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hang on, how can Ax use his stalk eyes to watch the ship when he's already morphed to bird
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# ? Mar 24, 2021 05:01 |
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# ? Jun 13, 2024 04:12 |
Thank gently caress Tobias likes dinosaurs, or we'd have a very weird alternate timeline.
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# ? Mar 24, 2021 05:17 |
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I would have assumed it would have been embodied by a spectral human Tobias that actual bird Tobias would imagine into group meetings with the other Animorphs as means of deluding himself (and for the sake of just simple scene blocking), that turns increasingly hostile and more menacing as the book goes on and Tobias's psyche unravels... but the sock puppet is good too.
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# ? Mar 24, 2021 07:43 |
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Animorphs-Megamorphs 2: In the Time of the Dinosaurs, Chapter 36 Jake quote:We flew. Up through the force field just as the doomed saucer lifted off. <sigh> Chapter 37 Cassie quote:I stayed on the surface to watch the end. So, I'm adding the Mercora to my list of genocides in this series. Man, it's kind of a gut punch, and I can't stop thinking of those dumb, vegetarian, broccoli-growing space crabs. Afterword quote:A note: Screw you, science, I'm going to believe my bird friend. This goes back to what I was saying earlier about how the Cretaceous was a long period of time, and just because two animals lived in that period doesn't mean that they lived anywhere near each other in time. If you're curious as to what animals there "mainstream" scientists (who don't even believe that earth is under attack by alien parasites) believe were extinct by the time the comet/asteroid hit, it's Deinonychus, Spinosaurus, Elasmosaurus, and Kronosaurus. Only Tyrannosaurus, Saltasaurus, and Triceratops probably survived to experience the end of the world. So what did you think about the book? It's, in my opinion, much better than the first Megamorphs. The author's hit her stride and knows her characters better, and even though this book also separated the characters, it's much more tightly put together, and everyone had something to do, unlike the first one, where Rachel spent the entire time wandering around with amnesia. It's also more....poignant, I guess. Ax and Tobias realize that the comet has to hit, and the Mercora, who are complete innocents in the whole matter, have to all die so that humanity can have a future. It's one of those sad inevitablities. You're mourning both for the Mercora but also for the entire, destroyed world of the dinosaurs. So, I liked it. Next book is going to be a Cassie book called "The Departure".
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# ? Mar 25, 2021 05:06 |
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(Edit: This was a response to the previous update. I'm slow) Tobias has a lot less information about this than he thinks. He doesn't know for sure that nobody ever found a Mercora fossil, just that it wasn't obviously alien if they did, and it's possible for them to prosper without fossilising at all, especially if they have the technology to recover their dead. Fossilisation is actually really rare. They don't know that they're right at the end of the Cretaceous, either. Or that time travel works they way they assume it does. The Nesk could have redirected Halley's Comet to crash into the planet for all they know. Obviously by the rules of drama, any travel back to dinosaur times will be right at the end of the Cretaceous, and anything strange in the sky is definitely going to hit the planet and kill everything, but Tobias is working off a lot of flawed assumptions for his Hard Decision here. Mazerunner posted:hang on, how can Ax use his stalk eyes to watch the ship when he's already morphed to bird Shwoo fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Mar 25, 2021 |
# ? Mar 25, 2021 05:14 |
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They should have kept the dino morphs I really like this one, and it has a different tone of grimness to most of the darker books. I guess that's what happens when you have to commit genocide to keep the timeline on track.
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# ? Mar 25, 2021 06:34 |
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This was the first book of the series I actually bought, as opposed to getting them from the library, and it's the one I read the most. I agree it's a lot better than the first Megamorphs; that one felt full of padding, while this one justifies its extra length really well. Next one is a goodie, too, although it has maybe the biggest moment of bizarre logic in the entire series.
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# ? Mar 25, 2021 07:55 |
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When I first read the book I had wondered why the gang couldn't have told the Mercora to leave the planet knowing that there's no sign of them in Earth's history and that it would be glassed pretty soon. They could have told them that they might have found somewhere else to settle since humans have no knowledge of the Mercora in the present. But I've realized that if they did that the Mercora probably would have just resettled on Earth since there's no guarantee they would have found another suitable planet. Then from there, they would have drastically changed Earth's evolutionary history. Also, it's interesting that broccoli survived the extinction event. The Mercora settlement was right at ground zero and they probably didn't travel too far to expand their fields once the Nesk had fled. GodFish posted:They should have kept the dino morphs At least it's consistent with the Jake's experience in The Forgotten.
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# ? Mar 25, 2021 08:00 |
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Epicurius posted:The Navy diver who was the hero of the rescue swore she’d been led to the submarine by dolphins. Some people suggested maybe she was suffering from hallucinations brought on by the depth and by breathing the wrong mix in her scuba tanks. I've never been in the military but I imagine she's going to be in a lot of trouble with her CO for immediately fronting the media! quote:So what did you think about the book? It's, in my opinion, much better than the first Megamorphs. The author's hit her stride and knows her characters better, and even though this book also separated the characters, it's much more tightly put together, and everyone had something to do, unlike the first one, where Rachel spent the entire time wandering around with amnesia. I like the first one a lot more than everyone else seems to. I dunno... this one is fine, but clearly a gimmick book to capitalise on the dinosaur craze, and weirdly a lot shorter than I remember - they wash up on shore, encounter some T-Rexs/Deinos, meet the Mercora and the Nesk, go grab a nuke and... that's it? The thing that really sticks out to me now is the paucity of morphing. If I were writing a book about teenagers with the power to turn into animals and blasted them 65 million years into the age of dinosaurs, I'd feel obligated to make them acquire more than just two fairly similar dinosaurs. It feels like a missed opportunity to not have any morphing of pteradons or ichthyosaurs or sauropods. Especially when there's six of them, this book's just a bit of silly fun, and none of their morphs end up being canon anyway. I think on the whole Megamorphs 3 is the best of them, and Megamorphs 4 is the weirdly haunting one that I don't remember liking much but is probably still better than the first two. It's a bit ironic that Megamorphs 1 is the only that that "actually happened," as it were. edit - also, I never really noticed it as a kid, but the series really embraces the characters' differences and the narrator of any given book is usually really important. i.e. 18 was very much about Ax and his torn loyalties, 15 was very much about Marco and his mum, 13 was very much about Tobias - despite being happier as a bird - feeling frustrated he can't contribute as much. It's not always front and centre but it often is. And with Megamorphs it's neat in theory that you're cycling through multiple narrators, but I think it actually robs the story of a thematic focus. It's no coincidence that the Megamorphs books are generally the weirdest, most plot-driven stories of any of them. Rochallor posted:Next one is a goodie, too, although it has maybe the biggest moment of bizarre logic in the entire series. I found 19 really dull as a kid but way more interesting when I re-read it in my late teens. It's arguably the most important character book for Cassie; the only other real contender is 29. freebooter fucked around with this message at 09:44 on Mar 25, 2021 |
# ? Mar 25, 2021 09:38 |
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19 is one of the best books in the series for what it does for the Yeerks. I''ll just leave it for that.
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# ? Mar 25, 2021 10:21 |
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One of the covers was pretty misleading.
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# ? Mar 25, 2021 10:32 |
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The end of this book is one of the scenes from fiction that stuck with me as a kid: the Animorphs desperately flying and swimming as far away from the comet's impact site as possible, an impact they engineered after misleading their allies and condemning them to extinction for the sake of preserving the timeline, hoping that they'll survive the apocalypse they unleashed.
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# ? Mar 25, 2021 14:22 |
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freebooter posted:I dunno... this one is fine, but clearly a gimmick book to capitalise on the dinosaur craze, and weirdly a lot shorter than I remember - they wash up on shore, encounter some T-Rexs/Deinos, meet the Mercora and the Nesk, go grab a nuke and... that's it? Yeah, this is about where I fall on them. I think Megamorphs 2 is actually my least favorite because it's so gimmicky that it having a better actual story than Megamorphs 1 isn't enough for it to hold my interest. Books 19–23 are going to be interesting to get through. Quality-wise, they're all "fine" to "great," but they're a lot of darkness and a lot of gut punches all in a row.
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# ? Mar 25, 2021 14:35 |
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Animorphs rarely presents the opportunities for truly alternate or counter-text readings, though it does an adept job of merging the saturday morning cartoon vibe with serious moral issues as we see in this very book. The kids go back into the time of the dinosaurs - where they maybe commit genocide. However ultimately the villains are evil and the cause of our heroes is just so whatever they do is justified despite handwringing. I don't think this is what K.A. Applegate intended but I do want to float the following idea: Why Tobias Was Right to Blow Up All the loving Mercora Almost everything we learn about the Mercora or more importantly, the Nesk, is simply told to us by the former. The first time the Nesk openly encounter Tobias and Rachel, to its knowledge aliens with the power to change form actively in the process of fighting a dinosaur, it stuns the creature attacking them (rather than killing it) and asks Tobias and Rachel who they are. It does project some possessiveness over the dinosaurs and "things" but there may be a justification for that possessiveness. Additionally, the Nesk admit they were listening to Tobias and Rachel and thus could have killed them in their sleep if they wished. It requests that Tobias and Rachel demorph, and only threatens them after they repeatedly refuse. Once Tobias and Rachel have refused to demorph as it asks and actually attacked one of them, the Nesk use their spaceship to herd the kids toward a group of them rather than simply killing them with their weapons. The Nesk do not want to kill the kids, they want to take them prisoner and find out who and what they are. An objective view of the Nesk is that they are: inquisitive, value Earth's fauna, communicative with other intelligent life, somewhat wary, and possessive of Earth. Meanwhile, what do we know about the Mercora? They admit that they are not native to Earth and that they have not encountered an intelligent lifeform there before - except we know they have. They've encountered the Nesk. Maybe the Mercora meant they have not encountered an intelligent lifeform from Earth before but the text is ambiguous. Possibly the Mercora mean they do not consider the hivemind Nesk to be intelligent at all. The Mercora admit that they control their single outpost, while the rest of the countryside (continent? planet?) is controlled by the Nesk. The Mercora claim to these outsiders that they have no aggressive weapons, but the Nesk do and these outsiders should go grab one. According to the Mercora, the Nesk are scavengers who steal from other races (Ax later seems to gather this impression when raiding the base), believe the dinosaurs and planet are theirs, and cannot tolerate the existence of other sentient races. Except they tolerated Tobias and Rachel for a while, and did not seem intent on killing them. Tobias even calls out Mercora hypocrisy right before the kids raid the Nesk base, as the supposedly peaceful Mercora are sending them on a violent mission. Upon reaching the base, the kids see that the Nesk have substantial perimeter defenses and later have thought-speak detectors. Weirdly, the Nesk are very prepared for an attack from the famously peaceful Mercora. As I mentioned, Ax sees that widely different technologies are in use and determines that the Nesk as scavengers and thieves. Using diverse technologies could also suggest technology trading, especially for a species that probably finds advanced industrial manufacturing difficult due to their form. Of course, once the alarms go off the Nesk attack the Animorphs who are already in the process of destroying the Nesk base. Upon return, we are just told the Nesk are abandoning the planet due to a single defeat at a base. Someone diverts the comet (I presume this is objectively true as Ax's previous calculations suggested it would not hit Earth) and now the Mercora need a nuke to prevent it from hitting the base. As we all read, Tobias and Ax modify the device and ultimately the Mercora are destroyed and everyone is sad about it. Let me take a moment to discuss ant evolution. Ants evolved from wasplike insects during the Cretaceous period, probably linked to the spread of flowering plants. They became ecologically dominant (ants constitute 15 - 25% of all animal biomass on the planet) shortly after the Cretaceous. While we have seen plenty of alien species that resemble Earth animals - Hork-Bajir are saurian, Taxxons are centipedal, Yeerks are sluglike - none seem as similar to their Earth analogue as the Nesk. Rachel says the Nesk smells familiar and even describes them simply as ants when she kicks the one investigating her and Tobias. We know they are possessive and protective of Earth and the animals living on it. This leads to a simple conclusion - the Nesk are indigenous to Earth. They evolved from the ants which were diversifying in this very period of time. Unfortunately for this burgeoning civilization, Earth was being colonized by the Mercora who have advanced technology including impenetrable force fields and are slowly terraforming (Mercora-homeworld-forming?) the planet by introducing and growing alien flora. The Nesk, who have traded technology with visiting aliens or taken from those attempting to colonize Earth, cannot penetrate Mercora defenses to protect their world and now the Mercora have allies who can disguise themselves as other living beings. Diverting the comet reads better as an act of desperation or miscalculation on the part of the Nesk. It is the only thing that can eliminate this threat to their people and the planet. Unfortunately, it also collapses the biosphere for a few thousand years. Partially due to that and partially due to the lack of visiting alien species (Ellimist reveals himself to Crayak right around this time, so presumably the nature of intergalactic politics changes substantially) to provide technology, the Nesk diversify into the various non-sentient but biologically and socially advanced ant forms that now comprise most life on the planet. Ultimately, a victory for humanity and antkind. Too bad about the dinosaurs though. EDIT: K.A. Applegate did actually once imply to a reader who asked about the Nesk that they became modern ants. "Scholastic's According to KA posted:Hi K.A. ANOTHER SCORCHER fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Mar 25, 2021 |
# ? Mar 25, 2021 20:13 |
freebooter posted:I've never been in the military but I imagine she's going to be in a lot of trouble with her CO for immediately fronting the media! i agree, megamorphs 1 is a better book than this. but then i have a soft spot for the wacky teenage antics side of the early books and a gorilla driving a truck is peak wacky antics for this series
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# ? Mar 25, 2021 20:22 |
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I think I loved this megamorphs because I was super big into the dinosaur craze at the time, but going through it all now it's really hard for me to be invested at all. The premise is so... bizarrely out of left field and so detached from the actual main conflicts of the story (other than at the end having to make a Big Decision) that it feels like it's a fanfiction. Who didn't write fanfiction when they were 12 where their favorite book characters end up in X universe and have to save the day? As a kid I really liked the "change into cool animals!" and "secret heroes saving the world and no one can understand!" themes which yeah those resonate with kids because they're going through weird changes and don't fit into society meaningfully so those are big cool themes that let you escape or feel important, and dinosaur adventure was fun. Reading this as an adult though it's just so completely non-sequitur. I think what I like about the animorphs these days are seeing them struggle with very unfair odds against something too big for them to meaningfully defeat while it slowly destroys their sanity, because, well, that's the theme that resonates with me as an adult, lol. I like at least you do get to see the animorphs address the absurdity of the plot? "So what, we spend the rest of our lives 65 million years in the past trying to survive the aftermath of the k-t extinction event? Battle with the yeerks over, this is it??" Which sure yeah! It does have a good sense of things being so far beyond their control and sometimes life just ignores what your main "plot" is and goes "anyway, now your life is dealing with this unrelated disaster" which has been the theme of basically everyone's lives the past year and change. Still feels like it's just a really on-model written fanfiction though.
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# ? Mar 25, 2021 22:16 |
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disaster pastor posted:Books 19–23 are going to be interesting to get through. Quality-wise, they're all "fine" to "great," but they're a lot of darkness and a lot of gut punches all in a row. I think they're all great! And I definitely think 20-22 being the strongest books in the series is a widely held opinion. 23 I don't remember much but recall people speaking very highly of it; then it's kind of weird that such a strong sequence runs headlong into a very silly and wacky book in 24. (Poor Cassie cops some of the silliest books.)
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# ? Mar 25, 2021 22:43 |
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Ok, this is: Animorphs-Book 19-The Departure, Chapter 1 quote:My name is Cassie. You know the drat thing about the war for the Animorphs? They just fought a bunch of Hork-Bajir, and Cassie killed one of them. None of these Hork-Bajir wanted to fight them, though....none of them had any control over what they were doing. If it were up to them, they'd be like Jara Hamee and Ket Hapak, hanging out in the forest, with the intelligence of five year olds, stuffing themselves on bark, without malice towards everybody. To win the war, they have to kill innocents. Chapter 2 quote:I demorphed as I headed toward home. It started to rain a little, just a drizzle. Just enough to turn the leaves wet, to make the grass squishy as I walked across the field. So, yea. This has been a pretty horrible night for her.
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# ? Mar 26, 2021 04:30 |
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I think this is one of the only Cassie books I remember liking as a kid. Also, wow, that's an even worse souvenir of morphing than Marco finding the ant mandible in his side.
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# ? Mar 26, 2021 05:24 |
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That is an impressive Chapter 1. The usual overview of the series premise, whatever, but then it effectively sets up the main conflict of the book with an understandable inciting incident. Megamorphs weirdness aside, it definitely feels like Applegrant are at the top of their game in this period.
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# ? Mar 26, 2021 05:53 |
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I was reading the description of the clinic and started thinking, wait, how does her dad get funding? I guess the answer is: he doesn't! Thanks for setting up this thread. I've been binging it for the past couple of weeks and loving it! I never cracked one of these open because all I knew about them was the goofy covers. I read a bunch of other sci-fi as a kid. It's ironic because I thought this series would be dumb power rangers style junk and it turns out it's way better than a lot of the stuff I was reading at the time. I don't know if I would've appreciated it back then though. They don't even get to keep the dinosaur morph?! I would not have been ok with that at 13.
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# ? Mar 26, 2021 09:04 |
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WrightOfWay posted:Also, wow, that's an even worse souvenir of morphing than Marco finding the ant mandible in his side. Thank you, I was trying to figure out what this bit reminded me of. Is this the first book that's begun in media res, sort of thing? With them already on a mission that doesn't even get drawn up as exciting or important, just a horrible and horribly tedious regular part of their lives? It really underlines how the war is just a constant feature for them now. quote:I walked by a fox. Its tail had been hacked off. Probably by some troubled kids. It's a really nice small touch that even in this circumstance, Cassie is such an empathetic and sympathetic person that she subconsciously assumes the hypothetical kids in question are "troubled" rather than just writing them off as assholes or whatever. Zonko_T.M. posted:I was reading the description of the clinic and started thinking, wait, how does her dad get funding? I guess the answer is: he doesn't! It's awesome to have people on board who've never read the series before, especially since some of the best stuff is yet to come!
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# ? Mar 26, 2021 10:36 |
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Is this the first ghostwritten book?
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# ? Mar 26, 2021 19:27 |
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HIJK posted:Is this the first ghostwritten book? No, that's 25.
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# ? Mar 26, 2021 19:31 |
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disaster pastor posted:No, that's 25. And, interestingly enough, #26 is the last non-ghostwritten book in the main series until the last couple books (with a single exception).
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# ? Mar 26, 2021 22:39 |
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Fuschia tude posted:And, interestingly enough, #26 is the last non-ghostwritten book in the main series until the last couple books (with a single exception). Wait, which one's that? I thought it was straight ghostwritten from 26 all the way to the first book in the 10-book conclusion arc.
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# ? Mar 26, 2021 23:23 |
If it's the starfish book I may lose my poo poo
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# ? Mar 26, 2021 23:45 |
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:If it's the starfish book I may lose my poo poo freebooter posted:Wait, which one's that? I thought it was straight ghostwritten from 26 all the way to the first book in the 10-book conclusion arc.
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# ? Mar 27, 2021 00:18 |
freebooter posted:Wait, which one's that? I thought it was straight ghostwritten from 26 all the way to the first book in the 10-book conclusion arc. The one where they get introduced to the Crayak and some of its homegrown aliens on the planet of shopping malls
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# ? Mar 27, 2021 00:19 |
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Animorphs-Book 19-The Departure, Chapter 3quote:It took a long time for me to get to sleep. Obviously, these dreams are from the last book...which is the last time Cassie killed something in combat by letting her morph's instincts take control.. quote:I woke up. In a way, this almost reminds me of the earlier book about Rachel and her dad, where she's trying to decide whether or not to move east with him and give up the fight to just be a normal kid. Chapter 4 quote:“You weren’t in school today,” Jake said. So I think there's a good point in this chapter. It's not just the killing the Hork-Bajir that made Cassie snap....it's the realization that this war is changing all of them for the worse. She sees herself changing, getting desensitized, and she's scared of what she's turning into.
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# ? Mar 27, 2021 03:29 |
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It strikes me here that part of what makes it so hard for them is that it all has to be a secret. It's one thing to go over to France to fight the Nazis when everyone else your age is being conscripted too, and it's all anyone in the world is talking about, and you can write letters home, etc. Whereas for the Animorphs, it's like... you're literally saving the world (or trying to) and never getting any recognition or credit for the sacrifices you're making except from each other.
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# ? Mar 27, 2021 07:35 |
Cassie is right. The only way to get out of this unscathed is to get out. Shame about that whole alien invasion, I guess.
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# ? Mar 27, 2021 07:46 |
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Rachel cutting her off and saying that no, they can't be friends because they clearly have different morals and values was...remarkably insightful for some teens. Also obviously a giant blow to Cassie.
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# ? Mar 27, 2021 12:51 |
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Ravenfood posted:Rachel cutting her off and saying that no, they can't be friends because they clearly have different morals and values was...remarkably insightful for some teens. I don't know. It seems to be a very teenage thing to do. Your teenage years are when you start working out your own beliefs, and realize that your friends don't always share yours, and the whole "I can't be your friend anymore if you believe that" seems very adolescent.
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# ? Mar 27, 2021 16:10 |
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Holy hell after a kind of a snooze with the weird loopy dinosaur time we start off with THIS heck yeah this is what Animorphs is about.
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# ? Mar 27, 2021 19:15 |
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Animorphs-Book 19-The Departure, Chapter 5quote:I had fallen behind on a lot of my chores. One was the water trough made of an old claw-foot bathtub that we kept in a far corner of the pasture for the horses. It had gotten overgrown with algae and was crusted with windswept leaves. You know, we don't know what Ax thinks about Cassie quitting and all that. He wasn't at the meeting. I mean, I assume he's not that fond, but... quote:This part of the pasture was right up against the forest. The grass stopped just a few feet past the fence, and there the line of trees began. I looped the mare’s reins over the fence and looked around. Ouch. But yea, mother bears are very protective of their cubs. The whole quote "The female of the species is more deadly than the male." comes from a Kipling poem that that includes the example, if you're walking and see a male bear, he'll generally get out of your way, but if it's a female, you're dead. quote:When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride, Don't mess with bears, especially bears with cubs. Chapter 6 quote:“Aaaahhhh!” Cassie is like 2 days out of the Animorphs and she already saved the life of a Yeerk.
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# ? Mar 28, 2021 04:02 |
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Epicurius posted:
I did, and in nearly this same era. It's pretty good, and similarly brutal and unforgiving. For some reason I always kind of merge it with The Giver in my mind, even though they're nothing alike. I must have read them around the same time.
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# ? Mar 28, 2021 06:09 |
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Animorphs-Book 19-The Departure, Chapter 7quote:I guess Marco would have been cooler, more glib. Maybe Rachel would have just attacked. I don’t know. But I’m not Marco or Rachel. I actually think it would be pretty hard for the Yeerks to annihilate the Chee. They're pretty resilient, they have over fifteen thousand years of experience, and their holographic technology is beyond what the Yeerks can detect. Chapter 8 quote:We were not in a good position. Night was falling. We were somewhere in a forest. We had no tools and no matches. Everything around us was damp, maybe too damp to burn. And what I could see of the sky, looking up through the trees, was filled with dark clouds scudding on a stiff breeze. The Andalites are very much the galactic policemen. In addition to the Yeerk War, we saw in the Andalite Chronicles that they go after raiders like those Skritt-Na. quote:I stood up again and stuck out my hand. This time, Karen took it. “Come on,” I said. “We have to get moving.” If you remember, this is the leopard that escaped earlier.
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# ? Mar 29, 2021 04:37 |
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Ugh, Karens
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# ? Mar 29, 2021 15:34 |
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# ? Jun 13, 2024 04:12 |
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Time Trial posted:Ugh, Karens "Excuse me. I want to infest your manager."
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# ? Mar 29, 2021 17:06 |