If you could change one thing in the series......

[esplin]

*peeks in*

Just because she wrote it that way doesn't mean it is the best way.  "Ram the blade ship" was cheap, like something you would get out of the RAFvending machine.

I think that she did it to piss people off.  She was trollin' animorphs fans everywhere. Which is probably why some people think it fits.. 

The pointless mini-plots fit in the middle of the series, but not at the very end.

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

I think the fact that she started two other series kind of hints to the fact that she was losing interest in Animorphs.

Or, you know, fulfilling a contractual obligation.  She was probably signed on for however many individual books, and Animorphs was naturally drawing to a close narrative-wise, she still had books left over she was bound to write for the publisher.  That's a much more likely scenario.

[JFalcon]

I'd make a simple move that would have saved my two favorite secondary characters, Afran and Arbron.

Nothlits can reacquire the morphing technology, I mean it makes scientific sense (as much as any of this does ), if Tobias can be acquired then they should be able to obtain the technology too, it's their new body so yeah.

Afran could have morphed something not dependant on Kandrona rays, and joined the Animoprhs or the free Hork-Bajir, Arbron didn't need to end up getting killed in the rain forest. I consider being exiled to the ocean to be a terrible fate, I hated that. They took an experienced soldier and threw her away forever, she can't even hang with them after the war, they had no way to contact her, no way to make sure sharks or orcas hadn't done her in, they ignore the dozen or so other ways she could have been saved and just make her a whale. Woopty freakin' doo, nice one, Jake.

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

Eh.  There'd be no emotional investment that way.  Who cares if they're a nothlit if they can just reset themselves and try again?

[JFalcon]

Not really. If say Cassie became a Nothlit she's not Cassie anymore, she'd lose the morphs she had, she can become human again but she'd be a different human, not Cassie since that DNA was lost.

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

Meh.  It just doesn't sit right.

[morfowt]

one of the messages of animorphs was, how you look on the outside doesn't matter one bit...

[Chad32]

I think the fact that she started two other series kind of hints to the fact that she was losing interest in Animorphs.

Or, you know, fulfilling a contractual obligation.  She was probably signed on for however many individual books, and Animorphs was naturally drawing to a close narrative-wise, she still had books left over she was bound to write for the publisher.  That's a much more likely scenario.

So Scholastic made her start more series, just because animorphs was ending and she had more books that she was contracted to write? And she couldn't just start writing the extra books after finishing Animorphs? I didn't know publishers could do that.

Not being sarcastic, by the way. Unless you meant something else.

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

I could be mistaken, but I think they get signed for a certain amount of books.  So they probably signed her and Michael for 20-30 kid's series books, then renewed the contract or whatever after Animorphs became so successful.  Eventually the Animorphs story was probably naturally drawing to a close, and it wouldn't need all of the books they were contracted for to wrap it all up, only some of them.  The leftover books probably became Remnants.

[Chad32]

But did they make her start before Animorphs was finished? If not, why didn't she just wait?

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

I don't really know.  But Everworld had finished before she started Remnants, right?  The timeline is getting a little fuzzy after so much time.  But I think Everworld was well and truly over before the first Remnants came out.

If she lost interest in anything, it was Everworld.  She's said herself she found that the most difficult to write.  I don't think you can just pass off the fact you didn't like the ending as her "losing interest in her own story".  Out of the three, it's pretty clear Animorphs was her baby, that's why she did the final arc.

[Aleron]

LOL, most of these topics seem to turn to the ending.  Most of us seem to hate it.  A few of us seem to like it, or at least feel a sense of loyalty to it.  If that doesn't speak for how the fans really feel, and how the ending really was, I don't know what does.

EDIT: As far as what I'd change, I'd fix the KASUs, and write a book 55.

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

In the words of the mighty Bad Religion, consensus is not a fact-based exercise.

Just because a sizable number of her (it must be said reasonably young) readership take issue with the way she ended the series, doesn't mean she was wrong in doing it that way.  I mean, since when was popularity a credible barometer for quality?  It usually isn't. 

[esplin]

There is no right or wrong ending.  But there are good and bad ones.  The end of Everworld = Bad.
The end of Animorphs = Could be better.
I didn't like The One at all.  If she had never mentioned him it would have been better.  I'm not saying its wrong or bad, but it could have been better.

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

The ending of Everworld was bad, yes, because she'd given up on the series.  She knew two books before that she didn't want to write them anymore.

Animorphs was a different situation.  You can tell the final arc was pretty methodically planned, if anything.  It's one thing to disagree with it and realize you would have written it differently, but to call it a "bad" ending within the context of the series, everything that came before, is factually inaccurate.  There's just simply not an argument to be made for that.