animorphsficcommenter

[animorphsficcommenter]

They play “never have I ever” in a scene of “with the sun burning the dashboard”, is that what you’re thinking of?

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?

[animorphsficcommenter]

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 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.

[animorphsficcommenter]

What about people who went by the island and heard his thoughtspeak screams? Or, like, Crayak?

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."

[animorphsficcommenter]

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.

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.

[animorphsficcommenter]

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.

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.

[animorphsficcommenter]

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.

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.

[animorphsficcommenter]

0:00

at this point i think that if someone were to gave me a timestamp for black friday i could tell what part of the show it is

[animorphsficcommenter]

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.)

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.

[animorphsficcommenter]

Poor Tobias would have all sort of tattoos on his hawk body.

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.

[animorphsficcommenter]

Honestly in my experience both of these are accurate

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.

[animorphsficcommenter]

Jake morphed Homer though.

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.

[animorphsficcommenter]

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.

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?

[animorphsficcommenter]

Regarding tags- I suppose what I’m looking at is “what the Animorphs themselves would perceive as changes to the status quo”. So it’s in-universe, but can include simply revelations.

In what books would you say the status quo changes?

I'd say the single biggest one is #45. That's the first time we see an Animorph deliberately reveal their identity to a civilian, and the first time we see a semi-permanent shift in one Animorph's living situation. Marco becomes a full-time fugitive with Tobias and Ax. Visser One dies, and Visser Three gets promoted.

That said, every book from #45 - #54 shifts the status quo a little bit more. #46 is the first time we see yeerks directly try to wage war against human forces, and the first time the Animorphs mass-recruit civilians. #47 is the first (and kind of only) pitched open battle between Empire and Resistance. #48 has more going on in the background, but Ax mentions that the yeerks have become an open secret in huge swathes of the internet and are being discussed as a plausible rumor on radio/TV. #49 is when the Animorphs reveal their identities to their families, and all become full-time fugitives. #50 is when the team expands to include Auximorphs, and controllers get the ability to morph. #51 is the first time the Animorphs ally with human authorities, and announce their identities on TV. #52 is the first direct all-out attack on the Yeerk Pool. #53 is when Jake first uses a plan to not just delay the yeerks but defeat them, and #54 is all about the consequences of that plan.

Compared to the earlier slow creep of the yeerks' progress, and the kids' efforts to hamper it, those last 9 books are blindingly fast. But #45 is really what gets the ball rolling. The references to endgame start immediately after that book, and as a direct result of its events.

[animorphsficcommenter]

I should have had HBC instead of AC, since HBC introduces Toby. 20 is there for giving the animorphs the morphing cube, 22 is there for its recurring impact on character psyches. Same with 33, because Tobias becomes noticeably more withdrawn afterwards. 38 is when the Animorphs stop fighting to stall and start fighting to win. 23 directly changes how Tobias views himself and his relationship with Ax for the rest of the series.

In what books would you say the status quo changes?

I'd say the single biggest one is #45. That's the first time we see an Animorph deliberately reveal their identity to a civilian, and the first time we see a semi-permanent shift in one Animorph's living situation. Marco becomes a full-time fugitive with Tobias and Ax. Visser One dies, and Visser Three gets promoted.

That said, every book from #45 - #54 shifts the status quo a little bit more. #46 is the first time we see yeerks directly try to wage war against human forces, and the first time the Animorphs mass-recruit civilians. #47 is the first (and kind of only) pitched open battle between Empire and Resistance. #48 has more going on in the background, but Ax mentions that the yeerks have become an open secret in huge swathes of the internet and are being discussed as a plausible rumor on radio/TV. #49 is when the Animorphs reveal their identities to their families, and all become full-time fugitives. #50 is when the team expands to include Auximorphs, and controllers get the ability to morph. #51 is the first time the Animorphs ally with human authorities, and announce their identities on TV. #52 is the first direct all-out attack on the Yeerk Pool. #53 is when Jake first uses a plan to not just delay the yeerks but defeat them, and #54 is all about the consequences of that plan.

Compared to the earlier slow creep of the yeerks' progress, and the kids' efforts to hamper it, those last 9 books are blindingly fast. But #45 is really what gets the ball rolling. The references to endgame start immediately after that book, and as a direct result of its events.

[animorphsficcommenter]

Cassie isn’t short for anything.

Jake isn’t short for anything.

Neither is Tobias, or Rachel.

Marco is short for a human.

Do you know if Cassie ever get called "Cassandra" in cannon, or is that just a popular headcannon? Because it's always bugged me when characters in fanfic call her Cassandra, even though I know it's not actually a big deal. I'm %100 projecting, as someone whose given name is usually a diminutive of a larger name, I'm aware of that, so I'm not out to make a big deal out of it either way, I'm just curious

Nooooo I also have a huge peeve about fic characters (especially Jake) calling her "Cass" or "Cassandra." We never learn her full name in canon, so it could be "Cassandra" or just "Cassie" or anything else. And only Ronnie calls her "Cass."

#54 says "Jake always called me Cassie. Never Cass like Ronnie did." I love that detail. Jake uses people's correct names, never their nicknames — he never uses "Xena" or even "Rach" or other common shortenings. Heck, he'd probably use "Aximili" if Ax didn't introduce himself as "Ax."

Which is why I gnash my teeth over first AniTV, then later the Animorphs Graphix, having Jake use "Cass." It's one of my favorite details from canon that he is so freaking careful about names. He learns people's names and titles and then uses them ("Aunt Naomi," "General Doubledday, sir" #53). It's why he hates being called "prince," because it's not correct, AND HE WOULD NEVER USE "CASS" OR "CASSANDRA" HOW DARE YOU.

[animorphsficcommenter]

How did you think you became a ghost, you morphed one and got stuck?

Animorphs AU where everything is the same *

* I like it the way it is

[animorphsficcommenter]

I was expecting the ghost to have the same preferences as the living person, which would include being alive instead of dead. So if making a ghost alive counts as killing the ghost then…

Animorphs AU where everything is the same *

* I like it the way it is