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zhderilla (Newbie)

Nov 29th 2023 at 6:56:08 AM •••

Hi everyone, I was reading through the character page and noticed some IMO odd takes on Cassie. I would like to remove some tropes I think really don't apply to her and edit descriptions on others, but I'm new here so I wanted to discuss it with you guys first.

UNMARKED SPOILERS AHEAD

Tropes I would like to remove

Born Winner

Unlike the rest of the team, Cassie's contributions to the team are qualities she was born with, rather than skills she had to learn. See Superpower Lottery below.

She has valuable learned skills: her fighting abilities are on par with the rest of the team ^noteexcept Rachel and obviously Ax, her ability to read people. Besides, her being an estreen rarely makes a difference, and temporal anomaly thing only comes into play in one book.

Loophole Abuse

In The Departure, she makes a deal with a Yeerk who discovers that she and the other Animorphs are actually humans and honors her end of it by willingly trapping herself in the form of a caterpillar (even after said Yeerk pulls a Heel–Face Turn and tries to talk her out of it), but is ultimately spared from suffering the long term consequences of this choice when her new caterpillar form becomes a butterfly, which resets the morphing clock and allows her to demorph back to human form. It's left unclear whether she intentionally chose the caterpillar as the form to trap herself in knowing this would happen or if it was just a happy accident.

This is just incorrect, the book is very clear on this. Cassie didn't know becoming a butterfly would reset the morph clock, and Aftran choose the caterpillar, not Cassie. At a stretch you could argue that she cheated Aftran by not telling her about becoming a butterfly but she still knowingly condemned herself to at best a year long life ^noteor however long butterflies live.

Principles Zealot

Cassie knows in her heart what she believes to be right, and when it comes to those beliefs, she does not budge. Even when it means disagreeing with the rest of the team, even when it means going behind their backs (as she does in The Departure and The Test), hell, even when it means outright working against them (as she does in The Diversion), Cassie will follow what her principles tells her is right every time. Because the narrative agrees with her conviction that her principles are always right, she never has to deal with the usual negative consequences of this behavior.

I would argue that exact opposite is true. Cassie willingness to compromise her principles is what is so tragic about her. She starts out as this sweet, idealistic, caring, compassionate kid, who feels bad for killing a termite queen, who at one point gambles the future of the human race on the belief that there are good Yeerks. She ends up helping to blow up the Yeerk pool killing thousands of innocent people because she sees no other way, and says nothing when Jake flushes 17000 helpless Yeerks into space and even tries to defend his actions in front of Erek. Loss of innocence in war is a huge theme throughout the series, and no other character embodies that better than her.

Skilled, but Naive

Possibly the most professionally talented member of the group (see Teen Genius below) but her uncompromising sense of morality hinders her usefulness to the team.

As I argued above, she is anything but uncompromising, and incredibly useful to the team: very capable fighter, hatches the plan to capture David, without her "naïve" actions in The Departure Ax would have almost certainly died in The Sickness^note.
Basically her Batman Gambit at the end pays off because, while others just want to defeat Yeerks through combat, she is the only one who really tries to understand who she's fighting.

Tropes that I would like to edit

Gambit Roulette

Her surrender of the blue box. She lets Tom steal it from Jake, counting on the gut feeling that giving Yeerks morphing power will cause mass defection in their ranks, as a Yeerk who becomes a nothlit will have no need to feed from the Yeerk pool and thus no longer depend on the Empire. However, she doesn't reveal this to have been her intention until after the defections start happening, making it seem like impossibly good foresight (or worse, Cassie hedging her bets, since if it didn't pan out she could always fall back on the excuse she used before of trying to keep Jake from killing Tom). Not to mention her plan created a ton of risks and threats that the Animorphs didn't have to worry about before, such as an entire army of morph-capable warriors as opposed to just one. While the roulette ultimately comes up in her favor, it exacts a heavy cost in life, culminating with Rachel's death.

This is more of a Batman Gambit, right? First, risks of giving morphing power to the Yeerks are way overblown, Andalites have morphing and superior technology and are still loosing the war. Morphing was always more suited for espionage and guerilla warfare ^note. Second, Cassie guesses from her interactions with Aftran that what Yeerks really want is to escape their slug bodies and dependence on Kandrona, and morphing is a perfect solution. It is a gamble, but hardly an unreasonable one ^note. And she sees the bigger picture: without giving the Yeerks morphing power the war can only end in either a complete genocide of Yeerks^note or complete enslavement of Humanity, with the latter being a lot more likely.

Tobias: [in book 52]: They're trying to survive. And we're trying to survive. I'm not really sure why it has to be an either-or thing ^note.

Could she have done it in a smarter way? Of course, but it was also impulsive desperate attempt to save Jake from either killing his brother or dying himself.
If you're looking for someone to blame for Rachel's death, it might as well be Jake. He could have assigned 3-4 Auxiliary Animorphs to go with her, greatly increasing her survival chances while not jeopardizing the diversion attempt on the ground. He makes mistakes, just like Cassie, just like all the Animorphs.

Good Is Not Nice

Cassie is undoubtedly the most moral and compassionate member of the team. She's also an uncompromising Principles Zealot and a take-no-prisoners Manipulative Bitch when she feels it necessary to manipulate her teammates.

Replace the second sentence with something like "She will also rip your throat out if you attack her, morph a polar bear and put your head in her jaws if you call her a racist slur, or hatch a brilliant plan to turn you into a nothlit if you threaten her friends (see David)".

Manipulative Bitch

While other members of the team are more physically dangerous, when it comes to head games Cassie is the most dangerous Animorph by a long shot. Like Ender Wiggin and Hannibal Lecter, she has the ability to understand a person completely without particularly liking them, and she is more than capable of weaponizing this understanding to manipulate those she considers enemies. David is the most prominent victim of this, but she also manipulates Visser Three, Tom, and even Rachel over the course of the series

Just a question here: in which book does she manipulate Rachel? No examples come to mind.

Omniscient Morality License

No matter what reckless action Cassie takes, no matter how badly she puts her friends in danger, the narrative always ends up proving her right. See The Departure, The Experiment, The Test and The Answer for the best examples.

This is downplayed, arguably even justified example of the trope for The Answer and The Departure.
The narrative doesn't prove her right, for example: the consequences of her choices in The Departure come into play in The Sickness where her decision to spare Aftran almost destroys the Animorphs. She faces those consequences with great bravery and resourcefullnes. She infiltrates the Yeerk pool basically alone ^note and saves Aftran.
How does she endanger her friends in The Test and The Experiment? In The Test especially she has their back the whole time.

lexicon Since: May, 2012

Nov 28th 2015 at 1:54:08 PM •••

Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: With Tobias, in a fashion. While Tobias is a predator as a red-tailed hawk, his own personality has always been gentle and a little dreamy. Rachel, on the other hand, is a Blood Knight who genuinely enjoys the fighting that comes with being an Animorph (which scares her). This might account for a great deal of the attraction between them: Rachel loves the human Tobias in a way he can hold on to, and Tobias keeps Rachel connected to gentleness, compassion, and mercy. In a way, they keep each other connected to their humanity.

I don't think you would call Tobias a feminine boy because his being 'gentle and a little dreamy' is being a star-gazing bully magnet.

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ElementX Since: Jan, 2001

Jan 7th 2016 at 4:38:28 PM •••

I dunno, I feel like it fits as well as a majority of the examples in that trope (in some cases more).

I guess it depends on how you define feminine and masculine. Tobias is definitely the more gentle, passive one in the relationship.


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