The Ghostwriters & the Shell

Okay, so the title may be a little corny. At least to those of you who have heard of Ghost in the Shell. To everyone else it probably doesn't make any sense and is also corny. But I happen to think it fits pretty well.

The Ghost in the Shell, for everyone's information, is a Japanese manga and anime. (I already have an explanation of manga and anime in my Sailor Moon rant, so go there if those words mean nothing to you). It's a little obscure, but it has a great story and was wonderfully done; I'm sure it would have been big in America if it weren't for the fact that it's a little dark and not exactly something for young children to watch, which most Western viewers can't understand, outside of South Park (and young kids watch that, too).

Anyway, the basic plot of Ghost in the Shell is that it is the year 2029 and the world has basically become intertwined with the 'Net. People, through experimenting in biotechnology, have been able to integrate their bodies to machines. In fact, most people have found it best to become total cyborgs, and eventually many people are entirely machine, the only lingering piece of humanity, that which distinguishes them from regular machines, is a "ghost," a ghost in the mechanic shell.

And how does this connect to Animorphs? Well, look at the way it started out. Just a kid's book series about kids saving the world from aliens. In the light of the much-disdained Goosebumps, nothing to get all excited about. But then, from people who thought the covers looked cool, to their older siblings who picked up those books because they like the idea of shapeshifting, through word-of-mouth and websites, the Animorphs books grew to be an empire in its own right.

But then, Scholastic and various other corporate powers saw how many people and how fanatical they were, and all they saw were dollar signs. Thus, the commercialization. T-shirts, decals, posters, bookmarks. No big deal. The Animorphs following grew even greater. Then, the announcement of an upcoming TV show. Everyone cheered, saying to themselves how cool they thought it was. I personally was picturing something with Babylon 5-type effects and set and acting. I should have realized that, for one thing, it was on Nickelodeon, produced by the people who brought to us Goosebumps. And then it came. And the world trembled.

Then, we had Animorphs Transformers. And soon, a video game. Company after company is trying to cash in on the ever-growing Animorphs fan following. I meant to write a rant just about that, but I figured that since everyone else had already written something to that effect, there was no point in me doing it. But it was the last straw when I started reading about ghost-writers.

This is the fragile tie-in with the title; you start out with something good, but some people aren't satisfied with it. They want to "improve" the Animorphs following by commercialism which is doing nothing but slowly destroying it, going down the road of Goosebumps in which the fans find they just "aren't into it" anymore, potential new fans are turned off by the ugly transformers and farce of a TV show, and the next thing you know it has been replaced by a new, untainted series (though it probably won't stay that way for long) -- Watchers, maybe? Everworld? with its only remaining fans a scattered cult following.

And we all thought that the books, at least, were "pure" from all of this. Like, Screw Scholastic and all it's affiliates, we still have our books, and we aren't giving you a cent for anything else. But then comes the advent of yet another degradation to the books: ghostwriting. Now even the text of the books aren't completely by K.A. Applegate anymore. Now, I'm not going to blame K.A. for having ghostwriters (though it may not entirely be her choice) because she is a very busy person, especially now that she's going to maintain two series. As for myself, there would be no way I could churn out one book a month -- it takes me almost that long (or maybe longer, depending what time of the year it is) to write two chapters of The Controller -- and we can't forget that she does have a life outside of Animorphs, including a family. And some of the g-writers (namely Melinda Metz, who did #29 is leaving after doing #34, and whoever did #27) did a good job, but most of them left us with a distinctive feeling that something is missing.

K.A. isn't giving up the actual writing of the Animorphs, books though. She writes some of the actual text in many of them, and she also goes over the finished product and edits them and adds in her own writing. Like, if you noticed in #30, it changed for the better at the second half (and redeemed the book) because it was the ghostwriter for the first part, then K.A. the second. And #32 was ghostwritten, but it turned out that the evil Rachel wasn't even as ruthless as the regular Rachel, so K.A. got rid of the manuscript and wrote it herself (can we all give a resounding cheer?).

But the thing is, it can always get worse. There may come a time when it's simply a matter of K.A. writing out the plot and basic situation with character, sending it off to the ghostwriter, who produces a manuscript that goes straight to the publisher. K.A. would be just a name on a book cover, a representative of a large group of people, and I remember clearly reading in the Ask K.A. Forum about how she's not like the author of Nancy Drew, who was actually several people. It's only her-- she writes the books all on her own and --I believe these were pretty much the exact words-- if the fans felt that the books were getting weak she would *end* the series. Not anymore.  Normally I would say "That may be a little pessimistic, but . . ." it's not. Seeing what has happened with other book-TVshow-merchandise collections that eventually grew too big to support their own weight, and the trends in Animorphs as of late, it seems to me a legitimate concern. I'm not sure what, if there's anything we can do about this, but the least we can do is address our concerns

In conclusion, all I'd like to say is, in all this vast empire Scholastic has made, where is the Animorphs we all fell in love with three years ago?

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