The Quest for the Legends

I've had this idea for a little while about implementing some sort of a tag system here. Now, since I was writing that one-shot with Spirit's backstory, which also touches on May's, and started worrying about whether it was all consistent with everything I've said in Ask the Characters and so on, I went and made it.

Currently, only I can tag posts. This is because the primary intended purpose of this feature is to facilitate a better organization of all the relevant information I've posted on the forum - I want users (and myself) to be able to search for posts tagged with a particular character, for instance, in order to see all questions they've answered in Ask the Characters, any tidbits I've posted about them in threads, etc. If people really want tagging ability, that could be arranged somehow, but right now I don't think the forum is big enough to really warrant it; there isn't much in the way of stuff I'd imagine people would really need to be able to find quickly except for those fic-relevant tidbits.

In any case, I'm still in the process of going through and tagging stuff, so be patient while that happens. If you have any suggestions for tags that already-tagged posts ought to have, tags that should be added in general or not-me posts that warrant tagging, please let me know.

That Spirit one-shot is pretty much finished, but as I said I want to finish the tagging in order to be sure I'm not contradicting myself anywhere; once that's done, though, it should be up pretty soon.

There has also been progress with chapter 55, so yay?

Sheesh, the number of Scyther tags alone would be ridiculous! And that Spirit one-shot thing makes me wonder about the possibilities of other one-shots about the Pokémon in the fic. (I realize you haven't implied that there would be one-shots for the others, but still.)

Mark's team doesn't seem to have a Pokémon that necessarily needs one, seeing as most of them were captured young (Jolteon, Dragonite, Sandslash) or have had their backgrounds explained fairly well (Charizard, Gyarados, and Scyther).

Letaligon's background as a Leta in the Ruxido woods would be fairly interesting in my opinion. Sure, we've heard about some of it, but the idea of examining in detail how the Leta/Letal/Letaligon pack operates is intriguing, just as it was to see inside the Scyther tribe.

For the most part, May's other Pokémon don't really have that much in the way of personalities or backstories. Floatzel is a great character, but a one-shot for her seems odd. Lapras also comes to mind, but what would there be to say?

A look at Tyranitar after his release seems plausible, but there wouldn't be much of a point in showing that if he's no longer in the story.

Then again, Spirit's uniqueness sort of warrants a one-shot, while the importance of any other Pokémon is basically already explained. Kind of makes all of these other ideas irrelevant… I'll stop rambling now.

Ooh, cool! A tagging system seems like it should work well. Anyway, I have a suggestion for if users ever get to tag things. Perhaps there could be sections, like:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags by Butterfree:
tag, tag, tag

Tags by Users:
tag, tag
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Do you know what I mean?

I'm not really planning to write more backstory one-shots for the moment - the point of writing one for Spirit is that she actually had relevant stuff happening in her past that I don't really foresee coming up in the story because it's not that important. The other Pokémon with relevant backstories all pretty much had them explained in chapter 27. If I feel the urge I might do one for Letaligon or something, but don't count on it.

User tagging would work basically the way you suggested, Rose - there would be Butterfree-tags and user tags, but kept separate both in the post display and the tag searching (so that you could search only for posts I tagged with whatever).

I really like this idea for a feature. I have wanted to ask several questions on the forum, but have been too afraid (as well to lazy to check) to ask due to the fact that someone might have posted it already. Tags should help tremendously in that regard. =D