Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: nothlitlifestyles on June 12, 2008, 12:18:03 AM
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I always wished that we could have learned a bit more about his character I mean if in fact the Chapman in The Andalite Chronicles is the same as the one throughout the series, then what changed? I mean your made to hate him in The Andalite Chronicles, I mean he is completely willing to sell out the human race, but then in book two you almost just gotta love him giving in to the yeerks just to prevent them from taking melissa and then gathering up the will to fight the yeerk to make sure it stays that way. Is it just one of those once you become a parent your whole world changes things or what?
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Probably.
Personally I love that move; Chapman is always referred to as the controller, even when we learn it was all for his kid, the whole series calls him chapman and you hate him. Then they introduce him as free human, and surprise, you still hate him!
Maybe more than the parent thing is that he just grew up. He's a teenage boy thrown in over his head, but he's still a punk and is just looking out for number one. Lots of folks like that, but as they get older they realize that not everything is about them, and there are whole bunch of things that can change your out look on life in the whatever something years since your days a rebel; just look at Principal Skinner!
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Actually,
up until he becomes a Controller I can understand his motives quite easily.
Remember, he was voluntary. To PROTECT his FAMILY.
Sure, he's self-serving, in the sense that his family is part of his whole self.
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People can change a lot as they get older, and I guess this is just one of these cases. I always liked how Chapman became a Controller to protect Melissa. And his fight with Innis 226 is one of the strongest and most sustained cases of host rebellion we see in the series. All the others only last a couple of seconds before the Yeerk regains control. This may be partly due to Innis being quite weak, and partly the fact that it was his child that was threatened, and it's amazing what all species will do to protect their children.
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yeah i thought it was strange we were positioned to feel sorry for him in book 2, but when they go in more depth about him when he was younger he was a little sh*t.
I guess yeah, people change when they become parents...
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What was Chapman meant to look like?! Beyond old and a little bald?! Was he tall? Did he have a moustache? Think he had grey hair?
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i pictured him looking the way he did in the show, same with Tom and Erek's human form
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To be honest I can see the similarities between chronicles Chapman and main series Chapman.
In both cases he's extremely selfish and has his price. In TAC he sells out humanity for . . . what? What did he sell us out for? We don't know, we just know he was stupid enough to try to make a deal with the Yeerks, and apparently still continue thinking they were his friends even after having the future Visser Three in his head, even after seeing what being a host was like.
In The Visitor he sells us all out for his daughter and is perfectly content to the rest of us suffer so long as his daughter is okay, ignoring the fact that if she isn't killed when the Yeerks win she'll be made into a controller then. As he threatens Visser Three you can see the total almost Andalite arrogance of the man to think he could be a threat to the entire invasion, rather than just screwing over poor Iniss 226 if he got him shoved into a looney bin, that overblown sense of self importance, that arrogance is totally the teenage brat who landed the Jahar on the Taxxon homeworld just because he didn't like the Andalites.
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A child changes everything . . . . I guess :-\
I've always wondered what the Chapmen that was a controller felt about Melissa feeling as if she wasn't loved and alone in her own house. I'm sure he felt like dirt about that. I'm sure you could say that's Karma for him selling out the world . . . even though he didn't know he had done it. He's the main reason the yeerks found out about earth.
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I always thought that Chapman was a selfish, self absorbed human when we first met him. He felt free to sell out the human race for a buck, like a CEO would abandon his workers. Yet when he and his wife had a daughter, Melissa, he realized that the world wasn't just about him anymore. Like any father, he wanted to make the world a better place for his child. The only choice he seemed to have was to volunteer himself in place of his precious child- as much as seeing her feel isolated every day must have pained him.
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In The Visitor he sells us all out for his daughter and is perfectly content to the rest of us suffer so long as his daughter is okay, ignoring the fact that if she isn't killed when the Yeerks win she'll be made into a controller then.
I agree entirely. Also, does anybody see the irony where he becomes a controller to save his own kid, yet sends hundreds of other kids to become controllers?
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Favortism for the win I guess, but yeah Chapman never really won any points with me, even if he was sacraficing himself for his daughter and even if it was enough for Rachel to hate him less it just ticked me off more. "She'll be taken later or killed, in the meantime you're selling everyone out!"
I did have sympathy for Iniss 226 though.
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Why do people get labeled sell outs for fighting hopeless battles? You think those people screaming and crying in cages are somehow better off than the ones just going along? What Chapman did was save his daughter from infestation. She was never killed or infested. I'd say he made the right choice.
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I on the whole feel like there were many layers unseen to the war and also to voluntary hosts, I don't think they were all conned into being hosts, I think some of them might have been, some of them might not have understood what they were doing, but I believe a few of them genuinely wanted to be hosts, and I also don't think the Yeerks were as evil as they're made out, I do think that many, like Aftran, just wanted to be free, some hosts, like those in the YPM, saw this and wanted to help find the middleground between the slavery of humanity under the Yeerks and the slavery of the Yeerks under the Andalites, and so no, not every voluntary host was a sellout or, as the Animorphs would have it, a traitor.
Chapman was.
He's a sellout for having selfish reasons for betraying humanity on the whole, not once but twice, the first time was due to ignorance and selfishness, the second time was . . . well, pretty much due to ignorance and selfishness.
If his wife threatened his daughter there were other roads he could have taken apart from allowing himself to be infested. He could have run away, taken the girl and tried to disappear, after all Visser Three couldn't even find Loren, it's clear his eyes and arms on earth aren't endless. Chapman might not have gotten far, but then again he might have gotten away, and just trying would have been better than giving up the way he did because in giving up all he did was staple a "don't open 'till x-mas" note to his daughter's forehead, he didn't save her, the end of the war did.
If the yeerks won, which he was helping them to do, she would have been infested, how could he not see that? Besides we don't know what happened to her at the end when the Yeerks pretty much went public, she might have been infested then, what would Chapman have done to stop it?
The flaw with his decision is that apart from willingly helping other people's daughters and sons become controllers just to protect his own for a limited time he has no way whatsoever of stopping them once they win the war. His only defense was being able to make himself look insane in front of parents and that was, for the time being, enough to dissuade Visser Three, once his sanity wouldn't have fallen into question for any reason, or once Iniss 226 destroyed his mind enough to leave him a babbling loon what would his defense have been?
Once the Yeerks won she'd be dead or infested, period. I mean Visser One might have left some humans on earth once the Yeerks had enough because of her kids but Visser Three would just breed more yeerks like he told Elfangor he would, or he'd have torched the planet and killed the last of the humans in an attempt to get the Animorphs, I mean do you really think that's beyond the guy?
It's sort of like a parent who throws their kid out of the way of a train, but lets the kid land in quicksand, they avoid a quick death but if they're not rescued by someone else they just die later after being alone and sad for a good long time, which is pretty much how Melissa seemed, sad and alone until the series stopped remembering she existed.
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If Chapman had run away with her, the goal would still be the same: Try to keep her from being infested in the hopes that someone else saved the planet. With the way he did it, she was still able to go to school and have a reasonably normal life.
I doubt he helped the Yeerks any more than other voluntaries.
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Chapman was in a lose lose situation. Way back in the Chronicles, he was a selfish jerk and sold out the human race.
But now... age seems to have made him realize how wrong that was - and his love for his daughter made him commit an impossible choice. Someone like Chapman never had a chance. If he refused, they would have made him an involuntary controller. After all, he's punished every day for his choice- the daughter he sacrificed himself for is left to cry over her math homework.
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If Chapman had run away with her, the goal would still be the same: Try to keep her from being infested in the hopes that someone else saved the planet. With the way he did it, she was still able to go to school and have a reasonably normal life.
She could have gone to a different school and lived a far more normal life with a father who wouldn't have mentally abused her. She wouldn't have to know what happened to her mother, just tell her that it was a trial seperation. How long would that last? Who knows.
And yes he'd still be waiting for someone else to win the war for humanity's sake, but at least he wouldt be allowing his body and influence to be used to help stop that someone. And again, he's got to be smart enough to know that his daughter would have been taken later on anyway, what must have happened to her when the pool ship parked itself in the middle of the city? The whole "oh no, we had a deal" thing wouldn't have mattered She was almost certainly infested then, thus he failed to protect her and still sold out humanity in the process for his own selfish reasons.
The only way I can see him being forced into the infestation would be if his wife confronted him with a large number of controlers there or nearby, this isn't the implication since she wouldn't have had to threaten him into complacency if this were the case, they could have just made him and Melissa involuntaries right then and there, it's more likely that he had some chance of getting away when the offer was made, thus they threatened the girl.
Do I feel sorry for him? No. Do I see similarities between him in the main series and the chronicles? Yes. And that's my point. He's always been a self important little man seeing things on a small scale, that's just who he is. It's not a bad thing in a main henchman and there's a very human quality to the character but he's not some unsung hero.
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I doubt that Mellissa was taken when the pool ship parked. What would be the point? I say almost certainly that she wasn't infested, so his goal was achieved.
And why would he send her to another school if they were in hiding. Yeerks tend to hunt down and kill people who know the truth. evidenced by them killing people in book eight, and attempting to kill Msarco and his father after the failed infestation.
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What would be the point? What was the point of anyone's infestation? She was a host, she was raw meat to the Yeerks, a pork chop, a hamburger, she was nothing to them but a consumable, why infest her? The better question is with morph capable humans and lots of hostless Yeerks and the deal with Chapman no longer necessary why not infest her? A young athlete, good physical health far as we know, already mentally damaged, throw in morphing capability and a loyal Yeerk and you've got yourself a frontline soldier the likes of which Rachel would have the slightest of hesitation killing. Why leave her, a friend of a known Animorph whom said Animorph might contact, free to make said contact and endanger a reasonably important Yeerk when she could have been used against the Animorphs instead, might even have been used to lay a trap for them? I'll actually grant that the fact that she never was used that way might indicate that she remained free, but it could also be that a proper chance never came up.
The objective is to infest as many humans as possible, Visser Three/One showed long before that he didn't care about his deal with Chapman so what exactly happened to her when there was no secret about the Yeerks? Both her parents were controllers, there was no one to take her away to safety, so either she was infested or she was on her own, how normal could life have been for her then? How much more dangerous with two controller parents? She had value as a host she was worthless to the Yeerks as a free dependant, worthless things get discarded. Chapman was only a host, whose only weapon had disappeared when no parents would actually show up at conferences to see him wig out in public, Iniss 226 didn't even care about the girl, he wouldn't have kept her as a pet the way Visser One planned to keep her kids.
Now does all this mean that she was definately infested? No. 'Course not. Maybe she was just so mind boggligly unimportant to the new Visser One that he never said "Melissa Chapman, you win an all expenses paid trip to tour the stars as a shock troop of the Yeerk Empire, bring that lucky kid right on down for infestation!" maybe over the course of the war Iniss 226 developed a sort of fondness of Melissa and sent her away to a non-infested relative before the pool ship descended, maybe they just kept up their charade with Melissa being even more confused as to why her parents didn't worry about the big alien space ship shooting down fighter jets and blowing up buildings. My word is far from holy script and it can be argued with but for now it remains the more likely and realistic explanation to me personally, that Melissa was infested at the end. The pros to the Yeerks outweigh the cons. That however is not the subject of discussion here, though if we want to make another topic dealing with Melissa's possible infestation that'd be fine with me. ;D
Actually I kind of wonder sometimes if she would have been infested much sooner, she fades into the background so completely that she could have married a Hork-Bajir and we wouldn't know it--no, stop discussing her, bad me, bad!
Anyway back to Chapman, if they had escaped why would he send her to another school? To keep up the illusion of normalcy? Well obviously she wouldn't go as Melissa Chapman, and again if they slipped under the initial net of the Yeerks, with Chapman not being that important in the grand scheme of things they wouldn't send bug figters after him, wouldn't be able to send very many police after him since they would only be able to rely on controller-cops, again a group not every police officer belonged to. The Yeerks would instead wait to see who starts talking about space invader slugs, when Chapman didn't they'd figure he wasn't a threat anyway, again they couldn't find Loren even after they had the link of Elfangor (or Al Fangor) and Tobias (Fangor?) they never (to our knowledge) got the guy from the park in book 3, they even (for reasons totally beyond me) never seemed to figure out that Karen had stopped showing up at they Yeerk Pool or that Aftran wasn't infesting her anymore. The Visser was far from omnipotent, escape was very possible and assuming Melissa could be reasoned with staying away and safe was also (Slightly less but still very) possible.
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I feel kind of guilty giving short responses to your posts, but let's say she was infested. How long was the timespan between open war, and the Yeerks losing? A week, at the most? Certainly no more. A few days of being infested is better than a few years, unless they managed to take her off the planet. Which is actually possible, given that she wasn't mentioned afterwards.
Still, I think he did a good enough job.
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Well let me start by saying that if she was infested a great big w00t for her because it probably means that she
A: Got the morphing power [w00t w00t!!] ;D
B: Also got to understand fully why her parends did love her and why they couldn't show it [kinda less w00t] :'(
It's one thing to be told "gee sweetie, I couldn't even blink if I wanted to" it's quite another for her to experience that horror and understand that her father underwent it willingly to protect her and both her parents fought it just to keep her safe.
And yes, its true she wouldn't have been infested for very long, assuming she was only infested then and not much sooner, and one could suppose that Chapman, therefore, somewhat achieved his means by putting off her infestation and limiting the trauma, but if she was infested it proves that he was a fool to try to make a bargain with a being he couldn't possibly understand and I continue to feel that unless his options were "Come quietly or find out what a Hork-Bajir is" which is unlikely there were other roads he could have taken, I'll grant however that since we don't know enough about how he was taken we can assume he used his slick personality to make a deal that turned out more to his advantage than to Visser's. Human creativity we'll call it.
I feel kind of guilty giving short responses to your posts
Well if your short responses can get me to ramble on like I do then really you're doing me (and possibly everyone else) a favor keeping them short, if you left a super long response when the heck would I ever stop talking? I'd be in limbo writing a response for days only to try to post it and get that message saying that someone else posted while I was writing and telling me to recheck my work so I'd do that, find something else to say, I'd get caught in a loop, technically you're keeping me sane by having mastered the short and sweet response ;)
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Hahahahah! You do have good points, though, JFalcon.
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Hahahahah! You do have good points, though, JFalcon.
Aww thanks ;D
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Chapman was just the Assistant Principal. Was the Principal infested? If not, why not?
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What I've seen with schools I've been too, the assistant principal usually deals with the kids and the events. That might be why they went with assistant principal.
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What I've seen with schools I've been too, the assistant principal usually deals with the kids and the events. That might be why they went with assistant principal.
Why not infest the Principal too? after all, the Yeerks are swimming with unhosted Yeerks!
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What? Do you mean unhosted humans?
I guess the real principal never got involved
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What? Do you mean unhosted humans?
I guess the real principal never got involved
I mean Yeerks who don't have hosts. Until they discovered Earth, the Yeerks had a severe shortage of hosts. I figure that the Yeerks should be able to infest the entire staff of the city's school system! Then recruit all the students into the Sharing.
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Yeah, generally the principal deals with big-deal school matters, the vice tends to handle student discipline type of stuff. More contact with the day-to-day events, probably why they went with that title.
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Yeah, generally the principal deals with big-deal school matters, the vice tends to handle student discipline type of stuff. More contact with the day-to-day events, probably why they went with that title.
In one book, I read of Jake using a bad word and being sent to talk to the PRINCIPAL about it, not the Assistant Principal.
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Only the Sith deal in absolutes, Tim. Etc.
Nothing in life is 100% black and white, this or that. There are exceptions to rules.
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Only the Sith deal in absolutes, Tim. Etc.
Nothing in life is 100% black and white, this or that. There are exceptions to rules.
If the Assistant Principal normally deals with student discipline, why would a mere bad word warrant a Jake visit to the Principal?
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Because reasons.
Also, which book was this? For some reason, I can't remember reading that part. :P
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Because reasons.
Also, which book was this? For some reason, I can't remember reading that part. :P
Book 20: The Discovery: Page 41. Marco tells Jake about David's plan to sell the morphing cube, and Jake says a word you shouldn't say in class, and is sent off to the Principal to discuss the matter.