you lost the game

It's not clear! It's safe to say that Tom is at least 3 years older than Jake. In Megamorphs 4 (set at the same time as #1), Tom's a licensed driver, which puts Tom at 16 or older, and Jake is 13 at the time he becomes an Animorph (#53). So the age gap is at least 3 years.

However, #1 also mentions Tom quitting his high school basketball team, so that puts him at 18-19 at the oldest as of the start of the war. Given there's no mention of Tom being expected to start college or a full-time job at any point in the next 3 years, despite having upper-middle-class parents with college degrees, I tend to believe he's closer to 16 when the war starts and 19 when he dies, vs. 19 when it starts and 22 when he dies.

Random post, but I love how hummingbirds always look suspisious, judgy and slightly pissed

The Invasion is such an excellent one-two-three punch of an opening that I've never seen it topped in series fiction. Animorphs tells you EXACTLY what you're getting into with the first book.

We get about 3 pages of our heroes having wonder and joy at aliens being real before #1 hits us with the graphic onscreen death-by-cannibalism of this kind, caring stranger. And if Jake being chased by 7-foot blade monsters wasn't scary enough, he only escapes because a human bystander dies in his place.

So Jake goes home. To his nuclear suburban family, and his piddly sports problems, and his nice morph-training sequence with his friends. And just kidding there's a yeerk living inside your home already and it knows where you sleep. But that's fine, we'll just tell an adul — oh shit the cops are controllers the reporters are controllers the camp counselors are controllers the vice principal's a controller Elfangor really fucking undersold this problem.

So it's up to them, they guess. And Marco might be scared of dying, and Cassie might be reluctant to fight, but Tobias seems 100% confident they can save the world! So they go. And they don't save Tom, and they get people killed, and they do nothing to hurt Visser Three. And they don't even all make it home at the end of the day. Because it turns out Animorphs is not only a series where supporting characters die; it's a series where the main characters get permanently injured and will never be the same again.

Like [SPOILERS FOR VARIOUS HORROR MOVIES] Kane in Alien, Johnny in Night of the Living Dead, Dan in Frozen, Jonathan in Dracula, Hutch in The Ritual, Jason in Cloverfield, Mathias in The Ruins, Mary in Sinners, or Frank in 28 Days Later. [END SPOILERS]

Those characters all exist to be not just supporting cast members but people we know, people we like... who then encounter terrible fates that make the stakes of the rest of the story all too real. Each of them gets a moment that shifts the story from being adventurous (Alien, Cloverfield), family-oriented (Sinners, Night of the Living Dead), or "scary but we're handling it" (The Ritual, Dracula) to HOLY HELL WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE at the moment the eldritch forces eat them alive. They make clear this is a space where damage is permanent, where death is real and Captain America's not gonna popping back up 6 issues later good as new, and where anyone can die.

I had to do a little bit of digging around but I think the relevant tropes are: "The Worf Effect" when a strong/known character is defeated to show an enemy's strength, and "Sacrifical Lion", an important character killed to show an enemy's strength or that shot just got Real.

#i think ‘go for the heart’ works a little better#since the character in question is typically the emotional center of the group#and thus typically ‘the heart’ as in the trope#though admittedly Cassie is more the heart of the Animorphs#we really don’y have too many examples lf the team operating without Cassie come to think of it#when she’s alone we’re normally in her POV#except the taxxon book. they go without her in that one and immediately fall into a trap#Animorphs

You're right that "heart" isn't quite Always Kill James, because while "heart" can mean center, it also implies warmth/caring. It's the motivating character you have to take out, the one who centers and grounds the others on the team. Like, Frozen is about heroic Dan, Dan's bro-ey abrasive friend, and Dan's girlfriend who doesn't even want to be there... so of course it kills Dan first. Cloverfield introduces us to cool-guy Jason, Jason's brother, Jason's friend, Jason's girlfriend, and Jason's hanger-on... and 15 minutes later, it kills Jason. The James is the guy who pushes the friend group forward and pulls them back, who reins in the wilder (Sirius) elements and draws out the quieter (Peter) ones. So the best way to sow chaos and force interesting character reckonings is Always Kill James.

Tobias only really plays that role before being nothlited. In #1, Tobias puts Jake in charge, Tobias talks Cassie and Rachel into joining the war effort, and Tobias gets all the others to try morphing. It's Tobias's idea to try fighting the war themselves instead of telling an adult (like Elfangor suggested), and it's Tobias who walks right up and starts talking to the scary alien while the others are half-planning to run away. But Tobias being trapped in morph knocks him out of that role, and forces a change in motivation for the rest of his team.

how do you distinguish grey from other colours beyond black and wite?

Distinguishing features of moral beige:

The protagonist is constantly agonising over Hard Choices; however, circumstances always conspire to prevent them from actually having to make those choices, so in practice they're just angsting over stuff they might have done.

The text exhibits a recurring pattern whereby the protagonist seems to to have made a Hard Choice, but new information is reliably revealed shortly thereafter which retroactively establishes that whatever they did was the morally upright course after all.

The protagonist's moral impulses are straightforwardly heroic, except in one specific context which lacks any clear real-world analogue; for example, being prejudiced against telepaths.

The protagonist's actions are consistently reasonable based on the information available to them – they're merely operating on bad information basically all the time due to a bizarre conspiracy and/or a series of increasingly implausible misunderstandings.

Spin the wheel to find out your weakness!