#Shorm

[clothless-sock]

thought speak yap session in Ax’s burrow thing in the woods

[sarifel-corrisafid-ilxhel]

Drawing at work again. Decided to try drawing everyone's favorite shorms. Wait, how do you pluralize shorm? Is it shorm or shorms, or is it something else?

If this looks a little different to you, that is because I did a few adjustments when I got home.

[zeddpool]

Yo @dawnquafam , you called?

Fr tho, this was fun to draw

🩵🌊🩵

(for anyone wondering, Idk who Sheryl is either, it’s just that “Suck it everyone who said I was crazy for believing in Atlantis” wasn’t quite as funny)

[zeddhood]

Maybe it’s just because I’m a huge sucker for rarepairs, but idk, I feel like Orm/Dr. Shin has potential

[pfeffaroo]

Tell me we both matter

[kooldewd123]

list of other human inventions I think ax would enjoy:

- lawnmowers. of course, with humanity having much denser cities than andalites, it makes sense to create devices that can capture grass so they can share it with people who have less room to graze. what he doesn't understand is why humanity would invent something like this when they don't even eat grass.

- rubik's cube. stereotypical, i know, but it's too good a mental image to not mention.

- baking soda volcano. he'd have a good laugh at the idea and then when he realizes they're being serious he'd explain that andalite children make, like, nuclear batteries or something in school instead. then he'd try to drink the vinegar.

- those gag glasses that turn your vision sideways or upside down or whatever. he's used to having four eyes, so they don't faze him in the slightest. in fact, he thinks it's amazing that humans invented something like this to overcome their disability of only having two eyes, and he doesn't understand why everyone doesn't carry one around all the time.

- one of those giant jelly belly containers with every single flavor in it. i mean come on, this one's obvious.

- the bible. hear me out on this one: it's the most popular book on the planet. surely that means it would be a great way for him to learn about human culture (he thinks). of course, without context, he just ends up even more confused than before, but at least there are a lot of old-timey words in there that are fun to say. like "parable." or "byzantium."

[crystalkitty1220]

OKAY BEFORE I SAY ANYTHING, WHATS THEYRE NAME

I HAVE NOT DECIDED YET

APPARENTLY CHANGELING NAMES ARE USUALLY MEANINGLESS ONE-SYLLABLE WORDS

IT'S HARD TO FIND ONE OF THOSE THAT IS UNIQUE

[pissfizz]

SOBBING FUCKING SOBBING OHHH MY GOD…. THEY ARE SO IMPORTANT FUCK

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Your post mentioning why #41 is your least favorite, and why a simple one-sentence explanation of Anti-Morphing Ray would improve it tremendously, made me think of one thing that would make #40 *slightly* better for me: if the bees they morphed were solitary carpenter bee type species, which actively DON'T live in hives and presumably don't have a social mindset that would be a PTSD trigger for our protags.

Even better, some of those bees are known for hovering for ages in the same spot certain times of year, which would make them the perfect surveillance bugs for discovering the hidden secrets of new-found Andalite pals!

Yes, that's good point! I gnash my teeth over #40 because it has such wasted potential. It's, like, three lines away from being a damn good Animorphs book. Setting aside a version where Gafinilan introduces Mertil as his husband (I get why that can't happen in a 90s children's book) it could be vastly improved with a few tweaks:

Carpenter bees! You're right that that fixes the continuity, both plot-wise and character-wise, by having non-social bees.

Have Gaf say he and Mert "are vecols." Or else add a line clarifying that "vecol" means "visibly disabled." Either works, and either one has interesting implications for andalite culture, without being ham-fistedly ignorant about invisible disability.

Give Mertil a personality. Which could be done with one line — he only needs one wry comment as he's being rescued, a kind remark about bees, a silly pet name for Gaf. Just... something.

Drop the line about "the girlfriend" supporting Jake no matter what. Marco can be sexist, but that's too far even for him.

REMEMBER TOBIAS EXISTS. Especially when Ax announces that anyone who chooses to become a nothlit is "a coward" and Cassie agrees that Gaf is no coward and thus would never trap himself in morph. Tobias has TWO LINES in that scene, one of which is "Sounds reasonable." He's also there for Jake's and Gaf's conversation about nothlits and vecols, and again barely says a word. Again, you only need one line — just have Marco notice that Tobias isn't weighing in.  #37, #38, and #41 comment on Tobias being dissociated after Taylor fucked him up, so you can explain his near non-existence in this story. But at least explain it, ideally while making Ax look marginally less dickish toward his shorm.

[fanonical]

it's such a powerful concept, i sometimes forget that the word 'shorm' is silly as hell

[serpenera]

HOGWARTS CLASSES MASTER SCHEDULE

I've been cooking up a fanfic but before I can write a single line, I gotta have EVERYTHING figured out and because part of said fanfic is meant to take place at the castle, I decided I needed a class schedule for the entire school to use as ref.

At first, I did what any normal person would do: I googled it and lo and behold, I found a couple of fan-made schedules. The most promising one was that created by @shorm (check it out here) - the elective class system in particular looked very neat - BUT I soon realized it had one critical flaw: it required the teachers to hold multiple classes at the same time. Whether this was intentional (the schedule could work if all the teachers used time turners) or just an oversight, that schedule wouldn't work for me so I sat down and made my own.

It took me maybe a little over a week of on and off work to create this. While @shorm's work was definitely an inspiration, I made the schedule from scratch, taking some liberties to make sure that there are no overlaps. Details will be explained below.

The schedule is FREE TO USE as a reference for your fanfics. I would, however, greatly appreciate if you COULD CREDIT ME.

It's a very long post so I'm putting it all under the cut.

CLASSES OVERVIEW

CORE CLASSES

All core classes are mandatory for years 1 to 5 and optional for years 6 and 7 (based on OWL results). Each House has at least 2 classes with one of the other Houses, presumably to facilitate inter-house relations between the students. Based on this principle the 7 core classes are put into exclusionary pairs.

Potions is always 1x week: for year 1 it's 1h, for years 2-5 2h (double period). As a result DADA which is its pair (both work with GS+RH groups) is set up in the same manner.

Herbology and Charms (both work with GH + SR groups) always have 1h lessons 2x week for all years.

Transfiguration and History of Magic (both work with GR + SH groups) have 1h lessons 2x week for all years. History of Magic has an additional lesson for years 1 and 2. This is possible because History is not part of the 6-7 year curriculum.

Astronomy has 1h of theoretical class during the day 1x week and 1h of practice during the night 1x week for all years. It can often overlap with the extra lesson of HoM for years 1-2 (it also works with GR + SH groups). The practicals take place at either 11 PM, 12AM or 1AM.

ELECTIVE CLASSES

Flying is only for first years, presumably to determine the students' predisposition for the Quidditch teams.

Students can choose 2 or 3 out of 5 available classes. The schedule allows to choose max 3 classes in any combination. If you only choose 2 classes, you will have one additional free period, which one will depend on your class choice.

The elective classes can have students from all Houses. G1 and G2 refer to group 1 and 2 which are formed based on students class choice. If a lot of students make the same choices, House-based groups can be formed.

Each class has 1h lesson 2x week. CFMC, Divination, Arithmancy and Ancient Runes run 2 sessions of each of the 2 lessons to accomodate the two groups. Muggle Studies runs only 1 session of each of the 2 lessons, presumably because it's a less popular class and a second session is not required to allow for any 2-3 class combination.

MASTER SCHEDULE YEARS 1-5

Year 1 always starts from second period (9.30) and have a free Friday afternoon. Year 2 starts from first period (8.00) or second period (9.30) depending on the day and also have free Friday afternoons. All houses have Astronomy Practical on a day that would allow them to sleep in the next morning to compensate.

Years 3 to 5 start on either first or second period, depending on the day, and also have classes on fifth period (during which year 1 had flying lessons) to accommodate the elective classes. The numbers 1 and 2 next to the class choice refer to lesson 1 and lesson 2 of the same class (see teachers schedules below).

STUDENTS' SCHEDULES YEARS 1-5

The following schedules are transposed from the Master Schedule above.

The schedules for years 1 and 2 appear a bit empty, but this is due to a lack of teachers' availability. At most, you could have an additional Potions and/or DADA lesson on period 3 on Wed/Thu.

The schedules for years 3-5 assume a student follows 3 elective classes. If they follow 2, then in place of a 3rd class, they will have a free period.

STUDENTS' SCHEDULE YEARS 6-7

6 and 7 year students will only attend the classes they qualify for based on their intended career path and OWL results. Each class is scheduled 2x week in a different time slot to allow for a student to follow any class combination.

TEACHERS' SCHEDULES

The following schedules are transposed from the 1-5 years master schedule and the 6-7 years schedule above.

CORE CLASSES TEACHERS

The numbers in the slots refer to the year and the letters refer to the House. So for ex. 1 GS = 1st years Gryffindor + Slytherin. 6 and 7 years are always a mix of all Houses.

Potions and DADA, which are paired up (they teach the same House combinations GS or RH), always have 2h lessons scheduled for either period 1-2 or period 4-5. This way the students can either start later (8.30 instead of 8) or leave earlier (16 instead of 16.30). Year 1 has 1h lessons because no more consecutive periods are available. This way, both Potions and DADA teachers have 3 days where they have a free period before lunch. If you wanted, you could use it to have year 1 have a second 1h DADA and/or 1h Potions class on Wed/Thu, leaving the teachers with only a single free period like all the other teachers.

Astronomy has 3 nighttime slots between 11 PM and 2AM to accommodate students from all years. Years 1 and 2, being the youngest, will always have the earliest slot. Years 3 to 5 take either the second or third slot based on whether they have classes on period 1. Years 6 and 7 always have the late slot. Astronomy teacher has no classes on period 1 except for the theoretical for years 6 and 7 which always falls on a day after a night where she was teaching no class (Sunday and Thursday) allowing her to sleep through the night and wake up early.

ELECTIVE CLASSES TEACHERS

The numbers in the slots refer to the year. Les 1 and 2 refer to Lesson 1 and 2. Gr 1 and 2 refer to group 1 and 2 (which can have students from all houses based on their choice of subjects).

6 and 7 years are always a mix of all Houses. The lesson earlier in the week will be the first one and the one later in the week will be the second one.

Elective classes teachers have 9 free periods they could use - if necessary - to schedule an additional session of either lesson 1 or 2, based on students' availability. This, however, is unnecessary if students choose no more than 3 classes. An additional session would not be scheduled for a single student that decided they want to follow 4 or 5 classes.

Muggle Studies teacher has 15 free periods as they have only 1 session for lesson 1 and 2 for each year. A second session is not necessary unless a large number of students (more than half) signed up for the subject. In that case, they would be split into two groups based on their other class choices and availability, and up to 6 of those 15 available slots would be used to schedule additional sessions (see "Additional Availability" table above to determine when for which year).

If we don't make any modifications and leave MS with 1 lesson 1 and 1 lesson 2 and the other classes with 2 lessons 1 and 2 lessons 2, each student will be able to follow either one of the below class combinations:

EASY MODIFICATIONS

Since the core classes are set in pairs, you can swap them to better suit your needs.

To give an example: I have Potions set for year 1 RH on Monday period 3. Meanwhile GS has DADA. Then I have Potions for year 1 GS on Friday period 3. Meanwhile RH has DADA. If for some reason you need year 1 GS to have Potions on Monday, all you have to do is swap these two slots around.

You can also swap the electives around. The elective class slots in the master are better left where they are but you can easily swap the classes available for each slot. You will only need to reference both the electives table and additional availability table to determine which classes are available for each slot and set them up in three blocks of three classes each just like I did. You only have to make sure that each class except one appears twice for each three-block set. The single class doesn't gave to be MS. If in your story a lot of students take MS but few take CMC, you can rearrange the classes so that CMC only appears once.

Any changes you make will obviously need to be transposed to the relevant student and teachers schedules.

[princeseerow]

animorphs #8: the alien: ch. 14 - 21

lirem-arrepoth-terrouss says he was an aristh under prince seerow "many centuries ago". do andalites really live centuries, or is this just a way of obfuscating just how long ago seerow's kindness really took place?

ax being goaded into taking the blame for elfangor breaking the law.... oof

i adore the running gag in this book of the other kids not knowing how ax eats but not wanting to ask because, well, that would be rude

the suspense of what seerow did has been building up so well that even though i already know the answer i'm still dying for ax to reveal the truth

the hork-bajir running away is cracking me up. let's hope visser three doesn't find them again...

this book does such a good job of making alloran a tragic sympathetic figure. here he is, going through absolute hell, and yet he understands that ax is incapable of killing him no matter how much he begs him to, because it is a LOT to ask of a young cadet.

i'm sorry, there are yeerks on the andalite planet?? do we... do we ever follow up on that?

of course it's cassie who first puts together that andalites aren't secretive with their technology because of control (says marco) or power (says rachel), but because they're ashamed of their past. we're shown over and over that rachel and marco are the least trusting of ax, that jake is exasperated and trying but failing to stay neutral, and that tobias is firmly on ax's side (even when he isn't), but cassie never quite takes a side. she's not trying to judge him one way or the other, she just wants to understand him.

andeven after the big reveal of seerow's kindness, ax's friends don't... care. or, more accurately, they don't mind. they're more upset about being lied to than about the andalites' messy past, because they recognize that seerow (and ax, for that matter) had good intentions. they don't want to punish him, they don't hate him, they just want to all be on the same page. it's sweet.

awww ax finally calls tobias his shorm

[lakesbian]

kind of enamored with the animorphs background detail that rachel is in charge of tobias and ax's closet. she's canonically either just purchasing shit for ax without his input (has his size memorized?) and bringing it to the scoop for him or dragging him shopping and trying to keep him away from the food court for long enough to try on outfits. and the little nineties magazine cover model outfits she puts him in, which are apparently dork-preppy enough that they make marco want to shove his head in the toilet, certainly do not cater to any of ax's actual tastes. do you suppose rachel ax and tobias all went to the mall together and tobias coerced him with promises of cinnamon rolls to try on 4 different stupid pink polos so rachel could decide on her favorite. cool shorm bonding experience (tobias tying a pair of shoes onto ax's feet at his girlfriend's behest while ax politely inquires for the seventh time in a row when they will be obtaining cinnamon buns)

[zeddpool]

Practice sketches of Orm and Dr. Shin. I have a bit of a soft-spot for disgraced scientists who go down the wrong path in pursuit of their passion but when it comes down to it will do the right thing in the end. It’s a surprisingly common trope and I’m a sucker for it every time.

🥼🌊🔱

(Honestly the only reason I don’t have a full-blown case of brainworms is that the Aquaman movie fandom seems to currently consist of me, 5 other people, and a possum we found in a dumpster)

[milquetoast-zeitgeist]

I saw a post today, from another Animorphs fan, who got the chance to meet K.A. Applegate; and he said 'they say never to meet your idols, except Katherine Applegate'.

She truly is an underrated treasure of humanity.

Months ago, I had the serendipitous and very unexpected opportunity to go to an event she was at, 12 minutes from my house.

I was delirious with excitement. I don't think even I understood the awesome emotional enormity of what I'd gotten the privilege to experience.

Tonight I did. I'm crying as I write this, with the realization that I got to meet (and got a hug from!) the author who shaped my young adulthood.

I mean, I can take you to the exact geographic spot on the planet Earth, where I was sitting in 6th grade (USAmerican), and I saw the Animorphs book one advertisement in the scholastic book flyer.

I didn't know it then, but what I felt was the fulcrum of destiny weighing on me, and I chose to commit myself to those books. And like almost every other reader, I was forever changed.

I never, in a million gazillion years, in my most wild imaginings, even in the absolute heights of my young adult flights of fancy, did I ever think I'd get within miles of Katherine Applegate. Let alone get to hug her, as a thank you for changing my life!

We, the Animorphs fandom, are truly one of the most dedicated and blessed and undervalued and underappreciated fandoms. But we're all family, knit together by struggle, and pain, and bonds of friendship and connections that run deeper than family.

To all my fellow friends, family, and fellow shorms.

You matter

[pfeffaroo]

The Semliin-Shorm Chronicles TRAILER