130: Julia Stiles

Julia Stiles

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Title text: I found an old tape of this episode in my family's closet. Check the news section of the forums to see the clip!

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Explanation

Julia Stiles, who later became a well-known actress as an older teenager and adult, did in fact appear in the children's television show Ghostwriter as a 12-year-old in 1993. The sketch in this comic depicts Stiles as she appeared in the episode, and all the dialogue attributed to her is taken from her character's actual dialogue.

Although this dialogue was supposed to establish Erica (Stiles' character) as an expert on hacking, it actually consists mostly of buzzwords (some of which are fake), none of which would impress an actual computer hacker. The term "console cowboys" is stated to be a reference to the book Neuromancer in the full scene.

The thread in the news section of the forums, as referenced in the title text, could originally be found here. However, as the forums went offline in 2019, the link is no longer available. A copy of the video with better audio can be found here.

Transcript

The best thing ever to appear on TV:

12-year-old Julia Stiles as a hacker in a 1993 episode of PBS's "Ghostwriter"

[A sketch of Julia Stiles, as a 12-year-old, with a bandana over her head, long wavy hair, elbow shirt, wrist band, and pants.]

Julia Stiles: Do you know anything about hackers?

Julia Stiles: Can you jam with the console cowboys in cyberspace?

Julia Stiles: Never experienced the new wave? Next wave? Dream wave? OR cyberpunk?

Trivia

• This is a rare comic on xkcd to feature a drawing of a recognizable human being, as opposed to a stick-figure representation of them.

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Discussion

Randall is right once again. Netherin5 (talk) 13:30, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

I can't beleive it took over 16 years for this factoid about Stiles to be included on her Wikipedia page. IIVQ (talk) 23:14, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Is there a category for actual recognisable people on explainxkcd.com, as said in the Trivia section? 42.book.addict (talk) 23:13, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Category:Real people, do you mean? 162.158.74.69 00:22, 3 February 2024 (UTC) (PS, Welcome. You're a very busy newcomer (at least via a username), catching up on everywhere you can. I hope you enjoy your time here, I'm sure you've got a useful contributions in you!)

Category:Real people includes all comics that depict real people, but in most cases they are drawn as stick figures with blank faces in the usual XKCD style. The depiction of Julia Stiles here is done in a more realistic style. --208.59.176.206 04:02, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

A number of "real people stick figures" are (at least somewhat, once the reader has the context, like the Firefly/Serenity actors) actually recognisable by facial features (even if still no-eyes/nose/mouth, far from 'blank'). Ditto "fictional people stick figures" (e.g. Darth Vader?).

Perhaps what was being asked here (though it looks ambiguous, 42 should probably clarify) is more something that would be encompassed under some "non-stick figure" ("non-stickfigure"? "figure, non-sticklike"?) ukbrella category, with the very few examples that start from Barrel Boy and head onwards towards this sort of 'quality'/style. But it's already a small group of comics. Far smaller if you exclude 'fictional' BB (and presumably you'd not additionally include the ferret), so I'm not sure there's enough examples having similar "Julia"-styles to warrant non-fictional-non-stick specificity. But I'm sure someone with a bit of time could list them all, for us, if there are. 82.132.244.183 08:15, 22 October 2025 (UTC)
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