Fans of the Animorphs

lol well I guess the pendulum is swinging the other way, which is fine, you guys are allowed to like her but I still don't.

And you know, reading through all of your comments, there's not really any one part I disagree with. I agree that she's not a perfect character, and that her flaws I think are some of the most subtle and realistic of anyone in the group. I agree that she's not totally responsible for being such an insufferable figure of morality since that's the role she was assigned to and the one she felt she had to fulfill, and I even agree that she had a couple of moments of REALLY AWESOME.

There's two reasons I still don't like her, which I'll outline here:

First, I still believe Cassie's position on the team was redundant. Yes, she may have been assigned to the role of "moral compass" and she may have worn that title proudly, but I still don't see her as the practical moral compass of the team. Tobias still is to me. Sure, Cassie may be able to parse through all the theoretical mumbo jumbo, and she certainly never shied away from telling the team outright "NO WE'RE NOT DOING THAT," but like I've explained before, I really don't think that's what a moral compass should do. Marco was the strategist because no one else could really SEE things that way. I don't believe anyone, except sociopaths I guess, is born without a conscious. And assigning Cassie to the role of team's conscious, when everyone else has a perfectly good working one, made her practically redundant and really insufferable to me. Anyway, like I've explained before, it is an important role but one she didn't fill correctly--since everyone already has a compass and knows the difference between right and wrong, someone who plays that role in the group shouldn't have veto power. Their job isn't to say "this is too wrong for ME so thus it's too wrong for all of us," it's to outline the consequences of their actions in an objective way and make sure they're making a perfectly informed decision. Tobias did this way more than Cassie did, I think #30 is a great example when they were talking to Marco's mom for the first time and he was all "dude are you sure about this? This is going to fuck you up if you do it." No judgment, no self-righteousness, just an objective, impartial observer making intuitive, deep predictions.

You guys are free to disagree with me. I still believe even morality can be a practical thing, and for some reason it was the only thing in the books that was allowed to get really theoretical and abstract. I guess the authors thought it was a theme or whatever.

The second reason I still don't like Cassie is that she's never wrong.

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Now I've read through your comments and you guys cite a lot of examples where Cassie makes mistakes. She does. She knows she does. The Animorphs know she does. She does things for stupid reasons, she lets her gut and heart rule when her brain should (which are all qualities I hate in real life, but even that's irrelevant to why I don't like her as a character), and she causes a lot of conflict for and within the group. The problem is that none of these actions ever seems to be anything in the long-run except a secret solution to a big problem. Obviously, the biggest example is the morphing cube. Yes, she justified it later by insinuating she "hoped" or whatever that the Yeerks would self-destruct because of it, but yeah, she totally just did something really stupid in the heat of the moment. Same thing with Aftran. Really stupid decision that turned into something that, probably in concert with the morphing cube, ended the war. Cassie routinely makes objectively bad decisions that, through narrative magic, turn out to be right.

Now, some of you may think this is an accurate representation of unpredictability and irony of real life. I disagree. Fiction is not reality. Fiction is a carefully contrived fabrication of reality. Real life does not have Chekov's guns, rising action, climaxes, and conclusions. Real life is cruel and arbitrary. The structure and "reality" of the books never treated Cassie that way.

And yeah, it didn't really treat any of them that way until the end (and yes--I'm still a little mad that Cassie got off scot-free both externally and internally), but Cassie always just seemed to get extra-special treatment to me. I'm still pissed about the Ellimist calling her "wise" in Megamorphs 4 when I STILL THINK SHE WAS TOTALLY WRONG ABOUT HOW TOBIAS WOULD RESPOND TO HIS OWN INFESTATION (then again, as I think of it, maybe the Ellimist was just saying that to reinforce her own recklessness because he knew...you know what, no, it was still stupid), I'm pissed that the morphing cube worked out so perfectly, I'm pissed that Aftran worked out so perfectly, I'm even pissed that little stupid stuff worked out so perfectly, like Cassie sitting out of #43 JUST SO SHE COULD COME BACK AND SAVE THE DAY (with a moral crisis of course) or Cassie being the embodiment of Jake's idealized future in #41. Cassie was cast as the angel way too many times. If you want me to believe she is a balanced character with more than surface-level flaws, tell me more times she fucked up or was cast in a negative light that didn't last more than two pages.

In the carefully contrived fabrication of reality that is Animorphs, Cassie was the representation of how the world should be--and so, that world more often than not was that way. I still think Cassie could have been a good, balanced, interesting character if she wasn't favored so goddamned much.

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So anyway mostly what I'm saying is I think the morph cube incident was Cassie being stupid and it stayed stupid. I don't think that decision really got redeemed at all.

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So anyway mostly what I'm saying is I think the morph cube incident was Cassie being stupid and it stayed stupid. I don't think that decision really got redeemed at all.

Agreed. And there was great frustration!

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Not really. Tom would have wanted to get back at Visser Three for torturing him whether or not the morphing cube was given up. The Taxxons and YPF really did jack to get them on the ship. Pretty much all the coordination hinged on the Anis, Erek, Toby and Tom. They could have arranged to get on by claiming to be any YPF member, not necessarily a Taxxon. Pretty much, nothing they did to get on the ship had anything to do with the morph cube.

Basically, there's nothing the morphing cube did that the very idea of nothlitism couldn't do. If Cassie had really believed that was an alternative, she should have contacted Illim earlier in the series to spread the idea. Instead she handed a giant weapon over to the Yeerks in a fit of passion.

Cassie was a dummy and she got peeps killed for pretty much nothing. AFTER the war her idea was awesome, but during the war it was just a smokescreen for her to escape blame for acting impulsively.

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1. But again, what did the Taxxons or YPF even do for the final battle? How did that correlate to getting them on the Pool Ship? What did the Taxxons have to do with anything, really. I love them but they basically showed up in #53 to be an illustration of how nobody's purely evil, not to actually forward the plot or anything beyond giving Tom a way to contact Jake.

Tom had access to the Pool Ship and Jake's parents. He's got bargaining chips up to his eyes. And his goal would have been to punish V3 no matter what, morph cube or no - for Tom it was not about the morph cube, it was about getting tortured. Do you really think, with all the Yeerks who hated V3 and the Visser system even as early as #4, that he couldn't have found some guys happy to go with him with the Blade Ship? Tom wasn't taking a big amount of Yeerks with him, just a hundred loyal ones.

I mean, the thing is, I get that the morph cube was essential in the negotiations that ended the war. The end of the last current day chapter is pretty much "we got cubez!". But there really isn't anything that giving up the cube accomplished that couldn't have been done more safely with disseminating the idea of the cube. The Yeerks did not need to be in POSSESSION of the cube to have unrest. They want unrest? Point out that there's an alternative. Actually USE the YPF instead of mentioning them on the side. Have Erek sneak in and give it to a few Controllers. Don't just give it up to TOM.

I just...don't see it being the necessary push. Not when there was already such disdain and fear for V3 way early in the series. Not when most of the Yeerks willing to defect didn't have access to it anyway.

2. Maybe it could have been a good idea, but not the way Cassie implemented it. Also, even though Marco risked his life, obviously they DID find the Chee (that said, that's always been a plot point that bugged me. They totally should have Chekov's Gunned Erek's magic cell phone from #10 instead of just had it be "I can't find them" "try harder" "found them!").

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staysleeping.livejournal.com

It's funny when I was younger and before I ever really grasped the whole war/consequences of the series Cassie was my favorite. Of course this was largely due to the fact I liked the animals she morphed on her covers best. Oh my naivety :p Anyways... I'm probably just biased, but I agree with everything you said – especially that second reasoning. By no means am I saying she's a weak character or anything and I agree what people have been saying how her flaws make her more "likable," it just bothers me that her flaws pretty much always end up being blessings-in-disguise. I will admit I do like a few Cassie books (dur she got some of the best books) and the series wouldn't have been the same without her. I just think there should have been some tweaking to how she was portrayed. I think the thing that makes Cassie tolerable in the series for me is how the other characters (particularly Marco) react to her and get frustrated. I guess I don't HATE her, just out of the 6 she's by far my least favorite and idk I get annoyed. I better stop I'm babbling.

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acts_of_tekla

I dislike the way Cassie is written a lot more now than when I was reading the books as a kid. That is probably because in the meantime, I've earned a degree in Peace and Justice Studies, focusing on bioethics (a subject in which I attribute my interest at least partially to Animorphs). So I've basically spent four years learning how to form concrete arguments regarding ethics, and the way that Cassie's arguments tend to be written flat out sucks. "It just feels wrong" does not qualify as an argument.

It didn't *really* bother me until I was rereading #43. Admittedly, the book has kind of an Idiot Plot, but Cassie just walking out on the mission was a real head-desk moment -- not because I dislike that she went against the group or stood up for what she believed in ('cause that's always awesome), but because she didn't say that they needed to talk to Taylor sans Yeerk, like she had in #19. A six-year-old deserves to voice her own opinion, but an eighteen-year-old doesn't -- even when the stakes are even higher in many respects? That just makes no sense.

I think that had the post-David arc books not been largely ghost written, we would have seen a much more complex Cassie. IIRC #20 is the first book where her ability to manipulate people is remarked upon, and I really would have liked to see more of that -- especially because it comes *after* Cassie's big "What have I become and what will I become if I keep doing this?" freak out in #19. I really would have liked to see her deal with the internal fallout of acknowledging or realizing that she was being manipulative at some point.

I think the problem may have been that the ghost writers thought that "moral compass" meant "character who is a saint" rather than "character who can see the possible consequences of the group's actions and points them out". "Moral compass" in that sense *is* necessary to this sort of story and cast archetype.

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blue_rampion

I think the problem may have been that the ghost writers thought that "moral compass" meant "character who is a saint" rather than "character who can see the possible consequences of the group's actions and points them out". "Moral compass" in that sense *is* necessary to this sort of story and cast archetype.

That, I think, is exactly what happened.

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almighty-patsy.livejournal.com

I really would have liked to see her deal with the internal fallout of acknowledging or realizing that she was being manipulative at some point.

YOU ARE SO RIGHT

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Except Tobias didn't have enough respect from the group until like, the late 20's early 30's to have his opinion really matter. Jake and Cassie pitied him and Marco thought he was a wuss. That's half the team who doesn't take him seriously. And I think a huge reason that the group sort of elected Cassie as the morality spokesperson was the group psychology of children. It's a very kid/teenager response to go "well, _____ says it's wrong so I know not to do it", and since they couldn't talk to any adult figures about the war, they decided on Cassie because she seemed the most emotionally mature (she's the least emotionally mature, but the qualities she possesses look, to children, like maturity). And then, as the war escalated and as they grew up, they started listening to her less. Even before the final arc, pretty much none of them are giving a crap about her morality. Everyone's lending more credence to Tobias.

I don't recall how the Yeerk Peace Movement was integral to the war ending, actually. I may need to go back and reread the last books. I pretty much remember the YPF doing jack and occasionally ending up in trouble and needing rescuing, except for that one time one YPF member stops Visser Three from killing Jake, but that's like two lines of the whole book. I don't agree that the morphing cube did anything but escalate the war - maybe post-war it offered a solution, but they really didn't accomplish anything during the war with the cube besides more violent battles. So IDK, a lot of people say that the morph cube decision turned out to work for Cassie, but I don't buy it. It led to her BFF and Tom's death indirectly.

More in a minute computer making explodo noises.

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I think a huge reason that the group sort of elected Cassie as the morality spokesperson was the group psychology of children. It's a very kid/teenager response to go "well, _____ says it's wrong so I know not to do it", and since they couldn't talk to any adult figures about the war, they decided on Cassie because she seemed the most emotionally mature (she's the least emotionally mature, but the qualities she possesses look, to children, like maturity).

Completely agree- and the thing is, in the begining books before everyone was growing up ~~KAA wasn't handing everything over to ghost writers due to deadlines~~, Cassie actually bugs me the least... Maybe because her Morality Goddess role was more needed then verses later?

I don't agree that the morphing cube did anything but escalate the war - maybe post-war it offered a solution, but they really didn't accomplish anything during the war with the cube besides more violent battles. So IDK, a lot of people say that the morph cube decision turned out to work for Cassie, but I don't buy it. It led to her BFF and Tom's death indirectly.

And I'm not bitter about that at ALL. Really. ;)

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I don't think you're wrong about Tobias not being taken seriously until the midpoint of the series--but that doesn't change the fact that Cassie's made obsolete once he is. Maybe it's more because it's part of his arc, but the fact that Tobias kind of BECAME the moral compass due to his immersion in the somewhat kill-or-be-killed natural world, and having to reconcile that with his remaining strands of humanity, I find much more compelling than the fact that Cassie plays with animals and wears overalls. I don't know, I guess it's kind of unfair to her character, and maybe the common ground we're all finding here is that the ghostwriters really fucked her up, but by the end of the series Cassie had no more purpose on the team and yet still influenced the thrust of the war the most.

I don't think the Yeerk Peace Movement had a DIRECT influence over the end of the war, and this is me just reading between the lions (which I think is the main thing getting us all into a little bit of trouble on this topic), but I think the YPM kind of incited feelings of unrest and made the Yeerks realize the fact that there was a choice, even though the regime had kind of taken that away. Maybe we're not supposed to read it that way, but without that underlying layer of dissent I don't know if as many Yeerks would have deserted at the end of the war.

As far as the morphing cube--I think you and I actually agree completely, but I think you're focusing on what actually happened and I'm focusing on how the books tried to sell it to us. Because yes, what ACTUALLY HAPPENED is that Cassie let Tom go in a moment of EXTREMELY POOR JUDGMENT, giving the Yeerks a game-changing weapon, and lots of people died that shouldn't have because of her actions. The way the books tried to sell it--and this is in 53, I can find the direct quote if you want me to--is that Cassie realized the cube would cause additional dissent amongst the Yeerks and in someway foresaw that the Taxxons would go rogue once they weren't allowed to morph. Now, I don't know if it's possible to prove this based on the text we're given, but this may just be some intense denial and overjustification for what she knew was a rather large fuck-up. But based on how everything works out, I really believe it was written to be some deep insight or wisdom in a kind of discontinuity to show that action in a new light. Cassie was always characterized as having some deeper wisdom or connection to the plane of morality than everyone else, and that's not hard to write if you're in charge of the universe.

I have to go out on a limb here too and say that I really don't like #19. Everyone saying it's their favorite book, I'm kind of rolling my eyes a little bit. Don't get me wrong, I still think it's in the *golden age of Animorphs* and it deserves to be, if nothing more than because, for the first time, it introduces the concept of moral uncertainty, of something other than absolute evil, of a complication in the whole good guy/bad guy scheme. I love the concept of moderate Yeerks, I love getting the perspective of how they justify overt slavery, I love hearing from one of them that wasn't psycho sociopathic Visser Three.

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I don't love anything Cassie does in that book.

And even then, we get the same exact sort of narrative acrobatics that make a lot of really reckless, poorly-thought-out decisions turned into inherent, deep wisdom or some kind of foresight. Cassie tells a Yeerk the truth about her and the Animorphs and it all works out fine! In fact it creates a whole movement of dissent amongst the Yeerks! Cassie becomes a deliberate nothlit but it all works out fine! Because there's a deus ex machina morphing exception when it comes to caterpillars! Yay! I'm fine with a character martyring themselves for a greater cause--just make them into actual martyrs, you know?

And you said that a lot of them got the same kind of narrative acrobatic treatment, and I'll admit that did make me stop and think--and yes, Marco telling Visser One his real identity was a huge, game-changing mistake that should have made them lose the war as surely as Cassie's numerous blunders. But the fact is--Marco's decision did nothing in the end. Visser One got herself in trouble for her OWN political decisions and her choice to have a familly with Issam, NOT because Marco told her who he really was. Marco's decision didn't have the NEGATIVE impact it should have, but a magical POSITIVE impact didn't spawn randomly from it, either. I can forgive it more because it wasn't overjustified. Each one of Cassie's...I don't know what to call them, executive impulses?...led to some greater solution that wouldn't have been possible without them, and were then retroactively explained as extremely insightful wisdom.

Overall, I guess, if you REALLY READ what happens in the end of the series, none of it really makes sense. Cassie didn't have to let Tom go, Rachel didn't have to die, Jake didn't have to make her, and if everything had gone down without a lot of convoluted plot seemingly dictated by the message rather than by the logic, everyone would have survived and the war would have ended without a hitch. But I guess that doesn't show readers what a hell war is, does it?

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I think that we're approaching it from different ways. #53 may be trying to convince us that Cassie's morph cube moment is deep deep wisdom, but I simply ain't buying it, because the actual actions it causes are all full of Fail. So whether or not Jake (who is in love with her) says something to the effect of it being "great wisdom"...I mean, whether or not the author for that to be the message, that's simply not how the actions of the books play out. So it's invalid to me. There were repercussions for her screwup and it's not some great wisdom, to me. Even if the author is trying to convince me otherwise. I don't know, maybe it's just that I tend to ignore the author playing favorites and focus on the events. Nothing wrong with your way either, it's just not how I approach literature. Which is probably why I'm an econ major and not involved in the artful humanities.

On the flipside, the only reason Edriss was able to discredit V3 and provide a distraction so she could save her own life, thus leaving Eva safe for later rescue, is because Marco blew it at the end of #30. I mean, I love the Marco dude, but he dodged one almighty bullet with that one and it led to him getting his mom back. Not war-changing, but it still does sort of bug me that the end of his character arc hinges on a "whoops" moment. As for him saving his dad, without Peter's space radio they couldn't have prevented WWIII, so that turned out pretty well for him too. And again, I love Marco liekwhoa, but he is one seriously lucky bastard. ~~Oh look I'm turning this into a Marco conversation oops sorry.~~

#19 is on my shortlist for top 5. When I called my mom last summer telling her I was rereading Anis, her response was "the butterfly book is the best one!". I can still trace my lifelong love of villains back to #19 and Javert from Les Miserables. It has a soft spot in my heart that makes me overlook all errors. I don't disagree with anything you say, because it's all 100% correct, but #19 will always give me the huge warm fuzzies.

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see, that's just it. I think we're reading it the same way, it's just the tone and discourse that leads to the same conclusions we're reaching is what pisses me off. The text seems to forgive Cassie for a massive screw up, which makes me dislike the character for getting off so easily. I don't like it when anyone skirts justice, fictional or no.

wait, I'm having a little trouble following your logic, let me see if I can parse this out...so if Edriss hadn't known that Marco was an Animorph, then she never would have been able to call him during "Visser" and show the Council that Visser Three had fabricated the deaths of the Andalite bandits, right? Is that your point? That's definitely true, but at least Marco's forgiveness is based on the somewhat shrewd and self-preserving actions of a character, rather than just the fate of the "universe" ie the authors wanted it to work out that way. As far as Marco's dad preventing World War III--I mean idk, the whole fact that Peter had to make the radio to contact the Andalites is another eyeroll moment for me, because it was established WAY BACK IN BOOK 5 that Ax was perfectly capable of making a space radio to contact the Andalites, and had in fact done so on another occasion. I mean, I really like the decision to bring the parents in as advisors and soldiers, but let's have them do something the kids haven't already proven themselves capable of, you know?

But wait...you're talking about the radio he made like in 45-46, right? idk maybe I am talking about something completely differently lol.

And yeah, I do love Aftran, and as much as I love #29 I do think she got shafted/underutilized a little bit. I wish we'd seen more of her, or at least more characters like her :')

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Eh, the text can take a hike. Cassie got peeps killed. She was a dummy. Jake's "she has such insight!" moment changes none of that. I guess the text forgiveness just...doesn't bother me because I ignore it. I really have no other answer for that. :\

Yeah, that's basically what I was getting at, but I do see the distinction you're making between "magical universe powerz!" and "Edriss is a sneak" being the saving grace of a bonehead move. I accept your point.

Yeah, the space radio from #45 (I totally don't remember what it's called, and I just wrote a drabble involving it two days ago...whatever). Wasn't the space radio primarily to intercept Yeerk commands, not to contact the Andalites? Because while Ax was shown to be capable of the latter, it looked like he could only do the former with Peter involved. And I'm alright with Peter being brilliant, because he pretty much has no other saving graces in the whole series. He is FailureDad. He needed to stop sucking or he would have been just completely unlikable.

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that's fair. And tbh I never really thought of it as "Jake hero worship" so much as "author hero worship," but you're right, there's enough evidence in the text of unreliable narrators that we can't exclude that possibility. I think it's a fine line, but we just fall on either side of it, you know?

lol the space radio, now that I think of it, what was its point? Because yeah, they used it to intercept Yeerk broadcasts at first, but then in #52 that's what Ax uses to contact the Andalites, right? God I don't even know. Ax had to do all the decryptions anyway, but Peter and him worked together, so I really don't know. The end of the series is still such a mess in my mind but I'm sure with ppl like you and Kim Hoppy, sense can be made somehow lol.

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Totes.

I think it was originally supposed to intercept and then Ax modified it. #45 made it seem like Peter was really vital to the process, like maybe Ax could tweak some of Peter's stuff to make it work but Peter was providing the raw code or something (which would have made sense with #8, too), but...I don't know. Peter's expertise is so deeply ill-defined because one second he's an engineer and then he's a programmer and when it's convenient he's making space radios. And yet he thinks ice cream is a meal. My theory is that Ax basically knows how to spiffy things up to his needs, but he needs the basics laid out for him, like how some people can hack Myspace but can't start up a functional social networking site on their own.

The end of the series could totally use some work and clarification. Pretty much I just like that they're all miserable at the end.

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Pretty much I just like that they're all miserable at the end.

You would. :P (Obviously!)

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