Month: July 2018

thejakeformerlyknownasprince:

I’d say that this is less a matter of character de-evolution or flanderization, more a matter of different perspectives.

The Animorphs pretty much only see Visser Three when he’s under attack by, well, them.  There are a few exceptions, of course, like in #25 or #37, but on the whole the only samples of his behavior they ever get are when he’s fighting for his life.  The Animorphs are also understandably biased in their interpretation of his behavior, tending to ascribe him uncharitable motivation because, hello, he’s trying to kill or enslave them and their friends/family.  That combination probably biases a lot of what we think we see from him in the series.

For instance, Rachel is smart enough to be a Packard Foundation Outstanding Student (whatever that means) and get an award in front of a schoolwide assembly for some kind of academic achievement (#13).  Not only that, but she’s skillful at thinking quickly on her feet when forced to make her own decisions (#17, #32, #37), has pretty decent insight into her own and others’ emotions (MM2, #7, #13), and is capable of enormous compassion, even for her enemies (#33, #54).  However, most yeerks could be forgiven for assuming that she’s a mindless brute, because the only times they ever see her are the times when she’s rushing alone into a room full of 12 hork-bajir-controllers to start ripping throats out with her teeth.  Not only that, but — assuming that Aftran’s not the only one with a specific grudge over a dead peer — they’d be forgiven for turning her into an inhuman monster in their minds.

Visser Three is the same way.  He doesn’t do great under pressure, tending to fall apart and start mindlessly tearing into anyone who happens to be in the vicinity.  He’s much better at planning and manipulation when he has time to think things through, time he usually doesn’t have if Ax’s tail blade is at his throat or birds of prey are raining from the sky to decimate his troops.  He’s also a skillful manipulator (AC, as you mentioned) but a pretty poor leader (MM1, MM4, etc.).  That means that he often ends up resorting to shouting louder and louder to try and get people to listen to him — because he doesn’t know how to persuade large groups — and eventually chopping off heads when shouting doesn’t work.

It’s also important not to underestimate what a sheer pain in the butt Visser One is for Visser Three, to the point of directly sabotaging a lot of his efforts on Earth.  We don’t know for sure where Visser One and Visser Three’s mutual hatred comes from.  (If I had to guess, then it has to do with Visser One’s indignation that her pet planet and her pet humans got given away to Visser Three after she spent decades securing the Yeerk Empire’s first-ever Class 5 species.)  Either way, Visser One’s combination of hatred for Visser Three specifically and her hidden agenda to prevent open war on Earth in general conspire to get in Visser Three’s way a hell of a lot.  She forces him to work within the Sharing’s subtle-influence model, and Visser There does not do “subtle.”  She prevents him from winning battles through helping their enemies in #5, #15, Visser, and possibly other times that we don’t know about.  She gets him falsely (sort of falsely) accused of treason in #30 and ensures that the Council of Thirteen has him shackled by constant micromanagement in #37 and #38.  Visser One is a huge force in Visser Three’s incompetence, one that the Animorphs generally don’t recognize because they can’t see it.

Visser Three is also, I would argue, a victim of the Peter Principle.  He’s very good at fighting alone (and a one-controller army once he has Alloran’s body), reasonably good at directing small groups, and terrible at large-scale leadership.  The Yeerk Empire kicks him up the ladder because he makes a good figurehead, having Alloran’s body and all, but he would make a much better dragon to someone else’s wizard.  Said another way: he’s enforcer material, not emperor material.

Anyway, I do believe that all of these dynamics are deliberate decisions on K.A. Applegate’s part.  One aspect of the hyper-realistic style of Animorphs I really appreciate is that it’s not the story of six kids taking down an empire through superior force, or through destroying a plot-solving macguffin like the One Ring.  Instead, Applegate sells us on the idea that this is the story of six kids approaching what’s already a pretty wobbly block tower and poking at it from 40 different angles until they eventually manage to yank a few key blocks (Visser One, absolute control of the hork-bajir, kandrona security, Arbron’s taxxons, Tom’s yeerk, the Pool ship) out of the base in order to send the whole thing tumbling down.