Link of the Day: This Is War.

[fickle]

Link of the Day: This Is War.

Nope, not a political link. It's about Animorphs, actually, and why the final book ended the way it did. While procrastinating on writing final papers, I've been cleaning up my tags and found out that I had an Animorphs tag, which led me to a very old entry where I discussed a letter that nyrhtek had linked to wherein K.A. Applegate discusses the end of the Animorphs series.

And I hated the end of the series. I really, really loathed it. I wanted to scream and fanwank about it when I read it though thankfully, I didn't have a livejournal or a deadjournal back then to rage about it.

Why thankfully?

Because I was completely and totally wrong to hate it as I did. She had a really good reason for ending it the way she did and just because I hated it on a personal level and was horrified at what happened to my favorite chars, well, reading her letter got me over that. Especially the following paragraph:

Pretty soon you'll all be of voting age, and of draft age. So when someone proposes a war, remember that even the most necessary wars, even the rare wars where the lines of good and evil are clear and clean, end with a lot of people dead, a lot of people crippled, and a lot of orphans, widows and grieving parents.

A-fucking-men.

...And now I want a Tobias-hawk icon. Or maybe a Rachel-Tobias one. Canon ship ftw, in this case. Which is another reason why the Animorphs books are awesome -- they're good enough to make me ship a canon pairing, which is pretty rare where I'm concerned. I'm picky about shippings and pairings and unless I like both characters in a pairing, it's unlikely I'll like the actual pairing as a whole. And I'm even pickier about female characters, because there aren't that many of them to begin with and I tend to get a little irate when I keep empathizing better with the male chars than the females. Nothing against guys but it would be nice to have some female characters out there that I can understand and really get behind, you know what I mean?

So, Rachel/Tobias? Totally my rock-solid OTP there. Hits all my buttons and has two of my top three chars from the series. Occasionally my top two depending on what I've been reading recently.

Edit: I have an Animorphs icon now. XD Text is Elfangor's hirac delest, image is of Rachel and Tobias dancing. With apparently Ax-the-Afro-Andalite in the background.

Comments

[pikachumaniac.livejournal.com]

(I told you it was awesome. :P )

Yah, my biggest problem with the ending was more the execution (a little too choppy and short), rather than what had actually happened to the characters. I wouldn't say it was... fitting, the end, but it made a whole lot of sense to me. And it makes you think, which was awesome. That entire series made me think a lot... well, not entire. The beginning and the end because a lot of the middle books just... sucked. But once things really started happening, my god. The entire thing with using the morphing box to give powers to those who were crippled? That was insane. And just so disturbing, that anyone-especially a bunch of kids-could make a decision like that. So many of the things they did were just like... holy shit, not good.

And Jake. Jake was never my favorite, nowhere near, but I felt absolutely horrible for him in the end. He lost everything. His parents, his brother, his cousin, his girlfriend, his life, and I don't mean the last just from the fact that he probably died. It's amazing, some of the stuff that happened in the series because it's not something you really expect. But deep down, you know you should have because that's just how the series went. It was never really very happy, despite the humor. And it was never meant to be either. >_o

:P Thank god I get to go home and wander through the books... you're making me want to read them again! Well, at least the end of the series, from the point where Tobias's mom comes back into the picture.

[perivates.livejournal.com]

Heh, I kind of feel like rereading the end of the series and some of the chronicles now. :)

I remember how much I freaked out after the last book... (though reading it while on a class field trip probably wasn't such a good idea anyway) and I can't say that I'm too proud of how much I ranted about it at the time, either. But I think that the fact that since then war has become a very close reality definitely makes me more appreciative of Applegate's letter to her fans, and for ending it the way she did.

[a-white-rain.livejournal.com]

I didn't mind that Rachel died, but that I heard the ending had so many loose ties.

[xinda.livejournal.com]

How long is the series?

[harmonybunny114.livejournal.com]

omg, what you put in my stocking was the best present in the world! You really know me :D