Just a random person on Tumblr

I think part of what is making young people lonelier, in discussing why they're increasingly isolated, is that they're so afraid of meeting someone who doesn't hold their same beliefs, and instead of being just core beliefs it is kinda ancillary shit.

It's actually okay to disagree even on social topics! Even on some political ones! But I mean, online you can start with "i love this mutual but they have a really bad/uninformed opinion about x media"

I know this is IMMEDIATELY going to be taken in bad faith, and yes babygirl, you are so right, I DO want you to go make best friends with both the KKK grand wizard AND your nearest nazi leader.

But seriously, as someone who has spent two decades doing community organization: finding ways to connect with different people is so so so important. There are people i follow here who ate 80% smart and their brain falls out of their head 20% of the time and that is GOOD FOR MY MENTAL ECOSYSTEM AND GOOD FOR LEARNING HOW TO BE A PERSON

here is the first of the show's major Smallvillisms:

okay so in Smallville the fact that Clark Kent has superpowers is a secret. I cannot speak for Smallville in particular but Clark Kent keeping his powers a secret generally works for audiences bcos 1) it is a core element of the Superman narrative. if he was just publicly Superman that would feel weird and jarring. 2) Clark Kent is a nice and good boy and we understand that he is keeping his secret with the best of intentions

the secret superpowers angle is completely foreign to the Arthurian mythos however; in fact it's kind of the opposite of the usual deal with Merlin as a character? but they wanted to do Young Merlin with a Clark Kent thing going on. OK. now they need a reason why his magic is a secret.

uhh it's bcos they made magic illegal. who made magic illegal? the king. not Arthur obviously. different king. we want to keep the whole Camelot/royal court aspect tho so instead of doing the usual King Arthur backstory he's just uhh normal prince. and magic is illegal bcos it killed his mother. okay now we're cooking with gas. but obviously we want the villains to mostly be other magic users for Merlin to fight. why are these other magic users trying to Get Arthur? well they are mad that his father banned magic. and Merlin has to protect Arthur bcos he's going to be King Arthur one day and save the land. so Merlin's gotta explode all the other magic users. he gotta!!

Morgana has THAT arc bcos Smallville has a whole thing where Lex Luthor and Clark Kent are childhood friends.

i re-iterate that I haven't seen Smallville but I imagine Lex being the guy in the friend group who is going to turn out evil works bcos Lex Luthor's whole thing is that he's an asshole rich white man. definitely possible to do a character like that who's sympathetic whilst still having it ring true for the audience that they're just gonna be a bad guy.

and like they maybe COULD have made this work with Morgana? but here i suppose we do get into the straight up just bad politics, doing Morgan Le Fay but she's Lex Luthor would maybe involve leaning into the privilege she has as a noblewoman (effectively a princess) but instead they just u know victimised her over and over and then when she snaps and starts exploding people it's like wow Morgana i can't believe you're evil now. stop exploding people Morgana. only Merlin is allowed to explode people.

it's like, i don't know. they didn't realise they couldn't just go directly from s1-2 Morgana (was end of s2 the switch? I forget) to 'oh she's just evil now' without it being really weird and jarring? they didn't realise that a female character could have motives for being evil that didn't revolve around all the men in her life abusing her?

and then Merlin rocks up and explodes them both. just blows them up like bombs. and its like ok that COULD be a really interesting character moment for him but it. its not. bcos really blatantly what's going on there is they were like 'ok we're out of time, wrap it up folks. Merlin comes in and explodes the bad guys like bombs.'

it feels weird & jarring not bcos it was morally bad behaviour on Merlin's part but bcos straight up its just bad writing.

eta not gonna reblog this again but the OTHER issue w the Smallvilling is that it means Merlin is constantly not just lying by omission to Arthur but flat out lying to his face, manipulating him, on occasion straight up brainwashing him?

so Arthur is an asshole in s1. this is fine. he is at the beginning of his growth arc. Merlin training a young Arthur up to be a better king is a Thing in Arthurian literature and this is a different angle on it but nonetheless. growth arc!!

except um. it never really happens? like yeah he matures and becomes less of a manchild as the show goes along but his improvement is pretty limited.

A Nervous Old Man (right) and his Emotional Support Violence Machine (Left)

Like, before you watch Avatar, you’ve seen all these memes about Katara and her mom, and based on those memes, you assume it’s one of those lines you have to get used to hearing at least once every episode. But then you watch the show and realize that she only talks about her mom maybe five or six times per season and you also realize she only brings her up when she’s trying to comfort someone or empathize with them because that’s how she processes her grief and that’s one way she connects with people.

Or you hear the infamous line, “then you didn’t love [our mother] the way I did” and you prepare yourself for one of the worst character assassinations ever only to see the scene after nearly three seasons worth of context and realize she was kinda right. She’s been the mother, the nurturer, the comforter. She’s been patient, gentle, and accommodating where everyone else has gotten to be insensible and reckless and childish, and the one moment where she allows herself to feel her grief, suddenly she’s this evil bitch and not, y’know, a 14 year old girl whose been thrusted into adulthood in a way no other character has. A 14 year old girl who should be allowed immaturity and raw emotion and anger instead of the patience and grace she’s been forced to extend to every character without even the smallest amount of gratitude or even consideration in return.

Or you see all of the clips where Katara puts Aang in the “friendzone” and you expect to have this wishy washy back and forth where Aang is putting his feelings out there only to have Katara neither commit nor express any clear reciprocation or rejection. Then you watch and realize that, as cute as the ship is initially, that there’s never a point where Aang returns any comfort or grace to Katara despite her always doing this for him to the point of coddling. That for as much as Aang says he loves her, he never seems to outgrow his perception of her so he can recognize her as someone who feels grief, anger, and pain as much as she expresses love, kindness, and maturity. And instead of having moments where he learns to see her beyond her strength or compassion, you’re instead given moments where Aang forces his feelings onto her, both romantic and non-romantic, and Katara is expected to just…shoulder those feelings the way she shoulders everyone else’s.

Katara is the most misunderstood character in the show. As much as people recognize the complexities of Zuko, Sokka, and Azula, they struggle to do the same for Katara because they see her struggles as somehow lesser, and therefore, less deserving of sympathy. They can handle her so long as she’s being endlessly patient and loving and kind, but the moment her endless love, patience, and kindness runs out, she’s suddenly this annoying bitch who can’t shut up about her mother or reciprocate Aang’s feelings. But Katara’s trauma does matter as much as anyone else’s. No, she wasn’t banished from her kingdom. No, she didn’t lose her entire community, and no, she isn’t the only one who lost her mother. But the difference between her and everyone else whose experienced loss because of the Fire Nation is that she’s never given time to process her trauma. Aang gets to lean on Katara constantly. Toph gets to express her feelings to Katara, and yeah, Sokka also lost their mother, but unlike Katara, he isn’t put in the position of being a substitute for everyone’s parent. He even admits that he sees his sister as a mother. The only characters who ever comfort Katara or allow her to vent is Zuko and her father and that’s, like, three scenes in a show where the other characters are consistently given opportunities to seek out Katara for unconditional support.

The fandom interpretation of Katara has been so bastardized that even those who haven’t watched the show know her for this fanon version and not for who she is. She’s such an interesting character beyond her fandom limitations, though. She’s brave, hot-headed, and hopeful as well as gentle and caring. She wishes to learn waterbending, not only because she wants to fight in the war, but because she wants to continue her culture’s practices because, and people often forget this, she also lost an entire subculture within her already fractured tribe. And she wants to defeat the Fire Nation both because of her deep love and empathy for other people, but also because she wants to avenge her mother. But because some of the fans have reduced Katara to a bitch who constantly whines about her mother and friendzones Aang, you wouldn’t know any of this, and it sucks because she’s the only character whose been dumbed down to such an extent.

That initial accidental google I did of a mutual returned an AI summary that was absolutely correct, and featured information about them that would not have been obvious from a quick perusal of their blog. The first few times I googled myself the AI overview was 100% correct. The version of that post that is circulating is not the one where I shared that the AI gave me someone's real name. I had hoped that it had screwed up and it wasn't their real name after all, but no, I checked with them, and just by googling someone's Tumblr URL, I got their honest to goodness legal name. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is? Like yeah I get that it's fun to go, "Haha, AI bad at collecting information," but that's not the problem. The problem is that sometimes AI good at collecting information, and it can collect a lot more a lot faster than a normal human can, by running multiple searches simultaneously and cross-referencing a lot of different documents all in a few seconds, for a level of snooping that would take a real person hours or even days, if they could do it at all.

^ it should look like this ^

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Lyra, my beloved cat of 13 years, passed away this year on Father's Day. She's been by my side through very difficult times and was my little rock of steady and unrelenting love. I struggled a lot drawing this, and struggled a lot posting it, but I know I would've wanted to read a comic like this that validated my grief for her when I lost her.

TLDR; I got lost on the highway a few weeks ago at 1am and called my husband instead of using maps and I can’t stop thinking about it so, I wrote something.

All day the stars watch from long ago my mother said I am going now when you are alone you will be all right whether or not you know you will know

And this forces you to decide whether your autonomy matters to you more than the approval of the group - while they'll still act like you're on thin ice either way, if you give in at this point they know you're theirs forever, because now they've established a foothold, you've shown a moral weakness, which they will brand you with so it can be used against you in the future ("hey RICE-addict here doesn't want help break into the city records office") to force you to double-down and isolate you further.