Animorphs - The Entire Series

Wasn't there an implication that the pool ship's pool isn't enough for all the Earth-side yeerks? Are we even sure that's the only pool on the pool ship?

When I was 8 or so, I spent about a week believing that Yeerks were definitely trying to take over New Zealand so I spent my spare time breaking into all the cleaning supply cupboards and other weird doors at school, trying to find the secret entrance to the Yeerk Pool.

Luckily, I found no such thing, then joined a perfectly normal youth group, who are more like a family than anything, you should come along one week, you'd really like it

say that sounds great, i would like to know more

Back when they blew up the Kandrona generator, they said the pool ship had to have a limited number of Controllers shuttled back and forth, but I thought that was more of an issue with the flight management, not the occupancy of the pool itself.

I absolutely don't buy that because Jake's inner narration may be all of the diegetic evidence we have of the event, but his word is not sacrosanct. Reasonable inferences can be made. If nothing else the conceit is still that these books are letters/memoirs written after the events. We are not viewing pure narrative as it dietetically happened. Everything is in the past tense. If anything, him omitting more cold, calculating details would make a deeper sense if the books are indeed memoirs of the Legendary "taking of the Yeerk Pool" as a sort-of revisionist history. Ok that last sentence is a bridge too far on the conceit, but my points are made.

Even so, let's pull back and go with a more nuanced rebuttal:

We've followed these characters for dozens of books and adventures, seen them grow and evolve, and by this point we know that they are tactical combatants operating as soldiers. We never see any character's full course of thought patterns, particularly subconscious. Quite often, characters are as surprised as the reader are with what comes to their conscious minds. This is consistent and it stands to reason that Jake was not in full situational awareness, either during the writing of the book or the actual events, to consciously articulate everything running through his head.

Your argument also implies that a decision made out of emotionality therefore lacks a pragmatic component, or vice versa, which again is absolutely false in human nature-- constructed for fiction or otherwise. We're all experienced enough to have managed crisis in our lives, however mundane or banal, and are aware that even in the most heated or most detached moments we are not truly separated from those other aspects of ourselves. It's silly to think otherwise.

Jake made a strategic decision, and in the moment it was the right one. It wasn't an ethical one. It wasn't a good decision. It was also a biased, prejudiced, heated, emotional decision. But it was the correct decision based off the situation and goals he had on that mission.

Being more real, I think we can all agree that it's a case of the last books being crazy rushed and Applegrant not really having time, nor inclination, to properly set up a logistically consistent environment for the finale. Their goal was to have a narrative Rubicon that Jake and the Animorphs would have to cross in order to succeed, and they did it. The rest is immaterial, thematically speaking.

It's really a damn shame this story will probably never be told in a way that fully does it justice. It's head and shoulders above so many teen series that came out just a few years later. It's a credit to the authors how good it is despite copious unnecessary filler and this rushed ending. Just imagine a series half the length or so, all at the high quality of the chronicles books.

Ah well. It still completely rules. And real ones know it. Bring on the endgame!

Structurally, I agree with this entirely, but in the fiction, I think it's a bit better established. For instance, while I do think the exact number on the Pool ship is a bit low, if the Pool ship could support all or even most current Yeerks, there wouldn't be much of a pressing need for the ground based pool now that the infiltration is now an invasion, no?

Given that people are still talking about this book, we'll hold off on starting the last book for one more day

I think a fair comparison does exist and it's an unarmed conscript lying in bed in their barracks with their weapons locked in a, er, cage nearby.

Their society may be totally militarised but fundamentally they're the crew of a warship that is at that exact moment shooting at a company of US infantry.

Are they the crew of a warship, though? It seems right now all they can do is swim in a muddy pool. They only become part of a crew if they're hosted, and there's only a small number of hosts up there and no ability to get more. Most of the Yeerks are actually helpless and remain so as long as the ship is controlled.

They're more like colonists on a boat while the occupying force is clearing an area for settlement.

Yeerks do have some ability to interface with computers in their own bodies. Esplin goes into it when we got his PoV.

Now there's nothing saying these Yeerks are doing so, but the ability is there and if it was gonna be anywhere it'd be on the pool ship

I mean to a degree (and I'm really pushing it tbh) the non combat/engineering crew of a human warship is helplessly doing nothing too, until there's an injury or fire in their compartment.

The chef with damage control training isn't able to defend themselves against high explosives at all, and isn't really going to play a part in (short) battles unless things go very wrong.

e: wrong thread!

I think this is probably the closest equivalent you're going to get for something that has some sci-fi weirdness in it. If a North Vietnamese squadron attacks a US FOB in Vietnam at 2 in the morning, that's pretty well understood as a "just" action. Yeah, a lot of the soldiers might have been asleep, they might have been conscripts, and there were probably some doctors in the base, but the majority of them could have just stayed home.

I didn't really consider just how damaging flushing the Pool ship would have been to the Yeerks, given how it's framed as basically a distraction to get Visser One down there. You have to assume the liquid in the pool gets flushed, too, and presumably that takes a long, long time to fill, so in addition to the Yeerks who got spaced you're getting additional casualties from Yeerks starving before they can get it back up to speed. And Visser One is totally the kind of boss who keeps his subordinates working until they're only a couple hours from starvation.

I can accept that flushing the pool ship is morally ambiguous within the context of this story, but mostly because it's presented that way, not necessarily because I think the story makes a rock solid case for it. As someone else said, if the Yeerk peace movement had been fleshed out more it would be much more convincing. As it is, what other choice does Jake have? The only alternatives are that humanity becomes a permanent slave race to the Yeerks or the Andalites glass the planet. He's the only person in the universe who can engineer an alternative, and this is the only way to do it.

Applegrant do a fantastic job selling the thematic moral lessons that war is hell, there are no real heroes, and soldiers are permanently scarred by their actions. Those themes are conveyed so well emotionally that they can kind of paper over areas where the plot doesn't quite support them.

I feel the same way about Rachel's arc. We kind of just get told she's become unhinged and ruthless, we don't really see exactly when or why that happens. There's no real defining moment when she crosses some moral line - almost everyone on the team, except MAYBE Tobias, makes equally morally ambiguous decisions along the way. It doesn't help that she gets saddled with some of the cartooniest plots for her POV books. But again, her character arc works well despite that lack of the exact how and why, as long as you can fill in a few blanks.

The beauty of Animorphs is that it transcends its status as a Scholastic book club series and becomes greater than the sum of its parts. You have to read between the lines a little bit for it to all come together, but when you do it's absolutely worth it.

Visser One probably has a private yeerk pool in the captain's quarters. They would have to use that.

<Don't touch the jets!>

For an actual contribution, when thinking about the ethics of the flush, I'm reminded of this interview with World War II P-51 ace Richard Peterson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=norNcyKMZ-A

The Yeerks are, in a sense, the men in the parachutes: floating, helpless, unable to effect their fate or even beg and plead their case for survival. But they're still dangerous, and once they return to earth and get back in their hosts (Or planes) they'll be dangerous again. Refusing to shoot a man in a parachute is really a gentleman's agreement - you don't do it to them so they won't do it to you.

But the Yeerks have never respected any kind of gentleman's agreement, or any law of war. Throughout their invasion they've targeted civilians, tortured their foes, and their overall commander revels in causing mass suffering. They would not hesitate to gun down a helpless man - and if they did, it would likely only be to infest and enslave them. There are dissenters, but they are rare, unorganized, and ultimately of no consequence to the overall Yeerk hierarchy.

Brutality begets brutality. Atrocities beget atrocities. And when one extends no mercy to their enemies, it is the height of arrogance and folly to expect it in kind. This doesn't make Jake's decision right or moral - but ultimately, the Jake that ordered the deaths of 17,000 helpless Yeerks was a product of the decisions made by the Yeerks themselves.

I love that interview. No further comment, but take a few minutes and watch a kindly old man talk about murder.

Part of what makes it more complicated is that, while we might see some Yeerks come from the homeworld, it's under quarantine and blockade by the Andalites. Every Yeerk on the Pool Ship either is ftom the initial hijacking of the Andalite ships or their descendants. If a Yeerk wants to go back, they can't.

Anyway, let's see what happens next,

Book 54-The Beginning

Chapter 1


i know some people have said they don't read the opening chapter because they tend to get repetitive, but please read this one.

Chapter 2


I just want to say it's a good thing for Visser One that Andalites don''t drink. I should be focusing on Rachel and Tom here, but Visser One is more depressed and demoralized than we've ever seen him.

In my mind Visser One looks a rather pallid, dull grey compared to his usual lustrous blue-purple. If you've ever seen someone when the fight has gone out of them because they know there's no way to win it, yeah they really do look different.

Those chapters are a boss way to get us back with Rachel. Glad she gets some words off to Tobias.

Killer line, and one of the ones that stuck in my head over the years.

Love how the tone of the writing turns what is supposed to be a triumphant moment for the Animorphs into a very bleak one. I can see how people reacted negatively to this ending arc if they were looking for something more affirming in their YA fiction, but it is so much more powerful this way.

Hi, my name's Tree Bucket and I'm 37 years old, and here is a cool Andalite space fighter that I drew. SHOOOOM.
It's as close as I can get to Elfangor's ship as described in book 1.

I will fly your spacewhalescorpion

I'd ride your scary scorpion ship too. However, i had an unusually busy night and need to get to bed; Chapters tomorrow.

Oh I love the fighter. Very visibly Andalite in design, from the tail to the blue energy fields!

...I am 35 years old and here are some bug fighters I drew so they can do battle. TSSEEEEWWWW!

Star Trek has poisoned my mind so when I hear "bug fighter" my brain goes to the Jem'Hadar attack ships that look like flattened beetles. The aphid-like pod design looks really cool though.

Again because I'm a 90s kid as well, I always pictured Yeerk technology being a mix of the Zerg gooey bio-horror shit from StarCraft and the Klendathu Bugs also gooey-bio horror shit from Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers. But like gooey bio-horror if they took over a bunch of Protoss technology so it's all clearly way over their paygrade and functioning only because their biomass has just infested it completely.

AW H*CK YEAH



Tseew! Blap! Bromph! H-r-r-r-a-a-g-h! Flan!

It also all smells like a dank basement.

So, the Beast from Homeworld.

Oh my Ellimist.

I see that Dome ship creepin up too!


e: Better start getting those hirac delests ready now, Andalite scum! It seems some reinforcements are arriving from Z-space...

Chapter 3


You may not remember this, but in one of Rachel's encounters with Crayak, he told her to kill her cousin. He meant Jake, of course, but,,,

Chapter 4


This, of course, at the end, was the conversation that the Elimist had in the Elimist Chronicles. We just didn't know it at the time.

There's not a lot I can say about her death, It was a tragedy, and like most tragedies, it was tied up with who she was and her personality. Ultimately, though, she was brave, she was strong, she was good, and she mattered.

These two chapters just fucking kill me.

Every time. Every single time I read that final conversation with the Ellimist it just...breaks me.

For me it's the abrupt ending, followed by everyone staring in mute horror at the screen at the start of the next chapter.

That'll do, bear.

F

God damn

me, wiping tears from my eyes.

Something to remember about Rachel is that she was Crayak's spoiler....his choice to add to the team. Jake's brother was a Yeerk, Ax was Elfangor's brother, Tobias was his son, Marco was the son of Visser One, and Cassie was the pick from humanity/Earty. Crayak picked Rachel because he thought she was corruptable, and he and the Drode tried to corrupt her a few times in the series, it didn't work, though, because Rachel made her own choices, abd she chose to be loyal and do what was right,