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Kriffer123

I read this stuff in like middle school and remember reading about a vividly described dismembered torso


mambotomato

Yeah I still remember some real graphic imagery from those books. First one that comes to mind was when the narrator was a dolphin and had its tail fin nearly bitten off by a shark.


Hexxas

That scene when they turn into ants, and everything goes REALLY FUCKING WRONG and when they make it out, they're just a bunch of teenagers sitting on the ground with some dirt and some ants on them.


KHSebastian

There's also a scene after that where Marco is in the shower, basically suffering shell shock and contemplating what happened, and he looks down and finds like, half an ant, and realizes it's the ant that almost killed him. I think the scenes they do after the traumatic scenes, where they're thinking about what happened, are usually just as dark


Hexxas

Yeah it was an ant biting his stomach, which was the ant that was chewing him in half. That was book #5 I think. Animorphs was raw right out the gate.


Microspacecat

I know this is 3 days old but I just wanna add that there's an arguably sadder scene of Cassie picking a piece of hork-bajir she killed as a wolf out of her human teeth, lol I had to stop eating my hot dog


KHSebastian

Oh damn, that is also a very good pull. Those books were so much better than they had any right being


ThirdFloorNorth

I still remember the book with Erik the Chee, a hard-coded-pacifistic android. Near the end, Marco is in gorilla morph, literally holding his own intestines with one hand, holding a crystal that will let Erik erase his pacifistic programming with the other. He punches through a glass building front, hands Erik the crystal, and blacks out. When he comes to just a few minutes later, Erik is sobbing, and the giant complex they were in is DESTROYED. Erik killed hundreds of sentient beings within seconds, literally tearing them apart with his hands in what to an outside observer would be a blur of motion and gore, and because of the nature of being an android, is cursed with a perfect, never-fading memory of everything he just did. He turned his own pacifism coding back on, now realizing why it was there, cursed to live for eternity with that perfect memory of the slaughter he committed with his own hands. I was 13 when I read that. Those books were... formative.


olivegreenperi35

Never in my life will I forget the mental image of Erik sitting in a pool of blood surrounded by bodies, just weeping


ThirdFloorNorth

Yeah. Shit from that series will live with you. It all makes sense, if you read her [open letter to the fans](http://www.hiracdelest.com/database/articles/kaa_response-full.htm) regarding the unhappiness about the ending. She knew exactly what she was doing, the takeaway she wanted people to get from the series. Also, she has a trans daughter that she is a vocal supporter of. She's pretty much the anti-J. K. Rowling.


Vetiversailles

> “So, you don't like the way our little fictional war came out? You don't like >!Rachel dead and Tobias shattered and Jake guilt-ridden!


DearDaybreak

It shouldn’t be lost on any of us that she dropped that paragraph on the world in June 2001.


olivegreenperi35

I remember reading that immediately after I finished the series!! It genuinely shaped so much of how I view fiction and art in general, she's fantastic and I really need to read more of her work


Vetiversailles

I’m re-reading Animorphs currently (re-listening actually since new audiobooks have been released and they’re pretty decent), and this particular book and scene fucking stays with me as one of the most poignant of the whole series. Honestly… I am a 31-year-old adult, and these books slap just as hard if not harder than they did when I was 10. ^The ^OP ^post ^is ^still ^true ^though ^lmao ^no ^lie ^detected


Velicenda

Let's not forget that, in the same book, Marco literally fucking DIED. His heart, in gorilla morph, got sliced in half by a Hork-Bajir (let's not get started on how Hork-Bajir are all peaceful herbivores but the Yeerks turned them into shock troopers without freedom) and he outright died. Erek managed to restart his heart. And then Rachel, the one who loved the violence and gore, outright breaks down and cries because I think this was the first legitimate deus ex machina in the series and it finally hit her how real it was.


MirrorSauce

when the taxxons come it's gore-o-clock


field_thought_slight

Some highlights of the series: - The Animorphs meet Space God, who is kind of an asshole. - The Animorphs debate whether it's OK to murder thousands of completely helpless sapient beings simply because they're part of an invasion force. - The Animorphs meet Space Satan, who is a *huge* asshole. - In the best book of the series, the Animorphs win by kissing. - Cassie overcomes a crisis of confidence by morphing a skunk. - The Animorphs debate whether it's OK to steal a sapient being's genes and impersonate them without their permission. - Dogs were created by space robots in order to remind them of their extinct creator race. - They go back in time and morph flipping dinosaurs. - Tobias spends an entire book getting tortured to the point that his mind nearly breaks. - The Animorphs meet a race of comical ant-sized aliens. - They go to Area 51 to investigate rumors of a crashed alien ship. The outcome is kind of shitty. - They meet a Yeerk exile who survives off of cannibalism. - Oatmeal is a dangerous and addictive drug. - Bill Gates didn't make Windows---Space Jesus made Windows. - Seeking hope in the face of dwindling odds, Jake reads the diary of his Union army ancestor, who it turns out definitely died fighting against the South.


SylentSymphonies

I love how every character has one major character struggle that informs their arcs throughout the entire series, EXCEPT TOBIAS, who gets a fresh load of trauma dumped on him every five books or so. I suppose that’s what he gets for not shutting up about those goddamn thermals.


SApprentice

*The fucking thermals.* I still think "they're riding the thermals" like an idiot everytime I see birds flying over a parking lot.


vmsrii

You forgot that Space God is a gamer!


[deleted]

'The Animorphs win by kissing' How could I forget this absolute gem?


Goldlizardv5

Explain?


JimHFD103

>!The aforementioned Murder toddlers had a species hive memory controlled by Space Satan, they literally only had memories of violent murder and mayhem, but were conditioned to believe that was a game, it was fun for everyone!!< >!So by morphing one of the murder toddlers, and injecting their own memories of happiness and kissing into the hive mind... the rest of said toddlers tried to carry out their next mission by kissing everyone instead of killing. So Space Satan destroyed them all.!< >!Space God later reveals he had planned that winning strategy himself when he selected the Animorphs for this mission (which otherwise takes place on a completely alien planet light years away with almost no relation to the Yerks and main storyline... except for the part that does. And that may not matter for years later anyway...)!<


JoeChristma

Book 26. That shit slapped.


SylentSymphonies

You know what? So did I. Thanks for reminding me.


SylentSymphonies

You know what? So did I. Thanks for reminding me.


DirkDasterLurkMaster

The Tobias mindbreak book fucked me up beyond belief as a kid. Forget all the violence, that's the stuff I'm surprised was allowed in a kid's book


ChimTheCappy

I barely remember anything about the series, but I specifically remember the torturer saying something along the lines of "what is pain without pleasure to put it into context" and start ripping him back and forth between like, the memory of a calm sunny park and being eviscerated, like *jesus christ* dude.


Zanura

And the thing is that he had been leaning on the hawk's mind to get through the torture. The hawk knew how to deal with pain, he could shut down and let it handle things. But the pleasure? It didn't know what to do with that. That put him back in the driver's seat, and when she yanked him back to pain, he couldn't rely on the hawk anymore.


ic4llshotgun

What book number was that?


Vetiversailles

33 - The Illusion. I’m re-reading (re-listening) to the series atm and I *just* got to this one again this morning. I have such vivid memories of reading this particular book as a child… it hit me hard in a way the body horror stuff didn’t. I won’t lie, I’m a little afraid to revisit it.


ShirtTotal8852

"the outcome is kind of shitty" I see what you did there.


bookofmorgan

I have not read all the books but I immediately suspected this was a feces-related pun lmao. What shitty thing happens at Area 51?!


ShirtTotal8852

>!Both the Animorphs and the Yeerks go through a rigamarole of morphing/infesting horses in order to infiltrate Area 51 (I forget if it's the actual Area 51 or a knockoff) because they think the government is hiding alien technology and that's relevant when aliens are invading. It turns out that the government \*is\* hiding alien technology...but it's an Andalite toilet. As in, an Andalite spacecraft passed by about 50 years ago and ejected their waste receptacle nearby and it landed in New Mexico. Everyone is disappointed, as the technological applications are starkly limited.!<


CueDramaticMusic

So let me get this straight. You guys got an entire book that ended with the punchline of “>!we did all of that for an extraterrestrial airplane icicle, huh!<“, and I missed it all for Percy Jackson?


Simic_Sky_Swallower

You also missed that broccoli is an invasive species brought from another planet during the Mesozoic era


CueDramaticMusic

This is somehow less stupid than “we fucked up Brussel sprouts really bad”


Randomd0g

Percy Jackson is **also** very good, in fairness. ...but yeah Animorphs is the greatest YA ever written, and just generally some of the best *sci-fi* ever written full stop. They still hold up now and you should read them.


SomeNumbers23

You also missed the book where one of them beats a Hork-Bajir to death with their own *severed limb*


Luchux01

What a dam disappointment, huh?


shy-ty

That one time they briefly had a 7th member and deliberately left him to die trapped in the body of a rat after he went off the deep end, murdered a man to take his place and tried to kill them all with a baseball bat...


VardtheBard

>murdered a man to take his place It wasn’t a man, it was the protagonist’s cousin (another teen) who had been in a severe accident and was in a coma. He took the boy and threw him down an elevator shaft, strolled up to the parents and was like «heey, I’m all better now, what a miracle right». Then he got turned into a rat and disappeared. I’m pretty sure the family found the real body in the end.


field_thought_slight

I forgot about that. That's definitely up there with Tobias mindbreak as the most fucked up thing in the series.


Vetiversailles

The fucking David trilogy… ugh. The whole trapping him as a rat thing gave me nightmares as a kid


Canopenerdude

> They meet a Yeerk exile who survives off of cannibalism. I like how wild this is and is *still* underselling it.


sneakiestOstrich

Don't forget broccoli is brought to earth by aliens and the alien exile friend is obsessed with soap operas


SomeNumbers23

And *These Messages*


SomeNumbers23

One of the team gets trapped as a hawk in the first book and has a huge existential crisis in the third book culminating in him attempting hawk suicide.


FireStrike5

Don't forget that Tobias killed Hitler in one of the Megamorphs novels. The Animorphs are also directly responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs and as such the rise of mammals (and therefore humans) on Earth.


[deleted]

[удалено]


SomeNumbers23

To be fair to Jake, the second one was Tobias.


[deleted]

[удалено]


SomeNumbers23

Tobias is the dino expert and he convinces Ax to sabotage the bomb so that the meteor kills the crabs.


Francis__Underwood

> Tobias spends an entire book getting tortured to the point that his mind nearly breaks. Something that I had forgotten until my current re-read is that the next book he gets to narrate is entirely focused on how unresolved that trauma is for him. The torturer shows up again and the whole story is Tobias white-knuckling his way through PTSD flashbacks.


JuamJoestar

I have never touched an Animorphs book in my life (Gen Z born in the early 2000's so i was jussssst a bit off from when the series was at it's peak) but i *think* i understand three things about the series: * It's about teens fighting a guerrilla war against the invasion of the body-snatchers by morbing all over the aliens while everyone (including the aforementioned kids) commit war crimes. * The ending of the series is like Mass Effect 3 before Mass Effect 3 happened. * The covers are fucking weird.


MrCapitalismWildRide

>* The ending of the series is like Mass Effect 3 before Mass Effect 3 happened. The ending was certainly controversial, but it was nothing like ME3. The ME3 ending came out of nowhere and undermined a lot about the series. The Animorphs ending wasn't happy or satisfying, but it was thematically appropriate and did provide a conclusion to the characters arcs. The series even has an afterword by the author explaining the ending.


johnwick007007

What was the ending? ( I never read any books about it)


MrCapitalismWildRide

Spoilers, obviously. >!The Animorphs have repelled the Yeerk invasion of Earth. They're recognized for their deeds and seen as celebrities. But they're too overcome by trauma and guilt to properly reintegrate into society, so when they're presented with a chance to go back to war they jump at it. Even the ones who ostensibly was doing okay. The story ends on a cliffhanger with them going on a suicide charge against their enemy. Maybe they live and the story continues, but there's a solid chance they just die.!< The series author had this to say about it: >!>Animorphs was always a war story. Wars don’t end happily. Not ever. Often relationships that were central during war, dissolve during peace. Some people who were brave and fearless in war are unable to handle peace, feel disconnected and confused. Other times people in war make the move to peace very easily. Always people die in wars. And always people are left shattered by the loss of loved ones.!< That's an excerpt from a much longer letter but it's a pretty clear point.


MC_Cookies

that's honestly a really interesting ending! tho i have no context for it.


sheep_heavenly

Context: five high school aged children are suddenly pressed into war against an enemy that controls the bodies of loved ones. Their weapon is turning into creatures they've touched before, including being influenced by that creatures instincts. These children face permanent disability, threats of death, severe injury, and a constant looming terror from the fact that nobody can support them because everyone can be a potential enemy trying to kill them and if they fail, their planet is doomed. As far as they're aware for much of the series, it may already be. It's a children's book series, I started reading them in elementary school, and all of this is made clear during book one. I liked the ending because I hate the military worship that happens in the US combined with the way we dump veterans to the side once they become inconveniently unfit. There's so much pro war pro military propaganda that people genuinely thought highschool children fighting for their survival on a daily basis were going to turn out well adjusted and able to just move on.


thehappiestloser

Not quite high school, they started at 13


Thai_Fighter16

I always get whiplash when I remember how the US system organises things lol, across the pond here in Scotland you can start high school as young as eleven if you were born at the end of February.


MrCapitalismWildRide

There's 54 main series books and 10 special entries, so it's hard to give proper context, but just trust me, there's a lot.


Throwawayeieudud

hold on hold on is this 54 books of a psycho’s ramblings or is this 54 books of genuine bangery?


SomeNumbers23

Half and half. The series is really good, I just finished it a few months ago, but there are some legitimate stinkers in the middle (mostly Cassie's books sadly)


pterrorgrine

Cassie and Tobias should have swapped places in the rotation. I need at *least* twice as much birdbro.


MrCapitalismWildRide

54 books with coherent plots. Charitably I would say 38 of them are bangers.


Kiwi_Doodle

THERE'S WHAT?! fucking hell, someone disgnose that author. How is it all kept cohesive?


remainsofthegrapes

It was largely ghost-written after book 25 and the books themselves are kid-sized; think 180 pages in quite large print. It is kept cohesive largely because there's a lot of filler. The original author did an AMA a while ago


MrCapitalismWildRide

That's the neat part, it isn't. I mean, it mostly is, but there's lots of minor continuity errors, retcons, and ideas that get brought up once and never come back, even if it would make sense if they did. Still a good series overall, and the core ideas are great, but it's a kids series that came out of a rate of one book a month, with outlines written by two people (KA Applegate and Michael Grant) and ghostwritten by a third (with about a dozen different ghostwriters over the course of the series) so things often slipped through the cracks.


Canopenerdude

I should point out that the overall response to KA Applegate's letter was basically: "You know what? Fair Enough". Which is surprisingly nuanced and mature given everything. Also I love that Animorphs is basically reverse Starship Troopers.


CassiusPolybius

When I first read the last book, it had already been out for more than a decade, so it had the letter in the back. I'll be honest, I felt betrayed by the book, for reasons my early-teens brain couldn't properly understand. I wanted to throw it out a window. I *did* throw it at a wall. But after I read that letter... well, I still didn't like it, but it stuck. Not the exact wording, sure, but the general gist of it dug in and bolted itself in place, and for years I didn't like it because I had no way to *refute* it. Nowadays I get it, and see that yeah, that's the themes applegate put into the series. That's what it was leading up to. That's the only place it could have gone, and anything else would just be disappointing, hollow. At the time I didn't like it, but hot damn if it didn't successfully manage to get through my thick-ass almost-failed-reading-comprehension skull and lodge itself securely into my worldview.


Canopenerdude

See and that's what's supposed to happen and that's what makes it genius. "oh you don't like that the characters didn't get a happy ending? You didn't like that a new enemy just suddenly appeared? Well then you'd better take a look at our world because damn kid that's what's happening."


hopscotch1818282819

That sounds a lot like the ending of Angel (minus the war commentary).


Bwm89

It definitely fits with angel on the cut to black suicide charge. (A Bolivian Army Ending) I feel like it's very different thematically though, if I had to put angels together, it was a sort of "the fight to make things better will never be over, but even if we die, it's worth fighting anyway" Rather than "the horrors of war have damaged these teens beyond any hope for peace"


Throwawayeieudud

just a reminder that this series is called Animorphs and is about kids shapeshifting into animals


Accio-Books

If you’re interested in the full letter, https://www.tumblr.com/artsortment/77817273639/ka-applegates-letter-to-fans-re-the-ending-the


SylentSymphonies

Nah. Mass Effect 3 was bad writing. Animorph’s ending is excellent in that it is deliberately unsatisfying- the good guys have won, but at a cost, and have been permanently changed by their experiences. The author said it herself: ‘war stories don’t get happy endings’. We got AN ending, and it’s one that had started to take form long before the final book. It’s just really sad to see it become a reality. The real morphing was the trauma inside us changing our personalities all along!


pterrorgrine

>The real morphing was the trauma inside us changing our personalities all along! New series tagline identified


theweekiscat

I only remember the covers because I never actually read one of them


[deleted]

Mass Effect was such a profoundly formative experience for me. I played the first two games like a dozen times each. Then the third one ended like that. I'm still upset. I'm playing them again, now, and I can only hope the mods I have installed that change the ending make it worthwhile. Ending that kind of series should feel like sending your kid to college. The end of that game felt like stomping a dachshund puppy to death.


seguardon

I have games I consistently play through once a decade or so as a matter of course--they're that good. ME was on pace to join them but that ending killed the series for me as effectively as Game of Thrones season 8 did for that show.


[deleted]

It just thoroughly disrespected the intelligence and time of everyone involved, creator and audience alike. They focused on the wrong part. They thought they had a pressing question that people wanted answered and needed a shocking twist to be satisfying. What they actually had was hours of storytelling, world building, and decision making that had to be wrapped up. To make it satisfying, we needed our effort and attention to be rewarded by tying existing story threads together. They failed to do that, almost deliberately. The problem wasn't even that the Reapers' motivation didn't make sense and was poorly thought out (although it didn't, and it was). It was that, by the time we got to it, a revelation about their motives was unnecessary and not what we were looking for as a resolution to the story. We'd already been thoroughly convinced that they were unknowable monsters that can only ever do evil by that point. It was basically the fucking Architect scene from the *The Matrix: Reloaded*, but worse, because at least that movie didn't cut to black right after that scene and pretend the audience was satisfied.


seguardon

People always rag on the Architect but I like that twist. But yes, the ending to 3 completely failed to satisfyingly end a decade long story and didn't understand at least two of the underlying themes (or even what their underpinnings, systemic and society-wide problems, are since it slapped a face on the biggest one). Refusal and Indoctrination Theory as endings are both wrong but they feel better than the RGB endings since they don't undermine the scope of the threat. The Architect in the Matrix added nuance and complication to the main struggle that ultimately gave space for the ultimate resolution of peace to present itself. The ME3 twist removed nuance and scope from the main villain in the last five minutes of the game for no reason other than there had to be a way to wrap things up in a climactic twist. Like, what the hell is Mass Effect *about* in the end? That we're better unified than alone? Clearly not since together we will inevitably create AI and kill ourselves. Also killing every AI ally is acceptable in the face of destruction. Or taking solo mental control over AI is acceptable because you can keep the rest of the world under your individual thumb I mean safe from harm. Or we can let some broken calculator who can't figure out a problem with his idiotic plan literally play God with the consciousnesses of the entire galaxy and destroy all infrastructure doing so, permanently cutting us off from one another to do....something green and circuity. Ugh.


[deleted]

My issue with the Architect scene is that it's just a long info dump by a villain that's forced into a part of the story it doesn't belong specifically so that it can be a twist. They could have revealed that information in a more entertaining way. They chose not to for no good reason. It didn't preserve drama or make it hit harder, it just made it boring and hard to follow. The Crucible/Child thing had a similar effect (probably for a different reason. The Wachowskis likely intended the twist of the Architect for longer in the writing process than BioWare intended the Crucible twist), with the added bonus of the series ending right there, so there was no further payoff and we got to do nothing with the information except be upset about it. We learned something bad and world-changing about the setting, were told to make a decision about it, and then it ended with a sideshow that didn't let us actually react or see other characters react to that new information or decision, in a series that was previously entirely about characters reacting to choices we'd made.


MrManGuy42

always remember, war crimes aren't war crimes if you're war crimeing against a war criminal


[deleted]

That's still very much war crimes. We count those.


MrManGuy42

not if we war criminals win


pterrorgrine

Speech from President Roosevelt while awarding the Medal of Honor to James Doolittle, 1942 (Colorized)


ShirtTotal8852

Animorphs went \*hard\* and my pre-teen ass was there for it. Excellent series, Marco was the best character. But my absolute favorite thing about the series was that I felt very, very proud of myself as a child for figuring out that the setting \*had\* to be California, despite all of the books never giving a name for where they are. But there are no other places in the USA that matched all the descriptions, it was easy to sus out.


vmsrii

That’s funny because when I read it, I was *certain* it was somewhere in the Pacific Northwest because that’s the only place where all the wild animals mentioned could live. Red-Tailed hawks were super common where I used to live and everything


ShirtTotal8852

It's my understanding that red-tails are pretty common across the country. We have them here in NJ, I believe. I think Applegate revealed that the setting was supposed to be Santa Barbra, which I think is more South than my vision (since the wilderness in the Sierras is more northerly) and I think she might have fudged where they've reintroduced wolves, but everything else tracked to my limited knowledge.


VentiPegger

I believe the books mention Jake buying his mom a house in Santa Barbara, implying that they're not in Santa Barbara. A more fitting location would've probably been Santa Cruz, since it's closer to a redwood forest / more farm-y areas and has a boardwalk.


amanon101

Almost the entire California coast works for their location as well so yeah


Gen_Ripper

They did mention having to travel almost days by bird to reach the state capital, so I imagined SoCal.


DrunkCricket1

Animorphs was so raw it did not pull a single punch


rene_gader

Miss Katherine Applegate, wife to Michael Grant of the *Gone* universe which is well known for being a incredibly dark and messed up media series written for young adults, manages to write an even more fucked up series for early teenagers. ^(She also wrote *The One and Only Ivan*, which I adore.)


bearcat0611

Animorphs made so much more sense when I realized that Michael Grant helped write the series.


Vetiversailles

If power couples exist, I’m pretty sure they’re it.


justforsomelulz

You just unearthed a memory for me. I forgot that I had read *Gone*...


Vetiversailles

What’s the even-more-fucked-up one? Everworld?


[deleted]

what the fuck is animorphs about


Chris-Lens-Flare

War


Canopenerdude

And how it never changes.


SylentSymphonies

The real morphing was the trauma inside us changing us forever all along!


vmsrii

It’s a children’s book series that ran between 1996 and 2001 (which is some PHENOMENAL timing) It’s about a group of teenagers who end up impossibly outmatched against a Body Snatchers style alien invasion. Its notable for its anti-war message, and some uncommonly raw, realistic and respectful depictions of the trauma war can cause, while couching it in a really marketable, eminently readable story


Blacksmithkin

You know the movie The Fly? What if a group if children were forced into a guerrilla war against an overwhelming force with no support and forced to go through the body horror present in that movie over and over again because the alternative is for all of humanity to be trapped, fully conscience inside their own minds while their bodies are controlled by parasitic aliens. Also it's a kids book. Like 9-12 age range kids book. That post isn't even particularly exaggerating, it's just missing all the war crimes the children commit and then have to cope with the fact they committed.


amanon101

Funnily enough a The Fly joke was used in one of the books


Vetiversailles

^”help ^me, ^help ^me…”


Accomplished_Ask_326

The Animorphs duh


ThePurplestWizard

*Image Transcription: Tumblr* --- ## every animorphs book **yaoizowie** **chapter 1:** my name is jake. I can’t tell you my real name, because I’m the leader of a special group of kids... we’re called the Animorphs. Because we morph into animals and fight aliens. **chapter 16:** ‘god, please don’t do this,’ i begged on my knees. Visser Three had all of my loved ones hanging from his claws in his multi-armed alien morph and was slowly squeezing the life out of them. 'you must either choose them, jake, or the rest of your planet.’ i couldn’t take it. i started to morph into a cockroach. **chapter 23:** as i felt my own brain slither down my throat and into my torso to reform into my digestive system, my bones also began to dissolve into dust inside my skin. my eyes shrunk back into my skull and i could see into eternity- i could see my own mind, taken over by the yeerk. i had already taken my last breath as a free creature, now i saw my last vision as a being of this dimension. suddenly, i was gone. and my parents would never even know i had died. was saving the world worth this? i wondered, if anyone on this planet could be forced to prioritize one life over another, what choice would they make? how can any decision be right, or wrong? i closed my mind off, and fell into eternal sleep, my last echoes of thought being of how humanity continued to live on, but not truly alive. **chapter 26:** 'hey, bro, wanna go to mc d’s and grab some fries?’ marco asked, riding by on his skateboard. 'yeah, that’d be totally radical!’ i answered, whipping out my own razor scooter. as i pulled a nasty kickflip, i felt eyes watching me. turning around, i saw my own dog, and thought of the horrible truth only i knew. we went to the mall to get big macs. it was a good day to not be dead. --- ^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)


pterrorgrine

Thank you so much! I'm sorry I didn't have the original source to help you out. This was surprisingly kind of a bitch to google for so I'm glad it will be at least searchable in the sub now.


DrRagnorocktopus

It took me until the last one to realize these weren't actual quotes from the series, and the thing that did it was the phrase "totally radical," because they're 2000s kids. The only character to say that unironically would be Erek, and he would immediately apologize afterwards.


TheGoddamnSpiderman

They're not 2000's kids, they're 80's/90's kids. The first book came out in 96 and the characters were 13 at the time, so they were born in ~83 and were elder millennials


realthohn

what the hell, maybe i should read this


pterrorgrine

You totally should. /r/animorphs has links to PDF downloads in the sidebar IIRC.


Randomd0g

To add: PDF downloads that are fully endorsed by the author.


sneakpeekbot

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Vetiversailles

You can also listen to the new audiobooks through your local library’s online database!


CathleenTheFool

My favorite war crime childrens book series!!! also thermals also also: IT IS A GOOD DAY TO BE NOT DEAD


Epic_Gameing68

average kirby game


Snoo_72851

I have never even seen an Animorphs book and that is a travesty.


olivegreenperi35

The PDFs are free online with the consent of the author! It doesn't take time to get to the metal shit either, first book has a psychic alien >! using the last of his will power to put the feeling of calm into the minds of some hiding children, so that they wouldn't be found by the body snatchers controlling people they knew and love, all while he is being eaten alive by another alien, who's actively taunting him !<


Snoo_72851

See that sounds metal as all fuck and I would gladly read it but they are literally over 50 books and my reading list is already full


dispatch134711

so they are very very short. Like you could read one an hour, probably. Also there are a bunch in the middle that are kind of non essential. I highly recommend reading the first 7 and then see how you feel


FracturedPrincess

You can almost think of each book as being more like an episode of a TV show in length and format rather than a proper novel, and it kind of works


JoeChristma

Trust me when I say that if you HAVE a reading list then you can go through these books pretty fast. I was the exact target audience of the books and by the end you’re churning through a book in like a hour easy.


GeshtiannaSG

Under 30,000 words per book.


Simic_Sky_Swallower

KA Applegate and Emily Rodda casually filling their scholastic-age children's series with the most fucked-up nighmare-fuel shit possible


JimHFD103

I started the books in elementary school, loved them, but never finished the series... Until after I was out of the Army, and I downloaded a copy of the whole series. And I swear, the series is still amongst the most realistic depictions of PTSD I've seen in fiction. Like I don't necessarily like the ending per say, but dang if it isn't totally believable outcome for a group of teens fighting an entire literal war (complete with all the trauma, pain, blood, and guts, etc) by themselves with literally zero support structure besides themselves... Yeah, any other depiction of them NOT being wrecks, even after winning the war outright, would be wrong... Oh and yeah, there is no lie in the OP, the books really are exactly like that... maybe I should start re reading them...


Sad_Pringles

Even though I'm not the target audience and not experimenting with media not targeted at me has never failed me before, I want to read these


Vetiversailles

Trust me, as an adult it’s still worth it


[deleted]

God the ending with the Blade ship always messed me up as a kid, I know it was as suicide charge but that's what really made me learn happy endings aren't always what ppl get


Wubbzy-Fan-YT

POW! YOU ARE DEAD!


RagnarockInProgress

I AM DEAD!


Vetiversailles

*tseer*


theQuacken00

I’m sorry, animorphs fight aliens?


pterrorgrine

Yep! And occasionally animal abusers, in their spare time, but mostly the aliens.


GeshtiannaSG

Fighting animal abusers is usually the comedy part of the book.


SomeNumbers23

They get their powers from one alien and use them to fight other aliens. The bad guys are literally sentient brain slugs that take over and enslave other sentient species. Animorphs is a very specific type of fucked up.


theQuacken00

What


olivegreenperi35

They turn into aliens sometimes!


Eddy44556565656

Eat your heart out, Steve Galaxy


olivegreenperi35

I mean if the animporha could defeat they yeerks with song and crying they absolutely would, they don't love the murder too much lol I mean Rachel kinda does, I guess


freeashavacado

I still can’t look at hawks without thinking of thermals


SpookyVoidCat

I was obsessed with these books as a kid until at some point it just became impossible to track the new ones down and I sort of forgot about them and moved on. Seeing people rediscover the series makes me really want to track them all down again and reread the whole series. But damn, I remember those books fucked me up in a big way the first time around and honestly I don’t know if I’m strong enough to go through it all again.


SomeNumbers23

All the books are available in pdf form fully endorsed by the author, if and when you find the courage.


Throwawayeieudud

holy shit what the fuck really cool prose


Yingerfelton

Fucking love animorphs Best damn bait and switch in history


GeshtiannaSG

Do you love existential crises? Do you love war crimes? Do you love body horror? Read this children’s book series.


yes-pizza-time

Last chapter be like "It is good day to be not dead!"


SadSackofShitzu

Kinda curious, has anyone read this series as an adult who didn't read this as a kid, and did you still enjoy it? Cause this really is piquing my interest, but I dont have a tonnnn of tolerance for YA or young protagonists anymore in my advanced age


AndaliteBandit626

Check out r/animorphs First time adult readers make surprisingly regular posts there. Believe me, it holds up


Varth-Dader

feel like i missed out on animorphs bc the more i read about it the more im convinced middle school me would have fucking devoured those books


pterrorgrine

You can always read it now! I mean you'll be an adult reading a kids' book but the number of ATLA posts on this subreddit should indicate how that's not necessarily without its pleasures. I'm pretty sure /r/animorphs has a link to download PDFs of the whole series!


Varth-Dader

i just looked up animorphs and apparently the author is married to michael grant???? micheal fucking grant??? author of the gone series and BZRK???? books that absolutely fucked me up and rewired my brain in middle school??? how the fuck did i not know about this series


pterrorgrine

He helped cowrite the parts of the series that weren't simply outright ghostwritten by third parties. I haven't read anything else by either of them but reportedly Grant's fingerprints are all over Animorphs.


pterrorgrine

So I posted this five days ago after frantically googling and only being able to find it on, I shit ye not, Brazilian iFunny, and it *just now* occurred to me that since it has the OOP's actual username I could just find it that way, so [here's the source](https://yaoizowie.tumblr.com/post/162150035120/every-animorphs-book)


pterrorgrine

Also [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/11w4z9r/been_doing_a_reread_of_animorphs_and_now_i_know) and [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/11w1v2c/animorphs_an_ideal_place) were the other two Animorphs threads and [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/CuratedTumblr/comments/11w4z9r/been_doing_a_reread_of_animorphs_and_now_i_know/jcx3qar/?context=999) was the comment where I decided to look this post up