The Quest for the Legends

This is an author's commentary intended for readers who have already read the entire ILCOE. My retrospective comments on the chapter are in bold below, with some remarks within the text and then some overall thoughts at the bottom. The commentary will contain significant spoilers! Do not read the commentary on your first read-through!

Welcome to another one of my once-favorite chapters! This one was published on September 21st, 2005, almost three whole months after chapter 26 - but in between, I'd started the IALCOTN and written the prologue and the first three chapters of that, motivated directly by my then-boyfriend starting to read the ILCOE and thinking the beginning was boring (as many other people did). I asked in the Serebii thread if I should just focus on the revision, keep focusing on this one and not post the revision, or replace the chapters in the current thread once I'd gotten to the point where the chapters would line up sensibly, and I was leaning towards the third option myself; however, I think everyone in the Serebii thread strongly preferred the second option, and luckily, this meant I soon returned back to working mostly on the ILCOE and wouldn't publish another IALCOTN chapter until April 2006.

Wow, their company is better than none? High praise, Mark.

I did this whole thing about May and Alan really hitting it off mostly to make Mark feel left out (and to ensure he can then have a lengthy private conversation with Scyther in chapter 29 as they travel onwards), but in hindsight it's really nonobvious how they became such fast friends. May had never even met Alan before Mark suddenly wanted to go to his house just earlier. That's not to say it's implausible this could happen (I'm sure Alan would try to get to know May here since he hasn't met her before), but I didn't actually show it developing at all, which makes it weird; it looks like they're just talking animatedly and ignoring Mark immediately.

I'm making this sound hilariously contrived with this "Oh! This just happens to be the exact perfect place to camp just when you suggested it!" thing. Why didn't I just have Mark suggest camping because they're in a convenient place to do so.

This is an exceptionally confusing way to begin this conversation.

Also, I guess Alan lugs firewood around in his bag? That sounds impractical.

I am glad he's having some emotions now, at least! I like the emotions of this opening all in all, Mark's anxiety about telling his Pokémon and the way something's obviously hanging in the air and the way it's finally begun to sink in how monumental this is.

I like that description of May.

That's not reeeeally that informative, Mark.

Here, Mark suggests they should all get to know each other better since they're on this quest together and that's why everyone launches into backstories, but in the previous versions, he just sort of randomly asked what it's like to be a wild Pokémon. This version definitely makes more sense.

Nooooo even Mark got the wrong impression about how the War works (also why isn't Chaletwo correcting him)

Gyarados sounds somewhat more sympathetic here than he did in the previous versions, where he relished how great it was when humans dumped poison into the lake and killed most of the other Pokémon (Dead fish pokémon everywhere!) and didn't include that mention of understanding that Suicune (supposedly) was doing it for the sake of the other Pokémon in the lake.

Racko sure is a person. These may be his only lines in the fic? Alan's team, for the most part, basically aren't characters.

In the previous versions, he declared that life in Hoenn was too great for words, so let's not speak of it! That definitely sounded like it wasn't actually that great, and that's what Mark took away from it, but since I wasn't about to do anything with that, it was probably better that I took that out here.

Of course, he does end up going back, having changed his mind when he returned to the Sandshrew colony in chapter 34. I'm not sure exactly when I decided on him going back, but I probably wasn't planning on it when I wrote this. Either way, I'm very happy with his ending.

In the previous versions, all Butterfree said was that she couldn't remember much of her life, because when Caterpie become Metapod their brains are compressed and everything nonessential is thrown away. Here, I added this edgy thing about Butterfree dying when they mate, which everyone said was canon in the Japanese version of Bye Bye Butterfree back in the day, but actually wasn't. I blame the fandom rumour mill; it's not like I'd ever decide to write about Pokémon that die when they mate.

Mist and her siblings from Itsruban are one big reference to another fanfic that I started in 2003 before I got here in the original, The Second Clone. This weird little story, which never got too far, was based on a dream I had about scientists creating a Sentret super-clone, having learned from the doomed Mewtwo experiment to use a weak Pokémon as a base. The resulting Sentretwo (who quickly evolved into a Furretwo) was an insufferably arrogant little prick named Denol, and the story was about him getting caught by a trainer, getting to know his team of Pokémon including an Espeon named Mystic, and then escaping from the trainer to try to return to their homes, traveling together because coincidentally their prior homes were all in the same direction. The final chapter I wrote was about Mystic leading the team into the city of Itsruban and finding her brother Shadow, whom she despised, with a gang of Dark Pokémon; the chapter also went on to explain that they'd originally been five Eevee siblings abandoned in a cardboard box who had each picked a name based on the evolution they aspired to be, with the others having been named Pyro, Mist and Wave. I actually think originally I just reused the same appropriate name for a female Vaporeon, but then I decided this was actually Alan's Mist and the two stories were happening in the same universe. This merger worked out pretty awkwardly: the city of Itsruban is shown as a really big city in The Second Clone, and it even specifies that there are two official gyms in it, but it's nowhere to be seen on the Ouen map. One would expect there are probably other settlements in Ouen that aren't on the map, but huge cities with two official gyms would probably be there, right?

I'm pretty sure Ruxido also originated in The Second Clone and was originally brought into TQftL when I made that decision to combine these stories' universes (the first mention of Ruxido in the old versions was in the equivalent of chapter 26). Ruxido and Itsruban are names that just sound like random nonsense, but they were actually both named using the same silly naming scheme I thought up for that fic: I looked around in my room, found a random object, took the Icelandic word for it, spelled it backwards, and then tweaked it until it looked like a weird exotic-looking name. Ruxido came from "diskur" (plate) and Itsruban came from "bursti" (brush). You're welcome.

That's a weirdly mature and dispassionate answer for a child who just talked about losing his mother, but. I am happy the story is reminding us of this actually good moment from chapter three, though I'm not sure how much the story has truly shown Mark grow since then - after all, it hasn't been that many chapters since he caught Leta after she screamed for help.

More Lapras. I like this, but why does nobody comment on this.

In the previous versions, Lapras gave some more detail, which was rather over-the-top:

“I lived in the Lake of Purity with the other Laprases there,” said Lapras. “But they mocked me all the time because I was weaker than the average Lapras... I was actually crying when she found me and caught me... I still remember how much that Thundershock hurt on top of all my woes...”

I am happy I had the discernment to edit this. Lapras just not really wanting to talk about it beyond this jab feels way better.

Wow, what. Why doesn't Skarmory have issues from being caught so young. Maybe they spend a while in the nest?

Gratuitous anime references, go! This is obviously calling back to the events of Pikachu's Goodbye. It's extremely unnecessary and just creates more contrived relationships to anime characters for no reason. To boot, how would this wild Pikachu from Kanto even end up in Ouen? Why did I decide to keep this.

In the previous versions, Mark did express his opinion:

“Whoa!” Alan exclaimed. “She must have been the Pikachu Dad told me about... that one time when he was going to release his Pikachu!”

“He meant to release PIKACHU?!” Mark said in disbelief. “Seesh, how many pokémon can one person care this little about?”

“It was because he cared so much about them,” said Alan in defense. “Pikachu wanted to join a group of wild Pikachus and Dad had a really hard time deciding whether to let him or not, in the end he decided to let him go, but Pikachu came back.”

“Oh,” said Mark blankly. “Well, that’s how they always explain it...”

“He cares about his pokémon, goddamn it!” Alan said loudly. “Too much, if anything!”

That's... actually kind of better. The current version just sounds like a cheap, eye-roll-worthy jab at the anime (the sort that you'll make when you're a teenager trying to distance yourself from something seen as hokey or childish, but your standards are actually shallower and more childish than the thing you're trying to distance yourself from - how inane is it to think the anime is bad because Ash respects his Pokémon's wishes to move on when they find a greater calling in life, just because you don't do that when you're playing a video game). Previously, it was pretty obvious Mark was wrong here, and also Alan's issues got to come out a bit. I guess I made this change because it's kind of out of character for Mark (he was starstruck by Ash just a few chapters ago, why would it suddenly turn out he thinks Ash didn't care about any of the Pokémon he released), but it's out of character for him to think it but not say it too.

If I were writing this today I'd probably have him make some incredulous remark about the idea he'd meant to release Pikachu in order to prompt Alan getting defensive, just in a less dickish way that doesn't suggest actually he's always thought Ash sucks. However, in the next revision Raichu would probably not be randomly that Pikachu's son. Maybe Alan'd give an anecdote about that episode in response to something Raichu said about his own wild Pikachu colony, which'd prompt that.

I'd actually forgotten the exchange about releasing Pokémon hadn't happened here when I wrote about Alan's issues in chapter 66; I thought it was neat that Mark had unknowingly exacerbated Alan's self-loathing here in this way earlier chapter, but alas, guess that didn't happen.

More foreshadowing! This time actually intentional.

I love human lawnmower May.

Ah, yes, the goof about there being a leader pair and not a single leader like we learn just a couple of chapters later. Please ignore this. This wasn't in the previous versions, which never brought up the Leader thing; I guess when I was rewriting this chapter I vaguely decided to flesh out the Scyther swarm and wrote this in before I started developing it more and it became this whole thing about the Leader being the strongest of the swarm - and once I'd come up with that concept, it no longer made any sense for there to be a pair, because there's only one who's strongest, and the second strongest wouldn't necessarily be the strongest's mate.

Later I'd start calling "serious" duels "true duels", which sounds less silly; I didn't exactly indicate that "serious duel" was necessarily the actual official term here, so not technically a retcon I guess maybe.

In Scyther's Story he sounds like Nightmare did stand out a bit for him, but maybe he always said that about the female of the week.

It was definitely nothing so grand as love, but I'm not sure lust is quite the word you're looking for either.

This is really self-aware, talking about how the discovery of Scizor was met with prejudice, how it's a trade-off that's worth it to humans, how they're taught to loathe Scizor, etc. Today I'd write it more like this is, you know, an actual prejudice he himself believes in and rationalizes, like the rest of the fic indicates. The previous versions also had this, with Scyther talking about how he can't help feeling this disgust when he sees a Scizor.

In Scyther's Story I gave Scyther a pre-evolution, Descith, and Scyther and his friends are very excited about evolution - but I figured maybe they have a different word for that evolution.

Shotguns don't fire bullets, do they? I was obviously extremely knowledgeable about guns here in my country where guns are the exclusive domain of the small, small subset of people who go hunting, who as I distantly understand it mostly do it maybe once a year because they want ptarmigan for Christmas dinner.

In the previous versions, Scyther cut two fingers off somebody; that person has been spared here. They also specified that the kid got a nosebleed because Scyther accidentally kicked them - it's a little hard to picture how a Scyther "slashing everything" results in someone getting a nosebleed of all things, but that's how. I'm kind of amazed at the lack of casualties resulting from a raging Scyther who doesn't care in a Pokémon Center full of people, though. Really, how did Scyther manage to not kill anyone.

I like the detail about the Mew Hunter being hesitant to use the ball - it's not mentioned here, or even in this version of chapter 10 (a big oversight, I think), but that was the ball he'd made for Mew, and him catching Scyther in it was a pretty pivotal moment for him, with him ultimately deciding to save this injured Scyther rather than keep saving it for that remote chance of finding Mew again one day. Of course, that didn't count for much once Mew was actually within his sights again, but for a few years, he really had let it go to an extent, and that's how Scyther always knew him.

Obviously, none of this is as good or positive as Scyther thinks it is - and no mention of the bit where he couldn't leave, of course.

Basically none of this whole section on his relationship with Rob was in the previous versions; Scyther only talked briefly about him at the beginning of his story, as part of his tangent about dueling with Kabutops:

“When I was wild,” Scyther said, still staring into the fire, “we used to have duels. Nothing is like a good duel. The Mew hunter let me have duels with Kabutops, but nothing is like duelling another Scyther. It was a whole lot better than nothing, though... made me stronger than the average captured Scyther... if only his desire for Mew hadn’t poisoned his mind like that, he would’ve been the best trainer I could ever get. Knew what he was doing, oh yes. Knew what our scythes are worth. Deep inside he really cared for us, his armed squad of pokémon. But I knew that when Mew was somewhere, he’d act like we don’t exist. Just grab the ball, find Mew, catch it, and then plan world domination. While Mew seemed completely out of reach... then he was a very good trainer. We were precious to him, and I knew it. Kabutops was a good friend of mine...” Scyther suddenly seemed to realize he had wandered off the subject. “Yes. Wild. Duels. I remember my last duel in the wild. She was a female. The fastest Scyther with the sharpest scythes I’ve ever seen. But she dared calling me a Scizor... there is no worse insult in a Scyther’s vocabulary.”

The bit about him planning world domination has me rolling my eyes so hard. Really, thirteen-year-old self. Really.

Either way, I think it was a good choice to focus more on that here; Scyther's loyalty to the Mew Hunter really is something kind of interesting that just seems very strange and arbitrary up to this point, and I think this chapter in its current form does make it pretty clear why he loved and respected him, in this misguided way. In a later revision, I may have some of this come out earlier, though.

In the previous versions, he said the reason he didn't kill her was was that it was just common courtesy to spare someone who has spared you. This didn't make any sense given Scyther morality.

Mark's lack of "Wait, what, that was her?" feels really odd - surely that's the most remarkable part of the story here, but Scyther stops short of saying it outright, so surely he'd want to confirm, right? Not just move immediately on to "Oh, so that's why you let her go."

Oh boy. This comment doesn't make any sense in this version, because Scyther never explained exactly what she'd said to insult him at the beginning of his story! He only said that she insulted me… a bit too harshly. The old versions and Scyther's Story all explained that she called him a Scizor, and that's what kicked off the duel and everything, hence why he'd fire back at her in this particular way when they meet again. I can't believe I managed to bungle this, here when this was still like my favorite subplot in the entire fic! Fifteen-year-old self, I am disappoint.

I'm pretty sure the reason I was vague about the insult here was that I'd started to think just "Scizor" as a plain insult sounded awkward, and what she'd actually said might have been something else in the same vein. Sometime around the writing of this chapter, I started to write out an extra about Scyther's duel with Nightmare, which I'd eventually scrap and then revive later as Scyther's Story; in the original document for the extra, I'd made two starts, one where she called him a "son of a Scizor" and one where she told him to "go get evolved", which'd just be the absolute most offensive way to tell a Scyther to go fuck himself (that version was likely what I actually had in mind when I wrote this, given the phrasing of "Look who's evolved now" over the previous versions' "Look who's a Scizor now"). Eventually, when I published a canonical version in Scyther's Story, though, I made use of the whole Pokémon naming worldbuilding thing: he names her Nightmare, and she fires back by naming him Scizor.

Either way, even if I didn't want to commit to precisely what she'd actually said to him, I could still have had Scyther mention during his explanation of Scyther's hatred of Scizor that that was what it was about, in order for this line to make sense. There was no excuse for this.

This last line is a bit melodramatic. But at least Scyther's actually hating Scizor now and not just talking about how all Scyther are brought up to do so.

I have no idea if this is what I was thinking when I wrote this, but - they're in Ruxido, so it'd make sense Leta's worried she might bump into her father (or her mother, who'd inevitably try to persuade her to stay). I do like the relationship between Leta and Jolteon.

Speaking of Leta, she pretty much vanished for this entire chapter. Maybe she wouldn't really want to share at this point - but if I were writing this today I'd absolutely have Mark try to get her to share. After all, she's his newest Pokémon, and Mark knows she has some stuff going on - wouldn't he want to know more? I'm pretty sure when I was writing this I just plain forgot about her, because obviously she wasn't in the previous versions of the chapter. (Dragonair, who also pretty much disappears for this chapter, did get to speak in the previous versions.)

(Leta being present here now does present a little bit of a problem, though: ultimately, the fic'll necessarily nail down that any given trainer can only have six Pokémon out at a time, since otherwise it'd be way too easy to just swarm the legendaries with hundreds of Pokémon. One of Mark's Pokémon is going to have to get left out for any campfire conversation like this.)

Pupitar, of course, has no interest in going off on his own, even if he could; he just wants to be with May. And she shows him an unusual degree of affection because she really is fond of him (for his potential to become the strongest member of her team... which is also why she has such high standards for him), which only fuels his obsession with her and pleasing her. While the earlier line where May explained Pupitar doesn't speak and isn't very social was there in the previous versions, this one was new. I do think it would've been cool to actually show more of Pupitar; the little bit in chapter 26 where she's annoyed with him as he's fighting a Beedrill was a good addition, but I definitely could've done more in that vein.

So, the Pokémon backstory chapter... by which I really mean the Scyther and Gyarados backstory chapter, because who are we kidding. The other Pokémon backstories are pretty much shallow, meaningless filler with very little thought to them. The other actually meaningful, interesting bits here aren't actually backstories: Lapras hints at her dissatisfaction with May, and May explains that Pupitar doesn't talk.

In itself that's perfectly understandable, of course; Scyther and Gyarados are the Pokémon with backstories that are relevant to previous and later events, and it'd have been ludicrous to make up extensive, elaborate backstories for the other Pokémon that then don't go anywhere. (In the previous versions, I actually made a point of having all the Pokémon talk here, even Alan's, and it was pointless and distracting; I do appreciate that I tried to cut it down a little here.) But I've grown to dislike the way that this chapter makes a point of presenting this as this equal sharing time when it's so ludicrously transparent that Scyther and Gyarados are the ones with actual fleshed-out stories that matter and the rest are throwaway. It feels like one of those anime screencaps showing a group of blankly smiling, bland background people in simple, regular clothing, except there's this one girl standing among them with bright green hair and an elaborately overdesigned outfit. Spot the protagonist.

Another issue is that this is also very transparently an infodump chapter. The heavy focus on just having everyone tell their stories rather than interacting or talking about those stories in any very substantial way hurts it; everyone just sort of listens, Mark asks a couple of questions just to break up the monologue and to prompt them onward, and then they move on to the next person, rather than the chapter presenting much of a real conversation about what's being said. Something like that can work okay, but it becomes very unnatural when things that should warrant comment just get sort of silently left there, like Lapras's critical remark about May and Scyther talking extensively about his suicidal feelings.

In the next revision, I might just have Scyther and Gyarados talk about their pasts separately sometime when they choose to trust Mark with them (there's technically no real need for May or Alan or the other Pokémon to hear their stories first-hand). But either way, a chapter of campfire conversation where Mark tries to get everyone to get to know each other better is still a cute idea and would probably happen; it'd just probably be more focused on actual interactions and back-and-forth conversation rather than a series of monologues of obviously uneven importance. The Pokémon whose backstories don't matter might bring them up during the conversation, but hopefully in the service of something other than just me being able to proudly proclaim that all my Pokémon characters have backstories. It'd be interesting to see May's Pokémon share more about their views on training and trainers, perhaps compared to Mark's. Alan actually being bothered by Lapras expressing dissatisfaction, May shutting him down, Lapras remaining relatively silent for now before she finally gets fed up for good later. A bit more of May interacting with Pupitar. It could be great.

I was mentally preparing to cringe all throughout Scyther's story here, but nah, apart from the inevitable excessive use of ellipses, it's okay. I like the focus on Rob. The main reason I was dreading it is that everything about Scyther in the previous versions was really bad, past the point of cute kid writing with amusing morbidity sprinkled in and and into some oh god why territory. I did an admirable job editing it here, considering he was my favorite character and I wouldn't have put it past me to keep a bunch of awful cringeworthy stuff that I should've known better than to do here because of that. It seems that despite this I did manage to successfully identify and excise all the big what aspects of it and mostly just keep the stuff that vaguely holds up, or at least holds up to about the same degree that anything else in the fic does. Thank you, fifteen-year-old me.

To start with, while Scyther here establishes that his shallow and ill-advised crush on Nightmare wasn't really love, we weren't that lucky in the previous versions. Instead, Scyther proclaimed that he absolutely does love her, ~but he hates her too~ (so tragic! so deep!), and talked at length about some bizarre, elaborate theory on how emotions work that I apparently had when I was thirteen (because let's not kid ourselves, it's absolutely me and not Scyther thinking I've nailed down the truth of human psychology):

Scyther paused, then coninued, “Everyone has a sense of emotion. It means the ability to understand people’s emotions, yours and others’. If it’s strong, you have an easy time understanding emotions, otherwise not. Females have a stronger sense of emotion than males on average, but of course it really varies. Your sense of emotion is split up in two; the negative part and the positive part. If your positive part is weak, you’re for example likely not to understand when you’re in love. If your negative part is weak, you’ll have a hard time understanding why you dislike someone or something. My sides are both pretty strong, but the negative one is significally stronger. So when there’s someone like her around, whom I feel very strong feelings for on both sides, in fact, too strong for me to fully understand them, I’m confused. Sometimes I will despise her, sometimes I’ll feel like abandoning the Scizor hate, freeing her from the trainer and then we could live happily together. But seeing as my negative sense of emotion is stronger, I always have this prickle of hate, and as much as I’d like to love her, I can’t help hating her sometimes. At the moment I love her, but who knows what I’ll think of her tomorrow? It can change overnight.”

Thirteen-year-old me was pretty much the last person who should have been writing about love anywhere. I had never even had a crush, was pretty determined to die alone, and hated romance in general. I made an exception for Scyther because he also hated her and the purpose of this whole thing was to make him miserable, and thus this didn't actually mean any kissing or 'I love you's, just a lot of incomparable angst - but this meant I managed to seriously write at length about Scyther being in love with this other Scyther after dueling her once, and wishing to live happily ever after with her only he can't because of this hatred he also feels, and this is all rooted in his strong sense of emotions did you know I have solved psychology, and all in all this is the deepest most tragic character, according to me, the world's least romantic thirteen-year-old. Clearly a recipe for greatness, right.

But that wasn't the end of it, oh no. In the original, this was the first chapter that had an extra after it - and unlike the extra that now goes with this chapter, that extra was a piece of freeform poetry about, naturally, Scyther's negative sense of emotions overpowering the positive over the course of the night, because this is clearly how psychology works. Extra 1: Switching Sides reads like a parody of angsty teenage love poetry and I am so mad at my thirteen-year-old self for making me have to show this abomination to you fifteen years later. Why. I think this may be the actual worst thing I have ever written, by God. I think. I managed to make myself reread it once but now my eyes just refuse to lock onto the words.

The extra that now goes with this chapter, 'Guilty', is thankfully not any kind of attempt to rework that; instead, it's just a proper retelling of one of the moments Scyther talked about in the chapter, where Rob catches him in a suicide attempt, pours him a beer to make him feel better, and gives him some strange, backwards advice about why he shouldn't kill himself even though everything is horrible and life isn't worth it. (It cuts off abruptly before Scyther actually starts to tell him his backstory.) This scene would later be retold again in chapter XXXIV of Scyther's Story, with identical dialogue. Originally, though, it was written by hand on paper in a flash of inspiration on the plane home from a family vacation in Switzerland, before this chapter came out. I thought it was some of my best writing at the time, but today, man, that prose is so stilted.

Ignoring that, though, the content is all right, I think. In Scyther I finally had a suicidal character where it wasn't a throwaway thing for drama points in this one chapter, someone who's actually struggled with wanting to die and feeling that he's worthless and deserves it for a long time, not just because of this one thing that happened but because of this whole messed-up unhealthy suicide-glorifying society that teaches that you're worthless and deserve to die if you commit certain transgressions, and even though he finds some questionable ways to cope with it, none of them magically make him okay. And the extra actually shows Rob obviously genuinely caring about him in his own misguided way, which probably helps, what with how bad his only actual on-screen appearance in the fic was at showing that.

Heavy personal disclaimer here: I have never been suicidal. The idea is honestly kind of alien to me; I have never even experienced not strongly, actively wanting to live for as long as possible. It's just not a place my brain goes, even in my darkest moments. It has been fascinating to me in fiction since I was a child precisely because it seemed so intensely strange and awful and heartbreaking that people could be driven to that point. Thus, it's not actually for me to judge my efforts to write about it, except to the extent that even I can recognize the badness of stuff like the final scene of chapter 23 by now. So if you have the personal experience that I don't, please do tell me how you feel about Scyther; he's not my favorite character anymore, but I still care about his story a lot and I want to get him right.

In any case, I hope you do like Scyther, because this is the first in a stretch of three consecutive chapters that revolve increasingly around Scyther. Strap yourselves in.