Comments on The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)

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CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 60: The Swarm

In another comment I mentioned one of the things I find jarring about Scyther occasionally taking over the fic is that Mark barely reacts and is just completely uninterested in Scyther's character arc, when he really should be.

But reading this commentary I think another reason it's odd is that only a couple of Mark's Pokemon get even close to this much attention. If all of them got something like this, it wouldn't stand out so much. So in the rewrite it'll probably be a lot better since you'll be treating all of the main characters as people from the start.

[06/10/2024 16:48:35]

CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 59: December

This is such a good Stantler moment. I really like the impact she has on May, who has probably the best character arc of the fic, and catching Stantler is such a special part of that.

I don't think I really appreciated May back in like 2009 or whenever I first read TQftL, but I do now.

[06/10/2024 14:29:36]

CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 58: Sins of the Mother

I like the anticlimax of her father already being dead, and I agree that Letaligon's ending is probably better if she doesn't come back. However, the feeling I've always gotten from this chapter is not that she'll eventually get over this and live happily with her family, but that there's a lot of brand new tension and she may be going into a bad situation where she'll be miserable and purposeless. I think there should be some more here to hint that she'll be okay to really make it work. She just leaves miserably.

I think Mark noticing "something in that final look" was supposed to be that hint, but that's just Mark telling us his hopes. What *we* see when she gives him that look is that she's confused and sorrowful, making it look like Mark is optimistically misinterpreting her because he wants her to be okay.

[06/10/2024 13:43:12]

CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 54: Reunion

Even if May releases him right away and the records are deleted, the fact that she had a Tyranitar is very public information now, so you'd think she'd still at least get interviewed by the police.

[06/09/2024 13:33:48]

CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 53: Away

"'Or are they going to ask Tyranitar himself, and he’ll tell them I said he should die?' May paced off towards a nearby rock and leaned against it with one hand for a little while as she rubbed her forehead. Tyranitar glanced uncomfortably at Mark."

I didn't realize it on my first reread without commentary, but this really sets up Tyranitar's actual conversation with the police later.

Reply: Funnily enough that wasn't actually decided on until quite a while after I wrote this chapter! But it is of course something that follows from it - Tyranitar gives himself up specifically hoping to make them think he just did it on his own and May's not responsible.

Thanks for all the commentary you've been making! Really enjoyed reading your comments, and lots of good points made. Hope you're enjoying the reread!

[06/08/2024 13:03:03]

CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: The Ouen League – Chapter 50: Friendly Competition

"It's a bit cheap how lucky Mark is getting with all this paralysis, isn't it?" He uses it a ton, so he could get lucky sometimes. Though it may happen in a couple of other battles too. Not sure.

[06/07/2024 02:17:04]

CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: The Ouen League – Chapter 49: The Rage of a Scyther

Also, these league battles with more experienced trainers like Michael is said to be here, as well as perhaps May's battles, could benefit from you trying some competitive Pokemon battling to get a sense of other types of strategies. There are definitely some good battles throughout the fic, but these move spam battles read more like you've mostly or only played the games, where spamming your strongest STAB move is really the only thing you need to do.


At least I've never seen you mention playing competitive.

[06/06/2024 15:11:05]

CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: The Ouen League – Chapter 49: The Rage of a Scyther

I also don't mind Mark's internal rambling about moves, but it does make it really apparent that he could get way more coverage moves than he ever does. If he had financial limitations, that would resolve that neatly, but he's never shown to. He just buys whatever he wants and then still never thinks about putting stuff like Ice Beam on his team, or giving more of his Pokemon Earthquake, or doing anything to cover Jolteon's weaknesses. Jolteon goes on with just Return as his only TM move for… maybe the entire fic? But even back in gen 3 he could've learned like, Iron Tail, Dig, Shadow Ball… plus a good number of supportive moves like Double Team. It's less glaring early on when you expect the Pokemon to not do all of that, and he's still refusing for like 40 chapters to look up their moves for some reason, but by the time we're multiple legendary battles into the fic and he's in the league buying up TMs, it's definitely odd.


Reply: He teaches Jolteon Shadow Ball, actually! He also teaches both Charizard and Letaligon Earthquake (they both use it in this chapter), plus Dragonite with Fire Punch and Thunderpunch, etc. Picking up a bunch of coverage moves here is like the one proactive thing he does do with his Pokémon's movesets. I prodded at the strategizing scene because it goes on for a long while contemplating a bunch of things back and forth and only some of it ends up relevant, not because he literally doesn't do any of it.

[06/06/2024 12:17:55]

CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 37: Carl

The part about reading that Dragonair is powerful and being disappointed actually directly contradicts a bit in an early chapter, which stated that trainers often expect to catch a psuedo legendary and then be strong, but that Dratini and Dragonair aren't actually strong at all, and that it actually takes a trainer who's already very good to bring them to their full potential and evolve into Dragonite. So having read/heard that (I forget which) should have set Mark's expectations.

[06/04/2024 10:47:44]

CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 36: The Crater

It's a bit odd in the hotel that Charizard can come out but Diamond can't.

[06/04/2024 01:29:52]

CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 34: Return to Cleanwater

"Speak of the devil" is technically inherently negative, but people use it in a friendly way with some regularity due to lack of a better phrase.

“I need a Water and Ice Pokémon in my team,” May muttered. “There are Fire and Dragon Pokémon all over the League and…” This stuff with May spitting out random justifications instead of accepting that she's upset and hurt is really realistic and makes for good character growth and I like it. And it's really interesting that Alan tries to argue to what she's literally saying but it doesn't work because it's not what she means.

Wasn't either that Manectric or Elektrike intended at one point to become Raikou's chosen and get captured by Alan? I can't remember where you said that.

Reply: You probably already got to it, but what you're thinking of comes up in the chapter 51 commentary, where Entei explains the Chosen:

Background thing that I came up with at some point but never actually made canon: the Electrike whose mother they accidentally killed in chapter 34 may have been one of Raikou's potentials. The main reason I came up with this is that I thought it was thematically neat, and deliciously cruel, if Alan almost ended up with one of Raikou's potentials too, but whoops things aren't that neat, Electrike doesn't actually want human help and probably dies, and Alan gets no special Pokémon after all. It is kind of an unbelievable coincidence that Alan would almost get it too, though. I doubt I would ever actually make this canon, but if you enjoy the idea, please imagine this was the case.

[06/04/2024 00:21:02]

CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 33: Thunderyu

Perish Song is another problematic move. I think Curse or poison would honestly be fine if you just say the legendaries have tons of HP - like a boss battle where you have status effects chipping away at the boss and it does help but it's still ultimately the attack damage that is doing the bulk of the work.

In the Pokemon games, legendaries have pretty normal amounts of HP, but you're already presenting them as bosses that need 6-30 Pokemon to take them down, so of course status moves would not automatically win.

It'd make the battles more interesting honestly if they spent more time doing literally anything except their most damaging moves. For example, why can't they use stat-boosting moves just before some of these fights? You could get a lot of mileage out of exploring movesets more in these fights.

Reply: Yeah, as I mentioned in the commentary, the problem there is mainly May explicitly acting like Spirit pulling off Curse is just going to solve all their problems and be a foolproof way to beat Thunderyu in the equivalent of four turns like in the games, when I should have just made it not be able to do that. When May does canonize the idea that all they'd need to do is pull off Curse and stall a bit, that's when I get awkwardness where they have to just somehow forget about this possibility except just when they're too late to pull it off.

[06/03/2024 21:13:25]

CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 32: The Birthday Party

"I will, of course, go on to not have this exception for Thunder Wave at the League later, because I am the most consistent"

Ah, I found where you knew the Thunder Wave usage was inconsistent after all. Based on when each of these battles happened, it looks like this is most likely because Thunder Wave was effective on Volt Absorb Pokemon in gen 3, but not in gen 4 - with these battles being written during gen 3, and the league battles being written during gen 4. So you probably just looked it up each time and didn't notice that it had changed.

Reply: Ha! I never realized that was why, but that does make a lot of sense, actually. I always thought I'd just sort of arbitrarily decided to make an exception in the earlier chapters for some reason and had then forgotten about it.

[06/03/2024 20:30:48]

CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 31: Spirit

This is one of the times where you have Thunder Wave work against a Volt Absorb Lanturn, but in a later chapter it doesn't work (I commented on that chapter).

I think it also worked against Marge's Lanturn, but I forgot to check.

"The big question then, though, would be exactly how Spirit gets her final blessing from Entei." Does Entei not have any way to find his potentials? Surely he does because any of them could move at any moment, unless he was just planning to continually search all of Johto to look for them whenever he wants to check up on one who happens to not be where he expected. I know he's not psychic, but the energy he puts into the potentials is his energy, so I'd buy that he can just detect it.

Alternatively, Spirit could tell Entei she's leaving with May to Ouen.

There's still the question of Entei getting to Ouen at all, but I'm sure he could figure it out.

[06/03/2024 17:51:29]

CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 31: Spirit

This is one of the times where you have Thunder Wave work against a Volt Absorb Lanturn, but in a later chapter it doesn't work (I commented on that chapter).

I think it also worked against Marge's Lanturn, but I forgot to check.

[06/03/2024 16:14:20]

CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 29: Stormblade and Shadowdart

It honestly is believable that Mark would accidentally call the paramedics doctors at least.

The Abra helping the paramedics is a really interesting throwaway world building detail.

I wish Mark or anyone reacted to Scyther's drama. One of the big things that makes it feel irrelevant is that in-universe no one else cares or does anything. It's always odd in general when Mark just watches some Pokemon have a long conversation or scene which he could easily participate in but he just doesn't do anything or have any thoughts about it.

[06/03/2024 15:42:30]

CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 28: Scyther's Revenge

I do like Fury even though he doesn't end up mattering - but it fits okay alongside other random trainers Mark encounters as part of his journey. It'd be cool to see anything more come of it. It's the type of thing you'll see in book 1 of something that then becomes much more significant in a sequel.

I don't believe this happens but it would be cool to see Scyther make a promise somewhere near the end to show his character growth.

[06/03/2024 15:09:36]

CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 27: Past, Present and Future

Skarmory is already present in Johto. Did May just want a lower level one and right away? I'm curious how long that trip was just to get one Pokemon. I don't recall Ouen's location relative to Johto coming up.

Also, Scyther's suicidal feelings are pretty decently written and plausible for his situation, the angst is just over the top - which presumably wouldn't be the case if you write it again while not being 15. I would just note that often the most suicidal people don't tell anyone how they feel, so the part where Scyther is often very eager to explain how suicidal he was and still is comes off as odd. It'd be more likely for Mark or someone else to need to convince him to talk about it. Also, people don't always make attempts to commit suicide when they're at their worst. It's actually more likely that in your most depressed moments, you are suicidal but don't have the energy to do it. Instead, once you start to feel a bit better, that's when you paradoxically have the energy to try. It's a huge risk when people go on anti-depressants and is one of the reasons they're supposed to he watched closely by someone they trust early on with a new medication - the anti-depressants may make them feel better enough that they can manage to kill themselves. Those are the things I'd suggest taking into consideration for the rewrite.

[06/03/2024 13:21:40]

CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 26: Dead or Alive

What is the point of mentioning the animal world idea at all meant to be here? Sure, it's vaguely interesting, but it doesn't actually affect anything, since no animals ever appear in the fic, Mark never thinks about this again until the random part explaining more about it being destroyed, and humans being alongside Pokemon doesn't really require any particular explanation since it's already part of the world you're writing a fanfic about. If it's here at all it'd maybe be better mentioned as just a one-sentence aside, since it does nothing.

Reply: At the time I wrote this chapter I had zero idea what was actually going to be relevant to the plot and what wasn't, and also had no real sense of streamlining narrative in general. I'd come up with this worldbuilding to explain why humans in the Pokémon world are like our world's humans despite there being no other animals and Pokémon being very different sorts of creatures, so I wanted to include it in the fic; my thought process didn't go much further than that.

[06/03/2024 11:22:20]

CuriousJolteon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: The Pokémon Festival – May 25th: Chaletwo's Arrival

I thought you'd comment on it here, but I'm still confused about why they can only talk when Mark's dead. Chaletwo handwaves it by just saying someone could otherwise always overhear, but 1. someone could overhear Mark talking to May, Alan, and others later about the War, yet Chaletwo never cares about that, and 2. both Chaletwo and Molzapart can speak to people psychically anyway, which presumably can't possibly be overheard.

Reply: I just wanted Chaletwo to kill Mark and then handwaved a reason he supposedly had to; it never made much sense.

[06/03/2024 11:16:20]

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