who is your favourite animorphs character?

[NothingFromSomething]

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.

[Chad32]

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...

[NothingFromSomething]

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.

[Chad32]

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".

[NothingFromSomething]

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.

[pallosalama]

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 
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.

[itw2009]

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.

[NothingFromSomething]

To say Jake doesn't have a personality is...yeah, pretty effing ridiculous.

[Chad32]

It doesn't stand out as much, so some people think he doesn't really have one.

[NothingFromSomething]

Yeah.  He's most definitely not a "by-the-books Clark Kent/Steve Rogers boyscout", though, as some paint him to be. 

[itw2009]

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.