Way back in the 90s, when LGBTQ+ representation in YA literature was extremely limited and you were a gay nerd, like me, you may have also loved the weird little series of books called Animorphs, in which children could transform into animals.

If you had asked me an hour ago, I would have told you they do this to solve crimes, but I’m apparently mixing up my childhood favorites because Nancy Drew these children are not — they are instead using this skill to battle a secret alien invasion. I somehow forgot that very large detail…I mostly just remember wishing I, too, could transform into an animal for two hours at a time (which is why I now often play druids in D&D).

And even if you have never read the books, surely you’ve seen the iconic covers of flipbook-like images of children transforming into animals, including the uncanny valley of the in-between stages. If not in bookstores, than perhaps in a meme or two. The ability to change your body into something else, the very concepts of identity and invasion, are unsurprisingly widely appealing to queer and trans kids across the country — especially us 90s kids who had little by way of actual representation in our YA novels. Author Katherine Applegate probably didn’t intend to write such queer and trans allegories into her stories, but it doesn’t seem like she would mind her books being interpreted that way; she is a fierce LGBTQ+ ally and supportive mother to a trans daughter.

Why am I talking to you about Animorphs in the year 2026, you ask? Well: Ryan Coogler, the genius behind award-winning horror film Sinners, will be adapting the series for Disney+. While being produced by Disney seems to be a strike against against its potential to be actually contextually queer, the company is not quite as stingy on LGBTQ+ rep in its live-action content as its animated films. For example, in a similar genre, the Disney+ adaptation of the hit children’s series Goosebumps included queer and trans actors and characters in its two-season run.

Between that and Katherine Applegate’s politics, I think this is a much better YA book series adaptation to support than that other one on HBO, personally.

Giddy up, more news for ya!

+ Station 19‘s resident lesbian firefighter Maya Bishop will be making a guest appearance on Grey’s Anatomy this week (and hopefully her wife will join her!)

+ Trans actress Josie Totah stars in new horror movie called Faces of Death alongside queer actress Barbie Ferreira

+ Queer actor Rivkah Reyes is kissing girls in the music video “classy” by Randy Beth

+ (Rivkah also went to SNL this weekend to support former School of Rock castmate Jack Black on his 5th time hosting, which is very sweet.)

+ The final The Devil Wears Prada 2 trailer (eee!!) features an original song by Lady Gaga and Doechii

+ Queer actress Alexandra Shipp joins the cast of upcoming holiday horror film White Elephant (that also stars KJ Apa and Nick Jonas, confusingly)

+ NASA played Chappell Roan’s Pink Pony Club as a wake-up call to the astronauts on Artemis II — lesbians in space! Love to see it.

+ Season 3 of Euphoria will likely be the show’s last, according to Zendaya

+ For my sports gays: Here’s an inside look into the relationship between basketball stars Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd

+ Also: Sherri Cola voices an aardwolf (a real animal and not a fictional mashup of an aardvark and a wolf like I originally thought) named Hannah in animated sports film GOAT

+ Sabrina Carpenter released a music video for House Tour on which her, Margaret Qualley, and Madelyn Cline break into a house and are vaguely sexual with each other while going through the owner’s things

+ Love of my life Tatiana Maslany will be starring in Apple TV’s Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed as what sounds like a mashup of all her Orphan Black characters rolled into one: “fact-checker, mom, divorcée, youth soccer coach, and inadvertent criminal investigator”

+ New novel Vernal Thaw by Frances Cannon explores toxic queer monogamy