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

Anonymous asked: 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.

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the-dot asked: 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.

Anonymous asked: 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.

Anonymous asked: 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!!!

I’M SO PROUD OF MY KIDS.  I’M SO PROUD OF THEM.  THEY WON.  MY KIDS.  AND THEY ONLY GOT A LITTLE BIT DISMEMBERED.  HERE IS MORE YELLING ABOUT MY KIDS IN THIS BOOK.

Anonymous asked: For the ship grade: Hellboy/Liz Sherman?

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.

So, um, yes.  I’m Here For It.

Anonymous asked: 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!!!

T O M T H O

Anonymous asked: 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:

1. The Riders
   
2. The hafor
3. Bystanders at the laprun trials
4. Sungold
5. Corlath, probably immediately after she took his mask at the trials
6. Gonturan
7. The City hafor
8. Random City folk
9. Various Damarian soldiers, including Senay and Terim at different times
10. Luthe/Aerin
11. Jack Dedham
12. Random Outlanders following mad Harry into battle
13. Kentarre and her archers
14. Richard Crewe, probably because Jack tells him
15. Small animals on the side of the path
16. Passing birds
17. Thurra probably????
18. MAUR THE BLACK DRAGON, DEAD THESE MANY CENTURIES
19. PEOPLE IN SUNSHINE, WHO AREN’T EVEN IN THE SAME UNIVERSE
20. 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.

Anonymous asked: 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.

Anonymous asked: "Not fat–he’s an athlete" just an fyi that you can be fat and be an athlete :)

You’re absolutely correct, and that was an error in phrasing on my part.  I have no idea when I wrote that post but I was probably having a pre-MCAT anxiety fit and therefore pretty fuzzy, mentally speaking, because that’s basically been my last month.  My apologies, and thanks for how polite your message is.

Anonymous asked: In my mind I will forever refer to Jake as "Roach Boy"

Oh my God, the YELP of laughter I let out when I saw this, you have no idea.  Roach Boy, with a Roach Motel on his head.

On a somewhat related note I think it’s fucking great that he gets called Big Jake, like, point me toward the fanart where Jake is just.  A big dude.  Not fat–he’s an athlete, even if he’s not great at basketball–but just big.  I have a friend who’s a football player (like…one of the positions that does a lot of running, I know nothing about football) and he’s like six foot and he’s ALWAYS been a really huge dude, tall and broad shouldered and kind of benevolently looming at all times, even when we were Animorphs-age.  Draw me Jake like that dude.  Just.  Real tall and real broad through his shoulders with real big hands and generally kind of unsure about what to do about it.  Talk to me about how he goes from kind of cheerfully slouched (I know a lot of friendly huge dudes, you know the slouch I mean, of like “I’m really tall and I’m trying to look approachable”) to ramrod straight and menacing as fuck during the war.  He goes from being totally friendly and adorable to…genuinely kind of intimidating? 

…listen, I’m sorry for this drastic change of topic, I just have a lot of feelings about Big Jake.