Taylor Lancaster

This section applies to the ILCOE.

Taylor Lancaster is Rick's spoiled younger brother and May's "rival". His current Pokémon are all super-clones obtained from his brother: Raitwo (Raichu), Mewtwo² (Mewtwo), Feraltwo (Feraligatr), Shiftwo (Shiftry) and Sciztwo (Scizor).

Appearance

Age (current)
12
Stature
Average.
Eyes
Blue.
Hair
Long and red, resembling that of the rival from Gold, Silver and Crystal.
Clothes
Mostly black or dark shirts, jeans and a black jacket.
Handedness
Right-handed.
Images
None, but again, just think of the G/S/C rival.

Pre-Story Biography

Rick and Taylor's parents died in a car crash when Rick was fifteen and Taylor was only two. Rick has been taking care of him since and is the only parent Taylor can remember. As Rick dearly loves his brother, he is usually willing to do anything for him, and Taylor is rather too used to getting everything he wants as a result. He has also grown up around exciting super-clone experiments and is unimpressed by ordinary Pokémon, finding them rather boring and weak compared to the ones his brother works with.

Taylor is eleven years old at the beginning of the story, having delayed his Pokémon journey out of lack of interest even after receiving a Charmander - eventually to be Mark's - for his tenth birthday. He first set out when he had finally persuaded his brother to give him a super-clone, Pikatwo, but thought of his Charmander as weak and did not want to use it. One day he battled a girl, May, whose Quilava managed to beat Pikatwo, and here he saw his chance to get rid of the Charmander he didn't want: he tricked her into trading her Quilava for his Charmander and then headed off before she had the chance to discover she'd been duped.

After this, Taylor continued to beg Rick for Pokémon as he continued on his journey and, ironically, ended up never using Quilava either.

Character Rambles

So. Taylor, The Quest for the Legends' take on the standard rival character. And it's... surprisingly well handled, actually, for something that's been in this fic since the beginning (which is of course not saying much, but hey). Right from the start I didn't want him to be some guy who's mean just because; instead, he has a skewed sense of right and wrong because Rick is a terrible parent and brought him up to think he could get whatever he wanted, without regard for other people.

Therefore, Taylor really isn't a bad person, per se. He does not delight in others' suffering. He isn't even really mean. He just goes about trying to achieve the things he wants using the means available to him: he wants a stronger Pokémon than his Charmander, so he tricks some girl into giving him a Quilava for it; he wants the Charmander back now that it's probably a Charmeleon, so he tries to frame May for stealing it from him; he wants to get to participate in the League with his super-clones, so he hypnotizes League officials so that they will let him; he wants to get more super-clones, so he gives Quilava back to May, without ever really realizing or caring how much he fudged up her life with that trade in the first place. He has this sort of warped sense of logic governing his actions, where everything is generally okay if it's for his benefit, but as soon as there's no direct advantage in it for him, he'll try not to cause other people trouble or inconvenience and even sometimes be willing to make a bit of an effort to be nice (such as when he returns Quilava to May when she's become inconvenient to him, as opposed to just releasing her into the wild). It just never really occurs to him to actually place others' needs before his own, because all his life his needs have been placed before everyone else's.

I've also enjoyed his League participation, because it illustrates delightfully how bizarre his thinking can be. He goes to great lengths to be "allowed" to take part in a tournament, but at the same time everything is so blatantly rigged in his favor simply because he has super-clones that his eventual win is inevitable from the start, and he knew that perfectly before he began. There is really no sensible reason why he ought to have bothered to do it in the first place; none of it was ever a real challenge to him, he doesn't need any money, and his win is obviously meaningless to everyone else because of his inherent advantage, rendering the honor and reputation of being a Champion null and void. But Taylor doesn't care, because in his head he's just doing it because he wants to win the League, with no real conception of what it is that makes such a victory meaningful or worth striving for. There isn't a lot in the way of meaning in Taylor's life; he just decides on a whim that he wants to do something, goes and does it by whatever means necessary, and then finds himself something else he wants to do. It's crushingly empty, but not quite lonely or hollow, because he doesn't really realize there is anything missing.

So basically, May is always trying to insist that Taylor is an awful person who needs to burn in a special level of Hell and rages on about how he is a lowlife cheating thief, but he's really an okay guy - he's just brought up to think the world revolves around him. He might even have grown up to be a perfectly nice individual if he could just have matured a little, shed that mindset and found some real purpose in his life.

...but it's too late for that now, isn't it?

Ah, poor Taylor. I'm not quite sure when I decided on his demise, but it definitely wasn't very long after I first created him. Even in the original plan, where the League was supposed to have an Elite Four-like system and May was supposed to end up the winner, Taylor was doomed to a gruesome death at the hands (well, foot) of May's mute Tyranitar. Much as the League probably made readers despise him, I hope most will at least agree that he didn't deserve this. Poor kid.