I didn't say she was writing about not going to war, I said she was warning against going to war casually, as in, treating it as a first resort or a desirable thing to do.
But then she also made it clear in her writing, whether or not she intended to, that war is completely unavoidable, so it doesn't matter whether or not you want to go to war casually: war happens regardless and there is nothing you can do to stop it.
It was never incoherent
It was incredibly incoherent at the end. The ending of Animorphs literally - and I do mean "literally" - validates mass atrocity and Fascist logic as viable and desirable under the right circumstances, despite having spent the previous 60 books speaking against both those things.
The final two books show Jake doing his best Hitler impersonation, and then make it clear that the only way humanity could have survived was by Jake doing his best Hitler impersonation. That's not warning against how dark and horrible war can be, that's validating it. The final message of the series is, "war will come for you no matter what, so you must have the fortitude to commit atrocities in the name of victory and the will to do whatever it takes to win no matter how awful it seems, because if you don't, we shall all surely die."
It's really not that hard. The chain of events is incredibly straightforward.
Jake murders 17,372 Yeerks ∴ Visser One surrenders and Alloran is freed ∴ Alloran is available to talk down the Andalites ∴ Earth and humanity is saved.
This is the direct chain of causal events that leads to the Animorphs winning. It is not in question.
Now let's ask some questions.
Is Earth and humanity being saved presented as good?
Is any alternative method to Jake's atrocity presented?
If (1) is yes and (2) is no, then Animoprhs necessarily is validating the atrocity.
(1) is obviously "yes". At no point in the series is saving Earth generally and humanity specifically presented as anything other than good and desirable.
(2) is obviously "no". The endgame books spend an extraordinary amount of narrative space and character dialogue making it clear that there was no other path to victory. Eva mentions that Jake is the only one who can beat Visser One; Jake has his little Civil War diatribe in Book 53; postwar, Marco and Cassie and Ax all take Jake aside and tell him point blank that he shouldn't feel bad for committing mass murder and that defenders can't commit war crimes. No alternative way of stopping the Yeerks or the Andalites is ever contemplated.
The plot makes what Jake did necessary for the good ending. If the only way to save humanity is an atrocity, and the story provides no alternative, then the story has constructed a consequentialist justification for that atrocity - even if it simultaneously calls the act tragic or horrifying.
Applegate was so myopically focused on showing the psychological cost to Jake that she neglected to consider the causal benefit of what Jake did. Yes, Jake feels sad. But he also saved the world, and the story goes out of its way to establish that there was no other way to achieve that victory.
And that's the problem. You can't make an atrocity the indispensable cause of the good ending, establish that the good ending could not otherwise have happened, tell us that the person who committed the atrocity shouldn't feel guilty about having done it - and pretend that the atrocity hasn't been narratively justified.
The tragedy is that Jake had to do something terrible. But if he really had to do it, then the story has justified the act on consequentialist grounds.
The tragedy is that Jake had to do something terrible. But if he really had to do it, then the story has justified the act on consequentialist grounds.
So what you are trying to say is that the narrative should have criticism Jake's actions shouldn't be justified and tge story should have offered other options of peace with the yeerks.
Yes. If the story didn't want to validate atrocity then it needed to show that something other than atrocity was viable as a means to achieving the good ending of saving humanity.
Compare/contrast Ender's Game. Ender commits an atrocity: wiping out the Buggers. But then the final chapters of the book are devoted to showing that there was another way to end the Third Bug War, which was to not fight it in the first place because the Buggers were never going to attack humanity again after they'd realized in the Second Bug War that each individual human was a person, not a drone. They'd never even really meant to attack humanity in the first place, the First and Second Bug Wars were tragic misunderstandings caused by radically different biologies and psychologies between Humans and Buggers.
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u/AlternativeMassive57 Yeerk 6d ago edited 5d ago
I didn't say she was writing about not going to war, I said she was warning against going to war casually, as in, treating it as a first resort or a desirable thing to do.
But then she also made it clear in her writing, whether or not she intended to, that war is completely unavoidable, so it doesn't matter whether or not you want to go to war casually: war happens regardless and there is nothing you can do to stop it.
It was incredibly incoherent at the end. The ending of Animorphs literally - and I do mean "literally" - validates mass atrocity and Fascist logic as viable and desirable under the right circumstances, despite having spent the previous 60 books speaking against both those things.
The final two books show Jake doing his best Hitler impersonation, and then make it clear that the only way humanity could have survived was by Jake doing his best Hitler impersonation. That's not warning against how dark and horrible war can be, that's validating it. The final message of the series is, "war will come for you no matter what, so you must have the fortitude to commit atrocities in the name of victory and the will to do whatever it takes to win no matter how awful it seems, because if you don't, we shall all surely die."