Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: Galladerotom on July 29, 2009, 08:30:17 PM
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I have noticed that ax's character is not entirley unique. This came to my mind when I was watching teen titans (I like stupid cartoons deal with it)when I noticed disticint similarities beetween Ax and Starfire. Mainly to do with food.
"You kids stay out of here buy that crazy friend of yours a bottle of tobasco sauce if he needs it." "What is Tabasco? Tuh-bah-sco is it tasty and full of flavor?" -animorphs
"I quite enjoy these tangy yellow drinks." "Uh, starfire that's mustard." "Is there more?!"- teen titans
Mostly though the trade mark of the alien is the akward and hilarious.
Post your own comparisions to Ax.
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Dude, Teen Titans is awesome. :P
But yeah, there is a sort of general alien 'persona' that authors seem to portray. I think it falls more under the category of commenting on humanity than anything else, though. Visser One makes commentary about how Hollywood is the most influential place in the world, Elfangor notes that people sticking white cylinders in their mouths is ridiculous when it makes them seriously ill. Ax treats advanced technology as a "game" and wonders if Big Wheels are weaponry.
When you have a character that is on the outside of humanity looking in, you'll have similarities across the spectrum. Imagine if you were a complete stranger to Earth and you walked in on a bunch of bipedal sentient beings who spent half their time eating, half their time starving themselves, half their time killing one another and the other half in front of the television?
(and yes, to quote Marco, I know that is too many halves)
Similarly, I think that as an "outsider" you would find some aspect of humanity to become fascinated with. Food seems to be the most obvious, since there is such a VAST variety of foods, but there are other aspects to marvel at as well.
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I like stupid cartoons to teen titans was cool and this is an interesting thread
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yeah I kind of see Ax as Mr. Spock with a food fetish now
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food fetish sounds gross i just think he loved to eat
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well that's what fetishes are!
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no fetishes are sexual in nature its about pleasure and gratification not love
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No, fetish does not mean sexual alone. You are using two different meanings of the same word- preoccupation - in this case, Ax's preoccupation with food (Jenigen's intent) and the interpretation of her post.
fetish (plural fetishes)
1. Something nonsexual, such as an object or a part of the body which arouses sexual desire or is necessary for one to reach full sexual satisfaction.
2. Something which is believed to possess, contain, or cause spiritual or magical powers; an amulet or a talisman.
3. An irrational, or abnormal, fixation or preoccupation.
Source: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fetish
I have found a few similarities in other books, now. At the time I read Animorphs. Ax seemed original. Is it possible that Ax set a standard that others are now borrowing from?
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well its an archtype by definition its from a molde
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I doubt that Ax set the standard. Food is a good Human thing for aliens to fixate on, since we're the only species on Earth that makes food just to enjoy it.
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we're the only species on earth that do a lot of things
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not have sex for pleasure dolphins and chimps do that to
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oh well I was going to say like, use an economy and process natural resources and exhibit a deep curiosity of our natural world, but u know however u want to take it
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How about bare our teeth to show happiness, instead of to scare or intimidate. We're about the only species that does that.
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Only known species. . . .
I suscribe to the belief that we haven't discovered all the animal species on Earth yet. . . .
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yeah, superdimensional mice could be watching our every move
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hell yeah fellow hitchhikers
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So...yeah. About archetypes.
Actually, looking at Hitchhiker's is a good example of how aliens aren't all the same. There are a vast amount of races explored in Hitchhikers, and they all act vastly different. Then again, they aren't necessarily confronted with life on Earth.
Take Star Trek, though. Aliens and humans intermix frequently, and rarely do you run into an 'Ax' character.
In short, I think that there are alien archetypeS, emphasis on the 's'. There is not one way for aliens to act. There is the 'emotionally reserved' alien, the 'humanity-obsessed' alien, the 'violent-culture alien' and so on and so forth.
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Yeah, it's quite possible.
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well star trek is not a kids show
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well star trek is not a kids show
So? Star Trek still has alien's, and therefore the potential for alien archetypes. It doesn't matter what age range it is presented to (unless the creator of this thread wanted to narrow it down in such a way). If anything, it strengthens the argument of archetypes importance/existence if they can transcend age and appeal to a broader audience.
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Star Trek aliens are all Humanoids. It's a bit different from a n Andalite falling in love with a Hork-Bajir. Fortunately, morphing power negates the squick factor.
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But is an Andalite falling in love with a Hork-Bajir an archetype? That's just a singular event.
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whats squick?
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If something squick's you out then it's icky and makes you cringe. More or less.
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neat
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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Squick
Yeah aliens are basically a vehicle for the author to comment on humans other examples are: Edriss infesting an Iraqi soldier and saying 'poorly run', her low opinion of drug addicted Jenny Lines, and Essam"s high opinion of Lowenstein.
This tendency goes back to Gulliver's travels. What is funny is that you never read stories in which an Englishmen visits Australian aboriginals and starts saying 'these people failed to invent the wheel and have no word for the number 1 and no other colours but dark and light' because that would be very offensive, instead he will learn a deeply spiritual lesson about respecting indigeneous culturer or whatever politically correct message the author wants to shove down our throughts. Even though a post industrial englishmen visiting pre-contact australia would have a greater technological gap then the one between Yeerks and humans in the animorphs.