Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: EscafilDevice on September 01, 2009, 03:45:59 PM
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Does anybody notice how in #50 when the Auxiliary Animorphs are introduced there is contrast made between James and David?
James has blonde hair, so did David. James chose a lion as his battle morph, which was David's, and some of the Animorphs got a little nervous. Also think about how their situations/personalities are so different. James benefits from becoming an Animorph (well, until he dies) and it ruins David's life. James is also more responsible while David is careless.
I think James was set up as a foil for David and was forgotten with the frenzy of finishing up the series. I think that each book in the final arc became more rushed, Y/N/M?
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Yeah, I think he was too. There may have also been a little something going on between Marco and one of the auxilaries, if I recall. There was potential there, but it was pushed under the rug.
I think the auxilaries would have been handled best one of two ways. One is to make the original animorphs work like seargents while some auxilaries work under each Animorph. each one having their own group, and it would be interesting to see how each Animorph manages their own group.
Another thing is to simply make branch groups that work in different areas of the country/world, but work independantly like Toby and her group does. The Chee can be used to keep an eye on them, and give quick information via chee net.
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I kinda like the idea of their being separate Animorphs cells in different countries, especially if they only kept brief contact with other cells to ensure security (The Chee would be ideal for communications as they can't be infested). However, despite the fact that we know the Yeerk invasion must have been quite widespread, we don't actually know how far it had spread or which countries had been infiltrated.
Anyway, back to the James/David thing. I think it probably was supposed to show a "what if" image of David, to show how well he could have turned out. Or maybe KA just stuck the Lion morph in there as an in-joke and the rest is coincidence.
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Wait James died?
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didnt all the auxiliaries die?
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I don't think so :o
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The Auxiliary Animorphs died in the last battle against the pool ship. One of the reasons I hate that book. *gestures*
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it never specified that they all died, but it seems pretty likely as we dont hear about them in the parts of the book past the war. jake would have probably taken them instead of two total newbies if they were available.
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Jake sent all of them to stand outside while Visser Three shot them all one by one in his Pool Ship.
It was one of the most disturbing images in the whole series, I thought. But somehow the army was fine. Doubleday survived, didn't he?
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Most of Doubleday's men survived. The Auxiliaries were the red shirts - they were the front of the line, they were the first ones that Visser One attacked.
It seems like a such a cop out that after all the Auxiliaries are brutally murdered (I recall Visser three killing them from the bottom up... Imagine the agony of having your legs dissolve into molecules and then have the rest of you go that way too) Erek is able to break the security codes in order to drain the pool ship's Dracon cannons.
The Auxiliaries were handled very inelegantly, whereas a traitor like David got a proper send-off AND a follow-up book.
Throughout the series there was the subplot of how to deal with the disabled, not realizing that someone that may not be physically fit is still mentally strong - mentally stronger than, even - and is still useful in many ways.
This was touched upon for like two seconds.
There was the Andalites' handling of vecols, the yeerks unwilling to take physically disabled host bodies...
We got the Auxiliaries for one book, really, and like, four chapters give or take in books 52 and 53 where they're all killed and the disablility subplot just goes to hell.
All of the characters were fascinating as well, especially James.
I would have liked to see more of a parallel drawn between James and David and James and Jake.
UGH don't get me started lol
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Wow, that's a really interesting point, and I'd never thought about it before. And it's true, too. James is like, the anti-David. Both were leaders, in a sense, but one only wanted to gather a team to serve himself, and the other served under Jake even as he lead his own people. David's life was ruined, James's life was improved. David considered morphing as a way to commit crimes and cheat the system, and James, too, found morphing to be a 'way out,' but in a bigger sense. There's tons of parallels.
And yeah, I agree that the Auxiliaries were handled very poorly. You could tell that KA probably had big, complex plans for them, what with the introductions and detailed characterizations they got in book #50. But after that, they got lost in all the noise of the final arc. It's a shame, since I would have really liked to have heard more about them after the war. You know, not even necessarily to have survived the war, just some acknowledgement of their sacrifice, and what it meant for them to have been Animorphs in the first place.
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And yeah, I agree that the Auxiliaries were handled very poorly. You could tell that KA probably had big, complex plans for them, what with the introductions and detailed characterizations they got in book #50. But after that, they got lost in all the noise of the final arc. It's a shame, since I would have really liked to have heard more about them after the war. You know, not even necessarily to have survived the war, just some acknowledgement of their sacrifice, and what it meant for them to have been Animorphs in the first place.
If only the Auxiliaries had been introduced earlier...but I guess the whole point was that they didn't want to recruit more Animorphs except as a last resort. :/
That was the main thing that bothered me in #53 (that was when they all died, right?), that they didn't even get mentioned after that battle.
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yeah well the animorphs should've began recruiting more people as soon as David thing was over: they were sooks to be put off by one creep and should've selected their next person based on that person's character knowledge rather than a bunch of disabled children in book 50.
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I remember Ax's objection to making David an Animorph was that they were a guerrilla team and adding more members would add more risk.
I don't think they needed a big ol' army until the final arc, when the war was brought out into the open.
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nonsense, guerrilla/assymetric warfare/terrorism require as many people as possible just like every other army on earth, though they may lack numbers (there are presumably more people in the American Army then Alqaeda not including members of affiliated organisations)this is not by choice but circumsttnces, real life guerrillas/assymetric warfare/terrorism actively recruits new members as much as possible, especially guerrillas in say Afghanistan or Vietcong who have extremely high death rates. furthermore many human guerrilla armies actually have superior numbers to their enemy (take the Iraqi insurgency as example and the vietcong) what differientates them is their lack of resources (Che Guevera said the way to distinguish government troops and guerrillas was that guerrilla are/must be sparing with bullets as they lack resources/access) and by extension technology (flying a plane into a building or using a dirty bombs rather than nuking a city or fire bombing dresden). It would've been more correct for Ax to be concerned about unwieldy command structure or higher possibility of capture, but even then regular armies have about 8 people under a sargeant and 16 under a lieutenant+ assorted corporals, lance corporals etc (roughly, my knowledge is not precise). Both problems can be averted by making use of the cell system (each one commanded by an original animorph so 5-6 groups of 4-8 ppl each) as used by terrorist organisations with great success.
As for 'the yeerks will start becoming suspicious about all these controllers disappearing and new andalite bandits emerging: this could be averted with: 1. all cells using the same morphs and appearing separately or 2. they kept up the masquerade for two long anyway, why didn't they just kidnap their families and fight full time?
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I like the idea of using the same battle morphs, and only attacking in groups of six, but the biggest advantage of higher numbers is the ability to do more at one time. Meaning different cells should be making attacks at different locations.
Or maybe they could just use the cells to do stuff more often, instead of doing multiple things at one time. So it would still be one group attacking at one time, but they'd be able to attack on a daily basis or so.
As far as number 2 goes, I think staying in school and trying to further education and such would be more beneficial to them if they managed to win. Though I'm not sure if that outweighs getting their families to safety. They could probably still do a kind of home schooling, where the Chee supply them with academic resources like textbooks.
But it's a fact that they had two safe locations to hide their families and use as bases: The Chee's basement and the Hork Valley.
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I don't think the reason why they kept up the masquerade so long was because of any tactical advantage or anything like that. Warriors or not, these were still just kids. They didn't want to give up their lives to fight this war full-time, and so they didn't do so until it became clear that there was no other choice.
I agree that it would have been a better idea to go underground sooner. I think they were taking a big risk, leaving their families (not to mention themselves) out in the open. And they could have hurt the Yeerks a lot more if they had inducted their families earlier, giving their families a better chance of getting used to the new reality so that they could be much more helpful than they actually were in the final arc. Heck, maybe they could have even given their parents morphing powers, and allowed them into the team.
Not to mention that, if they'd acted sooner, Jake's family would have been saved, FTW.
All of that said, in the Animorphs' place, I still would have done exactly the same thing they did. Just laid low, and tried to keep a quasi-normal life. Not a good tactical move, but the Animorphs were so much more than just tactics.
As for the guerrilla cell groups idea, I've heard that talked about before as something the Animorphs should have done. The idea has merit, but you have to consider the security risk. Even if you gave the other cells absolutely no information on the other groups, if any of them were infested, it would still be revealed that they were human. And if the Yeerks ever realized that any of whom they were fighting was human, then they could have pulled what they did in book #49 earlier (ie, testing blood samples for matches to find the Animorphs). And if they had ever actually known in book #49 that a number of the forces opposing them were actually human, rather than just speculating that that was the case, the Yeerks would have tried harder to keep that operation secret, and maybe, just maybe, they would have found the Animorphs before the Animorphs even knew they were looking. Bam. War's over.
And its a fact; the more Animorphs you add, the more likely it is that one of them will eventually be made into a controller. So you can't just keep adding more and more 'cells' and increasing your forces. Somebody is going to get caught eventually.
Truth is, the small group they had worked well. It minimized the security risk, while still allowing them to inflict damage on the Yeerks. Keep in mind, of course, that up until, what was it, book #46, they were just holding the Yeerks at bay until the Andalites came to the rescue. They weren't trying to defeat them all by themselves.
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There was always that glimmer of hope that the kids were just keeping the Yeerks at bay until the Andalites came.
When it was finally definitive that they weren't coming, to betray or to release some sort of quantum virus or offer any assistance at all, that's when the guerilla warfare began.
I would have probably tried to live as normally as possible until it was impossible, as well. Just having some semblance of reality helped keep most of the six sane for as long as possible. Six was a very powerful number, indeed.
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you can't really draw a relationship between the two.
mainly because K.A. never gave James enough Character Development as David.
and let's face it, James was a red shirt. David as a villain for 4 books.
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okay this may be a really stupid question, but is there ever a definitive reason WHY the Animorphs don't tell their parents what is going on before #48 or whatever?
I mean there's the whole "THEY COULD BE CONTROLLERS" but idk, on this reread I am kind of disappointed that they are so untrusting of adults. It is mentioned at one point something like "are you kidding an adult does not have the elasticity of mind to accept an alien invasion" and I'm kind of like "yeah that's why sci-fi sells so well to 18-35 year olds"
And besides, there were PLENTY of people they followed around for three days, making sure they weren't Yeerks. Marco's potential girlfriend in #25 pops to mind. So they would know if their parents are Controllers. And most of their parents seem like loving, caring people that would listen if their kids told them they were the only force stopping an alien invasion, and might even, you know, WATCH as they did a morph for them. If they were really 13-year-old kids, I just really think one of them would have cracked a lot sooner, and wouldn't have needed to be cut in half by a shovel to do so.
But of course, the whole "a bunch of kids fighting aliens all by themselves" would be a much better sell than "a bunch of kids whose parents know that they are fighting aliens all by themselves." But idk, I mean, Harry Potter made it work.
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Maybe they didn't want to risk any of the parents being captured...though I guess that wouldn't be much of a problem if the parent's weren't fighting...
Or maybe they didn't want their parents fussing over them like Mrs. Weasley, haha :P
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Well, parents aren't really big on opening their minds and being like... imaginative and believers and things.
They believed in the system, and it's seriously bad security.
What if they ended up as controllers?
That would just be suicide, plain and simple.
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Yes there's a greater risk that someone would be taken. And unfortunately, not all of their battle morphs would come with a blade they could slit their throats with if it came down to that. Like the andalites. But I think that's an acceptable risk.
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Well, parents aren't really big on opening their minds and being like... imaginative and believers and things.
They believed in the system, and it's seriously bad security.
What if they ended up as controllers?
That would just be suicide, plain and simple.
In reality, that's where I disagree.
In a children's book series, hell yes, parents tend to be dumb road obstacles that get in the way of the ingenious little kids figuring everything out. If it's a genre thing, fine, like I mean Roald Dahl loved his adults ineffectual and villainous, and even Harry Potter had the Dursleys, but in this series, if they weren't Controllers, none of the adults seemed to behave the way you described. I mean even THE GOVERNOR in book #51, who is one of the most complicit members of "the system" you described, was like "Aliens? OK thanks for telling me." And in fact, once the parents found out, Rachel's mom was the only one who really gave them any trouble, and that was just because she hated the outdoors and were scared of the Hork-Bajir lol.
So I guess my point is, they really just made their lives harder than they needed to be for the majority of the series. The argument that "they could be made into Controllers" is sort of valid, but even then not really, because until Marco's dad got targeted for that...reason, the Yeerks seemed to recruit exclusively through the Sharing. They'd even let humans they needed go, like the woodland guy in #9 and oh, I don't know, TOBIAS in #33 for really dumb reasons. So if Jake walked up to his parents, were like "Aliens are real, Tom is infested, don't join the Sharing, help me keep him tied up in his room," and morphed to tiger, do you really think his parents would have lacked the imagination and faith and been too tied up in "the system" to do anything about it?
It just would have given everyone someone to be emotionally vulnerable with besides Cassie is all.
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I think I'm on the wrong bus. I thought this bus was going to parallels-between-james-and-david, but it seems to be headed to what-the-animorphs-should've-done...
[spoiler]translation: we're kinda off-topic aren't we?[/spoiler]
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Yeah, and I think I was the one that started it. Sorry about that.
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Since we are going off topic does someone want to resurrect the 'if the yeerks were invading' thread and continue this discussion. after all there is only somany times you can say 'David and James both have blond hair and morphed lions."
Irony, lions=jesus... but the animorphs regard them as unlucky (this should go into religion and animorphs) and Jake's morph was the tiger rather than the more stereotypical lion for leadership.
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wasn't jesus the lamb of god?
that would be a hilarious battle morph
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Jesus is the lion as well as the lamb... the lion is sort of 'I come with the sword to avenge the innocent (paraphrasing here)" aspects of jesus, rather than the crucified aspects.
Aslan=Jesus.
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wasn't jesus the lamb of god?
that would be a hilarious battle morph
almost as hilarious as a horse
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At least a horse has enough strength to knock a Hork-Bajir down. Though Cassie makes it obvious in the books that there are animals that are faster, stronger, and have better senses.
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Since I was the last person to post on 'religion and animorphs' can someone else please resurrect that topic.
truly this adults are useless (as anijen said) is not a case of truth in television, more like pandering to the audience.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdultsAreUseless
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In order to make teens and kids look as competent as possible, adults must be downgraded to incompetent. Much like in the Simpsons.
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yeah but is it truth in television? I mean sure aliens and morphing is not real but shouldn't humans be portrayed realistically.
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I don't think it is. People can be competent and incompetent, regardless of age. There are smart kids, and dumb adults. Though I think in kids shows, there is usually that acception with the adults. One or two that are The Only sane Person.
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Sure, there are intelligent children and stupid adults. But the virtue adulthood is not defined by intelligence (for intelligence is a rare condition indeed) but by experience.
Amongst prodigies and geniuses, there have been child mathematicians, painters, scientists, linguists, musicians and so, but I noticed that on the list of child prodigies, how few writers or leaders military or otherwise there were. Sure Christopher Paulini wrote a book, but as any look at Tv tropes will tell you his books are awful for reasons other than poor grammar or spelling... On fanfiction.net there are 12-13 year olds writing who presumably get adults to correct the technical aspects of their writing (spelling, grammar and so on) but their stories still lack the mature and complex characterisation, plots, themes that and older writer will have because these aspects of writing are not based on your technical ability to write but by observations of people as the author matures and ages aka experience that one gains as one reaches adulthood. Which brings me to leadership:
Good leadership requires several characteristics more commonly found in adults than children: consideration for others as opposed to selfishness that to be honest children (and sociopaths who have many child like characteristics) lack, the ability to listen but still remain firm and detached and not be swayed by their emotions but what is necessary all of these things are based on maturity (unless you are a sociopath in which case you're morals fail to grow as you body does). Military tactics are not like painting or music (which is something that genius pick up quickly because they learn quickly) but are gained through experience, study of previous generals, knowledge of local terrain, weather conditions, coordinating politics (which is basically to manipulate people an ability that requires experience) and so on... The lack of children in leadership position is not for want of trying either: numerous kings and queens have begun their reigns young (some even before they were born or Mary Queen of Scots at 6 days old) but they have been advised and helped by adults, sure Edward IV of England (Henry VIII son) was a good king (but many child monarchs mature quickly in the role) but he still relied on a lot of advice and help. The only military prodigies I can think of are Alexander the Great and Akbar... but they're both older than other prodigies and Akbar reigned for a long time.