Tomorrow we'll be starting Book #33, The Illusion! It's a Tobias book, so you all know what that means

For now, though, let's talk about the kids, how they see each other, and how they see themselves since our latest book gives us a lot of good insight into that

We literally get to see Rachel torn in half, and it ends with both sides hating each other for being either weak or out of control

This book also continues something of a trend of a lot of Cassie's best moments, the ones that demonstrate her understanding of how sentient creatures behave and being able to exploit that, showing up in books where she's not the POV character, such as here where she deduces that Rachel's sense of duty would lie in the Meek Rachel or her entire entrapment of

David back in book 22

Due to the whole literal split personality we get to see a lot more of the internal conflict of the characters, and how one person can react in several different ways to others around them depending on the situation

These kids are clearly suffering from massive amounts of stress, various types and levels of PTSD, and growing up way too fucking fast, but how do you see their views of each other?

As they change, do they understand each other better or worse?

They're a highly effective team, but what can erode that away?

We'll see you tomorrow for the start of our next book!

oh man the starfish one!

wheezes gently i need to... get back on this.....

Yes, please do! We welcome more discussion!

lol the best laid plans....

i was doing so good at the beginning and then my landlord decided to sell where i was renting....

i spent a not insignificant part of yesterday geeking about an alternate andalite tail design though so it is probably Time

also legit i adore cassie she is my bae and one of my favorite parts of her that so few people seem to notice is that she is terrifying

they're so busy thinking of her as the soft sweet Moral And Understanding Upright character when like

legit they are all terrifying in their own way but i almost think i'd prefer to have any of the kids after me before her

Wheezes, I love the bit at the end of 32 with Tobias's "the two of you and the two of me" comment to Rachel

she's nature! nature is not soft or gentle!

like

rachel is who you send after someone if you want em scared

cassie is who you send if you want them finished

and on that note it's actually interesting to me now that i think of it that arguably the two most dangerous animorphs are both the girls and they are dangerous in such different ways

Mmm, on a one-on-one basis, yeah. Against a group, Jake and Marco are both scarier, because they can adjust for a group

Cassie possibly could do it but it's hard to judge a group if you're just used to determining how one person acts

yeah

i mean situationally they're all bad news

jake and marco do best in a group, tobias does really well on some sort of tragic, self-sacrificing martyrdom mission that pits him against the world but is much more defensive than offensive in a general way, ax is like a guided missle where he'll go for the target and nothing else once pointed there

but one on one it's the girls

marco is very very good at figuring out how people think and expecially group dynamics but odd as it is he doesn't have the ruthless streak that cassie can have that lets him just cut straight to the heart of the problem

i dunno ;lsakjgd;f

No, you're absolutely right. At least not right now, although he's kind of growing into it, but damn. Him and Cassie, if they got along better... countries would fall

“The two of you and the two of me” quote is one of my absolute favorites

so i petered out partway through number seven (i am so behind) but even as i catch up it's so interesting

they all started off caring so much about so many things and so eager

by book 30 rachel isn't tangling with elephant trainers anymore, ax ins't so eager always to charge

so you know i've had a question for a very long time

if a morph-capable controller morphs into something too small for a yeerk to still be present in the brain - like an ant or whatever, though you could argue if a yeerk would be there in any morph brain unless it was the morph that was infested - and got trapped in that too small morph

the yeerk is presumably in zero space along with the extra matter from the controller

... now what

would the yeerk starve in a couple of days and leave a free nothlit or would the yeerk be able to survive without kandrona

..I think you killed everyone

whoops

.... isn't 33 that one with the torture?

cause that one messed me up, man

animorphs goes hard but that one went like the hardest it had yet gone

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

YUP THOUGHT SO

like animorphs in general is a messed up series

but honestly that is one of the most messed up books in the entire series and in a series where the main character being disemboweled is a semi-regular occurrence is an impressive claim

The Yeerk Z-Space question...how could the Yeerk control the body from Z-Space? That is where “extra” mass goes, so something must remain behind. (Didn’t the mosquito book deal partly with this?) Does the Yeerk in the controller shrink really really small to control the human or alien in morph?

Is it some trace of the morpher that remains behind that anchor consciousness to a morph? Or the soul? I’ve been thinking about this way too long...

Since this is full series I can say it - at least one of the Controller-morphs from the final battle is a snake, so clearly there's still some connection

They're plugged into the brain directly, right into the neural pathways, so even though they're a separate thing they're also like... say if your brain had another lobe

i mean we saw more extreme morphs in book 6 so

the yeerk morphed jake into ant iirc

And the kids have their full bodies when they get swept up by the Andalite ship in 18, everything's in place and somehow they can still morph even though they're technically already morphed, so the yeerk-brain connections are still in place through a morph

yeah somehow there's a connection

weeps

why is good fanfiction so hard to find

IT'S SO GOOD WHEN YOU DO BUT

Sturgeon's Law

ughhhh

Yup

well I found some good ones

and a daemorphing one on the front page of ao3 and that series kills me

since i really loved it before it started... rewriting everything about canon left and right....

I've heard about it but I've... never listened to a podcast...

no....

.... actually speaking of fic would anyone be willing to look over a thing i'm doing?

.... that fic sure is ax/a anthropomorphic cinnamon bun goodnight everybody i need a nap

i need to stop trying to find fic is the truth

.... the kids hurt me