Line #19 Fridge/ANIMORPHS


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8	!!FridgeBrilliance:
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10	* At first there doesn't seem to be any particular reason why Arbron picks a yellow VW Bug to convey Jake down to meet the [[spoiler: Free Taxxons]]. But then you remember that when [[spoiler: Arbron first became a Taxxon ''nothlit'', the Living Hive brought Elfangor down to him in a yellow Mustang.]] Knowing Arbron's humor, he probably enjoyed the symmetry.
11	** Also, a Taxxon is essentially a kind of ''[[StealthPun bug]]''.
12	* A small one about the TV series opening: Of the five kids, four of them are shown running away and looking around. Except [[BloodKnight Rachel, who just turns around and smiles.]]
13	* One of the things Ax finds amusing about [[PunyEarthlings humans]] think the Internet is more advanced than the telephone. At first, this seems equally silly to the reader, but then you realize that Andalite telephones have to transmit {{Telepathy}}, not sound. Then again, they also consider the book more advanced than the computer. The second one can be explained by the series being very, very nineties - it probably ''was'' faster to check the index of a book and go to the right page than wait for a website to load.
14	* Ax is definitely one of the more "out there" characters, at least in the eyes of humans. His human morph is even worse, and strangers have been noted to think there's something wrong with him. He's also an ''aristh'', the Andalite equivalent of a cadet. Put it all together and what do you get? [[StealthPun A literal space cadet]].[[note]]Somewhat outdated slang for someone who seems a little "spacey" or out of touch with reality[[/note]]
15	* In ''The Alien'', Ax fixes Marco's dad's programming. This makes little sense at fist, since human computers should be completely different than Andalite computers... until you realize that Elfangor exchanged ideas with 'Bill' and 'Steve'. He even had to use simple terms like "WINDOW" to explain advanced concepts!
16	* This is pure DeathOfTheAuthor stuff, but remember that "Andalite traitors in the ranks" plot that Applegate just kinda forgot about? Well, the last time it comes up is during the Leeran campaign. Leerans have telepathic powers. Purging your military is very easy when you just allied with a people who can instantly sort out traitors.
17	** Also, the leader of the Andalite force on Leera seemed pretty willing to cooperate with aliens - he'd have to be on the respectful side and not thinking about bailing on them like Alloran, the Leerans would be able to tell - and less arrogant than most. He might have pushed to have Leerans weed out traitors but offended the higher-ups in doing so, and so when they finally sent the fleet to Earth it was in command of someone much less sympathetic to humanity.
18	* In ''The Message'', the kids muse why Cassie and Tobias (and Visser Three) would hear Ax's telepathic SOS but the rest of the Animorphs wouldn't. They conclude that it must be some connection between Andalites and morphing; and that therefore Cassie can hear it because of her connection with animals and natural morphing talent, and that Tobias can hear it because he's stuck in morph. This could be true, or it could be subtle foreshadowing of Cassie's temporal anomaly superpower and Tobias being Elfangor's son (and therefore part Andalite in a way).
19	* Ax's books are among the most light-hearted of all the books. It could be because of his humorous interpretations of humanity... But when Tobias morphed Ax in ''The Illusion'', he was struck by the powerfully optimistic nature of the Andalite mind, and he was subsequently told by Ax that the Andalites do their rituals to ''temper'' that innate optimism. This could be another reason why Ax's books are more lighthearted - his natural optimism is seeping through into his writing.
20	* So, the Ellimist stacked the deck by having the team of six be composed of Elfangor's brother and son, a girl who's both an ''estreen'' and a temporal anomaly, and the son of Visser One's body. Which leaves Jake and Rachel as the odd ones out, and Rachel is confirmed (assuming the Ellimist is telling the truth) to be a "happy accident." OK, but Jake? What's so special about him, other than the fact that he's already closely connected to everyone else in the group, is a natural leader, a GuileHero, a {{Determinator}}, and has an excellent reason to fight since his BigBrotherMentor is one of the Yeerks ...oh, yeah. [[BlatantLies Total coincidence. Definitely not stacking the deck there.]]
21	* Despite Chapman's Yeerk repeatedly being involved in plans that fail, Visser Three never up and kills him. Chapman was one of his hosts, and it's shown with the Yeerk who gets starved out of Jake that the previous hosts stay with the infesting Yeerk in some way. Visser Three is ''attached'' to Chapman, he's very happy with an Andalite body but doesn't want to see a host that served him well dead on a fit of pique.
22	* It's possible that some of the time when Visser Three randomly kills an underling it's to cover up for Alloran's tail twitching - either managing to wrest a flicker of control or, like Visser One used to torment one of her hosts, allowing his control over Alloran to slip to see how long before he notices - or else to engage in whatever fantasies of homicide Alloran has, also to torment him with the knowledge that even if he could act and randomly kill the Controllers around him, it wouldn't impair Yeerk efforts.
23	* Bark is an awfully low-calorie food for something as big, active, and fast-growing as Hork-Bajir, especially given that they don't eat constantly. But they ''were'' designed by the Arn to live on trees, and they do also eat cones, not bark alone. Probably trees on their homeworld were also designed to have sources of calories and proteins, like some acacias that host mutualistic ant colonies, and on Earth they have to branch out and supplement their bark with acorns and so on.
24	* When Ax is sick in ''The Deception'', Erek mentions that the Chee can't help because the most recent medical experience the Chee have is in the form of the Chee who poses as Erek's father, who was a doctor in the fifteenth century. This might seem odd, considering that the Chee are highly intelligent and have perfect memory, but makes sense when taking into account the increasing risks of modern medicine; no matter how hard they might try, it would be impossible for any Chee doctor to guarantee that they wouldn't kill a patient by accident, so their pacifist programming means that they daren't even attempt to be doctors to avoid the risk.
25	** Doctors also presumably need to get up-to-date on all the latest vaccines. It'd be a bit of a hassle to keep faking the paperwork.
26	* Why do the Ellimist and Crayak support the Andalites and Yeerks respectively? Because with the Andalite's morphing technology, the lines between species become meaningless, making Crayak's [[TheSocialDarwinist desires]] completely futile. The Ellimist isn't just playing to win, he's trying to undermine the rules of their CosmicChessGame itself.
27	* What if Ax's Yamphut from ''The Sickness'' was just salmonella?[[note]]Originally posted on [[https://www.reddit.com/r/Animorphs/comments/o0yr5w/what_if_axs_yamphut_from_the_sickness_was_just/ reddit]], reposted here with permission.[[/note]]
28	** In ''The Sickness'', Ax succumbs to an infection of the tria gland, which threatens to kill him. He mentions (off-page) that the other Animorphs are likely to get it, though for them it will just be similar to a stomach flu. And they do, indeed, fall ill, one by one. Except for Cassie. Why is she spared? (other than narrator PlotArmor) I'm not willing to take "luck" for an answer.
29	** Ax and 4 of the 5 human Animorphs get sick... but it doesn't spread beyond them. In addition to it missing Cassie, they don't give it to their families; Ax doesn't cause an outbreak at the school despite it being implied that he goes to town on the refreshments table at the school dance. Most contagious illnesses incubate for more than 24 hours; Jake gets sick--in morph--hours after Ax does. This seems less like a contagious disease and more like something not contagious that they all picked up together. Except Cassie.
30	** Enter... ''The Experiment''. The previous, much-maligned book... though it is remembered for giving us "These messages", "people who are young and restless", and Visser 3 getting smacked with poop. It also gives us the infamous final (very short) chapter, allegedly written by KA as something of a "[[TakeThat screw you]]" to the ghostwriter, wherein the Animorphs chow down on hamburgers in a blatant affront to the book's [[AuthorTract anti-meat message]] (which on the re-read, is actually pretty mild... but I digress). Who do we know eats the burgers?
31	** To start, Marco is the only one with a burger; his decadence inspires Jake and Rachel to get one, followed by Ax (who can't properly orate his request for the cinnamon bun in his mouth). Cassie complains; there's no indication that she joins in, and it would be very on-brand for her not to do so (plus she's likely to have a more robust immune system, as someone who works with animals, especially sick ones).\
32	Yeah... those were some bad burgers.
33	** For this to hold, Tobias needs to eat a burger as well. Tobias is at the food court but doesn't request a burger (on page). But, we learn in a later book that he & Rachel have taken to having picnic style "dates", normally with fast food, wherein he makes a point to eat some meat as a hawk and then as a human. Not too much of a stretch.
34	** "But wouldn't they just morph out of it?". Well... hear me out. We learn in ''The Journey'' (much as I'd like to pretend that book didn't happen) that you can morph out of viral infections. Poisons are less definitive but it seems morphing out of chemical toxins or venom is at least sometimes an option. But, for a human to digest food, we are dependent on our gut bacteria. It stays with us for life, but it is genetically separate from us. Our immune system learns to make exceptions for it. Given that the Animorphs aren't in a constant state of extreme digestive distress (or even malnourishment), we're pretty much forced to take as canon that bacteria are considered part of "you" and survive morphing. If that's true, some live bacteria could remain in your morphed form, explaining why the Yamphut strikes Ax & Jake while morphed.\
35	So there you go. The ghostwriters strike back, and nearly end the Animorphs' whole career with some sub-par beef.
36	** I'll end this, as it seems I always do, with a tie-in to Elfangor's time on Earth. He seems to have left out of his Hirac Delest (and the Ellimist was content to leave buried) the fact that, shortly after his first meal as a human nothlit, he must have begun a harrowing, month's long journey through all seven levels of the Bristol Stool Chart... starting on level 7. Ax may have had his cinnamon buns... but Alan Fangor had the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRAT_diet BRAT diet]]. It's canon now.
37	* In the early books the Ellimist implies he's just one of an entire species, as he always refers to himself as "we" or "us". Then, in ''The Ellimist Chronicles'', we finally get his OriginsEpisode, and he's only one person. This seems like a contradiction at first, until you remember that he absorbed the minds of all of Father's victims, so he [[FromACertainPointOfView sort of IS multiple people.]]
38	* In ''Visser'', Visser One mentions that human eyesight is similar to that of the Hork-Bajir, but weaker in depth perception and stronger in color differentiation. This makes sense regarding their lifestyles: both spent time in the trees as relatively weak prey items, but while the Hork-Bajir retained their arboreal lifestyles and mostly ate bark (hence, retaining a need for better depth perception), humans went down to the ground some time ago and developed a more omnivorous diet (so being able to detect relatively subtle differences in food items became more important so they didn't eat poisonous berries or such).
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40	!!FridgeHorror:
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42	* Not directly story-related, but the morphing technology brings up some really scary implications. It's established that inanimate objects do not morph. Since the morpher's body doesn't always change in a predictable 1-to-1 way, various parts tend to slide around--what if the morpher in question has piercings? Braces? Worse, suppose some time prior to getting morph tech the morpher had to have intense corrective surgery--their ''bones and muscles'' would melt and reform around metal plates/screws, to say nothing of the mess this might cause when they morph back.
43	* In ''Visser'', it's said that Hork-Bajir are a Class Three species because they are not numerous enough and ''they can't be quickly bred''. That means they ''breed'' the creatures they take as hosts. Obviously, this is not explored in the series, but in the books where the horrible future of Yeerks completely taking over humans is shown, this means that aliens in those humans' brains are making them have sex with each other so those aliens can conquer the galaxy. Want to take the horror a step further? Yeerks have really poor senses in their natural bodies and get drunk on the senses of their hosts, they explore them and indulge them for pleasure. Think about how eager just normal people tend to be regarding having sex, because it feels so good, now add in a sensation starved parasite in charge of the decision making process and thousands of others in the exact same situation for them to experiment with. And the host has absolutely no say in it whatsoever but still has to experience it. You'd be getting raped until the Yeerk gets bored of it, if ever, and possibly they may not care about the age of the hosts involved.
44	** It's explored in that very book. Visser One actually fell in love with her lackey while they were trapped on Earth and they had 2 children with their human hosts.
45	** The Council of Thirteen, and Eva, both react with shock and disgust when they hear what Edriss did as Allison. Eva's been Visser One's host for years at that point. Hork-Bajir aren't bright, but given their storytelling ability and how little time they have uninfested and in the cages, they should be aware of the correlation of sex and pregnancy, and they are so anti-Yeerk it's hard to believe most of them wouldn't abstain to keep from having children who'd be infested in turn. So most of them are probably artificially inseminated or else 'bred' by Yeerks, but host propagation is seen as a chore for low-ranking Yeerks and too vulgar for Visser One to dabble in.
46	** This is a problem that only really shows up in the graphic novel, but all of the Hork-Bajir seen so far have been male. Knowing what we do about how the Yeerks treat their hosts, the fate of the female Hork-Bajir can weigh heavily on someone's mind.
47	* In ''The Invasion'', Jake nearly tells Tom that ''he's'' the tiger when they're in the Yeerk Pool. As Tom is reinfested shortly afterward, Jake ''nearly sold out all of the Animorphs on day one.''
48	* David's fate - rats only have a lifespan of two to three years. So instead of a death sentence, the Animorphs just gave him a slightly prolonged death sentence. Keep in mind that we don't know all that much about morphing technology. For all we know, he could be a rat with a human lifespan. Which could be worse?
49	** We actually already have an idea as to how nothlits would age. Tobias himself is a nothlit and in The Beginning it is mentioned that he's aged a lot as a hawk which means that nothlits have the same life span as that of the animal they've taken form (Although it is unknown whether morphing could reset the aging process or the morph 'ages' a couple of hours every time it's used).
50	** Rats are also very territorial. If you introduce an adult male rat to an established colony, it's attacked and if it can't escape, the other rats kill it. If you introduce an adult female, it's rarely attacked by males, and attacks by females drop off after a few days, so the female may be accepted. David in female rat morph could survive, but then he's a female rat who'll go into heat and be pursued by males.
51	*** They're less likely to attack juveniles - there is a window of time between being a baby who'll be killed for food and an adult who'll be killed for trespassing - which Cassie would probably know, so maybe she had Jake bring over a rat of the right age.
52	* When Jake's Yeerk starts dying, they both get treated to our first look at the being called Crayak. Does it happen to ''every'' Yeerk Controller, or just one? If so, is that why many of the humans who escape that control wind up going crazy?
53	** The Ellimist notes that Crayak would have sensed that Jake had been touched by the Ellimist in that moment, so it may be that he just became aware of Crayak in that moment because Crayak was paying particular attention to him in turn.
54	* Much of the NightmareFuel of the series can go over the heads of its target age group, who are more likely to just focus on the cool adventures and animals. However, if you're an adult who decides to do a nostalgic re-read (this troper did), not only do you catch everything this time around, but it's compounded by the fact that all of it is happening to young children ''and'' teenagers.
55	* Melissa Chapman pretty much just disappears after the first few books. But it's not an oversight at all. It's the natural result of someone becoming an Animorph, and Rachel at that, and as a consequence losing touch with pretty much all her "normal" friends. Given that Melissa is depressed as it is even before her best friend drops her for seemingly no reason, her life must be awful. Well, awful in her perspective anyway...
56	* When Ax first tries to use his Human friends to morph into a human kid that fits this planet better than a blue deer with a prehensile poleaxe whip for a tail, it makes sense and it's an easy way to explain away the Andalite being able to talk to the Humans in public. But ...Animorphs can absorb the forms of other specific Humans. That's terrifying! An Animorph could murder controllers, letting themselves be recorded doing it, and leave splashes of their own blood and fingerprints and the murder-weapon, then show up to school the next day completely uninjured, under no suspicion, and watch as a different controller entirely gets sent to prison for it. Or at least leave the Yeerks having to cover up their own murders.
57	* Remember the infamous DealWithTheDevil that The Drode gave Rachel, on the behalf of Crayak?
58	-->'''The Drode:''' If you ever find yourself desperate, Rachel. At the end. In need. Remember this: your cousin's life is your passport to salvation in the arms of Crayak.
59	** Understandably, everybody automatically translate "your cousin" into "Jake", since it's common knowledge that Crayak ''really'' hates Jake. However, people do tend to gloss over what really was said: "''Your cousin's life...''" [[spoiler:''Rachel killed '''Tom'''.'']]
60	** It gets worse. Notice how Rachel didn't freeze when it came time for her to follow Jake's order? It would have been perfectly understandable for her to freeze in the middle of battle and go [[spoiler: "Oh shit, I'm about to kill my own cousin!"]] especially if it was her first time [[spoiler: killing someone personal and familiar to her]]... Unless it ''wasn't'' her first time. Unless she ''did'' [[spoiler: kill David after all. She froze in the face of his request to kill him, and we don't know for sure what happened, but if she did kill him, it could explain why she was able to carry out the task of killing Tom]] without freezing up.
61	* Even if everything had gone hunky-dorky for him in the end and there had been an ending where everything was good, [[spoiler: and where Rachel lived]], consider Tobias' situation when the war ends. Both of them end in a no-win situation for the Emohawk.
62	** Situation A: He's stuck in the form of a hawk which has, at most, a twenty-five year lifespan. The bird form is already a mature adult when he gets stuck in the morph, so he's at least three "hawk years" old, if not more. He even mentions in the last book that he's old for a red-tail. So he not only sacrificed his humanity, he's sacrificed most of his potential lifespan.
63	** Situation B: With the war ended, and [[spoiler: in a world with Rachel and his mother alive]], he might have been tempted to metaphorically hang up his cape for good, and become a human ''nothlit'' to live a normal life. But knowing Tobias and his conflicted feelings, he'd forever regret leaving his wings behind to go back to being a weak human, never to morph again. Considering how depressed he was in canon after the end of the war, it's likely this would only exacerbate his condition, and could have caused him to go into seclusion anyway, push those away he loved, or even become suicidal.
64	** There's also a possibility of a Situation C - after the war, [[spoiler: without Rachel]], Tobias overcomes his depression and seclusion enough to go to the Andalite homeworld with Ax and eventually ''nothlits'' as an Andalite. He likes his Andalite morph's optimism, hands, tail, and eyes, and doesn't seem as uncomfortable in it as he is in human form. Andalites don't live in cities and spend a lot of time running on the grass, so he wouldn't have to be around people as often as a human would and could be alone for long stretches of time. He could learn to pilot Andalite craft. There would be an adjustment period and he'd still struggle and second-guess himself, but he might be able to make it work. Loren would forgive him eventually. Toby probably wouldn't like it, but depending on how long Hork-Bajir live, he might outlive her even as a hawk.
65	** How about Situation D -- Tobias becomes a Hork-Bajir ''nothlit.'' There wouldn't be too much intellectual stimulation, but the free Hork-Bajir pretty much view him as Moses. As with Andalites, it's a more powerful body that would let him live in nature. He'd be on Earth, able to spend time with Rachel and Loren, even if he couldn't date Rachel (probably). He'd also be able to help defend the colony from terrorists.
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67	!!FridgeLogic:
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69	* When Elfangor gives the Animorphs their ability to absorb other forms, and spends some time implanting lots of information about the setting as a whole into Tobias using a telepathic link, he knows that the Yeerks are on their way, but also that they are a few minutes away. Reading this scene the first time seems to make sense. He is injured and the Yeerks are coming so, after giving the Animorphs their powers and teaching Tobias how to use them, he just lies there till the Yeerks come and kill him. But then, reading it all over again a few times...
70	** He had plenty of time between mind-melding with Tobias and the arrival of the Yeerks to let each of them touch him for long enough to absorb an Andalite morph. This would have made things a lot easier later on for them all. It would have let them "prove" that they were indeed Andalite bandits, by transforming from Humans "back" into Andalite forms. It would also immediately give them a form that has horse-like running ability ''and'' a super-strong whip-like tail that wields a super-sharp blade.
71	*** Actually it would do the opposite. Visser Three has control of an Andalite host and would surely know that something weird would be going on when five Elfangors popped up at once after each battle. That's another reason why [[spoiler: Ax gave Tobias a hair/fur-cut when he morphed into him in ''The Illusion'' when trying to destroy the Anti-Morphing Ray, to make it believable that the Yeerks actually captured an Andalite and they'd think that he morphed when he demorphed into his hawk form]].
72	* At first the franchise, ''Animorphs'', being about teenagers who turn into animals to fight an alien invasion is fairly straightforward. Human kids, given the ability to turn into creatures that they have managed to "absorb" the form of, begin a guerrilla war against an army of mind-controlling slugs. And then Ax comes along, one of the "good-guy" aliens, and uses ''their'' DNA to form a Human disguise. Still, makes sense, he wants to blend in on Earth, so he wants to look like a normal Human kid that they might hang out with. But then, reading it all over again a few times...
73	** Why don't the five Human Animorphs use their ability to turn into specific individual creatures on other Humans? Yes, it is a little bit immoral (since the person in question doesn't know you're doing it,) but it seems perfectly acceptable by the standards of ''fighting off alien invasions!'' Especially when the aliens in question are taking over people's bodies! Would it really bother you to copy the appearance of a classmate or a random member of the Sharing? Because clearly the Animorphs are happy to murder Yeerk host bodies, why not first mimic them to frame them for crimes or infiltrate the Yeerk pools or whatever. Not to mention the much more sleazy potential that Marco at least might consider.
74	** Even just giving each other permission to use each other as a morph! Especially Tobias, when he gets his morphing back, because he has no normal life to cover for. He can give the others a perfect alibi while they morph. Jake could follow a controller around for almost two hours as a morph while "Jake" is at home, playing video games with Marco, where Tom the Yeerk-Controller can easily see him.
75	** Even if you weren't planning to use the morph of someone you absorbed, having the ability to absorb their form is pretty useful, too. Even if you have already absorbed their form, you can always touch them again and "absorb" the form a second time, or a third, or a fourth, or a fifth... Just to induce the calm and subdued effects that absorbing something's DNA has on anything. Getting beaten up at school? Just concentrate for a moment and suddenly that guy holding your wrist to make you slap your own face has stopped and just letting you go.
76	*** This has been noted in the fanfic ''Fanfic/{{Eleutherophobia}}'', where [[spoiler:Tom acquires Jake]] to help calm his PTSD.

Context Fridge / ANIMORPHS