any tips on how to get promoted quickly? i absolutely hate my current host's body. what kind of species lets itself evolve this way? their reproductive organs are just disgusting, and now this one has started bleeding once every lunar phase? her mom said it was normal for human females once they became mature enough for copulation. the very thought makes me sick! absolutely revolting! it's things like this that make me miss being a taxxon tbh. i hate humans so much.
There’s a lot to address in your message, anon. Let me break down my response into a couple of parts.
First of all, disliking your human host body. I think you might be coming at this issue from the wrong angle. Yes, humans can be disgusting at times, but are other host options really that much better? Right now, you’re romanticizing how it was when you were living as a Taxxon because you’re thinking about all the pains of living as a human, but is the endless unstoppable hunger and the bodily fragility really worth it? To use a human phrase, anon, I think you’re making the mistake of thinking that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
Secondly, the specific issue of the human menstrual cycle. Both of this blog’s mods have female human hosts and have to deal with that as well, so I know your pain on this one. Maybe try talking to your host’s parents about hormonal birth control? It prevents humans from having a child, which is something I highly doubt you’ll be needing, but also has the side effect of reducing the frequency and/or effects of menstruation in most humans. (Oh, and also, there can be a convenient silver lining -- male humans are usually ready to blame any irregularity in a female human’s behavior on “that time of the month” and not ask any more questions. If you slip up in your control or in imitating your host’s behavior and do something that a host’s male acquaintance thinks is weird, just blame it on pre-menstrual hormones and he’s almost guaranteed to drop it. Just a helpful tip!)
But really, the thing that sticks out to me here is that you asked for advice on being promoted quickly. I will say, I’m not a sub-visser or anything so I have to admit this blog isn’t going to be able to give great advice on improving your rank. However, I think the fact that you’re only thinking of promotion as a way to change your host body is a bad sign! You should focus on carrying out your duties and serving the Empire effectively, first of all, and if promotion comes it’ll be as a reward for that. Also, why do you think that promotion will get you out of a human host anyways? You might be transferred to a different human host, but there’s a reason that humans are currently considered the optimal species for infestation. Generally the higher in rank you go, the more likely you’ll be assigned to a human, unless you get picked to be part of testing some newly discovered experimental host species or something like that.
All in all, I think my advice for you would be to try to be rational about this, and that it’s almost certainly easier to change your way of thinking than it would be to get a different host. You could even make a list of the pros and cons of different host species and use that to try and convince yourself that humans aren’t so bad an option. When you see a Taxxon around at the pool, draw on your host’s human instincts and think about how gross they look, to try and get yourself out of the habit of wishing you were still living as a Taxxon.
If you still can’t get over it, I’d also recommend mentioning it to a superior officer. It depends on your relationship with the superior, of course, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to casually mention that you’re not loving your human host. Don’t frame it in a way where it sounds like it’ll impede your service, of course, but dropping something like: “You know, there’s nothing wrong with this host, but sometimes I miss being a Taxxon. I know a lot of Yeerks think humans are the best hosts, but I personally wouldn’t complain if I had to transfer to a different species” into a conversation, is unlikely to hurt a superior’s opinion of you. They might even like the idea that you’re adaptable. (Outright complaining about your host or requesting a transfer is more likely to get you punished. Never forget that as a rank-and-file Yeerk you’re basically expendable to the Empire. It’s a shame, but in the process of an invasion, it’s the truth.)
