What do the yeerks of this blog think about humor? Is humor common among yeerks?
There are a lot of yeerks out there who THINK they're funny.
-- Edrin 986
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@selfdeterminedsymbionts
What do the yeerks of this blog think about humor? Is humor common among yeerks?
There are a lot of yeerks out there who THINK they're funny.
-- Edrin 986

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hey folks! just a cool tip - I/host have had a marimo ball for a while and we've found that it's also a comfy spot for when I/symbiote feel like a bit of sunshine. we don't think they'd work in a traditional pool (since it prefers clear water) but it seems to do fine next to a kandrona generator for short periods at a time. anyway, we do recommend as an addition to a symbiote's 'room'!
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Remember to change the water in your Yeerk Pool every so often so that your little buddies always have clean, fresh water to swim in. Be sure to monitor the pH too so they don’t get chemical burns.
Contrary to common thought, a yeerk cannot survive indefinitely in a fishbowl or any other small containor. While clean tap water will do in a short term emergency, their permanent setup needs a proper size tank with filters, oxygenation, temperature control, and adequate Kandrona ray permation. The liquid needs to be maintained with the proper additives and consistency for ease of movement and communication. Yes, communication! Yeerks are colony dwellers and prefer to have lots of companionship in their pools! A “colony” is loosely defined as three or more individuals, with some wild colonies numbering in the hundreds or thousands, but on average a household colony is between ten and fifty yeerks depending on enclosure capacity.
The best setup for your yeerk colony is similar to that of an aquatic turtle*, with a full bio-filtration system tweaked to compensate for the preferred sludgy nature of the liquid, a water oxygenator, a Kandrona/heat lamp combo, and a number of interesting decor objects for exploration via sonar for enrichment and play. Your population should never increase beyond one yeerk per gallon to prevent over-crowding. When upgrading your tank size, be wary of introducing new yeerks to your colony, as extra space in a healthy environment can trigger spawning among colony mates.
If you notice some of your yeerks have spawned, remove as many of the grubs as you can find with a fine net and place them in an incubation setup. This is actually easier than it seems since grubs have slightly different nutrient and temperature needs compared to adults, and in an artificial set up, they tend to stay at the surface of the water, closer to the heat and light. There can be as many as 800 grubs in an average batch! The highest count recorded was 947, with one instance of twinning (two yeerks forming from a single grub). Grubs are tiny don’t need as much space as adults (about 100 grubs per gallon is ideal), but they will grow quickly and will need a permanent setup in as little as two months.
Yeerks enjoy staying with their spawn-mates long term, as they would in their natural habitat, and a single batch of grubs is actually a very stable colony! But we understand not everyone can keep several hundred yeerks together in adulthood and the batch will need to be split up for rehoming. This is best done while still in grub stage, as their senses are much more limited, and bonding between batchmates only begins upon entering the second stage of maturity. It’s not recommended to separate colony members past this stage.
With proper care, you can maintain a happy healthy colony of these fun little guys indefinitely! They are excellent friends and companions!
* Do NOT, under any circumstances, house aquatic turtles with your yeerk colony!
This is the most definitive guide for taking care of your little Yeerk friends that I have ever seen.
This is horrifying.
Yeerks are not cute little pets you keep in an aquarium. Yeerks are people. Pools are not adequate long-term habitats for them, they are spawning and feeding grounds; a Yeerk’s long-term habitat is inside a brain. Keeping Yeerks without access to body they can move in and use a full sensory suite with is equivalent to keeping humans in solitary confinement, i.e. torture; if you’re managing a Yeerk pool with a permanent unhosted Yeerk population you are a prison warden. They are not your “friends” or “companions”, they are your victims, and if you spent even a second hearing what they have to say you’d know this.
Do not, under any circumstances, keep a Yeerk pool unless you are a Yeerk yourself, or you are helping out in a Yeerk-managed project. If you don’t believe me, stick your head in there and listen.
#i will not answer any questions regarding my species or yeerk-infested status
I never suggested keeping Yeerks away from willing, well-vetted hosts who won’t hurt them. However, Yeerks are primarily an aquatic species and must return to a Yeerk Pool every so often, and it is important that the pool be well cared for. Any host who cannot or will not provide an adequate pool for their symbiote should not have a symbiote, period.
Remember: Everybody needs their alone time and everybody needs a safe, welcoming space to retreat to. This is also true for Yeerks, since they are a gregarious social species who have their own social structure independent of their hosts. A Yeerk Pool should be a communal affair, and letting your Yeerk swim alone would be cruel.
If you have more Yeerks than you have hosts for them, talk to your friends. See if you can recruit them to help care for your Yeerks.
Look, there’s been a great deal of propaganda regarding yeerks in the past few decades, especially in the earliest heyday of enthusiasm for them during the late 90s-early 00s. But there has also been a lot of more recent research that has gone largely ignored in favour of this older and frankly harmful rhetoric . So let’s clear some stuff up:
1) The idea that yeerks find a properly maintained pool to be “torture” or “a prison” has been contradicted by literally thousands of first-hand testimony from yeerks themselves. These accounts describe the pool immersion to be comfortable, safe, surrounded by familiar colonymates, and energizing from constant absorbtion of necessary nutrients. In fact, most of the “prison” narratives in earlier care guides were artificially pushed by the very propaganda mentioned above, and has been largely debunked now that many of the authorities that pushed it are no longer in positions of power and influence in the sphere of yeerk enthusiasts.
2) The idea that a host brain is the “natural” habitat of a yeerk is demonstrably false. A yeerk will literally die in a host brain if they don’t return to a pool within 72 hours. It is a temporary experience at best. And while many yeerks enjoy it and choose to maintain an ongoing symbiotic host relationship, it can be an extremely stressful and negative experience for others. Many pool-raised yeerks will try a host out of curiosity, but elect to remain in the pool nonetheless. Yeerks should not be forced to take a host if they don’t want one! It’s not necessary for a satisfactory life and can be debilitating for both yeerk and host if forced. Not to mention that a lot of involuntary hosting was also forced during the time stated above as a result of said propaganda, and I don’t have to get into how absolutely unethical that was as well.
3) This notion pushing that unhosted yeerks are inferior or incomplete is once more pure, obvious propaganda. These are capable sentient beings who lead full lives in their pools, complete with complex social interaction and interpersonal relationships. Purporting that the way they naturally interact is insufficient compared to ours is extremely speciesist and denotes a lack of understanding of the relevant xenobiological research.
4) Just because the pool caretaker may not be able to communicate directly with their yeerks does not mean they are a “prison warden”. Yeerks in a properly maintained colony meet all their social needs with theur colonymates. Again, assuming they need human companionship implies that their own species is somehow inadequate for them. You can see how deeply harmful and isolating that kind thinking is if pushed on them, especially for those who find the host experience unsatisfying. They end up thinking something is wrong with them, when in fact they are completely normal! As long as they are well cared for, many yeerks are content being unaware of their caretaker entirely. Some may curiously interact with you, but don’t be alarmed if most ignore you completely. As I said, they have full and enriching lives already. If your colony is happy, healthy, and stable*, than you’ve done everything you need to for them.
* In the case of yeerks, “stable” refers to a colony that does not increase or decrease in population during the majority of the yeerks’ lifespans, while still having all their space, nutritional, and social needs met. These are also referred to as “full pools”, since in their natural habitat no spawning occurs in a full pool until there is sufficient space (ie when enough of the inhabitants reach the end of their natural lifespans). Conservation efforts rely on maintaining stable colonies, rather than exponentially increasing overall population indefinitely, as research has shown stable colonies to be where yeerks are happiest for the majority of their lifespans. See the cited paper for the relevant research conducted by Dakor-288 and Johanna Brun for more details (Dakor-288/Brun et al. 2018).
And 5), there are established means of communication between caretaker and colony if needed! I can only assume anyone commenting to the contrary has never kept a colony as they seem to unaware of this, but since these are sentient beings who, as of now, are unable to thrive in their actual natural habitat of their home planet, they are heavily protected and you need to be licensed to maintain one. This comes not only with mandated inspections, but also access to resources like symbiotically hosted yeerks who can communicate with your colony on your behalf, and technological developments to allow yeerk sonar pulses to be heard and translated by their caretakers. There are also numerous programs to take in unexpected grub colonies from people who can’t maintain them.
We may use a lot of the same terms, equipment, and language for them as we do for pets because of how similar the act of caring for a colony is, but they are indeed a sentient species undergoing heavy conservation efforts. No one who legally keeps a colony is unaware of this. And while regulation can definitely be improved in terms of quality and accessibility, household colonies have been shown to have an overwhelmingly positive impact on conservation efforts. Please don’t conflate responsible keepers with illegal breeders! And always get your yeerks from a licensed provider!
Citations mentioned:
2018
Dakor-288/Brun, Johanna L., Emilio Veres, and Issun-433/Penelope Carlysle
“Yeerk Colonies Reconstructed: Debunking the Myth of Pool Inadequacy in the Natural Lifespan of Yeerks”, Published in The Journal Of Current Xenobiology, vol.24, pp. 157-194.
I’m curious what you mean about host addiction?
so this is one of those cases where I forget that my headcanons are not universal, whoops
I don’t think anything that I’m about to say is noncanonical, but I might not be able to reliably provide sources. what I will do is try to explain what I mean, and hopefully make it make sense? okay.
in #29, Cassie talks about how when she’s a Yeerk, she doesn’t actually feel upset at all at being in the Pool in her natural blind state. She’s happy, and contented, and glad to be with her brothers and sisters. This stands in stark contrast to Aftran’s bitter insistence in #19 that it’s inherently unfair for a Yeerk to be sapient and self-aware while being eyeless and senseless, but I think it’s important because Cassie naturally does have the expectation of sensory input beyond echolocation and some tactile sensation. Her mind expects eyes and smell and hearing, and it’s not getting it, and yet there’s none of the body-horror aspects we see in other books of losing aspects of oneself thanks to a particularly powerful morph or doing something natural for the morph but being terrified anyway (ant, termite, mole, Taxxon). When she takes a host - when any Yeerk takes a host, actually - what happens, then, has to be more complicated than just trying to follow one’s instincts to achieve a naturally desired end. They’re not taking hosts to escape the existential horror of having self-awareness but not being able to do anything with it. There’s something more complicated going on here.
What is it?
Well, I’d argue that they’re junkies. They’re sensation and neurotransmitter junkies the same way the Andalites are taste junkies, but on a much more grand scale. They react to hosts like it’s something they’re entitled to, like it’s ridiculous to expect them to go without this, but by my read it’s not because they feel a relief of having an outlet for urges they otherwise can’t explain, it’s because they like the feeling of having a host. They like the sensory input, they like the brain chemicals. And often, it’s not just enough to experience these things fleetingly, they can’t “drink socially”. It’s all or nothing. Esplin is so obsessed with Andalites that he has to have one, and Edriss LARPs the perfect housewife life more eagerly and happily than her job in the Yeerk military. There’s some commentary, I think, about “getting too close” - what does that mean, for an involuntary host and their Yeerk, but addiction to this existence?
it’s ofc a headcanon but I really think it’s got legs. also please imagine check-in stations at the Yeerk Pool featuring official Sharing-approved “Host Addiction And You” pamphlets. I need that in my life.
Everything about the Yeerk Empire seems to be set up to encourage this for reasons of control. Consider:
- self-hatred and self-disgust of unhosted yeerks seems endemic in yeerk society. They declare themselves the glorious destined masters of the galaxy in one breath and disgusting and helpless when unhosted in another. This duality is explored pretty thoroughly with Aftran, and it seems to be the party line, taught to them from birth. “You are great and powerful with a host, the empire is great and powerful with many hosts. Without them you’re fucking useless.”
- rank is pretty closely married to host access. We see a taxxon controller counsellor and some of the higher ups have what we humans would consider pretty boring or low-status jobs, but on the whole ‘better host = higher rank’ holds pretty firm. Yes, this is what we’d expect in most societies -- power buys privilege, including access to better hosts -- but it’s also a two-way street. It means that having a better host broadcasts to other yeerks that you’re more important. And if you don’t have a host at all? You’re worthless. Nobody important wouldn’t have a host, even though unhosted yeerks can communicate via computers just fine (as seen in The Andalite Chronicles and could still get management and command work done in their natural states).
- host access is artificially restricted via overwork. Yeerks are expected to work literally to the brink of death on every shift, exiting their hosts to feed only when they come close to starvation. Think about that for a second. Yeerks can draw memories from host brains at will and tell their hosts things at any time; there’s no reason for one yeerk to have the same host all the time. A safer method would be to work in teams of 2, taking the host for one day and then having one feeding/rest day. Anything the yeerk needs to know about its partner’s behaviour will be in the memories. It’d mean more trips to the yeerk pool but since there are entrances absolutely everywhere that’s not a problem, and it’d also mean more flexibility in scheduling pool trips -- in an emergency, someone could stretch to 2 or even 3 days.
But yeerks with hosts spend all of their time in a host and the minimum amount of time possible feeding. This is massively unhealthy for every kind of higher animal we know about, including humans, and presumably it is for yeerks, too. But what are they gonna do? Complain? Say they want to spend more time as a gross helpless slug? Sounds like a great way to lose your host to someone more ‘dedicated’.
- the yeerk pool seems to be kept deliberately boring. The natural pools on the homeworld must be bursting with life (natural pools generally are), but every description we see of a pool makes it look boring, uniform, and sterile except for the yeerks. Cassie says that yeerks ‘communicate very little in their natural state’, which can’t possibly be true. If they want to talk, why wouldn’t they talk? Presumably social convention. It’s not done to talk while eating; you eat and you get back to work. Of course yeerks without hosts are going to be bored out of their minds. Of course they’re going to want nothing more than to get a host. Of course they’re going to become addicted to alien sensation, when they don’t get to indulge any of their normal sensations.
All of this teaches a yeerk that the one thing they absolutely need above all else is a host. Without a host they are disgusting and their lives are worthless, boring and shameful. With a host, they get to LIVE. And for hosts, they need slaves! They need to conquer! They need to listen to the Empire, who decides who gets hosts and who doesn’t, and they need to work hard and maybe pull some dirty tricks and always be scrambling for their next promotion to make sure they get to keep their host, or maybe even get a better host! They need to be a blind, obedient army of conquerors. What else could the universe hold for them?
The books should've did so much more with jake being a doctor's child. So many opportunities.
Jake: So, Dad, are there any parasites that can live in a person’s brain?
Steve: Yes! Well, it’s not technically a parasite, but if you go swimming in fresh water in Florida in the summer, you are at risk of getting Naegleria fowleri, which is a brain-eating amoeba. It just goes in there and eats your brain. Most patients die within a week.
Jake: Wow, and it gets in through your ear?
Steve: No, don’t be silly. There’s too much stuff between the ear and the brain.
Steve: It goes in through your nose!
Tom, eavesdropping from the other room: The nose! That makes so much more sense!
That’s what I’ve been saying!
-- AJ

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You're all just a bunch of bleeding-heart host-sympathisers, and if you'll get our whole species killed if your twaddle catches on! Shame on you! SHAME!
Can someone please explain to me why having a host is supposed to be so great? Like, why do most yeerks think it’s so great to not be able to feel our real bodies? To be walking around (not swimming - walking!) in bodies that are completely the wrong shape and which give WAY too much sensory input? I’m only inside my current host because I was ordered to infest them. If I made it to a HYPA pool I don't think I'd ever come out!
I’ve met several yeerks who feel as you do, although many don’t realise it at first. The pro-infestation propoganda is strong, and the Empire doesn’t want to admit that it’s not a universal desire, because their second strongest method of control (after threat of execution) is control over host access.
But we are a species that has always greatly outnumbered our hosts, and there has always (until we started building artificial pools in space) been more work to do inside a pool than outside it. To assume that all of us are naturally equipped for, and desirous of, constant time in other bodies, makes no sense.
-- Edrin 986
Well the Empire pretty clearly screwed up with the Hork-Bajir. Obviously if we were to take over, we'd do it different and not enslave anyone and only take willing hosts. Our tech can compensate for the rest. Surely the humans would quickly realize that we were the best possible outcome for their species and planet.
Name ONE good management decision your species has made since leaving the homeworld.
-- Cassidy
I’ve been thinking and I’ve reached the conclusion that the Council of Thirteen and their vissers have damaged, possibly irreparably, the future of the Empire. Even those Yeerks reading this who are still loyalists will have to agree after considering my points.
Think about it. The policy of the Council has resulted in the Empire losing or driving away just about every potential ally we could have had.
Shortly after escaping the homeworld, the Empire attacks the Hawjabrans. We can’t infest them, so we leave them all to die. Why? It’s a PR disaster for us. We’re telling the galaxy that if you aren’t useful as hosts, we’ll kill you. Did we try to ally with the Hawjabrans? No, of course not. Did we ask them if they hated the Andalites too? Nope.
We find a race of the best biotechnologists in this arm of the galaxy right on the Hork-Bajir homeworld. What do we do? Form an alliance with them to design a Class-Five host? Nope, we enslave and kill them all. Why? I have never heard a good answer from a loyalist.
We find the Leerans, who already share thoughts. How many of them wouldn’t mind another person in their heads? We never know, because we invade them too.
And you have already skillfully documented the disaster that is the invasion of Earth.
We could have started a Free Systems Coalition of Yeerks, Arn, Leerans, humans, Taxxons, and others, all united and opposing Andalite imperialism, but instead we drive away all potential allies and play right into Andalite propaganda about our species as a ravenous horde, committing atrocities and plaguing the galaxy.
Under their own laws, the entire Council should all be sentenced to death by Dracon beam for treason by incompetence, or quite possibly death by Kandrona starvation for treason by antipathy towards a subject species. Even the most fanatical Empire shills have literally no answer to these points. That’s probably why they execute anyone making them.
--------------------------
Have to agree with you there. At this point, revolution is a matter of species survival.
-- Kalem 442
when it comes to inhabiting a physical form my rule is possession is 9/10ths of the law
This is a poor framework.
-- Edrin 986

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the empire needs you! to seduce visser dwei
I regret encouraging this.
-- Cassidy
But seriously, what's so wrong with taking over But seriously, what's wrong with ruling earth as benevolent overlords? We help out the humans and we help out ourselves. Or do you really think the humans will welcome us with open arms when they realize we're here? They haven't exactly been the most accepting of new peoples in the past.
Prove you can be ‘benevolent overlords’ to the hork-bajir and get back to me.
-- Cassidy
I have a feeling that plan might not work. Esplin 9466 seems to be a little bit TOO into andalites if you know what I mean. I wouldnt be surprised if he wants to dance with one too.
This plan is going to take a lot of cosmetics then.
-- Cassidy
I can't believe we're seriously suggesting mating with Esplin 9466 as a way to get rid of him. I REALLY can't believe it makes more sense than half the proposals I've seen to kill him.
Ultimate honeypot.
-- Cassidy
lets be real here though: v3 is somehow still around. at this point im starting to suspect the only way we'll get rid of him is when he finally fusions
That’s a good point, actually.
-- Kalem 442

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Rebel scum!
ngl esplin 9466 lookin kinda cute tho. i'd dance with him tbh
And propogate his madness further?
-- Kalem 442