Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: shivanfire on February 19, 2010, 03:59:57 AM
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First, a disclaimer: I love Animorphs. I love this series - so much. Some of them are in the top 10 books I have ever read - and I'm truly grateful to Katherine and Michael for bringing them into the world.
Now, however, with the discussion about Animorphs 2.0, I thought it might be a good idea to revisit K.A.'s famous post-series letter (written around 2001) to the fans. Unfortunately, I had a very negative reaction to this letter. Why? Because it contains what is (arguably) a huge lie. At the very least, it is a huge contradiction (close to the same thing).
I will prove it. This will (obviously) be marked as a spoiler:
[spoiler]
This is from K.A.'s letter (source: http://hirac-delest.issamshahid.com/database/articles/kaa_response_54.htm (http://hirac-delest.issamshahid.com/database/articles/kaa_response_54.htm))
Animorphs was always a war story. Wars don't end happily. Not ever...Here's what doesn't happen in war: there are no wondrous, climactic battles that leave the good guys standing tall and the bad guys lying in the dirt.
This claim is simply untrue - a lie. I'll give four crushing responses to this statement, from the general to the specific:
1. Animorphs is a sci-fi/fantasy story, which is a completely different genre than "war story." Animorphs is much closer to Star Wars (a sci-fi/fantasy) than Saving Private Ryan (a war story). Animorphs was never realistic, and it is not about a realistic war.
2. Around 1998, K.A. says (in response to question asking "Do you have any words of wisdom for Animorphs readers?"): Two things: I hope my books help give you respect and awe for the natural world. Animals are at least as incredible and amazing as any alien species. The other thing is that in the books, it's up to kids to save the world. In life, that's true as well.
(source: http://www.kidsreads.com/authors/au-applegate-ka.asp (http://www.kidsreads.com/authors/au-applegate-ka.asp))
Think - very carefully - about what this quote means, combined with the context of the ending (#54). This 1998 quote says it's up to kids to save the world. And yet, your reward as a kid for deciding to save the world is being killed (Rachel) or screwed up (Tobias, Jake)? What a great message to send to kids! Clearly, K.A. changed her mind about Animorphs somewhere between this 1998 interview and her 2001 letter. Animorphs was NOT always a war story (as K.A. defines it). Instead...
3. Animorphs used to be a story about hope. Think about The Invasion, or the Andalite Chronicles, or Megamorphs #1. In MM #1, the last word is literally "hope"!! Now, by "hope" I do NOT mean simplistic/cartoonish good-vs-evil fights. I mean something much deeper. The characters in the three books that I mention go through hellish nightmares (Tobias is trapped as a hawk, Elfangor actually DIES, Jake thinks that he let Marco die). And amazingly, against impossible odds, they emerge determined to keep fighting. First question - Is that realistic? Not really... but when was the last time you turned into a tiger to fight aliens? That's right. Second question - Is that stupid? NO. If you think inspiration and hope are stupid, I feel really sorry for you.
4. Another line from the 2001 letter: But I've never let Animorphs turn into just another painless video game version of war, and I wasn't going to do it at the end...And to tell you the truth I'm a little shocked that so many readers seemed to believe I'd wrap it all up with a lot of high-fiving and backslapping.
Oh please. This is what you call a "straw man" argument. No one was hoping for a comic book victory. What a lot of us WERE hoping for was something actually in the spirit of the series - like Megamorphs #1 (see the previous point), or #26 The Attack, or #4, or #13, or #6, or #7. Why were we hoping for that? Because that's what the series used to be about! It used to be about hard questions, the need to keep fighting, trust and friendship, where to draw the line, and hope in the face of darkness (and yes - sometimes, a hard-won triumph).
Let me be very clear again - I was not looking for a cartoon victory. I WOULD HAVE BEEN HAPPY WITH A DEFEAT - as long as it stayed true to the spirit of Animorphs that we all loved (again, #1 and Andalite Chronicles are perfect examples of this).
I know K.A. and Michael always cite Lord of the Rings (and how they wanted Animorphs to be more LOTR and less Star Wars), but here's the fatal flaw with that argument: unlike #54, no one finishes Return of the King feeling depressed. This is how they feel: "Wow." Lord of the Rings is not a slam-dunk victory, but it is awe-inspiring. Frodo is scarred forever - like the Animorphs, he sacrificed any chance at a normal life - but you also appreciate the world that he has saved, you appreciate Sam's ability to return to the Shire, you appreciate Aragorn's coronation as the rightful king. In Animorphs, there's none of that, even from the "successful" characters (Marco / Cassie / Ax). In LOTR, the victory is complex and comes at a great cost - but it is clearly a victory. In #54, all of that is brushed off-screen (we get one sentence of Ax being promoted), so from a reader's perspective it might as well not happen.
We care about Animorphs because we cared about the characters. So what once was a series about hard choices, the shedding of innocence, and hope amidst adversity ends with (1) an exercise in cynicism, (2) a non-ending, and (3) a note from the author to "morph out" - which I translated as "grow up."
If K.A. wrote the ending to simply "make us" realize that war is terrible - mission accomplished, I guess. But I think we already knew that starting from The Invasion. Sorry, but I have WAY too much respect for Animorphs to take the narrow message of #54 over the higher message of #1:
Until then, we fight.
[/spoiler]
So, agree? Disagree?
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Wow that's deep. I mostly agree with you .
Animorphs was more than a War story.
I was also not expecting cartoon ending of a good vs Evil fight since well it was more shades of gray.
I was not expecting a 100% victory. but i was expecting more "YAY" than what we got.
I prefer the message of HOPE rather than the WAR IS TERRIBLE message.
I can look at the news and know war is terrible but Hope is not as easily visible.
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The final message didn't satisfy me either. one of the weirdest parts is twhen she talks about relationships. She says relationships started during wartime break up during peace time, except there's no reason to think Rachel and Tobias' would end. The one that did end started before the war, and had little development during it.
She talks about how Rachel wouldn't be able to cope with peace, but then she introduces anti alien terrorists. Gee, I wonder if Rachel would have gotten involved in that perhaps. Among a list of other options.
She used the Bolivian Army ending to screw over most of the suriving Anis, but I believe most fans want them to have survived. Why? Because it's not a satisfactory way to end the series.
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Very good man, I agree. +1 for you.
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I agree. I think you've just put into words what I've felt for a long time. The ending was depressing and upsetting, true, but the most upsetting part was the death of the spirit of the series over the course of the later books.
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With the way writing works, a lot of this stuff can be reconciled.
First, on war stories: you can have a sci-fi war story. There are lots of sci-fi war stories, in fact, and a lot of people here took Animorphs as a war story from very early on. It also makes sense (and isn't unusual) for an author to claim that a story or character "always was" something that the author didn't intend from the beginning. Lots of authors have an experience of their story "growing", and, regardless, I think you could make a pretty good case from just #1 that the series was aiming for significantly darker than Star Wars.
On the message: The message that it's up to kids to save the world doesn't mean that those same kids have to live happily ever after. It remains true through the last book that it was up to kids to save the world. They go through a lot on the way, and there's a message there about determination and hope, but the books also don't pull punches and pretend that the whole thing was costless. And the kids do win - they accomplish what they set out to accomplish - and their victory is an all-in-all good thing. It's not as if there's a big reveal where it comes out that the yeerks weren't actually bad guys, and despite the "war is hell" message it's never seriously in doubt that the war the Animorphs are fighting is one worth fighting in. Finally, I note that, in fact, many readers on this forum did manage to take the "war is hell" lesson along with the "it's up to us to save the world" lesson.
I don't know about the death of the spirit of the series, as Aluminator puts it. I guess I can see it, but, at the same time, how much of your perception of the spirit of the series is due to the ghostwritten books? It's entirely plausible that KA's intent all along was to slowly have things get darker and darker over the middle books, but a lot of the ghostwritten books were of necessity rather episodic, and they had to end with things basically the same as they were when the book started. I guess I just don't buy that the ending has to be seen as nothing but an "exercise in cynicism", though from everything I've seen I'd agree that many readers could have used some more closure.
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The spirit didn't die, it changed, and evolved, and I fully respect Katherine and Michael for doing it that way. Yeah the early books were more about hard wins and moral victories and at the end of the day they usually had a discussion about their feelings and how they were glad to still be alive and together. As the series went on these instances became less and less frequent. The kids were put through a horrible ordeal and they became more and more scarred by the whole war.
And yes, it was always a war story. Your initial claim was that you would prove it wasn't, but you never actually offer any evidence to oppose this claim. Just because you say its a science fiction/fantasy story (which it is) doesn't make it any less of a war story. It can be both, and it is both. They constantly refer to themselves as a guerrilla force, they deal with tough issues of battle, they go through PTSD, they go through war.
And things didn't end so well in Lord of the Rings. Just like Animorphs it was a hard won victory. Just like Animorphs the ones who were pulled into the battle (the hobbits/animorphs) were never the same afterwards. They tried to go back to the shire but it wasn't the same, especially for Frodo who essentially sailed off just like The Rachel did.
But you made a good argument. I get that alot of people didn't like the ending and I get that you needed to say that. It sucks that this is your only post on the forum so far, hopefully you stick around.
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Just FYI, the link in the original post should be changed to http://www.hiracdelest.com/database/articles/kaa_response-full.htm
That other link and whole sub-domain will be disappearing soon, as I pay off the site's bills for the year.
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Personally, I mostly like the ending of the series, and I agree with what she said in her letter. I would have been disappointed if the series had ended with all six Animorphs, 16-ish, facing mostly mundane lives disturbed only by fame. I thought that going down fighting was just right--and Rachel's death, in particular, has always struck me as near-perfect, and I liked that the boys gave post-war life a try for three years but failed miserably and became warriors again (Marco can try to convince me all he wants, I'll never believe he was truly happy) to rescue one of their own. If anything, I just wish that they had all died together.
I mean, I have my complaints, too (I wish that they had take Cassie with them, and that there had been some resolution for Tobias and Loren, and that The One had gotten some development before #54), but those kids were guerilla fighters to the last, and I loved it.
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Actually Gotchaye, they didn't all accomplish what they set out to do. Jake lost Tom. But I guess the others did. Tobias did find a prupose in life, even though he gave up on a better life when Rachel died. Rachel and Cassie's goals were to save Humanity and the world respectively, and that got done. Marco became famous, and Ax became a Prince, although then Ax got assimilated.
I don't see why Marco wouldn't be truly happy with his life. Just because you get bored from time to time doesn't mean you're missing something. It just means you need a little vacation. If Marco isn't truly happy being a celebrity, then I guess I don't know Marco, which would be sad because he's my favorite.
And I understand that they will forever be changed, but that doesn't mean they have to die for it. That doesn't make sense.
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With the way writing works, a lot of this stuff can be reconciled.
First, on war stories: you can have a sci-fi war story. There are lots of sci-fi war stories, in fact, and a lot of people here took Animorphs as a war story from very early on. It also makes sense (and isn't unusual) for an author to claim that a story or character "always was" something that the author didn't intend from the beginning. Lots of authors have an experience of their story "growing", and, regardless, I think you could make a pretty good case from just #1 that the series was aiming for significantly darker than Star Wars.
On the message: The message that it's up to kids to save the world doesn't mean that those same kids have to live happily ever after. It remains true through the last book that it was up to kids to save the world. They go through a lot on the way, and there's a message there about determination and hope, but the books also don't pull punches and pretend that the whole thing was costless. And the kids do win - they accomplish what they set out to accomplish - and their victory is an all-in-all good thing. It's not as if there's a big reveal where it comes out that the yeerks weren't actually bad guys, and despite the "war is hell" message it's never seriously in doubt that the war the Animorphs are fighting is one worth fighting in. Finally, I note that, in fact, many readers on this forum did manage to take the "war is hell" lesson along with the "it's up to us to save the world" lesson.
I don't know about the death of the spirit of the series, as Aluminator puts it. I guess I can see it, but, at the same time, how much of your perception of the spirit of the series is due to the ghostwritten books? It's entirely plausible that KA's intent all along was to slowly have things get darker and darker over the middle books, but a lot of the ghostwritten books were of necessity rather episodic, and they had to end with things basically the same as they were when the book started. I guess I just don't buy that the ending has to be seen as nothing but an "exercise in cynicism", though from everything I've seen I'd agree that many readers could have used some more closure.
Awwww, you got to the rebuttal of the rebuttal before me. :(
What Billy said. +1
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*claps* bravo OP, bravo
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wow. i love this thread. kudos all around for some really, really good and intelligent points on both sides.
anyway. =) to answer:
DISAGREE.
[spoiler]i never "expected" anything of #54. maybe i take gullibility and open-mindedness to an extreme, but ultimately, i was never disappointed or upset by the story's "conclusion". yes, i ranted and raved when rachel died. yes, i yelled at jake and tobias and cassie in turn... but you know? i thought that the ending finished out the story appropriately.
this was a "war story and then some". i don't see how you can perceive it as being otherwise; you'd need better words than "closer to ___ than ____" to convince me.
and what on earth would you have katmike do? they mentioned all the fame and glory the group received. hell, the animorphs got a LOT. how much more epic does it get than talk shows and commercials and free cars and movies.... and a huge blurb in the history books? i mean, President of Earth? yes? we laugh at/with marco, but how much influence did the entire group have afterward? they could have taken over countries. and none of this is inferred or implied- i believe that it is all clearly stated in #54.
what katmike did was tell this LOTR-esque ending from the characters' perspectives. as they always have.
so... let's talk tolkien for a second. let's talk bilbo baggins.
the guy goes through a LOT, but the story is told in the third person- you never get a sense for how he's changed (especially not in the child-oriented book, the hobbit) except in passing. there's more of a focus on celebration and general "yee-hah" than on bilbo's internal struggles- his problems with the ring and his literal need for adventure and an adrenaline rush after the conclusion of the hobbit.
now, let's talk frodo.
not depressed, what? when frodo comes back, the guy is done. DONE. he LEAVES. he's scarred. he's depressed, and you infer it from the fact that he's not making happy babies with some other happy hobbit from down the lane. the only thing you say is "we appreciate the world he's created". why? because the story is told in the third person- "the world" is all we really hear about. none of the inner workings of the mind. i daresay tolkien purposefully left that nasty bit out in order to fabricate the impression of a beautiful ending that was truly not so beautiful for some- namely, those who were in the thick of the worst of the fight from beginning to end.
animorphs is first person. the characters (except for marco, and it's from him that we get the most "yee-hah") are focused on their problems: the problems that are so much more glaring than movie deals or autobiography signings. i mean, watching your bff die? it would weigh a bit more on YOUR mind than standing in for a car commercial. watching your friends suffer physically and mentally in the aftermath... so much more concerning than a new mansion in Hollywood. (even for marco and ax, who are most notably the least 'touchy-feel-y' of the group)
regardless of any changes to an overarching theme that you believe 'ought' to be present, i believe the book series stayed true to its plot, characters, and thematic priorities.
now, addressing things from my perspective (i.e., not yours). sorry if this treads on some feelings, but i'll be blunt:
the readers don't "deserve" anything. katmike wrote this series for themselves, not for an ephemeral audience that they will never meet. (this concept of entitlement is very Gen X/Gen Y, btw.) where katmike took the series and what they did with the characters was their call, not ours.
also, if i can speak Gen Y-ese for a moment: no one here has the right to tell katmike what to do.
and if katmike "changed their minds", so what? if you think that's wrong, then i feel sorry for you. change happens. some of us don't take it well, but we all must force ourselves to coexist with it.
katmike did not "lie" to us. to use an equally strong word: bull****.
i don't think katmike ever had much of a message to send. i don't believe they sat down and planned the book series around some deep, morally or intellectually stimulating catchphrase. i believe that katmike's reasons for doing this- whatever they are- don't need to be defended.
now, personally, i see this rebuttal- "the ending was wrong because it contradicted the majority of the rest of the series 'in spirit'"- as the manifestation of a deeper, petulant rebellion against something that just doesn't sit well with you. you don't like it, so you look for something to blame. it honestly sounds like it's something that's been festering in your mind for a long time... and, although it was well-worded and presented in an organized and well-thought out manner, it reads of a little BS to me. like... a little exaggeration. it's a little too far-fetched.
i could be wrong. *shrug*
but think about it? i really see this kinda violently negative reaction to the end of a fictitious book series as being flat out over-the-top.[/spoiler]
and again, just to reassure people, i know your feelings are all totally valid. frustration, disappointment... yeah. i get it. i still love all of you. ;)
(and thanks for the mental stimulation. xD i like that most about this thread.)
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Thank you itw. I agree with all of your points. I did not think the ending violated the spirit of the previous books at all.
I love the ending! TEAM ENDING! ~makes t-shirts~
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Thank you itw. I agree with all of your points. I did not think the ending violated the spirit of the previous books at all.
I love the ending! TEAM ENDING! ~makes t-shirts~
oh really? what about cassie? some team ending, ka's freaking pet gets to live but none of the other characters? thats awesome, and my favorite gets to die first and without a doubt. Team was missing 3 members when they went out
Everyone hated book #54 because we didn't have that complete, happy, everything's-good-now, ending, but for us the last thing we wanted was some artificial closure. (We both hate that word by the way.) So we decided that some, like Marco, would come through it all just fine, and some like Cassie would actually find a positive meaning from it. But others, like Tobias and Jake would sort of never get past it. And one would be dead.
Doing all that in 160 pages we didn't have much room to address everything.
i also wanna say thats not why for me, its the totally new plot line with the kelbrid and what i mentioned above XD
although some closer would be nice :[ i spent my childhood on this and it makes me mad, to the people who like the ending, congrats, you get to be content with animorphs. The rest of us were disappointed and hurt even.
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I agree with all the points the OP made. Excellent job. I hated the ending. I didn't read the series to read about the realism of war. I read the series to read about hope and winning in the end. By the end, the little pet Cassie got practically everything she wanted and got to be proven 'right' while everyone else got crapped on. Yay?
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Thank you itw. I agree with all of your points. I did not think the ending violated the spirit of the previous books at all.
I love the ending! TEAM ENDING! ~makes t-shirts~
oh really? what about cassie? some team ending, ka's freaking pet gets to live but none of the other characters? thats awesome, and my favorite gets to die first and without a doubt. Team was missing 3 members when they went out
Everyone hated book #54 because we didn't have that complete, happy, everything's-good-now, ending, but for us the last thing we wanted was some artificial closure. (We both hate that word by the way.) So we decided that some, like Marco, would come through it all just fine, and some like Cassie would actually find a positive meaning from it. But others, like Tobias and Jake would sort of never get past it. And one would be dead.
Doing all that in 160 pages we didn't have much room to address everything.
i also wanna say thats not why for me, its the totally new plot line with the kelbrid and what i mentioned above XD
although some closer would be nice :[ i spent my childhood on this and it makes me mad, to the people who like the ending, congrats, you get to be content with animorphs. The rest of us were disappointed and hurt even.
I was mostly joking about that last part, in case you couldn't tell...
I'm not saying it was a perfect ending. I just find it interesting that there is so much division over this one issue.
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i know you were joking but people seem to use that a key point of why it was good, and i beg to differ is all.
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it does seem strange that others didn't die sooner, though.
sure, she wanted a 'war is costly' message, but what would the odds that they would get through all those previous situations unscathed?
even with all the deaths and sacrifices, i would have really liked to see #54 a lot longer. like chronicle long.
it felt very rushed, barely skimming through multiple subjects (which i felt were very important).
the closing statement felt like salt in a wound when she mentioned remnants.
i know it wasn't supposed to mean anything like that, but i felt like she was brushing past the series and moving on.
i wasn't ready. with that ending, i was not ready. :'(
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I had no problem with anything that was written in the last book. The only problem I had with the ending of Animorphs is that it didn't end. It was a cliffhanger.
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All of these replies are thoughtful arguments, and fascinating to read – some of the best defenses of #54 that I’ve ever seen. Let me list some of my initial thoughts in reply to what some of you have said.
Gotchaye: First, on war stories: you can have a sci-fi war story. There are lots of sci-fi war stories, in fact, and a lot of people here took Animorphs as a war story from very early on.
Duff: Your initial claim was that you would prove it wasn't, but you never actually offer any evidence to oppose this claim. Just because you say its a science fiction/fantasy story (which it is) doesn't make it any less of a war story. It can be both, and it is both
I completely agree. In some sense, Animorphs is a war story. But in some sense, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are war stories. What I meant, to be more specific, was that Animorphs was not a “realistic” war story, in the sense that the Animorphs survive odds that are literally impossible. For one example, the Yeerks fire their Dracon beams on the Animorphs thousands of times but they always miss, just like the bad guys in Star Wars (Marco even makes fun of this in #7). In a “realistic war story,” this would never happen, but it is a well-known trope of fantasy (unrealistic) war stories.
Another example, which is devastating to K.A.’s 2001 letter, is this fact (as noted above by goom): For the first 53 books, no Animorph ever dies. Again: For the first 53 books, no Animorph ever dies. This is incredibly unrealistic – and it means that Animorphs is not a realistic war. So to kill an Animorph in #54 and then justify it by saying “in real wars, people die” is an unsupportable argument. Yet that is precisely the argument that K.A. makes.
Gotchaye: It also makes sense (and isn't unusual) for an author to claim that a story or character "always was" something that the author didn't intend from the beginning.
This is exactly the point I am making. K.A. claimed something that wasn’t true.
Gotchaye: I don't know about the death of the spirit of the series, as Aluminator puts it. I guess I can see it, but, at the same time, how much of your perception of the spirit of the series is due to the ghostwritten books?
By the spirit of the series, I mean the books #1-#26 (add in Megamorphs #1 and #2, AC and HBC, etc) – not the ghostwritten books.
Gotchaye: Finally, I note that, in fact, many readers on this forum did manage to take the "war is hell" lesson along with the "it's up to us to save the world" lesson… I guess I just don't buy that the ending has to be seen as nothing but an "exercise in cynicism"
I suppose the point that I am making is that by #54, the “war is hell” message completely overpowered the “it’s up to us to save the world” message, and I think that was really weak. Previously, we had seen K.A. do both very well.
Duff: The spirit didn't die, it changed, and evolved
It evolved to the point where it was not the same. The message you get from #1-#26 is completely different from the message you get from #54.
itw2009: i daresay tolkien purposefully left that nasty bit out in order to fabricate the impression of a beautiful ending that was truly not so beautiful for some
Yes, the ending was very bittersweet for Frodo (although bittersweet and death are different things [but it's also true that the Grey Havens are an allegory for heaven]). And Frodo's scars help make the story truly great. Still, LOTR has very important counterbalances to Frodo (see below).
Duff: And things didn't end so well in Lord of the Rings. Just like Animorphs it was a hard won victory. Just like Animorphs the ones who were pulled into the battle (the hobbits/animorphs) were never the same afterwards. They tried to go back to the shire but it wasn't the same, especially for Frodo who essentially sailed off just like The Rachel did.
You have it backwards. The hobbits do thrive afterwards - Frodo was the (very important) exception. From Wikipedia: “ Aragorn is crowned King of Gondor outside the walls of Minas Tirith in a celebration during which all four hobbits are greatly honoured … Aragorn marries Arwen… Over time the Shire is healed. The many trees that Saruman's men cut down are replanted; buildings are rebuilt and peace is restored. Sam marries Rosie Cotton, with whom he had been entranced for some time. Merry and Pippin lead Buckland and Tuckborough to greater achievements. Frodo, however, cannot escape the pain of his wounds.”
The Animorphs equivalent would be: Rachel dies, but Jake becomes President of the United States and marries Cassie. (I’m joking, of course. But we see the proportions are completely out of whack in Animorphs. In LOTR, major couples survive the war and are happy – in Animorphs, no couple survives, and only 1 is happy. This completely changes the message of the story.)
KleenexCow: I would have been disappointed if the series had ended with all six Animorphs, 16-ish, facing mostly mundane lives disturbed only by fame.
So would I. But there are more than two ways to end a series.
I wish that they had take Cassie with them, and that there had been some resolution for Tobias and Loren, and that The One had gotten some development before #54
All agreed. Let me propose some endings that I would have vastly preferred to #54:
1. All the Animorphs die in a blaze of glory (yes, I’m serious) . What irked me about Rachel is not that she died, but that she died for a stupid reason (this is a whole separate discussion, but there is no reason that one of the auxiliary Animorphs couldn’t go with Rachel and thus avert her death. Or Ax could have gone with Rachel as well – there is no way that Erek wouldn’t render Ax’s computer knowledge redundant. Sending Rachel alone only made sense as a cheap and easy way to create drama)
2. One couple remains intact (this would have been much more in-line with Lord of the Rings) and one is destroyed
3. The One / Kelbrid (which K.A. obviously pulled out of NOWHERE) have been slowly developed in the previous 10-20 books. (No matter how you slice it, the original ending was simply lazy storywriting.)
4. There is an Andalite conspiracy, and the Animorphs get into an inter-Andalite war (a la #18). This sets the stage for Animorphs 2.0 which takes place on various non-Earth planets.
5. The Yeerks are only defeated on Earth, and the Animorphs are conscripted by the Andalites to fight the Yeerks on other planets.
As I’ve said, my overall problem is not that #54 had dark things happen. As I’ve listed above, there are many, many ways to end the series darkly - with a purposeful sacrifice (i.e. the Animorphs’ deaths) or by slipping right into another war - that would NOT turn into a depressing and honestly not-very-interesting “war is hell, war is hell, war is hell, war is hell” message with a tacked-on cliffhanger.
I think you could make a pretty good case from just #1 that the series was aiming for significantly darker than Star Wars.
If you mean just the original Star Wars (A New Hope), then I agree. But Empire Strikes Back is exactly as dark as the darkest of #1-#26. It is that rich kind of darkness that I appreciate – a battle against impossible odds, where you aren’t just worried that you’ll die, but that you’ll turn into the very monsters you are fighting – and yet nevertheless leaves you with some sense of resolve. At the end of Empire, everything has gone wrong, everyone has nearly died – but there is still hope.
itw2009: the readers don't "deserve" anything
Never said they did.
itw2009: no one here has the right to tell katmike what to do.
No one is telling them what to do. It’s only because we care about Animorphs so much that people reacted so strongly to its ending.
itw2009: change happens. some of us don't take it well, but we all must force ourselves to coexist with it.
Sure it does. But just because something has changed does not mean we are forced to like it.
itw2009: i don't think katmike ever had much of a message to send
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. Maybe you thought Animorphs had no message, but a lot of us did.
itw2009: katmike did not "lie" to us. to use an equally strong word: bull****…. i believe the book series stayed true to its plot, characters, and thematic priorities.
You’ve given no evidence for that position. Even the others who liked #54 agree that it was a large shift. All you’ve really said is:
and if katmike "changed their minds", so what?
And that is a perfectly valid position to take. My point was that they DID change their minds, in a huge way... and then said that they didn't, that Animorphs had always been a "realistic war" - as I said above, that can't be true.
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For the first 53 books, no Animorph ever dies. Again: For the first 53 books, no Animorph ever dies.
lol well that's not entirely true. Jake died twice, and Marco died once too I think.
But your point remains. Actually, the fact that people could die and come back to life so much might prove it even more.
I really have nothing else to say but I want to be in this conversation so my thing gets updated :)
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I think that those of us who were disappointed believe they WERE supposed to earn the victory, but they should have actually gotten the victory. I don't mean they stop the yeerks but lose absolutely everything they care about in the process. I mean a victory. I didn't need a cartoon victory either, but I also didn't need an ending that was that harsh.
I think what it comes down to is the message seems to go...
Books 1-53: Fight for what you need to and stand up for hope.
Book 54: By the way, if you do what we just told you to do, you'll suffer and die.
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Very true. Three of them never got a victory that they could enjoy, and two of them lost what they gained. Marco became famous and Ax got to be a Prince, but then Ax got assimilated and Marco ran off to ram the bladeship. Rachel died and what did Jake and Tobias get?
Yes the world is saved, but it could have been saved by anything. The andalites could have decided to save it instead of quarantining it. The YPM could have started an active rebellion and overthrown Visser Three somehow. The world being saved comes second to my desire to see the Anis come out stronger for all they've been through. That didn't happen for the most part.
I'd like to ask KA why she decided to have Cassie stay behind and all, but Richard hasn't posted the questions I already sent him to post as far as I've seen. Unless I missed them.
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itw2009: i don't think katmike ever had much of a message to send
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. Maybe you thought Animorphs had no message, but a lot of us did.
When ANIMORPHS hit the Publishers Weekly bestseller list we thought, "Hmmm. . ." And then we started seeing very large royalty checks and that was definitely very cool. But we're both wary and always waiting for the next shoe to drop. We're also sort of self-deprecating about our work, we really try never to take ourselves seriously, so our attitude was always, "Yeah, we sold a million books, but RL Stine was much bigger than we'll ever be." Because of that character trait (or mental weirdness) it didn't occur to us that anyone was even getting the sort of moral, philosophical, political substructure of ANIMORPHS. We wrote the "deeper" stuff for each other's amusement and out of a sort of vague feeling of moral obligation -- and mostly just because it worked for the story. But we figured maybe 1 reader out of a 1000 was paying attention to anything beyond Tseeew Tseeew!
So it's only been recently that we've come to accept that we had any lasting impact on readers.
My point in using this quote is to say that yes, AppleGrant had a message to send, but it was not initially for the readers. If writer's wrote to please their audience they would be stuck in a never-ending rut of 'will this piss them off?' It's impossible. While I am not a particular fan of certain parts of the ending (specifically the introduction of new characters in the last three-fourths of the book) I think that this is a fact you have to recognize. Whatever message AppleGrant wanted to portray, the message was ultimately for themselves, not for their readers, and even though you don't like it you have to accept it.
I think that itw is entirely correct in the fact that many readers these days have a sense of entitlement in regards to book series (or movies or tv shows). They feel that the writer has to appease them, and appease the investment that they make by reading/watching the author's work. This simply is not how writing works. If every time I wrote a new story I tried to twist it so that my readers got the ending they wanted I would spend half of my life agonizing over endings.
Shivan, you give some excellent examples of other ways the series could have ended, and I do agree that some of them would have maintained the "war is hell" message without the slapped-on cliffhanger. However, AppleGrant chose not to end it that way, and that was their decision and I have to respect that, even if I do not like it.
In my opinion, the ending of #54 will never stand up to the ending of HBC or TAC in my mind, which left a message of undying hope in the face of unprecedented horrors. That does not mean, though, that it was unfaithful to the "message" of the series, because the message of the series is whatever AppleGrant wants it to be. :P
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Hey guys, I'm new to this forum. I have been an avid animorphs fan for awhile now, and I just reread the series recently. I just wanted to say that I agreed with a lot of the points already brought up in this thread. The ending left sort of a sour taste in my mouth. I was fine with most of what she did with the characters and Rachel's death, but I hated the last mission and the cliffhanger.
I know she mentioned that she had a page/space limit, and I really think she could have used the pages wasted on the final ending to delve more into the other issues that were missing...i.e. what happened with the auxillary animorphs, the lasting effects on human controllers, etc. I felt like the entire ending was super rushed with not enough of a conclusion developed after the end of the war.
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I've been watching this discussion since it started, and I saw a few things that I felt I had to respond to.
1. All the Animorphs die in a blaze of glory (yes, I’m serious) . What irked me about Rachel is not that she died, but that she died for a stupid reason (this is a whole separate discussion, but there is no reason that one of the auxiliary Animorphs couldn’t go with Rachel and thus avert her death. Or Ax could have gone with Rachel as well – there is no way that Erek wouldn’t render Ax’s computer knowledge redundant. Sending Rachel alone only made sense as a cheap and easy way to create drama)
You seriously think that if just one person went with Rachel, they would have been able to fight off an entire Blade Ship full of morph-capable controllers? The only thing that would have changed is that there would have been another corpse in the Blade Ship's bridge, and they might have been able to damage the ship a little more.
4. There is an Andalite conspiracy, and the Animorphs get into an inter-Andalite war (a la #18). This sets the stage for Animorphs 2.0 which takes place on various non-Earth planets.
Animorphs 2.0 wasn't discussed until about 8 years after the series ended. The ending couldn't have "set the stage" for Animorphs 2.0 (if that ever happens) because it wasn't planned at the time. I have my own issues with the cliffhanger ending, but it was never supposed to set up anything.
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I don't think the problem is the cliffhanger ending. For example, Angel's (why do I always make BtVS/AtS analogies?) last episode was a cliffhanger, with all the characters walking into what was pretty much certain death if they weren't already dead. Yet it was beautiful, because the plot had been set up (albeit quickly) previously and it all flowed.
The problem is that 54 is really two endings meshed together. The war ends and we get a VERY unsatisfactory recap of how our heroes have been living. The war ends and then it's ONE YEAR LATER. No. I wanted those petty details, like Jake reuniting with his family, Loren, the auxiliary Anis, Rachel's family & her father etc. And instead of getting a little bit more of that, the book goes into a very off-the-wall plot that has no foreshadowing. The Anis die (probably) fighting, which is a nice touch, but would have been nicer if they were all together and maybe the plot kind of followed.
The main problem seems to be, to me, that we didn't get the resolution to the war that we wanted and then we were plunged into another fight. So it's just stuck together and unsatisfying, even though I would have been okay with the Anis dying fighting...but not LIKE THAT. Or them living bad, unsatisfying lives on earth...but with more DETAIL.
I like to pretend it ended right before the Kelbird stuff.
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shivanfire. my mind (being what it is), jumped into psychoanalyzing your underlying motives and did not directly address your problem, which clearly isn't helping you. my apologies. i have whole pages devoted to trying to convince you of your motives for writing this thread, but i will only send them to you if you want them. for your sake, i'll approach this differently.
from what i get from your posts, the conclusion of your ENTIRE spiel (including "i hate the ending", blabla) is:
"katmike wrote things one way, then told us that they didn't write them that way, and i don't like it."
first.
okay. you have serious issues with inconsistency. i get it. (to you, this takes priority even above how awful you think the ending is in and of itself, without any "lying" defense on katmike's part.)
the biggest life-problem you're going to have is also accepting the fact that people are human. they are inconsistent as a rule. they can make mistakes; they aren't perfect.
that being said, katmike didn't make any mistakes- not unless they say it was a mistake. let me give you an analogy:
you paint something. you suddenly, drastically change your painting style at the end- say 3/4 of your painting is davinci and the last 1/4 is picasso. let's say NO ONE likes that last 1/4 (or the fact that you have two very different styles on one canvas).
so what? it's your painting. if you want one quadrant of your painting to be disproportionate angles and arcs and glaring, primary colors, well? your call. i won't judge. i won't start some complaint thread about how inconsistent you were. about how you started this gorgeous davinci-like piece and that, until your picasso style came in, it looked pretty awesome. if you defend yourself by saying that your painting was ultimately consistent, i'm not going to call you a liar.
second.
katmike weren't lying. if anything, they were giving us their take on the progression of the series, redundantly, from their perspective. which, if it was honestly their take on the series, can't be deliberately misleading or incorrect.
here's the truth: you and they think differently about things. you infer different definitions of different words, you associate different experiences with different phrases. what you say is "weak", they say is "strong". what you say is inconsistent, they say is consistent. you and they also have different priorities, different resources, different motivations, different goals. this shaped the way katmike wrote the response that you found so offensive. how can you call it LYING? they were not deliberately misleading you. they weren't trying to be sneaky and defend something they secretly think is wrong.
and since you did not experience the writing of the series, you can't prove otherwise. given any setbacks katmike may have experienced, yes, the series is 'consistent' until they say otherwise. unfortunately, they wrote the series and so by default, you become the liar and they the source of all truth. if they say tobias has his own alien kids on another planet... well, you choose to take their word for it or prepare to suffer the consequences. you can say "ho, no wayz; that's impossible", but then who is lying? you.
as for those of you whose first addressed priority is "i didn't like the ending" (those who are taking this thread off-topic):
tough luck. terenia, imho, answered that concern eloquently and efficiently (and kindly, haha). i actually don't care about whether or not any of you like the ending; we can agree to disagree on that and i am fine with it. i am only addressing those who have the gall to attack katmike for the choices that they legitimately made. these are the people who believe that they have factual evidence of how bad the ending is ("we needed details", "we needed closure", "we wanted...").
in fiction, there are no facts except the ones the authors create or choose to use. if the authors are inconsistent, they are STILL right until they say otherwise. welcome to author-world, where authors are lords and the audience are laymen.
now, just because two people have brought up (out of context, which kinda irks me) my "katmike had no message at all, ever, and never ever considered one" comment:
itw2009: i don't think katmike ever had much of a message to send
if none of you have noticed, i'm a few IQ points better than that. i also used the words "much of a", implying that there was one, but that it wasn't much.
everything has a message- every sensory input we humans receive is coupled with a brain reaction equating to a message. often, most of these messages are unintentional or merely implied. for example, everything i'm writing here is sending a message about who i am as a person, what my priorities are and what i believe in. ditto for katmike. every word they wrote sent messages about their characters, their plot- and about who they are as authors. what their priorities are.
anyway. to help some people out, i'll explain that sentence in more detail.
i doubt very much that katmike started the series with a catchphrase message. now, i could see "hope" as potentially being very loosely what they used to originally sell the series to scholastic, but i bet they knew beforehand that they'd allow the message to change IF certain things happened as they wrote the series. i would bet a lot of money that they were willing to be open-minded about potential changes to the plot, the characters, and their 'message'.
i know that they didn't create a message and make it their first priority to plan the entire series around it. that's pretty difficult for a lot of people to accomplish- even more so for authors who are pounding out a book a month and when the number of books you'd originally planned to write keeps increasing. imho, the books would have been boring as hell if katmike were always forced to finish each book with a "hope" message. i would have considered not reading the series.
now, katmike chose their message. then they chose to change it and then they chose to defend it. you chose not to like it. ultimately, i think the three of you are even. no hard feelings on either side. no discussion necessary, unless you really need to continue to get your opinion off your chest.
as one last point: animorphs is not lord of the rings. it isn't supposed to be LOTR. that would be boring and lawsuit-worthy.
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okay I know I said I didn't have anything else to say but now I do.
I'm not sure I like this talk about authors being the "gods" of their universes and readers being the oppressed populous. I've heard this a lot and it's never really sat well for me for a few reasons.
1) Art is not a dictatorship. It's a feedback loop between creators and consumers. There's a reason that criticism is a profession, and that some people make a great deal of money doing it. If art was creation without meditation, the vast majority of what is available would be complete trash. Most of it is, but there's a reason that professionals are there to tell us what movies, TV, books, and art to take the time to view.
The fact that you guys are saying that we, as readers, have no right to question or critique or try to understand the choices the authors made is kind of irking me a little.
2) Yes, authors can write whatever they want, and we can whine and moan about it as much as we want, and nothing is going to change. At least, I think that's how it used to be. I think the internet has done a lot to breach the divide between writer and reader, like what's happening with a lot of TV shows, but whatever that's an issue for another time! The point is, authors have the right to write whatever they want, and we have the right not to buy it.
I think part of the pain of the...perceived inadequacy? (lol I'm trying to be objective here which is really an exercise in futility b/c I have my own opinions) of the ending is that we, as readers, ALREADY devoted all of this time and money to the series, so there was a sense that we were cheated of the quality we felt we'd already paid for. There are some logical fallacies with that assumption--what about the quality we received AS WE WERE READING THE SERIES?--but I guess, idk, there was this feeling like there was no way to express our discontent since it was the end. The feedback loop had been cut off. So we were all just kind of sitting, broiling with all of this malcontent while Applegrant went off to form a whole new fanbase with Remnants.
I guess my point is, I get the anger, and I also get the diplomacy. I understand that people were turned off by the cynicism in the last book, by the rushed pace, by the lingering unresolved plotlines. I don't believe it was entirely without merit--I myself kind of liked the dark turn the series took right at the end, but I believe it happened too late to really explore the character arcs spawned by it--but saying that "that's the way the authors wrote it so that's what we have to accept" is kind of bulldiddy to me. As readers, if we didn't question and scrutinize every decision made by the authors, then we're just mindless income streams and as much as publishers would probably like that, I think art as a whole will suffer for it.
So feel free to disagree with the OP about their feelings about the end, but don't cut off their opinions just because we have no right to question or dictate how the series should be.
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Jen, I'm not trying to say that writer's are gods and readers are the mere mortals relishing in their every written word. What I was trying to get across was the fact that if you are a writer you can take into consideration what the readers want, you can accept their criticism and apply it to your work, but in the end you are still in control of your own masterpiece. The readers don't HAVE to like it, and by no means do I think they are required to. In fact alternate ending fanfics are some of the most popular, and I think that's great. Think you can do it better? Go ahead, try. In the end, though, whatever the writer puts to paper is canon and that's that.
As a reader, I expect to be allowed to voice my opinion. At the same time, I don't expect it to have too much of an impact. As a writer, I look forward to feedback and criticism from my readers, but I don't always follow every suggestion that my readers make.
It's a balancing act, but I think that itw is correct in saying that you cannot accuse the author of LYING to us. They stood by what they believed was true of the series and, since they wrote it, how could they be lying? They were not trying to deceive us in any way.
Whether you agree with the ending, or with their final message, is a different story. After all, we are all entitled to our own opinions.
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well if it's come down to arguing about semantics, then that's where I lose interest lol. I just think the OP has every right to say that the ending wasn't in the spirit of the story if that's how they feel. Authors may be in charge of canon, but we're in charge of interpreting it. There are at least 10 religions that all use the Bible as their main text, after all.
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There are at least 10 religions that all use the Bible as their main text, after all.
true but not everyone has the ability to talk to the person that wrote it :P
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lol are you implying that some people do?
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No one really talks to God. All they do is say or think something, then attempt to interpret future events as what he might be saying. That's not a conversation.
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Hey, at least we got an ending. The could have just cancelled it 10 books early. Even people who don't like the ghostwritten books don't actually wish the series ended at 26.
I completely agree. In some sense, Animorphs is a war story. But in some sense, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are war stories. What I meant, to be more specific, was that Animorphs was not a “realistic” war story, in the sense that the Animorphs survive odds that are literally impossible. For one example, the Yeerks fire their Dracon beams on the Animorphs thousands of times but they always miss, just like the bad guys in Star Wars (Marco even makes fun of this in #7). In a “realistic war story,” this would never happen, but it is a well-known trope of fantasy (unrealistic) war stories.
The dracon beams did not always miss. The books wrote about limbs being blown off, guts spewing out, bits of flesh flying off. Sounds like a pretty realistic war story. Sure nobody died, but nobody ever dies in a story like this until the very end, thats just how stories work.
I know she mentioned that she had a page/space limit, and I really think she could have used the pages wasted on the final ending to delve more into the other issues that were missing...i.e. what happened with the auxillary animorphs,
They all died...sorry
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duff: The dracon beams did not always miss. The books wrote about limbs being blown off, guts spewing out, bits of flesh flying off. Sounds like a pretty realistic war story. Sure nobody died, but nobody ever dies in a story like this until the very end, thats just how stories work.
1. I'm pretty sure Dracon beams / shredders used to kill instantly (an Andalite was instantly vaporized in #18, and I'm pretty sure in Andalite Chronicles as well). At some point, I guess they must have been "down-graded" to non-lethality. But this still supports my point. Example: Leia was hit in Return of the Jedi, but people still make fun of Star Wars. The Animorphs get hurt way more by Hork-Bajir blades and Visser Three's crazy morphs than by Dracon beams. This is ludicrously unrealistic.
2. It is NOT "just how stories work." Above, I talk about how Saving Private Ryan is the type of realistic war story that Animorphs is NOT. In Saving Private Ryan, a main character actually dies halfway through. Even in Lord of the Rings (the gold K.A. standard), a member of the Fellowship (Boromir) dies 30% of the way through. If you're looking at death count, Animorphs (until #54) is in the box with Star Wars: a big fat zero. The "no hero dies" trope is completely impossible, but it is a staple of fantasy.
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At some points getting hit by a beam would completely vaporize you. Not just leave a wound.
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lol are you implying that some people do?
nope, just saying that we can talk to the person that actually wrote animorphs without starting religious conflict.
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Hey, I'm new here too, and I thought this was a super interesting thread. Nice to see so many people still totally into these books in an obviously passionate way.
To answer the OP, I disagree. Here is why, point by point (I'm not sure either of us are going to 'crush' each other though).
1. Obviously any fiction is in its very nature going to be unrealistic to a certain degree. Certainly, most of the story couldn't have continued if all of the characters did not survive till the very end. However, while Animorphs is certainly not Saving Private Ryan, it is also not Star Wars. The issues discussed throughout the series were certainly much deeper than what most space operas contain. There are plenty of examples of this throughout the books. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that the end requires the readers to think about the true cost of war, and about the people that are really affected by it. The authors often used their work to make the readers think about war and the reprecussions of it. I really like that it wasn't a happy ending. I think the one we got was a lot more interesting and thoughtful.
Also, science fiction is often used to discuss deeper issues, including war. Just because the premise isn't realistic, doesn't mean it can't discuss very deep issues.
2. I'm not sure what you mean by putting in this quote. Would it be better if the authors just said, save the world without thinking of the human cost? No. They always valued their audience a lot more than that. Truthfully, any type of conflict is either distressing for those involved, or turns them into monsters. The authors always tried to include the impact of violence on the Animorphs throughout the series, starting in book 1 when Tobias was trapped in morph.
3. The last book is still hopeful, just in a different way. It is about something bigger than just the Animorphs. Andalites, yeerks, hork bajir, taxxons and humans all come away from the conflict better off. However the cost is the burden of the individuals. I actually think it is incredibly hopeful. Most conflicts do not end this happily. Really, it is showing that if you are fighting for the right reasons, without wanting just plain revenge or just wanting to hurt someone else, you can create a better outcome for everyone involved.
4. I take point four to mean that you feel the ending wasn't in spirit with the rest of the series, but I think it very much was. It was an ending, an appropriate one for a series that was incredibly dark. I think it very much reflected where the last ten books or so were leading. I started reading Animorphs as a 10 year old, and ending up finishing them when I was about 18 or 19. I was quite impressed with the maturity the series managed to achieve, in that at that age I could see a lot of value and truth expressed through what was essentially quite a childish premise.
I personally feel that the ending to Animorphs was a lot better than the ending to a lot of other children's books, in particular Harry Potter, which seems to have the type of ending you wanted from this series. Also, I don't see how the message of book 54 was more narrow than the message of book 1. Are you saying that a message of hope is more important than a message of the true price of war?
I guess in the end we will just have to agree to disagree. I think I would have been disappointed with the type of ending you were after, but that's just me. Evidently, a lot of fans really seem to agree with you.
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To start off, I just want to say that I haven't read every word that's been posted in this thread because frankly, I don't have that much time anymore. However, I have seen some good points on both sides of the fence. Now on to my take on the subject.
I enjoyed the ending in a certain fashion. As someone who absolutely loves Animorphs of course I wanted to see more and to know more, but I can completely understand the ending and I'll lay out some points as to why it's believable and ok with me.
1) I think that Animorphs is definitely a war story. It's about people who are thrown together to fight a war that they didn't ask to be a part of. In some cases they didn't even really like each other. (Think about how Marco thought Tobias was weird and also his strained at times friendship with Rachel) These characters came together and bonded in a huge way through their experiences fighting the Yeerks. That's a war story.
2) To those who say that the spirit or message changed, I both agree and disagree with this. Any story that goes on for so long has to change in some ways. If nothing in the story changes, then you end up with static, one dimensional, boring characters and story lines. After so many years of fighting a guerrilla war, the Animorphs are worn down, they're tired, they're willing to take chances. Just look at the Auxiliary Animorphs. You really think that the Animorphs would have taken that risk at any point before that? Even if the Yeerks had made the kind of advances that they do in #54, the Animorphs would not have been desperate enough to use the blue box again so close after the David incident. The point is that they changed. They aren’t the same people that they were in book #1 or even the same people that they were in book #26.
Take a look back at an old picture of yourself, think about the person you were then, even one year ago, and I’ll bet that you can see a bunch of differences in who you are and who you were, and you weren’t involved in a crazy war with aliens.
3) In regards to the ending itself, I don’t think that it betrayed any of the characters. All of them take something different from the war. I don’t know if you can really say that any of them are happy though. Even Marco with all of his TV deals and everything still reminisces about his days with the Animorphs and morphs sometimes to get back to it. And once the Kelbrid come into the picture, that feeling of “it’s up to us to stop it” comes right back into play. The same feeling is still alive. In their own ways, I think that everybody wanted to be there. Not in an overt sense, but still, there is some part of each of them that wants to put them back in those situations. Plus, the story isn’t really over. The Yeerks were kicked off Earth but they still a big force throughout the galaxy. Don’t forget, the Yeerk invasion of Earth wasn’t even a full operation, at least for most of the series, it did pick up at the end obviously.
My point is that there is still a lot happening. The war is far from over. I equate it to Star Wars. If you follow the Expanded Universe and read those books, you find out that yes, the Emperor was killed at the Death Star II, but the Rebels/New Republic don’t attain peace with the Empire until 15 years later.
4) As far as Lord of the Rings goes, up until the end of the book, you have only 1 ½ deaths. I’m only counting main fellowship characters. I say half because Gandalf dies but comes back although Frodo and Sam didn’t know that. So the only real death is Boromir, and he was corrupted by the ring. Everyone who dies in LOTR was corrupted in some way. Theoden, Denethor, they were corrupted. So nobody “good” dies in Lord of the Rings. Even Frodo was corrupted and he essentially ended his life by going to the Grey Havens. And if you look at Tolkien, you can see that he wanted his characters all to live because of the devastation that he went through in World War I.
5) I think that the fact that all of us can feel these sorts of emotions about the ending is the entire point. We all fell in love with these characters and followed them for so long. They became our friends, our comrades, and the feelings that we get are exactly what those characters are feeling. So when you feel those sorts of things, it’s another emotional tie that the story itself creates for its readers.
Anyways, I could probably go on for a very long time about all this so I’ll cut it short here for now at least.
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lol are you implying that some people do?
nope, just saying that we can talk to the person that actually wrote animorphs without starting religious conflict.
there are plenty of schools of thought that would argue that is just as irrelevant as the fact that we can't ask what God meant in the Bible.
Assuming God actually wrote the Bible :/
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Idk who said it but i agree that the whole one/kelbrid adventure was a waste of precious space in the last book
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I know TV tropes considers the One and Kelbrid to be discontinuity, for what it's worth. As bad as the ending was, it was made worse by that. At least before that Marco and ax were happy.
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It was just some dumb set up for the cliff hanger ending, it could have been done better IMHO
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My only solace in the ending being a cliffhanger was the hope that it was leading to a sequel series. KA's letter at the end rather violently dissuaded me of that notion.
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I dont mind the cliffhanger itself just how we got there
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I have mixed feelings on the cliffhanger ending. On one hand, I was really getting into that sub-story, and wanted to know a lot more, and was frustrated when it ended so abruptly. On the other hand, it was definitely unexpected, and kind of made me hope that a sequel might occur at some stage.
I think I kind of am starting to understand why people were so anti the ending, and why I don't have a problem with it. I think a lot of people really cared about the characters, while I personally didn't really. I think the characters were pretty cool, but not enough for me to really love them and root for them and their relationships. I guess I was always just more interested in the plot, and I guess that's why I wasn't so annoyed Rachel died and that Cassie and Jake never worked out. It probably just didn't mean enough to me.
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Yeah i was really involved with the chararcters and the story meant a lot to me. To me it was a slap in the face but i guess others are perfect ok with a meh ending
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I wouldn't say it was a meh ending. I think the ending was more true to the story and kind of didn't really care about the characters. I did very much care about the plot, but the characters, not so much.
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I dont remember any cliffhangers, if you mean totally freaking pointless yeah we had books like that.
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Whether you think it's pointless or not is really a matter of opinion. I don't. You obviously do.
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I don't think that the ending was pointless. The Animorphs kept on fighting, their job wasn't over. And plus, they were going into battle to save one of their best friends, Ax, who would have done the same for any of them.
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Well i just wanna point out that they didnt try and save ax... unless mercy killing is the same as save now.
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Well said. What, oh what, was she thinking? :P
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Mercy killing is one way of saving someone. That's why Jake wanted to kill Tom, to keep him from becomeing the next Eva.
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The Animorphs didn't necessarily die at the end. Any number of things could've happened after Jake said "Ram the Blade Ship."
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True, but it is a Bolivian Army ending. The opriginal Bolivian Army ending ended wth the people dying. Of course we can say whatever we want because she left it open.
She actually said in the sticky question thread that she dislikes tying up loose ends, which I find weird. It's not a proper ending if you don't try to tie up most things and give closure. In my opinion.
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I think that they were trying to save him. Since neither we nor the Animorphs have any knowledge of how the Kelbrid works, we can't say that they would be unable to save him. As someone said, any number of things could happen.
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True, but it is a Bolivian Army ending. The opriginal Bolivian Army ending ended wth the people dying. Of course we can say whatever we want because she left it open.
She actually said in the sticky question thread that she dislikes tying up loose ends, which I find weird. It's not a proper ending if you don't try to tie up most things and give closure. In my opinion.
Well, just think...if she had completely and thoroughly explained everything and tied up every loose end, this forum would be a lot more boring. :P
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THe Last book made me sad, it was mainly in the fact that Jake is perceived as having gone insane. I think it makes sense that he would go insane, but it almost ruins the character, and though honest, it wasn't fair to us as readers. I remember being a kid and crying as tobias became trapped in hawk form, and then again when i realized that he and rachel could never have a normal life together. TO just be in love. I felt that same way years later as i read the last few pages of the series. I didn't cry, but i felt like it. I think she wrapped it up in an honest way, but we didn't read the books because we wanted to know the horrors of war, we read them because we fell in love with the characters, and i don't think she should have ended it like that, no one wants to watch the one's they love die or go insane. And that's why i'm so terribly disappointed.
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I think that they were trying to save him. Since neither we nor the Animorphs have any knowledge of how the Kelbrid works, we can't say that they would be unable to save him. As someone said, any number of things could happen.
like what, for real, what could have happened? And if they didnt die, thats even stupider IMO. Animorphs is a 'real' war story right? ::)
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I have to admit to being a little surprised because I agree a lot with the original post but at the same time I liked the ending, it was memorable in exactly the way most of the books I read at the time weren't.
For one thing Rachel's death was very well done, the road leading to the event was . . . not grand, I have many issues with the order Jake gave from a tactical and even a practical standpoint. To me it was clear right away that Rachel was going to die and I dreaded it, I hoped she'd been put in that situation for pure misdirection, but in the end it still happened. I was sad of course but as I've said before I've never really been quite so moved by a fictional death, so if nothing else that event will always be untouchably awesome in my mind and a testament to KA's skill. But had I been Jake she'd never have been on that Bladeship to begin with . . . and that's really sort of off topic so I appologize and will stop myself right there on that matter.
The truth is that like others I was a little put off by KA's letter, I felt it was overly agressive towards an audience that was mostly kids, I know I was a kid at the time the story ended, but I never saw her message before coming here (as an adult) so I wasn't exactly traumatized by her irritation so what can I say? Honestly I feel like she had every right to end her story how she wanted but I definately agree, that doesnt mean we have to like it at all, and not liking it doesnt make us immature it just means we have different beliefs, individual personalities, isn't that one of the things Animorphs was all about? Being individuals instead of cogs? Being free instead of Controllers? That people disliked her work just means that individuality wins again . . . might I add "w00t"
As for it not being a realistic war story, well I both agree and disagree, I know that shouldn't be possible but hear me out. It had fanciful themes and what more or less comes off as magic at times so I can see where it seemed unrealistic, and I won't pretend the atmosphere of the final arc didn't feel different than what led up to it. Different yes, but not exactly alien.
The presence of death and realism was always there. Background characters were killed, entire Andalite crews were slaughtered, Yeerk pools were boiled or shot off into deep space, even a few orcas got the axe if I recall, hard decisions were made time and again and not just by our main characters but by villains and supporting characters as well and though our main Animorphs didn't die (permanently) until the end many of us were always worried that they could even though we should have known they couldn't. We worried because that presence of death was there, it just didn't catch up to them until the ending. I mean during the whole David thing I really did expect death to jump out from some corner with a shotgun screaming "BOOM, HEADSHOT!" so in that sense it did feel like a realistic war story.
I think what I agree with is that it wasn't just a war story though, there was more to it than that and towards the end it did feel like some of that was forgotten, or at least left behind.
I hate to make this post any longer but I actually think more than LOTR, Animorphs is similar to Exo-Squad. Exo-Squad, for those who don't know, was a TV show aimed at kids that still had a lot of underlying themes that viewers could either notice or ignore. It was violent, it was mankind's fight against extinction itself, towards the middle there was some episodic bits, and much like Animorphs it ended on an upsetting cliffhanger and it wasn't until the end that a major (good) character finally died . . . except they screwed that up by cloning him in that final episode, but that's neither here nor there, the point is that at no point did Exo-Squad not feel like a war story, and the same is true of Animorphs in my opinion.
Yes it's about a bunch of people doing impossible things and surviving, winning where they shouldn't, where it should be impossible, getting away just in time, that's part of the fun, we want to think that kind of stuff can happen, we want to pretend that, despite all evidence to the contrary, a single person can really make that much of a difference, but it doesnt mean it's not still a realistic story. It might seem like the ending was one without hope, but to me that hope was Rachel, it was Jake, the hope KA gave us with the ending was the Animorphs themselves.
On balance we humans want to believe there really are people like Jake, Marco, Tobias, Ax, Cassie and indeed most definately Rachel out there, some of us want to believe that we could, ourselves be that brave. Their existance fictional though it may be, is a sort of hope itself. That said that they died doesnt really mean that hope dies too because even dead their example remains and in fact creates a bar, a challenge even; sort of like saying "they gave up this much" and again, yes they're fictional characters in a children's book but they're a reminder to us all and indeed to children that in history we do have real people who've done similar deeds if only for their own countries or families and not for the earth itself.
Well . . . not much else to say at the moment except sorry for the length ;)
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As for it not being a realistic war story, well I both agree and disagree, I know that shouldn't be possible but hear me out. It had fanciful themes and what more or less comes off as magic at times so I can see where it seemed unrealistic, and I won't pretend the atmosphere of the final arc didn't feel different than what led up to it. Different yes, but not exactly alien.
The presence of death and realism was always there. Background characters were killed, entire Andalite crews were slaughtered, Yeerk pools were boiled or shot off into deep space, even a few orcas got the axe if I recall, hard decisions were made time and again and not just by our main characters but by villains and supporting characters as well and though our main Animorphs didn't die (permanently) until the end many of us were always worried that they could even though we should have known they couldn't. We worried because that presence of death was there, it just didn't catch up to them until the ending. I mean during the whole David thing I really did expect death to jump out from some corner with a shotgun screaming "BOOM, HEADSHOT!" so in that sense it did feel like a realistic war story.
I think what I agree with is that it wasn't just a war story though, there was more to it than that and towards the end it did feel like some of that was forgotten, or at least left behind.
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Yes it's about a bunch of people doing impossible things and surviving, winning where they shouldn't, where it should be impossible, getting away just in time, that's part of the fun, we want to think that kind of stuff can happen, we want to pretend that, despite all evidence to the contrary, a single person can really make that much of a difference, but it doesn't mean it's not still a realistic story. It might seem like the ending was one without hope, but to me that hope was Rachel, it was Jake, the hope KA gave us with the ending was the Animorphs themselves.
I really like what you said here JFalcon, +1 to you!
As JFalcon said, the story is both realistic and unrealistic at the same time. And that's the beauty of it. We can have kids turning into animals and having adventures with aliens which is unrealistic, but have them feel and experience things that clearly are extremely realistic. Main characters don't have to die in every book or every chapter for death and fear and those other emotions that go with them to be present in their, or ours as the readers', minds.
Sometimes the suspense and the waiting fear of what will happen is just as powerful or even more powerful than the death of a character can be.
I think that they were trying to save him. Since neither we nor the Animorphs have any knowledge of how the Kelbrid works, we can't say that they would be unable to save him. As someone said, any number of things could happen.
like what, for real, what could have happened? And if they didnt die, thats even stupider IMO. Animorphs is a 'real' war story right? ::)
Maybe they morphed insects before they hit, which would protect them from damage and then they got into the Blade Ship and reeked havoc on the Kelbrid. Maybe they made some last second adjustment that disabled the Blade Ship. Maybe the Ellimist plucked one of his celestial strings to change things and help them. Maybe Crayak did. Maybe they all die and the Kelbrid gets away and terrorizes the entire galaxy. There are numerous possibilities and that's the whole point. K.A. left it open for readers to decide for themselves what happened to the characters that they love so much.
As for the Kelbrid themselves, it's possible that they are another form of parasitic species. The way they infest their hosts is just different. That would allow them to save Ax.
Strange and unpredictable things happen in wars all the time.
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Yeah but saying anything could have happened just isn't good enough. Nothing happened and it's a cop out. A rip off. A middle finger. So people say anything could have happened like that makes it ok and it doesn't.
Also, God could have come down from heaven and stopped them from ramming each other, declared peace in the universe, Rachel comes back from death, they all sing hallelujah, and RL Stein & JK Rowling pop their heads and brag that they sold more books. I mean, anything could have happened right?
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I don't think that I can agree that nothing happened. The war (on Earth at least) ended. The Animorphs won. Andalites and humans begin trading, new agencies and programs are formed. Those are all things that you get in an ending.
Plus the Kelbrid capturing Ax and the Animorphs being reunited is something that happens. The Animorphs are fighting again, and the odds are stacked against them. That yells Animorphs. That's what they do.
I think that having the Animorphs just peter out and fade into life would be denying what they went through. At first they were fighting for a normal life but by the end of the war, their lives are anything but normal. They need something more. That's what the sendoff is. It's the Animorphs being Animorphs because they can't be anything else.
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As for myself, I can admire Mrs Applegate for trying to teach us that war is bad, but I humbly believe the series would have been better without the sledgehammer message, or at least with a different execution.
My reasons are simple, and purely a matter of opinion, it doesn't bother me if anyone disagrees. The series is sending a message that 'War Is Bad', but anyone with half a brain will already realise that. The series aims at educating us, but for me all it did was provide crushing emotions. I already knew that war was bad, it's not too difficult to figure out. I was hoping for a message of hope when you have absolutely no choice but to defend yourself.
'War Is Bad' is aimed at reducing the number of conflicts we take part in. This is a noble goal, but the Animorphs is a series where the war is a necessity: the liberty and lives of our entire species is threatened by an unprovoked act of aggression - what message does that send to the audience if the author is downplaying the results of fighting for a cause that noble? I agree that it is unrealistic that six teenage guerilla warriors should defeat an alien empire, but:
a) I don't read science-fiction to be told things I already know and be left emotionally dissappointed at the end.
b) It's simply cruel to allow all 6 characters to survive until the final battle, and only then suffer a loss. It's infuriating to have an author dance away a particular aspect of realism-of-war for 53 books, and then crash it home just when you're starting to hope you might get a happy ending after all. I'm not asking for backslapping and rainbows, I don't mind if the survivors have scars, but Tobias and Rachel were by far the two characters I liked most. One died, the other had to live with that AS a nothlit WITHOUT any other friends or family he was close to UNTIL the eventual Bolivian Army Ending implied kamikaze charge.
c) Pulling the Kelbrid/The One/whatever out of thin air is inexcusable, I don't knw how else to say it. If that plot thread had been developed prior to book 54, or even mentioned, it might have been okay. But it wasn't.
I loved every single book in the series prior to the last, but #54 was just a letdown for myself.
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Oh wow, people are STILL mad about #54.
It wasn't my favorite, but I liked it well enough. A good ending for humanity with enough bittersweetness for our heroes. I was upset when Cassie and Jake split, but I understood it. Rachel dying, I called it early on and had she'd lived she probably would've done poorly without an outlet for her anger. Tobias completely falling apart was expected.
I suppose the Kelbrid and such were an asspull, but I didn't really mind it along with the cliffhanger ending. I just saw it as the start of a new war, with the Animorphs surviving the ramming to fight a new war.
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Sorry to bring up this topic again, but I wanted to say a few words that might provide insight for what KA/MG were thinking when they wrote about ramming the Blade ship.
In the Andalite Chronicles:
Elfangor rams the blade ship because he sees Alloran (which he considers his biggest mistake). He somehow manages to survive and becomes a hero to his people. Remember, he was probably not in the right frame of mind because he'd just got thrown back into a war after a few years of peace. Just ramming the blade ship wasn't going to save anyone: it was just going to give the Andalite Dome ship a chance to self-destruct to do a little more damage to the Yeerks. Perhaps he might kill the Abomination.
In 54:
Jake sees the escaped blade ship as his biggest mistake (where he could neither save his brother nor his cousin). Given the only options (ram, run), he sees it as his chance to right another wrong. It's extremely reckless, and I think it's also because he wasn't in the right frame of mind because he just came out of a few years of peace. Ramming the blade ship wasn't going to save Ax -- it was just going to do a little more damage to the renegade Yeerks who killed Rachel. Perhaps he might kill the one who killed Rachel.
So, personally, I think that KA was trying to give us another hope because it parallels so nicely with what Elfangor did. Elfangor became a Prince, fought countless battles, and finally, provided new hope to a new people. I found the message of extreme hope in their suicidal attempts (they're like, freakin' invincible unless Jake plans for one of their deaths :P).
With that said, I did expect Rachel to die -- they alluded to it in so many books because of how they worry how she'll be when the war ends. Plus, the Ellimist Chronicles already mentioned someone was going to die. She HAD to die, in my opinion. It didn't blindside me. I was brought to tears with her goodbye to Tobias.
I do agree, however, that the final book felt very rushed. I guess she had a limited amount of time and space, but I would've liked her to have ended it on #54/Animorphs Chronicles... or something.
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As far as I am concerned about The Response, what annoyed me most was that it started like this:
Quite a number of people seem to be annoyed by the final chapter in the Animorphs story. There are a lot of complaints that I let Rachel die. That I let Visser Three/One live. That Cassie and Jake broke up. That Tobias seems to have been reduced to unexpressed grief. That there was no grand, final fight-to-end-all-fights. That there was no happy celebration. And everyone is mad about the cliffhanger ending.
So I thought I'd respond.
And I was like: "I totally understand why they would be annoyed about over-criticism of all those other things, if she wants to kill some characters and let others live it is her story, that's up to her. If they want to criticize it, OK, but to say it 'Shouldn't have ended that way' is a bit much. I'd really love to here some justification for the cliffhanger though, because that felt like way too much of an insulting copout..." Then they address everything, well enough I felt, except the cliffhanger.
I think I mostly agree with Terenia and itw as far as my opinion goes, we are certainly welcome to have our own opinions about the ending and to vocalize them as much as we want, but it isn't up to us to say that authors should/shouldn't do anything other than what they want to do in. I liked itw's painting analogy, most importantly the conclusion that "If I want to do the last differently, that's entirely up to me." And I think that should have been more a part of KA's response. I also think it helps to keep in mind when we see that KA was ticked off at the response it wasn't the 'due criticism' that you see here but probably plenty of much more insulting personal e-mails telling them that they were flat out 'wrong'.
As far as responses about it being too harsh/sad/disappointing, or this for example:
... I think it makes sense that he [Jake] would go insane, but it almost ruins the character, and though honest, it wasn't fair to us as readers. I remember being a kid and crying as tobias became trapped in hawk form, and then again when i realized that he and rachel could never have a normal life together. TO just be in love. I felt that same way years later as i read the last few pages of the series. I didn't cry, but i felt like it.
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and i don't think she should have ended it like that, no one wants to watch the one's they love die or go insane. And that's why i'm so terribly disappointed.
I would say that those sorts of feelings/reactions is a lot of the point of the ending, so if they wanted to do that then that is exactly why they should end it that way. I would appreciate it if people were clear what they don't like rather than just saying they didn't like 'the ending' because there are a lot of different thing that happened in that book.
For example, I really disliked the final spaceship scene, not even because it was a "Bolivian Army Ending," because a "going out in a blaze of glory" ending can be pretty darn cool, but because it was done by setting up something completely disjointed from the rest of the series so it felt like a cop-out; on the other hand even though it was sad (or perhaps additionally because it was sad) I thought that the other elements were rather well done, and that either A. everything post-war could have been expanded in #54 or B. everything post-war up to Ax as a Captain (but not encountering a new enemy out of nowhere) could have been an epilogue to #53; then simply cutting off the encounter with 'The One' and everything that resulted as a consequence.
Again though, though I offer this as my "I didn't like this" and "I would have preferred ideas like this" I still feel that it isn't up to me (or anyone) to actually say "they got it wrong" and even if the whole series is re-released I don't think it should be changed to make anyone happy. (Expanded on... now that's another story, though still up to the author of course).
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I hated the ending, but I hated it because the final time-arc seemed to be so out-of-wack compared to the rest of the series, not the ultimate outcome. The ultimate outcome more or less made sense, though perhaps more pessimistic than it needed to be considering there are only six original characters we are working with.
1. It was always a war story. That it is simultaneously a sci-fi doesn't take away its ability to be a war story. (If she had tried to call it historical fiction or something along those lines then my statement would be invalid, but I'm pretty sure that claim was never made.) That one of the key messages on a "brought up consistently" basis to keep hope doesn't take away that it is a war story. I would be hard-pressed to weigh the message of "hope" over the message of what war - and the peoples within it - are. She didn't say it was a true war story, but it is definitely a sci-fi war story. Not one of the books has nothing about any sort of conflict. The Ellimist and Crayak are in conflict. The Ellimist loses his whole species due to conflict - a conflict where both people think they are in the right. Visser One has to go through a great deal of pain and conflict related to politics and the war. It would be very hard to find a book where the main problem, the main thing they have to overcome, is that of the war. Cassie finds out not all Yeerks are bad. Ax finds out not all Andalites are good. The war takes people who should be very close and personal to them - except Cassie. (Tobias/Elfangor, Jake/Tom, Rachel/Tom, Marco/Mother, Ax/Elfangor, Cassie/??? - since Jake wasn't gone that long). I would say most of its points throughout the whole series relate to war - that not everyone does all good, not everyone does all bad, sometimes there are misunderstandings, sometimes there are traitors, and that a lot of conflict is more complicated than the participating governments ever act - authority on one side will often tell us things to completely demonize the other side.
2. The ending - even if I feel the timing was completely illogical time-wise to allow such big character changes - is fitting to that effect. No one comes out of that ending thinking anything but "war sucks."
3. I don't find the ending absent of hope. I think it is a parallel to another story, Elfangor's. Also, there's a big plot-hole left in the end that could explain their survival: They do not charge the same ship noted to have taken Aximili earlier. Ax never found the Blade Ship. There are at least two ships involved with The One, then. The Blade Ship (whom the Animorphs attack) and the gigantic ship larger than even Dome Ships (whoever Ax discovered and didn't make the realization quite on time that he and his comrades needed to leave). So I think the attitude "Oh it's impossible for them to have survived/would be totally stupid if they did" is a bit silly - it seems she made it certain they would be going into another conflict, another war. I guess they're the Ellimist's favorite chess pieces or something. Notice, too, that everyone alive is still doing something. Just because things aren't peachy doesn't make it over.
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About that last point, the fact that it doesn't really end is what, to ke, makes it particularly real. Were it all to have an ending, be it happy or sad, if all the loose ends are tied up that makes it seem less real to me. In real life nothing ever really ends, there are always loose ends that don't quite get tied up. Unthinkable that's why I like this ending so much. By leaving us at the cliffhanger it tells us, almost outright, that the story is not yet over, there is a lot more left to be done.
And as far as the theme of the last book goes, yes it says, pretty violently, that war sucks, but more than anything I think that it's the ultimate show of hope. Everyone has problems, most are left crippled in one way or another, and yet they are still able to rise to the call when they are needed. It leaves a bittersweet feeling in your mouth to see the characters we love brought so low, but who am I to say that that doesn't happen to all of us sometimes? But it's one thing to keep fighting when you're already wrapped up in the battle, another thing entirely to be under the weight of regret and remorse while feeling the bite of depression and still be able to enter the ring when your number is calledas Jake did. That, to me, is the true victory that I saw in the ending, the meaning that will stay with me.
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If they had left out The One and Kelbrid, they would have still had the anti-alien terrorists to deal with. I would have been fine with that. That way they're just dealing with the aftereffects of what happened, instead of starting a whole new thing that won't be expanded on outside of fanfics.
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As Jara Hamee had said. "Stories have no end."
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Well they kind of do. The story about the war between the Anis and Yeerks is over. The one about the Kelbrid and One is starting. Although if it's just the story of thier lives, then it's over when they die.
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Honestly, I wasn't expecting a perfect victory, but something that provided closure to the series. As far as real life wars, look at the famous picture of a US Sailor kissing a woman, the celebration after World War II was enourmous. I wasn't expecting a party, but at least something that made it feel like the journey was over.
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Chad your comment made me sad! But yes, eventually their story, however insignificant to the rest of the cosmos, will end... Though slower than probably most of our own stories, since we're not famous or anything.
Is it funny fictional characters in some ways get longer lifespans than we do? I guess I must think so.
Anyway, I like to think they're on a new journey. If Applegate/Grant are interested in rebooting Animorphs, they must have thought a continuing Animorphs story (regardless of whether or not it involved the originals) was possible!
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I'm sorry it made you sad. I didn't really mean it like that, but stories really do end. Even this planet is not eternal. The universe...I don't know. I heard once that it's ever expanding, and I don't know if it's possible for it to hit an end.
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I wasn't being that serious about my sadness, lol, but thanks.
Life's characters are always changing but the plots are always the same.
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I, for one, liked the "cliffhanger" ending. After getting through the 53 other books in the series plus all the megamorphs and chronicles and such, we all had this feeling that we knew not just the animorphs' world, but their larger universe pretty well. That cosmos was huge. And yet those six kids were somehow always the center of it: the source of hope, future peace, long-lasting galaxy-wide change. Our view was just so narrow in that way. I'm glad that there was something in that universe to sneak up and surprise us at the end, to let us know that while the animorphs will always be badass, it will not always be their fight and their story. They deserved an ending, not an eternity as warriors. And I felt that that kind of message is much better than the one we would have gotten if, say, they had tried to find and kill Visser One/Three instead. That would just be like getting stuck in an endless loop.
Also, I approved of Jake's decision to leave Cassie behind for their final mission. He was right when he said they needed someone to protect the gains and victories they had won. Abandoning that kind of responsibility would be paramount to saying that all that really matters is the fight, rather than what they were fighting for.
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As much research as it is clear you did, and as well as you made your point, I would have to disagree with the idea that her ending to the story was not in the spirit of the story. Animorphs IS a war story (and by the way, so is Star Wars. <-- See that word there? It's war.) WAR is not a genre of story, it's a setting or a type of story. Sci-fi, fantasy, historical fiction are genres and all can be about war. Lord of the Rings is a war story. And K. A. was right about it being up to the children to save the world. The Heroes of WWII were the young men, late teens and early 20's, who went and fought, and came back wounded, broken, or crazy. That's what happens in war. Everyone involved is a causality in some way. Every soldier loses something, and she communicated that message very well. It made the whole series more powerful, especially to those of us who are rereading it now with a greater understanding of life than when we first read them. It makes them less of a hokey sci-fi story for kids, and more of a legend about heroes, who were willing to lose any and every part of themselves for the rest of humanity. It made Animorphs an epic, and it would not have been as good if she'd done it any other way.
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I just read that letter for the first time and well, whatever your opinions on how it ended, props to K.A for defending her choices so bluntly. :)
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First, a disclaimer: I love Animorphs. I love this series - so much. Some of them are in the top 10 books I have ever read - and I'm truly grateful to Katherine and Michael for bringing them into the world.
Now, however, with the discussion about Animorphs 2.0, I thought it might be a good idea to revisit K.A.'s famous post-series letter (written around 2001) to the fans. Unfortunately, I had a very negative reaction to this letter. Why? Because it contains what is (arguably) a huge lie. At the very least, it is a huge contradiction (close to the same thing).
I will prove it. This will (obviously) be marked as a spoiler:
[spoiler]
This is from K.A.'s letter (source: http://hirac-delest.issamshahid.com/database/articles/kaa_response_54.htm (http://hirac-delest.issamshahid.com/database/articles/kaa_response_54.htm))
Animorphs was always a war story. Wars don't end happily. Not ever...Here's what doesn't happen in war: there are no wondrous, climactic battles that leave the good guys standing tall and the bad guys lying in the dirt.
This claim is simply untrue - a lie. I'll give four crushing responses to this statement, from the general to the specific:
1. Animorphs is a sci-fi/fantasy story, which is a completely different genre than "war story." Animorphs is much closer to Star Wars (a sci-fi/fantasy) than Saving Private Ryan (a war story). Animorphs was never realistic, and it is not about a realistic war.
2. Around 1998, K.A. says (in response to question asking "Do you have any words of wisdom for Animorphs readers?"): Two things: I hope my books help give you respect and awe for the natural world. Animals are at least as incredible and amazing as any alien species. The other thing is that in the books, it's up to kids to save the world. In life, that's true as well.
(source: http://www.kidsreads.com/authors/au-applegate-ka.asp (http://www.kidsreads.com/authors/au-applegate-ka.asp))
Think - very carefully - about what this quote means, combined with the context of the ending (#54). This 1998 quote says it's up to kids to save the world. And yet, your reward as a kid for deciding to save the world is being killed (Rachel) or screwed up (Tobias, Jake)? What a great message to send to kids! Clearly, K.A. changed her mind about Animorphs somewhere between this 1998 interview and her 2001 letter. Animorphs was NOT always a war story (as K.A. defines it). Instead...
3. Animorphs used to be a story about hope. Think about The Invasion, or the Andalite Chronicles, or Megamorphs #1. In MM #1, the last word is literally "hope"!! Now, by "hope" I do NOT mean simplistic/cartoonish good-vs-evil fights. I mean something much deeper. The characters in the three books that I mention go through hellish nightmares (Tobias is trapped as a hawk, Elfangor actually DIES, Jake thinks that he let Marco die). And amazingly, against impossible odds, they emerge determined to keep fighting. First question - Is that realistic? Not really... but when was the last time you turned into a tiger to fight aliens? That's right. Second question - Is that stupid? NO. If you think inspiration and hope are stupid, I feel really sorry for you.
4. Another line from the 2001 letter: But I've never let Animorphs turn into just another painless video game version of war, and I wasn't going to do it at the end...And to tell you the truth I'm a little shocked that so many readers seemed to believe I'd wrap it all up with a lot of high-fiving and backslapping.
Oh please. This is what you call a "straw man" argument. No one was hoping for a comic book victory. What a lot of us WERE hoping for was something actually in the spirit of the series - like Megamorphs #1 (see the previous point), or #26 The Attack, or #4, or #13, or #6, or #7. Why were we hoping for that? Because that's what the series used to be about! It used to be about hard questions, the need to keep fighting, trust and friendship, where to draw the line, and hope in the face of darkness (and yes - sometimes, a hard-won triumph).
Let me be very clear again - I was not looking for a cartoon victory. I WOULD HAVE BEEN HAPPY WITH A DEFEAT - as long as it stayed true to the spirit of Animorphs that we all loved (again, #1 and Andalite Chronicles are perfect examples of this).
I know K.A. and Michael always cite Lord of the Rings (and how they wanted Animorphs to be more LOTR and less Star Wars), but here's the fatal flaw with that argument: unlike #54, no one finishes Return of the King feeling depressed. This is how they feel: "Wow." Lord of the Rings is not a slam-dunk victory, but it is awe-inspiring. Frodo is scarred forever - like the Animorphs, he sacrificed any chance at a normal life - but you also appreciate the world that he has saved, you appreciate Sam's ability to return to the Shire, you appreciate Aragorn's coronation as the rightful king. In Animorphs, there's none of that, even from the "successful" characters (Marco / Cassie / Ax). In LOTR, the victory is complex and comes at a great cost - but it is clearly a victory. In #54, all of that is brushed off-screen (we get one sentence of Ax being promoted), so from a reader's perspective it might as well not happen.
We care about Animorphs because we cared about the characters. So what once was a series about hard choices, the shedding of innocence, and hope amidst adversity ends with (1) an exercise in cynicism, (2) a non-ending, and (3) a note from the author to "morph out" - which I translated as "grow up."
If K.A. wrote the ending to simply "make us" realize that war is terrible - mission accomplished, I guess. But I think we already knew that starting from The Invasion. Sorry, but I have WAY too much respect for Animorphs to take the narrow message of #54 over the higher message of #1:
Until then, we fight.
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So, agree? Disagree?
You lost me when you said Animorphs is not a war story, but a sci-fi/fantasy story.
For one, those are not mutually exclusive, mainly because 'war story' is not, as you're treating it, a genre.
It's a type of story, that's all. Any story of any genre can be a 'war story' - sci-fi, horror (how fitting would THAT be), fantasy, what have you. As long as the thematic content is ABOUT war, it's a war story. Animorphs is very DEFINITELY about war - it is literally about the effects of it on children and others forced to fight, and it is figuratively about the effect on humanity as a whole. On ALL sentient beings. It's a deconstruction of all our glorious notions of war. That's Rachel's entire reason for existing! (Well, almost.)
And Star Wars, if you're concerned with things like genre, isn't even a sci-fi series.
It is what you call 'space opera'. Essentially, fantasy tropes, sciencey setting. It is INFINITELY more similar to Lord of the Rings (if Tolkien had bashed himself over the head with a steel-toed clog before sitting down at his typewriter) than it is to, say, 2001: A Space Oddity. ODYSSEY. Haha! Wow. David Bowie on the mind.
Examine the events of the Animorphs series.
The 'heroes' are, by definition, guerrilla fighters, caught up in what is called an asymmetrical war. Very different from Star Wars, which is much more of a traditional 'journey' story - even if the destination is more metaphysical than corporeal (i.e. enlightenment in the light side of the Force).
And, for the record (directed at everyone now), I believe what she meant by it being 'up to children to save the world' was something along the lines of "it's up to the young to put a stop to the cycle of war, where their parents had failed".
If you see war as cyclical and self-propagating, in that sort of light, the ending makes perfect sense.
They are consumed by the next revolution of the cycle. Crayak and the Ellimist, Good and Evil, duel within us endlessly. Because we are sentient.
It is our beauty and our bane.
To me, the ending is wonderful.
I LOVE how broken they all were, after the war ended. Except maybe Cassie. Been a while since I read The Beginning, and I never have paid much attention to Cassie...
But that's what war DOES, what war IS.
It is pain and horror and it breaks people, inside.
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I think that Animorphs is supposed to be a war story. And war changes people. My dad was a Vietnam vet, so I have a firsthand look at the sort of trauma war inflicts. I didn't have a problem with that.
Jake and Cassie not staying together did not surprise me at all. However, because I had missed part of the series, Rachel's death seemed senseless and pointless. And I couldn't understand why Jake never tried to save Tom. He shared a house with the guy. You can't tell me that there wasn't a point where Jake couldn't have ambushed him, tied him up, and starved the Yeerk out of him. There was even that family trip to a cabin (can't remember which book that was) where Jake was going to kill Tom. What kind of a brother thinks about killing first instead of saving? But I'm sure someone can give me a reasonable explanation for this.
But what upset me the very most was that ending. I can understand Jake, Marco, and Tobias going after Ax. But it felt too sudden and too abrupt. That last monster was quite literally out of nowhere. Though I'm not a majorly published author yet (only in small magazines), I've gone through enough classes (and I mean professional classes and workshops) and done enough writing on my own to see a cop-out when it's on the page. She just wanted to end the series.
Applegate did not have to end it like she did and the whole "I wanted them to go down fighting" is utter bull. None of us wanted them to go down fighting. Why would you go on and on about hope only to kill off most of the characters? We wanted them to live. Where was the living in that last book? Where was the hope? It was so depressing, I cried for like five minutes after reading that thing.
And you don't take your readership through such an emotional journey and then leave them on a low. An author's first responsibility is to her readers. Applegate was just thinking about herself at the end and not about what was best for her readers, emotionally, and what ultimately made sense.
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I know I'm one of the few who really loves the ending, but I remember it ending and running crying to my mother about how unfair it was (she also read the series and was all weepy over Rachel at the time). She told me that I probably hated it then, but would come to love it as an adult - and she was right. As she told me, it wasn't about the Yeerks and it wasn't about the One and it wasn't ever about the enemies. It was about the Anis. At the end of the series, they all knew who they were - Jake, Rachel and Tobias defined by war, Marco still feared death but would lay down his life for Jake, Cassie knew that she was only a soldier because of circumstance, and Ax had blended his time on Earth with the culture he'd wanted to return to, but now felt able to criticize (though I do wish he'd gotten more pagetime at the end). I don't feel like it was a cop-out. I feel like it felt conclusive, it ended with a bang, and the Anis had all reached the apex of their maturity as characters in realistic ways. She could have ended the series in a variety of ways that would have alienated fewer readers, even ones that weren't happy endings, but I feel like the dark-yet-gutsy ending it got really served the series well.
And it wasn't about the readers, because the readers were a bunch of grade schoolers at the time and you can't always try to please your audience. Because then you get Megamorphs 2.
*prints Ram the Blade Ship t-shirts*
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I find the ending...difficult.
Like Lisa implied, the older I get the more it grows on me, and in the end I respect AppleGrant's license as the creator of the series to end it however they darned well please. I do feel like the time of the Animorphs had reached it's conclusion, and that was displayed nicely in the way she ended it.
I guess the reason it rubs me the wrong way, personally, is because for me it was not about the Ani's. Yes, they were the focal point and the vessel through which the story was told, but as a reader I was always much more interested by the alien races and the war on a grander scale. I didn't like the implication that because Earth was won the Yeerks were never a problem again - so let's move on to the next threat. I imagine the reality of the situation would have been a very Firefly-esque universe, with the Yeerks standing in for the browncoats as outcasts who still hold strong to certain beliefs. That was the conclusion I was interested in, and we heard so little regarding that it made me sad. :(
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I think that while none of us were expecting a total happy ending, with everyone alive and together and happy, we did expect there to be some closure. I was okay when Rachael died, you knew that one of them had to at some point in the series and Rachael was the pick. But ending 54 with Jake saying "Ram the Blade Ship" its leaving everyone with hopes or dreams that will never be answered. What happened to them? Who is the One? Is Cassie the only animorphs left? WHO, WHAT WHEN WHERE AND WHY? And i agree, animorphs was more of a standing up story than a war one, but around 50 that all changed, the end was near anyone could see that; but a that point it became a full out war. Not just a few battles here and there with school the next day. Armies attacking and casualties on both sides. So we saw that coming, okay. But 54's end? I think Applegate owes it to the fans to write just one more and answer the questions. If she did that and everyone died, i would still be fine because it gave some closure.
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The story could have ended with Jake and them firing all weapons at the other ship. Which would imply THEY KEEP FIGHTING rather than they all die.
Tobias especially should have survived. He is Elfangor's son. He fought and died so that Tobias and all children like him could LIVE. In a way, I feel like Elfangor's memory was spit on with that ending.