The Quest for the Legends

Chapter 39: The Workings of the War (commentary)

This week on The Quest for the Legends, we recap the plot, now that I finally knew what the plot was about (roughly)! In this chapter's commentary, I ramble about the story's time travel mechanics, wrangling this monster of a plot to not have planet-sized loopholes, the fine art of creating creatures unable to die but capable of feeling pain, my doomed efforts to keep the anime canon to the fic for as long as I could, the difficulties of serially publishing a story with twists, my realization that Chalenor is a Sir Barely Appearing in This Fic, and the amazing story of how a disgruntled Mewtwo fan complaining at me on MSN Messenger probably inadvertently sparked the entire plot.

all right - time to ask a time travel question about the fic I've been holding on to for some time.

I think you mentioned in a previous chapter commentary that Chaletwo jumping forward in time to only be visible a few minutes every year isn't going to work, considering it is established (in this chapter) that he would be leaving the time he's "anchored" to, and as the War approaches he should get pulled back to the right time. If we follow on the idea that Chaletwo consistently jumps forward in time to appear for a few minutes, the way I would envision this happening is that as he gets further and further in the future toward the War, he gets his power drained ("prematurely" because he's only "existed" for 5000 minutes or whatever, I would think), and then eventually bounces back to 5000 minutes after his creation. This is how I see it as working - feel free to correct me if you have a different version! But if I assume this is accurate then my question is, so is Chaletwo just incredibly weak for the remainder of his existence until he "catches up" with the War later on? I know this is all moot because that's not going to be how Chaletwo operates in the next revision but it is something I thought of recently that I was curious about.

And two other questions -
1) without Mewtwo-guy changing your idea for what happens to Mewtwo and affecting everything else, do you have any idea of where the story might have gone after that?
2) you mentioned the mechanics of how Pokeballs and soul gems work regarding the War, but when it came to how it would work now that Chalenor's dead you said what you thought Mew would think, but not what you would think would happen. Any ideas on that front?

I think you mentioned in a previous chapter commentary that Chaletwo jumping forward in time to only be visible a few minutes every year isn't going to work, considering it is established (in this chapter) that he would be leaving the time he's "anchored" to, and as the War approaches he should get pulled back to the right time. If we follow on the idea that Chaletwo consistently jumps forward in time to appear for a few minutes, the way I would envision this happening is that as he gets further and further in the future toward the War, he gets his power drained ("prematurely" because he's only "existed" for 5000 minutes or whatever, I would think), and then eventually bounces back to 5000 minutes after his creation. This is how I see it as working - feel free to correct me if you have a different version! But if I assume this is accurate then my question is, so is Chaletwo just incredibly weak for the remainder of his existence until he "catches up" with the War later on? I know this is all moot because that's not going to be how Chaletwo operates in the next revision but it is something I thought of recently that I was curious about.

If Chaletwo did this, then his power would be drained as if he never time-traveled at all, through the anchor. He'd still be at the power level he would be at after 5000 minutes in his own time. He wouldn't bounce back until he's lived the full nearly 1000 years.

1) without Mewtwo-guy changing your idea for what happens to Mewtwo and affecting everything else, do you have any idea of where the story might have gone after that?

This either happened after or probably had no influence on the Mitch-is-Chalenor reveal, so that would probably still have happened. I'm also pretty sure I'd been planning the ending with Mewtwo^2 being out long prior to this. So, as things were headed at that stage, we'd probably have had an ending where they just fight and take down Mewtwo^2 (well, I might still have ended up with Mark helping him resist, don't think that'd have been related), and Mitch joins them and turns out to be possessed by the ghost of Chalenor. But that'd just kind of be it. The Destroyer would be random giant pterodactyl or something. Nothing of note would have happened before the last War, and Mew's words would have been truthful.

2) you mentioned the mechanics of how Pokeballs and soul gems work regarding the War, but when it came to how it would work now that Chalenor's dead you said what you thought Mew would think, but not what you would think would happen. Any ideas on that front?

I said that maybe it would have, and that's what I'm inclined towards - Arceus's design actually being flawed is part of the point here, and if there was a real possibility of everyone escaping the War under these circumstances, I think that has a nice punch to it, both because of that and because of Mew's fierce motivated denial of the possibility. But, you know, if for some reason I later came up with something better, I'd do that.

Mitch being possessed by Chalenor isn't as interesting if Chalenor isn't as mightily relevant, so I'm really glad that happened, then! Destroyer-Chalenor is great

On time travel again - so if Chaletwo needs to live 1000 years (in any time) to be affected by the War, is it theoretically possible he could time travel to the time of the War but not take part in it due to not being affected by the energy pulse/madness? Would he still be "marked" as a legendary in the eyes of the others and targeted for murder? Would he even die if he was, since he's still a true immortal and all?? Sorry, I'm asking a ton of questions about something completely hypothetical and sort of irrelevant, but time travel stuff fascinates me ok lol

hhhhhhh the idea of this mewtwo stan solely adding & messaging you on msn to bemoan your insufficiently Reverent mewtwo content
I love teens

Haha, he didn't solely add me because of that; I'm pretty sure we'd talked before that point. I think I read his fic before he read mine.

This same guy also told a friend of mine how the fic ended, before I had even figured that out myself. She told me he'd spoiled the ending of the fic for her and I was like ??????? Somehow he'd misremembered his own theory on it as being something I'd told him. It was something weird and grimdark where the War started and all the legendaries rampaged and then I'm pretty sure some very elaborate sequence of events happened that in no way resembled any plan I had ever had for the fic.

man I had 10 million worries about how the fic would end way back in the day and 10 million more extremely bizarre and nonsensical dreams about it too