The Quest for the Legends

Mark: Huh? I… don't think that would work.

Chaletwo: Well, you can't recreate the soul. He could've made something that looked like Chalenor, but not actually him. He used Mewtwo's body to make me because he wanted to do it quickly, so he could transfer something of the original Chalenor from the eye.

Mew: That would rest on whether or not he formally released me. I do not know if he did.

You cannot ask Raikou questions, because Raikou has never appeared in this fic (though as a matter of fact, Raikou has been caught this whole time and had no opportunity to make a Chosen for himself).

I already have plans for Raikou's Chosen if I happen to reconsider the choice of making him not have one in the IALCOTN.

And it's been so long since I was playing Colosseum that I can't really remember how I dealt with Entei, but remember that you'll get more chances at it if it's hard to catch it now. :/

Huh? I put up Ask the Characters as one of the first threads I made in the forum when I first put that up, which as it happens was after chapter 35, but I've had an Ask the Characters thing going at various forums since early in the fic.

You wouldn't have been able to ask Suicune about the Chosen thing anyway, however, because the rules say you can't ask any characters who have not appeared with a speaking role (or something as good as one, like Carl's Charizard who incidentally never spoke but was still established as a character) in the fic, which Suicune did not until chapter 35.

And even if Suicune had had a speaking role before that, he'd probably have refused to tell you. :P Why would he tell you but not Gyarados?

Could you put the old writing guide back on the menu?

No, because it's under reconstruction and does not make any sense as it is right now. As it was before, it was not very good.

How about the art thieves click here?

That was stupid and pointless and just a random place to vent my frustrations about art theft. Now that I have a Wall of Shame, it is really obsolete, and it is not as if it was ever going to convince anybody not to steal art. If I were to bring it back, it would just be an article about my most amusing experiences with art theft - no alerts.

Or the old fan theories?

Didn't you read my lengthy breakdown of why I wanted to take them down? From the 03/17/08 update:

* I stopped accepting fan content a while ago. It seems weird to have a few random pages of submitted content still there. This is a pretty minor reason, though.
* It seems like half of the time I get an e-mail mentioning these theories, whether positively or negatively, the author mistakenly believes that I wrote it despite the italicized names of the real authors noted at the top of each page. So basically I keep getting either showered with praise I don't deserve or attacked for opinions that aren't even my own. Both feel considerably awkward.
* It seems kind of stupid that my site, which contains some of my own theories about the Pokémon world and is generally pretty much in its entirety written by me, contains these other theories, parts of which I distinctly disagree with. Even if it were clear to everyone who read them that I didn't actually write the theories, having them on my site definitely does seem to imply that I approve or agree with them, which, well, I largely don't. I've been kind of uncomfortable with that from the beginning, actually, but had them up anyway because I was letting people submit fan content.
* Following that: although I haven't personally made any plans to create a Pokémon breeding theory of my own as I just figure they do it the same way we do, Pokémon genetics and evolution are subjects that I myself have wanted to write theories about for a while. Obviously it would be kind of odd to have two completely different theories about Pokémon genetics or evolution on my site, one of which is mine and the other not. And that probably-coming-soon theory I mentioned above does slightly touch upon Pokémon breeding such that it would be rather incompatible with Dannichu's breeding theory, as well.
* The breeding theory in particular was written in 2003 and can well be considered outdated at this point since it revolves around the three fairies, Mew, Celebi and Jirachi. We now have Manaphy and Shaymin as additions to this group, and technically it would make the most sense if they also had some role in the process following the original theory's logic. This doesn't entirely invalidate the theory, but it shakes its foundations in the same way as the fourth generation shook the foundations of my Zodiac.

Then I put up the theory of Pokémon gender ratios and genetics, and that along with the Pokémon evolution and Pokéballs theory I'm going to write at some point in the future basically contradicts everything in the old fan theories.

I liked them very much and I need you to bring them back.

You don't "need me" to bring them back. They're still there, at exactly the same URLs they used to be; I can give you the links if you absolutely must keep reading them. But I will not put them back on the menu because I don't actually endorse their content anymore.

And why did Suicune have to die?

Because otherwise the entire Gyarados/Spirit/legendary beasts subplot would make absolutely no sense.

Gyarados: I… don't know how it works. Somehow I drain all the energy from my body and use it to attack. I only discovered I could do it.

Alan: I've told him already. We've… well, pieced it together. I just don't understand why Chaletwo would keep something like this from us. Couldn't it have helped if he'd told us everything about their powers, at least? Couldn't he… you know, change them, if he's the one who made them in the first place? Why didn't he even tell Molzapart before we set out to capture all the legendaries?

May: Well, depends on what I'd be going up against. You have to pick your team with respect to what your opponent has, you know? And where you'll be battling, what kind of strategy you want to employ, that kind of stuff.

May: *unimpressed*

Mutark: *wails unhappily*

Suicune: They have no responsibility. We simply expect them to stay alive with the gems unharmed until the War is over, and to ensure that, we had to select those that made the best use of their power and showed the skills to survive.

Mutark: *bats*

Charizard: *looking conspicuously away*

Suicune: We did not know about the War of the Legends at the time Chaletwo approached us. And in any case I still doubt his plan will work. Even in the unlikely case he manages to capture all of the legendaries - and without all of them, it's all for nothing - what happens to the Destroyer's energy? It is much safer to do it our way.

Do you think I like starving my subjects? No; I felt every shred of pain I put him through. But it was necessary, and instead, I gave him incredible power. If I do not live, I cannot guard the Water Pokémon in the future. It is good in their long-term interests.

Entei: A Pokéball might protect us just as well from the Destroyer, but submitting ourselves to the whim of the human who carries the ball? Hardly worth the risk. And what if the legendaries that remain merely find and destroy the Pokéballs? Protected only by human children, it would be easy, and we would be sent out again to die or go mad, but the soul gems are protected by powerful Pokémon, and should they be destroyed, there might still be time for us to be resurrected before our souls leave the world. In all respects it is safer than Chaletwo's silly idea, while the latter has no discernible advantages. This is not even a choice.

Chaletwo: I'm not Chalenor, and I am trying to save everyone, not just myself. Hiding in soul gems is all fine and dandy if you personally just want to be safe, but to prevent it altogether, you have to get everyone out of the influence of the Destroyer, which means forcibly capturing them since nobody agreed to do it willingly. So Pokéballs it is.

I admit I didn't personally think of soul gems back then, but it amounts to the same thing; I can't exactly force them all to create soul gems. Besides that it's a lot less convenient thanks to the part where the body dies. With Pokéballs, the body can be restored easily.

Mark: Um, not really. I just… draw, you know?

Well, this would be a matter of relevant preexisting worldbuilding that actually needs some explaining - a TM/HM article would pretty much consist of "Oops, I slipped up there, so ignore that bit." (Though I have actually also been toying with the idea of making a section of known errors and inconsistencies just to apologize for them and be sure to fix them in the IALCOTN.) Most wild Pokémon societies (pretty much everything except Scyther and Letaligon) also aren't actually relevant to the fic, so making articles about them would involve making stuff up specifically for the article - also not really the sort of thing I'm going for here.

I'd be really interested in learning about the whole 'chosen' thing for Spirit and Gyarados. For instance, how does the process of it work? Why are the symbols the way they are? Were their unusual abilities something that resulted in them being 'chosen,' or were they the result of being 'chosen'? Why do they become lighter colors?

A good deal of this was explained in chapter 51 - legendary picks out several Pokémon as candidates and gives them some powers as well as marking them with darker colors than usual in order to recognize them more easily, puts them through some hardships to test their potential and let them realize their powers, and finally picks the best one to be the actual Chosen and carry the soul gems, which also includes marking them with a lighter color than usual (again, so they can be more easily recognized). The symbols are arbitrary but also there to be recognizable. Suicune was technically still testing his candidates when Gyarados threatened him and he saw his best option as being to immediately 'choose' Gyarados and create the soul gems on the spot; Entei, meanwhile, had decided on Spirit beforehand, the way they intended, and told her she was special and chosen (so that she would consider herself and her life important and could tell others in order to inspire the respect and reverence both humans and Pokémon usually reserve for legendaries) while leaving out the part where the point of the whole ordeal is just saving his ass while hijacking the lives of other innocent Pokémon (so as to avoid dissenters like Gyarados deciding the whole thing is preposterous and doing their best to destroy the all-important gems).

Aaand that would be an example of the general sort of thing these articles might be like - written in a more organized manner and going into more detail, of course, but just taking the stuff mentioned and implied in the chapter and summarizing and elaborating on it to provide a better view of the big picture. I might well do one on the Chosen (going into more details on this), but probably only after I finish that Spirit one-shot I was talking about a while ago, since that would touch on other bits.

Actually the first one I'd like to do would be about the concept of power in the QftL universe, which would probably be lumped in with the Destroyer's power draining thing.

So here it is, that Spirit spin-off one-shot. Nothing spectacular; it's just a brief account of baby Spirit's testing, plus a little bit of seven-year-old May and her father.

I've also finished tagging all my relevant posts in the Quest for the Legends forum as well as some of the Quest Blog forum. I'm thinking about organizing the tags somehow, maybe splitting them into character tags, other fic-related tags and unrelated tags or something like that, to make the searching easier to do.

Finally, you may or may not have noticed, but I randomly decided that in addition to how far into the next chapter I am, I'm going to have a quote from what I've written so far in my signature. With this, I also decided that it's about time I allowed blog browsers to see that stuff without finding my posts at the forums, so my signature is now displayed on Quest Blog posts.

EDIT: On second thought, I put the signature on the main blog page at the top instead. Seemed kind of redundant to have the same signature showing below every post on the page.

If Raikou hadn't have eben caught by Rick, would he have made a Spirit Gem and could he have maybe given it to Jolteon?

He would have made a soul gem, but it would have been given to one of his potentials, and Jolteon wasn't one of them.

Wasn't born, and most definitely was not yet a Jolteon (the potentials were always of the legendary's type). And even if he had been, he would be dark-colored and somebody would have noticed that.

Yeah, that too. It stretches credulity enough that Spirit and Gyarados's trainers happen to travel together.

(Although there is this hidden piece of random headcanon of mine that says that the Electrike whose mother they killed in chapter 34 was one of Raikou's potentials, which, if it had accepted Alan's offer to take it and train it, would have resulted in a perfect trinity of potentials for the three main characters. Which, of course, meant I specifically didn't make that happen.)

Who's your favorite author? What's your favorite book by them? Is it a well known book in Iceland?

I don't really have a single favorite author (of fiction, anyway); there are a lot of books I love. Michael Ende and both Momo and The Neverending Story have to go pretty high, though, and I recognize that while there are other books I really love, those two are better as literature. They do have Icelandic translations, but I don't think I've actually met anybody here besides my best friend (who introduced me to them) who's read them.

If you could have any superpower, what would you choose? How would you use these powers?

Flying, preferably if coupled with super-endurance (which would also be pretty good on its own). Just for the sheer fun of it, seriously. Being able to fly places under one's own power is pretty much the ultimate freedom, or maybe after teleportation (which would also be very cool, but not as fun as flying).

If you could exist in the universe of any piece of fiction / time in history, where would you choose?

Pokémon, of course! Who wouldn't want a bunch of cuddly, badass, powerful, awesome creatures as friends you can go on adventures with? Also, some of them can fly.

Though magic of the less restrained kind, such as in Harry Potter, would also be very cool to have. (Plus, flying!)