@lathori has wriggled a deal out of me to write her TWO happy AU’s for Animorphs. This is one of them. An actual college AU where no one is miserable.
Anonymous asked: 7 and whoever you want
7: I do not believe in love at first sight. But god damn. (Look at you.)
Two things. First, it’s a very dangerous thing to say ‘whoever I want,’ because I go straight for the niche fandoms that I love the most. Thus: Animorphs. Second! It has come to my attention that I accidentally swapped two prompts—this line is actually prompt 17, and prompt 7 got used for the Sith!Padme AU. Because I’m a fucking disaster area and my brain likes to pull switches like that on me. (Math classes suck for this exact reason.) But like the Sith!Padme AU is done? And I was halfway through this by the time I realized, so I am VERY sorry but I’m doing this.
Tobias could give you the exact moment he fell in love with Rachel, as a bruised thirteen-year-old kid in a body he barely remembered. Love at first sight was a fairy tale, but he could give every detail of the moment—it was like light being struck from a match, casting everything in a fresh glow.
Admittedly, he remembered everything about that night in the construction site, about Elfangor’s serious eyes and Visser Three’s terrible morph and the desperate giddy feeling in his chest of yes, yes, I knew it, there’s more to this world. Which made a lot more sense, in retrospect, but of course at the time he just knew that something had clicked into place. While everyone else was standing around being awestruck and wondering, Tobias had been too busy feeling a wash of relief that, oh God, he wasn’t crazy, there really was something else and it was exactly as spectacular as he had always believed it would be.
But even in that chaos, Rachel had been like a beacon.
He’d had a crush on her from the moment he arrived in town, of course, but then he could guarantee that about every boy at their school agreed with him, save the ones who were related to her. He could list five girls off the top of his head who were probably head over heels for Rachel, having a crush on her wasn’t anything special. She was clever and funny and fierce, her beautiful face was almost an afterthought.
And Tobias had needed something bright and strong to hold onto, and just being around Rachel, in the line of her sharp eyes, was a good start.
So it never did shock him, that he was in love with her.
It wasn’t her grip on his hand as they watched Elfangor die, although he was sure everyone would be shocked to hear it. That was just…Rachel, scared half to death and still with strength and ferocity to spare. She clutched his hand because it made her feel better, to steady someone else, and God Tobias had needed it. He’d almost bolted right then, run back to the Andalite’s side, because he barely had a life to live anyway and he’d felt something from Elfangor’s thoughts he’d never felt before. Some messy tangle of regret and pride and grief, all centered around a bright hard thing that made affection look like small fry. The loss of it hurt like broken glass in Tobias’ throat, sharp and bloody. And it was Rachel’s grip on his hand as he cried that kept Tobias hidden behind the wreckage, kept him sane enough to live through the night.
But it was later, that it really hit him.
They were running and, at the time, Tobias had desperately wished for wings. It was almost funny, now, but probably only to him—he’d never told the others how often he wished he could fly away, before he got a new appreciation for the dangers of wishes.
Here was something else the others never knew: he had three cracked ribs that night. There was no way, even with adrenaline pumping ice through his blood, that he would be able to outrun the Hork-Bajir on their tail. Tobias’ forgotten human body was tall, but skinny and out of shape, not strong like Cassie or fast like Jake, he was slow and hurt and shocky. And he had a moment of strange clarity, as if he could see the future as clearly as the Ellimist ever showed it to them. He would die, and it would be awful, but the others would live and that would be…good. They had people who would miss them, and he didn’t. They would live to fight the Andalite’s war, maybe save the world, and Tobias would get to rest.
And then Rachel, tall, athletic Rachel who could probably have outpaced every last one of them, even Jake, slowed, and dropped back. She was shouting, arms outstretched with a wild, ecstatic look of challenge on her face. Tobias could only catch about one word in three, but they were…vivid.
That was the moment. Tobias, tearing across the rough ground of the construction site with impossibility on his heels. Rachel, screaming curses in death’s face in order to protect the people she cared about. It was more like being struck by lightning than anything so polite as falling in love, but.
Goddamn.
Anonymous asked: If you are in the mood to write pain (and, really, when aren't you in the mood to write pain): Rachel/Tobias during the early war
*mean cackling* So when I’m in a very particular mood about the little girl I used to be and how much she was screwed over, I tend to take it out on my characters. Ergo, I am banned from touching my Alleirat story until our houseguest leaves, and will instead be writing Animorphs because how much worse could I make it. Sorry. And since this got pretty long and also there’s not exactly loads of Animorphs fic, I crossposted it to AO3. If you like Animorphs, maybe comment on that shit or something.
here we stand (with our arms folded)
It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since the disastrous attack on the Yeerk pool, the sun still over the trees at the edge of the forest where it butted up against Cassie’s farm. The horse she’d morphed, whose quick legs had saved Cassie and one single woman the night before, was loose in the field, and Rachel was cross-legged on a crate in the barn as Cassie murmured to a wounded rabbit. Rachel felt dazed, with exhaustion and shock, as if every blink and turn of her head demanded a fresh calibration of her brain, a new moment of I’m alive and nothing is okay. She’d spent an hour in the shower after getting home, with the water as hot as she could stand, but she could still feel the grit of the Yeerk pool floor on her palms and feet, and kept expecting to catch a glimpse of Hork-Bajir blood on her human teeth in the mirror.
Cassie didn’t seem much better, her hands still where she would usually be smoothly going through her tasks and her voice mindless nonsense, as if she was as numb as Rachel. The silence wasn’t quite tense, but there was an unmistakable taut feeling that kept even the noisiest patients subdued and quiet.
“Did Jake say why he wanted to talk to us?” Rachel finally asked, and Cassie glanced up, shaking her head.
“No,” she said.
biophilie asked: "u dont know tragedy until you ship a dead girl and a bird" i feel it
son. it was sad as fuck when i first read it when i read it nearly 15 years ago and it is even sadder now because i was cold as fuck as a kid and now as an adult i have the fragile emotional state of an infant that’s been shown the first 10 minutes of the movie “up”. animorphs has destroyed me and showed me how to feel, and most of that is bad and i regret it.
Moran Rereads Animorphs
Book 3: The Encounter
AKA “The first named character attempts suicide and suffers the first breakdown regarding humanity”
Moran Rereads the Animorphs
So turns out we’re doing a post for every single book. Literally why am I like this. Posts will be going here, feel free to block the tag. Spoilers, yadda, yadda.
Book 2: The Visitor
AKA “We get some seriously grim insight on voluntary Controllers, the first bug morph, and probably the reason I hate shrews”
Moran Rereads Animorphs
Listen to me, kiddies. I read these books for the first time when I was SEVEN. (Well, it took me about three years to collect most of them and get to the end, so I read the first half of the series about twelve times by the time I was ten or eleven.) And let me tell you a thing: if you have passed these books up because of the ridiculous covers or because they’re ‘kids’ books’ you need to reevaluate your life. Immediately.
ANYWAY, I found them all for free on the internet (GET THEM HERE) and I’m rereading them/reading them out loud to Adler, because we are actually DISGUSTINGLY domestic. And I was originally planning to comment on them like five at a time, because otherwise I’d have way too many posts, but I wrote like a solid page of things down about the first book alone, so….yeah. I guess books-per-post will be flexible based on how much I say about the book in question. Here be spoilers, obviously. If you don’t want to hear about it, please feel free to block my Animorphs tag, I won’t be offended.
Book 1: The Invasion
AKA “The first named character is murdered, a main character is trapped as a bird, and five kids sign up for a lifetime of PTSD”
Two Form Letters Jake Wrote Up To Make His Life Easier
(originally posted here)
Dear (circle one) Ax Marco Tobias Cassie:
I know that you are trying to be extra brave today because (circle all that apply)
A) You fucked up the last mission
B) You are attempting to live up to Andalite cultural standards of masculinity
C) You are attempting to live up to Human cultural standards of masculinity
D) You are trying to (circle one) revenge/save/impress ______
E) You have a personal vendetta against _____
I would just like you to know that (circle all that apply)
A) You’re right, you did fuck up pretty badly in a way that I never could have anticipated
B) You actually saved all of our butts even if you don’t realize it (see back of page explanation)
C) No matter how hard you try, you will never be as good as you think your brother was
D) You are too close to this
E) You are still very special to me
Because of that, in regards to the special mission you have asked to be a part of in order to redeem yourself, I would like to (circle one)
A) Give you my blessing
B) Ask you not to get yourself killed
C) Ask you not to get all of us killed
D) Politely ask you not to go, which we both know you will probably disregard
E) Tell you no way in hell, if you go I will personally rip you a new asshole
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely
(circle one) Jake Prince Jake
Dear Rachel:
I would just like to take the time to tell you (circle all that apply):
A) Gold star for being brave for everyone else’s benefit today when you were actually scared
B) Thanks for saving my butt
C) Thanks for saving the butt of (circle all that apply) Tobias Ax Cassie Marco
D) I have a special mission/some dirty work for you (see back of page)
E) You are out of control and you scare the pee out of me sometimes
Thank you.
Love,
Cousin Jake
(Source: friendshiptothemax, via mildlyautisticsuperdetective)
"You were brave. You were strong. You were good.
You mattered."
You mattered."
— Animorphs, The Beginning (via chromatographic)
(via chromatographic)
