Evelyn, Slytherin primary and Slytherin secondary. Follow for really an excessive number of fandoms as well as political commentary and the occasional philosophy quotes. Also, knitting!
did anyone actually ever read those animorph books
just stared at the covers for a concerningly long amount of time before putting it back where i found it
me too
Same
Here are some of the spoilers you missed out on by not reading Animorphs:
Five children are forced to engage in guerilla warfare, espionage and repeated murder to protect their loved ones from alien parasites as they wait for the other, heroic aliens to finally arrive. When they do, the “good” aliens turn out to not give a shit about humans, caused the whole intergalactic war through their own shittiness and are willing to exterminate whole planets themselves to get at their hated enemies.
A child repeatedly experiences his intestines hanging out of his body while in various animal forms
A child is mentally tortured until broken and never gets better
A child in the form of a fly experiences getting splattered and smeared against a ceiling until his friends who are also flies at the time can peel his body off and take him somewhere he can transform back into a whole human before his insect mind fades completely
A child is shrunken and experiences having her eyeballs digested out of her head inside her friend’s stomach while she’s in the form of a tiny elephant
The heroes are forced to permanently imprison another child in the body of a rat because he knows too much and they abandon him on a tiny island with only other rats and garbage for company. Rumors circulate that the island is haunted but it’s actually his psychic screams reaching distant boaters.
A race of devastatingly powerful, violent aliens turn out to be mental toddlers who don’t know what they’re doing and are just bred to think they’re playing one big game before they’re killed at age three so they don’t learn the truth
An alien spends a few centuries hanging from the parasitic tentacle of a much bigger alien, surrounded by millions of rotting corpses attached to its other moon-spanning tendrils. They engage in mental warfare until one finally absorbs the other completely.
It turns out another seemingly “evil” alien race is simply driven to kill and eat everything in sight because it was separated from its original world where food was continuous and the entire specie’s life is the torture of perpetual starvation
A peaceful robot willingly removes its inhibition against violence to help in the war, only to slaughter a huge number of alien-controlled humans so gruesomely that nobody dares think about or speak of it again and it is the only thing left undescribed in a book series that already describes entrails getting torn out and skulls getting smashed
A child stays too long in the form of a flea and instead of turning back into a human, accidentally turns momentarily into one big, giant flea that can only writhe and moan because it shouldn’t exist and can’t live at that scale.
The kids discover Atlantis, then discover that Atlanteans are inbred mutants who paralyze any humans they find, dissect them alive to figure out how their organs work, then stuff the corpses as kitschy museum displays for their children.
An ordinary ant gets transformed into a human child. It has no idea what’s happening and is so overwhelmed by its huge new brain and sensory input that it can only scream until it dies
what i mean: i haven’t written a single word about this. in fact i haven’t held a pen since 2015. every day when i take the train i maldaptive daydream about the possibilities of this fic and how the characters would interact, specifically when they have long intense heated glances across a busy room with enough raw yearning force to set off a jet plane and blueball me into oblivion. yes i have a ‘writing prompts’ tag for no fucking reason. no i can’t spell maladaptive
I was in line at Aldi and this girl with two toddlers in front of me had her card declined and she looked so fucking sad and said “let me call my husband real quick” and it was only 18 dollars, so I just paid for it, and she was very sweet and then as she walked off, the lady behind me said `”You know that was probably a scam, right?” and like, even if it was, like what a sad fucking scam, right? 18 dollars at the Aldi. If you’re “scamming” me for some Tyson chicken and apple juice and cauliflower, then just take my fucking money.
“A scam” people are fucking wild.
This happened to me, too. A woman had used WIC for the majority of her stuff (which I say from personal experience is such a long and embarrassing process) and to buy the remainder of her groceries, which included diapers and wipes, she used a card, and it got declined. I bought the other $30 of her groceries because hey, I’ve been there, and now I’m not. She was extremely emotional and began to cry and even hugged me. My mom called me on the drive home and could tell I had been crying myself, asked what was wrong, and when I told her what happened, she berated me for being “duped.” I couldn’t believe she could be so disappointed in one of her children for doing something- nice? Is that the hill you want to die on? Getting mad about people needing groceries?
I once paid for a woman’s bill at the vet…it wasn’t a big one, but she was trying to pay for some medication for her dog, and her card was declined. And her lip started trembling, and she says “I don’t get paid until Tuesday, would he be ok until then?”
So I just told them to add the $20 something onto my bill, and I thought she was going to break down crying right there.
And I don’t care if it was a scam or not. Just do nice things for people sometimes.
Do good recklessly.
I think “Do good recklessly” would be fantastic word art to hang on one’s wall. Artistic people, go!
So this has happened to me but from the other side. Several years ago when my oldest was around three or so, I had my debit card decline at Walmart. It wasn’t a scam or a mistake, I was genuinely broke. Out of money. I checked my bank and discovered I had something like 7 dollars left to my name and a hungry kid and nothing to eat at home. So I sat there trying to come up with the best way to stretch that tiny amount of money to feed my kid. Not even to feed me. I can live on popcorn or something if I have to but my kid was three and he had to eat. So there I am trying really hard not to cry while I slowly take things out of my basket to get it down to under 7 bucks, when a lady tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up and she smiled at me and started putting the things back in my cart. I opened my mouth to tell her that I didn’t have the money for them but she stopped me right away and said “Don’t worry about it. It’s gonna be fine.” Then she handed the cashier her credit card and said “Ring up all of it.” My kid got to eat because of her. I got to eat because of her. I had laundry soap and deodorant because of her. She could’ve just ignored me silently struggling in that line. She could’ve decided I was a scam and gone home feeling good about avoiding being duped. But instead she chose to help me and she saved us. So maybe the person struggling in front of you is trying to put one over on you or maybe they are just sad and broke and trying to figure out what to do. You get to decide which you want to believe and what you want to do. But I’ll tell y’all, no one has ever been more beautiful to me than that lady in that line who saved me and my baby. Be like her. Be beautiful.
Do good recklessly
DO BETTER. BE BETTER. STRIVE TO BE BETTER.
DO GOOD RECKLESSLY
One time, my dad and I were living the grocery store and there was a guy outside asking for money to buy some stuff to take home for his kids. It was around Christmas time. My dad asked him if he could give him groceries instead of money, and the guy immediately said yes, so my dad gave him one of everything we bought (meat, rice, some chocolates, milk, oil). At that time, my dad hadn’t gotten his paycheck because the company he worked for was going through a tough time, but he didn’t care, he saw an opportunity to help someone and he did.
Another time, my dad gave 50 bucks to a guy who said he needed to buy medicine for his kids. I told my dad he was probably going to spend the money on alcohol or something, but my dad said that “whether he was lying or not says something about HIS character, but hearing someone in need and choosing not to help when I have the means to says something about mine”.
I never forget that.
“whether he was lying or not says something about HIS character, but hearing someone in need and choosing not to help when I have the means to says something about mine”
I have so many feels about Hardison. Hardison, who thought “it was kind of cool being on the same side” when nobody else would admit it. Who painted that big, ugly picture as a joke, but carted it around everywhere they ended up moving like a family heirloom. Who worked so hard to build them an office that functioned like a home everywhere that they went - bought a building, bought an entire fucking brewery (and ran the damn thing, with fair hiring practices and, after a few missteps, fairly good beer no matter what Eliot says) to give them space to work. Who kept Nate’s secrets.
I think what chafes me most about the show is how much Hardison gave and gave and gave for that crew, and how much Nate took without ever giving back. Eliot was mean the way a big brother snaps or a kid pulls their crush’s pigtails (I like to think somewhere in between). Nate was cruel in his dismissiveness and irrational expectations, the way he shut down Hardison every time he showed too much pride - like a kid showing off and hoping to be praised by dad and getting chewed out instead. Because he was just trying to build a family all along. I think he got a taste of that, growing up, was lucky enough to stumble into his Nana’s care - but he never had a normal family, and he was always the odd man out at school, the nerd, the kid who finished his work before the rest of the class had even written the names on the page and acted out, started stealing, because he was just so damn bored. Kids can be so cruel and he found his validation online, sometimes through games and sometimes through the people who hired him to steal information or money.
Still, better than any of them anymore, Hardison is the one who knows what family actually looks like. Eliot drowned the man who had a normal family in blood a decade or more ago. Nate did his best to forget when he lost his own. Parker never had one. Sophie won’t tell, but girls like her don’t come out of good places. Hardison saw it and for a little while he had it, unconventional but all his. He’s just trying to create a new one for himself by giving them everything he can: his money, his designer homes, his grocery delivery orders with everyone’s favorites (just as long as Eliot cooks it), his carefully crafted briefings, his mind - the smartest one anyone of them has ever known. I always feel like he didn’t really succeed until Nate and Sophie left. Nate’s crew, Hardison’s family.