What if it happened this way, instead of that way?

[Chad32]

I don't know if anyone has done this kind of thread before, but I think it would be interesting. The idea is to take an event. Any event in the series. Ask yourself what if it went a different way? How would things be different? It can be big or small. It doesn't matter. Just come up with something, and describe what might happen.

[Darth Revan]

It's your thread, you should be able to move it. Look at the bottom of the thread, under the Page numbers. There should be two buttons, "Move Topic", and "Lock Topic".

This is interesting though.

I'd have to change how David turned out. I'd make him more agreeable, and gung-ho. He'd live with the Chee and help out immensely in some of the situations that would've been necessary to have another look out, or more powerful back up.

[Chad32]

Do you think that would have made a big difference? Do you think that would encourage the Anis to start recruiting sooner? How do you see that effecting the outcome?

[Blazing Angel]

oh yeah. By book 37 their would be a force of animorphs.

[NateSean]

Not necessarily. I think they were right not to start trying to recruit people after David. For one thing, there was just now way of knowing who was and who wasn't a controller. Secondly, Visser Three maintained the passive invasion under the assumption that there was only a handful of Andalite bandits running loose and one possible human with the morphing technology.

The Animorphs had to recruit the auxilliaries because their cover was blown and the Yeerks knew who they were. But as long as there were only six of them in the earlier books, the Yeerks wouldn't raise the invasion level. Increase the number of Andalite bandits, thus increasing the amount of damage to the Yeerks and the Empire might go ahead and greenlight a more aggressive invasion.

Now I agree that the situation with David could have been handled more appropriately. At the very least I don't think they should have given him the morphing power at all, but since they had done it they could have treated him a little more amiably. Poparena makes alot of good points and when it comes right down to it, the David trilogy was one mistake after another on behalf of Jake and the team as a whole. Everyone had their hand on the idiot ball.

Now...offering the Yeerk Peace movement the morphing technology might have been a smarter move. We don't know how many of them there were but it's safe to say that Aftran had a significant amount of people on her side.

Give those a Yeerks a chance to take permanent morphs in exchange for surrendering their hosts and smuggling out weapons and other equipment that might give the Anis an advantage against the Yeerks. Heck, if the Anis had acquired Yeerks, they could use the freed hosts to infiltrate the pool and smuggle out even more hosts. Stage the deaths of said hosts and make the Chee earn their effing keep for once by having them house the freed human hosts while the Hork-Bajir return to the Valley with Toby.

The Yeerks would panic at a larger fighting force of "andalites". But a few hosts going missing might barely register on their radar. Visser Three clearly didn't care about a thousand Yeerks dying or becoming addicted to oatmeal, so this would be another great way to use his tunnel vision against him.

Give Toby the morphing power. It would be easier to coordinate the escape of more Hork-Bajir.

Sheer attrition alone wouldn't be enough to slow down the invasion, but the fewer hosts the harder it would be for the Yeerks to maintain security and secrecy.

[Chad32]

I agree if there were suddenly a few dozen bandits running around, that could make the Yeerks blow their cover and start an open war. If they did it, they'd have to take certain precautions like only sending out up to six individuals at a time. As long as only six are shown at once, the Yeerks may be none the wiser. You could still have people out on recon and stuff, but when it comes time to bust out the battle morphs, only do it with up to six members.