I Should Be Sleeping

This book earns its reputation for being silly and inconsequential, yes. But BOY HOWDY does the series need a light book as of #24. The series-altering gut punch of the David Trilogy, then the hork-bajir crisis in #23, are just behind us. The epic kids-vs-gods plot of #26 and #27 is coming up. Hork-Bajir Chronicles is just behind, and Megamorphs 3 ahead. Comic relief is meant to be a literal term — when done well, it gives the audience a chance to let out a breath and relax their shoulders before the tension starts ramping back up.

Interesting that Cassie lists humans' attractive qualities (to yeerks) as "Humans, with fingers more delicate and capable than any taxxon or hork-bajir or gedd. Humans, who could be fed almost anything... Humans, who exist in numbers far greater than all those species combined. We are the perfect host bodies." (p. 3).

Also: I love how the helmacrons serve as a sort of character checkpoint. The kids are so casual about a second alien invasion because they've gotten so good at fighting the first. Arguably the helmacrons are a serious threat to Earth — their shrinking ray could in theory do a lot of damage to a lot of humans, and they know the Animorphs' identities — but the Animorphs themselves are jaded enough to respond with a collective eye-roll rather than fear.

Rachel with the makeshift weapons! Morphing is for Tobias and the others; she has a baseball bat, and a brick, and another brick, and two perfectly good fists. Also, Jake shamelessly cowering behind Rachel and her brick supply. Hard same.

"Tobias turned, but he was shrinking fast. He was already down to about hummingbird size... «Well, this is unfortunate,» he said" (p. 40). Most Tobias response ever. Shout-out to Sisi Aisha Johnson for her bone-dry delivery on this line.

No she's not some monster that destroys lives for kicks while emotionally leashing her pet girlfriend/sibling-replacement, but I would read the fuck out of that.

So, basing myself entierly on the Hungarian Wikipedia here: Báthori Erzsébet was a powerful noble woman at a time when women were losing political power. She'd inherited a lot of land from her husband, and, well. Should she vanish from the scene, that land could go to someone else who wants it more. So she was arrested for alleged murder with very little evidence, and imprisoned. The King actually wrote a letter asking her to be released, because, again, very little evidence, but that letter was ignored.

The first documented claims of the bloodbaths are from about a generation after her death. From what documents we have from her lifetime, she seemed to have been a perfectly nice noblewoman, only politically inconvenient.

Add to this: This story sounds EXACTLY like something that people in the Middle Ages would tell about someone they wanted discredited. See the blood libel accusations directed against the jewish community. If I wanted to smear the good name of a woman at that time, then "she KILLS beautiful, young girls and BATHES in their blood, because she is OLD AND UGLY and cannot accept that. Also she's GAY" would be a very good way of doing that.

And in perfect unison my sister and I yelled “DAD NO!” So vehemently he stopped in his tracks.

Then a look of dawning comprehension on his face.

“Oh, this is like Kirk and Spock, isn’t it”

niche partioning is a concept from ecology wherein groups within a species expand into different ecological niches so they're not competing with one another, right? so for example, sexual niche partitioning happens when sexual dimorphism means that one sex eats different things / occupies different spaces / etc. as another within the same species. you have one species that occupies multiple niches within the ecosystem.

ontogenetic niche partitioning is when this happens as a result of developmental changes. paternal care tends to obliterate this partitioning--hard to have your juveniles eating something different from your adults if the adults are feeding them!--so we just don't see it very often in mammals or birds, but it's quite common in other species, especially invertebrates. for example, a caterpillar and a butterfly are examples of classic niche partitioning, even though every butterfly will occupy both niches over the course of its life. you don't have to have a big fancy chrysalis transformation to engage in ontogenetic niche partitioning, but those transformations are a pretty big sign that it's happening in a given species.

anyway, it's most common in vertebrates among fish, lizards and snakes these days, especially monitor lizards, where juveniles will occupy a different (often arboreal or otherwise sheltered) niche from adults and hunt different prey until they get big enough that the juvenile niche. there are some good reasons to think that some dinosaurs might have engaged in ontogenetic niche partitioning, especially the bigger species, too. we think sea turtles might do it, although that's hard to say because we don't know very much about sea turtle development once the hatchlings go back to the sea.

the neat thing about ontogenetic niche partitioning is that it allows a given ecology to host a much larger population size for a given species than would otherwise be the case, because the total space occupied by that species is spread across a lot wider niche space. this is especially relevant for, say, a large carnivore that eats livestock.

basically, what if dragons are just the very oldest, reproductively mature members of their species, and the common wall lizard or whatever is just a juvenile that might or might not survive long enough to reproduce? imagine if dragon eggs are very small with big clutches of little insectivorous hatchlings that are eaten by anything that comes by, any of which might have the potential to become a great fire-breathing monster if it lives long enough.

imagine that dragon society. do people know that the hatchlings and the dragons are the same species? (they might not: there are real examples of people mistaking ontogenetically niche separated groups for independent species in their own right.) if dragons are sapient but the sapience takes time to develop, what does that say about the nature of sapience itself? how does a society work and transfer wealth if you remove parental care?