#the ellimist chronicles

[aniquotes]

"'Okay, then answer this, Ellimist: Did I... did I make a difference? My life, and my... my death... was I worth it? Did my life really matter?'

'Yes. You were brave. You were strong. You were good. You mattered.'

'Yeah. Okay, then. Okay, then.'

A small strand of space-time went dark and coiled into nothingness."

- The Ellimist Chronicles (Ellimist), pg. 200 (by K.A. Applegate)

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Animorphs audiobooks — how did they choose the Chronicles narrators?

Look. I LOVE how Scott Brick reads The Ellimist Chronicles — he might be my favorite narrator yet. He comes off as super condescending but with a hint of melancholy. Like he really is this infinite cosmic gamerboy wearily explaining the universe to a stupid little human.

But why the hell is MacLeod Andrews (who normally voices Jake) narrating The Andalite Chronicles? Like, I can appreciate not wanting to cast an entirely new voice for Elfangor, but Adam Verner (who voices Ax) is RIGHT THERE! Or you use Michael Crouch (who voices Tobias) if there's a schedule conflict. Why would you recast the guy who does Jake as Elfangor? Why would you then NOT do that for the other Chronicles?

Because I could see an interesting argument for having Jake's voice narrate Elfangor's story, IF we then got Tobias's voice narrating Dak and Aldrea's story, then Rachel's voice narrating Toomin's story, then Marco's voice narrating Edriss's story. This still begs the question of why Jake and not Ax, but at least that way it'd be consistent.

[andalitean]

🚶‍♀️

[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?

[tentacleteapot]

will there ever be a fictional expletive better than "deep worms", from the Ellimist Chronicles? probably not.

[ellimisms]

LISTENNNNNNNNNN I just think Father is a cool villain and one of the few villains from Animorphs that Actually Scared Me. Like we all know why visser three is a ridiculous over-the-top saturday-morning-cartoon villain; he wasn't *allowed* to be too scary and still have it be a kids book. Crayak is supposed to be terrifying, but honestly, he's just... meh. I didn't really care about him for a while, and then I just disliked him because he's annoying. but FATHER??? HOO BOY. Just the idea of a planet-spanning intelligence, stealing people's brains and intelligence and thoughts and memories and also attatching them to tendrils underwater like a fucked up graveyard???? the mental imagery of that planet????? GOD. i love father if you couldnt tell

[guavajaws]

I just finished reading the Ellimist Chronicles and honestly this book is absolutely bonkers

You mean to tell me that the narrator is ACTUALLY an alien gamer bird who had to watch his entire species get wiped out then play video games with a sentient water moon for all of eternity only to finally beat him because he plays shit music- THEN ABSORB EVERY MIND HE’S CAPTURED AND??? Somehow get integrated into the fabric of space and time itself and become god??

What even IS this book

[i-assign-you-animorphs]

Species: Pemalites

This is a meteorite that has fallen from a clearly superior part of the galaxy.

[andalight]

Can't wait to find out that alien life is nothing like we thought it would be.

[andalitean]

the ellimist being a gamer and not even a good one is killing me WHAT IS THIS BOOK.

[ramonahblog]

I need to clarify that when OP says loser gamer they don’t (just?) mean uncool. They mean the giant winged* creature sucks at gaming so much, he was well-known for never winning from his own people. He always lost. Like that is a character trait. He is garbarge at gaming. 

That aside, OP is right. Why are we not trying to explain the Ellimist when describing how weird the series is? 

*I pictured the Ellimist more as a giant pigeon.

I just think it's kind of funny that when people try to describe how weird the Animorphs series is they go with things like "the time they killed Hitler in an alternate timeline" like that gag doesn't have it's own tvtropes page, and not "a giant butterfly who is a loser gamer bro becomes the sole surviving member of his species, absorbs the memories of half a galaxy and becomes a godlike megacyborg, then gets sucked into a black hole where he becomes even more godlike and can see the fabric of reality itself, and he's just a minor recurring character."

(I am slowly finishing the series after setting it aside for 20 years and I just got to the Ellimist Chronicles)

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

What are some instances of retconning in animorphs that you have noticed? (aside from the first book)

Honestly, Animorphs is not bad. Compared to Sherlock Holmes or Percy Jackson, there's hardly any retconning at all. Compared to series like Dune or X-Men that built in-story retcon mechanisms because of the infinite overlapping retcons, Animorphs is practically airtight. Not Harry Potter or Mistborn airtight, sure, but better than any other multi-authored 20+ book series I know.

However, there are some. Ax's mention in #8 of occasional hork-bajir wars doesn't fit with Hork-Bajir Chronicles showing they have no concept of violence before andalites arrive. Cassie's line about "my niece" in #37 is not in line with her saying her parents are her only family in #49. Rachel suspects at times that Jordan's a controller (#12, #22) but in #49 Jordan's dismissed as even a potential threat.

And then there's the absolute clusterfuck of Tobias's parentage.

In #3, he says "my parents died." In #13, it's "both my folks left a long time ago." In Andalite Chronicles, when Elfangor asks about Loren: "She disappeared. When I was just little... I guess she died." In #23, he says "both my parents are dead." But also DeGroot says "Your father... who died? That may not have been your real father" implying a stepfather we never meet. After Elfangor's will it kinda falls into place, but even then...

Elfangor says he and Loren were ~14 mentally, ~18 physically, when they got to Earth, and that "when she was ready by human standards, I married her." He mentions getting multiple college degrees, but that it's only "three years later" that the Ellimist abducts him back to space. No one apparently notices he was gone — Ax has no idea Elfangor lived on Earth, and didn't notice him missing (#8), so... he time-traveled back and lived those three years twice? And no one noticed him being seven years older because... Ellimist fuckery? There's mention of Loren dating someone else after Al's "death", so at least the random step-dad is consistent. But Loren doesn't mention him in #49, so I guess she got remarried and rewidowed between Tobias's birth and his third birthday, and then she forgot him.

Anywhoo, it kind of lines up sorta if you squint, but I'm 99.9% sure that there was some degree of retcon somewhere in there.

[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.

[rozrae7030]

My wonderful gf @cairavende is finally rereading the Ellimist Chronicles, so here's a summary I wrote of that book from memory that makes me giggle every time

This boi a lizardbird gamer who got pussy juices spritzed in his face and was looking forward to/anxious about seeing her later before his home crystal (which stayed aloft above a volcanic planet due to the continuuous flapping of shifts of his species) was destroyed by aliens who thought the game VODs they broadcast were really actually this species monstrously playing god with lesser races, who escaped only to crash land on a water planet dominated by a single jellyfish creature (named Father) that assimilated its prey by jacking a tentacle into their brains and playing with them in a mindscape He controls, and Toomin endures that torture for millennia and grows and learns and eventually overpowers Father and uses the accumulated resources and knowledge of the millenia of crash lands and the original inhabitants to assimilate himself and the billions of minds in his head into a swarm of biotech spaceships and play god in the universe for a long time, eventually creating a Sim of himself to be a proto-andalite for a lifetime and then play personal god to them during their species infancy until his evil mirror Crayak, another Ascended Gamer, started destroying the universe. Their fights grew more destructive until his core fell into a black hole while part of the swarm was in realspace and part was in z-space, causing him to Ascend further into a truly omnipotent being outside of spce and time and fixed things until Crayak grokked the jig and pulled the same thing and now they play chess with teenage Californians and space slugs

[thekinglemingle]

My favourite bit of Skrit Na lore is that they have existed as a species and a culture longer than God has been God

Even God doesn't know what their deal is

the skrit na are peak animorphs worldbuilding actually.

yes, the grays actually exist.

yes, they actually ride around in flying saucers.

yes, they actually abduct people. cows too.

yes, they actually dissect people and then put them back together and let them go. sometimes they put them in a zoo instead.

none of the other aliens know what their deal is. they have a larval stage where they look like giant cockroaches. one time they somehow obtained the most dangerous weapon in the entire universe and just threw it in their junk drawer next to a mustang convertible and a case of dr pepper. they are directly in the middle of a galactic war and have survived untouched because neither side cares enough about them. i don't think any of the main cast besides ax even know they exist?

every sci-fi series should do this. this is awesome.

[tobiasmasonpark]

Reading the chronicles books from Animorphs