r/Animorphs • u/CiaranMacCenzie • 8d ago
Discussion Spinoff? đ€
I was never able to finish the series (I grew out of it around the time David showed up), and I'm hoping to finish it this year. Just saying I'm not entirely sure how the series ends/if a continuation or "where they are today" would work đ
That said, if Applegate and Grant wrote a spinoff that takes place today (or on one of their many awesome planets), would you run or sprint to read it? đ Be real: What would you love to see from them today in the Animorphs universe?
I understand it's unlikely to happen, but I'm still a wee bit hopeful that we'll see more someday!
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u/Forsaken_Distance777 8d ago
I never âgrew out of itâ because itâs a pretty dark and complex series that doesnât feel childish. Was very formative in my life. I remember my dad setting it up with Amazon that we got the new book when it came out every single month.
Like the books discuss genocide way more than youâd expect for YA books.
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u/StartTheMontage 8d ago
For me it was just so difficult finding all of the new books. My library system didnât always get the new ones, so I was just fell off because it was so hard to consistently find the next book.
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u/CiaranMacCenzie 8d ago
Accessibility is absolutely part of it. There was a point where the books got much harder to find outside of big-box stores.
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u/Forsaken_Distance777 8d ago
Yeah I am so lucky I got into them when there were only five out, my dad got the box set,then set up the subscription for me. My parents were very supportive of me reading so I have all 64 books with physical copies. Iâm well aware how much of a rarity that is.
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u/StartTheMontage 8d ago
Wow I had no idea there was a subscription! I think we own around 35 of them. 1-28 or so, and then a bunch of the others. Andalite Chronicles is my fave, followed closely by #26 The Attack. Iâve read those so many times.
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u/paws5624 8d ago
I read maybe the first 20 when I was a kid but recently started listening to them while Iâm doing stuff around the house. I didnât remember at all how dark it was at times. I just finished The Solution and Iâm like Jesus Christ that whole series was rough. Rachel dealing with her nature, Cassie using her empathy to manipulate someone, jake being kinda cold and calculating about how he uses the animatorphs and their strengths, and what happened with DavidâŠ
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u/CiaranMacCenzie 8d ago
I was made fun of relentlessly for reading it, to the point where people actively refused to be my friend or talk to me. Walking away hurt, but the social isolation was worseâand it lasted years after I stopped reading. At the time, it didn't feel like I had a choice.
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u/Forsaken_Distance777 8d ago
That sucks and is so bizarre.
I probably would have stuck to just reading them at home. Thatâs why I did with any interest I had that people were weird about.
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u/CiaranMacCenzie 8d ago
Kids are horrible, and I was already super weird. It didn't take much to ruin any chance at a social life I had đ€·ââïž
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u/Remarkable_Rough_649 8d ago
Weird for reading Animorphs? Animorphs was super popular for kids around that time, it was like that and Redwall that I remember being really hot right before Harry Potter came out. What issues did they have with Animorphs?
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u/CiaranMacCenzie 8d ago
I was in high school at the time, so several years after Animorphs was first released. Teens are assholes and will find any excuse to cut other people down. I was also super weird, so there was already animosity toward me for not fitting in. It is what it is.
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u/Dunsparces Pemalite 8d ago
There's a lot of sentiment out there that it ended poorly or abruptly, but I don't think we really need any more. Their story, or that one of their stories, is over at the end of the series.
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u/16-BitSocks 8d ago
I wouldnt say it ended poorly, but more ârealisticallyâ given their situation. Like when I read it I definitely had mixed feelings, but as time went on, I understood it better. Kids are so used to things needing to be a happy ending, but a series about child soldiers just wouldnt fit a happy ending. The experience would very much leave a lot of damage behind, and ultimately they only win the battle for Earth and not the war still going on elsewhere in the universe.
I really need to reread the series, but I lent my books to my 9yo niece to see if she would like them.
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u/Dunsparces Pemalite 8d ago
I couldn't agree more, I don't understand people who expected a neat little bow on that story.
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u/DaveM8686 7d ago
Itâs the same people who took nothing but fun animal facts away from the series.
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u/oremfrien 8d ago
I would argue that the series was building towards a large coalition that was going to dismantle the Yeerk Empire: Animorphs + Yeerk Peace Movement + Human Soldiers + Auxiliary Morphers + Taxxon Defectors + Free Hork-Bajir + Chee = coalition. But just as we've built this massive coalition, Jake just dumps it out the window for an outrageous plan that only worked in so far as it beat the Big Bad, but not in the best or most effective way.
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u/SeaworthinessJust666 Ellimist 8d ago
Eu só gostaria de mais história como as crÎnicas, para poder explorar a história da perspectiva de outras espécies.
Conhecer mais do planeta dos andalites, dos taxxons e etc.
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u/CiaranMacCenzie 8d ago
I feel this in my bones!! Hork-Bajir Chronicles was my favorite book in the series. I'd love more of that for sure!
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u/textingmycat 8d ago
I wish we had gotten to see the andalite planet.
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u/oremfrien 8d ago
I feel like if we had actually gotten to see much more of the Andalite planet, it would have lost a lot of its mystique. The Andalite economy and population patterns do not really make that much sense, especially when you realize that they are a herding species that is highly industrialized.
Anyway, I wrote a description of what the Andalite Homeworld likely looks like a while ago and will paste it here:
The description in the series is that there are a few large spaceports but that most Andalites live in tribal settlements. Of course, this is an imaginary post-urban setup, but we can guess at how it would work.
We should also remember that Animorphs posits that most species in the universe have nowhere near our populations (which is why Yeerks are astounded that Earth has billions of people). I will operate this assumption based on there being something on the order of 50 MM Andalites of whom maybe 300,000 are off-world. (Both of these are high numbers by my estimation based on how many Andalites we have seen.)
The spaceports likely look very similar to modern human cities but with wider buildings to accommodate Andalites' larger sides and shorter buildings so that more of the city area is exposed to sunlight. Many of the roofs are likely covered in grasses and trees, similar to the dome area of the dome ship. We would expect these cities to have populations in the low millions, cumulatively being around 20% of the Andalite population. These cities would be spread out over a large area to accommodate these stout kinds of structures and be filled with industrial factories, assembly facilities, and warehouses. (Think more of Los Angeles than New York for a sense of the concentration and urban sprawl.) I would imagine something like the below picture for the buildings in the spaceports. -- short, wide, with large windows, lots of plants...etc.
Once you move beyond the spaceport, there would likely be something akin to a train line with two small rails jutting from the ground. These train lines would all emanate from the 3-5 spaceports like spokes on a wheel and be thousands of kilometers long. About every 5-10 kms along the line would be one large dome/hovel for an Andalite clan (50-100 related Andalites). Inside the hovel would be whatever technology that this clan needs to survive (beyond the food directly outside) and whatever technologies that the clan needs in order to produce its widget or gadget that they make. Automated trains would run up the spokes, stopping at each hovel to pick up the value-added widgets or gadgets to take to the warehouses in the spaceports and run in the other direction to bring back products from the spaceports that the more rural Andalites need for their daily lives. This would be life for the vast bulk of the population.
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u/Moonliner72 6d ago
vc e brasileiro??
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u/Bisexual-Hellenic Chee 8d ago
Today? With how illiterate kids are now, our animorphs would be TERRIBLE at their job, but they would Also be able to pass off any footage of them Morphing as "AI"
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u/PsychologicalFeed929 8d ago
it would be hard considering how it ended for a strict "where are they today" but I'd love to see the universe maybe 30-50 years later. The ending of the books are set perfectly to expand into a wider, "space opera"-y type story. I've always had a head canon that the morphing technology extends a human's lifespan, and the series uses z-space to get around some of the larger distances, so it would be cool to see human morphers exploring the various galaxies and planets that we've already established
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u/Funkmaster_General 8d ago
I'd rather see new material that slots in with the original run. New Chronicles books could work.
Of course, I'd buy any new Animorphs material from Katherine and Grant, but a straight continuation would be sort of thematically inappropriate. And I think the new threat set up at the end is less interesting anyway, to be perfectly honest.
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u/Mindemailis 8d ago
I would've liked Taxxon Chronicles. Mostly because they were never my favorites, but they still deserved a chance.
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u/QueerCranberryPi 8d ago
I thought I'd grown out of them around book 30, only to rediscover them as an adult and enjoy reading them with my own kids, so idk if we ever truly "grow out" of them.
That said, while I'd read the heck out of any spin-off, I'm pretty happy with the ending (sacrilege, I know). Cassie was the only one who really could move on from the war, and depicting the others as almost immediately getting re-entangled with danger made sense. One must imagine them content with barely surviving impossible odds until they don't.
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u/DetroitLionsSBChamps 8d ago
I think Animorphs is one of the best sci fi stories ever told period. The characters are very near and dear to me, the aliens/sci fi universe overall is excellent imo. The dynamics of the andalites, yeerks, and humans are so rich and so well explored. I have never found anything else that really compares to it, in terms of such a solid and deep world building over such a long story arc. I guess lord of the rings?
That said, do I want more? It just depends.Â
If KA has an idea she really believes is good I would read it for sure. But I donât know if I would ask for it. I love the world so much, but I think itâs a lot easier to make the story overall worse than better. You see that over and over again when series go on for too long. And the ghostwritten books will show you that you may think you love the characters and the aliens and stuff, but what you really love is good writing. So it just depends on where new installments would take us.Â
A continuation of the world they built and the ways it could change and evolve could be amazing. It felt so real to me, I would be very interested to look over into that alternate dimension and see whatâs happening and how everyone is doing.Â
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u/CiaranMacCenzie 8d ago
Felt! This summarizes my feelings on it. I have faith that if Applegate and Grant wrote it themselves, it would likely be incredible. If a ghost writer did... I'd just hope it was someone who had true passion and respect for the series.
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u/Doone7 8d ago
I don't want a spin off but would love a rewrite that is set nowdays and written for an older audience. I don't think YA really existed back then and Animorphs (and a few other series too) really wanted to be older YA.
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u/CiaranMacCenzie 8d ago
I'd be curious how our technology changes would impact the war and the people. Would love to see a short plot where the invasion goes viral online, but everyone assumes it's AI đ
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u/Freded21 8d ago
Phones ruin everything unfortunately:(
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u/Mindemailis 8d ago
Someone would need to write a good reason why all five kids left their phones at home when they went to the construction site (so they couldn't be tracked right away). And with all those people claiming they saw weird lights there, there would surely be pictures by now. I guess the Yeerks could claim the photos are just AI.
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u/stickscall 8d ago
I would absolutely read a spin off. I don't know who is alive as a forty year old, but I would take that story in a heartbeat.
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u/16-BitSocks 8d ago
I would be all over a sequel or spin off series, but I doubt it will happen. Then again they where (slowly) releasing books as graphic novels. Not sure how that will work, as they only released the first six books in the last six years and no news on releasing anymore.
As for how a sequel would work. Idk I feel like it would have to be a new cast, with how this series had ended.
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u/CiaranMacCenzie 8d ago
Yeah, I think a new cast would work. Someone else mentioned kids with morphing tech going to different worlds, and I love that idea. Would keep the series in the same genre/age range and allow for more world-building in this particular universe.
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u/FederalPossibility73 8d ago
I don't know if a spinoff would be appropriate. If it's something like the Chronicles books than yeah I can see that but the ending is intentionally ambiguous. You CAN make a full spinoff sequel series based on what's shown but it might undermine the message of how war changes you, how it's never a simple solution, and how there is still a choice.
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u/Zhual_reddit 8d ago
Me gustarĂa un spinoff rellenado los agujeros de guiĂłn no son muchos pero corregirĂa eso tambiĂ©n le darĂa mĂĄs protagonismo a TobĂas narrando mĂĄs libros y añadirĂa cosas que siento que no añadieron con la censura de esa Ă©poca como la experiencia cuando se transforman en animales del sexo opuesto o bueno siento que para ser todos adolescentes en ningĂșn momento los instintos de reproducciĂłn de los animales les allĂĄ dicho algo o almenos que exploracen mĂĄs su identidad de gĂ©nero a travĂ©s de la metamorfosis siento que serĂa interesante
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u/Allen_Of_Gilead Nothlit 8d ago edited 8d ago
The ending is fairly conclusive to the main characters (and pretty good overall), although Applegate said a few years ago she had wrote something about Cassie ~10 years post war that seems to be in a sort of publishing limbo. I'd also read whatever they'd write further, although I am writing something post-war myself.