The Quest for the Legends

Chapter 6: The Mammal, the Monster and the Mental Change (commentary)

This chapter features an unnecessarily complicated alliterative title for no particular reason, Eevee being cute and having apparently entirely forgotten about his mom possibly being dead, Mark continuing to treat his Pokémon extremely inconsistently, Rick's irrelevant junior trainers who are directly based on particular trainer sprites, and some decidedly silly legendary battles.

I'm actually two chapters ahead now, having almost finished the commentary for chapter eight. It's nice to have a buffer; it also gives me a bit of opportunity to look forward in a given commentary.

>"i went out of my way to give Mark his own taste in Pokémon"
>both Mark and May use mons that i know younger-Butterfree was/is a large fan of (like… may having a butterfree… lol)

nah I'm not being mean!!! Or even trying to. I just kind of laughed a bit when I got to that line. I know that Mark's Pokémon acquisitions were not because Mark himself particularly wanted any of these mons because he liked them (Eevee aside) but because in the context of the fic they just kinda crossed his path, but I still thought it was amusing.

On a different note, though, it's super fun to read about how your ideas changed for the IALCOTN plans… and then you're still saying that some of them aren't logical or are still cringey. I remember thinking as a kid the IALCOTN was So Much Better Written (even if i preferred the ilcoe??) that it's weird to me now to hear you saying that your ideas weren't so much better or in some cases worse than the ILCOE. Are you planning to do another rewrite of this? You kind of indicated you would but it was hard to tell if it was like an actual think in the works or just a kind of "knowing me, and how much I revise this thing…" kind of thought. (If so what's its abbreviation? lol)

I went out of my way to give him his own taste in Pokémon in the HMMRCIG, i.e. to establish that he's got his own favorites and so on, which he didn't really have at all in the previous revisions as far as I can remember. Obviously that didn't change his actual team, which is indeed just shamelessly composed of a bunch of Pokémon I like. :P

The IALCOTN is definitely vastly better written and very on point most of the time with its changes. I mean, see the commentary for chapter five. There were some missteps (unavoidably, I think; I'd be pretty concerned if I didn't want to change anything about a revision started when I was fifteen), but the Eevee thing is pretty much the only thing I think the IALCOTN plans made worse (aside from the bigger-picture concern that it takes even more chapters to get to Stuff Actually Happening).

In theory, I would absolutely like to do another rewrite. I don't know when/if I'd actually get around to writing that - it's at least not top priority at the moment - but at the very least, one of the things I want to accomplish by doing the commentary is a good look back at the progression of the story that'd let me map out more clearly how I'd go about a rewrite. Maybe by the time I finish the commentary I'll be so ablaze with passion that I'll just start the rewrite; maybe I'll feel satisfied just knowing what I'd want to do in it. Who knows.

As for what it'd be called, who knows. The Version Where I Actually Know What I'm Doing? TVWIAKWID, pronounced tvee-aquid, has a nice QftL revision name ring to it.