Was this the atlantis one? I know I say for this for every single underwater one but this time I think I might be right??? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ its fun the watcher is reading too. they're on the one with the hammerhead shark. two water books at once. me and them. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ```Hey, reckless in battle keeps me alive. Reckless in the gym just breaks bones.``` i love this idea that her recklessness is itself a defense mechanism. keep the fear at bay, keep moving. she's not fearless. i'd argue she's the most afraid of ALL of them. i remember her fear in the mole morph. and i think the reason why she was as hurt by cassie quitting for pacifism reasons was related. cassie interpeted it as rachel viewing cassies passifism as a moral judgement, a sign rachael wasn't a good person. but... i think it was also. that rachel was so so scared all the time but she fought anyways so why was suddenly cassies fear important. cassie should be able to buck up. because rachel was. ```I can’t help myself. It’s like I’m addicted or something. Addicted to danger. Addicted to defeating the Yeerk invaders.``` and THAT is why she had to die. because there really was no life for her after the war. if she'd lived she would have found a new war. forever. ``` I didn’t like the moment of hesitation, the moment when I considered the fact that I was the only girl in school whose … I guess “boyfriend” was … how should I put it … a bird.``` so cassie and jake kissed after the howler mission and now rachel is admiting she's dating tobias (i think this is the first time) ```“How about his face? A mask?” Jake ran to snatch up some full-head masks. “I have Clinton, Gingrich, and a Teletubby. Dipsy, I think.” “That’s not Dipsy,” Cassie corrected. “That’s Tinky Winky. Dipsy’s green and has the straight up thing. Tinky Winky’s the one with the triangle.” Marco wondered. “Po,” Cassie said. “No offense,” Erek said, “but how on Earth have you people managed to avoid getting caught for this long?”``` right? ```A minute later a gorilla wearing a sandwich board sign for a misspelled movie carried a very trendily dressed Bill Clinton over his shoulder out of the mall. Fortunately, there was a big sale on at the department store, so not that many people noticed. At least, that was my explanation then. ``` i genuinely don't remember what happens here, esp if its not the atlantis one. okay yeah they had to go reaaaaly deep, hence the giant squid morphs but. huh. ```“So let me get this straight,” Marco said. “We have to rescue a paralyzed Chee from a stolen goods warehouse before the Controllers get her. Then we have to dive down to the bottom of the ocean, find the Pemalite ship, somehow get inside it and turn off the signal before ten o’clock tonight so the Yeerks don’t get the Chee in the safe at the nuclear waste facility. Is that pretty much it? Or do we have to discover the Fountain of Youth and come up with a low-fat cookie that tastes as good as Mrs. Fields’s, too?”``` so definitely not the atlantis plot. ```Besides, who needed the extra firepower? Crooks might scare ordinary people, but not us. This was a quick, easy in and out. No biggie. ``` theyt thought the same thing about david. it really tells something that yeerks are so bad at things that regular humans, even children, are bigger threats. maybe nothing good tbh, thinking of the "humans are orcs" tropes of "humanity fuck yeah" though, it does make sense that parasite slugs wouldn't exactly have a strong killer instinct. man, ax was really smart to use skunk morph for this. their objective was to incapacitate both sides and secure the android, and that worked towards that goal far better than brute force. plus, he didn't want to be seen in his own body and its not as if he has a lot of combat morphs (what could possibly be better for combat than his own superior andalite body) ```I was definitely not in the best of moods. I was feeling brittle and tired and mad at the world. Maybe it was just one too many battles. Or maybe it was because I’d been thinking about what we had to do next. Dive fifteen thousand feet down into the cold, dark ocean. Deeper than we’d ever gone before. Deeper than a dolphin or a hammerhead shark could dive. Up against an enemy that couldn’t be fought: the deadly, crushing pressure. It worried me because I couldn’t think of a way to beat it, and if we couldn’t beat it, then it would beat us. Crush us.``` again, burried. she is afraid of the force that comes from all directions, that cant be fought, that doesn't care how brave you are. ```I was teasing Marco. But the truth was, there was nothing funny about being crushed to death. The image of it bothered me. The feeling of being squeezed on every inch of my body, pushed inward, internal organs squishing and …``` so very Buried. ```“Saving the Chee isn’t going to be a suicide mission,” Jake said, glaring at me. “You’re overreacting, Rachel.” My jaw dropped. Worrying about something as lethal as atmospheric pressure was overreacting? Wanting to get home in one piece instead of dying a stifling, airless death on the dark ocean floor was overreacting? Since when? If Cassie had said it, Jake wouldn’t have told her she was overreacting. He would have agreed. He would have thought she was being sensibly cautious. Wasn’t I allowed to be cautious? No, of course not, I thought bitterly. I’m supposed to be a reckless fighting machine and fighting machines don’t feel caution or fear. And even if they do, they don’t advertise it. “Well, excuse me, I guess I’ll just shut up and follow orders,” I said. “Look, I’m sorry, Rachel,” Jake said tiredly. “You made a good point in a bad way, okay? But nobody’s gonna die because we’re not gonna dive unless we find the right morph.”``` i love this. rachel has so many thoughts about identity, FOCUSED always on jake. (who i think is stranger) she thinks she has to be this perfect warrior or be rejected. and her clausterphobia is something that prevents her from that perfection. i also like how jake apologizes, acknowleding the worth of what she said AND his emotional response to it. good point in a bad way. fun fact, not only are there not any giant squid in captivity, but it was well after animorphs taht we got actual good footage of one alive. DM actually had an uncle be part of the team that got that footage, which is really cool and then magic sperm whale beached itself right when they needed it. this HAS to be the ellimist. between that and the camera malfunctions hmmmm, they think its not the ellimist and they ARE right, its not his style. he does things like warp space so tobias has no choice but to find the escaped hork bajir. his abilities are much stupider. like. he's so big, so powerful, that he almost can't interact at a human level anymore. and fucking up cameras is human level. and rachel realizes the whale is suffocating. her worst fear. its interesting of all of them that rachel has a PHOBIA. jake got swatted as a fly and poisoned as a cockroach. marco got ripped in half as an ant and torn in half as a dolphin. but rachels greatest fear is just...the one thing she can't bluster her way through with bravado. rachel uses tobias to cheat to draw the short straw to morph the whale (specifically because she's scared and awnts to face it) so tobias cheats to get the second short straw ``` Jake grabbed my arm and pulled me aside for a private word. “Don’t you ever do that again,” he said, far angrier than I’d suspected. “It’s your fault Tobias is going. Remember that next time you decide to make fools of the rest of us.” He let me go and I walked away, a little shaken. Jake doesn’t get mad much. When he does, it sticks in your mind. ``` im genuinly curious what the mystery is here. if its atlantis...thats so dumb and crowded in the middle of all this. but what else could it be? ```There’s nothing you can say to the ocean. No mercy to be begged. No deals to be made. If we were weak or careless or stupid, it would smother us, crush us, bury us forever in miles of black, black water. I yelped, shaken out of my dark imaginings. Tobias said. Then, after a moment of silence, he said, Too big for all my bravado. ``` almost my exact words. you know. contrast that with their first dolphin morphs. the fear that it wasn't ethical because of the intelligence. compare that with teh cold pragmatism this time. doesnn't matter if its ethical or not, everyone dies if they dont' do it. everyone. even the whales. maybe especially. ```It was madness! We were blundering around blindly. The sun’s rays had never reached this depth. Never. If the water had been rock and dirt, it could not have been any darker. We were buried alive! Buried alive in water. Tobias said at last, his thought-speak voice faint, his tone shaken. I agreed. We turned and headed up. And now the panic grew. You can walk through a graveyard at night and be afraid, but the terror doesn’t begin to get you till you start to run away. When you acknowledge fear, it grows. And although I tried to tell myself it wasn’t terror sending me to the surface, that it was just a need for air, I knew better. We raced. We barreled madly toward the surface. It took forever. Up and up and up. Air! Where was the air? We’d been down too long. We’d never reach the sky again. We were going to die in darkness, to sink and sink back to the cold, lightless, lifeless ocean floor. Buried alive in water. ``` buried i really hadn't remembered her clausterphobia from when i was a kid and litrerally the second they want to give up they make progress. what IS this. god thats right the ship looks like snnoopy you can google it, the picture you got to see from the front of the book. like a baloon animal snnoopy oh!!!!!!!!!! thats right. crayaks minion. the joker jester thing. god. i forgot about that fucker entirely. on *purpose* ```“Oh, Marco the funny one!” the creature cried, slapping its limp hands together. “How’s Mommy, Marco? Is she alive or is she dead? Does she scream with the Yeerk in her head?” ``` ```“If you ever find yourself desperate, Rachel. At an end. In need. Remember this: Your cousin’s life is your passport to salvation in the arms of Crayak.”``` god yeah id forgotten entirely about this arc. ```I wondered if I should tell Jake about the Drode’s foul offer. But I decided against it. I knew I would never, ever give in. I knew myself. I did. I knew my limits. I knew. But what the Drode and his evil master Crayak had seen inside of me was real. Jake knew it. He trusted me, but there might come a time when he would doubt … Jake had enough to worry about``` man, this seems like crayaks true purpose with this gambit, sowing doubt there. complete. man i am going to be so shocked when it finally actually is atlantis.