Group Re-Read: Week 1, #1 The Invasion

[wolfev]

no please that was great. Now that whole ting with Tobias confuses me though. He is the time shifted son? What exactly does that mean? Was Loren pregnant when she met the other guy she married? Did she meet him soon after of something? We know Elfangor's existence was erased because the tiem matrix was still on earth and we use windows. And does that mean that there is Elfangor's DNA in Tobias? Does that tranfer in sxeual intercourse? I know he couldn't morph it because it was never acquired but is it there? Furthermore is Tobia's human DNA still in his nothlit body but can't be morphed so he has to use his time traveled acquired morph. Also since Tobias always morphs to human and his human morph is of him when he was 13 and morphs don't age, doesn't that imply that 16 year old Rachel is fooling around with the body of a 13 year old? And why do all the morphs except the human ones go to the adult stage?

[morfowt]

uh...the last part, It's not just humans, I think the when the morph becomes permanent (become a nothlit), it ages.

[wolfev]

yea but all the animorphs morph adult animals? Should't Tobias morph to about the point he ended puberty?

[morfowt]

huh? wait you lost me there...

[Terenia]

When you morph you morph into the form at the point it was acquired. So if you acquire a 10 year old human, each time you morph it it will be 10 years old. Similarly, if you morph an adult grizzly it will be the same age every time you morph it. Demorphing resets the clock on the DNA. If Tobias became a nothlit in his human morph he would age like any normal human. Similarly, when Tobias is a red-tailed nothlit he ages like a normal hawk (which is why it's such a big deal...hawks don't have a very long lifespan).

Similarly the Rachel morph that Cassie has will always be of Rachel at 13/14. Even when Cassie herself is in her 60's or 70's.


As far as Tobias is concerned, I don't think that their connection is one bound by DNA. Elfangor got Loren pregnant. Then Ellimist eliminated Elfangor from his life and made Loren believe she had been with a different man all along. However, clearly there is some vestigial connection between Tobias and Elfangor (as we see in #1) and even Elfangor and Loren (we see this at the end of the series). So maybe it's something that goes deeper than DNA. Something the Ellimist was unable or unwilling to change.

[Tiana]

6) Cassie is, surprisingly, the first person to agree to receive the morphing power and fight. What do you think about that?

Wow, at first I had to reread that part to double check, but it's true, amazingly. Cassie was the first to say yes, while everyone was still debating about the weirdness of the whole situation. I always thought Tobias was the first to agree, considering how he was the most active in convincing the others later on in book #1. Very very interesting, the person most affected by the killing was the first to enlist. Perhaps she, like the others, were just too naive to grasp what fighting the war encompassed?

[wolfev]

Please, Cassie just wanted to become a horse. And I don't think they were thinking very clearly at the time. It could have been the shock of what they were seeing. I don't think Elfangor ever said they had to kill though. None of them really thought about what had to be done at the time.

[morfowt]

I think tobias was the first to agree, but just didn't say out loud. when he spoke, he didn't say anything about not wanting to do it. what he said was, "he's dying", when the others were arguing whether to do it.

of course he didn't tell them. he didn't have the time to do that. only enough time to give them the morphing power. And the animorphs didn't even know how they were to use the morphing power to defeat the yeerks.

[Terenia]

Yeah, I can't imagine the Ani's going into this thinking they were actually going to kill people. Maybe they understood it in the abstract, but even then? If something like that had happened to me when I was thirteen I don't think I would have understood that part.

I think their first dose of reality that it was their lives on the line was when Jake heard Chapman say "save the head". Something about someone calling out your own death will do that to you, I think. Maybe even more so than watching Elfangor be murdered (which of course was also terrifying. I mean, you agree to enlist in an intergalactic war and the next thing you see is your main guy getting eaten by an alien monster? Not too reassuring...)

[morfowt]

no I don't think so. I think the reality really hit them when they saw the yeerk pool.

[Tiana]

Perhaps a bit off topic, but I always wondered what type of relationship Tobias and Rachel had at this point. Because by book #3 they were almost "confessing" their feelings for each other. Here all we see is Jake's POV of when Tobias landed on Rachel's shoulder as a hawk.

Thoughts?

[Terenia]

I'd been wondering that too, actually. Rachel and Tobias barely know one another, but they are already acting as if there is an attraction of sorts there. I'd be really interested to know how exactly they got to know eachother. Spoiler for a future re-read, but in book #3 we find out (or remember?) that Rachel has a picture of Tobias as a human. If she barely knew Tobias, what's she doing with his picture? Was there already some crushing going on pre-Anilife?

[Tiana]

lol I remember how the TV series attempted to show it, Rachel's little sis took a photo of them while they were talking and Rachel kept the picture.

Hm...did he like her from afar or was the feeling mutual from the very beginning?

[wolfev]

What also confuses me is that Tobias at this point is a wimp while Rachel is the exact opposite. What attracted them in the first place. Oh the picture could have been taken after they met and he started going hawk. Remember Tobias wasn't with Jake the whole time. Him and Rachel could have started something off screen. Is it hinted Tobias trapped himself in this. I think it is.

[Slushie Man]

1) When Elfangor and Visser Three interact their conversation is very impersonal. How much of their history do you think that KA had figured out at this point?

I think she had the basics of the series down before she started. The finer details though were fleshed out later. There are some minor things in the earlier books that got retconed later though, so that may be one of those.

2) Elfangor's fighter is equipped with two oddities: a family picture and an Escafil Device. Why do you think Elfangor would have these items on a fighter? Especially the Escafil Device - as a fighter pilot, it seems odd that Elfangor would have the added responsibility of guarding a piece of Andalite technology as he rides into battle.

It's not unusual for fighter pilots to decorate the inside of their ****pits with personal pictures of family and friends. As for the Escafil device, maybe his plan was to jump ship and try to escape, and he was trusted with getting the device as far away as possible, so the Yeerks don't get it. but then his fighter got shot down before he got very far, and we know the rest from there.

3) The infamous KASU of book #1: Do you think that KA should have kept thought-speak the way it was in the first book, so that they could thought-speak even in human form? Or does it make more sense the way it ended up? If I remember correctly some of the ghostwriters have Ax and Tobias capable of thought-speaking in human morph later on in the series. What do you think about that?

I don't remember them thought-speaking while in human form in the first book. I may be mistaken though, but I'm pretty sure they don't. As for Ax thought-speaking in human-morph - In all morphs, they can thought-speak as well as speak in the creature's language (Be it various animal noises, ect). This is no different. It's a morph. Ax can speak in human language as well as thought-speak. it's no different then Cassie using Dolphin clicks in that morph, or all of them howling various pitches as wolves.

4) How much of an 'accident' do you think Tobias getting stuck in morph was?

Diffinitly an accident, but not something he was overly worried about at first, as he constantly stated in the first book that he preferred being a hawk to a human. It wasn't really until the third book when the hawk instincts started taking over more and more that he really started regretting it.

5) What do you think of the way KA portrays each of their personalities in this book? This is when we're introduced to the characters, and they're all still incredibly naive. What do you think about how they start out?

They're just normal teens thrust into a hopeless situation. They act exactly as I expected them too.

6) Cassie is, surprisingly, the first person to agree to receive the morphing power and fight. What do you think about that?

Someone had to be the first.