Why don't you like Cassie?

[DinosaurNothlit]

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.

[rossabo]

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.

[Liz]

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.

[AcreLorraine]

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. 

[SuperBlue]

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.

[Champion]

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.

[RYTX]

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

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

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.

[fao13]

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.

[morfowt]

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...

[AniDragon]

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.

[morfowt]

but they were entertaining...

[Shock]

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.

[agentAK]

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"

[morfowt]

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?