Look at these nerds

  • Ericthescruffy [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    Man I was fucking obsessed with these books as a kid. I read nearly all of them including the special one offs like the origins of the Hork-Bajir and how the Ellimist went from being a bird alien esports player to being Q from Star Trek.

    In hindsight: HOLY FUCKING SHIT HOW THE FUCK DID THOSE BOOKS GET MADE/PUBLISHED??? Like straight up if you watched the TV show on Nickelodeon that shit was like if they took Starship Troopers and made a power rangers show out of it. Those books are definitely marketed towards kids but like…fuck…they’ve got full on body horror and amputations and insane levels of violence and descriptions of pain and torture and some wax philosophizing on guerrilla warfare and shit. jesus-christ

    I know my parents were just fucking happy that I was reading a book and they helped me graduate to adult fiction but man I would be fucking terrified to do any sort of deep dive on the fucking ideology of those things. I imagine its gross as fucking shit.

  • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    I hadn’t heard about Animorphs in several months and then I’m the last 2 days I’ve seen several posts about it, got a text from my mom asking if I read them, and started listening to a podcast about it.

    Why is everyone suddenly talking about Animorphs?

    Separately, I’ve thought about the scene where Jake has a starving Yeerk in his brain and basically shares thoughts and feelings with it as it dies at least weekly for the last 15 years

    • Evilsandwichman [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      I will say this, it’s crazy to think that you have an army of soldiers who can see their victims in their entirety, to see them as full on people by reading their entire minds, and yet are still dedicated to their mission. I know there was a faction that turned on the rest of the Yeerks, but you’d think given how their abilities work that you’d have a mostly unwilling army. One of the best ways to create a soldier who just kills on command even if it’s civilians is to dehumanize the people they kill, but when you can read everything about your victim, surely it becomes impossible to do that. Even if it’s ideology that drives them, the dehumanization factor is kind of important, it’s hard to understand how they don’t have more of their kind turning on them.

    • Waldoz53 [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      i saw an animorphs twitter thread a few months ago where the person summarized each book in the entire main series. and honestly? it was cooler and darker than i remember, and i thought it was extremely cool as a kid