A Single Piece

Original DA Upload Date: April 2, 2021

My artwork for Autism Acceptance Day. Because you already are well aware of it. Now time for the accepting of autism!

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When I decided to redesign Gilda to be overweight, I also decided to make her neurodivergent. I actually wanted to write Gilda as neurodivergent since I first publicly revealed her on New Year’s Eve 2017/New Year’s Day 2018, but I abandoned the idea for a while, until I noticed there to be a lack of neurodivergent characters in the media, especially ones created by neurodivergent content creators. Luckily for me, I myself am a neurodivergent content creator, and my decision to start Grunvale over from scratch was the perfect opportunity to reboot Gilda into a neurodivergent character. I feel it’s especially important to make Gilda neurodivergent, as females are tested and diagnosed far less than males.

It’s also not helpful that the ‘experts’ the media often turn to for autism research are Autism Speaks, a self-proclaimed advocacy group that’s actually more of a hate group. They see autism as a disease that must be cured, and those on the spectrum as a burden to society. They also popularized the symbolism of puzzle pieces to represent autism, and “Light It Up Blue” to spread autism awareness.

To those uninformed, we do not appreciate this. Autism and people with autism are not puzzles in need of solving, wearing blue perpetuates the idea that most neurodivergents are boys, and, as I already said, we don’t need awareness. Autism has been known about since 1911, it’s been known to be a spectrum since 1943, and most of developed society has been aware of autism’s existence for nearly 30 years. We prefer the rainbow infinity symbol, and that you wear red instead. I am wearing a blue T-shirt as I type this, but that’s because I like the color blue. I’m not wearing it to further Autism Speak’s propaganda.

I’ve pretty much said everything I need to say. Autistic people are not a puzzle, Autism Speaks is a hate group, and Andrew Wakefield should be forced to take the acid bucket challenge for the damage he’s done to the medical and autism community. Happy Autism Acceptance Day, and see you next artwork. Bye.

DON’T FORGET TO FOLLOW ME ON OTHER PLATFORMS:
Twitter: twitter.com/StormTheArtist
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DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/phoenixofgrunvale
YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCEtCO…
Discord: Contact me by my tag (Phoenix of Grunvale#1752) for an invite to my server.

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Grunvale is owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of it, as long as you link me to it.
This artwork was made at a resolution of 2880×2160 (aspect ratio 1.33:1).