Fans of the Animorphs

I'm too buzzed to say anything of value rn but I look forward to hear what

lisacharly has to say!

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lol that comment took four tries I should be no where near a key board rn

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sylverlining.livejournal.com

Oh goodness. Go lay down, honey.

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rayerai.livejournal.com

*applauds*

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natural-blue-26.livejournal.com

Yes, this is *so* her week, lol. ;)

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OMG EDRISS IS SO MUCH COOLER THAN ESPLIN NEENER NEENER.

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natural-blue-26.livejournal.com

Somehow, I expected you to write more lol.

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I'm working on a post right now. ;) Just kidding that that's my only response.

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kleenexcow.livejournal.com

Oh, man. Visser One added so much to the series, I think. I appreciated that while Visser Three was this crazy-ass psycho side of the Yeerk invasion, Visser One was sooo much more of a politician. It made the Yeerk perspective so much more multifaceted--they weren't all out to kill us for the lulz, some were just doing their job. I mean, she had ambition, and she was certainly capable of being ruthless, but I don't think she was ever evil for the sake of crazy like V3. Visser One proved time and time again that she recognized that sometimes letting someone live could could actually work to her advantage. You know, until she went on trial as a traitor.

I felt the revelation with her having kids, and that being the reason she didn't want all-out war, was brilliant, especially considering that the Eva-Marco relationship always colored our perception of Visser One. In fact, all of Visser was brilliant. I do wish that we'd run into Madra and Darwin again, though. In my personal canon, Eva and Peter searched them out and adopted them after Marco disappeared.

Can you think of any incident involving Visser One where an Animorph other than Marco was narrating? I can't think of any. It would have been interesting to see an action scene with her from an outside perspective.

Jake says "We may prefer Visser Three to be in charge. He makes stupid mistakes. His people all hate and fear him, which makes people less effective. And, we know him. Know what to expect. Visser One might be a more dangerous enemy."

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blue_rampion

I think the series needed Visser One - Visser Three was much closer to your standard villain, but Visser One shows why the Yeerk Empire was so successful, even when they have people like Visser Three spreading their incompetence around.

And yes, the whole complicated mothers-and-children relationship was absolutely fascinating with Edriss. You've got this create you can't be a mother in her own form, and yet is absolutely fascinated with the idea of motherhood. She wants to experience it, but can't really understand it fully.

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The Visser One storyline is the strongest single arc in the series for me, up until the point where it crashlands into mediocrity in #45. I love that it introduces political mindgames to the series as early as #5. And Visser is my favorite book in the series, with either #30 or #15 being my favorite in the series proper. So, um, I like me some Edriss.

Edriss, to me, is the invert to Aftran. If Aftran's capable of empathizing with her hosts and capable of wonder at the complexities of the human mind. Edriss is too, with one caveat; just because she understands (or thinks she does) doesn't really mean she cares, or even better, doesn't mean she won't use it to get exactly what she wants.

Edriss thinks she understands human love. She doesn't. She doesn't even get close. The most chilling line in Visser besides "I made Jenny Lines breathe" is "...I could always infest Madra, place some well-trained Yeerk in her head.
Then she would love me. She’d have no choice". I mean, seriously, WTF Edriss, that's not how it works you nutter. She sees the consequences of human emotion but doesn't really grasp the WHY. There's also a great series of lines where Edriss rages at Allison Kim for 'betraying' her, arguing that she treated Allison kindly and was used, betrayed, tricked. Edriss honestly doesn't see why her hosts all hate her. She has the reputation as the Yeerk who opened up the human mind, but she can't really shift her perspective to that of her hosts. She can only project what seems logical and rational to her onto them, and then gets flustered when they respond like humans instead of Yeerks.

That said, for those shortcomings, she's still better at it than other Yeerks, because she can predict what humans will do, as she did by creating the Sharing and by anticipating how Allison Kim would return to the hospital. That's part of why she hates Marco so much during Visser - she can't predict him, and then partway through the book he turns the tables on her in a way she didn't anticipate. Oh does she hate him. But she's easily smarter than Esplin and probably than a few of the Council Members, and is the most devious and intelligent Yeerk we see in the series.

In T9, someone brought up the idea that Allison may have been cultivating the love for Hildy/Essam and not Edriss, as a way to fuck with Edriss/assert autonomy. Upon rereading some chapters, it seems like that may be implied, that Allison is 'playing' Edriss by trying to push her towards Hildessam. Possibly Allison was even trying to set Edriss up for a challenge, sort of a 'bet you can't seduce him' sort of thing, because Edriss is totally in it for the challenge. I get the sense that while Edriss is ambitious and manipulative, it's not so much because she wants the glory, it's because she likes the challenge. She likes the challenge of ascending the ranks. She likes the challenge of finding a Class Five species, of being in a clever host, of trying to master human emotions. She absorbs knowledge like a sponge. She's outright disappointed in Jenny Lines for not fighting back.

I do love that she listens to her hosts' advice, though. The bits where she and Eva are piecing together what's going on in the trial are some of my favorites, and I can't see Esplin asking for Alloran's advice, for example.

Anyway, the point is that I love Edriss and find her absolutely fascinating. I have more thoughts on this, but I just want to put this up there because people are apparently psyched for Mah Magnificent Thoughts. <3

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lol ugh after I'm fairly certain how I rank the chronicles books, you come here and post this and force me to reevaluate everything!

because you're totally right--visser is one of the deepest character studies we get in the entire series, and it's not just edriss as an individual we investigate, but the entire yeerk character and psychology overall. It's kind of sad, in a way, that they are so defined by domination, even on a deep level like that they're still obsessed with owning it, controlling it. Even when influenced by the *cosmically charged power of love*, all they want to do is dominate.

lol you put it much better than I did, but that is a really haunting line, and it's kind of that clinching detail, that climactic turning point, when we realized Edriss hasn't been changed by her experience as a human. She learned a lot, but even humanity, which this series seems to tout as granted with an overwhelming capacity for resilience and power, she turned to her old ways.

It makes me wonder what the real reason behind picking Eva was, too. We know it's because Eva was a mother, but why did she need to be? I'm thinking, based on your reading of it, it's because Edriss still didn't really understand what it meant. She could predict Allison's actions, but I don't think she understood the powerful, instinctual driving force behind them, that could make even a brilliant and rational person like Allison behave exactly as Edriss expected her too.

I like your reading of Allison/Hildy/Essam/Edriss' relationship, too, and it kind of answers a canon question of mine which is--whose kids are Madra and Darwin? Who expressed the desire and consent to make them? I really didn't think the text answered the question, which kind of infuriated me, but I also kind of understood the meaning behind it, like ~*~we're not supposed to know~*~ and it's supposed to show how little we actually own control of our actions at all, but I think you're right. Edriss and Essam had plenty of opportunities before infesting Allison and Hildy to conduct an affair--they were both in Hork-Bajir and in two other humans before. So was their love theirs? No, I think that they were more along for the ride than anything. Allison and Hildy, through whatever motivation, fell in love with each other, and Essam and Edriss simply indulged their deeper instincts.

I also think that ties into the fact that Edriss didn't stop taking coke or whatever when Jenny was addicted to it. I think that detail clinches that Yeerks are just as susceptible to petty human addictions and emotions as humans themselves, perhaps even moreso. An interesting reading of it, thanks for posting that, I thought about it all through my salad :)

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mattiris.livejournal.com

I thought the line about coke was interesting because it suggests there's a certain level of detachment there from the Yeerk. They can fuck your host body up as much as they want but it won't affect them; they'll still be mentally on the ball while you're giggling and have the munchies.

That being said, when they can make you relive every memory or sensation in crystal clear perfection, I'm not sure why they'd still need to rely on drugs.

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see idk, I read it more as Edriss rationalizing it that way, but I think the Yeerk enjoys it just as much as the host.

Though I will admit there's a lot of discrepancy between just how much of a host's experience the Yeerk has to also experience. Wasn't there some line about them being able to quiet the pain or something? idk I feel like it changed in the middle at some point.

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"I could not cut myself off entirely from the pain my host felt. Not without releasing my host altogether. She felt the pain, and so did I." is the direct quote. I guess they feel a little less of the pain the host feels? That's the way I tend to write it.

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okay. so they do have some degree of control, but not entirely. interesting, thanks for finding that

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Visser like, needs an extra fifty pages, to me. And then it would be perfection. Right now it's just really really goddamn good. But then again, the entire V1 plot needs a bunch of added material, especially #45 ~~and no I will never get over that being the shortest book in the series~~.

Personally, I think that played a huge factor in why she picked Eva. She sort of just thought she could swap mothers/wives for each other, since they must all be the same, right? And she still didn't understand it, and wanted to understand it, but never really figured out how.

The other thing is that though we see very little of Eva in the series, she's incredibly strategic, and at points in Visser is piecing things together faster than Edriss can. And she espouses that 'free or dead' mentality that Edriss admired so much in Allison. We also know that Eva broke Edriss' control at least a few times ("don't join the military", "no, you have to kill her", and Peter mentions that it seemed like Eva was struggling with something before she died). So I think Edriss liked the challenge Eva presented, and that's why she kept her as her primary hosts.

Side note: the bit about Edriss keeping watch on her children through other hosts? How many other hosts did this biatch have? So much AWESOME fridge horror as to what all her other hosts did while she was running around in one of her warm bodies.

Great point about the coke, too. I do think Edriss represents a lot of the darker parts of humanity, which again, makes her the flip to Aftran, who is 'saved' through humanity while Edriss just gets more and more depraved and petty than she already was.

I wish I could take credit for the Allison/Hildy reading, but someone on AIM from trans9 suggested it and then I was all "that's brilliant!" and totally kiped it.

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ugh all the chronicles books need an extra fifty pages. The Andalite Chronicles just needs fifty different pages. And actually THBC was okay.

ughhh the first time she mentioned having more than one host I was like "LOL WHAT IS THERE SOME BUFFALO BILL WELL IN YOUR BASEMENT WTF GURL"

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Which fifty different pages in TAC, out of curiosity? *hasn't read it in months*

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I kind of wish the fifty page walk through the Time Matrix Park would have been the fifty extra pages of happiness Elfangor got with Loren

but that just might be my fangirlishness spiking out of control, idk

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I would have liked Loren/Elfangor explored more too. I didn't quite buy it the first time I read it, but it grew on me. Some more delivery of how that relationship really worked would have been nice.

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yeah, exactly. Though I guess when I first read it, I was young and ideal and gullible so it was more me going "WTF...WTF...WTF!" upon each revelation. I mean, not only is Loren like 16 but she's fucking her alien friend she fell in love with after a week?

wtf

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Hah, yeah. Though my thing was more of me taking a long time to warm up to Loren. For a long time she almost felt Sue-ish to me, like she had no special powers but she was such a special snowflake person who seemed almost tailor-made to have Elfangor fall for her. IDK. I like her more now.

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lol ngl I didn't know I was supposed to hate sues until learning what a sue was. then I hated them like, with compounded interest.

never thought of her as one, though

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Heh, I totally didn't know what a Sue was, I just remember thinking "this girl is a little TOO cool" when I was a kid and giving her the fisheye. I mean, I thought Rachel was cool too, but at least we got Rachel's narration at that point where she was like "I wasn't brave I was just blind LOL".

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sherrilina.livejournal.com

I thought she continued Jenny's addiction just to keep her quiet in her head, that it didn't affect Edriss much? :s

And while Hildy and Alison's emotional natures probably contributed, I like to think (and think it's in the text) that to an extent it was the Yeerks' romance as well--perhaps they never had an affair earlier because they were still getting to know one another, growing closer during their exile, and things came to a head while influenced somewhat by Hildy and Alison. I just think it's more interesting and epic, these two aliens falling in love and playing it out in these two hosts, and the hosts following suit.

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see, I think a lot of this comes down to whether or not you trust Edriss' narration. Yeah, we see two sides to the whole Hildy-Allison-Edriss-Essam affair, but I think it's a little too simplistic to just assume one is a perfect lie and one is a perfect truth. Edriss is muddled by her own pretentions and denial, especially by her loyalty to the Yeerk race.

But I mean, I think it's perfectly acceptable for you to read it that way. It just never really sat right with me. Maybe it's not supposed to though, idk.

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acts_of_tekla

Regarding Edriss, Eva, and Marco...um, I guess all I have to add is that I really like the irony of Edriss inadvertently creating her true nemesis by infesting Eva. The Animorphs were a whole lot more dangerous with Marco.

It's also interesting that in Visser we see that Marco thinks like his mom and is much closer to her in many ways than he was to his dad. Of course, computer engineering requires a similar kind of thought, but it's less the vicious bright line than mental Legos. Still, I wonder if that of thinking was what brought Peter and Eva together in the first place? Maybe they met at a chess tournament or something.

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Oh man, I have so many ideas about how Peter factors in, because I really don't think he's very much like Eva and Marco in terms of the Bright Clear Line ideology. I mean, in #45 he's concerned about his son stealing from Controllers. He's very clueless and from what we see of him in the series, very inept at just about anything but his job. From the series, I always read Peter as very good-hearted, very honest and sweet, very emotional, and brilliant (dude built a SPACE RADIO), but really kind of a dope and irresponsible. And a little bit passive-aggressive and emotionally manipulative. He's really just a genius ditz who's excellent with computers but has no fricking clue how to parent a teenager or deal with emotional trauma. Then again, I also think Peter has depression and was probably in therapy, on antidepressants or both during the series after #5.

Anyway, I always saw Peter and Eva kind of working together by tempering each other. Eva wouldn't put up for Peter's self-pitying baloney and Peter would bring out the sweet, vulnerable side of Eva (who's sharp as a whip but seems very proud). So together they kind of balanced. His relationship with Nora was different because after Eva 'died' and he mourned for years, he had to learn to stand on his own two feet, in a sense, and be a responsible adult. By the time Nora came along, he didn't need someone pressing him to be said responsible adult, so he could love Nora over shared passions and making-out-on-the-couch instead. A no less valid love, but a different one.

/blah blah blah I read too much into Peter and I love him even though he is Failure Dad in the Sad Cave.

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blue_rampion

Your thoughts are always magnificent, Lisa ♥

And oooh yes. She definitely does not get how love works - and when you think about it, she doesn't care about the kids themselves. She cares for the idea of them, for the concept of "her children". She protects them because as far as she is concerned, they belong to her.

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Excuse the rambling, boringness, lameness, and overall opinionated stupidity of this post; I'm using this as an opportunity to attempt to hammer out my headcanon on Visser One while I attempt to write an application for her, and I figured a community of dedicated fans was as good as anywhere to do it. (Also, they made me do it. :| Foul enablers, all of you.)

At any rate, most of my interpretations of Edriss kind of boil down the basics of her motivations and personality to one or two points. First off, I think she's to some degree emblematic of the most basic Yeerk character and motivations, taken to their logical extremes, cranked up to eleven. She's got both the best and worst (to them, anyway) aspects and potentials of their kind. Not to get all Biblical and whatnot, but I think the Yeerks can at their core be defined as Greed--and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Greed is always wanting more, always wanting it better. It's hunger, lust, need. It's painful and uncomfortable and utterly insatiable. You can't be entirely content or satisfied or happy for good at any one point, not when there's still something left out of reach--and there's always something out of reach. There's never going to be something you don't want or can't do. There will always be someone better, something more enticing, something more you can have or something you have that you can improve. It can lead to disgusting excesses and cruel and selfish behavior, but it's also raw energy and drive to be harnessed, the basic building blocks of a personal life and society in general. Greed doesn't let you sit on your laurels and stagnate; if you had absolutely no desires, you'd be dead and wouldn't need anything, anyway. Instead, it pushes you to learn and do and obtain as much as you can, to better yourself and your position, to get out into the world and act and contribute. Greed makes you survive and thrive, because anything is better than stagnating and wasting away and just letting yourself die and fall into nothingness. All hardships can be endured as long as there's the potential for improvement.

That's the basic species-level drive for all Yeerks, I think, when it comes right down to it. They want more. They were utterly shafted in the evolutionary lottery, when it comes to being a sentient life form--they have a mind, but little to nothing to actually do with it. In their natural state, they're weak and helpless, barely mobile, barely capable of comprehending their surroundings. They can't see, can't hear, can't speak, can barely even feel. They can't reproduce without dying in the process, and even then, it's asexual. Their natural state is, frankly, fairly similar to what plenty of stories use as a fate worse than death for their villains, leaving them their own minds and nothing else. It's natural that, once they're aware of what they're missing, they would want to have that. Why not, when everyone else does? There's a whole big universe out there, and anyone would want to be a part of it. They want to experience it and be involved with it. They want freedom and feelings and connections, knowledge, strength, power over their own lives, control of their own fates--the sort of basic autonomy and agency that just about any other sentient species takes as a given right.

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That's what Edriss wants, too. She doesn't care if someone else is happy or prosperous if it doesn't inconvenience her--as Visser mentioned while she was still in the backwater Skrit Na base, she's capable of extending a killing blade or a helping hand. She'll help you, she'll cut deals with you, she'll live and let live, and she's even capable of something like friendship or love or graciously sharing happiness and fortune with others. It's Greed, not Envy, at least for her--as a person, at least, she doesn't feel a need to tear someone down in order to raise herself up. (Host situation and conquest aside, of course; those are a means to an end, not a personal vendetta.) She wants, she strives, she improves herself, she takes insane risks that jeopardize her current position and safety in the hopes of a big reward. She's full of restless energy and relentless ambition and endless fascination. She loves to learn and gather knowledge and skills for herself, to plan and tilt the odds in her favor, to face challenges and gain new experiences not only for what they bring her, but for the sheer thrill of it. She values resources not just for what they are, but also for what they can do for her and how they can be useful. What matters is what's successful, whether that's politics, manipulation and mind games, infiltration, betrayal, or outright bloodshed. She, like Marco and Eva and I think maybe even Allison Kim, is mostly motivated by that bright, clear line rather than having personal hangups, or letting pride and power and arrogance go to her head, or even just stumbling over overlooked details.

Amidst all that intelligence and ambition and scheming and manipulation is exactly what Marco saw in Visser One's eyes in the underwater base--a shark. Edriss can't stop moving, and it's the movement that's most important--the journey and all its experiences and emotions trump the destination, because she'll never be satisfied with setting down anywhere once and for all.

Earth was so thrilling because it was entirely unknown, uncharted, even practically mythical territory to the Yeerk Empire. There was nothing holding her back, and nothing to stop her from exploring and acting exactly as she pleased. Her success or failure depended almost purely on her own luck and cunning and abilities, with an allowance for Essam's help as well. (But at first, he seemed to be considered almost an extension of herself, as her assistant--so did that even count as something separate when he was just one more piece for the chessmaster to move?) And even more thrilling was that it worked. In this new wide-open frontier she was able to use her abilities to the utmost and create an effective plan, one she probably could have pulled off, given enough time and resources and support, if complications hadn't arisen.

The complications were what really screwed with her, I think. She went from the model of what a Yeerk should be, to the extremes of what a Yeerk could be--from a scheming conqueror and infiltrator who studied a species to better know how to control and own them utterly, to a sympathizer, a traitor who had been taken in by the very wonders she had sought to dominate and possess, who had been tricked and betrayed and entangled in her own webs. During that year or two, she hung in the balance, swinging between the perfect military commander and the sort of overwhelmed individual who could possibly have been coaxed into a mindset similar to the far-distant Yeerk Peace Movement, and eventually settled into a surprisingly well-integrated middle path, one where she could understand (sort of), appreciate, and sympathize with humans while not losing her need to use and control them. Part of her ending up so messed up by the experience was her fault as a person and as a Yeerk, but part of it was just humanity itself, and the people she chose for her hosts.

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As a Yeerk.... well, it's intrinsic, to some degree. Yeerks quite simply don't often get the sort of normal life experiences that most other sentient species have. They don't get taken care of by parents, they don't get to experience the world, they don't get to fall in love or be parents themselves. They don't often get genuine friendships, or hobbies, or physical pleasures, or form fulfilling and genuine relationships with people, much less grieve if those bonds are broken somehow. They acquire knowledge of all of these things secondhand--they get the what, but not the how or why, no underlying framework of understanding for the deeper elements of emotions and life; she can predict reactions, and manipulate them admirably, but she has difficulty truly understanding them in all their complexity and nuance. Needless to say, it's enough of a taste of the forbidden fruit to be enticing, but not quite enough of substance by itself to amount to much. Also, they could be considered to never truly get a "pure" experience of the world--they can't. They're parasitic slugs that absolutely require another host to interact with the world, one that's reasonably intelligent. Their every experience is filtered through what a host thinks and feels about it, what it does and says, how it reacts, how it struggles and resists and protests, what its physical body is like.... everything is tinted and distorted, however minorly, dualized and at a remove. Even as Edriss wonders at the insanity of the split-brain design in humans, Yeerks "naturally" are forced to have such a design too, with Yeerk brain and host brain operating in a similar vein. Having what's technically three minds in one body, with a Human Controller, is just upping the complexity exponentially.

That feeds into how actively Edriss screwed herself over by selecting the hosts she did, as well. Edriss is used to that situation. It can't be anything but that. Which is why she ended up so disappointed with her first two hosts; the defeated soldier and Jenny Lines were nothing. They were wastelands, worthless and ignorant, broken and defeated shells that barely had any purpose to exist, much less any use to her or society at large. She needs that duality, and she needs it to be a dynamic one. She prefers hosts that can challenge her, that she can find useful, that can make her learn and grow. In that sense, she likes a personality type surprisingly similar to herself--again, the intelligence and resourcefulness that Eva and Allison Kim display are rather similar to each other, and to her own behavior in some respects. She craves not only a useful pawn, but in some sense, a peer.

Because she likes having someone who could be considered a worthy adversary, that's exactly what she got. Eva and Allison Kim were intelligent, cunning, sophisticated people, who longed for freedom and who wanted to do everything they could to counteract their imprisonment. Allison Kim established a camaraderie early on, by actually talking to Edriss rather than just screaming and raging, learning from her and passing on learning herself, keeping her mind agile and her hope alive instead of giving in to despair and futility. She played games with Edriss to try and exploit intentional lapses in control--and also resisted seizing them immediately just for the sake of controlling herself, rather biding her time for opportunities that were advantageous, like when she nearly killed them both in a traffic accident. She was willing to sacrifice her own life in pursuit of freedom. She was willing to resort to trickery and manipulation of her own--as when she used their flow of information to maneuver Edriss into believing that she needed to not only research and learn about humans and their cultures to be able to conquer them, but that she needed to experience that cultural immersion to be able to truly understand them.

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And that's where she screwed them both up. She explained/showed/led by example, but since she was also using trickery, the result wasn't exactly what she intended. I think that Allison Kim used that challenge and goal, those potential humanizing feelings partially to gain some leverage and control for herself, and try and manipulate Edriss some to hopefully turn the situation around or at least give her some inner conflict/doubt and muddy the waters, and some to simply help herself cope with the situation. The two of them seemed to make a habit out of choosing hot hosts, so there was possibly physical attraction there if she would allow it, and Hildy--plus Lore, later on, though it seems likely he was in a position to be a mutual friend and confidante to them both, being locked up and Yeerkless most of the time--was the only other person in the world going through the same thing she was. There was definitely an undeniable bond there. She let it form and happen, pushed it along, twisted her brain up into knots to make herself fall in love with him, and thereby influence Edriss to do the same by example and osmosis. Even if she likely never got to actually talk to Hildy during the romance itself, because they wouldn't be so stupid as to both feed at once and allow their hosts to collaborate, even if they only ever possibly got to talk at each other while one was chained up and the other infested.... I think she made herself love him.

The good news was that it sort of worked. The bad news was that it didn't happen completely, and by then she'd probably tangled up her mind and emotions and identity with Edriss' to some extent, in an awkward and ironic symbiosis that she was probably trying to prevent to begin with. I think Edriss did in fact fall in love with Essam, with Hildy, with humanity and their world in general, much like Essam did. Essam seems like he got it far worse and quite possibly went entirely native, and loved both Edriss and Allison deeply, but Edriss fell pretty hard, too. For about a year, she was almost a human, experiencing love and companionship for the first time, a true caring relationship in isolation from her power structure, a whole new world full of possibilities. She learned and performed a gender identity and sexuality, and got a front row ticket to the wonders of humanity, and she was addicted to the experiences and feelings they provided. She loved feeling alive and passionate and connected. But again, even though she was experiencing all of this--it was induced. Artificial. Manipulated. Second-hand, to some degree, because Allison Kim was the one who had originated and pushed it along for her, whereas Essam seemingly got to simply react and let things develop naturally on his side of things. Because it was to some extent tainted by Allison Kim's ulterior motives, Edriss didn't get a pure experience or understanding of love. She again got the what and a glimmer of how, but certainly not the why. No matter how truly she loved Essam in the end.... it was given to her by someone else, and because it didn't come from her initially, she couldn't understand why simply infesting Madra with a well-trained Yeerk and forcing her to love her wouldn't be what she wanted.

That was her fundamental disconnect, and probably a big important factor in why she remained Yeerkish at heart. She could grasp and exploit the motives without understanding them. She could take the cocaine to subjugate Jenny without (mostly) being sucked under herself, and she could rely on the parental affection to ensure that Allison Kim would come so she could ambush her. She could have her children and love them without really getting what that meant. I think she did love her children like she loved Essam--that is, genuinely but without the true, deep understanding that it deserved, because by that point she was so tangled up with Allison Kim that neither of them could help but love them and be influenced by each other, rather than let that love spring wholeheartedly from herself as an individual. They're her children, and HERS because she made them and they should be her possessions, and they're the embodiment of those joyous months of love and happiness and hope and endless potential and possibility.

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