#david animorphs

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

If david was like 10 years old, was less of creep and jerk to everyone, but still did his canon actions. How messed up, would the Animorphs be? Or would it be like the canon versions.

You know how if you spend enough time around kids that age, at some point a 10-year-old boy will run up to you and say something like "Sex! Puberty! Testicle!" and then stare at you waiting for a reaction? And you know how if you're an adult, this is obnoxious but not threatening or shocking? Because you know that kid might know what all those words mean, but probably couldn't paraphrase the sentence "puberty involves development of secondary sex characteristics such as the testicle" to save his life?

Obviously the difference between ~14 and 10 is much smaller, and obviously it feels far vaster when you're 14 yourself. But either way, I think that David's creepy behavior would come off less the way he intends, more like that 5th grader who picks up the habit of yelling "Orgasm!" in adults' faces.

Same goes for most of his worst behaviors — they might not be met with leeway or forgiveness, but with contempt. He tells Jake that Jake is acting like a dad? Jake doesn't find that disturbing, but just typical little-kid temper-tantrum behavior. He keeps attacking birds (including Tobias) in morph? That's not threatening, that's him being a brat trying to show off for the big kids. He keeps yelling about how he wants to go home? Marco's not likely to give him tough talk about how sometimes your parents are controllers and you just gotta suck it up, and Cassie would probably be trying to comfort him.

What that means for the team dynamic, I'm not sure. His attempts to bully them would be ineffectual, their attempts to rein him in would be a lot gentler, and they might be able to keep him on the team as the world's worst kid sidekick if that resulted in an equilibrium.

[solsticat]

tfw the child soldier starts child-soldiering a little too hard

[whiteratnothlit]

animorphs is anti blonde propaganda and im thankful for it. no more please.

[stagebeetle]

(Inspired by @greeknerdsstuff ‘s post)

[fanonical]

never forget that one of the animorphs books straight up implies that David The Seventh Animorph murdered a child

[teaveeobsession]

I love to play and draw

[brothermouse-skeleton]

What if Rachel didn't kill David? I know it's already pretty ambiguous if she did or not, but what if she really did spare him?

When the world learns of who she was, all the battles, all the rage all the fury, Rachel the Warrior, Rachel the Brave, Rachel the Killer, there's this one rat who knows the truth. That she's just a scared little girl who did what she had to.

He hears what people say about that David guy, what a coward, what a jerk, what a monster, what a dirty rat. He can see that it's all true. And yet he's one of the precious few who was given mercy by Rachel the Merciless, not because he deserved it, he didn't even want it. She gave him mercy because under all the blood and violence, Rachel was kind.

But he can't tell anyone. Because who would believe The Rat?

[shernb0t]

i dislike blonde people

[caseyhughes]

jake, rachel, tobias, marco, cassie, david do you guys like my au

[sn-4ppl3]

some quick ones b4 i go to bed (that shitty looking pendant is a ww2 medal of honor,, oough book 31,,, youre so underrated it hurts)

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

you've given me too much animorphs inspiration (animorspiration?) and I'm now drowning. help. I wrote like half an essay on The Tragedy of David and how it's not really about whether he deserved a chance to change but the fact that they just straight up did not have the luxury (or tools) to give one. I think that while rachel's only regret is not giving him a clean kill, at the same time she would have done almost anything to be able to throw david at a competent adult role model and watch him face a nonlethal and constructive consequence for his actions.

I think a lot of things about david, too many for the little shit. he's such an asshole, he's cruel and sexist and so fucking unpleasant to read about I can barely imagine the horror of actually being in a room with him. but he's also just fucking thirteen. I want to grab him by the scruff of his neck and send him to therapy. even better I want a story where his family lives and it doesn't magically make him a decent person, he's still awful because he's goddamn david, and *then* he's dragged to a good therapy program and has a real incentive to change. also I guess the child soldier thing would be happening too in the background or whatever.

I couldn't agree more, with all of that. The decision to nothlit him (and kill him) is excruciatingly well-justified in canon. He's so despicable that I often want to reach through the page and throttle him. He reminds me of myself when I was a spoiled, damaged 13-year-old sick to death of being The New Kid at every school.

Maybe I was never quite that misogynistic. But at 13, I thought Light Yagami had the right approach to ethics. I thought the world would be better off if people would just shut up and give more power to the government. I was naive, I was awkward, I was a rich white kid with more experience being excluded than befriended and my social skills reflected that. Oh, and did I mention my obsession with snakes and horror comics and trying to shock adults? Because that's the root of my personal desire to stomp David's face in.

He's a normal kid, with normal problems, with a normal amount of teenage self-centeredness and temperamentalism. And the other Animorphs have basically no choice but to kill him to get him off their team. Because he's not ready for the tremendous soul-crushing responsibility they're forced to take on, to keep their species alive.

You know that old joke, about including exactly one normal athlete on every Olympic team so that we can really appreciate just how astoundingly good all the Olympians are? That's David, for the Animorphs. He's not superhumanly selfless, and he's the only one on the team for whom that's true.

[partially-thought]

I kind of saw it coming that they would have to dispose of David in some way the moment they turned him into an Animorph. But I would not have thought they would have to take it into their own hands.

My hope was that he dies in combat with Yeerks, but after the end of the second book that no longer seemed like a possibility.

But even then I hoped that he would be killed in a combat accident with Rachel.

What I did not see coming was the deliberate, cold blooded assasination that was the trapping him in Morph and sending him to some rock island. You could argue that they did not kill him, but as Rachel said herself - his life ended right there.

So yeah, I think this is the critical moment of the series. Before this, it could have been a children as heroes Series as any other - I mean, there already were some storylines of PTSD and morality, but that in itself is not necessarily absent in other childrens literature.

But a decision as heavy as this - even if it was the (IMO) correct decision in their circumstances, is unprecedented in other childrens Media I have seen.

[whiteratnothlit]

david crashout 1998

[please-help-this-little-lesbian]

So, I recently started watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. The politics of the show are very interesting to me, especially considering I just finished reading The Animorphs series. Now, I know they aren’t directly comparable, what with being two different mediums (books vs a cartoon), being created at different times (Animorphs the 1990s, ATLA 2005-2008), and (slightly) different age ranges (ATLA 7+, Animorphs middle grade (specifically 9-12, though I’d argue it generally skews older.)) But both are very anti-war and anti-imperialism. Animorphs was the first series in that age range I encountered that truly goes “hard” with its themes. It asked a LOT of tough questions, and its protagonists were truly morally gray in the end. One of my favorite scenes in the series is where the villain is on trial for war crimes, and his lawyers bring up that the protagonist is ALSO a war criminal. The protagonist is acquitted by The Hague because it was self-defense. Incredible. But, back to ATLA.

An episode that really stood out to me was “The Puppet Master,” particularly Hana’s fate. Now, if I’m being completely honest, I was never afraid of Hama, and honestly, I didn’t blame her. I’m not saying she was RIGHT, she was torturing innocent people who had nothing to do with her original imprisonment, but I could understand how she’d operate on all Fire Nation citizens being a monolith. Honestly, I was a little disappointed that her arc ended with her being locked up again, the very same thing that drove her to blood-bending in the first place.

It really made me think about “justice,” particularly the western view of it. I feel like the west, particularly America (ATLA, though inspired by Asian culture, is an American made-TV show), justice is viewed as a punitive and retributive thing, where the ultimate goal is to punish the fact that a crime was committed, rather than address why, how, and the humanity at the heart of the situation. Wim Laven says, in an article for LAProgressive, “No criminal trial is motivated by healing or truth. Trials are about fact finding and fact exclusion,” (2021). Healing is a part of my problem with Hama’s story. She is someone who has suffered from immense trauma in being kidnapped, imprisoned, (probably) tortured, and lost not only her home but everyone she knew. Yes, continuing the cycle of violence doesn’t help you heal from it, but sometimes it feels like it’s the only option. Again, I’m not saying what Hama did was RIGHT, but to her it was something, something to deal with the pain and anger. And putting her back in the very same conditions that fueled this pain and anger doesn’t feel like justice to me.

Let’s take it back to Animorphs since I brought it up for a reason. There is actually a similar situation portrayed in the series. In book 20, The Discovery, we’re introduced to a character named David. He recently began attending the same school as the protagonists, and came across a piece of technology he shouldn’t have. This leads to him being targeted by the villains of the series and triggers a fight between the protagonists and antagonists. In this fight, David’s parents are captured by the villains, and his home is destroyed, leaving him at the mercy of the protagonists. They debate whether to leave David to be captured by the antagonists or induct him into their group. (The villains are parasitic slugs who can crawl into people's brains and take them over, and the protagonists can morph into any animal whose DNA they acquire. Because they take over brains, you have no way of knowing who is and isn’t actually a parasitic slug, so the protagonists must keep their powers a secret from everyone they know. Yes, IK Animorphs is weird. The point is, the slugs know everything about you, so either way David is a risk.) They ultimately decide to give him the power to morph and induct him into the group, but this ultimately ends up being a mistake. David repeatedly endangers the group, breaks their rules, almost betrays them to the villains, and tries to kill multiple of the protagonists. The group has no choice but to do something with David, but what? They don’t want to kill him, so they do something that’s honestly far worse. They trap him in rat morph (you can only stay in morph for two hours before it becomes permanent) and drop him off on a secluded island in the middle of nowhere. This haunts the protagonists for the rest of their lives. Later, through fever dream plot reasons, David comes back and begs to be killed. We never find out if he is or not. A key part of David’s story is that at the end of the day, he was just a traumatized, troubled kid whose life was turned upside down, and EVERYONE ended up suffering for it. Animorphs does a really good job of exploring the tragedy of war, and it's because of the focus on how war creates conditions where violence is the only option because it is easier to commit to a cycle of revenge than work to improve conditions so that war doesn't have to be inevitable.

I'm not saying Avatar: The Last Airbender doesn't talk about this, or that it has to! It's for a younger audience, I don't expect or need the protagonists to commit atrocities! But it's interesting that they introduced a character that is villainized for this, and disappointing to me. The situation isn't black or white, Hama is sympathetic, and we understand why she's doing this, but the writing presents the only solution as punishing Hama for the harm she caused instead of allowing her to redeem herself.

I'm not saying that's an easy answer, either. The gaang are kids, in Fire Nation territory where they're subjected to Fire Nation laws, and just freed her victims. With the upcoming invasion, they couldn't just take Hama back to the Southern Water Tribe. But why is locking her away the only solution? Why didn't they at least consider the route where they prevented her from committing further harm by taking her out of the situation? Maybe they ask her to join the invasion with the promise she'll stop blood-bending. Maybe they promise to break her out later. I'm not saying everything would be perfect, but letting Hama return to her home, surrounded by people who would help her heal, takes away the desire to do harm, does it not? This is a situation where punitive justice is NOT the only answer, yet it's presented as if it is. I wouldn't even be as upset at her fate if the narrative addressed this wasn't the only way, and the tragedy of this being their only option at the moment. But it doesn't because it sees it as right.

This also frustrating because Zuko IS given the benefit of tragedy and restorative justice. Now, I haven't finished the show yet (I just finished 3x11), but from what I've seen so far, I'm assuming Zuko redeems himself by not only working to heal HIS trauma but the trauma he caused OTHERS. And that's GREAT! I LOVE Zuko, he's my favorite character. I'm not saying he doesn't deserve a redemption arc. He DOES. But it's frustrating that he, a member of the royal family of an imperialist nation, who's directly harmed the gaang amongst other crimes, is given this opportunity while Hama, a victim of said imperialist nation, isn't. Yes, you can chalk it up to Hama admittedly committing far worse a crime than Zuko has, and Zuko being a child while Hama is an old woman, my main concern is still the optics here.

ATLA has a philosophy of actions defining character, and while this is fine, and I agree with it, I don't think it's given quite the amount of nuance it needs. Motivations for actions are just as important. Hama's arc is messy and nuanced, but that isn't explored nearly enough.

If we can all agree that Zuko is a victim who deserves a second chance, then why isn't Hama?

[fanonical]

animorphs au: what if david wasn't Like That

[teaveeobsession]

Last post for today I wish I had someone to YAP to guys like and subscribe if you love to yap