Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Group Re-Reads => Animorphs Forum Classic => Past Re-Reads => Topic started by: Terenia on March 27, 2009, 04:38:27 PM
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Summary
Marco, the other Animorphs, and Ax have managed to find out where the Yeerks are planning to build their next ground-based Kandrona. That's a good thing. The location is supposed to be somewhere around the North Pole. That's a bad thing. The Animorphs and Ax know that the Yeerks are a "cold-blooded" species, but this is a little nuts! Who wants to be anywhere near the North Pole without Arctic morphs - and wearing spandex?
Even so, the kids know if the Yeerks succeed with their plan, Earth is pretty much done for. And Marco, the other Animorphs, and Ax aren't quite ready to give up the fight...
Questions
1. The entire premise of this book is that the Yeerks are building a ground-based Kandrona strong enough to essentially turn any swimming pool into a Yeerk Pool. If they had succeeded, what consequences would have come about as a result? Would it have been game over?
2. The Yeerks recreate the Venber race by splicing Venber and human DNA. These Venber are fully programmable, like biological computers. Is this better or worse than what the Arn do? Why?
3. Why does KA include the Eskimo kid in this book? Was it smart for the Ani's to let him go after he saw them morph?
4. Everyone always makes Cassie out to be this over-indulgent moralizer, but in the last few books she's shone a different side. What do you think has changed?
5. The Ani's eat in their wolf morphs to avoid starving. Does that food carry through when they demorph and remorph? Or do they go back to hungry?
6. Anything else. :)
Next Week: #26 The Attack
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1. The entire premise of this book is that the Yeerks are building a ground-based Kandrona strong enough to essentially turn any swimming pool into a Yeerk Pool. If they had succeeded, what consequences would have come about as a result? Would it have been game over?
I think it's safe to say that Earth would be pretty screwed. At the very least it would have made the end of the series very different, as destroying the Yeerk Pool wouldn't have been as damaging if most Controllers had access to their own personal pools.
2. The Yeerks recreate the Venber race by splicing Venber and human DNA. These Venber are fully programmable, like biological computers. Is this better or worse than what the Arn do? Why?
I'm not excusing the Arn, but what the Yeerks did was far worse. They made a mockery of an extinct species and used technology to enslave them to suit their purposes. Not to mention the fact that innocent humans were essentially killed in the process.
3. Why does KA include the Eskimo kid in this book? Was it smart for the Ani's to let him go after he saw them morph?
The guy was there for comic relief and as a plot device for finding the Polar Bear morph. It may not have been smart to let the guy go, but there wasn't really anything else they could have done. The Yeerks weren't interested in enslaving the people in that area so there wasn't likely to be any danger.
4. Everyone always makes Cassie out to be this over-indulgent moralizer, but in the last few books she's shone a different side. What do you think has changed?
I don't really get what you mean, but I suppose she became slightly less of an "over-indulgent moralizer" as the series went on because the war was starting to get to her.
5. The Ani's eat in their wolf morphs to avoid starving. Does that food carry through when they demorph and remorph? Or do they go back to hungry?
Difficult to say for sure. Logically the food should carry through a morph/demorph, since other objects are carried on (eg. bullets don't vanish, they just get pushed out of their bodies).
However, based on evidence from the series, we can assume that food does not get carried through the morphing process. In a later book (#49 I believe) Tobias morphs human to share a burger with Rachel, but then demorphs to eat in his hawk form. Also, the human body wouldn't be able to tolerate the raw meat of the seal the Animorphs ate as wolves, so they would have been very sick if the food had been carried through the morph.
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I'd say what V3 did was far worse than what the Arn did. What the arn did wrong was how they treated the Horks after their creation. They created the Horks to save their planet, which is not an evil thing. It's going to extremes to separate themselves, and trying their best to keep the Horks from becoming a developed species that's wrong.
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5. I don't think it does. Say you just a burger and it hasn't fully digested yet. Then you morph an ant. if the food stays, what happens to you? in #42, Ax said something about a danger if marco morphs while they're inside his body. the danger is probably getting sent into z-space along with all the other extra mass...
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I've always wondered what would happen if you launched a nuke at that North Pole base tbh.
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4. Everyone always makes Cassie out to be this over-indulgent moralizer, but in the last few books she's shone a different side. What do you think has changed?
I was actually pretty impressed with Cassie this book. At the time that it first came out, I thought it showed a lot of growth with her when it came to the whole "eating the seal" thing. It showed that though she can sometimes moralize a bit too much, she at least has her priorities straight. (this growth is completely slaughtered in later books, granted... but it was nice at the time)
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5. I don't think it does. Say you just a burger and it hasn't fully digested yet. Then you morph an ant. if the food stays, what happens to you? in #42, Ax said something about a danger if marco morphs while they're inside his body. the danger is probably getting sent into z-space along with all the other extra mass...
I think we just solved the problem of where the extra mass comes from when you morph something bigger than yourself. It's undigested food. :P
Anyway, since I'm here, I might as well answer a couple questions while I'm at it.
1. Yeah, that would pretty much be game over, at least until they managed to destroy the base and set everything back to how it was before. With Kandrona everywhere, the Yeerks' biggest weakness would be essentially gone. You'd have a heck of a lot harder time starving controllers (although, come to think of it, they only ever did that once anyway), and they'd be infesting new targets like crazy. The Yeerks would just throw a big pool party, and everyone would leave with slugs in their heads.
2. Way, way worse. The Arn created a new race from scratch, and just set them loose and let them do what they wanted. The Yeerks resurrected an existing race and mind-controlled them. And don't tell me they just created them without free will in the first place. They went over that issue in book 28, and proved that Yeerks don't know how to separate sentience from sentient creatures. So, yeah, the Venber would have had to have been thinking, feeling, slaves. Which is, granted, what the Yeerks have been doing all along, but when you resurrect a race to enslave them, that's just a whole new level of sick.
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5. The Ani's eat in their wolf morphs to avoid starving. Does that food carry through when they demorph and remorph? Or do they go back to hungry?
With the whole Z-Space thing, also remember that they shift into morphs, they just don't pop into something new. Organs get shifted and changed, mass is changed, not being removed and then replaced. I think anything the morph has metabolized would have stayed as a human. I think this is why morphs don't starve (Think about how many hours Jake spent as a tiger; is he ever described as eating?) I think metabolized energy transfers between morphs. It is noted that, while flesh wounds are healed, hunger, thirst, and the need for sleep all remain.
Still, this leads to yet more problems. For instance, when something massive is morphed from human, it would use all the metabolized energy remaining in the human body in minutes or seconds or less. Would it then starve? Yet Cassie's whale is always fine.
Also, most arctic animals (polar bears, walruses, etc) Have a MASSIVE amount of Vitamin A in their livers. As in, you eat a sizeable portion of a liver from these animals, and you die from OD of Vitamin A. If you morph from human, with a far smaller amount of the vitamin, does the arctic morph instantly get sick from the lack of the vitamin, or assuming the body creates it, why doesn't the human get sick from all the Vitamin A now in the system when they demorph?
Assume everything needed is created by the body (which is probably impossible), and anything in excess is extruded into Z space. How do clothes morph then, while a tiny language chip (AC) or microprocessor (One with the Hammerheads) inside the body cannot? If I put something in my mouth, morph, would it be expelled from the body or transferred to Z space? How does it know to push out bullets but not undigested food? It could be claimed that only organic materials would go with the extruded mass (Food vs metal), but then why do the spandex (Synthetic fiber) morphing suits get extruded?
This isn't even getting into how age is determined from DNA or things like haircuts and nail length are maintained.
I feel it's safe to say that it's a work of fiction and there cannot be a foolproof explanation for every aspect. :'(
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The thought just occured to me that Ax shouldn't be able to morph flea. I mean, how small is that translator ship in his head?
The only real solution is probably suspension of disbelief.
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The thought just occured to me that Ax shouldn't be able to morph flea. I mean, how small is that translator ship in his head?
The only real solution is probably suspension of disbelief.
Ax does not have a translator chip. I forgot which book, but it's said that his generation of arisths has a translator cell. As in the size of a single cell, somewhere in the brain, not a chip.
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Maybe stuff can go into Z-space, yet remain "in contact" with the morpher. Like, how does a human intellect fit into an ant brain, unless the mind is somehow extruded into Z-space and yet stays in contact with the body? It shouldn't be possible, otherwise, for the Animorphs to keep their human intelligence when they morph into small-brained animals . . .
And this makes some theoretical sense, when you consider that Z-space is a sort of dimension of space (except for being not-space), so things could be 'close' to other things, even when one thing is in Z-space and the other isn't. Think of Z-space as a higher dimension, like our three dimensions; if two things can be touching in three dimensions, they can be touching in higher dimensions.
Also, this would allow some food to continue to be metabolized in morph, since it would still be 'touching' the stomach wall. Thus explaining why morphs don't starve.
I feel it's safe to say that it's a work of fiction and there cannot be a foolproof explanation for every aspect. :'(
Oh, come on. That's a cop-out!
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The thought just occured to me that Ax shouldn't be able to morph flea. I mean, how small is that translator ship in his head?
The only real solution is probably suspension of disbelief.
Ax does not have a translator chip. I forgot which book, but it's said that his generation of arisths has a translator cell. As in the size of a single cell, somewhere in the brain, not a chip.
That's news to me.
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The thought just occured to me that Ax shouldn't be able to morph flea. I mean, how small is that translator ship in his head?
The only real solution is probably suspension of disbelief.
Ax does not have a translator chip. I forgot which book, but it's said that his generation of arisths has a translator cell. As in the size of a single cell, somewhere in the brain, not a chip.
That's news to me.
Me too. If you figure out which book that was in, let me know. Because I've got most of them nearly memorized, yet I don't recall that ever being mentioned . . .
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i nerveer heard of that everr
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I can't remember... I KNOW I've read it, but it seems far away...
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Maybe it was fanfic?
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I doubt it. The only fanfic I can recall reading was Dino's #55, and he called it a chip there.
There's a chance though. I know I've read it, just not where.
Stupid source amnesia.
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Translator chips are able to morph with you, just as clothing is. It's probably made of an Andalite material that takes the morphing technology into account (and I am 98% positive there is never a mention of a translator cell in the canon series. Could be wrong, though).
Morphing spandex clothing takes concentration and practice. Originally they were unable to. So perhaps, morphing inorganic substances comes with several requirements:
1) You know its there and concentrate on having it become part of the morph
2) It is close to the body.
.....or it could just be a plot device so that the Ani's weren't running around naked...
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I actually don't recall Ax having a translator chip either...
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i have my doubts he would need a chip. Andalites are awsome so i doubt they would need a translator chip. But how would Ax have learned English.... andalite intersteller cultures class...?
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The thought just occured to me that Ax shouldn't be able to morph flea. I mean, how small is that translator ship in his head?
The only real solution is probably suspension of disbelief.
Ax does not have a translator chip. I forgot which book, but it's said that his generation of arisths has a translator cell. As in the size of a single cell, somewhere in the brain, not a chip.
Are you sure? It's been a while, but I don't recall that being mentioned. Either way, I assumed that the translator chip morphed along with them, like skin tight clothing or (in Visser Three's case) a Yeerk in the brain.
On the subject of translator chips, we never figure out for sure if Ax actually has one. I assumed he did since he knows English, but on the other hand there has been one or two occasions when Ax had to translate an alien language for the others and was sometimes unsure of the exact translation, which is unlikely if he had a chip. On the other hand, it's likely that the chip doesn't work while in morph.
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i have my doubts he would need a chip. Andalites are awsome so i doubt they would need a translator chip. But how would Ax have learned English.... andalite intersteller cultures class...?
Actually Andalites do have translator chips, Elfangor states that they're standard military issue, at least for his generation, as for how he learnd English, well his thoughtspeak works on a level higher than actual language, so if his translator chip translates English he can still speak Andalite and be fine . . . of course then again he does speak it when he's in human morph.
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...Or it could be a plot device. The idea of a translator anything is far fetched. Just hearing sounds won't translate a language if there is no base. You need to have an existing idea of what at least some of the words mean before you could crack the code, so to speak. If I randomly spoke gibberish, but in an organized fashion, would a translator chip be able to pull a language out of it?
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if there is a chip (and i dont there is) then mabey they programed it useing human radio transmitions(spelling) but that would mean that they had been studying human cultuer for years....
even though the andalites where inteligent i dont think they would have a translation chip for a cultuer they would never visit... cuz of the whole seerow thing...
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We seem to have gone a bit off topic with the translator chip discussion. If anyone wants to continue talking about it, feel free to make a thread.
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1. Game over
2. Yeerks were worse
3. I agree that the kid was comic relief and a plot device, and since the Yeerks never found out about him, it was ok to let him. (Hindsight is everything.)
4. Yes Cassie can be way to moralistic, but I've never doubted that she wouldn't do anything to survive.
5. Well, if food doesn't carry from morphs, I've think we've figured out why Ax doesn't weigh a 1,000 lbs.
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I like this one, but all I can think about it is how it starts a chee saga. The next like, four books, all have relatively high amounts of chee appearances.
Don't know why, but I've been thinking about that for days
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I like this one, but all I can think about it is how it starts a chee saga. The next like, four books, all have relatively high amounts of chee appearances.
Don't know why, but I've been thinking about that for days
Definitely agree. From #25-34 the Chee have some sort of role in each book.
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I remember a translator cell from somewhere.
This book wasn't bad. It wasn't one of the best ones, but it was solidly paced and moved pretty well. I liked the idea of the Venber, however organically unlikely they were, and there was some mysterious talk about The Five or something that I was intrigued by, but that's not an unresolved plot thread I can be too unhappy about.
There's some interesting discussion on tvtropes about how exactly the Animorphs were still able to think and reason in really primitive forms, and basically the theory is that the mass in Zero-Space, which we know is still at least recognizable as the original form, somehow remote-controls the morph from there. So even if they're an ant, they're still using their human brain, just distracted by the ant's instincts in real space. If that makes sense.
So, therefore, even if it wasn't a translator "cell" and was a "chip" instead, Ax could still use it since he can still use his Andalite brain.
Of course, to me at least, this begs the question of why the Andalites aren't just using Zero Space as a huge organic or inorganic storage unit, programming medical equipment to draw from vast supplies of blood or medicine, programming weapons to draw from vast supplies of fuel or ammunition...but idk. I think about Animorphs way too much.
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Yayz, you're here! *hugs anijen*
Ahem. Anyhoo.
I actually love that this is the start of a long Chee involvement. I don't think we see enough of them in the series, so when we do I really enjoy it. I often think that the Ani's could have been more involved with their allies. Even if they can't fight, they are hugely useful for holograms and whatnot, but they rarely use that advantage except #26 (which we'll talk about this weekend :) ).
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There's some interesting discussion on tvtropes about how exactly the Animorphs were still able to think and reason in really primitive forms, and basically the theory is that the mass in Zero-Space, which we know is still at least recognizable as the original form, somehow remote-controls the morph from there. So even if they're an ant, they're still using their human brain, just distracted by the ant's instincts in real space. If that makes sense.
Yeah I always thought that too. Presumably the morpher's mind is stored in Z-space along with their body, but still connected to the form they have morphed into.
I also liked that the Chee start to have a bigger role in this book. It's the first time they cover for the Animorphs while they are away on a mission.
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This isn't even getting into how age is determined from DNA or things like haircuts and nail length are maintained.
Well, determining age from DNA isn't that farfetched. See, there's a long string of repetitive, meaningless DNA at the end of every chromosome which protects the important information from destruction when the DNA strand is replicated during mitosis... every time the DNA strand is replicated, a segment of DNA is lost in translation, and so every time the cell divides, its DNA is literally shorter. Thus, the cell's (and, through that, the organism's) age and age-limit are shown in their DNA...
But I always thought that was kind of a fasinating thing- how the actual appearance of the morph was determined by its DNA in the books. Marco's hairbut, Tidwell's weight, things determined by environment but apparently shown through when their body is reconstructed through DNA. But when Tobias morphs Taylor, he becomes someone he's never actually seen- Taylor before her accident.
Like, if someone acquired the DNA of a person who was anorexic, but who was genetically inclined towards obesity- what would their morph look like? It's never really stated. ;--;
1. The entire premise of this book is that the Yeerks are building a ground-based Kandrona strong enough to essentially turn any swimming pool into a Yeerk Pool. If they had succeeded, what consequences would have come about as a result? Would it have been game over?
I don't think it would have been game over entirely. I mean, for one thing, it's stated a few times in the book that Kandrona isn't the only thing Yeerks absorb from the Yeerk Pool, so them forgoeing those other nutrients in favor of convenience might weaken them in the long run. Also, how big of an advantage that becomes depends, imo, on whether or not the Yeerks were ready to go ahead and declare full-on war. I can't imagine that having some neighbor come over to hold onto your screaming, crying host while you swim around in your backyard, and then forcing his head underwater while he flails about so you can reinfest him, would be that subtle or secretive. Not to mention that the aforementioned host is much more likely to be able to escape from his backyard than he was from the Yeerk Pool. It'd be a convenience for Yeerks whose hosts have jobs which require them to travel or somesuch, and I'm sure it'd make expanding the invasion much easier, but it wouldn't eliminate the Yeerks' main weakness entirely. The gameplan would change, but they wouldn't be untouchable.
2. The Yeerks recreate the Venber race by splicing Venber and human DNA. These Venber are fully programmable, like biological computers. Is this better or worse than what the Arn do? Why?
The Arn were awesome. Arrogant, but they did what they needed to do to save their planet- and their keeping the Hork-Bajir a few tiers below their own people isn't that much better than what we do with dolphins- who we're all pretty sure are self-aware- or chimpanzees, which share 98% of our DNA. They tried to make sure Hork-Bajir remained ignorant to their existence and used them to care for their planet; we keep dolphins in big pools and make them jump for our amusement. *shrugs*
The thing with the Venber was, obviously, cruel. As were... the people-whose-species-I-forget, who eliminated the Venber in the first place, was worse- although, again, it's not something I could never imagine humans doin'.
3. Why does KA include the Eskimo kid in this book? Was it smart for the Ani's to let him go after he saw them morph?
He was a plot device. *shrug* A few books later, I'm not so sure they would've taken the risk of letting him go.
4. Everyone always makes Cassie out to be this over-indulgent moralizer, but in the last few books she's shone a different side. What do you think has changed?
Cassie, bless her heart, IS an over-indulgent moralizer. <3 And I adore her for it. I don't think the whole let's-eat-dead-things is that big of a stretch- I mean, she's vegetarian, but the seals were already dead. They weren't born, raised in poor conditions, and killed at a predetermined time to be eaten, they'd been killed as a function of being part of nature. I don't think it was out of character for Cassie to say "Hey, let's do that thing where we DON'T die," and encourage her friends to eat something they didn't even have to hurt.
5. The Ani's eat in their wolf morphs to avoid starving. Does that food carry through when they demorph and remorph? Or do they go back to hungry?
I find it fascinating to think about, an' I loved reading other people's answers to this. x3 Canon-wise, the books seem to flip-flop on the subject.
6. Anything else.
I feel pretty strongly that this would have been the PERFECT book in which to introduce a walrus morph. But, once again, KAA neglects my favorite animals. (Elephants, sure! Rhinos, sure! But no hippos, that would delight Ember. D< Grizzlies, sure! Polar bears, sure! Raccoons, why not? But not hyenas, that would delight Ember. D< Seals, polar bears, but no walruses! Nyaaaa ;--;)
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I feel pretty strongly that this would have been the PERFECT book in which to introduce a walrus morph. But, once again, KAA neglects my favorite animals. (Elephants, sure! Rhinos, sure! But no hippos, that would delight Ember. D< Grizzlies, sure! Polar bears, sure! Raccoons, why not? But not hyenas, that would delight Ember. D< Seals, polar bears, but no walruses! Nyaaaa ;--;)
There was a hyena morph in the first Alternamorphs book. :) (Probably the only good thing about it, really...)
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Yeah, but you get shot if you use it! xD
Whereas the 2,500 pound giraffe stampeding for those defenseless children... well, that's just cute. Only a jerk would shoot a giraffe...! D=
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I think there was one scenario where you can use the hyena and survive... But I've also sort of... selectively forgot most of the Alternamorphs books.
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I think there was one scenario where you can use the hyena and survive... But I've also sort of... selectively forgot most of the Alternamorphs books.
you survive but you become a nothlit, unless you use it during the attack on the yeerk.
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I can't imagine that having some neighbor come over to hold onto your screaming, crying host while you swim around in your backyard, and then forcing his head underwater while he flails about so you can reinfest him, would be that subtle or secretive. Not to mention that the aforementioned host is much more likely to be able to escape from his backyard than he was from the Yeerk Pool. It'd be a convenience for Yeerks whose hosts have jobs which require them to travel or somesuch, and I'm sure it'd make expanding the invasion much easier, but it wouldn't eliminate the Yeerks' main weakness entirely. The gameplan would change, but they wouldn't be untouchable.
That's a very good point. You'd either have a huge spike in escaped hosts, or a huge spike in the purchase of handcuffs and other restraining gear.
4. Everyone always makes Cassie out to be this over-indulgent moralizer, but in the last few books she's shone a different side. What do you think has changed?
Cassie, bless her heart, IS an over-indulgent moralizer. <3 And I adore her for it. I don't think the whole let's-eat-dead-things is that big of a stretch- I mean, she's vegetarian, but the seals were already dead. They weren't born, raised in poor conditions, and killed at a predetermined time to be eaten, they'd been killed as a function of being part of nature. I don't think it was out of character for Cassie to say "Hey, let's do that thing where we DON'T die," and encourage her friends to eat something they didn't even have to hurt.
That's very true, and really what I thought was interesting about this scene was the fact that Marco at least expected Cassie to have a problem with eating the seal, as if the already half-devoured animal was more important than them. I guess that doesn't say much for Marco's opinion of her, eh?
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Cassie, bless her heart, IS an over-indulgent moralizer. <3 And I adore her for it. I don't think the whole let's-eat-dead-things is that big of a stretch- I mean, she's vegetarian, but the seals were already dead. They weren't born, raised in poor conditions, and killed at a predetermined time to be eaten, they'd been killed as a function of being part of nature. I don't think it was out of character for Cassie to say "Hey, let's do that thing where we DON'T die," and encourage her friends to eat something they didn't even have to hurt.
Is it ever stated that she is a vegetarian? I'm sure she's against cruel farms and such, but she technically lives on a farm, so she can't be ignorant. Also, her dad made Chili one time, which is mostly meat.
Also, when you mentioned the method for determining age from DNA. While that's true, it isn't always consistent. Free radicals can affect cell function during mitosis, so the bits removed can be more or less, which is why two identical twins can seemingly age at different rates, based on environment, even though they have the same DNA.
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^ I always assumed she was. I mean, they have at least a few instances where they're at the mall eating, and everyone has a hamburger or whatever, while Cassie is specifically noted to be eating a veggie wrap or something similar. In #12, I remember Rachel ordering herself a hamburger from room service and getting Cassie a salad, although it's been a while since I read that one, so my memory could be faulty. *shrug* So I've always just sort of assumed she was vegetarian. ^^()
And I've never heard of identical twins aging at different rates. o_o The free radical bit makes sense, I've just never heard of it before. x3 *is an art major, so doesn't get too much in the way of new science learnin'* Interesting!
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Sloth morph for the win!!!