Oof, that rat. Yeah, that's savage. Time to gooo! Terrible south park reference right out the gate, beautiful. oh man. ax deciding to claim tobias is "missing" and not dead probably for the best. rachel. boy rachel would have Emotions about that. okay, there is ax coming clean. prince jake 'believes' tobias to be dead. ax didn't see a body, so he's not going to go and make any claims. ```If David had hurt Tobias, I would … But what was the point in making threats? I didn’t need to make threats. I knew what I would do. So did Jake. That’s why he’d sent Ax for me``` god. yeah book 19 was a major turning point. we go from a sincere and deep look into the ethics of passifism in a war of survival to an analysis on what you do with traitors in said war. and yeah its telling jake asked for rachel adn not any of the others. rachel would do what is needed to be done . marco might too but he's less... viscious? he's more willing to do the cold math of ruthlessness. but that doesn't give you that extra burst of strength and speed in a fight. not like rachel's violence. and this sets up their dynamic that gets rachel killed eventually. jake asking her to be a weapon and her agreeing its what she wants. god even knowing jake AND tobias survive this its really tense being rachel with ax and not even knowing there was a fight to the death between jake and david, just seeing the aftermath ``` He was lying in a pool of blood. A tiger. Sprawled like he was asleep, but with a shallow pool of black blood extending around his neck and head.``` yuuup. god the fact that david BOTHERS looting a jewlery store after killing jake (or at least assumign he's dead) is just. ugh. ```David glared at me with furious, yellow eyes. he said. I stared back at the lion. The traitor. And I said, “Find a place to hide. Because I’ll make you a promise: I will kill you, David.” He turned and walked away, laughing as he retreated.``` and its not even that he thought tobias wasn't a person cuz he was trapped in morph. he just. "this isn't a biologically human body so its cool to kill" god his double think. he's so spiral and i hate him. all the shit i fear of it. lying and gaslighting and toeing the line oh so carefully so everything thinks THEY are the ones being unfair and mean to you. ;alsjf;slkjdfl alright lets watch this guy suffer. also its interesting to me that rachel DOESN'T kill him. at least. not that we know. ... i pointed out earlier, i think, tat the fact that david does NOT end up being a problem later on means... he definitely died on that island. because he would have, i dunno, promised a sailor that he was a magic talking rat who knew where treasure was in order to get back on the mainland and try to revenge murder the animorphs. and he didn't. so. maybe rachel DOES go back to that island, as a bird of prey, and systematically hunt him down. and just never tells the rest. cassie would be upset about it. but she needs to feel safe. to feel in control. adn to do that david has to die. we'll see if my hypothesis has any canon weight as we go. ```none of these things meant anything to me. Tobias was dead. Jake might still die. And I was going to have to go after David. I was going to have to hunt him down. I was going to hunt him down and destroy him. No, not destroy. That was a weasel word. It was vague, meaningless. I was going to kill him. ``` calling out the fact that they always used the word "destroy" before ```I don’t know how that made me feel. I’m not a person who obsesses over her feelings. You know what I mean? Some people can’t stop “looking inward” constantly, and that’s not me. But it definitely made me feel strange. Jake had called for me specifically. Because he wanted someone who would do precisely what I was planning to do. Like I say, I’m not big on feelings, but something about that felt wrong. And yet, as I completed the morph to fly, I knew Jake had picked the right person. See, I cared for Tobias. I don’t think I even knew how much I cared till right then. ``` yuuuuup... more and more i think she fits my buried headcanon. buries her feelings. terrified of tight spaces. terrified of being trapped, of being unable to make her own choices (tbf thats a bit web but web and buried have overlap) oh parker, you really did help me understand the buried. cassie ends up with the resucue team (memory says she gives jake a shot of adrenaline to get him awake in time to demorph) so our viewpoiint is going to go back to hunting david instead of staying with jake ```We demorphed quickly. I could hear two police officers talking in a low whisper just on the other side of the A.C. unit. “A tiger, here? With no one knowing it’s escaped? It must be one of the Andalite bandits in a morph.” We knew the police force had been partly infiltrated by the Yeerks. Still, it was a shock hearing them talk about Andalites. “You may be right, but there’s nothing we can do about it. None of the other cops here are our people.” “Visser Three won’t take that attitude,” the first cop said, shivering despite the fact that it was not cold. “He’ll think we should have found a way to kill it.” “Then maybe Visser Three doesn’t need to hear about this.” “Yeah. No need to bother him with every minor thing that goes on. Yeah. We keep our mouths shut.”``` aslfjas;ldfjaslkfjas;ldfjasljfasldf and THIS is why "yelling and screaming (and killing) ppl when things goes wrong creates an atmorphere of fear that makes work LESS productive not MORE" god i remember this line: ```We flew away into the night in a straight line for Marco’s house. Marco would be asleep, unsuspecting. He was safe behind locked doors and strong walls. Only walls and doors meant very little to an Animorph. I began to realize just how hard this was going to be. Visser Three had been trying to wipe us out for a long time. He had thousands of human-Controllers, Taxxons, Hork-Bajir, spacecraft, and all of his own bizarre, deadly morphs. We had just the six of us. Only … it was just five now. And maybe four. Just us, against a person who could become any animal he could touch. A person who could be any living, breathing thing. A flea in your hair, a cat in a tree, a bat in the night, and, when you were unprepared, when you were vulnerable, a lion or tiger or bear. I was starting to realize why Visser Three hated us so much. ``` and yeah it really is true. like 90% of the damage the animorphs did to the yeerks, especially early on was just in accidental psyops no one every getting to feel safe and always being paranoid even that time they installed the fly detectors the controller noticed it going off and was just dimissive of it because of the increasingly paranoid security god thats right, marco was actually david in morph ```Of course! Marco was still alive because Marco had been human. David had said it himself: He would never take a human life. He would only kill animals. A hawk, a tiger, a harrier. Not a human. ``` at least its a consistent sort of morality ``` David said. ```` you really get the vibe that maybe a parent caught david killing small animals and stressed to him it couldn't be people and thats as far as he got tobias lives and saves rachel from david ```Tobias was alive. It turned out that David had killed a red-tailed hawk. And Jake had seen that dead hawk. Only it was a different red-tail. ``` it remains a dumb cop out that a red tailed hawk happened to be flying at NIGHT near david but whatever ```As for Marco … well, Marco awakened to find David standing over him with the baseball bat. He’d been tied up and locked in his closet. It took him the rest of the night to get loose. It had been a bizarre night. But the most bizarre thing was that when it was all over, we had to go to school.``` .......... why? couldn't he just morph something small enought to loosen the ropes and escape? i feel like this book has way more plot holes than average, probably cuz its the most ambitious arc yet (three parter!) rachel then threatens to murder his parents if he rats them out to visser 3 ```I was shaking. The muscles in my neck were twitching. Suddenly I had a raging headache. My ears were ringing. I was exhausted, yes. But it was more than that. I was high on adrenaline. High on the rush of power and violence. What had I just done? In all the time we’d been fighting the Yeerks, I’d never made a threat like that. What was the matter with me? I felt … not exactly ashamed. But I knew I never wanted to talk to Cassie about what I’d just told David. Or Tobias. Or even Marco. And as for Jake, I found myself filled with a terrifying surge of pure, utter hatred for him. I couldn’t begin to explain it. But I swear at that moment I hated Jake far more than I did David. I should have gone back to the cafeteria. I should have told them all what had happened. But Jake already knew, didn’t he? Jake, the smart, determined leader, already knew all about me. And I couldn’t face him. I couldn’t face what he knew about me. ``` goddamn. rachel really subcoming to her role as the group violence distributer. ```My brain kept buzzing away, like I’d consumed six pots of coffee or something. I kept wondering: Had I always been like this? Back before the Animorphs, back before that encounter with a dying alien who changed our lives, who had I been? I tried to remember, but it wasn’t like I was thinking about myself. It was like I was remembering some girl I used to know. Like she was an acquaintance I’d forgotten about until someone reminded me. It was like, “Oh, yeah, Rachel. I remember her.” ``` the horrors of war writ clearly. rachel isn't about introspection. cassie is. but both come to similar realizations that they are becoming strangers to themselves. to cassie its a fate worse than death. she's willing to throw away her friends, her mission, maybe even humanity to avoid it. lets see how rachel deals with it. hah she doesn't she just moves on bury bury bury feelings? what feelings? existential dread about the destruction of the self? not me. ``` Jake said. It made sense. Cassie was the best at morphing. Jake was using her for her special talent. Like he used Marco for his suspicious mind. Like he used Ax for his knowledge of all things alien. Like he used Tobias for his raptor eyes and ears. Like he used me. For what? For my recklessness? For something dark that lived inside me?``` okay she's still gnawing at it she doesn't like how he sees her. how he's right. but she's not considerng quitting like cassie did. ```It was true, of course. It’s very hard to stay upset when you’re in dolphin morph. A dolphin in the ocean is like a kid in a candy store. Like Cassie at a nature preserve. Or like me at a department store sale.``` oh i find that interesting. back when she was listing out past traits of hers that she'd almost forgotten, liking shopping was one. is she trying on that old identity for size? reminding herself of who she is? or is it just too uncomfortable to acknowledge the possiblity that the place she's most comfortable is the battlefield. ```Chances were the guy who was firing at me was a Controller. A normal human’s first thought would not be to shoot an elephant on the beach. I went at the man, full speed. BLAM! BLAM! The muzzle flash was like tiny echoes of the lightning. This time I felt a bullet hit me in the shoulder. It didn’t hurt, exactly. I was just sort of aware of it. He didn’t get a chance to fire again. I lowered my head, bringing my hugely long tusks into line with the gunman, and he turned and ran. Jake said. His thought-speak voice came to me just as I was considering whether I should run the guy through with my tusks or trample him. Of course, Jake was right. These were innocent bystanders. Mostly. ``` oh yeah, evidence she's killed humans in combat before no matter what the previous books imply. and how different is it from davids "its okay because you're a bird right now not a person" mentality? its okay because you're also being a tramatized slave? david goes killer whale to try to eat them as dolphins because he is just. the worst. he literally could just like fuck off to the other side of the world. wait, he's not just doing this for vengence, he wans his parents back and i guess thinks if he kills all but one animorph the last one will HAVE to give the morphing cube to him so he can trade it to the yeerks for his parents and he tells everyone about rachel's threat ```No one said a thing. No one came to my defense. I felt hollow all of a sudden. Like I could feel their silence as a big hole in my insides. Who were they to be judging me? Which of them hadn’t done things they were ashamed of? Was I ashamed? Was that what I was saying?``` god rachel having no choice but to deal with all these feelings even while not being able to fully see them ~~~ back. only twenty pages to go, i think we're in the end game. ```“Sorry,” I said. “Look, bad stuff happens. Doesn’t mean it’s going to happen to you. Doesn’t mean it’s going to happen to me or Sarah or Mom or Dad.” “Yeah, but that’s what’s so weird and all. I mean, I feel like scum because I felt kind of glad it wasn’t me. You know? It was like ‘Whew! Close one!’ But that’s not right. I should just be sad. And I am. Only it’s not just sadness. It’s also, like, ‘Glad it wasn’t me!’ And then I was all, like, ‘I would never ride my bike like that.’ You know, the guy who ran into him is saying Saddler just shot out into the street without looking. So I’m thinking Saddler got run over because he was stupid and careless. But that’s not right, either.” “It’s not right, but I think it’s probably normal,” I said. “I mean, you don’t want to think it could happen to you. So you have to come up with excuses. Ways it could never happen to you. You end up blaming the person who got hurt. Because then you don’t have to think about what if it was you it happened to. You even start getting mad at the person it happened to. Like ‘How dare he drag me down into all this pit of darkness? How dare he get hurt and make me feel bad?’” Jordan nodded. “That’s just so wrong, though.” I shrugged. “Yeah, probably. But it’s also how people are. You don’t want to go around thinking, ‘It could be me next. It could be my sister or mother or father.’ You’re going to do anything you can not to feel that way. You have to put up a wall between you and the fear. You have to cut yourself off from it, tell yourself you’re safe. Bad stuff only happens to people who are careless or stupid or evil.” Jordan seemed to feel better. She even smiled.``` man, what an unexpected take down on complex grief and coping mechanisms and how they don't make you a bad person. man and , with david popping right after, it makes me think how it applies to him. how something terrible has happened to him, he's lost his whole life, and his only crime was posting online about a cool and weird thing he found. so you get mad at him. you blame him. you come up with reasons it would never happen to you. but. i mean, the narrative demands david be terrible, sure but. are we sure thats WHY he gets the fate he gets? how many 13 year old kids (or younger! what are the odds that he was exactly their age, you know?) could adhere to the animorphs trauma bonded discipline? how many could avoid cracking if visser 3 offered to make it all just go away. give them their old life back. how many would know WHY you shouldn't trust visser 3, when they got such a half assed onboarding from the animorphs? yeah. davids a dick. so we can watch what happens to him and say "that would never happen to me" so we can justify what happens and not stop rooting for the main chars. now, i'm not saying the animorphs were wrong. maybe they should have killed him out right instead of leaving him alone and trapped. (honestly still p sure rachel DOES kill him but... needed an out) i'm just saying that its a lot more complex, and what rachel says to her sister takes on a light that i don't think past me caught at all. also yes, the tumblr folk are correct that jake and rachel, despite being cousins, spend a lot of time talking about how good looking each other are. this is weird. ``` Saddler was in the one farthest from the door. I took one look at him and thought, Okay, I believe in mercy killing. No one should have to be so … helpless. ``` very buried but also rachel you trap david as a rat. you def should mercy kill him then. nothings more helpless than a rat on an island. okay thats a weird plot hole. rachel takes a look at him and thinks he looks helpless and dying, but then in the next paragraph talks about how he's clearly suspiciously healthy (because he's david) whatever, again, these three are not well edited books cuz this arc was so experimental. ```“Okay, fine, Rachel. You want to do this, fine. I think you’re the bravest member of the group. I think in a bad fight I’d rather have you with me than anyone else. But yeah, Rachel, I think there’s something pretty dark down inside you. I think you’re the only one of us who would be disappointed if all this ended tomorrow. Cassie hates all this, Marco has personal reasons for being in this war, Ax just wants to go home and fight Yeerks with his own people, Tobias … who knows what Tobias wants anymore? But you, Rachel, you love it. It’s what makes you so brave. It’s what makes you so dangerous to the Yeerks.” I let his words blow past me. I heard them, I’d feel them later, but I didn’t want to feel them right then. “You did think I’d go kill David the other day. My God.” “No. I thought you’d scare him. I thought you’d say the things it took to scare him. I thought you’d say whatever you had to. And I thought that of any of us, David would be most likely to fear you.”``` bury the feelings rachel. bury them. ```“I worry about you, Rachel. More than any of the others except Tobias. I feel like this war is to you like booze is to an alcoholic. Like I don’t know what will happen to you if it all ends someday. What are you going to do? Go back to being the world’s greatest shopper? Go back to gymnastics and getting good grades?” I laughed harshly. “You worry about me? What do you think you’re going to do? Jake, you’re a leader now. You make life-and-death decisions. All the time. You’ve learned to do that. And,” I added bitterly, “you’ve learned to use people. You use them for their strengths and their weaknesses. Worry about me? Like when all this is over you’ll go back to being a mediocre basketball player and a decent student? You’re not even in high school yet and you’re the most wanted person in the Yeerk Empire. Visser Three would trade his Blade ship for your head on a stick.”``` god oof. rachel doens't live to see the end of the war and peace RUINS jake. He's miserable. they know each other too well. ```“I’m not going to lose it, Jake,” I said, staring down at the polished linoleum. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I do kind of get off on it all. But I still know where the line is. And I won’t cross it. I am not some kind of nut. I know what I’m doing.” Jake nodded. “I know you do. But everyone draws their own line. Cassie’s is in one place. Marco’s is somewhere else. Yours is in another. Mine …” He made a failed attempt at a smile. “For example, see, I used to think my line was drawn at using my friend, my cousin, to do my dirty work. Guess that turned out not to be true. Sorry, Rachel.” I have no idea why I did what happened next. Because I’m really not that kind of person. But I hugged Jake. And he hugged me back``` god. what a good point. that everyones lines in the sand are different. that even if you can be trusted to act morally what you decide that means is incredibly personal. i mean, just look at david. his line is "don't kill humans" which makes it VERY weird to try to figure out what he did to saddlers body. he just dissapeared it. did he let it go die from exposure? so yeah, they plan off screen with teh knowledge that right now they know where david is and any plans they make later could be overheard. (though thought speech kinda gets around that) they're pretending to capitulate to david. ```Cassie shook her head slowly. “There’s no good choice here. But you know what? As sad and awful as it is that your cousin died, that’s natural and normal and part of life. Having some ghoulish fake version of Saddler still around makes me kind of sick to my stomach.”``` you know, i think maybe cassie is stranger after all. her greatest fear is becoming unrecognizable to herself and then THAT. i'll take her out of hunt after all. though... she DOES struggle with the laws of nature a lot. kill or be killed. and she's terrified of being too big a predator... i'll just give her an addendum. ```Marco sneered. “I never thought I’d see the day. Fearless Rachel, mighty Xena: Warrior Princess, humiliated by some kid. You’re done for, Rachel. No one will ever be impressed by you again. You’re a joke.”``` wow laying it on a little thick there huh marco. tho we've established before that complimenting david while you're lying to him does seem to always work. big k energy, again. ```“What, you didn’t want to share a room with David?” Marco said. “I don’t want to share a planet with him,” Jake said. “Although I’ll tell you all one thing. I wish it had worked out with David. Whatever else you can say about him, he’s smart, brave, and ingenious.”``` GOD. seriously how thick can you lay it on? seriously big k energy and that does help me see things from david's point of view in a way i didn't as a kid. he's a jerk. he is killing people. but you can also see just how WRONG people are treating him if what they want is for him to cooperate. how insane the animorphs expectations are for ANYONE much less someone with this kids hangups. but yes, they set their trap. they 'plan' on cassie goign with david, but "let slip" that rachel also knows where the bait is (because cassie was "too scared" to hide it alone) you can really tell cassie came up with this plan, because she can read david like a book. stroke his ego, give him a puzzle to solve, everyone play to their TROPES in ways that really don't fit them all the way. she'd be a good web avatar if she was afraid even a little bit about fate and shit. ```We were chatting away like that as we worked. Chatting almost compulsively. No one wanted time to think. No one wanted to have time to reflect on what we were doing and what it would mean.``` yeah this is legiminately the most fucked up thing they do. well, maybe less fucked up than all those mass murder war crimes. they've already done a set of those already. ```“It better work,” I said. “Because as awful as this is, the only alternative is worse. It has to work. It has to work or we … all of us,” I added with emphasis, “we will have to become killers.” ``` says the girl who was fully prepared to gore a human being but stopped because he might not be a Controller. reminder that the human is alive and aware in that body and gets to be free once every three days AND can be freed permanently if things go right. its not just david with a weird line. killing is only killing if the victim isn't a Controller Slave. even that term "Controller" is dehumanizing. It's not a PERSON its a SLUG CONTROLLING A PERSON. ```But I’ll tell you something. If Visser Three thought for certain that he could catch the “Andalite Bandits,” as he thought of us, he wouldn’t let the public get in his way. He wouldn’t need to send in the Hork-Bajir. He could machine-gun the place using human-Controllers. That would have made the news, but no one would have thought it was all that strange. I guess that says something about the condition of the human race, with or without aliens.``` yeah. man. ```Then there he was. Saddler. David. He swaggered in like he owned the world and everything in it. I so wanted to wipe that smirk off his face. But that wasn’t in the script. My role was to seem chastised, beaten down. Defeated and humiliated. That’s what we figured he’d want. That’s what would make him happy.``` so thick. ```But I said, “I can’t go in there with him. I don’t trust him! He could -” “Rachel,” Jake said, dripping disgust, “you know, I always thought there was a coward hiding deep down inside all that tough talk of yours. Just do it. You want to remain an Animorph? You’ll follow orders.” I nodded, meek and afraid. David searched my face through Saddler’s eyes. Was he suspicious? Had I overplayed my part? Then he reached across and smeared the re-fried beans down the sleeve of my shirt. And laughed. So I did something I don’t do much. I started to cry``` ........................... god its so hilariously thick. honestly bold move on davids part, morphin a rattler near a rat. what if he'd lost control of the morph and bit? no hostage. though i guess its not his first time as the rattler. ``` I told Jake and the others. Cassie wondered. Marco said. Ax wondered. David reached down and scooped up one of the four cockroaches. He put the mouth of the bottle beneath it and dropped it into the bottle. Marco yelled. David laughed. “I’m putting you somewhere safe.” Jake yelled. ``` god the difference bewteen how they're speaking privately to each other and the 'script' they're following ``` David laughed. I rolled my little rat eyes. This guy’s ego just kept growing.``` big k energy. ```He had my tail in his jaw. He was pulling me back. I couldn’t reach him, and if I tried we’d go around in a circle like a dog chasing its tail. He’d be able to get back out of the pipe, maybe escape altogether in the sewer network. I said. I twisted back, just as David hoped I would. Only I didn’t attack him. Instead, ignoring the hideous pain, I chewed through my own tail. I cried in agony as the last shred of skin parted. David screamed as he fell back, holding nothing but a few inches of tail. I darted for the exit, and before I was halfway into it yelled, The steel gate slammed down. It would have snagged my tail, if I’d still had one. ``` hard core. ```That’s when Tobias swooped down from the dark sky and landed atop the cage. Tobias supplied. “See, David,” Marco said, “we knew you were in the barn, listening to our every word. How did we know? Tobias. So we played out that whole pathetic scene for you about how disgraced Rachel was. We knew you’d get so much sick pleasure out of forcing her to obey you.” “That piece of the blue box we retrieved? A Lego,” I said. Ax said. ``` and ther ewe have it. the fear david has of lies and manipulation even as he inflicts it on others. bit of spiral, bit of web. ```For Cassie, it was an improvement over the alternatives. See, no one was going to have to die.``` and yet earlier cassie talked about how death is natural, better than not!saddler living out his life. ```But David’s life would end, just the same. And so would “Saddler’s.” Eventually, they would find the real Saddler’s body, and then they would know, that at least for them, there was no such thing as a miracle.``` oh boy can you imagine the horror of that. a single day of a miracle, getting your previous child back whole and safe. and then suddenly plunged right back into the neightmare. every injury returned without warning. ``` Ax reported. David cried. “You tried to kill us,” Jake said. “You threatened to turn us over to Visser Three. Not to mention what you’ve done to Saddler’s family.” David cried. “David, we have fought the Yeerks for a long time now. It seems like forever,” Jake said wearily. “We are not going to let you beat us. We are going to save the human race if we can. There are larger issues … more important …”``` only god can judge david. ```It took two hours for David to become a nothlit. A person trapped in morph. Two hours. But that two hours of horror will last forever in my mind. If I live a hundred years, I will still hear his cries, his threats, his pleading, each night before sleep takes me. And beyond sleep, in my dreams. ``` fucked. up. k deserved better. deserved to die, really. ``` Ax said. ``` yeah. they leave him on a rock that humans can't get to that have other rats. they figure theres a food source there. ```Something kind of snapped in me after that. I didn’t suddenly become all soft and mushy or anything. I didn’t turn into a wimp. But somehow the joy I’d gotten from combat, the thrill I’d gotten from battle against impossible odds … well, I guess maybe I just grew up a little. We never heard from David again. Not directly, at least. But months later I heard some kid at school talking about the rock. It was haunted, he said. He and his family had passed close by on a boat. He swears he’d heard a faint, ragged voice crying, “No! No!``` i'm just saying, NO prison is that escape proof. and this kind of narrative you'd FIGURE david would be back one way or another. but no. they end it here. i GENUINELY think rachel ends up going back to kill him. no one should be that helpless. thats what she thought. her line in the sand is not leaving people to be trapped in fates worse than death.