Animorphs with an older audience.

[voodooqueen126]

What else would we like in an older audience: a more realistic portrayal of the practicalities of warfare as well as the old 'realistic portrayal of war is hell' such as employing a cell system, having characters research warfare rather than having a inborn genius (like Marco).
 Rather than having 6 child heroes and the very unrealistic 'adults are useless' it would be more realistic to have a range of characters and  ages and a higher death rate. it would be wise to have each cell either equally balanced (and therefore have the adult leading) or completely monogender, mono age (to avoid the adult men sending the 'little children and defenseless women' home because they think child warfare is wrong and women shouldn't be involved in combat (as in real life armies), so instead you would have all teen girl group of 6 and an adult woman group of 6, and a adult men group of 6 and a teen boy group of 6... to counteract the monotony, of 6 similar girls failing lacking the diversity of character that was the strength of the original animorphs was that each member complimented the group (the lancer, the big guy, the brain  etc). you would actively recruit members from different cultures, educational backgrounds and personalites (a girl version of Marco, an adult version of Jake, an adult woman version of Tobias, an adult version of Rachel etc, a leader, a lancer, a big guy, a smart guy a chick one for each team). A good idea would be to discover which university students were controllers (engineers make especially good terrorists according to Al-Qaeda) and seek to kidnap and de-infest them rather than free the sweet little kid with down syndrome because you are sentimental. This team would work closely with Ax. Ax would be the linchpin of these cells: they would know as little of each other as possible but only know Ax. Another point going back to Leader, Lancer, Big Guy, Smart Guy, The Chick. is that the cells (like real life armies often) would specialise: the teenage girl group might be the chick (as well as having a leader, lancer, big guy, smart guy and the chick) would specialise in seeking out new recruits with useful potential and light reconaissance, the adult woman group might focus on logistics and more difficult aspects of reconaisssnce (lancer/smart guy), the teenage boys would be involved in active aggressive combat (the big guy) whilst the adult men would lead (leading/lancer) and so on... there are so many interesting ways to fight the yeerks...

think about the huge range of people who join the army in real life and how this enriches the armed forces rather than harms. But a more rational rather than emotional approach to warfare would be good.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AdultsAreUseless
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourGirlEnsemble
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FiveManBand
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CommandRoster

[Chad32]

That sounds quite good. It could work well if they decided to go with the mostly independant groups working in other areas, while the original animorphs work in their area. As opposed to my idea of making each animorph a squad leader with five troops each. The only thing I like better about my idea, is with that it would be interesting to see how each squad acts, as an extention of each character.

[voodooqueen126]

No its the same as your idea chad, you would want each squad to have atleast one original/longest serving member until they  died. getting back to my tuan-lee-cam example.

[Chad32]

Oh, right. Ok.

[voodooqueen126]

But you would still need to be careful that they didn't know too much about the other cells.
Some body please bump up 'religion and animorphs'!

[Chad32]

What's so interesting about religion and animorphs? I think it's already been established that KA thinks lowly of religion.

[animefanboy]

How do you figure? I'm just curious where you got that impression.

[Chad32]

The Sharing has comparisons to religion, where they both put little "worms" in your head to get you on their side. Also with the way Visser 1 talked about religions and molding the sharing around their ideologies. Saying a bunch of stuff without really saying anything concrete.

[voodooqueen126]

chad is right the world view that makes up the subtext of animorphs could be described as Politically Correct Secular Humanist... though I think of the sharing as being more of a cult like the scinetologists, raelians than a true religion. my father's university lecturer Anderson (this was the early 1950's) said that people became fascists or communists because they were inadequate and needed to belong to a group an anecdote that my father loved repeating, so i always thought of the sharing as being like fascism or communism: you think you are the special ones and to be accepted by this group you are willing to do any act of evil.

[animefanboy]

I guess, but I never really picked up that kind of message. Oh well, I am bad at reading between the lines.

[Chad32]

I was bad at reading subtext too. I came here, and have been surprised at the new way of looking at the series. I have a whole new understanding. I may not like some of the things I learned, but I understand it better.

[voodooqueen126]

Quite a few of the books on writing I own, make a case that if a story lacks subtext or theme then it is basically pointless, and furthermore unlikely to be entertaining/attract readers/be worth reading (however you describe a good story). For instance of the reasons Mary Sue stories are so awful is that they have no true theme-they are just wish fulfilment.

[Chad32]

That makes me feel a little sad, because of all the times I started writing stories (that I never finish), I never tried to make an underlying theme. I was never trying to teach aesops or give life lessons. I was just trying to entertain, period.

I mean, if I write a story, and people learn something by reading it, then great. That's fine. But that's not the main goal. It's mainly me publicising the kind of fantasy stories that I think about in my head, just to see if people other than me think they're cool.

[Jess]

Something that occurred to me was that an older audience would probably appreciate more of a Marco-Rachel-Tobias love triangle I know I would

Rachel/Tobias was and still is my OTP and is beautifully canon, but no one can deny that Marco and Rachel and chemistry and a lot of characters had touched upon that chemistry, perhaps even Marco and Rachel themselves.

It would definitely be an exploration of human relationships.

[Chad32]

That would be cool. We know sometimes she had doubts abotu going out with someone trapped in hawk form, that didn't seem overly inclined to go back. There could be a book where Marco and Rachel go to a movie separately, wind up sitting near to/next to each other, and wind up laughing together after the movie is over.

I don't see why not, especially dince KA wasn't planning on them getting together in the end, anyway.