Animorphs - The Entire Series

As somebody who poked Epicurius about this...

The chapter breaks are pretty artificial. Every book has 20ish chapters so scenes get chopped up to fit that structure. In the first five books, there's generally enough going on that each chapter has relevance, but we're already at the point where, for example, we wouldn't have lost much if chapters 10, 11 and 12 were all discussed at once; there are only three posts between 10 and 11, and then Epicurius doesn't have much to say about 11 because there's not much there to say anything about.

Sometimes it's worth doing a single chapter, maybe because it's got a stopping point or it's breaking for a cliffhanger or because Epicurius feels there's enough substance for discussion, but some of this is just place-setting.

Edited to add: I also brought up that at a chapter a day, we're looking at the 3.5-4 years' range for getting through the series, which may not be everyone's ideal.

Agreed. For example, the last two chapters worked well split up because we got the "war crimes?" discussion from one and now "OMG Jake's a controller!" here. But other chapters don't have a lot on their own.

Yeah, this is where I'm at - also, it's very probable that yeerks would be able to treat otherwise treatment-resistant mental illness in a host, which would definitely be an incentive for people. The problem is yeerk psychology is not inclined to try negotiation first, so there needs to be a whole war before some of them are like, man, this has gotten fucked up.

There could be a twist like, most yeerks are actually chill and they are being forced into this by the council as unwilling conscripts or something. But even the one Jake got stuck with is already being a jerk so not looking likely at this point.

Kind of funny, if this was a different series at this point I'd expect Jake will convert his yeerk to their side with the power of friendship.

Interesting that Jake can control himself at the beginning of this infestation. Wonder if that's because Yeerk wasn't ready/expecting to get a host yet, or if it always takes a while. We've seen that the hosts can occasionally rebel (Chapman) but that makes me surprised Visser 3's host never rebels in combat to try to die or anything like that.

This is what I'm more worried about. Am I following this thread for 4 years? I hope so. I wouldn't mind a few more updates however. At the same time, not going to pester OP to update more, as I'm sure this already takes a good amount of time. Also by updating more he may burn out and we never finish anyways.

It makes me wonder if you could be a Controller and not even know it, if the Yeerk was unusually subtle. If they could make the host think it's just part of their subconscious or whatever talking, not an independent entity.

It's never brought up in the books so it's fair game for the no spoiler rule, but in the TV show Visser Three got 99% of the way to breeding a caste of Yeerks who could survive nearly indefinitely without Kandrona. If those existed and you could infest someone with one covertly and with orders to stay in "read only" mode, you could probably have a really good sleeper agent that could come online only in very exact circumstances.

Otherwise the whole "sleeper Yeerk" kind of falls apart because it'll need to feed every three days and there's no real way to cover that up. ...Unless there was a way for a Yeerk to directly play with a host's perception of reality by directly fucking with their brain ala The Matrix. If you could shove your host into some kind of fantasy land or quasi-unconsciousness, then you'd have free reign to do whatever I guess.

I'm now picturing a Yeerk crawling into somebody's ear with a tiny little Kandrona bulb and wiring to install it into the host's skull.

I think it's a combination of new host, unexpected host, and Yeerk/host both traumatized by being/falling into a very hot Jacuzzi.

Ok. We're going to try multiple chapters, and see how it goes.

The Capture, Chapter 15


I guess if you have to be taken over by a Yeerk, at least it's good if he's one of the family.


Remaining silent doesn't work so well when your interrogator is sitting on top of your brain reading your thoughts, as you might imagine.


Grant and Applegate are Star Trek fans, if you haven't guessed.


The Capture, Chapter 15


See, it's that reflexive hatred that's dooming him. If the Yeerk had been able to control itself better, Jake would be a goner by now, but...


See, I never really got the impression before this that Jake and Cassie did know each other for years. I had pegged Cassie as Rachel's friend, and that, even though they were cousins, Rachel and Jake weren't really that close.


I think "humans believe what they see" could be a motto of this whole series. One of the things the series is about is how there's a difference between how things appear and what they actually are, but that people don't look beneath the surface.

I choose to ignore the contrived coincidence of Jake being infested by, of all the Yeerks in that pool, the Yeerk who both had previously infested Tom and was earmarked for the governor.

Maybe it's that go-getter attitude that got the Yeerk ahead in life.


It's actually very human that, for all this time the kids have spent telling us that once a Yeerk's in your head, it knows everything you know, Jake's immediate response is "you may have me but I'll never tell you who the others are!"


Well, I wouldn't have made my earlier post about new host/unexpected host/combined trauma if I'd remembered Ax saying this later.


This is a side of Yeerk infestation we haven't seen yet, and it's really interesting. It would be easy to write "a perfect imitation of the host" as, well, a perfect imitation of the host. But there are downsides to total integration. First, your instincts fire and your host's body responds, with as little control as you'd have over your own. Second, there are situations where you just can't do a perfect imitation, because your host would be acting against your own interests.

The Yeerk can say all the right Jake things in one-offs and asides, but it can't let Jake's body overrule the Yeerk's instincts, and because it's trying to protect itself, it can't let Jake agree with the others about the importance of finding a way of being sure he's not infested, even though it, Jake, and the others all know that if it really were Jake, he'd immediately see their point and agree. It just can't stop trying to talk them out of it despite the fact that trying to do so is actively convincing them otherwise.


And it's a fascinating contrast. Which fake Jake is more believable?

Part of the Yeerk's problem, I think, is that it's not psychologically prepared for the infestation. It was swimming around in the jacuzzi, minding its own business thinking about its promotion and looking forward to its new job, and then it had to crawl into an ear to survive. So, now, without any time to be ready, it's surrounded by Jake's best friends and a member of a species it hates more than anything in the galaxy (which is also why it's first comments was ""As soon as we know Rachel and Ax are safe, we need to break up and go our separate ways,".) Even if it weren't planning on going straight to Visser Three with the secret, tt needs time to be alone and understand its new host. So right now, Temrash is bluffing, bluffing for its life.

And unfortunately for it, it can't succeed, because that's exactly the wrong thing to be doing. If it had another minute to plot out the Jake way of handling this, it could have been home free. Even after Ax caught on, Temrash could have realized there wasn't an easy way out, and gone along with the situation as "Jake, who understands the importance of being sure," in hopes of finding a way to influence the plan and leave an opening for escape. But "Andalite filth" blew that, and now Temrash isn't trying to figure out what Jake would do in this situation, it's trying to figure out what Jake would do to get out of this situation, and failing, because Jake wouldn't.

Ax has officially made up for his screw-up with the transponder and then some.
Fucking sneaking up on him to get him to freak out

I like how this doesn't do the usual thing of people taking ages to realise that someone's been taken over to manufacture drama.

I got the feeling they weren't all best friends but did know each other. They all seem to know what's going on with each other. Cassie and Rachiel seemed to know what had happened to Marco and his dad. I figured Tobias is the one they knew least about, but they still seem to know a good amount about him.

Even if they weren't particularly close, there's a decent chance they've been in the same school and classes for years and years by this point. She might not have the details to let him pass with Jake's parents, but she could probably get him through a day of school.

Absolutely. It's a genuine relief to skip what I assumed would be a dozen chapters of "I said hello to dad but it wasn't ME saying hello to dad!!" Instead we get to see Ax and friends being smart and awesome.

I wouldn't mind getting chapters faster. If Epicurius needs to do something like take longer breaks between books to make up for it I'd be fine with that.

Well, we're going to be doing two chapters a day for a while, and we'll see how it goes, ok?

Oh it has such more interesting dramas to get to.

I guess a lot of kids media has to milk the surface of these kinds of situations because they won't, can't go as far.

Keep in mind, these books rarely cracked 250 pages, so they didn't have much room to pad things out unnecessarily.

Probably would have been smarter for the humans to be Jake in shifts than have Ax do it when he knows almost nothing about humans. Maybe have Ax take nights.

Then the other humans would have to explain their own absences.

This, again, was one of the rare legs up the TV show had over the books because by the nature of its medium and not being tied down specifically to one POV, you actually got to see Ax trying to pretend to be Jake and weirding the shit out of Jake's family (and Tom's new Yeerk) by being a teenage alien dipshit.

Yeah but only for two hours at a time, Rachel can say she's at the mall, Marco that he's at Jake's, Cassie that she joined a hippy nature commune etc.

Still wouldn't be worth it because of continuity problems. You'd very likely run into issues where Rachel-Jake has a conversation with his mother and then two shifts down the line she starts talking to Marco-Jake about something that she talked about earlier, so Marco's relying on what Rachel told Cassie and then what Cassie told him about it. Easier just to let Ax do it all and have Jake just be anti-social for a few days. He's a teenager, so being uncommunicative and hiding in his room for a few days shouldn't draw too much notice.

I now wonder what happens if a yeerk starves inside someones brain.

Also the thing about not being able to imitate someone perfectly is really only an issue when the other person knows about yeerks. Even if your friend or family member begins acting weirdly out of character you are not gonna think they've been body snatched unless you already know that's a thing.

There's out of character and then there's Ax-Jake

I fail to see how adding Ax to anything could possibly make it worse

Jake's a teenager. He is going to do weird shit because a thought probably related to trying to impress a girl (or a boy) entered his developing, hormone-addled brain.

Both this part, and a conversation in #2, says that the Yeerk word+number we're given is a rank - lower number is better, the "type" who knows.
This will, IIRC, be retconned later - this would be just their name. The only one that retains as a name=position is Visser.

I don't remember much from the TV series, but the Ax-as-Jake dinner scene and the way he eats an artichoke will forever stick in my mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzriUwNzHjw&t=534s

How long would it take a Yeerk to figure out how to morph? Because a prisoner that can turn into a roach and skitter out of its bindings seems like an issue.

It's a really good thing Tom's yeerk is new, though, I imagine.

Morphing takes a while. But yea they can't loose sight of him for even a couple minutes.

The Capture, Chapter 17


People in the thread have mentioned that.


A person's fantasies are a private thing. This has to be a major vioation here. Still, it's very on the nose that Yeerk's cover organization is a group called The Sharing.


In a lot of ways, that's an even greater violation, isn't it? Worse than anything the Yeerk can do to Jake is to show him what it did to Tom...that the brother he idolized has been reduced to a hopeless wreck.


The Capture-Chapter 18


So, like his boss, Temrash is a cat lover.


So, the Yeerk discovered morphing, only to have to deal with a bunch of other people who know how to morph too and habe been doing it longer,