my animorphs/ magnus archives fear assignments + my reasoning behind them
JAKE: WEB → i think jake seems to exhibit a deep fear of being controlled, and i would argue it takes root in his psyche the moment he finds out tom is a controller. it only becomes more realized in #6 when he becomes a controller, and even MORE SO later on when crayak begins to torment him. it feels as if he despises the galactic chess game idea in general (whether it be crayak or ellimist), so it’s rather fitting that he was likely a wild card like rachel.
MARCO: BURIED → marco is seriously my favorite character of all time and thus this is impossible for me. he’s very hard to pin down, and i think there’s definitely elements of lonely and vast to his character, but i’m settling on buried. manifestations of it appear constantly throughout his life; his mother drowning, the emptiness of her coffin, him and his dad being extremely financially unstable in the wake of her death. you could argue there’s a buried aspect to the weight of having to destroy eva, whether that be from team pressure, his own logic, or her own assurance that he will destroy edriss.
RACHEL: SLAUGHTER → i figure this is likely easy to understand, but nevertheless: rachel is scared of becoming a killer. she is scared of being hungry for bloodlust, and furthermore, she is scared of other people seeing her that way. see jake monologue in #22.
CASSIE: DESOLATION → i think cassie is typically opposed to destruction, but i think she is actually scared of being the destroyer. the book i think of specifically is megamorphs #2, in which she loses herself in t-rex morph (a morph she was against doing in the first place) and has an understandable breakdown over after returning to her senses and discovering she killed another dinosaur. though it’s in a similar vein to rachel’s slaughter fear, i think cassie is so dedicated to conservation that the opposite being inflicted by her own hands is a nightmare for her.
TOBIAS: FLESH → when it comes to tobias, i think there are two options at hand. one is, obviously, the hunt. early books have him fighting the hawk’s predator instincts, feeling disgusted by himself and attempting to “stay human.” later on, he gives in to those instincts, though, so i think a more interesting fear assignment is flesh. flesh focuses on the dysphoria tobias wrestles with, typically pertaining to his human form. the book that best exemplifies this is #33; he is deeply uncomfortable in his human form, and is simultaneously afraid and paranoid that rachel is intentionally trying to trap him in it.
AX: CORRUPTION → if there’s one thing i know about ax, it’s that he’s deeply repulsed by yeerks (for better or for worse.) he does not see them as people; they’re akin to disease to him. specifically recalling the scene in #29 in which cassie has aftran infest ax— GRANTED, this is done without ax’s permission and he has every right to be deeply upset at that violation, but he seems even more angry at the fact that a yeerk was in his head at all.
also, in terms of the series as a whole, i think the main fears the kids would be fighting against would be the extinction (whether real or not, this would be similar to jon trying to stop it in s4) and the stranger.
the idea of yeerk infestation is so incredibly stranger-esque that i think it would easy for the yeerk domination of the earth to be obtained by carrying out the unknowing, and that’s what the kids end up trying to stop for most of the series.
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