#animorphs

[tathrin]

Sorry I'm going wild over @thejakeformerlyknownasprince's tags here: #cake #cassie/jake #this this this this this this this #for me “do you ship cassie/jake?” will never have a simple yes or no answer #because my favorite part of their arc is the way that her convictions (what he admires most about her) #eventually mean she can't follow him anymore #and the way his insistence on taking responsibility for everyone (what she admires most about him) #eventually means that when he loses her he loses for good #i love their relationship #especially the part where it ends

Look I love unconditional devotion love stories as much as the next person, but there's really something so deliciously raw about conditional devotion.

I have served you and I have loved you for decades, but I will not give up my principles for you. You cut out part of my heart and took it with you down that path that you insist on walking, but you walk it alone. Even when the bleeding, gaping hole you left in my chest kills me, I will not follow you.

[greghatecrimes]

HELP THIS IS SO FUNNY ALSJJFKEMSK the amount of layers to this... like an onion. thank you for sharing this, it's a masterpiece truly

[sarifel-corrisafid-ilxhel]

Tobias: <Okay, when were you guys going to tell me?>

Jake: "Tell you what?"

Marco: "That you look completely ridiculous when you start bobbing your head and stuff?"

Tobias: <Yes!>

Rachel: "I told them I thought it was cute, and that if they knew what was good for them they'd keep their mouths shut."

Cassie: "Her exact threat was that she'd turn their heads upside down if they made fun of you for it."

Tobias: <Ugh!! Why couldn't I have picked a less dorky morph?>

Jake: "Well I kind of said you should get something at the Gardens and you said... Well, you know."

Ax: <I assumed it was normal for the creatures of this planet to do bizarre things with their heads. Marco, for example, makes the strangest expressions when I- >

Marco: "OKAY WHO LIKES LOUD NOISES?! I KNOW I DO!!"

[kooldewd123]

Could you share something about Animorphs that you really enjoy? One of the books you like best, or a really good plot point, or a character moment?

I love hearing people talk about the Animorphs because when I read them growing up, I didn't have any book friends, but they're just SO GOOD

i have been unable to get megamorphs 3 out of my head for fifteen fucking years. granted, i could say that about most of this series, but mm3 has always been a particular favorite of mine. i think it might be my favorite time travel story ever. i mean, that cold open? cassie's a slave owner, jake's a fascist? i have thought about that scene so much. how the culture we grow up in shapes who we become as people. the series as a whole has led me to do a lot of self-examination of my own human and cultural biases (particularly through ax's outside view), but this scene has fundamentally shifted my entire worldview in a way that very few pieces of media have ever managed to accomplish.

and then the rest of the book is just fucking awesome.

from the second they wind up in agincourt, the entire book is just nonstop chaos in the best possible way. there are too many fantastic moments in this book to count. like c'mon, tobias catching an arrow in midair is one of his most badass moments of the entire series and it never gets brought up because the rest of the book is already so kickass. and then there's rachel absolutely losing her shit after jake dies, which never fails to cut through me every time i read it. her yelling "do you hear me, andalite? they killed your prince. do your duty" is permanently ingrained in my brain. it is genuinely one of the animorphs quotes i think about most often. then we have cassie finally snapping and threatening to bite a racist's head off, the haunting sight of the normandy invasion seen through ax's eyes, and, of course, tobias killing hitler, which is such an absurdly iconic moment that it almost doesn't bear mentioning. plus we end it all off with one of "killer with a conscience" cassie's most brutal moments talking to john berryman in his dying moments so she can erase him from the timeline. like, holy shit. this book is just animorphs firing on all cylinders from start to finish and i absolutely love it.

[urgentkettle]

100%

Demonstrating the rope dart (繩標; sheng2biao1)

[eng by me]

[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.

[victusinveritas]

[fanonical]

good news! you're an animorph! bad news! you didn't know about the two-hour limit and got stuck in your first morph, which is whatever this wheel lands on

[moonkent]

I wonder if the initial plan for the thought speak was that it could work whenever there is someone with thought speech capabilities to establish a link and both parties could talk along it? Like how in some countries, if someone calls you, it only charges their phone account, not yours, even though you're both using the connection to talk?

Because along that line, it doesn't make sense that, in the construction site scene, the kids worry aloud whether Visser Three can hear them, and Elfangor assures them that he can't "as long as you don't direct your thoughts to him". Thing is though, how on earth did Elfangor hear their quiet conversation when NO ONE ELSE (not the Hork-Bajir with their good hearing, not the Taxxons, not the Human Controllers, not Visser Three) heard them whisper? Unless it was because he was actually hearing them along a telepathic link (because presumably they would think the same words they said - I know I do).

So maybe that was how it was meant to work, and once Tobias morphed, he could then establish the same the telepathic link with Jake and that's how Jake would be able to send Tobias a thought speak message even when not in morph.

It would have been a very handy skill! Too handy, in fact, which is likely why AppleGrant decided to scale it back.

Errors, “Errors,” and Animorphs

So in a different post I ranted about how a tiny non-distracting unfixable difference between two shirts is not an error in Jurassic Park.  IMHO, a continuity gap is only an error if:

It draws attention to itself and distracts the audience

It could’ve been fixed pretty easily in-story

It makes character, plot, or setting nonsensical

Animorphs has continuity gaps of its own.  And I have opinions about what we readers do and do not count as “error.”  First, an example that’s clearly an error:

I wondered if Tobias had heard my thought. I concentrated. Tobias, can     you hear me?

«Yeah,» he said, «I hear you.»

“Did you hear my thoughts before that?” I asked.

«No, I don’t think it works that way.  You have to think at me for me to     hear.»

—#1: The Invasion

Tobias briefly hearing Jake thought-speak in #1 breaks the rules of the setting; several other books (#2, #23, #31, #33, #46) clearly state that it’s impossible to thought-speak if one is human and not in morph.  It’s an easy fix; the re-releases and audiobooks delete this moment, and the graphic novel makes Tobias unable to hear Jake.  It distracts the audience; I’ve gotten 5 or 6 separate asks over the years of people going “I was rereading #1, and the weirdest thing…” It’s an error.  I can’t say what happened behind the scenes — K.A. Applegate toyed with a thread that was later dropped, or decided to introduce a limitation for plot fuel at a later time.  But it’s an error.

Second, an example that I don’t think counts as an error:

I returned to my life, feeling strange and out of place. That night Jake came over. We went outside.

“I tried morphing the Tyrannosaurus,” he said. “Nothing. Didn’t work.”

“You could ask Ax. He may know why.”

Jake laughed. “Yeah, but even if he explains it, I still won’t understand it.”

—MM2: In the Time of the Dinosaurs [Cassie’s narration]

The kids not being able to morph dinosaurs outside of the Cretaceous Era makes a lot of sense in context.  The whole book series would fundamentally change if they could use T. rex — that would become heavily a favored morph for many of them.  It kicks off all kinds of plot questions that demand answers: Where do the controllers think the “andalite bandits” got dino DNA? What anti-dinosaur measures would they be forced to adopt? Would the Animorphs’ whole strategy change around having those morphs? How would Rachel feel about everyone but Tobias suddenly having a much stronger morph than her? Would they even bother with contemporary animal morphs afterward?

If the kids are morphing dinosaurs all the time after ~#18, then the series loses a lot of its uniqueness.  Applegate has said that most of the inspiration for the series was about trying to help kids understand what it would really be like to be inside an animal mind, with as many animals as possible.  That’s part of why so many of the plots hinge on giving the Animorphs an excuse to learn a new morph (e.g. #4, #17, #27, #47, #52) so that we can experience the coolness right along with them.  That’s why the war is explicitly about fighting for Earth, nonhumans and all (#7, #23, #53).  If it’s not a menagerie of six different critters — including one immigrant from space — rolling up to battle, then it’s not Animorphs. No, it makes no dang sense that sario rip morphs stop working once the rip gets unripped.  But the series acknowledges it, and it allows us both to have a unique animal-based story (dinosaurs! Heckin dinosaurs!) without ruining its own premise.

Third, one that I find fascinating because it’s kind of right on the margin:

“What I don’t get is why I have to be a girl wolf,” Marco grumbled.

“We had one male and one female,” Cassie explained for the tenth time. “If two of us morphed into the male, we’d have two males. Two male wolves might decide they had to fight for dominance.”

“I could control it,” Marco said.

“Marco, you and Jake already fight for dominance, and you’re just ordinary guys,” Rachel pointed out.

—#3: The Encounter

Later, Tobias’s narration uses the word “alpha” to describe Jake’s morphed behavior — howling and peeing to mark territory, challenging another wolf pack to protect his own.

There is scientific consensus right now, as of the 2020s, that the term “alpha” is an inaccurate descriptor of pack-lead behavior, and that dominance fights between adult males are almost nonexistent.  That although wolves usually run in a phalanx-like shape with one middle-aged male and female at the point, this isn’t the result of dominance fights but rather an effort to have the physically strongest wolves absorb blows from rogue prey animals or rival predators.  That the dominance fights observed in captive wolves in the 1970s were the result of an ecology error, putting wolves from rival packs into single enclosures.  Fox (1972, 1973) gave a reasonably accurate description of how wolves behave if you put a bunch of adult strangers in a zoo together: the young adult males fight, the winner of that fight wins first access to food, and the mate of the winner gets the most resources for her puppies.

However, time rolls forward, and advances like hidden cameras (and the resurgence of wild wolf populations) allow us to watch wolves without needing to capture them first.  Mech (1999) follows some such wolves around, and quickly realizes that dominance and submission aren’t nearly as important among wolves who chose to make a pack.  Stahler et al. (2002) figure out a better way to introduce stranger wolves in captivity, and get full cooperation among young adult males.  Nowadays drones and radio collars get 1000s of times the wolf data Fox had to work with, and reveal intense cooperation with little more than play-fighting among puppies.

The Encounter comes out 1997.  Mech publishes the first big takedown of the alpha concept 1999.

Did an error occur anywhere in this process?

No, in that Applegate presumably doesn’t own a Time Matrix and published a book based on the scientific consensus at the time about how wolf social dynamics worked.

Yes, in that the error is pretty distracting — I get drawn up short by it every time I reread #3, and I know others have too.

No, in that the error was corrected in the graphic novel adaptation.

Yes, in that the error is still present in the audiobook, and Michael Crouch delivers the moment about Jake being backed into a dominance fight with all of Tobias’s exasperated humor.

No, in that the error allows for some character moments, both silly (Jake peeing on trees) and sweet (Jake being ready to take on an entire rival pack alone, over a rabbit he doesn’t want).

Yes, in that the error takes away from one of the series’ most fundamental purposes, to educate kids about animals.

Anyway, books are great, science is imperfect, and I think the more we all engage with amateur criticism the more we’re all going to learn about what counts as an error in fiction writing with inspiration in scientific reality.

[chalkbird]

when you're a shapeshifter i bet letting yourself slowly fall off a rooftop only to turn into a bird and fly away feels soooo good

[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

[kooldewd123]

actually the craziest impact animorphs has had on me is that i never really got an urge to eat cinnamon buns from reading them BUT the phrase "the refreshing beverage known as vinegar" has forced its way into my head every other week for years to try and convince me it would be a good idea to chug a whole glass of it

[brothermouse-skeleton]

Animorphs books be like

Page 1: I am a child soldier. My every waking moment is defined by fear and paranoia. My dreams are full of unprocessed trauma. The fate of the entire world rests on me and my friends. I failed my geography test because I do not know the difference between Equator and Ecuador. Also, I'm really hazy on the difference between geography and geology. Again, the fate of the world rests on my shoulders.

Page 13: <Now THAT is a sexy monkey>

Page 26: *The dopest animal fact you've ever heard*

Page 27: Do you know about thermals? You do? Too bad, I'm going to explain them again.

Page 36: *fart joke fart joke 90's pop culture reference barf joke*

Page 40: Rachel kills someone with her bear hands. Not a typo.

Pages 3,15,16,25,26,30,33,37,40,44,46,50,55,56,57,60: TSEEEEEEEEEEEER!

Page 47: I willed my bones to melt faster. If there was a single bone in my body in the next ten seconds, everyone I ever loved of cared about would die an excruciating death.

Page 50: Funny alien thinks he's people.

Last page: *The gang goes to Burger King to avoid thinking about their war crimes*

[benevolentfalcon]

Most sci fi/fantasy: this civil war has been waged for a thousand years. These great houses have ruled the realm for eight thousand years. These two families have been feuding for ten thousand years. This single political institution has stood for twenty-five thousand years.

Animorphs: there is a war waged across the galaxy, waged by countless species. Entire planets have been conquered, entire species have been enslaved. Multiple genocides have been committed, even by the "good guys." It's been going on about, oh, thirty-two years now.