#and i could see multiple possible positions for everyone but the berensons

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

This is a cracky question, but suppose the Animorphs saw Captain America Civil War. Would they be Team Cap or Team Iron Man?

Okay, if I can be a raging hipster for a minute: I LOVE the comic book arc of Marvel’s Civil War, and I’m not a huge fan of the movie they made from it.

The comic story was an excruciatingly effective execution of an argument where no sides are right.  Team Cap correctly argues that it’s wrong to force heroes like Spider-Man to out themselves, but takes that argument way too far when they skip over diplomacy and go straight to stabbing people.  Team Iron Man correctly argues that superheroes have way too much power to have so little oversight, but takes that argument way too far when they start imprisoning metahumans just for failing to register.  Families get torn apart by politics, as in the case of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage’s struggle over what’s best for their daughter.  Politics get torn apart by families, as in the case of Black Widow being firmly Team Iron Man and the Winter Soldier being (of course) Team Cap but them both deciding to ignore their own ideals and focus on solving smaller problems instead.  Heroes die.  Captain America is so disgusted with himself after he beats Iron Man unconscious that he turns himself in, only to get assassinated in the midst of Iron Man’s gloating publicity ploy.  Iron Man’s so disgusted with himself over the death of his best friend that he stops enforcing the Registration Act and quietly lets the war die.  No one wins.  Everyone loses.

That arc isn’t cool or action-packed or any of the other terms we normally use to describe kickass superhero stories; it’s heartbreaking.  Spider-Man compares the fight between the Avengers’ co-leaders to a nasty divorce.  The schism destroys friendships with decades’ publication history.  The Superhuman Registration Act draws attention to Black Widow’s immigrant status and internalized fear of treason, Power Man’s and Cloak’s identities as black men who’ve been abused by police, anti-mutant prejudice as a constant fracture point, and questions of superheroes as law enforcement.  This is the comic book arc that started me reading comic books.  It’s sad.  It’s heavy.  It’s complex and uncomfortable.  It starts badly and ends worse, with no good answers.  It’s got all that depressing shit that makes me love Animorphs so much.

The movie adaptation was solidly okay, but it was also a fistfight in a parking lot over who got to keep Bucky Barnes.  There is a clear right side and a clear wrong one, because Team Iron Man is operating off a miscommunication.  It was a decent flick in its own right, but it captured 0.000001% of what makes me hug the comic books to my chest and cry tears of masochistic agony at night.

ANYWAY, that has all been a characteristically long-winded way of saying: there’s not a good moral divide in the movie Captain America: Civil War.  However, if the Animorphs all read the comic series Marvel’s Civil War, I think they’d land thus:

Jake: Team Cap, for most of the same reasons as Cap himself.  Like Captain America, Jake’s a true believer in the best of American institutions — and like Cap, there’s no American institution that Jake respects more than the right to overthrow any power structure that needs overthrowing.  They’re both tough-minded idealists, and they’re both a little too willing to take their ideals too far.

Cassie: Team Iron Man, mostly because Cassie has compassion for all people but also knows that there’s no such thing as a single right answer.  Cassie doesn’t trust the U.S. government, but she trusts a world with no government even less, and she more than any other Animorph understands the value of compromise.

Ax: Team Iron Man, because Ax tends to believe that the solution to any one group having too much power is a set of checks and balances.  He evolves over the course of the series to understand his brother’s anarchistic tendencies better, but he also experiences visceral disgust at the idea of secret assassin squads and other excesses on the part of the andalites’ War Council.

Marco: Team Cap, but only lightly.  Marco’s canny and cynical and definitely does not believe that the solution to an excess of law enforcement is more law enforcement.  But he also sees moral event horizons coming, even when he chooses to wave at said ethical thresholds as they go by rather than respecting them.  If one side seemed to be more effective at preventing violence than the other, he’d go for that one regardless of its ideals.

Rachel: Team Cap, because Rachel’s the type of person who gets angry at even the implication that someone is trying to control her.  Deep down, Rachel fears becoming a controller even more than anyone else on the team — definitely more than she fears dying — and she would not willingly give up her power to a relatively unknown government agency.

Tobias: Team Iron Man, but with Marco’s same lack of conviction and willingness to change.  Tobias knows his own limits, up to and including knowing that some ethical questions are simply too big or too complex for him to answer.  In Tobias’s case, it’d be a matter of wanting to at least give the Superhuman Registration Act a try, and then seeing how it’s working out before jumping to conclusions.