Discussing the Saddest Moments in Animorphs

[planetstella]

For example, I literally cried the at the end of 'The Andalite Chronicles' the second time I read it.

[Chad32]

Rachel and Tom dying at the end of the series, and most of the main cast possibly dying out in space fror no good reason. I know, they were saving Ax, but the only reason she wrote that plot point was to make her stupid bolivian army ending. The end of the series in general was a downer ending.

The end of TAC and HBC. Of course neither of those could have very happy endings.

Finding out what happened to Loren.

[DinosaurNothlit]

Well, I actually really like the sad stuff, so long as it has a point to it.  The ending to HBC.  The scene in Visser where Visser One is pointing a gun at Darwin and the kid grabs the gun and holds it to his chest so she couldn't miss.  Most of Tobias's memories during the torture scenes in #33.  The very end of #48, where Rachel can't decide whether or not killing David is the 'right' thing to do.  The backstory between the Pemalites and the Chee and the Howlers.  The dismal post-apocalyptic views of earth we get in #7 and again in #41.  That's the stuff that sticks with you and hits you where you live, you know?

The problem is with the stuff that's supposed to be sad, but completely misses the mark and just ends up frustrating and pointless to read.  The ending of #54 was very much this.  I get that it needed to be a cliffhanger, and a bolivian army ending can actually be quite excellent if done well.  But 'going out' against some completely random monster out of left field that we know nothing about?  After everything the Animorphs had been through with their main established enemy, the Yeerks?

Nope.  Not sad.  At least not in any meaningful way.  It'd be like reading about a soldier coming home from a war, and then falling down the stairs to his death.

[Chad32]

I agree. Those things were pretty sad. I also agree about the frustrating things in the ending. As much as I go on about how bad Rachel dying is, it overshadows the fact that Jara Hamee died with no battle scene or anything. Toby just mentions that he's dead. The death of a guy who proved he wasn't a controller by splitting his own skull open should be sad, but it's given no focus. Just an offhand remark after the death scene of a main character.

[NothingFromSomething]

Jara's a tiny, tiny character though.  His function is basically "representing the first of the free Hork-Bajir, and being half of the reason Toby exists".  He didn't need some big last-hurrah scene, he's just representing the notion that it wasn't just humans and yeerks involved.

[Chad32]

I just think that if he was going to die, he deserved more than an offhand comment. I know he's an incidental character. He made a big impact with me, though, like Mellissa did.

[Chad32]

Yeah, the Ellemist didn't really explain that she was pregnant, did he? And later when we find out that Andalites kiss by caressing each other's faces, it does seem like Elfangor was kissing his son goodbye. even though we know KA did not think that far ahead when writing her books. She wasn't the kind of author that figures out all the major plot points of a series before publishing the first book. That scene in the first book might have inspired the idea for an andalite kiss, though.

[skjaedigare]

This one line was probably it for me: “I knew I had said good-bye to Jake forever”.

Not because i shipped Cassie and Jake in a major way or anything. But it was a line that worked on multiple levels.

[Snakie]

Threads like this come up from time to time, and I'm always surprised more people don't mention Tobias becoming a nothlit.

Another underrated sad moment is when Jake breaks down on the witness stand when testifying against Visser 3 in book 54.

The scene in book 6 when the Yeerk controlling Jake (who used to control Tom) shows Jake a memory of Tom, who no longer has the will to fight for himself, powerlessly pleads for the Yeerk to leave Jake alone.  Another scene that is rarely mentioned but has stuck with me since the very first time I read the series nearly 20 years ago.

[SmartGirl333]

Not because i shipped Cassie and Jake in a major way or anything.

Here's the thing: they're canon for most of the series. They don't need to be shipped.

[Chad32]

You can ship a canon pairing, I think. Some people will ship characters that have no chemistry, or just haven't done one thing to indicate they feel for each other that way. If they can do that, we can ship canon pairings.

Some sad moments get overlooked by some people, for various reasons. What happened in book 6 is pretty bad, especially since in the end that's the only thing we genuinely learn about Tom himself.

[SmartGirl333]

I mean, with crack pairings, pairings that TOTALLY WORK but haven't been confirmed, and everything in between, it's up to the fans to write and draw them. With canon pairings though we expect canon to create our fics for us. Also, this is completely off-topic.

[Chad32]

Talking about Jake and Cassie's relationship falls within the topic of sad moments.

[skjaedigare]

In any case, for me, what made that line particularly sad, was that it signaled the end not only of a particular relationship, but the end of the book, emotionally. Clearly very subjective, but yeah. SmartGirl333 is right to say that, because it was canon, it was always sort of a given, and i guess for this reason, it doesn't necessary encourage the same kind of enthusiasm or support as non-canning pairings. But precisely also because it was also sort of a given, to see it finally come to naught, was slightly crushing.

[SmartGirl333]

Yeah, good point. Wow. I missed that in my first read of #54.
On topic, #54 has all the emotions. Happy because the war is finally over, sad because it took so much major character death, angry at KA for the BolivianArmyEnding, and an emotion I can't even describe in English (closest approximation is "HOLY F**KING SH*T") when I realized that the entire Ellimist Chronicles took place in one line on page 24.