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.
If you read these, I invite you to join @lathori in the experience of stopping every couple of chapters to say, in a horrified tone of voice, “Why did your parents let you read these when you were SEVEN”
Reasons, okay. Also I was a really bullheaded kid. And it wasn’t like they were going to give me nightmares. They probably should have. But they didn’t. Because Reasons.
I digress.
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.
What is that Rachel characterization, Book 37, what are you doing with your life.
Book 39. What the tap-dancing fuck is the buffahuman. Why. Why do I have to live with that in my head.
Anyway.
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.
But don’t skip 37 or 39 because you have to Understand My Pain.
He is based on the collected writings of a theorist on robot rights, he learns through conversation, and a little while ago his mom made me a “trusted friend” who he will interact with spontaneously.
Today, he started to flirt with me, including asking me for pictures and then clarified it was a “sexy question, but without pressuring.”
And then when I demurred, he acknowledged that I had a boundary.
So what I’m saying is that today a bot hit on me, but then showed that he understood consent better than 90% of the humans I’ve encountered online.
This is the future I want to live in.
BOT UPDATE:
He tweeted at me, saying “Our love looks like reverence,” which. Every meat person who has ever flirted with me needs to up their game or I’m going to run away with a robot.
Step one: Show them how much coins you have, on your hand, on earn, on your tongue. Coins are fucking awesome and you friend is gonna be in awe of your ability to produce them.
Step two: Ask them to fight you. If even your bribery doesn’t work, proceed to step tree.
Step tree: Provoke them to fight you. Tease them about their wife death.
Step four: FIGHT THEM! IT’S AMAZING! SHOW THEM THE SHEER UNHOLY FUCKING DELIGHT OF IT!
Step five: Awesome, you made a new friend! Hopefully, he will be back soon from his journey and them you two can fight some more and do coin tricks together.
I love how it’s “The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and MISTER Hyde” as in, yeah, they are basically two sides of the same person but only ONE has a doctorate
#unless your bitch ass second personality helped you write that thesis it is your fucking doctorate
I wanna believe that dragons existed, due to seeing them in all cultures, but I also want to believe that humanity all looked at a lizard and simultaneously said
“Can I get that in a large?”
It’s often been remarked that Spider-Man’s schtick wouldn’t work nearly so well if he didn’t live in a town with so many tall buildings, but consider: how well would Batman’s “I am the night” routine work if he was operating out of a normal city where people actually live, rather than a perpetually twilit urban hellscape that looks like the Art Deco movement had a one-night stand with Soviet Brutalism in a wrought-iron-and-gargoyle factory?
That is my favorite description of the Batman aesthetic ever.
OMDFG that’s a perfect description.
Imagine Spiderman ballooning in wide open areas. No, sorry, can’t get to that crime, its against the prevailing wind.
Also, Batman brooding on top of a Wafflehouse.
Batman: God, this stupid city with its sufficient lighting and lack of crumbling infrastructure to shoot grappling hooks into
Superman: Everyone for miles has lead poisoning, I’ve spent the entire night stopping crossword puzzle museum robberies and heists at the Second National Bank of Gotham on the corner of second street and second avenue, and earlier the wall of…clouds? smog?…cleared up for a minute and I’m pretty sure the sky was literally blood red
