#YOU ARE ALL YEERKS

[lizord-lord]

haha i should really catch up on the muppet joker lore-

why are there yeerks now.

[i-assign-you-animorphs]

trick or treat from @princeseerow !

(its a sideblog so i cant send asks from it lol)

You get…

Escargot!

[petrichorca]

I'm frothing at the mouth for tomorrow but while we wait, maybe catch up with our Animorphs OFMD alien Stede/human Ed fic? 👉👈 there are four extra fingers and two extra hearts in play. No Animorphs knowledge needed, just a little belief in that we've got you (we do). AO3 link right here!

Cc @ghostalservice

[lilacnothlit]

Most dedicated Larpers ever written.

Stephenie Meyer's sci-fi novel The Host is like. it's almost so much. the alien bodysnatchers at the center of the plot are like Animorph's yeerks if they got really into cottagecore. no, they don't want intergalactic war and domination! they want intergalactic peace and domination! they make every planet they visit a peaceful socialist utopia and like, okay, yes, they have to violently take over the bodies of a planet's native inhabitants to do it. yes, they have to suppress the unwilling minds of their host bodies. yes they are for all intents and purposes committing a genocide of their chosen planets' initial inhabitants and then puppeting their husks around playing at homogeneous, sanitized versions of the cultures they destroyed. the alien main character mentions that even episodes of the Brady Bunch were scrubbed because they were deemed too violent. and they call themselves souls, which is so loaded on so many levels. impossible not to read into the spiritual connotations, especially when written by an author coming from the mormon church which so highly values mission trips. just by sympathizing with humans who don't want to be possessed, by helping them hide out and stay free, our protagonist becomes a pariah, an outlaw from her own society. peace is valued above all else but not peace for the colonized, who are meat to be processed. it's better this way. they had so much potential but squandered it with foolish violence so now we have the right to overtake them and make them live correctly. isn't it beautiful now? isn't everything perfect? there's like almost so much happening in this story except Stephenie's a fucking mormon so she never draws any meaningful connections to anything and the happy ending is that the alien brain parasite protag is gifted the body of a beautiful coma patient that she can "ethically" puppet around, easy peasy problem solved. also there's a fucking love triangle.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

"How dare you, now we're on a slippery slope to acknowledging that Tom is also not really an Animorphs character, he's a 98% hypothetical brother that Jake used to have before the series started" BUT ACTUALLY

I've had this thought in my head for months and never spat it out anywhere: tumblr girlies love to freak out over the whole "haunting the narrative" trope and that's what Tom is. Elfangor too in the more classic sense, but Tom is the fun new twist in the sense that we basically never get to interact with him in canon. He's at least mentioned in almost every if not every book and his body's there plenty, sure, but not him.

That is such a good point. Like, part of what I find so fascinating about Tom is that he witnesses huge chunks of the story, but does almost nothing because he has 0 agency. He's the only non-Animorph regularly present for battles and for the downtime in between, the only person period who has his level of insight into the Animorphs themselves (Jake especially, but also Rachel and Marco) while also having his level of insight into Yeerk Empire leadership.

He sees almost everything. He's there for the Animorphs' first mission and their last. He's there when the yeerks get the morphing power, when David kills Saddler, when Jara and Ket escape, when the taxxons go rogue. He's there, but he isn't.

Jake tells Ax in their first conversation: "I've lost a brother too" (#4). He says it to the reader: "I don't have a brother anymore" (#47). And then he doesn't, not anymore. Crayak said it all along: "Have you killed your brother yet?" (#27). Tom haunts the narrative, well before his death.

[myhyperfixationisiforgot]

animorphs was like yeah what if you (child soldier) promised your best friend (also a child soldier) that you would save him, and that you would kill him before letting the body-snatching parasites take him. what if you realized that you can't ever do both. you can't save him without the yeerks. you can't kill him because if he dies everyone you've ever known dies.

what if you literally have to cut him open while he screams and pleads for you to stop and kill him. he hates you for saving him. he hates himself for hating you. you hate yourself for doing it, and you hate him for making you choose. all you can do is wash the blood off and go eat dinner with your family. you will wonder if what you did was worth it for the rest of your life.

[kooldewd123]

The juxtaposition of horror and comedy is obviously a pretty essential part of Animorphs but I really wanna give a special shout-out to the sequence of books that goes

19: Cassie is lost in the woods with a Yeerk she refuses to kill and risks everything they've worked for in the naive hope of forming a peace.

20-22: The Animorphs bring in a new recruit, only to trap him in the body of a rat and leave him on an uninhabited island after realizing he's too much of a liability to keep around.

Hork-Bajir Chronicles: The tragic story of how the peaceful and innocent Hork-Bajir were lost to the Yeerks due to the Andalites' arrogant indifference.

23: Tobias is finally offered the promise of a real family but has it yanked away when they discover it's all a ruse.

24: YEEEAHH, IT'S THE FUCCKIN HELMACRONS, BABIY!!! YOU WANT MORE SOUL-WRENCHING CHARACYER DEVELOPMENT? NAH, WE DOING "HONEY, WHO SHEUNK THE ANIMORPHS" IN THIS BIYCH!

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Hi just finished this again last night, and hooo boy does it hold up!! Arguably even better on the reread, because you can See Shit Coming--lines that did not necessarily induce Dread on my first read absofuckenlutely do on subsequent passes (like, hello, "No matter what he loses, he'll always secure a replacement"?? OOF). Very Gothic, very trauma, very cold and dark and fucked up book, but WOW it was well done!!

I also super enjoyed the worldbuilding, here. Telling stories around the edges of various cataclysms and apocalypses, only to have those stories coalesce into something familiar with context revealed later was a supremely neat way to establish the state of the world (dog noses falling from the sky?? woah). And it was a neat way to weave in personal and town histories, too--the sheer volume of Integral Storytelling didn't register for me on the first read, but I appreciated it a lot more on the second.

This also remains one of THE most fascinating stories I've read with regard to POV, too, which. Unfortunately. Is ~Spoilers~, so I'm putting it under a cut here.

I know this isn't really billed as a "haunted house" story, but I put it on my reread list for NaNo prep (during which I shall be writing a haunted house story), and I do actually think this counts, still? Because my Parasite in Medicine, absolutely you're haunted, and the call is coming from inside the house host. In Simone's body, the Institute is haunted by the life, the brain, the personality it commandeered, and it was SO fascinating to watch the Institute's hold deteriorate over the course of the story. Much like in HARROW THE NINTH, rereading knowing who the secondary POV is makes you step back and go OH!!!!! The threads and hints are There, and watching them come together from In The Know is a hugely different experience, 10/10 recommend.

I also, on my reread, really enjoyed how there WASN'T a hard turning point, on the POV front? The threads started earlier than I recalled (I did read this two years ago, and I have the attention span of a goldfish, for context), and they kept snowballing, but it was still fuzzy to point to the moment of no return, which I really enjoyed, too. And the Emile stuff, and the second person Emile stuff, remained just as heartbreaking and gutwrenching and So Much Worse, Actually, to see all the hints that the Institute missed but were very clearly there. Just. Gah. What a BOOK!!

So, yeah, I'm definitely leaving this as 5 stars, I love it, I'll be rereading it periodically for the rest of my life, I think. If you can stomach it, I HIGHLY recommend it, but it's chock full of traumas (like. pretty much every one you can think of, actually), and it does NOT flinch away from the brutal stuff. Deeply, horrifyingly fucked up book, I love it with my whole heart.

Books of 2024: LEECH by Hiron Ennes.

This is a reread for me! I first read it when it came out in 2022, and it absolutely rewired my brain. It does so many fascinating POV things that I adore, and I'm excited to revisit it with ~Vague Recollections~ of plot reveals to see how many of them I spot ahead of time this go-round.

[church-of-crayak]

I have a theory that Visser 3 would have failed an invasion of Earth because he didn't understand human politics, and human nature. On the Yeerk and Andalite home worlds they have a few spaceports but they don't have the infrastructure and confusing nations that would make it impossible to fall.

If you strike an Andalite spaceport (the closest thing they have to a city) you cripple the Andalite War effort.

If you wipe out a major human city like say New York, or Tokyo there's many others to fight back and entire governments and militaries to fight back with completely different structures.

It seems that most alien races in the animorphs have a pretty united government.

yeah, it also helps that all these different spots humans exist in are Packed Full of us. we're incredibly fucking plentiful, that's what makes us so attractive as a host species, but it's also what makes us the hardest to scoop up in one go.

i think there's also something to be said about the fact that visser three's ultimate goal is not to conquer the human race, but to conquer the andalites. he's an andalite nerd & admirer first, and that means that for the entire earth invasion, instead of taking visser one's strategy at face value and keeping the yeerk invasion quiet and slow, he's worried instead about what happens five, ten steps down the line. he's not really concerned with the way humans work.

like...Edriss was the original leader of the earth invasion for a reason, and she did this and accomplished all she did by actually doing research into humans, infiltrating them herself, and finding out what makes them tick. She also made a bunch of enormous fucking mistakes, obviously, and she's got a very similar (albeit... very slightly less all-consumingly violent?) obsession with humanity as esplin does with andalites, which hurts more than it helps.

i think that as far as visser three is concerned, the humans could and should have been infested in droves on day one. he can't imagine a species being anywhere close to as resilient and awesome as the andalites, and that's where he fails. he's infinitely more concerned with the "andalite bandits" coming for him than he is about any of the humans he's subjugating turning on him (cough. cough. also the andalite bandits).

it also helps that he's just plain stupid

[rays-animorphs]

The dynamic between Ax and Jake is really something.

"Prince Jake"/"don't call me prince"/"yes, Prince Jake."

"I don't really understand how this human/American thing of having a leader with no authority works, so I'm going to project my expectations of military hierarchy onto you. We're going to have a relationship on my culture's terms."

"No, we're going to have a relationship on MY culture's terms, where I only have the power that my teammates decide to give me and they never actually have to do what I want and I can't do anything about it. You have to respect a request to call me the way I want to be called by the terms of my culture."

"Hmm, well you're my commanding officer by Andalite military standards so I have to do what you say, but also by those standards you can't absolve yourself of that role, so tough shit, prince. I will do (more or less) anything you tell me to, but I won't change my understanding of what our dynamic is because Andalite princes don't actually get to just turn over the entire military hierarchy so you don't get to do that either. And also, I want our relationship to exist on my culture's terms, and not yours."

And "prince" has such a romantic feel to it, very Chronicles of Narnia. I imagine some part of Jake LOVES being called "prince". It's such a status thing, and who doesn't like status? But at the same time, setting aside what "prince" actually means to Andalites, Americans don't have "princes". Not having princes (or kings or queens or hereditary titled nobility or any of that) is kind of the whole American deal, it's what America is, so Jake can't be a prince and also get a good grade in Being An American (something that is normal to want and possible to achieve.) And I think Jake cares a great deal about being a good American.

So he can't just not act like a prince (it's not enough that he calls for votes on big decisions and basically lets things go without consequences when the other kids go off and do their own thing or deliberately do things he told them not to do) he has to tell Ax to not call him a prince, over and over again.

At first I was mildly annoyed that Applegate went and did the very cliche thing of having a somewhat diverse team but making a white boy in charge, because there is ALWAYS a white boy in charge, and while that's still a relevant media critique in general, I do think Applegate at least did some interesting things with having a white boy in charge. Because...you can tell Jake was raised (is being raised, he's not done yet) with the expectation that he's likely to end up in some kind of leader/power role in society, and all the adventure stories with a white boy leader that talk about what it means to be a GOOD leader, he internalized all that, he knew it was aimed at him, he's got the American equivalent of noblesse oblige in spades, he's got a very strong internal sense of what abusing his power would look like and he wants, really badly, to NOT abuse his power. (And wow, this would be a different story if the Animorphs had coalesced around a leader who didn't have that ethic.)

And just like El in the Scholomance trilogy is wary of taking even the first step on the road to becoming an evil sorceress of great destruction, Jake is wary of taking even the first step to being a dictator, the road that ends with him going "I'm making all the decisions here and you all have to do what I say or else." (Which might well have caused the end of the Animorphs and therefor lost the war to the Yeerks, if he had done that.) So he has to say no to the title, over and over.

[thelesbianthespianposts]

Rachel Berenson is on the Villains Wiki and I’m mad

so I’m gonna go through this bullshit page and show how bullshit it is

Starting off, they call her an anti-heroine.

first off, I think that definition isn’t great, but also, Rachel has a LOT of heroic attributes. She’s brave, she’s strong, she clearly loves her friends, she’s determined, she’s loyal and she shows regret for her less heroic actions. Plus, in the more literal definition of anti-hero, (a character who works against the protagonist but isn’t the antagonist), she IS a protagonist. She never works against the animorphs except when she was cut in half and one half was all of her strength with none of her inhibition.

They call her a monster??? She’s a child. And while it’s true the war affected her psychologically, it did that to everyone else too. If you want a character that turned into a cruel irrational monster, look no further than her first cousin, Jake.

Like this is much worse than what Rachel has going on. (Not saying Jake is a villain btw I’m just calling out the hypocrisy).

The entry tries to characterize Rachel as some remorseless killing machine when it’s just not true. She constantly thinks about her actions. Honestly this page reads like she wrote it about herself because it lists all her insecurities as fact.

This is when she gets put back together, she has to come to terms with the fact that she is not pure killing machine, but not completely innocent either. And she’s scared!

This is my favorite Rachel introspection. The idea that she finds comfort in her hubris because it means she’s not alone is so important. She clearly hates herself for enjoying the fighting, but seeing that people throughout history also dealt with that makes her feel more human.

(Wrong use of whom, left out a was, terrible run on sentence)

(Before she dying?? Girl) But anyway, this blatant misrepresentation of Rachel’s conversation with the Ellimist is wild. It frames the conversation as if Rachel was mauled and the Ellimist came in to call her a mistake. That’s not what happens. He does say he never intended Rachel to be an animorph, but she had proven herself invaluable to the team. Then, he tells her something that invalidates this whole page, I’m guessing why they didn’t mention it.

“You were brave. You were strong. You were good.” It serves as a moment of relief, making Rachel know that her insecurities were wrong and that she was a good person, despite her actions. She dies with that knowledge, providing her with a sense of closure that’s really good narratively, and brought tears to my eyes.

Marco, albeit reluctant originally, enjoyed the war. Jake towards the end of the series definitely enjoyed escalating the war. Ax, with his authoritarian propaganda against yeerks ingrained in his mind enjoyed the war and even suggested using harsher tactics on yeerks several times. Rachel did enjoy fighting, yes, but it was always a topic for her self reflection. Her love for fighting was her big flaw she had to work through narratively. It makes no sense to use that as justification to call her a villain.

Anyway- have some of my favorite Rachel moments I didn’t already include

Her awesome shopping logic- she would never call it “girl math”

Love her aside about Cassie and Jake bc we know Cassie was insecure and thought Jake wouldn’t like her bc she’s Black, so it’s nice to see her defending it even to Tobias.

On that topic, I love this interaction. (Obvi the kind of dated “colorblind” thing isn’t great now but it’s the 90s so it’s how they would talk about it) but Rachel is so quick to assure Cassie that her fears are unfounded, but in a nice and comforting way that doesn’t invalidate Cassie’s feelings.

Just some funnies

[ganymedesclock]

Tell me more about parasites and their hosts. Do you think the dynamic works if neither is aware of the other?

Before all else, any simplified dynamic has nigh infinite potential and how you explore it depends entirely on what you personally are looking for.

In my own case, a lot of my relationship with the idea of parasitism comes from my own mental health being strongly dependent on where I live- being able to return to home like a save point in a horror game. This sense of constantly being dependent on comfort, not merely as a normal person is but to the extent that I've felt like I'll be unable to cope if I can't get home in time or haven't built adequate mini 'safe rooms' (e.g. my car or a hotel room) to recharge, has formed a lot of my relationship with the idea of parasitism and the idea of haunted houses.

Both, to me, centrally focus on the idea of dependency on equilibrium. A house can't really chase you down- while there's certainly haunted house stories that give it the power to trap or pursue, to me, the most compelling angle is often one of necessity. Someone weighing the ghosts, the violence, the blood on the walls, and having to ask themselves if this is really worse than being homeless, or losing some advantage or shelter that you have here that can't be found elsewhere.

In the case of parasitism, the host is the haunted house. It may be simply indifferent to the parasite's survival; it may be actively hostile to and trying to rid itself of the 'guest'. But both parties have to weigh the odds- is it worth tearing into your own walls just to get at the interloper, is it worth staying in a place that unknowingly tolerates your existence at best and hates you at worst if the alternative is being laid barren in the world?

As a child, I remember reading the Animorphs books and one thing that always struck me as an unexpected source of pathos was how bleak and miserable the yeerks' default existence was. While we mostly experienced them from the horror of their would-be victims, people terrified and paranoid that those around them were being controlled, made prisoners in their own minds... the book where Cassie is briefly host to a yeerk and the first thing said yeerk does is, rather than focus on their agreement or advantages, start running around wildly and making use of Cassie's morphing power for the sheer wild euphoria of being able to.

As much as they are the Bad Guys in the story- invaders, body snatchers, sometimes sadists- there's something to be said about the torture of a fully sapient and intelligent being living as a nearly senseless, barely mobile creature by default. A tapeworm is perhaps lucky it cannot evaluate its existence in comparison to other life forms.

And, yeah, sure, parasites trip a particular contrarian reflex in me that I always want to root around and play with things that are seen as too icky or evil to be 'worth exploring', whether or not there's even any actual morality attached to things. Parasites do nothing on a basis of sadism- 'parasitism' is how they survive just as much as herbivory is how a rabbit survives.

It's instead on a basis of need.

And the point where we need others- especially imperfectly, reluctantly, warily, always hesitating on these dynamics of exploitation- and especially when it comes to the body which we often see as the most private bastion of the self- is where some really juicy dynamics can spring from.

[sarifel-corrisafid-ilxhel]

I am playing with an idea where the Yeerk Peace Movement, or portions of it, have a new mission after the Yeerk War is over. The Yeerk Empire scattered aliens from their homeworlds to the furthest reaches of the Yeerk Empire's territory, and getting everybody back to their homeworlds should be a large part of cleanup operations.

However, we get zero indication the Andalites have any interest in doing stuff like that. They happily leave most of the aliens on Earth on Earth to become Nothlits or citizens of Wyoming, so getting people back home is clearly not a priority. The only mentioned Andalite ops post-war are dealing with Yeerk imperial remnants (which have been rebranded as Pirates to rob them of legitimacy) and downsizing the combat fleet now that the war is over. So I'm thinking maybe the YPM get the job instead.

My guess is Earth governments come up with the idea first - after all, the Yeerks undoubtedly relocated a bunch of Humans to other planets, and it'd be very out of character for any Earth government to say "This is fine, you can leave our citizens stranded light-years from home."

Plus, the YPM have experience with Yeerk tech and spacefaring, more than anyone else on Earth does. Hmmm... But then there's the issue that the Andalites absolutely hate the idea of Humans getting Yeerk ships, so which ship or ships will get used for this? What's the ultimate crew makeup like? Are there armed Andalite guards on the ship with orders to eliminate the crew if they act funny? What deep space hazards do they encounter? Which planets do they visit? Does Prince Aximili get to make a cameo in his big important space captain role? So many possibilities.

I'm gonna keep playing with this idea.

[bogleech]

i dont really go to dr who or anything but i feel like your nazi/fascism allegory immediately falls through once you make whatever youre using "born like that", implying that everyone that is a nazi or everyone that is a facist was Born evil and therefore you dont have to worry about falling victim to nazi rhetoric because Youre not one of those evil bad guys and you dont have to worry about any of your friends or family being neo nazis because clearly theyre one of the good guys + you can easily tell who the bad guys are even though its. a far much more complex thing than that and youre going to run into someone that you think is a cool, chill person but it turns out theyre jsut really good at hiding their fascist beliefs.

Yeah, exactly, if a narrative wants me to think the alien invaders are actually morally despicable then they need to show me that they're capable of anything we would consider kindness or that not all of them are the same! If they hatch out of the queen slug's spores with an automatic instinct to find and eat babies then that can't really be considered any more good or evil than a cat's drive to eat birds. It's an unfortunate problem for other species but never works as an allegory for an ideological choice! One of the best subversions of this are the Orks in Warhammer 40,000, of all things. If I remember right, they were the result of an advanced species using biotechnology to create their own "warrior caste," deliberately "stupider" and driven by a lust for violence, so basically a sub-race created by eugenicists be expendable military slaves. How well that worked out for the civilization is obvious, but the setting never treats the Orks as necessarily good or evil but more of a chaotic force that has no idea what it's really doing at any given time. Conversely, the Yeerks in Animorphs were given a lot of complex, conflicting motivations that feel pretty human. I ultimately end up feeling bad for them as a whole because they're pitiful little slugs you can crush with one hand, and most of what they do is driven by a mix of fear and radical indoctrination. Their leader, however, pretty much is a space hitler who can be held completely accountable for the war as well for horrible things done to his own kind in order to enforce their obedience. And we do still get good-guy yeerks who rebel against that system!

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Relating to this post, if animorphs was greenlit for an 8 episode PJO style series, and you weren’t sure if more seasons would come up, what books would you adapt? Would Ax even be there? I would probably introduce him in episode 2 but I know less about animorphs.

To answer the second question: Ax would indeed be hard to solve. I think all undersea adventures would be off the table for budgetary reasons, even today, but you wouldn't want it to look like AniTV's thing where Ax just stands around in the woods yelling "Help!" until Cassie wanders by.

I'd solve this by simply having Ax be on the fighter with Elfangor when he crash-lands. Two issues I foresee here:

It makes the fact that Elfangor should morph to escape glaringly obvious.

It begs the question of how Jake ends up leader if Ax has more yeerk-fighting expertise.

For #1, I think the most interesting resolution would be if Elfangor's shot dead by a yeerk sniper midway through explaining the invasion. The scene would have to engineer a reason for him to be apart from the kids at the time — maybe he steps back into his fighter to return the morphing cube, and then a Bug Fighter shoots it from overhead? — but any exposition he doesn't cover could be taken up by Ax.

For #2, I think you could do a little humor and characterization with Jake and Ax playing hot-potato over responsibility for the team. Maybe Jake speaks for everyone when it's just the humans, but once Elfangor dies he starts asking Ax what to do, and they go back and forth for a while with "I thought YOU knew what to do!" "No, I thought YOU knew!" before Marco or Tobias suggests a vote and Jake gets elected to lead.

To answer the first question: I'd make the following 8 episodes:

Roughly the events of #1 (AKA Jake's story): Elfangor lands, the kids learn to morph, they infiltrate The Sharing, they fail to rescue Tom, Tobias gets stuck.

Parts of #7, MM1, and #17 (AKA Rachel's story): The kids learn about the ground-based kandrona and destroy it, but there are all kinds of downstream consequences. Rachel gets injured during the battle and wanders off with no memory, Ax recruits disgruntled yeerks to help him contact his dad, Jake gets his hopes up about Tom, and a whole bunch of yeerks end up dead or addicted to oatmeal.

Combo of #13 and #23 (AKA Tobias's story) (AKA all of AniTV's good ideas): Tobias stumbles on a group of escaped former human-controllers, who help him plan a mission to break into the yeerk pool and free some hork-bajir. While going through their files, Tobias finds intel about Elfangor's hirac dilest. He saves Jara and Ket, retrieves Elfangor's CD, and discovers it has some kind of baked-in genetic override that restores his morphing power. With Ax, he reads Elfangor's life story.

Some of #19 with most of #29 (AKA Cassie's story): The team falls ill with an alien virus, forcing Cassie to venture into the yeerk pool alone in search of a cure. She ends up trapped in (the woods? a back room? a quicksand pit?) with Aftran and Karen for a few days, long enough for them to become friends and reconcile their differences. Aftran helps Cassie escape with intel that will save Ax before she herself returns to the pool sans host.

Mostly #30 and #45 (AKA Marco's story): Marco is out in public when he spots his dead mom, and follows her as a bug long enough to realize she's controlled by Visser One who is plotting an attack on the hork-bajir valley. Through letting Visser Three in on her plot, Marco discredits her and gets her charged with treason. As Visser One is about to be executed, the Animorphs grab Eva and drag her off to starve out the yeerk. The last scene is Eva and Marco telling a very surprised Peter that they need to talk.

Parts of #37, #46, and #51 (AKA Ax's story): Eva, Peter, and Ax build a radio that will let them talk to the Andalite Navy. Ax learns that a mission is already on Earth — he finds Gonrod et al. and offers to help them, with most of that plot playing out. Ax prevents Estrid from using the quantum virus by threatening to drop a nuclear bomb on the yeerk pool with her crew inside. Estrid reveals that the virus was a last-ditch attempt to save humanity, and that after this the andalites are writing off Earth entirely.

Combo of #49, #50, and #51 (AKA The End): The Animorphs' human DNA gets discovered, probably matching Jake to Tom for simplicity's sake. They evacuate Cassie's and Rachel's families, and start to notify the authorities. At a key moment, Ax reveals that he stole a morphing cube from Gonrod. Jake suggests making more Animorphs, but is acting reckless about it in the aftermath of losing his family — sure enough, after recruiting James et al., Jake walks into a trap and Tom's yeerk gets the morphing cube. The episode ends with Tom's yeerk popping up in the hork-bajir valley, offering to make a deal.

Mostly #54 (AKA The Beginning): Rachel dies, the Blade ship escapes, Cassie becomes the alien-human ambassador, Marco gets famous, Tobias lives in a tree, Jake teaches the next generation how to morph, and Ax hunts the Blade ship. To give a little more resolution than we get in canon, maybe Ax himself comes back to Earth and recruits the boys to help him battle The One in the outer reaches of space.

A lot would need to get cut, for the sake of taking 63 stories down to 8 — no Ellimist, no David, no Loren, no Crayak, no Toby, probably no taxxons or chee. But I think that my version preserves most of the overall story, while still being (hopefully) easy enough to follow for people who haven't read the books.

[lakesbian]

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I said. “Even if we were warned, we wouldn’t last long.” I leaned close, close enough to whisper in his ear. “But some of us would last a while, you little creep. Long enough to make sure that your parents … well, use your imagination.” He stepped back, drew back his fist, and swung on me. I dodged the blow. I grabbed his head with one arm and jammed the fork against his ear. I fought a nauseating urge to twist the fork, to make him scream in pain.

What had I just done? In all the time we’d been fighting the Yeerks, I’d never made a threat like that. What was the matter with me? I felt … not exactly ashamed. But I knew I never wanted to talk to Cassie about what I’d just told David. Or Tobias. Or even Marco. And as for Jake, I found myself filled with a terrifying surge of pure, utter hatred for him. I couldn’t begin to explain it. But I swear at that moment I hated Jake far more than I did David. I should have gone back to the cafeteria. I should have told them all what had happened. But Jake already knew, didn’t he? Jake, the smart, determined leader, already knew all about me. And I couldn’t face him. I couldn’t face what he knew about me.

i would like to preface this post with the fact that i was discussing this matter and i was like "where's that quote i've seen about here on ruthlessness that was tagged as taylor hebert? that's how marco works" and then i googled it and

apparently that quote is just straight up literally from marco. whoops. stop being taylor, marco. being taylor is taylor's job. very funny thing to find out though. ohh that quote i was remembering and thinking was applicable to a fictional character was literally from that fictional character. okay. anyway.

the jake/rachel dynamic here is probably objectively more interesting but i'm particularly enamored with the rachel/marco dynamic because it's like. they're not particularly close. they're banter buddies but not friends beyond that. but when it comes down to the bloody shit they're perhaps the most closely aligned on the team in terms of how they think and act, in that rachel is the one whose immediate suggestion is always "what if we kidnap/murder/maim them" and marco isn't cruel but he is, well, ruthless in the manner described by the above quote i didn't realize was from him. it's such a weird little cross-angle of closeness where they're close in a way that doesn't mean they're friends (for a certain definition of friendship, anyway), but does mean something is severely wrong if she can't even go to him with the blood on her hands. it rocks.

the dynamic with jake is also really good. being the type of person that the one whose job it is to understand & direct you all knows should be called on if he needs someone killed in a cold fit of rage, and the resentment that stems from having to recognize this about yourself thru someone else's recognition of the fact