Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Fan Fiction & Art => Topic started by: JAaronWade on May 14, 2017, 11:25:15 PM
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I'm getting back into this series after a long hiatus. I recently started reading the books to my kids and one thing led to another and now I'm writing a full-scale reboot.
Here's the link to my series outline (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GpPxByp5ftx5yUOvfeG8ND1zifuXUTem98_CMLGNoTw/edit?usp=drivesdk).
It should go without saying but just to cover my bases: the series outline contains spoilers, so if you just want to read the fan fiction as I add updates, go for it. But I wrote out where I want the series to go and where and why my continuity is different.
And this is the link to #01: The Fallen (http://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/24334599). I’ll post when I've added new chapters, but the links will always bring up the most current version of the documents.
I feel it may have some pacing issues. I write better collaboratively, so feedback and suggestions are very appreciated. My Google Docs settings for these documents allow anyone to leave comments.
And feel free to check out my Tumblr (http://animorphsfanfic.tumblr.com) if you're at all interested.
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I just added Chapter 7 (http://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/24338571).
Feedback is welcome.
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Added Chapter Nine
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Woah, I seem to have forgotten to check in on this thread.
I reformatted my original chapter structure, posted Chapter Eight earlier today.
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This is fantastic. I haven't had time to read all of book 1 yet, but i read the entire outline. Count me in. As i have more time, I will read and update with my thoughts.
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I added Chapter 9.
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Chapter 12 (http://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/25603656) is up. I keep sharing the chapter links on the Facebook group, the subreddit, Tumblr, and I've even tweeted them, but I keep spacing to post on the forum. Sorry, I'll try to be more fastidious with future chapters.
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Chapter 13 (http://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/25748016) is up.
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Chapter 14 (http://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/25830789) is up.
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Finally got a chance to read this, and, just, holy crap. You've managed to change the story at all the exact right points, to make it into something completely new and all your own. I'm glad I saw the version of an Andalite you're working on as a 3D model, because the way you described Elfangor in your book, I just can't picture him any other way. He seems so much more alien, the way you've written him, and the deer-centaur concept would not have done him justice. Makes me curious about how you'll depict Ax, when they get around to meeting him. But right now I mostly just can't wait to see the Yeerk Pool OMFG. It took me a while to notice the lack of Hork-bajir and Taxxons anywhere in the story thus far, which is simultaneously weird to me for an Animorphs book and yet makes perfect sense in your story.
The only thing I was going to point out was how out-of-character you've portrayed Cassie . . . but then I got to thinking, and actually that's an improvement, too. :XD:
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The Hork-Bajir and Taxxons will appear soon.
As far as Cassie, she's intuitive, empathic, an environmentalist, and she's attuned to her emotions. I just made her more confident.
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The Hork-Bajir and Taxxons will appear soon.
. . . I probably should have seen that coming. :P Yeerk Pool, and all.
As far as Cassie, she's intuitive, empathic, an environmentalist, and she's attuned to her emotions. I just made her more confident.
Yeah, I guess you didn't actually change her that much, it's just so weird to see her and Jake in such a straightforward relationship. It still makes sense that they would be, they are sixteen and that's the age where such things accelerate much more quickly than at the tender age of twelve.
Also, I can't get the quote "Hot dildo monkeys!" out of my brain. There's a thing that original-books-Cassie would never say. :P
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Chapter 15 (http://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/25963014)
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Chapter 16 (http://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/26013900)
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Chapter 17 (http://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/26131185)
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I had some minor writer's block with Chapter 18 (http://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/26234319) and ended up taking the kids to a minor league baseball game the other night, so I'm a bit behind. Still aiming to have the next chapter on Wednesday.
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I didn't get Chapter 19 (http://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/26324487) posted till about 2:30AM, EST so I decided to wait till morning to post the link. I'm probably just going to either slide into a Thursday-Sunday schedule for awhile, and that itself may become a Friday-Monday goal by the end of the book, but I'm going to keep aiming for two chapters per week.
Ahh, the joys of killing all my free time.
Chapter Twenty is likely going to be a little late because I want to revisit my outline. I planned this as a roughly thirty-chapter novel, so I want to make sure I'm on point for the last round of chapters.
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So I'm up to over 500 views and only a handful of comments...
Hmm...
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So now I'm up to just shy of 800 hits and still no comments...
Oh well, here's Chapter 20 (http://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/26350323)...
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Chapter 21 (https://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/26350332)
Seriously, does no one comment on this forum? Has anyone posted on AO3 that hasn't posted here?
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Love it so far (around Chapter 20). I love the twists that you've thrown in, and I'm wondering if certain characters will survive the first book. Characters that didn't survive the first book in the original, but are still alive at this point. One criticism I have is that sometimes there's quotes with no name attached, and it's not always easy (for me, anyway) to tell by context who is talking.
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Trying to work on the multiple narrator thing. I get it. For the reader, it can be a bit confusing. For me, the author, it's he said, she said, constantly over and over, so it gets a bit tedious identifying the speaker and it's an easy thing for me to drop. Let me know specific areas and I can fix it.
Anyway, thanks for the feedback, sorry it took me so long.
Chapter 22 (https://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/26350305)
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I'll try and let you know, but it happens a lot. Too bad if you tried searching for quotation marks it would just assume you were specifying search parameters...
My Dad talks that way all the time (I do a bit, too), where we'll talk about things without providing any frame of reference to the audience. So it's something I notice, because I'm trying to pay attention to it myself, and I love calling my Dad out when he does it.
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Just stumbled on your story while trying to find my own fan fiction I posted, and I gotta say, I am HOOKED. Keep going please! I am interested on how it's all going to tie it. You're very good :)
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Chapter 23 (https://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/26350410)
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[spoiler]I like that Jake considers going to battle in the Yeerk pool to be a date night with Cassie.
We have a married couple in my Taekwondo class that considers class to be a date night, because they're together and they don't have their kids for the hour.[/spoiler]
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Chapter 24 (https://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/26350542)
Hey, if ever I don't respond to a comment (and I really need to check out RAF more often), hit me up on the Animorphs group on Facebook.
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Naw, I'll just assume you don't like me and take a personal offense.
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Well I guess that works too.
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Chapter 25 (http://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/26350602)
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Chapter 26 (https://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/26350644) is up.
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Whoops, missed a chapter. Great work, as always!
(Tobias should have taken two hits, not "two hit", FYI).
This is somewhere between fan fiction and reboot. I think the fact you're doing it for free is because the IP belongs to KA Applegate and/or Scholastic. If you can get the rights to the IP, then maybe you can do a reboot. Either way, I'm glad you're having fun writing it, because I'm having fun reading it.
Of course, now I want to do my own. Like, a reboot of your reboot, where once again they are older. Where Jake is an Army Ranger veteran, Cassie is his wife who is a veterinarian, Rachel is an aspiring MMA fighter, Marco is a programmer at Amazon or Microsoft (this one takes place in my neck of the woods: the Pacific Northwest), and Tobias is...uh...well I've figured out 4 out of 5. Maybe he's a Youtuber. Actually that might work.
Anyway, love your work. Keep it up!
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[spoiler]I'm really curious what's going to happen with this story. Tobias going into the facility in elephant form instead of hawk form has me wondering if he's going to get trapped as a nothlit.
When this started, I was under the assumption that Elfangor would die during the book, Tobias would be trapped, and other than the characters being older and certain words being used that weren't in the kids' version, this would end the same way the first book and first episode of the show did. Now, it's still easily possible, but I'm not so sure.
I haven't read the originals in a long time, but I like the way the battle strategy is progressing in this book. I like that the characters are taking the initiative to gather morphs specific to what they need to do. That's something they did in the original series, but mainly as a "new morph of the week" type of situation, where here it seems to be more tactical. I also am a big supporter of Marco's improvised weapon.
Overall, I'm glad we see more of Elfangor than we did in the originals. I'm not sure if he'll live or not, but I hope he does. Of course, I never want anyone to die. I'm surprised I like Game of Thrones so much. I digress. I'm curious to see if Tobias gets in trouble with his Uncle, if he makes it out. I'm curious to see if Elfangor fills in for him a bit if Tobias is trapped as a Nothlit, since Elfangor can morph him. I'm curios for Elfangor to get his own morph, and for Elfangor and/or Ax to do some of the silly stuff that Ax did when he first became human (playing with words,
gorging himself on food). I'd like to see Jake fight as an Andalite.
I'd like to see a lot, so I guess my point is, please keep writing![/spoiler]
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As I mentioned in a comment on FFN, Tobias having the elephant morph was kind of a weird accident, honestly. I was writing their trip to the zoo, and obviously a lot of the key plot points here are borrowed from #01: The Invasion, but what I never noticed about that book as a kid is that while Tobias and Cassie do go to the zoo, whatever they acquire there is never used. Tobias shows up at the school in the hawk morph he acquired from the WRC, and when Cassie morphs in the Yeerk pool, she goes to the horse she acquired from her barn. Cassie was easy, I just gave her the wolf morph. Tobias was trickier. I was really considering giving him a jaguar morph, but that idea never gained any traction. It occurred to me that while Rachel morphs an elephant in the first book, after #07: The Stranger, her default battle morph is the grizzly, and she doesn't use the elephant so much after that. So I figured if I'm going to have the bear and the wolf in the fight, between a horse and an elephant, the only one I really would miss in a fight would be the elephant.
[spoiler]As far as Tobias becoming a nothlit, yes, that's still going to happen. There's really no way for me to write this series and not have Tobias trapped as a hawk. I feel that I can change a lot and still have the series work, but some things just change too much. For example, I wanted them to be older so that I could include profanity, drugs, sex, and darker tone. But on the same token, if they were, say, college students, I don't think the dynamics would work. I really think 16 is as old as I could make them and keep the series. So Tobias is definitely still bound for his hawk fate. I just decided it didn't need to be this book. In #01: The Invasion, these kids find an alien, are given the power to morph, watch that alien die, and then spend the next three years fighting a secret guerrilla war for an alien they knew for at most half an hour. I took the mindset that for Elfangor to matter that much to them, he shouldn't just be that quick of a plot element, but rather a significant character. I wanted to build him up, give him interactions with the group, and make Elfangor matter. He has to die, you're right. That's one of those things that has to happen for the series to work. So obviously his role in this book is very inflated compared to the original series. So with as much focused on Elfangor, I felt it was the wrong title for Tobias to nothlit. They're given one damn rule, and in canon, they break it in their first mission. I think it's too much to throw on the reader. My plan is actually to keep Tobias as a human for a bit. He's still going to become a hawk, but I think it works better for the narrative that he be a full member of the team for awhile. That way not only is it tragic that he becomes a hawk, but also it is a huge loss to the team that they've lost a member.[/spoiler]
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Chapter 27 (https://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/26350677)
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[spoiler]The beauty of a reboot is it doesn't have to follow all the rules of the original. How many of the storylines in the original series are you planning to pursue?
The oatmeal line? Some of the one-off alien lines like where they get stuck in Z-Space mid-morph, the Sario rip that has Jake in two places at once (which really doesn't make sense as it's an older version of him...but whatever), the one where Jake is stuck 10 years in the future, or where Cassie is in a world without the Animorphs only to be an anomaly?
How about the Ellimist giving Tobias the ability to morph back into his Human self?[/spoiler]
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Chapter 28 (https://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/26350692) is up.
No, a reboot doesn't have to follow all the same rules, and I bent a few of the rules from the original series. When I first went through the series, flagging stories I wanted to keep, I had a maximum of 36 books. I'm probably not going to do that many, as some of those concepts are going to be combined in the longer format (the original #01 was under 40,000 words. I'm already at 109,000). I'm probably going to do about 20 books, maybe more.
My goal is to keep to two chapters every week. If I keep on that, that's about three and a half books a year. If I somehow manage to hit three chapters a week, and hold that pace, I could get to five books a year. I'm going to aim for at least three books, hope for four, and pray for five.
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Sounds like a good plan! When I wrote my first novel I had trouble sometimes, though. I'd get 15 pages one night and 15 words the next. Writers' block sucks!
Keep up the good work.
As to Chapter 28, to quote Agent Smith:
[spoiler]They're not out yet.[/spoiler]
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Chapter 29 (https://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/26350701) is up! Only one chapter left to go!
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I have a question on the rules of morphing. We see in the original books that morphing can heal surgeries (such as acquiring steers and morphing bulls), and obviously morphing can heal injuries. So, what about...
1. Scars (if morphing can bring back a bull's male parts, I think it can heal scars)
2. Piercings (would they morph with the clothes, and would the holes still be there after the morph)
3. Jewelry (such as rings)
4. Tattoos (these are older kids and it may be relevant)
5. Make-up (I guess it's close to skin-tight)
6. Hair Dye
The original Animorphs didn't mention any scars I remember, piercings weren't mentioned much either. They didn't talk about jewelry (except every once in a while Jake had a watch, which could just be an oversight), they obviously didn't have tattoos, and I don't remember them talking about makeup or hair dye.
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There was a scene in #02: The Visitor where Rachel is trying to fix her haircut through the morphing technology. In canon, she can't do it. In mine, I see absolutely no reason why she wouldn't be able to. Piercings, hair dye, circumcisions, all of that would be morphable, if the user choses to do it. For example, a scar you've had since childhood would be part of your mental image of yourself, so you wouldn't heal it unless you consciously chose to heal it.
Also, Book 1 is finished! Chapter 30 (https://archiveofourown.org/works/10937583/chapters/26350710) is up!
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I thought about it more, and I think that most of those (maybe scars, but definitely tats, makeup, piercings) could be considered to be like clothing. For example, if an animorph acquired another, would they acquire their morphing clothes, too, or would they just acquire the naked version of them?
So I think what you acquire is the naked, pure DNA of whatever you're acquiring, but when you morph, you morph into your ideal self, which includes the skintight clothes you were wearing, along with any modifications that you have chosen to make to yourself.
That's one way I can think of it, anyway.
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I enjoyed it!
I'd say I'm sad it's over, but you have Book 2 in the works! Are you planning on doing the same thing as the original run, and using a different character for #2? If so, are you doing the same order as the original, or are you shaking things up?