Author Topic: Morphing Wounds  (Read 1440 times)

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Offline TobiasMasonPark

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Morphing Wounds
« on: February 03, 2011, 08:07:32 PM »
     I understand that morphing heals any form of wound. I mean, it was stated many times in the series. And we also see that the morphing technology can heal old wounds. We've seen the Animorphs regrow entire limbs and organs after a battle. But I'm a little confused about handicapable morphers. James and a few other of the auxiliaries made a complete recovery, but most of the others were still disabled. Why is that? I can't remember if it was explained in the series or not, but I always thought it was because the others were born with their disabilities (one of them was born with cerebral palsy) and the DNA couldn't be fixed.

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Offline BennyBoy

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Re: Morphing Wounds
« Reply #1 on: February 03, 2011, 08:23:41 PM »
You answered your own question - those with acquired disabilities could heal with morphing, those who were born with them couldn't because it's a part of their DNA.

Offline TobiasMasonPark

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Re: Morphing Wounds
« Reply #2 on: February 03, 2011, 10:10:10 PM »
     Yea, that's what I figured. But I didn't just want to assume, I wanted to see if anyone was sure.
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Offline wildweathel

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Re: Morphing Wounds
« Reply #3 on: February 04, 2011, 02:10:11 AM »
I actually have a different theory.  We hear "DNA, DNA," but where did that come from?  Elfangor's very hurried "how-to-use" explanation, to an alien species, whilst dealing with a species identity/loyalty crisis and his impending death.

If he told a small lie to children or oversimplified things, I think we can understand. 

Any biologist knows that development is not strictly determined by genotype.  Heck, anyone who knows "identical" twins knows this.  Or, think about how morphing (unlike cloning) reproduces age and physical attributes like fitness or even hair length.

Cerbral palsy is a good example because it is not heritable and has absolutely nothing to do with DNA.  It's caused by brain injury, especially to very young brains.  No other known cause.

Remember when (IIRC) Rachel experimented with adjusting her hair length by morphing? 

And then, there's that rule about only morphing animals.  They break it by morphing alien species far, far more genetically distant than a rose or paramecium.

Well, here's my crazy theory:

It all has to to with identity, particularly some metaphysical sense of what is the "right" way for the physical matter of your body to fit together.

You morph a bear and loose a limb.  You don't accept that (on a subconscious level) as the "real you" or even as the "bear you."  Morphing fixes it.

You've lived with CP all your life.  You've grown to accept it as you, just as much as your fingerprints or iris patterns in a deep, and apparently somehow physical level.  Morphing won't "fix" you, because you're not broken.

You return to your true form by remembering what it is and willing to return to it.  You must touch base on this form before borrowing another.

You wear the scars the world inflicts upon you with a sort of twisted pride, so when your cat gives you a well-deserved scratch for playing strange alien make-believe, you accept that too.  Morphing doesn't fix it because you're not broken.
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You can morph a dog or kafit because (subconsciously) a dog or kafit knows what it is.  But, you can't morph a tree because a tree doesn't.

A borrowed self is, well, stolen.  Morphers are identity plagiarists--they copy not only DNA, but body and conditioning and, ooh, get this: learned behaviors.  Flight in birds is not instinctive.  It's learned, through trial and error and a lot of good luck.  Unless you morph something really bizarre like a Howler, you don't get declarative/narrative memories.

I think this might be more a privacy/comfort feature than a core limitation of the technology.  Body, instincts, training, those are enough to deal with without adding memories or social identity to the mix.  Andalites are already shocked enough with morphing as it is--they're comfortable with a social structure that defines who they are and what they should do.  Something that changes who you are is very disturbing and they're surprisingly and infuriatingly averse to the technology.

Unlike humans. We're very flighty and imaginative, the sort of species that actually thinks it'd be cool to be a bird for an hour or two or maybe forever. 

So, morphing copies "self," but not perfectly.  The copy is a "self-with-amnesia" (amnesia fogs autobiographical memories and facts, but not language or "muscle memory" skills or intuition) and a convincing story about where that self came from.  "You are a temporary self.  Really, deep inside, you're something else.  You have two hours to change back." 

This leads to an interesting and shocking problem.  Does the archbishop dream he's the grasshopper, or the grasshopper dream he was an archbishop?

The very dangerous truth about morphing is that when a kid fighting an alien invasion becomes a tiger, he really becomes a tiger.  A very strange tiger that's forgotten that it's a tiger and has been bamboozled into thinking that it really is a kid fighting an alien invasion and thus does very un-tiger-like things, like attacking a walking salad shooter instead of finding something smaller and unsuspecting to kill and eat.  How long can that lie hold together?

Maybe a little longer than two hours.  After that, he's a tiger by choice--and that choice is beyond the power of the Escafil device to reverse.  He's called a "nothlit" a nonsense word that stands for a concept in Andalite thought without an English equivalent, but which very well might be related to this:

[spoiler][/spoiler]

Oh, and this idea of "self" as in "a metaphysical something of what an organism should be that drives it to be" is not something I came up with entirely by myself.  It's strikingly similar to a concept in Scholastic philosophy that goes by the Latin term anima, related to the English "animate" and (conveniently) "animal."  It's usually translated to a different Anglo-Saxon word.  We might say that then morphing plagiarizes the soul...   

...and it's official.  I need to go to bed now.

So, to try and bring this digression back on topic, I think the inconsistencies and incongruities of "therapeutic morphing" open up one hell of a can of worms related to the question of "yes, a return to health, but what is health anyway?"
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Offline FATELUVR95

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Re: Morphing Wounds
« Reply #4 on: February 04, 2011, 09:01:50 AM »
Wow, if Cassie thought that she would never morph.

Offline BennyBoy

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Re: Morphing Wounds
« Reply #5 on: February 04, 2011, 07:33:15 PM »
I actually have a different theory.  We hear "DNA, DNA," but where did that come from?  Elfangor's very hurried "how-to-use" explanation, to an alien species, whilst dealing with a species identity/loyalty crisis and his impending death.

If he told a small lie to children or oversimplified things, I think we can understand. 


I have to completely disagree.

We're told at multiple points throughout the series that morphing is based on DNA. The two that come immediately to mind being Elfangor and in the Hork-Bajir Chronicles - Aldrea confirms that the process is a technological ability that is based on DNA: "I placed my hand on the chadoo. And I began to acquire the animal's DNA."

I think your comment on learned behaviours is interesting but I completely reject any notion of souls and becoming the animal self. The stuff about knowing who you are on a subconscious level and that being the thing that heals you I also disagree with. We're told that morphing repairs DNA, and given that we're told about how excess mass is stored in Z-Space the explanation has backing.

I think we're told that morphing is based on DNA, and it's that simple. 


Offline NekojinCat

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Re: Morphing Wounds
« Reply #6 on: February 05, 2011, 09:25:54 AM »
I agree with BennyBoy on the DNA issue - I think it's confirmed by enough internally solid sources that morphing relies on DNA. I think the best way to explain the process is to make a distinction between the original DNA and the morphed DNA. Because of the Z-space explanation, we know that the mass of the original morpher exists physically somewhere else while they're morphed. At the same time, their consciousness inhabits a copied version of the animal DNA they acquired. So any injuries sustained happen to the animal body, which is essentially created and discarded with each morph. So if Jake morphs a tiger, loses a limb, and demorphs, he's just recalling his unwounded human mass from Z-space. Then, next time he morphs the tiger, a fresh copy of the acquired DNA is made.

That leaves room to explain the questions of age and physical attributes like hair length. As for the instincts and learned behaviour, I guess it just leads into a debate about how much of that is stored tangibly in the brain, and how much is therefore able to be replicated by morphing.

All questions that are really beyond the scope of the series, anyway.

Offline Blazing Angel

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Re: Morphing Wounds
« Reply #7 on: April 03, 2011, 11:28:01 PM »
About the kids brain problem maybe in KA's world everything we know is wrong quote from ax "No,no,no that's not how gravity works at all." Or he could have been born with something wrong with his brain that wasnt detectable in 1999.
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Offline Tim Bruening

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Re: Morphing Wounds
« Reply #8 on: August 01, 2015, 02:26:22 PM »
     I understand that morphing heals any form of wound. I mean, it was stated many times in the series. And we also see that the morphing technology can heal old wounds. We've seen the Animorphs regrow entire limbs and organs after a battle. But I'm a little confused about handicapable morphers. James and a few other of the auxiliaries made a complete recovery, but most of the others were still disabled. Why is that? I can't remember if it was explained in the series or not, but I always thought it was because the others were born with their disabilities (one of them was born with cerebral palsy) and the DNA couldn't be fixed.

And then there's the age old question about why Elfangor couldn't morph (The Invasion) to fix the burn in his right side, given that the Animorphs often demorphed to fix far more serious wounds.  I suspect that morphing may be harder than demorphing.