Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: SmartGirl333 on August 17, 2013, 12:35:27 AM
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Which 1? :ax:, :rachel:, :cassie:, :tobias:, :jake:, :marco: or someone else? My vote is made obvious by my Sig :ax:
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My favorites Anis would probably go: Marco, Ax, Tobias, Rachel, Jake, Cassie. Marco is most like me, I believe. I can relate to him the most. Ax is hilarious. I can relate to Tobias being a bully magnet, and he's kind of a woobie. Rachel is strong of mind, and the closest thing to an actual warrior/soldier besides Ax in the group. Jake is kind of boring. Not much really stands out. Cassie is the most annoying at times, especially in the final arc and ending.
There were other interesting characters, but that's my view of the main six.
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I may contradict nearly everyone on the site by putting the characters in this order: Cassie, Jake, Marco, Rachel, Tobias, Ax. My reasoning goes like this:
Cassie--- Of all the characters in the story, the only one to remotely resemble me in "flavor" is Cassie. Now granted I only read through #42 or so, so I never saw most of the segments where Cassie gets Mary Sued up. What I do know is that the girl is prone to making ****ty decisions on the basis of morality alone, and going off on a mental tangent when she is most needed. Yet she also functions as the "heart": all of these details are similar to....well, me in most of my relationships.
Jake ---- Jake is the character whose stories bring most to mind the "conflict of the hero"---- what a leader or visionary does as they're forced to be an ideal when their lives, families, and identity are slowly compromised. Since I'm fascinated by this kind of thought process, and by the idea of a hero/supervillain wearing emotional masks to fit the situation...he interests me. He also gets some of the best weird time travel/Crayak-Ellimist incidents, and I am obsessed by that sort of thing.
Marco--- Marco is interesting because his tactics I'm as intimately familiar with as I am with Cassie's. The loudmouth who hides behind his bravado, who is in some way intimately tied to the actual conflict but rarely mentions it among most other people. The bravado concealing a brutally cold and strategic mind that leaps right to the most practical solution. Yep, sounds damn familiar.
Rachel--- Rachel is closer to my sister than me, and so never really wowed me as much as the others. She is interesting as far as plotlines go, but I never really liked being in her head much. I guess because I control my own aggression with the skill of a master and so don't understand how Rachel can falter. Her Will is strong and her mind is fierce, yet her Will conceals her inability to control her strength.
Tobias: I can relate to Tobias' problems but not really his methods. I like his sharp mind though--- reminds me of my own in some instances.
Ax: Ax is just boring. He's too "Spock" for me to relate to, too technical, even though his culture is fascinating. Elfangor I took to much more immediately--- less logical and more emotional than his younger brother that he is.
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My favorite is Marco but Cassie comes in a close second. Out of the six main characters, those two are the only ones who almost always do or say things that make me think "hmmm...yeah that sounds like something I'd do/say". And the littler personality quizes that used to be on the official website always went back and forth between labeling me as Cassie or as Marco every time I took it.
Favorites in Order: Marco, Cassie, Rachel, Jake, Ax, David, Tobias
Yes. I added David to that list just to show how much I dislike Tobias. He is to me what Cassie is to the majority of Animorphs fans. And he's just such a bore! There are only two Tobias books I actually enjoyed. The rest I struggled through because they were just so damn boring.
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Some like me think Tobias is the woobie. Others think he's the scrappy.
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Other! Toby Hamee. Unfortunately wasn't explored much in the series but was nonetheless a fascinating character.
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Some like me think Tobias is the woobie. Others think he's the scrappy.
He's the scrappy because of how hard they try to make him the woobie. It's just too much. I can only be told to pity somebody so many times before I just get pissed. And then there was his forced relationship with Rachel that was more mother/child or big sister/little brother than anything romantic. Jake and Cassie felt more natural than that, and those two barely ever did anything.
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Actually, Tobias' forced relationship with Rachel felt like the most natural thing about him. My real problem with him was that he seemed so damn miserable all the time. o__o; I mean, true....Tobias' life was basically ass in a bucket. But as a kid, at the time I read it, it was simply impossible for me to relate to that kind of existential angst. Kid Me, in a demented sort of way, thought that existential angst made you cool and not depressed. ......boy was I a dumb kid. :p
~Well that and all those men you have known have responded to such angst with arrogance and self-aggrandizement. Moping, on a man, seems terribly unnatural to you. Weak and unappealing. Only showing their true fear to those closest to them.
Yep.
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Pre-ghostwriter Rachel is still my favorite, though overall, I'd have to give it to Marco. Rachel, pre-ghostwriter, was a well-developed character-- brilliant, beautiful, witty, ruthless, sort of the more gung-ho yin to Marco's yang. Later in the series she devolved into just a blonde maniac who I could no longer appreciate. Marco, to me, is easily the most relateable character in the series.
Granted, when I was first reading the series, Ax's social awkwardness, ridiculous antics, and "being an alien"-ness made him my favorite.
Chad, you and your TVtropes :P I had to go look those terms up.
Honestly, Kelly, you raise an interesting point about Tobias-- you were unable to relate to that much existential angst, and therefore, you disliked the character. Whether someone likes or dislikes Tobias likely has to do with how well they relate to him. How well someone relates to Tobias likely has a lot to do with two things: 1) How much cause they had for angst in their childhood (or life prior to whenever they read the series) and 2) How they deal with said angst-making situations.
Basically, I'm saying that Tobias acts as the series' liaison to the downtrodden, but that those who've never really had cause for the type of angst and depression Tobias goes through won't really get it. Whether you consider Tobias to be your *looks back up at Chad's post to remember the words* woobie or your scrappy may say more about you than you realize :P
That said... I had a reasonably happy childhood, but I can absolutely relate to Tobias's feelings of depression. Even so, I am not a fan of Tobias.
Is anybody else a little in awe of the fact that the same author wrote all six characters, in all their different types of relateability?
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The fact that she made such a varied cast of main characters is one of the best things about the series. Unfortunately the ghostwriters flanderized some of them. There's another TV tropes word. It means exaggerating something about a character that used to just be a minor part of them. Rachel's willingness to fight is a good example.
TV Tropes will enrich your life. TV Tropes will ruin your life.
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I feel like my favorite character depends on which book I'm reading at the time. XD When I first started reading, I told people my favorite was Rachel. Because I was 11 and a girl and thought I had to pick a girl. ::) Not that I don't like Rachel. She narrates one of my favorite books in the series (#22) I think my real favorite at first was Tobias. <.< ...Possibly because I like seeing characters get kicked around. That sounds bad. But makes so much sense to me now that I've written that. XD
Jake also takes his turn as my favorite. I catch myself patterning characters I write after him sometimes.
Marco I feel like basically shaped my worldview. XD Like, literally, I can point to a thing I wrote when I was first reading Animorphs where I basically say "I'm going to try to find the humor in everything. Because Marco."
Blargh. I'm just going to take the easy way out and say Elfangor. Because it's technically true. Also books that more directly involve him in some way (for real, in a flashback, or in a weird hallucination thing) are the ones I keep going back to reread. And Andalite Chronicles is one of my favorite books ever, never mind in the series. XD
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i'll stick to my story:
such a tough question~ i admire all of the animorphs...
but i'll stick with jake. the whole 'responsibility' thing- gotta give him credit for toughing it out. wish i had the balls to make half the decisions he made.
oddly, although i believe i have the most in common with cassie, i find it hardest to relate to her. :-\
which sums it up. when i was in elementary school, i used to believe that i had a lot in common with rachel. honestly, the only thing that i think that i have in common with her is a broken "fight or flight" reflex.
i fight. every time. i'm insane and a moron.
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Out of the six main characters Marco is by far my favorite. Others have already illustrated why he is so awesome already so I wont go into that too much.
Visser 3 has to be my favorite besides anyone in the main six. I mourn him though, as his potential was killed off pretty early. His own power crazed ego turned him into a scooby doo villain by the time the Animorphs met him. In the Andalite and Hork-Bajir chronicles he was smart, dangerous, and full of ambition.
I really did enjoy his 'monster of the week' schtick in the books. He was just horrible at actually doing his job though, and Visser 1 was much more dangerous. Its too bad the only fear he actually inspired was turning into horrors from other worlds.
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I really liked V3 in the first few books, but he was overused and book 9 was like the final nail in the coffin.
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I really liked V3 in the first few books, but he was overused and book 9 was like the final nail in the coffin.
Yeahhhh that is pretty much true.
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Dear old Visser Three was interesting to me too, but mainly as others have said when K.A. wrote him really well. The ghostwriters couldn't do it at all, and K.A. even occasionally screwed it up. He seems to get his brain back in the first Megamorphs too, even if I've heard that people have mixed opinions on that one. Loved that one. Also loved the less-than-playful banter going on between Three and One in Visser.
And his pompous-as-all-hell behavior around the Council in that one. XD In the Roleplays we do with Meg, where Roleplay Mar starts to sound like Broadway Javert's demented bastard child, he's also probably channeling the good old Visser's rants from way-back-when. ;) Then again, I've also heard that practically any attempt I make to get passionate gets a bit of it in there. <.<
As for the notes on Tobias....oddly, my childhood wasn't exactly free of angst and I occasionally responded pretty similar to him. o.o; I think it's more his gender than anything, as sexist as that is---- like I said, all of my male role models at that age were.....arrogant as all hell, and prone to converting angst into aggression.
So yeah. :p
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Visser 3 has to be my favorite besides anyone in the main six. I mourn him though, as his potential was killed off pretty early. His own power crazed ego turned him into a scooby doo villain by the time the Animorphs met him. In the Andalite and Hork-Bajir chronicles he was smart, dangerous, and full of ambition.
I really did enjoy his 'monster of the week' schtick in the books. He was just horrible at actually doing his job though, and Visser 1 was much more dangerous. Its too bad the only fear he actually inspired was turning into horrors from other worlds.
i completely agree with this. and shenmue. and i'd not really thought about it before- he did have a lot of potential as a character and villain, huh? hmmm.
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I guess its kinda cool that Visser 3 can get it done when it really matters. I'm still disappointed that he was such a horrible leader and villain in the regular series though.
Shenmue had a lot of great points. He was pretty awesome in Visser and Megamorphs 1 as well.
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There was also book 11 when he morphed something that looks like a tree to blend in with the jungle. Plus just waiting for the Anis to come back instead of sending search parties.
He had good moments. He was just overused, and thus also needed to be the fall guy.
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My favourite Animorphs is Tobias, my favourite character is the Ellimist.
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I got the feeling that people didn't care a whole lot for the Ellemist. Personally I don't mind him, and liked the idea that he was the reason the Anis always made it out of missions ok.
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The Ellimist was pretty cool. He was interesting enough as a manipulative bastard in the main series and the Megamorphs, but when it came time for his story to be told in The Ellimist Chronicles, I felt many feelings for him.
My favorite Animorph, as many also say, changes often. It's hard to choose when they're all so brilliant. Right now it's Marco, but a week ago it was Jake, and it's usually Ax. Maybe next week it will be Cassie.
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I always LIKED the Ellimist, but he became my favourite when I read his Chronicles book and found out that he started out as a gamer... And a crappy one, at that.
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This is a really tough decision. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but I'll have to go with Tobias, followed by Rachel, Marco, Jake, Ax, and finally Cassie.
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Tobias is by far my favorite. I've had a terrific childhood, but I find him oddly relatable. All of his books felt very well written to me. It just bothers me how in the end, Applegate screwed him. He never got to have the life he deserved.
Rachel's reckless and violent nature intrigues me, but I feel like more should've been done about her character. She felt kind of underdeveloped in the end. They really could've done more with her. It seems odd then that I would have her be my second favorite. It's just that there was so much potential in her that I couldn't put her any lower. I almost want to say that I relate to her as well as Tobias, but I don't. There are only small bits of her personality that I relate to, but I still
What's not to love about Marco? He's sarcastic, logical, cautious, and would've made a much better leader than Jake were he able to make rapid-fire decisions under pressure easier. The ongoing story about Marco's mother was great, too. I simply liked Rachel a bit better.
Jake actually kind of bored me at times. He's just so average that he gets kind of bland. However, he does have some really great moments with Crayak and the Ellimist as well as some interesting moments with internal struggles about leadership. And who can forget possession by Yeerk!
Ax's comic relief made him my favorite when I was younger, but now he really isn't that interesting of a character.
Cassie has always been a huge annoyance for me. Her need to go over every decision with a moralistic fine-tooth comb just irritated the piss out of me. One good thing about the last several books was Cassie's ability to finally see that they are in a freaking war and you can't win by planting flowers and singing songs at the enemy. This change in character is slight and isn't really noticeable until she argues with her parents about certain war tactics.
Interesting enough, some of my favorite books are Cassie books. The Aftran books were brilliantly done and Cassie's hyper-idealistic attitude actually has merit here. Of course, she then has to ruin my appreciation of her in these books with her terrible decisions and attitude in others...
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Tobias without a doubt he is just the best character you could possibly have in a book, in my eyes anyway.
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While Cassie was not a 'fun' character, like Marco (who is my favorite), she is quintessentially the spirit of the Animorph books.
Free will, right and wrong, good and evil
The Departed - Karen shook her head. ".. Do you think I would deliberately trap a morph-capable body as a bug if I weren't sincere? I'm giving up everything! Will you give up nothing?"
And she actually went through with it. Which of the other Animorphs would have done this with so much negative bias towards ALL Yeerks? Not to mention the storyline payoff of having the Yeerk resistance aiding them.
I couldn't find the quote in my books, but I believe it was Tobias in one of the last 10 books - "I dont hate [them]. Its like, I don't even hate the Yeerks right now", a very Cassie-like opinion 25 books of content after she displayed this.
So while Cassie is not THE favorite, I do not believe she gets enough credit, and deserves more respect than being labelled a Mary-Sue. We could have had an Animorph series without Marco, and while the tone would have been different, the story would have remained relatively unchanged. If Cassie was left out, bad choices would have been made that would have hurt the overall outcome of the book.
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I don't think you should get credit for for something going right when you do something stupid. What she did paid off, but she went about it the wrong way. That isn't skill. That's luck.
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Cassie is a somewhat tragic character in the sense that her character would have been great to read if it was always written the way it was in 19 The Departed.
She was still the foolish moralizing idealist of the group in that book, but it was written in a way that felt much more understandable and organic. Many still wouldn't have liked her, but she would have been way, way more readable and accepted.
I don't know why on top of her being annoyingly moralizing and a broken record they also had to make her the most likely to do stupid things like screw up military time.
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I'm not exactly sure what I'd do to make Cassie better, except maybe have her be called out more, or grow out of her idealistic mindset more. If she had been the most idealistic, but eventually grew out of that and became a more pragmatic, adult person, it would be better not necessarily a lot like Marco or Rachel, but just more realistic about how she does things. Things go right for her, seemingly not because of how she does things, but because the author wants things to happen a certain way.
19 had some of her best and worst moments. It's good that she found out more about Yeerks and helped Aftran, but abandoning the group for selfish reasons, and putting blind faith in something she wanted to happen was stupid. The only reason Karen is alive and presumably uninfested is because the author wanted a happy ending.
I think some people have theorized that she was reinfested, but by a peace movement Yeerk, and they didn't tell Cassie just to make her feel better.
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this discussion about cassie makes me want to go back and reread books so i can be sure that i'm saying the accurate thing when i talk about her.
in any case, when i was eleven/twelve, i might've screwed up military time, too. someone go find smartgirl333 and ask her if she knows - sans search engines - how to tell military time. (she's about thirteen-ish, isn't she?) the scenario was also, imo, a simple and accurate way of using a child's inexperience as a foil for what might otherwise have been a brilliant mind. it does stink that it ended up being cassie making the "stupid" mistake (and i remember raging at her the first time i read the book), but the tension created by the stupid mistake made the book more of a page-turner. the fact that i haven't read the book in a decade and still remember this is pretty impressive, imo. literarily, that's something i appreciate.
big-picture-wise, the group would also have had significantly less dynamic if there hadn't been a 'cassie' character on hand. that's not to say that 'increases group dynamics' makes a person more interesting, haha. still, it wholly improved the series.
i suppose that cassie's ideal, adult self would still instinctively graft those solid morals into her daily actions, but she wouldn't consider them absolute and she also wouldn't be as driven to take that aspect of herself seriously 100% of the time. (plus, she might learn how to let others' mistakes 'go', instead of seeing someone's personal, moral 'failure' as something to 'correct'.)
....but i wouldn't expect that out of a thirteen-year-old. i mean, kids are still figuring out how to answer that "i am a person; who is that person?" question at that age. some adults never get past that point.
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Hm... I know I'm not the one who first brought up the thing about her screwing up military time, but I know I've been harsher in my thoughts about it than I should be... I was taught military time VERY young, because it's also used by French-speakers, and I went to a French school. (That actually makes me wonder how that scene worked out in the French translations...)
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Whether or not a typical real world girl of 13 would screw up military time is irrelevant.
The point is that most of the dumb little mistakes like that made in these stories were made by Cassie.
Furthermore, if she wasn't sure how to do it why did she trust her own judgement and never even bother to check and make sure she was right? I realize she's only 13, but the world is potentially at stake for gosh sakes.
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snakie-
well, i note your point. ...uhm. what is it, exactly? cassie is the bestest animorph ever? ;)
cassie's optimism is.... unsuited for war. imo, however, it embodies a reason for preserving the human race. there's much less in the other animorphs that would do more than instill fear in other races. everyone else becomes acclimated to war, making war, winning war. cassie is the 'other': something outside of war that helps significantly to justify the others fighting to save the planet. it's never the others' justification for saving the planet: well, not overtly. but someone- in a group grown increasingly desperate and willing to sacrifice themselves and others to ultimately save the planet- needed to be some sort of "voice for humanity".
....not that i really have a reason for defending cassie; she was never my favorite (and frequently was my least favorite). yet sometimes i think that her role in the book series receives a worse rap than it deserves. KA put some real thought into her role. ghost writers may have goofed a bit. perhaps her wimpier characteristics could've been spread more thinly across more than one animorph. in some books, she seems like the lone plug in a dam about to burst, and that, imo, makes her seem a bit shallow and one-dimensional.
anyway, i'll get back to: bestest animorph for what? for winning? for literary purposes? for moral purposes?
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Sacrificing idealistic innocence is not a bad thing. Of course this "voice of humanity" once left the group because she was changing too much. I'm not sure you can interpret that any other way than selfishness. I realize the Humans are rarely helping the Yeerks fight, but I'm pretty sure it's legal to kill one of your kind in war. Plus the rule about not morphing Humans kind of implies that one of the others might use the DNA to commit crimes.
Like everyone else, she had a legitimate role to play, but she took it too far and I feel it hurt the team as much as helped.
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I always liked the Marco, Ax, Tobias mini group when they had missions together: Marco provides humour while still being good at his job, Ax gave his Andalite view on things and I always seemed to relate to Tobias. Not that I had a bad childhood or anything.
The other Animorphs were okay in my opinion. Jake was an interesting character, especially by the closing arc, but he wasn't really unique. I never really liked Rachel, her character was nearly always the same even to the end. Lastly, Cassie. I didn't mind her. Although she was annoying at times, she was necessary for the team, especially since K.A Applegate was trying not to promote war. The team needed her views, even if she would be shouted down by Marco or Rachel.
Outside of the Animorphs, I really liked Toby's character. She was definitely under-used. A second Hork-Bajir Chronicles about her during or after the war would have been nice.
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I'm gonna go with Father.
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Erek. I just think he's really cool. Can't remember if he's this way in canon but in fanfiction he can be very snarky and sarcastic which i love because that's how i am
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My favorite character above all is definitely Cassie. I feel really bad that she gets such a bad rap in the fandom because, like some others have said, I think she plays a seriously important role in the Animorphs that cannot be replaced. The way she looks at the world is not only about questioning the morals of everything the group does, it also makes her an extremely understanding and sincere person who helps every single other Animorph through emotional crises. Her idealistic view of the world helps keep her and the other Animorphs grounded, even if they think she's being too overbearing at times and she doesn't let them making fun of her change who she is because it is very important to her to be able to live with herself after/during this war. And besides Marco, she's the only one that can say she accomplished that.
And also, to the opinion that she is selfish when she quit the Animorphs, she is not the only one to have done that. Marco also threatened to leave the group on multiple occasions (and wasn't even going to stay past the first mission until he realized he needed to save his own mother) and Jake, though the consequences did not remain, wished away ever getting the powers at all, dooming the human race. All of the Animorphs have been very selfish or emotionally weak at some point or another but for some reason everyone points out Cassie.
Anyway, I don't mean to just defend Cassie, she's always been my favorite before I realized anyone hated her. On another, more personal note, it was very important to me as a little black girl that I found a series that featured a black girl as a main character, being an important person in saving the world, being the moral backbone of her group, and not being paired up with another random black person just because of some arbitrary blacks have to be with blacks rule. And not only that, Cassie was very similar to me as a kid and even now. She is very much a Libra like me haha I've always been a person who looks critically at social issues, things that can be disputed if looked at closely or are often overlooked. And I think it's important to look critically at things in your life that you may just go along with because it "needs" to happen. That's the basis for many civil liberties and movements we have had and have today that work to make the world a better place. And I appreciated Cassie so much for being a part of that.
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Hey lolapandi, are you on Tumblr at all? Because just this past week or so, there's been a really interesting conversation about Cassie and race. Starts with this post (http://blackmantagirl.tumblr.com/post/78334548941/everything-about-cassie-is-****ing-political-and), continues here (http://blackmantagirl.tumblr.com/post/78381438702/sorry-im-on-my-phone-so-cant-reblog-you-post-as). Really thought-provoking stuff.
I'm also a Cassie fan, btw. (ssshhh, don't tell anyone!)
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Oh! Thank you so much for the links! It looks really interesting, I'll get to reading through it soon. I AM on tumblr but only recently so I've been trying to find my way into the tumblr Animorphs fandom but I still miss quite a lot.
Love having a fellow Cassie fan!
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ooh. oooh. nice links, liora. agreed on the thought-provoking bit.
boy, do i have a ton to say after reading those; i'll need to consider joining tumblr.
[spoiler]really, so i don't forget:
- how media influences culture with "ideal" v. "realistic" depictions of culture (also the egg/chicken conundrum)
- "fixing" the "usual white peripheral vision"
- stereotyping, period (god, do i hate it. one more "black people 'x'" or "white people 'y'" ... i swear.)
i have to congratulate her on speaking out about something that is a clear moral and societal issue. her first post is also aggressive and uncompromising to an extreme; stereotyping and generalizing never sell a point for a better end.[/spoiler]
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Overall probably Jake, but they're all pretty interchangeably awesome. Rachel's also a big favorite, as there was a weird character dynamic there.
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My favorite character above all is definitely Cassie. I feel really bad that she gets such a bad rap in the fandom because, like some others have said, I think she plays a seriously important role in the Animorphs that cannot be replaced. The way she looks at the world is not only about questioning the morals of everything the group does, it also makes her an extremely understanding and sincere person who helps every single other Animorph through emotional crises. Her idealistic view of the world helps keep her and the other Animorphs grounded, even if they think she's being too overbearing at times and she doesn't let them making fun of her change who she is because it is very important to her to be able to live with herself after/during this war. And besides Marco, she's the only one that can say she accomplished that.
And also, to the opinion that she is selfish when she quit the Animorphs, she is not the only one to have done that. Marco also threatened to leave the group on multiple occasions (and wasn't even going to stay past the first mission until he realized he needed to save his own mother) and Jake, though the consequences did not remain, wished away ever getting the powers at all, dooming the human race. All of the Animorphs have been very selfish or emotionally weak at some point or another but for some reason everyone points out Cassie.
Anyway, I don't mean to just defend Cassie, she's always been my favorite before I realized anyone hated her. On another, more personal note, it was very important to me as a little black girl that I found a series that featured a black girl as a main character, being an important person in saving the world, being the moral backbone of her group, and not being paired up with another random black person just because of some arbitrary blacks have to be with blacks rule. And not only that, Cassie was very similar to me as a kid and even now. She is very much a Libra like me haha I've always been a person who looks critically at social issues, things that can be disputed if looked at closely or are often overlooked. And I think it's important to look critically at things in your life that you may just go along with because it "needs" to happen. That's the basis for many civil liberties and movements we have had and have today that work to make the world a better place. And I appreciated Cassie so much for being a part of that.
I don't believe that Marco's actions were selfish, since he knew that his father would commit suicide if Marco disappeared. Cassie left because she didn't want to change, despite that being an important part of growing up. People change. It happens. Otherwise you'd still be a child.
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I feel like ever since the ghost writers started writing the books the personalities went downhill. They all went extreme in their respective directions, and made it sort of unbelievable that they're still a team.
For instance, Rachel started out as a typical high school girl who's into looks and stuff, that just happened to be incredibly brave and tough in battles. I liked her in the beginning, but then she turned to this reckless blood thirsty lunatic. Yeah, I get it, it's war and the soldiers only get darker over time, but going extreme was bad for both the book and the character.
People may be able to justify Rachel going dark, but Cassie's growing conflict on moral issues is just dumb. It's war, and she should have figured out by then that the enemy's already been infiltrated, and the best she could do is defend the human race. I feel like the ghost writers had to go extreme with each character and Cassie's personality development really just makes no sense. Even for an environmentalist, you think about your own survival first, instead of worrying if the predator will starve if you don't offer yourself as dinner.
And then there's Jake, with practically no personality at all. He's the fearless leader but that's it. He makes the life and death decisions, he says the final word, but that's it. He has no personality, and even when the story's narrated by him, we don't really hear anything from him, just the fact that "as fearless leader he has to stay cool and be right". Why did Cassie and him like each other anyway?
Marco's a tad better, since Marco was originally just designed to be a comic relief person who's skeptical about everything. You can't really make an annoying person out of that even you went extreme.
Ax was okay I guess. Since he's literally an alien, everything weird about him could be forgiven. Even though he never learned after being on Earth for such a long time, it's still forgivable and at times he's funny. But still I wonder at times why didn't Ax acquire a lion for battles that would be seen by non-controllers...
I never quite got Tobias... He got issues, being an orphan, being a nothlit, belonging to 3 separate species... He could have been a nice person, but the fact that he's so deep in his personal **** really makes him annoying. And why did Rachel and him like each other anyway? The fact that Rachel's pretty probably explains his part, but what does Rachel see in this sad, introvert guy anyway?
So I guess at the end of the day only Marco and Ax are likable characters at all...
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TV Tropes calls it flanderization. Basically take one aspect about a character, for instance Rachel's willingness to fight, and stretch it until it overshadows most other aspects. If not all of them. It's hard not to run into problems when you have several people working on one series. Too many cooks will spoil the broth, as it were.
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Yeah, I hated the way the non-Katherine/Michael writers tended to write Rachel as some bloodlusty reckless "GET SOME!" moron.
She was otherwise probably the most complex of everyone, maybe Marco aside.
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She was an interesting character. Even in the end, when it was decided that she just needed to die for some reason, her last thoughts were on shopping. In fact in her last narrated book she was tempted by Crayak, and manage to figure out that taking the power she needed to beat the Yeerks would be worthless because everyone would fear her. She figured it out without needing cassie or anyone else to help her. These are not the things that a hopelessly lost blood knight considers. Yet KA killed her off to make the series more "real", even if it breaks established things of the series. For 53 books, main characters do not die. Having one main character die in the last battle with the Yeerks doesn't make it more realistic. It just makes it cheap.
The characters were given endings that seem to coincide with how willing they were to actually fight the Yeerks. Cassie and Marco were the least willing ones, so they turned out pretty happy. Rachel and Tobias were most willing, so one died and the other just gave up on life with Humanity. Hunting a mouse that he describes as being very smart, and possibly only having half a tail...
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I can't remember the line, but if Rachel's last thoughts were indeed on shopping, I'm betting it was more of a sarcastic outwardly-casual comment to The Ellimist or whatever, or a not-so-serious thought on her part.
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She was poisoned as a bear, and when she demorphed she commented that all the injuries were gone, and she could have gone shopping. She may have still been a little woozy from the poison, but it's still an odd thing to think about from someone who was "too far gone to handle not being in a war anymore".
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Ah, okay, so it was more just a fuzzy conscious-fading moment. The second last book, sorry, I thought you meant when she's all trans-dimensional with the Ellimist after actually dying.
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I never quite got Tobias... He got issues, being an orphan, being a nothlit, belonging to 3 separate species... He could have been a nice person, but the fact that he's so deep in his personal **** really makes him annoying. And why did Rachel and him like each other anyway? The fact that Rachel's pretty probably explains his part, but what does Rachel see in this sad, introvert guy anyway?
Tobias had problems, everyone have them. Some just more than others. He still lived more-or-less life, and helped others while staying sane at least to certain degree.
One reason for their relationship could be the opposites that balance each other, Rachel was quite into the fighting, Tobias not so much and their lives were so different.
And of course the fact that love doesn't always follow logic ::)
But on the topic, I think Father - Ellimist - Crayak trio was the most interesting character set in the series, The Father as a thing that preserves every living thing that lands and wants to play games for hundreds of years makes him/it pretty interesting ;D
But of course maybe the Ellimist-Crayak was best, Ellimist Chronicles was great book, and as a gamer the conversation in the end made me very satisfied, especially Crayak's comment
There must be a game. If there is no game there is nothing for me.
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And then there's Jake, with practically no personality at all. He's the fearless leader but that's it. He makes the life and death decisions, he says the final word, but that's it. He has no personality, and even when the story's narrated by him, we don't really hear anything from him, just the fact that "as fearless leader he has to stay cool and be right". Why did Cassie and him like each other anyway?
ah, the tinkling of my itty-bitty heart breaking.
i don't fully disagree with the idea that the ghost writers might have taken personalities to an extreme; that might be the case. i'd have to re-read a few books to remember how that played out (with a mind with the cognitive skills not of my 12-year-old self, haha).
since jake is (still) my fave, i'll say that i (still) have the utmost respect for someone who takes power and doesn't make a mess of everything. i've seen people in positions of power do a lot of disappointing things with that power. jake did all right. really well, considering.
i've had to lead things for work and it's been stressful- you know, when the success of a project means that my team gets a paycheck and its outcome reflects a long-term investment in my country. but lbh: i'm not out to single-handedly manage the saving of the world. from where i'm standing, however, i have no issues imagining that jake would have been consumed by the war. it's just hard not to be when you're the scapegoat, the figurehead, the target, the keystone, and so on. between the doing and the worrying, it's a 24/7 job. it doesn't seem an unrealistic portrayal of a child-leader.
for all that the premise is so.... well. yes. xD SCI-FI-MAZING-RIFIC.
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To say Jake doesn't have a personality is...yeah, pretty effing ridiculous.
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It doesn't stand out as much, so some people think he doesn't really have one.
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Yeah. He's most definitely not a "by-the-books Clark Kent/Steve Rogers boyscout", though, as some paint him to be.
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i also might have been very intentional about not really mentioning jake's personality in my post.
to bring my thoughts to cruel reality: i don't find that saving-the-world leaders need a terribly large amount of personality. they need a moral compass and a sense of priority and the end goal but, for the duration of the war, everything else needs to be set on a back burner or it gets in the way of winning with minimum casualties. the animorphs won because jake had no personality. he set the casual banter, the shenanigans with marco, the shopping with his cousin, developing a relationship with cassie, etc. aside.
the first parallel i come up with is ender wiggin. like a paper doll cut from the same outline, he's got a lot in common with jake; the only major difference in perception from the audience's view is derived from our seeing ender's early childhood. once ender got down to business, however, it was all about winning.
i'd be intrigued to read a book with a war-hero-commander-type protagonist that doesn't seem to lack in the 'personality' department. ...and maybe that's the issue. if we want personality, perhaps stories should be told of the commander post-war operations. cite osc spending five+ books on ender post-'ender's game'.
then there's the anti-hero commander (or the bad-at-his-job commander)... i haven't seen that trope make it to the main character list, yet. usually, such a commander is a supporting character or an antagonist.
anyway. vomity thoughts for a monday morning.
edit: GoT. i need to re-read those. GRRM is an exception, in that he has so many blasted characters that none of them need to be fully protagonists or antagonists... and so while he runs the gamut with commander-type tropes, none of them are really 'main protagonists'. or so i'm remembering, and i might be remembering incorrectly.