Comments on The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
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Negrek
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 65: Three Dragons
Funny, having Mew tell the legendaries that the previous war was just a one-time thing seems like it would require her to come up with a pretty elaborate story about how that could be. Like, what exactly would cause all the legendaries to suddenly slaughter each other, every single one of them, and how could Mew really assure everyone that it would never happen again? Whatever the case, it seems like the legendaries would at least *try* to do something to to prevent the situation from happening again if they actually knew about it. Like, if Mew spun it as Arceus having come down and cast judgment on the legendaries for their sins (reasonably close to the truth), then I would expect to see at least some of the legendaries adhering to their own kind of religion where they try to be good so Arceus doesn't show up and slaughter them all in the future. Or if Mew said that one legendary became super powerful and basically started all the murdering, etc., I would expect some kind of agreement or something between the legends to try and prevent anyone from getting so powerful again. Like I'm trying to think up a scenario where Mew would have fabricated something and Chaletwo's capture plan (or the beasts' soul gems) were the only measures anyone was taking to prevent a future war and having trouble coming up with one.
I agree that the current set-up, where the legendaries in general don't seem to realize that there ever was a war or question why Mew made them a thousand or so years ago, doesn't make a lot of sense. And probably the humans would have noticed all this nonsense going down unless someone mass-memory-modded them every time or something (and even then there would be physical evidence…). idk. It's a tough problem.
Just curious as we get into the NaNo chapters, do you think that NaNo was good for this fic overall? Like here, you basically rewrote the entire chapter, so you weren't able to use the draft for all that much. Do you think you might have finished faster if you hadn't done that NaNo sprint and then had to do so much editing afterwards, or do you think figuring out some of this stuff that didn't work on the first go-round ended up helping?Reply: Like I said in there, the current canon is that Mew just made it sound like it happened out of nowhere, had never happened before, and nobody knew why - no elaborate story, no Arceus coming down, just one big question mark. It's pretty hard to take measures against a complete unknown. It does leave some earlier dialogue in the fic sounding a a bit odd, like Entei and Chaletwo both indicating they'd fully believed they'd never die for a thousand years (surely at least for a while at first they'd have worried about whether something like that could reoccur), and that's the sort of thing I mean by writing it more like that was the case from the start.
It might actually be more robust for Mew to just go with it not involving them going mad at all, and just saying it was a regular old war where they'd split into factions over some disagreement and then killed each other. Obviously then it's pretty reasonable for the legendaries not to spend their time worrying about that just happening when they're all broadly getting along fine barring individual rivalries. Mew would need to fudge something about the whole Chalenor dying issue, though - if he was supposedly the Preserver, he should be a true immortal, so a mundane war shouldn't be able to kill him. Maybe Chaletwo thinks only Mew is a true immortal. Hmmm.
I think the fic did benefit a lot from me writing out this bad rough draft of the entire rest first and then being able to have a full overview while I thought about how I wanted to change it. Writing and publishing a chapter at a time, I would almost certainly have done a much worse job building things up, especially when it comes to May's arc.
[07/15/2019 18:34:19]
Person using an e-reader to browse the Internet
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 65: Three Dragons
I've found a sentence in this chapter with a confusing pronoun, which I assume is a typo.
This one is at the beginning of the 16th paragraph from the bottom. May's Mutark uses the pronoun "their", which is not used for it anywhere else that I have read so far.Reply: That's referring to Racko and Pamela, not to Mutark; they were on Dracobalt's back earlier, and after Preciure tore them off, Mutark took their place there.
[07/10/2019 11:35:46]
Person using an e-reader to browse the Internet
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 35: Suicune
I have found a missing punctuation mark. It is at the end of the 16th (I think) paragraph. After the word 'electricity' the paragraph ends without any sentence-ending punctuation. Sorry I can't be more detailed about the location; the e-reader can't show me that section of the chapter and the comment field at the same time.
[07/07/2019 01:38:40]
Happy
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 52: The League Finals
A total unrelated ramble, but the league strategising + scythers continuing stagnation on the code + the entei then chaletwo convos - makes me think a lot about like, theorising the distribution of human versus pokemon intelligence!! Like I can believe despite the full apparent ability of pokemon for complex reasoning, maybe what places human adults on top is like… emotional intelligence. Or like I know youve said before, the abstract intelligence of perceiving patterns & broader-picture thinking. Its super interesting to think that in a world with other sapient beings, the disparities are in much more subtle ways, & then carrying on to consider how itd affect these scenarios. (Quite frankly I too easily forget the disparities amongst people. /cough) And I enjoy deeming its why legendaries are socially exactly on par with eleven year olds. :L
Im pretty sure stantler knocks a leg off my ideas here (not like its important to 100% adhere to BUTTERFREES CANON, KING WORK OF FICTION hahaha - just idly throwing things round), but im ready to justify outliers at the speed of light, or maybe her capability for strategic abstract thought is far outclassed by humans as a counterbalance. Something like that. (Also you can draw a line between this & letals own strategic intelligence vs… her emotional lol)
Also fury stands out so far in this regard I do declare he voluntarily took on human education haha. Everyone has the ability to grow beyond themselves!!
[05/11/2019 19:06:24]
Chibi
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 39: The Workings of the War
So here we're onto the chapters that were posted the second time I fell out of reading the fic. Yes, somehow, I fell out of reading it right before the Volcaryu battle, which is absurd. I think it's because I was in college or something? I dunno. But either way, I didn't read these chapters until at least during the league arc.
It's kind of amazing looking back at this being literally the only speculation fuel we had all the way until chapter 61! I'm pretty sure I remember never buying the Articuno-as-Destroyer theory lol. But the greatest red herring the fic ever threw us was time-traveling Chalenor. It's amazing that even when multiple people began to suspect that he was not the Preserver, not one of us managed to extrapolate that he could not time travel. In future revisions, I'd definitely recommend capitalizing on that.
I definitely feel you with the struggle for how on earth to preserve mysteries in serially published fiction. I'm pretty happy with the solution I came up with, but it was definitely difficult.
[02/17/2019 23:18:41]
Muuja
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 19: Good or Evil?
Can't wait to hear more about Anonymous Dirtbag! Oh wait.
[10/24/2018 19:20:07]
Seren
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 11: The Lizard and the Mantis
I don't know if anyone else mentioned this already, but I also thought it was interesting to note how Mark thinks to talk to Scyther and introduce him to the rest of the team, while he's never so much as had a passing thought about that in regards to his other pokemon.Reply: Mark actually sends out Sandshrew with the intention of introducing him to Charmander just after catching him! He just gets interrupted by May and then forgets about it entirely, and then makes no attempt at all to do it for Dratini.
[09/10/2018 00:41:07]
mamma
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 77: Home
Jæja, þá er sögunni lokið. Þetta var afskaplega fín saga. Hérna í lokin voru ýmis nöfn á stöðum og pokemonum rifjuð upp, og mönnum eins og Carl. Við það rifjuðust atburðir upp líka, td vatnið með Suicune og Gyarados, hvernig Mark laug að Carl, Scyther og móðir hans og vinkona/kærasta, man ég það rétt? Drekarnir einn inni í fjalli, annar man ekki alveg… Alla vega, flott hvernig þú hnýtir alla lausa enda í lokin, td May og morðið.
[08/23/2018 13:15:14]
Seren
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 8: The Master of the Clones
Okay, for real, Rick's line "let's hope it was just some random kid" was glorious. What happened to the nurse who went to fetch him to tell him there was a random kid waiting to earn his badge? Who knows, Rick is busy not caring that strangers are screwing with his gym!
Also I've totally been pronouncing it "Mewtwo-Squared" the entire time this story has been updating. I thought it was a neat little detail since it's supposed to be a super-clone of a super-clone, so like, exponentially stronger than the original, hence the "squared"… and I'm actually a little disappointed that that's not really how it was intended.Reply: I mean, that's what I meant when I said I felt it made more sense in some imagined mathematical abstraction of super-cloning! I just didn't want to pronounce it "squared" because that's not a very powerful-sounding word. Hence "to the power of two", which then ultimately got shortened. Please do continue to pronounce it Mewtwo-squared.
[08/14/2018 23:06:07]
K
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 77: Home
I've been following this fic for 12 years now, and while I'm sad to see it's over, I'm so happy that I got to see it end. The difference from that early version I read with the "Char! Char!" to this is night and day. Now I need to re-read it - after Chapter 50 I hadn't checked in on this in a long time, so the memory of Chapters 1 - 50 is hazy to me!
Thank you for writing this. If you ever start writing original fiction, I'm sure you'll have a lot of us lining up to read it as well! :)Reply: Thanks for reading! Since you mentioned rereading, if you're interested, you can follow the weekly retrospective commentaries I'm making on each chapter from the beginning.
[08/07/2018 11:37:28]
anon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 77: Home
So when are you finishing the IALTCON? ;)Reply: Haha, it'd probably be a a new revision at this point! No idea when I'll get around to that, though. I've got a Morphic rewrite to do.
[07/07/2018 16:57:32]
Steph
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 77: Home
Thanks for finishing. Following the story since 2006.. so happy to have an end.Reply: Thank you for sticking with it all these years!
[07/01/2018 08:59:52]
mamma
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 76: Chalenor
Þetta er mjög upplýsandi kafli og áhugaverður. Vel skrifaður, fallegur. En það er ýmislegt sem ég skil ekki. Af hverju skiptir Mew um kyn í hverjum undirkafla? Og ég held ég þurfi að lesa síðasta kafla aftur til að reyna að botna í plottinu. Ég skil það þó aðeins betur nú en áður.Reply: Mew hefur ekkert kyn. Mismunandi persónur kalla hann mismunandi fornöfnum, og frá hans eigin sjónarhorni skiptir það einfaldlega ekki máli. Þess vegna skipti ég á milli. Það hefur enga þýðingu fyrir söguna þannig, átt ekkert að þurfa að velta því fyrir þér.
[06/27/2018 12:48:45]
mamma
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: The Final Stretch – Chapter 75: Mewtwo²
Búin með kaflann. Hann er svakalega flottur hjá þér. Ég grét í lokin. Plottið er flókið og ég þurfti að lesa sumar setningarnar aftur og aftur, brjóta heilann til að rifja upp, fara fram og til baka, taka mér hlé. En ég held ég hafi náð þessu að lokum.
[06/25/2018 13:14:24]
mamma
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: The Final Stretch – Chapter 75: Mewtwo²
Ég var að byrja aftur á kaflanum. Las fyrsta hlutann, þar sem Mitch er að átta sig á sínum innri ábúanda og ákveður að drekka eitur til að ábúandinn fái yfirráð yfir líkama hans. Þetta er mjög áhugavert og óhuggulegt um leið. Því það er ábyggilega svona sem fólk gengur af vitinu og gerir óhuggulega hluti eins og að taka eitur í þeirri trú að það sé að hlýða raunverulegri rödd innra með sér, raunverulegri veru. Að það sé að gera rétt. En er í rauninni að gera rangt. Mér finnst frábært hvað þú átt auðvelt með að lýsa tilfinningum, notar mjög fjölbreytt orðalag til þess. Ég er að basla við þetta sjálf í mínum skrifum og finnst ég alltaf nota sömu orðin aftur og aftur. Ég hlakka til að lesa meira og ætla að setja svona athugasemd við hvern undirkafla.
[06/25/2018 06:24:33]
SilverLatios(CarmineKnight)
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 77: Home
I'm not crying. I'm not crying.
I don't think I have anything left to say, except thank you, for everything. And I'll be looking forward to anything you write in the future, whether it's the commentary for TQftL or far beyond that. Just thank you for this story you've told, and for all the many years we've spent with these characters.Reply: Thank you so much for reading throughout the years (and your part in the card)! I've always really appreciated your comments.
[06/22/2018 13:25:40]
Tutimetzel
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 77: Home
Don't think I've ever commented before, but I've been following this fic for probably like a decade. Thank you for persevering. I can't imagine what it feels like to finally finish it. Seriously, great job. It was an amazing ride.Reply: Thanks for reading!
[06/21/2018 00:56:47]
AChexy
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 77: Home
Is this the end? NOOOOO!Reply: Yup, this is the end! The story is over, so sadly there's nothing more to write here. But feel free to follow the commentary if you want to relive some of the earlier bits with me!
[06/20/2018 11:34:53]
Larissa
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 77: Home
What a wonderful ending :D Congrats on finally seeing this story to a close, at long last. I loved getting to see how all the different characters ended up; it was very satisfying.
I particularly liked May's ending - her arc has long been the most interesting to me, and this is a really great way to wrap it up. I haven't reread the previous chapters in a while and can't remember if the stuff about her dad was mentioned sooner, but that would be a nice thing to work in earlier if you end up making any future revisions.
Also, speaking of rereading: now that it's all done, ebook versions would be super handy, if you ever get the chance ;)
For real though, congrats again on finishing. You should be very, very proud of yourself.Reply: Maaan, I had no idea you were still reading the fic; it was a real gutpunch to see your name on that e-card. Thanks so much for following it! I'm glad you found the resolution for the characters satisfying; that's the biggest thing I wanted to accomplish here, and I'm particularly pleased you liked how May's arc ended.
May's dad has not been mentioned in the fic proper, but it was in the spin-off one-shot Spirit. I didn't expect to end up bringing it up in the fic at all, so that's why it never came up before, but then it just sort of happened here as I was editing! There was a hint in chapter 74 where Mark noticed May didn't want to call anyone, and I thought it was nice that this scene followed up on that a little, but yeah, if I'd known I was going to make a point of it, I'd have built it up more, and will do so whenever I next revise this.
I'll look into putting together an e-book version before I start the commentary!
[06/20/2018 00:43:11]
Blue Shine
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 77: Home
I've been reading this story for more than a decade now, and it's hard to believe that it's finally at an end.
You've come a super long way as a writer, and I found this a satisfying end. I look forward to reading the next version.Reply: Thanks for reading! <3
[06/20/2018 00:00:00]