I think it's a bit weird how The Andalite Chronicles, a dark story with endearing characters and an utterly tragic ending, is beloved by fans while the outcome of the final arc is so despised by many.
Because it wasn't the very last book. It was a bittersweet ending, which in itself I didn't mind.
However, the last book has more bad things happen than good things, and doesn't really give closure. Someone posted that the fact the Animorphs are the ones that defeated the Yeerks was a major bone KA threw to us. Personally, I wouldn't care who defeated the Yeerks as long as the ending was more good than bad and actually ended.
When I watch TV shows, I don't mind episodes ending in cliffhangers in the middle of a season. I do hate it when the last episode of a season ends in a cliffhanger, and I have to wait months to see what happens.
Animorphs is worse, because the cliffhanger will never be resolved. There was no good reason for Rachel to get killed by five amateurs. There was no good reason to end the series with a cliffhanger. There was no good reason for Tobias to leave everything he still had in the world just because he lost his girlfriend.
Exactly.
The Andalite Chronicles broke my heart. It was dark, it was a love story, and it was one of the best books in the series. You can't really compare it to the last book.
FearlessLeader put it very nicely with his food analogy, so I'm not going to rehash all of that. Of course I think that an artist should have free rein over what they want to produce. However, someone who writes a children's series through Scholastic is in the business to make money.
I think K.A is eloquent and creative, but she certainly isn't untouchable. I don't know how many of you like Star Wars, but I consider Star Wars to be my other not-so-guilty science fiction pleasure. Look at how many of those super-nerd Star Wars fans vilified George Lucas for putting Jar Jar Binks into Episode One - he was, and basically still is, the butt of every Star Wars joke. And guess what Lucas did? He wrote him out of the series by drastically reducing his role, but did it in a way that helped the series.
George Lucas and K.A. Applegate both created amazing stories. However, they did it because they wanted to make money. If George Lucas wasn't concerned about making a profit, he would've made Star Wars into one of those low-budget indie B-movies. (It could be said that Lucas needed the big studio money to get the effects, but Lucas was already in the business and he probably could've worked around it if he were stuck with an indie budget.)
I'm not saying that indie films are the only films that are good and all big-budget films are terrible. That's irrelevant, I've seen good and terrible films from both types of companies. But it's a fact of life that if someone wants to make money, they'll go to a big publishing house or a big movie company because that's where the money is.
I think the woman is a creative genius, but I don't think of her like I think of French artists starving to death because nobody will buy their paintings. I'm not saying one is better than the other - it's simply her devotion to her work, or lackthereof. If she were so serious about her "art" as you like to put it, don't you think she would've written more of the books herself? Yeah, some of the ghostwriters were fantastic, but #37 is the best example of someone missing Rachel's character entirely. And didn't she say that she "revised and edited them"? She obviously didn't do that much editing because there wouldn't be so many KASU's. There's a difference between writing out Jake's thoughtspeak in #1 and retconning things later on, but there were glaring errors in later books that she didn't pick up on. For a "serious artist", she didn't seem very serious.
And it's the quality of the book. There's a difference between disliking a genre or medium and disliking content. Putting personal preference aside, there are good paintings and there are bad paintings. Let's say that there's a painting of a monster devouring a baby in an art museum. For the sake of this example, it's a bad painting because the monster and the baby's mother are too far apart, which creates boring, empty space that looks bad. The lighting is also bad. Next to it you have Goya's "Saturn Devouring His Son", which is a masterpiece. The subject matter is the same, but Goya's painting is better because of the contrast, the colors used, the facial expressions, etc.
If she wanted to write this last book the way she did, fine. But she shouldn't get pissy at people who didn't like it because WE'RE the ones who have made her filthy rich. I don't have to eat at Jose's Mexican cafe, but if I order a crispy chicken taco and get a cold enchilada, I have a right to be angry. I don't have to go back, but Jose can't say that I'm in the wrong for not liking his crappy food when I'm the one who bought it. FearlessLeader's analogy was better, but you get the idea.
Really, how dare she end Animorphs on such a bad note and then tell us to buy her next series in the farewell. Oh and, surprise surprise, she had Remnants ghostwritten too. I think she's lazy and arrogant, which breaks my heart because she's certainly up there with George Lucas. I would not be so angry if I didn't love Animorphs so much.
