#animorphs 31

[imperfectskeleton]

There's something about Animorphs #15 & #16 and #30 & #31. The Marco into Jake. I love telling people who know nothing about Animorphs "yeah the matricide and fratricide books are back to back" but like. 15/16 is Jake and Marco clinging to their friendship asking each other for reassurance nothing has changed. 30/31 is "I know you too well for you to be my friend right now. You aren't checking in with me, your friend. You are holding the line in a war we cannot win, knowing I may be about to pay to win with the blood of my family.

Marco has to be there for every second when it gets too close to him. Can't let anything out of his sight. He never admits he would be better off being out of control of the situation, because in a way he wouldn't. If it had been forced away from him before those last seconds, he would have lost it. He was clinging to the plan, his bright, clear lifeline of rationality.

Jake, on the other hand, loses it instantly. He wants Cassie, not Marco, to deal with his emotions rather than the facts of the situation. There's no rationality, but he's the leader, so who's going to stop him, call him out, relieve him of duty? This is his family, and he's a naive teenager, a world weary old man, a nobody who's saving the world. Tom is the war for Jake and however his understanding of the war changes, his ability to be the person the animorphs elected leader disappears when his family is at risk.

Interfering with family is often thin ice to tread upon. How much worse to tell your best friend that their mother, their brother, is a threat and keeping them safe may be too high of a risk?

Jake, I know my mum has to die. I'll do it myself. I planned it perfectly. I know I can't talk to her. I know I keep trying to.

Marco, my brother could be free. All it takes is three days out of town. Nobody dies and we win. Now I'm morphing to tiger because they are not getting my dad.

Are you ok? That's an order.

[exigencelost]

The other thing about Marco saying to Jake “You’re not getting me killed to save your father!” which is one of a total of like, two times in #31 that Marco loses his temper, which is fucking miraculous given the stakes and the way Jake is acting, is that it illustrates how completely he has internalized the mentality that the team—not just the war, but the team— is all of their first responsibility and everything else they love is secondary; and how much Jake has not. Marco threw a fit about that concept very early on, before anyone else recognized that it was going to come down to that. But he’s worked through it and reached the conclusion by the end of #5. Jake doesn’t really get there until #53.

[exigencelost]

We're back baby. Thinking about the barely explored psychological layer cake that is Jake's apparent willingness in book 31 to kill Tom if that's what it takes to save their dad. Put 53-54 aside. That was Tom vs the world, and it was also his only way to save Tom. This is just one life for another life. And it's not just that he cares about his dad more than his brother. It's that he has clearly brought himself to a place where he views the hybrid entity Tom-Yeerk with hatred and enmity, and most of that hatred stems from rage on behalf of the wrong done to his brother, but he cannot afford to untangle that hatred from the breathing human body and mind called Tom Berenson. It is wholly irrational to value his father's life over Tom's life because of anger at what has been done to Tom. But it's also necessary to his continued cognitive functioning. He'll fall apart if he looks at any of it too closely.

[exigencelost]

Hi! I saw some of your animorphs posts while I went trawling in the tag, and I was wondering if (if you had time and interest obvs) you could talk about why Jake's books didn't resonate/work well for you? I remember liking him, but I have such a vague memory of the books that I don't think I can even remember Why so now I'm curious about other people's thoughts on the character.

I don't think I have a problem with Jake's books per se. Some of them are whack but that's just true about the series. Book 6 and book 31 are among my absolute favorites. I also don't have like in-universe criticisms of Jake as a human person or child or combatant. My problem with Jake is that I think giving the team a consistent single absolute leader makes their decision making processes and internal power struggles a lot less interesting than they could be, AND that it is boring to have a character whose defining value to the team (in the way that Rachel brings courage and aggression, Marco brings cynicism and tactical analysis, Cassie brings empathy and insight, Ax brings a literally alien body of knowledge and an understanding of military discipline, Tobias brings the concept of being cool about anything for ten seconds, etc) is just being objectively correct about almost everything most of the time.

It's relevant that Jake is the only (non-bird) white boy on the team. The show Leverage does a similar thing from what little I've seen of it. You have a group of people with highly specialized skillsets and then one (coincidentally white male) person who, instead of having his own specialized skillset, is simply in charge. This doesn't match any of my own experiences with resistance movements or in fact any kind of group endeavor I've ever participated in, unless some external authority was imposing such a leader on the group, which is not the case in Animorphs.

I'm interested in Jake the same way I'm interested in all the kids on the team: I'm interested in his courage, his resilience, and his fallibility. I am interested in the story of children trying their best to take on an impossible task that they are not really equipped for, but that they have to do anyway because no one else is offering to take it off their hands. You might notice my two examples of Jake books I love are a book where he gets taken out of commission and has to trust the team to act without him, and a book where just about every decision he makes is wrong and the team is forced to basically stage a coup. I wish more of his books involved that kind of failure of leadership that ends up forcing the team to work on less hierarchical terms and coming out victorious, because I think that kind of messy resourceful teamwork is the beating heart of the story. I think it makes some sense for this group of kids to anoint an absolute leader to get them through their gauntlet of high pressure decisions, but I think it's a flawed approach and I wish the story had paid more sincere attention to its flaws and its consequences, and offered more moments where the group realized that they had to tackle a problem differently.

[exigencelost]

God Animorphs #31 really was The Book. In what other book ever do you get a fourteen year old saying to his best friend in desperation “He’s my father! I can’t just let him die!” and then pausing in the face of the awful realization that instead of the argument-ending trump card that by all rights that statement should be, it’s the weakest point he’s ever made and one of the cruelest things he’s ever said, because he’s saying it to the boy who he greenlit to kill his own mother last month.

[exigencelost]

One of the things I like about Animorphs #31 which I will someday make a stupidly long post about is that it illustrates that Jake's position of leadership is completely conditional on him making—most of the time and with a reasonable allotted margin for error— what the group considers to be the correct call. Individual group members will follow orders they dislike for a given period of time out of trust in/loyalty to Jake and the team, but this is not a military hierarchy, and if they all agree he's incorrect they'll move forward together in direct opposition to his instructions to do something that would completely and personally fuck him up forever.

[exigencelost]

Something about the way that like. Between #15 and #30/#31 the caretaking, nurturing element of their love for each other was destroyed. The love that would get Jake to keep a secret from the team to protect Marco’s privacy and dignity, that would get Jake to encourage Marco to make whatever call sits right with him, to extend mercy and gentleness. The love that Marco has for Jake that makes him want to figure out what the right thing is to do. Between #15 and #30/31 that is destroyed, and what’s left is a love that serves only one purpose which is to hold them both to the mark. Their duty to each other is just winning. It’s just the line from A to B. It’s reminding each other of that when they falter, when they waver on the edge of humanity, it’s dragging each other back into strategy. And it’ll destroy them both but it will win them the war. 

[exigencelost]

Like. Okay. In #15 they have this profoundly touching moment. Rachel and Ax run off to kill Visser One, not understanding who her host is. Jake tells Marco:

<It’s your call.>

Marco hesitates, then as he’s about to follow them—to help them or stop them, it’s unclear—Jake says:

<Marco? Do what’s right. Forget about what anybody thinks. Do what’s right.>

And Marco’s response is:

That’s my friend Jake. That’s his answer to everything, I guess. Do what’s right. And somehow, he always seems to know just what that is. Or at least he thinks he does. Jake’s a natural hero. Heroes always know what’s right. 

Me? I’m a comedian. All I know is what’s funny. And what isn’t. 

Which makes me insane, not just because of the resonance with Marco’s dialogue in Visser, but because of what happens in #30 and #31. In #31 Marco obviously believes that Jake has no intention of doing what’s right. He thinks Jake can’t see what’s right. That he’s too much of a hero to do what’s right. And then they have this exchange:

“You need to back off on this,” Marco said quietly. “You can’t make this call. Not about your dad and your brother.”

“You made it when it was your mom,” I said.

Marco shrugged. “Yeah, well, that’s me. If it’s any comfort to you, I’d like myself more if I was like you.”

Which makes me insane. This scene gave me new symptoms. This scene gave my plants aphids. Okay? This scene corrupted the chemical composition of my toenails. The self-disgust. The self-destruction. The unyielding principles. The completely fucked up love story. I have been tricked into caring about Jake Berenson.