I wanna rant about something I love so much.
Marco and Cassie’s relationship.
The reason I wanna talk about this is because their friendship is a double edged sword. Marco and Cassie both want to protect Jake and keep him from making dumb self sacrificial decisions (for example in Elfangor’s secret they made a pact because they were the only two who saw immediately who Jake was planning to sacrifice, himself) but also they are complete opposites.
Cassie is conscious of her decisions and how they effect the line she has placed for herself to never cross. Her books purposefully put her into situations where she needs to make a choice between winning the battle and sacrifice her morality or possibly lose so she doesn’t need to end lives. She’s one of the smartest animorphs and her depth in empathy allows her to manipulate her enemies and even her friends, but we know she does not like or want to do this. She has repeatedly been shown to know the obvious answer and avoid it if it’s at cost for lives or morals. She was the one who first thought of the auxiliary morphs and immediately refuted it because she saw it was the obvious answer but it was at cost to her own morals.
Marco on the other hand, sees the obvious answer like Cassie, that line from a to b and focuses on just that. Ignoring the morals and hurt caused because if he can avoid thinking about the sad, murderous side of it, he can win the war. He is ruthless and so is Cassie although she won’t admit it. He and Cassie are so similar but foils of each other at the same time. Marco needs to be there to counteract Cassie and vice versa. This comes out in their interactions with Jake when planning attacks.
Cassie and Marco both are close to Jake, Cassie being his girlfriend and Marco being his best friend. They are the first people Jake listens to when he plans an attack because they are smart and vicious. They fight the most out of the animorphs because they are both sides of Jake. That’s why he listens to them the most because Cassie is that part of him he wants after the war but he knows Marco is the one who will get them through the war.
In The Proposal, Cassie is the first person to realize what is going on with Marco because her empathy allows her to read people very well. What made their friendship stand out in this book is the scene when Cassie comes over to his house to talk about his problems because she knows he can’t tell anyone else about them. Whilst Jake tells Marco to get over it because he needs “funny, cynical ruthless Marco”, Cassie knows the root of Marco’s problem and wants him to, in short, cry it out. Accept it and move on. Because out of any of the animorphs, she is the only one who could understand him. She’s had those nightmares after she did the “ruthless” thing. After she had to commit the “obvious answer” like in Elfangor’s secret when she prevented John Berryman from ever being born. That was the ruthless “Marco” way. So she knows more than a fraction of what he’s going through and she doesn’t just shove it down and try to forget about it. She feels it in the moment, the sadness and the regret. And then she moves on. And that is why that scene in the proposal is more important than you think.
