#life form: hork bajir | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

cluelessrebel1988 · 2 years ago

Text

If I Ran The Zoo (or how I would plot out an Animorphs TV/streaming series if I had the time/ability/resources)

So this is something I've been kicking around in my head on-again, off-again for a couple years now, and I thought I'd put it out there, just for the lols (do people still say that?)

My thought process is for a 5 season arc, with each season being somewhere in the neighborhood of 13-15 episodes long, give or take. There would be a few changes with the order of things, and a few minor characters would play a bigger role. I'm not going to go episode by episode, but just sort of outline the big arcs for each season. I'm not in any way suggesting that this is the best way to do it, just that this is how I would do it.

Season 1

This season obviously would start the events of The Invasion and would primarily incorporate events/plot points from the first 10 books, including finding Ax in his crashed ship (though I would move that to either take place in the first episode, or in the second half of the two-part premiere), Tobais getting stuck in his hawk form (and getting an episode or two dedicated to him coming to terms with that), and introducing Erik and the Chee (Erik would be introduced as a friend of Marco's early in the season, with his identity as a Chee being revealed in the second half of the season).

The only major plot point from that run of the series I wouldn't put into play just yet is the reveal of Marco's mother as Visser One (although I would be very much establishing her through flashbacks, dreams, etc., so people will recognize her when Visser One does show up).

The main arc of the season would involve the Kandrona Ray and the events of The Stranger, with the team meeting the Ellimist and learning about the ray and its significance and plotting to take it down to try to end/expose the invasion. Erik and Ax tagteam providing info about the ray and its use, but it's the vision from the Ellimist that gives Rachel the final clue, again, as in the book, with that occuring at the end of the penultimate episode. The season finale is solely focused on devising and executing the plan to destroy the ray. The plan would succeed, which would prompt Visser One's return, revealing her host to be Marco's mother as the cliffhanger for the season.

Obviously, we would be exploring the kid's home lives more, with the relationship with their families and friends and the whole 'work-life balance' thing that comes with fighting a guerilla war against an alien invasion. Not to the point where they're having to fake illnesses to skip school every episode, but enough to show that it's putting a strain on their relationships. I would also explore Rachel's relationship with Melissa Chapman more and have Melissa be a bigger supporting character in the show. We'd also introduce Karen and Aftran in this season, revealing her to be a controller early on, but something that Cassie doesn't find out until the end of the season

Season 2

Season 2 would pick up a few weeks after season 1, as The Alien did with The Stranger. The kids learn that their hope that the invasion would reveal itself with the Kandrona ray destroyed were in vain and that Ax knew that. The premiere would largely follow the plot of that book, with the Animorphs attempting to integrate Ax into society and attempting to take the fight to Visser Three with the help of a Yeerk traitor, and Ax telling the others about the Law of Seerow's Kindness. Ax would get a lot of development this season, with the events of The Deception coming into play.

Tobias would help free the Hork-Bajir as in The Change and get his human form back as a morph, and the reveal that he is Elfangor's son would be included in this season as well (Obviously we're tapping into the Andalite Chronicles for flashbacks in at least one episode this season to help set that up).

Marco's main character arc would revolve around learning that his mother is Visser One, keeping it a secret, only to have the others find out later, thus incorporating The Predator and The Escape. Also Visser One is the big bad for the season, delving more into her conflict with Visser Three. The season would end with her supposed death following the Animorphs' thwarting of her plans

For Cassie, we cover the utilize adapted versions of The Departure and set up for The Sickness, with Karen/Aftran and Cassie perhaps getting trapped somewhere and forced to work together to get out of it, laying the groundwork for Aftran to be captured by Visser Three. The season finale would also center around the efforts to rescue Aftran.

Jake and Rachel will have arcs and roles to play in each of these stories as they each start to fall into their respective roles as leader and fighter, respectively. If they get their own arc, it would be around trying to save Tom specifically.

Additionally, Melissa is still around in her expanded role, but with a new friend: David, who would be introduced fairly early in the season in a recurring role (Melissa is also recurring at this point). She and David will have a B-plot where they become friends and are together when David finds the morphing cube, the discovery of which also occurs in the finale.

Season 3

Obviously, the primary source for the main arc of season 3 is the David Trilogy, with The Discovery in particular serving as the source for the season premiere. It plays out mostly the same, with the Animorphs learning that David and Melissa have the cube and plans to sell it online. They try to retrieve the cube before the two of them can attract the attention of the Yeerks, but ultimately fail, leading to the battle at David's house. They manage to get Melissa and David out of the house before they can be captured, and are forced to reveal themselves and tell them what's happening, essentially recruiting them into the Animorphs.

The events of the rest of the trilogy, with the threat to the UN summit or some similar event involving world leaders as a target that they have to keep the Yeerks from taking advantage of -- as well as with David and Melissa's reactions to being Animorphs -- would take up the majority of the plot this season. Obviously Melissa becoming an Animorph opens up some new potential for her arc, especially around her relationship with her dad and trying to come to terms with him being a controller (and the fact that Rachel has been keeping this a secret all along). She and David would have similar arcs around their parents being controllers, but while David ultimately turns against the Animorphs, Melissa does not (although David tries to convince her to). The season ends with the gang trapping David in a rat morph, as the books do.

One of Melissa's major character traits is her interest in technology, something she used to bond with her father over (working together to take things apart and then put them back together before be became a Controller to try to keep her safe) and I imagine her and Ax developing something of an awkward friendship as she tries to ask him about the morphing technology and other Andalite technology, with him being reluctant to share due to the Law of Seerow's Kindness. But, as he's grown closer with the Animorphs, he would eventually acquiesce and they would begin to bond. The two big relationships (Rachel and Tobias, and Cassie and Jake) also take major steps this season

The other major arc for the season involves other Andalites, incorporating The Arrival and The Other, with the reveal that other Andalites are on earth and some are there to help...or are they? The season would also end with Tobias getting captured by the Yeerks to begin the laying of the groundwork for the discovery that the Animorphs are not, in fact, Andalite bandits.

Season 4

The events of The Illusion and The Test would be adapted for the season premiere, including the introduction of the Yeerk resistance (led in this series by Karen/Aftran) and Tobias's capture and torture, with the main difference being that it is Tom (who has largely been a secondary or tertiary villain thus far) being the one who conducts the torture. During the interrogation, Tobias lets something slip that most of the controllers in the room don't pick up on, but Tom does, leading him to investigate and setting up for the finale, which would be largely and adaptation of The Diversion, with the race against time to save their families taking up the majority of the episode. Melissa is able to save her parents, her father proving to be an asset in the final season with his knowledge of how Yeerk technology works.

This season as a whole would focus on escalating the war between the Animorphs and the Yeerks. The stakes become higher, as are tensions following David's betrayal. Visser One returns, learning that Marco is one of the Animorphs and we incorporate the events of Visser, seeing the Animorphs rescue her.

Following Tobias's capture and torture, Rachel becomes more angry and vengeful, setting up for her arc over the final season (we've seen hints of her violent streak over the series up to this point, but it gets more intense this season).

Season 5

With their secret out, the Animorphs regroup in the Hork-Bajir valley and try to figure out their next move. The final arc of the series would play out largely how it does over the course of the final books, with the team recruiting more Animorphs to help them with their mission, and even trying to recruit government and military officials to aid in the fight. Tom gets the morphing cube, adding controllers with the ability to morph (other than the newly appointed Visser One) to the threat against the Animorphs. The final battle would be a multi-pronged attack, with the bombing of the Yeerk Pool being part of the final assault and not a separate battle.

Rachel gets aboard the blade ship and kills Tom before being killed herself. In an effort to make up for the harm he caused, Hedrick Chapman sacrifices himself to both ensure the Yeerk Pool bomb goes off and to save Melissa one final time (the pair of them were in charge of building/detonating it, along with Ax), and Jake orders the flushing of the Yeerk Pool on the the Pool ship, alienating Erek and the rest of the Chee going forward. All of this is in the penultimate episode.

The series finale follows the aftermath of the war in The Beginning, and, as the books did, the series would end with Jake, Tobias, and Marco (and probably Melissa) being recruited to help save Ax from an as-yet unknown threat.

And there you have it, my outline for how an Animorphs series could/should play out. As I said at the start, this is just my idea and others might have different thoughts about what order the arcs should go in and what significant changes (if any) would be made. Please be kind with any criticisms, and if you'd like to share your thoughts with me, my inbox is open. I also did a fancast for the series a few years ago if anyone's curious about who would play who

#animorphs #series outline #just my ramblings #Jake Berenson #Rachel Berenson #Marco #Tobias #aximili esgarrouth isthill #Ax #Cassie #Melissa Chapman #David

237 notes · View notes

bluefox4 · 11 days ago

Text

<They want a Hork-Bajir to chase, right? Well, we could give them one.> <Morph a Hork-Bajir?> Marco asked. <Ewwww.> <Jara Hamee isn't just any animal,> Cassie objected. <He's sentient. He's self-aware.> <Ax morphed me once,> Jake pointed out. <And Cassie, you morphed Rachel.> <I'm just saying we have to get Jara Hamee's permission, at least,> Cassie said. <But whatever you decide, do it quick.> p. 53

Good idea to actually have this conversation, as brief as it is. Jara Hamee has been used by Yeerks for possibly his whole life, it's best to get his consent. Make sure that he is fine with someone using his form.

Ax let it go and focused his main eyes back on the Hork-Bajir. <Yeerks are coming. One of my friends wishes to morph you. To trick the Yeerks. Do you agree?> "Jara Hamee hates Yeerks," the big Hork-Bajir said. Like that was all the answer he needed to give. p. 53

He is luckily cool with this plan.

#Animorphs #Animorphs Book Club #The Change #Ani 13

11 notes · View notes

boylied · 2 months ago

Text

Animorphs Book Club- The Alien

Sorry I’m a bit late for this one. It’s been a crazy week (I was on five planes within the span of four days) and I haven’t even been online for most of it. But we finally get an Ax book. I remember being so intrigued by him and never having any Ax books of my own. I finally found them at a library. It was not enough time to figure him out. Let’s try again now that I my brain is finished forming.

I love that aliens across media are always stunned at how much water Earth has. In a universe where sentient life has popped up all over, a water planet is still remarkable?

I have mentioned before that I was a parentified eldest child. As such, I really don’t vibe too much with Ax’s viewpoint around Elfangor. But I think this small scene between the brothers is so cute. I can’t help but think about when the Ellimist plucked Elfangor from Earth and, when trying to convince him to return to the war, the Ellimist used Ax’s existence as fodder. Elfangor returned, in part, to be with Ax and protect him. And we were robbed of getting to see the brothers together.

I love the diary entries.

“I would have liked to have Tobias’s DNA, but that was not possible,” Cute.

I love the whole trope of a bunch of kids trying to show an alien their human society, only for it to go horribly wrong. But this is the only example I can think of where we get to see it from the alien’s POV. I love the dramatic irony. But also, Ax is losing his mind over movie theater popcorn and candy. I just know a bowl of gumbo would kill him.

“Rachel is a true warrior,” I know that’s right

Chekhov’s rattle snake.

First instance of Ax calling Tobias his Bestie. I know he thinks being besties would mean having no secrets, but he does not really that All middle school friendships involve secrets and drama.

Jake’s fury at the fact that Ax withheld information for him specifically to manipulate him into destroying the kandrona. Fast forward to endgame when Jake keeps Rachel’s solo mission secret specifically to prevent the others from putting a stop to it. Presently, Jake says “you don’t know a thing about [humans].” So I ask, does Jake eventually lose his humanity? Or is Jake the one who doesn’t humans?

KA Applegate does Who’s On First?

It’s funny thinking about what things Ax describes for us versus what things he assumes we know. He takes the time to explain that the Andalite sky has anywhere from two to four moons. But he never bothers to lay out how he eats (until -for character arc reasons- he is forced to explain to the animorphs later). He mentions that books seem more advanced than computers to the Andantes, but thinks that the program he found in Marco’s house is a children’s game.

Part of what’s fun with these books is figuring out what’s going on when the narrator isn’t around. What’s fascinating here is that we know that Ax is keeping secrets, and the Animorphs now know that he’s actively keeping secrets, not just being mysterious. And now we see Tobias come talk to Ax alone. And then Marco. And then Cassie. And it’s like, they’re really getting together aside and being like, Who is the best one for the job? Who’s gonna get him to open up?”

The Hork Bajir have a bio clock that sets them warring every 62 years? I did not remember this little fact. But I was always interested in the world building aspect of the series (Work-Bajir chronicles was my Favorite book). And now I’m thinking this was definitely a design by the Arn to keep control over the population and distract them in case they ever got brave.

“Cassie has talent. Morphing does not happen to be my talent.” Ax is so funny because he is clearly a good fighter. But he has admitted that he didn’t pay attention during school. He doesn’t remember much about xenobiology, or the more advanced sciences (by Andalite standards), never cared for art, isn’t that good at morph control. He only cared about fighting and being like Elfangor. And because we’re human readers, we click more with the Animorphs and think of Ax as this advanced, alien being who is more advanced than humans, but in reality, they got saddled with the Andalite version of the middle school jock. Omg- Ax is Jake this explains so much.

The communications between Ax and his home planet is just *chef’s kiss*. We get to see him relieved and emotional to just see another Andalite. We get to see him go back to normal operations, giving his report and finding comfort in the familiar. We get to see him admit the uncomfortable, and vehemently defend both Elfangor’s actions and the humans as a whole. Ax being bullied and pressured by an older, well respected Andalite into lying and taking the blame (apparently this call will NOT be recorded for training and quality purposes). And we see the very beginning of Ax getting radicalized.

Also, I get that it’s devastating to lose your eldest son. But you hear from your long lost son, who you didn’t know for certain was alive. He tells you his brother died, and your immediate response is “well you better go get his killer, kid.” Stone cold Pops. I get that it’s tradition, but it’s giving shot gun wedding vibes.

Also love seeing more insight into Yeerk society. They’re parasitic slugs, but they’re capable of love and relationships. Is this their own capabilities? Or a byproduct of their hosts? I seem to remember that their reproductive cycle includes self destruction to create the next generation? So I doubt their biology would evolve to include romantic love or familial feelings. So my hunch is that Yeerks can develop friendships and share bonds with each other, but they only grow to develop romance and family after taking hosts that have that biological urge (Visser 1 being the most prominent).

Once again, Cassie’s the goat. This whole deal with Seerow’s Kindness gets me itchy. My memory is fuzzy but it’s taken what- roughly 70-80 years for the Andalites to go from kind space explorers to traumatized, walled off space cops. When I was younger I thought this was such a good story for children. You start off kind, someone betrays you, and you close yourself off to prevent it from happening again while beefing with your ex. It ruins your next relationship (the Hork-Bajir). And then someone else comes along and finally teaches you how to love again. That love and healing is more powerful than fear and secrets. But now that I’m older, I realize that most adults haven’t grasped this concept either.

I wonder how many would have lived if they had just mercy killed Alloran.

But of course we end with a PSA on unity across species and the pursuit of freedom. Lovely.

Also shout out to @emeraldmew for the comparison “Apparently more than you, you CLOD.”

#gumbo #other things that would kill ax include #lemon chicken piccata #a hot Cheeto #Turkish coffee #everyone falls in love with Earth #rip Derane #animorphs book club #cassie #jake berenson #marco #rachel berenson #tobias #aximili esgarrouth isthill #8

12 notes · View notes

kooldewd123 · 1 year ago

Text

Alright I've got some THOUGHTS about the Iskoort and how they relate to Yeerk ecology that I've been dying to get out but I wanted to wait until I reached book 26 in case there was some detail I was forgetting. So obviously, the big twist with these guys is they they're actually some offshoot of the Yeerks who found a way to evolve past the need for parasitism by creating an artificial species to inhabit. The part that's been really sticking out in my mind as I reread the series, however, is that this isn't actually the first time a concept like this has been brought up. Let's take a look at Guide's description of the Iskoort:

Since we formed our symbiotes, the combination Isk and Yoort, we have been as we are now. ... The Isk cannot live without the Yoort. And to ensure this symbiosis would be real, the Yoort, too, were modified. Now Yoort cannot live without Isk and Isk cannot live without Yoort. They are one creature with two parts. - Guide, #26: The Attack

This description sounded familiar to me when I read it for some reason. That's when I realized: It's weirdly similar to the way that Seerow describes the relationship between the Yeerks and the Gedds:

[The Yeerks] have no history of harming intelligent life-forms. The Gedds are barely conscious in their natural state. It's not as if they were stealing the bodies of truly sentient creatures. They and the Gedds are symbiotic. - Seerow, The Hork-Bajir Chronicles.

The Iskoort aren't a symbol of what the Yeerks might become become in the future - they're what the Yeerks already were before the Andalites found them. The Yeerks, within their native habitat, aren't parasites, but rather mutualistic partners to the Gedds. The Gedds' bodies give the Yeerks new senses and enhanced motility, while the Yeerks' capabilities for higher thinking grant the Gedds all the benefits that come with it, such as greater survival skills and the framework of civilization. Yeerk benefits from Gedd, and Gedd benefits from Yeerk. It's not hard to imagine that over many generations, as the Yeerk/Gedd relationship grew deeper, we could have seen something strikingly similar to the Iskoort evolve.

But then the Andalites came.

The Yeerks specifically evolved to infest the barely-sentient Gedds, but it turns out that much of sentient life in the galaxy mirrors Gedd anatomy closely enough to also be viable hosts for Yeerks. Like I said before, the Yeerks didn't necessarily evolve as parasites, but they became so opportunistically when unleashed upon unsuspecting habitats that had never had any reason to evolve defenses against such a threat. You know what we call something like that in real-world ecology? An invasive species. And I just love that. Animorphs is a series with a strong, clear environmentalist message. Invasive species are some of the closest examples we have to actual villains in nature, so creating villains that reflect them is a brilliant idea. And with this perspective in mind, even more parallels start to pop up! Real-world invasive species often begin spreading as stowaways on settler ships, and the Yeerks began spreading using Andalite advance ships. Invasive species can cause ecosystem collapse by out-competing native species, and the Yeerks intentionally destroy the ecosystems of worlds they've conquered. My biology brain has been latching on to this idea ever since I read that passage from Seerow. It's such an interesting shift in the way to analyze the Yeerks' actions.

#i hope this isn't something already obvious lol #i was late to reading hork bajir chronicles and this idea sprung fully formed into my brain the second i read that passage #animorphs iskoort #animorphs #animorphs yeerks #yeerks #animorphs gedds #idiot teenagers with a death wish #koolmathgames.com

33 notes · View notes

tunashei · 10 months ago

Text

First Impressions of Animorphs!

I'm listening to the Animorphs series while I work, through Animorphs Aloud - a fan made reading of the series. Here are my first impressions/random thoughts about them! Spoilers below if you haven't read them.

Book 12.5: The Andalite Chronicles (Part 2)

Oh no...the second they mentioned that Alloran and Arbron were last seen as Taxxons but it'd been over the two hour morph limit...one of them is gonna be stuck as a Taxxon, aren't they?

Sensible plan Elfangor, good choices

Arbron definitely ate that guy. Also this voice acting is very good, Arbron sounds gloomy and a little hysterical

Man I wish human larval forms could be set to work cleaning and doing menial chores, instead of just lying there and screaming. And then they'd cocoon and transform into fully functional adults instead of going through the awkward teenager stage

Ah fuck...totally called it. Arbron is a Taxxon forever now. That SUCKS man, I quite liked him. At least Tobias is stuck as something pretty cool, being a Taxxon seems like hell

As someone who is completely incapable of estimating speeds, three thousand miles per hour sounds totally believable

Arbron is so cool. Under the most intense pressure, life irrevocably changed for the worse, in a unfamiliar body and he STILL nails the shot. Three times

Oh yeah they could totally use the Time Matrix to fix Arbron

Elfangor please do not cut off your friends limbs he can no longer get those back by demorphing (what is it with Andalites and severing limbs??)

Hadn't considered before that if Andalites eat with their feet they must also taste with their feet. It's a good thing Ax has never been in andalite form walking around a typical human city...though he did eat cigarettes once so maybe he'd like it

Do andalite eyestalks have eyelids?

Elfangor you have the most powerful weapon in the universe on a hostile planet, your commander is missing, your friend is missing presumed dead, your alien crush is kidnapped and in peril, and any moment the Yeerks could find your crashed ship. Why are you reading a picture book

Oh my god is he going to drive the car

HELL FUCKIN YEAH ANDALITE DRIVING A MUSTANG

Oh ok Arbron can regrow limbs. Convenient. I'm glad he's found a purpose too, having an Andalite in control of a bunch of Taxxons could be pretty powerful

Alloran is back! I didn't think he'd vanish completely but him appearing as a Hork-Bajir genuinely surprised me

Woooow...I mean kind to give him the warrior title, Arbron totally deserves it, but *casualty of war?* That's harsh. I wonder how often this happens, Andalites getting trapped in morph while fighting in the war and then being discarded because accommodating them would be inconvenient. Or because having them be visible in society might make their military look bad.

Alloran what is the matter with you the MOST POWERFUL WEAPON IN THE UNIVERSE is just lying unattended in some desert and you're hung up on these insignificant Yeerks whose deaths would barely make a dent in the war. You have issues man

Bye bye visser three/sub visser seven I'm sure that was definitely you that fell out of the ship you're not currently in Chapmans head

War crimes! Woooooo!

Well, at least he realised before he got ambushed? And got the upper hand with some good shooting. Too bad you left Alloran to be infested. I was hoping we'd get to find out how Visser Three got his Andalite so pleased we got to see that

Ahaha this is devious I love it. Make him run. Make him DANCE. Those Hork-Bajir must have shit themselves when they realised they were shooting at their own visser

'You up for a little genocide, Elfangor?' Top 10 Animorphs Quotes

These living asteroids are weird, struggling to visualise them. Set em on the Yeerks

FUCKIN CHAPMAN. Should have put him in a cupboard or something. Deserved that nut shot

Dramatic end to this part! Intense action

#animorphs #the animorphs #animorphs aloud #book #books #audio book #first impressions

6 notes · View notes

benevolentfalcon · 1 year ago

Text

Now that you say this, I think this is basically canonical? Or perhaps that Yeerks have a different conception of childhood. In Hork-Bajir Chronicles, Esplin says that he was not born on the planet, he was born on the ship the Yeerks had absconded with in their revolt. A revolt that was less than two years before Esplin's narration (main action of HBC is in 1968, the revolt was in 1966, but this scene in particular was significantly before the Yeerks came to the Hork-Bajir homeworld). The Yeerk who would become Visser Three was at most two years old by the time he had curried enough favor to become one of the two very first Hork-Bajir Controllers. He had been raised since birth to be a soldier--as in, he was literally born on an active warship.

(But he also in no way comes across as a child, which only has me questioning how the Yeerk life cycle works--maybe all the offspring of a Yeerk throuple inherit their parents' collective memory, springing from their decaying brows fully formed like some morbid Athena? Maybe Yeerks have no concept of "child"?)

Most sci fi/fantasy: this civil war has been waged for a thousand years. These great houses have ruled the realm for eight thousand years. These two families have been feuding for ten thousand years. This single political institution has stood for twenty-five thousand years.

Animorphs: there is a war waged across the galaxy, waged by countless species. Entire planets have been conquered, entire species have been enslaved. Multiple genocides have been committed, even by the "good guys." It's been going on about, oh, thirty-two years now.

#chemiosmotic #animorphs

9K notes · View notes

featherquillpen · 3 years ago

Text

Liveblog of the #23: The Pretender audiobook

I liveblogged about it to @joysweeper on Discord, so here it is in bullet point form. Boy did I get mad about Hork-Bajir rights.

Michael Crouch (the narrator) is soooo goooood

You know I love the trans Tobias reading and I'm hearing his speech in early 23, about how his name doesn't tell you who he really is, through that lens

We all talk a lot about how Rachel's behavior to Tobias in early 33 (when she tries to trap him in human morph) is appalling. But there are shades and precursors to that in early 23, huh? Everyone except Rachel can see Aria is fishy right away, and she's the one pushing and advocating for Aria to be real because she wants a human boyfriend -- even though Aria is in fact a serious danger to him, and everyone except her can see it. Her entire push for Tobias to be human is selfish, cruel, and puts him in danger, and it extends beyond 33. Rachias is such a nightmare train wreck, I love it

Crouch's human Tobias is delightfully stilted. He sounds like he's making an awkward phone call at all times

I'm so goddamn emotional about the free Hork-Bajir. But also 🔪🔪 at the way Tobias condescends to them. And he's better than the rest of the animorphs about them. The bar is on the floor

I love Crouch's Toby voice omg. It reminds me of his Cassie voice! Calm, precise. More hoarse than Cassie's, as a nod to her being a big lizard, but not gravelly like his Jara voice

It's so transparent how Tobias goes to the HB to stroke his ego without doing very much to support and manage their feelings in return

I still do love the way Tobias explicitly connects the HB plight to the way they're living on colonized Native land. That's some of the closest to truly radical thought the animorphs get. It's always him and Cassie with the borderline radical visions.

Jara says the HB will give their lives for Tobias, and then Tobias says, well people like that you have to try and save. An uncharitable reading of this is: What if the HB weren't so fawning and grateful, Tobias? What if they resented and disliked you even though you helped them? Would they not be worth saving then? Do you only fight to save people who are sufficiently grateful? Who are model victims of the Yeerk empire?

He really does worry more about these rabbits than he ever does about the enslaved HB he kills and maims. He has that moment later with Fal Tagut which I love, but Fal forgives Tobias and Tobias does not then have a guilt spiral about what he does to enslaved HB on the regular.

Tobias's comment in 23 that humans have these little intimacies he doesn't is kind of interesting. He wasn't physically affectionate as a human in book 1, and he still isn't when he morphs. I can't help but think about it through the trans femme lens again. Many trans women have noted a jealousy about the physical intimacies available to women.

I'm kind of realizing that Marco may be the most physically affectionate animorph and it is sending me. If you count tussling and shoving with Rachel and Jake then it's Marco

Crouch truly does the best Ax voice besides Vermer himself. He just sounds like a teenage boy who speaks with great precision

The fact that Tobias doesn't know his birthday speaks much more to his human life than his bird life. It indicates that it was never celebrated.

Oh my God I loved the delivery of Tobias's line in 23: "I cannot use my superpowers for evil." I always imagined that faux solemn as a joke, but Crouch delivered it so earnestly and it's very cute

I love the homework scene in 23 where Cassie noticed that Ax misses having people who can nerd out at his level of Andalite science. Though, on the other hand, presumably any of the animorphs could learn to nerd out at his level if they had any patience. They always cut him off when he tries. So that's kind of on them.

Visser Three calls free HB "poor stupid Hork-Bajir"... The animorphs' opinion of them is truly not so different from V3's

It's so funny to imagine Visser Three doing all these Aria things. Getting dressed up. Acting sad about zoo animals. Reading a newspaper

I really feel like Ax gets so shafted in Tobias books after 13 in favor of Rachel. The juicy Ax scenes are just lacking here. Like I would love to see Tobias have a moment of guilt in his fantasies about being human about leaving Ax alone in the woods. It feels in character

TOBIAS TELLS AX ABOUT ELFANGOR OFF SCREEN. I will never not be mad about this. WHY would you end on a birthday cake with Rachel instead of Tobias telling Ax they're family?! It might be Applegrant's biggest fuck up, if we lay aside obvious punching down problematics like Marco cracking jokes about Ax's "rain man impression" and everything with the auxiliary animorphs

My personal pet theory is that even if Tobias hadn't figured out that Aria was Visser Three, or if Aria had been real, he wouldn't have been able to actually follow through on his resolve to trap himself as a human and live with her. There's a lot of textual evidence that Tobias prefers life as a hawk and is in denial about it, and further, with his history of abusive neglect, I think once he was actually faced with a parental figure that he doesn't deeply trust, he would panic and feel the need to escape immediately. He just wouldn't be able to do it.

#animorphs #animorphs audiobooks

20 notes · View notes

ladylilithprime · 2 years ago

Text

Got tagged by @pirate-captain-kaira for this, so... ~cracks knuckles~

Ten (no-pressure) questions:

♫Do you play an instrument?

Not very regularly. I know the basics of how to play piano, guitar, classic flute, snare drum, xylophone, harp, and a hand-carved Native American cedar flute I've had for a couple decades.

•Favourite book characters?

Firenze and Luna Lovegood (Harry Potter), Ed (Deep Wizardry), Cimorene and Kazul (The Enchanted Forest Chronicles), Menolly (The Harper Hall trilogy in the Pern Chronicles), Aldrea (The Hork-Bajir Chronicles in the Animorphs series), Vanyel and Kerowyn and Winterhart (Valdemar series, different books), uhh.... Several others I'm blanking on at the moment.

•What's your star sign?

Scorpio. (Sagittarius rising, moon in Libra)

•Favourite colour schemes?

Blue/green/silver, blue/indigo/purple, black/burgundy/red, black/green/gold, black/gray/white/purple....

•Naps or long sleep?

Yes.

•What languages do you speak?

English, fluently. I'm acceptably conversant in ASL, Castilian Spanish, and French. I know a smattering of Japanese, German, Yiddish, Latin, Greek, Russian, Hindi-Urdu, and Arabic. (If we're counting fictional languages, add Quenya, Sindarin, and Vulcan to that last list.) And if I'm sleep-deprived and unhappy I absolutely will mix any number of those languages together to swear at you.

•Dreams/aspirations?

Short term, to finally rebuild my desktop computer. I have all the parts I need, but finding the time and the spoons to put it together.... Long term, I would eventually like to start publishing my original works, including the children's books I've been working on writing and illustrating based off stories made up to tell my kids at bedtime.

•Long hair or Short Hair?

I've had both. I enjoy having long hair, but right after giving birth it's so much easier and safer to have it cut short.

•Tea or coffee?

Tea. I can tolerate coffee in its various forms, but I vastly prefer tea, especially spiced teas and chai.

•Bring a book character to life or go into a fictional world?

Go into a fictional world, provided I could easily get back out of it. Much safer than bringing a book character to life since I'd be most likely to bring out Kazul, the King of the Dragons.

Tagging whoever wants to do this. Go, have fun!

#tag games

2 notes · View notes

thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 2 years ago

Text

Eleutherophobia Deleted Scene

@eomund42 #might have to post as a DVD extra or whatever

Yes please!

[This fragment was originally part of Chapter 6 of How I Live Now. I got rid of it because a) the conversation around Jake’s table was getting too long, b) the tone doesn’t work given how the chapter opens, and c) I accidentally left Rachel and Effilit unsupervised in the yeerk pool, so I needed to retcon that the Tobys were guarding her while everyone else was at the house.]

“Food? They had enough kandrona for years.”

“Not the yeerks, the hosts!” I stood up, pacing as I talked. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t spotted it before. “The Blade ship only had space for a few months’ worth of food storage, and I know that at least some of that was taken up with bark for hork-bajir or taxxon meat for taxxons.”

Marco made a gagging noise which I ignored.

“Visser Seventeen didn't bother restocking those stores or even checking them. Humans are omnivores, that’s a big part of what makes us so useful,” I continued, “and the yeerks always assumed that they could feed a human body just about anything that didn’t poison it and it would keep going.” I turned around, making eye contact with Eva. She was nodding slowly. “But what if that’s not the case? What if they ran through the human food supply they had on board and couldn’t find any alternatives that had all the vitamins or amino acids or whatever that a human body needs?”

“They really don’t know as much about humans as they think they do.” Eva offered me a tight little smile. “Edriss wrote up most of the intel they have on us and... Well. Edriss wasn’t a disinterested party, given that her life depended on her ability to convince the Council that humans were worth the Empire’s time.”

“That would explain why the Blade ship hasn’t been back sooner,” I said, resting both hands on the back of the empty chair. “They’ve probably been hopping around between planets this entire time searching for a plant or animal source that’s close enough to Earth food.”

“Until they got desperate enough to come back here,” Cassie said.

I nodded. “Humans can digest just about anything, but that doesn’t mean they can live off it indefinitely. The yeerks probably found a few partial food sources, and they might have bought themselves some time by forcing one of the hosts to morph a large animal, become a nothlit, and then—”

Marco made his stop-talking-about-cannibalism gagging noise again, this time louder.

“Anyway,” I said, conceding the point this time. “Maybe there’s no vitamin K in the universe in a form humans can use. Maybe there’s no calcium. I don’t know, but whatever it is they’re missing, they’d get desperate enough and have to come back here.”

“So this is a quick trip. A grab and go.” Cassie exchanged a glance with Jake.

“Which means that if Rachel doesn’t come back within a few hours they’ll probably leave without her,” Jake concluded.

“And that brings us back to Tom’s original point,” Eva said. “We need to figure out where the rest of them are hiding. Immediately.”

<Rachel can tell us right now if we figure out a way to get that thing out of her head,> Tobias pointed out.

Having arrived firmly back at square one, we all sat there in frustrated silence for several seconds.

“Could you contact your illusionist?” Eva said. “Make, I don't know, a hologram vanarx to threaten it with?”

I glanced over at her. That wasn’t a bad idea.

“Illusionist?” Marco said. “What illusionist?”

“Your person who makes the holograms,” I said impatiently.

“We don’t have a person who makes holograms.” Marco glanced at Jake, who gave a slight nod. “I mean, maybe if Ax-man asked the Dome ship nicely they’d be willing to whip something up, but that’d take too long.”

Eva leveled a long, unamused stare at Marco. “I may have been born at night, querido, but I wasn’t born last night.”

Marco looked away, shoulders hunching.

“Eva,” Jake said. “Please trust us. We’re telling the truth that we don’t have an illusionist.”

“I know perfectly well that you six did not whip up an entire fake hork-bajir valley in less than three hours using parts you found at Radio Shack,” she said flatly. “Humans still don't have that kind of technology. Probably not the andalites either. So. Who helped you?”

“Technically...” Ax said. “Eck. Nick. Lally.” He trailed off. That appeared to be all he was going to say on the subject.

I looked at Eva. Eva looked at me. We were adults, I reminded myself, in a room full of kids. There was no need to bristle with defensiveness, no need to feel like the only two losers out of the loop.

“You could make a hologram on that scale, with that level of sophistication, right now?” Eva said to Ax.

And now none of the Animorphs were looking at her.

<Those were special circumstances,> Tobias mumbled.

“And the current situation doesn't count as special circumstances?” I looked slowly around at each of them. Jake wouldn't meet my eyes, but Marco leveled me with a hard, defiant stare.

<No, just…>

“You just can’t have the zombies knowing about it?” I asked.

Cassie stiffened.

Jake held up both hands in a placating gesture, looking between me and Eva. “It isn’t possible, okay? So leave it.”

I shoved forward to brace both hands on the tabletop. At least three of them flinched. “Just like it’s not possible for you to pull an exact copy of Cassie out of your collective asses? Cut it and it’d bleed, but scan it for life forms and it’d pop up as inorganic. Hang onto it for over two hours and it wouldn’t demorph, but take your eyes off it for a second and—” I snapped my fingers. “It’d disappear into thin air. You mind telling me how you pulled that one off?”

There was a long silence. Tobias had developed an apparent fascination with straightening his own feathers. Cassie just looked annoyed with me.

“Didn’t think I’d notice that, did you?” I asked them, voice flat.

“To be honest?” Marco said. “No, we didn’t.”

“It's not our secret to tell,” Cassie blurted. “We swear.”

Marco glanced at Jake again. Jake looked at Cassie, who looked from Tobias to Ax and then back to Jake. Jake looked back at Marco.

“Since Tom and I are clearly the only ones who give a damn about actually helping Rachel,” Eva said, “perhaps it would be best if we left the room.”

“Chee!” Marco shouted.

We all looked at him.

“That's whose hologram tech we were using,” he said. “The chee.”

It was progress, anyway. “What’s a chee?” I said.

Jake muttered something about there not being time for all this, but looked up at me and said “There was this species called the pemalites.”

“Yeah, everybody knows about pemalites.” I frowned. “Wait, you’re telling me they’re not extinct?”

“They are,” Jake said. “But they built robotic companions before they died. And those companions, those chee, were specifically designed to look and sound and even feel like anything they wanted. The chee can’t commit violence, not even to save a life. But, yeah, they can make a copy of Cassie — or the hork-bajir valley — on command.”

“Please, you can’t tell anyone,” Cassie said. “Their existence depends on their secrecy.”

I shrugged. “I so do not care that the pemalites left behind a bunch of sex bots, and don’t think anyone else will either. Can they help us?”

“Sex bots? Sex bots?” Marco spluttered, twisting around to glare at me. “They're not sex bots, you absolute sixth-grader.”

“’Chee’ literally just means ‘friend,’” Cassie said.

“And you can program them to look like anyone you want because��?” I raised my eyebrows.

Cassie opened her mouth halfway, and left it open.

“Jake?” Marco said imploringly. “Tell me the chee aren’t sex bots.”

Jake patted Marco on the arm. “The chee aren’t sex bots.”

“See?” Marco said to me. “You are a disgusting human being, and oughta be ashamed to open your mouth.”

“Always am,” I said, smiling angelically.

<Anyway, it’s a moot point.> Tobias glared at me. <The chee wouldn’t spit on us if we were on fire, even if we could contact them. Which we can’t.>

“Why, what happened?” I asked.

Jake suddenly became fascinated with the grain of the tabletop in front of him. Cassie made a noise of annoyance in the back of her throat, also looking away.

“He was fine,” Marco said loudly. “Jake did nothing wrong.”

“Who was fine?” Eva asked.

“No one!” Marco waved his hands. “I mean everyone! Everyone was fine. So don’t worry about it.”

I made eye contact with Eva. Yep, right back to the feeling we were the nerds being tolerated by the cool kids’ table but not allowed in on the joke.

“Tobias is right,” Cassie said. “We’re wasting time with this discussion. The chee are well-hidden enough that we couldn’t find them if we tried. And even if we did they wouldn’t help.”

“You can’t even ask,” Eva said tiredly. “You don’t think it would be worth trying to ask for help.”

“They can look like anyone.” Marco did look genuinely apologetic now. “Anything. Trees, rocks, the wall behind them. They don’t want to be found, and so we’re never going to find them again.”

“Okay.” Jake ran a hand over his face. “Okay. An illusion is a dead end. We’re on the right track, though. How else could we get a, um, a yeerk-eating-thing?”

“Varanx,” I provided. “And we even if we had one for real, it’d just eat Rachel’s brain right along with the yeerk.”

“So that idea’s a bust, but…” Jake looked around the table. “But…”

<Is there another way to get it out by force?> Tobias threw in. <Brain surgery, something like that.>

I winced. I knew of 10 or 12 people who’d had yeerks removed by force. Two had survived. One was in a vegetative state, and the other was, well... Spacey Gervais. Who lived up to his name.

“Is there anyone among our allies qualified to perform brain surgery?” Ax looked at Jake. “Your father, perhaps?” Then he twisted to look at Cassie. “Or yours?”

“Not on a human,” Cassie said, even as Jake shook his head.

“That’s also likely to be a dead end.” Eva was leaning more heavily against the wall, but glared at me when I tried to nudge my empty chair over to her. “Human brains are strange, and poorly understood by humans and yeerks alike.”

<Rachel’s a morpher.> Tobias looked from Eva back to Cassie. <She can heal from any amount of damage that doesn’t kill her instantly.>

“Or leave her comatose,” Cassie said. “Or otherwise unable to make a mental image of an elephant and then will her body to become that. And I don’t think Ben Carson himself could get an entire yeerk loose without taking apart most of the host brain as well.”

“No surgery.” Jake rested both hands on the table, closing the discussion. “No varanx, real or imaginary. It seems like we keep coming back to persuasion as the best way to get it out.”

I hated persuasion. Because I had an idea for persuasion, and I was going to pitch it to the group when hell froze over.

Hell froze over… or Rachel’s life was on the line.

I sighed. “Yeah. Fine. I’ll do it.”

Cassie looked up at me. “Do what?”

#animorphs #eleutherophobia #long post #animorphs ficlet #how i live now #deleted scene #mentions of torture #mentions of cannibalism

91 notes · View notes

goodgrammaritan · 4 years ago

Text

Animorphs

Been thinking lately about how in a fit of "I'm too mature for these kids' books" I got rid of my entire Animorphs collection in a garage sale, and how I regret that. I learned a lot of cool animal facts from those books, and as an adult, I realize that the depiction of war was a lot more involved than I thought. You think, kid heroes! Cool! They turn into animals! But then you're like, these CHILDREN are fighting a WAR and having to make life-and-death morally gray decisions and that is HORRIFYING.

I hate how fear of outside judgment led me to get rid of these books that were so dear to me. I looked it up and I could rebuy someone's entire used collection of paperbacks for $392, or I could get all 62 digitally for $4 a pop. Both of those options are a little pricy, so instead I made a list of my personal must-haves of the series. (Of course, as I looked them up on Goodreads for titles and to remind myself of various details, I kept adding more to my list.) So here's my list of what are, in my opinion, the best volumes in the series:

6. The Capture. First Animorphs I ever read. Jake gets infested by a Yeerk, and the Animorphs have to starve it out. It's the first real non-battle interaction the Animorphs have with a Yeerk, and it's sad and scary. Particularly sad when Jake learns this Yeerk first Controlled his brother, Tom, and how Tom got infested because he had a crush on a girl...

7. The Stranger. The Ellimist makes his first appearance here. He shows them a chilling future in which the Yeerks win, and then gives them a clue about how to set the Yeerks back. All because he loves Earth/humanity. (The future he shows them includes the horrifying tidbit that as Controllers, they fucking ROASTED AND ATE TOBIAS. Yikes!!!)

8. The Alien. Ax's first book. Fun to see an alien point of view, and along with the seriousness of the moral struggle Ax has re: what to tell Jake et. al. about what's happening to the starving Yeerks, there's the scene where Ax eats an entire tray of Cinnabons.

10. The Android. The Animorphs meet an android ally who needs them to unlock his ultimate powers. He's the creation of a peaceful race that was wiped out by the Yeerks, but can't overcome his pacifist programming without help. And he unlocks his powers, but at what cost?

12. The Reaction. Rachel has an allergic reaction to the crocodile morph, and it makes her morph uncontrollably when she feels strong emotions. Lots of hilarity, plus it's fun to see Rachel and Cassie get to have normal teenage crushes on a teenage heartthrob, Jonathan Taylor Thomas Jeremy Jason McCole from Home Improvement Power House. And the final burping of the croc is entertaining.

12.5 (The Animorph Chronicles 1) The Andalite Chronicles. Elfangor's backstory. Him being a hotheaded pilot, the Taxxon planet, him meeting Loren (and Chapman as a kid!), driving a Corvette, and growing up as both a human and Andalite. And he's Tobias's dad. It's so fucking sad. (Also loved that he gave the technology to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, lol.)

13. The Change. Tobias can morph again! And they rescue Hork-Bajir. First time they realize that the Hork-Bajir are people, have marriages and whatnot. Humanizes them. And it's the first place I ever read "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Free or die!!

14. The Unknown. Hilarious. The Animorphs check out Area 51 Zone 91 to see what alien technology the government is hiding. Marco and Rachel shenanigans, plus Cassie being clueless and unable to come up with a fake phone number (using 8 digits instead of 7, yes, this was written in the 90s). But just, the horses, Cassie not knowing military time (I can relate, girl), the whole showdown at The Gardens. I mean, riding rides while fighting Yeerks, Visser 3 "beheading" someone only to have it be someone in a costume in a parade, and he's only cut the costume, and how he gets freaked out by this creature that seemingly forms a new head when the old one's cut off, oh my god. Cracks me up. And then it turns out it's an Andalite toilet.

17. The Underground. I just remember this one making me laugh because... oatmeal? Oatmeal makes the Yeerks go crazy? It's just funny seeing oatmeal as an illicit substance and a weapon.

19. The Departure. You know Cassie is the only Animorph who could conceive of empathy for a Yeerk. Trapped in the wild with one, there's a good examination of what it means to be a Yeerk without a host, and how miserable that is.

20. The Discovery. Good news: The Morphing Cube has been found! Bad news: the guy who discovered it puts it online to sell and the Yeerks come after him. Good news: they can recruit David to be a new Animorph! Bad news: David's personality/character. Marco's initial assessment, that someone who has a cat named Megadeth can't be a great person, is right.

21. The Threat. Jake's turn to narrate the David problem. It started out as a good thing, but then David gets a taste of power and...goes off the rails. He's a fucked-up kid.

22. The Solution. Fucking dark. Yes, David is a problem and it had to be done, but FUCK. Also, it acknowledges Rachel's battle lust, and how if you need something terrible done, you call for Rachel.

23. The Pretender. Just kill me, Tobias, why don't you. This is one of the saddest books in the series. So sad because Tobias thinks, after all this time, he might have a family. Then not only does it turn out to be a trick, he finds out who his real father is. One of his final lines about morphing into a human so he can cry, ohhhhh god.

24. The Suspicion. MUCH-NEEDED humor after the gut-punch heart-stab that was book 23. Introduces the Helmacrons. These are tiny aliens with enormous egos. They wouldn't be much of a threat, but...they have a shrinking ray. Cassie and Marco get shrunk down and captured on the Helmacron ship. My favorite scenes are the Goodwill nerd quizzing the Animorphs about sci-fi, and the groveling scene. Cassie doesn't know how to grovel, so the Helmacrons tell her and Marco to grovel in the style of their people, and, well, Marco's involved, so you can imagine how that goes.

26. The Attack. Ellimist vs. Crayak. The Animorphs go to do battle for the Ellimist on another planet. While the battle for the big bads is the main plot, they do explore, with the Iskoort, a potential symbiosis situation with the Yeerks. It's a possibility for peace that is sadly never explored outside of this one book, but it's a good thought experiment.

29. The Sickness. Aftran, the Yeerk the Animorphs made peace with 10 books ago, is being held hostage and they need to rescue her from the Yeerk pool. Unfortunately, Ax gets sick...and then so does everyone but Cassie. This is great because it explores human/Yeerk allyship, and Cassie has to morph into a Yeerk, and getting the POV of having access to all of a person's memories, even if you're trying to avoid them... Wow. A bit of a mindfuck. Plus what they figure out for Aftran is great.

29.5 (Megamorphs 3.) Elfangor's Secret. Uh oh, a Visser has found a time traveling device. The Yeerks follow him throughout various historical periods. Very funny ("How do you say sorry in French?" "Ah em verreh sorreh?") and also very dark, what with them temporarily dying in horrific battles. They fight at Agincourt (finding the Visser bc he's cleaner than everyone else), cross the Delaware, go to Trafalgar, D-Day... There are so many horrors. And it makes sense that Rachel gets monotone telling Ax what the Holocaust is. It's implied that Jake is Jewish, so as his cousin, maybe Rachel is, too?

32. The Separation. Rachel tries starfish morph and ends up being split into two parts of her personality. Lots of moments of humor, but also acknowledges the darkness in Rachel. Seeing it unchecked is more than a little chilling.

33. The Illusion. Tobias will always break my heart. In this case, he makes a big sacrifice to convince the Yeerks their new anti-morphing ray doesn't work, and over the course of the book, he gets tortured. It is heart-wrenching, with flashbacks of painful and (very few) pleasurable moments of his past. Tobias will always make me cry.

34. The Prophecy. What do you do with you get possessed by the spirit of Aldrea, daughter of the Andalite who gave technology to the Yeerks? Why, fuck shit up on the Hork-Bajir home world, of course. Cassie is such a badass here.

35. The Proposal. I love the ones where the morphing goes wrong. In this case it's not an allergy, it's emotional issues. Marco's dad is proposing to his new girlfriend, and he's...having trouble adjusting. Why? Well, there's the thing where his mom is likely still alive... Anyway. The primary tactic the Animorphs use in this one is annoyance. Marco turns into a yappy poodle to target a specific enemy, and it ends up working extremely well. Also, Hanson cameos.

40.5 (Megamorphs 4.) Back to Before. What if they'd never taken the shortcut? Jake gets an offer from a powerful being to take them back in time. It's a canon AU. Among other things, Marco and Rachel's bantering turns into dating, which is a fun exploration.

42. The Journey. The Helmacrons are back! These little egomaniacs get me every time. It's humor plus a journey inside Marco's body.

I fucking miss my collection. What was late teens/early 20s me thinking?

#animorphs #ka applegate #regrets #best of #helmacrons

28 notes · View notes

rays-animorphs · 3 years ago

Text

So guess who finished book 19 last night! Woot!

Some thoughts (spoilers):

I think the ending works. Cassie quit the Animorphs because she got overwhelmed with the death and destruction and senselessness of it all, she came back when she got an injection of hope, it absolutely parallels book 9 where she looses her cool over killing the termite queen but is OK again after chilling out as a momma skunk for a bit. For Cassie it isn’t about moral purity, it’s about balance, she just needs the death and destruction to not overwhelm the protection and peace and love and so on.

And I think part of that is her decision to quit Animorphs came from a bad place. It wasn’t really thought out and it wasn’t for instance based on an interaction that reminded her that Yeerks and/or their hosts are sentient life forms who matter or something that put her in touch with her core values, it was her killing a Hork-Bajir Controller when she didn’t have to. The books strongly imply that Cassie is the first of the Animorphs to kill, back in book 1. Cassie can handle killing — when she figures it’s justified. Which is not that weird for a wildlife rehabber. The center has probably had to put down animals before, and it’s definitely had animals they couldn’t save. (Plus, whenever they have a carnivore, guess what those guys eat.) Cassie is familiar with death, her inclination to value all life coexists with knowing that sometimes death happens and you can’t avoid it.

Anyways, so Cassie’s decision to nope out wasn’t actually coming from a place of moral clarity, in fact it was coming from the opposite, a place of numbness and overwhelm. It was less “this is the right decision” and more “I don’t think I know what is right any more, so I’m defaulting to inaction.”

It’s possible that returning to the Animorphs was also not coming from the best place either, “life is beautiful let’s max out the credit cards” doesn’t exactly sound healthy either. It’s also possible a sense of obligation played into it, her friends came to bail her out so she felt she owed them, or maybe she just didn’t want the continued conflict that reaffirming the decision to leave would bring.

It also parallel’s Marco’s “I’m gonna leave/nope I’m in” turnaround in book 5, although Marco’s reasons for returning are a lot clearer. And when Rachel was considering noping out to live with her dad. Or even Tobias’s turn to the suicidal in Book 3. Or Ax’s “yeah I gotta get revenge even if it kills me”, or Elfangor going AWOL…anyways, there is a theme here is what I’m saying, this is not a story about heroes who never have second thoughts about the path that they’re on. And yes, there’s only one character so far who’s genuinely gotten to leave for good, Erek.

Cycling back to the inciting incident, my read is Cassie is upset more that she was out of control and was acting out of accordance with her values than it being about killing under orders vs under her own initiative — it wasn’t a decision, she describes it as the wolf’s instincts taking over. Cassie does have quite a lot of “ooh that sounds like a sticky ethical decision I’d rather that someone else made it”, but that doesn’t strike me as her main problem in this case. And I mean, if I’d killed a sentient being (two really) in a moment where I felt like I wasn’t even in control of my actions, and then realized there wasn’t even a good reason to, I’d be losing my shit too.

Back to the caterpillar thing: I know “everyone is Jesus in purgatory” is a TV Tropes page and it’s possible to read too much into this stuff, but 3 days? When it’s made explicit in the book that normally metamorphosis takes longer? (In connection with self sacrifice and peace overcoming war and specifically sacrificing yourself to ensure someone else’s redemption and all. And the leap of faith aspect, at no point is Cassie sure Aftran will go through with her side of the deal.) It’s not quite as hammeriffic as say the Narnia chronicles or the Deathgate Cycle, but it’s there.

The characters are generally describing Cassie as “giving up her life”, which is not an unreasonable description. It’s not literal death, but she is giving up all the human things like family and meaningful work and I don’t know, cinnamon buns. And we have a highly symbolic transformation, and she comes back to life.

And butterflies are I think not usually a symbol of peace or a “swords to plowshares” thing, but I think that’s a thing here, with Cassie’s transformation connected to Aftran retiring from active participation in the Yeerk invasion. Butterflies are about as harmless and indeed vulnerable as it gets.

We’ve had butterfly symbolism before, in the book where we meet the Ellimist. Book 7. I don’t think it’s exactly the same thing (in book 7 it was this chaos theory imagery, the idea that very small changes can make a huge difference, which is about hope, and maybe miracles or things that seem miraculous, and I don’t see a chaos theory thing here, but the hope and miracles thing is.

And all of them, every single one of the Animorphs, actively decides to support Cassie’s decision to not kill Karen/Aftran in the end. Any single one of them could have gone “no this is ridiculous, there is too much at stake, you can’t fight a war without breaking a few eggs” and not one of them did. And there were all 5 remaining Animorphs there. They could have done the 3 day thing and killed Aftran without killing Karen.

I’m counting that as a miracle.

#animorphs read-through #animorphs book 19

2 notes · View notes

boylied · 4 months ago

Text

Animorphs Reread- The Invasion (pt 2)

Okay pt 2! Here we go:

KAA REALLY loves the animal parts of this series. But also her descriptions of the morphing process and the mentality of the kids in morph definitely inspired my own artistic voice. The descriptions of visuals and the flow of consciousness between human and animal inspired my own writing in a way I had not noticed in real time.

If Homer the dog can smell traces of yeerk, why did they never utilize this skill in the future? Did they ever use this again? I get that Jake hasn't fully connected the dots just yet, but later he gets proof that Tom's a controller. And he knew that he smelled something off. Seems like an experiment worth funding, considering the circumstances.

I know I've already said I don't really like Jake. But man, the fact that his friends show him a news article and then all have to take turns telling him to read the next part. Come on, Jake. Can you not just read? And then they all have to draw the conclusions for him? This is the leader?

I feel like Cassie is painted as this magical, wise, mature girl who fights for the Earth, blah blah blah. But I love that on their first day, she morphs a horse (presumably while hanging out with Rachel), and then goes "Hey Rachel, you go meet the others, I'm gonna gallop in from the distance and then show off how good I am at this morphing process".

I also love the scene of the kids voting on what to do. Marco (obviously) is a firm no to joining the fight. And he has good retorts to each of the others to try and sway anyone in the group. Rachel realizes how big this is and at first suggests getting help, but then realizes that's not an option and immediately steps up to fight. Tobias (obviously) is a firm yes. And forms his first connection with Rachel. Cassie wants to help the animals. She's already thinking long term about life after the war. And when the others conflict, she keeps peace by suggesting they sleep on it. And I gotta hand it to Jake, he does know his team, even this early. He sees what they're doing and what they're thinking. This is probably part plot device so that the reader can also know everyone. But he is the common link amongst the others, so it does make sense.

I made it through the whole morph sequence and the eating of the spider, and the tail coming off. But the "The spider gave a kick in my stomach." got me gagging.

"Idiot teenagers with a death wish" - roll credits. "Animorphs," - post credit scene

The duality of Marco being the most aware of the danger/death and the one who keeps all their spirits up with jokes. Parentified children rise up.

Rachel: This is no where near as dangerous as the consturction site. Cassie: He'll call my mom! *Everyone scatter!!!*

The battle is such a beautiful introduction to each of their fighting styles. Rachel going full Hulk. Jake strategizing. Marco moving decisively and just punching anything that gets in his way. Cassie trying to save the humans and hork bajir before she even joins the fight. And Tobias swooping from above.

Cassie might not have killed the policeman (he might have been killed by accident and she just witnessed it). But I think it's a more powerful read if Cassie is the first animorph to actively murder another human being.

God I love this series. It had such a profound affect on me growing up. And I'm so looking forward to a group read y'all.

#animorphs book club #animorphs #jake berenson #rachel berenson #cassie #marco #tobias #1 #book club #kaapplegate #michael grant

17 notes · View notes

thesilkenlair · 5 years ago

Photo

(Casey Here!)

As much D&D as I play, you'd imagine I would eventually get around to illustrating some of their most iconic monsters! Which is to say, the ones that I personally find the most iconic. Which is to say, the ones I memorized when I was reading my dad's monster manual at age nine. Purple worm - Sandworms never go out of style. I've seen a lot of rad designs for this bugger over the editions, but I favor the slightly less reptilian older takes for this particular critter. It's kinda basic, but sometimes that's what you want. It's like a shark or a crocodile: Just flat out unchanged across the ages. Hook horror - I've heard it rumored that Gygax used a small Gigan figure to represent this monster. I can't verify that, but it definitely sounds right. Hook horrors are one of the very first things you meet when you play around in the caves, and they kind of remind me of the Father Deep monsters of the Hork Bajir homeworld that way. Mind flayer - Mind flayers! Basically, take all of your Dracula conventions and dip them in a fresh coat of Lovecraft. There's that old "decadent aristocratic upper caste system who literally eats the poor, but still somehow comes across as less evil than the actual real life 1%" setup that will never stop being relevant. Though personally, I see mind flayers as the first alternative for folks who want to play that monster-who-feels-the-urge-to-eat-their-friends-but-refuses-to-do-it shtick but don't want to deal with vampire baggage. You know, the furry option! ... Slimy? Rubbery? Do we have a word for anthro-cephalopods? I'm only a casual furry. Gelatinous cube - I'm not apologizing for giving this one a slot. Froghemoth - So, back when I participated in my very first long-term campaign, I played a druid. You've met Talia before. Naturally, I was chomping at the bit for the day I finally got to turn her into a froghemoth, and celebrated the day my wish was finally granted and she was allowed to chug human-supremacist-cultists like popcorn. Yeah, okay, the froghemoth is one of the classic vore-monsters. But it's a charming design in its own right. Kind of a freaky Hanna Barbara critter, like you'd see Space Ghost fighting. No matter how many artists draw it, they can never shake that inherent goofiness that third edition tried so hard to purge. I would probably cram them somewhere onto Fronterra if I was sure they were public domain. As is, I'm 99% certain that this is what Visser Three turned into when he ate Elfangor. Tarrasque - D&D's original kaiju! Kind of just takes the name and nothing else when it comes to its mythological origins, but I don't mind. The Tarrasque is that endgame "let's test the players" final boss monster... Or at least it's supposed to be. My DM reskinned it for our final Pathfinder session, and one of the PCs still nearly killed it in a single turn. Also, he let Talia turn into one, so maybe Pathfinder is just bullshit? Regardless, the Tarrasque has one of those simple, iconic designs. I've heard rumors it was based on the concept art for Fallout's deathclaws, and like the Gigan-figure, I can't verify this in any way. With its reptilian features, twin horns, spiny carapace and grabby fingies, it has an undeniable lizardlike quality that I can't help but find charming. Kinda feels like a more refined version of Zilla? Though for an insatiable eating machine, I notice a lot of artists give it very little belly to work with. Come on, this guy eats entire cities! Give him somewhere to put it! Rust monster - An icon of icons, the rust monster! Drawing its origin from a bizarre Chinese "dinosaur" toy, later designs have made it more insectoid in appearance, but never feeling QUITE like anything Earthly. It's the four limbs. Between the four limbs and the tail, it's hard to tell if it's an arthropod mimicking a vertebrate or the other way around. I'm pretty sure this is part of what inspired my ossaderm creatures for Fronterra. Also, Ryla can turn into one in our campaign. I have no shortage of havoc to wreak when the opportunity comes. Behir - Dragons in D&D are kind of... extra. Godlike beings, paragons of whatever personality trait they represent. Whenever there's something uber powerful in D&D, it gets compared to dragons. It makes them kind of unapproachable. Behirs provide all the essentials of a dragon - Serpentine body, scaly skin, horns, sapience, breath weapon, taste for human flesh - wrapped up in a smaller, weirder, IMO cooler package. You know, your Lambton Worms. A lot easier to port in and out of adventures, a lot less of an event when they show up, but still a formidable force in their own right. I like the behir. The behir knows how to taunt me just the right amount. Bulette - Another Chinese "dinosaur" figure monster, the bulette is actually another one I associate with Talia. Whenever we faced a problem that didn't have a glaringly and immediately obvious solution, she would turn into a bulette, whether it was for beating up robots, digging through obstacles, trampling smurfs, navigating labyrinths, distracting slashers with cute dog tricks... it was kind of her signature form. But shenanigans aside, the bulette is just an excellent monster. While the "land shark" shtick may be common, there's a lot more going on with the bulette's design. It's rumored to be a mad wizard's creation, as he combined a snapping turtle with an armadillo and mixed in a helping of demon blood to taste. Personally, I always considered that to be a neat little rumor to flesh out the world, but never assumed it to be true. The bulette just feels too naturalistic for that. Like some kind of protomammal or crocodylomorph, or weird triassic monstrosity. Magic and demons and dragons and so on DO affect the ecosystem. I always figured the bulette was just something that evolved to compete in this new biosphere. Owlbear - This one, on the other hand, I fully believe the "mad wizard was bored" explanation. Another chinasaur critter, the owlbear is frequently made fun of. What makes it scarier than a regular bear? It can't fly, so why have owl parts at all? Why trade fangs for a beak in what is at best a latural move? Well, first of all, fuck you, owls are creepy motherfuckers, and that alone is enough to justify it. But secondly, that's part of its charm. Besides some improved vision, the owl DOESN'T make it more dangerous. What makes the owlbear dangerous is that it's an insane, Frankensteinian monstrosity roaming uncontrolled through the wilderness! It doesn't need weaponry, its sheer temperament is enough to make it a worthy opponent. Sure, the practical threat might not be hugely above that of a bear, but storytelling isn't about numbers. Any asshole can go outside and get eaten by a bear. The owlbear is part of this world. The owlbear is a reminder of what magic can do. Someone somewhere actually made this thing, for whatever reason, and now the world is irrevocably changed because of it. Owlbears go beyond practicality. They bring the lore! Also, bears don't have very good eyesight, so the big owl eyes probably make them better hunters. Flumph - Is that a Japanese-style martian? Do we just have aliens in D&D? Dear lord, I love them! Okay, the flumph has got a sizable hatedom. And that hatedom can eat my ass, because the flumph is precious and perfect just the way it is! Flumphs are designed as a sort of sidekick-type creature. They're not very good fighters, but they bring knowledge and lore to the table. Whether they're aliens from some far off star, seeking your aid to prevent catastrophe, or psionic natives of the Underdark eager to bask in your positivity and hopefully stick it to the tyrants they're forced to share real estate with. My group generally treats them as straight up aliens, benevolent but strange. Course, we're all pretty strange, so we get along just fine. Otyugh - Okay so, the aberration creature type implies that this is something from another world that doesn't belong. And yet otyughs, which are aberrations, are an essential part of this world's ecosystem? Okay, I can buy the idea that an alien organism adapted to our world and is now a key part of it. Fronterra's got a TON of that. It just feels like after a point, the otyugh would be considered a beast? Otyughs are great. Every ecosystem needs a decomposer, and every fantasy story needs at least one dive into the sewers. Otyughs provide both, and are intelligent enough to keep the plot moving if it hits a snag. There's always going to be garbage, refuse, carrion, decay, things that need to be broken down and processed. Carrion crawler - The carrion crawler is pretty similar to the otyugh in that it's technically not considered a beast, and therefor must have its origins elsewhere, but feels so integrated into the ecosystem that it just feels like it belongs. They usually can't talk, so they're not just reskinned otyughs, but I still consider them pretty essential. Otyughs find a singular spot where waste is dumped and shovel it down at their leisure, while carrion crawlers skulk through the tunnels, actively seeking their food. The crawler got one of the most radical redesigns on the transition from second to third edition, but I can't really choose a single favorite. The oldschool tentacle-faced cutworm looks like it could be a real animal, while the googly-eyed Halloween decoration feels like it could be from another world, merely having set up shop here. Could there name apply to two wholly different creatures? If so, then I'm not sure which one mine would be considered. I kinda mashed them together into something that doesn't quite feel like either. But I like it for what it is. Maybe I'll sneak it onto Fronterra. Aboleth - Tentacled, telepathic sea creatures who turn humans into slimy minions, who remember everything their race has ever seen, and who are always plotting something behind the scenes. Yeah, the aboleths really crank up the Lovecraft elements. Actually, between the mind flayers, the flumphs and the aboleths, even the most oldschool D&D covered quite a few essential Lovecraftian bases. The flayers are your corrupt yet still recognizable humanoids who can be considered truly evil, the flumphs are benevolent-yet-bizarre guardians who know more than you, and the aboleths are the truly unknowable, sinister intellects. The fact that they can barely function on land honestly only adds to that, IMO. They're inherently difficult for a party to reach, and they offer some nice underwater adventure seeds. Not enough adventures go underwater. There's this perception that the ocean is bad for storytelling because so many writers lack the creativity to make it work. I wanna run an underwater adventure now. Beholder - Icon of icons! THE D&D monster! The beholder! Paranoid, jumpy, always five steps ahead and twenty steps perpendicular! Beholds are fun in just about every way. Between their wacky, diverse designs, their elaborate lairs, their eccentric personalities, their bizarre powers, you're never gonna run out of fun with beholders. Remorhaz - It's always been a thing that bothered me with environment-based monsters. Why does the ice monster who lives in the cold use ice as a weapon? Aren't most of the things it encounters going to be resistant to the cold? Sure, a cone of cold will still kill a polar bear, but a lot of the monsters in the tundra are outright immune to cold. A while dragon's not going to get much use out of its breath weapon fighting frost worms and frost giants. That's one reason the remorhaz sticks out to be. We have an icy tundra beast whose insides are a scorching furnace, which it can intensify and weaponize as it sees fit. Which also conveniently explains why its design - a sort of cobra-esque centipede - invokes warm-weather creatures, despite its icy environment. It's a nice subversion of the usual tropes, plus it's just a memorable, cool looking critter to begin with. On a smaller note, the remorhaz feels like a good loophole for Ryla's "no cold weather morphs" rule. Turning into something elementally affiliated with ice is no good, but a non-magical monster that survives the cold by superheating its insides? That seems perfectly viable to me!

95 notes · View notes