of Gremlin/Cthulhu 14 with small mushrooms growing off of their bubble

“AI art isn't real art because it just copies from real artists. Art is something that is so very human and it has human emotions in it. A robot can't replicate that emotion and cant give meaning to an art piece”

gremlin/cthulhu14

(@totallynotagremlin on tumbrl)

There is a drawing of myself gesturing towards the text.

“AI art is actively harming the art community by:

Taking jobs

Opportunities

Hope and motivation

From artists.”

Page 3

“Most artists can't do anything against the people feeding their art into these AI systems.”

There are two drawings of myself, sitting down, crisscross, underneath the text with speech bubbles showing that I'm theI'm person talking.

“Many artists don't have the means to fight these legal battles for their art, even if they wanted to.”

“Some dont have the:

Money” 

drawing of a dollar and some coins

“Time” 

drawing of a clock with the numbers jumbled

“Capability” 

drawing of a green frog in a purple witch hat and dress holding up a magic wand with its tongue.

“And even if they did…

Most AI art escapes copyright laws”

Beneath this is an image of Professor Lionel Bently and a small drawing of the university of cambridge.

“Professor Lionel Bently, faculty of law at university of cambridge said (In the UK) “its not an infringement of copyright in general to use the style of someone else””

There is a drawing of the same wizard frog from before. It is laying down.

“so … AI gets away with stealing from artists with no consequences.”

The text is surrounded by a yellow and orange comic emphasis speech bubble

Image of van gogh, starry night, and fake ai recreation.

Image of Zeng Fanzhi art, image of john chamberlain art, “art by artists inspired by Van Gogh

“Artists take inspiration from each other. AI only companies what it sees.”

Page 4

There is a drawing of a green beetle with yellow wings in the top right corner. On the other side of the page, there is an image of Reema Aelhi.

Design and Artist Copyright Society (DACS) is an organization that collects payments on behalf of artists for the use of their images. “I asked DACS’ head of policy Reema Aelhi if artists' livelihoods are at stake, “absolutely yes,” she says”. (Vallance).

There is a brown bat hanging upside down from red swirls on the page.

“Deep fakes and biases

Another problem with generative AI is that often, the data sets used to train it contains, “pornograhy, reflected social stereotypes and contains “derogatory… or harmful associations to marginalized identity groups””. (vallance)”

There is a cartoonish small white and brown cat underneath the text.

“Example, Prompt CEO”, image of a white old man.

“Prompt, criminal”, image of person of color

“These are examples of HARMFUL BIASES”

There is a moth emerging from a green cocoon through three images. The first is an untouched cocoon, the second has a yellow, red, and green moth halfway emerged from the cocoon. The third has the moth fully emerged, resting on the cocoon. There is one last moth flying across the page underneath the text.

“AI art also threatens the jobs and livelihoods of artists.”

There is a drawing of a brown suitcase with stickers on it, and college certificates around it.

“The artist and writer strike in 2023 that lasted 148 days happened in part, due to the fear of being replaced by AI.”

There is a broken yellow, red, and green moth wing at the bottom of the page.

Page 5

“AI also takes opportunities” two green shoes are hanging from a red dot.

“Animated jobs”

Two cartoon birds are on a television screen with a red/pink background.

“commission work”

There are two people, one is a person in a purple shirt who is handing over a drawing to a girl in a blue shirt with ginger hair.

“Book cover art jobs”

There is a fake book with a person on the cover, who has a big orange bird on her arm. There are clouds and three stars in front of her.

“The Colorado State Art Fair was won by an AI image, entered by Jason M. Allen”

Arrow from Jason M. Allens name to quote, “it's over. AI won. Humans lost” - quote from Allen (Clark L.)

“Artists were outraged. You don't let robots compete in sports competitions, why was it allowed in an art competition?”

Tweet from RJ Palmer, @arvalis - august 13, 2022

“This thing wants our jobs. It's actively anti-artist”

“Great artists steal…[but] this (AI) is directly stealing their essence in a way.”

How much can AI be credited with creativity? Human art has emotions /feelings, thoughts/memories, and takes skill and time.

AI art has none of that”

Beneath the text, there is an image of a desert with two clouds, one partially covering the sun. The sky is blue and there are cacti in the background. There is a singular tumbleweed bouncing through the scene.

Page 6

“With a push of a button, he (Allan) was able to create a piece of art that would have taken hours to create by hand… we’re watching the death of artistry unfold right before our eyes.” (Mello- Klein C.)

There is a person in a coffin. There is water in the coffin covering most of them. There are stars over their chest. There are leaves surrounding the coffin.

Page 7

“It is important to be mindful about the implications of automation and what it means for humans who might be replaced”

-Cansu Canca, research associate professional at Northeastern University, founder and director of AI ethics lab. (Mello-Kline, C.)”

There is an image of Cansu Canca. There is also an orange owl in flight.

“Most artists taken advantage of by AI feel wronged in 3 main areas

They didn't consent”

There is tea in a  white and blue cup. Steam is coming up from the brown tea.

“They weren’t compensated”

There is a bronze coin. Next to it is a stamp with the words “the three C’s (Chayka, K)”

“Their influence wasn't credited”

There is a blue credit card with waves on it and a silver chip. On the credit card, there are the words “credit card numbers :D”

“Courts have sometimes ruled in favor of the copier rather than the copied”

There is a red fox with a blue butterfly on its nose and a turquoise background.

Page 8

“If AI art should be used at all, it should be used as a tool and not a replacement”

There is a hammer with a red handle and two wrenches, one on either side of it, followed by two files and yellow pencil. 

“Brennan Buck, senior critic and Yale School of Architecture uses AI also a tool to colorize and upscale images.”

Next to the text is an image of Brennan Buck.

“New artists can look at art made by artists and AI to learn new techniques. However, learning from real artists is more ethical and effective.”

Beneath and between the text is a drawing of a woman with long flowing ginger hair. Her body is obscured by waves like clouds or mist. Six white wings are coming out of her back. She has several hands surrounding a woman with shorter brown hair.

Page 9

“AI is actively harming artists and the art community. It's presently taking jobs and opportunities. Art is a labor of love and pain. Artists cannot and should not be replaced by machines.”

There is a drawing of myself in a birch wood forest. There are bits of sunlight streaming through the gaps in the leaves. I am painting a picture of the scene I see before me. I am in a green dress with a white off-the-shoulder top and there is a brown easel.

Works Cited

Chayka, K. (2023, February 10). Is A.I. Art Stealing from Artists? The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/is-ai-art-stealing-from-artists?irclickid=xyOXQL259xyPRBuWV7XlJViKUkH17cVGIzN7Xs0&irgwc=1&source=affiliate_impactpmx_12f6tote_desktop_FlexOffers.com%2C%20LLC&utm_source=impact-affiliate&utm_medium=29332&utm_campaign=impact&utm_content=Online%20Tracking%20Link&utm_brand=tny. February 28, 2024.

Clarke, L. (2022, November 18). When AI can make art – what does it mean for creativity? The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/12/when-ai-can-make-art-what-does-it-mean-for-creativity-dall-e-midjourney. February 28, 2024.

Mello-Klein, C. (2022, October 12). Artificial intelligence is here in our entertainment. What does that mean for the future of the arts? Northeastern Global News. https://news.northeastern.edu/2022/09/09/art-and-ai/. February 28, 2024.

Public Delivery. (n.d.). Why did Félix González-Torres put free candy in a museum? https://publicdelivery.org/felix-gonzalez-torres-untitled-portrait-of-ross-in-l-a-1991/

Vallance, B.B.C. (2022, September 13). “Art is dead Dude” - the rise of the AI artists stirs debate. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62788725. February 28, 2024.

Williams, T. (2023, January 9). Artists angry after discovering artworks used to train AI image generators without their consent. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-10/artists-protesting-artificial-intelligence-image-generators/101786174. February 28, 2024.

Yup, K. (2023, January 25). What AI art means for society, according to Yale experts - Yale Daily News. Yale Daily News. https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2023/01/23/what-ai-art-means-for-society-according-to-yale-experts/. February 28, 2024.

[sparvverius]

15 + 24 or 25 for the history ask game? ✨

15. Were the history classes teached in an interesting way in your school/ college/ university? What would you do to improve them if you were the teacher / lecturer?

though i've always liked history i can actually credit my obsession with and love for it to a specific teacher! i had her for two years in middle school and she was the best. she would almost always assign art and research projects instead of quizzes. when we learned about ancient egypt she had us wrap uncooked whole chickens in salt and bandages and then bury them in a wooden coffin in the school garden. we dug them up two years later and they were pretty well preserved! to teach us about the amrev she showed us 1776 the musical (i mean that wasn't the only thing she showed us but it made it very fun). if she could think of a way to turn something into a game or roleplaying experience or song or art project she would.

though my high school latin class was more of a language class than a history class it was kind of also a history class and that was also wonderful. the teaching style felt so easy and i think i never got less than an 100% on a quiz but it was also effective! i won a prize in a statewide competition once. i've always compared language classes in college to that one and they've always come up short in comparison. writing this is reminding me that i need to contact that teacher so that i can tell him about my study abroad trip in rome i got to go on last summer!

as for one i would improve... in high school i got a 0% on a frev assignment because i spent the whole class time at the board correcting the packet we were given. but i won in the end because the next year the teacher used (an edited version of) an essay i wrote to teach the frev. all that was nothing against the teacher who was great just shows the abysmal state of education about the frev in america outside of specialist classes even in otherwise very good history classes.

i've been very lucky in that the worst thing i can say about a history class i've had is that i have forgotten everything about it.

24. Most underrated historical figure?

i've been trying to learn more about the haitian revolution and i think really every major player in that event--as well as the event itself--is massively underrated. i can't help but think there's a political reason for it. i mean toussaint loverture is relatively well known but how many people outside of haiti or specialist historian circles know dessalines existed let alone that he went from being enslaved to being an emperor? not enough!! and too many of those who do content themselves with accusing him of genocide despite the groups of haitian whites who were given amnesty and citizenship

25. Most overrated historical figure in your opinion?

george washington. aside from the obvious reasons i find him boring sorry </3

[secretsofthestorymakers]

Happy 10th Anniversary of Frozen!!!!! ❄️🥹🩵

Frozen came out in theaters on November 27th, 2013. I saw it opening weekend. I was 8, my sister was 5. Now it’s 2023, ten years later. I am 18 years old and in college. And I still love Frozen. I could tell dozens of stories about what Frozen has meant to me over these ten years. Some of my most vivid memories of playing with my sister were about Frozen. I remember reenacting parts of the story, changing it a bit to fit what we wanted in the moment. When Frozen II came out in 2019, I remember going to see it on opening night. I remember the entire theater laughing so hard at Olaf’s recap and all crying when Elsa froze and Olaf faded away. That Christmas, I got the Art of Frozen II, which introduced me to analysis of the story through the symbolism in Elsa and Anna’s costumes. During the pandemic, Frozen was one thing that was guaranteed to make me happy. I wrote so many analyses and creative projects during that year and into the next two when I felt alone at school. I even wrote about Frozen in my college application essay. And now it’s been announced that we get two more Frozen films; the magic will continue for years to come.

From the time I was 8, playing as Elsa and Anna with my little sister to now, the way I see the story has changed over time but my original love for it hasn’t wavered. Frozen is a story that tells us that love is stronger than fear. It shows us the power of true love in a dark, fear-stricken world. It shows many ways to love, and many ways to express it. And that is powerful.

Frozen has truly had such a huge impact on global culture and on so many of us as individuals. Its universal appeal and powerful themes contribute to the pure magic of it. For ten years, Frozen has been inspiring us, enchanting us, bringing us joy. As we move into the next decade, I know it will continue to have that magic. Frozen took the world by storm back in 2013, and hasn’t released its hold. So, for me and for everyone else who has experienced the magic of this timeless story, “let the storm rage on.”

[porridgefeast]

ITSAY/IPYTM thoughts

In three parts because that's how I wrote it.

Oh-aew in a shirt which seems like the most meta English t-shirt text ever in Thai BL(ish) world (and there have been many others) but also seems like something Oh-aew would somehow own.

Part 1

I wasn’t assuming I’d have a ton to say about I Told Sunset About You. I wasn’t even planning on starting it at the particular moment I did, I just had it in mind I’d do so soonish. But wow, this drama hit me like a ton of bricks.

I tend to enjoy it when there’s a small gesture or moment onscreen that brings me back to uncertain romantic moments of young adulthood. Oddly enough, it’s often how someone leans (not kabedon-ish looming fwiw)—make of that what you will. (There’s this one moment in Between Us that hit me with something I can only describe as the world’s hardest pang.) But yikes, having so many... I guess first love feelings come up so hard and fast is really unusual and compelling, but almost too powerful for a sensitive creature such as myself. It’s certainly beautiful in an important way I think art is meant to be beautiful. But it’s less uncomplicatedly enjoyable than some things.

I don’t always have to identify with one character over another, even if one character is positioned as the protagonist of a story. I don’t always identify with anybody, though certain stories will pull me in in that way. But man, ITSAY gives me vertigo. Teh’s paradoxical mixture of obvious feeling and self-conscious reserve might normally make it so I’d be seeing things firmly from his perspective, but instead I whip back and forth between Teh and Oh in a borderline-painful way. I guess I just want so badly for them not to hurt each other.

Billkin’s left eyebrow jiggles like even Teh’s face is fidgeting nervously. At the point I’m currently at in the series, it feels like this kid is going to explode leaving only a fine mist. PP Krit is so still as Oh that it’s at least momentarily tempting to perceive him as solid, confident. But his steadiness is one of watching and waiting SO intently.

I feel like I could write an essay about the blinking alone, much less the overall category of looking. I don’t especially want to write it, but it’s there.

About midway through episode 2 I found myself kind of relieved to confirm there are only five episodes. I wanted to hurry through those most acute push & pull moments. But here I am at the beginning of episode 4 and it feels like it’s been a dang eternity.

Part 2

Back again after ending ITSAY and getting 4 1/2 episodes into IPYTM. I’m not writing about this show because I decided to do so, but because I don’t seem to have a choice. Not that I wouldn’t choose to do so, it’s just moot.

I think I’ve finally put into possibly inadequate words a thing Billkin does a lot as Teh. Sometimes his face just kind of goes... offline. He’s telegraphing despair while his face settles into a stiff mask. I find it a lot more true to life than what many actors do in similar scenes, but also very relatable in a way that’s painful! Again, in an art way. In a way that puts into practice the fact that we don’t only watch and read stories to pass time but because they help us understand ourselves. But part of me is annoyed, like a kid who’s been told to get in the car only to find they’re being taken someplace totally unforeseen and unappealing.

I find myself not wanting to explain what PP Krit is doing as much, but not because what he’s doing is less carefully crafted, certainly not because it’s less affecting. I said earlier that I was bouncing back and forth between identifying with each of them but not long after that first note of mine I stopped being able to identify with Teh very much. It might be a stretch to relate the events of this show too much to an experience of my own, but I was probably the Oh-aew in my first serious relationship, which was a very long one that was completely tied up with my entire college experience and a long first stage of adulthood.

I don’t judge Teh too harshly, but he just seems SO young. Like, younger than I may ever have been. Part of what makes this show good at what it does is that I don’t quite know what’s going on with him a lot of the time. There’s certainly a part of me that wants someone to explain what goes on in his head, but the ambiguity works for this show’s narrative style.

Maybe this will become more apparent, but am I supposed to have a strong conviction as to what Jai’s deal has been? Because that guy seems determined to give some of the most intense mixed signals I’ve ever witnessed. I feel like the director was going okay in this shot you’re in love with Teh. Okay now in this scene you feel like Teh’s kinda gross.

Honestly Teh is super gross! Billkin is a cute kid and Teh has many endearing qualities but he is a MESS. About half the time (well, half the time we see him onscreen, who knows what he does during time-jumps) the kid is barfing feelings like No-face from Spirited Away after he’s eaten nearly everybody who works at the spirit bathhouse.

I strongly suspect these characters and performances would bring up different things for people other than myself. This show is taking my personal buttons and stomping on them; presumably for others it stomps on slightly different or even opposite buttons, and for others it might trigger very little whatsoever of their own personal baggage.

Well, back to it I suppose.

Part 3

I feel less urgency now that I’ve reached the end point of the two series. Which is good for me but it means I have less to say at this point.

I’m very curious as to how a rewatch of these two series would feel to me. At first I thought a rewatch might be great—often that way I can relax and appreciate things more, since I’m not distracted by suspense as much. But I could just as easily wind up dreading certain moments. So many public scenes, yall. So much shame being experienced!

I would like to take a short moment to appreciate Hoon. His mom-pleasing powers may have complicated things for Teh, but it was such a relief to me that he was a sweetheart and a good brother.

I’m glad there’s a happy ending but I’m relieved Oh-aew got several chances to be resentful. (Not that I would have been unhappy with some less-than-happy endings. Too happy an ending would have been odd tonally anyway for this show.) I’m pretty sure I laughed out loud when Oh-aew was like but this time if you have a problem can you tell me and we can talk about it?

I was so glad Tarn got a little cameo at the end. It felt like giving her her due. Recognizing how that moment made me feel makes me realize how much I appreciate Tarn having interiority and agency as a character.

In other news, maybe I’m now one step closer to being able to see Na Naphat onscreen without immediately thinking of him as Tawan from Kinnporsche. And usually saying “f*cking Tawan!” in my head. It hasn’t happened yet, but I hope to get there. I’m sorry Na Naphat, I guess that performance was almost too good.

[cereal-before-milk]

Q-TA MINAMI

is a non-binary, bisexual, and feminist mangaka. Their manga stands out for dealing with issues such as sexuality, both in adolescence and adulthood, motherhood or everyday life. Which is why the demographics in which they are best known are seinen and especially josei.

Also known as Kyuta Minami, were born in Unnan City in Shimane Prefecture on January 13, 1969, although they currently live in Tokyo.

Q-ta graduated from Joshibi University of Art and Design Junior College Department of Design. Minami began working as a doujinshi artist during college and continued after graduating. Although at first they weren't very successful and couldn't make a living from it, so Kyuta was a "Pooh/ Poo Taro" (プータロー slang for unemployed, normally this term is not used in homeless people -wikipedia). During that time, they were living in the south exit of Koenji, Suginami-ku, Tokyo. That is why it is believed that hence their name, "South (Minami) Q-ta" (南 Q 太).

Their "official" debut on a large scale and that had an impact on the market was in 1992, with the Let's Play (Asobi ni ikô yo) manga in Wanimagazine (an adult/erotic content magazine) and obtained a mention Honorary Young Jump Rockie Award. Although already in 1990, the mangaka obtained an honorable mention in the Afternoon Four Seasons Award, in a category of young cartoonists, this caused them to take two years off. Those were the beginnings of what would be a long run of honorable mentions, such as the 1994 "Weekly Young Jump" rookie award, awards and drama adaptations of his manga, such as Yura Yura, which was dramatized in 2003 by the television channel of BS-i (now BS-TBS) in the Drama "Koisuru Sunday".

1996 and 1997 were very important years for Kyuta since they published manga in up to 3 different publishers, including the great Shueisha. All that variety made Minami achieve greater recognition and even loyal fans of their manga.

About their private life, Q-ta has been married three times and divorced twice. Their first marriage was with the mangaka Sabe, with whom they had their first daughter. After her birth, the mangaka changed her style a bit and began to make more childish manga and dedicate it to their daughter, like the manga Children's Games, published in 2003, which contains her personal experiences.

Their second marriage was with the poet Koichi Masuno, in between their first son was born. But there were bad feelings between the mangaka and the poet, so after the marriage, Masuno agreed that he would see his son once a month, something that Q-ta tries to avoid. The poet wrote novels and essays showing his resentment and even regret for the divorce (in case you are interested the book is Marriage disqualification, I have only found it in Japanese), in this he said that the mangaka earned more money than him.

Minami's last marriage is with the manga editor and ex-husband of mangaka Marie Yasuhiko, Masami Otsuka. With Masami, they had a son and a daughter, in addition to the son the publisher had with his first wife. So while raising a total of 5 children and taking care of 4 cats, Q-ta Minami managed to publish more than 40 manga, many of which are short stories or one shots, but unfortunately very few have been published outside of Japan.

Their drawing style reminds me of Kyoko Okazaki's style. It could be said that mangakas like Q-ta Minami continued with the legacy that the mangaka left empty, even if it was in an unrelated way. In fact, Q-ta is considered post-Kioko. It is noticeable at first glance that their drawings stand out for the almost absence of detail, although the dialogues in his scenes also follow the same pattern. With the slightest bit, the mangaka immerses us in their stories that are closely linked to the day-to-day life of women, girls, adolescents, and young adults.

Their manga are very peculiar (just like Minami) and they are closely linked to the everyday, to the weight of the monotonous and to trying to break that monotony that we have all faced at some point. Or not, the mangaka may simply want to demonstrate the drama that can exist in the "simplicity" of everyday life and, on many occasions, adding eroticism. And something that is a pleasure to read about their mangas is how Q-ta treats the sexuality of women, especially in adolescence/ young woman. Minami isn't t afraid to delve into a topic, which is often silenced or treated from a male gaze, and show how the girls who are the protagonists of their manga enjoy (in many cases) discovering and showing her sexuality.

➳ SAYONOARA MIDORI-CHAN 1997

*It isn't suitable for all audiences. It contains adult material*

- demographic: josei

- genre: romance, slice of life, drama

- French

Yuko, the protagonist, is a 20-year-old girl who is not very clear about things or what she wants in life, with the exception of one thing, her "boyfriend" Yutaka. She doesn't have hobbies or friends, nor does she look for them, although with two jobs it's not like she has time for it either. At night, she works in a bar next to where Yutaka works. That's where all the misfortunes happen to the protagonist, some even dangerous. Yuko should never have taken that job.

It is a very short story, so risking I will say that you do not expect a sublime masterpiece. Even so, it will surprise you how, in only 7 chapters, the characters are so well written and are so realistic that you can even identify with them. The narrated situations, the union between the employees, the relationship between the protagonists, the friction between the women, etc. They are things that could have happened to you, and that makes it interesting.

- in 2005 it was adapted to live action.

➳ POP LIFE 2016-2018

- demographic: seinen

- genre: slice of life

- English

Sakura, a mangaka, and Akemi, an event organizer, are two single mothers who end up living together and supporting each other in raising their children. The two families live in a somewhat small apartment, which could suggest that it makes it difficult for two small children, a 16-year-old teenager and two women, leading a comfortable life. But the reality is completely different and mothers seem to be happier in their new lifestyle than in the life they led before.

A breath of fresh air on motherhood, taken in a realistic way, showing broken families, but in a certain way complete. Although it is not only about motherhood, but also about death or how to handle a divorce. Many of the experiences that we see in both women are taken from the author's life, narrated from another perspective.

➳ HANDS OFF MY GIRL 2005

*It contains adult material*

- demographic: josei

- genre: slice of life

- Spanish

It is a compilation of a total of 8 stories, each one with a different genre, but all with the Q-ta Minami touch, so it cannot be classified into a specific genre, although the most abundant is slice of life.

The vast majority of these stories contain explicit sex, from TL to GL (yuri). But it is much deeper, it is not only simple eroticism. Hands off my Girl also deals with topics such as lies, jealousy, infidelity, unrequited romance, etc. Like in the second story, Broken Into Pieces, where the protagonist has sex with the man she loves, but he has a girlfriend, and he is supposed to love her more than the protagonist.

But there is something very curious, and it is that the last two stories have nothing to do with the rest. Diary of Another Young Girl narrates the life of a 10-year-old girl who is always in the clouds, has no friends and only trusts her cousin. And Days Spent with Her is an autobiographical chapter of the mangaka that narrates what a day is like with her and her daughter, who is still a baby.

➳ THE BLOOD RED BOY 2022

- English/ Spanish

- genre: drama, romance, bl

It is a very interesting one shot and only has 16 pages. The protagonists are nothing alike, they lead completely different lives and the only thing they have in common is the bar where they are going to drink and the reality from which they are fleeing. It is a story that touches on topics from gender to loneliness and the search for self-love. These are like pieces of an incomplete puzzle and you are the one who has to fill in the missing gaps.

➳ NOT ALL GIRLS ARE STUPID 1996-1997

*It contains adult material*

- demographic: josei

- English

Guess what? Another compilation of interesting short stories. Where girls start to discover their sexuality, fall in love, get disappointed and live their lives the way they want. Although there will be misfortunes, toxic relationships, unwanted pregnancies, infidelities and a lot of detail from the Q-ta Minami brand.

Q-ta Minami's stories are not characterized by being extraordinarily long so these are ideal to read when you don't have much time, but I really don't know what you are waiting for to give them a chance.

[sometimesrosy]

There is something that truly frightens me these days that teens and up are very unfreaked out about these days and it makes my eyes saucer big in shock. I'm on plenty of reading forums where "readers" say they forget the novels they read the second they finish them. They aren't concerned at all about it and when anyone starts to question it they describe reading as just walking past 100's of paintings in an art gallery and only enjoying the paintings for the length of time it took to look at them. Am I just showing my age to think this is nuts? Wasting time to not remember a thing. Then also think they are winning at life to go through a hundred books a year like this?

So I have a different take on this.

Remember please that as an English major, English teacher and writer, I am invested in paying attention to literature. It's a deep pleasure to analyze and understand stories and poems and essays solidly.

Saying that... that's not the only reason to read or the only way to read.

You're allowed to read just for pleasure. Just for the wild ride of the book and not have to be able to critically analyze it when you're done.

You're also allowed to read for escapism. This world is way crazier than it used to be, and we used to think the world was crazy forty years ago. Kids often don't have a lot of control over their lives and reading is a way where they get to feel more in control and/or safe.

When I was a teenager, I didn't read a hundred books a year. I read, oh, I'm guessing, four to five hundred books a year. I read 1-3 books A DAY.

Why?

One. I had a two hour commute both ways. Two. I didn't have money so reading was my entertainment. Three. I only had like seven tv channels, no streaming, no social media etc. And four, and the main reason. Reading was my coping strategy to deal with a difficult, scary and sometimes dangerous homelife.

Do I remember all the books I read as a teen? Absolutely not. I like to say that those books went into "the soup," and they certainly did. I don't remember them for particular narratives, but I remember general conventions, patterns, tropes, structures, timings, moods, themes, cultural expectations, etc. I credit that intense reading period with making me a writer. Reading became as natural as BREATHING.

Do you remember every breath you take? No, of course not.

Admittedly, it turns out that I have adhd, and that sort of hyperlexia is a trait of adhd and autism, so there's a reason for it. I'm not normal and never have been. But you're looking at reading patterns here that aren't normal either.

So these kids are addicted to books.

GREAT! Do you know what other kinds of things kids COULD be addicted to? So many bad things. Let them have their speed reading. Let them do PJO or their ACOTAR or their fanfics. I don't know what kids are reading today.

Reading is PRESCRIPTIVE. People read for what they need and what you may need-- a wider view of the world or intellectual stimulation or a hit of beautiful language-- may not be what these kids are reading for-- escapism, anxiety, entertainment. And neither of those reading needs are wrong.

I read like those kids when I was in high school. And I was one of the only ones I knew who did read that much. I think it's good that reading is cool because it wasn't in the 80s. BUT after I did that 6 year sff binge, I went to college and got a degree in English, and I did NOT read that much anymore. I read more slowly and wrote essays and analyzed books and chose new genres and talked about books and remembered quotes and all that. And I read more slowly for, oh, twenty years, until PTSD, ADHD, anxiety, chronic illness and stress got to me. And then I started binge reading again. Now the genre guarantees a happy ending to combat the anxiety, and it's non-intellectually demanding so my ADHD brain can actually rest instead of going a mile a minute as it does when I don't have something occupying it.

I read 224 books this year and I absolutely can't remember them all. I have to keep a log with titles and authors and ratings and summaries so I can remember which ones I liked best. I reread those, and the second (and third and fourth) read helps me remember the plot and characters and everything else. A close reading is different for me than an entertainment read. My business is words, so when I read for entertainment I don't fuss.

So here's what I'm saying. Reading is good even if you think they aren't reading right. There is no 'right' for reading. If they're just reading for escapism, that's fine. If it's fostering a true love of books that might become a career, that's great. If they're reading as a coping strategy. Leave them alone unless you're a therapist and can help them out.

Another possibility you might want to consider is that it's your questions that are making their brains go blank. A lot of people have trouble answering direct questions like that. And if they actually sat and thought about the story or characters and kind of unfolded it from that direction, would actually remember. By 'a lot of people' I mean me. My adhd brain doesn't remember like that. But if I go back to my log and look at my summary, the narrative will come back to me.

[angelosearch]

After I graduated from college I sucked at file management and lost a lot of what I wrote in those years. I do have some stuff printed, though. I'm starting to transcribe some of my poems/essays/etc. for safekeeping.

I'm going to share this poem here because it's about writing but I want ya'lls opinion too (poem and poll under the cut).

Writer's Anxiety

Hi, I'm [angelosearch]. I'm a writing major. I'm a student of writing. I write. I write a lot. But I'm not a writer nor poet nor essayist nor author nor artist. Just a writing major. All my writer friends have a "writer's ego," but what if the ego is a no-go more concerned with grade pointed resume sectional blog posts than being pretty or clever with words? Scratch that, I am concerned. So concerned that I shrink at the sound of their sentences dancing above me, floating over my work even with each page I read, word I write, no matter how many cups of coffee or sleepless nights, my words come out sloppy. I watch them wear their writing effortlessly like those who only wear clothes that fit them, but my family never had the money to replace the things I outgrew, so maybe my poetry spills out my bra a bit while your sleek fiction fits your tongue like a glove. I can cover it up with scarves, an outerwear of excuses knitted with "I did this at the last minute"s and "I got writer's block on this one"s.

Everyone talks about writer's block, but what about writer's anxiety? That feeling you get when you realize everyone in the room knows what they're doing but you--or at least that's how they seem. How can they stay so cool as an epiphany slips out their lips? They just put rhythm to the meaning of life and said "Thank you." They fill out their toques and denim jackets, readers grown into writers clad in unbuttoned unbridled confidence... I want to feel that way. I want to write that way. BUT every poem feels like a car swerving into unmanageable metaphors or else a train traveling one way on a single track with no transfers to blandly named towns called Springfield or Coddington. BUT every fiction has a world like a piece of paper sparsely decorated with cardboard characters wearing cheap, floral-print adjectives, endings arriving contrived or premature. BUT every essay is stuck in one form, a record clichely repeating the same facts about your life: "my parents are emotionally divorced" "neither of them went to college" "I feel like I don't belong" "I don't belong-don't belong-DON'T BELONG."

My friends tell me that I am wrong but it sounds like that knee-jerk compliment you get get right after you say "I'm ugly."

Why does nothing I write sound right? I want to know where new style begins and no style ends. I want to think the world just isn't ready, but I'm not that conceded. I can't believe it. I can't assume I'm a writer because I write--most can form words on paper, but not everyone can turn a confession into an expression called art.

End poem!! I think I wrote that in 2013 (The spring of my junior year).

[witchstormm]

Hello everyone! A few days ago, I wrote an essay on Accidental Autistic representation in media using the character Diane Nguyen from BoJack Horseman as an example of that as a part of a bigger college paper I'm writing about autistic representation in media! I decided recently that I wanted to make my current essay public as I work on the bigger paper, just as a bit of a taste tester for those interested in what I have to say as well as a way to showcase why I believe Diane Nguyen is autistic coded (as an autistic person)! To those interested, the essay will be put right under the cut! I hope you enjoy it! To those who aren’t, I understand! I hope you have a wonderful day as well!

When trying to come up with ways to make characters with diverse personalities, creators will often end up representing groups of people without initial and deliberate intent. While it may be a bit misleading to call something that was unintentional “representation,” media, in general, is a subjective art form, so it’s important to recognize the merits of what an audience can take from a piece of media, even if it was unintended by its creators. A rather notable occurrence of this would be the abundance of media portraying autistic characters. Accidental Autism in media is often presented as characters who were intended to come off as “quirky” and/or “different” by their creators without realizing the “quirky” traits in question are diagnosable qualities of autism. As a result of this phenomenon, these characters and their reflective arcs often have more focus on who they are overall rather than solely existing to be an “autistic character,” which ends up humanizing and more accurately portraying autistic people and how they function in society. A good example of this happening in a modern-day show would be the accidental representation of autism in BoJack Horseman with the character Diane Nguyen, a frequently recurring character who is one of BoJack's closest friends.

BoJack Horseman is an animated series that debuted on Netflix in August 2014. It stars the titular BoJack Horseman, a washed-up celebrity horse from a popular sitcom from the 90s, and his eccentric friends Princess Carolyn, Mr. Peanutbutter, Todd Chavez, and Diane Nguyen as they all go through the motions of day-to-day life while dealing with heavy topics such as childhood trauma, drug abuse, mental health, abortion, overwhelming fame, etc. Such portrayal of real-life experiences has won the show numerous accolades as well as high critic and audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and other similar websites. The show’s writing has managed to touch the lives of a lot of people, and the characters within it are still often discussed to this day as their relatability has withstood the test of time and maintained their relevance in popular culture, even though the series has ended. 

A lot of the characters in the show have their respective fans and portray unique viewpoints on life that many can relate to; however, the case of Diane Nguyen (BoJack’s former ghostwriter-turned-friend) in particular, is an interesting one. Of the main characters, she's the only one that people seem to be perplexed by, being labeled as weird or odd, because on a surface level of examination, she may not trigger a general audience's perception of what an autistic woman is. Thus, these traits are unfortunately often perceived as annoying or inconvenient when it comes to furthering the narrative of this show. It is not until all of her acclaimed “annoying” traits are added up that a general audience will recognize how she ends up properly representing the autistic experience.  

As outlined by the CDC, certain diagnostic criteria need to be met for an individual to be considered autistic. In particular, there is a minimum of no less than 5 traits an individual must possess that are deemed as being persistent and cause significant impairment in multiple areas of functioning. One of the foremost traits of autism Diane possesses is that of info-dumping, a practice in which someone regurgitates as much information about a specific topic as they possibly know onto someone else in an unprompted manner at random parts of conversations throughout the run of the show. In season 1, episode 3 “Prickly-Muffin,” Diane goes on a tangent about her thoughts on Sarah Lynn, tying into her feminist views in general without understanding fundamentally that BoJack wasn’t meaning to ask for her actual opinion of Sarah Lynn; he was more trying to get Diane’s opinion of her being in his house (Bob-Waksberg). Another instance of this occurring would be in Season 3, Episode 7 “Stop the Presses.” This time, Diane goes on a tangent about her disastrous trip to work, which led her to be nearly 2 hours late. This event proceeds from a comment Princess Carolyn had made where the latter replies, “I’m hanging onto every word” (Bob-Waksberg). She says this in a sarcastic tone, which is implied to have flown over Diane’s head, as she responded to her literally. While these instances may seem innocuous at first glance, “deficits in social-emotional reciprocity…from abnormal social approach and failure of normal back-and-forth conversation” as outlined above is a rather important trait of autism (CDC). While this is still a noticeable way to indicate autism to an audience, the usage of how her traits are portrayed is visible enough to cause some people to consider it while not overriding who the character is fundamentally.

Diane’s link with the traits of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) doesn’t end there. She often misreads social situations and ends up spouting inappropriate conversation as a result of not understanding nonverbal behaviors. She exaggerates her facial reactions in situations that don’t necessarily warrant said expression, such as times when she’ll widen her eyes for no reason mid-conversation. While it's not expressly stated in the show whether or not it is something she does purposely, the intention of showcasing this behavior, in particular, could go either way. Either she's doing it as a result of years of masking, a process in which an autistic person attempts to conform to societal norms, or she’s just the type to make random faces from time to time. She also tends to have the opposite problem where her delivery of important information comes off as dry as a result of her lack of intonation and expression in her delivery. A good example of this would be how she responded to her co-worker (at the time), Guy, in the episode “Feel-Good Story.” He invites her over to his place to watch a game, and her tone while accepting the invitation is monotonous, even though you can tell she’s genuine in her delight (Bob-Waksberg). Diane’s also very prone to viewing situations logically by default, which often leads to negative reactions by others, best showcased by the time she alluded to the harassment she experienced as a result of some popular cheerleaders in high school who wrote “virgin slut” on her forehead. Her initial reaction to their harassment was to question how she could “be both a virgin and a slut at the same time", disregarding the elephant in the room of the fact that she was being harassed at all (Bob-Waksberg). She’s missing the social situation of what’s occurring then entirely, focusing more on the logical fallacy of the cheerleader’s statement rather than the fact that they were harassing her.  Another example of this behavior occurring in the show would be when she first met Sonny and he talked about how his parents would get back together, as they’re secretly still in love after their divorce, whereas Diane’s initial reaction was to tell him that it wasn’t true because “[his parents] hated each other and fought all the time” (Bob-Waksberg). These traits would all constitute what the CDC labels “deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction,” but are done in a way where they don’t feel like a caricature. As a result of her tendency to read situations and respond literally, it feels as though it comes more naturally to the character, rather than feeling as if there are very specific beats that she needs to hit for the writers to feel as though they’ve accomplished autistic representation.

Diane furthermore largely dislikes social events as they make her uncomfortable because she often fundamentally doesn’t understand what to do and how they’re supposed to work. In that manner, Diane admits: “When you’re Diane, you can live your whole life like it’s a puzzle, put together from the pieces of different sets…your whole life is full of these pieces that don’t quite fit. But at some point, you start to think it’s you. You’re the piece that doesn’t quite fit” (Bob-Waksberg). This behavior of hers would constitute “Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships, ranging, for example… difficulties adjusting behavior to suit various social contexts,” according to the CDC. Shown struggling to understand how people around her go about partying and/or socializing in general, it makes her feel like an outcast due to her innate differences. Moreover, her over analyzation of people and what they’re doing in certain situations to decode and then imitate such behaviors is a great example of when she described how she would simply observe and study how people interacted together at parties in the first episodes of the show (also directly linking to how she mimics her friend's unique behaviors unconsciously). Such as when she copied one of BoJack’s quirks in which he asserts his full identity over phone calls; “This is Diane by the way… Nguyen, obviously” (Bob-Waksberg). This further supports her tendency to try to adjust to her environment.

Whether she’s adjusting her glasses an unnecessary amount of times or she’s pushing her hair back over and over again, Diane tends to fidget around in a manner that would be seen as excessive and distracting from an outside perspective. She always seems a bit uncomfortable with conversations, especially when said conversations involve her communicating en masse with people, so as she’s interacting with others to calm herself, she’ll repeat certain motions. This falls under the diagnostic category of stereotyped/repetitive motor movements, repeating these actions as a form of soothing herself in uncomfortable situations一 also known as stimming.

“Highly restricted, fixated interests that are abnormal in intensity or focus” are a rather well-known autistic trait, and something that Diane exhibits in a wonderfully noticeable yet subtle way (CDC). She tends to develop obsessive interests in random things that can go unnoticed in the grand scheme of the show if not focused on, such as when she fixated on making the perfect grilled cheese when she first moved to LA, making them for every meal she ate at that point in her life until she had felt she perfected the recipe (Bob-Waksberg). This demonstrates how intensely focused she can become on a topic, and how willing she is to see the ideas she has through. Another would be her strong desire to help people and her fixation on change and fixing things, even when it comes to her detriment, such as when she took a very public stance against a celebrity in the show who’d been accused of sexual assault and continued to hold her ground even when she received several threats to her life for refusing to drop the allegations she made against him in the season 2 episode “Hank After Dark” (Bob-Waksberg).

While it’s clear that characters like Diane are autistic to an audience who are looking for these traits, they often fly over the heads of those who aren’t intending to view said characters as autistic, including creators. In trying to come up with a character that they deem as different from what would be considered socially acceptable, the media will often take inspiration from autistic traits, which creates a rather interesting result of good autistic representation. Unintentionally, the accidental combination of traits resulting in an accurate depiction of autism, such as those seen in Diane Nguyen, creates a clear dichotomy between characters with qualities forced into checking the boxes of CDC guidelines. These content creators, along with the characters born from simply recognizing autistic traits as common in society and innately human, deliver an accurate, relatable, and profound representation of a subgroup that is often dramatized and embellished in a manner that becomes inaccurate in modern media.

My Works Cited

“Diagnostic Criteria.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2 Nov. 2022, https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/hcp-dsm.html.

Bob-Waksberg, Raphael, writer/creator. "Prickly-Muffin" BoJack Horseman, season 1, episode 3, The Tornante Company / Boxer vs. Raptor / ShadowMachine, 22 August 2014. Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/watch/70298932?trackId=14170289&tctx=2%2C0%2Ccd3cc07a-d98d-468c-8bc4-dfcb3ded2d58-331248819%2CNES_BB936C03657FFA88767C5DAF178961-B9F225DDE3A711-3DF1649C24_p_1678406684315%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C70300800%2CVideo%3A70300800

Bob-Waksberg, Raphael, writer/creator. "Stop the Presses" BoJack Horseman, season 3, episode 7, The Tornante Company / Boxer vs. Raptor / ShadowMachine, 22 July 2016. Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/watch/80073223?trackId=14170289&tctx=2%2C0%2Ccd3cc07a-d98d-468c-8bc4-dfcb3ded2d58-331248819%2CNES_BB936C03657FFA88767C5DAF178961-B9F225DDE3A711-3DF1649C24_p_1678406684315%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C70300800%2CVideo%3A70300800

Bob-Waksberg, Raphael, writer/creator. "Feel-Good Story" BoJack Horseman, season 6, episode 3, The Tornante Company / Boxer vs. Raptor / ShadowMachine, 31 January 2020. Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/watch/81026961?trackId=14170289&tctx=1%2C0%2C9a11e1d5-7da2-450e-8743-fc53e5b0bcb0-47084340%2CNES_BB936C03657FFA88767C5DAF178961-B9F225DDE3A711-AE978428A7_p_1678524571926%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C70300800%2CVideo%3A70300800

Bob-Waksberg, Raphael, writer/creator. "One Trick Pony" BoJack Horseman, season 1, episode 10, The Tornante Company / Boxer vs. Raptor / ShadowMachine, 22 August 2014. Netflix,https://www.netflix.com/watch/70298939?trackId=14170289&tctx=2%2C0%2Ccd3cc07a-d98d-468c-8bc4-dfcb3ded2d58-331248819%2CNES_BB936C03657FFA88767C5DAF178961-B9F225DDE3A711-3DF1649C24_p_1678406684315%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C70300800%2CVideo%3A70300800

Bob-Waksberg, Raphael, writer/creator. "Xerox of a Xerox" BoJack Horseman, season 6, episode 12, The Tornante Company / Boxer vs. Raptor / ShadowMachine, 31 January 2020. Netflix,https://www.netflix.com/watch/81026970?trackId=14170289&tctx=2%2C0%2Ccd3cc07a-d98d-468c-8bc4-dfcb3ded2d58-331248819%2CNES_BB936C03657FFA88767C5DAF178961-B9F225DDE3A711-3DF1649C24_p_1678406684315%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C70300800%2CVideo%3A70300800

Bob-Waksberg, Raphael, writer/creator. "Angela" BoJack Horseman, season 6, episode 14, The Tornante Company / Boxer vs. Raptor / ShadowMachine, 31 January 2020. Netflix,https://www.netflix.com/watch/81043629?trackId=14170289&tctx=2%2C0%2Ccd3cc07a-d98d-468c-8bc4-dfcb3ded2d58-331248819%2CNES_BB936C03657FFA88767C5DAF178961-B9F225DDE3A711-3DF1649C24_p_1678406684315%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C70300800%2CVideo%3A70300800

Bob-Waksberg, Raphael, writer/creator. "See Mr. Peanutbutter Run" BoJack Horseman, season 4, episode 1, The Tornante Company / Boxer vs. Raptor / ShadowMachine, 8 September 2017. Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/watch/80117548?trackId=14170289&tctx=2%2C0%2Ccd3cc07a-d98d-468c-8bc4-dfcb3ded2d58-331248819%2CNES_BB936C03657FFA88767C5DAF178961-B9F225DDE3A711-3DF1649C24_p_1678406684315%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C70300800%2CVideo%3A70300800

Bob-Waksberg, Raphael, writer/creator. "Hank After Dark" BoJack Horseman, season 2, episode 7, The Tornante Company / Boxer vs. Raptor / ShadowMachine, 17 July 2015. Netflix, https://www.netflix.com/watch/80048082?trackId=14170289&tctx=1%2C0%2C9a11e1d5-7da2-450e-8743-fc53e5b0bcb0-47084340%2CNES_BB936C03657FFA88767C5DAF178961-B9F225DDE3A711-AE978428A7_p_1678524571926%2CNES_BB936C03657FFA88767C5DAF178961_p_1678524571926%2C%2C%2C%2C70300800%2CVideo%3A70300800

[poetessinthepit]

You express your thoughts so clearly and in such a way that’s so easy to follow/understand. It’s impressive. I’m curious, did you take debate classes or something similar, or is that something that just comes naturally for you?

Thank you so much! I really appreciate the compliment.

I'll answer your question by revealing a little about myself.

I've always loved to read and write. My childhood dream was to be a professional writer, and while that dream never came to fruition, it led to me to refining my writing and speaking skills during my formative years.

I never participated in debate club or took classes, but when I was in high school, I participated in a YMCA program called Youth in Government. For this program, you had to learn parliamentary procedure, research your state laws, and write a bill. Your hardwork would culminate in a trip to the state legislature where you'd spend the weekend with other students, acting as a mock legislature and debating bills. It was total nerd shit. I think many of the kids who participated had an interest in politics. I was already completely disillusioned with the political system at 16 and mainly just wanted to argue with people in a formal setting. I won "best first year legislator" my first year, and it's probably because I spoke on nearly every single bill. I would never turn down an opportunity to get on a microphone.

When I was in high school, I was generally known for always raising my hand and getting into debates, not only with classmates but with my teachers. It got me in trouble a few times, and I think my classmates found me annoying.

I did write for my school paper, but I don't think I ever wrote about controversial topics; I was more interested in covering the arts and signaling to everyone that I had "good taste." But mostly, I loved editing more than I liked writing articles. In English, I actually enjoyed classroom activities where we'd have to swap essays and make edits. Whenever these activities commenced, I was over the top with the amount of corrections and suggestions I would make to the essay of a fellow student. I would hand back their paper, and it would be covered with red marks. I remember sighing in a disappointment when my only note would be needing to add a coma. I was ridiculous. I cannot emphasize enough that I was a total fucking nerd. I was simultaneously down on myself and full of myself in the way that only a teenager can be.

When I was a senior in high school, I took a class called Contemporary Issues that focused on current events and involved a couple debates but nothing as formal as what I participated in with the Youth In Government program. I also remember my teacher in that class also made some crazy statements like one about extreme leftism being associated with terrorism. It definitely wasn't a very good class, and it didn't teach me much about debating.

In college, I majored in communications, but I never finished my degree. I still learned a lot from the classes I took, and I use the skills I developed in my career today, even though my career is in a totally different field.

I don't think that I'm the most gifted orator or writer, but I have long been obsessed with writing the perfect sentence, crafting the perfect argument, and being as precise as possible in the way that I word things, sometimes to a fault, and I think that obsession carries through even in junk I'm posting on social media.

Anyway, I know that was an unnecessarily long and detailed answer, but I hope the few followers who bother to read this enjoy learning a little bit more about me.