A Rebuttal to K.A.'s final letter

[Kitulean]

I agree with all the points the OP made. Excellent job. I hated the ending. I didn't read the series to read about the realism of war. I read the series to read about hope and winning in the end. By the end, the little pet Cassie got practically everything she wanted and got to be proven 'right' while everyone else got crapped on. Yay?

[Liz]

Thank you itw.  I agree with all of your points.  I did not think the ending violated the spirit of the previous books at all.

I love the ending!  TEAM ENDING!  ~makes t-shirts~

oh really? what about cassie? some team ending, ka's freaking pet gets to live but none of the other characters? thats awesome, and my favorite gets to die first and without a doubt.  Team was missing 3 members when they went out

Everyone hated book #54 because we didn't have that complete, happy, everything's-good-now, ending, but for us the last thing we wanted was some artificial closure.  (We both hate that word by the way.) So we decided that some, like Marco, would come through it all just fine, and some like Cassie would actually find a positive meaning from it.  But others, like Tobias and Jake would sort of never get past it.  And one would be dead.

Doing all that in 160 pages we didn't have much room to address everything.

i also wanna say thats not why for me, its the totally new plot line with the kelbrid and what i mentioned above XD
although some closer would be nice :[ i spent my childhood on this and it makes me mad, to the people who like the ending, congrats, you get to be content with animorphs.  The rest of us were disappointed and hurt even.

I was mostly joking about that last part, in case you couldn't tell...

I'm not saying it was a perfect ending.  I just find it interesting that there is so much division over this one issue.

[esplin]

i know you were joking but people seem to use that a key point of why it was good, and i beg to differ is all.

[goom]

it does seem strange that others didn't die sooner, though.
sure, she wanted a 'war is costly' message, but what would the odds that they would get through all those previous situations unscathed?

even with all the deaths and sacrifices, i would have really liked to see #54 a lot longer. like chronicle long.
it felt very rushed, barely skimming through multiple subjects (which i felt were very important).

the closing statement felt like salt in a wound when she mentioned remnants.
i know it wasn't supposed to mean anything like that, but i felt like she was brushing past the series and moving on.
i wasn't ready. with that ending, i was not ready. :'(

[Cloudbreaker]

I had no problem with anything that was written in the last book.  The only problem I had with the ending of Animorphs is that it didn't end.  It was a cliffhanger.

[shivanfire]

All of these replies are thoughtful arguments, and fascinating to read – some of the best defenses of #54 that I’ve ever seen.   Let me list some of my initial thoughts in reply to what some of you have said.

Gotchaye: First, on war stories: you can have a sci-fi war story.  There are lots of sci-fi war stories, in fact, and a lot of people here took Animorphs as a war story from very early on.

Duff:  Your initial claim was that you would prove it wasn't, but you never actually offer any evidence to oppose this claim. Just because you say its a science fiction/fantasy story (which it is) doesn't make it any less of a war story. It can be both, and it is both

I completely agree.  In some sense, Animorphs is a war story.  But in some sense, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are war stories.  What I meant, to be more specific, was that Animorphs was not a “realistic” war story, in the sense that the Animorphs survive odds that are literally impossible.  For one example, the Yeerks fire their Dracon beams on the Animorphs thousands of times but they always miss, just like the bad guys in Star Wars (Marco even makes fun of this in #7).  In a “realistic war story,” this would never happen, but it is a well-known trope of fantasy (unrealistic) war stories.

Another example, which is devastating to K.A.’s 2001 letter, is this fact (as noted above by goom): For the first 53 books, no Animorph ever dies.  Again: For the first 53 books, no Animorph ever dies.  This is incredibly unrealistic – and it means that Animorphs is not a realistic war.  So to kill an Animorph in #54 and then justify it by saying “in real wars, people die” is an unsupportable argument.  Yet that is precisely the argument that K.A. makes.

Gotchaye:  It also makes sense (and isn't unusual) for an author to claim that a story or character "always was" something that the author didn't intend from the beginning.

This is exactly the point I am making.  K.A. claimed something that wasn’t true.

Gotchaye: I don't know about the death of the spirit of the series, as Aluminator puts it.  I guess I can see it, but, at the same time, how much of your perception of the spirit of the series is due to the ghostwritten books?

By the spirit of the series, I mean the books #1-#26 (add in Megamorphs #1 and #2, AC and HBC, etc) – not the ghostwritten books.

Gotchaye:  Finally, I note that, in fact, many readers on this forum did manage to take the "war is hell" lesson along with the "it's up to us to save the world" lesson… I guess I just don't buy that the ending has to be seen as nothing but an "exercise in cynicism"

I suppose the point that I am making is that by #54, the “war is hell” message completely overpowered the “it’s up to us to save the world” message, and I think that was really weak.  Previously, we had seen K.A. do both very well.  

Duff: The spirit didn't die, it changed, and evolved

It evolved to the point where it was not the same.  The message you get from #1-#26 is completely different from the message you get from #54.

itw2009: i daresay tolkien purposefully left that nasty bit out in order to fabricate the impression of a beautiful ending that was truly not so beautiful for some

Yes, the ending was very bittersweet for Frodo (although bittersweet and death are different things [but it's also true that the Grey Havens are an allegory for heaven]).  And Frodo's scars help make the story truly great.  Still, LOTR has very important counterbalances to Frodo (see below).

Duff: And things didn't end so well in Lord of the Rings. Just like Animorphs it was a hard won victory. Just like Animorphs the ones who were pulled into the battle (the hobbits/animorphs) were never the same afterwards. They tried to go back to the shire but it wasn't the same, especially for Frodo who essentially sailed off just like The Rachel did.

You have it backwards.  The hobbits do thrive afterwards - Frodo was the (very important) exception.  From Wikipedia: “ Aragorn is crowned King of Gondor outside the walls of Minas Tirith in a celebration during which all four hobbits are greatly honoured … Aragorn marries Arwen… Over time the Shire is healed. The many trees that Saruman's men cut down are replanted; buildings are rebuilt and peace is restored. Sam marries Rosie Cotton, with whom he had been entranced for some time. Merry and Pippin lead Buckland and Tuckborough to greater achievements. Frodo, however, cannot escape the pain of his wounds.”

The Animorphs equivalent would be: Rachel dies, but Jake becomes President of the United States and marries Cassie.  (I’m joking, of course.  But we see the proportions are completely out of whack in Animorphs.  In LOTR, major couples survive the war and are happy – in Animorphs, no couple survives, and only 1 is happy.  This completely changes the message of the story.)

KleenexCow: I would have been disappointed if the series had ended with all six Animorphs, 16-ish, facing mostly mundane lives disturbed only by fame.

So would I.  But there are more than two ways to end a series.

I wish that they had take Cassie with them, and that there had been some resolution for Tobias and Loren, and that The One had gotten some development before #54

All agreed.  Let me propose some endings that I would have vastly preferred to #54:

1.   All the Animorphs die in a blaze of glory (yes, I’m serious) .  What irked me about Rachel is not that she died, but that she died for a stupid reason (this is a whole separate discussion, but there is no reason that one of the auxiliary Animorphs couldn’t go with Rachel and thus avert her death.  Or Ax could have gone with Rachel as well – there is no way that Erek wouldn’t render Ax’s computer knowledge redundant.  Sending Rachel alone only made sense as a cheap and easy way to create drama)

2.   One couple remains intact (this would have been much more in-line with Lord of the Rings) and one is destroyed

3.   The One / Kelbrid (which K.A. obviously pulled out of NOWHERE) have been slowly developed in the previous 10-20 books.  (No matter how you slice it, the original ending was simply lazy storywriting.)

4.   There is an Andalite conspiracy, and the Animorphs get into an inter-Andalite war (a la #18).  This sets the stage for Animorphs 2.0 which takes place on various non-Earth planets.

5.   The Yeerks are only defeated on Earth, and the Animorphs are conscripted by the Andalites to fight the Yeerks on other planets.

As I’ve said, my overall problem is not that #54 had dark things happen.  As I’ve listed above, there are many, many ways to end the series darkly - with a purposeful sacrifice (i.e. the Animorphs’ deaths) or by slipping right into another war - that would NOT turn into a depressing and honestly not-very-interesting “war is hell, war is hell, war is hell, war is hell” message with a tacked-on cliffhanger.

I think you could make a pretty good case from just #1 that the series was aiming for significantly darker than Star Wars.

If you mean just the original Star Wars (A New Hope), then I agree.  But Empire Strikes Back is exactly as dark as the darkest of #1-#26.   It is that rich kind of darkness that I appreciate – a battle against impossible odds, where you aren’t just worried that you’ll die, but that you’ll turn into the very monsters you are fighting – and yet nevertheless leaves you with some sense of resolve.  At the end of Empire, everything has gone wrong, everyone has nearly died – but there is still hope.

itw2009:  the readers don't "deserve" anything  

Never said they did.

itw2009:  no one here has the right to tell katmike what to do.

No one is telling them what to do.  It’s only because we care about Animorphs so much that people reacted so strongly to its ending.  

itw2009:  change happens. some of us don't take it well, but we all must force ourselves to coexist with it.

Sure it does.  But just because something has changed does not mean we are forced to like it.  

itw2009: i don't think katmike ever had much of a message to send

I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one.  Maybe you thought Animorphs had no message, but a lot of us did.

 

itw2009: katmike did not "lie" to us. to use an equally strong word: bull****…. i believe the book series stayed true to its plot, characters, and thematic priorities.
 

You’ve given no evidence for that position.  Even the others who liked #54 agree that it was a large shift.  All you’ve really said is:

and if katmike "changed their minds", so what?

And that is a perfectly valid position to take.   My point was that they DID change their minds, in a huge way... and then said that they didn't, that Animorphs had always been a "realistic war" - as I said above, that can't be true.  

[anijen21]

For the first 53 books, no Animorph ever dies.  Again: For the first 53 books, no Animorph ever dies.

lol well that's not entirely true. Jake died twice, and Marco died once too I think.

But your point remains. Actually, the fact that people could die and come back to life so much might prove it even more.

I really have nothing else to say but I want to be in this conversation so my thing gets updated

[Kitulean]

I think that those of us who were disappointed believe they WERE supposed to earn the victory, but they should have actually gotten the victory. I don't mean they stop the yeerks but lose absolutely everything they care about in the process. I mean a victory. I didn't need a cartoon victory either, but I also didn't need an ending that was that harsh.

I think what it comes down to is the message seems to go...

Books 1-53: Fight for what you need to and stand up for hope.
Book 54: By the way, if you do what we just told you to do, you'll suffer and die.

[Chad32]

Very true. Three of them never got a victory that they could enjoy, and two of them lost what they gained. Marco became famous and Ax got to be a Prince, but then Ax got assimilated and Marco ran off to ram the bladeship. Rachel died and what did Jake and Tobias get?

Yes the world is saved, but it could have been saved by anything. The andalites could have decided to save it instead of quarantining it. The YPM could have started an active rebellion and overthrown Visser Three somehow. The world being saved comes second to my desire to see the Anis come out stronger for all they've been through. That didn't happen for the most part.

I'd like to ask KA why she decided to have Cassie stay behind and all, but Richard hasn't posted the questions I already sent him to post as far as I've seen. Unless I missed them.

[Terenia]

itw2009: i don't think katmike ever had much of a message to send

I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one.  Maybe you thought Animorphs had no message, but a lot of us did.

When ANIMORPHS hit the Publishers Weekly bestseller list we thought, "Hmmm. . ."  And then we started seeing very large royalty checks and that was definitely very cool.  But we're both wary and always waiting for the next shoe to drop.  We're also sort of self-deprecating about our work, we really try never to take ourselves seriously, so our attitude was always, "Yeah, we sold a million books, but RL Stine was much bigger than we'll ever be."  Because of that character trait (or mental weirdness) it didn't occur to us that anyone was even getting the sort of moral, philosophical, political substructure of ANIMORPHS.  We wrote the "deeper" stuff for each other's amusement and out of a sort of vague feeling of moral obligation -- and mostly just because it worked for the story.  But we figured maybe 1 reader out of a 1000 was paying attention to anything beyond Tseeew  Tseeew!

So it's only been recently that we've come to accept that we had any lasting impact on readers. 

My point in using this quote is to say that yes, AppleGrant had a message to send, but it was not initially for the readers. If writer's wrote to please their audience they would be stuck in a never-ending rut of 'will this piss them off?' It's impossible. While I am not a particular fan of certain parts of the ending (specifically the introduction of new characters in the last three-fourths of the book) I think that this is a fact you have to recognize. Whatever message AppleGrant wanted to portray, the message was ultimately for themselves, not for their readers, and even though you don't like it you have to accept it.

I think that itw is entirely correct in the fact that many readers these days have a sense of entitlement in regards to book series (or movies or tv shows). They feel that the writer has to appease them, and appease the investment that they make by reading/watching the author's work. This simply is not how writing works. If every time I wrote a new story I tried to twist it so that my readers got the ending they wanted I would spend half of my life agonizing over endings.

Shivan, you give some excellent examples of other ways the series could have ended, and I do agree that some of them would have maintained the "war is hell" message without the slapped-on cliffhanger. However, AppleGrant chose not to end it that way, and that was their decision and I have to respect that, even if I do not like it.

In my opinion, the ending of #54 will never stand up to the ending of HBC or TAC in my mind, which left a message of undying hope in the face of unprecedented horrors. That does not mean, though, that it was unfaithful to the "message" of the series, because the message of the series is whatever AppleGrant wants it to be.

[comet266]

Hey guys, I'm new to this forum.  I have been an avid animorphs fan for awhile now, and I just reread the series recently.  I just wanted to say that I agreed with a lot of the points already brought up in this thread.  The ending left sort of a sour taste in my mouth.  I was fine with most of what she did with the characters and Rachel's death, but I hated the last mission and the cliffhanger. 

I know she mentioned that she had a page/space limit, and I really think she could have used the pages wasted on the final ending to delve more into the other issues that were missing...i.e. what happened with the auxillary animorphs, the lasting effects on human controllers, etc.  I felt like the entire ending was super rushed with not enough of a conclusion developed after the end of the war.

[INH]

I've been watching this discussion since it started, and I saw a few things that I felt I had to respond to.

1.   All the Animorphs die in a blaze of glory (yes, I’m serious) .  What irked me about Rachel is not that she died, but that she died for a stupid reason (this is a whole separate discussion, but there is no reason that one of the auxiliary Animorphs couldn’t go with Rachel and thus avert her death.  Or Ax could have gone with Rachel as well – there is no way that Erek wouldn’t render Ax’s computer knowledge redundant.  Sending Rachel alone only made sense as a cheap and easy way to create drama)

You seriously think that if just one person went with Rachel, they would have been able to fight off an entire Blade Ship full of morph-capable controllers?  The only thing that would have changed is that there would have been another corpse in the Blade Ship's bridge, and they might have been able to damage the ship a little more.

4.   There is an Andalite conspiracy, and the Animorphs get into an inter-Andalite war (a la #18).  This sets the stage for Animorphs 2.0 which takes place on various non-Earth planets.

Animorphs 2.0 wasn't discussed until about 8 years after the series ended.  The ending couldn't have "set the stage" for Animorphs 2.0 (if that ever happens) because it wasn't planned at the time.  I have my own issues with the cliffhanger ending, but it was never supposed to set up anything.

[powertrash]

I don't think the problem is the cliffhanger ending. For example, Angel's (why do I always make BtVS/AtS analogies?) last episode was a cliffhanger, with all the characters walking into what was pretty much certain death if they weren't already dead. Yet it was beautiful, because the plot had been set up (albeit quickly) previously and it all flowed.

The problem is that 54 is really two endings meshed together. The war ends and we get a VERY unsatisfactory recap of how our heroes have been living. The war ends and then it's ONE YEAR LATER. No. I wanted those petty details, like Jake reuniting with his family, Loren, the auxiliary Anis, Rachel's family & her father etc. And instead of getting a little bit more of that, the book goes into a very off-the-wall plot that has no foreshadowing. The Anis die (probably) fighting, which is a nice touch, but would have been nicer if they were all together and maybe the plot kind of followed.

The main problem seems to be, to me, that we didn't get the resolution to the war that we wanted and then we were plunged into another fight. So it's just stuck together and unsatisfying, even though I would have been okay with the Anis dying fighting...but not LIKE THAT. Or them living bad, unsatisfying lives on earth...but with more DETAIL.

I like to pretend it ended right before the Kelbird stuff.

[itw2009]

shivanfire. my mind (being what it is), jumped into psychoanalyzing your underlying motives and did not directly address your problem, which clearly isn't helping you. my apologies. i have whole pages devoted to trying to convince you of your motives for writing this thread, but i will only send them to you if you want them. for your sake, i'll approach this differently.

from what i get from your posts, the conclusion of your ENTIRE spiel (including "i hate the ending", blabla) is:

"katmike wrote things one way, then told us that they didn't write them that way, and i don't like it."

first.
okay. you have serious issues with inconsistency. i get it. (to you, this takes priority even above how awful you think the ending is in and of itself, without any "lying" defense on katmike's part.)

the biggest life-problem you're going to have is also accepting the fact that people are human. they are inconsistent as a rule. they can make mistakes; they aren't perfect.

that being said, katmike didn't make any mistakes- not unless they say it was a mistake. let me give you an analogy:

you paint something. you suddenly, drastically change your painting style at the end- say 3/4 of your painting is davinci and the last 1/4 is picasso. let's say NO ONE likes that last 1/4 (or the fact that you have two very different styles on one canvas).

so what? it's your painting. if you want one quadrant of your painting to be disproportionate angles and arcs and glaring, primary colors, well? your call. i won't judge. i won't start some complaint thread about how inconsistent you were. about how you started this gorgeous davinci-like piece and that, until your picasso style came in, it looked pretty awesome. if you defend yourself by saying that your painting was ultimately consistent, i'm not going to call you a liar.

second.
katmike weren't lying. if anything, they were giving us their take on the progression of the series, redundantly, from their perspective. which, if it was honestly their take on the series, can't be deliberately misleading or incorrect.

here's the truth: you and they think differently about things. you infer different definitions of different words, you associate different experiences with different phrases. what you say is "weak", they say is "strong". what you say is inconsistent, they say is consistent. you and they also have different priorities, different resources, different motivations, different goals. this shaped the way katmike wrote the response that you found so offensive. how can you call it LYING? they were not deliberately misleading you. they weren't trying to be sneaky and defend something they secretly think is wrong.

and since you did not experience the writing of the series, you can't prove otherwise. given any setbacks katmike may have experienced, yes, the series is 'consistent' until they say otherwise. unfortunately, they wrote the series and so by default, you become the liar and they the source of all truth. if they say tobias has his own alien kids on another planet... well, you choose to take their word for it or prepare to suffer the consequences. you can say "ho, no wayz; that's impossible", but then who is lying? you.


as for those of you whose first addressed priority is "i didn't like the ending" (those who are taking this thread off-topic):

tough luck. terenia, imho, answered that concern eloquently and efficiently (and kindly, haha). i actually don't care about whether or not any of you like the ending; we can agree to disagree on that and i am fine with it. i am only addressing those who have the gall to attack katmike for the choices that they legitimately made. these are the people who believe that they have factual evidence of how bad the ending is ("we needed details", "we needed closure", "we wanted...").

in fiction, there are no facts except the ones the authors create or choose to use. if the authors are inconsistent, they are STILL right until they say otherwise. welcome to author-world, where authors are lords and the audience are laymen.


now, just because two people have brought up (out of context, which kinda irks me) my "katmike had no message at all, ever, and never ever considered one" comment:

itw2009: i don't think katmike ever had much of a message to send

if none of you have noticed, i'm a few IQ points better than that. i also used the words "much of a", implying that there was one, but that it wasn't much.

everything has a message- every sensory input we humans receive is coupled with a brain reaction equating to a message. often, most of these messages are unintentional or merely implied. for example, everything i'm writing here is sending a message about who i am as a person, what my priorities are and what i believe in. ditto for katmike. every word they wrote sent messages about their characters, their plot- and about who they are as authors. what their priorities are.

anyway. to help some people out, i'll explain that sentence in more detail.

i doubt very much that katmike started the series with a catchphrase message. now, i could see "hope" as potentially being very loosely what they used to originally sell the series to scholastic, but i bet they knew beforehand that they'd allow the message to change IF certain things happened as they wrote the series. i would bet a lot of money that they were willing to be open-minded about potential changes to the plot, the characters, and their 'message'.

i know that they didn't create a message and make it their first priority to plan the entire series around it. that's pretty difficult for a lot of people to accomplish- even more so for authors who are pounding out a book a month and when the number of books you'd originally planned to write keeps increasing. imho, the books would have been boring as hell if katmike were always forced to finish each book with a "hope" message. i would have considered not reading the series.

now, katmike chose their message. then they chose to change it and then they chose to defend it. you chose not to like it. ultimately, i think the three of you are even. no hard feelings on either side. no discussion necessary, unless you really need to continue to get your opinion off your chest.


as one last point: animorphs is not lord of the rings. it isn't supposed to be LOTR. that would be boring and lawsuit-worthy.

[anijen21]

okay I know I said I didn't have anything else to say but now I do.

I'm not sure I like this talk about authors being the "gods" of their universes and readers being the oppressed populous. I've heard this a lot and it's never really sat well for me for a few reasons.

1) Art is not a dictatorship. It's a feedback loop between creators and consumers. There's a reason that criticism is a profession, and that some people make a great deal of money doing it. If art was creation without meditation, the vast majority of what is available would be complete trash. Most of it is, but there's a reason that professionals are there to tell us what movies, TV, books, and art to take the time to view.

The fact that you guys are saying that we, as readers, have no right to question or critique or try to understand the choices the authors made is kind of irking me a little. 

2) Yes, authors can write whatever they want, and we can whine and moan about it as much as we want, and nothing is going to change. At least, I think that's how it used to be. I think the internet has done a lot to breach the divide between writer and reader, like what's happening with a lot of TV shows, but whatever that's an issue for another time! The point is, authors have the right to write whatever they want, and we have the right not to buy it.

I think part of the pain of the...perceived inadequacy? (lol I'm trying to be objective here which is really an exercise in futility b/c I have my own opinions) of the ending is that we, as readers, ALREADY devoted all of this time and money to the series, so there was a sense that we were cheated of the quality we felt we'd already paid for. There are some logical fallacies with that assumption--what about the quality we received AS WE WERE READING THE SERIES?--but I guess, idk, there was this feeling like there was no way to express our discontent since it was the end. The feedback loop had been cut off. So we were all just kind of sitting, broiling with all of this malcontent while Applegrant went off to form a whole new fanbase with Remnants.

I guess my point is, I get the anger, and I also get the diplomacy. I understand that people were turned off by the cynicism in the last book, by the rushed pace, by the lingering unresolved plotlines. I don't believe it was entirely without merit--I myself kind of liked the dark turn the series took right at the end, but I believe it happened too late to really explore the character arcs spawned by it--but saying that "that's the way the authors wrote it so that's what we have to accept" is kind of bulldiddy to me. As readers, if we didn't question and scrutinize every decision made by the authors, then we're just mindless income streams and as much as publishers would probably like that, I think art as a whole will suffer for it.

So feel free to disagree with the OP about their feelings about the end, but don't cut off their opinions just because we have no right to question or dictate how the series should be.