#specifically i need other horror people to get into animorphs because some things in this series

[rxttenfish]

its so so so so cool but a bit scary ironic wise that you’re reblogging animorphs fanart right after i got super into it and been telling everyone around me about it, cosmic animorphs sign LOL

COSMIC ANIMORPHS SIGN!!!!! this is an omen that everyone should Read/Re-Read Animorphs Now, Literally Now, This Is A Direct Order, Make 2024 The Year Of Animorphs

[atsadi-shenanigans]

Writer Interview Game!

Thank you so much for the tag, @gilded-glitter!

When did you start writing?

I was actually toodling around with that in elementary school. At some point, I think I tried to write Jurassic Park 3? (This was before that movie was a thing). Got about 15 pages into it.

Are there different themes or genres you enjoy reading than what you write?

I love fantasy and especially dark fantasy (with horror elements). Could do sci-fi, I think. And the romance angle is new, but I think I'm liking it, as long as I can build it slowly and they're both kind of dorks. And I read all of the above, and a BOATLOAD of non-fiction, mostly history, accidents, adventures-going-wrong, etc. I have three bookshelves, and one of them is entirely (and overflowing) with non-fiction.

Is there a writer you want to emulate or get compared to often?

Hmm. I loved Animorphs as a kid, and Jurassic Park. So anything in that vein, I guess? Got compared to Laini Taylor once and I almost choked on my own tongue. If anyone EVER comped my to Tamsyn Muir I would simply expire.

Can you tell me a bit about your writing space?

Literally wherever. First drafts are by hand, because I can take and deploy a notebook anywhere, anytime, with hardly a fuss. The majority of my fic is probably written during my lunch break at my work desk in the old spiral, college-ruled notebook.

At home, when typing, my desk is a catastrophe. Stacks of paper and other notebooks and knocked over figurines. Organization? I don't know her.

What’s your most effective way to muster up a muse?

Writing something fun? Listening to music a lot. I'm kinda a work horse, and I've trained myself to GO in about the time of a lunch break or the 10-15 minutes waiting for the bus. The small time increments really helps (not a big commitment, just whatev).

Are there any recurring themes in your writing? Do they surprise you?

Outsiders, monsters (both of those being the actual hero, I SEE YOU GUILLERMO DEL TORO). Rage against everything that hurt you but like, trying to find a way to channel that. Not super surprised.

What is your reason for writing?

I like it. It's fun! And it's REALLY fun sharing it; lets me connect to other people.

Is there any specific comment or type of comment you find particularly motivating?

Literally anything. I'm just tickled somebody took the time to do it (god knows I don't always have enough spoons).

How do you want to be thought about by your readers?

I've never really thought about that? (see above, re: outsiders). Never got noticed much in my olden fandom days. So uh, the thought of being perceived vaguely makes me want to crawl under the desk???

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

Dialogue and fights.

How do you feel about your own writing?

I mean, like any writer, I waffle between "Holy crap, this is my best work yet!" and "Throw it in the bin! IN THE BIN!" One thing I've learned is to have fun with it. Because NOT having fun makes it a mind-melting slog and you get burnt out. I try not to take it all very seriously.

When you write, are you influenced by what others might enjoy reading, or do you write purely for yourself, or a mix of both?

Ehhh, more towards what I like and hope it finds an agreeable audience. I know better than to chase trends. I write long fiction, and that is an UNDERTAKING. The only way to consistently see it through is to like what you're working on, so I definitely need to care enough to carry the bitch through.

Tagging: @bardnuts @britonell, @sasseffects @britosia @hiboudeluxe @shewhowas39 @allymcfee and @mutualcombat

[earlgraytay]

I agree with all of this, with one caveat: a lot of it depends on the genre you are working in, and the conventions of that genre.

Writing a spy in a Le Carre-inspired historical story or a modern thriller- which is what OP's advice is geared towards- is going to be different from writing a spy in a high fantasy, a children's spy adventure story, or a spy-flavoured romcom. Some genres run on more hopeful conventions than others, and writing a spy in a more hopeful genre requires you to bend reality to the genre's conventions.

Like, to take one example that's been in the media a lot lately- Spy X Family is a Fake Marriage comedy about, well, a spy building a family. Twilight, the main spy character, is a cynical, calculating bastard with an awful childhood... but he's also a genuinely decent person when it comes to his "family", doing things to protect them that would get a character in a proper spy novel killed.

And it works, because Spy X Family takes place in a different world from ours, with different rules. The rules of a (...romantic?) comedy dictate that both leads are good people you could fall in love with. The tension in Spy X Family doesn't come from "will the spy stuff succeed"-- the betrayals Twilight engineers are played for laughs, and you know that, for the story to continue, the mission has to go on. The tension comes from comedic tension and release and from the relationships between the characters.

Twilight still follows some of the rules that OP laid out.... but the rules are adapted to fit in a universe that runs on laughter and love, and not in dying alone in the dark. There's just enough of an edge to his character that he's believable as a spy, but he still fits within the conventions of the romcom.

Similarly, a spy story aimed at children ages 8-11 is usually not going to be able to grapple with the darker side of human nature in the specific way OP laid out. You can get surprisingly cynical in a children's book, don't get me wrong, but middle grade fiction has some conventions that you can't ignore if you want parents and schools to give your story to Impressionable Young Folks. It has to be at least a little bit didactic- you have to teach kids something- and a lot of the time, the lessons have to be relevant to kids' lives.

Which means that, for your story to be palatable to the audience who's buying your books, the main character has to have genuine friends, so that they can have normal kid friend problems that they work through in a way that teaches kids something. Which means that you can't write a proper spy in the way that OP laid out, because spies don't have real friends.

There are stories that can do both. The Animorphs series does this really well- on a granular, book-to-book level, these kids were friends before they became [functionally] spies. They have normal kid problems, including problems with how to treat each other, which are resolved in a didactic way. But the overall story of Animorphs is a tragedy, and these friendships get... incredibly messed up over time, in ways that look more like what you laid out.

But most kids' stories about spies just aren't going to be able to grapple with the full horror of what's going on. And that's okay... provided that you know that, and work within the confines of your genre. If you're writing a kids' adventure story with a spy coat of paint, you need to know that that's what you're doing... and you need to consider why you want to write about spies, specifically, to do that.

On Spies (Personality)

“Intelligence work has one moral law—it is justified by results.”

-John Le Carre, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. (10)

[curiosity-killed]

hello! what are your top five (or more) hualian fics? I can't just keep rereading your fics so I desperately need some recs! c:

adsjhlk anonnn ;A; ah okay so some of my faves pulled from my top tier of bookmarks (which is wildly subjective and depends upon the day and mood but oh well. here we are):

(under cut bc this got real long)

you'll know, you'll fall by mme_anxious

Rating: E

Summary:

“We talked about it,” Xie Lian says, hearing the frustration in his voice. “I want to go to the next step.” “It's okay if you don't—” Hua Cheng started. “I do! God, I want it so much. I don't want you thinking that I don't. I—I think about it all the time, San Lang.” Hua Cheng looks pleased, the tops of his cheekbones flushing to match his red shirt, and his thumb strokes the back of Xie Lian's hand. “What do you think about, gege?” -- Xie Lian seeks a lesson in desire. And another. And another.

My notes (apologies for this one it’s drawn straight from my bookmark notes lmao):

INTIMACY IS WORTH THE VULNERABILITY! TRUST IS REAL! LOVE EXISTS! HOLY SHIT!!!

i might be tearing up a little bit bc of the abundance of love and care apparent both between hualian and in the writing of this fic. it's. A Lot.

Animal and Real by etymologyplayground (but also all of EP’s hualian fics because they’re the fics I most reread ^^’)

Rating: T

Summary:

Ling Wen and Shi Qing Xuan establish the communication array, and then Ling Wen leaps into the well and disappears. Shi Qing Xuan walks over and sits in front of Xie Lian and Hua Cheng. "So," she says. "Dianxia. Crimson Rain Seeks Flower. Fancy meeting you here."

--

Book 1 ended on a cliffhanger. I fell off.

Alternate summary: "Xie Lian's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" Slowly Animorphs Into "Xie Lian And Hua Cheng Have A Nice Day, Actually"

My notes:

I like...don’t...actually....have words for this LMAO but basically I love, love, love Xie Lian getting to be hurt and hurting and Hua Cheng finding different ways to comfort and help him and actually talking about things (like Xie Lian accidentally hurting Hua Cheng’s feelings and them actually TALKING ABOUT IT) and just hnnnn yeah. this is like my go-to fic haha but I heartily rec all of etymologyplayground’s fics for tgcf (also many mdzs/cql fics but i am apparently behind in reading those orz)

le renard apprivoisé by hilarions

Rating: G

Summary:

If you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others, and hearing it will call me like music out of my burrow. You will understand that the things that are yours are unique in all the world. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.

My notes:

Ah gosh. Hua Cheng equating himself with a starving, injured wild thing that doesn’t deserve care or compassion, Xie Lian telling him he loves him the fox anyway, the nature of dessert and love hnnn it’s a good time

Panopticon by @pengiesama​

Rating: M

Summary:

Jun Wu has built a very splendid home for Xie Lian, with gifts and friends and wondrous sights just for him. He will be very happy there.

Xie Lian won't take this house arrest lying down.

(Inspired by the book/movie Coraline, by Neil Gaiman.)

My notes:

Just an absolutely delectable balance of suspense and mild horror and love and aaahhh sometimes I forget that parts of this aren’t canon bc this is basically accepted as my canon of Jun Wu. Also “I was taller than that” will never not be my favorite thing

Tame to Fortune's Blows + Something Foreknown by crowdedcafe

Rating: M and T, respectively

Summaries:

For eight hundred years, Ruoye is Xie Lian’s only companion. It tries its best to ease some of his hardships, to lessen the misery he feels. But Ruoye is only a length of silk, and sometimes its love simply isn’t enough in the face of Xie Lian’s suffering.

Or, Ruoye loves Xie Lian when others don’t know how.

(TFB)

E-ming is born with a hole in his heart and an emptiness in his soul. Through centuries of hearing stories about Hua Cheng's beloved, E-ming grows to love the man he was born missing.

(SF)

My notes:

Just really lovely character studies essentially of Xie Lian and Hua Cheng through the lens of their weapons. personally I think they’re best read together but they are each standalone, canon-compliant fics 

ALSO:

Innocence Died Screaming, Honey Ask Me I Should Know by @eponinemylove​

Rating: T

Summary:

Hua Cheng puts a finger to his temple thoughtfully. He asks, "Who wants to tell me what the deal is with all these damn petals?"

The communication array goes completely silent, a feat almost in itself. Hua Cheng muses silently that gods can, apparently, shut the fuck up—they just choose not to. How convenient.

It takes a moment before Ling Wen manages to speak up. "Your Highness," she says carefully, "what did you say just now?"

"These white petals? There's got to be a hundred of them. The man just—oh yeah, there was a man—exploded into them. What's up with that?"

There's a long stretch of silence where it feels like all of Heaven is holding its breath.

Finally, Ling Wen responds. Her voice is clipped as she asks, "What do you know about the Four Calamities? Specifically, White Flower Mourns Massacre?"

Alternatively: the one where Hua Cheng is a martial god, Xie Lian is a calamity, and nobody is at all what they seem.

My notes:

AAAAAAHHHHH. GOD. THIS FIC. it would be embarrassing to admit how many times I’ve reread it (also I don’t know. late night decisions are not meant to be recorded in the ledger of memory) but it’s so fucking good. The characterization, the threads pulled from canon along with the deviations and alterations and the suSPENSE i am McLosing It. pls god someone come yell abt this fic with me i love it sm

I have such low Fic Reading Energy but. this babe. i see an update email and start vibrating like a gd electron.

Some other authors I trust with my heart and soul: @xihe-jun, merthurlin, atomicmuffin, uhhh I’m definitely missing people orz

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Just saw Animorphs is getting a movie. Any thoughts?

I never keep track of media news, so asks like this are the only way I learn anything about movies.  I went out and did some research and...

Listen.

I’m going to try to go into this with an open mind.  I’ll read all the reviews and Internet comments when it comes out, and I might even go see the thing in theaters, if theaters are a thing again by then.  I work hard not to be completely consumed by my pessimistic nature about stuff like this.  I’ve been wrong about movie adaptations before--maybe I’ll love it and watch it a hundred and fifty times and finally revel in the Animorphs Renaissance I (and they!) deserve.

However.  First problem I foresee, the last two things that were made by Scholastic were Goosebumps and Clifford the Big Red Dog.  I am not optimistic about what that portends for a book series best known for gore, body horror, war crimes, moral ambiguity, and the grim realities of how there is no such thing as a just war.  Offhand, I can’t think of a way to make a G or PG live action Animorphs movie that is...good.  Maybe if you bump it to PG13, we could talk (admittedly, the guy in charge of Picturestart has been involved with a lot of blockbuster YA movie adaptations, all of them with serious problems in my opinion but not always, like, ruinous problems, eg: Hunger Games, Divergent) but even then, they’ll probably end up cutting back on a lot.  Okay, I’ll live if they cut the body horror (I’ll complain, but I’ll live) but it is a series about war.  There’s only so much you can cut to get under a rating and preserve the actual point of the story.  This is the short version of my long ramble about how an animated Animorphs series would be better and more functional in basically every way.  Which brings me to...

Second problem I foresee, how much are these fools planning to adapt????  On the one hand, I think you could very competently turn The Invasion into a full length movie without, A, a huge amount of dull filler breaking your pacing into tiny pieces, or, B, losing any important plot or character beats.  On the other hand, I absolutely do not trust movie studios and I’m concerned that their desire to have Ax for the Alien Value will make them over-ambitious and try to do multiple books.  Don’t do multiple books.  The Invasion is plenty of plot for a movie.  If you desperately desperately want to shoehorn Ax in there (I don’t think you should do this!!!!  Scholastic, are you looking at my post?  Are you there, Eric Feig?  It’s me, Starlight.  Don’t do that!  And if you HAVE to do that, call me to check your plans!), you can just pop him on Elfangor’s ship and have an emotional beat about Elfangor’s death, or else have Elfangor give the kids an exact location and make it their first Morphing Caper to go get an alien.  Don’t do multiple books.  One book.  If this movie covers more than one book, I am going to be Very Upset, and I will without a doubt have reason to be Very Upset, because it will be a mess.

As some just...general concerns: 

I’m concerned that they’re going to make everyone a one-note character.  Specifically, I’m concerned that this is going to be a movie starring Protagonist Boy, also featuring Clown Boy, Nice Girl, Mean Girl, Alien, and Cautionary Tale.  

I’m concerned that they’re going to strip back the moral ambiguity to the wire, which is to say “everyone but Tom is A Bad Guy, no complications needed.”  I know everyone gets a lot of jokes in about the Oatmeal Book, but that book and others like it make the requisite legitimate points about the issues with fighting Controllers.  Those are real people!  Make sure you mention it!

The Yeerk Pool scene at the end of Invasion is an outstandingly good moment to underline that.  Hell, you can dredge up the later Yeerk Pool scene of the temporarily free Hork Bajir and humans forming a wall of bodies to buy the kids time to run, shove that in there (because we’re not going to do multiple books, right Scholastic????).  Foreshadow the absolute shit out of it with Tom and the other Controllers (hell, if you gotta, have Jake discover why Chapman is voluntary when he scopes out his office), and then come out swinging with the free hosts protecting the kids with their own bodies, and you’ll be able to minimize the “gore” rating while preserving the “body snatcher horror” aspect.

I’m concerned they’re going to overplay the humor.  These books work because they understand how to balance humorous scenes with serious scenes, and how to employ dark humor during dark scenes, and when there shouldn’t be any fucking jokes.  If I hear one joke during Elfangor’s death scene, I’m suing.

Basically, I’m concerned about these books getting the Percy Jackson treatment (or, apparently, the Artemis Fowl treatment), by which I mean that I’m worried they’re going to make an objectively terrible movie, which will be righteously hated by the fans and critics alike, and then they’ll go “okay, these books are poison, we will never adapt them into anything again.”  Which would be tragic on a lot of levels, most of all that it will mean I never get the animated Animorphs series we all deserve, ideally featuring one episode per book (except the Invasion, which obviously deserves a double-length pilot) and directed by, I dunno, Noelle Stevenson or someone else who will give us the bisexual Marco and gender-confused Ax and deeply traumatized Tobias I crave.  I would trust the She-Ra team implicitly with the Animorphs.  Not so much the companies that gave us The Maze Runner and fucking Clifford.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

If you could change anything about the Animorphs series (structurally, not really narrative-based), what would it be? Book rotation, writing styles, removal (or inclusion?) of filler books, things like that.

I’d probably start by hiring younger and better-representative actors, better writers and directors, better editors, better camera crews, more in-character costuming, more convincing CGI, overall less slapstick… Okay, just about everything about the TV series should be started over from scratch, preferably with a humungous budget like Game of Thrones or Westworld has.

A few specific ways I’d change AniTV, if I was given creative license and a theoretically-infinite budget but late-1990s special effects:

Have Tobias regain the ability to morph way sooner.  Once it finally happens a good 20 episodes in, the writers have an excuse to just have Tobias be “morphed human” like 99% of the time onscreen, the same way that Ax and Visser Three are.  I’m totally fine with the decision to use Christopher Ralph more and That Fucking Hawk less, because Christopher Ralph can actually act and doesn’t look at the camera as it moves.  What I really don’t understand is why it took 20-odd episodes to get to that point, when the writers could’ve kept the nothlitization plot and also kept a human actor (who also presumably was cheaper to feed and house than That Fucking Hawk) for most of Tobias’s appearances.

Include more scenes (and episodes) with all six kids.  There were apparently budgeting constraints and timing issues that prevented some of the kids from appearing in some of the episodes… but a good 80% of the show is just Jake, Marco, and Ax or just Cassie, Rachel, and Jake.  We rarely get full-group scenes, I don’t know if we ever get full-group missions, we lose track of Tobias for weeks on end (see point 1) and we sadly don’t ever get to see the full-group dynamic outside of a couple stray Barn Conversations in the second episode and The One With the Oatmeal.

#&@^%*# develop Rachel’s character better.  I get that it’s hard to show Rachel kicking butt if all they have is the same 30 seconds of lion stock footage to play over and over again while the guy playing Chapman does a heroic job of pretending to react, but there are other ways to bring out Rachel’s Xena-ness outside of the battles.  AniTV Rachel does get some development that canon-Animorphs Rachel does not — I love that moment with her giving that pendant to Sarah, for instance — but we really lose her role as the kickass action hero and instead get her mostly reverting to gender stereotypes.

Lean into the creepiness of the controllers (and ditch the flashlights).  Opinionated Animorphs Episode Guide argues, and I couldn’t agree more, that the single biggest problem with the TV series is that the yeerks just… don’t feel like much of a threat.  They spend most of the battle sequences running away from repetitive stock footage of lions, failing to notice housecats standing six inches away from them, or waving flashlights dracon beams around while never actually shooting at anyone.  For all that they’re not intimidating, the controllers are sinister: the creepiness factor is UP TO ELEVEN in scenes like Melissa talking to her dad over dinner, Visser Three stopping by to check on Jake’s parents in the middle of a banquet, and all the Sharing sales pitches.  Even just Tom and Melissa skulking in the mall together while Jake third-wheels manages to come off as genuinely disturbing because of the uncanny valley way that the actors badly imitate human behavior.  I’m not sure how to make an action show if there are no big open battles, just that the yeerks would feel a lot scarier and the battles a lot more urgent if we had a little less action and a little more Sharing recruitment.

Expand the role of the escaped yeerk hosts.  That little cell of hactivist ex-hosts that Tobias bumps into in the series finale has SO MUCH POTENTIAL (they’re the inspiration for Matter Over Mind in my own fics) and yet we only ever see them decipher Elfangor’s MacGuffin Disk of Shitty Parenting and then promptly get recaptured by the yeerks.  What are they doing?  How are they coping with newfound freedom?  Do they still lie to their families about what happened, or have they tried to tell the truth?  What insider information on the Yeerk Empire could they use to help the Animorphs?  How do they find new members?  What are their views on the war as a whole?  I could write an entire novel… Oh wait, I already did.

Just make the kids sixteen or seventeen.  Actors that are over eighteen have an easier time working full-time while not having to worry about child labor laws or academic schedules or whatnot.  I get that.  I don’t know that it would be possible to cast actual 13-year-olds in the roles, and — given the way child actors are treated — I don’t even know that it would be ethical.  However, there’s no need to insist that the Animorphs are freshmen in high school while also having actors in their mid-twenties play the roles.  Just let them be young adults.

Have Ax and Visser Three be mostly occluded most of the time.  Assuming there’s no making a realistic-looking andalite on a TV show budget, especially not in the late 90s, I think it’s not the worst idea in the world that Elfangor’s entire appearance consists of backlit silhouettes and extreme close-ups.  Any time the camera draws back enough to show more than an arm or face for Ax, I tend to squeak in horror or amusement, and I assume most people are in the same boat.  Just let the andalites’ presence be implied off-screen, something we get hinted at but never fully explored.

[aion-rsa]

Animorphs: A Panel By Panel Comic Breakdown of Adapting a Scene From The Visitor

https://ift.tt/39BH5q6

Reading the first Animorphs graphic novel was a delightful shock. Not only had one of the greatest sci-fi novels for kids finally returned in a new form but it was also extremely faithful to the original book. Every scene was lifted from the novel and almost all of the dialogue was kept intact. A few small changes were made to remove dated pop culture references or to better fit the visual medium but overall it’s easily one of the closest adaptations of any piece of media out there.

So how is it done? Taking a whole novel and turning it into a graphic novel isn’t a smooth process, especially for a sci-fi series like Animorphs that features a ton of internal first-person narration.

Covering the adaptation of a whole book would need a book of its own to cover so instead artist Chris Grine gave us detailed insight on adapting a specific scene from the second Animorphs novel, The Visitor. Armed with an original copy of the novel, we really got into the nitty gritty of changes, Rachel’s stink face, the horrors of morphing, and even got a few never before heard pieces of info about the upcoming graphic novel.

(For anyone who wants to compare the comic pages to the original novel, the scene these pages are adapting are pages 33-36 of The Visitor.)

DEN OF GEEK: Before we get to these specific pages, I want to talk about the process at the very beginning, which may impact how these pages are handled. So you sit down, you’ve got a copy of The Visitor. Do you first read through the whole thing and figure out how you want to tackle it and what you may want to throw out?

CHRIS GRINE: So here I finished the first Animorphs graphic novel. Then I moved to the first book in this other series I’m working on. While I’m doing that, I’m listening to the audio book for the second Animorphs book. I’m listening to podcasts and I’m doing my research thing. It gives me time to be in my head while I’m trying to think of the different scenes. It’s nice that I didn’t have to just rush right into the next book because I just had time to give it more thought.

That’s basically how I do it. Just as much time as I can to be thinking about it beforehand.

Once I saw the finished comic pages I sat down and really compared them to the book and that really helped illuminate what you have to do for every page of this graphic novel. You’re not just reading a page, drawing a page, you’re taking in the context of the whole scene. Like here, it’s raining but as I’m reading the book it only mentions it’s raining after the scene is done.

That’s how a lot of these things go. I’ve got to really read the whole thing several times before I can even start penciling, because sometimes they drop the warnings after the chapter.

So once you’ve read the original novel several times, do you print out the pages and make notes? You mentioned you also have a spare book to make notes in. 

Well, basically I go chapter by chapter, and since the chapters are anywhere from five to 10 pages or so, I’ll make sure I have a full idea what the environment is. Like in that particular scene she’s going to be walking down the street that’s kind of a boulevard. There are guys that are bothering her in the car, it’s probably a storefront type thing. That’s what I had in my head, that there’s alleys, this is definitely a small downtown. I get that in my head. Then within the book I take a highlighter and I’ll highlight all the dialogue, just the dialogue.

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I’ve got the book next to me while I’m penciling the pages and I’ll jot down little bits and pieces of the dialogue. So at least I know where I’m at on the page. I start doing panels, putting in dialogue, and try to see how the page goes. I know a lot of people probably give it a lot more thought than that, but I just go and then if I hit a wall, then it’s pretty easy to just back up and come at it from a different angle. But that’s the general idea of how I do a lot of it.

In the book, this is a very internal scene for Rachel as this guy is chasing her. She’s having a lot of thoughts about it but in a graphic novel you’ve got to sell most of that in a look. When you read, say, a paragraph of internal thought do you think about how you can sum that all up in a look? How do you make sure it conveys all the thoughts that can’t be put on the page?

Well, with Rachel, it’s pretty easy because I love giving her a stink face. She gets pissed. I really enjoy giving her that little snarl on her face. But if Marco says something that’s obviously out of line, all she’s got to do is look at him and he shuts up. We don’t need half a page about why Marco is so immature and why he needs to keep his mouth shut. Like you said, it’s all in that look. I try to do that as much as I can because it cuts down on word count. 

So let’s get to the morphs on the second page where the guy chasing Rachel says he’s not gonna hurt her. We see the elephant in the shadows and then she jumps out. In the original book, there’s a whole description about Rachel thinking about morphing and the whole process of morphing is described. Here though you cut it down to that one shot of the tusks in the darkness. When she jumps out and is that big half morphed version of herself, it’s very accurate to the description in the books. Was the half morphed image the most important thing you wanted to convey here?

Yeah, I knew that that was going to be important, but I was trying to think of it more like a movie scene. If you’re watching a movie, some dude runs and follows this girl who you know is going to kick his ass. If you’ve read the earlier book you know that she’s not messing around, but he follows her into a dark alley.

Then she goes way back into shadow where you can’t see her. He thinks he’s got the upper hand. I was trying to think timing wise that he can’t see her. He thinks she’s scared and she’s hiding from him. There’s that moment where he thinks he’s definitely in charge. Then she just explodes out of there and he drops his wallet and basically turns into a baby and runs away. I played up the comedy after that. That part wasn’t in the book but I definitely wanted to make him look like an idiot right after that.

I was going to ask about that. In the book, he’s just scared. He runs away. Here he talks with his buddy a bit and they both drive off. Adding that comedic element and making him look like a complete fool, that’s such an interesting change to me. And you give him someone to talk to, because again, you don’t have that internal monologue.

I knew even before I started the book, that this was one of the scenes I was going to have to change. What you don’t know, because you’ve only seen these pages, is the opening of the book where it’s those two hunters that are shooting at them? The same guys.

They’ve had a really bad day. They’re shooting stuff and the bird show up and take the dude’s gun and throws it in the ocean and take the other guy’s drink. Obviously they’re not drinking beer like they were in the book, they’re drinking soda. His buddy spills his soda all over his good shirt. His buddy is constantly going, “It’s not right for the birds to be stealing your guns,” so they’re really mad.

Then I picture the next day, they’re trying to pick up chicks out here [in this scene]. They’re getting ready to have another bad animal day. I just love that. It might be an ongoing joke. Just these two idiots are always in the wrong place at the wrong time, and animals are constantly attacking them. They just don’t know why. So that’s what I was tying it together with.

Having them be 16 probably since they’ve got a truck but not very smart either, it kept the situation in this scene the same but it wasn’t quite as scary.

Obviously, the original books took kid readers seriously and these graphic novels are doing the same thing. But with a visual medium where you’re depicting a real world horror instead of sci-fi horror, you don’t want to completely terrify the kid readers.

And book two, there’s a lot of emotional stuff going on with the cat and with Melissa being just destroyed basically. She thinks her parents hate her. Then at the end with Chapman in the construction site where he’s reduced to a sniveling, crying person laying in the mud, begging. It’s awful. There’s just so many heart wrenching moments in the story that I thought playing up some comedy when I could, or add just a little bit more, especially at the beginning, would maybe lighten it up just a little bit.

Hopefully that’s the consensus after the book comes out. 

On the final page of this preview, we see Rachel morphing back. That image of her morphing back from elephant feels like it’s right out of the original covers of the books. When you draw morphs, are you taking inspiration from those covers, especially the mid morph faces?  

Yeah, absolutely. In the first book with the first two or three morphs, I tried to make sure I showed as much as I could. Then it was easy to do a shorthand later when they needed to morph because it could almost be like it was off camera. You don’t have to see it. Sometimes it’s more exciting if a tiger just bursts out of somewhere and you didn’t see it happening but you were expecting it anyway. It also saves me time and saves page count.

But there are a few scenes at the beginning of the second book when they’re birds and they’re morphing back. There are like two or three pages of just them morphing back and it’s awful (laughs). So I think people are going to get their fill of body horror pretty quick.

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Fans have always known about the body horror but in recent years there have been all these memes about the mid morph face from the covers. Now it seems like the graphic novels are leaning right into that.  

It’s still my style, but I still try to make them as terrible as I can. There’s a description in the second book when they’re turning back from birds and one of the description is like, “There’s teeth. The beak is becoming teeth.” It’s awful. So I was like, I’m drawing that for sure. That sounds terrible and that’s definitely going in the book. So I try to have as much fun with them as I can.

Is there anything else you can tell us about the second book? I know it’s not going to come out for a while, but anything that you’re excited for the fans to see?

The first book felt like, if it was a movie, it was a popcorn blockbuster summer movie, right? Lots of big set pieces and stuff. The second one feels smaller and more intimate, and there are a lot more opportunities for character development, or just some conversations. I’m so proud of some of the scenes where I felt like I really got to nail those scenes. Like I did justice to those scenes. 

The scene with Chapman towards the end? It’s terrible. He’s crying and he’s a mess. Since it’s been raining all day, it’s not really mentioned in the book, but that construction site is just mud. He’s falling down in the mud. So he’s also half covered in mud and he’s crying and he’s just a mess, and Visser Three’s just being a total ass to him. 

Those are scenes I was really looking forward to doing, but when I got to them, I slowed way down. I was like, okay, this is an important scene and I got to do it. I know it’s not really telling you anything new about the second book, but I just felt like the stakes were raised on more of an emotional level. That’s something that I was really excited about.

In case you missed it, make sure to read the first part of this interview with Grine where he more broadly talks about adapting the challenges of adapting the books and what’s to come in the future. The Visitor (Animorphs Graphic Novel #2) is now up for pre-order on Amazon.

The post Animorphs: A Panel By Panel Comic Breakdown of Adapting a Scene From The Visitor appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

What don't you like about #47? Not hating. just curious.

Short opinion: I’m just gonna leave this here.

Long opinion:

Seriously, though, Isaiah Fitzhenry’s journal cuts off mid-sentence.  Because we know he died in the act of writing it.  Oh, and by the way, he’s lying in the middle of a battlefield, bleeding to death, while writing those words.  This book clearly didn’t think things through nearly well enough, or perhaps assumed that its child readers wouldn’t notice.  Trust me, I noticed.  When I was eight years old* I had this ridiculous mental image of this dude lying there in the middle of a freakin’ Civil War battle writing in his notebook with his pen.  Now that I know a little history I have this EVEN MORE RIDICULOUS mental image of this dude lying there in the middle of a freakin’ battle with a quill pen, an ink pot, a sheet of non-waterproof wood-pulp, a pen knife, an ink blotter, and some kind of writing surface AS HE BLEEDS TO DEATH IN THE MUD.

There are several other utterly ridiculous leaps of logic that this story is forced to make in order to achieve the journal at all.  Why the heck even bother adding in a character named Jacob?  Given that he died before meeting anyone from the Fitzhenry family who actually survived long enough to procreate, one can only assume that Jean Berenson has read her grandfather’s great-aunt’s dead brother’s journal enough to go want to name a kid after this dude, and yet she has never once mentioned that fact to Jake.  Otherwise it’s just a weird coincidence, one which violates the One Steve Limit.  

On the subject of dead brothers and Berensons (too soon?) it’s interesting to note that this book continues the motif of eldest siblings kicking the bucket that runs throughout the series.  Rachel and Tom are the obvious ones, as I’ve noted, but there’s also Elfangor, Saddler, Arbat, Aldrea, and now Isaiah Fitzhenry.  If I had to guess the fact that Isaiah has a younger sister and then dies tragically is no accident.  (Although that all could have been avoided if he’d just gotten to a friggin’ medical tent instead of whipping out his complete set of writing supplies in the middle of a battlefield to continue his vaguely-racist memoirs…)  It’s also a nice connection to that chilling moment at the beginning of the book where Jake dumps a box of Tom’s things in the trash because he has pretty much given up on the idea of saving his brother at this point in the war.  

However, even the way that Jake ends up with the journal is kind of weird and logic-defying.  His Grandpa G tried to leave it for him as a gift (which makes sense, given how obsessed that kid is with military history) but somehow or other it got lost in the mail because Jake is only now finding it mis-labeled in some box in the basement.  Which makes sense how?  Why the heck didn’t it come up during that whole sequence where Tom and Jake were looting all their great-grandpa’s stuff looking for medals and daggers?  For that matter, why didn’t Jake’s grandmother just give it to him after the funeral, given that #31 specifically mentions she made sure to pass along everything that her father wanted Jake to have?  Assuming it did get lost amidst the chaos of the funeral and the Attack of Moby Cassie and Tom ending up in the hospital and all, how on earth did it end up in a box in the basement among a bunch of Tom’s old school papers?  

It also has to have traveled a heck of a ways to make it into Grandpa G’s possession in the first place.  Someone has to have found it on the battlefield, presumably delivered it to Isaiah’s sister, who then passed it down to her children’s children, who then thought it would be a good thing to hoard and only pass on to the one great-grandchild who happened to prove himself worthy.  For that matter, did Jake read the whole thing sitting there in the basement?  If so, why does he only react to the first chapter?  If he didn’t read the whole thing in one go, does that mean he’s carrying it around in bird morph until he reaches the hork-bajir valley?  Again where it defies logic, and all to achieve a plot device that could have been conveyed so much more easily with good old-fashioned flashbacks.  

And, well, as Cates has pointed out, no discussion of this book would be complete without commenting on the GLARING RACISM in the parallels between the past and present day.  The idea of escaped slaves fighting back against the people who once disenfranchised them in both the 1860s and the 1990s would be interesting and all… But in the process this book compares hork-bajir, who Marco says have “the intelligence of your average second grader” (#51) to African American individuals.  Not only does it draw a parallel between white individuals and humans while also drawing a parallel between black individuals and non-human characters, but it does so in a way that suggests that the black individuals are comparable to simple tree-dwelling primitive aliens with no written language or ability to comprehend complex ideas.  If I think too much about this accidentally horrific metaphor (which I try not to) then it could arguably even re-cast the hork-bajir, with their simple but intuitive reliance on “head voices” (#13) and “Mother Sky’s flowers” (Hork-Bajir Chronicles), as Magical Negro stereotypes.  

The racism is far and away the biggest problem with this book, because RACISM, but there are also a ton of flaws in the characterization and plotting that just bug me.  Jake’s personality is all over the place in this book, most especially when he acts like a total jerk to Toby when Toby (very logically) points out that sixty-odd walking Salad Shooters can’t just duck and run every time the going gets tough the way that six morph-capable kids can.  One of Jake’s great strengths as a leader is his decisiveness, and he spends huge chunks of this book quibbling about the right course of action in an utterly unJakeish way.  Oh, and don’t get me started on the fact that during the final battle HE FORGETS THAT TIGERS KNOW HOW TO SWIM.  Exactly how hard did you get hit over the head by Visser Three’s tentacle-morph, man?  

Toby herself has a couple of downright bizarre lines in this book, including “The trees whispered something about new friends who would take up our cause.  Human friends who would join our fight… I see things, Jake.  Many things” (#47).  Say what?  I thought it was Aldrea who was secretly an andalite, not Toby.  The hork-bajir like their trees, sure, but they also view the trees as a natural resource that needs to be carefully cultivated, not as sentient whisperers sent by the gods to warn about impending Trekkies.  Also, no offense to the assorted Carpenters (Did Richard Carpenter have a younger sibling?  I bet he did.) but why the hell do the trees consider their arrival important enough to bother telling anyone about it?  It’s not like three civilians with no natural weapons are exactly going to turn the tide of a battle that is otherwise being fought by battle-hardened shapeshifters and walking razor blades.  In fact, I’m kind of disappointed in Jake and Cassie for not simply morphing polar bear and herding the dumbasses back to civilization by force before someone could get killed.  I’m 99% sure they contributed nothing to the battle outside of distracting the poor schmucks who had to worry about saving their sorry butts from the aliens.  

Frankly this book feels like it accomplishes with a sledgehammer what #31 already did with a scalpel.  It’s about how Jake is descended from this long line of badass warriors.  It’s about how war is never pretty and the reality has no room for glory amidst the unspeakable horror.  It’s about realizing that you have no control over who lives, who dies, and who tells your story (X).  It’s about struggling to be a good person amidst cosmic events where there are no real clear answers.  It’s a story about families and countries tearing themselves apart over the fight for freedom.  All of which were already covered thoroughly in #31, in a book that actually advances plot, character, and narrative arc.  

Part of what’s so frustrating is that, unlike #48, this book actually has several moments of decent writing.  I love the image of Jake starting to write “Tom” on that box of his brother’s things only to cross it out and write “trash” instead.  The sense of impending catastrophe is huge in this book, because even before the yeerks find the kids’ identities there’s building suspense around the idea that war, children, is just a shot away (X).  The scene with Raines firing four shots in the length of time it takes Samson to reload is freaking powerful.  The parallels between the American Civil War and the Yeerk-Human War are right there when you look for them.  There’s some great social commentary on the fact that in reality the Union was almost as racist as the Confederacy because that was the poison everyone was drinking back then.  There’s the most epic open battle in the whole series, one that is decided through the Animorphs��� home team advantage rather than the yeerks’ shock and awe tactics.  

If only the author had decided to leave out the Logic-Defying Journal of Racism, this might have the makings of a really good Animorphs book.  

*Side note: when I was eight years old and reading this book for the first time, I had no clue what a “Trekkie” was and could only assume at the time that it was some type of specialized camper, since the book never actually specifies what the term refers to and never even mentions Star Trek by name.  Reading it as an adult, I cringe at this condescending portrayal of sci-fi fans in a novel written for sci-fi fans.