[identity profile] buffyangellvr23.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] animorphslj
I don't think I got him yet. We only saw a little of him in book one, plus the special books had him. Andalite Chronicles especially. I sometimes wish the group had gotten a chance to know him better, that he'd been around longer, and not just because of Tobias.

Date: 2010-10-18 06:18 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mattiris.livejournal.com
I love Elfangor so much. He may just be my favourite literary character ever.

More in-depth analysis when I'm not half-asleep.

Date: 2010-10-18 04:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] isteillia.livejournal.com
elfangor was my hero as a kid. he was just and patient, but in the end, he was only "human". He ran from the fight because he was tired of the politics, the fighting. he wanted a life of his own, and he reached out and took it, but he realized he had a duty and went back to it when he was needed.

He had his flaws, but it made him more endearing to me. I do think that in Andalite society he would have been labeled as odd or worse for finding a human attractive- Not really sure how Andalite society handles xenophilia, really.

I wish we had seen more of him, and that tobias had been given a chance to know him as his dad. I bet Elfangor would have been the best dad ever.

Date: 2010-10-18 08:48 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] anijen21.livejournal.com
I think we all love Elfangor a lot because we are supposed to love Elfangor a lot. Before the Andalite Chronicles, he's really just kind of that deified mentor figure, and what's so effective about that first book is how well they present him that way.

I mean, the first book follows the whole Hero's Journey pretty closely, but what is so FUCKED UP and amazing about it is how perverted and castrated it is. Luke got Obi-Wan through two acts of a three-act movie. Harry got Dumbledore for six of seven books. How long did the kids get Elfangor?

All of five minutes.

I love that decision, making them figure out almost EVERYTHING on their own, because it gave them such a degree of agency and there was this whole level of "do we really HAVE to be doing this?" The fact that the choice to fight in the war was entirely theirs, and at no point were they trying to earn the love/approval of some grizzled, experienced father-figure just made the whole series that much more tragic and immediate. I love AppleGrant for kind of subverting children's lit conventions like that.

Anyway, that was in the first book. In The Andalite Chronicles, which is still my favorite book in the series, he becomes a lot more than some saintlike god figure and he actually gets one of the most well done character arcs of all the secondary characters in the whole series. He starts off as kind of a petulant, immature, idealistic twerp and ends up an experienced adult who's capable of seeing just how complicated and painful things like great success and acclaim can be. And yeah, whose heart wasn't broken by the last thirty pages in that book? (which, honestly, I cannot think of another unique 30 pages in any book I like better)

but I do want to mention something.

and I don't know if now or the Ellimist's character discussion is the right time to bring it up

but does anyone else think the Ellimist totally coerced Elfangor into going back into the war? Like, no ambiguity about it, the Ellimist lied, used, and forced Elfangor back into the war?

Because here's the way I see it: Ellimist may have access to more information than any other being, and a more than fair ability to manipulate it, but that doesn't mean he's serving some higher "destiny" or whatever. Most of the things he changes would have stayed the same without his influence.

The Ellimist CHOSE Elfangor. Maybe because he got involved in the Time Matrix bullshit, maybe because he liked the way he looked, idk. But Elfangor's destiny was not prewritten at all before the Ellimist got involved.

So when the Ellimist comes down and says "you're not supposed to be here, this isn't where you belong, you need to be somewhere else," it was pretty much a LIE, right? I mean, if that's true, that's basically giving the Ellimist license to write the history and fates of purely sapient beings--something the Christian God can't even do. And we learn from him in The Ellimist Chronicles that he DOESN'T know a lot, including what happens after death and whether or not he made mostly right or mostly wrong decisions.

I mean, I'm sure this isn't a very profound conclusion, but the fact that Elfangor chose to go with him was sort of like someone choosing to go with a conman. The Ellimist knew Elfangor's weakness--his sense of duty--and played to that. He also withheld very important information until Elfangor had agreed to go with him. If Elfangor actually had agency, full information, and any kind of power at all in that situation, who else would be willing to bet he'd have said "no"?

I don't know. tl;dr, the Ellimist is a dick.

Date: 2010-10-19 12:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tobiahawk.livejournal.com
I love Elfangor, not because he was a "perfect" hero, but because he was set up to be one and then wasn't--he knew it, but very few other people did. I think at the beginning of the Andalite Chronicles--which awesomely ended with a mediocre artish Elfangor losing a tail fight--we can see a lot of similarities between Ax and Elfangor--the same high-reaching dreams, he unspoken fear that they are out of reach, the idealism. The main difference, IMO, seems to be that Elfangor is more flexible than Ax--he fairly quickly accepts Loren as a (near) equal to example, while Ax generally remains somewhat aloof to humans--even the Animorphs--throughout most of the series. I have no doubt that some of this difference was for purely plot reasons, but it's still interesting to see the difference. In some ways, I think Ax's inflexibility protected him from the guilt Elfangor faced in that it kept him from "running away"--both literally and figuratively--as much as Elfangor did. And my g-d, Elfangor must have been saddled with guilt--guilt for leaving Loren and her son, guilt for helping (unwittingly) in Alloran's infestation, guilt over lying and being called a hero because of it, guilt over running from war, etc. (On a semi-related note, I always loved that he thought of Arboran as becoming the hero he "always wanted to be", while he doesn't see himself as much of a hero at all), etc. On the other hand, I think his happiness when he was human and/or with Loren greatly surpasses any degree of happiness we see in Ax over the series.

Does anyone else wonder about Elfangor's reliability as a narrator in the AC? Is it possible he's using the hirac delest as a way to relive his guilt before dying, a last confession of sorts? To have maintained the status he did as a warrior and legend, he must have done more great things than ram the Bladeship, yet he really doesn't seem to care about the positives, and seems to see the only positives as his wife and don, presumably the reason he kept fighting so hard to protect earth. And improbably or no, I thought it was only fair that he recognized Tobias in his final moments as who he was. I wonder if he had doubts about giving his child to a life as a warrior (which he disliked in the end), or if he just saw it as a way for Tobias to fulfill his duty as an Andalite.

I wonder if Ax would have respected Elfangor nearly as much had he heard the hirac delest, in all its imperfection.

Finally, the just awesome: Elfangor swiping at Visser 3 as Elfangor lays dying? Bad ass. The dying comfort Elfangor left Tobias in his DNA? Awesome. The letter he left Tobias? Also awesome. Elfangor/Loren? An amazing ship, second only to R/T for me--genuine and believably evolving. I think how much Elfangor cared about Tobias--a son he met only at his deathbed and only for an instant really shown through--and it was Elfangor's affection, not his heroism, that defined him for me.

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