Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: TobiasMasonPark on April 24, 2011, 05:08:31 PM
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I noticed something about Rachel and her choice in battle morphs. And this has been on my mind since I read one of Tobias' books; where he states how magnificent Rachel's morph from human to bald eagle looked. I can't remember the book, but I can paraphrase the quote:
Not that I would ever mate with her. Rachel's bald eagle is male, for one thing.
Rachel's Bald Eagle--despite the fact that, in the Visitor, Rachel refers to the eagle as she. Her grizzly bear morph, according to that horrendous Fanfic about Rachel doing...things to a morphed Tobias, is also male. Rachel morphed Fluffer McKitty in the Visitor-- a male cat. She morphed Loren's dog, Champ-- a male german shepherd. And she morphed Jara Hamee-- a male Hork-Bajir.
Now, I can't just go on to assume that ALL Rachel's morphs were male. She says in the Visitor that the shrew she morphed was a female. I'm also not stating that ALL her morphs were male. However, the examples I listed does say something about Rachel's personality; something that we already knew about her.
I am not a psycho analyst; nor do I claim to have a firm grasp of psychology. However, Rachel's choices in morphs--the more aggressive animals-- and their gender does seem to imply that she suffers from what Mr. Sigmund Freud refers to as "penis envy". We know that Rachel is more than meets the eye. She kicks butt. She's violent. And its to be assumed that she suffers from some sort of mental ilness or complex.
Any ideas?
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She's definitely be considered a Tomboy, which is a girl that acts in ways more typically masculine. I don't know if it was done on purpose that her most used morphs are male, though for a battle morph I can see the logic in choosing a male bear over a female.
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At first, I thought it was a coincidence. You know, she acquires what's made avaliable to her. She probably didn't think much about gender.
But then I started to wonder if K.A. was subtly hinting something about Rachel.
Then again, this, too, is doubtful, since K.A wrote for children, and tried to stay away from [most] adult subject matter.
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I think you're looking to far into this:
I doubt you get to pick what the sex of the Bald Eagle at the Barn is, or your friends cat that you need to use.
At the time, Jara was the only Hork-Bajir they had available, they're all using Champ to keep with loren.
Now you could say something about her battle morphs, but facts are facts male elephants and bears are (significantly) bigger than their counterparts: she wanted to hit hard, so she pulled out the big...well, boys. If a female bear was bigger, I'm sure she'd take that.
Now if she'd insisted on being the male wolf in book 3 then you could make an argument.
But I think Rachel was happy with you she was, including her gender: there's a line in one the books when her dad says she's as good as any boy, and she's trilled. She doesn't have to be one of the guys to do what she did, and doubt she wanted to.
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I'm just saying that I thought K.A was implying something.
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i think rachel is sorta like a tom boy but also a girly girl. so sh'e sorta a mix. A tom girl(story that makes me laugh behind that :P )
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And she morphed Jara Hamee-- a male Hork-Bajir.
Rachel's choices in morphs--the more aggressive animals-- and their gender does seem to imply that she suffers from what Mr. Sigmund Freud refers to as "_____".
You got me thinking again about gender identifiers of Hork-Bajir besides the quantity of their head blades. :-\ Thanks.
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according to that horrendous Fanfic about Rachel doing...things to a morphed Tobias, is also male.
ha...haha...BWUAAAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !!!! That fic was sooooo gross!
On topic:
I think you just may be reading into it a little too much, like somebody already said. I doubt any of these theories, that Anifans have come up with over the years, have ever crossed KA's mind when she was writing.
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I think, first and foremost, Rachel had a thing for fire-power, whether that fits into big male morphs or not, is redundant. For example, if she went for a hyena morph, she would have wanted to acquire the females, for they are the big and physically dominant ones of the kind. I don't thin the male factor was a pre-requisite in her decisions.
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I agree with everyone that said "doubt KAA" was really thinking about that. However, I think Rachel's morphs do demonstrate that using morphing for combat can make the gender issues irrelevant. Now it's my turn to be reading too much into something, but I've been wondering if Rachel's morphs show say something about patriotism. the bald eagle is an American symbol. The grizzly bear is California's state animal.
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And the AFRICAN Elephant...?
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..is just plain bad-ass. It's not like an Indian Elephant would be any more American anyway.
I suppose I should throw into the mix that among eagles the females are (somewhat) larger. Oh, and we can throw out the crude Freudian argument because male eagles lack that particular bit of equipment.
But, in any case I think it's telling that we don't usually find out what sex the morphs are. It really doesn't matter, except in the handful of cases (wolves, lol) where it does.
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I'm pretty sure Marco's Big Jim and the tiger Jake acquired were male. ("Duh" for Big Jim.)
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just renaming the thread. we're going to be getting some new members with the re-release and i'd like to try and keep topic-name spoilers to a minimum.
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FYI, goom, each post still has Rachel's last name.
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He's gonna have a lot of fun undoing all that :P
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He's gonna have a lot of fun undoing all that :P
:rofl2: ;D
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He's gonna have a lot of fun undoing all that :P
:rofl2: ;D
Let's be nice...:P
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Oops, that's right, we gotta worry about the new generation. Don't want to spoilt it for them!
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Nah. If kids nowadays are anything like the ones I've known, they'll wait for the dvd.
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Nah. If kids nowadays are anything like the ones I've known, they'll wait for the dvd.
I want a DVD! It would mean that a movie had been made, and I want an Animorphs movie! (I'm actually starting to write a screenplay based off book 1 with a program called Celtx, and I'm having fun doing it!)
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I get what you're saying, but I do agree that it was largely coincidental. In the case of the grizzly bear morph, you're talking about a grizzly bear. This thing that essentially dwarfs humans and makes us look like rag dolls.
When Rachel was approaching the sleeping bear in her very human and vulnerable form, I really have to believe that the bear was sleeping spread eagled for her to notice it was male. Because as desperately insane as Rachel was, she's not stupid enough to approach a bear and try to check under the trunk. Think The Beginning with a less dignified death.
However, in my initial analysis of the Animorphs first "on screen" battle morphs, I do find a stunning comparison between the elephant and the grizzly bear.
All right, what are the characteristics of the elephant she morphed? It's large and very impractical in a small space, hard to conceal and not indigenous to North America. In many ways that was basically Rachel in the earlier books. She was a wild one who took the morphing as an excuse to really let her inner child out to play. However, the elephant is also a largely docile animal and generally only lashes out when confused.
Now, the Grizzly Bear is a slightly more focused animal. There is simply no gray area with this thing. If you get into it’s personal space it will mess your doody up no questions asked. That was how Rachel was in book seven. A focused, controlled individual who was still a bit off kilter, but for the most part she had become a more thoughtful fighter. Remember, she was the one who figured out where the Earth based Kandrona was after the Ellimist dropped the hint on the whole gang. (Including the one who could calculate the distance between Earth and the Andalite home world, but was too high on himself for finding a Yeerk pool entrance.)
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Well, maybe Rachel has something "masculine" in her personality, but I don't think this has to do with morphs.
I think it's simple fact of strenght. For example, male grizzly bear is quite larger than the female and much stronger. And the African Elephant? According to my animals encyclopedia, the weight of females is 2.4-2.6 tons, while males 5-6 tons!
It's the same for many other morphs like the Siberian Tiger, Wolf and Gorilla (males weigh twice as females). They need to fight, so for battle morphs is better to use male animals. The question is reversed in birds of prey, cause females are often larger (I remember in some book Tobias specifies that females of red-tailed hawk are bigger).
IMHO, the problem of "sex" of the morphs has never been affronted seriously, except where the gender is fundamental (e.g. mosquitos).