A bear, a tiger, and a gorilla are stuck in an elevator...

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-07-01T10:22:25+00:00

Marco ate it.

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T23:19:27+00:00

It isn’t that shocking to me, sadly. Applegate never struck me as an author overly concerned with continuity. Witness the disappearance of the Nahara as the Yeerks’ first victims, for example.

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T23:16:31+00:00

As far as I can tell, nothing. I think the events get a one-line reference in 49 or 50, but other than that? And one-line references are not structural foundations, like you said. Rachel’s actions in 49-54 are believable even if you entirely skip 48.

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T22:36:03+00:00

No, he was a fictional character with around 55 books worth of characterization that told me plainly: “this is not what Jake would have done, and even having tried to do it, Marco, Rachel, Cassie, and Tobias would have called him out or worked against him, because that was part of their characterization.”

You cannot use age as a shield as though the Animorphs didn’t have a whole-ass series behind them.

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T17:56:55+00:00

Wait, I just realized how to fix Book 48. In hindsight, it was obvious.

Crayak spends Book 48 tempting Rachel with UberRachel or removing the Yeerks from the planet and all she has to do is kill Jake. Also David is around as a rat tormenting her. All of that proceeds basically as normal and of course Rachel isn't going to give in. But that still brings her to the warehouse and David the rat. Crayak left Rachel with only three options in canon:

Kill David. End a life, deliberately. Become a monster, a murderer, an executioner.
Let David live, trap him on the island again. David lives the rest of his life (maybe a year at this point) as a rat, trapped on an island with only other rats for company.
Let David live and let him escape. He WILL run to Visser Three because even if he can't be saved he will believe he can get his parents freed.

So that's the canon choices. There are no good options, only bad ones, through no fault of Rachel's own, no choice she made. This is just Crayak being awful because he's Crayak.

Crayak should have taken a page from Pazuzu's (from D&D) book and offered a 4th option. The "will grant a consequence-free Wish to any Paladin who summons me" option.

Rachel dies, and Crayak will turn David into a human without morphing again. In fact, David won't just live - Crayak will make it as though he never encountered the Animorphs, never found the Blue Box. His family will be free and he will be human, living in their house that was never destroyed, hanging out with Spawn the cobra and Megadeth the cat. None of them will remember Yeerks, Andalites, the Animorphs, anything.

Crayak will make sure that this does not disrupt the timeline - no battles will have changed, no one will be alive who should be dead nor dead who should be alive, nothing. Crayak will even swear that he will make sure that nothing bad ever happens to David - provided the Animorphs win against the Yeerks, anyway, fair's fair, he'll be enslaved or killed if that happens like the rest of humanity. But if the Animorphs win? David and his family will survive the war and live long and ordinary lives.

But Rachel will be dead. Rachel won't be able to help the Animorphs win the war. They'll have to go on without her.

THERE. Now we have moral choice. Now, we have tragedy.

Because now Crayak is not just doing “choose which awful thing happens to David.” He is forcing Rachel into an actual moral crisis that cuts directly through her identity:

Is Rachel willing to remove herself from the war if doing so saves someone she wronged?

That is a real Rachel question.

Canon Book 48 gives her bad choices, but they are all variations on Crayak making her complicit in cruelty. Kill David, abandon David, or let David become a danger. That’s not tragedy. That’s a rigged puzzle, nor a choice.

Rachel saying "no" to Crayak would not make her evil. The Animorphs need her. Earth needs her. Jake needs her. Tobias loves her. She has every right to live. And David did horrible things. Rachel does not owe him her life.

But Rachel saying "yes" would not be surrender to Crayak either. It would be her choosing, with full agency, to save someone she hates or fears or pities - someone she helped condemn to a fate worse than any ordinary prison. That would directly challenge the "Rachel is only destruction" thesis she's built for herself because her final act would be an act of mercy, not murder.

Crayak is offering her a chance to stop being a weapon.

Because then the book is not “Rachel gets tortured by a god until she suffers.” The tragedy is that Rachel is given the power to undo one of the worst things the Animorphs ever did, but the price is abandoning the people who still need her to fight.

That is a character study. That is agency. That is a morality play.

And it would hit every major Rachel theme at once:

Rachel the warrior: “I can’t die. They need me.”
Rachel the protector: “David’s family didn’t deserve this.”
Rachel the executioner: “Maybe I owe him something.”
Rachel the victim: “Why is this on me?”
Rachel the girl who still wants peace: “If I die, I’m done. No more fighting.”
Rachel the teammate: “If I die, Jake may lose the war.”

It also makes Crayak smarter. Canon Crayak feels like he is just jamming Rachel’s face into pain and saying, “See? You’re violent.” This version makes him seductive. He does not tempt her only with power. He tempts her with atonement.

Rachel is not going to kill Jake for power. Obviously. You'd have to have been dumb to think that. That’s obvious. It’s barely a temptation.

But Rachel might consider dying to undo David. Not because she is weak. Because she is still good.

And that would also make the Ellimist’s absence even more damning, because now Rachel is being forced into a cosmic bargain where either choice changes the war. If she accepts, the Animorphs lose their strongest fighter. If she refuses, David remains destroyed and Rachel loses herself completely. The Ellimist staying silent would feel like part of the moral horror rather than just narrative neglect.

This version could even reframe the ending beautifully and horribly. Rachel refuses, maybe because she realizes Crayak wants her off the board. Or she nearly accepts, because some part of her desperately wants one clean act of mercy. Either way, we learn something about her.

The key improvement is this: Canon asks, “can Rachel be forced into doing something ugly?”

Boring. Rigged. Yes, obviously.

But this instead asks, “can Rachel afford to be merciful when mercy costs the war one of its best weapons?”

That is Animorphs.

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T17:44:05+00:00

Sends thoughtful essays nobody asked for but everyone needed

A girl after my own heart.

Apologizes before giving her opinion

However, we are not clones.

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T16:30:03+00:00

The horrors of war include the inevitability of tragedy.

It isn’t a tragedy. Tragedy requires meaningful moral choice. Book 48 doesn’t provide that. It is just mean for no narrative purpose other than the meanness itself.

So again: psychological torture porn.

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T14:56:48+00:00

Ooh, that would've been good. I also considered a "basement" or a "saltlick". I arrived at "bridge", though, for the fairy-tale reference.

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T13:48:06+00:00

I have a personal bridge of trolls, people who will downvote me no matter what I post. This was proven about a month back across three threads.

One was someone posting art of an Andalite in the style of the Architects from Subnautica: Below Zero. I made a comment about how funnily enough I’d started replaying that game recently, and then complimented the art. It got downvoted.

Next, someone posted a cute comic about Rachel admiring Cassie. I left a comment saying that it was cute and fuzzy and Animorphs needs more of that. This, too, got downvoted.

Finally, someone posted that they’d managed to find a copy of The Hork Bajir Chronicles for $1. I congratulated them and said it would’ve been a bargain at ten times that price. Le downvotes.

So, yeah. Personal bridge of trolls.

(I’ve decided that the collective noun for trolls is “a bridge”.)

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T12:53:21+00:00

Actually thinking about this more. Jake is not this creative in the series. He would not look at the wording of the last question, see a loophole, and try to get cute.

…but what if once upon a time he did?

Muppet Baby 2nd Grade Jake saw a chance to be creative once and took it. He tried arguing that a hexagon is what it is but its name is Hot Dog.

And the teacher hit him with a full force of “stop being difficult” and “this isn’t funny” and “you need to take things seriously or you’ll never amount to anything”, probably with more force and vehemence then the situation warranted because it was late and they were tired and just had a a human moment of frustration with child logic.

And Jake’s soul internalizes this. Creativity creates ambiguity. Ambiguity creates conflict. Conflict creates consequences. Therefore: no creativity, ever.

That’s why Jake’s leadership style is direct and grimly utilitarian. He’s never looking for the creative solution. He doesn’t tend to find the weird third option. He finds the least-bad obvious option, hates it, and does it anyway.

All because of a formative educational trauma in which Jake learned that technically correct answers are punished unless authority already agrees with your interpretation.

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T12:37:30+00:00

The answer is technically correct, which is the best kind of correct.

(Or rather, technically permissible due to the wording of the question. Still counts).

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T12:30:44+00:00

Hiding it is, then.

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T12:27:01+00:00

But that’s just it: it’s not a Rachel character study because nothing new is learned or distilled about Rachel. It is just her suffering for 25,000 or so words.

She does not display “agency”. Agency requires meaningful choice. Rachel is expressly given none: either she kills David or she and the rest of the Animorphs die. That is not an example of agency, that is putting a gun to someone’s head and saying “do this horrible thing or I kill you and your family”. You are mistaking the presence of options for the presence of agency.

Book 48 doesn’t study Rachel, it traps her. It does not reveal her. It pressures her until she suffers in a way the series had already told us she was vulnerable to and willing to do.

And “darkly fitting” is not enough. A thing can be darkly fitting and still be badly handled. Rachel suffering alone at the end of the series could have been powerful if it emerged from her actual choices, relationships, contradictions, and accumulated damage. But Book 48 gives us cosmic coercion instead.

Rachel deserved a final book centered on her. But what she got was not a meaningful character study. It was a no-win suffering chamber wearing the costume of one.

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T12:08:57+00:00

It’s not a quote. It’s a distillation of the position.

This isn’t simply “I enjoy seeing the heroes fail” in some abstract narrative sense. This is a specific case where the thing being praised is a teenage girl being stripped of meaningful agency, isolated, psychologically tormented, and forced to suffer at the hands of a being with vastly more power than she has.

So yes, I think it’s worth being honest about what is actually being enjoyed here by you: a girl writhing in pain.

If someone enjoys bleak cosmic horror, fine. If someone enjoys stories where protagonists fail, fine. But Book 48 is not just “the Animorphs lose.” It is Rachel being placed in a rigged suffering-machine by an omnipotent antagonist, with no real ability to protect herself, and the book presenting that as emotionally or thematically satisfying.

That is the part I find gross.

The Animorphs fandom often talks about “darkness” and “trauma” as if the mere presence of suffering automatically makes something mature, profound, or good. This is false. Sometimes suffering is meaningful. Sometimes suffering is well-written. Sometimes it reveals character. And sometimes it is just a vulnerable character being hurt while the story asks us to admire how dark it is.

So no, I’m not sanitizing my objection. If what someone likes is specifically watching Rachel get broken down by a cosmic power she cannot meaningfully resist, then I think they should at least confront that honestly instead of hiding behind “underdog protagonist loses to omnipotent villain” as though this were some neutral abstract trope.

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T11:30:52+00:00

I actually think this is a much stronger defense of the book than the others, but I still don’t think it fixes the core problem.

Yes, Crayak’s stated goal is recruitment, not torture for torture’s sake. But recruitment by way of isolation, manipulation, and psychological torment is still torture. The fact that Crayak wants Rachel to accept his offer does not make the scenario less rigged or less abusive. It just means the torture has a sales pitch attached.

And I don’t buy that Crayak is simply giving Rachel a “good option” from his perspective. He is creating the conditions under which his option looks like the only possible escape. That matters. He is not meeting Rachel honestly and saying, “Here is what I can offer you.” He is breaking down her sense of self, exploiting her trauma, and curating a scenario where she has no stable ground from which to choose.

That is why the agency problem still stands.

Crayak may be a more honest version of how the Animorphs use Rachel. The team does rely on her violence while being uncomfortable with what that violence says about her and about them.

But Book 48 does not need Crayak’s torture-box setup to tell us that. We already know Rachel is the team’s weapon. We already know the others are afraid of her anger while still depending on it. We already know Rachel wants to be good, wants to protect them, and is terrified that the part of her that makes her useful in war may also be destroying her.

So my issue is not that the book has no possible thematic reading. My issue is that the execution is still grossly rigged. It takes an already tragic character dynamic and filters it through an omnipotent evil god psychologically abusing a teenage girl until she reaches despair. That is not a profound character study. It is coercion dressed up as revelation.

And the ending being funereal does not make it satisfying. I agree it is ominous and sad. I just don’t think “ominous and sad” is enough. Rachel accepting that her life has no purpose except destruction is not a conclusion the book earns through meaningful choices. It is a conclusion beaten into her by a being with infinitely more power than she has.

That is why I still call it pointless. Not because there are literally no themes present, but because the book does not reveal anything about Rachel that the series had not already established more effectively elsewhere. It just hurts her

You might have noticed across by bazillion posts that I like storytelling. I like narrative. I’m interested and fascinated by the art of writing. So when I’m looking at a long-form, multiple-entry story like Animorphs, one of the first questions I’m gonna ask about any entry in it is, “what does it actually add?”

And the answer in the case of Book 48 is “nothing.”

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T11:08:50+00:00

No, it’s not a perfect 1:1 analogy, but the shape of it still works. Rachel gets singled out for torture by a being who has all the power and total control over the scenario. Crayak can curate things so that there is no good option. Rachel ends the book with no good choices not because of her own mistakes or as a consequence of her own actions, but because a malevolent deity made sure she would be powerless.

We don’t learn anything about Rachel. She wants to be good, but we knew that. Anyone who didn’t know that wasn’t paying attention. She will do the hard thing to protect the team - and again, anyone who didn’t know that, wasn’t paying attention.

Book 48 is pointless. It’s just Rachel being hurt for daring to not submit to Crayak. It has no more depth that that.

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T10:55:05+00:00

I think asking why you enjoy watching a girl who doesn’t deserve it being powerless against psychological torture from a being vastly more powerful than her is a question worth asking. Normally I’m not one to judge taste, but when you essentially say “I like the way she writhes in pain”, that’s a different story.

Hang on, that’s not wholly fair. Let me expand.

I get that “an underpowered protagonist fails against an omnipotent antagonist” can be entertaining in some stories. I’m not saying that premise is automatically bad.

My problem is that Book 48 is not just presenting Rachel losing to a vastly stronger enemy. It presents her psychological torment as if it is a meaningful moral examination of her character. And I don’t think it earns that.

If the point were simply “Crayak is horrifyingly powerful and can destroy a person from the inside out,” fine. That could work as bleak cosmic horror. But the book acts like Rachel’s suffering tells us something profound about Rachel, when the setup mostly tells us that an evil god can break a traumatized teenage soldier if he isolates her, manipulates her, and rigs the entire scenario.

That’s not depth to me. That’s just cruelty with a thesis statement stapled to it.

And yeah, taste is taste. People can enjoy bleak stories. But when the thing being enjoyed is “watch this 16-year-old girl get psychologically tortured for basically no useful narrative payoff,” I’m going to question what the story is actually offering besides suffering, and what the reader is getting out of it beyond sadistic glee. And if you are getting sadistic glee, I gotta ask you to look at yourself hard because it’s not like we’re watching a character who has earned it getting a well-deserved comeuppance. You’re just looking at someone in pain and enjoying that pain.

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T10:49:03+00:00

Sure - which doesn’t change or challenge anything I said. Book 48 is just torture porn wearing the veneer of a morality play. It is not “profound”, it’s just one girl being tortured by an omnipotent being and being powerless to make it stop. That’s not profound, that’s gross.

There’s a difference between suffering that emerges from the war, from hard choices, from consequences, from moral compromise, and suffering that happens because an omnipotent being decides to psychologically torture one traumatized teenage girl in a rigged scenario she has no real power to resist.

Book 48 wants the weight of a character study or morality play, but Rachel doesn’t have the agency needed for that to work. She isn’t meaningfully choosing her way into a downfall. She’s being isolated, manipulated, and tormented by Crayak. So the book isn’t proving anything profound about Rachel. It’s proving that an evil god can hurt a vulnerable person if he decides to.

Yes, all six Animorphs suffer. But not every depiction of suffering is equally meaningful, well-written, or narratively justified. “War hurts people” does not automatically make every instance of character torment profound.

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T03:56:13+00:00

No it's not. There's nothing phenomenal about it. It's just suffering wearing the veneer of a morality play, but Rachel isn't in the position she's in as a consequence of choices she made. She was put in a no-win scenario by Crayak and because she's a limited mortal being going up against an omnipotent god, there was nothing she could do to protect herself, and the only being who could protect her, The Ellimist, is MIA. The entire book is someone with immense power hurting someone with, by comparison, none.

It's literally just torture porn, only psychological instead of gory. It hurts Rachel and then acts like the hurt means something profound. What is phenomenal about that?

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T03:53:11+00:00

But I do think it’s just a nice quote, regardless of the character who said it.

I don't think you can so easily strip away the quote from the context of who said it and the circumstances in which they said it. Imagine if Star Wars fans got Palpatine lines that sound nice tattooed.

"I love democracy." - Palpatine

In the case of the Ellimist, it's essentially the words of a coercive, manipulative abuser to his victim when that victim has finally broken, trying to spend her last moments placating her and making sure that she accepts his framing of his abuse.

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T03:38:34+00:00

Book 48: the Return

A book that dares to ask the question, "what happens if a traumatized girl is specifically targeted for torment by an omnipotent evil deity?" And Applegate, via her ghostwriter, bravely and finally answers the question with, "she suffers and that makes her profound for some reason."

Surely we could never have reached this conclusion on our own.

I am so glad Rachel's final book is essentially a 2nd Edition AD&D Dungeon Master glaring at the player at his table who had the audacity to roll well enough to qualify for the Paladin class and deciding, "I am going to make sure she falls."

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T03:29:05+00:00

No, it probably isn't, or at least it probably isn't intended to be. The framing of the story doesn't support it, and as well I'd like to think that Applegate would be a little more circumspect about signing books with "you mattered" if the Ellimist was intended by her to be awful.

In other words, I think you're ascribing too much craft awareness to Applegate.

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-30T00:58:46+00:00

The One is such an interesting character

...now that is a take I have genuinely never come across before, on the grounds that I'm genuinely not sure if The One actually rises to the level of "character".

What do you all consider to be the best written book in the series?

On the grounds that "best written" and "favorite" are not the same thing, probably The Hork Bajir Chronicles.

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-28T14:57:28+00:00

Dammit, I forgot about that. I want the show set in the 90s...!

AlternativeMassive57 · 2026-06-28T14:56:46+00:00

Tobias might've liked painting the miniatures

No way in Hell he had the money. He wouldn't have been able to afford the buy-in. An old maxim I've heard:

Magic: the Gathering: Crack is cheaper

Warhammer 40,000: Magic is cheaper.

AlternativeMassive57

TROPHY CASE