Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: CounterInstinct on June 04, 2008, 10:48:58 PM
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I mean, for example, number 41 showed that Jake also had indecisions and weaknesses as a leader. He makes mistakes too.. etc etc.
Another example, #13 showed ambiguity in what Tobias really wanted more, to become human or hawk. Since the Ellimist said that he will give "what Tobias wants"
So what does the MM4 show?
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that elfangor screwed everything up by landing in the construction site that night lol
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It solidifies the whole 'Destiny' thing.
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That it was destined that the Animorphs had teh blue box?
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I always thought it showed that, no matter how much the Animorphs dislike the war sometimes, if they hadn't gone through that construction site, everything would have been worse.
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but that message got screwed up when everything ended up better lol
i think it kinda showed that it wasnt about random kids being thrust into the war, they were born to be heroes, and even though they had no responsibility to fight they did
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Well, most of them were born to be heroes...
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How did things end up better? Tobias was a Controller, Marco was dead, everyone else also, presumably ended up dead and open war was waged on earth, which the humans were absolutely not prepared for. In all reality, if that timeline had been kept intact the war would have been lost.
MM4, IMO, shows that the Animorphs have to fight the war, or else all is lost. Granted, that message is exclusively for the readers and does absolutely ZERO to advance the plot or character development in the series, since none of the Ani's remember it ever happening (kinda like #11...).
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na, the book ends with crayak freezing time after ax, cassie, rachel and jake managed to get into the blade ship and activate some kind of self destruct or something that would have ended the war, at least thats how i remember it...RE-READ AHOY!
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How did things end up better? Tobias was a Controller, Marco was dead, everyone else also, presumably ended up dead and open war was waged on earth, which the humans were absolutely not prepared for. In all reality, if that timeline had been kept intact the war would have been lost.
MM4, IMO, shows that the Animorphs have to fight the war, or else all is lost. Granted, that message is exclusively for the readers and does absolutely ZERO to advance the plot or character development in the series, since none of the Ani's remember it ever happening (kinda like #11...).
Exactly! It shows that they really do need to keep fighting....what is the point of any AU? It's like asking what's the point of what the angel shows the guy in "It's a Wonderful Life," or what the point of the Buffy episode "The Wish" is--it shows how important certain people/events are....
And IMO AUs are the best, I thought MM4 was very interesting...
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yea but in its a wonderful life the guy remembers it all afterward so he learns from it, none of them remember mm4, it goes back to when jake makes the decision and drode just doesnt accept it
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na, the book ends with crayak freezing time after ax, cassie, rachel and jake managed to get into the blade ship and activate some kind of self destruct or something that would have ended the war, at least thats how i remember it...RE-READ AHOY!
yup, but the war was still lost. If the Animorphs didn't fight, Jake, Marco, Cassie, Rachel, Tobias Ax all would have died. Most humans would die. Taxxons never became nothlits. Hork Bajir didn't became a free species. Etc.
If they fought, well, you know what happens....
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The point of MM4 was simply to piss me off
It solidifies the whole 'Destiny' thing.
For me that makes it far worse than any filler story, ending or lack of plot advancement ever.
For me the whole thrill was "five random kids who happened to walk through a construction site" and then suddenly this book comes out and oh, surprise, the Ellimist planned this all along and if it hadn't happened they'd experience some weird transdimensional jumps that results in Armageddon?
No. Bad bad bad bad bad.
I like the book I like the story, up until that Ellimist appears I like it. But the idea of inescapable destiny is both disgusting and horrifying to me.
So yeah. MM4 is to make me go grr
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maybe...ellimist didnt stack the deck, and crayak just assumed he did cause hes a mean old fart, i dno im just trying to help you out bro lol
okay how about this, the reason that ellimist won, is because he took the time to look into the history of all 6 of the members destined to group together, he didnt actually change anything to put them together, but he saw how special they all were, whereas crayak, a cold calculator, just saw the numbers game, 6 against a million, um dur, and thats why he didnt see that the animorphs had all this going for them
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I appreciate the effort man, but the fact that the ellimist came in and giggled "hehehe I stacked the deck, ain't I a stinker?" kinda overrides that theory.
But the point is while taken; live in denial. I can do that
Yep Ellimist wasn't even aware of them till book 7
Yeah. Right
*lives on in delusion*
la la la
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whos the ellimist? what are you guys talking about?
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I think the point of the story was just meant as a cool "what could have been" and that they were going to win, it would just have been in a different matter.
Also, doesn't it say that Cassie would have some memories of it, but she wouldn't say anything because it would destryo some members of the group (i.e. Jake giving in like that, Tobias volunteering to be a Controller)? Maybe that helped set up some of her actions at the end of the series like when she let Tom have the Blue Box.
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whos the ellimist? what are you guys talking about?
are you kidding or do you really not know?
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hmm.... i think that, the Ellimist didn't choose to make those 5 kids go to that construction site. I mean, it was Jake who chose that right? The Ellimist isn't allowed to interfere their decisions. Anyway, the reason why the Animorphs didn't go there at M4 because Crayak and Drode changed the timeline, to make these 5 kids decide to go the safe way. Of course, it was in the rules because the Ellimist was allowed to change somethin in the Falla kadrat (?) situation thingy.
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that elfangor screwed everything up by landing in the construction site that night lol
Yeah, what he said. :p
I liked MM4, though. It was well-written and very exciting, though it didn't have much of a point, like a most of the books in the thirties and a few from the early forties.
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It is what they call in erudite circles a "counterfacual history", a study into what might have happened if x didn't happen and y did, thus resulting in alpha and not z :nerd:. It's great for character study.
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You guys baffle me. Ironically, I just read this book yesterday. Finished it in a bit over 2 hrs. Great read. Especially the opening. If there's one thing KA does really well, its writing the opening sequences. Anyone remember MM3 book opening? Very disturbing but interesting.
MM4 was an important story. It showed Jake's reaching his breaking point, even though there was plenty more to come. It represented Cassie as an anomaly, an explanation as to why she was so well grounded, so stable, so moralistically cool, and a bit mystic, and in a sense, what made her give the Yeerks to morphing cube.
It showed that Rachel would have indeed dated Marco. If it happened, it would have happened. Truth don't lie.
Tobias def would have ended up with the Sharing, making a huge mistake on his part, only to realize that hey, he could have endured his rough teenage years. That's loads better than losing your freedom to an alien slug.
If it weren't for Cassie though, and for the already happened timeline, the Animorphs would have fallen to the influences of the undercover Yeerks. Eventually. But then again, Ax would've screwed things up big time.
And in the end, all was not lost. The Ellimist stated that although the Animorphs did all die in that alternate timeline, they still were able to take out a lot of the Yeerks by blasting the Pool Ship. And millions of humans would have died, but the VICtory would eventually come. The Yeerks would not have won.
The importance of the story is that the Animorphs HAD to become the heroes they were to save millions from dying. To stall. To save humanity from total destruction, and most importantly, to save themselves. As much as I hated the final book ending #54, it was still way happier than the ending we saw in MM4
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The Ellimist stacked the deck. Its undeniable, as it was stated in the book itself.
He chose Jake to lead. Jake was the only one with ties to all the Animorphs. Visser one's son, Elfangor's son and brother. And the anomaly. Please tell me u didn't actually think it was just a random coincidence that these four ended up as part of team of 6 random humans? There's no way.
The ellimist didn't entirely control the situation. He just sets things up by creation or manipulation and sits back to watch it all play out. He obviously managed somehow to manipulate the situation so that all 5 of the Animorphs, including Ax, excluding Rachel, ended up living in that exact town. Jake and Marco becoming best friends. Jake ended up liking Cassie (I'd like to think that part was natural. The Ellimist wouldnt tamper with love) and Tobias was a guy he helped out. Rachel was just a tag-along. A serendipity. Earth's sacrifice who just happened to be Jake's cousin and totally badass.
He stacked the deck hoping and sorta knowing they'd eventually fight the Yeerks, no matter how resistant. And I think that was pretty cool of him. Giving them that opportunity.
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Another thing...the only problem i had with MM4 was Rachel. She was cool in the beginning but towards the end she got crazy. Kinda like the badly interpreted Rachel by the ghostwriters in the books' final arc. Only worse. In MM4 Rachel went from cool to just wild and smiling and liking the idea of killing and the adrenaline rush and....She wasnt the Rachel we knew early on in the books. The smart badass Rachel. Cold in battle and still loving it just the same. Instead she was wild like some silly war child, loving the idea of killing way too much.
And Im sorry to say this, but Rachel was a dumb blond. It was a stereotype KA tried to avoid, but succeeded halfway. The whole make stupid decisions and act on impulse without consequences? Yea, that's pretty dumb. It was needed for someone to throw the chess board across the room when they knew they were losing, but it was still dumb on her part to act that way. KA brought a whole new meaning to the term "Dumb blond." But Rachel's still a fav Animorph of mine.
Amazing how different she and Cassie were. No wonder they weren't on good terms near the end. One was a pacifist. The other was bellicose. And still best friends? Work of the Ellimist maybe? Although the idea of it occurring without the Ellimist's help is quite possible, since it can happen in real life.
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Uhmm... actually, it wasn't clearly stated if the Ellimist stacked the deck or it was plain coincidence. Hahaha, i think he was just teasing the Drode on how the 6 of them ended up together. But still, the possibility that they were chosen is pretty large.
And although Rachel was just the only accident, i think she turned out pretty well for one. Tobias would have given up back at book 23 if it weren't for Rachel. C'mon, admit it, Tobias cares more about Rachel than the fate of the world itself. ;D
But sadly, I halfway agree with filmstu on the Rachel part. Rachel from book 2, book 7, book etc... books before 24.... was different from the other Rachels. I mean, the ghostwriters made Rachel look like some dumb blond. In book 54, she seemed so different from the previous Rachels. She even waited for the Yeers to be fully morphed before she attacked, to be fair and not be "Yeerk". In book 52, she recommends attacking the Yeerks in midmorph, which was a bit harsh.
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The Ellimist must have stacked the deck, I just don't believe in coincidence on that scale (or at least would have to put it down to bad writing). Think back to the Ellimist Chronicles, this is what he does, one small, subtle change and watch it play out. Of course he's much better at it now than he was back then.
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Hmm... yeah, I am pretty convinced right now that the Animorphs were chosen, but, its not that the Ellimist was bad at the game back then, its just that he always wants to play the underdog. You know, join the weaker and more likely to loose team and play his best.
Figures, he played chess with Crayak. Crayak had billions of Yeerks as his pieces, and Ellimist had none but 6.
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I can buy that the Ani's were chosen. It seems almost inevitable. But if Ellimist was going by his "one small change" rule, what was the small change? Because most of what I can think of is actually a big change, at least in the lives of the Ani's and related family members. He didn't create the Ani's. He didn't bring them into existence. So what did he do to ensure that they all ended up in that town, walking across an abandoned construction site together?
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I loved MM4, AUs are great, and the whole thing sucked me in right from the crazy opening scene. I think the point of it though was to explain why there were so many damn coincidences cropping up :3 The obligatory sci-fi/fantasy "we're all connected by fate, or a glowing dude who doesn't interfere" thing.
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He didn't create the Ani's. He didn't bring them into existence. So what did he do to ensure that they all ended up in that town, walking across an abandoned construction site together?
hmmm...make the town the animorphs live in the best town in the world so that everyone would want to live there, inculding the animorphs' parents?
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Insert a "hero" gene into 5 people being born in the area?
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Hmm.. figures that those 5 children were all coincidences... Since the Ellimist was only allowed small changes (hence giving morphing power to 5 random kids). Choosing who those kids were and make them live together in one town was probably too much. Also, creating their existence is already way over the line.
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Well, Tobias had to be part of it, so maybe Ellimist just chose Tobias and by luck the others were all around too???
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Well think about it.
Marco's mom was Visser 1
Marco's best friend was Jake whose brother was a high ranking controller and liked Cassie
Rachel was Jake's cousin who liked Tobias and was friends with Cassie
Cassie had access to animals
Tobias was Elfangor's son
Rachel sadly is the only one without any real connection to the fight other than she was a bridge to Cassie for Jake and she was a good fighter.
Ax is just there because he is Elfangor's brother.
Also if you notice when the Animorphs start messing with the Ellimist's original plan by making changes to the group, everything seems to go haywire.
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The Ellimist says all that in Ch.29.
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*While continuing to deny the Ellimist involvement in the groups forming:*
You got the relations to Elfangor, yeah, Visser One's host's kid,
Cassie because of being "sub-temporily grounded" or whatever
And Jake and Rachel as two strong figures to lead the fight.
The question isn't really so much why he chose these people, it's how he got away with it in the rules of the game, without Crayak just smashing them with a meteor in retaliation. And when he did this of course, reminiscant of the time line convergences shown to Elfangor in TAC
Okay well then
*goes back to denying the Ellimist's role in group formation"
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Read, like, the next-to-last chapter of TAC, and then Ch. 29 of MM4.
Dare you deny SCRIPTURE?! ;D
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Yes
Yes I do
especially because of TAC
that is in direction contraction to The book of Rachel, book 7 verse...something, where the Ellimist said everything changes the future
Nothing is decided, and that should include the 6
Like all holy works it contradicts it self
And whatever happened to that Bibliomorphs thing, did anyone finish any of that up ???
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No, the conversation of the Drode and Ellimist was misleading.
"Oh, I see now, I see it now", the Drode said, ignoring Marco, ignoring all of us. "Subtle as always, Ellimist. Your MEDDLING came before, didn't it? bla lba... Elfangor's time shifted san... etc etc..."
"Oh, did I?" The Ellimist laughed. "That would have been clever of me"
it was unclear whether what the drode said was true, or if the Ellimist was just teasing him. Of course, choosing the 5 kids was against the rules. The rules were 5 supposedly random kids, as Drode stated in Ch. 29.
You can't deny the scriptures.... ;D
Plus, in book 7, the Ellimist said that he cannot interfere, he cannot decide.
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The Sacred Word of KA is not contradictory, we mere human fans just fail to comprehend ;D.
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Yes the Ellimist says he can't interfere
but he does
a lot
He preped the group in advance to include these particular people.
What the drode said was true, the deck was stacked, and the Ellimist did tease him. cause he got away with it.
The Ellimist was involved from the start. That's made clear in TAC, and 26 where he talks about how Jake had encountered Crayak (book 6) and the Ellimist mentions that Crayak knew the Ellimist had made himself known to him, though he didn't present himself till book 7. The same book where he admits that he can't control or predict, or event truely manipulate the future as planned. the future is not ineviatble, a million thing could change and result in a trillion more changes.
Plus, have you ever read the enormous list of KASU's out there.
Yeah, there are plenty of contradictions.
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Blame the disciples aka publishers :).
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yes, but even if the Ellimist supposedly chose these 5 kids, he still didn't have an influence over their actions, right?
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No. All he could do was make a small change and then let it all play out for itself, and hope for the best. The Butterfly effect, in more words or less, like stated in The Stranger. Rachel said that the Ellimist has butterflies too. And what did the Ellimist do upon hearing that? He LAUGHED. Which i thought was pretty awkward for him to do, but it confirmed Rachel's theory.
He stacked the deck. That "meddling nitwit" (drode was hilarious) knows he stacked the freakin' deck. And luckily he did. But he let it play out for itself. The good thing about Rachel being in the group but not part of the original plan, is her strength. Both her and Jake were very determined people and I guess we could say they were there to lead the team. Jake leads, Rachel the motivation.
If you notice, all the Animorphs had a special gift or tie to the war. Rachel was the only one lacking in that department. She wasnt a strategist, or an advisor, or tech support. She was the Soldier, plain and simple. And she embraced that position and gave it her all, a total badass.
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yea but in its a wonderful life the guy remembers it all afterward so he learns from it, none of them remember mm4, it goes back to when jake makes the decision and drode just doesnt accept it
But WE remember--it's for us most of all I think.....
Just like in "The Wish" on Buffy none of the Scoobies remember the AU, but the audience is left knowing how important it was that Buffy came to Sunnydale.....
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Uhmm... actually, it wasn't clearly stated if the Ellimist stacked the deck or it was plain coincidence. Hahaha, i think he was just teasing the Drode on how the 6 of them ended up together. But still, the possibility that they were chosen is pretty large.
Well from TAC we know that the Ellimist at least knew that they would all come together, and stacked the deck as far as allowing Elfangor to return to where he was *supposed* to be so that he could later come to earth and help the Animorphs (and so that Ax would be born, since he knew he too would play a key role). It's not that far of a stretch to say he engineered things given how he knew all of this....I always kind of assumed he had a hand in it after reading that chapter in TAC....
Anyone remember MM3 book opening? Very disturbing but interesting.
Holy crap yes! I have never been sooo confused in my life while reading a book! :p I remember thinking, "WTF Melissa?!" from page one, etc. Now that was another cool AU....
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Hmm... yeah, I am pretty convinced right now that the Animorphs were chosen, but, its not that the Ellimist was bad at the game back then, its just that he always wants to play the underdog. You know, join the weaker and more likely to loose team and play his best.
Figures, he played chess with Crayak. Crayak had billions of Yeerks as his pieces, and Ellimist had none but 6.
OK GUYS. There is a timeline in the Ellimist Chronicles you must realize. When Ellimist makes his presence known to Crayak by moving the planet Earth, That was when Dinosaurs still walked the earth! Yes, he said the small warmblooded animals had a future, but who knows if he knew about the Animorphs back then. I think Ellimist and Crayak each chose a species. Crayak chose Yeerks, Ellimist chose ANDALITES. Humans weren't even at modern technology when the Yeerks were still living in their pools, before Seerow's Kindness. Seerow's Kindness also is a big part that makes you question who caused that? Cause that's the big change for the Yeerks. That would be Crayaks small part, EXCEPT that he didn't choose the Andalites, so he couldn't do that. I think Ellimist was foolish and gave the Yeerks the technology of spaceflight.
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I always thought MM4 was a response to the TV show episode with the same premise, a way for KA to say, "Now this is what really happens."
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no i think the episode came after the book
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Nope. MM#4 came after 'Not My Problem'. It was the only book in the series that wasn't adapted by the TV show, because the TV show wrote the same story before K.A even announced it (I remember reading this on Morphz way back). K.A most likely didn't even know that the TV show had done an episode with a 'what if' story because her and Michael said that they had only watched the first two episodes of the TV show and then stopped.
Doing a 'what if' story in a series isn't exactly original anyway, no more than having an evil double twin (#32) or a team mate turned traitor (David), or even a befriending-a-bad-guy-while-trapped-in-an-isolated-location-to-better-understand-and-break-the-black-and-white-villain-stereotype story (Aftran, #19). A lot of it is pretty cliche stuff that has been done lots of times already on tv and film. Just be glad we didn't have a book that was focused as a court room drama.
Oh wait. ;)
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Yea, it is pretty weird it worked out that way. She must've been pissed how close the episode was, cause they were really similar. That is to say in the way the show tended to screw up the books, if they were to screw up MM4 thats how I figure they would screw up MM4. Or maybe she mentioned it to the writers as a planned work and they ran with it. Now here is the big question, if the show lasted, how on earth would they have gotten through the rest of the series? They basically wrote themselves into corners a lot. I do know they probably would have done a David trilogy movie event. Of course it would have ended differently. Like the yeerks being the ones who trap him in the end because he went to their side.
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Yea, it is pretty weird it worked out that way. She must've been pissed how close the episode was, cause they were really similar. That is to say in the way the show tended to screw up the books, if they were to screw up MM4 thats how I figure they would screw up MM4. Or maybe she mentioned it to the writers as a planned work and they ran with it. Now here is the big question, if the show lasted, how on earth would they have gotten through the rest of the series? They basically wrote themselves into corners a lot. I do know they probably would have done a David trilogy movie event. Of course it would have ended differently. Like the yeerks being the ones who trap him in the end because he went to their side.
Sorry, I must've missed something, but how did they write themselves into a corner? The final episode ended with the prom and was left pretty open.
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No I generally mean that with the changes in continuity they would write themselves into corners where they would be unable to do certain story lines without messing with their own continuity.
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Again, I don't understand what you mean. Which storyline are you talking about specifically? They never killed off any of the characters early or left things unresolved any different than in the books. Everything seemed to generally be in proper continuity on the show, and if the show hadn't been canceled, then they would've had more than enough time to make sure that they followed the books continuity as well because the books would've been over before the TV show.
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I have opinions similar to RYTX on this book.
The point of MM4 was simply to piss me off
It solidifies the whole 'Destiny' thing.
For me that makes it far worse than any filler story, ending or lack of plot advancement ever.
For me the whole thrill was "five random kids who happened to walk through a construction site" and then suddenly this book comes out and oh, surprise, the Ellimist planned this all along and if it hadn't happened they'd experience some weird transdimensional jumps that results in Armageddon?
No. Bad bad bad bad bad.
I like the book I like the story, up until that Ellimist appears I like it. But the idea of inescapable destiny is both disgusting and horrifying to me.
So yeah. MM4 is to make me go grr
Though I liked MM4 and DO think it was important, I can relate to this too.
Character descriptions aside, the idea that the Animorphs’ feelings and decisions are all part of some sort of ‘play moves’ in the Ellimist’s and Cryak’s conflict, is a bit ludicrous to me and ruins the whole idea we are all lead to believe in the beginning, that the 5 kids that walked through the construction site were all random average teenagers who coincidentally happened upon a crashing aliencraft.
Though I think the Ellimist was needed to put things back in place at the end there, I didn’t like his ‘stacking the deck’ stunt in it.
I know the Ellimist is a complex character. My worst read was possibly The Ellimist Chronicles.
MM4 was more for us readers to realize how life would have been for the Animorphs if they never met Elfangor. Plain and simple to me, we needed to be shown that independent to Jake's giving in there, the Yeerks were still invading and the Andalites would have still lost that battle above the Earth.
You can wish the specific problem to be removed from your life, but it doesn't mean it will disappear.
So you get this feeling of 'as bad as things are in the reality, things could be a looooooooot worse'.
I always thought MM4 was a response to the TV show episode with the same premise, a way for KA to say, "Now this is what really happens."
I too have wondered which execution of the Alternate Universe Idea came first. The MM4 Book or the Tv episode?