#i dont rly want to enter a relationship with the goal of getting married constantly looking over me

[xoshepard]

its not as though i dont wanna get married someday but since i was dating For The Experience it was deffo a mistake to date someone who was dating With A Purpose

anyway given that i spent the entire relationship vaguely puzzled as to what i was supposed to do as an s/o and what i was bringing to the table for him and what was expected of me, i am now so ??? about the whole dating/romance thing in general fhdkdhdj

like what do i want out of dating? companionship? is this something i can only get from an exclusive partnership? i think i know the answers to these questions but the longer i stew on it the more convinced i am that app dating will never actually work for me bc i just require so much more time spent together getting to know people to feel comfortable in ANY kind of relationship and to feel a genuine connection, and the jump to extreme intimacy that the dating app thing forced on me was very disorienting. if i do go the dating app route in the future i need to be prepared to date someone for MONTHS before going exclusive with them. and i should probably also continue to date multiple ppl until i do go exclusive w someone bc i have a tendency to just go for whoever likes me regardless of how i feel about them, leading to stuff like the experience i just had. in any case i had no business entering a relationship with my ex after 3 weeks or whatever.

[uniformbravo]

animorphs liveblogs, this time a marco book so u already know it’s gonna be a party am i Right boys,,,,,

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i read so much goddamn animorphs today and update: marco is, once again, ruining my life,

this is actually one of the very few books i personally own (out of two to be precise) so i am. Somewhat familiar. vaguely. let’s fuckin.,.., Do this

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[from the back cover of the book]

But Marco's personal stress is causing him to morph into creatures that don't exist.

“marco’s personal stress” this should be...... fun

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My name is Marco. But you can call me "Marco the Mighty." Or "Most Exalted Destroyer of My Pride." You can cower before my mighty thumbs and beg for mercy, but you'll be crushed just the same. For I am the lord of the PlayStation. Pick a game. Any game. Tekken. Duke Nukem. NFL Blitz. Whatever. Practice all you want. I'll still beat you. I'll crush you like Doc Martens crush ants. I'll -

i hate him. ia hhate him so mugjfn

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"I was just watching his show -" Rachel cut me off. "You were watching William Roger Tennant? Marco looking for advice? On what? Coping with shortness?" "I was just channel surfing," I yelled. "That's not the point!

hklJKDJ GOD

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<This bites,> I said. <Why did we get stuck with the Saturday morning shift? I should be asleep right now. Or watching The Powerpuff Girls.>

Confirmed

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<You know why you're here,> Cassie replied. <You switched with Jake so you could watch the South Park marathon last night.> <Yeah, but that was before I knew about The Powerpuff Girls marathon,> I grumbled.

SUPER CONFIRMED

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<Something bothering you, Marco?> Cassie asked. <No, absolutely not.>

jdkdjdsf the avoidance tactics

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And then there’s Euclid.> <Her toy poodle.> <Satan with a perm. Simple commands like "sit," "stay," "heel" all mean the same thing to this dog: Bark at Marco. Jump on Marco. Bite Marco's ankle.>

ffuckign Good Dog

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For forty-five minutes we followed William Roger Tennant up the beach and then back to the compound. For forty-five minutes I vented. Cassie may or may not have listened. Every once in a while, she said <”uh-huh”> or <”bummer.”> By the time Tennant walked back through the gate of the compound, I felt a little better.

ok but i just love this so much like. ive mentioned before how i love cassie and marco and this is just so Good this is a Good Scene

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The first thing to change was my head. It began to shrink. From normal size to the size of a cantaloupe. To grapefruit. To orange. To just slightly bigger than a cherry tomato. <Oh, that's a nice look,> Rachel said. <Now your head finally matches the size of your brain.>

all i want is an animorphs spin off series thats just 100% rachel’s burns on marco they give me so much life

also all i can think about is this pic gkdjlfksdlfkdj

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ok so this book is rly fun, basically it’s like everyone is super fucked up from this war but marco in particular is so super duper fucked rn he’s reached another plane of fucked he’s on a higher tier of emotional distress and it’s messing with his ability to morph, he’s so spectacularly damaged that he’s experiencing it in new and unprecedented ways he’s fucking evolving he’s ascending

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"Cassie?" "Hi. Can I come in?" She didn't wait for me to answer but just sort of pushed her way past me. I followed her back to the living room. She turned off the TV and looked expectantly at me. - "You have something to tell me?" "No." "So why are you here?" "I'm here to listen to you." I laughed. "What, are you a shrink now?" She shrugged. "You said it yourself: We can't exactly go to see counselors, can we?"  "Look, I'm fine." "No, you're not," she said. "Jake bought it, Rachel bought it, but I didn't. Something went wrong. I heard it in your thought-speak. You blew another morph." I sat down. I was sure I'd covered. I was sure. But of course this was Cassie. Cassie who knows what people are feeling about five minutes before they do. "Did you tell Jake?" "No. And I won't." "Why not? What happened to it being everyone's concern?" "Because I want you to know you can trust me. You know, enough to talk to."

god like??? their relationship is just So Good i love that cassie is the one to reach out to marco so consistently and genuinely, the only one to offer that kind of support, because he shoves all his pain away and hides it from everyone else but she sees his truth, insightful cassie, and then actually sets out to do something about it 

because let’s not forget jake, who knows every member of his team inside out and Absolutely knows when marco is having problems, but isn’t the same person as cassie. cassie, who worries for her friends. cassie, who wants to help in any way she can. jake sees an issue like this and analyzes its contribution or detriment in relation to a mission, decides whether it’s worth looking into, and acts accordingly. he simply does whatever is necessary to reach the goal. he doesn’t have the time or energy to go chasing after every member of his team every time they break down, because they’re all broken and they all deal with it differently, and that’s really what it comes down to for him: they deal with it. get it done, and deal with it. no time for anything else, just let everyone fix themselves as they do, and move on to the next thing.

which is such an interesting parallel to cassie’s way of dealing with these things. cassie the empathetic healer, who speaks her mind and confronts the issues everyone else glosses over. it’s such a breath of fresh air to see her enter into the situation with pure intention, to fix, to help. these books give such a feeling of loneliness sometimes, spinning tales of personal conflict and avoidance and silent suffering, especially in the case of marco, who deliberately masks his pain with laughter, pain’s polar opposite. cassie is a force of companionship, of understanding in a place where it’s desperately needed, and i think it’s really refreshing, given everything else that happens constantly around her. it’s just really nice, is all i’m saying

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She ignored my weak attempt at a joke. "And then we found out your mom was still alive. Only she wasn't your mom anymore. Her body had been taken over by a Yeerk. And she was the enemy. Marco, in the space of a few awful months you've gone from believing your mother is dead to almost literally having to try and destroy her." "And you think maybe that's stressful?" I deadpanned. "I think it would have crushed most people," she said. "That mission against her and Visser Three, you were setting her up to take a fall. You were intimately involved with leading Visser One, your mother, into a trap that -" "Shut up! Shut up!" I jerked up off the couch. I had my hands over my ears. Stupid. I took my hands down. They were trembling. "Look, Cassie ..." I started to say with exaggerated calm. But then I forgot what I wanted to say. I could see her. On that mountaintop. Her sudden realization that it was me who had brought her there. Marco. Me. Her son. Her host's son. Not some ruthless Andalite warrior but her own son . . . Visser Three's troops and ships closing in. The cliff giving way. Falling. And later, Rachel had come to me and said that her body could not be found. That maybe she was still alive. And Rachel had understood that she wasn't doing me any favors because it was so much better to know, to know for sure anything, even to know something terrible as long as the torture of uncertainty was over. . . . "What did I do?" I whispered.

im in immediate pain i dont want this get this away from me remove this from my life in the present year of 2016*

he didnt even realize until now, he didn’t even put this together until now he was so focused on every other aspect of the situation that he didn’t even think about anything other than the fact that it was entirely his fault that his mother was possibly dead, he just had too many other things clouding his mind to realize that oh shit if she’s still alive we’re all kind of fucked

he’s usually so conscious of things like that at all times but this particular event fucked him up so good it blocked his perceptiveness, he probably didn’t want to think about it he probably pushed it out of his mind as much as possible so whenever it did manage to surface the only thing he felt was guilt and pain, as in the emotional response rather than the tactical thinking

he doesn’t realize until right now, when cassie confronts him and forces him to think about it, what the facts strung together actually mean for them, five books later this is happening i’m gone knock me tf out

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"Nora and I have been talking about getting married, Marco. But we won't do it without your okay." "Yeah? And what if it's not okay?" I said. I could hardly hear my own voice. He sighed. His eyes turned vacant, distant. The way they'd looked for a large part of the past two years. I hadn't missed that look. I hadn't missed it at all. "Marco, we're a team, you and I. We've been through a lot together. If you say no, I'll accept that." Fine. So it was on me. Great. Typical. Yeah, why not? I'll decide if my dad is happy or not, if my mom is still my mom. I'll decide if she lives or if she dies so that I, the Great Marco, the great cold-blooded Marco can prove how tough I am by leading her into a trap, setting her up ... I felt pain. I was digging my fingernails into the side of my head. I was going to explode. Some artery in my head was going to blow apart. It was too much. Way too much. "I'm out of here," I said. I got up and ran for the door.

re: those last few lines: live footage of me reacting to this entire passage,

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[context: marco messed up a morph in the middle of a mission & is now lost in a half poodle half polar bear morph]

<Come on, Marco,> Cassie encouraged. <It's going to be okay. Remember the mission?> The mission? I poked Tennant's huddled body with my paw. Watched him shrink and shudder. <What's going on, Marco?> Cassie said soothingly. <Talk to me. We're your friends. Talk to us, talk to me and-> <Talk my butt,> Jake snapped. <Marco. Cope. Now. That's an order.> It was like a bucket of ice water dumped on my head. It was like waking up from an intense dream. Fast. Painful. Slowly my mind grasped control. <Jake, he's going through some bad stuff in his life,> Cassie said. <He's stressed. His dad is-> <Cassie, you know I love you and admire you, but be quiet,> Jake said. <You listen to me, Marco. We have zero time for your self-pity. I don't care what your problems are. You deal with this, right now.> I started to shrink. My body deflated like a balloon with a pin-hole. My head, shrinking. Becoming a normal poodle head. <That's not exactly enlightened behavior, Jake,> Cassie shot back, obviously angry. <lf he's having stress-> <Cassie, he's not you, he's not Rachel, he's not even me. He's Marco,> Jake said. <What he needs is to pull his head out of his rear end and remember what he always says.> What I always say? What was he talking about? Jake said, <Life is either tragedy or comedy. Usually it's your choice. You can whine or you can laugh.> I laughed. Laughed in recognition. Oh, yeah. I do say that. I was completely poodle.

Oh How The Turntables Holy Shit

like is it just me or is this super fucked up for jake to do oh my god?? humor is marco’s defense mechanism he uses to ignore his terrible realities and bottle everything up and hide it all away and it’s super unhealthy and cassie recognizes that, so she tries to help him by showing empathy and encouraging him to open up

jake also knows this about marco and and instead uses it to put him back on track on a mission like instead of saying “you can’t bottle up your emotions like this it’s not healthy and it’s obviously causing major problems” he’s like “you better bottle that shit up right this fucking instant or so help me god”

and the thing is it fucking works, marco snaps right out of it like “oh yeah bottling up my emotions why didn’t i think of that lol” and the whole thing just kind of strikes me as Super Fucked Up???? wow

i absolutely love it tho like dont get me wrong im not trying to demonize jake or w/e- it’s just another example of that brutal realism you get with this series because it feels like there should have been some kind of moral lesson about friendship and emotional support at the end of this, like it should have been cassie who managed to get through to marco by being there for him in such a critical moment, but it’s not. the thing that puts him back on track is literally the opposite of that, it’s jake basically telling him that his emotions are a waste of everyone’s time and that he needs to shove them aside just like he always does because it’s worked in the past and it needs to work Right The Fuck Now- it’s the invalidation of marco’s emotions that finally manages to pull him back to where he can essentially “function” properly again, as far as morphing goes

god and this is the shit that always gets me, why i love these books so much, like not to get all Edgy or anything but it’s that brutal reality of a fucked up situation, where there is no moral at the end, the serious issues aren’t getting resolved, the characters are fighting amongst themselves and damaging each other in the process it’s just?? so???? it’s so fucking Good like God i just

i cannot even describe how much i love this series, i just

i really love animorphs, okay,

god

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I was coming home from school when I heard the phone ring. It rings more often now with Nora around because she gets calls from parents asking why their kids are flunking math. I decided not to answer. Let the machine get it. And then, I heard her voice. "Marco, if you're there, pick up." My mother.

wHAT KIND OF ENDING IS THIS IM SCREECHING IN THE MOONLIGHT GOOOODDDDDD Hhe was about to move on, this book was ending in all this acceptance and starting anew shit and now ur pulling a fast one on me like this ummMMMMM??? UMMMMMMMMMMM?M???? BY E

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((lmao retroactive 2 years later bullet point add, @ visser one what the fuck this was so risky what if marco’s dad was home??? what if the three of them were all sitting around the dinner table having a meal and ur damn Mom Voice starts projecting across the entire living room uhh??? hello?????? i kno ur deal is that ur literally in space jail abt to be convicted for space crimes or w/e but i stg at least do a batman????? or pull an accent or S ometh ign jesus christ. smh))

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*lol