Imagine Jason Todd holding a baby, soft and fragile and protected in his strong, beefy arms. He’ll even do the thing where he sits and leans back so the baby can sleep on his chest. Maybe even lay the baby down on his thighs. The baby’s tiny hand wraps around his index finger and he may or may not get teary eyed thinking about how small and precious the baby is.
Zuko’s scar is different than the typical villain’s scar bc it’s not an ambiguous sign of past violence but an explicit symbol of his father’s abuse – rather than making him seem tougher for no reason it shows that at his heart he’s just a traumatized child and not a villain at all. In this essay I will
I may have just learned why I struggled in art class so much.
The teacher tried really hard to help me learn how to add a congruent shadow to what I was drawing in an attempt to teach me how to make the item more realistic and identifiable as an object. But every time I added the shadow, the item no longer looked like what I was trying to show, but the teacher would say “see doesn’t this look better now?” And was confused when I said no.
According to this study, autistic people (children in the case of the study, but these things don’t change as you age) found it harder to identify objects if they had a congruent or incongruent shadow, but easily identified the item when shown without cast shadow (“floating in space” as art teachers would describe it). In contrast, control children who were neurotypical and had no history of anything else which could affect this kind of thing struggled to identify the object without the cast shadow, and as expected the one with the incongruent shadow.
It’s absolutely fascinating that finding out that I’m autistic has actually answered soooooo many questions I had about why I experience the world so differently.
And I guess it means that it’s ok for me to draw things without cast shadows if that’s what I am able to then enjoy looking at when finished. It also explains why I prefer colouring books to more traditional artistic pursuits because there is a clearly defined edge to the pictures and no expectation that you should be adding shadows outside of the lines.
Any other autistic people noticed this with themselves?
Oh this is absolutely fascinating… and explains a lot about what I struggle about art and trying to comprehend 3d form. Particularly notable was the idea that cast shadows and second order contrasts added noise, and interfered with and prevailed over processing an object.
This is honestly one of the big reasons I struggle with drawing from life actually, since I have to compete with the shadows in order to comprehend the form I am attempting to draw. Outside of just cast shadows, if you look at my art, you will see that I am only concerned with first-order (luminance-defined) shadows. And tbh, the way I draw them they don’t exactly behave like shadows, and only serve to define the object for me in a way that makes sense to me and nothing else. Even then, I try to keep them as simple as possible because anything more would be too much for what my brain can process. I would never touch the complex second-order (texture-defined) shadows because they actually keep me from recognizing an object. It is interesting stuff. The way they called it “noise” really does help me understand why it becomes so hard for me.
Also interesting is this is probably why I am unable to sleep without bright light directly around my head at least, because everything becomes unrecognizable otherwise and I become unable to identify even my own room.
ill gladly retell it but it sounds like complete horseshit, the only thing i have to prove myself is the fact that i made all those lying on the internet compilations because i hate people who bullshit this stuff and ive studied them enough to know that if i wanted to fabricate my own i would have made this way less stupid and more believable. ANYWAY
in like 2006 or 7 i was really into metalocalypse and made a myspace page for my fan character and there was a handful of people who roleplayed as the members of dethklok so i friended and interacted w them as my OC, they had a little following so when people saw us interacting on bulletins or tagging each other they would come and friend me (my OC), obv not knowing its a 13 year old doing it cause all the pics were just drawings of her
so this one guy friended me and immediately formed a weird obsession with my character and would constantly comment on her stupid myspace pics (again – drawings, and not very good ones) with shit like “you look good” “sexy” “we could be together if this was Cool World” and would occasionally message me with more or less the same sentiments but i didnt wanna talk to a random greasy stranger so i never responded with more than a “thx”
he went silent after a while and i didnt think much of it until a couple weeks later he shot me another message to the tune of “hey babe im sorry ive been quiet my wife found our messages and kicked me out” and thats how i ruined a marriage through my metalocalypse OC
heres one of the pics that was on her profile for full contextual ambience
a man was willing to destroy his marriage for this
DarkestElemental616 