Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Group Re-Reads => Animorphs Forum Classic => Past Re-Reads => Topic started by: Terenia on May 12, 2009, 06:57:49 PM
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Summary
Something is very wrong with Ax. He's sick. And the Animorphs don't know what to do about it. They can't take him to a hospital. They don't know how to contact the Andalite home world. And Ax is dying.
Casie and the other Animorphs come up with a plan. but it involves finding a new way into the Yeerk pool. There's just one problem: Jake, Rachel, Tobias and Marco come down with Ax's sickness. And now, for the first time, Cassie is on her own...
Questions
1) Why do you think that Cassie does not contract the Yamphut?
2) What do you think about Cassie performing brain surgery? Is it at all realistic? Additionally, do you think the Chee could have/should have been more help?
3) How does Cassie do on a mission alone?
4) Cassie saves Aftran, and is faced with her dying of Kandrona starvation. Instead of letting her suffer, they allow her to use the Escafil Device to morph whale permanently. This ends up being the same motive that moves Cassie to steal the cube later on. My question is: How did Cassie not see the answer to the Yeerk problem then and there? Why did it take another 15 books or more?
7) How do you feel about the character of Tidwell/Illim?
6) Anything else? Funny moments? Sad moments? Intense moments?
Next Week: Megamorphs #3: Elfangor's Secret
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I have to catch up haven't started reading yet.. finals T_T
this is one of my favorite books idno why i think the whole idea of brain surgery was interesting.
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1) Why do you think that Cassie does not contract the Yamphut?
2) What do you think about Cassie performing brain surgery? Is it at all realistic? Additionally, do you think the Chee could have/should have been more help?
3) How does Cassie do on a mission alone?
4) Cassie saves Aftran, and is faced with her dying of Kandrona starvation. Instead of letting her suffer, they allow her to use the Escafil Device to morph whale permanently. This ends up being the same motive that moves Cassie to steal the cube later on. My question is: How did Cassie not see the answer to the Yeerk problem then and there? Why did it take another 15 books or more?
5) How do you feel about the character of Tidwell/Illim?
6) Anything else? Funny moments? Sad moments? Intense moments?
1) It could be her immune system being better because she's always around sick animals. Maybe she takes vaccines frequently because of this. Maybe it's just another way of making Cassie special, as has been going on throughout the series. I always thought it would be funny if she got sick at the last minute. Like when they're on the beach.
2) Seems realistic to me. I thought erek did enough, being Cassie's assistant.
3) Well she pulled it off with a bit of luck. It might be a bit unrealistic for a water logged bird to make a clean getaway from the pool. I was a little nervous that she may have grabbed the wrong Yeerk for a bit there.
4) Cassie didn't see any answer until after she let Tom get away with the cube. Even in the moment that she stopped Jake, she wasn't thinking of that. Her saying that stuff about helping the Yeerks was just clinging to a small positive thing that happened in the hopes of justifying what she did.
5) I thought it was interesting to hear about the peace movement, and to see that all Yeerks weren't painted with the same brush.
6) Aftran: He's waking up, Cassie. And now he's starting to scream!
Cassie: He's Screaming? Am I hurting him?
Aftran: No Cassie. He's screaming because he has a Yeerk in his head.
That was hilarious when I read that, and I still find it funny. 29 is an interesting and important book in the series. Probably the last really important book Cassie narrates for a while.
Sometimes I wonder, when Jake gets sick in eel morph, why they didn't split into two groups instead of all leaving together. One or two members could have escorted Jake out while the others continued. I would have liked to see more of ax's thoughts on Aftran, but it's never stated.
Lastly, I think it would have been better for Aftran to somehow join the group. Instead of becoming a whale and "put on a bus", figuratively speaking.
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I have to catch up haven't started reading yet.. finals T_T
this is one of my favorite books idno why i think the whole idea of brain surgery was interesting.
same here.
one of my favorites.
1) Why do you think that Cassie does not contract the Yamphut?
probably because she's around animals a lot, probably a good immune system.
:2cents: i'd always wondered why the yamphut stayed with them even after they morphed. wouldn't the morphing 'heal' them (like marco's rabies)?
2) What do you think about Cassie performing brain surgery? Is it at all realistic? Additionally, do you think the Chee could have/should have been more help?
definitely not realistic, but the erek did his part in assisting her. cool, but not probable.
3) How does Cassie do on a mission alone?
personally, i think she does better by herself.
KA definitely gave her a lot of luck (not getting hit by a dracon beam, the gleet biofilter opening) to make up for her being alone.
4) Cassie saves Aftran, and is faced with her dying of Kandrona starvation. Instead of letting her suffer, they allow her to use the Escafil Device to morph whale permanently. This ends up being the same motive that moves Cassie to steal the cube later on. My question is: How did Cassie not see the answer to the Yeerk problem then and there? Why did it take another 15 books or more?
honestly, i don't know. my first reaction to her suggestion was, "give more of them the morphing power!".
maybe she didn't trust the yeerks to not abuse the power?
5) How do you feel about the character of Tidwell/Illim?
i think he should have been used in more books. interesting guy.
6) Anything else? Funny moments? Sad moments? Intense moments?
i'll re-read it later and post a few.
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Definitely not realistic? How so?
Not that I'm any kind of credible source of info on brain surgery.
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I think she didn't get yamput because she's an estreen.
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I think she didn't get yamput because she's an estreen.
Any reason why you think that? I don't think yamphut is tied into morphing at all, although it might be, now that you mention it. Ax gets sick in human morph, Jake in eel. Marco shortly after demorphing from osprey. Tobias is in his natural form, but his natural form is a morph, so perhaps it's different. We don't know the circumstances around Rachel getting sick.
Hmm...an interesting point to ponder.
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I think she didn't get yamput because she's an estreen.
Any reason why you think that? I don't think yamphut is tied into morphing at all, although it might be, now that you mention it. Ax gets sick in human morph, Jake in eel. Marco shortly after demorphing from osprey. Tobias is in his natural form, but his natural form is a morph, so perhaps it's different. We don't know the circumstances around Rachel getting sick.
Hmm...an interesting point to ponder.
That is an interesting point. I never made that connection, but it all happens when they morph, or are in morph. Who knows if Rachel morphed or not.
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LOL I HAVE ACTUALLY REREAD THIS ONE SORT OF RECENTLY!
my thoughts:
1) Why do you think that Cassie does not contract the Yamphut?
Plot-induced immunity tbh. Actually, I think Yamphut is kind of stupid. It doesn't make any sense that an alien disease is virulent to humans. There are very few diseases on Earth that can be contracted inter-specially, unless you've got AIDS or something and can die from feline pneumonia. Bacteria and viruses evolve to attack very specific biologies, so an Andalite-evolved disease would probably have no effect on human biology. NOT TO MENTION that if morphing can heal tissue damage from injuries, why can't it heal tissue damage from disease? Maybe ten years worth of fanon is working against me here, but I always assumed that the morphing technology purged any foreign organic growth, excluding whatever the morpher intended, eg clothes and Yeerks.
2) What do you think about Cassie performing brain surgery? Is it at all realistic? Additionally, do you think the Chee could have/should have been more help?
I actually really liked the level of detail that they used describing the actual brain surgery. I liked that she used the saw that cut the holes in birdhouses, I liked the description of her disinfecting the wound and cutting him open, idk. I did not like the "it will heal on its own" though because that was unnecessary considering he CAN MORPH which I think was dropped very often in ghost-written books for some reason. Anyway, it was very well-paced, tense, and believable. Besides, it's not like she was actually digging around in gray matter, she was just doing an appendectomy in Ax's head and those are supposed to be pretty easy surgeries. idk. I bought it.
3) How does Cassie do on a mission alone?
I usually hate Cassie, but once again, I liked this. I liked the sense of hopelessness that started to creep in as the Animorphs dropped out one by one, leaving her alone, because tbh she was always kind of the weakest link as far as confidence and courage. So she really stepped up to the plate in this case, and that was nice to see.
4) Cassie saves Aftran, and is faced with her dying of Kandrona starvation. Instead of letting her suffer, they allow her to use the Escafil Device to morph whale permanently. This ends up being the same motive that moves Cassie to steal the cube later on. My question is: How did Cassie not see the answer to the Yeerk problem then and there? Why did it take another 15 books or more?
Simple answer: Because she is a moralistic moron. Sorry, I really don't like her character, and I HATE HATE HATE how she was left off the hook for her actions so much. Ugh. I can never verbalize why I feel this way, but idk...all of her actions were guided by her conscience alone, and never the pragmatic sort of rationality that Marco or Jake employed. And that pragmatism was villified in the end while Cassie's intentions were validated...ugh THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS, and I think letting her off so easy on so many of these counts revealed a kind of favoritism and immaturity. I'm still pissed at her about leaving David in rat morph, and that was a mess Rachel ended up cleaning up for her.
7) How do you feel about the character of Tidwell/Illim?
I really liked him. I really liked his limited character development: I don't know why, but the detail of him flicking soap bubbles at his wife really stuck with me. I like when hosts are given believable, sympathetic motivations for becoming hosts or joining the Sharing or w/e. The Yeerks exploiting those levels of human vulnerability are what make them such evil, awesome villains.
6) Anything else? Funny moments? Sad moments? Intense moments?
I am dee-dee-dee-lirious!
And when Ax and Erek were playing that game and Ax is like "I now owe Erek one million dollars" lol idk it was really funny in a sick, scary way. Very effective. This is one of, if not my very favorite ghost-written book. Thirty-three probably comes in at a close second, but that one was a little bit too twisted and unlikely to work as well as this one.
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I liked the idea someone put out during the LJ reread of this one...it would have been really interesting if Aftran had used the morphing ability to pull a frolis and somehow help them as a human nothlit.
What I can't figure out later is once the Yeerks got the cube, why were they still intent on taking over the world?
I enjoyed the Illim/Tidwell thing. I actually put Illim into Jake and Cassie's daughter in the Animorphs Relations RPG lol I also wish he'd come back more...he was mentioned later in The Test and then again a few books later when they lost contact with him.
btw if morphing eliminates yeerks, why did Jake's temporary yeerk try to make him morph?
lol with the brain surgery I also thought "appendicitis"
funnies: "She wants my bodeeee! bdee!"
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1. Cuz otherwise she'd be stuck in bed and we woudn't have much of a story ;D
but to be more serious, I think she was just luckier than the others...
2. I thought it was realistic, not that I know (or want to know for that matter) what a realistic one would look like...
btw if morphing eliminates yeerks, why did Jake's temporary yeerk try to make him morph?
where in the book did it state morphing eliminates yeerks?
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where in the book did it state morphing eliminates yeerks?
i think they mean 'eliminates the need for hosts for yeerks'.
right?
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I think the reason Yamphut affects while in morph is quite simple. How Ax explained (going on memory here so need to reread this I'm like ch3 right now ). From what he was seen foreign objects stay with you when you morph. They don't vanish. when they had the chips implanted in them as Sharks and morphed to flies they almost died because of the chips. And when they got in teh fightwith teh Ants Marcosaid he still had teh head of the ant on him afterward. Yamphut is caused if i remember correctly by the concentration of viruses in the ...Tira glad i believe it was called. The viruses are a separate thing from the body and in my opinion should be able to say there .
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then how did marco's rabies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabies) get cured in book #42?
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i think it has to do with what the Tira glad does. it keeps the stuff away from the rest your body. The Rabies was in his system already. but yeah that is a big if.
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1) Why do you think that Cassie does not contract the Yamphut?
There's THE question that won't shut up! We can only speculate answers.
Tobias who was a hawk got sick himself... The Andalite disease in itself seemed very ambiguous.
WHY was Cassie the ONLY one who didn't get sick?! Beats me.
2) What do you think about Cassie performing brain surgery? Is it at all realistic? Additionally, do you think the Chee could have/should have been more help?
Half-way feel it was well done. Let's face it, out of all the Animorphs, ONLY Cassie would have been the one well equipped to perform this kind of operation. And only Cassie would have made the call to put a Yeerk inside the Andalite's head.
The entire book felt like it was very blatantly 'timely' in a blatantly obvious way.
Ax gets sick, Aftran is being interrogated, Visser Three is away for the moment, the Anis get subsequently sick one-by-one, inevitably Cassie is the one on a solo Yeerk pool trip, easily finds a not-so-inconspicuous-prisioner Aftran, Cassie morphs and re-morphs in the pool, only to the arrival of Visser Three for the interrogation, escapes, only to find Ax in crisis and needing to operate...
4) Cassie saves Aftran, and is faced with her dying of Kandrona starvation. Instead of letting her suffer, they allow her to use the Escafil Device to morph whale permanently. This ends up being the same motive that moves Cassie to steal the cube later on. My question is: How did Cassie not see the answer to the Yeerk problem then and there? Why did it take another 15 books or more?
I believe the 'seed' is unconsciously planted here, but 'the coin just didn't quite drop on her' yet.
I, too, am not under the impression that the 'surrender of the Blue Cube to Tom' stunt was ever planned on her part. I think Cassie came up with the move based on instinct and on the spot. This episode with Aftran definitely helped drive her to do that.
7) How do you feel about the character of Tidwell/Illim?
As the human who had suffered, I connected with Tidwell. His reputation of being a cold hard and serious teacher, was mitigated by what Cassie reveals through his memories. Deep down, it shows that any cold-hearted person indeed has their reasons for turning into the way the way.
As for the Yeerk, who, through Tidwell, learned the harm of what he was doing, I was halfway proud that the two managed to find a compromise and together fight for the Peace Movement.
6) Anything else? Funny moments? Sad moments? Intense moments?
Comment: Eels?! To infiltrate the Yeerk pool?!?!?! Two words: Come on!
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6) Anything else? Funny moments? Sad moments? Intense moments?
Comment: Eels?! To infiltrate the Yeerk pool?!?!?! Two words: Come on!
I actually thought it was ingenious to travel through the plumbing...
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Questions
1) Why do you think that Cassie does not contract the Yamphut?
I like to think that she did, but later on, ala old tv shows when the character who nurses everyone else back to health gets sick at the very end of the episode and ends up being twice as demanding as the others were whilst being nursed.
2) What do you think about Cassie performing brain surgery? Is it at all realistic? Additionally, do you think the Chee could have/should have been more help?
Realistic? No, but then again I might just be extra harsh on this book. I think the Chee should have done more but to be honest this was one of the times that I actually really liked Cassie, like I say the whole surgery thing wasn't realistic . . . but it was so cool.
3) How does Cassie do on a mission alone?
All things considered? She gets really lucky in some places, but I think she did well. Wierd I know, since I hated this book so much, but this was, as I said above, one of those times I really liked Cassie.
4) Cassie saves Aftran
HAH! >:(
and is faced with her dying of Kandrona starvation. Instead of letting her suffer, they allow her to use the Escafil Device to morph whale permanently.
As they say in the books "And [JFalcon] said some things I can't repeat"
This ends up being the same motive that moves Cassie to steal the cube later on. My question is: How did Cassie not see the answer to the Yeerk problem then and there? Why did it take another 15 books or more?
Because Aftran's whale morph wasn't a gift it was an execution, they took an experienced soldier, one with the resources and charisma to found a resistance in the enemy's army, and throw her into a bigger Yeerk pool (Coming soon, The Ocean: the bigger, better Yeerk pool experience, no infestation vacation, no leaving to explore the land, no friends ever . . . now comes with free predators and polution. But hey, you won't die if you reproduce so live it up girl! Go get together with a being who's level of sentience is entirely different from your own, leaving you as stated before, truly and wholly alone in that big blue yeerk pool devoid of the colors you fell in love with) Aftran probably agreed because hey, guess what, the alternative was death and we know how Yeerks are about that, they say she chose whale but that's an incredibly out of character moment for her, I call it a lie on Cassie's part to make up for the fact that Aftran was screwed royal. Frankly I think the reason it didn't occur to them to let the Yeerks use morphing technology right then and there had to do partially with the fact that a Yeerk would have to be really desperate to agree to it, I mean it's like saying "hey, you there, stop being human, it is bad for you and everyone else, be a dolphin, they are fun loving hapiness machines who never experience a violent thought--except when there are sharks around!" you'd stare at the person saying that, shake your head, mutter something under your breath and walk away, some people would be all for it, just as some Yeerks were all for it, but the Yeerks didn't take "one-time-morphing" as a savior to their race, in fact it nearly wiped out their race, forced them to become "lesser" beings with (it's implied in the case of humans) shorter life spans. They took to it as part of the terms of their losing the war, they essentially had the option of morphing once and forever, or being confined to a yeerk pool for all existence, even if Cassie had had the thought then it wouldn't have come to anything, the Yeerks still had enough power to do things their way and I say bully for them!
7) How do you feel about the character of Tidwell/Illim?
I like him, we go out for [non-alcoholic] drinks sometimes . . . he decided to become a grizzly bear notlit, makes for some interesting outings. I mean if you havent seen a bear bowling you haven't lived, and clubs? Man forget clubs, when you go in with a bear, every girl wants to know your story and no bouncer can kick you out.
6) Anything else? Funny moments? Sad moments? Intense moments?
Honestly the book itself is overshadowed by my shameful bias towards the ending, I consider the entire ending an intensely sad moment because I hated, I hated how Aftran's involvement in the story ended, I'd rather she had died, been given that level of dignity, instead it was like they were punishing her for being one of the few yeerks with a concience. Being confined to a larger more dangerous Yeerk pool isn't a reward, seeing only the dark depths of the ocean wouldn't have been a reward for her either, what did Aftran value? Colors, eyesight, freedom from the Yeerk pool all things she gave up due to her deal with Cassie in book 19, not because being without them was her personal prefrence. There is a multitude of ways she could have been kept in the story, the Chee spring to mind right away, or if she had to become a nothlit she could have been a bird of prey like Tobias, that would give Tobias some company, give the group another lookout, give Aftran the freedom and eyes she'd value, and let the group ease up on forcing Ax to explain everything since Aftran could probably do it better and without the anti-yeerk bias. I would have much preferred her joining the cast, she could have shared a book slot with Cassie the way Tobias and Ax did, instead they flush her down the toilet because she would have brought about that most hateful of wonderful things: change! Honestly though its one of the few Cassie books that I really really enjoy from beginning to near end (the only other to spring to mind is number four which is probably one of my favorite books in the series all together) I despise the actual ending of this book so much, so very very much. Part of me likes to pretend it ended very differently, but I won't go into any more painful ranting detail, I'm sure I've irritated enough people today. :P
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Really?
You're calling that vast and varied waters of the ocean; which carries more abudance of life and color that the anywhere else when Aftran gets a powerful body capable of doing and seeing things no host she could ever had could do, a big sludge pond?
Really?
I just don't see it.
This book, I don't know, my general dislike of Cassie makes it hard for me to enjoy it to the fullest, but all in all I'd say it's a pretty good one. None of it actually seemed outside the realm of possibility even the brain surgery, and it was nice to see her stand on her own. It almost make me begrudgingly proud of her.
Almost
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I totally agree about Aftran there. They should have made her human and have her as part of the team or at least as an adviser. No need to exile her from everything she had.
No friends no family and a huge ocean to explore but no one to talk about it with.
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Really?
You're calling that vast and varied waters of the ocean; which carries more abudance of life and color that the anywhere else when Aftran gets a powerful body capable of doing and seeing things no host she could ever had could do, a big sludge pond?
Really?
I just don't see it.
I'm not saying the ocean is a sludge pond, I'm saying it's a big yeerk pool, yeerk pools and sludge ponds are not the same thing. Yeerk pools were just as life giving and life sustaining to the yeerks as ponds and oceans are to earth life. Life for humans wouldn't be all that possible without oceans (at the very least it'd be really difficult) life for yeerks wouldn't be all that possible without yeerk pools . . . does that mean we should live in them?
No, what I'm saying is that in the yeerk pool Aftran was confined and deprived of her favorite sense, in the ocean she is, in fact, still confined, still without the colors she loved. The ocean is colorful where it's shallow enough for sunlight to light it up, which is often (but admittedly not always) too shallow for a whale without a death wish, divers use flashlights because you're not going to see very well without them so with exceptions the deep ocean is devoid of color and full of danger, that's the world Aftran was permanently shoved into, permanently as in unlike us or the other Animorphs she can't just leave if she gets scared or sick of it, she's alone to boot, in the yeerk pool maybe, despite being in a cage after her capture, some yeerks communicated encouragement to her, won't happen in the ocean, she has to face those fears alone. The ocean is dark, it's full of conflict and killing, the things that Aftran ran away from when she chose to infest Karen, now she's confined to that for the rest of her life, and we're supposed to buy that she's happy about it? That it's her reward for doing her part? Seems more like her own personal hell to me.
Like you said, I just don't see it :)
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Yeah. why a whale, anyway? Why not a reef fish, at least? One with really good eyesight.
Of course I would have added her to the team. Either have her become a nothlit, or a controller that sustains herself through Erek's help.
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Sorry to be away for awhile.
1. My best guess is that I agree with everyone who said that Cassie had a stronger immune system because she's always around sick animals.
2. I liked the brain surgery scene. As for realism, I stopped worrying about that in Animorphs when time travel became a semi regular occurance.
Now for the Chee, I feel a rant coming on. I was fine with Erek's (and through him the rest of the Chee) role at only offering limited assistance with surgery because it made me think that playing doctors went against Chee programming. After all doctors lose patients or could cause serious harm to them. It was mentioned that Mr. King was a doc in like the 16th century, but I figured a chee could get away with it then because medicine was so crude that he could get away with it then, but no chee has been a doctor since because of medical developments. It's ironic that the Chee can't be people who save lives because there is just a good a chance they could kill them too.
However, other than the fact the series is called Animorphs and not Chee, how come the Chee couldn't rescue Aftran?
3. I think she did really well.
4. I think this illustrates a weakness in having ghostwriters and not having an overall idea of how the series will eventually end.
I liked Tidwell/Illim, wished they and the YPM could have been used more.
JFalcon, I was okay with the Aftran's choice of humpback whale. I figure she chose it because of Cassie's happy memories of morphing. However, your commentary on it was really interesting.
Quotes:
"We all agreed that we couldn't let Aftran die. It was Jake who thought of the way to save her. He suggested that we give her the power to morph..." Anyone else think it was interesting that Jake was the one to come up with the idea.
"Marco shot a triumphant glance at Rachel. 'See? Still think my idea is nuts?' His face darkened. "Wait a minute. It is nuts. What's the matter with me? Am I insane?'" This quote always makes me laugh, but pretty much the whole scene does.
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1. Cuz otherwise she'd be stuck in bed and we woudn't have much of a story ;D
but to be more serious, I think she was just luckier than the others...
2. I thought it was realistic, not that I know (or want to know for that matter) what a realistic one would look like...
btw if morphing eliminates yeerks, why did Jake's temporary yeerk try to make him morph?
where in the book did it state morphing eliminates yeerks?
Here but I misread, she actually said 'excluding'
AniJen21:Maybe ten years worth of fanon is working against me here, but I always assumed that the morphing technology purged any foreign organic growth, excluding whatever the morpher intended, eg clothes and Yeerks.
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hmm idno or else Ax wouldn't need flea powder if he can just morph the fleas off
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i think it has to do with what the Tira glad does. it keeps the stuff away from the rest your body. The Rabies was in his system already. but yeah that is a big if.
but the other animorphs (besides cassie) don't have tria glands.
they still retained the disease.
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yeah well what confused me is the fact that its contagious.
the tireglad had not exploded so there are no air born viruses of whatever that was stored in there. There was nothing that was going to contaminate them at all UNTIL it bursts. but it never did. So how did they get sick in the first place.
With that in mind. since i have no clue how Yamphut affects others without it being an actual virus. it seems to be able to affect an life form no mater shape or size
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the tireglad had not exploded so there are no air born viruses of whatever that was stored in there. There was nothing that was going to contaminate them at all UNTIL it bursts. but it never did. So how did they get sick in the first place.
i think musicman might have the answer to that :woot2:
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Yeah. why a whale, anyway? Why not a reef fish, at least? One with really good eyesight.
Of course I would have added her to the team. Either have her become a nothlit, or a controller that sustains herself through Erek's help.
KAA seemed to really REALLY like whales. So for KAA, this was probably a very good morph.
Personally, I'd have gone with dolphin. *shrugs*
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I definitely get the feeling that she's fond of whales. She gave them a kind of sentience, and our Favorite Mary Sue got one in the first book she narrated.
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Maybe, since the Andalites are a telepathic species, the other Animorphs didn't get sick but just really, really believed they were getting sick beause Ax was projecting his own feelings of illness . . . I dunno.
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Maybe, since the Andalites are a telepathic species, the other Animorphs didn't get sick but just really, really believed they were getting sick beause Ax was projecting his own feelings of illness . . . I dunno.
That's.... actually a pretty good theory. Stuff like that actually happens in real life, where people will show symtoms of an illness they don't have, because they believe they really DO have it.
There's a name for it, but I forget...
But anyway, with the Andalite telepathy, the above could be enhanced.
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That seems believable. More believable than them actually getting infected by something that should still be contained in Ax's body.
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Because Aftran's whale morph wasn't a gift it was an execution, they took an experienced soldier, one with the resources and charisma to found a resistance in the enemy's army, and throw her into a bigger Yeerk pool (Coming soon, The Ocean: the bigger, better Yeerk pool experience, no infestation vacation, no leaving to explore the land, no friends ever . . . now comes with free predators and polution. But hey, you won't die if you reproduce so live it up girl! Go get together with a being who's level of sentience is entirely different from your own, leaving you as stated before, truly and wholly alone in that big blue yeerk pool devoid of the colors you fell in love with) Aftran probably agreed because hey, guess what, the alternative was death and we know how Yeerks are about that, they say she chose whale but that's an incredibly out of character moment for her, I call it a lie on Cassie's part to make up for the fact that Aftran was screwed royal. Frankly I think the reason it didn't occur to them to let the Yeerks use morphing technology right then and there had to do partially with the fact that a Yeerk would have to be really desperate to agree to it, I mean it's like saying "hey, you there, stop being human, it is bad for you and everyone else, be a dolphin, they are fun loving hapiness machines who never experience a violent thought--except when there are sharks around!" you'd stare at the person saying that, shake your head, mutter something under your breath and walk away, some people would be all for it, just as some Yeerks were all for it, but the Yeerks didn't take "one-time-morphing" as a savior to their race, in fact it nearly wiped out their race, forced them to become "lesser" beings with (it's implied in the case of humans) shorter life spans. They took to it as part of the terms of their losing the war, they essentially had the option of morphing once and forever, or being confined to a yeerk pool for all existence, even if Cassie had had the thought then it wouldn't have come to anything, the Yeerks still had enough power to do things their way and I say bully for them!
This actually cracked me up, haha...and I agree with you. I always thought it was a terrible waste of an important resource and ally to have her morph into a whale, even if Aftran did supposedly choose it. It also would've been interesting if the Chee had taken her in, or, *gasp!* an actual self-sustaining YPM had been introduced.
But that's pretty much my roleplaying characters, and the militant crazy Yeerks in #41...damn. We never really got any more of Yeerk civil unrest in the form of major characters after Aftran, and that was disappointing.
Here's something--why didn't Aftran get sick? She was touching the stinkin' tria gland after all. Can Yeerks get sick, or would they have natural immunity to illness to prevent complications and death inside their hosts' brains? I guess we'll never know ::)
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I don't know why aftran didn't get sick. Maybe there just wasn't enough time for her to really feel the effects. I also wonder why she didn't seem to bothered about being put in a host that could die any second. Host death can kill the Yeerk. I kind of expected her to comment on that. Did Cassie know that a Yeerk could die if his/her host died?
I think it's obvious that KA didn't want to take any spotlight away from the Anis. Not a lot of detail was given to the Chee, Free Horks, YPM, or Auxilaries. At least, not as muich as there could have been.
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you know now that i think about it you are right.
It seems she avoided giving more details on purpose.
also i agree Maybe, since the Andalites are a telepathic species, the other Animorphs didn't get sick but just really, really believed they were getting sick beause Ax was projecting his own feelings of illness . . . I dunno.
That's.... actually a pretty good theory. Stuff like that actually happens in real life, where people will show symtoms of an illness they don't have, because they believe they really DO have it.
There's a name for it, but I forget...
But anyway, with the Andalite telepathy, the above could be enhanced.
i mean Aximili was morphing demorphing at first. That never happened to the others.
and Cassie didn't get sick and neither did Aftran who was closer to the actual TiraGland. I think yeah they were horribly sick but it might have all been in their minds
IF you consider how they were reacting. Jake got to the point of being unable to walk. but Marco only needed a baby aspirin. No one got sick until after they were informed that it was contagious. (if I'm wrong sorry )
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Which means Cassie never got sick because she was too busy to worry about it? She was so focused on Aftran and Ax that she didn't let it get to her.
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Exactly =D
at least that is what i think
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I don't know why aftran didn't get sick. Maybe there just wasn't enough time for her to really feel the effects. I also wonder why she didn't seem to bothered about being put in a host that could die any second. Host death can kill the Yeerk. I kind of expected her to comment on that. Did Cassie know that a Yeerk could die if his/her host died?
maybe because aftran was prepared to die, even asking cassie to kill her, so she didn't mind host death killing her since she thought she was gonna die either way.
I definitely get the feeling that she's fond of whales. She gave them a kind of sentience, and our Favorite Mary Sue got one in the first book she narrated.
who are you talking about? no one got a whale morph in the first book he/she narrated?
Jake - book 1 - no whale
rachel - book 2 - no whale
tobias - book 3 - not even morph capable
cassie - book 4 - mention of whales, but no morphing of whales
marco - book 5 - no whale
ax - megamorph #1 - morphing of whales, but he wasn't the one who morphed it.
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Well, Cassie aquired a whale. That's where she got the morph from.
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Well, Cassie aquired a whale. That's where she got the morph from.
she acquired it in megamorphs #1
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Where did she aquire a whale morph in megamorphs 1?
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around the last few chapters. it was how they defeated the veleek
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From the way I read it, it seemed like she already had the morph. I don't remember any mention or description of her finding a humpback whale to acquire.
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no morf is right, the whale said something like "strange cloud above" and then cassie is like "I LOVE ANIMALS AND I NEED YOUR PERMISSION FOR YOUR DNA PLEAAASE"
and the whale was like "yeah w/e"
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Oookay. Guess I was wrong.
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Did Cassie ever tell Tidwell and by extension the rest of the YPM that Aftran became a nothlit? If yes, then shouldn't the YPM have asked about using the morphing cube for the rest of them? Or do you think the Animorphs lied or let the YPM assume Aftran died of Kandrona starvation?
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I don't know. It seems the authors didn't care much about the possibilities for the YPM, and for the most part they just faded out. Except near the end when one of them saved Jake, but was likely just a plot device.
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Did Cassie ever tell Tidwell and by extension the rest of the YPM that Aftran became a nothlit? If yes, then shouldn't the YPM have asked about using the morphing cube for the rest of them? Or do you think the Animorphs lied or let the YPM assume Aftran died of Kandrona starvation?
It would be in character if she did, me thinks.
Though the YPM going from there to asking about turning voluntary nothlits is a bit of a stretch. From the episode where David gets turned nothlit, and now Aftran here, I remember it still hadn't quite clicked in me that that was salvation, the solution to the war, at that stage.
Personally, KA can actually get away with this one.
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Summary
Questions
1) Why do you think that Cassie does not contract the Yamphut?
1)i think it's because Cassie works with animals and gets all those vaccines
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So a normal vaccine like one for rabies unknowingly also prevents Yamphut?
Possible, I suppose. It's a better explanation than I have. *shrug*
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I don't know if it's been said in this thread, but there's an idea going around that it was more in their heads than anything else. Jake was the first to get sick, but he didn't come down with it until after ax mentioned it was contagious. Cassie never got sick, and she was the one that had the most to worry about.
I've said that it would be funny if she got sick right at the end, which is what I expected to happen. That would have left us asking fewer questions, and the others could comically run from her in fear of catching it again.
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Interesting.
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Maybe, but I'm not sure that a comedic ending would have fit this particular book. Unlike #14, which was a walking punchline, this particular Cassie book was more along the lines of #19. It was trying to portray a deeper message.
Now, I think they completely messed it up in some parts. I still hate that they wrote Aftran off at the end, and would have loved to see a more meaningful solution - like allowing her to take on a morph that would have been useful to the war.
Still, I don't think a comedic ending would have quite...fit.
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Maybe. It was a serious book, so a last comedic part wouldn't fit well.
I hate that they wrote her off too. She could have joined somehow, and have been the inside member with connections to the Peace Movement. Not that the Peace Movement panned out much either, unfortunately. The only times afterwards that they were mentioned is the second Taylor book, and one point in the last arc.
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Yeah, that's another irritating point. They go through all this trouble to set up the YPM and then basically ignore its potential. There were a lot of unexplored possibilities there, and I blame it primarily on the fact that AppleGrant were busy with their other series at the time. If they had given Animorphs their full attention I think we would have had fewer filler books and more books that dealt with those types of things.
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Yeah. KA is an excellent writer, but only when she's interested in something. once she loses interest, it goes south. Many peripheral characters weren't fleshed out nearly enough.
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Sorry to bump this up, but I noticed something weird.
Cassie takes Ax's temperature and says she can't confirm if Ax has a fever since she doesn't know the normal body temperature of an Andalite; Ax tells her it's 91.3 degrees, as in degrees Celsius.
Biologically speaking, this is an extremely high body temperature. For reference, pure water boils at 100 degrees Celsius. Ax's temperature while in a fever was 95.5 degrees; that's pretty frickin high. Shouldn't the animorphs have been burned the moment they touched him?
Also, that was his temperature after he has 30 seconds of water drinking, which would presumably cool his body down a few degrees or so. Wouldn't the water in Cassie's trough (which Ax was drinking from) have started boiling or turned to steam? It isn't likely that the water was a pure sample, and with the impurities, it could have led to a lower boiling point.
Also, four books earlier, when Ax and the Animorphs were stranded in the North Pole after escaping from the Blade Ship, Cassie asks him how he's holding up.
Cassie: "Ax? How are you holding up?"
Ax: <I am holding nothing up. I am slowly freezing to death. I doubt I can maintain brain function for more than a few minutes.>
This wouldn't have made much sense, since Ax would have been very warm. Yes he would have lost heat, but nowhere near his body shutting down from hypothermia. Furthermore, his core body temp would have been enough to melt the venbar upon touching them. At the very least.
Any chance this is a KASU, or just a handwave as "aliens can have higher temperatures than biologically feasible"?
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I guess she meant to say feranheight, not celsius.
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That would mean Ax's temperature should have been [95.5 -32] x 5/9, or 35.2 degrees Celsius (while fevered). Would make a lot more sense. Normal andalite body temperature would be 32.9 degrees Celsius. Humans have a normal body temperature of 37 degrees Celsius (more or less depending on where it's taken; orally, etc.)
That explains a lot. I find it a little strange that Cassie had a farenheit thermometer (degrees Celsius are more commonly used), but it's not impossible. Thanks for answering.
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That explains a lot. I find it a little strange that Cassie had a farenheit thermometer (degrees Celsius are more commonly used), but it's not impossible. Thanks for answering.
Um.. maybe not in medical/veterinary settings, but in America, the Fahrenheit temperature scale is more common by a longshot, and so it would make sense for her to have one that's set to Fahrenheit...
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Is it? Had no idea. Though most hospitals I know measure it in Celsisu, and Cassie'shermometer is essentially one used in a Vetinary/Medical setting.
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Well, it takes place in the U.S. and every thermometer I've ever used in the U.S. has read in degrees Fahrenheit, not celsius. Let's ask one of RAF's bionerds. I'm sure they've seen veterinary thermometers.
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Well, I've never seen a veterinary thermometer...but the thermometers at the doctor's office are in Fahrenheit! ;D ::)
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Details, details.... :disgrace: