Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: YeerkSalad on August 05, 2015, 03:42:57 PM
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Spoilers may be unmarked here. If you haven't finished the series, don't read this thread!
So yeah. If you'd written the series, how would you have ended it? Would you have ended it differently if it were a TV series/movie?
I would have ended the series similarily, but the final book would be a LITTLE more epic. I didn't like V1's surrender. He didn't seem as crazy and impulsive as his character usually was.
INSTEAD...
Let's say that Jake hasn't flushed the Pool into space yet - they entered from a different direction. Also, let's say that there are some escape pods near the Pool. (Do you see where I'm going with this?) The Animorphs become pretty distracted with Rachel's death and all, and V decides that the Blade Ship is screwed. At the bare minimum, this coward wants to survive. He attempts to get to the Pool's pods while the characters are getting the feels. Ax leaves them to it and chases the visser to the Pool. Marco gets an idea and follows them. Cue epic Andalite fight scene. Eventually, after a large dose of awesome, V1 is knocked into the Yeerk Pool.
V1 is now in the perfect spot for what Marco needed.
He presses a button.
A shieldy airlock thing closes over the Pool.
V1 and over 17,000 other Yeerks are flushed into space.
I know... this removes the trial scene. The Animorphs'll be partially reunited in some other way.
Also, I'd like the final scene to be a bit different. I like the idea of the characters (including Cassie) coming together one last time, albeit in their final act. But let's remove The One from the picture and simply have the Blade Ship be full of the last Controllers.
Last thing: it'd be interesting/depressing to have the Yeerks discover the Pemalite crystal and reprogram the Chee to be jerk-faces. Thoughts?
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I wouldn't have made it a downer ending, introducing a new threat just so most of the surviving Animorphs could go off on a suicidal mission. It wouldn't hav been all parties and rainbows. It would have taken time to heal. They would have healed, though. Marco's ending would be almost the same, except he'd take proper vacations instead of morphing lobster in a pool. Cassie would become a zoologist, using morphing power to be in tune with animals. Jake would join the military. Rachel may become a cop, or get into extreme sports. Tobias would become Human, move in with his mom, and become a pilot so he can still fly.
Rachel, Tom, and the Auxilaries would live, because if you've established for 50+ books that sympathetic named characters don't die, you don't throw it out in the last book or two. Toby takes her people to her homeworld to take it back.
The war has a lasting effect on people, but they get through it over the years. One of the themes in the early books in "hope", after all. It's a war story, but it's also a kids series. You think The Land Before Time and secret of NIMH would be the classics they are if Little Foot's group got eaten and Frisby and her kids drowned in mud? I doubt it.
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I have a little bit of a different view. I think that named characters should be "allowed" to die. Otherwise, I like your ideas!
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I have a little bit of a different view. I think that named characters should be "allowed" to die. Otherwise, I like your ideas!
That is something you should establish early. I don't mind if characters die. song of Ice and fire is a good book series, and it doesn't really have protagonists, or main characters. It has POV characters that haven't died yet. You're either going to let people die from time to time, or you're going to make sure everyone lives. You don't get to the last book and start killing three long running characters, and a whole group of new guys. It does not make your series more realistic, especially when later you decide somehow a 2-3 year old alien gets to have a seat on the US Congress!
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I agree that Applegate should have killed off more characters earlier.
Personally, I am pretty anti-happy ending when it comes to what to change for the last Animorphs book. If there were a happy ending for Animorphs, I'd wonder if the authors were patronizing and mocking their audience, especially since the entirety of the series was all about not talking down to its demographic and being realistic about war, even in a sci-fi setting. There just aren't happy endings in war. Even if all the remaining Animorphs recovered, they're never going to be the same. Bittersweet maybe, but not happy.
That said, I don't want a super depressing downer-ending either! I disagree with the majority of fandom calling it a downer-ending, especially since so many things in the last book and within the series itself point to them surviving. I like the open-endedness of the last book, I don't think I'd change that. I've seen some fans like it being open-ended because they like the idea of a downer-ending. Having it open-ended, in my opinion, is a good idea in general because I've probably read nearly every post-book 54 fic out there and people have come up with some pretty creative ideas for what happens next or what the One even is. (I have my own theories, too.)
What I would change about the book is ditch the chapters that are nothing but summaries and flesh the end out some more. I had trouble processing so much of what happened because it was written like, "This happened and then this happened and then we did this," which is too disconnected and jumbled for me.
We never got to know the new characters that they spent a year or so with in space, never got any chapters in their POV either. Not having a chance to get to know them, it's easy to see why the audience would be bitter about half of the original Animorphs being gone and think of the new characters as nothing but Rachel, Cassie, and Ax expies. I even thought it was really disappointing to have them come in out of nowhere at the very end. Not getting to know them makes it hard to care whether they live or not, because they're not the Animorphs we've known and loved for years. I would keep them but flesh them out, give people a chance to like or dislike them.
I do also agree that at least some of the Auxiliaries should have lived. Not just using disabled children as canon fodder but also killing them all off, from a writing stand point, is quite messed up to me as a disabled person! And then to never mention them again afterwards? What the heck.
Lastly, I think I wouldn't have given any hints about the One at all if I were K.A.A. When she shot down the theory that it had something to do with Father or whatever it was that had shown up briefly after Jake's future dream, it got rid of some cool theories and was quite a disappointment.
THIS. THIS. THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS. THIIIIIIIIIISSSSSS.
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I doubt very few wanted a clear happy ending, and it's not definite that Jake's group actually died, but the ending is extremely bitter with very little sweet. Some of which went bitter, because Marco left the good life to possibly die in space. Any hints in the earlier books that they may survive ramming the bladeship went out the window when rachel and Tom died. Established rule about character death gone.
That's usually what people point to when someone complains about the ending. accusing them of wanting a flowers and rainbows happy ending, and then we have to explain that no, we don't want it going way to the other extreme either.
I mean, name me one historical guerrilla group that fougth for years, never suffering casualties, up until the last battle. I bet their aren't any, and talking about realism at the very end doesn't make much sense.
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Let's say that Jake hasn't flushed the Pool into space yet - they entered from a different direction. Also, let's say that there are some escape pods near the Pool. (Do you see where I'm going with this?) The Animorphs become pretty distracted with Rachel's death and all, and V decides that the Blade Ship is screwed. At the bare minimum, this coward wants to survive. He attempts to get to the Pool's pods while the characters are getting the feels. Ax leaves them to it and chases the visser to the Pool. Marco gets an idea and follows them. Cue epic Andalite fight scene. Eventually, after a large dose of awesome, V1 is knocked into the Yeerk Pool.
V1 is now in the perfect spot for what Marco needed.
He presses a button.
A shieldy airlock thing closes over the Pool.
V1 and over 17,000 other Yeerks are flushed into space.
I know... this removes the trial scene. The Animorphs'll be partially reunited in some other way.
Also, I'd like the final scene to be a bit different. I like the idea of the characters (including Cassie) coming together one last time, albeit in their final act. But let's remove The One from the picture and simply have the Blade Ship be full of the last Controllers.
I still feel like Jake had to be the one to flush the Yeerks, but aside from that I like your version. It has the downside of not freeing Alloran but a proper tail blade showdown between Ax and Visser 3 would have been awesome. It wouldn't have eliminated the need for the trial, but it would certainly have given them more of a just cause for doing it.
I also prefer the idea of ditching the One and having them end it instead with a final confrontation with the surviving Controllers aboard the Blade Ship. The Animorphs still get to go down fighting, but without the unexplained mystery of a brand new enemy coming out of nowhere and driving the readers nuts.
I used to hate the evil cliffhanger ending, but aside from the frustration of not knowing who the One is, I don't mind it as much now. Partly because, in my opinion, most post #54 fics or alternate ending fics just aren't that great (no offense intended). A lot of them have some form of happy ending where everything somehow works out, which to me is unrealistic and quite frankly boring.
I do wish that the ending had been less rushed though. #54 should have stretched out the final battle and ended with Earth's victory, then they could have written #55 as a more fully fleshed out post-war story. So much potential and unanswered questions had should have been developed more in the post-war years.
They could have explored how society reacted and changed in the face of alien encounters, or shown us more of how Earth's military has been utilising the morphing technology. How about going more in-depth on which stories the Animorphs did or didn't share with the rest of the world? Did they tell anyone about the Chee or Ellimist/Crayak? That would upset a lot of religious groups (or create new ones). And forget about the Visser One trial with Jake and the others, what about the numerous other cases which could easily be brought against the Animorphs? Justified or not, they did recruit a bunch of handicaped kids to fight an alien invasion and got them all killed in the process. Pretty sure that's just cause for an interrogation at least.
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I don't see much unethical against using handicapped people. They needed to recruit people that Yeerks would overlook, and they wouldn't be able to control adults as well as people more their age. Getting them all killed was just because KA decided they should all get killed.
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I agree that Applegate should have killed off more characters earlier.
Killing off any of the animorphs is only something that could have happened in the end.
Ellimist/Crayak? That would upset a lot of religious groups (or create new ones).
Here's an interesting cliffhanger ending idea. The Crayak has started a cult which will lead the world into an apocalypse, and the remaining Animorphs must stop him. I feel like this is a bit more connected to the series, but it still provides the "War doesn't end" theme.
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No, killing off animorphs could have happened early. Just let them keep the box from the start, do some recruiting here and there with people they can trust, and every few books one or two members die. If you want something approaching realism. After three years of survival, killing off people at the end doesn't make it more realistic. What's realistic about that?
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No, killing off animorphs could have happened early. Just let them keep the box from the start, do some recruiting here and there with people they can trust, and every few books one or two members die. If you want something approaching realism. After three years of survival, killing off people at the end doesn't make it more realistic. What's realistic about that?
I wouldn't really kill off animorphs untill atleast book 53. By the way your saying it all the original 6 animorphs would have bitten the dust by book 10, which sounds horrible. You can't really get attached to any of the characters due to the fact that the characters are dying every 2 two books. And if characters were coming and going that quickly, they wouldn't really be all that developed. You can't get much out of the characters if their arcs last 3 145 page books total.
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It is a risk you take when you kill off an interesting character, but it also leaves room for new interesting characters. I just think you either do it that way, or you don't do it. I'm certain people like Ned Stark too, but at least when he died it set the pace for the rest of the series. Rachel and Tom's deaths, and in a way especially Jara's, was just jarring. A cheap tear jerker to make an obvious statement that death happens in war. Yeah, we know that. Did you really have to shoot established fundamentals in the foot just to be captain obvious?
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I don't think that character deaths should be SUPER frequent. You know the TV series Primeval? It's a British sci-fi drama with a lot of cast changes. By the final season (as of 2011; the show might return), only about [spoiler]3[/spoiler] of the original cast members remain. But this was over the course of 36 episodes, and some characters didn't die - they just couldn't take it and left.
Anyway, I'd like cast changes, but a few characters should stay throughout.
Rachel: Dead
Jake: Alive
Cassie: Leaves - #19 gets rid of the loophole
Tobias: Alive
Marco: Dead - shot by dracon beam as he kills Edriss.
Aximili: Condition unknown - captured by Controllers instead of taken by The One
Melissa: Alive
Auxillary Animorphs: Some alive, some dead
I still think it'd be interesting to have the Yeerks find the Pemalite crystal and use the Chee in the last few stories to cause delicious destruction. Erek is the last "regular" Chee, and he screws things up like he did in 53-54.
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I disagree with leaving Cassie as a butterfly, I don't really feel like that would give her character justice. Doesn't it make more since if Jake dies than Marco or Rachel. He's the leader, and it could be a leader's sacrifice.
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I don't see much unethical against using handicapped people. They needed to recruit people that Yeerks would overlook, and they wouldn't be able to control adults as well as people more their age. Getting them all killed was just because KA decided they should all get killed.
I'm not saying I'm against them recruting the Auxiliary Animorphs, it was a necessary tactical decision. But do you seriously think that after the war it wouldn't have got them in trouble? Maybe it wouldn't have gone as far as an actual trial (crap happens in war and they had just saved the world and all) but it's still something I think deserved mentioning.
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I disagree with leaving Cassie as a butterfly, I don't really feel like that would give her character justice. Doesn't it make more since if Jake dies than Marco or Rachel. He's the leader, and it could be a leader's sacrifice.
1. #19's ending was a Deus Ex Machina (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeusExMachina). Naturally occurred morphing? I hardly think so! Inside a cocoon, caterpillars essentially melt into goo (retaining some memories) and reshape into a butterfly-y thing. The process is very different. Cassie's non-butterflyness at the end was clearly caused by Applegate having a soft spot for Cassie. It was a loophole that was far too forgiving.
2. I don't like Heroic Sacrifice (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeroicSacrifice)s. They seem kind of cliché. They're so common in today's works that it makes the writer seem lazy.
If Marco died, I suppose that Jake would have to be the one to do the whole flushy thing. That'd actually be good, emotion-wise. Jake would have to run away from one of the worst things he ever did, only to do something arguably worse.
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I agree that 19 ends with a bad Deus Ex Machina. But leaving someone to die as a butterfly as a pretty horrible way to end a character's arc.
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Let's agree to disagree there. I think that it would have quite an impact on the viewers/Aftran. It'd be a great way for her to take her bow.
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Let's agree to disagree there. I think that it would have quite an impact on the viewers/Aftran. It'd be a great way for her to take her bow.
Why not have Cassie stay a butterfly, and then recruit Aftran an an Animorph once the morphing cube is found? (Keep Aftran in a water trough between missions, and have her crawl into Erek's head to feed every 3 days).
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I don't think she could feed inside of Erek. He probably has no ear orifices. Wouldn't it be difficult to carry a slug around without accidentally crushing it? Aftran would get killed in no time.
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I don't see much unethical against using handicapped people. They needed to recruit people that Yeerks would overlook, and they wouldn't be able to control adults as well as people more their age. Getting them all killed was just because KA decided they should all get killed.
I'm not saying I'm against them recruting the Auxiliary Animorphs, it was a necessary tactical decision. But do you seriously think that after the war it wouldn't have got them in trouble? Maybe it wouldn't have gone as far as an actual trial (crap happens in war and they had just saved the world and all) but it's still something I think deserved mentioning.
Well, someone is bound to have a problem with anything you do. I don't think the Anis were conscripting these people.
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I don't think she could feed inside of Erek. He probably has no ear orifices. Wouldn't it be difficult to carry a slug around without accidentally crushing it? Aftran would get killed in no time.
Excerpt from the thread "Marco killing Karen", Reply #55 on: December 28, 2011, 08:56:14 PM about Erek's ability to keep a Yeerk alive in his head.
Quote
<How did you convince the Yeerks that you are one of them?> Ax asked him.
Erek turned off his hologram and became a machine once again. And then the front of his head
split open. Inside his steel and ivory head was a chamber, just a few inches in diameter. And inside that chamber was a gray slug,
helpless, unable to escape. Tiny wires, no thicker than hairs, wrapped around it.
<Yeerk!> Ax hissed.
"Yes," Erek said. "The Yeerks believe I am human. I accepted infestation. But of course the Yeerk cannot make a Controller of me. I made a
place for him instead. He sees nothing. Knows nothing. I tapped his memory, not the other way around. And now I can pass among the Yeerks like one of them."
I had two reactions. One, I was sick at the thought of that Yeerk, trapped inside a steel cage. As much as I hated Yeerks, it seemed harsh just the
same. But another reaction was much stronger. We had an ally! A powerful ally. An android who could pass as a Controller, who could enter Yeerk society. And an android with many powers of his own.
"How do you keep the Yeerk alive without Kandrona rays?" Cassie asked.
See, every three days a Yeerk has to return to the Yeerk pool to absorb Kandrona rays. Without that, they die.
"I am able to use my own internal power to generate Kandrona rays to keep this Yeerk alive," Erek explained. "When I go to the Yeerk
pool I am able to trick the Yeerks into believing that my Yeerk is swimming in the pool. I generate a hologram of a Yeerk leaving my ear
and dropping into the pool. Later, I create a hologram of it returning. The Yeerks never notice that they don't encounter this Yeerk actually
in the pool. Yeerks communicate very little in their natural states.
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Which book is this from?
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Book 10, when the Chee are introduced. This is never mentioned again, though. You'd think the Chee's ability to produce Kandrona radiation would come up later, especially after the YPM is introduced. and I'm still a bit irked that the chee don't seem to have any connection to them. You'd think they'd be the one to start such a thing.
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Book 10, when the Chee are introduced. This is never mentioned again, though. You'd think the Chee's ability to produce Kandrona radiation would come up later, especially after the YPM is introduced. and I'm still a bit irked that the chee don't seem to have any connection to them. You'd think they'd be the one to start such a thing.
I nominate the failure of anyone to mention the Chee ability to produce Kandrona radiation and thus keep Yeerks alive to be one of the most amazing omissions in the series!
Book 29: When Cassie was thrashing around trying to figure out how to keep Aftran alive away from the Pool, it would have been utterly natural for Erek (who was right there in the Barn while Cassie was agonizing) to offer to feed her Kandrona rays in his head, yet he somehow forgets to make such an offer! It would also have been utterly natural for Cassie to wonder if Erek could feed Aftran Kandrona rays in his head. Someone should surely have said "Wait a minute, don't the Chee have the ability to produce Kandrona radiation and thus keep Yeerks alive?".
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I still think it'd be hard to have Aftran as an Animorph. I guess they could have her just hanging out in Erek.
If the Yeerks found the Pemalite crystal and reprogrammed the Chee, they could shove Yeerks in the Chees' heads! They'd have easy, nearly-invincible transport!
If that happened, they could have won the war in like... a week.
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It's like KA mentioned it, but changed her mind about it, and hoped we'd forget about it if it was never mentioned again. Like Alloran saying there are Yeerks on the Andalite Homeworld. Nothing done about that either, except for a fight where V3 morphs a Kafit bird.
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It's like KA mentioned it, but changed her mind about it, and hoped we'd forget about it if it was never mentioned again. Like Alloran saying there are Yeerks on the Andalite Homeworld. Nothing done about that either, except for a fight where V3 morphs a Kafit bird.
I theorize that in the weeks after the great Andalite victory on Leera, the Leerans used the telepathic abilities to root out all Andalite traitors.
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Applegate really should've written these important things down.
LIST OF IMPORTANT THINGS I REALLY NEED TO CARRY ON IN A STORY ARC THING
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I don't know if it ever got out that the andalite captain was a traitor, and Andalites don't really want mind readers hanging around them anyway. Too many important secrets.
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I really disliked the character Cassie became after the war. I wasn't a huge fan of her anyway, but after the war, I disliked her even more.
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I liked her a bit after The Departure, but she was never my favorite. She was an obnoxious hypocrite, but she felt like a real person.
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The Helmacrons shrink everyone on Earth!
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I really disliked the character Cassie became after the war. I wasn't a huge fan of her anyway, but after the war, I disliked her even more.
Well it's not like she was most people's favourite anyway :P I didn't particularly like her any less after the war, but I do dislike the fact that she was left out of the final mission. I get that she has character flaws, but she's not a coward and she wouldn't just stay behind because Jake told her to. I could definitely have seen her sneaking aboard in morph to join the others.
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You, phoenix, just got all the ingredients out for a big bowl of fanfic soup.
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I really disliked the character Cassie became after the war. I wasn't a huge fan of her anyway, but after the war, I disliked her even more.
Well it's not like she was most people's favourite anyway :P I didn't particularly like her any less after the war, but I do dislike the fact that she was left out of the final mission. I get that she has character flaws, but she's not a coward and she wouldn't just stay behind because Jake told her to. I could definitely have seen her sneaking aboard in morph to join the others.
I'd honestly be surprised if she wanted to go. Given the choice, she wouldn't want to get involved in another war. Even if it is the save Ax, because she's not actually as much of a people person as she's painted to be.
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You, phoenix, just got all the ingredients out for a big bowl of fanfic soup.
It's the only type of soup I know how to make. :P
Cassie might not have wanted to go, but I'm sure she would have felt obligated to. She still cared for Jake and she definitely owes Ax that much.
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Yet she proved early in the series that she's willing to abandon her group if it means changing herself.
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Despite that I'm the only here who does like Cassie, I also feel like she should have gone along with the others in that final mission against the one. It doesn't feel right that all of the everyone except Cassie went out fighting.
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That's part of the reason I think they weren't really meant to survive, because KA couldn't bear to put her pet character through that.
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I don't know if anyone else here has read the Harry Potter series, but the postwar parts of #54 felt somewhat like the "19 years later" epilogue to HP...
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I've listened to the HP audiobooks. (Oh, the shame!)
The postwar parts had very different... tones. While HP's was kind of cheesy - worst. names. ever. - Animorphs's was [spoiler]much more depressing.[/spoiler]
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Spoilers may be unmarked here. If you haven't finished the series, don't read this thread!
I would have ended the series similarily, but the final book would be a LITTLE more epic. I didn't like V1's surrender. He didn't seem as crazy and impulsive as his character usually was.
INSTEAD...
Let's say that Jake hasn't flushed the Pool into space yet - they entered from a different direction. Also, let's say that there are some escape pods near the Pool. (Do you see where I'm going with this?) The Animorphs become pretty distracted with Rachel's death and all, and V decides that the Blade Ship is screwed. At the bare minimum, this coward wants to survive. He attempts to get to the Pool's pods while the characters are getting the feels. Ax leaves them to it and chases the visser to the Pool. Marco gets an idea and follows them. Cue epic Andalite fight scene. Eventually, after a large dose of awesome, V1 is knocked into the Yeerk Pool.
V1 is now in the perfect spot for what Marco needed.
He presses a button.
A shieldy airlock thing closes over the Pool.
V1 and over 17,000 other Yeerks are flushed into space.
Adding to the awesome V1/Ax fight would be the two changing form as they fight! V1 would treat us to all his awesome monsters!
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I would prefer an "andalite vs andalite" situation opposed to "andalite vs everything ever," but your premise is interesting to think about.
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I would prefer an "andalite vs andalite" situation opposed to "andalite vs everything ever," but your premise is interesting to think about.
I figure that Visser 3/1 would use every tool at his disposal to win! So would Ax.
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Guess so. Then again, maybe the Pool ship had been weakened enough that any potential damage to it/too much weight could cause a problem. Touché, though.
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Guess so. Then again, maybe the Pool ship had been weakened enough that any potential damage to it/too much weight could cause a problem. Touché, though.
Visser 3/1 might be too angry to care abut damage to the Pool ship!
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I think he'd care if the ship crashes.
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I think he'd care if the ship crashes.
The Visser might be to angry to realize that the pod ship might not be able to tolerate damage caused by his monsters!
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That would probably result in the death of all the characters. The plot wouldn't allow that much of a deviation from its source material.