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

Anonymous asked: ok so..... i always ignored the animorphs books as a kid (i think i picked one up and it wasn't the first book and i was confused and annoyed and the covers were ???? tacky??) but you're making me want to get into them as a 21 year old.... i mean. i guess i'm asking: what should i expect. how much of a commitment am i getting myself into.

Right, so, the first thing you should know here is that I know plenty of people who started reading these books as adults and therefore: no judgement.  The covers, also, are terrible, so furthermore no judgement on that front.

THAT BEING SAID.

Animorphs is a best-beloved series and it’s not their fault they lost the cover art lottery, this was such a formative series in my life.  Like, Robin McKinley taught me what you could do with words and stories, but Animorphs taught me what you should do to characters.  RIP all my characters who are still paying for that particular lesson.

So, Animorphs is a middle grade series, yes, it can be cheesy and tropey and absurd (and DATED good lord the 90′s seem like a long time ago).  But also…like, it’s a 54 book series literally RIDDLED with grim moral quandries, grisly murder, gory battles, war crimes, and general trauma, so forgive them their occasional descent into middle grade nonsense.  If you’ve ever looked a kid’s series that you loved to bits and pieces and thought to yourself “Jesus, these kids should be an absolute train wreck, I can’t believe Harry Potter/Percy Jackson/whoever sleeps at all ever,” Animorphs is the answer to that thought.  The first named character–my beloved weird alien prince Elfangor, the Wise Mentor Character™–dies horribly forty pages into the first book, and it pretty much goes downhill from there.  I affectionately call the kids the PTSD Squad and lordy.  LORDY.  Are they fucking ever.  Ongoing Fandomn Discourse includes the eternal question of “What is the first onscreen instance of really serious PTSD” and I generally argue for the suicide attempt in Book 3, but I could also see my way to granting the nightmare in Book 2.  The people who think it takes until Book 5 are just wrong, I love you all, but no.

• If you read these, I invite you to join @lathori in the experience of stopping every couple of chapters to say, in a horrified tone of voice, “Why did your parents let you read these when you were SEVEN”
  

• Reasons, okay.  Also I was a really bullheaded kid.  And it wasn’t like they were going to give me nightmares.  They probably should have.  But they didn’t.  Because Reasons.
  

• I digress.
  

But so, in terms of what you’re committing to…that.  That is what you’d be committing to.  In addition to the main series, there are 4 Megamorphs (of WILDLY variable quality, to be sure, and largely optional, but good brain candy most of the time) and 4 Chronicles.  The Chronicles are Andalite (PHENOMENAL BOOK, COULD BE READ INDEPENDENTLY, ABOUT MY GOOD WEIRD BOY ELFANGOR, DEF A FAVORITE), Hork-Bajir (really interesting characters, good concept, a little shaky on the dismount, so to speak), Visser (I don’t remember a ton of this one but GODDAMN I love Eva), and Ellimist (didn’t read this because honestly I didn’t care about the Ellimist that much as a kid except in terms of his ongoing torment of the Squad and I still don’t).

I feel it’s also my duty to warn you that events conspired against KA Applegate and much of the second half of the series is written by an assortment of ghostwriters, who are ALSO of wildly variable quality.  Example: Book 33, affectionately called The Torture Book by much of the fandom, could probably be used to raise me from the dead so that I could enjoy it one more time.  Books 37 or 39, on the other hand, which I pretend don’t exist, could be used to raise me from the dead so that I could bitch at length about how much I Fucking Hate Them.

• What is that Rachel characterization, Book 37, what are you doing with your life.
  

• Book 39.  What the tap-dancing fuck is the buffahuman.  Why.  Why do I have to live with that in my head.
  

• Anyway.
  

To that end, I recommend letting yourself skim and/or skip books if you reach one you really can’t handle the writing in after, say, the early 30′s.

• But don’t skip 37 or 39 because you have to Understand My Pain.
  

ANYWAY.

ANIMORPHS.

GREAT SERIES.

GET THEM ALL FOR FREE HERE.

KEEP ME POSTED IF YOU CHOOSE TO READ THEM.

words-writ-in-starlight asked: Definitely my favorite part of this blog is when people ask 'why are you shouting' in the reblogs because I love irony. Also I love inane bits of trivia and was also told that I had a knack for it, so like. *fist bump* You go my buddy.

factsinallcaps:

FOR EVERY ONE OF THOSE “WHY ARE YOU SHOUTING” MESSAGES YOU SEE IN THE REBLOGS I GET SIX IN MY ASK BOX AND TWENTY “I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW I READ YOUR FACTS IN TERRY CREWS’ VOICE” MESSAGES AND FRANKLY IF I GET TOO MANY MORE I’M JUST GONNA HAVE TO SHUT DOWN MESSAGES COMPLETELY

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.

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!

lylasdaddyalpha asked: Sometimes I forget that I am a PORN blog that posts PORN, not animorphs things anymore. But you reblogging my Mcdonalds story just got me like 70 new notes on that post and I'm just scrolling through your blog now, not a care in the world. Lol

This is it, this is my favorite ask that I have ever gotten in my entire life.  I hope you’re enjoying Ye Olde Blogge, my buddy, because this ask makes me laugh every time I look at it.

Originally posted by ihiphop

Anonymous asked: I am really glad about your tags on that mom post you did. Everyone is always ragging on me because I do t talk to my mother, but they don't understand how shitty she is. And things like you said just help me not feel super shitty as well. Thank you.

Listen, honey, let me tell you a story about my family.  First of all, my mom and dad are the kindest, most generous, best people I have ever had the privilege to know, and I am grateful every day for their presence in my life.  

That being said.

My Yaya, my mom’s mom, used to leave bruises on me and convince me that I was insane, and that’s nothing compared to what she did to my mother.  She has caused directly four (five?) nervous breakdowns in my cousins, and drove one to the point where he called his sister to come keep an eye on him in case he tried to kill himself.  My Nana, my dad’s mom, is a decent person, or could be if she didn’t stand idly by while her husband turns violent and aggressive.  He’s a bitter, cruel, misogynist old man, and the shit they are literally right now putting my father through makes me see red.  I could gladly punch any of them in the face.  My response to hearing that Yaya has kicked the bucket will be literal tears of relief, followed by copious amounts of alcohol.  The best I can hope for is to be ignored, and I have resigned myself to that, but my god am I ready to be done with their shit.

So here’s the point to this unnecessarily personal rant: you’re doing right by yourself, and that’s what matters.  You looked at your situation and chose life over limb, and I’m really, really proud of you for it.  That is a brave thing to do and the only people who understand that are the people who are in the same situation.  

Family isn’t supposed to hurt like this.  You are doing the right thing.

menderash:

paper-mario-wiki:

menderash:

paper-mario-wiki:

i follow a blog that is 100% dedicated to animorphs.

idk if that person is in a mutual with me, but im gonna ask this because you talk about it a lot:

how is marco bi? also, who is marco? what animal does he turn in to?
im so fucking confused about all of your posts and ive never seen or read animorphs in my life but im not gonna unfollow you because you are just so passionate about it and i want to know why it drives you so wild.

is it me ur looking for???

yeah whats the deal dude

steeples my fingers and looks at you seriously

Keep reading

Anonymous asked: So how was Rogue One?

MY G O D IT WAS A BLESSING AND A GIFT UNTO US ALL.

In all seriousness, though, I loved it.  It couldn’t have been better designed for me if they tried.  Brutal honesty about Doing What Needs To Be Done, desperate people fighting desperate wars, shouting matches between allies with laser-targeted accusations and grief-driven sharp tongues, bloody hands and buried sins.  

Basically, look, okay, here: if you read and liked the entire Animorphs series, this will be your jam.  If you prefer your heroes to be unsullied and clean (which, no judgement), maybe not.  But seriously, give it a try.

A couple other things:

• “Fiercely competent anti-fascist space Latinx with a robot best friend” is my new favorite weirdly specific trope, see also: Poe Dameron

• Jyn Erso grows so much over the movie she’s my daughter and I love her

• I want to wrap Bodhi Rook in blankets and put him down in front of Fantasia and cuddle him and feed him chocolate until he’s Happy, I’m a simple woman with simple needs

• Darth Vader is so hilariously Extra

• Krennic’s cape is a fucking tragedy

• “Welcome home” *bawls*
  

• Baze and Chirrut are married and have been for like thirty years, sorry I don’t make the rules

generalmercer:

maybe i have a faulty understanding about how this works but like. i never understood the whole “one of us only tells the truth, the other only lies” like…. just ask them a question you know the answer to. what days christmas. the fucker over here going “april 7th” is the liar. problem solved

Because I’m me and kind of a pedant…

The critical third rule to this game is “You can only ask one question total.”  So you have the one who always lies in front of one door, for example, and the one who always tells the truth in front of the other door, say, and then you can ask ONE question that has to tell you everything you need to know.  Generally, if you can get the answer you need, finding out if you’ve asked the liar is a nonissue.

Exempli gratia: in Labyrinth, when Sarah is faced with the situation, she asks one of the two “would the other one tell me that this door leads to the castle.”  When the answer is yes, she knows that the other door leads to the castle and the one she’s facing leads to certain death.  This is because, if the guard she asked was the liar, she knows the other guard would tell her no, this door does not lead to the castle.  If the guard she asked was not the liar, she knows that the other guard would tell her yes, this door would lead to the castle, and it would be a lie.  QED, the other door leads to the castle.  The fact that Sarah falls down a hole does not change this, because she does eventually reach the castle and Jareth is kind of a cheat.  A faerie cheat, but still.

(via lupinatic)