okay i have LEGIT been looking forward to this one because i can not for the LIFE of me remember how tobias learns he's ax's brothers the cover makes me remember that tobias... at a family of rabbit's mother, then morphed that mother and raised them? or. something??? it was weird. its late so im not gonna start now, but it'll be nice and short when i do ~~~~ ```I could go to the others for help. To Rachel and the other Animorphs, my friends. But how weak is that? How can I go begging for help to deal with a situation I should be able to handle myself?``` tobias is starving to death and instead of asking for a buck to eat a cheeseburger from mcdonalds or whatever as a human he just. doesn't cause problems. man you can really tell he was abused. ``` I had long since marked the burrow of a rabbit and its family. Three baby rabbits had survived. I was human enough to know that people - humans- would be disgusted by the sight of my killing and eating a baby rabbit. They would rather I at least go after the adult female. But they’d be wrong. Life in the meadow isn’t a Disney movie. If I killed the mother, the babies would all die. If I killed only the baby, the mother would survive to breed again. Breed more babies for me to take. To rip apart. To eat.``` that line stuck with me too about it being better to eat the babies. i find it interesting that tobias is reintroducing us to the first book. they used to do that EVERY book but now they just kinda gloss over it. granted, it'll be becasue we need to remember who elfangor is for this book. but i like to think that night stayed with tobias more than the ohters. not just because its the night he lost his humanity, either. ```Trapped in a world where I must kill to eat. And not like humans do, where they hire someone else to draw the blood and shatter the bone and then get the food in sanitized plastic packages at the supermarket. I must kill my own food. I must swoop down and drive the sharp talons into the brain, into the neck. I must feel the heart stop beating. After … after I have already begun to feed.``` seriously. ```Suddenly, I was scared, helpless, frozen with terror! Above me the wings blotted out the sun. Huge, monstrous talons came down, like they were reaching down from the sky itself.``` ... ```I was still hungry. And now I was shaken up, too. This was not the first time I’d had a similar experience. It had started in the last couple of weeks. Weird flashes like waking dreams. I would be closing in on my prey and then, in that ultimate moment, I would feel my mind transferred into that prey. ``` yeah okay its either guilt driven panic attacks giving him these visions or the ellimist is up to his old tricks. ```Roadkill. Carrion. But it was fresh. It hadn’t been dead more than an hour. The flesh would still be warm, especially on this warm day. But the maggots would not have started growing. Not yet. I circled above it. If only it had still been breathing. Stupid, isn’t it? Drawing a line between prey that’s alive, that you have to kill, and somehow pretending that’s okay, that’s right. And on the other hand, acting like something already dead is off-limits. The truth is, I’d seen hawks eat roadkill. Older, weaker hawks. Unlucky hawks. It happens. It just hadn’t happened to me. I circled lower. So fresh. I was so hungry. Such a stupid, meaningless distinction. My hunger argued with me. My hunger was convincing. I dropped down, as suddenly as if I were going in for the kill. Maybe I wanted to pretend that’s what I was doing.``` oh god and then rachel sees him do that and he gets so embarrased ```I flew to Rachel’s house that night, after the lights in her sisters’ and mother’s bedrooms were turned off. She had left the window open, as she often did. Sometimes I’d come by and do her homework for her. I don’t know why. Some weird desire to stay in touch with my old life, I guess. ``` tobias always was my favorite. so introspective. what does it mean to be human. what things can you do to remain it? ah thats right. THATS right thats what this plot is. the yeerks find out tobias is elfangors kid and go looking for him. its a trap. ```Mostly I was just nervous. What was I going to discover? What was I going to learn? What temptations would I have to face? Strange word, temptations. Strange concept. But that’s what worried me most. Temptation.``` and thats why the ellimist didn't mamke him human again. at least not, trapped in morph as a human. ```Ax’s people, the Andalites, know a little about the race or the individual called “Ellimist.” No one knows for sure whether there’s just one, or many, or whether it matters. Anyway, the Andalites tell fairy stories of the Ellimists. They see them as tricksters. Unreliable. Creatures who use their power in unpredictable ways. Well, the Ellimist had tricked me. He left me hanging, stuck between two impossible choices: become human and stop being an Animorph. Or live the life I live now. ``` memory says by the time we read the ellimist chronicles we'll find out taht the trickster reputation really isn't accurate. its more that at the scale the ellimist opperates at, its HARD to communicate clearly. its gigglesnort all the way down, really. plus theres the restrictions in the cold war with crayak. honestly the ellimist probably at least subconsciously influenced how i protayed jr in sburbsim. well, the jr who made sburbsim, at least. trickster god that is unfathomable just because they're outside of the universe of rules you use to make sense of your world. ```My hearing grew confused. My eyesight dimmed. It was as if anything more than a couple of dozen feet away grew irrelevant. My eyes would not naturally focus on faraway things, preferring to see up close. I felt exposed without my feathers. I felt deaf and blind. It was as if someone had gotten hold of the “brightness” and the “contrast” knobs on an old TV and turned them both down by half, then lowered the volume to a whisper. Human senses work okay for what humans do. But compared to a hawk, a human is deaf, blind, and helpless. ``` man i just really did like how animorphs reversed things as a kid. making humanity seem like the weird thing. same thing homestuck did with the trolls viewing humans as weird. ```The lawyer and I stared at each other till the Coke came. I gripped the can self-consciously and pressed it to my beak. Lips. It had been a long time since I’d tasted sugar. I almost burst out laughing. It was like being Ax in human morph. The taste of sugar was overwhelming! And the coldness. I hadn’t felt cold in my mouth in a very long time.``` damn, you know ```“Tobias, where have you been staying? Your legal guardians both seemed to think the other one had you.” Not a question I wanted to answer. “I take care of myself.” DeGroot smiled. “No doubt. But you are underage. You can’t ‘take care of yourself.’ Not legally.” “You can’t lock me up,” I said. Literally true. One thing about being an Animorph: No home, no building, no school, no jail or prison could hold me. The lawyer looked pained. “That’s not what I am talking about.” “Okay. What are you talking about?” That seemed to set him back a little. It was weird. I had a toughness I’d never had when I was human. As a human I’d been a bully-magnet.``` tobias always was my favorite. the weirdest arc, the rarest (besides ax) viewpoint i was always so excited when a tobias book came out. ```“Are you okay? You don’t seem surprised.” No, I didn’t, I realized with a start. I had forgotten to make facial expressions. It was something I didn’t do as a hawk. “I am surprised,” I said. I twisted my face into what I hoped was an expression of surprise. But it occurred to me that I was facing a new problem: He’d said he’d read the document on my next birthday.``` tobias has autistic energy just from hawk time. he doesn't know his birthday. poor boy. you know, given we know this is a yeerk trap. theres a chance if he asked when it was, the lawyer would assume he's an andalite in morph. ```My father! My father was not my father? There was some “real” father somewhere? Also dead or gone? That was a lot of coincidence. And some long-lost cousin showing up within days of when this “father’s” will was supposed to be read to me? Way too much coincidence. ``` the plots really do get smarter as the series goes on ```Only then did it hit me full force: Someone wanted me. Family. Wanted to take care of me. Unless, of course, what they really wanted was to learn my secrets. And then kill me. ``` jesus. tobias has it so rough. ```I didn’t want my friends thinking for me. I didn’t want them to decide what I felt. I wanted to do it alone. This was mine. My problem. My hope. My choice.``` tobias was always alone. even before he was the one trapped as a hawk. he just. he's not USED to having people have his back. thinks of it as weakness. man i get that. ```“Bek is not in the valley,” Toby said. “I … we found tracks leading out of the valley. The right size for a Hork-Bajir of his age.”``` where on earth is toby learning to talk like that. dak hamee learned things from aldrea... who is toby talking with. well. she knew that tobias was coming. is it the ellimist himself that is her conversational partner? ```Well, she had me there. It was way too easy to see a day when the Yeerks were defeated and these Hork-Bajir were left behind on Earth. What would happen to them? Humans didn’t exactly have an unblemished record of tolerance for different races. After all, before this valley had belonged to the Hork-Bajir, it had probably been inhabited by Native Americans. ``` ```“Just tell me this,” Marco raged. “When do we get a vacation? I mean, Ben-Hur rowing that Roman galley while the guy whipped him and the other guy banged on that big drum got more downtime than we do.”``` and that is fundamentally the problem. they're going from crisis to crisis. back when the pandemic lock downs started, we all felt like that, i think. i've felt like that in other times of my life. the longer it goes the dumber you get. the more burnt out. animorphs is a story about being drained past all sanity. its not surprising david wanted out like, two seconds into it. they made him a huge asshole so we'd not feel bad about his eventual fate. but any of us would have done that as well. nearly any of us. ```It was just a dumb little routine, but I felt a flash of jealousy. There are little intimacies that most humans can have that I can’t. I can’t shake hands or hug or lay my head on anyone’s shoulder. ``` okay so he's still in denial he likes rachel then i see. ```“Today’s the twenty-third. When’s your birthday?” Marco laughed, then I guess he realized I wasn’t kidding``` its the little thing isn't it? its easy to go "man tobias's life sucks" and then you realize that he's so divorced from his own humanity that even just a few months as a hawk and he can't remember his birthday. or worse he didn't know even as a human. his aunt and uncle neglected him so much he just. didn't know. didn't remember. ```Rachel went into her bald eagle morph. I’ve seen her do it many times before, of course, but for some reason this time it fascinated me. Is that the right word? No, it mesmerized me. Rachel is a beautiful girl. She’s beautiful in that way you know will last her whole life. She’ll be a beautiful woman. But beauty alone isn’t that big a thing. What makes Rachel “Rachel” is what’s inside. And watching her morph to eagle was like seeing her soul emerge through her flesh.``` yeah. serious crush. ```Was she more beautiful to me because she was a bird now? No, of course not. For one thing, eagles and hawks don’t mate. For another, her eagle morph is male. But sometimes it seemed to me that this body suited her better than her own. Her own body misled people with superficial resemblances to the glossy images of magazine models. This body was Rachel: fast, strong, smart, intense, and dangerous.``` ``` Rachel laughed like that was the funniest thing in the world. she said.``` ``` I felt like an idiot the minute the words were out of my head. This was like the “old” Tobias style: treating people to displays of stupidity and weakness. No wonder I’d gotten beat up so often when I was human. It was like I was begging people to sneer at me. I muttered to myself. ``` god he really is in his own head. ```It is especially thrilling flying around tall buildings. Something about being outside a skyscraper really reminds the human part of you how high up you are. You can imagine humans suddenly outside and picture their helpless terror as they fall, and … well, like I said, it reminds you.``` what did i classpect him as again? web. i mean he IS constantly being tugged on other peoples strings, but that was definitely some vast shit right there. ``` ``` he feels so guilty about it. its weird. the last time i read this book i had a pet rabbit. did i have feelings about this eating rabbits theme throughout the book? i dont' remember. i think i remember this "cousin" being visser3. ```Why? Why would someone want to take care of me? She didn’t know me. So why? Because of some vague family loyalty thing? Maybe. I guess some families are like that. You know, they feel connected to anyone who shares a biological connection to them. But my family wasn’t that way. Not the ones I’d met, anyway. ``` yeah he really stuck with me ```Aria … if this was Aria … hefted a camera bag onto her shoulder. She paused in front of a fulllength mirror, adjusting her hair and checking her clothes carefully. Rachel sniped, I laughed. But at the same time something bothered me about what I’d just seen. Something … But then the woman was out the door of her room and out of sight``` i remember what it was. if this cousing was supposed to be on safari for years, why would she primp in front of a mirror? i mean, i'd assume cuz she's nervous meeting this long lost family and knowing she's gotten out of the habit of doing shit with people? lord knows i get extra worried when i go into public after the lockdowns and etc. right, she's def visser 3 cuz i remember that they were like "wtf how, you can't be in morph that long" and it turns out she was going to the bathroom every two hours or so ```I wanted to ask why a Controller would care about the conditions of the animals in that hideous zoo. But I didn’t. I guess I’ve gotten so I say less and less. Sometimes all the communicating that people do just seems irrelevant. Action is what counts. ``` man ```Visser Three, who had traveled the galaxy acquiring morphs of the most deadly creatures of the known universe. he said, sounding delighted. ``` you know, say what you will about visser 3, but he PERSONALLY remembers the names and faces of just about everyone he meets, friend or foe ```“Yes. Down on face,” I said, trying my best to sound like a Hork-Bajir. I knelt and started to stretch out. And that’s when Visser Three got overanxious. He started to rush past me, desperate to reach the others. He stepped a little too near. And suddenly, instead of eight legs, he had five. One fast, powerful swipe of my arm. Blade! Blade! Blade! I was like that new three-blade razor. he bellowed in pain and rage. He began to topple over, unable to support himself with his one left leg``` okay, one, three bladed razors were NEW then. god somehow that dates it more than all the other 90s bullshit. and ALSO this is EXACTLY what kept visser 3 from getting aldrea's body last book. he gets overconfident and rushes in without thinking. interesting that its a consistent flaw for him. i wonder if applegate had a character bible somewhere listing "makes rash decisions when near victory" for esplin ```All because of me. Because I’d let pain distract me. Because I wasn’t focused. That had been the human in me. The human in me had given too much weight to pain. A hawk knew better. A hawk didn’t care about pain.``` no i'm thinking that was the HORK BAJIR in you bro. you were morphed at the time. you weren't hawk or human. but man it puts into context the torture he survives later on , much later on?, by retreating into the hawk mind. ```I saw the other hawk float suddenly into my field of vision. He was getting bolder. More aggressive. How long till he attacked and I withdrew? If I’d been a true hawk, the battle would long since have been drawn. Even an old, sick hawk would have put up a better fight than I had so far.``` is it just because you're the defender? or is tobias not thinking about why the other hawk hasn't initiated the fight yet either. just too busy blaming himself for everything. god, mood. ```We’d learned nothing. Nothing at all, except that she seemed to enjoy her hotel room. She’d go out for a while, but return every couple of hours. She’d leave the curtains open. We could watch her, except for when she stepped into the bathroom and closed the door. Ax asked. I said. Ax wondered. ``` sexism loses the day tobias doesn't notice how WEIRD it is that every two hours nearly on the dot she's back ``` I said. I said slowly, amazed. Ax agreed. Something in Ax’s choice of words bothered me, but I forgot about it in the rush of emotions that followed.``` i do think its hilarious how hardcore visser3 goes to try to convince anyone looking that its all completely legit. arranges for his 'aria' persona to save animals and children and all sorts of dumb shit. because he's worried that the son of elfangor has eyes on him. ```“I don’t care that you ate roadkill. Stop being an idiot! I care about you. And when I see you doing that, I know things are going wrong for you. But you’re off in your own little hawk world and no one is allowed to help you. You’d rather starve than ask for help. You can’t ever admit that your life may suck because then you’ll feel weak.” ``` rachel telling it like it is ```For a long while neither of us spoke. Then Rachel, in a whisper, said, “What am I supposed to do, Tobias? I’m a girl. You’re a bird. This is way past Romeo and Juliet, Montagues and Capulets. This isn’t Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio coming from different social groups or whatever. It’s not like you’re black and I’m white like Cassie and Jake. No one but a moron cares about that. We are … we can’t hold hands, Tobias. We can’t dance. We can’t go to a movie together.” “One more change, Tobias. Back to human. You’d be free of this stupid war and free of all the danger of living as a hawk. I wouldn’t have to worry about you anymore.” I couldn’t take anymore. I just couldn’t. It was too much. I felt like I’d explode if I didn’t get away from her. I couldn’t be that near to her … couldn’t. I turned and prepared to fly. “Tobias. It’s tomorrow, by the way. Your birthday. I had Marco hack into the school records. It’s tomorrow you have to see the lawyer and Aria. Whatever happens there - whatever you decide - come see me afterward, okay? Maybe we can have a cake with a candle.” I spread my wings and flew away. ``` and there it is on the table. they like each other. (and racists are idiots) and marco can hack apparently. see what always confused me is they CAN do those things sure for only two hours at a pop but they CAN ```. The hunger was terrible now. Terrible enough to leave me weak. If I didn’t eat I would not have the strength to fly to the Hork-Bajir. I would not make it to the battle.``` and THIS! its clearly established in other books (tho maybe books that haven't happened yet) that eating in one morph makes you not hungry in another. he could just be human, scronge some change like he did for hte payphone and buy a burger. yeah he's all confused and torn up inside, trying to be a hawk and be independant but also not but he never even MENTIONS it as one of the options he's rejecting. smdh. ```It was the human in me. I had to fight it! If I wanted to be a hawk, I had to destroy the part of me that felt, the part of me that cried for the creatures I killed. No predator could feel for his prey. I could not allow myself to feel the terror I inflicted, feel the pain I caused. ``` ```“Do you think the Yeerks will respect you? They won’t. They’ll come after you harder,” Cassie pointed out. Toby nodded. “That is true. But the Hork-Bajir will respect themselves. A fool is strong so that others will see. A wise person is strong for himself. The Hork-Bajir will be strong for the HorkBajir. That way, when the Yeerks are all gone, we will still be strong.”``` ```“I fight you,” a Hork-Bajir I didn’t know said to me as I fluttered along, keeping pace with the group. “In Yeerk pool. Before. I fight you.” He grinned and pointed to a nasty scar across his left eye. Then he pantomimed a bird coming down and raking his face with its talons. “Fal Tagut say ‘Aaaahhhh!’” “No sorry! Fal Tagut not free.” He tapped his head with one long claw. “Fal Tagut have Yeerk. Now free. Good! Hork-Bajir and humans friends. Toby say.” It was a long speech for a Hork-Bajir. Fal Tagut seemed worn out by it.``` man. really drives home that yeah, every single enemy they kill is a person. they're not shredded to nothing under so much slavery. every single one of them can recover if given a chance. ```Hard to imagine humans welcoming seven-foot-tall goblins into the local Boy Scout troop when they couldn’t even manage to tolerate some gay kid. ``` you know , i don't even remember the books MENTIONING gay people, it must have just slipped right past me as a kid we really have come a long way, as a society, but thats not a reason to let our guard down. 'progress' isn't a guarantee of time. ```Get pushed, push back. The only way. No, not the only way. There was another way. Don’t push to begin with. It’s the aggressors who start the cycle. It’s the guy who wakes up in the morning and decides he can’t get through the day without finding someone to attack, to insult, to hurt. But where does that leave you? Letting jerks dictate your reactions? Always sinking to the level of whatever creep comes along? ``` the evolution of trust, by nicky case delved into this with a simulation. the idea that copying what others do to you (but with a forgiveness for possible mistakes (once)) getting you out of that eye for an eye cycle, even if theres jerks around ```It suddenly occurred to me, right then, for the first time, that what I thought was so unique about me - that I was half instinctive predator, and half human being - wasn’t so unique after all. Every human - Jake. Rachel. Marco. Cassie, all humans - kind of lives on that edge between savage and saint. And the thing is that sometimes when you get pushed you do have to push back. And other times, you have to turn the other cheek. ``` i really do love cassie and tobias's soul searching as to the nature of war. none of the others do it. ```A road had been cut into the escarpment, wide enough to accommodate human trucks.``` how the hell does a 14 year old who barely went to school know what an escarpment is. actually other question, who would CALL and escaprment and escarpment. i have to google to even find out what they are and if i was in the middle of a stressful situation i'd just call it a cliff also, now i know thats what i'd call maybe the not-cliff in the backyard of where i'm moving too ```How could I have been so stupid? How could I have ever been stupid enough to hope? How could I have failed to know? Had I been blinded by some pathetic desire for normalcy? It was all an act! Aria, saving the little girl’s life, just an act! A show put on for the benefit of any Animorph who might be watching. I raged at myself. Raged and berated myself, piling anger on top of anger. Anger was good. Anger was safe. Anger was so much better than the other emotions that threatened to surface and overwhelm me. ``` god, yeah, i understood tobias as a kid. the tiniest mistake turning into self hatred. ```I felt sick. I could barely flap my wings. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t see. Everything was just spinning around me. I hadn’t realized till that moment how much this hope had meant to me. A home. A family. I couldn’t fly. I landed hard and lay there in the dirt. I just kept saying it, over and over in my head. In my life as a human, in my life as a bird, I have never been lower than that. I knew my friends were fighting. I knew they needed me. But I couldn’t … … couldn’t. After a while, a clawed hand snatched me roughly from the ground and I realized I was moving very fast. “Come with me, Tobias. The weapon is about to explode.”``` yeah. i love that tobias channels that nihilism and depression to spring the trap visser 3 set while playing the role of the "street tough kid". ```“We are here today to carry out the reading of an important document left for Tobias by his father. By … by a man different than the man you believed to be your father.” I shrugged. “Whatever.” Aria leaned toward me. “Aren’t you interested in finding out who your real father is?” I laughed. “Did he leave me any money?” DeGroot’s eyebrows shot up. “No.” I rolled my eyes. “Figures.” ``` ```So the lawyer began to read. I had forgotten how to use facial expressions. I was used to being a hawk and not a human. It saved my life. ``` saved by the autism (granted im not saying autism is literally "forgot how to human because you were trapped as a hawk for a year or whatever" but it reminds me of autism pride posts so here we are) ```“I took the name Alan Fangor. But my true name is Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul.” Time stopped. I felt like I’d grabbed hold of a million-volt power line. Every cell in my body was tingling. Elfangor! My father! I could not let a flicker of recognition appear. Not a movement. Not a widening of the eyes. Nothing! Nothing! The lawyer had stopped. Visser Three glared at me with a woman’s eyes. I shrugged. “Is that it?” I saw Aria’s eyes dim. She/he was disappointed. The tension, the electricity, seemed to slowly seep out of the airless cube of an office.``` ```But we did meet, Elfangor, I thought. We met as you lay dying. Did you know? Did you guess … Father? Did you sense, at that last, terrible moment when I had to leave you to the murderer who now sits beside me, that I was your son? Tears! NO! NO! One tear and I would die. DeGroot looked annoyed now. Let down. He mumbled through the last paragraph of the letter like he had somewhere else to be. ``` every single thing tobias does is so extra. he genuinely believes he has to be perfect or die. like, a human kid crying because his dead dad was crazy and also wasn't coming to save him (even through posthumous money) isn't unheard of! but no, tobias needs to be perfect. ```I cannot say that I love you, my son, because I do not know you. But know that I wanted to love you. Know that, at least. ``` man what an intense and accurate mood. wishing you could have had a chance to love someone, but not wanting to misspeak and say you do love them. ```I walked out and closed the door behind me. I heard DeGroot say, “Shouldn’t we take him? Just to be safe? Make him one of us?” Aria snorted derisively. “He’s street trash. A waste of a Yeerk. Elfangor would be ashamed. His son should be a warrior. A worthy adversary, not some young fool. A pity, really.”``` yeah i remembered that final line ```But then I morphed again. Back to human. See, I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry a lot, for a long time. And hawks don’t cry``` god ```I wondered why the Ellimist had allowed my father to leave that letter. But I didn’t wonder for long. The answer was too simple. See, I had a duty, too. And who is there to remind you that what you want for yourself is less important than doing what is necessary and right? ``` fuckign ellimist. ```ion. I’ll have to go on walking that tightrope. I ate the mother rabbit. All I could hold. Then I morphed into the mother rabbit. And I shepherded the babies safely back to their den, as over our heads the other hawk flew, looking down at us for a chance to hunt and eat as I had done. Life would have been a lot easier for me if I could have been a simple, ruthless animal. If all my decisions were straightforward. If everything made sense. But that’s not the way it is for human beings. I looked up at the other hawk through terrified rabbit eyes. I had become prey, this time for real. This is what it felt like. This is what my prey saw when they felt my shadow blot out the sun. It was good that I knew. I said to the shadow of death above me. I killed to eat. But I didn’t need to eat these little ones. These I would save. These little ones I could pity. That was the human thing to do``` bam, and the thing i remembered from the intro . and there we are, read it in a weekend