#ypm

“No Bernard, it’s just your boss”

Is still probably one of my favourite lines tbh

Power and Glory | Yes (Prime) Minister | Jim Hacker/Humphrey Appleby | canon & post-canon | implied character death | [listen]

Tracklist

I like the idea of Cassie doing diplomacy this way. She'll just have to learn a few alien languages. Or get a translation chip.

Yes!  I am also infinitely bummed that that plot thread remains so underdeveloped.  I guess I don’t find the chee as interesting — my own preference would be for the YPM to replace the chee in the final battle — but I agree that it’s frustrating we don’t hear more from them.

Honestly, a lot of the plots of the books #39 - #44 where the series kind of slows in the late middle could benefit from the addition of the YPM.  If Jake’s going to be in the future for the entirety of #41, make it real time travel and not a dream, and then have the second half of the book be about him using intel he acquired in the future to inform the YPM’s strategies.  If everyone’s playing hot-potato with the morphing cube in #39, how about having some morph-controllers who create a spark among the yeerks that the YPM later flames?

If Marco and Ax need to live through an After-School Special to learn that Prejudice Is Bad in #40, then it could be so much more fascinating to have them learn about the life history of a yeerk and befriend a yeerk.  Actually, I really like this idea now that I’m saying it.  It would be fascinating to see Ax especially go all the way from his attitude at the start of the series to becoming a willing ally to a yeerk.  Sort of like what makes Gimli and Legolas’s arc in Lord of the Rings so popular with fans.  It could show us how prejudice breaks down on an individual level, it could force Marco to question his own ruthlessness, and it could really add to the story of Ax struggling to figure out his own worldviews instead of begging authority figures to make those decisions for him.

Plus, if it’s Peace Movement yeerks that the Animorphs end up helping in this book, then that avoids the continuity-breaking mess of convoluted logic that was necessary to explain the presence of extra andalites on Earth that no one noticed in #40.  YPM characters could be more overtly, more directly disabled without the necessity of hiding under terms like “vecol,” and more directly queer without hiding under the previously-platonic classifier of “shorm.”  While a children’s book from 1999 still wouldn’t have been able to put in a real discussion of a queer relationship, having two yeerks who use male pronouns talk about having a deep love for each other would at least be more direct.  The issue of ableism could also be talked about less in the context of “all prejudice will be solved if individuals just learn to love each other” and more in the context of “prejudice cannot be solved if we don’t change systemic problems with access.”

The Yeerk Peace Movement!

I’m probably saying that at least partially because #29 is my favorite Animorphs book of all time (closely tied with #26, #38, #51, and #54, all of which are also my favorite Animorphs book of all time, and I never said I was a rational person, just that I really like Animorphs).  But I also think that Applegate is doing something really important, and really cool, by having the enemy forces have a resistance force within their ranks.  So much of Animorphs is about breaking the black-and-white thinking that other conflicts (and, frankly, other children’s SF) so easily fall into, and the YPM is a huge part of that motif.

Not only that, but the plot potential around the YPM is nearly infinite.  I speculated here about how the YPM could end up being the dominant force for the entire Yeerk Empire, and here about its potential for infiltration and sabotage.  The YPM could help the Animorphs negotiate a better treaty with the andalites.  The YPM could pass information to the resistance, but also build out the resistance within the Empire itself.  The tiny handful of appearances they get in the later books — staging a protest in #43, saving Jake’s life in #50 — don’t showcase their sheer coolness potential.

When speculating about Animorphs movies, I think I talked myself into my favorite idea for the YPM: that they could simply replace the chee in the final battle.  Instead of the whole hologram-thing, the Animorphs could have a yeerk ally ride inside Cassie (with her consent, of course) in order to fool the Gleet Biofilters.  If they set up a bunch of YPM-yeerks among Visser Three’s retinue, they could take the Pool ship as bloodlessly as possible.  It could work, and it could reinforce the series’ motif of there being no good or bad peoples, only good or bad actions on the part of individuals.