ANIMORPHS #6: THE CAPTURE

hi friends, and welcome back to animorphs weekly, america’s newest and coolest true crime podcast. i’m your host, bianca phipps, coming at you from thursday, which is abnormal for me. a peek behind the curtain: i normally read the book & write this blog on the monday before it’s released. but i’m making my way through the artist’s way & i’m about to start week four which is reading deprivation & in order to avoid incurring the wrath of julia cameron i’m going to type out this blog first & then go officially start week four. this is a lot of unnecessary backstory, but we’re friends, and i wanted to be honest. also i wanted to preface this in case i can’t make any topical jokes about whatever truly bananas shit will reveal itself on the internet from now until next week. anyway. wanna read a book?

NOW, HE’S ONE OF THEM….

i can’t wait to discover who the “he” is. i’m assuming it’s ax, because he’s trapped on earth with the other animorphs now, essentially making him “one of them,” but who knows?? maybe this is the book from my memories and one of the animorphs is gonna let a yeerk into his ear. feels a little early in the game for that, but who knows? certainly not me, who scrolled past decades old spoilers on reddit yesterday. i’m trying to take this seriously! i also love this cover. it’s straight forward. you can hear the bones crunching. today, i’m simply a one, just a boy preparing himself to become a fly.

we’re back to jake!

SUMMARY

we get a brief intro with the usual spiel — it’s shortened, because those of us who read books chronologically understand the pattern, but still there, because chaos kids exist who would just pick up these books at random and read them with no context. jake waxes poetic about how the enemy (the controllers) are everywhere: the policeman on the corner, the teacher in your school, your best friend, your brother. he knows because his brother is one of them.

the story starts on a saturday morning with jake and big brother tom eating breakfast together. big brother tom has a meeting today with The Sharing, the yeerks’ multi-level marketing scheme. they’re gonna do cleanup in the park and then have a barbecue afterwards! big brother tom is like, jake, you should totally come. then we could spend more time together. jake feels really bad about this, because obviously he wants to spend time with his brother, but his real brother, not the slug driving his brother’s body around. jake says, “maybe i will join some day,” and then immediately thinks, “like when hell freezes over.” get ‘em!

big brother tom is like ok, suit yourself. you’ve got the house to yourself today (mom and dad are out playing tennis) so have fun!! bye!! jake’s like, yeah, i’ll have fun…

fun, of course, is a loose term here. jake goes to his room and pulls out a matchbox. inside that matchbox is a cockroach. reader, i wish to perish. jake holds the cockroach in his hand to acquire the dna and i am not meant for this world!!! i truly have to commend applegate on her apt descriptions of how animals move and exist in this world but my god can we give the exoskeletons a break

jake adds the roach dna to the other dna living inside of him and explains that he’s an animorph. he has a tiger, a dolphin, a flea, a falcon, a trout, and a green anole lizard also at the ready.

“it was the gift of the dying andalite. a powerful weapon for us to use in resisting the yeerks. it was also a dangerous, deadly curse. like any weapon, i guess.”

deep!

jake plans on using the cockroach morph to get into The Sharing’s new headquarters building. cockroaches can go anywhere, jake points out. “you may have noticed that fact.” i know it’s not a threat to me, specifically, but it feels like one! i hate roaches! jake considers calling marco, but then thinks, no. he needs a rest. we all do. sure, for sure. the animorphs are just kids who still have to go to school and last book they faced death again for the thousandth time, but this time, it was in space.

so jake’s pulling a full martyr and turning into a roach alone.

i know i say this in every blog, but the transformation from human to roach is simply the worst thing i’ve ever read. no bone crunching in this one, just bone dissolving. jake feels his skull melting away. cute! being in the roach’s brain is much calmer than jake anticipated. which makes sense. they’re supposedly all that will survive a nuclear apocalypse. if i was that confident in my own mortality, i’d take naps all the time, too. but there’s no time for naps! someone’s flipping the lights on!

jake learns that roaches are fast motherfuckers. (this is true.) he can move three miles per hour which is incredibly fast for a six-inch monster. he zips into the wall and hides from whatever turned the light on. he runs into another cockroach (gross) and decides its time to demorph. good! he needs to figure out who was in his room. he decides to go to the garage (it’ll be empty and there are no mirrors) when along the way, he walks right into a motherfuckin’ roach trap.

we cut to all the animorphs hanging out in cassie’s barn. jake is no longer a cockroach, so obviously he escaped somehow. he’s relaying the story to his friends — marco and rachel think it’s very funny (true) but cassie does not. she very firmly tells him to never try out a new morph without one of them there ever again. it’s awesome! of course, the reason cassie is going all tough on jake is because they care about each other. to jake, cassie is an amazing person. she’s tough and smart and very pretty.

“i guess most guys would say rachel is prettier. personally, i don’t think of her that way because she’s my cousin. but rachel does look like some kind of blond supermodel.”

this again

marco refers to rachel as xena warrior princess, and jake says, “but that’s marco. for him, everything is a joke. except for his family. or what’s left of it.”

damn!

jake also says “cassies says a lot of the girls at school think [marco']’s cute. i wouldn’t know.” (i’m looking into the camera.) marco and jake disagree on almost everything, but they’ve been best friends since diapers, and they’d do anything for each other. including keeping the secret that marco’s mom is visser one.

they always save tobias for last and it makes me laugh every time. without fail whoever is narrating the books is like, “these are all my normal friends. and then there’s tobias. he used to be normal. now, he’s a fucking bird. and i guess he’ll always be a fucking bird. that’s the danger of being an animorph. tobias got stuck, and now, he’s a bird forever.”

which brings us back into the story. rachel’s like, how did you escape? jake’s like, so i was sitting there, trapped in the roach motel, when i heard my mom and dad. they came home early - my dad twisted his ankle playing tennis - and while they were upstairs in their room, i demorphed. he was stuck behind the fridge, but it’s all good! everyone has a good laugh, and then marco is like, ok, cut the cameras, why were you trying out a roach morph? good question marco! jake’s like uh…okay. here’s the truth. we learn that big brother tom has ascended the ranks of The Sharing and is just below assistant principal controller chapman. big brother tom has been making a lot of phone calls - and jake, ever the kid detective, has been hitting that automatic redial to see who big brother tom has been calling. guess what? they’re all doctors who work in the same wing of the hospital. rachel’s like, why would the yeerks be running a hospital? before jake can answer, marco (“who could teach a class on paranoia”) pipes in.

“oh, man. they’re going to use the hospital to infest host bodies. you check in to have your tonsils out or to have a cast put on your broken arm. you check out as a controller.”

terrifying!!!

ok so important to remember that jake’s dad twisted his ankle. you don’t think he’s gonna have to go to the doctor, do you?? is he the “he” in the “now he’s one of them….” ??

we cut to later that night. jake and his parents are eating dinner. big brother tom comes home. it’s a classic sitcom family scene. mom’s like, did you get enough to eat? big brother tom’s like, i did — but it wasn’t as good as your cooking. mom’s like, oh, honey, your father cooked. and by cooked, i mean ordered delivery! [cue laugh track] meanwhile, jake is just sitting there, staring at big brother tom, imagining the yeerk inside his head.

“i asked ax about how the yeerk slug lives in a person’s head. he’d explained it to me. how they can flatten their sluglike bodies. how they can sink between the crevices and cracks of a person’s brain. how they melt like a liquid into every available space. how they wrap their bodies around a brain and attach their own neurons to human neurons.”

jesus

big brother tom catches jake just staring at him (probably trying to imagine the flattened slug making his brain as smooth as an egg) and literally says, “what’s your malfunction?” jake and big brother tom get into some heightened sibling banter, made sharp by the knowledge that both of them have been affected by an alien war. jake is like, “may i be excused?” and his mom is like ok but come down later for cheesecake!

mom i can’t eat cheesecake i’m an animorph

big brother tom catches up with jake on the stairs and is like, seriously, what is your problem with The Sharing? you should join. it’ll make your life feel so important and you can be a part of something bigger!! jake says, “i don’t want to be a part. i guess i’d just rather be one person. on my own.” for a moment, Yeerk Arrogance flashes over big brother tom’s face, and just like that, it’s gone. big brother tom is like, sure. your loss.

later that night, jake has the dream. “a dream that had begun to appear almost every night.”

but then he doesn’t describe the dream!!!

instead we cut to the animorphs in marco’s new apartment!! marco’s dad went back to work and was able to afford a new apartment. nice! they’re all going to practice becoming roaches. marco points out that they’ve literally never practiced before, and jake is like, yes, exactly, we can’t keep doing that. this is going to be an ~official spy mission~ and they don’t want to fuck it up. (growth!) cassie asks, “is it possible to die of total willies? i mean, do you think we could someday just gross ourselves right out of existence?” i feel you, girl! i don’t want you to become a roach either! but an animorph’s gotta do what an animorph’s gotta do. marco, rachel, cassie, and ax all morph into roaches. jake talks to them for about an hour, trying to get them to understand how sound works in a roach body. once they’re all out of morph, jake is like, but seriously guys, i can do this on my own. everyone’s like, jake?? you literally don’t have to we can all morph and also we’re all in this together??

“are you worried about tom getting hurt?”

count on cassie to figure it out.

of course he is! jake’s like, he’s my brother but y’all are my friends. marco’s like, ok, rule number one, we don’t hurt tom. jake’s like, it’s not that easy. he would definitely kill any one of us. dark, but true. tobias is quick to point out that it wouldn’t be Real Tom killing them, it would be the yeerk in his head. also true! jake is like…i’ve been having this dream…

finally

basically, in the dream, jake is in his tiger morph and he’s hunting tom. once he gets up close, tom turns around and isn’t tom anymore, it’s…

who, jake???? who?????

jake is conflicted. if they succeed on their mission and shut down this hospital business, big brother tom fails. and when big brother tom fails, visser three gets angry. he could kill the yeerk in big brother tom’s head, or he could just kill Real Tom altogether. this is a classic trolley problem! marco points out that they don’t have to make any decisions yet. they can go on their roachy-spy mission and gather more information and make a decision from there. marco is the only other person who understands exactly what jake is going through, because, you know, his mom is visser one. everyone agrees: information first, decisions later.

mature!

we cut to the kids at night. they’re approaching the new The Sharing building, a simple one-story whitewashed building with one door and boarded up windows. the kids + ax head into a nearby alleyway so they can morph. tobias is on rat-watching duty to make sure that no rat snatches up a cockroach. (do rats eat roaches??) tobias has grown more comfortable with being a hawk, evidenced by the few jokes he’s making, which does bring me some joy. adaptation. the roaches scamper into one of the cracks in the building, and tobias is like, godspeed, animorphs. tobias is good out here.

the little roaches scatter into the corners of the room. luckily, yeerks don’t give a fuck about roaches, so no one cares or notices five roaches moving in sync. i sure as shit would. from outside, tobias is like, hey, y’all? a limo pulled up and there are some tough looking dudes coming inside. the roaches are like, ok! thanks!

bad news bears, everyone: visser three has acquired a human morphs. worse news is that the animorphs can’t see because of their bad roach eyes, so they can’t even identify his new human form. dangerous! visser three is like, good work everyone! now that we have control of the hospital wing, i project we will have 200 new controllers a month. a month!! thank god i don’t have health insurance you won’t catch me going to the doctor!!!

visser three is like now for the grand reveal! in a few days, the govenor of the state (unnamed, obviously) is going to have a minor surgery performed in the yeerk wing. when he checks out, he will be a controller!! everyone’s like no this sucks!! and rachel is like, don’t you pay attention to politics?? (good for you, rachel.) she points out that the govenor is going to run for president next year. if he wins, there will be a Controller President.

i’m not going to make any political commentary here because you all know how i feel about our government but like…..at this point in 2020 if i learned that there was truly a yeerk in the white house i would simply mark it off my bingo card and go back to sleep

the animorphs are like ok we have learned all we need to know. let’s blow this popsicle stand! unfortunately, someone finally notices the five roaches huddled in the corner of the room and tries to step on the animorphs! someone in the back is like “nah they’re just roaches they’re everywhere on this planet” and visser three is like someone kill this fool! the roaches are clearly animorphs! kill them!

jake is like SCATTER!!!! it’s chaos!!! the animorphs are dodging all kinds of stomping feet. cassie escapes through a crack in the wall. so does ax. jake lands on someone’s shoe and gets kicked across the room but lands against a wall and hides under a newspaper. marco goes to the bathroom. rachel climbs onto a man’s sock and drops outside. suddenly, bug spray!! the yeerks have bug spray!! jake tries to make a run for the door but the bug spray gets him. he starts to twitch. he can’t breathe! he’s sliding towards the door. he’s outside but he’s not gonna make it…and then whoosh! tobias swoops in!

“hang in there jake,” tobias said. “it’s me. red-tailed airline welcomes you aboard, and i am hauling my feathered butt outta here!”

tobias!!

they land on the roof of a boston market restaurant. (one day i’m going to compile all the clues of location and narrow it down. i simply don’t have the brainpower to do it now.) tobias is like, morph, jake!! you have to morph!! but jake is dying…the poison…it’s killing him…

he slips into the dream. he’s a tiger, stalking tom, but suddenly, as he leaps towards tom, he switches places. now he’s tom and the tiger is coming for him!!

and then he snaps awake! back in human form. close one! he starts looking for a way off the roof of the boston market (he’s too tired to morph) and tobias reveals that he saw visser three leaving that meeting with big brother tom. they’re tight. (eyeball emoji.) this is good and bad. good, because big brother tom is alive, but bad, because if the animorphs manage to shut down the hospital project, visser three is definitely going to slice off big brother tom’s head. those who fail visser three die.

we cut to gym class. jake is playing basketball with two boys named juan and terry. nice to remember that there are other kids at this school — but also, could juan and terry be controllers??? the enemy is everywhere. during passing period, marco and jake cross paths. marco makes a joke about being grateful it’s basketball day and not wrestling.

“i hate wrestling. getting up close and personal with sweaty guys? not my idea of a good time.”

sure jan

marco also reveals that the governor’s surgery is set for next tuesday. marco called the governor’s office, told them he was a reporter, and they faxed him a schedule. the 90s! marco’s theory is that it’s for hemorrhoids, which is why it’s such a big secret. “the jokes are just too easy.” they are! marco’s like, so should we go tomorrow? jake gets a Look on his face which marco recognizes immediately. marco checks in with jake - they had a close call last night and marco knows what it’s like. jake’s like yeah man, i’m ok. thanks. it’s a cute bro moment. jake’s like we’ll need to figure out a way to get inside the hospital. marco’s like, well, cassie has an idea.

“oh, man. you know, i like cassie. but this is the girl who suggested we try an ant morph.”

“not ants,” he said over his shoulder.

“i don’t even want to know.”

“think dog poop.”

“what?” i demanded. but by then he was through the door and gone.

objectively a hilarious and entirely unhelpful hint.

after school, jake, rachel, and cassie are at the mall. they’re searching for a gift for jake’s mom for her upcoming birthday. jake asked cassie to help him, and cassie asked rachel to help her. friendship. rachel, of course, owns the mall and manages to find a nice blouse on major sale in ten minutes. it’s awesome. she’s like “i’m gonna go check something out in juniors, catch you at the food court,” leaving jake and cassie alone to discuss cassie’s grand idea of turning into flies. they’re discussing it, but based on the book cover, i have a feeling they’re gonna do it. also, kids, please stop talking about yeerks and morphing at the mall. you know there are controllers at the mall. come up with some code words!!!

we cut to the animorphs becoming flies for the first time. cassie goes first, because she’s the best, and i am not joking, when cassie’s eyes become fly eyes, rachel vomits. she voms! jake screams. marco, reasonably, covers his eyes. all of this has to just be great for cassie’s self-esteem, but once she’s full fly, she starts zipping around. she’s like, this is fucking awesome! zip zip! the other animorphs are like, oooookay. let’s do it.

lots of bug morphing here…

the kids + ax all morph into flies and hop onto tobias’s neck so he can fly them to the hospital. (jake refers to tobias as “the bus” which i think is very funny.) as they pull up to the hospital, cassie privately thought-dms jake to remind him that he can drop out of the mission and they’ll all understand. it is a little close to home. but jake insists: the yeerks have to be taken down, and they’re all in this together. tobias flies near an open window, and i just want to type out this interaction, because it’s very endearing.

okay, everything looks fine to me, tobias said. i see an open window on the third floor. no screen.

you’re sure? marco asked.

marco, in light this bright, i could tell you if there was a single strand of sipderweb across that window, let alone a screen.

he said spiderweb, rachel moaned.

h e e e l p m e e e! marco mimicked.

by absolutely terrible luck, the old version of the fly had been on tv the night before. like fools, we’d all watched it.

i don’t understand what this means, ax grumbled.

CLASSIC found family bonding here, folks!! it’s no secret that i am very fond of all of these kids and i love when applegate reminds us that they’re all just kids, who watch movies and fail pop quizzes and like each other.

they fly into the hospital and split up according to plan. jake, cassie, and ax are on one team; marco and rachel are on the other. everyone can immediately identify where poop is — but we’re not here for poop! we’re here for the yeerk pool. team jaxsie find a strange scent and start to follow. they are officially too far away to communicate with team rarco — so they’re on their own. they find a room where the strange scent is very strong and sneak inside. ax demorphs first to clear the room if there are any humans / controllers, and then cassie and jake demorph. inside the room is a jacuzzi filled with yeerk slugs. the word jake uses is “roiling.” roiling with slugs. ROILING. jake discovers that the pump for the whirlpool action has been disconnected, but if he can get it working, he can cook all these yeerks right up and destroy them. he doesn’t hesitate. he tells ax to watch the door to the hallway and asks cassie to morph into a wolf. he finds some tape and some tweezers and starts hotwiring the jacuzzi. a little hacker boy!! he manages to get all of the wires connected and fires it up.

but then! two humans in white lab coats come into the room! jake tries to stay out of sight and morph into a tiger while cassie and ax handle the new intruders. two more men, dressed as guards, run into the room. they’re holding guns - but not for long! ax’s sharp andalite tail slices the guard’s hand clean off! the other guard pulls his gun out! two shots!

they told me later there was a third shot. but i didn’t hear it.

a sledghammer blow struck the side of my head. a ricochet. for a brief second i clung to consciousness. but then, i swooned. i fell.

facedown in the whirlpool.

facedown in the bubbling, boiling mass of dying yeerks.

Y’ALL WHEN I SAY I AM STRESSED

suddenly, jake comes to. he feels like he’s suffocating (because of the water) and he feels a pain in his head. pain like he’s never felt or imagined before!! like someone is drilling a hole in his ear!! drilling straight into his brain!!!!! jake is on the ground. he can’t scream because he’s choking. ax and cassie are trying to fend off the controllers in the doorway but they’re losing steam. suddenly! a gorilla and another wolf arrive! team rarco!!!! rachel jumps into the action. she tells marco to grab jake and tells ax and cassie to keep holding the door. she’s going to change morph for more firepower. marco cradles jake and covers his face with a white lab coat. the pain in jake’s head starts to ease, but instead of feeling better, he only feels more confused.

rachel morphs into an elephant (classic) and a voice inside jake’s head thinks, rachel? a human?

Y’ALL

the animorphs escape the hospital and make it to a stand of trees. marco peels the jacket off of jake’s face while cassie morphs into a horse to get him away. jake tries to tell marco about his head, but he can’t quite get the words out. again, the voice in his head: “unbelievable. can it be? humans?” before he can figure it out, marco lifts jake onto cassie’s horse back. jake is struggling. they’re running and at one point, cassie jumps a fence. jake falls, but doesn’t really feel the pain. his eyes start moving on their own. “like someone else was focusing them.”

don’t struggle, jake, a voice in my head said. it’s pointless.

what? who was saying that? what was…?

then, a laugh only i could hear. put that primitive human brain to work, jake. jake, the animorph. jake, the servant of the andalite filth.

then i knew. i knew what the voice was. a yeerk! a yeerk in my own head.

i was a controller.

DAMN

Y’ALL

i cannot handle this we are hurtling at lightspeed applegate slow down i am s t r e s s e d o u t !!!!!

this is book six!!!!!! BOOK SIX we have a little under fifty books to go!!! WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE where do we go from here???

jake and the yeerk inside his head start to have a conversation. the yeerk (temrash one-one-four, previously temrash two-five-two, of the sulp niar pool) is like, give it up! i win! you lose! temrash one-one-four reveals that he used to be the yeerk inside big brother tom and was set to be the yeerk inside the governor’s head, but this is an acceptable change of plans. jake is freaking out. he’s not in control of his body anymore. he can feel the yeerk rifling through his memories. cassie, marco, and tobias are like, jake?? dude?? you okay??

the yeerk makes him speak. fake!jake says that he’s okay, he doesn’t need to go to a hospital, and once rachel and ax are known to be safe, they’ll need to go their separate ways. real!jake is still freaking out. he’s trying to figure out a way to communicate to cassie and marco that he’s not himself. they’re the two people in the world he’s closest to! surely they’ll know he’s not himself!

right?

god my worst nightmare

fake!jake uses the word “parboiled” which to me is an instant red flag, because what even is that word, but i’m also just searching for something to cling to. real!jake starts to lose hope. no host ever defeated a yeerk — not even assistant principal controller chapman and his wife, who put up a good fight but ultimately couldn’t win.

the yeerks got a fucking animorph!!!!

tobias leads rachel and ax back to the clearing. ax puts a hand on fake!jake’s shoulder — and suddenly, a beam of hope. fake!jake can’t control his reaction to seeing an andalite. there is a brief moment where fake!jake curls his lip in disdain - but a brief moment is all ax needs. that scorpion tail is up against fake!jake’s throat, and ax is like, yeerk!

y’all

i’m STRESSED

the animorphs are like WOAH DUDE WOAH GET YOUR KNIFE TAIL AWAY FROM JAKE’S THROAT but thank god ax is like no fucking way i know a yeerk when i see one there is a slug in prince jake’s head! the other kids are nervous, almost doubtful, but ax is like, his head fell into the yeerk pool. he was in there long enough for a slug to slither in, and it takes a moment for the yeerk to take over. was he acting weird and comatose? and cassie’s like yeah….he was…

i swear i could have kissed the andalite right then.

(camera)

fake!jake is like y’all!! ha ha it’s me ?? what are you talking about ?? i’m jake l o l. the others are like, shut up, jake. we need to think about this. tobias points out that the yeerks need to visit the yeerk pool every three days, so they could just hold jake hostage for three days until the yeerk dies. cassie points out that they can’t just hold a kid hostage for three days, everyone will freak out and the yeerks will know something’s up. marco points out that they can’t take the risk - if there is a yeerk in jake’s head, and the yeerk gets back to the others, their cover is totally blown. fake!jake is now freaking out. he underestimated these kids. (CLASSIC villain move.) fake!jake is like, my folks will totally freak out. “no offense, tobias, but i have an actual family, not some messed up aunts and uncles who didn’t want to be taking care of me in the first place.” damn! cold! fake!jake turns to cassie to plead with her.

cassie’s like, “there is a way…to make sure no one notices jake’s gone. ax can morph into jake.”

MY GIRL

ax is like, cooolio. he reaches out to acquire jake’s dna (which he already did but for the purposes of the narrative i’ll let it slide) and when his hands touch jake’s forehead, the yeerk flips out.

“get your hand off me andalite filth!” he screamed aloud in a distorted version of my voice.

rachel’s like, well, now we know for sure.

I’M SO PROUD OF THESE KIDS

of course, it’s a shaky plan. ax isn’t great at being a human, and the morph can only be two hours at a time, and they’ll have to keep controller jake locked up in an abandoned shack in the woods and take turns keeping an eye on him. the yeerk knows that marco and cassie are the most pliable. but it’s the best plan they’ve got. they start walking towards the old shack, and the yeerk starts digging through jake’s memories. the yeerk says to cassie that ax is going to fuck it up, and then they’ll all be killed. rachel whips around and is like, i’ve known jake my whole life, marco is his best friend, and cassie has known him for years. we can teach ax how to be jake. (i am, reader, cheering.)

the yeerk is like rachel, drop the tough girl act. we all know this isn’t going to work.

“i disagree,” a voice behind me said. “humans believe what they see.”

the yeerk whipped my head around. there, standing a few feet from me was…me.

totally, absolutely, me.

the yeerk, of course, responds to ax’s perfect morph with more arrogance, thereby sealing all of the other animorphs’ belief that jake really is being controlled. prince jake would absolutely want to help ax sell the performance!! but fake jake? fake jake wants to be let go. so into the shack with you!

rachel and tobias are going to take first watch, while marco and cassie teach ax how to be jake. the yeerk inside jake’s head is still crowing with pride, talking all kinds of shit about how proud visser three is going to be, how many promotions he’s going to get, how the animorphs will all end up dead at visser three’s feet. we learn that the yeerk can shield most of his thoughts from jake, but for some reason, he’s showing off these. probably because he wants to intimidate jake. jake’s like, do you daydream about this a lot?? and the yeerk is like you want to talk daydreams?? let’s look at your daydreams puny human

again, my nightmare

the yeerk plays one of jake’s fantasies. he’s a pro basketball player and he makes the winning shot and the crowd goes wild and cassie is there and so is Real Tom and it’s very sweet and very sad. jake lashes out at the yeerk. (vulnerability is hard.) and then the yeerk is like you sound just like your brother. want to see one of his memories? and then he shows jake the scene from the beginning of the book, but from tom’s perspective. Real Tom’s perspective. Real Tom is crying. “sobbing, helplessly, silently,” begging the yeerk to leave his little brother alone. jake can feel Real Tom’s utter despair and hopelessness. the yeerk is like, every host tries to fight. but every host eventually succumbs to the truth: escape is impossible. you’ve lost.

jake is like, three days, and you’ll be dead.

the yeerk says, “wait and see, human. just wait and see.”

y’all!!

it’s late in the night. tobias is nearby, rachel is keeping guard, and jake tries to sleep. he has the tiger dream again, and then the yeerk is like, huh. nice dream. very metaphorical. and then the yeerk reveals why he’s so fucking confident.

he starts to morph into a tiger.

HOW did we not think about this!!!! i didn’t even think about this. of course jake can morph!!! hello!!! jesus christ. the yeerk starts to morph into a tiger and jake is trying to warn rachel but of course he can’t because he’s trapped inside his own body. the yeerk is like, don’t worry, i won’t kill her. i plan on delivering four morph-capable human bodies and one andalite scum to visser three. fun! the yeerk as tiger escapes into the night, but quickly gets lost. he’s vaguely wandering, and jake reminds him of the time limit. the yeerk is getting frustrated. a-ha! he thinks. i will simply morph into a falcon and fly away! the yeerk starts to morph into a falcon when WHAM! something slams into him. he tries again. WHAM! another something, slamming. he can’t morph! he returns to human form, and jake realizes what happened. a great horned owl has arrived. an excellent nighttime hunter. but it’s not just any owl…

sorry i had to hurt you, jake. but it was necessary. we realized the yeerk would try morphing. so we were ready. rachel only pretended to sleep. we wanted this yeerk of yours to make his escape when we were most ready for him. so you hang in, jake. the forest is full of your friends.

cassie!!!

the yeerk is AFRAID and i am DELIGHTED. the yeerk starts flipping through all of jake’s morphs. jake tries to distract the yeerk with some good old fashion shit talk. the yeerk morphs into a wolf and takes off. jake is like, you fool. in the distance, there’s howling. the yeerk is confused, but jake quickly explains. last time they were in these woods as wolves, they ran into another pack. (you remember! the wolves!) those howls are the animorphs announcing their presence to the other pack. jake’s like, run fast, yeerk boy. that other alpha wolf is not fucking around. the yeerk stops running. up ahead, five pairs of yellow eyes. real wolves. suddenly, from behind, marco appears as a human. he’s like, c’mon, man. time to go back to the shack. from behind him, rachel as elephant appears. and it turns out cassie morphed into a flea and has been riding on the wolf back this whole time.

y’all!!! i am so proud of these kids!!! they do a lot of dangerous shit but they are pulling it TOGETHER right now. it is incredible. jake has an interesting revelation about humans: they will always try to do the impossible. fight until the bitter end. but the yeerks? they’re not like that. when they come across something impossible, they give up. unstoppable force? immovable object. a classic conundrum! the yeerk gives in and follows the owl back to the shed.

the next morning, the yeerk tries again as an ant. he makes it three feet before running into a group of enemy ants and almost gets torn apart. earth is savage! the yeerk is losing hope. he took over jake’s brain around nine am on a saturday. we’re already at monday night. the yeerk is growing weak. he needs those kandrona rays! he tries to morph into a falcon, but tobias is there in a flash, his talons wrapped around the falcon head. the yeerk is like, if you kill me, you’ll kill your friend. tobias is like, better to die than become a controller.

amen sister friend!

then tobias is like, but i wouldn’t have to kill you. i’d just have to poke your eyes out. a blind falcon can’t go far. he’s right and he should say it! the clock is ticking. the yeerk demorphs. he’s clearly still waiting for a miracle, but he’s hungry, and i know what it’s like to be hungry. it feels utterly hopeless. the yeerk is still trying to monologue. a lot of “you think you’ll win but you won’t, the humans are weak, the yeerks will win.” and jake is like, maybe. but you won’t be alive to see it.

damn!

as the yeerk and jake sit in the cabin as the sun rises on their third day together, the yeerk starts talking. he says the yeerk evolved as parasites, not predators. they first inhabited a species called the gedds, and as the gedds evolved, so did the yeerks. they were in the gedds until the andalites came. jake’s like, what happened when the andalites came? the yeerk is like, ah, yes, you don’t know. ask your pet andalite one day to tell you the story of the andalites and the yeerks.

yes!! please do!!

finally, it’s time. the fugue begins. it’s the yeerk’s final hours. cassie arrives and sits down next to jake. she wants to be there for him when he comes back to himself, which is very sweet. the yeerk starts to die, and as he does, jake can catch glimpses of the yeerk’s memory. he sees the yeerk pool, and a gedd (“humanoid, short and stooped, with webbed feet and three clumsy fingers”), and the yeerk taking over a gedd for the first time. jake sees not just the memories of the yeerk, but the memories of his host. a hork-bajir, forced to kill his friends. jake realizes that pieces of each host have imprinted themselves onto the yeerk, and similarly, are getting imprinted onto him. and then he sees tom.

we get big brother tom’s origin story. Real Tom joined The Sharing because of a pretty girl. he followed her into a secret leadership meeting on accident. he thought she was seeing someone else. and in a way, she was. but not another human boy — visser three. jake watches Real Tom get tied up, feels his fear and his rage as he gets taken over.

as the yeerk finally dies, jake’s vision changes suddenly. he can’t really describe it, but it feels as if he can see into things, front back top bottom and inside everything all at once. and then, he sees something else. some sort of creature machine with no arms and a single eye. the eye turns slowly, slowly, slowly towards jake. it’s bloodred, and it sees him. he feels a sharp terror, and then suddenly — it’s all over. jake is back in control of his body. the yeerk slug lays on the ground, withered and shriveled into nothing.

we cut to jake at the dinner table. his family is teasing him for eating so much the past few days — which, of course, was ax, who is obsessed with taste and human food. big brother tom teases him, and jake just feels kind of sad, because he knows his brother is trapped in there somewhere. that night, he has the familiar tiger dream, and the next day, he meets up with the other animorphs at cassie’s barn. he uses cassie’s dad’s cell phone, and morphs his throat into a wolf throat to change his voice. he calls tom, and says, “don’t give up, tom. don’t ever give up.”

damn!!!!

REVIEW

5/5. honestly?? 5/5. this book took all the animorphs had previously learned and put it into action. i was stressed while reading this book. but i am so proud of the team!!! am i worried about the lasting ramifications of having a yeerk in the brain?? absolutely. am i ready to see how the animorphs handle it? yes!

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• do you think you’d fall for The Sharing?

PREDICTIONS

• …this is….dark….but one of the animorphs might die, right? surely someone is going to die before the series is over

• i’m not going to name names yet because i don’t want to jinx it i’m just throwing that out there

ok that’s all i have for you folks!! thanks for playing. see you next week!