#dapsenlumber

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

You’ve said before that ex-hosts in Eleutherophobia can have blunted affect such as their expressionless speech. Does that still happen when Tom uses thought-speak, which doesn’t require any physical muscle control?

So. My headcanon about thought-speak is that it doesn't have tone like voice-speak, but that it does convey emotions in its own way. For example, in MM3 Rachel notes that Cassie's thought-speak "was alarmed. She'd heard the guns. But she didn't know... about Jake." Later, when discussing the Holocaust, Ax notes Rachel "[thought-] spoke with no special emphasis. No anger."

If Rachel can tell that Cassie a) heard gunfire but b) doesn't know Jake is dead, then Rachel has a pretty good read of Cassie's mood just from the way Cassie shouted the word "What?". Definitely more information than Rachel would've gotten from Cassie texting her the word "What". Ax noting Rachel's lack of emotion in thought-speak also suggests she normally does have emotion coming through.

Based on what we see in #1 and #33, thought-speak can convey a lot of things voice-speak cannot: images, memories, a sense of someone else's emotions in your own body. But it doesn't necessarily convey tone. We don't see any instances of characters being "shrill" or "hoarse" in thought-speak, even though those are common in voice-speak. In #50, Timmy has trouble generating language, but can use thought-speak fluently. So it's not like talking on the phone.

I headcanon that is why no one can tell when Ax is joking: In andalite-to-andalite communication, intent is obvious by default, so you'd never need to lower and sharpen your voice to get verbal irony across. Galuit can't tell when Jake is being sarcastic (#18) for the same reasons Jake can't tell when Ax is being sarcastic; there are two different ways of conveying it. Ax is like "obviously I willed a certain ironic distance into my words; why is that so hard for humans to understand?" and the humans are all like "bro, when using mouth-sounds you gotta inflect irony."

As to what that all means for yeerk hosts, who sound "flat" (#45) and "slurred" (#2) when talking out loud... Hm. Gotta think about it more.

[arrivisting]

wip meme, cont.

#13 for @dapsenlumber

They kissed without skill, hard and heedless. Their mouths came together in a rough access of feeling. The angle was wrong until Fingon pulled Maedhros’s head down, and Maedhros’s good arm hitched him up against him, and then it was better.

His lip was bleeding when they came apart, and Maedhros’s white cheek was studded with red marks from where the gold in Fingon’s hair had pressed against it.

[sokkastyles]

dapsenlumber

Or maybe Jeong Jeong is subtly dissing Pakku

Jeong Jeong is so interesting to me because after leaving the Fire Nation he seems to have such loathing for his own bending because to him it represents everything he hates and wanted to leave behind, and sees fire as capable of only causing destruction and pain. I actually think Pakku and Jeong Jeong are two different interpretations of what happens when you lack a balanced perspective. Jeong Jeong has great respect for the female-coded power of waterbenders but calls firebending a curse (and firebending is masculine-coded). Which, as I said here, is a wrong way of looking at things, just as wrong as Pakku’s gender essentialism. That’s one of the things I love so much about Iroh and Zuko’s narratives, both have a strong theme of reinterpreting masculinity to become non-toxic. There’s an absolutely fabulous video essay on that here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SezGJNNZmtI

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

@dapsenlumber

Maybe Jake is average but crumbles under pressure. The basketball tryouts are the biggest thing of his life to date and he can’t handle it

So true.  Because that’s part of the point of Jake, that he’s the least talented guy on this untalented team while also excelling at meeting the challenges thrown his way.  He says his talents lie in basketball and video games — only he can’t make his junior high team as an eighth-grader, and regularly loses at video games to a less-experienced Marco.  That’s not to say he remains that untalented throughout the series; 10 pages later he’s insta-coordinating how he and his friends can maximize their ability to escape a horde of controllers, while running from said controllers.  100 pages after that and he’s directing battle strategy based on a combination of paying attention and winging it.

Anyway, what if he’s getting screwed by the Yerkes (no relation) Dodson Curve?

He’s just wildly mis-calibrated to how hard he should be trying to get on the basketball team, because it’s the hardest thing he’s ever tried to do so far.  This kid thinks he’s “invincible” (#4) and climbs construction cranes for fun (#1).

As @derinthescarletpescatarian​ and @andalitean​ put it: “Jake is the plain mashed potato of the Animorphs.”/ “He isn’t even mashed at first he’s just a boiled potato (the trauma is what mashes him)” (X).  Which is the perfect description of Jake.  He does rise to the occasion, but his actual superpowers are confidence, fast reaction time, faking ‘til you make it, and following the little rules so that no one notices you breaking the big ones.  And at first, that confidence is the kind that comes from the assumption nothing really bad will ever happen to him because nothing ever has.  He has to take a lot of hard knocks before he properly understands when to dig in and when to quit.