I’ve been wondering, a lot of animorphs fan culture here on tumblr spends a lot of time talking about how great a writer K A Applegate is, but weren’t 90% of the animorphs books ghostwritten? From what I’ve gathered through interviews, they weren’t even that picky about who wrote it, her husband said they got “some guy the met at a bar” to write one once, simply because they were short on time.
So the question of the authorship of Animorphs is more interesting and more complicated than just “a bunch of ghosts in a trenchcoat collectively calling themselves K.A. Applegate,” the way it is with Nancy Drew or The Baby-Sitters’ Club. Of the 66 books published under the name Animorphs, 24 are partially credited to ghost writers, so it’s less like 90% of the series and more like (does some quick math) 36.4% of the series is ghost written.
HOWEVER, it’s not as though the ghost-written books involved Scholastic simply handing the reins to some new people and cutting the original Katherine Applegate out of the loop. On Reddit and Twitter, Applegate has talked about the fact that she didn’t play well with others and in retrospect regrets how demanding she was: apparently she wrote extensively detailed outlines for every book that was eventually ghost-written, and put a ton of requirements in place about what the ghost writers were and were not allowed to have each character say. Not only that, but she reserved the right to edit every single book as thoroughly as she so chose after the ghost writer was done, and admits that she effectively rewrote some of them from the ground up.
I understand why this level of neuroticism probably made her a nightmare to work for, and I commend her for being willing to own up to past mistakes, but I also think that much of the remarkable consistency in the series’s character arcs can be credited to her high level of involvement. Outside of a handful of lines in #43 and #48, I find all of the characters to be thoroughly consistent throughout the rotating authors. The plots maintain consistent tone and development, and some of the best moments in the series (eating the baby seal in #25, the final battle of #33, the conversation between the Berensons in #37) are the product of ghost writers, probably because K.A. Applegate held them to such high standards.
There’s also the question of Michael Grant. He and Applegate have talked about the fact that he was a lot of the inspiration for Marco, and he definitely solo-wrote most of #47, but other than that it seems as though there’s no disentangling his influence into neat little chunks. I’ve seen a handful of fandalites collectively referring to the author of the series as “Applegrant,” which I think gets the idea across pretty well, but (unlike with the other ghosts) we don’t have a nice clear list of books that are and are not credited to him.
All of that is before we get into the fact that every single book ever published through Scholastic bears the hard work of everyone from editors to publishers to cover models and back-of-book summary writers. To describe any great work of fiction as the product of an individual is to ignore the mostly-invisible labor of dozens of people whose names don’t get to appear on the front cover.
Anyway, I refer to the author of Animorphs as “K.A. Applegate,” which seems like the least untrue way to describe the way the series came into being. We know that she was the one running the show all along. So it seems to be both as accurate and as inaccurate as saying “the president did X” to refer to the actions of the U.S. government as a whole.
natural-blue-26
Out of curiosity, which parts of #43 and #48 jumped out at you?
Honestly, these are just my opinions, and I also think there are a lot of good parts of both books. For instance, I actually really like both opening sequences. The start of #43 picks up where #33 left off with Tobias asserting that Taylor can die curious about him, while also going a lot more into his decision to become a nothlit and discussing the fact that he honestly doesn’t know if he would’ve made the same call now if he could go back in time and do it all over again. The opening of #48 has really good atmosphere, building out the Animorphs’ tension about the impending open warfare with the yeerks as they all huddle close and wait for the hammer to fall.
In terms of what I think doesn’t work for #43:
- Marco makes a lot of really mean remarks to Cassie during the kids’ whole discussion about whether to blow up the yeerk pool, actually laughing in her face when she points out that they’d be killing an unknown number of hosts right along with unarmed yeerk noncombattants. Ax and Jake are also both totally blasé about blowing up the yeerk pool, even though they both voted against using the oatmeal to hurt even a few yeerks in #17 and they’re all deeply troubled about actually destroying the yeerk pool in #52.
- When the kids first reach the tunnel, it’s Jake yelling at Ax as Ax is struggling to get control of a new morph, while Rachel tries to talk to him “kindly” and “tentatively.” There are a handful of other moments like this — later on Jake actually bares his teeth and growls at Tobias after they briefly bump each other, only for Rachel to wring her hands and declare that everyone is falling apart. Frankly, both Berensons come off less like their usual selves, and more in line with Ye Traditional Teen Superheroe Gender Roles, than I am entirely comfortable with.
- It’s arguable how much this is out of character, but I am really REALLY not comfortable with the way that Tobias’s tough predator attitude occasionally edges close to Social Darwinism when he looks at Taylor in this book. Yes, he has a kill-or-be-killed outlook thanks to the hawk mind, and yes, he definitely fails to recognize at other times that Taylor was preyed upon by the Sharing as much as she joined to “save face” but still. Don’t love it.
In terms of #48:
- Cassie and Rachel’s friendship feels a little off-kilter throughout their interactions in this book. Sure, they’ve both been through a lot since they were kids giggling over Jeremy Jason McCole and cheating on their science homework together, but they’re downright mean to each other in a handful of places in this book. They call each other names — monster, wimp — and fail to band together to take down David the way they did in #22. I would’ve even liked to see a scene with the two of them acknowledging that they’ve grown apart, or (even better) some kind of reconciliation before the end.
- Cassie herself is weirdly helpless throughout this book. If anyone could escape David’s bug-poison trap through a careful controlled morph, it’s her. If anyone could talk David into letting them both go, it’s her. We never see her try either tactic, or really anything at all outside of sitting around and begging Rachel to rescue her.
- Rachel herself holds the Idiot Ball for large parts of this plot. She morphs rat to convince David to let Cassie go… and then doesn’t consider just demorphing the moment Cassie is out of his direct threat. She accepts the idea of plan-following literate rats without question, even though she’s been a rat herself and knows they don’t move in coordinated groups, much less read or write. She makes no attempt to find third ways out of the situation, such as bargaining with David for something like the morphing cube or Jake’s life in order to buy Cassie some time. Sure, it’s all a dream, and dream logic applies, but…
- Rachel also doesn’t really get anything done in this book. She has a lot of moments with a lot of potential, but she spends most of them crying. First it’s her bursting into tears when David suggests they’re just alike, then it’s her crying even harder in a ball in the corner when Cassie points out that David can’t be allowed to live, and then it’s the end of the book and Rachel’s still just sitting on the ground sobbing. There are ways to convey that she is experiencing strong emotion that can nevertheless advance the plot or align better with Rachel’s earlier characterization, so it’s a bummer that that’s the last we get of her narration before #54.
I’ve always thought that #43 had really good characterization. It read to me like all of the Animorphs were *deeply uncomfortable* with the idea of blowing up the yeerk pool, but agreed it was necessary, and were trying to justify it to themselves, trying to pretend like it wasn’t bothering them- and then lashing out because of being so fraught and tightly wound. Jake’s trying desperately to prove he won’t let Tom derail the war effort (this is coming off the back of 41, remember), Rachel’s trying desperately to feel that she’s not bloodthirsty…
As for 48, it isn’t all a dream, I’m not sure why you think it is- we even see Cassie mention it in book 50. It begins with two dreams back to back, but starting in chapter six it’s the manipulations of Crayak. The thing is that he used the dreams to basically gaslight Rachel, and that’s something I think is really cool about the book- even the reader is left wondering throughout the book what’s real and what isn’t, and it’s very hard to get a sense on reality until things have settled at the end. It’s an intentional manipulation technique by Crayak to overwhelm Rachel and make it harder for her to think things through and piece them together. Thats why she doesn’t realize about the rats at first, because it’s harder to realize rats don’t work as an army when Crayak had you kidnapped by an army of rats.
Also, Cassie is never out of David’s direct threat. He opened an airhole, one he could easily shut again.
To me, 48 was the climax of Rachel’s arc and it’s one of my favorite books, where the whole arc about the darkness inside reaches its peak. It’s also a sizable part of Cassie’s arc, pushing her further into an unwillingness to make that sort of tough call- she won’t try to escape, she won’t fight David, she won’t take him back, she won’t let Jake stop Tom. (This phrasing is unfair to her and I’m sorry about that, I don’t know how to properly phrase the thing I’m trying to point at, sorry.)
As for Rachel not getting anything done… I’d have to disagree. This is her against Crayak, she *cannot* kill Crayak. She can kill Visser Three and she does her absolute best to. She can escape, and she does, by playing on the goons. This was intended as a psychological crucible for her, and she stayed strong instead of breaking- she didn’t give into Crayak’s offer. Unlike, notably, Jake in MM4. What more would you actually expect her to be able to do?
48 is the exact sort of thing that is setting up the ways the Animorphs are falling apart in these later books. Cassie and Rachel *are* mean to each other, and that’s the point. The war is driving them each into their roles, the things they have to be at the expense of everything else. Rachel *has* to be the warrior, doing the dirty things the rest of the team can’t. Cassie *has* to be the voice of morality, pushing for restraint when others are focusing on how to get things done. Jake has to be the general who focuses on the war above all else. This book most directly talks about those roles out of any of them. It’s a personal favorite of mine.
What if, for whatever reason, the Animorphs couldn't use thought speak?
Don't know how to avoid a total party kill in this scenario, probably during their first battle when Jake's unable to coordinate the team. Anyone else have a way out?
What if they couldn’t use *private* thoughtspeak, and everything they said could be heard by the people nearby?
i think the realistic answer is morph tech works with the yeerk being considered part of what goes to zspace, but i think the horrible answer is that the yeerk stays in the brain during morph and thats why visser three favors big morphs- no chance he gets squashed in the new brain, and when a yeerk tried to morph something too small like a rabbit or mouse (after they got the cube) it just. instakilled both yeerk and host by way of Too Little Skull For More Than One Brain
This fits with the stuff in #15 with the kids not being able to morph bugs while they've got mind control chips in their brains. Do we ever see a controller morph a bug? Like, I think the smallest brain we see a controller morph is maybe the king cobra — I think peregrine falcons are smaller overall, but reptiles famously have minimal brain. And we don't know for sure that there's not space in a snake skull for a yeerk.
It's hard to say how small a skull can fit a yeerk. We know horses can fit yeerks (#14) and they have smaller brain cases than humans, but it's also implied in #33 that a hawk can't fit a yeerk and they have bigger brains than king cobras. But we don't know for sure.
This is a really interesting headcanon, and I'm kind of here for it.
Temrash morphed an ant.
The animorphs play truth or dare. What's the funniest dare each animorph recieves?
Okay, I KNOW I've seen this in a fic, but I can't find it now. Does anyone know of the fic where the Animorphs play Truth or Dare?
They play “never have I ever” in a scene of “with the sun burning the dashboard”, is that what you’re thinking of?
What do you think Visser Three and the other Yeerks thought happened to David?
I'll be honest: this is one of those questions I try to avoid asking, because I think thinking about it too hard reveals an unusually glaring plot hole.
Because... well. As of #20, Visser Three suspects and may even know that the andalite bandits recruited this kid David, maybe even giving him the morphing power. So if the yeerks are that sure that ordinary 14-year-old human David McJonesmith is an "andalite bandit," then why couldn't the other "bandits" also be teen humans? What's to stop the yeerks from at least checking on David's known associates? He only has one semi-friend during his tenure in California — and that's Marco. So why don't the yeerks take a second look at what a guy selling a morphing cube might have said to Visser One's host's son while they were hanging out together? And why would Visser Three of all people (or at least one of his cronies) not go after Marco in search of proof that Visser One is collaborating with the andalite bandits?
Someone else help me Baker Street Irregulars this one into making sense.
I mean, I always took it as David's obvious disappearance after one encounter solidifying in Visser Three's mind that the others had to be Andalite's. Clearly they recruited the human child in desperation from his brilliant campaign against them, and he fell in the first fight, unlike the real Andalites, who had been able to foil him so long. Andalite superiority proves that the others could never be just human children.
And then we're back to the problem of many yeerks probably guessed the truth, but what were they going to do, volunteer a theory that went against Visser Three? Not unless they had airtight proof.
So the Animorphs lived to fight another day.
Interesting concept. I could see that, especially if V3 takes David turning on the team as proof that humans don't have what it takes to fight yeerks.
Or maybe he thinks the Andalites decided humans couldn’t be trusted and killed him themselves? Which is actually really close to the truth…
What would happen if David pops up after 54 and tries to trash the Animorphs reputation?
Marco makes a press release the following day. He looks solemn and even a little sad as he stares directly into the camera, hands folded on the desk in front of him.
"I wanted to address the troubled young man named David who has been speaking to the press about me and my fellow Animorphs. Although it is true that David briefly attended our high school, we were otherwise not acquainted with this person at any point during the war, nor was he ever affiliated with this team. It's clear he gained his ability to morph in the same way that the vast majority of human morphers did: he was made a controller, either involuntarily or... otherwise.
"I have never been controlled by a yeerk myself, but I am told it is a deeply traumatizing experience that can leave long-lasting emotional injuries. I'm aware that David denies ever having been a controller, but again we need no further evidence than his morphing ability to know that his memory cannot be accurate. Therefore, it's no wonder that he demonstrates such clear evidence of mental illness, in this case manifesting as a fantasy about having been an Animorph during the war.
"As someone whose own mother was controlled by a yeerk for many years, I have deepest sympathy for David, and can only hope that he soon gets the help that he needs. Thank you for your time."
If anyone asks Eva, she'll report that she remembers David having been present at several meetings of the Sharing, and listed among the rosters of human hosts. No, she can't comment either on whether or not he was voluntary. It wouldn't be appropriate to speculate. But... well.
I.....would question why NOT just be honest? They recruited, he was a sociopath, end of story?
Like, the fight with tiger and the Lion was a PUBLIC even. They could easily tell people about that. AND Rachel and Jakes families could back up them explaining what happened to their cousin. Would they really NEED to lie about David?
I still think it'd be a good idea, for a few reasons:
- The higher the pedestal, the further the fall — the U.S. loves destroying the lives of celebrities. This was true well before "cancel culture." Look at Janet Jackson, Shia LaBeouf, Hugh Grant, Lindsay Lohan, etc. Arguably, paparazzi culture hit its scummy nadir in the late 90s - early 00s, and the celebrity having done something wrong was regarded as justification for literally any level of harassment.
- That tsunami of bullshit is going to land hardest on Rachel. Because David would be the most eager to criticize her, because she spearheaded the effort to try to kill him and then trap him, because she's not there to defend herself. Because she's female, duh. And Rachel is dead.
- There are a few narratives it'd be all to easy to slot Rachel into, if David's treated as an authority on her. Psycho bitch. Crazy ex-girlfriend. Spoiled rich girl. Hysterical white girl. PMS. Mad cow. Just wander over to Reddit to see more examples.
- And Rachel is dead. She died saving her friends. Saving the ungrateful planet. She can't defend herself, she can't explain. It would be devastating, and a grave injustice, to see something like that happen to her legacy.
Oh and it’s still very fucked up what the Animorphs did to David. And “both sides did fucked up things” doesn’t sit too well with the press.
@lookingatdogswhilecompilingcode #also yes both marco and eva do something incredibly evil in this au but i also cannot get myself to completely disapprove#which is the point of everything david#oh and i love how eva would totally throw voluntaries under the bus with this#where eleutherophobia!tom wouldn’t
Yes! That's what's so great (🤕) about David — any time he gets involved, the situation quickly becomes Everyone Sucks Here. He's awful, the Animorphs do awful things to stop him, ESH.
The story kind of falls apart if anyone looks at the timeline too closely, though. David got the ability to morph long before there were morphing human controllers, and there’s corroborating evidence to support that. Plus the amount of morphing controllers was probably limited and it wouldn’t be out of the question for there to be a list of them somewhere.
Of course, Marco’s star power is enough to overshadow any of David’s attempts to bring his version of the truth to light, but it has just enough evidence to at least be a very persistent conspiracy theory.
David got the ability to morph long before there were morphing human controllers
But can he prove that? Visser Three never definitively knows that there are seven "andalite bandits," and no non-Animorph witnesses David morphing mid-series.
The fight on the roof of the mall? A training exercise that got out of hand, and Marco (having anticipated this) has the lion morph to back it up. David’s disappearance in #20? Same thing that happened to Eva: he got yeerkified and transferred off world. The only person who could definitively confirm or deny David being a morph controller is Tom, and you'll need a ouija board to get a statement from him.
What about people who went by the island and heard his thoughtspeak screams? Or, like, Crayak?
The current discussion about "a big advantage for the yeerks is that no one knows there's an alien invasion" reminds me of your ficlet that became the first chapter of All Assorted Animorphs AUs; Elfangor meets the team as adults, and they *do* go public about the invasion. It ends poorly. Sorry kids, no clean option here.
The yeerks' need for secrecy and the Animorphs' need for secrecy are not the same, in a really interesting way.
- The yeerks need to keep humans as a whole from knowing that mind-controlling alien invaders exist. This means suppressing all knowledge of extraterrestrial everything, even when it means covering up for their enemies.
- The Animorphs need to avoid controllers knowing who they are, and don't have a reliable way to know which humans are controllers. This means they have to protect their names and faces at all costs, but would prefer it if humanity did know the yeerks exist.
Like, look at #22 where the controller-cops indirectly protect Jake by inventing reasons a tiger could be unconscious on the floor of a California mall. Or the times the kids win victories over controllers by getting them to act alien in front of civilians (e.g. #12, #35). The yeerks are the ones who have to keep the entire war secret.
By contrast, the kids just have to keep themselves secret. Look at the number of times they straight-up admit they're morphers and not real animals. Sometimes it's around people too remote to be controllers, like Derek (#25) and Yami (#44). Sometimes it's a civilian who just reacted with shock instead of anger to the sight of morphing (e.g. the home cook in #5, the busboy in #35). Sometimes it's even a known controller, just as long as they don't give their names (e.g. the opening of #18, Visser One in #30). They don't even go out of their way to actively maintain the fiction they're andalites — they don't dispel that belief if they can help it, because it's useful, but they're not going to spend a ton of time and energy on it. Just as long as no controllers know that Jake Berenson of 123 Street Road, Townsville, CA, can morph, it doesn't matter what else leaks.
@blackwater776 #the kids are actively TRYING to tell the world about aliens!#they just have to avoid telling controllers who they are in the process; hence the lack of last names
I guess that's another thing that strikes me about the difference — saying it's a "plot hole" if you can figure out in #16 or #44 that the Animorphs are from California is missing the point. The controllers of this world already know the morph-capable terrorist cell is in California; they're in California too, and that's where the dang tigers and elephants keep showing up! But anything the kids can do to make it less obvious they're from specifically Street Road of Townsville, CA, will still work in their favor.
Same goes for using their real first names; they're all fairly common JudeoChristian first names, except for Aximili. But the yeerks have figured out who Ax is by mid-series (definitely by #38, possibly as soon as MM1) and it doesn't matter one whit that they know Elfangor's kid brother survived and joined the "andalite bandits."
@as21-7 #also. it's not a plot hole they're 13#for all that the animorphs fight the war and learn to do it competently. they're still kids#marco 'knows' how to drive from a videogame and he notably Cannot Drive. they *aren't* able to be spies; they're kids doing their best#they don't know how to tell the world in a way that doesn't immediately get covered up and then them killed#they might not even know you can tell theyre from california in their books. because they're 13#(yes they grow older and eventually start to go other places but im emphasizing that theyre still kids)
That's also a good point. Most of the "breaks" in their secrecy are character-driven, in a way that feels realistic for normal kids who aren't combat trained. How are they supposed to know that international airports located near boardwalks are actually pretty rare in the U.S.? They don't know where the city of Sydney is or why their school is on a seven-day cycle! And it's not like they could hop on Census.Gov to judge how common the first name "Tobias" is in 1996. They're doing the best they can, while juggling a lot of other priorities, and it fits character-wise that it'd be imperfect.
I do feel like they should be able to figure out “the son of Visser One’s host body” is probably pretty specific to just Marco, though.
Writing advice #?: When it comes to characterization, obligation > love.
What I mean by this: love is basically universal. It offers little variability. Almost everyone has a friend, sibling, etc for whom they'd do anything. Allegedly even Hitler loved his apocryphal dog, John Wilkes Booth was a good brother, yadda yadda so forth.
So if you want to have a story that makes us like your character Liv, and establishes interesting tension that will draw out who Liv is as a person... don't write about her rescuing her beloved mother. Write about what happens when someone she dislikes is in danger.
Two great examples I've read recently:
- In The Drift by C.J. Tudor, Meg is trapped in a broken-down cable car with five other people and no way to call for help. She risks her life, performing a heroic physical feat that causes herself serious injury - to save a woman who accused her of murder, suggested leaving her to die, and generally treated her like dirt all week. Meg is heroic as hell.
- In Dungeon Crawler Carl, the eponymous Carl ends up in the adventure because he ran outside in boxers in -10°F weather to save his ex-girlfriend's obnoxious, misanthropic cat. Carl might be a shlub, but he's a rock solid dude.
I could go on - would Shiloh saving Jeb be nearly as powerful if Jeb wasn't such an asshole? - but the point remains. Meg sacrificing so much to save her partner would be just what's expected. Carl rescuing a cat he chose to adopt is a non-event. Obligation is where the rubber hits the road. Where the ordinary people get sorted from the awesome ones. Where the character-defining moments occur. Over 99.9% of humans ever researched would sacrifice a stranger to save a loved one; a rare form of brain damage that causes people to value strangers and family the same is considered extremely aberrant.
I mention all of this because fan fiction is chock full of examples of characters dying (or killing, or walking through fire, or...) to save their best friends and their sisters and their fiancés. And if you want to write a story about Dean Winchester killing orphans or going to hell or destroying his car to save Sam Winchester, awesome. But there's not a ton of room for characterization in there.
If you want us to learn something about who this person Liv really is, show her forced to choose between rescuing a dog who just bit her and making it to a job interview on time. Let her see her loud neighbor with the bass-boosted music about to get a ticket for an expired meter. Give her a choice between saving 10 strangers or saving her wife. Have her walk by her sexist coworker and realize the guy is quietly sobbing. Literally anything she does next will be interesting, and say a lot about her as a person. If she's just choosing between her wife's life and her own, or her wife's life and the sexist coworker, then the scene might be poignant or sad - but it won't be surprising or tense or revelatory about Liv as a person. The big moments of heroism aren't driven by love, but by obligation.
I actually think this is one of the most fascinating things about Animorphs. Because we see Marco risk his life over and over again for those he cares about.
…And we see how he treats Nora, and those he *doesn’t*.
Marco would do absolutely anything for those he cares about, but that’s a very short list. But since all our narrators are *on* that list, it’s not so obvious. It’s a really cool and subtle piece of characterization.
So I'm putting together an In Defence of Cassie PowerPoint for a PowerPoint night with friends. Do you have any arguments for or against her? I trust your opinion and am curious.
Let's see.
"She's too powerful, too unique, too far-seeing, and not good enough for Jake! What a Mary Sue!"
Counterpoint: May I introduce you to the reigning champion fan favorite, Sad White Boy Tobias?
- Only nothlit ever to regain the ability to morph
- Only known human-andalite hybrid ever to exist
- Regarded as savior by entire hork-bajir species
- Entire existence is a time paradox the war hinges upon
- Pulls the canonically "most beautiful girl in our grade", who turns down 6 or 7 other offers in favor of Bird Boy
- Correctly predicted planetary ecology 65 million years in advance
- Believed to be immune to 2-hour limit
In conclusion: y'all wouldn't be crying "Mary Sue" if Cassie was a sad white boy, and I can prove it.
"She's too weak and hand-wringing, and she never helps the war effort!"
Counterpoint: First of all, the fact that the same people say this in the same breath as "she's too powerful" is... telling. Secondly:
- She saved the entire team's lives in #24, in #29, in #44, and in MM1, among others.
- Specifically calling out #44 — that ending shows she is willing and able to be ruthless when her friends are in need. She doesn't like slaughtering human-controllers, but if the alternative is everyone she loves dying, then she'll fucking well do it.
- Much like Jake (see: Sad White Boy), she's more willing to risk herself than her friends, hence the end of MM1
- Her medical knowledge saves Marco from rabies, Ax from brain!appendicitis, and Tobias from bird flu.
- Her survivalist knowledge saves everyone in #25 (the Arctic), MM2 (Cretaceous Era), #11 (rainforest), and #14 (desert).
In conclusion: Cassie's only idealistic-looking by the standards of this extremely morally gray team.
"She's so unfair to Jake!"
Counterpoint: Jake? The Jake who refused to speak with her for weeks? Jake who proposes marriage while they're still broken up? Jake who announces he'll never trust Cassie again because she [checks notes] saved his brother's life? That Jake?
Also:
- She gives him tons of emotional support in #16, #21, #47, and other times he's feeling low.
- They have a healthy argument where they air differences and come to an understanding in #9.
- Did I mention he doesn't just dump her but ghosts her in the middle of the war's endgame?
- They're teenagers. Their relationship isn't perfect, but it is built on open communication and mutual respect
which is more than Rachel and Tobias can say - She's fighting a war, and PTSD for that matter. No, she doesn't have infinite emotional bandwidth.
In conclusion: Their relationship is fine, their breakup is mutual, and her behavior only looks bad if, once again, you're holding Cassie to a different standard than you are Jake.
"She shouldn't have trusted Aftran!"
Counterpoint: friendly reminder that the alternative was killing a 6-year-old for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If that's what you think Cassie should've done, that tells us more about you than about her.
"She spends too much time moralizing!"
Counterpoint: this is a book series about war, not a friggin' video game. If you want moral pornography, go play Call of Duty. If you want sci fi realism, then you're going to have to accept that a majority of humans prefer not to kill their fellow humans if at all possible.
"She's a ripoff of [insert character here]!"
Counterpoint: literally every single one of these says more about the commenter than about the source work. "Every dystopia is set in the U.S." is the kind of thing only people who only read books by American authors would think. "All epic fantasy is Eurocentric" => tell me you only read books by white people without telling me. I'm glad you think Cassie is too similar to Willow Rosenberg, but there are at least 6 other stories in the known world, and I hear some of them even feature sweet/dorky/caring characters who are secretly ultra-powerful.
In conclusion: You don't have to like Cassie as a (fictional) person, but 85% of criticisms directed at her are bad-faith attacks on one of the 1990s' only fat Black female gnc ultra-powerful superheroes.
Half the notes on this post: I had no idea Cassie got this amount of hate! What the heck????
The other half: Good point OP, but here's why my hatred of Cassie is totally justified and not at all based in holding her to different standards than her white male costars.
To address some further points that the notes have been kind enough to bring up, it would appear further debunking is needed. To be clear, I get that most people don't have my encyclopedic knowledge of a series that ended a quarter century ago and are getting their information filtered through fandom. However.
"She doesn't acknowledge the sacrifices her friends make for the war effort."
Counterpoint:
- "I guess I'm not you, Tobias. I guess I'm not willing to make the sacrifices you've made... That can mean... I'm a coward. I'm selfish." (Cassie, #19)
- "'Each day, each battle, each mission, I just feel less and less.' ...I turned to Jake. He made the ghost of a smile and nodded his head. He understood. He knew. It was happening to him, too." (Cassie, #19)
- "Cassie put her arm around my shoulder. It is a human gesture of comfort. 'You okay?' she asked. [Ax just rejected the only 3 other andalites on the planet.]... Cassie held my hand, and in the darkness where no one could see, I cried." (Ax, #38)
- "She [Rachel] had this way of seeming untouched by what went on around her. Unaffected. Above... But the war had touched her. She'd changed, and she'd known she was changing... My beautiful, brave best friend." (Cassie, #54)
- "'So how is he [Jake], really?' /'I'm not exactly a psychiatrist, Cassie.' /I wasn't going to accept that. "Marco, you have a very subtle mind and you're a good observer. And he's your best friend." (Cassie, #54)
- "Jake had done an almost superhuman job of protecting his parents. Both from death and a fate worse than death. Infestation. Until the last time." (Cassie, #50)
- "He wants us to just quit the whole thing... But at the same time, it's Marco who is very aware of all the security problems. He's the one who makes sure we never discuss anything on the phone, where enemy ears might be listening in." (Cassie, #4)
In conclusion: I could go on, but she's IMHO more aware of the others' sacrifices than Ax or Marco is.
"Her saving Ax with brain surgery in #29 is a deus ex machina"
Counterpoint: First, trephination predates writing in parts of the world so, a) it can be done without modern tools, b) it can be done without written instruction (which Cassie has), c) it can be done without yeerk assistance (which Cassie has). Cassie doesn't literally trepan Ax, but her surgery isn't far off.
Second... I already brought up Tobias reshaping the history of the entire Earth, didn't I? Aight, how about:
- Marco predicts Visser One's moves months in advance, using information gleaned from 3 interactions with her that each lasted less than 15 minutes (#30)
- Ax, who weighs ~100lbs, kills a T. rex that weighs ~25,000lbs using only his tail (MM2)
- Rachel fights three hork-bajir controllers, injuring two and killing one, with no morphing and only melee weapons (MM4)
- Tobias catches an arrow in midair, intercepting an object traveling at over 200 MPH while himself traveling at up to 60 MPH and actively being shot at (MM3)
- Marco and Ax hack the CIA database in an afternoon because they're bored (#48)
In conclusion: It's a superhero story, ffs.
"Her ability to morph well is rarely or never helpful"
Counterpoint: This one has got to be down to OP not having read the books in ~20 years.
- In #37, she morphs her way out of shackles without revealing she's human by only demorphing parts of her polar bear legs.
- In #44, she pulls a similar trick by breaking into an airplane with human fingers while still 90% gull.
- The default "nuclear option" (MM1, #24, #34, #39) is for the kids to drop Moby Cassie on their problems, a strategy that never fails to get results — and that hinges on Cassie being able to turn into a whale ultra-fast while retaining some of her bird parts.
- In #9, she saves everyone's lives by regaining control of her termite morph long enough to kill the queen, something none of her friends can do.
- In #3, #21, and #26, she saves fellow morphers from being trapped by helping them demorph.
In conclusion: Cassie being a skilled morpher doesn't become useful quite as often as Tobias's flying skills or Ax's lightning calculation, but it's a close contest.
"She's the one who pushed the others to dump oatmeal in the yeerk pool and later to drop a nuclear bomb on it."
Counterpoint: This one has got to be down to OP not having read the books in ~20 years, but also it's extremely telling that this false rumor is making its way around the fandom. I'm sure someone's come up with a way to blame her for the JFK assassination and the Mount St. Helens eruption while they're at it.
- "'Cassie?' I asked. 'What do you think?' /... When she turned around, I was shocked. She had a stricken look. 'I... I don't know anymore, okay?... All the rights and wrongs, and all the lines between good and evil...' Cassie hugged herself." (Rachel, #17)
- "I kicked the rest of the barrels into the pool, just so Marco couldn't possibly miss. Then Cassie went off to free the others... «Marco has to shoot,» I said... /«He's not leaving us any choice,» Tobias said grimly. He hopped over to sit on Marco's shoulder. «You're aiming high,» he said. «A hair lower...»" (Rachel, #17)
- [Jake and Eva discuss bombing the yeerk pool] "«You know, maybe we should rethink this,» Tobias said. /'Yeah, we should,' Cassie agreed. 'This mission is way too heavy with bad karma.' .../'I'm out,' Cassie said hotly. 'I thought that maybe... but I can't. And I can tell you my parents are out, too.' .../ Cassie turned to walk away, but Jake grabbed her sleeve. 'Cassie! Come on.'/ 'Come on what! ... You don't knowingly take innocent life. Not if you're a decent person. I thought you knew that, Jake.'" (Ax, #52)
- "'Cassie's going [on the mission],' Jake said. 'If there are tough decisions to be made along the way, I want Cassie to make them.' .../'Cassie!' Marco sighed. 'We increase the risk...' /«Cassie is right,» I said abruptly. «We agreed to give a full five minutes to those who wish to escape. To give them less would be dishonorable and inhumane.»" (Ax, #52)
In conclusion: She's capable of tough calls when they need to be made. But she always opposes slaughtering unhosted yeerks.
"Cassie is preachy and moralizing"
Counterpoint: I could bring up all the times Jake outright scolds someone for going against the team, or the times Tobias decides the fate of the world based on a gut feeling, or the times Marco's a straight-up asshole about someone disagreeing with him. But instead I'd like to list Cassie's morals:
- Don't kill prisoners of war if at all possible (#19, #52, #16)
- Don't ask anyone else to do something you wouldn't be willing to do yourself (#9, #19)
- We should maybe stop annihilating every other species on Earth at top speed, even if doing so is good for the economy (#4, #9, #24)
- Sport hunting is wasteful (#29)
- Hunting for food is not only acceptable, but often a person's only option (#25, #9)
- Animals feel pain (#4, #28)
- Animal experimentation, especially for cosmetics, is cruel (#28)
- It's better to fuck up by saving a life than by taking one (#19, #29, #50)
- An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind (sometimes you have to compromise) (#41, #52)
In conclusion: The environmentalism is the obvious place where Cassie's idealism has stood the test of time, far better than Marco's mockery about logging limits being the same as "let dogs vote!" (#9). But if we take a step back from the idea that the point of war is winning at all costs (again: if you want that, play Call of Duty) then most of what Cassie supports seems downright reasonable. You don't have to agree with her on everything — I'm in favor of culling animal overpopulations with sport hunting — but in a lot of ways she's less extreme in her views than Marco or Ax.
Yes and some more stuff
- She's the one to try a morph first whenever they can afford to do so
- She really tries her best to be comforting without making the other person feel bad (#4, Visser, #40)
- I know Marco (and Tobias?) talk about her giving them looks of pity. But that's Marco and Tobias. They see a glimpse of sympathy towards them and immediately think the others think they're weak. Instead of, ya know, just being compassionate
The team needs Cassie’s moralizing as much as they need Marco’s sense of humor and Rachel’s bravado. Even if they disagree with her. Especially when they disagree with her. They (and Cassie) may not know where the line is and shift it constantly, but they need the reminder that the line exists, that there should be a line.
I want to preface my reply here with the understanding that I agree with you on how a lot of these *are* double standards. But at the same time… I think there is a *legitimate* criticism laid against Cassie that I feel is being brushed off here. And when I say “criticism” I mean “character flaw she has”, in the same way that one could criticize Visser Three for being evil; it makes her character more complex, makes the book better, and it’s not bad to have!
But her decision to put Aftran in her head, to let Tom escape with the morphing cube, genuinely do put the whole world at risk. More than anyone else on the team, she struggles to set aside the close-to-her people instead of the world. In Percy Jackson, his fatal flaw was supposedly “loyalty”- he’d let the world burn for his friends. I don’t think that flaw was managed well there, but it reminds me of Cassie in theory.
Putting Aftran in her head to save Karen was a bad decision. It worked out really well, and I understood why she did it, and I don’t think that it makes her a Mary Sue that it worked out. That’s one of my utterly favorite books in the series. I love its message. *And* I think it was a bad decision. I think it put everyone else at risk, and the correct thing to do with the information she had at the time would have been to let Karen die rather than become a controller herself, and I think Cassie is the only one of the Animorphs who would have made that decision at that point in the war. Brushing this off as “The alternative was killing a 6-year old girl, and that tells us more about you than it does about her” is disingenuous, I think. Killing Karen *would* have been deeply deeply unpleasant, I’d have hated it, all of them would have hated it. But between “killing a six year old girl” and “exposing my entire team so that the whole planet falls to a life in slavery”, I know which one I’d pick, even if I *really wish a third option existed*. It’s a very legitimate thing to be upset with a character about, *even if* it’s incredibly realistic and very hard for anyone to do.
Similarly, the decision in book 50 to let Tom get away with the morphing cube- it worked out well, but it put the whole war at risk, and with the information she had it was the wrong decision. I think she is a *better character* for it; I think the story is better for it; I love Cassie. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that at that point in the war, no other Animorph would have taken that risk, and I don’t think it’s sexism to say “I think that that was a bad decision and this is my least favorite character as a result.” (And side note, she isn’t my least favorite character.)
They need her. They need someone to stand up for what’s right, to keep them from going too far. But she is *more likely* to go too far in the opposite direction than any of them. And that’s not a double standard; I’d be upset with any of them who knowingly took an action of that magnitude of risk. The others didn’t- except Jake, who gave up on the war in MM4, and I’m upset with him for doing that for exactly the same reasons. (With the exception of Nice Rachel in book 32 and Marco in book 42, both of which get passes for being literally brain damaged at the time.)
A similar thing goes for Rachel too, but a more interesting one here. Ax absolutely is bloodthirsty, and I’d even say *more* bloodthirsty than her. But the *narration* calls out Rachel as being the bloodthirsty one, over and over again. “Ax, get Rachel”, not “Rachel, get Ax”. Book 48 (which I love as a character study) is all about how Rachel reacts to the constant way the others treat her as bloodthirsty; we don’t get a similar book for Ax because they *don’t* treat him that way despite him being the one to suggest, e.g., flushing the Yeerks in 53, letting them starve in 7 without concern for the hosts.
So I think there absolutely is a sexism of sorts going on here, but I think it’s happening *in-universe too*, and I think a lot of people *out-of-universe* form their opinions based off of what the characters themselves think without doing deeper analysis to see what biases the characters have. And so I don’t think a discussion about this is complete without mentioning that aspect too.
Longtime reader and fan (thank you for existing and sharing your writing!) first time asker, prompted by watching the movie The Martian: what if the team went on a mission out in space, during the war or after, and accidentally left someone behind on a planet? I can't decide who it would be worse for it to happen to, and whether being able to morph would really be helpful. Maybe it's a funny no-big when you have alien space travel, I suppose
Ooh, I think it all depends on who got left behind.
Ax: We know from canon that he can get by while stranded on an alien planet without either dying or losing his mind. That said, Ax also desperately needs company and doesn't do well alone. When he's stuck in the Dome ship, he gets to the point of hallucinations and memory problems from the isolation (MM4). So Ax would probably figure out how to get a potato farm or other food supply going — he's very good at cobbling together solutions from limited technology — and he would be able to fix things that went wrong for a time.
But Ax better find that Rover and get it talking to an Earth satellite as fast as he can, if he's the one stranded. And he hopefully wouldn't make a mistake that results in it frying. If he does, then Ax would have the greatest risk of just losing the plot. That could mean falling into a depression so bad he stops maintaining his food supply, becoming so anxious he can't do EVAs anymore, developing psychosis and losing track of reality, or any number of other ways that his brain could start eating itself. But if he does end up with any kind of major overwhelming stressor, then he's probably screwed. It's not like there's a way to do therapy through a 2-message-an-hour Rover running on Morse code, and I doubt(?) NASA would've sent antidepressants in their limited weight supply.
Jake: Would go the same way as Ax, but a lot faster. He wouldn't consider himself worth risking others' lives to rescue, he wouldn't have the necessary mental flexibility to engineer himself a long-term survival solution, and he wouldn't be able to remain sane with no one to talk to. I don't think he'd actually die by suicide. I think he'd just curl up in bed and eat 3x a day until he ran out of MREs, and then gradually slip away.
Marco: Easily the best equipped to survive over a year alone on Mars. Name puns aside, he's the most Mark Watney-ish of the Animorphs. He can laugh as he's crying, he can entertain himself, he can think through problems quickly, and he can charm the media of planet Earth enough to convince NASA to mount a rescue expedition.
Marco would start talking to himself the moment he wakes up alone, and he wouldn't stop talking until he was finally back on the spaceship. He'd try so hard to be cool and tough in the logs, insisting on not really being scared, not really being hungry or in pain, until you could almost believe him. If something breaks, Marco will take it apart and fix it. If he risks dying in the process of fixing the broken water purifier or oxygen system, then he's going to run straight at it with manic determination to make his death at least entertaining for the folks at home.
Of course, Marco might also be the most upsetting one for the other Animorphs to realize they've left behind. Rather than trying to make the others feel better about having made an honest mistake in the process of trying to save their own lives, he'd be making jokes about how he was five minutes late for the school bus and yet they still left him on the field trip, or he knew that Jake found him annoying but never realized he was that annoying. Which would only make the whole team feel way worse about the fact that they left him for dead and nearly let him die for real.
Cassie: Would do all the science she could, with the opportunity she'd been given. She would carefully log the rock samples she found, take extensive notes on her processes, and use up every single sample container and scrap of disc space she had left on her observations. Then she'd go out somewhere beautiful, eat one last MRE and watch one last Earthrise, and take off her helmet.
Tobias: Probably second-best equipped psychologically to spend all that time in survival mode. Like Ax, Tobias is prone to mental illness and so risks not being able to keep going through all the relentless misery and stress, but Tobias is also a solitary creature at heart. And Tobias isn't afraid to do what it takes to survive, as long as he's not hurting anyone else in the process. So he wouldn't make contacting Earth a priority (except to make it clear that he needs rescue) and he would be okay with a tiny trickle of communication with his fellow humans that eventually gets cut off.
However, Tobias is also a lot more... rigid in planning, I guess? He doesn't have Ax's or Marco's "try anything" attitude. He makes rules for himself, and then he follows them, even to the point of risking death. He tends to obsess over taking the right course of action no matter what, and spends a ton of time considering what right would be in any given situation. Like, he's got more functional fixedness than Marco or Cassie, which could be bad if his only option for survival is to make a sock and a paperback book cover into a makeshift CO2 filter. So I think Tobias would handle the isolation best of anyone on the team, but risks not handling the 40,000 random engineering problems that come from using a tent meant for 6 people over 2 weeks as a home for 18 months.
Tobias would also be extremely upsetting for the other Animorphs to have left behind. His role on the team is classic break the cutie, where anything bad happening to him is utterly devastating for all his friends in a way it wouldn't be to have Rachel or Jake suffer a similar fate. If there's anyone that the team would risk cannibalism and death to return to Mars for, it's him.
Rachel: It's hard to say if impulsivity is more of a bonus or a drawback here. Rachel has never taken anything lying down in her life, ever, and she'd be offended by the idea of some stupid dusty planet getting the better of her. She would fight with every iota of her being to survive, fighting airlock failure and potato rot and oxygen leaks and water system clogs.
But. Impulsivity. If that means she tries anything, tries everything, until a solution works, then excellent. If that means she gets fed up with the process of survival, less good. If that means she says screw it and eats when she's hungry, doubleplusungood.
I don’t think Ax was hallucinating in MM4, I think it was a result of the timeline decaying (like Jake seeing his paw or Visser One being inexplicably transported.) It’s worth noting that the Yeerks don’t find Ax, and it’s implied he left before the mirror wave call, and those things-he-thought-were-hallucinations are the reason why.
(Side note, that’s my biggest pet peeve about MM4. All the changes mean we don’t *actually* get to see what would happen if the Animorphs never Animorphs. Even their victory at the end is predicated on Cassie coming back, so we don’t know if they would have won otherwise.)
Random idea: what if every time you acquired an animal you got a tattoo of it? How might that affect the number of morphs the Animorphs acquired? (Alternatively, what if instead of touching an animal, getting a tattoo of it was sufficient to morph it?)
How much of a choice would they have about the tattoo? If they're allowed to choose what it looks like and where it is and how big it is, then their personalities could come out. I could see both Marco and Cassie (for very different reasons) committing to getting sleeves with gorgeous zooscape murals, while Jake tries to cram as many tiny tattoos onto his left asscheek as he possibly can.
If the where/how/how big is not under their control, then I could see an even greater imbalance in amount of legwork than we see in canon: Ax and Tobias would be acquiring everything they can since they don't have cover to maintain, while the four human characters would be bracing themselves for catastrophe every time they got a new set of DNA. Also, Marco's dad would be even more convinced than in canon that Marco has joined an LA street gang. Since this is Peter we're talking about, he wouldn't necessarily do anything about it, but he would be extremely concerned.
Thought: What if the size/placement/vividness of the tattoo directly correlated to use/connection with the morph? So the fly morph is a pinprick somewhere on their body they're not even aware of, but Tobias has a red-tailed hawk tattoo in his human form that spreads across his entire back?
Ohhhhh I love this idea. Tiger stripes gradually creeping up Jake's arms, Ax getting more and more human figures across his flanks, Cassie having just dozens of tattoos spreading outward...
Poor Tobias would have all sort of tattoos on his hawk body.
Hot take: the authors purposefully kept the Animorphs from ever properly taking advantage of a raccoon morph (until Book 52, maybe) because racoon morphs are too OP. Change my mind, tumblr.
I guess I'm not of the mindset that there are animals more OP or UP than others. It feels antithetical to the whole philosophy of Animorphs, which is all about all animals having unexpected advantages and there being no such thing as a "best" animal.
That said. What advantages does raccoon have? Genuine question — all I know about them is a) rabies and b) trash theft.
they are basically everywhere in the states [although i dont know much about beaches or the raccoons there?] so its hard to be suspicious of them, theyre also well known for trying to get into stuff which helps evade suspicion
downside: people are terrified of rabies and call animal control on raccoons if they are 1) active in daylight or 2) acting strangely in ANY way
Fascinated by the juxtaposition here.
Honestly in my experience both of these are accurate
who was the first to grow facial hair, jake or marco?
Definitely Marco. I mean, Jake's may have sprouted first, but if so he'd shave it off like a responsible teen. Marco would be the one showing off his three mustache hairs around the school for a solid 1.5 grades.
Jake morphed Homer though.
Do you think Visser One’s yeerk box at the trial was lavender because of Andalite sexism, like a sort of “you are not in the military anymore” deal?
I promise I tried googling this but got nothing. What does lavender have to do with court martial/dishonorable discharge?
Female andalites are purple and don’t have the same military roles as male andalites, so I wasn’t sure if it could be interpreted that way (the book explicitly mentions it being lavender for a reason) or if that was me reading too much into it.