imitorar

[imitorar]

Art by JaeCheol Park

[imitorar]

so tonight I’m at synagogue, listening to the Purim Night reading of the Book of Esther, like you do

and near the end of this chapter my brain presents me with the following:

nooooo ooooone plots like Haman calls the shots like Haman plans a genocide by casting lots like Haman

(It only works with the Hebrew pronunciation of Haman, which, like Gaston, is accented on the second syllable.)

By the time we get home my brain has added:

for there’s none so well-favored and kingly yes, we all can be certain of that he’s so rich that his pockets are jingly and he looks really sharp in a three-cornered hat

*face in hands*

[imitorar]

“Tall wax'd the spirit's altering form, till to the roof her stature grew; Then, mingling with the rising storm, with one wild yell away she flew.”

Henry James Townsend (1810–1890) - Glenfinlas

illustration from Samuel Carter Hall's ‘The Book of British Ballads’, 1842

source

[imitorar]

Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris - The Pilgrim in the Garden or The Heart of the Rose, 1901

[imitorar]

Animorphs // Gethsemane Jesus Christ Superstar

[imitorar]

From Edgar Allan Poe's 'Tales of Mystery and Imagination' The Imp of the Perverse ' illustrated by Arthur Rackham, 1935.

[imitorar]

'A Thousand and One Nights' - 'The Tale of the First Dervish' illustrated by Kay Nielsen, 1910

[imitorar]

this is genius!!!!

performer: @abby_seim 

video source:  @josey__terry

[imitorar]

Arrivederci

[imitorar]

I think venus flytraps should be intelligent and ambulatory. I think they should get into the cupboards. I think they should purr when you pet them.

[imitorar]

Art by Mary Syring

[imitorar]

from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” illustrated here by Japanese artist Macoto Takahashi, born 1934

[imitorar]

A non exhaustive list of things Tamora Pierce taught/influenced me on.

Periods exist

You don’t have to (and probably shouldn’t) marry the first guy you date

Chickens are the stupidest birds (I know she’s backtracked/regretful about this but I can’t shake it)

A undead dinosaur army is literally the coolest concept ever

Crows are the best

Servants often make the best spies

Bullying is not just a “childhood” thing people grow out of, it can and does often does have serious consequences

Delegation/management is an actual skill that most people don’t have (I’m not sure why the clerks’ death in Lady Knight is the thing that always sets me off crying but it does)

There’s magic in everyday creativity

Forest fires are the most terrifying thing to experience

Except not really because actually the isolation from a wide spread disease is humanity’s worst nightmare (wish we hadn’t experienced this first hand 😭)

Respect sanitation workers

Friendships are more complicated as adults, but also sometimes the first step is realizing friends mostly likely won’t judge you as harshly as you judge yourself

[imitorar]

I want to write a fic where Lilo goes to college and her roommate is Boo from Monsters Inc. Boo is the first person to think Stitch is adorable and cuddly, and Lilo is the first person not to act like “Mike Wazowski” was a weird name for a goldfish. They get on like a house on fire which is kind of bad for Nani’s blood pressure.

But then one night they wake up in the middle of the night because something is in their closet. And the door starts to creak open so Stitch tackles whoever (whatever) is in there. They fall back into the closet, the door slams shut… and when Lilo runs over and opens it there’s nothing but an empty closet.

Then Boo tells Lilo all about this weird thing that happened to her when she was a kid, and how no one ever believed her but she knows it was real. 

And cue Lilo and Boo busting into the Monster world to rescue Stitch and wreaking mad havoc in the process.

[imitorar]

Gwenda Morgan (British, 1908 - 1991), Midwinter, 1962, wood engraving, signed, titled and numbered 15/50.

[imitorar]

Relating to this post, if animorphs was greenlit for an 8 episode PJO style series, and you weren’t sure if more seasons would come up, what books would you adapt? Would Ax even be there? I would probably introduce him in episode 2 but I know less about animorphs.

To answer the second question: Ax would indeed be hard to solve. I think all undersea adventures would be off the table for budgetary reasons, even today, but you wouldn't want it to look like AniTV's thing where Ax just stands around in the woods yelling "Help!" until Cassie wanders by.

I'd solve this by simply having Ax be on the fighter with Elfangor when he crash-lands. Two issues I foresee here:

It makes the fact that Elfangor should morph to escape glaringly obvious.

It begs the question of how Jake ends up leader if Ax has more yeerk-fighting expertise.

For #1, I think the most interesting resolution would be if Elfangor's shot dead by a yeerk sniper midway through explaining the invasion. The scene would have to engineer a reason for him to be apart from the kids at the time — maybe he steps back into his fighter to return the morphing cube, and then a Bug Fighter shoots it from overhead? — but any exposition he doesn't cover could be taken up by Ax.

For #2, I think you could do a little humor and characterization with Jake and Ax playing hot-potato over responsibility for the team. Maybe Jake speaks for everyone when it's just the humans, but once Elfangor dies he starts asking Ax what to do, and they go back and forth for a while with "I thought YOU knew what to do!" "No, I thought YOU knew!" before Marco or Tobias suggests a vote and Jake gets elected to lead.

To answer the first question: I'd make the following 8 episodes:

Roughly the events of #1 (AKA Jake's story): Elfangor lands, the kids learn to morph, they infiltrate The Sharing, they fail to rescue Tom, Tobias gets stuck.

Parts of #7, MM1, and #17 (AKA Rachel's story): The kids learn about the ground-based kandrona and destroy it, but there are all kinds of downstream consequences. Rachel gets injured during the battle and wanders off with no memory, Ax recruits disgruntled yeerks to help him contact his dad, Jake gets his hopes up about Tom, and a whole bunch of yeerks end up dead or addicted to oatmeal.

Combo of #13 and #23 (AKA Tobias's story) (AKA all of AniTV's good ideas): Tobias stumbles on a group of escaped former human-controllers, who help him plan a mission to break into the yeerk pool and free some hork-bajir. While going through their files, Tobias finds intel about Elfangor's hirac dilest. He saves Jara and Ket, retrieves Elfangor's CD, and discovers it has some kind of baked-in genetic override that restores his morphing power. With Ax, he reads Elfangor's life story.

Some of #19 with most of #29 (AKA Cassie's story): The team falls ill with an alien virus, forcing Cassie to venture into the yeerk pool alone in search of a cure. She ends up trapped in (the woods? a back room? a quicksand pit?) with Aftran and Karen for a few days, long enough for them to become friends and reconcile their differences. Aftran helps Cassie escape with intel that will save Ax before she herself returns to the pool sans host.

Mostly #30 and #45 (AKA Marco's story): Marco is out in public when he spots his dead mom, and follows her as a bug long enough to realize she's controlled by Visser One who is plotting an attack on the hork-bajir valley. Through letting Visser Three in on her plot, Marco discredits her and gets her charged with treason. As Visser One is about to be executed, the Animorphs grab Eva and drag her off to starve out the yeerk. The last scene is Eva and Marco telling a very surprised Peter that they need to talk.

Parts of #37, #46, and #51 (AKA Ax's story): Eva, Peter, and Ax build a radio that will let them talk to the Andalite Navy. Ax learns that a mission is already on Earth — he finds Gonrod et al. and offers to help them, with most of that plot playing out. Ax prevents Estrid from using the quantum virus by threatening to drop a nuclear bomb on the yeerk pool with her crew inside. Estrid reveals that the virus was a last-ditch attempt to save humanity, and that after this the andalites are writing off Earth entirely.

Combo of #49, #50, and #51 (AKA The End): The Animorphs' human DNA gets discovered, probably matching Jake to Tom for simplicity's sake. They evacuate Cassie's and Rachel's families, and start to notify the authorities. At a key moment, Ax reveals that he stole a morphing cube from Gonrod. Jake suggests making more Animorphs, but is acting reckless about it in the aftermath of losing his family — sure enough, after recruiting James et al., Jake walks into a trap and Tom's yeerk gets the morphing cube. The episode ends with Tom's yeerk popping up in the hork-bajir valley, offering to make a deal.

Mostly #54 (AKA The Beginning): Rachel dies, the Blade ship escapes, Cassie becomes the alien-human ambassador, Marco gets famous, Tobias lives in a tree, Jake teaches the next generation how to morph, and Ax hunts the Blade ship. To give a little more resolution than we get in canon, maybe Ax himself comes back to Earth and recruits the boys to help him battle The One in the outer reaches of space.

A lot would need to get cut, for the sake of taking 63 stories down to 8 — no Ellimist, no David, no Loren, no Crayak, no Toby, probably no taxxons or chee. But I think that my version preserves most of the overall story, while still being (hopefully) easy enough to follow for people who haven't read the books.

[imitorar]

The ending of the tale of the Emperor's New Clothes kind of feels like an autistic power fantasy. The awesome idea that when you observe that something everyone is doing makes no sense at all, and you point it out, everyone would just go "oh wow, finally someone was smart and brave enough to admit that this ridiculousness makes no sense, we can all stop pretending now" and just stop doing the thing that makes no sense.

In a more realistic version, whatever guardian would be responsible of the boy who pointed out that the emperor has no clothes would have pulled him aside and gently said "yes, sweetie, we know. Everyone knows. Now stop talking before you embarrass us any more than you already have."