Reblogged greatwyrmgold
Reblogged
Anonymous asked:
What if Animorphs was set before the civil rights movement?
[First of all: I misread this as “set DURING the civil rights movement” and wrote an entire AU accordingly; hope this is okay. Secondly, I justified them being more civically engaged by making all the Animorphs 19 in this AU.]
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• They plan it carefully, because they have, literally, only one shot at this. Jake takes the time to steal a requisitioned Viet Cong rifle, because — much as Marco hates the extra risk — they need the whole thing to look right. Marco’s the one who flirts with the staff sergeant (who, like him, probably tried to plead out of the draft by dint of “homosexual sympathies”) until Grummald agrees to let him and Jake patrol together.
- That evening Jake slings his gun over his shoulder (hoping that no one notices in the low light it’s an AK-47 rather than their standard-issue M16) and promises everyone that he and Marco will be back before 2000 hours.
- They march almost half their patrol route before Marco says, “You could still take this chance, you know.”
- Jake’s jaw tightens. They’ve had this conversation before. He points out that he’s three months out from making it home free. Marco points out that Jake could get called back for another tour. Jake claims he’ll go AWOL if that happens. Marco starts to protest. Jake states flatly that his decision is final.
- They’re at the furthest-out point of their loop when Jake takes the radio off his belt. “PFC Berenson to Arlo Base, do you copy?”
- “Falsworth to Berenson, I copy.”
- Jake relays their position, then adds, “We can hear something movin’ about hundred yards south of us. Gonna go check it out. Like as not it’s another of those wild pigs, nothin’ to worry about.” He gives a nervous laugh and adds, “If it’s another fuckin’ tiger… speak well of us at home, yeah?”
- Marco smirks. He’s seen Jake go toe-to-toe with a real tiger out in this jungle before. The predators should be scared of them, not the other way around.
- “Copy that,” Falsworth says. “Say safe, Private.” Jake signs off.
- “Last chance,” Marco says. “You and me, swap right now—”
- “How would you carry me back to camp?” Jake asks. And before Marco can come up with an answer, Jake raises the gun and fires.
- The first bullet shreds through the flesh of Marco’s right thigh; the second impacts the femur on that same leg and sticks in it with a sickening crack of bone. Jake drops the gun in almost the same motion that he snaps the safety back on, already diving forward to lean pressure on the wounds.
- As Marco leans back and does his best not to scream or pass out, Jake yanks out his med kit and does a hasty but effective job of disinfecting the holes then stapling them shut. Last of all he pulls out the pre-prepped shot of heroin and, leaning close to find a vein, slides cool, blissful apathy into Marco’s arm.
- “You’ll take care of yourself, right?” Marco slurs as Jake is carrying him back to camp. “You’ll be okay?”
- Jake shifts position slightly, wrapping his free hand around Marco’s wrist. “I’ll be back before you know it. I promise.”
• The system works brutally fast, offering Marco a disability discharge and preliminary repair surgery before dumping him out of its care and off Uncle Sam’s list of concerns as fast as it possibly can. That suits Marco just fine; he limps out of the hospital on crutches and takes the first opportunity he can to morph, heal, and fly home.
• Home, as it turns out, needs his help. Rachel has been leading the team since Jake got drafted, and the half a dozen yeerk projects she’s stopped don’t really make up for the four dead civilians she’s racked up in that time. When Marco demands to know what they were thinking, Tobias snaps at him to give them a break. Marco knows what that’s about. Tobias feels irrationally guilty that he’s got no home address, no draft card, no lottery number hanging over his head. Good, Marco thinks viciously, still unable to forget Jake’s attempt at a cheerful wave as the MedEvac helicopter rose into the air. Tobias should be guilty.
• Cassie gets arrested. Tobias is the one who goes to bail her out, because he’s the one with the appearance that will automatically earn the cops’ trust and respect. He finds her sitting in a cell with a dozen other protestors, eye blackened and lip bleeding from a police officer’s baton.
- “Did you save any more elephants?” he asks Cassie as they let her out, trying to lighten the mood.
- “No,” she says, sounding tired, sounding sad. “Apparently I was trespassing. In a public cafe.”
- Not knowing what else to do, Tobias pulls her into an awkward hug. She leans against him, so he guesses he did okay.
- “Is she your girlfriend?” one of the cops asks, sounding like he has an opinion on the subject if so.
- “That’s none of your fucking business,” Tobias says softly, gently, as he continues to rub small circles into the back of her shoulder.
• Marco considers telling Jake just how bad it’s gotten in the real war (as they call it, to tell it apart from this fucking farce of LBJ’s) but finds he can’t come up with the words. Even their system of codes might not be enough to protect them, if a controller intercepted one of the letters. That’s the excuse Marco uses, anyway. The truth is that Jake’s letters are relentlessly cheerful in a way that Marco knows is a lie, and some combination of not wanting him to worry and sheer passive-aggression lead Marco to match Jake tone-for-tone.
- Let me know if you want out. Ax and I will be there in an instant, Marco scrawls at the bottom of a typewritten page.
- It’s not so bad over here, Jake answers. And anyway, we’ve gotta keep a low profile. Remember?
• Rachel does not, it would appear, remember the part about keeping a low profile. They’re all angry, every single one of them, when the random asswipe calls Cassie an unrepeatable word. Cassie herself accepts it with a hard swallow and a dismissive look, and Marco settles for shouting back a couple insults of his own.
- Rachel, on the other hand, feels the need to morph grizzly bear and bite said asswipe’s arm hard enough to break it. She doesn’t seem to care that there are two other witnesses present, or that the others are all shouting for her to stop.
- She stops short of killing him. She even demorphs on her own, and goes charging out the back door of the automat into the empty lot beyond.
- Marco throws caution to the wind and follows. “What was that?”
- She whirls around, hair flying everywhere, tears on her face. “Why the fuck are we fighting so hard to save this country, huh? Huh?”
- Marco runs a hand over his hair, unpleasantly surprised for the umpteenth time to remember it’s so short. At least the U.S. Army cutting it all off gave the neighborhood punks one less reason to call him a hippie queer and kick the shit out of him. Silver linings.
- “I can fight my own battles, you know,” Cassie says quietly, stepping up next to Marco.
- Rachel scrubs both hands over her eyes, sniffing harshly. “Was he…?”
- “Not a controller.” Cassie smiles tightly. “Just a jerk.”
- “I’d do it even if he was a controller,” Rachel says.
• Which is why, feeling like an asshole the whole time but knowing it has to be done, Marco calls for a vote of no confidence against Rachel the very next day.
- “This is because I’m a woman, isn’t it?” Rachel leans close to Marco’s face, pointing a shaking finger at him. “Because I’m some weak little female who can’t handle power in your eyes!”
- It’s so wildly untrue that Marco almost laughs, but he’s pretty sure that then Rachel would kill him. “It’s because you’re out of control,” he whispers. “Because I don’t trust you not to get us killed. Because you’re one of my best friends and I don’t actually want you to die, but that’s the way you’re headed right now.”
- “Rachel…” Cassie says. Whatever she’s about to say gets interrupted when the phone rings inside her house. Looking pathetically grateful for the excuse, she runs to go get it.
- «This would just be a temporary measure,» Ax says, halfway between asking Marco and assuring Rachel, «until Prince Jake can come home.»
- “Exactly.” Marco nods. “And he’ll be back in a matter of weeks.”
- Tobias flutters, shifts, preens feathers. At last he says, «Rachel, I… I love you. But I want you to be safe, and…»
- She rounds on him. “You too, then? I have to be kept safe? You don’t think I’m up for this? I should just stay home and embroider handkerchiefs and leave the fighting to the men?”
- “You want Cassie to lead?” Marco babbles. “Let’s have Cassie in charge. I love that plan. That’s the plan where more people don’t die, let’s go with that plan.”
- «I think that’s…» Tobias trails off.
- Cassie is standing in the doorway, phone still in hand, corkscrew cord stretching away into the house. She doesn’t seem to know she has it, because both her arms are wrapped around herself where she stands in the doorway and rocks slightly as she cries.
- Marco feels all the air punched out of his lungs. He knows what she’s going to say, well before she finally finds the words.
• It was fast. Jake’s mom repeats that seven or eight times. Single shot to the forehead, no warning. Body lost to the Mekong River. It was fast. Jake’s mom says it again, and Marco feels a curl of disgust underneath the rage. Of course it was fast; anything else wouldn’t have killed him. They’re Animorphs. Anything short of a bullet in the brainpan would’ve been no more than a momentary inconvenience for Jake.
• «I don’t understand,» Ax says after the funeral.
- «Yeah.» Tobias’s voice is dull. «None of us do.»
- «No, I…» He glances at all of them at once. «I don’t understand why Prince Jake’s grandmother took issue with Rachel’s family being in attendance. When I asked her myself, she…» He pauses, sensing that this is sensitive ground. «She called Rachel’s mother ‘the divorcée’ more than once.»
- “Yep.” Rachel bites out the word. “That about sums it up.”
- «But I don’t understand.» Ax’s main eyes crinkle in a frown. «Unless I have the word wrong, this simply refers to the termination of the relationship between herself and your father.»
- “It does.” Rachel sighs. “You got a problem with that?”
- «They no longer wished to be wed, and so they were not. What does that have to do with Prince Jake’s grandmother?»
- “I don’t know, Ax. I really don’t.”
- «But why was she angered by your mother’s presence, but not similarly angered by your father’s?»
- “Yeah,” Rachel says. “All really good questions. If you ever find any answers, be sure to let the rest of us know.”
• Their argument seems so small, so silly now, Rachel thinks. She and Marco are sitting side-by-side a hundred yards up in an enormous pine overlooking the cemetery, watching through raptor eyes as Jake’s parents go through the last of the motions for the burial of an empty coffin. Then again, the entire Vietnam War seems horrifyingly petty in light of what’s happening with the yeerks, and that didn’t stop the two of them from bickering before.
- «During the battles, Cassie makes the calls,» Rachel says. «She tells us when to attack, when to retreat, when to change the plan on the fly. The rest of the time, we vote. Yeah?»
- «Agreed.» Marco shifts, talons scratching the bark. «First motion to put to the group: VA hospitals.»
- Rachel glances over, a sharp twitch of her eagle neck. «What about them?»
- «They’re full of wounded and disabled soldiers, and…» Marco lets out a laugh that is full of pain, not mirth. «And, and it’s funny. But maybe the worst fucking thing about being in Vietnam is that there are no yeerks. Not anywhere in the armed forces, anyway. Because why bother? The U.N. doesn’t give a shit about us, our country doesn’t give a shit about us, our own towns hated us so much they picked us to send off to die. We leave home where we get called hippie scum by the older generation, we go to kill some poor clueless kids who are trying to kill us back, we get home only to get spat on by hippie scum who call us babykillers. And even the yeerks don’t care about us, because no one else does. Which is downright hilarious, when you think about it.»
- «You want to recruit more Animorphs.» Rachel’s plenty smart; she figures it out. «And you want to start where you know the yeerks won’t be. Start with people who already have military training.»
- «I know a guy. From the Army. James. Sniper bullet took out his spine somewhere around the stomach area. He’s smart. Tough. Decent. Doesn’t entertain fools. He’d be a start.»
- «Let’s put it to the group.» Rachel opens her wings. «Nothing much else for us to see around here, anyway.»
• «Prince Cassie, do you ever… ever wonder what will happen if we win?» Ax asks one day.
- She takes a hand off her pitchfork, beckoning him further into the barn. “I do. I assume you do too?”
- «My people have very different customs from yours.» He steps delicately between the cages. «And some which are much the same. We have a term, vecol, which…» He shakes his head, a very human gesture. «It doesn’t matter. I worry sometimes, though. What my people might think of the team we now have. What you, my friends, might think of my people when you learn.»
- Cassie leans the pitchfork against the corner between a post and the first horse stall. “I’m pretty sure if we win, we’ll claim Tobias was leading us the whole time.” She smiles. “He’ll hate that, of course, but pretty much any alternative would be worse.”
- «You wouldn’t even acknowledge Prince Jake’s leadership?»
- “Oh, we’d honor his memory, to be sure, if we could.” She takes a breath, feeling Ax’s fear — that her entire species will be measured and found wanting, for its outdated and terrible beliefs — and tries to find words. “Jake’s parents are Jewish. Marco’s mother is Latina. Rachel and I are female, and neither of us has the good white Protestant family to be fully American. James and Timmy and the others aren’t even allowed to have human rights in the U.S., much less…” She grimaces. “It’s not his fault, but Tobias…”
- «Tobias is half andalite.» Ax says it with pride rather than defensiveness.
- “And yet, he — or his human shape — also looks like the people you see on TV.” She raises her eyebrows. “You have to have noticed that none of the people on any of the shows look like most of us.”
- «You are fighting against this, though.» Ax gestures to the Black Power poster Cassie’s dad hung above the refrigerator that holds their feeder mice. «You take the time to fight these battles, as well as those against the yeerks.»
- “It’s like Toby said.” Cassie shrugs. “I want us to have a place to come back to where we can be safe, once the war is done.”
- «I understand,» Ax says. «Or rather, I think I do. Maybe it would be best for me to explain to you how we are taught to think of vecols, and maybe you could tell me how it is I can help this other fight of yours.»
- Cassie takes his hand in both of hers. “Maybe I can help in your fight, while we’re at it. After all, there are infinite battles. As long as we don’t lose hope, we can keep fighting forever.”
Reblogged
Anonymous asked:
is megamorphs 3 worth reading? just seems kinda depressing but idk
To the polls!
One of my favorites in the series. It’s depressing yes, but moreso it’s chaotic in the best way possible imo. I’ve always loved how it explores the unpredictability of messing with time. The complete disorder that Visser 4’s changes cause for everyone involved do very well to set the tone and amplify the message of just how brutal wars and battles are + how emotionally taxing the ordeal is for everyone
Yes! It extends the "there are no good guys or bad guys" motif of the series from the yeerk war to all the other wars, in a way that's deliberately quite troubling.
But I also like that it doesn't lose sight of the difference between a war of defense and a war of invasion. France taking over all of Europe, Germany taking over all of Europe, Britain taking over the entire world — these would all make our present reality measurably worse than it is. The U.S. having developed the atom bomb, the text implies, did make our present reality measurably worse than it would have been if they hadn't.
As Jewish person who had been learning about the Holocaust in depth for the first time around when I first read Animorphs, it was such a breath of fresh air that their response to encountering Hitler was to kill him without an extended moral debate, as almost a punctuation to other things.
Also, the fact that Ax is like "I don't get it" and Rachel's like "You're getting the 10-second summary of the Holocaust, then we're dropping some grenades on some Nazis." And the Nazis hurt and fear and long to see their families again in the aftermath, because Nazis are still humans. And Jake was a Nazi, 100 pages ago. Evil is evil, but the scariest part of all is that evil is done by human beings. Like, this series Goes There.
The weirdest thing to me is that the Jake who exists at the end of the book remembers being the Jake who time-traveled. Because I still maintain that the Jake, who did actually travel through time died, and that the Jake we see at the end of the book exists because there was never any time travel, and therefore shouldn’t remember it.
Although I guess one could say that he got grandfathered into the deal that the Animorphs made about retaining their memories. And/or that Crayak made sure that he would have his memories just mess with him.
Reblogged
Anonymous asked:
is megamorphs 3 worth reading? just seems kinda depressing but idk
To the polls!
One of my favorites in the series. It’s depressing yes, but moreso it’s chaotic in the best way possible imo. I’ve always loved how it explores the unpredictability of messing with time. The complete disorder that Visser 4’s changes cause for everyone involved do very well to set the tone and amplify the message of just how brutal wars and battles are + how emotionally taxing the ordeal is for everyone
Yes! It extends the "there are no good guys or bad guys" motif of the series from the yeerk war to all the other wars, in a way that's deliberately quite troubling.
But I also like that it doesn't lose sight of the difference between a war of defense and a war of invasion. France taking over all of Europe, Germany taking over all of Europe, Britain taking over the entire world — these would all make our present reality measurably worse than it is. The U.S. having developed the atom bomb, the text implies, did make our present reality measurably worse than it would have been if they hadn't.
As Jewish person who had been learning about the Holocaust in depth for the first time around when I first read Animorphs, it was such a breath of fresh air that their response to encountering Hitler was to kill him without an extended moral debate, as almost a punctuation to other things.
Reblogged
Anonymous asked:
Book 50 Megamorphs 2
#50:
Short opinion: [Vague impotent mutterings repeating what other people have said about how this portrayal of disability is problematic and Cassie somehow never has serious negative consequences for all her bad decisions.]
Long opinion:
K.A. Applegate does this really cool thing throughout the series with role reversals, especially within the Anifamilies, that really comes to the fore in this book. It’s a motif that starts as early as the first book, when Jake goes from sitting outside Tom’s door singing “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” to doing battle in order to protect Tom in less than half a book. It continues up through the final book with Cassie becoming an independent adult while her parents stay home and Jake’s casual statement that “I bought a house for my folks” (#54). Heck, arguably it starts even before the war begins, given that Marco’s reason for not wanting to get involved is a desire to protect his dad and Tobias spends that whole scene with Elfangor trying to protect his dad.
Anywhoo, it is simultaneously heartbreaking and awesome how much time the Animorphs spend parenting their own parents in this book. Tobias is determined to keep Loren out of the war even though, logically speaking, she’s a morph-capable badass who they could really use on their side in a battle. Rachel gets saddled with the role of impressing the seriousness of the situation on her spoiled, rebellious mother. Jake spends this whole arc grappling with the realization that his family are beyond his ability to help or protect; not only does Tom’s yeerk threaten to kill their parents to keep Jake in line, but at some point between #41 and the last scene of #50, Jake has arrived at the conclusion that killing Tom’s yeerk is more important for the greater good than saving Tom himself. Marco gets this fascinating role reversal from within the role reversal from the first several books (where he does the grocery shopping, financial planning, and meal preparation for his largely-incapable father) to the last few books (where his mother is the most competent adult in the whole damn valley) even though he hasn’t stopped fighting to protect his family. Ax meanwhile has ended up shoved into the role of diplomat between armies, between species, and the kid who just wants to follow orders into doing the right thing suddenly becomes the one who has all the power over the andalite and human forces alike.
But of course this isn’t their book. This is Cassie’s book. This is the story of Cassie realizing that her good, kind, caring parents… “wouldn’t—couldn’t—face the awful truth. That we were at war. That the rules had changed. That we had to do things we’d never choose to do under peacetime circumstances… and I was angry that my mother was forcing me to confront her with this truth” (#50). Cassie has maybe the most unshakable optimism of anyone else on the team, with her willingness to believe that the Earth will come through in the end, that the yeerks are worth giving a shot at redemption, and that the Animorphs need to behave like they’re going to have to live with themselves someday when they survive the war. Not only is this kind of fatalism uncharacteristic for her (just like Jake’s apathy is uncharacteristic for him, a sign that already the center is failing to hold), but it’s a sign of the direness of the situation that Cassie has come to accept that “Some of us are going to die. That’s a fact… Nothing will stop the dying except winning the war. And right now, our chances of winning don’t look real good” (#50).
Cassie spends this whole book not just horrified but often disgusted with her parents’ naïveté. Experienced warrior that she is, Cassie understands that Michelle is being somewhere between condescending and clueless with her insistence that the hork-bajir need “at least forty feet of space” to survive as if they are livestock. Similarly, she’s heartbroken that Walter thinks the solution to their interpersonal problems is to adopt Jake, when what Jake needs isn’t a new set of parents but the respect of what little family he has left—he doesn’t snap out of his depressive apathy until Naomi throws her faith behind him at the weapons depot. When Marco simply tells Jake outright that Cassie’s parents aren’t strong enough to join the fight, that fact is so self-evident it doesn’t even sting that he’s being so mean.
War is hell. War changes people. Those are platitudes. K.A. Applegate does a nightmare-inducingly good job of showing those realities, and she uses this ultimately good-hearted kid to convey that there is no such thing as fighting a war while keeping one’s hands clean. There’s no such thing as a good war, a just war, or a glorious war. There is, however, such thing as a necessary war. Cassie doesn’t die in the war; in fact, she is perhaps the only Animorph who truly manages to recover enough to thrive after it ends. Her interactions with her parents in this book make it clear that she is irreparably damaged nonetheless, and that she doesn’t have the option to go home anymore.
Walter and Michelle are foils to Cassie, because they are still the kind of person she used to be back when she talked her best friend into letting her walk home with a cute boy through an abandoned construction site. And their lack of exposure to war leaves them so unable to cope with its realities that they come off as somewhere between childish and sad. Because Cassie has not just grown up on her own, she has grown beyond her parents. She passed mere maturity at some point thirty-two books ago. Now she is beaten-down and battle-weary, infinitely beyond her parents’ ability to protect her and so far out of sight of that sweet tree-hugging girl that she wouldn’t even recognize the person she’s become. But it’s what’s necessary, because the alternative is letting the yeerks take the planet. The only choice left to her and her friends is the least atrocity, and it is the choice she must take.
Reblogged thejakeformerlyknownasprince
the war criminals after the war. on substack
Reblogged
"How dare you, now we're on a slippery slope to acknowledging that Tom is also not really an Animorphs character, he's a 98% hypothetical brother that Jake used to have before the series started" BUT ACTUALLY
I've had this thought in my head for months and never spat it out anywhere: tumblr girlies love to freak out over the whole "haunting the narrative" trope and that's what Tom is. Elfangor too in the more classic sense, but Tom is the fun new twist in the sense that we basically never get to interact with him in canon. He's at least mentioned in almost every if not every book and his body's there plenty, sure, but not him.
That is such a good point. Like, part of what I find so fascinating about Tom is that he witnesses huge chunks of the story, but does almost nothing because he has 0 agency. He's the only non-Animorph regularly present for battles and for the downtime in between, the only person period who has his level of insight into the Animorphs themselves (Jake especially, but also Rachel and Marco) while also having his level of insight into Yeerk Empire leadership.
He sees almost everything. He's there for the Animorphs' first mission and their last. He's there when the yeerks get the morphing power, when David kills Saddler, when Jara and Ket escape, when the taxxons go rogue. He's there, but he isn't.
Jake tells Ax in their first conversation: "I've lost a brother too" (#4). He says it to the reader: "I don't have a brother anymore" (#47). And then he doesn't, not anymore. Crayak said it all along: "Have you killed your brother yet?" (#27). Tom haunts the narrative, well before his death.
Hey so what the fuck is going on in Animorphs
Child soldiers, PTSD, war crimes, morally hard decisions, at least one suicide attempt, genocide…
But nobody says a swear or do does more than a chaste kiss, so it’s all good.
I dropped out partway through myself. Need to go back one day.
One of the best exchanges in M*A*S*H is this:
Hawkeye: War isn't Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse. Father Mulcahy: How do you figure, Hawkeye? Hawkeye: Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell? Father Mulcahy: Sinners, I believe. Hawkeye: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.
So that's what Animorphs is.
I'm mostly being tongue-in-cheek when I suggest that the Second Congo War was a World War 3/4/5, but I do have to note how remarkable it is that one of the 20 deadliest wars in human history occurred within our lifetime and most of us have never even heard of it because it took place entirely within Africa
The Second Congo War is also known as "Africa's World War" because of the involvement of nine different nations and approximately twenty five armed groups, most of which, if not all were proxies. It is truly sad how little attention Africa receives on the world stage.
I should have also added that this is not one of, this is THE deadliest conflict since the Second World War, according to the International Rescue Committee. The conflict was further exasperated by the trade of conflict minerals, such as tin, tungsten and gold, these are most often mined using slave labor.
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Anonymous asked:
Just spent the morning telling a coworker why I love Animorphs so much and I think she's going to check it out. Just thanking you for rekindling my passion for the series, which may have just gained it another fan!
I love talking with random adults about the Animorphs series. If they're within 5 years of my age, then odds are they have this half-a-memory of "those Scholastic books with the awful covers? And wasn't the one kid stuck as a bird, like stuck forever as a bird? And oh god, those brain-parasite things gave me nightmares..."
If they're considerably older or younger, then that's when things get really fun. Because you only have like 90 seconds to Pick Two:
- Teen superheroes fight aliens, but so disturbingly realist it makes Watchmen look romanticized
- Maple-and-ginger instant oatmeal
- War epic about there being no moral answers even during "righteous" defensive battles
- You know what a "thermal" is? Trust me, you will soon.
- Complex and loving battle-forged-family dynamic fleshed out by a rotating first-person point of view
- "Do you hate trash cans? Is that your problem? Do you just HATE TRASH CANS?"
- "[D-Day] landing craft were still disgorging men. Like cattle going down the chute to the slaughtering floor. But, of course, cattle don't know what's corning. Humans do. They saw the bodies of their fellow soldiers. They heard the explosions. They smelled the death. And they still came. War is obscene... but individual soldiers are the very best of humanity."
- Speaking of cattle, there are these mind-control hamburgers, only it turns out when you morph a steer its balls grow back...
- You ever have that nightmare where you can't even control your own breathing, much less your fingers or toes? You ever want to read a whole book set inside that nightmare?
- American-flavor anti-imperialism that anticipates the War on Terror disturbingly well
- Okay, so there's this space prince, and this space prince's little brother, and the little brother's half-human nephew, and the half-human nephew's girlfriend, and the girlfriend's cousin, and the cousin's best friend, and the best friend's ethical counterpart... and together they fight crime!
- Ya like caterpillars? You ever want to imagine one that's 15 feet long and an autocannibal?
- ... and there was only one tail blade!
- 1990s nostalgia, but also uniquely 1990s-brand horror
Okay, so I never read Animorphs as a kid - I might have been very slightly too old or just didn't happen to get into them - but as teens my brother and I challenged each other to read the first few books in Hebrew from our cousin's collection. The thing about reading science fiction in translation when you speak the source language more fluently is that you are constantly encountering made-up words that make more sense if you say them in your natural accent. Like, Yeerk? Took forever to figure out it wasn't a Hebrew vocabulary word I just didn't know, like some noun form of green somehow.
We read the first two and a half books together or something like that, over the course of one Passover, in a little weird book club, but I never read beyond that until this year. So there I am, in my upper 30s, barreling through the entire series over coffee and picking up all the nuance I missed by reading it in translation, and periodically whispering "what the hell."
Passover is the best time to speed read Animorphs
Instant maple and ginger matzah.
Also, this reminds me of the time I went to the Hebrew Wikipedia page for Animorphs and ran it through G
The current translation is slightly different, giving Ax's name as "Eximily-esgarot-acetyl (ex)" and "Yeerks" as "Hyrk/Hyrek/Hierak/Hyraks/Hierkim/Hierakim/Hyerkit/Vegetables".
Reblogged
Anonymous asked:
Just spent the morning telling a coworker why I love Animorphs so much and I think she's going to check it out. Just thanking you for rekindling my passion for the series, which may have just gained it another fan!
I love talking with random adults about the Animorphs series. If they're within 5 years of my age, then odds are they have this half-a-memory of "those Scholastic books with the awful covers? And wasn't the one kid stuck as a bird, like stuck forever as a bird? And oh god, those brain-parasite things gave me nightmares..."
If they're considerably older or younger, then that's when things get really fun. Because you only have like 90 seconds to Pick Two:
- Teen superheroes fight aliens, but so disturbingly realist it makes Watchmen look romanticized
- Maple-and-ginger instant oatmeal
- War epic about there being no moral answers even during "righteous" defensive battles
- You know what a "thermal" is? Trust me, you will soon.
- Complex and loving battle-forged-family dynamic fleshed out by a rotating first-person point of view
- "Do you hate trash cans? Is that your problem? Do you just HATE TRASH CANS?"
- "[D-Day] landing craft were still disgorging men. Like cattle going down the chute to the slaughtering floor. But, of course, cattle don't know what's corning. Humans do. They saw the bodies of their fellow soldiers. They heard the explosions. They smelled the death. And they still came. War is obscene... but individual soldiers are the very best of humanity."
- Speaking of cattle, there are these mind-control hamburgers, only it turns out when you morph a steer its balls grow back...
- You ever have that nightmare where you can't even control your own breathing, much less your fingers or toes? You ever want to read a whole book set inside that nightmare?
- American-flavor anti-imperialism that anticipates the War on Terror disturbingly well
- Okay, so there's this space prince, and this space prince's little brother, and the little brother's half-human nephew, and the half-human nephew's girlfriend, and the girlfriend's cousin, and the cousin's best friend, and the best friend's ethical counterpart... and together they fight crime!
- Ya like caterpillars? You ever want to imagine one that's 15 feet long and an autocannibal?
- ... and there was only one tail blade!
- 1990s nostalgia, but also uniquely 1990s-brand horror
Okay, so I never read Animorphs as a kid - I might have been very slightly too old or just didn't happen to get into them - but as teens my brother and I challenged each other to read the first few books in Hebrew from our cousin's collection. The thing about reading science fiction in translation when you speak the source language more fluently is that you are constantly encountering made-up words that make more sense if you say them in your natural accent. Like, Yeerk? Took forever to figure out it wasn't a Hebrew vocabulary word I just didn't know, like some noun form of green somehow.
We read the first two and a half books together or something like that, over the course of one Passover, in a little weird book club, but I never read beyond that until this year. So there I am, in my upper 30s, barreling through the entire series over coffee and picking up all the nuance I missed by reading it in translation, and periodically whispering "what the hell."
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Can we take a moment to appreciate the fact that K.A. Applegate might be the only sci-fi writer EVER who both (a) condemns the mass killing of aliens even if they are attacking the earth AND (b) shows why it’s sort of necessary in the situation?
It seems like too many other sci-fi stories go the route of Avengers or Doctor Who (S1) or Independence Day where a protagonist wiping out thousands of aliens is portrayed as uncomplicated heroism and we all celebrate at the end. Either that or they go the route of Avatar the Last Airbender (S3) or Buffy the Vampire Slayer (S5) where the characters that don’t want to engage in violence don’t have to get their hands dirty because a deus ex machina comes along and prevents that from having to happen. In both cases doing the right thing is also a matter of doing the easy thing.
Applegate, by contrast, doesn’t let her characters get away with an uncomplicated happy ending. She doesn’t say “they were aliens so it’s okay to kill them,” and she doesn’t offer them a third way out of their impossible choice. She gets into the hell that is war and doesn’t use the sci-fi genre to let her gloss over the dirty details.
acrownofswords
Orson Scott Card also does this really well in Ender’s Game!
We’re going to have to agree to disagree about Ender’s Game, because while that book has a powerful anti-war message, it also [SPOILERS FOR ENDER’S GAME] features a main character who has no idea that he’s making decisions with real people’s lives at stake at any point while making those decisions. Ender literally believes that he’s playing a video game when he annihilates the buggers and the human navy, and so none of those decisions near the end of the novel reflect the thought process of “oh god I have to end lives to save lives and there are literally no good answers.” He’s actually more concerned with impressing his mentors and building up useful skills at the time than he is with any kind of moral quandary—which is, of course, exactly why everyone lies to him about it being a training simulation—but it’s hard to say what he would do when faced with the choice between consciously ending thousands of lives or passively allowing the potential for billions to end, because he never actually gets the chance to make that choice. [END SPOILERS] Still an awesome piece of sci-fi, but…
But where I think K.A. Applegate goes a step beyond that into disturbing-moral-paradox land is that [AND NOW FOR SOME ANIMORPHS SPOILERS] when Jake and Marco and Ax make the decision to wipe out 17,000 yeerks because the alternative is the death or enslavement of 5 billion humans, they know exactly what they’re doing. They’ve also been up close and personal with the yeerks at that point—Jake and Ax have both literally shared brain space with yeerks, however briefly—which means that unlike Ender they don’t have the option of dehumanizing the enemy, diffusing responsibility onto authority figures, or otherwise morally disengaging from their actions. Applegate shows us time and again that what the yeerks do to their hosts, making them into “The most total slaves in all of history, because even their own minds [aren’t] theirs anymore” (#20) is an atrocity to the point where any halfway decent person cannot allow it to stand, pretty much no matter what it takes to end that atrocity. [END ANIMORPHS SPOILERS] Both stories have messages that are not simply pro-war or anti-war so much as they are about the impossibility of moral simplicity in times of war. However, Animorphs features child characters consciously making impossible moral decisions under conditions of grey-and-black morality; Ender’s Game does not.
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“FMA is bad because it portrays war criminals as sympathetic, likable people” bro that’s the point. That’s the whole point. That is THE point. Did you think Ethnic Cleanser is some kind of special category of person that gets separated away from all the Good People at birth? Did you think there’s some kind of barn full of Genocide Doers that only gets deployed into the general public during world wars? Did you think assholes who do terrible shit in real life are never charming or likable or capable of doing good things and helping people? One of the best parts of FMA is how we the audience realize that some of our core protags have made irredeemable choices, and we have to reckon with the fact that they’re still people, with the unalienable rights and qualities thereof. Sorry if the Problematics aren’t constantly wearing a dunce cap and a list of all their crimes and this makes the media incomprehensible to you
These tags have passed peer review
Oh hey this could be about Animorphs
@potato-on-your-head #god yes all of this#and I would say FMA and Animorphs show different aspects of that#FMA shows these people who you connect with and laugh at and root for them#and little by little shows you the horrifying inhumane cruel things they did in the past#and you have to wrestle with that and figure out how to reconcile your first impression of them with this new information#whereas Animorphs shows the leadup to committing war crimes#Animorphs sets you up with these children whose hands have not yet been stained with anyone’s blood#and then leads you down the path they took to get there#you see and understand why they did it#even as you’re horrified by it#very interesting observations
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“FMA is bad because it portrays war criminals as sympathetic, likable people” bro that’s the point. That’s the whole point. That is THE point. Did you think Ethnic Cleanser is some kind of special category of person that gets separated away from all the Good People at birth? Did you think there’s some kind of barn full of Genocide Doers that only gets deployed into the general public during world wars? Did you think assholes who do terrible shit in real life are never charming or likable or capable of doing good things and helping people? One of the best parts of FMA is how we the audience realize that some of our core protags have made irredeemable choices, and we have to reckon with the fact that they’re still people, with the unalienable rights and qualities thereof. Sorry if the Problematics aren’t constantly wearing a dunce cap and a list of all their crimes and this makes the media incomprehensible to you
These tags have passed peer review
Oh hey this could be about Animorphs
@potato-on-your-head #god yes all of this#and I would say FMA and Animorphs show different aspects of that#FMA shows these people who you connect with and laugh at and root for them#and little by little shows you the horrifying inhumane cruel things they did in the past#and you have to wrestle with that and figure out how to reconcile your first impression of them with this new information#whereas Animorphs shows the leadup to committing war crimes#Animorphs sets you up with these children whose hands have not yet been stained with anyone’s blood#and then leads you down the path they took to get there#you see and understand why they did it#even as you’re horrified by it#very interesting observations
Reblogged terrypratchettappreciation
"Why are our people going out there?" said Mr. Boggis of the Thieves' Guild.
"Because they are showing a brisk pioneering spirit and seeking wealth and...additional wealth in a new land," said Lord Vetinari.
"What's in it for the Klatchians?" said Lord Downey.
"Oh, they've gone out there because they are a bunch of unprincipled opportunists always ready to grab something for nothing," said Lord Vetinari.
"A masterly summation, if I may say so, my lord," said Mr. Burleigh, who felt he had some ground to make up.
The Patrician looked down again at his notes. "Oh, I do beg your pardon," he said, "I seem to have read those last two sentences in the wrong order..."
Terry Pratchett, Jingo
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“'She called me a war criminal,’ I said.
‘She’s wrong,’ Cassie said.
‘Did what you had to do, man,’ Marco said. 'We all did.
<Jake, it was I who pointed out the possibilities to you,> Ax said. <I pointed out that the Yeerk pool aboard the ship could be drained.>
'Yeah, but I made the call. I pulled the plug. So why don’t you tell me: How is that prosecutor wrong? How is Visser One evil and I’m not? I’d really like to know that.’ I had intended it to be a rhetorical question. I hadn’t mean to sound so plaintive.
Cassie took it seriously. 'Jake, I’ve thought a lot about this.’
Marco rolled his eyes. 'Yeah, we know.’
'I’ve had to think about it because I’ve done the same things you’ve done, Jake. You were the leader, but if you’re a war criminal then so are we for following you.’ She shivered. It was cold and the breeze was gusting. 'I’ve had to make my own peace with things I’ve done.’
Despite myself I was hanging on her words. And despite myself I was remembering kissing her.
'Jake, you can’t…’ She took a deep breath. 'You can’t equate the victim and the perpetrator.’
'So as long as you’re playing defense it’s not possible to commit a war crime?’ I asked. 'That’s pretty close to just saying that the winner makes the rules because it’s the winner who writes the history.’
She grabbed my arm and searched for my eyes, forcing me to look at her. 'No, Jake, it isn’t. There are a lot of close calls in history, lots of wars where the blame is evenly split between the sides. This isn’t one of them. Before they came to Earth no human ever attacked a Yeerk. No human ever harmed a Yeerk. This one is clear: We are the victims. They made war on us.'”
- Book #54: The Beginning (Jake), pg. 90 (by K.A. Applegate)
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Anonymous asked:
hey so i just got into reading/rereading animorphs and i was wondering around where in your opinion does it go from like it’s ‘normal’ content or like topics to its darker more dangerous war-like content in the series?
There are not major tonal shifts in the series, so I honestly think what you see in the first book is what you get. 1990s humor, involuntary cannibalism, and all. If it’s not your cup of tea after the first 3 - 4 books, it’s probably not gonna become your thing later on.
The Wise Heroic Mentor is eaten alive on-page on page 20 of book 1 so I’m not sure what shift they were expecting.
So. I think, based on this whole discussion, that it depends on what one means by “tone shift.” If we’re simply talking about Bad Things Happen, then yeah that starts on page 20 of book 1 and doesn’t let up until literally the last page of the last book. However, if we’re talking about Bad Things Happen because the “heroes” caused them… That does change a lot over the course of the series.
Basically, it’s the difference between a horror/sci-fi/action series, and a series that makes you question the very nature of war and also ruins your ability to watch simple stories with clear-cut “good guys” and “bad guys.” I agree that there is extreme content right from the start, and I also agree that the grey-and-black morality doesn’t become a major feature of the story until later on.
It seems like, based on everyone’s takes, there are two shifts in the moral tone of the series:
1. The David Trilogy, and to some extent #19 and #23, change the stakes of the war and what the Animorphs are willing to do in order to win it. It’s the first time that the reader is excruciatingly, unavoidably uncomfortable with the heroes’ actions.
- In #19, Cassie murders a prisoner of war and the (defenseless, surrendered) guy holding that prisoner… and then meets and has to apologize to the sibling of the guy.
- In #20 - #22, RacheI and Jake premeditate the murder of a kid their own age whose life depends on them, and trap him in a fate that’s arguably worse.
- In #23, Tobias finds out that the Wise Heroic Mentor low-key caused the invasion of Earth.
2. The Final Countdown, from #45 - #54, shifts the Animorphs away from a defensive stance to an offensive one. In the process, the moral high ground pretty much disappears.
- In #45, it’s Marco breaking the kids’ own cardinal rule because he has to risk the death or controllerificaion of someone he loves and he’s decided it’d rather be his friends than his parents.
- #46 opens on a debate over intervening in U.S.-China politics that ends with Cassie saying “can we live with ourselves if we do this?” and Jake saying “can we live with ourselves if we don’t?”
- #47 is about how the well-meaning liberators can be every bit as shitty to the liberated as the enslavers themselves are.
- #48 (possibly) ends on Rachel actually going through with that murder of that kid.
- #49 involves them losing Jake’s family, because of a mistake Jake made.
- #50 fractures the whole team. #51 leaves the team fractured.
- #52 amps up the andalite threat to the point where the humans’ “allies” start to look worse than the yeerks.
- #53 introduces the sketchiest yeerk “ally” imaginable into the mix, and #54 opens with the “good guys” backstabbing the “bad guys” rather than the other way around.