#Andalite Chronicles

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

AU: what if Elfangor is trapped in Taxxon morph, not Arbron?

I don't know how to get out of this one without a total party kill (capture? total planet kill?) because I feel like Arbron would never give some random humans morphing power in Elfangor's shoes. Anyone else have ideas?

[praxcrown5]

More (old) Animorphs fanart. I was going through an art phase where I was combining traditionally colored art with digital backgrounds. Looking back on it 10+ years later, it's cringe...

In hindsight, I should have done the mortrons traditionally. I'm proud of the patchwork sky, tho...

[foolishskull]

war-prince alloran was like my first ever book crush idk what that says about me. anyway this book changed my life

[kooldewd123]

I decided to swap the location of the Hork-Bajir Chronicles and the Andalite Chronicles on my reread and I really feel like these positions make a lot more sense than release order.

Hork-Bajir Chronicles: Comes right after the introduction of Jara and Ket, so we get the Hork-Bajir backstory at the same time as our Hork-Bajir characters. Introducing Toby at this point right after the establishment of the colony shows immediate growth and hope for the Hork-Bajir. The name "Esplin 9466" works much better as a twist reveal here than it does in 16, not that it's a super surprising twist here, either. Placing this one first means that the first three Chronicles are in chronological order, so we get the backstory of the Andalite-Yeerk war in stages as the story progresses.

Andalite Chronicles: I'll be honest, I always thought it was weird that this one came so early. The backstory of the Andalite prince that gave them their morphing powers feels like it should be more of a centerpiece. Putting it right after the David trilogy seems like a much better spot to put it in to me, since it's a good turning point in the series. And then it's next to 23 (Before or after, your pick. I've seen opinions either way) so we get the big reveal at roughly the same as Tobias. It's not like there's any sort of dramatic irony that ever comes from the audience being aware of the twist before Tobias, so pushing it back makes it feel like less of a lingering plot thread.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

He technically doesn't succeed, but he tries to kill 1000s of noncombattant yeerks over the taxxon homeworld. Which I think counts as (attempted) genocide.

the weird schrödinger's emotion that is "that character death was narratively satisfying and emotionally impactful and ultimately the best way to handle their character arc" simultaneously with "noooo but I wanted them to live :( :( :("

[mistynwindy]

I'm gonna repost a couple of things from insta for now then I'll be posting things both there and here!

[emeraldmew]

Huh. Something I realized during this readthrough is that as bad as Taxxons and their uncontrollable hunger seem to us, they must seem significantly worse to a species of herbivores.

Andalites aversion to Taxxons and insistence that they're evil is probably at least partially fueled by their diets.

[imperfectskeleton]

I’ve started on my animorphs read (got a whole heap of notes on the first three chapters somebody help me) and I was thinking about how it’s neat that visser three is the one to say elfangor’s name but also. <an honour to meet you>

like probably nobody else knows this isn’t their first meeting because of Chapman’s apparent memory wipe. And like wow, this is a big moment. Their first face-to-face meeting since the alternate universe.

Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul, decorated by the Andalite military, mortally wounded and the last survivor of the ambush on his dome ship. A hero so big that nobody will ever hear of his crimes, who just wanted to do things right.

And he’s facing Visser Three, who nobody has fought and survived.

Whose face he has personally been spitting in - as well as a creature without a mouth can - since he was just a subvisser in a hork-Bajir body.

Whose hands he played into better than the visser could ever have hoped, allowing this abomination - an andalite controlled by a yeerk - to be created.

And he knows he has to die. There’s nothing he can do, but he makes his ship fire, one last time - not on alloran though, he could never kill alloran, this is all his fault after all, but people have been freed before, and he’s just met the son he never even saw and he needs what he tells these human children to matter.

So he shows them how to fight, how to be brave, as one of the biggest moments in the war against the Yeerks happens in an abandoned construction site on Earth, with five human children as witnesses. Elfangor probably isn’t arrogant enough to think he’s a big moment, but to the yeerks, to the andalites, to the animorphs, he is. So really, of course, the biggest moment in the war was before visser three landed and showed the animorphs what elfangor meant. It was when a dying alien crash-landed in front of a bunch of mall rats who should’ve taken the long way home.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Elfangor: Aw sweet, my wife's pregnant! Life is looking u--

Ellimist: Yoink.

My favorite part of Animorphs is how Elfangor literally never has a good day ever.

[jus-kira]

Axilimi

finished😋

His spots was not originally gonna glow up but when I edited it, it just sort of did it on it's own so I kept it!

[twenty-of-your-minutes]

Arrives to the fandom 20 years late with Starbucks

Most of the stuff on this blog is placeholders for the time being but my Animorphs autism has grown to require its own place to post. Should have some art and fanfic up in the near future

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Andalite Chronicles thoughts (pt. 3):

Elfangor might think that his mistake is disobeying Alloran, but IMHO his real mistake is underestimating "primitive aliens". He confidently tells Loren that there's no way Chapman can possibly fly the Jahar — and next thing he knows, Chapman is landing the Jahar on the taxxon world. He assumes that the taxxons are mindless when not yeerk-controlled — and the taxxon rebellion catches him flat-footed. He doesn't ask Loren for help, assuming she's too primitive to help — and then she explains the Time Matrix better than he can.

Do we ever see a human character morph a taxxon? I don't think so. New theory: andalites are uniquely bad at controlling taxxon morph, because they're so unused to tasting things and the idea of food being a source of pleasure in its own right. Tobias is out of practice with taste, but we know that Tobias does unusually well at controlling taxxon morph compared to Ax, and compared to the three andalites here. So maybe it wouldn't be so bad if Rachel or someone had morphed a taxxon after all.

Interesting that Esplin 9466 gets promoted partially because he recognizes an andalite in morph when no one else can. Setup for him having that bias for the entire rest of the war, methinks.

Related thought: I'd love to see a world where Arbron gets ahold of the Time Matrix. He's probably try to use it to change the taxxons' evolution so that their metabolism isn't such a mess, which could go really badly or really well depending on if he's really as good at xenobiology as Elfangor says he is.

Animorphs books can be read here | Book Club schedule is here

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[lilacnothlit]

Ever saddle your human girlfriend with the magic fingernails and ride towards the intersection of the memories of three planets? Not yet? Hm. Ah, well, I hope the story has the happy ending they deserve.

(His tail says "tooth," his head "music" and his heart "grotesque.")

[bluefox4]

And yet, I saw that some part of my own time line still intersected her own. I still touched her future in some way. My line and hers converged, and then from those two lines came a new line, just emerging, just beginning to grow. <What does it mean?> I asked the Ellimist. YOU HAVE A SON, ELFANGOR. In a flash I saw the truth. That's why Loren had gone to see her doctor. She would have come home and told me. We had a child! <No! You can't take me away! I have a son!> I cried. <That changes everything! Don't take me away!> p. 313

And this is why you should have waited for your wife. Or asked for more time. Or at least had her be present when making this choice.

Important lesson kids, if someone is demanding that you make a life changing choice and gives you no time to think about it, ask why? What do they have to gain if you don't have time to think about it? Especially if they are a powerful god.

[kooldewd123]

the weird matrix world that elfangor, loren, and visser three make together is one of my favorite concepts in all of sci-fi. i mean come on, it's just such a good story prompt on its own: three different aliens are trapped in a mish-mash dimension made from their own imperfect memories of home. it looks familiar on the surface, but when they give in to that familiarity, they find that some pieces of it are missing and other pieces are just wrong. there may or may not be some greater power responsible for creating this world, and the only chance they have at escaping it is through a time vortex at the world's center, which would displace them from home temporally as well as physically. you could make an entire story out of unraveling this place. it feels like an scp horror story and i mean that in the best way possible.