Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win
Month
So I started this the HOUR I got out of X-Men Apocalypse and then I got busy and it sat mostly-finished in my documents for like a month and a half and then I finished it and now it’s sat COMPLETELY finished in my documents for about two and a half weeks. But I finally got around to posting it. Warnings for…standard X-Men-level violence, body horror, social prejudice, and general jackassery, and also for rampant abuse of parentheticals. Crossposted to AO3 here.
So this is how it starts.
He comes around and the first thing he realizes is that his head is clear, really clear, for the first time in…a while. Might be days. Might be weeks. Good fucking job, he tells himself while he’s still working up the courage to move. Stranger danger, dumbass. Especially when the strangers in question are blue and pop out of mysterious purple bubbles, apparently. To give himself due credit, he’s pretty sure he tried to leave the blue stranger in the dust—the guy’s name is elusive, something ancient, something translated roughly as ‘Apocalypse,’ and isn’t that just menacing as hell.
ME. Everything is under a cut because I’m trying not to inflict too much mulling-over-of-plot on y’all. But I need to hash some details out re: Polaris and Tumblr is now my wall at which to throw things.
…………………reblog this and say something nice about the person u reblogged it from because there’s too much hate on my dashboard right now and its making me upset so lets start a chain of love
Listen to me, kiddies. I read these books for the first time when I was SEVEN. (Well, it took me about three years to collect most of them and get to the end, so I read the first half of the series about twelve times by the time I was ten or eleven.) And let me tell you a thing: if you have passed these books up because of the ridiculous covers or because they’re ‘kids’ books’ you need to reevaluate your life. Immediately.
ANYWAY, I found them all for free on the internet (GET THEM HERE) and I’m rereading them/reading them out loud to Adler, because we are actually DISGUSTINGLY domestic. And I was originally planning to comment on them like five at a time, because otherwise I’d have way too many posts, but I wrote like a solid page of things down about the first book alone, so….yeah. I guess books-per-post will be flexible based on how much I say about the book in question. Here be spoilers, obviously. If you don’t want to hear about it, please feel free to block my Animorphs tag, I won’t be offended.
Book 1: The Invasion
AKA “The first named character is murdered, a main character is trapped as a bird, and five kids sign up for a lifetime of PTSD”
Today, we’re going to talk about the time Paul’s desire for superior firepower turned into a mini arms race that ended with me setting Eric on fire with a homemade flamethrower.
No, Matt Boomer, you sexy motherfucker, I am not kidding you. Let’s begin with some details.
So when I was at the University of Iowa, several people, including myself, bought Nerf guns for impromptu battles in the hallways when we had free time. Mostly this was all good, clean fun, except for two of the guys down the hall, my roommate, and I.
We all thought, rightfully so, that factory built Nerf guns are bullshit. They’re weak, darts are too fucking light, the barrels cause too much friction, which makes them inaccurate and slow, and you have to re-cock them after each shot. That’s some fucking bullshit right there. So we fixed it.
We bought new, higher tensile springs. We bought PVC pipe and lubricant. We put BBs in the tips of our darts, and my roommate and even put in a second spring to automatically cock the gun, essentially turning them from bolt action pieces of shit into semi-automatic friendship-ruiners.
So when I moved back to Chicago, and into the apartment, I obviously brought my Nerf guns (my roommate gave me his when we moved out), and I obviously attacked my roommates the first opportunity I had. OBVIOUSLY this led to everyone buying Nerf guns and modifying the shit out of them.
However, some of us were terrible shots, so certain measures had to be taken to make it possible for them to keep up. Brad practiced in his room every day, Josh built an extended clip for his gun, and Kyle bought the fucking Vulcan and built a 600 dart belt for it because he decided aiming is for people who can’t fire 6 darts a second (he modded it for doubled firing speed using a small car battery and replaced mechanics).
Paul was fucking terrible. Like almost so bad it couldn’t be for real. He once tried to ambush me coming around a corner from 2 feet away and missed by a good 6-7 inches. He literally could have slapped me and he missed. Whatever moving on.
So Paul decides to solve his aim problems in the most Paul way possible: online shopping. He bought 500 foam pellets for a marshmallow gun, two dozen foam discs, and a motherfucking t-shirt cannon.
You see, Paul, much like Kyle, decided aiming was for lames. So he would pour foam pellets into the cannon until it was half full, slip in a disc to keep them from falling out, then shotgun people in the face. I was his first victim and boy let me tell you that shit is terrifying.
So Paul became the big dog in the house during Nerf battles, and the rest of us found ourselves unable to compete. So we all escalated in our own insane ways. Eric and I, the former champions, modified our guns to fire faster, Brad added an extended magazine to his gun, Kyle built a harness so that he could shoot his fucking stupid fucking bullet-storm piece of shit while moving. Josh booby-trapped various parts of our apartment. Suddenly, we were all better than Paul again, so he decided to step his game up.
He started making paper cartridges that would explode open once fired. Suddenly, he could actually fire multiple times a minute, which meant once again, he was at the top. It didn’t help that our reluctance to shoot back out of fear of getting shot was allowing him to take his time, therefore drastically improving his aim.
So we stepped up again. I smooth out the cocking mechanism on my guns, improving my firing speed even faster. Eric adds more weight to his darts, making them heavier and faster and much more painful. Kyle buys a bigger battery, newer parts, and he perfects his belts, which increases his firing speed to 12 darts a second.
So Paul steps up to take advantage of his improved aim and buys something called a Pucker Chucker which basically is a t-shirt cannon except it shoots foam pucks. This means we can’t just shoot at him from the other side of the apartment anymore, so we all step up again. I modify the rail on top to make aiming easier, Eric modifies his grip to make it more comfortable, Kyle and brad modify their barrels to make them more accurate, and Josh jumps on board the crazy train and builds a goddamn under barrel cherry bomb launcher.
And this is where shit starts to spiral out of control.
Brad starts making smoke grenades, Kyle solves his weakness against close quarters combat by using his battery to create a cattle prod to keep people back. Eric breaks the head off an old golf club to use the shaft as a weapon, I put pins in the tips of all of my darts, and Paul realizes that the Pucker Chucker can also shoot real hockey pucks after he steals my bucket of pucks from my room.
So it escalated a couple more steps but I’m going to leave them out partially out of a desire to keep moving forward and partially out of shame anywhoozle when we pull out our final contraptions and modifications that day we shifted from light-hearted fun that was a bit too far to literally combat. Josh had a sword. I don’t know where he got it from.
That battle was terrifying. Our normal fights were like an hour, two hours tops, then we would clean up, get together in the living room with some beers, and laugh about what happened. Honestly we should have known this was going to happen because when we did this after our previous fight, the laughter was less “haha remember when I shot Josh in the butthole? Classic.” and more “haha remember when I missed your face with that puck? Next time I won’t miss.”
So we somehow get into a battle again and this time things go south quickly which is bound to happen when you have a dude in a speedo swinging a sword around while rolling fireworks down the hall. It was literally chaos. There were fireworks and homemade smoke grenades and Kyle made the electrical current in his cattle prod too strong and it was too close to the muzzle of his Vulcan so every few seconds you would just see a flaming dart wiz past and I built a fucking flamethrower and I don’t know what the fuck is going on so I’m just firing it in the general direction of Josh to keep him the fuck away. At some point Brad barricades himself in his room, and so we all run back to our rooms and hide.
We do this for three days. THREE DAYS. I missed classes. We all had junk food in our rooms, and private bathrooms, so that’s what we sustained ourselves on for three fucking days. I, however, try to eat healthy, so I ran out of food almost immediately. After not eating for a day and a half, with food literally less than 50 feet from where I was hiding, I decided that I was willing to risk a trip to the kitchen.
So here’s something important about our apartment: I was the only one who knew how to cook. I had tried to teach the others, but all that had accomplished was several kitchen fires. This meant when Eric also ran out of food, he knew the only way to get a meal was to make peace with me. So he had snuck down the hall to my door, intent on asking me for help.
I did not know he was there.
So when I opened the door and saw a crouching figure in the shadows nearby, I assumed, I think justifiably, that it was the guy who had been swinging a sword at all of us the last time I saw him. So I pulled the trigger on my homemade flamethrower, only to see Eric’s horrified face illuminated by the flames for a split second before they hit his torso.
Luckily, I was using a scavenged fuel source (computer screen cleaner), so the flames were weak, but still fire is fire and fire fucking hurts. So Eric is rolling on the floor with first degree burns on his stomach and chest, and I’m freaking out because Eric is my friend and I just set him on fire, so there is now a lot of screaming coming from the hall.
Now, to lighten the mood slightly, here’s a personality test. You hear the sounds of fire, followed shortly by screaming coming from the hall outside your room. What do you do?
Do you assume the crazy sword guy has finally snapped and is going to kill you all, so you climb out the window onto the fire escape? Congratulations, you’re Brad.
Do you hear the cries of pain and grab a first aid kit before sprinting into the hall to help? Hey! You’re Kyle!
Do you hear the flames so you sprint into the kitchen to grab the fire extinguisher? You are Paul.
Do you come out into the hall to see what’s going on but also bring your sword just in case you have to stab someone? You are Josh and also mentally unstable please put your sword away.
So Kyle comes out and he and I start administering first aid and luckily through a combination of the weakness of my fuel source, how quickly I stopped the flames, and the quickness of our treatments, Eric only gets some first degree burns on his torso. Paul puts out the last of the flames, Josh decides he doesn’t want to stab anyone today, and Brad decides that the lack of screaming is a good thing and he comes inside. I spend the next hour apologizing profusely while cooking everyone dinner, and we decide that hey we should probably have some rules for our Nerf fights to prevent this from ever happening again.
So we all eat, we establish rules about modifications and ammunition, and at the end of it all, we grab some beers, head into the living room, and tell Josh he needs to get rid of the sword seriously dude where did you get that from?
He doesn’t cut the string between them. That’s the cruelest part, Leia thinks—that she can still feel that cord of golden light tied around the struts of her ribs, knotted somewhere in her cardiac muscle, tying her to him. He plucks at it sometimes, and she can feel the vibrations in her throat, her back teeth. (That’s how her brother loves her, bile choking her and a blinding agony, like her heart is trying to squeeze itself through her ribs. I miss you, he whispers through the Force, through her dreams, a lover’s voice. We are all we have, Leia, why won’t you see that?)
It’s cruel, it’s cruel, she doesn’t want to feel the black mold and ice spreading out from his hands, calcifying and creeping closer, ever closer, to her. He should have cut it. He should have finished it, this, them.
But then, Leia hasn’t cut it either. She’s not sure what her reason is.
.
The hardest part is the walk.
She can choke down the greasy slop that they serve at various dodgy cantinas throughout the galaxy. She can sleep on the itchy pallet on the narrow bunk in the Falcon. She can wrinkle her nose at Han cleaning his teeth and trying to talk at the same time—both too early in the morning when she really needs the refresher—and go without a hot sanisteam for weeks. She can lie and haggle and handle a blaster, speak Huttese like an Outer Rim rube or Basic with a thick Corellian drawl that never fails to make Han laugh.
And she can do it all while quietly slipping transmissions for the Rebellion into the right hands, praying that there is someone to read them on the other end. (It’s gone quiet in the wake of Endor, even though the Emperor had mysteriously retreated and all but handed them the victory. Leia doesn’t know what to make of that)
But when she’s not thinking about it, she reverts to the princess, the general—she’s always been someone who commands attention, and it’s written in the way she holds herself, the way she walks. It’s a dead giveaway, Han sighs, exchanging a look with Chewbacca. They’ve been watching her walk up and down the hold for what feels like most of the day, and nothing seems to be working.
We could shoot her in the foot, Chewie grumbles. Or you in the mouth, it’d have the same effect.
There isn’t truly ‘night’ when you spend most of your time in hyperspace, flitting from planet to planet, each with their own orbital period. Once, Leia had been able to shut her eyes and simply know what hour it was in Aldera, night or day, wherever in the galaxy she was. Even after Alderaan was destroyed, she had been able to breathe deeply and know, absolutely know, just before dawn, the oldawu blooms will be opening, or, third night watch, the streets quiet.
These days, she can barely track her own internal chrono. They stumble from morning to midnight to afternoon to dawn and then back, into the timeless suspension of hyperspace. It’s disorienting. She think it’s making her sick.
Still, sometimes, Leia lays beside Han in the artificial dim of the cabin, and she is grateful. She is grateful. It’s easy to pretend in the no-time and nowhereness that they are just two unimportant humans, a man and a woman, hurtling silently through space as humans do. That they have not lost anyone or anything, they are not running. They are not waiting. They are not bleeding out internally, and they are not afraid.
They are just where they are supposed to be.
.
a dream: there is a boy with sand in his mouth, his lips stitched shut by cruel hands. he is heavy, he is so heavy, all the desert in his lungs and belly, burned sere and dry as bones in the sun.
there is another boy, and he is water. he is the flood. he lifts his hand and tears open the boy with sand in his mouth-lungs-belly—washes him away. it is a kind of terrible mercy to drown, the boy thinks.
right then, he is not sure which boy he is.
in this dream, there is a girl who watches them, and screams thunder when the flood runs red.
.
in another world, the boy is still a flood, but he says drink instead of drown. but that is another world. it has no bearing on this one. it’s probably best if you don’t think of it any more.
.
Is he okay? Han asks her once. Leia is sitting in the empty co-pilot seat, her feet tucked under her. She’s fidgeting with her hair—she’d cut it short, terribly short, after some smuggler in a cantina recognized her braids as Alderaanian and nearly blasted her through. (The bounty on her specifies ‘alive’, not ‘well’.) Her head feels impossibly light now, bare and hollowed-out and full of loss.
It’s a kind of vicious equivalence to it, she thinks. Everything about her is full of loss.
I mean—Han starts, but she cuts him off.
I know who you mean.
(If she began spooling that golden thread around her fingers and followed it, to where her brother stands waiting for her in the dark, she knows Han would follow. He would. And he would love the thing she became, however terrible, just as he would love whatever monstrous remnant of Luke they found. She’s not sure he’d even see the ice and black mold growing in the cracks of the people he once knew—she and Luke could blind him with a sharp needle and kiss him after, pet his hair, and Han would be secretly glad, grateful to be wanted, to be allowed.
Sometimes, Leia cannot breathe with how much faith Han has in her, in them. She doesn’t know what she’s done to deserve it.)
Well? Han asks. His voice is soft. Is he okay?
I don’t know how to answer that, Leia says.
.
There was talk of a rescue, in the wake of Endor—Lando and Han in particular, still tired-eyed from the battle but upright, warming their hands over the ewoks’ fire. They talked about storming the Emperor’s star destroyer like it was Jabba’s palace, like Luke was trapped in carbonite somewhere and all they had to do was—
Leia had bitten her tongue until it bled. She was in too much pain, her connection to Luke howling, the whole Force digging its claws into her skin, her skull, that the blood in her mouth offered some relief.
At least it was real. She was still real, here, human, and not dissolved into light.
Leia! Han said, when she spat onto the grass. (She had still felt it, the red staining her lips, the corners of her mouth. Every atom in her body was screaming for Luke, her heart pulled against her ribcage like the string might snap if he went any further—)
We can’t rescue someone who doesn’t want to be saved, she’d said, and that was the end of it.
.
another dream:
why? the girl who is a storm asks the flood. tell me why and maybe then I will understand, maybe I will come.
I am so tired, the flood says. aren’t you tired?
they are standing in a charnel-house. she is not the reason for all the bones that lie here, but more of them are at her feet than his. (‘skywalker’ is scored into all of them with an uneven hand.)
that’s not a reason, the storm says. that’s an excuse.
.
They’re in some nameless place that serves nameless food, smoke-filled and seedy, when the grav-ball match cuts out. There’s a collective groan from the assembled criminals and riffraff when the Imperial sigil fills the viewscreen—Han’s good at finding planets, places, where there’s no love lost for the Empire. Leia shoots him an amused look; he shrugs, grinning.
Her humor vanishes when a soft-spoken voice says, My name is Luke Skywalker.
The viewscreen is old and grainy, marred by a spiderweb crack at one corner, but Leia can still see that his eyes are bloodshot, orange-red and unsettling. They seem to find her in the crowd, piercing her through and pinning her to the grimy wall. The nameless food roils in her stomach.
His smile is the same, she thinks. A crooked, farmboy smile, undimmed; almost a smirk but meaning-well.
He smiles as he recites the death toll from some ‘uprising’ the Empire ‘cleansed’. Leia barely makes it to the refresher before she’s sick over her boots.
.
can you come back? the storm who is also a girl asks. if there’s a chance, any chance—
you cannot stopper a flood, the boy says, and turns away.
.
Han finds her in the refresher, sobbing, blood in her ears, her nose. I’m sorry, she chokes out. She gets blood on his cheek but she can’t seem to stop pulling him closer and then struggling away, clawing at his shirt. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to. I’m sorry.
It’s okay, Han says, gathering her up, holding her close. After a minute of struggling, she goes still, like a bird with a snapped neck. (He wishes he had a different metaphor.) Hey, hey, talk to me, Han breathes, stroking her shoulder with his thumb. Tell me what’s wrong, maybe I can help. I can help.
I cut it, Leia whispers. I cut the string out. I didn’t have a reason, I just had an excuse, so I cut it out of me. I think I’m bleeding, Han. I don’t think I’ll stop bleeding.
Han exhales. Okay, let me get the medkit, it’s just—
I’m so tired, Leia says, her voice barely louder than a whisper. She’s clinging to him weakly, and there’s blood in hair. I’m so tired.
It was a huge disappointment as a child to fall in love with the stars and then find out how much math it requires to get anywhere near them.
Shoutout to everyone that had a dream career or ideal life but were roadblocked by math.
(originally posted here)
Dear (circle one) Ax Marco Tobias Cassie:
I know that you are trying to be extra brave today because (circle all that apply)
A) You fucked up the last mission
B) You are attempting to live up to Andalite cultural standards of masculinity
C) You are attempting to live up to Human cultural standards of masculinity
D) You are trying to (circle one) revenge/save/impress ______
E) You have a personal vendetta against _____
I would just like you to know that (circle all that apply)
A) You’re right, you did fuck up pretty badly in a way that I never could have anticipated
B) You actually saved all of our butts even if you don’t realize it (see back of page explanation)
C) No matter how hard you try, you will never be as good as you think your brother was
D) You are too close to this
E) You are still very special to me
Because of that, in regards to the special mission you have asked to be a part of in order to redeem yourself, I would like to (circle one)
A) Give you my blessing
B) Ask you not to get yourself killed
C) Ask you not to get all of us killed
D) Politely ask you not to go, which we both know you will probably disregard
E) Tell you no way in hell, if you go I will personally rip you a new asshole
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely
(circle one) Jake Prince Jake
Dear Rachel:
I would just like to take the time to tell you (circle all that apply):
A) Gold star for being brave for everyone else’s benefit today when you were actually scared
B) Thanks for saving my butt
C) Thanks for saving the butt of (circle all that apply) Tobias Ax Cassie Marco
D) I have a special mission/some dirty work for you (see back of page)
E) You are out of control and you scare the pee out of me sometimes
Thank you.
Love,
Cousin Jake
*finger guns* Hey, my shadowy sweetie, I’ve been called worse things in my life.
are you the person that kills the spider, makes someone else kill the spider, or catches and releases the spider outside
i’m the person other people make kill the spider
when channing tatum was 16 he dated a guy and he’s spoken about it in great length and referred to himself as not-straight so stop calling him part of straight culture lmao
CHANNING TATUM LOVES MEN and works really hard to remind everyone of that all the time and somehow it keeps getting rewritten and forgotten because queer erasure is WILD, support Channing Tatum, man, he’s the genuinely kind inoffensive white normy looking guy we all dream of existing but think can’t be real, Channing unicorn Tatum
I honestly did not know this and I’m so glad I do now!
@boromir-queries-seanI learned something new and horrifying today which is… that… no submarine is ever considered “lost” … there is apparently a tradition in the U.S. Navy that no submarine is ever lost. Those that go to sea and do not return are considered to be “still on patrol.”
?????
There is a monument about this along a canal near here its… the worst thing I have ever seen. it says “STILL ON PATROL” in huge letters and then goes on to specify exactly how many WWII submarine ghosts are STILL OUT THERE, ON PATROL (it is almost 2000 WWII submarine ghosts, ftr). Here is the text from it:
“U.S. Navy Submarines paid heavily for their success in WWII. A total of 374 officers and 3131 men are still on board these 52 U.S. submarines still on patrol.”
THANKS A LOT, U.S. NAVY, FOR HAVING THIS TOTALLY NORMAL AND NOT AT ALL HORRIFYING TRADITION, AND TELLING ALL OF US ABOUT IT. THANKS. THANK YOU
anyway now my mother and I cannot stop saying STILL ON PATROL to each other in ominous tones of voice
There’s definitely something ominous about that—the implication that, one day, they will return from patrol.
Actually, it’s rather sweet. I don’t know if this is common across the board, but my dad’s friend is a radio op for subs launched off the east coast, and he always is excited for Christmas, because they go through the list of SoP subs and hail them, wishing them a merry Christmas and telling them they’re remembered.
Imagine a country whose seamen never die, and whose submarines can’t be destroyed…because no ones sure if they exist or not.
No but imagine. It’s Christmas. A black, rotting corridor in a forgotten submarine. The sound of dripping water echoes coldly through the hull. You can’t see very far down the corridor but then, a man appears, he’s running, in a panic, but his footsteps make no noise. The spectral seaman dashes around the corner and slips through a rusty wall. He finds himself at the back of a crowd of his cadaverous crew-mates. They part to let him through. He feels the weight of their hollow gaze as he reaches the coms station. Even after all these years a sickly green light glistens in the dark. The captain’s skeleton lays a sharp hand on his shoulder and nods at him encouragingly, the light sliding over the bones of his skull. The ghost of the seaman steadies himself and slips his fingers into the dials of the radio, possessing it. It wails and screeches. A bombardment of static. And then silence. The deathly crew mates look at each other with worry, with sadness; could this be the year where there is no voice in the dark? No memory of home? The phantasm of the sailor pushes his hand deeper into the workings of the radio, the signal clears, and then a strong voice, distant with the static but warm and kind, echoes from the darkness; “Merry Christmas boys, we’re all thinking of you here at home, have a good one.”
A sepulchral tear wafts it’s way down the seaman’s face. The bony captain embraces him. The crew grin through rotten jaws, laughing silently in their joy. They haven’t forgotten us. They haven’t forgotten.I am completely on board with this. It’s not horrifying, it’s heartwarming.
Personal story time: whenever I go to Field Museum’s Egypt exhibit, I stop by the plaque at the entrance to the underground rooms. It has an English translation of a prayer to feed the dead, and a list of all the names they know of the mummies on display there. I always recite the prayer and read aloud the list of names. They wanted to live forever, to always have their souls fed and their names spoken. How would they feel about being behind glass, among strangers? Every little thing you can do to give respect for the dead is warranted.
I love the idea of lost subs still being on patrol. Though if you really want something ominous, let me say that the superstitious part of me wonders: why are they still on patrol? If they haven’t been found, do they not consider their mission completed? What is it out there that they are protecting us from?
grantaire-put-that-bottle-down:
hey there LGBTQ kids who are also Christian/Jewish! If you feel like you’re disobeying God, questioning your faith, or feel wrong and dirty for loving who you love, there’s this fantastic site I found today called hoperemains that accurately and thoroughly combs through scripture and its (many) mistranslations, validates your orientation, and basically let’s you know that you’re not pissing off God. It’s insanely thorough and after reading through every page on the entire site it’s super helpful. Go check it out!
No no no! Jewish LGBTQ kinderlach! Go to Keshet!
hoperemains is completely from a Christian perspective, and not pluralistic or interfaith at all.
If you reblogged the first post from me please reblog this amendment so the Jewish peeps can access this resource too!
Trans Jewish kids, you can go to TransTorah as well!
Muslim LGBTQ kids, you can go to iamnotharaam! It’s run by a mod squad of different genders and orientations, and they take submissions from everybody!
–BB
MAY ANYONE WHO REBLOGS THIS BE ELEVATED TO THE EQUIVALENT OF SAINTHOOD IN THEIR RELIGION BLESS ALL OF YOU OH MY GOD.
REBLOGGING THIS AGAIN BECAUSE IT’S SO FREAKING IMPORTANT TO ME AND ALL MY FOLLOWERS TO READ THAT DEAL WITH GRIEF AND GUILT WHILE BEING LGBTQ AND RELIGIOUS
so ok about ghostbusters i really feel like holtzmann was the realest part of the movie to me? like a lot of straight people might watch the movie and go ‘holtzmann was so over the top, too much, unrealistic, cartoonish’ but:
i’ve known women like that (and fallen in love with them) and done my best to be a woman like that (and got my heart broken a lot) and you can watch holtzmann aggressively flirt with erin until the moment erin loses her shit over kevin and then you see holtzmann just kind of grin bitterly and stop. entirely stop. erin is insufficiently bi. erin wasn’t politely turning down holtzmann’s overtures, she was totally oblivious of them. erin prefers hotdogs to hamburgers. and holtzmann respects that completely even while her face is like aw, fuck. and i just nodded to myself. like yeah, yep, me too, same, yup.
jillian’s actress is gay. jillian’s actress knows this situation, has lived this situation, grew up in this situation, she knows: most of the women you like will like men, and that sucks, but it’s no one’s fault, you can’t get mad. suck it up; laugh it off. you’re surrounded by brilliant, beautiful women all your life and you flirt and you dance and you preen and you have fun, but you have your honor, too, you also know what it’s like to be hit on by that creep at your job, to dodge innuendo and unwanted touches from that ‘friend’ who’s too friendly. you’re better than the men who get bitter about it. us weird girls, us girls who like girls and are girls, we all know.
i didn’t really expect to see something that real in ghostbusters, but damn. damn. it felt good. it felt like representation. it felt like a pat on the back i’ve never gotten. we know you. you’re here too.
I still can’t believe that fanfiction is free
I sometimes have to pay for water, but with a phone and some wifi, I get to read whole novels about my favorite characters for exactly zero additional dollars
How goddamn rad is that
Thank you fic writers,The unsung heroes.
Thanks to all fanfiction writers out there
Patron saint of laying in bed till noon on your day off.
Ya'all
I am a 27 year old full grown ass adult.
My partner and I are reading Animorphs together (my first time he has had them since they came out)
We just finished 30 (it’s a Marco book- the reunion)
I can’t …
1. HOW ARE THESE BOOKS MENT FOR 7-12 YEAR OLDS?
2. I just ugly cried for the last half of the book, while reading outloud, nbd.
3. I have told my partner that I will no longer read Marco books… I have entirely too many mommy feels.
4. I am ruined ya’ll, I just can’t.
5. Animorphs fandom, someone comfort me? I have 27 books left to make it through and my poor feels are all going to break and make a mess all over arnt they?
well if you start from a place of
then you generally end up with a cool dude imho
Animorphs is the story of five ordinary teenagers who discover that aliens invading their planet. They meet an alien from a race that opposes the invaders who gives them the ability to shapeshift into animals to fight the invaders and protect their planet. Cue wacky hijinks and cool animal shapeshifting and awesome space adventures!
Except not. Animorphs takes the whole ‘teen superheroes get up, go to school, save the world’ trope and deconstructs it HARD. The kids aren’t even close to equipped to deal with this war; the enemy is huge, powerful, and ruthless. Super-healing comes as a happy side effect of their shapeshifting, which is a good thing because they get into physical combat a LOT and are constantly being disembowelled and having limbs ripped off and soforth. Also, the invaders are body-snatchers, who climb into the heads of their victims and control them utterly, being privy to their every thought and memory, meaning that all the ‘enemies’ whose throats the kids rip out in battle are in fact innocent slaves. One of the kids finds out almost immediately that his older brother, who he loves and respects, is a helpless slave of the enemy, living a nightmare in his own head — and who would kill his little brother without hesitation if he ever found out who he was. The bad guys use the kids’ high school and the local boy-scout-esque community group as tools of manipulation and recruitment, meaning that the kids are surrounded constantly not only by enemies but by innocents being led straight to the enemy and they can’t do a damn thing but watch it happen. A main character tries to commit suicide in book 3 and I think the PTSD nightmares start about book 5. The kids can’t tell their parents why they wake up screaming, of course, any more than they can hug them and tell them they love them right before going into a deadly battle — their parents might be under the control of the enemy, and could kill them at any moment.
As the series goes on, the war gets more complicated. The violent, knife-covered alien footsoldiers the kids are constantly fighting in battle aren’t so violent. The bad guys aren’t so bad. The good guys aren’t so good. And these kids, who are thirteen when this all starts, have to figure that out, because there’s nobody else to do it. Is it okay to use biochemical warfare against the enemy? Is it okay to keep fighting and kill innocents in defense of other innocence? Is it alright to use drugs against the enemy, even if the side effects have negative consequences for their slaves? The Big Bad has a habit of decapitating henchmen who fail, and the Animorphs sometimes need to work against their leader’s enslaved brother… what if the Big Bad kills him? Can they back off, sell out part of the human race just to protect a human they happen to know and love? Eventually, a resistance movement develops among the body snatchers and some of them refuse to take unwilling hosts and will only inhabit volunteers — but where’s the line between free consent and coercion when you’re trapped between opposing forces in a war, when your family is in danger?
Despite having six main characters (they pick up an alien to join them shortly into the story), the protagonists are as well developed as the grey areas they fight in. The character development is amazing as you watch the war break them all in different ways. The charismatic kid who is nominated leader mostly because he has no glaring flaws prohibiting him from the job has no choice but to take it seriously, and can’t show weakness or fear, so he lets nobody help him as he slowly breaks inside and starts treating people like pawns. The clear-sighted realist and head strategist who deals with tragedy with humour, using jokes and sarcasm to hold the team together and give them roles to hold onto, who gets better and better at planning until he realises that the plans and outcomes are all that matters to him even if they involve the death of people he loves… and thinks of this as a good thing. The brash bombshell with more courage than anyone, who shields her friends with her strength and her body and leaving nobody to shield her, who deals with her fear by doing her job until the anger and rage and violence is all that’s left. The philosophising environmentalist, who entered the war as a force of nature nominated to save her planet and has to compromise on line after line until she doesn’t even know how to protect her friends any more. The neglected orphan with no connection to any human being, who finds friends in the fight and fights for them, not humanity… knowing that when it’s over, he’ll have nothing. The alien cadet who just wants to go home and somehow ended up with the honour of his famous brother and the fate of a planet on his shoulders, who tried to operate under his own people’s laws and moral code in a completely different world.
It’s really good, basically. And it’s been released online for free here: http://animorphsforum.com/ebooks/
i can’t believe it’s 2016 and there still hasn’t been an animated adaptation of animorphs
things that 15 year old me did sophomore year that my southern-bred god-fearing conservative christian teachers Did Not Like
- teacher refused to let me sit backwards in chairs. i made a point to sit backwards in chairs until she told me to stop, and then id manspread as much as possible. (semester one.)
- teacher got onto my friend and gave her a panic attack over her newly dyed hair. i told her my friend putting red streaks in her hair was no different than her removing the grey streaks from her hair. got sent outside. (semester one)
- teacher told me my bra strap was showing. took my bra off in class and put it in bag. was sent to principal’s office. mother was called, although she only muffled her laughter over the telephone. (semester two)
- [to homophobic teacher who disliked my mothers] “what language is gaelic from? gayland?” “that’s where my moms are from, ma’am.”
- teacher claimed i was lying about moving to uruguay and tried to force me into sitting in a personal meeting about my future classes and goals. told her to “sign me the fuck up for underwater basket weaving” and got sent outside. (semester two)
- was told by teacher that “ladies should not say they have to pee. try ‘can i use the restroom’ instead” replied with “alright. i gotta piss like a racehorse. can i use the restroom?“ (got sent outside. again. semester two)
- was told to “smile, you’ll look nicer” by a 6′0″ male coach i did not know. when he blocked my entrance out of the classroom until i smiled for him, i said “shove it straight up your ass,” before elbowing him in the ribcage, ducking under his arm, and running for it. skipped class in that building for a week. (semester two)
- hopped a fence to catch my bus and flipped off an ancient male history teacher when he shouted at me to come back. he threatened to find me again. he never found me.
“Teacher told me my bra strap was showing. took my bra off in class and put it in bag.”
Oh my god that sounds amazing!! This is great haha
I really want a science fiction story where aliens come to invade earth and effortlessly wipe out humanity, only to be fought off by the wildlife.
They were expecting military resistance. They weren’t counting on bears.
Imagine coming to a hostile alien world and being attacked by a horde of creatures that can weigh up to 3 tons, run at 30 km/h (19 mph), and bite with a force of 8,100 newtons (1,800 lbf).
By the time you realise that they can traverse water, it’s too late. The surviving members of your unit manage to make it back by shedding their excess gear and running for their lives; the slower ones were crushed to death within minutes.
You later describe the creature to one of the humans you captured, wanting to know the name of the monstrosity that will haunt your nightmares for cycles to come.
The human smiles as it speaks a single word, slowly and distinctly, in its barbaric tongue.
“Hippopotamus.”
This is giving me the biggest, creepiest grin I might have ever grinned
Imagine being the next crew to go down to earth and thinking “it’s fine, we got this. We have the weapons and equipment necessary to deal with bears and *shudders* hippopotamuses. We’ll be fine.”
And at first you are, you’ve learned how to dodge. You’ve learned where their territories are. You know how to defend yourself.
But then one night you are sleeping in your shelter. You’re in a tree covered temperate part of earth. It seems benign. There are been no sightings of the dreaded “hippos” around. Not even any bears. But there is a slight rustle of the undergrowth. You try and ignore it telling yourself it is just the wind.
Then you hear the rustle again. closer this time.
You peer out into the darkness but see nothing amongst the trees.
The rustle again and now you realise you can smell something. It’s musky and slightly foul. It’s the smell of an omen, a warning. But what of? Where is this smell coming from.
You sit up, but it’s too late. The foul smelling creature is on you. You are hit with 17kg of coarse fur and vicious bites. Long dark claws tear in to you and you are pinned down white the striped creature tries to bite your throat.
It takes some doing but you manage to wrestle free. Blood drips from your wounds and already they itch with the sign of infection. The creature has a bloodied snout, rust rad, mingling with the black and white hairs. It lets out a terrifying growl from the back of its throat and looks to attack again. It’s between you and your knife, so your only choice is to back away.
Eventually the creature gives up and snuffles off in to the undergrowth, down a hole near your shelter you hadn’t noticed before.
When you make it back to your base you once again consult the captive human.
“Badger.” they say, with a solemn nod.
One word: Moose
“Our vehicles are far superior to the local human models, in range, speed, armament, and any other metric you care to name! Nothing could possibly-”
BAMrumblerumblethumpcrash!!!
“That’s called a moose.”
Wolverines.
Also.. dolphins.
The invasion is going slowly. The humans have caught on and are actively destroying information on the planet’s flora and fauna before Intelligence can capture and process it. All that they have are survivors’ accounts. Bears. Hippos. Badgers. Moose. It is becoming obvious this mudball planet is a full-on Death World to the unprepared, and you are so very unprepared.
You lost Jaxurn to a plant. Not even a mobile or carnivorous plant, just one that caused a vicious allergic reaction on contact that killed him in less than a rai'kor. Commander Vura'ko died to an insect bite, a tiny local pest that sucked a tiny bit of her blood and apparently replaced it with a bit of its last meal, which was full of disease. Backwash. She died to bug backwash. And yet you honestly envy them after that… thing you encountered…
When you got back to base the quarantine officer refused to let you inside. They had to roll a containment tank outside to put you in, because you all knew there would be no chance of eliminating the smell if it got into the ship’s air ducts. Smell. You wonder if your nasal slit will ever recover from this stench.
And the smell would. Not. Leave. After incinerating your gear the Q.O. had you use every cleansing agent they could think of, including a few janitorial ones, and still everyone fled the stench if they were downwind of your tank. Desperate to protect everyone’s nasal slits from the smell the quarantine officer interrogated the humans. From them, a glimmer of hope: there was a cure. Somehow the juice of a certain fruit on this mudball was the only thing that could break up the chemicals in the little horror’s spray. Immediately the Q.O. sent a team to recover buckets of the stuff and made you bathe in it. That was hours ago and it didn’t seem to be working, though. All it was doing was turning your blue skin an interesting shade of purple.
Sighing in frustration you wave the med-assist on duty over, who only approaches after checking the wind direction. Annoyed, you flip on the tank`s vox speaker.
“The humans did say it was “grape” juice that removed “skunk” stench, right?“
Every night.
It came for someone almost every night.
Any soldier alone was a viable target for this native monster that moved unseen by any but the security viewers, usually only spotted in hindsight. They were taken as silently as this earth-monster moved. Sometimes they’d find the remains in the morning taken up a tree and hung there, mostly eaten, as if it were a grisly reminder that the monster was still there, waiting unseen, to strike again.
What little they saw of the monster on the vidfeed showed true horror. Yellow eyes that shone with all the light it could gather. It had fangs as long as his grasping digits. Claws half that size formed curved hooks that allowed it to climb up their fortifications with impunity. And in the underbrush, its spots made it almost impossible to see clearly in the undergrowth, if it could be seen at all.
Even the native sentients, the humans, had a healthy respect and fear for it.
The earth natives called the monster a leopard.
It was a constant fear that muddied the senses, and let the monster hunt even more effectively as the soldiers were always on edge. Sleep deprived with fear, it made them even better targets for the monster.
But rumor was that there was worse on this planet. Rumors of a monster like a leopard but larger, and bigger in every imaginable sense. Stripped instead of spotted, which leaped from the underbrush with a sound.
A sound that burst eardrums, paralyzed entire units, and let the monster kill with impunity. While the Leopard wrestled soldiers down and ripped their throats out. This other monster, the Tiger, killed with its pounce alone.
“We’ve been through this,” Group Leader 455 snapped. “The dissection of an Earth life form will help the scientists make weapons to combat the rest of this planet’s hellbeasts. And these are domesticated. Harmless.”
The troops were not-quite-looking at her in the way troops do when they don’t want to be seen to contradict a ranking officer, but can’t quite muster a correct Expression of Enthusiastic Assent. “The name of this species,” she pointed out, “is synonymous with dullness and slowness in the language of the Earth barbarians.” Well, one language out of several thousand—these creatures needed Imperial guidance more than any other world on record—but there was no point in confusing the rank and file.
More not-quite-looking. 455 bubbled a sigh and consulted her scanner. “That one,” she decided. “Alone in the separate pasture. Scans suggest that it’s a male, which means it’s probably weaker. Possibly it’s kept isolated so that the females don’t eat it before mating season. And yes, I know some of you are here on punishment detail, but you’re still soldiers of the Imperium. This squad is perfectly capable of handling a lone, helpless, pathetic male cow.”
I’m enjoying this immensely. Wait until the aliens try Australia for size…
I have one word, which I would speak with utter pleasure to invading alien forces.
And that one word
is
crocodilian.
i think about the fact that eliot’s counterpart for the “anti leverage” team was a woman a lot. and by eliot’s counterpart, i mean their team’s brute. their hitter. the one who beats up and attacks anyone who threatens the team’s plan. and eliot isn’t like “oh she’s a woman” even tho hardison was like “u weren’t gonna hit a girl.” and he was like “she killed a man with a mop.” he was scared of her. he respected her. he never once thought he could get the upper hand just because she was a woman.
The real tragedy about the barricade is that we don’t know how much is true. Victor Hugo was there at the June Rebellion, so what is fact and what is fiction? That question gives me chills because we’ll never know.
Charles Jeanne (who I think is probably actual real life Enjolras) wrote an in-detail account of the ACTUAL barricades in a letter to his sister after the fact
you can read it, tenlittlebullets translated it into English :)
it’s really graphic, he leaves no gory details out, just FYI if you’re gonna read it, keep TW: VIOLENCE in mind
#how is he real-life enjolras if he survived (via metellus-cimber)
I’m so glad somebody asked this, because the answer is: when they finally ran out of ammunition, Charles Jeanne rounded up everyone who was still standing, went, “look, if we’re going to die, we might as well die fighting,” and led a suicidal ten-man charge against an entire flippin’ infantry column, armed with nothing but bayonets. The first few ranks of soldiers were so unprepared for such a spectacularly insane attack that they were too surprised to shoot. They crossed bayonets and tried to hold the insurgents off in hand-to-hand combat, but Jeanne’s swordsmanship was apparently aces, because he held off a bunch of them at once and covered his friends as they tried to breach the ranks. And once they were in, nobody could shoot them for fear of taking out their own guys.
So the last stand that the insurgents had intended as a noble suicide ended in them breaking through the ranks entirely and winding up in the next street over, outside the combat zone, going “well shit, what do we do now?” (I’m guessing the infantry column wasn’t very deep; central Paris at that point was a rabbit warren of narrow twisty streets, and assembling troops en masse for an organized attack was a logistical nightmare.) Unlike the National Guard, the army weren’t total chumps and got themselves turned around to give chase and start shooting once they weren’t at risk of friendly fire any longer… and that’s when all the civilians holed up in their houses went “no way, you’re not getting your hands on these crazy bastards” and started hurling furniture and crockery down on the soldiers’ heads. Jeanne was understandably distracted at the time, but afterwards somebody informed him that the barrage of unlikely projectiles included a piano. A piano. That is some straight-up Looney Tunes slapstick right there. No wonder Hugo went for the heroic death scene instead; if he’d stuck to real life, he probably would’ve gotten complaints that he’d wrecked his readers’ suspension of disbelief.
Anyway, someone opened an alley gate for them to shelter in and take stock of the casualties—most of them survived(!!!), but a few were pretty nastily wounded. Their host then had to lock Charles Jeanne in to keep him from charging right back out and taking on the whole goddamn army singlehanded. He probably would’ve broken down the door if the poor man hadn’t pointed out that going back out would give away his wounded comrades’ hiding place and the identities of the people sheltering them. They sat there listening to the gunfire gradually slow and go silent, and then in the middle of the night the ones who could still walk were allowed to slip away one by one at long intervals from each other. Charles Jeanne went straight home, slept like the dead for a few hours, was woken up at five in the morning with a warning that he’d been denounced and the building was surrounded, and then slipped out in disguise and managed to evade the police for four months before a former comrade ratted him out and he was arrested.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why Charles Jeanne’s letter is an absolute treasure that deserves to be available to anyone in Les Mis fandom who wants to read it. Incidentally, “how Actual Historical Enjolras survived the barricades by being too good at his suicide mission” is also one of the stories I tell when anyone asks me what the hell is so interesting about researching people nobody’s ever heard of from an obscure chapter of French history.
#charles jeanne#what a BAMF#and then he managed to derail the whole trial with impassioned noble speeches and dramatic gestures worthy of a Hugo play#while visibly dying of consumption#seriously how was this dude even real#saint merry#june rebellion#à cinq heures nous serons tous morts#1832#history geeking ahoy
If you’re adopted internationally into the United States, BY adoption LAWS you’re legally a citizen, but you still have to apply for documentation and if it’s not done by the age of 18 you have to pay over $500 and get a judge to reopen your adoption case.
Even More Fun Fact: No one actually tells adoptive families, this so many find out after they’re 18 when their kid needs to get a passport, wants to apply for financial aid, get certain jobs, vote or some other shit that requires proof of citizenship and now it’s too late because they’re 18 or over.
AND EVEN MORE FUN FACT! You can sometimes even be deported because you can be considered foreign-born, non-citizens!
Oh and they won’t accept adoption papers or a birth certificate as proof.
Do it now! Seriously. Even if you think you are safe. Do it.
Many people are finding that even a birth certificate is not valid proof anymore. Texas birth certificates are notorious. So notorious that I have 3 friends who can’t use them to get passports! Don’t think everything is hunky dory. You must nail down your citizenship.
Plus the cost for your citizenship certificate is almost doubling this fall.
SIGNAL BOOST.
Some Naturalization/Citizenship Certificate tips from me, the person who front-end processes these forms for half the country: the passport people are absolute garbage at sending your Naturalization Certificate back to you. Unfortunately, they also require it for you to get a passport. If you don’t get it back, whine at them about it and they will probably cover the cost of the replacement.
Also! It takes up to 12 months to get a replacement certificate. If you urgently need your Natz Cert to visit your dying relative in another country, the word you want to use is ‘Expedite’. Not ‘ASAP’. Not ‘rush’. Expedite. Write a letter explaining why you need it expedited, if you do. Otherwise the USCIS data-entry grunts (me!) aren’t allowed to throw it into the expedite line and it gets relegated to the Backlog Crypts.
Also! You need to get a new Naturalization Certificate if your name and/or gender legally changes, because a lot of places want your proof of citizenship for things like Social Security and student loans and Medicaid/EBT/welfare benefits and drivers’ licenses.
ALSO ALSO both the N600 ($600) that you use to apply for your Naturalization Certificate in the first place and N565 ($345) that you use to apply for a replacement certificate are eligible for FEE WAIVERS. It’s called an I912. Learn it, love it, use it.
Please for your sake make sure you are using the current version of the form. The most common reason I have to reject an N565 is because someone sent me something that expired in 2013. The current one is seven pages long. Please send the government all seven of them.
includes cis girls, trans girls, nb girls, lesbians, bi girls, pan girls, anyone who is a girl and likes girls! excludes terfs!
okay do me a favor and reblog this with your favorite song in the tags that’s really…soft. like, i’m talking “first day of my life” by bright eyes, “falling in love at a coffee shop” by landon pigg kind of stuff. i wanna make a playlist
Actually jk but it’s close enough
Oh my God you’re right. Hey, @biend, nice taste in icons, I like it. ;)
“Hillary is so good at delivering the good that when she was in the Senate Karl Rove literately sent out a memo forbidding republican senators from talking to her because she kept getting them to support progressive causes.
She’d get to know each individual senator as a person, find some area where they weren’t shitty human beings, and talk them across party lines.
Her partnerships were deemed so successful … that Karl Rove, according to a source close to him, sent word last year to halt Republican cooperation with her—an edict that has been ignored.
As the atmosphere in Washington has deteriorated, Clinton has emerged within the Senate as the unlikeliest of figures: she, not George W. Bush, has turned out to be a uniter, not a divider.
She walks softly but carries the biggest sticks. This is going to be great”
Why I would pull my hair in frustration every time a Bernie voter pointed out that she was friendly with or supported by a bigot or republican. You do realize that Republicans are basically your -coworkers- when you’re in the senate, right?
That leaders of bigoted special interest groups have an impact on our country whether someone meets with them & tries to reel them in or just leaves them to their own hateful devices.
Hillary Clinton would AT LEAST meet up with these people to let them know she had her eye on them, and at most to get them to do the most progressive thing they were capable of.
people who complain about dinosaurs “not being scary anymore” because its been discovered they have feathers and are closely related to/ancestors of birds are so bizarre like
- its not about how scary they are, they are/were real life animals and what matters is learning more about them, not how well they fit into your science fiction horror film lol
- can you imagine a 13 foot chicken running at you with full intent to eat you??? thats fucking terrifying holy shit
peacocks are synonymous with vain, frivolous beauty and they will attack cars. they will attack you while you try to get to your car. they’re like six feet of useless feathers and they will destroy you. imagine if they were carnivorous and had functional spurs.
a t-rex could look like a gay disco ball and i guarantee that you would fucking book it if it had a problem with you
listen
listen
have you ever met a swan
if anything the birdier they get the scarier they are
Australia literally fought a war against giant birds AND FUCKING LOST
Overheard in the student lounge:
“Oh man, I can’t deal with birds ‘cause they’re dinosaurs and sometimes it’s like they get this glint in their eyes and they remember.”
“Have you ever interacted with a goose? ‘Cause those things are dicks.”
Dear comic book fans,
With the casting of Zendaya as Mary-Jane Watson in the upcoming Spider-Man film, I’ve noticed some tension and controversy surrounding this topic, and I just want you all to know…
WE COMIN FOR ALL YOUR REDHEADS!
WE TOOK MARY JANE
WE TOOK IRIS WEST
WE TOOK WALLY WEST
WE TOOK JIMMY OLSEN
WE COMIN FOR JEAN GREY NEXT
WE’LL MAKE BLACK WIDOW A MUTHAFUCKIN BLACK WIDOW
All right hear me out here, this is coming from a DEVOTED X-men geek: Please do a POC Jean Grey. South Indian Jean Grey. Nigerian Jean Grey. Latina Jean Grey. YO YOU KNOW WHAT I COULD GET BEHIND? MOTHERFUCKING IRANIAN JEAN GREY OR SOMETHING FROM THAT AREA, YES OR YES.
I mean the others are good too but I love Jean, I am obsessed and I can think of like five AMAZING actresses I would love to see crush it as Jean Grey.