"You may now demorph."

[Myitt]

I just wanted to say that I completely agree with your take on the ending, kitsune.  And anijen, poor Cassie.  Ouch. XD

[estrid]

haha anijen u are awesome, +1. i wanted to do much worse than that to cassie by the end.

[zaprowsdower]

For me that line was all about finality-the story is finished, the voyage is complete, the journey is done. It was like at the end of the Lord of Rings when Sam, after the great adventure he had and all the sacrifices he made, was right back at home-completing the circle.

[Shenmue654]

Maybe our collective problem as Animorphs fans is that in our hearts, the series never really ended. They're still there, in their broken future, fighting whatever has come. I personally wish it had ended with some justice. I don't think KA Appelgate ever understood how much it meant to all of us. That it told us things that until that point we had not known with such clarity. Something about experiencing the reality of a guerilla war through the lives of children makes the concept real. Not as if it happened to us, but that it happened to old friends of ours from middle school or something. And we're just reading their long secret diaries now.

KA Appelgate assumed, I suppose, that her series couldn't possibly make that impact on people. By that line it's clear she knew it was important, but perhaps not so much. I still remember the incredible poignancy and bitterness of Visser and the thrill ride of many of the Chronicles. : )

[morfowt]

ok I didn't read all 4 pages. I barely read the first page. I never thought about it, but I guess I'm a nothlit too, but instead of stuck in a narrator's body or whatever, I'm stuck mid-morph. Part of the morph is still there, but another part has gone back to being human.

and for the record, those 4 words didn't have much impact. I didn't really think about them much outside of, "it's a common concept in the series"

[esplin]

It's one of my favorite lines in the series actually. Everytime I read it I can't help but think "not yet."
If she meant it to be all that it was I don't know, but no doubt a powerful sentiment

same here! not yet!  I always thought as a kid animorphs would never end.  I always wondered what animorphs #200 would be like. 

[franken_stein]

Okay, I wanted to address something KitsuneMarie said but it was said under a spoiler tag so I'm just going to have to bury my whole comment:

[spoiler]"I know the final conflict involving Ax is probably troubling for a lot of readers, too, but it provides a tenuous reason for the Animorphs guys to regroup (which is the best we could expect after all the understandable resentment between Tobias and Jake), and it confirms that their love for their friends is stronger than their anger towards each other."

The thing is, I really like that, EXCEPT that Cassie didn't go. I would have been a LOT more okay with the whole entire book if only that one thing had been changed. If the whole group was able to put aside their anger because "their love for their friends is stronger," then the whole group should have gone, for Ax's sake. I mean, I think I had a lot of issues with that book, but that was something that I thought was maybe one of my bigger issues...[/spoiler]

[dahud]

That single sentence was a half-brick to the soul.

[itw2009]

to summarize my own reaction:

when i first saw the title of this thread, i couldn't even remember where i'd seen those words, but they invoked a bittersweet emotion in me.

SO. obviously, now I remember, but i will say that i maybe/possibly cried a little when i read those words the first time. or even plausibly the second or third time. O___o it was, imho, a very cool way to end the series.

[powertrash]

[spoiler]Rachel's death[/spoiler] made me tear up. That line made me cry. I understand what someone meant by "not yet!" That's how I felt. I don't want to demorph. I want to be fighting the Yeerks with the Animorphs forever.

It was also the end to a big chapter of my life. It's very hard to say goodbye to a series that taught me what it meant to be human. Animorphs really defined me as a person and defined large periods of my childhood. The series ending was a hallmark that a part of my life was now over.

"You may now demorph" affects me so profoundly because I partially live in the fantasy worlds I read about. They're more bitter, truthful and poignant than reality and they mean so much to me. Having been the child (and now the child masquerading as an adult) that was constantly told to get her head out of the clouds, the line was the person(s) that created the fantasy world I lived in gently telling me it was time to leave. Like...Aslan removing me from Narnia. And in that way, it was so bittersweet because I wanted desperately to stay, but it really was time to move on.

It makes my continuing obsession with this series kind of sad, actually...like me clinging to something I can never recapture.

[itw2009]

Like...Aslan removing me from Narnia. And in that way, it was so bittersweet because I wanted desperately to stay, but it really was time to move on.

D: i really like that parallel.

[Phoenix004]

To us it felt like we were all in a conspiracy together, us and the readers.  Co-conspirators.  Us against them, whoever "them" was.  It felt like we were at the end of something transforming, something kind of intense, like a sports team at the end of the season or an army at the end of a war.  Or like we were all being crazy together.  Anyway the feeling was, "You guys have stayed with us from book #1 through book #54 and you have been incredibly loyal, we are incredibly grateful, but we understand you're going to see other writers now." 

In case any of you didn't see it, the above quote was KA's reponse to the query about what "You may now demorph" was actually supposed to mean.

[spoiler]Cassie not going with the others on the final mission doesn't feel right to a lot of people (myself included at times) but I think it was done to keep the legacy alive. The whole series was about there always being hope, and with at least one of the Animorphs still safe it kept the hope alive. It also may have been a final way of proving how much Jake cared for Cassie, even though he didn't show it the rest of the book.[/spoiler]

[AndaliteWarrior100]

I beleive that when she said this she was saying something deeper than she ment to say...Andalites may be real, may not. Hork-Bajir may be real, maybe not. Yeerks may be real, though I wish not.

[KitsuneMarie]

Interesting Have you read Terenia's fan fiction sort of about this? It's very short: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4181732/1/Walk_the_Line


In response to Applegate's answer (which I am so thrilled and grateful she provided), a series like Animorphs leaves an indelible mark on many readers. Even though we will and have been reading other books by different authors, I don't think it's entirely possible for those of us who were loyal and engaged enough to read all the way to the end to ever "demorph" from the series.

[AndaliteWarrior100]

No, I haven't read that, so I will.