#animorphs

[carlandrea]

One of the things animorphs does very effectively is that the series gimmick (turning into animals) :

- is fantastic wish fulfillment for the kids reading it. Excellent daydream material

- ties in nicely with the series themes about violence

- it’s even educational! Seamlessly integrates Animal Facts into the narrative by making them extremely plot relevant

AND

- would genuinely be devastatingly powerful in the specific context of guerilla warfare

[lakesbian]

animorphs is funny because the kids spend almost the entire series turning into birds of prey to fly in virtually every scenario while complaining about how they have to space themselves out so it doesn't look suspicious that all these rare raptors are grouped together, about how birds of prey often have to do a lot of hard flapping work to fly in some situations they're not meant for, about tiring out easily, etc. to the point where it starts getting weird and confusing that they literally always use those bird morphs instead of thinking to turn into e.g. migratory geese for certain situations as per their general capacity for pragmatism. and then in literally one of the last books in the series some of them turn into geese to fly long distance and spend the entire time going "wtf this is great why the fuck didnt we do this earlier holy shit." and also the answer to that question is at least in part "one of the animorphs is just literally on all levels including physical a hawk that gets snooty about bird species he thinks suck and would have been really annoying about it"

[mapleandgingeroatmeal]

Ok you might be wondering, haha it’s funny to be an Animorph, Vic, but why the squid? To which I would reply that this Animorphs cover in particular features, I shit you not, a plot where an Alien ship has trapped the heros aboard while it tries to get them to play games.

[srvanguardconnors]

This is 1000000% accurate. I don’t wanna hear your fucking Hogwarts house. I wanna know which member of the Animorphs you most identify with.

society if Animorphs and Harry Potter swapped pop cultural impacts

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

I imagine you've answered this or something very similar, but what's an aspect of the animorphs story/universe that you think should have been expanded on in canon?

Personally I'm a sucker for world building so I always wanted to see more internal andalite and yeerk culture built up, but I don't think it necessarily would have made the story better

Yes! Things I want more of (an incomplete list):

Yeerk Peace Movement. How big are they? How do they operate? How widely known are they among the invasion force? How many yeerks (like Aftran) are ambivalent about their cause?

Auxiliary Animorphs. What do they do in their down time? Is James pretending to still be paralyzed; what's that like? Exactly how many are there? Do any survive, and if so what happens to them?

Taxxons. How literal is "Living Hive"? To what extent was them all becoming voluntary a top-down leadership decision, and what percent of them are in rebellion? What's their culture like? How much of their precarity is artificial vs. evolved?

Ax and Tobias. Obviously.

Crazy Helen, Shoe Lady/Fran, Spacey Gervais, et al. There are so many hints that Temrash 114's calm assertion that "no human has ever escaped" cannot be true (#6). What are they up to? Do all escapees end up so far on the fringe of society? Has anyone tried to launch a Hamee-style mass escape effort among the humans?

What else am I missing?

[andhumanslovedstories]

I truly enjoy how much Animorphs is like “here are our young heroes, each with a distinctive trope to fill in the group!” And then it makes you watch how the pressure of each person’s role grinds them to dust. And also they have homework.

[troacctid]

[brothermouse-skeleton]

Reading Animorphs has helped me develop a saying that I always try to remember when thinking or talking about war: Nobody, in the history of anything has ever won a war, they just lost less than the other guy.

Wild how that's what I got from the "funny animal cover books at the scholastic book fair", but hey, I'm not going to look a book horse in the mouth

I sometimes think about the letter KA Applegate posted for her fans who were disappointed by the ending of her series, and while I understand simply not liking how a story ends, I really respect her reasoning.

Like you can dislike the ending, that's fine.

But her reasoning is very interesting to read. And I really enjoy the framing of the anti war message.

[tacosouponthree]

tumblr, i need you to understand that i am not interested in animorphs, i do not really want to see animorphs content. i am delighted that there's a fanbase still having a good time but i am merely seeking vic michaelis dressed up as a squid thank you

[hugintheraven]

Cassie Animorphs really spoiled me for all future pacifist characters. Like, I didn't love her when I read the series as a kid, but as I've gotten older, I really appreciate that she's the moral center of the group, the one who's always trying to find non-lethal solutions, AND she regularly kills her enemies(and their human shields). Because she understands that if violence is going to happen, then keeping HER hands clean doesn't stop the violence. That sometimes, the only way to keep an attacker from hurting others is to attack them yourself.

And so she does the right thing. Always. And sometimes the right thing involves violence. And she regrets it, but if she's the only one who can save lives and that requires killing, she will. And she'll go right back to arguing that they should be looking for a path to peace while standing in the pool of blood.

Compared to how some series will have a pacifist character who relies on their friends to do all the violence while condemning them for it, or a series will find a loophole/change the rules to allow the pacifist to not kill when it would otherwise be 100% necessary, it was a nice practical situation to have Cassie dedicated to peace while being willing to kill to achieve it.

[cobaltegg]

so like, what if you were the last surviving animorph but it's been canonically established that you still had your best friend's DNA in your body

[fanonical]

animorphs: hey kids! did you know that war is hell animorphs: i am sure this isn't going to become really relevant in your lives here in the usa in the year 2000

[bluefox4]

A little late, oh well.

Book 6, The Capture, has a total thermal count of 0.

Thermal Count

So, having knowledge about Animorphs without reading it before, I know that the word thermal is a thing in the fandom. I figured that I'd track every time the word is said.

In The Invasion, the word thermal is said a total of 4 times. Three times in chapter 12 on page 87; and one time in chapter 13 on page 95.

[theartistaslisalee]

Back in MK11 I made a series of sketches called ANIMORPHS where I created the characters as various animals. Rather than following the Animalities I would find an animal whose name is close to each characters name. For example, Liu Kang would become Liu KANGAROO and Raiden becomes RAIDHEN and so forth. Now with MK1 I decided to update the art to fit with the characters current appearances and include one that previously hadn’t appeared in 11; I will not be involving the new Animalities as well. Here to start:

LIU KANGAROO

RAIDHEN

KUNG LLAMA

JOHNNY CAT

KENSHEEP

GERALLA

More is on the way so keep a lookout!

[johnandrasjaqobis]

how quickly do you think the leverage crew would spot the yeerk invasion