Petition to rename Animorphs books more accurately, so they’re called things like “first named character gets eaten alive”, “first suicide attempt”, and “oh my god even more genocide are you kidding me”
#1: “First named character gets eaten alive” #2: “First incidence of PTSD, also JESUS CHRIST, ANTS” #3: “First suicide attempt” #4: “THEY BIT HIM IN HALF” #5: “WELL THIS ONE’S UPSETTING” #6: “Genocide and slavery, basically” #7: “The future can involve eating your friends” #8: “Well, this is the one with cinnamon buns…” #9: “Oh thank god it’s getting less traumatic” #10: “THE BLOOD IS EVERYWHERE” #11: “someone dies and it’s confusing” #12: “let’s sell out the human race, nbd” #13: “SHIT GOIN DOWN HODAM” #14: “Poop Jokes” #15: “*unintelligible screaming about sharks*” #16: “SO MUCH CANNIBALISM, ALSO CASUAL MURDER.” #17: “This is the oatmeal one. Alternatively, this is the chemical warfare one.” #18: “Brain lobes get bitten off in this one.” #19: “Moral Shades Of Gray: The Book. Also a throat gets ripped out, and parts of it stuck in someone’s teeth.” #20: “OH NO” #21: “OH NOOOOOO” #22: “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST NOOOOOOOO” #23: “HE JUST WANTED A FUCKING FAMILY” #24: “… let’s pretend this one never happened” #25: “RIPPED ITS SKIN RIGHT OFF. Also, more genocide.” #26: “GENOCIDE AHOY” #27: “Increase Your Password Security” #28: “Graphic Depictions of a Slaughterhouse” #29: “Graphic Depictions of Alien Brain Surgery” #30: “*sobbing intensifies*
ok that’s all for now
#31: attempted faux-patricide, with a knife #32: using your own dismembered limbs as weaponry #33: torture, the book #34: there’s no on-page genocide, it’s just backstory #35: half-gorilla, half-trout #36: Atlantis practices sapient taxidermy #37: this one could never be published post 9/11 #38: averted genocide! #39: Opened wide in a silent scream as gleaming, white teeth erupted from the pink gums.
#40: ableism & betrayal #41: in the future, everything is worse #42:
angry aliens are inside you. Rabies? #43: HUNGER #44: Cassie goes to Australia! Cracky, fluffy, murder, gangene, cannibalism… #45: This is the part where it gets intense. #46: AX NO MAYBE #47: no one we actually cared about died… #48: Job interview from hell, almost literally #49: no no no Jake no I’m sorry #50: what’s better than 6 child soldiers? MORE child soldiers. #51: oh good it’s a chase sequence #52: collateral damage, the book #53: NO NO NO NO #54: NO NO NO NO NO
The Andalite Chronicles: all your heroes are flawed The Hork-Bajir Chronicles: genocide, the book VISSER: the villains are complex and sympathetic and still unflinchingly evil The Ellimist Chronicles: how to become a god; spoiler alert: everyone dies
So–yesterday was Homestuck Day, and by that I mean it was the nine-year anniversary of the first posted page of Homestuck. You may have noticed your entire dashboard going into a maddened, dismaying frenzy. People you thought were your coworkers, your neighbors, your friends, your family, all of them infected by a virus that transmits through gray facepaint and Vriska memes.
Well, okay, I kinda got a little weird there. My purpose in making this post is actually to advise you to read Homestuck–hell, read Jail Break and Problem Sleuth first, if you want, they help you to understand what the hell is going through the author’s head. But read it, especially if you want to be a content creator, because reading Homestuck is a transformative experience–in that it will transform how you understand, process, and create fiction. It pushes…boundaries. It pushes the boundaries of storytelling, of character interaction, of audience participation, of the medium itself–of several mediums themselves. The actual story has some severe execution problems late in the game, but I am firmly of the opinion that Homestuck is gonna be taught in college in fifty years alongside other great works of fiction throughout the history of mankind.
Moreover, it’s helpful to understand the people making content that are Filthy Homestucks. Your favorite artist is a Homestuck. Your favorite cartoon is made by Homestucks. Your favorite indie game was made by Homestucks. You’d be surprised how large a percentage of you this is true for. Homestuck, for better or for worse, is important, and I highly recommend the experience of reading it.
If you wind up buying gray facepaint and pointy anime shades as a joke, all the better.
I cannot stress how strongly and emphatically I agree with every word in this post.
Homestuck is also an excellent excercise in character voice
writing pesterlogs in particular gave me a very big “aha” in understanding how voice creates character nearly as much (if not more!) than character creates voice.
some iconic dialogue that sounds like its from the great canon of literature but are actually from memes
I will face God and walk backwards into Hell
“I’ll do whatever you want” “then perish”
I have been through hell and come out singing
feel free to add more!
There are no gods here
Do I look like the kind of man who dies
God’s dead and soon we will be too
I thought there were no heroes left in this world
• you kneel before my throne unaware that it was built on lies
Impudent of you to assume I will meet a mortal end
This is hell’s territory and I am beholden to no gods
Bury me shallow, I’ll be back
– take this gift, for the gods surely won’t
God wishes he were me
One day, you will be face to face with whatever saw fit to let you exist in the universe, and you will have to justify the space you’ve filled
For a minute I was like wait, why are all these religious Bible quotes showing up on my dash? Didn’t think I was following anyone who usually posts that sort of thing. Then I reread the first post.
You know what cracky trash AU I could totally be down for? Hela using up a massive amount of her power and smashing back through whatever awful place Odin banished her to, so… like… she’s still magical and clever and strong, but her power level has been wrecked to “normal Asgardian” levels at least by breaking free. Maybe lower.
So, Hela breaks back into Asgard and tries to steal some of Odin’s treasures to make up for her slowly regenerating powers, but she can’t manage it. Too many guards on the vault or something. So, out of her mind with pain and fury, Hela steals Odin’s “true” treasures instead: kid!Thor and kid!Loki. (Hela has never forgiven her father for marrying that peace-loving witch of a woman. I hc Frigga as Hela’s step-mom, btw. (link to that post))
By some insane order of events, Hela manages to get away from Asgard with the equivalent of, like, a 13-yr-old Thor and a 10-yr-old Loki. Only… what the hell is Hela going to do with them? Use them as hostages? She’s weak enough that they can basically dogpile her to keep her from doing things and it works, and they’re such clever know-it-all shits. The only thing Hela can really do with her magic right now is hide them from Heimdall and his Sight, she can’t access the Bifrost, and she has no idea where they ended up. She was busy running for it while being chased by all of Asgard, thanks, and now her shitty asshole little brothers aren’t even bothering to pretend to be scared of her.
It’s bad enough that the bigger one keeps trying to fight her (even weakened to that of the average civilian, Hela is warrior enough to kick his ass, although the lightning trick is fucking annoying, she can’t taste her tongue), the smaller one with the decent grasp on illusion magic keeps trying to stab her in any and all sides while she’s distracted.
While arguing and fighting on this unknown planet, the three of them eventually stumble into Big Trouble of some kind or another. (What’s this? Vulnerable children of the All-Father? Yum.) Hela and her kid brothers have to put aside their differences to run for their lives. (They’re her hostages, damn it, she can’t let them die or call for help.) Through another insane order of events, Hela, Thor, and Loki end up on the run through the galaxy, accidentally getting involved in multiple plots, coups, revolutions, heists, and parties across multiple planets while trying to respectively evade the Asgardians also chasing them or get home. They leave so much chaos in their wake.
(Loki: “HE started it!”
Hela: “I don’t care who started the revolution! I’m ending it!”
Thor: *scoffs* “With what powers?”
Hela: “Shut up! You! I told you not to drink that stuff, but noooo-”)
Seriously, give me the trashiest, most crack-filled, wildest Kidnapping-Turned-Runaway-Road-Trip (turned Babysitting Gig from Hell) of a depowered Hela and her know-it-all hostages little brothers while some of the galaxy’s Biggest Bads try to catch the All-Father’s children while they’re vulnerable. Give me all the absurd, horrifying nonsense of a group of disaster gods screaming their way through surviving monsters.(At some point, kid!Loki stabs Thanos or someone equivalent in the ass. Because I need that to happen. It’s the highest point of Thanos that Loki could reach while the dude was threatening his brother. Thanos didn’t have much time to care about this though, because Hela soon stabbed him in the face like ten times for threatening her little brothers hostages.)
Give me all the bonding and a surprising amount of character development too, though. Hela has to come face to face with what Asgard’s conquering has done, without the power to be able not to care, and Thor realizes what his heritage is built on. Loki gets revealed to be a Frost Giant at some point, but his siblings still love him.
It’s beautiful, especially the part where all three siblings roll back into Asgard and 13-yr-old Thor (who has never had any decent taste in siblings in his life) is covered in ashes and blood but proudly like, “What up, we’re back. My murderous secret sister Hela is good-ish now and I love her!!! I love my Frost Giant brother too!!! Even if he looks like a weasel and eats garbage.”
(Loki: “We were all eating garbage! You ate more than I did!”
Hela: “Ugh. I surrender already. Can I shower yet?”)
You know what I’d like them to ricochet off? Ego. Maybe save one of those failed kids that ended up in the bone dungeon in the process.
