YMMV / The Elementalists

• Abandon Shipping: There are players who stop pursuing Beckett due to the sheer amount of screen time he has since Chapter 9, when they think he's a Creator's Pet who pushes out other love interests despite the latter group's relevance to the plot. The final straw was the revelation that he disabled the wards protecting the mirror dimension, putting countless lives in danger.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Beckett Harrington is the biggest example. Players pursuing him like him for being a Tsundere Love Interest who warms up to Eli, while many others hate him for being an Insufferable Genius who doesn't care about the other Pend Pals except for Eli, whom he's still condescending towards at times. Not helping matters is that of all the love interests, he has the most premium options that appear at almost every chapter, which comes at the expense of others (especially Aster), raising issues on Pixelberry's handling of love interests. One side defends him as a necessary means to make the series profitable. The other side hates him even more for being a Creator's Pet and considers Pixelberry's overt focus on him a betrayal of the app's title being Choices, which should imply giving players choices on which love interest to pursue.
  • Everett Merkseyer, the captain of the Thief team. Some players like him for congratulating Eli for their performance in Thief to the point that they want him Promoted to Love Interest. Others felt that he's too insignificant to matter, in addition to caring only about winning championships and treating Griffin badly during much of Book 1.
  • Katrina Harrington, Beckett's sister. On one hand, many players like her for her beauty, friendliness, and outgoing personality, in addition to being a Cool Teacher who provides an interactive way to teach her students magick. On the other hand, there are some players who think she's putting Beckett down, whether unintentionally or not, causing them to take his side, since some know how it feels to be the underachieving sibling.
  • Atlas has become this in Book 2 due to their increasingly hostile behavior, such as getting angry at Eli for wanting to know more about their mother instead of rescuing Gemma. One group believes that Atlas has a right to be upset and have negative feelings towards their mother given their Dark and Troubled Past and being alone for years. Another group believes that Atlas is behaving irrationally and that their anger directed towards Eli is unjustified. However, this is mitigated in the beginning of Book 2 Chapter 10, when they apologize to Eli.
• Broken Base: In Book 2, people are split on whether they should trust Kane or Alma while a third group believes that neither of them are trustworthy. Kane turning against Eli in Chapter 12, regardless of how much Eli has impressed him and Alma not appearing since Chapter 9 hasn't helped.
• Creator's Pet: Beckett Harrington, who receives a premium scene in just about every chapter despite being one of the most polarizing characters. It gets to the point where he has been called a black hole love interest, the kind of love interest the entire story revolves around at the expense of other characters (including Eli) and even the story's plot.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Kane, dubbed "Powerful Wind Guy" by Eli, already has a strong fan base. Players are drawn to his sophisticated personality, view of his harmful antics as amusement, interest in Eli, and Eli's ability to impress him.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Tim, the non-diamond option familiar, who quickly became loved by the fans in spite (likely because of) the developers' attempts to bring him down as a pet.
  • Professors Kontos, Englund, and Swan are all beloved by the fandom for being kind and supportive teachers to their students who care for their safety. Swan in particular is popular for caring about Eli's well-being, teaching them more about their powers and sun-attunement, and fighting the shadow monsters.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Fans often refer to Beckett as "Bucket" in a disparaging manner since Zeph misread his name that way in Book 1 Chapter 14.
  • Atlas has come to be nicknamed "Atlas Uchiha" due to their personality being similar to that of Sasuke Uchiha from the Naruto franchise.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Kane wears a colorful suit, a top hat, and an evil-looking mustache that make him look like a stereotypical Dastardly Whiplash.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The scene where Eli shares their Daydream Potion at a Rave has lead to several jokes that they were technically dealing drugs.
  • The Elk Monster from It Lives Beneath making an appearance in Chapter 18. Jokes have ranged from players telling the monster that it's in the wrong book, to telling Raife that they've killed plenty of Elk Monsters already.
  • Zeph's nicknames for Beckett when he was having a sugar rush, with "Bucket" being the most popular.
  • Atlas saying "Shit" when they break into Dean Swan's office and presumably drop something. It was later changed to "Shoot".
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Just how powerful Raife is. It was already established that he was an elusive psychopath who murdered hundreds of twins. As soon as Eli and their friends confront him in Chapter 17, he murders Dean Goeffe right in front of them to show off how powerful he is. In a fight where he is outnumbered six to one...he wins. The writers don't hold back on how he brutally attacks your friends.
  • In Book 2, Chapter 14, Kane makes an illusion of Atlas murdering Eli's love interest at Raife's lab.
• The Scrappy: Many players dislike Raife Highmore for being a bland villain and his desire for attunement to all elements a weak motive. Even after Eli and Atlas find out about his plans to restore blood magick to its former glory and find a way to resurrect the dead, players think it should've been expanded upon in Book 1.
• Tear Jerker: Atlas's whole backstory. They watched Raife kill their foster parents and spend years fending for themself. In one particular moment in Book 2, Chapter 5, Atlas goes on an angry tirade against their and Eli's birth mother, Theia, after finding out that she was still alive. Atlas expresses how they believe that Theia abandoned her children and let them spend 18 years thinking she was dead. It gets to the point that they become so angry that they temporarily lose control of their magick. It hits home for anyone who was adopted and wonders why they aren't with their biological parents.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Many players felt that Aster is often sidelined, ruining her potential as a character because of her visions hinting at important things to come and her perspective on the setting as a wood nymph. A noticeable example is when she tried her branching ability to find Zeph, but was immediately taken out of commission by Raife, causing some to wonder if she even knew who he was.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Fans expected the series to have four books, one for each year at Penderghast, and point out that the reason the series ended at Year 2 is that the writers wrote themselves into a corner after they killed off Raife too early, noting that they should have had Raife's final defeat occur in Eli's senior year.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Beckett gets hit by this twice.
  • In Book 1, when confronted by the other Pend Pals for unintentionally unleashing the shadow monsters on Penderghast, Beckett tries to rationalize trying to protect Eli from harm, yet didn't mention other people in Penderghast who have become collateral damage, causing Shreya to call him out for excluding the other Pend Pals and not being a true friend.
  • This happens again in Book 2, when his overachieving sister Katrina becomes a teacher in Penderghast, which triggers his inferiority complex. At the same time, he made no attempt to change his hostile tone towards Katrina on his own. An example is in Chapter 6, when Katrina puts out a fire in the classroom that Beckett started in the first place because he wanted to show off, and he once again becomes upset with her.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Many readers playing as Male!Eli have complained about the premium outfits in Book 2, unlike the many dresses for Female!Eli in comparison. Some of the getups are very tacky, others don’t look special. The worst offender was the gala suit, where Eli doesn’t even get the black suit as a default option.