Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: Horsefan1023 (Seal) on February 10, 2009, 10:06:37 PM
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I always see a "we hate Cassie" somewhere, and I was wondering why you hate Cassie. Even, in Nohensen's new thread, "Cassie vs. Marco," he said "this is not a we hate Cassie thread." So, just tell me why.
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I actually really like Cassie. Tobias bothers me to no end (blasphemy, I know), but Cassie was really impressive. I disagree with her on virtually every little conflict in the series, but that just makes me like her even more. It's almost like, "you're so annoyingly NAIVE and good-natured! How can you possibly be so DECENT and NICE?! How dare you?!"
She really bothered me with some of the preaching, but she was necessary, you know? Without Cassie the team just wouldn't function.
I guess I'm more like Marco, with maybe a hint of Rachel's bluntness and Jake's 'this sucks, but it needs to be done anyway' attitude, but hey, I really wish I could be like Cassie. It's an admirable quality.
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Yeah, I don't get it. Cassie calmed people down, and even though she had some weird virtues, she was an important part of the group. And, provided a lot of morphs. Imagine without Cassie, Jake wouldn't have his Tiger, no Gorilla, no elephant, (in one, they went back behind the cages with her, as you remember) and possibly no Ax. Tobias had the visions too, so that's why I say possibly.
I don't get it. She was important.
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I think Cassie was all right, but she seemed to be just a bit too perfect. Add a few mistakes on her part, and I would be fine.
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I guess what bothered me most about her was that she, more than any of the other Animorphs, rang of "Mary Sue." Now, I'm not calling her a full-blooded Mary Sue, because if that were true I would have burned all the books written by her, but she was the most that way of the Animorphs, at least. And, being the roleplayer that I am, anything even slightly Mary Sue just bothers me on some instinctual level. I can't help it, really.
By Mary Sue, I mean that things just seemed to go her way a little too often, the other characters liked her a little too much, etc.
Funny thing is, even though Tobias is my favorite character, I think I can understand why some might not like him. He has a few Gary Stu qualities of his own; the hard life, the 'why me?' attitude, etc. But for some reason, those factors don't bother me so much in his case. I guess because I don't see the other characters bending over backwards to make his life easier like they do for Cassie.
To sum up, basically, like I said before, my dislike of Cassie is more based on my roleplayer-ish instinctual fear of Mary Sues than anything rational. I'm sure if I knew her in real life, as an actual person, I would love her to pieces.
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If Cassie's a K.A. Mary-Sue, then Marco's a Michael. ;)
And Jake's basically just that Captain America archetype, the slightly-dorky but otherwise completely average hero who takes the responsibility of everything upon his shoulders.
I'd call Tobias a silly emo, but he pre-dates emo by almost a decade. :)
So yeah, Cassie's not really any more of a Mary-Sue than Marco.
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My dislike of Cassie stems from her imposition of high moral standards, especially during the war. I view morals and economics in a situational basis (and by economics, I mean efficiency that typically isn't very moral). In normal daily activity, morality outweighs economics, which is fine since most of our daily activities aren't an emergency or a special occasion. We do not speed in traffic and cut through lines in our daily activities, because it is unnecessary and harms others. However, in emergencies or dire situations like war, economics should outweigh morals. If somebody's wife is pregnant, and he has to rush her to the hospital, speeding in traffic is necessary because it is more economic than obeying traffic speeds.
The problem about Cassie is that her morals often conflicted with the efficiency of the situation. I'm sure that they could have been far more efficient if they got rid of the morphing sentient creatures rule, and morphed key figures like Chapman more often.
Additionally, it seemed that her motivation for doing some things was really insignificant. For example, in book 8 (I think?) where the Yeerks were trying to trap them in the forest, she felt as though they needed to act to save the animals as the primary reason, which is a completely coincidental and secondary reason for why they should have stopped the Yeerks (to protect themselves). Her character reminds me of somebody who would actually risk the other members to protect some insignificant animals, just like that girl in the remake of Dawn of the Dead who ran across the street just to save that dog and nearly got the rescue team killed trying to save her.
Not only that, but it really ticked me when she stopped Jake from killing Tom. Of course, this wound up turning in their favor, but that was completely coincidental. It could have turned out far worse. Additionally, Jake killed Tom anyways, and it wasn't even like Tom was innocent anyways (I mean, he still had a Yeerk, and was therefore the enemy).
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If Cassie's a K.A. Mary-Sue, then Marco's a Michael. ;)
What's a "Michael"?
So yeah, Cassie's not really any more of a Mary-Sue than Marco.
What?! How is Marco at all Mary-Sue?! You must be seeing something that I missed, because I don't get that at all from him.
My dislike of Cassie stems from her imposition of high moral standards, especially during the war. I view morals and economics in a situational basis (and by economics, I mean efficiency that typically isn't very moral). In normal daily activity, morality outweighs economics, which is fine since most of our daily activities aren't an emergency or a special occasion. We do not speed in traffic and cut through lines in our daily activities, because it is unnecessary and harms others. However, in emergencies or dire situations like war, economics should outweigh morals. If somebody's wife is pregnant, and he has to rush her to the hospital, speeding in traffic is necessary because it is more economic than obeying traffic speeds.
The problem about Cassie is that her morals often conflicted with the efficiency of the situation. I'm sure that they could have been far more efficient if they got rid of the morphing sentient creatures rule, and morphed key figures like Chapman more often.
Additionally, it seemed that her motivation for doing some things was really insignificant. For example, in book 8 (I think?) where the Yeerks were trying to trap them in the forest, she felt as though they needed to act to save the animals as the primary reason, which is a completely coincidental and secondary reason for why they should have stopped the Yeerks (to protect themselves). Her character reminds me of somebody who would actually risk the other members to protect some insignificant animals, just like that girl in the remake of Dawn of the Dead who ran across the street just to save that dog and nearly got the rescue team killed trying to save her.
Not only that, but it really ticked me when she stopped Jake from killing Tom. Of course, this wound up turning in their favor, but that was completely coincidental. It could have turned out far worse. Additionally, Jake killed Tom anyways, and it wasn't even like Tom was innocent anyways (I mean, he still had a Yeerk, and was therefore the enemy).
Rossabo, that's one of the reasons I used to cite for disliking Cassie, too; putting morals in front of the greater good, and all that. But what you have to consider is that it's easy to look at the Animorphs' decisions and say "Oh, you should have done that" or "What were you thinking when you did that?", but it's much harder to make those same decisions under the stress of war. We can think about it all rationally. They sometimes didn't have that luxury. And even when they weren't under the stress of battle, they were still so close to the situation, that emotions would get in the way of logical thought.
Or, maybe I'm just defending Cassie on this particular point because I think I would have done a lot of the same things she did. :P
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Rossabo, that's one of the reasons I used to cite for disliking Cassie, too; putting morals in front of the greater good, and all that. But what you have to consider is that it's easy to look at the Animorphs' decisions and say "Oh, you should have done that" or "What were you thinking when you did that?", but it's much harder to make those same decisions under the stress of war. We can think about it all rationally. They sometimes didn't have that luxury. And even when they weren't under the stress of battle, they were still so close to the situation, that emotions would get in the way of logical thought.
Or, maybe I'm just defending Cassie on this particular point because I think I would have done a lot of the same things she did. :P
I think that they handled the events more like sporting events than an actual war. I guess the only person I would agree with if I was in their situation would be Rachel. If I was in their situation, I would have used guns (obviously they couldn't have used guns in the books) and I would have blown up the Yeerk pool a long time ago. I'm not trying to make turn this into a "this is what I would have done" scenario, I'm just trying to say that I think many of us would handle the situation a lot more violently and aggressively than they did, and part of why the group did not act as aggressively as I think they should have is due to Cassie.
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What?! How is Marco at all Mary-Sue?! You must be seeing something that I missed, because I don't get that at all from him.
You do know Animorphs was co-written by her husband, right? Michael Grant/Reynolds/whatever else he goes by. Sarcastic and devious, somewhat provocative from his blogs. Writer of Gone, co-writer of Animorphs and Everworld and Remnants. K.A.'s basically said that if any of the characters reflect them personally, Cassie has a lot of her and Marco has a lot of Michael.
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I actually used to really like Cassie. She was my favourite character for about half the series. But, at some point in time, she just started to bother me... I think it was around the buffa-human book... Which wouldn't have been so bad if the next book narated by her hadn't been the equally useless and fillery Australia book. So... I don't know, I guess she just wasn't treated well by the ghost writers in this span of books, and really lost her appeal to me. This was a point where she could have had a lot of really good growth as a character, but instead she was just... I dunno. Blah.
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She just got annoying sometimes.
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I like cassie, so I don't have anything to say, but I know for a fact that the two reason most people hate her are either, they don't like her moralizing, they don't like how she's almost perfect, or both...
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She does some things that others feel there's vindication for, but I don't believe it. Opting to force David to become a nothlit instead of giving him a quick death. Letting Tom escape with the morphing cube. Never morphing Humans because of some vague similarities between morphing sentient creatures and what Yeerks do. Leaving the team and abandoning the world and her friends so she doesn't turn into Rachel. Those things I don't feel there's vindication for.
She played an important role in the group, and I don't hate her. She's just my least favorite. I'm more like Marco, who is pretty opposite of Cassie.
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It's not so much that I didn't like her as that I was sort of indifferent to her, I liked Tobias, Rachel and Marco, I respected Jake, I thought Ax was funny, and Cassie? Well . . . meh. Her books were usually pretty boring, I don't know why but I found her interactions with Aftran the only thing that interested me when it was Cassie's turn to tell the story, I mean appart from book 4 which was awesome.
It was when she let Tom get away with the cube that that indifference became a slight dislike, but only slight, I was willing to see how that ended before I made my final decision on the matter.
And then it ended in disaster, and I think when the series ended I resented her for surviving when the implication was that none of the others would and the fact was Rachel hadn't. I think I was kind of mad at her for not forcing her way into the mission, as stupid as that seems now that I think of it, I guess I just felt like if it were to end that way she should have been there too.
Still I don't hate her, I just like her less than the other Animorphs . . . the only character I ever really found myself just disliking--no no, I admit: hating: was Aldrea . . . who did eventually share a body with Cassie so naturally there was some agression towards Cassie for not calling a priest right away to cast that evil spirit right out.
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What?! How is Marco at all Mary-Sue?! You must be seeing something that I missed, because I don't get that at all from him.
You do know Animorphs was co-written by her husband, right? Michael Grant/Reynolds/whatever else he goes by. Sarcastic and devious, somewhat provocative from his blogs. Writer of Gone, co-writer of Animorphs and Everworld and Remnants. K.A.'s basically said that if any of the characters reflect them personally, Cassie has a lot of her and Marco has a lot of Michael.
Oh, I can kinda see that, then. But . . . I think there's a subtle difference between a self-insert and a Mary-Sue. If done well, a character who happens to resemble the author can be just fine. In Marco's case, it isn't really apparent that he's like Michael. I mean, he doesn't get any favoritism from the authors, so he's really just another character. Now, when you have a character who's a lot like you, they're at a much higher risk of becoming a Mary-Sue, so most authors have to be careful in those waters. The difference being that Marco managed to escape that, whereas Cassie was pretty blatantly the favorite character throughout a lot of the series.
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I don't know if anybody else has realized this, but the praise for Cassie generally comes from girls, and the criticism of Cassie generally comes from guys. I think it's funny because it draws back to typical inherent human behavior- that the guys are more aggressive, and girls are more nurturing.
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I actually really like Cassie. Tobias bothers me to no end (blasphemy, I know), but Cassie was really impressive. I disagree with her on virtually every little conflict in the series, but that just makes me like her even more. It's almost like, "you're so annoyingly NAIVE and good-natured! How can you possibly be so DECENT and NICE?! How dare you?!"
She really bothered me with some of the preaching, but she was necessary, you know? Without Cassie the team just wouldn't function.
I guess I'm more like Marco, with maybe a hint of Rachel's bluntness and Jake's 'this sucks, but it needs to be done anyway' attitude, but hey, I really wish I could be like Cassie. It's an admirable quality.
I agree. I was never a huge fan of Tobias or Rachel (or R/T for that matter, which is atypical of me because I'm a sucker for the whole doomed romance thing, but that's another topic for another thread) and I never understood why they seemed to be the favorites.
I'm kind of like Marco too. I don't disagree with Cassie exactly; I like her rationale for believing what she does, and I'd agree except that it just seems to add way too much complexity to the situation. I don't want to take anything more into account than I have to, but Cassie forces me to think about it, and I like that.
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Cassie was fine for most of the books, I just didn't like the ones she narrated because I was "forced" to read her constant moralizing. When she piped in or gave her opinion I didn't have a problem with it. She'd make a good point or something. But the constant nagging in her head annoyed me. I see people like that on tv or whatever and I really just want to slap them. Something about it bothers me.
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Cassie was actually one of my favorite Animorphs((next to Marco) the only one of her books that I didnt like was the Departure, and the one where she was in Aussie Land, other than those, I found her books to be very exciting. I didnt like how she turned out in the end though. there are so many things KA could've done with her but she decided to let her live the rest of her life with all her friends dead. I hated most of tobias' books though. most of them were really repetative. just Toby whining about how hard his life is, and how he wanders if he became a nothlit on purpose and blah blah blah. the only Tobias books I really liked were The Diversion and the Pretender.
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I couldnt stand her because of her animal obsession. true she held the group together, but in some books she was just too much of a tree hugger for me. Like when she was crying about the kits, or about the triceratop, or the termite queen. im always left thinking, well theres more than 5 skunk kits, and all the dinosaurs died out, so why are you crying? but i do reconize her wisdom on most cases.
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They made Cassie too special.
The estreen who is the only one who can do certain missions, the stragetist through empathy that is momunental in everything, and (this is the worst in my eyes) the one who is the anchor to our ***ing reality?!
They gave Cassie so much in an already incredible live, and all these things were just luck or talent or whatever.
She came into it all to easily, and I don't like that
That and the CONSTANT preaching.
We get it; war bad, killing bad, you still do it when you have to.
Just too much for me
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Yeah, I agree about the space-time anomaly Ellimist thing. But then again, a LOT of the Ellimist's chess game bothered me, when it was revealed he's basically orchestrated every little frakkin' thing except Rachel, right down to the kids meeting at the mall that night.
I was like...GUH.
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i've found that it's not that i don't like Cassie, but i just LOVE the other five and was always more indifferent to her.
plus to me, her books were the most boring. i mean, granted she had her hugely important ones, like 4 and 50 and the ones with Aftran, but she also had the horse book, the amazing morphing-buffalo, the Australia one and a bunch of other fillers i can't even remember the plot of. while some of her moralizing annoyed me, if i had to say why i don't like Cassie, it was just because i didn't like her books.
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in fact, rachel and jake have about just as many filler books. tobias and ax didn't have too many books in the first place, so marco is the only one that had a lot of important books...
I don't know if anybody else has realized this, but the praise for Cassie generally comes from girls, and the criticism of Cassie generally comes from guys. I think it's funny because it draws back to typical inherent human behavior- that the guys are more aggressive, and girls are more nurturing.
...haven't noticed this...the number of guys and girls who support cassie seem to be equal to me...
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Yeah, but... Rachel's and Jake's filler books weren't as annoying as Cassie's. I mean, yeah, Rachel had the Magic School Bus book, and Jake had Atlantis, but most of their fillers either had a point, character development wise, or were at least entertaining. Cassie's were always the same character development, that we've already seen in her NON filler books that were done well.
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but they were entertaining...
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i never did like Cassie as much as the rest of them because of the naivety and the preaching about the animals.
contradicts with my philosophy.
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For me, I was fine with Cassie for the most part. Had I been on the team, I probably would have quit because of her. I like Cassie. I do. When she's not preaching, she's a decent character. The problem starts when someone suggests something that has to be done. Cassie would sit there and debate ethics. I can understand that she doesn't want to lose herself to the war, but some things have to be done. I mean, she won't morph a human if it could get her into the yeerk pool and save the mission, but she never refuses to kill a group of Hork-Bajir that are trying to kill her. She doesn't fight the ethics battles she knows she'll lose. But I like Cassie. I found her somewhat boring at times, but okay. She just needed to understand the bigger picture. I'm going to sound all nerdy here for a second, but if I could say one thing to her it'd be "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" ---- "In times of war, the law falls silent"
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wait...when did she say she wouldn't morph a human to get into the yeerk pool? she'd most likely not do it, of course, but when it was said that she wouldn't?
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It's one am here. It's the only example I could think of. I just meant that she has more morals regarding acquiring a sentient creature than killing one. She outright refuses to morph a human, but she settles with just "disapproving" over killing innocent Hork-Bajir.
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Yeah . . . to be honest given that Hork-bajir are supposed to be few in number with a slow reproducive rate (this was stated in Visser) it seemed odd to me that in addition to all the ones the Animorphs killed or maimed Visser 3 by doing things like executing them for making dumb comments and doing genetic experiements on them, you think Visser 3 would run out of stock after a while, been forced to use nothing but human controlers and then win the war because the Animorphs would be powerless because they always tried not to kill humans :P
Or you know, at least notice that casualties are always staggering with Taxxons, high with Hork-bajir and comparatively nonexistant with humans and therefore use humans more often.
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I don't think they are really that few. I mean, "small" in number can mean lots of different thing, depending on your perspective. Visser might just mean that there aren't enough Hork-Bajir for the number of yeerks they have, and they breed slowly. If Hork-Bajir can for numerous large colonies over an entire plant they can't be THAT close to extinction...
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Well true, but they're the shock troops of the entire empire and their intial stock was hit by a quantum virus so you'd think whatever's left would be divvied out in varying numbers to all the Vissers, even sub-Vissers have some Hork-Bajir under their direct command, I mean they're the go to ground troop of the Empire and the're half the crew of all the bug fighters, the only Yeerk attack craft we ever see (though we see a variant in 11) so you'd think Visser 3 would be a little less tail crazy on them, you also have to figure since he's the only Visser (We know of) who's losing them to a free colony he'd have to explain why he has so many KIAs and MIAs on a planet where there shouldn't be any strong resistance, just a ragtag band of bandits.
If I were his superior officer I wouldn't send him replacements based on that alone, I'd send them to the front lines and tell him to make due with his new Human controllers, after all that is what he's there to gather. Nevertheless I think I even remember Visser 1 making a joke about Visser 3's rough treatment of his Hork-Bajir so I doubt it's uncommon or all that harshly frowned upon for Vissers to be overly aggresive in their disciplinary actions, the question is if there are forty something Vissers all commanding entire armies losing Hork-Bajir left and right why didn't they try to find a back up shock troop? I mean I thought that's what they intended to use humans for, a go-to host since they were so numerous, yet Visser 3 rarely risks large numbers of human controllers, he prefers to send in squads of Hork-Bajir, if he'd used more human controllers the Animorphs and Cassie in particular would have had a harder time fighting simply because while they show little and no concern about Hork-Bajir or Taxxon life respectively they always try to avoid killing humans, and if they didn't I'm sure good old Cassie would give them such a talking to they'd know better next time.
A mixture of Visser 3 using more human controllers (before they became morph capable that is) and Cassie's strong morals could have ended the Animorphs, or at least made things much harder for them . . . I guess that's a reason not to like Cassie, though it's kind of a poor one since Visser 3's determination to set Hork-Bajir against alleged Andalite instead of swarming them with humans like he was supposed to prevented us from seeing if she'd react tht way . . . she might have taken a JtHM approach to it and just gotten with the swing of things, finding little reasons to justify the killing . . . while listening to classical music.
I think I'd have liked her a bit more then.
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...If I were his superior officer I wouldn't send him replacements based on that alone...
. . . she might have taken a JtHM approach to it and just gotten with the swing of things, finding little reasons to justify the killing . . . while listening to classical music...
Part A. I wouldn't give him anymore Hork-Bajir either.
Part B. What's JtHM?
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Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. Except in this case it'd be Cassie the Homicidal Maniac so CtHM. ;)
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I don't think they are really that few. I mean, "small" in number can mean lots of different thing, depending on your perspective. Visser might just mean that there aren't enough Hork-Bajir for the number of yeerks they have, and they breed slowly. If Hork-Bajir can for numerous large colonies over an entire plant they can't be THAT close to extinction...
Quantum virus ring any bells?
Alloran launched a fairly successful bio-genocide attack on them. The HB homeworld war was pretty much Vietnam on roids, only this time with mass extermination. The population as of the 1990's is probably a couple million, maybe even less, hundreds of thousands.
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I believe in visser, it was said that there were thousands of hork-bajir...
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Yeah. It's definitely not in the tens of millions, certainly not billions like us. Taxxons and Andalites are unknown, but they're likely to count their numbers in millions too, not the bizzizleions.
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I don't think they are really that few. I mean, "small" in number can mean lots of different thing, depending on your perspective. Visser might just mean that there aren't enough Hork-Bajir for the number of yeerks they have, and they breed slowly. If Hork-Bajir can for numerous large colonies over an entire plant they can't be THAT close to extinction...
Quantum virus ring any bells?
Alloran launched a fairly successful bio-genocide attack on them. The HB homeworld war was pretty much Vietnam on roids, only this time with mass extermination. The population as of the 1990's is probably a couple million, maybe even less, hundreds of thousands.
Yes, but the Yeerks love Hork-Bajir hosts. I doubt that they'd use them as shock troupes if there was a danger that the HB would become extinct from battles.
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I'm sure they had breeding programs and measures to make sure that the Hork-Bajir wouldn't go extinct, but they were too careless about them. Doing genetic experiments, casul executions (Visser 3 at one point throws one out an air lock because it broke his concentration) and we know that the Yeerks used Hork-Bajir and . . . well, we don't know of anything else, as their front line soldiers and as garrison soldiers, Taxxons are implied as being more numberous yet still are more like a second line soldier so on a galactic scale the Yeerks were probably winning some fights, but any time they lost a battle, or lost a pool ship how many Hork-Bajir did they lose, and could they replace them quickly enough?
I remember now that they mention Hork-Bajir reach maturity fast, Toby was an adult by the end of the series wasn't she? So a 2-3 earth year wait for a combat ready Hork-Bajir controller . . . I mean it's possible that the Yeerks could maintain Hork-Bajir numbers during the war, certainly better than the Andalites, when but I still feel like with carelessness like that shown by Visser 3 they would have seen numbers dropping gradually, or even rapidly.
I mean in the end what did they plan to use humans for? They don't pilot bug fighters, they don't go into combat, they might be technicians and they do help to crew the Blade Ship and Pool Ship, I guess freeing Hork-Bajir and Taxxons up to be used in ground combat, but still did Visser 3 have a quota of humans needed, a number he had to maintain thus explaining why he didn't risk them very often? I mean why play an ace if a two will do? Why risk a Hork-Bajir when you can use a human? He's on earth, he can replace humans much more easily, kidnap homeless people off the street, no one would notice or care, it doesnt matter that they're not voluntary or that they're not in a position of power, for a dracon toting grunt to be thrown at the andalite bandits you don't need the president of the united states, just a body with a trigger finger.
There is a Japanese saying that goes something like buy 100 spears for 10 gold, instead of one sword for 1,000 gold, losing even one Hork-Bajir would have been worse than losing a few humans, Visser 3 must have lost well over a hundred to the Animorphs even before the free Hork-Bajir started abducting them too, all in all I doubt his losses would have reached one thousand, but before becoming Visser 1 I doubt he should have had many more than a thousand of these soldiers on a simple harvest world, they'd need more of them for the worlds that do know they're being invaded and to fend off the Andalite fleets and armies.
The Animorphs went out of their way at times not to harm humans so losses in Yeerk life would have been reduced as well.
Instead Visser 3 says <Hork-Bajir . . . go use your blades, I want some entertainment . . . no, put the dracon beams down, I said use the blades.>
If I were a Hork-Bajir controller under his command I'd hop into a bug fighter and fly straight to Visser 4 with a copy of Visser 3's personal diary and say "Listen up dude, you want to be Visser 3, I want to make the current one look bad, give me a higher rank and you get to know who Visser 3 calls his "widdle schmoopykins"
Except it'd come out more like "Ghafrash, be Visser 3, ghafrash higher rank, fit me know, eked widdle schmoopykins!"
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They use them as shock troops because they're the only physically worthy hosts they have for the job. Population has nothing to do with it.
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I don't think they are really that few. I mean, "small" in number can mean lots of different thing, depending on your perspective. Visser might just mean that there aren't enough Hork-Bajir for the number of yeerks they have, and they breed slowly. If Hork-Bajir can for numerous large colonies over an entire plant they can't be THAT close to extinction...
Quantum virus ring any bells?
i find it somewhat funny that a "virus" that is based upon attacking the individual molecule of the host can be resisted..
it's not even in the book of Biology, it's in the book of Physics
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Well, they're using biological agents to attack...biology. Using physics knowledge, sure, but it's still pretty much in the boundaries of a bio-weapon.
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I actually like Cassie. When I first read the series, I hated her foolish morals and contradictory whining. But now I admire her trying to keep to a code of right and wrong. She helped represent the group's soul and embodied the things they were fighting for, so sue her if she didn't want to hate herself after the war was over. What's humanity's survival worth if it becomes as amoral as the Yeerks, anyway?
And it wasn't like she couldn't kick ass, she had her share of throat-ripping just like the others did. In book 29 I admire her strength.
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I kind of side with you on general attitude toward Cassie, but how were her morals "foolish"?
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Foolish as in how she impeded the group from doing what it supposedly "had to do" at the time. Back in those days, I'd be reading, they'd almost get the bad guy, and then Cassie would go "STOP! Is this right?" and I'd wanna stab the page.
Like I said, my opinion of her has improved since I was younger.
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Yeah. I mean, I just don't think she was foolish, as such. Without her balancing and checking Marco, they'd probably be morphing people left right and center, and unleashing hell through Rachel.
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Which I don't see a problem with. If it's a couple of teenagers trying to defeat an entire species, I say do anything you can. If that means staying in a morally dark area, so be it.
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Jake would have lost it, though. Without Cassie, you don't have Jake making effective decisions taking in both the narrow and broad strokes, the immediate and the big picture.
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There are some points where Cassie's refusal to be morally dark helped them out. For example she didn't kill Aftran as essentially everyone else wanted to do and though Aftran says that there are other yeerks who don't want to enslave it seems it was Aftran itself that organized them into the resistance. Later, one mission where Cassie refuses to participate due to the imorality of what they're doing she ends up saving everyone by going against her own morals and attacking other humans, if she'd just gone along and been morally dark both the Animorphs and the Yeerk Peace Movement could have been wiped out.
The problem isn't so much Cassie's morals as it is the effects they have, she's pretty much always proving that doing the right thing will be rewarding in the long run . . . except at the very end of the series, and even that's debateable. In reality, unless you want to get religion involved there's little evidence that doing the right thing will always (if indeed ever) have its own rewards later on.
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Although Cassie is second from the bottom on my personal animorph pile, and she does get on my nerves, alot, she was the only one who could see from A-Z whereas Marco just saw from A-C or D. By questioning if what she was doing she was essentially wondering if they could live with themselves when all was said and done. For that, I like Cassie.
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.... I liked Cassie..... :donno: