this topic. this tangent.
rather, was the op headed in that direction when discussing the logistics of surviving the order "ram the blade ship" in light of TAC (something i hadn't connected before)?
anyway. to the former, i doubt that katmike were thinking about TAC when they wrote 54, but i personally wouldn't mind the "less cliffhanger, more death" conclusion. in some ways and on some levels, that sort of closure doesn't seem inappropriate at all. (kindasorta but not contextually echoing lumy.)
as for the latter, the tangent, but easily the more fun bit to discuss:
i respect that katmike made a choice. not really knowing the context in which the choice to end the series this way came about, i don't judge
them for it. i suspect (as i think i'm not alone in doing) that the series' popularity was waning after months of being ghostwritten by a half-dozen authors who couldn't (wouldn't or simply didn't) interpret the characters consistently. scholastic almost surely saw profit declines and came around and told katmike: "you've got 'x' number of books left. find a way to finish this by then." whatever else played into the final arc and 54... i don't know. i see a hyper-detailed spectrum of speculation from the RAF community- these things that
might have affected the series' progression and end in one way or another: kids, time crunch, apathy, paychecks, other projects, audience age and/or devotion level, losing touch with the books, ghostwriters, 'well, from an interview, it seemed like' / 'looked like' / 'sounded like', etc...
no one's got the full picture except katmike (and at this point, i doubt that they'd remember how everything in their lives led up to "Ram the Blade Ship"), so i've pretty much decided to leave "why"s and motives out of my evaluation of the ending. i can't read minds and will only give them the benefit of the doubt, assuming that they chose what they thought would be best at the time. i don't believe that said choice was intentionally malicious or even merely apathetic towards the audience. even with numerous Q&A sessions (some
long after the fact, some without the benefit of audio and/or visual of the person speaking), i think that the motive-related information gleaned therefrom isn't direct evidence of this "katmike don't care about us" complaint. anyone can misrepresent him/herself (repeatedly) to general media and anyone watching/reading the general media can misrepresent what is reported.
...that also doesn't mean that folks can't feel jipped. in the same way that there's no decisive evidence of "they hate us", there's also no decisive evidence of "they love us". there were assuredly elements of the series that were "sub-par" (my baseline is an average of the quality of the non-ghostwritten books). but again, if i don't have enough evidence to make a call about a person,
i'm not going to hang my hat on the conclusion that makes the worse assumption about a person. people, in general, deserve better than that.
...i'm also not pointing fingers at anyone with the above and i'm not particularly judging anyone who does the above. i don't pay much attention to who says what and i don't solidify my opinions of people over a few internet forum posts- especially not when folks're hanging their opinions out on the line to be judged by strangers. opinions happen.
anyway. taking
all of that out, that leaves me with the ending.
just the ending. ...it's not something that i've ever addressed/formed a public opinion of, because i'm like that. xD
so... hmmmm. there was context. 53++ books worth. i tend to give those skimpy, limp, ghost-written drabbles less authority than the first 25 and last 5-10 or so. like i said, my quality baseline is the stuff katmike wrote.
i've read a lot of proposed alternative endings. they usually start with rachel's death (and i have nothing differing from popular opinion of how that played out) and then hone in on what must surely be the clusterf* in 54. well, i'll start with the "pet cassie" beef. do i want cassie to join the anis on their Final Mission and die in a blaze of glory? pretty much. but cassie being cassie (at age 20-ish), do i think that she'd agree to it? no. and would it be fair to force her to tag along? i don't think so. in this one way, i see cassie as existing to serve as a foil for everyone else. she shows that there's a choice. if she hadn't chosen differently, i might have taken the other anis' decisions for granted.
marco tagging along was another beef of mine. it might've been that final touch to his 20-ish personality: despite a rocky relationship with Ax, despite being the reluctant animorph, despite his cynicism, despite being somewhat satisfied with his post-war life, despite knowing intimately how hellish war is... he pretty much chooses to go back. is he being loyal? an adrenaline junkie? i don't know. i can't tell. but did i want him go with the anis and yadda yadda...? yes. (odd how dissatisfied i am when i get what i want. xD)
ax being kidnapped- at all. you know, if jake had been the one to disappear, i find it significantly more probable that the entire ani team would have gone after him. but in any case, since i rather want the anis to die in a blaze of glory, using ax' disappearance as the catalyst wasn't, imo, a terrible choice. could've been better. could've been worse. i mean, who likes mopey tobias, anyway? (jay-kay. i love you, tobias.)
cliffhanger. you know what? i'm ambivalent. "you may now demorph" hit harder than "ram the blade ship". the former signified an End, which was more bittersweet. the latter was something of a cop-out (but less negativity associated with the connotation): giving the readership room for speculation without committing to a final end. am i like this with all media? nope. my preference for cliffhangers just peeps out under circumstances that
animorphs didn't meet. they'd done their duty. imo, all 'important' questions had been answered.
....uhm. general "feel" of the ending (53/54, pre-post-war). lumy, i don't think you're alone in finding voicing that to be difficult. for myself, i give the authors a lot of leeway. little plot choices, turns of phrase, actions chosen by the characters... idiosyncrasies that seem inconsistent are legit reasons for complaint. at the same time, characters changing over elapsed time in book-land seems, to me, to be more realistic. as my own devil's advocate, i think "but this is more/worse than that. there was no reason for so-and-so to do or say 'x'." to which i respond "just because the reason behind a change isn't spelled out doesn't mean that it isn't possible. the byproducts of 'i've been fighting this war for "y" years could be anything and can't be spoken for by someone who's never fought in one."
people are complex. they frequently do things that you don't expect. knowing that, i don't mind seeing book characters doing things that i don't expect. jake making a seriously bad decision to send rachel out. (was it the fact that this was tom, that the war had taken this dramatic turn, that he'd been fighting it for so long, that they were this close to an end affecting his decision? or had katmike needed a convenient reason to kill rachel off?) the auxiliary anis being put on the front lines to die. (did a snapshot of the situation at the time leave room for alternatives? or did katmike just need a convenient "war is bad" subplot end?)
again, i tend to give folks the benefit of the doubt. perhaps i should do so less often. i dunno. well, what else do people complain about? it all seems to be related to "i can think of a better ending". i don't see many specific "this is what went wrong"s that add up to some overarching "the whole thing sucks". i could be missing it, but that's where i am at this point in time. (moral of the story/my advice to katmike: stop doing animorphs Q&A sessions.
this is clearly the source of your buttrape.)
my conclusion? i'm neutral. in fact, my hyper-analysis of the whole thing just seems to further detract from the story, so i think i'm done. and speaking of "distance", i haven't read the series in a few years, so who knows what the hell i'm talking about? i sure as shootin' don't.