Think Animorphs will do better with some vulgarities and sex scenes?

[goom]

i remember when i read the series (at a relatively young age) i thought she was pushing the line with 'crap'.
lol.

[Azguard]

lol. well, i think vulgarity would make it more realistic and it would be kewl here and there. but sometimes, when I hear people swear i just think they're trying to be cool and it comes off as the opposite effect to me.

[Duff]

I think she did a good enough job with the actual emotions so that when she used the second tier swear words like crap and damn they still had a good effect

It obviously would have been more realistic if they had dropped a few f-bombs, but not really necessary

Sex, no way dude, thats just stupid. Maybe if the characters were older it would have made more sense, but it still wouldnt really add anything to the story. Them having sex would be completely out of character, not just cause they're so young, but because rachel and cassie just dont seem like that. Cassie is def a wait til marriage and Rachel...well she wouldnt do it at 13 i know that lol

[Azguard]

rachel? oh my gosh, i could see her swinging both ways, but with the war she definately swung towards holding back....

[Dameg]

For older odience, yes. For kids, no.

[Nateosaurus]

Yeah I like it how it is. No real need for all the other stuff as its a childrens book series.

[wildweathel]

SPOILER WARNING, by the way.

Animorphs already has quite a bit of sex.

No, really.

But, first I guess I'd better begin at the beginning. (not The Beginning)

For those of you who don't know, Applegate is a very versatile author.  To slightly paraphrase Scholastic:

"Applegate is an award-winning author who has written books on a wide range of subjects and in a variety of formats, from picture books to adult romances."

So, if she had decided that Animorphs would have improved with graphic sex and language that would make a sailor blush, well, I imagine she would have done so (and marketed to an older audience, of course).

There is certainly this in Animorphs: eros (It's Wikipedia: clicky please readie)

Marco's father (do we ever learn his name?) & Eva
Elfangor & Loren
Jara & Ket
Tobias & Rachel (of course)
Dak & Aldrea
Ellimist & Tree

Oh, and apparently the Eros of human hosts is addictive to Yeerks (neatly covering both sex and drugs!  Or at least eros and addiction)
Eslin & Derane (A08)
Essam & Edriss (Visser)

This, by the way, explains why Tobias and Marco's father are so badly broken up, after Rachel and Eva's deaths.  They had both given parts of their souls away, and that part died.  They are in a very real sense, torn in half.

Now, of these eight notice that: six end in one of the member's premature death, four are cross-species, and two of the remaining ones aren't normal for their species.  Twisted much?

Now as far as physical intercourse is concerned, there are really four things to say.

• Obviously none happens on page.
• Obviously some happens off page.  Where else do Tobias, Toby, Marco, and Ellimist's Andalite children come from?
  
• An insensitively handled sex scene would detract from the work.  A lot.  (LOL, dahjo)
• Tobias and Rachel do show quite a bit of physical affection.  See the end of A33, for example.
  

So, are they having sex off page by the end of the series?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  There isn't enough evidence to say, and you know what?  I'm OK with that remaining unknowable.

[AniDragon]

I'd agree that an actual sex scene would be uncalled for. Maybe an implication (and really, with the amount of times Tobias goes to Rachel's bedroom, I think our imagination can do the rest), but that's it.

Vulgarities, though, could have worked. Not an extreme amount, of course, but when things get really bad, people will curse. And in fact, the books TELL us that they curse, they just don't put it the exact words on paper.

Ex: And then Rachel said some words I didn't even know she knew. (book one, slightly paraphrased as I don't have the book in front of me)

However, the way it was handled could come off as confusing to the more naive among us.

For example, in Megamorphs #3, when someone calls Cassie the "N' word. Clearly, this is a word that shouldn't be in a kid's book, so it's a good thing it was censored. Now, at the time that this book came out, I was quite naive about things like racism. I knew that racism existed, of course, I just didn't know that there were racist words. So when the book told me that "and then he called me a word I won't repeat", I didn't realize it was referring to what it was. I thought he had just called her a b*tch, and that she was over reacting.

So, had some curse words actually made it on paper, then my naive little mind could have realized that this part was meant to have something even worse than a puny little swear word.

Of course, this might have just been me. Like I said, I was quite naive.

[wildweathel]

...with the amount of times Tobias goes to Rachel's bedroom, I think our imagination can do the rest...

As I will now demonstrate

But we did it lots of mornings.  Whenever Tobias managed to find an early breakfast and it wasn't raining.

See?

Tsk, tsk, your dirty RAFian minds...

..."it" is Rachel's homework.

[musicman88]

I would've liked to see both if only for the fact that it shows them getting older and more mature.  It just seems that they were 13 up until book 50 or so and then they instantly jumped to being 16.  Some aging in between would've been nice.

I don't think that having them swear every other word would've been good for anybody, but they definitely had their chances to swear.  Although KA did have someone sometimes say that "*blank* used a word that I can't repeat" and stuff like that I guess.  And I don't think we need a full fledged sex scene with intimate details (I'll save that for my own fics), but some implied stuff would've been nice to see.  Maybe Marco making a few jokes on how Tobias and Rachel had sex or having the rest of the Animorphs finding out what really went on between Jake and Cassie or something like that.  Anything to make them seem a bit older really.