|
Capfalcon posted:I know we're basically dealing with the heirs/founders of the Yeerks who were big enough jerks/had enough balls to mug some Andalites for their tech and high-tail it out of there. Makes me wonder what the Andalite plan was before that happened. The Andalite plan for the Yeerks? I don't think they had any, really. You can see the moments just before the rebellion in the Hork-Bajir book. Seerow's the only one who has any enthusiasm for the Yeerks. All the other Andalites on the Yeerk homeworld have a combination of boredom and disgust regarding the Yeerks. So I think the Andalite plan was "Humor Seerow and try to forget the fact that we ever had anything to do with these hideous slug things."
|
# ? Dec 16, 2021 16:11 |
|
|
# ? May 28, 2024 02:21 |
|
Epicurius posted:The Andalite plan for the Yeerks? I don't think they had any, really. You can see the moments just before the rebellion in the Hork-Bajir book. Seerow's the only one who has any enthusiasm for the Yeerks. All the other Andalites on the Yeerk homeworld have a combination of boredom and disgust regarding the Yeerks. So I think the Andalite plan was "Humor Seerow and try to forget the fact that we ever had anything to do with these hideous slug things." Sure, the warriors wish they were doing something actually interesting instead of being assigned to this weirdo, but I don't know that the brass signs off on sending materials to build a Andalite-Yeerk Peace and Cooperation Center just to humor a prince. He had to be sent there for some reason. I suppose it might have been an exploration mission that got out of hand but... Seerow had a plan to uplift them, at least. I wonder if the Andalites had done it before, and this is the first time it backfired in a big way.
|
# ? Dec 16, 2021 16:28 |
|
The following two chapters are presented without comment. Chapter 25 quote:TSEEEEW! Chapter 26 quote:“Die! Die!” she shrieked.
|
# ? Dec 17, 2021 04:27 |
|
Epicurius posted:
One of my favorite moments in the series.
|
# ? Dec 17, 2021 04:50 |
|
Good moment, though I feel like Rachel's being a bit cavalier (and they're often a bit cavalier) with the human host who is essentially a hostage, since she doesn't know Taylor's voluntary.
|
# ? Dec 17, 2021 09:57 |
|
Even if she's voluntary there's a line between 'yes please give me cutting edge medical care and show me a galaxy I never knew existed' and 'yes, sign me up to the space KGB post haste'. It isn't like she can back out now.
|
# ? Dec 17, 2021 10:06 |
|
Not to mention in Visser Three Ltd., getting intentionally spared by the Andalite bandits is a guaranteed death sentence, anyway.
|
# ? Dec 17, 2021 11:00 |
|
Fuschia tude posted:Not to mention in Visser Three Ltd., getting intentionally spared by the Andalite bandits is a guaranteed death sentence, anyway. That's a really chilling point. Tobias says as much "she's dead anyway" knowing full well she's getting thrown into the Taxxon pit at best. From a certain angle it's actually the more ethical/humane thing to do to kill the Yeerk and Taylor quickly, but Tobias is specifically requesting Rachel doesn't so that they feel better about their choices. The moral calculus of this series is like trying to find the end point of a Klein bottle.
|
# ? Dec 17, 2021 15:17 |
|
Throughout this thread I kept starting books thinking I had never read this one and then remembering stuff as it came up. This is definitely one of the first (possibly the first) where I'm still sure I never even flipped through it and just. Holy poo poo god drat. This book.
|
# ? Dec 17, 2021 17:19 |
|
This book was so visceral. Tobias broke so many feathers, cartilage and bone over the course of the torture and escape that right before he morphed he was probably a slightly-twitching pile of lumps. Thank goodness for morphing fixing physical scars.
|
# ? Dec 17, 2021 22:44 |
|
Chapter 27quote:It was a windy day. Sunny. We were all there, all but Rachel who’d had something to do with her dad. So we end the book with metaphysics, a kiss and thermals. So I don't know if this book touched you the way it did me. A lot of the books deal with serious or heartrending topics, but this one, for me, seemed really bad, because torture is certainly a problem in the real world, unlike alien invasion. Torturers don't use high tech stuff like Taylor's magic pain button. They don't need to, but the damage torture does, both physical and mental, is still real. Therefore, what I'd like to do is to link to The Center for Victims of Torture, Minnesota based organization that provides help to victims of torture and anti-torture research and advocacy. It has an 84% rating on Charity Navigator, so if you end up donating, money will go to a good cause. Obviously this isn't sponsored by Something Awful or anything like that. You won't get a gang tag if you donate or anything like that, just the satisfaction of knowing you've helped some people. I'll also say it's obviously been a tough couple of years for people. Covid has disrupted everybody's life, and beyond the fear and suffering the disease itself caused, it ruined businesses, put people out of work, and left a lot of people in a precarious situation, so, I'll say, don't feel any pressure to donate, and if you, don't donate more than you can afford. I just think these people do good work, and wanted to bring them to your attention. This has been a pretty heavy book, and Christmas is coming for those who celebrate it, so lets do this. We'll wait until Monday to start the new book, which is book 34, The Prophecy, ghostwritten by Melinda Metz, who also wrote Book 29 (the Yeerk Peace Movement/Cassie realizes she IS a brain surgeon after all book)
|
# ? Dec 18, 2021 06:14 |
|
I can't be sure, but I think I could have really used this book back then.Epicurius posted:So I don't know if this book touched you the way it did me. A lot of the books deal with serious or heartrending topics, but this one, for me, seemed really bad, because torture is certainly a problem in the real world, unlike alien invasion. I don't know about that. Science fiction is pretty much always metaphorical. People project their hopes and fears into these speculative scenarios; spaceships and lasers really aren't the point, even in "hard" sci fi. Lots of people around the world have been, and are, worrying about invasion and colonization. The idea that any given person you run into on the street might want you dead through no fault of your own, might be your enemy, and you have no way of knowing just by looking at them, is a reality for many people around the world today. These are an abstracted threat, yes, but I think a very relatable one.
|
# ? Dec 18, 2021 10:07 |
|
That last chapter This is one of the strongest books in the series.
|
# ? Dec 19, 2021 05:02 |
|
I remember this book being a turning point for Tobias. It's a tough read but a good one. I'm still a little annoyed at Rachel not being sensitive to the time Tobias had spent in human morph at the beginning of the book though I understand why it was necessary for setting up Tobias's inner turmoil.
|
# ? Dec 19, 2021 09:38 |
|
Good, solid book, but I definitely get why I didn't really connect with it as a kid. I'm all for putting adult themes into kids' books, but... well, I mean, I've obviously never been tortured, or held prisoner, but as an adult I think I understand pain and powerlessness as broad concepts better than I ever could have as a kid. (Though I also had a relatively privileged upbringing, so obviously there are lots of kids out there for whom this would have struck a chord - this is just my personal take.) I'm also glad that they seem to have dropped (at least I can't remember when I last saw it) Ax playing around with mouth sounds every sentence when he's in human morph. It's run its course and is no longer amusing for a character whom we're meant to take seriously.
|
# ? Dec 19, 2021 13:34 |
|
freebooter posted:I'm also glad that they seem to have dropped (at least I can't remember when I last saw it) Ax playing around with mouth sounds every sentence when he's in human morph. It's run its course and is no longer amusing for a character whom we're meant to take seriously. We know Applegate and her husband were big Star Trek fans. It's well-known how important Spock and Data were to the first two series as Neurodiverse-coded characters, specifically autistic characters. Ax is definitely coded with some autistic tropes when he's in human form, and the most prominent is definitely his mouth sounds. It's a form of echolalia: (the image is obviously about literal children; by the time you reach adulthood it tends to be more of a private self-soothe for anxiety and not a lack of cognition/understanding) We'll probably never know if they stopped because they realized the "bit" wasn't endearing, figured Ax would have grown out of it by now, found the bit tonally inconsistent with the plots at this point in the story, or if they got pushback and realized they were making a bad choice, or some combination of all of the above... but whatever way yeah I'm loving happy to have that gone.
|
# ? Dec 19, 2021 16:30 |
|
Do you think Visser 3 went absolutely insane for cinnamon buns the first time he morphed human?
|
# ? Dec 19, 2021 17:22 |
|
OctaviusBeaver posted:Do you think Visser 3 went absolutely insane for cinnamon buns the first time he morphed human? He has been a Hork-Bajir before so eating was nothing new to him, even if it might have been for Alloran. Also Visser 3 is probably incapable of feeling pleasure without hurting someone.
|
# ? Dec 20, 2021 01:19 |
|
WrightOfWay posted:He has been a Hork-Bajir before so eating was nothing new to him, even if it might have been for Alloran. Also Visser 3 is probably incapable of feeling pleasure without hurting someone. Visser 3 resents his herbivore body. Things'd get pretty grim if Andalites were carnivorous. (V3 at the wheel of a combine harvester, yelling FOOLS as various small rodents scurry out of the path of the header blades)
|
# ? Dec 20, 2021 02:31 |
|
Ok, I hope everyone had a good weekend. We're back and it's time for Animorphs Book 34-The Prophecy Chapter 1 quote:My name is Cassie. Just Cassie. At least that’s all I’m going to tell you. It’s not because I think I’m so special I only need one name. I know I’m not Jewel or Brandy or Beck. So we start with the standard summary of the series, and once again, the kids who have agreed to not use morphing for personal reasons are using morphing for personal reasons. Chapter 2 quote:The cool night air fluttered my owl feathers as I flapped toward home. I tightened my right talon around the doodle. There was no way I was going to lose it again. If you don't remember the Arm from the Hork-Bajir Chronicles, they were the original inhabitants of the Hork-Bajir homeworld....three foot tall pterodactyl aliens who were master geneticists, who, after an asteroid devastated their homeworld, created the giant trees to help stabilize the planet and the Hork-Bajir to take care of the trees. They also helped the Andalites create the biological weapon that would wipe out the Hork-Bajir.
|
# ? Dec 21, 2021 04:56 |
|
Side note: Cassie is, once again, ice cold in her plan to murder that supposed Hork-Bajir controller.
|
# ? Dec 21, 2021 05:24 |
|
Capfalcon posted:Side note: Cassie is, once again, ice cold in her plan to murder that supposed Hork-Bajir controller. Cassie is no doubt willing to kill to protect herself and the people she cares about.
|
# ? Dec 21, 2021 05:50 |
|
Chapter 3quote:<An Arn, on Earth? Here? Why? That’s the question. What’s he up to?> Rachel wondered. So The Phantom Menace reference dates this book, and sure enough, it came out in September, 1999, while Phantom Menace came out in May, 1999. Also, while it's sad that Quafijinivon is the last Arn, it's not necessarily surprising. If you remember the Hork-Bajir Chonicles, they altered themselves so they'd die if they were infested, so the Yeerks used them as slaves and target practice. While one Arn is still left, I'm putting the Arn on our genocide list. Chapter 4 quote:I have come to give the Hork-Bajir a chance for freedom and rebirth. And revenge against the Yeerks. I have a plan that will require your assistance.” So, the Animorphs clearly don't trust the Arn, which is probably smart. That being said, this is a tremendous opportunity, both for the Animorphs and the Hork-Bajir.
|
# ? Dec 22, 2021 05:30 |
|
First thought was that the Animorphs were more than a little caviler showing themselves to this Arn, followed swiftly by the realization that, if this Arn knows where the free colony is, he's never leaving there alive unless they allow it. Second, I suppose that Ritual of Rebirth is probably an Arn thing, not an Andalite thing due to Ax only reacting to the name of the memories, not the ritual itself. Given how things generally went with the Arn, I wouldn't be surprised if this brain scan was not really done with her approval.
|
# ? Dec 22, 2021 05:57 |
A+ trolling, Marco.
|
|
# ? Dec 22, 2021 06:12 |
|
Comrade Blyatlov posted:A+ trolling, Marco. It would be a pretty good joke to have the plot happen to someone who isn't the narrator for once, and Cassie just watches her friend become someone else for a while. It definitely isn't happening, but it would get a good laugh out of me.
|
# ? Dec 22, 2021 17:57 |
|
Chapter 5quote:“And the next words out of Rachel’s mouth will be …” R.L. Stine was, of course, the writer of Goosebumps, which was the more popular Scholastic series. Also, "Sometimes, in war, even the “good guys” do awful things." is a good thing to remember. Chapter 6 quote:I braced myself for … for what, I didn’t know. Cassie, if you remember, was infested by Afran in book 19.
|
# ? Dec 23, 2021 03:53 |
|
Chapter 7-Aldreaquote:My name is Aldrea-Iskillion-Falan. So that last line doesn't seem very promising for Cassie's independence. But I do feel for Aldrea, whatever she is now. How must that feel? Chapter 8 quote:The Arn quickly outlined his plan for Aldrea. I could feel her mistrust and anger growing as he spoke. Absolutely no tension in this room at all. I think Ax's feelings towards Aldrea are pretty complicated. The fact that she voluntarily became a Hork-Bajir nothlit, I think he sees as a betrayal and that she can't be trusted. On top of that, he likes Cassie and wants her to be safe, and he knows that if Aldrea doesn't want to leave, he can't make her, and he's feeling helpless and insecure that he has to depend on her to let Cassie go. On top of that, she's Seerow's daughter, and he was raised with the idea that this whole war was Seerow's fault, and I think there's that residual mistrust there. Also, Rachel's right....humans and Andalites aren't all that different in a lot of ways.
|
# ? Dec 24, 2021 05:25 |
|
Good on Ax for laying out the ground rules this early, but maybe not the smartest thing to actually do, since it raises the awkward potential response of "or what?"
|
# ? Dec 24, 2021 07:33 |
|
Chapter 9quote:Okay, we’re supposed to brief you, so here goes: One of Cassie’s best fighting morphs is a wolf,” Rachel told Aldrea as we headed home through the sun-dappled woods. Well, had she? Just a thought, that Cassie combines Aldrea's arrogance to Ax's sometime arrogance, but there's a difference, and maybe it's just that Ax knows the Animorphs whole Adrea doesn't. Ax, at his worst, is absentmindedly patronizing, in a "Well, we could use repulsor technology, but wait, you haven't developed that yet, have you?" Aldrea is openly contemptuous. Chapter 10 quote:Okay, there’s that girl, Holly Perry, you know, she transferred from Polk?” Marco said from his seat on one of the big bales of hay in my barn. “I want my Chee to ask her out for me. I tried a couple of times, but this thing happened with my voice.” I like that while Jake worries about his family if he doesn't come back, Marco's priority for the Chee is to organize his love life. Regarding Erek being the White House butler for FDR, that means he was this guy: Alonzo Fields, who was chief butler for Presidents Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower. He actually wrote a memoir about his time as chief butler, called "My 21 Years in the White House", and died in 1994 at the age of 94.
|
# ? Dec 25, 2021 05:39 |
|
It's Yeerkmas, so I'm taking the day off! Take care, and the next two chapters are coming tomorrow.
|
# ? Dec 26, 2021 04:51 |
|
Did any of the books take place during Christmas? No one shot Christmas specials where we find out Santa is a Chee or something? What a missed opportunity.
|
# ? Dec 26, 2021 05:08 |
|
Edna Mode posted:Did any of the books take place during Christmas? No one shot Christmas specials where we find out Santa is a Chee or something? What a missed opportunity. Well, Jake and possibly Rachel are Jewish, so they could had a pretty memorable Hanukkah special.
|
# ? Dec 26, 2021 14:27 |
|
quote:I could have pointed out that my friends and I were probably the galactic morphing champions. Come to think of it, they probably are. Visser Three (or Alloran, really) is probably the only person who has more morphs and has morphed more often.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2021 02:52 |
|
freebooter posted:Come to think of it, they probably are. Visser Three (or Alloran, really) is probably the only person who has more morphs and has morphed more often. It's interesting that we never see Visser Three morph something and lose control of the morph. Might chalk it up to actually being a (comically evil) adult and practice morphs before using them in combat situations.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2021 03:47 |
|
I was going to make a joke about V.Three always losing control and attacking everyone which is what he wanted already but it's probably because he's controlling Alloran's mind which is the morphing mind, a step removed from actually morphing your own mind.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2021 03:59 |
|
I remember how they say that the only Andalites who really use the morphing power are their intelligence agents, which as a kid I figured just meant the same sort of cockroach/fly infiltration thing the Animorphs do, but it just occurred to me that the Andalite CIA equivalent probably doesn't have the same qualms they do about morphing sentient species and would absolutely just be acquiring and infiltrating other intelligent spacegoing races.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2021 04:25 |
|
Chapter 11quote:For the second time in less than one full day, we were flying to the Hork-Bajir valley. Pretty sure "the galaxy of the Hork-Bajir planet" is a typo there, or else this war is a lot bigger than I though. Also, Ax really hates Aldrea, doesn't he? Chapter 12-Aldrea quote:I rolled over and realized that Dak was gone. I opened my eyes. Dreams and nightmares are used a lot in this series, or at least focused on a lot.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2021 04:29 |
|
freebooter posted:I remember how they say that the only Andalites who really use the morphing power are their intelligence agents, which as a kid I figured just meant the same sort of cockroach/fly infiltration thing the Animorphs do, but it just occurred to me that the Andalite CIA equivalent probably doesn't have the same qualms they do about morphing sentient species and would absolutely just be acquiring and infiltrating other intelligent spacegoing races. Andalites don't come across as a very subtle species to me, so I wonder to what extent they use that sort of intelligence outside of scouting/commando operations? I think we are told that most Andalite soldiers only know one or two morphs, and don't really use them outside of training.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2021 04:36 |
|
|
# ? May 28, 2024 02:21 |
|
Sounds like one of those questions that gets the broad brushes of: * Andalites aren't as "together" as we first see them. They're actually pretty poo poo at what they do when you get down to it. Unlike humans. Wonderful omnifaceted humans. * Earth's biodiversity be loving cray cray compared to everything else in space so it never occurred to anyone to do poo poo like that. Applegate was cribbing heavily from the TNG playbook-- in a good way mind you, but yeah.
|
# ? Dec 27, 2021 07:15 |