howsbusiness-noneofyours asked: Okay, question. Before following you, I hadn't even HEARD of animorphs. And I see it a lot from you. What is it?!
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/
This, all of this. Animorphs was the series that taught me about war, and of the butcher behind every knight.
(It also taught me to side-eye neatly-wrapped-up happy endings.)It saved my life as a teen which was pretty neat
i can’t believe it’s 2016 and there still hasn’t been an animated adaptation of animorphs
(Source: rileybleu, via chromatographic)
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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
(via goblinbutch)
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.
(via princehal9000)
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.
(via renew-leverage)
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
(Source: jiubilee, via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
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.
(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)
includes cis girls, trans girls, nb girls, lesbians, bi girls, pan girls, anyone who is a girl and likes girls! excludes terfs!
(Source: skatergf, via skymurdock)
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