Taylor

Taylor is a strange character. Also known as Sub-Visser Fifty-One, she is second-in-command to Visser Three in her sector on Earth, but she has many characteristics of the teenage girl she once was and resembles an older Rachel. She is just as much a preppy mall-rat (or whatever that preppy mall-rat is now) as she is a powerful figure in the Yeerk Empire.

Taylor and her Yeerk counterpart have an unusual relationship. Being a sub-Visser, the Yeerk would presumably be already hardened to the sentient minds she took control of and shouldn't care much about the "insignificant human girl" who volunteered to be her host: she was more interested in making a Controller out of her mother, the chief of police. But maybe she couldn't help but feel a little sympathy for the girl who gave up her freedom for the sake of her lost beauty, she who was once among the high of her society, just as some Yeerks may see themselves as the fallen, sacrificing their souls in enslaving sentient minds for the sake of gaining bodies and an empire, to be like the high and mighty Andalites.

Taylor was once one of the most popular girls in her school. Motivated, stylish, athletic, attractive. "When she walked down the hall at school, there wasn't a boy who didn't dream she was his. Not a girl who didn't wish she were her." However, she was trapped in a fire, and although she survived, she was maimed for life, loosing limbs and her face disfigured. Seeing her horrible appearance, her friends eventually abandoned her and left her all alone. Confined to a wheelchair, she was completely lonely until The Sharing took her in. Seeing her vulnerable state and important position with the chief of police, they offered her infestation. In return they would repair her body. So, Sub-Visser Fifty-One gained a new host, and Taylor was given the best in Yeerk technology: artificial limbs, her face reconstructed to its former beauty. But of course, it was only skin deep.

As a Controller, Taylor seemed to develop a strange partnership with the Yeerk who controlled her. While the sub-Visser had been trained to shut out the pleas of those she would enslave, she had never had a human host before, and was intrigued by Taylor. She loved the feelings of being beautiful and admired, of having everything she wanted, and the senses vastly superior to anything she could experience by herself. After a while, it seemed that they merged. When Tobias got Taylor to talk about herself, she spoke with mixed pronouns, sometimes sounding like like the Yeerk, sometimes like the girl Taylor. Or maybe Taylor had even more control than she let on, and was putting on the facade of being the powerful sub-visser, for Taylor herself enjoyed that power just as the Yeerk enjoyed the place in human society. At the end of her spiel, both parts of Taylor are referring to themselves in first person, taking turns talking until they again unite and torture Tobias once again with the pain machine.

She and Tobias also share a strange link. They both have dual, merged identities, two minds that both need one another for survival and stability. For Tobias, it is the human and the hawk, and for Taylor, it is the two who seemingly have nothing more in common than the fate that brought them together. Tobias sympathizes for the human Taylor's dilemma, being crippled and stripped of social status (though he never had any such prestige) and willing to do anything, even give up her own freedom to get it back. Even for the sub-visser, for Tobias could also feel sorry for the Yeerk who just wanted something more than to forever float disembodied in a pool.

Perhaps she saw that similarity also. Maybe this was why she hesitated in applying not only the pain sensors to Tobias, but also those of pleasure, of nice memories, knowing that those could be as bad, if not worse, than the pain. She shared her story with him, when after declaring that his friends would never betray him, he asked what she knew of betrayal. It was only a ploy to keep her away from torturing him further, but she seemed to be relieved to actually share her story with someone. She was enraged when he apparently trapped himself in morph, seeming to sacrificing his Andalite form just as she had once lost her unmarked human one, and it made her furious that he had willingly given it up all for the sake of his compatriots, similar to the thing that had driven away all of her friends a while ago.     

Tobias also saw a link in Taylor to Rachel, who, although he loves her, is a little vicious. In fact, Taylor is almost a perfect picture: seemingly the pretty, preppy, mall-rat (Taylor even looks like an older Rachel) but burning inside with an inner rage. However, at the end of the book when Rachel, as a bear, and Taylor were side by side, Tobias decided that there was truly no comparison, for the difference between Rachel and Taylor was honor. Rachel wanted to kill Taylor for what she had done to Tobias, but he intervened, saying, "Be Rachel, not her."

Rachel, Tobias and the others left Taylor, knowing that Visser Three would surely kill her for her failure to even exact information from the single Andalite renegade. But, like so many others left for dead, she may only go into hiding for another time, to threaten the Animorphs once again.

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Note: I realize that not to many other people have given whole character bios to Taylor, and there is one certain other page which has one. Although, unlike many cases, I actually realized that this page had a Taylor profile before I even wrote this, after reading #33, I just couldn't resist. I have tried to make my bio unique and have avoided copying the aforementioned other page, and I hope its webmistress will forgive me.

Melodrama in this profile is courtesy of the Shoujo Kakumei Utena soundtrack.