Thoughts on the ending

[esplin]

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

You're right, and the fact that the planned all the plots for the ghost written books. 

[estrid]

exactly

[Liz]

Didn't she just look over them once they were completed?  There probably wasn't time to revise them that extensively.  Besides, if she had enough time to fix every single thing the ghosts got wrong, she may as well have just written the books herself. xD

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

No no no no noooo, kablaah.  Not what I'm saying.

K.A. supposedly gave the ghosties an outline, a basic plot, and they could run with it from there.  It's pretty obvious from reading the books itself that a lot of the specific dialogue etc wasn't written by Katherine or Michael.  The general plot?  Sure.  But a lot of the characterization, the tone etc, was a little "off" under the ghostwriters.  Rachel being a major one, even Marco to an extent.  It always seemed most of K.A.'s writing toadies didn't quite grasp that balance with those characters that was evident in the books written by the two authors themselves.  Rachel turned into a blunt unsympathetic & dangerous wildchild, Marco just being a clown.

That's not to say the general ideas for the books didn't come from Katherine/Michael, they did.  But that's not my point.

[jsjosh]

K.A. supposedly gave the ghosties an outline, a basic plot, and they could run with it from there.  It's pretty obvious from reading the books itself that a lot of the specific dialogue etc wasn't written by Katherine or Michael.  The general plot?  Sure.  But a lot of the characterization, the tone etc, was a little "off" under the ghostwriters.  Rachel being a major one, even Marco to an extent.  It always seemed most of K.A.'s writing toadies didn't quite grasp that balance with those characters that was evident in the books written by the two authors themselves.  Rachel turned into a blunt unsympathetic & dangerous wildchild, Marco just being a clown.

That's not to say the general ideas for the books didn't come from Katherine/Michael, they did.  But that's not my point.

I'd like to... add to / contradict this a little bit. I have no idea if the MorphZ board still stands, but somewhere buried within a thread over there, someone posted the entirety of a KAA-written outline for a Remnants book. And these outlines were long. And very detailed. Like 30 pages describing everything that happened, chapter-to-chapter, whether two characters had a conversation, the general idea of what that conversation would be about... I mean, they were pretty intense. So I would say they were a little more involved than just giving the "general idea".

[estrid]

i never saw any of KA's outline for animorphs, but i don't see how she wouldnt give a detailed outline to the ghostie. of course she would have. so for rachel's character to deviate as much as it did from the original, then that means that either a)the ghostie completely ignored where KA described rachel's character for that book or b) KA herself forgot where exactly she was goin with rachel's character

[morfowt]

30 pages? an animorphs book is about 150 so compressed to about a fifth of the book... not a lot of room for character personality (in my opinion) other than basic or important ones. I think she'd mostly write actions the characters do, and basic (like he/she felt happy) or important (like the feeling is COMPLETELY important in the climax) feelings, and not write down every single detail about the balance of rachel's personality...

[jsjosh]

well, i mean, character development and motivations are often implied by the actions that characters take and the way they interact with others, you know? so of course there was probably a somewhat skeletal description of rachel as a character in #48 (for example), but she had still scripted specific things like "rachel becomes enormous due to the power of crayak and experiences an intense bloodlust with crayak urging her on", which i think was the main issue everyone found with that book in terms of being true to rachel's character. so i agree that the tone being a little off was totally the fault of the ghostwriters, but the things the outline specified rachel do and say in the book probably led the ghostwriter to logically extrapolate her personality from these OOC things written in the outline.

[Starsword]

Is it me or does Jakes final plan of sending Rachel seem really pointless? I'm all for killing members of the series because at least it leaves a better feel to the story, one in which we are not treated like wee children. But expecting a grizzly to go up against at least ten morph capable people and wreck the inside of a ship is asking a bit much. And why didn't they just expect to use the Pool ships cannons, or tell the Andalites the blade ship was coming their way. Yeah Andalites might die, but who cares? They were cruel in their own right.

[Chad32]

He wanted to make sure Tom didn't become the next Eva. Free or die, and all that. It was a very risky mission, but not really suicidal. There were ways to get her out. I'm not sure why the Andalites didn't chase it down.

[Starsword]

I don't think its about free or die, because he would have just killed Tom from the start if that were what it was all about. He wanted to make sure the war was done, all wrapped up, but it just seemed kind of pointless.

[Chad32]

He wanted to rescue his brother from the beginning, but at that point he was just hoping to end Tom's suffering.

Besides, the Yeerk would have destroyed the pool ship if not for Rachel. The other Anis are lucky the other Yeerks didn't open fire.

[Starsword]

Hmmm, true, that still seems like a pretty big task for one person. Interesting, never thought of that. 

[Hylian Dan]

Tom wanted to kill Visser One and the Animorphs before taking off for the rest of the galaxy. The rest of the Yeerks didn't care. The Andalites would be too difficult to convince to help, seeing as how they were planning to destroy the planet. The Pool ship was supposed to disable the Blade ship so that Tom would be captured, but Erek drained their weapons. Rachel was the last resort. She only needed to kill Tom because he was the one who cared about revenge. His other Yeerks just wanted to escape.

[estrid]

i always saw the sending of rachel as yet another sloppy finish. there were so many different possibilities that would have been more pheasable. and what about the new anis, charging at full out open gunfire as rhinos or whatever just for a distraction? it was stupid and pointless, just a quick way to finish them off without having to explain what happens to them after the war