Author Topic: On Cassie's "Intuition"  (Read 6088 times)

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Offline KingAlanI

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Re: On Cassie's "Intuition"
« Reply #60 on: November 22, 2014, 08:55:08 PM »
Part of being a well written character flaw is that other characters make note of it and urge the character to change. As opposed to Tobias telling Jake it was beyond wrong to exclude her from a meeting after what she did.

You have a point.

Offline NothingFromSomething

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Re: On Cassie's "Intuition"
« Reply #61 on: November 22, 2014, 09:04:40 PM »
It's more complicated than that, though.  Tobias and Rachel didn't agree with what she'd done either, they were more just on-board with the emotional thing that it was a dick move, and likely saw that excluding Cassie (of all people, little miss sees-three-steps-ahead) from friggin' war meetings wasn't exactly the smartest thing in the world to do.  And they were right.

Person Of Interest re-watch.  Still stunning as ever.

Offline NickDaGriff

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Re: On Cassie's "Intuition"
« Reply #62 on: December 01, 2014, 08:26:57 AM »
Actually, I think it's even more complicated than that.  Remember Elfangor's last words to Tobias?

[spoiler=The Andalite Chronicles]
The Yeerks came and I told the human children to hide. But Tobias stayed behind with me for just a few moments. Alone.

<Your mother ... tell me about your mother, Tobias. Your family.>

He was surprised. Troubled. "She . . . disappeared. When I was just little. I don't know what happened. I guess she died. People say she just left because she was messed up. They said she never got over my father. I don't know. But I know she has to be dead because she'd never have just left me. No matter what. But maybe that's just what I told myself. I don't exactly have a family."

It was a fresh stab of pain in my hearts. And yet, I knew now that all was not lost.

<Go to your friends, Tobias. They are your family now.>[/spoiler]

That little dialogue hit him really hard when Elfangor died.  A random stranger who seemed to care for him, suddenly brutally murdered as he watched helplessly.  It made him want to cling to what he had all the more, and he risked his life over and over to keep his friends alive and together.  In the finale, when Jake lost his family, he kind of started to push everyone apart with his distrustful, isolationist, "gotta put on a strong face for them" attitude.  Tobias picked up on that, and really didn't like it.  When he saw Jake actively excluding Cassie from the meeting, when she'd always been part of the group since day one, he felt like he had to step in and take a stance or else this surrogate family of his would fall apart, and he'd be alone again.  That thought just scared him too much, so he called Jake out on it.

He had to have felt betrayed, but he couldn't just let go of the bond he'd built with the others.  Even though Cassie wasn't exactly close with him, she was still part of the group, part of his family, and family sticks together through everything.  In my Tobias thread I mentioned he spent a lot of time coming up with an idealized view of how things should work because he had so much going wrong for him.  This is one lingering echo of that.

This is also why he just couldn't stay around after the war ended.  It wasn't just that Rachel sacrificed herself.  If that were all, he would've been able to handle it a lot better.  But the issue was that Jake, the guy he originally pushed to be the big protector of the group, ended up becoming the one who sacrificed it.  It mirrored the whole ambiguous duality theme that traumatized him so much with his torture.  Regardless of whether Jake's actions were justified or not, it felt like a betrayal on a level he just couldn't handle.  Jake was suddenly worse than Tobias' aunt and uncle combined while the whole world celebrated his heroism.
[spoiler=A writer at heart:]
My sequel fic, Animorphs #55: The Following
My first Memoirs fic, A Geeky Gryphon's Origins

Offline Chad32

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Re: On Cassie's "Intuition"
« Reply #63 on: December 01, 2014, 09:03:47 AM »
It would have been nice if that was elaborated on. Instead we get Cassie betraying the group, and Jake reasonably excluding her from a meeting (albeit accidentally), and Tobias saying it was "beyond wrong". Jake didn't say anything in his defense, and Tobias didn't elaborate. It's as if we're just meant to take Tobias' side, when I think Jake should have held a special meeting to call Cassie out and consider dropping her from the team.

We don't know if these Yeerks that nothlitized themselves took their unwilling hosts with them. We don't know if there are still morph capable Yeerks hiding somewhere, ready to assassinate world leaders and take their place. We don't know that the same victory couldn't have been achieved by keeping the box and sending a message to the yeerks that defecting meant a new life as something that didn't rely on kandrona radiation.

The only thing we know is that Cassie did something stupid that wound up having a silver lining in an otherwise dark cloud. Mostly due to an author's saving throw, I'm sure.
« Last Edit: December 01, 2014, 09:08:09 AM by Chad32 »


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