#it needs to be in the antiwar trauma fiction hall of fame and yet it is not. hello

[kaftan]

Animorphs rambling incoming:

i don’t think people who haven’t read Animorphs understand that Animorphs is the quintessential “childhood trauma in a sff setting” narrative. but people need to understand. because at its core, past the simplified synopsis (six kids gain the power to turn into animals so they can fight the aliens that are infiltrating Earth by sneaking into people’s brains!), Animorphs is a war story. it’s not a story about a war that just so happens to star children--it’s about child soldiers. Applegate and her co-authors made a choice to refuse to dress it up as “kid superheroes save the day!” because they wanted that message to sink in.

it’s hard to really convey this fact about the series with any number of words because you really need to read it yourself, you need to experience the crumbling of naivete and slow erosion of morality and steady piling up of casualties over ~1.4 million words. but... between the moments of levity, goofiness, and genuine fun (which the series is full of! they’re welcome breaks from the many grimmer scenes) the message of the cost of war, the way it destroys children, is always present. it’s sobering.

even outside the war context, it’s all the little things: symptoms of PTSD like rachel’s increasing aggression / jake’s listlessness and depression / everyone’s hypervigilance and self loathing; the hopeless of knowing as a child that no one is coming to save us; that moment in #19 where marco is desperately trying to lift the team’s spirits by Using Humor To Cope but every joke falls flat; the repeated scenes of different animorphs mourning the people they used to be and the world they can never return to; i could go on and on--it’s all of these things that are emblematic of childhood trauma in general. try as i might, i can’t think of any other series that does what Animorphs does with extended narratives of trauma, period. that’s why i’m nuts about these books. that’s why i think everyone needs to read them.

thanks for attending this impromptu TED talk.

#animorphs #like. now in the 2020s i think people are finally waking up and going 'oh shit animorphs is darker than i thought' #but when do we all collectively start putting respect on its name for [gestures at the points i just made] #it needs to be in the antiwar trauma fiction hall of fame and yet it is not. hello