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dni if nsfw/kink, dd/lg, map, terf, swerf, or exclusionist
video by y.na__
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so i started reading book four and im just so stricken by like this is EXACTLY WHAT YOUNG ME WAS FUCKING DESPERATE FOR. ITS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS BEGGING FOR and i just PASSED IT UP!!!!!! i came up with elaborate headcanons and daydreams and put this intense amount of thought into constructing what eventually ended up being ENTIRELY DIFFERENT from the source material, because i DESPERATELY wanted the protagonists of my books to be deeply changed by the events in the stories i loved. and not changed for the better necessarily i wanted them wary of strangers. i wanted them standoffish and cliquish, not meanly so, just-- just like "why bother hanging out with people outside the group? especially when they could eventually pose a threat and cant know or understand what we've been through". i wanted them to grow jaded. i mean, every kid's show involved kids going on adventures and usually fighting evil... like code lyoko n stuff. i wanted their alter ego lives to OVERSHADOW regular life entirely. i wanted them to prioritize it. i wanted them to slowly become more and more closed off and mature and unwilling to even SIT near their parents and their family. i wanted everyone to slowly steer clear from them in hallways because of their thousand-mile stare. i wanted them to jump at loud sounds and be vigilant, i wanted them to sleep over at each others houses CONSTANTLY and sleep in shifts and sit in companionable silence instead all i ever got was people who never changed. they never grow exceedingly secretive, they never get ptsd. they were always regular children, even PAST the point they should be regular children. and now im only FOUR FUCKING BOOKS IN, and im only like 20 pages into the book, and ALREADY theyre hinting towards it!!! already rachel's bulletin board has post-its about paranoia and war!!!!!! already!!! this is content ive been desperate for since basically FOREVER, since reading was A Thing I Could Do. and i denied myself this because of the fuckin covers!!!!!!!
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OH MY FUCKING GOD I FORGOT ABT THE PART WHERE LIKE RACHEL REALIZES THAT LIKE. SHES ONLY GETTING CLOSE TO MELISSA AGAIN TO GET SOMETHING FROM HER INSTEAD OF OUT OF GENUINE WORRY FOR HER FRIEND AND THE GUILT SHE FEELS AND AHHHHH HOLY SHIT IT WAS SO DAMN SAD BUT ALSO SO!!! FUCKIN NICE THAT THEY ACKNOWLEDGED IT!!!!!!!!! AND SO WELL WRITTEN TOO AND AHHH IT WAS SUCH A SAD BUT GOOD PART
this one goes out to the cool dude who requested i review book 2 as a whole *finger guns*
it was fucking phenomenal.
like. ok. you probs want more detail than that, but,
ok. jesus. where to even start. so, admittedly, it lost me a lil in the beginning. i mean, i understand!! it’s for children, and it’s written with the assumption that maybe you dont have access to the first book(which is great!! because children often DONT have control over which books they can access, so allowing them to benefit from your series with some VERY brief and honestly decently-crafted exposition is awesome, and framing it as each character telling their version and understanding of events is BRILLIANT to working towards characterizing everyone, and also making the same information palatable to repeat-audience, and also informing you of who knows what! so if they keep this format, as things go on and secrets are inevitably kept, it’ll become VERY interesting seeing the same situations from different perspectives, from people who hold entirely different puzzle pieces! so it’s all good!!!) but holy jesus mother of CHRIST ALMIGHTY does the recap fucking MURDER me each and every time!!! my adhd ass cannot Handle it and i start to skim because im a big weenie baby
but i can acknowledge that it is completely functionally sound, is solidly crafted, and lends itself well to a unique and interesting writing style. it isn’t badly made or poorly constructed in any sense, it’s just a Thing that happens not to click exceedingly well with my personal reading style
i really, really loved how much the book expanded on like… like what its like to be morphed. as in, mentally, that you have multiple consciousnesses(theres a fuckin scrabble word for ya lmao) that are not only vying for dominance, but also have murky boundaries. the cat and rachel are distinct, but when she morphs she becomes the cat AND rachel. almost like two bodies of water sitting next to each other have suddenly been merged, and the water can flow back and forth seemlessly, and it’s very hard to tell sometimes where one begins and the other ends, but they are inherently distinct(in a way)
or maybe even- like two ponds next to each other, and theres a small hole in the wall separating them. but the longer you stay like that, the more you force water through the crack in an effort to get control, the more you WIDEN THE HOLE, which eventually results in a melding that can’t be undone; i.e. tobias. his “pond” and the bird’s “pond” have mixed so thoroughly you could never hope to separate their consciousness. you can put droplets of blue and yellow food coloring in a glass, and MAYBE you could very carefully scoop them back out, but if you slowly stir it, the water will turn green and there’s no turning back
i also like the way animals and their emotions are represented… sort of. this happens more in book three, but like, occasionally there’ll be some statement about how animals just “dont have those feelings[mourning, grief, missing someone, intense sadness]” and i… ok, these books were written a while ago, and these are CHILDREN who might not have a strong enough grasp on their own feelings to entirely understand the animal’s feelings and how they’re different!! but we KNOW animals mourn. many species bury their dead. koko the gorilla spiraled into a depression when her baby died, and got better once she was told she was getting another baby… but then what she got WASNT HER ORIGINAL BABY, and she got angry, she wouldnt accept it, BECAUSE SHE THOUGHT THAT SOMEHOW WE HAD BROUGHT HER BABY BACK AND FIXED IT, AND SHE WOULD GET /HER/ BABY BACK(im going to cry btw?? im Big Baby and im going to cry?????) and i just… i know thats a fairly obvious case of a Smart Animal but i just refuse to believe that animals cant mourn. maybe they mourn differently, maybe it would feel different, i’ll accept that, and i’ll even accept “this specific species cannot feel xyz”, but i just refuse to accept “animals dont mourn” because you are telling me a Lie right to my Face
OK WELL IVE DONE ENOUGH TALKING AROUND THE ISSUE. TIME TO GET INTO THE ACTUAL MEAT OF THE STORY
SO. IT WAS INCREDIBLY FUCKING POWERFUL. like, it did everything it needed to and more to win my heart and convince me of just how high a caliber applegate was/is writing at. i mean, just… the nuance of the morality of the yeerks, the incredible lengths the chapmans go to to protect their daughter, how deeply melissa’s pain was and how brilliantly it was portrayed, the way rachel deftly comforted her friend in the only way that could truly keep her safe AND save her from her suffering even if only in the smallest of ways, the deeply scared and flawed and NOBEL rachel who knows what she must do and doesnt care how scared it makes her because she can do this. it isnt much but she can die silently, this is something she can do, she can die with the biggest FUCK YOU burning in her heart as she forces her mouth and her brain into complete silence, she is ready, good lord she will go down fighting even if it looks like silence because her defeat is the possibility of victory, because she knows this, because of melissa and her parents and rachel’s parents and because of tobias and jake’s brother and every single person who had to suffer through the feeling of their llved one slipping away and they dont know why this is happening, and because FUCK. VISSER. THREE.
the only POSSIBLE complaint i can truly lobby against the book is that i believe in rachel’s note to melissa, she says “your FATHER loves you”, which is true!! and it makes sense to highlight just how incredible it was that he was able to stand up to v3 just because of how much he loved her… but the mother fought back as well. she was weaker, but that doesnt make her fighting any less impressive because SHE TRIED TO CHOKE HERSELF TO DEATH
MELISSA’S MOTHER TRIED TO KILL HERSELF BEFORE SHE ALLOWED THE MONSTER CONTROLLING HER BODY EVEN A CHANCE TO HURT HER DAUGHTER
melissa’s mother fought against the yeerk in her brain and wrapped her own fingers around her own goddamn neck and squeezed with the intention of DYING. she loves her daughter so much she was ready to die, and he loves his daughter so much he’s prepared to LIVE- live through hell, live through being a traitor to humanity, ready to live in a box in the back of his own mind. they both love her more than words could ever even hope to express
ok well i’m done for now because i made myself cry and now my nose is all runny and gross??? so. yeah. i’ll add more thoughts if/when they come to me
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ANYWAY im gonna go eat a sugar cookie then maybe read book 4
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i know i was a little bit joke-y with them, but i just wanna say the lines about the female bird that was mistaken for tobias were poetic and beautiful and not at ALL what i was expecting. every time i read them they smack into me like a punch in the gut
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no. no! what??? bullshit, fuck you, FUCK YOU, fuck this fuck you fuck EVERYTHING
#alb#SHE WAS INNOCENT AND PURE AND THIS IS ILLEGAL AND I AM CALLING THE POLICE#YES ID LIKE TO REPORT AN AWFUL MURDERER HER NAME IS APPLEGATE#AND SHE MURDERED A BEAUTIFUL SMALL INNOCENT LITTLE LADY AND MUST BE STOPPED IMMEDIATELY
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wh no no no??????? no???????????????? no she cant
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YEAHYEAHYEAH UEAH YEAH YEAH GOOD SHIT THATS SOME GOOD SHIT HELL YEAH HELL YEAH YELL HEAH
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NO! NOOO I TAKE IT BACK TOBIAS UNDO IT!!!! DONT HAVE DONE IT NO
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HE DID IT HE DID IT OH MYGOD TOBIAS DID IT, HE DID IT!!!!!!!
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OH MY GOD OHHHHHHHH MY GOD HOLY SHIT
#alb#A BIRD WITH A LAZER IN ONE CLAW DRAGGING ITSELF ACROSS THE TOP OF A SPACESHIP WITH THE OTHER CLAW#IM SORRY THATS EQUAL PARTS HILARIOUS AND /NAIL-BITINGLY INTENSE/
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OH MY GOD OH MY GOD TOBIAS OH MY GOD
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OH MY GOD, RACHEL, BACK AT IT AGAIN AT THE KIRSPY MARTYDOM
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NO! NO! NO! SHUT YOUR MOUTH ITLL ALL BE FINE I LOVE YOU ITLL ALL BE OK
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