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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 2 years

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Genuine question, what’s wrong with the DSM?

[OP refers to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which I mentioned being unpopular among mental health professionals.] Disclaimer: I'm not a psychiatrist, I'm not a therapist, and I'm not trained in counseling. I'm a social psychology researcher. If a therapist contradicts me, listen to the therapist.

The problem with the DSM as I understand it: a lot of counselors/ psychiatrists/ etc. want to move away from a category- and source-based diagnostic system, toward a symptom-based treatment system. For example, think about Pepto Bismol: you feel nauseous, you chew pink tablets, it ends your nausea. It doesn't matter if your nausea is indigestion or seasickness or lactose intolerance. You match a treatment (pink bismuth) to a symptom (nausea) and don't waste time or money on diagnosis unless that treatment proves ineffective.

A large percent of counselors etc. would like to take the same approach to mental health. So we'd be researching treatments for nightmares (neurofeedback? MDMA?) in the long-term, and giving clients treatments for nightmares (meditation! Ambien!) in the short-term. All without worrying too much about whether the nightmares are caused by General Anxiety Disorder or a phobia or Seasonal Affective Disorder. There are many strengths to that approach.

Only, see, there's this big purple dinosaur holding us back.

[Image ID: Hardcover copy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, DSM-5, American Psychiatric Association; the title is white text on a purple background.]

So if everyone who uses the DSM also hates the DSM, why does it still exist and why do we keep buying it every time a $100 text revision gets published? Two reasons, in order of importance:

Insurance

Communication

Insurance is, I kid you not, the DSM's #1 reason for existence. American insurance companies won't cover treatment unless it's for a diagnosed illness, and so therapists put diagnosed illnesses on what they'd often be more comfortable describing as "bro, this dude is hella distressed and I'm trying to help undistress him." Note the word American on the cover; other countries have other manuals, and no other country's counselors are as chained to theirs as we are to ours. This means that the DSM helps — yay, affordable therapy! It means the DSM hurts — sets of symptoms get grouped artificially, spectra get split into categories, and diagnosis happens way too early in the therapeutic process.

Another comparison to unmental health: I don't have carpal tunnel syndrome, but my insurance provider thinks I do. I only announce that I don't because I haven't told you who I am or where I live. (If the insurance companies find us... Well, we just won't let them find us. The thing you should know is everyone is getting screwed by health insurance. Yeah, even you.) I have wrist pain and tingling. It has the wrong antecedents for carpal tunnel, and it has weird manifestations — pressure on the base of my thumb causes pain in my pinky — but my OT wrote down "Carpal Tunnel" on the forms because the alternative was a $500+ round of diagnostic scans. No one cares whether my median nerve is inflamed or not; occupational therapy still looks like "try this stretch, that stretch, this brace, that brace, and these activity changes; keep whichever combination makes the pain and tingling go away."

This kind of thing also happens in mental health all the time. Many therapists don't care — and neither should you — if your serotonin levels are low; if you're miserable and an SSRI prevents the misery, take the dang SSRI. If your mother was harshly critical and now you feel panic at any hint of criticism, it doesn't matter whether that better fits C-PTSD or NPD; it matters whether you cope with soothing self-talk or if you cope with alcohol. Put something from the DSM on the forms, and focus on finding which stretches (breathing exercises) make the tingling (panic) go away.

Communication is the biggest strength of the DSM. It means that clients can benefit from labels ("I'm not lazy, I'm ADHD") and consistent standards of treatment can be applied across different clients in different states. The DSM has huge lists of things like "if your client shows memory problems, be sure to check for alcohol abuse" or "if they have self-harm, make sure it's non-suicidal before you do anything else" that are tremendously helpful. It can help therapists who encounter a set of behaviors they've never seen before to go "client is rigid, rule-bound, and lacks insight... huh, looks like I'd better refer them to an OCPD specialist." (It's also the source of a lot of toxic misinformation on social media when symptom lists get taken out of context without that all-important differential diagnosis information, but I digress.)

However, diagnosis should never be the beginning point for therapy — it's impossible to know your client's mind without first building trust and transference — but reliance on the DSM for insurance often forces it to be. Diagnosis should never be the end point for therapy — knowing your perceptions don't match others' because of Bipolar I won't stop you hearing the dang hallucinations — but home use of the DSM often acts that way. Categorical diagnosis is limiting if your therapist is primarily interested in how depressed you are but the Beck Depression Inventory uses an absolute cutoff point for "depressed" or "non-depressed." Categorical diagnosis is useless if over 50% of people diagnosed with a depression are later diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and vice versa. So it's an imperfect book that does a lot of things well and a few things badly, and many of its heaviest users would argue that it shouldn't exist at all.

For further reading, I recommend The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. I don't agree with all the axes he grinds or all the ways he grinds them, but he's got decades of psychiatry experience and is (I hope) predicting the next paradigm shift in mental health.

For instance, van der Kolk argues that it doesn't matter if at intake your client has long blond hair and is named Linda, only to show up the next time with no hair and the name Gerald, only to come next time with short red hair and the name Taylor. The therapist should only be asking "how does the client feel about these changes?" and "what are these changes doing for the client?" If Linda can't remember what Gerald did, then focus on the terrible memory gaps that alter identities create. If Taylor became Gerald to try and please you, then focus on teaching mindfulness and self-compassion. If this is a happily genderqueer person, then figure out why they're seeking help and don't worry about the appearance changes. If this is someone who thinks in absolutes and regards their personality as constantly changing, then work on teaching them to see the world and themself with moral complexity. It doesn't matter whether Dissociative Identity Disorder exists or not; just ask your client what they need and how you can help, then go from there.

Anyway, the DSM is an imperfect solution to a complex problem, and a lot of mental health practitioners view it as a relic of a more paternalizing era. No one has come up with a really good solution for how to remove and replace it, so for now it's the least-bad option.

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exigencelost · 9 months

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Animorphs 5 gave us so much. They fit so much into that tiny little book. Two kids getting almost boiled alive for dinner in a regular human kitchen in a scene that had sort of nothing to do with the plot. Ax going completely insane at radio shack and almost dooming the Earth by virtue of total inability to behave normally in public for ten seconds. A disillusioned teenager making a desperate attempt to abnegate his duty for what would turn out to be the last time in his fucking life, then realizing twenty minutes later that he's incapable of that. A gaggle of teens experiencing ego death and getting ripped to pieces by completely normal ants before blindly bursting out of the suffocating earth and running home in leotards, only for one of them to find an ant pincer in his hip in the shower later and have a brief but thorough nervous breakdown in his bathroom. The same gaggle of teens catching a glimpse of their home planet from the window of a spaceship sent to consume that planet, struck by its beauty and by the weight of the duty of care for it that's been placed on their shoulders, moments before they are brought to believe they have failed that duty irrevocably and will die before they reach their home again. And all of that was before Eva came back from the dead.

#animorphs #animorphs 5 #marco animorphs

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lakesbian · 2 months

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OH have you finished all of animorphs then? Any general wrap-up thought on the characters n their arcs if so?

oh boy okay that's a big ask because the lack of specificity means i'm inclined to be comprehensive. i'm gonna force myself to be brief

jakey: very coherent arc from "i'm not the leader why are you guys saying i'm the leader stop saying i'm the leader" to "Subhuman. Flush 'em." it's good. i also like the chain where he's like. initially invested for saving his brother > tells marco he can't make calls about his mother because he's too close to the situation and is frankly an ass about it while hypocritically insisting he can handle the yeerk controlling his brother trying to murder his father, relieved when the animorphs take the difficulty of having to make the choice away from him but still views it as an indictment of his leadership capabilities > during the evacuation of the families he almost like...overcompensates w/ under-prioritizing himself and his loved ones, irrationally prioritizes everyone else's families being moved out first despite the fact that it would have made more tactical sense to do his first > he loses his family over this and it breaks him

rachel: problem w/ rachel is that, unbeknownst to me when i started reading, multiple of the books for her just had no idea what the hell or fuck they were doing, and were wildly out of character. ignoring the books that were fake and didn't happen, her arc is good. the thing is that "we might have to do something terrible, too. get rachel" is the crux of her Issues and the ghostwriters didn't need to do any of that other shit. the fake and true rachel books would've been served better by exploring the fundamental divide btwn her and cassie as people i'm sure you know what i mean

marco: probably the most consistent/strong arc? it's good. reading the end part was like

marco: i haven't seen jake in a few months. i still worry about him of course, just...from my hot tub me: that seems not true marco: okay so he hasn't seen ME in a few months but i have been continuously accidentally-on-purpose spying on him, and also sometimes i turn into a lobster in my fountain to cope me: okay yeah that's true

i like his fundamental internal conflict of. Being a person who is very capable of seeing, as per his iconic monologue, the bright line from a to z, and also continuously kicking the part of him that's horrified & upset by how that line impacts himself/the things personal to him under a rug. and despising when people pity him or acknowledge that he's upset/hurt because it reminds him he's got all that shit under the rug and distracts him from the bright clear line. really really good character writing how he's completely okay with constantly yelling and crying about how he's the most scared and afraid boy ever because fear over physical things is pragmatic, but he can't tolerate having it acknowledged when he's upset by something he knows to be necessary, because that's Not pragmatic. it adds flavor

cassie: i think it's funny how some of the other roles on the team are "the leader" "the lieutenant" "the axe-man" (<- not to be confused with the ax-man) etc and she's The One With A Continuously Functioning Moral Compass, Nerd #2, and The Emergency Lisa*. i've been told that the cassie books are either some of the strongest in the series or absolutely nothing but the thing is that i like the absolute nothing ones because i think the shenanigans are fun. so overall she's got great books. the struggle of a character who finds the moral compromises she's forced to make while participating in a war genuinely psychologically intolerable but still keeps being sucked in further is good & a nice sort of foil 2 some of the other morphs. i do have. And this has to be said despite being somewhat tangential. i do have the firm opinion that. rachel and cassie v much come off like they should be the classic "people who were bffs as kids and start becoming distant/incompatible as teens but are ignoring it and will be insisting on hanging out/calling each other bffs for several more years until something causes a bigger schism" dynamic & it would add a lot more if the text was aware of this fact and did something about it. but that's a longer post for a later time

tobias: his stomach flipping over while he tries to deny that the hawk-boy form of himself ellimist is showing him is him is perhaps one of the most stark scenes in the entire series and i think we should all be drawing it more. it's nice they put an abused autistic kid who doesn't feel like a human person in animorphs so that various children reading could have their brains rewired. i like how he's got a very heavy internal life. he's always Pondering. the torture plotline is a bit weakly written i think, his strongest moments are when he's doing an identity crisis thing. his dynamic with rachel is really good and the end of his arc does feel fitting. i think with how aximili is always going on abt how tobias is his shorm aka soulmate it would've been good if we saw more of the convos they were having or they had a more clearly Besties bond going on. although i DO like that aximili almost never shouts, someone (jake?) explicitly notes that when ax Does yell it means you'd better fucking listen, and to my memory the only call-caps moment aximili has is yelling "TOBIAS!" when he thinks tobias is critically wounded. more of that shit please. i would've also liked more tobias books in general bc he has one of the strongest narrative voices out of the gang

aximili: I was so mad about his very last book in the series being a shit ghostwriting moment. So mad you do not even want to know. entire plot of, like, book 8 all over again, except this time he's casually considering endorsing genocide for some reason. anyway i think there's a lot of interesting things going on in his head but his arc doesn't really wrap up well & there are a few ghostwritten books where he feels poorly done w/o having a rachel-type Really Iconic book that makes up for it. he works better early and mid series. he's also just a fundamentally hilarious character concept which is great. i'm sad that people lied to me about him being autistic compared to other andalites (he's not) but i like when he has axtism moments anyway. i would like to see 100 drawings of axmini get cinnamon roll now please

#ask #animorphs lb

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corvidares · 7 months

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suzanne collins fascinates me as a person. i wanna study her like. did she approve how this movie came out? or the previous ones? does she think its funny? or just sees it as bringing more readers to her books???? as a novelist, if my story got misconstrued by the masses so hard i would. idek what i'd do but maybe she saw it coming when she made the movie deal. idk!!!! i liked the movies as a kid (had an excuse not to be media literate. was a kid. read the books the first time as like a 12 year old LOL) but now im just…… the actor did katniss so dirty shes angry and petty and unlikable and sharp and. shes just SO MUCH MORE of an interesting person in the books

very flawed. arguably collins tries to make her unlikable. VERY different from your typical YA female protagonist™️ SPEAKING OF WHICH. its very weird to me that suzanne wrote it as a YA book. its honestly pretty adult. in the sense of the big themes its tackling. but, of course, i dislike when people imply that books for younger folks cant do that successfully. i always point to animorphs as a fantastic example. i honestly wonder if her publishing agency pushed that angle cuz like yeah katniss is 17. but still

if you have any interest at all in dystopia and HAVENT read the hunger games please give it a shot. even if you didnt like the movies (or did. or didnt see them. whatever) theres a reason it kicked off the popularity of dystopia in pop culture. almost nothing made in the few years after is nearly as good

#to be clear i havent seen the ballad movie yet i plan on pirating it #but first i want to reread the book bc its been a couple years #i LOVED it tho #anyway. some ramblings from discord #the hunger games #ig #suzanne collins #corvi caws #the ballad of songbirds and snakes

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rjalker · 2 months

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people really need to stop recommending books based purely on the fact that they're "Queer representation" of some kind.

Not only does it do a disservice to the story itself, because I guarentee you the author wanted their story to be remembered for more than having "x characters" and nothing more...

...but if you're going around blithely reccomending tons of random strangers read something like the Xenogenesis trilogy by Octavia E. Butler based purely on the fact that some of the characters use it/its pronouns...

that's.

I'm sorry but that is just so negligent. That's the only word I can think to describe it. Xenogenesis is an adult science fiction story meant to be read by adults who are ready to have an incredibly serious conversation about slavery, eugenics, rape, genocide, and how consent literally cannot exist when you are a slave, and what that means for you and everyone around you.

It's not a fun casual adventure story anyone and everyone should be picking up without knowing what they're getting into. You have no idea how many people you're casually recommending this series to are victims of rape who are going to be triggered by scenes in this series, and you're not giving them any warning!

It's already bad enough for people to be flattening stories down into whether or not they have "X characters" but to not warn people about genuinely triggering content in the books you're flattening this way?? Why would you do that?

Please don't fucking do that. If you know a series deals with triggering topics then you need to warn people about that any time you recommend people read it. The Xenogenesis series requires trigger warnings for rape at the very least, and a whole lot more on top of that too, but that's the bare minimum.

Stop recommending people read things just because "characters use x pronouns in it" or "it has nonbinary characters" or "it has a lesbian in it" without any relevant warnings about triggering content it also contains.

At least the person who did this did specify that the it/its users in Xenogenesis are all aliens, but like, that's the least of things people need to be aware of before reading this trilogy.

Reccommend media by actually summarizing it. There's almost always an official summary you can find somewhere. Warn people about any topics that might be triggering that the content contains.

And, since I see this happen the most: for the love of fuck do not lie to people about Queer characters being in a series, or refuse to explain to people that the Queer characters that do exist are just the same old stereotypes we've all seen a million times, with nothing to balance them out and make them actually progressive.

That is going to accomplish nothing except alienating people who've been tricked into reading something that's not actually what they were told it was. You are not going to get anyone to enjoy a series by betraying them by lying about nonexistant or at best shallow, stereotypical, bioessentialist 'representation'.

The Animorphs does not have a single canon Queer character.

The Murderbot Diaries is just the exact same nonbinary robot stereotype that was old in the 90s, with no important human nonbinary characters at all despite there being seven whole books at this point. There are exactly 2 human characters who use neopronouns, but they're the epitome of "token characters". They appear for a combined total of maybe 10 pages, have no importance to the plot, and get shoved offscreen as quickly as possible, never to be seen again. All of the robots use it/its pronouns because they don't have genitals and Martha Wells is transmisic and loves biological essentliasm, and still very clearly equates sex with gender with pronouns. Despite the protagonist using it/its pronouns, no one ever asks anyone else for their pronouns, everyone just magically knows, because, again, biological essentialism. Also known as the exact opposite of representation for trans people.

The Xenogenesis trilogy does not have a single canon Queer character in it. All of the characters who use it/its pronouns are part of the third reproductive sex for the alien species.

Start recommending series based on what the plot is actually about, or what good things they have going for them, not just because they have characters who use XYZ pronouns or are the literal stereotype of a nonbinary robot.

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petrichorca · 3 months

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First fic lines

I was tagged by @mxmollusca @ghostalservice @naranjapetrificada @spirker! (sorry if I missed someone) I've done something similar before I think but I've posted more since, so here we go!

Post the first line of your ten most recent fics, and see if there are any patterns.

1. like sugar to my heart (gift for @ghostalservice): There’s a vending machine in the private staff-only corridor of Blackbeard’s that Stedeth loves.

2. like a bird (collab with @ghostalservice): When Stedeth-Esgarrouth-Bonnetil was a very young Andalite, he thought that he’d like to be a dome ship when he grew up.

3. Stede’s Cursed Red Suit as a Metaphor for Grief and Moving On: “Oh, fuck off!” Stede wails.

4. Calypso's Dawn: Ed remembers Stede’s shocking strength from the night before, and it stokes the heat growing in his belly.

5. Life as a Series of Forward Rolls: Stede Bonnet is a forty-something years old man who owns Barbie dolls.

6. Did you mean to do that?: Stede pulls his hand away to find his palm slick with blood.

7. Perfectly Ordinary Tuesday (collab with @ferventrabbit): That morning Stede wakes up with Ed’s arm draped over his chest, Ed’s hair spilling in every possible direction across his skin.

8. Foundation Repairs (gift for @mossgroves): They’re in their innkeeper era.

9. Silky Smooth: Stede regretted almost nothing from giving up his old life, in favor of returning to the man he loved.

10. $20 Wedding Dress (collab with @veeagainsttheday and @ghostalservice): Ed puts on his scowly face just before he pushes through the front door of the dark bar he randomly chooses.

Mostly this tells me I've been writing more of Stede POV lately (several of these fics like #5, #7, and #8 switch POVs). I love Ed POV so much though. Many of these fics are modern AU (#5, #10) / Animorphs AU (#1 and #2). I've got missing scenes from s2 (#3, #4, #6, #9). And then there's innkeeper era (#7 and #8). Some start mid-action, most require some set-up prose to get us where we're headed. I like that they all start differently.

Also YAY for collabs and gifts; I love community. The collabs represent some of the most fun I've had in ages, maybe ever!

Tagging at random, feel free to post your own even if I don't tag!! @sweet-bazzle-bean @ferventrabbit @adhduck @darcylindbergh @robertaseaport @petrichorpirate @yerbamansa @chocolatepot

#ofmd fic #ofmd #our flag meets death #ten first lines #fanfic #tag game #i love you ofmd #ofmd fanfic

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bookaddict24-7 · 4 months

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REVIEWS OF THE WEEK!

EVERY WEEK I WILL POST VARIOUS REVIEWS I’VE WRITTEN SO FAR IN 2024. YOU CAN CHECK OUT MY GOODREADS FOR MORE UP-TO-DATE REVIEWS HERE.

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42. Identity by Nora Roberts--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

One of the best things I did for myself with this book was going into the story without reading the synopsis. I legitimately knew absolutely nothing about this book and man, when that first twist happened I was HOOKED.

The familial relationships in this book were everything and I loved that there weren't any of the usual tropes in this one when it came to the romance. It was a thriller first and a romance/familial story second. I did love how all of the characters communicated and worked together, even if their dialogue was sometimes a little awkward--especially when discussing intimate things. I know all families are different, but I wouldn't confess to my mom and grandma that I just came back from a night of pure sex LOL. But hey, to each their own.

The love interest was interesting. I really liked him and his blunt delivery, but sometimes he DID push that line of like "Alright, I guess we're just going with this." It was funny watching these two come together and I'll be honest, when he was a certain way (which I know is just his personality), I thought "wow, our standards are flat against the floor." While the relationship sometimes felt stilted, it didn't detract too much from the story for me.

Now the villain was something else. He was creepy and horrendous. I actually pictured his face changing from when he first meets the MC to when he sees her sick friend. It's horrendous and he was so well written--especially when we get to see his steady decline into even more madness.

Overall, this was FUN and had some very disturbing moments. Roberts is a little too good at writing someone who thinks so horrendously and does some horrible things to his victims. I recommend this for the sweetness of the family and a character who loves her job, but also for the creepy POV of the serial killer.

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43. The Unknown by Katherine Applegate--⭐️⭐️

It's been a few weeks since I've read an Animorphs book because the library holds time is sometimes brutal. Why am I mentioning this? Because this was one of the rare books in this series that I didn't feel any urgency to read. I'll be super honest: This one felt like a weird dream. Half the time I was confused about how the characters got to certain points in the story.

I'll still be reading the rest of the series, of course, but this one was just okay. I do love these adventures, but this felt almost like a filler book?

Anyway, onto the next one!

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44. The Titan's Bride Vol. 1 by ITKZ--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I will admit that while this storyline was actually sweet and pretty intriguing, this book is...nearly all porn. Had me blushing through the whole thing. I'm intrigued by where the story is going and I'm kicking myself for not having ordered the rest of the books yet, but yeah, this was basically porn with a sprinkling of a sweet and fantastical storyline.

I will say that the artwork is stunning!

Sigh. LOL.

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45. Once There Was by Kiyash Monsef--⭐️⭐️⭐️

ONCE THERE WAS would have been better as an adult fantasy book. Why? Because so many things in this book felt like an adult fantasy book--there weren't any adult themes, but a lot of the circumstances were a bit of a stretch. I think I, as a reader, wouldn't have had to suspend my disbelief so much if this had simply been an adult.

I mean, a fifteen year-old inherits her dad's Vet practice and and lives alone?

By the end of the book, I had forgotten this was YA.

Moving on from that, this book had a really cool concept. I loved the idea that there's a vet out there destined to take care of mythological monsters. I also loved that it was such a diverse set of characters too, including the MC. We get to see more about her culture and her father and what happens when Western society stamps out that aspect of an identity. For example: food, language barriers, and culture.

While the book felt a little all over the place, I really liked seeing the MC in action when it came to these magical beings. I also really liked how Monsef explored the concept of grief and how important it can be to just feel the emotions.

Overall, this book was OKAY. There were points where I was a little bored and a little confused as to why this was YA, but I can also see why so many people might love it. This was like Dr. Doolittle for mythological creatures.

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46. Raiders of the Lost Heart by Jo Segura-- ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I didn't know what to expect from RAIDERS OF THE LOST HEART, but I had a pretty good time with what Segura gave us. From the badass FMC to the stuttering and himbo of a MMC.

I think with books like this one, I need to not take the storylines too seriously so I can fully enjoy it (which I did). The romance, tension, and spice were great. The adventuring was fun (even though I would have loved to see a bit more). I think reading the author's note also helped in realizing how much leeway was given to the characters' adventuring, since it isn't really like this in real life.

This really felt like I was watching a movie. It was a quick and addicting read and had me hooked from the very beginning.

There is one character, however, who is clearly Pansexual and I do wish they had said that instead of having the FMC confused as to how one person could like more than one gender. I do like that this character explains it, but I do wish Segura had gone the extra step of saying the term.

Anyway, I enjoyed this for what it was and I'm glad I didn't pay attention to the rating!

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47. Olive Harvest in Palestine by Wafa Shami & Shaima Farouki (Illustrator)--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I don't normally rate or talk a lot about the storybooks I come across. But I came across OLIVE HARVEST IN PALESTINE while scrolling Instagram and I knew I immediately wanted it on my shelves. It's beautifully illustrated and the story it tells of an event that was a yearly tradition of harvesting and pressing olives in such a beautiful place like Palestine was both eye-opening and heartbreaking.

It breaks my heart to know that all of that beauty is now only on pages of storybooks, memories, photographs, and videos taken in passing. My heart ached while reading this important book. My heart cries for those olive trees that were hundreds of years old.

If there is a storybook you pick up this year, let it be this one.

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48. Block Shot by Kennedy Ryan--⭐️⭐️

When I read the first book in this series, I was hooked. I thought it was powerful, heartbreaking, and incredibly addicting.

And I don't know if it's because I spent yesterday sick in bed, but BLOCK SHOT was the last thing I wanted to finish (even though I only had like 4 hours left in the audiobook). I finally finished it earlier today but because I knew I wanted to finish it so I could get to the third book. Normally, I tell friends to DNF books but sue me, I wanted to give this book a shot.

All of that being said, I WAS intrigued at the beginning. I loved how these two knew each other from way back when and how, even years later, they still couldn't fight the chemistry between them. Call me wild, but I personally don't know how I would have reacted if I the FMC and the events of the first part of the book happened. On one hand, I get it because being a fat girl has always been my identity. Being the butt of fat girl jokes? Been there, done that. But on the other hand, I found that this FMC had a massive chip on her shoulder that she carried for the majority of the book, which she then moulded into a slightly unhealthy thing.

I'll admit, I found the portrayal of her body and how even the MMC referred to it (like being fat is a horrendous thing) really icky. I know that this was written a few years ago, but it made me so uncomfortable that the fat girl's humiliation was one of the big motivations for the FMC to "better" herself, as if her intelligence and already existent beauty wasn't enough. Don't get me wrong: wanting to feel a certain way and looking a certain way isn't a bad thing, I think the phrasing of it was just not it.

Which leads me to saying that...the FMC was one of those characters who supposedly had a powerful presence and was touted as this saint, but LOL, let's be real. She wasn't. Sure, she could put her business face on, but man, she was someone who was so easily manipulated. There were so many instances where I wanted to shake some sense into her. Like, we KNOW the MMC was an asshole, but at least he admits it? He was honest about who he was, while she was the one play acting.

I won't even touch on the fact that there's cheating in this and it's not like in the first book, where it felt like a glimmer of hope and fear. Here it was all pure selfishness. And I don't think we should always like the main characters in books, but like...at least make them consistent. I don't know, the FMC annoyed me and again, while I didn't like the MMC, at least he was honest.

Also, that twist. I saw it coming, but it added a whole other level of ick to everything and the FMC.

I'm disappointed with this book, but I'll still be picking up book 3.

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49. My Love Mix-Up! Vol. 1 by Wataru Hinekure (writer), Aruko(illustrator), & Jan Cash (Translator)--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I loved MY LOVE MIX-UP! and how much fun it was. The storyline was entertaining and while I think things happened a little too quickly in this first volume, I did love the antics and honesty the MC had for his situation. I can never tire of these kinds of stories where kids are just casually living their lives and falling in love with the unexpected person.

This reminded me a lot of BLUE FLAG, which was one of my favourite reads a couple of years ago. I loved the friendship aspect and how, even though things have the potential to be messy, that friendship perseveres.

I also laughed quite a bit at that twist at the end. Will definitely be aiming to get this entire series!

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50. Happy Place by Emily Henry--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I think I always kind of know what to expect from an Emily Henry novel, so while I went into HAPPY PLACE with a bit of nerves, I also knew I would probably enjoy it. I didn't read the synopsis, as per usual, and I was (unsurprisingly) hooked from the beginning. This book was a shot of melancholy, heartbreak, and that magic feeling that summer sometimes brings out in us that anything is possible.

At first, I was put off by the going back and forth with the past and present. Mainly, I've always found these kinds of stories feel a little abrupt when they have a flashback chapter every so often and I become impatient for the present day story. But as the story progressed, I realized it was impatience mingling with anxiety. I was afraid to see what broke these two up; what had the power to come in between these proclamations of forever I-love-you's and soulmate-y kind of love stories. I was worried and while I had to force myself to face it, I'm glad I did. I obviously won't say what it was, but I will say that it felt like a very real reason, even though these two would heavily benefit from couple's therapy.

I also appreciated the friendships and how this book isn't just about the romance that broke, but the relationship between friends. There are different kinds of happy places in this book and many of them include these amazing friends who are guilty of a huge crime: growing up. I find that I related a lot to the one friend who spent her time chasing that high of youth caught in a summer breeze. I remember summers long past full of memories that will never be replicated, but growing up means knowing that those memories exist, even if life and time changes everything.

Much like many other Henry books, this delves into deeper topics as well, like familial trauma, grief, mental health, and abandonment issues. Those were palpable on the pages as the characters faced these very real parts of themselves.

I'm not giving this a full five stars because of the flashbacks and how messy the MC and her love interest were. Communication is a golden rule I wish more romances adopted, but I also can understand that in order to have diverse characters, we need to be mindful of the ones who genuinely have a hard time communicating--usually because of mental health and traumatic responses. All of that being said, I still stand by this couple being chaotic--even if they were probably my second or third favourite couple in the Henryverse.

ALSO, DID EVERYONE PEEP THE BEACH READ EASTER EGG?? Hell yeah.

___

Have you read any of these books? What were your thoughts?

___

Happy reading!

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wowhead · 8 months

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the Animorphs have it hard enough fighting a secret guerilla war against an alien empire. but they're doing that shit while in middle school. imagine your friend almost dies as a wolf and you ripped out some alien's throat in a fight and the next day you have to wake up and go to algebra class like its nothing

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maidenvault · 2 months

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Hiya! 💕 Could I please have 🍓🍄🍬🦴🐚 for the Writers Truth or Dare ask game? 😊

Thanks for the ask! 🥰

how did you get into writing fanfiction? Going by a loose definition of fanfic, my sister and I wrote a Star Wars story when we were in grade school and I filled up many notebooks with a never-ending Animorphs one later myself. So when I got into my first internet fandom, Roswell, and came across fanfic on the most popular fansite, it was a no-brainer that of course I wanted to do this and I was off running with it immediately.

share a head canon for one of your favourite ships or pairings Throughout much of their friendship, especially early on, Zuko and Katara are unspokenly conscious of having some level of attraction to each other with no real wish to act on it. But they grow closer than ever after they've been without their spouses for some time and end up getting married in old age.

post an unpopular opinion about a popular fandom character Kotetsu Kaburagi is a really flawed guy and not the greatest dad because of it, and the more significant arc in the original series is his own, not Barnaby's.

is there a piece of media that inspires your writing?

So many Hayao Miyazaki movies were formative for me and elements of them sneak into my ideas for original writing, but he's more of an inspiration to me as a person and creator himself. Miyazaki often despairs over the state of the industry and the seeming futility of making art in a world that's headed for disaster in so many ways, and in recent years he's had to reconcile with his own limitations as he gets older. (In the documentary Never Ending Man he says at one point, "If I try to focus like I used to I get exhausted, so I just fool around"...and fuck, at not half his age I already feel that way a lot lol.) In the end he just can't seem to not work no matter how he reasons with himself that it's time to give it up. His work is a constant demonstration that the value of life, and of art, is in humanity's drive to just keep going and keep creating even in the face of apparent hopelessness. It's that leper in Princess Mononoke saying, "The world is cursed, but still we find reasons to keep on living," a moment that always moves me like just about nothing else in film. It's an idea that has haunted almost his entire filmography and he still has no easy answers, there's just the work.

do you like or dislike surprises? In fiction they're great. Irl they better be good surprises.

#hayao miyazaki #princess mononoke #zutara #prince zuko #katara #kotetsu kaburagi #tiger and bunny #asks

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pretty-rage-machine · 7 months

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20 questions for fic writers

I got tagged by meikuree! You should go read her excellent fic. 8)

I can't remember whomst among my mutuals does fic or not 😭 consider yourself tagged if you're interested! Let's all toot our own horns

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

63. My account is here, btw.

2. what's your total ao3 word count?

AO3 informs me it's 244,098, which feels like SO much and yet almost nothing based on the time I have theoretically been writing.

3. what fandoms do you write for?

Gonna call out ones where I've written more than a single fic and where I feel it is at least somewhat likely I'll return and write more: Animorphs, Naruto, Blade of the Immortal, and Shingeki no Kyojin, but there's loads of one-offs and smaller fandoms there too. I'd like to write more Gravity Falls, as well.

The rest are under the cut.

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

With All Brightness (Lilo & Stitch), The Girl In The Water (Spirited Away), beauty, her artificers (Greek mythology), I've got Four Voices on the Line (the only one I hear is mine) (Animorphs), and love what you see in the mirror (TWEWY). Perhaps significantly, four of these were written for Yuletide, and one was written as a new year's resolution treat, so also for Yuletide.

5. do you respond to comments?

Yes, I try to.

6. what's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Ummm. Hmm. One of my friends once told me my fics were "gloomy" but I have a hard time calling out the angstiest ending. 😂Maybe it's Preludes (Naruto), a Kakuzu/Madara fic with Hashirama dying nearby? Or maybe it's On Moths (BOTI), a fic about Makie dying of tuberculosis back when it seemed like that might happen.

7. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

With All Brightness (Lilo & Stitch) is so fluffy I think it has to be it.

8. do you get hate on fics?

I never have! Touch wood

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

Yes! I write the kind that feels right for the characters to me. I like smut as character study and I like insane mindfucks and fucking as another manifestation of a battle of wills between characters.

10. do you write crossovers? what’s the craziest one you've written?

Like, a little drabble of one back in high school, Invader Zim/Kingdom Hearts lol. I really respect authors who can do a compelling crossover, but I don't feel like I'm that good tbh! Crossovers I want: Machineries of Empire/She-Ra (I need to see Kujen and Horde Prime go toe to toe), Gravity Falls/Attack on Titan (Hange and Bill Cipher being buds), Revolutionary Girl Utena/Narnia (ANTHY IN NARNIA. THE PROBLEM OF ANTHY)

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

I had a fic's framing device lifted! It was like. Not a songfic but a poem fic. It was that Monday's Child poem, and I had a line of the poem and then a short bit of writing after each line. Someone commented telling me they liked the Batman version more (lol), when I knew mine had come first based on publication dates. It was weird but I was a lot younger at the time and didn't really know what to say.

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope!

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, with an ex-friend.

14. what's your all-time favorite ship?

Hmmmm I don't have an all-time favorite! I'm not so much about the shipping, though I enjoy shipfic.

15. what's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

All my currently-in-progress fics are oneshots. The WIPs that are unfinished, I know I'll never finish lolol

16. what are your writing strengths?

Uhh... (digs toe in the ground) character voice and tone? I feel like I don't know my own strengths lol. I used to get praised for beautiful imagery and having a "simple" style (though people would say this and then hastily clarify that they meant it in a good way, which tickled me) but not for a while.

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

I wish I was better at snappy dialogue and twisty plot, I really admire authors who are great with plot and can write things that give the feeling of like... things going wrong in a way that makes sense, characters dealing with that in a way that makes sense? Hmm.

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I think it can be handled very well or very poorly. I don't know if I myself ever would if canon didn't model doing it, or if I couldn't find someone fluent in the language to check that I wasn't butchering it.

19. first fandom you wrote for?

Invader Zim babyyyyyy

20. favorite fic you've ever written?

Hmm. Hard to pick just one, but here are some both old and recent that I especially like:

quelled and quenched in leaves (Stardew Valley) - a spooky fic I had a blast working on, very well received.

🐻🌠👋🗻FRIENDS🍦💎🔪🏄LEND💞🦆🕵️😲A👊👌🤟🙌HAND🤝🧙🔎💖 (Gravity Falls) - a doofy Gravity Falls casefic centered around some pretty rare characters. I jammed as many puns and gags into this as I could and tried some new things in general while I worked on it, and I'm still proud.

Chimera (Gemini) - exchange fic written for an obscure movie, another stretch in genre and tone that I still am proud of.

A Season Under the Kandrona (Animorphs) - fic about Aldrea and her family on an alien world. I just... love Animorphs so much

long still sea (Blade of the Immortal) - fix-it fic for the ending when I really needed that, written over the course of a single day in a borderline fugue state. I wish I could call on that productivity at will lmao

template:

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

2. what's your total ao3 word count?

3. what fandoms do you write for?

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

5. do you respond to comments?

6. what's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

7. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

8. do you get hate on fics?

9. do you write smut? if so, what kind?

10. do you write crossovers? what’s the craziest one you've written?

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

14. what's your all-time favorite ship?

15. what's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

16. what are your writing strengths?

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

18. thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

19. first fandom you wrote for?

20. favorite fic you've ever written?

#my writing #memes #fanfiction

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nonhumanresources · 8 months

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Ponytober Day 3 - Casting Spells

More writing but this time it's cool because WOAH IT'S A COLLAB. Friend did the art and I did the writing! It's about me getting turned into a pony by a very distracted friend. Turned out fun I think, and the art is incredible! Check that out here.

Story itself is below! It can also be read here if you prefer a google doc. Due to length I suppose I'll format this like my regular story posts, too. Seriously I was not planning on 4k words.

Summary: Maru is a pony. This is new. However, book club is happening, and this takes precedence.

What to expect: pony TF and ranting about Animorphs.

Length: 4.2k words.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Maru trotted through the kitchen, taking in a deep breath. His nostrils flared, and he sneezed, the scents emanating from the oven far more intense than he was ready for. He stumbled at the force of it, getting his hooves tangled, clacking loudly against the wood floor.

Behind him, the softer sound of sneakers echoed slightly through the hallway. “The sitting room is just through there,” Ash called from behind. “And uh, tissues should just be on the counter there. Sorry, there’s probably still flour floating around.” When he heard their voice, Maru’s ears swiveled backwards, bringing it to the forefront of his attention. It felt like squinting, but with his hearing.

Maru glanced around, finding the tissue box. He actually squinted as he focused on it, the horn atop his head heating up, coming to life with a pale green aura. Another aura of the same color enveloped the tissue emerging from the top of the box, and he flicked his horn upwards, willing it to move.

The first tissue did pop out of the box, but it shredded itself almost instantly. He tried again, this time moving slower, trying to keep it from stretching at all. The tactic succeeded, and he caught it with a hoof, rubbing his wet, sensitive nose. He still wasn’t used to being able to smell so clearly. The air was in high definition, now—he could even smell directions, if he focused, able to tell based on the breeze on his nose and the strength of the scent where it was coming from.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, crumpling the tissue into a ball with his telekinesis and tossing it into the trash can. He glanced behind himself and saw Ash waiting patiently, dressed in a flannel and sweats. I guess it has been getting colder, Maru realized. With the new coat, he hadn’t noticed. He resumed his trot through the door on the opposite side of the kitchen, entering a cozy little sitting room. It was sparsely decorated, but there was a huge flag hung on one wall depicting Ash and their two roommates dressed in formal wear. The gag decor served to help enliven the space somewhat. A TV stand stood on one side, though it was pushed to one side to make room for a sofa and a lounge chair facing each other. It seemed almost intimidatingly formal, though he knew it wasn’t.

Ash followed and let out a little laugh. “It’ll be more friendly when we’ve got attendees to actually make a circle of chairs. Hard to do when there’s just two people in the book club.” They stepped past Maru, brushing against his fur as they scooted through the tight space and settled down in the chair, legs tucked up underneath them, almost like a perch. “I figured the couch would be better for you, considering you’re horizontal now.”

Maru scoffed, but he did trot over and climb up onto the cushions, settling down with his forelegs hanging off the front so he could face forward. It was a bit awkward to sit twisted, but it was better than nothing. He slung his bag off his back and slid it to the floor beside him. “Yeah, I don’t think I’d fit in any of your chairs at this point.”

“Too long,” Ash agreed.

Maru felt his face grow a little hot. “Not to mention the pony body.”

“Yep, lanky pony body.”

“It’s tall, thank you very much,” Maru retorted. He coughed, changing the subject. He may be lanky, but that was a mark of pride, thank you very much. “That seemed like a lot of mess to bake cookies for just two people. Er, person and pony. What kind did you make?”

Ash grinned. “Oatmeal.”

Maru groaned, rolling his eyes. “Seriously?”

They laughed, shrugging. “What? I thought it was the best choice, given the circumstances. Plus it’s funny.”

Maru shook his head, but he couldn’t help but laugh at least a little. Leave it to Ash to turn baking into a bit. “Well, they better be tastier than they are funny. You wanna start?”

“Sure.” Ash swung their legs out from beneath themselves and stood. “I’ll grab a few cookies and we can get going.” They exited the room, and Maru heard the oven creak open, cupboards rattling. His gaze wandered the room curiously. While he sat, he fidgeted, his horn lighting up once more and snagging a pillow on the other side of the couch with its aura. He lifted it up and down, spinning it while he inspected the rest of the room. He’d originally done this to practice his telekinesis, but it had rapidly become a habit, and he’d bumped his head against objects he’d forgotten he himself was floating several times at this point. On the plus side, it had genuinely helped him learn better control over the magic. He’d gone from using telekinesis like a numb hand to grasp at everything, straining as hard as possible just to lift it a few inches, to something decidedly more magical. He’d thought of it like a spectral hand, but as time went on, it was feeling more and more like something more ethereal. Letting it act as a force of will, rather than a hand that he could use as he’d done before he’d changed, helped the telekinesis be less stiff. That had been a very exciting and very, very nerve-wracking realization. It was like he had to let go of his old form just to get better at using this one. Or maybe he was just catastrophizing.

“Yeah! You get that pillow!” Ash cheered. Maru yelped and firing it across the room, smacking it into the far wall. He spun and glared at the doorway, where Ash stood, grin plastered across their face once again. “Sorry to startle you, just thought I’d give you some encouragement. That cushion must have said something real nasty, eh?” They held a plate of cookies, and they dragged a spare chair to the space between the recliner and the couch, setting it down there. They jumped back into the lounge chair with a few cookies in hand, this time with their legs sideways, feet sticking up over one of the armrests.

“You wanna talk about it?” they asked, biting into one of the cookies and promptly fanning their mouth. “Ow. Hot.”

Maru grabbed one of the cookies with his horn, blowing on it before he responded. Did he? “Not… particularly,” he admitted. The prospect of getting into it all was daunting. Turning into a small purple pony came with a shocking amount of emotional weight.

Ash nodded, seemingly content with that answer. “Gotcha. We can talk about something far more important instead.” Reaching behind themselves, they grabbed a small paperback book off the shelf behind the couch and held it up. The cover was a somewhat horrifying depiction of a teenager transforming into a lizard.

“Animorphs!”

~ ~ ~

Ash had been the one to suggest a book club. After all, they were the only one who had actually read Animorphs other than Maru, and they’d been keen to reread the series along with him. Maru was already several dozen books ahead, but Ash didn’t much mind; it would help refresh the beginning of the story for Maru, while they got to enjoy talking about each book with him. Plus, it’s not like they were going to get spoiled on the ending; one of the only Animorphs books they’d actually owned as a kid had been the very last one, so they were already long past that point.

Unfortunately, Maru had texted before the first meeting, abruptly canceling it. Everyone had been worried, as it was radio silence for multiple days before word got out: Maru, their loving friend, was now an utterly adorable cartoon pony.

No one had quite been able to wrangle the how out of him thus far, but frankly, the entire group was amazed enough at sudden change to be willing to suspend their questions until he was willing to share the information himself—even though several were desperate to find out. Fortunately, all of them were pretty used to talking about this kind of thing; mostly, they were shocked it was actually real.

So, book club was rescheduled, which gave Ash the time to speed through a couple more books. They’d been meaning to only do the first, but it had gotten them into enough of a reading mood that books two and three had flown by in time for the first official meeting. They reasoned that was more than enough to talk about in an evening.

“Yes!” Maru leaned forwards, smiling. The expression should have sat oddly on his muzzle, but somehow, it twisted in just the right way for it to come off as natural and friendly. Cartoon horses were just more malleable than their real life counterparts, Ash figured.

“Okay, so, since we both read the book recently, I don’t think we need a summary or anything,” Ash began, leafing through its pages. “It was good, for sure. I remembered the basic plot from when I was a kid, but it was fun to go through it again. Been a bit since I read anything for kids, too, honestly.”

Maru laughed, his head bobbing up and down. “Maybe the first book is, but they go so crazy so fluffing—I meant, frosting—gah, you know what I’m trying to say. Ponies have a hard time swearing.”

“I got it,” Ash hummed. “I remember some wild stuff, plus everything you’ve mentioned. Most kids books don’t have the main characters kill Hitler. Lump it in with Warriors and Guardians of Ga'hoole under ‘books I should probably have not been allowed to read but completely changed my brain chemistry as a child,’ eheh.”

“Right?!” Maru resounded, leaning forwards even further. He was tapping his hooves against the couch in excitement, tail flicking. “Like—they’re constantly almost dying, their families are involved, it’s all insane.”

“Not to mention the sheer amount of alien nonsense,” Ash agreed. “Book four is like, Atlantis, right?”

“Yeah!” Maru leapt up from where he sat, and Ash leaned to one side, avoiding the sharp end of his horn. He shoved his nose into his bag and came out holding a simple journal in his mouth, levitating another, fancier one with his horn. He set the journal down and searched through the opening pages.

“I’ve been taking notes as I go,” he explained, distracted. Ash leaned forwards to try and get a look, but they weren’t wearing their glasses, so it was legible as chicken scratch from this far away. “Here—yeah, this is the one where two of them just start having visions for no reason, and then they have to go find Ax underwater.”

“Forgot about the visions,” Ash mused. “What else is going on there? I remember some crazy water animal, right?”

“Mhm!” Maru’s horn literally sparked with giddy excitement. Ash reached out and extinguished a spark that landed on the oatmeal cookie platter; it was pleasantly warm between their fingers. “It’s this big whale thing that’s got like, thirty tails, and it’s all red. I swear I have a pen somewhere, I could draw—”

He was cut short by a sudden ripple in the air. Like hazy heatwaves, an image swam in between the two friends, flickering like a low-battery flashlight. It was a great, hulking thing, with ruby red skin and eyes that seemed to glare out of its realm of nothingness at the two. The whole thing was cast in minty green light that streamed from Maru’s horn, not unlike a projector.

The room was dead silent as the image faded away, the unicorn’s horn going dim once more. Ash blinked the bright afterimage out of their vision, the dread gaze hanging in their mind.

“Dude.”

“I-I don’t know how I did that!” Maru yelped almost immediately. “I’ve barely even started studying illusion magic!”

“No. Dude.” Ash knocked a fist on the wooden chair, and Maru’s muzzle snapped shut. “That was awesome.”

Maru looked like he might faint, but he gulped it down. “Yeah. Y-yeah, it was cool. It was just sudden, is all.”

“Two questions,” Ash stated, holding up a hand. “One, what do you mean by studying?” They held up a finger. “Two, think you can do that again?” A second finger went up, and they waggled them in front of Maru’s snout.

In response, the book on the couch came to life, floating up in the air. “Uh, I found it a few days after… y’know. The whole thing. It’s a book of Equestrian magic, I think, so unless there are other unicorns out there, I can’t see it being for anyone else.”

“Also awesome,” Ash interjected. That brought a smile to Maru’s face again, wiping away the shocked expression. Good.

“As for doing it again… maaaaybe? Like I said, I don’t even know how I managed it the first time.” Maru shoved his journal aside to make room on the floor in front of him, dropping it open to a bookmarked page. Complex diagrams covered it, labeled with what Ash could only assume were notes on casting technique and the like. That sounded… magic-y enough.

“Do you want to try it again?” Ash pushed, unable to keep a hint of excitement out of their voice. It wasn’t every day you got to see magic purple ponies, after all.

“I mean, yeah, obviously,” Maru sighed, tapping his hoof on the page.

“Let’s do it, then!”

“How are we supposed to replicate an accident, though?”

Ash shrugged. “More book club, obviously. Here, I’ll get back into place…” they trailed off as they threw their legs back over the armrest of the chair, shifting back and forth to get comfy. “There. Then you can look at your spell book, but don’t focus on it; just keep talking about Animorphs.”

The pony gave them a baleful look. “I don’t know if Animorphs is the answer to everything, Ash.”

“C’mooon, Maru, just give it a try. Look, I’m even eating another cookie. I swear you can’t even tell it’s a new one.” True to their word, Ash snagged another oatmeal cookie and took a bite, opening their mouth to show off the half-chewed mush. Maru stuck his tongue out, turning away.

“Fine, just never do that again,” he chided.

Ash gave him a thumbs up, then swallowed. “Okay. Book four. The Animorphs are… what, on a boat? Stranded in the middle of the ocean? Flying above it? Where are our heroes?”

Maru rolled his eyes at the theatrics. “Boat, yeah. So, Tobias and Cassie were having visions, right? And then they all saw these ocean ruins on the news and recognized the writing on them as Andalite language, and it gave them such a powerful vision that both of them blacked out.” Maru sighed. “Look, Ash, I don’t know if this is gonna work.”

“No, no, keep going!” they protested. “Seriously, now I’m just into the story. I wanna hear about it.”

Maru shrugged. “If you say so. The Animorphs had to make it out to the middle of the ocean, right? But it was too far for the two hour morph limit, so they had to get onto a boat somehow…”

Ash listened attentively, doing their best to look relaxed while keeping an eye on Maru’s horn. It was an experiment, sure, but it was also just fun to listen to him talk about something he was so clearly passionate about. Whether or not they got to see some more magic, Ash considered this a successful book club. I’ll have to catch up a bit further for next time, they thought. Otherwise it’s just gonna be a storytelling hour featuring Maru.

The pony’s explanation of the book trailed off. He squinted, attempting to readjust his glasses with a hoof, only succeeding in knocking them further off kilter. A bit of telekinesis righted them. “Uh. These words are starting to make more sense to me. Should I be worried?”

Ash made a noise somewhere in between ‘probably?’ and ‘no clue, you’re the magic expert.’ “Try reading them, see if that activates the spell or something. Then keep talking about Animorphs, every time you get into it your horn starts glowing. I’m sure there’s some magic-pony-emotion-thing going on.”

Maru stuck his snout basically into the spellbook, squinting harder. “The Animorphs are with Ax, under the ocean, right? This one’s like….” He pronounced a word in a language that made Ash shudder, the syllables slipping around their ear like water currents. “And Visser 3 knows they’re there. Um, ssslierat alethandra. They need to get out before the whole ship gets blown up by the Yeerks, and…”

He kept going, but Ash was finding it hard to concentrate. The magic words interspersed in the story weren’t just impossible to understand; they were actually difficult to listen to. They kept knocking around in their head, taking up far too much space, drowning out the rest of the story. An ache began to pulse inside their skull, and they rubbed their temples, trying to ease the pressure.

They could tell Maru had taken a breath, but Ash couldn’t manage to get out anything than a grunted “Uh-huh.” He immediately launched back into the story-spell, and their headache continued to get worse. Their hand bumped uncomfortably against their forehead; Ash pulled it back, vision swimming.

What was in front of them was very clearly a hoof. “Agh. Maru?” they mumbled, head pounding. He didn’t seem to hear. With another one of the strange phrases, their back arched, hip bones reknitting themselves and making the seated position awkward to maintain.

This was, of course, not a great situation. Whatever spell Maru had, it wasn’t illusions—it was turning Ash into a pony, too. They grunted as their shirt grew tight under the flannel, aching back consolidating into two oddly textured lumps that strained to be freed. Ash had to stop him reading it and fast—they couldn’t be a pony, because tomorrow, they had classes to attend, and the two were very likely going to be at odds with one another.

“Yeah, yeah. Hey, Maru?” They tried to interrupt him again, but they were slurring their words, voice quiet under the strain of the changes. They coughed, and the cough turned into a hack that stretched their neck to twice its regular length. “Maru!”

They twisted around, frantic now. Maru’s eyes had a silvery sheen over them, vision locked to the tome on the floor. His horn was alight with shining magic, brighter than Ash had seen it the whole evening, bathing the room in an eerie green glow. The sight would have been exceptionally frightening, had he not been relating the plot of The Message, book four of Animorphs by K.A. Applegate. That part made it only moderately-to-somewhat frightening.

Ash nearly passed out as, with one word, the pain suddenly spearheaded somewhere near their prefrontal cortex, then blossomed outward. They held their face with a hoof and a hand, feeling as a horn sprouted between them, fortunately passing right between two fingers instead of stabbing into them. It was sharp.

“Listen, Maru, I—”

Shhhrrrip! One shoe tore in half, another creamy blue hoof poking through it. Ash kept trying.

“I really think—”

Another magic word, and Ash’s hair was obscuring their vision, fluffing out into a styled mane. The blonde faded to green, then a deep blue towards the end.

“Would you stop reading?!”

With a mighty tear, two feathered wings BURST from Ash’s back alongside a long, flowing tail. With their already precarious choice of seating position, the shove from beneath was all it took to shove them up and back. They flailed four hooves as they tipped over the armrest. Their wings flared outwards to help, which accomplished exactly the opposite, unceremoniously dumping them right onto their head. Collapsed in a heap of shredded clothing, mussy mane, and bedraggled feathers, Ash let out a deep sigh. One final magical word made two pointed pony ears pop into existence, peeking out from their mane.

Well, they thought. At least now I get to see if I like the oatmeal cookies more.

~ ~ ~

“...the sperm whales let them ride them back to shore, and Ax… oh.” Maru blinked as he reached the end of the spell. His horn was glowing, but no alien fish swam through the air this time, glowering at its real compatriots. “Nothing? I swear I said it right….”

He glanced once more through the spell. That really was all of it? The story idea had been interesting, and he had an easier time making out the runes now, but it really had been for naught. He sighed; Ash’s ideas were usually too silly to work, and half the time they were jokes, anyway.

A whinny somewhere behind him stopped him dead. Maru’s stomach dropped, ears laying back. Oh no.

He spun around and clapped both hooves to his mouth, suppressing a shriek. A large alicorn was propped up against the couch, upside down. One he knew well—he’d drawn this alicorn, back when he’d had the ability to hold a tablet pen.

“Ash?” he gasped, horn sparking again. One of the motes of light drifted down and rested atop their brand new snout. They blew it away, clearly exasperated.

“That would be me, yes,” they said sardonically.

“But you’re—”

“Yes,” they interrupted, sounding grave. “It appears my ass is, in fact, a horse.” Based on the unfortunate positioning, this was an easy fact to confirm. The deadpan delivery was even enough to push past the usual cartoon censorship. One of their shoes dropped off a hoof, smacking into their horn and bouncing away. “Along with the rest of me. Help me up, yeah?”

Maru nodded and rushed over, tripped over himself in his haste. He braced his shoulder against the lounge chair and pushed, sliding it over the floor, only stepping on Ash’s wings and mane once or twice in the process. They wriggled all four legs, trying to right themselves. Maru helped tilt them and got smacked with a wing as they came rightside up, a wobbling mess.

“Now then.” Ash stood up, taking a step towards Maru. Or, well, they tried. They only succeeded in throwing themselves face-first back to the ground. They quickly sat back up and coughed.

“Ah. What I meant to say was this.” They reached out a hoof, pawing at the Animorphs book that had been dumped to the floor along with themselves. They made a motion as if picking it up and raising it into the air, and seemed surprised at how ineffectual this was in accomplishing anything whatsoever. They sucked in an annoyed breath, raising an eyebrow at Maru.

“Look, the page SAID illusion, I swear,” he said, but the excuse sounded a little lame. “I… don’t even really remember casting it. I said it exactly like it was on the page.”

Ash sighed. “I’m sure it said illusion. I trust you, Maru. However—” they raised both wings. “—I am also a pony. So something went wrong. You looked like you’d been possessed when you were casting that thing.”

Maru opened his mouth, but Ash continued before he could speak. “Not actually possessed. Sorry, I don’t think my apartment is haunted. Maybe next time though.”

Even despite the panic, Maru sighed, a little disappointed. “At least that would give an explanation. I’m sorry, Ash.”

Despite the situation and all the awful feelings swirling around in Maru’s stomach, there was a deep-seated relief. At least I’m not alone. It was something of a selfish thought, but it was true.

Ash clicked their tongue. “Yeah. I bet. Listen, bookmark that page for later and stop working on illusion spells for now. Book club only goes until 8 and I need to learn how to move things with my mind before your ride shows up.” They tapped their horn with a hoof.

“I can help!” Maru agreed readily. “It’s the least I can do. It’s not that hard once you start to figure it out.”

“Sweet. Y’know, Animorphs kinda got it right with their transformation scenes, honestly. Felt like I was living the book.” Ash cracked a grin, and Maru groaned internally. He knew that grin. “On the bright side, I can think of a few people who are gonna be sooo jealous.”

“Ash, I forbid you from gloating,” he snapped.

“Oh, come on! You know I gotta. Just think of the funny pictures I could send!” They pushed themselves to their feet, shaky, but didn’t fall this time. Maru propped them up against his shoulder, and despite their extra alicorn height, he was pleased to see he still stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the other pony.

They walked through the apartment, still arguing as they left the sitting room and the oatmeal cookies behind. There was a lot to go over, but the evening was young. There would be time. In the end, the only true tragedy of their first ever book club meeting was that the book itself lay discarded, flatly undiscussed. As it turned out, fascinating as Animorphs was, there were several more interesting things to discuss that night.

#writing wyrms #ponytober #ponytober2023 #casting spells #mlp #transformation #tf #unicorn #alicorn #rosa #by technicality; I am rosa therefore they are in here #my stuff #mlp tf #animorphs #I swear that isn't a bait tag. this whole thing is predicated on the books #but also it's kind of a bait tag #woe horse be upon ye all animorphs readers finding this through tags

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