Darth Wiki / The Movement

The Author's Friend: So, is it much like the original series?

The Author: For the most part, yeah.

The Author's Friend: Is it even recognizable as the same media?

The Author: Not in the slightest.

The Movement is an Animorphs Alternate Continuity Fan Fiction. It was originally intended to focus on Aftran from The Departure and The Sickness, but it ended up asking the question, "What would the Animorphs world be like if the Yeerk Peace Movement had played a more active role?" The results were shockingly different.

It is currently in early stages of production - the overarching plot is still in progress, and the only part of this fiction to actually be written is the prologue and the very beginning of a chapter. (Not chapter one, just a random chapter that fits into a fairly late stage into the overarching plot).

It was unfortunetely lost when the author's computer randomly decided to be stupid. However, the author is in the process of re-writting the lost work.

Not to be confused with the DC Comics series of the same name.

Note: As yeerks are genderless, the author decided not to use 'he' and 'she' to refer to them. Instead, he opted to use an uncommonly known gender pronoun sometimes used by people who are gender queer. In the following pages, 'zhe' takes the place of he and she, and 'zhir' takes the place of him and her.

The Plot Summary So Far:

Warning: Mild spoilers may be unmakred.

Aftran returns to the pool right after the events of The Departure. Zhe begins the Peace Movement there, and starts recruiting members, including Illim, Verrator, and Altilow. Meanwhile, the Animorphs thwart David as in the books. This time, however, Verrator (in a human host) suggests to the Animorphs that they should begin to use the morphing cube on Movement members and humans who can help the fight. Recruitment for the Movement shoots up as yeerks realize that they can take advantage of the morphing cube's abilities. The majority of the Movement become nothlits in various animal morphs, although a significant number chose to remain yeerks, the four original members included. The Animorphs, meahwhile, recruit humans to their cause, which they not-at-all-ironically call the Auxiliary Animorphs. Even when Aftran gets put on a Long Bus Trip that forces Illim to take over leadership, everything is looking up for peace in the relationship between yeerks and humans.

But not all is well. The Movement has no explanation for the disappearance of the thousands of yeerks that disappear when they become nothlits. This makes the Council of Thirteen suspicious. When a spy informs them of the Movement members who remain in the Pool, the Council jumps at the opportunity to kill them. In order to make it inconspicuous, the Emperor (who controls who mates with who) orders members of the Movement to procreate so that they can die. Despite the cleverness of the plan, it doesn't take long for the Movement leaders to figure out what's going on. It is eventually revealed that the spy was Verrator. Zhe was killed by the movement. Altilow presents zhir body to Visser Three and says that it is the body of Illim, and that the rest of the Movement has defected back to the Empire.

Due to Altilow's role in the supposed destruction of the Peace Movement, zhe was promoted to Sub-Visser 339 and sent to the Anati homeworld. Zhir position of power makes it easy for zhir to begin a Movement there, and it grows even more quickly than the one on Earth. Unfortunately for Earth's Movement, however, Illim was given false information that Altilow was killed on the Anati homeworld. When four andalites ( who were voluntary controllers) pick up the Animorphs from Earth and take them to the Anati homeworld, they were completely unaware of the movements existence. When the movement tried to appeal to them, only Cassie trusted them. In the end, however, the Animorphs found out that the andalites were controllers when they sent the humans into a trap in order to kill them. The controllers were killed, and Earth's Movement became aware of Anati's Movement. From this incident on, however, voluntary andalite controllers were a constant threat to the Movement's safety.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, the Animorphs manage to trap Visser Three for three days, killing the yeerk and freeing Alloran. Alloran goes with the Animorphs to capture a yeerk bug fighter, which he takes into space to go back to the andalite homeworld. However, he was delayed severely when the Skirt Na abducted him.

Eventually, Anati's Movement becomes so large that it overtakes the remaining Empire presence on the Anati homeworld, and the few Empire members that are left were tortured or killed. This causes a huge imbalance of power in the Yeerk Empire, as more and more yeerks flee to Earth. The Animorphs and Earth's Movement start to feel more and more resistance, and the Movement is in constant danger of being wiped out due to low membership. Most of the auxiliaries were killed or taken as controllers, along with Rachel and Marco.

Alloran eventually escaped the Skirt Na and made it to his home planet. But when he told the andalites about the invasion of Earth, they decided to go in and shoot everything that moved, including the movement. Alloran tried to convince them against this, but his efforts failed. In the end, he was forced to try to sabotage the departure of the andalite fleet, resulting in his execution.

But things were going much better on the Anati homeworld. Once the Movement was sure that they had the entire planet on their side, they went out into space to kill the Council of Thirteen. However, the andalite fleet intercepted them in space. The Movement put up a fight, but the andalites completely destroyed Anati's movement and left no survivors.

The andalite fleet was headed to Earth. Empire radars had detected the fleet approaching ahead of time, but the andalites far outgunned the yeerk forces. Because of this, Visser One (who had replaced Visser Three in leading Earth's invasion) decided to made a truce with the Peace Movement and the Animorphs only to destroy the andalites. The ensuing battle was very bloody and it resulted in Jake's death, but the Empire and the Movement won. At this point, however, the empire betrayed the movement and started infesting andalites rapidly. The Movement retaliated by doing the same, not caring if the andalites wanted to be controllers or not. Once there were no more andalites left to infest, the Movement took the remaining andalite ships and blasted into space to destroy the Council of Thirteen. The Empire followed.

Once in space, the empire was disputed over whether to trust the Movement or not. One side, led by Visser One, wanted to continue to follow orders and protect the Council. The other side, led by Visser Five, thought the fight was hopeless and thought the Movement would be more lenient with them and even give them a position of power if they supported it in the destruction of the Council. It didn't matter, though, because the Movement rejected help from Visser Five and his troops.

Meanwhile, the Movement developed an enormous bomb that would destroy the entire Council. The Empire reached the Council just seconds after the Movement infiltrated them. They set off the bomb, and it killed everybody on the ship, including the entire Movement, the Council of Thirteen, and most of the Vissers and Sub-Vissers.

Tropes that apply to the parts of the story that have been written:

• Acceptable Breaks from Canon: The Peace Movement's existence.
• Adults Are Useless: All the auxiliaries are teenagers, which is never explained. Word of God tells us that he didn't think he could write nuanced relationships between kids and their parents very well.
• The Complainer Is Always Wrong: This applies to Jake in The Anati; he was the only one that mistrusted the andantes. But it was subverted in the end.
• Crapsack World: And the especially sad thing is that we get almost everyone's POV, meaning the audience is asked to sympathize with the people making the world a more miserable place for the genuinely good characters. Not that there are many of those. So it sort of balances out.
• Creator In-Joke: It's pretty much impossible to understand every single Shout-Out, Stealth Pun, and other literary devices without the author telling you about them - he's given you only a few here.
• Happiness in Slavery: The first Gedd that Aftran infested had long since given up fighting the yeerks and had accepted its fate - Word of God tells us that it actually enjoyed not having to solve problems itself.
• Hypocritical Humor: From The Anati
  Kiberla: Are all humans this arrogant?
• Purple Prose: The author's style is to write in a mild form of this. Here are the prologue's opening lines:
  There was nothing but darkness. But of course, there never was. Nothing but a perpetual black infinity that engulfed me for as long as I could remember, as long as I existed.
• Scenery Porn: Descriptions of the Anati homeworld definitely qualify.
• Shout-Out: Falabboi, the name for the sludge that the yeerks reside in, is named after Fall Out Boy.
• Switching P.O.V.: And TONS of it. Almost every single character narrates at some point.

Tropes that apply to parts of the story that have yet to be written:

Note that every example is subject to change.

• A Nazi by Any Other Name: The andalite military.
• Alien Blood: Marco once joked about Rachel decorating her locker with hork-bajir blood. She took this about as well as you might expect.
• Always Chaotic Evil: The yeerks, even the ones in the Movement, think this about the andalites. And vice versa.
• Anti-Climax: This applies to the entire arc with the Anati Peace Movement. They're intercepted by the andalite fleet going to Earth on their way to assassinate the Council of Thirteen, and there were no survivors.
• Anyone Can Die: Anyone. And eventually, everybody does.
• Ascended Meme: Cinnamon Bunzuh!, an Animorphs Review Blog, suggested that "your mother infested a horse" should be a yeerk insult. In this fiction, it actually is an insult to suggest that a yeerk was part of that mission.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The author's version of the Chee: they refuse to support anything violent at all, which was the author's excuse not to use them very much.
• Bad News in a Good Way:
  Marco: Alright, I have good news and bad news.
  Jason: Go ahead.
  Marco: Well, the good news is that the bad news isn't Earth-shattering.
  Jason: I hope that wasn't supposed to be funny.
• Badass Crew: The Animorphs, Auxiliaries included.
• Battle Couple: Rachel and Tobias, at least at first.
• The Big Damn Kiss: This is how Ax comes out to everyone - when he kisses Jason.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The yeerks can send messages through chemicals, and they can chose whether or not the receiving yeerk can understand who the message is coming from or not. Also, there's a mental disease that slowly breaks down their brain; Verrator has it.
• Body and Host
• Bored with Insanity: The author. He couldn't just stick with the original level of Nightmare Fuel - he had to take it up a notch.
• Breather Episode: Every time an episode is dedicated to a flashback.
• Can't Have Sex, Ever: It's not that they can't have sex, but members of the Peace Movement are reluctant to procreate, as it results in their death, and the yeerks that are created as a result will probably not be part of the movement. At one point, it becomes a major plot point that the Council of Thirteen forces members to procreate in an effort to quietly get rid of them.
• Character Development: All of the original six Animorphs act exactly like their book counterparts, until the Alternate Character Interpretations kick in. For everyone except Ax, this involves them going insane.
• Child Soldier: Everyone.
• Darker and Edgier: Much more of both than the original Animorphs series.
• Downer Ending
• Demoted to Extra: The Chee.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Visser One goes to Illim, revealing that she knows exactly who he is and who his host is… but it's because she wants to team up with him to stop the andalites, not because she wanted to kill him.
• Enemy Mine: The Empire helps the Movement, but only to destroy the andalites, not because they actually agreed with the Movement's message.
• Ensemble Cast: The closest the series has to a 'main character' is Illim, and even zhe doesn't appear in a good number of books. There's no character that appears in every one.
• Everyone Is Bi: Most of the human characters are, anyway. The yeerks are asexual.
• Evil Versus Evil: The andalite fleet versus the Yeerk Empire. Subverted somewhat by the fact that the Animorphs and the Movement were working with the Empire the entire time.
• Face/Heel Double-Turn: The andalite fleet turns out to be evil when they invade Earth with the intent of destroying it. In response, the Yeerk Empire teams up with the Peace Movement. Ultimately subverted when the Empire betrays the Movement in the end.
• G-Rated Drug: Instant maple and ginger oatmeal in the books. Not that we actually see it - yeerks just ask each other if they're high on it.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: For the most part, although it occasionally leans towards Black and Gray.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Averted in this joke:
  Leela: Why don't you just use guns, now that the yeerks know who we are? It would be a lot safer.
  Marco: Well, me and Jake wanted to. But Rachel wouldn't let us.
• Have You Tried Not Being a Monster?: The Peace Movement acquires members by basically asking this to everyone within their range.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: When the Empire was divided into two sides, general consensus from the movement was to not trust any of them.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: The Yeerk Empire. They team up with the Movement just long enough to disable the andalite fleet, then they return to being evil in order to infest as many andalites as possible. Then, the Empire gets divided into one side who wants to team up with the Peace Movement to overthrow the Council, and another than wants to follow orders and destroy the Movement.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: The Movement on the Anati homeworld actually becomes larger than the yeerks fighting to enslave the Anati. In the end, it gets so big that remaining members of the 'resistance' are captured and often tortured. But this doesn't stop the andalite fleet from destroying the entire movement when they intercept in space.
• Heroic BSoD: Almost everyone.
• Heroic Neutral: Applies to most of the Auxiliaries.
• Ignore the Fanservice: Gave us Foreshadowing for Ax's relationship with Jason.
• Interspecies Romance: Jason gets in a relationship with Ax.
• Living with the Villain: The yeerks in the Movement and the ones who are loyal to the Empire both live in the same pools.
• Meaningful Name: Verrator comes from a word that means 'traitor' in German.
• Mook–Face Turn: The entire concept of the Peace Movement revolves around this.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: Went both ways for Aftran and Verrator. The latter didn't say goodbye to the former before zhe got Put On A Bus. The former didn't say goodbye to the latter before zhe died.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Not a single fucking one.
• Noble Demon: Most subordinate yeerks are portrayed this way.
• Official Couple: Cassie and Jake, Rachel and Tobias, Ax and Jason.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Visser Three's death triggers two plots: Visser One's takeover, and Alloran going to the andalite hoemworld.
• Reformed, but Rejected: A significant number of plots revolve around the Animorphs not trusting the Peace Movement.
• The Reveal: Verrator was a spy for the yeerk empire.
  • The andalites on the Anati homeworld were voluntary controllers.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilised: The Movement is even darker and more violent than the book series.
• Rivals Team Up: The Peace Movement and the Yeerk Empire team up to destroy the andalite fleet that tries to invade Earth. They succeed, but the Empire betrays the movement and starts a race to infest the andantes.
• Shapeshifter/Voluntary Shapeshifting/Animorphism
• Ship Tease: Happens occasionally between Tobias and Ax. In fact, Ax has a large and unrequited crush on Tobias. However, Tobias is actually straight (for the most part), and Ax eventually gets over him.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The Anati Peace Movement amounts to nothing except a bunch of dead people.
  • The same can be said for the entire fiction, although according to Word of God, lots of involuntary human and hork-bajir controllers that we never got to see were freed after the end.
• Single-Issue Psychology: Everyone, pretty much. The author was too afraid of getting things wrong to put in very much complex psychology.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Much more cynical than the original series.
• Token Minority: Almost every single human character is a minority in one way or another.
• "They Still Belong to Us" Lecture: Visser Three's attitude towards the Movement. Everyone else takes on a much more violent approach.
• Twofer Token Minority: Quite a few characters.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Between most of the couples, although a few got true resolution.
• Villain with Good Publicity: The andalite fleet.
• Voice of the Resistance: Aftran, until she gets Put On a Bus. After that, Illim took over for zhir.
• Whole Episode Flashback: We get an entire episode about Aftran flashbacking to before the Movement.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: The majority of the yeerks don't side with the Anati Movement until Altilow manages to kill Visser Five.

Tropes that apply to different characters:

Aftran 942:

• Adaptational Badass: As shown in flashbacks to zhir hork-bajir body.
• Badass Pacifist
• Bus Crash
• Decoy Protagonist: Aftran is abruptly removed from the story due to the events of The Sickness, leaving Illim to be the hero for the rest of the series.
• Heel–Face Turn: Aftran sees zhir actions before zhe started the Peace Movement as pretty villainous.
• Long Bus Trip
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Zhe tries, quite hard, and usually manages it. But zhe does fall short every once in a while.
• Sense Freak: It takes Aftran an entire page to describe a few seconds while zhe infested zhir first Gedd, because all the new senses were so overwhelming to zhir.

Altilow 725:

• Corrupt the Cutie: Altilow actually does some pretty horrible things to the Empire's yeerks towards the end of the series.
• Hypocrite: Altilow claims to support peace, but zhe actually violently kills or tortures many Empire yeerks.
• Meaningful Name: 'Altilow' comes from All Time Low, and '725' comes from the date that their EP Put Up or Shut Up was released - July 25th.
• Villain Protagonist: An interesting example - he does some obviously villainous things, but he gets killed by true villains, and we feel sympathy for zhir the entire time.

Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill (Ax):

• Adaptational Villainy: Ax is actually used as the villain a couple times, usually when he opposes the Peace Movement.
• Amusing Alien: Less so than in the books, but still present.
• Gayngst: Tons of it.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Ax is one of the only characters who gets a happy ending. You know, until he dies.
• Villain Protagonist: See Adaptational Villainy above.

Cassie Summers:

• Anti-Hero: She suddenly becomes one once she goes crazy.
• Author Avatar: Cassie is the author's favorite character, and he claims he has the most in common with her. Pretty interesting, considering that she goes crazy and kills her boyfriend in the end.
• Berserk Button: Don't say anything bad about the Movement around Cassie, even when they really deserve it.
• Break the Cutie
• The Extremist Was Right: Usually, although it's subverted every once in a while, just to keep things interesting.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Her last words.
• Staking the Loved One: Cassie kills Jake in an insane rage.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Cassie goes batshit crazy at the end of the series. In the final battle, she just tries to kill everyone in sight, and she succeeds on Jake. She eventually sets off the bomb that killed everyone.

Edriss 562 (Visser One):

• Anti-Villain: More than any other Visser in the series.
• Big Bad: She replaced Visser Three as this.
• Sympathetic Murderer: We actually get quite a bit of Visser One's narration, and she's pretty sympathetic for the most part, even though she's almost as opposed to the movement as the Council is.

Esplin 9466 (Visser Three):

• Anti-Villain: Present, although not nearly as much as the other Vissers were.
• Big Bad: Just like the original series. Until he's killed.
• Cartoonish Supervillainy/Stupid Evil: The name reason he was killed.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: At one point, Naya suggested that they could bait zhir into a trap by angering him and taunting him. Zhe almost killed her on the spot, and yet it still didn't work.
• Decoy Antagonist: The author felt the need to kill him in order to get a truly threatening villain (Visser One).]]
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Visser Three is much more dangerous in this series than in the original books, although the author still felt the need to replace him with Visser One in order to get a genuinely dangerous villain.

Illim 412:

• Drunk with Power: Occasionally.
• Meaningful Name: The '412' part of his name comes from the production code of the Futurama episode The Sting: 4ACV12
• Our Hero Is Dead: Along with pretty much everyone else, but Tidwell and Illim die a few minutes before the big apocalypse.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Not as much as Aftran, but still present.

Jake Berenson:

• Sacrificial Lion: Although in an interesting subversion, it's the Cassie who kills him, not a villain.

Jason Grayson:

• Catchphrase: "Fuck everything."
• Coming-Out Story
• Deadpan Snarker: Less in the later books, but always present.
  Naya: Whoa. ''That's'' what your normal voice sounds like? You're sarcastic so much, I'd completely forgotten.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: King, in Jason's case.
• Meaningful Name: 'Jason' comes from Jason Lancaster of Mayday Parade, and 'Grayson' comes from the title characters of Will Grayson, Will Grayson.
• Sarcasm Mode: He never leaves it.

Leela Lancaster

• Buffy Speak: She's known for it.
  Leela: I do not have a speech weirdness!
• Meaningful Name: Leela comes from Futurama, and Lancaster comes from Hazel Lancaster of The Fault in Our Stars.

Marco Hernandez:

• Sacrificial Lion: He's one of the many killed by the battle with the andalites to give the audience a heads up - "People are about to die!"

Megacrew 124 (Visser Five):

• Anti-Villain
• Even Mooks Have Loved Ones: Five's attitude whenever Visser Eight is in danger.
• Meaningful Name: 'Megacrew' comes from Megan Crewe, an author, and '124' comes from the date that her book The Way We Fall was released - January 24th.

Naya Wentz

• Adorkable: Stupid? Probably. Still awesome? Hell yes.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: She's know for being frequently distracted and off in her own thoughts.
• Cloudcuckoolander
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: At one point, she suggests taunting Visser Three into a trap. Zhe almost kills her on the spot.
• Meaningful Name: 'Naya' comes from Naya Rivera (of Glee), and 'Wentz' comes from Pete Wentz (of Fall Out Boy).

Rachel Berenson:

• Action Girl: Even more so than in the books.
• Bears Are Bad News: Rachel generally only morphs grizzly if she's about to do something really, really dangerous.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: This is the author's Alternate Character Interpretation of her. As she slowly loses her sanity, the sheep's clothing gradually comes off.
• The Brute: She's pretty much incapable of anything else. Not just in a fight, she's not capable of anything except ass kicking.
• Dark Action Girl
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Or else she will morph grizzly bear and tear your head off.
• Dumb Blonde: Rachel puts on an act of this in order to hide the fact that she's scared that she's going insane.
• Good Is Not Nice: Rachel is more of a Jerkass than some of her enemies.
• Sanity Slippage

Tobias Fangor:

• And I Must Scream: One of Tobias' biggest fears is that he'll lose his thought speak.
• Closet Key: Tobias is this for Ax.
• Emo Teen: Inspired by his Fan Nickname, 'emohawk'.

Verrator 409:

• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Due to zhir yeerk mental disease.
• Becoming the Mask
• Face–Heel Turn
• Meaningful Name: 'Verrator' comes from a German word meaning 'traitor', and '409' comes from the Futurama episode "Jurassic Bark" - 4ACV09.
• The Mentally Ill
• Not Too Dead to Save the Day: Verrator's dead body was presented to the Council of Thirteen. They were told that this was the body of the Peace Movement's leader, and that the rest of the Movement had been captured. It worked.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Except only a few people thought zhe really deserved it.