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I edited the trope holding subpages (Animorphs.Tropes A To H, Animorphs.Tropes I To P and Animorphs.Tropes Q To Z) to link to each other.
Edited by SmartGirl333
Almost all of the so-called "meaningful names" are HUGE stretches.
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Yeah I noticed this... still I'd feel bad to the delete the section. I mean we don't know K.A. Applegate's intend on choosing her character's names. It's just HIGHLY unlikely that she had all that in mind.
I added to the entry before I saw this - tell me if it's more stuff that seems like a stretch.
And then everybody died. The end.
Possible Stomatopod
Oh my goodness, my blog is mentioned in the article. If you don't mind, I'm going to go dance around like a buffoon. *u*
I draws things. And I seem to be some sort of marine entity. Hide / Show Replies
Aw, and now it isn't anymore. =<
I draws things. And I seem to be some sort of marine entity.
And now it is back again. I am getting whiplash here.
I draws things. And I seem to be some sort of marine entity.
I added it, at least the original one. You're awesome, by the way.
And then everybody died. The end.
Is there a trope for Cassie & Rachel's friendship? Two people who are as diffferent from each other as could be, but are still friends? I've gone with Odd Friendship, but that might not be right.
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I think a combination of Odd Friendship and Tomboy and Girly Girl just about covers it.
And then everybody died. The end.
Tropers/{{McJeff}}
Removed the following.
Moral Event Horizon: David. Saddler. Enough said. "Flush them." Jesus Christ, man. Setting aside the fact that Jake just ordered genocide, what makes it even more disturbing is that he enjoys the helpless fear and suffering of seventeen thousand Yeerks. The years of guilt he goes through earns him some forgiveness from the reader, but not from Erek. For many readers, the Yeerk pool bombing was also over the line, as it killed hundreds of innocent people, both Controllers and otherwise, as well as thousands of defenceless, unhosted Yeerks. "If you tell the Yeerks who we are, we'll know. We have sources inside the Yeerk organisation ... Even if we were warned, we probably wouldn't last long. But some of us would last a while, you little creep. Long enough to make sure your parents... Well, use your imagination. You want a war between you and us, that's fine, we'll play that out. But if you try to sell us out to Visser Three, your little family will never get put back together again." That, dear reader, is Rachel threatening to kill David's captive parents.
The Moral Event Horizon is a line that, once crossed, there is no turning back - a character who has crossed the Moral Event Horizon is nothing more or less than an unredeemable villain. These are... not that.
The flushing of the Yeerk pool was Shoot the Dog.
Rachel threatening to kill David's parents was, at most, Kick the Dog, and probably not even that since she was bluffing.
David probably did cross the Moral Event Horizon at some point, but "David. Saddler. Enough said." isn't adequate. Figure out where he crossed and then readd it.
Russell... likes to hurt people... for PEACE. Hide / Show Replies
wasn't it pretty explicitly stated she wasnt bluffing?
Edited by dsaffgwef
You could be right, I don't have the book to reference. But assuming you are, wouldn't it still be more What the Hell, Hero? or Kick the Dog? For it to be a Moral Event Horizon, it would have had to make Rachel so detestable that we wanted her dead on the spot.
Russell... likes to hurt people... for PEACE.
the point of that discusssion was that Rachel is aware that she is losing her grasp on being nice. Remember that she was exausted at the time. If it had been about fifteen volumes later, Rachel would have done it, and not felt guilty until afterward.
Honestly, I have to disagree on the wrongness of the flushing. Those weren't, as far as I know, innocents, that was 17,000 enemy soldiers who would have practically killed 17,000 other sentient beings as a means of suiting up. It was a pool full of a species which wanted nothing more than to conquer the universe because evolution handed them the shit end of the stick. If you're in a war, and you get a chance to kill 17,000 enemy soldiers, who cannot fight back, and who would kill you without a moment's hesitation were the situations reversed, you do it. It's plain sense. 17,000 yeerks flushed, or 17,000 sentients sent back to hell?
You know, I think you're missing something entirely, Korbl. Those 17,000 some-odd Yeerks? Yeah, they were sentient. They were living, thinking, sapient creatures, mentally the equal or superior of any human. Yes, they got handed the short end of the evolution stick, but that does NOT make them any better or worse than anyone else. In fact, it could be argued that their ability to take over the bodies and brains of other creatures was their evolutionary movement. Was what Jake did right or wrong? Not trying to start a flame war or anything, but I wonder if, if a Jew who was put in one of the Nazi death camps was given a gun after being freed, if he wouldn't go start shooting up every Nazi he saw, regardless of their individual actions.
The point is, flushing the Pool ship wasn't genocide. It was a war crime, plain and simple. And, yes, it's a book primarily about war. Right and wrong, a soldier can't really afford to ask those questions.
A bit late to add, but it should also be remembered that the Yeerks have a fundamentally different society than humans do - that is, there is no separation between civilian and military, and all Yeerks are effectively military combatants - whether they want to be or not. Jake flushing the Yeerk pool is pretty explicitly a war crime, as kakatana59 points out, and this is even lampshaded by Visser One's defense attorneys, who quite sensibly point out that the only reason why Jake isn't being tried for war crimes right there with the Visser is because he's on the winning side. Just because Jake has been driven into depression by this doesn't make it any less true.
Don't forget that right after Rachel threatens that the Animorphs will kill David's parents, she then threatens to torture him with plastic fork. Although that is sort of Narm, since while it is depicted as brutal, the idea of torturing someone with a plastic eating utensil? Utterly hilarious.
Hey guys, this is my very first post on TV Tropes. I love the Animorphs, and I was reading the CMOA and I thought we should add something. Currently, it says: "Alloran has a CMOA when he begs Ax to kill him, knowing that his body will otherwise be recaptured by the Yeerks." Now, I'm not sure if this is a CMOA or just a heartwarming moment, but after Alloran is freed(permanently) from Visser 3/1 he swings with his tail, and yells: <Do you know how moved my tail? I did. I did. I did.> That's awesome.
As for the caption that I recently added, I believe several end-of-book advertisements and other promotional materials featured the phrase "Make The Change". The only example I can find online of this is in this image
◊, but I'm sure many of the old books feature this phrase or a variant thereof in those pages that can be found at the end of the book.
Would there be a trope in general for covering the edits and such of the relaunch series? (can be seen in the "Relaunch Trivia" and "Relaunch Edits and Updates" sections on this page concerning Book 1's relaunch
. Specifically, I'm referring more to the "Relaunch Edits and Updates" section. The other relaunch books have similar sections on their own pages at the Hirac Delest website) I'm thinking it would be something along the lines of Re Write or Retcon...?
Could someone with more experience with Animorphs than myself (I have only read about two thirds of the books, and that was some years ago) please investigate the validity of the examples given under "All men are perverts"? I cannot recall any of the events described there, and the only one of them I find plausible is Cassie being in a bikini at some point in the series (#15?)
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There's the cassie in a bikini issue in #24, Marco using the internet to look for "scantily clad girls" or Victoria's Secret Models in #16 and #49, and a few others scattered around there.
Flying a plane is no different from riding a bicycle; it's just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes.
Thank you. That only leaves the "Marco trying to get Cassie and Rachel to make out" part, as I've just found the Tobias quote used there in #23. :-)
Kevin Klawitter
I think we should get a Best Book Crowner, like they have for episodes of Batman The Animated Series. What do you guys think?
Flying a plane is no different from riding a bicycle; it's just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes.
MLM of color
Another Moral Event Horizon topic: These paragraphs are in question:
- Marco's Moral Event Horizon came when he planned to perfection, and executed to completion, an operation that culminated in him killing his own mother, who was then host to Visser One. The episode showcased Marco's logic and ruthlessness taken to its extreme conclusion and showed how far he was willing to go to achieve a strategic goal.
- Tobias crossed his in Megamorphs #02 when he condemned the Mercora race to extinction, citing I Did What I Had to Do in order to preserve the rise of the human race.
- Rachel's came when she threatened to kill David's parents, after which she realizes she's been deeply changed by the war.
- Similarly, Cassie's Moral Event Horizon was also brought about by the David situation, as she masterminded the plan to sentence David to a Fate Worse than Death because it was easier than killing him.
- Jake, by contrast, flushes seventeen thousand Yeerks into space during the final battle. What makes it a Moral Event Horizon is his inner monologue beforehand, in which he totally dehumanizes Yeerks, describing them as "parasites" and "subhuman" and claiming that they brought their deaths on themselves.
- In The Hork-Bajir Chronicles, Aldrea uses a Yeerk ship to blow the shit out of a makeshift Yeerk Pool, with no time given to the morality of her actions. Of course, her family's murder just pushed her past the Despair Event Horizon, so it's a little hard to blame her.
- Aldrea's ixcila crosses her own line when she refuses to release her hold on Cassie at the end of #34 and must be forced to do so.
- Even Erek King, the pacifist android, has his - in #26, he manipulates the Animorphs into going after the Howlers even after learning they are children, coldly citing the killers of his creators as beyond forgiveness.
I know this is a YMMV trope, I still think this is still Sqaure Peg Round Trope, as none of these actions (except mabye Aldrea) really push them to the point of irredeemable evilness. Plus I dislike how this trope is always mis-used.
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Firstly, my apologies for not catching this sooner. I looked for this on the YMMV discussion page.
I'm not going to copy/paste my tl;dr dissertation here because seriously, giant wall of text and you can find it on the Animorphs YMMV discussion page. I would like, however, to make a few observations.
These entries (well, half of them, as Jake, Aldrea, and Marco's Moral Event Horizon descriptions were around well before I joined the wiki) were added to prove a point - that point being the uselessness of the Moral Event Horizon in relation to Animorphs characters. When making your edits, Mega J, you pointedly never touched David or Edriss's descriptions - the implication being that the actions of these two characters made them somehow beyond forgiveness, when as you can clearly see by comparison, the Animorphs commit much worse crimes. David kills exactly one person (maybe, we never actually see him kill Saddler though it's strongly implied) and two birds. Rachel has doubtlessly killed hundreds of Hork-Bajir Controllers by herself, and Jake and Tobias have both committed mass murder numbering in the tens of thousands of kills. What Measure Is a Mook? is strongly at play here, but just the same, it is a gross case of Moral Myopia to consider David as crossing the Moral Event Horizon and not the others. You add one, you have to add them all.
The same goes for Edriss. Her kills cut the reader more because of how deeply personal they are, but ordering Jenny Lines to breathe is no worse than when the Anis starved Temrash out of Jake's head in #06, or for that matter when Jake had Chapman kidnapped and tortured by Ax in book #31 as a ploy to stall for time. She kills most of her former hosts - that's six kills, tops. Still doesn't beat half the Animorphs, and it's noteworthy that she never kills her Eva host despite it being the most sensible thing she could possibly do. Thinking about having her daughter infested wasn't meant to be a Moral Event Horizon, it's meant to highlight the fundamental differences between the Yeerk and human way of thinking, which is a major theme throughout Visser. As with David, if you condemn Edriss you by extension have to condemn the Animorphs as well because they commit similar crimes.
The whole point of all this tl;dr: there's no good and evil in Animorphs, just war and hard choices, and Moral Event Horizon can't really be applied to any Animorphs characters (except maybe Visser Three and Crayak, since one is a straight-up The Caligula and the other is portrayed as pretty much malevolence incarnate, but even Visser Three might have a logical explanation for his villainy - that being he's been driven mad, as in literally mad, with power and the Andalite arrogance that comes part and parcel with his host). But David and Edriss certainly don't commit any worse crimes than the Anis do and deciding whether or not they're irredeemable is solely on the reader.
Edited by Milbury
You've explained it well, it's just that Moral Event Horizon is the line when someone crosses it and becomes irredeemably evil, and I just can't see the main characters that way.
Fair enough. I don't see any of the characters that way, that's why I love this series so much. It's truly a work where right and wrong are subjective, and the reader decides who to support instead of having the decision shoved in their face. I was just annoyed at seeing antagonists like David and Edriss vilified while the acts of the main characters were glossed over. I'd just as soon delete all the entries, since like I said, I don't believe you can apply the Moral Event Horizon trope to Animorphs - it's an anvilicious trope better suited to more black-and-white works of fiction. But if you apply it to one character, I do believe it must be applied to all of them that it fits - and that can include even the main characters, though I will concede that a majority of readers will not see them that way, simply because they're the protagonists.
If you're okay with deleting all the Moral Event Horizon examples, let me know and I'll do it. I just don't think it's fair to single out some characters but gloss over others.
I always wondered if the Animorphs could morph plants. After all, they've morphed into insects (ants, cockroaches, etc) and invertebrates (giant squid, lobsters).
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I always thought the requirement included some kind of place to store conscious thought. Hence why nobody morphed a jellyfish, sponge, or sea squirt. Super-Rachel did morph a plantbeast at one point, but that was Crayak-influenced.
Elfangor said "the DNA of any animal" (paraphrased), but plants have DNA, and no one explicitly said they couldn't do plants. I can't see why they'd want to, though. You wouldn't be able to do anything; plants can't even decide to do things like animals can. They're just reactionary and chemical-based, I think.
Hm, might be a hell of a way to choose to go, though. You morph a plant, and your consciousness just kind of... fades away. If it doesn't, well, you should be able to morph right back. Unless the consciousness went first and you couldn't finish the morph... that'd be... unpleasant.
I'd think that if you morphed a plant, you'd die. Think about it, all of the things they've morphed into had some sort of nervous system. Electrical impulses, muscles, etc etc. I'm no expert on zoology, but that's pretty much what separates animals from plants. No, don't get started on Venus fly traps, that's an entirely different discussion.
Seriously, there's no problem with the Five-Man Band. The Hero, The Lancer and The Big Guy are uninamous (spelling) and then The Chick. Finally The Lancer could trade with The Smart Guy. Screw that. I'll use another series, i.e. Furthia High. Furthia High has a Five-Man Band, and Campy is The Smart Guy. The last character is definitely like Campy. So Ax is The Sixth Ranger, because he's from another planet.
It just bugs me: How would the morphingpower work for someone with braces or glasses? how woul the kids explain the repeated breaking of forementioned medical perscriptions?
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Well, glasses would need to be removed just like anything other article of clothing the Animorphs had that couldn't be morphed.
But point is apt for things like braces.
Braces could count as skintight clothing because it's glued to your teeth and Rachel wore earrings in #32. Maybe morphing it more than DNA. It seems to able to tell how fit someone is, how long their hair is, etc.
Wouldn't they just be able to morph back so they don't need braces? I mean it seems to cure major wounds so why couldn't morphing just realign teeth?
Again using Rachel as an example, she tried fixing a haircut using morphing, but it didn't work. So presumably, surgical or orthodontic fixes will remain, and morph with the skintight clothes. For example, that one gland Ax had removed in The Sickness probably didn't grow back.
While we're talking about braces, you might as well ask whether fillings would morph too. I personally find it hard to believe that of the five original kids, David, and all of the Auxiliary Animorphs, none of them had a single filling.
But then again, IIRC in "The Andalite Chronicles" someone said something about Andalites having a chip in their heads that was basically a universal translator, so they must have figured that out in the beta testing.
Is this a case of Aliens in Cardiff? Besides the unusual traits of having both a zoo and a mall, the place the Animorphs live isn't given much description, and pretty much every major American city is described as being 'elsewhere'...
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That's not what it's about. It's about the war and how it changes them, not their location. Their somewhere in California and their close to the beach so, no Aliens in Cardiff
I'm not sure where this goes—-I'm leaning towards either Fridge or Funny——but if Andalites kiss by touching palms with one another, then clapping must look very very strange to them.