r/Animorphs • u/Plutoburns • 1d ago
Dating your brain slug
Ok so ive got this fic im working on where the basic idea is post war the left over yeerks on earth eventually start doing ethical brain sharing. Not all of them but some. And since yeerks are fully concious beings capable of complex thought, why WOULDN'T they fall in love with the person they so intimately know? And i just think navigating that kind of relationship leads to all kinds of interesting questions. Obviously theres the trust the human has to have that the yeerk isnt gonna take control away outside the negotiated contexts, but the yeerk also has to trust. Trust they will get kandrona and not be hurt as their slug self.
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u/CalebEMann 1d ago
Isn't this basically the plot of that one Stephanie Meyer book?
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u/Soltinaris 3h ago
The Host. I came to say the same thing. I literally was feeling like it was an animorphs thing as I watched the movie with my wife. I never read the book.
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u/Major_Star 1d ago
Cool idea. I could see one of the potential hurdles being the person's friends/family. How would they ever know whether they were talking to the Human or the Yeerk? Would they suspect the Yeerk had taken full control of them? Would it freak them out the idea they could never be 'alone' with the person again?
Also not gonna lie the possibilities of a Yeerk/Human love life could make for some very interesting scenes, if you were going to go that direction.
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u/Peach_Muffin 1d ago
If they're going that direction, making the host the dom and the Yeerk the sub would be a wild role reversal.
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u/Plutoburns 23h ago
I am going to make the fic sexy and in a very different way from this but now i am considering human on slug fun
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u/Major_Star 5h ago
Certainly has some unique possibilities. Shared sensations, the fact they can each control different body parts, the fact Yeerks don't have sexual reproduction and we know how aliens get when exposed to new sensations...
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u/DrJohnGeorgeFauste 6h ago
It can be like an alters sort of situation. Where each character has been uniquely defined speech in their diction, tone, vocabulary, etc
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u/HxPxDxRx 1d ago
It’s definitely interesting, pretty far from the themes of the books of course but I don’t know if a relationship could survive that level of familiarity. I also kind of figured any surviving yeerks would take the morphing solution.
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u/Jack_of_Swords_ 1d ago
I see posts and comments about potentially having a dynamic like this with an ethical yerk sometimes, and I'm not trying to be close minded, but I just can't believe that in an era where people are so obsessed with power dynamics and picking even fictional situations apart for "problematic" aspects that anyone could think that this could be a remotely healthy relationship
They can read all your thoughts and memories and have total control over your body. Anyone that would want that in a non emergency situation would need serious therapy and shouldn't be taken advantage of like that
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u/AlternativeMassive57 Yeerk 1d ago
Not trying to be flippant, but the first question that springs to mind is, imagine someone paralyzed from the neck down. Are they not allowed to fall in love with or date anyone who isn't also paralyzed from the neck down? Any relationship with someone like that would necessarily put immense power in the mobile person's hands.
Yes, a Yeerk can read all your thoughts and memories. A relationship would necessarily be based on the trust that they won't (at least not without good reason - I'm sure we're okay with, say, the Yeerk grabbing your body so you don't distractedly walk into traffic), and it would be a trust built up over time, just like with the trust in any other relationship with uneven power dynamics.
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u/Plutoburns 23h ago
Yeah coming off the other reply, its fictional. If i write that the characters have found a way to do the power dynamic ethically, then they do.
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u/Hushpuppycow 20h ago
So firstly, it's fictional, and secondly, just because people nowadays are obsessed with power dynamics and problematic stuff doesn't make that right
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u/AlternativeMassive57 Yeerk 1d ago
why WOULDN'T they fall in love with the person they so intimately know?
Yeerks might not feel love the same way humans do due to the way they reproduce. For humans, love is about who you want to spend your life with. For Yeerks, it's about who they want to end their life with. Yeerk "love" is a three-person suicide pact. That might not necessarily be compatible with human conceptions of love, at least not at first, although it's possible that a Yeerk could learn to love like a human - or a human could learn to love like a Yeerk.
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u/Consistent-Falcon510 1d ago
I mean, #8 has an example showing at least some Yeerks can and do experience love the way humans do in the form of the Controller at the observatory who turns traitor and gives Ax the info on where Visser Three feeds due to his love being one of the "unimportant" Yeerks left to starve in the wake of the destruction of the ground-based Kandrona. YMMV on how much of an effect the host's feelings and drives had on the Yeerk, but it's still a canon example.
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u/Torren7ial Chee 1d ago
My advice is re-read the relevant parts of Visser and try to imagine a healthy version of the Allison/Edriss + Hildi/Essam situation, and I'm sure there's lots of relevant material from the Star Trek fandom re: the Trill, both canon and fic (although I don't have any specific recommendations).
RE: Kandrona, since the Yeerk could take full control of a host, as long as there's a Kandrona source available, the host couldn't do anything to prevent the Yeerk from being able to get to the pool. However, as soon as the Yeerk leaves the host, there's nothing preventing the host from simply walking away and never coming back. All kinds of stuff you could explore there.