The Quest Blog


COMMENTARY DONE

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11/28/2008: Ladies and gentlemen, I suck.

So. It's nearly the end of November, and I haven't even finished chapter 46. Bad me.

At least I did get myself to finish chapter nine of Morphic, and yesterday I got past the point I'd been stuck at and now it's just sitting down and writing a couple of scenes and battles. I like some parts of what I have and some not. I'd give a preview, but none of it would make very good preview-material, really, besides that I'm not at home right now.

11/01/2008: PeNoWriMo

As I had mentioned, my goal for my Personal Novel Writing Month (an unofficial spin on NaNoWriMo) is to write 50,000 words total of The Quest for the Legends and Morphic in the month of November.

The initial statistics:
Morphic: 24,279 words
TQftL: 208,862 words
Total: 233,141 words

Thus, my goal is 283,141 words. Hopefully this will get me to finish chapter 46.

Also, opinion poll! Should I post chapters here as I finish them during PeNoWriMo (with probably some drop in quality as they'll be written in a hurry and not edited very well, though of course I will proofread for typos and such), or post them after I edit them properly in December? Alternatively, I could finish chapter 46 and post it because you've been waiting for it for a while, and then wait until December with the other ones, which might be the most sensible choice (since I really don't want to mess those chapters up too badly).

10/23/2008: Chapter 46 is annoying.

It's way too long. I'm on the fifth page and probably have at least one page left before I get to the actual battles, and I'd planned to cram two of those into the chapter. Ugh.

That and I haven't been in much of a mood to write it recently. But never fear: I think NaNoWriMo for me this year will be a dedication to writing 50,000 words total of The Quest for the Legends and Morphic in the month of November, and that's got to get stuff done.

Right now Dragonite is talking about how he feels like a balloon.

10/12/2008: TQftL Tropes

Ever been to TV Tropes? If not, it's the sort of website you are liable to waste an entire day on - I did that on Friday, for instance - so you might want to turn away now if you want to manage any sort of productivity for the next few weeks. But if it is too late for you and you're bored, then here's something to do: find tropes that apply to The Quest for the Legends (or the spin-offs). And post them here. See how many we can get.

Chapter 46 is on the fifth page; now I'm worrying that it will be too long. I maybe should have combined the entire first half of this chapter with chapter 45, but then my favorite chapter beginning ever wouldn't be a chapter beginning. D: Oh, moral dilemmas.

09/30/2008: Chapter 46 progress report

(Psst, everybody who missed it: I did not make a typo in the title of this post; chapter 45 is indeed already up.)

I'm on the second page of chapter 46 already. It has my favorite chapter beginning ever, so I took some time off the chemistry report I was supposed to be writing the day before yesterday so that I could write that, and then I just went with the conversation, which I also like the outcome of. The chapter will have a battle or two (haven't fully decided yet) and some training stuff, so it could become long, but I'm not entirely sure.

Good God, I still can't believe I'm actually writing League chapters now. You have no idea how long I've been plotting those things out and rubbing my hands together at the vague future idea of writing them. @_@

09/29/2008: Chapter 45 up

See? I really can write fast.

Chapter 45: The Ouen League HQ (or: Stuff Happens)

Five and a half pages. :D Hope you enjoy.

09/26/2008: Chapter 45 coming along

Chapter 45 is coming along pretty nicely. I've already written one silly scene I've been planning for ages. :D This will not be a very long chapter, so expect it pretty soon. Well, assuming I manage to think of something to name it; the current working title, consistent with my other amazing working titles, is "Stuff Happens".

I'm not sure posting a preview would do much good, so I won't. I'm just telling you all that it's being written and it won't be long.

09/18/2008: Chapter update notifications (and chapter 44 up)

Now registered members can, through editing their options, choose to receive an e-mail when a new chapter of The Quest for the Legends or related material has been posted. It might be marked as spam, unfortunately, but oh well.

And if you didn't notice yesterday, I finished chapter 44 and it's up.

09/17/2008: Chapter 44 up

See? I told you I felt a writing spree coming up!

Chapter 44: Polaryu

It's just over nine pages. And it was written in a month and one day. I could still make it to chapter 47 before the end of 2008 at this pace (which, for those who haven't been reading the blog since I made my new year's resolution, would mean I'd have written ten chapters this year, a feat I thought I'd never manage but merely swore to try, the actual resolution being that I'd write at least five, which I've already done). Whee.

I like some things about the chapter and not others; it's more subtle than a lot of my chapters, in that I don't rub the precise explanation for everything that happens in your face, which I like, but the actual battle seems too short. <_<

09/16/2008: Chapter 44 progress

So. I've been inching on with chapter 44, and I think I sense a writing spree coming up soon because I've had this nice tingling of writing mood in the past few days. It's got a silly little pointless fraction of a wild Pokémon battle and random talking to Chaletwo and stuff. Nothing very interesting yet.

But the entire third page of the chapter is about Nevermeltice. I kid you not. And it was completely spontaneous, as in I just kind of incidentally put it in in a burst of inspiration near the top of the page, but it still made marvelously much sense to tie the chapter together. I love it when that happens.

I'd quote it as a preview, but you'd almost definitely figure out the significance immediately and that would be no fun. :(

09/12/2008: The Dragons of Ouen (with new Polaryu)


I finally settled with a design I thought looked decent. :D I'd messed around with a few different ideas but none really came out well. And then I just went all dithering-crazy on the wings and it actually worked out fairly, I think. I also shrunk the near wing a bit, shortened the right arm (our left), added a mouth and moved the base of the wing, which many had pointed out was placed too low.

The previous version of the scratch, if you want to compare, looked like this:



So, since I've probably finalized at least the designs for now, I'm going to go on a bit of a trip down the memory lane about the designs of the Dragons of Ouen.

(Read more...)

So yeah. Ramble over.

09/11/2008: New Polaryu

Ta-da.



I hate the wings and absolutely cannot figure out what to do with the shading on them. And the crystals on the limbs look pasted on. And it's a bit monochromatic. But I like the head, the pose and the new design.

Basically: while all three dragons are fundamentally bipedal in that their hind legs are stronger than the forelimbs and they can naturally stand upright, they differ in how they prefer to position themselves while at rest. Thunderyu doesn't like using his legs at all, so he generally glides. Volcaryu stands upright on his bulky legs, ready to use his strong arms to attack. Polaryu, on the other hand, prefers to stay relatively horizontal compared to the other two, often letting his forelimbs support his upper body.

I might add more crystals and do something with the wings, so I wouldn't consider it quite finished yet, but I'd love some input.

Also, I dare you to even attempt to guess what sprite I used as a vague reference for the pose (in the same way as I used the original sprites for Thunderyu and Volcaryu). It is obviously not Polaryu's old sprite.

09/08/2008: New Volcaryu sprite


That makes two thirds of the trio done. I don't like the Volcaryu as much as the Thunderyu, but at least it fixes some of the design issues of the old one (no neck, leg plates not really fitting in with the other plates, silly-looking Houndoom horns).

09/07/2008: I know I was talking about Polaryu, but...



I mean, it was about time I made D/P sprites of the dragons, and since I think I know more or less what I want to do with Polaryu, I felt this was a good time to do it. And I started with Thunderyu because I like Thunderyu and it's technically the first of the trio.

Obviously inspired by the old one's pose, but it's all made from scratch. The worst thing about it is that I couldn't fit in the wings as being as huge in comparison to the body as I'd have liked.

(Also, if you didn't notice, that was an BBCode I just used! :o)

09/04/2008: Polaryu needs a redesign.

So I actually managed to start chapter 44, but then I run into another problem, even though I'm not up to where Polaryu actually appears yet: he needs to be spiffed up.

See, a very long time ago, I made extremely generic-looking sprites of a Fire/Ice/Electric legendary dragon trio. It was basically a slender yellow dragon with large wings, a bulky red dragon with horns and black plates of armor and a sort of medium-bodied blue dragon. Much later, I redesigned them to be more interesting: Thunderyu became horned with blue gems embedded into his scales, Volcaryu's sprite was completely remade with better coloring while keeping the black armor plates and bulky build that made him unique, and Polaryu became… a slightly better shaded medium-bodied blue dragon.

No, seriously. Just compare them:

Old Thunderyu - Old Volcaryu - Old Polaryu
New Thunderyu - New Volcaryu - New Polaryu

As you can see, Polaryu kind of got the short end of the stick in that remaking, and right now he looks really plain, generic and Charizard-bodied. Not to mention that his head shape has always been a little bit weird and those stripes on his belly look fake.

So yeah, he needs a redesign. I've been toying with some ideas; I think I know what I'm going to do with his head, but I'm kind of torn on the body.

One idea I had was to go with inspiration from birds and/or T. Rex: long but strong back legs, small forelimbs, a pretty horizontal basic position, and a long tail for balance. I like Polaryu having a long tail from the previous design, so I'm all for keeping that; it's mostly a question of whether it would look good and fit him.

The other main idea was making him basically quadrupedal. It could fit into the pattern if instead of regarding Thunderyu as bipedal I could think of him as having no legs at all per se: his primary method of getting around is flight. Volcaryu is his opposite in that regard, being a bit clumsy in the air (and having small wings) and most suited to standing upright on the ground (while Thunderyu would always be a bit awkward, since the size of his wings would get in the way very easily if he spent a lot of time on the ground). Polaryu would then be the third option, quadrupedal and able to both walk and fly just fine.

And then, of course, I could also keep Polaryu as the generic bipedal dragon, which could also be seen as an intermediate between Thunderyu and Volcaryu, but there's less to be done with it. Nostalgia wants me to go this way.

Any thoughts? Also, where did everyone go after the forum crash? The minipage has been really dead pretty much ever since. Of course, I never expected it to be very active in the first place, but with the original forum I was pleasantly surprised by the activity.

09/01/2008: Blah.

All I've written of chapter 44 is still "Chapter 44: Polaryu". I can't seem to get myself in the right mood to write the beginning.

So uh, I know this is a weird request, but would some of you mind posting in the remade Speculation of the Next Chapter thread? Or here. Either way is fine; I just know that interesting speculation gets me in the mood (and no, I'm not going to steal your ideas). In fact, speculate about the League chapters too if you have any thoughts about how that will go.

08/15/2008: Chapter 43 finished

It's pretty much exactly eight pages, although that could change in the editing.

Will edit this post when I've proofread and put it up.

EDIT: Chapter 43: To Champion Island. It might surprise you in a non-plotty way.

So next up is chapter 44, which I don't think I'll spoil much if I tell you includes the Polaryu battle. Since they have to get to Polaryu first and all, it will probably be pretty long. And I am going to love writing chapter 45 because I've had it planned for so damned long and it sets up the League chapters which I've also had planned for so damned long and it contains the return of a character you haven't seen in a while in a surprising manner. :D

07/29/2008: Yay, writing spree. Somewhat.

Okay, so I just wrote, uh, close to two pages of chapter 43. It has a battle. And something I really didn't think would happen this soon, but did. And God, there is a lot of stuff that needs to happen in this chapter. o.O Or well, okay, on second thought the last part would be more appropriate as part of chapter 44. And it's not that much, per se, but just time-consuming stuff, in fic-time but not writing-time. Well, whatever. At least I'm writing. So yay?

07/27/2008: Retcon ahoy! (+ chapter 43 preview)

Okay, so since my mom is reading the IALCOTN, I made special arrangements for her to be able to click pretty much any Pokémon name in the story and see a picture of it. (They don't appear normally, as for most people that would just be distracting.) And while I was going through it to make those links, I finally went ahead and did some retconning.

- Firstly, Rick trains stone-evolving Pokémon. The whole legendary business is just rumours. Some people think his stone-evolving Pokémon are super-clones. This is now fact in the IALCOTN and the previous notion of him openly training legendaries will henceforth be ignored.

- Secondly, and minorly, I changed the references to Route 201 to Route 301, as the 200-routes are in Sinnoh.

Yes, I'm writing chapter 43. I just started the second page. I think things are about to start happening soon; so far it's just conversation. This is the beginning of the chapter, as a preview. None too interesting.

Alan will fill him in, huh?

The start of their journey across the calm sea was none too interesting, and it was all too quickly dawning onto Mark that this would be a long, long day, especially since May still seemed to be in a bad mood and hadn’t said a word to him since they’d set off. Lapras occasionally glanced over her shoulder at them, but never spoke. There was little to do other than staring at the sunny hills behind them or out at the endless stretch of deep blue ocean ahead – that and talking to Chaletwo.

“I know,” the legendary Pokémon replied in his head, the voice pained. “What could I do? I didn’t really realize how little he knew until he was out there.”

I noticed you seemed really bent on not mentioning the dragons, Mark mused. Why is that? I mean, you had no problems telling May and Alan about them or letting me tell everybody in Crater Town.

“You can tell a human there are legendary Pokémon they don’t know about,” was the frustrated reply. “But Molzapart knows there aren’t supposed to be any Dragons of Ouen. He’d start asking questions.”

Right. That made sense. And if Alan is going to discuss it with him, they’ll put together two and two, since he has no doubt noticed how much more you seem to care about them than about somebody like Suicune. Gotcha.

And now he’d brought up the memory of Suicune again. He hated himself sometimes.

07/10/2008: Laziness

Chapter 43 has not yet been started.

Since chapter 42, I've been busy with math training and obsessing over Phoenix Wright. All I wrote was the beginning of a Phoenix Wright fanfic, which will sadly be a bit of a headache to finish thanks to a plot hole in the game. And uh, chapter 43 is not interesting enough to make me really excited by the prospect of writing it. And on Monday I'm going to Spain for the International Mathematical Olympiad and won't be back until the twenty-second of July.

So uh, try to encourage me somehow to make me write over the weekend? Pretty please? :<

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