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!

Chapter 64 came out on May 13th, 2014. I was twenty-four now, and the fic was just a bit more than a month away from its twelfth birthday. It had been fourteen months since chapter 63. Ouch.

This was the single longest wait for any chapter of the fic, including where I worked on multiple chapters at a time and released them all at once. That sounds pretty bizarre: after all, I'd just finished drafting the entire rest of the fic; shouldn't this have been where things speed up? But instead, things slowed down after the NaNo draft. I even made graphs:

See that sharp upward spike on the first graph, and the first really long horizontal gap on the second? That's this chapter.

Why? Well, some of it was the usual kind of just focusing on other things. But I also just spent a lot of time and care thinking about this chapter, and about the rest of the fic as a whole, as I worked on editing it. It's a May-focused chapter, and May is probably my favorite character in the fic; I really wanted to do her justice here, I didn't think the NaNo draft achieved this, and the more I reread the entire NaNo draft - something I did a lot of at this point - the more dissatisfied I was with it, and with the way May's arc played out in particular. I mulled over major changes, scenes I wanted to add, tossing around ideas; I thought, a lot, about May, and about Robin. I identified more and more issues with the draft and wrestled with how I wanted to fix them.

You can see some of the progression of my thinking in my entries on the Quest Blog and posts on my Tumblr, which I started using in the summer of 2013:

Between work and the interactive type chart that I've spent way too long making for TCoD, I've had very little writing time recently, and although posting chapter 64 today would have been nice, I've just ultimately not had any time to finish editing it.

(I like the chapter, though. It has lots and lots of May.)

I'm going to be changing so many things about what I wrote for NaNo. It spends time on silly things and doesn't do other things I'd like to do and I've changed my mind about various decisions I made. (June 19th 2013)

Chapter 64… is not getting worked on much at the moment. I've been randomly in a website mood recently, hence all the updating TCoD and now with the BOOYAH SEMANTIC MARKUP FOR MY FANFICTION thing, and when I'm not doing that I tend to be working on those Serebii contest reviews. I've been thinking about it quite a bit, though, in terms of what purpose it needs to serve for the story and how to go about achieving it, so all this time hasn't been entirely unproductive - I was dissatisfied with how the chapter progressed but I've mostly figured out what blanks I need to fill in. (September 5th 2013)

This should not be what the rest of this fic's lifetime will be like, honestly. It's just that this chapter is really hard to get right, and I really want to get it right. Mostly, on both counts, that's because of May. Normally I have it easy: Mark is a very cooperative narrator, because he is generally straightforward, quite introspective and usually honest with himself. If something is bothering Mark, I can just write "It bothered Mark that…" and it will be both an accurate representation of how he mentally frames it to himself and easily communicates information about what's going on in Mark's head to the reader. May, on the other hand, has about a billion different things going on in her head and she hates half of them and doesn't want to acknowledge that they exist or if so only in the briefest and vaguest of terms, and on top of all that Chaletwo is in her head reading her mind right now and that makes her mentally clam up even more than usual. This all makes her way more interesting than Mark (at least in my opinion), which is why I extra-specially want to get this chapter just right, but on the other hand it also means writing a chapter that mostly revolves around what's going on in May's head, like this one, takes some figuring to work out how to smoothly show the stuff I want to communicate within the rather uncooperative framework of her narration. Really interesting figuring! But also kind of time-consuming figuring, and the result of the figuring often involves some delicate tuning and long story short, I'm still working on getting it right because of all that.

Unfortunately it's not all good news for what comes after the chapter either, even though this particular issue is specific to it. I never really liked chapters 66-70 and they keep bothering me: essentially it's a five-chapter arc that as it stands could almost be cut out without impacting the rest of the fic, which is always a bad sign. I say almost because actually just cutting them out would leave a bunch of setup leading nowhere and a bit of character development for Alan would be missing and a minor loose end one of them addresses would be left hanging, but the rest of what happens in them is, right now, just setting up the rest of them and then more or less restoring to the status quo, which makes them feel pretty pointless (to me, anyway). So I want to work out a way to integrate them better with the rest of the story, too, and that will also take some figuring.

But I will soldier on no matter what. Never think the fic is dead. I couldn't quit it if I tried. (November 3rd 2013)

Rereading some of the TQftL NaNo chapters. I’m noticing for the first time that just about every other chapter seems to contain a moment where Mark mysteriously has a spark of insight where he realizes based on very little what’s really going on with [something]. Which, come to think of it, has happened in a lot of the recent actual posted chapters too. When did this weird epidemic start? At what point did my brain decide Mark was psychic? Individually they’re not so bad - I mean, they’re not totally unreasonable as inspired deductions, and they’re usually not really plot-relevant insights so they’re not dei ex machina per se - but reading a lot of them in a short period of time starts to sound hilariously parodesque.

Oh, fic. You’re so ridiculous and I love you. At least I’ve gotten some decent ideas about how to make this all less silly. (December 10th 2013)

Third draft of chapter 64 of TQftL finished (in a burst of writing prompted by having it pointed out to me that it’s been a year since I posted chapter 63, holy crap). It is so hard to revise subtlety issues. I’m not all that sure it’s actually clearer what’s going on in May’s head than in the last draft but since now my betas already know I don’t know if they can even tell me. (March 24th 2014)

There is literally just this one single sentence in chapter 64 that I’m still mulling over before I hand it off to elyvorg again. I just have this feeling like there’s something perfect I could write there that subtly but beautifully conveys everything I need, but I haven’t found it yet. (April 28th 2014)

Either way, eventually I did it, and I think the wait was worth it. This is one of my absolute favorite chapters, and all the thinking I did here really helped shape and focus the rest of the fic.

This is the first chapter for which I can compare the NaNo draft to the final version! I've dug up a version of the document from June 2013, when I had read through the draft and made some edits, but they were fairly minor edits - largely just fixing typos and phrasing, rather than adding or rewriting entire scenes. For every chapter from here onwards, I can remark on how I edited the chapter between 2013 and when the chapter was posted.

May has some... trust issues, of sorts. She has a very hard time relying on other people, by default. (It hadn't occurred to me before, but this is probably because of her dad, isn't it.) So it's instinctively uncomfortable to her to leave someone she's not used to responsible for her safety. She knows in cases like this it's irrational, and it kind of bothers her, hence why she feels like Chaletwo's probably internally mocking her for it.

I love Chaletwo and his vague, apprehensive idea that at some point most humans develop a bizarre alien obsession with the opposite sex that he'd very much prefer to avoid.

Luckily for him, May also very much thinks the entire idea is weird and gross.

This is a pretty vital part of May's worldview. She thinks all sorts of things, but what matters is the things she actually does, the things she can control. It's extremely important to her that she can hide and suppress her weaknesses and fears and present a strong front and regard that as who she really is - especially now, when she's haunted by the awareness that she did actually think that she wanted Taylor to die.

That, incidentally, is the actual point and the real reason May is so particularly tense about having Chaletwo in her head right now: she's terrified of that particular thought somehow slipping past and being exposed. But she's suppressing that hard and doesn't quite know that that's why; all she knows is the revulsion she feels at the thought of having someone reading her mind.

I did not know exactly why May was quite so tense about this in this chapter when I was originally NaNoing it, and had actually been thinking that it was a little weird and seemed like it was going somewhere when it wasn't, so I should probably mess with it in editing - but then I was writing chapter 73, and I went OH, so that's what all that stuff in chapter 64 was about.

In the NaNo draft, Chaletwo didn't answer this and the scene ended here after a brief ending line.

The main reason for the addition of this chunk in editing was to establish clearly what May actually thinks of Robin, as a contrast to later. I also enjoy it for May continuing to put Mark down a bit, though.

May's narration in general is a lot more cynical and pessimistic than Mark's, which I hope comes across pretty clearly.

May comparing Mark's Charizard unfavorably to Robin's several times in this chapter just happened very organically while I was NaNoing.

Note the mention of it being cold. Throughout the chapter I mention the cold a lot in order to build up the twist. I'm pretty sure when I started writing the chapter during NaNo, though, I hadn't yet realized the bit where of course the dragons wouldn't choose to live in a place like this, and I just coincidentally imagined it being kind of cold. In editing, when I knew the twist, May's coat became wool-lined to emphasize it more.

I like this bit a lot. May genuinely has grown a lot more used to thinking of the Pokémon as people, and really did just unthinkingly figure Charlie's probably tired and needs a break - and then she notices Alan reacting to that, and knows why he's reacting that way, and it stings. But rather than actually acknowledge the hurt, May bites it back and makes this sardonic jab out of it.

The bit about Skarmory being disappointed to go with Alan was added in editing, largely just because the rhythm of this bit felt off, but it's another line I enjoy; Skarmory really does like May, and I just like May taking this petty satisfaction in the fact he prefers her in this moment.

People being as cheerful and enthusiastic as Robin is just wigs May out a bit. It occurs to me that May does a lot of comparing and making mental jabs at people in general, in a way that Mark obviously doesn't, and that this is probably pretty telling - she's got such a critical way of thinking about everything, and that's the light in which she judges herself, all the time.

I also just enjoy how May's internal commentary is rarely reflected in what she actually says out loud.

Dragoreen threatening Mark really was pretty traumatic for her and will pop up again in this chapter.

She's effectively wondering about IVs vs. EVs here. Robin's Charizard also just really wants to do well for his trainer and tries not to show when he's tired, though - he does this again later in the fic.

The sixth generation came out while I was editing this chapter, so the Fairy reference was obviously added in editing. This is the first sixth-generation reference in the fic - which, amusingly, actually precedes the first fifth-generation reference in the fic, later in the chapter. (At least I'm pretty sure the Beartic is the first fifth-generation Pokémon or move mentioned in the story.)

Robin's Froslass and Gastrodon are friends. In the draft, May noticed them whispering to each other, and I kind of miss that bit, though I assume Froslass is making this comment for the same reason.

May still very much thinks in practical battling terms, but has a somewhat difficult time figuring out how to voice her concerns now that she's trying to be more mindful and not talk to her Pokémon like she did to Tyranitar. Then Robin gets at exactly what she was thinking in a constructive and positive way, not "They're slow," but "It'd help them if the dragons were paralyzed." And that sort of starts to kick off this burst of nagging jealousy in May: Robin's a great battler, but this stuff also just comes so easily to her, and slowly Robin's presence just starts to grate on May's insecurities.

The bit with Cacturne is another small bit where May notices Robin's effortlessly friendly relationship with her own Pokémon.

In the NaNo draft May just said she didn't know. I'm happy about this addition; more vague irration with Mark, and a bit of explanation for why Chaletwo and Dragoreen couldn't tell them more.

The NaNo draft was considerably blunter about the implications here: Robin was wide-eyed and concerned, like she thought he’d died or something. That was even worse.

Robin totally does know when to leave it alone, which is only more frustrating because then May can't even feel properly justified in hating her for it.

This entire scene with the battling discussion was completely rearranged in editing; originally, in the NaNo draft, once Robin sent out her Pokémon, May first looked at each of Robin's Pokémon in turn and considered them for the upcoming battle, before May pretty much monologued about the strategy plan until Robin asked about Tyranitar. In the 2013 document, May looking over the Pokémon ends with this:

Finally, her Luxray, currently lying at the back of the group, would definitely come in handy – paralysis was always useful, and electricity would be neutral against them. He let out a low, rumbling growl as May looked at him, and she averted her eyes. He hadn’t seemed very sociable before – he’d initially reminded her uncomfortably of Tyranitar – but when she’d casually asked about it during a rest stop, Robin had assured her he just took a while to trust new people but was passionately loyal, sensitive and gentle and actually talked to her a lot.

Could May have told her something like that about any of her own Pokémon off the top of her head? She wasn’t sure. She’d thought she was doing fine now – Stantler and Alan seemed to think so or pretended they did – but come to think of it she still never talked to her Pokémon about anything but battling and the War of the Legends. How much would that have changed for Tyranitar, really?

“So, what do you think?” Robin said hesitantly, and May snapped her head back towards her, unclenching the fist she didn’t remember clenching.

In my further editing, I realized the lengthy dump of inner monologue was tedious and awkward, and instead I had May start talking about strategy immediately with her thoughts on the individual Pokémon spread across the conversation, and made Robin a more active participant. More importantly, though, I realized that this whole bit about Robin's Luxray reminding May of Tyranitar was pretty interesting and could be shown way more effectively instead of just dumping it here in a sentence, and I ditched the too-blunt second paragraph there entirely as well in favor of subtler bits. I do kind of enjoy that bit with Robin hesitantly asking what May thinks when she's been silent for too long, though; it shows her hoping for May's approval in a way that's lost in the final version.

May's so achingly angry and negative. Of course they weren't going to succeed on day one! But she hates this and the whole situation has her stressed and on edge, and it makes this really pretty innocuous and expected lack of immediate results into a stinging failure. All she wants is to just find the dragons and get away from here.

This one paragraph was in the NaNo draft, but the entire rest of this scene was new in editing.

Robin's enthusiasm only bugs May all the more now that she's hyper-aware that Robin knows Tyranitar's gone but not why.

Obviously Alan immediately knows why she's asking about this, and she knew he'd know and hates it, but this has been really, really bothering her - and on some level, she wants to be right that they're similar cases, to knock Robin off her high horse, to prove that she's flawed too.

Of course, May knows that this is a good thing, that there's not another Tyranitar in the making here - but that just makes this another way that Robin is better than May. Alan's really rubbing it in, too.

Robin talking about the hilarity of Luxray figuratively threatening to kill someone sure isn't making May feel any better.

Robin is just such a fan of May and so thrilled to point to her as a positive example and it just makes May nauseous.

Poor Robin. She just has no idea why May's suddenly so cold. This was supposed to be her dream trip with the true Champion, and before they left May had really sounded like she liked her and thought she was pretty cool! But now May just seems irritated by her very existence, and she doesn't understand what changed.

Obviously, Robin noticed May was irritated they didn't find anything. A version of this line actually happened directly after the first paragraph of the previous scene in the draft. The rest of this scene, though, is another one that's new in editing, which surprised me looking at the old document; I think I must have added it relatively early, but clearly not until after this.

Robin felt like her loss to May at the League was pretty embarrassing: after all, it was nearly a 2-0, until miraculously Charizard managed to take down Tyranitar. So it was a delightful surprise to her when back in chapter 63 May was saying Robin was awesome. Now, though, with the way May's acting, she's thinking maybe May didn't actually think that much of her after all - maybe she just said that to convince Dragoreen or something. And she wouldn't blame May for that; she just wants to know.

To May, of course, the battle against Robin was that one where she didn't manage to beat a Charizard with a Tyranitar, where she only pulled off the win because she'd gotten lucky at the beginning and so had one more Pokémon in reserve. The thought of that battle is humiliating, and Robin suddenly talking about "I get it if you weren't that impressed" just sounds fake and insincere - like fishing for compliments in some kind of grotesque mock-humility.

Robin is eleven and identifies as a girl without having really questioned it, but I'm pretty sure in a couple of years this is going to evolve into some real Gender Thoughts. Maybe if I write more about Robin I will find out exactly what the conclusion to that would be.

(I have been feeling mildly odd calling Robin her in the commentary while aware that Robin isn't necessarily actually a her, but the character as present in the fic is only ever called her and is at least happy to be called that at this point in time, and I don't actually know yet how Robin's going to end up identifying as an adult. Do you think I ought to be calling Robin them in the commentary until (if ever) I figure it out? Or am I way overthinking this?)

This flies entirely over May's head, of course. To her, saying she thought she was a guy was just something that came to mind, as a thing she'd actually thought about Robin that was wrong, and that she kind of spitefully hoped would bother her, because it'd sure bother her if someone thought she was a guy - only of course Robin isn't even bothered by it, because somehow Robin is just perfect and invulnerable.

Robin no

I guess that's a kind of validation for Robin, if a very confusing kind.

This is another scene that's new in editing. I distinctly remember writing in a dream here that was kind of inane and being unhappy with it, then rewriting it completely later when I'd figured May's issues out better, and I really thought the original dream sequence had been NaNo proper, but apparently not. (Well, maybe I wrote one during NaNo and deleted it entirely before I wrote in this new one?)

I was really happy with this dream sequence once I had rewritten it, and I still kind of like it. There's an intentional complete lack of spatial coherence in it: somehow May's held in Luxray's jaws (Luxray should not be big enough for that), but she can also simultaneously see his eyes, and Robin, and then when she's dropped she's looking straight down. The dream itself, brief though it is, is an amalgam of basically everything bothering May at the moment:

• Robin's Luxray, who reminds her of Tyranitar...
• ...wanting to kill someone (her)...
• ...while Robin judges her, having learned what happened to Taylor...
• ...except that unlike May, Robin could call Luxray back...
• ...only she's not going to because she doesn't think May deserves to be saved...
• ...which mirrors May's deepest, darkest fear that maybe she didn't actually want to call off Tyranitar, either...
• ...and then she's being dropped off a cliff, like Dragoreen was threatening to drop Mark...
• ...and of course, Taylor's there, with his frozen stare, in a pool of blood.

It may be a bit on the nose, but I also kind of enjoy how many things it manages to allude to in not a lot of words. And of course, all in all, it's a bad time for May, to the point where Chaletwo butts in to wake her.

May is employing a technique to ground herself and forget the details of the dream by systematically focusing on real, physical details and sensations instead. Note how this isn't something she's thinking of here; she already has a strategy and turns to it immediately. This is not her first nightmare.

(Meanwhile, Robin's sleeping perfectly soundly, because of course she is.)

At least May's nightmare-forgetting techniques are pretty successful. (Her voice was definitely just shaking with cold, clearly. Remember how it's cold?)

Chaletwo was legitimately concerned there; Mark's had some anxious dreams but nothing quite this intense. But May's just mortified to know he could see her dream at all. Granted, there's no way he could pick out the really relevant detail from it, but the very fact she has nightmares is something she finds humiliating - a weakness, something that makes people pity her when she's fine - and all in all she doesn't like Chaletwo being all up in whatever her brain pulls out in the night without her input, which could be anything.

May's difficulties with having to rely on others again. This scene was in the NaNo draft - but there, it immediately followed the initial strategy discussion with Robin, and began with those two earlier paragraphs that eventually turned into openings for their own scenes.

Reminding you of that cold again, and how Pokémon that have a weakness to Ice don't do well in cold. Meanwhile, May having genuinely improved again, asking Skarmory if he's all right. (Also, comparing him to Charizard some more, because of course.)

The "but at least this time she was alone" was added in editing, emphasizing how Robin's one of the big sources of stress for May right now. (Remember, in the NaNo draft the previous three scenes weren't there, and I hadn't really gotten into that whole aspect of it, which turned out to be hugely important.)

The difference between the two is that Skarmory can't really attack without some maneuverability, so he's pretty useless in a cramped space, whereas Charizard is able to light things up and attack from a stationary position on the ground.

That one time that I said there was literally one sentence that I was still working on before I could publish this chapter? It was this line. I had a very specific feeling here that I wanted to convey somehow: May's trapped and suffocating and desperately wants to just find the dragons and be done here, and she's clinging to that idea even though really she knows it isn't going to solve anything. I still feel like there's a better line I could put here, but I ended up going with this one, this brief, hollow parenthetical acknowledgement that it isn't going to be done at all, without elaboration. It is blunter than I'd have liked, but the way it sounds more irritated than anything else like this made it just passable enough.

In the NaNo draft, none of this thought process happened; they just went into the cave.

These three duds before the cave with the Beartic were added in editing, just to intensify May's mood.

These three paragraphs were also added in editing for imagery and atmosphere; during NaNo I just went straight from just wide enough for something Dragoreen's size to crawl through to "Do you also hear something?", because I am particularly bad at writing this sort of thing and just skipped it.

May's relief here was also added in editing, since it connects back to her earlier wishful sentiment about how they'd be done if she could just find the dragons.

She insists on going in to check because she desperately wants it to be real and just needs to find out as soon as possible, and then justifies why that totally makes sense. Also added in editing; in the NaNo draft she just went in, considered getting the others but decided against it because it'd just be too crowded (but really because I wanted her alone in there).

Fifth generation acknowledged!

Note the awoken by the sound of her voice; she ordered the attack before it was even awake. She could have walked away here without being threatened in any way. This is pure her taking things out on this random Beartic that dares not to be a dragon.

In the draft there was a line earlier where May noted Skarmory would be able to spread his wings and fly in here; I changed the context around it so it didn't fit in anymore.

This is described a lot more brutally than I'd generally describe a Pokémon battle, because that's the point of it, and May had Skarmory keep up a relentless onslaught the whole time, giving it no chance to surrender and going on for longer than he needed to. But I may have gone a bit too far; I think some people took it to mean she'd had Skarmory murder the Beartic. It's just fainted and will be fine. This should be clearer.

Chaletwo was way more perceptive and sympathetic than he should should have been here in the draft. May also had some extra unsubtle "Why was she being like this? Why now?" All in all, a large improvement.

May does not enjoy apologizing.

This was also annoyingly unsubtle in the draft, with May explicitly wondering why she wasn't getting better.

I kind of wish I'd expanded this exchange a little, or explored May's interactions with Charizard a little more otherwise. With all her commenting on him I think it would've been fun if she'd actually gotten to know him a bit better.

She chooses to tell Robin here for a few reasons. She's genuinely pretty unsettled at the fact she beat up that Beartic, and it's just making her afraid of her own emotional state and what it means about her as a person, which makes it nag at her even more that she's hidden this from Robin - telling her seems like it'd be the right thing to do. But also, if she just tells Robin and gets it over with, she can stop feeling this constant tension about whether Robin's going to find out and when and how she's going to react - and on yet another level, the fact Robin obliviously admires her because she has no idea is the worst kind of constant reminder that she doesn't actually deserve anyone's admiration, and in a sort of self-destructive way she just wants Robin to find out and stop admiring her.

She doesn't actually want to have a conversation about this, though, especially not about this part. Telling her was in no way a thought-out decision.

The whole legendary quest has been a very convenient excuse to just keep going without thinking about that, hasn't it.

There were a few more lines to this conversation in the draft:

Robin looked at her for a few seconds before slowly lying down again, facing her this time. “Wishing death on people is a bad way to go through life, even if you don’t mean it,” she murmured. “My mom always says the way you think has consequences even when you don’t intend it to.”

“I wasn’t wishing death on him,” she said.

“Tyranitar must have thought you were.”

I actually like May trying to insist she wasn't wishing death on him and Robin going "Tyranitar must have thought you were", which in that version would've absolutely stuck hard with May. But ultimately I just really didn't like that first line with Robin going straight to this sort of platitude after being told something like this; it just didn't feel right, and ultimately what the Robin in my head actually wanted to do here was just turn around and process this and spend some time trying to figure out how she actually feels about it. Maybe in the next revision I'll work the latter two lines back into the dialogue somehow. (Maybe in a later chapter.)

Don't really like this line. "It could take some time"? Well, yeah.

Dragoreen herself is not enjoying this environment.

Dragoreen, of course, knows that they're not going to have to look blindly around the region once she decides to tell them where her brothers actually are, so she knows they can afford to wait a bit longer than Chaletwo thinks.

This little exchange with Dragoreen was another scene added in editing, to pace it out and have a bit more setup before the twist happens.

Hey, did you know Dragoreen doesn't like it when it's cold

Dragoreen isn't even trying very hard to be convincing here, is she? She makes a token effort to present it as an honest mistake, but she pretty much knows they're going to figure out what's up.

SHE DOESN'T LIKE COLD, BECAUSE SHE'S A DRAGON, LIKE HER BROTHERS

I'm pretty sure this bit was actually spontaneous when I was NaNoing - I knew Dragoreen was lying about them being here, but I think May just made that "Why would a bunch of dragons choose to live in such a cold place anyway?" comment as part of her way of thinking - this angry, reproachful jump to the idea this was obvious all along and she should've figured it out - only then I realized wait, she really does have a point there. That means I think Dragoreen not liking the cold actually originated without me having realized this was actually totally a hint that the male dragons wouldn't be here all along.

Huh, I guess in editing I decided to switch to the sixth-generation "Never-Melt Ice" spelling. I actually seem to have find-and-replaced it in the whole Word document, even, but never changed it on the site. The inconsistency is a bit jarring.

Dragoreen never expected to get away with this, only that they wouldn't figure it out for long enough to delay them a bit. I didn't really want Chaletwo talking over this last bit and figured he's just kind of speechless for a bit and May's saying everything that needs to be said, but in hindsight, that doesn't quite feel like a satisfactory explanation; of course he'd want to say something to Dragoreen himself immediately.

I would've kind of liked to see Floatzel's own reaction to the command to punch Dragoreen, and May's reaction to that in turn; obviously, Floatzel's all for pointlessly attacking someone purely to lash out where Charizard wasn't, and it feels like kind of a lost opportunity that I don't really attempt to draw a comparison or otherwise tie this back to some of the chapter's previous events in a more substantial way.

The chapter plan here just said Chapter 64: They go down Route 317 to Acaria City and search the mountains there; something happens; they realize the dragons aren’t there. Another "Something happens" chapter! Essentially, the plan was that I'd figure out when I got here what should happen in the chapter, depending on how things developed; I didn't expect just futile searching to hold anyone's attention for a full chapter, even though I did want them to spend some time searching in the wrong place, but there was enough opportunity for character stuff to be happening, or else just conversations about the central mystery, that I figured I could lean on that to make an interesting chapter out of it. That essentially ended up being what happened, even though the chapter ended up quite different from what I was imagining there, where there was no Mark injury and no Robin.

When I wrote the chapter for the NaNo draft, I was pretty much just letting things play out; I sent May, Robin and Alan off to the Acaria mountains (but flying rather than walking), knowing they'd search for a while but not find anything, and then watched what happened. At that point, that was: May being really antsy about having Chaletwo in her head; introducing Robin's Pokémon team; strategizing where Robin asks about Tyranitar; May searches a cave where she finds a Beartic and tries to have Charizard beat it up, then Skarmory; May, unable to sleep, tells Robin that her Tyranitar killed Taylor; they keep searching for five weeks; and then Dragoreen finally tells them she was mistaken and May realizes she was lying to them the whole time.

In the NaNo draft, Robin then didn't do much of anything for the rest of the fic. She and May got along fine, she had six extra Pokémon for the battles, then abruptly in chapter 69 she spontaneously told Ryan and Sparky that May's Tyranitar had killed Taylor and opined that they should go to the police and this coverup is wrong, then that led to nothing whatsoever (May wasn't even present for this conversation, so it couldn't have influenced her eventual decision to go to the police, and none of the people who were present actually mentioned it again). I knew already as I was writing the draft that the entire way this was playing out wasn't right, but I had no time to actually get it right, and so I kept writing and left it at "I'll fix it in editing."

Essentially, with chapter 64 and that bit in chapter 69 and mulling over what was going on in May's head here, I realized Robin should be having a much bigger effect on May than I'd managed to think through while rushing through the draft - I'd written in the seeds of it in chapter 64, while in her head, but not managed to properly follow up on them. Robin also should have been significantly more affected; in the draft the bit in chapter 69 was incredibly abrupt, but obviously what ought to have been happening was this steadily nagging at Robin the whole time, and Robin actually confronting May about it, and this in turn seriously affecting May and the rest of her plot.

So, in editing, the biggest thing I did here was to expand the Robin element and explore the effect she in particular has on May more deeply, setting the stage for later edits to later chapters - which I still hadn't entirely worked out my plans for, mind, but I had some idea. I kind of wish I had also found a way to add more of May interacting with Chaletwo and Charizard, both characters she doesn't interact with that much in the chapter even though the interactions that do happen are interesting and feel like there'd be more to explore there. Also, I wish I'd included more of Alan! This has a pretty big effect on him, too, as a particularly humiliating instance of them just completely failing in their hero efforts, but we don't really see enough of him here to get a sense of it.

As I mentioned, though, this is still one of my favorite chapters. The primary plot events here are just Robin learning about the murder, time passing, and Dragoreen telling them where the male dragons are for real, but mostly it's just a character study of May, the way that she thinks and her insecurities and how everything is affecting her, setting up the rest of her arc. I'm a fan of character study, particularly of characters with issues and a lot going on under the surface, and all in all this chapter is just very me. I can recognize that there are things that could have made it better, but it doesn't make me any less fond of it.