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tfw-no-tennis · 3 years ago

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the animorphs continues, david trilogy style

here we are...we finally arrived....the david triology

I did remember a good amount of these books from when I read these when I was like 11. but I also forgot a lot an hooooly shit

WHERE TF DO I EVEN START. so that shit slapped obvs. it really felt like the series has been leading up to this - all the characters have had to make really difficult no-correct-answers decisions, and it leads up to this - the ultimate shitty situation with absolutely no good, clear solutions, and everyone gets to contribute to the awful conclusion!

one thing that really stood out to me is that with David's inclusion as this kind of ‘outsider’ within the group, even though none of it was from his POV, we still get a huge sense of the animorphs being an extremely well-oiled team, who all know and trust each other very well - especially w/Jake as the leader - Jake has to make a lot of decisions in these books but the other animorphs always listen to him

this all probably didn’t help David, who was already thrown into a completely crazy situation, and who now has to deal w/this group of kid superheroes who work very well together. it also doesn't help that David doesn't really try to find his place on the team

anyways I love how much wild shit happens in animorphs always. like they try to steal the blue box as birds and then David chases them off w/a bb gun? and then they end up in this huge alien showdown with visser 3 and his troops in David's house? batshit

also the hilariously 90s part w/the email...lmao. like its the 90s so there's no way to shut off the automatic email remotely, they HAVE to go to David's computer, and they also can just unplug it...lmao they should've just taken out the phone lines tbh

also I completely forgot about the whole plot w/the world leaders meeting and the yeerks and stuff. that really served to ramp up the tension and also make it obvious that David was an outsider as he consistently fucked things up then played it off

also KAA did a masterful job of making David juuuust a little sympathetic in book 20, but still Off enough that you're like ehhhh I don't know about this guy...then he goes full awful creep and it becomes obvious that there’s no way they’ll be able to let him stick around in any capacity

the bit where David kills the crow for no reason is the first Real indication that this is gonna go seriously wrong. but even before all that, his conversations w/Marco gave me like, school shooter vibes

these books are full of some REALLY good tension. the whole end of book 21 was so tense - they've been gearing up for this mission for days now, and they’ve had to do some crazy stuff to get where they are, so the realization that it’s all a trap is completely chilling

and then when David tried to betray them to visser three...the gravity of that decision is unmistakable, because then the yeerks would find out that the animorphs are (mostly) human children, and they’d even know who they are, and that would be the end

I loved the part where David tries to act like he was just setting up an ambush w/his betrayal to the visser, and Jake immediately has everyone play along - and they do. earlier in the series someone - probably Rachel or Marco - likely would have ignored Jake bc of how slimy David was acting, but they've basically become a highly efficient military squad at this point, and it was a perfect slow slide into that over the last 20 books, and now is the time when the reader kinda realizes this (at least for me)

even if they don’t agree w/Jake and think they should just address the David problem right then and there, they all trust Jake as their leader to make that decision

also the fact that these are the first books to do the ‘to be continued’ thing rather than wrapping the plot up...it really made it feel all the more tense

in other books I normally look at the page count and go ‘ok so this conflict will be solved in this scene cause there are only 15 pages left’ (which is st I do a lot I now realize lmaooo I can pretty much gauge what’ll happen based on how many pages are left - and I do this when I read fanfic too, by looking at where the scroll bar is...anyways)

BUT w/these books its totally up in the air cause they can end anytime and just get continued next book, which makes it so much more tense imo

also I fucking loooove the part in book 21 where they’re hiding out with that little pool of yeerks - and I actually bookmarked some pages for these liveblogs, so I have quotes, this one from Jake -

‘There was something wrong about killing defenseless slugs. I was pretty sure about that.’

Oh, Jake, that opinion is gonna change someday....

it is a little ironic considering he jacuzzi’d those yeerks in like book 7 or w/e. but alas its still a fantastic line that serves to show in the end how much things have changed

also I love that the decision not to kill those defenseless yeerks end up helping them later - the yeerks check the pool bc they’re so certain that if the andalite bandits HAD snuck in, they surely would have killed the helpless yeerks. but they didn’t, so that means the andalite bandits didn't sneak in....

I like when the characters do a morally good thing and are then rewarded by the narrative for it - it’s pretty rare in this series, where there are usually NO morally correct choices (such is life) or they’re actively punished for making a ‘good’ decision (one could argue that the decision to make David an animorph instead of letting him become a controller was a morally good decision, but it had dire consequences).

Ok and the part I have to talk about w/these books of course - everything w/Rachel. bc damn Rachel really goes through it in this trilogy. I absolutely LOVE the character development she gets, and I especially enjoyed the way her and Jake's relationship was developed

anyways, one of the best and most fucked up quotes of the series, from Jake’s POV in book 21 -

<Ax? I think Tobias is dead,> I said. <I think David killed him.> <That would be a most terrible thing,> Ax said. <Yeah. Get Rachel. If David’s killed Tobias, we may have to do a terrible thing, too. Get Rachel.>

AUGHHHHH fucking chills I swear. also eternal love for them saying dead/killed/etc and never shying away from it. it really wouldn't have the same impact if they used the normal kid-safe PG words

but yeah Jake asking for Rachel when he thinks that they may have to hunt down and kill David? phewwww.

and the significance of this is never downplayed. this essentially confirms that Jake sees Rachel as the one who is willing and able to do the dirty work - and specifically in this case, it’s also likely bc it was Tobias who was ‘killed’ and he knows how Rachel feels about Tobias

but like, that’s so fucked up, I love it. they give this situation the exact amount of weight it requires - ch1 of book 22 has this part from Rachel -

‘If David had hurt Tobias, I would... But what was the point in making threats? I didn't need to make threats. I knew what I would do. So did Jake. That’s why he’d sent Ax for me.’

at first, it seems like Rachel is on the same page as Jake, but when it becomes clearer later that Jake sent Ax specifically to get Rachel bc she could do the terrible thing that had to be done - instead of just bc they needed reinforcements and she was closest - then things change

but even when Rachel gets rightfully upset later over this, you get the sense she still never really sees any option other than to kill David. it’s not even the ‘killing David’ part that upsets her, it’s that Jake, her cousin, immediately thinks of her as the person to do the deed

so, another fantastic quote from Rachel -

‘Tobias was dead. Jake might still die. And I was going to have to go after David. I was going to have to hunt him down. I was going to hunt him down and destroy him. No, not destroy. That was a weasel word. It was vague, meaningless. I was going to kill him.’

fucking WOW. like really. that bit right there is just perfect quintessential dark animorphs. it just subverts the classic kid-friendly phrasing, using words like ‘hunt down’ and ‘destroy’ instead of kill. But Rachel says it like it is. she’s not going to destroy David, she’s going to kill him.

But then a few pages later, after Ax tells her the quote where Jake asks for her specifically -

‘It definitely made me feel strange. Jake had called for me specifically. Because he wanted someone who would do precisely what I was planning to do. Like I say, I’m not big on feelings, but something about that felt wrong.’

I say it a lot but wow do these kids need So Much Therapy. these are like...8th graders. jesus christ. when I was in 8th grade I was busy planning sims-playing get-togethers w/my fellow 13 year old friends. christ animorphs

and fuck, the part where Rachel threatens David’s family, and shoves a fork in his ear? jesus. and the fact that Jake knew that Rachel was going to threaten David and let her go do it...

and then afterwards, Rachel says -

‘I felt...not exactly ashamed. But I knew I never wanted to talk to Cassie about what I’d just told David. Or Tobias. Or even Marco.’

I'm gonna make some leaps here but I think it’s really interesting that Rachel even mentions Marco here, and says ‘or even Marco.’ like, the ‘even’ seems to imply that Marco would otherwise be somebody she WOULD talk to about something like this.

which...kinda tracks, tbh. Marco is Mr Ruthless, he’s a cold, pragmatic strategist when he isn’t cracking jokes as a coping mechanism. it makes sense that Rachel would talk to him about things like this - he would make jokes, but he’d also understand

I'm just so interested in all the highly varying dynamics that exist within the group okay

and then right after Rachel says -

‘But I swear at that moment I hated Jake far more than I did David. I should have told them all what had happened. But Jake already knew, didn’t he? Jake, the smart, determined leader, already knew all about me.’

that's fucking daaark okay. It paints this picture of Jake having become this master manipulator who knows all about Rachel’s violent tendencies and is using them to his full strategic advantage

Oh my god okay and then all the stuff w/Saddler, christ. I had completely forgotten about that plotline but there was so much fucked up stuff there, too

and the scene where Rachel gives some good life advice to her little sister, and it’s a good bit to remind the reader and characters of the world outside of animorphs conflict...and then David speaks up.

that was such brutal mood whiplash, when you realize that David is morphed and hidden in Rachels room somewhere...fucking chilling

that whole scene just oozes disgusting creepiness. David’s fixation on Rachel specifically, and his rage at being ‘bested’ by her, really feels like misogyny to me. while David butted heads w/Marco, you never got the same sense of anger and disgust that he displays towards Rachel.

and the line where he says ‘hey, enjoy your shower’ made me shudder in disgust. christ. there are a lot of revolting, dark implications there.

also, book 22 obviously does a ton of fantastic character work for Rachel, but it does the same for Jake, too. and Cassie, but ill get to that later

we get to see so much of Jake as a leader and a strategist here, and pitting him and Rachel against each other (so to speak) makes for some excellent characterization, like when Rachel starts questioning why he asked for her -

“I thought David had killed Tobias. I thought he might kill me. I wanted...firepower.” “I see. You wanted me for my morphs.” It was a good answer. It could have almost been true.

and then we get a brief pit stop at the children's hospital where the fucked up parade continues - David morphed Saddler, Rachel and Jake’s injured/dying young cousin, and is pretending to be him, miraculously recovered from his accident

and meanwhile he DUMPED THE REAL SADDLER’S BODY DOWN AN ELEVATOR SHAFT. I literally cant, what the FUCK.

and they never really follow up on it but the whole family and all the Drs think its this miraculous recovery against all odds, but then obviously David disappears and therefore so does Saddler - do they ever find his real body? how completely fucked up that must have been - so much worse than if saddler had just died from his injuries - the miraculous recovery completely overturned by a bunch of stuff that doesn’t even make sense to anybody except Jake and Rachel....

anyways, after all that completely fucked up bullshit, we have the Jake and Rachel confrontation, Jake’s whole speech about Rachel is amazing, but here are my highlights -

“I think you’re the bravest member of the group. I think in a bad fight I’d rather have you with me than anyone else. But yeah, Rachel, I think there’s something pretty dark down inside you. I think you’re the only one of us who would be disappointed if all this ended tomorrow.”

I mean, christ. imagine your fellow 13 year old cousin saying this to you. oh MAN. and I love so much that Jake isn’t wrong, but he also is? he understands what Rachel will do, but not why she’s doing it. and I talked abt it before but Rachel has found herself in this box of ‘the brave/reckless blood knight,’ and feels pressure to live up to that reputation.

so how much of it is a façade that she puts on bc she’s expected to, and how much of it is how she really feels? well, she got that reputation initially for a reason, but she gets pushed more and more in that direction as the series progresses, both bc of the unintentional pressure to live up to her role as the Xena of the group, and bc it’s really, really useful to have somebody like Rachel on your side

Then Rachel says -

‘I tried to look at myself the way Jake saw me. Was it true? Did I love this war?’

I'm gonna lose it, these poor fucking middle schoolers. Rachel, listen, you’re 13, you’re a child soldier, of course you don't love the war you’re fighting...I need every child therapist on the block to come here right now

like jesus being 13 is hard enough without all this nonsense. it’s such a tenuous time in development, and add something like this - someone like Rachel, who is somewhat pigeonholed by society as ‘vapid, pretty blonde who loves to shop’ would of course flourish in an environment where she gets to show how much of a 3-dimensional Person she is - she can love shopping and also kick ass! nice! but also, like, trauma.

So then Rachel says this about Jake -

“Jake, you’re a leader now. You make life-and-death decisions. All the time. You’ve learned to do that. And,” I added bitterly, “you’ve learned to use people. You use them for their strengths and their weaknesses.”

Fucking read, wow. I feel like Rachel is absolutely correct here, if not simplifying things a lot. like, yes, Jake does make these unfathomable decisions on the regular, but he’s got tons of conflict over every single thing he does, and there was a lot of uncertainty and trial-and-error leading up to this. but she is correct that he’s learned, and is clearly a lot more comfortable in his role as a military leader now.

I just love the contrast these two have. Rachel, with the burden she carries as the bravest - the fighter of the team, who must be relied on in battle and to do the things that nobody else will do - and Jake, the leader, who has to make decisions knowing that he could get his friends killed at any time, and still trust that they’ll listen.

And then Jake says -

“But everyone draws their own line[...] For example, see, I used to think my line was drawn at using my friend, my cousin, to do my dirty work. Guess that turned out not to be true. Sorry, Rachel.”

And then they hug and vow to murder David together, as a team. Heartwarming cousin bonding! Again, so much therapy.

So yeah I love that scene. especially when you take into consideration Rachel’s ultimate fate, and Jake’s part in it. excuse me while I go weep.

Anyways, to the end. THE ENDING....it gets me every time. I’ll never be over it. I don’t remember much about animorphs from when I read it at age 11 but I really really remember the ending to book 22. The way they masterfully set David up, the rat morph, the pipes, THE LEGO, the reveal that they planned the entire thing, the moment when David realizes what’s going to happen to him....oof. It’s not something I could forget, even w/my notoriously horrible memory when it comes to media

Also I feel like there was more subtle misogyny when David insists on humiliating/subjugating Rachel, just because she proved earlier that she was stronger and smarter and better than him...eugh David is just such a disgusting creep that you don’t even end up feeling bad for him even though he’s a middle schooler being handed a fate worse than death. I mean, he tossed a dead/dying kid’s body down an elevator shaft in a children's hospital. I’m pretty sure he deserves this.

And here’s the part where I talk about Cassie. because even though she didn’t get a POV book in the David trilogy, she still got some brutally fantastic character development. here we see David starting to realize what’s happening -

‘Cassie was crying. David hadn't asked who the mastermind of the plan was. Who it was who had so accurately appraised his emotions, his need to build his ego, the fact that he would choose me to be his “companion.” Cassie, of course. Cassie had worked it out, step by step, after Jake and I had failed to come up with anything. For Cassie, it was an improvement over the alternatives. See, no one was going to have to die. But David’s life would end, just the same.’

CASSIE. The dark horse, except not really, bc this is perfectly in line with what we know about her, especially coming off book 19, her last POV book before this. in that book she makes some absolutely awful decisions, all to avoid having to kill somebody.

After all of Jake and Rachel’s badass vows to take David down, it’s Cassie who finds the solution.

To a lot of people, David’s fate could be considered worse than death. To Cassie, it’s a better alternative. That speaks volumes about her, and I love it.

Also, the MANIPULATION. Cassie in the David trilogy really gets to flex her interpersonal manipulation skills, which I love to see. It’s such a fascinating aspect of her character; a really interesting use of empathy

Like the scene in book 20 where David freaks out as a roach and she manipulates him into not giving them away by pitting him against Marco, someone who David doesn’t get along with, by saying ‘if Marco can do it, can’t you?’ because she knows he’ll fall for it. And he DOES.

And then the part in the cafeteria where she basically plays the ‘good cop’ to everyone else in the group’s ‘bad cop.’ Not ONLY does she manage to get David to shut up and listen to her, she also posits her theory that he wants to blue box to trade it for his parents - which his reactions to her questions confirms as true. and nobody else in the group suspected this.

She lures him into a sense of security by talking kindly and quietly about how she understands how he feels, then hits him with what she knows and gets him to confirm it, which then allows Rachel to accurately threaten him.

And then Cassie, offscreen, comes up with the entire plan on how to trap David as a rat, because from the beginning she had him figured out. David didn’t pay much attention to Cassie - more misogyny tbh, as Cassie is the girl on the team who isn’t an aggressive, feminine blonde - and that ended up being a huge reason for his downfall.

David also didn’t pay much attention to Tobias, and clearly didn’t see him as human at all, and that made Tobias very valuable after David assumed he had killed Tobias.

Ok, back to the ending - the fact that it was Rachel and Ax who stayed there to wait the two hours for David to become a nothlit....

Rachel says -

‘Jake’s a good leader. He knows when to use us. He knows when to protect us. He knew he had to protect as many of his people as he could from what was going to happen.’

fucking brutal. TWO HOURS of listening to this awful kid beg and threaten and barter. I can’t even imagine.

And Ax too! He gets overlooked a lot as an alien, and it’s probably true that all of this impacts him differently than the other human animorphs, it can’t be in any way pleasant to have to sit there for two hours and act as a living timer to count down this kid’s life. Ax is a kid, too, and an isolated one at that, being the only Andalite on the team.

So yeah that scene is awful. Rachel even says -

‘Two hours. But that two hours of horror will last forever in my mind. If I live a hundred years, I will still hear his cries, his threats, his pleading, each night before sleep takes me. And beyond sleep, in my dreams.’

I know I’m beating a dead horse here, but jesus christ, THEY NEED SO MUCH THERAPY. The fact that one of the constants in all of the POVs is the nightmares that all the animorphs consistently have....geez

Okay so I know in my last two liveblogs I ended them by comparing animorphs to another series - hxh and mtmte - but I honestly am drawing a blank for this...

I guess the only thing I can think of is to compare it to mob psycho 100, which is another very good, very subtly subversive series

In mp100, the entire Point is that the very powerful psychic middle schoolers DON’T end up using their powers to fight life-or-death battles against adult enemies in order to save the world and whatnot. the Point is that that’s fucked up, and these kids shouldn’t be responsible for something like that, no matter how powerful they are

and basically the character who says all that is Reigen, an adult who actively prevents the middle schoolers from joining what would be some very traumatizing fights

basically my point here is less to compare the two shows and more to say - the poor animorphs could really use a Reigen huh. like, they seriously need an adult who’ll step in and say ‘wait a second, these kids are doing WHAT? hold the fucking phone, no way, get some actual adults in here to solve this shit. not today!’

the closest they could've come to an adult figure in their lives is Elfangor and he dies like 5 minutes after giving them superpowers, soooo....

man mp100 slaps I should rewatch it. anyways yeah the theme of this post is ‘the animorphs need therapy and also a stable adult figure in their lives to help them not get traumatized all the time’ thank you for coming to my ted talk

#this is like a whole ass thesis lmao i have quotes and everything look at that #lj reads animorphs #had to fix that tag bc it used to say 'read' instead of 'reads' smfh #animorphs

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 5 years ago

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I saw your post on how Animorphs is written from a childist perspective where you very neatly outlined the boundary between a cast for children and one for YA. But what delineates the boundaries between YA and Adult fiction?

[OP refers to this post.]

What’s the difference between YA and Adult fiction? In a word: Marketing. Young Adult novels are Young Adult novels if they’re classified that way by bookstores, critics, publishing houses, and/or researchers.

People have pointed out that libraries had YA sections decades before I put the “official” inception with Twilight and Crank. While that’s true, my local library also has sections on “Queer Paranormal Romance” and “Memoirs by Muslim Authors” (reason 491.2 that my local library is the best) but I doubt either of those genres is going to become mainstream anytime soon. It wasn’t until Barnes & Noble (and other major gatekeepers) started incorporating YA sections that critics and scholars and publishers started considering it a “real” category worthy of study and discussion, and that didn’t happen until ~2005.

That’s also why the core of my argument about Animorphs is that it’s published by Scholastic, and Scholastic only publishes children’s books, and therefore Animorphs is a children’s series. Genres are fairly-arbitrary marketing categories, and so are target ages of novels.

So what’s the difference between YA and Adult fiction?

Literal answer: If it’s in the YA section of a bookstore or has a “YA” sticker on the cover, it’s YA. If it’s not, it isn’t.

Actual answer: Generally, novels that are about adolescents, focus on adolescent conflicts, written for adolescent readers, and/or concerned with the problems of adolescence are Young Adult.

There are some genres that are far more common within YA than others. Paranormal romance is a big one. So is “problem lit” that focuses on angst and characters’ first struggles with sex/drugs/death/finance. (Like I said, Twilight and Crank were trend-setters.) Period dramas are common, as are Chosen One stories, as are urban fantasies, and those three genres often overlap. Bildungsroman, or the coming-of-age school story, is the O.G. YA genre.

There’s also a big convention around length. YA novels tend to be physically quite large, even if publishers have to force the issue through screwing around with spacing and margins like a bunch of high schoolers whose essay has a five-page minimum.

[Image description: Side-by-side comparison of p. 112 of young adult novel Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi and p. 112 of adult novel Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. The pages are the same size, but the Gone Girl page has approximately twice as much text on it.]

The end result is this.

[Image description: Children of Blood and Bone’s spine lined up next to Gone Girl’s spine. Gone Girl is noticeably thinner, even though it has a higher word count.]

This shit drives me BANANAS, but it speaks to the importance of this convention, and the extent to which arbitrary trends drive contents of books instead of the other way around.

Anyway, a few marginal cases that I think speak well to the YA/Adult divide:

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. I used to play a game where, every time I entered a new bookstore or library, I’d guess in advance where The Golden Compass was located and then check to see if I was right. Partially because I’m a dork with really boring ideas of fun, partially because there was no knowing in advance where it’d be classified. I��ve seen HDM classified as children’s literature (because the main character is 10), as adult adventure (because it deals with religion and death and sex), as religious fiction (because it’s about kids who kill God), as Litératuré (because it attracted Critical Acclaim™), as adult sci-fi (because it’s in a steampunk world), as romance (because ???), as fantasy (because there are talking bears), and finally as YA. It seems to have settled in YA, I think it belongs there, but YA didn’t really exist at the time when it was published. It’s got adult and child themes, adult and child characters, and very adolescent character arcs about coming into one’s sexuality and becoming an independent individual... so no one knew what to do with it in 1995.

Song of the Lioness by Tamora Pierce. Pierce herself has talked about the fact that the books were first marketed as romance (because they’re by a woman and about a woman, and publishing is full of sexist BS), they later got moved to children’s lit, then to “genre fiction.” Now they’re YA, and they belong in YA. Again: they’re books about adolescence, where most of the characters are adolescents, and they focus on adolescent concerns.

Crank by Ellen Hopkins. First of all, I want to make clear that I love that book, and that I learned more about how to write poetry from Hopkins than any English teacher. However, Crank was also the inspiration for some of my least-favorite trends in YA. It’s a verse novel, so it has as few as 5 words per page but is also a fucking tome. Publishers took the message that they could charge $29.99 for a novel with the same number of words but three times the pages as one going for $7.99, and acted accordingly. It also featured Baby’s First Discussion of Serious Topics like addiction, homelessness, assault, and prejudice. That helped launch a lot of genuinely brilliant novels whose authors took the time to do it right and/or wrote what they knew (The Hate U Give, Wintergirls, Miseducation of Cameron Post)... aaaand it helped launch a lot of condescending, ablest/sexist/problematic, “those Other People are just like us” type novels (13 Reasons Why, The Fault in Our Stars).

Anyway, people have been writing novels about adolescence for adolescents for as long as there have been novels. Catcher in the Rye, The Outsiders, The Chocolate War, A Wrinkle in Time, Speak, Silent to the Bone, and Killing Mr. Griffin all make that patently obvious. However, those novels all kind of wandered around homeless inside a lot of bookstores until mega-sales of books like Twilight, Harry Potter, The Book Thief, Just Listen, Crank, So Yesterday, How I Live Now, The Hunger Games, and (sigh) Looking for Alaska forced Barnes & Noble to build a home for them.

It’s interesting to look at lit crit from right around 2005, because a lot of scholars are saying “there’s this... new category? about teenagers? it’s becoming a thing?” But in 2020 scholars can just write “YA” and not even spell it out because yeah, yeah, everybody knows. So the category is useful if it helps people find books, obnoxious to the extent that it controls what books get published or marketed and what they look like on the shelf, and probably going to split even further into “YA - Teens” and “YA - Emerging Adulthood” if trends continue as they have been.

#literature #young adult literature #ya #lit crit #children's lit #publishing #marketing #(almost) nothing to do with Animorphs #young adult novels #john green negativity #long post #fury-brand #asks

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taiblogcomics · 4 years ago

Text

Mind Games Over Matter

Hey there, misery porn. Are ya ready, kids?? Coz it's time for the really terrible stuff in Titans to set in~

Where better to start than with this cover~?

Oh boy, this cover. Hang on, friendos. This is gonna be a rant~

Okay, first things first. The Tron look itself is not the problem. In all honesty, I think the Tron look is cool. Spider-Man had a Tron-looking suit for a while, his stealth suit, and it was really cool. The Tron look is not the problem! If they'd just kept it to Superboy, it'd be fine. The problem is that this is a team book. And just look at this team. Practically all of them are wearing black. There's some colour on the right, but let's look at the left for a moment. There's Superboy, whose colour is red. Red Robin, whose colour is red. And Wonder Girl, whose colour... is red. Or maybe two of them are scarlet and crimson.

So, as a team, why does this look not work? Because they all blend together. Take the Fantastic Four, for example. They're a team that all wear blue uniforms. But they all look unique, don't they? Half the time, the Human Torch is bright red. The Thing wears the bottoms of the uniform, but is also still a rocky orange monster. Invisible Woman is usually a transparent white object. The only regularly blue one is Mr. Fantastic. Or let's go the other way: the Teen Titans animated series. Cyborg and Raven both have blue in their design, but they're very different blues. Starfire and Beast Boy both heavily use purple and green in theirs, but Starfire's official colour is orange, at least according to the theme song. Point is, it's not the uniforms themselves, it's the lack of unique looks among the team.

And to top things off, Kid Flash just got a new costume a scant two issues ago. Was that not good enough~? We had to turn him into a human light cycle~?

Anyway, we open on somebody's unfinished Animorphs fanfiction. By which I mean an actual horrific depiction of Tim Drake turning into a bird. This is presented to him as a loss of control, a fear of his. And we turn the page and we see the *next* thing wrong with this issue. Meet Omen. In previous continuity, Omen (AKA Lilith Clay) was one of the earliest members to join the Titans, way back in 1970. She was unnecessarily killed off in the godawful "Graduation Day", and only appeared a couple times after as a zombie or Black Lantern. So anyway, the New 52 brought her back as a villain.

Not just any villain, but now she's blonde with red tips on her fringe haircut, a tattered floor-length black dress, and her eyes stitched shut and bleeding. So in case you didn't yet think the New 52 was backsliding into edgy '90s shlock, here's your proof! And while Omen is tormenting Tim with visions, Cassie is trying to pound her way into their chamber. Bunker tries to pull her back, pointing out that the chamber is full of water and they should come up with an actual plan. Cassie's response is to gut-punch Bunker and tell him to stop telling her what to do. Oh good, what a lovely team dynamic.

After Solstice continues to be the level-headed one and points out that turning against each other is what Harvest wants, we cut back to Tim and Omen. Tim's returned to human, and he defies Omen by insisting she's not really an enemy, just another person Harvest has corrupted. She's annoyed by his fortitude and sends him away, opting to take Cassie to torment instead. And while she's taunting Cassie for her life choices, Tim is brought before Harvest, who also taunts him. Harvest then walks off, content to ignore Tim for now. Tim is then ominously fitted with his Tron armour. It's not even a bodysuit, it's like an actual breastplate.

Back with Omen, she's picking on Skitter now, experimenting with separating Skitter's bestial side with her human half. Human!Skitter gets all "reunite us, or life itself is doomed!", which Omen thinks is hilarious. I think it's hilarious too, because thanks to my foresight of having read the whole series, Skitter is probably the least consequential character in the story. Bunker suggests that it really sucks having your private-most thoughts invaded and turned against you, and Solstice mentions this is what Omen does to prepate those for the Crucible.

We get a brief meanwhile of an investigation of the fight back in issue 5. Amanda Waller--who I actually forgot they turned skinny for the New 52--is leading the investigation, commenting on how metahumans are getting younger and younger. So, being Amanda Waller, she immediately defers leadership of the investigation to someone else, a guy named Agent Lance. Back in the actual story, Cassie and Skitter are being fitted for their Tron armour, and Tim stops by. Apparently he'd rather comment on Cassie's word choices than help her. I'm not sure I even buy his criticism that young people don't say "to boot".

Bunker and Solstice have a one-page conflict, where Bunker is upset that she didn't tell them the full extent of horrors that being Harvest's test subjects amounts to. She apologises, confessing that she was just so scared. See, that's all you need. I'm glad they didn't turn Solstice into their "manufactured conflict" go-to. While that's going on, Omen starts prodding around Kid Flash's mind. The amnesia thing kicks in, and whatever caused him to forget actually becomes a psychic backlash on her, repelling her from him. He dashes off and tries to take Bunker and Solstice to safety, only for both of them to be shot. That's when he wakes up suddenly, clad in his Tron armour, in the same room with Cassie and Skitter.

And while they're in there, Tim is doing his own heroic leader shtick. He infiltrates the other end of the base while Omen is working on Bunker. When she refuses to let him go, Tim lashes out--killing her. Except no. He suddenly wakes up back in the room with the others, still strapped to the table. Harvest himself enters, and reveals that the whole thing was essentially trying to push Tim to the limits where he'd kill someone. Harvest calls up another of his goons, Leash, who uses his powers to drag all the Titans along into the Crucible area, where the Culling will begin. That's a complaint for next time, but yeah. Here we are~

So yeah. If it wasn’t last issue, this is where the series really began its nosedive. For one thing, this is just a whole issue of tormenting our heroes, and that’s not very pleasant to read. Secondly, they reintroduce Omen--who has been dead for a whole nine years, by the way-- and make her a terrible, angsty, asshole villain. She is working for this Harvest goon for no adequately explained reason (a recurring theme, as we’ll soon see), and might as well have been a different character entirely. But no, she’s referred to as both Omen and Lilith in story, and since this is a Titans story, it’s pretty clear she’s the New 52′s interpretation of the real deal. I’ve read a lot of the 1980s New Teen Titans series and I actually really liked Lilith in those books. So this is just personally really disgusting to me.

And all of this isn’t even half as bad as what’s next, my dear readers. Because oh boy, it’s finally time. All this has been leading up to something called “The Culling”, and we’re gonna get into that next week~

#comics #reviews #Teen Titans #The Culling #Taiblog

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foxespsu · 5 years ago

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01 / BASICS

Full Name: Casey Isaac Hendrix

Nicknames: Ace (their nickname from the Buckeyes)

Birthday: January 13th

Gender: Nonbinary (they/them)

Orientation: Bisexual

Astrological Sign: Capricorn sun, Pisces moon

Spoken Languages: English

Birthplace: Stillwater, Oklahoma

Relationship Status: Single

tw discussions of addiction, pill usage, etc

02 / PHYSICAL TRAITS

Hair Color/Style: Brown, wavy. It’s usually messy in the way that says i’ve styled it this way. Sometimes, it’s just messy.

Eye Color: Blue

Face Claim: Thomas Doherty

Height: 5′11

Tattoos: N/A

Piercings: N/A

Unique Attributes: They’ve got a touch of that accented d r a w l no matter much they’ve tried to shake it over the years.

03 / PERSONALITY TRAITS/TYPES

Positive Traits: Compassionate, ambitious, hard-working, selfless.

Negative Traits: Self-critical, pessimistic, indecisive, intense.

Hobbies/Interests: Exy, Exy, Exy. It was supposed to be their golden ticket, their way to escape and to provide for the family they left behind, so how could they afford to give it anything less than their all? When they crashed and burned in Ohio though, Exy left a black hole in its wake. They went home, spent a year drifting from room to room, listlessly picking up and dropping hobbies. Books went unfinished. Journals kept their empty pages. When Ohio told them they couldn’t come back, Casey finally focused and started again, went through every school they could think of until it lead them to David Wymack. They didn’t want to be a Fox, but they are now, and it’s only fair. This is what they deserve—and as scared as they are to step foot on that court again, they can’t help feeling that maybe, just maybe, they can get some of that dream back again.

Major/Minor: Exercise biology major, no minor.

Insecurities: Almost too many to count, but there are a few that repeat themselves more often than others in Casey’s thoughts. Exy wasn’t only a way out of Oklahoma. Exy was a means to stardom too and Casey loved it in all the ways they shouldn’t. They defined themself through it; Casey the captain of their high school team, Casey the breakout star of the Buckeyes. Without those titles, they’re struggling more than they’d admit with their own identity. Who were they that year without Exy? Who are they now if they’re just a Fox? Maybe it’s because Casey knows how easily they can be set aside. After all, their own family hardly knows what to do with them when they’re home now. Their mother and their siblings love them, Casey’s never doubted that, but they don’t know them—and Casey doesn’t know their family either, if they’re honest. They haven’t forgotten those pills either, how strong they’d felt on them, how powerful. Untouchable, at least before it all fell apart. Casey’s determined not to relapse, but they’re still terrified they’ll never be that good again. Never feel that good again. This is sobriety, this endless string of frustrating days and monotonous tasks, and some days it’s harder than others to remember why they want this.

Quirks/Eccentricities: Laughs too loud, runs their hands through their hair constantly, paranoid about their clothes looking too worn down.

MBTI Type: EFSJ, “the Caregiver”. Kind, loyal, sensitive, needy. They make decisions based upon their personal feelings, for good or for ill. Their need for approval is a double edged sword.

Enneagram Type: Type 3, “the Achiever”. At their best, type 3′s are self-directed, compassionate, authentic, and ambitious. At their worst, they are obsessed with their mistakes, covetous of success, and willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that for themselves.

Moral Alignment: Neutral good.

Temperament: Repressed Choleric

04 / FAMILY & HOME

Immediate Family: Their mother is Maya Hendrix. Of the Hendrix children, Casey is the oldest, but they’re far from the only one. Kennedy is the second eldest, currently 19. In Casey’s absence, she takes care of most of the domestic duties while their mother works. After Kennedy, there’s the twins: Aiden and Evan, age 17. Next is Cooper, 15, Nevaeh, 13, and finally, the baby of the family: Cheyenne, 11. Casey moved out for boarding school when she was only four years old. They don’t all share the same father, but when none of those fathers stick around, what does it matter?

Other Family: With a family as big and sprawling as theirs, they’ve had to rely heavily on their extended family too. Casey’s grandparents had an active hand in raising them, as did some of their aunts and uncles in the area. It takes a village, as they say, and the Hendrix family practically is a village in its own right.

How do they feel about their family?: Casey loves their family. When they first dreamed of Exy, it was attached to thoughts of buying their mother a bigger home, a better car, boarding schools for all their siblings without the stigma of scholarship. Obviously, that didn’t work out. Now, despite that love, they feel distant from them too, in the worst of ways. Boarding school was more a home than Oklahoma, and then the Buckeyes too, before it all went wrong. Although Casey helped raise their siblings once upon a time, they also moved out young enough the family looks to Kennedy as the eldest now. Casey doesn’t know how to fit back into the dynamic. Cooper, Nevaeh, Cheyenne, the twins—they all grew up without Casey there and now, when Casey has finally showed up in their lives again, it’s only because they’ve failed so horribly in Ohio. They feel guilty too. After all they weren’t the only one who gave things up for Exy. Their mother did too, making what little money that had stretch further so Casey could pursue their dream. They can’t help but feel like they’ve thrown it back into her face, wasted the chance she paid dearly for. That isn’t the legacy they wanted for themself, for their family, but it’s their legacy nonetheless.

How does their family feel about them?: Their family loves Casey. Maya worries about them—her quiet, headstrong eldest, who won’t tell her the full truth of what went wrong. Kennedy used to idolize them, the one who escaped Oklahoma, but there was a bitterness there too. They escaped but she stayed. She took care of the people left behind, taking up Casey’s mantle as the de facto parent when their mother was busy or working. Those feelings only grew when it was clear Casey had moved on without her or the rest of their family, that their life was full of glamour and arrogance she could never match. Now that they’re back, she’s torn between concern and a strange schadenfreude. If nothing else, now Casey must know they aren’t better than their roots after all. For some of the younger siblings, it’s far less complicated. They’re distant. They hardly know Casey. Overall, no one in the family is quite sure how to speak to them—whether it’s about Exy, Ohio, the Foxes, or simply their shared history.

Pets: Dorms, whether in boarding schools or college, rarely allow pets. And, with as many mouths as they had to feed back home, pets were an impossibility. Every now and then someone would abandon a litter of kittens or an unwanted puppy at their doorstep in Oklahoma. Casey and their siblings would always nurse them back to health, but they could never keep them. Thankfully, their local shelter always made room.

Where do they live?: Casey has only recently moved into the dorms. Before that, they spent a year in Stillwater, Oklahoma, living in their now unfamiliar childhood home.

Description of their home: Cramped. Messy. Crowded. Casey’s family still lives in the same home they grew up in, but everything about it has changed in the years they were gone. Most of the siblings share rooms, although their mother and Kennedy have their own. There’s a huge tree in the front yard with a tire swing and a frayed rope ladder. Those Casey does remember.

Description of their bedroom: As the oldest, Casey used to have their own room. That honor went to Kennedy once they moved out for boarding school and they could hardly ask her to relinquish it when they returned. This past year, they shared with Aiden and Evan. No one enjoyed it.

05 / THIS OR THAT

Introvert or extrovert? Extrovert.

Optimist or pessimist? Pessimist.

Leader or Follower? Formerly leader, current follower—or trying to be, at least.

Confident or Self-Concious? Self-conscious.

Cautious or Careless? Cautious.

Passionate or Apathetic? Passionate.

Book Smarts or Street Smarts? Book Smarts.

Compliments or Insults? Depends on what’s more honest.

06 / FAVORITES

Favorite Color: Yellow

Favorite Clothing Style/Outfit: Jock™️ albeit one with lots of bright colors. Athleisure, tank tops, hoodies, sweatpants, sneakers, etc. Casey is always ready for a workout.

Favorite Bands/Songs/Type of Music: Pop, hip-hop, rap, rock—anything that makes them feel awake and ready to move on a cold morning.

Favorite Movies: Back home, they didn’t have cable, but they did have the same dusty DVDs to watch over and over. Mary Poppins, Jurassic Park, Bring it On. Casey’s seen them all too many time to feel anything but nostalgia over them now.

Favorite TV Shows: They didn’t watch much TV growing up. Exy always felt more important. During their latest year back home though, they borrowed someone else’s Netflix login and marathoned far too many terrible TV shows instead of doing something better with their time. Already, Casey can barely remember half of them.

Favorite Books: They don’t read much now, but they’ve been known to enjoy a good adventure novel. Their mom used to drop them all at the library for the bulk of the day when they were too young to be left at home, and Casey read their way through most of the Animorphs series.

Favorite Foods/Drinks: Casey’s an adventurous eater, which is a kind way of saying they’ll eat anything and probably enjoy it. And, yes, they still enjoy the foods they grew up on too—burgers, fried food, too much ranch, okra, cheese, and gravy. They drink too much coffee, prefer Blue Gatorade to anything else, and choose craft beers on the few occasions they feel like a drink.

Favorite Sports/Sports Teams: Exy, obviously. They follow all the other teams, although now it’s out of a jealousy they don’t want to feel. Wymack is taking a chance on them, after all. Before it all fell apart, Casey was a loyal Buckeye.

Favorite Time of Day: Morning

Favorite Weather/Season: Spring

Favorite Animal: Dogs

#drug abuse /#addiction /#inspo: casey #about: casey

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shewasanamericangirl · 7 years ago

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What are your favorite books and poems?

ooooooooh, i have a lot of books to look back on…first, i know you don’t typically read graphic novels, so i’ll keep those in a category separate from regular books. osamu tezuka’s phoenix, naoki urasawa’s pluto, and hiroya oku’s inuyashiki (which i’m still working on) are all manga series that have made a huge impression on me; the experience is a lot more literary than simply being comic books. the biggest common themes are that they’re all deeply empathetic science fiction stories. they also all involve robots, though i don’t think it’s robots specifically that i wanted to read about. there are a lot more manga and other graphic novels of different genres i could gush over too, but those three come to mind most readily as ones that stuck with me.

books i read growing up have influenced me a lot, especially series i started as a kid and continued reading into adulthood like the wizard of oz and harry potter. a wrinkle in time and the books following were fascinating to me, though i admit i was like 9 when i read them and i feel i didn’t have the best grip on what was happening despite my precociousness. the his dark materials trilogy (the golden compass, etc.) was another i was probably a bit young to read, but i loved it and it made me cry a lot. i’d be amiss not to mention animorphs, too–it goes deeper than “wisecracking teenagers turn into animals to fight evil aliens” sounds, i swear.

my favorite poem, easily, is emily dickinson’s “hope is the thing with feathers”; it portrays hope like a separate being, such that you even empathize with it by the end. while i was in school, a go-to poet we’d read to learn about imagery was william carlos williams, particularly known for “this is just to say” and “the red wheelbarrow”. natsuki would definitely like his work–simple poems with clear, vivid (and sometimes cute) imagery. just what is it that depends on that wheelbarrow? i can’t say, but i can’t forget the image of it covered in raindrops and the white chickens contrasting against its red. i’m sure a lot of us know poe’s “the raven” (i first learned of it from the simpsons) which is really impressive for its sense of rhythm and using that same damn rhyme over and over–it feels so restless, and just keeps intensifying. when i played doki doki literature club a few weeks back, i really loved natsuki’s first poem “eagles can fly” (no spoilers on that page) for how such simple images lead to an immediately recognizable feeling. i read a lot more poetry when i was younger, so there are definitely some poems i loved that don’t come to mind right now.

i know the minute i post this, i’ll remember another book or poem i overlooked…oh well. :V

#shylax

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littlelarks · 7 years ago

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MARIAH REREADS ANIMORPHS AND CRIES: BOOK 6 in which jake casually commits genocide and oh snap was that who i think that was???

*waves* hi jake!! it’s been a while!! (23 months in fact sssshhhhh we’re just gonna pretend these past two years between posts never happened)

(this is arguably the ugliest of jake’s covers. i rememeber being so grossed out as a kid. even more than the giant squid one.)

but okay! we open on an average cheerful saturday breakfast in the berenson household -

As I sat there across the table from him, I was trying to decide something. I was trying to decide whether I would have to ever destroy him. Destroy my brother, who was not my brother. Not anymore.

GOOD. TIMES.

right so jake’s brother, tom, has basically grown to be #2 in the whole ‘controller hierarchy’

which always makes me laugh a lot? b/c we have in the #1 slot a middle school vice-principal and in the #2 slot a high school freshman? like we haven’t really gotten a clear view yet of how far the yeerk invasion has spread but.... surely you could do so much better, visser three???

aNYWAYS

jake’s been snooping on all the phone calls tom has made in the past week, leading him to believe the yeerks have taken over a nearby hospital as, like,an infestation hotspot. check in as a normal sick human, check out as a controller.

(actually this is the most brilliant plan the yeerks have had to ate am super impressed over here i take back my previous judgement against you, vissie)

COOL SO our gang’s master plan is to first infiltrate a meeting of the sharing (as cockroaches. cockroaches. jfc sure IT’S LOGICAL BUT WHY SO MANY BUGS APPLEGATE) to confirm if what they think is happening at the hospital is actually happening and then.... go from there? they never actually have a real plan this book jfc

they do however, practice their morphs before charging into a life and death situation for the first time, so... progress?

oh! also jake keeps having dreams where he’s a tiger & mauling & killing tom yayyyyyyyy

"I just don't want anything to happen to Tom," I said lamely. "It's not just about what might happen if there's a fight. It's. . . . Look, I think Tom is important to this whole hospital plan somehow. I think maybe he's in charge. If we manage to stop this thing, who knows what they'll do to Tom? I mean, maybe Visser Three just kills Tom's Yeerk. But we've all seen Visser Three in action. He likes to make examples out of anyone who fails him. He could kill Tom." Rachel whistled softly. "If we succeed, Tom fails. If he fails, Visser Three may kill him." "That's about the way it is, yeah," I said. "So, what do we do?" Marco asked. "We forget this mission," Cassie suggested. "And leave the Yeerks in control of a hospital? A little factory for making Controllers?" I countered. "Why? Because my brother may be hurt?" "Yes," Cassie said simply. I hesitated. I wanted to agree. But how could I justify backing off for selfish reasons?

I AM SAD. BUT OH SWEET CASSIE. 2 GOOD 2 PURE.

(psst small side-note - i ADORE the shifting narrative perspective in this series. for example, last book, marco was like, ‘oh, jake and cassie? toooootally dating but pretending not to’. and now we’re in jake’s head, where the only thing he’s said is that cassie’s beautiful and important to him. so EITHER marco’s assuming things or jake’s not telling us the whole story. regardless we have a bit of an unreliable narrator thing happening, slightly. which i -like- to believe is intentional.)

cool so their super secret roach spy mission at the sharing goes... about as well as you’d expect - they almost die! multiple times! jake gets poisoned by bug spray & writhes about in pain!

BUT they do learn a few important things, mainly that the hospital is exactly what they think it is & that the yeerks want to use it to create a minimum of 200 new hosts a month & TAKE OVER THE GOVERNOR - the same governor that’s going to run for president next year (okay yeah no longer making fun of the yeerks this is quite brilliant well done guys)

still with no real plan outside of, um we should probably stop this thing, cassie’s like hey, it’ll be easy to sneak into the hospital as flies!

& it’s our not truly horrible bug morph! apparently #fliesjustwannahavefun #(andeatpoop) but they’re just like zzwop zwoop having a blast & hitch a ride to the hospital by latching on to tobias

screamsss I FORGOT the yeerk pool at the hospital is in a mini whirlpool jacuzzi omg god bless this series

oh but then dear lord

I walked slowly around the whirlpool. My foot hit something solid. The pump for the whirlpool action. It was disconnected, with a wire pulled out of the wall socket. The control panel had been ripped away, exposing bare wires. "Ax? What do you think would happen to all those Yeerks in there if the temperature of the liquid suddenly went up to say, one hundred twenty degrees? And the liquid was all agitated?" Ax looked puzzled. <I believe the heat and the agitation might destroy them.> "Well. That would be a pity."

genocide by jacuzzi y’all

GENOCIDE BY JACUZZI. J A K E.

(I get that we haven’t yet gotten into yeerk culture & we still see them as the Big Bad but this is not right, okay? there’s no guilt, no remorse... like, what??)

ohohoho but don’t worry, it’s about to get a million times worse

right after jake short-circuits the jacuzzi & the several hundred yeerks start to fry, two controllers rush in, and in the ensuing kerfuffle a gunshot nicks jake on the head right past his ear and HE FALLS HEAD-FIRST INTO THE YERK POOL

"My . . . head ..." I said. <Headache? No surprise, dude.> "Something . . . wrong ... I can't. . . think." <Don't worry. Take a break. We have it under control. More or less.> <Unbelievable,> said a voice in my head. <Can it be? Humans?> What was that voice? Where was it coming from?

ohhhhhhhhh honey

YUP jake’s now a controller

controlled by the exact same yeerk who has been controlling his brother all this time. you know, for ~the drama of it all~

but at least the drama of whether or not the other kids’ll realize Something Is Wrong With Jake is fairly short

I spun suddenly. I hadn't heard anyone else arriving. Ax! Just behind me. His Andalite face close to mine. His big eyes watching me. And in that split second, hatred revealed itself. A hatred that had crossed light years of space to play itself out on planet Earth. <Andalite!> the Yeerk hissed silently. And in that one word I heard the same fury and contempt I heard whenever Ax said the word "Yeerk." Only I heard it. The Yeerk did not say a thing. But surprised, unaware, unprepared, he did curl my lip in an instinctive expression of revulsion. It was a small thing. It lasted only a second. And then the Yeerk was using my mouth to say, "Hey, Ax. You did great back there when - " In a movement too fast for me to see, Ax whipped his tail forward. In the blink of an eye, his scythe blade was leveled a quarter-inch from my throat. <Yeerk!> he said.

Ax (and inter-species racism!) saves the day!!!

there’s some back-and-forth about oh gosh, what if he is a controller, what if he isn’t - well either way if we keep him locked in this old shack in the woods (???) for three days we’ll know for sure since the yeerk’ll starve to death - oh but gosh won’t his parents be a little worried if he’s missing - wait we have an andalite, ax can just pretend to be him!

ax touches jake to get his dna & the yeerk instantly starts screaming about andalite filth, casually, & there’s a moment where they all look at the camera like they’re on the office, so that ends that debate

cut to jake being locked in a shack for three days, the gang standing guard and basically backhanding him every time the yeerk tries to utilize his morphing power to escape

& even though this is a super not funny situation i’m still laughing for fourteen pages - he tries to escape as a falcon at one point and cassie in horned owl morph just like, shreds his shoulder - he tries to escape as a wolf but comes across an ACTUAL wolf pack - like, poor little yeerk, he’s trying his best

SPEAKING OF THIS POOR LITTLE YEERK, he slowly starves and dies of thirst inside of Jake’s head

The Yeerk cried in pain, again and again. And the visions came floating up, crystal clear, as if they had just happened.Visions of the good times in the Yeerk's life. And of bad times. The emotions were strange. Alien. I guess that's the word for them. There was no memory of love. I guess Yeerks don't do love. But there was affection. Pride. Fear. Regret. Those I could understand.

Jake is privy to flashes of the Yeerks life, the lives of his former hosts (including Tom, ouch) and it’s all very sad and emotional, especially Tom, and wait - holy shit was that the Crayak!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????????

And then I saw it. A creature. Or a machine. Some combination of both. It had no arms. It sat still, as if unable to move, on a throne that was miles high. Its head was a single eye. The eye turned slowly . . . left. . . right . . . I trembled. I prayed it would not look my way. And then it saw me. The eye, the bloodred eye, looked straight at me. It saw me. It SAW me! No! NO! I cried in silent terror. I looked away. And when I opened my eyes again, all I saw was a weird glow. The glow faded, little by little. I was trembling. "It's over, Jake," Cassie said.

THAT WAS

THAT WAS THE FUCKING CRAYAK I CAN NOT BELIEVE

I’M SORRY I AM LITERALLY FLOORED

I DID NOT THINK HE APPEARED THIS EARLY

DAMN. DAMN.

.... so the book ends by jake disguising his voice and calling tom to tell the real tom ~inside~ not to give up & that there’s still hope. it’s very emotional, but tbh i’m not really paying attention b/c i still remain floored by our five-second glimpse of THE CRAYAK at the moment of the yeerks death, i have honestly never been more impressed with this series’ continuity than in this moment.

STAY TUNED - next time we’re back with my girl rachel, and since this universe isn’t already wacky enough, we’re introducing time travel & the closest thing this series has to a god~

#guess who's back back again #animorphs #mariah reads animorphs #lol it has LITERALLY been two years i am so bad at things but for reals my plan is gonna be two books a month #i've missed my nerds #i first started these because my friends refused to read the books and i wanted to yell at them but if anyone else tunes in -#hello! welcome! please cry about these children with me!

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 5 years ago

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Hell is For Children: Animorphs as Children’s Lit

[Guest post from Cates!]

So a couple of months ago Bug asked me to write a post about why Animorphs is Middle Grade/Children’s Fiction, not Young Adult. Since she asked, I’ve read several wonderful posts from other people questioning or explaining what the difference is between Middle Grade and Young Adult, where Animorphs fits, and why it matters. Here’s my two cents as a children’s literature scholar.

To start, Animorphs’ 20,000-30,000 word count per book is a big hint it’s not YA fiction. Obviously, a book with a low word count is not automatically a children’s book, and a book with a high word count is not automatically a book for adults. But if Animorphs was aimed at teens, Applegate would likely have been expected to make the books longer. While there are a lot of great YA novels that are as short as or shorter than your average Animorphs book (check out BookRiot’s list of 100 YA novels under 250 pages,) most YA series, and especially fantasy or scifi YA series, are expected to top 100,000 words. (The three books in the Diviners series by Libba Bray have a total wordcount of 520,000 words; Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy tops 400,000 words, for example.)

Animorphs’ word count isn’t enough on its own to exclude the series from YA classification, but Animorphs’ short word count also fits the trend of children’s—not YA—series fiction in the 1990s. In order to understand this trend, and why it produced books specifically for children, not teens, we need to jump back in time to WWII. Because so many American men were drafted into the military, women took over jobs that had been almost exclusively done by men, like mechanics, sales, electricians, etc. When WWII ended, thousands of men returned home, but women didn’t leave the workforce. Realizing they had an excess of young men and not enough jobs, the US government created the GI Bill, allowing soldiers to attend college for free or at a steeply reduced cost, thus stemming the influx of workers and giving the economy and industry room to grow.

At the same time, families were having children (and those children were surviving) at an unprecedented rate. Thanks to the GI Bill, college was no longer something reserved for wealthy white men, but something available to the middle and even lower class. A college education offered social and economic mobility, and the Baby Boomers, children of the GI Bill recipients, became the first generation to grow up with the idea that college was something that could and should be pursued by all.

Then, the Baby Boomers began having children in the late 1970s through early 1990s, meaning a large chunk of those children (including Bug and I) were in elementary school in mid 1990s to early 2000s. Thanks to their parents, a higher percentage of American adults than ever before had attended college. Thanks to advancements in women’s medicine, psychology, sociology, and education, among other fields, people understood as never before the importance of instilling a love of reading in children at a young age. The huge middle class was willing to invest lots of time and money in their children’s educations, because at this point not having a college education was seen as a barrier to success.

I’m sure you can see where this is going. (Kidding).

Children’s publishing exploded in the 1990s because children—or, more accurately, their parents—were seen as a huge, untapped market. Previously, children’s publishing didn’t receive as much money or attention because, the logic went, children did not have money and therefore couldn’t buy books. But then the publishing industry realized that there were literally millions of parents willing to spend money on their children’s education, and publishers like Scholastic, Dutton, Dial, Penguin, Random House, and others rushed to take advantage of this new customer demographic.

Of the ten books featured on this Scholastic bookfair poster from 2000, seven are series fiction.

Serialized fiction—ie, stories that took place over the course of several books about the same characters and/or in the same setting—was the perfect way for publishing houses to capitalize on this new market. And hoo boy was it successful. From 1993 to 1995, Goosebumps books were being sold at a rate of approximately 4 million books a month. That means roughly 130,000 books were sold every day.

Here’s a few names to bring you back: Bailey School Kids, The Magic Treehouse, Babysitter’s Club, Junie B. Jones, Encyclopedia Brown, Cam Jansen, Horrible Harry, Secrets of Droon, The Magic Attic Club, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Bunnicula, The Boxcar Children, The American Girls, Amelia’s Notebook, Dear America, Wayside School, Choose Your Own Adventure…we could keep going for days. All of those series have two things in common: one, they were either published between 1985 and 2005 and/or experienced a huge resurgence in the 90s, and two, they’re all middle grade novels. Some are aimed at younger children, like Junie B. Jones and The Magic Treehouse, and some are aimed at older children, like the Dear America series and A Series of Unfortunate Events.

The point is, Animorphs is so clearly a product of its time (and not just because of the Hansen Brothers references,) it slots perfectly into the trend of series fiction for children. If you want to claim Animorphs is YA, you also need to claim all of the series I just listed above.

Now, let’s talk about the main argument I see in favor Animorphs being YA: the dark content.

This is my personal wheelhouse. I’m planning on someday doing my PhD dissertation on trauma, violence, war, and trauma recovery in Middle Grade—not YA—fiction. I always find it funny when people use descriptors like cute, sweet, innocent, silly, light, and simple to describe children’s books. While there are certainly plenty of children’s books that are one or more of those things, there are also dozens that are the polar opposite—dark, complex, serious, violent, and deep. I once read a review of The Golden Compass which said “it’s not like other children’s books with a clear cut good guy and bad guy and a simple message.” I don’t know how many children’s books the author of the article had read, but I’m guessing not a lot. Let’s just do a blunt reality check with a few of my favorites—including some picture books which are typically for an even younger audience than Middle Grade. Spoilers for all of the books I’m about to mention.

Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki This book follows a little boy who is sent to a Japanese interment camp during WWII. He and his family deal with abuse, starvation, and sickness. Suggested reading age*? Kindergarten and up.

*(For this and all subsequent books I used reviews from Kirkus, the Horn Book, and School Library Journal to determine suggested reading age.)

Check out this picture of Shorty playing baseball while an armed soldier watches him from a guard tower. Isn’t it cute, sweet, and innocent?

Pink and Say by Patricia Polacco Pink and Say are 15-year-old boys serving as Union Soldiers during the Civil War. Confederate Soldiers kill Pink’s mother, Pink and Say become POWs, and Pink is hanged because he is African American. Suggested reading age? First grade and up.

Fox by Margaret Wild This book starts grim and just gets grimmer. Dog and Magpie have been burned in a wildfire. Dog loses an eye, Magpie a wing. Magpie rides on Dog’s head—she is his eyes, he is her wings. Fox comes and convinces Magpie to leave Dog and come with him. There are definite sexual undertones. The book ends with the possibility that Dog and Magpie will be reunited, but no certainty. Suggested reading age? Six and up.

[The text says “He stops, scarcely panting./ There is silence between them/ Neither moves, neither speaks./ Then Fox shakes Magpie off his back/ as he would a flea,/ and pads away./ He turns and looks at Magpie, and he says,/ ‘Now you and Dog will know what it is like/ to be truly alone.’/ Then he is gone./ In the stillness, Magpie hears a faraway scream./ She cannot tell if it is a scream of triumph/ or despair.”]

Tell me this isn’t a total punch in the gut.

The Rabbits by Shaun Tan The introduction of rabbits to Australia is used as an allegory for European colonization and the casual destruction of the Aboriginals’ lives and cultures. Suggested reading age? Six and up.

The Scarlet Stockings Spy by Trinka Hakes Noble A girl spies on the British during the Revolutionary War while her brother fights. He’s killed and there’s actually a description of her finding the “bloodstained hole” in his coat where the bullet struck him. How cute and silly! Suggested reading age? Second grade and up.

Meet Addy: An American Girl by Connie Rose Porter I think this works as a nice comparison to Animorphs because it’s another long-running, popular series aimed at kids just starting to read chapter books. Among other incidents, there’s a graphic description of Addy watching her brother get whipped by an overseer and a passage where another overseer forces Addy to eat worms. I actually give American Girls a lot of points for not shying away from the uglier parts of history. They don’t always get it right (*cough* Kaya *cough*) but those books are more complex than I think most people realize. Suggested reading age? Second grade and up.

My Teacher Flunked the Planet by Bruce Coville From the sight of a child starving to death to homeless children freezing in the streets, Coville certainly doesn’t avoid the darker side of human nature. Pretty sure most adults only noticed the funny green alien on the cover. Suggested reading age? Fourth grade and up.

“That was the day we crept, invisible, into a prison where men and women were being tortured for disagreeing with their government. What had already been done to those people was so ugly I cannot bring myself to describe it, even though the memory of it remains like a scar burned into my brain with a hot iron.

“Even worse was the moment when it was about to start again. When I saw what the uniformed man was going to do to the woman strapped to the table, I pressed myself against the wall and closed my eyes. But even with my hands clamped over my ears I couldn’t shut out her scream.”

Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai The Vietnam War, migrants drowning in the ocean, refugee camps, racism…this book is a bit like Animorphs in that it’s got a surprisingly dry sense of humor even as awful events take place. Suggested reading age? Fourth grade and up.

The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Patterson A pretty harsh look at the realities of America’s foster care system as told by a girl who could give Rachel Berenson a run for her money. It’s not afraid to show that parents aren’t automatically good people. Suggested reading age? Third grade and up.

Stepping on the Cracks and Wait Til Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn If WWII, bullying, dead siblings, draft dodging, and parental abuse are too light and fluffy for you, you can always read about a child consumed with survivor’s guilt because she started the fire that killed her mother. Suggested reading age? Fifth grade and up.

“‘How do you think Jimmy would feel if he knew his own sister was helping a deserter while he lay dying in Belgium?’

‘It wasn’t like that!’ I said, stung by the unfairness of her question. ‘Stuart was sick, he needed me! I wish Jimmy had been down there in the woods, too! Then he’d be alive, not dead!’

Mother slapped me then, hard as she could, right in the face. ‘Never say anything like that again!’ she cried. ‘Never!’”

I could go on (and on and on and on) about trauma narratives for children, but suffice to say while I think Animorphs is probably the most brilliant one I’ve ever read, it’s far from the only one. Kids’ books can be dark, which is good, because if we only tell stories about white, able-bodied children living in big houses with two loving parents then we’re excluding the majority of real children’s lived experiences from our narratives.

There’s one more point I’d like to address: without sounding overly accusatory, I think a lot of the compulsion to consider Animorphs YA instead of children’s fiction is born of the adult bias against children. I’ve mentioned this before on the podcast, but Children’s Literature scholar Maria Nikolajeva created the term aetonormativity to describe society’s tendency to value the adult over the child. Like I discussed above, we have this idea that children’s books are somehow sweet and innocent, while YA fiction is darker and grittier because it addresses so-called ‘adult’ topics like sex, drugs, suicide, violence, and death.

As I hope I’ve established above, just because a book addresses these topics that doesn’t automatically mean it’s for teens. Books about heavy subjects can, are, and should be written for children. I think most of us are fans of Animorphs because it’s a series that sticks with us long after we close the neon-cloud covers. It’s a series that strongly disputes the notion of a clear right and wrong, and doesn’t shy away from the atrocities of war. And it was written for children. It was sold to children. It was read by children.

Some of us adults are just cool enough to read children’s books that treat child readers with the respect they deserve.

— Cates

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 5 years ago

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I don't know how much this adds to the discussion regarding Animorphs being children's lit, but I think it's important to keep in mind that kids' books can get away with heavier themes than kids' shows tend to, so if someone's coming into the discussion with the framework of "for children" they may need to keep in mind that as a book it can cover more ground than a tv show that grownups just have to glance at to decide if it's "too much" for their kiddos (whether it is too much or not).

This definitely adds to the discussion of Animorphs as children’s lit! I think you’re hitting the nail right on the head. Many people don’t realize this (I didn’t realize this until I was in college and had a class on the subject) but television shows have to justify themselves to a metric shitton of people before they’re allowed to go on the air. Books only have to justify themselves to a moderate-sized committee, if that.

People who have the power to veto content on TV shows include (but are not limited to): individual writers who have a particular idea, head writers who don’t like the idea, script editors who might take it out, directors who refuse to film what they don’t like, videographers or artists who add their own creative vision to ideas, visual effects teams who can cut things based on budget, voice actors who can protest decisions they don’t like, episode editors who might take an idea out, producers who won’t back anything that might cause controversy, studio executives who can pull content that’s not “on brand,” national network crews that can decide not to air certain content, local network crews that can also decide not to air certain content, and future “backers” who might decide not to invest in a show based on its content.

People who have the power to veto content in books include: the author with the idea, the agent who publicizes it, the editor who polishes it, and the publishing agent who sells the idea. At most.

Nowadays, one can self-publish one’s own work with ZERO outside input, or else very little. The Martian was read by exactly two (2!) people before Andy Weir put it on the internet, and it became an international bestseller. It would be possible to make a self-published TV show with that little outside input… but most platforms wouldn’t promote it, and would probably take it down if it got hate-reported or had content violations. Not only that, but (as Cates pointed out) books get edited as content that has already been written, in a story that already exists. Shows get edited in the context of deciding whether it’s worth the trouble to write an idea that’s still hypothetical.

Television is ultra-conservative (in the sense of never rocking any boats in any direction) because it has to please hundreds of people with creative input and to justify its multi-million-dollar budgets. Books can reach the minimum production value necessary to be good with the influence of one person (okay, lbr, two people) and fifty bucks for printing or web-hosting fees. That’s the reason that only 42% of non-animated roles and 39% of animated roles go to women on TV, including only 12% of non-animated roles and 4% of animated roles going to women of color. By contrast, 63% of children’s lit on The Atlantic’s bestsellers list is written by women, about female protagonists; that’s not counting books by men about female protagonists. (They didn’t collect data on authors’ ethnicity; if anyone has this stat, HMU.)

It’s the reason that Arthur just made national news THIS FUCKING YEAR by depicting a same-sex (traditional) (Christian-coded) wedding ceremony, one that local networks in Alabama chose not to air. Meanwhile, in 2015 Cates presented a conference paper about the history of kids’ picture books with queer protagonists, a history that goes back to 1981 (Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin) and covers such mainstream 1990s series as Bruce Coville’s Magic Shop and Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants. We see the importance of the lack of gatekeepers: for instance, the author of Heather Has Two Mommies struggled to get a mainstream children’s press to pick up her book, so she went to a lesbian publisher, which ended up creating an entirely new branch for children’s books. (Apparently there were entire publishing houses just for lesbian books in 1987? The more you know.) One other interesting case study for queer content is Gore Vidal: in 1948 he published what would today be classified as a YA gay romance novel (The City and the Pillar) but in 1959 he had to “code” and hide the queer content in the Hollywood film (Ben-Hur) that he also wrote. Television to this day uses queer-coding in lieu of actual romance, especially when it’s kids’ TV (see: Legend of Korra or Adventure Time), while children’s literature has already made the push all the way into demanding that the queer romances in Grasshopper Jungle and Geography Club be more intersectional.

To be clear, it’s not like children’s books have carte blanche in this regard — Applegate and Grant have both apologized for having to code Mertil and Gafinilan rather than just marrying them off, and have expressed regret over not getting to write an openly bisexual Marco or openly trans Tobias. But kids’ books can still fly under the radar of the wowsers in a way that kids’ shows often cannot.

Anyway. Queer representation is obviously just one of a plethora of issues that get very different treatment in children’s books vs. children’s shows. There are plenty of others. Children’s shows can depict violence, but have to treat it as silly or inconsequential and avoid showing blood. (Because that’s a great way to teach kids about not harming others!!!) Children’s books can have as much blood — and, apparently, as many spilled entrails — as they would like, as long as those things don’t happen in the first couple of pages or make the cover summary. Neal Shusterman is responsible for some of the most cringe-inducingly silly AniTV episodes, and also some of the most brutally unflinching works of children’s literature I’ve ever read. American screen media are no longer subject to the Hays Code, but its marks still remain. American literature has pretty much always been the Wild West, and with the advent of online self-publishing, the west is getting wilder.

Don’t judge a book by its movie. And don’t judge a book by its show. AniTV is tame and silly, treating its violence as inconsequential and its characters’ mental health struggles as harmlessly or innocent. Animorphs has the courage to show that when you shoot a man he doesn’t just silently fall over and disappear but bleeds and screams and dies, that being a victim or a perpetrator of such violence can leave even “innocent kids” fighting for their lives against PTSD and depression. It has the courage… but it also has the freedom to do so. That’s an extremely important distinction that should not be overlooked.

#animorphs #anitv #children's literature #lit crit #television #censorship #animorphs meta #meta meta #long post #mental health #violence mention #homophobia mention #q word #queer representation #lgbtqia #old man yells at cloud #anonymous #asks

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