53 KiB
r!Animorphs chapter 18: Cassie
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Author: u/philh *
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URL: http://archiveofourown.org/works/5627803/chapters/15396877
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Score: 52
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Created: 2016-05-03T13:34:26
Post:
Comments:
u/KnickersInAKnit [+17] (an hour later)
All right, all right, I'm over the 20 min shock and I think I can start asking questions now. First off, holy shit. This is a lot of death. So here are my questions/comments about it:
Writing-wise, this is an incredibly bold move. Do you plan on introducing a whole ton of OCs later, as the canon Animorphs setting is now gone?
was this the only Earthside pool?
does Crayak get to move his own pawns to safety? Who would they be?
Illim? Tidwell?!?! Aftran... :( THE REST OF THE CHEE.
CASSIE NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Are Tom and Marco's dad going to be poofed to safety as free humans, or as Controllers?
In terms of scope, how do you plan this war to progress? We've already quickly gotten to 'wipe the town off the map with a WMD'. What's next? Quantum viruses?
What's the end goal here? In canon, it used to be 'get the Yeerks off Earth & defeat V1/V3 = win'. Do you plan on having your Animorphs (or some of them) dedicate themselves to chasing V3 back to the homeworld?
Do you feel that there's a chance for peace? Quite a number of fanfics out there explore the potential AU of a cooperation between Yeerks and humans, post-war. Or, the possibilities of Yeerks moving away from parasitism to symbiotism. Ie the Iskoort future. From the way this story has progressed so far, it doesn't seem like this is in the cards...or is it?
With the destruction of the pool, there goes the hivemind and everything it learnt about humanity. Does this mean that a new pool could potentially choose a different direction in terms of how it becomes established?
Are we going to see V1 step in to yell at V3 for this tactical decision?
u/chaos-engine [+6] (7 hours later)
Crayak already got his move, which is why the Ellimist now gets to move the animorphs.
u/ivory12 [+17] (9 hours later)
Just want to note that we, the reader - and the Animorphs, too, I suppose - don't know that was the Ellimist. He never identifies himself by name, and even if he had there's no guarantee of his honesty. Maybe Crayak wanted to kill the emotional support structure of the Animorphs.
u/callmebrotherg [+15] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (9 hours later)
Horrible (hopefully) untrue theory: Crayak and the Ellimist are one and the same. This is solitaire, not chess, and playing mind games is just part of the fun.
u/CouteauBleu [+5] We are the Empire. (19 hours later)
...
That would actually explain... some incongruities. Honestly, I'm pretty sure that they're playing this game for fun, not out of ideological reasons (they did it for fun in canon).
u/ketura [+3] Organizer (23 hours later)
Not sure how you can construe canon to mean they did it for fun. They had pretty much the same ideological impasse.
u/CouteauBleu [+5] We are the Empire. (a day later)
In the Chronicles, the Ellimist lets Crayak ascend to godhood the same way he did, even though he could have easily destroyed him with his reality-warping powers.
u/ketura [+3] Organizer (a day later)
Hmm. I'll have to re-read. It could have simply been a matter of him not yet having a complete grip on what he could do, and by the time he did Crayak had followed him. I can't recall, but that's a good point.
u/Salivanth [+3] (13 hours later)
This seems unlikely; if Crayak wanted to hurt the Animorphs, he simply could have let the WMD hit them and end the war. I can't think of a good reason why Crayak would want to weaken the Animorphs, but not just take them out; it seems like that would be very out of character for this fic.
u/ivory12 [+5] (15 hours later)
We don't know what his goals are beyond winning their game, or how exactly he intends to go about achieving that. I think it's pretty easily argued that the Animorphs mere existence engenders a lot of the chaos and destruction on Earth "the Ellimist" has said he (Crayak) is so fond of. I also think that Visser Three's win conditions are probably not very similar to Crayak's, or rather that the success of the Yeerks is not something I think Crayak is overly concerned with in and of itself.
edit: though the truth is we just don't know and it's probably not possible to really guess at the goals and methods of the story's two near-omnipotent beings.
u/MugaSofer [+5] (a day later)
On the other hand, if they really are "order and chaos ... noise and silence", it's possible that the Yeerk Empire are agents of "peace", while the Animorphs are agents of "war" and chaos.
Red and blue morality, right?
u/callmebrotherg [+5] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (a day later)
A point in favor of this theory:
- The Ellimist made the Pemalites.
- The Pemalites made and programmed the Chee.
- The programming of the Chee says that the Yeerk invasion is a good thing.
u/None [+3] (3 days later)
In a larger sense, compared to most of the Animorphs universe, humans are agents of war and chaos. Compared to humans, even the howlers were a cheap joke with a limited shelf life.
u/chaos-engine [+5] (12 hours later)
In curious about why he said "One of us is wrong, and only time will tell which. I have my own opinions, of course, which I'll keep private."
You would expect him to consider himself correct, hence his entry into the chess match. Does he now think he's more likely to loose, but doesn't want to say that for fear of demoralizing the Animorphs?
u/avtrisal [+5] (15 hours later)
Maybe something happened over the course of the game which made him reconsider his opinion that he was right, but the structure of the game means that he is forced to continue?
u/KnickersInAKnit [+4] (7 hours later)
Remind me Crayak's move was?
u/ketura [+6] Organizer (7 hours later)
I don't know that we know. It's possible it's something that's happened around earth (bringing the yeerks maybe?), but these two play on larger than a galactic scale. Perhaps a move taken on Planet#3728r9474 four hundred years ago is just now being cashed in here on Earth.
u/CoolGuy54 [+1] (a month later)
If we're keeping the story tight it could be either of the two big Andalite mistakes or whatever led to Elfangor & co. getting shot down.
u/CitrusJ [+3] (7 hours later)
Which chapter does it say he got his move? This one?
u/ketura [+5] Organizer (7 hours later)
This chapter:
"But in the meantime—it’s my turn, and events have conspired to give me unusual freedom of movement.”
u/Skeys13 [+2] (6 years later)
I thought it was weird Marco didn’t update his value of Garrett after seeing how incredibly effective his mind attack was.
u/CouteauBleu [+12] We are the Empire. (8 hours later)
Yayy! Update! The only way this could be better is if there was one of them every day.
I really like how the Ellimist is portrayed. "I dunno. Seemed like the right [face] to use". Priceless :p
Mhhh... something fishy is going on with the whole teleportation thing. Tobias was safe, away from the blast site, and free to warn the world about the invasion... Though we don't know yet what he had the time to do before being teleported. And I'm probably reading too much into it, but the Ellimists cuts them in a middle of a dicussion, right after Tobias pointed that he didn't belong there.
By the way, the Ellimist never actually stated he was the good guy in their "order vs chaos" battle. I'm getting a sense of Goddess of Cancer vs Goddess of Everything else from this, and somehow I don't think the Ellimist will be on the side of Everything Else here. The most suspicious line being "One of us would like more of—this [destruction, people dying]. The other, less". Although if Crayak has made Howlers, that probably means that he is... wait. Does the fic actually state who made the Howlers? The Ellimist interlude doesn't actually say who does what, only that stuff is done.
I thought this was a surprisingly well-explained divine chess match you set up. I think this is a great quality in the fic so far, to take elements of canon as-is and re-describe them in a way that makes sense. It's the same impression I had from the pool scene, when Marco says "this is bad... like... Auschwitz-level bad".
Damn you! This isn't how this episode was supposed to work! The kids were supposed to get some amazing insight from their tour with the Ellimist which would let them win the day by tricking Crayak with the sort of rules-layering that only works in books for 10-years-old children and... I kind of answered my own complaint there, didn't I?
Anyway, one reason I really liked this episode is I read it right after having a big frustrating debate with a catholic friend about utilitarianism, consequentialism, the trolley problem, etc... So it was really nice to read about Cassie's point of view, and I confess it felt really cathartic when Cassie [spoiler alert]. Like I could mock her and say "See? See? This is what happens when you ignore sensible consequentialist directives and do what your heart tells you instead! Ha!" But I wouldn't do that. Poor Cassie already had a shitty enough life as it is (had?).
Speaking of frustrating debates with Catholic friends... See? See? This is what actual evidence for God's existence looks like! He writes complex unambiguous messages by moving molecules around, and then just in case it's too subtle, he also stops time to have a nice chat with you.
Garett's "I'm someone who does the right thing even if it's hard, period" oath may not be the most spectacular or glorious-sounding oath, but it really resonated with me in a simple direct way, more than even the orange lantern oaths. It's something to aspire to.
u/earnestadmission [+9] Singular "they" user (17 hours later)
Anyway, one reason I really liked this episode is I read it right after having a big frustrating debate with a catholic friend about utilitarianism, consequentialism, the trolley problem, etc... So it was really nice to read about Cassie's point of view, and I confess it felt really cathartic when Cassie [spoiler alert]. Like I could mock her and say "See? See? This is what happens when you ignore sensible consequentialist directives and do what your heart tells you instead! Ha!" But I wouldn't do that. Poor Cassie already had a shitty enough life as it is (had?).
If you disagree that "A thousand lives lost plus two thousand lives saved just isn’t the same thing as a thousand lives saved, period" then I think we need to talk about asymmetric loss functions and the many (MANY) objections to aggregation that have been built up in the literature.
I'm not even sure HJPEV would disagree with this sentiment. If Cassie behaves differently than he would, it's only to the degree that he had plot armor and she does not.
I side with Cassie. Team #trynottobeawarcriminal will live on in our hearts.
Edit: Your other bullet points are all perfect. Although, I'm pretty sure that in canon the Howlers are specifically stated to belong to Cryak.
u/ZeroNihilist [+8] (23 hours later)
Her reasoning there is correct. The problem is that even when she couldn't propose reasonable alternatives she still wouldn't get on board with the plan.
If she had committed to all the flawed plans, she might have been able to save a few lives by increasing the available resources. The greater the disparity of power, the more the stronger side can afford mercy.
Cassie's Batman-like aversion to murder—as a moral event horizon—had a real cost in lives, both human and non-human. If you can't achieve the ideal of your goal then you should take the best available option, and that's where Cassie failed.
I expect I would probably be similar to Cassie. I wouldn't be happy with any chosen course and yet would have no solutions. I hope I would be able to avoid wasting resources on futile symbolism, but I've never been in a situation that would test it.
u/CouteauBleu [+2] We are the Empire. (19 hours later)
Well, I'm not that utilitarian, though I'd be interested to read about the strongest of the objections you mention. I wouldn't say that "save 1000 lives" is the same as "sacrifice 1000 to save 2000", but they're pretty close to each other when it comes to the decision you have to make if it's a choice between "do it" vs "do nothing".
Anyway, I don't disagree with any of Cassie's points, except for the part where she feels useless to the group: like Rachel pointed out, she's the only one with a moral compass strong enough to remain, um, accurate through horrible warfare, which is kind of important to avoid stuff like dumping thousands of yeerks into space for little tactical advantage.
Re Howlers: In canon, yes. Here? Everything mentioned so far about what the Ellimist and Crayak did has been extremely vague and didn't clearly assign actions or motivations to either of the two. For instance, the fic doesn't actually tell who made Rachel butterfly into existence. Maybe Crayak did it knowing she'd screw the resistance over?
u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (12 hours later)
the orange lantern oaths.
Oaths as in multiple? I can only think of one that I'd expect to resonate with /r/rational fan right now. Which are the others?
u/CouteauBleu [+2] We are the Empire. (19 hours later)
The ones in "With This Ring". I'm really fond of the Enlightened!OL oath and the Renegade!OL oath.
u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (21 hours later)
I thought there might be an oath from a different source because I have a hard time reconciling those two to resonate with the same type of person.
u/CouteauBleu [+2] We are the Empire. (21 hours later)
There's a lot of oaths in WTR. There's the original OL oath, the Enlightened!OL oath, the Enlightened!Paulphidian oath, the Renegade!OL oath, and the Yellow!Grayven oath. The 1st and the 3rd are okay, the yellow one is meh, and the 2nd and 4th (Enlightened and Renegade OL) are the most inspiring to me, for opposite reasons.
The OL oath is inspiring in a "build great things, make lots of friends, help many people" way, while the Renegade oath resonates more in a "Fuck this shit, I don't need any help, I'm going to solve everything myself, now shut up and let me fix the universe" way.
u/abcd_z [+2] (2 days later)
Just FYI, the only actual canon Orange Lantern oath goes like this:
What's mine is mine and mine and mine.
And mine and mine and mine!
Not yours!-Larfleeze
u/abcd_z [+2] (2 days later)
Just FYI, those are all fanon, created for WTR. The only canon Orange Lantern oath is:
What's mine is mine and mine and mine.
And mine and mine and mine!
Not yours!-Larfleeze
u/technoninja1 [+11] (8 hours later)
The god was the Ellimist and not the Crayak, right?
u/TK17Studios [+6] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (9 hours later)
u/Bowbreaker [+3] Solitary Locust (12 hours later)
Wait, so it wasn't supposed to be ambiguous and as of yet unanswered?
u/TK17Studios [+7] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (12 hours later)
The cookie is for noticing the ambiguity and thinking critically about it (which I'm sure many others did, but technoninja posted about it first). It's not a confirmation in either direction; I just like positively reinforcing Paying Attention.
u/Bowbreaker [+2] Solitary Locust (21 hours later)
Ah. That makes more sense. I was afraid the cookie was for noticing that it's definitely the Elimist and not the Crayak or something.
u/Salivanth [+12] (22 hours later)
So, you're telling me a protagonist did something stupid and heroic...and actually got PUNISHED for it, rather than just constantly saying "Fuck the odds" every chapter and continuing on with no major sacrifices?
I love this fic, so much.
u/TK17Studios [+11] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
As author, I would like to say thank you thank you thank you for all of the thoughts and comments ... I'd trade 100 views or upvotes for 10 comments any day, and it's been super great to see people reacting and theorizing and swapping ideas.
u/None [+2] (2 days later)
Keep it up!
u/CitrusJ [+10] (3 hours later)
Author: "I'm always curious about whether or not I did [Cassie] justice."
Did? What do you mean, did?!? Ahhhhhh
u/NotUnusualYet [+9] (12 hours later)
Haven't seen this mentioned yet: Did anyone acquire Cassie? There's going to be a very awkward conversation soon, if so. Also a potential resurrection if they can munchkin the morph tech even further, though I don't consider that likely.
u/MugaSofer [+5] (a day later)
Well, if she really has a cosmic role, they could always kill someone to resurrect her... D:
u/FeepingCreature [+2] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (2 days later)
Jesus Christ. This is a science fiction setting. Don't tell me there's not a matter duplicator anywhere.
Kill a mindclone.
:grumbles about contrived problems that only exist because the main characters aren't transhumanists:
u/MugaSofer [+4] (2 days later)
Hey, mindclones are people too! That's not transhumanism, it's ... some subtype of patternism where worth is tied to uniqueness, I forget the name.
Hmm, I wonder how the Animorphs might go about creating a mindclone ...
u/FeepingCreature [+2] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (2 days later)
It has a name? ... Share? I don't know it.
u/TK17Studios [+1] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (2 days later)
Worth is tied to uniqueness like in the Andalite culture?
=P
See also Drive comic.
u/philophile [+3] (a day later)
They all acquired each other in the beginning before they knew the implications, "in case anyone had to cover for anyone else." Not sure if everyone has more recent backups though.
u/ketura [+2] Organizer (a day later)
If so, it would be Jake or Rachel that could have done it in the sly, and being as Rachel only recently figured out she could do it to Marco, I think Jake might be the only candidate.
u/PeridexisErrant [+8] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (29 minutes later)
I would like a happy ending, please.
Please.
^(not like this...)
u/TK17Studios [+15] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (4 hours later)
Put aside fear for courage, my friend.
Actually, you should know that I'm trying very, very hard for a happy ending, because I really want one too, but I have precommitted to not guaranteeing the happy ending without doing the work. In other words, I'm just running the calculation, and I'm doing my best to have the good guys win, but if I come up against an insurmountable problem, then they won't.
u/PeridexisErrant [+7] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (10 hours later)
Cassie died as she lived, ethically conflicted but trying to do the right thing. I guess in the end that's all you can ask the Powers for.
Though I note that (a) we don't actually see her die, (b) it's not clear which God we saw, and (c) the other one might move Cassie and the kid...
But probably not. Those who burn so brightly so young don't often grow old.
u/Chosen_Pun [+4] The Chosen Ones (17 hours later)
Well, Cassie never demorphed, so she and the kid should still be in Z-space. I think I vaguely recall a plot from the canon series where someone stuck like that was actually picked up by a passing ship, Hitchhiker's Guide-style.
A similar ex machina here, however, would seem poorly advised after this sequence of events, even if not entirely implausible given the respective deus and diabolus already in play, so to speak.
u/TK17Studios [+2] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (18 hours later)
Can confirm that Cassie and the kid are still in Z-space until the pocket dimension runs out of steam and collapses. However, the meteor strike creates pressures and temperatures that are extreme enough to completely wipe out every trace of the nanotech that maintains the link between pocket dimension and morph construct—there's no "anchor" remaining for any kind of demorph to occur/no machinery left to open a wormhole and start pulling Cassie back into reality.
u/CoolGuy54 [+1] (a month later)
Hmm... Sounds like this should work like when Garrett had his construct frozen and he woke up as a disembodied consciousness running on the emulator. That doesn't actually help her out though, there's no link back to reality... unless maybe someone...it'd have to be Rachel... was willing to sacrifice themselves and that could somehow re-establish the link... nah, if you tried this you'd with the already established backup copy trick, which makes more sense given the end of Interlude 4 too.
edit: Actually, no! everyone has acquired copy's of Cassie's morphs, so she probably get gain control of them via the resonance thingee. And they might even be able to do this after a period of time if destroying her construct means her pocket dimension starts running time at a different rate to everything else.
u/360Saturn [+7] (7 hours later)
I'm wondering how Rachel will react to this latest development. That's her whole family down the drain now along with her best friend and she's the only one of them that's lost that. Good thing to happen to the already most unstable character eh...
u/TexasJefferson [+7] (a day later)
This seems like an extremely unsubtle move given just how subtle the interlude's description of interventions was.
So I notice I'm confused.
First, it implies the other guy did something equally unsubtle or that our guy has been saving up intervention points for a very, very long time. Both possibilities seem in need of explanation.
Second, it implies that that game is going very differently than our guy expected—otherwise it seems likely he would have pursued more subtle interventions to steer his pieces away from danger (or danger away from them). Alternatively, maybe this flashy intervention was needed mostly for the psychological effect it would have on the pieces rather than for the purpose of saving them? But in that case, it remains to be seen what his purpose was in getting Cassie killed—as something that causally near into the future should have been crystal clear to such a being. ("Maybe he's just really incompetent?" Like r!Voldemort was seen by HPJEV?)
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+6] (11 hours later)
Deeply gripping. I wish I could read a new chapter everyday. I love this story so much.
You wrote Cassie's voice incredibly well. I'm stunned.
Also, yes, the bug fighter was still hovering above the building, so what happened should have happened. Stupid yet heroic decisions should not be rewarded lightly. I applaud you for writing simulation---as you put it, running the calculation---rather than writing plot.
I wonder if you could describe in the course of one of the next chapters why Cassie was included among the queens, bishops, and knights?
u/halxeno [+4] (a day later)
Stretching the chess analogy - if she was a queen perhaps one of the pawns will need to be sacrificed to return her to the board.
u/throwawayIWGWPC [+3] (6 days later)
Ugh, don't remind me. Even where deus ex machina is commonly legitimate, it still makes me cringe.
IMO if the Animorphs get another date with our ascendant deity friend, they should ask if they can take their sweet time deciding. Then they can take their time to munchkin as hard as possible.
u/MultipartiteMind [+5] (2 days later)
Pleasantly(?) consistent with the most irritating thing about Cassie's personality in the original series.
I also found myself remember the original Ellimist Chronicles, about how he puts his life on the line to destroy Crayak to save the galaxy, becomes godlike by accident, and then sits back and waits for Crayak to catch up and become godlike too before doing anything to him.
For the arbiter, I note that they could have used the same unassailable arbiter to broker the universe-halving division while preventing betrayal.
I also note that, in the moral calculus sense (justifying loss aversion), to a starving person the difference between enough money for no meals and enough money for one meal is of much greater value than the difference between enough money for one meal and enough money for two meals. The first half-of-a-universe either filled with or bereft of life matters a lot more (in terms of presence/absence of future potential, too) than the second half does, at least if you value life. Going for double-or-nothing presumably makes sense if the thought of any life existing is torturous, and the last speck wiped out is worth more than all the rest combined.
u/chaos-engine [+5] (7 hours later)
It sounds like the move allowance was based on mass * distance. Doesn't that mean demorphed Ax should count as two people then? Same for Grizzly Rachel?
Also, couldn't that math have been hacked to move everyone a short distance away first, morph down to tardigrades out something tiny, and then move them 50 miles out? That would let them move more of the robots (Chi, right?) or other high value people out of the 50 mile radius.
Other hacking opportunities: Instead of moving 8 bodies 50 miles, move 16 bodies 25 miles, with 8 of them being the Chi, and the 8 Chi should be able to transport the other 8 bodies 25 miles in half an hour. If they can't move that fast, then you can do the appropriate math to figure out how many people they can move.
Bring the morph cube over to Marco's dad and Jake's brother, move the yerks in their heads 1 foot away to free them, then give them the ability to morph and tiny creatures to morph into. Now they can morph them into something small and have low mass for low moving costs. Repeat this process with any other humans you want to save.
u/ketura [+6] Organizer (7 hours later)
I highly doubt this was a munchkinable event. The Ellimist was not limited to the atomic mass of X people, he was just going to have to offer X atoms of transition per meter to his opponent in the future, and so he wanted to minimize any advantage he gave away. He already knew their number and no doubt knew their request beforehand, and he had deemed the risk acceptable.
It also seems to me that this was a single "move"; it was going to happen in that one instant or not at all. They weren't exploring the limits of physicality (the Ellimist is capable of far more than he did), but rather were offered a single non-grid-aligned chess move. Taking (and thus allowing to Crayak) several short hops over a single large one seems to me to be the far more dangerous option to leave for your hyperintelligent superopponent.
u/callmebrotherg [+5] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (9 hours later)
It also seems like "make it possible for X humans to gain morphing capabilities, save X humans from Controller-dom, and save X Chee" are all things that might allow additional moves for Crayak.
u/Salivanth [+5] (14 hours later)
Similarly, "Take over the mind of the best strategist the Andalites have" was one hell of a move. The game's been going on for a while before the fic starts, that's for sure.
u/callmebrotherg [+4] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (14 hours later)
What's really interesting to me is trying to figure out what counts as a move. Is it just direct intervention? If so, "take over the mind of the best strategist the Andalites have" might not even have been a move, but a secondary effect.
u/ketura [+7] Organizer (a day later)
I have no doubt that this is a match between who is the better butterfly-wing coach. These direct interventions are the feints and distractions, meant to consume attention.
u/thequizzicaleyebrow [+5] (a day later)
This is canon, the Ellimist originally started out as an alien gamer whose favorite game was a competitive butterfly effect simulator. There was different scenarios, but the basic idea was to see of the two people playing, who could further their goal better via one small change, the smaller the better.
In the only game of this we saw, each player was trying to get a species to advance the fastest and destroy the other player's species in the same solar system. It seems likely that the Ellimist and Crayak are now playing a hellishly more complicated version of this game, using reality.
Or actually, since in the original game it was a simulation, our universe could be a simulated universe they're using to decide their conflict.
u/Salivanth [+4] (14 hours later)
I'm guessing that Crayak's move wasn't to cause the event directly, but set events in motion so that it would occur. Similarly, the Animorphs weren't physically moved to the construction site, but it's pretty clear that the Ellimist set it up so that they'd be there.
u/ZeroNihilist [+4] (a day later)
If Crayak (or the Ellimist) wants to kill off the resistance, it's now over. Teleport small chunks of lava from the Earth's core into their brains, or teleport small pieces of their spine two millimetres to the left.
There's a lot of ways to kill somebody with unrestricted teleportation even with much stricter limits than "human mass equivalent times a macroscopic distance".
Which means that there are either more restrictions in place than we know about (e.g. can't directly kill a piece on the board) or the other player doesn't want them dead at the moment.
u/ketura [+2] Organizer (a day later)
Considering that the Ellimist himself had this opportunity and didn't just use it to, say, off Visser Three, you're probably right about straight up killing people. It's far more likely to be more like chess: have to use a piece to take a piece. A game of positive actions that put your own pieces in advantageous spots, rather than a game of negative actions that just delete your opponent's.
Which sounds a lot more like the Ellimist than Crayak. I wonder what concessions were made to have him agree to such an ordered playstyle...
u/MugaSofer [+2] (a day later)
Well, Crayak has his Howlers, although he (it?) does work through mortal agents as well.
u/ketura [+2] Organizer (a day later)
Yes, he "has" the Howlers, but I think that's more a matter of them being the perfect storm: they're impossible to beat in combat, their values line up reasonably with Crayak's, and they're super easy to manipulate when it comes to matters of "wipe out everyone on this planet", but really hard to manipulate for Order. This makes them "his" game pieces as opposed to his agents, and even then only in so much that the Ellimist just doesn't get much out of them.
In other news I struggle to see how the Drode might fit into this AU, without there at least being an Anti-Drode.
u/callmebrotherg [+3] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (a day later)
Drode might be the Elfangor to Crayak's Ellimist.
u/ketura [+2] Organizer (a day later)
Hmm, that's an intriguing thought. The Drode more directly acted than Elfangor ever did. Though perhaps that's a matter of perspective: Elfangor had free will and was persuaded to be the hero when needed with just a nudge here and there. The Drode was given demigodlike powers and specific assignments, with his own initiative here and there. Both really are mirrors of their respective master's values.
u/callmebrotherg [+3] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (a day later)
We also don't know what Elfangor was doing in this continuity.
u/ketura [+5] Organizer (a day later)
To be honest I like the idea of an Anti-Elfangor more than an Anti-Drode: just some complete evil badass that thwarts plots, routes armies, and constantly frustrates the cause of order in some remote sector while being outnumbered ten to one.
u/callmebrotherg [+5] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (a day later)
As the Human-Yeerk Peace Alliance points out, this is arguably Visser Three, even if canon doesn't fully recognize it:
Now, I’m not saying that Visser Three is a bad military general. That’s not what this is about.
Give him a force of 100 Hork-Bajir-Controllers and tell him to take a strategically valuable spot on a hostile planet, he’d go in, take the spot, blow up two areas valuable to the enemy and come back with 200 new hosts in chains. I mean, he became famous when High Command assigned him to defend the Taxxon homeworld and he took out the Andalite invaders and came home with an Andalite host.
He took down the Andalite invaders of Earth before they even reached the planet – do you have any idea how hard it is to ambush somebody in space? There is no cover in space. He’s great in a high-stakes warzone, which is frankly weird for our kind.
Though, I guess a true foil to Elfangor in this particular sense would also be aware of the EC Game, which is not true of Visser Three.
u/MugaSofer [+2] (2 days later)
The thing is that - in canon, at least - he created the Howlers directly to be the Ultimate Killing Machines(tm). That seems to suggest a different playstyle to the cryptic-butterfly-God one favoured by the Ellimist.
u/ketura [+2] Organizer (2 days later)
Perhaps. Then again, if Jake's intervention ruined the whole species, why not nuke the planet and make more elsewhere? That suggests to me that it had taken millenia or eons of butterfly work to build them up to the point they were at, and with ruined memories all that work had in fact been wasted. That doesn't seem like direct agents to me.
u/MugaSofer [+3] (2 days later)
Well, presumably he had to make an expensive deal with the Ellimist to create them - or perhaps he did so before they attained godhood, as the Ellimist created the Pemalites.
IIRC they did explicitly make the point that the Howlers never evolved and were created by Crayak directly, although I'm not sure if the Ellimist confirmed that.
u/ketura [+2] Organizer (2 days later)
Being made before godhood makes the most sense, actually. Good points all around.
u/XerxesPraelor [+5] (14 hours later)
“Order and chaos,” said the creature. “Unity and harmony. Silence and noise. A fundamental conflict of values.”
"And noise.
And silence."
“Oh, my dear Miss Everdeen. I thought we had an agreement not to lie to each other.”
"Girl, I thought you weren’t going to lie to yourself."
u/ZeroNihilist [+4] (a day later)
It's worth noting that "silence" isn't the opposite of "noise" in the same way that "order" is the opposite of "chaos".
chaos:noise :: order:signal
I think silence would qualify as a type of signal, but it isn't quite the same as, say, a piece of music or an encoding of the prime numbers.
Also, "unity" and "harmony" aren't generally thought of as opposites. The distinction would be that unity is "singularity", where harmony is "working together".
Personally, I think that this entity, whether Crayak or the Ellimist, is the one that wants more bloodshed. After all, the Yeerks don't seem to want to be bloodthirsty. If they win, they will unite all humans and Andalites into a single hive mind. There won't be any conflict, because in a sense every human will be every other human.
There will, of course, be trillions upon trillions of sapient slaves screaming in their heads, but they won't be killing each other.
If the humans win, it will be a much slower process getting to the point of universal pacifism, but hopefully that would be the end result. Publicise the Yeerk-human conflict and they might even catapult ahead.
But if neither side wins, if they both keep fighting forever and ever, escalating until first the galaxy and then the universe are consumed in perpetual war... well, a non-definitive victory for either side here would be a good first step.
u/MugaSofer [+3] (a day later)
It's worth noting that "silence" isn't the opposite of "noise" in the same way that "order" is the opposite of "chaos".
That rather depends on your definition of "noise", doesn't it?
u/ZeroNihilist [+9] (a day later)
I may have been unclear. Silence is an antonym of noise, but it does not imply the same relationship as chaos and order.
Chaos and order describe the degree of structure in a system. An order-loving deity would try to build structure (such as planets, organisms, and societies) while a chaos-loving deity would try to tear it down.
There's a fairly obvious human moral mapping between the two: chaos is bad, order is good.
Noise and signal (treated as antonyms) map directly to chaos and order.
With noise and silence (assuming you mean "noise" as in "not silence"), it's not quite as easy.
A noise-loving deity would be one that tries to create things which make noise (like people, supernovae, and earthquakes). A silence-loving deity would try to eliminate every source of noise.
If you interpret it as "flux vs. stasis", the implication still holds.
Assuming all you knew about a deity was that it loved chaos, would you guess it preferred noise or silence? I'd say noise, as silence is definitely not chaotic by the colloquial definition.
That would imply (by exclusion) that the order-loving deity loves silence. There's a problem there; society and peace and progress are very ordered things, but none of them are silent (literally or metaphorically). Quiet, perhaps, but not silent. You still have to engage in a change of ideas.
My hypothesis is that the two entities are OUS (order, unity, silence) and CHN (chaos, harmony, noise). Neither of these has a desirable human morality mapping. OUS would eliminate us for being noisy and disunited, while CHN would have us constantly in flux. Which is the Ellimist and which is Crayak doesn't really matter, but I'd guess OUS = Ellimist and CHN = Crayak.
So where in canon the Ellimist is basically an all-around good guy that just helps out because his morality happens to line up with human morality, I'm suggesting that neither of them actually cares about us. We're just another battleground, and if ever one should win their game then human society is going to change beyond recognition overnight (either to static perfection or eternal conflict).
u/CouteauBleu [+7] We are the Empire. (a day later)
I think you're on point with most of your analysis. There's been a lot of hints that these gods are out to screw us, or at least Not Our Friends, and I'm pretty sure that both of them have goals orthogonal to the long term survival and prosperity of human kind.
It would actually be somewhat close to canon, where the Ellimist comes from a game-centered society, and let Crayak ascend to godhood so they could play an infinite game of chess. The Ellimist often tells the Animorphs things that turn out to be untrue (cough-retcon-cough-KASU), and his strategy when Crayak starts destroying his worlds is "Make so many of them he can't keep up no matter how much he destroys". Yeah, canon!Ellimist definitely was on the CHN side of the game.
u/TK17Studios [+3] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
Without making any confirmations or disconfirmations of ZeroNihilist's specific conclusions, I strongly admire and approve of this quality of thought.
u/PrimeV2 [+5] (16 hours later)
I notice that Jake is confused. This is probably important.
We have no way to verify anything we know about these gods, anyways. Nothing, that is, except for what we learned from the 3rd person omniscient interlude, but that kinda feels like cheating.
u/philh [+8] (6 minutes later)
what
no
fuck
u/natron88 [+3] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (an hour later)
This is an interesting story. I look forward to reading more of it.
u/360Saturn [+4] (20 hours later)
I know I'm commenting again, but I don't remember that much about canon Cassie. How did canon get around her ethical objections to what they were doing? How did she maintain her friendship with Rachel and her romantic relationship with Jake when one was the weapon and the other the mastermind behind some horrible, horrible actions?
u/scruiser [+4] CYOA (a day later)
Cassie's dangerous unilateral moves occasionally paid off in unexpected ways in canon:
She let herself get trapped in caterpillar morph to prove to a yerk, Aftran, that she would be willing to take blindness/deafness/weak form if it meant saving another being. This inspired Aftran to start the yerk peace movement. Of course, we've already seen how Aftran went in this timeline.
Giving the morph cube to Tom's yerk enabled that yerk to lead a rouge movement against Viser 3. Of course, Rachel died to kill that group once their usefulness was up, but I would count it as still a weak net positive.
How did she maintain her friendship with Rachel and her romantic relationship with Jake when one was the weapon and the other the mastermind behind some horrible, horrible actions?
- In canon they are able to avoid killing human controllers for some time, and the few yerks that notice this statistical anomaly are ignored. In this AU though, Viser 3 would easily notice that.
u/TK17Studios [+2] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (20 hours later)
She basically didn't. It was rocky many, many times, with Cassie occasionally taking dangerous unilateral action to protect the enemy or mitigate bloodshed, and often objecting or boycotting (and once "quitting"). In the end, her conscience drove her and the others permanently apart; in many ways, it was her sort-of departure that precipitated the gloves-off bloodbath of the last few books.
u/None [+5] (2 days later)
Quick comment:
I totally called the red/blue morality aspect of elimist and crayak :D - Interesting to think about how the human scale scharacters should act in these circumstances. When you know gods are playing games with you you could try and second guess their intents, but you also know they could know what you were going to choose anyway, so you get stuck in a morass of recusion. Could be an oppurtunity to introduce some omega style decision theory scenarios
Cassie is interesting, very self aware in how she is violating her own principles. Reminds me a bit of some characters in worm. -
On the specialness of the chosen 4, in canon it was because Cassie had some ability to sense changes to timelines, though that was never really explored. It also justified the coincidence of Elfangor's son, Visser 1's son, a natural leader, a fighter, etc all ending up as friends in the right place and time. Elimist was described as "stacking the deck". I don't think we've had any references to Tobias and Marco's family connctions so far, but I don't think its been ruled out either. Imagine r!marco would be less affected by it. Elfanor's earth backstory with time travel, non genetic inheritance, etc would be a bit hard to fit into the story, but I could see him having been on earth before in a diferent way
Given we now have an animorph presence in DC and a wmd attack by V3 it would be very hard for the war not to go to full escalation right now. Unclear who would win given the yeerks explicitly have more limited forces in this version, but are more clever about using them. Hope the human authoritiies are also realistically competent, as teen books the originals played off 'adults are useless' a lot.
u/royishere [+3] (2 hours later)
Was there an option to reverse time entirely? Trade the town's existence for an intact yeerk pool? And if there was, would they have taken it?
I just... shit. Fuck.
u/CoolGuy54 [+1] (a month later)
would they have taken it?
It would have been a bad trade, looking at the big picture.
u/confettibin [+3] (a day later)
I'm sure this was explained at some point, but when did they aquire three separate Hork-Bajir? I only recall Rachael getting one during the first mission at the Y.
u/ketura [+2] Organizer (a day later)
Which is all they needed. Remember that they can acquire from morphs, with caveats.
u/confettibin [+4] (a day later)
Caveats like the interference. They were all using the morph at the same time. They wouldn't have been coordinated enough to clear rubble.
u/ketura [+4] Organizer (a day later)
The interference, I think, isn't between all the people currently morphed from the same template, but between the original acquirer and any copies. With no Rachel Prime human-hork-bajir brain interface broadcasting indiscriminately, the individual Rachel-brain-matter local copies perform just fine.
Now maybe I'm off-base on this, but IIRC none of the tests shown on-screen tested the case where the prime morpher was out of the picture, though I can't imagine this Marco overlooking that.
u/scruiser [+3] CYOA (a day later)
So in canon, Cassie's impulsively stupid pacifistic moves ended up working out okay through dumb luck or incredibly convoluted chains of events (getting stuck in butterfly morph to convince Aftran to give up its host, only to be able to morph again as a side-effect of butterfly metamorphosis; giving up the morph cube to a group of yerks who went rouge and messed up Viser 3's plan in the process; etc.) I was expecting the author to pull a similar move here, even if it wouldn't seem rational!fic because the Ellimist was involved (in canon the Ellimist was good at pulling moves that lucked like one thing but actually accomplished something else: offering to teleport the Animorphs and a select group of humans to another planet to preserve human civilization, while actually showing them the location of the Kandrona ray; getting them to trick the Howler hive mind with feelings of love; etc.) Thus the ending of this chapter was a huge shock and I am hoping there will be some kind of twist, but I haven't figured it out yet and neither has anyone in this comment train, as far as I can tell...
Raising your prior for improbable Ellimist intervention and/or Cassie lucking out, does anyone see anything now?
u/noggin-scratcher [+5] I am a happy tree (2 days later)
An improbable arrangement of the local terrain channels the force of the meteor impact in such a way that it arrives at the location where Cassie happens to have to come to rest (once you account for her predicted path having seen the child in need of rescue), in a highly improbable shape. As a result she is compressed and propelled.
Shortly thereafter a nearby Controller observing from outside the blast radius at what they believe to be a safe distance is taken by surprise as a diamond bullet passes neatly through their brain, killing them instantly (alternate idea: just gets hit in the face by the body of a snipe imbued with lethal velocity). That Controller was responsible for routine maintenance and they are replaced with someone fractionally less diligent.
This becomes pivotal when a glancing blow against a Yeerk ship's shield just barely exceeds its capacity, because a single relay was overdue for replacement, and thus brings down the shield, the ship and their central command in one lucky strike.
(and I still feel like this is insufficiently improbable to be an Ellimist level of play)
u/scruiser [+5] CYOA (2 days later)
I was going to say that this is not quite canon Ellimist's style in terms of manipulations, but then I recalled the time a passing Andalite ship picked up their bodies in Z-space in a freak accident, so maybe. But still, it doesn't seem to quite fit...
Okay, how about this what if this is actually Crayak interfering... Crayak was counting on them making rational/ruthless decisions but Cassie didn't and now Crayak's plan is thrown off?
u/noggin-scratcher [+4] I am a happy tree (2 days later)
Using Cassie as a projectile may not have been a suggestion founded in seriousness.
Having it be a Crayak plan that got disrupted would be interesting... losing the group conscience seems like it would serve his goals though (maybe it was a Crayak plan that went exactly as intended?), unless it makes the surviving group members abruptly more decisive and effective, or more moral to honour her memory.
Not that it seems entirely certain that she's deceased... we haven't yet read "And then her flaming remains were scattered to the four winds with no hope of recovery" so I guess some hope still remains for further improbable intervention. Maybe.
u/None [+3] (2 days later)
I'd bet heavily that cassie is perma-dead. Anything else would be narratively unsatisfying.
u/CouteauBleu [+3] We are the Empire. (6 days later)
Agreed. Listening to your heart instead of taking a rational decision is not a behaviour that should be rewarded, be it by manipulative gods or rationalist writers.
On the other hand, I'd be very disappointed if Cassie didn't show up again as a "Morph ghost", that is, people morphing into her and unlocking her mind.
u/None [+3] (2 days later)
I don't know if anyone will see this so long after the post, but I would really like, even if it is an aside, someone to ask the Eliminist how exactly he and the Crayak happened and, if he tells them about the whole fell into a black hole / sentient spaceship cluster thing, have that person immediately start thinking about how to do that themselves. I didn't read every book in the series, but upon looking into the Eliminist chronicles I couldn't help but think that, if the way he achieved immortality and omnipotence is reliable enough that it worked for him and the Crayak, couldn't a whole species potentially do it, and exist as a race of energy beings? It's not like blackholes are going anywhere, or anything... Thoughts?
u/scruiser [+3] CYOA (2 days later)
I mean an advanced enough species could probably do it eventually, but I would assume in this rationalized AU it wasn't just falling into a blackhole, but some complicated procedure along the lines of embedding its mind into the information on the edge of an event horizon or something else that requires a lot of advanced engineering ability and not just some generic trick that the Ellimist could easily share .
I would also assume that the rules of the game the setup will also confine any other entities that reach their same level, or prevent them from reaching that level in the first place.
u/None [+2] (2 days later)
We have no reason to believe they are the only 2 energy beings in existence, just that they are the only ones who have chosen to play this game. In a realistically large universe anything that happens once will happen several times.
u/NukeNoodles [+2] (7 days later)
Broccoli confirmed as an alien species? Also fortunate that Tobias has the Blue Box with him.
u/PrimeV2 [+2] (12 days later)
So, I had a brain fart last night:
If the god was willing and able to move the atoms of all the animorphs out of the blast zone, couldn't he also have been able to move the atoms of say, a W-80-1 nuclear warhead up to the KKV to send it off-course? I assume he could jigger with it to activate it, if so, but I just can't help but wonder why he specifically said he was unwilling to directly move the atoms of the thing, when presumably more efficient means were available to deal with the problem...