megamorphs #1: the andalite’s gift
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@andalitebandits
megamorphs #1: the andalite’s gift
Taking a moment to appreciate that Elfangor took 20 minutes to figure out how to turn on the Mustang while Chapman landed the Jahar completely unscathed.
romants
But, my father kept insisting, the Yeerks on their home world have been peaceful, these years since the attack that destroyed his honor. I didn't point out that the Yeerks on the home world had no choice: An Andalite fleet was parked in orbit above them, ready to shred anything that tried to come or go in the system. p. 34-35
How much does the Yeerk Homeworld know and support the space-faring Yeerks? How much of a split is there on the homeworld? We don't really know. Because their is an Andalite Fleet parked at their homeworld ready to blast everything.
So that also means that Yeerks like Esplin 9466 Prime that were born on the Yeerk spacecraft don't really have the option of just going home if they decide that they don't want to conquer other species. We know that some of the other Yeerks in his training program didn't like it but they really can't just leave.
The Yeerks that went willingly into space are one thing but the Yeerks born in space? They are born probably just to be more soldiers. Get the ones that don't want to fight to become parents because that process kills three Yeerks but get hundreds of new potential soldiers out of the deal. Sounds like a win-win for Yeerk high command. Pressure decenters out (tell them that they need to mate if they aren't going to fight) while getting more troops that you just have to feed the right propaganda to while young.
OK, but given how little yeerks know about anything beyond their world before the andalites came, and how low-tech they and the gedds are, how many yeerks even though that they are? And of those who do how many even know why?
There's a really interesting question about thrownness and settler-colonialism in there. Like, suppose you're a guy with French parents and French culture... and you were born in Algeria in 1904. And you've never seen France. And now it's 1943 and France is occupied by Germany, and they're also invading Algeria.
Like, what do you even do in that position? You could do your best to be nice to your Algerian neighbors, but that won't stop them killing you first chance they get because you're on their parents' land. You could try joining that rumored Anti-Colonial League, but that wouldn't necessarily help Algeria and might even accelerate the rate at which Germany takes over the entire planet. You can't go back to France — it's occupied, you've never been there — but staying in Algeria makes you part of the problem. You could join the military, because at least then you're protecting your own, and you're helping prevent Germany wiping out Algeria entirely... but likely as not you'll get sent to "quell unrest" in Algeria instead.
I dunno. I feel like a lot of the ordinary yeerks are caught in a system too big to do anything about, and probably do their best not to think about it while also telling themselves that at least they're nicer to their hosts than the people on the aquatic hork-bajir project.
And that's assuming that the Andalites didn't just set the planet on fire and refuse to admit it. That does seem to be their usual MO.
"Just tell them we're Animorphs." "Tell them we're what?" "Idiot teenagers with a death wish."
THE ANIMORPHS30 ZINE IS HERE!!!
(And thanks to @gros-chat-fait for this beautiful cover art!!)
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the series, creators of the fanbase have come together to bring you a zine of nearly 200+ pages (at which point I'm not even sure we can call it a zine anymore! The correct term at this point would be anthology!), filled with art and writing.
You can download it as a PDF here, or if you just want to view it without downloading, it's available on Canva here.
Currently I'm still working on options for getting a printed release, but self-printing is still an option! Stay tuned—there should be a self-print mirror available shortly (I'll just need to change some links to QR codes, among other things).
Okay, I think that's all I have to say for now! Here's to thirty years!!!
WARNING do NOT start reading books and comics or watching movies or looking at art!!! you will start wanting to create art yourself. or god forbid. writing.
andalite homeworld panorama that started as a warmup and ended up serious
What do you think would've happened if the Andalites managed to win the space battle over Earth before the events of book 1?
Oooohh. Probably not good for humanity in the long run.
The andalites lose that battle because they don't realize how many yeerks are on Earth already. They're clearly expecting to encounter maybe a yeerk scouting mission or an advance guard at most, and then are shocked to find a huge mass of yeerk troops with established infrastructure. We know from Visser that the yeerks are pretending to be primarily interested in Anati and Leera to hide what they're doing on Earth, and that the War Council is dangerously determined to downplay the threat even to their own troops.
So if the andalites win because the yeerks let them win (e.g. by sending out only the expected handful of small vessels) then they'll think they eliminated the yeerk threat on Earth. The Sharing is allowed to flourish unchecked and sweep up an exponentially-growing number of human hosts, the yeerks are allowed to keep quietly trucking more and more troops to Earth, and pretty soon you've got human-controllers flooding the galaxy just as the andalites are announcing total victory on Leera.
However, if the andalites win because they know to be prepared, that's a whole other ball game. Because andalites are famously unconcerned with civilian causalities among the "lesser" species they "protect." If they succeed in showing up with enough Dome ships to take out the Blade ship and Pool ship in atmosphere, then they'll have to know that there are already 10,000s of yeerks on Earth. Hopefully, that means that the andalites launch a covert counter-invasion with troops in human morph. Hopefully, they put Elfangor in charge of that mission and he takes a measured approach informed by his Earth expertise. More likely, they either fire their space lasers and wipe California off the map to be on the safe side, or they take control of Earth's governments by force and declare it a "territory" of their Electorate to be on the safe side.
Rainbowdash animorphing into a roach <3
happy happy 30th birthday to the book series that changed my life!!!
animorphs is my all-time favorite piece of fiction and i’m in the middle of this huge painting for it, but figured i’d post this WIP anyways since its june 1! hopefully the full piece will be done by the end of the month :-)
animorphs was like yeah what if you (child soldier) promised your best friend (also a child soldier) that you would save him, and that you would kill him before letting the body-snatching parasites take him. what if you realized that you can't ever do both. you can't save him without the yeerks. you can't kill him because if he dies everyone you've ever known dies.
what if you literally have to cut him open while he screams and pleads for you to stop and kill him. he hates you for saving him. he hates himself for hating you. you hate yourself for doing it, and you hate him for making you choose. all you can do is wash the blood off and go eat dinner with your family. you will wonder if what you did was worth it for the rest of your life.
what if 23 books later he plans to let your planet be blown up because he is afraid that your version of mercy might be the most dangerous thing in the universe. is the question i would add.
Big announcement:
Fucking petting hims
While I sort of get the impulse, it does always get my back up when people talk about something like Animorphs with this attitude of 'omgggg remember these books, how on EARTH were we allowed to read these books, they're so grim and dark and violent and tragic, no adults could possibly have known what they actually contained or they'd have been banned.'
And like. Allowing for the fact that there absolutely are adults who think every distressing topic ever should be banned from children's literature - they're children's books. You were allowed to read them when you were a kid because they were written for kids. Bridge to Terabithia is also a children's book. So is Where the Red Fern Grows and Old Yeller and Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry and The Giver and loads of other books that deal with heavy, difficult topics. It is appropriate and good for children to have books about these things that are tailored to their reading levels and it genuinely really bugs me when people act like they're somehow not really for kids because bad things happen in them or they end tragically.
This world is just toooo funny yall. But it’s really not a laughing matter at all is what’s crazy about it all
What if the Animorphs had a therapist in the know? If you don't want to make an OC, perhaps make Cassie a burgeoning amateur one, more than she is in the books.
Jo watches the clock tick past 10:00, to 10:01, to 10:05. It's not a shock — no-shows are even more common in therapy than in any other medical field. She specializes in anxiety disorders. It'd be silly to get shocked that sometimes clients get too anxious to show up to talk about their worst fears with a near-stranger. So she makes eye contact with Will, their receptionist, and he nods to indicate he understands to call back if her 10AM does show. Then she goes back to her office, locks the door, and gets to work typing up her notes from her 9AM session.
At 10:08, she looks up and startles so badly that her pen snaps in her hand. There's a teenage boy sitting in the chair across her desk.
"Hi," he says, smirking.
Breathing in deep, then letting it out, Jo gives herself three full seconds to don her professional face. She is familiar with boundary-testing, of course, and clients trying to get a rise out of her is also not new. It's just this particular client's choice of test that got to her. "Marco Ray?" she says.
"Dr. Ade?" he asks.
"Please, call me Jo," she says.
"Jo," he repeats. "That short for Josephine? Jolene? Jocelyn?"
"Jo is fine."
"Johnathan? Joaquin? Jodadiah?"
She keeps her professional face on. "Jocasta," she says, mostly to get them off this topic. "But I go by Jo. Do you prefer a derivative of Marco?"
"Jocasta." His smirk becomes a grin. "What an oedipal name, as your man Freud would say. That why you decided to become a headshrinker, to figure out why you want to boink your own kid?"
Okay, that's enough. There's establishing rapport, and then there's countertransferrence. "Marco," she says. "If you'd like to proceed with this course of therapy, then we will need to talk about you rather than about me. If that's not something you're comfortable with, then we can discuss other topics first, see if we can come back to it later. But if you're not prepared to discuss yourself..."
"I thought you said we could talk about whatever I wanted." He mock-pouts. "It's why I picked you."
That is not why he picked her, since it applies to almost any therapist on the planet. He picked her because she's an ex-controller whose Peace Movement yeerk died six months ago, but not before putting her in contact with Illim who put her in contact with the Animorphs. That, and her tour of duty in Iraq in '91. He picked her because last week she had conversations with Ax and Tobias, the week before with Cassie, and none of them has been killed or infested in the interim. Presumably there were other tests over the last month, given how many times she's noticed birds of prey hanging around outside her house, but she's not privy to what those would be.
Marco tilts his head back, looking around the room. Reading the degrees she posted on the walls, the titles of her books. "How to Lie with Statistics, huh?" he asks.
"Interesting choice," she says, "to comment on." She does find that interesting, given that it's a tenth the size of the textbooks and — unlike a lot of the volumes about gender roles — doesn't contain the word Sex in the title. But she also wants to see what he'll say next.
"I love lying," he insists, stridently enough that she suspects a lie. "And I hate statistics." That one also seems like a lie. Very interesting.
"Tell me about how you came to love lying, then," she says.
"But it'd be a lie." He widens his eyes.
"Marco." Her next move is calculated, and requires her to hold onto her show no fear face with all ten fingernails. But she stands up, and walks around her desk to lean against its front. Putting herself within arm's reach of easily the most dangerous client she's ever had. "We don't have to talk about you," Jo says. "But if we don't, then this will be a waste of time and money for us both." She does have some Gestalt training, it's true, but right now she's also being this blunt because she senses it's what Marco needs.
The assessment portfolio his school counselor sent over paints a picture of a young man smart enough to be dangerous in a traditional classroom, one who went from mischief-maker to potential threat around the time his mom died. He needs a straight-shooter, and he needs dependability more than affirmation right now.
There's also the problem of his needing some kind of diagnosis for the paperwork's sake. There's the family history of depression, but that's not the sense she's getting from him. Of course she can't put PTSD or ADHD on the insurance forms, would raise too many questions. Reactive Attachment Disorder? She hasn't seen anything for herself, but that seems to be the way the assessment is pointing. She'll probably just go for Oppositional Defiant Disorder, though she hates to toss yet another whip-smart brown boy into that trash pile of a diagnosis.
Marco considers his own thoughts, as she considers all this. At last he looks up at her, and what comes out sounds honest: "Is it okay if we talk about Jake instead?"
"Yes." Finally some progress, twenty-two minutes into the fifty-five she has with him. "Tell me about Jake."
"And you'll keep it to yourself." He squints at her. "Or else we'll have to kill you."
Jo really really wishes she could tell whether that second part was a joke. "I'll keep it to myself," she says, "on pain of losing my license."
"Okay." Marco blows out a breath. "Guess I'm betting on you not hating your job, then. So here's the thing about my boy Jake. He thinks he has to take responsibility for the entire world, and then some. Never mind that he's fifteen, never mind that he's just some dumb jock who never asked for any of this. He's been backed into a corner where someone has got to pick up the slack, and he's doing it. But it's leaving nothing behind for him, you know? And he won't even admit that anything is wrong, not even when we can all see it."
If she'd known it'd be this easy, she would've made her first question about... mentally she searches her notes. Jake Berenson, she's pretty sure. The Animorphs' informal war-prince. "That can't be easy," she says. "For him."
"Yeah," Marco says. "And people mistake him for being all grown-up and mature, you know? Which he is, but only because he has to be. You can just tell that what he wants is to be a kid. Play Sega. Goof off in class. All of that. But not only is he one of the six — freakin' six — dumb losers stuck trying to keep the human species around, he's also got a friggin' controller in his own family! That has got to mess with a guy's head, no way it doesn't. Knowing that there's nowhere safe, that those damn slugs already got into your home, that they've been there for years, and you thought you were oh-so-smart but it turns out that nothing you think you know can be trusted, not even your own memories..."
"And what do you think Jake would say," she says, "if I got him into this office and asked him what he needs from all of you?"
Marco takes a breath. She can't tell, not for sure, if he even knows he's doing it. But she does her best to remember every word, as he starts talking again.
------------------------
"You all right?" her supervisor asks, sitting down on the front step of the office next to her later that afternoon.
"New client this morning," Jo admits, stubbing out the cigarette she's swearing yet again will be her last. "Hard one."
"Mm?"
If the client in question had signed the release form, then Jo would be able to talk this over in more detail. Since he didn't, she's going to have to be more circumspect.
"SLS," Jo says, which about sums it up.
You're not supposed to use the phrase Shit Life Syndrome, not even with fellow practitioners. It's too defeatist, too judgmental. But it lingers anyway, because sometimes that really is the presenting problem. Sometimes the client is sad because her husband is a piece of shit and her manager's abusive, sometimes a client's scared because his parents hit him and his teachers don't listen. But all the therapist can do is let them talk for a while about how bad it sucks, before sending them right back into the same morass of bullshit that gave them depression in the first place.
And sometimes the client's fighting in a war with no one on his side but a couple fellow kids. Sometimes he's being forced to defend his life six times a month with fists and teeth. Sometimes he's lying awake at night because his mom is a hostage for the other side and sometimes you really do have to let the hostages die.
"Ah, damn," her supervisor says. Her smile is sad. "Work with what you have, okay? Don't rush it."
"I should become one of those people who hoards kittens," Jo jokes weakly. "Only the kittens are clients, and I bring them all home."
"And hoarding isn't considered a disorder because the kittens in question get good quality of life once they're there."
She stubs out her cigarette unfinished, folding the butt underfoot before putting it in the trash. "I hate when you talk sense."
"One day at a t—"
"Secure my own oxygen mask!" Jo blurts overtop her. "The wounded healer too can have compassion fatigue! Trust the process!"
At first it's halfway to anger, but by the time she's done they're both half-laughing with released tension.
"Take care of yourself, okay?" her supervisor calls, as she heads to her car. "And call if you need anything."
Jo snaps off a salute of acknowledgement, and then she walks out to her car. Off to trust her wounded mask, or some such shit, one compassion at a time.
this is very specific, so i could only think of 3 characters, but anyway love these guys <3