Welcome to the Moonlight Library’s 30 Day Animorphs Challenge!
Despite Project Animorphs in 2013, I clearly do not talk about Animorphs enough.
This particular challenge is taken from the Heck Yeah Tumblr Challenges archive on Tumblr.

Day 12: Your thoughts on Visser Three

Visser Three is an incompetent dangerous megalomaniac. That sort of drive, ambition and ruthlessness is a product of the Yeerk military culture, the ideology that Yeerks deserve to make slaves of their host bodies because they’re Yeerks and are superior to all other races in the galaxy.

Visser Three – when he was Esplin back in the Hork-Bajir Chronicles – shows alarming empathy and drive towards his goals of achieving an Andalite host body to be promoted to a high Visser rank. His ultimate goal was to be on the Council of Thirteen, and he wanted it quickly, so when he did manage to enslave Alloran he was promoted quickly due to his new host body and the military intelligence stolen from his mind. Esplin really didn’t do so much to ‘deserve’ the promotions – he’s jumped so quickly from curious Yeerk determined to have the best host body up to Sub-Visser Seventeen, Visser Thirty-Two and then he finally made it all the way to Visser Three. Yeerks are rewarded for major achievements and Alloran as host body was one of the best.

However I do think Esplin is insane – not only is Esplin insane, but the effects of having Alloran, a perfectly intelligent creature who also happens to have some kind of prior mental illness before he is enslaved for many years in his own body enhances his own insanity. I think this is demonstrated more obviously in Taylor, where the Yeerk gets confused between her own experiences and Taylor the human’s. I believe the same thing happens to Esplin, who is not the most stable of Yeerks to begin with, when he infested and enslaved Alloran, who was one of the most unstable Andalite officers in the military and already had a huge ruthless streak, that when those two minds met and stayed joined for so long their insanity fed off each other. Esplin might have been intelligent but he was attached to Alloran’s insane brain, and I think it influenced him more than if he had chosen a different host.

I think the combination of Esplin and Alloran makes him hugely dangerous but it also makes him utterly predictable and thus the Animorphs are able to manipulate him at certain times, to ensure their own survival.

About Nemo

A lover of kittens and all things sparkly, Nemo has a degree in English Literature and specialises in reviewing contemporary, paranormal, mystery/thriller, historical, sci-fi and fantasy Young Adult fiction. She is especially drawn to novels about princesses, strong female friendships, magical powers, and assassins.