Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

@littlestartopaz asked for A, G, and P from this fandom ask meme!

A: Your current OTP (Topaz specified ATLA)

…I’m not very interesting and I actually really like Aang/Katara, but my favorite ship is Zuko/Mai and I’m perpetually really cranky that she’s apparently???  Not his Queen/Empress/Lady Wife/whatever you call it????  They’re a really devoted and incredibly salty pairing and that speaks to me.  And also I like watching Mai wreck people while Zuko stands back and smirks.

G: What was your first fandom?

X-Men.  Since I was seven.  I wanted to be a mutant and go to Xavier’s about 10000000x more than I wanted to go to Hogwarts.

P: Invent a random AU for any fandom

The AU in which the Animorphs manage to drive off the Yeerks and still keep their shit pretty much 100% under wraps because the BPRD from Hellboy catches on before the general populace and makes all the ex-Controllers sign more nondisclosure agreements than anyone ever because they’re kind of like “…we don’t…have an aliens department…but we’re usually responsible for this kind of shit?”  And they get kind of high-key glomped by the BPRD for the brand-spanking new BARD (Bureau of Alien Research and Defense), which is comprised of like five squeaky new agents, an ex-Marine captain who lasts about two and a half seconds before he quits, and an archivist who almost bawls her eyes out when she’s shown the stack of paperwork she has to do.  Plus four sixteen-year-old humans, an Andalite who opts to stick around and play galactic liason for his best friends, and a talking hawk.  

Some headcanons:

• The BARD has a truly astounding agent overturn rate, because people come in, and about 75% of them leave when they suddenly realize that they’re expected to take Jake’s lead.  It’s a problem.  It’s more of a problem because Marco, Tobias, and Rachel gleefully (and unsubtly) take bets.  Tobias, for the first time literally ever, has money, because he has an uncanny knack for picking out the ones who will make it.  He buys the others stuff because what the fuck else is he going to do with it.

• Hellboy thinks they’re the greatest.  He worries because they are Very Young, but also: Rachel morphed elephant and cleaned his clock, he thinks they’re the greatest.  And he gets being hurled into a war you don’t want to or aren’t ready to fight.  Hellboy comes to visit the BARD all the time, especially since it’s an Approved Outing according to the BPRD.  Also he and Tobias are weirdly good friends, which confuses a lot of people.  

• Abe Sapien speaks fluent thoughtspeech and Ax finds him fascinating, they’re good friends.  The first time he has a conversation with the others, Rachel punches him in the face for reading her mind.  Jake comes pretty close too.  Fortunately, Abe believes in the principle of ‘forgive and forget’ and is perfectly willing to not read their minds, so the lot of them get along okay after that.

• Rachel and Liz actually don’t match ideologies very well, they prickle off each other too much–being unable to control herself is Rachel’s greatest anxiety, and relishing the destruction is Liz’s greatest fear, and they scare each other.  Liz and Cassie match up worse, though, because Liz is still the sort of woman who will ruthlessly immolate an entire room in order to save Hellboy.  That’s not to say the Animorphs don’t like Liz, though, they like her just fine and she immediately installs herself as their de facto big sister.  Her self-assumed duties include:
• making sure Jake remembers to eat
• listening to Marco complain about how fucking stupid bureaucracy is and how much easier when it was, quote, “just wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am and blow up a McDonalds”
• providing Tobias with a slightly more useful sounding board regarding Rachel than, well, Marco
• teaching Cassie to meditate
• explaining colloquialisms to Ax (she’s gotten weirdly good at this from hanging around Hellboy and Abe so much)
• letting Rachel rage when Rachel needs it, because if there’s one thing she gets, it’s the occasional need to scream yourself hoarse just because everything is so unfair

flvffs asked: top six female characters (if this is still running??)

Oooo-hooo-hooo, it’s been a goddamn WHILE since I went into my inbox, yeah, I have a lot of stuff to catch up on.  But yes!  This is still going!  This is the top six meme, for those of you who (justifiably) have forgotten since a month ago.

Also, this ask if just goddamn MEAN.  How???  Am I supposed to pick????

By cheating ruthlessly, that’s how.

Books

• Jamethiel Priest’s-bane, of the Kencyrath Chronicles, because she’s fierce as fuck and rides a rathorn into battle and is probably going to end the world.  Literally what else could you WANT in a character.

• Harimad-sol AKA Harry Crewe and Lady Aerin Dragon-killer, and I’m cheating MORE by putting them in the same category because they’re from the same series.  They are my beloved childhood friends and heroes, okay, the Blue Sword and the Hero and the Crown are goddamn glorious.

• RACHEL.  Because GODDAMN ANIMORPHS.  I’m not going to say more because I’m writing an epic rant about every book as I reread it.  Also Cassie gets honorary mention because GODDAMN CASSIE.

• Hermione Granger.  C’mon, y’all, I’m part of the Harry Potter generation and I’m a Gryffindor, Hermione is basically mandatory for this list.

• Kitsune Yukiko from Stormdancer, my L O V E.  Someone come cry with me.

• Um!  Um!  I only have one more, um!  THERE ARE TOO MANY.  Fuck it, Galadriel.  And Arwen.  They’re tied for LOTR lady-love.  With Eowyn as a close second.

Movies/TV

• IMPERATOR FURIOSA, ‘nuff said.

• The Honorable Miss Phryne Fisher, because I’m literally watching Miss Fisher right now and remembering that I adore this show and have the worst crush on Phryne.  Also her lesbian doctor friend is awesome.

• Buffy Goddamn Summers.  

• Echo from Dollhouse.  “I’m not broken.”  And honorary mention to Dolores from Westworld.  “I imagined a narrative where I wasn’t the victim.”  God, stories about empty bodies being filled up with souls are my SHIT.

• Rey.  And General Leia Organa.

• MAKO MOTHERFUCKIN’ JAEGER-DRIVIN’ KAIJU-STOMPIN’ MORI

Comics

• Rogue.  I like shitkicker comics Rogue a lot more than movie Rogue, not gonna lie to you.

• Natasha Goddamn Romanoff.  

• Wonder Woman.  Because she’s fucking Wonder Woman.

• Kitty Pryde.  I feel that she has been grievously wronged by the movies and I’ve taken it very personally.

• Ororo fucking Monroe, god, Storm is everything to me, she’s a goddess.

• Jean Grey.  I know a lot of people think Jean is…I don’t know, boring or something?  But I just.  I love her a lot, I got started on the comics rather than the original movies, and Sophie Turner CRUSHED IT in Apocalypse.
  

sroloc--elbisivni asked: in the vein of the previous ask, if I'm not being annoying--top six animal forms you would choose to morph into?

YOU ARE NEVER ANNOYING ME WITH ASK MEMES.  Okay, because I am the way I am, the morphs are split up by function rather than ranked, there are more functions but these are the six morphs I would really really want.

Wolf: Battle Morph

Wolves are tough, powerful, and they have hella stamina on the run or in a fight.  If I wanted more agility, I’d go timber wolf, if I wanted power and bulk I’d get an arctic wolf/Yellowstone wolf because they’re about the size of a small pony.  I’ve always loved wolves, they’re just absolutely stunning animals, and while I lived out in MT I saw a wolf pack face down a hungry grizzly bear, and that means I have capital-R Respect for them.

Grizzly Bear: Battle Morph

Um, we’ve covered that I’ve wanted to be Rachel since I was Smol, right?  But that aside, for just pure crushing power, a grizzly is a good bet.  Grizzly v. car ends with a totaled car, I know this from seeing the effects, and they can truck along at a good 30 mph given the inclination to do so.  Their vision is for shit, but like.  They can also swat a person’s head clear off their shoulders like a fucking soccer ball.  Who the fuck needs good vision, I don’t even have that as a human and as a human I can’t bat someone’s head off their shoulders.

Red-tailed Hawk: Recon Morph

So, my logic here.  First of all, the vision.  A bird of prey is the perfect morph for recon because vision.  No point getting up close and personal with your target when you can follow them leisurely at half a mile.  Second of all, red-tails are the most common hawk in the Americas, and they thrive in just about every habitat warmer than ‘Arctic’ and wetter than ‘desert,’ which makes them much less remarkable than, say, a bald eagle (I love Rachel).  Third of all, and this is the reason I went with a more noticeable raptor rather than, say, a rat with wings (I live on the coast and my view on seagulls is…not generous), a hawk is actually worth something in a fight.  A female red-tailed hawk can push a five-foot wingspan with a razor-sharp beak and talons, and even the smaller males have the speed and natural weapons to make a menace of themselves in a fight–a seagull, on the other hand, might blend in with the crowd, but they also have fucking webbed feet.  And finally, Christ, if I’m going to turn into a bird I’m going to turn into something that can soar for hours, not flit from roof to roof and eat Subway sandwiches momentarily set aside by their owners.  In summary: bird of prey.  Also Tobias was a fave so I’m predisposed toward red-tails.

Cat: Recon Morph

Okay, hear me out here: alley cats as spies.  Cats can hear through walls, there’s literally no reason not to use one as a spy.  Stick me on a roof, I’ll eavesdrop all fucking day (with breaks every two hours for demorphing).  Also, while cats aren’t very big, they’re generally pretty good in a fight (as anyone who’s been scratched up by an otherwise-friendly housecat will attest) and they’re pound-for-pound one of the most efficient predators in the world.  On top of that, stray cats are a common thing in any city–roll around in some dust to scruff yourself up and walk like the streets are yours.  Beats the everloving hell out of a housefly morph.

Dolphin: Water Morph

Literally who doesn’t want to be able to turn into a dolphin.  No one, that’s who.  I fucking love dolphins.  I think I made a comment about this in this write-up, but I’m pretty sure being able to morph, and being able to morph dolphins in particular, has great potential as a treatment for depression (assuming you’re not, you know, the last bastion of defiance against an alien invasion).  I’d like to submit my name to that clinical trial, someone hit me up.  Also, I’m not a confident swimmer but I love the water, so being a dolphin would be EXACTLY aligned with my interests.

Snake: Fun Morph

Am I picky?  No.  Would this morph literally ever be useful?  No.  Do I just really, really want to turn into a snake?  Yes.

sroloc--elbisivni asked: Top six big cats

Oooh, yay!  Top six ask meme

6. Mountain Lion

Okay, like, these things are gorgeous and all, and very impressive, all silvery-brown, but they lost a higher spot on the list because they FUCKING SCREAM and the first time I heard one it was like fuck-all midnight in Bumfuck Nowhere, MT, and I was convinced that my family and I were all going to be ax murdered and no one was ever going to know because we lived in a town of 90 people with no law enforcement to speak of where people went missing in the mountains monthly.  However, there’s a certain level of badassery to that, so they still made the list.

5. Normal Lion

It’s…a fucking lion…it had to get on the list somewhere on account of being a fucking lion.

4. Cheetah

Did you know that the reason they get cheetahs dog-friends is because cheetahs are so high-strung that they basically can’t function as creatures?  So they get therapy dogs to, like, lower their blood pressure.  And honestly same.  Also the science of how cheetahs run so fucking fast is AMAZING and makes me happy, they’re like spotted Slinkies with legs.

3. Snow Leopard

MAXIMUM FLOOF.  There’s a picture somewhere of a snow leopard with its tail in its mouth and I can’t find it BUT I LOVE THAT PICTURE.  Snow leopards are the perfect combination of lethality and floof.  Also they do parkour, basically, and you have not truly admired a creature until you’ve seen a snow leopard run across a wall.

2. Black Panther

Actually black panthers are melanistic jaguars!  But I like them a lot and kind of always have, I have a toy black panther I’ve had since I was very wee, her name is Casseopia, I think.  I was on an astronomy kick.  They’re amazing and their black coats are so sleek and beautiful and I’m a fan.

And coming in at Number 1. Siberian Tiger

Everyone remembers how I read Far Too Much Animorphs at the age of seven, yes?  I have a genuine adoration for the Siberian tiger because it’s Jake’s battle morph.  And furthermore: look at this gorgeousness.  How could I NOT. 

They’re big, sleek, beautiful, and their numbers are (very very slowly) on the rise.  I love them very much.

In conclusion: as we’ve seen, I know little to nothing about big cats, but I like them anyway.

ask me my top six anything

(Source: ltdebmorgan, via n-haught)

Anonymous asked: 8 and 14 for the author's ask?

*squeak* YAY MORE ASK MEME.  Y’all should send me more questions because YAY ASK MEME.

8) favorite genre to write

I already said this here, but it’s short so *throws confetti* FANTASY MOTHERFUCKERS

14) do you make playlists for your current wips?

HahahaHA yeah.  Wow yeah.  Not for fics, but my original works get HUGE playlists on Spotify, which then get subdivided by character or pairing or whatever.  The Polaris playlist is like…seven hours long, with subsets of playlists for Seb/Jun Li, Lessa/Max, Lessa and Max individually, Marshal North, Marshal North and her wife, and one just titled Music for the Dead for the wakes and funerals at Polaris.  The Falls the Shadow playlist (actually the Gunmetal Revelations playlist, because FtS is the first in a trilogy) is twelve hours long, with subplaylists for Sam/Michael, Oz/Kit, Billy/Colin, and the archangels and Lucifer.  I go HARD AS FUCK on the playlist thing.  And as usual you can blame the fuck out of @twistedangelsays for all of that, because prior to her encouragement I was too sheepish to make myself playlists for novels that didn’t even exist.

Anonymous asked: 7, 8, 10, 18

*runs around flapping arms* So many people did the thiiiiing, I love it!  

7) when asked, are you embarrassed or enthusiastic to tell people that you write?

Um…depends on my mental state that day.  If I’m having an ‘up’ day where I’m in good mental shape and the anxiety et al are chill, I’m really enthusiastic about it.  Because, God, guys, gals, and nonbinary pals, I love my writing, it is my whole heart, and I basically live in a constant state of “SOMEONE COME YELL WITH ME ABOUT THIS NOVEL THAT DOESN’T EXIST BECAUSE I HAVEN’T WRITTEN IT YET.”  On the other hand, if I’m having a ‘down’ day, or a slightly precarious sort of day, I’m not embarrassed per se, but one disinterested remark or sarcastic comment can put me into a spiral that can last for a long time.  I’ve abandoned whole universes without a backward glance because of stuff like that.  There was this one universe that I created as an assignment for a science class that ended that way–we were supposed to create superheroes based on the four major biomolecules, and the whole class turned in crappy comics about, like, ‘Daring DNA’ and ‘Lady Lipid’ or whatever, but naturally I created four real people and gave them superpowers/secret identities and wrote up whole justifications for why their powers and personalities and places in the group fit each biomolecule and handed in twenty pages of origin story and action figures, and I got a D on the assignment.  The teacher actually failed me at first, but raised it because “at least I knew what the four biomolecules were” and even though I had an entire novel and universe plotted out, I scrapped the whole thing and never touched it again.

8) favorite genre to write

*throws confetti* FANTASY, MOTHERFUCKERS. 

10) write in silence or with background noise? with people or alone?

I answered this one here!

16) are there any characters who haunt you?

In…what sense?  In the positive sense, all my characters kind of haunt me, more so if I finished their novel or one of their novels.  Like, they’re real people, my head is a pretty cluttered space with all the people up there.  In the negative sense, the characters in the novels I’ve abandoned kind of…loom.  Like that novel I mentioned up there?  Fucking haunting me.

Anonymous asked: 3, 5, 6?

I love ask memes, I really do, they’re very soothing.  From this!

3) what order do you write in? front of book to back? chronological? favorite scenes first? something else?

I start on page one and write until I get to the last page.  Every once in a while, when I’m bored and/or distracted and/or need motivation, I’ll do what I call ‘writing ahead’ and write individual scenes or events ahead of time and then integrate them later, but if I write ahead at length, it’s something that’s taking place immediately after the writing that I’m caught up on.  I just really hate having to meticulously go over the stuff I’m integrating in to make sure it’s all contiguous and everything.

5) character you were most surprised to end up writing

I answered this one here!

6) something you would go back and change in your writing that it’s too late/complicated to change now

Um…I dunno.  It might have been kind of interesting to make Sam Lightworth a lesbian, but I like the dynamic of “tall snarky angry dude crumbles all over tiny lethal wicked-eyed girl with the fate of the world in her hands” that I ended up with in FtS.  I just…have a lot of things that I write and generally I get pretty committed to the way things are, because my characters are very real to me.  Altering them after the fact feels kind of like a betrayal.

sroloc--elbisivni asked: multiples of 5 for the ask meme?

Yay!  From this ask meme.

5) character you were most surprised to end up writing

Whenever I end up writing someone genuinely nice, I’m totally baffled.  Like, okay, in my Falls the Shadow novel, one of the Four Horsemen is named Kit (Famine) and she’s just flat-out a genuine sweetheart.  Will Hargrove, from my unfinished novel Emrys Ascendant, is Too Nice for any of this supernatural shit to be happening to him.  Or Lessa, from Polaris?  Like, yes, she can murder a dude with lightning, but also cartoon birds probably braid her hair in the morning.

10) write in silence or with background noise? with people or alone?

Background noise, always background noise, I hate silence, I build incredibly expansive and intricate playlists for my various novels.  And if I’m around people, they have to be background people–I write really well in coffee shops, libraries, ice cream stores, that sort of thing.

15) why did you start writing?

I always told stories, you know?  I was really into playing pretend as a kid, and I started memorizing fairy tales and folklore as a very smol bean.  And then when I was like eight or nine, my beloved aunt (sarcasm) told me that I was too old to play pretend and I needed to stop living in my own world and get my head out of the clothes and grow up.  I was a pretty messed up kid, so naturally I took this as gospel, but I still had stories to tell, so I started writing them down.  Flash forward a decade or so and I’m putting out about a novel every 18 months.

20) do you write in long sit-down sessions or in little spurts?

Both!  When I have a few hours I can scrape together without feeling like I’m volunteering to have more dirt shoveled down onto my coffin (literally fuck college so much), I can write straight through that whole time period without trouble.  If I have a whole day, I’ve been known to forget meals or sleep or water.  On the other hand, I also carry a notebook and scrawl down bits of scenes and conversations whenever I’m sitting and waiting for things.  Whenever I’m talking to someone who says something like “I’ve always wanted to write a novel but I don’t have time” my response is usually “No one has time, you usually make time.”  I mean, I sure as hell don’t have time to write novels, I just kind of do it anyway.

25) copy/paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of

Okay I know this is more than a few sentences but I am!!!  Literally so proud of this!!!  It’s from a story I just now started about…um, basically a story about how I never got over my smol bean rage about the whole “Getting kicked back into the real world as a kid again after growing up in Narnia” schtick.  

“A drink for the Wanderer,” I said, switching from the bland notes of English to the hard lilt of Alleiran and pouring out a dribble of scotch into the northern mug.  “To fire, to travel, to lies and battle.  Bring us home alive and send us out again.”  The familiar benediction warmed something cold in my chest, left me trembling on the dangerous edge of tears.  “Bless your servant, Wanderer, for I am far from home and have no war to fight.” The last part of the prayer was personal, individual.  I had been making the same simple request for years.

I passed the bottle across the table and he took it, tipping it not quite far enough to pour scotch into the southern mug.

“An empty cup for the Lady of Stars,” he said in Alleiran, subdued.  “To storm, to sky, to the fallen light.  Raise us up and let us fly.”  He paused and let out a breath that shook, closing his eyes as if he couldn’t stand to look at me during the personal prayer.  His prayer had been the same as long as mine had.  “Bless your servant, Lady, for I have done great harm that cannot be repaid.  Watch over my sister as she walks between days, where the living cannot go.  Grant me clarity, guard my sanity, show me a bright path.”  He opened his eyes and offered me the bottle, adding quietly, “Save us from the past.”