Let's Read Animorphs! The Whole Series! Ch-ch-ch-chaaanges

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Fuschia tude: Dec 26, 2004; THUNDERDOME LOSER 2019

mind the walrus posted:

It does read as a bit contrived but it's thematically justified because the Chee have been built up to be the ultimate non-aggressors, and Jake is deliberately crossing ethical boundaries to get their help. If it weren't for that, I'd agree it's a narrative cheat, but because it holds a cost that pays off both in terms of world logistics and characters, I'm not really bothered.

Ellimist/Crayak, on the other hand, are 100% a cheat.

# ? Mar 19, 2023 17:44

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# ? May 25, 2024 03:39

mind the walrus: Sep 22, 2006

Oh yeah not even a tiny doubt I'm real glad Applegrant didn't even try to bring them into it

# ? Mar 19, 2023 17:46

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

Chapter 22

quote:

We blew out of that room and tore down the corridor, heading directly away from engineering. Heading, in fact, for the pool itself.

After all the pent-up watching and waiting it was good to have claws and teeth and enemies to face.

From time to time as we went, lone Hork-Bajir or human-Controllers spotted us. Most ran and survived. Others did not run. A small patrol of what had to be some sort of Yeerk military police stood and did battle with us. They slowed us for only a few seconds.

We were moving almost too easily, encountering almost too little resistance. Visser One had to learn of our presence. He had to rush from the battle in engineering to confront a greater threat.

There were guards at the entrance to the pool itself, a pair of Hork-Bajir talking nervously about the distant firefight in engineering.

I was on the first one before he could yell. I carried him down with the momentum of my leap and slapped him with the kind of blow that only a tiger can deliver.

Ax took out the other guard and, all at once, we were in the holy of holys, the pool itself. It was perfectly round, dimly lit, under a low ceiling. It was a gray steel swimming pool lined with cages where uncooperative host bodies were kept while their Yeerks soaked up nutrients. The cages held maybe twenty or twenty-five humans and Hork-Bajir, all temporarily Yeerk-free.I hadn�t considered the possibility of freeing hosts.

<Marco! The cages!>

<On it, man,> he said happily.

A Hork-Bajir voice cried, �Andalite!�

A gaggle of unprepared human-Controllers began to charge at us, drawing Dracon weapons but afraid of firing here in the sanctuary.

We blew through them before they could make up their minds. A pair of Taxxons, evidently not members of Arbron�s group, came slithering out to do battle. Cassie and Tobias tore one up badly enough that his brother would finish him off.

More Hork-Bajir. A slashing, close-in battle, and we were away again.

Now the word would reach Visser One. I hoped. Hoped. He had to come to the bridge. If he stayed in engineering he would turn the tide of battle against Toby�s people.

Ax said, <Prince Jake! Inside that booth, those must be controls for the pool.>

<Yeah?> I didn�t get it.

<They must occasionally repair the pool itself,> Ax said. <That would mean draining it.>

<Let�s go!>

A bonus. Another new element. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?

Good. Good. Maybe. I knew the way the plan played out, knew what would happen. Rachel. Tom. Inevitable.

Maybe new elements, maybe the freed prisoners, maybe this new opening, maybe the inevitable need not occur.

Maybe we could save her.

The booth Ax had spotted looked absurdly like a toll-collector�s booth on the highway. It was clear plastic and perched just above the pool, jutting slightly out. There was a single Hork-Bajir inside. There were eight Hork-Bajir outside, unarmed but ready for trouble, ready to stand and fight.

No time to think, attack!

Ax and I raced straight at them. I slashed and opened my nearest foe from belly to neck. Ax�s tail whipped. Cassie came bounding up behind us and launched herself into the battle.

But the area was too narrow, we were hemmed in. Like being shoved down inside a blender set on puree. The Hork-Bajir were all around us, beating us down, slashing, cutting, pounding, tearing at us with their clawed feet.

No way to get free! I couldn�t strike without hitting Ax who was shoved hard against me.

And then, on my back, snarling but helpless, I saw a Hork-Bajir leap high over my head and land like a mosh-pit surfer on my tormentors.

The prisoners! One of the Hork-Bajir prisoners Marco had released.

Marco was there now, too, but most of all, it was the freed prisoners. They turned the tide, attacking their tormentors with awesome rage.

Ax was on his hooves again, bloody, hurt, but well enough to swing his tail and cut the lock to the control booth.

A gorilla yanked the door open and said, <Hi, there! You want to live? Then lie down right now!> He grabbed the unresisting Hork-Bajir and threw him out into the fracas.

Then Marco held the door open like a hotel doorman and grinned a rubbery gorilla grin.

<Gentlemen?>

Ax pushed past me, began punching at active screens and arrays of controls.

<There is a flush sequence,> he said. <I have to override the safety protocols.>

He turned his stalk eyes to me even as his main eyes guided swift, nimble fingers.

<It can be done.>

<Okay,> I said.

<The pool is full to capacity. These are the Yeerks that were rescued from the earth-based Yeerk pool. Plus the bulk of the unhosted Yeerks recently transported here.>

<Some reason you�re telling me all this, Ax-man?>

<Jake, there are seventeen thousand, three hundred seventy-two Yeerks in this pool.>

That rocked me.

Visser One had to know we were here, on the loose. He had to run for the bridge and not stay to win the fight in engineering.

Seventeen thousand. Living creatures. Thinking creatures. How could I give this order? Even for victory. Even to save Rachel. How could I give this kind of order?

They could have stayed home, I thought. No one had asked them to come to Earth. Not my fault. Not my fault, theirs.

No more than they deserved.

Aliens. Parasites. Subhuman.

<Flush them> I said.

He gave the order....

Chapter 23

quote:

The Pool ship�s main pool went through its standard cleaning cycle, draining the gray, sludgy water out into the vacuum of space.

The water, and the parasite creatures within it, froze instantly. The pool became an ice cloud falling away from the slow-moving Pool ship.

How many had Ax said? Seventeen thousand and � how many? How many Yeerks had felt the sudden stab of terror as they realized what was happening?

Frozen now. Crystals. An orbiting graveyard.

<Let�s go,> I said.

We ran from that place, ran from thoughts of what we�d done. Ran for the bridge. His fault, it was Visser One�s fault, all of it. Who had started this war? Not us. We hadn�t asked for it.

It was him. Him and his filthy, subhuman, parasitic race.

His fault. Not mine. Not mine.

He was on the bridge when we got there, our old enemy. Visser One and a handful of Controllers, human and Hork-Bajir. But he seemed almost alone.

The main view screen showed a cloud of sparkling ice shards.

Visser One watched it, almost oblivious to us, though he surely knew we were there. Finally, he turned, and looked at me with all four of his Andalite eyes.

<So,> he said almost softly, <still not dead.>

<No, Visser. Not quite dead.>

<You�re the one called Jake, aren�t you? The brother of my security chief�s host body.>

<That�s me.>

He nodded slightly. He motioned toward the view screen as the picture changed. <As you see, my Blade ship is approaching.>

<I don�t think they�ll be much help to you, Visser.>

<No. It took me a while to see what had happened. But I see it now. The Blade ship will attack, and I am helpless, unable to control this ship.> He laughed mirthlessly. <Only a traitor could have beaten me. I was not beaten by you, human, or by your pet Andalite there. I was undone by my trusting nature.>

Marco laughed then stopped himself.

<Only another Yeerk could have beaten me, and then only by the lowest treason. I was not beaten by you. Never by you.>

<Visser, you can still get off one or two shots at the Blade ship. Take out his engines.>

<Yes, we will try that very thing,> he said dryly. <But you see, someone is bleeding power out of the Dracon beams. Power is being diverted. One of the traitors at work, I suppose. We will get off one or two shots, but at one-quarter strength. Will they be enough? Unlikely.>

<Erek!> I raged in private thought-speak. <Stop draining power from the Dracon beams!>

No answer of course.

<Erek, I know you think you�re doing the right thing, but you�re making it worse!>

Visser One sighed. <My one consolation is that when the traitor murders me with my own ship, it will at least finally be the end of you!>

�Targeting the Blade ship�s starboard engine. We are ready to fire,� one of the humans reported.

Visser One waved a lazy hand. <Fire.>

On the screen I saw the beam reach out through space. Once. Twice. Both missed.

The Blade ship reacted swiftly to avoid the slow retargeting of the Pool ship�s big Dracon cannon.

The Blade ship fired. The explosion reverberated through the ship.

�Engine number one is destroyed, Visser.�

The Blade ship fired again. Again.

Two more explosions.

�We are without propulsion, Visser.�

<Yes. I noticed that,> Visser One said. <No engines. And all our brothers in the pool murdered by these humans.>

�We are being hailed.�

<Of course,> Visser One muttered. <By all means. We must play it out.>

It was Tom�s face that appeared on the screen. And Tom�s voice that spoke. But the smug, hard, derisive tone was that of a Yeerk.

�You seem to be experiencing some engine trouble, Visser,� Tom gloated.

<The Empire will track you down and kill you, you do understand that, I hope?>

�Oh, I doubt it. I think the Empire will have its hands full,� Tom�s Yeerk said cheerfully. �The Andalite fleet is rather close by. It�s possible that I misled you on that point.�

Then he caught sight of me.

His face paled. His eyes went wide. All at once, he knew.

�You�re not dead!�

<I noticed the same thing,> Visser One said dryly.

Tom snapped an order to his crew. �Bring us around to target the Pool ship�s bridge. Do it! Now! Now! Bring us around!�

<Jake,> Tobias said, pleading, knowing, but pleading anyway.

<Rachel �> I said. <Go.>

And so ends the penultimate book of the series, on a cliffhanger.

We should probably talk about the spacing of the Yeerks. This has been discussed before...the morality of it,, but one thing i notice is that Jake goes out of his way to justify his decision to himself, which suggetss that he's not entirely sure about it. it also makes me think of the Andalite Chronicles, and where Elfangor disobeys Alloran's order to destroy a Yeerk pool, So, i guess my question is, what do people think, about this, and also about anything else you want to discuss,

it's Sunday night here, so let's start the last book Tuesday night. This will give everybody two days to discuss this book as a whole (If people want more time, let me know.)

# ? Mar 20, 2023 03:00

Comrade Blyatlov: Aug 4, 2007; should have picked four fingers

I'll comment more later, but I want to draw attention to how perfunctory the battle has become. It's not even a question anymore - they'll win every fight they get into - but the fact that Jake no longer even thinks of it says just how inured to the violence he's become.

edit: oh, that'll teach me for jumping to the end and missing the middle. well, i still stand by what i said about them becoming inured to it.

as for the Yeerks...... I'm reminded of Robert MacNamara during the excellent The Fog of War. He discusses the tactics used, and how and why they got to that conclusion, and then looks direct at the camera and says 'we were acting as war criminals.' and you see deep into his soul, and know that he knows he's damned for what he did.

I can't fault Jake's choice at all, but you can rest assured he will never sleep a full night again for it.

Comrade Blyatlov fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Mar 20, 2023

# ? Mar 20, 2023 03:27

Mazerunner: Apr 22, 2010; Good Hunter, what... what is this post?

Interesting how Jake and Esplin both heavily deny their complicity in how things turned out- Jake with 'we didn't ask for this', and dehumanizing the yeerks, V1 by going 'you didn't beat me, only a traitor could do it' ignoring a) that the animorphs were cahoots with the traitor and b) it was his fostering of an environment of fear and ruthless backstabbing that lead to this

# ? Mar 20, 2023 04:17

Rochallor: Apr 23, 2010; ふっっっっっっっっっっっっｃｋ

I've been sitting on this for a while now-about six months ago I was listening to a podcast and somebody brought up the ending to Animorphs and how the reaction was polarizing... and it turns out they missed the last book and thought this was the end. What does everybody think about this as the ending? It's not half bad, honestly.

# ? Mar 20, 2023 04:30

Tree Bucket: Apr 1, 2016; R.I.P.idura leucophrys

Here at the end of the series, I went back and read the opening chapters of book one. It's interesting how many lines really stuck in my head for all those decades. And I still can't see a satellite at night without wishing for it to suddenly change direction...
There's something sad in comparing that first scene of the kids watching the blue ship descending (radiating good vibes and static electricity in equal measure) with our most recent scene of Jake ordering the death of several thousand yeerks.

Mazerunner posted:

Interesting how Jake and Esplin both heavily deny their complicity in how things turned out- Jake with 'we didn't ask for this', and dehumanizing the yeerks, V1 by going 'you didn't beat me, only a traitor could do it' ignoring a) that the animorphs were cahoots with the traitor and b) it was his fostering of an environment of fear and ruthless backstabbing that lead to this

Yeah, it's a really compelling scene. No catharsis for us!

# ? Mar 20, 2023 05:00

Mazerunner: Apr 22, 2010; Good Hunter, what... what is this post?

Tree Bucket posted:

Yeah, it's a really compelling scene. No catharsis for us!

yeah Esplin's just so... tired. Like he's not going down cursing the heroes with a maniacal laugh, he's just looking at all the death like, "this wasn't supposed to be how it went".

I mean he was still gloating about frying the auxiliaries so I don't feel really all that bad at all, but right now? He knows he hosed up and it cost his species everything.

# ? Mar 20, 2023 05:41

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

Comrade Blyatlov posted:

I can't fault Jake's choice at all, but you can rest assured he will never sleep a full night again for it.

I don't remember the scene at all, even though I know I read this book, I just remember the aftermath of it (for Jake personally, and more broadly) in the next book. And what's quite shocking about it is that it's unnecessary.

They're unarmed civilians. There's no host bodies available for them aboard the ship. There's no way they can contribute. Flushing them makes no strategic difference, and seems to be driven by anger and frustration, hence the dehumanising refrain that keeps running through his head afterwards - that's not the Jake we know, but in the moment, I think he's genuinely feeling it.

The ruthless and strategic thing to do would have been to hold them hostage and threaten to flush them (and not be bluffing) if the Visser or the Blade Ship (or both) refuse to surrender. I don't think that would actually work on either of them (definitely not Tom's Yeerk) but it would be more defensible as a battle tactic than this, which I can't read as anything other than a sort of Dachau-shooting emotional reprisal.

Rochallor posted:

I've been sitting on this for a while now-about six months ago I was listening to a podcast and somebody brought up the ending to Animorphs and how the reaction was polarizing... and it turns out they missed the last book and thought this was the end. What does everybody think about this as the ending? It's not half bad, honestly.

Impossible to really discuss this without discussing the final book and actual ending, so I'll slap it in spoiler tags:

I would admire the chutzpah, but that's not the same as liking it, and I think it would do the series a disservice. It would end on a high adrenaline note, but a big part of the series so far has been about what happens after the battles. The final book really, really works IMO as an examination of the same thing writ large (i.e. what happens after the war) and it would be a terrible shame to lose that, and to lose the examination of what happens to the individual Animorphs in the years to come.

That in turn feeds into why I think the actual cliffhanger ending sort of works: because it's a cliffhanger of personal fates, not the fate of the conflict at the heart of the entire series, which taps into the same kinda nihilistic "life goes on, and poo poo just keeps happening" vibe of the final book. You win the war, you live with the guilt of the flushed Yeerks, you still got to get up every day at 6 for your teaching job at Twentynine Palms and then you probably maybe get killed in another galactic conflict trying to rescue a friend - just one loving thing after another.

# ? Mar 20, 2023 07:19

Comrade Blyatlov: Aug 4, 2007; should have picked four fingers

I think that's come up ITT before, about the status of the Yeerks, and there was disagreement over whether they are civilians or soldiers. I came down on the side of soldiers, making them a valid target, but I can understand seeing it the other way.

# ? Mar 20, 2023 07:47

Vandar: Sep 14, 2007; Isn't That Right, Chairman?

Is there such a thing at this point as a Yeerk civilian? They're all here to take human bodies, they're all going to be used as part of the war effort.

# ? Mar 20, 2023 08:08

Star Man: Jun 1, 2008; There's a star maaaaaan
Over the rainbow

My reading of it is that they might not make it out of this alive, whether Visser One stops them and manages to get out, or the betrayal by Tom's Yeerk was a setup. I think in the moment it was absolute prejudice by Jake to do it, and no one had any reservations. They already did it once on the ground.

# ? Mar 20, 2023 08:12

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

The line between civilian and soldier may be blurry, but I think they're "victims" just as much as the Yeerks already in Controller heads, or the German concripts in the world wars: yes, their side started this, but they're part of a colossal horrible military machine and probably really didn't get any say in things either.

That's what makes this line so good:

quote:

They could have stayed home, I thought. No one had asked them to come to Earth. Not my fault. Not my fault, theirs.

He means it in the sense that Earth didn't ask them to come here. But the Applegates phrasing it as "no one had asked them" - especially since the Yeerk peace movement cropped up again in the last few books - is a reminder that, literally, no one asked them, not even their own leadership. They are victims of an autocracy. I don't think any of that matters in the grander scheme of the war, but it does when you're staring at the flushing lever.

Star Man posted:

My reading of it is that they might not make it out of this alive, whether Visser One stops them and manages to get out.

This I hadn't thought of, and think is fair: if the Animorphs die right here the loss of 17,000 Yeerks could still theoretically tip the balance of the war, or at least tip the likelihood of the Andalites glassing earth.

It sort of reminds me of the WWI armistice; it's widely considered horrific that the agreement was signed before dawn but scheduled for 11:00am, and military leaders still launched assaults in that five or six hours, but part of that is the benefit of hindsight. We know the armistice stuck, but they didn't know it would, and both sides wanted to be in the most advantageous position on the battlefield in the event the war resumed.

# ? Mar 20, 2023 09:10

Mazerunner: Apr 22, 2010; Good Hunter, what... what is this post?

freebooter posted:

This I hadn't thought of, and think is fair: if the Animorphs die right here the loss of 17,000 Yeerks could still theoretically tip the balance of the war, or at least tip the likelihood of the Andalites glassing earth.

Minor spoilers this doesn't just tip the war, it ends it. The yeerk population is actually that small. Like, they could sure do a lot of damage to humanity before the andalite fleet gets there, but any hopes of a yeerk empire at all are crushed. After that point, no matter if the animorphs survive or if V1 surrenders or dies to 'Tom', the war is over and humanity is saved.

Jake didn't know this, though, and he wasn't putting it into his calculations.

But yeah it's... could they have demanded V1's surrender? He has backed down before, with the oatmeal, but are they willing to trust that he would actually honor the agreement long-term? or just long enough to get their hands off the lever? that he doesn't have a way of locking them out?

# ? Mar 20, 2023 09:44

Comrade Blyatlov: Aug 4, 2007; should have picked four fingers

It's also now a total war situation, since the Yeerks are openly wasting everything and infesting everyone willy-nilly.

# ? Mar 20, 2023 10:00

freebooter: Jul 7, 2009

Mazerunner posted:

But yeah it's... could they have demanded V1's surrender? He has backed down before, with the oatmeal, but are they willing to trust that he would actually honor the agreement long-term? or just long enough to get their hands off the lever? that he doesn't have a way of locking them out?

It also hadn't occurred to me that my own mental thumb is on the scale in terms of thinking of them as bargaining chips, because I know that V1 loses and the Earth is saved, and I also know that the Blade Ship escapes to terrorise the far corners of the galaxy. It makes sense that Jake is way more concerned right now with saving the planet than with saving his brother/saving the abstract idea of other planets.

Comrade Blyatlov posted:

It's also now a total war situation, since the Yeerks are openly wasting everything and infesting everyone willy-nilly.

Total war has never been an excuse to massacre civilians. (And "total war" is a notion that dates to World War II, which is also pretty much the modern genesis of "well it wasn't a war crime if we did it")

# ? Mar 20, 2023 10:29

mind the walrus: Sep 22, 2006

So Erek is the reason Rachel dies, however indirectly.

# ? Mar 20, 2023 11:26

Soonmot: Dec 19, 2002; Entrapta fucking loves robots; Grimey Drawer

In my mind, the only yeerk civilians are the ones on the homework. This was a monstrous act by Jake, but no more so than the other mass casualty attacks he's planned recently

# ? Mar 20, 2023 12:27

Star Man: Jun 1, 2008; There's a star maaaaaan
Over the rainbow

What's every alien invasion story always been about, folks?

C O L O N I Z A T I O N

Jake just wiped out an entire colonizing force

# ? Mar 20, 2023 12:48

ANOTHER SCORCHER: Aug 12, 2018

The best context for the Yeerk-Human war is not as a traditional conflict but as a slave revolt. Those are often very dirty conflicts with massacres on both sides. Slave societies require the cooperation of everyone in the oppressor group and so when the oppressed gain the upper hand they have a strategic imperative to cause civilian death.

# ? Mar 20, 2023 13:33

Zore: Sep 21, 2010; willfully illiterate, aggressively miserable sourpuss whose sole raison d�etre is to put other people down for liking the wrong things

I think its also important that we see Jake at probably his very lowest moment here, he's ordered multiple suicide missions hoping he can pull this all off and has already had to watch most of his military allies and the auxillery Animorphs be gleefully incinerated.

Not to mention he sent Rachel on a mission she has no realistic way of living through and just ordered his brother's death. Like even if she does manage to kill Tom and all the other Morph capable Yeerks on the ship then you still have her stuck on the Blade ship with no way to control it.

He's shutting down and lashing out at this point.

# ? Mar 20, 2023 16:46

Capfalcon: Apr 6, 2012; No Boots on the Ground,
Puny Mortals!

It didn't really click for me that the Yeerks population is so small that 17000 dead is more than a bad day in the war. It honestly makes the Andalite-Yeerk war seem kinda funny in retrospect. There were probably not more than 200,000 combatants, but their alien tech is what made it something that actually mattered to Earth.

Anyway, my opinion is that most of everything else has mitigating factors. Even the pool bombing is a military target where they give plenty of notice, and the Yeerks aren't separating "military" from "civilian" usage in any meaningful way. Probably because those words probably don't exist in Yeerks. But with this, Jake did his first big boy war crime by killing scores of helpless soldiers that have no means of fighting back and pose no threat for the foreseeable future.

On the other hand, I think likening the Animorphs' campaign to a slave revolt is rather apt, so... Yeah, in conclusion, California is a land of contrasts.

# ? Mar 20, 2023 17:08

QuickbreathFinisher: Sep 28, 2008; by reading this post you have agreed to form a gay socialist micronation.
`

Jake has had several of the absolute worst experiences of his life in fly morph. The auxiliary animorph scene is so brutal.

# ? Mar 20, 2023 17:19

Traxus IV: Sep 11, 2001; it's our time now
let's get this shit started

God drat these last couple chapters have been intense

# ? Mar 20, 2023 17:47

TheGreatEvilKing: Mar 28, 2016

Capfalcon posted:

There were probably not more than 200,000 combatants, but their alien tech is what made it something that actually mattered to Earth.

The text kind of hints at this with the American Revolution firing line, but the Yeerks really aren't good at hand to hand combat.

If General Doubleday's soldiers had gotten onto the Pool ship with US fireteam tactics they probably could have stormed the Controllers and seized the ship without the Auxiliary Animorphs having to die. The problem is getting there.

# ? Mar 20, 2023 19:17

gourdcaptain: Nov 16, 2012

mind the walrus posted:

So Erek is the reason Rachel dies, however indirectly.

I have to know what the actual Erek King who won the contest to get his name into the books thinks about this, assuming he read this far.

# ? Mar 20, 2023 19:38

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

Here's a look at the deaths in The Animorphs, including who is responsible for each one. (Contains one or two minor spoilers for the last book)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMzpQCsGb_I

# ? Mar 20, 2023 22:46

mind the walrus: Sep 22, 2006

Even with the understandable nature of Jake being at his lowest and needing to assert a sense of control and karmic payback, flushing the pool really is the sensible move from a combat perspective. Contextualizing it as a slave uprising against colonizers is exactly right. They stand to gain nothing from letting the Yeerks live aside from possible better peacetime negotiation optics, and stand to lose a hell of a lot if any part of this mission goes pear-shaped. I wouldn't go so far as to call the decision pragmatic, but it is the right tactical and strategic move from where they are.

# ? Mar 20, 2023 22:48

Capfalcon: Apr 6, 2012; No Boots on the Ground,
Puny Mortals!

Epicurius posted:

Here's a look at the deaths in The Animorphs, including who is responsible for each one. (Contains one or two minor spoilers for the last book)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMzpQCsGb_I

That makes a very good point that Ax is at least as, If not more, responsible as Jake for the Flush. I'd be very interested in hearing his inner narration for that scene.

# ? Mar 21, 2023 01:54

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

ANOTHER SCORCHER posted:

The best context for the Yeerk-Human war is not as a traditional conflict but as a slave revolt. Those are often very dirty conflicts with massacres on both sides. Slave societies require the cooperation of everyone in the oppressor group and so when the oppressed gain the upper hand they have a strategic imperative to cause civilian death.

Well, except we don't see the cooperation of every Yeerk. We've seen multiple members of the Yeerk peace movement. We've also seen that the morphing cube will let Yeerks survive without slavery, and we've also seen the Iskoort, who are Yeerks in a truly mutual relationship, It's outside anyone's current technology to make Iskoort (although if the Yeerk didn't wipe out the Arn....) But we know those other two options exist, and that there are probably members of the Yeerk Peace Movement and Yeerks who would agree to become nothlits in the pool. Do they just get written off as acceptable losses? Also, assuming this is a slave revolt (and none of the Animorphs themselves are actually slaves, even though there are humans and Hork-Bajir are, or at least the equivalent), is there anything the Animorphs can do that would be immoral? Serious questions here,

mind the walrus posted:

Even with the understandable nature of Jake being at his lowest and needing to assert a sense of control and karmic payback, flushing the pool really is the sensible move from a combat perspective. Contextualizing it as a slave uprising against colonizers is exactly right. They stand to gain nothing from letting the Yeerks live aside from possible better peacetime negotiation optics, and stand to lose a hell of a lot if any part of this mission goes pear-shaped. I wouldn't go so far as to call the decision pragmatic, but it is the right tactical and strategic move from where they are.

Maybe, but unlike reality, where we can only guess at intentions, we know exactly what Jake was thinking, and it wasn't that he wanted to gain a tactical or strategic advantage. It was:

'Seventeen thousand. Living creatures. Thinking creatures. How could I give this order? Even for victory. Even to save Rachel. How could I give this kind of order?
They could have stayed home, I thought. No one had asked them to come to Earth. Not my fault. Not my fault, theirs.
No more than they deserved.
Aliens. Parasites. Subhuman."

Does the fact that that was his thought pattern change anything?

# ? Mar 21, 2023 04:45

cptn_dr: Sep 7, 2011; Seven for beauty that blossoms and dies

Epicurius posted:

'Seventeen thousand. Living creatures. Thinking creatures. How could I give this order? Even for victory. Even to save Rachel. How could I give this kind of order?
They could have stayed home, I thought. No one had asked them to come to Earth. Not my fault. Not my fault, theirs.
No more than they deserved.
Aliens. Parasites. Subhuman."

Does the fact that that was his thought pattern change anything?

To me, at least, this reads a lot more like he's desperately trying to justify to himself why he's right to do it. It doesn't sound like he believes it. Which doesn't change much, practically speaking, but I don't think he actually believes they deserve it.

# ? Mar 21, 2023 04:58

Star Man: Jun 1, 2008; There's a star maaaaaan
Over the rainbow

They blew their hometown to fuckin smithereens to destroy the Yeerk pool underground. All bets are off.

They are trapped on a pool ship in space with no way out but to win. Take every mother fucker out with you, because either you win and commandeer the ship long enough to plea to the Andelites for your life before they wax all life on Earth and Rachel does enough damage on her own in the blade ship to remove it as a threat or die trying.

# ? Mar 21, 2023 05:37

CidGregor: Sep 27, 2009; TG: if i were you i would just take that fucking devilbeast out behind the woodshed and blow its head off

I've said this before but contextualizing Yeerks in the pool as 'helpless soldiers/POWs' or 'civilians' or anything of that sort always felt really disingenuous to me when the only way they can be considered an "enemy combatant" or a "valid target" by those traditional definitions is when they are controlling a host body who is in all likelihood a helpless prisoner themselves and generally would have to be killed to kill the Yeerk. Is that somehow 'better?'

Yeerks by their very nature force us (and the characters) to completely rethink all these terms. We just can't apply the same standards of what constitutes an acceptable act of war to an alien race that lives by incredibly different rules. As heartless and cruel and war-crime-y as Jake's decision seems from a regular ol' human-on-human war perspective? Killing Yeerks in the pool, meaning they aren't killing the truly innocent hosts in the process, is the objectively and morally correct thing to do.

# ? Mar 21, 2023 07:36

Comrade Blyatlov: Aug 4, 2007; should have picked four fingers

I would buy the civilians argument a lot more if the situation was that we met them in space in a first contact type scenario. When they're part of an invading force, well, they're invaders. Until there's a surrender made, they're targets. Your average private on Omaha might not have wanted to be there either, and might even have been against the war, but they're still a target, and the same holds if you're looking at their troop ship before it hits the beach.

I'm always open to other interpretations, but for me at least you can't cry foul when you're the invaders.

# ? Mar 21, 2023 08:12

disaster pastor: May 1, 2007

cptn_dr posted:

To me, at least, this reads a lot more like he's desperately trying to justify to himself why he's right to do it. It doesn't sound like he believes it. Which doesn't change much, practically speaking, but I don't think he actually believes they deserve it.

Yeah, I think it's clear that Applegate and Grant do not think this was the right thing to do and don't want the reader to think so, but they do want the reader to understand why Jake does it, how he can justify it in the moment, and how his justifications make sense to him and his team and can't just be ignored.

CidGregor posted:

I've said this before but contextualizing Yeerks in the pool as 'helpless soldiers/POWs' or 'civilians' or anything of that sort always felt really disingenuous to me when the only way they can be considered an "enemy combatant" or a "valid target" by those traditional definitions is when they are controlling a host body who is in all likelihood a helpless prisoner themselves and generally would have to be killed to kill the Yeerk. Is that somehow 'better?'

Yeerks by their very nature force us (and the characters) to completely rethink all these terms. We just can't apply the same standards of what constitutes an acceptable act of war to an alien race that lives by incredibly different rules. As heartless and cruel and war-crime-y as Jake's decision seems from a regular ol' human-on-human war perspective? Killing Yeerks in the pool, meaning they aren't killing the truly innocent hosts in the process, is the objectively and morally correct thing to do.

Yeah, I've said the same thing:

disaster pastor posted:

It's undisputed that the Yeerks are the aggressors in this war, so the kids, as resistance, have a liiiiittle bit of leeway here. But man.

As a general rule, the only guaranteed lawful way to kill an enemy combatant, especially pre-War on Terror, is during combat. But it's literally impossible to kill an unhosted Yeerk "during combat" (unless it's trying to escape from a dying host). So killing a Yeerk in combat always means killing a potentially innocent host. If you want to kill Yeerks without killing hosts, you have to kill a helpless Yeerk. If you want to prevent innocents from becoming hosts, you have to kill helpless Yeerks.

It's some supremely hosed moral calculus that middle schoolers should not be expected to have to do.

# ? Mar 21, 2023 13:40

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

So to add another complication, does it change your conclusion if there aren't enough Yeerks/the Yeerks aren't in position to retake the pool?

# ? Mar 21, 2023 13:52

disaster pastor: May 1, 2007

Epicurius posted:

So to add another complication, does it change your conclusion if there aren't enough Yeerks/the Yeerks aren't in position to retake the pool?

Would Jake know that? Would Ax, even?

# ? Mar 21, 2023 13:53

CidGregor: Sep 27, 2009; TG: if i were you i would just take that fucking devilbeast out behind the woodshed and blow its head off

Epicurius posted:

So to add another complication, does it change your conclusion if there aren't enough Yeerks/the Yeerks aren't in position to retake the pool?

I feel like that would require such dramatically different circumstances that it would make the current situation unrecognizable. They're a five-person strike team inside an enemy HQ, probably exponentially outnumbered, on a covert mission. To say the Yeerks don't have the numbers to stop them doesn't jive with that setup at all.

Also, their mission was to destroy the pool ship. That was kind of always the goal. Jake and Ax manually flushing the literal pool itself makes it feel more personal and directly on them, but those Yeerks were gonna die anyway if their plan succeeded. And Jake's mental gymnastics may have been him trying to justify the deed to himself, but a lot of it is still factually-correct: they ARE an invading force, they COULD have stayed home, and this war IS happening expressly because of the Yeerks themselves. It's just the dehumanizing language he uses that feels bad and ugly.

Now if you REALLY wanted to make this look like a moral grey zone or a potential war crime, having the Yeerk Peace Movement being a much more sizeable and active presence in the story and the war would have been the way to go. It's easier for them to not think too hard about all two of the peaceful Yeerks they know exist. Not so much if it were a couple hundred they'd worked with before and specifically knew were in the pool ship (and not already dead from the main underground pool's destruction).

# ? Mar 21, 2023 14:24

Avalerion: Oct 19, 2012

If the yeerk population invading earth was this small they really should have just like, quietly taken over north korea or new zealand.

# ? Mar 21, 2023 15:30

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# ? May 25, 2024 03:39

Zore: Sep 21, 2010; willfully illiterate, aggressively miserable sourpuss whose sole raison d�etre is to put other people down for liking the wrong things

The Yeerk population on earth being so low is pretty weird yeah. Especially since they seem to be r strategists who produce hundreds of offspring at a time.

Though given their level of intelligence and the fact reproducing kills them that gap might be a bridged a bit. But still you'd think trying to get the population up enough to infest like more than a single small city would be kind of important (I'm assuming here that the Yeerks flushed are like 1/8th-1/6th of the total invading population based on the 3 day cycle and need for a few hours in the pool)

# ? Mar 21, 2023 15:48

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