K.A's response to the final book criticsm.

[morfowt]

Edit: The dude is Elfangor, I assume. You remember how Visser Three ate him?

oh yeah... I couldn't register elfangor as a "dude", that's why I didn't think of him...

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

Dude, alien dude, Andalite homey, like whateverz.

[Chad32]

Show more respect for the Great Elfangor! He is not a "dude"!

Joking. lol.

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

Warrior Prince Dude-Guy.   

[Chad32]

That's better!

[JFalcon]

I just call him Al. Sometimes he liked to be called Mr. Fangor though. 

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

  Ugh.  The cheese, the cheese.

[Starsword]

I love rereading the books now, and without even thinking about it, I think. Oh thats graphic. Like Marco holding his slit open stomach to keep his guts from falling out. Thats like Saving Private Ryan imagery.

[Aleron]

LOL I have a weak stomach, and as a result, I find myself distancing myself from vividly picturing such scenes, like I'm watching it through special glasses or something.  I bet they distanced their perceptions and their morphs to prevent shock when possible.  (An example would be: hey, i'm injured, but it's not like a real injury, since I'll just morph out).

[Starsword]

I always just figured they put it all deep down inside hoping it would never resurface, along with the rest of their individual decisions.

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

You know what I thought was sick?  In a totally "whoa, she actually went there!" way?  The book towards the end where Jake's narrating, talking about walking away from a battle and slipping on the blood-slick floor.  So gross.  And the dying human-Controller begging for a blanket or whatever, "I'm so cold!", Jake just turns and walks away without saying anything.

I mean, really.  What other kid's series could get away with THAT?   

[Chad32]

I don't know how she got away with it, really. I suppose I distanced myself from those scenes too, and focus on the funnier and lighter parts. Except that it got harder and harder as the series went on, then she shoved it in my face with the last book.

[Hylian Dan]

I'm stealing this from an article I just read about making video games more artsy:

Sadness sticks with you longer than happiness

Aeris.

That’s all I have to say. One name. That one name, more than any other name in video gaming, brings back memories of tragedy and loss and regret and anger and horror and vengeance. Despite the fact that Final Fantasy VII was released a decade ago, many gamers still mark the death of Aeris as one of the saddest, most emotional moments in video gaming history.

The death of an innocent flower girl who healed your party and was (some would say pointlessly) murdered by Sephiroth in the middle of the game really has a way of sticking out in the collective gamer subconscious. And that is a very, very, good thing.

While we all have moments we enjoy from our favorite games, the sad moments tend to be the most oft-remembered amongst in our community. Whether it’s the death of Aeris or the end of Fallout, tragedy has a way of standing out in a way that happy endings and jokey one-liners never will.

This trend is not solely relegated to video games, of course. Some of the greatest works of literature ever written have unabashedly negative endings -- hell, most everyone would agree that Shakespeare’s tragedies were immeasurably greater than his comedies.

Misery is friggin’ awesome

Happiness is, in my opinion, overrated. Happy people are seldom interesting for very long. Things that consistently make people happy are usually transitory and intrinsically meaningless. Happiness is rare, and fleeting.

But misery? Misery, as said above, sticks with you forever. Misery can ruin your life, and fuel your creativity. Misery can give you purpose and drive where simple happiness and contentment lead to stagnation. Not to get any more philosophical or condescending than I already have, but wouldn’t it be interesting to see that misery present in video gaming, as well?

Imagine you play a video game that takes place during a war. Throughout the entire story, you have to lead an innocent child through a battlefield, protecting her while trying to find her parents. After hours and hours of getting to know and care for this child, you finally reach her home -- only to find that the enemy combatants have quartered themselves in her house, and the little girl is shot to death upon entering.

Now, while the above scenario would be admittedly more than a bit manipulative, it’s the sort of thing you’d remember for the rest of your life. As games like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus prove, accompanying a helpful character throughout a game is an original and fantastically effective way of connecting the player to a character. If the player loses someone he or she cares about due to the atrocities of war, then it will hurt so much more than if the player had watched a movie or read a book with an identical plot. Even ignoring the thematic implications of such an ending, it would be insanely effective, and, if done well enough, could change the way the player thinks about video games, war, and the world in general. That is what great art does.

Simple is boring

If you put together all the WWII games in all of video gaming, their combined amount of play time would probably exceed the actual length of WWII. When this strange influx of Nazi-stomping games appeared, many gamers (myself included) didn’t know how or why the industry had suddenly chosen to create dozens upon dozens of games about the same war.

I would argue that this happened for two main reasons: firstly, the gameplay opportunities WWII presented (on land, on sea, in the air, across the entire globe), and secondly, because of how easy it is to oversimplify the morality of that war. WWII was clear-cut: Nazis bad, Allies good. Unlike WWI or Vietnam (to my knowledge, not a single WWI game has ever been made, and only a handful of Vietnam games have been produced), very few people in modern America would argue in favor of the enemy’s side. While, to a degree, this method of viewing WWII is not entirely false (though films like Das Boot do an awfully good job of humanizing the Nazis), it provides game developers with often unfair opportunities. Instead of looking at WWII as the horrific loss of life than it was, in video games the war is frequently depicted in much the same way it was in the 1940’s: a heroic, unambiguous fight against evil. Good guys die in large numbers, but their deaths are not terribly violent (not a single WWII game I can think of includes blood, much less gibbing). The enemies we fight are faceless and without personality (Call of Duty 2 seems to have about twelve different Nazi models, total).

Now, are these WWII games fun? Undoubtedly. But through the genre’s inability to reinvent itself -- to take the war setting and apply actual concepts of morality and loss and horror -- gamers quickly grew tired of the flood of differently-playing, but identically-themed WWII games. Even though each new WWII game brought something new to the table (whether it be commandable vehicles, epic multiplayer, or a different gameplay structure), not a single one of them chose to innovate in an emotional or thematic way.

“Simple” is boring. “Good vs evil” is boring. The world is in shades of grey, so why not make the player experience that same moral ambiguity in his gameplay? Why not move beyond simply making a game “fun” or “entertaining” and present real, moral dilemmas? Dick and I have talked about this before, but most video games tend to make their moral choices far too clear-cut,  or altogether meaningless in the overall scheme of the game.

Source

Agree? Disagree? Any thoughts on relating this to Animorphs?

I really couldn't disagree more with the sentiment that Animorphs should have been watered down and diluted so as to be more "considerate" to its audience. Don't shock anyone. Don't make them squirm. Don't punch them in the gut and leave them reeling afterwards. Just entertain them until they discard you and move on to something else.

No. K.A. knew her audience well and treated us with respect. Throughout the series she challenged us to think about the story's conflicts on deeper levels and see the shades of grey. She treated us more like students than like consumers. That's probably why the tone of her response to the criticism of the ending was rather harsh. She had seen our potential, but most of our class failed the final exam and whined that it should have been easier.

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

Preach it, brotherrr.  Can'I'getta'Amen?

[Chad32]

I disagree with you. [/shocker]

The death of Aeris is one of the most memorable points in the game, and also one of the things I hate the most. Why did they have to kill off my healer?

Shakespear wrote comedies? I did not know. I was made to read Romeo and Juliet, and the tragic ending was completely stupid. I told the teacher that. She said R&J was one of the greatest romance stories in history. I said no, Walt Disney's Cinderella is. That got a few snickers from the class.

At this point I really am repeating myself. Rachel dieing was unrealistic in the context of the series, where all the main characters always live, and a super cosmic being ensures there's always a way out for them.