Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: LorenF15 on July 26, 2011, 10:58:57 AM
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why do you think sarcasm was so baffling to Andalites? Do they even have a sense of humor or what? I just thought it was so interesting how things went right over Ax or Elfangor's head. Discuss the consequences of not understanding sarcasm and how this might or might not benefit Andalite culture.
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Some Andalites have a sense of humor. Sarcasm is a form of satire. Andalites are overly logical, hindering them in their ability to decipher undertones in the human language. Basically, they over think things.
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i agree with tmp.
i also think that the andalite brain does not necessarily work the same as a human brain. this could explain their powers of recall and calculation and time keeping. if more of their brain is dedicated to more scientific and processing, they may have a harder time figuring out humor in the first place due to biology.
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there are plenty of humans who dont understand sarcasm either, might not be an andalite thing, just an ax and elfangor thing. aldrea had no issues understanding sarcasm in andalite chroncles, and many of the other andalites in that book did things like calling the hork bajar genius.
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I'm inclined to think that the difference is cultural, rather than biological. Andalite society may simply place less emphasis on humor, and more emphasis on other outlets for clever thinking such as science. Besides that, they don't understand human humor because things like sarcasm might be culture-specific.
Just look at Arbron from TAC. He may not have been any Marco, but he certainly had his own style of humor, despite being an Andalite. Not to mention that most of the Animorphs thought that Ax eventually developed a very dry sense of humor from being exposed to humans for so long.
there are plenty of humans who dont understand sarcasm either, might not be an andalite thing, just an ax and elfangor thing. aldrea had no issues understanding sarcasm in andalite chroncles, and many of the other andalites in that book did things like calling the hork bajar genius.
I think the 'genius' comment could be called a KASU, since it's not like Ax couldn't hear sarcasm, it was more like he didn't even understand the concept, which implies that sarcasm is unheard-of among Andalites. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it . . . shouldn't sarcasm be impossible in thought-speak anyway, since thought-speak works by images rather than words?
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Have to figure that though speak conveys tone as well as content-otherwise a lot of the stuff you do-crying, yelling, in addition to sarcasm-wouldn't be understood.
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I'm inclined to think that the difference is cultural, rather than biological. Andalite society may simply place less emphasis on humor, and more emphasis on other outlets for clever thinking such as science. Besides that, they don't understand human humor because things like sarcasm might be culture-specific.
Just look at Arbron from TAC. He may not have been any Marco, but he certainly had his own style of humor, despite being an Andalite. Not to mention that most of the Animorphs thought that Ax eventually developed a very dry sense of humor from being exposed to humans for so long.
there are plenty of humans who dont understand sarcasm either, might not be an andalite thing, just an ax and elfangor thing. aldrea had no issues understanding sarcasm in andalite chroncles, and many of the other andalites in that book did things like calling the hork bajar genius.
I think the 'genius' comment could be called a KASU, since it's not like Ax couldn't hear sarcasm, it was more like he didn't even understand the concept, which implies that sarcasm is unheard-of among Andalites. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it . . . shouldn't sarcasm be impossible in thought-speak anyway, since thought-speak works by images rather than words?
andalite chronicles was written directly by by KAA, as opposed to most mentions of lack of sarcasm by ghost writers. thought speak works by concepts, not images, its a subtle difference. basically, there would still be tones (maybe?) so [genius] and [genius] would have different concepts and thus "sound" different. a human easily interprets that as sarcasm, whereas an andalite would likely hear it as "mr. obviously not a genius" which would explain while some andalites have issues with sarcasm and others dont.