#david animorphs

[solsticat]

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

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

okay i need to appeal to somebody with greater knowledge and greater ability to crowdsource: i’m trying to find out what happened to the real saddler. and everyone is telling me they found his body at the bottom of the elevator shaft but nobody has given me a SOURCE and i feel crazy cause i swear 22 just does not say that anywhere. is my pdf defective? do they say it in a later book?

So what it says in #22: a doctor tells Saddler's mom "Your son's heart stopped. We were rushing him to surgery, but in all honesty he was not going to make it... Then, as they were taking him up to the O.R., something happened with the elevator. It jammed or... or something. The nurse and doctor who were with him seemed to have been knocked out. When they came to, the elevator was working again. They rushed your son to surgery where he... he opened his eyes!" (p. 104-105). The doctor waves his hands and protests about Saddler being uninjured a while longer, and then sends him home.

When Rachel explains that they're trapping David in morph, she says "David's life would end, just the same. And so would 'Saddler's.' Eventually, they would find the real Saddler's body, and then they would know, at least for them, there was no such thing as a miracle."

Judging by what we know of David's morphs and character, I'm guessing it's something like:

He waits around until Saddler's in the elevator (or triggers it by fucking with the heart monitor)

He pulls a fire alarm and/or emergency shutdown

He gets into the elevator as a roach and uses cobra venom or hospital drugs to take the doc and nurse down

He acquires and morphs Saddler

He takes the elevator to the morgue and dumps Saddler there

He gets in bed and waits for the doctor and nurse to recover

But we don't know what happened to the real Saddler. I've seen the theory that David morphed lion and ate him, or that he stashed him in an unused room. I think people refer to Saddler getting tossed down an elevator shaft because he disappeared inside an elevator, not necessarily being literal. (Like, how would David access it?)

[whiteratnothlit]

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

[cawcawdraws]

For halloween ive decided to make some little animations of scenes from books that scared me as a kid. Hoping to make more but excited i finished one. This one is david from the animorphs. This scene scared the shit out of me as a kid. Theres a ton of good david scenes for his books, but untimately the tv glow seemed fun to try animating for this one.

[fanonical]

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

[stagbeetleturnedloser]

(Inspired by @greeknerdsstuff ‘s post)

[shernb0t]

i dislike blonde people

[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.

[please-help-this-little-lesbian]

So, I just finished Animorphs book 21, The Threat, and Jake's reaction to discovering that David killed Tobias is fascinating. Particularly, this line from page 64:

"I’d gone into lots of battles against Hork-Bajir, Taxxons, Visser Three himself. I’d always gone in hoping to win. But I’d never gone in consciously hoping to kill."

Jake's use of the word "win" is what stands out to me the most. We know that in past books, Jake has killed. We also know that he's not afraid to sacrifice people to stop the Yeerks. In book 19, he gave Marco the order to kill Cassie if she was a controller. So to me, this says that up until now Jake has defined his wins as stopping the Yeerks from completing their goals. Not necessarily killing them. But lets go back to the line: "But I’d never gone in consciously hoping to kill."

The use of "consciously" is interesting. It implies that Jake is aware that people will die as a result of his actions in this war. He isn't happy about it, and when possible he will seek the least violent solution to his problems. But he knows that death is just collateral damage in this war, and has accepted it.

Before he discovered Tobias, he had Ax get Rachel. He knew the only possible solution to David's treachery was killing him, and he couldn't do it. But it had to happen so he let Rachel handle it. But then he discovered Tobias.

So, as someone who is reading these books for the first time, I think this moment is going to change everything. I think is the moment where Jake and the rest of the Animorphs change their entire decision making process for the rest of the war. He has now realized that there is no room for nuance and the benefit of the doubt. From now on, I believe he is going to do whatever it takes to protect his team and win this war, damn the consequences. There is no longer any room to care. I truly think this is the moment where we are going to see the kids go from brutal to Brutal. War is hell, and trying to fight the fires with water is pointless.

[the-worst-bracket]

Round 3B

[dogboyboyshorts]

aughck. the return feels yet again. i just had to do an evangelion screenshot redraw about it, of course

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Ok love your thoughts on Animorphs tv series pacing. Hear me out: episode 1? Starts with *David’s* POV finding the cube, being attacked by Visser three and “rescued” by the animorphs, and given morphing power. Episode 2 starts with book 1 and progresses normally through the series from there

I think like “Machete order”, this really reframes the slow escalation of paranoia, and in episode one when these strangers show up and are like “Yes david you have to abandon your parents, they can’t be saved” you’re like “fuck these guys”

But by episode [redacted] of meeting david in animorphs pov, youre like “DAVID YOU MORON THEYRE LOST TO US GET IN THE FUCKING CAR”

And Jake goes from episode one “David, face reality, shit’s bad and your parents are a loss” to episode two Jake “of course i can save Tom”.

I love this, because it's a great way to throw the viewers right into the story. In the original series, it was necessary to give us some kind of origin for the Animorphs — it's a superhero story convention, it's important in a kids' series, it gives out exposition nice and slow, and it sets the tone of the books. However, there are a lot of things like "touching this box lets you turn into animals" and "the enemy are sea slugs who live in brains and eat in a cavern under the school" that you can simply show on TV without having to tell anyone. Concepts like "andalite navy" and "kandrona" can be conveyed with a few shots, so there's no need to have a scene where Elfangor explains them to Jake or brain-dumps them to Tobias.

This adaptation would probably lean more toward YA than middle grade, because it'd require trapping and/or killing the focal character, but I think YA would make sense for an Animorphs adaptation. YA series are more able to depict violence and body horror than children's shows, and Animorphs isn't Animorphs without realistic violence and body horror. There's also a lot of potential for making the conflict between David and Jake even more complex than it is in canon, if we don't see why Jake is the leader, only a bunch of his close friends insisting that it's for the best.

[whiteratnothlit]

this fucking song is stuck inside my head

[5rcane]

[fanonical]

rachel: jake rachel: i'm just saying rachel: if we really want to solve this little problem rachel: we could just eat david

[dr-reids-fidget-toy]

uhh yeah