Moran Rereads the Animorphs
So turns out we’re doing a post for every single book. Literally why am I like this. Posts will be going here, feel free to block the tag. Spoilers, yadda, yadda.
Book 2: The Visitor
AKA “We get some seriously grim insight on voluntary Controllers, the first bug morph, and probably the reason I hate shrews”
- Let me take this moment to remind you that I LOVE RACHEL.
- Let me also take this moment to remind you that THESE ARE CHILDREN. Like. I just. Just really THINK about the fact that this whole book is them vs. their vice principal. THEIR VICE PRINCIPAL. AT THEIR MIDDLE SCHOOL. God I’m just such a wreck about this whole situation. Leave me.
- Rachel fits the cat morph so beautifully. She really does best in the morphs that are top predators—a feral tomcat is, pound for pound, a better hunter than just about anything out there, although grizzly bears are definitely up there—and the confidence and arrogance of the cat brain just matches up perfectly with the self she tries to project. Also, I always think of that line from the first book when I read about Rachel: “I guess you never really know someone until you see them scared. And even scared to death, Rachel had strength to spare.” She just. Is everything to me. That is all.
- The shrew morph fucked me up the first time I read it and I still kind of hate the creepy little things. Reminder that these books were PRETTY FUCKING FORMATIVE.
- Jake and Rachel have a conversation about how much they’re both terrified of eventually having to morph insects and then???? Jake morphs a flea because he’s worried about Rachel and he can’t leave her alone and he wants to protect her and make sure she has backup. Jake’s such a desperate kid tossed into the role of the leader and he’s so ready to trample past his own boundaries and limits in order to protect his people and get the job done, and honestly I think that’s both the thing that I love the most about him and the thing that leads to…well. He doesn’t go down in history as Jake, Savior of Earth, does he. His whole perspective of the war is formed by that desperation, and he’ll do anything to win, and we all know where that got him. God, this kid, I am a ruin of a human being.
- The scene where Chapman—the real Chapman—gets his body back for a while and talks to Visser Three and defends his daughter is VERY UPSETTING. The insight we get into voluntary Controllers is just…so sad. These people who sold out to the Yeerks to protect individuals, and because they believed that someone would save them eventually, that it would be impossible to conquer the whole world, that the Yeerks were not that bad. God. Fuck. Can you imagine the slow revelation, once they had the Yeerk in their head, of just what they had consented to? I wonder how many hosts started out voluntary and became involuntary later.
- On a lighter note, Jake’s flea morph gives them SUCH a skewed concept of what bug morphs are like, Jesus fucking Christ. Sit tight for commentary on the ant morph in Book 5, because THAT SHIT.
