who is your favourite animorphs character?

[AniDragon]

Hm... I know I'm not the one who first brought up the thing about her screwing up military time, but I know I've been harsher in my thoughts about it than I should be... I was taught military time VERY young, because it's also used by French-speakers, and I went to a French school. (That actually makes me wonder how that scene worked out in the French translations...)

[Snakie]

Whether or not a typical real world girl of 13 would screw up military time is irrelevant.

The point is that most of the dumb little mistakes like that made in these stories were made by Cassie.

Furthermore, if she wasn't sure how to do it why did she trust her own judgement and never even bother to check and make sure she was right?  I realize she's only 13, but the world is potentially at stake for gosh sakes.

[itw2009]

snakie-

well, i note your point. ...uhm. what is it, exactly? cassie is the bestest animorph ever?


cassie's optimism is.... unsuited for war. imo, however, it embodies a reason for preserving the human race. there's much less in the other animorphs  that would do more than instill fear in other races. everyone else becomes acclimated to war, making war, winning war. cassie is the 'other': something outside of war that helps significantly to justify the others fighting to save the planet. it's never the others' justification for saving the planet: well, not overtly. but someone- in a group grown increasingly desperate and willing to sacrifice themselves and others to ultimately save the planet- needed to be some sort of "voice for humanity".


....not that i really have a reason for defending cassie; she was never my favorite (and frequently was my least favorite). yet sometimes i think that her role in the book series receives a worse rap than it deserves. KA put some real thought into her role. ghost writers may have goofed a bit. perhaps her wimpier characteristics could've been spread more thinly across more than one animorph. in some books, she seems like the lone plug in a dam about to burst, and that, imo, makes her seem a bit shallow and one-dimensional.

anyway, i'll get back to: bestest animorph for what? for winning? for literary purposes? for moral purposes?

[Chad32]

Sacrificing idealistic innocence is not a bad thing. Of course this "voice of humanity" once left the group because she was changing too much. I'm not sure you can interpret that any other way than selfishness. I realize the Humans are rarely helping the Yeerks fight, but I'm pretty sure it's legal to kill one of your kind in war. Plus the rule about not morphing Humans kind of implies that one of the others might use the DNA to commit crimes.

Like everyone else, she had a legitimate role to play, but she took it too far and I feel it hurt the team as much as helped.

[AndaliteBlues]

I always liked the Marco, Ax, Tobias mini group when they had missions together: Marco provides humour while still being good at his job, Ax gave his Andalite view on things and I always seemed to relate to Tobias. Not that I had a bad childhood or anything.

The other Animorphs were okay in my opinion. Jake was an interesting character, especially by the closing arc, but he wasn't really unique. I never really liked Rachel, her character was nearly always the same even to the end. Lastly, Cassie. I didn't mind her. Although she was annoying at times, she was necessary for the team, especially since K.A Applegate was trying not to promote war. The team needed her views, even if she would be shouted down by Marco or Rachel.

Outside of the Animorphs, I really liked Toby's character. She was definitely under-used. A second Hork-Bajir Chronicles about her during or after the war would have been nice.

[Broanus Clay]

I'm gonna go with Father.

[WildeMoonChilde]

Erek. I just think he's really cool. Can't remember if he's this way in canon but in fanfiction he can be very snarky and sarcastic which i love because that's how i am

[lolapandi]

My favorite character above all is definitely Cassie. I feel really bad that she gets such a bad rap in the fandom because, like some others have said, I think she plays a seriously important role in the Animorphs that cannot be replaced. The way she looks at the world is not only about questioning the morals of everything the group does, it also makes her an extremely understanding and sincere person who helps every single other Animorph through emotional crises. Her idealistic view of the world helps keep her and the other Animorphs grounded, even if they think she's being too overbearing at times and she doesn't let them making fun of her change who she is because it is very important to her to be able to live with herself after/during this war. And besides Marco, she's the only one that can say she accomplished that.

And also, to the opinion that she is selfish when she quit the Animorphs, she is not the only one to have done that. Marco also threatened to leave the group on multiple occasions (and wasn't even going to stay past the first mission until he realized he needed to save his own mother) and Jake, though the consequences did not remain, wished away ever getting the powers at all, dooming the human race. All of the Animorphs have been very selfish or emotionally weak at some point or another but for some reason everyone points out Cassie.

Anyway, I don't mean to just defend Cassie, she's always been my favorite before I realized anyone hated her. On another, more personal note, it was very important to me as a little black girl that I found a series that featured a black girl as a main character, being an important person in saving the world, being the moral backbone of her group, and not being paired up with another random black person just because of some arbitrary blacks have to be with blacks rule. And not only that, Cassie was very similar to me as a kid and even now. She is very much a Libra like me haha I've always been a person who looks critically at social issues, things that can be disputed if looked at closely or are often overlooked. And I think it's important to look critically at things in your life that you may just go along with because it "needs" to happen. That's the basis for many civil liberties and movements we have had and have today that work to make the world a better place. And I appreciated Cassie so much for being a part of that.

[Liora]

Hey lolapandi, are you on Tumblr at all? Because just this past week or so, there's been a really interesting conversation about Cassie and race. Starts with this post, continues here. Really thought-provoking stuff.

I'm also a Cassie fan, btw. (ssshhh, don't tell anyone!)

[lolapandi]

Oh! Thank you so much for the links! It looks really interesting, I'll get to reading through it soon. I AM on tumblr but only recently so I've been trying to find my way into the tumblr Animorphs fandom but I still miss quite a lot.

Love having a fellow Cassie fan!

[itw2009]

ooh. oooh. nice links, liora. agreed on the thought-provoking bit.

boy, do i have a ton to say after reading those; i'll need to consider joining tumblr.

[spoiler]really, so i don't forget:

- how media influences culture with "ideal" v. "realistic" depictions of culture (also the egg/chicken conundrum)
- "fixing" the "usual white peripheral vision"
- stereotyping, period (god, do i hate it. one more "black people 'x'" or "white people 'y'" ... i swear.)

i have to congratulate her on speaking out about something that is a clear moral and societal issue. her first post is also aggressive and uncompromising to an extreme; stereotyping and generalizing never sell a point for a better end.[/spoiler]

[NothingFromSomething]

Overall probably Jake, but they're all pretty interchangeably awesome.  Rachel's also a big favorite, as there was a weird character dynamic there.

[Chad32]

My favorite character above all is definitely Cassie. I feel really bad that she gets such a bad rap in the fandom because, like some others have said, I think she plays a seriously important role in the Animorphs that cannot be replaced. The way she looks at the world is not only about questioning the morals of everything the group does, it also makes her an extremely understanding and sincere person who helps every single other Animorph through emotional crises. Her idealistic view of the world helps keep her and the other Animorphs grounded, even if they think she's being too overbearing at times and she doesn't let them making fun of her change who she is because it is very important to her to be able to live with herself after/during this war. And besides Marco, she's the only one that can say she accomplished that.

And also, to the opinion that she is selfish when she quit the Animorphs, she is not the only one to have done that. Marco also threatened to leave the group on multiple occasions (and wasn't even going to stay past the first mission until he realized he needed to save his own mother) and Jake, though the consequences did not remain, wished away ever getting the powers at all, dooming the human race. All of the Animorphs have been very selfish or emotionally weak at some point or another but for some reason everyone points out Cassie.

Anyway, I don't mean to just defend Cassie, she's always been my favorite before I realized anyone hated her. On another, more personal note, it was very important to me as a little black girl that I found a series that featured a black girl as a main character, being an important person in saving the world, being the moral backbone of her group, and not being paired up with another random black person just because of some arbitrary blacks have to be with blacks rule. And not only that, Cassie was very similar to me as a kid and even now. She is very much a Libra like me haha I've always been a person who looks critically at social issues, things that can be disputed if looked at closely or are often overlooked. And I think it's important to look critically at things in your life that you may just go along with because it "needs" to happen. That's the basis for many civil liberties and movements we have had and have today that work to make the world a better place. And I appreciated Cassie so much for being a part of that.

I don't believe that Marco's actions were selfish, since he knew that his father would commit suicide if Marco disappeared. Cassie left because she didn't want to change, despite that being an important part of growing up. People change. It happens. Otherwise you'd still be a child.

[cathey]

I feel like ever since the ghost writers started writing the books the personalities went downhill. They all went extreme in their respective directions, and made it sort of unbelievable that they're still a team.

For instance, Rachel started out as a typical high school girl who's into looks and stuff, that just happened to be incredibly brave and tough in battles. I liked her in the beginning, but then she turned to this reckless blood thirsty lunatic. Yeah, I get it, it's war and the soldiers only get darker over time, but going extreme was bad for both the book and the character.

People may be able to justify Rachel going dark, but Cassie's growing conflict on moral issues is just dumb. It's war, and she should have figured out by then that the enemy's already been infiltrated, and the best she could do is defend the human race. I feel like the ghost writers had to go extreme with each character and Cassie's personality development really just makes no sense. Even for an environmentalist, you think about your own survival first, instead of worrying if the predator will starve if you don't offer yourself as dinner.

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?

Marco's a tad better, since Marco was originally just designed to be a comic relief person who's skeptical about everything. You can't really make an annoying person out of that even you went extreme.

Ax was okay I guess. Since he's literally an alien, everything weird about him could be forgiven. Even though he never learned after being on Earth for such a long time, it's still forgivable and at times he's funny. But still I wonder at times why didn't Ax acquire a lion for battles that would be seen by non-controllers...

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?

So I guess at the end of the day only Marco and Ax are likable characters at all...

[Chad32]

TV Tropes calls it flanderization. Basically take one aspect about a character, for instance Rachel's willingness to fight, and stretch it until it overshadows most other aspects. If not all of them. It's hard not to run into problems when you have several people working on one series. Too many cooks will spoil the broth, as it were.