Chapman

[Seryna]

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.

[JFalcon]

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.

[Chad32]

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.

[JFalcon]

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. 

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.

[Chad32]

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.

[JFalcon]

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!!]
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 

[Gafrash]

Hahahahah! You do have good points, though, JFalcon.

[JFalcon]

Hahahahah! You do have good points, though, JFalcon.

Aww thanks

[Tim Bruening]

Chapman was just the Assistant Principal.  Was the Principal infested?  If not, why not?

[Dylan]

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.

[Tim Bruening]

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!

[Dylan]

What? Do you mean unhosted humans?
I guess the real principal never got involved

[Tim Bruening]

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.

[NothingFromSomething]

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.

[Tim Bruening]

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.