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Apr 28, 2024 07:20
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- death cob for cutie
- Dec 30, 2006
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dwarves won't delve no more
too much splatting down on Zot:4
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barreling in to interrupt alternamorphs time to say that I'm very glad nine gear crow in SBF pointed this thread out to me; through it I've reread all the books over the last month and I just had a good cry over KAA's letter, which was probably good for me because I have been having some bad depression lately and I am not great at crying
also about once a week I think about that certificate that got made for Tom way back in the thread and laugh my rear end off
also also you always take the second choice offered to you... unless you're up against a gamer, who knows how games are played. then you take the first choice. but if the gamer knows you're a gamer, then that changes the balance.
still the second one, go for B
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May 12, 2023 11:07
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- nine-gear crow
- Aug 10, 2013
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The people have spoken, and the people want
...what?
The Next Passage – Chapter 18
quote:
The white void vanishes.
You’re in a forest. Surrounded by trees and massive shoulder-high ferns. Bright, buttery sunlight
filters through the leaves.
“Hrrrrhuh!”
You jump. A grunting, snuffling sound is coming from behind you. You hear branches being pushed back. Something moving. Something big.
“What’s that?” Cassie asks apprehensively.
Ax turns in a slow circle, tail blade ready.
<I’ll check it out,> Tobias offers. He flaps up through the trees.
Crash! Crash!
Still behind you. But closer.
“HuuuuRROOOOAAARR!”
Wham! Wham! The ground shakes with the impact tremors. Something is coming!
<Run!> Tobias shouts.
You don’t have to be told twice.
Crash! Crash! Crash!
The earth trembles! You have to fight to stay on your feet, to keep moving forward.
“HrrrrrRRROOOOAAAARRRR-unh!”
Right behind you! You glance back. What you see almost makes you pee in your pants.
You’re being chased by … by a reptile. But it’s a reptile out of a Godzilla movie. It’s half the length of a football field and the size of a small house. Its jagged teeth glimmer wetly.
“T-rex?” you mutter in horror.
Impossible!
Crazy!
And only a few feet away!
“HrrrrrRRROOOOAAAARRRR!”
Run!
Your heart is hammering against your rib cage, your skin is covered in cold sweat. You’re screaming, crying as you flee. Leaves slap your face. Twigs whip your bare arms.
The others are ahead. You catch glimpses of them.
CRASH! CRASH!
You push hard. Run all out.
The T-rex is gaining.
Maybe a foot away now!
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!
A root catches your foot! You’re flying, tumbling. Then -
“Ah!” You hit the ground hard. You can’t breathe. Can’t move. You’re frozen from sheer panic. Down comes the T-rex’s head. Hungry eyes lock on your gut. You can feel the heat of breath on your face. It smells rancid.
This is the end. You squeeze your eyes closed. Then -
CHOOSE YOUR MORPH. COCKROACH OR WOLF.
The Ellimist.
“What are you doing?” you yell. “Trying to get me killed?”
You open your eyes. Expecting to be safe. Expecting to see the world on “pause.”
“HRRRRRRRROOOOAAAARRRR!” Inches away from your nose, powerful jaws roar open.
You see rows of teeth, a sofa-size tongue.
“Aaaaggggghhh!” you scream.
CRUNCH!
The T-rex chomps its jaws a hair’s width from your right ear. You grab your ear with both hands. Crying, trembling.
CHOOSE.
Well holy gently caress, this went from 0 to 10,000 in no time flat, huh?
So welcome to Megamorphs #2 In The Time of Dinosaurs already in progress. Kind of a weird dick move for the Ellimist to go “YOU HAVE BROKEN SPACE-TIME AND I AM MAD ABOUT IT. FIX IT, MORTAL!” and then throw You Two into a completely different space-time disaster to sink or swim, huh?
Are we 100% that this isn’t Crayak and we’re just catching up with all the poo poo he put David through between The Solution and The Return?
Anyway, we have two completely arbitrary morphs to choose from now:
Good luck.
nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 04:45 on May 21, 2023
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May 12, 2023 17:00
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- gourdcaptain
- Nov 16, 2012
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We have absolutely no idea what we're doing, so cockroach and chill.
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May 13, 2023 01:32
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- nine-gear crow
- Aug 10, 2013
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The Next Passage – Chapter 19
quote:
You roll. Stumble to your feet.
What good is a roach morph? What good is any morph now? T-rex is going to turn you into dinner before you have a chance to morph.
The massive head comes down again. So close you can see the pebbly skin, look into one dark, damp nostril.
Instinctively, you dodge behind a tree.
You focus some small part of your brain on the roach. Imagine the small, easily compactible body. Long to become it.
“HrrrrrRRROOOOAAAARRRR!” The T-rex screams with rage.
WHAM! WHAM!
It’s coming around the tree for you.
You can’t hide.
You can’t outrun it.
You can’t morph fast enough.
Only one chance.
You run straight for the gaping maw. Get splashed by dripping dinosaur saliva. Graze your back on the huge chin.
You run through dinosaur legs as big as massive columns. Under a belly that rises above you like a low-slung pebbly gray ceiling.
The T-rex can’t reach you. Can’t get its massive head under its legs. It leaps up and spins around, turning almost gracefully except for the tree it knocks over with its tail.
As you run you’re starting to shrink. Four feet. Three and three quarters. Three and a half.
Looking down at your feet, you see your chest cover with an armor plate of brown cockroach shell. It’s disgusting, but at least it means the morph is working.
Your fingers melt together. Next time you look, they’ve formed a single, many-jointed bug leg.
SPLOUT! SPLOUT!
Antennae jump out of your forehead as you run out from under the T-rex’s tail. Your body is growing clumsy as your legs start to thin.
Three and a quarter feet. Three feet. Two and three quarters.
You hunker down, trying to hide beneath the ferns. Your waist pinches together. The lower part of your body swells to form a bloated insect abdomen. Your skull melts away. Your ears and hearing fade, making the roar of T-rex sound far way.
Which is a good thing.
Because the T-rex is close. It is patiently sniffling through the ferns, searching for you with its Buick-size snout.
The roach mind bubbles up at the same time extra legs suddenly pop out of your chest.
I’m cool, the roach mind seems to say. The roach is happy under the ferns. Calm, collected.
Then -
CHOMP!
It has you!
Up, up, up you go. A two-foot roach impaled on an even bigger dinosaur tooth. High into the air.
Wet, pink, warm. You’re in T-rex’s mouth! Lolling in a pond of spit just under its slab of a tongue.
Somehow, you manage to keep your concentration, to keep morphing. Now you are a foot long. Half a foot. You pop free of the massive tooth. You’re ripped practically in two. But somehow you’re still alive.
T-rex clamps down. but now you’re more roach than human and the space between the dinosaur’s teeth and gums seems like a huge pink cavern.
Go toward the light, you think.
Now the roach mind is starting to panic, to protest. You fight for control. You crawl right out over the T-rex’s lip and out onto its pebbly skin. Must tickle.
The T-rex gives a massive swing of its huge head, and sends you flying.
<Aggggghhhh!>
Down, down, down.
You catch a flash of blue, green, brown.
Thunk!
You land on your back in the mossy soil. Wiggling your legs in the air. You stretch, scramble, stretch, scramble, and flip.
You’re right side up and alive.
Killing a cockroach is hard.
The indestructible cockroach strikes again! Well done team.
The Next Passage – Chapter 20
quote:
You squish yourself down under a nice piece of moss next to a tree root. The roach body makes itself small, stays perfectly still.
The T-rex doesn’t know you fell out of its mouth. Isn’t interested anymore. It has found new prey.
<Watch out, Marco!>
<Coming up behind you!>
From your hiding place, you can’t see what’s happening to your friends. But you notice their calls and shouts are growing distant. Even the T-rex’s footfalls fade away.
You’re a bug alone in Dinoland.
Now what?
Find the others, you think.
That means demorphing. Has to. Catching up with them as a roach would take forever.
Reluctantly, you concentrate on your own body and feel the changes begin. Antennae dissolve. The roach’s exoskeleton softens into human skin. Extra legs wilt and slurp up into your chest.
And you grow. Up out of your safe moss hideaway. Zooming up to your own true height.
A grinding sound as your bones grow back and join together to form a skeleton. A slish slosh as your stomach, kidneys, pancreas, and blood vessels spring back. Your heart reappears and immediately begins banging against your rib cage.
Now you’re a human alone in Dinoland.
You walk, then trot, then start to run.
“You guys! Wait up!” you shout.
Nobody answers.
Following the trail isn’t difficult.
You can see the snapped saplings and crushed ferns where the T-rex pushed through the forest. You can follow the dinosaur’s talon prints.
There’s one every five or six feet.
You run until your lungs burn and your side aches.
You slow it to a walk and trudge along. Your bare feet are bloody and bruised.
The sounds of the forest terrify you.
Twigs snapping.
Leaves crunching.
Something scampering through the low vegetation.
The light under the trees starts to fade. The sky shades from blue to deeper blue to red. The trees around you begin to lose their sharpness.
Twilight is coming on.
Then night.
You have maybe ten minutes of daylight. Twenty, tops.
Do dinosaurs hunt at night?
You have no idea.
You come out of the woods and into what looks like a big pasture full of tall grass. You see a flickering light off in the distance. You smell something -
Smoke!
And something else -
Meat!
You start to run.
Jake, Cassie, Marco, Rachel and Ax fill you in on their adventures while you chew on what turns out to be T-rex shish kebabs.
Here’s the deal:
Ax killed the T-rex seconds before it killed Marco.
Cassie figured out how to turn the T-rex hide into food and shoes. Rachel used a couple of twigs to start a fire.
After eating a couple chunks of meat, you are starting to yawn big time. The run through the forest, the constant adrenaline rushes are getting to you. Your eyelids are hard to hold up. So is your head.
The others are still talking, still discussing the situation.
You stretch out on your side next to the fire. You make a pillow out of your hands and close your eyes. Almost immediately you fade into a dreamless sleep.
At first you’re not sure what wakes you up. You stare at the black night. Roll over and blink at the blazing fire.
Cassie and Ax are on their feet. Rachel is shaking herself awake. Everyone is staring out into the darkness.
“What is it?” you ask, sitting up.
Jake’s voice. He’s running out of the darkness. “Everyone get out of the way!” he yells.
“Stampede.”
“Stampede?” Marco demands incredulously. “What is this, a cowboy movie?”
“MOVE!” Jake yells.
Once again we’re back to contriving ways to split You Two up from the main crew and then have the more exciting off-screen Animorphs adventure recounted to them later, but at least we’re not going whole chapters where the main kids just dip out of existence like in The First Journey, so… progress?
Anyway, we’ve got two choices to try an get away from this dinosaur stampede alive:
- Morph the roach again.
- Run.
What’ll it be?
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May 13, 2023 23:25
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- gourdcaptain
- Nov 16, 2012
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Continue mashing roach to solve all our problems.
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May 14, 2023 03:27
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- nine-gear crow
- Aug 10, 2013
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The Next Passage – Chapter 21
Time to re-roll roach and see where that gets us...
quote:
Morph, morph, morph! you think.
You can already hear the dinosaurs coming.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
You try to focus your panicky mind on the cockroach. Antennae sprout violently from your head.
The changes are beginning!
Faster, you think.
A sound like rolling thunder. Like a train bearing down on you.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
You can vaguely make out the herd. Long-necked dinosaurs. Big. Huge tails. Taller than elephants or giraffes. Heads on the same level as treetops.
“Why are they running?” you demand.
<A T-rex!> Tobias yells. <Heading this way!>
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOMBOOMBOOM!
The dinos are closing in. Closer, closer.
It’s hide or get stomped.
But you can’t hide until you get small. And you aren’t getting small!
Your body is segmenting. A hard shell forms over your human arms and legs, over your face. But you don’t shrink. You’re a four-foot-something half-roach half-human. And here come the big boys!
<Run!> Tobias yells.
You try, and stumble. Your legs are fusing together, turning into bloated roach abdomen.
The thunder grows louder. Surrounds you. A whale-size dino passes by you, blocking out the moon. The herd is all around you.
You’re trapped!
An enormous talon passes right over your head. The dinosaurs are moving around you like water moves around a rock in a stream. All you can do is stand still and tremble.
Get small, you tell yourself. GET SMALL.
You begin to shrink.
You’re a dog-size roach. A cat-size roach. And then -
Another talon coming down toward your head.
Uh-oh.
You’re a dead roach.
Gregor Samsa’d, what a way to go. Just goes to show you, you can’t roach your way out of EVERYTHING, now can you?
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May 15, 2023 19:48
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- nine-gear crow
- Aug 10, 2013
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So of course doubling down on the roach morph was not a good idea. The correct choice was “run”.
The Next Passage – Chapter 22
quote:
You run.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Jake is right in front of you. Ax in front of him.
The others are behind you somewhere. I’m glad my legs aren’t as short as Marco’s, you think.
You don't need to be faster than the T-Rex, you just need to be faster than the second slowest member of the group.
quote:
You can hear the dinosaurs closing in.
Boom! Boom! Boom! A sound like rolling thunder. Like a train bearing down on you.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Here and there, you catch a fleeting glimpse of the herd. Long necks. Huge tails. Big and heavy enough to smash you like a steamroller.
Your leg muscles burn. Your lungs ache. But you push yourself harder. Fueled by fear.
<A T-rex!> Tobias yells. <Heading this way!>
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOMBOOMBOOM!
Closer, closer. The thunder grows louder. Surrounds you. The herd is all around you.
You try to run with it. But the long-necked dinosaurs are faster. And they’re also fueled by panic.
WHAMMMM!
The ground bounces, stumbling you to your knees.
“ScreeeeeEEEEEE!” a long-necked dinosaur squeals in panic.
A shadow that blots out the moon and stars. Trembling, you turn and look. Then -
CHOMP!
“Agggghhhh!” you scream.
Darkness. Hot breath. A slimy, rough surface beneath you. A tongue!
You’re in T-rex’s mouth!
GULP!
Pressure on all sides. Squeezing you down and down some nightmare tunnel.
You’re being swallowed!
A bigger opening. Liquid all around. Water. No, no, no. Too hot to be water. Digestive acid.
You’re being digested.
So this is like twice in one book that You Two has been swallowed by a T-Rex. I know Goosebumps had a lot of "the ghostwriter and/or RL Stine's barely disguised fetish" stuff going on in them, and I guess Animorphs is getting in on that poo poo too as we narrow in on the end of all things for this thread.
quote:
You are blind. Deaf, except for a sound of churning. And the steady bass drum of a heart beating.
You grin up against warm flesh, up against something that feels like bones. T-rex’s last snack?
You’re holding your breath. You don’t want to breathe in the battery acid T-rex has in its stomach.
What can you do? with a desperate burst of energy, you try to claw your way out. But it’s hopeless. You can’t grab onto the smooth flesh lining the dinosaur’s belly.
What can you do?
The Ellimist has given you only one morph: roach.
You begin to morph.
Almost immediately your oxygen-deprived brain calms down. Your thinking grows clearer.
Roach bodies can live longer than humans without much air.
You’re growing smaller. Now the churning of the stomach isn’t so painful.
You’re alive. But for how long?
You pass out. Wake up. Pass out.
When you wake up the second time you notice the stomach has stopped churning. Your roach
senses can smell fresh air.
You force the roach toward the air.
Run! up a tube the size of a water pipe.
Run!
Out into a cavern lined with sparking teeth.
Run!
Across a plain of pink flesh.
Don't you just love false choices? The answer was actually "morph roach again" after all.
The Next Passage – Chapter 23
quote:
You begin to demorph.
Your human eyesight blinks back on. You can see you’re standing next to an enormous corpse.
You’re still only a few inches high. A dinosaur looks the size of an aircraft carrier.
The others notice you.
“Hey!” Cassie says. “You’re alive!”
<Barely,> you say, still more roach than human.
“We all made it,” Jake says, shaking his head. “Amazing.”
“Who killed the T-rex?” you ask.
“I guess I did,” Jake says.
“How?”
“It ate me,” Jake says. “So I acquired it and started morphing in its throat.”
That's both incredibly smart and incredibly hosed up, Jake. Choking a T-Rex to death with itself inside itself is certainly a new one for the highlight reel of "Just Animorphs poo poo", I guess.
Also are we really out of ideas that we're already reapting the "Someone kills a T-Rex off-screen then recounts it to the reader" plot point not just twice in one book but twice in the span of two concurrent chapters?
Like, I know these books are lazy, but come ooooon.
quote:
Everyone is buzzed with energy and nerves. You decide to keep walking even though it’s dark.
You trudge through the grass for a few miles. You stop and doze. You get up and trudge some more.
Nobody knows where you’re going. But somehow walking makes you feel better.
Gradually the sky lightens and the sun comes up. More trudging. And now you’re beginning to think that sitting down and never walking again would be a nice plan.
“Oh, man, look,” Jake says. “I think we’re coming up on some kind of big gorge or whatever.”
You march up to it. A huge canyon. You’re on the edge of a valley hundreds of feet deep and miles across.
The valley isn’t empty. Down there, spread across a mile of valley floor, are glittering, shining buildings. And hovering over them is something that looks like a flying saucer.
A flying saucer and dinos? This is getting weird.
Okay, so Day Two in the Cretaceous Era, number of T-Rexes killed: 2 (which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it's happened twice now), number of ancient alien cities discovered: 1.
How should You Two react to this discovery?
- Pretend you never saw the city.
- Decide to investigate.
nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 01:33 on May 16, 2023
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May 16, 2023 01:31
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- gourdcaptain
- Nov 16, 2012
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Amazed that even when the solution isn't roach, it's roach.
Anyway, let's ignore the alien city, we can probably get back to it later.
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May 16, 2023 12:24
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- nine-gear crow
- Aug 10, 2013
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loving lol these books
Let's go back to the first choice and stop reading.
I guess ignore
Just remember, this is only HALF the book. Once we're done with this plot, we get to back and do the A SIDE! 
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May 16, 2023 16:55
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- nine-gear crow
- Aug 10, 2013
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Let’s see ow ignoring this problem turns out…
The Next Passage – Chapter 22
quote:
You turn your back on the canyon and walk the way you came. Through the tall grass, heading for the forest.
You’re hungry. Thirsty. Itchy. Damp from sweating in the heavy humidity.
An added plus: You’re attracting bugs the size of small birds.
At first you complain about the bugs, the humidity. But after a while the group quiets down.
Everyone seems to be fighting depression. You have no idea where you’re going or how to get home.
Even Tobias seems tired. You notice he is flapping from tree to tree, resting while the rest of your weird little group catches up.
Once you’ve crossed the plain, you move into the woods. You stop to drink from a spring.
“I wish I had a Coke,” Jake says as he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Anything in the soda family,” Marco says. “Coke, Pepsi, Sprite, Orangina, root beer. Hey, I’d even suck down a Tab.”
Ax has one hoof in the edge of the stream. <I find the water in this time period quite refreshing. Far superior to twenty-first-century water.>
“I want a shower,” Rachel says.
“Why?” Cassie asks. “You already look impossibly clean and well groomed. I swear you have some sort of force field that repels dirt.”
<Shhh…> Tobias says.
“Why?” Marco says. “I like to bond by sharing grooming tips. Have I ever told you how I keep my hair so soft and shiny?”
<I think I hear something.>
Jake instantly looks alert. “Check it out.”
“You think?” you repeat. Birds of prey have incredibly sharp hearing. You don’t understand Tobias’s hesitation.
Tobias flaps hard, straining for altitude. <Uh-oh. A Deinonychus. Only about four feet to your left.>
You spin. Scan the trees. Tobias knows a lot more about dinosaurs than you do and he sounds worried.
“I don’t see anything,” Jake says.
Rachel is already starting to morph. She’s growing, sprouting grizzly fur. “What’s a Deinonychus?”
“Aren’t those the baddies from Jurassic Park?” you ask.
“Those were Velociraptors,” Marco says.
“What’s the difference?” Cassie asks.
<Deinonychus are bigger,> Tobias says, sounding puzzled. <It’s weird. Paleontologists say Deinonychus was a smart pack-hunter. But this one is alone.>
“Maybe it’s an outcast,” Rachel suggests. “Like a lone wolf.”
You have another idea. “Or -”
“Heeeeeesssss!”
Coming from your left.
“Heeeeeesssss!”
Coming from your right!
You spin around just in time to see a flash of motion. A man-size dinosaur. Leaping. Then -
BAM!
Sharp talons hit your chest, knocking you onto your back. You’re pinned to the ground! You beat on its pebbly flesh with your bare hands.
The dinosaur lifts one talon. It points a wicked, down-curved claw at your guts.
“No!” you yell.
SLASH!
You’re lunch for a Deinonychus.
An artist’s rendition of a Deinonychus.
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May 17, 2023 06:41
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- nine-gear crow
- Aug 10, 2013
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I was just going to do the one chapter, but gently caress it, the other choice is the end of the B Side of the book.
The Next Passage – Chapter 25
quote:
“We’ve got to get down there somehow,” you say. “Investigate. Maybe whoever built that city can help us figure out a way home.”
FLASH!
The valley disappears.
The prehistoric landscape vanishes.
You and the others are sitting in the middle of an empty IMAX theater. You have the best seat in the house. Center seat of the center row.
Cassie, Ax, and Tobias are on your right.
Marco, Rachel, and Jake are on your left.
A tub of buttered popcorn sits on your lap. There’s a supersize soda in the cup holder.
Marco picks up his cup. Sips.
“Coke?” you ask.
Marco makes a face. “Tab.”
INVESTIGATE, comes the Ellimist’s booming voice. FIND A WAY. THESE ARE THINGS HUMANS DO WELL.
The houselights dim.
The enormous curved screen in front of you fills with an image. A close-up of a nameless primitive man. His grubby hands are rubbing two sticks together. A lick of flame starts to grow, illuminating a face filled with wonder and fear.
The scene shifts. You see a dirty, wild-looking woman tap-tapping a piece of flint against a stone to fashion a crude tool.
Again the scene shifts. You see men and women of all races weaving fabric, forging glittery objects of metal, collecting seeds, planting seeds, making sails and canoes and setting off to explore waterways.
Now the pace of the images picks up. More toolmakers. This time fashioning spears, harpoons, and arrows. Wheels! Wheels of a dozen different sizes. Wheels on crude vehicles, on potter’s wheels, on lathes.
And now the humans you see are starting to look different. More light in their eyes. A keener awareness. You watch them plot the motion of the stars. Create the first irrigation systems. Stack up crude bricks to build shelters and then ziggurats and then pyramids.
People wearing tunics and sandals invent screws, pulleys, levers. Pumps, simple engines, watermills, plows. Arches, vaults, domes. Amphitheaters, aqueducts, tunnels, bridges. Lighthouses, roads, and compasses.
Now the images are coming faster. Castles. Gunpowder. Cannons. Maps. Clocks. Ink, paper, movable type, printing presses and books. Telescopes. Steam engines.
<Incredible,> Ax whispers.
Now the images are spinning so fast they are just flashes.
You see what has to be Benjamin Franklin with his kite. Edison with a bumpy-looking lightbulb.
Then a sprawling city light up. New York!
Streams of people in hats moving down a staircase and onto a herky-jerky train. A subway in London or Boston or Paris. Delicate suspension bridges. Trains, photographs, telephones. People climbing snow mountain peaks, probing ocean floors, riding into space on rockets.
Images flashing by, blurring into one another. Airplanes, elevators, skyscrapers, cars, computers, plastics, drugs, medicine, TVs, lasers, robots, vaccines, satellites.
The screen goes dark.
The theater lights come up.
<That was cool,> Tobias says.
“Very PBS,” Marco adds.
“What does it mean?” you ask.
YOU HAVE PASSED THE TEST.
The theater disappears.
The Animorphs disappear.
You’re in the backseat of your parents’ car. Your dad is driving and your mother is in the passenger seat. You’re following a big yellow moving truck. On the way to your new house.
“Mom?” you say in disbelief.
You remember everything - the battle in your bedroom, morphing, the Howlers, the T-rex. You also remember this car ride. It happened a week ago. Back before you ever spent a minute in your new school.
Your mother turns around and smiles at you. “What is it, sweetie?”
“Nothing.”
You feel like crying. You have it to do all over. Now you don’t ever have to go near that construction site. Now you don’t ever have to discover the blue box.
Unless you want to.
So… that’s it, I guess? That was the Ellimist’s great big trial for how to fix the timeline that You Two broke when they scooped up the morphing cube from the construction site: survive a couple of encounters with some dinosaurs then literally go watch a museum IMAX movie that’s just a timelapse of human civilization.
Nothing was learned. Nothing was gained. Nothing was accomplished.
Well, I guess maybe you all now have the image of Ax trying to fit his centaur rear end into an IMAX theater seat to imagine, but that’s about it…?
WHO’S READY FOR THE A SIDE NOW?! 
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May 17, 2023 06:50
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- nine-gear crow
- Aug 10, 2013
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The white flag is out. This is the final lap!
Let’s head back and pick the A button this time and see what underwhelming bullshit it foists on us this time instead of a halfbaked barely rehash of In The Time of Dinosaurs...
The Next Passage – Chapter 6
quote:
BECAUSE YOU’VE ANGERED ME!
You feel a chill crawl through your body as the sunlight blinks out. You are in total darkness.
Floating in a featureless void. No up. No down. And the Ellimist’s voice comes from everywhere at once. And from nowhere.
“I - I’m sorry,” you stutter. “Wh-what did I do?”
YOU HAVE ALTERED THE STRANDS OF SPACE-TIME.
“But I don’t even know what space-time is,” you protest. Then -
You see it. It blinks on like a ride in a carnival.
Threads. Hundreds, thousands of them in all the brilliant colors of the spectrum. Running in every direction around you. Threads streaking off into the distance, curling back inside themselves, disappearing, reappearing, twisting, raveling, and braiding. A chaos of complication. And they are changing all of the time. Moving. Growing brighter or dimmer.
You can’t make sense of it.
No matter. It is beautiful.
“Is something bad going to happen because of me?” you ask.
THAT DEPENDS.
“Depends? Depends on what?”
YOUR WORTH. YOU WILL TAKE A TEST TO MEASURE YOUR WORTH.
“What kind of test?” you ask, trying to sound strong.
DO WELL AND I WILL SAVE YOUR FAMILY FROM THE YEERKS. DO POORLY AND YOU WILL DIE.
“What kind of test?” you ask again.
The threads disappear. The darkness disappears. Now you are floating in a plain white void.
CHOOSE.
You look down. In your hand is a remote control with two round buttons. One is marked A. The other is marked B.
The Next Passage – Chapter 7
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The white void is gone.
You are surrounded by color! Primary colors everywhere! Red, blue, yellow. Wherever you are, the place seems to have been built of brilliantly colored blocks like Legos.
Coming straight at you is a gaggle of aliens!
Ugly aliens. Heads thrust forward on long necks. Triangular faces with the point toward the top. Pink eyes stuck on short stalks. Gaping mouths with fat blue tongues and tiny blue-tinged teeth inside.
Eight, ten of them. All thought-speaking at once.
<Human, sell me your memories!>
<Come visit my nightmare theater!>
Their necks protrude from shoulders like flat serving platters. Two arms drop from the shoulders. Each one is jointed three times, ending in a grasping hand made up of three clawlike fingers.
The aliens’ knees hinge the wrong way. The bottom part of their legs lay flat against the ground, extending forward. The feet are naked and have one long toe and two short ones.
The grossest part is their midsection. It’s an accordion made of veined, pink flesh. It moves up and down, wheezing and whining as the aliens beg.
<Your eyes will fetch top dollar in the best boutiques! Especially if they are still attached to your head!>
<Your nose hairs are too long! I will braid them for you!>
You shrink back in horror. That’s when you realize you’re a dizzying distance in the air. Inches from the end of a platform miles from the ground. A platform with no railing. Fall and it would take a couple of hours to land. Suddenly you feel dizzy.
<Watch it!> Ax uses his tail to pull you away from the edge.
“Back off!” Jake says to the aliens. He roughly pushes one that comes too close.
“Iskoort,” Cassie says. She sounds puzzled.
You’re relieved to see all of the Animorphs are with you. Also, relieved that they seem to know where you are.
<What are we doing here?> Tobias demands.
“Don’t you remember?” Marco asks. “We joined the frequent fighter plan last time.
“One thing we are not doing is selling my hair,” Rachel says firmly. “It took me weeks to get a decent ponytail after my last Iskoort trim.”
“I assume the Ellimist transported us here,” someone says. You realize you’ve never met the kid who’s talking. He has brown hair, just a little over his ears.
“Hi,” you say.
“Hi. I’m Erek King.”
“Something tells me this is not a vacation,” Jake says.
YOU ARE CORRECT.
You clear your throat. “Turns out the Ellimist was a little annoyed we made another Animorph,” you explain.
YOU WILL FIGHT THE HOWLERS AGAIN. THIS TIME IT WILL BE EIGHT AGAINST SEVEN. YOU WILL HAVE AN EXTRA ALLY - FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE.
“Why do I get the idea he knows something we don’t?” Marco asks.
Rachel shrugs. “We won last time. How hard will it be to beat them again?”
I WILL ERASE YOUR MEMORY OF THIS PLACE. YOU WILL BEGIN THE TEST AGAIN.
“That is so not fair!” Marco says.
“What’s not fair?” Jake asks.
“Huh?” Marco asks. “What are you talking about?”
“I - I don’t know.”
AND TO THE NEWEST ANIMORPH, CHOOSE YOUR MORPHS. I WILL PROVIDE YOU WITH THOSE YOU DO NOT HAVE. ANDALITE, SHARK, AND KOMODO DRAGON. OR FLY, HAWK, AND HORK-BAJIR.
“What is this - McDonald’s?” Marco asks. “Do you want fries with that?”
Ax’s main eyes flicker toward you. Why? Does he dislike the idea of you morphing an Andalite?
YOUR FRIENDS CANNOT HELP YOU. CHOOSE.
This book feels weirdly mean spirited, like the ghost writer is Lucy holding a football and the reader is Charlie Brown.
I honestly have no better commentary on this book than this post right here.
We have two slates of morphs we can choose from:
- Andalite, shark, and Komodo dragon.
- Fly, hawk, and Hork-Bajir.
What’ll it be?
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May 17, 2023 19:59
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- gourdcaptain
- Nov 16, 2012
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What the hell are you even going to do with a shark on Lego skyscraper planet? I've got to find out. :P
Seriously, Toomin is so incredibly mad at You it's downright bizarre and comical.
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May 17, 2023 20:05
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- gourdcaptain
- Nov 16, 2012
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i wonder why the writer decided to make it "you're fighting them again, but also you don't get your memories" instead of just... having it be the first time? they've had no problem shoving You into already-existing animorph stories until just now. seems weird.
let's take the obviously-wrong choice with the sea creature in it (A)!
Also this is Fake David You, so 26 wouldn't have even happened yet. Unless this is after David and they just tried again to recruit another kid who is extremely like David in-universe. Which uh... would be a hell of a thing for them to do.
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May 17, 2023 20:38
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- Epicurius
- Apr 10, 2010
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College Slice
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Also this is Fake David You, so 26 wouldn't have even happened yet. Unless this is after David and they just tried again to recruit another kid who is extremely like David in-universe. Which uh... would be a hell of a thing for them to do.
They gotta hide that morphing cube better.
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May 17, 2023 22:57
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- nine-gear crow
- Aug 10, 2013
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Also this is Fake David You, so 26 wouldn't have even happened yet. Unless this is after David and they just tried again to recruit another kid who is extremely like David in-universe. Which uh... would be a hell of a thing for them to do.
They gotta hide that morphing cube better.
The "Sixth Animorph" is like the drummer for Spinal Tap. Every few books the kids recruit a new one and they just die in various improbable ways and the Ellimist wipes their memory of it so they're not acknowledged book to book.
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May 17, 2023 23:18
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- nine-gear crow
- Aug 10, 2013
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The Next Passage – Chapter 8
quote:
THE BATTLE BEGINS NOW.
“Howler!” Erek yells and points.
You look.
The Howler moves up a stairway and comes to stand on your platform. He is about the size of a large man. Two arms, two legs, and five-fingered hands that look almost human. From the wrist projects a retractable claw with four hooked, steel-tipped claws.
The head is black, pebbled skin. Beneath the black, in the cracks and creases of the flesh, are lines of bright red. He looks like he’s made of molten lava.
He is wearing a series of loose belts around his torso. Each one holds a different weapon. Dracon beam. Knives. Boomerangs. Guns of different sizes and shapes.
“Morph,” Jake says. “Ax? You take the lead. Tobias? Get some altitude. Erek? Stay about of the way.”
Stay out of the way? You wonder about why Erek isn’t fighting. But now isn’t the time to ask questions.
Ax has his tail bowed and ready, three eyes on the Howler. One on you.
A few steps back, the others begin to morph.
Orange fur sprouts on Jake’s hands and arms. His fingers swell into claws. A long tail springsout from the base of his spine and immediately begins to twitch. He is a tiger; the same tiger you saw fight in your house.
Rachel is morphing to grizzly bear. A massive pillar of rough brown fur. Marco is morphing gorilla. Cassie, wolf.
Erek had moved back under the stairway. He was talking. “You’ve got to be careful of the Howler’s voice. His howl will paralyze you, numb your senses-”
The Howler’s hand moves. He is reaching for a weapon!
You have to morph. But to what? Surely not a shark. You’re on dry land! That leaves two choices: Andalite or Komodo dragon.
Congrats to everyone who called it, shark is a completely useless morph in this situation. It is never used even once in the book. The Ellimist literally gave You a whammy morph just to be a prick.
What a weirdly spiteful book this is.
Of our two actually useful morphs we have:
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May 18, 2023 19:40
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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Apr 28, 2024 07:20
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