Character Discussion: Cassie

[buffyangellvr23]

Here goes...the character who often seems to get the most negativity, and sometimes it's for good reason. I know my LJ folder is gonna be swamped this week, but I'll turn you loose anyway LOL

I do like the animal loving part myself...but there are things that some of you say about her that I can see as well...both positive and negative.

Comments

[sylverlining]

Frankly I've never gotten why she gets the brunt of so much negativity - largely I blame ghostwriters oversimplifying or misinterpreting her.

Specifically I find the assertion that she's a "weak" character incredibly inaccurate and only seeing a very, very small part of the picture. Morality =/= weakness. I honestly respect her for always at least trying to keep that moral compass pointing north, especially in situations with so very much grey.

... Could totally be biased, though, as I kind of wanted to be her when I was a kid. With the morphing talent/art form and everything, ha.

[blue_rampion]

Yeah, Cassie suffered the most at the hands of the ghostwriters. She's got a lot of subtle depths to her, and sadly it's the subtle depths that went out of the window when the Ghostwriters came in.

Really, I don't think you could argue that any of them are weak. And when Cassie chose the moral option, she didn't do it because she was afraid of because she didn't have the strength to do otherwise. She did it because she believed it was right - and regardless of whether you think she was right, it takes an amazing amount of conviction to be able to do that.

[sylverlining]

Definitely. I mean, they all did, because they all have overt qualities and then very subtle qualities, and they were so largely glossed over at the hands of ghostwriters - it varies, of course, but nobody knows the characters like their creator, naturally.

And hell yeah - this is one reason why Animorphs is such an amazing series, because it has pretty much universally strong characters... main ones, anyway. You could argue that David's weakness (or just utter psychopathic evil) was his downfall. They're all positive and sympathetic and AWESOME in their own ways.

And I LOVE what you said last - YES - it takes BALLS to take a moral stance and stand by it, it takes a hell of a lot of perception and thought to even find that, and it takes so much courage to stand up for what you truly believe is right, in the middle of a LITERAL WAR ZONE, for pete's sake.

[cxrdevil]

I agree that she's not a weak person - far from it - but I think what people mean when they say she's a weak character is that her development doesn't hold water. I do love her to an extent, but there's legitimate reasons for being disappointed in her part of the story - anijen21 summed up the main issues logically as usual.

hmm how much sense am I making tonight?

[sunshinenorcas]

I don't think her problem is that shes the 'heart' of the group- it's that the others have already cast her in that role and thats what they expect her to be, so when she acts not like the heart (which she's not)- they all go 'wtf', like in the polar book when they are debating killing the baby seal, and they all look at her, and she basically says 'what the hell guys, I'd rather kill it then starve/freeze'. (Holy run on sentence batman

[lisacharly]

God I love Cassie. I just love the fact that she even exists. Her being in the books ratchets them up another level of the "wow, I was reading this as a kid? Moral relativity? Kantianism? Cool!" scale.

I'll come back with more later.

[sylverlining]

SERIOUSLY. <3 Man, they all add so much, but I think the ones who stick out in my mind for adding the most dimension are Cassie, the Chee, and the Arn as the creators of the Hork-Bajir. That and the very nature of the Hork-Bajir as being so sweet and childlike - I LOVE those facets that just blur the line of good and evil and right and wrong right down the middle -

Hell, no. It erases it. That's what these books are, they don't just mix the shades of grey and blur the line, you can argue that there IS NO LINE.

(...except maybe with Crayak. And David. xD That little bastard even I have a hard time forgiving.)

[ghosted]

I actually really liked Cassie, both as a kid annd on my reread this summer. I didn't realise that she's so widely disliked until I had a poke round the fandom, and let my (male if that's significant) bff borrow the series. He hated Cassie.
I feel like in some ways Cassie is what I should be, in that I consider myself to be compassionate but she actually acts on that. Then again, she attracts enough controversy that perhaps I should reconsider her as a role model.
One of the things I admire most about her is her ability to make intuitive leaps - I can't think of examples atm, except for when Ax is trying to tell them all about Seerow's Kindness and she works it out before anyone. I think people call her manipulative? I'm not sure I unreservedly agree with that, but I think it's interesting how much power she can have over people through that, despite being seen as "weak".
Also #19 is probably where I started going WAIT WHOA WHAT, I was reading about this level of complicated morality at the age of what, nine?!

[cxrdevil]

I feel like in some ways Cassie is what I should be, in that I consider myself to be compassionate but she actually acts on that.

I felt this way when I was younger, just like I totally felt like I was Tobias (meanwhile everyone nods in agreement) and I think that's a good point. She's kind of the most ideal of the Animorphs. Not that the others aren't all important or admirable, but, because she's the character that gets pointed at by the Morals Finger, we're meant to take her as a role model, somebody we should emulate. That might be why a LOT of people either madly adore her or reallllly dislike her.
In the most basic sense...
(a) If you identify with her morals - caring for animals, making the necessary choices for survival like in the seal scene, wanting to not kill even yeerks, etc - you don't like thinking of her negatively, because that means that your moral values aren't right by association, and that's always uncomfortable

[blue_rampion]

You can't discuss Cassie without discussion her moral compass - Cassie, for good of for ill, gets cast in the role of 'moral compass'. You've got a bunch of kids thrown into a freaking war, with all of the moral complexity that comes with that - and then there's Cassie, already the kind of person who has strong morals and acts on them. So they go to her for the moral guidance, because to them it seems like she's got a better handle on things.

But she doesn't - there's cases where you can most definitely argue that Cassie is in the wrong. Letting Tom escape with the Blue Box is often the example people argue the most. But I think this is part of what makes Cassie interesting as a character. She doesn't have all the answers. She gets things wrong. She'd been saddled with this enormous responsibility of thinking about what's right and wrong, and we often see her having to struggle with what she believes in and what she actually has to do

[lisacharly]

But she doesn't - there's cases where you can most definitely argue that Cassie is in the wrong. Letting Tom escape with the Blue Box is often the example people argue the most. But I think this is part of what makes Cassie interesting as a character. She doesn't have all the answers. She gets things wrong. She'd been saddled with this enormous responsibility of thinking about what's right and wrong, and we often see her having to struggle with what she believes in and what she actually has to do.THIS THIS THIS. I could not agree with this more

I adore the phrase "Karma Houdini" :)

[natural_blue_26]

-David. Her belief that killing him would be immoral ends up sentencing him to a fate worse than death. We even see in #48 that this was a really bad move on her part.

YES. I would have liked to see this actually DEALT with within the group so MUCH. I get the suspenseful fade to black and all that, but, come one, Cassie had to have SOMETHING to say about it afterwards when she's not in giant doom!box. D:

-#28. Marco's curse-out to her in the middle of the book is so epic.

You? Marco? Noooooooooo ;) ;)

-The beginning of #19. Marco and Rachel just RIP INTO HER in the beginning. And you know, they're right. They're in too deep to quit. And she does decide to come back. And she loses her friendship with Rachel anyway. God, I love #19.

Really? This is why I dislike 19. ;) But I honestly don't think she said it meaning to hurt Rachel *on purpose*. (They were never going to last through the war intact anyways, but 19/54+ is not that far.) It's just... Think about it, and THEN insert your foot in your mouth if you're really sure you

Re: I adore the phrase "Karma Houdini" :)

[lisacharly]

Yeah, David kind of...only gets mentioned what, three times after the fact? #48 and #45 and...somewhere else? I don't know. For such a gamechanging trilogy it really should have been mentioned more.

Marco gives the best curse-outs. Fact. Except for Rachel's "you just said the whole world can go to hell so long as you, Cassie, don't end up turning into me" line, which just wins the championships of curse-outs.

No, Cassie certainly didn't mean to hurt Rachel most. She was being self-absorbed and desperate and didn't realize the effect her words would have on any of the other members (Jake for losing her as his gf, Marco for trying to quit when she was such an advocate of HIM staying on the team, Tobias because he can't quit even if he wants to, Rachel for implying that the worst thing that can happen to her is to be numb to the violence - I don't think Ax cared all that much).