#skewing information

[lazyveran]

i think its interesting to point out that azula and katara are both people that value and strive for control, however they value different types of control

katara is someone who's been forced to become an adult at a very young age. she was given the responsibilities of a caregiver without the room to be a child. i think she focusses on an orderly, stable emotional/domestic dynamic and laboriously denies her own needs to achieve that. its also the fact she is, no doubt, attempting to emulate her mother in a way that a child cannot really comprehend. there's an expectation afterall for her to fulfil that empty space. so it comes off as controlling, perhaps even emotionally manipulating at times, while she in turn can be stubborn and wild with her own emotions. it's a fascinating dynamic because she constantly needs to be controlling people, not so much their action but their manner, headspace and so on, but also accepts help from others (when shes not being stubborn)! it's not healthy, per say, but she accepts people as people with their own thoughts, feelings and desires, and moves to accommodate that after they push back

azula on the other hand needs to control everything, all aspects, at all times. she too was forced to be an adult as a child, but she also never had a healthy example of an adult to begin with. her caregivers either left her at a key developmental stage or were. ozai. and as a princess, she's been taught to be a certain role with a country wide responsibility as soon as she could talk. alongside her military training, too! (all of this is taught, might i add, by people who are required to maintain a professional distance. even if she's a child, their society requires her emotional isolation) azula values absolute control and order in all aspects of her life, she's never allowed herself room to contemplate what a fufilling emotional dynamic is. she views everything on a wider scale, so much so she's always a politician, military leader and absolute ruler in every aspect. and in turn, everyone else is not allowed to have their own desires in the face of that. azula quite literally cannot approach people on an equal level, her background and her desperate need to control actively dehumanises them. while intellectually, she's a genius with an innate knowledge as to how people tick, they are always below her in class, in skill, and in her eyes, maturity in itself. which is ironic, really, since that very mindset is more childish than anything - viewing people like toys to play with, rather than humans with thoughts and desires outside her own

there's just. no separation for azula between her inner self and outer self need to control - unlike katara. because despite katara's need for control too, she's FAR more conscious of how a relationship should function. she's far more mature, really, than azula ever will be. in fact i'd argue katara being 'immature' is more an indicator of how stable she is than azula's demeanour. she feels her emotions, feels others emotions, and takes them at a human level. azula tantrums when someone doesnt dance to her tune

[knowlesian]

one of the handy things being a word nerd/ex-debate kid taught me is that if you talk long enough and do enough fancy rhetorical backflips you can make a reasonably convincing argument for some absolutely ridiculous ideas, especially if your audience doesn’t have a level of baseline knowledge to lean back on

the reason this is handy because it also taught me that just because somebody sounds confident and seems informed doesn’t mean they aren’t cherrypicking data and thus, using the truth to lie their fucking faces off

[mihai-florescu]

I wish to erase ensemble stars from the memory of everyone i dislike...

[caspersscareschool]

i should just start creating reading comprehension quizzes for every chapter of kny and faxing them to ufotable animation studios

[the-way-astray]

reblog with your ranking of the eight cliffhangers from “not bad, actually” to “shannon, i’ll be banging on your door by sunrise”. this is. for science.

(side note: this is a ranking of the cliffhangers themselves, not how they were resolved or continued in the next book. so if a cliffhanger really hit you hard but then you found the way it was resolved in the next book to be underwhelming, that’s irrelevant. it would still be more toward the “shannon, i’ll be banging on your door by sunrise” side, and vice versa.)

mine is:

(not bad, actually)

“Sophie Elizabeth Foster is unmatchable.” (Flashback)

“I’m going to be hiding the same way the Black Swan hid you. [ . . . ] Love, Keefe.” (Unlocked)

“‘Sophie?’” (Lodestar)

“‘As of this morning, Prentice is awake.’” (Neverseen)

“‘Let’s go join the Black Swan!’” (Everblaze)

“‘Who’s Alvar?’” (Nightfall)

“‘You’re saying stellarlune is a Forgotten Secret.’ [ . . . ] ‘Bring it on.’” (Legacy)

“‘My name is Elysian,' she said. 'And I am the power source you’re all here looking for.’” (Stellarlune)

(shannon, i’ll be banging on your door by sunrise)

[eastgaysian]

bg3 speedruns are pretty fun

[the-punforgiven]

I wish there was an option to change your vote on Tumblr polls

[heftbyjapanesebreakfast]

one thing i don't get is people expecting the oppenheimer biopic to focus on anything other than.... oppenheimer and his life/ perspective. and i think people are telling on themselves bc there is surely an abundance of art made by japanese people about their experience of the bombings so really people should be looking into that instead i think yk? idk it's just like certain art is about certain subject matter and oppenheimer is about oppenheimer...

[timeisacephalopod]

You know as a horror fan "cultural Christianity" is such a useful term because as an atheist as well as a horror fan and a fan of haunted house stuff if it's done well I very, very quickly noticed how many horror movies are Christian propaganda. So few horror movies involving religion (which is a shocking amount of them btw) pick any religion that's not Christianity to center itself around and when they do that religion is bad and evil, not the cause of evil and the savior from it (because the demons may be Christian, but God and the bible are also the solutions in a way other religions aren't granted. Bonus points if it's an indigenous religion being portrayed as Evil and Bad).

Pretty much any exceptions I can think of to that rule use Judaism and the Holocaust as a backdrop and never in like a normal, the Holocaust is horrible way it's always playing on myths of Nazi Germany's experimentation on the Jewish population. Which I find highly troubling and disturbing, but regardless nothing like being a horror fan to convince you of cultural Christianity because no other genre leans on religion as a plot device so much unless it's straight up a Christian movie for a Christian audience using Christianity as it's main theme and through line.

[nagitoedit]

still it was sooooooo funny and uncomfortable at the psych appointment because she saw ? somewhere in papers/files that my mom and dad divorced in.... 2015 i think and shes all like "so.... usually divorce causes problems in children... how was that for you was it hard on you...?" acting all nervous/gentle like lmaooooo thats not even the worst part i dont think i cared about the divorce In Comparison to Everything Else. hed been abusive to my mom and generally neglectful not great to us (me and sibling) and theyd been separated for 6 years before the divorce because he kept going to jail for drug related things which he would often steal money from us for it and generally made my moms life hell by like manipulating and emotionally abusing her and hed have violent tantrums where he broke things (there are still holes in the walls and other damage in the house from him) and also sorta ruined our lives a bit and then in 2019 he was accused of some crime and he ran away to escape getting arrested or whatever and i think legally he is classified as a missing person and we dont even know if hes alive or not.

so like the divorce was whatever to me i guess.

[manda-kat]

Youtube recap sucks.

Why do they have to constantly drag me like this?

[bendingwind]

Well the bad news is that I'm pretty confident this story isn't getting out this week. The good news is it's gonna be a lot longer and a lot better as a result?

[radialarch]

episode 5 // episode 6

jo yeong slipping out of formal speech

[lamalamam]

fleabag jokingly tells the camera her father hates being alone with her and then instantly drops her smile when she realises he’s truly uneased at her presence :(

[verved]

Why does trying to even suggest a new point of view to an american fundie feel like such a futile effort. Like I’ll even agree with some of their concerns and point at the solution that is adorned in neon signs but just bc it aligns more with a liberal view they turn up their nose and insist that I’m like, trying to force “worldly” and “ungodlike” views on them. I literally couldn’t care less about god I just need you to see like, the real world issues that could be solved if you stopped clutching your pearls. I promise, forming your own opinions isn’t as scary as it sounds I prommy.

[jerseymuppet]

hi, can i ask what the gerard way/eliza cuts situation is? i've never heard of this before.

Hi! Eliza Cuts was Gerards fiancée during pro rev I believe? She had some allegations against him that no one ever took seriously because everyone hated her. Seriously if you look up her name the first thing to pop up is entries of her name on urban dictionary being used synonymously with skank/whore/lying bitch. I personally haven’t looked too much into the situation for that reason, it’s all mostly old information in Gerard’s favor and I don’t really feel comfortable subjecting myself to all that for information that’s so obviously skewed. But mack @awsugar might be able to help with any further questions you have!