maybe this has bothered you too...

[captaincommiex.livejournal.com]

i'm home for the summer, and i just started to reread the invasion. this must be the tenth time rereading this particular book, but it just occurred to me: why didn't elfangor morph into another form to save himself from dying, and then demorph to heal his andalite body of the wounds? from what i've gathered, ax (or estrid, or maybe it was aldrea, i don't remember which of the andalites) had a kafit bird morph from the andalite home world, which he had to acquire to practice morphing. he said that young andalites often acquire a kafit bird and had to pass a morphing test or something. it stands to reason that elfangor, even before his convoluted trip as described in the andalite chronicles, had at least acquired a kafit bird, if not any other animal. why didn't elfangor give the animorphs the morphing power first, then morph into a kafit bird to heal his andalite body, then in his kafit bird morph, lead the animorphs to safety away from the approaching yeerks?

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_thelady_/]

Well, first and formost I think it's because having him alive would have messed everything up for KAA. But if you need a better reason...like other said he was exhausted, physically and emotionally, thought his brother was dead, separated from his love and his son yet so close...and all that. But also, let's not forget that Visser Three was minutes behind him. If Elfangor had escaped the Visser would have searched like mad to find him and with all the Controllers on hand it wouldn't be too hard to find a bird with eight wings. Bet those kind of stick out on Earth. And the kids would have been found. I think it was a bit of assisited suicide, coupled with noble sacrifice to help his son and the others escape. How very Andalite-ish of him...

[janinedog]

I was going to suggest something like this. I've always believed that he could have escaped if he wanted to, but he died because he wanted to give the Animorphs a fighting chance. If he had escaped, Visser Three would have looked for him--and probably have found and killed the Animorphs as well. I figure that Elfangor knew that if he let Visser Three kill him, then Visser Three wouldn't think to look for other enemies, and the Animorphs would have the advantage of surprise.

I think Elfangor knew he was going to die at some point, and he figured he might as well die in a way that helped the kids that he just gave the morphing power to. I don't think he expected to be able to defeat the Yeerks on Earth by himself, and he knew that him being alive would just make the Yeerks more nervous and on-edge--making it more difficult for the Animorphs to fight.

[samantha-lowe.livejournal.com]

As much as I'd love to believe this because I'm a sucker for Elfangor-related melodrama, I'm positive it's just a plothole. I adore KAA, but creating a self-consitent narrative was never her strong suit. She tries to cop out in Andalite Chronicles with "too weak to morph, too weak to fight", but yeah, the kids have morphed out of far, far worse. Defnite KASU.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_thelady_/]

I agree. Like I said, I really think it's more of the first line there, but it's so much nicer to consider it noble sacrifice.

There were so many KASUs in the first books, weren't there? At times it seemed like the ghostwritters understood the rules of the Animorphs universe better than she did.
<.<
>.>
I hope I don't get stoned for that.

[captaincommiex.livejournal.com]

ha! about the stoning thing. i agree with you, so if you find yourself suddenly pelted by stones, know that none of them came from me.

[frameacloud]

...Your icon wins, by the way. But you knew that.

[captaincommiex.livejournal.com]

yay for discussion!

in response to all the points about how he was exhausted: many of the animorphs have been on the brink of death and survived by demorphing, such as marco as an ant in the predator and jake as a fly in the warning. with the animorphs, it seems that they always seem to summon up some will to demorph, even if it isn't a conscious desire. i don't remember who it was, or in which book, but i believe it was marco as a dolphin in #15 who was almost killed by hammerhead sharks and demorphed while he was unconscious, and (i think) cassie morphed into a whale and carried him back to shore. elfangor was strong enough to describe everything about the yeerks, give them the morphing power via the escafil device, and on p.37 of the invasion, it notes how the great elfangor "fought the pain of his wound and climbed to his feet" and actually fought visser three with his tail blade before he died. (i know there are a lot of ambiguous antecedents in there, sorry, but you know what i mean.) if he had enough strength to do all that, and with the later evidence of unconscious morphing, elfangor should have been able to morph.

if elfangor were afraid of scaring the kids with morphing, he could have morphed and demorphed inside his fighter before he came out to approach them. then, he would have been healed before he even talked to them.

and about visser three searching like crazy to find a missing elfangor, he would not necessarily know what elfangor morphed, or even what had happened. elfangor could have used his fighter's weapons to self destruct the fighter (the way the yeerks' escape pods in #5 self-destructed), so it would appear that elfangor died upon impact. since it was night, and since hork-bajir can't see very well in the dark, it would be hard to find a kafit bird or any other animal he could have morphed. controllers knew that there were people at the construction site besides elfangor, and they believed they were andalite bandits. it can be argued that visser three tried pretty hard to find the animorphs too, if visser three couldn't find the animorphs until much later, i'm sure the great mythical elfangor could have done better.

i thought about approaching this matter from the andalite custom angle. as demonstrated in #40, even if an andalite could morph to escape fatal disease, it was frowned upon by andalite culture and laws. this could apply to elfangor's situation -- perhaps he wanted to abide by andalite customs and bravely face death, instead of cowardly morphing to save his life. but then again, elfangor broke the law of seerow's kindness, so he didn't blindly obey andalite customs and laws. he would have morphed and saved himself despite this possibility of andalite cowardice because it would have given earth a greater chance of survival, just like giving humans the morphing power gave earth a greater chance of survival.

i guess i'm just going to chalk it all up to kaa's indecision or canon errors, up there with the book that said the group contained two eagles and one osprey instead of the reverse and the whole you-can-thought-speak-without-being-in-morph thing. but it's so unsatisfying to have that be the answer.

[samantha-lowe.livejournal.com]

Well, remember that he went to the construction site in order to use the Time Matrix so that he could buy himself more time, so it wasn't about being too honorable to try to evade death. Again, I say KASU.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_thelady_/]

Well, I mostly agree with you but you seem to excited at the thought of discussion.

First off, Elfangor was more than physically exhausted. Returning to Earth with the knowladge that Loren and his then-known son must have been hard on him. Then seeing the Dome carring his brother crash away toward Earth. Plus having lived through not only the battle that took place that night, but also who-knows-how-many before and all of the Ellimist's meddling. What I'm pretty much getting at is that someone who has a lot of weight on their mind can be brought down by relativly less physical pain and returning to Earth would have dredged up a lot of ghosts for Elfangor. Maybe it's not that he couldn't have morphed, but more that he just couldn't pull up the will to do it. And, yes, he did bravely fight Visser Three there at the end of his life, but it takes a great deal less courage to act brave when death is imminent than it does to live and face all the various kinds of pain in life.

the great mythical elfangor
Also, this phrase made me stop and think. Elfangor is a hero is his people's eyes, but we really don't know much about what made him one. Was it suddenly showing up after a long absense there at the end of TAC? Or was it something else he did in the nether-years that we never saw? I'm not saying Elfangor isn't a bad-ass, but my impression from TAC was that he average joe put into above-average situation and muddled through till he came out alive at the end. (It has been years since I read that book.) Then he runs away to live with Loren and returns only when the Ellimist all but forces him to. His sudden appearence would have given him noteriety and from there it's very easy to make a hero out of a slightly-better-than average soldier; nearly all of them commonly do things that can seem hero-like and gossip does the rest. I'm edging away from the angry Elfangor-lovers now...slowly...Really, I don't know; he could be Jesus, Moses, and the Easter Bunny re-incarnated, but we don't really know. Maybe he wasn't 'great mythical,' he was just a tired, injured soldier who wanted to go home.

And besides, different people cope and react differently to different situations so saying 'Well, the Animorphs could have morphed!' is a bit of a cop-out. Elfangor isn't an Animorph.

About the self-destruct...crashes and explostions look very different. If Elfangor had self-destructed his ship it would have been very evident, and then it would have been equally obvious that he'd survived. Elfangor didn't really have any Earth morphs (if he even could have kept them), and aliens would stick out. Even if one of his own people didn't catch the bird, some poor kid walking home the long way from the mall could see a eight (six?)-winged bird and freak out, thus leading the chase back to Elfangor. With Earth morphs, you only have to hide from the Yeerks. With alien morphs you have to hide from everyone.

Yeah, I'd forgotten that they did chase the kids, too. Then again, no matter how much Visser Three wanted to catch them he wasn't exactly chasing them. His people were. And the Controllers thought they'd caught and killed the only guy who knew what was going on. So what if some drunk, homeless guy or dumb kid took the wrong way home? No one would believe them if they even believed what they saw themselves and it's cold and dark and I haven't had dinner yet. Shine your flashlight around a bit so we can go and eat.

Interesting point about the Andalite customs thing. Tho you're right about Elfangor not being one to follow rules blindly, there is a bit of a difference between law and culture. After all, you're raised in your culture and someone who can easily see the fulitily of a certain law might not be able to shake deep-seated and abstract ideas like honor and bravery. So many stupid acts are commited by intelligent people in the name of 'courage.'

And, once again, yeah...KASU. The whole of the Animorphs books would have been different if Elfangor had survived.

[samantha-lowe.livejournal.com]

Slightly-better-than-average soldier? Blasphemy! Blasmphemy! Blasphemy!
By the by, does your offer to distribute DVDs still stand? If so, I'd like to get in on it. My e-mail address is slowe@wellesley.edu. Let me know?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_thelady_/]

Hey, like I said, 'Slightly-better-than-average soldier' isn't a knock on anyone. Most 'hero's are just slightly-better-than-average soldiers doing their job and accidently getting noticed for it. Then there's the heros that are just slightly-better-than-average soldiers who got put in crazy situations and said 'Ack!' until the somehow lived through it. Not many public heros are heros because they're acctually better at whatever they do than their co-workers. (This not including the slackers and sand-baggers, of course.)

Sorry, I'm not able to offer the DVDs anymore on account of my deployment. Try contacting mattris. I think he's still the one who took over.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_thelady_/]

Oops. mattiris Sorry 'bout that.

[captaincommiex.livejournal.com]

in regards to being excited about discussion, it's just that the community seems kind of dead in terms of lively debate. or maybe i'm just dorking out.

and i was reading the other comments and realized i forgot about the time matrix stuff.

i always thought that elfangor did something else after being found by the andalite fleet at the end of TAC because it seemed like the andalites revered elfangor for much more than being mysteriously alive. he must have been a good warrior.

i still love arbron more.

and by the way, "Shine your flashlight around a bit so we can go and eat."

haha, nice.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_thelady_/]

i always thought that elfangor did something else after being found by the andalite fleet at the end of TAC because it seemed like the andalites revered elfangor for much more than being mysteriously alive. he must have been a good warrior.

That would make a good fanfic, too. This thread is giving me too many plot bunnies...

[samantha-lowe.livejournal.com]

First of all, please do write those fics, and please do let me know when you're done!

Second of all, I've come up with a better retort regarding Elfangor's skill level than calling you a blasphemer ^_^ Here it is: in Visser, Edriss said that Elfangor's name was a curse because no single Andalite had done the Yeerks more damage than he. In book #1, Visser Three says "You're a legend. You shreded seven of our fighters, or was it eight by the time the battle ended?" Saying that he shreded seven or eight right after "you're a legend" implies that seven or eight is really, really impressive. It's possible that Elfangor's image was blown out of proportion by word-of mouth (so to speak) on the Andalite home world, but I think that Yeerk generals would be far less sesceptable to Andalite gossip.

Remember that in Elfangor's first battle with the Taxxons, he went into a trance and fought so well that he actually scared Arbron and Alloran. Finally, Prince Samilin, who worked with Elfangor personally, told Aximili "by the galaxy, your brother could fight!"

... so my point is, at least in canon, Elfangor is legitamately kick-ass. So there.

Also, write those fics!!!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_thelady_/]

Good point. Like I said, I'm working from memory here and it's been a while. But I then counter with the point that the ability to kick-ass doesn't necissarily mean that he's immune to emotional or mental abuse.

I'd be happy to write those fics. Tho it may take some time. Got any more canon references to what Elfangor did in those nether-years?

[samantha-lowe.livejournal.com]

He is, indeed, prone to mental and emotional abuse. However, Elfangor is kind of my personal archetype for most things awesome, so I felt the need to defend him :)
As to the nether years: he wasn't around when Ax was born, but he came to visit sometimes, they went running, and he treated Ax like an adult, which is why Ax started idolizing him. According to Samilin, Elfangor was a his captain and a war-prince (though I think KA confused herself over how Andalite ranking works)and the two were friends. In TAC, Elfangor mentioned that a z-space rift opened up between Earth and the busy centers of the galaxy, so that Earth was months instead of days away. In #33, he fights some sort of alien we don't encounter anywhere else with a figure-eight-shaped ship, crashes into it, and goes spinning through space Darth Vader-style. He angsts over Loren and Tobias a bit. And of course at some point the Ellimist accosts him to have him write that letter for DeGroot. Also, he once told Ax "it's a leader's job to be lucky". That's all that comes to mind now. Dear lord, I'm lame (because so much DID come to mind).
Anyway, please, please write those stories!!!