#just saw animorphs spoilers in the notes

[trashcanmoose]

Continuing from last time, here's more of my commentary on my Animorphs re-read! We're on book one right now.

Of course, a SPOILER WARNING for anyone who hasn't read the series.

Let's get into it.

Book One: The Invasion (Chapters 6-14)

I don't know what came over me right then. I had been so afraid. So terrified. But it was like something just snapped in my head. I couldn't just hide and watch, I couldn't. "You filthy - " I jumped to my feet. I snatched up a piece of rusted iron pipe from the ground and started to climb over that wall. I guess I just went crazy or something. It had to be craziness, because there was no way that I, alone, armed with a piece of pipe, was going to accomplish anything. The Andalite's silent cry made me hesitate. I felt Marco's hands grabbing at my shirt and pulling me back. Tobias and Marco held me down. Rachel put her hand over my mouth. I was trying to scream, or curse, or something. "Shut up, you idiot!" Marco hissed. "You're just going to get us all killed." "Jake, don't." Cassie put her hand on my cheek. "He doesn't want you to die for him. Don't you realize? He's dying for us." I shoved Marco and Tobias away angrily. But I was in control of myself again.

Okay, so it's a long part to be highlighting but this whole section makes me actually feel like I can relate to Jake on something, which I feel like won’t happen super often in this series from what I can remember, but I could be wrong. The anger of seeing something terrible happening that you can't stop? That's exactly what's going on here.

Then we have this, which felt necessary to share:

At the very end, he cried out. His cry of despair was in our heads. His cry will always be in our heads.

Okay, when I said last time I wasn’t going to highlight anything specific from Elfangor’s death? This. This I’m highlighting because it’s a major starting point in the Animorphs’ PTSD development and it would actually be really terrifying in real life.

And just a little more of Elfangor’s death, as a treat.

Okay not really a treat, more of a punishment I suppose:

The Taxxon-Controllers rushed forward and crowded around Visser Three. They seemed to be stretching up toward him, and then I saw why - a piece of the Andalite fell from the Visser's jaws and the nearest Taxxon greedily gobbled it up.

A second instance of Andalite-eating in the series already. That was fast.

Ready for something else that really gets my attention?

I heard a sound that was strange because it was so normal. It was laughter. Human laughter. The humans . . . the Human-Controllers - because that's what they were - were laughing, like they were at some kind of a show.

I know they’re human-controllers, so it’s the Yeerks making them laugh, but it still feels just as fucked up, and for some reason more fucked-up than the Hork-Bajir-controller laughter. There will be so many substantially more fucked-up things in this series though, and I think I’m ready.

Now for some slightly more random notes:

She slowed down just a little and began yelling and waving her arms. "Come on, come on, you - " And then she said some words I didn't realize Rachel even knew.

Rachel got that fancy swearing going on.

And on the topic of language:

Even in my panic it surprised me. They were talking some mix of their own alien language and ours. "Ghafrash fit nahar! I get! I kill!"

I want a Hork-Bajir-to-English dictionary, please. Can this be my next Duolingo language?

The two Hork-Bajir were coming after us, bounding like some devil kangaroos.

I just love this imagery. It’s hilarious to me for some reason.

Then we get back into some more serious stuff:

"Just save the head," the human told the Hork-Bajir. "Bring that to me and we can identify it."

This would be so damn petrifying to hear, especially when you know they’re talking about you.

Then we jump to later, after the construction site, at Jake's house. Jake and Tobias are there.

He was glowing. I swear, he was glowing. Not like he was radioactive or anything, I don't mean that. It's just that his eyes were shining bright, and his face was one big grin, and he seemed to be tingling with energy, bouncing like he couldn't standstill.

I love happy Tobias, and I hate how rare I know that becomes. 

He nodded his cat head up and down. Very weird to see, I can tell you - a cat nodding yes in a thoughtful, normal way.

The thought of seeing this is just really entertaining to me.

He just looked at me with those deep, troubled eyes - eyes I can now see only in my memory.

Ahhh! HOW did I never catch this foreshadowing before?

"Jake, listen to me," Tobias said. "It's just what happened to me when I morphed into a cat. The dog brain is part of your brain now. You have to deal with it."  <But . . . there's a dog in MY yard.> "That's Homer, Jake. You are Jake. You're just in a body copied from Homer's DNA. That's the real Homer out there. You put him out there. Focus. You are Jake. Jake."

A dog in MY yard. Early stages of learning to control the morphs are kind of hilarious.

"Bad dog," Tom said to me. "You keep quiet. Bad dog." And then he left. I was devastated. I wasn't a bad dog. Not really. I was just barking because some other dog was in MY yard. Bad dog? I was a bad dog? No, I wanted to be a good dog. I crept into the corner, utterly miserable. Tobias knelt down and patted my head. When he scratched me behind the ears, I felt a little better.

Jake’s reaction to being scolded as a dog is actually somewhat precious. Not sure why.

But as I was sitting there watching him munch toast, I just had this feeling. This feeling that said No, this has to be a secret. Even from Tom.

Why does this HURT??

A thing that was part horse and part Cassie smiled at us with big horse teeth and said, "Hey, kids."

Petrifying. Certainly nowhere near the worst of what I’ll read in this series, I know, but it would be petrifying to see.

"Let's take a vote," Rachel said. "I vote we try to live long enough to get driver's licenses," Marco said. "I vote we do what the Andalite said - fight," Tobias said. "You've never even been in a fight," Marco sneered. "You can't handle the punks at school. Suddenly now you want to kick butt on that Visser Three freakazoid?" Tobias said nothing, but a blush spread up his neck. "I vote with Tobias," Rachel said, giving Marco a dirty look.

This is the start of me being mad at Marco frequently, isn’t it?

Marco looked at me. "Jake. He's one of them."  "What?" "Tom. Tom is one of them. Your brother is a Controller." I swung my fist and caught Marco in the side of the head.  He jumped back and I swung again. But Marco was quick. He dodged my second swing, and I slipped and went down. Marco snatched the bedspread off my bed, threw it over me to tangle up my arms, and sat on me.  "Jake, quit acting like a stupid jerk," he said.  I was trying to grab him, but he had me pretty good. "Take that back!" I yelled.

Ahhhh! Not only can I 100% picture this scene; but this gives me all sorts of feelings. Marco’s intuition is on point but like, I’d probably be like Jake on this, which is to say, angry and in denial. It’d be a pretty hard hit to hear that someone you care about is the enemy.

"That was the coolest thing I've ever done in my life," Tobias said. His whole face was glowing. "I was riding the thermals." "What's a thermal?" I asked. "That's when there's warm air rising up from the ground. It forms this cushion under your wings. You can just float up there. Like a mile up! You just surf the thermals. You guys have got to do it! It is the best thing ever."

Oh, you asked Tobias about thermals? You’re about to LEARN.

Tobias's eyes darkened. "It's terrible when birds have to be locked up in cages. They should be free."  "Yeah, free the birds," Marco commented sarcastically. "I'll get the bumper stickers printed up."

If I had a car, I’d want this bumper sticker for Animorphs reasons.

"Suddenly the wimp is a hero," Marco sneered.

Marco is an asshole, plain and simple. I would’ve punched him by now.

This time Tobias didn't blush. "Maybe I just found something worth fighting for, Marco."

I want to give Tobias a hug.

"It's not exactly some video game, is it?" Marco said. "This is reality. You don't know anything about reality, Jake. Nothing bad has ever really happened to you. You have this perfect family. Like I used to have." His voice cracked a little. He never talked about his mom's death.

Okay yes, Marco is an asshole, but I still feel bad for him sometimes.

At that moment, something weird happened. I was looking at Tom, and he was smiling at me. But then his face kind of twitched. His head started to pull to one side, like he was trying to shake his head only he couldn't quite do it. For just a split second there was a look in his eyes - scared or . . . or something. He was looking right at me, and it was like some different person, some scared person, was looking out of those same eyes. Then he was back to normal. Or what looked like normal.

Ahhhh too many emotions! Tom has always been one of my favorite characters and I get all too many feelings reading this.

"It could have been anyone," Tom said. "But it might be the one who's my brother, Jake. I know he goes through the construction site sometimes. That's why I brought him here tonight. So we could either make him ours . . . or kill him."

Yikes. Okay, that's part two of book one! Sorry to take so long to write up the commentary. I'll try to be a little quicker with the next part! The next part should be chapters 15 through the end.

I plan to start a re-read of the Animorphs series for the first time in about 10 years. Since I’m sure there are plenty of things I won’t remember, I’ll be sharing my thoughts here. Wish me luck.

[tfw-no-tennis]

beast warhrerhbjgdsf

ok so at the end of the beast wars opening when they go ‘BEAST WARS’ the end sounds all garbled so its like ‘BEAST WARGHISHUDFBJKSFNS’ its really funny

so we’ve watched more beast wars!! woohoo

we've watched thru ep 21 now wrow

I continue to really like this show despite the cgi continuing to be painful

I like the characters and plots a lot...it feels pretty episodic rn but there's a throughline of character development and dynamic establishment that keeps things fresh

plus, new characters!! blackarachnia returned offscreen right after she left I guess, so she's here now...I like how she like immediately has her own agenda and isn't loyal to megatron (or tarantulas, who had a hand in her creation) 

and tigatron!! what a cool dude I love him. he’s so chill, and I like that he’s into nature and stuff, that's awesome. he is super epic and I feel like he’s saved the maximals sooo many times lmao. for some reason I feel like he’s eventually gonna be like ‘no I'm gonna go be one with nature sorry guys bye’ and leave the cast - specifically if we move the setting to space/cybtertron later in the show I feel like he’d stay on earth. that's just my hunch tho idk 

and airazor!!! she is super cool, I like her design a lot. cool bord lady...the maximals definitely needed someone who could fly other than optimus (which, why can he fly, he’s a GORILLA). and airazor is dope, I hope she sticks around

also the pods are a great way to introduce new characters and create conflict - all the eps w/the pods have had great tension, and I like that the good guys don't always win (like when the predacons got a pod to make blackarachnia, and later inferno)

ah yes inferno, that was a fun one - I liked how he was more ant-like and that translated into him trying to protect the pod, calling it ‘the colony.’ he’s so massive for some reason which is kinda funny. also ruth and I both hate that he flies around with his spinning ant ass. cursed 

also ruth implored me to include the fact that we’ve been calling scorponok a beta cuck bc he’s just such a loser hbvjakhdsfnaks

on that note its sooo funny to me that literally all of the predacons aren't really loyal to megatron, w/the exception of scorponok, who isn't very useful anyways. like, we start the show off with dinobot defecting like IMMEDIATELY and all the other predacons are trying to take over or undermine megatrons authority constantly. he doesn't seem to care that much tho which is funny. I feel like they spread out the megatron-starscream dynamic from g1 throughout like all the predacons lmao 

also megatron is so funnyyyyyy I love him lmao. he’s so dramatic, he’s like a theater kid but more advanced - like a classically Shakespearian play actor. 

and I find it funny that megatron like, barely ever leaves the base?? he just kinda chills out there and sends his underlings to do stuff, which they’re almost never successful at accomplishing. I feel like megatron has participated in like 3 fights this whole time and almost never actively participates in the plot, unless the plot is taking place at the predacon base. I wonder if he’s busy plotting or something...

also ruth and I both noticed that the characterizations kinda changed around a little from the beginning, like rattrap being less mutinous, optimus being more understanding, etc; which tbh seems to be a bigger Thing in 90s/2000s cartoons (that is, the whole ‘not having the main cast’s characterizations nailed down at the beginning of the show’ thing)

ok what else has happened...I find it super funny that there's been TWO episodes where megatron tries to reprogram a maximal in some way to give the predacons an advantage, and both times it backfired spectacularly. like, didn't he learn from the first time!? 

the starscreams ghost ep was WILD omg. also I saw that that ep was up next and I was like ‘oh we should watch the g1 s3 ep where starscream is a ghost bc there might be important context we’ll need’ and ruth was like ok fine and then we watched it AND IT WAS SO BAD. MY GOD

like, we watched a fair amount of g1 before starting beast wars, and I’ve watched a couple s3 eps (which, I know s3 isn't as well regarded as the pre-movie stuff, but I guess I must have watched some of the better eps bc they weren't like THIS), so i knew this ep probably wouldn't be very good...but we were NOT prepared for the level of badness we were presented with vbahdjkfhbahsjkdf

I mean maybe we were missing in-show context, but also we just had no idea what was going on the entire time basically. the entire episode was so wack. the only takeaway I had is that octane and sandstorm are dating

anyways enough about g1. the beast wars starscreams ghost ep was actually good, I missed g1 starscream, that iconic bitch...none of the predacons are quite on his level in terms of sheer legendary bastard energies

I liked that blackarachnia was like starscreams protégé, complete with her betraying him at the end lmao 

also idk if this is something we’re supposed to know from the beginning, but ruth didn't realize that beast wars megatron and op aren't g1 megatron and op and she was like :0 when that was kinda revealed this ep - idk if that's a spoiler or not but I already knew that going in lol 

oh and the part where op said ‘LETS MAKE THIS A DOUBLE DATE’ and busted dinobot out of the cr chamber? Gay™

oh my god and that ep where the maximals were stuck in beast form and like, reverted to their animal instincts was...sure something vbhajdkfsnbskjf that was a lot 

it was like a much more goofy version of the stuff in animorphs about the characters being influenced by their animal morph’s instincts (which was almost always presented in an absolutely horrifying manner)

but yeah we have 6 eps left in the season (!!!) which we’re looking to finish soon, I’ll probably make another post for those eps and s1 in general woohoo

[definitely-not-an-alb]

I think the best thing about TMA for me until now is that it’s the first time I’ve actually gotten into one of those unspoilable fandoms myself. Like that’s the main reason I started it, people kept reblogging stuff about it onto my dash and I was always like ‘??? this makes NO SENSE but it sounds rad and like ya’ll are having FUN and I appreciate that’.

LIke I’m generally the kind of person who does not give a single fuck about spoilers, in fact, I appreciate spoilers. Like I don’t care about A:EG AT ALL right now, and I’ll actually write to a friend who saw it today and ask her to spoil it so that I can have like, emotions about this and enjoy watching it once I get my hands on it. And I only ever got into Hannibal because I read a misfiled fic that spoiled me for every single plot twist of the show. There’s some fandoms I’ve never consumed any canon of, I just exist on the branches of them, consuming fancontent and getting the same kind of enjoyment out of them as out of my main fandoms. So I’m a weirdo and I start 90% of my fandoms because someone ‘spoils’ me for them. 

So not only do I Not Get Spoilerculture, it’s actively detrimental to my enjoyment of media.

But. There’s those fandoms. The ones that make no goddamn sense. I love them.

The SCP-Foundation was prolly the first time I experienced this with, but that one has the added bonus of literally never stopping it’s bullshit. Like you can’t get ‘into’ it, I feel like, it’s too much content, and to disjointed. There’s no canon, there’s not even several main narratives, it’s just An Organically Grown Purposeful Mess hive-minding it’s way, and on top of that it has like seventhousand different internal (some defunct now) subcultures and occasionally you find a relict from the 4chan days (the true horror of the archives). It’s a mess, I’ll never understand it’s writhing, weird mass and I love it.

Homestuck. I have no fucking clue what the fuck Homestuck is (a comic? a webseries? an eldritch abomination beaming content into it’s follower’s brains?) or what it’s about and there seems to be like 100 years worth of canon and it’s own language and logic and I have no intention of ever reading it, because otherwise I might understand the nonsense that crosses my dash and where would be the fun in that. Please, for the love of god, don’t explain homestuck to me, because that’s literally the only way you could make it boring to me.

Animorphs, is kind of the same, though I might actually read it at some point. With that one it’s more like ‘I know the themes, but I can’t name a single character or plot event and I have no idea what those words mean, I only understand the abstract interpretion at the end of your essay’. It’s fuckign great. Please don’t explain Animorphs to me.

And gonna be honest, TMA is kind of like that. Like I’ve seen stuff about it, and I mean text posts and character studies and explenations of plot points ffs, cross my dash for month now, and I’ve read them. And they sound rad but I honestly don’t understand a word? And that’s great!

It’s like, I see the words and I see the letters and they make sense individually, but then I read, and they do not make sense together. I should know what this means, but I do not. But it’s also not nothing, it’s not meaningless babble; it’s something, and there are people, somewhere, who know how to understand this, somehow.

I’m at around episode 40 now, and it’s like, with the very first episode, i picked up this threat and started unraveling it. With every episode, those jumbled words look more and more like the stories and explanations I know them to be. And it’s exilerating, way more then it is scary, to reach out into that darkness and grasp that line of explanation and follow it, episode by episode. I don’t know any of the deep lore yet, but I’ll get there. Let me know, let me be part of this shared hallucination that is Fandom.

Old Wierd Fiction, your Lovecraft and whatnot, always had this problem, I think, that the people writing the stories wouldn’t have picked up the threat. Their horror is less of the things out there, and more of watching their friends pick up the threat, watching them start unraveling it and wandering away from them. They, the writers, and you, the reader, they assure you, are not like that. They are Sensible, the Right Kind of People, who wouldn’t do this out of their free will. They only come into contact with the strange and dangerous through accident, or the choice of others (misguided idiots). They’d never pick up the book, never read the words they can’t understand, never talk to those people (the Wrong Kind of People). They don’t listen to the sounds in the darkness, they don’t find the other half of those barely eligible notes, they don’t ask the people talking weirdly like that and they mind their own, respectable business. They wouldn’t do this, they are the sensible ones, right?

I’ve never been very good at being the Right Kind of People, not in who I am, and not in who I am, and I have very little aspiration, if any, to be. And I think I’m not a very Sensible Person either.

I’m not stupid, of course, I wouldn’t open the obviously creepy door and wouldn’t touch the definitely cursed amulet and wouldn’t read the barely legible, antique book I found that says ‘Here Be Demons’ in Latin.

But I am, in the end, not very sensible. I lay awake at night not saying ‘that was just my birds.’ but ‘Was that my birds?’. I name the things in my nightmares (what a stupid thing to do, don’t.). I go digging for the rest of what those people are talking about, those barely legible posts on a website.

And in the end, this is save, right? It’s just fiction. There’s worse ways to fill this want-to-know-want-to-dream-awake-want-want, like a cult or something, right? It’s a podcast, some transcripts - I can always stop listening.