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Make a Move for the Right Reasons

@zarohk

AMA Unifying Theory of Bionicle & Dragon Age
Old enough to have learned Internet safety in school. Born last century.
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Reblogged cipheramnesia
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ive always rly liked the idea of a member of a group of adventurers having what everyone assumes is very well trained hawk and then at the end of their journey its casually revealed that thats actually just his buddy whos a shapeshifter and just rly likes being a hawk

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the guy also like thinks everyone knows bc he never tries to hide the fact that the hawk is a person but everyone assumes hes always just joking. like the others being like "damn its crazy how he knows exactly what you want him to do its like he knows english or something." and the guy is just like "well yeah thats his first language so ofc he's fluent??" and they all go "haha good one" and move on, leaving him confused

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they just think hes a quirky guy that really loves his pet and says things like "the 9 of us" even tho there are clearly only 8 people! he just cares about the bird so much he counts it as a group member haha !

#literally#animorphs
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Reblogged pyrochord
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Was Elfangor Really Buff?

I am practicing how I draw Andalites again, and an important question came up - the cover of The Andalite Chronicles shows what is presumably Elfangor looking like a sculpted god, but elsewhere in the series it's confirmed over and over that Andalites have weak upper bodies, particularly their arms. Ax's torso is described as boyish on like, two different occasions.

BUT THEN! VISSER confirms on its cover that Visser Three is jacked. Book 40, we meet Gafinilan, who is described like a bodybuilder. Book 41, Jake sees a super handsome and jacked Andalite and immediately assumes they're Elfangor. (It's not, but it *is* a morph based on his his younger brother Ax's DNA, so it's close enough?)

SO. IMPORTANT QUESTION.

#animorphs#elfangor sirinial shamtul#not buff
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Reblogged
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Anonymous asked:

What if Visser One stayed on Earth and was still in charge of the invasion when the Animorphs were formed?

thejakeformerlyknownasprince answered:

The humans would lose.

I’m speculating, of course, but that’s my speculation.  Edriss 562 — especially Edriss with access to Eva’s brain — is too damn smart to be taken down by six kids and half her own army turning on her.  Edriss knows how to pay close attention to Eva’s intelligence and perception without getting sucked into Eva’s blind spots the way that Esplin 9466 is with Alloran.  Eva herself is tough, canny, and very good at understanding her enemies and allies alike.

Neither one of them is perfect, to be sure, but ultimately Visser One gets taken down more by Marco’s opportunistic leveraging of misinformation within the Yeerk Empire than by her own errors.  Visser One understands humans, and has enormous skill at persuading them.  Visser One knows the value of subtlety well enough to lead a covert invasion.  Visser One might be more feared than loved, but she still wins several followers out from under Visser Three with her charisma and vision.  Maybe most importantly, Visser One set the playbook for the Earth invasion — creating the Sharing, emphasizing the value of voluntary and quasi-voluntary hosts, controlling the flow of information, leveraging Hollywood for social influence — and so she understands how the plan is supposed to play out in practice.  Either an invasion with Visser Three using Visser Three’s playbook or one with Visser One using Visser One’s playbook could work, in practice; it’s only when Visser Three is forced to use Visser One’s plans that the whole invasion falls apart.

A few ways that I think Visser One could improve on Visser Three’s plans:

  • Recruit with less honey, more vinegar.
  • Tom’s yeerk makes multiple attempts to lure Jake and his parents to Sharing meetings, all unsuccessful.  However, it’s not until the yeerks know that Jake’s an Animorph that the yeerk in Tom finally gets authorization just to drag their parents down to the yeerk pool by force.
  • A better idea would be to drop the cult-recruitment strategy entirely after two failed attempts.  All it would take is getting a valuable potential host alone with a controller long enough for said controller to shoot the person in the back with a minimum-power dracon beam.  Then the controller could drag the host to the nearest car, get the person to the yeerk pool, and send the Body Snatched copy of the host (who would, of course, insist that nothing is wrong) home within an hour or two.
  • Make yeerks more mobile.
  • To give credit where it’s due, this is maybe the only good idea that AniTV yeerks ever come up with in 26 episodes of the show: They carry their unhosted brethren with them in thermoses.  This makes infestation infinitely easier in less-than-ideal circumstances, because it only requires a half-second of distraction on the part of the host for the controller to dump the yeerk in the unsuspecting person’s ear.  There are even fake ear thermometers in the one episode which have been modified to contain yeerks in little kandrona pods, meaning that an EMT-controller can infest someone in front of human witnesses without even arousing suspicion.
  • Throughout the book series, that (overall much smarter and more competent) version of the yeerks faces considerable problems with getting single hosts such as Jeremy Jason McCole or Jake’s dad down to the yeerk pool.  Given that we know yeerks can travel short distances in ziploc baggies (#29), Visser One would almost certainly leverage travel mugs to her advantage through keeping unhosted yeerks ready to go at a second’s notice as opportunities arise.
  • Go for quantity over quality.
  • Using the two methods I mentioned above, we could see a situation like Salem’s Lot or Invasion of the Body-Snatchers where the parasites quickly overwhelm the non-parasites with sheer numbers.  The yeerks devote a lot of resources toward trying to secure a small handful of high-impact but well-guarded targets — the chief of police, Karen’s dad, the governor of California, the president of France (?), William Roger Tennant.  Even when they grab ordinary schlubs, they tend to prioritize ordinary schlubs like Tom Berenson who are young, physically active, well-connected, nondisabled, and reasonably attractive.
  • Instead, they could just go full Hufflepuff: take the lot, and treat ‘em just the same.  Let’s use Tom as an example.  He gets grabbed because of his high school crush.  Then maybe the yeerks send “Tom” to get Jake in the door of a Sharing meeting by any means necessary.  They infest Jake the instant he’s in the door, and then send “Jake” and “Tom” home to tell their parents that there’s an urgent need for them to come to the car wash downtown.  Then they’ve got Steve, who is almost certainly friends with at least a few doctors he can call on the phone and ask to come downtown.  Those few doctors each call a few doctors, who each call a few doctors, and pretty soon they’re all going into business for themselves with this one weird nutritional supplement infesting their patients en masse.
  • The one big problem I see with this strategy is that there are approximately 10,000 humans for each yeerk on Earth, which would mean they’d have to focus heavily on infiltrating one town or city at a time and only branching out gradually as more yeerk pools were built and more baby yeerks were spawned.  It could still work though, IMHO.
  • Fix the culture.
  • I miiiiiight just be saying this because I’m a social psychologist, BUT.  Some major communications training could go a long way in the Yeerk Empire.  As it is, Visser Three’s leadership (and to a lesser extent that of other vissers) incentivizes lying to cover one’s own butt over offering up any kind of helpful feedback or remotely risky suggestions.  The Yeerk Empire, in canon, falls because a) Arbron and the other taxxons take the first alternate out that comes along rather than continuing to work for these imperialistic assholes, b) Tom’s yeerk gets fed up with Esplin’s crap to the point of wanting to stick a knife in his back, and c) the empire has been hemorrhaging hork-bajir hosts for years without doing anything about it.  The Animorphs come along and give the block tower a big ol’ shove, to be sure, but Visser One and Visser Three have been playing Jenga with it for years by the time it finally falls.
  • Visser One might, if she has the chance to run her own house for once, be smart enough to realize that rewarding people who give her bad news is a much much better idea than shooting the messenger.  Assuming she does, then we get no fake mind-control hamburgers, no multi-billion-dollar Sea Blade project that goes nowhere, no weekslong infiltration effort to glimpse a useless andalite porta-potty, and no near-catastrophe with the veleek.  Mist importantly, there’d be no internal fracturing that leads to the empire’s fall.  She’s not great at controlling her temper, so that’s a maybe at best, but assuming she could, then she’s capable of winning loyalty rather than demanding it with temper tantrums.

Assuming that Visser One manages to do all that, and I think she just might be able to pull all that off, the humans lose.  The Animorphs would do their best to make a mess along the way, of course, and maybe the invasion would be successful enough to get the andalites’ attention a little early, but it’s still not looking good for the good guys.

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It’s worth noting that in canon Visser One figured out that the “Andalite Bandits” were actually human long before long before Visser Three did. There’s a pretty good chance that if she was actually involved in the invasion during the series she would have figured it out earlier

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Oh crap I forgot about that!  Yeeeeaaaahh, if Visser One’s in charge then humanity’s DEFINITELY screwed.

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@reconstructwriter

#jenga tower theory of yeerk politics#CYOA mentality#which makes me think humanity might have a glimmer of hope#visser one#figures the animorphs out much faster#and visser one playing by visser one’s handbook#is more efficient than visser three playing by visser one’s handbook#So the animorphs are almost certainly screwed if not tpk’d#but#edriss 562#is still constrained by the system#she’s raised by#operates in#and doesn’t question#and that system is a jenga tower CYOA mess that even someone in her position can only do so much to push back against#if she’s would push back#would she really fix the culture?#she’s the other half of an argument with visser 3 while the animorphs are attacking and their underwater facility is drowning#I can’t see her rewarding subordinates who bring her truthful news good or bad given her dismissiveness towards subordinates#she wouldn’t be as self-sabotaging as visser 3 in canon#but that’s a low bar

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I distinctly remember a Leeran mind-reader flat-out telling Visser One that the Animorphs are human, he’s reading the mind of the “andalite bandit” right here and it’s definitely a human, and Visser One just dismisses this as ridiculous.

I mean, apparently she did her own research later, because she realized how odd it was that the kids were never killing humans, but at the time she just ignored all the evidence in front of her.

I’d say that her biggest flaw (besides the whole “my slaves definitely love me for real” thing) is that she very much acts as if it’s her against the entire universe. That mindset actually gets her pretty far in the Yeerk Empire, where everyone really is out to get you, but it certainly wouldn’t help her reform it.

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That’s a good point. She assumes that the leeran is telling her Marco is human because an alien can’t tell primates apart and mistook a gorilla for a human (and she’s distracted by arguing with V3) but that is clearly a missed opportunity for her.

Now we just have to come up with a way the Animorphs could use that to beat her…

#visser one#edriss 562#the escape#animorphs#yeerks#yeerk empire#eva#animorphs meta#animorphs au#long post#jenga tower theory of Yeerk politics
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Reblogged quasi-normalcy
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the other day i saw a tiktok of a woman talking about how her hyper-militant abusive parents would sometimes punish her by “taking away her name” and referring to her as a prisoner number. genuinely terrible stuff, obviously. but i skimmed the comments and. listen. i truly DO NOT mean to dunk too hard on this person, like they could be a kid or something, but.

just. breathtaking. imagine if your primary reference for the concept of the un-personing of prisoners was (check notes) a book series about owls.

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This is why it's important to Include stuff like this in fiction, especially ya fiction. It can be a lot of sheltered and/or indoctrinated children, in the case of a lot of rural "Christians", first introduction to these types of concepts in a way they can understand.

I don't think there's anything weird or shameful about it. Knowledge is knowledge, regardless of where it came from.

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I was once listening to one of the ten billion animorphs podcasts out there, with two hosts, one who'd read Animorphs as a kid and one who was reading it for the first time as an adult. For those who don't know, Animorphs is a war story in which a handful of children have to secretly hold off an alien invasion until the "good" aliens arrive to save Earth. It starts off with fairly clear-cut Bad Species of aliens and Good Species of aliens but as the series goes on it becomes clear that there is no such thing as a good, clean or glorious war, that a clean Good Side and a clean Bad Side is usually propoganda, that heroism is a matter of circumstance and that war will chew up and spit out even the victorious; there are no winners in war, just the side that lost less.

It's a lot, for books aimed at eleven year olds who want to read about kids turning into fun animals.

On the podcast, the two (American) hosts happened to get onto the topic of the post-9/11 Iraq War and their reactions to it. They were both children at the time and as such could not be expected to have particularly nuanced views of US military policy. The person who hadn't read Animorphs was unsurprised by the declaration of war; that's what you did. Someone attacks America, America goes to war. That's how a country protects itself, through military revenge. The Animorphs fan, about the same age, had been devastated and against the war from the start. War was a Big Deal and, while sometimes unavoidable, should be a last resort; a lot of people were going to die, and a lot more were going to get hurt, and no matter how the war shook out it was still going to be horrible. They attributed this perspective, of course, to the series that had taught them about the horrors endemic to war in an engaging way at such a young age -- to Animorphs.

That's what kid fiction is for.

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For anyone wondering if the tradition of philosophically transformative middle grade SFF series is being continued by more recent authors, the answer is yes: most specifically, Wings of Fire by Tui T. Sutherland (who also, under a different pen name, wrote some of the Warrior Cats books). The main story, which follows a bunch of young dragons as they deal with prophecies, magic, friendship, love and belonging, is told in three series, each consisting of five books, all of which I read aloud to my son at bedtime over a period of several years. Though also funny, colourful and moving, the core themes go harder than they have any right to, and by the end, Sutherland - like K.A. Applegate and Kathryn Lasky before her - is not remotely in the vicinity of fucking about.

Specifically, to give a breakdown of the themes in each book:

Series 1: The Dragonet Prophecy

The Dragonet Prophecy - What if you were raised by abusive caregivers who lied to you about your origins and who want you to be a warrior for the cause, but your greatest strength is kindness.

The Lost Heir - What if you were forced to confront the terrible cost of fighting vs the imperative of survival vs the burden of autonomy, and also you learned you'd accidentally killed your own father.

The Hidden Kingdom - What if you were told your whole life that you were lazy, unwanted and useless, but all the things your abusers disdained are actually your greatest strengths, and you succeed by embracing what they failed to value.

The Dark Secret - What if you find the home and the family you've always wanted, but your dad is a war criminal, your people are bent on genocide, and you have to choose between your own potential belonging and what you know to be right.

The Brightest Night - What if the single uncompromising principle you carry through war, betrayal and horror is the hope that people can be better, and then your hope wavers. What if you choose hope anyway and, in so doing, make it into a different sort of prophecy.

Series 2: The Jade Mountain Prophecy

Moon Rising - What if you had a secret about yourself that gave you legitimate grounds to fear that you'd be hated, killed or harmed if you disclosed it, such that your only confidant becomes someone dangerous. How do you learn to accept yourself while still staying safe?

Winter Turning - What if you've been raised in a high-control caste system but are starting to question your parents, your society and your role in life.

Escaping Peril - What if you're a former child soldier who was once manipulated into committing atrocities by the abusive monster who claimed to be the only person who'd ever love you, such that you still, despite everything, desperately want to please her? What if you struggle to be good anyway, even when almost everyone else is afraid of you?

Talons of Power - What if you were terrified of your own power, which you've been told can so easily make you a monster, but a bigger monster is threatening everything and everyone you love, forcing you to invent from whole cloth the philosophical thesis that power is inherently neither good or bad, and that what corrupts is feeling entitled to use it without check or consequence?

Darkness of Dragons - What if you were the hyper-competent, hyper-vigilant, clever child tasked with stopping a war, and the ultimate key to doing so is to force everyone to confront their shared identity and abandon historical prejudice (which was, itself, founded on deliberate propaganda).

Series 3: The Lost Continent Prophecy

The Lost Continent - What if you were the poster child for the model minority myth in a highly policed society, convinced that if you just obey the rules and do as you're told, you'll be safe and protected, only to have this illusion brutally ripped away and eventually conclude that oppressive systems cannot changed by internal reform; they can only be torn down.

The Hive Queen - What if you belonged to the oppressive majority in a bigoted society but came to be emotionally and politically allied with the oppressed. How do you unlearn the privilege you still have (even though you've also been somewhat outcast within your own majority) without denying your own identity or succumbing to self-pity?

The Poison Jungle - What if you're part of a hidden minority whose members are all survivors of an attempted genocide, raised in what is functionally a terrorist cell to take revenge on the people who tried to exterminate your kind. How do you unlearn the extremism of your upbringing in order to both exist as a person in your own right and choose a path to the future that doesn't involve an endless cycle of retributive violence? (And also you're a lesbian.)

The Dangerous Gift - What if you were raised in the dragon-world equivalent of a white supremacist society, hateful and angry and terrified of everyone you've been told is an intrinsic danger to your very existence while also being your inferior. How do you unlearn the bigotry of your raising and steadily become a kinder, better, stronger person in a way that acknowledges that transition instead of pretending it never happened?

The Flames of Hope - What if the open wound at the heart of the world was the twisted legacy of empire: centuries of genocide, violence and warfare that continued to self-perpetuate long after the initial cause was forgotten, because that's what cycles of violence do. What if you reached through time to the very first victim whose anguish started the cycle and offered them comfort, and in return, they gave you mercy. What if you were a fully grown adult reading the denouement of this book aloud to your child while actively weeping.

Like! I cannot emphasize enough how this series is rooted in the emotional thesis that some parents/caregivers are abusive, that it's good to ask questions, and that even if bad things happen to you, you still have a responsibility to be kind to others, because hurt you don't deal with becomes a generational inheritance, and then it just... makes that bigger.

The point being: middle grade books that make kids think about these issues are actually doing such important work, and the fact that they might be about owls or dragons or warrior cats or shapeshifting aliens doesn't make them silly; it's what makes those concepts accessible to the intended audience, not just by disguising the difficult bits in something cool and fantastical, but because the horror would cut too close without them.

#animorphs#kids books#wings of fire
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Reblogged kinsey3furry300
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Visser is one of the best books in the Animorphs series

Especially in terms of story craft and using the restrictions imposed on books for children to it advantage

Given how young most animorphs readers are/were when first reading them, this was quite possibly many people's first villain pov story

And that's really the secret sauce to having some of the darkest moments and implications of the whole series

Because to Edriss, none of it was that bad. It was justified. She did it for love, or out of necessity, or it wasn't that big of a deal anyway. So many horrific things happen in the book but they happen just off page, they're glossed over, they're implied but not given the detail necessary to really force you to dwell on the horror during a first read

This is of course because the book needs to be accessible to kids and not overwhelm them or scare them too badly

But it works perfectly in universe! Edriss isn't glossing over how the twins were made or the guy she kept locked in a basement because it's horrific, she's glossing over it because to her it's not

It just wasn't that big of a deal. It's not important enough for details (it's also because she's a huge liar and she's literally on trial. That's part of it too)

I feel like I'm rambling and I've barely scratched the surface of why this book works so well, but if you've read it you get it

#visser#animorphs#animorphs book club
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Anonymous asked:

AU where the Animorphs were better allies to the free hork-bajir colony from the start?

thejakeformerlyknownasprince answered:

Add this to the long, long list of things I wish we’d heard more about in #54, because we just don’t know how well the Animorphs did at supporting Toby et al.  There’s like one mention of Cassie helping the hork-bajir fight for their rights in the U.S., and the excellent headcanon that Ket adopts Tobias after the war, but other than that it’s unclear.

I think Toby’s exactly right when she tells Tobias in #23 that the end of the yeerk-human war will be the beginning of the hork-bajir’s real struggle.  It’s clear in #23 and #50 especially that “your average suburbanite ain't gonna tolerate a seven-foot-tall bladed alien for a neighbor,” as Marco puts it (#47).  It’s important that Toby ends the war with as many allies and hork-bajir on her side as possible, yes, but what’s going to be far more important will be what the humans do next when deciding how to treat the hork-bajir.

As of #54, the surviving Animorphs are some of the most powerful people on the planet.  Marco and Cassie especially have enormous social capital within their species, and Ax and Jake are both revered by their respective militaries.  If they use that power to fight for the hork-bajir, then potentially they could get a hell of a lot done.  The hork-bajir don’t need human rights, so to speak — they need hork-bajir rights.  They need to be able to harvest bark and to herd trees and to rebuild their culture.  They need to live their own way without interference from human authorities, and #34 makes it clear that they need to do it on Earth because that’s the only home they’ve ever known.  Sure, that human-style constitution Naomi helped them write will probably help, but they’re probably going to benefit the most from getting humans to step off.

How that would happen... Well, I love the implication in #54 that Arbron is enforcing the taxxons’ rights by adopting a stance of “Oh I’m sorry, did you say something about ‘logging’ or ‘permits’ or the company that owns this land?  Because I was too busy devouring your entire body after my friends poisoned you to death to catch any of that.”  Obviously eating one’s feelings — and then eating the sources of those feelings — is more of a taxxon solution to life’s problems than a hork-bajir one.  But Toby and Aldrea do also note that the hork-bajir have had to learn violent self-defense along the way.

So I could totally see Tobias “no gods, no kings, no masters” Fangor adopting a similar stance toward protecting the hork-bajir, and Ket shaking her head over her murder-son but not actually doing anything to stop him.  Meanwhile, Jake and Ax could be trying to push through andalite and human laws about respecting the hork-bajir or facing the consequences. Cassie and Marco would, of course, be rabble-rousing to drum up popular support for those motions.  Bonus for Marco taking every invited-speech opportunity to stop mid-word and toss the mic to Toby, because he’s a chaos demon like that.

It could all be supported by canon, and just be one of the many things (Ax’s career, the ex-hosts, the Auximorphs, the fate of the yeerks, Ronnie, CinnaBon) we don’t get to hear much about because The Beginning is pushing its length limit already.  Until someone tells me otherwise, that’s the interpretation I’m going to go with.

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Okay, circling back to this post because I’m still bothered by the implied assumption that in canon the Animorphs don’t help the hork-bajir, and that’s just not true.  The whole main plots of #23, #34, and #36 are about Toby or her parents coming to the Animorphs for help with specific problems (a missing kid, a weird arn dude, yeerk experiments on hork-bajir-controllers) and the Animorphs immediately rushing off to spend the whole book trying to help.  The plots of #30 and #47 are driven by the Animorphs fighting entire pitched battles to keep various Vissers away from the hork-bajir valley, battles that end with their loved ones and/or random civilians getting killed.  The hork-bajir do plenty to help the Animorphs as well, most notably in #49 and #53, but it’s more of an exchange relationship than the Animorphs ignoring the hork-bajir’s needs in favor of serving their own.

Like, Jake and Toby definitely butt heads on a fairly regular basis over the fact that they have different end goals, but they also make an effort to come through for each other.  Eventually the hork-bajir end up hosting the Animorphs’ families in their valley, but that inconvenience also comes with a major increase in the quality of their security, as #50 and #51 specify.  And it is pretty clear that the Animorphs at least are trying to get their parents to be respectful houseguests, whether it’s Rachel taking point on Naomi-wrangling duty or Cassie scolding Michelle into better respect for the hork-bajir culture.

Could the Animorphs do more to help the hork-bajir?  Definitely.  Did they still do a hell of a lot, arguably even more than the hork-bajir do to help them?  Yeah, that too.

#animorphs#hork bajir#animorphs meta#toby hamee#ket halpak#tobias fangor#animorphs spoilers#animorphs headcanon#hork bajir rights#naomi berenson
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some fandom disagreements are like "I see your point but I think this other aspect of the narrative is more significant," and some are like "I don't think you can read."

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"You interpret yeerks differently than I do, which sure."

vs.

"I'm pretty sure you haven't read an Animorphs book since you were 10, and even then probably didn't get past the first few in the series."

#fandom#petty fandom beef#animorphs#headcanons
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Reblogged kinsey3furry300
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Duuude don't question my version of events I'm such a reliable narrator. I'm literally the protagonist and the main character. You can literally read some of my internal thoughts, that clearly means you have complete access to an objective view of my thoughts and feelings and a correct impression of my characterization and the events unfolding around me. I'm not omitting any information from the audience. Nevermind that timeskip just now

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@warriorlid14 prev tags

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throws him in the ring

#animorphs#Marco animorphs#parahumans#worm#wormblr#Taylor Hebert
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Reblogged kinsey3furry300
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• Visser Three’s surrender is quiet, in the end.  He’s surrounded by enemies — Animorphs, rebel taxxons, his own head of security — and he didn’t get to be in charge of the Yeerk Empire by risking his own neck.  He dips Alloran’s head, lowers his tail, and offers no contest as Jake takes the helm.  As Jake switches on the Pool ship’s comms to radio the Blade ship, face-to-face with his brother once more.

  • «Erek,» Jake says.  «If you please.»
  • A single shot takes out the Blade ship’s main engine.  A second one destroys its auxiliary power.

• Below decks, Ax removes his hand from the Pool’s control panel with a sigh of… relief.  Regret.  Release.  17,372 yeerks swim on, unharmed.  And Erek disappears, tossing a bitter glance as he goes.

  • “So, now what?”  Tom's face cants into a smirk as the rebel yeerk crosses his arms, standing on the deck of the powerless Blade ship.  “We seem to be in a stando—”
  • «Look in the mirror, dumbass,» Marco snaps.  Front-facing camera, rather. The yeerk must do so, because he whips around to stare at Rachel.
  • “Hi.”  Rachel is human, unarmed.  She has one hand resting lightly on a control panel.  “I turned your dracon cannon a hundred eighty degrees.  I push this, and it fires.”
  • “That would kill you too,” Tom’s yeerk snaps.
  • Rachel bares her teeth in a smile.  “Duh.  But look around you.  Count to six.  I’m here with no backup, and no Plan B.  I woke up this morning knowing how this would go.  Either we both die… or you get out of Tom’s head and we both get to live.”  She rolls her fingertips over the trigger button, grin so fierce you could almost miss how much her hands shake.  “Give me an excuse, slug.  I’ve been waiting for three years to fry you.”
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Genuinely, how on Earth are you so good at this? Like, I'll be saying the same thing at the end of Eleutherophobia, but you write this world like Applegate is straight-up possessing you. A scenario where Esplin actually works with the Animorphs? The insight on Taxxon culture I'm taking as canon now?(And tobias stamping his membership card for a *fifth* species, or close enough, the boy can't stop adding to her repiertoire). This is one of your best, among an astronomical bar already.

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I went back and forth on the "cannibalism" vs. "cannibalism mention" tags for way too long when posting this. 😆 Because like, if you're a person, and you eat a person... but you're not the same species... but you've been semi-adopted into the same culture... but you're both permanently in animal bodies... but you have to eat her to respect her death rituals... but you didn't technically get her permission first... but this is a culture with no cannibalism taboos... but you do have other ways to get food... then does it still count as cannibalism?

Arbron's right, we need more words for all this nuance.

#animorphs#animorphs ficlet#long post#animorphs aus#visser three#visser jake#minor character death#gore#yeerks#taxxons#canon typical cannibalism
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Reblogged ggwweenn1
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the most important thing you can do when writing a story is to include an alien character whos like incredibly bizzare and weird and eccentric and seems to go against like EVERY aspect of your worlds expected norms, and then later introduce more characters of the same alien species, but theyre like perfectly normal and Also find that first guy weird

#animorphs#aximili esgarrouth isthill#ax animorphs
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Anonymous asked:

Worst animorph other than Rachel to get amnesia in megamorphs 1?

thejakeformerlyknownasprince answered:

[Nonny, you shall have to see if you agree with my reasoning or not.]

• I can't tell you who I am, or where I'm from.  As in, I can't.  Seriously, I can't remember.  I woke up in an area of forest that I didn't recognize, which could mean anything — I don't remember any places.  Maybe these woods were just outside my house — if I even had a house.  Maybe I was thousands of miles from my home.  I just don't know.

• I woke up under a tree.  I was lying on the uneven stick-stabbing ground, my head aching like someone was banging at the top of it with a rubber mallet, trying to unstick my brains like so many rusted-on gaskets.  If so, it wasn't working.

  • "Hello?" I said out loud.  It came out weirdly garbled.  My mouth wasn't moving how I expected, something misaligned.  That wasn't right.  I just knew, in a way I didn't know which was was home or even my own name, that I wasn't supposed to sound like this.
  • I was meant to have lips and teeth, not this... this ceratioid thing I could feel on the front of my face when I raised my fingers toward it.  Toward, because I wimped out before actually touching it.  It was like an open wound.  It was not a part of this body.  I knew that much.  I was certain.
  • Focus, I told myself.  You need to figure out what to do with... this.  You'll die out here if you don't.
  • And then I felt it, something moving deep under my skin.  A sound escaped me then, a whimper of pure horror but with a bird's hoarse cry somewhere in there as well.  I swear, at that exact moment, a cloud passed over the sun.  Just one, where the sky was otherwise clear, and then it was gone.  But it was like the weather was changing around me with my thoughts — or else my vision was.
  • This was wrong, this was so wrong, this wasn't supposed to be happening...  But before long it was done, and I was left with two lips, several teeth, and a much clearer voice.
  • "Hello?" I said again.  Better.
  • "Hello!"  I yelled it this time, twisting my aching head to look around myself.  "Hello!  Please, someone help me, I'm lost!  I need help!  I was flying, and then I fell—"
  • Abruptly I stopped talking.  Flying?  What was that about?  Flying.  I was...  I looked again at my fingers, my nails, my arms and legs and toes.  Human.  Humans didn't fly.
  • "I hit my head!" I called, an edge of real desperation now.  "And now I'm losing my mind!"
  • The echoes faded into the trees, and no one answered.

• After another minute of sitting there and shouting, all the while battling the urge to cry, I gave up on shouting and pushed to my feet.  Turning in a slow circle, I tried to get my bearings.  Trees, all around me, most of them so tall that their lowest branches were above my head.  Sunlight from mid-morning or mid-afternoon, I couldn't tell which one.  The only thing out of place was the spot of blood on the trunk of the tree directly above me, about twenty feet up on its trunk.  I could feel a swelling on the right side of my forehead, but if I fell from that height, why didn't I have any broken bones or even scrapes?  As I stood there, another sound gradually became clear to me: water, from somewhere to my right.

  • "You're supposed to follow running water, right?"  I spoke out loud, in case there was anyone looking for me.  "It's a... clothesline.  I think.  A straight line you follow if you're lost in the woods, because otherwise you naturally walk in circles."
  • Then I shut my mouth, listening for the sound.  Definitely to my right.  I started that way, listening carefully.  Bare feet and forested floor were a painful combination, but I didn't exactly see a K-Mart anywhere around here and I didn't want to sit there under that tree forever.
  • Had I heard that clothesline thing in science class, or in some cartoon that made up different rules for reality?  This was insane.  I was insane.  I was scared, I was lost, I was going to die out here, and maybe my campground was 500 FEET AWAY but I'd never find it again because I'd been dumb enough to climb a tree and then brain myself so hard I hallucinated feathers onto my arms.
  • "Keep going," I whispered to myself.  "Just keep going.  Find help.  That's all you have to do."

• The sun had moved to directly overhead and then started setting a little, my legs were trembling-tired, and my feet hurt like crazy by the time I decided to give up and drink the river water.  Moving water was safer, right?  And it would be stupid to die of thirst this close to a water source.  Drinking the cold, slightly dirt-flavored water made my headache go away, which for some reason made my feet hurt even worse.

  • "Let's review what I know," I said out loud, to distract myself, picking along the river bank.  "I speak English.  I know what English is.  I know what a clothesline is.  I know what clothes, are, though..."  I looked down at my raggedy skintight togs.  "I'm not very good at picking them out before a hike.  I'm a human.  Right?"  I frowned at the trees.  "I'm human, I guess.  What does a human feel like?"
  • This made my head hurt worse.
  • "Okay," I said.  "No.  Only humans wear clothes.  Normally more clothes than this, but..."
  • I stopped talking then.  Stopped walking as well.  Held my breath, even, trying to block out the river.  I thought I'd heard...
  • And then, faster than thought, I was sprinting through the woods as fast as my torn feet would carry me.

• When I burst through into the clearing, I let out a yelp of sheer joy: humans!  There were humans there in the clearing, seven or eight of them.  Better yet, most of them were walking around with trash bags and grabby tools, cleaning up trash, and they all had matching t-shirts.  Nonprofit.  The word just came to me: nonprofit!  By now I was stumble-running down the hill.  They were volunteers for some charity.  I was saved!

  • "Hey, kid."  That was a guy with patterned tattoos wrapping his arms under the sleeves of his cheery turquoise t-shirt.  "You okay?"
  • "No!"  It came out half-wail.  "No, I'm not okay.  I'm lost.  I got lost in the woods.  I think I hit my head, and now I'm having trouble remembering things.  Please help."
  • The guy squinted at me like he wasn't sure what to make of this story.  I knew how it sounded — like something from a crime drama — and I hadn't even mentioned any of the really weird stuff yet.
  • "Okay," he said slowly.  Moving forward, he dropped his trash bag on the ground to put a warm hand on my arm.  "Let's get you inside, right?  There's a park shelter right over here, it's got running water and everything."

• The guy with the tattoos introduced himself as Bill, and the medic who met us in the shelter as Sharon.  They were both so nice it was almost overwhelming, bringing me granola bars and bottled water and a blanket I didn't need.  The shelter was sparse, just two tables and four benches in a common area and bathrooms off to the side, but it felt so good to be inside.  Sharon put me through concussion checks, then she disinfected and bandaged my feet.  Bill ducked out to talk to his fellow volunteers, probably about getting me a ride to the nearest hospital that might know who I was.

  • "Sorry we don't have any spare shoes," Sharon said.  "For now..."  She produced a pair of fuzzy socks, the kind with no-slip soles, and she even slid them gently over my feet before I could offer to do it myself.
  • "Thank you," I said.  "I'm so lucky I found you."  Like the t-shirts and the blanket, the socks were marked with the nonprofit's name.
  • The Sharing.

• When I stepped out of the little shelter, I found every one of the volunteers standing in two small clusters, whispering to each other and looking at me.  News of the crazy kid had apparently spread.  I was about to retreat back inside, but—

  • "Cassie?  Cassie Osei?"
  • The guy striding toward me was tall, light-skinned, with brown hair and a slow-spreading smile.  I could swear he reminded me of someone, though the name eluded me.
  • "Is that my name?" I said.  "Cassie?"
  • He stopped walking, eyebrows drawing together.  "What's that supposed to mean?"
  • "I'm sorry," I said, "I hit my head, and now I don't remember anything.  I don't even remember who you are."
  • The guy turned, exchanging a glance with the volunteer to his left.  Something passed between them that I wasn't privy to, but I could see it happen.
  • "Why don't we step back inside and talk in private."  He turned back to me, smiling again.  "My name's Tom, and I know you.  Sounds like you have quite the story to tell."

• I'm not sure why I ended up telling Tom everything.  Maybe because everyone was being so nice — he even pulled a bench out for me to sit, almost gentlemanly.  Maybe because he did seem faintly familiar, in a way no one else here did.  He said we'd known each other a long time, so I guess I was half-remembering a younger version of him, which fit with how some part of me expected him to be a little younger, a little shorter, more chubby and less muscular.  Warmer, too, if I was being honest.

  • "You had bird parts, when you woke up," Tom said, when I was done.  "And you didn't have a mouth, until you morphed yourself one."
  • A jolt went through me, at the word morphed.  It seemed to have the same effect on the guy standing in the door, who shifted in position and cleared his throat loudly at the word.
  • "No, I..." I glanced at the door, then back to Tom.  "I had a mouth, there was just something wrong with it.  You mean morphed like a caterpillar?  I'm not sure."
  • "Okay."  Tom sat down on top of the table, which — with me still on the bench — put him both further over me and a little closer to me than I was strictly comfortable with.  "Look.  Owen..."  He tilted his head toward the door.  "Is just nervous, because he thinks that we might have a big problem on our hands before the next two hours are up.  Do you think that that's the case?"
  • "Um."  I scooted back a little on the bench, trying to be subtle about it.  "How do we know each other again?"
  • "Cassie."  He touched a hand lightly to his chest.  "I'm your foster brother.  We grew up in the group home together, remember?  Even if you don't remember me, do you think you can remember any details about our foster mom Helen, or our dad Ricky?  What about our cat Snowflake?"
  • He was watching me closely as he spoke, and I could see it all over his face: he didn't believe me.  I knew it sounded far-fetched when I'd said it, but I'd been expecting condescension, not this level of suspicion.
  • "If you say so," I said. "I think I remember scooping litter boxes." It was the only true statement that came to mind.  "Do we have a lot of pets?"
  • Sighing, Tom dropped his head.  His hand went into his pocket, and I tensed, but when he removed it he was just holding an ordinary thermometer.  "Okay," he said, "I think you're running a fever, because you're not making much sense.  I'm going to check, for Sharon's records.  That all right with you?"
  • I don't know why I stood up then, my heart pounding so hard that I could feel it in my own eardrums.  Why I was staring at the ordinary plastic thermometer in his hand like it really was a gun he'd pulled out.  "Is there..."  I cleared my throat.  "Is there maybe an oral thermometer I could use instead?  Or one of those ones that goes under the armpit?  I just..."
  • It was the kind that went into your ear.  Why was that scary?  I didn't know, but I also couldn't get myself to calm down enough to sit there and do this completely ordinary medical check.
  • "Pro tip, andalite."  Tom's voice had gone ice-cold now, no emotion at all.  He set the thermometer on the table next to him, standing up to walk down the bench toward me.  "Next time you impersonate a human, try doing any research at all.  Humans don't morph, you sanctimonious imbecile, and Cassie Osei has met Tom Berenson maybe three times in her life."
  • "Don't—"  My voice came out small, and I felt like I was shrinking under his gaze.  "Please, just leave me al—"
  • The wind was rising around us, sky darkening as Tom loomed closer over me.  He was crazier than I was.
  • "Shit!" Owen said.  "Now you've done it!"  He strode around Tom, hand coming out of his jacket pocket.  "Stop!" he shouted.  "Or the Veleek—"
  • Later, it would occur to me to wonder why the thing he pointed at me scared me even worse than the thermometer had.  It was just a clunky black flashlight, nothing special.  But that would come later.  In that moment, I was distracted by the entire building exploding around us.

• The roof was gone in an instant, simply pureed into fragments.  The building's walls and furniture shattered around me, ripped into chunks and then shredded down to dust by the force of the whirling mass of devouring blades that all the while roared like a tornado.  The scream of wood ripping apart, the jackhammer shatter of broken cement underneath, and — worst of all — human screams as well.  "WATER!" someone was shouting.  "GET WATER!"  And then the words were lost under an unending cry.

  • I cowered down underneath the bench, half-sobbing with terror and shock.  I wanted it all to stop, to go away, and more than anything I wanted to disappear.  I wanted to become nothing, nothing at all...
  • And I was.  My hands had already shriveled away, where they had been clamped around my head, and my legs were disappearing as well.  My whole body was getting smaller and smaller, becoming translucent, no more than a fingernail clipping in size, bones and hair willed away by the force of my sheer overwhelm.

• The queen.  The queen needed help.  The workers had to help the queen, and she was so very far away.  But that was all right.  These six strong legs were enough to carry this body until it dropped, trying to reach her, and then this body would serve as fuel for others.  Just like a taxxon, constructing a living hive.

• Taxxon? A nothing thought. Never mind.

• The legs powered on.  The thoughts were not troublesome, not when the queen was in need.

• Taxxon.  The legs stopped.  The antennae sought, the feet scrabbling, but—  Taxxon.  I knew that word.  I.  I knew.  I knew it, because I was.  I was.  I was.

  • «Oh my god!» I shouted, there in the termite tunnel I'd built for myself.  «Oh god, oh my god, I have to demorph!»
  • Cassie.  I thought of Cassie.  And suddenly there was so much to think about.  The hair I'd cut short, after I got tired of maintaining my braids, and the nose I liked but the hips I hated, the spine I was hoping would grow taller before I was done with puberty.  Cassie.  The hands I used to pick up ducklings for bottle feedings, the knees I braced with when I was lifting a bale of hay, the voice that everyone said sounded just like my mom — My mom!  Dr. Michelle Rhonda Osei.
  • By the time I was done tearing my human body from the ground, I was laughing so hard I was fully hyperventilating from the insanity of it all.  I was me.  Me.
  • "Morphing," I whispered into the grass, where termites couldn't hear me and wouldn't care.  "I just had to complete a morph, and it healed me.  Of course!"
  • I was on the ground, just into the edge of the woods.  It felt like I'd walked for hours in termite morph, in search of that dead queen, and maybe I had.  But I'd only made it about fifteen feet in that time.  Still, I was away.  That'd been way too close.  If that enormous wind-monster-thing hadn't happened to show up just as I was starting to morph...

• And then I stood up. I turned around.  And then I just stood there, looking over the clearing, for a very long time.

• It'd ripped them all apart.  I took nearly an hour to confirm, going from body to body trying to find anyone intact enough to bother checking for a pulse.  Nine of them, I thought, though it was hard to tell with so little left of some.  I could recognize now the two clusters that had formed when I had walked out of the woods: full members.  And innocent civilians.  All dead now.  For what?

  • Water.  Owen, or maybe Tom — oh god, Tom, I was going to have to be the one to tell Jake — had yelled for water, in the last seconds before the many-toothed alien thing had gotten them.  So the controllers had known what it was.  And they'd thought water could save them.
  • I threw up, when I was done.  I'd been swallowing it down for a while, but at some point I was so spent I couldn't anymore.  I wiped tears and snot off my face, when I wiped my mouth, and I didn't care.  Maybe I should have been glad, at least six of my enemies dead — seven if you counted what I suspected about that thermometer — but I couldn't bring myself to be even bittersweet about it when there were nine of my own species slaughtered around me.

• "Okay," I whispered.  It was a day for talking to myself.  Like soothing a spooked horse.  "Okay, Cassie.  Get home, and get the others.  Tell Ja—"  I stopped, then, because that part I couldn't say out loud.  But I finally knew who I was, and what I had to do next.

  • So I focused on my inner osprey, the morph that had gotten me into this.  And I started to change.
  • I saw the dust monster coming this time.  With osprey eyes, of course I did.  And I flew like the devil trying to get away.  But even my wings were no match for its speed, and before I knew it I was surrounded by those terrible ripping blades.
  • Closing my eyes then, I gave in.  The way I hadn't, not even to the termite mind.  But I was so tired, I couldn't bring myself to care.

• To my surprise, it didn't devour me.  It simply carried me, enveloped in its mass, so surrounded by dust that I couldn't see out.  And when at last it opened itself, I was dumped into the bridge of a spaceship.  A spaceship manned by hork-bajir, and taxxons, and exactly one andalite whose face was all too familiar by now.

  • «Cassie?» a voice behind me said.
  • Scrabbling around on my talons, I found myself face-to-face with a gorilla inside a steel-sided cage.  «Marco?»
  • He crossed his arms, tilting his chin down at me.  «Where have you been all day, young lady?  We've been looking all over for you, which is how Ax and I ended up blown to Oz by the Wicked Witch of the East over there.»
  • Marco.  It was Marco.  I wanted to laugh, and cry, and hug him, and then cry a whole lot more.  «It's not a cyclone,» I said instead.  «It's called a Veleek.  And I think I know how to beat it.»
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I thought it was going to be Tobias getting re-nothlited as a human at first.

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@nachtare I did consider that idea! But Tobias can't morph as of MM1, so I had to set it aside.

#animorphs au#long post#animorphs#animorphs aus#anitv#megamorphs 1#the andalite's gift#minor character death#au

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