Call me Sol. I write Animorphs AUs, Animorphs meta, Animorphs fan fiction, and anything else I can think of to write about Animorphs. Also, I really like Animorphs.
I have no idea how to write this one without losing the fundamental nature of yeerks while also getting around the fact of them, y'know, enslaving people. Anyone else out there with more inspiration than me?
#kaa does such a good job of showing that they are SO harmful that almost any action is justifiable-ish in the course of stopping them
I feel like it could work if you made the relationship between Yeerks and their hosts more like the relationship between Eddie Brock and Venom. If it were a mutual, symbiotic relationship where they share a body with a consenting host and provide some kind of benefit like enhanced reflexes or faster memory recall/brain processing power while still allowing their hosts to have autonomy instead of completely taking them over, I could see it.
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Am i correct in thinking that the animorphs book club is your first time reading through the series in order? If so, how are you finding the experience?
Huh, good question. I think there are a lot of Animorphs books that are stronger than I remember — #22 is a big one — because I knew they were important developments for the series as a whole, but I hadn't necessarily realized just how well-written they are. Like, #21 is kinda eh, but all its flaws are forgiven in my mind given that it's setup for how good #22 is.
There are other books that are definitely weaker than I remember. Like, I'm glad I'm not the only one who found the very end of #23 kinda weird as a kid, and more than anything on rereading I want more of the hork-bajir plot, less of the Aria one. But #23 is also important for the series as a whole, and I think I'd kind of overlooked its flaws because of that.
I think I'm also noticing the kids' growing commitment to the war, and how that tends to speed up the first halves of the books because as you go there are fewer and fewer descriptions of homework and zany ecoterrorism. On the one hand that can be nice, since #6 and #9 especially have some pacing issues that mean the meat of the story gets squashed near the end. On the other, I hate to lose the Batman Cold Opens where we get to see the characters midway through various questionable morph-related pastimes, as well as the other glimpses of their everyday lives. In general, the series slims down as it goes (I believe #1 is the single longest main series book) and it's a bummer that we get fewer glimpses of the Anifamilies in the process.
I just reread book one because I realized I haven’t actually done that in years. What do you make of the woman they managed to rescue from the yeerk pool? She rode out on Cassie’s back (there were two, but one was hit by a fireball). But she kinda just vanishes after they say they rescued her. I guess it makes sense that she didn’t become a character, there’s no place for her in the narrative and there’s nothing the Animorphs can really do to help her, nor her them.
I still think about her though. Do you think she got away? Would she just have been reinfested? I wonder if that moment of freedom would spark hope for her that one day it will be permanent, or crush it further because in the end she was just taken again. I wonder if she knew the girl who rode behind her.
Yeah! I like the headcanon that she's the old lady Rachel bumps into in MM1 while lost in the woods. We don't know a ton about that lady's history, other than that she's a former controller who kind of ended up on the fringes of society because no one believes her about having been controlled (and because she seems like she's maybe got some psychosis and hoarding going on).
There's nothing in Animorphs canon specifically confirming or denying it. But we also know from #8 and #13 that escaped yeerk hosts are super rare, so I feel like there are decent odds it's the same person.
I have no idea how to write this one without losing the fundamental nature of yeerks while also getting around the fact of them, y'know, enslaving people. Anyone else out there with more inspiration than me?
(ok this ended up LONG, throwing a cut in here goodness- )
Maybe the yeerks could be the "good guys" if they themselves were slaves, forced to control other species as an easily managed workforce for another empire, when all they wanted was to return home and live in their symbiotic gedd hosts.
(....not done the series yet so idk all the details of what's up with the gedds, but for the sake of this lets say its legitimately symbiotic and fine)
Perhaps the au's evil andelites are a conqueror race - making first contact with the yeerks they saw their potential as a tool for espionage and control. They enslaved them easily due to their dependence on kandrona sources, and have been using them as a means to infiltrate other planets and take control of their populations and slave workforces.
The yeerks could HATE hate having to live in unwilling hosts - being enslaved themselves and forced to do that to another being or face kandrona starvation. Their motivation could be kind of like the few yeerk rebels in canon, but the whole species could share that sentiment and be fighting against their andelite opressors instead of against the yeerk empire's government.
The rebellion goal is to get resources to build, control and defend their own kandrona sources, to remove their people's dependence on the andelites and be able to choose their own (willing/non-sapient) hosts and re-claim their homeworld.
For a potential plot ..... maybe the few remaining organized rebels on earth have, after years of work, managed to construct an untraceable self-sustaining mini kandrona - barely enough to sustain a handful of yeerks, but it's something. But, they are found out. Their leader is forced to flee with the kandrona source, and a few young free yeerks that had been helping with the rebellion. The andelites and controllers are hot on his tail, and if he is killed then the kandrona source will be destroyed and his friends will be left helpless without hosts. The rebellion will take years to regain their lost progress, and by then the andelites will have control of earth.
Desperate, the rebel stumbles upon a group of kids in a construction site. His young yeerk friends need hosts to continue the fight - its the only hope for the rebellion and the only hope for humanity. He knows it, and his human host knows it too. He tries to explain as best he can what he's asking of them, and with partial information and the threat closing in, the human kids say yes.... And so, five kids become hosts to five young yeerks, keepers of the only free kandrona source, and must work together to save both their species from a future of andelite tyranny.
Then..... ok, then this got me then thinking how Ax and morphing abilities might fit into this, cause they need to have morphing abilities or 1) they can't fight, and 2) its way less cool.
(This part I start to diverge from the canon mechanics of stuff for the sake of the au but I think its worth it.)
First thing: Ax. He'd still be an andelite I think, and I think it could be interesting if he was originally taken as an unwilling controller by the team and was thej held as a prisoner, until he eventually came to see their side and joined the team for real - kind of building on the idea of his "realizing andelites aren't so perfect" arc from canon. (Whether he ended up ever working with a yeerk or remained independent on his own... unsure! Interesting possibilities either way!)
Then: Morphing. Getting the power at the same time they take ax prisoner might make sense, no idea how the timeline would work (whether they spend a few books without morphing, or meeting ax is shoved in with book-one origin events somehow). Or maybe it was stolen by the yeerk rebel who brought the kandrona source to the kids.
But, regardless - (and this is the point this diverges from canon mechanics) I think it would be really interesting if the *yeerks* got the morphing ability, but can only use it through a host body. Mechanically for dna stuff this makes no sense, but it would tie the "thing" of the series to the "thing" of this au AND give a better reason for the humans and yeerks to work together. The yeerks need the humans for obvious reasons, but t humans would need to keep hosting the yeerks if they want to have any powers to fight with.
Maybe the team or the yeerk rebel leader had the yeerk kids take the power hoping it would let them morph out of their own yeerk bodies to free themselves, but they got this instead. Compared to letting the morphing mechanic work normally for yeerks, this would keep the interesting moral mess that is the yeerks having no viable end-game other than finding infesting *some* host species, and would lock in that the yeerk kids and human kids have no choice but to stick together to fight.
(I think the messed up dynamics between the yeerk and human kids would be would be a one of the most important things about this au. And - Up to this point, the human kids have been relying on the yeerks for their knowledge and experience operating a rebellion. But as the humans become more experienced, they'll have less and less tactical reason to keep housing the yeerks..... but, tying up their superpowers with their relationship as host and controller would force that to be The Thing of the story. Cause it would be so messed up. And it would only get weirder as they bonded having the same traumas and being forced into the same roles of their group dynamic. Oh man.)
Some other points to play with...
- People who are notable human controllers in canon could have been replaced by andelites living in morph. Maybe the original people are dead (Chapman?) or alive somewhere as yeerk hosts offworld (Tom? Marco's mom?), or maybe the original person never lived that life at all and the person they knew was an andelite the whole time (marco's mom?? That would change that plot a LOT though, not sure how you'd spin that to work for marco's character ..... but could be interesting to play with flipping the alien parentages between marco and tobias and trying to make it still work story-wise)
- ^ building off this.. there may be potential for visser 3 to still somehow be an andelite controller?? To mirror how having an andelite captured is such a shame upon the andelites, having one of their own working with their oppressors would be a different kind of shame upon the yeerks. Maybe he somehow works with his andelite host as a show of good faith, or maybe he was allowed to infest some andelite criminal as punishment for that andelite's crimes, or given the body of some andelite who was injured or mentally handicapped and deemed useless... various ways it could happen, bonus points if its a wildly messed up situation on both sides of the arrangement.
- I'd imagine the kids only host their yeerks part-time, at least at the start, and that while hosting the yeerks frequently let the humans copilot or take the wheel. I don't remember to what extent yeerks could let their hosts act, but I feel like this au would need the human hosts to have some ability to be given agency while hosting - either the yeero taking a back seat, or choosing to seamlessly channel the host intentions to the point the host is basically acting for themselves. Throwing the yeerk-host-morphing thing into this would be interesting as the series went on, since in order to be prepared to fight on short notice they'd need to have their yeerks with them at all times. Also, playing with the yeerk characters similarities and differences from their human counterparts and to what extent they converge as they're forced to play their roles in the fight ... If you played with many of their actions being on copilot, it could be interesting to have moments where the line between their thoughts and wills starts to blur ... "was that violent impulse acted on in the heat of battle from me or from you?" etc etc
- The yeerks would be mixed in as pov characters for the books, possibly sharing books alternating-chapter-style with their humans as the series progressed. Cassie's yeerk is aftran 942, of course.
- The mini candrona is located in cassie's barn.
- ^ I feel like there was something in canon about size limits for hosts that would prevent them from inhabiting small animals BUT if you ignore that the yeerk kids could inhabit some of the animals cassie's parents were healing. It would be neat for the humans to get to interact with their yeerks outside of their heads but only in a limited capacity (petting them as a bunny, for example), playing with the ethics of non-sapient animal hosts. Do the hosts seem distressed? If yes, is that distress worth saving the yeerks the distress of being senseless in the mini pool? Or, maybe the yeerks are able to help the critters cope with the distress and pain of their veterinary treatments....
- At some point we'd need to get a "human-and-yeerk morph a yeerk together" plotline just for the sheer mess that would be.
- on that note: the mess of trying to navigate animal morph instincts while also trying to work together as yeerk and host
- the colony of free hork-bajir is also a colony of freed yeerks, working off a secondary kandrona - the hork bajir sympathize with the yeerks as a race, and agreed to help them in exchange for the yeerks helping fight to free their homeworld some time down the line.
- Tobias ends up trapped in morph, AND this somehow makes him trapped with his yeerk. Something something both the original bodies are in zero-space so the yeerk doesn't need candrona, something something. They're togethet full time. He gets to speed run the loss-of-original-human-identity-to-the-war arc in canon? He and his yeerk get to speed run the "weird messy blurring bond of living inseparably" arc in this au!! And they STILL have to deal with being a bird 😫
I have no idea how to write this one without losing the fundamental nature of yeerks while also getting around the fact of them, y'know, enslaving people. Anyone else out there with more inspiration than me?
Author of the fic here, adding some context. The only way I could think of to make this premise work was by removing the Yeerks' ability to control hosts by force. After their ancestors were mutated by a prion virus, the current generation can only move a body when the host allows them. So hosts are volunteer-only and yeerks are mostly passengers. Maybe that does lose their fundamental nature, but that's AU for you.
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I have no idea how to write this one without losing the fundamental nature of yeerks while also getting around the fact of them, y'know, enslaving people. Anyone else out there with more inspiration than me?
Maybe an AU where the yeerks decide to cooperate with other peoples instead of enslaving them but the Andalite navy still wants them dead, with a similar outcome to the end of your oneshot where Aftran and Tom cooperate.
In an timeline where Seerow's kindness didn't horribly backfire, it'd basically be a no war AU. Or a first contact story where Andalites reconsider their noninterference policies and peacefully interact with humans.
Or an Andalite Chronicles AU in where the Skrit Na decide to transport the time matrix to Kelbrid space, and there's at least one yeerk cohabiting with an Andalite crewmember and/or living in a pool full time (probably doing navigation Star Trek Cetacean Ops style)
I have no idea how to write this one without losing the fundamental nature of yeerks while also getting around the fact of them, y'know, enslaving people. Anyone else out there with more inspiration than me?
I have no idea how to write this one without losing the fundamental nature of yeerks while also getting around the fact of them, y'know, enslaving people. Anyone else out there with more inspiration than me?
Ghost in the Shell was absolutely fantastic. I for one will be eagerly anticipating more barely-coping Berensons in the future.
Barely Coping Berensons sounds like an emo band from the early 2000s. Jake is the lead singer with a gruff smoker’s voice (regardless of whether or not he actually smokes.) Tom is the guitarist who pours his anger into his riffs and the one who tells Jake to take a goddamn break when he decides Jake needs it. Rachel is the drummer who isn’t always good at aligning with the rest of the band but whose solos make the audience scream with excitement. Jordan is the bassist who keeps them on a more-or-less even keel. Sarah is the makeup artist in charge of applying the black liquid eyeliner and making sure Jake’s bangs cover at least half his face.Â
(Also: thank you! I’m glad you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!)Â
#Rachel would go through at least four sets of drumsticks a set because she throws them or breaks them  #Tom is really goddamn tired of dodging flying drumsticks  #Jordan replaced Rachel’s drumsticks with KFC drumsticks  #luckily Jake stopped Rachel from killing Jordan #betatakesthebox
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Do the books ever say how much older Tom is than Jake? Or Rachel than Jordan and Sara? Just curious where you got your canons from for your fics. I always headcanoned Tom being 10 years older because the brother I idolized way back when (he's a piece of shit now but I digress) was 10 years older than me
It's not clear! It's safe to say that Tom is at least 3 years older than Jake. In Megamorphs 4 (set at the same time as #1), Tom's a licensed driver, which puts Tom at 16 or older, and Jake is 13 at the time he becomes an Animorph (#53). So the age gap is at least 3 years.
However, #1 also mentions Tom quitting his high school basketball team, so that puts him at 18-19 at the oldest as of the start of the war. Given there's no mention of Tom being expected to start college or a full-time job at any point in the next 3 years, despite having upper-middle-class parents with college degrees, I tend to believe he's closer to 16 when the war starts and 19 when he dies, vs. 19 when it starts and 22 when he dies.
So: it's never spelled out in canon. But based on context clues, the age gap is ~2.5 years at minimum, ~6 years at most, and probably closer to 3 or 4 years than either extreme.
Was thinking about Tobias being trapped in Morph in the first book again, and how that weirdly bolsters Jake's leadership; the Animorphs have a very early example of how bad things can go when someone Doesn't listen to him. They'd both probably be horrified to think of it that way I assume.
The Invasion is such an excellent one-two-three punch of an opening that I've never seen it topped in series fiction. Animorphs tells you EXACTLY what you're getting into with the first book.
We get about 3 pages of our heroes having wonder and joy at aliens being real before #1 hits us with the graphic onscreen death-by-cannibalism of this kind, caring stranger. And if Jake being chased by 7-foot blade monsters wasn't scary enough, he only escapes because a human bystander dies in his place.
So Jake goes home. To his nuclear suburban family, and his piddly sports problems, and his nice morph-training sequence with his friends. And just kidding there's a yeerk living inside your home already and it knows where you sleep. But that's fine, we'll just tell an adul — oh shit the cops are controllers the reporters are controllers the camp counselors are controllers the vice principal's a controller Elfangor really fucking undersold this problem.
So it's up to them, they guess. And Marco might be scared of dying, and Cassie might be reluctant to fight, but Tobias seems 100% confident they can save the world! So they go. And they don't save Tom, and they get people killed, and they do nothing to hurt Visser Three. And they don't even all make it home at the end of the day. Because it turns out Animorphs is not only a series where supporting characters die; it's a series where the main characters get permanently injured and will never be the same again.
I also don't know if there's a term for the trope, but. Horror pretty much always has a beat where a main character dies or gets permanently harmed really early on, because a) it tells the audience that this is a story where anyone can die, and b) it tells the protagonists they're in a setting where anyone can die.
Like [SPOILERS FOR VARIOUS HORROR MOVIES] Kane in Alien, Johnny in Night of the Living Dead, Dan in Frozen, Jonathan in Dracula, Hutch in The Ritual, Jason in Cloverfield, Mathias in The Ruins, Mary in Sinners, or Frank in 28 Days Later. [END SPOILERS]
Those characters all exist to be not just supporting cast members but people we know, people we like... who then encounter terrible fates that make the stakes of the rest of the story all too real. Each of them gets a moment that shifts the story from being adventurous (Alien, Cloverfield), family-oriented (Sinners, Night of the Living Dead), or "scary but we're handling it" (The Ritual, Dracula) to HOLY HELL WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE at the moment the eldritch forces eat them alive. They make clear this is a space where damage is permanent, where death is real and Captain America's not gonna popping back up 6 issues later good as new, and where anyone can die.
Again, I don't know if there's a term for that trope. But there's clearly a deliberate choice to have Tobias end up permanently, for-real, trapped in another body in the very first book in the series. Because it tells the reader, and more importantly it tells the characters, exactly what's at stake here.
I had to do a little bit of digging around but I think the relevant tropes are: "The Worf Effect" when a strong/known character is defeated to show an enemy's strength, and "Sacrifical Lion", an important character killed to show an enemy's strength or that shot just got Real.
Ahhh thank you! So it seems like Tobias fits the Worf Effect, and Rachel is more the Sacrificial Lion at the end of the series.
This may be me interpreting Worf Effect much more strictly than is necessary, but imo an important part of the Worf Effect is the fact that it comes from serial TV. Worf is a Klingon character from Star Trek: The Next Generation - he's an established Strong Guy on the protagonists' crew. Him getting defeated by a new antagonist is a form of setting the stakes and establishing the level of threat the protagonists are under, but he has also been positioned as this archetypal role in a way that I don't think Tobias fits. The team hasn't really been fully established into their roles by the time that he gets trapped in morph. A more apt example would be Rachel getting beaten in a fight by a given novel's antagonist, because she's been established by the series as the Team Tough. There is a status quo power level that has been disrupted by a new threat, and this is different to me from what's essentially a series-wide standard being set in the first book/episode
Good point. Like, the Ants Are Terrifying thing in #11 would be Worf Effect, because Rachel fearlessly charges off to face down a squadron of hork-bajir-controllers alone, but she's so visibly shaken up by being nearly eaten by ants in the aftermath that Jake wants to cry just from looking at her. Ants can defeat Rachel in ways that taxxons and dinosaurs and hork-bajir and jaguars cannot, therefore ants are the scariest critter the Animorphs encounter.
#i think ‘go for the heart’ works a little better#since the character in question is typically the emotional center of the group#and thus typically ‘the heart’ as in the trope#though admittedly Cassie is more the heart of the Animorphs#we really don’y have too many examples lf the team operating without Cassie come to think of it#when she’s alone we’re normally in her POV#except the taxxon book. they go without her in that one and immediately fall into a trap#Animorphs
You're right that "heart" isn't quite Always Kill James, because while "heart" can mean center, it also implies warmth/caring. It's the motivating character you have to take out, the one who centers and grounds the others on the team. Like, Frozen is about heroic Dan, Dan's bro-ey abrasive friend, and Dan's girlfriend who doesn't even want to be there... so of course it kills Dan first. Cloverfield introduces us to cool-guy Jason, Jason's brother, Jason's friend, Jason's girlfriend, and Jason's hanger-on... and 15 minutes later, it kills Jason. The James is the guy who pushes the friend group forward and pulls them back, who reins in the wilder (Sirius) elements and draws out the quieter (Peter) ones. So the best way to sow chaos and force interesting character reckonings is Always Kill James.
Tobias only really plays that role before being nothlited. In #1, Tobias puts Jake in charge, Tobias talks Cassie and Rachel into joining the war effort, and Tobias gets all the others to try morphing. It's Tobias's idea to try fighting the war themselves instead of telling an adult (like Elfangor suggested), and it's Tobias who walks right up and starts talking to the scary alien while the others are half-planning to run away. But Tobias being trapped in morph knocks him out of that role, and forces a change in motivation for the rest of his team.
After that first book, Always Kill James would instead mean taking out Jake, as the one who gets everyone else organized and helps them through crises. So Jake dying in MM3 is Always Kill James but Tobias "dying" in MM2 isn't, because Tobias isn't the one bringing the team together anymore. I think I'm leaning toward Take Out the Keystone. Or maybe The Center Cannot Hold? Must continue to noodle on this.
Was thinking about Tobias being trapped in Morph in the first book again, and how that weirdly bolsters Jake's leadership; the Animorphs have a very early example of how bad things can go when someone Doesn't listen to him. They'd both probably be horrified to think of it that way I assume.
The Invasion is such an excellent one-two-three punch of an opening that I've never seen it topped in series fiction. Animorphs tells you EXACTLY what you're getting into with the first book.
We get about 3 pages of our heroes having wonder and joy at aliens being real before #1 hits us with the graphic onscreen death-by-cannibalism of this kind, caring stranger. And if Jake being chased by 7-foot blade monsters wasn't scary enough, he only escapes because a human bystander dies in his place.
So Jake goes home. To his nuclear suburban family, and his piddly sports problems, and his nice morph-training sequence with his friends. And just kidding there's a yeerk living inside your home already and it knows where you sleep. But that's fine, we'll just tell an adul — oh shit the cops are controllers the reporters are controllers the camp counselors are controllers the vice principal's a controller Elfangor really fucking undersold this problem.
So it's up to them, they guess. And Marco might be scared of dying, and Cassie might be reluctant to fight, but Tobias seems 100% confident they can save the world! So they go. And they don't save Tom, and they get people killed, and they do nothing to hurt Visser Three. And they don't even all make it home at the end of the day. Because it turns out Animorphs is not only a series where supporting characters die; it's a series where the main characters get permanently injured and will never be the same again.
I also don't know if there's a term for the trope, but. Horror pretty much always has a beat where a main character dies or gets permanently harmed really early on, because a) it tells the audience that this is a story where anyone can die, and b) it tells the protagonists they're in a setting where anyone can die.
Like [SPOILERS FOR VARIOUS HORROR MOVIES] Kane in Alien, Johnny in Night of the Living Dead, Dan in Frozen, Jonathan in Dracula, Hutch in The Ritual, Jason in Cloverfield, Mathias in The Ruins, Mary in Sinners, or Frank in 28 Days Later. [END SPOILERS]
Those characters all exist to be not just supporting cast members but people we know, people we like... who then encounter terrible fates that make the stakes of the rest of the story all too real. Each of them gets a moment that shifts the story from being adventurous (Alien, Cloverfield), family-oriented (Sinners, Night of the Living Dead), or "scary but we're handling it" (The Ritual, Dracula) to HOLY HELL WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE at the moment the eldritch forces eat them alive. They make clear this is a space where damage is permanent, where death is real and Captain America's not gonna popping back up 6 issues later good as new, and where anyone can die.
Again, I don't know if there's a term for that trope. But there's clearly a deliberate choice to have Tobias end up permanently, for-real, trapped in another body in the very first book in the series. Because it tells the reader, and more importantly it tells the characters, exactly what's at stake here.
I had to do a little bit of digging around but I think the relevant tropes are: "The Worf Effect" when a strong/known character is defeated to show an enemy's strength, and "Sacrifical Lion", an important character killed to show an enemy's strength or that shot just got Real.
Ahhh thank you! So it seems like Tobias fits the Worf Effect, and Rachel is more the Sacrificial Lion at the end of the series.
This may be me interpreting Worf Effect much more strictly than is necessary, but imo an important part of the Worf Effect is the fact that it comes from serial TV. Worf is a Klingon character from Star Trek: The Next Generation - he's an established Strong Guy on the protagonists' crew. Him getting defeated by a new antagonist is a form of setting the stakes and establishing the level of threat the protagonists are under, but he has also been positioned as this archetypal role in a way that I don't think Tobias fits. The team hasn't really been fully established into their roles by the time that he gets trapped in morph. A more apt example would be Rachel getting beaten in a fight by a given novel's antagonist, because she's been established by the series as the Team Tough. There is a status quo power level that has been disrupted by a new threat, and this is different to me from what's essentially a series-wide standard being set in the first book/episode
Good point. Like, the Ants Are Terrifying thing in #11 would be Worf Effect, because Rachel fearlessly charges off to face down a squadron of hork-bajir-controllers alone, but she's so visibly shaken up by being nearly eaten by ants in the aftermath that Jake wants to cry just from looking at her. Ants can defeat Rachel in ways that taxxons and dinosaurs and hork-bajir and jaguars cannot, therefore ants are the scariest critter the Animorphs encounter.
This might be my favorite inside cover inset, because it does actually look like a science text illustration and the need to show multiple magnifications at once is hilarious.
I love picturing K.A.A. writing this book with a pocket calculator and a scratch pad on the desk next to her, forced to figure out if you start with a 0.0625-inch human, and then reduce that human by half, and then have that human turn into a proportional humpback whale (how many 4'3" humans in a 45' whale?) and you also have a 0.0625-inch red-tailed hawk who then turns into a proportional human (how many 20-inch birds in a 5'1" human?)... What is the relative size of the human morph to the whale?
Seriously, though, there are so many aspects of the physics of shrinking that this book gets into that I haven't seen in any other kids' book. Sure, there's lots of "small objects looked big" but the stuff about relative speed and strength changing, or how a larger animal would be more delicate but a smaller one would be more subject to physical forces... All of that is pretty technical, but in a really fun plot-driven way.
Ax, bby! Panicking about controllers potentially seeing him turn from an andalite to a human! Only to have Rachel point out that he's literally the only actual andalite on the team and that this will not, in fact, reveal anything about their identities. Poor kid. We've all been there.
On second thought, does the thing with helmacrons killing their own leaders... actually make sense? Because Visser Three says helmacrons are "a fungible species. Kill one and its mind... is absorbed into another. They never die" (p. 150). So like, is there an actual logic to Elect Wise Leader => Kill Her => Receive Her Wisdom => Discuss in Committee What She Would've Done? Okay, I was not expecting that absurdist detail to have that much fridge logic to back it up.
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Your fic Ladybird, Ladybird was one of the saddest stories I've ever read. It is really well-written. Sometimes I hope that this story takes place in the same timeline as the one where Cassie becomes the President of the United States, because that could mean that Jean gets to reunite with Jake again.
I know it's not quite the same, but that's why I wrote Lady Franklin's Lament as a companion piece to Ladybird, Ladybird. I really wanted to show Eva being in almost the same circumstance as Jean, but coping with it far better. Jean wants to assign blame for the loss of her sons — first to Jake and then to herself, and also in a weird way to Tom himself. Eva chooses to live in the world and treat life as a gift, adopting a mentality that shit happens and all you can do is do your best to help others until such time as the shit happens to you.
Part of the difference is religious, Judiasm's "the body is a temple" vs. Catholicism's "the flesh is a weak prison of sin" diverging sharply on what it means to truly lose a son, as in having his body go missing. Part of the difference is the meaning of loss — Eva's grief is "clean" in that people can understand and accommodate what it means to lose a son, whereas Jean's grief is messy and complicated in that no one knows what to say to a woman whose one son killed the other and got hailed as a hero for doing so. Part of the difference is cultural, Eva's forced confrontation with the reality of being torn from her family at an early age vs. Jean's middle-class assumption that if you work hard and eat your vegetables then things will work out for the best.
So like, I know that isn't the clean answer you were hoping for, but to me part of what I wanted to do with those fics was refuse a clean answer. They're meditations on grief, on a loved one ghosting us in this terribly literal way and how we continue calling them for years afterward, always hoping that this time we'll get an answer.
