#frenemies. in the sense of every grade school child who has ever used that word... aaron and neil are Frenemies

[thespineoftherighteous]

"i thought you were a bitch until i got to know you" relationship but make it Aaron and Neil

[foxy--stoat]

sorry if this doesn’t make sense

so i’ve been thinking a lot (wow, what a surprise) and idk I feel like i’m not really dealing with things? and I can’t really tell anyone, so what better to do than to tell the entire world completely anonymously, I guess...? I’m really confused. about everything. but here’s my rant (it’s either going to be 10 pages long or 5 sentences, it can go either way)

I feel like I live in the world of my podcasts and books and tv shows because a world where the mayor uses they/them pronouns, and queerness is a given, or a world where hooded figures won’t let you in the dog park and the city council is a large blob of limbs, or where small silver worms can eat your flesh or where people’s boyfriends are empaths or when giant bats live underground, or when every problem can be solved in a 40 minute episode is so much more exciting than my reality! my life is so predictable, just get up, go be in zoom meetings all day, take a walk, practice cello, exercise, and go to bed again. Nothing happens. but in my tv shows, the words “from beneath you it devours” will pop up again and again and every time I’ll get shivers down my spine because I dont’ know what it means and I do and I know that everything will be ok in less than 10 episodes and if I get sad I can push through the pain push hard through the pain till it breaks, but in real life, the monotony of my life, when I push though the pain and fear and doubt and struggle it just slingshots me back a million miles. and I know, that’s just real life. but when you’re a little kid, you read of all these worlds that you can retreat into, so much excitement and wonder, like narnia, or harry potter, or even the underland! but then you realize that it was all in some stranger’s imagination and it will never be real. so you live your life, and every day is a drop of water on a stone, making a difference, but it won’t show until you’re long dead. and maybe one day it will stop. and it will never show. and all you’ll have to show for your infinitely small life is a falling apart family, a sad group of friends who will later turn you into a cautionary tale for their kids about wearing your seatbelt, or looking both ways before you cross the street, and a stack of books. maybe one day they’ll find your tumblr account and if you were still alive they would have scolded you. “clara!” they would say, voice shaking and mind racing as to what could have made their perfectly goody-two-shoes daughter break such obvious rules “why would you do this? you know that you could be catfished or hunted down!” and what they wouldn’t add is “we thought you were better than this. we thought we could count on you but all you did is let us down and now you can’t have friends or your podcasts or your books or tv or your room and all you can do is sit and stare at the wall and agonize over if Buffy ever defeats the first, or what Rita’s last name is, or what Rose’s story is. they’ll not let you hang out with Jane and Liam, even though you haven’t talked to them for ages, because they’re “bad influences” even though all they did was dye their hair and use the occasional curse word and go on twitter.” when I was in third grade, they were glad I made friends with them. that was when liam was still mila. I only had 2 friends, one of which I hated. (she and I were the perfect example of frenemies, but we’ve grown apart now). but now when I want to hang out, maybe go on a masked walk or facetime, my mom is like “why don’t you hang out with vivian instead? or julianne? or literally anyone else besides your stupid idiotic ‘bad influencing’ elementary school friends, despite the fact that you’ve known them since you were 7.” when I talked to the doctor, she asked me if I did drugs or knew anybody who did. I said no, obviously. (I really don’t). then my mom had the audacity to pull me aside for a moment and say “what about jane and mila? (this was before he was liam)” and I got so mad for a moment, because shaving your head and hanging out with people you hadn’t known since kindergarden is apparently evil and if they rub off on me I’ll be a little devil child. ok, this has turned into a rant about something else. I do this a lot. all of my notebooks are full of me starting to write a short story about something and always, without fail, end up being something awful and ranty. if I ever actually finish anything, I’ll share it on here, but I doubt I will. 

so anyway, I feel like every episode of every podcast or tv show or every chapter of every book is like another brick on the wall separating me from my life, and though it feels like it’s keeping me safe, it’s really separating me from what I need - food, water, sunlight (metaphorically. I do eat and drink and sleep and go outside, mostly). Or like I’m digging a hole, and with every shovel of dirt the mound becomes more prone to falling and burying me alive. but I can’t stop, because maybe if I dig deep enough I’ll find something worthwhile, something to keep my trying. something that will stop me from just giving up on life. 

ok. whew. that was a lot. I’ve been holding that in for a while and I don’t care if you read it or not, it’s just comforting to know that somebody, somewhere, maybe agrees and can sympathize. maybe they even read this and feel somewhat better knowing that I feel the same way? doubtful, but I’ll keep thinking it. I need the hope. 

apologies that this was so long, and apologies in advance for the millions more of these that will inevitably come, probably all very repetitive and nonsensical, but also very therapeudic for me. and I don’t care if this didn’t make any sense because it does to me and ugh not another rant

also sorry for any spelling/grammatical mistakes usually I’m a very grammatical person (at least when I’m talking out loud, idk about when I’m typing) so plz don’t hate me for that

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

What are other books/series that you'd recommend that are in the same vein as Animorphs?

Honestly, your ask inspired me to get off my butt and finally compile a list of the books that I reference with my character names in Eleutherophobia, because in a lot of ways that’s my list of recommendations right there: I deliberately chose children’s and/or sci-fi stories that deal really well with death, war, dark humor, class divides, and/or social trauma for most of my character names.  I also tend to use allusions that either comment on Animorphs or on the source work in the way that the names come up.

That said, here are The Ten Greatest Animorphs-Adjacent Works of Literature According to Sol’s Totally Arbitrary Standards: 

1. A Ring of Endless Light, Madeline L’Engle

This is a really good teen story that, in painfully accurate detail, captures exactly what it’s like to be too young to really understand death while forced to confront it anyway.  I read it at about the same age as the protagonist, not that long after having suffered the first major loss in my own life (a friend, also 14, killed by cancer).  It accomplished exactly what a really good novel should by putting words to the experiences that I couldn’t describe properly either then or now.  This isn’t a light read—its main plot is about terminal illness, and the story is bookended by two different unexpected deaths—but it is a powerful one. 

2. The One and Only Ivan, K.A. Applegate 

This prose novel (think an epic poem, sort of like The Iliad, only better) obviously has everything in it that makes K.A. Applegate one of the greatest children’s authors alive: heartbreaking tragedy, disturbing commentary on the human condition, unforgettably individuated narration, pop culture references, and poop jokes.  Although I’m mostly joking when I refer to Marco in my tags as “the one and only” (since this book is narrated by a gorilla), Ivan does remind me of Marco with his sometimes-toxic determination to see the best of every possible situation when grief and anger allow him no other outlet for his feelings and the terrifying lengths to which he will go in order to protect his found family.

3. My Teacher Flunked the Planet, Bruce Coville

Although the entire My Teacher is an Alien series is really well-written and powerful, this book is definitely my favorite because in many ways it’s sort of an anti-Animorphs.  Whereas Animorphs (at least in my opinion) is a story about the battle for personal freedom and privacy, with huge emphasis on one’s inner identity remaining the same even as one’s physical shape changes, My Teacher Flunked the Planet is about how maybe the answer to all our problems doesn’t come from violent struggle for personal freedoms, but from peaceful acceptance of common ground among all humans.  There’s a lot of intuitive appeal in reading about the protagonists of a war epic all shouting “Free or dead!” before going off to battle (#13) but this series actually deconstructs that message as blind and excessive, especially when options like “all you need is love” or “no man is an island” are still on the table.

4. Moon Called, Patricia Briggs

I think this book is the only piece of adult fiction on this whole list, and that’s no accident: the Mercy Thompson series is all about the process of adulthood and how that happens to interact with the presence of the supernatural in one’s life.  The last time I tried to make a list of my favorite fictional characters of all time, it ended up being about 75% Mercy Thompson series, 24% Animorphs, and the other 1% was Eugenides Attolis (who I’ll get back to in my rec for The Theif).  These books are about a VW mechanic, her security-administrator next door neighbor, her surgeon roommate, her retail-working best friend and his defense-lawyer boyfriend, and their cybersecurity frenemy.  The fact that half those characters are supernatural creatures only serves to inconvenience Mercy as she contemplates how she’s going to pay next month’s rent when a demon destroyed her trailer, whether to get married for the first time at age 38 when doing so would make her co-alpha of a werewolf pack, what to do about the vampires that keep asking for her mechanic services without paying, and how to be a good neighbor to the area ghosts that only she can see.  

5. The Thief, Megan Whalen Turner

This book (and its sequel A Conspiracy of Kings) are the ones that I return to every time I struggle with first-person writing and no Animorphs are at hand.  Turner does maybe the best of any author I’ve seen of having character-driven plots and plot-driven characters.  This book is the story of five individuals (with five slightly different agendas) traveling through an alternate version of ancient Greece and Turkey with a deceptively simple goal: they all want to work together to steal a magical stone from the gods.  However, the narrator especially is more complicated than he seems, which everyone else fails to realize at their own detriment. 

6. Homecoming, Cynthia Voight

Critics have compared this book to a modern, realistic reimagining of The Boxcar Children, which always made a lot of sense to me.  It’s the story of four children who must find their own way from relative to relative in an effort to find a permanent home, struggling every single day with the question of what they will eat and how they will find a safe place to sleep that night.  The main character herself is one of those unforgettable heroines that is easy to love even as she makes mistake after mistake as a 13-year-old who is forced to navigate the world of adult decisions, shouldering the burden of finding a home for her family because even though she doesn’t know what she’s doing, it’s not like she can ask an adult for help.  Too bad the Animorphs didn’t have Dicey Tillerman on the team, because this girl shepherds her family through an Odysseus-worthy journey on stubbornness alone.

7. High Wizardry, Diane Duane

The Young Wizards series has a lot of good books in it, but this one will forever be my favorite because it shows that weird, awkward, science- and sci-fi-loving girls can save the world just by being themselves.  Dairine Callahan was the first geek girl who ever taught me it’s not only okay to be a geek girl, but that there’s power in empiricism when properly applied.  In contrast to a lot of scientifically “smart” characters from sci-fi (who often use long words or good grades as a shorthand for conveying their expertise), Dairine applies the scientific method, programming theory, and a love of Star Wars to her problem-solving skills in a way that easily conveys that she—and Diane Duane, for that matter—love science for what it is: an adventurous way of taking apart the universe to find out how it works.  This is sci-fi at its best. 

8. Dr. Franklin’s Island, Gwyneth Jones

If you love Animorphs’ body horror, personal tragedy, and portrayal of teens struggling to cope with unimaginable circumstances, then this the book for you!  I’m only being about 80% facetious, because this story has all that and a huge dose of teen angst besides.  It’s a loose retelling of H.G. Wells’s classic The Island of Doctor Moreau, but really goes beyond that story by showing how the identity struggles of adolescence interact with the identity struggles of being kidnapped by a mad scientist and forcibly transformed into a different animal.  It’s a survival story with a huge dose of nightmare fuel (seriously: this book is not for the faint of heart, the weak of stomach, or anyone who skips the descriptions of skin melting and bones realigning in Animorphs) but it’s also one about how three kids with a ton of personal differences and no particular reason to like each other become fast friends over the process of surviving hell by relying on each other.  

9. Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Louis Sachar

Louis Sachar is the only author I’ve ever seen who can match K.A. Applegate for nihilistic humor and absurdist horror layered on top of an awesome story that’s actually fun for kids to read.  Where he beats K.A. Applegate out is in terms of his ability to generate dream-like surrealism in these short stories, each one of which starts out hilariously bizarre and gradually devolves into becoming nightmare-inducingly bizarre.  Generally, each one ends with an unsettling abruptness that never quite relieves the tension evoked by the horror of the previous pages, leaving the reader wondering what the hell just happened, and whether one just wet one’s pants from laughing too hard or from sheer existential terror.  The fact that so much of this effect is achieved through meta-humor and wordplay is, in my opinion, just a testament to Sachar’s huge skill as a writer. 

10. Magyk, Angie Sage

As I mentioned, the Septimus Heap series is probably the second most powerful portrayal of the effect of war on children that I’ve ever encountered; the fact that the books are so funny on top of their subtle horror is a huge bonus as well.  There are a lot of excellent moments throughout the series where the one protagonist’s history as a child soldier (throughout this novel he’s simply known as “Boy 412″) will interact with his stepsister’s (and co-protagonist’s) comparatively privileged upbringing.  Probably my favorite is the moment when the two main characters end up working together to kill a man in self-defense, and the girl raised as a princess makes the horrified comment that she never thought she’d actually have to kill someone, to which her stepbrother calmly responds that that’s a privilege he never had; the ensuing conversation strongly implies that his psyche has been permanently damaged by the fact that he was raised to kill pretty much from infancy, but all in a way that is both child-friendly and respectful of real trauma.