the rainbow connection 🌈

He/They pronouns 🏳️‍⚧️

AuDHD and OCD (I do some advocacy stuff sometimes but I'm bad about posting it online because I don't really use social media often. I forget I have it tbh)

I'm working on a story! Maybe I'll post updates on @corvus-series .

Despite the fact that 99 percent of my personality revolves around art and writing, there's another 1 percent! (Idk man, I can't do math.) So, here's the other 1 percent of my personality:

🎶 Music! The Beatles, Queen, Ricky Montgomery, Led Zeppelin, Mitski, Cavetown, Will Wood, SOAD, and MCR

Current Top 3 Songs 🎶

1. "All Dead, All Dead" by Queen

2. "Dear Prudence" by The Beatles

3. "This December" by Ricky Montgomery

📚 Books! Currently reading: "The Idiot" by Fydor Dostoyevsky, and "My Year of Meats" by Ruth Ozeki.

I've fully read and loved: "Good Omens" by Terry Pratchett and (REDACTED)), "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes, and "Giovanni's Room" by James Baldwin. I read "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley as well and that was decent imo.

📺 TV shows! Lost, House MD, Community, Bob's Burgers, Parks and Rec, The Office, Good Omens.

🌻Miscellaneous! EPIC the Musical, history (anywhere, any era), 70s media/culture, writing essays, Tomadachi Life: Living the Dream, medicine in general.

Quick-ish watercolor page :)

I haven't water colored in a while but I finished the book Good Omens a bit ago (hearing about season 3 made me worry a bit about getting into the show but ik the horrors because I look up spoilers like an evil guy)

-Mina and Lucy gotta kiss already. Or, they for sure already have. Unforch, it's the 1800s and they have zero level of autonomy outside of plot this far. They seem to be (as in they definitely are) a vessel for Stoker's era-common misogynistic "anxieties" about the "new woman." Actually, scratch that, just women period. Sadly, it's the 1800s. It's a cow farm, there's gonna be cows. Doesn't matter. They're wuh-luh-wuh now because I said so.

I came out as lesbian a bit before transitioning (FTM), however, I'd hesitated saying I was absolutely lesbian despite believing I only was attracted to women and not being able to see myself in a romantic or sexual relationship with a man. Because hindsight is 20/20, I now believe that my hesitation using the lesbian label, the fact I identified as aromantic for years prior to coming out as lesbian, and my inability to see myself with a male partner was because I was imagining myself as a girlfriend or partner of a person.

I've noticed a lot that the representation I see in media of ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) of an autistic adolescent or adult character heavily focuses on either overstimulation or social-emotional difficulties. I believe the focus on these specific things is in part because most mainstream media representation is written by allistic writers who aren't writing from lived experience. As these writers lack lived experience, they often reduce ASD to the parts of the disorder that are most apparent to themself (meaning meltdowns, shutdowns, or obvious differences in socialization) or are most discussed online. They also likely base their writing off already existent autistic characters who were also written by an allistic writer.

Most canonically confirmed autistic characters are written with traits such as the flat effect, literal thinking, obvious difficulties reading social cues, abrupt endings, and pointed observations (Think Shaun Murphy from the Good Doctor*); these are all traits that are immediately apparent to allistics.

When ASD is depicted in characters in early childhood, representation is often once again depicting the autistic traits most immediately apparent to allistics. And, the autistic character's storyline is centered around the allistic main character - teaching them how to "react" to an autistic peer (Ex. Sesame Street, Daniel Tiger, Arthur). I am not arguing that it's not vital to teach allistic children empathy for autistic peers, by the way, but rather just saying I have noticed a pattern.

Why am I even pointing this out? Well, it's because it simply irks me. It irks me that canonically autistic characters are so often written to be stereotypes because they're written to be identifiable as autistic to an allistic audience. So, there is minimal representation/exploration of impacts of ASD on the autistic individual themselves. There is next to no representation of fine and gross motor skills issues because they mostly affect the autistic person experiencing them and may not be immediately obvious.

I couldn't tie my shoes until I was ten. I couldn't skip until I was eight. To this day, I still struggle with tying knots, using zippers, or buttoning buttons to the point of emotional distress at times. Unlike communication differences and meltdowns, those struggles aren't immediately apparent to those around me.