Why don't you like Cassie?

[Horsefan1023 (Seal)]

I always see a "we hate Cassie" somewhere, and I was wondering why you hate Cassie.  Even, in Nohensen's new thread, "Cassie vs. Marco," he said "this is not a we hate Cassie thread."  So, just tell me why.

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

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.

[Horsefan1023 (Seal)]

Yeah, I don't get it.  Cassie calmed people down, and even though she had some weird virtues, she was an important part of the group.  And, provided a lot of morphs.  Imagine without Cassie, Jake wouldn't have his Tiger, no Gorilla, no elephant, (in one, they went back behind the cages with her, as you remember) and possibly no Ax.  Tobias had the visions too, so that's why I say possibly. 

I don't get it.  She was important.

[Faerie Larka]

I think Cassie was all right, but she seemed to be just a bit too perfect.  Add a few mistakes on her part, and I would be fine.

[DinosaurNothlit]

I guess what bothered me most about her was that she, more than any of the other Animorphs, rang of "Mary Sue."  Now, I'm not calling her a full-blooded Mary Sue, because if that were true I would have burned all the books written by her, but she was the most that way of the Animorphs, at least.  And, being the roleplayer that I am, anything even slightly Mary Sue just bothers me on some instinctual level.  I can't help it, really.

By Mary Sue, I mean that things just seemed to go her way a little too often, the other characters liked her a little too much, etc.

Funny thing is, even though Tobias is my favorite character, I think I can understand why some might not like him.  He has a few Gary Stu qualities of his own; the hard life, the 'why me?' attitude, etc.  But for some reason, those factors don't bother me so much in his case.  I guess because I don't see the other characters bending over backwards to make his life easier like they do for Cassie.

To sum up, basically, like I said before, my dislike of Cassie is more based on my roleplayer-ish instinctual fear of Mary Sues than anything rational.  I'm sure if I knew her in real life, as an actual person, I would love her to pieces.

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

If Cassie's a K.A. Mary-Sue, then Marco's a Michael. 

And Jake's basically just that Captain America archetype, the slightly-dorky but otherwise completely average hero who takes the responsibility of everything upon his shoulders.

I'd call Tobias a silly emo, but he pre-dates emo by almost a decade.   

So yeah, Cassie's not really any more of a Mary-Sue than Marco.

[rossabo]

My dislike of Cassie stems from her imposition of high moral standards, especially during the war. I view morals and economics in a situational basis (and by economics, I mean efficiency that typically isn't very moral). In normal daily activity, morality outweighs economics, which is fine since most of our daily activities aren't an emergency or a special occasion. We do not speed in traffic and cut through lines in our daily activities, because it is unnecessary and harms others. However, in emergencies or dire situations like war, economics should outweigh morals. If somebody's wife is pregnant, and he has to rush her to the hospital, speeding in traffic is necessary because it is more economic than obeying traffic speeds.

The problem about Cassie is that her morals often conflicted with the efficiency of the situation. I'm sure that they could have been far more efficient if they got rid of the morphing sentient creatures rule, and morphed key figures like Chapman more often.

Additionally, it seemed that her motivation for doing some things was really insignificant. For example, in book 8 (I think?) where the Yeerks were trying to trap them in the forest, she felt as though they needed to act to save the animals as the primary reason, which is a completely coincidental and secondary reason for why they should have stopped the Yeerks (to protect themselves). Her character reminds me of somebody who would actually risk the other members to protect some insignificant animals, just like that girl in the remake of Dawn of the Dead who ran across the street just to save that dog and nearly got the rescue team killed trying to save her.

Not only that, but it really ticked me when she stopped Jake from killing Tom. Of course, this wound up turning in their favor, but that was completely coincidental. It could have turned out far worse. Additionally, Jake killed Tom anyways, and it wasn't even like Tom was innocent anyways (I mean, he still had a Yeerk, and was therefore the enemy).

[DinosaurNothlit]

If Cassie's a K.A. Mary-Sue, then Marco's a Michael. 

What's a "Michael"?

So yeah, Cassie's not really any more of a Mary-Sue than Marco.

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.

My dislike of Cassie stems from her imposition of high moral standards, especially during the war. I view morals and economics in a situational basis (and by economics, I mean efficiency that typically isn't very moral). In normal daily activity, morality outweighs economics, which is fine since most of our daily activities aren't an emergency or a special occasion. We do not speed in traffic and cut through lines in our daily activities, because it is unnecessary and harms others. However, in emergencies or dire situations like war, economics should outweigh morals. If somebody's wife is pregnant, and he has to rush her to the hospital, speeding in traffic is necessary because it is more economic than obeying traffic speeds.

The problem about Cassie is that her morals often conflicted with the efficiency of the situation. I'm sure that they could have been far more efficient if they got rid of the morphing sentient creatures rule, and morphed key figures like Chapman more often.

Additionally, it seemed that her motivation for doing some things was really insignificant. For example, in book 8 (I think?) where the Yeerks were trying to trap them in the forest, she felt as though they needed to act to save the animals as the primary reason, which is a completely coincidental and secondary reason for why they should have stopped the Yeerks (to protect themselves). Her character reminds me of somebody who would actually risk the other members to protect some insignificant animals, just like that girl in the remake of Dawn of the Dead who ran across the street just to save that dog and nearly got the rescue team killed trying to save her.

Not only that, but it really ticked me when she stopped Jake from killing Tom. Of course, this wound up turning in their favor, but that was completely coincidental. It could have turned out far worse. Additionally, Jake killed Tom anyways, and it wasn't even like Tom was innocent anyways (I mean, he still had a Yeerk, and was therefore the enemy).

Rossabo, that's one of the reasons I used to cite for disliking Cassie, too; putting morals in front of the greater good, and all that.  But what you have to consider is that it's easy to look at the Animorphs' decisions and say "Oh, you should have done that" or "What were you thinking when you did that?", but it's much harder to make those same decisions under the stress of war.  We can think about it all rationally.  They sometimes didn't have that luxury.  And even when they weren't under the stress of battle, they were still so close to the situation, that emotions would get in the way of logical thought.

Or, maybe I'm just defending Cassie on this particular point because I think I would have done a lot of the same things she did. 

[rossabo]

Rossabo, that's one of the reasons I used to cite for disliking Cassie, too; putting morals in front of the greater good, and all that.  But what you have to consider is that it's easy to look at the Animorphs' decisions and say "Oh, you should have done that" or "What were you thinking when you did that?", but it's much harder to make those same decisions under the stress of war.  We can think about it all rationally.  They sometimes didn't have that luxury.  And even when they weren't under the stress of battle, they were still so close to the situation, that emotions would get in the way of logical thought.

Or, maybe I'm just defending Cassie on this particular point because I think I would have done a lot of the same things she did. 

I think that they handled the events more like sporting events than an actual war. I guess the only person I would agree with if I was in their situation would be Rachel. If I was in their situation, I would have used guns (obviously they couldn't have used guns in the books) and I would have blown up the Yeerk pool a long time ago. I'm not trying to make turn this into a "this is what I would have done" scenario, I'm just trying to say that I think many of us would handle the situation a lot more violently and aggressively than they did, and part of why the group did not act as aggressively as I think they should have is due to Cassie.

[ChimichangaChupacabra]

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.

[AniDragon]

I actually used to really like Cassie. She was my favourite character for about half the series. But, at some point in time, she just started to bother me... I think it was around the buffa-human book... Which wouldn't have been so bad if the next book narated by her hadn't been the equally useless and fillery Australia book. So... I don't know, I guess she just wasn't treated well by the ghost writers in this span of books, and really lost her appeal to me. This was a point where she could have had a lot of really good growth as a character, but instead she was just... I dunno. Blah.

[musicman88]

She just got annoying sometimes.

[morfowt]

I like cassie, so I don't have anything to say, but I know for a fact that the two reason most people hate her are either, they don't like her moralizing, they don't like how she's almost perfect, or both...

[Chad32]

She does some things that others feel there's vindication for, but I don't believe it. Opting to force David to become a nothlit instead of giving him a quick death. Letting Tom escape with the morphing cube. Never morphing Humans because of some vague similarities between morphing sentient creatures and what Yeerks do. Leaving the team and abandoning the world and her friends so she doesn't turn into Rachel. Those things I don't feel there's vindication for.

She played an important role in the group, and I don't hate her. She's just my least favorite. I'm more like Marco, who is pretty opposite of Cassie.

[JFalcon]

It's not so much that I didn't like her as that I was sort of indifferent to her, I liked Tobias, Rachel and Marco, I respected Jake, I thought Ax was funny, and Cassie? Well . . . meh. Her books were usually pretty boring, I don't know why but I found her interactions with Aftran the only thing that interested me when it was Cassie's turn to tell the story, I mean appart from book 4 which was awesome.

It was when she let Tom get away with the cube that that indifference became a slight dislike, but only slight, I was willing to see how that ended before I made my final decision on the matter.

And then it ended in disaster, and I think when the series ended I resented her for surviving when the implication was that none of the others would and the fact was Rachel hadn't. I think I was kind of mad at her for not forcing her way into the mission, as stupid as that seems now that I think of it, I guess I just felt like if it were to end that way she should have been there too.

Still I don't hate her, I just like her less than the other Animorphs . . . the only character I ever really found myself just disliking--no no, I admit: hating: was Aldrea . . . who did eventually share a body with Cassie so naturally there was some agression towards Cassie for not calling a priest right away to cast that evil spirit right out.