The Quest for the Legends

Chapter 45: The Ouen League HQ (commentary)
The Ouen League - Chapter 46: Day One (commentary)

In today's two very hastily-titled chapters, Mark and May finally arrive at Ouen's Pokémon League, a bored employee reverses Mark's deceased status, Mark reviews the accommodations, Mark angsts, Taylor acts according to Taylorlogic, the League's drug tests fail to account for Pokémon being chosen by legendaries, the kids learn about the hypnotizing conspiracy set up back in chapter 14, May continues to be my problematic fave, Mark has an amusing mental image that is totally foreshadowing, and I ramble about resurrection mechanics, anticlimaxes, my precious chapter plan and the ridiculous rearrangements that chapter 46 went through, and the various happenings at the League that I'd been planning for a very, very long time (and the ones I hadn't).

I know you only talked briefly about the Quilava extra but I just wanted to say that I don't think it's doing such a poor job expressing Quilava's feelings as you thought. Since its release I've only really remembered it for the part where Quilava brushes against May's leg and says "It's okay" in an attempt to comfort her, and I always took that to be a sort of mark of forgiveness on Quilava's part rather than a naive misunderstanding of what's going on. I don't think I would have been able to tell you exactly that Quilava sensed May's hurt and felt bad for her, but I think the descriptor "comfortingly" in the part where she brushes May's leg kind of gets that across - if Quilava were just ignorant I'm not sure she would know enough about what it means for her or May to feel like there's any reason to do any comforting. Not to mention the whole story is full of Pokemon - both Mark's and May's alike - not really being all in on the way May handles things, so it'd be strange to think that May's first Pokemon, who would have seen her before she ever started learning how to treat Pokemon, who would likely have been bred specifically to have a kind of awareness of this kind of thing, would be ignorant about it. Of course, this is all stuff I thought of just now and not eleven years ago, but I think it's worth sharing my view nonetheless since the extra was brought up.