Anonymous asked: you are making me seriously consider going back and reading the animorphs books we have at my house
DO IT.
DO IT AND TALK TO ME ABOUT THEM.
ALL THESE YEARS MY BLOG HAS BEEN NOTHING BUT A RUSE TO SUCK YOU ALL IN AND CONVERT YOU TO ANIMORPHS.
No one loves the animorphs as much as me is what I’m learning today
You lie, I will fight you for that title.
You actually have a lot of animorphs content on your blog so based on that alone you may win however I am currently hand-writing an spn animorphs au at work soooo
I’ll see you with the fact that I hand wrote this Animorphs/Avengers crossover fic five years ago on a road trip with my best friend, and raise you the fact that I own the entire series hard-copy.
Hi hello I am entering this contest unsolicited with the fact that I have dragged at least three (QUESTIONABLY FOUR but that second anon is elusive, and I don’t know how many people actually took my recommendation outside of those people) adult humans into reading this series within the past eight months and am writing a fifty part series of miscellaneous Animorphs fics from that one prompt list.
I LOVED these books back when they came out. I used to save up all my hard earned babysitting money to buy the newest book as soon as it came out because the library never got it right away and there was always a huge waiting list. I gave up reading them sometime around December 1998 because it seemed like the story was never going to conclude, it was just going to be more and more and more and more books. I actually didn’t realize that it had an end until seeing people talk about Animorphs on my dash. I should see if my mom still has my copies in her basement. Now I want to see how it ends, lol.
Anonymous asked: ok so..... i always ignored the animorphs books as a kid (i think i picked one up and it wasn't the first book and i was confused and annoyed and the covers were ???? tacky??) but you're making me want to get into them as a 21 year old.... i mean. i guess i'm asking: what should i expect. how much of a commitment am i getting myself into.
Right, so, the first thing you should know here is that I know plenty of people who started reading these books as adults and therefore: no judgement. The covers, also, are terrible, so furthermore no judgement on that front.
THAT BEING SAID.
Animorphs is a best-beloved series and it’s not their fault they lost the cover art lottery, this was such a formative series in my life. Like, Robin McKinley taught me what you could do with words and stories, but Animorphs taught me what you should do to characters. RIP all my characters who are still paying for that particular lesson.
So, Animorphs is a middle grade series, yes, it can be cheesy and tropey and absurd (and DATED good lord the 90′s seem like a long time ago). But also…like, it’s a 54 book series literally RIDDLED with grim moral quandries, grisly murder, gory battles, war crimes, and general trauma, so forgive them their occasional descent into middle grade nonsense. If you’ve ever looked a kid’s series that you loved to bits and pieces and thought to yourself “Jesus, these kids should be an absolute train wreck, I can’t believe Harry Potter/Percy Jackson/whoever sleeps at all ever,” Animorphs is the answer to that thought. The first named character–my beloved weird alien prince Elfangor, the Wise Mentor Character™–dies horribly forty pages into the first book, and it pretty much goes downhill from there. I affectionately call the kids the PTSD Squad and lordy. LORDY. Are they fucking ever. Ongoing Fandomn Discourse includes the eternal question of “What is the first onscreen instance of really serious PTSD” and I generally argue for the suicide attempt in Book 3, but I could also see my way to granting the nightmare in Book 2. The people who think it takes until Book 5 are just wrong, I love you all, but no.
But so, in terms of what you’re committing to…that. That is what you’d be committing to. In addition to the main series, there are 4 Megamorphs (of WILDLY variable quality, to be sure, and largely optional, but good brain candy most of the time) and 4 Chronicles. The Chronicles are Andalite (PHENOMENAL BOOK, COULD BE READ INDEPENDENTLY, ABOUT MY GOOD WEIRD BOY ELFANGOR, DEF A FAVORITE), Hork-Bajir (really interesting characters, good concept, a little shaky on the dismount, so to speak), Visser (I don’t remember a ton of this one but GODDAMN I love Eva), and Ellimist (didn’t read this because honestly I didn’t care about the Ellimist that much as a kid except in terms of his ongoing torment of the Squad and I still don’t).
I feel it’s also my duty to warn you that events conspired against KA Applegate and much of the second half of the series is written by an assortment of ghostwriters, who are ALSO of wildly variable quality. Example: Book 33, affectionately called The Torture Book by much of the fandom, could probably be used to raise me from the dead so that I could enjoy it one more time. Books 37 or 39, on the other hand, which I pretend don’t exist, could be used to raise me from the dead so that I could bitch at length about how much I Fucking Hate Them.
To that end, I recommend letting yourself skim and/or skip books if you reach one you really can’t handle the writing in after, say, the early 30′s.
ANYWAY.
ANIMORPHS.
GREAT SERIES.
KEEP ME POSTED IF YOU CHOOSE TO READ THEM.
okay so a) sympathy about the housing nonsense, sounds almost as bad as my school’s, and b) this au sounds FANTASTIC and makes me wish I’d actually read more than the first quarter or so of the animorphs books
A) WHAT ARE COLLEGES DOING WTF GUYS WHY THIS WHY WHY WHY, WE PAY SO MUCH MONEY. *clears throat* thank you for your support. I was fortunate enough to be able to consistently bully Security/Housing into putting me with people I knew because I was Not doing that shit and I can be very…um, persuasive? Commanding? When I feel like it.
B) you definitely do not need to know anything about this series other than having a vague impression of the characters and a desire to see these kids have a nice time in order to grasp this AU, so if you bailed on the Animorphs because it was unremitting chaos and violence and death this may be the AU for you.
C) if you actually do want to read more of the Animorphs and join this very small corner of fandom, here is a collection of all of the ebooks entirely for free, keep me posted so we can cry together. Trigger warning for unremitting chaos and violence and death. And dismemberment.
Vodka Tia Moran