(note: I have no romantic or sexualized experience myself, so I admit *some* of these points rely entirely on secondhand stuff and media)
One thing I think is not talked about very much is that straight men live pretty much desexualized lives if we’re not actually having sex at that moment, and then there’s not much room to be the object rather than subject.
As I’ve said before, we men don’t have clothing options for “dressing sexy” in masculine clothing (there is cross dressing but that is different). There’s no male equivalent to the short skirt or low cut top. There’s no male lingerie that isn’t seen as a joke.
Further, we just don’t get validation for our sexuality outside of a sexual partner. We are almost never complimented for our looks or sexiness from platonic friends like women are, especially same sex friends.
There really aren’t many straight male role models for raw aesthetic sexiness in mainstream culture (besides unnaturally muscled men). In fiction, male characters are almost never attractive for embodying sexiness but rather for doing things (saving the world, being extremely witty, being a genius, winning the tournament, etc.). Their sexiness is non-aesthetic and sometimes is in spite of their aesthetics.
Anecdotally, it seems like a lot of men aren’t even called physically hot and sexy by their own sexual partners, who themselves focus on personality. There’s not much room to fulfill the role of passive sexism object for you partner for many/most men.
I think it is telling that a lot of porn for men ignores the man’s personality and has a woman just throwing themselves at the man, overcome with lust.
Also there the fact that women seem to rarely approach men and some seem to often expect the man to do most of the sexual escalation, especially in the early stages.
We talk about women of color or women who are disabled being sexualized, but we don’t talk about how all straight men are desexualized and denied the ability to be sexualized object.
oh my god… that’s why they send dick pics
“witness me!”
There are occasional reddit threads about things like this: “guys who send unsolicited dick pics, why do you do it?”
The answer always seems to be some combination of slot machine mentality (“maybe this one will like it, and make the other 50 worthwhile”) and a desire for witness. Surprising numbers of people admit that it’s validation even if the reaction is negative, simply because they’re still being viewed in a totally sexual context.
At the very least that has obvious consequences for people trying to reduce dick pic sending. There’s some core of people who can’t possibly be reached with “it’s not attractive to women” because that was never their expectation.
More broadly, I think efforts to get (Western?) men to emphasize with objectification wildly underestimate the challenge they’re facing. It’s not just a sympathy shortage, it’s a totally unfamiliar feeling. Making things even harder, it’s a feeling a lot of men say they wish they could have.
The usual narrative on not (politely) complimenting the appearance of unknown women is “sure, it’s nice if it happens once, but think about how annoyed you’d be if it happened all the time”. Fine in general terms, but I think a lot of men don’t have any way to intuit the emotional difference between too-frequent compliments and being pestered with too much of something totally innocuous like requests for the date.
The comments on those articles are frequently from men saying they’ve literally never received a single compliment from a stranger on their appearance, and can’t imagine what it would be like. The ones who have are often talking about a single, years-old compliment they still cherish. That’s not a framework that supports more than a purely theoretical understanding of what’s it’s like to be valued for your appearance too heavily - or at all.
Obviously that’s not universal, any more than all women are catcalled, but it seems like a really serious communication failure to appeal to a sense of objectification that much of your audience has literally never felt, and desperately wants.
Reblogged because thefutureoneandall describes exactly why I have trouble empathizing with feminism columnists.
Can confirm, I’d take literally any compliment on anything at this point, and would cherish it.
one day we gotta get all the men and all the women to sit down together and hash this stuff out between them, how hard can it be.
This discussion kind of reminds me of a story that made the rounds about a year ago, where
a woman, after having gotten a bit tired with dick pics, decided to try to get her “revenge” of sorts, by sending unsolicited vagina pics to 40 random men:
Let’s be honest: while I enjoy penises, I don’t necessarily want
unexpected visual boners intruding on my day. I wondered, “What would
guys do if I turned the tables and sent them an unexpected vagina pic?”
And so, in my own twist on revenge porn, I sent 40 unexpected vagina
pics to men on Bumble.
This … didn’t work out the way she apparently expected it to:
Overall, I was surprised that I didn’t get my, “Gotcha!” moment. I’d
initially hoped the guys would see how invasive it is to receive such
intimate photos from a stranger. When I’m excited to get to know a guy,
his penis isn’t the first part of him that I want to know. But given
that men like to send dick pics, I suppose their enthusiasm for v-pics
makes sense.
So, basically, women experience dick picks as a net negative, as an intimacy violation, while men experience v-pics as a huge positive, as validation and an indicator of interest.
This seems consistent with the above discussion, where it’s a pretty common male experience to basically never receive any sexual attention ever and thus respond really strongly positively to whatever scraps come their way (or to start trolling for attention - with the point of some of these dick pics apparently being to get any attention at all, no matter how hostile), while a common female experience seems to be more like being flooded with unwanted sexual attention and wanting a way to make it stop -
resulting in an absolutely massive inferential gap - with the result that if you’re on one side of the gap and try to describe your feelings and experiences to the people on the other side, whatever words you have will just fall on deaf ears because the feeling and experiences you describe are … not just unfamiliar, but outright alien, to the ones on the other side.
This alienness is … mutual.
For men, it feels like no men are sexy to women.
For women, it feels like all women are sexy to men.
It’s like one person dying of dehydration watching another one drown.
“It’s like one person dying of dehydration watching another one drown.”
the conversation has gotten longer, so i’m reblogging
… This is so cool. It actually makes sense.
but of course women are wary of just giving men compliments, because attention-starved men are likely to take it as a come-on. what a dilemma.
So what I’m getting from this… Is that my idea of taking popular types of fiction and essentially ‘flipping the script’ so that there are sexy male characters as ‘damsel in distress’ types would actually be very good and help a lot of people become comfortable with their sexuality?
it could well! i’m not the guy to answer this really, i’m queer and also i’ve always been pretty comfortable with being the one giving the compliments (and just asking for validation when i need it). but i do think there’s a place in the world for fiction where The Sexy One is male.
consider chris hemsworth in ghostbusters. that one’s a bit mean-spirited, with him being hilariously clueless, but you’ve got that dynamic where what he contributes is, he’s hot. that’s it. and i found it kind of a breath of fresh air, not because it was a fuck-you to sexist tropes, but because it’s never, ever enough for a guy to be attractive, but here it was, and that was fun to see.
i once thoughtlessly complimented a guy on his jacket, because he and his friend rounded the corner and suddenly i was confronted with an extremely handsome young man in a very fashionable black leather jacket, and i blurted out ‘whoah, nice jacket, you’re looking good!’ and the look on his face was just this explosion of surprise and delight– he actually kind of missed a step. the next minute i was like shit shit SHIT what if things get weird JEEZ but he and his friend were already walking past, and his friend just started laughing. kind of this ‘whoah, cool, what the hell’ laugh, and when i glanced back they’d both kind of lit up and were elbowing each other as they walked away. i was extremely relieved to have like dodged a bullet of ‘if you let a man know you are attracted to them at close range GOD KNOWS WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN BUT IT’S GONNA BE OBNOXIOUS PROBABLY’ and then also pleased that i’d made that guy’s day. but also like. i guess now i’m realizing i probably made that guy’s decade…
i wish it was more common to compliment people– especially guys– in a casual way. but when you live as a woman you can spend a lot more time dodging men’s attention rather than soliciting it…
maybe male poledancing is like, the next big fad to cash in on? guys can enjoy getting hit on and girls can enjoy there being a specific space for that, that they, the girls, can leave afterwards.
I’d honestly never considered this before; it makes a lot of sense. *internally recalculates a bunch of stuff*
i have a fake son.
his name is Tim and he is working on his M.S. in astrophysics at Berkeley.
he is devestatingly handsome and enjoys rock climbing and volunteers as a counselor at the local YMCA there in Berkeley, California.
i am so proud of my fake son. i have raised him up in my own head to be such an outstanding member of society.
“Tim” is only brought up when asked about by one particular woman at work that i only see on occasion. i don’t make a habit or game of lying to people, but with her, it kinda came about as follows:
Faye is one of those people who has been there/done that and will hang herself on the cross while she tells you how much worse the experience was for her. i’ve seen this woman Kanye West an 8-month pregnant girl at said girl’s own baby shower to glorify the gift she gave her as well as go into how horrible her labor was with her own children. Faye also is a braggart. her car/purse/house/ring/shoes/etc. all cost more than whatever yours did and her children are all angels.
i was forced to work with Faye for 2 days about 5 years ago. she called me Emily a few times before i finally told her my name is Amy, not Emily. she gave me a sideways glance and said, “I like Emily better”, and since then, she has always called me Emily. i let this go because to get angry with her and tell her off is to see her become dramatic and begin crying and insist she did not mean anything by it while not issuing anything close to an apology. Faye is always right, too, you know.
anyway, when she shut up long enough about herself and her fabulous offspring on the second day, she asked, “Do you have any children, Emily?”
i replied that i do not. she then launched into her daughter taking fertility drugs so that she could give her mother grandchildren someday.
that was the only question she asked me until i saw her about a year later.
“Oh, HI, Emily! How are you?!”
“Hi, Faye…how are you?”
“Wonderful, wonderful. Stephen just graduated from UT. He’s going to be the best doctor ever! How is your son, uh, Tim?”
it took me a second. Tim? son? what the hell is she talking about?!
it dawned on me what a complete narcissist she truly is. she hadn’t heard me the day she asked if i had children, because she didn’t care. she didn’t care enough to call me by my real name, so it wasn’t much of a surprise.
i couldn’t stop myself. i briefly thought about correcting her, but i decided to just go with it.
“Tim is doing so well. He was just accepted to Berkeley after his amazing thesis on planetary nebuli. We are so proud of him.”
her eyes grew big. “Oh, how nice! But, Berkeley? That’s so far from home. UT is an excellent school; surely he could’ve been accepted there?…”
i gave a small chuckle. “Oh, well, they wanted him for sure, Faye. I mean, all the letters he received, practically BEGGING him to study there. But, well, they just don’t have a sufficient astronomy department. UT is a fine school, but not for the subject that Tim is going into. Astrophysics is not something you can study just anywhere, you know.”
her eyes narrowed. “Medicine is what these young people should be going into. Astrophysics? What is that, anyway? How will it contribute to the world?”
“Gosh, I don’t really know how to explain astrophysics, Faye. It’s so mind blowing for simple minds like mine and yours. But searching for things in space that could potentially help our planet is a pretty big deal, I think.”
Faye promptly excused herself. i knew i had gotten her.
i’ve bumped into her on and off throughout the past 5 years and she always told me how her angels were saving the world, especially Stephen, and then she’d ask about Tim. and i made sure my Tim was one step above her Stephen. her face would turn crimson and she would have to abruptly leave.
i saw her as i was leaving work yesterday and she stopped me to wish me a happy Easter.
“Stephen is coming home this holiday. He’s bringing his fiance. She’s a doctor too, you know. How is Tim? Don’t tell me he’s still not graduated?…”
“Oh, Faye, don’t be silly! Astrophysics takes YEARS to graduate from. It’s not as simple as medicine. But, yes, he is close to graduating.”
“Is he coming home for Easter? I can’t imagine spending holidays without my children; how dreadful! Oh, but he’s all the way in California…it costs so much to fly here, I assume.”
I grinned. “Yes, it does. But he’s such a sweetheart, he’s flying me out there this year! Taking a break from his studies and humanitarian efforts to have his dear ol’ Mom around for Easter. I’m so lucky!”
“…yes, well, have a nice time, Emily. Happy Easter!”
“You too, Kay! Oh, I mean Faye!”
you know, like i said before, i don’t like to lie. it does seem very silly to have let this go on for so long. Tim has been a fabrication in the making for over 5 years now, he almost feels real to me.
when i see Faye, i have images of my fake son, looking so handsome in his lab coat as he’s peering into a microscope looking at dust particles from a comet. i see him jogging with his dog on the beach. i see him hiking and biking and climbing. i see him helping an elderly woman with her groceries.
it’s a true testament that if you lie, or let a lie go on for a while, it becomes a solid thing that you have to keep up with.
oddly enough, i don’t lose sleep on this lie. i don’t see her often enough to fib about this on a daily or consistent level. Faye never cared anything about me or my life until she had something to try to one-up me on. SHE is the one losing sleep on account of her Stephen not succeeding quite like my Tim. it’s amazing how this lie has eaten her alive and made me feel proud of something that doesn’t even exist…
eh well.
i’ll be boarding the fake plane to Berkeley this afternoon, to celebrate Easter with my fake son.
Mama’s soooo proud of you, Timmy!
i'm imagining the significance of the dwarves inventing a printing press. like you said, their years spent traveling without a home probably did a lot of trauma, which trickled down through the generations. to be able to tell their own stories and to see them permanently pressed with something stronger than a hand and pen, is probably really special. catch me crying in the fuckin' club thinking about this, goddam fucking line of thrain and children of Mahal.
Honestly I need a shirt that reads “Catch me crying in the fucking club about the children of Mahal” because HARD SAME. THE STORY OF MY LIFE.
I’M NOT EVEN GOING TO PUT THIS ON ANOTHER POST BECAUSE JUST. YES. JAKE IS MY BOY. HE’S THE BEST BOY. HE’S DOING HIS VERY BEST AND I LOVE HIM SO MUCH.
IF YOU DON’T LIKE JAKE BECAUSE OF THE ACTIONS HE TAKES DURING THE WAR, I DISAGREE BUT I RESPECT YOUR OPINION. IF YOU DON’T LIKE JAKE BECAUSE YOU THINK HE’S INCOMPETENT AND/OR BORING, I INVITE YOU TO MEET ME BEHIND THE HAUNTED EX-DENNY’S AND WE CAN SETTLE THIS PROPERLY.
Oh God, listen, they get saved by the power of skunks and bureaucracy in this one and I’m SURE it’s because KA Applegate looked at that whole…termite thing and said to herself “I should go easy on them, where can we get some humor here” and I’m not even mad. I love her for it.
Also it occurs to me that this ask IS in the middle of several asks about Animorphs #9 but I could be wrong, in which case…thanks?
We are sure to SMELL you coming…. My boy… Look at him… Such a good one liner. An icon truly…
I never thought about it, but, I mean…of course it’s the dwarves.
The elves would never think of it, fading out of Middle Earth with their perfect memories entirely intact, bearing the lore of ages in their own lifetimes. Elrond would never think to write down the story of his life, for all that it stretches back to the Silmarils’ crafting. When they do write things down, they believe in taking the time to inscribe the words with their own hand–no one knows the hard truths of permanence and impermanence like the Firstborn, and if you are going to take the time to make something ephemeral into something lasting, you do it right. And besides, Quenya and Sindarin and forgotten Noldorin, all are made with elaborate curling letters, intended more to be written with a brush tip or a calligrapher’s pen than printed for clarity. A printing press would never capture the fluidity quite right.
The race of men…well, they’re still trying to recover. The great kingdoms of the human race–hard Gondor and broken Arnor, wild Rohan and poor shattered Harad to the South–took the brunt of the Ring War hardest of all. Even the strongest of them is left in fragments. New rulers, damaged walls, burned cities. Not many have time, in those first years–and it does take years–to worry about the lore that might have been lost or muddled by water and fire and falling stone, not when there are still leaderless orcs roving and people starving as they try to stretch the harvests. By the time they do, they’re trying to piece together what they used to have. No one thinks twice about trying to piece it together the way it was, and the way it was, was handwritten. Someday the race of men will be great innovators, reaching toward the stars with sure hands and bright eyes. Now, though, the race of men is enduring, is rebuilding and making alliances, trying to prevent the losses of the war from reappearing ten, twenty, a hundred years down the line. They are doing well, at enduring–pragmatists, grim and tough and determined–but they hardly have the time for mechanical marvels that don’t aid building, speed farmwork, or otherwise smooth the path.
The hobbits persist in being stubbornly hobbitish. Oral history is what they do, and their memories for family ties and dramatic gossip could give the oldest Eldest a run for their money. Who’s going to bother to write down the story of the time Athella Proudfoot–no, not that one, the other one, Odo’s great-great-great aunt–drank half the tavern under the table, got up on the bar, did a jig in nothing but her bloomers, and then settled in to drink the place dry? (And still looked fresh as a daisy, if quite a bit less sober, the next morning.) No one, because anyone you ask knows the story of everyone who ever did anything worth knowing the story of. What do the hobbits care for legends and lore? They know who they are and where they come from, songs and stories and all, and there’s a certain level of strength in that. Strength enough to walk into Mordor, strength enough to reclaim the Shire.
The dwarves…the dwarves are a people who once had libraries, sweeping and beautifully full of knowledge. The libraries in Khazad-dum have rotted, by now, ransacked by orcs and goblins or burned entire by Durin’s Bane. Books and scrolls, illuminated with precious metals and expensive inks by the finest scholars, are worth nothing to a dragon, nothing but fuel for amusement, things to send sparking. The library where Dis learned to read, where Thorin and Thrain before him learned statecraft, are nothing but ash. The Iron Hills, Ered Luin, those places were filled by a people seeking refuge. Few dwarrows snatched tomes as they fled Erebor. Fewer still kept them at the ruin of Azanulbizar. The dwarves escaped their ancestral homes with the clothes on their backs and scraps of bread baked on stones, with the pyres of the burned dwarves still smoldering behind them.
It’s a survivor of that flight who scratches down the first idle plans. She remembers seeing Dain Ironfoot, barely more than a child–but then he seemed such a grown-up to her, at the time, when she was still a beardless babe only just walking–bloodied and limping on a crutch as he stood up to claim the leadership his father had left in his wake. Dain and Thorin, young dwarrows still, but already old with the weight of the world. She remembers that better than the dragon, better than the battle. Her mother died in Ered Luin, but not before writing a poem for the burned ones, a poem for the two dwarves who had surrendered their own youth for the sake of their people. She can’t stand the idea of her mother’s poem being lost, the way so many things were lost in flight after flight.
That dwarrowdam dies, an old dwarf in her bed with her loved ones around her, and it’s her best friend’s daughter who comes across the plans, many years later. Yes, she thinks, looking at the levers, at the vague notes about possible lettering methods, yes, that could work.
It doesn’t work, at first. It doesn’t work a lot, really, but the dwarves are a stoneheaded bunch and not in a rush to be put off by a few petty failings. Or by a total collapse of the base mechanics, the first time she tries to pull the lever. The dwarrowdam unearths herself from a pile of metal and gears and wood, with the help of a few other folks who heard the complicated crash and weary cursing, and starts again.
It takes most of two years and a lot of brainstorming–first with her friends, then with her guild, then with any poor fool careless enough to wander into her workshop–but the scribe-machine works. She shrieks and bursts into tears when the first page comes out crisp and clean and beautiful, and sprints into the great hall waving it triumphantly over her head.
The paper says, in kuzdh runes, plain and clear, We are Mahal’s children, and we are yet unbroken.
The prosecutor who subpoenaed and cross-examined Hitler in 1931 for a murder trial against four brownshirts was a Jewish lawyer named Hans Litten. The three-hour testimony left Hitler so unnerved and humiliated that he forbade anyone speak Litten’s name in his presence, and he was killed in a concentration camp. Today, the German bar association is called the Hans Litten Association, and every year they give out the Hans Litten Award for excellence in the legal profession. That’s how you commemorate history.
re millennial killing stuff post: so at my second job I edited a dissertation on how young consumers are changing luxury brands, like they won't just buy the same identical handbag bc "oh it's $designer!" like they'd rather spend that money on an experience etc, so brands have had to COMPLETELY change how they approach the new generation - I mentioned this to an older friend cause I thought it was neat & she went "yeah it's weird how young people expect companies to bend over backwards for them"
THIS EXACTLY
My (much older) co worker was talking recently about how she wants the new $300 whatever designer bag, and I was talking about how me and the husband might set $300 aside to go up to House on the Rock for a weekend.
That seems to be pretty standard for the older people I know vs. the younger people I know. For $300, we could get a hotel room overnight, a couple good meals, into House on the Rock, and some money to spend on whatever while we’re there.
And she was just like “But it’s a kate spade bag.”
And I was like “And???? My purse has a unicorn on it I paid $5 for it at Goodwill and I can hold things in it to take up to House on the Rock.”
Great now I'm having emotions about the Hork-Bajir
OH BUDDY JUST YOU WAIT, THERE ARE ALWAYS MORE EMOTIONS TO HAVE ABOUT THE HORK-BAJIR
Ha, your tag “way past Romeo and Juliet” I get it now. *sighs* God do I love ships with angst
You have not known angst until you’ve sailed the good ship Rachel/Tobias. Honestly this was super formative in terms of what ships I do and don’t like, and also what kind of ships I write, but even so: I’ve never come close.
Oh geez… I really like Marco and Rachel friendship….
Marco and Rachel have that excellent A-grade “Yeah we hate each other but also I’ll shank you if you so much as look at them crosseyed” banter dynamic and I love it. Also they’re…kind of similar, in terms of terribleness, and I love the kind of unconscious alliance that springs up because they both have that ruthless cold-eyed clarity about What We Have To Do.
Oh no! He had to watch as they blew the ship apart.Oh geez this poor guy... I hope he does get to stab Vissier 3
*anguished keening* Aaaaaax.
My poor blue trash boy, I love him, he had to watch the Dome ship burn and then he thinks he’s going to die alone at the bottom of a foreign ocean and then some aliens come to find him and tell him his hero brother (who Ax adores) is dead and THEN he joins a horrible horrible guerrilla war and tbh I’m dying over it always.
OH GOD It’s the Andalire SOCIEEEEETYYYYY
YEP.
YEP IT IS.
HONESTLY THE DEATH RITUAL IS VERY LOVELY BUT ALSO OH MY GOD AX YOU DON’T HAVE TO DIE IN BATTLE IN ORDER TO BE WORTH SOMETHING PLEASE TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF.
hi!! i absolutely adore your Blue Sword headcanons (why doesn't it have a bigger fandom. why.) and i cried a little when i read the last ones. if i may ask, do you have any headcanons about the children?
(i sent that before i meant to weeps, sorry, feel free to ignore this one if you want) also, luthe is probably their weird uncle who loves them all and tells wild stories that no one quite believes. (i hope you’re having a good day!)
Ummm, let’s see, headcanons about the kidlets. I’m not going to do the headcanon meme because I’m mostly making these up, but I hope these are good!
Tor Mathin
Tor is a lot of things–first sola, horseman, a good tactician, a promising young king–but a swordsman is not among them. He’s passable, technically very good, but he lacks joy. Tor is the first person in his family in the gods only know how long to prefer spears, and dredges up an old design for a Damarian saddle that allows him to strap the poles to his horse’s side for easy access.
Tor takes after his namesakes–both of them, actually, although naturally Tor’s dry humor and stoic sufferance of small children didn’t make history nearly as much as his Just-ness. But what I’m saying here is that, basically, Tor has a very droll sense of humor and is an incredibly excellent big brother who claims dibsies on his youngest sister on the spot and routinely allows himself to be dragged into trouble with her. Mathin is delighted.
Aerin Amelia
Obviously, Aerin Amelia is the next carrier of Gonturan. One of them, at least. She is a talented stateswoman and the beloved first sol of her people, and her mother teaches her swordplay, and Aerin associates it with laughing and joy and the beat of sunlight on her cheeks. She beats the crap out of her brother frequently and Tor puts up with it because he’s a good sport.
She likes to dress up like her godmother–Amelia dotes on her, and for Aerin’s sixteenth birthday the girl shows up in crimson and blue, a dress Amelia sewed for her over the winter, somewhere between a Hill robe and a layered Homeland dress, with pearls woven into her bright red hair.
Aerin and Senay’s baby sister Rilly fall in love and get married and Senay and Harry are both pleased beyond belief. Aerin, much like her namesake, is Tall, and Rilly is kind of Tiny all her life, they’re adorable.
Jack
Jack is a fucking kelar powerhouse. All his siblings are, they take after the old kings, but Jack in particular is juiced. His talents run toward rock and stone, and when his kelar wakes he almost shakes down a wing of the citadel. He and Harry ride out into the Hills and she sets up a camp in a little valley where she once learned how to fight, and they just sort of wait out the worst of it. She kisses his hair and rubs his back and it’s a terrible few weeks, as he tries to get control, but it’s an oddly warm memory, later.
To that effect, Luthe likes Jack very much, he reminds Luthe of the Aerin easily as much as his sister, and although Jack is far from being a full mage, Luthe teaches him a few tricks. One that Jack particularly loves, because of the way it makes his sisters yell at him in mock aggravation, includes turning little posy rings of pimchie flowers into golden birds that sing before flying away into nothingness. Luthe observes Jack’s talent for this particular parlor trick and very scrupulously does not burst out laughing.
Hari
The youngest child of Harry and Corlath is two things above all else: an incredibly skilled rider and the fucking family prankster. Tor adores her from the minute she’s born, a wrathful little thing with jet black hair and tiny clenched fists, and he makes a fantastic babysitter, and she gets on her first horse at two years old because she talked Tor into letting her ride his stallion. It was a terrifying experience for Tor as well as all the sofor who witnessed their teeny baby sol shrieking with delight as she clung to the horse’s mane like a burr. It was also the moment that Tor realized his baby sister could probably ask him to hand over the kingship and he might actually do it.
Hari and Aerin trade custody of Gonturan, sometimes, more just for variety than anything else. Aerin usually carries it because Aerin actually likes swords, whereas Hari likes to fight with a pair of knives. This is considered something of a sneak-thief’s weapon, in Damar, but Hari is very stubborn and Harry isn’t exactly a strong candidate for telling any of her children “No, you can’t, Because Tradition” and Corlath is too thrilled with his life to take a hard line on something so unimportant. So it’s mostly Hari’s tutors kind of moaning through their teeth as she learns to throw knives and Hari young woman is that your brother’s best tunic you’re using for target practice.
Yes, it absolutely is Jack’s best tunic, because Hari, in the fashion of younger siblings everywhere, is, after all, something of a sneak-thief, and she stole it to see how long it would take him to notice.
It has been three weeks and while Aerin and Tor have both noticed, Jack shows no sign of picking up on it.
hi! can you do allura/shiro or matt/shiro for the ship grading? (I hope you're well!)
All right, listen, I am excited to be excited about Matt as a character but thus far he has such negligible onscreen time as to be pretty much a wholecloth creation of the fandom. Thus: Shiro/Allura, my loves.
Ship Grade: A+ (OTP) | A (I love it) | B (It’s really cute) | C (Not a bad ship) | D (I’m neutral on it) | E (I don’t really like it) | F (NOTP) | N/A (Don’t know it well enough)
I love Shiro as a character because I’m an ENORMOUS SUCKER for PTSD-ridden ex-prisoners who are holding it together by the skin of their teeth and on the merits of a core of solid titanium determination. I love Allura as a character because I’m a huge fan of royalty whose nations are half-destroyed (or all destroyed) and who are still fighting the good fight because they believe that nobility is an obligation, not a privilege. I’m enormously in love with them as a couple because they’re mutually the adults in the room most of the time and, A, I love relationships where the people in question can relax around each other more than anyone else, and, B, they’re just so ruthlessly competent and I live and breathe competence porn and I am NOT turning down such a perfectly dovetailed pair of personalities who can ALSO be a solid 10/10 in capability.
Also, that shot of Shiro catching her hand and pulling it down in whichever episode of Season 2 was a more compelling argument for the ship than anything else I’ve seen for any other arrangement. So like. Here I am. Let the alien princess and her right hand man smooch.
…I just realized that between this and Elfangor/Loren I have A Type and it’s half-alien battle couples who bond over learning how to be EVEN MORE COMPETENT with each other.
Ship Grade: A+ (OTP) | A (I love it) | B (It’s really cute) | C (Not a bad ship) | D (I’m neutral on it) | E (I don’t really like it) | F (NOTP) | N/A (Don’t know it well enough)
Where do I even START with my affection for this ship. Like, despite the unremitting horrors of war, this ship has it all. Alien expressions of affection, Battle Couple shenanigans, Loren and everything she chooses to be in the face of not one but three alien abductions, cute flirting, comedy, tragedy, THE WHOLE NINE YARDS. God, Animorphs can fucking deliver on the ships.
But I think the thing I like the most about Loren and Elfangor is how much they learn from each other? Like, okay, Loren learns about the universe, she learns about how big the galaxy is and how much there is to see, about science she could never have dreamed of and what it means to fight. That’s obvious. But Elfangor learns so much from her, too–the Andalites teach courage with a combination of formal education and shame culture, but Loren is the first person as far as I can tell who teaches Elfangor that feeling emotions isn’t in conflict with being brave.
More than that, though, Loren brings a kind of brutally hard-headed, incredibly human pragmatism to combat that Elfangor seems to gravitate toward almost immediately. Like, this is humanity’s Special Thing in Animorphs (in addition to our mastery of the sense of taste), it’s that we’re very clear-sighted about our goals (be they freedom from a Yeerk or victory over an enemy) and we care much more about achieving them than about anything else. Plenty of people in the series talk about how strange humans are in their absolute willingness to fight against hopeless odds–everyone from Temrash 114 to Edriss, Visser One herself, mention it. The Hork-Bajir bring up how much they agree with it, free or dead. Taxxons, Andalites, the Arn, even the Ellimist.
And Loren teaches Elfangor that brutal human practicality from the very first time they meet. He meets her and she doesn’t know what he is or what’s going on, but she’s already eliminated the immediate threat to her safety and she is more than willing to take out this new potential threat as well. Loren wants to get home, sure she does, but saving the universe takes priority, so okay, sure, she’ll go on a potentially life-threatening mission to make sure that happens. Fighting Pre-Visser Three (actual Visser Three at that point? Not sure) in the Time Matrix world, Loren doesn’t mess around with fancy forms, she throws rocks and beats things with a bat and does whatever works no matter how dishonorable or underhanded it might be.
And then Elfangor, after everything, when he’s returned to the timeline, what does he do to win a battle?
He rams a ship with his fighter, in the most graceless, unadorned, pragmatic battle tactic I’ve ever seen.
I love these kids so much, y’all. Does Loren/Legs art even exist, y’all, where is it.
why do superheroes care so much about their cities? its always “i have to protect this city” or “people of this city will die” like chill i mean shit i dont even know who my mayor is
people still dont understand what freedom of speech is, christ
1. Freedom of speech means the government cant prosecute you for shit you say, and it does NOT include threats or incitement 2. Freedom of speech is not the right to be heard. Literally nobody has any obligation to give someone a platform to speak
Being banned from a website for perpetuating Nazi ideology is not a violation of free speech
the most often missed and most important words are “congress shall make no law”
It's little moments like the elevator scene that I remember these guys are teenagers :) and that they will have to live with the trauma of basically being the front line soldiers in an intergalactic war at the age of 13. I'm really liking these books,
I honestly love the weird little moments of party banter where the kids all stand around and talk about whether they’ve seen any good movies lately or anything, because you’re SO RIGHT, they’re babies and it’s so clear in those moments. These poor tiny teens, someone get them a therapist. And then get that therapist a therapist. Honestly this is just a spiraling fractal line of therapists hearing terrible trauma.
Wait
….
They won! Holy smokes THEY ACTUALLY WON A BATTLE! THERE WAS A LITTLE DISMEMBERMENT BUT THEY WON!!!
Aaaaaah, yay, I didn’t actually expect anyone to do this.
Ship Grade: A+ (OTP) | A (I love it) | B (It’s really cute) | C (Not a bad ship) | D (I’m neutral on it) | E (I don’t really like it) | F (NOTP) | N/A (Don’t know it well enough)
I believe I’ve mentioned that, first of all, I’m an absolute sucker for complementary superpowers and Girl On Fire/Fireproof Demon Hero is consequently my exact shit, and, second of all, I really like ships where they click so well in combat, and, third of all, the whole dynamic of “I lit a whole room on fire and killed a thousand demons for you”//”I low-key almost ended the world for you and then probably threatened the angel of death to make it give you back” is MY WHOLE LIFE.
Oh, and of course I’m hilariously into the mutual pining that’s going on there.
JFC TOM!!!! MY BOY!!!! HE DIDN"T THEM TOUCJHING JAKEEEE!
LISTEN I WILL CRY WITH YOU FOREVER ABOUT TOM AND HOW MUCH THE ONLY THING HE WANTS ANYMORE IS FOR THE YEERKS TO LEAVE HIS LITTLE BROTHER ALONE, THAT’S ALL HE WANTS, GOD, I’M GOING TO CRY.
Book 6 was so good! I loved that Yeerk perspective! Tom THO!!!
No one loves the animorphs as much as me is what I’m learning today
You lie, I will fight you for that title.
You actually have a lot of animorphs content on your blog so based on that alone you may win however I am currently hand-writing an spn animorphs au at work soooo
I’ll see you with the fact that I hand wrote this Animorphs/Avengers crossover fic five years ago on a road trip with my best friend, and raise you the fact that I own the entire series hard-copy.
Hi hello I am entering this contest unsolicited with the fact that I have dragged at least three (QUESTIONABLY FOUR but that second anon is elusive, and I don’t know how many people actually took my recommendation outside of those people) adult humans into reading this series within the past eight months and am writing a fifty part series of miscellaneous Animorphs fics from that one prompt list.
I LOVED these books back when they came out. I used to save up all my hard earned babysitting money to buy the newest book as soon as it came out because the library never got it right away and there was always a huge waiting list. I gave up reading them sometime around December 1998 because it seemed like the story was never going to conclude, it was just going to be more and more and more and more books. I actually didn’t realize that it had an end until seeing people talk about Animorphs on my dash. I should see if my mom still has my copies in her basement. Now I want to see how it ends, lol.
A+: OTP A: I love it B: It’s really cute C: Not a bad ship D: I’m neutral on it E: I don’t really like it F: NOTP N/A: I don’t know the ship well enough
No one loves the animorphs as much as me is what I’m learning today
You lie, I will fight you for that title.
You actually have a lot of animorphs content on your blog so based on that alone you may win however I am currently hand-writing an spn animorphs au at work soooo
I’ll see you with the fact that I hand wrote this Animorphs/Avengers crossover fic five years ago on a road trip with my best friend, and raise you the fact that I own the entire series hard-copy.
Hi hello I am entering this contest unsolicited with the fact that I have dragged at least three (QUESTIONABLY FOUR but that second anon is elusive, and I don’t know how many people actually took my recommendation outside of those people) adult humans into reading this series within the past eight months and am writing a fifty part series of miscellaneous Animorphs fics from that one prompt list.
do you think that during the scene where harry and corlath sit at the fountain he was like holy shit holy shit holy shit she's holding my hand holy shit and then later was like sheheldmyhandsheheldmyhandsheHELDmyHAND and one of the riders (probably mathin) was like im gonna tell this story at your wedding
Well, as we all know, the exact order of people who realized that Harry and Corlath were in love* was:
The Riders
The hafor
Bystanders at the laprun trials
Sungold
Corlath, probably immediately after she took his mask at the trials
Gonturan
The City hafor
Random City folk
Various Damarian soldiers, including Senay and Terim at different times
Luthe/Aerin
Jack Dedham
Random Outlanders following mad Harry into battle
Kentarre and her archers
Richard Crewe, probably because Jack tells him
Small animals on the side of the path
Passing birds
Thurra probably????
MAUR THE BLACK DRAGON, DEAD THESE MANY CENTURIES
PEOPLE IN SUNSHINE, WHO AREN’T EVEN IN THE SAME UNIVERSE
Harry
*Narknon is not included because, as it has no bearing on her life besides the improvement of her porridge quality, she maintains catlike, disdainful disinterest
So what I’m saying is: yes, yes he does. And at their wedding Mathin, in his capacity as Harry’s stand-in entire family, presents her as the Daughter of the Riders and tells the entire assembled city about how it took a fight, a mutiny, a war, a miracle, and a near-death experience for Harry to see what was right in front of her nose, and in the meantime their noble king was blushing like a teenager after so much as touching her hand.
Honestly, my goal is to build a life, and career, where I’m not constantly waiting for the weekend. I don’t want to live that way, where I hate five days of the week because I hate my life and job so much, that the only relief I get is Saturday and Sunday. I want to enjoy my life, and not wish it away every week. I want each day to matter to me, in some way, even some small way. I want to like my life, all of it, not just my life on the weekend.
Yes to your Jake headcanon. 'Big Jake' to me always meant that he was broad shouldered and tall and just solid (which means Tom was probably even taller if he called him midget but that could have also been a big brother teasing thing). No offense to anyone if they want to headcanon Jake as being chubby, but that's not how I interepreted his nickname at all.
I have read some EXCELLENT chubby Jake headcanons and I’m here for it, tbqh, but yeah, IDK I knew a lot of just…really big dudes when I was younger, the gentle giant types who seem kind of bemused by being the size of a fridge. And Jake always struck me as the type of guy who seems kind of bemused about being so tall. Also, who else is with me that Tom used to call Jake midget because Jake was shorter than him as a kid and then Tom got infested with a Yeerk and the Yeerk never changed the nickname even though by the end of the war Jake is three inches taller than his big brother. Obviously in an AU where Everything Is Okay this means that Tom calls Jake midget as like an ongoing family inside joke that makes people very confused because Jake is Tall.
i love shrikes because they’re horrible little carnivores whose feeding habits are grim enough to earn then the nickname ‘butcherbird’ but they look like this
