Totally Random Animorphs Thoughts

[Quaf]

I don't have time to read 10 pages of new posts in the animorphs board. I am not exaggerating.

[redtailedsaffa]

Well, your fault for making the hiatus that long

[Phoenix004]

In this case, the authorities are aliens from another planet, who are fighting a resistance force which can morph into animals, attack, then retreat, demorph, and disappear.  I would therefore expect that said authorities would be more concerned about "visitors" then normal school officials, and would be interested in their backgrounds (as in "do these visitors really exist as legitimate humans, or might they be Andalite fakes?")

Why would the Yeerks think that Andalites would want to go to a human school though? Human education is laughable compared to Andalite schools and by book 8 there was no longer a Yeerk pool entrance inside the school. Ax wanted to go because he's young and wanted to learn more about human culture, not for any tactical reason.

True. I've always wondered that. You couldn't get away with it here in a British school.

Surely it would have been better to have Ax pose as one of the Animorphs at the school? No random extra relative, no new kid at the school, no reason to draw suspicion (providing Ax can hold himself together).

I actually changed primary schools when I was about 7 and I did get to spend a day with the class before I moved there. But I'm pretty sure that was all arranged through the head teacher and such, I didn't just turn up and ask to tag along, lol.

I don't think Ax posing as one of the Animorphs would have ended well. He's bound to have done something strange, especially if they made it to lunch time, and they aren't meant to be drawing attention to themselves (hence why they don't usually sit together at school).

This does remind me of a random thought I had the other day though: why did the Animorphs get Ax to play Jake during book 6? He obviously acted weird around his family, which draws unwanted attention from Tom. They only had to cover for him for 3 days! The other Animorphs could have taken turns playing him at home and (assuming he had school for at least one of those 3 days) they could have called in sick for him at school (Jake does the same thing in book 31 by pretending to be his father). Or they could have taken turns morphing Jake and covering for him. Marco, Rachel and Cassie missing one day each of school (not all on the same day of course) is less suspicious than Jake missing three in a row or acting like a food obsessed genius with a speech impediment.

[Tim Bruening]

So I've started a summer reread, (thinking about making a tradition of it ), and it's bringing some things  to mind that don't really belong in any particular threads and really don't need to be discussed at length in new threads. So yeah, just stuff



Visser Three really seems enjoy eating his minions

Does the taste overwhelm him like the taste of Cinnabons does with Ax?

The Visitor: Chapman tells Visser 3 that he has recruited 4 new Voluntary Controllers, including an FBI Agent.  Why would an FBI Agent WANT to be a Controller?

The Predator: Visser 3 seems to be math challenged:  He orders the guard at the Animorph's prison tripled, yet when their door opens, they find FOUR of Visser 3's Hork-Bajir lying on the floor.  That means that the normal guard would be 1 and 1/3rd Hork-Bajir!  What good is 1/3rd of a Hork-Bajir?

The Suspicion:

Front Cover: Cassie morphing into an anteater.

Inside Front Cover: Cassie Anteater with a bunch of Helmacrons stuck to her tongue.  She is in the anteater pen with one other anteater (possibly either Visser Three or another animorph).  There are 7 people watching the anteater pen.  The scene of Cassie morphing into an anteater and sticking Helmacrons to her tongue actually occurs, so I assume that the 7 people watching are canonical!

PP 152-153: Having checkmating both the Helmacrons and Visser Three, the Animorphs go to work.  Anteaters Rachel and Jake lap up the Heklmacrons and hold them hostage, while Ax holds Visser Three hostage, and guards the Helmacrom ship and the morphing cube.  Marco and Cassie demorph to miniture human form, go into the Helmacron ship, and start unshrinking everyone.  They first unshrink Visser Three, Tobias, and the Human-Controllers.  Visser Three and the Human-Controllers depart.  Then Rachel and Jake scrap off their Helmacrons, demorph, and are unshrunk.  Then Marcos and Cassie put the beam on automatic and stand in it.

How in the world do Visser Three, the Human-Controllers, Ax, the Animorphs, and the Helmacron ship leave without the 7 sightseers noticing them?  Those 7 visitors on the inside front cover should have seen the following:

I: A Northern Harrier landing in the anteater pen, carrying a toy spaceship and a glowing blue cube.

II: Five anteaters growing out of nothing (PP 147-148.  Jake, Cassie, Marco, Rachel, and Visser 3 morph full sized anteaters from their 1/16th inch natural forms).

III: The northern harrier morphing into an Andalite (Ax) and pressing his tail against an anteater's throat (Visser 3).  Page 151.

 IV: Another Andalite, a bunch of humans, and a red-tailed hawk appearing out of nowhere and leaving the anteater pen, along with the 1st Andalite!  Also the toy spaceship flying away.  PP 152-155.

I expect that the 7 tourists would spread the news far and wide!

[Tim Bruening]

The cover shows Cassie morphing into a kangaroo.  The inside cover shows the kangaroo HOLDING A WEAPON (a hunting boomerang).  The Cassie-kangaroo's ability to hold a boomerang makes me wonder if she could have operated a Dracon beamer with her kangaroo paws?  If so, that factor would have made the kangaroo morph a real bonanza!

The plane arrives in Sydney with most of the luggage missing, the cargo hold and cabin clearly damaged, and the passengers suffering burns from the Drakon beams the Hork-Bajir applied in an effort to smoke out Cassie.  Unless the Yeerks have a major presence in Sydney, I predict a major scandal!

At the end, Visser Three sees two tourist planes approaching, so he erases all evidence of aliens from the battle scene in the Australian Outback, and leaves.  Why doesn't he just destroy the tourist planes?

[Chad32]

We don't need to add extra drama for Cassie by having two planes worth of people get blasted. Though the indea of someone getting an infected arm or leg from handling alien metal seems a bit forced.

No one uses dracons, for some reason. Not even Ax, who should have training with a similar weapon.

[Tim Bruening]

author=Chad32 link=topic=11499.msg882230#msg882230 date=1440091375]
We don't need to add extra drama for Cassie by having two planes worth of people get blasted. Though the indea of someone getting an infected arm or leg from handling alien metal seems a bit forced.

Visser 3 would have no reason to care about the emotional impact on Cassie of blowing up two tourist planes!  It seems to me that destroying the planes would be less bother than eliminating all the bodies from the battle.

No one uses dracons, for some reason. Not even Ax, who should have training with a similar weapon.

Most of the morphs lack opposable thumbs, so the Animorphs got in the habit of not carrying weapons.

[Chad32]

I'm talking about the author of the book. Not V3. Maybe I should have made that clear.

[Chad32]

I'm pretty sure KAA lost interest in the series about halfway through, since most of the later half of the series is ghostwritten. Everworld had that problem too, even though it was only about 15 books long or something. After what she did in the last arc, I wouldn't want her coming back to the series. I'd be too afraid to read them.

It's not going to help that you'd have some backlash whether she brought Rachel back in some form or not.

[NothingFromSomething]

I don't know about "lost interest", she was just juggling multiple series at a certain point.

Was some of Everworld ghost-written too?  It's been like a decade since I've read it, sort of assumed it was all Katherine/Michael.

[Phoenix004]

KA also had a child part way through writing the Animorphs series, which is another reason she ended up relying on ghost writers

[Chad32]

I know it was deliberate. I also believe it was a bad idea.

[YeerkSalad]

I think that
[spoiler] everybody died. I didn't consider it that bad of a cliffhanger - it's not hard to speculate what happened. My opinion about The One, however... that was a bad move.[/spoiler]
Crapplegate.

[Tim Bruening]

I too am annoyed that the series ended [spoiler]on the cliff-hanger of Jake ordering his ship to "Ram the Blade Ship".  [/spoiler]

(One other series I saw that ended in the cliff-hanger was Blake's 7, [spoiler]which ended with the ship seeming to blow up![/spoiler]

Weirdest Animorphs books I have read: The Hidden, with the morphing buffalo.

The Journey, which the Helmacrons and the Animorphs going up Marco's nose!

Animorph Headlines:

The Hidden: Buffaloes Go On Downtown Rampage!

The Pretender: Many Bladed Alien Put On display By Local Man.

The Unexpected: Badly Damaged Plane Arrives In Sydney.

The Conspiracy: Wild Animals Go On Rampage Outside Local Sharing Meeting.

[YeerkSalad]

I am okay with [spoiler]everyone dying.[/spoiler] I'm not okay with [spoiler]a new antagonist being introduced at the end.[/spoiler] Heck, [spoiler]killing everyone[/spoiler] could actually make a really good ending. It just didn't in this case.