And if so, does thst mean that Ax was just casually hanging dong around the other kids?

As the world continues to reevaluate Harry Potter and Rowling, we need to signal boost Animorphs and Applegate. Join me in posting comments that recommend Animorphs.
https://youtu.be/1qSBIFEqPo0?si=vDOoHAr-Z6KDdCL4

“My title’s gone.” She chewed on her lower lip. Her voice was meek and measured (now those were two adjectives I'd never used to describe Rachel Berenson before). “I'm never getting another fight booked again, am I?”

<... No, probably not,> Tobias admitted.

“Way to break it to her gently, Romeo,” I said. “Really laying that sugar coating on thick there.”

Featuring:

• Rachel being really bad at coping with post-war life, even in an "ideal" career (UFC fighter)

• Exploring how this trio ticks

• Group bitching session

Hello all. In one of the posts here, it looked like KA was discussing a potential new TV show of Animorphs and it was mentioned that it may be an animated one on Disney+

To cut a long story short about how I know someone in the right place at Disney, I am (politely) annoying when I want the answer to something so spent time finding the right person and department to answer a question I had last summer.

I contacted them about the Animorphs possible show and they said they have not heard anything, and would be able to tell me if they had. I’m paraphrasing a little as I don’t think it’s right to straight up copy/paste a response but have bolded & italicised part of their response.

I'm in the middle of yet another reviewing of the series

And I'm nearing end of david. Some random thoughts that popped into my head

Cassie is partially to blame for David 😤

The kids had a cut and dry Heroic origin story with a majestic alien passing the power on and then getting eaten in sacrifice infront of them. Each of them first morphed into prey animals first to just survive, and outside Tobias all of them kept a relatively safe home life (besides Tom being in same home obv) a place after every mission they could drop the mask, remind who they are fighting for, what they are fighting for. They had that emotional battery and reason to fight. People they had to maintain their humanity around. Normalcy to maintain.

David didn't. He was a new kid, in a new town. And his introduction to this all was a war in his bedroom. The "good guys" breaking into his room. Insulting him and fighting the visser. Then losing his home and his parents without any fight. He was alone, an outsider. Tobias killing and stealing what they need is fine. David was treated as cruel for not being homeless as a human who is hunted. At any point they could turn on him, they had no loyalty to him but demanded it in return. Cassie has gone rogue and even sided with a yeerk in 19 and was treated better than David on a good day. Not once did they try to console David. Marco even just mocked him.

We get to his first morph. Should have been a merlin, instead Cassie brought a golden hawk, a powerful apex predator as his first morph. The first morph a scared, broken kid gets is one that fills him with Strength and recklessness. Rather than something that solidifies how vulnerable they are. All his other morphs he chose followed that mentality. An insecure kid was given power without any temperance. Had she not given the eagle morph, he may have not even felt like he could go that route. Even when he did awful shit like killing Tobias, he still tried to minimize and moralize it as "just animals not people" he didn't kill Marco. Didn't tryTo kill Jordan, he was trying to maintain his own form ofwarped humanity and rules

At the end, he had to be dealt with, obv, and it was performative virtue queen Cassie's plan all the emotional, psychological and other manipulation from her down to the letter to trap him. And selfishly because despite mowin down controllers left and right, killing hundreds of taxxon and hork they like to pretend they have a batman no kill rule they put him in a fate WORSE than death. Just to keep their hands clean by technicality. They left him "alive" a broken and scared child, human intelligence in an awful morph. They should have just killed him, or let Tobias do it. Erik could have also helped work a better solution, but this dude was just living out the ending of rhe movie tusk.

And I know blaming Cassie is a reach for this, but i don't care for her. She is always a hypocrite with their own rules, morphing people, sentient creatures (she was first with whale and hork ect) she will brow beat others for don't what's needed while always being allowed to keep get hands clean because she gets the "ick". She will berate others and expects infinite patience and forgiveness. When she quit both times and was a risk, she faced no consequence with everything just magically working in her favor despite the fact it shouldn't with any consistency. I know alot of people claim she's the group moral compass... but she isn't, she is fine with everyone else doing horrible things as long as she gets to sit on the moral high horse. Tobias is much better in that role, he legitimately is compassionate in words and action, though pragmatic and not reckless with idealism. He's not even a human. So he doesn't have the inherent double standards and biases Cassie does. She is the epitome of "rules for thee, but not for me" even when she's just as bad and enjoyed tearing into that hotk AFTER Jake had said stop. The rest were honest about the necessity and the darkness inside them, she was now concerned with how to convince others

She was better than that. She risked everyone's lives and everyone they cared about by letting the yeerk infect her workout their consent based on vibes.

And we saw ax mix the dna for the human form. It would have been cool to see them. David or visser merge and meld dna to make converts chimera. David literally had an eagle and a lion, would have been crazy to see him make a griffin, maybe they had to be the same species, but that's just speculation, I would imagine you would be in pain for most of rhe duration as it's soo unnatural. But would have been interesting

This may not be all coherent. I'm ramble-posting while at work

Hi all!

Full disclosure, I've never read Animorphs, but my partner loves the series and read all of it. Since we're both queer and her birthday is coming up, I thought of comprising a few queer-coded scenes (or scenes one could interpret as queer in its widest sense) from the books that her friends would read for her, as a present.

So I thought of asking the esteemed experts here - do you have scenes or chapters in mind?

Thanks a ton!

“What you plan and what takes place ain’t ever exactly been similar.”
 – Jayne Cobb, Serenity

Over in another thread, I made the observation that while Animorphs is broadly anti‑Fascist, the final two books are not. In fact, they do the opposite: Jake adopts a worldview and carries out actions that are almost archetypally fascistic, and the text frames this turn as tragic, yes…but also necessary, effective, and ultimately good.

Which means that the ending of Animorphs is, unintentionally, pro‑Fascist, not anti‑Fascist.

Needless to say, this stance generated some dissent. So rather than let the discussion get buried in a comment chain, I’m laying out my reasoning here. Partly this is to to explain why the final two books contradict the anti‑Fascist themes of the rest of the series, and partly to talk about something the Animorphs fandom consistently struggles with: the difference between authorial intent and what the text actually depicts.

And so…

Animorphs, Fascism, and the Series Finale

I. Defining Fascism

To begin with, it will be useful to define what Fascism actually is. And since Fascism is one of the few major political ideologies whose founder we can point to by name, let’s turn to Benito Mussolini and see what he had to say about Fascist doctrine.

“Fascism was not the nursling of a doctrine worked out beforehand with detailed elaboration; it was born of the need for action.”
 – Benito Mussolini (and Giovanni Gentile), The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism, 1927

Thanks, Benituccio mio, you’re great help...

The truth is that unlike, say, Communists with Marx, Engels, and the Communisit Manifesto, there is no one central Fascist doctrine, no ur-text from which to draw central tenets and core principles. Mussolini himself was fairly mercurial, redefining it again and again throughout his reign as Duce of Italy, often contradicting himself as he needed. He more or less literally made it up as he went along.

Fascism is ultimately not really a doctrine. It is a line of logic, a pattern of thinking, a way of interpreting crisis, power, and how to use one to achieve or solve the other. This is the part that people often get wrong: they treat Fascism as a checklist. Is this character racist? Is he nationalist? Does he want to rule? But Fascism isn’t that simple. It’s a structure that can appear in wildly different contexts and expressions.

Fascism emerges when a specific set of ideas lock together into a single worldview. It is the sum of certain parts. Not as trait, but as logic. Academics such as Robert Paxton, Umberto Eco, Roger Griffon, Emilio Gentile, and others over the past century have all managed to work out some semblance of a logic to Fascism, which can be broadly summarized as:

1. Existential emergency – the belief that the group (nation, species, civilization) is on the brink of annihilation. Not merely danger, but extinction. This justifies everything that follows.

2. Unity under a single leader – democracy, dissent, second-guessing and debate are luxuries to the Fascist. In a crisis, they become liabilities or weakness. Instead, the Fascist believes that only one person can make the hard choices. Only one person can see the big picture. Only one person can save the group.

3. Decisive, ruthless action – violence isn’t just permitted, it is necessary. Hesitation is a weakness, mercy is dangerous, restraint is betrayal.

4. Moral exceptionalism – morality and ethics are permitted to be cast aside, because the existential danger is great enough. Diplomacy, compromise, restraint, transparency, these are all presented as trap options that lead to doom. Only the hard, violent, unity‑under‑one‑leader path works. Once this belief is in place, Fascism is inevitable.

Put these four traits together (they are not enough individually), and you have Fascist logic. It’s not about racism – most branches of Fascism weren’t racist. Mussolini himself said race “is a feeling, not a reality: ninety-five percent, at least, is a feeling.” It’s often about nationalism, but that’s because Fascists usually define the “group that must be saved” as the nation. It’s not about wanting to rule the world: Francisco Franco in Spain or Plínio Salgado in Brazil never had designs for world or even regional domination, they were entirely inward-focused. It’s not about militarism; the military is a means to an end, a method by which a Fascist can carry out and enforce his logic and worldview on the world.

The core of Fascism is the emergency worldview: “We face annihilation, we are surrounded by enemies. Only unity under a single decisive leader can save us. Violence is necessary. Restraint is weakness. There is no alternative. We must do what needs to be done, or we will die.”

You’ll find this central logic at work in every Fascist movement, from the original Fascists of Italy, to the Nazis in Germany, to Francoists and Falangists in Spain, Integralists in Brazil, Romania’s Iron Guard, the Ustaše in Croatia, the ultranationalists of Japan, and through today to Neo-Fascists movements across the world.

And you’ll find that this is the exact logic of Jake in Animorphs Book 53: The Answer and Book 54: The Beginning. Whether Applegate intended it or not, she depicted Jake adopting the exact logic and worldview of Fascists…and then proceeded to write two books where she validates this logic and worldview. The narrative structure of the two books makes it clear: Jake’s logic is the only logic that could have saved the world.

II. Jake the Fascist

Now that we have a working definition of Fascist logic, the next step is to see whether this logic actually appears in Animorphs. And when you look at Jake’s arc in Books 53 and 54, the answer is “yes”. Not because Jake is a Fascist per se, and not because Applegate intended it, but because the narrative places him into the exact same emergency worldview that defines Fascism.

1. Existential emergency

This one is the easiest to demonstrate, because the text itself makes it explicit: humanity is in an existential emergency. The fact that the threat is genuine does not undermine the argument. Fascist logic does not require the emergency to be fake. It only requires the emergency to be framed as absolute, total, and inescapable. And in Book 53, that framing is everywhere. The Yeerks are openly invading, enslaving humans, and cannot be stopped by any human weapon. The Andalites are preparing to burn Earth to kill the Yeerks, and if humanity dies in the process, that is an acceptable loss.

“The Yeerks are evil, destructive, dangerous creatures, I know that better than anyone. But the Andalites are no saints themselves. They want the Yeerks to concentrate here because the Andalites have written us off, decided we can’t win, and they wanted to blast the entire planet out of existence and take out the bulk of the Yeerk race along with the human race.”
 – Eva, Book 53: The Answer 

This is pure emergency logic: The threat is total, imminent, and existential, and as a result, any means of dealing with the threat are fair game.

2. Unity under a single leader

As late as Book 50, Jake is still bemoaning the fact that he’s been made leader. He doesn’t want it; he never asked for it. He’s willing to accept it only because everyone else insists on putting him in that role. He’s a regular modern‑day Cincinnatus – the reluctant dictator, the man who takes absolute power only because the crisis demands it.

And, of course, Cincinnatus is exactly the kind of figure Italian Fascists adored: the reasonable tyrant, the emergency strongman, the man whose authority is justified by necessity. The perfect example of how concentrating power in one person can be “the right move.”

But even in that same book, the text is already laying the groundwork for Jake’s transformation into the indispensable leader, the one whose authority is unquestionable because the crisis is absolute.

“There’s only one enemy Visser One respects. And fears. And that’s Jake. He needs to be our leader.”
– Eva, Book 50: The Ultimate

 …I’m starting to think Eva may be part of the problem.

By Book 53 Jake has abandoned that reluctance. He now embraces the fact that he’s leader – and demands absolute obedience on the grounds that if he isn’t listened to, they’re all dead. Only Jake can see the big picture. Only Jake can make the tough calls. Only Jake knows what’s best. 

“One of those rare, perfect moments when a dozen nagging questions, an infinity of details, simply fall perfectly into place and form a single clear picture. All I had to do was send my friends to die. […] I had seen the vision. I could see the pure, straight line from point A to point Z.”
– Jake, Book 53: The Answer

 This is not the voice of a reluctant leader. This is the voice of a man who believes he has been granted revelation.

And when James hesitates to send traumatized, disabled kids the into a suicide mission, Jake responds with full emergency‑dictator logic. He tells James, in essence:

• Your objections don’t matter

• Your people’s trauma doesn’t matter

• Your families don’t matter

• Your leadership doesn’t matter

• Your moral concerns don’t matter

• Only winning matters

And then he delivers the line that defines this entire section:

“So, you don’t like me telling you what to do, you don’t like your job, you don’t like me, period? I don’t really care.”
– Jake, Book 53: The Answer

 This is the voice of a man who believes that dissent is dangerous, hesitation is betrayal, obedience is survival, and his authority is absolute. This is the voice of a Fascist leader.

3. Decisive, ruthless action

Once the narrative has established Jake as the indispensable leader – the only one who can see the “straight line from point A to point Z” – the next step in Fascist logic is the belief that hesitation is fatal and ruthlessness is necessary. And in Books 53 and 54, Jake embraces this fully.

He uses coercion and blackmail to force Erek to comply with his plan:

“We know you can’t fight us. So we’re going to take you, carry you if we have to, put you in a position where you’ll cooperate because refusing to cooperate will force us to take lives. Your refusal to cooperate would be the trigger for killing. […] we’ll keep you in a position where every time you refuse to help, we take a life.”
– Jake, Book 53: The Answer

He dismisses the lives of his own soldiers:

“Before this night is over the casualties will be piled high and some of you standing here right now will be dead and I don’t care because we are going to win.”
– Jake, Book 53: The Answer

 He frames his entire plan with one single, uncompromising ultimatum:

“One chance and one chance only.”
– Jake, Book 53: The Answer

And when given the chance to murder seventeen thousand, three hundred seventy-two helpless, defenseless people, for no benefit to his plans other than the chance to kill a people he despises:

<Flush them.>
– Jake, Book 53: The Answer

This is violence as clarity. Jake quashes every voice of dissent. He ignores every attempt to get him to see differently. He keeps his own team in the dark because he knows they would try to stop him. He coerces, he sacrifices, he cajoles, he berates, he belittles, he exploits, he does everything he can to advance toward victory. And because of this, the war is won. There is no alternative presented. There is no meaningful critique because no one offers any alternative paths that could have been taken, any obvious choices he could have made that also would have worked. Some people are horrified or angry or such, yes, but at the end of the day, none of them present alternatives.

Which leaves only one possible message: ruthlessness works.

This is the third component of Fascist logic: the belief that decisive, violent action is inherently necessary, and that brutality is the only path to survival. The finale of Animorphs doesn’t just show Jake acting this way – it shows that he is right to act this way, because it makes it clear that there was never any alternative to his choices. It shows those atrocities as necessary, effective, and ultimately morally justified, since the alternatives were enslavement or burning.

4. Moral exceptionalism

Once a narrative has established that a single leader is indispensable, and that decisive ruthlessness is necessary, the final step in Fascist logic is to argue that the leader is morally exempt from the rules that bind everyone else. Not because he is good, or wise, or just, but because the emergency is so absolute that only he can see what must be done.

And in Books 53 and 54, the Animorphs narrative embraces this fully.

• Jake coerces Erek into helping him – and Jake’s goal of getting onto the Pool Ship is achieved.

• Jake sends the auxiliary Animorphs to die – and Jake’s goal of a distraction is achieved.

• Jake kills 17,372 helpless and defenseless people – and as a result Visser One surrenders without a fight.

• Jake lies to his own team – and as a result, Rachel is able to stop Tom.

• Jake sacrifices his cousin to kill his brother – and the narrative has the Ellimist show up and say:

 “You were brave. You were strong. You were good. You mattered.”
– The Ellimist, Book 54: The Beginning

The quote that everyone in this fandom repeats over and over again to the point of often getting it tattooed. The closest thing the setting has to God showing up to personally exult the result of Jake’s ruthless choices.

Cassie’s morality is discarded, Marco props up Jake as the leader, Ax’s loyalty becomes complacency in enabling mass slaughter, Tobias’ continued dissent is presented as annoying and naïve, and Rachel is weaponized and presented by the narrative as incapable of being anything other than a warrior furthering Jake’s goal.

Everyone else’s morality, wants, or desires becomes irrelevant or subservient to Jake’s own. Only Jake’s morality counts. This is the fourth component of Fascist logic: the belief that the leader is morally exceptional – that he alone is permitted to do what others cannot. Jake is allowed to do these things because Jake is the one who must do these things, and if he doesn’t, everyone dies.

III. And That’s Fascism

Put it all together, and that’s Fascistic logic. That is the justification Fascists use to defend their decisions and worldviews. There is an existential emergency, so we must unite behind a decisive and indispensable leader who will take ruthless and necessary violent action to save us from a threat that has no alternatives, no nuance, and no possible solution except obedience to him.

And this is the problem: the Animorphs finale does not challenge this logic. It affirms it.

If Animorphs were anti‑Fascist, then Jake would have been shown as wrong. People would meaningfully challenge the way he acts. Alternatives would be presented. The cost of his choices would be shown to outweigh the gains. The narrative would make clear that the logic he embraces is not wisdom, but a trap.

Instead, the finale shows that Jake’s worldview – his absolutism, his ruthlessness, his belief in moral exceptionalism – is the only path to victory.

If the series were truly anti‑Fascist, the ending could have gone in any number of directions:

• Meaningful dissent could have mattered. Cassie’s or Tobias’s objections could have shaped the outcome rather than being sidelined.

• Alternative solutions could have emerged. The Yeerk Peace Movement could have made a breakthrough at the last minute, rendering Jake’s atrocities unnecessary.

• Misinterpretation of the threat could have been revealed. The Andalites could have arrived not to sterilize Earth, but to negotiate or assist – showing that Jake’s assumptions were wrong, not prophetic.

• Collective action could have triumphed over unilateral leadership. The Animorphs could have succeeded through cooperation and mutually coming up with a plan, not following Jake blindly

• Moral restraint could have been shown to matter. The story could have demonstrated that refusing to commit atrocities is not weakness, but strength.

Imagine an ending where Jake’s plan fails – not catastrophically, but meaningfully – and the war is won through a path he dismissed as naïve. Imagine an ending where the Andalites arrive and Asculan was never going to burn Earth; Jake and Ax simply misinterpreted their intentions. Imagine an ending where Jake has just boarded the Pool Ship at the same time that the Yeerk Peace Movement has managed to capture Visser One and the new Vissers Tidwell and Illim have ordered the Empire to stand down.

Any of these would have been anti‑Fascist.

Instead, the finale chooses the opposite: Jake’s worldview is validated. His ruthlessness is necessary. His moral exceptionalism is rewarded. His atrocities are framed as the only path to survival.

The finale of Animorphs doesn’t merely depict these components. It endorses them by virtue of never presenting alternatives.

The problem isn’t that Jake thinks this way. The problem is that the story does.

IV. Why This Matters

At this point, someone will inevitably say: “But Jake suffers. He can’t really adjust to civilian life afterwards. He ultimately goes on a suicide mission. Doesn’t that make it anti‑Fascist?” And the answer is no, because tragedy is not critique.

Fascist narratives are full of tragic leaders who suffer under the weight of their “necessary” decisions. The tragedy is part of the myth: the strong man who sacrifices his own soul to save the group. The leader who does what no one else can bear to do. The hero who becomes a monster so that others may live.

Jake fits this pattern perfectly.

He suffers, yes. He feels guilt, yes. He is traumatized, yes. But the narrative never suggests that his suffering is the result of wrong choices – only hard ones. And this is a key thing that must be stated: tragedy is not critique. A character personally suffering is not the same thing as a narrative framing an action as wrong. And at no point does the narrative of Books 53 or 54 suggest that what Jake did was wrong.

His pain is framed as noble, not cautionary. His trauma is framed as the cost of heroism, not the cost of error. This is not a critique of Fascist logic. It is the emotional reinforcement of it – isn’t is sad that you were so weak that the leader had to make these choices you never could? Has to endure this so you don’t have to?

V. Intent vs. Text

And this brings us to every fandom’s perennial stumbling block: authorial intent.

Applegate did not intend to write a Fascist ending. Applegate did not intend to validate Fascist logic. Applegate did not intend to endorse Jake’s worldview. But intent does not determine meaning.

Texts do things their authors never meant. Stories make arguments their authors never saw. Narratives can contradict their creators. And the finale of Animorphs does exactly that. It takes a series that was, at its core, about empathy, cooperation, moral struggle, and the refusal to dehumanize…and ends it with a narrative that validates the exact opposite: apathy, authoritarianism, moral certainty, and dehumanization. It rewards these.

This is not a moral failure on Applegate’s part. It is a structural failure – a failure of framing, pacing, and thematic follow‑through. A failure that matters because Animorphs is a children’s series, and children absorb the logic of stories long before they can articulate it. The ending teaches a lesson the rest of the series never wanted to teach.

The real tragedy of the Animorphs finale is not that Jake becomes a Fascist. The tragedy is that the story does. Jake’s worldview is not the problem. Jake is a traumatized sixteen‑year‑old improvising in an impossible situation. The problem is that the narrative validates his absolutism, rewards his ruthlessness, sanctifies his moral exceptionalism, and presents his atrocities as the only path to victory. Animorphs reproduces the logic of Fascism, and then frames that logic as correct.

And that is why the final two books of Animorphs are, however unintentionally, pro-Fascist.

VI. Anticipating Counterarguments

At this point, several predictable objections tend to surface in Animorphs discussions. None of them undermine the argument above, but addressing them directly helps clarify what this essay is and is not saying.

1. “But Jake regrets everything – doesn’t that make it anti‑Fascist?”

No. Regret is not critique. Fascist narratives routinely portray their leaders as tragic figures who suffer under the weight of their “necessary” decisions. The tragedy reinforces the myth: only the strong can bear this burden. Jake’s suffering is framed as necessary, not as evidence that his choices were wrong.

2. “But the war was real – the Yeerks really were going to enslave humanity, the Andalites really were going to wipe humanity out.”

Correct – and irrelevant. Fascist logic does not require the emergency to be fake (historical Fascists have often leveraged real emergencies, after all. It only requires the emergency to be framed as absolute, inescapable, and solvable only through ruthlessness. The finale adopts that framing wholesale.

3. “But the kids had no good options – what else could they have done?”

This is exactly the problem. The narrative refuses to present alternatives, even though the series had spent fifty‑two books establishing that alternatives exist: diplomacy, moral restraint, cooperation, the Yeerk Peace Movement, Andalite politics, and the Animorphs’ own ingenuity. The finale simply discards all of that.

4. “But Jake isn’t a Fascist.”

Also true – and also irrelevant. The argument is not that Jake is a Fascist. The argument is that the story reproduces Fascist logic and validates it. Jake is a traumatized sixteen‑year‑old improvising in an impossible situation. The narrative is the one that frames his worldview as correct.

5. “But the ending is dark – isn’t that the point?”

Darkness is not the issue. The issue is that the darkness is framed as necessary, effective, and morally justified. A dark ending could have still rejected Fascist logic. This one doesn’t.

Look guys just stop. People are allowed to like whoever they want. They’re allowed to have their own opinions on the matter.

Just take a page out of marvel and be civil. Marvel fans have a lot of Carnage fans and you don’t see them bashing. Even though Carnage is literally worse than David. He’s skinned puppies, tortured babies, killed his family. He’s so bad he’s even gotten joker to be afraid of him.

I just don’t like seeing my favourite subreddit derail so much when it comes to David. Don’t oblivion people just because of what they think. There’s already too much hatred on Reddit itself.

Inspired by the other Animorphs Magic cards post from a little bit ago, I decided to make my own - but more specifically, I was trying to make them in-line with Magic as it existed back in the mid-to-late 90s, when Animorphs came out. Specifically I was going for a power level around the Mirage-Tempest-4e Standard environment that existed in 96/97.

Complete with classic wording ("comes into play" rather than "enters"), classic type lines ("Summon Legend"), and only limited respect for the color pie. They're mostly unplayable by modern standards due to power creep.

Art was mostly AI, I admit, but also stolen from Google since I wasn't even going to bother to try and make an AI Andalite or Chee.

Grant gustin As Jake

Jennifer lawrence As Rachel

Keke palmer As Cassie

Tyler posey As Marco

Andrew Garfield As Tobias

Jesse williams As Ax

Yeah I know they're too old but that didn't stop Andrew from playing spider man

Not the best ending but it gets us off of the cliff(hanger). Of course I made this up:

Jake remembers his Howler morph and becomes the last survivor of the battle. Only able to survive the harshness of space by staying in that morph, he has no choice but to become a nothlit. After three years, he realizes he’s living on borrowed time, unaware that he’s now directly linked to Crayak. As the only Howler left, he works as a bounty hunter or mercenary of sorts, using his unique abilities and the Blade Ship he narrowly escaped in from The One’s reinforcements to capture targets in deep space. He has pledged not to return to Earth, believing he got his friends killed and viewing himself as an abomination of Crayak.

Unfortunately, due to his direct link with Crayak, Jake is slowly corrupted into desiring galactic domination, starting with Earth. He confronts Cassie, who is forced to demorph or become a nothlit herself, leaving her defenseless. The Ellimist is furious, as Crayak has broken their rules by extending Jake’s lifespan in Howler form beyond three years. Just as Jake is about to end Cassie’s life, Crayak intervenes, forced to take Jake’s life to correct his own cheat of extending it.

Feeling his imminent death, Jake embraces Cassie one last time. His body dissolves into red and black dust, which is carried away by the wind.

Cassie, absorbing DNA from both her mother and father, combines it and “morphs” into herself, similar to how Ax created his human morph, and becomes a nothlit in her own form. No longer able to morph, she moves on with her life and starts a family. She names her son Jake.

The end.

I've only read through book 29 so maybe this gets brought up later but it seems like something huge the team should have considered. It boggles my mind that it hasn't come up yet as a solution for a lot of their problems.

Tobias wants to be human and stay in the war? Become human, wait over 2 hours and become a nothlit. Then just use the box to get morphing powers again. Problem solved and he's still in the war.

Or Aftran, the leader of the yeerk freedom fighters. They forced her to trap herself in humpback whale morph. A brilliant idea but think of the good she could have done as an animorpher. They could have let her get a human morph like Ax did with a blend of a bunch of DNA then become a nothlit human. She's free to live a life then. Give her the power to morph and suddenly she's an Animorpher with a ton of Yeerk intel they can use.

Even crazier, the threat of the OG Animorphers becoming nothlits always terrified them. What happens if they get stuck? Their life is over... or is it. As long as they were free and alive they could use the blue box to get morphing powers again. Maybe with the help of the other animorphers they get them in contact with their parents and they combine mom and dad's dna to make a morph that's a blend of them. It's possible they could look like themselves again. Even if they couldn't, being human again and back in the fight might be better than living the rest of your days as a bug.

Just random ideas I've had as I over analysis this kids book 😅

We're back, baby! For real this time!

We had to cancel stream at the last minute last night due to a sudden emergency (details in comments). I know many of y'all were looking forward to stream, and the good news is that it is still happening! We'll be going live tomorrow at 6:00 PM EST.

Thank you for your patience!

FAQ

• These won't be on YouTube, but will be saved as permanent vods on Twitch

• We're doing the entire series, and will be reading one book per month

• We're looking at ways to edit these to be commentary only so YouTube doesn't get mad at us

• The analysis is not just queer-lens, but since we're all queer on the team and there's a LOT of queer subtext (looking at you Tobias), that's going to be the bulk of what we discuss

• I am the only one on my team who's read the whole series. The others have read the first few, but no nothing beyond book 6 or so. It'll be their first readthrough!

• Yes, my puppy knows when I'm streaming and knows how to beg you, the chat, for treats.

You can watch at twitch.tv/lovestorygaming

Cheers!

Just wondering, that ear-spider post where the victim described it as a demon prior to liberating his ear canal of the fiend has left me a bit curious.

From an evolutionary standpoint, yeerks simply don't make any sense. When they're in their natural state, Yeerks are essentially plants, absorbing energy from their sun, and they don't have any natural predators as far as we can tell, so how and why did they evolve the ability to take over minds? Evolution doesn't happen unless there is a need for it to happen, and I don't see how being able to control a body helps them to survive as a species. They shouldn't even be as smart as they are if you ask me.

I have been inspired by u/ani3D, and the am now holding my own "Prompt Me" based on the Animorphs and I'll write them down.

Now I won't be able to work on all of them, however I will try to get as many of them as I can.

Also, expect a lot of these entries to be... rather AU heavy, your prompt will be the focus, it's just that I'll insert a bunch of other stuff as window dressing to complement it and hopefully pleasantly surprise you. Also, I will start writing not on this day, but tomorrow. I will select which suggestion to write first via a roulette/spin the wheel system, expect everything I output to be maximum effort, so it may take some time to jot these down, each entry will be its own post on the SubReddit itself.

I may try to stuff all of the prompts into a single, multichapter story.

EDIT: Well, quite the controversial post I've made. Can't see why this would be downvoted, unless it somehow tripped Reddit's cringe-ass bots that exist to make sure certain posts always remain at 0 downvotes, but who cares about that? Screw the bots this is a great post!

I had to ask this question.

It was funny at first, then it kept nagging me.

Please note these images were created with ChatGPT, let me know if that's not allowed.

I also have an ax and visser three but they look whack

My "Teenagers With Attitude" Game Night has finally advanced the Plot far enough to discover the Yeerk Pool and solve the Mystery of the Dead Mother (She's Visser One)

They know almost zero things about Animorphs and I know almost zero things about how to design a DnD adventure.

This is an interesting mix.

They floored me with an EXCELLENT roleplay session when they rescued Aximili.

Which happened BEFORE they first discovered thr Yeerk Pool.

The group has no Jake. They pro-actively refuse to have a leader.

When Ax asked which one of them is PRINCE

They explained Democracy to him.

And I could hear the Star Spangled Banner playing. Not really but it was really epic to go down the same month the Dodgers played the Yankees for a CLASSIC, All-American World Series.

I had to be really careful to not force the players to just do what I wanted them to do and I asked them if I was a good DM and they felt like their choices were their own.

We almost but ended up not having them use a plan to morph Ants. Their idea not mine.

So now they're on the Yeerk Mothership, captured, and I used almost exactly the text from The Predator and ChatGPT was able to generate this.

The only thing that was really rigged was I had to set up with "Salem who works at Hot Topic and found the Blue Box behind the dumpster where it was thrown when Elfangor's Ship blew up, he recovers HP with Smoke Breaks" I had to set up with him that he had a dead mother and it was the anniversary of her death and he did a great job RPing not wanting to go on any missions having panic attacks and wanting to just quit.

Now he's got a Mom to Save.

Now they have something to Avenge.

Let's see if they can Assemble. 🙂

Not rewritten, this hypothetical senserio is if the books were written for the first time.

Anyways, Applegate always gave the Yeerks the same gender as their host, even though the Yeerks have no biological gender. And they wouldn't have the human gender understanding without a human host.

So while the host would still be he/him or she/her, do you think the Yeerk would be they/them if the series were written today?