you lost the game

WHO REACHES THE MONTHLY METRICS

This was prompted by me and my boyfriend discussing handedness and being able to tell apart left and right. And me, being ambidextrous, was baffled by how do people with an obligate dominant hand mix up which side is the one with their Writing Hand and which one isn't?? And my boyfriend pointed out that I go "turn left - no I mean right" so much when giving directions that I have lost my navigator privileges.

I argued that mixing up the words isn't the same thing as mixing up the directions. Like if your mom accidentally called you the dog's name doesn't mean that she literally can't tell you apart from the dog. And he looked at me like this

Okay wait, I just remembered that the first time I read this book age ~6, I interpreted Tobias turning into the rabbit at the end to be him choosing to feed himself to the other red-tailed hawk!?!?! Because, like, he says the thing about how hawks have to eat, and how he's going to protect the other rabbits. And then he notes his fellow hawk circling overhead. And then the book ends.

I don't think kid-me even questioned the idea that this book would end on its narrator choosing to die of free-range consensual cannibalism??? Because a) if anyone would, it'd be Tobias, b) if any series would, it'd be Animorphs.

And I read the series out of order, so I think I kind of just assumed for a while there that that was how Tobias's story would end? Tobias does say in ch. 27 that he wants to die, and he does spend the whole book talking about hawks eating rabbits, so honestly it's not the weirdest misreading of all time. And like, 6-year-olds tend to roll with what they read because there's 0 awareness of genre conventions, so I don't think I was nearly as horrified by that as I was by the descriptions of where grocery store meat comes from.

#as someone whose first animorphs book as a kid was pretender#this was exactly the interpretation i had#i had zero context for this series i just thought that the book would end with the main character becoming a rabbit forever and then gettin#eaten#animorphs

friend whos always available: i can do whenever

friend whos constantly busy: im sorry i have work and then school and then the labyrinth and then more work :( i can do tuesday at 3:00 am for five minutes tho

friend with the randomly generated sleep schedule: (no response)

friend who went missing in the woods behind their house 12 years ago and hasn't been heard from since: (no response)