i saw a post today where someone stated that they often can't tell real information from misinformation online. i am not here to make fun of that person. that being said, the ability to figure out if information is real or not is a critical skill for everyone who uses the internet. you need to be able to do that on your own. it's great if you can get help or if people will tell you what's real and what's not, but you also need to be able to do it by yourself. simple, easy tips under the cut.
the most common style of misinformation i see on tumblr is the fake news headline. it's an image or multiple images of a headline and sometimes an attached story. easy tips to discovering whether this is real or not:
is there a link in the post? click it and see where it goes. no link? possibly fake, possibly the poster just didn't include it.
google the full headline, not just key words. even better, google the headline with the full headline in quotes so you get exact matches. can't find a match? probably fake.
is there a clear url/website attached to the headline? if so, go to the website and search for the headline. can't find a match? probably fake.
is there an author? google them. see if they're real. see if the subject of the article matches the stuff they usually write about. see if they have social media where they may have posted the headline. can't find an author, or they seem way off-track? probably fake.
if it's an image of a tweet, look up the person's twitter handle. can't find the tweet? possibly fake. it could also be a real tweet with the text or date edited.
is there a date? a story written in 2002 may have very different ramifications than a story written in 2022. it depends on the subject, but some subjects change rapidly and even a 5-year-old story may be out of date. see if you can find anything recent. if not, it may be fake or out of context.
go to google news and do a quick scan. this is going to work better for headlines that are about world news, but it's still worth a try. google news also allows you to search stories and limit by date. see if you can find a matching headline. if you can't, it may be fake or old news.
general tips:
don't trust social media. just don't. please. people can and will say literally anything they want. anything you read on social media that has real-world implications, you should fact-check.
you may think it's overkill, but google everything. even things you're mostly sure of. reading more headlines and more news can help you get better at discerning between real and fake headlines.
every source of information is biased in some way. try to seek out less biased sources. look up the bias media chart (here's a link) and use it to find sources that do less biased and more original reporting.
think about bias as you're reading. who is the author writing for? why are they writing? what do they want the audience to feel? what facts are they choosing to include or omit? how might the presentation of the facts change if someone with a different perspective was writing?
there are also websites dedicated to fact-checking. this works best for major world news, but try snopes or factcheck. the rand corporation has a huge list of tools for rooting out disinformation as well.
there's nothing wrong with asking for help, but if you genuinely cannot figure out if something is real or not on your own, and you give up trying to figure it out without help, you run the risk of believing and even spreading misinformation. some misinformation is essentially harmless (a celebrity's favorite color, for example). some misinformation is incredibly dangerous. please please PLEASE check your facts. it is quick and easy and worth it.
if you need more help, let me know.
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cannot stop thinking about that meta that’s like “voldemort’s ultimate goal was to simply destroy the british wizarding world” because it makes so much sense. tom riddle was a poor, orphaned, assumed muggleborn boy with a (most likely) ‘commoner’ accent and a distaste for humanity who sorted into slytherin, the hogwarts house infamous for being filled with loud rich bigots. tom riddle, with his background, could not have possibly been very popular those first few years of his schooling. tom riddle would’ve loathed the lot of them, all those arrogant, spoiled rich kids boasting about their family line. finding out he was the heir of slytherin would have been both a relief (he has something to fit in) and a jackpot (if they knew, they’d bow before him). and he uses that heritage later, when ‘tom riddle’ has disappeared and a stranger called ‘voldemort’ appears in his place. the fanatics literally kiss his feet.
voldemort is canonically a genius. he would’ve known that non-magical blood doesn’t make you dirty or less talented, because he himself is the prime example of that. espousing the bigoted pureblood agenda was simply the easiest way to gain power over the ones in power—all to send society crumbling to the ground from the inside. he takes over the ministry and ruins it, taking the first steps in tearing down the establishment; he kills regardless of blood, implying he doesn’t give one flying fuck what your heritage is; he tries to destroy the sorting hat, which would render the concept of ‘houses’ void.
personally i think it’s very interesting and appealing to put this interpretation in the context of tomarry/harrymort. i’ve always HC’d that harry will grow tired when he’s older, after he’s saved the wizarding world once (at the expense of his own happiness and well-being) and sees that nothing has changed or will change. that voldemort was a symptom, not the disease. that he and hermione and ron keep struggling, working themselves to the bone to make their world more fair and to suppress and eradicate the rampant underlying bigotry, but that it just won’t take.
and with an older harry, an embittered one, turned caustic and cynical by the very world he once viewed as his sanctuary—i don’t really think their beliefs would differ all that much. they’ve both seen and experienced the injustices. they’re both annoyed and disenchanted. harry will always have a regard for life, and voldemort won’t ever, but if anyone would have a wish to tear society down and build it back up again it’s them both.
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I'm in A Mood™ (stressed) so im going back to my roots of melting two character together into one person. So bruce wayne!danny fenton. Danny Fenton who, for eight years, grew up in a beautiful gothic manor with his mom and dad under the name "Bruce Wayne". Playing piano with his mother, running around the manor with his father.
Then when he's eight it's ripped away from him. There's blood on his hands and pearls pooling at his feet, and both his parents are dead in front of him.
And he gets shipped off to distant relatives "the Fentons" shortly after, Alfred close on his heels because someone needs to take care of him, someone that knows him. Bruce goes to the Fentons for the safety of anonymity. Gotham's press wants to sink its teeth into him.
Danny misses his city even if it took everything from him. There are shadows in his eyes and he's pale as a sheet even beside his distant cousins, and they change his name to "Danny Fenton' because nobody should know that their newest child was illustrious orphan Bruce Wayne.
They call him Bruce behind closed doors. Danny prefers it that way, he clings onto the name -- the one his parents gave him -- like a lifeline. He makes friends with Sam and Tucker. Tucker takes one look at the willowy, morbid little boy standing in the corner like a shade, ghosts in his eyes, and drags him out into the sunlight, and takes him over to Sam.
When Danny is twelve, he's still not over it -- and he's a little obsessed with the Fentons' research, with the morbid. He has books upon books on death, murder, detective work. Anything he can get his hands on. And stars. He loves stars.
Alfred owns the apartment next to them and comes over regularly. Danny clings to him.
When Danny is twelve, he's still quiet, meek, a shy little thing prone to being bullied. Freaky little Fenton with the night in his eyes and too-cold skin even before he put one foot in the grave. in a sleepover in his room with Sam and Tucker, he tells them the truth. They're his friends, he trusts them.
"My name is Bruce." he murmurs, voice quiet as the breeze, always quiet. he's staring at his star-covered sheets.
"Like Bruce Wayne?" Tucker asks, a joking tone in his voice.
Danny smiles a little, lamb-like with insecurity. "I am Bruce Wayne." And he takes them down to the lab, disrupting Maddie and Jack, to prove it. Sam tells them of her own wealth then shortly after. They start calling Danny "Bruce" in private too -- its trust. Thats what it is. It's trust.
Sam goes to media functions and comes back with aching feet and complaints on her tongue -- and Danny soaks it up all like a sponge, splayed across a beanbag chair with Tucker in her room. He's not envious of her, he used to go to events with his parents and they kept him safe from the ugly of Gotham's Elite. For the most part. He's had comments made at him, he doesn't miss them.
Alfred returns to the manor semi-regularly, Danny goes with him. he wanders the hallways and helps Alfred clean, the last thing either of them want is for their home to fall into disrepair. He brings Jazz with him next time, then Tucker, then Sam. They all help him clean, and he shows them his room. The one across from his parents', it feels strange.
When Danny dies when he's fourteen, the first adult he tells is Alfred. He and Jazz go over to his house more often than they stay in the Fentonworks building. At least at Alfred's, the food doesn't come to life. Alfred sits at the kitchen table and weeps when Danny tells him, Jazz is upstairs, and its just the two of them.
Danny's ghost form wears pearls around his wrist and the gloves look stained with some kind of black substance. He looks like a child who died in a lab accident, but he also looks like a child who has shadows dripping off his shoulders, curling at his feet, hanging from his eyes.
because amorphous blob batman has my heart always and danny/bruce will not escape it even in death even if that IS the only reason im giving him Mild BatBlob Vibes...so far
when they go to the manor, alfred helps danny make a pile of stones between Martha and Thomas' graves, nobody but the two of them (and sam and tucker) will know what it means. (not even bruce's children later down the line, not for a long, long time)
danny dives into ghost fighting on shaky feet and not half as witty as he once was in one world. he's skittish, skittering between blasts from shadow to shadow and clumsily making his way through each battle. but helping people lights a fire in him. he still has shadows dripping off his feet but there's a purpose in his eyes.
and god help him, he's going to help people.
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"[high pitched and tinny] Let’s dive in. Let’s dive in. It’s time to dive in. Get ready to [audio distorts and slows] dive. Diiive. Diiiiie…"
(The Road to PALISADE 20: City Planning Department)
so that's what i've been working on for the past 2 weeks!
i wanted to draw something for this intro ever since i first listened to it (as a companion piece to my other gur drawing, though it of course ended up being way bigger in scale), but it only really gripped me about halfway through PALISADE ep 18.
the next morning after that i listened to this narration on repeat for about 45 minutes and then made a big sketch on 4 sheets of paper at my desk at work.
anyways, i haven't listened to the new episode yet but i think i'm probably ready for whatever they're gonna throw at us with the next sortie. i'm gonna believe, against it all, in millennium break. for gur
(i recommend listening along while scrolling!
+ transcript btw. if anything is hard to read)
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How do the girls get along
Pretty great actually!
Jenny and Kim are very good/close friends, since they met relatively early compared to others (they actually met each other first out of everyone, then others at one point and another) and had a shared adventure sometime after the ends of their respective shows (wink wonk).
But, their first meeting was not actually very um, positive. There was some conflict, but after it was resolved both of them gained a very solid friend for life!
Jenny, was glad to meet someone else (beside Brad) who treated her like a person/normal teenager (instead of an 8th wonder of the world or a freaky robot) and not to mention she got a fellow superheroine girl friend! After Misty, she kind of missed having someone like that to kick butt with (considering that like, 70% of her friends are dudes) or just hang out.
Kim was fascinated by Jenny, not because she is a robot (tho she does think its pretty cool) but because it kind of gave her a contrast to her own life in a weird way? Like, Kim was a normal teenager who got into superheroing on accident and just went with it, while Jenny was created with a goal of being Earth's defender but rebeled to have some sort of normal life. And now they both live those weird semi-normal lives, that led them to meeting each other.
Jun is around 5-6 years their junior and while they met each other much later on, when Jun was a little older (like not 11-12 age of the show), she still kind of looked up to them and both Jenny and Kim felt an instant kinship with the girl.
Before she met Jenny and Kim, Jun only knew a couple other guys as fellow heroes/magical protectors (guess who ;D lol), and while she had plenty of female role models (Ama/Jasmine being the most prominent) and friends, she kind of enjoyed meeting some cool older superheroines to bond with! It also helped that despite the age difference, both Jenny and Kim never looked down at her when it came to superheroing/fighting, but respected her abilities and expertise (considering that Jun was practically an apprentice to her Ama since at least 8-9ish of age, when her powers first awakened, she has a lot of experience).
They both are kind of like cool older cousins to her, who travel a lot for their work and come visit to hang out often and tell/share stories about their adventures. Their and her lines of work while similar, also run in completely different circles (human/interplanetary vs magical/supernatural), so its always a treat to hear about the things they do.
(And yes sometimes she feels jealous about the fact that both of them get to travel all over the world, and despite the developments, more often than not she has to stay town locked and limit her excursions to magical realms.)
Silly thing, but Jun absolutely adores Jenny, for one simple fact that she can travel to space just like that (she and Danny, fellow astronaut/space fans, share that, despite the fact that Danny kinda can travel to space just like that too.)
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