69 KiB
Ideas for Rational!Animorphs
-
Author: u/MugaSofer *
-
URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2bb0mo/ideas_for_rationalanimorphs/
-
Score: 24
-
Created: 2014-07-21T16:15:43
Post:
Prompted by this, I just reread a couple of old Animorphs books that were lying around my brothers room.
You know, there's a lot of potential in this.
There's what sounds like a vaguely-Friendly AI in the background that created the setting - the "Ellimist" - who can't interfere because it's acausally trading with an unFriendly AI.
The main enemy has the ability to, effectively, rewire brains to follow their own (selfish) goals; and although there are limits, the heroes are exactly as outgunned as this implies.
The protagonists have a unique piece of "magic", with clear limits and rules - great for munchkin plots that don't involve making up your own rules in order to exploit those rules.
So: what would you do with a rational fanfiction of the series?
Comments:
u/ketura [+13] Organizer (11 hours later)
This is a memory dump of some of the ideas that I have thought about over the months and years. Animorphs was one of my favorite series; I own copies of all of them and still regularly grind through the series every few years. Some of these changes I would make aren't so much changes as they are codifying what happened in the series as having a real reason. Here they are, ordered from most to least canonical (or plausibly canonical):
Item the first: Yeerks unconsciously absorb and incorporate the personality traits of their hosts.
While still on their home planet, they only have access to a non-sapient species that presumably were bred for stupidity (no personality to absorb), the Hork-bajir were engineered to be stupid and non-challenging (barely any personality to absorb), and the Taxxons have a pure animalistic instinct (need to be consciously fought and so the Yeerks are on guard to prevent any intellectual "leakage"). As soon as we see Yeerks take over more intelligent species, however, we see Face-Heel Turns and other drastic personality changes within individual Yeerks.
Esplin 9466 (Visser Three) goes from cold, calculating, cautious, and awarely respectful of his enemies to arrogant, reckless, demanding, and downright condescending as soon as he takes over Alloran-Semitur-Corrass; each of these new traits are very obvious in his host's appearances in the Andalite and Hork-bajir Chronicles. In addition, I don't think it was coincidence that Esplin turns from patiently plotting to opportunity-seizing after infesting Chapman in the Andalite Chronicles. Aftran 942 goes from ambitious and bloodthirsty to morally and socially aware after infesting Cassie. Edriss 562 (Visser One) doesn't change much on the surface, but gains a completely out-of-species motherly instinct over "her" children after having babies through her host. Cassie herself has much fewer qualms about resisting the Yeerks after morphing to a Yeerk and infesting Mr. Tidwell, a human member of the Yeerk Peace Movement. The very existence of the Yeerk Peace Movement on Earth, which has no known analog in any of the previously conquered species, at least suggests that enough Yeerks are being changed by their hosts to make this a very plausible possibility.
While this could be explained as, y'know, character development, I think the stack of evidence of basically every single PC Yeerk we ever see points in this direction.
Would this be a plot point, or just something to keep in mind to keep everything consistent? I don't know. In a fanfic exploring rational thought, it could be invaluable in exploring "how does one really change one's mind", though as a positive or a negative example I'm not sure.
Item the second: the Andalite telepathy is more than "thought-speech" as the Animorphs term it. It is the reverse of the Yeerk's personality-absorption and directly beams not only the user's thoughts but also opinions, expectations, and personality to the receivers. It is also inherently one-way (though this is explicit in the original work). As a result, Andalites in general are very hive-minded without knowing it, as all PC Andalites immediately move to conform to their peers as soon as they interact with them and are thus bombarded with subconscious telepathic expectations.
There are a bare handful of occasions where more than thoughts are explicitly transmitted, the most prominent example being when Elfangor does his data dump in the first book (not just to the recording device, but straight into the Animorphs' heads), where images, memories, and emotions are directly transmitted. The number of examples where Aximili and Elfangor (who both question the moral standard of the Andalite people while isolated) immediately return to form as soon as they are within range of another Andalite's thought-speech is sizeable.
How such a power works between planet-separated species is probably outside the scope of the fic, and can be explained by Ellimist hand-waving. For those of you who did not read The Ellimist Chronicles, the being known as the Ellimist spent quite a period of time living as an Andalite after discovering them, and it's at least implied that he manipulated their evolution as he saw fit. As a running theme, he himself probably did so unconsciously, at least at some level.
(This particular item in conjunction with the next makes the idea of Andalite "words" such as aristh and shorn to be kind of a ridiculous concept.)
Item the third: Andalites, as a side-effect of the hive-mind mentality (or perhaps a contributing cause of it), are able to read thoughts, but only when the being in question is attempting to communicate outwards (a non intrusive mind-reading, as opposed to the intrusive mind-reading abilities the Leeran have).
This is perhaps the most speculative of the plausibly-canonical ideas I've had. Being as Andalites themselves can all communicate via thought-speech, the only time such an ability as passive mind-reading would become apparent is when communicating with other species, which when combined with Andalite isolationism, slow rate of scientific discovery, and the fact that First Contact appears to be a relatively recent thing (the Yeerks broke free of their home world in about 1966, and based on the fact that such things such as "don't give unknown undeveloped species advanced scientific advancements" wasn't a thing yet, I think it's safe to say that Andalites are new to the whole Where No Alien Has Gone Before thing, so they wouldn't have much opportunity to realize they can fuzzily read thoughts), I think it's reasonable to think that Andalites themselves do not fully understand how their powers work.
I've constructed a scene (in my head) of Elfangor and Abron first meeting Chapman and Loren, and inquiring what gases they need to breathe. Loren answers "Oxygen", but she doesn't know anything about it besides the word used to represent it and that it's dangerous when concentrated, so Elfangor receives the message of "volatile gas". When Chapman repeats it, Elfangor understands "gas with 8 protons and 8 neutrons" based on Chapman's own knowledge, and so actually understands he means Oxygen.
This would result in a fairly major departure from canon, but would make things such as Ax's culture shock less fish-out-of-water and more "I literally cannot understand your metaphor".
Item the fourth: More intelligent creatures operate less off of instinct than less intelligent creatures, and so morphs into those creatures take more learning time to master.
This is a large departure from canon, but I think it's superior to the "well, we're creating a creature and then enslaving it, so are Yeerks the real monsters?" weaksauce moral conundrum that canon uses to avoid morphing intelligent beings. If instead more intelligent beings have fewer hard-wired instincts to guide them, the morpher has to mentally explore their new body and grow used to it. Human to human would be mostly easy, but human to Hork-bajir or hawk to Andalite would take a ton of relearning how to walk, fight, and speak (Ax suddenly knowing how to use vocal English bugs me perhaps more than it should; Elfangor tried to fake Taxxon and got completely exposed for it).
This leads up to perhaps the biggest concept, one that I think would be fairly major in a rationalfic:
Item the fifth: humans are unique in the magnitude of their ability to change their minds and thus to adopt rational thought.
You may have noticed a theme of unconscious abilities or decisions, and items 1-3 discussed above could be explained as social pressure rather than telepathic pressure. If I were to write an Animorphs rationalfic, I would include humans being more able to become aware of their own thought processes, and thus change their thinking than any other discovered species.
Aximili was downright shocked to discover that humans went from heavier-than-air to landing on the moon in sixty years. One lifetime, give or take. This may be due to economy of scale (humans definitely outnumber just about every other discovered species so far), but Ax seems more troubled in the understanding that implied. Perhaps it took the Andalites so much longer, not because they couldn't find the evidence, but because they became so attached to unsound principles that it was much more difficult for them to admit when they're wrong--coupled with the passive hive-mind telepathy above, this would make propagation of new ideas among Andalites very, very slow, taking generations at a time for a single new true principle to fight its way to acceptance.
When Edriss discovers humans and first infests one of the Iraqi soldiers in the Persian Gulf War, she is baffled to find what she termed two brains in the same head (the two halves). She also noted that such a mind allowed its user to argue with itself, which she decided had to contribute to such a massively populated species being so technologically backward, which is of course at odds with Ax's conclusion.
Both of these point to human thought being a strange and different way of doing things to both of these species, which would of course be expected in any fiction, but in the case of a fanfic specifically focusing on how to think rationally, it could be a vehicle for a number of topics.
(Con't)
u/ketura [+9] Organizer (11 hours later)
This could be bolstered by molding some of the main characters to each be avatars of particular concepts important to the rational community at large--Marco is the Hollywood rationalist, cold and unfeeling and more apt to take the ruthless point A to point B approach; he must learn how to embrace his emotions and become a true rationalist.
Cassie is the moralist: avoiding pain, suffering, and death are of paramount importance, but where is the line drawn when you have to eradicate another species to save your own? If a creature walks and talks exactly the way you'd expect it to, is it really any different?
Tobias makes us ask, are we still human when we don't have human bodies? If it's not the physical synapses within our brain that is actually letting us think, what does that mean? Do souls exist, or is it tech mumbo-jumbo that's just copied our thought patterns to some zero-space whatchamacallit?
Jake has to face humanity's destruction while it is happy to ignore it, and has to divide his attention between saving everyone in their current state and finding a solution that lets the most possible people survive the cataclysm.
Aximili struggles with becoming aware of his own mental powers and pitfalls, and controlling them when they fall into old patterns.
Rachel....hits things. I'm not sure what to do with her. Definitely a statement about losing minds after death, but other than that, maybe just having muscle is what's needed.
Anyway, I think that's all the important bits (whew, two posts!). In a story like this, determining the rules in fine detail is more important than the particular plot points, and so I've spent most of my mental energy in that direction. While I don't have a whole lot of excess energy to actually spend writing, I would love to bounce ideas and act as a sounding board/reality check for anyone who wants to tackle this project, OP or actual OP in /r/rational included.
u/DaystarEld [+3] Pokémon Professor (2 days later)
This is all great :) Animorphs was one of the top IPs I considered before going with Pokemon, and I think it could be done really well.
One thing I would change is reverse the roles of Rachel and Marco: she always seemed like the cold pragmatist, and I wouldn't want Marco to lose his defining sense of humor.
Make him the one newest to rationalism, have him act as the "reader insert" for explanations and wish fulfillment. There are a lot of for-fun things someone could do with shapechanging powers that the books barely touch on, and Marco always came closest to using his powers for fun.
u/ketura [+7] Organizer (2 days later)
Thanks! :)
The reason that I peg Marco as the "cold" rationalist is because of this passage from the original series from Marco's POV, which I've always liked:
People don't understand the word ruthless. They think it means "mean." It's not about being mean. It's about seeing the bright, clear line that leads from A to B. The line that goes from motive to means. Beginning to end.
It's about seeing that bright, clear line and not caring about anything but the beautiful fact that you can see the solution. Not caring about anything else but the perfection of it.
That's what had happened. I saw the way to take both Vissers down. And that's all that mattered.
But I wasn't going to explain all that. Other people's pity just messes with the straight line. Other people's pity makes you think things you can't think about when you are seeing the line.
. . .
"We take out Visser One. We take out Visser Three. We leave the Yeerks believing they've erased the free Hork-Bajir colony. The free Hork-Bajir end up much safer; the Yeerks end up leaderless."
I avoided looking at Cassie. From Jake there was just the briefest flicker of sadness. But Jake, too, is addicted to the bright, clear line.
Rachel kept her eyes down, focusing on the dirt-and-hay floor.
Rachel's not stupid. She knew anything she said would just make me mad. And I guess she, like all of them, was putting herself in my shoes. Wondering if she could do it.
(Context for non-readers: one of the Vissers he's talking about taking down has infested his mother, so that means killing her to take out Visser One.)
Marco was always the most genre-savvy of the group, the loudest, the funniest, but he was also the one who had the firmest grasp on what was at stake, who lost the most the soonest. He covered up his understanding with jokes, but his reluctance was always a symptom of knowing better than the others what it meant to try to win.
Rachel, on the other hand, was very Jekyll-and-Hyde, who would revel in the blood while fighting, would push for whatever course of action led to the most open conflict, but never thought things through, and when the consequences of her actions caught up with her, it always blindsided her. She always went the emotional route, whether that emotion was bloodlust or fear for her family.
Both would kill to get their goals. Both would trade the few for the many. The difference is that Rachel would see that solution in the moment and then hate herself later once she was down off the adrenaline high, whereas Marco would have thought of it a week beforehand and accepted it as valid, even if it hurt him personally. And then he'd crack a joke.
So, when I say Marco is the cold one, I mean what he actually is, and not what he appears. And he tries to cover it up because he knows if it comes down to math, he will make the rational decision, and he's not sure if he wants that.
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (2 days later)
Hmm. You're right, but I still feel like that's what makes him the best candidate for reader insert.
I didn't mean to just keep him as a the "noobie" forever: just that, as the most relatable character, having him come to those realizations and learn those lessons is the best perspective to tell the story and teach the lessons through. Having Rachel as the cold pragmatist works better than just making her a meathead, since it puts her at a huge disadvantage not to get any character upgrades while everyone else does. She can still enjoy the thrill and violence without being dumb about it.
That should be his character arc: from someone who starts as the group jokester to the one that embraces the "bright clear line."
u/ketura [+2] Organizer (2 days later)
I feel like with five (later six) of them, there's no need for a straight-up insert who's dumb as a brick where it comes to rationality, especially not the one that was probably the most intelligent and informed besides Ax in the original. I feel like each of them can be the insert of their own particular spectrum, leaving no one person carrying all the ignorance all at once.
If anyone, Ax himself has the most reason to be separate from the human's strange ways of looking at things, but like I say, I don't feel he'd need to be the only one learning new things for the sake of the reader.
I do agree with your statement about Marco's general arc, and Rachel does need some sort of tuning, I'm just not sure what. A Harry's-Dark-Side-like intelligence when she's morphed and in battle? That might be interesting.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (2 days later)
Again, I'm not saying he should be stupid or "dumb as a brick." Someone can be smart without being familiar with the specific or formal axioms of rationality. Think more Hermione/Draco from HPMOR.
Or my personal example if you've been reading Pokemon: Origin of Species. Red is the nascent rationalist, familiar with the concepts but not perfect at utilizing them yet, Blue has an "evidence only" perspective, only believing in things that are observable rather than using much deduction, and Leaf is the outsider and devil's advocate, challenging and questioning the accepted axioms.
These are starting points to explore different perspectives and personalities, different roads to rationality that still give them room to grow and learn with. None of the main characters should be idiots, but starting someone out as the perfect rationalist also misses the mark in a group-focused story, I think.
u/MugaSofer [+4] (20 hours later)
All of these are excellent ideas. Seriously, I was going to respond to each one, but all of my responses were the same.
u/ketura [+2] Organizer (a day later)
Heh, glad you like them. Animorphs really does have a well-constructed universe, it was just the author's prose and occasionally glaring plot holes that detracted from the experience.
u/alexanderwales [+12] Time flies like an arrow (32 minutes later)
With the caveat that it's been a long, long time since I've read the books, and I never read them all, I actually remember the series being fairly well written (at least so far as people making smart choices went), though I might be looking at it through rose-tinted glasses.
- Yeerks don't know that anyone but the Andalites have morphing technology, or that the ability to morph can be given. Keeping that secret is priority number one. If at all possible, the animorphs should keep their existence a secret period instead of doing missions in animal form. (The books did a decent job of this.)
- Acquire all of the best animals as fast as possible, with a focus on infiltration, fast movement, and combat.
- It's mentioned that different DNA can be combined in order to make a wholly original morph. This is used to prevent creating an exact duplicate, but it could also be used to build a "more optimal" version of an animal for each morph, or perhaps a hybrid animal (or even one that's wholly unique and can act as a game breaker).
- Can you morph into another of your same species? I recall that there's nothing that prevents morphing into a human in general, but I can't remember whether there's a prohibition on, say, acquiring a morph of someone important and going around in their skin.
- Figure out what the Yeerks want, and if possible, give it to them while maintaining the survival of the human race at the same time. I would prefer a version of the story where the Yeerks aren't all evil (though I half remember one of the animorphs getting taken over and maybe having a Not So Different moment?).
- One of the things I really liked about the series was that each of the team had their own defined personality - I'd like that to carry over into any rational treatment in the form of values conflict (the best type of conflict).
- Morphing allows for thought-speak, which would be immensely useful, especially if you could morph into yourself. Acquiring it outside of the morph would be even better.
Edit: Honestly, the single biggest limitation is the two hour time limit, which nerfs a wide variety of possibilities.
u/FaceDeer [+8] (3 hours later)
Later in the series an Andalite joined their group and he created a hybrid human morph based on all of the other Animorphs to serve as his human form. As I recall he could have morphed a specific one of them, but he went with the mix so that he would have a unique identity (and be less likely to blow the cover of one of the regular Animorphs due to his weird nonhuman behaviour drawing attention to him). So yeah, I think they could have impersonated other people pretty easily, at least physically. None of these kids were experienced actors, though, so I would think it'd be a big risk to try it in most circumstances.
There actually were "non-evil" Yeerks, in fact there was a secret "resistance" group of Yeerks who wanted to play nice with other intelligent races and only take nonsentient or custom-engineered host bodies. The Animorphs wound up involved in some ops with these subversive Yeerks from time to time. They didn't show up until later in the series, though, you may not have got that far. They were rather tragic, really - the "mainstream" Yeerk culture thought of them as dangerous traitors looking to sell them out, and the Andalites thought the Yeerks were always-chaotic-evil and didn't even recognize that there could be nice guys hidden among them.
Another major secret ally the Animorphs had in their back pocket were the Chee androids. The Chee were super-advanced and super-powerful, but they were also programmed to be absolute pacifists. A rational approach could try to convince them to loosen their programmed pacifism safeguards a little (the one time a Chee android allowed his safeguards to be removed he utterly massacred a large Yeerk battalion single-handedly. He then begged to have his safeguards put back in afterward, appalled at what he'd done, so fortunately the hard programmed limits aren't the only thing keeping them from being monsters, but still definitely a risk IMO) or have them supply the Animorphs with advanced technological tools.
One of the Chee had even infiltrated the Yeerks successfully - he'd built a Yeerk cage into his skull and trapped the Yeerk that tried taking him over, keeping it imprisoned in permanent solitary confinement inside his head in a great karmic payback (and also raising creepy questions of just what "pacifism" entails). So that's really handy. The Chee can produce Kandrona rays, which Yeerks need to live and the control of which is one of the main ways the Yeerk Vissers keep the other Yeerks in line, so they'd be able to supply the subversive Yeerks and keep non-subversives prisoner outside of host bodies. Great allies.
u/None [+3] (a day later)
The Chee can produce Kandrona rays, which Yeerks need to live and the control of which is one of the main ways the Yeerk Vissers keep the other Yeerks in line
This suggests a way of giving them a decent quality of life without hurting anyone. Ask the Chee to mass-manufacture bodies similar to theirs, though probably less powerful -- don't want a Yeerk to be able to kill tons of people with impugnity. Omit any consciousness from those bodies and hook up Yeerk-friendly controls. This cuts out the control scheme, introduces a dependency on a relatively friendly body of potential peacekeepers, and doesn't hurt anyone.
u/FaceDeer [+4] (a day later)
You're sort of proposing turning the Yeerks into Daleks for the greater good of the universe. I like that. :)
u/Drazelic [+1] Dai-Gurren Brigade (2 days later)
There's an interesting plot you could do with that. The possibility for a Yeerk to live independently of the Kandrona Rays from the pool might actually be a good way to get a lot of Yeerks to defect; at the least, I could see interesting cyberpunk-esque politics happening, if, say, the Animorphs were to sneak into every pool they knew about and leave these Chee-knockoff bodies.
What do the Vissers do when the entire reason why their empire is so militaristic collapses beneath them due to Animorph/Chee-introduced technological progress? Kill them with kindness, as they say.
u/EndlessStrategy [+1] (2 days later)
If memory serves, after the Yeerks obtained morphing technology, which could have let them all take on a permanent non-parasitic, non-Kandrona dependent form, they didn't just give up the war.
They may have started the war to increase their quality of life by gaining host bodies. But they'll also take what they can get, without limit. Conquest for conquest's sake.
If you give them all host bodies, that would increase their military might several times over. They'd be in a perfect position to conquer the rest of the galaxy. Unlikely that they'd turn down that possibility.
u/noggin-scratcher [+4] I am a happy tree (an hour later)
Can you morph into another of your same species?
I think there was an ethical taboo against morphing into a sentient, but not a technological limitation.
Figure out what the Yeerks want, and if possible, give it to them
If memory serves, they wanted to enslave all the humans sheerly because we're so numerous - perfect fodder for an army. So that may be a non-starter of a plan.
Morphing allows for thought-speak, which would be immensely useful, especially if you could morph into yourself.
Or, second-best, buddy up and all morph into each other.
u/Timewinders [+3] (an hour later)
Yes. I know David morphed other humans, but the main characters didn't like doing it because when you morph into an animal you have to control the native mind. Doing that to a sapient would be too much like what the Yeerks do or something like that. The Animorphs only morphed sapients when they had permission from the person they got the DNA from. Ax got around it by combining multiple people's DNA to make his human morph.
u/drageuth2 [+3] (20 hours later)
What if you morph into yourself? Would that give you the telepathy, or potentially some other advantages?
u/Drazelic [+2] Dai-Gurren Brigade (2 days later)
...Injuries are removed when you demorph.
If you had a morph-capable friend, and you mutually morphed into each other, you could harvest body parts and organs from each other, then demorph and neutralize the damage.
In a world where morphing technology is commonplace, you'd have unlimited supplies of replacement organs and blood and basically everything you'd need to keep anybody alive. At the end of the war, commercial application of organ-duplication via morphing could usher in a quality-of-life revolution and end the illegal organs trade entirely.
u/drageuth2 [+1] (2 days later)
Or you could always make a more limited version of morph tech that only a allows a person to morph into themselves (and maybe doesn't have telepathy) Give that to everyone, and everyone has regeneration. Might even make them immortal depending on how it handles aging.
u/Zephyr1011 [+2] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (4 days later)
How would that handle the 2 hour limit? Either you would have to revert to wounded form every 2 hours, or it would be one use only. Still useful, but not immortality. It could have pretty cool medical applications though. Plus, how would you take your own form? Can you absorb the DNA from tissue samples? Or must it be while the host is alive?
u/drageuth2 [+2] (4 days later)
I thought 'morphing fixes injuries' meant that you healed injuries any time you morphed to a form or back. I've never read the Animorphs series, so I'm not up on the lore here. Didn't know about the two hour limit either.
Can you just morph again right away, or does it have a recharge? Can it be automated?
u/Zephyr1011 [+2] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (4 days later)
Yes, I was misremembering. You are right. Morphing will heal any non-genetic diseases. In the series, a group of disabled teens are given the morphing technology and 3 are completely cured by it. So your idea would probably still work. Although it may have difficulty with things such as cancer, since they might not be seen as damage to be fixed in the same way as an injury would.
I think you can morph again right away, but it takes about 2 minutes to morph or demorph and concentration. So I doubt it could be automated. And there may be issues with mental fatigue, but I don't think the technology itself has an inbuilt recharge period
u/Badewell [+3] (an hour later)
Yeerks know that Andalites can share the morphing technology, but have no reason to think they ever would. Only Andalites have it, so when they see animals attacking them they just assume that it's Andalites. Even more so because Andalites are very averse to sharing their technology with other species since because of Seerow's Kindness minor spoilers.
Hybrid morphing could be a thing. In some of the books we see people who are good at morphing (Estrid, Cassie) bend or even break the rules we know about morphing, and in book seven we see morphing that should be impossible happen because an allergic reaction. In another book, Cassie talks the group through a demorph when they're running at or slightly past the two-hour limit. It's possible that the limitations of morphing are a conceptual limitation and not hard fact.
You can absolutely morph into another member of your same species. In canon they try not to for moral reasons, but nothing prevents them from doing that.
Figuring out what the Yeerks want... late book spoilers
My understanding of thought speak was that it triggered the moment the morpher becomes incapable of speech. A controlled partial-morph to alter your vocal cords should be enough. Not sure how this works when morphing into another human (I can't recall an instance in canon where someone in human morph used thought-speak, but I believe it was done by someone in a Hork-Bajir morph which is capable of speech). Jake uses thought-speak without morphing in the first book, but that was ret-conned out.
u/ketura [+2] Organizer (11 hours later)
Ax used thought-speech while in human morph all the time; in fact, he usually was the one that relayed info to Tobias on human-disguise missions.
Also, thought-speech always took a moment after speech became unintelligible, so I always imagined it was at the 50% mark or some other arbitrary percentage.
u/Strilanc [+3] (12 hours later)
Figure out what the Yeerks want, and if possible, give it to them
u/Timewinders [+3] (a day later)
It's a good solution in the short-term but what about the Yeerks who don't want to give up their species identity just to live peacefully? Forcing all Yeerks to do that could be considered genocide. I think engineering nonsapient hosts would be a better solution.
u/someonewrongonthenet [+2] (a day later)
That actually happened with the Iskoort, but the Yeerks don't know about it yet.
u/autowikiabot [+2] (a day later)
#####
######
#### Iskoort:
The Iskoort are a strange, capitalistic race that live on a distant planet on the far side of the galaxy. They are divided into castes which live in guilds and spend their lives doing only what their caste specifies. For example, salesman Iskoory sell anything they can-even memories, skin, and hair. There are even Iskoort whose sole purpose is to buy goods in order to keep the economy going.
They have torsos like an wheezing, veiny pink accordian, vulture heads, and legs that make them look like they're walking backwards. They are actually a combination of two races: the Isk and the Yoort. The Isk were artificially created, and engineered so that they cannot live without the Yoort. The Yoort were likewise modified so that they can't live without the Isk, ensuring that neither of them rebels or abuses the other. The Yoorts were a parasite race much like the Yeerks and who also feed on Kandrona Rays. They, too, took over creatures as hosts and tried to conquer the galaxy. However, after spending so long being forced to enslave others in order to be free themselves, they came up with a solution. They engineered special hosts that would be most suited to them and could not live without them. In order to be true symbiotes, they altered themselves as well, so that they and their host bodies, called the Isk, formed a single race, the Iskoort, who then built an orderly society on their new home planet. Their society is a strange mix of chaos and order, but they are very important in the fate of the galaxy. The Ellimist and Crayak wage their battle over them because in about three centuries, the Iskort and the Yeerk will meet, and the Yeerks will discover that there is an alternative to their current lifestyle.
^Parent ^commenter ^can [^toggle ^NSFW](http://www.np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=autowikiabot&subject=AutoWikibot NSFW toggle&message=%2Btoggle-nsfw+cj4y2rd) ^or [^delete](http://www.np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=autowikiabot&subject=AutoWikibot Deletion&message=%2Bdelete+cj4y2rd)^. ^Will ^also ^delete ^on ^comment ^score ^of ^-1 ^or ^less. ^| ^(FAQs) ^| ^Source Please note this bot is in testing. Any help would be greatly appreciated, even if it is just a bug report! Please checkout the source code to submit bugs.
u/TimTravel [+2] (16 hours later)
Can you morph into another of your same species? I recall that there's nothing that prevents morphing into a human in general, but I can't remember whether there's a prohibition on, say, acquiring a morph of someone important and going around in their skin.
Yes, and they do later. They just choose not to most of the time.
u/MugaSofer [+8] (6 hours later)
OK. Munchkinning powers, take one:
Firstly, everyone should have a Yeerk morph. If nothing else, you can now vet allies perfectly.
Second, there is no reason why everyone has different morphs. Everyone should have every morph. In fact, I'm reasonably sure you can acquire a creature that is, themself, an Animorph in disguise.
Thirdly, as the characters themselves figure out fairly quickly, the intelligence-gathering applications of being a fly on the wall are insanely useful.
Fourthly, you can absolutely morph an animal, cut off a limb, then demorph. Morphing cares not for your conservation of mass. In fact, the whole "you heal when you morph" thing is amazing, and there has to be Applications.
Can you morph into a plant? Clearly, the brain of the animal doesn't need to be able to support your mind, and if it can handle aliens then the biological distance should be relatively small. It wouldn't be able to move, but OTOH no brain to fight you for control.
Now, more speculatively ... how does the morphing technology deal with brains?
Andalites themselves don't fully understand how it operates, IIRC, but still: it unquestionably grabs some data from the already-trained neurons of a creature, effectively duplicating them and plugging their knowledge and instincts directly into your brain. There is simply no way you can get these things from pure DNA extrapolation.
If morphing into someone let you read their mind, that would be insanely broken, though. Enough so that I would expect the characters to have put aside their ethical qualms and used it. At a guess, those occasions when what are clearly memories and learned habits "bleed through" are closer to the sporadic memories Yeerks retain than full access to the cloned brain.
Still, this seems to have infiltration applications, ironically enough. Morph a Controller, you should pick up enough of their strongest habits and memories to at least sneak into the Yeerk pool and plant a bomb.
Also, morphing into a human ... might double your brainpower in some sense? In addition to granting telepathy, which can apparently directly alter moods, magically persuade people you are telling the truth, and do direct infodumps without requiring you to explain concepts and terms.
Villain powers:
Yeerks seem to use the host's brainpower; indeed, there's no reason to assume they're sapient in their native form- they probably evolved to parasitize fish. So the obvious rationalist thing is to find smart hosts. ** Our heroes probably can't out-think the top 0.0001% of humanity. But! Yeerks are terrible people, and their society uses Klingon Promotion. Tactician Controllers would be a great help, but you don't want your underlings to be too smart. (This is probably the main reason they lose.)
Secondly, there is no reason to engage in fist-fights with apex predators when you have guns. Sorry. Especially when those guns are super-duper ray guns that can disintegrate people.
Thirdly, do the Yeerks actually control the government? The Yeerks should already control the government - which has Implications. This should be less of a war and more of a revolution.
u/cae_jones [+7] (7 hours later)
Re: Plants - I've been assuming that the morphing technology requires animal-like cells (no cell wall, etc), but it's ability to interface with the brain is impressive enough that this seems like a bizarre limitation on reflection.
The biggest weakness in the Yeerk invasion is probably Vissor III himself. He's a lot like the sociopath CEO who stops optimizing the corporation's value as soon as he's backstabbed his way to multi million dollar bonuses. He gave himself rank when the ranks were new and poorly moderated, bullied and murdered subordinates, got lucky enough to find a passed out Andalite to infest, and clearly failed to understand why Vissor I wanted to keep the invasion of Earth more covert. Vissor III effectively lost the war single-handedly the instant he got promoted to Vissor I, since the US Military was no longer a "neutral but might be ours eventually" force.
Meanwhile, Vissor I was, in fact, actively trying to subvert the military from within, and the Counsil 13 exists primarily so no one will ever find out who the emperor is. (We learn more about the Counsil 13 in Vissor than in any other book, and what we learn is practically nothing, other than their hosts and a couple names. Another book implies that the Counsil does have rotating membership, since the Inspector fully expects to be promoted to their ranks.).
If anything, making just one of the Counsil 13 or the top Vissors smart enough to propose reforms to the power structure would go a long way to making the Yeerks more formidable opponents. Vissor III and the Inspector are powerful weapons, but horrible leaders.
u/ketura [+5] Organizer (12 hours later)
If you take a look at my top-level comment, I talk about my theory that Yeerks subconsciously incorporate the thought patterns of their hosts, which, depending on how it's revealed to the characters (including the Visser), could return Visser Three to his original methodical, patient personality that he had early on, before humans or andalites were hosts.
u/ketura [+5] Organizer (12 hours later)
Firstly, everyone should have a Yeerk morph. If nothing else, you can now vet allies perfectly.
I've always wondered what would happen in the event that a yeerk infested a morph-form. It's pretty obvious that during morphing, the yeerk goes wherever the host brain goes and so retains control (however that works), but what about a yeerk taking, say, a human-morphed Andalite? Would they have control? Would the yeerk be killed by the pressure/topological difference if he demorphed, or perhaps transported to z-space with the rest of the excess animal form? Could a human morph a human and thus keep his thoughts shielded?
In fact, I'm reasonably sure you can acquire a creature that is, themself, an Animorph in disguise.
I don't think that's right, canon-wise, but I've always thought that this limitation + not being able to acquire from dead meat was inconsistent. For instance, book 16 was entirely based around getting someone's blood to acquire from, but then in the dinosaur time-travel they couldn't acquire from the dead t-rex. Both limitations are ripe for fanfic retconning.
Thirdly, do the Yeerks actually control the government? The Yeerks should already control the government - which has Implications. This should be less of a war and more of a revolution.
I always felt like the way they went about it was about right--start at the local level, understand how human politics functions and what you can get away with, and work your way up the chain as you have enough yeerks to cover everything and once you're confident you won't screw things up ("And you may deride their projectile weapons, but a nine-millimeter bullet will kill a Hork-Bajir host body quite effectively. And Taxxons or Gedds? A Taxxon can be killed with a can opener! . . . Five billion humans, each firing a single bullet, could have missed nearly a hundred percent of the time and still wiped us out!"). Visser One's plan of a Scientology knockoff (that actually produces mental change results, as far as the humans can tell) is also a valid non-linear approach.
u/MugaSofer [+2] (19 hours later)
I've always wondered what would happen in the event that a yeerk infested a morph-form. It's pretty obvious that during morphing, the yeerk goes wherever the host brain goes and so retains control (however that works), but what about a yeerk taking, say, a human-morphed Andalite? Would they have control? Would the yeerk be killed by the pressure/topological difference if he demorphed, or perhaps transported to z-space with the rest of the excess animal form? Could a human morph a human and thus keep his thoughts shielded?
... that is interesting. I have no idea. I ... guess they would be dumped into z-space, possibly in some sort of stasis until that morph is used again.
I don't think that's right, canon-wise, but I've always thought that this limitation + not being able to acquire from dead meat was inconsistent.
I could swear at one point they captured an insect, and it was so awkward to catch and hold the thing that they ended up all acquiring it from the first one to catch it, morphed.
On the other hand, I can actually buy the dead meat thing - it's the blood I would retcon. Morphing tech has to be scanning the target for more than just DNA.
I always felt like the way they went about it was about right--start at the local level, understand how human politics functions and what you can get away with, and work your way up the chain as you have enough yeerks to cover everything and once you're confident you won't screw things up .... Visser One's plan of a Scientology knockoff (that actually produces mental change results, as far as the humans can tell) is also a valid non-linear approach.
Sure, the Evil Plan is decent, although some of the details are sketchy.
But Controllers can always act perfectly in character, so they should already have higher-ups under their command. For whenever they need funding, cover-ups, even endorsements. (They may actually have this in the books, to be fair.)
u/someonewrongonthenet [+3] (9 hours later)
Morphing ares not for your conservation of mass.
The characters question the conservation of matter bit. Ax says that the extra matter goes into Z-space, and is drawn from Z-space. He also mentions that there is theoretically a chance that the extra mass is struck by a space-ship which was travelling through Z space, and that no one is sure what happens to the morpher if that occurs. (Z-space is called on to explain a lot of the stuff in Animorphs)
morphing into a human ... might double your brainpower in some sense?
In canon, that did not occur when they morphed into humans. However, the characters did feel aspects of their human morph's personality, similar to how they felt the natural instincts of the animals they morphed into - like, when someone morphed into Rachel they kept feeling impulses to "kick butt".
I think one of them also reported an eerie sensation of "being watched" during a sentient morph, and had the sensation that they were doing something invasive, like a Yeerk - but I think it was some sort of ape or cetacean or some other non-human sentient.
Relevantly, an ant morphed into a human once. It just started screaming. Conversely, when the human gang morphed into ants, they were almost overpowered by the hive instincts.
u/ketura [+3] Organizer (12 hours later)
He also mentions that there is theoretically a chance that the extra mass is struck by a space-ship which was travelling through Z space, and that no one is sure what happens to the morpher if that occurs.
A ship did pass relatively nearby while in morph, which resulted in drawing their consciousness back into their real bodies, stuck in z-space, which eventually was gradually "corrected".
I think one of them also reported an eerie sensation of "being watched" during a sentient morph, and had the sensation that they were doing something invasive, like a Yeerk - but I think it was some sort of ape or cetacean or some other non-human sentient.
Dolphins, killer whales, and humpback whales. Don't actually remember what happened when they did chimps.
u/MugaSofer [+1] (20 hours later)
The characters question the conservation of matter bit. Ax says that the extra matter goes into Z-space, and is drawn from Z-space. He also mentions that there is theoretically a chance that the extra mass is struck by a space-ship which was travelling through Z space, and that no one is sure what happens to the morpher if that occurs. (Z-space is called on to explain a lot of the stuff in Animorphs)
Right, I meant that there doesn't seem to be a limit to how much mass you can draw on for large morphs.
In canon, that did not occur when they morphed into humans. However, the characters did feel aspects of their human morph's personality, similar to how they felt the natural instincts of the animals they morphed into - like, when someone morphed into Rachel they kept feeling impulses to "kick butt".
Hmm. I was hoping for something along the lines of a voice in your head you could collaborate with.
Relevantly, an ant morphed into a human once. It just started screaming. Conversely, when the human gang morphed into ants, they were almost overpowered by the hive instincts.
Which, come to think of it, is odd - naively, I would have assumed that larger minds would be harder to "fight" for control of the shared brain.
u/someonewrongonthenet [+1] (a day later)
It doesn't seem to be related to size or complexity - there was no such issue with flies.
u/MugaSofer [+1] (2 days later)
Indeed; and there wasn't an issue with sapient cetacean morphs either, although in fairness it was implied they were actively cooperating on some level. It seems to be uncorrelated.
u/CeruleanTresses [+3] (13 hours later)
In fact, the whole "you heal when you morph" thing is amazing, and there has to be Applications.
IIRC, they did eventually give the morphing power to a few sick/disabled kids, and the ones whose issues weren't genetic were completely healed after demorphing. I thought that was pretty cool although they could have been more ambitious with it.
u/ketura [+2] Organizer (a day later)
I feel that the David storyline did a very good job of explaining why the idea kept them cautious--I mean, they were nearly wiped out by one arrogant, mildly intelligent dumbass, and the Reserves were definitely an act of desperation.
u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (a day later)
Yeah, I like the idea I saw elsewhere in the thread of morphing Yeerk to check that your potential ally isn't a total psycho.
u/TimTravel [+1] (16 hours later)
Fourthly, you can absolutely morph an animal, cut off a limb, then demorph. Morphing ares not for your conservation of mass. In fact, the whole "you heal when you morph" thing is amazing, and there has to be Applications.
Um, ow?
I think you just get genetic instincts, but I don't remember. No, I'm wrong. There was a housecat of a family friend and they morphed it and retained its knowledge. Hm.
u/MugaSofer [+1] (19 hours later)
Yeah, ow. But still, violating mass/energy conservation is not to be sniffed at, right?
I think you just get genetic instincts, but I don't remember. No, I'm wrong. There was a housecat of a family friend and they morphed it and retained its knowledge. Hm.
Ah, I didn't read that one, but yeah, that seems to happen other times too (the dog morph in book one, notably - Jake's first morph.)
I'm pretty sure the ability to process sensory information is learned, so it would have to access more than "instinct" to function; at least, it's definitely learned in humans.
u/fortycakes [+2] (8 days later)
... An odd thought occurs. Being able to violate mass/energy conservation should have massive implications for Andalite spaceship design given that they have infinite free reaction mass.
But then again, they apparently do something involving Z-Space and handwaving to fly, so it's probably less helpful than it looks.
u/TimTravel [+1] (a day later)
True, true. Humans are less developed at birth than many other species, though. Giraffes can run within an hour of being born. It's incredible.
u/Timewinders [+3] (15 minutes later)
Wasn't the Ellimist born as a Ketran? I don't think he thought in the same way as an AI even after the intelligence enhancements, and the same goes for his enemy. I don't know how you would munchkin the morphing ability that the characters didn't in canon, where they used the stronger morphs to fight, birds and dolphins to travel, and small morphs to spy on the enemy and infiltrate things. Maybe work with Ax to figure out ways to use the Z-space principles of morphing or the morph cubes for other things? Morphing involves stowing away mass in Z-space. If they could put something large enough away, it might be possible to use it as a weapon to destroy Kandrona Ray towers and the Yeerk mothership, killing all the Yeerks on Earth from Kandrona Ray starvation. Still, I think the majority of the changes from rational fic conversion would probably be from improved strategizing on how the war is conducted. Especially earlier on, when the Animorphs were less experienced, it seemed like they were frequently risking their lives on low-yield objectives.
u/MugaSofer [+1] (5 hours later)
Wasn't the Ellimist born as a Ketran?
I honestly have no idea. I vaguely recalled that they spent time as a networked fleet of starships (?), pegged them as a ship's computer from some humanlike race gone hard-takeoff.
Still, a (friendly?) superintelligence is a superintelligence. Should still allow for the occasional SAI-related lesson, and of course it explains a lot of the setting.
u/cae_jones [+4] (6 hours later)
Ellimist was originally a human-like intelligence, but he underwent several upgrade cycles. The neural-network fleet of ships was ultimately his most powerful phase before he accidentally fell into the glitch in the universe that turned him into a full-on reality warper.
(There was also a curious sense of identity in the neural network phase. He spawned a copy of his consciousness in an Andalite body to just spend time with the Andalites and see if there was anything worth doing. Yet, as he's losing nodes to a black hole during a battle with Crayak, he's lamenting that he's losing some of his original bodyparts from his days as a Ketran. He becomes nigh-omniscient almost immediately thereafter, but it was an incredibly human sentiment for a superintelligent neural network actively defending itself from attack.)
u/cae_jones [+4] (6 hours later)
Ellimist and Crayak's ascension to godhood is apparently replicable. Then there's the little matter of the Time Matrix, which normally just moves the user to a desired destination in spacetime, but can be overloaded to create a universe to fulfill simultaneous conflicting requests. There is almost certainly a reason that the Time Matrix only appeared in the Andalite Chronicles and a Megamorphs: because the series was about kids that can turn into animals fighting alien parasites, not about people using the Time Matrix to build a battle mech out of universes in an attempt to... I dunno, overthrow one or both of our resident god-tier entities?
u/buckykat [+4] (9 hours later)
build a battle mech out of universes in an attempt to... I dunno, overthrow one or both of our resident god-tier entities?
see: title spoiler
u/cae_jones [+1] (a day later)
While I am not familiar with said series, it was the one that immediately came to mind when I wondered if such had been done before. Just what I've picked up from comments in the HPMoR discussions alone gave it most of the probability mass. :)
u/PeridexisErrant [+1] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (a day later)
Tengen Toppen Rationality 40K
I have a truly marvelous idea for this crossover, which an omake chapter is insufficiently awesome to contain
--HPMOR 64, paraphrased from memory
u/Zephyr1011 [+1] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (4 days later)
I'm unfamiliar with that series. What manner of god overthrowing does it involve?
u/buckykat [+2] (4 days later)
u/Zephyr1011 [+1] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (4 days later)
Well, you have convinced me to watch it at some point this summer
u/themiragechild [+2] (an hour later)
The books didn't really have a really morally concrete reason for not morphing humans or other sentient creatures and I think they could utilize morphing humans really well and that could do some interesting shit.
u/EndlessStrategy [+2] (16 hours later)
Frankly, It's astonishing that the Yeerks were taking so long on their invasion in the first place. Nigh-unlimited mind control should give them the power to do almost anything they want, so long as they aren't discovered.
So naturally, the obvious main goal for the Animorphs should be to reveal the Yeerk invasion ASAP. It doesn't matter how competent their little group is, a whole world fighting against the Yeerks is gonna be about a million times more effective than a mere 6 people fighting them.
The Animorphs seem at a loss for how to accomplish this for most of the book series proper, fearing whoever they tell might be a Yeerk, but a very obvious method presents itself.
Just morph into animals, then use thought-speak to tell everyone in the city about the Yeerks. When thousands of people all start getting the same phantom message, they'll start acting on it. Especially if this plan is complimented by gathered evidence, such as the location of the Yeerk Pool. The Yeerks can't cover this up, and will be revealed before long.
So were I doing a rational fanfiction, it would become an open conflict fairly quickly. Not sure how the Animorphs would fit into it once that happened.
u/MugaSofer [+3] (19 hours later)
In fairness, I think they do break the masquerade eventually.
But personally, I would be leery of triggering a war with a species with higher military tech, at least at first. They can plausibly destroy secret Yeerk bases etc. But can humanity really win an open war with the Empire? (Would the Empire be willing to nuke cities from orbit, for example, even with host bodies in there?)
Still, they should tell someone. Just, you know, make sure you tell them over the course of three days.
It's astonishing that the Yeerks were taking so long on their invasion in the first place.
I actually think their problem is that they can't convert people fast enough, amusingly. They don't have the population on site, or the infrastructure. Remember, every new Controller needs a Yeerk pool in place to check in every three days.
(Plus, you know, their stuff keeps getting smashed by elephants.)
u/ketura [+3] Organizer (a day later)
I actually think their problem is that they can't convert people fast enough, amusingly. They don't have the population on site, or the infrastructure. Remember, every new Controller needs a Yeerk pool in place to check in every three days.
Not to mention that Yeerk reproduction involves three Yeerks combining and bursting into larvae, which kills all three "parents". I always thought that was an interesting idea that was never explored much: the high-ranking Yeerks obviously won't do it willingly at all, but you can't just keep using nobodies, or you select for poor genes. I always thought that forced mating would be a good punishment for a high-ranking Yeerk such as Visser One.
u/fortycakes [+1] (8 days later)
Presumably Yeerks would have evolved a psychology such that mating was considered desirable despite the downsides.
u/EndlessStrategy [+2] (20 hours later)
Yes, they do eventually, though I don't remember the specifics that well...
Anyway, you have a point about it being dangerous to bring humanity into the war, but I think giving the Yeerks another year or two to corrupt earth's higher-ups, then have those controllers fight it out with the Andalites would be even worse.
And once it becomes clear that the Andalites aren't even coming anytime soon, waiting to reveal things even a day longer makes little sense.
Presumably constructing Yeerk pools in every location they want to infest someone takes doing, true.
But it also seems as if they have genuine difficulty infesting people in power. One book is based around them trying to get their hands on a governer running for President, which means, at the very least, that the President is beyond their reach. But you'd think that it wouldn't be too difficult to capture a number of the people working security at the white house, then use them to do the job.
u/Drazelic [+2] Dai-Gurren Brigade (2 days later)
If we consider this a plot-hole, and we want to plug it, there was a post above that mentioned that thought-speak conveyed not only the message, but the personality and beliefs of the person as well. Perhaps it'd be too much of a risk that somebody would recognize your thought-speak character profile, if you broadcasted an entire city at once.
u/EndlessStrategy [+2] (2 days later)
That's hardly supported by the series proper.
Besides, that would just mean to start getting a bit more creative. Print out a ton of flyers with the most pertinent information and drop them from the sky in bird morph, for example.
Alternatively, follow around various influential people for 3 days to confirm that they're not infested, then prove the invasion to them and let them tell the populace.
u/someonewrongonthenet [+2] (a day later)
If you could get to a certain level of giftedness (Cassie's good enough at morphing that she can actually blend species together, all the animorphs can demorph into skin-tight clothing, and once this female andalite who was a morph-dancer turned into a fully clothed human girl in order to do freaky things with Ax like making out in human form) you could potentially do a lot of a cool things. When I was reading as a kid I always wondered if you can do with weapons what you can do with clothing, but come to think of it there are tons of non-military applications.
It's funny, but almost every single thing you guys have suggested has actually been covered in the series at some point or the other - the convervation of matter, the sentient morphs, the yeerk morphs, the "vegetarian" yeerks... I guess you cover a lot of ground over so many books.
I really wouldn't have suspected Animorphs to be at rational saturation point, but...well...
btw, there's a place with information: http://animorphs.wikia.com/wiki/Morphing
u/chaosmosis [+2] and with strange aeons, even death may die (14 days later)
The Kandrona pool was always a major weakness for the Yeerks, in canon. Too centralized, frequently attacked. So that's one change that should be made.
u/TimTravel [+1] (16 hours later)
Fun fact: Yeerks infested horses once. They very much are not limited to humanoids. Anything too small is probably out though.
u/MugaSofer [+1] (19 hours later)
... huh. I recalled they needed to gene-engineer sharks to make them smart enough hosts to be vaguely effective; but I guess that might just be physical brain size. Were the horse-controllers definitely sapient while infested?
u/cae_jones [+3] (a day later)
IIRC, the sharks received some sort of brain implants, but I don't remember anything about them being used as controllers directly. Of note is that said implants stayed in the Animorphs' heads when they demorphed, without serious side-effects, but if they tried morphing anything too small, it would explode their heads.
I don't remember much about the horse-controllers in terms of intelligence. They exhibited some human-like behaviors (modesty, mockery), and they managed to use a language that could work with horse vocalizations to communicate with Vissor III (IIRC, the same languagd used with the Geds).
(Random trivia the horse episode reminded me of: the US Military did retrieve an Andalite toilet, which was presumably lost during the battle that ended with Elfangor and Ax on Earth. Nothing came of this, but the Yeerks wanted access to it anyway because they thought it might have been something more useful.)
u/ketura [+2] Organizer (a day later)
Yeah, the shark-implant not going away when morphing was a bit inconsistent with other aspects of morphing. Tight clothing works, loose clothing doesn't (until very late in the series). Yeerks forcing a host to morph works, keeping the Yeerk with the host body. But suddenly the implant, that is imbedded in the head (like a Yeerk), is non-organic (like the clothes) suddenly isn't allowed to work. Boy, I hope no one had braces or pins or anything like that.
u/Zephyr1011 [+1] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (4 days later)
From the Animorphs Wiki:
Rule 1: There is a time limit equal to two Earth hours. If one stays in morph for more than two hours, they are stuck, becoming a Nothlit. A Nothlit can never return to their original form, or morph, ever again.
Rule 2: You cannot 'acquire' a morph directly from another person's morph or acquire a morph while you are in a morph.
Rule 3: You cannot morph directly from one morph to another, you must return to your natural form first.
Rule 4: It is possible to combine the DNA of several samples from the same species, to create a new being for a morph. This is known as the Frolis Maneuver.[4]
Rule 5: 'Morphing-sickness' is a rarely documented case when a morpher is allergic to DNA they have acquired. They become nauseous, and are prone to involuntary bouts of morphing when under stress. After a certain amount of time, between a few days and a week, one 'burps' the DNA so to speak, forcing out the creature in its entirety. Through the cascading cellular regeneration, an entirely new animal is created, and expelled from the morpher's system. They are then faced with the problem of having the animal there in the first place, should this animal prove to be dangerous. This process of expelling the DNA is called hereth Illint, translating from the Andalite tongue as "burping DNA".[5]
Rule 6: When one morphs a being smaller than themselves, the extra mass is extruded into Z-space. In the rare event that a ship would pass by, they would be drawn into it and likely evaporated by the ship's force field (Also, if one was to morph a form larger than one's self, the extra mass would likely be drawn from Z-space).
Rule 7: One can morph any living multicellular animal whose DNA they have acquired. However, one cannot morph a plant, a dead animal, inanimate objects (like chairs), or bacterium.
So, some ideas from this thread such as morphing into a plant wouldn't work, if we're being loyal to canon. Although I'm unsure what applications that would have
u/MugaSofer [+2] (5 days later)
True, but those ... aren't quite rules, misleading title aside.
It's a fan-made cliffnotes on morphing, not a series of laws established by in-universe experimentation.
(Some bits actually seem to be speculation, and I could swear a couple of these have been broken once or twice.)
u/nerdguy1138 [+1] GNU Terry Pratchett (5 days later)
Tidewell. The science teacher voluntary-Controller. EXPLAIN HIM. Seriously, why would you give up autonomy over your body?
Book 29.
u/MugaSofer [+1] (5 days later)
Oh, it's not just Tidewell(!)
In the very first book, they visit the Yeerk pool and see a whole bunch of volunteers, who are allowed to sit around in comfort instead of waiting in cages while their Yeerk feeds
Also, it's implied that the Sharing pushes infestation as some sort of spiritual cure-all.
So ... hmm, I'm not sure what the explanation is, but it had better be good.