#ketrans

《 The only alien race in Animorphs I like as much as Andalites is KETRANS!

The Ellimist Chronicles is my favorite in the series. I found the peeks into Ketran culture so fascinating, and the scene where Toomin watches the entirety of his home crystal become covered in the blood of his friends and family as they were shredded by fletchets.... clearly still haunts me

I think there’s something really interesting in the idea of gaming as being a place where the absolute no-consequences worst of humanity comes out, and of games (when stripped of context) as being completely horrifying comments on the way that humans behave when nothing matters.  Like, I know Michael Crichton was the most cynical cynic ever to cynicize, but Westworld does a really great job of grappling with the multi-faceted question of what it means about you as a person if you spend all day committing heinous crimes for fun, and maybe more importantly what it can do to you as a person if that’s your only source of fun.  The main point of the show definitely isn’t about condemning gaming as a whole; it’s about condemning gaming to excess, and about the illusion of control created by games that are really just about tilting a ball around a labyrinth on a macro scale.

Anyway, I’ve speculated before that “God is a gamer” is kind of supposed to be a major theme of the series, and that there’s a deliberate fuck-you to the “war = chess” view built into that theme.  Like, K.A. Applegate is all about showing how there’s something despicable and dehumanizing in trying to reduce war to a game or trying to make a game of war.  So I think that’s a lot of the commentary in the capasins — that if Toomin et al were really performing those in-game actions on real species, that’d be unconscionable.  Maybe even so much so as to justify their immediate execution.  Obviously that’s not what the ketrans are doing, and it’s a horrible misunderstanding... BUT that is what the Ellimist and Crayak are doing to humanity and yeerks and all in canon.

I redesigned the Ketrans. I don't think I ever posted my old one, but I'm happy with how much I've improved.

So for 24hr Comic Day this year...instead of a 24-page comic, I made a 40-page zine/sketch collection. U___U This idea, the Animorphs alien collection, is something I've been wanting to do for a while, so I'm glad I finally got around to it.

Preorders for the printed book are HERE.

5.25" x 8.25", 40 pages, BW interior, color covers. Includes 18 alien species: Andalites, Arn, Garatron, Gedds, Graffen's Children, Helmacrons, Hork-Bajir, Howlers, Iskoorts, Ketrans, Leerans, Mercora, Pemalites, Skrit Na, Taxxons, Vanarx, Venber, and Yeerks -- basically all the named sentient species with enough description for me to work with. (The non-sentient exception is the Vanarx, which I thought was just too relevant to leave behind?)

40 pages is a bit hefty for a copybon zine, so I'm getting it nicely printed instead. I was gonna have it perfect bound, but that doubles the price of the book, so saddle-stitched it remains! I'm pretty excited about it though~. 8)

A PDF download is available HERE.