Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: estrid on November 16, 2008, 12:56:46 AM
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Regardless of whether you liked the ending or not, do you think towards the end of the series it started getting rushed? Like KA just couldn't wait to finish the series once and for all? There seems to have been alot of things that were poorly explained and the books didn't really seem to flow into eachother the way the earlier books did (book 47 with the beavers being an example). and in the last book, she just kind of killed off a buncha people and didnt really explain what happened. she blew off characters that have played important roles since the begginning of the series. She didn't say what happened to the chapman family, you don't know what became of the other's families, or the chee and so forth. I don't know, to me it all just seemed like a very rushed end to a series that started off so well.
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Well, I really agree about the rushed part. Nearing the end, everything seemed to go so smoothly for them, from the female governer to the acquiring of the nukes, things seemed to go WAY too well compared to the past books...
What confirmed it even more was KA's own interview, where all she constantly said in the end was "Read my new series! I'm done with Animorphs!" It gave me the feeling that near the end, she just got tired of the series and wanted to start something new, thus ending it in a rushed way.
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to be honest, no I didn't think it was rushed at all. but then, I don't really complain too much about most things (and sorry if complain isn't quite the right word. couldn't think of a better one).
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I didn't really get the feeling that the ending was rushed. There was stuff that she never went more deeply into, but I think that kind of thing happened throughout the series, not just at the end.
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i dont know, drkchaos has a point. she was constantly goin on bout her new books, how the end was near for animorphs. and alla suddent, things seemed to get easier for them in the sense of missions got accomplished more then in the beggining.
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I think that she really just wanted to finish the series, but she didn't give a whole lot of thought as to how. I remember her saying somewhere that she didn't know how to really end the last book until the second to last chapter or something like that. I figured that's how most of the final books went.
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well things werent really going that easy for them lol i mean they were exposed, forced into hiding, while the yeerks unleashed all out warfare and torched their entire town, then they lost the blue cube
i felt it was a really epic ending, and a good continuing arc once that countdown started that made it feel alot more frantic and warlike and maybe in that sense a little rushed in that you felt they were running out of time just like they did
yea they had a few things go right for them, tom and the taxxons and everything, but she needed to let a few pieces fall into place in order for them to pull off the win right
and yea she kinda left a few loose ends but nothing extremely serious, nothing that you couldnt kinda figure out on your own
Having one of them be like;The chapmans all reunited and lived happily ever after. Erik never forgave them and the chee continued to live in hiding on earth. Jakes parents were freed, but despite their efforts, Jake remained distant from them, ashamed of what he had done to their son.
Its all just kinda semantics and would feel like it was being thrown in just for the sake of being thrown in. Plus I like having lots of loose ends, makes for lots of fanfics lol
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It's weird that KA wanted to push the idea that there will always be conflict, yet killed Rachel off with the excuse that "gee, I can't imagine what Rachel would do once the war is over." I don't know, maybe help Jake out against terrorists or many other things. It's a condradiction. There really just wasn't a reason to kill her off. of course, that's just the worst part of a list of things wrong with the ending.
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I agree with Duff on all counts. The war definitely got harder for them in the end, not easier. The decisions they had to make about the destruction of the Yeerk pool, for example, was probably more weighty than any decision they had had to make before.
And it didn't seem to me that Rachel was killed off because KAA wouldn't know what to do with her after the war. That whole mission was extremely important to the plot, not just an excuse to get rid of an extraneous character.
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ya but think of it this way, she had the auxilliries slautered in an attack that was so pointless it should never have been carried out. But with all the aux gone, she wouldnt have to explain anything. and it is a contridiction, by killing rachel off, whether u agree she shoulda been or not, just seemed like a way to not have to talk bout how rachel would do after the war, kinda like what nohensen said. now KA didnt have to talk bout coflicts.
and i don't mean things got easier in the end bout the decisions they had to make. i ment it got easier in the sense that everything they planned out seemed to go well, as opposed to the beggining where they had a lot more losses. more coincidences in their favor seemed to be taking place
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Well, it should be important to give credit where credit is due. Applegate was an excellent story writer and she had incredulous new idea's that she used in her books. Now with that being said, she was also bad at ending a series merely because she was so used books where very little would happen. I'm pretty certain that if she wanted to end the series going at the same pace most of the series was going in then it would have taken another 30+ books minimum. And like it has been pointed out, she said she was getting tired from writing Animorphs and i doubt another 2 years of the series would have been fun. So the quickest solution to this all would be to end the series quickly. She was a great story writer but i do not think she has had much practice with a gradually ending series. Thus, the ending was rushed, and thus it was not anything extra-ordinary that we fans were used to (which probably made the ending seem worse than it really was due to the high expectations)
If any1 has any questions about my rambling, Feel free to ask!
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...anyone wanna TWSS the title of this thread? hehe
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what's twss mean?
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Duff! hahahaha! nice one.
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Well, it should be important to give credit where credit is due. Applegate was an excellent story writer and she had incredulous new idea's that she used in her books. Now with that being said, she was also bad at ending a series merely because she was so used books where very little would happen. I'm pretty certain that if she wanted to end the series going at the same pace most of the series was going in then it would have taken another 30+ books minimum. And like it has been pointed out, she said she was getting tired from writing Animorphs and i doubt another 2 years of the series would have been fun. So the quickest solution to this all would be to end the series quickly. She was a great story writer but i do not think she has had much practice with a gradually ending series. Thus, the ending was rushed, and thus it was not anything extra-ordinary that we fans were used to (which probably made the ending seem worse than it really was due to the high expectations)
If any1 has any questions about my rambling, Feel free to ask!
well,. i think she woulda been able to do a good ending if there hadnt been wasted filler books like cassie off in australia. that book coulda been the start of the end, insteada wating till like 49 really to get it started, altho by 45 its like a snowball effect.
and duff wth does that mean?
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I sorta, (hate to say it) skimmed the last few books 'til 54. But I got enough of it to understand.
I agree with the fact that Rachel shouldn't've been killed. If she lived Rachel could've proven herself not to be a waraholic who loves violence and actually settled down. Been happy being normal. Maybe worked in the military to make sure her warrior side didn't go to waste. Sadly, she didn't get a chance.
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egads! exsqueeze me? a did you say skimmed? an animorphs book?!?! huh huh huh huuuuuh?
i loved the final arc lol i thought it was so well done and such a fitting end to my childhood series (i kinda lost interest late 30s early 40s and then i went back a few years later after i saw that the series had ended so i could get some closure haha)
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Hey. I didn't like the full out war crap! Can you blame a kid for not liking the betrayal of Ax? Can you blame a kid for not liking what ever I missed when I was skimming? I didn't think so. *crosses arms and says very attitudely*
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sorry duffy, but u cant deny that the ending was rushed. it was like "oh crap i wasted like 10 filler books where i coulda been starting to end this thing, so now i wana be done with it so i gota hurry up and do it in like 5 books" ya u cant do that well, and she didnt
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Hey. I didn't like the full out war crap! Can you blame a kid for not liking the betrayal of Ax? Can you blame a kid for not liking what ever I missed when I was skimming?
depends. how old were you when you read the final arc.
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lol, very true morfowt, age is kinda important in how the ending would effect you.
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well more than rushed i would say that the pace was just kicked into high gear you know, instead of filler book filler book, important plot, filler book it was something huge something huge something huge book after book and it set this really frantic pace that really did feel rushed but, for me anyway, rushed in a good way, because in the story, the animorphs were rushed
would you have preferred there to be another 5 books with random missions after the animorphs had been found out and open war had been started?....yea.....well... .me too, it would have been extremely cool lol but it would have really thrown off the pace of the final arc you know, after say 46 (with the exeption of 48 wtf) you get the feeling that this is it, the animorphs dont have time to look into the yeerks experimenting on donkeys at some dude ranch, and the yeerks arent wasting any time with any of those end the invasion quick schemes that filled in the series so well.
Its all out war, the only things that were important were gaining allies and destroying the oponent, which is what the books focused completely on after 49
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ya but i wana know what gave the yeerks the idea to see that they were human in the first place. and if tobias is a nothlit, doesnt that mean he wouldnt really have human blood to be found as if he were human, but just from his morph? ok thats another topic, the pt is, is if she wasnt busy sending cassie off to australia or whatever she coulda done a better job of the ending
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eh, perhaps you are right estrid, but she is the author, and i doubt that she intentionally made the book disappointing, but more to the point, it's probably kinda hard to come up open war, animorphs, Government intervention and aliens, the topics just dont mix well, any book concerning all 3 of those would inevitably move the series along at a fast pace, the only way they would be able to continue that arc is if the yeerks began hoarding their entire empire there, in which case the Animorphs would be nothing important due to the widened front. I just dont see how the final arc coulda lasted more than 1-2 books extra.
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the animorphs dont have time to look into the yeerks experimenting on donkeys at some dude ranch
Hahahaha!
Quite true, though. I agree with what you said about the pace, I liked it too.
I think if she had made the final arc spread out over more books it would have reduced the intensity and not be as exciting. But yeah, 48 was like...ummm.
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but see, she wouldnt have had to spread it out over more books if she hadnt wasted time with filler books
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but now you arent critiquing the final arc, your talking about the previous books, we can all agree those were not the proudest time in the series lol
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there were definitely filler books near the end, but it, but how would you add new idea's into the invasion of Earth? i think that was probly a block. It makes sense to cram in the last few books anyways, i mean, would u really have liked the last book to go into great detail about how everything worked perfectly? i think that cramming was an excellent way of showing the animorphs "true colors" even if they turned out rather gray. But i think what your annoyed with wasnt the cramming, it was just the quality of the cramming.
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i think that was probly a block. It makes sense to cram in the last few books anyways, i mean, would u really have liked the last book to go into great detail about how everything worked perfectly? i think that cramming was an excellent way of showing the animorphs "true colors" even if they turned out rather gray. But i think what your annoyed with wasnt the cramming, it was just the quality of the cramming.
yes the cramming does piss me off. i'm not talking bout the specifics of the end, or how it shoulda been a happy ending, every1 lives (which is another topic). what i'm saying is, u could have the crappy brutal ending, but still explain what happened. she coulda showed the entire chapman family blew up and the chee all got melted down to be used for scrap metal, it woulda taken one paragraph, wouldn't have been a happy ending, and woulda said what happened. so ya "reality" of war is brutal, yada yada yada, but i know what hapened
and duff i'm not just talking bout the final arc. im talking bout the whole end, like i'd say book 45 onwards was rushed, so had she started the ending earlier, like in book 39 insteada the stupid buffahuman book, she coulda finished by book 54 and explained alota things, even if she killed off every1, at least it wouldnt be like, oh leme introduce new characters third book from the end and then never talk bout them again ::)
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but it doesnt really matter what number she started the final arc on, the number of books it took to end the series would have remained the same, you know what i mean, she had an outline for, lets call it a 9 book arc (45 was really the beginning of the end....and 48 doesnt count haha)
so had she started at 39, it wouldnt mean we'd get 6 more books of final arc, it just means the series would end six books earlier
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How do u know it would end earlier? where does this assumption come from
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cause the final arc was nine books long....so if she had started the end 6 books earlier, the series would have ended six books earlier
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it could have been more spaced out and have more detail though
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i think she should have made 54 either longer or multiple books.
she should still make another one. i'd give a limb for 55.
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ya see thats what im talking bout. she had to cram stuff in cuz she wanted to be done by 54. but had she started ending it sooner she coulda fit more stuff in and still be done by book 54
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well estrid, the important thing is that you enjoyed the series. even if you hate the ending, Animorphs was an excellent series that gave much more happiness throughout the series then it could possibly take away in the end. Do you agree?
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hells ya.
i think endings could always be better, whats really sad about the ending was the fact that there would be no more new books.
i liked the mid-section of the series of the best, but there were a few gems that just stood out.
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i think she should have made 54 either longer or multiple books.
she should still make another one. i'd give a limb for 55.
I'm still on the fence about whether I like the whole new plot she added at the end, so I would say 54 could be shorter, even. She could just take that section out. xD
well estrid, the important thing is that you enjoyed the series. even if you hate the ending, Animorphs was an excellent series that gave much more happiness throughout the series then it could possibly take away in the end. Do you agree?
I dunno, the ending can ruin a series for some people. ~coughharrypottercough~
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i think she should have made 54 either longer or multiple books.
she should still make another one. i'd give a limb for 55.
I'm still on the fence about whether I like the whole new plot she added at the end, so I would say 54 could be shorter, even. She could just take that section out. xD
yeah, she should have either left it out or continued it.
what i'd REALLY like to see is a complete remake (in a more mature style) of the whole series.
that'd be great :P
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it could have been more spaced out and have more detail though
if she wanted to do that, why doesn't she just make more than 54 books?
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Why would people want a remake of Animorphs to be MORE mature? It was already borderline too much for a kid's series. Personally I'd tone down the seriousness. Of course, if there's going to be more maturity I'd like more main characters to die off throughout the series. New ones could come along via different means. That way most people won't be shocked and appalled by Rachel's death at the end.
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well more mature and more adult would be cool for us cause we are all older than we were when it first came out
id say it was mature enough tho, i wouldnt want it to lose any of the humor and everything
it could have been more spaced out and have more detail though
if she wanted to do that, why doesn't she just make more than 54 books?
its possible they gave them a specific number of books to finish it up, but maybe ka was just like okay its time on her own, hopefully they'll come back and we can ask
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UED i'm one of those ppl where the ending of a long series is super important. after ive invested all this time (5 yrs is a bit much) and interest into a series, i expect a well thought out ending not the rushed ending that it was. but overall ya i hate cliffhanger endings. i dont care if every1 dies, yes that woulda pissed me of and i woulda hated it, but i woulda hated it a bit less cuz i woulda known what happened with every1
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Why would people want a remake of Animorphs to be MORE mature? It was already borderline too much for a kid's series.
i just mean in the way it is written.
not scholastic reading level and page size.
more of an adult novel, if you know what i mean.
not the maturity of the content. that was a perfect balance.
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UED i'm one of those ppl where the ending of a long series is super important. after ive invested all this time (5 yrs is a bit much) and interest into a series, i expect a well thought out ending not the rushed ending that it was. but overall ya i hate cliffhanger endings. i dont care if every1 dies, yes that woulda pissed me of and i woulda hated it, but i woulda hated it a bit less cuz i woulda known what happened with every1
Ah well, to each his/her own, I guess. I like cliffhanger endings. xD
And I would have loved it if Animorphs had been a YA series and been more mature, like Everworld was.
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it could have been more spaced out and have more detail though
if she wanted to do that, why doesn't she just make more than 54 books?
its possible they gave them a specific number of books to finish it up, but maybe ka was just like okay its time on her own
yeah...that's sort of what I was talking about. I know I read somewhere that the contract was set for quite a few more books, but she decided to end at 54. If she wanted to spread the ending out, why didn't she just decide to go over 54 books?
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or not send cassie off to australia
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Yeah, 44 was kinda weird. :P
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*slaps forehead*
I mean, if she wanted to spread out the ending, she could've kept all the filler books, and just make the series over 54 books. She didn't, so she wanted to rush the ending (or maybe there's another reason).
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well her wanting to rush the ending makes sense
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she didnt want to rush the ending, she just wanted to make it 9 books lol theres nothing wrong with that, thats plenty of an ending imo and apparently in her opinion too
is that the opinion of everyone? clearly not, but i think its safe to assume she didnt walk up to michael one morning and be like hey hun, you know what i think we should do? lets just blow an animorphs ending out of our ass, just really screw over all our fans, sounds like fun dear, but do you mind if we kill rachel, i hate the witch
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she didnt want to rush the ending, she just wanted to make it 9 books lol theres nothing wrong with that, thats plenty of an ending imo and apparently in her opinion too
is that the opinion of everyone? clearly not, but i think its safe to assume she didnt walk up to michael one morning and be like hey hun, you know what i think we should do? lets just blow an animorphs ending out of our ass, just really screw over all our fans, sounds like fun dear, but do you mind if we kill rachel, i hate the witch
well actually duff, while that may not be exactly play by play what KA did, it sure as hell ended up looking that way. ::)
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well it wasnt THAT bad.
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yea but you have to have faith that they did their best to give us the ending they really wanted to do, and for some of us, myself included, it was the perfect conclusion the series. You have to think that K and M felt the same about it, even if some/alot of the fans didnt. I don't think they set out to make an inferior ending, and I don't think they were displeased with the ending when they finally put it together.
You can't please em all. Sorry kat, I know its like to wait for build up to something for so long and have it let you down so much ~coughharrypottercough~
*hands kate a cough drop* and I can only assume it was more disappointing with animorphs, i feel for ya
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haha ya u cant plz every1 duff, but i mean come on, after 5 yrs, u cant just lump it all into 1 book and then advertise ur new book like oh whatever i gave u a crappy ending, wasted 5 yrs of ur child hood, now buy my new book to be disappointed again!
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she didnt want to rush the ending, she just wanted to make it 9 books lol theres nothing wrong with that, thats plenty of an ending imo and apparently in her opinion too
oh yeah, that could be it too...wait...is there a difference?
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a difference in what?
huh, IM confused by something morf said...
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I am too. Morf u wanna extrapolate on that little comment of yours?
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Is there a difference between wanting to rush the ending and wanting to end it in 9 books?
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yea...there is lol the idea that 9 books is a rushed ending is completely an opinion, in some peoples minds that is plenty of books to provide a complete conclusion
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but see i dont think she took 9 books to end it. it seems more like really after 50 she rushed in the auxilliries then in 54 was like "crap,what do i do with all these new charachters i brought in? i know, ill just kill all of them off and i won't have to worry anymore" and so on
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but see i dont think she took 9 books to end it. it seems more like really after 50 she rushed in the auxilliries then in 54 was like "crap,what do i do with all these new charachters i brought in? i know, ill just kill all of them off and i won't have to worry anymore" and so on
To be honest, she could have just ignored their existance after the war, like she did with Loren. What was the point of bringing Loren back, again?
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bringing loren back was just her way of having one more lose end left unanswered. she seems to be a fan of that ::)
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bringing loren back was just her way of having one more lose end left unanswered. she seems to be a fan of that ::)
If she had Tobias move back in with his mother at the end, it would have made a lot of sense. Even if she didn't do anything with Loren until then, it wouldn have made it fine to me. Somewhere for Tobias to go besides becoming a recluse.
Though it seems he moved in with the Hork-Bajir. Though why they stayed on Earth instead of going to fight the current resistance on their homeworld boggles me.
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I agree there were way too many loose ends. Also, I don't think all 9 of the last books really contributed to the final arc; 46-48 could have happened pre-45 (with a few details tweaked). I think those books took time away from the endgame.
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ya def. also, the horkbajir stayin in yellowstone or whatever insteada goin home? that made no sense and it was obvious just a half ass answer to what she was gona do with them
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ok, how's this? while writing book 54, she changed her mind at the last second about some things, like originally tobias was gonna live with his mother, but in the end, decided against it.
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i doubt it, i think once she decided rachel was gonna die, tobias' fate was pretty much sealed
the hork bajir one made sense, they liked it on earth, their planet wasnt home for them, it was home for their parents, it wasnt the same place anymore
48 was definately a misplace, but i thought 46 was a good book to kinda change the kind of war they were fighting, and 47 def set the stage for things in the end
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i doubt it, i think once she decided rachel was gonna die, tobias' fate was pretty much sealed
the hork bajir one made sense, they liked it on earth, their planet wasnt home for them, it was home for their parents, it wasnt the same place anymore
48 was definately a misplace, but i thought 46 was a good book to kinda change the kind of war they were fighting, and 47 def set the stage for things in the end
There was currently a resistance going on there. Tobi should have taken her people to help.
I'm tempted to write a fanfic where the ending is changed the way I would fel acceptable, but that's probably been done a hundred times over by different people. Actually, all of my ideas may have been done by other people at some point, but that's going off topic.
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that is true, the horkbajir shoulda gone to help restore their planet,
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46 was a great book for the final arc because it really showed the war on a global scale, where in previous books the war had been mostly local.
I'm also one of the few who actually liked the Civil War parts of 47. xD
i doubt it, i think once she decided rachel was gonna die, tobias' fate was pretty much sealed
the hork bajir one made sense, they liked it on earth, their planet wasnt home for them, it was home for their parents, it wasnt the same place anymore
48 was definately a misplace, but i thought 46 was a good book to kinda change the kind of war they were fighting, and 47 def set the stage for things in the end
There was currently a resistance going on there. Tobi should have taken her people to help.
I'm tempted to write a fanfic where the ending is changed the way I would fel acceptable, but that's probably been done a hundred times over by different people. Actually, all of my ideas may have been done by other people at some point, but that's going off topic.
It has been done many times, yes. I was looking over RAF Classic's fanfic section and there were so many threads titled "Animorphs #55: The (something)"
But that doesn't mean you couldn't do a really good job of it! 8D
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I wonder, why Rachel, though?
Dont get me wrong, under the context of her mission, it fit very well into the story. Also, her deatch scene was written incredibly well, her final thoughts really did sound like those of a dying person, I just don't know why.
I still think Cassie should've been the one to die, I'm not saying that because I hate her (she's my second favorite character), but because I think it would've been more tragic to have the "purest" one destroyed by war. As a matter of fact, at the end, she seemed to come out the best from it.
I, personally, think she picked Rachel because she had the most connections with people out of the Animorphs, and would be missed the most (she had Cassie, Jake, Tobias, Sarah, Jordan, Mom, Dad).
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I don't remember reading anything about Cassie feeling guilty over Rachel's death. She did indirectly cause Rachel's death, just like Jake.
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Rachel had to die because Rachel had nothing to gain by the war ending. Rachel was an entity that, in and of itself, could only exist within the war.
At least that's what KA tries to play it off as. :) I personally think that there would always have been a battle for Rachel to fight. But in context of this particular war...it became all she was.
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There will always be conflict. Rachel could have done a lot of exciting things to help save the world after they won. It's kind of like what Kelran Isthinar said in an RP called Animorphs: a New Beginning. There will always be evil to fight.
Oh, and the good guys are allowed to like it. Not for the killing, but for defending what they feel is right.
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I dont know, I think it would've been great to see Rachel after the war.
I want to see how she would deal without all the constant adrenaline rushes, and the battles, I wonder if she would struggle. But, she could get those rushes from something else, I suppose.
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Oh, and the good guys are allowed to like it. Not for the killing, but for defending what they feel is right.
My signature is a quote from #48. If the good guys are allowed to like it, Rachel didn't think so at the time. :)
I do think it would be interesting to see Rachel post-war. Would she have withdrawn like Jake? Or gone on to other wars like Ax? What would have happened to her and Tobias?
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Oh, and the good guys are allowed to like it. Not for the killing, but for defending what they feel is right.
My signature is a quote from #48. If the good guys are allowed to like it, Rachel didn't think so at the time. :)
I do think it would be interesting to see Rachel post-war. Would she have withdrawn like Jake? Or gone on to other wars like Ax? What would have happened to her and Tobias?
EXACTLY! That could've been so interesting, as opposed to Marco and Cassie (and even Tobias after Rachel died), whose outcomes were obvious. I think Marco or Cassie should've been the one to bite the bullet. But then again, that's just me, and I'm not the author, so.....
Also, as far as Rachel feeling guilty about liking what she's doing, I think I see what she means. She likes to fight, she likes the adrenaline, and the rush of it all, and it scares her.