A 'Simpsons' animator's real-life struggle inspired a cartoon for kids with disabilities.
As long as animator Chance Raspberry can remember, he's held a pencil in his hand.
When he was 11, Raspberry broke the family VCR by skipping it backward and forward, pausing it to copy the images from Disney's "Sleepy Hollow" into an old notebook. Other days, he sat hunched over the desk in his room, mimicking the jet-black pen strokes that made Spiderman come to life.
For Raspberry, drawing pictures was a window to the rest of the world.
It was the '80s, and at the time, he was coping with Tourette's syndrome, a disorder health professionals and people close to Raspberry knew little about. It meant he often engaged in behaviors that no one could predict or control.
The tics, which started as unusual bouts of excess energy, often caused Raspberry to do dangerous things — like venture into the street in the middle of a preschool class.
Image courtesy of Chance Raspberry.
Once, Raspberry alarmed his preschool staff by perching on top of a jungle gym, pretending to shoot classmates with an imaginary bow and arrow. When they told him to stop, he literally couldn't.
As a result, Raspberry was often sent home, his parents pleading with school administrators who didn't understand him and his behavior. When he was 8, the tics started to manifest in sudden, violent outbursts.
"The worst tics were when I would repeatedly slap myself across the face. I would have to hit myself in alternating patterns of five and 10. On top of that, I had this tic where I needed to rub my right cheek against my right shoulder, and eventually I got a rash," Raspberry explains.
When he felt alone, Raspberry found solace in the zany world of cartoons, where high energy was normal.
Image courtesy of Chance Raspberry.
He began to draw. But being an artist — and one with a disability — didn't make everything easier for Raspberry. Classmates would often try to startle him just to see what he would do. Sometimes, they would even ruin his drawings.
"I remember I used to make this sound, like ‘weeee,’ obsessively. One time I left my desk to find that this drawing I was working on for hours was gone. I came back, and the drawing had this ‘weee’ written all across the top. It was destroyed, and I was really mad, because it had taken me so long,” Raspberry recalls.
He channeled all of his energy into his drawings, even ignoring the occasional teacher who would rip the pencil sketches from his hands in class and crumple them into the trash. Despite it all, his drawings got better and better.
16 years, countless hours, and thousands of cartoon sketches later, Raspberry ended up with a career drawing the same unruly boy who inspired him as a kid: Bart Simpson.
Image courtesy of Chance Raspberry.
Raspberry says he always loved Bart "because he's this outsider, rebel spirit — but he's never been ashamed. He doesn't regret being different."
"I think as a kid who had these feelings of being an outsider and being different, I loved watching Bart getting into trouble and seeing these stories told through the eyes of someone my age," he says.
After winning a group Emmy for his work on the Simpsons at 28, Raspberry decided he wanted to do more for other kids with neurological differences. He wanted to help those kids — and people around them — understand why thinking differently needs to be not only accepted, but celebrated.
Drawing from his own childhood experiences, Raspberry found the inspiration for the new animated show he's developing called "Little Billy."
Little Billy Harper. GIF courtesy of Chance Raspberry.
Like Raspberry, Billy is a young boy with a neuro-cognitive disability — only Billy's is a fictional one called "ultra-hyper-sensitivity." People around Billy don't often understand him, and some people even find him dangerous.
“I am basing this on my actual life, and I had all of these issues with my teachers and not getting along or following the order of things," he says. The show is largely based on Raspberry's life around age 4, when his abundance of energy made him realize he was different from other kids.
In 2014, Raspberry raised $30,000 on Kickstarter to help bring "Little Billy" to life. He's currently finishing the pilot and continues to work full time as a character layout artist on "The Simpsons."
Image courtesy of Chance Raspberry.
Raspberry channeled his abundance of energy into creating the completely hand-drawn series — the trailer alone required a whopping 1,372 drawings.
The goal of the series is to tap into the nostalgia of childhood in an entertaining, healing way while also creating visibility around what it's like to grow up with special needs.
"The show will explore in full in an honest way how a family that is dealing with this goes through it, how they’re affected," Raspberry says.
"Just because we're different, it doesn't mean we're broken."
Watch the trailer for "Little Billy" below:
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There's a reason why some people can perfectly copy accents, and others can't
Turns out, there's a neurodivergent link.
A woman in black long sleeve shirt stands in front of mirror.
Have you ever had that friend who goes on vacation for four days to London and comes back with a full-on Queen's English posh accent? "Oooh I left my brolly in the loo," they say, and you respond, "But you're from Colorado!" Well, there are reasons they (and many of us) do that, and usually it's on a pretty subconscious level.
It's called "accent mirroring," and it's actually quite common with people who are neurodivergent, particularly those with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). According Neurolaunch, the self-described "Free Mental Health Library," "Accent mirroring, also known as accent adaptation or phonetic convergence, is the tendency to unconsciously adopt the accent or speech patterns of those around us. This linguistic chameleon effect is not unique to individuals with ADHD, but it appears to be more pronounced and frequent in this population."
Essentially, when people have conversations, we're constantly "scanning" for information—not just the words we're absorbing, but the inflection and tone. "When we hear an accent, our brains automatically analyze and categorize the phonetic features, prosody, and intonation patterns," writes Neurolaunch. For most, this does result in copying the accent of the person with whom we're speaking. But those with ADHD might be more sensitive to auditory cues. This, "coupled with a reduced ability to filter out or inhibit the impulse to mimic…could potentially explain the increased tendency for accent mirroring."
While the article explains further research is needed, they distinctly state that, "Accent mirroring in individuals with ADHD often manifests as an unconscious mimicry of accents in social situations. This can range from subtle shifts in pronunciation to more noticeable changes in intonation and speech rhythm. For example, a person with ADHD might find themselves unconsciously adopting a Southern drawl when conversing with someone from Texas, even if they’ve never lived in the South themselves."
People are having their say online. On the subreddit r/ADHDWomen, a thread began: "Taking on accents is an ADHD thing?" The OP shares, "My whole life, I've picked up accents. I, myself, never noticed, but everyone around me would be like, 'Why are you talking like that??' It could be after I watched a show or movie with an accent or after I've traveled somewhere with a different accent than my 'normal.'
They continue, "Apparently, I pick it up fast, but it fades out slowly. Today... I'm scrolling Instagram, I watch a reel from a comedian couple (Darcy and Jeremy. IYKYK) about how Darcy (ADHD) picks up accents everywhere they go. It's called ADHD Mirroring??? And it's another way of masking."
(The OP is referring to Darcy Michaels and his husband Jeremy Baer, who are both touring comedians based in Canada.)
Hundreds of people on the Reddit thread alone seem to relate. One comments, "Omfg I've done this my whole life; I'll even pick up on the pauses/spaces when I'm talking to someone who is ESL—but English is my first language lol."
Sometimes, it can be a real issue for those around the chameleon. "I accidentally mimicked a waitress's weird laugh one time. As soon as she was out of earshot, my family started to reprimand me, but I was already like 'oh my god I don’t know why I did that, I feel so bad.'"
Many commenters on TikTok were shocked to find out this can be a sign of ADHD. One jokes, "Omg, yes, at a store the cashier was talking to me and she was French. She's like 'Oh are you French too? No, I'm not lol. I'm very east coast Canada."
And some people just embrace it and make it work for them. "I mirror their words or phrase! I’m 30. I realized I start calling everyone sweetie cause my manager does & I work at coffee shop."