#The Message

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Animorphs #4: The Message thoughts (pt. 2):

• "I have a pass to get in [The Gardens] any time I want, but the others all have to pay, which is kind of a drag because Marco never has any money... It turned out there was a special for tickets — buy two and get the third for a dollar. Marco had a dollar, fortunately, so we didn't have to go through any big scenes" (p. 46-47).

This detail struck me the first time I read this book (first Animorphs I ever read, so I'd've been... 6? 7?) and it strikes me now. I'd experienced this exact scene before, and many times since: some of your friends have money for the zoo (the roller rink, the concession stand, the local pool)... some do not. This doesn't stop you from going, it just means you figure out a way to have someone accidentally buy an extra ticket, or get a BOGO deal, or get extra cash from their mom, or, or, or.

Like, this is what class consciousness looks like to a 13-year-old. Some of you have pocket money, some do not. Just be aware of it, look for workarounds, and cover when you can. Cassie tries to smooth the moment over by asking Marco about his haircut, Jake's ready to cover if he needs to, and everyone's happy when there's a deal so the price becomes a non-issue.

Part of what stood out to me, then and now, is the very fact of thinking to include it. Goosebumps, the major competitor series, was explicitly written to have "no divorce, no death, none of that... stuff" (X). Every character in a Goosebumps book, with few exceptions, is an upper-middle-class white kid living in a suburban house with one mom, one dad, and 0 - 2 siblings. Bailey School Kids, Sweet Valley High, Princess Diaries, and My Teacher is an Alien were all more diverse, but none of them dealt with poverty or what were then called (in true classist/heterosexist fashion) "broken" families.

IMHO, this is sci fi realism at its finest. The kids need to go touch a dolphin to turn into a dolphin — but one of them doesn't have $10 to cover admission to the zoo, because his dad's been out of work ever since his mom died. It's just there, in the background, this real experience that real American kids have all the time, one that almost never gets talked about in other children's SF.

Animorphs books can be read here | Book Club schedule is here

[todayinhiphophistory]

Today in Hip Hop History:

Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five released The Message July 1, 1982

[theoptia]

Ta-Nehisi Coates, from The Message

Text ID: your mind expands as the dark end of your imagination blooms, and you wonder if human depravity has any bottom at all,

[tamsiblings]

a lot of the times the whole thematic idea firefly has going on of "yeah most things are pretty much exactly the same in space 500 years in the future" is pretty fucking funny edit: depressing. Oops!

but the idea that 500 years later there's no evidence of alien live and still people absolutely Insisting there is and having exhibits set up to trick you. is so fucking funny.

[emeraldmew]

I called Jake. "Hi, Jake. Are we going to the beach today like we planned?" We were always very careful about anything we said over the telephone. Phone lines can be tapped. Besides, Tom, Jake's brother, could listen in on an extension and overhear something we didn't want him to hear. "Actually, I was thinking the beach will be really crowded today," Jake said, sounding very casual. "I was talking to Marco and he said maybe we should go down to the river instead." Animorphs Book 4: The Message, p 56.

...

better opsec than the pentagon

[groundrunner100]

Naruto’s Question To Hinata

“Okay,

are

you

ready?”

- Naruto Uzumaki, Naruto: Shippuden: 500: “The Message”.

[ritadcsc]

Não desistam em tempos difíceis, mas orem com fervor.

Romanos 12: 12 (versão A mensagem)

[realnyhiphop101]

Grand Master Flash And The Furious Five “The Message” Era

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Animorphs #4: The Message thoughts (pt. 3):

"I ended up being a little late" (p. 56). Okay, this is brilliant. I'm noticing just how often the narrator is slightly late to a team meeting, and damn. This is the best literary device ever. How have I never spotted this before? It's the easiest way ever to skip small talk, lead-ups, recaps, and all the boring parts of the conversation. The narrator's a little late to the meeting, so as soon as they get there everyone just dives right in. Literally, in this case. I have to remember this trick.

Marco almost dies of blood loss because nobody knows how morphing works and Cassie freezes under pressure. This team needs an Ax.

Love that Ax's reaction to seeing humans for the first time is "Gaaaaah! Fuck! What is that!?!?!?" [shoots it with a dracon beam] And then 10 seconds later is like "Oh wait, didn't Elfangor say something about how Earth is full of furless bipeds? And that they're our allies? Oops."

Also, Ax, bby. He immediately goes "take me to your leader!" and then ignores Jake trying to Homer Simpson into the bushes in his haste to pledge to die for Jake's cause. Poor kid. He just found out his big brother died and he will adopt a surrogate, no matter how much the surrogate in question kicks and screams in protest.

I've always found the detail about Earth being terraformed to match the yeerk homeworld to be one of the most chilling in the series. It makes sense, since that's what humans plan to do to Mars and what England tried on every other country on the planet, but learning about that after a book's worth of the richness of cetaceans' and birds' worlds is a damn gut punch. Plus, it's Cassie. She understands better than anyone what would be lost, if our sun were kandonaized and all inedible species annihilated.

Animorphs books can be read here | Book Club schedule is here

[smokefalls]

It may seem strange that people who have already attained a position of power through violence invest so much time in justifying their plunder with words. But even plunderers are human beings whose violent ambitions must contend with the guilt that gnaws at them when they meet the eyes of their victims. And so a story must be told, one that raises a wall between themselves and those they seek to throttle and rob.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, "On Pharaohs" from The Message

[trashbagcommunist]

This is another concept that keeps being brought up that bothers me: that morphing something is the same or similar to yeerks infesting people. I think there could have been a good ethical conversation about morphing something that has a sense of self in terms of invading its privacy and violating it,

but it sort of falls flat for me that it's equated with yeerks infesting someone and taking their autonomy away. It's like the difference between someone literally controlling you and someone having a copy of your body to do whatever they want with. They're very different ideas but by equating them, we're not dealing much with the ethics of the latter. The fact that its actually not similar doesn't make it a less interesting conversation in my opinion.

[dk-thrive]

In my time teaching it soon became clear that becoming a good writer would not be enough. We needed more writers, and I had a responsibility to help them as a reader, to be an active audience for the stories they wanted to tell, or as a teacher, so that they could learn to tell them better, to reach deeper into their own truth in the same way that brought me euphoria, and reach into the hearts of readers and set them on fire, as Mary had been set on fire since college: by words on a page.

― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message (One World, October 1, 2024)

[corgi-nub]

dolphin study

[zaynesdesimc]

Sylus would love roar by Katy Perry

[imperfectskeleton]

Animorphs #4 - The Message 13-17

Another staple morph: the seagull. Time for the constant barrage of snack descriptions, which is pretty fun and different from how you’d normally describe an environment. Just getting the geography of an environment does get pretty boring, and the animal senses and perceptions focus on different things. It’s fun.

There’s a bit of a format in the early books of “if at first you don’t succeed”. The Visitor, Rachel follows Chapman again more from personal stubbornness than because the plan didn’t work. Also, the first recon trip as Fluffer wasn’t great. The Encounter, it takes two trips to the lake for them to have a plan they’re acting on (and the first trip is distinctly bad, never mind their *brilliant* trout plan). This book, first time they have only a vague idea of what they’re doing and Marco nearly gets killed so second time they make minimal changes.

When they’re reviewing what they know Cassie mentions Tobias doesn’t really like being inside but honestly you can’t convince me he like being inside as a human

This book may have the only Marco-Cassie one on one where he’s actually willing to open up to her. In part it’s that it’s early days, he hasn’t yet fallen got his walls up as high as they’ll be later in the war. But it’s probably also that he recognises she feels bad for being the one to make the call to follow the dream.

It’s also the most honest view of what Marco’s life has been like since his mom died. Everyone else mentions it in passing, Cassie is an unexpected witness. And Marco, while he’s honest, doesn’t like sharing.

Jake and Cassie not dating is truly the most thirteen year old love of all time. Like he’s been to her house for thanksgiving (insane). They’re ok being silent together. She can’t say she cares about him explicitly so she settles for “don’t ever get hurt”

And it’s early Jake, so while he already knows it’s a joke, he still means “I’m indestructible.” They’re going to win the war and right the wrongs.

Rachel swan diving off a ship and Jake and Cassie throwing blame for being friends with her. Ridiculous.

Marco having one of his beating everyone to the punch days so that they don’t give up on his account. It’s funny what he does for the group.

Also, the animorphs’ first morph in open ocean. Scary.

I fully believe that Jake sucks at maths. My headcanons for human animorph maths ability are as follows: Marco has the most natural skill, but barely passes because he’s bored and rushes exams. Rachel does the best academically, Tobias is pretty good with a natural talent for geometry. Cassie hates maths but gets better grades than Jake. Jake is terrible unless it’s remembering numbers related to things he’s interested in. Ax is in a different league, and is rather annoyed whenever Marco competes in it because he grasps things a little too quickly.

One descriptor I always kind of skipped over was the size. Half a mile in diameter. In my head it was maybe half that. It makes sense of course but still.

Also, hilarious that they’re in and demorphed before Ax knocks them out. Honour I guess.