#strig-identity

  Reblog if you're a fanfic writer and you wanna...

Bridge to the Stars. ALIEN. WORLDBUILDING. OMG.

Honestly what with the modern surveillance state I think the Animorphs would immediately be toast. Which is why I’m writing this as meta, because the fic would be way too depressing.

Like, even in the first book, there is no way the Animorphs could just slip into the Pool as their human selves and not get caught. Even with modern human level tech the Yeerks could have cameras up everywhere and just rewind to the point when the “Andalite bandits” had to have come down to the pool, and reverse google image search their faces and... bam, toast.

The only way the Animorphs could survive is if they were immediately as paranoid as they became around mid-series with the David trilogy. David taught them real paranoia and they were more careful after that. And that totally makes sense. But with their (totally understandable) carelessness from the early books, and the surveillance technology we have now, the Yeerks would have them infested within days.

 I come to you with an extremely important...

But in HB Chron, it’s canon that hork-bajirs have ears. “My senses felt for and found the ear opening.” (from Esplin). I find it curious that no media actually depicts this though.

I am not even sure that Tobias having a crush on Jake is an AU, tbh. Tobias is a sucker for that Berenson bravery.

I find it really interesting to look at Jake and Tobias through the lens of protagonists. Animorphs is very much an ensemble story, but if anyone is the protagonist, it’s Jake. He probably gets the most dramatic character development over the course of the series. But as many fanimorphs have pointed out, Tobias is a much more typical YA protagonist. He’s weird, he doesn’t fit in, he lives in an abusive household, and he has mysterious parentage. Jake has a stable home life and fits in quite well at his school.

But Tobias isn’t the protagonist. He’s Jake’s Call to Adventure. Even before the series began, seeing Tobias being bullied spurred Jake on to do something heroic and stand up to the bullies. And Tobias was the one most drawn to Elfangor, and the one who told Jake he should be the leader. He didn’t need to be called to the adventure, like Jake the protagonist, because he was always there for it.

The Call to Adventure always has to have a special relationship to the protagonist. Hagrid is Harry’s Call to Adventure – “yer a wizard, Harry” – Leia’s recorded message is Luke’s, Lord Asriel is Lyra Belacqua’s. Hagrid is a protective, guardian figure to Harry who knew him as a baby, Leia is Luke’s sister, and Lord Asriel is Lyra’s father. Tobias’s connection to Jake is his hero-worship, his gratitude, his crush, the boy he rescued, the reminder that Jake is brave and can stand up in scary situations.

Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas).

Okay, here’s an AU idea I’ve had for a while, but I haven’t come up with enough of the worldbuilding details to make it work. It’s a magical setting in which it’s impossible to do magic alone. You need at least two people to do even the simplest of magic, and it doesn’t work if the second, third, etc. people were compelled by magic to cast with you. Even though you can’t do magic alone, each person brings a certain flavor to the magic they cast with others. The more people involved in a spell, and the more experience they have working together, the more powerful the casting.

Someone take this idea and run with it because I haven’t figured out exactly what to do with it yet.

Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves.

I dislike Erek King, but I have to admit it was brave of him to volunteer to profoundly alter his programming, with consequences he could not predict and he could never forget. 

Show us an example of your personal headcanon.

My headcanon about why Yeerks infest sentient species even though they are shown to be capable of infesting horses and the like is because of their long evolutionary history with the Gedd, their only means of dispersal and environmental engineering. They have a strong instinct that draws them to join with sentient minds, in particular.

Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?