#peter animorphs

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

What if when the Animorphs and their families were in the hork-bajir valley, they gave everyone the morphing power? Maybe not Sara or anyone else too young to understand, but all the adults, Toby, and any responsible hork-bajir. At minimum it would give everyone the ability to survive horrific injuries, and they might get more branches of Auxiliary Animorphs on top of it.

(partly inspired by the line in your fic where Jordan mentions she was older than when Rachel was when she started)

Peter: The best morpher. He understands how the technology works, better even than Ax does, and he can follow orders like a champ. Though he's no andalite when it comes to tracking time, he seems to have better numerical estimation abilities than the others and that'd serve him well. On the parents' auxiliary team, I could see him in a role similar to Cassie's (being able to do partial morphs) or Tobias's (the first one to try the weird alien morphs).

Naomi: The diversion expert. She's good at getting and keeping attention, and pretty dang fearless. So she'd take on a role like Tobias does sometimes where he flies around drawing fire from the others by keeping just out of range. If she could find a bird of paradise morph that might suit her, but I could also see frilled lizard or blue-spotted monitor working well in that role since reptiles can be a little hardier than birds and survive a hit or two.

Michelle: The one evacuating civilians. She abhors violence, but she's also hard to scare. So I could see her morphing elephant, or another people-mover giant herbivore, and rushing in to grab bystanders out of the line of fire and carry them away. If she grabs a few human-controllers in the process, that's fine; once word gets around that she is actually willing to return any surrendered yeerk to the pool in exchange for keeping the host, lots of yeerks would be willing to work with her after being accidentally captured.

Eva: The leader. She'd acquire the biggest baddest hork-bajir whose permission she could get, and she'd put herself at the vanguard of the team. She'd also default to leading the auxiliary family team due to wealth of relevant knowledge and tactical experience. This would naturally lead to a lot of clashes with Michelle, but I think they'd be able to find common ground on wanting to save humanity more than any other priority. Plus...

Walter: The peacekeeper. His role would be sort of like Jake takes on during the downtime, working to smooth over conflicts between teammates and make sure they all keep their eyes on the ball. If Eva's the tactician then he's the strategist, thinking long-term about what kind of Earth they want to have left when all the dust clears. In terms of fighting style he'd be the versatile support person, maybe elephant morph as well since it can serve as a diversion or a people-mover or a tank depending on who must needs backup at any moment.

Loren: The tank. She's got that "throw rocks first, ask questions later" attitude that helps her charge into battle against pants-wetting odds, and she's proven to be suicidally brave (or just suicidal) under fire. Depending on what the Gardens has, I could see her getting cassowary, gharial, orangutan, something else that gets a what the fuck reaction from Californians in the second between seeing it and it fucking you up. She's also known to have really good aim, so post-re-ensightening I could see her literally just picking up a dracon beam and blasting away at her enemies.

[kicking-gul-dukat-in-the-dick]

animorphs quotes that. i... those poor kids

x x x x x

Edit: I made an animorphs gimmick blog: @i-assign-you-animorphs

[exigencelost]

''Peter didn't know'' that is the point. That is the entire point that's what tips it from tragedy to horror. You don't have to know. That is what makes it a story about heteropatriarchal colonial violence and not just a story about an evil alien. Of course he did not know that his wife had been possessed by an alien monster. He did know that his life got easier! He did know that his wife stopped arguing with him! That is all he knew and he was happy to know only that. That's the horror story. The question you are supposed to ask is: where in your life have you been handed comfort or power or ease, and seen no visible sign of distress from anyone offering it to you, and asked no further questions?

[pyrochord]

before peter started dating nora what if he had gone on a few dates with other women and the animorphs stalked each and every one of them to make sure they didn't go near any pool entrances ... but they did. all of them did. and so apparently peter likes women more when they're controllers, when they're perfect, when they're shaping themselves just for him. when they don't have to fight or argue about anything; when they're in agreement about everything. who would have thought?

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Odd question, but have you ever seen any good fanfic where Peter is able to find Nora again after the war? Just reread the Revelation, and I'm still mad at Marco for lying to his Dad because deep down he wants his "real" Mom and Dad back together. XD

Interesting question. I haven't necessarily, and I agree that Nora's raw deal in canon doesn't get questioned much by the fandom. From the ashes by warriorlid14 is really good so far and has some elements of Nora and Peter, but it's more in the background than the main plot. Anyone else know of fics like this?

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

What do you think would have happened if Peter was taken as V1's host instead of Eva?

I'm stuck on this one because I think there's a reason that in canon we never see an Animorph have a custodial parent who's a controller. And that is the fact that, in the U.S., kids are legally treated as being basically the property of their parents. There would be nothing stopping a yeerk who has custody of a kid from just infesting the kid for the sake of convenience (Chapman's deal with Iniss 226 being the rare exception). Like, you're legally allowed to drag your kids to meetings they don't want to attend, hold them in places they would rather leave, and even subject them to medical procedures or cult initiations they would rather avoid. So if Edriss has sole custody of Marco, there's nothing to stop her from just infesting him by force.

...which then means Elfangor accidentally recruits a yeerk among the Animorphs, which is a very short path to a total party kill.

Anyone else have a way out?

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Do you think it's as telling as I do that Marco's parent's don't get mentioned after the time skip in 54?

I guess I don't really find it telling. The Animorphs cast gets huge after #49, and with over 50 surviving named characters, it makes sense that the less politically significant ones get de-prioritized. Given the story #54 is trying to tell — of how the entire world changes and how the Animorphs cope in the aftermath of the war — Eva and Peter are simply less important than Toby or Arbron or Erek. We also don't get any mention of Cassie's, Ax's, or Tobias's parents in the final book, even though Ax's parents especially are a massive open question in his post-war life.

Don't get me wrong. I would love to know what Eva especially does after the war; god only knows I've written many many many many many many many fics on that subject. But KAA et al were limited to ~30,000 words, and you can only fit so much into 30k. Especially given the scale of the plot and cast at that point in the series.

[pyrochord]

This might be a really weird question but. What do you think Jake thinks of Marco's dad? I just re-read book 5 where Marco talks at length about how his dad fell apart and became a shell of himself when his mum died, and in book 6 Jake mentions that Marco has been dealing with a lot of heavy/difficult home stuff and has been dealing with it for a long time, and I can't remember when it's mentioned but Jake also says that now they live in an apartment Marco is more willing to have his friends over where he might've been embarrased about his home before, so I was just wondering, as someone who knew Marco and his family before and after his mum died, what Jake might think of Peter these days? There are other instances when Jake describes or mentions him, but he never really talks about him in a positive light.

hmm that's a good question! the thing that makes figuring out marco's past life really hard is that we already don't know much about what he was like before the war started (this goes for all the animorphs, of course) and #1 and mm4 make up 90% of what we have to go off of. and that's already after eva's supposed death, which we know has changed marco drastically. i realise it may sound like i'm getting off topic, but it's very important to look at marco and peter's past life with eva! we have to look at marco's perception of eva when he thought she was alive (this of course being before marco became the marco we know and love today) in order to gauge jake's. and then by extension, we can look at what he would see of peter.

okay here’s what i’ve got. as we know, peter and eva used to argue much more frequently before eva was infested (#10). when edriss got involved, she made sure that there was nothing more to argue about, playing the part of peter’s ideal wife (#10, Visser). this involved things like, yes, avoiding arguments (it’s implied that peter doesn’t like confrontation multiple times in the text), and also letting him do basically whatever the fuck he wanted (Visser). she was also the one to handle most of the discipline (#5). peter describes this as the best time of his life (#10) and it’s even implied that this happiness is what caused him to quit smoking (#45). 

(side note. imagine what that would do to eva’s psyche. your husband not noticing anything is wrong with you when you suddenly turn into this “picture-perfect” wife. your husband preferring this version of you, even. your husband quitting smoking for this version of you.)

anyway. this happiness causes peter to be much more laid-back! he’s the “cool dad.” he gets to just casually hang around while watching his son attempt dangerous stunts, making no actual attempt to stop him from doing so (Visser). eva handled discipline; he was the more laid-back guy. and to reckless kids like marco and jake (marco was reckless, playing superhero all the time; Visser, jake is still reckless, at least at the start of the series, climbing construction cranes and the like; #1), someone who just lets them do whatever they want seems like a pretty cool guy! 

so it’s my personal belief that jake saw peter as this really cool, really happy man who essentially was perfectly fine with all the dangerous stunts he and marco would attempt. a cool guy! so after the death-that-wasn’t-a-death, seeing this drastic change in how peter acted must have been really, really strange to him! he wouldn’t know what to make of peter anymore, going off of what little marco tells him, probably. jake and peter’s relationship would have been very strange, and none of their conversations would have the same energy. it’s like it’s just two completely different people talking. strangers. so in jake’s eyes, i think that peter went from this cool, laid-back, incredibly happy guy to a depressed stranger. now, jake only knows peter through marco, and we all know how much of a reliable narrator marco is.