#Merge Across

[canisalbus]

Hey, I’m new to Tumblr, but I’ve seen your characters around the internet and I love them so much!! Everyone has so much love for Machete and Vasco and your art is so cool to see! Do you have any tips for an aspiring artist and creative writer?

Hi! Welcome to tumblr! I'm glad to hear you like my dogs :]

I'm not really a writer, and I also completely lose my confidence when I'm trying to explain my art processes. So this is probably an obvious, unhelpful platitude at best, but one thing I've realized is that you should allow yourself to be self-indulgent. If you're the primary target audience of your own work, it generates passion and keeps you inspired and motivated. I like to believe that people who see your creations are more likely to respond to them positively if they can sense that you're putting your heart and soul to them.

[kindaasrikal]

“Cole? The hero of Shintaro?”

“Huh? Shintaro?” Vania what have you been saying about Cole post merge this time?? 😭

[lavampira]

d'alia liveq + warrior of light's journey (so far)

a realm reborn

heavensward

stormblood

shadowbringers

endwalker

dawntrail

[vicaly]

Took the 90's Spider-Man 2099 comics and slapped on Miguel's design from Across the Spider-Verse over it with his mask off :D

While the comics give me a headache reading, the lore they got for Miguel is awesome.

And I need that lore.

[spectrumgarden]

I keep thinking about how no one seems to think about nuance when it comes to like, the concept of "autistic traits / symptoms" and discussing them, and how that is intertwined with the push to not consider it a disability. And its complex to discuss, but here's my convoluted thoughts. I know it's long but I hope people will take the time to read it.

There are in fact people who do fit some commonly associated with autism traits that are not impaired by them. Let's make up a guy, for a second:

They like routine and repetition a lot but easily handle change in them. For example they wear the same set of clothes for years with no desire to ever branch out, but if you made them wear something else they wouldnt really be bothered by it as long as they dont think it's super ugly, etc. They like to watch the same movies over and over but happily agree to watch other things with their friends when spending time together, and are engaged and interested in those movies. Etc. They speak very formally or choose "complicated" words for things that could be expressed easier. They however do not face problems with communication beyond annoyance of others because they're able to rephrase things easily to be understood, and they also have a normal back and forth in conversations and initiate conversations normally. They sometimes engage in subtle self stimulating behaviors and recognize the desire to do so during boring or stress inducing times (which pretty much everyone does, btw). They dislike loud environments but do not respond with melt- or shutdowns or any other "severe" reactions, and while for example preferring to go to a museum over a club, they easily go through their daily life in busy areas like city centers, shops or cultural events like parades without issues beyond like, mild annoyance and no desire to stay for longer than necessary. They have strong interests in seemingly random topics and spend quite some time researching or engaging with those, but they do not view the world through the lense of said interest, they do not neglect caring for themselves or fulfilling academic or professional responsibilities because they are so engrossed in their interests, they are easily able to hold conversations about other topics. I could go on.

This person would not be diagnosed with autism by any doctor who pays attention to the impairment clause of the diagnosis. They would probably be told "you're subclinical / you do not meet enough criteria / ..." While his person would probably relate quite a bit to (parts of) descriptions of (level 1 and / or low support needs and / or high masking) autism. And this is an imaginary person I made up, but these people obviously exist (and as a side note, are probably what people refer to when they talk about "everyone being a little autistic" etc)

And this person being told they're not autistic might be upset. Because clearly, they have so many autistic traits. They relate to so many videos! But the thing is! There is no impairment! The one thing that connects all of the symptoms related to autism to the actual diagnosis. This does not mean they do not in fact relate to the autistic experience. This does not mean these parts of their life or personality are fake / non existent / not important to who they are and how they experience things. But it is important to differentiate. If they consider themselves autistic, if the world considers them autistic, it waters down the definition to a point of being categorically useless from a medical standpoint, from a standpoint of figuring out who needs support and in what ways. Who needs (early) intervention, who needs extra support in school or at work or at home or in public.

And like. Humanity at large will probably always want to shove themselves into random categories. "Which character are you like?" "What is your personality style?" "What is your star sign?" or "which sports team do you support", and countless more come to mind. I dont think this imaginary person is wrong or silly for wanting to find a category of people they are like, or recognizing this similarity with some autistic people. I wouldnt even mind if they made up a non-clinical category / group of people who relate to autistic experiences without the impairment. It would get the point across that it is a group of people with shared experiences, but it is not the same as autism.

However autism is increasingly treated like something thats just a personality type without impairment, by people online and offline. And when they go "this is an autism symptom" without nuance, without looking at the need for impairment, or even differential diagnosis, it spreads that attitude. "Liking to eat the same foods is an autistic trait"... or is it normal to have food preferences to a degree if it does not cause you stress to eat new foods, if you are capable of eating other food if hungry and presented with them and not the food you prefer? Or is this person anorexic and their mind has created categories of "allowed to eat" and "not allowed to eat" based on arbitrary categories relating to their fear of weight gain? "Only eating with small spoons at home is a common autistic trait"... or is it a harmless preference as long as you are still able to eat food outside a strict routine set up with zero possible deviations? Or is it a person with OCD and eating with small spoons is a compulsive behavior for some sort of intrusive thoughts?

I could go on forever. But in the end, these short sentences are all the same. They are, at the same time: autistic experiences and allistic experiences, because they are so non specific. They are watered down and any additional information is removed.

autism is about a specific combination of experiences that impair you. That's literally all it is. It does not automatically turn us into a category of "other" that is fully not possible to relate to, because we are human too. And some of it will be relatable to people that are not autistic!

And there is value in discussions of experiences of autistic people that go beyond the impairment, as long as we do not forget about it, or treat it as secondary instead of the defining factor. I dont mind if autistic people bond over something they're not impaired by, that they see as a common experience, for example not easily going along with authority. Being creative. Preferring the small spoon (without being impaired by it while having other impairments), whatever, and call those common autistic experiences. But those are not the pillars of what make up autism and solely relating to them should not be your reason for calling yourself autistic. Neither should relating to commonly impairing symptoms without being impaired by your version of them. The impairments resulting from abnormal development are what makes someone autistic.

There needs to be more nuance, detail, when discussing autism symptoms. And the push to, at the very least, expand autism into an area of experiences that do not cause impairment of any kind, or worse claim it never caused impairment, need to stop. It does not help anyone.

I genuinely think part of the whole "everyone is autistic these days" crowd who likes to go after people and invalidate them has picked up on some of this, but they lack the skills to criticize it for what it actually is and / or they want there to be a simple solution, which is that everyone who calls themselves autistic online who does not fit their very stereotypical view is faking. They are wrong of course. But I dont think this comes out of nowhere. There is something to criticize about how autism is treated in many circles, especially among younger people.

I'm really not sure how to end this post because I like to come to some conclusions on my long posts but just. Uhm. The way some people treat "autistic traits" as completely unrelated to the impairment they cause while staying exclusively autistic traits is wrong. The way people try to redefine autism is harmful and in the end not needed because they could simply invent other words for that experience.

[thecherrygod]

currently thinking about when you let kim know you found out about the pale while he was gone, and that if you tell him its terrifying hes like "so trying to spare you from it was a good idea", or that if you tell him its unreal he says how a lot of things are unreal, or that if you ask him where you are he says they are in elysium, but that all of them involve him comparing the pale to water, death, and "the fact we are all stuck behind our eyes, between our ears, talking for all eternity, like every other human being". and then saying heavy topics are not his forte and acting as if he never said that. you cant just say "heavy topics are not my forte" after dropping that. both the caring and trying to protect harry, and that water, death, and having a mind is terrifying/unreal/just how the world is...

[sevensimian]

Me in the cinema: haha he's so pathetic I love him

An hour later he casually turned into an eldritch cosmic horror and you know what good for him

[horsemeatluvr23]

jevin!!!!!!!!!! didn't have access to a scanner so this is my first (and hopefully last) sketchbook picture of the challenge... you can see the scale i'm actually working on here (i have small hands so my sketchbook looks bigger than it is) tbh i do not like how this came out but it was fun and i might recreate it digitally once the challenge is over

[sage-nebula]

Pokémon Horizons Ep 7 || Pokémon: The Strongest Mega Evolution

I'm finally catching up on the Horizons anime and something Liko said sounded very familiar . . . 👀

[deermouth]

I love every season on its own merits, but I still think the end of tsv ch1 is one of the most exquisitely atmospheric pieces of horror in the whole show.

[cradleghost]

LYLA helped Miles escape Nueva York

Hear me out

- as soon as the Go Home Machine booted up she would have theoretically know about it         -  I’m not sure exactly how integrated she is in the Spider Society system in ATSV but my personal opinion is that she basically runs the place.                 + She has a connection to all of the gizmos in order to send pings and allow them all to communicate

               + constantly scanning for anomalies 

               + able to keep track of and record information across dimensions 

               + Miguel would want her to be able to have access to basically everything because he has severe FOMO and wants to be in-the-know everything in order to keep a handle on it — and LYLA is the only one he trusts to do it. 

- with all that, Miles didn’t Sabotage anything when he returned to the base, he simply booted up the systems, which would immediately alert LYLA 

- My Guess is, that since she has such a close relationship with Miguel, she has seen the downward spiral he has been on, and knows that Miles fighting back and not following Miguel’s orders was the final push for him to snap (I have other thoughts about this in regards to both LYLA and Peter B. that I will get into later. 

- Because she knows that Miguel has tipped over that edge, and what she is capable of, once she receives the notification that the GHM Is active (after “seeing” the whole chase and, again — theoretically, hearing the conversation between Miguel, Miles, Peter, and Gwen, she makes the decision to help Miles.)            + she does this by letting the program run, letting Miles boot the systems and filling in what he missed in the startup that he didn’t know about, allowing him access to the hand-scan and admin protocols.

- when Margot trying to figure out what was going on, LYLA kept throwing screens in front of her, and distracting her

               + if she is as integrated as I believe she is, she wouldn’t have had to ask “what’s happening” — it would have been simple: ALERT: unknown admin access — no designation (which should have been denied (she’s a super computer, she could make an educated guess that after they all lost track of Miles that the attempted access was him)), SCAN: earth-42 (which, if she is able to access a database of dimensions, like when she was tracking spot, she knows is one with no registered spider-person, which again, educated guess could tell her that Miles (who she knows is from Earth-1610 and who was bit by a spider not from his home dimension)) was the one booting it up.

- with all of that: Miguel knows that Miles’s DNA scan would come up with something other than Earth-1610 (he’s a geneticist in the comics so I’m translating that into him in ATSV, and knows that the scan would be funky with it). While he may not know Exactly what universe Miles’s dna would show, he counts on LYLA to send him wherever the GHM sent Miles when Miguel opens his own portal, and because he is so in-the-moment and pissed, doesn’t double check, ending up in E-1610 where LYLA knows Miles Is Not Currently Located.

Anyway I’m sure I’ve missed some things but these are just some of my Many Thoughts on the subject

[nostalgia-tblr]

i say i "can't write proper romance" but here i am writing about quantum entanglement, the most romantic thing in all of physics!

[ridgystacis]

that single tweet from johnny yong bosch is about to ruin my life until april cause before they had my curiosity but now they have my attention

[chyirly]

More on the retrieval team (03, 87, and 12Mikey) and their importance in this little plot point.

They are the ones that have the most interaction with the Spiders, with most of them resulting in fights and the team running off with their target.

03 is the leader, being the most mature of the group he's the one that the others look for guidance. He's the heavy hitter, usually the one that attacks first before the others follow.

87 and 12 are the fighters, with 87 with his boisterous presence being the one that distracts the spiders and the other two take their target, mainly 12.

12 is the sneakiest, able to grab the target mid-fight before the Spiders can notice. Something they struggle with even after other encounters due to how sporadic his moves are.

There is a chase sequence after the fight ending with the trio escaping using a portal device, sometimes with another turtle coming to grab them. The last option does result in a few close calls.

Sometimes when things seem dire, Ronin will come fight, he is a last resort that first came out when Miguel became active.

The second to last of my Shellslinger/Shellshocked drafts. Probably won't add much for this ship for a while.

I'm almost out of drafts so post will probably slow down.

Should I post my WIP's that I will never finish?

Questions are welcomed!

[catgirlweed]

spider-verse got me so into different art styles and style differences,,,,,, oughuhuhuhuhuh

[miguelobsession]

I wonder what was different about Happy Miguel's life

Did Tyler Stone never use him? Was he not working for Alchemax? Did he not try to leave? Did Tyler not drug him? Did he not genetically modify himself? Was he not sabotaged into becoming Spider Man?

Did him becoming Spider Man resulted in a less severe reaction? Did his fiance not die?

Like

At what point Miguel's life diverged from the canon, and do you think movie Miguel just saw the fact that one simple decision changed his life completely?

He struggled his entire time as Spiderman viewing it both as a curse or as a blessing, but honestly the entire sequence of him becoming Spiderman and all the things he had lost from being a hero makes me hard for it to believe that Happy Miguel ever was SpiderMan.

And what a scary realization it must have been for Movie Miguel - that the only thing he has now, his duty, his hero identity that he grew to love, feel more comfortable in than existing as Miguel O'Hara, that the only thing he has left to drive him forward - is the only thing that prevented him from real happiness in first place.