Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: NickDaGriff on August 29, 2014, 09:31:32 AM
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This is a crazy theory and purely speculative, but it's my headcanon, so take it as you will.
So Cassie, throughout the series, makes a huge amount of highly questionable decisions that work out in a way almost too good to be true. In Megamorphs #4, we learn that Cassie has the ability to see how the timeline is supposed to be, and can disrupt any alterations just by thinking about it. So maybe, whenever she gets an inexplicable feeling about how something ''should'' be (I should cripple Jake so that he can't catch Tom and get the cube back), or just ''knows'' something she really has no clue about (you can't mess with free will, mmkay?), or takes some idiotic risk (no way this yeerk's gonna betray me if I let her infest me), she's unconsciously working to keep the timeline on a beneficial path. Heck, she even went nothlit to gain Aftran's trust, and only escaped through a weird loophole in morphing that makes no logical sense with what we know about morphing (her body should've been lost in Z-space like Tobias', and the butterfly would have become her base form; I call Ellimist shenanigans). This is basically the reason she has no character development. No one can possibly prove her irrational gut feelings wrong, because they never will be.
This does make her seem like a bit of a Sue at first glance. No plot element can really stand up to her ideals, so there's little room for growth. But, consider the implications. Is she aware of the course of the timeline? Is she making it up as she goes? If it's all being fed to her, then what or who is giving it to her?
My theory is that Cassie isn't just being guided by the Ellimist; she is a part of the Ellimist. The Ellimist planted her here in an unstable little spot in the timeline as part of his setup. Coincidentally, what happened around the time Cassie was conceived/born? Loren and Elfangor accidentally create their own warped mini-universe with Visser 3, bring their time-shifted selves back to Earth with the Time Matrix, and then the Ellimist alters the timeline in order to get Elfangor back in the right spot. All that screwing around caused glitches, some of which the Ellimist realized he could exploit. So, he reached into his collective mind, pulled out someone (maybe Aguella, based on how lovingly he acts with her at the end of Megamorphs #4), and inserted her consciousness into a convenient local spot, right in a gap in the timeline where she can "see beyond the walls" and act as a safeguard. Being a part of the Ellimist's hivemind consciousness, she instinctively knows what he would want her to do, and can act on it without it actually counting as direct interference from him. Of course, he keeps it a closely guarded secret from absolutely everyone (even her) because it would make Crayak pissed (he'd almost definitely see it as cheating) and Cassie a prime target, but that's just how he operates anyway.
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ESP?
I always thought that was how she operated, considering I have it as well, to some degree.
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Well, I think being subconsciously guided as part of a larger consciousness would count as ESP, in a literal sense.
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That sounds more like a hand wave than anything else. The things Cassie does that should end very badly, wind up doing something positive because the author wanted it to happen. Then she doesn't seem to suffer negative consequences, and doesn't change.
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Oh, I agree. I really wish there had been some acknowledgement in-universe as to how terrible her attitudes and decisions were, but no. She's the author's pet character, but I really want it to be more than just that. That's why this theory is going to be just part of a larger plot in my fanfic. Gonna make her take a good hard look at herself for the first time ever.
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As an in universe explanation, I think it's valid. I'll give it that much.
As ticked off as I was that Cassie let Tom get away with the box, I was more ticked off at Tobias for saying Jake (accidentally, unbeknownst to Tobias) excluding her from a meeting was beyond wrong. Really? Because I would have done it on purpose. I would have straight up told her that she was no longer a part of active missions.
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She's just intelligent and perceptive. She doesn't always get it right, either. I always hated that "Ellimist set up everything ever, ever-ever" stuff the later books seem to allude to.
It's just like Marco sees that thoroughfare from "Point A to Point B", Cassie's the same but on a more macro level. Just the big picture the chess game.
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I actually liked the idea that the reason the Animorphs never died, ignoring the one megamorphs exception, was that the Ellemist was protecting them by always making sure they had a way out.
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It's just sort of a cheap way to go, though. And it would seem to go way over the line of the rules of Ellimist/Crayak's game, like The Ellimist was basically cheating in desperation or something.
Like, sure, it works in a narrative sense like how Elfangor just happened to land exactly where these particular kids were at that point in time and all, but you don't really need to get into all that stuff, makes the actions of the kids that much less special.
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There's just too much to chalk up to her being perceptive. Just the examples I listed had absolutely no possible way for her to know that they would work out. Besides, I don't actually buy that she's that perceptive or a very good people-person, when most of her actions are fairly shortsighted. Her defining characteristic is that she runs on raw unfiltered emotion, and tries to dictate everyone's actions based purely on what she feels comfortable with. It comes into play over and over.
When she was in the woods with Aftran, she had no reason trust that a Yeerk with everything to gain would not waltz back home with a brand new morph-capable host. Cassie just didn't want to see someone get hurt in a time that totally necessitated any measures that would keep their identities safe. She put her cowardice and half-baked morals before her friends' lives, giving herself up to a Yeerk that was still ranting to that moment about how hypocritical humans were, and that invasion was morally justifiable. The fact that Aftran ended up being sympathetic and tired of the war was just a stroke of luck.
When she stopped Jake from going after Tom, the thought in her head wasn't that the Taxxons and various Yeerks would rebel or desert once they had the morphing technology. She was only thinking about Jake and herself. She didn't want to see Jake hurt Tom (which I don't think he actually would have at that point--he got that desperate after the stress of what Cassie did), and so she kept him from doing something that she knew was necessary because she wanted him "to be able to face himself in the mirror" (yeah, and he was totally fine afterwards).
Jake turned and began to stalk away. I trotted alongside him and grabbed his sleeve.
He yanked it out of my grasp and faced me. His face was white with anger. His lips were shaking. “How could you do it?” he cried, his voice breaking. “Why?”
I choked. “I was trying to protect you!”
“Protect me?” His brows lifted in amazement. “How?”
“You were wounded. He might have killed you.”
“Then why didn’t you go after him?” Jake demanded. “You weren’t hurt. With the trees for cover and the wolf’s speed, you could have taken him down!”
I couldn’t explain. Because I didn’t understand it myself. All I knew was that letting Tom take the morphing cube had seemed absolutely the right thing to do.
And something still told me I was right.
That's not how a calculated risk works. Either she was working on mindless, selfish emotion, or that was the Ellimist making his move to save the Taxxons from being completely wiped out in the final battle. I find myself not wanting to hate Cassie overly much, so I lean towards the latter.
We know the Ellimist like to bend rules and play subtle games. He lies constantly, providing people with a completely false scenario in which they think they're sure of what they're seeing, unaware of the second layer he's working. Think about #7, where the whole show he put on was just to lead them to the Kandarona. The deal he made with Tobias in #13 was a complete scam; if he really wanted Tobias to have what would make him happy, he would have given him his human form, removed the time limit, told him Loren's address, and returned all her memories. But no, the Ellimist didn't need a happy kid, he needed a soldier with complete mastery over his hawk form. #26 wasn't really about the Iskoort, it was about removing the Howlers from the playing field. The Iskoort solution to the war was too long-term to be at all relevant to the Animorphs, and the events in #54 have diverged from that potential future enough to make this outcome kind of unlikely. The Ellimist just wanted to get rid of the pawns that were wreaking so much havoc on unsuspecting species. He knew that the Howlers couldn't be beaten in combat, and the Animorphs would have to find a better way of taking them out. So he challenged Crayak to a battle of champions and made sure to include Erek on the roster, magnificently playing everything into his hands. So yeah. The Ellimist is already a cheating scumbag (although, he is doing it to save as many lives as possible, so maybe not a scumbag in this context). It wouldn't even have to be desperation, this kind of thing is just in character for him.
I wouldn't say that the cosmic game makes the actions in the Yeerk War any less significant. It's all about perspective. Someday, our sun is going to expand and swallow up everything up to Mars, and then burn itself out. Earth will be completely gone. Humanity will most likely be extinct long before then. That doesn't make the day-to-day struggles of people around the world any less important. They're both set values that are completely irrelevant to each other. Two sides of a larger coin. The Animorphs still suffered and struggled for everything, it's not like the Ellimist just handed them victory. They're still heroes in their own right, even if he gave them the occasional nudge through Cassie or other means.
Besides, it would make for a great moment for any character to learn that their entire life was as much of a sham as any of the Ellimist interactions above. It's only cheap if you make it nothing more than a hand wave. It becomes real if you actually bother to explore it in depth. Example, look at Inception. Everyone hates when a story ends with,"it was just a dream all along," because it's almost always done with nothing to back up the literary device, making it fall completely flat and negate the whole story. Inception made it matter by making the entire story about dreams from the get-go. When the,"or is it?" moment happened in the end, it wasn't just sprung upon you. There were hints all the way throughout the movie calling reality into question, including the entire premise of the film itself. It forces you, as a viewer, to start asking yourself questions and wondering. No one called that ending cheap. Frustrating maybe, but not cheap. And in Cassie's case, how do you even react to the revelation? How do you go on from there with that knowledge? It also kind of parallels the Hork-Bajir Chronicles, when they discovered that the Hork-Bajir are an artificial species and it rocked Dak Hamee to the core, so that's something.
The last thing I want to do is just hand-wave all her actions away. She did stuff, and she needs to face it. My idea of the Ellimist's involvement is just to provide purpose to it all, whether it was right or wrong. Besides, if Cassie is part of the Ellimist, then it's still all her own action.
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I'm fine with the purpose part, but also sort of think maybe K.A. went too far with it toward the end. And it's sort of contradicted in places, like there's that downright awesome "you mattered" line to Rachel at the end. If The Ellimist's been orchestrating everything with the kids, all of Cassie's foresight, Tobias overcoming the limitations of the nothlit status and still contributing majorly, a lot of the big near-death experiences, it really takes away from that. In that case they didn't so much matter personally as just being chosen as his chess pieces.
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^ That.
I haven't read everything, because ya'll wrote a hell of a lot, but making Cassie anything more than Cassie is too much. Unfortunately though, that was explicitly done. She's subtemporally grounded. Don't know what that means, don't know why she is, but she is. Attributing that to the idea that she's a deliberate extension of the Ellimist though, why? That's no less hand wavy then being STG in itself.
They did that stupid thing in MM4 were so many of the group were choosen by the Ellimist for various reasons, you'd figure they'd say out right if it was Elfangor's time shifted son, brother, and that chuck of the Ellimist in the short girl.
I took STG to be some rare attribute of some beings of the Animorphs universe, and Cassie just happens to be one of them, and the Ellimist took advantage of that.
Most importantly, though I don't think it made her infallible. Cassie dicked up a lot, and she got lucky a lot. The whole she knew giving the box up would divide the Yeerks always seemed like a retroactive fix to me.
I agree with the idea that she's unusually perceptive, and that things work out too well for her, but you know, there are a handful of people like that in the world. Sometimes people never have to grow or face the consequences. Rare, but it happens. Makes for a boring story character because the thrill is in watching them grow, but for some people it just works (also the problem with Harry Potter's Harry Potter).
Saying it's because she's an extension of super-dude makes that worse, if only because it he did get over played in the end.
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Yeah. I don't think it's specifically said that the Ellimist was orchestrating everything though, it's kind of implied but it's vague enough that you can draw your own interpretation from it. The way I see it personally is that he's sort of nudging things here and there, but doesn't actually get involved in the free will stuff, he doesn't micromanage it all. I just like it better that way than, you know, "he hand-picked all of these kids by doing some mathematical calculation and thought they had the best chance of succeeding, manipulating them all into being at the mall at the same time that night, having Elfangor crash in the construction site" and such. I know stuff like the sub-temporal thing contradicts that, it just always seemed out of place to me. Better when Ellimist's kept to being the big-picture guy, shaping things broadly but not actually explicitly using them as chess pieces in the sense that their free will is just an illusion. I don't really see it as a fate/destiny thing, personally.
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I'm not attributing it to fate or destiny. Even the Ellimist isn't fully omniscient/prescient. He just has a good grasp of potential futures, but he can overlook things and screw up. If Crayak's capable of it, so is he. The fact that he lends a helping hand and gives them the occasional nudge doesn't take away from the Animorphs' free will any more than typical daily human social interaction. Think about how much the influence of other people has affected your life. Chances are, the typical person has made some pretty drastic changes in their life based on what other people around them were doing. And yet, it's still technically free will.
To me, saying that Cassie just happens to have all these rare attributes on top of all these terrible decisions miraculously working out is far more contrived and makes her more of a Mary Sue than having one big subtle attribute that explains everything, not to mention the sheer unlikelihood of the Animorphs roster containing all these highly important kids without some kind of setup. And I think the Ellimist wouldn't say just how important she is in the end of Megamorphs #4 if she is part of him. In this capacity, she's basically an anti-Drode, working to balance out his influence on things. If the Drode doesn't know that he's being specifically countered, all the better. Most important rule of warfare, don't brag about how awesome your plans are, and don't interrupt your enemy when they're making a mistake. Given the Ellimist's subtlety, that would be way out of character for him. He only told the Drode as much as was already obvious, and his apparent gloating was to make the Drode feel as though he'd been given the full breadth of the plan.
Personally, I love the idea of the Ellimist being even more of a Magnificent Bastard than is apparent at first glance. I loved his book, love the character, love the whole concept. Manipulative trickster heroes are kind of my thing, I love clever and complex solutions to problems that leave the villain wondering just what the heck even happened. Still, there really is more to him than just being a big chess player in the sky. He was legitimately sad when Rachel died. Sad enough that he completely opened up to her on a personal level.
Darn it, every time I go back and read the last chapter of the Ellimist Chronicles, I feel like crying again.
Even if they all are just game pieces to the Ellimist, it doesn't make them any less important to the world as people. Like I said, everyday life and the cosmic game are far enough removed that you can consider them completely irrelevant to each other.
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Well, sure, but doesn't it bug you looking at it that way? That Rachel's sacrifice was pretty much down to the Ellimist making that eventuate, rather than her and Jake scheming it all themselves? The "you mattered" thing doesn't hold any weight, if when it comes down to it, it was him making them matter through some crazy 4th/5th-dimensional manipulation of the cosmos.
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No, because it's been stated that decisions are left up to the Animorphs themselves. He can try to show them a path, it's up to them to take it. He even said he never planned for Jake and Rachel, they just kinda showed up and made themselves awesome. It's not like he was micromanaging every day of their lives, just making some broader moves in the course of the war. Like I said, it's still entirely their struggle. They had to be individually strong enough to push to the end, and not a lot of people could do that. Rachel chose to sacrifice herself so that Tom couldn't take out the pool ship, which would have left no one in a position to negotiate surrender, resulting in the Andalites glassing Earth. The Ellimist had nothing to do with that. Jake had to be the one to plan for that contingency, and Rachel had to be tough enough to accept it.
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It's funny if the Ellemist didn't plan for Jake, but all of the Human team members have some relation to him. His best friend. His kind of girlfriend. His cousin. A guy he protected once.
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I always sort of took all that to be bullsh*t on the Ellimist's part anyway. Like Marco (I think it was Marco?) says, he doesn't interfere, but he does. The big guy's kind of justifying it to himself through his own little loopholes and warped reality (though with the best of intentions), while basically playing god with all the lowly little insects.
Sure, the kids had to have the fortitude and strength of character to make it work, Ellimist's goals weren't guaranteed successes, but he's still doing whatever he can to sort of stack the odds in the same way Crayak was, yin and yang.
Just never liked that. Loved the brief "showing up to show them an alternative and make sure they don't all die horribly" on occasion, but the whole implication he basically orchestrated them all being at the mall at the same time and witnessing the crash, it's all just a little unnecessary and cheapening.
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That's true, it is total BS. He says he doesn't interfere, but that's not entirely true. Like I said, the Ellimist always lies. The cosmic game is largely modeled off of Toomin's gaming career in Ketran Spore, so it's centered around non-interference. Of course, Crayak and the Ellimist are deciding their own rules just to keep each other in check, so it gets a little into Cosmic Calvinball territory when they agree on particular exceptions to their self-imposed rules. And as long as they don't outright break whatever rule without the other's permission, then the other isn't allowed to either. If one of them did, that would lead to unimaginable havoc as they both try to get retribution for whatever the other did last. They're not justifying it to themselves; they're justifying it to each other. Anyway, I think the non-interference thing was just something he said in #7 as part of his made-up "chance to rescue your species" ploy. Of course he interferes, he just has to have permission and/or be sneaky about it. The Animorphs were on a need-to-know basis at that point.
As for Jake and Rachel, I think of them as the tack holding the Ellimist's strings to the bulletin board (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StringTheory) (that's my mental picture of the Ellimist making his plans XD). They were mostly just local kids that fit the bill for what he needed, and ended up working out better than he could have hoped.
I wouldn't say it's unnecessary or cheapening to say that an early-established character is responsible for setting up the premise rather than sheer, highly improbable coincidence. I like cause and effect in stories, because that makes it feel more meaningful to me. Makes it feel like everything has a reason for happening. I guess maybe that's an opinion thing, but I dunno. If the Ellimist had only shown up after book #30 or so, then of course it would all just be a cheap, retroactive hand-wave for all the coincidence in the series. But no, he showed up early within the second narrator rotation. And we know for sure he set up Tobias for the construction site in #13. It was a bit of a gamble on Tobias' reaction to the time warp, but it's definitely more than just an implication. And man, I loved that scene.
The way I see it, it's a war story. If you look at the generals making their grand maneuvers and strategies or the infantry grunts just fighting to stay alive, it's all a huge tapestry of struggle with everyone playing an important part. Whether you look at WWII from the POV of the soldiers on the ground, the Jews being persecuted, the politicians making grand inspirational speeches, or the British Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare playing mind games with Hitler, nothing cheapens the whole of it. It's a huge chunk of history, and if (hypothetically) a secret intelligence branch told a soldier to be in a certain place at a certain time while the politicians put on their show of denial and jingoistic propaganda, that doesn't make it any less meaningful to the soldier risking his life, the Jewish citizens he saves, the intelligence operatives that can continue working in the field, or the war effort as a whole, which in turn affects the lives of all the citizens of every nation involved. A story from any of those people can be equally compelling, regardless of how many layers their story has hanging over it that they might not even be aware of. Now I know Animorphs is fictional and WWII was real, but I hope you see the point I'm getting at. The main series, overall, belongs to the Animorphs. The Ellimist may be a big player, but he's not central to it, and that doesn't take away from anyone else's story. Heck, I personally want a full series just about him, but I'm just gonna have to settle for my fanfics. :\
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To me, saying that Cassie just happens to have all these rare attributes on top of all these terrible decisions miraculously working out is far more contrived and makes her more of a Mary Sue
I think, ever since I heard the "Batman himself is a Mary Sue and technically so is Spiderman half the time" explanation...I have been dubious towards the idea of Mary Sue as a category. It seems to be mostly applied to female characters who take on the characteristics of male power fantasy heroes, but in a decidedly "feminine" manner. I.E. They appear to solve the series' problems mostly through their likeability, intuition and kindness rather than their brilliance or raw martial ability.
Cassie can be interpreted as a stand-in for K.A. Applegate herself, yes--- But that doesn't necessarily mean that Applegate was a bad writer. Stephanie Meyer is an example of how you can do it very badly. I'm not so sure Cassie was. Applegate's character preferences may not necessarily equate with those of the audience (The audience tends to prefer Marco and Rachel whereas Applegate showed clear preference for Jake and Cassie)...but again, that doesn't mean much.
If you write a book series for ten years, chances are you are getting something out of it other than the audience's appreciation. XD <3 I would know....I've been Roleplaying for more than a decade.
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Well, she only actually wrote about half the series. 1-24, 26, 32, 53, 54, and all chronicles and megamorphs. I do believe something was lost during the second half when the ghostwriters took over.
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I do believe something was lost during the second half when the ghostwriters took over.
Her wit was lost, honestly. Her clever, tactful way of developing the characters. It was as if the ghostwriters received her notes explaining what they had to do on the project but didn't quite know how to get inside her head.
Granted there were good ghostwriters and awful ghostwriters...
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Yeah, some were better than others.
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I think, ever since I heard the "Batman himself is a Mary Sue and technically so is Spiderman half the time" explanation...I have been dubious towards the idea of Mary Sue as a category. It seems to be mostly applied to female characters who take on the characteristics of male power fantasy heroes, but in a decidedly "feminine" manner. I.E. They appear to solve the series' problems mostly through their likeability, intuition and kindness rather than their brilliance or raw martial ability.
I wouldn't really say that. It's got pretty much nothing to do with whether a character solves issues through a "masculine" or "feminine" manner. I've seen plenty of katana-wielding, fireball-slinging, bloodthirsty half vampire/werewolf/demon/whatever OCs from either gender that fit the bill solidly all over deviantArt. A Mary Sue (or Gary Stu/Murray Sioux, if you want a male nomenclature--the name just happened to come from a specific fanfic) is a character that is unbearably one-dimensional and perfect at anything they do. The most typical symptom of a Sue is when they barely suffer any consequences for any actions. There are truckloads of Sues out there that just casually torture or kill people who tick them off, and no one in-universe thinks anything of it. Like Sonichu.
Spiderman and Batman are basically power fantasies at their core, like most other comic book superheroes. I wouldn't really count them as Sue type characters, because they've both had plenty of stories fleshing them out and exploring their psyches in depth, and they develop and grow as characters throughout their lives. They both have more to their character than swinging around the city and punching out bad guys, even if that is what they do regularly. Some kind of a power fantasy is usually a core component of a Mary Sue, but it's just one element. The problem with a Sue is that it rarely goes beyond that. The character never learns anything, or has any reason for existing other than being the author's cathartic mouthpiece.
The problem with Cassie is that without this theory, she's really not much more than a mouthpiece to criticize everyone else and set arbitrary limitations for everyone else based on her own skewed preconceived morals. My whole point here is to try and make her less of a Mary Sue, because I really don't want her to be one. KAA is a good author who made a pretty awesome series here, but nothing is perfect, and Cassie's behaviors are a bit of a tarnish.
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I wouldn't really count them as Sue type characters, because they've both had plenty of stories fleshing them out and exploring their psyches in depth, and they develop and grow as characters throughout their lives. They both have more to their character than swinging around the city and punching out bad guys, even if that is what they do regularly
They have multiple writers onboard. When Superman first premiered, and to a certain extent even now, he was an utterly flat character designed so that two Jewish guys could live out their power fantasies in him in a world where they were discriminated against. This is what a "Mary Sue" really is--- A frustrated human being with their internal fantasies taken form. The difference between one and a good character is merely time, skilled writers, and enough people agreeing that it is their fantasy too.
A Mary Sue (or Gary Stu/Murray Sioux, if you want a male nomenclature--the name just happened to come from a specific fanfic) is a character that is unbearably one-dimensional and perfect at anything they do.
You mean like James Bond? He gets in trouble all right (Good writers), but it doesn't do a lot to diminish his perfection and unbearable one-dimensionality. X] In a sense, a Mary Sue comes off as a Mary Sue to the person whose power fantasy it cannot be. This is why the Jason Bourne movies bugged me, and I couldn't put my finger on why. It was good action. It's also why the Twilight series, while badly written, was loved by a whole generation of teenagers and mothers--- Bella Swan acted very much like them.
The problem with a Sue is that it rarely goes beyond that. The character never learns anything, or has any reason for existing other than being the author's cathartic mouthpiece.
I think people who say this misunderstand why writers actually write. XD Writing IS a cathartic mouthpiece to the author, because the story they are telling is about their Heart. The key is to mask the catharsis, because the reader's reading for similar reasons and needs to be able to escape. That's what fledgling writers fail to do.
The problem with Cassie is that without this theory, she's really not much more than a mouthpiece to criticize everyone else and set arbitrary limitations for everyone else based on her own skewed preconceived morals. My whole point here is to try and make her less of a Mary Sue, because I really don't want her to be one. KAA is a good author who made a pretty awesome series here, but nothing is perfect, and Cassie's behaviors are a bit of a tarnish.
And this brings me to the point of my rambling: I never saw Cassie as a Mary Sue because Kid Me was most like Cassie of all the Animorphs. Without the gap between the author and the audience (Especially if the writing's actually pretty good), this isn't a thing they notice.
Since I never read the ending, my opinions may differ for this reason--- I knew only the Cassie portrayed for most of the series. But in that Cassie, I don't see the Mary Sue thing at all. She has her weird spiritual advantage, and that's that.
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I think maybe it's better to say Cassie was probably a representation of Katherine herself, her perspective, rather than delving into infallible "Mary-Sue" territory. She certainly wasn't "too perfect", that's almost the definition of the concept. It's probably just more likely that Cassie was very Katherine-esque, with maybe Marco representing some of Michael's take on the world or something.
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Yeah, Cassie and Marco were definitely supposed to be similar to Katherine and Michael with their respective worldviews, they've stated as much in interviews. Even the names are vaguely similar. Kinda makes it funny that they never got along in-universe. XD
Look at the Animorphs' development through the series.
- Jake steps up as leader, and while he was kinda flat and boring early, he turned from an idealistic jock into a hardened veteran, crippled by desperation and self-doubt, and ends up unable to function without a war going on.
- Ax is a proud young cadet just trying to do his duty and make his species proud even as he was stranded on an alien planet, burdened by feelings of inadequacy that he tries to overcompensate for, and ends up being forced to choose between the friends he made or the species he was brought up to serve.
- Rachel finds out she's really good at killing stuff and is disgusted by herself for liking the thrill of it, but keeps that side of herself hidden so that she doesn't drag the team's morale down with her, and ends up drowning in a pit of self-sacrifice all by herself.
- Tobias has to learn to deal with the hawk body and adjust to his new life, hoping desperately that he can be strong enough to help his friends and not be a burden, and barely maintains his sanity through all the crap that he goes through.
- Marco has to try to keep his deeply personal stake in the war from getting his friends killed, and keep his anger, selfishness and denial from clouding his objectivity, all while trying to see if he can still keep a positive attitude about life to keep everyone else from sinking into depression.
They all have their own journey through the war that totally changes them. By the end of the series, they are all completely different people.
All except for Cassie. She starts off idealistic, naive, and and constantly trying to force others to live by her arbitrary double-standards, utterly rejecting everyone elses' views as invalid, and never stops. She does that straight through to the end of the series, and never learns from her mistakes, because they have a habit of magically working out for the best, and that's just attributed to her being highly perceptive when there's really no way she could have predicted anything (see my examples above). Her special attributes just pile up to compensate for her lack of any character-based struggle (estreen, animal whisperer, infallibly intuitive, sub-temporally grounded, etc.). She could have had her own story arc, maybe something with the Yeerk Peace Movement, but that never went anywhere. Books #19 and #29 were good. Unfortunately, it felt like Applegate ran out of ideas for that, and every other Cassie book apart from #50 was pure filler. It's almost like she didn't know what to do with her own self-insert character.
It's kinda similar to the difference between Batman and Superman. The writers have Batman deal with a whole gallery of villains that all reflect some part of his personality that he's trying to overcome or come to terms with, and try not to go insane from stress. He always thinks his way through things and makes difficult decisions that even got him kicked off the Justice League. With Superman, their solution for decades has always been to just make him punch something harder than he's ever punched before, or get some new BS power on top of his already ridiculous collection. Flying and super-strength/invincibility? Totally, that's iconic for him. Super speed? Sure, gotta fly fast. Laser eyes? Well, he is solar-powered, so it's thematic, I guess. X-ray vision? Um... Frost breath? Lie detection/telepathy? Seeing peoples' souls? Getting stronger to the point where he can punch planets into dust and literally bench press more weight than probably even exists in estimates of the known universe? Yeah. That's all new powers as the plot demands, and he's a total mess nowadays. He literally just has to be stronger than whoever he's facing.
[spoiler]And provided his one token weakness kryptonite isn't there, he always is. Although there was that one time some minor nobody villain managed to beat him to death in a fistfight, but that didn't last long for whatever reason. Apparently, that whole arc was a mess anyway and I think it got retconned.[/spoiler]
Batman doesn't get stronger as his story goes on (origin story aside, obviously). If anything, he gets weaker as he ages. His knees actually get totally shot from all the injuring, face-kicking and rooftop-parkouring he does, leaving him crippled with arthritis if he doesn't have his knee braces. He has to work to figure out ways around all his weaknesses as a human being and a character, rather than just getting stronger to meet the challenge.
And that's a problem Cassie faces. Most of the stories where she shines are specifically set up for her to take advantage of some special attribute she had dumped on her. In #4, she can hear Ax for unexplained reasons, when it really only kinda makes sense that Tobias would, and then the whole whale thing happens. In #7, she figured out the Ellimist's game, even though Marco (the paranoid analytical one) really should have been the first one to see that there was another level there. Not even gonna go near #9. Book #19, her "intuitive" leap of faith gets Aftran to trust her, and luck makes everything work out. Book #29 was awesome because the ghostwriter knew what they were doing, but the plot still centered around setting things up for her area of expertise. Book #34, she saves the day because she's an estreen. In MegaMorphs #4, she unwittingly saves the day by doing nothing all book long, just by being sub-temporally grounded. There's more, but this comment is long enough as-is.
So yeah. I guess the obvious conclusion we can draw from this is, Cassie is actually Superman. NEW HEADCANON XD [/sarcasm]
Bond and Bourne are both definitely Sues, albeit slightly different kinds. Not gonna argue that point. Bourne is less so in his movies (he at least acts like a real person in the movies, the books are kinda weird and convoluted), so I like him as an action hero and enjoy that power fantasy (in fact, I even started an original story based on the character concept), but yeah. I haven't really watched the Bond movies, so I can't say much there, but the character never interested me from what I saw. Too much of a slick alcoholic womanizer, the kind of scumbag the writer wished they could get away with being, as opposed to being a strong character who also happens to be a scumbag. My sister read one of the books by Ian Fleming, and told me that's basically the case, along with some really silly amateurish prose. XD
You said that the difference between a good character and a Sue is a matter of time, skilled writers, and people agreeing with the fantasy. But time adds nothing. You can have an excellent character-based story that's only a couple pages long. Check out Ray Bradbury for some excellent short fiction. What do skilled writers add, if it's just a matter of people agreeing with them? Good writing is much more than just appealing to the lowest common denominator. It will make you millions of sales a la Twilight/Fifty Shades/Superman/Bond, but it won't make your character not a Sue. Good writing and appealing to the lowest common denominator aren't mutually exclusive concepts, but they accomplish different things, and don't really substitute each other well.
Writing is a fun, cathartic experience. Trust me, I know that well. But it is so much more than just that. It's art. Anyone can whip out a stick figure and call it good, and you can produce some really good (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots.html) stuff (http://xkcd.com) with stick figures. But trying to represent a person or object with accuracy takes objective technique. A power fantasy that doesn't care enough to explore anything further is how you get a Sue, the literary equivalent of a stick figure the artist never cared enough to improve. My first attempts at writing were awful for just that reason. I had no themes, no real plot beyond kids turning into dragons and killing people, and no character development of any kind. I identified with the power fantasy completely (still do, in fact) but the story was boring, predictable, and had no point in existing. All of it was just schlock no one would bother to read if they didn't already know me. Fantasy alone doesn't give the substance a good story or character needs. Any story starts with the author sitting down and figuring out what they find cool. Then, they build on that. Coolness is a foundation and a means, not necessarily the end. Yes, the reader's enjoyment is subjective and based on how much they agree with the author's idea of cool, but there is an objective basis for how much the author decides to expand on things, and that increases audience interest significantly.
TL;DR: The other animorphs all have more to them than just being self-inserts with superpowers. Every one of them has a story arc and can stand on their own. Cassie wasn't given that chance, just loaded down with people saying she's special, when she actually had much more potential as a character. It might even be the case that Applegate didn't even care that much about her as a character. It's sad, and I want to fix that.
Okay, how the heck did this comment become over 3 pages long? Sorry 'bout that. My comments have a tendency to explode.
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That was one hell of a post. Yeah, it's odd that the other characters changed so much, but Cassie never changed. That's part of the reason I don't care for her. Not only does she not change, but she does things that should have doomed them all, and doesn't learn from them because of an author saving throw.
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I don't know if I'd go as far as to say Cassie being more or less the same at the end of the series makes her superhuman, or overly unrealistic. She does sort of evolve and compromise, just nowhere near to the extent of the others, and I think maybe that's because she resists it more. She gets the whole "if we stoop to their level, there's no use in us winning, we might as well let them infest us all" deal to an extent the others don't, or don't want to admit/face.
I like your comic analogy. To use another, think of Steve Rogers in relation to the other Avengers. People like Tony and Thor, they go through character arcs, they grow up over the course of a story, have some realization about themselves and grow as people as events shape them. Steve, he starts as the selfless, sacrificing, humble, well-intentioned guy. And he doesn't change, not where it counts, it's more like he's the constant point, and rather than the world changing him, he changes the world.
Cassie's sort of the same to me. I love that about the character, that even when everyone else is dragged down in the dirt and close to just thinking "**** it, let's give them a taste of their own medicine", she drags them back from the brink. It's not that she doesn't falter, or make compromises she wouldn't have wanted to, it's just that there's a line, and it's much closer than Jake's or Marco's or Rachel's. And, sure, that moral-constant trait results in major mistakes, yeah, but she's also the only thing stopping for example Jake blackmailing Erek way earlier in the series. Or the group kidnapping and threatening people with torture and such, when they're in desperate need of information. Or Marco going way too Machiavellian for his own good.
She stays the same, and for better or worse, she shapes the world. It's awesome. Everyone else has an inward arc, personality evolution, she's a total rock and influences events outwardly.
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One problem is that one of the main reasons they won the war is that they finally decided to just drive a train of explosives into the pool, and I doubt that Jake really would have killed Chapman if Eric didn't help, but that was the only way to get around his programming. Could they have won without doing that kind of stuff? This is heavily debatable stuff.
There's a slippery slope fallacy that assumes if they cross some arbitrary line, there's no line they'll never cross. Does anyone honestly think that if they acquired a Human at any point, that they'd eventually start using that morph to commit crimes for self gain? If people say the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, someone's bound to ask well what if it was your family?
Of course different people have different opinions, which is why the group tends to suffer according to how much they actually like what they're doing. Some other author would have different opinions, and th plot would be something else.
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XenoFrobe, that comment is actually amazing. We have been waiting a long time on this forum for someone to really debate with and engage us in this very intellectual way. So we will proceed to deliver back exactly the same kind of response (Although probably not as long).
Good writing is much more than just appealing to the lowest common denominator. It will make you millions of sales a la Twilight/Fifty Shades/Superman/Bond, but it won't make your character not a Sue. Good writing and appealing to the lowest common denominator aren't mutually exclusive concepts, but they accomplish different things, and don't really substitute each other well.
But are they really two different things? I'm not so sure on that very point. It actually brings up this entire thought process that's been going in my head about Twilight, and to some extent Harry Potter.
The phenomenon known as "good writing" tends to not only be highly subjective as concepts go but correlates with the level of identification the viewer has with the author. The whole way that art and writing even operate is that they are the creations of someone else's Heart that manage to pierce yours. Books considered almost universally "good" aren't just good: They often draw upon a subconscious backdrop of archetypes and characters that resonate with almost every potential viewer. This is why Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter work--- They are, in a metaphysical sense, the "same story." It didn't even matter that Tolkien couldn't write worth a damn--- He tapped the Leviathan/Library/Collective Unconscious. There are maybe a couple stories like this in human history (Some people say about six, actually) and if you hit one with enough accuracy the result ripples through the whole network.
The result is that you can have Mary Sue-like characters in all or any of these stories, or characters that are too powerful...And nobody cares because whether or not they exist isn't even "the point."
But trying to represent a person or object with accuracy takes objective technique.
And again, I have no idea where you're getting the idea that this thing called "objective technique" even exists. There is fully nothing objective about art. Nothing at all. Some people hate Modern Art and other people worship it. I hate rap and other people are experts who know its nuances and cultural rhythm. An individual artist, like you did, can improve their skills and learn a lot from other artists. Then that artist is clearly "better than they were" according to their own definition. Yet I have read deeply eloquent prose written by authors who later dismissed their own creations as Mary Sues and their writing as trash. Writing that I had loved, and sometimes still do.
These people you define as the "lowest common denominator," the ones who like things like Fifty Shades of Grey and Twilight....The assumption that's going into all the comments nerd culture has made is that these people are stupider than us. Because the stories there do not and cannot appeal to a subculture like ours. We cannot enter the protagonists. Yet I don't think our opinion is even what was being targeted. Similar to how I am not Mr. Bond's intended consumer, and so I view him as a Mary Sue. If I am not, how might I judge his significance?
And that's a problem Cassie faces. Most of the stories where she shines are specifically set up for her to take advantage of some special attribute she had dumped on her. In #4, she can hear Ax for unexplained reasons, when it really only kinda makes sense that Tobias would, and then the whole whale thing happens. In #7, she figured out the Ellimist's game, even though Marco (the paranoid analytical one) really should have been the first one to see that there was another level there. Not even gonna go near #9. Book #19, her "intuitive" leap of faith gets Aftran to trust her, and luck makes everything work out. Book #29 was awesome because the ghostwriter knew what they were doing, but the plot still centered around setting things up for her area of expertise. Book #34, she saves the day because she's an estreen. In MegaMorphs #4, she unwittingly saves the day by doing nothing all book long, just by being sub-temporally grounded. There's more, but this comment is long enough as-is.
Cassie-As-Steve-Rogers is an interesting point, although that isn't the comment above. Is Captain America a Mary Sue? I don't typically think of him as such, yet he actually possesses every trait one might attribute to them. He is a modern-day paladin, a rock, in every sense of the word. Although to be frank, the Red Skull is a ****ty blackguard in the movies. -__-
Do we, as an audience, now disdain characters who either "have it too easy" or aren't flawed enough? And for that matter, exactly why is that? When Snow White and the Seven Dwarves came out in 1930, the main character was herself very much a "Mary Sue" if we rely only on mental characteristics to define such a person. She spent most of the story getting very, very lucky and having all of the traits of a perfect housewife. The only difference, perhaps, is that she needed saving by a prince. Cassie was never exactly the fighter of the group. In fact it's heavily implied she can't fight worth a damn. XD
But she does develop very similar bird-attracting, impossible superpowers consistent with her "shaman" role in the group. As for the book list, honestly it just seems to be the means that bug you. Every character in Animorphs has scenes and situations tailor-made for what makes them unique. The only difference is that their skills are not "earth-mother"-ish.
Something about this whole setup really bugs me, but I'm struggling to explain exactly what.
I had no themes, no real plot beyond kids turning into dragons and killing people, and no character development of any kind. I identified with the power fantasy completely (still do, in fact) but the story was boring, predictable, and had no point in existing.
As someone who, in my youth, wrote such things myself....I don't think this can really be the case. It may seem like that looking back, but there's a lot more even to why inexperienced writers write than just a power fantasy. People start writing because there's a story they want to tell that does not exist, and I still haven't managed to write the one Kid Me was after.
It's a story about these two friends who knew each other in childhood. One changes for the better and goes good, and one gets wrapped up in conflict and goes evil. They're both portrayed with equal sympathy. We see both the challenges that lead Character One to stay true to his ideals and the challenges that lead Character Two to break them. Sometimes, something goes horribly wrong that causes them to drift apart and we get a side-story about unquestioning, worshipful love and loyalty (And its power to create and destroy). Sometimes it happens over time and we get a story about the corrupting influence of power on desire and about how heroes can alienate themselves from the general public by being too selfless. Eventually they meet in an explosive, intense confrontation evoking love, hate, and regret.
At least in my case, even though I couldn't write it properly at the time...There was a lot more of a point than just art, or just a power fantasy. Rant relatively over. :)
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I don't know if I'd go as far as to say Cassie being more or less the same at the end of the series makes her superhuman, or overly unrealistic.
Not exactly what I'm saying. The Sue issue and my Ellimist theory are kind of related but separate discussions that are inadvertently getting mashed together.
I like your comic analogy. To use another, think of Steve Rogers in relation to the other Avengers. People like Tony and Thor, they go through character arcs, they grow up over the course of a story, have some realization about themselves and grow as people as events shape them. Steve, he starts as the selfless, sacrificing, humble, well-intentioned guy. And he doesn't change, not where it counts, it's more like he's the constant point, and rather than the world changing him, he changes the world.
That's actually looking at him from the wrong timeframe. Sure he's a humble, selfless, idealistic guy throughout, but that's not the point of his character's struggles. WWII is basically just his origin story, setting him up for when he thaws. The real issues he faces are his fish-out-of-water lifestyle and cultural differences between the '40s and modern day (casual sexism and racism, ho!), blind patriotism under an increasingly sinister government, and trying to find people he can trust when everyone he once knew is dead. The fact that he's so idealistic and selfless actually gets used against him again and again by supposed friends and enemies alike, and apparently leads him down a controversial path in the Marvel Civil War (which I actually have yet to read).
Cassie's sort of the same to me. I love that about the character, that even when everyone else is dragged down in the dirt and close to just thinking "**** it, let's give them a taste of their own medicine", she drags them back from the brink. It's not that she doesn't falter, or make compromises she wouldn't have wanted to, it's just that there's a line, and it's much closer than Jake's or Marco's or Rachel's. And, sure, that moral-constant trait results in major mistakes, yeah, but she's also the only thing stopping for example Jake blackmailing Erek way earlier in the series. Or the group kidnapping and threatening people with torture and such, when they're in desperate need of information. Or Marco going way too Machiavellian for his own good.
She stays the same, and for better or worse, she shapes the world. It's awesome. Everyone else has an inward arc, personality evolution, she's a total rock and influences events outwardly.
Yeah, she definitely does her job as the limiter. I'm definitely not saying that's a bad thing. The group really needed someone in that role at times. Tobias sometimes filled it, and Ax too, but 90% of it was Cassie. And yeah, sometimes it was too much. You'll notice, their individual and team effectiveness actually increases significantly when Cassie's not around. Whenever it was just Marco, Ax, and/or Tobias, for better or worse, they got stuff done. Hella effective.
The problem with her character is that these traits aren't fully explored and fleshed out, and so she comes off as nagging, preachy, and downright hypocritical at times. It's like she just decides something, and decides to make it so without any discussion on the matter. She could have very easily had a character arc centered around all this that would have landed her in exactly the same place at the end, and it would have improved her character immensely, if only because we'd get to see her thought process better and understand her more. She could have been figuring things out with the Yeerk peace movement, trying desperately to find a more diplomatic solution to things or stage a less violent internal uprising, and that would have been well within character for her.
There's a real wealth of untapped story there. Example, imagine a book between #19 and #29 where she starts attending secret YPM meetings to help them coordinate and doesn't tell the others because she knows they'll disapprove. Tobias spots her, and reports it to the others and causes them to all start questioning her loyalty/uninfested status while she tries to find a way to convince them that Yeerks really aren't inherently evil. At the same time, their numbers are increasing to the point that just meeting is a huge security risk, and Visser 3 gets wind of it, culminating in Cassie convincing the others to help her defend the YPM in an awesome battle scene. Themes would be about how she's growing apart from the other animorphs because of moral differences, but she still realizes she has to help them out, with aspects of the YPM subtly mirroring the Animorphs. It would pay off later, as they'd have more motivation to go help Aftran, beyond just seeing her as a security risk. It would really show how far gone Jake is at the end, that he can't see the Yeerks he flushed as having basic sentient rights, and it would also help drive the wedge between him and Cassie even further, as she might have had friends in that pool.
See, just off the cuff, there's already a solid premise that's totally up her alley. That would be awesome. Better than the Helmacron episode. I'd read it. Heck, I might write it. Or bribe someone more talented and less lazy to write it. :D
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XenoFrobe, that comment is actually amazing. We have been waiting a long time on this forum for someone to really debate with and engage us in this very intellectual way. So we will proceed to deliver back exactly the same kind of response (Although probably not as long).
ARGH, NOW I'VE FALLEN INTO THIS TRAP AGAIN
I constantly find myself getting roped into conversations and debates where I basically end up trading essays with other people, and I love the discussion, but it's like sandpaper on my sanity. The last one took me several days to write and proofread, and I was up at 3 AM editing it at one point. I'll get back to this thread in a bit. XD
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Oh gosh, eight pages this time. THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT YOU DID THIS TO ME YOU MONSTERS
Okay, clarification: so when I said “lowest common denominator,” I was basically speaking in the mathematical definition of the term. I was referring to the most basic elements that the stories all share that make them appealing when you boil them down (i.e., romantic/power fantasy), not "lowly peasants/common rabble who suck in the stale tripe they're trough-fed by the mainstream media because they have no sense of taste or gag reflex." I didn’t initially realize that there was another connotation to the phrase. I swear, I’m not trying to be an elitist culture snob here. XD
But are they really two different things? I'm not so sure on that very point. It actually brings up this entire thought process that's been going in my head about Twilight, and to some extent Harry Potter.
The phenomenon known as "good writing" tends to not only be highly subjective as concepts go but correlates with the level of identification the viewer has with the author. The whole way that art and writing even operate is that they are the creations of someone else's Heart that manage to pierce yours. Books considered almost universally "good" aren't just good: They often draw upon a subconscious backdrop of archetypes and characters that resonate with almost every potential viewer. This is why Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter work--- They are, in a metaphysical sense, the "same story." It didn't even matter that Tolkien couldn't write worth a damn--- He tapped the Leviathan/Library/Collective Unconscious. There are maybe a couple stories like this in human history (Some people say about six, actually) and if you hit one with enough accuracy the result ripples through the whole network.
Pretty much what I meant by lowest common denominator here. There are basic elements to a story that people just like. Various romantic/power fantasies and character archetypes hold a near universal appeal. However, appealing to this is not that same thing as writing skill. Tolkien may have had rambling prose, slightly excessive detail, and gotten a little verbose at times, but it was still highly readable, and you could get quite a bit out of it beyond just appreciation for the plotline. I attribute those issues to his obsession with world-building above all else (the stories were actually written as an excuse to use the languages he was creating in his spare time). He was a very good writer, and not just because his stories had innate appeal. No one would have bothered to read them through to appreciate the vast lore of Middle Earth if his prose was actually tripping over itself to a painful degree, or the sage wisdom, lovable humor and clever wordplay all fell flat, or the characters made no sense.
And really, I think the amazing depth to which Tolkien developed the history, mythology, and cultures of Middle Earth is a large part of, if not the main reason, why it remains such an influential force on the fantasy genre to this day. Just reading it gives this magical feeling of exploration, because there’s so much to learn about the world.
The result is that you can have Mary Sue-like characters in all or any of these stories, or characters that are too powerful...And nobody cares because whether or not they exist isn't even "the point."
Sue-ishness can work for a story. Plenty of well-respected stories from well-respected authors have characters that are total Sues on any litmus test you put them to, LotR included. Aragorn’s the heir to the throne, sort of a “chosen one” from an übermensch bloodline that gives him some light superpowers, ruggedly handsome and has various women interested in him, a master swordsman and good shot with a bow with unrivaled martial prowess (he can duel frakking trolls), and a really good person to boot, even able to overcome the corrupting influence of the Ring when humans are especially weak to it (including a notable ancestor of his). When you add up all these things, he looks pretty sue-ish. However, his story is all about actually stepping up as king and putting these traits to the best possible use, and his internal conflict keeps him from being one-dimensional. But when you make the character’s arbitrary specialness the entire driving force for the story without a shred of self-awareness, like My Immortal or Sonichu, that's where you run into problems.
And again, I have no idea where you're getting the idea that this thing called "objective technique" even exists. There is fully nothing objective about art. Nothing at all. Some people hate Modern Art and other people worship it. I hate rap and other people are experts who know its nuances and cultural rhythm. An individual artist, like you did, can improve their skills and learn a lot from other artists. Then that artist is clearly "better than they were" according to their own definition. Yet I have read deeply eloquent prose written by authors who later dismissed their own creations as Mary Sues and their writing as trash. Writing that I had loved, and sometimes still do.
All art has some objectivity to it. Art is a medium for communicating ideas, from thoughts as intellectually complex as the destructive ramifications of socio-political interactions of various power-grabbing noble families on individuals in a feudal fantasy world, to as primally simple as the fun in exploding zombie heads by the dozen. If you want to communicate your ideas, you need technique. Technique is all objective factors, essentially how precisely you can match reality or the vision in your head while you’re creating art. For literature, poorly paced prose, awkwardly structured scenes, and flat characters will start to muddle the points you’re trying to get across, because those all result from a lack of attention to aspects of your own creative vision. Themes will come across as an incoherent mess, and people will misinterpret your work (not that that won’t ever happen anyway). There are objective ways to improve your technique, and an understanding of them is important, even if you ultimately choose to reject them. What makes art art is intent, and if you don’t have the technical skills to correctly carry out that intent, your vision gets lost, and no one will see the dream you wanted to realize.
Subjectivity and style come in when you start to modify your technique. What you add or take away from a 100% accurate depiction of real life is what defines your art as yours. What would Bond be without MI6, his tux and arsenal of gadgets? What would Superman be without his flight, strength, and the red and blue suit? What would Edward Cullen be without his sparkliness, or Jacob Black with a shirt on? Boring, ordinary people is the answer. Nowhere near as many people would be interested in their stories, because their stories would be completely indistinguishable from anything else. Breaking from what people see in their everyday reality while maintaining identifiable features is a large part of what makes fiction enjoyable, and that’s why we get cultural trends in our fiction; while everyone may have a different reality shaping their identity, we all have a basis of common humanity, and share cultural interests.
Technique without any common appeal becomes too esoteric for people to actually enjoy. Appeal without any technique becomes bland and cliched, or unreadable due to the author's inability to remain coherent, potentially even both. Having neither results in Dadaism (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Duchamp_Fountaine.jpg). :D (just kidding) They're separate concepts that do correlate, yes, but correlation is not causation.
Being an artist is tough because self-criticism is super easy when you know every in and out of your own work. You can see every flaw better than most other people can, and they just end up glaring at you. Halo: Combat Evolved was a great game, and there was one mission I totally loved called The Silent Cartographer, which was kind of an open little mission on this small island, and it just had such a beautiful environment. I later saw one of the level designers in an interview talking about how he was proud of the work he did on the level, but there was one horrendous flaw they overlooked: a tree in a corner of some rocks was floating six inches off the ground. XD I’d never noticed it up until that point, and I only ever notice it if I remember the interview while playing. But yeah, he said it haunted him. So while you may only see the good in a work, you’re probably overlooking many flaws that that the author sees that would actually improve the work even further. But of course, we can’t pick at flaws forever, we have to move on at some point. As Leonardo Da Vinci once said, art is never finished, only abandoned.
Cassie-As-Steve-Rogers is an interesting point, although that isn't the comment above. Is Captain America a Mary Sue? I don't typically think of him as such, yet he actually possesses every trait one might attribute to them. He is a modern-day paladin, a rock, in every sense of the word. Although to be frank, the Red Skull is a ****ty blackguard in the movies. -__-
Do we, as an audience, now disdain characters who either "have it too easy" or aren't flawed enough? And for that matter, exactly why is that? When Snow White and the Seven Dwarves came out in 1930, the main character was herself very much a "Mary Sue" if we rely only on mental characteristics to define such a person. She spent most of the story getting very, very lucky and having all of the traits of a perfect housewife. The only difference, perhaps, is that she needed saving by a prince. Cassie was never exactly the fighter of the group. In fact it's heavily implied she can't fight worth a damn. XD
But she does develop very similar bird-attracting, impossible superpowers consistent with her "shaman" role in the group. As for the book list, honestly it just seems to be the means that bug you. Every character in Animorphs has scenes and situations tailor-made for what makes them unique. The only difference is that their skills are not "earth-mother"-ish.
Something about this whole setup really bugs me, but I'm struggling to explain exactly what.
Cap's not really a Sue for the reasons I listed in my reply to NothingFromSomethin g. It's all about context. He totally has all the traits that would otherwise qualify him as one, but his character struggles are actually separate or based around deconstructing those traits.
Look at how many Jaime Lannister fans there are for Game of Thrones. From an outside perspective, he's totally a rich, smarmy, spoiled prettyboy who just seems to enjoy flaunting his sword skills and basking in the radiance of the most powerful person he can get close to. But then you later realize that he actually has depth beyond that with some of the choices he's made in the past, and that they weren't all about personal gain/securing his position of power. He ends up suffering quite a bit and his actual feelings for his family become more apparent, which gradually makes him quite sympathetic (despite being so easily hateable at first) and you can actually look back on him earlier in the series with a newfound appreciation for what was probably going through his head while he did all the stuff that made you hate him. That all makes him a well-rounded, deeply thought-out character in spite of how easy he's had it in life or whatever despicable things he may have done, and we fans just eat that up.
It's not that we currently, as a culture, disdain people who've had it easy. It's because conflict and struggle are what any compelling story is made of. Any story that's ever told, from a high school drama about fitting in, to a superhero saving the world from annihilation, to a funny anecdote your friend once told you, has some kind of conflict creating drama at its core. When an author contrives for circumstances to work themselves out, they're removing all the conflict that made the story compelling in the first place. People want to see characters in a rough spot, and they want to see the characters handle it in whatever manner. That’s the essence of storytelling. If you remove that, it’s really not much of a story.
It kinda reminds me of the Matrix movies, when they're talking about the early Beta stages of the Matrix. In the first version, the machines made it an absolute paradise. They aimed to keep the humans to stay motivated to stay in the virtual world by appealing to every positive emotion and supplying for every need and want that could ever pop up. It didn't work. The humans ended up being basically bored to death from lack of stimulation (which really is something that could happen--an old study showed that babies that are cared for but aren't given any social interaction with a maternal figure in their first months will actually die from no medically apparent cause), and they collectively rejected the reality, causing entire crops of humans to be rendered useless and disposed of. The second beta went to the opposite extreme. The machines determined that lack of stimulation and appeal to certain instincts was the issue, and so they took inspiration from the genre of fiction that appealed to those things most: horror. Essentially, the second beta is believed to have looked very much like a B horror movie, with vampires, werewolves, ghosts and various monsters roaming around and preying on the population (the ones in the Merovingian’s chateau were left over from there). However, the peoples' will to go on living in such a crappy world dropped, and the machines determined that they were losing too much of the population to keep it viable. So, they eventually decided to go with a system that actually worked for humans in the past: modeling real life in modern-day 1999. They removed all limits on freedom within the construct, allowing the humans to police themselves and do as they liked with a bunch of artificially intelligent programs running around as social guidelines. No one ever had reason to question it, because their problems in life came from obviously human sources.
The whole thing is basically an analogy for storytelling with willing suspension of disbelief. Ultimately, the point in the movie was that people actually thrive on suffering and personal conflict because we’re a backward and stupid species. Naturally, it follows that when you have a character that faces no conflict of any kind or has it solved for them, it becomes very hard for most people to actually identify with them.
Trust me, it's not the "shamanistic" means I dislike. I've written for and enjoyed reading about spiritual, connected-to-all-living-things characters before. But Snow White and Cassie's issues are completely different. Snow White is a weak character because she has absolutely zero agency within the story, and yet the focus is entirely on her. I mean, what does she even contribute to the story? She tidies up around the house, gets the dwarves to enjoy her presence... And that's pretty much it as far as her actual actions go. When the huntsman spared her life, was it because she evaded him or talked him out of it, or through anything she did? No, he just chose not to lop her head off because he thought she looked pretty. When her life was in danger, was she given any chance to solve things herself? No, because she's got a herd of cute animals and a bunch of men to come riding to her rescue. She does absolutely nothing in her own story. Many Grimm’s fairy tale girls have this problem, it’s just a product of the time when they were written. It’s part of the reason reimagined fairy tales have had rush of popularity in recent years.
Cassie on the other hand, has plenty of agency. Maybe even too much. Wolf may not be the ideal combat morph, but she can handle herself in a fight, and does so far more than she'd actually like to. She actively does things to contribute to the team's welfare, helping make plans, reining other characters in, providing a meeting space, etc. She arguably has the most influence on what the group does, because Jake's so infatuated with her that he'll just go along with some of her more ridiculous ideas (like the Rainforest Cafe parrots). I imagine this is the kind of difference in writing you'd expect between men in the '30s, and a woman in the '90s. She’s a strong female character in her own right. What I don’t like is the way she wields her agency. She has quite a few times where she goes off on her own and makes decisions that affect everyone else in the group, based on some gut reaction to something she didn’t like because she's rigidly set in her ideals with no impulse control. She's like an emotional gun with a hair trigger and no safety. She'll go off with any bump in some drastic way that could literally get someone killed, but it's okay, because the muzzle always happens to be pointing in what was actually a safe direction all along that no one knew about. The way things work out for her just ends up feeling contrived, and it kills potential conflict in a cheap way.
Now, it’s not necessarily true that coincidence automatically makes things contrived. It’s perfectly acceptable practice to kick off a plot with something happening completely out of the blue, or use freak occurences as a plot device. However, excessive coincidence, using it as a crutch for your story, can strain the willing suspension of disbelief and leave readers wondering if there was supposed to be more. Coincidence being used to remove conflict (i.e., deus ex machina) will leave your audience unsatisfied with the resolution, because if some random occurrence was going to take care of everything anyway, the characters might as well have not even been there, and all their struggles up to that point have basically been rendered completely pointless. In Cassie's case, she gets deprived of anything having an impact on her character.
In that book list, those are situations that actually cheapen her natural agency by contriving the situation to be easily solvable specifically for her talents. It’s an issue of cause and effect vs. effecting the cause. The other animorphs do get tailor-made situations sometimes, but Cassie has it almost every time. #29 was the best Cassie book in my opinion, because it forced her to step up and basically take on the responsibilities of the entire team. Even still, she literally had to be the last one functioning to be able to shine on her own. The other animorphs all have to step up to the plate themselves and take action in whatever situation using their unique skillset. Cassie usually has it conveniently twisted around for her by the author so that she can use her unique skillset. I think the reason for this is that she was never given her own specific arc, which made the writers unsure how to approach her or justify her being the narrator of her own books. Hope that explanation's clearer.
What my theory does is maintains her agency, but actually provides a decent motivation behind her more controversial actions (beyond selfish gut instinct) and gives a plausible cause for her many special attributes within the established sci-fi universe (beyond mere coincidence). I don’t irrationally hate Cassie for her spiritual side. That’s not me, I’m kinda spiritual myself. Though when you think about it, her spirituality rarely even came up unless Marco was poking fun at her, so most of what we hear about it is Marco hyperbolizing. Heck, after rereading most of the books, I’m still not even fully sure what she actually believed in.
I had no themes, no real plot beyond kids turning into dragons and killing people, and no character development of any kind. I identified with the power fantasy completely (still do, in fact) but the story was boring, predictable, and had no point in existing.
As someone who, in my youth, wrote such things myself....I don't think this can really be the case. It may seem like that looking back, but there's a lot more even to why inexperienced writers write than just a power fantasy. People start writing because there's a story they want to tell that does not exist, and I still haven't managed to write the one Kid Me was after.
*shorten*
At least in my case, even though I couldn't write it properly at the time...There was a lot more of a point than just art, or just a power fantasy. Rant relatively over. :)
See, right there your story already has a million times more depth than mine ever did. Here: http://fav.me/d2povts (http://fav.me/d2povts) http://fav.me/d2rskex (http://fav.me/d2rskex) Those copies were apparently edited by Past Me at some point, as they're not as crappy as I distinctly remember them being (Karen was a snotty a-hole in early drafts because I didn't know how else to write a girl character at the time). I lost the original copies of the story in the Great Hard Drive Seppuku of 2013, which I have mixed feelings about. Anyhoo, those two links are literally the whole extent of it. A whole lot of worldbuilding centered entirely on the dragon forms themselves with a shoddy knowledge of history, and action scenes based on Call of Duty 4 with an emotionally blank narrator. Literally nothing else. It was pretty much just masturbatory self-insert power fantasy, and looking back on it disgusts me every time. My writing has improved massively ever since I realized why it sucked.
The fantasy continued on when I got into werewolf stories on deviantArt, and I actually started digging into why I like shapeshifters so much. Did a whole bunch of introspection and made a ton of personal revelations, but I won’t bore you with those. Point is, my writing was better as a result. Still wasn’t perfect, or even up to my current standards at that point, but yeah. All part of the technical learning process.
Your stated motivations there are absolutely about doing it for the art. We all write or draw because we have a story or picture we want to see, but no one has written or drawn yet. Wouldn't be much reason to otherwise. Art is your vision, manifested to share with the world. And sharing something that really shows your passion, that you successfully crafted into exactly what you wanted it to be is such a joy.
(https://www.silverfishlongboarding.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=145004&d=1393262482)
So, uh... Could I maybe get a bonus to my insanity meter based on sheer length? :D
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Oh honestly this is amazing. You don't have any idea how glad I am that you're just listening to my rambling about storytelling and choice. I spent a year on this very site feeling ignored and unimportant because no one was bothering to go through it all and respond intelligibly.
I can't quite respond to this one just yet (I'm pretty overworked) but if we're derailing too much we could totally take this on PM. ;}
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Well, I generally try to answer as thoroughly as possible. *looks at 8 page comment* You know, in case it wasn't immediately obvious. :D Y'all're bringing up good points, it makes answering more interesting.
But darn it, why can't my creative writing come to me this easily? >:(
As long as we're talking about Cassie, the Mary Sue concept, and whether or not it applies, I guess we're technically still on topic.
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Just going to ask you, XenoFrobe: could one basic concept of how Cassie is treated could be that she's the 'Aquaman' of the group, what with all the convoluted and illogical storylines designed to give her specific 'specialness' a chance to shine? Sorry if my metaphor seems like further derailment, but I'm sure he has a storyline reflecting your 'special little slice of awesome' theory where we find out why so many baddies care about fish, so I'll pretend that it's totally okay.
More generally, I just want to express support of this headcanon; my one caveat would be that Cassie did develop, just not internally. I'm not saying she shouldn't have been expanded upon, I would have really liked to see the moralizing and from-the-hip decisions dealt with and acknowledged beyond Marco's ribbing. What I am saying is that Shenmue makes a couple of excellent points about what development does exist, and I personally liked seeing her gradual removal from the group when they began to step over her boundaries.
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Sorry, I actually haven't seen or read anything about Aquaman. All I know is that his kid sidekick on Teen Titans was a lot more powerful, and that's really sad. XD But yeah, if he's in his element defending Atlantis or whatever, it makes sense that he'd be pretty powerful and able to work things to his advantage. If he's in the middle of an urban environment or something and he finds use for communication with aquatic creatures on a regular basis, then I call massive shenanigans. I think you got what I meant, though.
She does fall away from the group at the end, and that tendency was shown early in #9 and #19. Still, I'd argue that that wasn't so much from change on her part, more that she didn't like facing what the others were becoming/had become. And honestly, that's totally fine by me. I really feel like her attitude should have been expanded on, though. Some depth into her thought processes and why she hung in with the group for so long even though the violence disgusted her would be more than welcome.
It always struck me as kind of odd that Cassie briefly tried to justify Jake's actions to Erek in #54, that felt kind of out of the blue. In #50, Visser Three One is stopped from killing Jake by what was apparently a YPM member that no one even saw, and there was no foreshadowing or justification for that whatsoever. And if she was such a peacemaker, she really should have spent a lot more time seeking out every opportunity to actually make peace, rather than just waiting for something to come to her like it did in #19. I get the feeling KAA had a plot she wanted to cover with Cassie, but never got around to it because she just didn't know how to continue it with Aftran effectively out of the fight, or got distracted by filler that she also felt like writing at the time which she dumped on Cassie because she couldn't think of anyone else that would fit it. Maybe both. As a result, we get these fragmented hints of what it could have been, but no substance in that direction or major development for Cassie, which makes a lot of aspects of her character not make as much sense. The solution to that, unfortunately, was to try and cover it up with more specialness.
Yanno what, after I get some progress done on my current fic, I'm gonna write me some Cassie stories. :D
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Why is it that self sacrifice, like taking a bullet for someone, is considered virtuous, but becoming darker due to a need to save Humanity is considered wrong? Isn't becoming the dark hero that's willing to disregard the few to save the many a form of self sacrifice? If they hadn't blown the pool up, they couldn't have won. If they had stayed exactly the same, or as close to possible as Cassie insisted on, do you really think they would have saved the world? This is part of the reason Cassie annoys me. She comes off as selfish, willing to leave the group and abandon humanity because she doesn't want to change, and apparently KAA is ok with this.
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Having a character with that mindset is totally fine, but... Yeah. It's all about where you draw the line, and Cassie seems to be drawing it way too close, with KAA's blessing.
On the other hand, what I consider wrong is leaping to the most destructive action first, without considering alternatives. That's basically what Jake did in the end. When they took the pool ship, he could have had Ax stationed at the pool, ready to flush it on command, while he used it as leverage against Visser 3, and it would have turned out the exact same way. Once they had that console, the battle was basically won. But he didn't. He lost sight of everything else, and ended up wasting a lot of lives to accomplish a few simple tasks, just because he was stressed out and pissed off. Being a darker hero isn't really self-sacrifice, it just means that you're willing to sacrifice what isn't yours more. Granted, you have to live with the guilt, but that's subjective. Jake tore himself apart, while Marco pretty much enjoyed his life.
In the end, you have to be out to save lives. Every action you take should be worth something towards that ideal, even if you can't get a perfect solution. Acting purely out of vengeance just creates more blood for no real reason.
Aaaaand now we're officially off topic. XD
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I'm not even sure why flushing the pool would do anything. There's already been a situation like this with the oatmeal, and v3 didn't care until he was thrown in. I think this part was just thrown in because KAA wanted Jake to do a very bad thing. Something less justifiable than what he did to Eric, since if he really wanted eric to help there weren't many alternatives to work around his programming. Not to mention that he probably wouldn't have killed Chapman anyway. It was an odd moment to me, and seems like it was thrown in there just to show how far Jake has fallen. Why did he think flushing Yeerks would cause V3 to rush to the bridge?
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Why is it that self sacrifice, like taking a bullet for someone, is considered virtuous, but becoming darker due to a need to save Humanity is considered wrong? Isn't becoming the dark hero that's willing to disregard the few to save the many a form of self sacrifice? If they hadn't blown the pool up, they couldn't have won. If they had stayed exactly the same, or as close to possible as Cassie insisted on, do you really think they would have saved the world? This is part of the reason Cassie annoys me. She comes off as selfish, willing to leave the group and abandon humanity because she doesn't want to change, and apparently KAA is ok with this.
I think the reason the former is considered "good" and the latter is considered "bad" has to do with the after-the-fact moral changes that occur in one's heart. And your comments here somehow bring me back to why a show like "24" was popular in the early 2000s, but a story like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs worked in the 1930s-1950s but not now. We have become a cynical culture that tries to create stories that reflect real life, rather than stories that help us escape it. But that's less on-topic and more an interesting side-issue. What's more on-topic is:
Is sacrificing one's own soul in order to save people ever actually a good thing to do? A lot of people say, "Yes it is--- The ends justify the means in a brutal enough situation." Cassie's a person who thinks the ends don't justify the means, and never do--- Even in war. Jake was getting to the point where he was willing to justify more and more heinous actions for himself in order to save the human race. In other words, he was turning into Alloran. And the thing is....K.A. Appelgate notoriously dislikes the idea that you have to turn into a monster in order to save the world from monsters. She seems to believe there's too much of a chance you'll start doing those things for their own violent sake rather than doing them to save lives. Just like Alloran did, and in a weird way so did Visser Three. (If his younger self is any indication of what he was like before those factors began to corrupt him completely).
In my own personal opinion....You have to strike a balance between being unwilling to change and thus implicitly abandoning others for your own moral values (Like Cassie, apparently)...And letting the expediencies of an inherently messed-up situation turn you into a twisted shell of your former self (See: Jake himself, Alloran, the Visser, and a few major characters of mine). This is a really trite phrase, but "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
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Yes we are a more cynical people. leave It to Beaver is actually derided nowadays, and I doubt it would go anywhere if they remade the series. I know this kind of stuff isn't ideal. War itsself shouldn't be though of as ideal, though people who grew up with it will think it's fine. Of course going to the extreme one way or another is bad. Unfortunately part of Jake's downfall is the author's fault. Why did he rush into battle, but save rescuing his family last? Neither was smart, but that's just how the ghostwriter or KAA wanted it to go in order to get Jake to the point where he threatened Chapman to work around Eric's programming, and flushed a pool of Yeerks. It seemed really forced, which I think is part of the problem. Just like how Cassie let Tom's Yeerk get away with the box, even though she and Jake should have been able to capture him regardless of the dracon beam he had.
Cassie was pretty far extreme to the side of "I'd rather everyone die or be enslaved than do something I find uncomfortable", but Jake was veering to the other extreme of doing damage that didn't really need to be done. You do have to find some middle ground, and it's good to have someone like Cassie to keep you balanced. The thing was that I feel she was too close to the other extreme. Comparing morphing a sentient creature to infesting the person is ridiculous.
Cassie just doesn't feel moderate enough to play the role she's supposed to have. An anchor between extremes.
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I think it's a bit excessive to say that Cassie was willing to sacrifice humanity and lose the war in order to maintain her moral code. By the end of the series she's pretty much accepted the compromise, and is in-line with the rest of 'em with the exception of still being upset/disturbed by the whole
Marco: I know what you thought. Die, you filthy worms. Feel the fear, Yeerks. Feel the helplessness. They were suffering and dying and the thought of them suffering and dying made you thrilled. You were happy. You were high.
Jake: Yeah. Yeah, that was pretty much it, Marco. Word for word.
exchange. Even the times she screwed everyone over with things like sacrificing the cube, she was making a three-or-four-steps-ahead play, the long game. Not exactly being unwilling to make the hard call, more the opposite, even though it was admittedly a messed-up thing to do.
Cassie's code evolves pretty evidently throughout the series, it's just a bit less dramatic and tragic than, say, Jake's, who goes from decent stand-up guy to pretty much "I'll kill you all painfully and horribly if it means humanity survives, just the way the world works" in a couple of years.
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It's not excessive. She spelled it out in book 19 when she quit.
I don't see it as playing the long game, because there was no previous build up. Where was the thought process that this was what would happen if she handed over the cube? Why is it that in the last book she narrated before 50, she said them getting the cube would be the worst thing ever? Where was the foreshadowing? I don't buy that Cassie somehow knew this would happen. It was just the author trying to redeem her.
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Book 19. Pretty early in the series, way before the events we're talking about and before the gray-area stuff really came seriously into play in the books.
She's pretty much given up on the "right or wrong?" stuff by that final story arc where everything's escalated. She's complicit in the recruiting disabled and sick kids to the fight, she's cool with Jake blackmailing Erek, she's not speaking up about stealing bombs from military bases to load on a train and blow the sh*t out of a bunch of human hosts.
It's a pretty clear evolution, from the initial stages of the war soon after they met Elfangor, through to the war-weary Cassie of the final 10 or so books.
And the thing about the cube? That's the point, she did go through the thought process. She knew (or at least perceived it probably would) work in stoking the Yeerk resistance and the Taxxons, and saw that endgame when nobody else could. Doesn't make it right, going rogue and doing it all solo, but it's silly to say it wasn't thought through. The "it would be the worst thing ever" was likely just before she had that lightbulb moment and saw the possibilities, before that idea hit her that the rest of the team never comprehended.
And she didn't know it would work out. It was a gamble that paid off. Jake pulled that type of gut-feeling sh*t all the time and we're cool with it. Only difference with Cassie is she did it on her own, deceptively. Which makes it less-than-right, but they were all pretty fine with forgiving the means when they saw the end.
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I have gone over in other threads before how they could have done the same thing without handing over the box. I don't buy for a bit that this was some thought out plan, or she had some eureka moment. The only reason she did it, besides the author just wanting it to happen, is what she believed Jake was about to kill Tom and didn't think they could both take him alive for some reason. If it was actually thought through, she would have done it differently. The narration beforehand would have mentioned something. There would be plot points.
I could go on and on about this. Jake did not pull off this kind of stuff all the time. No one has done anything to that extent. This isn't just a gamble. This was complete idiocy.
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Jake made moves based on instinct rather than logic all the time. Just more in the heat of battle, nothing so macro.
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But does he ever think to just hand over the morphing cube, or anything else so extreme?
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Honestly, I think if Jake saw that far ahead, he just might. The difference would be he'd consult the others if given the chance to. Thing is, that's why Cassie's there, she and Marco play the big game, Jake's only really good at figuring out the here and now, how to get them all out of a bind and home safely. Only Cassie could have pulled off that particular chess move.
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He would have consulted the group, and if they agreed it had potential they would have done it in a way that didn't involve handing the box to the enemy. It would have had the same effect without the drawbacks.
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A little late, but I don't think it's fair to blame Cassie for quiting. She did, but she came back.
And Jake took the offer to back out too (MM4).
But I do agree with Chad, NFS you keep saying Cassie saw ahead; where in the course of the series do you see that she was ever thinking "if the Yeerks have access to the morphing tech, they can be converted" on a mass scale. F***, even doing that to Aftran was Jake's idea. And then it's ignored for 20 books. Giving her that "insight" was one of the most poorly executed retro-fixes I've ever seen.
Other thinks to gripe about
She's complicit in the recruiting disabled and sick kids to the fight,
which she should be, they do have a stake in the fight, and are only a little more vulenerable than the able bodied out of morph. Why did they spend half that book making that a moral crisis?
she's cool with Jake blackmailing Erek, she's not speaking up about stealing bombs from military bases to load on a train and blow the sh*t out of a bunch of human hosts.
and I'd say this is a great example of why her intuition is not to be trusted. This was unfolding very rapidly, and she was still under pressure from screwing up with the box, and she cracked. She lost sight of how she would respond, and how to find another way. I don't doubt for a second that she was okay with it, but she couldn't figure out how to neutralize it since everyone else had changed so rapidly.
Cassie had a lot of talents, her most valuable from the strategic stand point was probably being able to read people well. She understood motives and desires, and how that would play into others battle plans, so she could counter and set traps appropriately (which is the only arguement I can think of about her premotions on the box, but I remain doubtful). But then when things are in motion, when she's charged with responsibility, she has luck, or Ellimist being a dick.
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I already established that Cassie didn't put any thought into handing over the cube in post 9. Her whole thought process is plainly spelled out in the book's text, and it had nothing to do with thinking ahead. That was solely because she didn't want to see Tom die, and she justified it by saying she wanted to protect Jake from himself, but all that did was drive him crazy and make him unable to trust anyone or feel like he could rely on others. That's why he pretty much cut the others out from the decision making from that point on, even though their input would have helped massively in coming up with less bloody alternatives. He couldn't see the others as anything but a risk factor.
I'm not even sure why flushing the pool would do anything. There's already been a situation like this with the oatmeal, and v3 didn't care until he was thrown in. I think this part was just thrown in because KAA wanted Jake to do a very bad thing. Something less justifiable than what he did to Eric, since if he really wanted eric to help there weren't many alternatives to work around his programming. Not to mention that he probably wouldn't have killed Chapman anyway. It was an odd moment to me, and seems like it was thrown in there just to show how far Jake has fallen. Why did he think flushing Yeerks would cause V3 to rush to the bridge?
Visser 3 was under very intense scrutiny at that point, he had to be on his very best behavior or he'd be removed from power. He may have been able to get away with things like randomly killing and eating minions earlier, but only because the Council didn't care too much about Earth until Visser 1's trial, when the memory dumps clued them in on the planet's actual potential. After that, they started pouring in more resources, even though they didn't fully trust Visser 3 to handle it, him being on probation. Losing the ground pool was seen as an acceptable loss on his part, because they still had the pool ship in orbit, there was no real way for them to see it coming, and that pool was part of Visser 1's plan anyway (meaning he could wash his hands of it because he'd already said it was a waste of time and a bad idea, thus strengthening his position). Once he lost the pool ship, however, his fate was sealed. He could either be executed slowly by Kandarona starvation, or surrender himself and hope for a quick death in human hands. Book #6 established that cornered Yeerks won't fight back if they don't see any escape, and we see it subtly throughout the series. That's why Visser 3 gave up. He saw that the pool had been flushed (because he was already on the bridge), and knew that he was as good as dead no matter what he did. That's why the ship was as good as taken once they had access to that console.
Jake didn't see it as enough, though. He was pissed because his whole deal throughout the books was about not wanting all the responsibility in the world on his shoulders while being forced to take it. That whole emotional buildup came to a climax during the final books and he snapped under the pressure. He'd just seen a few hundred soldiers and all the auxiliaries die as nothing more than a diversion that he ordered, and the shock of it geared him into full denial mode, and he dumped three years worth of pent-up rage and hatred onto the yeerks in the pool. Who knows, in that state of mind, he might have even ordered Chapman killed (though he'd lose his leverage and Ax probably wouldn't have done it anyway). He was in an eye-for-an-eye mood and ended up seriously regretting it later, partially because he could see in hindsight how he'd made the same kind of emotionally-driven individual decisions he chewed out Cassie for. The decision made perfect sense on his part and was heavily foreshadowed, it wasn't just thrown in for trauma-giggles.
One thing that's bugged me about the writing itself in these books is that there's a notable difference between what the authors (KAA in particular) would usually state about a character, and how they would actually act. Cassie (the so-called people person of the group and the one who always saw ahead) was actually very much trapped in the emotional here and now, always thinking about what made her situation uncomfortable and flat-out ending it without thinking very clearly about others. She couldn't even see what was going on with Tobias or Rachel, her own best friend for years. Jake, on the other hand (the one who supposedly just reacted to everything), was generally the one thinking up plans for the team that usually played out pretty well, even if he did end up having to improvise a lot. Unfortunately, we can't just base our ideas of the characters off of what the authors tell us about them, we have to look at their actual thought processes and actions themselves. I challenge anyone to pull up some actual evidence from the book that Cassie planned for taxxon freedom/yeerk rebellion before she gave the cube over, and I'll buy it. As it stands, she had no reason whatsoever to believe that her actions would help the war effort in any way, and that was far from being on her mind as she bit Jake.
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I'm not real sure why recruiting disabled kids was supposed to be morally gray.
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Because as a culture, we like to feel sorry for anyone less abled than us. It's just BS, them recruiting at a hospital was no different from an Andalite recruiting the first kids he saw. They didn't have any idea what they were in for and it still sucks, but it's really no different.
EDIT: Semi-relevant video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K9Gg164Bsw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K9Gg164Bsw) That's why it's BS.
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I've already established what my main point is here indirectly: Most of what we are saying heavily has to do with how we would act in the exact same situation. Cassie's actions (And motivations) seem plausible to those who would behave similar to Cassie. Jake's motivations seem more believable to those who would have acted like Jake themselves.
Jake was pissed because his whole deal throughout the books was about not wanting all the responsibility in the world on his shoulders while being forced to take it. That whole emotional buildup came to a climax during the final books and he snapped under the pressure. He'd just seen a few hundred soldiers and all the auxiliaries die as nothing more than a diversion that he ordered, and the shock of it geared him into full denial mode, and he dumped three years worth of pent-up rage and hatred onto the Yeerks in the pool.
The key here is "Pent-up rage and hatred" and "snapping under the pressure." What direction and how a person snaps heavily has to do with what sort of person they are. When I snap under the pressure, what happens is that I collapse not under my resentment but under my own self-hatred and fear. What's being held back is not hatred of others but hatred of self and an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy. To a person like this, Jake's actions do not come off as rational or foreshadowed--- They come off as insane and unexpectedly violent. A similar belief will occur in someone whose experiences have led them to eliminate emotional factors when making decisions.
Cassie had a lot of talents, her most valuable from the strategic stand point was probably being able to read people well. She understood motives and desires, and how that would play into others battle plans, so she could counter and set traps appropriately (which is the only arguement I can think of about her premotions on the box, but I remain doubtful). But then when things are in motion, when she's charged with responsibility, she has luck, or Ellimist being a dick
Coming from experience, luck and goodwill are often the secret advantages of being passive. Perhaps because what's coming into play isn't luck at all, but a subconscious survival tactic which comes out of being able to read people really well.
But there's probably no way that K.A. was factoring that nifty feature in, and so I have no real excuse for most of this other than it having been part of Cassie's character since the start of the series. (As early as #4). She has a knack for knowing things she shouldn't....
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I've already established what my main point is here indirectly: Most of what we are saying heavily has to do with how we would act in the exact same situation. Cassie's actions (And motivations) seem plausible to those who would behave similar to Cassie. Jake's motivations seem more believable to those who would have acted like Jake themselves.
---
The key here is "Pent-up rage and hatred" and "snapping under the pressure." What direction and how a person snaps heavily has to do with what sort of person they are. When I snap under the pressure, what happens is that I collapse not under my resentment but under my own self-hatred and fear. What's being held back is not hatred of others but hatred of self and an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy. To a person like this, Jake's actions do not come off as rational or foreshadowed--- They come off as insane and unexpectedly violent. A similar belief will occur in someone whose experiences have led them to eliminate emotional factors when making decisions.
Oh trust me, I’m nothing like Jake. Not in the least. He’s almost the opposite of real life me. If I relate to or project myself onto any animorph, it’s Tobias for sure. Like him, my typical method of snapping under intense emotional pressure is to shut down, internalize, just leave without another word (or maybe some short biting words), privately stew in a swirling vat of emotions for a while, and do some seriously heavy introspection until I can face the world again. Definitely not leader material, more a solitary go-with-the-flow ideas guy. Still, that doesn’t mean I can’t try to get into Jake’s head. Having a certain viewpoint doesn’t mean we can’t understand where others are coming from.
When Jake’s pissed, he wants to lash out, but doesn’t really want to destroy anything, so he does it kind of passive-aggressively most of the time. He will yell and tell people exactly what’s on his mind from time to time as well. However, when he was under more stress than he’d ever had in his life from multiple factors that didn’t allow him his usual dealing methods, and saw an easy way to strike a huge blow against the enemy, that seemed like the ideal place for him to lash out with what felt like perfect justification at the time.
Jake’s feelings of self-hatred came after the fact, when he had a chance to sit back and really look at the damage he caused over the course of the war. And some of the things he did really were excessive and violent; I never said they were rational, just understandable from his perspective. He was trying really hard to remain impassive and unemotional, but it didn’t work. He was just too emotionally charged from everything he’d been through, just too personally close to the conflict to be able to remain detached and cool-headed.
As for foreshadowing, it started in #6 with the jacuzzi attack, which was mirrored by Alloran in The Andalite Chronicles. Note the animorphs’ collective shift in moral views between the occurrences. In the beginning, the Yeerks were just the enemy, plain and simple. Then, by the time TAC rolls around, they start to appreciate the fact that the Yeerks are sentient individuals, and don’t all want war. The contrast between the first two events highlight how far the animorphs have come in perspective (even though they weren't there for TAC; it’s still heavily thematic regarding the end), and Jake’s actions in the finale highlight how far he’s fallen with respect to those occurrences. Following that, we get to see how Jake totally loses it when his family is in danger in #31. His ability to stay rational just vaporizes, and he can barely think through the stress. When Marco’s dad said Jake always had a place in his family in #50, Jake almost broke down crying because that made him feel more than ever like his own family was gone for good. That’s one of the moments that made him so driven in the finale (and made Cassie's betrayal hit that much harder). He felt like he had nothing left to lose, because his family was gone and he later found his friends couldn’t be trusted (with Cassie’s betrayal and Ax going behind his back). He felt completely isolated, and began keeping to himself. He didn’t feel like talking over plans with the others was a good idea, because one of them might object and ruin everything. And so, without Cassie and Tobias to temper him or Ax and Marco to counsel him, he made a bunch of really ruthless decisions that ended up getting a lot of people killed. Don’t get me wrong, no one was coming out of this war clean, but it could have been a lot less bloody.
Coming from experience, luck and goodwill are often the secret advantages of being passive. Perhaps because what's coming into play isn't luck at all, but a subconscious survival tactic which comes out of being able to read people really well.
But there's probably no way that K.A. was factoring that nifty feature in, and so I have no real excuse for most of this other than it having been part of Cassie's character since the start of the series. (As early as #4). She has a knack for knowing things she shouldn't....
Like I said before, I'm not totally convinced Cassie is good at handling people. She tries to be nice, and certainly makes efforts to defuse volatile situations, but lots of people can do that. If she was so good at reading people, why did she never even offer Tobias any help when he was losing his mind in any of his books? Why didn't she see the whole struggle Rachel was going through and help her? Seriously, all Rachel needed was for people to reassure that yes, she was a good person where it counted. Jake was in a fragile state of mind when his family got taken, and he desperately needed closure on Tom. But what do we see?
- Through inaction, Cassie just affirms Rachel’s role as the "bad guy" of the team at the end of #48, the book that shaped Rachel’s mindset for the whole finale. All she saw was Rachel getting progressively more violent, and never tried to help her, just pre-judged and condemned her apparent attitudes without ever trying to look deeper. Rachel, in fact, took deep personal offense to this and it drove her to a breakdown in the end, followed by a suicidal level of determination to keep her friends safe when she'd picked up the pieces of herself. Tobias was literally the only person she had who told her she wasn't a monster. Cassie, her alleged best friend, should have been there to do that too.
- With Tobias, Cassie barely has any interaction with him throughout the series, apart from them sharing dreams after he mistakenly tried to eat her in #4, and the bit in #9 when she coldly treated him like he was being a jerk for eating cute little animals (which couldn’t possibly be more insensitive to his more obvious struggles if she actually tried) right at the moment when he was trying to open up to and sympathize with her. Come to think of it, it’s no friggin’ wonder he never talked to her afterwards. It's not like he has serious issues with emotional dependence, trust, acceptance, and getting hurt by those closest to him or anything.
[spoiler]<Hey, Cassie,> a thought-speak voice said as I crunched noisily through the woods. <What's
going on?>
I looked up and saw Tobias go skimming by. He flared, turned on a dime, and landed on a
branch. He dug his ripping talons into the soft bark.
"Not much," I said.
<I heard it was pretty bad last night. >
"Yeah? Who did you talk to?"
<Ax. Who else? He was definitely weirded out by the whole thing. >
I stopped walking. It was something in the way he said "weirded out." "Tobias, who else did
you talk to?"
<Maybe Marco,> he said.
"And Marco told you I went nuts, right?"
<Actually, the word he used was "insane." Also "Looney Tunes." And "wacko." But he
meant it all in the nicest possible way. >
I laughed bitterly. "Well, I guess I did go a bit wacko," I said.
<Welcome to the club,> Tobias said. <None of us is going to come through all this
completely normal. You know that. Too much fear. >
"Well, I'm pretty sick of it," I said. "I had to destroy the termite queen. I know, she was just a
bug. But you know, who am I to decide that it's okay to kill one animal and not another? Here
I am, the big Earth Mother, tree-hugger, animal-lover, as Marco would say, and when it gets
down to it, I'm just like ..."
<Just like me?> Tobias asked.
"Just like any predator," I said lamely.
<You feel bad because you had to kill the queen in order to survive.>
"I shouldn't have been there. It's their world, not mine. Those little tunnels in a rotten piece of
wood -- that's their whole universe. I invaded it. And when they got in my way, I reacted.
Who does that remind you of?"
<Look, you are not a Yeerk, and termites are not human beings,> Tobias said. <There's no
comparison.>
I didn't bother arguing. "Look, I have to morph. There's something I need to do."
<What?>
I sighed. "It's something stupid, all right? There's this mother skunk we have who's injured.
She has a litter of kits who are going to die. I think I know where they are, more or less, but I
can't get there walking like a human."
For a moment Tobias said nothing. <Skunk kits? Near the edge of the Yeerk logging compound?>
"Yes."
<I can show you where they are.>
For a frozen moment of time I refused to understand what he'd just said. I didn't want to think
of why Tobias . . . why a red-tailed hawk would know the exact location of a litter of skunk
babies.
I took a couple of deep breaths. I tried to keep my voice level. "Are they still alive?"
<There are four still alive,> Tobias said.
I felt an emotion I don't feel very often. I felt it boiling up inside me. I glared furiously at
him. At the ripping talons. At the nastily curved beak.
I could picture the scene in my mind. The way he would have swooped down, raked those
talons forward, snatched the defenseless kit off the ground and . . .
I was shaking. I laced my fingers together, just to stop them from trembling.
"I'm going to save what's left of them," I said. My voice didn't sound like my voice.
<I'll help you,> Tobias said.
I used my osprey morph and flew behind Tobias as he led me directly to the spot I had seen
the night before. I carried the frozen grasshopper in my talons. I didn't ask Tobias any
questions, and he didn't say anything.
He pointed out the almost-invisible entrance to the skunks' lair. And then he flew away. I
knew he'd go to Jake and tell him what I was doing. And I knew that I had hurt Tobias by
treating him so coldly.
But, to tell you the truth, I didn't care right then. I just wanted to find those baby skunks. I
don't know why, but somehow in my mind those baby skunks had become very important.
[/spoiler]
Legendary kindness and people skills, hard at work right there. Seriously, look at Tobias go, trying to bond with that active listening, heartfelt reassuring, honesty, and personal sacrifice as Cassie ignores it and trashes their chances of close friendship for the rest of the series. She apologizes later, but that kind of stuff still cuts really deep for him.
- With the whole cube situation in #50, you know what a “people-person” would do? Negotiate or manipulate. Things she was supposedly good at. She specifically says she wanted Jake to “be able to face himself in the mirror,” and that if he killed Tom he’d end up crossing the moral event horizon (which he debatably did anyway, partially as a result of her actions). And when she had a chance to capture Tom, the thing Jake has wanted more than anything since day one, she just let him go--no, more than that, kept Jake from him. And that played absolute hell on Jake’s sanity for the rest of the series, even long after the war. What a person with people skills would have done is sneak around, block escape, keep Jake from hurting him with constant reassurances, and then talk the Yeerk into surrendering with promises of life and freedom from Visser Three. Seriously, what Yeerk wouldn’t find that tempting, especially one that’s cornered at all angles and at extreme risk of being killed by V3 for the slightest mistake even if he does escape? Even if that failed, she’d still be in a position to just chomp his hand with the Dracon beam while Jake secures the cube and apprehends Tom. They could fix injuries with morphing later. What a person with people skills would NOT do is maul their boyfriend with no warning at all and doom their family members to the hands of the enemy. That just seems insane and unexpectedly violent.
[spoiler]I stopped in my tracks.
Because there stood Tom, unsteady, blood dried and streaked on his face.
Clutching the blue box. And a Dracon beam.
His eyes were wild. They darted toward Visser One. I imagined what Tom was
thinking. Whoever had the morphing cube held the future of the planet in his
hands.
Why would he hand that over to Visser One?
Tom ran.
I followed him to the edge of the ramp. Saw a pair of eyes gleaming in the dark
below me. A crouched body, black and orange.
Jake!
He watched as Tom staggered past. Then padded after him. His paws nearly silent.
Again, I followed. Into the surrounding woods. Beyond sight of the school. Barely
keeping Jake, the silent, bloody beast, in sight.
Still, Tom must have sensed something. Because suddenly he looked over his
shoulder. Turned.
And fired.
The Dracon beam singed Jake’s shoulder! But he kept moving forward. Toward
Tom.
“Back off!” Tom screamed. “I mean it, I’ll kill you!”
Jake took another step forward.
Tsseeeew!
Tom fired again. The shot hit Jake in the back leg. He fell heavily.
Tom took off running. Sure that Jake would not, could not, follow.
But Jake lifted the tiger’s seven-hundred-pound body on three legs and started
after his brother. Into the shadows. Into the darkest place Jake had ever been. The
place where he would have to kill his brother. Or be killed by him.
Suddenly, I remembered my father’s face. His voice. “Is what you’re doing
humane?”
No matter which way it went between Jake and Tom, I would lose Jake.
Because if Jake had to kill Tom, he’d never be the same. He would cross whatever
line it was that separated us from them.
And I was pretty sure there was no crossing back.
I ran ahead into the dark. Followed the trail of Jake’s blood.
Tom crashing through the woods ahead of me.
Soft, irregular thudding. Jake.
Stalking his brother. Prepared to kill him. For what?
For a morphing cube. For…
It wasn’t worth it.
Suddenly, I knew the truth.
I reached the clearing where they both stood.
Tom was out of breath. Staggering.
Jake was only a yard or two behind him.
Tom turned. Lifted his arm. Aimed his weapon.
“I’ll kill you, Jake,” he said, voice ragged. “I will.”
Jake snarled. Crouched. Prepared to spring.
That’s when I shot forward and closed my jaws over Jake’s uninjured back leg.
Clamped down.
Jake roared. Turned on me. Smacked at my head with his paw. The blow sent me
sprawling. Claws raked deep gashes in my side.
But it was worth it. The pain, everything.
I’d done what I had to do.
I’d made the sacrifice.
Tom disappeared into the night.
Jake and I lay there, panting with pain and fatigue.
We had nothing to show for this fight. Except that we were alive to fight another
day.
And tomorrow, Jake could face himself in the mirror.
[...]
We’d been back twelve hours and Jake still hadn’t spoken to me.
Hadn’t even looked at me.
Nobody but the two of us knew what had happened. They knew only that Tom had
gotten away with the morphing cube. That Jake was devastated.
And they knew something was very wrong between me and Jake. But they didn’t
know why. Finally I decided to force the issue with Jake.
Jake stared at me, his eyes cold and hard. “Well?”
“Stop treating me like I’m the enemy,” I said.
Jake turned and began to stalk away. I trotted alongside him and grabbed his
sleeve.
He yanked it out of my grasp and faced me. His face was white with anger. His lips
were shaking. “How could you do it?” he cried, his voice breaking. “Why?”
I choked. “I was trying to protect you!”
“Protect me?” His brows lifted in amazement. “How?”
“You were wounded. He might have killed you.”
“Then why didn’t you go after him?” Jake demanded. “You weren’t hurt. With the
trees for cover and the wolf’s speed, you could have taken him down!”
I couldn’t explain. Because I didn’t understand it myself. All I knew was that letting
Tom take the morphing cube had seemed absolutely the right thing to do.
And something still told me I was right.
[/spoiler]
Sure, he can face himself in the mirror, but she can’t grasp why he wouldn’t want to face her after what she did. Personal betrayal involving incredible physical and emotional pain, endangering the war effort, and almost getting them both killed on the spot (I think the only reason the Yeerk didn’t shoot them in the confusion was because maybe his dracon was running low, otherwise he had two animorphs at his mercy and every reason to kill them), all because she didn’t want to see Jake hurt. Is she just that self-absorbed that she can’t see what’s wrong there?
Personally, I don’t see any way to reconcile what she does and how she acts with what the authors say about her, unless she’s unknowingly working on a totally different level. Hence, my headcanon. She could have helped them overcome their respective issues in a healthier way, but didn't because the Ellimist needed hardened soldiers, not happy kids. On her subconscious, STG level, she saw that if they weren't constantly being pushed to rely on themselves more and more, they wouldn't have become strong enough to do the things that needed doing.
If she is good at reading people, and knew exactly what she was doing throughout the series, then the implications about her aren’t very nice. It would mean she was being incredibly callous and/or messing with peoples’ heads, causing them a huge amount of grief and danger for no real rational reason. If she’s a part of the Ellimist, she’s at least got a decent motivation then, even if she doesn’t fully understand why.
When I did a bunch of rereading for this post, I also noticed she mentions how she doesn’t even know why she does things quite a lot. She just chalks it up to, “I don’t know,” and, “Something tells me I’m right,” all the time. I've got three examples in the above two excerpts alone. Just running off extremely lucky selfish gut instinct, or perhaps something… More? *strokes chin melodramatically* (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQoRXhS7vlU)
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Looks like it's time to come back in. XD
Once I post on Roleplaying across the board, I will take my shot at this. :} <3 You're still like the second or third coolest guy ever.
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Even if this was canon, it seems like a plot hole or some other sort of writing problem. On the other hand, maybe it's a well written character flaw.
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Part of being a well written character flaw is that other characters make note of it and urge the character to change. As opposed to Tobias telling Jake it was beyond wrong to exclude her from a meeting after what she did.
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Part of being a well written character flaw is that other characters make note of it and urge the character to change. As opposed to Tobias telling Jake it was beyond wrong to exclude her from a meeting after what she did.
You have a point.
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It's more complicated than that, though. Tobias and Rachel didn't agree with what she'd done either, they were more just on-board with the emotional thing that it was a dick move, and likely saw that excluding Cassie (of all people, little miss sees-three-steps-ahead) from friggin' war meetings wasn't exactly the smartest thing in the world to do. And they were right.
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Actually, I think it's even more complicated than that. Remember Elfangor's last words to Tobias?
[spoiler=The Andalite Chronicles]
The Yeerks came and I told the human children to hide. But Tobias stayed behind with me for just a few moments. Alone.
<Your mother ... tell me about your mother, Tobias. Your family.>
He was surprised. Troubled. "She . . . disappeared. When I was just little. I don't know what happened. I guess she died. People say she just left because she was messed up. They said she never got over my father. I don't know. But I know she has to be dead because she'd never have just left me. No matter what. But maybe that's just what I told myself. I don't exactly have a family."
It was a fresh stab of pain in my hearts. And yet, I knew now that all was not lost.
<Go to your friends, Tobias. They are your family now.>[/spoiler]
That little dialogue hit him really hard when Elfangor died. A random stranger who seemed to care for him, suddenly brutally murdered as he watched helplessly. It made him want to cling to what he had all the more, and he risked his life over and over to keep his friends alive and together. In the finale, when Jake lost his family, he kind of started to push everyone apart with his distrustful, isolationist, "gotta put on a strong face for them" attitude. Tobias picked up on that, and really didn't like it. When he saw Jake actively excluding Cassie from the meeting, when she'd always been part of the group since day one, he felt like he had to step in and take a stance or else this surrogate family of his would fall apart, and he'd be alone again. That thought just scared him too much, so he called Jake out on it.
He had to have felt betrayed, but he couldn't just let go of the bond he'd built with the others. Even though Cassie wasn't exactly close with him, she was still part of the group, part of his family, and family sticks together through everything. In my Tobias thread I mentioned he spent a lot of time coming up with an idealized view of how things should work because he had so much going wrong for him. This is one lingering echo of that.
This is also why he just couldn't stay around after the war ended. It wasn't just that Rachel sacrificed herself. If that were all, he would've been able to handle it a lot better. But the issue was that Jake, the guy he originally pushed to be the big protector of the group, ended up becoming the one who sacrificed it. It mirrored the whole ambiguous duality theme that traumatized him so much with his torture. Regardless of whether Jake's actions were justified or not, it felt like a betrayal on a level he just couldn't handle. Jake was suddenly worse than Tobias' aunt and uncle combined while the whole world celebrated his heroism.
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It would have been nice if that was elaborated on. Instead we get Cassie betraying the group, and Jake reasonably excluding her from a meeting (albeit accidentally), and Tobias saying it was "beyond wrong". Jake didn't say anything in his defense, and Tobias didn't elaborate. It's as if we're just meant to take Tobias' side, when I think Jake should have held a special meeting to call Cassie out and consider dropping her from the team.
We don't know if these Yeerks that nothlitized themselves took their unwilling hosts with them. We don't know if there are still morph capable Yeerks hiding somewhere, ready to assassinate world leaders and take their place. We don't know that the same victory couldn't have been achieved by keeping the box and sending a message to the yeerks that defecting meant a new life as something that didn't rely on kandrona radiation.
The only thing we know is that Cassie did something stupid that wound up having a silver lining in an otherwise dark cloud. Mostly due to an author's saving throw, I'm sure.