The Quest Blog


COMMENTARY DONE

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06/26/2008: Chapter 42 finished

Finished at 11 pages. Interestingly, it is the first eleven-page chapter of the fic. There have been a number of ten- and twelve-page chapters, but never eleven pages. Sure ended up a lot longer than I thought it would be when I was worrying it wasn't enough content for a chapter. I've been increasingly realizing that it's the same with chapter 43, too - there is a lot of stuff happening in it, even if none of it is of much significance in itself.

So. I'll proofread and then edit this post when I've put it up. Just keep refreshing if you're waiting for it. Sorry for how late it is, too.

EDIT: Chapter 42: Splitting Up is here. Sorry about the wait again.

06/24/2008: About Chapter 42's Progress

Okay, I feel I owe you an explanation, seeing as I had promised to get chapter 42 up by the nineteenth.

Basically, I've been spending all my time on getting the Cave of Dragonflies forums back up and in shape. I'm almost done with this; right now it's pretty much just making a few images, re-adding a hack, creating the important threads, and finally remaking all the styles. This has unfortunately taken away from the time I've had to write chapter 42. I mean it when I say that it's close to being done; I'm writing pretty much the final scene of the chapter.

I'd have given you a preview, but looking over the chapter, there isn't really anything in it that's both interesting in some sense and does not spoil the whole point of reading the chapter, so you'll just have to wait. I'll probably get it (and the forums) up tomorrow. Sorry about the delay.

06/19/2008: Forums wiped

So. The database crashed for good. All the data was lost, including the forums and comments; you will have to re-register. On the plus side, most of the Quest Blog is still here, thanks to the fact I only started using the database for it fairly recently and I could just re-run the script that I originally used to import it into the database, and naturally all the files are fine.

In case you ask: the Cave of Dragonflies forums are going to take quite a bit more work to get back up, as I will need a fresh installation of vBulletin and at the moment my license has expired so I can't actually download it.

Happy sixth birthday to The Quest for the Legends. I'll try to finish chapter 42 once I've gotten the guestbook on the main site working again.

(Also, if you missed it, there is new fan art up.)

04/13/2008: Writer's Block

“Okay,” said May and stopped, “let’s train here around the lake. Screw the wild Pokémon; our Pokémon will learn a lot more battling one another.”

Mark shrugged and they walked together off the path to the great lake.

“What levels are your Pokémon again, Mark?” May asked.

“Uh, fifty or so?” He shrugged.

“Right. I think we’d accomplish the most by training specific skills instead of just randomly battling one another. Send them out.”

Mark plucked the six Pokéballs from his belt and threw them loosely forward. Charizard, Jolteon, Sandslash, Dragonair, Scyther and Letal emerged in flashes of white light. May looked thoughtfully at them. “What level are Dragonair and Letal exactly?” she finally asked.

Mark reached for his Pokédex and pointed it at them in turn. “Dragonair’s level 51, Letal’s 49.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “Okay, they probably won’t evolve just yet. Let’s forget about doing that before the Gym for now and focus on some techniques.”

And then I stopped. Or rather, the last three paragraphs of that are the only thing I've written in the past two months.

In other words, serious blockage going on here. I was going to ask you guys for some motivation and ideas for the training scene, but just typing up the blog post made me get tons of ideas and I don't really like to steal ideas from readers, so just, uh, thank you for existing and making me start making this post? Sorry about the long wait. I should have done this sooner.

It also made me go ahead and put up D/P movesets for the the Leta line and the Dragons of Ouen. Finally you get to know why Letal's been using Slash and Take Down in recent chapters.

03/04/2008: Best Quotes

So the FanFiction Lounge thread at PokéCommunity had a discussion topic about your favorite quotes from your own work, which made me randomly look through a bunch of chapters and pick out a few of my own favorites after initially picking way too many. From The Quest for the Legends and its spin-offs, they were the following:

“My father always used to say that there were two reasons you should make each and every one of your birthdays the best party you’ve ever had,” he said gleefully while cutting a slice for Alan, May and finally himself. “One: It might always be your last birthday, and in fact that becomes likelier every year, so it’s good always to assume it is. Two: It’s well worth celebrating that you were wrong about it last year.” […] “So well, cheers to Mark for not having dropped dead yet!” he said, raising his glass of milk. (The Quest for the Legends, chapter 32)

“Oh f… crap,” Chaletwo groaned. (The Quest for the Legends, chapter 34)

Well, Mount Fever isn’t that far away, is it? Mark argued. It would be easy to reach the roots of the mountain before that time. We deserve to take it easy for a little while, right?

“Well, sure, you do,” Chaletwo replied coldly. “I was just thinking, you know, since some human idiot got the brilliant idea of building a town in the middle of the crater of a dormant volcano and Volcaryu’s release would cause it to erupt…” Mark’s stomach churned uncomfortably at this point. “Well, I figured that, you know, you wouldn’t want all those people to get fried. Sorry I got that impression. I’ll leave you to your happy fun battle now.” (The Quest for the Legends, chapter 36)

And my favorite line ever to write just because I'm weird like that:

Death was a fact of life. Death was an ultimate truth. Death was not to be feared, because you inflicted it on others. Because they feared it too. Because you, too, would one day die, just like the prey that struggled with shining, begging eyes against your deadly scythe. (The Fall of a Leader, Part V)

But well, it made me start wondering. So out of curiosity, what are your favorite quotes from The Quest for the Legends and its spin-offs?

02/29/2008: Pokémon Speech

A while ago, I started randomly compiling some of the details I've gotten together about my interpretation of Pokémon speech in an orderly fashion in my brain, and subsequently adapted it to the format of a one-shot similar to the IALCOTN chapter 3 extra. I ended up writing what I'd created of that down, but then wasn't sure how to continue it or end it. Here's the piece so far:

(Read more...)

So a) do you like it in general, and b) what do you think I should do with it? Try to finish it up somehow and put it up as an extra or spin-off? Just leave it here like this for bored readers who bother to read the blog?

02/11/2008: What Pokémon Are They?

So I just finished the new What Pokémon Are You? quiz for The Cave of Dragonflies, and thought it would be nice to test it out by taking it in the role of various characters from the fic (adapted to the actual Pokémon world, of course).

(Read more...)

02/02/2008: Chapter 39 up!

And chapter 39 is up. It's not the best chapter writing-wise or anything, but at least it's plottier than all of the previous post-25 chapters put together.

02/01/2008: Chapter 39 coming along...

Chapter 39 is in progress, a full five pages in at the moment. This could end up being one of my fastest chapters for… a couple of years. Unless I hit some severe writer's block at the end of it or something. Of course, it's fairly easy to write, being nearly 100% conversation, battle-less, and so plotty that I'm as interested as I could be. The only problem is remembering all the information that I was going to cram into this chapter. Wow, I look forward to getting this thing out. It's going to spark so much speculation and questions. :D

Okay, fine, you get a preview of the beginning. Before it gets plotty, of course. As always, unproofread.

(Read more...)

Zomg campfire.

EDIT: Chapter finished at six and a half pages! Again, I'll proofread and put it up tomorrow.

01/29/2008: Crack pairings!

There is a thread at the Serebii.net forums about characters' hypothetical reactions to reading fanfiction about themselves. I replied to it and got a little carried away:

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Is it scary that I thought of all this stuff off the top of my head?

01/28/2008: Chapter 38 up

Chapter 38 is up like I promised. Enjoy.

01/27/2008: Chapter 38 done!

Well. That was one hell of a writing spree. Chapter 38 is finished at twelve pages in Word, the last of which is incidentally also the 400th page of the Quest for the Legends ILCOE Word document. About ten of those twelve pages were written in the past two days, and seven of them just today. Not bad. At this speed, chapter 37 would have taken me four days to write.

But I have a German test that I really should have started studying for before three AM, and I think I'll be able to look at it with a much more critical eye if I save the proofreading for tomorrow when it's not all quite as fresh in my memory anyway, so I won't put it up until tomorrow. Sorry, guys.

01/27/2008: Chapter 38 in progress

So I'm on the seventh page of chapter 38, and really liking it so far. Here's a preview of the beginning of the chapter if you want:

(Read more...)

I'm in a good enough writing mood now for it to be well possible that I might finish it before the end of the month. That would make it the first chapter written in under one month since chapter 30. And then I realized that even if I write a chapter a month from now on (quick by my standards today), I'll be 19 before I finish writing just the chapters I've already got down in my chapter outline. o_o; (I'm 17 now, my birthday being in February.) I need to speed up. A lot.

01/26/2008: Fanfic Forum

So by popular request, I've made a forum in which you can post your own fanfiction. The implementation is rather primitive right now - there is nothing keeping track of whether a forum is read or unread, how many posts/threads there are in a forum or who last posted in a forum - but it works, and since there are only two forums I don't think it will be too limiting to need to check both of them to know whether anything new has been posted. If you think it needs that functionality, however, you may of course voice that opinion.

Have fun.

Oh, and chapter 38 is on the third page. I'll probably get to work on it more now that I've completed the D/P Vs. Seeker for the main site.

01/19/2008: The Fall of a Leader

Part VII: Downfall of The Fall of a Leader has been posted. It is the final part of that story.

Random factoids for no particular reason about The Fall of a Leader, cut for spoilers about the ending:

(Read more...)

01/13/2008: Dream + FoaL VI

(If you haven't seen it yet, part six of The Fall of a Leader is up. See previous update.)

I had a dream about The Quest for the Legends. I'm not sure that's ever happened before. I can't recall it if it has, anyway.

The basic gist of it was that Carl turned out to be the main villain somehow. He wasn't the Destroyer or organizing the War of the Legends or anything, but he had a Buizel for some reason and was standing in some snowy plains when Mark, May and Alan reached him, at which point Carl took out a Pokéball and - dun dun duun - sent out Polaryu. And this really dramatic Final Fantasy-style battle music came on while they started trying to bring Polaryu down. This was all happening while I was writing it, and I was being all "OMG YAY I'M WRITING THE LAST CHAPTER FINALLY AND THIS THING ABOUT CARL IS SUCH AN AWESOME PLOT TWIST I JUST THOUGHT OF :D".

Yeah. Then it all turned into something about my cousins and I making a play about an attempt to fool some giants into thinking a huge fake leg was actually from a female giant who was in some cave (the intention being to lure them into it). And then I realized that at a point in the script my character had to kiss my cousin's character and was a bit freaked out about that.

I woke up with this random "WOW I SO HAVE TO PUT THAT CARL AND POLARYU THING INTO THE ACTUAL FIC" feeling that wore off when I realized how little sense it made.

01/12/2008: Fall of a Leader Part VI and ILCOE Progress

I've written just over a page and a half of chapter 38 of the ILCOE now, and I just finished proofreading part six of The Fall of a Leader. Be warned that it is the reason I decided to rate that story R, and if you find it disturbing, don't say I didn't warn you.

It is also, to remind you, extremely long (over 20,000 words, or 40 pages in Word), so make yourself comfortable before you begin reading.

01/11/2008: Wow.

Parts six and seven of The Fall of a Leader are better than I remembered. In the memory of writing them, part VI went approximately "RAMBLERAMBLERAMBLERAMBLERAMBLERAMBLE" for 20,000 words, with the, ahem, R-scene just kind of there. I mean, it's still kinda rambly and all and it's getting the most serious edits of all the parts, but it definitely feels more sensible when I read it than it felt when I was writing it. (The rambling was very interesting to write, of course, because I'm weird like that, but the whole time I was worried that people would be wondering if there was supposed to be a storyline in there somewhere, which doesn't seem quite as likely now.)

And part VII… the chapter where I actually reached 50,000 words is awesome. In the authorial way, of course, where I just get the feeling that most of it is much better worded already than it would be if I were to rewrite this chapter from scratch right now. I don't know how much anyone will like the content, of course, but the style is far above average for me. And somehow this happened while I was sitting there knowing that I'd have crossed the NaNo finish line later that day, where I should have been thinking too bubbly and incoherently to write properly.

01/02/2008: Forum stuff

I added read/unread markers for threads in the forum, as well as IM contact info and signatures in user profiles. Enjoy.

01/01/2008: Chapter 37

It's up.

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