The Quest for the Legends | Revision History

Revision History

The Quest for the Legends has improved a lot since the first version, to say the least - and to show that, I have collected all I have of each revision on this page. It also serves as an overview over the revisions that have been made of this. Original spelling, grammar and punctuation are kept completely intact.

Version 1.0: The Original

This the original version, how I first wrote this fic, started June 19th 2002. I referred to Charmander as a he, which surprised me when I read it again - I apparently switched to "it" in the first revision after having used "he" in the original. Stupid me, trying to be all grammatically correct. The links to chapters 1-6 below will all give you the same actual Word document I was writing it in saved with Word's automatic "Save as Web Page" function - that is how it was archived, actually, as later I simply erased this version and wrote the Good Battle Style and UMR into the document instead - so that means the bottom has some notes, revealing such horrors as my original plan to have Mark capture and use Freezer (now known as Freezaroy) on his team. Only the first eight chapters count as being this version, considering I always thought of the border between the "Good Battle Style" and the "Old Battle Style" as being between chapters eight and nine. When I speak of 'the original', I'm generally referring to 1.x - or well, not including the beta-UMR, but the Good Battle Style counts as being 'the original' since I changed so little anyway.

Chapters of this version:

Version 1.1: The Good Battle Style

This was, according to some old versions of the fic from archive.org, written mostly in the spring of 2003. The reason I decided to rewrite it for the first time was that after discovering the magic of actually describing what was going on during battles (gasp) which I was first forced to do in chapter nine when explaining made-up attacks, I realized that the first eight chapters had some of the worst battles in the history of Pokémon fanfiction. At first I didn't really think of doing anything about it except putting a "---START OF THE GOOD BATTLE STYLE---" between chapters eight and nine on the chapter listing, but soon after that I realized I could just rewrite the first eight chapters to be written with the good battle style as well, and thus my life will never be the same again. Archive.org unfortunately only has an archived version from March 25th where the ---START OF THE GOOD BATTLE STYLE--- was not yet in and then a version from May 5th where it is in and the chapter listing says the first two have been revised, so it's difficult to pinpoint exactly when I started it - the archive.org version just shows it was after chapter fourteen. It, like the original, contained an occasional link to a badly-drawn illustration in its Web version.

Chapters of this version:

Version 1.5: The Beta-UMR

After 32 chapters of the original (or well, the Good Battle Style), on September 29th 2003, I started revising everything in order to post it at the Pokémasters forums, dubbing this the "Ultra-Mega-Revised version". My first attempt at revising chapter one was posted at the old Cave of Dragonflies forums for opinions; it never went anywhere else, seeing as I was still unhappy with it and decided to do a more thorough rewrite. The most major change in this, I think, is that this is after I decided to translate all Pokémon speech directly.

Chapters of this version:

Chapter 1: How the adventure began

Version 2.0: The UMR

Chapter one of this was written just a few days after the previous, believe it or not - the only difference is that I was a bit braver when editing it this time. This was also where I finally started to double-space my chapters - somebody on TPM suggested that. Notice that I still didn't know the rules of capitalization in titles, still had hardly changed the chapter arrangement or chapter titles at all, and in fact none of the storyline either as far as I can remember - it was strictly an improvement in writing style, with the interesting addition of making Mark and May refer to Pokémon as "he" or "she" throughout, instead of having them abruptly begin to do so in chapter 23 as in the original, and having Pokémon speech directly translated from the beginning. It is in fact so little changed, especially later on, that in a couple of places in chapter 20 I didn't even go over it carefully enough to change a couple of "it"s to "he" when referring to Charmeleon. For a long time, this was the farthest I had ever gotten with the fic - only in chapter 31 of the ILCOE did I pass the point at which chapter 36 of the UMR ended - and before that point many readers thought of it as 'the one and only' Quest for the Legends. As of version 3.x, it is officially to be considered obsolete and uncanonical; if you find any information in here that is not in the ILCOE or different, ignore it.

Chapters of this version:

Version 3.0: The HMMRCIG

The HMMRCIG, or How Much More Revised Can It Get? version, was started after chapter 36 of the UMR. The motivation for doing it was a review from Obsidian Blade made on April 3rd 2004, where she, among other things, commented on how the first chapters were much worse than the later ones (not that I hadn't realized that already). That was also when I first wrote the prologue, and, following it, chapter one, with heavy edits, tweaks, backgrounds that never used to be there, and an earlier ending, basically rewriting the whole thing from scratch. Unfortunately, I could only dig up the prologue and chapters one and two from the Archive.org version of my Serebii.net forums thread, but oh well - the YAR is almost identical to the HMMRCIG in most cases, anyway.

Chapters of this version:

Prologue
Chapter 1: The Pokémon on the Road
Chapter 2: The Ouen Legends
Chapter 3: Vuiiii!
Chapter 4: Cleanwater City
Chapter 5: The Lake of Purity

Version 3.1: The YAR

The YAR, or Yet Another Revision, was rather minor; it was made after chapter five of the HMMRCIG (the first YAR chapter being put up on June 30th 2004), the reason being that I requested a review at the Pokémasters forums and wanted to fix up the fic a little bit before that.

Chapters of this version:

Version 3.2: The ILCOEth revision

ILCOE stands for "I've Lost Count Of 'Em", and I don't really remember the exact reason I decided to make this one. I started it after chapter six of the YAR, at least, on August 17th 2004. It sports slightly more changes than from the HMMRCIG to the YAR, but still follows the storyline of the HMMRCIG very closely, with the only real changes being in writing style. This is by far the longest-lived version of the story, being the one that I eventually completed on June 19th 2018 and then wrote an author's commentary on.

Chapters of this version:

Prologue
Chapter 1: The Pokémon on the Road
Chapter 2: The Legends
(For the rest, see the author's commentary)

Version 3.3: The ILCOTEM

A refining of the prologue and first two chapters, probably motivated by me wanting to post the story on the PokémonElite2000 forums. The name stands for "I've Lost Count Of Them Even More". From the last modified dates on some files, chapter 1 was edited on December 30th 2004 and chapter 2 on December 31st, but the prologue seems to have gotten some final tweaks on January 2nd 2005, when I posted it on PE2k. Since the ILCOE was already up to chapter 18 by this time and I only revised the first few chapters, it wouldn't have been right to start calling the whole thing the ILCOTEM - it's still the ILCOE, only with an improved opening.

Chapters of this version:

Version 3.4: The ILCOE patch

On the fic's nineteenth anniversary in 2021, three years after finishing it, I decided to embark on a project of drawing chapter art for every chapter of the story in the year leading up to the twentieth anniversary, June 19th 2022. Alongside the chapter art project, I decided to start posting the fic on the Thousand Roads forums, with minor patch revisions and spoiler-free chapter-end commentary. By this point I had grown a long way and found a lot of things in the first half of the fic pretty ridiculous; actually rewriting the fic into a state where I'd be happy with it would be a years-long endeavor, but instead I committed to just fixing grammatical mistakes and the like, plus the occasional thing that really bothered me and could be trivially fixed in a matter of minutes. The only exception was I made some significant revisions and additions to chapter 76, which I had been wanting to make since finishing the fic.

Chapters of this version:

(See the chapter index)

Version 4.0: The IALCOTN

I've Absolutely Lost Count Of Them Now. I made this one because both Nidokingu and a few reviewers believed that the start of the fic was way too slow and boring. I'm not sure, but I think I started this in order to post it on Pokémon Fan Universe on July 9th, 2005. I basically realized that most of the school stuff could be cut out completely, and other stuff could be told in a much shorter manner; then when I was writing it, I realized that just the school stuff, which I had transformed into a conversation between Mrs. Grodski and Mark, kind of qualified for a separate chapter. This basically means that now the original chapter one's story has been completely moved to chapter two. It, like the ILCOE, is now a staple which I may revise some of every now and then, but will most likely keep being presented under this name.

Chapters of this version:

Version 4.1: The APO

Yes, it's Another Pointless One, made for my posting of the IALCOTN on Bulbagarden on October 5th 2006! It's mainly some added italic lines in the prologue and teensy tweaks of the first chapter, which were in fact never put into this minipage because I'm too lazy.

Chapters of this version:

Version 4.5: WTHAIRTSTA

Heh, it was my friend AK who came up with that name to stand for "Why The Hell Am I Rewriting This Stupid Thing Again?" This was induced by a rather negative review by LaVerneT of the APO prologue on December 30th 2006, basically one of just the type that induces my infamous rewriting-urges. So basically I entirely rewrote the prologue from scratch (albeit with inspiration from the APO) and put it up as the IALCOTN prologue, and like it a lot better now. A tweaked version of chapter one and chapter two (now on this minipage as the IALCOTN chapters) followed.

Chapters of this version:

Also check out the trivia for some revision-related fun facts!