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

presidentromana asked: Prompt: Animorphs AU where Tobias is raised by Loren, perhaps about how it'd change the nothlit thing or his interactions with Ax?

featherquillpen:

I spent several minutes considering whether this should be an AU where Loren has her memories of Elfangor or doesn’t. I went with yes because… why not?

---

I was sitting in front of the TV listening to the local news about the “fireworks” at the construction site when Tobias came in and said, “Hey, Mom. Jake invited me along to check out the Sharing meeting at the beach later. Can I go?”

Cold dread trickled into my veins. I had hoped the war would never touch us. It wasn’t our war to fight; we didn’t have the weapons. But finally, it had come to my doorstep. “No,” I said firmly. “I need you help to me clean the house this evening. You’re staying in.”

“What if we start now?” Tobias said. “We could finish early and then I could catch up with Jake?”

I hit mute on the TV. “Tobias. I know some of your classmates have gotten into the Sharing. But I’ve heard about this group through my church friends. They look harmless, but they’re a dangerous cult. Has anyone ever told you what you have to do to become a full member?”

A pause. “Jake’s brother Tom says there’s a minimum number of hours of service, and then you go to a couple of special meetings and you become a full member.”

“But did he tell you what the initiation is like?” I insisted. “The ‘initiation ceremony’ is full members only.”

“No,” Tobias said, a frown in his voice. “He said it was secret. He just said that it totally changed his life.”

“I don’t trust an organization like that and neither should you,” I said firmly. “I won’t allow you to go there. Stay home and help me clean.”

---

Then there was the news story about the man who found a piece of metal on the beach with strange writing on it. I asked my church friend Mary to describe it to me. It took a while for the image to form in my mind, but when it did, it was unmistakable. Andalite writing. Elfangor had taught it to me.

That night, I dreamed of a thought-speak voice calling to me from the sea. 

I woke up in a cold sweat. An Andalite ship had crashed somewhere off the coast of California. There was an Andalite trapped in there, using the ship to broadcast his thought-speech. And somehow, I’d heard his call. My heart ached. There was nothing I could do for him.

I got up and went to the kitchen to get a glass of water. I found that Tobias was already there. “Tobias?” I said. “What are you doing up?”

“Bad dream,” he said.

Oh no. Had the message reached him too? Because of his heritage? Because Elfangor had touched both our lives? “What was it about?” I said, tentatively.

“There was a voice,” he said. “Calling to me from the ocean. It sounded scared. Desperate.”

Part of me wanted to tell him, after a lifetime of keeping the truth to myself. But what good could it possibly do? There was nothing he could do to help the doomed Andalite, either. So I said, “Hey. Why don’t you read to me from the book you’re reading?” It was an old ritual of ours. We went to his bedroom, and he read to me until he yawned between every word, and went back to sleep.

---

A month or so later, Tobias came to the house with a new friend in tow. “This is Philip, Mom. He’s here to borrow some books.”

“Yes, my name is Phil-up-puh,” the other boy said. “Puh. I am here to read book-suh.”

Playing with sounds. Just like Elfangor did in the first couple of weeks being human.

Then the boy added, stiffly, “I am sorry to intrude, intrud-ud-duh, on your solitude. Tude.”

“Come on, Philip,” Tobias said, and took him to his room.

I sat and frowned over that remark. It took me a minute to remember Elfangor’s distaste for the disabled that I’d had to train him out of, the way he insisted that they should be secluded from society. It probably didn’t mean anything. It was a coincidence. There were autistic humans who played with sound, and plenty of humans who acted weird around a blind woman. But there had to be a way to know. To be sure.

When Philip and Tobias came back out of his room, I was ready. If I was just being paranoid, I could say I’d gotten the phrase from a fantasy book. But if I wasn’t…

“Nice to meet you, Philip,” I said. “May your blade stay sharp, and the four moons guide our paths to cross again one day.”

Dead silence fell. Then I heard a sound I thought I’d never hear again – of bones grinding against each other, organs liquefying.

“Philip,” Tobias said, a little hysterically, but not hysterical enough for the morph to be a surprise. “What are you doing?”

“He’s demorphing,” I said, sounding calmer than I felt. “Tobias, close the curtain on the window of the back door. Just in case.”

“Mom?”

“Do it,” I said. “What if someone walks through the backyard and sees?”

I heard the whistle through the air, and the lightest press of the edge of a tail blade against my throat. «Demorph.»

“I can’t,” I said.  “I’m not an Andalite. But I had a child with one.”

---

I told them everything. I gave enough details that they even believed me. 

“You never told me,” Tobias whispered. “I met my dad, and I didn’t even know. I would have known if you’d told me.”

“And you’re fighting a war I swore to myself you’d never have to fight,” I whispered back. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too, Mom.”

stop-to-smell-the-dandelions:

shrewreadings:

marisolinspades:

hollowedskin:

battlescarmentality:

allieinarden:

I’ve noticed this revisionist Greek myth is common wherein Persephone loves Hades and eats the pomegranate seeds in order to evade her overbearing mother, and that’s all well and good. You know, sometimes I’m in the mood for it and sometimes I’m not. But hear this: as long as we’re doing this, why is no one wondering whether Aphrodite might really love Hephaestus? 

Think about it. All the gods in their immortal splendor are lining up to marry her, doing everything in their power to impress her, the goddess of love and beauty, and she choses…that guy. A god in technical terms only, a social reject who’s ugly and malformed and um, no fun. Always slaving away in his workshop when everyone else is quaffing nectar and having their eternal beach party up on Mount Olympus. They can’t believe she’d give up all of them for that. 

So, because the gods do not take rejection well (looking at you Apollo), eventually they start to say to each other, well, we all know Zeus made her do it anyway. He’s gotta feel guilty for throwing Hephaestus off Mount Olympus that one time. And it quickly becomes that poor girl, stuck in that workshop full of sweat and dirt and cyclopses when she could have had one of us. Because of course they’ve got love all figured out; it’s entirely technical and dependent on who’s the most charming and good-looking and not at all variable and strange and notoriously unpredictable, right?

Meanwhile Ares, only the most arrogant and brainless of the crew, can’t take a hint and is still showing up wherever Aphrodite goes trying to hit on her, so eventually she and Hephaestus decide to rig up an elaborate mechanical trap for him, using her as bait. When all the gods have laughed at him for getting caught he huffily attempts to regain his dignity by telling them, whatever, guys, you want to know the truth, I was meeting her for an assignation. And they all kind of know he’s full of it but they just accept it as the unvarnished truth from thereon in, because they’d love to believe she’d cheat on Hephaestus with Ares. They’d love it. Come on, Aphrodite, get off your high horse and admit you’re just as shallow as the rest of us. 

So they talk, but Aphrodite doesn’t really care about their collective jealousy because she dotes on her misshapen genius of a husband with his sooty hands and his sweaty brow who always takes her seriously and is always so hard at work inventing astonishing new things to make her happy, and she loves the volcano they live in with its internal pressures so conducive to the formation of precious stones and its passages lit with glowing lava that so gorgeously offsets her cheekbones, and all the cyclopses worship her because even with one eye apiece they’ve still got more depth perception than most men do where she’s concerned. True it is that as a couple the two develop a reputation for not getting out much, because all those Olympian parties bore them to death and they’d rather spend time with each other (poor Aphrodite, she’s such a vivacious young thing and her husband is so grasping and insecure that he won’t let her go out and have fun), but they do all right. 

THIS IS THE KIND OF CONTENT I’M LOOKING FOR

love <3

Ok, ok, wait, but it doesn’t end there. Because Aphrodite features pretty heavily in the story of Eros and Psyche. She’s painted as the villain, her jealousy causing her to send her son to curse the girl, but that’s just not true. She knows what it’s like to be clamored over for your beauty, knows the lies that are spread, the way it sets you up as a target and discredits your mind. Aphrodite hears the mortals whisper that this human girl rivals her in beauty, and one day she gets around to seeing what the fuss is about.

She finds Psyche’s home all but besieged by suitors, but she notices the girl isn’t falling for their flattery, that she is still kind, no matter who she’s dealing with. She sees a bit of herself in this girl who aches to be spoken to, not at, and who wants most of all to be heard.

When she sends her son to the girl, she is less than truthful about her motivations. She knows if she tells him she hopes he will fall for this mortal girl it will make things awkward for him, that true love must be discovered on its own and cannot be forced. When he comes away from the encounter with her name on his lips, searching for excuses to talk to her again, Aphrodite whispers into the soothsayer’s ear to tell Psyche’s father that she is loved by a god. Frees her from the hoards of shallow admirers and gives her son the opportunity he needs to see her again. 

When a year of late-night conversations fails to convince her son that it’s time to reveal himself to his beloved, she puts a bug in Psysche’s ear to ask for her sisters to visit, whispers in their ears to convince Psyche to take matters into her own hands, ensures the two can finally meet face to face. She is saddened when Eros flees, believing Psyche had betrayed him.

The four tasks Psyche must overcome to be reunited with her son aren’t laid forth out of spite, but rather to help the girl find herself. Aphrodite knows this girl hasn’t had a choice in the path her life has taken up until this point. Knows that everything was in the hands of her father, and of Aphrodite herself. She wants to make sure Psyche means it, wants Psyche to know what she’s getting into when dealing with the Olympians. Wants, most of all, for Psyche to question her own motivations, fully evaluate the situation, and then make her own choice.

Her frustration at the Olympians aiding the girl isn’t because she hates being tricked. No, she wants Psyche to break out of her shell, wants her to have the option to decide this isn’t worth it and walk away. 

When the final task ends in Psyche laying unconscious on the roadway, Aphrodite searches the girl’s heart and knows her intentions are true. Knows she is ready to join the family. She kicks Eros out of the house to ensure he would find Psyche, to ensure he would come to his senses and forgive her, realize that he had been unfair to her and to ask her forgiveness in turn.

They say Aphrodite was sour about the whole ordeal until her  granddaughter was born, but the truth was she hadn’t stopped smiling from the moment her son had first come home, whispering the girls name in reverence.

I liked before. 

Now I find it awesome. 

will someone please do a different take on icarus too

or medea

or  andromeda

(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)

One Trump Tweet I Am Prepared To Say Does Matter.

avatar-dacia:

plaidadder:

I want to talk for a moment about the infamous Trump Happy New Year tweet. We’re all familiar with it. It went like this:

“Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. Love!”

The general reaction could best be summed up as, “What an asshole!” But I’m glad he tweeted this, because it really clarifies things. Trump views everyone who didn’t and/or doesn’t support him as a conquered enemy. This ought to put to rest any talk of Trump “uniting the country” or “giving him a chance.” In fact, you know what, Donald?

If you are going to treat me like a conquered enemy, then I have to assume I am now living in an occupied country. And that means that from me, you get:

* no benefit of the doubt

* no cooperation

* no respect

and

* no legitimacy.

That tweet frees us all from any remaining scruples any of us might have had about rejecting his legitimacy and authority. You can’t be someone’s “enemy” and be their president at the same time.

Thank you for putting into words what was skeeving me the fuck out about that tweet, in a manner more eloquent than the “dear non-faith-specific God, he sounds like a literal supervillain out of central casting” that was springing to mind.

(via dyinghistoric)

bfleuter:

callmebliss:

8thgradeforever:

noxiousb:

semudara:

audiencecat:

songofsunset:

fireandwonder:

songofsunset:

Alien: So you’re saying that human brains sometimes just… malfunction? And see threats that aren’t really there?

Human: Yeah basically?

Alien: And then the human keeps living and doing things anyways???

Human: Yup

Alien: Woahhhhhh. Woahhhhh. Humans are badass.

Aliens would probably have fundamentally different responses to trauma than humans would,like- their brains. would be so fundamentally different. at a basic chemical and structural level we’d have to relearn everything, in this scenario the alien species is REALLY BAD at continuing to function with even a slightly impaired brain, and deals with it with LOTS OF BABIES, Oh yeah great grandpa died three years back when he got really surprised and WHAT DO YOU MEAN,THAT A HUMAN GOT STABBED THROUGH THE HEAD AND CONTINUED TO LIVE I DON’T BELIEVE YOU THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE, I bet they are all pregnant all the time and when they randomly die the baby eats their way out of the corpse, they are insectoid and look a lot like praying manti and they REALLY FREAK OUT THEIR HUMAN FRIENDS THE FIRST TIME IT HAPPENS, there is a sort of generational memory that happens which is how they managed to develop tech at all being so fragile, so when the creatures get depressed or homesick or manic and die it’s not like their human friends have lost them forever, except for how it sort of is, (via @songofsunset)

PLEASE IMAGINE THE FIRST TIME AN ALIEN HAS ONE OF THEIR HUMAN FRIENDS DIE

‘so hey, that was a great funeral, cool outfits, always glad to learn more about your culture and stuff. So, when is she coming back?’

‘She- she’s not coming back’

‘Yeah, not as Megan, but when is her replacement coming back?’

‘We’re- not hiring anyone new for a couple weeks???’

‘no no no, you’re not getting what I’m saying- I want to ask her about that book she lent me- can I keep it for another week or two, or does her new version want it back?’

The humans stare at the alien and just. slowly start to figure out what the alien is saying. The alien shuffles nervously, their six spindly legs making a skritching noise that echoes in the cold chapel. Finally, the kindest of the humans takes the alien aside and-

‘hey. so. Us humans don’t come back when we die. Not like you do.’

‘what? No, but you clearly talk about reincarnation, and-’

‘Those are just stories, Six. When humans die, we’re gone. We don’t come back.’

The alien laughs ‘No, see, cuz that would mean that- that would mean. That Megan- Megan is-’ The alien cuts off the hissing noise that is their equivalent of a sob. ‘I have to go.’

The alien spends a week in their spaceship, the only place they can send communication to their Mother. When they come back, their carapace is a glistening new shade of red, and they’ve ended up as a different gender. When the lab adviser asks them how they are feeling about Megan-

‘Megan? Oh, yes, my previous version was very fond of Megan.’ The alien cocks their head, like a particularly thoughtful bird. ‘I suppose that I regret her loss. She was a valuable member of the team.’

The lab adviser lets this be- they are aliens after all. But later, when lab hours are done, the adviser notices Six double and triple-checking all the lab equipment, especially- well. The accident that took Megan will never happen again.  

The book is never returned.

Now imagine the flip side: Sevan finds out his human friend is due to have a baby in six months. Six months! He asks, and finds that no, there’s no way to delay a human birth. In six months, a new version of his friend will emerge. Will they still like space operas? What about visiting that smoothie place in quadrant 6? Will they even still want to be friends?

His friend asks him to be visit the baby, after it’s born. Of course, of course he will. It’s the least he can do. There’s always that vulnerable phase after birth when you haven’t got the hang of the new motor controls, and everyone needs a helping palp for the first few months. 

The night he hears that the new baby has been born, he wails quietly and recites the qualities of his friend that he will miss the most.

Three days later, he gathers his resolve and knocks on the hatch of his friend’s place. Strangely, the access panel hasn’t been lowered - rude. He’ll make sure that’s one of the first things changed. His friends partner opens the door and lets him in and there - there is his friend,looking tired but well, a miniature copy of herself held in her arms. Imagine his joy when he finds out that not only will he get to spend longer with his current friend, but there will be another friend to get to know!

woa

good bug stories tbh 

Excellent bug stories

I am crying over space bugs don’t touch me

good good bugs ;n;

(via clockwork-mockingbird)

kyraneko:

the-negotiator:

ifitgivesyoujoy:

i just realized something: think about padme amidala’s public image. nobody knew she was married. nobody knew who anakin skywalker was at all–he was just some random jedi trainee, and by the time anybody would have started paying attention to him in the public eye, they would have known him as darth vader. to the public, anakin became a faceless villain who always was who he was, no fall from grace needed.

so, padme. i’m sure she had supporters across the republic. i’m sure her time as queen of naboo was EXTREMELY well-documented, and honestly, based on her rotation of outfits, she was probably a full-on celebrity. she was young and brilliant and a passionate defender of her people, and even though the empire seized power in the end, i wouldn’t be surprised if the rebellion decades later directly descended from the ideals of her followers.

but think about the circumstances of her death from the outside. people probably knew she was pregnant by some unknown father, of course, but this is a universe with robot doctors–saying “she died in childbirth” would probably be like saying “she died of the common cold” today. not something that happens, especially for a celebrity politician with unlimited resources. and there must have been a child, but what happened to it? did it die too? as a media narrative, it’s flimsy at best, ESPECIALLY considering the timing of her death.

padme amidala, the woman who ruled a planet at 14 and sat stony-faced while every other senator cheered on palpatine’s rise to power, died under mysterious circumstances just as the government she’d defended crumbled. from the outside, it seems pretty obvious that she was assassinated.

if this was a universe that at all made sense, padme amidala would have been a household name among republic loyalists. her tragically short life, her noble self-sacrifice for the ideals she believed in, would have been LEGENDARY. when the rebellion rose, she would have been the name on everybody’s mind–do it in her honor, people would have said. finish the fight she started.

i know we can’t go back in time and change the original trilogy, but the sequel movies? come on. don’t tell me darth vader is the only looming icon in this franchise.

To make it extra tragic - in the EU it mentions that the coroner used some kind of hologram technology to make it look like she was still pregnant at the time of her death, to protect the twins from the emperor and Anakin by telling everyone that the children had never been born. Padme Amidala’s death would have been the tragedy of the century, the face of the lost democracy.

Okay but what if that celebrity factor got used? By, like, everybody.

To the Naboo people, she’s their beloved Queen. To much of the galaxy, she’s a loved and admired public figure and stateswoman. To the Republic loyalists, she’s their martyred supporter, the vanquished—murdered, they think—face of Democracy. To the Empire, she’s a useful idol, the Emperor’s colleague, murdered, they say, by Separatist forces or by Jedi, tragically dead and conveniently silent, beautiful and glamorous and perfect for starting a cult of personality on her behalf. 

And here and there, among the various cultures, there are religious concepts like sainthood, ancestor worship, legends of dead protectors coming to life again to fight when they’re needed. And conspiracy theories, and wishful thinking turned speculation, and the Star Wars equivalent of tabloid newspapers.

The result? Padmé is the most popular and famous woman in the galaxy, a combination of Princess Diana, Mother Teresa, Che Guevara, Joan of Arc, Elvis Presley, Arthur Pendragon, Chuck Norris, and the Virgin Mary.

One of the most important Imperial holidays is Amidala Day, devoted to celebrating service to the Empire, the official story of the Empire’s birth, the Emperor’s home world, and the heroic Queen and Senator whom Palpatine claims as his staunch supporter. People paint their faces and make elaborate hairstyles or headdresses and put on their fanciest clothes; there are plays, and parties, and traditional Naboo dances and foods.

Vader hates it. This is about 60% of why the Emperor has made such a production of it.

Among Republic loyalists, a different story is told: a Queen Amidala who loved peace and democracy, who opposed war and worked tirelessly for ceasefires and peace treaties, who stood silently or wept as all around her cheered the newborn Empire; a Queen Amidala who was murdered by the Empire so he could create the fiction of her support.

Vader hates this too. It feels uncomfortably true, and threatens to undermine his resolve that she would have been at his side had she lived.

Rebels paint images of her on their fighters, hang holos of her on their walls, wear icons of her as good-luck talismans. There are exhortations, penned semi-anonymously by people who knew her, that she would have wanted people to join and support the Rebellion. The minimalist image of eyes, cheek dots, and paint-split lips are graffiti’d onto public monuments accompanied by words from her speeches. “Amidala Needs You” is a common phrase on Rebel recruitment posters.

Vader hates this most of all.

Statues and icons of her are made in a hundred different artistic styles and adorn the altars of a thousand worlds’ faiths. Mythologies are written about her: she stopped a Separatist advance with words once, appeared in a dream to a slave telling her where her transmitter was hidden, shot five destroyer droids with pinpoint accuracy before they got their shields up, stormed her own palace to take it back from the Trade Federation, cheated death at the hands of the Empire’s assassin, escaped with the help of the last of the Jedi, is still out there somewhere, mourning for the Republic on some uninhabited planet somewhere, training in secret lost Jedi arts to kill the Emperor, working as a Rebel agent or a disguised vigilante.

Vader dislikes this. But he also seeks them out and reads them, when he’s in a certain mood.

The tabloids regularly claim that she’s been seen working as a roast-traladon restaurant in some backwater suburb of Corellia, or navigating a spice freighter to and from Kessel, or singing at a nightclub on Nar Shadda.

Vader dislikes this too. He has to talk himself out of keeping an agent or three just to visit the places in question and make sure.

He isn’t often in a position to see teenage girls with Padmé’s face emblazoned across their tunics, or walls with familiar face paint next to “So this is how liberty dies: to thunderous applause” printed next to it. When he hunts down Rebels with her image on a chain around their necks for luck, he can tear them apart with the Force: a quick death, which is, ironically, the luckiest outcome available to them. Tabloids and legends can be read and dismissed, and he’s never had the opportunity to happen upon the fanfiction.

But when the Emperor commands, Vader stands at his side through parades and parties and celebratory addresses to the Senate, with Padme’s image on banners and holos, with Padmé’s image on stage saying words Padmé never said, with all the women and half the men wearing Naboo royal face paint, and accepts the pain of memory almost like a form of self-harm.

And when the newly-elected Junior Senator from Alderaan with a quiet grace that reminds him of her and a fire in her eyes that reminds him of himself asks him, at some interminable party, if he knew what she was like, he troubles himself to answer honestly.

It hurts him.

But he’s good at that.