Author Topic: Group Re-Read: #40 The Other  (Read 9387 times)

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Offline Chad32

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Re: Group Re-Read: #40 The Other
« Reply #15 on: December 15, 2009, 06:46:55 PM »
Hearing them talk about not being able to fly very far at a time, and having to stay so far apart from each other to not attract attention was kind of a wall banger for much of the series. Same with tobias complaing because his night vision was bad after he got his power back.

I can understand the Chee thing more, since they do have lives to live other than pretending to be the Anis. Erek even mentions this once to Marco.


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Offline Gafrash

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Re: Group Re-Read: #40 The Other
« Reply #16 on: December 17, 2009, 12:02:47 PM »
Probably that whole aversion to morphing sentient creatures. Which I thought personally was BS and they should have gotten over it by the end of the series. Morphing into someone's shape is NOT the same as taking them over the way a yeerk does, no matter how much Cassie tried to act like it was.
That's a bit of a funny one, because KA established that human morphs take onboard the sentience and sense of identity of the original. It's an interesting topic because she subsequently makes a statement that everything a human is, including thoughts and feelings, is encoded in DNA.
The 'aversion' of the Animorphs may actually be more practical than a ethical one. Basically there's complexity when a human morphs another human, it is not as simple as morphing non-sentient creatures. Unlike Ax, who ISN'T human, but IS sentient and isn't attached.

I never thought of what would happen if the Anis morphed Mertil! It would be interesting to see what his DNA-condition causes to the morpher.
But with the Yeerks having already rejected him, knowing his disability, I imagine it would be sabotaging on the 'Andalite Bandits' part to have a fully healed Mertil galloping around claiming to be healed and morph-capable again...

Offline anijen21

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Re: Group Re-Read: #40 The Other
« Reply #17 on: December 17, 2009, 12:22:15 PM »
what book was that? The only time I remember onboard sentience was #36 when they morphed killer whales and that was just so weird that I kind of filed it under discontinuity. If that had happened more frequently I would have expected them to stop morphing sentient creatures not because of their morals but because of how creeped out they'd have been.
I go off topic on purpose.

Offline Chad32

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Re: Group Re-Read: #40 The Other
« Reply #18 on: December 17, 2009, 12:43:55 PM »
I don't remember her ever establising that sentience is encoded in DNA. That would beg the question of why Ax never hears a voice in his head during his narrations. I've always said that there should be no problem with morphing people, as long as they don't commit bad deeds while usng a person's identity. Thinking that's the same as what they yeerks do i just stupid.


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Offline AniDragon

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Re: Group Re-Read: #40 The Other
« Reply #19 on: December 17, 2009, 02:09:30 PM »
In book 12, Cassie did mention that her Rachel morph kept wanting to do really stupid things. *shrugs* But that was also quite early on, before they really started thinking that morphing sentient creatures was bad.
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Offline Chad32

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Re: Group Re-Read: #40 The Other
« Reply #20 on: December 17, 2009, 02:11:42 PM »
I always thought that was a joke. That she wasn't being serious.


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Offline anijen21

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Re: Group Re-Read: #40 The Other
« Reply #21 on: December 17, 2009, 02:23:44 PM »
lol I agree with Chad, but here it is for your own judgment:

Quote from: #12, The Reaction, p. 147
I fell into step behind Cassie. "Nice job, sister," I said.

"Oh, good, you're back," she said. "It's a good thing. I'm having the worst time trying to control this morph!"

"You're having trouble being me? What could be hard about that?"

She raised an eyebrow in a way that looked as much like Cassie as it did like me. "This brain of yours. It keeps trying to get me to do really dumb things."

Come on, you guys. That's like Cassie's one good joke in this entire series. Let her have it and move on.
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Offline Gafrash

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Re: Group Re-Read: #40 The Other
« Reply #22 on: December 25, 2009, 11:14:15 PM »
I'm not so sure if it was a joke.
That book falls under the early stories, where KA herself wrote and there were a lot of detail. But much like 'thought-speaking-while-not-in-morph' and even 'Jake-acquiring-Homer's-memories-while-in-dog-morph', these KA factors ceased later on.
If anything, this could be a discontinuity, granted. But in the books where the Anis, and even Ax, do sentient morphs, the narrator always hints to an added sentience on board their own (think human, Hork-bajir and Andalite). Animals such as whales, dolphins, wolves, gorillas... all carried intelligence, but not the sentience found on the above.

Offline Chad32

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Re: Group Re-Read: #40 The Other
« Reply #23 on: December 25, 2009, 11:21:04 PM »
I have never heard of Ax mentioning any sort of alternate awareness while in Human morph, and he was the one that did it the most.

It doesn't make sense for there to be self awareness built into DNA like that.


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Offline CounterInstinct

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Re: Group Re-Read: #40 The Other
« Reply #24 on: September 17, 2010, 10:02:58 PM »
maybe Rachel naturally has a lot of testosterone, giving her a really quick temper. :P :D
I'm just a writer, and my main goal was always to entertain. But I've never let Animorphs turn into just another painless video game version of war, and I wasn't going to do it at the end. I've spent 60 books telling a strange, fanciful war story, sometimes very seriously, sometimes more tongue-in-cheek. I've written a lot of action and a lot of humor and a lot of sheer nonsense. But I have also, again and again, challenged readers to think about what they were reading. To th

Offline Gafrash

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Re: Group Re-Read: #40 The Other
« Reply #25 on: September 18, 2010, 11:08:25 AM »
I have never heard of Ax mentioning any sort of alternate awareness while in Human morph, and he was the one that did it the most.

It doesn't make sense for there to be self awareness built into DNA like that.
In a fictional universe where morphs can be looked at like replicas of the biological manifestations??!?!! You might be mistaking the whole self awareness thing I am saying for something around the concept of the 'soul', but it's not something that I am referring to here. KA never really delved into such things in her stories, not really.

It's really about discerning how much of humans is 'stored' genetically, but I fear this topic is too complex and not structured well enough in the series to be discussed. The closest I can get to it is highlighting the fact that in many occasions the animal's instincts hijacked the human one, as we know, and, logic states that the same should happen if you morph a sapien. The individual's brain would be there with you, so it would be feasible, if you were to morph a fat person who's 'hardwired' to eat fries, for the sake of an example, and have to discern the inclinations, if you were a healthy eater yourself. It is anyone's game. If you start thinking of morphing someone of the opposite sex, this might be easier to conceive.
All I am saying is that Cassie's statement, in the episode where she morphed Rachel, seems to support this.

Ax's feedback on humans was from an alien perspective really. He never really viewed humans as sentient or not. In fact he couldn't understand the humans trying to differenciate themselves from the rest of Earth's fauna, if my memory serves. I also got a vague memory about him in human morph mentioning being attracted to Rachel's looks, and we all know Rachel to be a minty female specimen. Why would him, in his morph, not say the same for, say, Cassie, who is also a female of the opposite sex?!

But having had the others morph humans (despite their ethics and all), the most curious one to me was Marco morphing that fat office guy during The Reunion. I mean, he turned into the same fat man, which seems to suggests that the man's condition was a genetic one, hence, 'hardwired' into that individual's brain. Tobias morphing what's her face, and Marco morphing The Governor.... Let's face it, there really wasn't enough feedback on what it's like to morph humans, beyond the whole 'it's wrong' thing. So I am forced to file the 'Cassie-morph-Rachel's thing under discontinuity.

« Last Edit: September 18, 2010, 11:13:17 AM by Gafrash »

Offline Chad32

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Re: Group Re-Read: #40 The Other
« Reply #26 on: September 18, 2010, 12:24:43 PM »
There is instincts, and there is self awareness. You're talking about instincts, which of course Humans have. I'm just saying at no point did the Human morph start talking and questioning its existance or opinion on what it was being made to do. That's a big difference, and why I think the rule is pointless. Yes there are ways to use a person's body wrong, but none of the Anis would do that kind of thing.


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Offline LisaCharly

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Re: Group Re-Read: #40 The Other
« Reply #27 on: September 18, 2010, 03:12:51 PM »
I'm pretty sure Cassie was just zinging Rachel.

Offline Gafrash

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Re: Group Re-Read: #40 The Other
« Reply #28 on: September 22, 2010, 11:33:56 AM »
Glad you're 'pretty sure', I, for one, am CERTAIN of what I am saying.
Don't want to keep on hitting this nail (especially since it's relative to The Reaction Re-read Thread) but just to round it up, my rationale for the case in point goes as follows:

A human is an animal, whose mind consists of an amalgalm of complex systems, too many and complex to here state. But take emotion for the sake of argument. The average human is capable of a vast array of emotions, that discern it from the animalia.

The subject: Rachel is a human character whose persona is a catalogue of bravery, confrontational, boldness, style, eclecticism, temperamental, stubborness, zeal, etc...

The issue: Cassie, whom, let's agree is Rachel's diametrical opposite persona, inspite being her best friend, same gender and age, morphs Rachel for the sake of a mission. She gets the job done, but hints towards inner conflict to do with the 'Rachel' morph.

Result: Yes, Cassie made her little retort, but to me it was also another factor to morphing added to this stage of the series. Much like the Z-Space-mass-storage or the metamorphosis-re-news-the-2-hours-clock etc...
So we get quote This brain of yours. It keeps trying to get me to do really dumb things unquote.
Which is indicative of some sort of a inner conflict, due to the Rachel morph on Cassie's part. Comparisons would indicate a character like Cassie would think of things a character like Rachel would do as dumb, hence we get the light-hearted retort. Remember they are still best friends.
The feedback there is indicative that Cassie didn't just get the base human emotions (remember she is a female of the same age and shouldn't be a stranger to the mind of a subject of the same sex and age). She got the conflicting ones to her own persona, which HAPPEN TO BE the ones willing to do what she judges as 'stupid things', much like the ones one may take Rachel for doing.

My interpretation: That beyond the human mind, 'Rachel' (brave, bold, confrontational, action-adrenaline rush etc...) was alongside the 'Cassie' (peace-keeper, serene, intuitive and so on) mind during the morph.

My hypothesis: That scene is still significantly early in the series, (#12) so the author may have still been discerning what she wanted to 'say' in her series (nothing more evident than in the very first book).
Since I can't think of any other instances where the narrators came up with something along this, I can only think that KA decided to steer away from that. And so we get this discontinuity.

We never really delved into this through the narrator. Only through hints of the other characters. Mostly Cassie, really.
But we can't deny that the protagonists (with the possible exception of Ax) agreed that morphing humans was an ethical decision without reason.
Sure, KA did it so she wouldn't have to do the 'morph human' thing as a cheap way out of the plots, make life harder for the Anis, but the concept is feasible just the same.



I have never heard of Ax mentioning any sort of alternate awareness while in Human morph, and he was the one that did it the most.

It doesn't make sense for there to be self awareness built into DNA like that.
Of course it doesn't. That's my personal view, too.
But Cassie's comment suggests otherwise.

Ax was hardly expressive on lots of matters (ref. to his own homeworld descriptions, technology). He began a diary on humans that was discontinued throughout his narrratives. He is an Andalite (that sees himself somewhat superior, and as such, never looked at humans as any different than Hork-Bajirs, Taxxons or non-sentient creatures), an 'outsider looking in', who had enough control over his morph, to not have anything worth mentioning. He never mentioned anything towards the raw hunter-gatherer instincts, the primate offshoot physiology... and yet we know it's all there.

maybe Rachel naturally has a lot of testosterone, giving her a really quick temper. :P :D
I laughed the first time I read it, but you know what, writing the above, the more I give CounterInstinct's thought, the more it makes sense. It may well be as simple as that. Chemicals are biologically coded and that we have seen active in morphs before (e.g. Marco/wolf spider making web).  :thumbsup:

Offline Terenia

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Re: Group Re-Read: #40 The Other
« Reply #29 on: September 22, 2010, 05:57:04 PM »
:tldr:


:P :P


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