Series Re-Read: The Andalite Chronicles

[buffyangellvr23.livejournal.com]

Ok now we're up to TAC, instead of last week like i originally thought lol.

I don't have time to transcribe the back cover blurb, but it's the story of what came before the Animorphs. The story of Elfangor's Hirac Delest, his final statement.  It also tells us about Alloran's background to a point, and a little more about Visser Three.

What were the things people were discussing about the timeline in this one in relation to other books?

Are we still debating whether we're dealing with the same Chapman here?

I'm anxious to hear everyone's thoughts on this one in general.

Next week is The Unknown

Comments

[anijen21.livejournal.com]

oh I definitely agree about that. This book is by no means perfect. The black hole that appears out of no where? And Visser Three conjuring the Yeerk Homeworld in that twisted universe WHEN HE WASN'T EVEN BORN THERE AND IS OBSESSED WITH ANDALITES? Some parts are edited poorly (a third of the book running around some made up universe? idk...), and there are a LOT of parts I would have loved to see. Actually, if you sliced off the last 30 pages of this book it would have just been a mildly entertaining, sort of creative normal dormal adventure.

There are BITS of Andalite culture in this book. This is where we're introduced to wish flowers, and population controls that make no sense (if each Andalite couple was only allowed one child then the Andalite population would decrease by half each generation...I mean China does that, but China is totally overcrowded, though maybe an Andalite's definition of "overcrowded" is a little bit different from ours. All the same, Visser made it clear that BILLIONS of specimens on one planet was totally unheard of, so either this doesn't work or the Andalite homeworld is the size of Pluto), and we do get a tiny glimpse into their economy:

<Long ago we had cities...But we were free-roaming herd animals to begin with. I mean, that's how we evolved. Millions of years ago Andalites moved in vast herds, which would split off into smaller herds at different times of the year. Then, gradually, we got used to forming into smaller herds. Families, really. Each family made its scoop, and we each held our own grazing lands. All this Andalite environment you see is part of my family's grazing lands...Once we evolved to form families, we began to study science and nature. And again, over millions of years, we learned to build things. You know--weapons and vehicles that let us fly over the land. And communications for extending the reach of thought-speak. Scoops became larger. Families joined with other families. Buildings grew. Soon we had thousands of Andalites all crammed together without enough grazing space. But we were learning space travel at the same time. Still, we weren't happy. We knew something was wrong. We broke down our cities, divided the land, and went back to life in simple family scoops. We kept building spaceships, but did it in little bits and pieces, here and there, spread out through tens of thousands of scoops. My own family does some of that. We design heat transfer components for fighters. Another family builds the pieces from our designs. Another family transports the pieces to the spaceport. I guess the three spaceports are about as close to what you would call a city now.> 281

Phew. But, in reality, that's all we get about the Andalite Homeworld. I mean, it's kind of unfair, if you think about it. 95% of the series takes place on Earth. A third of this book takes place on the Taxxon Homeworld. An entire book (actually 2 books, now that I think of it) takes place on the Hork-Bajir homeworld. HALF A FRIGGING BOOK TAKES PLACE ON LEERA AND WHO GIVES A GODDAMN ABOUT THE LEERANS?? But do we actually get ANY scenes that TAKE PLACE on the Andalite homeworld, besides the swirly bits of this universe THAT DOESN'T HAVE ANY PEOPLE IN IT??

Well there is a chapter in the Ellimist Chronicles. BUT THAT DOESN'T COUNT BECAUSE IT'S LIKE ANDALITE CAVEMEN OR W/E!

Yeah I still wanted more Andalite development. Up there, that is not enough.

And I kind of disagree about the "Elfangor win" part...I mean, I guess that's why I find the ending so sad. We know he was wildly successful in the war, from Yeerk testimonies, from Tobias' death-throes hallucinations in #33, etc. But what the last 30 pages seemed to do was show us that Elfangor really didn't care about any of it. He'd found his happiness, he'd claimed his "happily ever after." And the universe wasn't okay with that. So even if Elfangor got women and glory and praise and monetary reward, it was all kind of shallow and not really what he wanted. idk.

[karma-fucked.livejournal.com]

And I kind of disagree about the "Elfangor win" part...I mean, I guess that's why I find the ending so sad. We know he was wildly successful in the war, from Yeerk testimonies, from Tobias' death-throes hallucinations in #33, etc. But what the last 30 pages seemed to do was show us that Elfangor really didn't care about any of it. He'd found his happiness, he'd claimed his "happily ever after." And the universe wasn't okay with that. So even if Elfangor got women and glory and praise and monetary reward, it was all kind of shallow and not really what he wanted. idk.

It was kind of the same for Tobias, really. In fact, I think it was the same for all of the Animorphs. At some point in the series, they have an idea of their happily ever after, and none of them are able to achieve it. Tobias is the most pressing example: he found a family with the Animorphs and hope for a future with Rachel. And the universe looked at him and said, "Well, Tobias, you can either be happy or save the world." And of course, by saving the world, each Animorph lost what would have made them truly happy.

Elfangor gave up the war and attempted to get what he wanted out of life, but the Ellimist wasn't going to allow it. The fight for the greater good was more important than the happiness of these characters, and so they ended up sacrificing everything for it.

It's beautifully tragic, now that I think about it. Jake got into the war to fight for his brother and lost his brother. Cassie lost her...innocence? Idk, it's just the idea that the battle wasn't what anyone really wanted, they were fighting for something else and in the midst of the battle to protect it, they lost it. So winning was almost irrelevant.

That makes me consider the ending in a different light.

[sporadicfungian.livejournal.com]

this is why i honestly think the ending was, maybe not the best execution (especially given that the series kind of dipped in quality by the end... i think the last book i actually really like is probably 35), but conceptually the only way for the series to go. you can really see over the series how they go from fighting with a clear if impossible purpose to fighting because in a way that's what all of them, not just rachel, know how to do now. it's like, ok, we're animorphs, this is what we do. and marco even jokes about it but it's really sad if you think about it. and this is one of the reasons i still love this series so many years later, is because it shows that even when fighting a "just" war all victories are pyrrhic victories. this is why even though i think the series has more flaws than harry potter, in some ways it's also a much better series - because it really examines the effect of violence and war beyond just "people i love die." it goes beyond "evil exists and should be fought against" and really pretty far into "sometimes life really, really fucking sucks in ways that can't be fixed."

i dunno it's late and i should go to bed cuz i'm not making sense. but while the ending upsets me to the extent that, more than with any other series, i pretend in my head it never happened, and i take certain fic as canon, the reason it upsets me so much is because (aside from the "one" thing, cuz that was just bullshit) it's not a stupid ending. it's a totally appropriate ending for a series that started out as a scrappy-gang-of-five series and evolved into a detailed and heartbreaking portrait of a devastating war - because really, what other kind of war can there be?

if you look at the beginning, each of the first five books has a moment where the animorph in question is like, ok, this is it, i actually do feel the need to fight and stay in the fight. and those initial reasons just get farther and farther from them by the end - jake's brother dies, marco does eventually get his mom back but not before trying to kill her, cassie loses, like you said, her innocence, tobias [as has been covered extensively in this & last week's posts] loses the closest thing he ever had to a family, and rachel... if you look at book 2, the moment she commits to the fight is the one where she sees melissa crying because she thinks her parents don't love her anymore; she fights to protect these bonds of love that the yeerks are destroying... yet by the end of the series she can barely speak to anyone but tobias - i think in a way she withdraws even more than he does, because he was always an outsider but she and cassie kind of fall apart.

the ending is brutal, because it had to be.

...but i still pretend it all worked out.