Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: Gumby on June 29, 2009, 12:01:10 PM
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OK, if the you woke up one day, and you were in the animorphs town. Your entire life had been lived there, and your everything was normal, but you lived in the animorphs town. You know everything that is happening, and you wake up around the time of book ten. What would you do? Me? I would fight, try to join the animorphs, or form a rebel group, (Read the ELF) and fight the yeerks with guns, lasers, and blades. Give them a good ol' earth feeding, hot lead and cold steel.
What would you do?
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Work on a plan that consisted of destroying the Yeerk Pool, then getting inside the Pool Ship once it lands. The only way to win would be to take one of the big ships. Since destroying the Pool would force Visser Three to bring the Pool Ship down, taking that would be optimal. Though how to get inside, I'm not sure.
Guerilla fighting is good. But more radical things would be done to do real, lasting damage to the enemy.
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I would get my family to safety (after making sure they were free -- the three-day cabin trip, if you catch my drift -- of course, my mother and aunt would be most difficult to get this done, as they are as stubborn as I am -- my elder sister and her daughter would be easier, as my sister would do anything -- as I would -- to keep her daughter safe). Then I might find a way to sabotage -- with a device to eliminate me should I be captured . . .
Unrealistic? Maybe.
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I'd move
when it comes to fight-or-flight, I always choose flight
real estate values would plummet, anyway, so you'd want to get out as soon as possible.
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I'd move
when it comes to fight-or-flight, I always choose flight
real estate values would plummet, anyway, so you'd want to get out as soon as possible.
Hahaha! No there's some practical honesty.
I think I'd find the Animorphs and warn them of all the traps and tricks they're about to walk into. I would also probably try to help them come up with a better final plan...
All in all, they needed a lot of strategic help.
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Try to get several small groups of fighters together across the attacked area. Have each group in general contact, but with as little knowledge of the other groups as possible. Then there could be synchronized attacks, but if one fell, it wouldn't necessarily bring the rest down as well.
Get all that together, and, as previously mentioned, work on strategies.
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I'd look up the Berensons in the phone book and tell them they have a new ally. If that didn't work, I'd cross my fingers and hope I get a Yeerk in the YPM.
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I would probably become a voluntary controller.
*dodges the hate*
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Step 1: Retreat to survival cabin with 4-5 buddies and stay for at least 3 days
Step 2: Procure arms, preferably lots of .50 Beowulf assault rifles, .338 Lapua Magnum sniper rifles, and 12 gauge auto shottys. Also get lots of grenades & explosives.
Step 3: Wage guerrilla warfare
Step 4: ????
Step 5: PROFIT!
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I would probably become a voluntary controller.
*dodges the hate*
No hate to dodge, but I'd like to ask why.
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Not too sure on the specifics, but for starters I'd go find the morphing cube at the construction site. Not only does that stop David becoming a problem, it would give me the power to morph and a way of convincing the Animorphs to let me join the fight.
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I would probably become a voluntary controller.
*dodges the hate*
No hate to dodge, but I'd like to ask why.
Well, firstly I think that the idea of 'holing up' and fighting with guns and whatnot is unrealistic and suicidal. Running is probably the best option, but really, the Yeerks are "everywhere", so maybe not that practical.
Finding the Animorphs is possible, but it's not likely that they would accept your help. Remember they don't have the cube at this point. They may be a bit more trusting since it's so early on, but it would be a huge security risk for them. In fact, I might feel as if my presence would hinder their effort more than it would help it.
If I became a voluntary Controller I would, obviously, hope for a peace movement controller or at least one that is persuadable. I think I would have an easier chance of helping a Yeerk see other options if I went into it voluntarily. Yeerks are accustomed to their hosts kicking and screaming (human), not comprehending (Hork or Gedd) or being too overcome by instinct to care who is controlling them (Taxxon). I may be "selling out", but I think that by cooperating with a Yeerk from the beginning I'd have a better chance at starting a friendship. I strongly believe that the majority of Yeerks are more like Aftran than Esplin, they are just products of their culture and can be brought around to see reason.
And then I'd have a companion all of the time :)
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Huh. That's actually a good idea, Terenia.
Of course, there's always the off chance that you DO get someone like Esplin, but who knows.
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Huh. That's actually a good idea, Terenia.
Of course, there's always the off chance that you DO get someone like Esplin, but who knows.
Yeah, I figure it's a risk, but no more of a risk than screaming my head off while firing a machine gun into the Yeerk Pool. If I'm enslaved by a psycho-Yeerk there's always a CHANCE of regaining freedom, or changing Yeerks one day.
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I can see what you're saying... but I value personal freedom and privacy too much to go along with that. I surely wouldn't go in all gung-ho; that's a clear death wish. I would try to hinder the Yeerks in any way I could, but not that directly. If I were to find the Animorphs, all I would do would be to provide some better strategy, and interject some common sense; don't throw away those dracons for one thing.
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I would spend my time getting conclusive proof that the yeerks existed and get it to the president or to the head of the U.N. or something so steps could be taken to fight it. First I would find a couple of people I could isolate for three days. Once checked my friends and I would do the said above.
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Yeah, I figure it's a risk, but no more of a risk than screaming my head off while firing a machine gun into the Yeerk Pool.
Rambo is a good movie but doesn't work in Real Life. I'd personally try to sneak into the Yeerk pool a rapid dispersal container of Sarin or VX gas. Heck even Hydrogen Cyanide (Zyklon B) or Tabun would work to completely devastate ANY organism in the Yeerk pool.
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Rambo is a good movie but doesn't work in Real Life. I'd personally try to sneak into the Yeerk pool a rapid dispersal container of Sarin or VX gas. Heck even Hydrogen Cyanide (Zyklon B) or Tabun would work to completely devastate ANY organism in the Yeerk pool.
There's three problems with that plan. One is that we do not know if those poisons are even soluble in the Kandrona fluid in which the Yeerks live, and two, we don't know if they are lethal to them. For all we know, Cyanide could be an essential nutrient for Yeerks. Their metabolisms are like nothing on Earth. Three, as a civilian, how do you intend to acquire chemical weapons? Most nations even agree to not use them in modern warfare. You could technically make some cyanide based compounds, but not the in quantities it would take to saturate the entire Yeerk Pool complex.
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Rambo is a good movie but doesn't work in Real Life. I'd personally try to sneak into the Yeerk pool a rapid dispersal container of Sarin or VX gas. Heck even Hydrogen Cyanide (Zyklon B) or Tabun would work to completely devastate ANY organism in the Yeerk pool.
There's three problems with that plan. One is that we do not know if those poisons are even soluble in the Kandrona fluid in which the Yeerks live, and two, we don't know if they are lethal to them. For all we know, Cyanide could be an essential nutrient for Yeerks. Their metabolisms are like nothing on Earth. Three, as a civilian, how do you intend to acquire chemical weapons? Most nations even agree to not use them in modern warfare. You could technically make some cyanide based compounds, but not the in quantities it would take to saturate the entire Yeerk Pool complex.
Hydrogen cyanide is easily available commerically. Also why would you disperse them in Kandrona? You disperse them in the atmosphere and kill all the hosts.
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Then the still living Yeerks would get new hosts. Remember, it's only once for a few hours every three days. The vast majority of controllers would still be out and about. The best thing would be to try to poison the pool, starving them out.
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Actually, I think turning the complex into a crater would be effective enough.
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I wouldn't bring it up front that directly. If a Blade ship decided to come down and dracon everything in sight, we'd be helpless. If you poison the pool, you still kill Yeerks, the only difference is that they'd be helpless for a while, and it could be blamed on others, like an accident. Who's fault was it that the oatmeal confiscation shed leaked into the pool?
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You need to do something that will cause the Pool Ship to need to land, so you can take it. that means getting rid of the ground base. Not killing some people, and making them have to clean things up so they can get back to normal.
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It's not that simple. You just don't waltz on up to the Pool ship and take it. The Animorphs had a complex plan based on pre-existing connections and a bit of luck. We'd have none of that.
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Unless you take the Pool Ship, or possibly the Blade Ship, you can't win. Not as i see it.
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You can delay for as long as possible. If it were up to me, I would delay until I could figure out how to do two things.
Give undeniable evidence to known non-controllers high up in the government/military, and find a way to lure the Pool Ship somewhere into the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
After the Pool Ship has met some nuclear weapons, present evidence to uninformed nations around the world, as to not provoke conflict for violations of nuclear treaties.
Problem solved, or at least until they bring more ships.
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You think the Pool Ship wouldn't be able to stop nuclear missles? Shooting them down would be easy, with the guns and by deploying some bugfighters. And I doubt the resulting explosions and radiation would penetrate the shields.
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I said ocean for a reason. A nuke coming up from the water would be the real payload. ICBM's would just be distractions.
I do believe nuclear weapons could harm them. There have been instances in the books where they show that force fields aren't impenetrable, and demanding too much energy can overload them. A couple/few nukes should definitely be capable of that.
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Well, it might work. But how would you get it to come down, anyway? The only reason it came down in the books is to keep the controllers on the ground from dieing en mass. Actually, they might be able to just be sent up there to stay, but for whatever reason that didn't happen in the books.
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I think that these "blow them to smithereens" plans are horrible. You realize that you are talking about sentient creatures here? They aren't all evil, and one of the few things that we as humans have to rely on is our humanity. In a war obviously death is inevitable, but you should seek the most effective means of winning with the lowest loss of life possible.
You can't hate the Yeerks for what they are. Many of the Yeerks in that pool could be YPM Yeerks. Or young Yeerks who have never had a host. Or Yeerks who could easily be persuaded to find a better way. Not to mention all of the hosts that would be killed.
Civil unrest amongst the Yeerks is, in my opinion a more effective and less costly way of achieving victory.
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Not too sure on the specifics, but for starters I'd go find the morphing cube at the construction site. Not only does that stop David becoming a problem, it would give me the power to morph and a way of convincing the Animorphs to let me join the fight.
I like that idea. The main thing that drew me into the books was my long ago childhood wish to be able to turn into different animals. ;) To be honest, I don't think I'd be much help in a fight as I don't think I could bring myself to hurt another living creature/person. :(
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If we could get out I would get my kid tot the safest part of the world as possible and stay with him and fight anything that came near.
If I had to fight I would bring down as many nasty little slugs as possible.
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First I would figure out if any of my family are taken. I already know my dad is not since he is home all day so no way to leave every 3 days unless there is a hidden door to the yeerk pool in my own house. Everyone else in my family that is a different story. Once i figure out they are not taken or get the yeerks out of them . I will move on to finding out if Zohrra is taken or not. Hopefully not or i would be all sad and stuff. How to do this will be very hard considering he is miles and an Ocean away. Next once I'm sure he is free somehow ...need to plan that out more.. we will move to an isolated area maybe in Alaska or something and live alone there. I would fight but i don't see myself doing much help if any. I would do better as a survivor and hope that those who have the power to fight better than i do . I would help in other ways if possible but i don't see myself going all out and mass bombing the yeerk pool. Like some have said before not all Yeerks are evil most are nice and sensible people they just happen to be parasites
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OK, if the you woke up one day, and you were in the animorphs town. Your entire life had been lived there, and your everything was normal, but you lived in the animorphs town. You know everything that is happening, and you wake up around the time of book ten. What would you do? Me? I would fight, try to join the animorphs, or form a rebel group, (Read the ELF) and fight the yeerks with guns, lasers, and blades. Give them a good ol' earth feeding, hot lead and cold steel.
What would you do?
Woowww, first time i'd do is lock up my families and close friends to make sure that they're still on my side.. And next step is join animorphs-if i had luck to meet them
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I think that these "blow them to smithereens" plans are horrible. You realize that you are talking about sentient creatures here? They aren't all evil, and one of the few things that we as humans have to rely on is our humanity. In a war obviously death is inevitable, but you should seek the most effective means of winning with the lowest loss of life possible.
You can't hate the Yeerks for what they are. Many of the Yeerks in that pool could be YPM Yeerks. Or young Yeerks who have never had a host. Or Yeerks who could easily be persuaded to find a better way. Not to mention all of the hosts that would be killed.
Civil unrest amongst the Yeerks is, in my opinion a more effective and less costly way of achieving victory.
Ahhhh! Thank you! I was getting worried reading some of these plans. I think I'll be stealing your 'voluntary controller' plan...that makes the most sense, and is the most realistic to me. :-\
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I think that these "blow them to smithereens" plans are horrible. You realize that you are talking about sentient creatures here? They aren't all evil, and one of the few things that we as humans have to rely on is our humanity. In a war obviously death is inevitable, but you should seek the most effective means of winning with the lowest loss of life possible.
You can't hate the Yeerks for what they are. Many of the Yeerks in that pool could be YPM Yeerks. Or young Yeerks who have never had a host. Or Yeerks who could easily be persuaded to find a better way. Not to mention all of the hosts that would be killed.
Civil unrest amongst the Yeerks is, in my opinion a more effective and less costly way of achieving victory.
Ahhhh! Thank you! I was getting worried reading some of these plans. I think I'll be stealing your 'voluntary controller' plan...that makes the most sense, and is the most realistic to me. :-\
You know I would find you and totally set you free
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Well if I know everything as of book 10 I'd find a Chee, find some way to get my hands on the Blade Ship . . . once I had that (and . . . you know, a crew) I'd out run the pool ship get to really learn how to use the ship properly for about a week with the help of said Chee, and then, so that said Chee didn't end up violating any of their internal laws, try to negotiate with the Yeerks while similtaneously requesting Andalite help since as of book ten we didn't know what kind of selfish jerks the Andalites were so like the Animorphs themselves (who may or may not be on my Blade Ship crew) we'd probably trust them.
And thus the Andalites and Humans would form what I'd call the Star League, the Blade Ship, which I would rename Invisible Truth, would be the flag ship of the Star League Defense Force, and then we'd start the Babylon project mostly so I could fill my Blade Ship with Star Furies instead of those clunky bug fighters, building the first four Babylon stations out of legos and knocking them over so we could just skip on to Babylon #5 (or else skip to #6 so we don't get sued) then, with humanity and Andalite....ity united and touring the stars . . . I'd just wait for the human need to conquer to set in, watch as humans begin to act like their usual pushy selves and tick the Andalites off, I'd watch, wait, prepare and hope it happened before the small personal kandrona I kept in my quarters wore out and my human host freed himself, and when the time came, when Humans and Andalites waged their war Invisible Truth and a fleet of trusted vessels would jump into the Yeerk's solar system and decimate the Andalite fleet presence there, free the rest of the Yeerks and take both humans and Andalites while they're too busy playing war, then, with myself as the new Emperor of the council, I'd take my solar empire and pay a visit to those mysterious Kelbrid thingies.
Oh, and did I mention muahahahahahahahaha ha!
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If it happened around book 52-53-54, I'd form a group of free humans, and stock up on guns, swords, and dracons. I know they are sentient and all, but if they're invading us, I'd fight anyway, they are sentient, but they have no right to enslave another sentient race. And for aftrans thing, on humans and pigs, yeerks and humans being the same, that's wrong. Pigs are NOT sentient, they're dumb animals. Humans, are fully sentient, and are aware they are being taken over and tormented. I'd blast away at the slugs.
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I'd probably join the Yeerks. I mean, there's three races. I don't like humanity, but I do like lasers. The Andalites and the Yeerks both have lasers. However, the Andalites would rather exterminate all of us before actually helping, and I share much in common with Yeerks (including the fact that I don't like humanity), so I think becoming a Controller makes sense. And because I know everything that's going to happen, I'll go tell Tom that his brother's an Andalite bandit and then Tom will either kill him or take him hostage, causing the Yeerks to win and end up causing the alternate future from #41.
I think I'd get along with my Yeerk. Maybe he even lets me have free will for a while. He'd probably trust me enough to know I wouldn't rebel. I'd eventually rise up to a respectable rank, like sub-visser. Hell, they'll probably just visser me from the start because I just won them planet Earth (Suck on that, Esplin 9466!).
Doesn't that sound superficial? I'd sell out the human race for frickin laser guns. Then again, I've always wanted to hold the fate of the human race in my hands, just to see what I'd really do with it.
Better case scenario for humanity: I try to tell Visser Three instead and he chops my head off. I remember that one Controller from one of the early books who thought that the bandits might be human but then the other guy told him "try telling Visser Three that." Visser Three obviously didn't believe humans would be capable of putting up that much of a fight.
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No offence, But I'd kill you.
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No offence, But I'd kill you.
No offense taken. All's fair in love and war.
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I would probably help in the killing lol
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XD well i like teh idea of having my own free will
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You know, you just throw around the idea of giving up your body to a hostile alien empire and suddenly you have people screaming to tear your head off.
But really, if it did happen I'd probably just lay low. I wouldn't be much good in a fight and any plan I'd try to execute would be rather ambitious. I'm not really sure the Animorphs would be so quick to trust some stranger, anyway, so I don't think I'd try to contact them.
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I would ask for chee help to find one of visser 3's sharing things, and take two things.
1. A group of people to help hold off security.
2. A .50 Barret rifle, scoped.
I would find visser, set up a defensive perimeter, and line up, and, wel, you get the rest...
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As pointed out in #38 killing Visser Three won't really help matters much. In fact, it'll probably make it worse - they'll just send another to replace him, and it'll give them a reason to wage all-out war.
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its kind of with teh saying better to have an enemy you know than an Ally you don't
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Basic fact of humanity:
We want to join groups and be a part of something, for losers this is a bit difficult so they solve this problem by joining things
In peace: join the sharing/scientology/Moonies/nazi party etc
In war: Join the Anti-Yeerk resistance/regular army/Irgun/Al-Qaeda etc. That is to say that the slow invasion method of Visser 1 turns humanity's social needs into a weakness for the yeerks, but in Visser3's all out war our sociability is a great strength.
I would start my own guerrilla army (originally consisting of friends later capturing hosts and starving the yeerk), place my family in safety and use standard terrorist tactics in order to kill as many yeerks civilian and military, if any freed host turned out to be voluntary i would either behead them, beat them to death, burn them alive eventually i would start hanging drawing and quartering them I would video tape this and then put on the yeerk version of youtube/the news as a warning to other voluntaries.
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Yeah, because there's absolutely no justification for anyone being voluntary. amirite? [/sarcasm]
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You know, my friend and I discussed this once. He said that if any Yeerks got in his head, they would try and get out ASAP. His mind is a horrible place. It would be like them infesting the Joker.
Me, I'd probably try and help the Animorphs with tactics. I'd most likely be a tactician for them, I'd have to prove myself though. I'd most likely get them to trust me with the whole watch me for three days thing.
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Becoming a voluntary controller is worse than Oswald Mosley and his friends who betrayed Britain to the Nazis.
To betray ones' country is bad, to betray your whole species is even worse.
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I would buy earplugs.
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how much do i know? everything ive learned from reading the animorphs books? id probably track down an animorph, and warn them of everything thats going to happen, especially about david. id find the morphing cube, and the time matrix and hopefully pretty quickly fix up the universe.
without any knowledge though, id probably end up following some cute girl to a sharing meeting and becoming a controller. then again, given how screwed up my brain is, the experience would probably be worse for the yeerk than for me.
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Anyone who doesn't want to read a rant, please ignore the following...
Basic fact of humanity:
We want to join groups and be a part of something, for losers this is a bit difficult so they solve this problem by joining things
In peace: join the sharing/scientology/Moonies/nazi party etc
In war: Join the Anti-Yeerk resistance/regular army/Irgun/Al-Qaeda etc. That is to say that the slow invasion method of Visser 1 turns humanity's social needs into a weakness for the yeerks, but in Visser3's all out war our sociability is a great strength.
I would start my own guerrilla army (originally consisting of friends later capturing hosts and starving the yeerk), place my family in safety and use standard terrorist tactics in order to kill as many yeerks civilian and military, if any freed host turned out to be voluntary i would either behead them, beat them to death, burn them alive eventually i would start hanging drawing and quartering them I would video tape this and then put on the yeerk version of youtube/the news as a warning to other voluntaries.
Becoming a voluntary controller is worse than Oswald Mosley and his friends who betrayed Britain to the Nazis.
To betray ones' country is bad, to betray your whole species is even worse.
Only if you are that species. You don't mind Aftran and the rest of the peace movement, no? Or even Aldrea, Elfangor or Ax?
Betraying your species is bad, but torturing to death another member of your own species is much, much worse.
What about people who have already been betrayed by their own species? People in fear of their lives from dictatorships, seeking asylum and being turned away? If I didn't have food or a roof over my head or a way to look after and educate my children, and the Yeerks offered me all those things, I'd happily become a voluntary controller.
In a less extreme scenario- I know what it's like to be bullied at school. (I am so glad I'm now at uni :D) Luckily I had a loving family at the time and some great friends outside school, but if I hadn't had them (i.e. I'd been like Tobias) and people from the Sharing offered me the first hint of kindness I'd ever seen, I'd take them over my own species who'd shown me nothing but indifference or cruelty.
And if I saw videos circulating of voluntaries being burnt alive... okay it might scare me into fighting the Yeerks, but I'd secretly like the Yeerks much better than the human resistance.
Plus most voluntaries don't really know what they're getting into- when we see Tobias get infested in Megamorphs 4, it's not like they fully explain it to him. He doesn't understand that he's betraying his species, he just thinks its some weird initiation ritual. And even then he tries to back out at the last minute.
I have to condemn completely the idea of burning anyone alive, no matter what they've done. Thankfully, I don't think that's something you'd really do, voodooqueen, if it came down to it. Or at least not as easily as you say you would do it.
Sorry for the long and slightly angry post, guys.
I would buy earplugs.
LOL yeah! I already have earplugs, so I'm all set :)
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Kharina said it better than I probably could have said it. Sometimes going against your species is not a bad thing.
Though it would be a more simple decision if there wasn't a war going on. If they weren't invading, and were just looking for voluntary hosts peacefully, then it would be better.
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Yeah, but in that case there would have been nothing wrong with being a voluntary, because you wouldn't be betraying anyone. The only person you'd be affecting was yourself. I think the Yeerks would have many more voluntaries if they weren't being forced to betray their species and family and friends. It wouldn't be everyone's thing, but it could be really positive for some.
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well if the yeerks asked and were willing to be honest business partners, then it would be a great way for the human race to get rid of criminals/mentally ill/retarded etc... completely wrong and immoral but very useful for humanity.
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One can postulate some sort of inhibitor mechanism,some buffer between the mind and the yeerk. Of course, if you can do that, then you can probably just build a robot body.
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and as for the cruel and unusual methods of execution... this would be more to provide dicentives for treason. after all it worked in the middle ages and people then found public executions entertaining so after enough people were killed by the yeerks (remember the yeerks were basically going to blow cities from orbit think of the tragedy of burning paris to the ground) most of the human race may start to feel the same...
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well if the yeerks asked and were willing to be honest business partners, then it would be a great way for the human race to get rid of criminals/mentally ill/retarded etc... completely wrong and immoral but very useful for humanity.
At least you acknowledge it would be completely wrong. Hopefully that would stop us doing it, but then we're humans- I can picture it happening.
Whether the Yeerks would accept it is a different matter. Something tells me they would hope for more than drug addicts and criminals, who usually have a lot of psychological problems.
and as for the cruel and unusual methods of execution... this would be more to provide dicentives for treason. after all it worked in the middle ages and people then found public executions entertaining so after enough people were killed by the yeerks (remember the yeerks were basically going to blow cities from orbit think of the tragedy of burning paris to the ground) most of the human race may start to feel the same...
I understand it would be a useful way of making people frightened to help the Yeerks, but it's still completely and utterly wrong. And in the long run, people might begin to see the Yeerks as better and more humane than humans. (And yes, word choice of humane is intentional). E.g. people might ask their Yeerk to have them put in the cages during feeding and shout and pretend to struggle, but be perfectly cooperative when the Yeerk is actually in them- and no outsider can tell the difference. But I think that difference would be important to the Yeerk- it would make it easier for the Yeerk to concentrate on other things etc.
And I think most of us have moved on from the middle ages. There will always be some sadists, but most humans (at least those in democratic countries) now aren't used to public executions and torture, so are less likely to see it as a fun entertainment.
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selling the yeerks undesirables would be immoral but it would be effective way to remove those elements from the human gene pool.
I think a host's psychological problems can be overcome by the yeerks, as Edriss said, she found Jenny Lines easy to control... As for the whole Esplin is nuts because of Alloran's ego, perhaps isolation and not having other yeerks with similar hosts and having the same host for so long exacerbated.
People watch horror movies of innocent people being slaughtered, surely a few years of the yeerks slaughtering millions to billions of humans would delight in the execution of people who were selling out the human race, it would be a gradual process as well: first shooting voluntaries, then beheading, then beating them to death, then a few other things, then burning or hanging drawing and quartering (dependent on gender as it was in the middle ages). The beauty of fighting aliens is that whatever you do you always be better then them, this is why giant insects and other horrors feauture so much in sci fi (like Starship troopers and Enders Game deconstructs this concept) because you can kill and kill but you never have to humanise them.
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Voodooqueen sounds as bad as Yorick.
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It is not about what is nice but what is necessary.
Scenario 1: Yeerks invade in an open war scenario, far better is the species that occasionally torturers traitors/voluntaries than the species that invaded their planet and killed billions of people.I think to preserve earth's natural environment, human art and literature, freedom, democracy, joy and love basically everything that one loses if you become a controller would justify anything. It is not the tactic but the cause that really matters (within reason and with common sense and within proportion, i am not justified in torturing/nuking New Zealand over a fishing dispute, but nuking hiroshima was acceptable given the circumstances of world war 2 and probably saved Japanese lives as well.
There are degrees and distinctions, a holocaust denier (I think it was Diana Mitford) eventually said that it didn't matter if Hitler killed 6 million or 6 people because 1 is still taking a human life (roughly) who ever said this was an idiot, degree does matter, how far and why you do things matters.
Scenario 2: Yeerks cut a deal and the human race is forced to compromise.
People like Kharina and Terenia (and all the other people who said they would become voluntaries) are probably really nice, intelligent people in real life (i am guessing on the basis of numerous posts) and in such a situation they might volunteer themselves out of pity for the yeerks or ideas of self sacrifice. This would be a tragedy, as they have a lot to contribute to the human race as individuals and as parents/members of the human gene pool. Since Yeerks who are able to infest Gedds and Hork-Bajir just fine (barring a few linguistic problems) don't require their hosts to be law abiding, intelligent or sane as a yeerk basically overrides a hosts brain and controls actions, the intellect of the host is irrelevant it may even damage them (as people discuss do high intelligence hosts drive yeerks insane) therefore it would be a tragedy if someone as intelligent and as good as Kharina where to become a controller, none of her great characteristics would matter or be useful to anyone, far better that if one had to make this terrible compromise with the yeerks, that you give them the people who cannot contribute and whose presence in the gene pool is damaging... There would be potential for abuse: originally just criminals, then retarded people, then the profoundly mentally ill (rather than just people who are little depressed) then the welfare dependents, then the third world etc... but barring that sort of sliding slope, it would be a win/win situation: Yeerks get dumb, easy to manage hosts, humans pay fewer taxes and don't have to worry about Earth turning into Idiocracy...
Who is Yorick?
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Yorick was a guy that hated Yeerks with a passion, and even after Aftran couldn't see why anyone would sympathise with them.
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Well the yeerks certainly do get a lot of unwarranted woobiefication. I can understand them and i feel sorry for them, being blind slugs and all, and it's not like the average yeerk civilian was deliberately melicious. But in the end invading another planet is always wrong and the defenders have blank cheque when it comes to permitted retaliation.
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Alas, poor Yorick...
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It is not about what is nice but what is necessary.
Scenario 1: Yeerks invade in an open war scenario, far better is the species that occasionally torturers traitors/voluntaries than the species that invaded their planet and killed billions of people.I think to preserve earth's natural environment, human art and literature, freedom, democracy, joy and love basically everything that one loses if you become a controller would justify anything. It is not the tactic but the cause that really matters (within reason and with common sense and within proportion, i am not justified in torturing/nuking New Zealand over a fishing dispute, but nuking hiroshima was acceptable given the circumstances of world war 2 and probably saved Japanese lives as well.
There are degrees and distinctions, a holocaust denier (I think it was Diana Mitford) eventually said that it didn't matter if Hitler killed 6 million or 6 people because 1 is still taking a human life (roughly) who ever said this was an idiot, degree does matter, how far and why you do things matters.
Scenario 2: Yeerks cut a deal and the human race is forced to compromise.
People like Kharina and Terenia (and all the other people who said they would become voluntaries) are probably really nice, intelligent people in real life (i am guessing on the basis of numerous posts) and in such a situation they might volunteer themselves out of pity for the yeerks or ideas of self sacrifice. This would be a tragedy, as they have a lot to contribute to the human race as individuals and as parents/members of the human gene pool. Since Yeerks who are able to infest Gedds and Hork-Bajir just fine (barring a few linguistic problems) don't require their hosts to be law abiding, intelligent or sane as a yeerk basically overrides a hosts brain and controls actions, the intellect of the host is irrelevant it may even damage them (as people discuss do high intelligence hosts drive yeerks insane) therefore it would be a tragedy if someone as intelligent and as good as Kharina where to become a controller, none of her great characteristics would matter or be useful to anyone, far better that if one had to make this terrible compromise with the yeerks, that you give them the people who cannot contribute and whose presence in the gene pool is damaging... There would be potential for abuse: originally just criminals, then retarded people, then the profoundly mentally ill (rather than just people who are little depressed) then the welfare dependents, then the third world etc... but barring that sort of sliding slope, it would be a win/win situation: Yeerks get dumb, easy to manage hosts, humans pay fewer taxes and don't have to worry about Earth turning into Idiocracy...
Who is Yorick?
Well, actually the two species are about the same. Consider- the human that hurts a voluntary has hurt another member of their OWN SPECIES. At the same time this human has probably eaten battery farmed meat or used a medicine tested on animals or done something similar. The Yeerks, when they kill or infest humans, are only hurting a member of a different species- an animal. As Aftran said: "You're our meat!" As humans do this all the time, and many of them only do it for fun (all those sadists who'll set a kitten on fire etc.), we can't exactly take the higher moral ground here. Yeerks do however often hurt other Yeerks- just take v1s starvation which was a public execution and was somewhat similar to hanging drawing and quartering- similar pain levels.
So humans and Yeerks are remarkably and astoundingly similar. In fact, on their respective planets they're both relatively physically inferior (OK we're not quite as bad as Yeerks but compared to many other animals on Earth...) but have achieved a dominant status through intelligence and through using other species and machinery to achieve what they physically cannot (dogs, horses, oxen etc. in our case, gradually replaced by tractors, cars etc.)
OK, not sure how that started with me ranting at voodooqueen for senseless cruelty and ended up with me comparing humans and Yeerks. Sorry about the rambling.
Well the yeerks certainly do get a lot of unwarranted woobiefication. I can understand them and i feel sorry for them, being blind slugs and all, and it's not like the average yeerk civilian was deliberately melicious. But in the end invading another planet is always wrong and the defenders have blank cheque when it comes to permitted retaliation.
What the Yeerks did was wrong, but it does not give us 'blank cheque' for retaliation. We shouldn't retaliate at all, we should do only what is necessary to defend our planet. Just because someone is in the wrong by insulting me or even hitting me does not mean I am entitled to murder them and torture and murder their kids. I would be entitled to grab them and hold them back to stop them punching me again, or someone else would be entitled to do that for me. If they couldn't hold them, they might be entitled to knock them out. But no more than they needed to to stop them being a threat.
It's the same with wars. If someone threatens you (or someone else), you defend, but you don't start committing acts of revenge.
Or if you prefer, the old 'two wrongs don't make a right' saying that my parents were always fond of quoting to me :P
I'm not attempting to absolve the Yeerks or the voluntary hosts of all blame. It was wrong for .e.g. Taylor to do what she did. But the whole point of Animorphs is that KAA pretty much always strives to make us understand WHY. With Aftran, with Taylor, even with Visser One and Visser Three. We maybe still don't agree with what they did, but we can see where they're coming from and empathise with them.
Finally, what you mentioned above about having aliens as enemies meaning you can kill and kill and never give them any humanity- might be the case in Star Wars or even something like Lord of the Rings where no-one ever considers that orcs might have feelings- but reversing that idea was one of the main points of Animorphs. It was the WHOLE POINT of books like number 19. I think it's pretty obvious that KAA spent the whole series of books trying to make us see shades of grey.
The first time I read number 19 I was yelling at the book: "Just kill her, she's a Yeerk for heaven's sake! If Marco can nearly kill his own mother to get the Yeerk, you can kill some random kid you don't know!"
I came out of the book with an absolute Aftran obsession. Now that's good writing :P (You can tell I have an Aftran obsession by the fact that this long post came back to her in the end. this often happens).
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There is nothing wrong with retaliation if it is proportionate, and if someone blew up Mexico City (and frankly I would rather it be Mexico City than Paris or London) any retaliation would be proportionate, if some one blew up Paris or London (specifically the art galleries and museums in those cities-the people are awful :P) one would be justified in invading their planet and burning every one of their pools.
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There is nothing wrong with retaliation if it is proportionate, and if someone blew up Mexico City (and frankly I would rather it be Mexico City than Paris or London) any retaliation would be proportionate, if some one blew up Paris or London (specifically the art galleries and museums in those cities-the people are awful :P) one would be justified in invading their planet and burning every one of their pools.
..And the people from Mexico would be saying just the opposite.
What the Yeerks did was wrong, but it does not give us 'blank cheque' for retaliation. We shouldn't retaliate at all, we should do only what is necessary to defend our planet. Just because someone is in the wrong by insulting me or even hitting me does not mean I am entitled to murder them and torture and murder their kids. I would be entitled to grab them and hold them back to stop them punching me again, or someone else would be entitled to do that for me. If they couldn't hold them, they might be entitled to knock them out. But no more than they needed to to stop them being a threat.
Now we go from one pole to another. It's one thing to torture someones kids, and another to take a Chee-like peace approach. What is it about shades of gray again? The middle ground that's different to both sides.
Now, I am one who tends to favor logic over morality, and if someone threatens me with lethal force, I will use lethal force on whomever was threatening me. Just them, not their families and neutral fellow countrymen.
But I do agree with the concept of 19. In every alien movie, watching an alien getting slaughtered has no where near the effect as watching the same done to a human. In fact, the system used to rate movies has separate baselines for violence with humans and violence with non-humans. That's why an alien getting gored is PG-13 but a human getting shot is R. Back to topic, it's very difficult to align an alien with humanity, and even when done properly, it won't affect all of the audience the same way. For instance, the recent movie District 9 spent a long time trying to give the alien characters emotion. Yet, many people still saw them as "just the aliens". It's difficult.
Yes, there is the Yeerk Peace Movement. Yes, there is Visser Three. People always use those to argue Yeerk friendliness/hostility. Yet everyone ignores the 80% of the Yeerks that are apathetic, and don't really care one way or another. They'll take a host that's given to them, but they don't have a desire to cause suffering. Not one extreme or another. Look at human politics. You have the extremely conservative authoritarian republicans, and on the other end you have the almost socialist extremely liberal democrats. That's not all the people, just the poles. You have the more centered sides, the moderates, and even then, the apathetic people who don't care.
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The reason I said London and Paris would be worse than Mexico City is based on the Kyoto/Hiroshima principle: Originally the nuclear bomb was to be dropped on Kyoto which is far more significant but Henry L Stimson who went there for his honeymoon said it was too beautiful, so industrilised Hiroshima was chosen instead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_L._Stimson
It goes back to the make terrible decisions thing: If you have to blow up a huge city, better it be ugly like Dresden (after it was leveld in WW2), Hiroshima, Mexico City, Soweto etc. Than massively important to art and history like London, Paris, Rome, Beijing, Kyoto, Jerusalem, Cairo, etc.
There are a few borderline cases like Tehran which is ugly today but has some beautiful buildings, whilst Jerusalem has tacky churches and inappropriate mosques but still has the wailing wall and old olive trees.
Since the yeerks seem to lack visual arts (Visser 3's collection of torture implements aside) they probably would find the slums of Beunos Aires just as attractive as Angkor Wat.
Yeerks are complicated, emotional and unfortunate species and I am fully aware that everything was in shades of grey. As Kharina says they are very similar to humans: a weak species that achieves dominance by using stronger animals as tools, every one of shakespeare's tragedies could easily be written by a yeerk with a few modifications (getting rid of gender, subordination of women and marraige mainly). Indeed yeerks exist on a continuum. The Peace Movement is like Animal Liberation Front or PETA, most yeerks are like people in that use hosts/animals but do not wish to harm them, they are probably more focused on political and indivual freedom for yeerks then the way hosts are treated (one of the reasons I resent PETA IRL is that that energy could be expended helping humans not rats) remember the Yeerk system is basically a police state, then their are yeerks like Visser 3 or Temrash who are like Henry Harlow and those people who vivisect dogs. I am not saying that yeerks are not true people, I am saying that I do not care. It would be better to become a murder, then to allow the human race to be enslaved because your conscious is oversensitive. To not become ruthless would risk ending up like these idiots: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriori
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moriori
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On the contrary, Yeerks are great appreciators of beauty. Although I agree that slums would still look just as beautiful to them as a pretty cathedral or Tower Bridge in London or any other piece of architecture. They don't have eyes normally, so they see what we usually overlook. To a Yeerk in particular, slums are beautiful too. Watch the opening sequence of 'Slumdog Millionaire' and focus on the colours, sounds- try also to imagine smell and touch. Imagine you've never had any of these senses before.
But that aside, these are people's HOMES. Not to mention you're blowing them up. If anything, you should be making that kind of decision based on population, not buildings. I agree heritage is important, but heritage is different to different people- if you were Japanese, particularly if you were form hiroshima, you might find that more places in hiroshima had cultural meaning to you than Kyoto. It's all about perspective.
To both voodoo and ThinkAgain: I was advocating my 'Chee-like' morality as an ideal- I was kind of trying to describe what my morality consists of- you should defend yourself but you should never do something just for revenge. But some morally questionable actions might be neccessary in a war. Like blowing up the Yeerk Pool- I'm in a grey area about that, because I don't believe you should just do whatever it takes to win, but on the other hand the alternative- having Earth taken over by the Yeerks- is terrible to contemplate.
But I am not in a grey area about Jake's flushing of the 17,000 in 54. If they needed a distraction, they could have done something more effective than that- started a fire, set hosts free and persuaded them to rampage causing as much chaos as possible. It was demonstrated in 17 that Visser Three/One doesn't care about his fellow Yeerks, even large numbers of them. So how do they think that would cause an effective distraction? It didn't. They did it purely because they could and out of revenge. It is utterly wrong.
That's not to say I don't understand why Jake did it. Having lost all his family to the Yeerks, having suffered for three years fighting them, having basically lost half his childhood to them- of course he wants revenge. I can't say I wouldn't do the same thing in his situation (I've never been in his situation or even anything remotely like it). But I'm saying that, if you detach yourself from Jake's emotions and just look at the morality of the act, it was completely wrong and I cannot condone it.
When I was talking about using the minimal force necessary to defend yourself, I wasn't saying that everyone will always act that way, or even usually act that way. No one is perfect. But I would vouch for it as a moral ideal.
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On the contrary, Yeerks are great appreciators of beauty. Although I agree that slums would still look just as beautiful to them as a pretty cathedral or Tower Bridge in London or any other piece of architecture. They don't have eyes normally, so they see what we usually overlook. To a Yeerk in particular, slums are beautiful too. Watch the opening sequence of 'Slumdog Millionaire' and focus on the colours, sounds- try also to imagine smell and touch. Imagine you've never had any of these senses before.
But that aside, these are people's HOMES. Not to mention you're blowing them up. If anything, you should be making that kind of decision based on population, not buildings. I agree heritage is important, but heritage is different to different people- if you were Japanese, particularly if you were form hiroshima, you might find that more places in hiroshima had cultural meaning to you than Kyoto. It's all about perspective.
Well not really... certainly we all have different perspectives and slight variations in taste... but the over all consensus is that certain things are more beautiful than others. the sistine chapel more beautiful than the kremlin, the summer palace in beijing more beautiful than hugh hefner's play boy mansion, Kyoto more beautiful than Hiroshima... Not just to Stimpson, but to Japanese as well: Kyoto is a city of temples, shrines and palaces some of them dating to the 10th century, Kyoto is of national significance to the Japanese and any human can go there and enjoy the cities aesthetic beauty. where as Hiroshima would be of significance on an individual level: a place in Hiroshima is beautiful to someone because they met their wife there, or their first memory is of their mother taking them to that particular place, this is touching. But you or I could go to Kyoto and be instantly smitten with the city's beauty... a city for all humans to enjoy and appreciate not just the people who have a lifelong commitment, as is London, Paris or Rome.
Yeerks lack of discrimination when it comes to aesthetics is the very reason we should not take their art judgements too seriously... they're like "Oh my kandrona a toilet bowl! Oh My Kandrona an Iron Maiden! Oh MY Kandrona Chernobyl after the blast!" the last part is significant because that is what the yeerks were going to do to Earth: Everything beautiful and wonderful from the Panda to the coelcanth, from Hagia Sophia to the papuan long house they would destroy because... it's almost as if yeerks are over loaded by senses and beauty and being blind they have not developed good prejudices and sensible discrimination: so because a filthy polluted pool is beautiful to them they destroy anything more beautiful than that. Rather like what happened in Australia; they brought in boring violets, vermin starlings and evil animals like foxes and rabbits because Australia's own natural beauty was too much for them... Like it or not, there are benchmarks and universal standards for beauty (which are mathematically based), and discrimination and prejudiceses that are good and need to be cultivated (read Theodore Dalrymple' In praise of prejudice) it's not all relative to culture or upbringing, human tastes, like everything else, are biological in origin (the preference for symmetry, for height in men, large eyes and clear skin are the most obvious examples)...
But then, even for an aesthete like myself it is not that simple: take Cairo and Egypt generally, some of the most beautiful and the very oldest buildings on earth: the pyramids, abu Simbel and the Sphinx all reside there... But the people who reside there today are not the same people who built the pyramids, Abu Simbel or the Sphinx. In fact their almost the opposite, having contributed very little to human civilisation in the last 1500 years (admittedly the pyramids would be hard to beat)... except Sayyid Qutb which is almost anti civilization... Ironically across the border is Tel Aviv and Jerusalem (and Israel generally) having been sacked by filthy barbarians so many times in the last 2000 years they have very little of the ancient world except for the Wailing Wall... and yet by ironic twists of history the people of Israel are the same people who created the idea of a rational universe, the rule of law and all men (including the king) being equal before it, fair trial, human rights, the idea of a loving god with respect for the individual, objective history these are all ideas that have shaped human civilization for the better and all find their seeds in the old testament. for much as people like Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris love to bash the old testament, the ideas it contains are the foundations of things like Magna Carta and later into the social contract... ironic isn't it? Later those same people went on to make huge contributions to literature, music, science, business and social activism (notably few of these contribution are aesthetic, so perhaps Solomon's temple was the ugliest building in the ancient world and this is why the Babylonians destroyed it when they spared other ancient buildings). So in terms of beautiful Cairo or ugly Tel Aviv it becomes difficult... which brings me to my next point Population:
sadly it has long been observed that as a woman's education increases so to do her children decrease. this has been observed across all authentically industrilised nations from China, Japan, Korea and Singapore to America, England and Australia.
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Kharina, I see exactly what you are saying. I think I might not have said it clearly in my original post; I was not vouching for revenge, I was supporting preemptive action. If someone points a gun at me with the intent to kill, I'm going to attempt to draw and fire as fast as I possibly can. I didn't mean to go out and stab someone for making a baseless and shallow threat.
Also, I see what both of you are saying; Voodooqueen is vouching for the protection of human heritage and culture, and making sacrifices to do so, and Kharina is saying that everything on Earth is beautiful, especially to one who has never had eyes, and one area shouldn't be 'saved' over another based on how some people perceive the beauty. Personally, I sort of agree with both of you. If choices and sacrifices must be made, a middle ground must be found. Human heritage and achievement should be preserved, abet not at all costs. I think a city with a large human population should be spared over one perceived to be more culturally significant that has a much smaller population. By simple, although crude logic, if one must choose between saving two people or 100 people, the choice is clear. But if populations are equal, the city deemed more valuable should be the one preserved. It's pretty harsh to write off entire cities of people and their own unique histories, but sadly, if sacrifices need to be made, a choice must happen. It's not something where you can stomp your foot and shout, "No!"
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So if a city has a high population this might not correlate with intelligence of its members. Sure wealth and health are the natural rewards for intelligence and these things should result in a higher populations (the whole idea of evolution that positive traits lead to big populations) in fact looking at say Sao Paulo, the slums of Mumbai (aka slumdog) , Karachi, Kinshasa, Jakarta, etc... is that if you spared big cities but blew up smaller ones like Cambridge, this would be worse for the human race than if you blew up Bangalore and Haifa and spared Lagos and Riyadh... So sure some ugly cities like Los Angeles would be spared because of their high population and this would be okay because Americans (contrary to the stereoytpe popular amongst jealous old world europeans) are actually clever people and their vast wealth is a reward for intelligence as it should be. but the yeerks blowing up small cities and sparing big cities for their population would have a terribly dysgenic affect on the human race, which is precisely what they would do. Yeerks prefer moronic hosts (and as Nate the Ape speculated, the Gedds became dumber when the yeerks basically thought for them and as a way to cope with having no freedom) and we even speculated that intelligent hosts cause the yeerks problems (like Alloran and Esplin and heck Edriss and Allison Kim) so an open Yeerk invasion would probably blow up:
America (especially Washington, Harvard, Silicon Valley etc), Japan, Korea, Western Europe (where ever great universities are)and the parts of England (like Cambridge and Oxford and Buckingham palace but would spare bradford and the north), Israel (for the same reason that every villain from Ramses to Stalin in human history has sought to destroy them: because intelligent people are a threat to tyrants), much of India (especially cities such as Bangalore, Hyderbad, Delhi, Calcutta), Beijing and Shanghai. Leaving the yeerks with Africa, South East Asia, Polynesia, Australia, South America etc still a huge number of people and a human race without leadership or elite and very little technology easily conquered... The middle east would be a borderline case: it could prove as difficult to the yeerks as it does for America IRL or it could be easy for the same reason that America wants to invade the middle east...Edriss said it would be easy but that would be a slow infestation method rather than the bomb and invade the place to pieces method... I have stated previously that Open warfare in Esplin's style and Slow infestation in Edriss's style have opposite effects on the same human personality trait: Humans are social animals who need to belong to a group and in peace people who otherwise can't find friends easily join movements (like scientology or the sharing) and it war those same people join the army and serve their countries very happily. A good example of this is Adolf Hiter: a loner and a tramp before the war who people thought was weird, when WW1 came along he joined the army and for the first time in his life experienced camarederie and friendship and became a brave soldier and was very happy (in WW1 trenches he was happy! think of that) after the war ended badly for his side he tried to reproduce that feeling of camarederie and friendship by joining and later leading the Nazi party (or so psychological speculation goes). Then people, to be accepted by their peers joined and supported this movement, and proving KA Applegates point in Visser that humans will do any act of evil (giving up free will to gassing children) in order to be accepted by the group... The middle east could go either way for the yeerks.
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I have a plan. Contact the chee in the sharing, find the morphing cube. I will convince the chee to help me find the biological data of the yeerks bodies. Create a chemical compound that will drug the yeerk in the controller's body make it suggestible to hypnotism then get them to come out of the host body without killing them, thus limiting the casualties, use the morphing cube to morph yeerks and put them in the former controllers to infiltrate the yeerks. with eriks help i'll start a company get lots of money began developing nonlethal (shock gun- enough to take down even the toughest animal, paralyzing venom, sticky substances think spiderman. force field armor controlled by a efficient targeting system and non lethal missles etc) weapons under the pretense of making society better, they will be used to fight the controllers . I'll start recruiting people far away from yeerk infested places to start a revolution. Develope devices that can detect kandrona energy or x ray miniature items to find who is a controller. Contact the yeers in yeerk peace movement work together. I'll use erik or yeerk peace movement yeerk to convince the higher up vissers or council of thirteen to use non lethal means of aquiring hosts. I'll start searching for pemalite technology to find a ship to travel to planet of Iskoort or use zero space to arrive their faster, to get proof for yeerks that their is a better way. Once enough of the rebels have enter the yeerk base I'll set a trap, sabotage their security, lace the air filter with slow knock out gas , but before that the rebels and yeerk peace troops would lure the majority enemy controllers in a room for a speech assembly or something then the knock out gas would already defeat them the communications would already be sabotaged so no distress signal would be sent. That way minimal to no casualties would happen making the other yeerks and peace movement yeerks more cooperative. As a bonus I'll discredit visser three, give evidence that he is a selfish bastard , he does not care about his fellow yeerks, he cares only about himself and he is a threat to the yeerk empire with his selfish ambitions and the way he treats his workers, example making workers blind with fear that makes coordination between leader and team difficult, fear making the yeerk soldiers less patriotic and efficient even silenting those who could have made the earth campaign better. close minded and of course his lack of loyalty and care for the wellbeing of his fellow yeerks., again making the yeerks more reasonable to negotions. I'll show them the Iskoort as proof of a better way. the drug is just a way of infiltration. I'll probably need aftran's help and the chee to get passed the leeran controllers then Crayak would probably find a way to hinder the plan of ending the war with minimal or no casualties. To further weaken the yeerks along with my plan I'll study the taxons physiology find a way to help them get kandrona generator for prisoners during the infiltration phase. With the minimal to no casualties the yeerks would probably trust and cooperate with humanity more. The rebels are just to hunt down any stragglers not caught in the trap. As a bonus maybe there is a way to stop crayak with the time matrix or lead him into a trap with a bigger cosmic being in another dimension or trap him in mortal form, if possible using zero space and the rubber band effect. , I don't understand the nature of his powers. How is the plan?[/color]
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I just realized that, if controlled and limited, having a yeerk could be a good thing. You have a second mind going over your actions, acting as a normalizer for solitary types. Your client (if the human is the host, then the yeerk is the client) could act as a secondary memory, and as a finder: the interface for the yeerk is probably much sharper, allowing it to dredge your brain for forgotten data.
Would you accept such a bargain? I would. It's pretty messy up here.
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I have a plan. Contact the chee in the sharing, find the morphing cube. I will convince the chee to help me find the biological data of the yeerks bodies. Create a chemical compound that will drug the yeerk in the controller's body make it suggestible to hypnotism then get them to come out of the host body without killing them, thus limiting the casualties, use the morphing cube to morph yeerks and put them in the former controllers to infiltrate the yeerks. with eriks help i'll start a company get lots of money began developing nonlethal (shock gun- enough to take down even the toughest animal, paralyzing venom, sticky substances think spiderman. force field armor controlled by a efficient targeting system and non lethal missles etc) weapons under the pretense of making society better, they will be used to fight the controllers . I'll start recruiting people far away from yeerk infested places to start a revolution. Develope devices that can detect kandrona energy or x ray miniature items to find who is a controller. Contact the yeers in yeerk peace movement work together. I'll use erik or yeerk peace movement yeerk to convince the higher up vissers or council of thirteen to use non lethal means of aquiring hosts. I'll start searching for pemalite technology to find a ship to travel to planet of Iskoort or use zero space to arrive their faster, to get proof for yeerks that their is a better way. Once enough of the rebels have enter the yeerk base I'll set a trap, sabotage their security, lace the air filter with slow knock out gas , but before that the rebels and yeerk peace troops would lure the majority enemy controllers in a room for a speech assembly or something then the knock out gas would already defeat them the communications would already be sabotaged so no distress signal would be sent. That way minimal to no casualties would happen making the other yeerks and peace movement yeerks more cooperative. As a bonus I'll discredit visser three, give evidence that he is a selfish bastard , he does not care about his fellow yeerks, he cares only about himself and he is a threat to the yeerk empire with his selfish ambitions and the way he treats his workers, example making workers blind with fear that makes coordination between leader and team difficult, fear making the yeerk soldiers less patriotic and efficient even silenting those who could have made the earth campaign better. close minded and of course his lack of loyalty and care for the wellbeing of his fellow yeerks., again making the yeerks more reasonable to negotions. I'll show them the Iskoort as proof of a better way. the drug is just a way of infiltration. I'll probably need aftran's help and the chee to get passed the leeran controllers then Crayak would probably find a way to hinder the plan of ending the war with minimal or no casualties. To further weaken the yeerks along with my plan I'll study the taxons physiology find a way to help them get kandrona generator for prisoners during the infiltration phase. With the minimal to no casualties the yeerks would probably trust and cooperate with humanity more. The rebels are just to hunt down any stragglers not caught in the trap. As a bonus maybe there is a way to stop crayak with the time matrix or lead him into a trap with a bigger cosmic being in another dimension or trap him in mortal form, if possible using zero space and the rubber band effect. , I don't understand the nature of his powers. How is the plan?[/color]
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Assuming I was in the morphing group, I'd grab an animal with no ear canal, stay in it for the two hours, then do whatever. I'm a touch selfish.
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2005004219 you think outside the box, but i wonder why the andalites haven't already done so if it is possible?
Certainly the whole turning into animals to defeat aliens is ridiculous.
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The Andalites didn't really turn into animals to defeat the Yeerks, in fact the Andalites in general seemed a bit morph shy which is odd because it was as standard issue to their military as uniforms are to most human militaries and you don't see human armies charging at each other in the nude . . . outside of magic the gathering books. :P
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Fight... I'd help the Animorphs... Planning and information and such... until they could finally give me the morphing ability myself...
But I just thought of something interesting... Infiltration on a much deeper level...
Someone voluntarily becomes a Yeerk nothlit, and works his/her way up the Yeerk chain of command, becoming more and more powerful...
Such a deep cover operation would have to be accompanied by many Animorph missions to take out key higher-ups in the Yeerk command... simultaneously opening opportunities and clearing obstructions in the path of the operative. Once the operative was placed high enough, they would be able to strike a bargain with both the human race, and possibly (but much less likely) the Andalites... to end the war...
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But I just thought of something interesting... Infiltration on a much deeper level...
Someone voluntarily becomes a Yeerk nothlit, and works his/her way up the Yeerk chain of command, becoming more and more powerful...
Such a deep cover operation would have to be accompanied by many Animorph missions to take out key higher-ups in the Yeerk command... simultaneously opening opportunities and clearing obstructions in the path of the operative. Once the operative was placed high enough, they would be able to strike a bargain with both the human race, and possibly (but much less likely) the Andalites... to end the war...
Eli Cohen did that, although he was eventually publicly executed, he is probably the greatest spy of all time.
But become a yeerk (permanently) would be much more horrible than already unpleasant religious changes and difficult accent changes. It would be very easy to start sympathising with the yeerks: after all how much of your psychology is really your biology?
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The ideal candidate for such a mission would be Cassie... Someone who already sympathizes with the Yeerks, but is motivated at the core to peace... Cassie was friendly enough to the Yeerks and she was on the other side... I can't see her turning into a ruthless Yeerk ruler and persecuting humans... (again, I could be wrong...)
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Well yes and no:
If they already sympathise then they are easy to turn,
But sympathisers can act more easily (Like in the little drummer girl by John Le Carre)
But really the character in the little drummer girl (who was based off Vanessa Redgrave) was chosen more for her pre-existing contacts (and if you used someone who wasn't already sympathetic whom you could trust then the terrorists would be able to do a back ground check, so all of Vanessa Redgrave (I've forgotten the characters name) merits was not on her acting ability (given to her by her sympathies), but on the fact that she couldn't be traced back and had a few contacts and had attended a terrorist meetings (it's a complicated spy novel).
The heroine in the messenger by Daniel Silva has no such sympathies, but lacking links to the goodies she enters the terrorists circle unnoticed...
Having said that these are both novels,though the little drummer girl portrays the training of a honey trap quite accurately.
In real life Eli Cohen had no sympathies, was able to act perfectly, and was betrayed by outside forces beyond his control.
So what would be better:
Sympathetic acting but untrustworthy
or okay acting and trustworthy.
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Regardless of her sympathies, Cassie would not turn against the Animorphs... because she desires peace above all... She doesn't want the war to continue... So she would try to do what's best for everyone... Which is exactly what her mission would be in the first place...
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But as George Gilder says: wanting peace will make it ever more elusive, to achieve peace you must desire victory and peace will come from victory.
But though Cassie the human would never betray the animorphs (though Chad would disagree) Cassie trapped as a yeerk... perhaps the biology would cause the psychology that defines the yeerk brand of evil: the desire to control and use others, would take affect...
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And I do disagree, because in fact she did. Twice. Books 19 and 50. and you can all say maybe she subconsciously knew something good would come of it, but she really wasn't thinking...at all.
Then again, maybe we just have different ideas of what betrayal is.
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These were little betrayals and the author was on side, but as chad demonstrates Cassie has shown her fifth column/treacherous tendencies twice in canon, whose to say that being trapped forever in a repugnant yeerk body wouldn't exacerbate this tendency.
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Then again, maybe we just have different ideas of what betrayal is.
Sort of... In my opinion, her betrayals in those books was evidence of exactly the tendencies that would make her ideal for the deep cover mission...
I don't know about the biology significantly affecting her psychology... Not all Yeerks had those tendencies... (peace movement, anyone?)
In other words, yes, she "turned against" the other animorphs... but that was in the interest of peace... As a yeerk, it could be said that she would "turn against" the yeerks (eventually, after rising to high office), in the interest of peace... Exactly the outcome we're looking for.
The goal is to take a potential hazard (like someone in your ranks who subverts your goals in the interest of peace) and throw it on the other side... If Cassie was a pain in the Animorphs "war effort", she'd be an even bigger pain in the Yeerk war effort...
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I am not quite sure how to describe this or articulate this properly, but the problem is the desire for peace-as opposed to victory. There a certain psychological and political (of which I fear Cassie is a member) type that is willing to side with tyrants to avoid further violence, the thing is violence is a part of humanity and it is an instrument not an end or a sin. a police officer or a soldier uses violence to further good. The Cassie's of the world most exemplified by Gandhi are willing to side with tyrants to prevent violence (I am talking about Gandhi's support Hitler here though his capitulation towards Muslims and his passive resistance are decreasing examples of the same thing). In a real life Yeerk invasion a Cassie, like the Vichy government of WW2 france, say 'the violence of resistance is worse than the suppression of foreign tyranny." Cassie might look at an increasingly violent human resistance movemment (and like the Mujahadein resistance to the Soviets which later transformed into the Taliban) would become increasingly fundamentalist and il-liberal (because fanntics are more willing to sacrifice civilians in order to win).... that is why the Cassie's of the world are untrustworthy.
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She didn't turn against the Anis for peace. She turned against them so she wouldn't turn into Rachel, and to keep Jake from killing his brother and sliding further down the slippery slope. That's what makes me angriest. People take the ings Cassie did and try to twist them around in an attempt to justify them.
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I would never try to justify what Cassie did... Trust me, she's just as despicable to me as she is to you...
I just believe that her faults could be channeled better... That's all...