#this sets an example for the other yeerks

[tomberensonsghost]

I mentioned The Cleaners in this post, and they are primarily used to alleviate the burden of particularly difficult hosts, but they also have other uses as well. Sometimes a Yeerk and their host start to get along too well, and this simply cannot happen. In this case, the Yeerk and host are separated, and the host is sent to The Cleaners, while the Yeerk is detained elsewhere (most likely kept on starvation rations). Once The Cleaners have done their job, the two are reunited, so that the Yeerk is forced to spend the rest of its life in the empty shell of the host that it was beginning to get attached to.

#animorphs #yeerks #The Cleaners #this sets an example for the other yeerks #they can't start thinking of their hosts as real people #if you do there will be consequences

[lonepower]

ok you know what i need more bodysharing/brain roommates. malevolent got me feeling some kind of way and I need MORE. tvtropes has like 15 different categories that are all sort-of-but-not-really under the umbrella of what I'm looking for, and sorting through all of that is a little too unwieldy, so I'm turning to you guys. 

key factors of the specific flavor of "multiple consciousnesses stuck in the same meat suit" that I'm looking for are:

any variation of, a human (or this universe's equivalent [so like, an elf where elves are commonplace would count]) has another, nonhuman consciousness attached to them and only them in such a way that the two can communicate, and subsequently

they Banter Constantly

^that^ is probably the most important qualifier here tbh

second most important qualifier is that they are not separated at the end (this obv. doesn't apply if the thing is still ongoing). it's okay if the passenger gets a new body (cf. subnautica) or is freed from their binding (cf. baldur's gate), as long as the partnership isn't broken.

Related: they don't actually have to SHARE a body (so enchanted objects, an AI implant, a Mysterious Disembodied Voice, an imaginary friend, etc., also count). they just have to be tethered to each other such that the passenger cannot move around or function on their own without a host. (I think this is part of why it's hard to narrow down on tvtropes: it's more about the dynamic than about the specific mechanism of "possession".)

Third most important qualifier is that only the current host can hear/communicate with the passenger, even if other people around them are aware of the passenger's existence.

two humans stuck in the same body is okay as long as the other criteria are met, but I would prefer it if the host is human(/equivalent) and the passenger is not (or vice versa if the passenger/possessor is the one with control of the body, as with things like the yeerks, most demonic possession, etc).

it doesn't have to be romantic. they don't even have to like each other. conversely, it absolutely can be romantic too.

They DO have to be the POV character/s for a significant majority (like, at least 60-75%) of the work, because the internal back-and-forth is the entire point.

Bonus points if: they do actually share a body; they are either never physically separated either, or are rejoined at the end (voluntarily or otherwise); passenger has lots of setting-relevant knowledge/an alien or fantastical perspective, while host shows passenger what it's like to be Alive™; despite constantly butting heads, host and passenger work patently better as a team; super extra bonus points for all of the above 

My favorite examples of what I am looking for:

Malevolent podcast (super extra bonus points x10000000000000000)

Venom movies (this is probably the codifier for most people here tbh) (super extra bonus points)

Subnautica: Below Zero (AL-AN gets their own body but stays with Robin, and it hits all of the others)

Forspoken (super extra bonus points)

the "a bagel. two bagels." vine

(I know there's a couple others that I'm just blanking on. If I remember them, I'll add them.)

other things that have moments or flavors of this, but aren't focused on it/don't quite hit all of them:

the Bartimaeus trilogy had it at the end a little, but, well. it didn't last very long. (i STILL haven't recovered from that ending and i was, what? 15 or something? g o d)

the emperor in bg3 kiiiinda counts since they're magically bound to the player/party and can't exist outside their prison, but they do have their own body and are not nearly as chatty as I'm  looking for. also, while only the holders of the prism can hear them, All of the holders of the prism can hear them and I'd really prefer one-on-one.

I think Death Note would also count? I read it in like 6th grade and never finished it so my memory is patchy At Best, but since nobody else can interact with Ryuk, he's bound to whoever holds the notebook, and he's the supplier of the holder's powers, it's close enough that I would accept something similar.

Slay the Princess has the bickering in spades and fulfills the "do not separate" criterion depending on your ending, although the jury's out on whether the voices are Actually their own entities or just symptoms of you losing it. Also, nobody in it is human. The bickering is definitely good enough to make up for it though. (The fact that it's Jonny Sims clearly having a grand old time might have something to do with it...)

with the caveat that I have not watched any of it, i think jadzia (and?) dax from ds9 miiight count, but they're part of an ensemble cast and thus fail the "pov characters for a majority of the work" and "we get to hear their constant internal banter" criteria.

things I tried that fit at least some criteria, but didn't like for various reasons:

the good demon by jimmy cajoleas. promising concept, but 1) the protagonist smokes, which is an instant and unnegotiable dealbreaker (seriously, who makes their protagonist do that in The Year Of Our Lord Anything Later Than 1950?? and to a child? DEATH. ONE MILLION YEARS DUNGEON.), and 2) I looked it up and they separate at the end anyways, so there's even LESS of a point. 

the venom comics. honestly I just... really dislike superhero comics, there's always way too many of them to keep track of + I'm very shallow and they're usually unbearably ugly to me (and also having started with the movies I just found comics!eddie really unpleasant tbh) 

parasyte manga. perfect concept, great dynamic, but its particular brand of body horror was... not great for me and I had to put it down. (horror in and of itself isn't a dealbreaker, though, so if you've got something similar that doesn't involve lots of hands bent at nauseating angles, I'll gladly take it.)

Cyberpunk 77 has the two-humans flavor of this and hits almost all of the other criteria, but i viscerally hated literally everything about j*hnny s*lverhand with every fiber of my being and the rest of the game was so mediocre already that i just gave up

....I know it's a highly specific/potentially niche dynamic, but if anyone has any recs, PUHLEEASE hmu!!! I'm looking for original work rather than fanfiction, but apart from that, format doesn't matter at all (although if it's some like super difficult indie game or something, I probably won't get very far lol). the MAIN points are 1) bickering and 2) host-and-passenger, so if you have something that hits those but not the others, feel free to share it anyway!

#rec request #i'm not really sure how else to tag this? i don't want to tag adjacent fandoms bc i find it really annoying when people do that. #anyway please let me know... #long post

[hatingfromacrackedscreen]

One of my favorite things about the Animorphs rotating pov is how you get to see character development happening so subtly but from so many different angles. One of my favorite examples is with Cassie & Marco’s relationship, from when she left the team to the David Arc (books 19-22), and how it explains so much of their dynamic for the rest of the series.

Marco and Cassie have one of the most interesting dynamics out of the Animorphs because of how often they disagree over conflicts/strategy, but also because of the fact that they usually end up being the de facto strategists of the team (They also both are like, in love with Jake, which also leads to really interesting moments but this isn’t about that). Naturally this puts them at odds with each other often, especially during Book #19. Cassie quits the team and voluntarily infests herself so she doesn’t have to kill Karen, something that Marco doesn’t understand and also is upset about, because now he may have to kill Cassie. After book’s end Cassie makes it back to the team and Aftran begins the peace movement. There’s a lot of threads that contribute to spiral from the book, and Cassie and Marco’s relationship is one of the subtler ones. What’s important to note is that the next book, book #20, is a Marco pov. We get to see his thoughts, and all is not forgiven. He reminisces about the recent Cassie-related events, and says something along the lines of “yeah I’m not really chill with her after the shit she pulled with Aftran.” Which I support Cassie fully, but fair enough! Not only did Cassie voluntarily cause their biggest security breach at the moment, but also he thought he, a 14 year old, was now going to have to kill his friend, another 14 year old. I would be pissed too. (Also this is another great subtle narrative thread leading into the David Arc, which derives its most central tension from this same dilemma)

However the culmination of the Cassie Marco tension comes not from either of their own pov, but from the next book, book 21 which is a Jake pov. The Animorphs all morph bugs to break into a hotel that has a Yeerk conspiracy involved, and they come close to the 2 hour limit. They all morph back successfully except Marco (the weakest morpher) who is stuck as a several foot tall giant grotesque flea. Everyone’s freaking out, but it’s Cassie who’s comes forward, places a hand on Marco, and soothingly guides him through his sheer panic, and into demorphing back to his human self. After Marco breaks down and sobs on Cassie, and Jake even notes he’s never seen Marco cry like that. Which is significant since Jake has known Marco grieving through his mother “dying”. Jake doesn’t note it, because it’s a situation he doesn’t even know about, but in this moment Marco forgives Cassie. Marco never gives her shit for the Aftran situation again, either in his narration or in others. And I love that it’s something that’s not explicitly said by Jake in this book, or Marco or Cassie in later ones, but all of the resolution of that tension between them beautify resolves in a book that’s not either of their povs and doesn’t even explicitly mention it.

Not only is that a knack to Animorphs’ character writing, but it sets the foundation for their relationship going forward. It’s why Cassie still goes to talk to Marco in Book #35 through his issues with his dad remarrying, and he ridicules her a bit but hears her out. And then by series end, when Cassie gives the morphing cube away to the Yeerks, and Jake tells everyone. Is Mr. Marco “ruthless bright line from A to B” pissed at her? No he’s over it and back to being chums with her. Because that’s Cassie his bestie now❤️ And I love that no matter how often they’re at conflict later in the series, after the flea incident it never gets as serious in Marcos narration as it was to him before, in book #20. Animorphs’ character writing amongst multiple povs is just so so soo good.

#cassie and Marco are always one of my favorite underrated animorphs dynamics #THEYRE SO INTERESTING #I love Cassie and Rachel’s relationship more prbly but I do think Cassie and Marco are more interesting foils #Animorphs #cassie animorphs #Marco animorphs #Jake animorphs #animorphs meta #Cassie&Marco #animorphs 19 #animorphs 20 #animorphs 21 #who asked?

[semusepsu]

I hit the post limit so I'm going in ask boxes: I feel like I might've asked this before, but what are some of your favorite tropes to use or see used?

Hmm. I don't know quite how to answer this. sometimes i read something because a lot of stories will have tropes which i like but will not be enjoyable in the context of the story. also sometimes i seek out stories that are upsetting specifically because i want to feel messed up about them, and these stories often have tropes that i do not want to see in other media.

but, as a general through line, here are some things that earn points with me no matter what story i'm reading/watching/whatever. i don't go on tv tropes so i don't know if theres a word for half of these.

dramatic irony: when we the audience know something that gives a line more meaning to us than it does to some or all of the characters. Oedipus promising to severely punish the man who killed his own father.

that thing where a smart character uses their knowledge of other characters to get them to do something they would not ordinarily do, for example getting characters who dislike each other to work together by giving them a common goal. This is especially fun in the Vorkosigan saga, i've found.

setting appropriate moral problems: i like seeing fictional societies where there are specific problems that are not handled well, and characters from fictional societies shaped negatively by the society's mores. Le Guin writes this well.

that thing when a mismatched group of underdogs* join forces to take down a large, organized threat (*at minimum, not able to take the enemy down by themselves).

the thing where at the beginning there is a teaser for a climax, and then it goes back to the start of the story, and then there is a moment where you realize that some bad shit has to go down in the next five minutes for that teaser to happen, and then you spend those five minutes waiting for the shoe to drop

mind control - nothing highbrow about this, i just think it's a cool trope. there are so many ways that it happens, from yeerk brain slugs to watching a clock swing back and forth, so many moral questions in a universe where it is possible, so many ways it can be used for horror, action, drama.

there's probably more but those are the ones i can think of

#asks

[animorphs-duhve]

Book 1: The Invasion (okay, this is happening!)

So the first book! I remember they covered this book only on the Animorphs show that aired. There were a few things I remember from that show that I will mention later on. For the first book, the beginning of this book is the most important to the series that it is referenced once in every later book. It's good to reference it as it allows for anyone, who isn't insane enough to read the entire series beginning to end, to catch up on the series lore with whichever Animorphs book they begin with. I will also recap this beginning as it is a good baseline to know without having to reference it with the later books I read. If you already know about it, skip the next paragraph to go straight into my thoughts of the book.

Middle schoolers Jake, Marco, Tobias, Rachel, and Cassie are walking home on a Friday evening into an abandoned construction site to head home. They observe an alien spaceship falling from the sky which lands in the construction site. They go to check it out and find that an alien called an Andalite has crashed landed with fatal injuries. The alien warns the main cast that an evil alien race called the Yeerks are invading the earth. The Yeerks are a powerful alien race who infest other races and take control of their brain. They are parasites who have conquered most of the galaxy and are now conquering Earth. The Andalite mentions that he is a great prince and in an act of desperation, gives them the power to morph into any animal they acquire DNA from. The prince also warns them that they can only stay in a morph for two hours, or else they'll be trapped in it forever (totally not foreshadowing :> ) Their time is brief as the prince yells at them to run away as the first Yeerk ships land. The main cast watches from afar as the Andalite prince dies at the hand of another Andalite who is controlled by a Yeerk. This Yeerk is named Visser Three, who becomes the main antagonist of the series going forward.

From this, we go into their new morphing power that they acquired. It's important to set rules to how your new magic system works in your story. Morphing is WEIRD! but in the cool body horror way that I enjoy. It's described as your whole body twisting and breaking when you morph into any animal. Later in the series, it will get even weirder, but for now, it's introducing the concept of morph with cats and dogs. One thing to point out is that instincts from a morph carry over to your new body. For example, you turn into a dog, and you have to fight your dog instincts, like having endless energy and barking at other dogs, to gain control of your new body. Our characters can also communicate in thought-speak with each other when in morphs.

I like how insane that power is. It is creepy, but also really fucking cool. It's also interesting how each of our five characters also react to it. Tobias is the first one to morph along with Cassie and they are awestruck by it. To them, their new abilities are powerful and sick. Jake is freaked out by it at first from seeing Tobias turn into a cat, but is also curious. It's an amazing power, but the implications are grim. Marco hates it and he also recognizes that they have to use their new power to fight against the Yeerks, which to remind you, are enslaving all of humanity.

The reality of their newfound situation comes crashing when Jake finds that his brother Tom is a Controller. A human being possessed by a Yeerk. It's a nightmare scenario, where someone close to you is not who they are. The whole book is centered around Jake trying to save his older brother from the Yeerk in his head. Now, they have to be careful as anyone in their city could be a controller. It's a whole Invaders of the Body Snatchers situation all dumped on five kids with a silly morph ability. That to me, is what makes this series so interesting. It is goofy as it is, at the end of the day, just a children's book series. But it is so compelling to see where the author is going to take this series. And after reading the next books in the series, I am hooked!

The first book details some little things that become more and more leaning into that horror aspect of the series. Like in one instance, Jake morphs into a lizard to spy on a controller to reveal a Yeerk pool. One fact that they learned about the Yeerks is that they can't stay in a host for more than 3 days as they will die of hunger. So Yeerks have to go to a Yeerk pool to soak up Kandrona rays and nutrients to survive on Earth. While Jake was a lizard, he couldn't control the lizard body. That lizard body then went to eat a spider. Jake is horrified as he just ate a spider around the same size as him and after demorphing, is still disgusted by it! Those little details are fun but wow, that would mess you up.

The final act of this book is taking down the Yeerks by going to their pool and rescuing Tom and the captive humans. All five of our characters prepare by going to the zoo and choosing which powerful animal to morph. Before they enter, Cassie gets caught by a controller cop and is forced to the Yeerk pool. So now the gang is saving Cassie and Tom. They storm the Yeerk pool by following Tom to the entrance and raise hell in their morphs. Jake as a tiger, Rachel as an elephant, Marco as a gorilla (his first time morphing also), and Tobias as a hawk. They meet Visser Three for the first time, who sees them as Andalite bandits who survived and tries to kill all of them. Marco gathers as many human captives as he can to escape. Their whole plan is falling apart as the hundreds of controllers, some human, some other alien races, all Yeerks, are trying to stop them. In the final scene, all the humans they've tried to save either get captured or killed by Visser Three. Even Tom, the last human still with them, gets captured. The Animorphs barely escape from the Yeerk pool. The final scene of this book reveals that only four of them escaped. Tobias had been trapped and sneaked out in his morph way later. By then, more than two hours have passed, and he is forever stuck in his red-tailed hawk form.

So that's the end of the first book. What a ride! What a start for this series. The Animorphs show, if I remember correctly, also only covered this book in seven episodes. Tobias, being the only one stuck in a morph, is going to be interesting how the series handles his character moving forward. Though my theory, from only reading this book, is that Tobias kind of wanted that to happen. It was stated early on how Tobias has had a rough upbringing with how his aunt and uncle that he lives with don't care about him. And that Tobias also doesn't care about them either. My big thing that I want more of is, how is Tobias going to live? It's a scenario that I think about a lot. If I had to become one animal for the rest of my life, how would I react? How would I live like that? To many, that is a nightmare scenario, but it's cool that this series is tackling that question head on with one of its characters.

I don't want for every post moving forward to be a recap of each book's story. That would just be boring to me. I would rather just write about my insane theories and ramblings of the characters and the story without having a blurb recapping the book. I feel like it is important to recap this book, as it is the beginning of this equally insane series. For now, that's where I am. I am hooked on this series and can't wait to see what happens next!

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

As a sworn Cassie lover I must say, Rachel deserved a better friend. Cassie should have been a better friend.

Okay, to clarify: what should Cassie have done differently? Backed Rachel up in battles? Trusted Rachel enough to go on entire missions at her say-so alone? Risked her life and trusted Rachel to catch her? Shown up in the middle of the night because she knew Rachel was worried about her house collapsing? Taken Rachel's side in the debate about whether to leave Earth without knowing all of Rachel's reasons but knowing that Rachel has her reasons? Attacked the French army against her better judgment because some guy stuck a spear in Rachel?

Because [checks notes] yep, yep, she did all that already.

Or is your argument that Cassie should never criticize Rachel? Setting aside for a second that they both have valid points*, I take it as a sign of love and respect when my friends are close enough to tell me when I'm wrong or to suggest I change my behavior. Friendship is important because our friends are the ones who can tell us to our faces "what you did was hurtful" without it ruining the relationship, whereas we'd be tempted to dismiss the same words coming from an acquaintance or rival.

Is the argument that Cassie should subsume her needs to Rachel's? I don't think there are any formulas for a perfect friendship, but I think that they tend to work best when you let your own needs come first, and your own wants come after your friend's needs. For Cassie and Rachel, that's as basic as Cassie letting Rachel drag her on shopping trips and beach excursions in spite of not finding those activities all that fun. It's as complicated as Cassie saying "I love you but I can't be an Animorph anymore" even though she knows Rachel won't understand.

I don't understand the demand for Cassie to "do more" for Rachel any more than I understand the demand for Rachel to "do more" for Tobias or for Jake to "do more" for Toby. This series doesn't have a single hero whose needs outweigh those of the supporting cast. Animorphs is a series filled with humans who aren't perfect at understanding one another. It has six protagonists and twelve narrators and we get to see the private struggles of each of those characters well enough to realize that sometimes Cassie hurts Rachel's feelings without meaning to, just like Rachel sometimes hurts Marco's by accident and sometimes Jake hurts Cassie's. Not because of malice or even complacency, but because they're human beings and inexperienced kids who are struggling under an emotional burden whose weight is slowly killing them, and they're doing their best under the circumstances.

[unrelated rant below the cut]

*There's this whole other discrepancy in the way that we talk about Rachel and Cassie, one that I think reflects the way American media are filled with stories about characters using violence to "solve the plot" and the character with the fastest and most effective plot-solving being portrayed as the coolest and most likeable. An obvious example is Han Solo; fans threw a revolt when George Lucas tried to shift away from the character's first scene involving him shooting an unarmed coworker in cold blood. Han is cool because Han is violent without cause, not despite that.

Rachel solves the plot most efficiently when she's being "badass" and murdering prisoners of war alongside enemy soldiers, and that's when we (myself included) tend to admire her the most. Cassie solves the plot least efficiently when she's asking whether the kids really have the moral high ground anymore if they become as careless with others' lives as the yeerks, as willing to kill inconvenient humans or hork-bajir as the andalites, and that's when she makes us (or at least me) the most uncomfortable.

The shift toward "realism" in superhero media kicked off by Alan Moore and Frank Miller gave us the idea that "realism" in superheros is blood/guts/dirt, not the fact that most humans are basically decent people. Soldiers have to be taught to kill over years' training, because we fundamentally dislike killing people and recognize that the person we're shooting at might not "deserve" death even if it is someone working for a rival army. That's a "realism" angle I rarely see in superhero stories outside of Animorphs, because it's a lot less edgy and aesthetic than the "gritty" realism of Batman breaking his own hand in the act of breaking Joker's face or the Comedian using his superpowers to abuse women. The "people are basically decent and maybe none of them deserve to be murdered" take on realism is a lot more troubling and a lot less power-fantasy, which is part of why it can be easy to dislike Cassie for bringing it up.

#animorphs #animorphs meta #cassie animorphs #rachel berenson #violence #friendship #misogyny mention #have i mentioned how much i love the way the rotating point of view makes it clear how HUMAN all the characters are? #because i honestly think that's the secret to the series right there #each person is living in their own head #and we live alongside them #for 40k words at a time #only to switch to seeing them through someone else's eyes #and then someone else's again #ALSO: don't get me wrong i still love han solo #but i'm a crotchety old fart and a media psychologist so now I gotta interrogate *why* i love him #and conclude i'm not always comfortable with the answer

[monstrousgourmandizingcats]

Marco + Eva Religious Symbolism Effortpost: Three Key Moments/Motifs

“I Believe in Higher Powers, Yeerk”: Eva, Marco, the Protoevangelium, the Woman of the Apocalypse, and Related Iconography

The Protoevangelum is a Christian term for Genesis 3:15, towards the end of the Garden of Eden narrative. God says to the serpent “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” (NRSVCE)

Protoevangelium--”first Gospel”--is a specifically Christian term and is emphasized most in Catholic theology, in which this is said to be the first glimmer of Satan’s ultimate defeat by Christ, “the offspring of the woman.” The serpent strikes the offspring’s heel (the Crucifixion) and the offspring strikes the serpent’s head (Christ “saving us all from Satan’s power”, as the Christmas carol says.) Indeed, in earlier Bible translations based on St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, “he will strike your head” was “she will strike your head”--an error that nobody noticed for centuries because it wasn’t particularly important to the Catholic understanding of the passage, which has it refer to both Christ and Mary. Sin enters the world through Eve, and then the remedy for sin enters the world through the “New Eve” who sets right what Eve Original Flavor put wrong. Or who finishes what Eve Original Flavor started, if you’re into felix culpa theology, which I am. Anybody who’s paid attention to the lyrics of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” will also have heard “let the hero born of woman crush the serpent with His heel” in that context.

Anyway here’s Wonderwall Eva (note her name!!) and Marco killing Edriss 562 in Animorphs #45:

"Die!" she wheezed, eyes fixed on a small gray spot an inch from the edge. Visser One! <Mom, stop!> She fell forward, arm extended, clutching... "Die!" The Bug ship flew in over the pool, blocking us from Dracon fire, hovering low just feet away. My mother's face was distorted. Real human tears ran from her cheeks. Rage, pain, joy... And then her hand squished the parasite. But the slug was still alive. . . . "No!" I slammed my foot on the still-wriggling worm. And it was clear... ...it was clear that Visser One's journey had ended.

(Marco’s POV)

A final note on this: the image of the woman crushing the serpent’s head is especially important in Mexican Catholicism in particular.

Figure 1: Antonio de Torres’s painting “Virgin of Guadalupe”, showing the Virgin Mary closely matching the description of the “Woman of the Apocalypse’” from Revelation 12, trampling a snake (it’s there under her dress; in other versions of this image it’s a lot easier to see) and being held up by an angel.

Visser One’s “Crucifixion”: Eva Got Infested for Our Sins

I’m tempted not to elaborate on this at all because I’m so proud of the section subtitle but @nikosheba​ said she was specifically interested in my take so here goes.

The orthodox theology of Western Christianity (i.e. Protestantism and most of the Catholic Church) explains that Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection weren’t only necessary for human salvation as a moral example or demonstration of God’s power, they actually involved Jesus taking a punishment (from God/Himself, Satan, or both, depending on the specific theological theory) that otherwise humanity as a whole would have taken. The famous “blasting rope to Waluigi hentai” tweet comes from this; Jesus dies and goes to hell not because He deserves it but because anybody who would masturbate to Waluigi does and Jesus can take it better than they can.

Figure 2: A tweet in which a gentleman named Sebastian Castillo observes, correctly, that “it’s catholic canon that in the garden of gethsemane jesus christ saw every sin committed by human beings which means that he watched a guy blasting rope to waluigi hentai and still decided to sacrifice himself for humanity. absolute legend”

Eva doesn’t get infested and almost killed along with her infestor/torturer/rapist “for humanity”, exactly--it doesn’t even preserve any of her son’s innocence, not that she (or he) shows any evidence of wanting it to--but it is a horrible, plot-driving, character-motivating experience that she’s presented as weathering a lot better than most of the younger characters could have, which I think is similar conceptually. (In-universe, Garoff or somebody might have decided on the crucifixion punishment as something Edriss’s host would have found particularly insulting, yet symbolically fitting--which is also an ironic punishment for Edriss herself with her tendency to LARP as the women she infests.)

Fear and Trembling in Santa Barbara: Marco, Eva, Abraham, Isaac, and the Inherent Homicidality of Family Hiking Trips

(@visseredriss​ made the post that turned me on to this so, you know, thanks for making #30 even more upsetting than it already was, I guess!)

In Genesis 22, Abraham infamously arranges a hiking trip with his son Isaac so that he can sacrifice him to God at the end, which he doesn’t go through with (although an angel provides him with a ram to sacrifice instead). In Animorphs #30, Marco infamously arranges a hiking trip with his infested mother so that he can shove her off a cliff at the end, which he doesn’t go through with (although Jake does it for him because this is a very normal series of funny animal books for ten-year-olds.).

The story in Genesis is understood a little differently in (modern) Christianity and Judaism. The usual modern Christian understanding focuses on Abraham as the active protagonist of the story and presents it as a test of faith in which the “reward” for faith is the suspension of the test. This is, in my opinion, a misreading derived from Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling; the early Christian interpretation was closer to at least one Jewish interpretation, in which the protagonist of the episode is Isaac, the faith tested is his (in being willing to die) rather than his father’s (in being willing to kill), and Abraham going through with it is unlikely from the start because God has previously promised that Abraham will have grandchildren through Isaac. (St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews claims that Abraham was under the impression that, even if he did kill Isaac, God would simply raise Isaac from the dead--but then, St. Paul would say that, wouldn’t he?)

However, Kierkegaard’s exegesis is, as much as it pains me to say this about a character I love, Typical Marco Bullshit, and I would not be at all surprised if the parallel between Kierkegaard’s Abraham and Applegate’s Marco being willing to “suspend the ethical” to pursue what they see as a pre-moral imperative (obeying direct commands from God; winning the war against the Yeerks) is there for a reason. Even if it wasn’t deliberate, if you’ve taken an intro to existentialism (or even intro to Western philosophy) course you’ll have encountered Fear and Trembling; it’s there in the back of your mind, and “so then he led his favorite family member up the mountain to kill them in service of greater aim, and his reward for being willing to do this was that he ended up not having to do this” is never going to be an entirely accidental plot/thematic point.

#animorphs #meta #eva animorphs #marco animorphs #theology #the bible #catholic #judaism

[unculturedmamoswine]

So the Animorphs comic is great

The animorphs graphic novel is OUT, bros!! My copy came yesterday and i fucking loved every second of it! Have some unorganized spoilery opinions!

A bunch of dialogue was lifted right out of the book, and they fixed a couple minor examples of early-installment weirdness. No more Jake using thought speech as a human or Visser Three acting like he's never met Elfangor.

There's some narrative stuff you just can't get in a comic like you can in prose but honestly I don't think the comic suffered for that. Everything was really clear. Except I think maybe no mention is ever made of Jake and Rachel being cousins.

I was grinning with delight getting to actually see the Yeerk pool and watch Tobias fly around. I can't explain how cool it is to really SEE things that have only been in my head for most of my life.

Animorphs: Still horrifying. They did a commendable job of keeping the horror of battle and of morphing intact. Lots of disturbing mid-morph shots and people and aliens being killed. One detail I appreciated was Rachel getting her trunk slashed by a Hork-Bajir and the blood staying there. It's not just magically better or a tiny red line in the next panel. Really small detail but I loved it. And watching Elfangor get fucking chomped was wild. His blood fucking SPURTS OUT. And that woman who gets charred by the fireball! Wow

Practically nothing is outright different. I mean, arguably nothing. Seriously the biggest thing I can think of is Tobias implying that all the animorphs have known each other for a bit and been a group of friends for a while. He says "you're the guy who always pulls us together to get things done". Which… Weird, I guess, but probably fine. It might just be strange phrasing. I doubt they're planning to throw a crazy retcon at us. I do actually think that Tobias’s status as a group outsider is pretty important in the books, so I hope that doesn’t change.

An even smaller detail than that, but one I kinda wish they hadn't changed, is the period being changed to an exclamation point at the very end. "Until then, we fight!" has a much more 'and the adventure begins!!' excitement to it than the subdued 'we just lost a horrible battle but maybe we can survive long enough for someone competent to come along and fix everything' tone of the end of the first novel(la). But like… If a single punctuation quibble is your worst criticism that's pretty fabulous.

This really is a very very true adaptation. All the important character moments are there, including Marco's and Jake's unwillingness to join the fight, Rachel having a great time killing enemies, etc. 

I think the Andalite, Taxxon, and HB designs are all good. Very in line with what we've seen on covers before. Taxxons look a bit squishier than the more exoskeleton-y dudes on the covers. I do kind of wish they'd made the Andalites look more weird and less explicitly centaurish but i can admit i also like the nostalgia of the classic design. The Hork-Bajir have this hatchet-face look that makes them look like the pokemon Kommo-o, but I mean. That’s fine. Also why are some Horks wearing tiny armor on their shoulders? What could that possibly do for them?

Using different colored bubbles to show who is taking in thought-speech is so simple and works really well.

I honestly can't really tell if it's still set in the 90s or not. Tobias has what looks like a Walkman? But could be a Discman/generic CD player? Which doesn't necessarily tell us anything. Anybody can have a tape player even today, even if it's not necessarily that likely.

Only a year until the next comic comes out and I can’t wait! It’ll be super cool to see some Rachel pov!

It's just so cool you guys. It's such a great adaptation. Please buy this comic, anifans. It's what you deserve and it's what Applegrant and Chris Grine deserve.

#my post #animorphs

[laurenbrightwing]

Ok so I’ve been reading a lot of animorphs headcanons recently about the different cultures of the various alien species, and I was wondering how common phobias and fears would differ between them? Like, we have no reason to expect their mindset to be the same as humanity’s - yeerks die in reproduction, for example, so they might not fear death in the same way. And in one book I’m pretty sure it mentions that claustrophobia is common in andalites. Since they were herd animals in the past, they probably have some common fears related to solitude and being hunted. I imagine fear of injury (given the stigma around vecols) and social rejection to be prevalent for similar reasons. Andalites also rely heavily on sight, like humans, and their fears may revolve even more strongly around blindness or darkness than silence. If andalites have a concept of the horror genre or perhaps cautionary myths, their monsters might be eyeless (somewhat in contrast with humanity, which has a common horror trope of having too many eyes. I don’t imagine that being nearly as frightening to andalites). Yeerks are more interesting. For all of their complaining in the series about how horrible it is to be a yeerk, I don’t think they’d have any real fear of darkness, blindness, silence, etc in the same way. Hunger and starvation would be massively common phobias, for very valid reasons. Heat and desiccation too, given that a dry yeerk is very quickly a dead yeerk. At one point in the series it mentions the vanarx, a hunter of yeerks - I’m pretty sure the book said it can suck a yeerk out of the brain, which seems excessive to me when it could just hunt yeerks directly out of pools, but that’s besides the point. Yeerk horror might center around the slow poisoning of the pool, or returning to it in a host only to find it dried up, or having your poolmates disappear around you without understanding why until you’re alone...although then again, yeerks may not have the same idea of death given their method of reproduction. I don’t know. Taxxon fears are stated explicitly in the books. There seems to be a species-wide terror regarding starvation, to explain their constant hunger. They’re burrowing creatures so confined spaces and darkness are probably sources of comfort, not fear. To be honest, I’m not really sure about other phobias they might have, but I think one taxxon horror story would be like the Greek myth about that man who was constantly hungry and thirsty, with water and food always in sight but unable to ever be reached. I’m also at a bit of a loss for specific hork-bajir fears. I think it says somewhere that hork-bajir don’t fear heights or falling? There might be a cultural fear around fog and monsters given what Hork-Bajir Chronicles says about Father Deep. I think hork-bajir myths may contrast with andalite ones in that they’d be uncomfortable with open, treeless spaces. Their fears may revolve around harm being done to the trees, like a blight or other injury. Hork-bajir horror may be set in a foggy, open, treeless plain, maybe pursued by the monsters from the Deep. This is pre-yeerk invasion, which would probably greatly influence the common phobias of hork-bajir and all species involved in the war. This was a lot longer than I anticipated but basically I would love to see what horror stories would look like in different alien cultures, to reflect the values and biology of those species. I think it’d be interesting. If anyone has other ideas please share!

#animorphs #andalite #yeerks #andalites #hork bajir #taxxons #idk i just love worldbuilding and alien cultures #aximili #aximili esgarrouth isthill

[sarifel-corrisafid-ilxhel]

Space Battles in Animorphs

So I’ve been doing some thinking on the way space battles are fought in Animorphs based on what scant evidence we have, and what I’ve been able to conclude are the following:

Battles begin at long range. We know from Book 8 that the unnamed Pool Ship and the Dome Ship GalaxyTree began engagement almost as soon as the Dome Ship crossed into the Earth’s sphere of gravitational influence, while the Pool Ship was in Low Earth Orbit. Now, it’s up for debate whether this was the Hill Sphere (1.5 million kilometers- This is the area where objects moving slowly will orbit the Earth instead of orbiting the Sun) or the astronomical Sphere of Influence (924,000 kilometers). Either way, this is far beyond lunar orbit distances and you would see a light delay of 3 to 5 seconds! Compare this to Star Wars and Star Trek, where battles typically occur between ships close enough to each other that you could theoretically open a window and start firing with a rifle at the enemy ship.

Battles begin with maneuvering and deployment of fighters. This also comes from Book 8, with some backing from The Andalite Chronicles. In the battle in Book 8, the first thing the Dome Ship and Pool Ship do is begin closing the distance and launch fighters. They know roughly where each other are, but due to the light delay, they won’t be able to use optical sensors to aim at each other until they are closer together.

Theoretically they could use predictions of the enemy’s flight path to give lead, but it’s very likely both ships were also using countermeasures and maneuvering to disguise their intended course and prevent this from happening.

Fog of War exists even in space. This may seem silly given that you can see literally for billions of lightyears in any direction, but there are things to take into consideration in Animorphs space battles. The few space battles we see in Animorphs all occur at or near planets or asteroid fields, which are places where people would go for resources. There is no indication that any battles occur in deep space. So this gives us situations where ships can be ambushed without relying on the mystical super-dense nebulas of Star Trek. In book 8, for example, the Blade Ship was hiding in the lunar surface to avoid detection and then ambushed an unaware Dome Ship, presumably from behind. Another issue is the sheer distances involved. In Point 1, I mention that the range given in Book 8 is several light-seconds. In The Andalite Chronicles they mention having to fly at significant percentages of the speed of light to reach targets in a timely manner (and that flying too fast for too long resorts in time dilation, which is something you want to avoid). So the distances involved create two problems:

1. Finding the enemy. It goes without saying that space is big and ships are small. It doesn’t matter how powerful your sensors are, there will be a range where enemy ships just aren’t visible to you because they’re just too far away. On top of this, certain things like emissions management like in Book 54 will make ships easier or harder to spot, and electromagnetic cloaking exists in this setting. So maneuvers need to be carefully planned and constant surveillance of your surroundings is a must. As we saw in Book 8, the Dome Ship failed to reconnoiter the Moon correctly, and it was destroyed because of that mistake. 2. Shooting at the enemy. We have already established that battles in this setting can begin at ranges with a significant light-delay. For ships using light-speed weapons as Shredders and Dracons appear to be, this means that if you fire at where the enemy is when you see them, you will miss unless they are sitting still. You need to fire at where they are going to be, but when they have 3 to 5 seconds to maneuver, you almost certainly won't be able to hit them at that range either. Slower weapons like missiles can adjust their trajectory in flight without expending too much fuel thanks to the way physics works, but the moment they are detected, they can be shot down. So both energy weapons and missiles will have limited ranges. A well-executed missile attack with proper support may have a longer effective range than Shredders or Dracons, but not by much, and directed energy weapons excel at the point-defense role. Thus, missiles are not a commonly used weapon in the setting, although they are probably used when the situation calls for it. Additionally, electronic warfare is something the factions in the setting are capable of. Not only do they have cloaking devices and the ability to spoof or jam RADAR signals, but hacking is explicitly used on several occasions, usually by Ax. Additionally we see that formidable electronic defenses exist on both sides in Book 38 and Book 49, which implies that this is an aspect of combat people are prepared for. We can assume that long before two fleets are in range to shoot at each other, they're already trying electronic warfare to give themselves the advantage over the other fleet. At extreme range with light-delays they're likely using FTL sensors to probe the enemy's communications, and when they close the distance they're trying to throw off enemy targeting systems, disable enemy maneuvering systems, et cetera.

The number of ships in a battle is relatively small. In Book 8, the only ships explicitly referred to are the Blade Ship, the Dome Ship, the Pool Ship, and some fighters. We know from other books that a wider variety of vessels exist on both sides, and it’s unlikely a Pool Ship or Dome Ship would go anywhere without fleet tenders and escorts, but fleet composition almost certainly involves single-digit or low-double-digit numbers for large vessels. In book 54, the Andalite fleet that arrives at Earth is mentioned to be 2 Dome Ships and some unspecified escorts, while the Yeerk fleet’s composition is never given. While no escorts for the Dome Ship or Pool Ship were mentioned in book 8, real-world historical precedent says they probably had escorts. In World War Two, carriers always had escort vessels, but the escort vessels contributed comparatively little to the battles and so no one remembers their names. Often times accounts of battles like Midway will focus so heavily on the carriers that you would be forgiven for thinking those were the only ships there.

Warfare is changing rapidly. The Blade Ship is a form of assault vessel similar in function and size to the USS Defiant from Star Trek DS9. It’s much smaller than the Dome Ships it engaged in The Andalite Chronicles and in Book 8, but is a dedicated capital-ship killer that the Andalites are not prepared to defend against in those battles. We do see in book #54 that the Andalites have new cruisers (e.g. The Intrepid) meant to counter the Blade Ship, and the Yeerks in turn have new cruisers (e.g. The Rachel) designed to counter the Andalite cruisers.

The opening salvos of a battle are quick and decisive. In Book 8 and The Andalite Chronicles, the Blade Ship is able to decisively disable two Dome Ships with a few hits each in spite of the fact they should be shielded and armored. We know that shields and forcefields (Book 16, Book 18, etc) exist in the setting, and we know that starships must be armored well enough to withstand small pieces of debris traveling at several thousand miles per hour. However, the predominant weaponry used by the Yeerks and the Andalites are disintegrator-type weapons utilizing exotic particles as their mechanism of action. While these particles are never explicitly described, we can assume similar behaviors to the Nadion particle from Star Trek, which is able to break the molecular bonds present in non-degenerate* matter and is the active component of both Phasers and Disruptors. These types of particles are known to penetrate shields if sufficiently energized, presumably in the realm of GeV, TeV, or even higher levels of energy the likes of which would not normally exist outside of a supernova. There is simply no way to block this kind of attack when it comes from a comparable vessel to your own. *Degenerate matter such as Neutronium is immune, but no mention of degenerate matter is made in Animorphs. It should exist- It's what neutron stars and white dwarfs are made of- but no one uses it as armor. To use another example, the Andalite cruiser Intrepid is easily disabled by a single shot in Book 54 and is repeatedly hit again and again until the life support failed. By the time rescue could arrive, only one crew member was still alive, presumably because they found a SCUBA tank in the rec room. Thermal regulation in space is a secondary concern to the biological requirement for oxygen- It takes hours to freeze in the void or cook in starlight, but only minutes to asphyxiate. Thus, we can conclude compartmentalization of ships to prevent air loss after damage is vital, but somehow Andalite vessels are lacking in this regard. In any case, every time we see ship on ship combat in the series, we see that precise shots to key parts of enemy ships are used to decisively disable an enemy ship, and whichever ship manages to score hits on the other ship's vital components wins. The only times this is not the case is when one side has much weaker weapons compared to the other, such as The Rachel versus the Blade Ship, or in the case of Hork-Bajir Controllers with handheld Dracons firing on a stolen Bug Fighter.

Analysis. Taking all of these things into consideration, I believe that the first shots fired in a space battle in Animorphs are the product of a chain of decisions made from the engineering of the vessels in question, to the deployment and maneuvering of the vessels, to their situational awareness and tactical prowess, and the battle has already been won by the time the first Dracons or Shredders have discharged. For a comparable real-world example of this type of engagement we turn to the Battle of the Denmark Strait, which occurred on May 24th, 1941. In that battle, the German battleship Bismarck and it's escorting cruiser, the Prinz Eugen, were being pursued by British cruisers with RADAR. The German vessels were not able to evade their pursuers, and they were eventually engaged by British forces in the form of the battleship Prince of Wales and it's escorting cruiser, the Hood. It should be noted that these two battle groups were comparable to each other in size, composition, and technology. This is similar to the Yeerks and Andalites being at technological parity, given that the Yeerks largely got their technology from the Andalites. In the real-world battle, the German battle group was aware that they were being pursued, so the two ships turned to cross the T of the British battle group and coordinated their fire on the Hood. This was an important maneuver, as it let the German ships fire all of their guns broadside while the British ships, still sailing straight towards them, could only answer with their forward weapons. The British attempted to turn broadside to answer the Germans in kind, but they were already at a disadvantage, and large ships turn slowly. Within ten minutes of the first shots, a shell from the Bismarck penetrated through the upper armor of the Hood and detonated the aft magazine, breaking the Hood in half. The British battlecruiser sank in three minutes with a loss of all hands except for 3 sailors. This single shell proving so decisive was the end result of a series of decisions starting with the engineering of the ship and ending with the maneuvers carried out that day by the two battle groups. In both Animorphs and the Battle of the Denmark Strait, superior maneuvering by one side led to a favorable position that the other side could not answer. The Blade Ship ambushed the Dome Ship just as the Germans turned and crossed the T of the British vessels. And as we know, large ships turn slowly. This, coupled with a debilitating strike to the all-too-important mechanical areas of the ship, was the death of both the GalaxyTree and the Hood. In both Animorphs and the Battle of the Denmark Strait, the older vessel was caught in a horrible position and, unable to maneuver sufficiently to gain an upper hand, was struck in a vital location and destroyed in short order.

Conclusion. In Animorphs space battles, the action will not play out like the battles of Star Wars or Star Trek. Instead, they will universally be more comparable to the long, drawn out naval battles of the real world. To achieve a victory in anAnimorphs space battle, you must start with the construction of a ship with strong defenses against electronic warfare and good compartmentalization of the vessel and distribution of key systems through the ship. From there, through superior intelligence gathering and maneuvering, the first strike craft will be launched to limit the enemy ship's ability to maneuver, and once the distance has been closed, decisive and surgical shots to the enemy's bridge, life support, power systems, and engines will be made. This is the formula for victory in an Animorphs space battle.

#Animorphs #Space Combat #This was four pages in microsoft word #Why am I even writing this it's like 3 AM #Long Post #Headcanon

[selfdeterminedsymbionts]

How are we supposed to defend ourselves from the andalites without the Empire framework? I mean, I'd love to be able to release my host and then look for a human who actually wants me - but if too many of us did that, then how would we keep up the fight?

Why does your species have so much trouble understanding how a revolution works? I mean, humans have fucked this up plenty of times in the past, so maybe it’s something you learn through trial and error, but it’s pretty simple.

You don’t burn down the Empire. You change the Empire. Don’t take a pillar down until you have something to replace it with.

Step one: raise public consciousness of the issue and change the social zeitgeist until you have a critical mass of people on your side.

Step two: arrange to convert or replace the enemies in charge with people who can handle a revolution. NOT WITH THE EXTREMISTS AMONG YOUR PEOPLE. For example, I love Edrin and Kalem and AJ, but the Empire should NOT be put in their hands. You get leaders who a) know how to lead a nation (so preferably yeerks who are already high-ranking and understand how to do the job and what the important factors are), b) understand their job to be that of holding the Empire together, and c) are willing to compromise with multiple parties to do that. Edrin’s gonna be scandalised when seeing this, but it’s my position that whoever you guys pick should NOT be affiliated with, or even sympathetic to, HYPA. They should not have ideological attachments to either side of this issue if possible. The reason for this is that their job is not to ‘bring revolution’ -- it’s to hold the Empire together when revolution happens. That means logical cost-benefit analyses, it means realising that a transition to full voluntary symbiosis is what’s best for the yeerk people, it means realising that war is detrimental and peace is the way forward. Humans love to pretend that peace is won through protests and pretty speeches, but it’s not; it’s won through people in back rooms realising that peace is more profitable and stable for their interests.

You do it slow -- you start to phase out the involuntary captures until they’re for emergency situations only, you start to invest in voluntary host systems an switch them to a mutual-benefit model instead of a coercion-and-blackmail model. This is possible because us revolutionary idiots have already done the hard work and set them up for you. You copy our pool designs, you expand our systems; if you want to save yourself a lot of work you make groups like HYPA do your work for you by conveniently forgetting to go raid them so long as they’re bringing in new recruits for you. These pipelines are easy to set up; humans do it all the time. You stop pushing for pro-military, pro-involuntary, anti-empathy, and you go slow.

Step 3) Once the old systems have started to atrophy of their own accord, this is where you meet with andalites and with the humans. You do this separately.

The human story should be pretty straightforward. You have a pretty big chunk of voluntary humans now who believe in symbiosis. You blame the invasion on the old guard and hang them out to dry, explain the revolution and how your wisely appointed leader saved humanity from all that; you make friends. Humanity will see the vast benefits of technologically superior alien friends immediately. It’s how we work. You need to come public peacefully and set up the basics of your diplomatic relationship *before* the andalites get involved; it’s a quirk of humanity that we tend to trust the first guy a lot more than the second guy unless the first guy betrays us. So just, don’t betray humanity.

Now for the andalites. Either they’ll show up and tell humanity about the Evil Alien Parasites Deceiving Them (which you’ve already explained to humanity in detail, including how that was overthrown and the war won by yeerks), or you’ll have to go contact them. Either way, you bring humans in on this and, if possible, make as much of the information on what’s going on as you can public to the andalite civilians. The andalite military are pushing their whole ‘freedom for the galaxy’ angle and they’ll be forced to back that up if there are witnesses, so you want witnesses. This is the part everyone hates -- this is where you open the gates and let the old enemy in. This is where you ask for andalite help in extracting the yeerk population from the andalite homeworld and similar places. This is where you start to set up voluntary systems on other planets and extracting involuntary infestors and switching them over to the new system. The andalites *have no choice* but to serve your interests at this point, because they’re the same interests those andalites have been using as a shield for their own military activities. About halfway through this change you insist on the blockade around the homeworld being removed -- this will be a political sticking point, but you will win now that there’s peace; it’ll just take some time. Then you can welcome those yeerks, the yeerks who have never seen space or had anything to do with any invasion, into the new interplanetary yeerk civilisation.

THAT is how you do a successful revolution. You don’t burn down the old system and put a new one in its place; that’s how people die. You change it piece by piece, never taking down a loadbearing pillar until you have another constructed to replace it. Humans are gonna hate me for saying this, because I’m basically telling yeerks to release less human slaves, more slowly, and they’re right -- that sucks. You know what sucks more? The death and destruction that would occur if we insisted on extremists-win-through-inspiring-speeches movie style revolutions. You do this properly, sensibly. HYPA is one piece of the puzzle, it’s not the whole puzzle.

-- Cassidy

[featherquillpen]

Unreliable Narrators in Animorphs

After listening to @serpentcast‘s excellent episode about unreliable narrators, I got to thinking about the rotating first-person narration of the Animorphs books and the ways in which each narrator is unreliable. The hosts of Be the Serpent talked about three types of unreliable narrators: ones that are deliberately lying to you, ones that are lying to themselves, and ones that are just too ignorant to tell you the truth. I think we see all three types in the Animorphs series. So here are my takes, in rough order from most reliable narrator to least reliable.

Rachel

Rachel is the most reliable narrator of the six because her way of dealing with the brutality of war and her ever deeper entanglement in it is to be brutally honest with herself. She never shies away from the increasing darkness in herself, nor from exactly how fucked up the world around her has become. She knows exactly what she is, how she got there, why she hates it, and why she can’t stop. Nor is she oblivious like Ax – she can clearly see the changes in her teammates and her family, and isn’t afraid to point them out.

She’s also much more reliable about aspects of the war the other Animorphs tend to refuse to see. For example, all the other Animorphs except Ax tend to idealize Cassie as a moral compass, including Cassie herself to some degree. Rachel is able to see through it, though, as her best friend. In Book 22, she can’t buy into Cassie’s comfortable (self-)deception that her solution for David is merciful, because she’s there for every minute of the two hours it takes for him to become trapped in morph. 

The one thing that Rachel is a seriously unreliable narrator about is Tobias. She thinks of him as a human boy cruelly trapped in hawk form, when in fact he thinks of himself as more hawk than boy. He is quite clear about this, and every other Animorph understands this about him except Rachel. Her unreliable narration about Tobias means that she can’t even fully admit in the text how cruel and monstrous her actions toward him at the beginning of book 33 were.

Cassie

Cassie is mostly a reliable narrator because she’s very perceptive, especially of other people, and she feels a moral obligation to face down the effects of war on people. She believes if she lies to herself about the war, that’s the first step down a dark path. 

Cassie does have a blind spot, though, when it comes to herself. Most of the Animorphs, especially Jake, hold Cassie up as the group’s moral compass, and Cassie herself has bought into that myth to a large degree. She certainly doubts her own moral judgment, and doesn’t think she’s always right. But she does lie to herself about the nobility of her motivations and the consequences of her moral choices. She spent most of book 19 blatantly lying to herself about why she quit the Animorphs, wanting to believe they were less selfish and cowardly than they really were. After book 22, she lies to herself about the mercy of her plan to trap David in morph. And throughout the series she refuses to admit in her narration just how ruthlessly manipulative she is, even as we see evidence on the page over and over again how she uses her empathy and perceptiveness to maneuver people.

I’d like to point out here that Cassie is a notable exception among the Animorphs in that she is actually a reliable narrator about her love interest. If anything, Cassie is a more reliable narrator about Jake than he is about himself.

Jake

Like Cassie, Jake is very clear-eyed and perceptive about his team and about the war. He is able to see some things that nobody else can. He tries, most of the time, to be brutally honest with himself about the war and its effects on people, as Rachel does. But he gets unreliable when it comes to Cassie and himself.

As I said above, Jake idealizes Cassie as his moral compass. He relies on her perspective to make sure he doesn’t go off the rails and make monstrous decisions. So he can’t admit that her compass doesn’t always point true north. If he admitted that she doesn’t have any special insight into what is right or wrong, then he would have to accept just how lost the Animorphs truly are.

But Jake is the most unreliable when it comes to himself. He can’t acknowledge his weaknesses or his strengths. Throughout most of the series, Jake tries to present himself as a normal, dumb jock Everyman kid. But I would strongly argue that even in book 1, Jake is not a normal Everyman kid. He saved Tobias from bullies, which takes uncommon empathy and courage for a middle schooler. He has a passion and insight for military history. He shows real leadership qualities from the very beginning of book 1. It takes a long time for him to talk about himself as anything but a default jock boy, and even then, he thinks of himself as a completely normal boy turned child general.

And then, because of his leadership, Jake can’t show his weaknesses either. Not to the other Animorphs, and to a strong degree, not in his first-person narration. He can’t admit just how much of a weak spot his family is for him. Later in the war, he can’t tell us even in his own narration how much he’s falling apart. We just see it in his actions, not in the way he explains them. To me it is deeply tragic how Jake cannot, not even in his private narration, allow himself to be either special or human.

Tobias

Even more so than Cassie, I think Tobias has the clearest view on the broader societal issues involved in the war. He grew up under the poorest and most miserable circumstances of the Animorphs, and has the downtrodden’s sensitivity to power dynamics. He understands better than anyone how the Sharing takes advantage of people who are outside society. He understands better than anyone just how hard life is going to be for the Hork-Bajir after the war. On these matters, Tobias is both perceptive and honest.

But like Jake, Tobias can never be fully honest about himself or the girl he loves.

As I’ve discussed before, Tobias repeatedly frames Rachel’s issues with violence in terms of his own experiences as a predator. He understands that the hawk’s need to hunt is perfectly natural, and therefore Rachel’s love for the fight must also be natural and necessary. But Tobias is wrong about this. Rachel doesn’t just fight because she has to, but because she gets a terrible dark rush from it. Tobias doesn’t allow himself to see that when he talks about her in his books.

Tobias also cannot be honest with himself with his issues or how much abuse he’s suffered. He tends to downplay how badly his guardians treated him, and how bad his mental health is as a result. It takes him a long time to admit in narration (book 43) that he got trapped in hawk morph at least partly on purpose – early on he just can’t face that truth, because it speaks to just how desperate he was to escape his human life. Again, it’s really tragic how he can’t look at the scars of all the terrible things that have happened to him.

Ax

Ax is a great example of the ignorant type of unreliable narrator. Like Rachel, Ax is not much in the habit of lying to himself the way the other narrators often do. But Ax is not only oblivious, especially of humans but also when it comes to his fellow Andalites; but steeped in military propaganda, polite omissions, and outright lies.

Everyone has lied to Ax about his brother all of his life, including Elfangor himself. So it’s no wonder it takes so long for Ax to talk about him the way he really was – for the longest time, Ax didn’t know any better. Not to mention the wholesale fictions he’s been fed about the war against the Yeerks, what the Yeerks have done, what the Andalites have done, and what the Andalites’ goals are. He believes wholeheartedly in the nobility of his people – until he brutally learns over the course of the series that his people are liars, colonizers, and war criminals who have set out to destroy their enemies and become the galaxy’s police force, whether their control is wanted or no, no matter how many species they have to wipe out to do it. For the first half of the series, almost nothing Ax says about the Andalites or the Yeerks should be taken as fact.

The only thing that Ax consistently lies to himself about is just how loyal he is to his Prince and to Earth as a whole. He does so less and less as the series goes on, but I’d argue that even at the end, joining the Andalite military as a Prince and leaving Earth behind was not actually what was best for him or what he wanted in his hearts of hearts. But he was supposed to want to be back among Andalites again more than on Earth, so he convinced himself that’s what he did want.

Marco

Don’t take anything Marco says at face value. If we accept the framing narrative of the Animorphs series, that these are first-person memoirs the Animorphs are writing for posterity, Marco is definitely, deliberately lying to us.

Marco is the most concerned of all the Animorphs about posterity and how they will be remembered. As he shows in dramatic fashion in book 30, he thinks about how their actions and motivations will be perceived after the war. If his books really are his recordings for posterity, he is definitely lying to make himself seem cooler, suaver, and funnier than he is. He’s trying to make things seem more farcical and less existentially horrifying. He also wants to look like the ruthless, self-confident, cold-blooded tactician that he only sort of is.

And that’s just the stuff he’s deliberately lying to readers about. He’s also lying to himself about so many things. At the beginning, he denigrates and distances himself from Tobias because he doesn’t want to admit how similar they are. Later, he makes Jake seem like more of the dorky boy that he no longer is but Marco wishes he were. He thinks of Cassie as his opposite number, the sappy moralistic idealist, because he wants to believe that there’s some kind of counterbalance to the terrifyingly cold schemes he comes up with.

Marco is such an unreliable narrator when it comes to himself and his family. He won’t own up to how much he had to father his own father, and how much of a toll that took on his psyche. He’s able to tell us the truth that he hates being pitied, but that doesn’t make him any more honest about any of the sad things about him and his life that would make us, the readers, pity him. He lies to himself for book after book that he’s cold-blooded enough to kill his own mother, and it’s only at the moment of crisis that he finally faces the truth that he can’t. He can’t admit how much he’s willing to sacrifice for his dad until it drives him to a moment of desperation and stupidity. He wants so badly to be witty, charming, cold, distant, and empty inside, because that’s the kind of person who could survive the things he has without ever showing it.

#animorphs #animorphs meta #unreliable narrator

[lilacsolanum]

am I correct that you once mentioned being able to talk forever about the breakdown of Animorphs team dynamics at the end of the war? please... if so... i'd love to hear your thoughts...

YES, YOU ARE VERY CORRECT. HERE WE GO.

Cassie and Ax are the only ones whose books straight up lay down the law on this. The Sacrifice has Ax straight up talking shit about, like, everyone but Marco. Marco he’s cool with, because Marco’s clear headed and not worried about getting his hands dirty. Marco’s like “Man, drop a nuclear bomb if you GOTTA, like I don’t LOVE the idea but what’s an intergalactic war without a ‘lil nuke here and there? Makes it EXCITING.” But he starts getting disenfranchised with Jake - “I wished now not for Jake, but for an Andalite commander. An experienced soldier. Someone who better understood when to fight and when to watch.” He is OVER how Rachel is terrifyingly violent and should have been removed from fighting a while ago (the scene where Ax chooses to forgive and free a Yeerk-moprhed-bird who is just trying to become a nothlit — only for Rachel to thoughtlessly murder the Yeerk on a rampage — is one of the most chilling moments in Animorphs. I gasped and had the set the book down when I first read it, and I first read it as an adult.) While He even straight up calls Tobias out on getting trapped in morph on purpose - “He stayed in red-tailed hawk morph for longer than two hours. I suspect he did it on purpose.  It was his way of escaping the complexities of human life. Although he exchanged them for a new set of complexities.” When he finds out Cassie gave away the morphing technology, he says “I could not stop looking at Cassie. I was not exactly sure what I was feeling. But I was sure it was very close to hatred.” Later he says “Perhaps the real menace lay at the other end of the continuum - represented by Cassie. Humans who were softer. Kinder. Well-meaning. And, ironically, infinitely more dangerous.” He eventually does forgive Cassie and start to understand her choice, but it takes him a MOMENT. Ax is TIRED in this book. The Sacrifice is just Ax talking shit about everyone, it’s amazing. “My hatred for Cassie began to extend to them all. They were fools. They would never prevail. They were too soft. Too sentimental. Too childish. Too stupid and ignorant.” - Aximili in The Sacrifice, pouring out some tea.

Ax ends up in this really sad place at the end of the war where he’s resigned to dying on Earth, to dying with his human friends, and he sees honor in that but he does not want it. Ax is easily the least developed characters in the series, especially once he’s given to the ghostwriters. He’s either The Funny Alien Bro or he’s the writer’s voice of political commentary. VERY RARELY is he treated with respect. Because of this inconsistency, it’s hard to say what Ax does immediately after the war. Does he just peace out to Andalite immediately? Does he take time to decide what he truly wants? Does he decide he truly wants to stay on Earth with humans but goes back to Andalite out of duty? Does he reach out to Tobias? Does he quietly accept Tobias’s decision to isolate himself and feel secretly relieved that he no longer has to care for this neurotic bird? Does he feel guilty about being secretly relieved? Does he not care he’s relieved? There are a ton of ways to interpret Ax and view his post war decisions. The only thing we know from The Sacrifice is that he’s pretty fucking DONE.

-

Cassie talks a ton of shit, too. (”The truth was, and it hurt me to admit it, Jake just wasn’t Jake anymore.” - The Ultimate. “Rachel’s voice, on the other hand, was firm and unhesitating. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m thinking it’s time to explode a big ‘ole bomb.” “And you couldn’t be happier,” Cassie said bitterly to Rachel. “Could you?”” - The Sacrifice.) Cassie always has sweetly-snide things to say about everyone in her narration (homegurl is always like “Marco is funny, but only to cover up his own fear.” “Yeah Tobias DEFINITELY trapped himself in morph.” “Rachel is a mess.” Cassie is a southern church lady and a master at shade and I love her.)

Cassie and Ax are basically just. Done with everyone. Cassie has already realized all her friends are way too war-touched to ever be healthy, and knows, on some level, that she’ll retain enough stability be able to elevate herself past the PTSD. In her last book, she makes this sad, desperate last chance grab at retaining what was left of Jake’s humanity. After that, we don’t see many people really connecting with Cassie and honestly, it’s not because she gave away the morphing cube. It’s because the Animorphs agree to blow up the Yeerk pool. I think that is a defining point for Cassie, the equivalent of Jake losing his parents. Her fate is sealed when she is forced to participate in destroying the Pool. She doesn’t like herself and she doesn’t like these people. She completely gives up on Jake and knows they have no future, which you see plainly in her reaction to Jake’s proposal (I don’t know what I expected her answer to be, but I didn’t expect her to start crying. And not tears of joy, either. “I would like that … eventually,” she said. “ But. But what?” She sighed. “But, Jake, what are you going to be? What are you going to do?” “Guess I thought I’d go to college,” I said. “And study what, Jake? Me, I’ll go to college, I’ll become a doctor. never forget what’s happened, I’ll never even try, but I’ll be able to slip back into a normal life. But you, Jake?” ) She is straight up aggressive toward Rachel in The Ultimate (”“Why do you have to be so horrible?” Cassie exploded. “You are, you know. And you get worse every day. Your own mother can’t even stand you.””) Cassie is maybe not consciously aware that she is the only one who will truly survive the war, but she knows SOMETHING, and she starts to distances herself and gives up on her friends at the end of the war. It’s another one of Cassie’s bright clear lines.

-

Marco doesn’t really comment on things falling apart, but I also don’t think Marco approaches exactly HOW falling apart things have become in the same honest way Cassie and Ax do. Listen: homeboy has abandoment issues. Which I guess is extrapolation, as I can’t really think of any example where he’s directly like “Everyone Leaves Me Eventually Fuck ‘Em And Their Little Dog Too”, but the text DOES tell us 1. Marco’s mom died when he was 11, which is a very big thing to happen to a very tiny child; 2. His dad mentally checked out immediately after and 3. After the war, Marco awkwardly tries to keep the band together. He admits to spying on Jake in his free time in The Beginning, AND I MEAN. “Marco lived half a mile from me, in a house about seven times bigger than mine. We’d started hanging out again. And after awhile he’d given up arranging dates for me with whatever starlet happened to be willing.” (Jake, The Beginning). Some of that is Jake giving back to Marco, but one can ONLY ASSUME from Marco’s weird spying that Marco pulled every drop of Jake’s friendship out by sheer force of will. He also apparently invites Cassie AND HER BOYFRIEND to his Hollywood parties (I spoke to Cassie every couple of months. She was seeing some guy … actually, a good guy. I had met him at one of Marco’s parties.) and is in general all up in her shit. He does this crazy detailed run down of every step Cassie has made post-war in Chapter 10 of The Beginning. Like bro why do you even know Wal-mart tried to get Cassie to sign a deal with them? Because you’re not as cool as you think, and you miss the fuck out of the Animorphs. His defining character trait is also “Cares about no one unless he adopts you as as family, in which case he will walk right into hell and personally bitch slap satan to ensure your safety.” I honestly don’t think it OCCURS to him that they won’t all be friends after the war. He comments a bit on people falling apart, but I swear he thinks they’re all going to fall apart together. Marco is arguably in a better position when the war ends than when it started. He brings his mother back from the dead, his dad is functioning, he is rich and famous, everything is great (save for the inevitable trauma of his parents and the existence of Nora and the fact he deliberately put her in harm and all the other terrible realizations we’ve all had about that family). But I can’t help but feel that his abandonment issues are part of what lead him to The Rachel. He sacrifices a pretty bomb life to go on a suicide mission without question, because Marco doesn’t have much family, and he adopted the Animorphs as a family, and now the only way to get that family back for even a moment is to go on The Rachel.

Basically, at the end of the war, Marco is something close to happy and hopeful. The last book he narrates is a fucking romp with tanks and ducks and bondage jokes (”” ICONIC). He’s focused on his parents, and he’s not really seeing the looming aftermath of war.

-

Tobias is sort of in the same situation. He’s dealing with a lot. He’s got a Loren now, and he’s awkwardly morphing human for her. He has been disenfranchised with Jake ever since Jake manipulated him into volunteering himself for torture. He’s kicking it with Marco and Ax and they have this sort of unofficial club going on, but he never mentions particularly connecting with Marco on the same level he does Rachel or Ax or even Cassie. Which, don’t get me wrong, I am 100% a huge believer in Team Finesse as disgruntled roommates who care for each other deep down, but it’s ultimately not enough of a connection to keep him around after Rachel’s death. That’s the thing with Tobias. He was always sort of detached from everyone but Rachel and Ax, and Ax was somewhat circumstantial. We all love the shorms, shorms are real, but there’s definitely a reading where the two of them bonded because they had to. I also definitely think Tobias never truly believed in Ax’s love for him. That’s the thing with Tobias, he can joke and he can bond and he has a nice time with the other Animorphs but he doesn’t believe in a universe where they hang out without the Yeerks, ya feel? He can go on a tank joy ride with Marco, but underneath it he’s thinking “This hilarious class clown wouldn’t give me the time of day if it wasn’t for Elfangor.” He can listen to Ax call him shorm, but ultimately he’s going to feel “Ax is only here because he has no other option, we wouldn’t be friends otherwise.” That’s why as soon as Rachel dies, Tobias is out. When Cassie says, “He doesn’t hate you, Jake. He never did. His heart was broken, that’s all. And you know, Tobias never had anyone. No one before Rachel. No mother, really, no father he could ever know. Rachel was the first and only person who ever loved Tobias.” (The Beginning), I think she’s speaking from Tobias’s POV, because she knows of all people that Tobias was loved and loved fiercely by many. It’s just that when Rachel said it, he actually believed her. (This is a line I’ve been sitting on for a minute and will use in a fic, so anyone who reads it again later, act surprised okay?)

-

And Jake and Rachel have isolating incidents that are pretty clear on the page. Rachel’s descent into extreme violence addiction isn’t super well done, but these ARE children’s books. As dark as these books are, there’s something so incredibly disturbing about watching a child find joy in a shower of blood that it’s not really well touched upon. All we know is that she’s out of control, to the point where when confronted by an armed but currently peaceful group of soldiers, she ignores orders from Ax and attempts to ram through the human shield by physically stomping on her mother’s foot and forcing the gas pedal. No one wants to hang out with Rachel by this point, not even her family, not even Cassie. Well, we can assume Tobias is still kicking it with her, but we never get a scene of them together which is a SHAME. And Jake is, you know. I’ve rambled enough, but anyone who has read the series knows that Jake withdraws from his friends when he loses his parents in The Diversion. Marco and Tobias are too preoccupied to help, Cassie tries to the point where she hands their only leverage over to the enemy but eventually gives up on EVERYONE, and Ax is too exhausted to care. I don’t think it would have mattered much if Jake had gotten a ton of support though. He’d given up by then.

ANYWAY you asked for my feelings on the kids drifting away from each other and I gave you 2K because I am extra.

#animorphs #animorphs meta #long post #i'm so sorry #i'm not sorry #I'm full demi lovato in this moment #pretty-rage-machine

[sage-nebula]

This---this right here. This is why I love Animorphs.

Specifically, this is from The Andalite Chronicles, which was written during the series’ run, but serves as a prequel to the series as a whole (but, according to the reading order I have, is slotted in between books twelve and thirteen). Regardless, it’s part of the Animorphs series, and honestly, talk of andalites and yeerks and the presence of characters like Elfangor and Alloran aside, you can really, really tell thanks to conversations like this.

In so many fantasy and sci-fi stories, there is a clear dichotomy between those who are Good and those who are Evil. Those who are Good are the protagonists, whom you root for; you celebrate their victories, you cry for their losses, and you excuse what they do because they are Good and therefore they are Right. Meanwhile, those who are Evil are those who are the antagonists, whom you despise. You fear their victories, you celebrate their losses, and you know that no matter what they ado, they are Evil, and therefore they are Wrong. Even if the Good characters end up doing the very same things as the Evil characters, so long as the Good characters are doing those things to the Evil characters, you are never meant to question, doubt, or criticize them. They certainly aren’t made to question, doubt, or criticize themselves. The narrative never questions or criticizes their actions or decisions. At best, their behavior---which in some cases may amount to war crimes---is ignored. At worst, it’s celebrated.

Take, for example, the world-renowned Harry Potter series. 

(And obligatory disclaimer right here: I am a longtime Harry Potter fan, I really love Harry Potter, and I am not trying to bash Harry Potter by using it as an example here, so please don’t get it twisted to start wank, thank you.) 

Harry Potter is another children’s literature series about war. People die in Harry Potter, as they do in war. People are tortured in Harry Potter, as they are in war. The main characters, children that they are, are tortured at a couple different points. They lose loved ones. People are disfigured. Children are left orphans, and so on and so forth. It’s a story about war, and these things happen in war.

But what’s relevant to this particular post is that some of the protagonists, over the course of the war, end up committing a few war crimes of their own as defined by the laws of the fictional universe in which they reside. In particular, I’m talking about their use of what in their universe are known as the Unforgivable Curses.

In Harry Potter, as you may know, there are three spells that are considered Unforgivable and are therefore illegal. They are Avada Kedavra, the killing curse; Imperio, a mind control curse; and Crucio, a torture curse. Beginning in book #5, Harry shows a willingness to use these curses when he attempts to use Crucio on the woman who murdered his godfather right in front of him. He fails at using it, yes, but he tried. And whether Harry’s feelings and actions actually were justified or not in that moment is not really the point I’m trying to make here. The point I’m trying to make here is that Harry himself never thought about it. Now, to be fair to Harry, he was going through a lot at the moment; Order of the Phoenix is easily the best book in the Harry Potter series because Harry was realistically written as a traumatized teenage boy, which in all honesty we don’t see as much as we should in the other books. Nonetheless, Harry, to my recollection, doesn’t spare much (if any) thought to it, until he uses the curse again in book seven, and actually succeeds, all because he saw one of his favorite teachers be spat upon. (Which, to me, was alwasy rather illogical, like . . . he can’t muster up the will to torture when his godfather is murdered right in front of him, but he can when his favorite teacher gets spat on? OK.) And while said teacher is aghast that he used the curse, once Harry explains that it was because the one whom he cursed had spat on her, she gets flustered and we’re supposed to take it as a touching moment. It isn’t brought up again after that.

Now, again, to be clear: Whether Harry was actually morally fine with using an Unforgivable Curse in that moment is not the point of this post. My point is that no one in the narrative questioned it. Using Unforgivable Curses liberally, for small offenses, is what the villains of the story, the Death Eaters, do. Those curses are unforgivable for a reason. Those curses are illegal for a reason. Using them amounts to war crimes. Yet the protagonists use Crucio and Imperio to achieve their ends, just as the Death Eaters do. And, yes, all right, this is war . . . but if the morality of doing so is brought up, it’s dismissed a paragraph or two later. Harry never considers what it says about him that he’s willing to torture because someone he likes was spat on. He doesn’t consider how easily he’s pushed to violence, how far he’s willing to go. He doesn’t question whether this war is turning---or has turned---him into something perhaps he doesn’t want to be turned into. In Harry Potter, questions of morality begin and end at goals; what defines the Good Guys and the Bad Guys is what each side is fighting for---which, to be fair, is rather easily done in Harry Potter, given that the Bad Guys want genocide. Make no mistake, the Death Eaters were legitimately Evil and wholly in the wrong, the protagonists were wholly in the right to stop them, and I would NEVER suggest otherwise.  But, from a realistic standpoint, tactics matter, too. Things like torture and murder shouldn’t be excusable simply because you’re the Good Guys. How good are you, really, if you’re willing to torture and murder---if you don’t feel even an ounce of guilt over it? How good are you when, from the perspective of your enemy, you might be the Bad Guys, while they’re the Good? That wasn’t the case in Harry Potter---again, the lines of Good and Evil were very clearly defined---but in many (if not most) real life wars, it is.

Don’t misunderstand, Harry Potter is not alone in this. Many, if not most, fantasy and sci-fi stories stop at the question of goals and leave it at that, particularly when those stories are aimed at children. They don’t question tactics within their narratives, and they don’t make their protagonists question their tactics. They don’t make their protagonists take long, hard looks at themselves, nor do they make them quarrel with each other over what is acceptable and what isn’t.

But Animorphs does, and I love that.

In Animorphs, the lines are very clearly drawn in the beginning, and to be honest, a lot of the assumptions made in the beginning are correct, at least insofar as the Yeerk Empire goes. The Yeerk Empire is corrupt, evil, and wrong; they enslave, slaughter, and destroy. They must be stopped, just as the Death Eaters had to be stopped in Harry Potter, and that is inarguable. However, just because the yeerks (at least insofar as the Empire is concerned; we’re setting aside the Yeerk Peace Movement at the moment for sake of simplicity) were evil, the series makes it clear that this does not mean that every single tactic used against them is justified. As seen above, when Alloran wants to slaughter tens of thousands of defenseless yeerks---prisoners that are at his mercy---Elfangor steps up to argue with him, despite being a far lower rank, despite being a complete newbie on the battlefield. From the perspective of Alloran, Elfangor, and Arbron, the andalites are the Good Guys. The yeerks are the Bad Guys. This means, in Alloran’s opinion, that whatever they do is perfectly fine and justified. But Elfangor, who recognizes that the yeerks are still sapient beings even if they are the enemy (and are Evil), feels that their tactics still need to be called into question. He argues, because from a moral standpoint he doesn’t feel that it’s justified to murder defenseless prisoners of war simply because it’s a war and because they can.

And that’s what makes Animorphs so great.

Animorphs is not afraid to breach these topics. This is a sci-fi series that was aimed at children. It was published by Scholastic. And it told the story of a war that was, for the vast majority of the series, fought by a group of children using guerilla tactics against an Empire far larger than them. And it tackled these issues. The Chronicles books were arguably written for a slightly older audience, given that they were longer, but you cannot tell me that the author and publishing company did not know there was a very high probability that the children who read the main series would read these ones, too. And even outside of the Chronicles books, the main series tackled these issues as well. The Animorphs and Ax consistently, book after book, got into arguments with each other and themselves over the tactics they used in the war. They decided early on that there were some lines they would not cross because they did not want their tactics to make them sink to the levels of their enemies. And when the time came later when the war forced them to cross those lines (as much as those with free will are forced, and as war does), they still acknowledged that, with themselves and with each other. They struggled to make peace with it. Some of them never succeeded.

And the best part of all of this is that if you read the passage above, the narrative does not tell you who you should side with. You might think that you should side with Elfangor, since the book is in his perspective; but the narrative doesn’t paint Alloran as a cold, heartless murderer, in my opinion. It shows him as a seasoned, hardened, traumatized (given information earlier in the book) war veteran who has experienced far more than Elfangor has, who perhaps knows more than he does. Alloran is not arguing for the execution of the yeerks here because he wishes to see them die, or because he wants glory; in fact, he specifically says that war is not about glory. He’s arguing for their execution because he feels it’s necessary given the circumstances they’re in with regards to the war. This doesn’t mean that he’s right. His experience doesn’t make him right. However, Elfangor’s morality also doesn’t necessarily make him right. The narrative leaves up to the reader to decide for themselves who they think is right in this passage, and that was intentional. Applegate once said that, while writing, she challenged readers “again and again to think about right and wrong, not just who beat who.” Animorphs raises these questions, with the characters and with the readers. Animorphs is a war story questions its characters not just on their goals, but on their tactics, and acknowledges the fact that being the Good Guys doesn’t mean you get to do whatever you want with impunity. Or at the very least, that it shouldn’t mean that you get to do whatever you want with impunity.

And that’s why I really, really love Animorphs.

#animorphs #the andalite chronicles #elfangor sirinial shamtul #alloran #arbron #mmmmm honestly tho call me when a certain sci-fi series about giant cat-shaped mechas would ever #because they had the perfect opportunity in 5x02 to do this but bad writing made them pass it up #and make all their protagonists sans sir not appearing in that episode appear terrible as a result #ho hum. guess they can't all be animorphs huh #meta

[hermitknut]

Animorphs: The Musical

Okay first off, a disclaimer: I outlined this originally not as a musical that would exist as an adaptation of the books, but as something that is created, maybe ten-fifteen years post-war, within the universe of the books (or more precisely, within my own post-series AU that I roughed out here - TL;DR is that Rachel’s alive and the animorphs as a group aren’t big fans of the spotlight). This affected things in specific ways, but most importantly:

Ax doesn’t want to be focused on - he doesn’t like earth music, and he doesn’t understand this form of storytelling. As such, he plays a smaller role in the show than he might deserve to. 

I can’t imagine them ever telling people on earth certain things (David will be a secret taken to the grave, for example; Aftran/Karen’s involvement may have been kept quiet to protect the (still a tiny child) Karen; and while the role of the Ellimist has been shared with the Andalites it’s not exactly a well-known thing on earth because seriously can you imagine the amount of scepticism)

That said, there’s no reason this version wouldn’t work as an adaptation, it just leaves out certain things that I think we’d all miss if we were watching it IRL. I was thinking more about how the actual Animorphs would feel about their lives going on stage. 

Notes:

1. I’ve used songs from actual musicals as stand-ins, and none of them are exact fits. Mostly they convey the right kind of feel and pace for the moment.

2. Each animorph has a ‘keynote’ through the show; something life-changing that they volunteered. Jake’s and Marco’s were easy; Cassie, Rachel and Tobias elected to keep their real life-changing moments to themselves (Aftran, David, and Elfangor respectively) and so theirs are a little different. Ax asked not to be given one.

3. The morphs are done with puppetry, with little emphasis placed on the transition. For small morphs (bugs and birds), the child actors can operate the puppets themselves; for battle morphs, adult puppeteers form the shape of the animal around them. This means you can see the child actor performing/emoting even within a fight scene. For the style of puppets I’m thinking of, check out the stage adaptation of His Dark Materials that was done a while back by the national theatre (some images here and here). 

4. I’m also working under the assumption that we’re using pretty minimal sets, so big set changes aren’t hugely necessary.

This got SUPER long, so I’ve put it under a cut.

Act 1

The house lights go down. Over the speakers we hear a confused buzz of communication: some thoughtspeech (Marco! On your left! Keep moving!) and some radio communication (military instructions and people panicking). This cuts when the lights slam up, and we’re on the bridge of the Yeerk mothership; everything is frozen; Tobias speaks up, asking how everything came to this? [feel of Mama Who Bore Me from Spring Awakening]

A quick shift takes as back three and a bit years, it’s a busy mall. We see the kids as they are that night: Jake and Tobias bickering over the arcade games; Tobias tagging along; Rachel having dragged Cassie out shopping. There’s a chorus number here to set the mood [feels a little like Hard-Knock Life from Annie, upbeat but work-a-day], interrupted once for each animorph as they explain who they are. Tobias tells us about Jake; Jake tells us about Marco; Marco tells us about Cassie; Cassie tells us about Rachel; Rachel tells us about Tobias. They’re just one-two line descriptions (‘that’s Cassie, who Jake fancies but won’t admit it. Animal nerd.’), just enough to get a feel for who these kids are. The kids meet; decide to walk home together through the construction site.

The whole scene at the construction site has the kids at the front of the stage, looking out into the audience. We never see Elfangor (Andalite diplomatics felt it would be disrespectful to hologram him, so the director worked around this). But Tobias speaks to the audience, narrating the events of the scene (it stays fairly brief, but meaningful) and speaking Elfangor’s words (after all, he’s the one who has the right to). As they flee the scene, Chapman (whose name is changed for the show) is identified as a controller, and Tom with him. 

The next day the kids end up at Cassie’s barn. They’ve all tried morphing, and now it’s time for the debate about what they’re going to do. The song of this argument is reminiscent of My Shot from Hamilton, but less solo and more alternating between the characters. Marco cutting in (like ‘Geniuses, lower your voices’ and later ‘I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory’ in the original) in counterpoint, arguing to protect themselves and their families, Tobias impassioned, Jake mediating, etc. They conclude, of course, that they’ll fight - and Marco will be with them, for now.

The first keynote is Tobias’s, opening when he comes to Jake after their first mission (not seen on stage) and can’t change back from hawk. He sings us through his journey from book #3, describing his first kill and the mall fly-through as the chorus shows us it in freeze-frame behind him [my closest match is with Deep Into The Ground from Billy Elliot, but it needs more fear/climax in it to work].

Montage time! The fighting and spying begins in earnest [Solidarity, from Billy Elliot]. As the music shifts between its two threads, we have quiet moments that continue the story - Ax is rescued in a brief scene, and Eva is revealed as the host of Visser One - but the fight returns and there is no time to stop and recover. Marco’s character shifts towards the end of the song and Cassie remarks on how much more dedicated he is now.

Rachel’s keynote now [imagine something similar to Your Obedient Servant from Hamilton, but sung all by one person swinging between aspects of their personality] consists of some emotional elements of #32 blended with #12; no plot as such, just Rachel trying to establish herself as rightfully furious with the world as it is as her father moves away and her life becomes more violent.

Go straight to Cassie’s keynote, which incorporates parts of #29; her friends are no longer there and she is going to the Yeerk pool alone, cooperating with the Yeerk Peace Movement (her interaction with Ilim standing in, in the show, for the big shift of perspective in #19) and struggling between not wanting to hurt anyone and not wanting to abandon her friends [feels like Burn from Hamilton].

The build of the end of Act 2 is largely instrumental [feels very like Angry Dance from Billy Elliot] - it’s another montage sequence, but this is darker and faster and much more violent. The kids are thrown about, they lose limbs in morph and get back up; the stage is relatively dark with flashes of dracon fire; hologram hork-bajir and taxxons storm across the stage; Jake comes within an inch of having to kill Tom only to be pulled away by Cassie. Human controllers are out in force, trying to hunt them down. Visser Three is heard over the speakers. The final moment of the sequence sees the kids crawl, exhausted, into bed (the beds are a level up, right at the back of the stage), only to jerk awake; their parents call out and ask if something’s wrong; the kids reply together ‘Nothing. I’m fine.’ Lights out. End of Act one.

[interval where the actual animorphs in the audience eat way too much ice cream and cling onto each other a lot]

Act Two

A startlingly bright open [think The Nicest Kids In Town from Hairspray [warning for racial slur in that song], and even some of the lyrics work] - it’s the Sharing, posters and flyers everywhere, full on Disneying it up with upsetting cheerfulness as the Animorphs slip between them at school, battling exhaustion and deadlines. We see Marco forcing himself to grin at the mirror; Cassie pick out a sliver of Hork-Bajir flesh from between her teeth; Jake trying to act normal around Tom; Rachel flipping off someone trying to flirt with her. 

We ease straight into Marco’s keynote as he skips school to get away from all of this stuff, ending up in town where he sees Visser One. Marco’s keynote is then #30, compressed into one song [feels like The Room Where It Happens from Hamilton, with the idea of the ‘bright clean line’ of ruthlessness repeating through the song]. When the song stops we get the ‘Mum’ ‘It’s the boy’ exchange; Eva falls and all the lights cut except a spot on Marco, who tells us that he doesn’t remember how he got down from the mountain. Cut to Marco and Jake in the forest when Marco comes back to himself. They part.

Some indication that time has passed, then we move on to Jake’s keynote - which is, of course, #31. Jake walks in on Tom and his father arguing (Tom: ‘FIVE DAYS?!?!’ Jake, aside: ‘...Five days?’), slips the other animorphs and we have the build to the scene on the docks - use a stage-revolve to show Jake frozen and Tom with the knife behind his back. It ends in chaos, and Jake pulling Tom out of the water; and meeting Marco’s eyes from across the stage, a nod of acknowledgement. [I have And All That Jazz from Chicago as a stand-in for this because of the way it builds, but really I need something with more spirals of desperation and less pizzazz].

We then move quickly through the big reveal - rescuing all the families except Jake’s - and go to living in the Hork-Bajir valley. The kids decide to recruit the auxillary animorphs, and go to the hospital [Right Hand Man from Hamilton]. For logistical reasons, James is the only one you actually see on stage.

We have a moment of peace/tension on the brink of the final mission [Who Wants To Live Forever from We Will Rock You, but probably shorter].

The final fight is shown in glimpses and flickers, until we’re on the bridge of the mothership again where we started. The Blade Ship goes down but Rachel and Tom survive (I’ll write why into an AU one day, but for now I ask you to just go with it). The six kids end up on stage, pulling close together, holding hands, frightened of the world to come [probably an unholy mix of Who Lives Who Dies Who Tells Your Story from Hamilton and Stay I Pray You from Anastasia. Everyone is sobbing]; the lights narrow until only they are lit, and they’re asking if they’ve done enough...

Lights down. End of Act Two.

~

So uh. Yeah. That was super long and now I’ve got to dash, but please do let me know what you think XD

#animorphs #animorphs: the musical #h's animorphs au #needs a better tag #jesus my wrists hurt now I typed that all way too fast

[troytlepower]

Animorphs continues to be buck wild in The Ellimist Chronicles

This past weekend I finished rereading The Ellimist Chronicles from the Animorphs series. I remember this book being a stand out when I read the series before, but I wasn’t sure if that was due to the content of the story or just because it was the last of the supplemental books to come out. At this point in the series, the Animorphs main storyline is revving up into the grand finale, with the conflict between the Yeerks and the Animorphs becoming more of a public war, instead of a secretive, private one. The Ellimist Chronicles, in a weird way, gives us an origin to that battle.

The Ellimist Chronicles goes back eons into history and tells the story of how the super powerful, maybe omniscient, maybe omnipotent being known as the Ellimist (first introduced in book #7 of the main series) came into power. He starts out as a flying creature named Toomin who lives in a society that is super community driven, because literally everyone has to spend 90% of their time attached to and supporting the floating crystal they call home, flapping their wings to keep it in the air. Toomin spends much of his docked time as “Ellimist” in a sort of virtual-reality video game he plays where he manipulates the development of alien cultures in order to see how he can control their advancement, and he is already looking towards a future that would allow for less of this community-driven time. A lot of this part of the story looks at how dependent his people are on each other, and at his and others’ ideas about how to break that dependence using technological advancements.

Then, his home planet gets totally wrecked. An alien species who misunderstood the games, thinking that the Ellimist and his friends actually had the power to manipulate other societies evolution (can you imagine?) shows up, and literally blasts the crystals out of the sky. Toomin and a few others from his society are the only ones to survive, and set out in search of a new world to call home, starting what the book refers to as his second life.

A few decades on, Toomin is now in command of the search for a new home. Some members of his crew argue that they should adapt to a land-based life, but Toomin and the others still hope to find a new world where they can fly free, as they were used to before. While investigating an aberration under the surface of a waterlogged planet, all of the survivors end up captured by a tentacled behemoth that spans the entire world. The creature, called “Father”, taps into the mind of everyone it captures (and kills), which includes all of Toomin’s companions along with representatives from countless other races. The only thing it keeps truly alive is Toomin himself, who is forced to play games against Father in exchange for being allowed to live in a fantasty version of his life back on the Crystal, instead of seeing through his own eyes the watery graveyard that is his prison. This goes on for millenia, with Toomin always losing, until they discover the game of music, which The Ellimist is able to master thanks to his inginuity, creativity, and sadness. Emboldened, The Ellimist starts to push back against Father, and uses the creature’s own tentacle web to also tap into the minds of the preserved bodies under the sea, absorbing their knowledge and life experiences, until ultimately he absorbs Father himself.

Now that he has the knowledge, experiences, and creativity of multitudes inside his mind, The Ellimist works on “improving” his body, by building a construct out of all the crashed ships on the planet, and affixing his consciousness to it, literally becoming part of a machine. With that, he sets back out into space, taking on a new mission of forcing peace on a warring galaxy. He boldly intereferes, manipulating the development of individual cultures as well as the relationships between existing ones, to try to ensure peace and long life across the universe. As he goes, he expands his body, until his consciousness exists across thousands of ships. Unfortunately, it turns out that an even more powerful being has been following in his wake, and undoing his progress. A being called Crayak (introduced in book #6) acts as the mirror universe version of The Ellimist, creating war and destruction and death everywhere he goes. He challenges The Ellimist to a series of games, with entire solar systems as the stakes.

After many defeats, The Ellimist goes into hiding with primitive versions of the Andalites we know from the main series. He sacrifices most of his great intellect while in Andalite form, and lives a simple, peaceful life in a community again. He has a family, he has children, he relearns the meaning of loss and the power of hope. Eventually, reinvigorated, he heads back to the stars, this time with a goal simply of spreading life, instead of trying to stop death.

Utilizing this new strategy, he is able to push back against Crayak, and looks like he has a chance of winning this ultimate battle, until he is tricked into a trap, and all the great multitude of his body is devoured by a black hole. Expecting death, not for the first time in his long existence, The Ellimist instead finds a new perspective on life. From inside his confinement, he realizes he can see all of space and the winding timelines of every creature in existence. From here he plots a new strategy against Crayak, and works again to save and create life. Crayak catches on, and ultimately joins the Ellimist in non-corporeal, near-ominiscent existence. Realizing that now there is no way for them to battle without destroying everything, including themselves, the two settle down to a game. A long game. A game with strict rules. A game for everything.

And this is where this story of the Ellimist’s journey ends. It seems that the conflict currently raging on Earth between the Animorphs and the Yeerks was seeded eons ago, back before the Andalites had even evolved to have tails that could point forward. And it all came from two sad, lonely gamers, who were so mad that the universe didn’t turn out the way that they wanted that they learned to force it to develop in their images.

This book is bonkers, and that’s coming from someone who has spent the better part of the past year rereading The Animorphs, but I absolutely loved it! I had very little memory of the details of this story, and I couldn’t put the dang thing down. For the most part, it’s messages are really convoluted (I can’t tell, for example, if it’s pro- or anti-technology), but the one thing that it really makes clear is the importance of community, and the danger of isolation. In the end, even Crayak and The Ellimist seem to realize this, as they settle into their last game like Professor Xavier and Magneto; bitter enemies, but also, maybe someday, just maybe… friends?

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