Original post and reblog chain by sarifel-corrisafid-ilxhel on Tumblr
I have a new observation about a minor detail in Animorphs that could have so many implications.
The English teacher at the Animorphs school is named Mr. Feyroyan. Tobias thinks of the teacher fondly in book 33, says he was dreamer and one of Tobias’s few friends. Tobias thought he would grow up to be like Mr. Feyroyan, before the war started.
I googled the name Feyroyan on a whim and the only instances of the name Google can find are all related to Animorphs. So I redid the search while telling Google to exclude the Animorphs results, and none of the remaining results actually include the name Feyroyan. They’re all stuff like “Fey Royal” or something. So it looks like the name Feyroyan was made up by Applegate or one of the ghostwriters.
Well that’s no big deal, people make up names for their stories all the time, right?
Except this is Animorphs, where there are shapeshifting aliens, and Feyroyan sounds like an Andalite name.
So, is Mr. Feyroyan an Andalite? What’s his job? Is he gathering intel for the Andalites? Is he hiding from the war on Earth? Is he looking after Elfangor’s kid on purpose or is their meeting an accident arranged by the Ellimist? Is he a human nothlit or does he go to the bathroom between classes to morph and demorph? Is he an unused/forgotten prototype for the “Andalite hiding from the war on Earth while posing as a teacher” plot that we later see with Gafinilan? I have so many questions!!
....oh my god
it SOUNDS like a fake name an Andalite would take for himself to kind of remind himself of his old name, aka Alan Fangor. Which leads me to a theory...
Okay I’m going out of left field but I’m calling it: this is Elfangor and Arbron’s old Captain, that he served when he was an aristh. He heard Elfangor’s story about going to Earth, and about how Elfangor was so worried about his wife and child. So after he retired, he went to Earth to check on them, but got stuck in human morph. He thought he knew who Elfangor’s son might be, but wasn’t sure, and was always kind to the kids in his class who didn’t know where their fathers were.
Why am I calling that?
Because Elfangor’s old Captain’s name was Feyorn.
“Of course the captain already knew we were there. They say Captain Feyorn can practically see through walls. He knows everything that goes on aboard his ship.”
This is the old Andalite who described Alloran as a gentle, funny trickster as an aristh, and talked about what war did to change good people into hard ones. I could easily see someone like that deciding to live out his final years teaching and guiding some wayward youngsters.
A few additions to consider:
but why would Captain Feyorn of the StarSword go out of his way to live on Earth? Is he a nothlit, or merely timing his bathroom breaks strategically?
tbh my vote is Soola’s disease. We know from Gafinilan’s explanations that sufferers of Soola’s can go nothlit and escape a painful death, but also that doing so in an Andalite body is considered dishonorable and disreputable. The same does not seem to hold true with going nothlit in an alien body. And there’s a good chance that ‘Feyroran’ couldn’t find the humans he set out to discover — he maybe went looking for them but “Loren” is an unconventional spelling (assuming he knew her name in the first place, he probably assumed it was spelled “Lauren”) and he might not know Tobias’s name for sure
but the question I have is
did he survive to the end of the war?
It’s all starting to make sense. Yes. Yessss. I love all of this so much.
As for surviving to the end of the war... that’s a firm maybe. We know the school is destroyed when the Yeerk Pool gets blown up, but we don’t know if school was in session when that happened. So... my brain says “This is Animorphs, of course he died”, but my heart says school wasn’t in session that day and he escaped the destruction of the town. The war ended not long after that, so if he survived the school being destroyed then he probably survived the war.
The reason I’m willing to argue that he might have survived the school being destroyed is that since he was a Captain-Prince and experienced in the Yeerk War? He’d know the signs of infestation, he’d know that the faculty were gradually being converted to Controllers and that a lot of the upperclassmen were also being Yeerked. He’d probably figure out pretty quickly that the Sharing was a front, and he might even have steered some kids quietly away from membership. (I also like to think that he befriended Tidwell and Ilim, even if he wasn’t full “let me in on this Peace Movement thing” — he’s described as a good dude, and I think he’s capable of growing past prejudices and wartime opposition)
but like
I think he saw the signs that the war was ramping up, particularly in those last few weeks just before the dam burst and open war broke out in Santa Barbara, and probably fled to safety, possibly with Ilim/Tidwell and any other YPM affiliates who saw the writing on the proverbial wall and hauled ass away from the cesspit. (There’s a chance that after Eva’s rescue/Edriss’s death, all the Peace Movement Yeerks who could evacuated themselves and their loved ones because they knew Esplin would be even more brutal and draconian now)
well heck my hands slipped
~
<What was her name, War-Prince Elfangor? Your wife.>
I didn’t add, <The alien.> There were no others. He’d been well-known for it. A desirable, clever, ambitious young warrior, Prince, War-Prince, who had never taken a mate in all the time we had known him. Of everyone, I was the only one who knew the full story.
Well. Almost the full story. There was something he wasn’t telling me, about the whole thing. I had always known that, but he was entitled to some secrets.
Slowly, Elfangor ground a bit of the Ilispar root I had given him into the soil. <Loren,> he said, after a moment. <Her name was Loren.>
I ground my own root into the soil. The trembling in my hocks slowly began to ease. For a moment, the haze of pain cleared from my vision, as the root’s juices worked slowly through my system. For a few moments, the madness of pain receded.
I kept my thoughts even and measured as I pulled up the holo-map. <Where was she? On the surface.>
<Here.> His cranial eyes flicked to me, uncertain of my intentions, but he pointed. I committed the area to memory. <We lived here. Captain, why—>
<And your son?> I interrupted. <What was his name?>
<I don’t know. Humans rarely name their children before they’re conceived, and I wasn’t aware of his existence. Why this line of questioning, Captain?>
He was too smart, of course. But I hadn’t been trying to fool him. <I will die, within the next half-year,> I told him bluntly, and saw his nose-slits flare, his eyestalks swivel to stare at me. <My family on the homeworld is long since returned to the water and the grass. But perhaps I can do this one last thing for you, Elfangor. You kept your secret for the People, because I told you to. You served the People through every hardship. Now... it isn’t much. But if I can find them, I will. And I will help them, if I can.>
He told me everything he knew. I don’t think he believed I could manage, not truly.
Did I do it on purpose, getting stuck in morph? Stuck in the body of what I discovered later was a young man, with years and years and years ahead of him? A body that did not tremble or ache, a body that had charming black curly fur sprouting out the top of its head instead of stalk-eyes, and a mouth that smiled eagerly, and broad, strong hands?
Perhaps I am too old to recall. Or perhaps it has simply been too long.
I never found the human called Loren. But I found hundreds of fatherless youths, in my time teaching “English.” Perhaps one of them was Elfangor’s son. Perhaps not. Either way, I hope I helped some of them. I hope I was kind, to the child of a lost warrior who had been so far from home. I hope I was kind to all the lost children, and I performed a ritual every time I met a child with too-old eyes, as well as I could without a tail-blade, that he would find his way to serve Freedom in his own way.
The war came for me, eventually. I made mistakes. I missed signs. By the time I realized what was happening, my co-worker Pardue was dead in his office, and they had almost managed to squash rumors of a few choice words he had screamed, before they had cleared the hallways.
Yeerk. Kandrona.
The veil pulled back from my eyes. I saw the teachers — friends of mine, men and women I had known — changing their behavior. They were subtle.
What could I do? I had no technology. I had set my long-distance shuttle to self-destruct, and sent it towards the sun. My escape shuttle had nothing in it but enough gear to help me land safely, and I had sunk what was left into the ocean. I had no aid, and could no longer morph.
Of course, I already knew the answer. What could I do? What I had tried always to do.
Talk to the children.
Help the young ones, who had lost their way.
And at the end, when someone came in screaming that there was only minutes to go before the entire school was destroyed, I turned, on the awkward human legs that nevertheless had so much strength left in them. It was strength I had not earned, but borrowed, from a gentle young man I had met soon after arriving on Earth, who lived far enough away I was certain our paths would not cross again.
It was with his strength, and the strength of my new adopted people, that carried me back into the school, three times. Until all the students were out.
Was it his son? I don’t know. Perhaps it didn’t matter. There was a student trapped inside, that I managed to free. I saw him, running as fast as he could, before the ground exploded, and the world went dark.
I only hoped I would be remembered, in the end, for the ones I saved, instead of the ones I had killed by turning them into soldiers.