#also you think autism = Sheldon from the Big Bang theory and nothing else

[lesbiansanemi]

I hate when I’ll be complaining about some stupid bullshit a coworker does to other coworkers and half the time their response is to lower their voice and go “well…. You know…. I’m pretty sure they’re… on the spectrum, you know?” And every time I have a split second when I have to consider saying “you know I’m autistic, right?” just to make them vaguely uncomfortable for a few minutes and actually think about what they’re implying but of course I do not do that because the gratification is not worth a large sect of shitty coworkers knowing that about me and then talking about me like that every time I do something vaguely annoying or dumb but man…. It does get tempting sometimes

[fellowstrangetownappreciator]

Curious and autistic-coded

Hello there! April draws to an end and with that I think it’s high time to hurry up and write this. What does April have to do with anything, you ask? April is the Autism Acceptance Month. So what better month to do this?

Unfortunately I didn’t make it. I failed. It’s already 1. 5. when I’m posting this. But at least I tried to deliver on time.

In this mini essay I’ll present my case about why I think the Curious brothers from TS2 Strangetown display autistic-coded traits and my personal takes on it.

It’s basically your average headcanon post but with a funny top hat!

0: Preface: What do I mean by “autistic-coded”?

When a character is coded as something, it means that they have traits that are associated with the demographics in question to make the consumer knowingly or not link the character with the demographic, although the character's "label” is never explicitly disclosed.

In the nutshell, it means that there are canonical reasons to read the characters as autistic, although you won't find the word "autism" anywhere in the game nor in the developer's commentary.

In this particular case I do believe that the developer may not even be aware of the code, as there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. If there is, I’m not aware of it and I would be happy to learn.

So, let’s start!

1: “The white male who is very good at science”

Unfortunately autistic representation in pop-culture has a long history of being rather straightforward in which traits the characters often have. This stems from the belief that autism is “a boy’s disorder” (that’s why some autism charities to this day use blue in their symbols). Among popular examples of autistic-coded characters are Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper and Death Note’s L and Near. I’m sure you can think of more but you’ll find that most of them are men and either explicitly white or racially ambiguous white-passing. They also tend to be gifted in tech, logic or other science-y activities.

There’s nothing wrong with that! Nothing wrong with being an autistic with those “stereotypical” characteristics and there is nothing wrong with people being represented. What is wrong is the monotony and afab people/people of color being underrepresented which leads (among other factors) to harder access to diagnosis and resources for those people in real life. But! That’s a topic for a different day. (and not for a simbrl, mind you)

Back to the Curiouses! I just wanted to say that autism in media is traditionally associated with characters whose gender presentation, race and interests align with theirs. Those characteristic thus make a very convenient template for autistic-coding.

2: Inconsistent performance, huge gaps between strengths and weaknesses

Pascal, Vidcund and Lazlo are very skilled Sims by default, extraordinarily even for their age. Pascal has a skill maxed while his younger brothers both near maxing theirs.

But as you can see in Pascal’s default skill panel, apart from Creativity, all his other skills are extremely low, 0 points for Mechanical, Body and Charisma, 1 point for Cooking and Logic and his second best skill, Cleaning, has only 3 points. The same situation can be observed in Vidcund’s and Lazlo’s, except their strong suits are Logic and Cooking respectively.

Huge discrepancies within performance in different cognitive areas is a common trait found in those on the autism spectrum. We’re often talking extremes here and the scale of the difference is the defining factor. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, it’s just in neurodivergent people those tend to be unusually noticeable.

I think that skills, simplified as they are, are the closest The Sims has to possibly simulate that because they track the character’s performance and expertise in different areas and allow comparison. In real life, of course, this comparison is not nearly as possible and exact, nor desired, but for all our analysis-loving enthusiasm, here we’re still talking fictional characters.

3: Struggle with social cues

It is widely known that one of autistic traits are difficulties with processing social situations, picking social cues and successfully replicating socially desired behavioral patterns.

But these three are Sims, are they not? They cannot possibly display this trait, since they’re programmed the same way as others.

Yes and no.

It is true that there is no specific in-game feature that would allow Sims to behave with explicit neurodivergency in mind* but with the right combination of traits they can simulate behavior that really hits close to home for neurodivergent players.

*at least not in TS2, TS3 has traits that simulate some possible neurodivergencies but their names tend to be rather... ableist unfortunate and they’re not relevant to this post since they’re not autism related, and even if they were, we’re focusing on TS2 exclusively

Let’s take look at Lazlo here. He is, indeed, a playful soul. He likes to goof around, tell jokes, make others laugh. And since he’s very close to his brother Vidcund, close enough even to Tell Dirty Joke (an interaction that needs quite a high relationship to unlock), he autonomously does just that.

And oh boy, does Vidcund disapprove.

From my personal experience playing them, their relationship usually takes quite a hit from every cheeky joke Lazlo throws Vid’s way. They usually autonomously repair it very quick but it happens often.

But that’s a standard behavior. Vidcund’s very serious, he doesn’t take well to jokes.

No. I mean technically yes, Vid is definitely a grumpy old plant dad but, at least in my game, he tends to accept Lazlo’s jokes. All kinds of them, actually, except for the dirty ones. And Pascal, who technically has even lower Playful points (0 in comparison to Vidcund’s 4), doesn’t seem to mind Lazlo’s poor attempts at grown-up humor.

But! What is it that makes Lazlo try still? What drives him to attempt to make Vidcund laugh with a dirty joke over and over again? (and fail?)

I my interpretation, Lazlo doesn’t do that on purpose, he is just really poor at evaluating “dirtiness” of a given joke and frequently misinterprets Vidcund’s cues. The animation of a dirty joke being rejected even supports that as Vid doesn’t signal his discomfort with any exaggerated easy-to-read facial expression until Lazlo gets to his punchline.

No only that but as I mentioned, the invisible lines between spicy and too vulgar are often hard to thread. I can recall many times I thought I was saying a witty quip on an “adult” topic and was met with awkward silence or someone shushing me because “that’s not how you speak in public”. I can well imagine myself in Lazlo’s shoes.

A situation of social cues being misinterpreted or ignored can be observed also in Vidcund. Programming-wise, those are just his low Niceness and extreme Shyness showing but combined they again paint a picture of a very neurodivergent-looking behavioral pattern.

He often behaves like the concept of politeness or social rules doesn’t exist because the combination of the aforementioned traits makes him come off very blunt (lecturing and shoving telescope-peepers with no warning whatsoever) and distant (having a high chance of rejecting simple small-talk socials).

(That’s Jasmine Rai casting the “Summon Vidcund” spell.)

Yes, I am fully aware that it makes a stronger case for him being an a**hole than autistic but... there’s no reason he can’t be both. Not all autistic people are sweet cinnamon buns, all personalities you can think of can be neurodiverse and, for some their neurodiversity can even amplify their inconsiderate ways, as I believe it is the case with our dear grouch Vidcund.

4. Their bios

“No matter what happens, Pascal believes there is a logical explanation for everything. In his free time, he practices home psychoanalysis and collects conspiracy theories.”

(that’s how I imagine practicing psychoanalysis looks like, sorry Freud)

“Serious and exact, Vidcund strives to fit the universe into a nice tidy package. He has an unnatural fondness for African violets.”

(let’s collectively pretend those are African violets)

“Not as studious as his older brothers, Lazlo got his degree in Phrenology. He likes to call phone psychics and spends hours trying to bend forks with his mind.”

*error: screenshot of Lazlo bending forks not found*

(but here he is hanging out with Erin Beaker, the closest thing to “calling phone psychics” you can actually do in-game)

Both Pascal’s and Vidcund’s bios point to a pattern-focused worldview with a strong emphasis on rationality as the center-point that anchors the way they understand the world around them and build their principles on. This “pattern-ization” of thinking is a common autistic trait, with rationality being a popular theme because emotions tend to be difficult to access and asses for many of us.

Lazlo’s biography is an outlier. But it still has something significant in common with those of his brothers: All three of their bios allude to a potential special interest of sorts.

Special interests as an autism-related term are very specific, in-depth and long-term hobbies or areas of expertise that make an autistic person happy and they tend to go to seemingly exhausting lengths, often at the cost of other areas of knowledge and most likely the person’s ability to talk about anything else for a long enough time. (a loving hyperbole, no disrespect meant) Mine are my characters and cats. An even more intense but a short(er)-term passion is called a hyperfixation.

Them potentially having a special interest is yet another possible autistic-coded feature.

5. Wait. Why does it matter?

Right. What does it matter if a Sim (A SIM) (or two or three) is autistic? What do I hope to achieve, pushing my autistic Curiouses agenda down your throats?

I got to write a long rant-piece about some of my favorite TS characters and I feel like I can finally die satisfied.

Apart from that and me sharing my happiness of finding some good pixels I can relate to, it is a matter of representation.

Remember by the very beginning I wrote how most of the representation our community gets in media tends to be just a one specific type of character?

And how the Curious brothers seem to fit the stereotype to a point?

There is something I omitted, something I saved for the last on purpose.

The role. The role in their story, the role in the society the piece of media portrays.

We often see neurodiverse, autistic or autistic-coded character as children, students, villains, lone savants, victims in distress, comedic relief sidekicks, either very vulnerable and needing protection, or detached and having their role defined only by their academic prowess or their special interest/profession.

What we rarely get to see them as, are... parents.

That’s what many of us autistics are or plan to be someday in the future. The dogma around autism has started to dwindle relatively recently and there are little to no examples of autistic adults being the care-givers for once in the media around us.

The Curious brothers are just that. They are chaotic, they are eccentric, they can be a little too much... but they are dutiful and loving fathers/uncles to their little aliens they raise.

They make it work. Even if they face difficulties, even if they don’t exactly fit the standard.

“Sometimes, a family truly can be three brothers raising alien babies, and it’s beautiful.”

It encourages us to define family by love rather than traditional structures and it shows us that portrait of a functional neurodiverse family we need to see.

And goodness, is it a powerful sight.

[hoe-doroki]

Alright, friends, your local demi is going to take one last bow before ace week is up.

I’m going to talk about myself, because I the lived experience of ace and acespec people isn’t talked about enough and, well, this is the week to talk about it!

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s bring in a good ol’ frame of reference:

78% pure. For those who don’t know this is the rice purity test, where high scores mean you haven’t participated in many “racy” activities and low scores mean you have.

First, let’s state that I don’t want to put too much stock on this test. Only 3/4 of the questions are about sex and dating while the remaining 1/4 is about alcohol, drugs, and illegal activity. (Part of the reason my score is so high is because I, unrelated to being acespec, don’t drink or smoke.) But, like I said, it’s a place to start.

Stats. I’m a 24-year-old woman. I am cisgender, straight, and demisexual/demiromantic (not asexual or aromantic). I have never had a boyfriend, I have never enjoyed kissing, I have never had sex.

Oof, and right away, I’m embarrassed saying that.

And that’s the whole problem.

(This post clocks in at ~1.6k, so the rest is under the cut. Trigger warning for suicidal ideation.)

Well, not my whole problem, haha, but it is why I’m bothering to talk about this instead of keeping it secret, like I prefer to. I want to dispel some myths that harm the way I view myself and keep me from being honest with others. Because I fear that when people look at me and hear ��24-year-old virgin” they assume things about me that just aren’t true.

First thing’s first. The fact that I’m a virgin means nothing except that I have not had sexual intercourse with another person. There are no other assumptions to be made.

It hurts when people are surprised by this. I happen to fall mostly into the barbed categories of American conventional attractiveness, so when people hear that I have never had a boyfriend or that I’m a virgin, they assume there’s something wrong with me. Or that past men I’ve been around have missed an opportunity or something.

This is shitty on two levels. One, the assumption that my stats are the way they are because of some failure sucks. All it should be is a reflection of my agency and the fact that I am the queen of saying no. (In fact, it was my first word.) But then people are assuaged by the fact that I have, in fact, been approached for sex, as though that confirms for them the value that they assumed I had. As though that’s where any of my worth should be coming from.

Two, these assumptions, when flipped, imply that it would “make sense” for me to have my stats if I looked different or was less neurotypical.

Media--as it does--has played a role in these assumptions. I think about the characters who are “later-in-life virgins” and I think of Emma Pillsberry from Glee, who deals with extreme OCD and germophobia. Or Sheldon and Amy from The Big Bang Theory, the former of whom might very well be acespec and is likely on the autism spectrum as well, but who is shown to be very antisocial with many difficulties forming interpersonal relationships and the latter of whom comes from a very conservative family and a mother who ensured she couldn’t learn social skills until well into her thirties. Or the “what if” episode of Friends that basically asserts that Monica would have been too fat to get laid. Or The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which I don’t wish to talk about. (Oof, all such problematic examples)

And yes, these characters are all white (I am not) and that’s a discussion for another post better made by someone who is more of a media expert than me.

These characters are all portrayed to have something that “explains” why they haven’t yet had the privilege of having sex. And we see in movies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, or a whole host of teen movies, that virginity is something to conquer--especially for male characters.

I don’t look how people expect virginity to look. I’ll be real--I have high self esteem. I think I’m awesome inside and out and I don’t see any reason why I should be shy about that. I know that if I wanted to have sex with a stranger, I could do it tonight (covid notwithstanding--be safe, friends).

And even if I were a different person who had less self confidence or looked different or came from a different background, that wouldn’t mean that I “deserve” to be a virgin or whatever it is media is telling us. Virginity still wouldn’t have a damn thing to do with the other things that make up a person.

So, louder for the people in the back: being a virgin doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with me.

Next point. Being a virgin doesn’t mean that I’m innocent, a prude, or that I’m “waiting for marriage.”

Gosh, I’ve been asked if I’m waiting for marriage too many times. Two things. 1. No. I’d rather know my sexual compatibility with a partner before marriage and 2. I’m an atheist. So no.

Also, I am not innocent or a prude.

My lack of experience makes me feel infantilized. It does. That’s a personal issue of mine and, ya’ll, I don’t have many answers for how to overcome it. But I have done what I can to change that.

Guys, some of the best choices I’ve made in my adulthood are the things I’ve done to reclaim my sexuality (meaning sexualness not orientation) for myself. Not gonna get super nsfw here, but I’ve invested in about a dozen sex toys and I intend to buy more. They always makes me feel so much more adult and sexy. And I’ve done things with them that I feel pretty confident that many of my sexually active, allosexual friends haven’t done. This kind of thing isn’t for everyone acespec, but it helps me reclaim my worth as a sexual being, without needing a partner to validate that.

I’m also fully valid to write erotica! I love erotica and it’s another way I take back my sexuality. It is just as valid for me to write as it is for anyone else. I am capable of research--both on my own body and from resources, experts, and classes. I don’t need to have had sex for my opinion to matter.

Oh, and being acespec has nothing to do with my sex drive. It seems that I have a libido that is either average or slightly above average--I’m also a person that the more I’m engaging with my libido, the higher it gets.

This often feels like a curse. I, unlike many, but not all, acespec people, strongly desire sex. Like, I’ve bundled up a 35-pound weighted blanket on top of myself whilst engaging in self-pleasure just to try and make the activity feel more partnered (pro tip: that didn’t work.) The truth is that I’m really sick of having to take care of my libido by myself and would much rather have a partner.

But it’s not easy.

I’ve tried online dating, guys. Many times. I can’t do it. That’s not true of all acespec individuals, but it is for me, at least right now. For me, my demisexuality means that the idea and experience of going out, even on a casual date, with someone I’m not already interested in is nearly intolerable. And my current lifestyle, for many reasons, doesn’t lend itself well to me naturally forming crushes.

I’ve only had one major crush in my life. And it was 10 years ago. So you understand the difficulty.

I hate being demisexual, guys. I do. I wish that I could write this post with the intent of spreading pride and positivity, but I can’t. That’s not where I’m truthfully at yet. I’m lonely to the point of suicidal ideation. I’m too young for it, but I’m already making contingency plans for freezing my eggs or trying to imagine a future where I could be a single mother and...I can’t yet reconcile it. I know that part of this is my dreams being created in society’s image, but all I’ve ever wanted is to be a wife and a mother. And it’s hard to see that future when I can only look at my past and see images of silicone and sexual repulsion.

Remember when I said I’ve never enjoyed kissing? I’ve had more stage kisses than “real” kisses and, I have to say, the staged ones were more enjoyable because at least I wasn’t forcing myself to do them. Forcing myself to try to kiss someone so that I could feel “normal.” Forcing myself to kiss someone just because I was curious about what it was other people were talking about. My first “real” kiss was at 20 years old and it was a night where I forced myself to do a lot of things for the sake of catching up with my peers and I’ve been deeply uncomfortable with that experience ever since, and I can only be grateful that I stopped it as early in the evening as I did.

Everyone’s experience is so different, ya’ll. I haven’t heard a story like mine before, so in no way can I claim it to be an experience that widely represents demisexuality. It certainly doesn’t represent asexuality, nor how queerness (or many other things) intersects with either of those things.

But, at the same time, I’ve never heard a story like mine before. Do you know how helpful it would have been to have been able to see a story like this a few years ago? Ten years ago? It would have been life changing. Because even though, in the middle of all that self-confidence I spouted off about paragraphs ago, there’s this kernel of self-hatred stuck in my teeth, I would have felt validated. I would have felt seen. I would have been able to DM someone who could have told me, hey, it hurts and I know no one seems to understand you, but I do.

That’s to say, if anyone is going through something similar and wants to talk about it, my DMs are always open. I’m no expert, and I bet some of the things I’ve said here aren’t going to hit some people right, but this is my experience. This is the most intimate part of my life. It is a privilege that I’m sharing this with you all, so please, hold it with care. I hope this means something to someone.

Happy ace week, ya’ll.

Oh, and the rice purity test doesn’t mean shit. It’s good fun if you want, but if it makes you feel any kind of way because your number is too low or too high, throw it away. That’s not where any part of your value comes from.

[locolioness]

30 Days of Autism Acceptance 2020: Day 7, 8 + 9

April 7: Talk about autism in the media. Do you think that autism is typically portayed well? Badly? Is there anything you'd like to see more of when it comes to autistic representation? Who are your favorite autistic characters? Do you have any headcanons?

To be honest, I see like more of a mixed of good and bad portrayal of autism. There’s not much representation but I do see some progress on showing more canon autistic characters in the media. Shows like Big Bang Theory where they have a character named Sheldon, who’s is suppose to be autistic, where it is obvious that’s a negative portrayal/representation of autistics and making them look bad. Julia being introduced to the show, Sesame Street, to bring more autism acceptance was a good feeling to me at first but now after hearing Sesame Street started to team up with Autism $peaks and refusing to listen about the problem, it left me with nothing but bitter disappointment. 

I would like to see more actual portrayal of autistic characters that don’t fall into the stereotypes we often see in the media and people do their actual research on autism. I would also like to see more POC, LGBTQ+ and disabled autistics to show there’s more than one group of autistic people.

Even thought I haven’t been introduced much on shows/movies that have actual autistic characters, I heard there’s a TV show called Everything Is Going To Be Okay, where they have the main character, whose name is Matilda, is autistic and I’m willing to give it a watch. There’s also another autistic character from the PBS show, Arthur named Carl Gould. I remember a few years ago of seeing that episode, When Carl Met George, I was very absorbed with it and was happy to see an actual autistic character in a show that I grew up with as a kid.

I have a headcanon on Link from the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild who I consider as autistic. I feel like there are some evidence on supporting this as I realize it while playing the game. I will post the evidence when I get the chance.

April 8: What are some misconceptions/stereotypes about autism that you hate?

There are a few of them that really pisses me off. Autistic people can’t be in a relationship and/or have a family I find it very rude and offense. Autistic people can be in relationships and rise a family of their own like everyone else. There are even autistics who identify as LGBTQ+.

Autistic people are super geniuses is plain untrue. There are autistic people who have different skills, we’re not like Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper. We have different range of intelligence. There are some who are good in math. Some who are good in art and writing. Assumptions like that only makes us feel like we have to live up those unrealistic standards and it’s rather unhelpful.

April 9: How sensitive are you when it comes to touch? Are you pro hug or anti hug?

I can be quite sensitive to touch when it comes to certain physical contact such as kissing and hugging. The thought of displaying such actions, makes me feel kind of touch repulsed. I’m pretty cool with high fives or fist bumps with my coworkers at my job though. I even get uncomfortable when it comes to hugs. I only hug a few family members I really know and my boyfriend. 

[aroworlds]

First off, I loved your ask post about erasure, Scrooge, and representation. Anon, if you’re reading this, you’re a legend. Second, I haven’t read A Christmas Carol in a while, and I was curious how Scrooge is coded. In what ways do you see him as aro-ace? Thanks bunches!

First, I’m going to @ mention @thatmrgold, because I think they’re also a fan of Scrooge, additional to the original asking anon (or at least I’ve seen a reblog on one of my posts that suggests this–many apologies if I’m mistaken). I have read A Christmas Carol several times, but it’s many years ago now–my most recent engagement with the story is The Muppet Christmas Carol adaptation, seen last year! For this reason, I encourage anyone more familiar with the source material to expand upon my answer. I don’t have the detailed familiarity with the canon to answer save in broader strokes.

The main points where I think thatEbenezer Scrooge can be coded or seen as coded involve a previous failed romance (it’s depicted that he comes to love money more than hisfiancée, for which she leaves him), his long-running single-man-in-the-world status (he lives on his own, no partner, which is meant to indicate his hatefulness) and his isolation/disconnection from the world around him (demonstrated in a lack of compassion for his tenants, a refusal to allow his workers their Christmas, etc).

I’m going to explain why these points are effective coding, because written in a paragraph like that, they don’t seem like much. Thing is, they don’t have to be!

I’ll stress that much of this ties into long-running antagonistic aro-ace (and often autistic*) coding shared with other characters. A lot of a-spec coding is less about certain qualities suggesting a character’s being a-spec and more about those qualities being part of a broader literary canon of similarly-viewed characters. In other words, characters where people read those qualities together as having associations with a-spec identities, not because those character qualities are always inherently associated with being aro-ace or a-spec. In this sense, Scrooge is a-spec coded because Sherlock Holmes is a-spec coded and Clariel is specifically aro-ace and early The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper is aro-ace coded, and all these characters have commonalities in how they see the world, how they connect to the world and, most particularly, how the rest of the world views them. Viewed in isolation, Scrooge isn’t necessarily aro-ace-coded. Viewed in a social and historical context of other characters interpreted as aro-ace, on the other hand, he is.

I’m going to use The Big Bang Theory to explain my point, because I think Sheldon Cooper is the most recognizable character, and despite not liking the source material, I’m quite familiar with it. The Big Bang Theory doesn’t properly describe early-seasons Sheldon as aro-ace; it compares him to aliens, to plants and the scientific understanding of asexual reproduction. I think it does once or twice use “asexual” but it’s never in the current understanding of “lacking sexual attraction” and more like “a being without sex”. He’s constantly dehumanised for the aro-ace qualities the show won’t name. He talks, though, in ways that clearly demonstrate a lack of sexual and romantic attraction, and because of amatonormativity, they later give him a slow-growing romantic relationship as part of character “progression”. (Which is handled so disrespectfully and antagonistically, but that’s another post.) When people first hear the words aro-ace, they’ll commonly think of early-seasons Sheldon, because that’s the undercurrent of his character compared to characters like Scrooge or Sherlock. Even people who’ve never heard words like asexual or aromantic have an idea of what they think it is on first listen, because they’ve been exposed to so much unlabelled coding: in a world lacking intentional and meaningful representation to properly educate audiences on lived experiences, coding instead forms the basis of understanding.

(And it’s unexplored amatonormativity and aro/ace antagonism, of course, for why negative character traits are so often a-spec coding.)

This is why we end up with a character being aro-ace coded for things like not having a relationship and not connecting with people. These things do not inherently mean anything about the aro-ace experience, but they’re part of a social context where qualities indicate identities. Only the people who have a true need to understand–either as allies working with us or because they’re a-spec–go to a-spec communities to learn the diversity of experiences associated with our words, to look beyond the clumsy outline of coding.

(In fact, they have no concept of coding as distinct from representation.)

Additionally, especially because we a-specs are raised in a world where we are not seen or understood, we ourselves often come to relate to those qualities, however negative the coding and context, too. Not having a relationship says nothing about one’s lack of attraction, but many a-specs struggle to have a successful relationship, are pressured into ones we don’t want or are non-amorous. In a world where so few characters are depicted as long-term single in late adulthood, we’ll take that character for our own. Not connecting with society–well, I suspect the majority of aro-specs respect the need for Christians to celebrate their cultural and religious holidays, but when being a-spec is always a wall between us and the rest of the world, we feel and relate to that distance, that disconnect. When Christmas means people pestering us about our relationship status or lack of attraction, don’t we feel a bit like saying “Bah, humbug”? A romance failed by not loving someone else enough–not loving enough has been or will be levelled at many aro-specs, and I know that I’ve felt that because of my lack of romantic attraction, I must have loved something else over the “proper” romantic love for another person. It fits close enough to the amatonormativity we experience.

(There’s a reason why LGBTQIA+ and queer people so commonly relate to antagonistic characters, as their experiences of disconnection and alienation are as close as many of us get to our lived experiences. Only recently has there been, for some identities, anything close to representation, including representation that positively explores our alienation, enough that we might first see ourselves in anything other than antagonist characters.)

Lack of mainstream/broadly recognised representation, too, drives us to forge more intense connections with flimsier points of similarity than would be reasonable for a white, abled heterosexual cis woman connecting with white, abled, female cishet characters. She can be choosy about personality and character type in the characters she deems to be like her; we have the unconscious-but-constant knowledge that there’s few others like us and connect, in relief, just to have someone vaguely like us in the story, even if they’re clearly an antagonist.

On their own, these things are flimsy pieces of connection, but in a social context of coding and lack of representation, they become so much larger.

Does this make sense? A lot of what I see as aro-ace in Scrooge is less about descriptions of lack of attraction as it is broader brush-stroke images that correspond to lived experience or negative coding. Folks more familiar with the source material may be able to offer you more detailed examples, but for me it’s about the type of character Scrooge is in the social context of similar characters seen a particular way by a-specs and allosexual-and-alloromantic folks alike.

* Explanation of why I mention autistic coding under the cut for those who’d rather ignore the tangential murmuring:

A lot of aro-ace coding is also autistic coding because allo allistic writers cannot conceive of autistics being anything but aro-ace and aro-aces being anything but autistic. Both identities are seen as lacking empathy and connection to others, and both are subject to the dehumanising assumptions behind this kind of antagonistic coding, where aro-ace coding is used to show an autistic character as inhuman and autism coding is used to show an aro-ace character as inhuman.

Please note that the tendency for combining the coding does not mean that autistic aro-aces have full representation, as I see too many people argue: most of these characters are antagonists who don’t offer full, celebratory, supportive, intentional and beneficial depictions of aro-ace and autistic experiences. Aro-ace autistics are not positively depicted in the broader literary canon; surface aspects of their experiences are used to tell the audience a character is antagonistic. Given that I’m starting to see a few romance novels with autistic characters, by autistics and allistics alike, the idea that autistic aro-aces (and I don’t know of any autistic allo-aro character outside my own work!) are somehow more represented in fiction is raging amatonormativity. Again, coding is not representation and it’s disingenuous to conflate them.

[whiteclericmaris]

Honestly it's way past midnight but I can't sleep because I am still mad about that All in a Row show. Like for real they couldn't have a human actor play as the autistic. Do you have any idea how many times my Mom always likes to point out that Sheldon's actor from the Big Bang Theory has autism? And yet he acts in a TV Series for multiple episodes which are longer hours than that All in a Row must be? You're telling me you couldn't do that for the show (not that it matters as the plot of All in a Row just likes to dehumanize us more).

I'm even more livid at the fact that NAS told them to make changes and they didn't. Heck I just signed a petition to have that show pulled and you know how many signatures they need? 170,000. You know how many they have? 168,000+ (and that's just in one day). NAS told you to change stuff and you disregard it. Like that's some big disrespect for the autism community itself.

You know nothing about Autism. Oh but I know because I have it? Not JUST because I have it but I have met others with Autism.

One person used to be a neighbor in one of the old apartments where I lived. Let me call her Monet for this post. Monet was part of a Russian family and we happened to meet her because during one Halloween my sister noticed Monet and her sister trick or treating. So what my sister did seeing as they were young (like around 8 and her sister 12) she took them trick or treating as their babysitter since she was a teen. Monet was and still is autistic for all I know. Her mother was helping her with some therapy sessions for the autism. She would sometimes visit our apartment and I will always remember how she will say words. The most repetitive one would be something that sounded like "Again... Again..." for most of the stuff. She would not talk sentences but rather short words. Also she'd flap. Not just by screaming when kinda frustrated but actually flap how most autism people stim. When happy she's flap those hands. When upset she'd go up to her mother and push her forehead against her hand in frustration or just tired.

My Mom always had a thing for children and knew how to take care of them. She invited Monet over one time to watch Rio (the bird movie) since it was colorful and she knew Monet might like it. While Monet would walk oddly (like not really in order as kinda tilty from one side to the other with each step) you'd just think she was a baby in a kid's body.

Outside of Money my Mom found a place where they would host Autism meetups in a University. I'd usually go but one of the struggles is... It's mostly boys. Like there were 15 people and I was 1 girl out of 2-3. Sometimes we would play board games with each other and one day we even shared our favorite songs. Most of them could talk relatively normal. Some were even older than 30 and 1 had even written a book about their life with Autism. Some were slow in reaction but it felt normal. I don't remember why I stopped going (it wasn't because they moved where they hosted it but I just stopped).

As someone with autism you don't know the struggles I go through. I am at home and I barely do chores because too much trouble yet when I am at stores I organize nail paint by color and try pairing all the paint together with similar colors or even the exact same color, I organize DVDs where they should be and cans however the idea of doing something similar at home is like 'Does not compute'. I cannot sit still for long periods of time. In a classroom I tend to pull my hair for stimming and something else I'd rather not mention. My sister has been bullied for years all because of these repetitive behaviors of mine and I have been shouted at and told repetitively by my Mom to stop it. I even tried to find some ways to stop doing these tics but eventually I end up going back to eating my nails and other 'bad' tics of mine that I give up trying to even stop. For example I tried letting my nails grow but eventually they got too long (like not pointy long but maybe like 2-3 centimeters long). I do not know about other females but always having bitten nails my life having long ones feel odd. There's this area on the side of the nail that would start bugging me when long. Like not really vibrating but more itchy. I've never been a manicure type either so to me nails are not really important. The most I got teased for is by my Mom for not being able to open canned stuff. However having long nails did not mean I stopped scrating my head. I would bleed more often with the long nails as I scratched often. Eventually I just ended up eating those long nails back to short. However I don't injest the nail like I used to as a child rather I spit it out.

Honestly I usually feel ashamed when scolded by my Mother. Always fighting and telling me to stop doing some of these tics and I try but I always go back to it. It's not like I end up doing it on purpose nothing like 'Haha my Mom gets mad whenever I do this so let's keep doing it'. No it's more something I automatically come back to doing to even a sort of subconscious level. It's a real struggle.

Finding support as an adult is rough. I get denied Medicaid often because I am not in their category for disabled and just recently they set me up for failure. The last time I applied for benefits they told me I had to start working for them. Who does that? How do you expect someone who doesn't drive to find a job in a few days? I ended up having my food stamps taken away just because of this and am still umemployed and spend most of my time at home.

It's not just financial but also group support. I went to a program before but the thing is I felt they would not help my needs. It's like my Mom would say 'You're mentally challenged but not TOO mentally challenge that it looks like you'd blend in with neurotypicals'. I can speak english but I'm lacking as I barely use my words. I even noticed with my Dog whenever I go to pet him I say 'Yummy' cause he makes me so happy yet I also ended up saying 'Yummy' to an Uber Driver not because of the food they delivered but because my body recognizes 'Yummy' as happy.

Being autistic does not mean as if it is the end of the world. It's not that your child is in a coma all because they have autism (no offense to the relatives of those in actual comas). It does not always mean that your child is violent and resorts to violence. Also adults have autism too. It is not something they 'grow' out of. Some people find out in their older years they are autistic (I was 17-19 when I was diagnosed with it but that group I mentioned? I remember someone mentioning somewhere in their 20s). Autism is not something you can take away from the person. It is a way of being. Honestly it is offensive that someone would want to take it away.

'All my child does is go Bah bah'.

Have you ever considered that's not autism but them communicating something? A baby cannot speak words when born yet it cries as a signal that something is wrong. Knowledge isn't something people that speak automatically know. No it's something they learn from their teachers and parents. Maybe they might never say a coherent sentence but that does not mean they do not have a language.

[sillyanimegamingroad]

How much information can our brain store?

In 2016, Professor José A. Esteban gave the conference “ What are memories made of? And where are they kept? ”At the Achucarro Forum of the Basque Center for Neuroscience. In it, the CSIC biologist and researcher spoke about synaptic plasticity and the development of therapeutic applications for diseases such as Alzheimer’s. It has always been a curiosity that how much information can our brain store?

Thinking about the content of the talk, the first thing that came to mind were a couple of recent articles. On the one hand, the tweet from Vala Afshar, Chief Digital Evangelist at Salesforce.com, commenting on the Constellation Research study on the importance of Big Data, Analytics and Data Mining (again) at this moment in history in which 90% of the data in the world was created in the last year.

On the other hand, the creation by scientists from the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom of a new data format that, by storing information in crystal nanostructures, has achieved an expected life time of 13.8 billion years of expected survival for said support. You don’t know where to store 360 ​​terabytes of data and you may have to put it at 190º of temperature? No problem! We have the perfect hard drive for you thanks to a scientifically proven 5D storage technique. So I got to thinking, how much information can we remember? Will it be more or less than what can be generated in a lifetime? And what about the one that has been generated throughout history?

The information peta

Information peta of our brain

To estimate how much information could be generated, nothing better to do this than to look for the leaders in information processing. In 2011 Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, the company that wants to order the world’s information to make it accessible, said that humanity generated 5 exabytes of unique information every two days on the Internet .

What is that? Bernardo Hernández pointed out in these parts that it is as much information as from the beginning of history until 2003, all together, at the same time, without anesthesia. As there were people who did not quite square the figure, Science magazine decided to recalculate, concluding that we have generated about 600 exabytes up to 2011. And how much is an exabyte? Much.

1000 kilobytes = 1 Megabyte 1000 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte 1000 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte 1000 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte 1000 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte 1000 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte 1000 Zettabytes = 1 Yottabyte 1000 Yottabytes = 1 Bronobyte 1000 Bronobyte = 1 Geopbyte

So of course, a skill that is becoming essential to survive in this modern environment is a hypertrophied memory, whatever they say. Therefore I needed to have an idea of ​​our maximum capacity to memorize in order to determine if everything we generate fits or not.

Robert Birge , a professor and researcher at the University of Connecticut who analyzed the storage capacity of proteins, estimated it to be between 1 and 10 Terabytes in 1996, assuming that a neuron was a bit. Closer in time, in 2008, he considered in a radio interview that it could actually be something closer to 30 or 40 Terabytes , given that the brain does not store information in the same way as a computer. In any case, it seems insufficient to reach our goal, so a solution must be found. On the one hand, it is hopeful to remember that the brain forgets things, leaving room for new memories. We all have things we want to forget (those over 40 years younger because there are no compromising photos of us on the Internet of when we were young, for no other reason). But it is also true that we could forget what we should not.

No, in these topics we better bet on the Diogenes syndrome of memories, we are not going to forget any important anniversary for our partner, such as his birthday or Valentine’s Day. So we tried to keep asking to find out that depending on who we talk to we can reach the magic Petabyte number. The calculation in this case comes from estimating 100,000 million neurons with 1,000 synaptic connections each, taking each connection instead of each neuron for 1 bit.

The confirmation comes to us by a team of researchers from the Salk Institute led by Terry Sejnowski estimated in a paper published in eLife at the beginning of 2016 that it could be considered to go from tera to peta without problems since the synapses were not all the same, and that the different types could allow estimating up to 4.7 bits of information for each one .

What’s more, in some cases there is even talk of a maximum of 2.5 Petabytes . Paul Reber gives us an idea of ​​the impact of this difference in capacity in an article in Scientific American .

In it, this professor of psychology at Northwestern University explained that this amount would allow 300 million hours of television to be stored . Of course, what he did not say is that it was not in HD, so I do not think that with that quality we can survive our challenge: 1 petabyte in HD quality is barely 13.3 years of video , very little if we are looking for true love and for all life.

An image and thousands of words

Digital Brain

I admit, this first approach is discouraging. It was urgent to find solutions. So my next step was to try to determine the maximum potential of our memory . If it was greater than the information generated we would still have a chance. We have already left behind the mistaken idea that we only use 10% of our brain, but it is still clear that we cannot use everything at once and that we have it quite underused. How do you get to use it in such a way that it is possible to memorize everything you can memorize? The next one seemed obvious: we had to find the great memorizers of history , see what they were capable of and compare it with the limits.

Unfortunately, it seems that many of the best known cases of “infinite” memories were the result of trauma or unwanted situations and, what is worse, not easy to repeat without putting our integrity at risk to achieve it. An example of the risk we talked about was the old case of Cenn Fáelad mac Aillila , an Irish scholar who died in 679. Although what is called a scholar was actually scholar, it was not very scholarly. Come on, his thing was weapons and fighting. Precisely in one of them he got a good wound on his head, which resulted in a wound that caused him pain all his life on the one hand, and an elephant memory on the other. What’s more, it is said that he did not manage to forget anything else during the rest of his existence. To understand the harsh implication of acquiring this superpower we must know that Cenn, after obtaining his new condition, completely changed his life to devote himself to poetry and learning Latin, instead of enjoying with friends from the “third time” after the battles .

Recent literature has also treated the subject with interest. Forges wrote about ” Funes the memorable ” telling in his collection of “Fictions”, back in 1944, the story of a man who suffers from hypermnesia after a common accident: a fall, in this case from a horse.

Curiously, his new gift is also associated with another headache, this time that of not being able to sleep (a big mistake, as we will see later). The absence of sleep and the premise that this process is a “memory eraser” means that the protagonist has, during his short life, a memory full of details but a total inability to think and make use of them. I was on the right track … well, you understand.

Closer in time was the case of Kim Peek , who inspired the character of Raymond Babbit in the movie “Rain Man.” Kim did not have any accidents during his life as his ability apparently originated before his birth. After Kim was born, the doctors told his parents that the child was not normal and that he would have mental retardation all his life, so they even recommended admitting him.

They refused to discover as he got older certain abilities that contrasted with the evident delay that he actually showed, as they had been diagnosed. Little Kim had been reading since he was 18 months old. Well, the reality is that he memorized the books his father read to him and he didn’t need to read them ever again to remember them. At the age of three he went to the dictionary, which he also memorized, to finish with what is estimated to have been around 9,000 books in his life.

As in the case described by Borges, his great memory and other abilities did not help him in his day-to-day life (coordination problems) or in analyzing or drawing conclusions. Apparently the reason for his ability would be related to the absence of a corpus callosum in his brain, causing his neurons to form a compact mass of connections that amplified his capacity, combined all this with an evident case of macrocephaly.

Kim’s father met Barry Morrow, the scriptwriter for the film “Rain Man,” at a conference in the State of Texas in 1984. The film introduced the “Sage Syndrome” or Savant into our lives, studied by Darold. Treffert. A “Savant”, or virtuoso of the arts in French, is a person who despite some physical, mental or other disability, possesses other skills that are normally developed at a much higher level.

It is associated with autism although it is estimated that less than 10% of autistics have abilities of this type . It is also estimated that half of the Savants are autistic, which does not help us much in our search (safe and without risk to our integrity) for an infinite memory. In a century of study, a maximum of one hundred people with this capacity are calculated. Treffet himself considers that less than 50 exist right now in the whole world with it. Other researchers, such as Snyder or Mottron and Dawson, tried to find the ability to induce skills, but without much success. Looking for alternatives, I went to ” The Big Bang Theory” , which allowed me to remember that there is what is known as Hypertrophic Eidetic Memory or Photographic Memory. Yes, those people who remember everything, like Sheldon Cooper or Will Hunting. If they only remember things related to their own existence, we speak of a Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM), of which it is estimated that 20 such people have been studied around the world (all in the USA). They are the “Google Humans” who suffer from hyperthymesia or excess memories. Unfortunately it is a quality that, coming as standard, can be lost if it is not diagnosed and worked on.

It appears suddenly and from that moment those who suffer from it begin to remember a large number of details of their day to day. In this case, Jill Price , who published a book about her case in 2008, can remember all the days of her life since she turned 14. Remember that at the age of 8, in 1974, you were beginning to be aware that something was not normal in your memory.

Unfortunately these people do not always have the ability to memorize anything, usually their memories are focused on aspects of their own life. They also do not use techniques or mnemonic rules that can be learned or replicated by others, or managed or improved. There are several recorded cases besides Jill Price (the long time patient AJ), all of them very similar.

For example Brad Williams, Rick Baron or Marilu Henner, star of a TV series in the US, which is the place of origin in most cases. The study of these patients by a team from the University of California at Irvine, led by Dr. Parker, has helped to better understand where and how data is stored in the brain.

It has not helped so much to the bearers of this gift, since as Jill herself has the negative part of spending much of her life in the past, of not being able to identify what each key is for , of suffering problems with recognition facial of people and also showing obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

Become a Foer

At this point on the road it seems that the alternatives to have a memory “in keeping with the times” were having an accident waiting for luck to smile on us, inducing a genetic or birth anomaly and little else. Is there no other way to get an elephant memory? A journalist in the United States dedicated a year of his life to finding the solution to this problem. Our great man is Joshua Foer , who decided to leave everything to better know the people who were professionally dedicated to developing their memory, even training himself for the memory championships in the USA.

Without any prior knowledge of the subject, or special ability, or natural genetics, he won the championship in 2006. He ended up writing his experience in a book, ” The challenges of memory ” can be found in Spanish, “Moonwalking with Einstein : the art and science of remembering everything ”in English. Joshua also gives TED talks explaining how “normal people” can expand their retention capacity.

One of his first discoveries was the millenary mnemonic techniques , such as the palaces of memory. Aristotle spoke already in his time of places where we were able to store content to be remembered. The thing did not remain in the past: the ars memorativa was discussed and studied in classical sources or medieval studies. Saint Augustine wrote profusely about memory in his “Confessions”, in fact the term appears about 100 times, and also refers to a place where we can access and where memories are kept.

Frances Yates in her book “The Art of Memory” (1969) confirmed how the ancient Greeks and Romans used a technique based on prior memorization of the arrangement of everything in a room or building. Joshua Foer includes in his the story of the Greek Simonides of Ceos, who was enjoying a banquet with friends in the 5th century BC when everything collapsed around him, most of those present perishing. A survivor of the catastrophe, he suddenly became a history of memory when, abstracting from what happened and taking as a reference the columns, tables and general arrangement of the room, he managed to lead the relatives of the deceased by the hand to tell them where they were at the moment that everything changed in their lives. Joshua and the legend say that at that moment, with this practical demonstration of the Simónides technique, the study of memory began its official journey.

This is how the idea of ​​using a physical “place” as a reference is the basis of this mnemonic technique known as the Loci Method (plural of the Latin term “locus” or location, location). We first memorize a “container”, a reference, for example using a building or a house, ultimately a place we know; we can even create one from scratch. Once it is developed, we design routes through it, to also have an order, a sequence that we will follow to move through it and that will act as a common thread, turning a complex task into a pleasant walk.

Information stored in Brain

In this way we solve two important problems: remembering things that the brain has trouble remembering naturally, and remembering them in context even when they do not have them per se. The idea, later copied by communications engineers, of using a “carrier” of the message, which facilitates its transport and storage, is as old as our culture. Greeks and Romans in their ancient rhetorical treatises, such as the ” Rhetorica ad Herennium “, the oldest surviving book of rhetoric in Latin to this day (originating from the year 90 BC), already spoke of the places to store things in our memory.

Problem solved … for now

At this point part of the problem seemed solved. We could not confirm if the brain could remember all the information that is generated, but we did know that there were people who remembered everything , and that following Foer’s instructions, anyone could learn to memorize a large amount of important information, such as the dates essential to survive in a modern couple relationship. And after all, if Foer, a journalist, had been able to do it, anyone should be able to be.

The post How much information can our brain store? appeared first on Technoeager- tech blogs and articles.

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[the--anxiety-project-blog]

Autism acceptance month.

Hello everyone and thank you for visiting our tumblr today! 

Because of the fact that it is now Autism acceptance month most of the articles we publish this month will be about autism! 

Today (April 3rd, 2020) we will be learning about what autism is, and how it affects some people who have it. 

Autism is defined as a developmental disorder of variable severity that is characterized by difficulty in social interaction and communication and by restricted or repetitive patterns of thought and behavior. 

People who have it will often have trouble in social situations, with stuff like making eye contact, and reading social cues. 

They will also engage in an action called stimming, which is when someone will engage in repetitive actions or motions, over and over again. 

Now, not everyone who fits the definition of stimming is autistic, stimming can also be attributed to ADHD, and just plain old fidgeting. 

Some examples of stimming are: 

Running hands through hair repetitively. 

Running your hands or other parts of your body over and over again on a certain texture. 

Or even clapping or flapping your hands repeatedly. 

Autism is way more common than most people think, because a great part of society thinks that autism can only be what they are portrayed as in the media. 

In the media they are often portrayed as the most extreme end of the spectrum. They have to adhere to a rigorous schedule, can only eat or study certain things, and are often painted as obnoxious. Think Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory and you’ve pretty much got it down to a t.  

In reality autism, (like anything else) is a spectrum, and so you have different levels of traits. 

While one autistic person may need to adhere to a schedule all the time, and have awful sensory processing issues, another autistic person may have less sensory issues, and not have to adhere to as strict a schedule. 

Autism isn’t the type of spectrum most people think it is, it's not a straight line, with Neurotypicals (people who don’t have ADHD autism or something of the like) on one end, and the most ‘severe’ of autistics on the other. 

In reality, it's more like hundreds of lines like that, but with stuff like “adhere to schedule” and “textural issues” on them. 

While you may be one hundred on texture issues, you may also be a zero on adhere to schedule. 

Autism is complicated, and if you think you might have it it is best to not only do some research beforehand, but also to talk to family members and friends, maybe see a therapist if you’re comfortable with it.  

Talk to people on the internet, find forums and tumblr accounts and ask them how they got their diagnosis. 

And above all, remember that there is nothing wrong with you if you are autistic, you aren’t broken, you were simply born in a society that was not built for you and there is nothing wrong with that. 

Now, take it easy guys gals and Nb pals, we’ll see you on monday with a brand new post!

[thecrookedgavel]

The Black Box Readings - Ep 1 Transcript

Here’s the transcript for episode 1 of The Black Box Readings, the podcast where I read to you the backup of queer blogs that have gone down. 

See Other Episodes

An: Hey, all! And welcome to The Black Box Readings, the new podcast where I read to you the backup of queer blogs that have gone down! I’m your host, An Capuano. So basically, it’s a show where I narrate through a deleted or deactivated blog over the course of a season, with a focus on queer artists. Though to be honest, there was a specific blog that inspired me to make this podcast, and unless this format is super popular, I may just do the one season. Anyway, although reading things in a dramatic fashion is definitely in my wheelhouse, non-fiction podcasts are not. So please bear with me while I go through some growing pains as I try and figure this thing out. 

Alright, so this season, we have the story of a digital artist who caught my attention with a really cool piece of Overwatch fanart. It’s about her journey through a life spent mostly online, disability, and navigating through the difficulties of realizing that you’re trans.

For those of you not in the know, I am a disabled trans woman myself, so it’s not a journey I’m altogether unfamiliar with. The biggest reason I’m doing this podcast is because stories like ours get drowned out in the media. I wanted to be able to tell her story so that queer people, young and old, can hear something that resonates with them. And I have a good feeling that this will do that for you.

The Tumblr in question, I won’t say the address. Just know that the title of the blog was: “Less Than Human”. Yeah, I know. Not a very cheery introduction. I sort of choose to think of it, kind of like reclaiming a slur. If she calls herself less than human, other people lose the power to hurt her with it. I’m telling you the blog title because it is important later.

Anyways, enough out of me, here’s the first post of the episode, which happens to be the first post of the blog itself. It’s titled:

“Welcome!

Hey, my name is -”

Ok, so I guess I didn’t think this through. In the post, she uses her deadname, and I don’t feel comfortable reading it out to you all. If I have to choose between deadnaming a trans girl and being a little inaccurate, I’m choosing inaccuracy. I should say, actually, that I don’t consider myself a journalist or anything like that. Also, I get it would be bad of me to use her real name too. So we’ll just call her… Hmmm…. Ok, let’s go with Emmy.

“Welcome!

Hey, my name is Emmy, and I’m 19 years old! Nice to meet you guys! I’ve decided to start posting on my tumblr instead of using it as a dash, lol! I’m a visual artist, though I mostly stick to digital art these days. I spend most of my time reading. My fandoms are Gravity Falls, Steven Universe, Supernatural, Sonic the Hedgehog, Marvel, and of course, Shrek! Lmao. I think Cat Girls are cute, but I’m not a weeb”

*Laugh* I never read this post while she was active. Her sense of humor is really present in this post, she was always silly like this. Anyways, she follows up this post by posting a backlog of art that I figure she must have made and not shown to anyone. It’s all really good stuff. Some fandom, some original. It’s clear to me that she’s not posting her earlier, rougher work. I don’t remember too many details though, as this was a while ago, and I didn’t think to save her artwork when I was copying all her text posts into the google doc. I hope someone out there saved them before they were deleted, though.

I’m not going to bore you by reading every single one of her posts, or anything like that. Just the ones that stand out to me. Here’s one about Supernatural and how she might be falling out of love with it. 

“I don’t know guys, I’m finding it hard to watch supernatural these days. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still one of my favorite shows, it’s just totally not as good as the first 5 seasons. That and I WANT DEAN AND CASS TO BE TOGETHER! Is that so wrong? Look, Cass is an immortal being that just HAPPENED to take a male form. If he had a female form, you can bet that he and Dean would have banged already. I’ve read the tumblr posts too, the ones that talk about all the hints the writers give that Dean is gay. This is ABSOLUTELY queerbaiting, and even as a straight guy, I can see that. I have a lot of gay mutuals who have convinced me how ultimately cute Dean and Cass are, and I feel bad for them, because they’re not being treated fair. You think in its 12 seasons there would be something, but no, nothing. Pisses me off”

Here is where we start seeing a connection between Emmy and queer culture. Although she’s currently IDing as straight and male, you can tell she cares about queer representation. Now, I’m not saying that wanting good queer content makes you queer, of course not. Just that knowing that Emmy is queer, when you look back at her earlier posts, there’s some evidence there. She even talks about Castiel, a male character, having a female form, which I find interesting for obvious reasons.

Next up is a post about something outside of her fandoms, a show called Monk. For those of you who don’t know it, it’s a show focused on a detective with OCD who uses his disability to solve crimes no one else can. As someone with OCD myself, I really enjoyed the show, but it’s not without its problems. Hmm, yeah, I’ll get to those after reading the post, I think

“I’ve been watching a new show lately! Well, a show that’s new to me at least. It’s called Monk! I’m 3 seasons in, and I laugh every episode. But it’s not without its serious moments too. It’s about Adrian Monk, a detective with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and it’s like a super power to him. He can do things no one else can. But he also can’t do things that everyone else takes for granted. Mood. He always says “It’s a gift… And a curse” when talking about it. Big mood. Anyway, I highly recommend it, because it’s a positive depiction of someone mentally ill! I’m so used to people who are “crazy” being mass murderers or some shit. Idk, it’s heartwarming.”

I noticed one of the hashtags of her post was, “Finally found a version with captions.” This is important for later and I’ll get to it by the end of the episode. Where the previous post was the first we saw of her queerness, this is the first we’ll see about her connection with mental illness. It’s unclear if she feels her inabilities are balanced off by her abilities, or if her “mood” was just about her being unable to do what others can. Since her “big mood” is regarding Adrian Monk’s favourite quote “It’s a gift and a curse”, I like to think she was being positive and was including her abilities in the “mood.”

While I do agree with Emmy that it’s a positive depiction of someone mentally ill, and that’s certainly better than having yet another bad guy is who’s only evil because he’s crazy, I’m worried that it’s too positive. It’s actually a really common trope where neurodivergent people in media are seen as “super human,” like Sheldon in the Big Bang Theory, or uhh, the main character from The Good Doctor, I forget his name. It makes it look like everyone with autism or OCD are geniuses, and that sort of skews how neurotypicals view people like us in a negative way. Like, I do view my OCD as a gift, I wouldn’t be able to write the way I do, or play video games the same way if I didn’t have it. But I’m not a superhuman by any means. But I’m expected to, in some sense, outperform everyone because of my OCD, because of this impossible standard set by the media. *Sigh* I’m sorry, I’m getting really off topic. I hope you don’t mind this little rant.

Back to Emmy, I find it a little upsetting that she feels herself cursed in some way. Knowing what I know about her, I like to think she was more gifted than cursed, but given the title of her blog, I doubt she would agree with me. We can glean from this post that she is disabled in some way or another. Maybe she herself has OCD? Or maybe she just relates her own, different disability to OCD? It’s hard to tell at this point, and I don’t want to spoil it, especially since it will come up again in a few posts. 

Next up, we have a post about not just queer characters, but lesbian characters. I’m sure you have heard of Overwatch by now, even if you haven’t played it. Well, the creative devs promised us that a handful of the cast was queer, and at least to me, it seemed like an empty promise. Hmm, I guess it seems a little bit like the queerbaiting conversation we had earlier. Interesting. You know what I mean, right? Like, why take the risk of pissing off the straight, cis part of your fanbase with queer characters when you can just say some characters are queer and attract a bigger queer fanbase that way? But then they did something that blew me out of the water. They made a comic where Tracer has a girlfriend. This next post from Emmy is about this reveal.

“Merry Christmas! And what a Christmas it’s been. Because I got something I’ve been asking for for a LONG time. Blizzard made Tracer gay! I’m not the only one who’s been asking for this, a huge chunk of the fandom has been saying that Tracer is only into other girls. It’s been my headcanon for so long, and now it doesn’t have to be, because it’s canon! Tracer and Emily are so cute together! And their kiss is so hot too! Yeah, lesbians are really hot in general. They’re every guy’s ultimate fantasy. Thanks, Jeff!”

An: Ok, so before we continue, I think I need to apologize on Emmy’s behalf for the way she talks about lesbians. As a trans lesbian, I had a period where I talked about lesbains that way too. Before I came to terms with that identity, I mean. Since you believe you’re a straight guy, there’s no real explanation for why you’re so into lesbians other than them being a male fantasy. But it’s more than that. It’s part of like, seeing yourself as a girl that the idea of being with a girl that likes girls... that is so fundamentally appealing. 

Like, ok. *sigh* I remember this one time very clearly… I was with my girlfriend at the time and a friend of mine at a bubble tea shop. This was probably 9 or 10 years ago now? Jeez. Anyways, this couple of girls starts making out at the table next to us, and I had a full on sexual awakening. I remember that I couldn’t look away. Mostly because my ex wouldn’t let me forget it. I got teased by my friend and berated by my ex. Because I couldn’t explain what happened to her, let alone to myself, I eventually came up with a rather math-y explanation involving vectors of attraction *laugh*. Something like, if women are attractive to me, and men are not attractive to me, then adding their vectors together gives less attraction than two women’s vectors being added together. It was pretty stupid. I don’t talk to either of those two people anymore, by the way. 

Anyways, my point is that since this is before she’s realized she’s a lesbian herself, she’s under the false impression that she needs to sexualize lesbians in order to explain why she’s so attracted to the concept. So please don’t hold that against her. 

---

With that out of the way, we can move on to her next post. It’s a piece of art she made, and it’s pretty special to me. You see, this was the way I found her blog. One of the blogs I follow, who knows which at this point, must have reblogged it and it came across my dashboard. Again, I don’t have a copy of any of Emmy’s art, but I remember it pretty well. It’s a picture of Emily wearing Tracer’s outfit... Shit… Why did I give Emmy a name so close to Emily? Emily as in Tracer’s girlfriend. Maybe it’s because of my association with her and this drawing? Either way, it’s too late now, I’m not re-recording this whole episode. *Sigh* We’ll just stick with the blogger being named Emmy. Anyways! She’s sort of looking a bit out of place, like she doesn’t know how to feel about having a Chrono-accelerator attached to her chest. There’s a speech bubble in the frame pointing off screen that says, “You look marvellous, love!”, or something to that effect, but it’s obviously supposed to be Tracer saying it. It was a really cute drawing, and I was really fond of it, so I liked and followed. Feels like so long ago. 

Anyways, she did reblog the picture afterwards, saying:

“Thank you so much for all the notes! I really appreciate the support. Who knew that something so dumb would be liked by so many people? I really like Emily, and I hope she’s added as a Hero in Overwatch soon! I feel so happy! I’m going to go and do some more drawing, so keep an eye out for more posts!”

Not much going on in this post, but I decided to read it anyway because it contrasts so heavily with the next post. Not the next time she posted, but the next post I’m going to read. Actually, it’s the last post of this episode. 

So, I’m going to warn you, this is a side of Emmy we haven’t seen yet. The really negative side. *Sigh* I don’t know what set her off, maybe nothing did, but I think this post is very important to read to you, as it clears the air about her disabilities.

“I really appreciate all the love you’ve given my art, but I feel like I don’t deserve any of it. I’m so broken and worthless and I’ve only been pretending to be normal so that you’ll all like me. The truth is, I’m physically and mentally disabled, and life is just a never ending struggle. 

First off, I’m deaf. Very deaf. The quietest thing I can hear in either ear is a chainsaw. It means I can’t understand speech or anything I’d need to be social. I don’t know sign language at all, I was never taught. So I just… stay inside all day. I’ve been homeschooled by my Dad since I was young. He thinks something bad will happen to me if I go outside, because I couldn’t hear something like a car coming towards me. So I live my life online, for the most part. I feel so isolated, and like I can’t relate to anyone normal. 

Also, I have Bi-Polar Disorder. For those you don’t know of it, it basically means I have high highs and low lows. I’ve done a good job so far at hiding my lows from everyone and only showing my highs. Until now, I guess… I just feel so low today, and I couldn’t hold it back anymore. I just had to be real. Even if it’s an ugly side of me that I hate. My dad hates how moody I am too. He just doesn’t get that it’s not my fault. Even my highs are hard for him to handle sometimes. Anyway, please forgive me for lying so long”

So, I sense a bit of imposter syndrome here. She’s gotten some success and because she views herself as not even a normal person, she thinks she doesn’t deserve it. It’s a pretty common feeling amongst content creators and something you have to move past if you want to make stuff. It’s like, *sigh* like me, I’m not an expert voice actor, why are people listening to me? I have tricked them into thinking I’m worth listening to. If you’re feeling that way about a recent success, just know that it’s all bullshit and it’s normal to feel that way. I wish I had that knowledge at the time I originally read that post… Because then, I would have messaged her and let her know. But yeah, we have more to unpack here.

She talks about being deaf, and the level that she describes is a profound hearing loss, which is as bad as it gets. I have that level of hearing loss in my left ear, and it’s really hard to deal with. So, I kind of can’t imagine what it would be like to have it in both ears. 

Like, for me, I remember this one time where I was at my locker in high school, and someone must have been asking me a question a few times on my bad side. She wanted to know if I had any extra bus tickets, and by the time I finally caught on that she was talking to me, she said something like “Urg, I just want to punch you.” And it wasn’t a joke either, she was very frustrated with the way my hearing loss had affected her. It made me feel small, and like I was an inconvenience to those around me. Guess it didn’t help how I felt that I had a crush on her at the time… Ha… *Sigh* It was very isolating to grow up like that. I didn’t really belong there, but I didn’t exactly belong in the deaf community either, since I could hear fine out of one ear. So when Emmy describes how isolating it is to be deaf and not know sign language, I get it. I really feel that. When I saw this post, it really made me feel for her. This is probably the point in time where I made a mental note to support her art whenever I could. 

Lastly she talks about her mental illness, being bi-polar. I know a lot less about bi-polar disorder than I do hearing loss. Though I was in a production that never wrapped up about a bi-polar teen. Actually, I was the strict dad who couldn’t understand his child’s illness, which is a similar theme seen in Emmy’s post. I’ve actually been cast as a dad 3 or 4 times now? Yeah. *Laughs* Anyways, what I understand about it is that it can be seasonal. You might be manic for a season, and depressive for another. But yeah, it doesn’t always work that way. Usually medication can help balance you out, but in Emmy’s case, she wasn’t taking any meds at this point. I’ll say it here for clarity’s sake, but her having bi-polar disorder was a self-diagnosis, not a professional one. That’ll be covered in the next episode, though. 

So now the whole “Less than Human” thing makes a bit more sense, doesn’t it? Not because it’s true in any sense, but because it was true to her. Disability is something that people tend to see as different, or othering. There’s a lot of stigma there. We can sort of tell at this point that the way her Dad views her and treats her doesn’t help her feel any better about this either. 

That’s why she likes the depiction of mental illness in Monk so much, right? Because it’s a bit of a “More than Human” approach. It gives her some hope that maybe she can be seen positively one day too. As far as movies with Deaf characters goes there’s like 100, if I recall correctly. Which is honestly pitiful compared to the amount of movies, period. So it’s more than likely that she never got to see herself in media in that perspective before. 

Also, there’s the markings of a budding trans girl in there too, which may further intensify the feeling of not being human. For years and years *sigh*, there was practically zero positive representation of trans people in media. We’re taught that feeling like this makes us freaks, and that presenting differently than we’re supposed to makes us... something worse than that. It all comes together to form something bitter and isolating. Especially before you start owning those parts of you and finding a community of your own.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Black Box Readings! I really ranted more than I thought I would. Hopefully you all liked the anecdotal stuff I added in, didn’t really plan on doing that. Follow me on Twitter at TheCrookedGavel to stay up to date on this and other queer podcasts. Feel free to contact me there as well. This is An Capuano, signing off!