Drop a chapter for Christmas?

Glad to see my favourite Animorph up and running, and the Visser maybe paying for alienating 100% of his goons.

"Better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war."

So the reason Rachel played nice with the thief was that he was Ante's uncle? Not sure how I like how that feels when Rachel spoke out loud reasons that it shouldn't matter in the context of the greatest weapon ever. I think I'll give it a pass, but my first reaction was "HUH?". The kid had it right, and his uncle really had "no idea what he would do" to get it, that's funny at least. I assume that isn't the end of dealing with the "Wake Up, Go to School, Save the World" trope.

I used zalgotext in a fanfic years ago,and shortly after I saw comments in another fic on spacebattles that people thought it was gauche or something. Not sure what that's all about, but maybe you want to be aware of things like that.

Thanks for writing.

I’m really so fucking happy to see this updating regularly again. I’ve been checking every single day since last Thanksgiving (and also low key stalking TK17studios on reddit) waiting to hear news and the last few chapters have more than made up for the hiatus. I love your take on the Marcos finding his mom (I assumed she was dead at this point). I would try and guess what’s going to happen next but at this point with this story every one of my guesses has been wrong.

Please let the Garrett clone wake up though. He’s a V good boy and he deserves to live. I will negative review the fuck out of this series and accuse it of being racist publicly if you don’t wake Garrett up.

Hunh. I've no idea what I've just read... Marco and Tobias being interested and having their memory open to a young yeerk, but so many mysteries remain! sooooo curious.

Very well written though!

I'm shrieking this is so good. Glad you're back :)

kind of sad the bird was just thrown under the bus but what can one do

Seeing where you take this universe is absolutely incredible

Thanks for writing! Don't know what else to say, but it seems those author's notes are almost desperate! If you're looking to hit that button of yours some more, there must be a solution to make it even easier for your readers to send something, anything, back rather than just read and leave. Maybe a strawpoll or some shit, I don't know, behavioral economics? Good luck, and thanks again.

I'm so glad this is updating again!
Appreciate all the ways that this keeps brining up random bits of Animorph lore, and then adding it to the story in novel ways (at least the part of my brain that vaguely remembered Animorph lore is now useful for something!).

You are an incredible author. I would honestly say you surpass the author in prose, and maturity of the story. Crazy to think people like you are only writing fanfics. You could easily be professional

looooove the story! I think I found a missing segway? they go from powwow about ultimate goals, ending with "Maybe just keep that in mind, is all. It would have been a relief, being able to see againMarco here,[... from there out it's like a new scene, only theirs no cutoff between the two. Just a simple 'So we started walking, and 10 minutes later...' would do wonders here!

Well, it's been a couple of years, and long story short, while life kept me busy enough to have honestly forgotten about this story halfway through... some recent, rather strenuous circumstances brought me back into it, and I'm happy to say that your writing is one of the things which turned out to be the silver lining in the cloud of almost the last year.

So, I'm not going to go over the ground I'm sure many reviewers already have with regards to your writing ability and creativity. What I feel compelled to mention, though, is the world building you worked into the Arn and Hork Bajir planet, which I consider nothing short of stunningly effective. The depiction of the Arn as indifferent was merely a novelty to me at first, but the sheer chill of the misty kill zone and its very real horrors were top notch.

On top of that, the mention of the tarmagoyf made me smile (I heartily approve of cross fandom world building), and the first Marco's death was handled with a tact I so rarely see these days, but which was more a hallmark of great fanfiction writers from the old school here (back when the FFN icon was a lightbulb, ye gods and little fishes).

So thanks for the writing, I'll be waiting for more, and am eager to see how you might possibly use a handful of the Arn's own genetic monstrosities against them... or not, considering Applegate's original depiction of them as having some semblance of control over the monsters.

Till next time,
MS

another awesome chapter! cliffhanger aaaaaaargh!

since you asked I will try to make a prediction about what is going to happen (sorry about my english, I'm no native speaker)

But I'm not smart enough to find the elegant - and retrospectively obvious - path to victory. I'm not even sure what the victory condition is anymore. I would say peace and symbiosis? But with the E vs C shenanigans, it seems like such goals are gonna be out of reach for as long as the game is not over.

So I will tackle the problem from a narrative angle. What is A:tR about, and what can we extrapolate from here?

First, I'd say that this story is about updating oneself. About actually trying to be better at being smart. And we see Rachel update about impulsivity, Tobias update about control, Ax-Helium update about taboo and tradition, Jake update about...lack of trust? delegating? this one kinda gets reset, though. I feel like Marco got a lot of things right from the start, and he's now a harder, more extreme version of what he used to be.

V3 looks afraid of updating, to the point he murders his own horcruxes at the slightest deviation. It would make sense that this flaw is going to be his downfall - but even then I tried to imagine how V3 could lose now without either an idiotball or a deus ex machina and I failed.

Misc.
I think Erek is making himself forget about Rachel, probably so as not to trigger the censor.
I think Cassie (and possibly David) can still come back, because if their mind was emulated on the arbiter when they morphed.. can you say "backup"?
I think howlers hivemind was the missing piece to V3's perfect horcruxes plan.

Oh. OH, maybe it's also gonna be his Achilles' heel? I mean, in canon one could touch the whole howlers hivemind by touching one individual. So maybe, if one V3 horcrux can be convinced to update...