An Instance Of NT Ideology Shows Itself Clearly When What Autistic People Characterize As A Strong Sense

A comic about controlling your symptoms and trying to get other people to understand why it’s so hard to do so, in goo form

Japanese legend: you have the face of who you loved most in a past life

Some words to use when writing things:

winking

clenching

pulsing

fluttering

contracting

twitching

sucking

quivering

pulsating

throbbing

beating

thumping

thudding

pounding

humming

palpitate

vibrate

grinding

crushing

hammering

lashing

knocking

driving

thrusting

pushing

force

injecting

filling

dilate

stretching

lingering

expanding

bouncing

reaming

elongate

enlarge

unfolding

yielding

sternly

firmly

tightly 

harshly

thoroughly

consistently

precision

accuracy

carefully

demanding

strictly

restriction

meticulously

scrupulously

rigorously

rim

edge

lip

circle

band

encircling

enclosing

surrounding

piercing

curl

lock

twist

coil

spiral

whorl

dip

wet

soak

madly

wildly

noisily

rowdily

rambunctiously

decadent

degenerate

immoral

indulgent

accept

take

invite

nook

indentation

niche

depression

indent

depress

delay

tossing

writhing

flailing

squirming

rolling

wriggling

wiggling

thrashing

struggling

grappling

striving

straining

I was today years old when I learned that when you type "otp: true" in AO3 search results it filters out fics with additional ships, leaving only the fics where your otp is the main ship

This is so true: airnomadwannabe,tumblr,com/post/625266561858650112/a-probably-not-comprehensive-list-of-kataras

Ok, but the problem with this post by @airnomadwannabe is that our argument has never been that Katara didn’t, canonically, accomplish anything with her life.

It’s that virtually none of these accomplishments matter in the context of LoK. Very little that Katara did during or after the war is so much as referenced, and even the things that are referenced matter very little. Katara never talks about her life except as it pertains to Aang, or her children. She doesn’t get to do anything during the series either, despite there being multiple things that--were it not for her entire personality being vacuumed out with almost surgical precision--she should have done if she were being kept true to character, or if she, like, cared about her family and people at all. (Things like, oh, attending her own granddaughter’s Air Master ceremony, or lifting finger one to save her family when they were in danger, or lifting finger one to step in when her people were getting thrown into a whole ass civil war........but more on that later.)

I always go back to @araeph‘s Consumed by Destiny series (and I’m sorry I keep tagging you, I love your metas and reference them frequently, and incidentally, everyone should go read through araeph’s meta posts and analysis, they’re quite thorough and enjoyable to read), because it throws Katara’s treatment in LoK into incredibly sharp relief, especially once you compare it to her character arc in AtLA towards the end of the meta series.

To illustrate what I mean, I’ll go through the examples listed in the post anon sent me:

finished her work as Avatar Aang’s waterbending master

This is vaguely referenced, but honestly, you wouldn’t have any real idea about Katara’s waterbending prowess and her journey with Aang unless you watched AtLA first. Katara’s own experiences are almost never talked about, she makes a vague reference to her own trauma one (1) time and goes into much more detail about Aang’s pain, rather than her own. But she never talks about her experiences as his teacher, and someone who only watched LoK and knew nothing about AtLA would be justifiably confused at anyone who talks about Katara like she was important, even integral, to his journey.

played a major role in mediation of political conflict and land disputes following the war in both the Earth Kingdom and Southern Water Tribe

You wouldn’t know this at all unless you read the comics or looked it up on the wiki. It’s never so much as vaguely referenced, and considering the comics are a whole other kettle of badly-written fish, that may be just as well. But the fact is that this particular accomplishment may as well never have happened, as far as LoK is concerned. (And, actually, considering what happened in North & South and the civil war in LoK book 2, this is particularly galling. Why wasn’t Katara more active [or active at all] during that arc???? Did she stop giving a shit about her people and their sovereignty at some point in the last sixty years?)

helped to recover Ursa, the lost Fire Lady

Again, a comics-only plotline, which has no effect on anything in LoK and is never referenced. Furthermore, Katara isn’t allowed to share a single scene with Zuko--not even her own granddaughter’s Air Master ceremony.

revived the near extinct Southern Style waterbending and became the master to the Southern Tribe’s first new waterbenders in generations

This is something we can assume from conjecture, but so far as I know it isn’t actually stated in canon, even in the comics. Hama talks about teaching Katara Southern Waterbending, but the only technique she actually teaches her is bloodbending, which was outlawed by the time of LoK (which may seem like an accomplishment of Katara’s, but we’ll get there later). It’s entirely possible that Katara discovered Southern Waterbending techniques (my personal headcanon is that Zuko found and returned a whole boatload of waterbending scrolls from the Fire Nation Library archives, from which she was able to bring the Southern style of bending back), but this isn’t explored anywhere in canon. Even North & South doesn’t touch much on it, outside of the two kids Katara tries to help teach some basics (and who are promptly forgotten about), probably because it’s more about the South getting recolonized by the North and Katara being painted as unreasonable for resisting, but that’s another rant entirely.

became a noted human rights activist by leading the movement to outlaw bloodbending

This almost counts. Katara did nearly single-handedly get bloodbending outlawed, and this is even explicitly stated in the text of LoK! Finally, an accomplishment of Katara’s that was actually important to the sequel series! Except........where was Katara during Yakone’s trial?

The primary antagonist of Book 1 is revealed to be a bloodbender. His father taught him how to bloodbend, and cited Katara as the reason for bloodbending being outlawed. He had a personal grudge against her which he carried to his grave! And yet... she’s nowhere to be found during the flashback in which we see this notorious bloodbender being tried for a crime she was responsible for criminalizing in the first place. She isn’t mentioned even once during that flashback. Aang is there as the Avatar, and Toph is there in her capacity as police chief, and even Sokka is there--where the fuck is Katara? Wouldn’t you think they’d want an insanely powerful waterbender who also knew how to bloodbend on hand in case things went wrong and the bloodbender tried to escape? Especially once you remember that Katara, at fourteen years old, was able to break a master bloodbender’s hold on her body.

But she was nowhere to be found.

Hm.

was an internationally respected master waterbender and healer, even canonically called the greatest of her time in LoK

I will admit, lipservice is paid to Master Katara’s bending abilities. She’s called a master, and she’s allegedly the best healer in the world. The issue here is, we never see any evidence of this in the series. She’s a master waterbender, but we never see her fight--not even to protect her family, when her children and grandchildren were held hostage and threatened with death. (And before you bring up her age, Toph is only two years younger and gets to kick ass on screen to protect her family, and that’s not even mentioning the old ass men in the White Lotus who got to kick ass all over the place onscreen during AtLA.) She’s the greatest healer in the world, but we never see her heal a single significant injury on-screen--not even those caused by bloodbending (when Amon blocked benders from their bending)--and while she does coax Korra through physical therapy, she never once tries to heal her mind (despite this having some success on Jet, who was brainwashed by the Dai Li, back in AtLA). Katara’s healing abilities only get pulled out during LoK when the show has an injury she can’t heal, so they can say ‘look at this horrific injury that even the greatest healer in the world can’t do anything about!’

The Worf Effect comes to mind, but even Worf got to throw down and kick ass sometimes on screen.

demonstrated skill in non-bending forms of medicine such as midwifery and physiotherapy

I’ll give you this one! I don’t recall if Katara’s skills as a midwife are ever referenced in LoK, but she spent the entire series chained to the healing huts, so I’ll accept this on a technical.

became the waterbending master for a second Avatar in her lifetime by teaching Korra both combat waterbending and healing

Again, this is something the series paid lipservice to, but it’s never shown on screen. Korra had already mastered waterbending, earthbending, and was taking her firebending mastery test when we officially meet her current self in LoK, and we don’t see any flashbacks to her training with Katara in the series at all. There may be some in the comics, but again, a whole other kettle of badly written fish. (Sorry, I just really enjoyed that metaphor.)

was obviously a beloved and respected elder of the Southern Water Tribe

Was she? Was she really?

I’m just saying, for a ‘beloved and respected elder of the Southern Water Tribe’, she didn’t seem to have any political sway at all. Unless she just didn’t care about the North trying to take over the South (again!!!!! lest we forget lmfao) and her people plunging themselves into a full-blown civil war. You’d think that someone so beloved and respected, who helped to save the world by ending a war that had lasted for a century, who trained two avatars and was one of the most powerful waterbenders on the planet, would have had some pull with her own people.

LoK implies she is a member of the White Lotus

Considering everything else that is talked about or vaguely mentioned but not shown, this... doesn’t mean much. Especially since, by the time of Korra, the White Lotus had become a group entirely dedicated to training the avatar and were otherwise completely ineffectual.

They certainly weren’t around to help when the Red Lotus were causing problems.

until Book 3 of LoK, is the matriarch of the only existing airbenders and thus is a historical figure related to the revival of an entire culture following a catastrophic genocide

Who she does nothing to try to save when all of the existing (natural-born) airbenders, who make up two generations of Katara’s family, are captured by the Red Lotus and held hostage, threatened with death.

They nearly committed a second Air Nomad genocide (remembering that while airbending had been back, the airbenders who were given that power from the harmonic convergence weren’t actually Air Nomads themselves), and Katara didn’t lift a single finger to stop them, or even try, despite the fact that said genocide was going to involve the murder of her entire family.

raised* ** three amazing children who did incredible work for the world in their own right

The issues with the cloud family could fill an entire book. Yes, they all grew up to do great things, but less great is the fact that Aang blatantly favored one child over the other two to the point where they were bitter about it well into their fifties and sixties is....really not a good look. Add to that the fact that Katara let it happen? That’s a whole lot of yikes.

(And not to belabor the point too much, but before anyone tries to say ‘but they were exaggerating’ or ‘but they were a happy family’: Kya and Bumi having Nice Feelings over a family photo where Tenzin was a literal infant doesn’t compare to the fact that the Air Acolytes, who literally worshiped Aang, had no idea that he had other children. Bumi had to speak to a statue, hoping that his father would finally be proud of him--not for anything he did, but because he was finally an airbender, because that was the only thing he believed his father valued. These are events that occur in the text, and they say more about Aang as a father than anything else does. And Katara as a mother, since she never actually gets to talk about her experiences as such in the show.)

As for this bit:

**you can’t convince me, after spending her youth fighting for the greater good, Katara -gentle-hearted, empathetic, mom-friend extraordinaire, for whom family was everything- wasn’t perfectly happy to spend the rest of her life living peacefully as a teacher, wife, mother, and grandmother, and if that is what made her happy then she deserves it, and we don’t get to judge.

If family was everything to Katara, why didn’t she go to Jinora’s Air Master ceremony, quite literally the most important moment in an airbender’s life? And why was she ready to stand by and let them all be murdered? If she loved her people so much, why didn’t she say a word when they were plunging themselves into a needless civil war? Why does her deciding to spend her life living peacefully mean that she’s never allowed to do anything to protect the people she loves so much? Why didn’t she step in when Aang was blatantly favoring Tenzin and abandoning her at home to raise his other two kids?

Yes, Katara is empathetic and loving, a mom-friend extraordinaire, but honestly? No, she was not gentle-hearted--her heart was fierce, from a very young age. One of her most iconic lines is “No! I will never, ever turn my back on people who need me!”

But isn’t that exactly what she did, when first her people, and then her entire family, needed her the most in LoK?

That is why we think the creators made Katara nothing more than a trophy wife in LoK--because the only things she was that were important at all to the narrative of LoK were the Avatar’s wife, and the mother and grandmother of the new generations of airbenders. Nothing she did or accomplished during AtLA means a damn thing in LoK, and there’s no trace of her fierce heart, her bravery and courage, her daring nature, her talent for lifting spirits of a group of people and inspiring them to act.

No, LoK wasn’t about the gaang, but AtLA wasn’t about the White Lotus either, and those old men got to do shit and accomplish shit on screen! Why was Katara sent to languish in the healing huts when she wasn’t even going to be allowed to accomplish anything as a healer for the entirety of the series? Particularly when Zuko, Toph, and even Aang and Sokka were given some focus, allowed to fight to save their family (or at least mention going to protect his daughter, in Zuko’s case), given statues to commemorate their accomplishments, allowed to visibly take part in Republic City politics.....but Katara wasn’t.

The only member of the gaang who got less focus in LoK was Suki, and I would argue that she got the better end of the deal--she, at least, was allowed the dignity of disappearing completely, leaving fans to entirely headcanon her life post-war. We get to see Katara, she’s just... a shell of her former self.

And it’s incredibly disheartening to see people continue to bend over backwards to justify it with ‘but she did all of these things!!!!’ as if that actually has anything to do with how she was treated in the show itself.

  Far too many people have short memories when it comes to the shit their side did.

Here you can observe a determined child and their best friend.

---

what is a student. a miserable little pile of emails.

d&d spells as memes. i’ll start

power word kill

Hellsing & Vulnerability: Alt. How Sad is Alucard?

Gentlemen… I am a nerd.

Case in point: during my lunch breaks, instead of surfing Facebook—something I save for the comfort of my couch—I am on the TED talks website. Nothing makes my day like learning something new; I would take infinite college courses if they didn’t cost a dime, no matter how stressful the workload would be. Give me a lecture on anthropology or ancient history and I am happy as a lark.

Recently, my lunchtime lecture was given by self-proclaimed researcher-storyteller Brené Brown. It was entitled “The Power of Vulnerability”, and I highly recommend you view it [link here], if you’re interested in human nature like I am. Anyway, so I’m sitting there, half-reclined with the door to my classroom locked and fully engrossed in both the video and the sandwich in my hand, when it hits me. I’ve heard of inspiration washing over people like a wave, but when I get it, it’s like an arrow straight to my brain: sudden, unexpected, and I can’t think of much else afterwards.  

My brain sent a single thought through my head, one that made me stop chewing and run it through two or three times to make sure I’d heard it right: Alucard’s greatest fear is vulnerability.

Emotionally, that is.

Well, wait, I countered myself, taking another bite of my sandwich. Who isn’t afraid of vulnerability? It’s sort of a given: we don’t want to let anyone else—who can do harm—into the deepest, most secretive part of our souls. But then, as I thought more, I realized that although we as humans try to hide it, vulnerability also has a little habit of sneaking through.

Humans, as a species, are amazing. My favorite thing to learn about is universal experience. For example, all nations seem to have the odd occurrence where a child’s father tells corny jokes that often fall flat, but are funny because they fall flat. But dad jokes aside, universal experience bleeds into vulnerability like pink on a white dress. You don’t have to know someone’s language to know that they’re smiling because they’re happy, or covering their eyes and cowering because they’re afraid. Body language, facial expression, the look in their eyes—it all goes without saying, no matter who you are or where you’re from. Isn’t that amazing???!

(Clears throat) Since I was supposed to be talking about Hellsing, I’ll use an example from the manga/OVA. Also—do I even have to mention spoilers at this point? It should be assumed, but even so: spoilers!

The scene I’m thinking about is not Alucard, but rather his master. When Walter shows up on the streets of London, dressed in conveniently found leather and sporting some impressive age reducing cream, everyone is astounded. Seras gasps dramatically, Alucard smiles like he always does, the Iscariots go “No, no, don’t step there!” collectively. But what always got me was Integra’s reaction. Not immediately, though she does kind of waste her nicotine on the bloody ground, but afterwards, when Alucard asks her what he’s supposed to do—kind of. That one page became one of my absolute favorites in the manga, and it’s an excellent jumping point for our talk about vulnerability.

See, Hirano didn’t have to say “Oh, she’s super sad. That was her butler and kind of her second dad and now he’s thrown their relationship away to fight another dick also dressed up in leather”. He didn’t need to say it. She says it all without a word in edgewise about it: clenched fists, watery eyes, a tightness in her stance that suggests fighting back tears… she’s in despair. When you see a panel like this, it’s all too easy to remember that she’s a young 20+ woman who just lost the last person she could theoretically call family.

Heartbreaking, but what’s my point? Think about it. She was in the middle of a war, her house is on fire, vampires are trying to bite her, she was unofficially kidnapped and held hostage by a bunch of weirdos working for the Vatican, and she remains calm and cool. Her breaking point only comes when something cuts her to the core, something that she can’t deal with without instantly having to fight against the tears that would show everyone—enemies included— “hey, I’m hurting emotionally, I really need comfort and reassurance.”  

POINT #1: Vulnerability shows when a person feels a pain so great that it strikes a chord within their soul. Remember it, bookmark it: it’ll come back up later.

Another big thing, that I didn’t really think about until Mrs. Brown touched on it, was that the only people who don’t feel shame are the ones who lack the ability to connect empathetically with others. Now, I know you just read that and thought “Wait, weren’t we talking about vulnerability?”, but trust me on this. It’s just another point I’m making.

Now, let me ask you this: What is the defining term between the words psychopath and sociopath? Most people put them on the same lines, but there’s a major, major difference. That term is conscience. Psychopaths lack a conscience. They feel no sense of right or wrong about what they do. They can’t connect with others. Sociopaths, according to experts, have a weak conscience. They feel guilt or remorse, but it’s not strong enough to guide their hand like it might be in the average person’s mind.  

Now, Mrs. Brown found in her research that the underlying cause for shame, for people saying ‘I’m not ___ enough, I don’t deserve love or happiness” is excruciating vulnerability. The people who were ashamed of themselves were also afraid to let their inner selves show to the world. And the only people who don’t feel shame are psychopaths, who lack empathetical connections with others.

Point #2: Sociopaths can feel shame; therefore, they can feel vulnerable. You can probably see where I’m going at this point, right?

Last point: Mrs. Brown, in her findings, talked about something called “numbing vulnerability”. She talked about how humans will try to numb the emotions that they don’t like or agree with, the ones that cause them pain or go against what they consider their morality. Think of monks and nuns giving up pleasures for devotion, that sort of thing. But humans can’t just numb things that make them suffer. When they do, it starts numbing other things, too. You can get rid of shame, of guilt, disappointment, but at what cost? Joy, gratitude, happiness.

POINT #3: Those who chose to fight against vulnerability, become miserable.

Think of the London Blitz, or as I call it: manga catharsis. Everyone—Iscariot, Hellsing, Millennium: they all blew up, shot a man or two, got their emotions out, and if they lived they went on with their lives. SAY THAT I’M WRONG. Out of all the people that could have cried their eyes out there, which one of them did? (looks at camera like the office) Which one of them had a complete screaming, crying meltdown and showed a surprising amount of true vulnerability to a dying man as well as like, fifty other people who were just kind of hanging back and watching it all play out?

It wasn’t Seras, I’ll tell you that much. T_T;

Let’s take our three main points and apply them to the 600-year-old… uh… guy.

Point 1: Why did he have that fit in the first place? Catharsis, I tell you! Anyway, he was angry at Anderson for becoming a… plant thing dude. Ugly. He was mad at Anderson for turning ugly. (coughs) But if we take that point into thought, Anderson’s ugliness—okay, the nail loophole—cut him so deeply that it struck a chord within him, and he couldn’t help but rant and rave against what had happened. And, we can assume that unlike Integra, it went so deeply that he couldn’t stop the tears in time. Why? Because—and this is a bit of conjecture, but I think I can safely say—what Anderson did hit on a source of deep shame for Alucard, shame that he hadn’t been strong enough, brave enough, whatever enough to stay a human and instead became a vampire.

Summation: Alucard has the ability to feel emotions, and these can be forceful enough to provoke a reaction from him.

Point 2: Alucard is, I believe, a sociopath. Prevalent more in the manga, and subtle in the anime/OVA, he does appear to have the ability to connect with others. In the manga, he’s seen joking around with Walter, teaming up with Seras to tease Integra, getting along with Pip in a business-like way, and you can even go so far to say that he has an—albeit unhealthy—connection with both Anderson and the Major. Of course, it’s sometimes possible for people to fake these connections, but I don’t think that’s the case BECAUSE of his breakdown in London.

As stated earlier, to feel shame and vulnerability, to be burdened with emotional pain, is a sign of someone who has morality and can form relationships. Now, that’s not saying he’s a good guy—not at all. As a sociopath, any emotion he feels that gets in the way of his ultimate goal is easily ignored. He might feel guilt, shame, pain, or remorse for his actions, but he simply chooses to do it anyway and probably doesn’t bother to consider it more than a minute or two.

Another example is his and Seras’s little spat in the hotel room. She argues that the people he killed are humans, innocent of anything other than following orders. He shouts at her, yanking her up by the collar and yelling in her face. Then, when she starts to cry, he puts her back down and is more subdued. Now, there’s two ways I look at this: firstly, his expression when he sees her tears. He looks, in the OVA at least, almost shocked that she’s crying, and then seems to rethink his actions. Now, he wasn’t rethinking the killing, per say, but instead he felt something about making her cry. This leads back into the ability to make connections. He felt—bad?—about her tears, so he promptly stopped the offending action and reformed his behavior to something more acceptable: a quieter tone, placing her back on the floor, backing away to give her space. A psychopath wouldn’t care that he’d made her cry, having no emotional connection to her. But Alucard cared enough to stop the behavior, which means that he cared enough about her to at least think “I should not be doing this to this person. Let’s stop and do something else.”

Summation: Per the clinical definition of a sociopath, Alucard has the ability to both make meaningful connections with others. Whether he makes those connections or not is up to him.

Point 3: Throughout the manga/OVA, a close observer can see Alucard fighting against himself—and his emotions. When he dreams about his demise at the hands of van Helsing, he cries in his sleep. However, upon waking he is apathetic about the experience, dismissing it as “a dream; it was nothing”. He feels disgust and anger when a guard kills himself, rather than let Alucard rip him apart while alive. He speaks out against monsters “like me[himself]”, pleading with Anderson to stay human even if it costs him his life. He demeans himself at different times, often in soliloquy or as an undertone to a sentence.

This provokes the question: Does Alucard consider himself worthy of happiness? The answer is probably no, he does not. He shows himself to be very self-critical of his past choices, although he accepts all of them for what they are. However, instead of learning from his past and starting over a new leaf, he remains on the same path of death and destruction. One can assume that he might feel trapped by his own actions, unable to rise up and overcome to begin life anew. This might be why he waits for someone to kill him—a punishment that would, ultimately, free him. This would be a miserable, endless existence, one of self-loathing and an eternal feeling that he is, and always will be, beyond any sort of redemption.

Summation: Alucard’s shame and constant fighting against his own emotions has caused him to turn bitter against the world, as his existence is a cold, bleak realm of misery.

Now for the (deep, echoing voice)

 REALM OF OPINIONS:

If all of the above is true, and can be said about Alucard, here is what I think. Alucard would view his vulnerability as something weak and useless, to be despised and ignored for as long as possible. In short, I think that he would consider vulnerability to be something wholly

human

, and that as a monster he has neither need nor inclination for exposing that side to others. As a human, he was taken at a young age and abused, which set the foundations for what would have otherwise been a happy, healthy adulthood. Surely as a prisoner of the sultan, any weakness would have been mortifying to show to his captors. Even now, as a servant to the Hellsing Organization and British Empire, he would feel it better to hide any emotion that he truly felt behind a mask, so that they could have no ammunition to use against him if the time arose. This does not, however, stop him from at the very least forming a social bond with a few select people, even if they remain outside the field of acquaintances. It is shown through the manga, anime, and OVA that although he walks with both feet in the lawless side of existence, he has the ability to be polite, civilized, work with others, be a teacher, understand the implications of his actions, tease others, even laugh and cry. Despite hating the human part of himself, it is still a core element of his being. I leave you now with questions and thoughts: you are more than welcome to continue the discussion in the comments, PM me, reblog, etc. In fact, if you liked this read, please reblog it so that others can see as well! If Alucard can feel vulnerable, what other situations might he willingly/unwillingly show it? Men are automatically expected by society to be more aloof and emotionless than women, though it is not the case in the slightest. How might this also play a factor in Alucard’s psyche? Is this another part of the reason he loathes himself?If he were ever willing to step back and take a look at himself, or even go to therapy, how would that affect his behavior? As a sociopath, would he make a willing change, or would therapy only further complicate things?

I also want to do a talk that’s more about my fanfiction side of things, which will be coming up VERY soon. I hope you enjoyed! Please let me know what you think! I leave you now, with a quote from the TED Talk that Mrs. Brown gave, that I think sums it up nicely.

But there’s another way, and I’ll leave you with this. This is what I have found: To let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen … to love with our whole hearts, even though there’s no guarantee — and that’s really hard, and I can tell you as a parent, that’s excruciatingly difficult — to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, when we’re wondering, “Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this this passionately? Can I be this fierce about this?” just to be able to stop and, instead of catastrophizing what might happen, to say, “I’m just so grateful, because to feel this vulnerable means I’m alive."