Diane Nguyen

**Diane Nguyen** is one of the main characters from the *Bojack Horseman* series.

Diane is a human ghostwriter, a nice, well-reasoned, misunderstood intellectual, and a Vietnamese-American third-wave feminist from Boston who used to live with her rich and famous ex-boyfriend (and later ex-husband), former sitcom star Mr. Peanutbutter.

In the AWA fics, Diane is set to appear in a future AWA storyline.

## **Appearance**

Diane is a Vietnamese-American woman and one of the few main characters in BoJack Horseman that is a human. She wears thin, square glasses, and has light skin and midnight blue hair. According to model sheets, she is 5 1/2 feet tall in boots and stands at about 5’3-5’4 when barefoot.

In Seasons 1-5, Diane's hair was long with some of it worn parted over her shoulders.

In Season 5, Diane cuts her hair into a very short bob, with layered bangs that are styled to the left, and an undercut that is partially covered on the right side and appears as a faded purple color.

Her neck is considerably long, a feature that becomes more noticeable after she cuts her hair short.

In Seasons 1-6, Diane wore a green jacket with an orange arrow designed on each end near her abdomen pointing towards her center, a white short-sleeved v-neck undershirt that shows her cleavage and a bit of the bottom of her stomach, blue jeans with a dark grey belt, and black boots that each have two yellow stripes at the top.

In the Season 6 episode The Face of Depression, Diane begins taking antidepressants, which make her gain a significant amount of weight. Her hair has also gotten a bit longer, the bangs on the left side are a little shorter, and the shaved undercut has grown out. She also has a new outfit, consisting of a red and blue jacket with blue arrows pointing towards her abdomen like her previous jacket, a white short-sleeved v-neck shirt similar to the one from her old outfit, although instead, it's longer instead of a crop top, grey jeans, and the same boots from her previous outfit.

In 2007, she had short hair with long parted bangs, a similar style to how she wears in Season 5. When she worked at Starbucks, she wore a blue and white baseball tee under a Starbucks apron with orange arrows pointing to her abdomen, light blue jeans, and a name tag that said "Blarn."

As a sixteen-year-old teenager, from what was seen in her brothers' "Cry-anne" video, which was filmed on the night of her homecoming dance, she had pimples, and her hair was puffier (although she may have styled it like this just for the dance), also she had larger glasses with thicker and rounder frames. She wore a purple dress with big ruffled sleeves.

She is seen as a teenager again in a flashback in The Dog Days Are Over. Her hair was straight and went a little past her shoulders, she had thicker eyebrows, thick black glasses with square frames, and pimples. She wore a long-sleeved blue shirt with yellow, red, blue, and white stripes going across the middle, light blue jean shorts, and a black tattoo choker necklace. In this flashback, she was barefoot, although her teen self is depicted similarly in her imagination through crude sketches in Good Damage this time wearing black sneakers and white socks.

## **Personality**

Diane is a nice, intelligent, nerdy third-wave feminist woman who is shy at social gatherings but ironically bold and upstanding when she sees it's necessary.

Diane is considerably compassionate and empathetic, especially towards friends of hers such as Todd and BoJack, even when dragged into BoJack's shenanigans (demonstrated especially in Season 1). However, she occasionally struggles to balance this empathy with her tendency to believe that her way of doing things is the only correct way. An example shown is when she keeps the content of BoJack's autobiography One Trick Pony a secret, believing that the opinionated way in which she writes the book was the best way to do so. She finally admits it wasn't and apologizes when BoJack eventually confronts her.

Her stubbornness also leads her to refuse pragmatism and become uncompromising when it comes to her positions on many things, demonstrated in her many arguments with Mr. Peanutbutter. This contrasts rather sharply with her somewhat feeble moral compass, which tends to "flip-flop" when it comes to what she truly believes is the right thing, such as her stance on gun control, leading her to be admittedly hypocritical.

This is because her determined, overly-dedicated, and somewhat aggressive nature was born as a result of growing up with four lazy, irresponsible brothers, an uncaring father, and a spiteful and verbally abusive mother. Most of Diane's flaws come as a result of her being raised in a household filled with neglectful and un-supportive family, making her extremely similar to BoJack (a fact she goes to dramatic, abusive lengths to dispute when he brings it up).

This does, however, allow her to tolerate people like BoJack, even at the most trying of times. Even while being talked down to and bullied by her family, she takes on the responsibility of making their lives somewhat easier when the task falls at her feet often to her own detriment. Despite her opinionated nature, and the fact that BoJack violates most, if not all, of her principals, she cares about and supports him enough as a friend to try and steer him down (what she believes is) the right direction.

Most of her worst qualities are brought to the surface by her temper. Although she is usually quiet, polite, and reserved, Diane loses her cool dramatically and, albeit rarely, violently. She can become petty and spiteful when pushed beyond her limit. Some examples of this are leaking chapters of BoJack's biography against his will, accusing her husband of making things "all about him" (which is partially true) to cover for her own unhappiness with her life choices, and going as far as to write BoJack's confession about Penny to the reporter from Start Spreading The News into Philbert after Ana gives her the confiscated confession tape after BoJack tells her "we’re the same."

Her opinionated nature also seems to harm her just as much as her temper, since Diane often exhibits a mild form of social anxiety, and sometimes tends to deeply question how she feels. As noted by Stefani in The Stopped Show, Diane holds everyone to an impossible standard, including herself. She wants everyone to be as good as they can possibly be but struggles to acknowledge that it cannot happen immediately, her impatience for their improvement brought on by the stress caused by her anxiety. Because of this, she's overly-critical about herself and those around her and manages to become infuriated that people do not change as fast as she'd like, while also deeply questioning how she feels and sometimes even believing she's the sole problem. She walks a fine line between pointing fingers at everyone but herself and blaming herself alone for her stress.

This idealism also causes her to be somewhat hypocritical and self-destructive. Since she presents herself as somewhat of a frame of reference when it comes to morality, she won't hesitate to call others out on their flaws and constantly feels disappointed by them, despite the impossibly high standards she holds them to. However, this also leads her to second-guess herself many times when she's unable to force the change she wants to see in others.

This, in particular, is taken to extreme lengths after her trip to Cordovia in Season 2, where her inability to make a difference amidst the chaos of the war-torn nation's complex situation leads her to feel like a complete failure. This makes her incapable of recognizing her own flaws or attempting to improve on them on the one hand and leads her to resent herself for her discontent nature on the other. This only serves to make her more miserable, since she tends to direct her overly-critical nature towards her relationships (mainly her relationship with Mr. Peanutbutter), focusing on the negative, difficult aspects of them to the point where she sometimes breaks down.

During the finale of Season 5, it's revealed that Diane cares for others in her own strange way. She believes that she should still help her friends, even if she hates them or will never forgive them for their actions. Even though her friendship with BoJack is sometimes unhealthy, she helps him anyway by suggesting rehab. She admits that their caring nature is idiotic and stubborn, but she still expresses it multiple times.

In Season 6, Diane takes more steps to overcome her depression. She falls in love with her cameraman, Guy, who shares a connection with her and asks her to move to Chicago. However, despite not having anything left in L.A. to keep living there, Diane believes her new boyfriend Guy is the only good thing in her life, and that is too much pressure. However, after arriving home and reading a letter from BoJack, who was in rehab at the time, saying he wished he hadn’t dwelled on his sadness for so long convinces Diane to move to Chicago.

However, even after getting a book deal from Princess Carolyn, Diane still finds herself dwelling in her depression, which prevents her from writing and leads to her therapist and Guy encouraging her to take antidepressants. She refuses to at first, as she hated what they did to her mind and body in college. During a visit from BoJack, she admits she’s worried taking them won’t change anything, and he tells her how he also thought for a long time he thought couldn’t change either and gives thanks to her for believing in him. Diane goes on antidepressants, which lead her to gain weight, but nonetheless do make her happier, less irritable, and in general more content.

However, she still has trouble writing her book, as she has trouble tapping into her past trauma from her formative years, which she is convinced is "good damage." She also believes her antidepressants while making her lighter and clearer, are also making her foggy, and laments to Guy it’s why she didn't want to go on them. After she writes a fictional middle-grade story about teen detective Ivy Tran, she is concerned this won’t connect to as much to people as a personal memoir about her childhood trauma would. She even goes so far as to stop taking her medication, which makes her anxiety worse, even causing her to vomit from stress and withdrawal.

She eventually confides in Princess Carolyn growing up she always thought all the abuse and neglect she endured would mean something, and that one day she could get something out of her trauma through art and inspire girls like her. Princess Carolyn convinces her that Ivy Tran can do the same thing and even mentions she would love for her daughter Ruthie to grow up in a world with books like that.

## **Trivia**

* Diane was first created as a network/development executive who wanted to help BoJack with his comeback.
* Her last name *Nguyen* is the most common Vietnamese family name and most characters in the show comically mispronounce it.
	+ The reason for the name being unpronounceable is due to the various regions of Vietnam having a lot of different accents. So ironically, despite being the most common name in Vietnam, it has no uniform pronunciation.
	+ Common ways to pronounce it are: *Wyen, Newen, Ngyen, Nuyen*.
* Her phone number is 310-555-5443, and her email is nguyenisthelonliestnumber@aol.com.
* Even though she's a ghostwriter, her name is on the books she wrote.
* She turned thirty-five in the **Season 2** episode *After the Part*y, which took place in early **2015**, setting her year of birth in **1980.**
* She published *Secretariat: a Life*, which is a novel about Secretariat.
	+ She also served as a consultative writer for the film but was asked to do menial tasks such as making sure nobody tripped over the cables.
* Diane is one of the few characters to say "***fuck***." However Diane is cut off by the end credits, but the following episode does immediately picks up at the final second it left off at, and thus, actually saying it out loud.
	+ In the show "***fuck***" is only used whenever a relationship is ruined (In BoJack-related Story Arcs), the time it is not uttered in this manner, is by Diane Nguyen, who is cut off by the credits scene.
	+ Other characters who have said "***fuck***" are: Herb, Charlotte, Todd, BoJack, Gina, and Gina's Co-star.
* In *BoJack Kills*, Mr. Peanutbutter says he and Diane “*are like five big fights away from a divorce.*" The two do indeed have five arguments up until *What Time Is It Right Now*.
	+ In *Old Acquaintanc*e, Mr. Peanutbutter gets angry at Diane when she insists he talks to Captain Peanutbutter, due to him acting weird, questioning if she thinks she knows his brother better than him and just because she has a bad family doesn't mean everyone else does.
	+ In *Commence Fracking*, Mr. Peanutbutter confronts Diane due to the latter publishing Girl Croosh articles against Mr. Peanutbutter being pro-fracking for his governor campaign, as Diane is anti-fracking.
		- Diane says she won't publish it if he drops out of the race, and when he refuses, saying publishing the article will embarrass them and she always has to air her “*dirty laundry*” when someone disagrees with her. she states she doesn't want Mr. Peanutbutter to be governor because she thinks he would be bad at it.
			* She then publishes her article, which leads to the two throwing and breaking their computers and coffee mugs, and Mr. Peanutbutter pins Diane to the wall as the two struggle against one another. The two then engage in passionate “*angry sex.*”
	+ In *Thoughts and Prayer*s, the two argue on *MSNBSea* about gun control, and in the next scene, they can be heard having “*angry sex*” again behind a closed door.
	+ In *Underground*, Diane gets angry at Mr. Peanutbutter due to his fracking causing their home to collapse into a sinkhole. She also admits to BoJack that for a while, she hoped she was, like her brother, adopted too.
	+ Finally, in *What Time Is It Right Now*, Diane gets upset when Mr. Peanutbutter builds her Belle-Room, a giant room filled with books like the library the Beast gave Belle in Beauty and the Beast that's she dreamed of having as a little girl, claiming that it was her own fantasy and she hates big gestures as also seen in *After the Party*.
		- Mr. Peanutbutter in return gets angry for trying to do something nice for her and claims he does big gestures because he's scared she'll get bored of him and leave like his previous wives, Katrina and Jessica. After they calm down, Diane says she thinks their marriage is like a magic eye poster, as at first glance, it's messy and doesn't make sense, but if you squint hard enough, everything lines up. However, Diane says she so tired of squinting and breaks down crying, as Mr. Peanutbutter looks upset, as an implication their marriage has failed.
	+ The jacket she wears for the second half of **Season 6** is red and blue, both of which are complementary colors to green and orange, which were the colors of her original jacket.
	+ Like BoJack, she smokes cigarettes.
		- By the finale, she is apparently attempting to quit.