I went to McDonalds at work for lunch today, and just for shits, I ordered a happy meal with “extra happy”. The guy at the register was maybe 22, and he leaned over the counter and whispered, “I’m sorry, Visser 5, but this entrance is not yet active.” I growled and said “Fools! I want it prepared within a week!” We both laughed our assess off, then I ordered my real meal and left.
oh man good luck with the tv series it's so agonizing and I spent the whole first season wishing for a better animated version before giving up
HHHHHHHH that is pretty much how I feel about it right now!!!! I’ve been watching while I work on sewing a thing so I can LOOK AWAY during the cringeworthy parts but it. I just.
ALLOW ME TO SPEND THE NEXT PORTION OF THIS POST DESCRIBING EXACTLY HOW A NEW ANIMORPHS SHOW SHOULD BE CREATED AND WHY NOW IS THE PERFECT TIME TO LAUNCH IT.
for starters: I 100% agree that animated is the way to go. You can have the characters portrayed as their actual ages (children), no worries about the actors aging during fimling, you don’t have to blow your entire budget on cgi morphing effects, no need to hire TRAINED LIONS to jump around a set–it just makes more sense. You’re not limited to sets, you can animate anywhere in the world–in the universe!
And do you know who I think would be perfect to take this on????
DC.
Now–If you’ve never watched any of their animated shows, dear reader, you might be confused! I’m not talking about DC comics live action films, where they’re pumping out gritty emo batman movies and taking the most optimistic heroes like superman and trying to make them ‘dark’ and angsty.
I’m talking about the crews who did Teen Titans!!! Young Justice!!!!!!! The animated Green Lanturn series!!!!!!!!!! if you’ve never seen these PLEASE please do yourself a favor and watch them (I highly recommend Young Justice) because they do what the live actions failed: they show the real, dark sides of the characters and their struggles as well as the optimism and hope they keep despite it. They’re shows that are being produced for young viewers but are still gripping and entertaining for adults, and they OFTEN feature children or young adults as the main cast. They don’t shy away from showing violence, like other companies, because they’ve been doing it for so long. As well as a precedent for complex female characters, pov switching from episode to episode, and character growth for everyone!!
like as much as the broadcasting studios and the organization can suck the scripts and voice actors put so much heart into these things and just. gosh. they’re gems. I think if anyone was gonna be able to pull it off, it’d be DC at this point.
Child superheroes is BASICALLY THEIR THEME AND MARKET ALREADY!!!! They have the time slots, the advertising–it’s all already figured out!!! the fanbase is there. the fanbase is WAITING. it would be a hit.
There’s an excellent post by @perianfrost about this too here, about how each book would condense nicely into a 23 minute episode. Throw in an associated 90 minute movie each season for megamorphs, hork bajir/andalite chronicles–an excellent idea. DC already often do animated movies, sometimes associated with shows/sometimes not, their run of batman movies are AMAZING and reflect batman SO MUCH BETTER as a character than the live actions did. Hell, they’re better than the actual comics half the time.
I think each season could be around 20 episodes instead of 10, which would give you 2-3 seasons depending on how many filler books you cut out of the lineup (a lot of the ghostwritten ones aren’t super necessary to overall plot, so you could either condense the series or stretch it a bit). Having a relatively small number of seasons I think would increase chances for funding, and would make it less likely to be cancelled only halfway through (can you tell I’m bitter about Young Justice???? yeah).
Here’s examples of the art style I would like to see it as:
Not TOO cartoony, with realistically proportioned figures, with a simple yet dynamic style. Every now and then with beautiful shots of different landscapes or scenery.
And honestly?? This is the time for a reboot. Animated shows are a HIT right now. Gravity Falls, Stephen Universe, Adventure Time–it’s all been SUPER popular. You’re also hitting the current young crowd as well as the 20-year-olds who grew up with them, probably the second biggest demographic for kids shows.
It’s just. It’d be perfect. I want it so bad. Someone pay me to write all the scripts for them and I’ll drop everything else it just has so much potential.
Heey!! ✨ Do you have any headcanons for Bahorel, Grantaire and Joly friendship?
Whenever I think about the three of them, I think about that scene in the brick in which Joly and Bahorel talk about Musichetta and Bahorel is all like: “If you want to seduce her real good, you’ll need new pants” and Grantaire barges in like “HOW MUCH????”
So I give you: Makeover Bahorel.
To be fair, Joly’s style really suits him. He’s all printed shirts and suspenders that don’t actually suspend anything, cool glasses, always some cat prints for some reason, probably to make up for the fact that he’s allergic
Grantaire on the other hand…
He’s in dire need of shirts that don’t have holes in them and don’t carry the pungent smell of paint. He also needs socks. BADLY. Bahorel hopes he can find clothes that will compliment those biceps of his, because dang boy, you should offer free tickets to the gun show more often
Joly is quickly sorted out. Bahorel finds him some skinny jeans that will, apparently, “compliment his lil butt”.
Grantaire is more complicated. He’s all self-deprecating comments and doesn’t think anything looks good on him. That’s not his colour. Neither is this one. Nor this one
In the end, Baz gets him to buy several flannel shirts, a couple of skinny jeans, undershirts and the like
Joly gets complimented all over during the next ABC meeting and twirls happily to show his new acquisitions off
Grantaire arrived with rolled up sleeves and skinny jeans and Enjolras unconsciously snaps a pen into two.
our ability to belt out one entire three to five minute long song if we’re familiar with it like. suvi starts singing “hallelujah” to fill the quiet and is answered by liam all across the room in a p decent harmony. cora walks past and starts humming it enthusiastically even tho she can’t stay very long. gil joins in for the third refrain. ryder finishes it off with a passionate solo.
when they look around every alien is staring at them. vetra blinks and knocks her hands together. “that’s what you’re supposed to do when humans make those sounds right?” she asks kallo beside her, who mirrors her. everyone is a little stunned at the coordination and emotion in the performance and they all look equally moved. jaal might be crying. none of them know what a ‘hallelujah’ is, but they feel like they’ve come to understand it through this melody
they’re all extremely confused when all of the humans still continue on on their tasks without pause
edit; other songs include but are not limited to: bohemian rhapsody, mr. brightside, single ladies, no scrubs, and i will always love you
a good predictor of whether a species will end up being compatible with humans on long journeys is whether they are capable of understanding that ‘singing along’ is optional and humans do it because it’s fun. species that insist on assigning some biological or ceremonial importance to it will inevitably clash with their human crews sooner or later.
whereas species like the mertrans, who have their own infectious expressive behaviors, can integrate with humans indefinitely. on long-haul ships, a sort of hybrid culture evolves, where mertrans will thrum their throat sacs to provide percussion for human singalongs, and humans develop dance steps for mertran scratch/thumping episodes.
smart pirates avoid attacking ships where this has happened. despite being clownish, these species are also some of the most warlike, and offering violence to a closeknit mertran/human group provokes a reaction that is not only well-coordinated and heroic but prone to very bloody pranks.
there still are parts of the outer reaches where a mertran hand-signing “yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker” can clear a bar in seconds.
We’re all calling him chaotic good but…Isn’t it lawful good what they’re doing? I mean, it’s messed up that this is reality, but they ARE following the rules to a T.
2017, when cards against humanity is lawful good but the president is chaotic evil
Humans are the only intelligent species in the universe to have evolved from predators. Every other sentient species has evolved from a prey species… and so they are terrified of us. Now it’s up to you to persuade the Galactic Council that we won’t hunt them down and eat them all.
“We won’t eat you,” I shrugged. “Most of us would find the idea of eating a sapient being repulsive - it would be like eating another human.”
The gathering murmured. The herbivores were big, to be honest. A lot of them were easily elephant-sized, with a few even bigger. It had been jarring, at first, being one of the smallest known species. I guess we’d always expected ‘little green men’, small aliens with big eyes, looking a lot like us.
But no, they were big. Intimidatingly so. And we’d just told them not to be afraid of us. I looked over to some of my team, a few of whom wore expressions like they’d just realised it. Some of the aliens, too, were giving us a fresh appraisal. Instead of wide and fearful eyes, they were now narrowed in thought.
One of them leant against the wall, arms crossed. There was something buffalo-like about him, with a set of horns curving out of his head, and a rather bovine nose. A little like a minotaur, really. The Tellors had a problem with water shortages, we’d heard. Another, someone reptilian with nictating membranes and a nervous, flicking tongue whispered to her cohorts, her eyes darting between us all. The Fiarans were apparently running out of arable land.
I let my mouth pull up at the corners.
Now, there’s a funny thing about most beings, sapient or otherwise. Showing off your teeth is a general sign for ‘look what I have and might very well use’. Humans have always been weird about that, so it’s been normally something all of us in the diplomatic sector have to worry about when smiling.
Normally.
I cleared my throat, and the Council turned back to me.
“We want to be friends, really,” and the tone of my voice caused my team to spin around and stare at me. “And we have high hopes for what we could achieve together in an alliance.”
I paused, making eye contact with the Tellor and Fiaran especially.
“We won’t eat you,” I said. “But we didn’t eat our predators, either.”
The crowd began to mutter again. The Tellor snorted, making his way to the front.
“I have studied humans - you are the apex predators of your planet. Please explain.”
I looked up at him. “Oh yes, we are now.”
He tilted his head, and then took a step back as the meaning hit him. Or at least the meaning I meant to give - I wasn’t exactly about to spew lion attack statistics or explain the concept of zoos to him.
fun fact about the next avengers film being filmed in edinburgh: they’ve blocked off certain areas which is disrupting one specific postal van’s delivery route which is in turn leading to an awkward stand-off at the police station because Marvel Studios might be a billion dollar company but this man really wants to do his job and apparently interfering with the course of the Royal Mail technically counts as treason so they’re at a stalemate
“Many people, encountering fanfiction for the first time, wonder why so much of it is erotic. Anne Jamison, in Fic, gives a pretty good answer: a lot of fanfiction questions mainstream assumptions about gender, sexuality, and desire. But writing erotic fanfiction is also a wonderful game. The fanfiction community might be the first place where a woman is encouraged to enjoy her sexual fantasies and praised for the dirtiness of her imagination. Writing and reading fanfiction is a social, communal activity, and considering how much shame is still attached to the expression of female sexual desire (what’s so funny about it?) the creation of shared erotic fantasies is still radical.”—Introduction to The Communications Officer’s Tale, The Fanfiction Reader: Folk Tales for the Digital Age (via francescacoppa)
“While many people think fanfiction is about inserting sex into texts (like Tolkien’s) where it doesn’t belong, Brancher sees it differently: “I was desperate to read about sex that included great friendship; I was repurposing Tolkien’s text in order to do that. It wasn’t that friendship needed to be sexualized, it was that erotica needed to be … friendship-ized.” Many fanfiction writers write about sex in conjunction with beloved texts and characters not because they think those texts are incomplete, but because they’re looking for stories where sex is profound and meaningful. This is part of what makes fan fiction different from pornography: unlike pornography, fanfic features characters we already care deeply about, and who tend to already have long-standing and complex relationships with each other. It’s a genre of sexual subjectification: the very opposite of objectification. It’s benefits with friendship.”—Francesca Coppa, “Introduction to The Dwarf’s Tale,” The Fanfiction Reader (via rembrandtswife)
Rachel: Was it love at first sight, for you? Tobias: Mm… no, truthfully. It was more like terror at first sight. Falling in love took, oh, an hour or so.
“Look, Naomi, I know Rachel. She’s not the useless type. She doesn’t stand there and scream helplessly. She makes other people do that.”—Tobias reassuring a worried mother, probably (via incorrectmorpherquotes)
<p>
<b></b></p><p> <b>Random Assailant:</b> [grabs Rachel] We walk out of here unharmed or the girl gets it, all right?</p><p></p><b></b> [Marco sniggers]<p></p><b>Jake:</b> I hope you're not going to kill anyone.<p></p><b>Random Assailant:</b> That's up to us!<p></p><b>Jake:</b> Sorry, was I talking to you?<p></p><p></p>
“You know those days you sometimes have? The days that seem totally ordinary when you wake up, but by the time you go to sleep that night, your whole life is divided into before that day and after that day? This is one of those days.”—Jake in the first book, probably (via incorrectmorpherquotes)
as someone whos experienced multiple traumas, i do have ptsd but i don’t have any way of getting professional help for it! idk if thisll help but here are a bunch of resources that help(ed) me and might help u if ur in the same situation <3
record your thoughts uncensored. notebooks are preferable but a word document, voice recordings, whatever works for u. keep all ur stuff about trauma here. resources, quotes, ur own Personal Journey, document it all! keep it safe
confide in something or someone. find an outlet where u are mostly honest w urself/ur situation/ur thoughts. having a supportive network, even if they don’t know ur whole situation, rly helps! if u don’t have anyone irl, its honestly so okay if all of ur friends are on the internet (as long as youre safe)!
try to do something small every day. that can be taking two minutes to relax and do nothing, or saying one nice thing about urself, it doesnt have to be a whole hour of workbooking or w/e! any progress is good progress! it doesnt have to be every day either
not all coping mechanisms are equal. if a coping mechanism starts doing more harm than good, wean yourself off of it, replace with a healthier one. (for example, self harm is an unhealthy coping mech. taking a walk or watching tv might be healthier for u).
use a variety of resources. ofc find what works best for u, but also use many sources to research etc so u don’t end up w biased info! i tried to link a variety of resources here (website articles, pdfs, tumblr posts) but if u find ur own, make sure its not like Bad idk.
lmk if i linked or said smth bad please! i dnt want to hurt anyone & also if u want more detailed trigger warnings for something, lmk and ill do that !!
anyway I LOVE U ptsd is so rough and even if u don’t have it bt uve experienced trauma i love u. its hard to rebuild urself afterwards. its okay if u realize ur different now. keep going ur gna b okay!
he asked, sounding defensive. He was quiet a moment. Then, abashed, he said.
‘Your relatives are jerks and they didn’t deserve you,’ Rachel snapped.
”—
Book #31: The Conspiracy, pg. 42 (by K.A. Applegate)
Okay but just let me, like, get this off my chest.
I feel like a lot of the various ghost writers didn’t have a super great grasp on how to deal with Tobias’ background which, like, hey y’all, no judgment, I’m told it’s hard to generate authentically fucked up family dynamics without shall-we-say hands on experience. (Actually the person who wrote 33 did really well, particularly the scene with Tobias’ near-death hallucination/what-have-you and every time I read it I need to physically remove my heart from my body in order to make it stop causing me pain but A N Y W A Y.) But this person, who wasn’t even writing a Tobias book, I think presented one of the most authentic moments of Kid Who Was Pretty Fucked Up To Start With accidentally reminding all his friends who are More Freshly Fucked Up that his life has literally always sucked. Like, this person nailed the FUCK out of this particular exchange.
It’s how casual it is. I think I saw someone comment once that Tobias seems almost uncaring in this book which…yes? I mean, it’s not so much that Tobias doesn’t care, he cares very much, but he just has NO point of comparison. But it’s the totally casual nature of this comment that makes it seem natural. This seems like a totally logical statement on Tobias’ part, and the revelation that it’s not is upsetting to him. Not because he’s profoundly distressed in the moment about his family, but because he’s experiencing a shift in worldview–something he viewed as normal, maybe even as a positive, is an indicator of neglect. It’s a weird feeling. And this exchange NAILS THAT FEELING.
Also, Rachel’s clear and evident rage on his behalf makes me really happy.
Remember when the Ellimist was like “how about we pit seven of your ultimate killing machines against my six accident-prone teenagers and a hardwired pacifist” and Crayak was like “there is obviously no trick here, I don’t see how this can possibly go wrong”.
Imagine aliens coming to Earth and having translators that work perfectly. Except they don’t pick up on tone.
Tone has a HUGE impact on a message. Consider the following sentence:
“You look nice today.”
Now repeat it stressing each word one by one.
“YOU look nice today”, implying someone else that you are probably indicating with your body or to whom you’d previously referred does not.
“You LOOK nice today”, implying that you don’t smell/sound it.
“You look NICE today”, thus turning what would otherwise have been a casual remark into a compliment. You don’t just look nice. You look damn fine.
“You look nice, TODAY”, which is clearly an insult purpoiting that you usually look like crap. Damning by faint praise, as they say.
And all of these are possible - and wildly differing - meanings to a simple four word sentence.
In this scenario, super secret plans could be discussed in front of the aliens with them being none the wiser simply by saying it à la Mean Girls. Should war between the two factions emerge, humans would win by the power of passive-aggressive bitching
Going off how the Humans are Space Orcs and “Humans bond with anything despite obvious danger” that annoys the rest of the alien crew, think about them being introduced to earth oceans
After all it’s common to have to always remove their human from unknown likely dangerous life forms despite constant protests and that they were only “playing”
they start to notice that their human never really speaks of their earths sea creatures, which makes sense as the humans organs aren’t equipped to survive in that environment despite being able to “swim” (it is a common theory discussed that humans could survive if given no option to otherwise as that’s what they always seem to do)
curious and nervous, a rookie of the crew, decides to ask (the veterans have learned not to ask about earth as it always ends in confusion and horror)
Only to be told that “they aren’t really sure”, in human speak this can mean many things. One is that they never looked, another is that they were honestly telling the truth.
Confused, they ask again as surely the species that does everything to fulfill their curiosity would surly know what fills 75% of their surface?
Only to be told of creatures that are the length of their ship with a jaw just as wide. Of creatures that glow to attract and trap their pray. And that there was never a pod that was created could withstand the pressure of deepest depths. Or if it could, the visual feed would always disappear within rows of jagged teeth. And that are only the stories that have been proven. There are stories of the old ages, of creatures that could drown you with the sound of their voice, of things only seen in the shadows with a glimpse of sharp teeth.
Humans don’t go in the ocean, they learn. Humans that are made of iron and steel, known to bond with anything, and a curiosity that defies all known logic don’t dare to explore the depths of their own planet.
The crew learn that the only thing to terrify their human are the creatures that lurk in the oceans of their own earth.
Everything must seem tame to them compared to the monster planet that they call home.
And suddenly, things make sense.
I am 100% convinced that “exit, pursued by a bear” is a reference to some popular 1590s meme that we’ll never be able to understand because that one play is the only surviving example of it.
Seriously, we’ll never figure it out. I’ll wager trying to understand “exit, pursued by a bear” with the text of The Winter’s Tale as our primary source is like trying to understand loss.jpg when all you have access to is a single overcompressed JPEG of a third-generation memetic mutation that mashes it up with YMCA and “gun” - there’s this whole twitching Frankensteinian mass of cultural context we just don’t have any way of getting at.
no, but this is why people do the boring archival work! because we think we do know why “exit, pursued by a bear” exists, now, and we figured it out by looking at ships manifests of the era -
it’s also why there was a revival of the unattributed and at the time probably rather out of fashion mucedorus at the globe in 1610 (the same year as the winter’s tale), and why ben jonson wrote a chariot pulled by bears into his court masque oberon, performed on new year’s day of 1611.
we think the answer is polar bears.
no, seriously! in late 1609 the explorer jonas poole captured two polar bear cubs in greenland and brought them home to england, where they were purchased by the beargarden, the go-to place in elizabethan london for bear-baiting and other ‘animal sports.’ it was at the time run by edward alleyn (yes, the actor) and his father-in-law philip henslowe (him of the admiral’s men and that diary we are all so very grateful for), and would have been very close, if not next to, the globe theatre.
of course, polar bear cubs are too little and adorable for baiting, even to the bloodthirsty tudor audience, aren’t they? so, what to do with the little bundles of fur until they’re too big to be harmless? well, if there’s anything we know about the playwrights and theatre professionals of the time, it’s that they knew how to make money and draw in audiences. and the spectacle of a too-small-to-be-dangerous-yet-but-still-real-live-and-totally-WHITE-bear? what good entertainment businessman is going to turn down that opportunity?
and, voila, we have a death-by-bear for the unfortunate antigonus, thereby freeing up paulina to be coupled off with camillo in the final scene, just as the comedic conventions of the time would expect.
you’re telling me it was an ACTUAL BEAR
every time I think to myself “history can’t possibly get any more bananas” I realize or am made to realize that I am badly mistaken
It was an actual, TINY bear. Just. like a babbeh polar bear.
well, here’s a story about a plane. one steve did not actually jump out of.
a rare tale indeed.
if youve ever been in the military–any branch, really–you’d know that everyone in every branch thinks their branch is best. this is not a new thing, and it was certainly going strong during wwii. mostly it just meant that if a bunch of marines wandered into an army bar there would be a fight, but honestly it was all in good fun, just a way to blow off steam.
so of course there was a friendly rivalry between us howlies and the pilots we hung around with. most of the pilots and crews we knew were transport guys, not bombers, but we got around more than most units and wound up spending a few weeks stationed near the 97th bombardment group. the 97th was made of b-17s, these huge bomber planes called flying fortresses–and they earned the name, those birds were basically the tanks of the sky. they ran a 10 man crew, and we got friendly with the spectacular idiots of the Pistol Packin Mama. as you can tell from the name of their plane, the were exactly the kind of guys who would get along with a group of people called the Howling Commandoes.
but rivalries being what they were, pranks happened.
the pistol packers fired the opening salvo. merrifield, Mama’s copilot, was probably the mastermind behind it; he was a good tempered guy who never passed on a pun. which was why for the first prank, the pistol packers stole all our underwear. haha, commandoes.
such an affront could not stand. we put shoe polish on the rims of their headsets, and they came off mission with black rings on the sides of their faces. they hid dead fish in our barracks. we salted their coffees.
the usual nonsense.
but then we came back one night to discover that every one of our footlockers had been painted with ‘EAT IT.’
and that, my friends, sparked a whole new wave of stupidity.
morita was the genius behind our retaliation. during wwii, VD was a major concern, and condoms were widely available for any soldier who wanted or needed them. each of us went separately and got as many as we could get our hands on. steve’s face was red enough he couldve been used to flag down a plane. the quartermasters probably thought us howlies were about to host the biggest orgy camp had ever seen, but by the time each of us had contributed to the stash, we had some 300-odd condoms.
so that night we went and broke into the airfield. we were highly skilled troops, it wasnt that hard. gabe mumbled something about using our skills for evil, but soon enough we had found the Pistol Packin Mama, all glorious 104 feet of her.
she’d taken a few hits on their last run, and was awaiting maintenance before she went up again. luckily for us, the repair crews were a little swamped, and it would be a few days before they got to her. so we climbed aboard and set to work.
anything we could fit a condom over got wrapped. joysticks, armrests, controls–all of it got covered in latex. the remaining 250 condoms we inflated. theres nothing more manly than a bunch of soldiers sitting around in a bomber blowing up condoms. and after about four hours of macho dick balloon making, we were near ready pass out from lack of oxygen. but we’d also managed to about half-fill the Mama with condom balloons.
our work done, we sneaked back to the barracks and fell asleep.
as i understand it, merrifeld realized he’d forgotten a lucky picture of his girl inside the Mama, and went back to pick it up. he opened the hatch and a rain of condoms descended on him, which attracted attention from pretty much everyone else nearby. the pistol packers got crap about it from everyone for weeks. eventually, they came to us and declared truce. as a gesture of good faith, steve offered to do some nose art for them.
so steve painted the Pistol Packin Mama. and how a man who cant ask for condoms without his face turning the color of a stoplight can paint a larger than life half naked lady on a plane calm as you like, i will never understand.
