You reblogged a post a couple hours ago saying that David was failed by the adults. Was wondering if you’d be willing to elaborate on that? Most commentary on his extraordinarily shitty situation have to do with the Yeerks or the Animorphs so I was curious.
Yes! I have always empathized way more than I want to with David. Because my dad's job involved him being away 2-3 weeks a month during parts of my childhood, and required us to move from city to city every few years. To be clear, my parents are great — they're some of my best friends now we're adults, and they not only did everything they could to give us stability as kids but recently dropped everything to rush out and help me during a family emergency.
But it's not fucking easy to move around that much and have that much chaos at home. And I hope I have reasonable-quality social skills as an adult, but I wasn't always that way. I don't think I ever did anything seriously wrong — sucked up to bullies to avoid getting bulled myself, responded sarcastically when other kids tried to get real with me — but I also wasn't a great person as a preteen.
So like, I can feel my stomach curl up like a fist while reading some of those scenes with David. Like where he tries to join in with the in-joke about Tobias's Bird Opinions, only to have the Animorphs all turn on him because what the hell, you're going too far. Or where he doesn't fully understand what controllers are, and Marco scolds him for being naïve instead of explaining. Or where Jake orders him to live with Cassie, and David is baffled and hurt by the idea of a peer being in charge of his life. I've been David in those conversations.
But while I got pretty-good parenting from overworked but well-meant people (and had an older sister to fill in the gaps) — David clearly does not have that. David has a loaded BB gun in his room. David swims unsupervised. David owns 5 TVs. David has an illegal exotic pet under his bed. David's dad wears a loaded service weapon while sitting on the couch watching Buffy. David gives strangers on the internet his home address. Any of those details alone would be a mild concern; all together, they paint a picture of parents who never do any of the hard work of parenting when they could instead buy the kid more stuff to shut him up. No one has ever taught David to take others' feelings into account, and I'm guessing no one has ever grounded him. So he's not only friendless, but unable to make friends, and then he gets forced onto the world's most cohesive team. And disaster ensues.
