Funny / Eleutherophobia

The Day the Earth Stood Still

• Tom gets annoyed with Sub-Visser Eight banging on the wall and snaps at him.
  Tom: Essa four-one-two. Visser Seventeen. Yes, the little voice in my head can beat up the little voice in your head! And last I saw Visser One was in Animorph custody, so can you shut the hell up and die already?
• Later in the same chapter:
  Sub-Visser Eight: Hey, sweetheart. You want to know all the things this human body wants to do to that hot little human body?
  Leslie: Wanna know the things this human wants to do to you, you filthy earthworm?
• When the Berensons finally get home, they realize the doors are locked and none of them have keys. So Jake morphs a cockroach and slides under the door frame so he can demorph and unlock the door inside.
  Mom: My hero.
  Dad: And to think, otherwise we'd be reduced to jimmying a window like normal people.

Lost World

• Tom wishes that the Tyrannosaurus in Jurassic Park would eat the bratty kids.
• Tom is clued into the fact that Jake knows a bit more about T-Rexes than most people do. He has a bit of trouble believing that particular adventure happened.
  Jake: We were there for almost a week, and then when the comet hit, we were back where we started and no time had passed at all.
  Tom: You watched the dinosaurs go extinct?
  Jake: We sort of made them go extinct. We didn’t really have a choice.
  Tom: I’m still gonna call PETA on your sorry ass.
  Jake: You can’t prove I did it, because technically it never happened.

THX 1138

• Tom calls the Animorphs "Power Rangers" in his narration at one point.
• After Steve says that Tom doesn't have schizophrenia:
  Tom: So if I'd come to you, say, a year ago, and claimed I was being mind-controlled by an alien the local community center put inside my brain...
• When Tom arrives at the hospital, he introduces himself to the doctor as such:
  "I'm Steve Berenson's kid," I explained.
  She stood up so quickly she almost knocked over her chair.
  “The less famous one,” I added.

These Are The Damned

• The soundtrack for this fic is 'Somewhat Damaged' by Nine Inch Nails, but the author calls them Nice Is Neat.
• For years, Tom thought that the picture of Cassie giving a badger antibiotics on Jake's desk was of her strangling a raccoon.

Akira

• Jake jokingly suggests naming the cat "Muffins II: The Revenge", which Tom continues to call her in the narration.

Back to the Future

• Justin asks Tom if anyone else in the family was infested. Tom thinks:
  Welcome to the land of paranoia, kiddo. The rest of us have been happily living here for over three years.
• After Tom's failed attempt to get Jake to spend time downstairs, he tries to lighten the mood:
  Tom: Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed your glimpse of this rarely-seen, oft-spoken-of form of wildlife. And please remember, they are easily startled by flash photography.
• While on the phone to Tom, Bonnie makes fun of her well-meaning but ignorant parents.
  Bonnie: You know, Tom, Post-Infestation whatsits is just a state of mind. If you eat organic and avoid phosphates, then you too can be a real boy. Why, my friend Martha’s aunt’s reiki instructor’s next-door neighbor cured her PTSD by getting rid of phosphates, so I see no reason why you can’t do the same!
• Marco's speech about how Tom should challenge his great-grandmother's worldviews ends with this gem:
  Marco: And yeah, she’ll probably keel over from a heart attack in surprise, but at least she’ll learn something before she dies.
  Jake: [Facepalms] You have the most unique inspirational speeches.
• According to Marco, Peter's parents think that Eva is still dead and Visser One is pretending to be her to steal his money.

Ghost in the Shell

• At one Matter Over Mind meeting, it turns out that Eva is the only person present who has no idea what KTVH means. It stands for "keep the Visser happy", and the other attendees use it to describe Visser Three's various stupid plans that their Yeerks were too afraid to argue against — mind-controlling hamburgers, shooting every bird in a five-mile radius, buying really expensive things that the Animorphs kept destroying, et cetera. Then it turns out Eva didn't know that the Animorphs destroyed the Kandrona in the EGS Tower; Esplin told Edriss that it stopped working on its own.
• Homer freaks out and starts peeing on everything when Loren arrives at the Berensons' house with Champ in tow.
  Tom: You are a disgrace to all Pemalites.
• According to Bonnie, there's a preacher who thinks that Yeerks are angels and Jake is the Anti-Christ.
• Madonna has a controversial single called “I Wanna Be Controlled (So Baby Crawl Your Way Inside Me Tonight)”.
• Tom gets into an argument with Taylor at a meeting after she calls him Visser Seventeen. His narration sells it:
  Just great. I was about to get murdered by some cane-wielding pissed-off former host in the middle of this hallway while fifteen other ex-hosts watched in mild interest and totally failed to remember that they had the option to intervene if they so chose.
• Eva and Tom's discussion of the ethics of murder gets derailed:
  Eva: What if you were able to assassinate one person knowing they’d have a seventy-five percent chance of taking over a foreign country as a dictator and causing the whole place to descend into genocide?
  Tom: Then I’d quit the CIA and go start a peanut farm instead. What if tomorrow the sky falls and taxxons take over the planet in its post-apocalyptic state and next thing we know we’re all food for a bunch of giant hangry caterpillar overlords?
  Eva: Well, what if?
  Tom: I’m just saying, I’ll deal with it as it arises. Not that I think that last one is very likely.
• Chapter 17 is mostly serious, but it has a few moments of levity.
  • Jake has a Major Injury Underreaction to being shot.
  Marco: <Jake, buddy, you just got shot in the chest and bled most of the way to death. Your family’s allowed to be a little bit emotional about the whole thing for at least another ten minutes. Maybe fifteen, if we’re feeling generous. But no more than twenty.>
  Jake: Okay, seriously, that makes it sound like I died or something.
  Tom: <You mostly did. So shut up and drink your damn water, squirt.>
  • Later in the same scene, when the Berensons are wondering who shot Jake:
  Steve: The Twenty-Eighth Amendment made it illegal to imitate or steal anyone else’s physical form through morphing or infestation.
  Jean: Steve, honey, there are also laws against shooting people in broad daylight. That doesn’t seem to have stopped this person so far.
• This is Tom's reaction to being bitten in half:
  You want to know what will really happen if you cut a snake in half? IT WILL FUCKING DIE.
  Anyway, you can see why I was a little worried.
• Tom accidentally introduces the concept of marijuana to Ax. He hurriedly redirects Ax's questions to Marco, and Ax, in his own ambiguously sardonic way, responds with:
  Ax: I will be sure to tell him that you commended his expertise on the subject when I do so.

Total Recall

• When Tom says he broke his leg because he was attacked by a whale, the airport security guards try to keep their composure. Jake facepalms.
• According to Cassie, the State Department have been focusing on "surface victories" such as Hork-Bajir-friendly stairs.
  Cassie: Since we all know hork-bajir just love hanging out inside human buildings.
  Jake: And are totally incapable of climbing human-sized stairs.
• Shortly afterwards, Tom and Marco have a conversation separate from Jake and Cassie. Highlights include Marco calling Bonnie "whatsherface", Eva chaperoning Alloran through the paparazzi, and this:
  Tom: You poor thing. You have it so rough.
  Marco: It’s not easy being this young and beautiful and famous as well. Just last week I pulled a muscle in my arm from signing over four hundred autographs at a single event.
  Tom: I cannot begin to comprehend the depths of your suffering.

The Thing from Another World

• Mr. Chapman says he “was abducted by aliens years before children these days went and made it all the rage.” Also, Tobias is shocked when Chapman casually reveals that he knew Elfangor.
• Tobias complains about how un-aerodynamic cockroaches are, then smacks into the side of the Skrit Na saucer.
• Cassie the Social Justice Elephant.
  Cassie: <And while we're at it, the excesses of spending within the military-industrial complex are a travesty! The U.S. government should be—>
  Wham. Cra-CRUNCH!
  Cassie: <Oops, sorry. Should be funding NGOs, not building more outdated stealth bomber technology!>
  Wham.
  Tom: Well, it's not the most convincing blind rage I've ever heard.
• When Tom is trying to fly the Skrit Na ship:
  Jake: What’s that flashing light mean?
  Tom's narration: Now, if I could just find an off-switch for Jake...
  Tom: That’s the warning that there are humans trying to operate the ship. It’s very angry that this is the case, and in ten seconds it will blow up and kill us all rather than let its precious secrets fall into alien hands.
  Tobias: That was sarcasm, right? Because it, uh, didn't really sound like sarcasm.
• When the team are put in quarantine, Tom "switches his personality off to save on battery power" and snarks about how a whole room is more than enough space for him, while Marco sings deliriously.
• In the epilogue, Tobias is disappointed that Ax knows about Your Mom jokes, and says they were kicked out of a Burger King once because Ax drank mustard.
• After Tom insists he can't be an estreen because he's not a "super-dedicated morpher" like Cassie:
  Marco: I beg your pardon? I am offended, no I am appalled. That you would think Cassie is our resident crazy person who gets way too into morphing when my dear friend Tobias is right here in the room? If anyone is a crazy super-dedicated morpher, it is the guy who lives in a tree and eats rats, and I will not stand for him being upstaged—nay, for him being overlooked—in this fashion.

A Straight Line Down Through the Heart

• Tom reveals that he technically owns an entire warehouse of hunter-killer robots. He doesn't want to tell the authorities because then they'd own an entire warehouse of hunter-killer robots.
• According to Cassie, the Taxxons are protecting the Amazon Rainforest by eating people who encroach upon it.
• After Bonnie uses "spa appointments" as a euphemism for Yeerk Pool visits, Jean, Steve, and Tom go along with it and start discussing the Yeerk Pool as if it were a spa. Jake is embarrassed.
• The Berensons get too deep into their conversation about Jean's soap opera.
  Jean: Unfortunately, where it flies completely off the rails, is when Rebecca sees Ivan and she’s so overcome with love that she gets back control—
  Steve: Of course she does. [Rolls his eyes]
  Jean: Right? Anyway, she keeps control long enough for them to have a whole conversation.
  [Everyone present makes a collective noise of disgust.]
  Jake: And they expect people to believe that?
  Jean: [Sighs] They believed the part where Emily got kidnapped by an evil scientist and dosed with a drug that turned her into a different actress, so it’s a toss-up.

Slaughterhouse-Five

• Tom says Jake isn't giving himself nearly enough credit for ending the war, which leads to this exchange:
  Tom: If he hadn't been one of the can’t-make-a-basketball-team dumb kids that ended up responsible for the planet…
  Eager guy: We’d all be dead right now?
  Tom: Technically that’s a best-case scenario, but sure, let’s go with that.
• Tom calls Visser Seventeen "yours not-so-truly."
• After explaining the flaws of the Yeerk Empire's power structure:
  Tom: Moral of the story: think for yourselves! Question your leaders— [Gestures at Jake] To the point of obnoxiousness!
  Jake: [Sighs] Thank you so much for your assistance.

Escape from L.A.

• Tom encounters past-Jake while he's half-morphed into Eva. In order to throw off Jake's suspicions, Tom says the least "him" thing he can think of... by pretending to be an Evangelist.
• When a pedestrian sees Tom emerge from the sewers, he says he "had a slight misunderstanding with [his] cousin" and gives her betting advice.
• When Eva and Tom get into the YMCA:
  “Actually,” Eva said, “we’re here on behalf of the Village People.”
  That was, no shit, the yeerk pool password. Presumably because you had to be a fucking alien to say shit like that — or “Sharing is caring,” for that matter — with a straight face.
• Eva doesn't miss a beat when she's pretending to be Visser One. She's able to get everyone to leave just by pointing in a general direction and claiming there's a problem.
• The Yeerk Pool's computers talk with "pre-canned empathy" and glorify Visser Three with a long list of titles.

How I Live Now

• Tom phones Jake, only for Marco to answer, who then pretends to be Tom.
  Tom: You realize I violently murdered the last person who stole my identity, right?
  Marco: You realize you’re a walking-talking party pooper, right?
• When Ax enters the Berensons' kitchen, he finds a bottle of Sriracha and prepares to drink it. Marco calls him out for this, so Ax pours it into a glass first.
• Jake explains to the others that there's nothing to do with the Yeerk in Rachel but wait, but he gets sidetracked:
  Jake: I think I’ve already beaten that horse to death at this point. [Glances at Cassie] Sorry.
  Cassie: I do actually know what an idiom is, thanks.
  Jake: Cool, ‘cause I don’t.
  Ax: It is a non-literal form of speech that is specific to region, Prince Jake. Reeeeeegion. For instance, when Marco says that he is, in his words, ‘freezing his balls off,’ he does not mean—
  Marco: Not in front of my mom!
  Eva: Oh, no. My poor innocent ears. I have never heard such language before.
• Later in the same scene, Jake asks Tom what he knows about Visser Seventeen's plans. Tom starts to object because he's not Visser Seventeen, but Eva interrupts him.
  Eva: Yes, we’re all perfectly aware you’re not him. And I am also perfectly aware that Visser One hated pea soup, had a secret fondness for Joni Mitchell, and once found one of Visser Three’s sarcastic comments to be both clever and well-timed.
  Tom's narration: I was surrounded by mean people and I hated all of them.
• Cassie morphs into a Yeerk, infests Tom, and accidentally opens too many of his memories, causing him to have a panic attack. Marco then tries to lighten the mood:
  <Cassie, did you try turning his brain off and turning it back on again? That usually helps.>
• Ax and Toby are both confused by the human Animorphs' group hug, so Tobias tells them it's how primates show affection. Tom and Toby exchange glances, and he narrates:
  We shared a brief moment of empathy for our mutual desire to disappear into a hole in the ground.
• When planning to take out the Blade Ship, Cassie suggests an Animorph classic— fly as high as possible and drop onto it as a whale. Tom is incredulous, especially when he learns it's worked for them three times in the past.
• Tom starts admiring the Blade ship as soon as he finds it.
  Rachel: <Should I give you two a minute alone?>
  Tom: Ha-ha.
• Chapter 13 has a Running Gag where Tom has to repeatedly dismiss the Blade ship's warnings, usually because it interpreted something he said as an invalid command. It culminates with this:
  “Dismiss all the fucking warnings,” I said.
  To my pleasant surprise, it accepted that command.
  • Tom sets up the Dracon cannons for cleaning as part of a bluff against the remaining Controllers, and can't shut it off when they surrender. Once again, a Yeerk empire AI cheerfully says "Have a nice day!" while giving the bad news.
• Marco is shocked to learn that Tom calls Eva "Visser Mom" when Rachel reads out Tom's contacts.
• "The entire crack team that had foiled the Yeerk Empire stared up at me in silence, looking like they’d missed their naptime."
• As it turns out, Ax does not know how to properly call emergency services.
  <On The Young and the Restless, one always begins by addressing the phone number, and then clearly stating the nature of the crime,> Ax explained helpfully. <For instance, ‘nine-one-one, there has been a murder!’ One then immediately hangs up without offering further information, so as to avoid wasting dispatchers’ valuable time.>

Everybody's Free (to Fear the Future)

• Paperwork Error
  • As soon as Chapman realises that Alloran is in the room in a human morph, they get into an argument over the events of The Andalite Chronicles. Eva gets them to stop by accidentally channeling Visser One.
    “No, I do not care what history you two have. You will be sitting down, you will be keeping your traps shut, and you will be handing me a Unix-compatible list of yeerk deployments to the greater D.C. area by tomorrow, or so help me God I will— will put you both in time-out.”

Other

• The short about Jake's experiences on forums post-war is funny throughout. Highlights include:
  • Most people assume that Tom is Eva's bodyguard. When Bball24 reveals that he's Visser Seventeen's former host and can therefore morph, a thread gets derailed by an argument about how much it costs to hire him.
  • There's a site called Tobias Watch where people post pictures of birds and insist they're Tobias. Jake upvotes a picture of a crow, just to be a troll.
• The possibility of one of the Animorphs bringing up the Nartec comes up. The author wrote a hypothetical exchange that devolves into Marco half-convincing Tom that Bigfoot is real.
• A-Town, the sitcom loosely based on the Animorphs' adventures that comes out ten years after the war ends. It faces the same problems that the Animorphs TV series had, along with all the trappings of corny teen dramas. Jake hate-watches it much to Tom's amusement, Cassie redirects the conversation if it comes up, Tobias demorphs on the spot and leaves if asked about it, Rachel blatantly plays dumb and makes up random details that make it clear that she's never watched it, Ax loves it but no one knows if he knows that it's based off him and his friends, and Marco actually cameos on the show to Jake's eternal frustration.
• On Tumblr, Sol posted a deleted scene from How I Live Now where the Animorphs reluctantly tell Tom and Eva about the Chee. Tom's immediate thought is that the Pemalites invented them to be sex toys.

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