Which animorph had the hardest time in the war?

[KOFSoldier]

I feel Rachel had a relatively easy time with it because I feel she was styronger than she was made out to be. I feel she could have coped after the war, judging from the books she narrated. She's not some Blood Knight like the others see her. She didn't totally lose herself, because if she had she wouldn't have refused Crayak's offer in the last book she narrated, or hesitated to finish off V3.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

She probably would've been alright after the war. With time, of course...

[powertrash]

I feel Rachel had a relatively easy time with it because I feel she was styronger than she was made out to be. I feel she could have coped after the war, judging from the books she narrated. She's not some Blood Knight like the others see her. She didn't totally lose herself, because if she had she wouldn't have refused Crayak's offer in the last book she narrated, or hesitated to finish off V3.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

She probably would've been alright after the war. With time, of course...

I completely disagree. It might be because of the ghostwriters in the last arc, but the Return is really the last time we get to see Rachel struggle with a moral dilemma. After that, she turns violent and rude...she looses it, basically, in those last few books. Maybe she was preparing herself for the end. I don't think she would have turned to drugs or killed herself (that's so NOT Rachel) but I couldn't see her ever integrating herself back into normal society after she had gotten so...addicted...to the battle.

[Darth Revan]

She would've joined a more competitive sport, then joined the ARMY.

[Chad32]

The last thought she ever had was of shopping. I don't remember her being rude, but I do remember her crying in her mother's arms. Such contradictive stuff.

[adeon222]

The frayed nerves and strained relationships got to everyone toward the end... It wasn't just Rachel who was acting out of her usual character...

I am a firm believer that Rachel would have thrived in normal society after the war, (she did before the war...) partly because she viewed everything from that powerful, driven, competitor's point of view... like her mother, she would have been a terror to her enemies and a powerful ally for her friends, even if "life or death" wasn't on the table. With Tobias, Rachel would have been the second most successful Animorph after the war (after Marco)...

[Hewlett Aldershot III]

I'm not sure anyone can quantify the horrors of war by stating that any one person is more or less affected. I think that they all suffered reasonably equally (okay, maybe some more than others, but I sure as hell can't say who), but for different reasons. Jake, "armchair quarterbacking his entire life" due to the burdens of his leadership, and all the people he got killed (don't forget him sending Doubleday's men and the auxiliary animorphs to their death, along with the more obvious example of Rachel). Rachel, obviously due to her death, and even more, due to her losing herself to the war. Cassie, for the fact that the entire war went against everything she believed in, and how her relationship with Jake kinda dissolved. Marco, in my mind anyhow, just made the best of the aftermath. He was damaged badly after the war, being (once again, purely opinion) basically Jake's tactical officer (his #1, as Picard would put it) and seeing how those decisions impacted the war, and his best friend. Ax ends up fighting a war he ends up hating, is disillusioned with his own people due to the decisions he has seen the result of, and, well, ends up dead as well. Tobias loses his last true link to humanity, the girl he loves, and for that matter, was trapped as a hawk.
So, yeah, in my mind, they all suffered equally, but in many different ways. Hard to compare different kinds of suffering, I guess.

[anijen21]

I don't know if I agree with all of that. I agree that they all suffered, and it's nearly impossible to measure the magnitude of suffering, but maybe what we have to look at is how they coped rather than what they went through.

Cassie, Ax, and Marco I think made out the best. Cassie may have holed herself away in her work to stave off having to deal with what she'd gone through, Ax may have put his humanity behind him in order to move on in much the same way, and Marco may have accepted the glitz and glow of fame and glory to outshine the darker parts of his life, but still. They all reentered their respective societies as functional, capable people.

Jake and Tobias did not.

I think Jake eventually did, what with him working with the military to train special ops fighters in the morphing technology, but Tobias just flew away and didn't talk to anyone. A lot of that came from before the war, but I think the point is that I agree that Tobias would have figured out a way to cope had Rachel survived. And it would have taken Jake a lot less time to come out of his funk.

Kind of weird that with everything they went through, most of their psychological health after the war came down to how they felt about Rachel's death. It was certainly the climactic event of the war, their struggle, etc., but it certainly wasn't the only thing.

[Darth Revan]

Yeah, but the question isn't who had the hardest time AFTER the war.

It's who had the hardest time IN the war.

I think they all suffered so much in their own respects, that it runs about even amongst all of them.

[anijen21]

I think I sort of answered that, though, and I guess I agree with you. Nothing really bad happened to any of them until the end. Of course that's definitely plot-contrived wellness and not realism, but, you know.

[Darth Revan]

Nothing really bad happened to any of them until the end.

0.o

what do you consider really bad?

Being trapped as a hawk wasn't bad?
Finding out your brother is a tool of aliens isn't bad?
Finding out your mother is the head of the invasion isn't bad?
Being torn apart by rival ants isn't bad?
Getting chopped in half isn't bad?

I think, perhaps, your meaning was lost in your word usage.

[Chad32]

I think I sort of answered that, though, and I guess I agree with you. Nothing really bad happened to any of them until the end. Of course that's definitely plot-contrived wellness and not realism, but, you know.

A lot of bad stuff happened to them throghout the war. And I wouldn't call it plot contrived that they managed to get through all that alive (sans rachel), since KA gives an in-universe justification. Which is more than other series I could probably think of. Ellemist just dropped the ball at the home stretch for some reason.

[Darth Revan]

Ellimist just dropped the ball at the home stretch for some reason.

Yeah, I thought Crayak was allowed a lot more leeway with messing with things in the end, and the Ellimist didn't do much to balance that out.

[anijen21]

of course bad things happened to them

I just mean no one had a breakdown during the course of the series, which, considering the things you listed above, is pretty damn incredible.

So yes, in that sense, I would call it plot-contrived. If I got chopped in half, trapped as a hawk, and found out my mother was the leader of an alien invasion of my planet, I might suffer from more than bad dreams and a lot of angst-filler. There were times it barely even felt like what happened to them affected them at all. Other times, it was handled well. But let's be real--if somehow the events of this series happened in real life, one of them, AT LEAST one, would have snapped long before the end.

[Chad32]

Tobias broke down in book 3, Rachel just about broke down in book 7, Cassie broke down in book 19, and Jake broke down after losing his parents. Marco also got extremely stressed out in 35, or some other book.

I thought it was handled well. I mean, if things really are generally worse for real life people in war times, I don't see how anythign less than the draft board could get people to join the military.

[anijen21]

that was all angst

I am talking about full-on straight jacket nervous breakdown. Not "waaah I don't want to do this anymore." I'd be doing THAT every third second.

Jake had a REAL nervous breakdown in #54. And if these kids really are "everymen" and not superheroes, like we're led to believe, this would have happened a lot sooner.