#yeerk politics

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

One thing I’ve never exactly understood. Why did the victory on Earth in books 53/54 correspond to a total victory over the Yeerk Empire? Most clearly, we never see the Council of 13 get defeated.

Short answer: Eva.

Long answer:

This is all kind of background to the main plots of the books, but. What we know happens is something like this.

The yeerks try to take Leera, under Visser One's leadership. They meet andalite resistance, leeran resistance, and Animorph resistance — ultimately they fail (#15 - #18).

V1 gets reassigned to Sleegab Five. Not many details, but it doesn't go well. Doesn't help that Marco has been actively discrediting her within the Empire (#30).

V1 gets rereassigned to Anati (#30).

Toby et al. launch a resistance on the Hork-Bajir Homeworld (#34).

V1 gets tried as a traitor (thanks, Marco) and slated for execution (Visser). V3 becomes V1. This corresponds with the Empire withdrawing from some failed attempts to take other planets.

Eva (after being rescued; thanks Marco) points out that the Yeerk Empire has few territories outside of Earth that aren't being occupied by andalite counter-invasions (#45).

Andalites have occupied Yeerk Homeworld, Taxxon Homeworld, and Sleegab Five, taking them back from Yeerk Empire (#46). Eva knows that the yeerks are trying to convince the andalites that their focus is on Anati, and that their actual focus is on Earth.

Ax persuades Andalite War Council that yeerks are concentrating on Earth, which is a mixed blessing — it gets the andalites to head for Earth, but they plan to annihilate it when they arrive (#46).

Yeerk forces further concentrate on Earth (#51). Eva speculates that they now have 0 other planets, if they've lost Anati.

Jake, Toby, and Eva plan to blow the biggest yeerk pool on Earth to convince the yeerks "Earth isn't worth their time". They know they're making the yeerks some other planet's problem, but need to prevent the andalites from wiping out humanity (#52).

The yeerks are so overcommitted to Earth that blowing the yeerk pool has the opposite effect. New!V1 instead lands the Pool Ship on Earth and throws everything at an open Earth invasion (#53).

Eva, Jake, Arbron, and V17* conspire to both draw andalite forces to Earth and conceal that fact from new!V1. Now all the andalites' and all the yeerks' eggs are in the Earth basket (#53).

Jake corners V1 and forces him to surrender. V17 reveals to the Empire that the andalites are here, and plans to use that chaos to escape with a splinter group. The andalites accept Jake's handing over the Yeerk Empire (#54).

Rachel kills Tom, preventing V17's escape.

Ax and Alloran manage to negotiate Earth remaining independent, even as the andalites take control of the Yeerk Empire.

[domesticadventures]

animorphs #05 ie the first book narrated by marco in which they all get partially dismembered while in ant morphs and barely escape with their lives and marco is understandably like ok. well. that's it for me folks, this is the last mission i'm doing.

but that is NOT enough for one book, oh no. they continue the mission and wind up getting captured by visser three, who thus far has been their biggest, most terrifying enemy, only to meet visser one. and visser one is in the body of marco's mother, who until now he believed died almost two years ago.

and after this, marco questions everything about his mom before her disappearance. he wonders, was that real? was that her? or was that just the yeerk in her head playacting for as long as it had to until it could get away from me?

they finish the mission and then marco, knowing his mom is alive, knowing she's being controlled by a yeerk, knowing he absolutely can't say anything about this to anyone, and in fact hiding it from everyone but jake, who he swears to absolute secrecy - after all that, marco goes with his dad to his mom's grave to commemorate the second anniversary of her supposed death. and while there, something in his dad changes. marco sees the light come back into his eyes. he sees him come back to life. he sees him working towards becoming the dad he was before his wife died.

and then the book ends but you know. you have to wonder how long it took before marco started questioning that, too. is his dad really stepping up, moving forward, for marco's sake? is he really doing it because it's what his not-actually-dead wife would want? or is this just something else marco can't trust. is this, too, just a yeerk playing at being his parent. is it only a matter of time before his dad is gone, too. in the space of one scene, marco gets his dad back in one way and loses him irrevocably in another.

but his mom is alive. and there's a chance he could one day get her back for real. so he'll keep fighting. it's so awful! i'm obsessed

[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

[lakesbian]

v much respect your decision to enjoy animorphs in your own time. hope you're having a good time with it <3

if you have time, i'd love to hear any thoughts you have on aftran and the yeerk peace movement. *The Departure* and *The Sickness* are two of my personal favourites, and I love that rude slug

yeah it's fun :) the more complicated and nuanced politics and the "no species is a monolith" thing is goes w/o saying one of the main reasons why it's endured and why it was so popular. i love the bit in the aftran book where cassie is just literally gaslighting her and she doubts herself for a second. extremely funny how it's continuously a Thing with cassie where being the niceyest sweetest most perceptive special girl also means she's good at manipulating people. coyly and everything. (on a tangentially related note it's also very funny when she shows up to marco's house uninvited to Emotionally Support Him and she insists on him utilizing Proper Host Etiquette by offering her cookies and then when he takes the cookies back from her as a way of insinuating the conversation is over she just grabs the milk he was drinking and keeps talking.) aftran was well written and so were the actual causes 4 the yeerks doing all that beyond cartoony 'they're evil.'

the sickness is also cute it was adorable that ax learned how to play rock paper scissors while he was sick. and cassie petted his head and told him even brave warriors get sick sometimes :). also extremely endeared to cassie (like 4'3 tops) and marco (five foot nothing and his bills all paid) carrying jake (Normal Height, Described As "Big") home in what had to be the world's most lopsided and miserable chair-carry. the animorphs is closed forever because the world's smallest bravest warriors frewed up

[ghostofbriggiesmalls]

<If we use the Time Matrix to win this war we will no longer be Andelites. Not what I think of as Andalites, anyway. We have to win this war by being ourselves. By living up to our own standards, not by becoming as brutal and ruthless as the Yeerks are.> “You mean what’s the point of winning, if by winning you lose what you were fighting for.”

thank god the Animorphs never got political.

[tunashei]

First impressions of Animorphs!

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

Book 5: The Predator

Alright we've got Marco POV. I was dreading this one cause I find him a bit whiny and annoying, but I'm actually quite into it! I think seeing his internal thoughts and worries really helps deepen the character.

My suspension of belief is being tested by the idea of punks dumb enough to try and fight a gorilla.

Ok so if you get hurt and then morph, you lose the damage. But what if you have something stuck in you? Like a bullet.

<I am well. And each of you?> Idk why but I love this line. Polite boy. <3

Ax u fucking numpty where the hell are you going. I was not expecting him to be this...air-headed. And of all the foods for him to try first he got COFFEE?! Not gonna end well. Though is an interesting thought, if you could introduce food to someone who'd never eaten before, what would you pick?

---------

“Must I carry this?” he asked, indicating his empty coffee cup.

“No, you can just throw it away.”

Bad choice of words. Ax threw the coffee cup. He threw it hard.

---------

^ This made me laugh out loud at work

Ok so I guess staying undercover is just straight out of the equation now. How are you going to cover up Ax morphing from human to Andalite when he did it in a crowded mall? And then this poor lady watching her lobsters turn into humans/ an alien.

Confirmed can't morph from one animal to another. I thought Jake had done it in book 2 from flea to tiger but turns out I misheard and he did go back to human in between..

The ants lacking the idea of self leading to the group forgetting themselves is legitimately creepy. Imagine if they hadn't regained control, and Tobias watches his friends turn into ants and walk off and they're gone forever...

Put being ripped apart by ants on my list of ways I do not wanna die

Being that this is book 5/54 somehow I doubt this will be Marco's last mission, but considering how against it he's been and the recent traumatising I'm curious what will pull him back. Hoping it will be something that puts the 'should we/shouldn't we' plot point to bed.

You know I really want to know HOW Visser Three got the Andalite body, hope we get to learn that backstory sometime.

AAAAAAAAAAAA Visser One reveal holy shiiit. I KNEW Marco's mom would come back up, but I didn't put the pieces together with Visser One. Haha. Brilliant. I guess this is how we'll be keeping Marco on board.

Oh man the thoughtspeak between Marco and Jake, the only other one to realise. It makes Marcos comments on Tom being a controller in the first books so much juicer. Now you guys have this in common.

Not really sure why Visser Three didn't just kill them then and there

They're in a hurry so can't really blame em but man it would have been good if they could have acquired a Hork-Bajir from the unconscious ones

One thing I appreciate in animorphs is how so far, most of their missions have been failures. This book is probably the biggest failure, they potentially blew their cover with Ax in the mall, got almost killed twice, failed to capture a spaceship and got saved by a Yeerk. I really enjoyed it though, I like Marco a lot more now, I think the big reveal is gonna be great for his character.

[denzartriste]

how would quackity or techno fit into animorphs?

OKay okay. As of my animorph au, which i am putting all these guys in, Techno is stuck between a pig and human because he past the two hour time limit of how long he can be in a morph without being trapped in it, and decided to try and change back at the last minute. Stuck in a weird in between now, which sucks because he basicly can't live his normal life at all anymore - what with the entire "Can't let the yeerks know who the animorphs are". Obviously i AM deviating from the original story a teeny bit, but the yeerks and all that are pretty much the same i think.

I dont super know What would cause Techno to be stuck/not leave a morph for two hours - him forgetting until the last second is a bit silly but also it's the best i have right now. Maybe a dramatic situation where, at the last minute when he realises that it's between revealing himself or being stuck a pig, he'd rather reveal himself and risk the death that comes with it, but it's already to late.

Quackity is a bit trickier - i actually was thinking about him when i posted for characters because i knew there was a chance you'd ask about him (i was correct i was correct) and so i think he would have both a zoo and a casino. And i do think it would be like, either very close together or in the same area. He's a weird man he is Odd he has a zoo next to a casino. Half his staff are bizarre/abnormal. One of them really likes stating he's a human and can list off any biological fact but tends to end it off with some note about how it is Very normal for a human to just have 2 bones. Quackity doesn't question it, because he's being polite and also that sounds like more work than he's willing to do for a man who does his job fine. One of his other employees keeps staring at people and also always wears a hat with moving antenas poking out of it. Q thinks it's some new trend- mechanical hats or something. His skin is also purple but Quackity thinks it a medical condition so he doesn't ask. Another guy has asthma, and quackity didnt know asthma made you cough smoke and also have a phobia of cats and ALSO look a bit green but, again, medical condition. It's rude to ask. Ect ect - It's important to note that Quackity is a fully normal guy without any animorphing powers - And the fact he attracts so many Not Human People to work for him is a shit coincidence. The reason he attracts so many animorphs is because of the zoo, and the fact that animorph need to touch animals to aquire dna to morph into that animal.

[demenior]

📓 anything Animorphs?

To this day, I still think about writing a really good Animorphs/Avengers story

The ultimate barebones would be:

It's set relatively real-time, meaning that the Ani kids were ~16 in 1999

By 2010 (~Avengers time), the living humans wouldn't even be 30 yet

The Yeerk War went off in secret/was covered up by Shield

Jake never went on his suicide mission/no dealing with The One (yet)

Instead, Jake is employed by Shield for a variety of very secret roles

This changes a lot for me as to whether he was coerced into signing up as a minor and so is stuck in a very tight contract where Fury basically owns hm and Jake is resentful of that (with the trade-off being, so long as Jake is held by Shield, the rest of the gang can live their lives in peace)

Or did he join Shield for the same reason he goes off on the One Last Mission- because he can't leave the war behind

In some versions in my head, no one knows about Jake's powers and he reveals them at a cool moment but ultimately I don't think that's a great idea

The bottom line is always that Jake is devoted to keeping the Yeerk War a secret because that was what he believed was the right choice at the end of the war, but maybe these days he's regretting that decision and unfortunately has to live with his mistakes

Anyways, the story goes: the Avengers are assembled and are the big top dogs because not only did they save the world, they saved the world from alien invasion! They're so cool!

There's also this Jake guy who acts as a bit of a secretary/coffee guy/makes them sign forms etc etc. Obviously Fury wants him to be their new Coulson but like, the kid is a baby compared to the rest of the Avengers

While everyone is polite, no one takes much stock of Jake because he's just a kid! And a little dorky, a bit of a pushover, etc etc

And so from there it would be a series of scenes in which the cast of the Avengers all have moments where they have to do a double take at Jake to try and figure out why their intuition is telling them "something is up here" on the little moments where Jake lets his mask slip

These events could even include dramatics such as:

A mission gone bad and Jake lost a limb or was seriously injured in an explosion, only to show up with no injuries

Jake knowing to much about aliens that visit earth and him (badly) lying that he was going off intuition

Jake always exists as a bit of a morally gray character, who's focus is always on The Greater Good (more like Fury), than the morals of a situation, which can put him at odds with a lot of the Avengers. He's a very 'the ends justify the means' kind of guy.

There was a story where, with the events of The Winter Soldier, Hydra = Yeerk takeover, and so I was going to give Jake a very dramatic and public "Shield (hydra) is declaring this one dude enemy of the state and blaming him for Nick Fury's murder" to which everyone goes "Jake??? But he gets nauseous killing flies??"

And so along this route is how Steve and co would reunite with Jake somewhere and find out about the Yeerk War

There was also a thought about the events of Infnity War, with the Bg Last Stand in Wakanda, where Jake rolls in with his Howler morph and a bunch of the Hork-Bajir colony and remaining Animorphs to fight to defend earth

And so during the big fight Jake would be trying to draw Thanos out, because Thanos would definitely know about Howlers, and Jake would be projecting his Greatest Hits (read: war crimes and victories) through thought-speach to goad Thanos into engaging him, leading to the final showdown in that movie of the team trying to stop Thanos and failing

[nonsensical-shitposting]

oh no i made a new au

Since he’s been a fan of Bug Fables for much longer than me, I decided to run the initial premise for it past my brother to see what he thought. It went something like this.

Me: So I’m calling it the Team Snakereverse AU as a placeholder name for now. The basic idea’s that Vi, Kabbu, and Leif all start off the story in roughly the opposite position from canon. Here, I’ll send you what I’ve written down for them so far.

Him, reading it over: Alright, so to summarize, Vi accidentally became a communist revolutionary, Kabbu got a soul-crushing desk job, and Leif ripped off the Yeerks from Animorphs?

Me: ...that’s grossly oversimplifying it, but I know you’re just trying to be funny, so whatever. Anyway, now I just gotta turn it into a fic...

Him: Okay, but don’t go overcomplicating it. The base concept you’ve got there is good enough on its own. You don’t need to go changing anything else about the canon situation and making more work for yourself-

Me, already having several tabs open in Firefox to research oligarchic thalassocracies in the Middle Ages Mediterranean, the phonology of Panamanian Spanish, tire manufacturing, mercenary organizations throughout history, Jungian analysis, whether there’s any historical precedent for militarist-theocratic diarchy as a system of government, bombardier beetles, and the sociocultural effects of rapid industrialization: -okay, setting aside the issue of reversing Astotheles’ ideological underpinnings while keeping his personality as similar as possible, what if I swap the bandit hideout with Metal Island so the former gets reworked as a kind of underground Las Vegas and the bandits are based out of the latter? That actually works pretty well in conjunction with both the Snakemouth Den-Rubber Prison swap and flipping the Termite Kingdom’s canon isolationism so it’s an imperialist surveillance state- hm, but if I’m gonna go with the idea of the termites seizing a cultural hegemony, I can’t half-ass it, I need to figure out all the ramifications...

Him: WHY DO YOU DO THESE THINGS TO YOURSELF JORDAN

Me, in the process of sketching out a termite anatomy-based political compass equivalent: I don’t know what you’re talking about, this is child’s play compared to the convolution of The Strings We Pull. Ooh, hang on, what if the termites set up a system of submarine-based public transport that takes the place of the ant tunnels in canon? I gotta map this out-

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Just wondering...do you think David thought-spoke privately with Visser Three in #48 and told him the Andalite Bandits were human and that's why he starts looking in #49? Because that's my headcanon

Oh man, I do NOT know what to make of #48, but I do like this take. If David dropped V3 that hint, and if V3 saw mecha-Rachel as a distorted but still human-looking morpher, I could get behind this.

And you're right that Visser Three is the barrier to figuring out the andalite bandits are human. As early as #4 the kids overhear Temrash 114 and Iniss 226 debating: "is Visser Three wrong? What if they're not Andalites at all?"/ ... "Visser Three wrong? Maybe. But I'm not the fool who's going to try and tell him." Heck, as early as #1 the yeerks are looking for "some kids who were shooting off fireworks in the construction site", and presumably they don't mean andalite kids. So like, clearly some of the controllers are at least open to the possibility of human morphers. The only thing stopping a full-scale human morpher search is Visser Three a) having TWO of the galaxy's biggest andalite supremacists in his brain, and b) having absolute power over the Earth invasion.

So I've always headcanoned that some technician controllers start looking for irrefutable proof of human morphers as early as Elfangor's death, and that it just takes them ~2.5 years to come up with something ironclad. Ax's presence may have slowed the process — he's obviously an andalite and not just someone in morph as Elfangor — and Tobias's ability to stay "in morph" for 2+ hours and to go directly from being "in morph" to a different morph almost certainly muddied the waters. But yeah, maybe it's not that the technicians finally persuaded Visser Three; maybe Crayak engineered it that way.

[fanonical]

rachel: the yeerks are going to replace the mayor!

marco: oh shit!

marco: ...who is that again?

rachel: seriously

marco: i'm twelve, i don't follow politics!

[sarifel-corrisafid-ilxhel]

Visser Three celebrates the Earth holiday known as St. Valentine's Day with Capone-style massacres of his political enemies. Visser One celebrates it with wine, cocaine, and adoption certificates gifted to herself.

Napkin 433 celebrates it the normal way, with festive bits of flotsam, a large cake hidden somewhere in the Yeerk Pool, and a betting pool on how long it will take the Taxxons to find said large cake.

[dionitro]

Ok but you can't tell me that so much of today's politics CANT be explained by Yeerks

[edorielle]

Chapter 14 posted !

Summary: The new Kandrona, enhanced by the kandari discovered on Erguan, is ready to enter its final phase of real-world testing. Liemat, the Councilor overseeing scientific development, will be in attendance. For both Erkis and Lena, this event represents hope—the chance to be reassigned and finally leave Erguan. That is, as long as everything goes according to plan...

Erkis sighed and turned back to Riaami. "I’ve been ordered to lock you up in the isolation pool starting now." "I see. Well, let’s go then. I wouldn’t want to deprive you of the immense pleasure of such a grand political event." This time, Erkis chuckled. "Maybe I should request an exemption so I can monitor you closely. After all, you’ve already evaded the guards once. It’d be a shame to leave you in the hands of incompetent soldiers." Their gazes met in a mix of challenge and amused camaraderie. By "monitor you closely," Erkis clearly meant joining her in the isolation pool where Riaami was to be confined. Much to my dismay, they understood each other perfectly. I let out a mock-disgusted groan that only Erkis could hear. It was just for show because, even though the idea of skipping the launch tempted her, Erkis had no choice but to attend. <Something wrong, my sweet Lena?> she asked with mock concern. <Nothing at all. You two do whatever you want—it’s none of my business.> Since our last conversation, I’d decided to turn a blind eye to whatever was going on between them and to try to swallow my jealousy as much as possible. <Just don’t make Yeerk babies, for heaven’s sake. I’d be a terrible mother to them.> <No? Pity.> Erkis motioned for Riaami to lead the way. <Oh well. I’ll be patient and wait for her to get a human host. That way, instead of Yeerk babies, we can have lots and lots of little human babies.> She’d gotten me. She knew perfectly well that she’d shock me with that comment.

[fowlblue]

- As I recall in the first book, the tech thing that allows the kids to transform into animals is like… a cube. So in this case that’d be like. The Cube. Or Artemis replicates it himself.

- Nobody gets permanently stuck as an animal because no. I could not bear it. Close calls are perfectly fine though.

- Artemis’s go-to form is a falcon or raven, obviously- Butler’s a tiger and Juliet’s a wolf. They can turn into other things, just like in canon, but that’s their immediate go-to. I’m not sure how they’d go about encountering said animals, per se, but maybe the Extinctionists are also infiltrated by the aliens? And that’s one of the first places they break into?

(Opal’s is an andalite, Britva’s a polar bear, and Spiro’s a komodo dragon or rattlesnake- depends on if he’s being sneaky or not)

- I remember the politics between the Vissers in the books being really petty a lot of the time. Opal’s the one who really wants to be the leader, she thinks she’s the best because she’s got an Andalite form and some of the best tech that she designed herself- still, nobody wants to listen to her. Nobody likes Britva because he just likes killing things and lacks a lot of the patience that makes the Yeerks strategically smart, so nobody lets him make important war decisions. Spiro’s a smart bastard and has the most influential human form, but he’s also annoying because ‘fuck you, why turn into an animal when humans have this many guns’ and he’s too busy exploring what the human world has to offer the rich than actually doing stuff to help the invasion.

- Holly, much like Ax, has a lot of difficulty navigating the human world, and a strong sense of superiority at first, but she does genuinely appreciate the Earth’s fauna and learning more about the human race.

- Angeline does get possessed at some point like in TTP by Opal. After that Artemis is forced to explain why he’s been running off so often with his friends- he’s actually trying to save the world. No pressure.

- Butler has so much conflict about being forced to teach Artemis and Juliet war strategies and stuff because they’re too young for this, he never wanted this kind of thing for them (or himself, for that matter) and it kills him inside.

Today’s random AU idea: AF but also Animorphs.

[acaciapines]

Chara is a Yeerk trying to survive the invasion of Earth, with aspirations of being a caretaker that were never fulfilled, and so instead xe have been assigned a human child as a host. Out in the world under the ever-pressing eye of the Empire, and with a best friend involved in the Peace Movement, Chara isn't exactly sure how xe’s going to get out of this one.

But then again, it's not like any of the Yeerks were going to make it out alive, so. Maybe xe can keep something else safe.

i dont have an explanation for this au. no knowledge of undertale is needed but you do need to know about animorphs. god do you need to know about animorphs. have you read animorphs? read animorphs.