Animorphs

I do have to give the series kudos for coming up with aliens that felt like they were originally from planets that did not develop like Earth had. Granted, starting out as a written series helped a lot, but still. That's a lot more then some sci-fi writers can say.

So apparently (ITT when I say "apparently" it means "according to an internet source I don't remember"), KA was told that the traditional grey aliens weren't original enough, so she invented all these cosplay-proof species, but then was like "I'll put back in those aliens, as a minor group, called skrit-na"

I've heard something like that too. Basically, the reason they couldn't have aliens on the show very frequently was because they were so hard to FX, and the reason they were so hard to FX was that after Applegate came out with her first, much more FX-friendly designs, someone pointed out that they'll never be a movie or TV show so there's no reason to limit herself to Rubber Costume type aliens, prompting her to just go nuts on the designs of the Andalites, Hork-Bajir, and Taxxons.

Which is why Animorphs has some of the most distinctive alien designs in sci-fi.

EDIT: Also, this discussion has prompted me to read back through the series again. It's amusing how many Hilarious in Hindsight and Harsher in Hindsight moments the series has even in its throwaway lines. Book 6 features Jake remarking in his character descriptions that Cassie doesn't do surgery, but she'd probably be really good at if she did.

23 books later....

edited 16th Apr '15 8:07:31 AM by TobiasDrake

And now for something completely different.

I love the chronicles books. sO MUCH XENOFICTION

To quote Cinnamon Bunzuh on TEC:

Source

edited 16th Apr '15 4:23:25 PM by SmartGirl333

Has anyone seen good fanfics which are on the lines of, say, Gedd chronicles or Skrit Na chronicles? I remember one of the people from Cinnamon Bunzuh started one about the Gedds but it got abandoned.

If the Gedds were particularly interesting, the Yeerks wouldn't have been so desperate for better hosts.

I disagree, I think the Gedds are a huge blind spot in the Animorphs narrative.

That and the Taxxons, we really should have gotten a Taxxon Chronicles about Arbron.

The Gedds are dumb, clumsy, half-blind apes too stupid to survive without a brain parasite making their decisions for them. They're the Dumb Muscle of a symbiotic relationship on a miserable deathhole of a planet, not unlike the Iskoort until they were abandoned for less objectively shitty species once the Yeerks were given spaceflight.

The parallel between the relationship they once had with the pre-imperial Yeerks and the Iskoort is fascinating, but neither the Gedds nor the Yeerk Homeworld have ever been suggested to be particularly compelling narratives.

edited 19th Apr '15 12:23:57 PM by TobiasDrake

Gedds never seemed all that interesting to me. The Hork Bajir have an interesting backstory to them and tie in directly with the Yeerk's rise to power. It seems like the only noteworthy thing about them is that they were the natural hosts for the Yeerks until the Andalites arrived.

edited 19th Apr '15 12:30:41 PM by Kostya

"It seems like the only noteworthy thing about them is that they were the natural hosts for the Yeerks until the Andalites arrived."

This is why they're interesting in my opinion. It's a glimpse at the pre-glory days of the yeerk empire. And from the outside. [And we already effectively had a yeerk chronicle.]

That said, other species are totes cool, too. The Gedds are just one of the ones which came to mind when I was thinking of species which didn't get a chronicle but which could be interesting to know more about.

edited 19th Apr '15 4:37:12 PM by Hatshepsut

Can the Gedds even speak? I just feel like that book would wind up focusing on the Yeerks anyway.

Wait, you read Cinnamon Bunzuh? I love that blog!

A good chunk of this thread was devoted to Cinnamon Bunnzah! as it was covering the books. Adam is a Troper for that matter.

I take credit for the trope page image!

Adam's links are actually how I found TV Tropes. And now I'll never leave.

I've read a cool xenofiction story about the taxxons from before they had contact with the yeerks, mostly exploring some of the weirder aspects of their biology. Here. Pity it's not finished.

I've sometimes thought a story about pre-Andalite yeerks could be really interesting - or possibly, about the yeerks who were left behind on the home world, because surely most of the developments the off-world Empire went through would have missed them. Sadly I don't really have enough ideas about it to hang a whole fanfic on, though.

The problem with pre-Andalite Yeerks is much the same problem as the Gedds; all indications we have is that the Yeerk Homeworld is a shithole where a distressingly small veriety of unintelligent animals - even the smartest just barely qualifying for sentience - eke out a barebones existence in a miserable and boring wasteland.

There's not a lot that can be done to tell an engaging story in a place where any form of civilization beyond a very basic cycle of predation is virtually nonexistence. The most compelling thing that ever happened on the Yeerk Homeworld was the arrival of Seerow and his crew, and the establishment of their Empire; the events that allowed them to leave this awful place.

EDIT: I do think the story of Seerow's Kindness and the foundation of the Empire would make a great story. I'm just at a loss for what kind of story could be told prior to that.

edited 20th Apr '15 7:59:08 AM by TobiasDrake

I never bought that, frankly. Most of what we know about the Yeerk homeworld is from incredibly biased Andalites and Yeerks that buy the empire party line so much they're unreliable by default.

It's corroborated by offhand comments, like how the Yeerk that infests Jake's head in the sixth book complains that humans have too many animals and that their world is much simpler and less diverse. There are multiple comments by various Yeerks about how, when they take over Earth, they'll purge most of the genetic variety from it to make it a boring, drab wasteland like their homeworld, which is corroborated by the Andalites' assertions that they've done this to other worlds.

Ultimately, even if you feel that everyone who has ever said anything about the homeworld is biased, there's nothing in the opposite direction at all. Nobody has ever said anything that made the homeworld sound even remotely appealing as a setting for a story. Trying to turn it around and go, "No, the homeworld is FASCINATING, really," contradicts all established knowledge.

edited 20th Apr '15 9:23:47 AM by TobiasDrake

The andalite homeworld is also said to be less bio-diverse than the Earth, it's kinda what makes the rest of the neighborhood interested in them.

And just because it's not visually pleasing doesn't mean there couldn't be some interesting stories set there.

Yes. Notice that we have never had an interesting story set on the Andalite homeworld either.

The closest we've ever been is Ellimist, which only touched on their planet and had more to do with the visiting godlike alien than the Andalite world itself.

Besides, even without the bio-diversity, the Andalites have much more of a civilization than we've ever been given any indication of the pre-Imperial Yeerks possessing. The Andalites are a genuinely spacefaring race. The Yeerks are a primitive race suddenly uplifted by Andalite technology, like if cavemen were suddenly given nuclear weapons and spaceships - and they behaved accordingly.

The story of how they received that technology and how their civilization developed to what it is now is a potentially intriguing one, but before the Andalites arrived, their history can be summarized as Rock, Tar Pit, Predator, Rock, Tar Pit, Tree, Rock, Tar Pit, Eaten.

That's what makes them interesting. They're the krogan of the setting. An incredibly unadvanced species advanced WAY too quickly by visiting aliens, a group of mono-gendered parasites with little to no genetic diversity from a planet where lifeforms are objectively shittier or better based entirely on their utility, suddenly thrust into the midst of galactic civilization without ever having the opportunity to outgrow their destructive, territorial "OWN ALL THE THINGS" cave mentality.

Upon receiving the spaceships, the cavemen bludgeoned the astronauts with sticks and set out to hunt and conquer new horizons, and the entire war is a consequence of that.

edited 20th Apr '15 9:56:04 AM by TobiasDrake

So do you also think that there were absolutely no stories worth telling about humanity before we reached a certain level of technology?

I mean, plenty of people read historical fiction that's set in 'primitive' human cultures. I've read a few books and stories about 'cave people' that managed to be engaging.

Presumably yeerks had their own history of stuff that happened before the andalites came. They had a system of government (I definitely got the impression the Council of Thirteen is something that already existed, not something the andalites imposed). I don't think it's really possible to have a society of sapient beings with language and a government existing for presumably thousands of years... and have literally NO conflicts or changing internal relationships for that entire time.

I mean... do I, personally, have the ability to write engaging stories about stone age parasitic slugs? Not really. But that doesn't mean such a thing is not possible.

edited 21st Apr '15 3:11:42 AM by LoniJay

Loni Jay summarizes my thoughts on the subject and provides a cool fanfic, and I award ten points.

Doesn't Visser One imply that the Yeerks have always been united under one government?

Yes.

Why do you think most attempts at writing a stone-age story inevitably interposes anachronistic concepts on the setting? The Flintstones using dinosaurs as replicas of modern technology, for instance, or The Croods building its character relationships as a reflection of modern family drama. We have plenty of stories about Cavemen, but not too Caveman, and there's a reason for that: pre-civilization humans have more in common with a nature documentary than a compelling narrative.

Everything the Yeerks have, they stole from others. Even their technology is just a shittier offshoot of stolen Andalite technology. That's what they do. They don't innovate, they imitate.

edited 21st Apr '15 7:59:28 AM by TobiasDrake

You seem to buy the party line way too much for a person that's read the books. Wasn't the whole point that every species had good and bad, and that individuals were individuals? You can't judge a whole species and its culture based on half truths and propaganda.

Don't get me wrong the Yeerk Empire were shitty for a lot of reasons, but that's just it. The Yeerk Empire. It was a power structure seeded by the Andalites and that exploded into malignance over what, a few decades? People forget that but the Yeerk Invasion stuff isn't really a Hundred Years War. Most fan estimates put Seerow's Kindness in the 1960s.

edited 21st Apr '15 10:47:44 AM by odafangirl