#the ellimist

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Why do you think Rachel is the one the Ellimist and Crayak seemed to hone in on?

I think it's down to her being the most variable, and the most able to justify to herself when she does bad things. If there's anyone who could choose to work for Crayak because they've rationalized the reasons it's bad but necessary, I think it'd be her.

To be clear: Marco and Ax especially cross tons of ethical lines that Rachel would never. But Marco knows where the line is, knows what is right... he just chooses to work around it sometimes, based on what's expedient. Marco's the guy whose first impulse is ethical, who then rationalizes himself into being ruthless. Ax doesn't have that strong a gut-level moral compass, but he does have loyalty. In spades. For Ax, the idea of abandoning his team and striking out on his own is anathema, and he would never entertain a possibility of killing Jake for the good of humanity.

Rachel, on the other hand...

Rachel is most ethical in her second thoughts. Her first impulse often misleads her.

She's angry on behalf of the victims, to the point of wanting to annihilate every yeerk alive to get revenge for them.

She's sensitive to injustice, but her definition of "injustice" can be distorted from context to context.

When Jake and Cassie are around, she's ride-or-die for them. When they're not around, she tends to get tunnel vision and lose sight of what they're fighting for.

She's willing to do the hard thing for the good of the team — as #26 proves, that includes killing Jake.

So. She obviously chooses not to take Crayak's offer. But I think that if there was an Animorph who could justify killing Jake and selling out the team because it's the only way to save humanity, then I think it'd be her.

[lyrrical]

[brothermouse-skeleton]

Yeah, about your boyfriend? Well you know how he's been unwanted and ostracized by everyone who ought to have cared about him? Wellllll he also just watched his secret alien dad die right before his alien dad gave him the morphing power an- you know what, actually, long story short: he's a bird now. He's just...stuck like that. Yeah I mean he's stuck stuck. We might be able to fix him if we got a space goose from the edge of time and space involved but, honestly? I wouldn't hold my breath.

[dr-reids-fidget-toy]

animorphs quotes that. i... those poor kids

x x x x x

Edit: I made an animorphs gimmick blog: @i-assign-you-animorphs

[kooldewd123]

tobias gives off such intense egg vibes that the ellimist can't stop himself from fucking with him. god himself shows up to give tobias a divine quest and decides to throw in a solid dose of dysphoria along the way.

[boylied]

Animorphs Book Club- The Stranger

I’m gonna be honest, off the top of my head, I do not remember a single thing about this book. Rachel’s my fave, as always, so I know I’ll enjoy it. But which one is this? No idea. So let’s get into it.

I appreciate the recap being less than a page long.

I don’t think about Rachel’s dad that often, probably because he’s mostly absent. But he really does have a major impact on Rachel. She openly admits how alike they are, and it’s the first time she gives positive connotations to her own skills and qualities. (See my last report on a Rachel book where she compares herself to Cassie). But when comparing herself to her dad, she strives to be like him and to do things that he would approve of. (Also, a news anchor, olympic level ex gymnast? Who gave Rachel her genetics? As a kid, I just Knew he’s hot. But as an adult? He gives up custody of his kids and moves to a different city. He’s a fuckboy. And we all deserve better).

More ecoterrorism.

“It’s not about cheap thrills. It’s about feeling like I am involved in something very important.” This is what Rachel will cling to for the rest of the series (her life). No matter what she does, what acts she commits, no matter how grey they become. She’s on the good guy team, so she must be good. Right?

Oh wait, now I remember the plot. This is them deciding after having one and a half good plans that they’re ready to try and destroy the yeerk kandrona. This was also a plot point in the board game I believe. I loved that game.

I think I forget about Rachel’s home life from time to time. But eldest daughter of divorced parents, lives with the emotionally distant one and resembles the absent parent? She was me. Of course I didn’t want to think about her home life. It was my home life. And I read these books to Not think about my home life.

“I just left. Let him feel what it’s like” okay girl.

I take it back, he’s worse than a fuckboy. He’s moving away from his daughters to a different state. And because he’s afraid of being lonely, he asks his 13 year old daughter to decide to move with him. He doesn’t give up the new job to stay more in his daughters’ lives. He doesn’t go to court to get an official ruling (although let’s be honest, he could never beat Naomi in court). He puts it on Rachel to decide. He tells her about a possible big time gymnastics opportunity, and about all the fun sports games and activities they could go on together. He’d be a terrible parent. He just wants his friend to go with him. But she’s not his friend, she’s his daughter.

On reread, I think this is the beginning of Rachel’s downward spiral. The way she considers a normal life for an hour, but then immediately feels guilty by comparing herself to Tobias. She buries herself further by doubling down on the idea that she never gives up a fight. She had plenty of things in her life, but she’s just decided that she’ll give up anything and everything for the fight. And she will continue down this path until she’s killed by a polar bear morph.

Rachel’s instinct is to run and hug Tobias because for the first time she can. And Tobias’s first instinct is to cream and try to fly away. I’m crying and laughing at the same time.

Also, the kids meet god. Marco cracks jokes, and Rachel yells at him.

And now I’m stressing that they just demorphed to HUMAN in front of a cafeteria full of controllers. Even if we suspend disbelief and consider that all of the controllers missed it and thought they morphed INTO human form- is no one suspicious that one of the bandits remained andante while the others morphed? And does no one recognize these human children? 

Is this the first time Rachel’s lost control and gave into the blood lust? She blames it on being new to the grizzly morph, but she admits that she mixed the grizzly anger with her own. The parallels to beginner drug use are eerie. And for his part, Jake helps bring her back to herself, but he immediately admits that the grizzly -that Rachel using the grizzly- saved their lives. Can we count this as foreshadowing score- 5?

This book does a really good job of using the juxtaposition of the kids’ normal lives against their animorph problems. Having to go to school and raise my siblings had me walking in a daze. This shit is zombifying.

Can confirm that Keanu Reeves was very cute in 1997.

“I wasn’t brave. I was just blind.” Very symbolic. As Rachel slips deeper into warrior mode, she looks less and less. She thinks less because looking inward starts to scare her. She starts feeling less because it makes her job harder. 

They also made god laugh.

This was a beautiful book. It’s nice to see Rachel when she still has her grip on her humanity. She loves her parents. She’s tough and strong and she takes pride in that. And for a brief moment, she considered letting herself be taken care of. But she knows that’s not who she is. Also, I love the old pause the mission to have the characters stand in the elevator gag.

[kinsey3furry300]

Are we just never going to talk about that time in the 7th animorphs book, during the introduction of the Ellimist, which is a serious scene and a big fucking deal, when Rachel runs at Tobias to hug him because she's not seen his human form in ages, startling him, and he panics and so just starts flapping his arms like a bird in an attempt to get away.

Like... I need fanart of this specific scene.

[fanonical]

jake: yeah, turns out god is real jake: his name's the ellimist and he's a HUGE DICK

[beigetiger]

So sorry for animorph-posting so much tonight, but. Sometimes I think about the Ellimist.

How they were born so happy and carefree, just hanging out with their friends and being a bit of a loser. How they were eventually all driven from their home planet by an alien species who misinterpreted one of their first calls to space and how Ellimist had to sober up so fast because of it.

The way in which their curiosity ended up getting their entire species killed, how the SINGULAR ENTITY that killed them all and absorbed them kept Ellimist around to taunt, them, mock them with the visages of their friends and family and people who trusted them, keeping them around to play games they would never win in exchange for their freedom. How they stay there for eons. How they believe they'll stay there forever.

How the way they eventually win their freedom is learning to play music. Those weird, bizarre sounds that their opponent seems to be so good at. How they learn to recognize those sounds and play them, over many eons. Judged by the personalities of the creatures that the entity absorbed. How, when they win, they finally absorb that creature and become the sum of everything. Everything that was themself, the creature, their whole species, and the countless other species and individuals who fell pray to that same fate, were just a little too curious about that light in the ocean planet.

How the Ellimist becomes the god that got their species killed. Both in the sense of the being that alters the course of other species to their whims, the interpretation of the message that got their home planet attacked and them pushed out. And they become the god that personally murdered, consumed, every last one of them. That kept them prisoner for who even knows how long, because even god does not. They will be haunted by the personalities of those people forever, even though those people are no longer people, just other aspects of their mind. A being of infinite pieces, like an impossibly large stained-glass window. A true god.

The Ellimist is a kind and loving god. They've stopped wars. Helped countless species. But even kind and loving gods make sacrifices. Even kind and loving gods have visions of a future that not everyone fits into. Even a kind and loving god will let individuals, sometimes millions, if not billions of individuals, slip through the cracks to allow for what they see as a brighter future. The Ellimist is a kind and loving god, but they are still a god, and sometimes you have to grit your teeth and refuse to listen to their infinite wisdom, for their infinite wisdom does not have the prosperity of you or your family or your whole species in mind.

The Ellimist is a kind and loving god, but underneath it all, buried fathoms beneath the surface of that dark ocean planet, is a happy carefree loser who just wanted to hang out with their friends and play games.

[pickapok]

All these Animorphs posts across my dash just got me thinking about how the whole conflict across the series is essentially the result of two artifical elder god gamers playing a 4X strategy game on a cosmic scale with real lives and civilizations at stake.

And that's kind of fucked up.

[thelesbianthespianposts]

absolutely love that in book 26 the ellimist asks them to be his champions in stopping the genocide of an entire alien race and then they meet the aliens they’re protecting and they instantly have second thoughts

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Animorphs #7: The Stranger thoughts (pt. 1):

Rachel's family dynamics are agonizingly well-wrought. Naomi is doing ALL the hard work of parenting, forced to play the bad guy over and over, while Dan gets to drop in just long enough to treat his girls to fun nights out before he fucks off again. Jordan's old enough to see through Dan's bullshit and having none of it. Rachel wants to believe in her dad, and knows her mom puts too much on her. Sara just wants everyone to get along. It's such a perfect constellation of family mess, which KAA takes the time to build in the background of a sci fi adventure story.

Audiobook thought — Emily Ellet has my favorite voice for Marco. She gives him this brightly sarcastic, almost manic edge to everything he says, so that he sounds half-joking, half-pissed off on almost every line. I also like how she voices the Ellimist sounding gentle and tired and just a little bit condescending.

"He [The Ellimist] was humanoid. Two arms, two legs, a head where a human head would be. His skin was glowing blue, as if he were a lightbulb that had been painted over so that light still shone from him. He seemed like an old man, but with a force of energy that was definitely not frail" (p. 69). Okay, you know what, I take back every mean thing I've ever said about Toomin's AniTV appearance. Turns out "normal human guy who looks like a blue-painted lightbulb" is at least book accurate, even if it does look dumb as hell.

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

[joemerl]

No, do not just wave that issue away. I want to see them explain Tobias' situation to an Andalite.

Andalite: <You humans found a way to undo the two-hour time limit?!>

Animorphs: Um, no. The Ellimist did that. The second time that we met him.

Andalite:

[brothermouse-skeleton]

"God's a gamer, but he's kinda trash at it." K. A. Applegate, The Ellimist Chronicles, circa 2000 A.D.

[tentacleteapot]

I should have the Ellimist’s job, I would be amazing at fucking around and just sort of placidly waiting for everybody else to find out

[jesperr-fahey]

been on a bit of a lull in my animorphs reading journey because i'm on the ellimist chronicles right now and i just don't.. like him? like the book is fine, there's some interesting scifi world building with his species and their home planet and all that, but i simply do not vibe with him as a character and i don't really care about his backstory.. i already didn't really like him in the main series, but i honestly think he was more interesting as a mysterious seemingly all powerful figure!! i think explaining him as a Guy takes away from all that

idk, just curious if other animorphs fans have different opinions- does anyone actually like the ellimist? what are your thoughts on this book?