Call me Sol. I write Animorphs AUs, Animorphs meta, Animorphs fan fiction, and anything else I can think of to write about Animorphs. Also, I really like Animorphs.
A friend just suggested that the Animorphs should have morphed anteaters and used their long tongues to pull a Yeerk out of Controllers' heads. What's your take on this?
So! It’s a minor but important part of the series that you can’t get a living yeerk out of a living person’s head by force. If the yeerk dies of starvation (like in #6) it falls out on its own, but that’s the only way to get a yeerk out by force.
In #17 there’s a whole discussion around the fact that any person with a living yeerk in their brain remains a controller, even if the yeerk is deeply unhealthy and no longer has perfect control — it’s the reason that oatmeal isn’t the solution that the Animorphs hope it will be. We also see a guy who had a partially-detached yeerk ripped out by force (Hildy “Spacy” Gervais) in Visser, and he’s… not doing great. Not clear exactly what level of disability he’s dealing with, but he apparently can’t hold down a job and has a lot of movement/cognition problems. In #41, there’s also a yeerk that mentions wanting to leave a host but being unable, because of how the host is injured.
So like, we don’t know exactly how a yeerk integrates with a brain, but. Whatever it entails, there’s a part of the yeerk that doesn’t let go automatically, and doesn’t want to let go. And I think the moment you start going into someone’s orifices and carving away at the yeerk, you’ll be carving up their brain too. Within about a quarter-inch of temporal lobe, you’ve already deafened the human host, ruined their balance, taken away their ability to speak fluidly, and possibly taken away most of their meaningful vision too… and you haven’t even seriously damaged the yeerk yet.
Might it still be worth trying, on a controller they were going to kill anyway? Eh, Cassie would probably say “no” since it’d be unnecessarily prolonging suffering; Marco might say “yes” on the 0.001% chance it’d work long enough for them to ask the host questions before they die of intracranial pressure.
So, small side note, in The Visitor (#2) we do see that there’s at least one thing that can forcibly remove a yeerk and that Visser 3 uses his Vanarx morph to execute Iniss 174. We don’t have any information on how this impacts the host (other than being implied to be incredibly painful) but I have a feeling it would at the very least have some longterm trauma.
(Honestly I bet having one ripped out could leave tiny bits in there that would basically short out parts of the brain leading to madness)
Yes, that’s true — we don’t see what happens to the host brain, though, and at least in #16 there’s a strong implication that in order to eat a yeerk out of a controller then you have to rip up the host’s brain. So I guess the anteater could work like that varanx thing from #2, where the host probably dies but at least the yeerk does too?
Megamorphs 2: In the Time of Dinosaurs thoughts (pt. 3):
The description of Marco getting almost eaten by the T. rex is another of those passages that I go back to all the time to try and figure out how to write action. It’s so good at getting across his utter helplessness in the face of this overwhelming natural force.
I will never not love the detail about nuclear fusion being used by andalites “you know, to make the little dolls speak and so on?” (p. 67). Like Marco says, andalite Toys'R'Us must be a wild place.
Everything with Cassie stripping the T. rex corpse for parts is perfection. She might insist that she’s hardly an animal expert, but she’s doing way better than 95% of random American kids would do when thrust into this situation. Plus, her getting to be badass in the wilderness is always a treat.
The two parallel stories, with the characters running around not quite intersecting each other and discovering different parts of the same mystery, is usually the best part of any Megamorphs book. Honestly I wish more of the series did it, because this format is excellent.
“I’m not Rachel. I can’t just turn off the fear” (p. 83). Oh, Cassie. Oh honey. If only you knew.
Tobias and Rachel are… kind of insane, when left unsupervised. Like, don’t get me wrong, Tobias’s ability to dissect the hunting patterns of the Deinonychus and make a plan to infiltrate and then interrupt their social structure by using Rachel as bait is brilliant. But it’s also completely insane, and could go wrong in somany other ways than it does. Like, just to review: we’ve got them jumping off cliffs together in #13, kamikaze-rushing hork-bajir in #7, jumping onto moving helicopters in #23, and now this.
Is it just me, or does Jake spend like half this book dissociating? Like I get that our boy is chronically sleep-deprived and all, but he’s lying facedown in wet sand for “several minutes” when they first arrive and then after the second T. rex attack Marco says “we let Jake sort of doze for a while” before the others have to drag him up and shove him into motion to get him away from the injured dinos (p. 112). Presumably this is what his “zombie mode” (from #44) looks like.
And now Rachel and Tobias are 5-foot Deinonychuses attacking a 40-foot Spinosaurus. On purpose. No more unchaperoned dates for these two. Ever.
Also also: the nesk ask Rachel what she is, and she goes «We’re… dinosaurs?» A+ cover story, no notes.
Cassie being all protective of Jake and not wanting him to go off the cliff with her! Rachel and Tobias seeing the same cliff and choosing to jump off together! Jake hero-worshiping Cassie’s expertise! Tobias suggesting dates grow on trees! Rachel making the world’s dumbest attempt to secure Tobias protein! I love how this is the most romantic book in the series. Heck, shout-out to Ax going up against the T. rex to save Marco while we’re at it, if you ship that way.
Yes! I wonder about this too! I mean, we know that andalites can hear things spoken out loud, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they would want to for their dolls. So it might be that their dolls can hear and transmit thought-speak like their computers can, and they use nuclear fusion to make that happen.
Megamorphs 2: In the Time of Dinosaurs thoughts (pt. 4):
Jake refers to the pteranodons as “dinosaurs” but Tobias doesn’t. So now I desperately need the sequel to the alligator-crocodile conversation in the aftermath of this book to go something like: Jake: Those dinosaurs sucked. I much prefer modern reptiles. Tobias: Birds. Dinosaurs are birds, not reptiles. Jake: Wait, what? I guess some of them had wings… Tobias: Those weren’t dinosaurs. Jake: Right, they were birds. Gotcha. Tobias: No, the pteranodonswere reptiles. Jake: The running guys with teeth are birds, the flying guys with beaks are reptiles? Tobias: Yep. Except for how arguably all birds are reptiles. But the ones that didn’t fly and had pebbly skin, those are birds. Jake:… Jake: … are you fucking with me? Marco: He’s not. But he left out the part where that giant swimming thing that ate him and Rachel? Not a reptile. Tobias: Thank y— Marco: It was a bacterium. Tobias: Now HANG ON A SECOND—
Fascinating reverse Planet of the Apes situation they have going on there with the mercora, where they are the horror from the future.
Rachel and Tobias are now charging at 4 T. rexes in Deinonychus morph. Kids, no. No.
I love the… convincing surprise? of Marco being the first one to get ahold of a new morph, and Cassie being last. Because it’s the morph that has stronger kill-to-survive instincts than any other they use.
Also: Jake demorphing to human because he’s that confident Cassie won’t hurt human!him. Be still, my heart!
“I waited for Marco to toss out some clever comeback. It never came. Instead, as we once again headed for the nesk camp, I heard him whisper so that no one but me could hear: «You know, Jake? I see why you like that girl.»” (p. 187). This is a romance novel.
It’s interesting that this series takes place in a universe where time travel can change the future, but also where every instance of time travel except one (Elfangor and Loren in Andalite Chronicles) ends in the time travelers deliberately erasing their own impact as much as possible (MM2, MM3, #11, #41).
Tobias’s afterward like “anyway, the paleontologists are wrong, I’m right, I swear” gets me every time. Genuinely the best of all possible approaches to science marches on.
Okay yeah, that makes sense. Sario rips are just weird little loops, and no one even knows they ever happened unless you die at the end. (Which I guess suggests all the Animorphs die at the end of MM2? Eh, it fits.) But then the Time Matrix is a whole different beast, one that actually changes reality, and that’s why it’s so pee-your-pants terrifying to even people like Alloran and Visser Three.
So...if Animorphs happened to take place in the same universe as the Hellaverse (Hazbin Hotel & Helluva Boss), I was wondering what the Animorphs (except for Ax) would look like as sinners? Tbh, I have this headcanon that Rachel ultimately would end up in Heaven after The Beginning as an archangel, while Cassie might be able to visit Hell through the Ellimist's intervention. I'm less sure about Ax, since he's an Andalite and may not follow the same afterlife rules, and I'm not certain whether the crew of the Rachel actually died but mysteriously found themselves in Sinner's bodies.
I’m not familiar with the Hellaverse. (I do plan to watch as soon as I figure out a way to… ahem… access it, without giving money to Rainforest-Destroying Megacorporation.)
Anyone who knows Hellaverse and Animorphs have thoughts?
They might be the “good guys” but there’s absolutely no way any of the team would be making it to Heaven honestly, with how many innocents (hosts) that they killed. As for appearance, I can see them either being based off of their battle morphs, though Rachel could potentially also be Beast Rachel and Tobias could be the most human. Also possibly Cassie could be a rat in reference to her cruelest decision
Got no thoughts for Ax unfortunately lol
Tobias would have feathers everywhere except his arms, hands, and feet. Bird enough to be inconvenient, but not enough to fly.
Rachel would be Beast Rachel, except the Wolverine claws can shoot out anywhere on her body, and sometimes do so without her wanting it when she gets very angry.
Cassie is mostly a rat with the face of a wolf, and a Little Red Riding Hood cloak, referencing both her cruelest decision of deception and her battle morph.
Ax has mouths, plenty of mouths all over his body with entirely normal teeth but giant, lashing tongues.
Megamorphs 2: In the Time of Dinosaurs thoughts (pt. 4):
Jake refers to the pteranodons as “dinosaurs” but Tobias doesn’t. So now I desperately need the sequel to the alligator-crocodile conversation in the aftermath of this book to go something like: Jake: Those dinosaurs sucked. I much prefer modern reptiles. Tobias: Birds. Dinosaurs are birds, not reptiles. Jake: Wait, what? I guess some of them had wings… Tobias: Those weren’t dinosaurs. Jake: Right, they were birds. Gotcha. Tobias: No, the pteranodonswere reptiles. Jake: The running guys with teeth are birds, the flying guys with beaks are reptiles? Tobias: Yep. Except for how arguably all birds are reptiles. But the ones that didn’t fly and had pebbly skin, those are birds. Jake:… Jake: … are you fucking with me? Marco: He’s not. But he left out the part where that giant swimming thing that ate him and Rachel? Not a reptile. Tobias: Thank y— Marco: It was a bacterium. Tobias: Now HANG ON A SECOND—
Fascinating reverse Planet of the Apes situation they have going on there with the mercora, where they are the horror from the future.
Rachel and Tobias are now charging at 4 T. rexes in Deinonychus morph. Kids, no. No.
I love the… convincing surprise? of Marco being the first one to get ahold of a new morph, and Cassie being last. Because it’s the morph that has stronger kill-to-survive instincts than any other they use.
Also: Jake demorphing to human because he’s that confident Cassie won’t hurt human!him. Be still, my heart!
“I waited for Marco to toss out some clever comeback. It never came. Instead, as we once again headed for the nesk camp, I heard him whisper so that no one but me could hear: «You know, Jake? I see why you like that girl.»” (p. 187). This is a romance novel.
It’s interesting that this series takes place in a universe where time travel can change the future, but also where every instance of time travel except one (Elfangor and Loren in Andalite Chronicles) ends in the time travelers deliberately erasing their own impact as much as possible (MM2, MM3, #11, #41).
Tobias’s afterward like “anyway, the paleontologists are wrong, I’m right, I swear” gets me every time. Genuinely the best of all possible approaches to science marches on.
My understanding of this one is that they are not erasing their own impact; if the animorphs had never been there the nesk would not have been provoked into redirecting the meteor in the first place. So the decision made at the end is doubling down on the impact of their time travel rather than erasing it
I could be misremembering, I just recall thinking this one was so fascinating because they so brazenly changed the “intended” course of history, they just didn’t see it that way because they came from a future that had already been altered by themselves
So it goes back to that debate they have near the end of the book, where Cassie asks if the Animorphs were always there and if they’ve always been destined to kill the dinosaurs because it’s the only way they could exist to kill the dinosaurs, or if history was always going to take that course and they just put things back the way they were before there were humans there.
In theory, if the Animorphs never time traveled, then maybe the nesk would have changed the trajectory of that comet for some other reason. Or if the Animorphs never time traveled, the comet would have hit Earth all on its own and wiped out the nest as well as the mercora. Or if the Animorphs never time traveled, the mercora would end up living happily for millennia and humans never would have existed. Or if the Animorphs never time traveled, the dinosaurs would have eaten the mercora. We don’t knows, and it seems like neither do they. They could ask Ax’s science teacher, probably, but there’s no way to drop a line to that person.
If you’re wondering what small Incredibly American things are happening right now, it was on the local news that a baseball team held a memorial service for a bald eagle that died from injuries she got fighting another bald eagle.
Her widower mate getting a new girlfriend very quickly has also been on the news.
Rip Jackie you absolute unit I’m sorry your liver went bad
He found another mate when is seemed like she might recover, the cheating bastard!!!!!!!!!!!
He didn’t know she was still alive! She disappeared from his life tragically!!!!!!!!
I could see a future where Tobias tells this story and a Paleontologist immediately pipes up “hold on you claim a Kronosaurus swallowed you because all the fossil evidence suggests they died out around 30-40 million years before the point you traveled to are you sure you didn’t just misidentify a mosesaurus?” Cue Tobias spending the rest of his life agonizing over whether he made a groundbreaking discovery or just messed up an identification.
There’s debate about whether it was quadrupedal or bipedal
No one can agree if it swam, walked on land, or both
Given we only have bones, it could be anywhere from ultra-skinny to near-spherical like a manatee
It might not exist???? We’ve never found an intact skeleton, and people argue it’s the product of accidentally sticking Bone A on Skeleton B
Anyway, now along comes Mr. Animorph Ornithologist FancyPants, and adds:
97 million years ago, you say? 97 million? Oh, no. Try 65 million. That’s only a 22,000,000-year difference, I’m sure we’ll resolve this soon.
One assumes that shortly after Tobias says all this in an interview, he gets a lifetime ban (with a very snippy cover letter) from the Paleontological Society.
So...if Animorphs happened to take place in the same universe as the Hellaverse (Hazbin Hotel & Helluva Boss), I was wondering what the Animorphs (except for Ax) would look like as sinners? Tbh, I have this headcanon that Rachel ultimately would end up in Heaven after The Beginning as an archangel, while Cassie might be able to visit Hell through the Ellimist's intervention. I'm less sure about Ax, since he's an Andalite and may not follow the same afterlife rules, and I'm not certain whether the crew of the Rachel actually died but mysteriously found themselves in Sinner's bodies.
I’m not familiar with the Hellaverse. (I do plan to watch as soon as I figure out a way to… ahem… access it, without giving money to Rainforest-Destroying Megacorporation.)
Anyone who knows Hellaverse and Animorphs have thoughts?
They might be the “good guys” but there’s absolutely no way any of the team would be making it to Heaven honestly, with how many innocents (hosts) that they killed. As for appearance, I can see them either being based off of their battle morphs, though Rachel could potentially also be Beast Rachel and Tobias could be the most human. Also possibly Cassie could be a rat in reference to her cruelest decision
