The Quest for the Legends

Still not doing very well at actually catching up with NaNo, but it is getting written, slowly but surely.

I'm thinking about renaming Scyther's Story to 'Razor'. After all, Scyther's Story is just a pretty terrible name, it makes no sense if you haven't read the main fic (I can just picture some puzzled reader going "Shouldn't it be A Scyther's Story?"), and I'm bad enough at titles that I can't really think of anything other than my beloved "name of character" cop-out. Besides, the story is just "Razor's life", so it seems reasonably appropriate as a title.

I've rewritten Part II now and started Part III. I'm… reasonably satisfied with what I've done with Part II, story-wise; the main aching problem with the old one was that they were just being all chipper and making friends for no reason like in some horrible happy high school adventure, so instead, I now went and tried to portray a little better just how desperate and weird it is for Stormblade to start trying to talk to some year-old Descith about clouds (and hint at just how many of his peers he's alienated with it by now).

Likewise, their first encounter with Shadowdart isn't quite as forced and out of nowhere. I'm scrapping the whole females-are-darker-in-color thing; Scyther already has a gender difference that makes perfect sense and that was just a silly added complication and I have no idea what I was smoking when I put it in. Besides that everybody teasing Shadowdart because he looks like a girl is just horribly grade-school-esque and headdesk-worthy and doesn't fit in with the Scyther's otherwise quite sexism-free society. Scyther now officially don't give a damn about gender except when it comes to who they want to do the deed with.

So, uh. Another preview-scene. It references a new bit, where Stormblade briefly exchanges words with Razor at Shadowdart's acceptance ritual. Razor also makes a big deal of "sky Pokémon"; that's because the explanation of the clouds now includes a bit about how the sky is something analogous to the ground, with its own Pokémon that live in the sky (as opposed to ground Pokémon that can fly; according to the logic of the mythology, gravity is the force that pulls you to the plane where you belong, and hypothetically, a cloud "flying" towards the ground would "fall" upwards). Thus the assumption that "sky Pokémon" are a special class of Pokémon that can operate by different rules than "ground Pokémon".

“Why do you think it really rains?” said a sudden voice, and he whirled around to see a two-year-old Descith approaching him from the other side of the tree. It took him a moment to recognize him as the same one who had talked to him at the acceptance ritual the previous night.

“What?” he asked, a little annoyed that this weirdo was talking to him uninvited again.

“I mean, I know they talk about the clouds’ blood and stuff…” The older Descith stared up into the air. “But that seems weird to me.”

The younger looked uncomprehendingly at him. “Why?”

“Because,” the other said, pausing a moment, “because Pokémon have faces, and the clouds and the sun and the moon and the stars don’t. And they move so slowly, and they’re so weirdly shaped. And if the moon were really a Pokémon, he would know the sun is going to rise in the east and ambush her there.”

The younger Descith considered it. “They’re sky Pokémon,” he finally said. “That’s just what sky Pokémon are like.”

“But…” The older sat down near him, thinking. “But how do we know what the sky Pokémon are like? We can’t fly that high.”

The younger shrugged. “It’s what all the Scyther say, so it has to be true.”

“But how do they know?”

He shifted in irritation. “Why are you thinking about this? It doesn’t matter. You’re two. You shouldn’t be wasting your time thinking about stuff that doesn’t matter.”

The other was silent for a while. He looked out over the swarm, at the duels going on and some lucky Scyther sharing a Ponyta with two Descith. “I saw a flock of Pidgey fly through a cloud once,” he said at last. “It didn’t react or attack them. It was like it wasn’t even solid.”

“It’s a sky Pokémon,” the younger Descith repeated, annoyed. “Why do you care?”

The older one sighed, like he had had this conversation dozens of times before, and looked back over the swarm. As the younger was hoping he would give up and go away, he suddenly turned back towards him and said, “Hey, want a duel?”

Frankly, I wasn't all that enthusiastic about the rewrite of Scyther's Story; it's been several years now since I read it, but I remembered it as being well written (especially later on). Yet seeing these random excerpts and your own criticisms, I'm actually excited to read the new version, this "Razor." Hopefully it or the next chapter will get finished through NaNo.

D'aww, Stormblade.

Also yay for establishing in the background where Descith and adolescent Scyther get their meals from.

Frankly, I wasn't all that enthusiastic about the rewrite of Scyther's Story; it's been several years now since I read it, but I remembered it as being well written (especially later on). Yet seeing these random excerpts and your own criticisms, I'm actually excited to read the new version, this "Razor." Hopefully it or the next chapter will get finished through NaNo.

See? You guys will never just trust me when I tell you something needs to be rewritten. :P

Also yay for establishing in the background where Descith and adolescent Scyther get their meals from.

It's actually addressed explicitly several times in the new version, from formalizing the real role of parents into the acceptance ritual to it just repeatedly mentioning Razor getting food from his mother or father (and later, Stormblade). I think it's going to be quite abundantly clear how they get their food now.

Definately looking forward to reading this, I quite enjoyed Scyther's Story and Fall of a Leader, and seeing something in a new (rewritten) light is always good.

I actually quite liked Shadowdart's darker armor- namely because he was so self-conscious of it and acted so rashly to defend himself. I always like those kinds of charatcers. I think that Shadowdart's easy to offend, though, if memory serves me corectly.

Is there going to be some different feature of Shadowdart that makes him frequently teased in this version? From what I gathered, being teased a lot kind of shaped him into who he is, so.

He is still unusually dark-colored, which is a little different, but there are other, more important reasons for his isolation and defensiveness now.

So he came out of the closet, then?
I'm sorry, that was stupid. -_-
I quite like how Scyther culture is so radically different to human cultures, and the darker exoskeleton thing adds to that. Anyway, really looking forward to this rewrite of the spinoff of the rewrite of the rewrite of the rewrite (etc), of this awesome fic! Keep it up!