#animorphs 39

[rays-animorphs]

Cassie hid the morphing cube *in the barn*. Surely this can't be the first time some bug has walked across it.

Oh well. Suspension of disbelief.

[coldbrewblooded]

[exigencelost]

The other thing about #39 hellish ant-Cassie scene (where Cassie kills an image of herself that’s screaming in existential anguish) is that Cassie tries to tell the rest of the team about it later, to explain why she’s so shaken, and no one picks up what she’s putting down. Jake and Rachel (the people who love her the most) both try to connect with her in that moment and they both fail; Jake talks privately about his relief that she’s okay (which she’s not) and Rachel tries to make a joke to lighten the mood (which Cassie doesn’t laugh at). No one else tries at all, and no one really hears what she’s saying. 

I had a conversation awhile ago about how the team fails to see Cassie clearly a lot of the time and I’m thinking now also about the #19 line “You’re saying the whole world can go to hell as long as you, Cassie, don’t have to turn into me,” and how Cassie has no rebuttal because it’s true, but also, even though it’s true, Cassie doesn’t actually have a problem with Rachel. Like, I’m struggling to think of a time Cassie is actually judgmental of, or frightened of, or disapproving of Rachel. Cassie could not live with herself if she was like Rachel, but Cassie can easily live with Rachel, and those things don’t seem to conflict for her. 

And later in #19, Marco shows up to kill a small child and Cassie takes drastic action to prevent it because she doesn’t want to be party to that act of violence, but I can’t remember any line of her narration or dialogue that condemns Marco in any way for what he plans to do. She can’t bear to do it. That doesn’t mean she thinks less of him for doing what he thinks needs to be done. Cassie is afraid of Marco in #19 but she is not angry at him and she does not observably pass judgment on him. 

I’m having a thought that goes something like: Rachel and Marco (who refuse to say out loud that they hate themselves) have recurring problems with Cassie (who constantly verbalizes her struggles with self-hatred) which they frame as them defending against Cassie’s unfair moral reprobation; but Cassie doesn’t have any discernible problem with them. 

Whereas Tobias (who has achieved personal moral self-acceptance), understands Cassie possibly better than anyone, and Ax (who has a lot of issues but none of them are revulsion at his own capacity for violence) gets along fine with her until the endgame when she materially betrays the team’s objective. Like. Ax doesn’t have a problem with Cassie being passively angst-ridden. He doesn’t take that as an attack on himself. They’re not close but there’s not friction in the way there’s constant friction between Cassie and Marco. 

Marco sees Cassie’s moral hangups as a personal attack, and partly that’s because he feels like she’s making his boyfriend think less of him, but it’s mostly because he thinks so little of himself and he’s compartmentalizing that so aggressively that he can’t stand being in the same space as someone who refuses to compartmentalize. The entire team (with the possible and significant exception of Cassie) has accepted the premise that Cassie is a better person than Marco; so if Cassie is disgusted by her own sins, by the transitive property she must be even more disgusted by Marco. But I really don’t think she is. 

Idk. I’m forever thinking about #30, where Cassie yells in the planning meeting “we can’t do this, he’s in denial, it’s his mother,” and then she ends up pushing Eva over the cliff. Like. She tried to throw down against Marco’s plan but she expressed it very clearly not in moral terms but in terms of Marco’s well-being, arguably even in strategic terms: He Cannot Take This. This is a mistake. It will backfire. We will lose a functioning team member. And she loses that argument and so she shuts up and plays her part and then in the end she is the person who does the actual deed, which, again, protects Marco from doing it, falls in line with her thesis statement that he can’t survive doing it, but like. Are we really going to pretend that Cassie is sitting in moral judgment over everyone else? The only person on the team that Cassie Animorphs doesn't know how to live with is herself. The only thing Cassie Animorphs ever thought the word “abomination” about was a creature that was in the process of transforming into her. 

[rays-animorphs]

Oh wow.

So, one thing I think about sometimes, going through this series, is which stories are load-bearing, essential to the overall story, and which ones aren't. I think this one is. Because however the end game goes down, this is going to be part of it, Cassie having a moment of not being able to do the tough, ruthless thing. And immediately after she gets fucking attacked by an ant-Cassie hybrid.

Because, I mean. Wouldn't you be a lot more willing to do the tough, ruthless thing after something like that?

[exigencelost]

Reading Animorphs #39, aka The Buffalo Book, and I think we talk too much about the buffalo and about Cassie making “morph whale while falling through the sky” into a signature move and not enough about the scene where an ant morphs Cassie and starts screaming as it downloads a human mind and goes into emotional overdrive A K A the scene where Cassie watches an image of herself scream and thrash with existentially unbearable pain as it is flooded by the life-threatening revelation of its own capacity and by extension obligation to choose its own course of action. Very Cassie. Very themes. Very resonance. Very #19 breakdown triggered by the realization that she had attacked after Jake said retreat and so the death was on her. 

[exigencelost]

Talk about the Buffalo in Book 39!!

The buffalo speaks for itself.

[rays-animorphs]

Cassie passing out after all that seems a lot more plausible than if she hadn't. That was a LOT of morphing in a short period of time.

[rays-animorphs]

Where's your sense of humor/probably caught back in the Dome ship's airlock with Ax's