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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 7 years

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Will you do your fave book? Or if you already did it, the next fave? And so on...

Short opinion: I am constantly torn between wishing that The Beginning was twice its actual length and being in awe that Applegate manages to cram so much into a sparse 156 pages.

Long opinion:

As I mentioned here, #54 is actually my favorite book in the series. I’m probably the only fandalite on the planet for whom that is true, but I am a complete and utter sucker for tragedy. And this is tragedy in its purest form. Tragedy is frustratingly hard to find in contemporary American stories, because it offers no happiness or culmination at the end. Bad guys don’t always get punished; good guys don’t ever get medals from princesses or happy retirements into the sunset or reunions with lost loved ones; the very notions of “bad” and “good” get irreversibly complicated. A tragedy is the story of well-intentioned and deeply sympathetic protagonist(s) coming to a bad end that is at least partially one’s own fault, at least partially the fault of random Shit Happens, and entirely coherent and fitting with the tiny cascade of random events that led to the fall of a lightning-struck tower.

The purpose of comedy (i.e. stories with happy endings) is easy entertainment. The purpose of tragedy is to inspire fear and horror through making the audience wonder whether it is possible for each of them to meet a similar end. With the arguable exception of Cassie, every one of the Animorphs gets his or her own tragedy in the end. This series is a war epic about the costs of violence. It was never going to have a happy ending.

Rachel’s loss, in the opening moments, is the most obvious character culmination of the series. She has been struggling for months if not years to define herself outside of the war, attacked on all sides (her best friend, her boyfriend, her cousin and field commander, her own mother) for the very role that they all nonetheless demand that she perform in order to keep them all safe, not only from the yeerks but from themselves. Rachel has been the team’s first and last line of defense since the EGS tower battle (#7), and has all-but taken on the title of trash collector since becoming the one to handle David (#22). Killing Tom is her final act of protecting her found family; completing the suicide run is her final ability to use her comfort with violence to do something good. She might have done and even become terrible things, but she ultimately succeeds in turning that terror against an even greater evil in her last moments of life.

Arguably the next domino to fall is Tobias. I’m with Cates: his is the ending I find the least satisfying, because it devalues his friendship-cum-familyhood with Ax. However, I also can’t say that Applegate didn’t set that ending up. As early as #13 Tobias shows worrying signs of codependency with Rachel; as early as #3 he proves willing to retreat into his hawk side when the going gets tough. The scene where “Ken and Barbie” disturb his self-imposed exile through their simple reminder of humanity suggests that Tobias’s retreat isn’t nearly as complete as he’d like it to be, but then he’s never been able to escape being human no matter how hard he tries (see: #3, #33, #43, #49).

Part of what I find so fascinating about Jake’s character arc (fascinating enough that I wrote a goddamn novel or two on the subject) is how much his family story starts complicating this hyper-normative idea of married-parents-two-kids-fenced-backyard-golden-retriever-nice-neighborhood-white-upper-middle-class familyhood starting right in the first book, and how it only makes things worse once the war is over. Jake’s family continues to look “perfect” (i.e. normative) from the moment he first gets home and joins his brother and parents (and resident yeerk) for a home-cooked dinner in #1 all the way up until the alien inside his mom is firing a dracon beam at him from the front seat of her minivan, putting the first scar on the otherwise flawless siding on the facade of their two-story McMansion in #49. So it’s only natural that Jake’s first thought on committing fratricide in the immediate aftermath of mass murder is to wonder “how would [he] explain this to [his] parents,” and it makes a fair amount of sense that he basically tries to retreat back to that safe haven he (unlike all of his friends) has before the war begins (#54). But Jake can’t go home; home isn’t there for him to retreat to anymore. His desire to retreat back to his childhood home borders on pathological, since in many ways he’s older than his parents have ever been, and he’s gone beyond the point where he could ever hope to give his burdens back to them.

And then there are three. And then two.

There are two details about Ax’s role in the final book that I find really fascinating. The first is that line (which I quote all the time, because I find it so revelatory) where Cassie describes herself and Marco as “the only two real survivors” of the war (#54). Why isn’t Ax included in the list of “survivors” along with Cassie and Marco, even though he’s alive and (physically) well at the time? My guess would be the hints that he is, in his own way, just as addicted to risk and violence as Rachel ever was. He doesn’t know how to survive without the war, which leaves him “looking for trouble” in his “boredom”—right up until he recklessly stumbles upon enough “trouble” to get his entire crew killed (#54). That chapter also contains the other fascinating detail: it’s labeled “Aximili,” not “Ax” the way his chapters are in all the Megamorphs books. Ax has at least partially given up on the identity he fought so hard to forge throughout the entire book series. He has retreated back into being what his society expects him to be: a leader, a warrior, and an andalite who does not concern himself much with alien cultures. He continues playing that role, apparently indifferent to what is happening with Tobias and the others on Earth, right up to his death.

Quick side note: I find it so cool (by which I mean excruciatingly painful) that each of the Animorphs gets what they wanted in the first books in the series—and that those dreams prove to be so hollow once achieved. Rachel gets eternal glory, and the ultimate thrill ride along the way (#2). Ax surpasses Elfangor in reputation and respect (#8). Jake fulfills his daydreams of being treated as a superhero (#2), and of going home to his family (#1). Marco gets to be not only “an entire episode of Stupid Pet Tricks” but quite possibly the most famous person alive (#2). Tobias escapes his life and manages once and for all to “fly free” (#3). Cassie finds a non-violent way to change the world (#4); she even gets to be a horse for a while along the way (#29). And it’s nothing like any of them thought it would be. None of their childhood dreams have much feasibility or even appeal by the time they are some of the weariest, most mature and worn-out adults of their generation. Only Cassie manages to find satisfaction in getting everything she ever wanted.

Only Cassie… because Marco’s not quite a “survivor” either. He brags about his fame and materialism, sure—but then we’ve never been able to trust Marco’s narration. (See: the amount of time he spends obfuscating and/or lying to the reader in #30, #25, #15, and #35.) If you ask Marco outright, everything’s fine and it always has been. But then Marco describes Jake and Tobias showing up with an offer of a suicide mission as “everything around me turned translucent, like it was all fake… an old reality emerged from beneath the illusion” (#54). Even before that scene, it’s striking just how much time Marco spends obsessing over Jake. Marco freely admits to Cassie that he acquired an eagle morph for the specific purpose of following Jake around to spy on him, spends almost half the alleged description of his own life talking about how poorly Jake is functioning, and actually talks Jake into leading his crazy suicide mission for Jake’s own sake. What Marco doesn’t mention—and what we can assume from Jake’s own narration doesn’t happen—is him actually picking up the phone to call Jake and ask him if he wants to talk. The flash and glam and seven cars and heated pool and personal butler are yet more misdirection; Marco’s not okay. He’s just telling us about all the ways Jake’s not okay because that’s safer than admitting his own vulnerability. Jake says “Marco, you were bored out of your mind” and Marco unhesitatingly agrees (#54). Marco spends so much time trying to convince everyone of how very happy he is with materialism and Hollywood glam that he fools Cassie, he fools Tobias, he all but fools himself… but he never fools Jake. Which is why he has to keep Jake at arm’s length, no matter how much his guilt at doing so might eat him up as he’s sitting around watching Jake watching Rachel’s grave in the middle of the night.

And then there’s Cassie. Cassie who I’ve compared to an anti-Susan Pevensie, Cassie who finds a man who treats her right and uses power for good without resorting to violence. Marco, who was the last to join the war effort, might have eventually been able to find equilibrium if he’d been willing to get a haircut and get a real job (X). Cassie, who is unafraid to work on her own and leave her team when something needs doing and they can’t help her (#19, #29, #43, #44), is already living a new normal. Jake is right when he says that Cassie’s “a one-woman army,” and he’s right that she’s “the soldier who has fought her war and moved on.” The two Animorphs with the least “addiction” to the war emerge from the other side the most intact (#22). Cassie’s never going to be the same person she was, but she understands that. She doesn’t try to hide from the past, she doesn’t try to retreat into it; she picks herself up and figures out a way to live on her own. She shows that there’s hope for life after war, but also that there’s no returning to childhood. She lives, and keeps on living, even after two (maybe three, maybe five) of her fellow Animorphs have been eaten alive by the war. Because right from the start, Cassie has been comfortable with leaving her team behind—and in the end, she leaves her team behind, and she can’t save a single goddamn one of them.

It’s not a happy ending. It’s not a comforting ending. It’s not the kind of ending that suggests people get what they deserve and deserve what they get. It doesn’t offer the comfortable reassurance that the right ends will justify any means. It’s the kind of ending that gets in your head, burrows down deep, reads through your memories, and won’t leave you alone.

Don’t get me wrong: I love these characters. They were my heroes and my idols and my ink-and-paper friends throughout my childhood. They’ve taught me as much as a lot of real people I’ve known in my life, and there’s a part of me that does want them to live happily ever after. But if they did, they would lose a lot of the realness that makes them so precious and so painful to love in the first place.

#asks #answers #animorphs reviews #54 #the beginning #animorphs spoilers #unculturedmamoswine #jake berenson #rachel berenson #tobias fangor #aximili-esgarrouth-isthill #wouldn't it be nice if cassie and marco had last names #i didn't even mention that moment with alloran #or that other moment with menderash #or that other other moment with erek...

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 5 years

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To continue the somewhat narrower list, and to steal Cates’s framework about the Animorphs Giving an Account of Oneself...

The Book in Which Each Character Does the Most Conscious Self-Defining:

Rachel: #37. It’s a little heavy-handed, especially when Rachel’s talking to herself rather than to Marco or Jake, but it also defines who she sees herself as being. She likes being able to help, likes having power and using it to do good. Rachel knows perfectly well that she’s a deeply flawed person capable of committing extreme acts of violence — but she wants to use those flaws to keep her friends from having to do the same. Her protectiveness toward Cassie is of a very different flavor of her protectiveness toward Jake or Tobias. She protects Jake by annihilating anything that dares threaten him, and she protects Tobias by knowing when to get forgiveness instead of permission for bringing him food and when to back off and let him take care of himself. Her protectiveness toward Cassie, however, is about trying to let Cassie come out of the war with semi-clean hands, and if that means Rachel herself has to crash an airplane into a building, then that’s just what has to be done.

Jake: #16. Mostly for the moment that he defines what it means to be a leader to Cassie: “See, if I give in to fear, then that gives everyone permission to give in to fear. And we all have good reasons to be afraid. Pretty soon we'd be totally paralyzed. We wouldn't be able to do anything because one of us might have some good reason to be scared... The difference is you all decided I was the leader... A leader may be just as weak or scared or doubtful as anyone else. But he isn't allowed to show it. People say they want leaders to be just like them, but I don't think so. People want leaders to act the way people wish they could act themselves.” AND I DIDN’T SAY IT WAS A HEALTHY PHILOSOPHY, but it certainly shows how Jake defines his responsibility to the team. He doesn’t like morphing fly, he doesn’t want to morph fly, he takes every possible opportunity for the entire rest of the series to morph roach or dragonfly instead of fly, but his whiggish Great Man view of what a leader is “supposed” to be defines everything from his insistence that he has to morph fly to his eventual willingness to embrace the “Napoleon Jr.” role.

Marco: #30. I’m not the biggest fan of this book because IMHO it contains a little bit too much navel-gazing. But this is the book where Marco acknowledges that he wants to protect his mom above all else, that unlike Jake and Cassie he’s not capable of caring about other people just because they’re people... and that he has to let his mom die to protect a bunch of random people he doesn’t give a crap about. He’s smart, he understands the big picture, he sees the “bright, clear line” and where that line ends. He knows intellectually that he can’t go with his gut where Visser One is concerned, and so he wrestles his emotions to the ground in favor of using cold calculation to get what he wants. Again, not the healthiest outlook, but it does define his outlook for much of the rest of the series.

Ax: #38, again. Mostly because that’s the only book we really see where Ax has the chance to explain andalites to his human friends and to explain humans to their andalite allies, in a way that lets him define himself outside of and also within both cultures. He has moved beyond simply choosing one or the other, and he’s conscious of the fact that he misses his own culture while also being conscious that he’s going to miss Tobias and Cassie and Cinnabon and These Messages once he finally gets the chance to go back to his homeworld.

Tobias: #33. I’ve mentioned before that I really like the disconnect between Tobias and Taylor throughout this book. He almost explains himself to himself through refusing to explain himself to her. She doesn’t get it — not his family connections, not the level of conviction that allows him to die for love of his friends, not his value system focused on saying “screw the world” if the world won’t accommodate him, not his decision to remain a bird, not his willingness to be andalite as well. And she’s never going to get it. And Tobias, being Tobias, doesn’t actually care that that’s the case. Tobias has always had very little time for normative reality, because normative reality has never had much time for him. Taylor can die curious about what makes him tick.

#animorphs #animorphs meta #animorphs spoilers #rachel berenson #jake berenson #tobias fangor #aximili esgarrouth isthill #BE REALLY NICE IF CASSIE AND MARCO HAD LAST NAMES #WOULDN'T IT #asks #anonymous

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 6 years

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What would u say are the best and worst book narrated by each character ?

I sat down to come up with my least favorite book by each narrator and had a pretty easy time of it — there’s an unfortunate dip in quality in the series around #39 - #43 that I can point to as definitely not my faves — and then ended up totally baffled by how to choose JUST ONE favorite book by each narrator, because such a task is almost impossible. In conclusion, I really love Animorphs, as you probably never would have guessed from reading this blog. So, with a little cheating, here goes:

Tobias

Least favorite: #43, The Test

The plot of this book pretty much requires that all of the characters, but most notably Rachel and Jake, act in ways that really don’t fit with their behavior for the rest of the series. My cynical hypothesis about What Was The Ghost Even Thinking rhymes with schmender schtereotyping, but even if I more kindly assume that everyone was just acting strange to jerk Taylor around, I can’t really enjoy this book.

Favorite: #49, The Diversion

Tobias’s point of view works so well for this book, because its plot draws attention to his status as a partial outsider not only for human society as a whole but also for his team. He’s literally trapped in a liminal space that here actually gives him a lot of perspective on his friends’ families — and the importance of sticking close to his own. (And by that I mean 93% Ax, 7% Loren.)

Other favorite: #23, The Pretender

Speaking of Tobias being sort of stuck between roles, this book is so good because it shows the strength of his position as both able to access and able to escape being human. He moves flexibly between a ton of different roles in this book — a leader to the hork-bajir, a supporter to Jake, a parent to himself, a son to Elfangor, a quasi-hawk, a quasi-human, a quasi-andalite — and does so with astounding grace and aplomb. Resting bitchface has never seemed like a cooler accidental superpower.

Another favorite: #33, The Illusion

This book is the brutal shadow-self to #23, instead shutting Tobias out of a whole bunch of different roles over the course of the plot. It does however contain one of the series’s best villains (Taylor is terrifyingly sympathetic) and some of its best moments of heartwarming body horror in the final battle.

Least favorite: #8, The Alien

Honestly, there’s nothing really wrong with this book, but there’s nothing amazingly right about it either. It has a few great moments (Jake’s naïve optimism at the kandron’s destruction giving way to fear for Tom, Ax having dinner with Cassie’s family, Tobias definitely not tattling on Ax) but overall the plot is just kind of inane and doesn’t do much to move the series forward.

Favorite: #38, The Arrival

Estrid et al. act as such a cool check-in for not only how much Ax has grown as a person through spending too much time around humans, but also how much the team as a whole has grown until they are actually more effective warriors than a group of battle-trained andalite assassins. Every time I reread this book I end up making noises of triumph and fist-pumping the air, no matter how public my location is at the time.

Favorite favorite: #46, The Deception

This plot hinges on the stark contrast between Ax’s terrible and unavoidable awareness about the horror of open war and the Animorphs’ lack of standard of comparison beyond “hey, remember D-Day?” MM3 and #28 both do important work to condemn humanity from the outside, but this book actually uses Ax’s perspective primarily for celebrating the whole human species from an outsider’s point of view.

Marco

Least favorite: #40, The Other

As I’ve mentioned here, at this book’s core is an interesting concept that very emphatically does not age well. On top of the cringe-inducing attempt at an After School Special treatment of the idea that (*gasp*) queer men with AIDS are human too, it also has a largely nonsensical plot that strains both credulity and logic.

Favorite: #25, The Extreme

It’s a brilliant use of Marco’s perspective to comment on the constraints and terrifying outer reaches of Jake’s leadership, one that also contains a highly enjoyable mix of humor and horror. Because Marco. I could reread this one a thousand times and still find new aspects of the narration to delight in.

Also favorite: #15, The Escape

This book makes amazing use of Marco’s unreliable narration and lack of self-insight to contrast his willingness to imagine himself confronting sharks with his willingness to run from them upon a real encounter, along with his determination to kill his mom and his inability to stop himself from saving her. Marco is at his most human in this book, and also his most lovable.

Also also favorite: #51, The Absolute

The governor of probably-California is one of my favorite minor characters in the series, and I absolutely love the dynamic between Marco-Tobias-Ax any time it occurs (this book, #46, #30, #49), meaning that this surprisingly fun aside acts as a much-needed breath of fresh air and comic relief in between the Animorphs losing the morphing cube (#50) and blowing up the Yeerk Pool (#52). Plus, Marco + tank = OTP.

Cassie

Least favorite: #39, The Hidden

I’ve said most of this before, but this book is just… nonsensical. And it’s not delightfully nonsensical like parts of #26 or #14, it’s mostly cringe-inducingly nonsensical.

Favorite: #29, The Sickness

Arguably this is the best Animorphs book, both IMHO and by fan consensus. It’s got a simple but devlishly difficult plot, a ton of great characterization moments for all six kids, a handful of brilliant devices and settings that meld beautifully to Cassie’s overall character arc, and a wide-reaching perspective on the importance of overcoming difference that is a huge part of what makes these books so good. It’s also funny, horrifying, edge-of-your-seat engaging, and tear-inducingly beautiful at the very end.

Also my favorite: #4, The Message

Whereas #29 is probably just hands-down the best book ever written, #4 holds a special place in my heart because it’s the first Animorphs book I ever read and the one that convinced me to go find the rest of the series. This one is sweet and mystical, bleak with the dawning realization that these poor defenseless cinnamon rolls are in this war alone but also hopeful with the realization that these precious cinnamon rolls are in this war together.

Jake

Least favorite: #47, The Resistance

Although I’m of the opinion that #41 is more poorly-plotted, this book manages to be both poorly plotted and glaringly racist. Its plot doesn’t make sense on several different levels, not the least that Visser Three knows how to find the hork-bajir valley in this book and then apparently forgets how to get there for the entire rest of the series. And don’t get me started on Jake’s reprehensible behavior from the moment he casually declares Tom “as good as dead,” through to him trying to boss Toby about what’s best for Toby herself, all the way on to him being a jerk to Rachel and Marco. Blah.

Favorite: #31, The Conspiracy

Unlike #47, this book actually makes really good use of Jake’s character flaws to drive the plot forward — he’s bad at being vulnerable, and that ends up being a huge problem for his team. It also leans hard on the irony of Jake being the only one with a “textbook” family (i.e. upper-middle class, heteronormative and monogamous, European-American, traditionally gendered, outwardly happy) and also being the only one under constant threat for his life any time he’s at home, thereby accomplishing one of the series’s better comments on the fact that children’s lives aren’t as simple as we’d like to think.

Favoriter: #53, The Answer

There are definitely flaws with RL implications in this book, but the plot is so freaking brilliant that I can still regard it as a Problematic Fave. The final battle is so well-engineered and the Moral Event Horizon is so terrifying as it swings by that I assign this book to myself for rereading any time I’m struggling to write action or battle. It’s a scary, awful book, but also a very fitting capstone to the series.

Favoritest: #26, The Attack

This setting is so cool. This plot is so cosmic and yet so personal. This use of the chee is so bitingly brilliant in its commentary on pacifism as a luxury not everyone can afford. This story has so many moments that are either heartbreaking callbacks (the opening scene with Tom’s memories from #6) or bloodcurdling foreshadowing (Jake and Rachel’s casually absolute trust that each will be willing and able to kill the other if necessary). This narration feels like a middle-aged and yet middle-school protagonist struggling to figure out who he wants to be — and defeating a cosmic power at its own game with the power of love. I could gush forever.

Rachel

Least favorite: #48, The Return

Again, there’s nothing truly wrong with this book; it’s just a silly and inconsequential aside into the main character’s maybe-dreams at a time when the plot outside her head is heating up to the boiling point. It makes this whole thing come off kind of like Bilbo sleeping through the Battle of Five Armies.

Favorite: #27, The Exposed

I’m not normally a big one for romance, but this book makes me ship Rachel and Tobias so hard that my tiny bitter walnut of a heart grows two sizes every time I read it. Rachel has such great self-awareness that she doesn’t like any situation she cannot control or at least do violent battle against, and yet she dives into the bottom of the ocean with both eyes open and her chin up because that’s what she has to do to protect the rest of her team. Crayak has no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to asking her to turn on her loved ones.

Additional favorite: #32, The Separation

As I’ve said, I didn’t really get this book until I realized that it’s not so much about Rachel herself as it is about how the rest of her team views her, and how she defies their simple categorizations, both well-meaning (Cassie) and not (Jake), through simply being herself. Rachel is both masculine and feminine, both tough and vulnerable, and she makes no apologies for any of it.

And another favorite: #37, The Weakness

This book has an important role for the rest of the series in that it shows how the Animorphs’ guerilla tactics can easily be taken too far, and also how Jake’s discernment of his teammates’ strengths and weaknesses keeps them all alive. Rachel makes a fair number of logical-seeming decisions in this book that prove short-sighted, and of course it all leads to her and Jake’s brutal Checkovian epiphany at the end.

Added additional also favorite: #22, The Solution

A brutal but powerful read, this book focuses on the ugliest parts of Rachel’s personality (her sadism toward David) but also the most powerful ones (her compassion for Saddler and protectiveness toward both Jake and Jordan). It also shows that her reckless taste for violence and her boundless desire to protect her families both biological and found are actually two sides of the same part of her personality.

Okay I have a lot of favorite Rachel books: #17, The Underground

It’s oat-freaking-meal. Only it’s not just oat-freaking-meal, and I’m not talking about the extra-tasty maple and ginger flavoring. It’s a biological weapon. It’s a way to harm the enemy, but only through harming prisoners of war. It’s a social dilemma the like of which we rarely see in children’s books. It’s a lesson in decision making under uncertainty. It’s a moral imperative, but no one is quite sure what that imperative is saying. It’s a deconstruction of the implied assumption that it’s possible to write adventure stories in which no one gets hurt. It’s awesome. It’s hilarious. It’s disturbing as fuck. Welcome to Animorphs.

#animorphs #narration #animorphs meta #asks #answers #anonymous #rachel berenson #jake berenson #tobias fangor #aximili-esgarrouth-isthill #be really nice if cassie and marco had last names wouldn't it #k.a. applegate is a god #the rest of us just worship her

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