#and things will look different in retrospect

[traumagenic-positivity]

i'm not sure if this is the right place but i'm nervous to post this anywhere and wanted to share an experience and some growth i was proud of

as a young, unaware system, i changed my gender expression & identity & preferred name and pronouns rather frequently. frequently enough that one of my friends told me it was "like i had multiple personalities," a comment they both [didn't realise was rather inappropriate] and have since apologised for, and [didn't know was extremely accurate] to the point that i now find it rather comedic. but i really detested the idea of labelling myself as genderfluid the entire time.

when i identified as a girl i /was a girl./ i was not going to stop being a girl. i didn't feel that i had ever been a boy, and i didn't think i would be a boy in the future — i was a girl, plain and simple. the same was true for when i identified as a boy, or as nonbinary, and i honestly did not understand why it kept changing, considering this. i would identify as a girl and never have any concept of how i could have identified as anything else. i would 'come out' and 'go back into the closet' and have no clue why i had done one or the other. in retrospect, this is because i have DID — there is an alter who sees herself as a woman, and an alter who sees himself as a man, and an alter that sees themself as neither, and so on, and whichever alter is in front, their identity is clear to them. i detested the idea of identifying as genderfluid because my gender, as i received it, /wasn't/ fluid. the genders of my alters just varied from mine.

now that i'm diagnosed and have been in the process of treatment, i actually feel comfortable identifying as genderfluid, and have the flag hanging in my room. something i couldn't have really dreamed of as a teen. since i have names for my experiences, i'm comfortable both identifying with my own gender, as an alter, and also identifying as a whole /system/ as being genderfluid. it's the label that fits us best collectively, if you look at us as a singlet, or as one entity built up of many moving parts. it's nice to feel assured in that now. i'm proud of us.

i hope any systems struggling with collective or singular identity can reach a peace with it. it's not perfect and dysphoria is a complex thing for us, since we have many different desires, but we're so much more comfortable than we've been in the past. hopefully we can all make it somewhere serene, yeah? 🍂🦌

we've had a very similar experience!! our host could never quite put a gender on us, and we found genderfluid works as well!! for both a collective term, and a singular term for our host!!!

I'm glad you guys have become more comfortable <33

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

As I now read that the state or federal government intentionally murdered dozens of people with a wildfire in Hawaii, I am once again wondering whether there is such a thing as a natural disaster or a genuine catastrophe in the minds of terminally online people who think everything was done by Them

And like

Every single time? Nothing bad has ever just happened? And it’s never incompetence or neglect? It’s always malice? It’s always because They planned it?

[thenotoriousscuttlecliff]

The older I get the more I realise there is just nothing to Jean and Logan as a couple, he's just the cool bad boy alternative to her straight laced boyfriend, and no writer has ever bothered to develop them beyond that. Logan really has more of a dynamic with Scott than he ever had with Jean. When written well, Scott and Jean feel like genuine partners with neither character overshadowing the other, but when she's paired with Logan, Jean seems to just become the love interest or worse a prize for Logan to win for being a good person, the relationship always reduces her.

[averlym]

litany of the martyrs (click for better resolution!)

[kuromi-hoemie]

hhhh talking about my writing was fun but 30 tags is not enough.. yes i have 3 major influences but i have minor ones too.. it is a lovechild of my favorite things.. writing is so fun and i have no self control or a concept of pacing myself i will sit there for 16 hours and get hit with every status effect but by god does it all just flow out of me. I've always been a music person yes but i also used to write a lot into early adulthood until The Incident™

but i am ready 2 jump back into it. i think comics are a great middle ground between the two mediums so i don't get As into writing bc i kind of started going crazy last time 🫡 i can take a more structured approach to it that forces me to pace myself and think about it differently. i love art.... i love making things i love knowing how to do things i love knowing how to play things i love having so many creative outlets, even if i don't do a lot of them regularly lol. it is enriching 😳 and nice to know that it's always there to come back to when u want.

[thatonecrookedsmile]

["So what can you expect in the coming months?"] ["…you never know!"] ["He’s always watching me..."] ["-I saw Mister Drew the other day…was meeting with that Connor fellow, holding some papers."] ["I think they saw me looking though…"] ["Just too many secrets being cooked up in the kitchen!"] ["If I didn’t know better, I’d say there was magic there."] ["A well calculated understanding between creation-"] ["-big things are coming!"] ["-and creator."] ["Massive things!"] ["That smile…"] ["..you just learn to go with it."] ["He’s always watching me..."] ["You just watch…"] ["I’ve got a good feeling something great is going to happen…”]

...

…How very interesting,such… knowledge.

{A message from Wilson Arch}

-----

Yoooo, guess who is having a birthday today. Me,obviously. :D

Oh, and Wilson too, I guess. If you wanna be THAT guy.

Remember when this video came out there were people who heard the voice at the end and thought the voice was either Sammy or the Ink Demon? Man, those were the days. However with all due respect, I'm glad neither case was right in the end lol.

On this day 5 years ago, "Unknown - April 14th" was posted on YouTube, which means it's been 5 damn years since we first heard from Wilson...

man, what a damn BABY MAN, am i right folks

It's interesting to think that even though it's been 5 years, we've only known who Wilson really is for 2 years now (or more appropriately, 1 year and 5 months of those 5 years). Of course, now, after BATDR was released, we know who he is and what his place is in the Bendy universe. But between April 1, 2019 and November 1, 2022, all we knew about him was that he…existed. He was someone - someone bad apparently - who sounded old and who would have some relevance in the plot of Dark Revival. And that's it. We had no name, no appearance, nothing. He was someone, but we didn't know who.

It's no wonder he was only referred to as "Unknown" by fans during these 3 and a half years.

In the end, I would say that this drawing is a mix of 2 things. The first being the result of an idea I've had for a while, which is basically making a drawing in relation to the original video/"unknown" tape, but this time with Wilson, since now we know it was recorded by him. Plus it's been 5 years since the original upload,5 years of Wilson. I think this would be the perfect time to do this.

And second, a strange kind of redux/homage/"final chapter" in this kind of "collection" of drawings I did between 2019 and 2022 all based on the idea of "the unknown weirdo from BATDR saying How Very Interesting Such Knowledge" and so on. All of them having other characters in mind in the role of the Unknown. And now, here I am, redoing this idea again, only with The Man Himself this time. The real Unknown. Now as the Known, so to speak.

Going back to what I said before, you can see this drawing as a kind of farewell to this particular idea that I've kind of repeated over the years, as I've now done it again only with Wilson this time. (Does this mean I'll never draw this concept/line of thought again? I mean, I assume so. But there's no guarantee I can't make something similar again down the line. Who knows what the future holds. We will see what happens in the next 5 years.)

But,yeah. 5 years of Such Knowledge™.

Have a good April Fools' Day.

(Also, there are still a few hours until the day ends where I live, so for me it's still April 1st, so yeah, this still counts)

[mercymaker]

love is truly the dumb fuck juice of all time because a man can literally tell you 'i have violent thoughts of harming you' and your ass will be twirling hair and kicking feet like 'but would we kiss after that or?' like

[tsuncda]

so am i right or am i right in my assertion that bridgerton doesn't actually do character work, it just rebrands it's main characters before their season begins and tries to recontextualize them as poor little meow meows.

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

megumi 🤝🏽 yuuji

dying even if it’s only for a good minute only to be brought back to life bc fate realizes if they died for real then they would need to find someone else to fuck over. those two are like fates favorite barbie dolls.

apologies if this post is going to seem all over the place, just bear with me. i don’t even know if you’re going to see this BUT it’s okay bc i need to get this out my system 😭.

starting off — god, imagine the chaos that will ensue when megumi tells nobara & yuuji about his very tragic history with the zenins. but like he wouldn’t even tell them straight up, he’ll just make a little deadpan joke (my sarcastic, sassy son) & the others would look at him like : ??? wtf do you mean by that sea urchin head???

like imagine itafushikugi going shopping for like traditional japanese clothes for a little festival or some shit (megumi was dragged by his spikes to come along) & nobara is having the time of her life finding outfits for her & the boys. like it got to the point where she’s dressing them herself & she shows megumi an outfit that looked similar to the robe he was forced to wear bc of the zenin (it’s obviously not the same) & megumi just refuses to wear a robe with similar color patterns to the zenin robe.

megumi: that looks like the outfit the zenin forced me to wear. i wonder what happened to it, cause the last thing i know, i got blood all over it. so as the second member of the zenin hate club, im not wearing that….

megumi: wait that blue one looks decent. i’m going to try it on.

nobara:

yuuji:

nobara: …did he really leave without giving us the “ getting blood on a zenin’s robe” story?

imagine maki complaining about naoya in front of the first years, & maki just brings up naoya’s onesided beef with megumi & her stories of how naoya was so petty back in his childhood made him remember who tf naoya is (megs have selective memory, it’s okay)

megumi: ugh, he was so annoying. i remember when he came to my middle school back when gojo was busy dealing with the aftermath of his evil ex boyfriend evil plan & he basically kidnapped me. i was stuck in a car with that man for 40 minutes..you would hate him nobara.

maki: yeah you would hate him nobara.

yuuji: i’m sorry he kidnapped you??? why did you say that so casually?

nobara: fuck that. megumi is a disney princess, we know this already. BUT we’re just gonna gloss over gojo had an evil boyfriend?

& imagine when megumi finally tells his friends about the zenin clan was when yuuji just came back from the dead & they were asking how tf that’s possible. & somewhere in that conversation megumi just let it slip that his heart stopped beating once & itakugi looks at him in silence:

megumi: yeah the zenin clan basically forced me to exorcise some curses & complete a ritual to get a snake — that snake fucking bit me. it was my least favorite. but yeah i basically died. then yuuta brought me back. then i was blind for a good minute.

nobara, yuuji, & even sukuna:

megumi: it was a terrible time for me. gojo was even more clingier & protective. it got to a point where he started treating me like i was 6 again… reading me bedtime stories, singing me lullabies & describing the pictures in the stories since i was…yknow blind.

cue itakugi & even sukuna wanting to burn down the zenin but ofc they can’t do that…so they settle for pulling pranks on the members & traumatizing them ofc.

IM ALSO imagining how funny it would be for yuuji to be jealous of yuuta. like bro is basically living yuuji’s fantasy world. i’m giggling at the idea of yuuji fighting for his life to be either megumi favorite or nanami’s favorite.

you also opened my eye to the potential of maki & tsumiki… like i also like to imagine that in a happier world, they would understand each other on such a deep level. but they would also find parts of the other that they wished they had. but on a happier note i like to imagine that megumi would suffer whenever it was brought up that his aunt is basically dating his step sister. like maki would be a menace to megumi. every little thing he do? maki is texting tsumiki in a corner.

maki watching itafushi cook together in the kitchen: i can’t believe megumi has a boyfriend. it’s so cute that he thinks that he can hide this from me. lemme go snitch to tsumiki.

maki listening to megumi describe his fight with sukuna, a cursed spirit who apparently has a stripping problem: oh my god. megumi is truly yuuta’s boy. they both got cursed spirits obsessed with them…i need to tell tsumiki.

maki to megumi after witnessing his suicidal tendencies: don’t make me tell tsumiki.

i honestly love your story. the way you added so much more to megumi childhood is beautiful. it just make soooo much sense. but also your characterization of gojo is so precious to me. i’m waiting for gojo to go apeshit on the zenin. i’m also giggling in anticipation at gojo finding out about yuuta attachment to megumi. i like to imagine him to be kind of worried about it actually, bc that’s not fucking healthy. but i imagine him getting used to it since megumi will have a protector in the form of yuuta & his power of love.

i’m also curious to see mai’s role in this story since.

*sighs in disappointment at gege writing choices*

since she had a crush on megumi…yeah. but imma just interpret that as she wants to be his family. it keeps me sane

i also wanted to ask if there’s a chance that you would write a megumi POV of what happened in the zenin clan? ofc i would understand if you wouldn’t since it leaves a much more ominous feeling to the events. plus yuuta running commentary is a good mix of angst & humor so ofc i understand.

Yuuji: man fushiguro almost checks the boxes for a Disney princess. except he was never kidnapped or enslaved

Megumi, sold to the Zenin clan, who later kidnapped him: *sweating*

Nobara and Yuuji would be the co-vice presidents of the "fuck the Zenin clan" club if they knew what happened. They would be the presidents but yuuta and maki are already in a death match for the position and they're trying to avoid the bloodshed. they are not allowed to be treasurer because neither of them know how money works.

megumi is unaware that a formal club has been formed.

Megumi is suffering SO HARD in any world where maki and tsumiki are together. they won't stop ganging up on him when it comes to his love life and general wellbeing and holding hands where he has to see it. maki lectures him about his suicidal tendencies in the field, holds up one finger, calls tsumiki, and lets her pick up where she left off. maki tries to talk to him about relationships one (1) time and he tries to drown himself.

see i'm pretty open to writing a megumi POV but it, like most of my stories, falls in this nebulous category of "if i have the time." like, i've thought about writing megumi's pov before, there's a lot of stuff that happened that exists as like, background knowledge for me that will never make it through yuuta's pov because it doesn't make sense for yuuta to find out about it. It would be very tonally different, but if i did write it, it would be a different work entirely and i'd be making sea glass gardens into a series.

i'm eternally tempted by the siren call of making my works into a series. If i did it with sea glass gardens, i would want to add a one shot of Megumi's pov during the time leading up to sea glass gardens and a short multi-chapter of the gojo, nanami, shoko teen parenting trio. If I have the time, it will exist; if i don't, it won't.

[justsomerandomplanet]

I just realized vol 13's inside cover is this, i wonder how they'll do this with the parallel covers that have characters

[the-clay-quarters]

looking through storylets ive saved and realised that in the affluent photographer story, i was so annoyed by something she said that a. i forgot to save the whole thing and b. highlighted the particularly bad line

past me was so pissed he forgot all pretense of accurate archiving lmao

[waterloggedtomorrow]

In general I think my mother was right to cut our hair herself when we were kids, bc haircuts are expensive + hard to schedule + who Cares when you're a kid. But also walking into a barber shop is the Most terrifying thing ever + I do wish it were something I had more experience w.

[carmarriage]

i chose zexal btw

[sweetteaanddragons]

I have been thinking lately about a universe where Bruce Wayne killed the Joker.

I want to be clear here, since there are so many longstanding debates on this topic: I do not think Bruce Wayne should kill the Joker. I have just been wondering what would happen if the circumstances aligned in such a way that he did.

And to be clear on a related, yet slightly different topic: when I say I have been wondering about what if Bruce Wayne killed the Joker, I do not mean as the Batman. I mean Bruce "Brucie" Wayne.

Maybe it's kind of an accident? Like, he definitely did intend to hit the Joker, but he's Brucie right now, so he's trying not to look like he knows what he's doing while still doing enough damage to keep the Joker from killing someone, and meanwhile the Joker makes just the wrong move and -

And here we are. Brucie just killed the Joker.

Bruce's reaction here is one thing; he has his one rule for a reason, he's just broken it, he's determined to turn himself in -

His family's reaction is a whole different story. How does Cass feel about this?

How does Jason? Bruce has killed the Joker, just like he wanted, but it wasn't for him, not really, and -

And meanwhile, this happens in front of, say, a gala full of people, so now all of Gotham gets to react to it too.

Average Gothamite, seeing the words BRUCE WAYNE, JOKER, and KILLED in the same headline: OH, NO.

Average Gothamite, once they've processed the order those words are actually in: . . . I did not have that on this year's bingo card.

The city's most famous mass murderer has just been publicly killed by the city's biggest employer/philanthropist/source of tabloid harmless nonsense! Three days before Brucie was making tabloid headlines by tripping into a fountain and somehow losing his shirt in the process! Two weeks before, the newspaper was running a retrospective on the Wayne murders and what donation Brucie was making to help the families of victims this year! The article mentioned how one of his adopted sons had also tragically become a murder victim!

Now this has happened, and Bruce is having a breakdown over breaking his one rule, and the rest of Gotham just assumes that this is because poor Brucie thinks this somehow makes him like the man who killed his parents. They send a huge outpouring of support his way. This in no way helps Bruce's actual breakdown.

Ninety percent of Gotham is sure Brucie didn't actually mean to kill the Joker, and pretty much a hundred percent of them support him whether he meant to do it or not. No one wants to have anything to do with prosecuting this mess. Bruce is trying to make it as clear as possible that he will fully cooperate with the justice system and meanwhile an entire gala full of people is suddenly acting like they could in no way have possibly witnessed events that took place ten feet in front of their faces. Did Bruce kill the Joker? Is the officer sure? That doesn't seem like him. Maybe the Joker just tripped on his own. Marble floors, you know. Very slippery.

[brainpuncture]

i love all the art music and nature that the world has to offer but

[surgepricing]

I think about Azula shooters often and their common refrain of "if Azula hadn't had a mental breakdown, she would've won" and I'm here to tell you that no, she wouldn't have.

There is no universe in which Azula was winning that fight with Zuko (or Katara, for that matter).

Azula spent so much of Book 2 being built up as this deadly terrifying force against whom the heroes are badly outmatched that it can be difficult to catch exactly how quickly Zuko is advancing.

Back up a bit to Book One. For the fearsome exiled crown prince of the Fire Nation, Zuko's not that impressive a firebender. He's not bad by any stretch, and he's able to lay the untrained Sokka and Katara flat pretty easily. Then he gets in the ring with Aang, who is an airbending master, and the difference between a regular bender and a master becomes apparent when Aang literally puts his ass to bed:

People have attributed this to the fact that no one's fought an airbender in 100 years, but I think it's also worth noting that Aang (a 12 year old from a pacifist nation) has probably never fought anyone before. Like, ever. And yet the second Aang thinks "okay, I'll attack back", the fight's over.

Zuko's got the same genetic predisposition for firebending talent that Azula does, yet it never seems to manifest because of his mental blocks. At the beginning of the series, he's already so beat down that all he really has is conviction, pride, and anger, so even with training from Iroh (the firebending master, thank you very much), he struggles. Yet throughout Book 2, when he has no time to train because he's on the run, he actually seems to advance faster. The fact that his bending is literally tied to his character arc (as his morals become tangled and he has to fight off aforementioned mental blocks) is pretty brilliant. Like, by the time of the Crossroads of Destiny, Zuko getting his ass handed to him by Aang is a pretty consistent feature of the show--he just can't match wits with him.

Hell, at the beginning of the series, he and Iroh (again: the actual firebending master) launch a combined power surface-to-air attack...which Aang casually swats away into a nearby ice wall. Come the Crossroads of Destiny, however, and Zuko by himself launches this bigass fireball that blows through Aang's defenses.

Zuko advances so quickly that it's scary. That prodigious talent is in him even if it doesn't come through as cleanly as with Azula. Who, by the way, was busy about to get flattened by Katara some few dozen feet away, until Zuko took over and then effectively stalemated her himself.

All of this in retrospect makes it abundantly clear why Zuko's firebending seemed to skyrocket so much when he learned true firebending from the Sun Warriors: it was really the only thing left. He's hard a hard road learning how to fight waterbenders, earthbenders, and airbenders, and even if unconsciously, he's applying the philosophy Iroh taught him about augmenting his bending style with aspects of other styles (see also, the waterbending-like fire whips he uses in the above gif). Once he actually understands fire and how it works, he's got it mastered. Hence why any gap between him and Azula effectively disappears as soon as their next fight--before her friends have betrayed her and her stability goes out the window. There's no real sense of urgency to their fight at the Boiling Rock prison. True, Sokka's presence with the sword helps, but Zuko doesn't look remotely worried and he counters Azula's every attack perfectly.

All her life, Azula only ever learned fire. She was taught by the best people the fire nation can employ, so she knows all the cool tricks, but she's still poisoned by the corrupted firebending practiced in the modern ATLA timeline. Unlike Zuko, who managed to get the basics if nothing else from Iroh (fire comes from the breath, and can be used to survive as much as to kill), Azula has always used fire as a weapon and a means to hurt others. She has no true knowledge of the craft, meaning she's got the same weaknesses as Zhao, she's just better disciplined to the point she can make up for it.

Zuko's victory was a given considering Azula's complete loss of control by the time of Sozin's comet, but even had she been in a perfect mental state, she'd have lost, because in many ways Zuko is simply the better firebender.

And that's the truth of it.