whatjoshwrote

[whatjoshwrote]

There’s also #29 where Ax (very reasonably) freaks out that Cassie put Aftran in his head to help her perform the brain surgery and Cassie (also reasonably) tells him to stay still and demands he respect Aftran’s help in saving his life. She’s really at him for a minute but then she calms right down when she considers how he might feel about having a yeerk in his head given his cultural background on top of everything. I think it’s the youngest and most child like we ever see Ax — she even calls him (tenderly) poor baby during that scene. It’s lovely.

who do you think in the animorphs ended up still being the least close to each other? because obviously a lot of them are best friends, jake and marco, cassie and rachel, tobias and ax, and some of them are dating etc but which pairing do you think never really developed/got closer? or do you think by the end of the series they were all as close to each other as they could be?

To me, the two that stand out as being the least close, and staying that way, are Rachel and Ax. They mention discomfort with each other as early as #5, and Rachel's narration in #7 specifies that she's glad Ax is fighting with them but isn't sure if he's their friend. As late as #51, Ax considers Rachel a potential threat to the Animorphs' cause and goes out of his way to avoid trusting her.

In MM3 and in #37, Rachel's pretty snappish with Ax as she tries to lead the team, because she senses (correctly) that he doesn't respect her as leader nearly as much as he does Jake. In #18, Rachel is the harshest toward Ax about his decision to support the andalites over his own team, and in #46 Ax mentions being worried about Rachel more than any other Animorph.

Part of why I find their friction fascinating: it originates in their being so alike. They're the ones eager for battle at the start of the war, Ax because he's been raised on tales of Elfangor's glory and Rachel because she's champing at the bit of being feminine without being small or weak. They get their hands dirtiest throughout, from together killing the random Hessians in MM3 to advocating for wiping out the nartec in #36. It all culminates when Rachel makes the most brutal kill (Tom) and Ax makes the single largest (the Pool ship) during the final battle. Rachel sees her own darkness reflected back when she looks at Ax, and Ax sees his in Rachel. They're a dangerous combination, hijacking airplanes and boiling noncombatants alive to get their way. And they both need Tobias around to keep them sane.

[whatjoshwrote]

4000cc breast implants :)

[whatjoshwrote]

YES 10/10 post

I think detailed world building and presenting a reader/viewer/listener with an uncanny concept speaks to two divergent branches of what people like:

We like detailed, interesting, organised data and having that which is inherently unexplainable (magic) be explained.

AND

We also like bears with faces. We like the unexplainable, the uncanny, the weird.

your dark fantasy novel doesn't need a logic-based magic system it needs a bear with a human face

[whatjoshwrote]

✨✨✨✨✨

Ice cold takes from a Transgender Woman:

Not all Men are evil

Everyone has the capacity for evil

Transgender Men are men

Transgender Women are women

Excluding Cisgender Men from your spaces requires Transgender Men to out themselves if they want to engage (Same for Women)

Anyone can be Non-Binary, there is no "look" or requirement

Non-binary masculine presenting people should be welcome in queer spaces, many are just treated as men and predators

Non-binary feminine presenting people should be welcome in queer spaces without being seen as "Woman-Lite"

[whatjoshwrote]

Oh you mean that line in Rambling Man by Laura Marling:

“… it’s hard to accept yourself for someone

You don’t desire

As someone you don’t want to be.”

something i keep experiencing

[whatjoshwrote]

[whatjoshwrote]

This might be the Australian edition as well but it’s definitely the UK edition- this is the cover I had.

[whatjoshwrote]

❤️✨🙏🥬🍾

💯🙏💛🟨👍

[whatjoshwrote]

Fucking FINALLY someone uses this argument. Thank you Judge Reyes🙏🙏🙏

Literally sobbing. A judge, a US judge defended us. A judge brought up intersex people, uaing the term intersex, to *defend* us by not allowing our erasure. I'm having a lot of feelings right now

[whatjoshwrote]

I'm the best sister ever. I break into song in the middle of a serious conversation about me protecting my little brother in school.

Me: No but seriously you should tell me when people hurt you.

Brother: *mumbles incomprehensible*

Me: How do you expect me to protect you if you don't tell me anything?

Brother:

Me:

Brother:

Me: HOW CAN I PROTECT YOU BOY UNLESS YOU ALWAYS STAAAAAY IN HERE.

Brother: Oh no

Me: AWAYYYY

Brother: Please no

Me: OUT THERE THEY'LL REVILE YOU AS A MONSTER

Brother: Not another Hunchback song

Me: OUT THERE THEY WILL HATE AND SCORN AND JEER

Brother: Please stop

Me: WHY INVITE YOU CALUMNY AND CONSTINATION

Brother: why

Me: STAAAAAAAY IN HERE

Brother: Mom make her stop

Me: BE FAITHFUL TO ME

Mum: I can't

Me: GRATEFUL TO ME

Brother: Please

Me: DO AS I SAY, DING, OBEY, DING, AND STAYYYYY INNNN HEREEEEEE

Brother: Why do I live with you

Me: Now you have to sing Quasimodo's part!

Brother: NO MOM ARE WE HOME YET

Mum: YES LET'S GO

[whatjoshwrote]

This is so smartly argued and EXACTLY the difficulty that so many YA authors I know have come up against time and time again (and something I’m coming up against now with a new book I’m trying to publish).

As a bookseller, I have to remind book buyers on a daily basis that MG or YA are just ~suggested~ age brackets and that just because a couple of well known titles are in the same age bracket doesn’t mean they’re suitable for any age within that bracket.

On another but related note, I was pretty young when I started reading adult books - some things I was too young for and read anyway, some things I was too young for and had to stop because I found the content too upsetting and some things I loved and still love to this day.

I really believe you have to let adolescents be their own curators and therefore their own censors - they know what they’re ready for and what they’re not - and if they don’t, I think adults should give them the courtesy of making their own mistakes.

I'm here to clear up some confusion about YA books. When some people hear that label, they think "meant for children." Why is it, then, that some books classified as YA have tons of explicit content that doesn't seem "appropriate"? There are actually complex and messy industry reasons behind this, mainly to do with female, qu33r, and POC authors getting pushed into the category and then pigeonholed there. (Also, totally not a coincidence that such authors get funneled toward a lower-paying category.)

I go over the main 3 reasons in this video, but basically, everyone's lives would be better if a clear distinction existed between Teen Lit and New Adult Lit, but this did not work out and forced the YA category to house more than it's nominally supposed to. Pearl-clutching at individual authors (or worse, calling for book bans "in the name of the children") is not the way to resolve this. The industry itself needs to commit to recognizing the necessity of New Adult, or it'll always be forced to room with YA and scandalize people.

[whatjoshwrote]

Omg YOU DID IT

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.

[whatjoshwrote]

Omg yesss this is such a good way of putting it.

you've given me too much animorphs inspiration (animorspiration?) and I'm now drowning. help. I wrote like half an essay on The Tragedy of David and how it's not really about whether he deserved a chance to change but the fact that they just straight up did not have the luxury (or tools) to give one. I think that while rachel's only regret is not giving him a clean kill, at the same time she would have done almost anything to be able to throw david at a competent adult role model and watch him face a nonlethal and constructive consequence for his actions.

I think a lot of things about david, too many for the little shit. he's such an asshole, he's cruel and sexist and so fucking unpleasant to read about I can barely imagine the horror of actually being in a room with him. but he's also just fucking thirteen. I want to grab him by the scruff of his neck and send him to therapy. even better I want a story where his family lives and it doesn't magically make him a decent person, he's still awful because he's goddamn david, and *then* he's dragged to a good therapy program and has a real incentive to change. also I guess the child soldier thing would be happening too in the background or whatever.

I couldn't agree more, with all of that. The decision to nothlit him (and kill him) is excruciatingly well-justified in canon. He's so despicable that I often want to reach through the page and throttle him. He reminds me of myself when I was a spoiled, damaged 13-year-old sick to death of being The New Kid at every school.

Maybe I was never quite that misogynistic. But at 13, I thought Light Yagami had the right approach to ethics. I thought the world would be better off if people would just shut up and give more power to the government. I was naive, I was awkward, I was a rich white kid with more experience being excluded than befriended and my social skills reflected that. Oh, and did I mention my obsession with snakes and horror comics and trying to shock adults? Because that's the root of my personal desire to stomp David's face in.

He's a normal kid, with normal problems, with a normal amount of teenage self-centeredness and temperamentalism. And the other Animorphs have basically no choice but to kill him to get him off their team. Because he's not ready for the tremendous soul-crushing responsibility they're forced to take on, to keep their species alive.

You know that old joke, about including exactly one normal athlete on every Olympic team so that we can really appreciate just how astoundingly good all the Olympians are? That's David, for the Animorphs. He's not superhumanly selfless, and he's the only one on the team for whom that's true.

[whatjoshwrote]

queer people on this site really make me feel like a confused straight guy at pride. the discourse here could kill a man

[whatjoshwrote]

Every time I think of the David storyline I immediately think of the absolute storytelling genius of it being Cassie’s idea not only to trap him in morph, but also how they end up doing it, replete with an innate understanding of how to use someone’s deep psychological needs against them. The Solution is one of my absolute favourite Rachel books because of what it tells us about her, but i think it’s easy to forget what it tells us about Cassie- and all the people in her position in a time of war. She doesn’t have to capacity to add wilful murder to her conscience so she comes up with an absolutely horrifying way of avoiding that which is frankly almost as bad as just killing him, depending on how you look at it. It’s funny because Rachel has spent so much of this book furious with Jake for using her killer’s instincts only for Cassie to do exactly the same in this last hurdle! (And this is AFTER Cassie decided to walk away from them and been forced by a set of complex circumstances, to come back which is kind of mind boggling). The others are kind of horrified and sickened by this side of her throughout the series, but recognise that they don’t have the moral steadfastness of Cassie to ALWAYS try to do the thing that will rest easy on her conscience (I think people confuse this with the “right” thing, but I think what’s more interesting about her is that she isn’t led by selflessness; more a constant assessment of how heavily the immorality of something is going to weigh on her) , which is something they can depend on. She’s just as ruthless as Marco, but she doesn’t have a cavalier throwaway attitudes that he and Rachel share. But they forgive her not only because her schemes are always designed to help them, but because they know that she’s giving herself a much harder time than any of them could come up with.

I can’t imagine being so clear sighted about how my characters work from the very beginning, and being able to expose their flaws and hypocrisies so elegantly and tragically.

you've given me too much animorphs inspiration (animorspiration?) and I'm now drowning. help. I wrote like half an essay on The Tragedy of David and how it's not really about whether he deserved a chance to change but the fact that they just straight up did not have the luxury (or tools) to give one. I think that while rachel's only regret is not giving him a clean kill, at the same time she would have done almost anything to be able to throw david at a competent adult role model and watch him face a nonlethal and constructive consequence for his actions.

I think a lot of things about david, too many for the little shit. he's such an asshole, he's cruel and sexist and so fucking unpleasant to read about I can barely imagine the horror of actually being in a room with him. but he's also just fucking thirteen. I want to grab him by the scruff of his neck and send him to therapy. even better I want a story where his family lives and it doesn't magically make him a decent person, he's still awful because he's goddamn david, and *then* he's dragged to a good therapy program and has a real incentive to change. also I guess the child soldier thing would be happening too in the background or whatever.

I couldn't agree more, with all of that. The decision to nothlit him (and kill him) is excruciatingly well-justified in canon. He's so despicable that I often want to reach through the page and throttle him. He reminds me of myself when I was a spoiled, damaged 13-year-old sick to death of being The New Kid at every school.

Maybe I was never quite that misogynistic. But at 13, I thought Light Yagami had the right approach to ethics. I thought the world would be better off if people would just shut up and give more power to the government. I was naive, I was awkward, I was a rich white kid with more experience being excluded than befriended and my social skills reflected that. Oh, and did I mention my obsession with snakes and horror comics and trying to shock adults? Because that's the root of my personal desire to stomp David's face in.

He's a normal kid, with normal problems, with a normal amount of teenage self-centeredness and temperamentalism. And the other Animorphs have basically no choice but to kill him to get him off their team. Because he's not ready for the tremendous soul-crushing responsibility they're forced to take on, to keep their species alive.

You know that old joke, about including exactly one normal athlete on every Olympic team so that we can really appreciate just how astoundingly good all the Olympians are? That's David, for the Animorphs. He's not superhumanly selfless, and he's the only one on the team for whom that's true.

[whatjoshwrote]

Yeah pal, show us the Minotaur!

The tragedy of my life is that I keep acquiring and displaying fetish art and having to be corrected by my friends.

Most recently, a friend came over my house and saw my computer background and went, "Wow, um, I didn't know you were into that." To which I look at the picture of the well drawn muscular female minotaur in historically accurate Greek clothing and I start geeking out about how I love the detail the artist did with the clothing and I point out the period appropriate folds and pins, how the artist even inserted the native plant that was used to dye the clothing this particular shade in the background, and even how the belt has technology AND historically accurate weaving patterns on it.

Then I start explaining how I love the muscular choices of the minotaur, that I was so impressed with the artist's anatomically correct depiction of the muscles converging into the neck. That many people get an upright cow's neck wrong because cow's don't have collarbones, so it can be very difficult to merge the upper arms and a chest of a human with a cow's body. I draw her attention to the beautiful way they've merged the pectoralis major so smoothly while also staying true to how muscular they've depicted the rest of the body.

I finish up with my thoughts on the artist's bold choice to depict the minotaur as a female, and despite the underlying themes of a minotaur being violence, child murder, strength, and muscles. I segue into how unlike bulls, cow are perceived as mothers. That they are the major source of milk in human culture, and that idyllic depictions of them in a field usually depict calves frolicking nearby, yet the minotaur kills and eats children.

I finish and there is a long pause.

"Urban, this is fetish art." and she takes me to the artist's twitter and god dammit it's fetish art, not a bold statement on cultural perceptions of women and violence throughout history. I have been tricked again.

[whatjoshwrote]

I have a friend whose ex, a minor celebrity in some circles, was abusive.

Shortly after she and some other women went public about it, there were some people who chimed in talking about other misdeeds of his.

Her ex was, and is, a loathsome waste of oxygen, and the words, "...who deserves every accusation leveled at him" would almost escape my lips...

...Except that some of the accusations people began throwing around because they (understandably) hated this guy weren't true.

This did not help my friend at all! It muddied the waters, and gave her awful ex ammunition for his claims that people were just out to get him, and were willing to make stuff up to smear him.

Switching gears: there's been a lot of discussion recently about how some brilliant and influential art has been created by objectively terrible people. Part of that discussion has been calling out people saying, "Their work always sucked," or "I never liked it." Not only are statements like this unhelpful, they provide cover for predators. If you insist that your tastes reflect your morality, you're giving yourself a huge blind spot, and making it easy to dismiss evidence of harm done by creators you happen to like.

This is one reason why I think exhibits like this one are important: they help teach that lesson.

Three notes on this: 1. by the time of that exhibition, Gill was long dead and therefore unable to profit from it.

2. This kind of thing isn't necessary for every artist, because not every creator does heinous things.

3. My friend's ex is nowhere near the artistic league of Eric Gill or any of the other creators I'll discuss.

Switching gears again...

If someone mentions a bespectacled British boy wizard with an owl familiar, in a modern setting with "secret world" magic, the name that springs to mind is most likely "Harry Potter", right?

But Timothy Hunter, from The Books of Magic, was published a full seven years before that. I was working in a bookstore when the novelizations for the BoM comics came out, and had to tell kids that no, this was not a HP rip-off.

I don't think the reverse was true, either: for one thing, The Books of Magic is set in the DC Universe, and I've never heard of JKR reading superhero comics. But also... sometimes completely separate creators will come up with strikingly similar ideas, utterly by coincidence. It's one reason why most authors tell fans NOT to send them ideas or fanfiction based on their work: there is rarely any good way to prove that you didn't steal a concept.

Now, obviously every creator is influenced by other people's works, and I completely agree that it's good to acknowledge that and to point fans towards your influences!

When Rowling began channeling her resources into making life worse for trans folk, I saw a lot of people saying, "Well, Harry Potter was just a mediocre rip-off of The Worst Witch anyway."

While I haven't read that series, I strongly doubt this claim. The idea of magic schools is older and more widespread than either of those series, and "British boarding school hijinks, but it's a magic school" was bound to be written more than once.

Now, some of you already know, and others have looked up, who originally wrote Tim Hunter. And... yeah, it's Neil Gaiman. *sigh*

In the last few days, I've seen some people saying, "The Sandman ripped off Tanith Lee's Tales from the Flat Earth." They cite a number of similarities: Azhrarn, the Lord of Darkness, is a pale-skinned, raven-haired Byronic figure with a sibling-like relationship to the Lord of Death and the Lord of Madness. Like the Endless, these beings are god-like, but specifically not gods. Apparently some people have mistaken fanart of Azhrarn for Morpheus. And Chuz, Prince Madness, has a bisected appearance, half his face horribly messed up, like the demoness Mazikeen.

But speaking as someone who was a fan of the late Tanith Lee years before I picked up an issue of The Sandman: I don't believe the latter was stolen from the former. Are there similarities? Yes, but they're superficial. If you've read both series, as I have, you'll know that the stories, settings, and characters are very different!

It's possible Gaiman was influenced by Lee's writing, and if so, I agree he should have acknowledged that. But it's also entirely possible that these two authors independently came up with similar ideas.

When it comes right down to it, I think that statements like this -- "their best work was just a rip-off of something else" -- are just another variant of "their work always sucked".

It's often an easier accusation than "they've always been crap", because, as I said, writers come up with strikingly similar concepts all the time, and it's very hard to prove you didn't steal an idea. But it has the same problems, so -- barring the kind of case you could make with a college-level plagiarism-catching program -- I think it's best avoided.

Now, telling people, "Hey, are you sad about this creator turning out to be an awful person to whom you don't want to give any more money? Try this other person's work instead!" This is good! Let's have more of it!