#but I guess sometimes the way I see stuff talked about it’s likeeee is this adding to the richness of the character or is this

[ambrosiagourmet]

Take this with a grain of salt but I don’t think Izutsumi necessarily MUST be be viewed as canonically aroace. I do not have a problem with that reading at all, to be clear, but I’ve been mulling this over for a while and with how much self-loathing and neglect informs her character it just doesn’t seem to entirely fair in insist on taking the “I don’t have a type” line at face value.

She’s a traumatized 17-year-old girl who thinks she’s unlovable and has never had the freedom to chose what to do with her life. Of course she doesn’t have a type and longs for a mom to love her unconditionally.

[serafilms]

thoughts on pjo series so far after episode 6:

(spoilers for ep 6 ahead!! minor spoilers for the books too but nothing much about the plot)

acting SLAYS. slays. i almost teared up like 3 times bc of percabeth in ep 4/5 ALONE. and sally!! and grover!!!! luke and clarisse too ugh!!!!

special effects SLAYYYY. the monsters look really good and just as i imagined, I’ll give them that.

sets and locations are also very accurately pictured and the vibes brought out are just like the book!

script sucks. the writing is soooo awkward most of the time and the conversation just does not flow well. it’s too serious and boring half the time and i can’t keep relying on the actor’s tones even if they’re doing well as child actors.

soooo much exposition in every single conversation my head is spinning. like i feel like there were better ways to contextualise info from the book?

i saw someone say this show could’ve been approached with a fleabag ish narration and while that sort of would be a bit unorthodox i feel like that or just having walker narrate over the top sometimes would’ve been a good way to nod to the books. it’s difficult to bring a first person series alive when the narrator has so much personality and stuff to say that affects descriptions and how we see it, but i think it could’ve been possible.

music is clunky sometimes in that like why r the vibes so heavy for nothing…. like when they were talking in the animal truck and when they were driving the taxi etc.

no action. like i don’t need it to be pumping out adrenaline all the time but they have fr barely done anything i’m sorry 😰 book trio would’ve ate them alive.

cutting grover out at the waterpark likeeee??? yeah maybe him w ares was important but also it was not. they could’ve gotten that info any other time without making him stay w ares.

lacking explanation where it matters. like the eeriness of the lotus casino and why there are people from all different eras. and their RESOURCES like they aren’t explaining where their money and clothes and stuff are like these kids are surviving off one backpack?? it reminds me of in a wrinkle in time (2018) how the kid’s shirt changes like every 10 minutes and it’s just never acknowledged.

speaking of the lotus casino it’s just so like… bland. they’re cutting out the best parts of the story. percy fighting the chimera was so underwhelming and the bus scene too!!! and the lotus casino like yeah ok let’s not promote drugs i guess but they could have and SHOULD have had fun. why did they waste that time on cgi for the roller coaster in the casino at all?? it wasn’t sinister enough bc the whole vibe of the show is just serious so there’s no contrast between them thinking they’ve found paradise and realising there’s something wrong. captured the vibe of the show tbh: they plateau along the middle line of fun and serious business instead of playing with it like the book does.

feels like the character relationships r poorly drawn out. i’ve already forgotten about the weak attempt to build a percy-luke friendship. and annabeth not letting grover talk to hermes in the casino felt badly explained. plus grover’s whole backstory?? why r we straying so far from how the books explained him like they’re separating him a bit toooo much from the others.

generally just too many plot changes like as much as there is good in this show there is also bad and we stray further and further from the plot every single episode (the SOLSTICE WHAT HAPPENED TO THE TIME PRESSURE??).

it’s somehow too low stakes and too serious at the same time. like they’re acting like the stakes are high but i’m not feeling the pressure.

i understand it’s a new iteration and an adaption almost never means it’ll be the same, but that doesn’t mean i like all the changes. i guess there’s probably tonnes of reasons why book to screen adaptions always change so much (actually harry potter and tbosas ate tbh but oh well), and in this case it’s been many years since pjo was released, so rick is just taking that chance to rewrite things as he would if he wrote the books now. and i accept that. but these are just my opinions and some of these things are just plain bad choices for a show 😭

but i do still hope it gets picked up for all 5 seasons + heroes of olympus like i’ll give u all my money i’ll watch it all i swear

[tfw-no-tennis]

animorphssss.....2!

ok one L abt reading the series on my ereader is that the flipbook illustrations arent there ;_; those were my favvvvv

anyways I love animorphs still

I feel like I'll end up repeating myself a lot during these little liveblogs lmao but mannnn it’s so good. its so hardcore. like I know that that’s the whole Thing but I still get shocked by some of the stuff that happens 

like a big theme in the series centers around the morality of killing your enemies - and it’s so all over the place bc in book 6 you have jake boiling a bunch of yeerks alive, which is kinda gnarly if you think abt it, but the alternative would be to leave them there and let them infest people soo...? and that’s basically the point, that there are never any easy choices in war 

also I went on the animorphs wiki to look at trivia bc I love doing that and I cant BELIEVE (some of) the books were reissued in 2011 and they changed/removed some of the references to be more ‘modern’ omfg....talk about erasing 90s culture smh 

likeeee I was born in 97 so I didn't exactly grow up in the 90s and therefore some of the references go over my head but its so charming and fun to have them there! and it makes sense given that the books are SET in the 90s

I don't remember ever being confused by any of the references as a kid (tho for sure a lot of them went over my head), but then again I read the books in like 2008 sooo

also some of the stuff that they change - like changing ‘recorded w/a vcr’ to ‘recorded w/the TV’ or ‘floppy disc’ to ‘flash drive’ may make more sense to modern audiences, but doesn't make sense in the context of the story still being set in the 90s

tho it is funny that the books use the phrase ‘hook up’ to mean ‘meet up’ a lot bc that is a phrase that definitely has a different meaning nowadays

alsooooo as it turns out I'm p sure I only read a couple of the spinoffs - the hork-bajir chronicles and the ellimist chronicles (which was confusing lmao), bc my library didn’t have the others :( 2007/2008 woes....

but now I get to read the spinoffs woooooooo so I read the first megamorphs and the andalite chronicles 

I'm reading them in the chronological order (I think?) which is good bc part of the problem was that I read the ellimist book at a completely weird time and it confused me more lmao

megamorphs 1 basically felt like a regular animorphs book except longer, but the plot didn't feel like it needed all that extra page space tbh? even so it was an entertaining adventure

and rachel having amnesia was great, amnesia is one of my fav tropes lmao. and it was a lot of fun here, though a bit underutilized 

another favorite trope of mine is time travel, so I'm gonna have a really fun time here w/that

as for the andalite chronicles, I really enjoyed that one. I thought it was a well done story about the horrors of war (which is a theme animorphs does excellently), kind of similar to the overarching story of the whole series, but fit into one book without feeling rushed

the way the story starts out with elfangor wanting to be a hero, not understanding what that entails, to the end where he IS going to be a hero, and he knows now that this is a burden rather than a reward 

the horror elements are also really strong, with the taxxon morph being horrifying of course

and mannnn I loved that we got to see more of the taxxons as a species, and see that not all taxxons submitted to the yeerks - which breaks the previous theme of ‘all the taxxons are evil just because’ 

this book also establishes that the taxxons gave themselves over to the yeerks due to their constant hunger being unbearable, so it isn’t just that they’re evil for fun 

animorphs does such an excellent job showing that each ‘side’ of a war will have good and bad (or at least sympathetic and unsympathetic) people 

also loren was awesome, what a cool character. though I didn't realize she was literally like 13 until the very end of the book, holy shit. that's crazy. i thought she was 16 at the youngest....geez. her throwing a rock at visser 3 is even more iconic knowing she's a middle schooler at the time

and chapman was here! I'm assuming this must be the same chapman as the assistant principal controller... I thought it was a little strange to put chapman in that role, bc in this book he was a huge asshole basically the entire time, but in the previous (’future’) book it was revealed that he became a controller willingly only to spare his daughter, which is pretty far from this book where he’s actively trying to sell humanity out to the yeerks...people change I guess? (also he got his memory erased so I guess there's that)

alloran was a really interesting character. horrors of war again - we hear from his old buddy that he used to be a fun, witty guy, but war changed him into somebody who would do horrible things 

and him becoming a controller was horrifying, obviously, but I like that alloran wasn't portrayed as some perfect, holy guy in order to make it all the more tragic when he got infested. its already fucked up enough as it is, and making him flawed was a lot more meaningful 

and him wanting to flush all the yeerks out into space....oooooof the (later) parallels hurt 

plus the fact that elfangor refusing to commit genocide against the helpless yeerks (even though they’re the enemy) directly contributing to alloran becoming a controller.....oof. I love that it shows that even making the morally correct decisions during war can lead to awful things happening, but not in a way that endorses evil actions - the story isn’t saying that elfangor should have killed the yeerks, it’s saying that there are no good choices in war 

arbron being trapped as a taxxon was fucked up. but also really intriguing, especially how he found purpose and led a free taxxon uprising. I don't remember if we hear from him/the free taxxons again but I hope so

also the plot twist of tobias being elfangors SON...bruh. I do remember that despite not having read this book so it must come up in the main story later but my memory of that is vauge so I’m excited to see how that plays out. it’s always gonna be hilarious to me that ax is technically tobias’s uncle 

and then the ellimist drops in and wacks up the time stream even more. classic. I love the crazy time travel stuff in animorphs

omfg and the bits where elfangor is a human tech guy and talked about his friends bill and steve LMAOOOOO

also the scene where elfangor drives the yellow mustang while blasting '(I cant get no) satisfaction’ by the rolling stones was one of the most iconic things I've ever read

basically I loved all the angles of war fucking people up. from loren’s dad, to alloran, to elfangor himself learning about the true horrors of war...v well done imo

ok back to the main series - so my pick for the most fucked up scene SO FAR (in my own personal opinion) - the scene where they're in the jungle and rachel passes out in bear morph and a bunch of rainforest ants start EATING HER ALIVE and like crawling into her ears and mouth and HGGGGGG that was genuinely so fucking disturbing

its a good thing that the time travel made it so rachel couldn't remember that bc that was fuuuuucked

another contender is a scene we don't actually see - erek having his capacity for violence instated and then slaughtering a ton of human and hork-bajir controllers 

like damn, you know its fucked up when its too fucked up for ANIMORPHS to even ‘show.’ this is a series that doesn't pull punches but evidentially that would've been Too Much to actually portray (understandably). also i feel like seeing the aftermath/everyone’s reactions had more of an impact than describing erek killing a bunch of people would have

also I forgot that marco Literally Fucking Dies during that scene and that's why he doesn't get to see the slaughter. wow

and then in the very next book JAKE dies too. jesus

oh it was also so sad and fucked up when marco’s dad told him that he and his wife used to fight sometimes, but then all of a sudden they stopped fighting, and their relationship was basically entirely peaceful and perfect - and this is how marco knows exactly when his mom was made into a controller, bc of course a yeerk wouldn't care enough to get into petty arguments like that....ooooof

Okay and book 15 really got me...that was fucking heavy man. Geeeez. Everything w/Marco and his mom is so fucked uppppp

Like he literally has to deal with so much awful traumatizing shit. The scene where he pretends to be a controller and is face to face w/visser one and THAT HIS MOM but he can’t even do anything, and he just sees the evil in her eyes and thinks about how there’s no way she had been controlled by a yeerk that long before bc he’s never seen her look like that...that was so fucking sad.

Plus Marcos mom now thinking that Marco is a controller...aughh...and then later Marco knows he can’t even think-speak to her bc he’ll just talk about everything he’s wanted to talk about to his mom this whole time... ;_;

And the parts where Marcos humor slips and the utter rage he feels towards the situation comes through...man

Plus everything about him being understandably afraid of sharks after being nearly torn in half by one back during their first dolphin adventure

Augh oh and jake telling Marco that everyone can tell something is up bc Marco isn’t joking around and talking about how insane their plan is like usual, so Marco fakes it sand does all that even tho he’s terrified and conflicted...aughhhh

Ok and the last scene where Marco is thinking about a future where he and his parents can talk plainly about how awful and traumatizing everything is, and then eventually they’ll feel okay enough to joke about it, bc Marcos mom is the one who taught him to look at the funny side of life...Oh The Pain

There were a lot of great fucked up individual lines in this book too. I’m just so sad about these poor middle schoolers jfc

Also I do distinctly remember the scene where they collapse the shark tank at Ocean World or w/e, it was weird af reading it bc I remembered none of the rest of the book but got weird deja vu reading that scene and remembering having read it like 13+ years ago

if it’s not clear by now I have a pretty terrible memory for media which is honestly good bc then I can reread things and it’s like new

Also jake...man...I said it previously but I was kinda eh about jake when I first read these bc he’s kinda the ‘basic’ character, but now I find his story much more interesting

His conflict over being leader is really good. KAA does a fantastic job capturing the pressure he’s under bc he was chosen by his friends to be the leader, so he REALLY can’t back out, and he doesn’t necessarily feel up to it, but feels he has no choice in the matter...

And constantly having to make really difficult decisions that could get his friends killed...geez. It’s so much pressure. And he talks about wanting to go back to being a normal kid when this is all over, and it kinda strikes me as him being in denial - like, there’s no way things can ever be ‘normal’ again, but that’s his way of coping.

Especially with Tom and all that. That conflict is so compelling...jake having to play all these different roles - as leader, as a son/student, as a regular brother to Tom - he’s constantly having to act a certain way and rarely gets to be Himself

It’s actually kinda relatable in a way - that feeling of being In Charge, but in a somewhat abstract and informal way, so you feel like regular old you, but you have to carefully regulate how you act bc the people around you expect a certain standard of behavior from you...

And all the morally grey situations they’re put in are fucked up, but especially for jake who has the final say on what they do, even when knowing it could lead to his friends being killed or made into controllers

Like in the book with the cannibal yeerk guy - there’s basically no good choices there. Jake lets the cannibal live, and (at first) implies that it’s for the best that he’s cannibalizing other yeerks and therefore helping get rid of some yeerks - except that he kills their hosts too

but the alternative would be to directly kill another human being who isn't actively fighting/resisting you, which is a fucked up thing for a middle schooler to have to do 

And the conflict between jake and Cassie is really excellent bc jake has to make these awful decisions, and Cassie is the type of person who can’t stand that sort of thing, so it gets left up to jake a lot, but then she’s upset with jake for doing something awful, even while knowing that there were no better options

like, her asking jake to kill the cannibal guy for her was really fucked up, but also entirely understandable for cassie as a character to ask. it was an emotionally charged situation, and cassie is an emotional person. she’s also somebody who like to Act, to do concrete good, and getting rid of an Evil Bad Guy in front of her would be a definite action

But Cassie is a great source of morality to the group - most of them are pretty jaded, but Cassie is able to hope in a way none of the rest are. It creates a really compelling dynamic between jake and Cassie that I kinda dismissed when I was like 10 or w/e

Also the scene where jake as a fly gets crushed and starts dying? Seriously fucked. And then after when he’s nearly breaking down in the airport and Cassie comforts him...that was a really good scene. Cassie is so good  

And the continuity is so excellent - I love how in book 17, Cassie (and jake to an extent) doesn’t really weigh in on the moral debate abt the oatmeal bc she’s still shaken up by asking jake to murder a guy for her, and then (presumably) going ahead and lighting his house on fire when jake doesn’t kill him

And augh jake and Marco have such a good and interesting dynamic - the entire group kinda pushes each other into their respective ‘roles’ in the group, but for a few books that’s really true for jake and marco

I don't remember what book it was but at some point marco (I think) mentions that jake understands what marco is dealing with w/his mom being a controller bc of tom, but that they don’t talk about it bc they ‘don't talk about stuff like that’ or something and I'm just like noooo talk to each other :( 

but at this point jake feels like he can’t really express doubt and fear and stuff like that bc he’s the Leader and they look to him to be strong (which is ironically very similar to how rachel feels), and marco feels like he can’t be serious bc he’s the funny guy. 

Basically I love all the different dynamics in the group. How Cassie and Rachel are such opposites but are best friends and get along well, while Marco and Cassie are more directly opposed - as jake says, Marco is ruthless, and Cassie definitely isn’t. Rachel and Marco are also pretty different which is interesting, bc they have a lot in common, and actually agree on a lot (even if they disagree out loud) but their commonalities combined with their circumstances make them react very differently to the same situations

I also love seeing the differences between characters from each other’s POV - like, p much all the characters think that Rachel is completely fearless, but when the book is from her POV, we get to see that that isn’t true at all - she feels plenty of fear, but she recognizes that her role in the group is to be the fearless one, so she pushes aside her fear to fit into that role (which inadvertently pushes her more and more into that ‘fearless warrior’ box - something that happens to all the characters more and more as the story goes on, like jake as ‘the leader’ and Marco as ‘the jokester’).

Also I loooove the grey morality of literally everything. Like the book where ax discovers an andalite traitor - not a controller, just an andalite who betrayed them to the yeerks. This leads to the deaths of like a hundred other andalites, and that whole scene you really just feel for ax, bc he feels so awful about everyone else dying while he escapes, yet he’s also so grateful to be alive, which he in turn feels bad about...

And ax’s conflict about being torn between his home w/his fellow andalites and his new home on earth w/his friends is great

And oh man I fucking love book 19. Any of the books where it goes more into the yeerks and their side of things are so good, just like the book where jake was made into a controller.

And book 19, where we meet a sympathetic yeerk, comes right after 18, where we meet an andalite traitor - again, I love how we clearly see that no one side is completely good or completely bad

So yeah book 19 fucking slapped. That shit was so compelling. I love how Cassie made a bunch of foolish decisions based on naïve hope, but it worked out!! Things aren’t always bleak and awful!

Except there were plenty bleak and awful parts of this book. It had a great balance of moods tbh, even though a lot of the situations were extremely contrived lmao. I love the stuff that aftran says, which is basically what I was thinking when I started my reread - being a yeerk fucking sucks, you’re literally a blind slug but also completely and fully sentient, on the same level as humans and andalites - and as afran pointed out this book, the yeerks are born as parasites, just as humans are born as predators - why is it okay for the humans to kill countless animals to eat, but not for the yeerks to enslave races to act as hosts? Well, the situation isn’t totally comparable, which Cassie and Marco both point out when aftran makes that comparison - the yeerks are enslaving sentient species, and cows and chickens are not the same as the humans and hork-bajir (though the story understandably doesn’t fall too deeply into the ‘who deserves what right/animal sentience’ rabbit hole).

And I like that aftran points out that the yeerks basically have 2 options currently - stay helpless and blind in a yeerk pool, or enslave a host. It’s interesting to hear that a lot of yeerks don’t like doing this but see it as the only options, as opposed to complete sensory deprivation. It makes me wonder if there are yeerks who are so staunchly against it that they elect to stay as pool-bound slugs forever

Also maybe it’s the shounen anime fan in me but I don’t even care that much that Cassie’s entire plan was completely off the rails and hinged on only the slightest chance of success - with failure being much more likely and completely catastrophic, with the animorphs and their loved ones all being wiped out, vs success being unlikely and also achieving...a moral victory? Peace between two enemy combatants in a huge war? nothing all that concrete...anyways it was a bunch of good-faith horrible decisions on Cassie’s part, but I don’t even care? I love stories where hope and love save the day against all odds, especially when they’re wielded like weapons by a character and make everything end nicely

This is especially true here bc animorphs is generally a series that leans very far away from that type of thing, so when it does happen, it feels like a victory. Plus the David trilogy is next so we kinda need a happy ending while we can

also bc I compared animorphs to hxh last time, I now have to compare it to the other series I've (partially) liveblogged, transformers mtmte.

this is gonna be more abstract and brief but basically. mtmte is all about after the war, and everyone has so much trauma and everything just sucks, so they all go on a space cruise and work on themselves. basically.

but the series does a lot of exploration of how war fucks people up - same as animorphs, tho animorphs spans the beginning of the war (for the main characters at least) until the end, whereas mtmte starts when the war ends.

but the point is. both series do an excellent job showcasing the wide range of reactions people have to being put in unthinkable situations during wartime. all the major characters in mtmte go through arcs where they heal/change from the war, some more subtle than others

basically the animorphs needs to go on a wacky space cruise adventure with a bunch of other fucked up people and figure their shit out, mtmte style

ok this is wicked long already so I’m gonna end it here. also I feel like I should start the next liveblog w/the david triology bc I’m for sure gonna have a lot to say abt that

[finnwolfhardd]

General:

How many people on Tumblr do you know in real life? likeeee 3 lol

Do you want to change your name? idk if this means my actual name or user but either way i’m kinda fine with it rn

What time did you wake up this morning? i actually woke up at like 11:58 or something since i haven’t been in school for a while

What were you doing last night? I was drawing and watching movies, also texting a friend

Is there something you can’t wait for? death? lmao but for real i can’t wait to being my baddest bitch again

What’s getting on your nerves right now? how much clothes i have rn and a few cuts i have on my face. i just wanna feel and look pretty :(

What do you like about yourself? how blunt i am ig, people usually like that about me which kinda makes sense oh and my sense of humor ;;)))

WANTS:

Kids? I don’t really want kids, but if anything i’d adopt like a teenager cause it upsets me knowing that they have less of a chance of being adopted

Get married? A huge commitment like that scares me but if it’s with the right person i’m down

Career? Animator or Professional Photographer for like instagram models or something idk

LASTS:

Last drink? a punch that my aunt brought home? like it’s grape juice, sugar, and egg. it tasted like grape juice only but the egg freaked me out

Last meal? Yellow rice with sausages, corn, fired plantains, and a salad

Last phone call? My mom but i don’t really count her calls since she only calls to avoid texting during work, so a friend from highschool

Last text message? me to a middle school friend: “YOUR WANG CANT BE THAT LONG” he was talking about sucking his own dick

Last song listened to? Thriller - Micheal Jackson (Im listening to it rn)

Last time you cried? 2 nights ago, about some sad lgbt stuff

IN THE PAST YEAR HAVE YOU:

Made a new friend? Yeah, it was a new school with literally none of my friends so i made like 5 new friends and 20 new people i talk to time to time

Met someone who changed you? No, that would be rare case

Found out who your true friends were? Yeah kinda, something really bad happened a few months ago and only a few people stuck around me to help

Found out someone was talking about you? FUCK MAN old best friend of mine she spread mad rumors about me and i hate drama so much so i just cut her off right then

NOW:

Eating: nada

Drinking: nada señor

Listening: EASE - Troye Sivan (i don’t usually listen to stuff like this but i’m listening to a playlist about a character so i guess it’s valid rn)

WHICH IS BETTER:

Lips or eyes? I like eyes and their colours but god i love the shape and softness of lips; LIPS

Hugs or kisses? Kisses for sure

Nose kisses or neck kisses? Nose kisses calm me down

Shorter or taller? Taller but like not too taller, i don’t wanna strain my neck to give affection

Older or younger? Either, just like not too young or not too old, that’s kinda weird for me

Hook up or relationship? relationship i think? i’ve only had one relationship but we broke up and got back together so then the second time i was just kinda a booty call (i then dumbed him and am never getting back together with him)

HAVE YOU EVER:

Kissed a stranger? Nah lol but i wouldn’t mind too much i think, it would just be a bucket list kinda thing

Drank liquor? Yes, by accident every time tho. one time when i was 5, another during the summer, and recently when my friend gave me the wrong cup

Lost glasses?contacts? Uhhh both tbh, and they were trial contacts so i can’t ask for another until my mom pays

Sex on first date? i’m a good kiddie, never even had the sexies 🤭

Turned someone down? Yeah but i never stopped talking to them cause of it

Developed a crush on a friend? oof i was but then i moved so i can’t see him anymore, helping me move on ;)

Dated someone twice? Booty call dude? ya him ://

Been cheated on? nahh i’m too much of a goddess to get cheated on

Kissed someone and regretted it? when i got back together with booty dude, i regretted it instantly but i just HAD to ignore it

Lost someone special? 3-29-16

Been drunk and thrown up? i’ve only gotten tipsy so it wasn’t too bad

Talked to someone with the same name as you? italian name in america? least likely than you think

DO YOU BELIEVE:

In yourself? sometimes, rarely

Miracles? kinda, i believe if you don’t let go of the chances it’ll happen

Love at first sight? for certain people, some people just can’t obtain it ig

Heaven? i’m not religious so i don’t necessarily believe in heaven specifically, but there must be an afterlife or something. reincarnation or just being a spirit. this shouldn’t be it

Santa? whom?

Witchcraft? if you had the ACTUAL tools for it,,, maybe

Uhhh nominating

@smallchibiboi cause u a lil bitch