You should be able to read the archived appvar into somewhere in memory and just use it that way.

Ya, I've just never written/read from an app variable before, so I'm not sure what to expect. Is there any good tutorials on how to do it, or an example so I know what it would look like?

Actually you don't have to parse the VAT yourself, there are bcalls for that. The one you are looking for is ChkFindSym.
For creating an appvar you need CreateAppVar
And for archiving / unarchiving you need Arc_Unarc

He's asking about reading an appvar from the archive without unarchiving it. So, for when you are just using it for static data.

That's exactly right. I just figured since the sprite data isn't being manipulated, just referenced, that there would be an easy way to put that data into another spot, like an app variable, and just read from it. It seemed to me that you can read archived app variables.
If this is the case, I could add a lot more sprites and map tiles.

I'll try to follow the tutorial Eeems sent me, but I thought there was a more simpler way...I thought there was a command in axe, GetCalc(PTR,FILE), that could create appvariables. I was thinking of making a separate axe program that would write all the sprite data into an appvar, then read from that separate appvar in my main zelda program...but I dont know too much about this...