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

Anonymous asked: I love the idea of all of those animorphs crossovers, but especially the star wars and avengers ones.

HONESTLY I MIGHT WRITE THEM.

But like for a preview: 

STAR WARS: General Leia somehow ends up on Earth and has a Very Grim Conversation with Jake that’s mostly about brothers and warriors and how to live through living through battles and loving someone who doesn’t carry that weight half so harshly.  Alternatively, Rogue One is caught by the Death Star’s blast wave and shunted across a universe, and the Animorphs find them broken and bruised and Cassian and Jyn look into their eyes and see themselves.  Chirrut and Baze call all of them ‘little brother’ and ‘little sister’ and it makes Rachel prickle.  The Animorphs go from six to eleven (Chirrut morphs a mountain lion and Jyn morphs a wolverine, I don’t have the others sorted).  K2 doesn’t make it to Earth at all.  Rogue One still dies for the cause.  The End.

AVENGERS: I have two ideas here.

1. The obvious, in which the Animorphs get a “gift” from the Ellimist (”DOES HE OWN A DICTIONARY” Marco demands) and are sent to a world the Yeerks never touched and pop up RIGHT in the middle of the Battle of New York and handily freak out the Avengers.  Especially Steve, who almost has a heart attack at the sight of a teenaged girl in a leotard sprinting at him and shouting “Toss me”, and literally almost gets his head cut off when he watches her vault off his shield and turn into a fucking grizzly on the way down.  Tony almost throws up when he sees a gorilla get disemboweled and start turning back into a teenager as a bunch of people yell <No medics, no medics, someone protect his head!>
   
2. The one I haven’t really seen yet, in which the War happens a little later (like it ends maybe 2001) and thus the Animorphs are only about 26 when the Avengers are formed.  Still pretty young.  SHIELD kept the whole Yeerks thing under wraps (so. many. NDAs.), so imagine the Avenger’s surprise when the late Phil Coulson is replaced with a young dude build like a football player who tells them to call him Jake, and who introduces his team of equally young people plus one bird as their new backup.

Both of these include Marco and Tony basically talking shit about each other incessantly, Bruce and Cassie talking in soft honest tones about how it feels to be afraid of yourself, Tobias and Clint making horribly unfunny jokes about their childhoods, Steve taking it upon himself to make sure Jake actually talks about the stress of leadership and about how afraid he is of getting someone killed (Bucky and Tom get compared…especially if this is still a thing post-WS) and Natasha and Rachel being really weird friends where mostly they spar.  Oh, and also Ax and Thor bonding about Poptarts.

I also saw Wonder Woman today and I feel like there’s a great AU where that crossover also happens.

wildehacked asked: Marco/Rachel + "Jerry Springer, not Casablanca".

(I like your setup for these so I’m stealing it)

AO3 summary: It’s not a gin joint and it doesn’t belong to him and she’s not the love of his life.  Some days he’s not even sure they’re friends.  They fuck anyway.  (PWminimalP, Angst, Longer War AU, Unsafe Insane and Consensual, Light Bondage, Blood)

Actual summary: It’s about year six of a war that burned them all out about year three.  They’ve managed to keep their secret through increasingly brutal means over the years.  Rachel and Cassie haven’t spoken except on missions since Rachel killed a member of the Yeerk Peace Movement in order to keep them from giving the Animorphs up.  Jake looks like the walking dead and hasn’t smiled–really smiled–since they failed to save Jake’s parents.  Tobias is less human than ever since Rachel left him, and morphs Ax more often than he morphs his old body (his old body is barely fourteen, glaringly young among the others).  

Marco and Rachel aren’t dating.  Marco is still their tactician and their sense of humor, but their sense of humor is bitter and cutting, and when Rachel kisses him, she bites until his lips bleed and ties his hands with rough cord, he fights her and leaves bruises and cuts.  They don’t have a safeword.  Rachel needs to feel in control and Marco needs to feel like he’s not the one guiding Jake’s hand on the trigger.  It’s a bad system, but God they need it and if anything happens…well, they can just morph it away, and wash each others’ blood from their hands.

Anonymous asked: MORAN I WATCHED WONDER WOMAN TODAY AND IT MADE ME CRY IN THEATERS! I said "fuck me up diana" so many times. And Charlie was one of my favorite characters out of their little outfit. (Besides Steve) Which story do you think is the most tragic out of theirs?

MY DUDE I’M A HARD BITCH, HEART OF STONE, THE WHOLE NINE YARDS, AND I CRIED LIKE MULTIPLE TIMES.  I COULD WATCH DIANA JUST FUCKING WRECK PEOPLE ALL DAY EVERY DAY FOR A YEAR.

And….mmmm, that’s a good question.  On like a strictly impulsive level, I’m going to say Diana, actually, just because…the loss of that innocence, the loss of that belief that humanity has the potential to be intrisically, truthfully Good, is a tragedy on a fairly legendary level.  Like, the world is lesser.

That being said…I’m going to say Sameer.  The Chief, as he points out so articulately, has lost a great deal on a cultural level (I was so pleased that they actually addressed that), but he knows everyone.  I loved the shot of him wrapping his arm around the German kid at the end, treating the Germans with the same familiar affection that he gives to the Allies.  Charlie, we don’t learn a whole lot about, but clearly he starts the movie with very few people to his name–he actually comes out of this whole thing with two new friends and a goddess buddy and also Etta who I think would be highly entertaining and very good for him.  

But Sameer…Sameer is clearly close to Steve far more than the others, and more to the point he’s not going to be…super well accepted by the Allied forces.  As he says, he’s the wrong color–the Allies just fought against the Ottoman Empire, and Sammy would be easily mistaken for an old enemy.  He doesn’t have people outside this weird motley little gang, and Steve was his friend, Sameer is always the first one to shout for Steve, to start running after him, to WORRY.  So anyway.  Give me all the fic of Sameer and Steve being old friends and Sameer and Diana sitting quietly together as Sammy drinks and Diana listens to all his old stories about Steve that no one else is really in a place to hear.  But Diana craves that knowledge, needs to know more about Steve in a way that scares her, and Sammy needs to talk, about his friend who died a hero and who no one will ever remember except for this woman, this goddess who’s sitting on the floor with him with tears clinging to her eyelashes, and if he tells her everything, every detail, and Diana lives on with Steve’s memory in her heart then maybe he won’t quite be dead.

Anonymous asked: Have you read Robin Mckinley's The Outlaws of Sherwood? And if so what where your thoughts?

MY BUDDY.

I HAVE.

Right so I think I’ve mentioned my overwhelming obsession with Robin McKinley’s writing once or twice.  And I love Outlaws of Sherwood!  This is a Good Ask!

All right, so for those of you who haven’t read the Outlaws of Sherwood and don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s Robin Hood.  The basic premise is that Robin accidentally kills someone of a higher status than him and, in the process of hiding him from the Sheriff’s men, his best friends Much (the son of a miller) and Marian (the daughter of a Saxon nobleman) convince him that someone has to take a stand against the regime.  As such, people who are being taxed to death or who have had their homes taken leave with him and hide out in Sherwood Forest.  As the plot progresses, their gang grows, and the standard robbing-of-rich-feeding-of-poor proceeds, Guy of Gisborne shows up, and so it goes.

The major difference between this and most Robin Hood interpretations is that (*gasp*) Maid Marian has a real personality!  She’s a fucking firecracker!  She’s an expert markswoman–Marian is the legendary archer of the Outlaws, and goes to contests in a green hood under Robin’s name.  Marian is a tactician and a fighter and a woodsman AND she teaches all the men how to sew a goddamn shirt.  MARIAN IS THE TOTAL PACKAGE.  She and Robin bicker all the time and she nips it right in the bud when he gets stupid and overprotective and there’s this stunning scene where Marian and Robin are sitting together under a tree and Marian falls asleep on him and Robin just like “my arm is going numb and there’s a tree root digging into my hip but if I sat here for the rest of my life I would be happy, I want to marry this woman under any circumstances if she’d take me.”  And honestly same.  Anyway.  I digress.

All right, so here’s My Thoughts about Outlaws of Sherwood, and they can basically be summed up as “what a good” but also as “this is such a good way to balance the realistic and the hopeful in this story.”  Because like, okay, Robin Hood is a popular story to retell, but, especially in more recent versions, they get really…determined to be ‘realistic,’ which turns into some pretty profoundly grim stuff.  BBC did a Robin Hood show a while back and I passionately hated it–Robin was a womanizing nobleman who treated his manservant Much very poorly, Marian had a REAL WEIRD love triangle with Robin, who was kind of a dick, and Guy of Gisborne, who was a presumptuous pushy pseudo-rapist, and the Merry Men were a nominal saving grace until Marian was murdered at the end of the first season.  At that point, I just fucking bailed and googled how it ended–spoiler, it ends with Robin, after a fuckbuddies relationship with a villain, being poisoned and dying while Nottingham burns.  And here’s why I had an issue with that: Robin Hood, most basically, is the product of a society that was just dead exhausted by the Crusades and the class division between the Normans and the Saxons and the general state of the world that they went “What if someone had the option to not be us” and it was a thing of HOPE.  The idea of Robin as a chivalrous outlaw and Much as a loyal friend and Marian as a charming maiden just rebellious enough to ally herself with someone outside the law started as a story about hope.  A story about the potential to do something to save the people being crushed under the weight of a nobility that didn’t give a good goddamn about them.  A story about the idea that someone might care about them.

BBC’s asshole Robin and indecisive (and fridged) Marian and browbeaten Merry Men aren’t loyal to that idea.  Nottingham being burned to the ground as Robin dies just says “rebellion is pointless and the little people will always be victims of the system no matter what anyone does.”  

B U T.  You know what is loyal to that idea, that core of hope?  OUTLAWS OF SHERWOOD.  Robin is the cynic, here, the pragmatic influence to Much’s ready optimism and Marian’s fire-bright idealism, but even Robin…he loves his people, even if he doesn’t love the dream.  He would rather live to fight tomorrow than die a martyr, but when a young man in ridiculous red clothes shows up lost and alone in Sherwood Forest, Robin can’t help but care about him.  Much is a devoted friend, not just to Robin but to all the Outlaws, and the one whose idealism bears up under the worst the world has to throw at it.  Marian is proud and fierce and the one who turns dreams and love into real action.  

You wanna know why Outlaws is my favorite Robin Hood retelling?  Because it walks the line between honesty (life as an outlaw sucks! they’re hungry and cold and they’re horribly wounded in the last battle against Gisborne! Robin is scared and/or exasperated 99% of the time and the other 1% is pretty much that one scene with Marian!) and joy.  Outlaws loves its characters and its story and its hopes and its dreams, genuinely enjoys the hell out of itself, and that means that it feels like Robin Hood.  I don’t like stories tangled up in their own shadows and darknesses, I like stories that can balance the darkness with some light.  And that’s what Outlaws of Sherwood feels like.  It feels like a forest–the shadows are deep and green and frightening, and the sunlight is so, so bright.

recklessravager asked: My boyfriend is 4'9"

Listen, us tiny folks are only small because our spectacular-ness is condensed and distilled down into its purest essence.  Compliment your boyf on the purity of his awesomeness.

Anonymous asked: My friend describes herself as six foot negative 8. She is 5'2" and I just thought you would find this amusing.

This is so fucking good, give your friend a high five for me.

Anonymous asked: oh my god you're five foot nothing IM FIVE FOOT NOTHING I LOVE YOU HOLY FUCK CAN I GET A HELL YEAH

H E L L Y E A H

slyrider asked: MORAN IM SO DISTRAUGHT. SENSE8 IS MY FAVORITE AND SO IS THE GET DOWN AND NOW ILL NEVER KNOW WHAT HAPPENS TO MY FAVS. like they both end on cliffhangers and I'm dead. Honestly I'm fed up

I’M SO UPSET LIKE I NEVER EVEN GOT THE CHANCE TO WATCH THE GET DOWN (mcfreaking college, y’all) AND THEY FUCKING CANCELLED IT???  AND THEY CANCELLED SENSE8 WHICH IS LIKE THE ONLY THING WITH MULTIPLE QUEER RELATIONSHIPS ON THE FIRST DAY OF PRIDE MONTH LIKE THE FUCK???  AND DON’T EVER TALK TO ME ABOUT THE CLIFFHANGER THING OH MY GOD OH MY FUCKING G O D honestly this is why I appreciate shows that actually wrap shit up at the end of each season BECAUSE YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN THE EXECS ARE WAITING TO FUCKING SCREW YOU OVER.

LIKE?

CAN WE FUCKING SACRIFICE SUPERNATURAL ON THE ALTAR OF SOME KIND OF MEDIA DEITY AND SWAP IT FOR THESE?

Anonymous asked: u wanted prompts: steve takes it upon himself to stand outside planned parenthood clinics and fight people who attack and harass pp

Listen, I see and observe your ‘Steve’ up there, but I raise you Forty Percent of the Marvel Universe because I am bitter about the current direction of the whole comics thing at the moment.  *Max Rockatansky voice* I guarantee you, a hundred and sixty days out, there’s nothing but salt.  Anyway, if you’ve read my Claire Temple AO3 fic that may or may not get more stuff added to it when I feel inspired, this is technically that universe, but prior knowledge IS NOT REQUIRED, okay good let’s do it.  Also I believe that movie canon only applies to me when I feel like it so everyone is in New York and the Avengers live in the Tower, no one is dead and everything is F I N E.  I dunno, this is only like the first half of a much longer thing that covers this whole day and, if I had my way, would be a full-blown elaborate media fic with tweets and Trish’s show and everything.  But here, it’s real long, so I left it alone.  It’s on AO3.

Steve got the call pre-dawn, just as he was leaving the Tower for his run.  

“Captain Rogers,” FRIDAY said politely from the ceiling, “you are receiving a call from an unknown number with a New York City area code.”

“If it’s a reporter, let it ring out,” Steve said, knotting his running shoes.

“Reporters do not have your personal cell number, Captain,” FRIDAY said, and there was a trace of genteel condescension in the artificial voice this time that made Steve grin down at the floor.

“Where in the City?”

“Hell’s Kitchen.”

Steve frowned, straightening up. “That might be Daredevil in trouble. You better put it through to my phone. Thanks, FRIDAY.”

“Of course, Captain,” FRIDAY said. Steve’s top-of-the-line, not-on-the-open-market-yet, Jesus-Cap-does-your-shit-phone-even-text-here-let-me-replace-it StarkPhone rang, a jaunty tune that sounded distinctly like the National Anthem, and even more distinctly like the foreboding of Bucky getting his ass kicked.

“Steve Rogers,” Steve answered, hitting the green button and raising the phone to his ear.

“Um…hi, Captain Rogers,” the voice on the other end said hesitantly.  “This is Claire Temple, I don’t know if you remember me, but–”

“Of course I remember you, Miss Temple,” Steve said, grinning.  “You pulled a piece of rebar out of my chest, hard to forget a first meeting like that.” She laughed, the same slightly worn chuckle he remembered from her.  “And it’s just Steve, please, ma’am.  I think once you’ve been up close and personal with someone’s lung tissue you can probably skip the ‘Captain.’”

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sroloc--elbisivni asked: Have you ever read The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate?

I haven’t.  I don’t generally have the attention span for nonfiction or realistic fiction (that’s what…like…reality is for), sorry!