The Pistachio Project

Art is something that many people enjoy, whether it is creating or observing, many people take in art every single day. There are many different types of art, but let’s focus in on traditional sketching and drawing. Recently, I’ve found out about pen sketching through a Youtuber by the name of DrawingWiffWaffles.

It is a practice that is exactly what it sounds like. It’s just sketching out your drawings with a pen. The best (and worst) part about pen sketches is the fact that you can’t erase your lines. It helps you focus in on your drawing a little more and really think about where your lines are going, and pay more attention to shapes in a picture. I often draw from references, and since I started sketching with pens, I’ve noticed that I find more shapes within my references that helps me later then I am drawing without a reference.

Pen sketching also really helps me push my comfort zone and try new things. By working with something so permanent, it makes me care less about whether the drawing is perfect or not because I know that mistakes will happen and there is no way to fix them.

How free is freedom? How free should it be?

If there’s one thing that the United States of America loves, it is freedom. America gave itself the nickname of “the Land of the Free” and views itself as the protector and champion of freedom, going to war to protect and spread freedom all over the world. However, there are still various controversies surrounding freedom in the USA. These controversies surround things like free speech, freedom of religion, and the right to bear arms. Recently, between various social and legal changes as well as influential events, the meanings, interpretations, and other aspects of these rights and freedoms have come into question. With mass shootings, we have begun questioning our right to bear arms. Things like gay marriage and the increasing presence of secular people and beliefs have led to debates regarding our freedom of religion. The neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia as well as the increase in the hate speech used both online and in real life has led to debates regarding our freedom of speech. These things now beg two questions: how free should we be, and where should our freedoms end?

Personally, I believe that your freedoms end when they infringe upon the freedoms of others. Your right to bear arms ends when it begins to hurt my right to go to public places without the fear of getting shot. Your free speech ends when you start using it to threaten and discriminate. Your freedom of religion ends when you start imposing your religious beliefs onto others. By “ends,” I do not mean that you lose the freedom entirely, but that your freedom does not extend to allowing you to do that. Examples of this include keeping prayer and religious teachings out of the curriculum of public schools unless teaching students about the world’s religions; not allowing the use of specific slurs; and eliminating the legal sale of certain firearms. These policies still allow you to keep your rights—they aren’t forbidding you from owning a gun, expressing yourself, or practicing your religion, and so on—all the while preserving the civil liberties of others.

Nostalgia - a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. Or so it is defined in my online dictionary.

Especially in first world countries, it’s really easy to think the past was way better when you compare it to all the bad aspects of your life today. No homework, no responsibilities, no job. In hindsight, childhood seemed pretty fucking great. It seems like the past is the place to be. You had all this time to figure out who you are and discover your potential, with the whole world ahead of you.

And then one day you wake up, you’re entering your late teens, and your whole life is basically the equivalent skydiving with a busted parachute.

You traded long summer breaks for full time jobs. You traded fun for responsibility, and you probably wouldn’t have taken the trade off had it been offered

If Tumblr is known for anything, it's probably that it's an incredibly diverse platform when it comes to gender identity, sexuality, race, nationality, and religious affiliation, although not so much on the political spectrum. So, it's needless to say that there's a lot of pansexual people on the site, and a lot more people who feel unrepresented in films. The solution: to portray pansexual characters in mainstream media, most recently in hits such as Deadpool 2 and Solo: A Star Wars Story. However, the two had distinctly different approaches to this task, and it's worth a bit of discussion.

In Deadpool 2, Wade Wilson’s pansexuality was something poked fun at a bit, with him groping a fellow male character in one scene and his girlfriend teasing him for his same-sex attraction in another. Without context, this makes it seem like the film is taking a step backwards for diversifying its cast, but that's simply not the case. In reality, the Deadpool franchise weaves jokes about nearly everything into its comic books and movies, which is what makes Wade such a memorable and lovable character. By almost mocking of aspects of pansexual culture, the film is shedding light onto his sexuality in a lighthearted and almost flirtatious way.

On top of this, Ryan Reynolds, a writer, producer, and star of Deadpool 2, has made it very clear that he embraces diversity in the franchise. He has encouraged Wade to have a boyfriend in a future film, made several previously white characters black and Māori, and weaved in an extra character not found in the comics so a member of the X-Men could have a girlfriend. He is an obvious advocate for diversity in films in a way that doesn't distract from the sheer awesomeness of moviemaking.

Solo, on the other hand, takes a more subtle and less controversial approach to its pansexual character: Lando Calrissian. While the man who plays him, Donald Glover, has proved that he's not afraid of making a statement by releasing his hit song about gun violence, “This is America,” Lando did nothing to “prove” his pansexuality. He wasn't seen showing romantic attraction of any kind, same-sex or not, so as to not ruffle the feathers of conservative moviegoers. By confirming him as pansexual in interviews, the makers of Solo can effectively silence liberal fans by giving them a scrap of sexual diversity to hold onto, making them unable to complain that they aren’t being fairly portrayed.

When you see things about Europe about two or three thousand years ago, you often think of impressive structures and a bunch of muscular white dudes. Diversity isn’t something that really comes to mind. For instance, BBC faced quite a bit of controversy about a year ago when it released a cartoon showing life in Roman Britain and it showed a family with a dark skinned father. This spawned quite a bit of backlash online, with many people fighting over the legitimacy and accuracy of the cartoon’s portrayal. Many even went so far as to attack several scholars, like the classicist Mary Beard, and accuse them of trying to rewrite history.

Obviously, many of these attacks are fueled by hate and prejudice, but let’s look at the evidence. Firstly, Rome had a habit, especially in its early years, to station soldiers in places far from home. This was done to discourage their participation in rebellions and to encourage the protection of Rome. Additionally, many people forget how vast the Roman Empire was. It included much of the Middle East and Northern Africa on top of sizable portions of Europe. It has also been noted that the Romans even had battles against armies from places like China. These interactions, along with trade, made Rome much more ethnically diverse, and this included Roman Britain. There are also many records of North African and Ethiopian soldiers in Roman Britain, especially as members of the guards assigned to Hadrian’s Wall. The evidence is not just anecdotal, but also genetic, as a few skeletons and other remains have been found with DNA and other features common with people from the Middle East and Africa. But this also begs the question of why there are virtually no remaining traces of this diversity in the population.

The answer to that question is long and, to be honest, we don’t quite know everything, but there are a handful of explanations. The main one is that there were simply too few people and that not enough of them had established permanent roots in England, and that those who did had their DNA gradually phased out by the randomness of genetics and inheritance. It’s also not unheard of for an area to show little to no genetic evidence of the presence of certain groups. Britain also lacks genetic evidence of the the Danes, a group that had invaded England and who’s defeat is rumored to be connected to the origin of soccer/football, in its population. We also are fairly certain that there were Norse settlers in Newfoundland about a thousand years ago, but traces of Norse DNA are almost nonexistent in the current population.

Revolution. It’s something we all learned about, whether it be about American independence or an influx of industry or Les Miserables. Everyone has a different idea  as to what it means, but it’s hard to figure it out without taking part in one, an opportunity not many people have had. At least, not until now.

Since Gen Z came into existence, radical social changes have swept the world. Some of them are big, like Saudi Arabia allowing women to drive, 26 countries legalizing same-sex marriage, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell being repealed, and most recently, taking another step towards ensuring net neutrality’s safety. Others are smaller and more subtle, such as gender-neutral bathrooms popping up, women being expected to pay on dates, queer characters being less controversial in mainstream media, and the expected years of schooling increasing to a degree in almost every country.

Of course, none of these changes have come easily, and some of them aren’t finished coming. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but we’ve laid the foundations for a better tomorrow, and it’s something worth celebrating. But, how did we do it? The Internet. And Barack Obama.

That said, it’s likely we would’ve gotten there eventually, but without rapid communication and a black President to speed things along, there’s no telling as to how long it would take. But, with the invention of the Internet in 1990, sharing information is faster than ever, and the distance-decay model becomes more and more irrelevant. Any two places in the world with an Internet connection can communicate with each other, and minorities have taken this opportunity and run with it. Poverty and language do act as a barrier to mass communication, but those who can connect use it to share their experiences and wisdom, creating friendships and communities. All of this peaceful sharing is well and good, but minorities have realized that their struggles aren’t solitary journeys and that they have more impact than people than previously thought. The Internet has allowed communities to move from polite discussions to alerting people who aren’t directly affected by the issues. From there, allies are made, and with newfound supporters for the cause they can make change on a national or even global scale. Without WiFi, that would never have been even a dream, and yet here we are.

A smaller stepping stone but an important one nonetheless was the United States electing Barack Obama as President in 2008. One could go on for paragraphs about all the wonderful things Obama did, and some of the not-that-respectable things that need to be acknowledged, but the most impactful thing he did during his presidency was become President. He showed that a black man could become the President of the United States, and laid the foundations for people of color and minorities to go out and do great things by taking such a monumental leap. That isn’t to say that black men and women (Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Langston Huges, the Tuskegee Airmen, and so many others) hadn’t helped Obama do what he did by proving that it could be done, but he differs from the rest because of the duration of his presidency; Obama was the President the children of Gen Z grew up with and he helped to sculpt their worldviews. These kids were raised alongside the notion that a black man can be the President, so what’s to say they can’t do amazing things too?