oh jesus, this'll be a one two punch iirc this is the first set of books that relate directly to each other, not just ambient things like yeerks being more desparate because the kandrona rays are in short supply after the animorphs took out the local source nope this is an entire new animorph they're going to trap in a fate worse than death. this is the entire group grappling with whether killing a human is EVER justified, right on the heals of cassie trying to square violence of any kind. and then, after this, they get the ability to give others morphing... and a first hand experience on how wrong that can go. fuck david man i know i've seen tumblr discourse about how he's really just the only ordinary kid in the entire book series that he drives home how far of a gulf there is between the soldiers the animorphs have had to become and the kids they used to be but man, he thought he killed tobias and that it meant nothing becuase he "wasn't really human" fuck that guys def not reading nonight, got just. so many big days in a row, but looking forward to it. man, that person on reddit saying book 19 is where the series really gets going is not wrong. ~~~~~~~ Alright. I only have so many spoons, but I can read a bit tonight before bed. oh marco...no wonder the fandom headcanons him as bisexual "you look like a guy, in a good way" sure is a compliment to give a girl making sure to set up the way the morphing cube looks so we recognize it when david has it. ``` I took a good, long look at Cassie. See, there was this little episode with Cassie. She quit the Animorphs because I guess she had problems with some of the stuff we have to do. She came back, of course. But since then I’d felt a little shaky around her. Cassie has way too many morals and ethics. She’s always wondering whether something is right or wrong. Me, I just wonder “will it work? or not.” I was thinking of something snide to say to Cassie, but I decided to keep my mouth shut. Cassie has saved my life more than once. You cut a person a lot of slack when they’ve saved your life. ``` and the thing is, we KNOW how observant cassie is. theres no way she's not aware of how awkward it is that she's back and i love the context marco is bringing here, that he's saying without saying that, well, how can they trust her to not just do that again at the worst possible moment? because, and this fascinates me, she has the strongest morals of the team. which translates to those with the WEAKEST morals (rachel and marco) as her being baffling. who could say what she's gonna suddenly decide is immoral? who could predict it? jake can. jake is *eaten up alive* by this shit. he tries to make the hard decisions because if he doesn't, who will. but rachel and marco are just...naturally more ruthless. they have moral strugrals, sure, but in a very real way they don't SEE the same struggles jake and cassie do. ```Normally, I have a superstition about ever saying something is going to be easy. But this time, even I didn’t worry. Now I have a new superstition: Anytime I’m not worried, I worry``` good ol' fashioned hypervigillance ```"Hi, guys, what’s up?” Erek said, sounding exactly like any normal kid, rather than a robot so old he helped build the pyramids. “Not much,” I said, cutting off Cassie before she could explain what we were up to. We trust the Chee, but there’s no point giving out any more information than is necessary. I’m suspicious by nature. “What’s up with you, Erek``` and this is a dynamic that would have happened previously, but how different must it feel to both of them in the wake of cassie's defection? .............. okay. OKAY. lets set aside entirely that the world summit is being held in CALIFORNIA of all places (not that we know that the setting is that yet) lets just set aside that they're picking somewhere thats hard for EVERY DELEGATE to get to except maybe the japanese one. we good? WHY THE HELL IS A RANDOM FOREIGN LEADER A CONTROLLER IF THE YEERK INVASION HAS SO FAR BEEN CENTERED ON CALIFORNIA? they have incompetently been half heartedly trying to get the president of the us and the 'andalite bandits' keep stopping them. if they have, i dunno, japan already. why not just. NOT DO BIG MAJOR OPS IN THE SAME CITY THE ANDALITE BANDITS ARE CLEARLY STRANDED IN!? GO TO LITERALLY ANY OTHER COUNTRY. ................................................................... *calming breath* its really good at psychology and horror but god. its. so bad. at actual plotting. welp, can't have it all. moving on: you know , i can't remember how david even learned how morphing works. ```My fingers stretched out, elongating compared to the rest of my hands and arms. As they elongated, though, they slipped right out of the skin so that they became dry, white, bird-bone. “Eeeewww!” Jake said, laughing in disgust. “That’s something new!” “Oh, man, I don’t need to ever see that again!” I said``` new level of body horror unlocked oh tobias...why did you let marco go first. done for now. ~~~ (i am so sick, taking a break from reading) ~~~ i live well okay then, cobra morph on the front of the book makes a lot more sense now that i know david has one who the hell owns a cobra is that even legal not in california! man even just mentioning the pet would out them if it were. thats funny. oh okay, david mentions its illegal. cool. i do appreciate that tobias is a master of finding identical houses from the air. ```I heard the eerie sound of my own bones turning watery and disappearing. I literally felt the sagging of my internal organs as they sort of lay there, unsupported by the usual bone and muscle. ``` when i first started reading these again, i was SHOCKED at the body horror. i'd remembered the horrors of war thing, but somehow that totally missed my memory and now i'm just yeah yeah, the sound of your own bones liquifying, we've all heard it. no wonder it didn't stick, it becomes so....banal. ``` I know I still had my normal, human head. Normal size … with a snake where the rest of my body should be. Yeah, get a good, clear mental picture of that. Think about it being you. And then think about just how much you’d want to scream right about then. I was a worm with a head. ``` oh , so like a troll grub, or a treebab sigh yes marco turn into the thing that was trying to eat ax a minute ago that will be useful. i have no idea what commerciarl he's talking about, to youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdccNAOvPHg maybe? not what i was expecting... i guess he was just saying it was a tiny car? no car crash at all. that is NOT tiny by modern standards i do appreciate david tried to save his pet. he... is so easy to villainize, its hard to remember he had any redeeming qualities okay so i think they PURPOSEFULLY give him morphng powers. makes more sense than him accidentally figuring them out ```It’s weird, somehow, the way Rachel and I often end up on the same side. She likes Tobias more than me, and Cassie a lot more than me, but it’s often the two of us together on big issues.``` they really are the two ruthless ones. ax is right, more troops isn't necessarily better, when you're guerilla fighters. more mouths to leak. and already david is not agreeing jake is in charge. he gives me k vibes, tbh asking if THEY were told what morphs to pick by jake all about the fairness, alert to being given LESS than others ``` But now, here I am, the new guy - as usual for me - and you don’t like me.”``` man they really did flesh him out, didn't they ;lakjsd;faljks;jaf david is the first person to mention yeerks might have surveillance. can you IMAGINE how different this series would be if they had cctv? catch a single animorph morphing and..... huh. i could use stable diffusion to get an animation of a blond teenager turning into a grizzly bear and then put then in my cctv program. no. bad jr. focus. i still haven't finished DoorSim. huh, interesting, they're keeping us from knowing what all davids morphs are. seeeeecrets. they really should have let him ge the joy of flying out of his system before the first mission. they...don't quite remember what its like to be a regular kid ```I know a lie when I hear one. David had killed that crow. Deliberately. In cold blood. For absolutely no reason.``` yuuuup. fuck david. okay still fuck him but poor david. they LITERALY didn't have him practice a single morph. but for the FIRST time in a combat situation. they just. ugh. the animorphs are terrible at on-boarding. ``` she said. I’d never seen this exact side of Cassie. She’s always good at understanding people. It hadn’t occurred to me she’d be good at manipulating people if she had to. ``` cold. wow. not just a two parter but a flat out TO BE CONTINUED. ending on very nearly litearlly a cliff hanger as they all fall outta the helicopter. well. fun