I was hooked by the beginning of the story, but this development isn't my cup of tea. I think rational-fics are best when they stick to the "spirit of the canon" and have the characters act more reasonably within that. I think retconning the Yeerks into a hive-mind race breaks the spirit of the canon setting, which is that Yeerk society is a fascist analogue where individual ambition is systemically incentivized, and thus resulting in Yeerk individual characters that are selfish in personality. Making them semi-hive-mind not only introduces plot holes (visser ranking system, and individual Yeerk's extreme fear of death doesn't make sense) but more importantly it breaks the spirit of all Yeerk characters and their role in the story; now they're less individual characters and more like fragments of a hive-mind character.

Your a fucking faggot nigger

Ohhhh nooooo...

Oh, clever, clever Visser Three.

The best part is, I even kind of believe his intent. Imagine if the Ellimist and the other guy (can't remember its name right this second) ended up being the big bads, which, considering all they've done...

Excellent writing. I'm feeling the emotional impact of the Visser's words, and Tobias's doubts. This story is amazing, and I'm so glad I chanced upon it by accident.

This was an interesting chapter.
I honestly don’t think I have much to say about it. I’ve decided that I might not review every chapter, just that I might review the ones that I especially have something to say about.
But this was still really interesting. I’m going to keep reading.

This is a very interesting idea.
I feel like your portrayal of Elfangor was more realistic than in the books. Whereas in the books he landed on the planet to specifically find Tobias and get the time matrix, in your story he came to earth after failing to destroy it. It makes a bit more sense given what we know of the Andalite military and their arrogant attitude towards other species.
The way the kids dealt with the aftermath of the construction site event seems a bit more realistic. In the books they were just like “let’s just sleep it off and it will all blow over by the morning“, but in your story they know that this is all too real and they know that they’re in real danger, so they immediately start to plan.
The way the morphing power works makes it seem less like a children’s superhero story. When you are injured in your true body, you can just morph away the damage. I feel like that doesn’t show the fact that there can be consequences because you can just heal immediately. The morphing time limit being used to kill people is certainly a darker element that you brought to the story, but seeing as how I’ve already read this story before, it kind of makes sense to bring that in for future plot points.
I kind of had a problem with Marco having the idea to take out Cassie, Rachel, and Tobias. I feel like that would be something that he would’ve done in the later books of the series, but they haven’t been severely hardened by war and they’re still just kids. That part seems a little out of character, but for the most part you did keep them a little more in character.
I am really enjoying this story.

Hello.
It’s been a while since I’ve read this story and I’ve decided to re-read it. I think I’m going to review every chapter with my thoughts about it.
The first chapter was a little bit confusing, but good. Elfangor is my favourite character, and I wonder if the part where he says he spent several years in human form means he’s still Tobias‘s father?
Would he have to morph back every hour or so, or does it work differently with morphs combining DNA?
I can’t remember all the specifics of the morphing technology.
I’m going to continue reading and review the next chapter at some point.

i think it lessens the impact to take away melissa not being controlled because instead of a kid being neglected from her parents because they are being controlled by alien slugs its just another kid being controlled like tom rachel wasnt that close with melissa before the visitor either way so the impact wouldnt be the same as tom plus how does some 5 or 6 year old convince their parents to go to some club with random grown ass men and teenagers in it im not even sure if they explained what the yeerks say the sharing does in full detail but still why would they join chapman had a deal with the yeerk so i assume he knew and its not like once they are there they would be forced in instantly because unless they went into the pool itself there would have to be some ordinary non human controllers i assume right?

Now that is scary

I just spent a couple of weeks mainlining this story after having located it on TV Tropes. I can honestly say I have never read a better Animorphs fanfiction. It's not even a close contest. Harrowing, gripping, emotionally fulfilling, this is a rational fic done absolutely right. Thank you for bringing it to the fanbase over that good six years you were working. I can't wait to see what you do next!

I forgot the reason why nobody has tried to morph into an Andalite to take advantage of the higher mental capabilities to think and plan

I'm convinced this is a legit Reddit thread

this dude's life is brutal. then again, the whole thing is brutal.

Holy shit. I read animorphs as a kid and the memory always left a bad taste in my mouth for how the kids acted and how the tone shifted to a dark ending.

And now years later Ive found the cure.

Wow. This was the most gripping story I’ve read in a while. I read this in two weeks, compared to the last story I read, which was a million words, and that took me seven months.
I was a bit nervous getting into this. The summary listed this as a Rational fic, in the style of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I like intelligent writing, with consistent rules and consequences, but I didn’t like HPMOR for several reasons, mostly centered around the portrayal of the main character as being always right and feeling like a pretentious soliloquy of how smart the author is, and everyone else is dumb. That kind of character works, Sherlock Holmes is a memorable character for a reason, but the fact is that Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres is eleven, and it doesn’t matter that he’s actually parasitizing off Voldemort's soul, because there simply is not enough time in the 7 or so years that he’s been able to learn for him to pull off feats involving college level quantum physics.
But you didn’t do that with the Animorphs. Sure, Marco and Visser Three have their moments where they explain or think about how dumb people are, as well as strategies to prevent erronious thinking, but it feels natural to their characters. And even though our Animorphs are smart, they make mistakes. Cassie chooses between multiple valid moral philosophies, with consequences. Jake looks from the other perspective, and has consequences that he has to be reminded of.
The stakes kept getting higher, in a sensical manner. And the characters react fairly realistically to that; becoming more jaded, more hard, more overwhelmed, depending on the character. Now that I’m considering it, this story has a similar feel to Worm, with a weak power eventually munchkin’d into fighting a universal threat.
I liked this. Animorphs was always about the horrors of war, how that changes people, with very little status quo effects in the end. And in seeking to look at this from a new angle, clear up all the weird inconsistencies and bring this to a more adult audience, you made a new creation. You didn’t just Rationalize the story with all the philosophies and ideas of an internet group, you rationalized the story by fixing its characters and setting. I hesitate to say this is better than the original, as it’s difficult to say that one piece of art is better than another, but this certainly isn’t worse, and some audiences will love it more.