seminar taking longer than normal?
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# ? Sep 11, 2021 05:09 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 02:45 |
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:seminar taking longer than normal? Visser 3 absolutely uses late 90's era powerpoint, including the "applause" sound effect set to play after every word appears on screen. He considers this a technological marvel.
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# ? Sep 11, 2021 11:29 |
Visser Three is.... Jeb? If you don't clap, lose your head.
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# ? Sep 11, 2021 11:59 |
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:seminar taking longer than normal? We're doing trust falls, and it's not fun being the one who has to catch the Hork-Bajir controller.
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# ? Sep 11, 2021 16:03 |
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Chapter 5quote:As soon as we got outside the school, I managed to talk Ax through the demorph into his Andalite body. Once he was back in his own form, he stayed there. Big relief. So, the Tria gland is basically the Andalite appendix, just in much less convenient place. Also, Andalites, lower body temperature than humans, which is interesting, I guess. But given that none of them are actually brain surgeons, this seems like a pretty bad place for them to be. Chapter 6 quote:Brain surgery. Images of blood, and scalpels, and delicate tissue. I didn’t know if we could do it. But if we didn’t, Ax would die. I kind of like this, because the Chee do owe them, and after doing all the favors they did for the Chee, it's good to see they're finally asking for something back. I also, like Cassie, feel for Ax here. He's alone, mostly, on an alien planet, with a fatal condition unless he gets emergency surgery, and probably does miss his parents dreadfully right now. A lot of times, the books focus on Ax as comic relief or Ax as encyclopedia or whatever, but this is a kid who's stranded and in hiding on an alien planet in an alien society that he finds strange and disconcerting, away from his friends and family and trying to live up to the legacy of his hero brother. It's got to be hard for him. Also, for those of you who haven't read this, what's your take on the Aftran thing. Is this a trap?
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# ? Sep 12, 2021 04:26 |
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I don’t think this is a trap - but still a wild loose end. Like this would always come back to them as a threat. We know there is a yeerk trapped in Erek’s head with a mini kandora source. Do we know if that yeerk is happier than being in a pool? Or just if they are functionally in solitary? I think read this book, don’t remember what happens but seems like it may not be a bad place to end with atfran.
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# ? Sep 12, 2021 05:28 |
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Fritzler posted:We know there is a yeerk trapped in Erek’s head with a mini kandora source. Do we know if that yeerk is happier than being in a pool? Or just if they are functionally in solitary? I think read this book, don’t remember what happens but seems like it may not be a bad place to end with atfran. I'm pretty sure any Yeerk trapped in a Chee's head is functionally in solitary/sensory depravation. We know that Yeerks in the pool talk to each other, so who's this one going to talk to?
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# ? Sep 12, 2021 06:53 |
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So, I guess morphing doesn't fix this issue? Also, forget just having them hide Ax, the chee could probably fix it themselves, right?
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# ? Sep 12, 2021 06:57 |
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Epicurius posted:I'm pretty sure any Yeerk trapped in a Chee's head is functionally in solitary/sensory depravation. We know that Yeerks in the pool talk to each other, so who's this one going to talk to? Theoretically, they could create some kind of Yeerk Matrix for them to swim around in their own private Kandrona pool.
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# ? Sep 12, 2021 07:45 |
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Maybe that Yeerk is being reverse-Yeerked. Now it's living like a controller trapped in the mind of a body piloted by another and only being able watch as Erek lives his life.
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# ? Sep 12, 2021 08:02 |
more likely erek explained what's going on and the yeerk was like thank gently caress, now i'm finally in no danger from visser three and napped the gently caress out
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# ? Sep 12, 2021 08:03 |
Why not ask the Chee to brain surgery Ax while they're at it? Surely one of them must have been a xenoneurosurgeon at some point. Or is surgery too violent an action for them to perform?
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# ? Sep 12, 2021 08:17 |
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Remalle posted:Why not ask the Chee to brain surgery Ax while they're at it? Surely one of them must have been a xenoneurosurgeon at some point. Or is surgery too violent an action for them to perform? I don't think surgery would be considered a violent act, especially life saving surgery. But who knows, there may be some reason they won't do it because it would be too easy, narratively.
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# ? Sep 12, 2021 09:47 |
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Epicurius posted:<Ninety-one point three,> Ax gasped. <Of your degrees,> he added. Are they though, Marco?
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# ? Sep 12, 2021 11:03 |
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This book's morph: bacteriophages.
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# ? Sep 12, 2021 13:55 |
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e X posted:Are they though, Marco? Right?
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# ? Sep 12, 2021 14:30 |
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Chapter 7quote:Marco morphed and took to the air. The rest of us watched Ax sweat and tremble. So the idea before to have the Chee operate on Ax doesn't work because they don't know anything about modern human medicine or Andalite physiology. We do find out that among his other abilities, Erek is a Kindle. I do want to credit Marco here, Marco gets portrayed a lot as comic relief, vain, always cracking jokes, and so on, which is all true, but as we see here, he can also make logical leaps in a very practical sort of way. It's his idea to get in through the water supply, which nobody else thought of, and Marco is good at that outside the box thinking. Chapter 8 quote:An hour later Jake, Rachel, Marco, and I were treading water inside the water tower that sits in a corner of the mall parking lot, shivering in the cold water. So we have our mandatory body horror here. Also, eels are commonly used for bait. The American Eel, which lives on the Eastern Seaboard of the US is pretty commonly used. Not sure if a different species is used in the Pacific. Epicurius fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Sep 13, 2021 |
# ? Sep 13, 2021 03:19 |
Wait, your eels are a fingerlength? They're much, much bigger here. Also this is actually dumber than the water truck idea because there is no way they could see to identify the turnoffs
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# ? Sep 13, 2021 03:40 |
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I love how the Yeerks just hooked their pool up directly to the municipal water supply. I wonder if Visser 3 ever had to decapitate someone for forgetting to pay the bill.
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# ? Sep 13, 2021 04:01 |
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It kinda feels like a large copout that the Chee have both no information on Andalite physiology and no medical capability newer than the 15th century lol. I know it's obviously set up that way so that the book can happen, but it's still incredibly funny as a narrative conceit.
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# ? Sep 13, 2021 04:17 |
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:Wait, your eels are a fingerlength? They're much, much bigger here. American eels are usually around 2 feet long, although some female eels have grown up to 4 feet. The ones sold for bait, though, are usually juveniles, so they're smaller. There are other eel species in North America that grow bigger than the American eel, though. The California Moray, for instance, is, on average, about 5 feet long. Gwaihir posted:It kinda feels like a large copout that the Chee have both no information on Andalite physiology and no medical capability newer than the 15th century lol. I sort of wonder how much surgery Chee could do before their non-violence filter kicks in. Epicurius fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Sep 13, 2021 |
# ? Sep 13, 2021 04:19 |
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quote:Jake lifted his head. “Not if we started from the water tower. Then we’d go with the pressure all the way.” He started to sound a little excited. His eyes glittered. “Erek, can you tap into the city water department computers? Combine it with …” Jake sighed and wiped his mouth. “Combine it, with, um, with all you know about the Yeerk pool and … you know …” This is a weird little brain fart moment for Jake of all people to have and no one really makes any mention of it. Is he getting sick too?
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# ? Sep 13, 2021 04:23 |
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Epicurius posted:I sort of wonder how much surgery Chee could do before their non-violence filter kicks in. I think they'd be perfectly capable of competing an operation as long as they knew it would be beneficial or result in saving lives. They've demonstrated enough flexibility to their programming through other actions that could have second order effects.
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# ? Sep 13, 2021 04:28 |
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HisMajestyBOB posted:This book's morph: bacteriophages. This book's morph is actually very, very cool! But obviously don't google the cover unless you want to be spoiled on it... it's kind of weird in retrospect that so many of the books inherently had big plot spoilers on the cover. e X posted:Are they though, Marco? Yeah lol they're actually virtually nobody's degrees. Though this raises the interesting question of why hourly time is universal. We can't agree on physical measurements or annual calendars or power socket shapes, but no matter where you go in the world, a minute is always a minute and an hour is always an hour. Gwaihir posted:It kinda feels like a large copout that the Chee have both no information on Andalite physiology and no medical capability newer than the 15th century lol. Even if none of them have direct medical experience, surely they'd at least have perfectly steady robot hands, which is more than the Animorphs have. I suppose the other solution would be, if the Yeerk peace movement is legit and they decide to trust Tidwell, they could maybe get the help of a friendly Controller surgeon.
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# ? Sep 13, 2021 04:35 |
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freebooter posted:Yeah lol they're actually virtually nobody's degrees. Though this raises the interesting question of why hourly time is universal. We can't agree on physical measurements or annual calendars or power socket shapes, but no matter where you go in the world, a minute is always a minute and an hour is always an hour. During the French Revolution, they tried to introduce decimal time (10 hours in a day, 100 minutes in an hour, 100 seconds in a minute), which you won't be surprised, went nowhere.
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# ? Sep 13, 2021 04:44 |
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I'm imagining the bait shop guy having a different zany scheme every week to stop that dang hawk eating his eels then throwing his fisherman hat on the ground and jumping on it when it gets foiled.
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# ? Sep 13, 2021 08:47 |
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Chapter 9quote:Down! Cidgregor was right. Jake is sick. And if you look back, the text tells us right out that Jake isn't himself various times. All the stuff that Cassie just mentioned, she mentioned before, in the barn scene. Chapter 10 quote:<I think Jake is sick. That’s why he’s so out of it. He’s feverish.> I sent my thought-speak to Rachel, Tobias, and Marco. <And I’m afraid it may be what Ax has. If he starts having demorphing spasms -> So Tobias's idea wasn't great, in hindsight...
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# ? Sep 14, 2021 04:09 |
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What a wild ride.
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# ? Sep 14, 2021 07:45 |
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I'm imagining the poor confused firefighter that just fired five eels out of his hose.
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# ? Sep 14, 2021 16:56 |
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quote:<No. We’re not aborting the mission,> Rachel shot back. <Marco and Cassie, you can deal with Jake. Tobias and I will go on.> This is actually a sensible idea given the time pressures they're under (though I'd swap Tobias out for Cassie, since she knows Aftran). quote:<What, you’re the boss now?> Marco demanded. Even though Jake is more of the reluctant leader type, it is interesting that there's no clear second-in-command. The obvious choices to me are either Marco or Rachel, but it's equally obvious that neither would be pleased with the other having that position.
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# ? Sep 15, 2021 00:28 |
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Chapter 11quote:Through the air! Yea, it would be bad if they all got sick. Chapter 12 quote:I scrubbed my hands with hot, soapy water. Then I used my elbow to open the operating room door. So two down. Also, this is before cellphones got really common, and you can see that here.
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# ? Sep 15, 2021 04:18 |
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quote:“You ever notice how many different ways there are to say ‘throwing up’?” Marco asked as we passed Dunkin’ Donuts, the first in the row of fast food places dotting the main street running through town. “There’s vomiting, of course. Hurling. Tossing your cookies. Puking, a classic. Ralphing.” I personally despise it when I'm sick/hungover and people decide that talking about it in detail is a great topic of conversation for the present moment. I'm sure Applegate didn't think about this too deeply at the time but yamphut surely couldn't be contagious since it's a condition caused by Ax's own disease-stopping organ from filling up with earth diseases. Although I guess maybe they've just caught a regular earth flu off him? But it's funny in 2021 to consider that Ax has possibly introduced a novel alien virus to the people of earth.
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# ? Sep 15, 2021 04:33 |
Applegate again shows her incredible forward thinking by having Ax infect the gang with the rona
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# ? Sep 15, 2021 04:38 |
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:Applegate again shows her incredible forward thinking by having Ax infect the gang with the rona Where would an Andalite wear a face mask? And how would a Taxxon secure one? Tree Bucket fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Sep 15, 2021 |
# ? Sep 15, 2021 05:35 |
Tree Bucket posted:Where would an Andalite wear a face mask? Andalites still have nostrils. Taxxons would just eat their masks.
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# ? Sep 15, 2021 05:52 |
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freebooter posted:I'm sure Applegate didn't think about this too deeply at the time but yamphut surely couldn't be contagious since it's a condition caused by Ax's own disease-stopping organ from filling up with earth diseases. Although I guess maybe they've just caught a regular earth flu off him? But it's funny in 2021 to consider that Ax has possibly introduced a novel alien virus to the people of earth. So, one of the things that has come up a lot with covid is 'viral load'. I'm by no-means an expert, but as I understand it, it's the amount of virus you have in your system. Higher viral loads are associated with increased transmissibility, because you're pumping more virus particles out into the environment. (The Delta variant, for example, supposedly has viral loads orders of magnitude greater than original-flavor covid-19). So if Ax has an organ in his head that stores viruses, and it's now malfunctioning, it's possible that not only does he have a really high viral load, but also he's releasing several different flu viruses, all at once. It seems to me this would hit particularly hard, because even if you had some built-up immunity to one of the flus, there would be others that could totally blindside you.
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# ? Sep 15, 2021 20:14 |
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Wait. Being not just a different species, but coming from a completely separate genetic tradition originating on an alien planet, isn't it incredibly unlikely that his biology would be compatible with earth microorganisms in any way, let alone reciprocally infectious with humans?
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# ? Sep 15, 2021 23:42 |
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Yes, though the same critique applies to Yeerk parasitism affecting anything other than creatures evolved on the Yeerk homeworld (like the Gedd). Possible spoilery (?) answer: when the Pemalites spread life around the galaxy they used the same basic building blocs so most life is relatively compatible at a basic/chemical level. I would also assume the Ax doesn’t usually get sick from most Earth diseases, and most Earth life is immune to any pathogens he brings. But in this case his head organ has been sucking up Earth pathogens and is about to explode which would be bad, and at the same time it is leaking Earth pathogens to the rest of the Animorphs.
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# ? Sep 16, 2021 00:59 |
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There's a broad spectrum of xenobiology in sci fi, isn't there? From like Star Trek "humans can interbreed with aliens no problem" to something like KS Robinson's Aurora where exposure to an alien biosphere is quite simply fatal .
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# ? Sep 16, 2021 01:38 |
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# ? May 27, 2024 02:45 |
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Chapter 13quote:When it was finally time for lunch, I rushed straight to the cafeteria. I scanned the tables for Marco. So that's the story of Illum and Mr. Tidwell....a man suffering from the loss of his wife who found a companion, and a Yeerk who always accepted that it was its natural right to enslave and control others, who came to recognize their shared personhood and dignity. Honestly, I like the story. Chapter 14 quote:“Hey, Marco. Wait up.” I chased down the street until I caught up to him. I’d been hoping I’d find him on his way home from school. “I talked to Tidwell. Visser Three is coming back early.” And Marco's down.
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# ? Sep 16, 2021 04:11 |