Series Re-Read #33 The Illusion

[buffyangellvr23.livejournal.com]

The anti-morphing ray is still in development, and still has to be stopped. So the group comes up with a plan. Tobias will morph Ax and get himself captured. When he demorphs to hawk, the Yeerks will hit him with the ray and think it doesn't work.

I have a hard time re-reading this one because of all the angst.

Do you think they did adequate follow-up with this book, handled Tobias's aftermath well enough? I'm not sure what I think.

Taylor's an interesting character, the whole Yeerk/host merging thingy that we find out about her. And of course she comes back in The Test.

Also interesting that Tobias didn't want to kill her in the end...I suppose he didn't want Rachel to kill her if she wasn't a direct threat anymore...if they weren't defending themselves or something like that.

Comments

[anijen21.livejournal.com]

well if we're going down that path:

Mr. Feyroyn.

Rick Stathis.

Chapman.

Jake's high-ranking brother Tom, who reports directly to Visser Three.

If we're really holding the concept of *protecting our identities so the Yeerks don't find us* up to light, they really do a terrible job of this. The Opinionated Animorphs guide does a better job of explaining it than I can, but idk, I really can't agree with that because if Tobias is giving their names away IN THE FIRST PLACE, he's certainly not thinking about it on a level deep enough to realize *if they get one, they have us all*. He's bartering with him self, making concessions, thinking "I'll give them all up to make the pain stop, but not her."

And as far as that quote, idk, it doesn't help my case but that last part proves that his ability to judge reality is skewed. He's in a lot of pain, and he's just thinking about how terrible the Yeerks are, how vicious, how impossible it is for anyone to survive them. He's operating under no hope or realism. He is the direct recipient of all of their wrath, and his whole perception is skewed by that. I really don't think anything Tobias says in these chapters answers to logic or rationality. Which is part of what makes them so disturbing to read. Protecting Rachel and not the rest was not a rational decision, to me it was just the WRONG irrational decision. idk

[anijen21.livejournal.com]

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree

I still don't really agree that Tobias ever though she was dead. I mean, that's always a possibility but dilemmas involving *is she/he dead or is she/he alive* happen so frequently in this series that, I don't know, they either lose their urgency or I believe that all the Animorphs secretly know no one's actually dead. Even in MM3, when Jake got the back of his head blown off, it never felt like they were actively mourning him. I think the line you cited is just cheap angst to fill space.

Having said that, I also disagree about how psychosis works. I don't think it's a switch or an umbrella, like "you are either rational or irrational," I think it's more of a marginal thing. Like you start off rational, and as more time goes on and more stuff happens to you, you slowly sacrifice bits of rationality to cope with the pain. I think Tobias' thought process probably went something like this:

"I can't give anyone away. I won't. If I give one of them away, I give them all away, and that's all there is."

"Fuck this hurts."

"I can't give anyone away. But if I did, who would it be? Marco probably, that jerk. But no, they get Marco, they get all of us."

"Man this hurts."

"Maybe I can just give Marco away. If she was happy with that, she might let me go, and I could still rescue him. A momentary surrender for a long-term victory. Marco would agree that's good strategy."

"Holy God this hurts."

"All right, so I'll give up Marco, but what if she's not satisfied? Who next? Well if Marco's gone, they'll go after Jake b/c they're best friends, and then Cassie...yeah, it will stop there."

"Please God help me"

"Ax. I'll have to give up Ax. They won't be able to find him. Only I know where he is. They'll be happy with that. So Marco and Ax. Might as well give up Jake and Cassie anyway, make them happy."

"This is it, isn't it?"

"But not Rachel. They can have them all, but not Rachel."

idk. I think you can talk yourself out of sanity. That's what makes being a human so goddamn scary.