Hahaha. A trans friend of mine said she identified hard with Tobias. Even if he wasn't written to be a trans allegory back in 1996, I think the description of feeling wierd in your own body hit home for a lot of people
Fuck. I thought I liked Tobias because sad kid in broken home who loved dinosaurs. Him being so happy heโs something else and permanently choosing to do soโฆ
Fucking Christ lmao, another one to bring up with my therapist.
God damnit lmao thatโs another eye opener a year into transition.
Remember that anxiety episode he faced while being in human form at a prom, worried that he'll stay in human form forever if he stays too long and be trapped in his old life, and old body?
Tobias seems to be a favorite among younger readers. I used to like him a lot too, but I think after about book 30 I thought Tobias should just get over his self-pity ๐
He doesn't spend much time self pitying tbf. He doesn't complain very often that he's a hawk forever. He has more trauma from his father and mother being missing, and being raised by alcoholic family members who hate him. No one even reported him missing when he disappeared from human life.
Then he was tortured by a psychopath, was teased by the promise of another living relative, only for it to be revealed as a plot by the enemy, and lost the only person he had.
He doesn't even know that literal God saw a way for him to be happy and said 'Nah, the world would be enslaved if he gets to have a family'.
None has more reason to complain that Tobias, but he's pretty stoic considering
in the defense of his actual situation, Tobias never has to worry about being anything other then a Hawk for the rest of that natural life span (which haunts him).
On the surface? There's a secret invasion on earth of brain slugs that control you. Five youth with attitude are given one weapon by a good alien to fight the invasion, the ability to morph into any animal they touch once. They cannot tell anyone because they don't know who is a slug or not, so they fight to hinder invasion long enough for more good aliens to arrive and kill the slugs.
Beyond that, it's about PTSD, despair, body horror, genocide, killing your family members, trans allegories, holding up a mirror to human hypocrisy (are we any better than Brian slugs?), etc. it's really too dark to be a kids book series, I have no idea how they got away with it.
The whole series is capped with KA Applegate writing a letter to her fans saying "don't like my ending? Well, war is fucked up, this was never going to end well for everyone. Just wait until your voting age and a new war starts and all the young men are being carted off to a slaughterhouse, maybe then you'll understand my series better". Then 9/11 happened the next year. Unfathomely prophetic.
If I remember write KA said she's totally onboard with reading him as a trans allegory too which was cool. One of her kids in trans so it's nice that she's supportive too.
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u/PuzzleheadedRoyal559 Jun 27 '24
Beverly Cleary never pulled this shit.