Animorphs - The Entire Series

You could reasonably assume Tom found out something he shouldn't have and was taken kicking and screaming, since he tried to fistfight Visser Three.

Yeah, same. This and the sheer weirdness of Andalite Chronicles' ending are the two most dominant memories in my head.

I still, to this day, remember that scene.

I think it's addressed in a later book that Tom actually joined the sharing (spoilers for what I'm pretty sure is book 6) to get closer to a girl he liked (who obviously ended up being a controller). An extremely teenager thing to do, honestly.

Wonder if that lines up to possibly be Taylor. I barely remember that one though

No, Taylor doesn't have anything to do with Tom. I think the girl in question is in fact namedropped in Book 6, but it's definitely not Taylor. For what it's worth, however, there was a subplot in the TV show where Tom starts dating Melissa Chapman for a couple of episodes with the implication that he was trying to get her infested, but then it's dropped like a hot stone in the scramble to try and wrap things up after the Nickelodeon axe finally fell on the show.

Still, a point in the show's favour. It remembered Melissa was a character in this universe and tried, feebly, to do... something with her.

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.


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).


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.

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.

Correct me if I'm wrong, they recruit the disabled kids bc yeerks would never use a physically disabled host unless they had some sort of societal power, right?

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.

Exactly, they need to recruit more people without worrying about quarantining each one for three days or the Yeerks finding out. They figure the Yeerks won't infest disabled people.

Their justification for it being teens specifically is a little weaker but makes more sense within the specific book. They reason that teens will accept the story of the Yeerks more readily than an adult, who they'll have to convince and who might want to do their own thing. Within that book though, their parents who are now hiding with them try to take control of the groups decision making (I think specifically Rachel's mom does this) and the Animorphs basically have to put them in their place and tell them all to shut up and that they aren't making decisions anymore.

Yeah I think the moral grayness is definitely in recruiting teens, not in the disabled thing, bc like, disabled people can make their own decisions, especially if there's no mental impairment, and they have the same stakes as everyone else in wanting to defend the Earth from the yeerks.

'Adults might want to do their own thing' is specifically funny to me though with the context of David. I guess it's more of a worry that an adult might want to take over specifically bc of age and a desire to 'protect' the teenaged Animorphs?

Yeah that's basically the text's justification, thought tbh I think it's really just that this is Animorphs, the book series about teens becoming animals.

From memory that whole saga happens after Jake gives the speech of "we need to be asking ourselves if something is expedient, not if it's right" and they go full terrorist. it's interesting to me that a lot of people jump on that event in particular and not them bombing the Yeerk pool with however much collateral damage that inflicts.

The Message-Chapter 24


Credit to Visser Three. His morphs are disgusting.


You ever feel hatred? I think I did once, but it didn't feel like burning. It felt very...cold, like a cold certainty and rightness that that the thing I hated had to be destroyed. Scariest thing I ever felt.


Aww. That's cute.


<In Edward G Robinson voice> "Where's your cetacean God now, Cassie?"

isn't our cetacean god about to koolaid man visser 3?

Oh, Yea!

It's also literally what happens when their families move into the Hork Bajir valley.

The Message-Chapter 23


Humpback whales are filter feeders. They eat krill, so they aren't good at killing. Other types of whales, though, the ones that eat fish, like sperm whales, are very good at killing.


You know what? I'm laughing too.


So, while there are two more chapters, including a denoument for Ax, that's the story of whale Jesus.

If you don't like whales kicking the crap out of Visser Three why are you even here

I love whales kicking the crap out of Visser Three. But whales kicking the crap out of Visser Three because Cassie called out to their innately kind and understanding souls is, wow, really dumb.

On the other hand, even if it took some cetus ex machina, it's nice that they finally got to succeed at the exact mission they set out to do, without losing a fight and having to abort or having somebody get captured. Vague spoiler: it's going to be a little while before that happens again.

Can whales actually hit stuff with their tales? Wouldn't that just, like, push them through the water?
That said, I imagine getting hit by a fast-moving sperm whale would be extremely unpleasant.

I mean, being hit by a whale tail would push you through the water, but it would also hurt. If you're hit by a car, the force of that pushes you through the air, but it still doesn't feel very good.

If a whale hits you hard enough do you impact the water behind you like it was a concrete wall similar to too high a fall?

The water is concrete thing happens when you are moving too fast for the water to get out of the way. If a whale hit you hard enough to get you moving that fast, you'd be pulped by the impact.

I was curious too so I googled it and it turns out that they can.

https://sciencing.com/whales-protect-themselves-4566498.html

I do like the running gag throughout the series that Visser Three keeps turning up in monstrous alien gribblies... and almost always gets his ass kicked by Earth wildlife. I remember one of the later books explicitly stating that Earth's ecosphere is unbelievably vicious by galactic standards, and that most aliens who know about Earth have humans on their radar for the simple fact that humans are the apex species of this death world.

I also like the implication that he morphs specifically to win fights through brute size and strength, because if he has to actually fight using that body, it's not going to work well. He'd never let the morph's instincts take over like the kids do; "have 100% control over the body at all times" is an absolute rule for a Yeerk.

The weirdo fire monster thing seems like an incredibly useful morph that he should've used more often, in that case.

Light spoilers for a future book and question about Visser 3's biology:
I remember later the Yeerks are genetically adapting sharks so their brains are big enough for Yeerks to live in. Does this ever come up in Visser 3's morphs? He can't morph small enough wit hour killing the yeerk inside? Does this ever come up in an animorphs battle plan against him?

I don't think it ever does. I'd be surprised if Visser 3 had any small morphs. Biology aside, Visser 3 is not really the type of Yeerk who goes for subtle and stealthy approaches to problems.

I think a simpler answer for why he keeps morphing weird alien beasts is that those are simply what he had available - they are probably just normal animals on their respective worlds and only seem weird and alien to us.

Visser Three definitely seems like the kind of guy to go big game hunting and claim a morph as a trophy.

Obtaining a Yeerkbane morph would probably require a bit more competence than we've seen so far though.

A zoo, probably. I could see the Yeerks keeping some around as trophies after completing their conquest of their homeworld. And Visser Three making up a story about how he totally fought one and acquired it legit, when he just went to the zoo and had it sedated.

It'd be even better if the Andalite host is the one who had acquired the Yeerkbane. It's a useful morph for fighting Yeerks, after all.

That's a good question as to which morphs the Visser picked up on his own. I think I recall that Andalites tend to see morphing primarily as a tool for espionage, and don't have much conception of "battle morphs." Makes sense considering they have an effective natural weapon in their tails.

I don't remember seeing Alloran morph into battle forms before his infestation. Ax usually opts to stay in his normal form in fights, which you'd think would raise some questions about why only one of the Andalite bandits didn't acquire an Earth critter, but I don't remember it coming up. But it also makes sense consider Andalite pride.

Makes sense though that the Visser, as a yeerk, would want to take advantage of as many bodies as he could. When so much of your existence depends on what host body you can take over, why not opt for lots of them in one since you have the chance?

All these different approaches to mind/body issues still hold up and are very interesting to me

If I remember correctly, the few times a Yeerk finds out their identities, they usually say stuff like "We wondered why all but one of you morphed to fight." and basically that they had all the questions you might have... but it's also basically said that none of them actually told Visser-3 their suspicions because Visser-3 was not the kind of boss you wanted to tell anything he might not like to hear... and it was nearly impossible to know what might fit that category. So people told him as little as possible.

It's great that, re-reading Animorphs as an adult, Visser 3 is immediately identifiable as every crappy manager ever.

It really changes the context for why the reader hates and fears him.