The Quest for the Legends

How long, for a Pokemon fanfiction, do you think the avarage chapter should be?

Uhh, I'm really not the right person to ask about anything having to do with "average chapters"; I'm the person whose chapters vary between three pages and twenty-seven based on what is happening. Generally, a chapter should feel something like an episode of a TV show: it should have a storyline and structure in itself. Something of note needs to happen in the chapter and it needs to close off reasonably after that.

Hmmmnn, what would you think if I told you tat you are my my role model? I ask you for a lot of advice, even though you may not really notice it…(God, that was embarrsing. I don't know why, though.)

Uh… o.O Okay? I'm probably not an exemplary role model, but do what you want.

What are your faverite video games, outside of Pokemon?

StarCraft (though I'm ashamed to say I've never actually finished it), the Ace Attorney series, and the Heroes of Might and Magic series.

I just love the actual note - the mechanical wording, the capitalization of the "variables", the general idea of implicitly accusing Mark of feeding his Pokémon steroids, and just the logic of it, really - of course the League will assume something suspicious when somebody enters with an überpowerful Pokémon like that Gyarados. Let's just say it's the sort of random thing I would find completely awesome if it were in somebody else's fic because I'm weird like that. I'm not expecting you to find it particularly remarkable or anything, but I was incredibly giddy over finally getting to write it.

Let's just say it fits nicely into the five-chapter arc pattern the ILCOE has going.

Twelve, you mean. I don't really know about that; I've known some pretty smart twelve-year-olds and from remembering when I was twelve myself kind of think people tend to think of children as a lot more stupid than they really are (I was unable to write to save my life, and unable to tell that a bright blue background on a website does not look good, sure, but I know I could could debate and make rational arguments just fine when I was thirteen, and I can't really believe that all happened in that one year in between).

That said, it is also simply a tradition, hell, pretty much a law of children's books, films, series and entertainment in general to portray children as perfectly capable of rational decisions, thinking things through, coming up with good ideas and so on, for the very simple reason that even if real twelve-year-olds wouldn't be this rational, they can still tell when characters in a book are being blatantly irrational or useless and feel patronized if all children their age are being shown that way. As I said, I'm not actually convinced this is entirely unrealistic, but even if it is, writing them this way is kind of akin to not writing about people going to the bathroom - yeah, unrealistic, but it makes the story better (having the main characters make stupid mistakes all the time and being too immature to do anything useful is just tiresome), extends the potential target audience and avoids offending anyone.

Emotional maturity is something of a different matter; people have commented that Mark's general emo-ness at the beginning sounds a couple of years older than he is, for instance. But at least my twelve-year-olds aren't falling in TRUE LOVE OMG.

Who is the most boring person/ you're least favorite to write about in TQFtL? (Meaning the charecter you like the least)

I love all my characters in their own way. Sandslash isn't overly interesting, but it's not as if writing him actively bores me; if it did, I wouldn't be writing about him. I do dislike Molzapart and avoid writing him out of embarrassment over having ever created him, but that's not really a matter of him as a character, so I'm not sure if that counts.

What about the best? (I can guess who you will say….)

Scyther and Sparky and Chaletwo and Floatzel and Letaligon and May. :3 And Shadowdart if the spin-offs count.

It is in Icelandic. Although it is possible to get it on DVD with English subtitles (though I'm not sure how well translation would preserve the jokes, and there are a lot of Icelandic celebrities making cameos that nobody outside of Iceland would get).

I vaguely know Farla, starting with when I think I was Googling some of my fanfics to watch for plagiarism and found she'd commented on one of my one-shots as being a generic angstfest (and, as I found out when I read more, made an off-hand reference elsewhere to TQftL as having the most poorly thought-out plot she had ever seen). It was quite an awakening. :P

We don't exactly talk, but she knows her stuff and she often posts entertaining things, so I read her LiveJournal fairly regularly. Why do you ask?

There are "secret" forums for staff members mostly everywhere for the sake of allowing mods to discuss what to do about rulebreaking and rule changes and the like; I'm not sure if you're referring to my forums or Serebii here, but they both do. Though on my forums there is hardly any point in its existence, what with the last post in it having been in June last year (a question about the tag system), and the last thread before that was last posted in in December 2008. In other words, believe me when I say you're not missing anything.

Do you base any charactes on any real people?

Besides May originating as a self-insert-esque character and still having some 'references' to myself, no. Writing real people into a story that happens in the Pokémon world would just feel odd to me.

Is Taylor's Mewtwo2 going to end up like the Mewtwo from the movie, meaning, having his darstardly plans ruins by something stupid like crying?

What dastardly plans? Mewtwo² is brainwashed by the Clone Ball to just do whatever Taylor tells him to; if he has any sort of a plan for anything, it's to escape from it, but I'd hardly call that dastardly. Taylor's plans are slightly more so, but only really extend as far as "Win the Ouen League".

And no, seeing as I write lengthy rants myself about how ridiculous the crying scene in the first movie is, I would not write anything of the like into my fic. Mewtwo² will have an important role near the end, but that will not be resolved by anything lame.

Why must your friends be so witty? >:-(

Hm?

What's this, um, story you wrote wrote when you were seven. Sound like a good read.

It is, but it's in Icelandic and is not nearly as charming when I attempt to translate it (and when my delightful attempts at illustrations aren't there). I don't have it with me right now, but I suppose I can try to type it up from memory, though, since I was just reading it the other day (I do that regularly).

BOOK 1

Gráni, Faxi's father, lay and waited for death. Faxi stood by his side and said, "Dad, will I inherit everything?"

Gráni replied: "Yes, son, and that's quite a lot. You will inherit three things: the first is a necklace, the second is a map and the third is a chest."

Faxi thought this was weird. What was he supposed to do with these things? Then it was like Gráni read his thoughts: "The necklace makes you invisible, the map shows the way to Blakkur's cave* and the chest stores your treasures," said Gráni.

"But Dad, I have something for you," said Faxi. "And what is that, so late in my life?" asked Gráni.

"Yes, very 'late in your life'," said Faxi, "it's a medicine! Eat some of this grass!" "Yes! I'm cured!" Gráni ran away and all his belongings were left with Faxi.

Faxi paced around the clearing. He liked it there and decided to live there. He headed out to find new adventures.

Suddenly, Faxi heard a gunshot! He ran the other way, straight towards a human! It was a trap! The man with the gun had been herding him towards his partner with the bridle, who now put it on Faxi and led him away.

Faxi was sold on the condition that he would be shot when he could no longer work, at least NOT sold. He tried his best but soon it came to his dying day. He escaped narrowly, but his right front leg was wounded, and he lay there helpless until a tiger came and saved him. Then he limped away.

But soon it became apparent that a rock had gotten stuck in Faxi's eye. But soon it fell out.

Faxi ran out over the plains and onto the rock that separated the plains from the lowlands. There he met a beautiful mare. Cont'd.

*Blakkur is a horse who once fought Faxi and got a black eye. He is the only enemy who desires the necklace.

BOOK 2

The mare's name was Snow White. She loved Faxi and got together with him.

Soon a little foal was born into the world. There was plenty to do. Faxi went spying in the morning and didn't come back until the evening. One day, he came home with bad news. "Blakkur and Kola-Blakkur are going to kidnap the foal!"

"What? Kidnap little Blesi! Never!" But Blesi was kidnapped the next day.

That night, Faxi went to the cave and saw Blesi chained to a post. He tried to let him loose, but then Kola-Blakkur jumped on him! It was a trap! Now Faxi had to work all day carrying Blakkur's foal, but Snow White sat at home and thought things over.

One day, she had a brilliant idea. Faxi was on a night watch while Blakkur and Kola-Blakkur slept! That evening, she rescued Faxi (and of course Blesi too).

[insert random terrible overdramatic attempt at poetry about Faxi and Blakkur fighting here]

Did you have some dream job when you were litlle?

It was always two things: being a writer, and for some reason owning a restaurant. I'd made up menus, names, drawn pictures and floor plans and everything. And it was going to be all charity-like and collecting money to save the tigers. Unfortunately I'm no longer so obsessed with restaurants.

Do you have some huge asperation you want to fill in your life.

Finishing The Quest for the Legends. No, really, that is my primary long-term goal in life.

Huh, I did put a "change username" functionality into the forum. What do you know. (Wait, can't you access that yourself, though? Edit Options?)

Would you ever consider doing a backstory fic like 'Scyther's Story' for Gyarados and/or Spirit?

Funny you should ask. I actually started writing something like that for Spirit the other day (primarily explaining why she developed her Ghost-type powers). It would never be anywhere near as long as Scyther's Story, though; it would just be a one-shot.

Gyarados, eh, I kind of doubt it, since there isn't that much to his backstory that you don't already know, really. :/

How did you select the names for your charecters? Random ones you liked?

The general rule is "the first name that flies into my head", which is sometimes vaguely relevant and sometimes not.

Random: I like Christopher Paolini as an Author because he wrote Eragon when he was 11-13, and it is an incredible book, especially to be finished when he was 13.

…um, no. He started it when he was fifteen and it was published when he was nineteen. Seriously, what the hell? Eragon fans often love to report it as if it was written in its entirety when he was fifteen or published then, but this is the first time I've seen anyone claim he was even younger than that. o_O What's with people aging him down?

Not going to touch the "incredible book" bit. Just know that your mileage may vary widely on that.

I don't hate the idea; it's just extremely cheesy most of the time it's used. I'm all for villains laughing when it works as a reaction the character would have to what's happening, as opposed to just as a way of showing them delighting in their own evilness; see my lengthy justification of Mewtwo's chuckling in my first movie review, for instance.

Umm just noticed this buut… Sciztwo uses 5 moves :P just saying..

Oh, damn it. I can't believe these things slip through.

No. The kids have an excuse to go to the League in order to train their Pokémon for the legendary battles; they have absolutely no excuse to waste their time dressing their Pokémon up or trying to make their attacks look pretty.

Not to mention that the sense in which Xeiashi Zakaris is saying Mark is too smart has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with grades in any subject.

But yeah, as I said before, this is just how fiction with child main characters works. Ash saves the world several times over, and he's supposedly ten. Harry Potter confronted Quirrell over the Philosopher's Stone when he was eleven. James of Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach? Is seven years old. They act mature and qualified, in an abstract sort of way, because it just wouldn't make their respective stories any better to have them constantly fail at what they're doing out of their own immaturity; it would just make it annoying to read, the way any obvious idiot hero is usually annoying to read about outside of a very particular type of story. Saying they're too mature is kind of like saying they don't go to the bathroom enough; yes, it's arguably unrealistic, but this is just one of those cases where realism does not equal a better story.

Here I'm strictly referring to the stupidity aspect of immaturity, mind you; it's a perfectly valid complaint if you find his rebellious thing near the beginning too teenageish, or if you think he's too philosophical, or too cynical, or too hormonal, to feel like a twelve-year-old. It's just that being at least reasonably sensible and capable has to be considered an acceptable break from reality, even if it's technically unrealistic.

I've been wondering for a while, what do you do to put your Word documents of The Quest for the Legends onto your site? Do you have a code that can lift them and put them into the chapter page, or do you convert it to an HTML document and paste the HTML from that into the page, or what?

First I copy and paste the chapter to post it on forums, usually starting with the Serebii.net forums, and manually go through it to add the italics back in with BBCode. Then I run it through a little script I made to convert BBCode to HTML, and then I copy and paste the output HTML into a file I upload on the server.

Also, what methods do you use to brainstorm for your stories?

Eh, when I think "brainstorm", I think of those silly exercises they make you do at school where you're supposed to write down everything that goes through your mind for x amount of time and that's supposed to magically give you ideas, which I don't and can't do. I don't really ever do anything I would designate as "brainstorming"; I never sit down specifically to get ideas. I get ideas (a) when I'm not doing anything in particular and my mind happens to wander to a story and connect something together that I didn't before, or (b) during the actual writing of that story, where one of the (many, many) things that happen spontaneously during the writing of a chapter can spark ideas relating to something later in the story as well.

So. As you probably guessed, the "Chapter 53" posted yesterday was an April Fools' joke. If you hadn't guessed, this means you no longer have to worry if I've lost my mind. If you had, I hope it amused you half as much as it amused me.

Specifically, everything after "He wished he could help her, somehow" was a joke. What came before it was a sneak peek at the real chapter 53, designed to lull you into thinking you were just reading a normal chapter. So when will you get to see this real chapter 53? In fact, I finished it several days ago - for the first time in this fic's life, I have actually been withholding a finished chapter. (Yes! I really did finish a chapter, and a humorous knock-off of it, within the space of less than a couple of weeks!) So now that it's no longer April Fools' Day on the server, I can now put up the real thing; see the link at the bottom of this post.

For those of you who missed all the fun, the fake chapter 53 can still be read, this time as an extra to chapter 53. If you haven't read the fake one yet, I sort of recommend you read the real chapter first, but it's your choice.

Chapter 53 Extra: April Fools

With this, I also decided that it would be a shame if people could never comment on it again, so I decided to add the ability to comment on extras to the minipage, as well as moving all the comments on the fake chapter over to that comment page.

I'll be posting a bit of a 'making-of' for the fake chapter tomorrow, because I just like to ramble like that. Hope you enjoyed the joke. Thanks to everybody who played along; you all made my day (especially Negrek, who had me giggling for at least five minutes straight). Special thanks also go to opaltiger and elyvorg, who were in on the joke and also beta-read both the real and fake chapters.

Those of you who just posted to tell everybody it's a joke, pssh! Have you no sense of fun? :P

So, well, without further ado, I present to you chapter 53, for real this time. Nine pages. I'm afraid it's… a bit less amusing than its counterpart.

The Real Chapter 53: Away

Actually not; in fact, the fake chapter was written first, and it's been in the planning for years (though the real chapter has been in the planning for even longer). More on this in the aforementioned making-of I'm posting tomorrow.

Heh, I wondered if I should be looking up how much pressure it ought to take to crush him and calculating how realistic this was, but laziness won out with the consideration that "eh, Tyranitar are pretty heavy, right?" Definitely should have thought that through better.

Also, I spent most of the chapter WTF-ing over why nobody seemed to find it odd that Taylor was lurking in the rocks spying on them for no apparent reason; when you explained it, it's obvious why May would be expecting him, though I would have thought Mark would have been a bit more miffed when Taylor randomly appeared.

I did worry it would strike readers as strange, but thought the revelation of where they'd been worked a lot better afterwards, so I hoped it just wouldn't make people wonder too much before it came to that point. You have a very good point about Mark, though; he ought to be a lot more baffled there and there's plenty of time to describe it. Definitely something to add in.

The idea was that Taylor had teleported with Mewtwo^2, yes (actually to be explained in chapter 54), which was also why he wasn't followed there by a mob of paparazzi and his hatedom.

(And if tyranitar is all about making May happy, why did he disobey a direct order, even if May had previously said the guy had to die?)

His reasoning went something like this: May has talked a lot about how much she hates Taylor and how he needs to die; she seemed happy at first when I was advancing on him; she seemed very reluctant to tell me to come back and only did it because he ordered her to; meanwhile, she thought I was just scaring him so she didn't know I was planning something she was going to like; therefore, she'll still be happy when I do it and she won't want me to come back because he'll be dead so she doesn't need to follow his orders anymore.

Which is pretty effed up logic, of course, but he's pretty effed up.

Why, yes, I will have much fun with Rick.

Thanks a lot for your comments! It's always nice to get good criticism on these kinds of things. :3

First of all, I've added to a couple of character bios as well as the trivia in accordance with the real chapter 53. That means spoilers, of course, if you haven't read the chapter yet.

And now it's just the making-of-the-April-Fools'-chapter I talked about yesterday, for those who are interested. Read both the real chapter and the fake one before you read this commentary! It contains major spoilers!

This has been probably the most elaborately planned April Fools' joke you will ever encounter, because the idea for this is years old. Originally it sprouted from my desire in 2003 or so to write a little Take That to the shipping community as a whole - as planned, it would be an extra that would first explain parody "Rules of Shipping" such as "Pair up the main male character and main female character, because they are always in love", "Pair up all characters who have ever shown hints of liking towards each other" and "Pair up all characters who have ever shown hints of disliking towards each other", and then construct a list of ridiculous shipping names (such as NeverMetTheGuyButStillSomehowLoveHimShipping, for Alan/Rick) for more or less every conceivable combination of characters (except Scyther and Nightmare, because nobody cares about canon-ish couples).

Originally it was planned for the end of the fic, I think, but at some point after I ditched the UMR, I decided there was no reason to withhold it any longer than it would take for all the major characters to be introduced. Thus, I aimed to post this as an extra after chapter 31 of the ILCOE, where Spirit would make her debut, and waited patiently for my moment to strike.

However, as we know, rewriting all this took quite a while, and by the time I actually got to that part, I'd grown up a little and lost most of my desire to mock the very idea of shipping. Though I did start to write it - I'd started to write it several times, actually, with the beginnings of three very differently presented versions just in the final Word document alone - it just felt kind of childish and unnecessarily hostile towards a group of readers I really had nothing against beyond just not personally understanding their point of view. Although I'd been looking forward to it for a couple of years by this point, the appeal was mostly lost when I got right down to it, and I closed the document, sighed and vented my remaining annoyance with shipping when convenient forum threads cropped up.

I'm not sure exactly when, but it can't have been later than 2006 or so (and was probably much earlier) that I was going over the aftermath of Taylor's death in my head (that being one of the oldest relatively late-fic plot points still in the story; I think I knew Tyranitar would kill Taylor after the League before I'd even thought up the War of the Legends, though some of the details and context were different), and it came out as a really shippy-looking moment between Mark and May. Obviously that wasn't what it was meant to imply and I immediately knew I had to do it a bit differently, but at the same time it struck me that it almost worked. And that sparked the idea that maybe, once I got to that point, if the timing was right, I could write an April Fools' chapter that would actually play that moment straight and go there. It could be a funnier, more interesting revival of the basic make-fun-of-shipping idea, focusing specifically on mocking the actual cheesiness, out-of-characterness and poor writing that so often come with romance fics, built around my greatest shipping peeves of all: the clichéd and inevitable pairing of the main boy and main girl, and the characters involved being preteens (a particular squick of mine).

This was a really far-off possibility at that point, of course, so I didn't think much about it - I knew I wanted to do this, but I also knew the stars would really have to align to get the timing to work out that way when I finally got to this part of the story. Nonetheless, however, I did tell some people - most notably my friend opaltiger - that I would like to do a faux-M-shipping (M-shipping being Mark/May, of course) April Fools' chapter one day and that the ideal chapter to do it would be this one. opaltiger was always very enthusiastic about it and I continued to discuss it with him every now and then, but it wasn't until after I'd written chapter 51 that I realized there was a very, very real possibility I could pull this off - two and a half months for two chapters was quite reasonable, both as a deadline to accomplish it and as fairly normal writing speed for me that would probably make April 1st a natural, realistic, entirely nonsuspicious release date for chapter 53.

Almost immediately after I decided I was really going to do this thing and started thinking seriously about it, however, I realized that unfortunately I couldn't actually do it quite like my original idea had it, simply because it would be an inevitable mood-killer; it would feel much less amusing than just inappropriate and cheapening if it were really placed just after what should be a very traumatizing moment for the main characters (remember, the idea was sparked when I was thinking about the aftermath of the murder). This realization could have been a killing blow for the idea, except that conveniently, what made the original moment work so remarkably well - that May was in a very unusual, vulnerable emotional state Mark had never really seen her in - also applied, if slightly differently, before the murder. Better yet, that would mean I could potentially create an altogether different mood whiplash effect, with the fake chapter shamelessly happy and sugarcoated in contrast to the real thing, which would be probably the most grim and cruel chapter in the entire story. This was still a bit of a gamble; it could just result in readers bursting out laughing during the real chapter as they remembered the events of the fake one, but if it worked right, it might also serve to highlight the brutality of the real chapter.

So, now that I knew I was going to do it, what to put in the fake chapter? Well, obviously, the first thing was Mark and May sitting around a campfire, with May in a bit of a broken state of mind, and it actually striking Mark that he wishes he could hug her or comfort her or something. That was basically what happened in that original unintentionally shippy scene; it wasn't actually an out of character thought, but it sounded like a typical hurt/comfort fanfiction precursor to romance, and the basic concept here was to use such a moment as a bridge into a fake Mark/May romance, which would otherwise inevitably feel blatantly out of character the moment it was even hinted at, but would like this be ever so slightly more convincing.

The deliberate mood whiplash I'd decided on, then, plus the fact the chapter would probably start with the real beginning of chapter 53, led to the idea that I might specifically include further minor parallels between the fake chapter and the real one - the next thing I definitively decided to include was Taylor making an appearance in much the same way as he would in the real chapter. The difference would be, of course, that because in the fake chapter Mark and May would have abandoned their characterizations for ~true love~, May would fail to challenge him to a rematch and instead just make a little speech - unknowingly preventing both Taylor's death and Tyranitar's departure in the process. And while I was at it, why not wreck Taylor's characterization as well and make the speech magically "redeem" him? I wasn't sure if this particular bit would work out, but it was at least something I'd like to try.

I also decided I should write the fake chapter first. It was vital, of course, for the fake chapter to be ready before April 1st, while it was merely preferable that the real one be ready before April 2nd so it could also be put up as soon as possible. This also led to the decision that while I would try to make the chapter derail reasonably slowly so as to get readers to take it seriously for as long as their credulity could be stretched, there would still be a definitive point at which I would consciously stop writing the real chapter and start writing the fake one - I wouldn't have the real one ready and just modify it from there.

So I started writing the fake chapter with just that being the plan - starts off like the real chapter, Mark and May get derailed by a sudden romantic plot tumor, and then Taylor pops up, only for May to give a decidedly unmayish speech that would, at least if I could get it to work in context, "redeem" him. The first bit of it, up to when May is talking about how she didn't do all that great, I'd actually written with the intention of it being in chapter 52; I just left it out when I realized it wasn't quite heading towards anything that would be much of a chapter end. Then I just went on from there with the real chapter; they exited the League grounds, they made camp, they sat down by the fire, Mark looked at May and wished he could help her. And I knew this was it, the moment where the chapter would stop being the real chapter and become the fake chapter.

Continuing was like hitting a brick wall. "In the flickering firelight" wasn't so bad; it was pre-planned as a subtle mistake to start off with (while it would be reasonable in the evening, it's the afternoon and a small campfire shouldn't affect the lighting of the area like that; this was also a nod to that original unintentional scene, which did take place in the evening), and though it felt weird to include it deliberately, I've made plenty of genuine blunders that were worse. But the moment I went on, everything felt grotesquely off immediately. This was just not quite Mark. And when I got to May's "Do you think I'm pretty?" line, I felt almost physically ill. It was a remarkably disturbing experience; somehow, writing my characters acting that fundamentally off felt really… violating. (This goes double for the kiss. As I said before, I don't just dislike preteen romance; it actually really squicks me out. I'll write blood and guts if I need to, but two twelve-year-olds kissing? With tongue? God help me, that's the hardest thing I've ever written. Harder, in fact, than that one scene in The Fall of a Leader, which is objectively much worse in every way but gah they're twelve years old.)

…that said, that very fact lent an additional sort of sadistic hilarity to it, in a way I can only forgive myself for because they're fictional characters and don't actually have any feelings. It was hard to continue to write it seriously because, really, it felt genuinely awful, but my mind turned increasingly wacky in the attempt. Everything slowly became a bit more exaggerated, and before the end I was giggling like mad at pretty much every word I put in. And hey, since we're doing an April Fools' chapter, why not resolve the whole legendary plot while we're at it, in the worst, cheesiest, lamest possible way? Wild Mew appeared! Turns out the power of love is what they needed all along! And how about resolving Chaletwo's daddy issues, too, since Mew is here? (Of course, since Mew is inexplicably female in the narration in this chapter, that would make them mommy issues here, but hey.)

The line "And Chaletwo is not my boyfriend" was what made me stop and realize that I wasn't really writing this as a serious thing intended to fool people anymore; it had turned into the kind of April Fools' joke that's there to amuse in itself more than to make people take it seriously. And that was fine, really; I'd always liked that kind of joke better (see TCOD Solutions). The writing towards the end turned into something straight out of Faxi the horse, and I loved it. It would've been fun to seriously fool people and all, but this was too hilarious to resist. And, well, apparently some people somewhat fell for it anyway, which is always a plus.

I finished the fake chapter in one day. Later I went back and edited some of the most outrageous lines, just to attempt to strike something of a balance and maybe fool people for a bit longer, but otherwise it was definitely the quickest "chapter" I've ever written. Because it was fun. That tweet I made about the joys of writing? Yeah, that was the fake chapter. It felt disturbing as hell, as I said, but it was so very, very worth it.

Hope you enjoyed it and that it didn't ruin the real chapter for you.