The Quest for the Legends

Mark: if you caught lugia or articuno, would you ever just ride around on it trolling and saying "haters gonna hate"

Mark: …huh? o_O I doubt they'd let me do that.

chaletwo: are you sure the destroyer is not a pokemon on another planet?

Chaletwo: I have no idea. That would be handy if it were true and all, but it just sounds like science fiction to me. We have to assume something that's draining the power of the legendaries on this planet is probably also on this planet.

alan: what if a pokemon loves you too much in a… uh… yknow way

Alan: I… don't think that happens a lot. But if it did you'd just have to deal with it, like you'd deal with somebody else who likes you if you don't like them back. Talk about it and see if they can't get over it.

Sparky + Mitch: why cant yanmega use fly when it can pick people up and possibly eat their heads off?

Sparky: I'd wager it would just have a hard time carrying a human over long distances. You can't overwork the poor thing.

Mitch: I don't think it can pick people up at all, to be honest.

mewtark: have you ever tried blood sausage or blood pudding or shepards pie?

Mutark: *blinks in puzzlement*

Mark: what is meat made of, miltanks, tauroses, piloswines?

Mark: Huh? I just eat animal meat.

Mark: what happens if in a trainer battle, a pokemon uses roar and sends out chaletwo?

Mark: Um, I'm not carrying Chaletwo with me. He's on the PC and in my head, but not in any of my Pokéballs unless he needs to be sent out.

ok then, what happens if a hacker enters your PC and opens chaletwos ball?

Mark: Uh? You can't open balls on the PC.

Mark & May: Why dont you nickname your Pokemon?

Mark: Um, well, I'm not very good at names, and their species' names become their names when you use them for them, you know? It's not like they're not individuals because their name is the same as the name of their species. It's still their name.

May: I nicknamed Spirit, because she was unique - she wasn't just a Vulpix. But otherwise nicknames aren't necessary. They don't care what you call them, so long as they know what it is.

what I mean mark is that, a hacker withdraws chaketwos ball then opens it

Mark: I'm pretty sure the PC system is supposed to be very secure. I mean, I've never heard of anybody hacking into it.

Thought I'd write a bit of an update. I'm on the seventh page of chapter sixty, as my signature says, and the going's pretty fast when I'm actually working on it. I don't know when I'll finish, exactly, because I'm still not quite sure how long it's going to be (I'm going to wait for how things evolve organically to decide whether and how certain things should happen), but I'm at least definitely more than halfway done.

I quite like this chapter so far. Writing it feels like writing Scyther's Story/The Fall of a Leader. I'm a little worried about how this chapter will come across to people who haven't read the spin-offs, though; maybe it'll just seem to be introducing a bunch of tangential stuff without going into it properly. Oh, well. It all does serve a purpose and I don't think it's confusing without having read the spin-offs, so it should be okay.

I dreamt something about Mark and May being engaged for an arranged marriage or something (it could also be that they somehow got engaged by accident or that it was necessary to save the world or whatever; either way, they were still twelve). They were having lunch somewhere talking about how annoying that was and how they're kinda friends and all but why do they have to get married? I really enjoyed that dream because they were delightfully in character about it and I just generally love dreaming about my characters. Also, it just amused me that even in a dream where they're somehow engaged, they're just there going "yeahhh no".

There have been a lot of queries regarding the fact Mew is referred to by both 'he' and 'she' in chapter 61 - most of them noticing one instance and assuming it's some kind of a typo.

It is not a typo: Mewtwo consistently uses 'she', while Chaletwo and Mark's narration consistently use 'he'. (And May, you may also notice, uses 'it' - which means in this chapter the same character is referred to by all three standard English third-person singular personal pronouns, something I quite enjoy.) This is because in the world of this fic, all legendaries who are genderless in the games are biologically sexless single-individual species that don't have a gender as we know it. Some of them - like Chaletwo - prefer to be referred to by one particular pronoun anyway; others don't, and much like with Pokémon nicknames, the pronoun used in any given instance is up to the speaker. Mew is one such legendary.

This is not a new thing; I've been consciously writing it that way since at least the beginning of the HMMRCIG if not longer, and outside the fic I've been explaining this to readers for about that amount of time. The first time I found occasion to actually bring it up in-story, however, was the first time the opposite of the usual pronoun was actually used for a legendary: chapter 51, where Entei used 'she' for Mew. I threw in a paragraph of Mark remembering that Mew has no grammatical gender preference - kind of out of nowhere, but it was at least intended to introduce the concept to readers so they wouldn't be confused. And it seemed to work: I can't recall anyone expressing confusion over it then, so I actually was kind of surprised by how many people were completely puzzled when the same thing happened in chapter 61.

Now, I said I'd been consciously writing it this way since at least the beginning of the HMMRCIG. If this were a newer concept, it would probably be a bit more refined and informed by modern ideas about gender - but the fact it is old means that pronoun use has been an active part of the characterization for ages. So now that I've found an excuse to ramble about that, I will! :D

If you were to reread chapters nine and ten or Mew's random appearance in chapter 13 (but please don't), for instance, you'd notice Mark's narration awkwardly avoids using any pronouns for Mew as far as possible but goes with "it" where a pronoun is absolutely necessary. However, Chaletwo has always referred to Mew as 'him' - in fact, Chaletwo uses 'he' for every legendary that doesn't expressly prefer the feminine. It just seemed like what he'd do: he wants things to be simple and easy and doesn't like to think about them too much, so he made a rule - using the same pronoun he prefers for himself - and just sticks with that. And Mark, since chapter 25, has simply gone along with Chaletwo's pronouns for everyone, including Mew. (When he started not going along with everything Chaletwo said and did, it didn't occur to him to change his pronoun use in protest, but on reflection that would have been rather amusing.)

May, meanwhile, uses 'it' for all such legendaries, because as far as she's concerned that's just the correct pronoun for something genderless. Its potentially 'dehumanizing' properties don't bother her because she's not the most tone-sensitive person in the world. (Who would've thought?) I don't think anybody has ever commented on May's use of 'it' for legendaries Mark and Chaletwo are calling 'him', which just goes to show that people are perfectly capable of seeing the same character referred to by two different pronouns as long as they don't happen to be 'he' and 'she'.

Entei was an interesting case - it felt like he would refer to Mew as 'her', but as I wrote him I started to realize that as part of his general condescension he has shades of a kind of pseudo-sexism - he uses 'she' for smaller, less imposing legendaries. Although Suicune for instance also has no preference, my mental simulation of Entei found it absurd to call him 'her', because Suicune is his equal. He goes through all the motions of respecting Mew, but doesn't think anything of just going and making a plan to stop the thing that Mew doesn't want to be stopped - where Chaletwo keeps justifying his decision to disobey Mew with the greater good and Mew just being tired and not wanting to live anymore, Entei has no real impulse to care about Mew's opinion in the first place. In some way, calling Mew 'her' is because he doesn't think much of her and uses it as a kind of way to designate her as a different class from himself that he can be elitist towards.

Mewtwo, on the other hand, began to use 'she' for Mew to differentiate himself from her as part of his journey towards realizing that he was his own person with a right to exist independently of Mew. (Side note: I really liked writing Mewtwo and how he's dealt with his issues in the twenty-seven years since he was created.)

I've also written some backstory material from Mew's point of view that alternates between using 'he' and 'she' in the narration between scenes. If you found it confusing in chapter 61, just wait until you read that.

Oh, God, why do I keep forgetting about this thread.

Raichu: During the Thunderyu battle, you and Jolteon teamed up to sap the electricity from the funnel cloud, but you don't have the Volt Absorb ability. How could you do it? Is this a trait that all Electric Pokémon possess, or does your absorption differ from Jolteon's? If it does, how?

Raichu: We were just gathering the electrical energy to be able to use it to power our own attacks. Any Electric Pokémon can do that.

(Volt Absorb is the ability to use absorbed electricity for healing and had nothing to do with what they were doing there.)

Scyther/Razor: You mentioned in Ruxido that you used to slash through tall grass for fun (or training, I can't remember which). Did you ever accidentally slash a wild Pokémon? What happened if you did?

Scyther: Slashing grass is loud; normally the wild Pokémon would have plenty of time to get out of the way. But if you did accidentally hit something, you'd eat it, or take it back to the swarm and share it if you weren't hungry.

Racko: Have you chosen to stay as a Grovyle, or are you not powerful enough to evolve into a Sceptile?

Racko: I just like this form! I'd feel naked without my wrist leaves.

(IALCOTN) Mark: The school you go to has a Porygon to help with grading tests; how can it stay in Sailance without becoming debilitated and tired? Or can it avoid this by converting itself to computer code?

Mark: The Porygon are just in the computers, and presumably the Effect wouldn't reach them there. I don't think they ever take physical form.

Mark's Sandshrew: How many moves do you know?

Sandslash: I don't keep count. Fifteen, twenty?

(As I keep saying, asking the characters is not the best way to find out factual information. He knows Sandslash's natural level-up moveset plus Rock Slide and Aerial Ace, unless I've forgotten some off-hand mention at some point.)

Pamela: Do you use ranged moves (Thunderbolt, Shadow Ball, Round…) often?

Pamela: Sometimes. Alan likes Swift and Power Gem.

Victor: Do you think Mutark's ability to grow in size and power is a way of making up for it's lack of evolution? And I don't recall, is yours male or female?

Victor: Precious is male. I wouldn't say it's a substitute for evolution, per se; its utility is quite different, since it relies on enticing the opponent to underestimate it before it grows.

May's Stantler: You said you're a mother, how long ago did you have your baby? And have you had more than one?

Stantler: I had one calf, some five years ago, after my trainer died.

to Mark, May and Alan: What's your favorite species of Pokemon and why?

Mark: Lugia and Articuno.

May: Skarmory.

Alan: All Pokémon have their own strengths and weaknesses, and they're all their own individuals to be judged on their own merits, not their species. The idea of having a favorite Pokémon rubs me the wrong way - like having a favorite race of people.

(Mark's) Charizard: In the event of a battle between Charlie and yourself, who would be the victor?

Charizard: Probably Charlie. He is older and has more experience.

Mark/May: Have you considered buying or stealing a Pocket Healer? Seems that it would be awfully convenient.

Mark: Well, they're really hard to get and limited in scope, since they can only heal mild injuries - they're basically like a Max Revive and Full Restore in one. Serious damage like legendaries can do mandates proper Pokémon Center care.

May: Is it possible to hold a normal conversation with Mutark in any of her forms?

May: Kind of, but she only transforms during battle, so there isn't much of an opportunity for it.

Female Color Dragons: What do you suppose your male siblings are up to?

Raudra: They're scheming to leave us powerless and have us grovel before them as they rob us of our homes and mock us and slowly kill us!

You can't ask the male color dragons or the Destroyer, because they haven't appeared on-screen in the story (or, in the Destroyer's case, you at least don't know that he has), one of the requirements for being able to ask questions. Furthermore, all information I'll answer regarding the Destroyer in Ask the Author, etc. is basically channeled through Chaletwo - I'm basically telling you his beliefs about the Destroyer - and even if you could in fact ask the Destroyer questions, this would still violate the rule about not giving characters important information they may not actually know in the story.

Apologies for being ridiculously late as usual.

Letaligon: How is your life in Ruxido? Are you dissapointed about your father's death? Would you come back with Mark if you had the opportunity?

Letaligon: …I… I'm fine.

Mrs Grotentwoski (or whatever your middle name is): What would you say if I told you Mark is one of the 4 best trainers in Ouen this year?

Mrs. Grodski: Hmph. It looked like dumb luck, if you ask me.

Chaletwo: If you did absolutely nothing to stop the War of the Legends, who do you think would win?

Chaletwo: The legendaries' power is equalized for the War. There's no point speculating on who would win.

Mark and May: If you had a chance to become any Pokémon, which Pokemon would you choose to become? (No legendaries)

Mark: Um… One that can fly, maybe? It'd be nice to fly on my own.

May: Do I have to? I'd rather just stay as I am, thanks.

Mewtwo
how do you like chaletwo being a more powerful version of you

Mewtwo: I once thought power was the true measure of worth, but I have since realized that every life has worth in itself. Power is irrelevant. Now that I know why he looks like me, I do not fault him for it.

How do u put your pokemon personalities on?

Not a character question, but I believe you're referring to the personality test results? Take the test here, and when you get your result, it will give you a BBCode for your result image. If you click the "Edit Options" link on this site, you can paste the BBCode into your signature and it will appear at the bottom of your posts.

I didn't really see a lot of people comment on the Mark's passivity thing, so I'm not assuming it was obvious to everyone that that was significant - it probably wasn't, and shouldn't really be anyway. But I think the specific way I state it sounds just a bit too blunt as inner monologue for Mark - I think it doesn't seem entirely genuine as his thought process for him to be like "Well, I'm not the sort of person who would call this out." So that's the motivation for saying I'd do it a bit less bluntly, more than it being "too obvious". Don't feel bad it didn't stand out for you!

I agree any significant pushback from Mark would probably alienate May, as we saw with Alan (I think I mentioned this in a previous commentary). Doesn't entirely absolve Mark, though - that's not the reason he doesn't speak up, given what happens alienating May probably would've been entirely worth it, and he probably could have spoken up in some way that wouldn't necessarily set her off. It's one of those very human things where it doesn't seem important enough in the moment to stand up and disrupt things, and it's hard to see dramatic consequences coming.

It puts such a big grin on my face whenever you talk about Mark and May! Thanks for commenting! You won't have to do the Pokémon CAPTCHAs if you register an account, you know. :P