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I'd forgotten how creepy the Sharing stuff is. The Sharing is a good name for a creepy cult thing where alien slugs are implanted into your brain.quote:"Flying saucers," he said. He laughed again. "Only complete dips believe that kind of stuff." I forgot about the use of "dip" as an insult in the 90s. I remember one time some teenager was babysitting me as a kid and I mistakenly broke his Exo Squad action figure and he called me a dip.
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Apr 3, 2020 02:15
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SardonicTyrant posted:When they say the Yeerks are everywhere, they mean it; throughout the books the kids encounter Yeerk Controllers in a wide variety of professions in a lot of different locations. They basically have no way of telling anyone in the zoo staff is a Controller, so it's best to avoid the attention. Also a zoo is a pretty obvious place to install controllers, since it's one of the first places "teenagers who might have the power to morph" might show up.
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Apr 4, 2020 18:53
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At first I thought she was turning into a bear and was like "drat, a 14,000lb bear, that thing must be loving huge."
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Apr 9, 2020 04:59
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Epicurius posted:That would be like 11 grizzlies. Or one elephant-sized grizzly!
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Apr 9, 2020 05:47
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Epicurius posted:So, any thoughts about the attempted host revolt? Rachel also makes that parallel, about the fact that morphs and Yeerks both have to deal with the "two minds in the head" problem. When you think about it, it's kind of morally dubious to morph into intelligent animals (like Marco's gorilla), because you're effectively creating a copy of that animal and then Yeerk-ing them.
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Apr 29, 2020 03:01
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The animorphs should acquire the morph of a funnel-web spider or something and just have another animorph deposit them onto Visser three. Though I guess you could use the excuse of alien biology not responding to the venom.
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Apr 30, 2020 23:11
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Avalerion posted:It's weird how little actually happens book per book (presumably, but we are on chapter 18 and last book had 20 so I figure they get rescued/escape here but that's it for this one too). It works in thread format where we just move to the next one right away but I wonder how this was received back then, seems like it would be easy for kids to loose interest between books. I don't know what the situation for children's literature is like now, but back then books like this were a major source of entertainment and were read in a similar way to watching serialized television shows. You'd periodically check what new books were available at the Scholastic fairs, or whenever you went by the bookstore. I think this sort of thing was more appealing back then because we didn't have the internet and video games weren't as capable of being addictive time-sinks (I remember getting quickly frustrated with most NES games I played and once SNES/Genesis came out it was still mostly just something I did with friends). So there were fewer alternatives to reading (though this didn't stop me from seeing every single Doug episode 10 times).
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May 4, 2020 23:21
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This thread is great; thanks for making it! I definitely plan on following along as long as you keep doing it. I forget how far I got in the series as a kid. I know I didn't finish it, but I did read some of the side stort things like the Andalite Chronicles.Starsnostars posted:I distinctly remember Tobias being my favourite character, I think because his unique circumstances make him stand out more than the other Animorphs. Jake was my favorite for some reason. Maybe because I looked sort of like the kid who played Jake on the boom covers, except with glasses. QuickbreathFinisher posted:Did they morph ants and termites, and if so, why? Or am I misremembering? I thought the ant colony thing was in a Marco book but I'm pretty sure the termite thing is from Cassie's perspective. While I'm not sure of the book, one of my few vivid animorphs memories is of someone (I think Jake?) getting a leg (or legs) torn off as an ant. It's actually kinda interesting that the first insect morph is basically glossed over. I wonder if Jake will comment on it in his next book. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 09:50 on May 8, 2020 |
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May 8, 2020 09:44
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I think that Jake is actually a considerably more interesting character than many people make him out to be. I get the impression that he's constantly under a lot of pressure to organize this group of teenagers but doesn't really feel comfortable in that role, and this leads to things like the scene where he gets kind of irritated and tells people to stop debating the fish plan. It reminds me of the feeling I get when I'm trying to work with people on something and I know that nothing will get done if someone doesn't step up to make decisions. Like I'm not particularly comfortable taking charge, but there will be consequences if no one does. I forget how future books go, but I'd anticipate that this sort of position would lead to some level of "emotional isolation" from the rest of the team, where the need to take responsibility overshadows the desires of the teenager/friend.
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May 26, 2020 21:48
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wizzardstaff posted:I think they've discussed this plan already so it's not really a spoiler to talk about their reasons for not doing it: Ignoring the needs of the narrative (and the fact that they're kids who aren't exactly the most logical/reasonable), the most logical thing to do would probably be to travel really far to some other countries where the Yeerks haven't infiltrated (and it shouldn't be that difficult to get an idea of what regions they occupy) and reveal the situation to leadership there. The whole mind speech thing (or recording a video of them morphing or whatever makes this very easy to do in a way that wouldn't risk themselves and would convince the listener/viewer that the situation is real. While a "hot war" is bad, it's also practically inevitable in the long run (and there's a decent chance the Yeerk's couldn't engage if they thought they would lose).
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May 31, 2020 02:05
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Khizan posted:Where would you go? Is there a government that you would trust with this? One that you believe would handle it properly, that wouldn't just lock you in a black site research center for the rest of your life? That would be willing to let you walk free while knowing what you could do? You can communicate via mind speech without being seen pretty easily (due to being able to morph insects or birds or other things that can easily escape if the human is a Controller, if they even notice who's sending the thought speech to begin with). Just try it with various people in a place far from their city (I get the impression the Yeerks aren't in most of the world - kinda by necessity, since the whole reason they find Earth appealing is because its population is so massive compared with other galactic civilizations in this setting), and maybe do it to several people in the same room so they know the others aren't lying (and they're not going crazy). chitoryu12 posted:During this secret war in which aliens are mind controlling humans, why do the resistance not merely tell the government what's happening? There are other governments (most of which probably aren't infiltrated since there just aren't that many Yeerks and 99% of people in world governments are probably still not Controllers), and being able to morph into birds makes very long distance travel pretty plausible (if a bit tedious due to having to morph out briefly every couple hours). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Jun 16, 2020 |
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Jun 16, 2020 19:24
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feetnotes posted:You'd think they could go seagull, fly down, then back to human before morphing dolphin. I guess they get better at the logistics later! My concern at this idea would be ending up in a state part-way through the gull->human morph where you can't keep your head above water. Cassie is likely good enough at controlling the morph to avoid that, but the others aren't. Epicurius posted:To me, I sort of take Cassie's hesitation in this book at face value; She's risking all their lives on a dream they had and a conversation with a whale, and she's scared she's going to get them killed for no reason, and she doesn't want the responsibility of choosing. She asks Jake earlier in the book to decide if they should go on the mission, and admits that the reason she's asking him is "And then if it's a disaster, it will all be on your head," I said. "You'll be the one who feels bad. You'll be the one to blame". tbh I find her extremely easy to empathize with here. As readers we know that they're going to survive this, but as another person said what they were doing on that boat was actually extremely dangerous, and I'd be scared shitless that Marco was going to fall down, go unconscious upon hitting the ocean, and drown. I probably would have reacted in a completely identical way to how she did, and at the same specific moment (right before doing a concrete action with a fairly high risk of death). Epicurius posted:I mean, the kids don't know that, though. They don't know to what extent the Yeerks have infiltrated. Also, from a practical standpoint, even assuming they can do the bird/person/bird/person thing every two hours, which they're having trouble with in this book, they still have parents, and while the "Mom, dad, I'm sleeping over at Rachel's house, and you don't have to call her mom because she said its ok" thing might work, if you say to your parents "Umm, mom, dad, I'm going to be gone for a few days because I have to turn into a bird and fly to England so I can tell the Prime Minister that alien slugs are trying to take over the world", the response you should expect is more on the level of either "We're taking you to a therapist" or "You're grounded". The former is a very good point that hadn't occurred to me. And even without it, it doesn't bother me in the least that this doesn't happen. I was just spitballing about what would hypothetically be the best action in their situation. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Jun 21, 2020 |
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Jun 21, 2020 18:46
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PetraCore posted:I always assumed the morphing tech was intended by Elfangor to help them prove their case, but even then, there's a difference between proving you can turn into a tiger and use telepathy and proving alien brain slugs are real. It would at least get people to take you seriously, and it's pretty easy to prove (tell them the name of controllers, have those people put under surveillance - or imprisoned - for several days). You wouldn't even necessarily need to do anything forcefully; you could just give them the names of controllers and have them offer high pay to various people to stay under surveillance for over 3 days, and unsurprisingly all the people they said were controllers wouldn't accept the deal.
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Jun 21, 2020 20:06
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This segment is pretty much the only specific thing I remember from reading this as a kid. edit: holy crap, the ant head being attached to his waist is some really scary/creepy stuff. That whole segment is really scary; they're damned lucky, because transforming into small insects like that is a good way to get quickly killed before you even realizing what's happening. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Jul 6, 2020 |
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Jul 6, 2020 01:12
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That was some really strong characterization packed into a pretty small amount of text. The contrast between this and something like Harry Potter is pretty huge when reading this again as an adult. Not (just) in terms of "violence and heavy subject matter," but also just having far more nuanced and realistic characters. The Harry Potter cast are basically anime characters in comparison.
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Jul 7, 2020 01:11
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I like Marco a lot; he's a very realistic character IMO
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Jul 9, 2020 08:38
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lol why would you choose a roach if you wanted to choose an insect morph for stealth purposes Maybe that's why the book cover has him morphing into a house fly; they realize that roaches are a really dumb stealth morph, while a housefly would basically be perfect under human control.
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Jul 20, 2020 05:19
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I see that Rachel suffers from the same broken sales logic as my dad, where they seem to think that buying things on sale is the same as getting free money.
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Jul 23, 2020 09:53
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Jeez, that except is pretty intense. It resembles real life use of drug dependence as torture (get someone dependent and then deny them the drug until they give in). I say drug dependence instead of regular starvation because it results in more acute suffering within a short and well-defined time-frame ("how many days, how many hours").
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Jul 25, 2020 23:45
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The Ellimist is a prick and the Animorphs were right to tell him to suck it edit: It's pretty amazing how much these books are drawing me in ~20+ years later
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Aug 6, 2020 09:22
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Epicurius posted:I don't want to bias you all. Maybe some of you are liking it, but honestly, I don't think this is a very good book. Rachel is sidelined in chapters like this for most of the story. So far, in 22 chapters, Tobias has had one. I don't know. We'll get through this, though. At least Rachel is going to become an elephant. People like elephants! Yeah, I agree; it kind of highlights how good the other books are in comparison, though. The best way I can think of to describe it is that this book feels like one of those movie spin-offs of an anime where they have to make sure that nothing plot-important happens during it.
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Aug 21, 2020 01:12
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SardonicTyrant posted:May I ask why you think it's bad? I thought it was a pretty strong book. There's an interesting conflict, it's got more action than the previous books, and the most memorable scene in the franchise. Something about it just feels "off' to me. It's not that the events themselves are bad exactly, but it feels like it just abruptly jumps from scene to scene. Kinda similar to the thing that bugs me in JJ Abrams films, where each individual part is fine but somehow the whole ends up feeling generic and disjointed.
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Aug 22, 2020 23:06
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The Marco and Ax stuff in the Yeerk ship was cool.
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Aug 25, 2020 06:24
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Have we been told where Andalites derive sustenance yet? Are they like plants and just absorb sunlight or something?
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Aug 30, 2020 09:42
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I feel like we're seeing some of Jake's personality coming out in this book. Jake is sort of like a less "physical" Rachel. He has the same sort of "madness" that makes him willing to do violence, but expressed in a different way. He was upset to find out that Yeerks dying = their hosts being killed, but he definitely would have still made the same decision even if he had known. The guy comes off as constantly strained by the fact that, as their leader, he's sort of personally taking on the responsibility for all the Animorph's actions.SirSamVimes posted:I don't mind the trope, it's more a statement about adaptability than intelligence. It does get old when you see it everywhere, but this is one of the early examples of it right? I'm actually not sure when this sort of thing became common and if it was also a sentiment before the 90s. I can understand how a layperson could end up thinking "if we went from not flying to flying, and flying to landing on the moon, in such short amounts of time, clearly this means that traveling to other star systems is just around the corner." In the 90s it had also been a shorter amount of time since those things happened, so there wasn't yet the sense that it was, in fact, entirely possible for no significant improvements to made on that front for the following decades. nine-gear crow posted:There were kind of two inflection points that inextricably set things on the "things only get worse now" path, at least in the United States, and both came after Animorphs, and the 90s were effectively over: George W. Bush becoming POTUS, and 9/11 happening. The series came in for a landing at the perfect moment in history because 9/11 would have just t-boned it irrecoverably. 9/11 didn't just randomly happen out of nowhere, and most of the issues our society has that have become worse over time were inevitable long before it. Domestically most of the bad things happened before 2000 (deregulation, dismantling the welfare state, etc), and the US enthusiastically did war crimes and supported right-wing coups long before our more contemporary war crimes. The sort of optimism in the 90s was also mostly just a thing if you were fortunate enough to be white and middle class. We largely perceive time periods through the lens of their media/culture, so when people think back to the 90s they're mostly thinking of media and culture created by the people who were doing well during that time period.
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Sep 2, 2020 05:24
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disaster pastor posted:I think it's more that he's upset that this wasn't an unforeseen consequence, that Ax let the rest of them be excited and hopeful that a bunch of Controllers were about to be freed, and now that they've seen the hosts being killed instead, Ax is like, "oh, yeah, that was always going to happen." Jake doesn't mind taking responsibility for their actions so much as he minds not having all the information he could/should have had about the consequences. Yeah, I'm not talking about that (the attitude of the Animorphs in general regarding this makes perfect sense), but more stuff like his reckless behavior with the teacher. Also just subjective elements of the way he thinks/says things. That being said, probably the most relevant thing like this so far is the part where Jake decides to boil those Yeerks alive. That aside, the whole "people who are exposed are instantly murdered by the Yeerks" thing is actually really dark and presents some genuine moral "weight" that is pretty uncommon in stories like this.
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Sep 3, 2020 00:36
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Looking forward to the rest of this book given how good people are saying it is. The first Ax book was genuinely really good, largely due to how well Ax is written as a character.freebooter posted:This book, like all Marco books, is an absolute classic. And I want to post the inside cover except it's spoilers. But I think we're already up to that specific spoiler? I graduated high school in 2004 and had pretty long (shoulder-length) hair until ~2002/2003. I don't remember it being a popular style, but it also wasn't looked at negatively. I actually forget the exact style most common among guys in the early 00's; I remember in the 90s there was a thing with gelled up hair, and then sometime after graduating HS long bangs became a thing (with boys/men, that is).
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Sep 21, 2020 08:19
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Epicurius posted:So, are we going to find out what's wrong with Erek? Yes, probably, but not for the next few days because I'm in the hospital with a leg infection. Sorry about that Yikes, hopefully the first round of whatever antibiotic they give you does the trick.
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Sep 24, 2020 01:32
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My only issue with this is that, IIRC, Ax mentioned humans having much stronger arms and/or fingers, but in the image the arms are basically around as big/muscular as human arms.
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Oct 3, 2020 22:07
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Epicurius posted:Spoken as someone who's owned a dog, I can vouch for that. Lies. The way it really goes is that you throw the ball/frisbee, the dog catches it, and then she brings it back to you and drops it at your feet and runs back out to where you're going to throw it. Getting scratched after each throw is for dogs who don't have what it takes to go pro.
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Oct 22, 2020 22:03
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I'm catching up with this thread and I'm near the end of the book where they go into the rainforest. I like the scene where Jake freaks out from the pressure. I feel like that book does a very good job of showing the strain gradually building up in Jake, and the moment he couldn't deal with it anymore felt very "natural." Like as the reader you sort of feel the same pressure he does. I liked this part in particular: quote:I felt like my head was swimming. Somehow I’d just hoped there would be an answer at the end. But there wasn’t. It's easy to imagine how, due to being completely exhausted, he'd just sort of feel no choice but to make these decisions with faith that things will work out, so the minute they finally reach their destination and he has time to think again he's suddenly forced to confront the fact that he doesn't know what to do and no one else is going to give him an answer. edit: Also lol at the part in the next book where the crocodile prevents Rachel from killing a young child edit2: This segment reinforces what people were saying earlier about Andalites not being drawn correctly: quote:Since we were safe inside the barn, Ax was back in his own body now. His body is a strange but cool-looking mix of bluish deer body, humanlike arms and shoulders, and definitely alien head. Note the absence of mentioning a torso/chest; it specifically only mentions arms/shoulders and head, which isn't how most people would describe something like a deer-centaur. Epicurius posted:That's awesome. Totally and completely awesome. Wait, did the NIN ="Nice is Neat" thing originate in Animorphs? I vividly remember that and for some reason thought it was some sort of more wide-spread joke thing. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Nov 29, 2020 |
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Nov 29, 2020 06:08
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Fuschia tude posted:I figured he would just stay in place, embedded around the brain as it changes. That would make small morphs awkward, though, since theoretically the whole z-space magic wouldn't apply to parasites. But then Visser Three never morphs small, does he? He only goes for the big flashy ones. You kind of have to suppress disbelief with a variety of aspects to morphing, like how it would work with an organism's microbiome.
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Nov 30, 2020 06:14
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I don't think I saw anyone comment on (future) Visser 3 essentially saying that he would have been willing to sacrifice his life to save the 10,000 Yeerks. There's not really any reason for him to lie to Elfangor about that. edit: Chapman's characterization is so bizarre. It's like they felt a need to make him a villain as a human just because he's a villain as a Controller in the main series, except that's also strange because the brief glimpse we get of real-Chapman seems to imply he's not a bad person. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Nov 30, 2020 |
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Nov 30, 2020 07:17
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Epicurius posted:Sorry, everybody. I don't like doing it, but I've got to miss tonight. More animorphs tomorrow, I promise. Inexcusable, I will be complaining to the forums managers
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Dec 30, 2020 22:40
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quote:“I know what he meant,” I snapped. “He meant if it came to crunch time, would I destroy my own mother to protect the mission? That’s what he meant.” This is a pretty telling Jake moment; he immediately prioritizes confirming that Marco won't be some sort of liability, over trying to comfort him or avoiding the issue to bring it up later. Jake is basically responsible for constantly monitoring his teammates and ensuring that there aren't any issues that could jeopardize their mission. The other Animorphs are basically "freed" to be more focused on themselves and their individual roles because Jake is essentially personally taking responsibility for the "big picture" (and I imagine his little jaunt into the past and experiencing failure just cemented this perspective, since he knows what real failure feels like). edit: It's also real telling how everyone is always worried about how Jake will react when they do dumb things. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Jan 12, 2021 |
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Jan 12, 2021 22:20
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This is a good book and kinda makes the previous one stand out as more bizarre in comparison. I like Marco books in general. The dynamics between these kids are really complex in a way that I'm pretty sure I didn't pick up on when I read them as a child.
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Jan 14, 2021 02:43
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Epicurius posted:I mean, Christ, that's the most vicious line in this book. The most disturbing thing about this is that now Marco's mom, already experiencing the hell of being a Yeerk host, now also thinks her son is a Yeerk host (while previously she could have at least felt some solace in the knowledge that the vast majority of humans aren't controllers yet, likely including him).
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Jan 15, 2021 19:44
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Why is Ax talking about the telephone being modern? Andalites can't even use a telephone.nine-gear crow posted:For a crushing example of how time, technology and the internet have moved on since this book was written, here’s a tweet from Michael Grant getting pissed off at Dropbox like a weird old boomer I also dislike Dropbox and get confused by it, even though I work as a web programmer. I work a university where many of the researchers use Dropbox, and on the occasions where I also need to use it (which isn't that common, but sometimes someone is using it to make a file available or something) it always takes me some time to figure out. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Jan 27, 2021 |
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Jan 27, 2021 02:11
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This Jake getting swatted stuff is the worst body horror yet. Like that actually made me kind of light-headed to read. I'm thinking that maybe I never reached this book as a kid, because this is way worse than the ant thing but I don't remember it.Epicurius posted:He made the decision. I think in a lot of ways, this is the most painful book so far for me. It feels like Jake is trying to act like he feels like a leader should act instead of being a leader...and of course, the whole time, he's just psychologically a mess here. This is why I like Jake and disagree with the people who think he's boring. The books are very good about conveying the reader Jake's stress/tension.
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Jan 27, 2021 04:03
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Epicurius posted:The books are good about that. I do think Jake's characterization suffers, though, because its hard to get a clear idea what he's like other than the leader of the Animorphs. The rest of them have strong enough personalities that, if the Yeerks hadn't invaded, I could tell you what they're like. Jake, on the other hand, his strongest traits outside of his role in the Animorphs is that he likes sports and idolizes his brother. Yeah, but I think this is kind of deliberate and speaks to the way he's influenced by the burden of being the leader - he basically can't be himself and have much in the way of honest one-on-one interactions with other characters, since he feels like all the burden of having to "manage the group" falls on him. The rest of the team has the "freedom" to experience their own emotions/opinions towards the things they're doing because they can rely on Jake to make the decisions and carry the responsibility for their outcomes. Like in a non-Jake book it's usually about the character in question talking about their experience doing whatever the mission is and how they feel about it, while Jake is constantly occupied with making choices and managing the rest of the group. Even when he jokes with Marco, it always feels kind of forced, like he's trying to play-act normalcy or something (which we basically see to an exaggerated extent in this book where he's basically traumatized after the fly thing).
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Jan 27, 2021 05:24
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