Mark Greenlet

This section applies to the ILCOE.

Mark Greenlet is the main character and primary point-of-view character of The Quest for the Legends.

Mark's Pokémon

Appearance

Age (current)
12
Stature
Rather on the short side.
Eyes
Rather large and deep green.
Hair
Dark, short and slightly spiky - not the kind of spiky you'd need an inordinate amount of hair gel to replicate in real life, but just a bit ruffled.
Clothes
Red baseball cap worn backwards, various shirts and T-shirts, blue jeans, white shoes. He has a plain, brown leather Pokéball belt.
Handedness
Right-handed.
Images
Chibi Mark

Pre-Story Biography

Mark is eleven years old at the time the story begins. His birthday is June 9th. He lives with his parents in Sailance, a city in northwest Ouen which Pokémon seem to stay away from - like the rest of that corner of the region - for unknown reasons.

Mark loves Pokémon, particularly legendary Pokémon, which he is borderline obsessed with; his favorite Pokémon are Lugia and Articuno, though if legendaries don't count, it is Vulpix. He came to like Vulpix so much when he had a conversation with one for a Pokémon speech exam at his school, but when he was little, he dreamt of having a Charizard.

When Mark turned ten years old, he thought he would be able to become a Pokémon trainer at last, but his parents suddenly told him they thought it was too dangerous and refused to let him go, even as he watched his best friend Alex head off on a Pokémon journey with the Totodile he received as a starter. Since then, he has been moody and bitter at his parents and awfully lonely without all his friends and classmates.

Character Rambles

I think my favorite thing about Mark is his sort of general wimpiness, shyness and aversion to getting involved and how he has to take on these aspects of himself once he gets involved with Chaletwo's plot. I often enjoy writing him the most when he is committing the evil of inaction, such as when he fails to call May out on being harsh and borderline abusive toward her Pokémon. It's a bit funny to enjoy a character the most when he's specifically not doing anything, but I tend to like characters the most when they're at their weakest, or rather at their most flawed, and since Mark is a generally nice person who doesn't really have any serious issues (unlike *ahem* some other characters in this fic), his most flawed moments tend to be more when he fails to do something rather than when he actually does anything.

Those characteristics, of course, evolved with him over time; I think putting him with the much more dominant character of May had a big part in making him end up that way in the original version of the fic, when I did not do much of anything very consciously. She would basically stomp all over the scene being her exaggeratedly violent original self, and Mark would stand somewhere in the background going, "Okay, um, she's kinda creepy," but never doing a thing about it. I kind of like the resulting character for his role; most heroic characters are, well, heroic, and I enjoy writing somebody who is rather decidedly not a hero.

Later in the story, he has also been slowly gaining some confidence and strength, starting with his outburst at Chaletwo in chapter 35 and his subsequent taking of some control in their mission. Somewhat paradoxically, these are actually also some of my favorite moments of his. In chapter 38, for instance, he has this sudden burst of daring (brought on by his annoyance at Chaletwo) when he sends Thunderyu out to lure Volcaryu from the volcano, and I really enjoyed that. The League chapters overall had a lot of focus on him, with all the strategizing and his experiences during the battles, and with them come moments like his rant at Scyther in chapter 50 and his speech to his Pokémon at the end of that chapter, where he finally makes some decision about his life and shows a bit of determination. All of these moments I also found quite fun to write, perhaps exactly because they're relatively unusual for him but getting more frequent now as he grows as a person.