#david trilogy

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Very indulgent ask: you’ve talked here and there before about animorphs and unreliable narration, and I always love your insights. Do you have any passages or quotes from the books that you feel showcase biases in narration particularly well? Any favorites?

Oh man, how could I ever begin to answer? This is the best part of the series, and in some ways it's in every book! But I'll do my best.

David Trilogy:

In #22, Rachel characterizes Jake asking Ax to "get" her as Jake knowing what a violent monster she is, and using that monstrousness against a kid their own age. She obsesses over the idea that she's a terrible person who is barely worthy of being on this team, and the idea that Jake is basically puppeting her into atrocities.

But in #21, Jake asks Ax to get Rachel because he's scared. And because he wants the biggest baddest person he knows to protect him, if he's about to go into a battle he doesn't think he can win. Jake sees Rachel as his protector — in #11 he says that he never gets really scared until he sees Rachel get scared, and in #26 he trusts her to draw lines he can't. (Between this dynamic and how much Rachel dismisses Jake as a leader at first, I do headcanon Rachel being a few months older than him.)

In some ways Jake is right that she's his badass big sister — Rachel does see him as someone who needs protecting, maybe more than anyone else on the team does. (See: her sheltering him in #2, her pity for him at the end of #37.) In some ways Rachel is right that she's his red right hand — Jake asks Rachel to do the hard jobs, the dirty jobs, and he buys into her posturing about always being eager for battle, far more than Tobias or Cassie do. (See: him asking her to do all the hard parts of dealing with David #20-#22, his willingness to use her in #32.)

[starblightbindery]

Animorphs #20-22 by @kaaauthor

This is a remake of a book I made almost exactly two years ago. That was the 11th book I ever made and this one is the 50th (!) I asked K.A. Applegate to sign the book while it was still in sheets, so I only had one chance to get it right.

🐅 Animorphs 20-22 was the first serialized arc in the 90s book series.

🐅 The heroes recruit a new kid to their guerilla team and grant him morphing powers, only for his selfish and sociopathic tendencies to jeopardize their fight against the alien invasion.

🐅 Young readers were challenged by this subversion of the "new kid" trope and the moral dilemma that developed. Do they kill a fellow teammate? How else can they neutralize him?

🐅 ALSO: Can these middle schoolers crash the G7 Summit and save Boris Yeltsin, Bill Clinton, and other heads of state from infestation?

Foil Quill on Verona bookcloth, with iridescent calligraphy ink edges. I wanted to give this trilogy the special edition it deserves.

[featherquillpen]

Liveblog of the #21: The Threat audiobook

I listened to the (excellent) audiobook of Animorphs #21: The Threat yesterday and liveblogged it to @joysweeper on Discord. Here's what I had to say:

I think the acting choice to have David sound annoying in 20 was good because Marco hates him.. But I don't like that he also sounds annoying in 21. I think now is the time to lean into him being sympathetic

God I love the moment in 21 when Cassie calls David out for calling Tobias a bird racist. Cassie doesn't get to call out racism often in this series but I love it whenever she does.

Listening to the holiday inn bit and have many thoughts. I am actually totally on David's side that it's okay for him to squat in an unoccupied room, though breaking the window was dangerously indiscreet. Jake's insistence on following the law rings pretty hollow to me in his desperate circumstances

But the bit that really gets my hackles up is when David seems to think it's not a problem or a sacrifice at all that Tobias and Ax have to live in the woods. That's just so heartless to both of them

But it's very well written because his dismissal of Tobias and Ax's hardships foreshadows his moral justifications later that it's okay to kill non humans

It's a very clear difference that Jake feels compassion for Tobias and Ax and David feels none. Sure some of it is experience, but I would say that the sympathy for Ax's situation was pretty immediate for all the Animorphs when they first met him

I am very struck by how mealy mouthed Jake's scolding is. If a homeless person has a means to undetectably enter a hotel room I would say go for it. The hotel can afford it, fuck em

Ax honey how did you get to book 21 without learning what a hat is

But also, I am very intrigued by his horror at the notion of showing war on TV

Cassie is such a fucking mvp this whole trilogy

She did her best to help David settle in the hayloft

She manipulated David on the helicopter

She helped Marco demorph

She bit David, a wolf biting a lion, when he tried to sell out to Visser Three

She came up with the whole wretched awful David rat scheme

She saved the day so many fucking times and also she committed an unspeakable crime. Wonderful

And the whole time David thought she was harmless

It's so interesting that Jake was completely fine with boiling defenseless Yeerks in early book 6 and morally disturbed by it in book 21. His experiences with Temrash and Aftran changed him

The David trilogy slaps so fucking hard. It's just nonstop bangers. Not a dull moment

MacLeod Andrews (the audiobook narrator) is really nailing the emotional moments. The contrast in tone between private thought speech dissing David and publicly praising him is perfect

David's self pitying speech about how he's lost his whole life while standing over the presumptive corpse of Tobias is just so… Chef's kiss. Tobias sacrificed so much more than him. And David doesn't even consider him worthy to live

The action scenes here all go hard

There's a real theme of illusions in this book. The holograms. The fake Tobias corpse

An interesting AU to contemplate is one where David didn't pretend to kill Tobias and just peaced. He could have gotten away. Probably could have evaded the Animorphs forever. It's interesting that he didn't.

I guess ultimately he didn't because he resents the Animorphs too much. He needs to prove that he is better than them

Poor Ax though. The trilogy doesn't dwell on his pain here. But I think a LOT about how he must have felt hearing that Tobias was dead

Jake was the wrong person to have this mall showdown with David. Marco would have morphed cobra, snuck up on him, and poisoned him dead. Marco's ego doesn't require the showdown. Same with Cassie, she would have gone sneaky. But Jake is too like Rachel.

[austinendstheworld]

[thenixkat]

AU where David succeeds in murdering the Animorphs when they’re in the water as dolphins b/c he befriended the wild orca he acquired and brought them with him. And orca are down with murdering dolphins for the shits and giggles.

[jbk405]

I finished the David trilogy yesterday in my Animorphs re-read.  Apart from remembering just how much of a dick David was, I’m thinking about how the Animorphs could have handled things differently.  Because as much of a natural monster David was, the Animorphs themselves really bungled the whole deal from the beginning.

They straight-up drafted David into the war, they didn’t give him any kind of alternative.  They reveal their true identities to him before asking if he wants to join them, which immediately means that they can’t let him go.  They also don’t even pretend to be looking for a long-term solution to his living situation, just saying “We’ll figure it out after the mission” while telling him to sleep in the barn.  Even if he wasn’t a prick that sort of dismissal and domination would chafe at him, make him resent them all, and force him to look for a way to break out of their control.

Thinking about it, what they should have done was bring David to the Chee for short-term shelter once they rescued him from the fight at his house.  Not necessarily into the subterranean cavern where they live, but individual Chee must have secret identity homes scattered around the city to keep up their human lives.  The Chee who actually lives there can either vacate while David is there, or change their hologram so that he doesn’t know who they “really” are.  Then, once he’s settled and and can pretend that he’s not being hunted right now, the Animorphs talk to him and offer him the choice to sign up.  Give the pros and cons of the power and a frank assessment of the risks.  Most importantly, they talk to him in morph so that he does’t know who or what they are.  This way if he decides not to sign up they can release him without exposing their identities.  Neither David or the Animorphs are locked into action.

Whether he agrees or not they can talk to the Chee about long-term lodging.  Maybe one of their human identities can “adopt” David so that he can resume a pseudo-normal life in a new school.  If he doesn’t sign up for the actual war then he doesn’t know anything about the Animorphs themselves to endanger them and they can just fly away and leave him with the Chee.  There’s no need for him to become An Enemy since he can’t expose them.  Admittedly in this scenario he could expose the Chee, but they can easily just change their hologram and start up a new life.

And if he does agree to join up it can be a choice, with all the emotional investment that comes with it.

Now, again, since we know that David in particular is a jerk we know that he would have turned on them eventually.  He would have taken more time to get there, and he would have done it more subtly, but he would have tried to usurp Jake as “the leader” and definitely would have started abusing his powers on the side.  But it might not have gotten to a life-and-death struggle before it was resolved.  Maybe they would have been able to stop him before it reached the no-turning-back point, and could have found a way to get him out of their lives without needing to resort to such desperate measures.

Instead they functionally kidnap him, treat him very poorly for a lot of reasons, and then act surprised when he turns on them.

[nana-glass-chillhop-radio-hour]

I'd like you all to know that Seerowpedia is a national treasure and also 0.0% fuckin around

[lilacsolanum]

Ax: We have landed inside a hologram of a pillar that is protecting a Yeerk pool.

Imogen Heap: Hmm whatcho say

Slow Motion Camera: Close up on Marco. Close up on Jake. Close up Rachel. Close up on David. Close up on Ax. Close up on Cassie. Close up on Tobias.

Visser Three: The is no banquet tonight . . . All of this is a hologram!!!

Imogen Heap: Hmm whatcho say

Slow Motion Camera: Close up on Marco. Close up on Jake. Close up Rachel. Close up on David. Close up on Ax. Close up on Cassie. Close up on Tobias.

Cassie: Wait! Not all of these Hork-Bajir are real! Some are holograms!

Imogen Heap: Hmm whatcho say

Slow Motion Camera: Close up on Marco. Close up on Jake. Close up Rachel. Close up on David. Close up on Ax. Close up on Cassie. Close up on Tobias.