Animorph Positions

[Duff]

Yeah, Ax's natural form was very valuable in combat, but not completely superior to the Earth animal morphs; it's the fact that he has years of experience and training as a Andalite warrior that makes him potentially more effective in that form than if he morphed

ax had no experience as a warrior, he may have gone through training but he'd never seen combat before teaming up with the animorphs.

I don't think Tobias would work as the leader, hes too emotionally fragile. At one point or another all of them lead a mission, rachel in 37 marco in 30 tobias in mm2. Jake was special because he could not only lead and make the tough decisions but he could live with them the next day. Most of the others were capable of leading for one day but to make horrible life threatening decisions, live with them for months, and then have the strength to make the same kind of decisions again took something special.

The thing with Rachel and maybe Jake being happy mistakes by the Ellimist is interesting. I always thought that they were the connection to the rest of the team. Marco, Tobias and Cassie were all chosen but without Jake and Rachel those three have no connection at all and no reason to be walking through a construction site late at night

[donut]

ax had no experience as a warrior, he may have gone through training but he'd never seen combat before teaming up with the animorphs.

yeah, I think one of the books mentioned that he had never been in a fight

I don't think Tobias would work as the leader, hes too emotionally fragile.

What makes you say that?

[A ghost you know]

ok, I reread 37 since I couldn't remember anything at all about it, and wow, rachel screwed up.  I'm trying not to be too critical, since everyone sucks their first time, but wow.  I mean, I was left scratching my head going "what the heck?".  She did make all the mistakes I thought she would, and then a hundred more.  She was always impulsive and even reckless, but almost never downright arrogant.  And I never thought she'd violate the warrior ethos, and it astounded me that she broke the single most important rule a leader has to follow (even though it's surprisingly common for people to break): The commander's responsible.

Yeah, Rachel was definitely at her worst there. I'm surprised nobody got killed.

For a moral compass, jake maybe, but it's hard to say how much he was influenced by cassie.  Tobais might be also able to take that role.

Jake couldn't do it, which he proved by flushing 17,000 Yeerks just to provide "a diversion". Tobias might, but I think he was tainted by being a predator; when everything is "eat or be eaten", I don't think you keep many morals.

For hacking, DIY projects, and knowledge of aliens ax is simply irreplacible

Not to mention keeping V3 in the dark about the rest of the Animorphs being human. Eventually, he'd have gotten suspicious about all the Earth animals but no Andalites, particularly when he talked to the Animorphs.

I'm not really sure any of them could be taken out and the team still be able to function effectively without new team member to replace that person

I completely agree. They were like a puzzle - each one had unique strengths and weaknesses which the others offset. You can't complete a puzzle unless all the pieces are there, and the same holds for the Animorphs.

[Duff]

I don't think Tobias would work as the leader, hes too emotionally fragile.

What makes you say that?

He constantly shows his inability to deal with stress and pressure. When he first becomes a hawk he has a mini meltdown, not that anyone can blame him. He handles the Taylor thing well in 33 but right after that hes scarred for awhile, especially when they have to face her again in 43. MM4 shows hes the perfect confused, stressed candidate for the sharing.

I'm not saying hes not strong enough, he just cant handle stress and difficult decisions as well as Jake can.

[donut]

I just realized how long this was, I apologize in advance

ok, I gotta admit I haven't actually finished the series, the first time I read through it I only got halfway through book 40 (long story)  I've been reading the ebooks over the last couple months and just read 41 a few days ago, I definitely could have done without that one, other than the sheer weirdness of it, after the first 15 pages or so I felt like reaching in and strangling Jake, but I digress.  My point being I can't really comment on what happened after that, so I'll have to concede whatever happened in 43 and mm4 for now, if anything happened there that invalidates what I'm about to say, just tell me that rather than going into detail, I'll trust you and eventually read through them.

As far as an ability to handle stress, that's a complicated issue.  It actually has very little do with personality, none really.  Well not in susceptibility to stress issues, although it does in how quickly you recover from them.

As to what does affect susceptibility to it I'll focus on the ones relevant to Tobias

Israeli studies found that the strongest factor which distinguished between soldiers who were decorated for heroic acts and those who became battle shock casualties was having had many recent changes on the home front.

I think permanently becoming a hawk qualifies, as does finding out what's her name was really v3

The second strongest factor found in the Israeli studies was unit cohesion: the soldiers who became stress casualties were often committed to battle alongside strangers, while those who became heroes were alongside unit members they knew well, trusted, and depended on.

Since Tobias was the only member who had no prior connection to the members of the team whereas the other were friends or related he was the only one who had this risk factor
Of course it's a moot point if they continue to influence him, but as time goes by he should accept that he's become a hawk, mostly removing this risk factor, and would learn to trust the team members as they fought together more, so these two only really influenced him for his breakdowns in 3 and 23.  Although I can't really recall any serious problems he had other than those, at least prior to book 42
I'm noticing a definite foreshadowing that Tobias is about to have a breakdown, although I can't figure out why Jake never takes notice of these things and try to fix them before they become problems

Anyone may become a battle fatigue casualty if too many high-risk factors occur

At several points every other member of the team had similar breakdowns.  Jake in 8, 11, 31 and 41, Marco in 15, 30, and 35, Cassie in 9, 16, 17, 19, mm3, and 41, Ax in 8, 18, 26, and mm3, Rachel in (maybe, I can't quite remember) 22, 33, 37, and 41.
So I'm not really sure that he couldn't handle the stress, at least not worse than any of the others

 I think Tobias wouldn't be able to lead because he wouldn't have the confidence or command presence to do it.  Given some time and maybe a little guidance he would be able to, but I think the same holds true for most of the others as well.  In the long term, I think Tobias would probably be a good second choice


@kotetsu
I agree that she never really got them any good morphs except maybe the birds, I can't remember how they got them, but she did know which animals to get and how they'd react, like knowing to use the squid to get to the ship and whales to get the squids

[Kotetsu1442]

@kotetsu
I agree that she never really got them any good morphs except maybe the birds, I can't remember how they got them, but she did know which animals to get and how they'd react, like knowing to use the squid to get to the ship and whales to get the squids

Yeah, the predator morphs that they used for travel mostly came from Cassie's farm. My point was mainly that it was sad that a plot point they they often stressed during the introduction sequences was "Cassie's house has lots of injured animals kept there, it's a very convinient place to acquire a wide variety of local animals that would be much more difficult to track down in the wild," But this plot point is really never used beyond the first couple books, so it just becomes an ongoing Chekhov's gun; they keep setting it up to be used in future books but it is never really realized.

As far as Cassie goes, I'm not saying she didn't make herself useful by offering some insight (more often in the earlier books) into the morphs they were getting into, but very rarely in ways that were not common knowledge or something that they would have quickly discovered on their own (I really can't come up with any good examples of her making herself 'irreplaceable' in the role of animal knowledge). As far as the squid morph goes, that wasn't even a result of her role as 'animal knowledge expert,' she came up with it because of a book so it was nothing more than a lucky crap shot that any of the characters could have provided (Marco is the one who usually proves to be well versed and read in books/shows/and movies before his time, as evidenced in references in his jokes); or if they had gotten over their "oh it's hopless" moping and Googled/researched "Deep sea creatures" before giving up then the squid would have come up, meaning that that flash of random insight wasn't actually necessary.

I guess what I'm ultimately saying isn't that Cassie was useless in this respect because the role of 'animal knowledge provider' is useless, but that in a book where the premise includes 'children who morph into any animal they can touch' then the role of 'animal knowledge provider' really could have been developed a lot more than it was.

[donut]

Reading back over it, it looks like I'm suggesting that a person experiencing an extreme stress reaction is excused from their actions, which I'm not trying to.  People are always responsible for their choices.  It might explain them, but I still hold a person responsible for their choices even if I don't blame them for the choices (if that makes sense).

The main point I was trying to make is that tobias didn't really seem that much more susceptible to stress than the others and in fact seemed to handle it better than anyone else, except possibly Jake (maybe maybe not)

BTW major kudos to KA for how cassie was behaving in 17 and whats-his-name (the guy who got stuck as a taxxon) in TAC.  Very nicely done.

[Kotetsu1442]

Reading back over it, it looks like I'm suggesting that a person experiencing an extreme stress reaction is excused from their actions, which I'm not trying to.  People are always responsible for their choices.  It might explain them, but I still hold a person responsible for their choices even if I don't blame them for the choices (if that makes sense).

Honestly, that doesn't make sense to me, and usually I understand what people mean by their 'if that makes any sense' statements. I understand how at first you are saying that people are always responsible for their choices even if a stress reaction explains the choice. I'm not trying to start another huge debate on philosophical meanings and distinctions, but could you explain how you can hold a person responsible for a choice but not blame them, since to 'not blame' someone basically means to not hold them responsible by definition; I just want to understand the distinction in your meaning.

[Alex Oiknine]

Rachel would take Marco's place as the comedian, Marco or Ax would be good for leader positions.

I think most of them were capable of filling more than one role, if they had to. If not all of them.

[delta]

lol animorph positions... i do remember jake going doggy style (homer) once and listened to the sharing meeting on the beach

[donut]

Yeah I don't quite get it either.

I guess it's like someone who steals food so they don't starve, they're still responsible for stealing, but I don't really blame them.

I suppose it's like saying it can't be excused but I don't really hold it against them, they still have to own the consequences, even though i don't think less of them for it.

And I actually think most the blame prolly falls on jake in most of those cases