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Epicurius posted:I will say, in general, he's very much a children's book villian. Visser Three was terrifying when I was younger, an unbelievable cartoon villain when I got older, and now someone with his level of competence can become president and so I'm back to being terrified.
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 03:56 |
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# ? May 23, 2024 03:33 |
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Epicurius posted:I will say, in general, he's very much a children's book villian. I love how in regards to Visser Two the whole series is one giant unspoken "well what about Visser Two? What's their deal?" question. And then the answer is ultimately "Oh he's just some dipshit and then he dies." It's either and amazing long bomb joke, or the biggest dropped ball in the whole drat series.
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 03:59 |
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:Visser Three would have made a great villain if there were maybe five books. Because there are so many he just winds up looking totally ineffective, but he really does have some great moments. He does wind up kinda overused, if there were more mid-tier yeerks beyond Chapman (yeah I know there are some Taylor, Tom’s second Yeerk, the helicopter grannybut LORD Chapman’s Yeerk is doing so much heavy lifting) it probably would have helped prevent his mystique from fading some as the series progressed. On the other hand, it doesn’t really help that he’s not at all suited to manage Visser One’s invasion plan, being a real shock and awe dude forced into covert infiltration. And as soon as he’s Visser One he very nearly succeeds in his first attempt at that type of invasion: provoke nuclear war and then enslave the survivors.
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 04:21 |
Soup du Jour posted:He does wind up kinda overused, if there were more mid-tier yeerks beyond Chapman (yeah I know there are some Taylor, Tom’s second Yeerk, the helicopter grannybut LORD Chapman’s Yeerk is doing so much heavy lifting) it probably would have helped prevent his mystique from fading some as the series progressed. If it wasn't for the fact that the Animorphs had time to evolve from scared teenagers into an effective guerilla force, I think you can pretty safely say that his shock and awe style invasion would probably have worked. he might not have gotten everyone, and it certainly would have provoked more Andalite intervention, but they wouldn't have stopped him getting a great deal of soldiers.
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 06:32 |
Re: Yeerks and Chapman: The one time we do see Chapman get free he and his wife try to strangle themselves to die free. Visser Three is just riding the coattails of getting that Andalite body hard.
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 19:47 |
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So, this is a little earlier than usual, but we're at the end of the book. The Invasion-Chapter 27 quote:We ran. Exhausted and burned and terrified, we ran. Yep. She just killed him. quote:As for Tom . . . My brother. Tom was not freed. So how was it? Kind of a gut punch, huh? Those of you who read it as a kid, does it live up to your memories? Those of you who never did, how's it feel looking at it as an adult? And do you think Tobias permanently turned into a hawk on purpose? Easter is tomorrow, and then Monday, we start on our second book, The Visitor.
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# ? Apr 11, 2020 21:42 |
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I didn't read this series as a kid. I only remembered it when I saw that silly virgin/chad meme with harry potter. Now I'm about 10 books in and loving it. Probably my favorite scenes are later on when they get very Star Trek and start debating the morality of their actions against the Yeerks. Looking forward to you getting to book 5 in particular.
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# ? Apr 12, 2020 00:20 |
It was ballsy as hell for a kidlit series like this to end in an unmitigated defeat. You would expect a draw or a small victory to hook the audience, then maybe have them take a L four or five books down the line.
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# ? Apr 12, 2020 00:28 |
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That was a pretty good read all told. I thought Tobias got hawk-locked later on, in book 3 or something. Still, this is pretty out there stuff for kidlit/young adult fiction. I'm diggin' it.
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# ? Apr 12, 2020 04:05 |
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Radio Free Kobold posted:That was a pretty good read all told. I thought Tobias got hawk-locked later on, in book 3 or something. Still, this is pretty out there stuff for kidlit/young adult fiction. I'm diggin' it. Book 3 is Tobias's first POV book. And it's all about dealing with the repercussions of locking himself forever in the body of a hawk and what a really stupid loving idea it turns out that was in hindsight.
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# ? Apr 12, 2020 04:12 |
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Friends don't let friends permanently transform into hawks.
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# ? Apr 12, 2020 04:37 |
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It sucks they alternated between Tobias and Ax each cycle, thinking kids wanted to read about fellow kids I always thought the hawk situation was partially a way to write a homeless kid without quite broaching that uncomfortable reality.
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# ? Apr 12, 2020 09:23 |
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I’m loving this reread and hoping you get through at least a few more books (if not more). It’s such a weird and interesting series. Some of the thicker one-offs were also great and SUPER weird, like the one where IIRC they get sucked back to dinosaur times and find the earth already inhabited by a sentient alien race, but they have to blow up a nuke to get bumped back to modern times and in doing so annihilate the entire species off the face of the planet.. e: got some details wrong but just skimmed the synopsis and it’s even wilder than I remember mareep fucked around with this message at 13:30 on Apr 12, 2020 |
# ? Apr 12, 2020 13:28 |
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redcheval posted:I’m loving this reread and hoping you get through at least a few more books (if not more). It’s such a weird and interesting series. Some of the thicker one-offs were also great and SUPER weird, like the one where IIRC they get sucked back to dinosaur times and find the earth already inhabited by a sentient alien race, but they have to blow up a nuke to get bumped back to modern times and in doing so annihilate the entire species off the face of the planet..
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# ? Apr 12, 2020 16:45 |
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redcheval posted:I’m loving this reread and hoping you get through at least a few more books (if not more). It’s such a weird and interesting series. Some of the thicker one-offs were also great and SUPER weird, like the one where IIRC they get sucked back to dinosaur times and find the earth already inhabited by a sentient alien race, but they have to blow up a nuke to get bumped back to modern times and in doing so annihilate the entire species off the face of the planet.. What the hell?
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# ? Apr 12, 2020 19:44 |
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Radio Free Kobold posted:What the hell? It's... a little more complicated in context. It's the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Turns out a couple of alien races were also on Earth at the time.
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# ? Apr 12, 2020 22:43 |
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Radio Free Kobold posted:What the hell? Big time spoilers for that Megamorphs book: So the Animorphs are sent back in time to the Cretaceous period thanks to a rip in time caused by an explosion. Throughout the book they discover that there were other alien races present on the planet earth co existing with the dinosaurs. The friendly aliens are broccoli themed. When they find out that the meteor is coming their way the aliens plan to blow it up with a suitcase nuke. Tobias was big into dinosaurs as a kid so he figures out that if the broccoli aliens blow up the meteor than they'll be the ones to populate the planet and human evolution will never begin resulting in no human race and erasing the future of the Animorphs as well. He convinces Ax to sabotage the nuclear bomb so that the broccoli aliens can't blow up the meteor headed their way, thus saving the future of humanity by killing two warring alien factions on Cretaceous earth along with the dinosaurs.
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# ? Apr 12, 2020 22:49 |
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HIJK posted:Big time spoilers for that Megamorphs book: He convinces Ax to sabotage the nuclear bomb so that the broccoli aliens can't blow up the meteor headed their way, thus saving the future of humanity by killing two warring alien factions on Cretaceous earth along with the dinosaurs. One and a half, at least. The other alien species, we're led to believe, may have become ants
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# ? Apr 12, 2020 22:58 |
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Epicurius posted:One and a half, at least. The other alien species, we're led to believe, may have become ants So you're saying it's an alien race of space-bugs that some human children xenocided on purpose? Surprise, it's an Ender's Game reference!
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# ? Apr 12, 2020 23:54 |
Does the one woman they rescued ever get mentioned again, or is it just kinda left there? I'm assuming she almost immediately gets merced as a threat, the Yeerks must surely have some idea of who is who
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# ? Apr 13, 2020 14:29 |
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:Does the one woman they rescued ever get mentioned again, or is it just kinda left there? As far as I know, she isn't mentioned again.
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# ? Apr 13, 2020 14:43 |
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Mom didn’t let me read these as a kid thinking it would be too scary, I think she was right. That ended abruptly, feels like we are 1/3 through the story... It’s kind of simple but I enjoyed it so far, I hope you’ll keep going with these.
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# ? Apr 13, 2020 18:10 |
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The Visitor Welcome back to Animorphs. We've just finished "The Invasion", and now, we move on to book 2, "The Visitor". If you don't remember the events of the last book, don't worry, you'll be reminded of them throughout this one. Chapter 1 quote:My name is Rachel. I won’t tell you my last name. None of us will ever tell you our last names. Whenever I do use a last name, it’s a fake. Sorry, but that’s the way it has to be. And we won’t tell you the name of our town, or our school, or even what state we are in. If I told you my last name, the Yeerks would be able to find my friends and me. And if they ever find us, it will be the end. The first book was narrated by Jake, and this one by Rachael. In general, it cycles between the five of them in a fairly fixed order. And, as you'll see, each of the kids have their own narrative voice. quote:That day, the sun was bright. It warmed the earth below us. Warm air rose in an invisible bubble, a thermal. The thermal pushed up beneath our wings and we circled higher and higher and higher, till it almost seemed we could touch space. Poor Tobias. quote:<Okay, Tobias, you were right. This is the coolest thing in the world,> I said. Probably understandable. quote:<Me neither,> I agreed. <I have an idea.> I explained what I wanted to do and the five of us flew off, out of range of the shooters. When we were far enough away, we went into a steep dive, down, down, faster and faster toward the trees. Having taken on the Yeerks, the Animorphs now take on their greatest foe....drunk rednecks. In the Animorphs TV show, Rachel was played by Brooke Nevin. Here's a picture of her in Animorphs: And one from a few years ago. She's acted since Animorphs, pretty much all in TV. Her two biggest roles were the US series "Breakout Kings", and the Canadian series "Call Me Fitz", for which she was nominated for two Gemini awards (which is the Canadian equivalent of the Emmy).
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# ? Apr 13, 2020 21:04 |
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The Visitor-Chapter 2quote:They didn’t even have enough time to look surprised before we struck. I know that's why you read Animorphs. Birds fighting hunters. quote:I caught a little breeze and gained just enough altitude to get above the trees. But I was having a hard time. My wings were beating the still, dead air of the woods and not getting very much lift. I scraped the top of a tall pine tree and emerged from the woods, still flapping hard to carry the weight of the rifle, I made it out toward the beach, over the low cliffs at the water’s edge. And body horror! quote:As my skin began to appear, so did my morphing outfit. Fortunately, after a few tries, we had all learned to morph some very minimal clothing. "Absolute"! Remember when people said that? Me neither. Did people even say that? quote:“And blind,” Cassie agreed. “Human eyes are so lame for seeing things far away.” So this chapter can be summed up very much as "We can morph and this is what morphing is like, and these are what all the kids are like. I do sort of like the end summary about Tobias, though.. Epicurius fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Apr 15, 2020 |
# ? Apr 14, 2020 23:33 |
Tobias being morph-locked is implied as an accident in the last chapter of the first book, but did he do it on purpose?
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# ? Apr 15, 2020 03:49 |
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chitoryu12 posted:Tobias being morph-locked is implied as an accident in the last chapter of the first book, but did he do it on purpose? It's a debate that to this day has never been settled because it somehow reads both ways. I think it falls into that "accidentally on purpose" territory. Where he, at the time, didn't care if he did mode lock himself, but he wasn't aiming to do it 100% intentionally, and it's only afterwards (like Book 3 afterwards) that he realized the full extent to which he has hosed himself over, again either by choice or by negligence.
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# ? Apr 15, 2020 03:58 |
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I don't know if I'm just being weird, but I always thought the mid-morphing stuff was more "heckin cool!" than body horror.
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# ? Apr 15, 2020 04:04 |
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Radio Free Kobold posted:I don't know if I'm just being weird, but I always thought the mid-morphing stuff was more "heckin cool!" than body horror. I've seen various fan comic adaptations of the series (speaking of which there's an actual professional adaptation dropping later this year!) tackle the morphing process as described in the books, and even in the ones done by good artists, it's always been weird and gross as poo poo to me.
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# ? Apr 15, 2020 04:10 |
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I'm sort of tempted to agree with the "accidentally on purpose" locked himself into bird form. I think he hated his normal life so much and liked the freedom that being a bird gave him so much that he was careless, and that he didn't really understand or think about the consequences of being a bird. Remember, when Jake got to the school to attack the Yeerk pool, Tobias was already a bird, so add that to however much time he was trapped down there.
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# ? Apr 15, 2020 04:11 |
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Radio Free Kobold posted:I don't know if I'm just being weird, but I always thought the mid-morphing stuff was more "heckin cool!" than body horror. Would you say it was "absolute", as the kids say?
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# ? Apr 15, 2020 04:12 |
I think these little interludes really sell the characters. Because I mean... what else would a bunch of kids do but morph birds and fly around?
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# ? Apr 15, 2020 04:15 |
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Should have kept the rifle, take the fight to the next level.
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# ? Apr 15, 2020 06:58 |
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Gotta hand it to pony tail dude, hitting birds in flight with a rifle is some insanely good shooting.
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# ? Apr 15, 2020 16:02 |
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"Absolute", no, and neither that use of "skanky"
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# ? Apr 15, 2020 23:31 |
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The Visitor-Chapter 3quote:We all walked most of the way home together, feeling worn out. The flying was a little tiring. And morphing always takes a lot out of you. This is an example of how Tobias's transformation has further isolated him. These are his only friends, and now he can't even have a regular conversation with them. quote:“This morphing thing would be so excellent if it weren’t for the whole thing with the Yeerks,” Marco was saying. “I mean, if it were just normal, we could really use these powers.” For those who don't know or don't remember, when David Letterman hosted The Late Show, he had a segment called "Stupid Pet Tricks", where he'd have on animals who could do weird tricks. Here's one of the segments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8zEBRRw1oI quote:“We’d be hot in horror movies,” Cassie said. So this is basically reality getting in the way of their fantasies. As much as they'd like to have fun with their powers, they know the reality is they only have them because the earth is in trouble and it's their responsibility to save it... one they haven't been doing a great job of succeeding in so far. This also suggests that Cassie and Jake have feelings for each other. quote:I looked across the construction site and saw Tobias come fluttering down out of the sky. I couldn’t see where he landed, because that part of the site is hidden from the road, but I knew right where he was - on the spot where the Andalite had died. Somehow, in those brief moments when the Andalite had been with us, Tobias had formed some kind of special bond with him. This maybe suggests Rachel is forming a similar bond with Tobias, as she's the one to acknowledge his feelings. quote:“Get at who?” Marco asked suspiciously. Marco's kind of right here in that this whole thing is a longshot, and that they're probably doomed, but like Cassie pointed out, they don't really have a choice. It's between freedom and slavery. quote:“There’s still Chapman,” Jake said. The way I see it, the last book was largely unambiguous. You had the Yeerks who were bad, and Prince Elfangor and the Animorphs who were good. Jake faced some difficult choices in the last book....he wanted to save Tom, but if the only way to stop the Yeerks was to kill them, what's that mean for the hosts, but it wasn't so much a moral choice It was pretty obvious from the last book that living with a controller was agony, and death was preferable. In this case, though, Rachel's faced with a moral choice, and it isn't necessarily one with a black and white answer. Getting more information on Chapman and what the Yeerks are doing means manipulating her good friend.
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# ? Apr 15, 2020 23:40 |
Any other series, I'd expect this Melissa person to be Taken, or else quickly switch to the Good side and remove the moral ambiguity.
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# ? Apr 16, 2020 00:51 |
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It’s funny how Cassie and Rachel tease Marco considering that after the war he becomes a big Hollywood star and the public face of the Animorphs.
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# ? Apr 16, 2020 01:04 |
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Gnoman posted:Any other series, I'd expect this Melissa person to be Taken, or else quickly switch to the Good side and remove the moral ambiguity. So what's your prediction for what will happen here?
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# ? Apr 16, 2020 01:09 |
Epicurius posted:So what's your prediction for what will happen here? Going by what we've seen before, Melissa's going to get ground to paste between the two sides, and Rachel will be extremely guilty about it for the remainder of the book.
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# ? Apr 16, 2020 01:37 |
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# ? May 23, 2024 03:33 |
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Gnoman posted:Going by what we've seen before, Melissa's going to get ground to paste between the two sides, and Rachel will be extremely guilty about it for the remainder of the book. You've been beaten down after just one book, huh? Stay tuned to find out.
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# ? Apr 16, 2020 02:18 |