Thoughts on the ending

[morfowt]

I'm pretty sure he meant not developed enough...

[Chad32]

I don't think V3 was as developed as the main characters. Normally this never bothered me, but since I'm in overdramatic mode I'd like to talk about that.

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

I think in a lot of ways that was due to the limitations they had to work within, for a kid's series.  V3 filled that "moustache-twirling" inept overdramatic one-dimensional role, because the rest of the series was so damn serious, y'know?  They kind of needed someone to lay all that "har har, bad guy outsmarted by a bunch of kids and dunked in grape juice" stuff on.

In HBC he's a totally different guy.  Sure, it would have been nice to see more of that.  But I get the feeling that if the Esplin was written the same way he was in HBC throughout, our favorite little animal-changelings would be all different kinds of dead.

[Chad32]

It's true. There has to be a certain amount of ineptitude in the enemy for an outnumbered and outgunned group of heroes to survive.

What else can I nitpick about? Um...I'll have to think some more.

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

It's just Stormtrooper Syndrome, man.  V3 and like 10 armed Hork-Bajir should have easily been able to massacre the Animorphs into little smoldering chunks of dracon-cooked meat.

But then we wouldn't have a story.   

[Chad32]

I don't know if it's been said before, but does anyoen else think it's ironic that they wondered what Rachel would do if she lived through the war, but it was Jake that couldn't move on afterwards? Applegate played it out to where Jake wasn't his old self again until he found something else to fight.

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

Yeah, always loved that.  More of the parallels between the two characters.

Personally, though, I've always figured Rachel would have moved on after the war, especially with Tobias for support.  She'd still be able to morph obviously, providing a lot of that thrill-quota.  Plus she'd probably just join some elite special forces squad or whatever.  Or, hell, the X-Games or something.

Jake always seemed like he'd have all the baggage.  To paraphrase Rachel with the David resolution, "you guys go, this will bother you, it won't bother me".  Isn't that Rachel in a nutshell?  It always seemed she'd be able to move past the war stuff, just need to replace the dangerous infiltration missions with something else adrenaline-based.

[Chad32]

Now that's something we both agree on. If anyone, I worried more about Jake, since he has the burden of being the leader. I always figured, though, that Cassie would be there and Tom would probably be there too. Marco and Ax's endings, up until the lobster morph inducing boredom and assimilation, was what I totally expected from them.

Cassie I figured would do what she talked about doing at the start of the series. She would make an awesome zoologist with her morphing powers.

[estrid]

ya they put too much emphasis on "oh rachel wouldn't have made it anyways, so lets just kill her off and make it easier" but really not enough was placed on jake. i mean, after all, he IS the one who had to make all the horrible decisions no1 else would

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

I think a lot of that comes from people mistakenly seeing Rachel as some two-dimensional psycho-killer, though.  Seriously, Rachel was never half as messed up as a lot of the community seems to make her out to be.

Being reckless and thoughtlessly brave is a totally different beast to enjoying hurting people.  It was never the fighting that Rachel craved, she said it herself a million times she just enjoyed being a part of something important, bigger than what she'd be able to experience as a typical Californian mallrat teenager.  As for the thrills, she got that as much from flying around in eagle morph as she did from cutting up Hork-Bajir.

[estrid]

i totally agree. they turned rachel into this psychotic person that was not like her at all. it was stupid. my take is they did that just to have an excuse to kill someone in the end

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

"They"?  Not the writers, at least not K.A.  One or two of the ghostwriters didn't get Rachel, and the fanbase took that train of thought and started pulling characterization out of their asses.  Like #48.  Sure, there is a book with Rachel as a power-hungry psycho, but it was ghost-written, during a period of sucky ghostwritten books, and Rachel in that book doesn't mesh at all with the Rachel of the established K.A.-written books.  So, pretty much, it's not a good example of Rachel.

Look at Rachel in say 1-20.  Look at Rachel in her final scenes in 53/54.  That's not a bloodthirsty Viking killer chick, that's a decent & wholesome average suburban kid with a pretty significant assertive streak to her personality.  Sure, she's sarcastic, sure, she's not tolerant of a lot of BS.  But this "Rachel was at risk of turning into a crazy warrior woman with no empathyyy!" is sooo dumb.  She never straddled that line at all.

[estrid]

by they i mean ghost writer, but also KA. there is no way she was completely oblivious to what the ghost writers were doing. you mean to tell me that she wouldn't read what the ghost writers wrote before it went to print? I can't believe that

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

Of course she would.  And the editors, and whoever supervises the marketing, etc.  My point was that the majority of the ghostwriters, especially whoever wrote #48 The Return, wrote Rachel in a much more simplistic "black & white" way than Katherine did herself.  It seems the "Rachel as unstable sociopath" perception arose from this period in the books, as opposed to her less extreme portrayal throughout the vast majority of the series.

[estrid]

ya but i include ka in the blae process along with the ghost writers cuz if she didnt like what the ghosties were doin with the character, she shoulda said sumthing, insteada allowing all those books with the wrong depiction go to print