Comments on The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
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mamma
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 64: Hide and Seek
Ég las upprifjunarkaflann núna í annað sinn. Ég verð að segja eins og er, að hann er of flókinn. Annað hvort er plottið fáránlega flókið, eða þú ert ekki að útskýra það nógu vel.
En þessi kafli var ágætur. Ég á reyndar bágt með að skilja af hverju May drap ísbjarnarpokemoninn. Hvað græddi hún á því? Hefði hann nokkuð ráðist á hana eða hennar pokemona? Var hann nokkuð að ógna henni? Ég skil heldur ekki hvers vegna pokemoninn hennar lét segja sér að drepa hann, af hverju hann hlýddi May. May er eins og herforingi sem skipar mönnum sínum að drepa óvininn og þeir hlýða í blindni. Ég skil heldur ekki af hverju Chaletwo greip ekki fyrr inn í og stöðvaði atburðarásina. Þannig að ég er ekki alveg sátt við þennan kafla.Reply: Hún drap hann ekki. Pokémonbardagar enda venjulega þegar annar pokémoninn er meðvitundarlaus, og að því leyti var þetta nokkuð venjulegur pokémonbardagi. Hins vegar var engin ástæða til að berjast við hann til að byrja með, sem er einmitt punkturinn í þessari senu - hann var sofandi þangað til hún byrjaði að skipa Charizard að ráðast á hann. May fær útrás fyrir stress og reiði í gegnum ofbeldi (sem er líka ástæðan fyrir að lýsingin á bardaganum er óvenjulega ofbeldisfull). Henni hefur liðið frekar ömurlega og þegar hún finnur þennan pokémon þarna í stað drekanna sem þau eru að leita að er það fyrsta sem henni dettur í hug að vilja ráðast á hann.
Plottið er fáránlega flókið, en ef það er eitthvað ákveðið sem þú skilur ekki getur þú spurt.
[05/29/2014 17:41:16]
Happy
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 64: Hide and Seek
I just spent a good portion of my night refreshing myself on the last ten or so chapters instead of doing all my university assignments, so, I feel like the least I can do is comment to have something to show for it.
It's occurring to me now that tqftl - and indeed tcod as a whole - has been an absolutely formative presence throughout my internet life - which is, well, way to make both of us feel old, right! And I've thoroughly enjoyed the pleasant surprise of having a new chapter every now and again; it'll have been a long journey for some people, that's for sure, but for me it's only been the nights spent in unexpected glee.
But I think this is the first time I've read so many bits and pieces together (and even then it doesn't scratch the surface of a full reread), and I have to say it's an incredible difference to experience it all at once. :) The atmosphere and themes just rise like a tidal wave: that overwhelming sense of everyone in a world that's too big for them, that more and more they're challenging forces that could never be controlled, and they keep struggling through it anyway because that's all there's left to do. I'm a huge fan of reinterpretations of these kiddy stories in particular, taking the naiivete of youth and pitting it against the universe - I read tragically little fanfiction these days, so that sort of "grimdark"-sounding stuff must be common - but I feel like there's something different to yours… like, what I've read has this taste of edge, whereas I'd think of yours more as numb? That sounds pretty bad too; what I mean is, it's not about that shock-cynicism, but instead letting a cold world speak for itself. It's a very lovecraftian angle to take it (maybe? I shouldn't be bandying around authors I haven't read) - and maybe I just love it because we may have similar tastes (evidenced in that I chose to start from 53+), but there you are.
This chapter has been by far the highlight of this reading session; it flips from Mark's numb passivity that's characterised most of the fic, into a character that's immediately so different - and that explosion of rage and self-hate has never been more effective. It's clear your writing style keeps improving over the years too, I think; you've employed fantastic use of the unsaid, and May is the perfect vessel for that. The fighting is great! The beartic, in contrast with Dragoreen, where she's rendered helpless. You've fed us her sheer addiction to power & violence with every movement, and it really is scary to feel that - moreso when it denies her any reprieve.
(Ooh, also, I enjoyed the gender moment! With recent years à la tumblr I've been waiting for someone who could show and not tell it, and I'm very happy to see where it's gone with you. I'm also trying to be conservative about Robin's fan-ism, because I swear I will not project romance onto eleven-year-olds, but I love that you sent that crashing as well.)
And all of that may appear to be a ridiculous amount of over-reading for a fanfiction (lit studies decided to crash into the room), but I feel like it's worth it, because it's not about pokemon anymore - it's about you, as an author, and the themes that you bring into your works. I feel like it's no coincidence your major, most accomplished fics have shown this internal consistency; and should you move into your original ideas someday, I have full faith that I will enjoy it just as much! I look forward to the day! And of course, I look forward to the years I can watch this proof of concept move to completion :)Reply: This review makes me so happy like you wouldn't even believe. Thanks so much for reading and telling me your thoughts - it is incredibly helpful to know what readers are thinking with this level of depth. I'm thrilled you've enjoyed how the story has developed and hope you enjoy the continuation.
[05/15/2014 12:37:36]
LKWayvern
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 64: Hide and Seek
Just love how you casually throw in Fairy Types, like 'Yeah, they've totally existed all this time, we just never bumped into any before.'
Stopping the story now to make a big fuss over a new Type being discovered is a little foolish, so I like how you did it here!
Also… The similarities between Robin's Luxray, and my FC X the Luxray… they just keep increasing…
[05/14/2014 03:45:04]
SilverLatios47
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 64: Hide and Seek
Robin is awesome, and May's perspective is very rewarding; every bit of her development just makes me love her more.
[05/14/2014 01:21:32]
LKWayvern
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 61: Mewtwo
Waaaaaaiiiiiit…
Earlier, Chaletwo said Mew was a he.
In this chapter, Mewtwo calls Mew a she.
Also in this chapter, Chaletwo calls Mew a he.
Did Mew genderswap after the War if the Legends happened, or something…?
Well, in the Councilverse, Mew can switch genders, although she prefers female.
But that's a completely different set of headcanon, with nothing to do with this fanfic.
Really great story.
Personally, I think the Destroyer is Arceus! Even though he wasn't created yet when this story was first made…Reply: In this fic, all genderless legendaries are asexual beings, but some of them prefer one pronoun or the other. Others, like Mew, don't care, and the pronoun used is up to the speaker. This is briefly mentioned in chapter 51, though I should have established it better since a lot of people forget about that and get confused here where two different pronouns are being prominently used for Mew in the same chapter.
Chaletwo refers to all legendaries with no pronoun preference as "he"; he just made a rule and sticks with it. Mark's narration has largely picked that up from him. Entei tends towards "she" for smaller, less imposing legendaries as a subtle way to be condescending. Mewtwo refers to Mew as "she" to differentiate himself from her. May generally calls genderless legendaries "it" because she doesn't care about the dehumanizing implications of it. There are characterization reasons behind most characters' choices of pronoun for Mew (and other such legendaries, but Mew is the most prominent).
[05/06/2014 02:11:21]
Dylan Buchanan
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 27: Past, Present and Future
Did you plan this? I mean, did you plan for the story to transform into a quest to save the world or was it originally meant to be a simple journey fic?Reply: The original plan was for it to be about Mark catching legendaries just because. Then I realized that was stupid and was going to make it a simple journey fic, except then I realized the title wouldn't make any sense, so I concocted another plot that would involve catching legendaries. I'd decided on it at least by the time I wrote chapter 11 of the original version, since I inserted random foreshadowing for it there.
[03/14/2014 16:37:19]
Dylan Buchanan
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 18: Enemies Forever
What Scyther's did to Charmeleon was totally justified. Had I been mark I wouldn't have been near as harsh with Scyther. And about Scyther's attacking mark, isn't it a little early to think Scyther's would kill him?
[03/13/2014 05:15:21]
Dylan Buchanan
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 10: The Mew Hunter
Very good, very well written, nice twist that you miraculously made surprising where it usually would have been cliche. Why exactly did you get all of your party in the first 10 chapters? Not that I think any differently for it, just did you plan it that way, was it the spur of the moment, or something else?Reply: I'd planned a team of Pokémon I liked that I was going to make him end up with (hey, I was twelve) and actually got him most of that within the first five chapters, since at the time I was going to give him a legendary in the sixth spot (again, I was twelve). Scyther joining up was completely spur-of-the-moment, though; in the original plan I was just going to have the Mew Hunter threaten him with a random Scyther but in the process of writing the chapter I came to enjoy the Scyther's character so much I wanted to make him recurring.
Mark's not quite done catching Pokémon even though he has a team of six, though.
[03/12/2014 23:20:11]
UnknownEspeon
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 1: The Pokémon on the Road
i always wanna cry when mew is sad…. i wonder why….. i honestly feel more connected to a lugia….. huh.
[01/15/2014 09:48:48]
Narnik
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 60: The Swarm
I see. So, if I have this straight, Nightmare wants to throw out Code-as-Binding-Contract/Law, but not necessarily Code-as-Coping-System. Yes, that makes sense. I interpreted the text as saying "she wants to throw out the Code entirely, from Law to Belief".
In my original post, we were wondering "but then how are they going to get over the fact that they kill for a living?" I feel that the Code-as-Coping system actually works quite well in that area, and I wanted to ask what other coping mechanisms Nightmare/you had in mind for the swarm. But then that question's now irrelevant, because she's not implicitly throwing out Code-as-Coping.
Again, I feel that the Code works well. But its overextension was definitely a problem, as TFoaL shows. To that end, I guess there should just be the freedom to cope with the fact of murder in a different way; certainly, the freedom to refuse a state-installed doctrine.
[11/22/2013 06:13:01]
Narnik (and also Micah)
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 60: The Swarm
Are there really any ways to structure the swarm that completely ditch the Code? Nightmare's arguments against it mostly come from her time with humans. But Scyther still kill and eat sentient beings, and parts of the Code help Scyther cope with that fact. "Do not kill without accepting that one day it will be you who is killed," after all.
Micah (friend of mine) adds that there's a difference between what's best for society and morality; a difference between the necessity of killing and the reluctance/outright wrongness of killing. The Code exists as law, but morals exist as instinct.
(Admittedly, I'm a little bit tired, and I can't quite fully phrase it. So let me copy/paraphrase what he said:
"Well, if morality isn't determined by what is best for society, then there must be some overarching moral structure. Something that exists within each, or at least most, individuals…what determines the morality of the Scyther in this case? Not what's best for the swarm, not what's best for the individual…what is it?")
Reply: Well, equivocating morality with the law is basically exactly what the Code is doing in the first place, and that's what Nightmare has a problem with. As it is, the Code is a rigid set of rules hammered into them as not just principles of what's best for individuals or best for the swarm but the one and only definition of integrity and worth. It leads to situations like her being obligated to kill Razor for the utterly unremarkable personal failure of challenging a stronger opponent to a true duel in the heat of the moment, just to prove she's willing to face death - a pointless multi-layered insistence on punishment that benefits no one. The basic ideas the Code is rooted in, like the philosophy of accepting your own death if you're going to kill other creatures, aren't what she has a problem with - it's that she feels everyone is suffering for the insistence on strict adherence to the brutal system derived from these ideas.
Their actual moral instincts are really pretty similar to ours - they feel empathy, and they feel suffering is bad. The Code grew from a simple philosophical coping strategy and into what tried to be a consistent replacement moral system (not just a law) but was often incongruous with those actual moral instincts.
I'm not sure I quite follow what exactly Micah is referring to, without the context of that paragraph, so apologies if I'm misunderstanding your point.
[11/22/2013 01:11:58]
Three
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: The Ouen League – Chapter 49: The Rage of a Scyther
"raored"
Epic fail, huh?
:D
[06/17/2013 03:37:38]
Three
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: The Ouen League – Chapter 49: The Rage of a Scyther
Mark was all dizzy as his opponent was terrified of Scyther.
"Both" Scyther raored and leapt up without warning…
?
I know you're a perfectionist, so I won't keep these things to myself.Reply: There are two Scyther because he used Double Team earlier. One of them is the real Scyther, the other is an illusory copy that mirrors everything the real Scyther does.
[06/17/2013 03:32:08]
awesome sauce
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 33: Thunderyu
awesome
[05/29/2013 05:37:53]
mamma
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 63: Recovery
Þetta var ágætiskafli. Ég hlakka til að lesa meira.
[04/24/2013 13:31:42]
oh-paching
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 63: Recovery
What's the "flash of blood spreading over rocky ground" supposed to be? Was May suddenly stabbed?Reply: She was having a brief flashback to Taylor's death.
[04/24/2013 12:29:39]
Denri
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: The Ouen League – Chapter 50: Friendly Competition
I uh… just noticed. Near the end of the chapter, Mark says "You can stay with me in Sailance if you want, but I can also take you back where I caught you, or wherever you like.” Is the Effect no longer a thing? How can his pokémon choose to stay with him in Sailance if they will eventually become unconscious permanently by doing so? He wouldn't be able to live in Sailance and still have his pokémon at all, right?Reply: The Effect is a thing in the IALCOTN - not in the ILCOE. As I keep emphasizing, the two versions are not consistent with one another. In the ILCOE, wild Pokémon generally stay away from that part of Ouen, instinctively just not liking the place, but the precise reasons are a mystery and they suffer no adverse effects if they do come there.
Come to think of it, I should really note this on the Ouen Map page - it was made more to go with the IALCOTN initially (like most of this minipage), but it's bound to be pretty confusing when I've mostly been writing the ILCOE for the past several years.
[04/09/2013 04:14:39]
ilumos
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 63: Recovery
Great job, I love it! Things are finally coming to an end; I've been following this for so long. Are you going to post the other chapters?Reply: When I've finished editing them, yes.
[03/18/2013 07:22:10]
guywithakyogrepokdex
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 62: Diplomacy
I LOVE U
[02/28/2013 13:42:19]
guywithakyogrepokedex
Story: The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter: Chapter 38: Volcaryu
umm, not that i have a problem with it but, WHY THE HELL CAN THE POKEMON TALK???!!!!!1Reply: Have you forgotten the whole thing about Mark being good at Pokémon speech at school? It's not that the Pokémon are speaking human (except Gyarados and Spirit, but that's because they were given special powers by Entei and Suicune), but that people understand their language. In an early episode of the anime, there was a guy who was researching the language of Pokémon; this fic happens twenty-seven years later and assumes that they did figure out Pokémon speech and are now teaching it at schools.
[02/09/2013 19:14:35]