So I found the letter that the Animorphs author and trans ally K. A. Applegate wrote after the series ended and I’m FLOORED
I mean
You want something even crazier? Animorphs ended in May 2001. She didn’t know what was coming, but damn if she didn’t give her readers a much needed dose of reality about the horrors of war right before we were really going to need it.
If you enjoy easily-digestible sci fi, and can get your hands on the animorphs books, I really recommend it. They’re fucking great and thoughtful in a lot of ways you might not have picked up on as a kid. I’ve read the first dozen or so books over the last couple of years and they’ve literally changed the way I look at the world.
Not to butt in since the series came along when I was in high school and thus a bit after my time, but I am a librarian and as such I am ALL ABOUT matching people to the books they need in whatever format is available.. You can download the entire series. It’s free.
Applegate’s statement on the piracy subject is quoted from an AMA here for those that have moral issues with it. for those that don’t want to click, she says: “We do not take them down. Or ask for them to be taken down. I think
once the books are available to buy—paper or e—it would be nice if
people who could afford it would buy. (our kids have very expensive
tastes. You know: food and whatnot.) But for years they’ve been
unavailable except by ‘pirated’ means. These men and women kept the
series alive. They kept the books available. So no, we did NOT take
these books down.”
I had a dream that the king and the queen of a small country had a daughter. They needed a son, a first-born son, so in secret, without telling anyone of their child’s gender, they travelled to the nearby woods that were rumoured to house a witch.
They made a deal with that witch. They wanted a son, and they got one. A son, one made out of clay and wood, flexible enough to grow but sturdy enough to withstand its destined path, enchanted to look like a human child. The witch asked for only one thing, and that was for their daughter.
They left the girl readily.
The witch raised her as her own, and called her Thyme. The princess grew up unknowing of her heritage, grew up calling the witch Mama, and the witch did her very best to earn that title.
She was taught magic, and how to forage in the woods, how to build sturdy wooden structures and how to make the most delicious stews. The girl had a good life, and the witch was pleased.
The girl grew into a woman, and learned more and more powerful magics, grew stronger from hauling wood and stones and animals to cook, grew smarter as the witch taught her more.
She learned to deal with the people in the villages nearby, learned how to brew remedies and medicines and how to treat illness and injury, and learned how to tell when someone was lying.
Every time the pair went into town, the people would remark at just how similar Thyme was to her mother.
(Thyme does not know who and what she is. She does not know that she was born a princess, that she was sold. She only knows that one night after her mother read her a story about princesses and dragons, her mother had asked her if she ever wanted to be a princess.)
((Thyme only knows that she very quickly answered no. She likes being a witch, thank you very much, she likes the power that comes with it and the way that she can look at things and know their true nature.))
The witch starts preparing the ritual early, starts collecting the necessities in the winter so they can be ready by the fall equinox. Her daughter helps, and does not ask what this is for, just knows that it is important.
The witch looks at Thyme, both their hands raised into the air over a complicated array of plants, tended carefully to grow into a circle, and says, sorry.
apparently native american tribes were in contact with the donner party and offered them food when they saw the colonists were starving and the donner party turned them down and decided to go the whole “cannibalism” route instead.
Until now the Native American perspective has been left out of the telling of the Donner tragedy, not because the wel mel ti did not remember the pioneers, but because they were never asked, or perhaps were not ready to share. Their oral tradition recalls the starving strangers who camped in an area that was unsuitable for that time of year. Taking pity on the pioneers, the northern Washoe attempted to feed them, leaving rabbit meat and wild potatoes near the camps. Another account states that they tried to bring the Donner Party a deer carcass, but were shot at as they approached. Later, some wel mel ti observed the migrants eating human remains. Fearing for their lives, the area’s native inhabitants continued to watch the strangers but avoided further contact. These stories, and the archaeological evidence that appears to support them, certainly complicated my interpretation of the Donner Party event. The migrants at Alder Creek were not surviving in the mountains alone—the northern Washoe were there, and they had tried to help. (source)
tfw a group of unprepared strangers show up, refuse the food you offer them, start fucking cannibalizing each other, and then call you the savages
The story of the Donner Party is hilarious to me because like, everybody talks about them like these brave pioneers who made the ultimate sacrifice in pursuit of their destiny or whatever the fuck, but they were just complete dumbasses.
Like, have you ever heard of the Murphy Party? Sometimes called the
Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party? They were the first wagon train of the pioneers to make it over the Sierra Nevada, two full years before the Donners tried it, first of the american pioneers to reach the shores of lake Tahoe, first licensed physician in California, etc. etc. Ten families, about fifty people, not a single casualty (they actually arrived with more people than when they left). Because when the Donners picked the most charismatic city boy as their leader, the Murphys picked a mountain man. Where the Donners decided to take a “shortcut” that was completely impassable based on a letter they got from somebody who wanted to drum up business for a trading post he was building but who had never actually driven a wagon, the Murphys scouted properly and stuck to paths their vehicles could actually traverse. Where the Donners decided to shoot at the people who were already living in the area, the Murphys asked the natives for directions. When they got snowed in, they sent a few men on ahead to bring back supplies to the rest of the party
after building a sturdy cabin for shelter, instead of trying to hole up in shoddy tents and lean-tos before eating each other.
Not to mention all the idiotic in-fighting in the Donner party; they were constantly brawling or stabbing each other or exiling people or just leaving old men on the side of the path to die or “accidentally” shooting their rivals while cleaning weapons, while literally hundreds of other wagon trains somehow made it through the same trials without any murder.
So naturally, the Donners got a lake and a pass and a state park named after them and became household words, while anybody who wasn’t a complete moron got maybe a local park or a small creek.
Daaaaaaaaaamn.
It gets even better!
Donner was not the original leader of the group- the expedition started out under the leadership of a man named Reed, who did know what he was doing and had lead several groups safely to the Oregon Territory before.
When they reached the point where the new “California Trail” diverged from the Oregon Trail Donner convinced a large portion of the group to join him and travel across the Sierras.
Reed knew this was a very, very bad idea but Donner was apparently just- extremely charismatic and persuasive. Not only did the Reed Party safely make it to Oregon, as originally planned, but Reed immediately headed south as fast as he humanly could, and upon reaching Sacramento recruited a rescue party to bring emergency supplies up from the other side of the pass.
Unfortunately, it was already too late in the year and the weather forced the rescue party to turn back. Despite knowing the odds against the Donner Party surviving Reed refused to assume their deaths and stayed in Sacramento waiting for the mountain trail to clear.
So not only did Reed warn them not to, he was also the one that found the survivors afterwards.
My fave part of Naruto is when Lee shows up with his bowl haircut and kicks Sasuke’s ass dirty in front of his only two friends and then kicks Gaara’s ass Infront of a whole stadium and his family.
