The Quest Blog


COMMENTARY DONE

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06/13/2009: Huh.

It seems that Megan Hayfield has decided to be badass no matter how much I didn't intend to make her so. Or at least her Pokémon have decided to be.

EDIT: …Okay, okay, I'll talk a bit more. I'm on page thirteen of chapter 48 right now and the battle is progressing nicely; I'd estimate it'll get to the end by maybe page sixteen or seventeen, although knowing my estimates, I'm probably grossly underestimating it. The problem I mentioned in the 'American Ramble', by the way, has been solved.

06/02/2009: American Ramble

If you didn't know, I'm on a visit to the United States right now (I'm with my boyfriend, visiting his dad, who lives in Indiana). That means I've been having rather limited computer access and no access to the Quest for the Legends Word document. Really, all I'd need is the last couple of paragraphs I actually wrote of chapter 48 so I could continue properly where I left off - I just don't remember precisely where I was, and it's annoying to write something from vague memory of what I last wrote and then discover the ends don't quite match up. At least, I am happy to announce that I am writing this from my shiny new laptop we just bought, and when I get home I'm going to move or at least copy the Quest for the Legends Word document to it so that I will be able to write on any future trips.

I was thinking a lot about the fic yesterday (more specifically, just mentally refining and adding to an already prepared scene relating to the Letal subplot). I really want to finish chapters 48 and 49 soon, because I know I'm going to enjoy writing chapters 50 through 55. Really, I'm going to enjoy the end of chapter 48, too, but there's quite a bit of battle to go before I get to that, and I'm probably going to need some figuring to get it to end believably as planned. I never really like writing my way towards a predefined conclusion when that conclusion should be affected by the details of what happens before it, as I like to think a story ought to try to be a realistic simulation of what would happen given some initial characters and situations in a given world, and any sort of "authorial intervention" trying to arrange events specifically so that they can lead to a particular conclusion in the future undermines the reality of the simulation.

…okay, that probably isn't very clear, but basically here I'm not sure if having the characters make their logical in-character decisions in the battle is going to lead to the conclusion I want, which could be problematic. Usually when I write battles, I don't actually have a specific conclusion planned; I just write the battle and essentially see how it turns out, knowing at most that I want one party to win in the end and sometimes not even that. Here the idea is to end with a very particular situation in the battle; actually, the chapter 47 battle was similar, as I had previously decided it should end with Ditto vs. Charizard with Aaron having one severely injured Pokémon left. Basically here I have another such prepared ending situation, and it's looking like it could be a bit more problematic to get the characters' strategies up to that point to both make sense and end up in that situation. I could theoretically move that part to earlier in the battle, but it works better as a climax to the chapter.

I'll stop babbling now.

04/29/2009: Ending plottiness

I don't quite remember if I ever talked about one-shots A and B here. I think I did, and I definitely talked about them to opaltiger, but if it happened, it was in that interval of time between April and June of last year whose Quest Blog posts were lost in the database wipe. (Is it just me, or did I make all the somewhat interesting entries here within that timeframe? It seems like every time I look back to find some particular post I remember making, it turns out to be gone.)

I don't even quite remember which one I titled then as one-shot A and which as one-shot B, but at least, they are two one-shots that I plan to release as either extras or spin-offs around the end of the fic. The one I'm going to call one-shot A now happens just before the second-to-last chapter and might be posted in that interval - possibly at the same time as the second-to-last chapter itself. One-shot B is a flashback to before the previous War of the Legends that clarifies some plot points, and it might be made into an extra after the last chapter (not the planned epilogue), or just be posted as a spin-off one-shot after the end.

One-shot B was written as a rough draft into a notebook in a burst of inspiration I had while in Vietnam. I hid the notebook in my room when opaltiger came and haven't really opened it since.

One-shot A, on the other hand, was originally written on the computer, again in a burst of inspiration, but I've at least once - I think twice - randomly thought back to it, opened up the document and added to and tweaked it. Now I just did it again. I really consider it some of my best work at the moment; it's a shame I won't be able to show it to anyone until a time when I'll no doubt think it sucks.

Yeah, really, that's all. I guess my point is that while I was not writing chapter 48, I was writing, and it was The Quest for the Legends. It's just not anything that you'd be able to read. And I just wanted to ramble about the end.

04/27/2009: Chapter 48 coming along

It's inching on, bit by bit, sentence by sentence. Right now I'm on the tenth page, and the battle has just started - "just" as in "the first moves are being carried out". Presumably, the battle will be at least some eight or nine pages.

How quickly the rest of it goes basically depends on my battle-writing mood. If we're lucky, I'll go on a writing spree and finish it in a few sittings. If not, it could be a while. But I've got a pretty good feeling about these days, so… *shrug*

04/16/2009: Random dream

In Switzerland I had this dream where I suddenly discovered to my horror that there was this plot point I'd completely forgotten about where Chalenor got captured by this mad scientist dude, and this made a bunch of real crucial points in the plot make no sense.

I think that makes three dreams about the fic so far. And if I remember correctly, all of them have been about me writing it, as opposed to actually being inside the story in some form (which has happened with dreams about other people's fanfiction, oddly enough). Funny.

04/04/2009: Chapter 47, aka chapter 46 part one.

Okay, I did it (see previous Quest Blog entry for details). Sorry I didn't give you a lot of time to give your opinions. My mind just really tends to make itself up very shortly after I make a poll like that.

The Ouen League - Chapter 47: The First Preliminary

To explain exactly what I did, for those who did not see the previous entry or were confused by it: chapter 45 part II, as added onto the original chapter 45 in December, has been made into chapter 46, while this is the first twenty-one pages of what I thought was going to be chapter 46. If you've read the entirety of the fic up until now, just pretend that the second part of chapter 45 was called chapter 46 when you read it; no actual changes to the content of the story have been made other than this perfectly ordinary addition of a new chapter.

In any case, I hope you enjoy it. Since I didn't decide to split this chapter until now, close to seven pages of what is to be chapter 48 have already been written, meaning it will probably take a shorter time than usual, to make up for the rather long wait for chapter 47.

04/03/2009: Chapter Split?

You may or may not have noticed that, as my signature says, I'm on the twenty-eighth page of chapter 46. Now it really is just a couple of paragraphs until the start of the second battle (those in-between scenes actually are done, I swear!), and the chapter should more or less end with the end of the battle. So what shall we predict? About thirty-six or thirty-seven pages in all, if we assume the battles turn out about equal in length? In any case, the chapter is already officially the longest chapter ever of this fic (chapter 37 was twenty-seven pages), and the rest will just put it into the crazy category. Amusingly, if the chapter were to be thirty-six pages, it would make for two pretty lengthy chapters even if I split it in half.

That's more than just a hypothetical - I've seriously been considering splitting up the chapter, and the only real reason I haven't done so already and just posted the first half is my obsessive-compulsiveness about chapter 50. What's worse is that I've been increasingly realizing that actually the chapter I currently have earmarked as chapter 48 (though not chapter 49) would be a fine chapter 50 - in the IALCOTN I really might just both make chapter 45 part II into chapter 46, the first half of chapter 46 chapter 47, the second half chapter 48, the currently planned chapter 47 chapter 49, and the aforementioned chapter 48 into chapter 50. It would not even break that little "five-chapter arc" pattern that I talked about sometime way back, since I've realized that the currently planned chapters 49-53 kind of make such a five-chapter arc.

Of course, now that I've convinced myself so thoroughly of the merits of doing this in the IALCOTN, I am starting to feel it really ought to be that way in the ILCOE. So do you think I should retroactively split chapter 45 up again (making my favorite chapter beginning ever into an actual chapter beginning again!), put up the first part of "chapter 46" now as chapter 47 and then continue with the latter half of it as chapter 48?

03/18/2009: Writing

Oh, man, these scenes are so much longer than I anticipated. I said something like a couple of pages of between-battle stuff, right? Well, I'm about to start the sixth page of it, and there's still some left.

Basically I'm about to start page twenty-five of the chapter. The whole latter battle is still left. Happily, I'm really enjoying this, and think I'll have fun with the battle as well, so hopefully the moment of completion is inching closer.

03/09/2009: Fix

In a rare update whose content is neither "I'm writing" nor "I'm not writing", I fixed a very, very silly coding mistake that has made registration here at the Quest for the Legends minipage impossible since… September, when I added the chapter update notifications feature. Of course, it was only a couple of weeks ago that somebody actually first noticed this (or, alternatively, people had noticed it, but not had the sense to tell me about it). Unless somebody noticed it long ago and I managed to forget to do anything about it, which I almost did this time too until another person also complained.

At least it works now and will not tell you that there is already a user by your chosen name even if it's "Flargyflorg23513948672356".

As for chapter 46, I haven't written much since I last updated the Quest Blog; I'm still not at the second battle, with those in-between scenes having become longer and more numerous than I thought, but I'll be getting to it reasonably soon, I think.

02/26/2009: Writing spree!

Okay, so I'm now almost done with page twenty-two of chapter 46. That battle is done as well as most of the in-between scenes, so I'll be getting to the other battle fairly soon. Hopefully this writing mood continues and I'll finish the blasted thing before the end of the month.

02/25/2009: Mood swings

As usual, my writing mood likes to vary wildly. Recently I've been in the sort of mood where I really want to write, but can't actually get it done when I have the opportunity, which is very frustrating. Nonetheless, today I went over what I have of chapter 46, did some editing, and then continued with… half a page. So now I'm almost halfway down page eighteen.

This is the eighth page of this battle, which is… fairly close to the end now. After that there needs to be at least one scene, maybe two pages, and then the other battle, which I suppose could be roughly estimated to be around as long as this one. That would make for a total chapter length of something around thirty pages at least. Definitely heading to be my longest so far. I suppose it's a good thing chapter 45 part II is no longer in it.

I'm reasonably happy with this battle, at least. Hopefully I'll get it done soon.

01/30/2009: Rejoice!

I'm writing. I looked at the Quest for the Legends Word document, saw that sentence and was about to bring something else up as usual, but then I suddenly thought, "Hey, I want to write." So I finished that silly sentence and continued. I've written about a page and a half since then.

More significantly, that brings the Quest for the Legends Word document finally past the 500-page mark. Note that not quite all of that is the actual story, since there are notes at the bottom as well as the beginning of the IALCOTN written at the beginning of the document, but it still feels like quite a milestone. :3

01/22/2009: Stalling

Creative juices still dry. Still obsessing over random irrelevant things with my boyfriend (this time it's Boston Legal).

…well, almost dry. I actually wrote the beginning of chapter ten of Morphic the other day, but that's not what I ought to be talking about here. Then I reread what I have of chapter 46, or at least parts of it, and got stuck again on that same word in that same sentence. Figures. Actually, the entire point of that part is to describe that a particular Pokémon is about to faint. Maybe I could get past this by just making it faint already. Goodness knows it's taken quite a few hits.

01/15/2009: No writing

I've been stuck on the same word in the middle of the same sentence since the beginning of the year. It's not even anything that's particularly difficult to word; it's just another random sentence in the middle of a battle. My writing mood just kind of died.

Of course, that didn't stop me from doing useless things like typing and timing subtitles for Commentary! The Musical and sitting around with my boyfriend watching How I Met Your Mother and Boston Legal and finishing the CSS for the student council's website at my school, but in the way of actual creative work, I'm not worth much right now. :/

Hoping to be able to write more soon, now that I'm done with that CSS stuff (although I have a feeling I am going to be writing a long, pointless list of all the parts in which Commentary! The Musical seems to fit decently with what's going on in the picture before that happens).

01/01/2009: Happy 2009

I have a shiny new monitor to write on now. :D

So! My new year's resolution last year was to write at least five chapters in 2008, not counting chapter 37, which I finished on New Year's Day; I definitely did that. The other one was to try to write ten chapters in 2008. Chapter 46 is technically the ninth of the year.

But! Keep in mind that chapter 45 part 2 is only considered part of chapter 45 because of my OCD! Really I wrote a full nine chapters in 2008! And chapter 46 is well over an average chapter in length already, so if you turn your head a bit, I did write ten chapters in 2008! :o

…okay, so that was an excuse, fine. But! I wrote 108 pages of the ILCOE in 2008. And that's more than one fifth of the entire thing (currently I'm on page 496 of the ILCOE Word document, although that also contains a couple of the first chapters of the IALCOTN and a whole bunch of notes at the bottom; Word tells me the actual story is 489 pages at the moment). So I think I've done reasonably well. :D In fact, I wrote 145 pages in 2004, 114 pages in 2005, 58 pages in 2006, and 67 in 2007, so I'm almost at the same pace as in 2005.

I hereby resolve that I will write at least 100 pages of The Quest for the Legends in 2009, however many chapters that might be.

Still on the thirteenth page of chapter 46; I've been working on The Cave of Dragonflies too much recently. And playing Final Fantasy VII with my boyfriend.

12/22/2008: Progress

So I've just started the eleventh page of chapter 46. The first League battle started on page nine. I'm doing a reasonably good job inching on with the battle whenever I'm here; while I've been incapable of doing anything of worth for my site in way too long, my productivity in writing has been great recently. I mean, I've written more than twenty pages of stuff since October, which is well over two average chapters of this fic.

Currently trying my hardest to make the League battles good.

12/12/2008: Haven't done an extra in a while...

New extra, written in a burst of random inspiration at half past four AM when I was supposed to be going to bed! Just after a major writing spree which I just wrote a Quest Blog entry about!

Letting Go

I personally really like how it came out, but it may just be that I love writing May, especially in moments like that.

12/12/2008: Whoo, writing spree

I'm on the fifth page of chapter 46, after having been on the second when I got back home from my boyfriend's house in the late afternoon. Not quite NaNoWriMo output yet (today's writing is just under 1500 words), but it's something. And I really want to get to the battles, damn it. (Me, wanting to get to the battles? Impossible!)

A one-liner preview!

“Letal has turned into you,” Mark told May at dinner.

Interpret however you like for now.

Also, the deadness of the forum makes me saaaad.

12/05/2008: Chapter 45, Part 2

Chapter 45, Part 2: More Stuff Happens is up.

(Yes, that title is a joke and does not actually appear on the page. If you missed it, check the previous entry of the Quest Blog for an explanation.)

Eight pages added on. I'm rather satisfied with parts of them. Still my favorite "chapter beginning" ever.

12/04/2008: Dilemma

Okay, so. Chapter 46. Is. Way. Too. Long.

I'm starting the eighth page and what ought to be the main subject of the chapter isn't even particularly close to starting. As much as I like the chapter beginning being a chapter beginning, I have to be reasonable and realize that all the stuff I've written so far, plus some more, really, really belongs in chapter 45, which was rather short anyway.

So! Do you think I should finish this part and just add it onto chapter 45? At forums I'd just post it as chapter 45 part II; here I'd tack it onto the end of chapter 45 and post a link here that goes straight to where the current version of the chapter ends.

You might now ask why in the world I don't just make this a separate chapter and then make what was actually meant to be chapter 46 into chapter 47 and so on. And yes, that would be very sensible as well. But then what I want to be chapter 50 will just be chapter 51. D: And I'm too obsessive-compulsive to do that. Darn it, now I really wish I had fused chapters… what was it, 41 and 42? Then it would all fit perfectly. D:

Buuut yeah. What do you say? I, at least, am starting to kind of like the add-onto-chapter-45 idea, even though my poor chapter beginning really should be a chapter beginning. D:

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