Moran Rereads the Animorphs
Book 7: The Stranger
AKA “The PTSD squad sees the future and finally fucking wins a round, the Ellimist shows his not-face, and Rachel antes up her battle morph”
- MOTHER
- FUCKING
- GRIZZLY
- BEAR
- Anyway. *clears throat* Real talk. Gear up for some incoherence. This is a favorite book to be honest. Because this is the book where it really grinds home for them, on a bitter, visceral level, just how truly fucked they are—they see the future, where the war is lost and Rachel is a Controller and they are all dead—and they give up! They surrender! They agree to let the Ellimist take them to another planet! And then…they win a round. They win quite a round, with the destruction of the Kandrona. I’m so proud.
- Have I mentioned that I live for Rachel. She’s so strong, and she doesn’t believe that she is—when they attack the Kandrona, she claims that she’s not brave because she believed the guards were humans. But Rachel knows that humans would be carrying guns (probably BIG guns, given what they’re guarding), she knows that being shot is awful, she knows it fucking sucks, she knows that even a rampaging bear is going to notice a bullet. And she still trucks right on in there because she has a war to fight and a battle to win and I just. Love her.
- It’s easy to forget how much damage Rachel does and takes in battle. Marco takes the most really spectacular injuries (there’s a statistical analysis of how many times the various Animorphs are dismembered/disemboweled floating around the Interwebs somewhere, and he ‘wins’ by a landslide), but I think for sheer numbers, Rachel takes the cake. I cannot think of a single battle in which she doesn’t take any damage whatsoever, and the injuries are frequently “you better demorph before you bleed out” levels of severity, either individually or en masse. I think this is partly because she’s their tank, so that’s her job—they’re a pretty well-coordinated D&D squad, someone remind me to write down my headcanons for an AU where the war is all a tabletop RPG and they are happy and trauma-free children—and also because, since she’s the tank, she would rather suffer than watch her friends take the injuries themselves. She throws herself headlong into battle because she would rather take the bullet/rampaging Hork-Bajir/hungry Taxxon herself than let the others get hurt.
- Also! As the opening bullet points might have suggested, this book includes the advent of my favorite of Rachel’s morphs: the grizzly. Ursus arctos horriblis. Like, okay, if you want finesse in combat, the gorilla is a good one, it has hands. If you want mobility, the hawk is decent, what with the flying and all. The wolf has the advantage of sheer endurance, they can run for days. An Andalite…um…has a sword attached to its body, I feel like the advantages of this are self-explanatory. For a balance of speed and strength, Jake’s tiger is unmatched. But for sheer raw power—aggressive power, not bulldozing power—nothing tops a grizzly bear. I lived in Montana, just outside Yellowstone, where grizzlies were a plague, kids, I know of which I speak. A grizzly bear can take your head off with one swing, and those claws and teeth aren’t just for show. As battle morphs go: grizzly bear. Yeah. I would want a grizzly as my battle morph.
- I don’t…like the Ellimist much. Like, I think he’s a really interesting character, and I’m actually super into the concept of the handpicked dream team to face down the Yeerks being just…people, not soldiers or heroes, just kids with the backbone and grit to do what had to be done. But that being said. The Ellimist jerks the Animorphs around largely just to prove he can. I don’t honestly care what he says about having some grand master plan, he’s just doing shit. He’s well-intentioned—although more from the motive of stopping Crayak than saving people, but I’m not going to fucking split hairs over the fate of the Earth, okay, he can have whatever motive he damn well pleases—but he basically spends this whole book yanking the Animorphs’ chain. And I get why he does it, I understand his logic, but just for the record: fuck him.
- Future Rachel is a scary motherfucker. I mean, so is present Rachel, but at least with present Rachel it’s a good, clean fear of being eviscerated. I’m a little sad Rachel didn’t get to whomp her future self in grizzly form.
- Speaking of future selves, I continue to be a fucking wreck about Rachel and Tobias, that is all we are talking about for the rest of this thing. Of all the people at Visser Three’s disposal to put the screws to Rachel—and of course he guns for Rachel, because Jake is the leader and Cassie is the heart and Tobias is the soul and Marco is the schemer and Ax is the brains but Rachel is the fighting spirit, the part of humanity that has to break if the Yeerks want to win—he goes for Tobias. Not her best friend, or her cousin, he goes for Tobias. He talks about how they killed Tobias and roasted him and Rachel ate him because he wants to break her, and you know what? It works. It works. She goes back on her decision to fight, in order to save the people she loves—her family, her friends, and Tobias.
- Rachel and Tobias go to visit each other when they’re stressed or upset or bored. Rachel worries about Tobias’ safety so much and stresses about how dangerous life as a hawk is for him. Tobias is so careful with Rachel when she’s upset, and he’s so distressed when she flies away from him to acquire the bear at the Gardens. They get each other on this really visceral level, Rachel who’s learning to be a killer and Tobias who’s learning to be a hunter, and they have so much in common on that level. I? Cannot handle this? I need someone to request some early war era Rachel/Tobias fic from me, I NEED to wallow in this.
- OH. AND WE SEE TOBIAS AS A HUMAN AGAIN. Okay, fuck the Ellimist for many things, but this ain’t one of them. Tobias is so surprised and cautious and sad about being in his own body again, he has so clearly missed being a person, and also? The others? I am distraught? The others have clearly missed him, too, missed having him around, being able to see his eyes and watch him smile. And Rachel—who, to remind you all, is habitually described as extremely beautiful and effortlessly smooth, and who could therefore probably walk into her school and have every guy in the building panting over her—is so glad to see him. Tobias is a dweeb, he’s the quintessential bullied kid, not the kind of kid who traditionally gets that kind of response from a pretty girl. And to boot he’s a neglected, outright abused kid, so having someone whose response to seeing him is just sheer delight must be weird as fuck to him. I’ll bet you cash money, here and now, that part of the reason he can’t control the hawk’s immediate response to panic when Rachel runs at him to hug him is because that has never happened to him before. I’ll bet he’s never in his life had to deal with someone rushing toward him like that except to attack him. Of course he gives in to the hawk instinct to try to escape. And she’s so upset with herself for having scared him, and he’s so embarrassed for having reacted badly, and these kids deserve a movie night or some shit. It’s so fucking sad, God, I’m a mess.
