#the animorphs are all so complex this is like sorting real people

[paragonrobits]

not to blog about harry potter in the year 2023 but it illustrates a central point that I've had in mind for years whenever the subject of its pop culture impact came up; I always thought that it was the book series that actually got me into fiction in general, as until I read that series as a sort of my first urban fantasy without realizing it, I wasn't that interested in fiction in general, though that isn't specifically true and its a little surprising to realize why

so to illustrate my first point; for most of my life I've been an extremely heavy reader. As a kid I always loved reading more than anything else, and often I found myself doing so well in classes that I would just wind up ignoring everything going on to read, which I was usually allowed to do. For years, I would bring a book or two with me to school so i would have something to read in case my text books weren't interesting enough

the key point is that though I was a really intense reader, there were VERY few fiction stories that got my attention. Mostly, they were just... boring. I think on reflection that most of the books available at the time in the school libraries I frequented were kids adventure stories (the Hardy Boys and the like), things like Goosebumps and books series like the Babysitter's Club; in general i might consider the first and third categories predecessors to the Coffee Shop AU for a kid growing up in the 90s; relatively low in impact, strictly mundane and firmly set in the real world. At best I found them boring and not of interest to me, though I liked a lot of the goosebump books, which might have been foreshadowing.

So the Potter books were something unanticipated for me and really got me into reading fiction in a big way; I remember feeling that the time that it was something radically new for me, big on-going books with a lot of character stuff going on, meshing of the real world and the fantastical, and more; now I think its all VERY bare bones and there's perhaps something to the idea that even though the worldbuilding is pretty mild at best and it LOOKS like an interesting setting more than the actual details hold up, it was still pretty innovative for someone at the time.

But you know what book series I WAS already into, in a huge and monumental way at the time? A book series predating the Potter books, that have aged significantly better (and aren't written by the Arch-TERF)? That focused on science fiction, aliens as people in their own right, with really intense stakes, horror and gruesomeness all meshed into goofy 90s 'commit to the bit' feelings, complex characterization and a whole lot of fucked up goodness?

Well, hypothetical reader, let me tell you that the Potter books were NOT really my intro to fiction. To my collective knowledge, I was reading comic books long before then (though not cohesively or in any kind of order, which is probably why they don't stick out as much to me), enough to be massively into the Hulk cartoon series at the time, but when it comes to published books that I regularly bought or begged my parents to get for me whenever they were out, there was ONE series. One series that impacted me in a massive way, that were always the pride of my book collections.

That's right, and if you know something about the era you might already know what I'm going to say; i was an ANIMORPHS kid.

I think the reason the Potter books FEEL like they have more personal impact for me is a fairly ironic one, since I was reading animorphs for quite a while before the Potter books were ever published, at least by a couple years or so, is that they were large novels by the standards of the books I saw as a kid; I think that was probably unprecedented for me. Animorphs was released in monthly, episodic novels rotating character perspectives by month and they were relatively short books; collectively they got WAY more going on, but the individual Potter novels felt quite different.

In retrospect, I think Animorphs had way more of an influence on my mind and eventual writing attitude; I definitely remember being ENTRANCED by how the alien characters had genuinely alien designs, that Ax and Tobias were my favorite viewpoint characters, and the increase of ambiguous morality and the tragedy of the Hork-Bajir (especially them being outwardly ferocious looking but fundamentally peaceful beings) hit me like a firetruck at an age when I rarely read fiction at all and most of the other stuff I DID read felt rather bland by comparison.

In short, if Animorphs had been released as larger collections, I would have gone berserk for it more than I already did, and in a truly better world, Animorphs would be THE most famous book series from the 90s that ignited interest in reading genre fiction for children of the era.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

You have one book to introduce someone to the series, but can give them a brief summary of relevant background information beforehand. Which do you choose? Ideally I’d like a book which is a microcosm of the series as a whole and highly representative, without too much context required (no starting at 52), and balancing out early-installment weirdness and deus ex machinas. Books I’m thinking of: 1, 7, 8, 19, 25, MM3, or 38 come to mind, but they each have their own strengths and weaknesses

Megamorphs 1: The Andalite's Gift

It introduces all the characters' voices, including how much the rotating first-person point of view adds to the complexity of the story. (Holy persimmons the scene where the veleek takes Marco, as told by Rachel and then Cassie and then Marco himself.)

There's great character development in relatively little space — the bulk of it goes to Cassie's arc with realizing she sometimes has her friends' lives in her hands, choosing wrong when Marco's life is on the line, learning to live with it, and then finding a way to redeem herself. But we also have Tobias dropping in the fact that he and Ax are now BFFs and that he understands Ax was in a survival situation even before the veleek. We have Rachel sort of reinventing the concept of Animorph from the ground up.

"Do you hate trash cans? Is that it? Do you just HATE TRASH CANS?"

... paired with Jake and Cassie going home to cry themselves to sleep that night, because they got Rachel back but are pretty sure they lost Ax and Marco in the process.

"Real mice don't chase people.... At least, I think they don't."

The sequence where Cassie defeats the veleek is about as nifty as the series gets. There's a reason #24 and #34 and #39 all do homages to that scene, because the imagery is so dang cool.

Marco announcing he's not dead by randomly popping up in Jake's bed at 7:00 in the morning.

It introduces a bunch of motifs for the story: whales, inexplicable yeerk logic, Marco's "driving", quirky one-off characters, Ax as crouching straightman hidden troll, Air Tobias, controllers lying to senior leadership, sweet moments of the kids just being kids, graphic descriptions of severed limbs.

You don't need much, if any, background to enjoy it. The books always have exposition at the beginning, and this one's a contained story by design. Yes, it adds something to read MM1 just after #7 and realize that shoe lady ("Frannie") is no longer a controller because Rachel destroyed the kandrona emitter, an action that Rachel herself said she didn't know would make any difference to anyone at all. But you don't need that context; it just adds a drop of dramatic irony to one particular scene.

[holodeckprotocols]

animorphs book 9 (the secret) #thoughts

sorry can we talk about the home perm that cassie and rachel gave rachel's little sister? i love when these books will just have a random sentence that hits you over the head with the blunt end of the 90s.

well it wouldn't be an animorphs book without a genuinely PTSD-inducing bug morph! i wonder if that whole clusterfuck would've gone any differently if jake had been with them. it was genuinely so bizarre to see a jakeless mission but missions so often go belly-up for the animorphs that maybe it would've been mostly the same

i think a lot of people get frustrated with cassie for her tender heart and ethical hangups and i sort of get that. sometimes you just want to shake her and be like CASSIE there's people that are dying! just morph the fucking dolphin! kill the bug queen! but also ultimately she feels real to me and i love her. especially in these earlier books when they don't understand morphing as much and when everything is so new and raw. and she's such a good non-antagonistic foil for rachel. i think the strength and complexity of her pacifism depends on the quality of the particular book in question but i will always appreciate that she tries to find another way.

i used to live near a golf course that had a lot of critter activity at night. one time when i was out for a walk, i saw a mama skunk and five babies trotting by and it was one of the cutest things i've ever seen in my life. in that moment i would have died for them. so i really have no room to judge cassie's skunk crusade in this book.

askjsdjsfl;jdsklf why did visser three SLAP the commissioner guy??? that was the big plan to get him yeerked up?? of all things he could have done???? he is literally so ridiculous. the drama of it all.

the grape juice reveal is a little looney toons/meddling kids but this is a book for children and it's really funny so it's fine

[kinsey3furry300]

5 ships I hate, why I hate them, how to (kinda) fix them, the better ships you should be doing in that universe, and why you should ignore me and keep writing them if it makes you happy.

Note: this is done for amusement, please don’t be offended; I’m not attacking your ship, I’m just listing some ships I do not always care for, and how I think they could be improved, and maybe made brilliant, by clever writing.

In no particular order, and focusing on ships that often annoy me, with no attempt by me to say anything meaningful or popular about the current state of any particular fandom. I’m also a firm believer in the idea that there’s no such thing as a bad ship, only a badly executed ship, so my objections to these is less a dislike of shipping, or the paring, and more that they raise writing issues that I think are difficult to fix in a satisfying way. That’s why in a lot of the examples below I prefer AU ships to ones that try to messily work it into the cannon. Anyway, enjoy... I guess?

 Marco x / anyone (Animorphs)

Why I hate it: Animrophs is an intensely character-driven story, where the tension of each book comes from the conflicts, external and internal, that the five Animrophs (and Ax) face during a long, hard, traumatic war.  And while several of the character are paired off romantically, it’s always to emphasise character conflict over their different points of view. Jake and Cassie are a pair because Jake’s struggle with having to make hard, grey, morally ambiguous choices as leader is highlighted by Cassie’s burning need to make the right choice, the lesser evil, the choice that leaves some small shred of humanity and dignity and kindness left in this bleak world. Tobias and Rachel are a pair as their arcs deal with literal and figurative loss of humanity, as the slow accumulation of trauma over time turns these happy(ish), normal kids into psychologically ruined husks of their former selves and destroys them slowly, one fight at a time.

Marco’s arc, isn’t about either of these things: Marco’s arc, is about the bright, clear line between A and B, between problem and solution. Marco is a utilitarian, a pragmatist: his concern isn’t the burden of leadership, or the cost of the decision, but about how to put that all aside and make hard decisions that actually work regardless of cost. It’s not about what to do, the path is obvious: the bright, clear line of ruthless logic, but how to do it. His match, his counterpoint, the other character who’s all about the logic of taking awful decision in a way that actually works for the team, and his foil, his female counterpart in this, is not a romantic partner, but his mother: Visser one, making the exact same hard, difficulty ruthless decisions using logic and maths, but for the other side of this war. A romantic paring gets in the way of this arc because a partner doesn’t help him with that bright, clear line, and worse, any attempt to pair him of with either Rachel or Cassie breaks up not only a cannon paring, but their respective character arc.

How to (kinda) fix this: Marco’s arc is, at the end of the day, a trolly problem. So make sure whoever you ship him with is one of the people tied to the tracks. Introduce a character he crushes on, and then in the second act reveal that they are either a Controller, or in the family of a Controller or the proximity of the target of their next mission in a way that will make them collateral damage ,and let Marco struggle with what happens when that bright, clear logical line from A to B cuts through someone he actually loves; you know, like it did with his mother. See, even trying to fix this ship is weirdly Freudian.

The far better ship you should be doing: Ax x / EVERYONE. Ax in human form is described as a worryingly pretty, worryingly androgynous male of indeterminate race. He is a literally Bishonen alien hedonist with no familiarity with human senses, poor impulse control in human form, and no knowledge or understanding of human courtship rituals, and he can shape-shift, including into other members of the core team if needed to compel a mission, he calls Jake his prince,  and he is incredibly close to Tobias, the lonely outcast woobie that the LGBT fans adopted as their poster boy. Come on, the potential for shipping, both with wacky hijinks and sad, tragic star-crossed lovers’ trope is endless. Every line dedicated to Marco shipping is a line of text that could be dedicated to Ax trying to eat a Cinnabon erotically on his first date as a human and hulking out mid way because he forgot just how good they are. What could be better than him leaning into to erotically kiss a team-mate, and then fucking up due to his failure to understand human mouths, making weird mouth sounds, and then licking crumbs of the table in the middle of the mall, in front of the entire school, while his crush awkwardly tried to pretend this is normal? What’s wrong with you Marco-shipper people, do you hate fun?

 Riz/Tem (beastars) Why I hate this ship: Okay, just to quickly ask a question, to people who un-ironically like this as a serious ship and not a dark joke, just one little question: What’s wrong with you? I mean,are you okay? Keep taking the meds: the show is VERY clear on that point.

It’s like those people who say Joker X Harley Quinn is their ideal dark, edgy relationship: no it’s not, it’s abusive! Morticia x Gomez is dark and cool but CONSENTUAL and HEALTHY. This… this is a deeply imbalanced person murdering someone and telling themselves after that fact it was special and rare and magical. ITS HOMICIDE! And even if you write that out (and you shouldn’t, because that changes the character arc of every other major character) it’s still got more red flags that a soviet military parade. This is the botulinum of a toxic, one-sided teenage infatuation. Riz’s entire arc is about how he projects his thoughts and feelings about himself onto this idealised, made-up version of his and Tem’s relationship which, from Tem’s point of view, never existed. Riz never loved Tem: he loved the idea of Tem, the idea that someone would see the real him, see his inner pain and accept him anyway, but he never once told Tem this. He didn’t warn him “Hey, because of you I don’t feel I need my meds any more, do you mind if I try not taking them and we can meet and talk about this in a safe, well-lit pace?” He’s not honest with Tem, and on top of that It doesn’t make sense from the point of view of either of the characters for them to be actually, romantically in love (although  they were clearly close friends), because it undermines and cheepens Riz desire to just be seen and accepted for his real self, and the cannon Tem X Els ship. It also doesn’t make sense from a story point of view: Riz is a shadow archetype for Legosi. He’s what Legosi would have become if someone hadn’t interrupted his attack on Haru. That’s why Legosi needs to beat Riz with his own hands: because then he’s beating the darker version of himself he’s been carrying with him, and he can finally move on with Haru guilt-free. Having Riz and Tem’s relationship actually be what Riz imagined it to be undoes that. It undoes Riz’s interesting, dark inner struggle between truth and fantasy, it turns Tem’s tragic, unsolved murder that sets the entire story in motion into a just sort of weird Romeo-and Juliet suicide. It’s ruins the character arc not only for Riz, but for Legosi, and also, by extension, Louis and Haru, because Legosi’s internal angst over whether or not herbivores and carnivores can have a relationship as true friends needs this example of a tragic, flawed, toxic, failed friendship to bounce off of.

How it could (sort of) work: an AU where Riz’s attack on Tem is interrupted and Tem lives with a slight arm injury, and doesn’t tell anyone out of his complex feelings for Riz. Meanwhile, that bunny girl from the gardening club had been brutally devoured and Rz and/or Tem are so horrified with how close this was to their own near-miss, they start to investigate the murder, and in doing so get caught up in Louis’ inner struggle. Because that’s how the story needs to work, it’s about duality and struggle: and if Riz takes Legosi’s role, and by dating a herbivore he de facto takes the role, so Legosi must take Riz’s. This could be a great AU!

The better ship you should be doing: Pina/Riz (with a dash of Pina x Els), no, seriously, I’m not shitposting. You want to give Riz a redemption arc with a cute woolly boy? How about a story where Pina, out of a need for closure about at happened to him, starts to visit Riz in jail and they talk, mockingly at first, confrontational at first, but later Pina slowly becoming more fascinated in Riz and Tem’s life and asking Riz for more and more detail until they both bond over their shared traumatic experiences and their sense of loss for Tem’s senseless death, Tem’s unfished life casting a shadow over both off them. Eventually, the two of them find, from Legosi who still has the diary, that Tem had planned out an elaborate and beautiful first date with Els that he never got to take her on, and Riz, guilt ridden and sad than Tem never got this beautiful moment, decides to ask Pina take her on that date for Tem, with Riz coaching him by phone cyano-de-Bergerac style, Riz finally getting some closure that he helped one of Tem’s wishes come true and finally acknowledging to himself that Tem had a life and loves outside of him that were cut of short by his actions, and just crying over his lost friend, as Pina and Els slow-dance in Tem memory. Or if you just want to see Tem awkwardly date a carnivore boy from school, why not something less creepy and more wholesome and ship him with Jack? That would be cute AF, and more importantly, not romanticize brutal murder. Or an AU where everything is happy and nice, I’d argue at that it’s no longer Beastars at that point, but if it makes you happy, go for it. Let’s not shame anyone here.

 Snape X Lilly (Harry Potter)

Why I hate this ship: honestly, it’s not for the reason you think; I just like Snape too much as a tragic character, and making him in any way happy destroys his arc in my opinion.  The objection’s others have raised: that Snape acts in a worryingly possessive stalker-ish way towards Lilly, and that if Voldemort had gone for Nevil rather than Harry as a child Snape would have remained a loyal death eater, are true and I acknowledge them as having some validity, but that’s not why I can’t stand this ship. Snape is supposed to be a morally and emotionally complex, tragic figure. That “After all this time?” line was the best line in the Deathly Hallows.  Snape is supposed to show the equality destructive and redemptive power of  love. It’s sort of trinity: Lilly shows the pure power of true, unconditional love in her sacrifice to save Harry, Voldy shows what self-destruction and cruelty a life without understanding love leads to, and Snape sits somewhere in the middle: his one-sided  un-requited love being both the cause of his darkest, and his greatest actions. His curse, and his redemption, fall and rise. Making him happy messes that up.

How to (kinda) fix this ship: make them miserable. Make them fall for each-other only to be pulled apart by circumstance (you know, like they were in the darn original source material). You’re serious about making this a tragic, dark romance? Don’t ship them when they’re at school: Ship them during Voldemort’s rise to power, in the 80’s, after Lilly is married. Have the original Order of the Phoenix send her to meet with Snape and use their previous relation to try to milk some information out of him. Have her feel conflicted about it, have James furious about it, but have her do it anyway for the greater good. Have her meet up secretly with Snape who is angry and distrustful, knowing his must be a trap, and talk. Have the relationship slowly build over time against the backdrop of a cold-war spy thriller, as Lilly slowly realizes that she has some lingering feelings for Snape, but can’t reconcile them her loyalty to the order and her family. Make this a love story of conflicted feelings, divided loyalties, and spy-work against the background of drawing war-clouds. Have Snape offer to leave Voldemort, if she’ll leave the Order, and run away with him, but by that point she knows she’s pregnant and chooses to stay, out of loyalty even though she’s crushing on Snape. Have him show up at the rendezvous expecting for her to be there only for James to lead an Order Ambush, and a fight to ensure, on top of Tower Bridge in the howling wind and rain, Snape surviving but having his spirit crushed and fleeing before Lilly can tell him her true feelings. Make it big, and melodramatic, but above all, make it tragic.  Because that’s the only way Snape works as a character. Always.

The better ship you should be doing: Ginny X Nevil or Luna x Nevil: You want tragic lovers, at school, with divided loyalties, who never get together in the main cannon because a Potter ruins it and gets the girl? Ginny X Nevil. Write what was happening that final year Harry wasn’t at school when they took Dumbledore’s Army and make it work in earnest. Heck, you could even have Snape, as headmaster, hated by them but secretly trying to protect them as a secondary character to their secret, forbidden love. You don’t want to break up Harry X Ginny? Luna X Nevil is sweet and wholesome, but also tragic as they never get a chance, having their school life taken over by the horror of that final year and the need to fight for their very souls in a school run by Death Eaters and the trauma of the Battle of Hogwarts meaning that in order to put away the past and move on, they need to leave each other behind. Hell, do an AU where they canonically end up together, why not? They deserve happiness.

 Dean / Sam AKA Wincest (Supernatural)

Why I hate this ship: They’re brothers. The show even makes a joke about how squick this is. Several times.

How you could (sort of) fix this ship: You can’t: They’re brothers. The show even makes a joke about how squick this is. I guess a body-swap arc could fix this, as it’s less squicky if its just their bodies with someone else’s minds,  but seriously, the reasons why this shouldn’t exist are extensively covered in the show, and it was hilarious.  To be honest, I don’t hate this ship done as a joke, but I have seen some dark spots on the internet, and I can say with all honesty it’s not always treated as a joke. Some folks are really invested in this, and all I can ask is, is your home life okay?

Now, done as a joke, I’m 110% behind this. This is exactly the sort of insane wacky bullshit that makes for a good crack-fic. For example imagine that the supernatural threat of the week was book that made anything written in it come true, and the brothers are trying to find and destroy it, but they keep getting distracted by their burgeoning romantic feelings for each-other, and suddenly realise that the owner of the book is a fan on the in-universe novels, and writing slash-fic in the book. They need to find the writer before they make them do something they’ll both regret, but it’s just so distracting when Sam’s beautiful eyes are right there and- dammit, Sam, it’s happening again! Make Sam less concerned and even a little amused, with it, but make Dean hate what’s going on. Especially when the writer’s description suddenly makes Sam noticeably better hung that him. Make the villain turn out to be Becky from “Sympathy for the devil” and end with them trying to take the book away as she writes frantically to force them to do her bidding, and you’ve got yourself a good fic.

The better ship you should be doing: Cas/Sam or Cas/Dean or Cas/Sam AND Dean fic. Duh. Once again the show-runners beat the fans to the mark and pointed out that this is the best ship, and then they took it away just to fuck with us.

 Any Katniss ship that ignores her obsession with Emotional Security Logic. (The Hunger Games)

Why I hate these ships: Katniss is, briefly put, a mess before the books ever start, her father’s death and harsh upbringing have arguably given her PTSD before she ever volunteers for the reaping, and it doesn’t get better from there.  In psychology, Emotional Security Theory (EST) is a hypothesis that the heightened emotions surrounding repeated violent exposures leaves children vulnerable to dysregulated distress responses and eventual psychopathology, aka, why Kat be so messed up.  Her internal monologue makes the books completely clear that her choice in partners is not motivated by normal affections, but by deep, deep fear. A fear of loss, abandonment and death that leads her to make every decision about what minimises her, and her sister’s, exposure to potential physical and emotional harm. It’s frantic, fraught, cold survivalist thinking. And the other characters in the book notice and acknowledge it! “Which of us will she pick?” “She’ll pick whoever she can’t survive without.” Kat doesn’t like herself for it, but she does eventually admit to herself that she makes her decisions like this.

How do we fix this ship: Ship Kat with whoever you like, but give her a good reason to pick them: and in Kat’s mind “A good reason” is based on Emotional Security Logic, she needs to have a pressing reason why this ship makes her and her sister safer. Do that, and you’ve got yourself a good Katniss story. Don’t do that, and while you may or may not have a good story, the person staring in it isn’t Katniss Everdeen anymore.

The better ship you should be writing: Finick X Annie. Or, Haymitch prequel ships

FinAnn. This, this ship has some real potential to it, and is criminally underutilized. Finick and Annie’s relationship is one of the most tragic and romantic in the story, and has so much to offer. Or, if you want to have a hard-bitten character from district 12 struggling with trying to find love in the hellish combat of the games, do a prequel in which Haymitch finds love in the capitol during training, but loses then in the area and turns to drink as a result. Heck, you could even have some fun with this and turn it into a dark comedy, or a great tragic love story, whatever you like. It’s got potential, and his backstory is vague enough you could do a lot with it.

So, tell me below why I’m wrong, and have fun with your writing: just because I hate that ship doesn’t mean you should. Enjoy yourselves.

I’m off to write awful Ax/Pina/Luna Polyjuice’d into Nevil/Cas/Finick fiction set at an anime high-school that fights a magical war against other fictional schools, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me. BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

[tfw-no-tennis]

ani....morphs.....

ok so picking up after the david trilogy, which hit hard as FUCK, we have book 23, which basically was a semi truck that ran over my corpse, jesus christ, they really followed up the david trilogy w/all that....

23 was so so good and also painful. its the culmination of a lot of tobias’s characterization in the series thus far and also we finally get the reveal we’ve been waiting for about elfangor....ooooh man 

and there was a lot of painful stuff in this book but the worst imo was tobias wondering if it were possible that somebody wanted him and would take care of him, only to have it all come crashing down in the worst way when it turned out aria was visser three in morph, ouch. 

that was so brutal augh. and when he figured it out and just crash landed and kept thinking about how he wanted to die and how he was stupid to think he could have a home...bro get these kids some THERAPY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

so yeah that book was absolutely brutal but also so good...and it further fleshed out the animorphs working as a near-flawless team, w/the whole setup of tobias meeting w/the lawyer being so airtight and well-planned 

also more free hork bajir!! its cool that there's stuff happening w/them offscreen, I like that 

I literally had to take a break from reading the books bc the david triology + 23 was like so much, and also bc the olympics were on and all my time got dedicated to watching those, but then I opened 24, not sure what to expect, and BAM it was the helmacrons lmaoooo

I don't even remember the helmacrons but ig a lot of people hate them? lmao so that whole reputation preceded the book and I was like oh wow time for a change in tone

which wasn't wrong but also I liked that book?? I was never bored, even tho the whole thing was patently ridiculous and also had very little bearing on the overarching story

but I think it would be a standout if it were a TV episode w/a good budget - the visuals were amazing even in text, and I can imagine all the cool shrinking/growing/cellular stuff would be WICKED cool visually (ideally 2d animation but an ant man-esque live action adaptation wouldn't be terrible if they had the budget for it)

whatever let me dream. so yeah I didn't hate the helmacron book even tho the helmacrons themselves were...sure something. lmao I think they come back? that should be interesting

next book is the arctic one, we have yet another alien of the week style adventure - I liked this one too, it felt like more plot-y stuff happened since they destroyed the base, and marco’s POV is always fun 

I do find it funny/interesting how sometimes when the animorphs do something - like in this book, destroying that base in the arctic - it doesn't really seem to impact the yeerks much/it doesn't get brought up much after that. and then other things like them destroying the ground-based kandrona get mentioned a lot (that example is understandable tho bc that WAS a big deal). its just hilarious to me how blowing up entire building complexes has become so routine that it isn’t even worth mentioning at this point

Also I adore when they meet other random people/kids and are chill w/them, like w/that kid they met in the rain forest earlier on w/the time travel 

the descriptions of the brutally cold weather were great. I hate the cold so I was like oof this is a nightmare lmao

also ig that was the first ghostwritten book and I did kinda notice it was slightly different than usual? maybe? I could be imagining it tho 

okay but book 26 tho...BOOK 26. bruh 

that was SO good and I really didn’t know what to expect - but when we finally revisited Jake’s dream w/crayak I knew it was gonna be good (but I didn’t expect it to be a chess game war epic..!)

basically I loved it. SUCH a good Jake book - I really appreciate his character now as opposed to when I was 10 and often overlooked him (sorry jake).

similarly, when I was a kid and read these I sympathized a lot w/the chee and felt bad for them towards the end of the series when they had to get more involved in the war (genuinely don’t remember what they even do but ik I felt bad) 

but now I've basically 180′d and I'm like damn those chee sure are hypocrites huh. 

like they could solve So many of the animorphs problems but their stringent adherence to nonviolence leads to them actively getting in the animorphs way sometimes? and obviously pacifism is a complicated topic, but in this case it also intersect w/the whole ‘child soldier’ thing, and as beings who are insanely old and wise, the chee probably shouldn't just leave all the dirty work to a bunch of literal middle schoolers

aaaaanyways. there’s so much I love about this book. the iskoort! they were sure something. and the ‘plot twist’ that they are actually 2 beings, the Isk and the Yoort - and the Yoort are essentially Yeerks - that slapped. the symbiosis of it all! 

I loved the part where they all realize what this means, that this is why Crayak wants the iskoort destoryed - because someday the yeerks might come across them and realize parasitism is not the only way. I love it! 

alas I don’t recall the iskoort returning in the story (but also my memory is terrible so who knows?) but still that would be cool

basically I feel like this is the book where Jake Truly comes into his own as a leader, in every sense. he outmaneuvers Crayak, and even the ellimist, who’s yanking them around in his own way

the scene where jake shoves the howler off the cliff and jumps off and morphs and acquires the howler...that was fantastic and tense. 

also the murder is definitely becoming more overt. I mean, it has been for a while, but it isn’t really pointed out as much anymore. oof

more on the chee - as Jake points out in this book, and other characters point out in other books - the chee could have saved the pemalites, but instead just stood by while their creators were slaughtered. on the other hand, jake says, what do the chee do AFTER they’ve killed the howlers - where to point them next? when is the end of their violence? 

buuuuut also standing by while atrocities occur is pretty damning, as is frequently mentioned in this series - from the very beginning, when marco initially doesn’t want to get involved in the war at all, and the other animorphs basically tell him that turning his back on the war and acting like he doesn’t even know it’s happening would be immoral and cowardly (which imo this reaction helps to push marco in the direction he ends up going, but I digress) - this topic comes up again in 19 when cassie quits the team and rachel is upset bc she sees it as cassie elevating her own feelings above the greater good (as in, as long as cassie feels good about how she acts, it doesn’t matter how much preventable evil the yeerks are committing while she turns away). etc etc. but that’s essentially what’s happening w/the chee - even tho they help w/intel, the lack of any sort of Action on their part means that they’re essentially allowing awful things to happen when they could prevent them. this is rambly but basically...animorphs deals so much in grey areas, and the chee are noticeably black and white in their actions, despite falling, in a meta sense, in an extremely grey area. its such good, thought provoking writing!

anywayssss I keep talking about the chee lmao what else was there. oh YEAH jake and cassie kissed for the first time awww that was super cute 

and ofc immediately marco teases them as asks jake if he’s gonna kiss him next, and all I can say is...marco is a bicon 

also I love the background worldbuilding w/the iskoort, how they have all these groups and guilds and stuff - its not dwelled on much, which actually works really well to give the world/species a sense of lived-in realness 

okay oh man and the reveal at the end that the howlers were just like...children who thought the whole thing was a game...AUGHH man that’s sooo fucked 

like, when jake morphs the howler and has rachel ready to knock him down in grizzly morph if he gets out of control due to the howler’s murderous instincts, and he morphs to find that the howler is...playful, like a dolphin morph. SUCH a good fucked up sense of dawning horror there 

and the fact that as far as I can tell the chee KNEW this, but wanted revenge anyways, so they let the animorphs assume that the howlers were Evil On Purpose

also I love smaller moments, like jake seeing that ax is ashamed for briefly running away during one battle w/the howlers, and then entrusts him w/an important task bc he knows that ax will see that as redemption - and when everyone thought jake was dead and were so happy when he wasn't (they all love each other so much im gonna cry about these child soldiers augh)

basically that book was so good

man one thing I absolutely love is that the longer the series goes on the more obvious it is that andalites, despite inventing morphing technology, barely use it themselves 

like, most of the andalite characters we see barely morph. its kind of a last resort to them, as they’re already plenty dangerous in their regular forms 

meanwhile for the animorphs, that’s all they have to fight with. that’s their only weapons against the yeerks, and its so fun to see them use the power in so many varied ways, and so creatively, while the andalites have barely scratched the surface of their own technology

its also interesting to contrast against the yeerks who start out w/absolutely no technology, and the andalites share some but not all of their technology w/them...its too bad that morphing technology was just starting out cause that would’ve been interesting

like imo a lot of the conflict w/the yeerks could’ve been avoided if they could just nothlit into better forms - of course, there’d still be plenty of yeerks who want to go start wars or w/e, just like pretty much any species in the series, but a lot of yeerks would probably be like ‘yeah I'm good’ and just chill out as nothlits

also people online love to talk about how humans are alienfuckers and would definitely have sex w/sentient aliens and whatnot, and while I'm not saying that's untrue, its just funny bc in animorphs the truest alienfuckers are definitely the andalites

as of the hork-bajir chronicles, we now have a second instance of an andalite morphing another species to be in an inter-species alien romance (and eventually have kids) 

speaking of, I don’t think I’ve talked abt the hork bajir chronicles yet??? even tho I read it a while ago lmao 

HBC was great...I honestly haven’t really run into an animorphs book I’ve actually disliked at this point, I’m sure it’ll come w/all the ghostwriting and whatnot, but I’ve liked at least some aspects of every book

anyways HBC was great, and it’s funny bc I remember that I read this book as a kid, and yet rereading it now I didn’t remember a single bit of it lmaooo

I really liked the framing device of the free hork bajir telling this story to tobias. I also liked how we know from the beginning that this story wont have a happy ending - we know all the hork bajir end up enslaved by the yeerks, but it’s still somehow hopeful at the end? I think this is largely due to the framing device tbh. 

also I love toby, and I love that the First free hork bajir named their kid after tobias ;_; 

and oooh mannn I LOVED the different POVs from this book. all the characters were so interesting! aldrea was fascinating - I really like the increasingly negative view of the andalites that the readers are getting, all while maintaining the sense that they aren’t like, actively evil, just that they have their issues - like aldrea’s arrogance, and the general andalite arrogance which lead to the loss of the hork bajir. also, who knew andalites had their own brand of sexism? Ls

I did like getting a female andalite tho, that was cool. and dak was really cool, he was such a good, compassionate character who was able to maintain his morals in an interesting way throughout the story

and VISSER THREE...or should I say esplin 9466, because he’s not visser 3 yet...getting his ‘origin story’ was excellent - I really like how we’re learning about visser 3 backwards - we start off the series w/him as the main villain, and he’s campy and menacing, and then we see him in the andalite chronicles as a power-hungry sub-visser trying to climb the ranks and eventually getting alloran as a host, and then back even further here, w/the start of his focus on the andalites and the beginning of his ambition. its been very cool and interesting to see

plus, the beginning of the yeerks as we know them! seerow! alloran! it’s a party and nobody is having a good time, except for some of the yeerks. 

I like how it’s pretty obvious that the andalites are well-meaning with their interactions w/the yeerks, but go about it the wrong way - they give them enough technology that the yeerks realize there’s a whole world out there to experience, and then they blockade the yeerks on their planet and tell them they can’t leave. nnnnot the best approach imo

again, as I said above, I’m interested in how things could’ve gone if the andalites had given the yeerks morphing technology early on - could a lot of the conflict have been avoided, or would it have been worse? the yeerks seem pretty evil in this book, immediately jumping to enslave anyone they can. otoh we hear from esplin that not all yeerks like having host bodies, and find it overwhelming, preferring to swim around in the yeerk pool as a slug - I assume as host bodies became more available this type of thinking was probably stamped out in yeerk society or w/e, but there are a lot of interesting what-ifs in the situation 

I loved the scene where esplin first experiences having a host, and immediately knows he can’t go back. there are a bunch of great sensory descriptions, and it’s a nice scene to pinpoint as a foundational moment for the visser three in the current story, who spent a lot of time and energy getting what he sees as the best possible host body, an andalite

I find it interesting how much visser three clearly respects the andalites, even while constantly deriding them. and you can see the origins of that here as he immediately focuses in on the andalites, working to become an expert on them in order to make himself useful enough to move thru the ranks

another thing I like is how esplin seems a lot more crafty and ambitious than the visser three from modern times - I would guess that reaching his goal (andalite host body) and being given all that power was detrimental, playing on his weaknesses instead of his strengths. basically, I don’t think it’s ooc or anything, I can see how HBC-esplin became animorphs-esplin, especially w/TAC in between

as for seerow...poor dude. you really do have to feel for him, because you get the sense he really did just want to be kind to the yeerks, but it was borne from a place of pity, and he (and the other andalites) consistently held too much power over the yeerks for the species relations to ever be truly equal and functional 

AUGH I have so many thoughts about alien space politics. omg. I need to talk about the actual story lmao

so yeah I also feel for aldrea, she had a rough time, watching her entire family die and being thrown into a hopeless war

and then the andalite council or w/e not listening to her bc she's a girl AND seerow’s daughter...oof

also, I really really liked the running theme of the andalites - specifically aldrea - looking down on the hork bajir as ‘simple’ and constantly underestimating them, especially dak

and I like how this is portrayed as a bad attitude for aldrea to have, and she still remains and interesting and sympathetic character even while having obvious flaws. it’s about being 3-dimensional baby!

and oh man I love that dak realizes that aldrea looks down on him, and his entire species, but he can see that that’s how the andalites are, and it all connects back to the beginning of the story w/the yeerks, bc the andalites looked down on the yeerks and treated them with pity and kept them pinned under their proverbial thumb ‘for their own good’ and look how that turned out 

but dak is wise and kind enough to not hate aldrea for this, even acknowledging when she’s using him, but not pushing her away because he recognizes good in her too - and she ends up changing, partially because of his faith in her

and I feel like it can all be compared to that scenario of like - a hypothetical creature that lives in a 2D world suddenly being thrust into a 3D world, and comprehending what its seeing, and understanding that there’s so much more out there outside of the flat lines of its world - and then its dropped back into 2D-land with the knowledge of all the stuff its missing out on, and no way to get back to it or explain it to anybody else

I loooove that ‘trope’ or w/e you wanna call it, and it’s done beautifully here w/the yeerks - whos the say they wouldn't have been fine in their pool swimming around; as esplin said, a lot of the yeerks were terrified of having a host, it was only from the andalites’ perspective that their lives were sad and pitiful, and the andalites showed them what the world could be like, and then said ‘no, you can’t travel the stars like we do, you have to stay here on your planet and do what we say.’

and then again, w/the hork bajir - dak talks about how, even though he drinks up the knowledge that aldrea gives him, in the end it might have been better to just have lived peacefully, not knowing what was in the sky or the Deep - as aldrea says: “It was too late for Dak: he knew that the stars were not flowers.” 

plus the hork bajir having to go from a completely peaceful species who don’t even understand the concept of violence, to a bunch of soldiers fighting a war...oof 

basically everyone in this story uses the hork bajir. the yeerks use them as hosts, the andalites use their planet as a convenient place to dump seerow and then take their sweet time coming to help, and the arn created them as means to stabilize the planet, but block them off from their society and refuse to help when the yeerks come

like, the arn modifying themselves to be un-infestable by the yeerks and then being enslaved for physical labor instead? oof guys. if they had teamed up w/the hork bajir resistance things might have gone better, but probably not 

more on aldrea - throughout the story I was always thinking ‘how am I supposed to see her? as a good person, or as a bad person?’ 

as a POV character, especially a ‘good guy’ andalite, you just start off automatically thinking of her as a good person, but as the story goes on, she starts getting lost in revenge and begins using dak and the hork bajir, and you’re left wondering if this is a story about her slide into darkness, and then towards the end of the story her character development culminates in her making the decision to stay w/the hork bajir, and the be with dak, and that’s about when I went ‘ohhh right this is animorphs so every character is pretty much gonna be grey’

I feel like that moral grey-ness was on full display w/aldrea, and I really enjoyed that. I love so much when characters who are good do bad things, for good or bad reasons, especially in media like animorphs that’s aimed at kids. it’s so compelling. 

oof, and the ending when aldrea convinces dak to mobilize the hork bajir and teach them violence...and dak asks her if she’s ever killed another andalite, and she’s horrified, and says of course she hasn’t, and he says that that’s what she’s asking him, and all the hork bajir, to do - to kill their own people, even if they are being controlled by the yeerks. biiiig oof. I love that dak can keep up w/aldrea and her andalite supremacy attitude - it seems that the non-andalite characters who get along best w/the andalites are the ones who wont take their bs 

what else happened....oh my god how could I forget about alloran, and his quantum virus. oooof. I like how we find out about alloran in parallel to visser three, in the same backwards way - in animorphs he’s the tragic host of visser three, in TAC he’s the disgraced but still semi-respected war-prince who becomes the first ever andalite controller, and here he’s the guy who decides to commit some war crimes because, hey, we haven’t tried that yet 

but yeah that was fucked up, I love it. I’ve said it before I think but I like that alloran isn’t some perfect martyr tragically taken by the yeerks - it’s a lot more compelling that he’s a very flawed person who was taken as a controller partially due to his own bloodthirstiness. 

but yeah, the part where aldrea morphs alloran and ‘sneaks’ into that room was great. aldrea’s dedication to disposing of the virus is a great indicator of her character development - it really feels like the straw that broke the camels back w/re: to the andalites not being what she thought they were, w/their tardiness coming to help the hork bajir planet and the way her father was treated being the precursors to this realization. it all culminates nicely in aldrea saying ‘fuck this actually’ and nothlit-ing into a hork bajir.

and it’s really tragic but realistic that even though aldrea and dak end up seeing eye to eye at the end and getting together, the virus ends up being released anyways (and fails in its objective to stop the yeerks from using the hork bajir - the whole thing was p much a lose-lose situation oof), and aldrea and dak still die fighting a hopeless war 

but then we have the free hork bajir on earth, including toby, who, like tobias, has andalite ancestry, but no DNA to show for it - I like that they have that connection as well as tobias being her namesake

so yeah I enjoyed that one and its many-layered themes

WOW this got long uuuuuhhh ok I think i’ll leave this one off here. at the time I’m actually finishing the writing and editing, I’m on book 35 lol so I have some backlogging to do. never fear, I have a lot to say....

[lilacsolanum]

am I correct that you once mentioned being able to talk forever about the breakdown of Animorphs team dynamics at the end of the war? please... if so... i'd love to hear your thoughts...

YES, YOU ARE VERY CORRECT. HERE WE GO.

Cassie and Ax are the only ones whose books straight up lay down the law on this. The Sacrifice has Ax straight up talking shit about, like, everyone but Marco. Marco he’s cool with, because Marco’s clear headed and not worried about getting his hands dirty. Marco’s like “Man, drop a nuclear bomb if you GOTTA, like I don’t LOVE the idea but what’s an intergalactic war without a ‘lil nuke here and there? Makes it EXCITING.” But he starts getting disenfranchised with Jake - “I wished now not for Jake, but for an Andalite commander. An experienced soldier. Someone who better understood when to fight and when to watch.” He is OVER how Rachel is terrifyingly violent and should have been removed from fighting a while ago (the scene where Ax chooses to forgive and free a Yeerk-moprhed-bird who is just trying to become a nothlit — only for Rachel to thoughtlessly murder the Yeerk on a rampage — is one of the most chilling moments in Animorphs. I gasped and had the set the book down when I first read it, and I first read it as an adult.) While He even straight up calls Tobias out on getting trapped in morph on purpose - “He stayed in red-tailed hawk morph for longer than two hours. I suspect he did it on purpose.  It was his way of escaping the complexities of human life. Although he exchanged them for a new set of complexities.” When he finds out Cassie gave away the morphing technology, he says “I could not stop looking at Cassie. I was not exactly sure what I was feeling. But I was sure it was very close to hatred.” Later he says “Perhaps the real menace lay at the other end of the continuum - represented by Cassie. Humans who were softer. Kinder. Well-meaning. And, ironically, infinitely more dangerous.” He eventually does forgive Cassie and start to understand her choice, but it takes him a MOMENT. Ax is TIRED in this book. The Sacrifice is just Ax talking shit about everyone, it’s amazing. “My hatred for Cassie began to extend to them all. They were fools. They would never prevail. They were too soft. Too sentimental. Too childish. Too stupid and ignorant.” - Aximili in The Sacrifice, pouring out some tea.

Ax ends up in this really sad place at the end of the war where he’s resigned to dying on Earth, to dying with his human friends, and he sees honor in that but he does not want it. Ax is easily the least developed characters in the series, especially once he’s given to the ghostwriters. He’s either The Funny Alien Bro or he’s the writer’s voice of political commentary. VERY RARELY is he treated with respect. Because of this inconsistency, it’s hard to say what Ax does immediately after the war. Does he just peace out to Andalite immediately? Does he take time to decide what he truly wants? Does he decide he truly wants to stay on Earth with humans but goes back to Andalite out of duty? Does he reach out to Tobias? Does he quietly accept Tobias’s decision to isolate himself and feel secretly relieved that he no longer has to care for this neurotic bird? Does he feel guilty about being secretly relieved? Does he not care he’s relieved? There are a ton of ways to interpret Ax and view his post war decisions. The only thing we know from The Sacrifice is that he’s pretty fucking DONE.

-

Cassie talks a ton of shit, too. (”The truth was, and it hurt me to admit it, Jake just wasn’t Jake anymore.” - The Ultimate. “Rachel’s voice, on the other hand, was firm and unhesitating. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m thinking it’s time to explode a big ‘ole bomb.” “And you couldn’t be happier,” Cassie said bitterly to Rachel. “Could you?”” - The Sacrifice.) Cassie always has sweetly-snide things to say about everyone in her narration (homegurl is always like “Marco is funny, but only to cover up his own fear.” “Yeah Tobias DEFINITELY trapped himself in morph.” “Rachel is a mess.” Cassie is a southern church lady and a master at shade and I love her.)

Cassie and Ax are basically just. Done with everyone. Cassie has already realized all her friends are way too war-touched to ever be healthy, and knows, on some level, that she’ll retain enough stability be able to elevate herself past the PTSD. In her last book, she makes this sad, desperate last chance grab at retaining what was left of Jake’s humanity. After that, we don’t see many people really connecting with Cassie and honestly, it’s not because she gave away the morphing cube. It’s because the Animorphs agree to blow up the Yeerk pool. I think that is a defining point for Cassie, the equivalent of Jake losing his parents. Her fate is sealed when she is forced to participate in destroying the Pool. She doesn’t like herself and she doesn’t like these people. She completely gives up on Jake and knows they have no future, which you see plainly in her reaction to Jake’s proposal (I don’t know what I expected her answer to be, but I didn’t expect her to start crying. And not tears of joy, either. “I would like that … eventually,” she said. “ But. But what?” She sighed. “But, Jake, what are you going to be? What are you going to do?” “Guess I thought I’d go to college,” I said. “And study what, Jake? Me, I’ll go to college, I’ll become a doctor. never forget what’s happened, I’ll never even try, but I’ll be able to slip back into a normal life. But you, Jake?” ) She is straight up aggressive toward Rachel in The Ultimate (”“Why do you have to be so horrible?” Cassie exploded. “You are, you know. And you get worse every day. Your own mother can’t even stand you.””) Cassie is maybe not consciously aware that she is the only one who will truly survive the war, but she knows SOMETHING, and she starts to distances herself and gives up on her friends at the end of the war. It’s another one of Cassie’s bright clear lines.

-

Marco doesn’t really comment on things falling apart, but I also don’t think Marco approaches exactly HOW falling apart things have become in the same honest way Cassie and Ax do. Listen: homeboy has abandoment issues. Which I guess is extrapolation, as I can’t really think of any example where he’s directly like “Everyone Leaves Me Eventually Fuck ‘Em And Their Little Dog Too”, but the text DOES tell us 1. Marco’s mom died when he was 11, which is a very big thing to happen to a very tiny child; 2. His dad mentally checked out immediately after and 3. After the war, Marco awkwardly tries to keep the band together. He admits to spying on Jake in his free time in The Beginning, AND I MEAN. “Marco lived half a mile from me, in a house about seven times bigger than mine. We’d started hanging out again. And after awhile he’d given up arranging dates for me with whatever starlet happened to be willing.” (Jake, The Beginning). Some of that is Jake giving back to Marco, but one can ONLY ASSUME from Marco’s weird spying that Marco pulled every drop of Jake’s friendship out by sheer force of will. He also apparently invites Cassie AND HER BOYFRIEND to his Hollywood parties (I spoke to Cassie every couple of months. She was seeing some guy … actually, a good guy. I had met him at one of Marco’s parties.) and is in general all up in her shit. He does this crazy detailed run down of every step Cassie has made post-war in Chapter 10 of The Beginning. Like bro why do you even know Wal-mart tried to get Cassie to sign a deal with them? Because you’re not as cool as you think, and you miss the fuck out of the Animorphs. His defining character trait is also “Cares about no one unless he adopts you as as family, in which case he will walk right into hell and personally bitch slap satan to ensure your safety.” I honestly don’t think it OCCURS to him that they won’t all be friends after the war. He comments a bit on people falling apart, but I swear he thinks they’re all going to fall apart together. Marco is arguably in a better position when the war ends than when it started. He brings his mother back from the dead, his dad is functioning, he is rich and famous, everything is great (save for the inevitable trauma of his parents and the existence of Nora and the fact he deliberately put her in harm and all the other terrible realizations we’ve all had about that family). But I can’t help but feel that his abandonment issues are part of what lead him to The Rachel. He sacrifices a pretty bomb life to go on a suicide mission without question, because Marco doesn’t have much family, and he adopted the Animorphs as a family, and now the only way to get that family back for even a moment is to go on The Rachel.

Basically, at the end of the war, Marco is something close to happy and hopeful. The last book he narrates is a fucking romp with tanks and ducks and bondage jokes (”” ICONIC). He’s focused on his parents, and he’s not really seeing the looming aftermath of war.

-

Tobias is sort of in the same situation. He’s dealing with a lot. He’s got a Loren now, and he’s awkwardly morphing human for her. He has been disenfranchised with Jake ever since Jake manipulated him into volunteering himself for torture. He’s kicking it with Marco and Ax and they have this sort of unofficial club going on, but he never mentions particularly connecting with Marco on the same level he does Rachel or Ax or even Cassie. Which, don’t get me wrong, I am 100% a huge believer in Team Finesse as disgruntled roommates who care for each other deep down, but it’s ultimately not enough of a connection to keep him around after Rachel’s death. That’s the thing with Tobias. He was always sort of detached from everyone but Rachel and Ax, and Ax was somewhat circumstantial. We all love the shorms, shorms are real, but there’s definitely a reading where the two of them bonded because they had to. I also definitely think Tobias never truly believed in Ax’s love for him. That’s the thing with Tobias, he can joke and he can bond and he has a nice time with the other Animorphs but he doesn’t believe in a universe where they hang out without the Yeerks, ya feel? He can go on a tank joy ride with Marco, but underneath it he’s thinking “This hilarious class clown wouldn’t give me the time of day if it wasn’t for Elfangor.” He can listen to Ax call him shorm, but ultimately he’s going to feel “Ax is only here because he has no other option, we wouldn’t be friends otherwise.” That’s why as soon as Rachel dies, Tobias is out. When Cassie says, “He doesn’t hate you, Jake. He never did. His heart was broken, that’s all. And you know, Tobias never had anyone. No one before Rachel. No mother, really, no father he could ever know. Rachel was the first and only person who ever loved Tobias.” (The Beginning), I think she’s speaking from Tobias’s POV, because she knows of all people that Tobias was loved and loved fiercely by many. It’s just that when Rachel said it, he actually believed her. (This is a line I’ve been sitting on for a minute and will use in a fic, so anyone who reads it again later, act surprised okay?)

-

And Jake and Rachel have isolating incidents that are pretty clear on the page. Rachel’s descent into extreme violence addiction isn’t super well done, but these ARE children’s books. As dark as these books are, there’s something so incredibly disturbing about watching a child find joy in a shower of blood that it’s not really well touched upon. All we know is that she’s out of control, to the point where when confronted by an armed but currently peaceful group of soldiers, she ignores orders from Ax and attempts to ram through the human shield by physically stomping on her mother’s foot and forcing the gas pedal. No one wants to hang out with Rachel by this point, not even her family, not even Cassie. Well, we can assume Tobias is still kicking it with her, but we never get a scene of them together which is a SHAME. And Jake is, you know. I’ve rambled enough, but anyone who has read the series knows that Jake withdraws from his friends when he loses his parents in The Diversion. Marco and Tobias are too preoccupied to help, Cassie tries to the point where she hands their only leverage over to the enemy but eventually gives up on EVERYONE, and Ax is too exhausted to care. I don’t think it would have mattered much if Jake had gotten a ton of support though. He’d given up by then.

ANYWAY you asked for my feelings on the kids drifting away from each other and I gave you 2K because I am extra.

[carnationbooks]

Author Interview - marswithghosts

We’re going to continue our series of interviews with fandom authors with this conversation with Check, Please! author @marswithghosts. We were really excited to chat with this author, who has written several popular fics in this month’s featured fandom!

Check out marswithghost’s fic on AO3 here!(http://archiveofourown.org/users/marswithghosts/pseuds/marswithghosts)

How did you first get into fandom? What was your first fandom?

I didn’t realize I was in a fandom until I was maybe fourteen or so? Fifteen? Because I think my first fandom was probably Animorphs when I was 8-10, then I got into Harry Potter, anime in high school (Gundam Wing, my love), then probably Supernatural and then Check, Please!. I sort of fell into everything by accident, just about! I’ve always had a huge imagination for things, and I’ve always wanted to be more involved with the media I consume. So I think that’s probably how I got into it. I started thinking, “What if this were to happen? Or this? Why isn’t this in the book? I want to read it.” And then I would just write it for myself at first. I didn’t start posting any of my fic until I was on fanfiction.net in early high school. Don’t go looking for it—it’s pretty…awful…

Other than writing fic, do you participate in any other fandom activities such as drawing fan art, podfic, gif making, meta, cosplaying, etc?

I legitimately have no other skills besides writing, to be honest with you. I enjoy everything from everyone else, but I am not a big contributor to fandom besides the writing itself! I have lots of friends who have cosplayed, drawn great art, made gifs, and their meta is so complex and interesting…but that ain’t me.

What inspired you to start writing fic?

I’ve always been a writer, ever since I was in about first grade. I enjoyed writing, I liked exploring my imagination, and I didn’t realize that what I was writing at first was fan fiction. When I wrote about myself being an Animorph, I never knew that was any different from any other kind of writing. It was only when I got into Harry Potter and Gundam Wing that I discovered fanfiction.net and started realizing that “fanfiction” is when characters belong to someone else but the words and the story are totally mine. This is always what got me interested in Alternate Universes—damn near everything I write is AU, and I probably enjoy writing AUs the most.

What is your favorite thing you have written so far?

Sheesh, this is a hard one. Honestly? Totally honestly? Probably A Little Bit Closer in Check, Please! fandom. It’s the longest thing I’ve ever written in my life, and so much of it is really *mine*. It made me realize, hey—I actually *can* do a novel if I really want to. And so I am now working on an original novel.

What is your favorite fic by someone else?

There are a lot of them—too many to even comprehend at this point, honestly. My actual real-life fiancée is @annundriel​ (Ed. note: Annundriel on AO3), and I’ve always enjoyed her writing from way back in our Supernatural days. I think she has a really poetic way with words and imagery while staying very genuine and honest to the source material. I think that’s a really impressive feat that I’ve never been able to get the hang of…which is why I just make AUs :)

How did you get into Check Please?

This is actually embarrassing. I didn’t want to read the comic at all. But annundriel started reading it and gushed about it so much and showed me all these things that made absolutely no sense (there’s a character whose actually named Shitty?), but then I finally read it…and I fell in love with it…and she started writing fic and I loved her fic…and then I went on AO3 and found more fic…and then I wrote my own fic…and here I am a year later.

What pairings do you like to read in this fandom? What pairings do you like to write? Do you read gen fic?

My favorite pairings are Zimbits, Dex/Nursey, and—I have to admit this—Kent/Javier Martinez (my OC) (Ed. note: The fic is if this isn’t nice, i don’t know what is). I also like Kent/Tater as well! I’ll read just about anything if I like the writing, though, so I’m more willing to branch out now than I used to be even six months ago. As far as writing…I prefer Zimbits and Kent/Tater, Kent/Javier. I like doing Dex/Nursey, but still struggle with those characterizations; the others feel most natural to me. For gen fic: I would totally read gen fic, but I’m more inclined toward the ships. If it’s recommended to me by someone I trust, I’ll read anything.

What's your favorite fic trope?

Lord, there are so many. Fake dating, accidentally falling in love, tol and smol, etc. I also love coffee shop AUs, any customer service AUs (where’s the call center AU? oh right, that’s a WIP I’ve got…) Can you tell how I feel about AUs.

Do you ever get writer's block? What do you do to combat it?

I get writer’s block all the time. And with my anxiety, I also get panic attacks for sometimes no reason. When I get writer’s block, it’s intense. I have a lot of negative feels of worthlessness and self-doubt. When I was in grad school for my MFA, I kind of couldn’t afford to have writer’s block, since I had deadlines and workshops and my grades were at stake. Lately what I’ve tried to do is impose deadlines on myself—for example, I knew with my Kent/OMC story I wanted to post it for the very beginning of 2017. So I basically told myself “Okay, you’re going to get this done because you can,” and I went from there. Now what I do is I try to write by hand. I have several fancy notebooks and I’m currently obsessed with fountain pens and inks, so handwriting is enjoyable and soothing. It makes me want to put ink on the page so I can watch the pretty colors. This helps my anxiety a lot because I don’t feel quite as pressured as I do when I’m sitting at my computer and staring at a blank page. I’m so long-winded with my stories, even the short ones, that computer writing gets daunting really fast.

Do you have any recs for us to share with our readers?

— Because I’ve been so focused on my own writing, taking control of my mental health (and my physical health in general—yay for great employer health coverage), and playing video games (who’s ready for Mass Effect Andromeda?), I haven’t been reading as much fic lately. But I do have a list I’d done here: http://marswithghosts.tumblr.com/post/146909969360/wahs-into-ur-inbox-do-you-have-any-fanfic-recs And I super hard stand by those fics as well! So good. This fandom is tremendously talented and funny and brightening. I’m pleased to be a part of it.

We want to thank @marswithghosts again for such detailed and thoughtful answers to all our questions. One thing we love about this interview series is finding the similarities in how people tend to “find” fandom, while also getting unique perspectives about what fandom represents to each individual person. We hope you all enjoyed this perspective as much as we did. 

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Sort of an odd question, I guess, but can you think of what sorts of things helped distinguish character voice in Animorphs? I've wanted to write a series like it since I was a kid, with rotating narrators and the like, but I worry that my characters' narration gets kinda "same-y" and I remember Animorphs being pretty good about keeping them distinct. Any thoughts on the ways the kids' narration voices were differentiated?

I think where K.A. Applegate is an absolute master of character voice is the margin of unreliability within which she operates.  The characters don’t lie to the reader, and they pretty much never lie to themselves, but their attention is drawn to different details as dictated by their own biases and preferences and goals and experiences.  They can watch the same battle happen at the same time and come away with six subtly different interpretations.  One of the many, many great meta-commentaries in #54 is when Marco says:

Jake was too serious and heavy for the media… everyone acted like they wantedJake to do their show, but Jake wasn’t really into that game and the bookers for the shows knew it.Jake did not do good panel… As for Cassie, well, she was worse, if that’s possible. She had the tendency to wander around in all the moral subtext of everything. She’d take some story about a cool, rock ‘em sock 'em battle we’d been in and turn it into this mope about the morality of self-defense.

It’s a great way of summing up the character voices while gently poking fun at them as well.  Jake takes a serious, heavy view of most battles, and he focuses on all of the ways that he could have done things differently to prevent most of the risk.  That means that his perspective is very much caught up in the moment-to-moment question of what’s happening and what he has to do about it.  He doesn’t really ask the deep questions.  That said, he does break the fourth wall and talk to the reader more so than any other narrator.  Usually he’s apologizing, or trying to explain himself, or going “look, I know this makes me look bad, but here goes.”  He has the least distance from whatever’s happening in any given moment, and yet we also get the sense that his narrative voice is an older and more regretful person than the guy we meet in the first book.  If the Animorphs are running from an army of taxxon-controllers, his focus is going to be on all the ways he could’ve decided differently to avoid this situation in the first place.

Cassie, by contrast, does absolutely get caught up in the major questions and paradoxes implied by the Animorphs’ existence.  She’s the one to worry that controlling a morph is no better than controlling a host, the one who admits that she doesn’t have all the answers but asks the questions anyway.  During the down times, she worries not about the “best” way to fight the war (the way Jake does) but about the individual hosts and yeerks and baby skunks they’re harming in their effort to protect everyone.  If the Animorphs are running from an army of taxxon-controllers, her focus is going to be on the animals and civilians that are going to be harmed by the crossfire of this particular conflict.

Marco isn’t quite as blasé about the violence of the war as he makes himself out to be in that quote, but then Marco’s most characteristic narration quirk is that he is the least honest with himself and the reader.  Again, he doesn’t outright lie (the wildly-unreliable narrator was cliché in Edgar Allan Poe’s time, and that’s not even getting into the ableist tripe put out by bad Chuck Palahniuk emulators) because having a character outright lie or dream or hallucinate rapidly renders the entire story meaningless.  However, he tends to adopt whichever zoom lens will allow him to make the story funny and glorious rather than the zoom lens that runs the risk of revealing his vulnerabilities.  If the Animorphs are running from an army of taxxon-controllers, he’s either going to be zoomed way out to comment on the ridiculousness of giant Very Hungry Caterpillars running down a bunch of dumbass fursonas, or he’s going to be zoomed in far enough to complain about the fact that he already got his 10,000 steps today and yet here he is still stepping.  Either way, he’s going to adopt the perspective that almost keeps you from noticing how exhausted and terrified he is the entire time.

Rachel’s narration is all about turning situations into battles, preferably with herself on the side of righteousness and her enemies presented as the ultimate challenge.  Rachel is no bully (*cough* unlike early-series Marco *cough*) because she never ever takes on a weaker opponent, but she wants to fight everyone from her own uncomfortable emotions to God the Ellimist himself.  She tends to cast everything from bickering with Jake or hunting for bargains into a grand struggle, and she is always trying to figure out who is powerful and who is not so that she can defend the powerless through kicking ass on the powerful.  That’s a big part of the reason she’s so good to Tobias — she is gruffly affectionate or tough and defensive depending on what he needs — and part of the reason she often succeeds in supporting Marco when Jake fails to do so.  If the Animorphs are running from an army of taxxon-controllers, she’s going to be focused on turning the chase into a struggle, some kind of battle that she doesn’t even have to win, just as long as she has the chance to put the hurt on the people who would try and harm the powerless.

Ax is an interesting case in that he’s not necessarily talking to the reader; he’s talking to the Andalite War Council and possibly the entire Andalite Electorate.  A lot of the time his narration also mismatches the reality of the situation, but generally that’s because of biases in his perception rather than deliberate decisions about how to tell a particular story.  Ax has some great dramatic-irony moments during his more humorous scenes, because his narration is all about missing facets of human society that are obvious to every human reader (American ones especially) while trying to explain to his superiors that he’s doing just fine.  He has growing tension between his duty and the realization that the andalites’ imperialist bullshit is a bunch of imperialist bullshit, but he nevertheless toes the line of justifying his decisions through using what he was taught at the andalite academy.  If the Animorphs are running from an army of taxxon-controllers, he’s going to be explaining how he calmly assessed the situation and decided it would be for the best to run from the army while also noticing that it might not be The Warrior Way but it keeps them all alive and so he doesn’t necessarily care about being by the book at the expense of his team’s lives.

Tobias thinks too much.  I think it’s partially a side effect of the fact that he spends a lot of time alone — and unlike Ax, doesn’t get lonely when he doesn’t have company.  He really tries to get at the answers to the questions that Cassie just asks for their own sakes, and tends to obsess over the idea of there being moral rights and wrongs.  That said, Tobias’s distant and occasionally-detached perspective on the series means that he embraces the cheerful nihilism and darkly absurdist humor of the 2010s way ahead of the curve.  He’s the one most likely to announce casually that it doesn’t matter that the Animorphs lost a particular battle because the Earth is going to be absorbed by the sun in a total-planetary extinction event in a couple million years anyway, and the one least likely to care about needing strict definitions for his relationship with Rachel or his “half hawk, half human, half andalite” status (MM3).  If the Animorphs are running from an army of taxxon-controllers, then Tobias is going to have a literally distant perspective as he watches from overhead and herds all the others to safety, but he’s also going to have a metaphorically distant perspective as he unflinchingly assumes that this will be the last battle the Animorphs can expect to survive.

Anyway, I think that that’s what makes really REALLY good character voice.  It’s not a huge margin of uncertainty where we don’t even know what’s real and what isn’t.  (Again: 99% of those narrators are ableist as fuck, and 99% of those plots are frustratingly nonsensical to try and read.  Dream plots have never not been silly, and psychosis plots have never not been ableist.)  It’s not a tiny margin of uncertainty where we’re essentially reading a reporting of the events of the war without commentary.  It’s a more-or-less faithful rendering of the events of the war, with a focus on the aspects of any given scene that that particular character has reason to care about.  It’s subtle.  It’s complex, but simple and clean on the surface.  It’s masterfully done.