#Hork-Bajir Chronicles

[yalikejazz9]

Made this for my sci-fi class,

(The teacher is also a fan of animorphs so I couldn't not)

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Animorphs audiobooks — how did they choose the Chronicles narrators?

Look. I LOVE how Scott Brick reads The Ellimist Chronicles — he might be my favorite narrator yet. He comes off as super condescending but with a hint of melancholy. Like he really is this infinite cosmic gamerboy wearily explaining the universe to a stupid little human.

But why the hell is MacLeod Andrews (who normally voices Jake) narrating The Andalite Chronicles? Like, I can appreciate not wanting to cast an entirely new voice for Elfangor, but Adam Verner (who voices Ax) is RIGHT THERE! Or you use Michael Crouch (who voices Tobias) if there's a schedule conflict. Why would you recast the guy who does Jake as Elfangor? Why would you then NOT do that for the other Chronicles?

Because I could see an interesting argument for having Jake's voice narrate Elfangor's story, IF we then got Tobias's voice narrating Dak and Aldrea's story, then Rachel's voice narrating Toomin's story, then Marco's voice narrating Edriss's story. This still begs the question of why Jake and not Ax, but at least that way it'd be consistent.

[some-guy-named-john]

I'm re-reading the Animorphs books for the first time since 2001 and this scene from The Hork-Bajir Chronicles is just the latest of many moments that took my breath away.

"Either they will learn to fight and hurt and kill, or they will learn to be slaves. Both will destroy them."

[autoraton]

horked bajir

[kooldewd123]

The parallels in the Hork-Bajir Chronicles are driving me crazy. Oh, a group of peaceful individuals is forced into guerrila warfare? They're forced to grapple with sacrificing their own morality in exchange for the survival of their race? They're just trying to hold out for long enough for the Andalites to come save them, but the Andalites see them as so low priority that by the time they get around to helping, it's too late? The Andalites ignore a species that the Yeerks see as their greatest asset? Dak Hamee names his son after an Andalite, and his grandson, Jara Hamee, names his daughter after a human? Dak, a Hork-Bajir seer, witnesses the rise of the Yeerk empire, and his great-granddaughter, Toby, another Hork-Bajir seer, is instrumental in its downfall? Holy shit I can't take much more of this.

[lilliankillthisman]

I will say, though... I get it. I'm a Visser Three apologist to my core and this book has only cemented that. Like...

This line got me, OK? His whole thing has me in a chokehold. He's awful, he's a loser, he has the most cliche villain lines imaginable, and he's my favourite character in the series bar none.

[inkmaze]

animorphs will just drop a passage in a volume that will rotate in your thoughts for decades to come

[drowningcrickets]

MORE andalite content will be coming soon, and in higher quality

this is just the beginning

[elfangorsson]

Had anything, anything at all gone differently, could the yeerks and the Arn had formed an alliance? The Arn could have easily made hosts for the Yeerks. I'm imagining they could create something without a typical sentient mind and a lots of space in their heads for the yeerks to inhabit. Because that's the Yeerks' motivation, to have enough host bodies. I think if they had that they wouldn't need a war.

Obviously a big theme of the story is different species not being able to work together outside of a few individuals. But the solution seems so simple. (I haven't read the entire series so if it's somehow touched upon lmk)

[emeraldmew]

I would love to hear the Ellimist Chronicles as done by the Mechanisms.

[foundfamilyhq]

[toothlessloveshiccup]

[joemerl]

Writer's Month 2023, Day 5: word: sun | setting/AU: poolside

Available on FF.net here.

Summary: Everything is improving for the Yeerk Empire. All it cost was everything they'd ever known.

Word count: 394

[kooldewd123]

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

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

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

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

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

But then the Andalites came.

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

[lilliankillthisman]

Incredible Visser 3 lore in this one... he's been an Andaboo from the beginning that's so cute

[not-so-superheroine]

i haven't seen art of one in over a decade but i do recall exactly what hork-bajir look like.

i read all hork-bajir spinoff series and it added so many details on their society and stuff.

i should reread, but i am already backlogged on reading atm.