Character Discussion Jake and Ax

[buffyangellvr23.livejournal.com]

I think this is the last one for Jake for the moment. Unless I do Jake/auxiliaries later. Jake and Erek maybe.

Anyway, this one is fun just because they're probably close to the same age if you could translate Andalite to human, but Ax looks to Jake as a superior. The morphing of Jake was funny...eating all the chili. I don't recall *too* much conflict with these two after The Alien until the rescue at Jake's house went wrong and Jake was conflicting with basically the whole group, understandably.

Fun recurring moment: "Ax, don't call me prince." Ax's best response "I will call you the Jake formerly known as prince"

Comments

[1111-am.livejournal.com]

I don't have any in-depth character analysis or anything right now, but one of my favorite Jake and Ax moments is from MM4 when it's like they're the last two standing and Ax is the alpha male. Love it.

[rena-librarian.livejournal.com]

I always imagined Ax as older than all of them--about the Andalite equivalent of 18/19 at the start of the series. (And IDK if this is canon or not but I always thought Andalites aged slower/lived longer? I seem to remember Elfangor saying their gestation period was longer in TAC when he was talking about the wishflower ritual.) So I think it kind of speaks to how much he felt out of his element and needed direction that he was willing to accept Jake as his leader. And then, it kind of helps explain why he had issues with Jake later, when the Andalites were getting more involved and he had a better idea of what was going on than someone he had finally started to see as just a kid.

[shjh2448.livejournal.com]

Someone said something about an Andalite living to like, 200, and made it seem fairly commonplace. I have no idea where or what book, but I know I remember it. :\

(and of course now i won't be able to rest until i find it)

[lipogramscorecard.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

I think it's Ax early on (book 8?) "If I live to be 200 I'm still gonna be Elfangor's little brother."

[penandpaper71.livejournal.com]

I think Jake and Ax's relationship is interesting in the way it develops. Unlike Jake's relationship with all the other Animorphs, Jake and Ax have no real existing relationship at the start of all this and Ax's acceptance of Jake as his "prince" at first always read to me as being more a matter of Ax feeling that he needed to have one rather then the belief that Jake was the best one to lead. This develops over the course of the books as their bond strengthens. By the time of The Decision, Ax is clearly very fond of his human friends, particularly Jake and Tobias given that when they're all dying in space, they're the two he cries out to, and he appears to trust Jake quite a bit, but his loyalty to his human prince is not quite strong enough at that point to keep him from telling Jake that he's no longer his prince when he finds himself among Andalites again on the ship. Ax reads to me as being uncomfortable with all this and he's clearly very aware of his friends' unhappiness at his decision, particularly Jake's ("Prince Jake tried not to seem bothered. But although I am no expert on human facial expressions, I believe my statement did cause him concern."), but he still tries to make a break from them. He ends up taking a nasty blow though when he realizes that the ship's captain is a traitor and decides after that that Jake will be his prince from that point on (I don't think that he varies from this again actually, although I could be wrong. I recall that the next two times that they meet up with Andalites, Ax remains loyal to Jake and his other human friends.)

On Jake's side, I recall that the issue of trust comes up a few times, although it's not one that's always in play (For the most part, Jake does seem to trust Ax a lot), starting in The Alien, reappearing in The Decision, and I think it reappears again in one of the last book, when they discover that Ax has been communicating with the Andalite forces behind the Animorphs' backs. And their friendship strengthens throughout the books.

After The Decision, the relationship strengthens a lot, with the next big challenge happening in The Deception, when Ax decides to disobey a direct order, which is major for Ax. It's interesting because he doesn't appear to do this because he wishes to challenge Jake or because he doesn't trust him, but because he decides it's not fair to ask him to make this decision ("I never, ever should have laid such a burden on my friend. My ally. Never, ever should have asked a human of such superior quality to make a decision that would undoubtedly risk the lives of everyone he had ever known...[I skip a bit here] I was an alien. I would carry the burden.")

After he's done, he's tormented by the thought of the damage that his actions might have done to this relationships to the others, but particularly Jake, because these relationships are very important to him by this point ("Home meant my fellow warriors. All of them. And I had risked my relationship with them, especially with my prince, by doing what I had done"). We find out in the next book that this has complicated their relationship (Although Jake seems to be pretty understanding about it) and that they're both trying to pretend that it didn't happen, although Ax apparently hasn't been able to look Jake straight in the eye.

And, of course, by the end of the series, Jake is quick to take off after Ax when he finds out that he's in danger ("I was a little embarrassed by my response, but this was Ax, one of us. One of mine.") and apparently the last thing heard from Ax was Jake's name, although I wonder, given that The One appears to be expecting him, if that was intended to be a trick to lure Jake in.

Anyway, I've bored you all way too much now, so I'll stop.

Oh, as for relationship topics, has Tobias and Jake been done recently? I don't remember seeing it, but I could have missed it. I'm sorry if I'm overstepping my bounds here. I just thought that I'd mention it.

[buffyangellvr23.livejournal.com]

If I did miss him, I'll pick him up when I do the other Tobias ones. My bad if I did miss one.