#Leaving only Cassie as the real survivor of the war. Alone on Earth while her friends all went to die in space

[meixiaotian]

still thinking about how each animorph's fate is directly related to how much they enjoyed the war

#animorphs #I swear I saw a post about this years ago but I don't know where it is #so I guess I'll say it again #Rachel loves the war. She flourishes in it. She self-actualizes. And it's terrible #She and her friends don't even know what peacetime Rachel would look like. *Can* she even exist outside of the war? #And it turns out #No! She can't! Peacetime Rachel never comes to pass! She dies before the war is over! #While Ax. Ax is relatively unbothered. He did enlist in the Andalite military after all. He's not as haunted as the rest of them #After Rachel dies he's the next. Peace comes but he chases the echoes of the war and it ends him. #In some awful way where he's gone but he's not. Not exactly dead but absorbed into a greater hive mind #And of course Cassie hates the war. Hates fighting hates killing hates it the whole way through #And when it's over she manages to move on. She spends her days saving the environment #And when battle again comes knocking at her door she says no #She says goodbye. She knows she'll never see the rest of them again. #Because the rest. They hate the war but not as much as Cassie. #And they try to move on but unlike Cassie they can't. #So off they go to enter into another war. And maybe they survive but maybe they don't #Leaving only Cassie as the real survivor of the war. Alone on Earth while her friends all went to die in space #goddamn #I hated the last book as a kid #I still wish they had a happier ending #but there's so much to chew over and cry about #it's a really good ending

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

I'd love to hear opinions for Megamorphs 4

Short opinion: I giggle every time I read the line “President Clinton urged everyone to remain calm” but seriously this book is so scary specifically because it feels so realistic to canon.

Long opinion:

I’ve always felt like this book takes place in direct conversation with #1, fleshing out the existing personalities and relationships of the team as of the moment that they walk through the construction site.  The actual first book in the series sweeps the characters along so quickly toward their destiny (by necessity, because anything else would be bad writing) that we get extremely few details about what these kids are actually like before the war ruins their lives except in the retrospective.  Back to Before feels like a chance to go back and find out who exactly these kids were before they all became homicidal cinnamon rolls.  Of course I’m a sucker for the details about Tom (He has a driver’s license!  He wears a denim jacket over blue jeans like a true 90s fashion victim!  Temrash 114 keeps at least two separate dracon beams in his room!  His parents think he should pay more attention in school!) but there are also a ton of rich characterization moments for all six Animorphs.  

This book really shows us for the first time why Tobias is so desperate for his life to change that he throws himself into a war (and maybe-maybenot gets himself trapped in morph) just to have friends and a purpose.  He belongs nowhere—not at home with his alcoholic uncle, not at school where he’s constantly under threat of physical violence, not at the mall where Jake listens to him out of pity while Marco’s openly hostile—which means that he grabs the first chance he can to fly away from it all.  Maybe he’s being short-sighted, since by #3 he already knows he had no idea what he was getting himself into, but he’s so desperate to get out that one can hardly blame him even when he resorts to becoming a controller in order to have someone to talk to and something to give him meaning.  

It’s also striking that Tobias is the one who ends up recruited by the Sharing, while Jake attends one meeting and leaves.  Most of the series has this implicit assumption that if any of them will be the first one taken, it’ll be Jake, since he’s the one with a controller already living in the house.  (For instance, #41 and #7 both feature variations on the theme of everyone getting caught because Tom saw something he shouldn’t, and in #49 everyone is shocked when the yeerks’ DNA match isn’t between Jake and Tom.)  However, here Jake sees everything the Sharing has to offer… and tells Tom “I’m not really a joiner,” because he’s really really not (MM4).  The unfortunate flip side of the coin of Jake’s leadership ability is that he makes a fairly terrible follower.  In this book it saves his life, but there are other instances (when dealing with the andalites in #18 and #38, during the negotiations with the Arn in #34) where everyone would probably be better off if Jake could find it in himself to sit down, shut up, and do as he’s told.  Non-Animorph Jake is probably at risk of becoming a useless washout (between the crappy academic performance, the mediocre athletic performance, and the lack of motivation to do anything, he’s probably destined to spend the rest of his life as a failed artist living in a studio apartment in downtown LA paid for by his parents’ money), but he’s also not at risk of becoming a voluntary controller, because he’s perfectly content with his mediocre life.  

Rachel, by contrast, is incredibly restless in her normal life.  Cassie describes her as “hunting” with “laser focus” when looking for bargains at the mall (MM4).  It takes her about ten seconds to get on board with chasing down and attempting to tackle some random stranger because Marco thinks said stranger looks like his dead mom.  She snaps into action the second that Ax broadcasts the news that aliens are attacking the planet, and keeps fighting with whatever tools come to hand (including a severed hork-bajir head, because this girl is hardcore) until she gets killed.  For all that she loves it, this book implies that the war might be the worst thing that could have possibly happened to Rachel.  After all, she’s quite good at channeling all that pent-up aggression into verbal sparring the way her mom does (notice how much she enjoys arguing with Marco in the planetarium) and also releasing that extra energy through athletics the way her dad does (unlike Jake, she’s not deterred in her sports ambitions by a mere hiccup like utter lack of talent).  She also has a lot of friends and admirers, a track record of being one of the highest performers in her class, and a casual self-confidence that is rare enough for a girl her age to win her a lot of favors with a lot of people.  Non-Animorph Rachel (in a world that also had no yeerks) would probably thrive in whatever career she chose for decades before dying at a ripe old age surrounded by her highly attractive husband and seven fat grandchildren.  

Maybe my favorite piece of Marco characterization from this book is the way it establishes there is actually a lot more to his crush on Rachel than thinking she has beautiful hair and looks cute in a leotard.  He’s considerably less comfortable in his own skin than either of the Berensons, but he also practices what he preaches by appreciating a joke at his own expense just as much as one he uses to mock another person.  This book makes it obvious that he looks up to Rachel (not just literally, although Marco’s jokes about his own height are also amazing) because he recognizes how intelligent and ruthless she is, and those are the qualities he values the most in himself and others.  Cates pointed out that it’s interesting almost all of Marco’s role models are female (Xena, Alanis Morissette, Carmen Electra, Eva for that matter) and in a lot of ways he doesn’t just like Rachel; he admires her.  

And then there’s the portrayal of Ax when no one comes to rescue him.  #4 and #8 only hint at what it must have been like for him to spend weeks stuck in a tiny dome at the bottom of the ocean, not knowing whether anyone was coming for him, suspecting more and more every day that his whole crew was dead, but here we get a much deeper look at those long days of solitude.  He comes off almost like a prisoner in solitary confinement in the scenes before he manages to use the shark morph to escape: compulsively addicted to routines, talking to inanimate objects, starting to hallucinate when left alone for long enough… Ax is a survivor, tough enough to live through years of loneliness and grief while fighting a war on a foreign planet.  This book shows just how much of that strength comes from within, fire-forged by his traumatic introduction to Earth.  

Oh, and Cassie is sub-temporally grounded, apparently.  I have nothing nice to say about that concept so I’ll settle for saying nothing at all.

Anyway, I love both the opening and closing of this book.  The first scene has one of those UTTERLY HORRIFYING banality-of-violence beginnings, where we open on the aftermath of a battle that may or may not have accomplished anything other than giving the kids involved a few more nightmares.  Jake is disturbingly casual about the fact that he has lost an entire leg and is slowly bleeding to death, making wry jokes about how he and the three-legged table match each other. We can tell why: this isn’t the first (or even the thirtieth) time he’s been fatally maimed and then forced to shrug it off in order to keep fighting.  The kids try—and fail—to save the host of a fatally injured yeerk a few minutes of pain, and end up watching both beings bleed to death.  And then Jake goes home, and he once again plays the game of Lying For His Life with his parents and Tom, and he goes to bed ready to do it all again the next day, wondering what dreams of Sauron Crayak will come.  This poor schmuck literally never catches a break.  No wonder his little deal with the devil seems so tempting for the millisecond that it takes for Crayak to pounce.  (By contrast, the TV episode features Jake asking the Little Blue Ellimist to make him a Real Boy because he doesn’t want to do his math homework and plan a battle at the same time. What a whiner.)

Ugh, and then the ten little soldiers go out to dine, and they drop off one by one so fast that most barely get the chance to fight back.  Rachel and Ax especially do their best to battle the oncoming horde, but they’re largely unarmed and clueless against the yeerks. Tobias becomes the living puppet of a living puppet of Visser One, and then there were five.  Marco stands a little too close to a Bug fighter, and then there were four.  Rachel runs straight into turret fire because Rachel is still Rachel even without unleashing her inner grizzly bear, and then there were three. Cassie is in the wrong shopping mall at the wrong time, and then there were two.  Jake faces down an army of hork-bajir as just his little human self, and then there was one.  Ax might be able to survive—but he isn’t looking to go home and be safe, he’s looking to save the world.  And then there were none.  

A lot of the point of this book is that of course the Ellimist “stacked the deck,” because these kids in particular are the the only ones who have the necessary combination of idealism and grittiness to take on an entire army and win (MM4).  Marco says it best in #54: “We beat an empire, my friend, the six of us, and we did it in large part because you didn’t know any better than to trust your own instincts.”  Ax has the tech savvy and determination to engage in total war, but he can’t survive on Earth without human friends.  Rachel has the ferocity to be a one-woman army, but without her friends to ground her she’d get herself killed a lot sooner.  Jake might be a natural leader, but he’s also naive enough not to know how to balance ethics in times of atrocity without Marco’s ruthlessness and Cassie’s pragmatism to guide him.  Without Marco, the team would never succeed in taking down Visser One.  Without Cassie, they would never get in contact with the Yeerk Peace Movement.  Without Tobias, they’d never succeed at freeing the hork-bajir.  These six form a constellation of skills and needs and strengths and neuroses that balances the fate of the entire galaxy on the shoulders of a bunch of middle schoolers.  They don’t need morphing power to be badass—but they do need it to win.  

#asks #answers #animorphs #sohmamon #mm4 #back to before #animorphs reviews #megamorphs 4 #long post

[fireinclined]

name

so, capellans don’t have last names at all- instead they have core names and family suffixes. cassandra’s family suffix is -lyn, however, after the destruction of capella, cassandra chose to take on the -ndra suffix again

-ndra is the orphan’s suffix, but more specifically…its the suffix of the unwanted. only children who are given up at birth, are completely disowned from the family, or choose to cut ALL ties to their families have this suffix.

since cassandra was given up at birth, her names have been

cassandra -> cassalyn -> cassandra

her core name is cassa, and it’s considered very rude to call a capellan by their core name unless they have given explicit permission for you to do so. in addition- cassandra CANNOT STAND the nickname cassie, since that’s what her name would have been if dulcie and her had gotten married, and what dulcie used to call cassandra when they were engaged.

tl;dr: don’t call her cass and DEFINITELY don’t call her cassie

the herald

note: the reasoning for cassandra’s ability to see others’ future’s is different from the reason given in “hello, clairvoyant? humanoid rat speaking.” this is the official “canon” reasoning, and the fic will be changed to match this, should i ever rewrite it.

every augur is given a mask by thea- ones that she makes years before the augur in question is even born. they help the augur see more than what they normally would- they amplify an augur’s abilities. however, because no two augurs see the same things, each mask is tailor made for their particular brand of clairvoyance. using a different augur’s mask will give them the sight of that augur, but it will also induce intense nausea and headaches.

cassandra had taken back her grandmother’s mask from oddfrid, the woman who killed her, and held onto it, since her grandmother had no grave to place it at. she used the mask out of curiosity, and found that she could see other people’s futures- however she had no control over who’s future she saw. her visions were usually restricted to the planet she was on, and along with those visions, she was given the knowledge of how to get in contact with those people.

this was how raelyn’s clairvoyance worked. she could see the future of random people, and with those visions she knew how to influence their future. after all, that’s what being an augur’s all about- actively shaping the future by knowing what’s ahead.

when cassandra finally go to earth and settled down, she decided not to become some grand superhero. she was going to, for once, try to be normal. however…cassandra quickly got bored, and wondered if there was something she should be doing- something to help people more than she already was as a firefighter.

it was then that she decided to use her grandmother’s mask again, and peer into the future’s of others. with her visions came the phone numbers of those she saw, and it became clear how cassandra could use this power to help others.

whenever cassandra could, she’d put on her grandmother’s mask and then call people, warning them of disaster and trying to steer them away from tragedy. she quickly became an urban legend, and people started calling her “the herald.” the more and more she called to help, the more and more popular the herald became, until everyone wanted to know if she was real, and if she was, who was she?

cassandra hated the title of “the herald”, but it wasn’t like she could come forward and say anything. as previously stated, wearing her grandmother’s mask gives cassandra intense headaches and nausea, thus preventing her from using the mask on a regular basis.

cassandra’s education

alright so, since capella fell into a civil war when cassandra was 11, that’s kind of when she stopped going to school. ioavis was such a volatile time in her life as well- and forte and theon didn’t know shit about teaching a kid (beyond their respective professions). thea helped cassandra a little bit, but cassandra’s training as an augur came first.

it was only after cassandra had landed on pyrrah and met keandra again that she resumed any type formal education. while trying to read capellan texts on her inclination, cassandra realized just how poor her reading skills were. keandra tutored cassandra- honestly, he was the only one she would trust to help her. cassandra hates more than anything feeling st*pid, and would only let keandra see her that vulnerable.

cassandra learned enough math and science to maintain and fly her ship, and studied the history of many different planets- she only has a shallow knowledge of each one, since she was aiming to learn about as many as possible. cassandra also seriously resumed her studies in astrography that her grandmother had gotten her started on.

now cassandra has an above average reading level in capellan, and average reading levels in standard and english, and a very basic reading level in french.

cassandra & crying

alright so- at about age..14 or 15, cassandra stopped crying. cassandra’s time on ioavis was marked by constant high levels of stress, and for about ten years, when faced with something tragic or something that would make her cry, instead she would just shut down. in addition to just high stress, theon was…kind of an asshole. forte and theon both were. you know that one scene in “a league of their own” where tom hanks’ character yells at one of the players and says “there’s no crying in baseball!” yeah, theon and cassandra had a similar encounter. this idea of crying being a weakness was something theon instilled in her.

cassandra did not cry after forte’s death, instead she just went numb. she didn’t speak, she didn’t eat- once she started feeling again, she turned all that grief into anger, and that’s pretty much what got her through the rest of her time on ioavis- just running off anger.

after leaving ioavis, cassandra went to train with thea, and it could not have come at a better time. thea helped cassandra work through her issues- she still struggles with depression, along with enormous amounts of survivors guilt, but thea helped her learn how to cope with it all.

but cassandra didn’t really break down and cry until she saw keandra again. cassandra was overfilled with joy and relief- she wasn’t the last capellan! she wasn’t all alone in the universe. cassandra and keandra both cried for a good twenty minutes, and that’s kind of the turning point for cassandra. when she needs to, she cries. she tends to be an angrier crier.

putting on a front

see, cassandra might seem like she’s careless with fire- when she’s around people who know about her, she does use it pretty freely. but…she’s got an insane amount of control over it. the fact that she is able to use her powers so nonchalantly is a testament to how many hours she’s put into honing her inclination. she never starts a fire she can’t put out or one that will hurt someone unintentionally.

cassandra, in general, cultivates this reputation of being carefree and just…chill but almost in a bad way. she also acts kinda…airheaded at times too.  like, oh she’s so flippant and clueless, she can’t possibly be dangerous. she wants her enemies to underestimate her.

…but when a friend calls into question her control or competence, cassandra gets very hurt. she is more than she appears to be, and she has put in so much time and energy honing her inclination and her clairvoyance- to have that insulted, however mildly, gets cassandra very upset.

cassandra & silence

after the fall of capella, cassandra couldn’t stand how silent her ship was- which seemed huge and sterile to a traumatized twelve year old. so she turned to music to fill that void. now…capellans have a slightly different view of music that humans simply because music is just…talking? or at the very least, instrumental music can be used to convey ideas and emotions. so it was less…music music and more of just background chatter.

when atlas was destroyed and dulcie died, cassandra was completely overwhelmed by the silence, both in her head, since she had gotten so used to atlas’ presence, and…in her life. paola was still there but nothing was the same. so, again, cassandra turned to music. now that her perception of music has changed from simply talking to this emotional outlet, it meant more i think?

when cassandra gets to earth, she’s that neighbor that always has her music too loud and while she always apologizes…she rarely changes it for long. it's a huge coping mechanism but she’s rarely comfortable enough with someone to actually say that.

this is why cassandra takes immense joy in how loud her family is. she isn’t bothered in the slightest and will?? never police them on their volume. her fear of silence does start to lessen, but it never goes away. and she’s honestly just developed a love?? of noise because of it.

cassandra in the lone rat au

cassandra fighting the kraang in @ratdad-ninjutsumaster​‘s lone rat au is LITERALLY IOAVIS ALL OVER AGAIN

let me explain. the reason cassandra got involved in the revolution in the first place was because she was desperate to prove her worth…to herself, honestly. she thought if she could help people and do this huge act and help overthrow the government, that meant she was worth something. if she could do good, and help people…to her, that meant her life had value.

ioavis came after a few short weeks of travel through space after the fall of capella- cassandra was feeling extreme guilt over what happened, and felt like she had no value. that it would have been better for everyone if she’d died in the snow when she was a child. so a chance to do good on such a large scale? sign her the fuck up. a role that only she could fill as the (supposed) last living capellan? even better.

now, flash forward to after dulcie’s death. cassandra never once blamed dulcie for what happened with atlas- the ONLY person she kinda sort maybe shared the blame with was keandra, in that he thought of it, and cassandra carried it out (’with dulcie’ written in a tiny font in a footnote).

so cassandra took on all the blame for freeing atlas…and dulcie died fixing cassandra (’and dulcie’s’ scribbled in the margins)’s mistake. what’s even worse? cassandra could do fucking nothing to help them. she was powerless to against atlas- she could hold her back, but couldn’t rid herself of the monster.

so…after that, cassandra is pretty much back to where she was at the fall of capella, mental state wise. it’s maybe three years after dulcie’s death and cassandra’s arrival on earth, and while she does have a much better support system in place (ie, paola), she’s still…trying to prove to herself that she has value.

now, in most verses, cassandra takes on the role of herald, the events of ‘hello clairvoyant’ take place, and her friendship with splinter, and later role as mother to the turtles in her mind, gives her value.

in this verse? cassandra stumbles onto the kraang, and finds herself…in a position to do huge acts (stopping this invading force)….with a role that few others can fill (a ‘superpowered’ being with knowledge of alien worlds and years of fighting under her belt- honestly, she’s one of the most qualified beings on earth to fight the kraang at this point)…

and without her role as herald and her friendship with splinter/role as mother? she fucking JUMPS at that chance. she throws herself into danger, tries to save the world and be a hero to prove that she has worth, that her life is worth living.

cassandra’s temper

cassandra very rarely loses her temper honestly?? she’s not the yelling and screaming type unless it’s with someone she cares deeply about - the two obvious (and mostly likely) ones paola and splinter. when cassandra gets angry, she’s far more prone to storming away and sulking than yelling, so that she can recollect herself and not say something that she’ll regret.

when does lose her temper and gets extremely angry, she starts crying. but she hates this, and if you back down because she’s crying, it’ll only make her angrier.

and in an argument, she’s far more likely to wear a poker face and map out the conversation via her clairvoyance. again, only paola and splinter really see her get worked up in the moment and just keep barreling through the argument whilst angry.

cassandra’s enemies

so the first should be obvious: any capellan that finds out cassandra was one of the people who unleashed atlas. not everyone’s gonna be as understanding as vivi, and there are a lot of capellans that would do anything to have someone to pin all the blame on.

second of all: leftover members of a cult that kills augurs. winfrid was killed by them, and cassandra was nearly killed by a member of that cult too. it took all of her allies (keandra, paola, jayjay, owl, and brooklyn) to protect her while she was. you know recovering.

third: okay so while cassandra was on pyrrah there was an attempted coup?? and of course because cassandra was bffs with the queen and keandra was the queen’s little brother they helped stop it. so idk if people are still mad about that they might come after her.

and finally- here’s the big one, because this. is actually going to happen when i rewrite season one: we’re gonna call the scientist who created jayjay and owl dr. h. cassandra left dr. h’s fate in the hands of jayjay and owl, and they decided to have her be put on trial and thrown in jail, for reasons that i will discuss when i talk about jayjay and owl. one of dr. h’s allies comes after cassandra for revenge or as part of some scheme she has with dr. h.  i won’t say what exactly happens, but. it’s not good for cassandra.

but yeah, those are the people/enemies that might come after cassandra

gravity sickness

okay so, because earth’s gravity is so much weaker than capella’s, cassandra will wake up some nights, usually disoriented by her visions, and feel almost completely weightless- like she’s just going to fly off the surface of the earth. this is a terrifying experience for cassandra- despite the fact that she loves floating in her ship’s gravity chamber, the feeling like she’s going to fly right off the earth is so scary because she has no control over it.

if she’s sleeping alone, she’ll grab the edges of the mattress, as if trying to keep herself from flying away. if she’s with splinter, she’ll usually accidentally wake him up when she wakes up, and ask him to either hold her or lay on her. the feeling of his arms holding her tightly or the weight of his body on top of her makes her feel grounded. he’ll usually whisper affirmations to her (”you’re safe, you’re alright, this is real, i’m here, nothing’s going to harm you”) until she relaxes enough to fall back asleep.

does cassandra get jealous?

it depends, really. cassandra tends to get sad jealous rather than angry jealous (’oh, of course they don’t love me, who could love someone like me, they’ll be happier with them, etc etc). and it does take quite a bit to get her to despair like that: if her s/o is just hanging out with someone else or someone’s flirting with them, and she feels secure in their relationship, she’s fine with it. they can take care of themselves (usually).

however she DOES get angry jealous in amnesiac!splinter verse, because they AREN’T together, and she’s terrified that he’ll fall in love when he has amnesia, and when he gets his memories back, he’ll love that other person more than her.

how does cassandra grieve?

she’ll isolate herself, mostly, and usually go from surrounding herself with things that remind her of/belonged to the person she’s grieving to getting as far away from anything that reminds her of them as possible.

(in verses where splinter dies, this would mean that cassandra goes from staying locked in splinter’s room for days, only to alternate to staying in her apartment for days on end)

cassandra will rarely speak and rarely eat, and honestly the only who can get her to take care of herself is paola.

i keep saying that in these situation it’s only paola who can get cassandra to take care of herself, and that’s mostly because paola knows how cassandra grieves and how to deal with it. cassandra was practically lifeless after dulcie’s death, and while paola helped take care of cassandra during this time, it was only the revelation of what the yellow flowers in cassandra’s dreams were and actually going to earth that put some life back into cassandra’s eyes.

i would argue that dulcie’s death was the lowest point of cassandra’s life, and that remains constant- even in most aus. cassandra felt closed off from the rest of the galaxy, despite keandra and brooklyn staying around her. but it…it was this distant thing. not the comfort cassandra needed, you know?

in verses where splinter dies, cassandra does have her family and she does get out of bed and takes care of herself better than she does after dulcie. she has her family to live for.

cassandra adjusting to life on earth

the thing about adjusting to earth’s climate is that everything that’s different from capella was a million times worse on pyrrah.

it was so much hotter on pyrrah than it is on earth, and definitely than it was on capella. so cassandra eventually got used to that.

as for culture…cassandra lived in france for the first…two years? i think it was? maybe three- on earth, and cassandra had done a lot of research on earth in general, but especially on france, in the two months it took her to get there. i haven’t really thought much about her time in france- that’s something i need to work on tbh

cassandra doesn’t understand american politics at all. on capella there was lot more involvement in politics and everyone was critical of it- especially because of the ‘capellan cycle’, where a government would exist on capella for a few centuries before being overthrown and replaced for a few more centuries. so especially for cassandra, who was the daughter of a political thinker and revolutionary, and a capellan who grew up at the end of the current government’s cycle, she grew up very critical of authority and very aware of what was going on in the government. so the way americans know they’re unhappy with their government, but always know exactly what’s wrong with it or how to fix it, and are at times unwilling to put in the effort to change it…doesn’t make sense to cassandra

another thing cassandra doesn’t understand is like…consumerism. like this culture of constantly buying more, or espECIALLY things being made to be broken and replaced. for most of capella’s history resources were scarce, so shit had to be built to last for a LONG time. and this mindset never went away, even when capella began trading with other planets. so cassandra’s just ???? at how everything on earth is made to be replaced.

cassandra & drowning

cassandra is terrified of drowning. like…shoot her, stab her, let her pass away from sickness or old age…just don’t drown her or suffocate her.

i’d imagine her fear comes from actually having visions in her sleep of her drowning, and then there was the time she actually almost drowned. it happened when brooklyn was with her, and her leg got caught in sinking wreckage of a ship they were on. it was easily one of the top five most terrifying experiences of cassandra’s life

the day capella fell

cassandra always gets very solemn and quiet on the day capella fell, lost in her own thoughts and guilt, and she usually reaches out to keandra (and to a lesser extent, brooklyn) on that day because they’re all in bad places on that day.

also consider- everyone knowing this is a bad day for cassandra and doing their best to make her smile in their own ways. everyone gives her 100x more hugs and makes sure she knows that they love her

what cassandra did for money during her travels

it should be noted that before getting to pyrrah, with the exception of her time without her ship on ioavis, cassandra pretty much lived off of the food stored in her capellan caravel. usually these foods are dehydrated to make them last longer, and while they’re not…especially tasty, there was enough on the ship for 50+ people to live on for one year. so cassandra really had no need for money, since capellan ships don’t use fuel like earth ships do, and there were uniforms on board for clothing.

however, most of the clothing was far too big for cassandra, who was very short by capellan standards when she was a child, and this was the primary reason she learned how to sew- so she could make adjustments so she wasn’t tripping over her pants at the very least.

when on pyrrah, cassandra began an apprenticeship under a ship mechanic, and after a year cassandra was offered a job there. at the time, she was living with the royal family, so again…she pretty got whatever she needed, and all the money she made was saved up.

later on, after leaving pyrrah and parting ways with keandra, cassandra began to take up work as a translator, working with countless universities and libraries across the galaxy and translating thousands of audio files, all recorded in capellan.

while it is possible to understand capellan without knowing the meaning of the way it’s sung, a lot of subtle details are lost that way. so cassandra’s knowledge of the capellan language was sought after by many, especially since she’s thought to be one of the last two capellans left.

working as a translator also allowed cassandra to work while still traveling- having any and all files that needed translation sent to her ship.

photographs

on cassandra’s ship there’s a bunch of pictures on this shelf of

paola, cassandra and keandra

cassandra and dulcie

cassandra’s family photo

cassandra and brooklyn

cassandra, brooklyn, jayjay and owl

cassandra, brooklyn, keandra, and dulcie 

cassandra, keandra, paola & the royal family of pyrrah

cassandra,oriel, nikola, theon, and forte

work & josie

honestly the worst thing about work is that she can’t just say “i have a family emergency” because no one knows she has a family. so a lot of people think she’s flaky and unreliable when really, she’s just a good mom trying to help her sons take on an alien invasion.

this is somewhat resolved by the end of season one, because josie becomes the new fire chief (something that might have gone to cassandra had she not had to leave work so frequently), and josie knows that cassandra is an alien and that she’s protecting…someone. josie doesn’t know about the turtles completely just yet.

by season three, josie knows everything, and will cut cassandra slack when she says she has an emergency, which helps ease cassandra’s mind a lot once the city is back in order.

fireproof clothing

fireproof clothing is the norm on capella and it’s easy to find throughout the galaxy simply because there are so many races that can create/manipulate fire or are fireproof themselves, but before cassandra got her hands on a good amount of fireproof clothes, she frequently burned off the sleeves of her shirts by accident. her fire generally starts behind her shoulders and is pushed down her arms, and then out. so eventually cassandra had…no sleeves on her shirts.

now, however, most of her wardrobe is fireproof so she doesn’t have to worry about that anymore.

final inclination shift

cassandra undergoes her final inclination shift near the end of ‘winter in the woods.’ the emotions that cassandra has used to power/anchor her inclination are, in this order; rage, guilt, wonder, and love.

after dulcie’s death, her inclination fizzles out for about six months. she feels numb, and therefore has nothing to power her inclination with. when she gets to earth, it’s a little better, but she doesn’t have that strong emotional core that she used to, so she’s relying on passing emotions.

if anything, her powers are loosely tied to her pride, since every time she uses her powers to a greater extent, she’s trying to show off. but she has no…real core to rely on here. and because she’s falling in love with this family, it’d make sense for her to connect her powers to that love.

in later chapters of “winter in the woods,” she uses her powers more and more, and it’s out of a desire to protect, because of that love she has. and once the main plot of witw is over, it’d make so much sense that’d it happen almost subconsciously.

#🌠 and the universe said everything you need is within you. ( headcanons : all. ) #🌠 and the universe said i love you because you are love. ( headcanons : cassandra. )