#animorphs negativity

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

I disagree with your take that Rachel is out of character in the last few books. I think her experiences in 48 show her just how much the team needs her to be that girl, and so as things get more serious she starts leaning into that more and more so they can ALL do what they need to do.

And yes, she really needed one more book

So, my frustration is with how Rachel's written in #52, and how she's not written in #49, #50, and #51.

Rachel can be violent, and even brutal. She often refuses to stop when Jake calls a retreat, which in #41 and #7 puts the whole team in danger. HOWEVER. She stops fighting as soon as she's neutralized her enemies in #17 and #24. She cares a lot about protecting the helpless — Melissa, Tobias, random hosts in #17, the kid in the crocodile pit — to the point where she looks for a way not to hurt unhosted yeerks in #6 and MM3. Taylor is a foil for Rachel because Taylor only hurts those who are weaker than her and runs from a fair fight; Rachel only hurts those who are stronger than her and doesn't back down when outnumbered. Rachel's devastated to have even an indirect role in a civilian death in #37: that guy couldn't have hurt her.

But in #52, Rachel tries to kill a group of civilians because they're in her way. And she only stops because "an order from Jake" is the thing that controls her. She kills a controller who had already surrendered. Ax describes her as "a monster." This could all be a bad day or her not coping with the loss of her dad, but #49 and #50 and #51 all feature mini-teams she's not on, so it's impossible to say. One book later, when she's expressing sympathy for Tom even as she's threatening to "crack open his skull" to get to her real enemy (#53) — that feels more like the Rachel we know.

Throw in Tobias's weird apathy toward Rachel (seriously, he barely mentions her #49 - #53) and Rachel's weird apathy toward Jake hurting Cassie, and she feels forgotten except as an object lesson. I think even #52 could work if we got a book from Rachel's POV that explains her going off the rails the way #53 does for Jake, but that's not what we have.

#animorphs #animorphs meta #animorphs spoilers #animorphs negativity #rachel berenson #52 #the sacrifice #between rachel acting like a rabid porcupine and jordan acting like a 6-year-old... methinks some of the ghosts can't write teen girls

[ciderjacks]

I think my biggest issue is that I love talking. I love to yap. I love the sound of my own voice and I love my own opinions and I love how I construct words and I really just cannot get enough of listening to myself. I think I’m smart and funny and interesting. And u might be thinking hey why is self confidence a problem? Well it’s a problem bc my ass NEVER SHUTS THE FUCK UP.

#personal #It’s not like I’m ashamed of this trait #im not blind to my own faults and I think there are some people that are currently just objectively better than me #Therefore my self confidence isn’t like a negative trait #It’s just that I always need to have a vocal opinion on everything and in class it’s like I just animorph into this -> 🤓☝🏼

[rays-animorphs]

<Have I mentioned that I hate this morph?> Tobias added. <I mean, I’m finding myself very attracted to the Visser’s sweat. How sick is that?>

<Yeah,> Cassie agreed. <He stinks. But to my fly brain, he actually smells kind of good.>

<He certainly does not stink,> Ax said defensively. <This is an Andalite body, and Andalites have never been known to stink.>

#I love ax #animorphs book 25 #or draw 25 meme with Ax and 'agree to anything that might conceivably be interpreted as negative about Andalites'

[talenlee]

Can a Bird Love A Falcon

Since last year’s Locked Tomb readings got me nostalgic and retrospective, it was only a matter of time before I retreated back to earliest media of my post-cult life, the stuff that stands tall in my mind as some of my first lessons in how to be normal. So I picked the thing with a bunch of PTSD and existential horror.

Let’s talk about the Rachel/Tobias ship.

Spoiler Warning: If you’re ever planning on reading the Animorphs story, this article is going to spoil some events that happen in the last half of it. And since this is about Animorphs I guess Content Warning for war death trauma body integrity horror uh mind control uh cannibalism uh what’s the term for beating someone to death with one of your own severed limbs, that.

That.

Animorphs is a lot.

There’s not a lot of romantic material in Animorphs, but it’s there. It’s almost expertly defined in negative space – the way that actual teenagers consider and tease at the idea of boyfriend-girlfriend-joyfriend stuff without saying it, without any of it being explicit. Like nobody sits down and makes a list of reasons to want to date someone, it’s often just about emotional reactions to momentary stimuli, things that imprint on the brain and are being tested out bit by bit. It’s hard to grapple with for me to get in the right mind space, but remembering the Animorphs characters are, like, fourteen and not Anime-Fourteen but fourteen fourteen is pretty big in explaining how and why they react to things.

In that space, though, there’s the sorta-maybe-hey-thinking-about-it-do-they-kiss romance of Rachel and Tobias. Rachel is a girl repeatedly described as being hot, by her cousin, a tall, blonde girl who also is hiding the instincts of a violent warrior, a girl thrown into a war and commanded to be an adult, and she actually takes to it well. Like, in a different framing device, Rachel is the antagonist of a teen serial killer story. Tobias, by contrast, is what you might these days consider something of a droopy sadboy – floppy hair, skinny, no friends, unappreciated, bounced between abusive carers that aren’t properly parents, and then at the end of the very first story he turns into a hawk, never* to turn back again.

Oh and he’s also secretly an alien prince, but don’t worry, nobody ever tells him that.

It’s not even like it’s a complicated ship, in a lot of ways. As a loser of a boy, it was really just the shape of the most standard fantasy possible: What if there was the hottest girl in the world, who for reasons beyond both your control, had reason to hang out with you, become emotionally invested in you, and then from there, ha ha, you got ’em! You’re basically married at that point as long as no circumstances change the status quo where you get to hang around her regularly!

And then, thanks to you trying too hard and being too awesome, you have to leave your old life behind, embracing a new life, a new reality where none of your responsibilities persisted, your bad family were gone, and you have a reason to be socially connected with four extremely cool people who were probably not really your friends to start with. Oh and one of them is really hot and can kill everyone who bothers you. I mean beats up everyone. I mean she can protect you with her big, strong arms that are also fuzzy because she is a bear, and when she’s not a bear she’s basically Genius Barbie.

From her perspective, she can pick who she likes but instead of a boy who has Conventional Interests and connects to her life, she gets a boyfriend who is a secret. Also, he’s paradoxically, dangerous and very safe; they’re not sexually compatible in terms of their bodies, it’s very hard to argue that Tobias is interested in her because of her body and how their bodies relate. As a romantic partner, Tobias has to be interested in her for herself. At the same time, he’s a goddamn hawk, and hawks are really cool and badass and scary, and she can have him cruising around on her shoulder like she’s a pirate.

I obviously liked this ship as a kid because both of the halves were hot. It wasn’t just that Rachel was gorgeous but also that Tobias looked really good for kissing, and that meant they’d both have a fun time kissing, right? Obviously? This is a very straight way to consider ships, especially ships where I both wanted to be and kiss Tobias. Because again, he was hot. Right?

The canon of Animorphs actually deep-sixes the ship, early and late. There’s a middle period where the ship can happen, but there’s an after and a before, and the before is ‘when Tobias and Rachel barely know each other.’ They do eventually get a chance to do more conventional ship stuff – like holding hands and kissing – but that’s See, and I know you might not remember this: Rachel dies. Her last book is her relating her story, in her dying moments, to a god-figure, and there we get one of the enduring quotes of the series:

“You were brave, you were strong, you were good. You mattered.”

And before that quote, Rachel, reflecting on that moment, says that Tobias would not have let her get into the position where she was dying. He wouldn’t, because he loved her. And that’s some nice ship material but it would be nicer if it wasn’t happening as a character is dying.

Now you might think, hang on, this is a het ship. That’s not what I normally talk about around here! And you might be surprised, but consider this. This is a woman, and the lover who she cannot touch, who she cannot embrace, because there is a wrongness to it. The body of that lover does not properly align with their identity. The girl is positioned forever stand at a love that expresses itself through mostly, not expressing itself.

An eagle and a girl, is that not, itself, yuri?

Okay, I know it’s not. Personally, I have very little patience for ‘ah, two unrelated things is yuri’ jokes because it’s a wheelie everyone pops but also because, like, yeah, maybe it’s great to capture all the metaphorical ways we’ve suppressed women’s relatoinships but also maybe you could have them like hold hands and say they’re interested in one another. Like, that’s an option. Imagine if more yuri felt they could do that, even. What a world.

But anyway, thing is, Tobias, as a character, is a figure Important To The 90s Trans community, along with other such icons as Bugs Bunny and Ranma Saotome. There’s a fairly common thread through Tobias’ narrated books where he reflects on a determined tragedy (who he has been told he has to be) and the freedom of change (as being able to freely choose an identity and presentation through morphing). Applegate has been pretty clear that whatever vision of the characters’ sexuality and gender relationships work for you are effectively canon – they’re characters shared through the experience of reading and all that.

I’m not saying every nonbinary or trans kid from the 90s will respond to ‘Thermals’ and ‘Cinnabunzzzzz’ but a bunch will and it’s a trend worth noting.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Animorphs #Media

[raksha-the-demon]

That post about Azula-antis had me thinking about how if people had nuance we could use Azula's negative behavior as part of a larger discussion about how all the kids in atla are child soldiers and how that's gonna fuck them all up in various ways

and then I had a fuckin horrifying vision of if tumblr had existed in 1996 and we all had to deal with Cassie-haters in the Animorphs fandom insisting she was born an irredeemable monster and that the point of the story is actually that some kids are inherently sociopaths and sending them to war is good actually

#tbf i'm sure those people existed #but i never had to see their dumbass takes

[found-family-tournament]

Found Family Tournament Round 2 Part 7 Group 34

Propaganda and further images under the cut

(Mod’s Note: Changed the Animorphs’ photo. They deserved a group shot too.)

Animorphs: Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Tobias, Ax, Marco

Doom Patrol: Crazy Jane, Robotman, Elasti-Girl, Cyborg, Negative Man, Chief

Animorphs:

Sometimes found families aren't so much "found" as they are "forced together by incredibly traumatizing and harrowing circumstances" and THAT'S VALID

Doom Patrol:

literally every conflict is resolved by some personal growth, often through each other’s help, and many times there are minor plots about one of the team members learning to rely on another teammate they otherwise had friction with. academic writing DONE, these people literally go through the craziest plots, crazy evangelical sentient cockroaches, interdimensional and omnipotent alan tudyk, sex ghosts, and more often than not violence isn’t the solution to their problems (even if some of the protagonists wish it were oops).

#tumblr polls #poll #polls #tournament poll #found family #found family tournament 2023 #tumblr tournament #tournament #Animorphs #Jake #Rachel #Cassie #Tobias #Ax #Marco #Doom Patrol #Crazy Jane #Robotman #Elasti-Girl #Cyborg #Negative Man #Chief

[vexic929]

🛼🥑📚🔪🐚

🛼 ⇢ describe your latest wip with five emojis

⚡🍓🧬🧪😷

🥑 ⇢ you accidentally killed somebody, which mutual(s) do you text for help?

@negative-speedforce @practically-an-x-man @autisticharrywells @gangrenados y'all wanna help me hide a body? lol

📚 ⇢ what’s the last thing you wrote down in your notes app?

I was working on Beth and decided she's the kind of person who saves all of her contacts as emojis instead of names so

Beth's phone contacts: 💚🐀 - Hartley 🕹⚙️ - Cisco 🩺❄️ - Caitlin 🐻🧪 - Barry 🌷🖊 - Iris 🛼🧂 - Amel 🧬🧋 - Percy 🚔📻 - Joe 🚨✨ - Eddie 🏟🔬 - Dr. Wells 🍲🔑 - RA 📚💬 - Advisor

I'm not satisfied with all of them, they still need some work I think lol

🔪 ⇢ what’s the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

I used to write a lot of Animorphs fanfiction, the amount of weird animal facts I looked up is staggering XD

🐚 ⇢ do you like or dislike surprises?

generally I love surprises!

#goldheartedchaoticdisaster #vexic answers #vexic lives #ask game

[waterloggedsoliloquy]

@theluckoftheclaws said: How do you determine the right animal [for a character's dæmon] (genuine question)

You have unleashed levels of autism the likes of which the world has never seen, jsyk!

Dæmons are not really "this character is sarcastic and lithe and finnicky so they'd be symbolized with a cat". Dæmons are largely determined by their role and symbolism in *art*, and what art it's drawn from depends on where in the story Lyra is. It also depends on their role in the story as a character somebody invented for a purpose. They say that dæmons are your soul that reveals your inner nature, but that's in-universe conjecture. One widely accepted as fact, but one that the narrator never fully claims is true. It's important to remember that characters are tools in a story, and dæmons are signifiers of that role, much in the same way that medieval paintings depicted animal companions alongside humans, to evoke a cultural, spiritual and historical context. To quote Pullman himself: don't make a metaphor do the work of a fact.

For example, in the medieval Oxford, the dæmons all take the form of animals that would have been known to medieval scholars, and their implications carry their symbolic meanings of the time. Jordan college is full of ravens, moths ermines, cats, hawks, setters, and serpents-- and also there are a few creatures, such as basilisks and small dragons-- that would have been imaginary to us but very real to medieval scholars. The only dæmon not of European origin is Lord Asriel's dæmon Stelmaria, who is in the form of a snow leopard,  evoking Asriel's infatuation with the North and giving us a subtle clue about the fact that he fits poorly in Jordan society. It's not until Lyra meets Mrs. Coulter and goes to London that the variety of dæmons expands, and when it does it expands into the art of the rennaissance and Flemish art. Pugs, parrots, monkeys, and butterflies are found in London. When Lyra travels north, she meets people with wolf and snow goose and snowshoe hare dæmons.

Ermines represent young girls born into nobility and their spiritual purity, so Lyra, who is innocent and nobleborn, often has Pantalaimon in the shape of an ermine. The fact that weasels are considered sneaky liars (as Lyra is) comes secondary to me, in my personal opinion. The servants in The Golden Compass are described as all having dog dæmons, because Lyra's world operates on a strict hierarchy of class, and the Butler and Chamberlain are all servants of a story, not really fully-fleshed characters in their own right. Conversely the characters like Asriel and Coulter have very "noble" animals associated with high class and exoticism: the aforementioned snow leopard and golden monkey. Dæmons are also amoral-- they don't indicate heroism or villainy. If Pullman made every bad guy's dæmon an animal that we have negative association with, loaded them with snakes and bugs, then everyone in the world could immediate clock who a "bad person" is just by the shape of their dæmon, and life just does not work like that.

If you want to choose a dæmon for a character, you have to take into account the genre you're working in. Poetry (The creator of the Dæmorphing series) utilizes a more scientific approach, matching characters' dæmons to observed animal behavior and biology. This works very well for Animorphs fanfiction, which has a huge emphasis on zoology and the natural talents and traits of animals... and very little to do with art and history and fantasy. But if your work is more on the historical or fantasy side, I'd suggest looking into the symbolic meanings of animals in specific cultures and periods of time to inform your choices. This historical and cultural context is why I'd find it ludicrously difficult to make dæmons for, say, the Star Wars cast, because all the animals in that universe are Imaginary, and even the ones based on real-life animals lack the social+historical+cultural context of dæmons. So I could give them earth animals, but is that immersion breaking? Probably. Same goes for Pokémon.

This level of involvement and research and intertext is usually too complicated for your average ao3 chud though, so you open a fic and you're more than likely to see dæmons pulled from a pool of the same 15 or so animals. So many wolves.... so many big cats........

If it's a series and character i'm familiar with, i'm more than willing to offer suggestions for potential forms! I literally possess several bestiaries and books on animal symbolism.

#cecil drawls #theluckoftheclaws

[mrbexwrites]

Happy STS, Mo! What’s the story that has influenced your writing craft the most? Whether it made some element of storytelling ‘click’ for you, or served as an example of how not to do things, which story has taught you the most?

Hi Sam! Happy STS and NaNo!

This is a difficult question to pin down, as I feel like I've taken a lot of different influences from many different authors. Terry Pratchett is probably the biggest influence due to his social justice take on fantasy, and how well he subverts tropes. (I'm not in any way comparing myself to PTerry, as I can't subvert a trope to save myself! But I like how he uses his characters to observe human absurdities when it comes to how we treat other people, societal norms and institutional systems)

That said, I hate-read Fifty Shades of Grey, and fml, I learned so much in regards of what not to do. (For context, I was a huge nerd and avid reader as a kid. My peers...not so much. I read the Harry Potter series so that I could have something in common to talk to the other kids, who weren't into Animorphs, Point Horror, Edgar Allan Poe, etc etc. So, when Fifty Shades was all the rage, and everyone in my work was reading it, I figured I could join in and finally have something in common to talk to them about.)

That book...*shudders*

I had to do a hard reset of my kindle after I finished it, as I wanted no trace of it near my presence. It was awful.

The writing, dreadful. The storyline, the pacing, the characters...just...I was baffled how that even got published?! And became a bestseller?!

Did an editor even cast an eye over it?

After reading the first chapter, I wanted to buy E.L James a thesaurus and post it to her.

I wanted to punch the main character in face. Everyone was so flat and lacking in personality.

If I read the phase 'my inner cheerleader' , or 'inner goddess' one more time, I was going to rip my eyeballs so that I had no choice but to stop reading.

It was awful, and I learned several valuable lessons from reading it. The biggest one being that being a 'bestseller' is no mark of quality, publishing is a numbers games, and if that monstrosity could get published, then there was hope for me too!!

(I'm not a great writer, in fact, I'd hardly rate myself as average, but, my god, I'm better than E.L. James! It's a low bar, I know. But we all need thresholds to compare ourselves to!!)

I'd be interested to know what other people's take on this would be- including your own positive and negative influences :)

Thanks again for the ask, and sorry for rambling. Fifty Shades did a lot of psychic damage to my soul!

#STS #Answered asks #Never forgive #never forget

[greektragediies]

001.  GENERAL

name  mireya gracie salazar nicknames  mira age  33 date of birth  02/20/1990 zodiac  pisces place of birth  palm springs, california current residence  park slope, brooklyn ( with bellamy quist & remi ninomae ) gender  cis woman pronouns  she/her sexuality  pansexual occupation  agent ( occasionally slips away to an animal shelter to offer a hand there )

faceclaim  seychelle gabriel height  5'2" tattoos  outline of two betta fish on her left outer ankle ( for her sign ), small simplistic otter with a space helmet in the crook of her left arm. piercings  basic ear piercings, and an industrial in her right ear distinguishing features  a smile that seems permanent on her face, and a little rip in her left ear at the top. positive traits  ambitious, animated, resourceful, loyal, friendly, and protective negative traits puckish, stubborn, sometimes reckless labels / tropes  action girl, likes  otters ( her favorite animal, she can't help herself and has five stuffed otters in her room ), nature in general, the sound of rain, and the smell of fresh cranberry orange muffins.dislikes  failing, seeing her loved ones getting hurt, spiders, people that chew their gum loudly fears  completely losing her humanity and getting stuck in an animal shift. hobbies feeding stray cats, cooking (though she does experiment a lot and often gets certain cravings for things after certain animal shifts. sometimes resulting in dishes that aren't the most appetizing.), taking pictures of everything. habits  talking with her hands, and fiddling with the otter on her necklace when left idle.

002.  EXTRA ORDINARY

near death experience…  for the sake of being written on paper, mireya was attacked by a wolverine. and while wolverines aren't found in the desert of california their presence has been known to be found in yellowstone, where her start in the life of eo began. a lot of details are foggy and with no one there to confirm or deny a six-year-old girl's story her words are all there is on the matter. her recounting of the event has her wandering away from her family while they were visiting, she remembers the woods getting darker and hearing twigs snapping paired with growling, she remembers hearing herself screaming before there was nothingness. her memory seemingly picks back up with flashlights and people wrapping her blankets. power…  shapeshifting ( animal-based ) / animorphing - the ability to transform into different animals. the limitations (or rather self-given limitations) of her ability are that of animals that are alive at the present. she hasn't tried to shift into things such as dinosaurs or those of a mythical nature, with the taxation on her body with her current catalog there's a fear of everything that could go wrong. it was almost a slow-burn kind of situation, she knew she wasn't right when they got back to california at the beginning it was an involuntary thing and it took her shifting into a chimpanzee in the kitchen at then age of ten before her mom really understood what was going on. it took several years from that point before mireya was able to start controlling when she shifted and being able to actually have control when she shifted. drawbacks / vulnerabilities…  her shifting does come with a timer of an hour and thirty seconds before she starts losing touch with her more human side and things get harder to control before there is no control. she has to be sure she has access to backup clothes and a place to change when she returns to her normal self. depending on the animal changing is a painful experience that more than often results in things popping out of place when she's back to normal. she can also carry over some residue or characteristics of her transformations that can linger for a short bit after ( an example being ; experiencing the color blindness of a dog after the fact ). depending on the extensiveness of a mission she has a tendency to just sleep for days. (if applicable)  cerberus corp…  her mother has always been her biggest fan and number one supporter so it was she who pushed mireya to audition, she'd say it went pretty well despite a few hiccups that came with performing in front of people that held a taunting position in a place as cerberus. she was folded into the ranks in 2016 and it's been almost everything she could've imagined it would be a more. her number one goal is to protect people and get a better understanding of herself. if it weren't for a streak of recklessness and potential pr hell she could be level i but as it stands she sits comfortably at level ii. missions go fairly well and hardly gets to a point where she finds herself losing control. she's all about teamwork makes the dream work and understands her sometimes offensive approach to things isn't the only thing needed for a successful mission.

codename…  it was politely suggested by the corp even though she had a clear preference for others, it took a few months of going back and forth before she warmed up completely to it. artemis is a cool figure to have a codename based off of.

003.  EXTRA

potential connections... mission partners, old mission partners, friends gained from working there, it would also be cool if someone joined with the ability to communicate with animals, best friend. i promise i'll add more to this but just know she's still close to mother and an older brother both of which still live in california !

#cc.intro #｡° 𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 . mireya salazar : 「 canon event ! 」 #｡° 𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 . mireya salazar : 「 i'm howling and barking these songs ! 」 #I'm working on jayden's now and it'll be out tomorrow but to sum him up he's just a grumpy old young man #There may be things wrong and there will be a time I correct them but for now I need to stop.

[pissfizz]

Ok so apparently there is an animorphs fandom and apparently everyone loves to dunk on Cassie cuz she’s like. The one that has a sense of morality?? Which is like totally out of nowhere considering how important the messages about war are especially when it comes to Rachel’s overall arc like bitch you can’t call Cassie a whiny hypocrite just because she points out that what they’re doing is still wrong even if it’s for the greater good. Like you have to realize that Cassie is a majorly important character and the other characters literally would’ve gone insane without her and likely would’ve committed some absolutely heinous acts and more war crimes than they already did in canon. Like they need that voice of morality, the one that pushes for peace. You can’t have a war without someone who desires peace and diplomacy over fighting. If everyone just wants violence and bloodshed and shit then not only will you lose yourself and become the VERY THING YOU SOUGHT TO DESTROY if you have no tether to humanity, but you will not accomplish anything!! Especially in an alien sci-fi war where your entire side is made up of like six kids. War isn’t black and white, good guys and bad guys don’t exist in war, everyone has to make horrible decisions which is why you need someone to remind you that what you’re doing is still bad and will have negative consequences, even if overall it will benefit the greater good. Like I don’t agree with everything Cassie did (which, arguably, is kind of the point) but she should not be considered annoying and hypocritical because she’s NOT those things!! She is incredibly important in keeping these characters on track, and overall winning the war!!

#sorry I’m a Cassie defender guys she and Tobias were my favorites as a kid and I still feel very passionately about them #i haven’t read the books in quite awhile but. yeah #i need to reread them

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

AU idea 1/2: What if Loren were recruited to be an Ellimist figure like how Crayak tried to recruit Rachel? Longer pitch: it frustrates me that Loren is so clever and resourceful and badass but in #49 she's basically reduced to "nice middle aged lady who remembers nothing." So it would be a satisfying twist if she had superpowers and took Elfangor out of retirement and before he can decide what to say she's like "I know everything you know plus a whole bunch more. Here's what you need to do."

AU request part 2: I specifically have a joke in mind about "I'm a traditionalist- I believe women should engineer spacetime and men should take care of the kids." Here, "take care of the kids" means he either goes to help the boys out with whatever the hell The One is or helps them deal with the trauma from all they've been through. I imagine some kind of therapeutic/rehab vegetagble garden for them to work in, but your imagination is better than mine and I'm sure you could rock it. :)

So to be honest, Loren's not my favorite character for all the reasons you just mentioned. She's frustratingly passive in #49 - #53, and Ax's narration in #52 comments on her not putting in much effort to build a relationship with Tobias. She's also not my favorite as a kid, mostly because she comes off as, to be blunt... spunky.

Anywhoo, I'm tossing this one to fellow fandalites in the hope that someone is willing to weigh in with ideas.

#animorphs #asks #interdimensionalholeofpancakes #loren fangor #animorphs negativity #sorry to all her fans #she's just not for me

[silriven]

K.A. Applegate’s Letter to Fans

Animorphs is making the rounds again thanks to an article on Polygon that talks about ways you can read this twenty-year-old series now so I thought I’d signal boost my favorite part: Applegate’s open letter to fans who complained about the last book.  I think the reason why this hits me so hard is because I was one of those young fans who didn’t understand at the time why the series ended in the way that it did and stumbling across this response as an adult finally provided catharsis.  It’s a really funny and dark and deep series about a teenage resistance to an alien invasion and I highly recommend reading it.

Big spoilers for Animorphs under the cut.

This response was posted on Morphz.com by the co-owner Jeff Sampson, who had kept in touch with K.A. Applegate during the run of the Animorph series.

-------------------------------------------

Hi, everyone. I remember when the last Animorphs book first came out how there were some people who really hated it. Their negative posts really brought me down, because I loved the last book, and I was compelled to respond to all of the posts.

Apparently, K.A. felt the same way.

So, here it is for you, a letter from her to the fans explaining exactly why she ended it the way that she did, a response that will undoubtedly annoy some people. Be warned, the following does contain spoilers, don't read if you haven't read the last book!

- Jeff Sampson

-------------------------------------------

Dear Animorphs Readers:

Quite a number of people seem to be annoyed by the final chapter in the Animorphs story. There are a lot of complaints that I let Rachel die. That I let Visser Three/One live. That Cassie and Jake broke up. That Tobias seems to have been reduced to unexpressed grief. That there was no grand, final fight-to-end-all-fights. That there was no happy celebration. And everyone is mad about the cliffhanger ending.

So I thought I'd respond.

Animorphs was always a war story. Wars don't end happily. Not ever. Often relationships that were central during war, dissolve during peace. Some people who were brave and fearless in war are unable to handle peace, feel disconnected and confused. Other times people in war make the move to peace very easily. Always people die in wars. And always people are left shattered by the loss of loved ones.

That's what happens, so that's what I wrote. Jake and Cassie were in love during the war, and end up going their seperate ways afterward. Jake, who was so brave and capable during the war is adrift during the peace. Marco and Ax, on the other hand, move easily past the war and even manage to use their experience to good effect. Rachel dies, and Tobias will never get over it. That doesn't by any means cover everything that happens in a war, but it's a start.

Here's what doesn't happen in war: there are no wondrous, climactic battles that leave the good guys standing tall and the bad guys lying in the dirt. Life isn't a World Wrestling Federation Smackdown. Even the people who win a war, who survive and come out the other side with the conviction that they have done something brave and necessary, don't do a lot of celebrating. There's very little chanting of 'we're number one' among people who've personally experienced war.

I'm just a writer, and my main goal was always to entertain. But I've never let Animorphs turn into just another painless video game version of war, and I wasn't going to do it at the end. I've spent 60 books telling a strange, fanciful war story, sometimes very seriously, sometimes more tongue-in-cheek. I've written a lot of action and a lot of humor and a lot of sheer nonsense. But I have also, again and again, challenged readers to think about what they were reading. To think about the right and wrong, not just the who-beat-who. And to tell you the truth I'm a little shocked that so many readers seemed to believe I'd wrap it all up with a lot of high-fiving and backslapping. Wars very often end, sad to say, just as ours did: with a nearly seamless transition to another war.

So, you don't like the way our little fictional war came out? You don't like Rachel dead and Tobias shattered and Jake guilt-ridden? You don't like that one war simply led to another? Fine. Pretty soon you'll all be of voting age, and of draft age. So when someone proposes a war, remember that even the most necessary wars, even the rare wars where the lines of good and evil are clear and clean, end with a lot of people dead, a lot of people crippled, and a lot of orphans, widows and grieving parents.

If you're mad at me because that's what you have to take away from Animorphs, too bad. I couldn't have written it any other way and remained true to the respect I have always felt for Animorphs readers.

K.A. Applegate

Source

#animorphs

[hometownrockstar]

I’ve been wanting to read new books/comics do you have any suggestions? I wanna broaden my horizon and try out works I haven’t had the chance to get into!

yeah sure! ive been reading quite a bit lately, mainly horror and disturbing books/mangas so obviously trigger warnings for those ones i can elaborate on specific ones if u ask but i'll keep it short... iunno what specifically you might want so i'll just shoutout my favs recently

Berserk has been the latest manga ive been reading, probably one of the hardest ones to read bc its VERY sad and disturbing but is an incredible story nonetheless. i am not phased easily by written stuff but berserk was the first thing to have a scene that i had to look away from so proceed with caution... Berserk is interesting bc it has Nietzschean tragedy themes and structure, portraying a world where evil and pain happens for no reason despite humans fearing not pain but pain without purpose, but it also holds a sense of compassion and realism to both the good and bad, exemplifying how Nietzsche saw tragedy as beneficial to enjoying and valuing the good parts of life. Sorry this got long but a lot of horror stuff i feel can be boiled down to "Super fucked up bad things happen in it" which doesnt give the whole scope of how a specific media might handle or portray it, so i wanted to explain how it feels to me, rather than just saying its gratuitous.

Something different is the manga Ultra Heaven! this was like finding gold when i discovered it, its short and unfortunately incomplete but i highly recommend it just for the incredible illustration work and playing with paneling and crazy mind stuff. its written by a guy who does drugs and often points to psychadelics as a heavy influence for his work, and its extremely apparent in this one. if you love beautiful artwork and surrealist mind-fucky narratives (like perfect blue or eva) then i cant recommend this enough.

ok i cant let this get too long ummm Animorphs! throwing a curveball but its still horror, just kid's cosmic horror. and war. and its really good, even tho i read it as an adult for the first time i loved it. actually rlly good commentary on the ethics and grey morality during war. Heres where u can download every book, the megamorphs and alternamorphs are required for the plot btw theyre listed in the order u read them in-between the series books.

A good horror/comedy manga is Franken Fran, i INSTANTLY took to it when i picked it up its my style of dark comedy exactly. i really liked black jack for the episodic chapter style, n this is like black jack but with dark comedy body horror and i love it :3

Back to books... I'll list these together, Come Closer by Sara Gran and Confessions by Kanae Misato. I stayed up all night on two separate nights reading these bc they had me hooked so well lol... I wouldnt call them horror, more like thriller/tragedies. come closer has a great writing style, its a rather sad book about a woman being possessed by a demon, really good sparse prose that emphasizes details. Confessions is just... u gotta go right into it, its GREAT. really intriguing style and premise, love the epistolary format, SO good with details.

The Melancholy of Anatomy by Shelley Jackson, short story compilation. i talked abt it best in this post so i'll link it

Bonding by Maggie Siebert is a great short story horror collection as well, the horror feels like aching and emotionally palpable in it, very well done one of my fav horror books ive read so far.

These next two things are about more abstract writing so dont expect completely clear narratives -w- but I read Amygdalatropolis by B.R. Yeager and i SUPER loved it but i might have to reread it a couple of times to get the hang of it. his newer book Negative Space has good reviews so i'll check it out soon but thats more of a grounded narrative, Amygdalatropolis juggles surrealist imagery, forum text, symbolic elements in a truly hypnotic way.

Umm finally i have been really into books of poetry by Sam Pink lately :)! theyre rather short and like some are more story-related but theyre absurdist and really like, good and resonating in a personal way, i really super enjoy it, i read You Hear Ambulance Sounds And Think They Are For You and a bit of Person and i like them a lot :)

#ummmm btw i got these on z-lib*rary........ u can still access it on tor #if u wanna know how u can dm me i just dont wanna post abt it publicly bc of well u know what happened to it...

[ablubluh]

still reeling from a (now former) mutual reblogging harry potter onto my dash today. yesterday. whenever it was. i was scrolling through the post like surely something is going to be appended to this that expresses a negative opinion on it. and it never came. they were just unironically reblogging some comic about snape or something. in 2023. obviously i blocked them because they were the level of mutual of 'never actually interacted directly' and because i have self respect or whatever. but good lord. good grief.

made me think about how i'll put up with that shit from irls because of years of connection and knowing them well enough to have a conversation about it at least and still having enough positive experiences with them to outweigh the enormous disappointment. but wow! it really is a red flag and a dealbreaker for people with whom i don't have literally two decades of relationship.

i just don't get it. yk? consciously choosing nostalgia over a kids' series that isn't... even that good. over showing respect for real ass vulnerable human beings of multiple minority groups. affix your personality to deltora quest or animorphs or something. why show your whole ass so explicitly.

anyway. i'm not treading any new ground in pointing out that hp kinda sucks even if you try to divorce the art from the artist. if you haven't, in 2023!!!, developed your critical thinking enough to look at the series with the happily enslaved race that a main character is derided for wanting to free, the series with the unbelievably named cho chang, the series with the banker goblins, the series with etc etc i could go on... if you haven't grown up past blindly enjoying that shit, idk what to say.

read another book, man. there are so many out there.

#jake marco rachel cassie tobias ax you were named after the six bravest war criminals i ever knew

[talenlee]

We Don't Need An Animorphs Reboot

We Don't Need An Animorphs Reboot

It seems that every time a piece of nerd media comes out, other people in other nerd media spaces surface declaring that now, now is the time that our nerd media thing is ready to strike while the iron is hot. It doesn’t matter how unrelated it is. One of those spaces where I think I comfortably belong is the Animorphs fandom, even if I think I must come across as being so utterly negative all the time.

Whatever the current context, there’s always some reason that now, here, Animorphs is due a comeback. With the backlash against Hogwarts Legacy, there was a push that hey, now, now is a great time for us to make sure our Young Adult Fiction media property from the last millenium gets to take prominence and become the new thing everyone talks about with its own theme park! Then it was Goncharov, where the sudden thirst for creative element that encouraged people being able to make new Animorphs books and pretend they were always part of the canon as a great way to tap into that community! And then most recently, the fact there’s shapeshifting in the Dungeons & Dragons movie and an actor who’s a jerk —

Why, this movie is proof that we could totally have a great, successful, reboot movie for the Animorphs! You know, a movie! For that set of forty plus books!

Problem: This is completely unfeasible.

Part of it is just that the Animorphs books, for their own sake, are just impressively dated. It’s not just that the books are of a particular style or time or place, but the way they are is part of how they exist. The late 90s was a period when portable phones and secret communication networks and maintainable online conspiracies were a different species to what they are now.

If the Animorphs kids existed in the smartphone age, they could be tracked by the fact they were the only teenagers in town who didn’t want to carry smartphones around. And these aren’t small questions, these are questions that would fundamentally alter the world of their existence: How is the movement of Andalite spaceships going unnoticed in a world where everyone has cameras? How is there not a graphical database of everyone in town being surveilled from every diverse avenue by a conspiracy of Yeerks?

The world of the 90s was smaller. It was less connected. There was simply less surveillance, a conspiracy took a different form, the Yeerk’s avenues of attack were limited to needing a lot more material presence. It’s not like you’d need to answer all of these but these things would present questions that would need addressing to address the concept of the Animorphs at large in the newer world.

In 2020, if the Yeerks were invading, they would have Alex Jones telling you about themselves. They would advertise the idea of shapeshifting monsters and mind-controlling slugs, because we know there’s a population of people who can be mobilised and weaponised in a way we really didn’t anticipate in the 90s.

The whole idea of a reboot seems to be built out of a want to have more of it. The idea that Animorphs is good, and that means more of it would be better is at odds with my opinion that we’d be better off with less of it.

Some of Animorphs is effectively filler. Some of it is contradictory. Some of it is extremely silly. Some of it – like, y’know, the Ellimist and Cryak story chunks – can feel cheap in the context of a story that starts out as a science fiction fantasy narrative. The Megamorphs and other game material, that stuff isn’t really ‘part’ of the Animorphs narrative and it can feel really weird and wrong compared to the core material. Just having a clear vision of how important the mystical elements would become compared could make that eventual discovery a little more gentle.

What I would really like, if the idea was to create a new Animorphs product, for the vision of the fans of the 90s work who want some way to bring the product back, is an immense editing parse designed to attain the following goals:

Restructure the narrator order to give those picky fans the right number and sequence they say they want.

Diminish a few inconsistencies from early in the story that wound up being unimportant to the later stories.

A few added scenes or sequences to mention or explicate what happened to some minor characters that people like.

A single, standardised collection that lets people like me buy the whole set in a nice, readable form in a way that gets money to KA Applegate and the other contributors.

Problem: This is completely unfeasible.

What’s on the page is on the page. The people who made the books have moved on, they don’t get the money from reprints of the books, they don’t get to benefit from our desire to turn their existing, successful, good media, into another, different, differently available media. The last thing in the world we should want is ‘Animorphs Media’ being produced because it’ll all be just the same thing we already have, fan media, but being made by people who are going to make us pay for it.

Make fan content. Make Animorphs stuff. Share it with friends. Make reading lists. Make editorial revisions – show how you’d trim things or change them. Make fan comics. Sure, even use whatever dumb image tool you like to make fanart, 3d rendered or whatever.

Right now, Animorphs is a rare and precious thing in that it is widely available. You can get digital ebooks reasonably easily without spending money. You can find the books second hand if you want physical copies. The people who are sitting on the rights for it are not trying to monetise it, and the people who made it have moved on. We are free.

I get it.

I really do.

But stop thinking of the companies as sources of what you love.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Media