Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: Vanish on July 02, 2010, 06:41:02 PM
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When re-reading the series I found it unrealistic and bothering that even though all the main Animorphs characters were in hundreds of battles , no one died until the very last book. As much as I loved all the characters (besides Cassie haha) I think it would have made it more exciting if maybe one or two more would have died off during the series to give the reader the belief that anyone could die at any moment. For example after Tobias became a Nothlit, I think it added to the fear, atleast a little, of someone getting trapped in morph more and in turn made the story better. I know that the Animorphs universe itself was unrealistic but the series and characters had a lot of realistic things about it which is in my opinion part of what made the Animorphs so great.
Does anyone agree with me on this or do you think it would have hurt the story and the chemistry of the characters too much?
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I think it would have been a maybe-improvement if they had started off with one or two more kids involved, and Cassie died (which would redeem her general ish-ness), and one of the other extras died. Then maybe if another had been taken by the Yeerks, but the Ani's had to make a last-second choice to kill him before they get exposed. Jake survived infestation, which brought THAT particular fear home to us, but having somebody enslaved-then-dead would bring it even closer to home by illustrating the importance of secrecy and the value of freedom even over life.
But eh. :) I still love the series enough as-is; my post here is merely speculation of how I would have written it.
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haha oh yeah same here, I love Animorphs so much and I think its one of the greatest series ever written. Great ideas Estelore, I think if the animorphs had to kill one of there own because of infestation, it would have been a very dark and interesting moment in the series and would have shown the desperation of the characters need to win no matter what.
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*nod*
One of the big things about the series that bugged me was that it really did not get stressed ENOUGH (in my eyes) that this war wasn't just about humanity: there is a muchmuchmuch bigger picture here, and it involves humans, the whole of Earth, and all sentient cephalized species.
Having a couple mid-series deaths and really MAJOR moral/ethical decisions, decisions with massively profound consequences... it could only deepen the series, and it would give RAF so much more food for thought and discussion.
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i've argued the same point many times.
if k.a. wanted accuracy (war has sacrifices), she could have gotten rid of a few during the middle. *cough* cassie *cough*
keeping them ALL alive against impossible odds (only to have 1+ killed at the very end) doesn't seem fair, one way or the other.
it wasn't my series, but it still didn't feel 'right'.
try and keep the title a bit more specific (but thanks for including the spoiler warning!) :)
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killing a character is always dangerous for a creator of a series, because there are always people who get attached to characters (even cassie) that is why you dont see it happen often anywhere. in heroes, every time someone died, fans complained and the character was brought back. the only character to ever truly die in comics (bucky) recently came back to life as well.
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Yeah that's always hard to sacrifice a character. The only way to "cure" the missing, is to put another good character to replace it.
KAA could have done it. She added Ax and David, and the new Animorphs near the end, but she could have added more of them in other books and kill one of the main character, replace it by another one...
It's a challenge for the writers. ^^
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I definitely see a deterrent to a lot of people if you start nicking off characters, realistic as it would be, but in Ani-verse I see that being a problem too: we have a reasonably close community with with groups of kids dead or disappearing this stages a problem. Plus I envision our heroes being pretty demoralized in fighting a covert war where their teammates keep dying-I don't see them pushing through that as well as they did otherwise
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If she did kill one or two off once in a while it would have made the series more realistic. There would be a risk of the new person being deemed a replacement scrappy, but it would have been more real.
However it's either fanon or canon that the Ellemist always makes sure there is a way out. That justifies them always living through things that should kill them, because someone a lot more powerful than V3 was watching out for them. That's one thing that made it so jarring that Rachel died. It's like E dropped the ball.
I wonder if she would have gotten away with character death, though. Would she be forced to sell to an older audience if the Anis were killed off for real more often? She was walking the line as it was.
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I think it really cheapens/ruins the story to believe that "the Ellimist did it." For one thing it makes the Ellimist and Crayak's game if he is able to make sure that the Anis make it out OK everytime. Furthermore, it cheapens the efforts of the Anis, because then really wasn't their own actions that mattered in the war.
Of course, I agree that unrealistic as is and that this made some of the suspenseful situations harder to take seriously. The clearest example I always go to is this: at one point Tobias is dead, very clearly dead, quite undoubtedly dead... The book ends and he's still dead. But I couldn't even make myself care, instead I was annoyed because I couldn't even convince myself that it was possible that he was actually dead; instead I knew without a doubt in my mind that not only was he not dead, but I was also quite sure that he would come in 'unexpectedly' to save the day at a critical moment when otherwise something terrible would happen. It actually made the rest of the read more annoying because I knew that this literary device was being used and had to just wait for it to happen.
In all fairness, I certainly concede that KA wouldn't necessarily have known just how far the series was going to go from the beginning and wasn't prepared for this problem, so that by the time she was far enough into the series to have to say "You know, it is unrealistic that the Anis keep making it out safe and sound every time" it was too late to set up some characters to be part of the early team and sacrifice them for an early demise. At this point, she didn't have a dozen or so adults (who are a lot easier to kill off without hurting too many fans' feelings) but only 6 kids who were all justifiably necessary for the entire series.
So, unrealistic: yes, but also necessary with the series established as it was within the first couple of books. I guess this is just one of those situations where you have to apply suspension of disbelief; to accept that even though it is an unlikely story it happens that way anyways. Personally, I prefer it when the story stands on its own right in a "yes, it makes sense that it would play out like that" way, but if a story is good enough, as Animorphs certainly is, I am more than willing to suspend my disbelief as necessary and enjoy it.
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It was all part of Ellemist and Crayak's game. It doesn't cheapen the efforts of the Anis. All Ellemist did was get them together and make sure they aren't put into an impossible to survive situation. Everything else is the Animorph's doing. I think it justifies their survival very well, and is the most realistic reason that they did survive until the end. It's better than them being just that lucky, or just that good. Or the bad guys being just that bad. Of course they were bad, but you can partially justify that with the thought that the Council doesn't give V3 the best troops. He's off in the middle of nowhere, fighting a handful of enemies, and has a habit of killing his troops for trivial reasons.
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It was all part of Ellemist and Crayak's game. It doesn't cheapen the efforts of the Anis. All Ellemist did was get them together and make sure they aren't put into an impossible to survive situation. Everything else is the Animorph's doing. I think it justifies their survival very well, and is the most realistic reason that they did survive until the end. It's better than them being just that lucky, or just that good. Or the bad guys being just that bad. Of course they were bad, but you can partially justify that with the thought that the Council doesn't give V3 the best troops. He's off in the middle of nowhere, fighting a handful of enemies, and has a habit of killing his troops for trivial reasons.
Well yes, the Earth/Yeerk war could have gone either way and that the Ellimist made sure that they had a way to make it through while the Crayak made sure that the Yeerks could conquer Earth. It was then up to the characters from both sides to play it out their own way. But to say that with every mission the Anis decided to go on the Ellimist was allowed to provide them a way out does cheapen it, removing any real meaning to the debating, planning and worrying that they did beforehand.
Sure, when they are directly presented with a Crayak/Ellimist challenge (The Iskoort conflict for example) then yes, for it to be fair conflict to decide that outcome it has to be able to go either way. But if every time that they decide "The way we are going to solve this problem is to go Yeerk Pool" then the Ellimist is allowed to give them a backdoor out of the Yeerk pool, then they really can't make a wrong decision until they are actually in the heat of battle.
So I would say that, no, for the most part you have avoid the "the Ellimist/Crayak did it" explanations unless we know them to be a move they were making, and instead assume that for the most part the Ellimist and Crayak must have to stand back and watch how it played out.
On the other-hand, V3 having hand-me-down troops is a good point that adds some verisimilitude. As is the poor actions/decision making on the bad guys' part, though that often is in itself unrealistic; yes V3's arrogant oafish and stupid actions sometimes made the Anis' survival more reasonable, but it is unrealistic that someone that unable to control his ego would have lasted that long moving up the ladder in the Yeerk Empire.
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I really don't see the problem you're talking about, but I guess I can just agree to disagree here.
They could still plan, and they could still die. It's just that he made sure there was always a way out, if they found it.
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I think for a kid's series it would have been hard to keep kids into it had several characters died in the middle. Let's face it, Remnants didn't do that well. Other famous series (Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl for starters) all manage to keep most of the main characters alive. Animorphs was at least real enough to take one of the ones most precious to us, one of the narrators. In Harry Potter there were characters you loved that died, but none of the main three. And the main three lived happily ever after. In Artemis Fowl... Sad, but not a main character.
For a kids series, it was plenty horrific. People shot, entrails falling out, PTSD, people willing to run out of the war in spite of the damage it would do to civilians just to not be in it anymore (MM#4, The Andalite Chronicles), treachery, a loss of morality, tearing family apart, torture... I could go on pretty continuously about it.
From a first-person narrative I can understand why there weren't 20+ characters from the beginning. And losing a narrator! I always wonder what my cousins will think when they've read the series just to get to #54, and the character that always came right after Jake dies. Someone from the beginning, someone they got the thoughts of in every Megamorphs and 1/6th or so of the overall books.
Heck, I was starting high school when #54 came out and I remember my friends and I thinking it was so traumatic. You didn't need to be a genius to realize how much worse real war would be and how many people you would lose.
I think if, reading the series, there had been more narrators, people dying, etc., etc... A lot of kids wouldn't have even bothered, because there wouldn't have been anyone you could fall in love with. I don't know if even I would have bothered. Now, as an adult, I think I would. But back then? The whole point of a novel series was to have home characters you could come back to and be in love with. Speaking of literary love here, of course.
So, unrealistic? Yeah, quite a bit - especially considering their ability to make it as long as they did without Ax. A stupid decision in execution? No, absolutely not. For 9-12 year olds I think it was totally the right choice. Get them in love, get them to feel that comradeship, rip their heart out and show them the harshest war reality at the finish line.
Didn't like the final arc of the series, but speaking purely of how it ended I thought it was pretty smart.
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For a kids series, it was plenty horrific. People shot, entrails falling out, PTSD, people willing to run out of the war in spite of the damage it would do to civilians just to not be in it anymore (MM#4, The Andalite Chronicles), treachery, a loss of morality, tearing family apart, torture... I could go on pretty continuously about it.
I think most here would agree (correct me if I'm wrong) that it was 'realistic' in the sense that the aspects of it being a war were clear, I don't think it needed to be more horrific. We're mostly just talking here about that even as 'real' as it got, you still knew that the six main characters would make it out just fine. And yes, trying to have 20+ main characters wouldn't be personable enough for you to really start caring about them and yes, lots of main characters don't need to keep dying while you're still trying to get to know them. But setting up an extra character at the beginning, getting to know them peripherally through Jake in book #1 just like the rest of the Anis, then having them die within the next couple of books would have left the feeling that it wasn't just going to be like a little-kids cartoon where every main character made it out safe and sound; remember, this is a young adult series, maybe still 'kids' from our perspective, but ready for more suspense than a small child.
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Well Jake does die in MM3 (and Rachel for a second) and Elfangor gets killed in the very first book which is something that effects Ax throughout the series off and on. I dunno I guess it never really bothered me that no one died until the very end. There were plenty of other hardships that went on throughout the series that they had to deal with without anyone dying.
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Well, I said it was unrealistic, I just disagree that it was poor execution for a 9-12 series.
Without a substantial amount of other characters, any character in the beginning would have to die in the first few books in order to achieve being a peripheral character without kids knowing it was a peripheral character and expecting that character to die. To have a death happen to a character by the middle of the series, there would have to be a lot more than 5 characters - or kids would develop less attachment to other characters knowing they're peripheral and destined to die (I mean, what would anyone think of a character singled out to be the only unnarrated character in the story?) Even so, most kids probably wouldn't even be attached to the character until that character narrated - I think narration is a big key to that attachment in the Animorphs series, because it is not written in third person with any sense of semi-omniscience for the audience. It's the curse of first-person narration - that's why we can feel so upset when George Weasley or Dumbledore die even when they're not really main characters at all - because of the third-person narrative.
Doesn't work the same with first person narrative, but the first-person narrative provided so many more benefits for the sake of really engrossing the kids in the horrors of war. I think Tobias probably could have been killed mid-series (any time after book #3 really) and it could have made sense from a book production standpoint because as much as kids loved him he was a character in a fragile bird body, didn't have morphing powers for a long time and then avoided morphing like the plague a lot of the time, etc., etc. But doing the series with only five narrators would have been hard, too.
It would just be really, really hard to pull off is my point, and I can completely understand why it wasn't done. I write FanFic with a mature rating and I plan to have some more characters narrate and peripheral characters included over time. My plan is that peripheral characters will narrate and if regularly narrating characters die peripheral characters will move up. But realistically, I feel that's something I can handle as an adult reader, not a preteen. And my child education seems to agree with me so far - it would have been very difficult, and very likely not profitable - to attempt that. And Scholastic thought Tobias and Ax were controversial enough as characters as it was - hence them narrating less books than the others. >> But I mean, I do wonder how it would have worked that way - but I usually wonder that in conjunction of wondering how much better the series could have been written if it was aimed at a teen or adult audience.
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...Scholastic thought Tobias and Ax were controversial enough as characters as it was - hence them narrating less books than the others.
Could you clairify or tell me more about this? I had never heard that they were considered 'controversial' in any way, I just figured it was harder to write from their perspective (especially while Tobias was completely trapped as bird: "And then everyone went inside to go about the mission. I kept lookout. I preened my feathers some. I kept looking around. Fifteen minutes later I let them know that more reinforcements were approaching. I kept lookout some more. Everyone came running out while morphing back to human. Then they morphed bird and we flew away).
...I usually wonder that in conjunction of wondering how much better the series could have been written if it was aimed at a teen or adult audience.
I thought it was considered "young adult." I mean, it started out appropriate enough for children (I remember it being very vague about saying what happened in #1 when the policeman Human-Controller died for example) but it quickly became deep and serious in some topics, as well as occasionally graphic; I always assumed that the target was intended to be 'young adult' (though I know the boundary between "children's book" and "young adult" can be flexible often).
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Could you clairify or tell me more about this? I had never heard that they were considered 'controversial' in any way, I just figured it was harder to write from their perspective (especially while Tobias was completely trapped as bird: "And then everyone went inside to go about the mission. I kept lookout. I preened my feathers some. I kept looking around. Fifteen minutes later I let them know that more reinforcements were approaching. I kept lookout some more. Everyone came running out while morphing back to human. Then they morphed bird and we flew away).
Maybe controversial isn't as correct as "strange" - however, Applegate has at some point written their natures (being hawk and Andalite) being why they did not narrate more books as noted at this address: http://www.scholastic.ca/animorphs/animfaq.htm (http://www.scholastic.ca/animorphs/animfaq.htm). Mind you, that was when it was still being published. Post-finale I believe she has written at least once that their characters had Scholastic concerned - that kids wouldn't be able to relate and read less of them. I mean, Tobias in his debut narrating book tries to kill himself flying into a mall window. It wasn't exactly a character you often see - not even for a high school series. And they always narrated less stories - in The Beginning we still see this, with Ax and Tobias narrating one chapter each - and Ax's chapter is just to give us an idea of what happened, or that something was going to happen.
I thought it was considered "young adult." I mean, it started out appropriate enough for children (I remember it being very vague about saying what happened in #1 when the policeman Human-Controller died for example) but it quickly became deep and serious in some topics, as well as occasionally graphic; I always assumed that the target was intended to be 'young adult' (though I know the boundary between "children's book" and "young adult" can be flexible often).
I think books are rated differently now, but when I used to buy books from Barnes and Noble or Borders Animorphs was always listed as 9-12. (Nowadays for all I know they'd be rated younger because the vocabulary seems to be a bit simple for kids - they've been pushing a lot of vocabulary, grammar, and math concepts down into younger grades than when I was in school. However, when I was in school, that was how they were rated - which would make sense - that would be late elementary school through middle school - and Animorphs was in the middle school and elementary libraries - never in my high school libraries - unless they were hidden around in the "Books you can't get credit for reading" types of categories!) They certainly weren't written at a high-school level at any point - most of the kids I know who read it nowadays are in second-fourth grade.
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Post-finale I believe she has written at least once that their characters had Scholastic concerned - that kids wouldn't be able to relate and read less of them.
Don't go out of your way searching for it on my account, but if you do know off the top of your head where statements like that are available I would be interested, I was under the impression that Scholastic basically gave them free reign as far as the content was concerned. Like I said, I thought that anomalies like less Ax/Tobias books was purely the author's decision.
I mean, Tobias in his debut narrating book tries to kill himself flying into a mall window.
I'm going to have to reread that very carefully. It might be that I first read it as a kid and wasn't thinking in terms of suicide, but I thought that the flying into the mall window was purely the hawk instincts not understanding glass and Tobias being too freaked out (from his first hunt) to fight the instincts. I guess there could be a bit of the "unreliable narrator" plot device though, something new for me to think about.
As far as Children's vs. Young adult goes, I'll be the first to admit that I'm a terrible source to ask about that, A family friend gave me a set of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings for my 8th birthday and from then on I perused the public library and devoured every type of fantasy I could regardless of intended audience, reading 'Adult' books in elementary school and "Children's" beyond college. I suppose it all depends on what the individual reader is interested in and can find something to get out when it comes to a book's 'level'. Incidentally, my little brother is about the age I was when I first got into Animorphs, so I suddenly realized it was time to get him into them the other day. He's really loving #1 so far and if he's anything like I was he'll have burned through the whole series by the end of this summer. He'll need his own copies when the re-release happens.
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To your first part, I'll look through the LJ community because I believe that's where I first read the quote.
Edit: Dang it, I give up. But I remember the general quote being something along the lines of there being a worry that kids wouldn't relate to the characters, so they ended up narrating less. Not that they were being CENSORED. And then Applegate ended it with "And they ended up being beloved characters" except in her own words, which is why I know for sure it is not the FAQ I referenced you to earlier. But it would take months of back-tracking the community to find the link, even with my remotely LJ-savvy skills.
To your second part...
"But I wasn't going to stop. I wasn't going to slow down. I shot toward the door like I'd shot toward the rat. I was just going to end this right now. I would hit the glass at full speed and maybe that would awaken me from this nightmare.
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"A guy, dark hair, short, stepped to the door. He opened it.
"I must have been doing eighty miles an hour. A second set of doors, but these were open too. No impact. No awakening."
He was trying to kill himself that whole entire chapter. His hawk wanting the sky in the end wasn't him losing out to instinct, they make it pretty clear he only doesn't control it because he desperately WANTS to hit something at full speed, the whole chapter. They don't flat out say he wants to die, just "I want to wake up" - but he's not stupid, he knows he's awake.
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I've read the bit about Ax and Tobias narrating less due to a choice on the part of Scholastic as well. I think it was more of a collaborative choice between the author's and Scholastic, though. None of them really saw those two as characters that children could relate to, which is all important in a monthly series book, especially if it has a rotating narrator system.
As far as marketing, I've always seen it aimed towards a very elementary audience, not even necessarily middle school. When they first started coming out they were everywhere at my elementary school, but when I got to junior high it was already a 'kids book' that was mock-worthy (of course this wasn't the intention of Scholastic). Essentially, I think that the books were directly marketed at the same kids who were just getting out of The BabySitter's Club and The Boxcar Children and heading down the route of reading Goosebumps religiously. For me, that had always seemed like an elementary school audience.
Plus, if you look on some of the early ones, it has a reading level listed of a 4.5 or something. Obviously I know that's bull and reading level is never, ever decided upon correctly, but I figured that Scholastic put it there to basically tell parents what age it was appropriate for their kids to read them.
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Wow, that really does change my view of early-in-the-series Tobias. I went ahead and re-read that book this morning to make sure I had the context.
Still, I wouldn't call him suicidal. Yes, he didn't actually believe he was in a nightmare when he was trying to 'wake up' when he was first entering the mall. But he wasn't actually planning on killing himself and just using the term 'waking up' as a euphemism, because it wasn't life itself he was trying to end, he kept stating that he wanted to be human again, not end it all. He really wasn't behaving in a rational way (although I suppose many would argue that there is no such thing as a rational suicide) and in some disjointed way had convinced himself that destroying the hawk would give him back the humanity he believed he had lost, as he flew at something with high speed once inside the mall he said that he hoped to find himself stopped because he had his 'puny human arms' again.
By the end of the chapter it had shifted too, he definitely stated that 'the hawk had one' and that it was in control, thinking that 'the blue sky was safety' and that 'it didn't understand the glass.' In a way, he seemed to have convinced himself that the hawk was holding him captive and that he was willing to die fighting his captor, then he simply gave up and submitted to the capture at Rachel's pleading. Certainly not rational, but not suicidal in the sense that it was his intent to kill himself.
For murder they have the term "crime of passion" which can legally be considered a temporary insanity with lesser culpability; I wonder if mental health experts have a term distinguishing 'suicides of passion' as opposed to someone who is suicidal in a planned, premeditated way.
In any case, it's now 9:30 AM of the 4th of July, so I need to get out and play; I'll contemplated the depths of these and other favorite books some other time :).
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I started reading them in first grade; it never occurred to me that the content of the books could be inappropriate for any reader. In fact, last night Chunes asked me, if I could change any aspect of my childhood, then what? I had to answer that I would have started reading Animorphs at a much younger age. It would have had me better prepared for some of the more unpleasant aspects of life, because I would have been able to draw emotionally on the strengths of each character to help me deal with my own reality.
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I had started in second or third grade, so I was older than Estelore but younger than the target audience. The books were easy to read and I had great reading comprehension. It only occurs to adult me later that maybe I shouldn't have been reading them at that age. The main characters were in the early stages of junior high and there was some seriously disturbing content in there.
But then again, I guess that's proof that kids are smarter and more tolerant than parents give them credit for. After all, I played a game meant for teenagers when I was ten. Alone. ;) Depends on the kid.
As for whether somebody should have died, I disagree. Part of the reason Animorphs worked was that the main characters were so consistent. At the age I read them at, I was certainly afraid they wouldn't make it out in each book. I think we're looking at this from the perspective of adult nerds who have read a lot of books and played a lot of games. Just because we could predict what would happen now doesn't mean the target audience could. Yet new as they are in the ways of cliche and nerd-dom. X3
I can tell you straight that I had empathy with the characters because they were consistent, though death would've made for a more realistic war story. : )
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Still, I wouldn't call him suicidal.
Planning or not, going out to kill yourself is suicidal. Quite a lot of people who commit suicide have no plan for it. When I was in high school one of the teachers I knew had a student commit suicide by thrusting a pen through his eyeball. Quite a lot of depressed people do commit suicide this way - fairly suddenly, no plan about it.
I can understand seeing a difference between someone who plans or not, but it is akin to saying someone killed out of passion over having a methodical scheme to kill one. It doesn't mean you didn't commit murder.
He didn't mean "then hawk had won" like he was losing to instinct. He was tired of being hawk. He didn't want to kill to eat. He'd been in morph for several weeks, and we know that loss of control of a morph for that length of time is essentially impossible - other than with creatures like ants or termites. Any other loss of control (like Cassie giving into the butterfly, Rachel letting the bald eagle fly her first dive) is a "voluntary" surrender of will. If Tobias "lost" to the hawk, it was because he was tired of control.
That is the same reason he was so upset for killing the rat - the hawk wasn't too difficult to control, he was just relaxing and a bit jazzed and didn't think to make it stop.
(It's this same knowledge of morphing that makes Marco so sure that David killed the crow on purpose in The Discovery, or Ax's uneasiness in The Android when Marco goes after a beetle in wolf-spider morph.)
Sorry - I understand not wanting to think he was attempting suicide, but I had a kneejerk reaction to suicide needing to be planned. Most people I know who have attempted didn't exactly go out and scheme, they just went from depressed to overboard.
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It would've hurt the series....honestly, Rachel's death hurt a lot as well, but we accepted it because that was the end of the series, so we couldn't really say anything (unless KA would make a continuation with Rachel coming back to Earth thanks to a deal with the Ellimist and her and Cassie lead a resistance *ahem ahem*)
but yeah, a midway death would've been more realistic, but think about it....these kids are supposed to be the 'extraordinaries' amongst the human race...they were already faced with odds the whole time, I guess KA wanted us to believe that teamwork, strategy conquers all, as well as being all odds
...idk if anyone else put all of this earlier
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Sorry - I understand not wanting to think he was attempting suicide, but I had a kneejerk reaction to suicide needing to be planned. Most people I know who have attempted didn't exactly go out and scheme, they just went from depressed to overboard.
First off, no need to apologize for clarifying your viewpoint, I would never object to that.
Anyways, I'm not trying to reject the idea of suicide. If Tobias succeeded in killing himself it would have been suicide in the same way that a person who kills someone during a crime of passion did still murder them. But would you say then that a person who has committed murder while temporarily clinically insane is a murderous person? Could anyone really consider themselves anything but murderous in acknowledgment that they could be driven into the same state of mind under the right circumstances?
So I'm not saying that his behavior wasn't suicidal at that time, or that if he succeeded it wouldn't have been suicide; but that was because the horror of his kill had driven him into a temporary suicide crisis (that's the term I was looking for in the previous post), not that he himself was suicidal. A person in a drug induced state can similarly cause a person who is not suicidal to commit the suicide. I'm not saying that a suicide needs to be planned to be suicide, just there is a distinction between being driven to a suicide crisis and being a suicidal person.
As far as the 'loosing control of the morph' thing goes, I don't think that it can be said in any certain way that we know that 'loss of control of a morph for that length of time is essentially impossible,' There isn't enough information about nothlits and long-term effects of morphing a single body. Sure, after the initial surge of instincts the characters maintain control of the morph (mostly), but the instincts are still present and nag at them, they never have to maintain this control longer than two hours at a time. It can easily be an ongoing mental effort to maintain your identity in a different physical body complete with its own brain containing its mental processes. He talked before that episode of feeling like he was losing himself a lot, so I think at the end of the mall scene after Rachel's words it was a matter of surrendering to something he couldn't control; he was dodging things being thrown at him, saw the sky as purely safety and said "The hawk had won." He spent the following time as a hawk entirely and had difficulty thinking in terms of a human until something jerked his human side into asserting itself. It really wasn't until he became comfortable accepting that he was both hawk and human (#23, The Pretender) instead of trying to decide on one or the other that he really reached a relative long term peace.
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1. Yes, I (and the law) still call laws of passion murder ("crimes of passion" are not the exact equivalent of an "insanity plea.") They are considered murders of a lesser degree, but still murders along with a prison sentence. The difference is that it is not a first degree murder. I would also think killing others really can't be comparable to suicide. At all. But that legally, psychologically, and mentally the only big differences between the two is that more people have a chance of noticing and helping someone who has shown symptoms for a while compared to someone who does something spur of the moment. They're not usually a class of people who wouldn't have attempted "except for this one thing that happened that made me crazy." Certainly, we know this isn't the case of Tobias, who was addicted to morphing, became a nothlit, and then spent his time living bitterly going on about how he'd never be human again. Tobias fits the case of what, 25% of people who attempt suicide? (By which I mean, not showing symptoms that make people concerned he's suicidal and probably not planning anything or contemplating it - not that he's a hawk.) He's a ticking bomb.
I would also argue he's far from long-term peace in #23. It was more like a temporary peace (which seems to be something he finds at the end of all of his books, only to have it end up being irrelevant in the next). In the next book (from 23) he narrates, he experiences all those same internal conflicts when he gets tortured by Taylor, so that conflict still lived in him somewhere. Then again these sorts of problems - his next book also involves Taylor. Then he finds his mother and he goes through the same struggle as he tries to figure out why his mother didn't care for him. (And, for crying out loud, she's blind with amnesia to where she didn't even know the definition of basic vocabulary and he wants to tell her she should have cared for him?) We often decide he's happier as a hawk, but the truth is, if we go based on narration Tobias is a lot of consistent internal struggle.
2. To the morph thing - we know Arbron never lost control of his morph beyond the usual Taxxon need to eat, which is such a heavy drive even a Yeerk can't completely suppress it. However, when they've lost control of their morph, they are not aware of themselves. That seems to be a requirement in all morphs except for those completely overrun by some instinct. Ant, termite, Taxxon. You don't lose control while completely aware of who you are - it's being aware of who you are that seems to determine whether or not you'll be able to control the morph (same reason the Hork-Bajir were generally not considered good for receiving morphing powers by the Animorphs). Tobias, as he puts it repeatedly in the series, is his hawk morph. He didn't have some long-term, completely conscious blip in the ability to control his hawk morph. He just decided it wasn't worth controlling the actions. He's talking about a different type of tired than most people are ever even aware of. And I don't know, but I guess in my opinion trying to deny that side of him just degenerates his character, or part of what his character is about. He's supposed to be the kid who takes life too seriously, can't hold out for better times, etc. Tobias is, essentially, the kid who lets their current life situation dictate their future. I often argue the point that Tobias is sort of like the person who commits suicide from the beginning - he's gone from the human world and he gets to see that people didn't even notice, or that they just moved on.
His quote from MM#4 is an attribute to that part of his character - when he talks about how his life would have sucked, but he could have waited. High school wasn't forever, living with his aunt and uncle weren't forever. But that he'd looked for some salvation that just wasn't real. ("Giving up some of your freedom" probably isn't something anyone should ever agree to, even if they assume it's metaphorical - comes off as a bit cult-like, really.) It's a shame he couldn't have kept some of that internal revelation in the regular timeline, it might have helped him a little post war.
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I agree, no deaths till the end was unrealistic, but I think that if someone died halfway, then that may make the series even more unrealistic than it already was. Because, all of them are needed at the end. So maybe it would be better with a death, but then the odds would be even less in their favor.
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I agree, no deaths till the end was unrealistic, but I think that if someone died halfway, then that may make the series even more unrealistic than it already was. Because, all of them are needed at the end. So maybe it would be better with a death, but then the odds would be even less in their favor.
True, but like we discussed before, there were certainly ways KA could have changed the situation from the beginning or set up characters to die early; but as I've noted it may have been a few too many books into the series before KA was fully aware of how far the series was going to go so in all fairness she wouldn't have had reason to have prepared for this until too late.
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i've argued the same point many times.
if k.a. wanted accuracy (war has sacrifices), she could have gotten rid of a few during the middle. *cough* cassie *cough*
keeping them ALL alive against impossible odds (only to have 1+ killed at the very end) doesn't seem fair, one way or the other.
it wasn't my series, but it still didn't feel 'right'.
try and keep the title a bit more specific (but thanks for including the spoiler warning!) :)
What do you have against Cassie?
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That's a big can of worms you're trying to open, asking why some people dislike Cassie. She's practically a base breaker.
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That's a big can of worms you're trying to open, asking why some people dislike Cassie. She's practically a base breaker.
I like Cassie (I think she is pretty).