o, as you all know, I have a really, really bad habit of rewriting things. Recently, I made a list of things I want to change in LotE but wouldn't because the changes would be too drastic.
I ended up turning it into an outline for what I would do, if I were to rewrite LotE from scratch. Well, at least from Volume II onward. I'm still figuring out how Volume I would go. If this version of LotE ever came into fruition, it wouldn't happen until after after all the Bonus Stories are done. Why after the Bonus Stories? Mostly because this version of LotE would incorporate the material in those Bonus Stories. Thalia: *dreamily* but then sparktail came to the rescue
Sparktail: h-hang on! Thalia: yelling "don't hurt my thaliaaaaa" Sparktail: *going red* i-i didn't! Thalia: he picked me up like a princess and carried me out~ Sparktail: th-that's not what happened! Thalia: oh yes, he actually said something like Sparktail: d-don't tell them all this...! Thalia: something like "DON'T HURT MY PRECIOUS THALIAAAA" Sparktail: *is now a blushing mess* So I've been trying to fix up the site theme a bit, ever since my last semester ended. I was trying to clean it up, but I was having trouble tinkering with the layout for some reason, so I tried to rebuild the theme. It was a little tricky because I'm not familiar with how LESS works. Anyway, I just need to fix buttons now.
Don't misunderstand, I'm very thankful for this page, I've always wanted one! I've regarded it as a key milestone. But alas, Sparklefox is nitpicky and must provide commentary. Legend of the Exile is a Pokémon fanfic written by Sparkleaf. Begun in 2010 and originally intended as a Take That directed towards Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, though eventually it grew into a story of its own. I appreciate being given the benefit of the doubt, but LotE is still very much a "Take That" toward Sinnoh. It just focuses more on Hoenn love than Sinnoh hate. LotE takes place 12 years after the events of Ruby/Sapphire. Slick however, was the Champion of the Hoenn region and had been a key part of the fight against Giratina. As such, his pokemon vow to defeat the Exile in his stead. This leads them to journey to Sinnoh, where Exile's forces are strongest, in hopes of finding a way to defeat him. I've since corrected this section, but I'd like to point it out because it is an excellent example of confusion related to the 2012 revamp. LotE originally ended with 32 chapters in 2010, and the continuity was very different. In 2011, I unresolved the ending so I could continue writing it. By 2012, I found LotE very difficult to work with because of the existing continuity, so I ended up performing a half-reboot of sorts. Many backstories and personalities were changed as a result. Unfortunately, either because I forgot to correct all the inconsistencies, or because people remembered the old versions, elements of the old continuity stick in people's memories. Here is a comparison:
I hope everyone understands why I made these changes. I wanted to develop my characters myself rather than rely on canon. I want LotE to be accessible to all, not just the fans with the same Pokemon experiences as me. That's also why I try to tone back the anti-Sinnoh stuff a bit.
Not all aspects of a canon are important to all its fan works. This aspect of Pokemon features in WoV, which had Trainers battling against Giratina's forces, but I'm not sure it's that prominent in LotE... I would love to be proved wrong on this, though.
Eeeh. Insyte has not felt like that kind of character to me for years. Because he comes into his prime before the other characters, he actually serves as a model hero of sorts. In some respects, I think of Flareon!Insyte as a more ideal hero than Sparktail. Heck, Insyte had a third of Volume III all to himself. Additional notes.
So, for those of you who keep track of me mostly through this blog, this update may seem a little out of the blue. "Testament? What's Testament?" I had (still have?) a tiny mention of it on one page and nothing else.
Testament is my pet project, my exploration into high fantasy. And I haven't really talked about it here much because, well, this is very prominently a fanfiction site. So I became uncomfortable whenever I started to talk about Testament here. Additionally, I want to make sure I get all the "rewrites" done before I release it into the wild. I can't afford to get stuck in rewrite hell with Testament the way I did with LotE. Over the last few years, I avoided people with similar interests to mine, because people with common interests and different mindsets annoyed me more than people with different interests and common mindsets. This was an grave mistake, because as a result, I don't have enough experience with the expectations of fantasy readers: which tropes are considered cliched, which tropes are fundamental, which tropes are considered offensive, etc. Is it okay if 'a' knight rescues 'a' princess? Do all princes have to be jerks? Is it okay to portray the human race as good? Does everything from nature have to be holy? Well, ignore what I said about LotE Bonus #2 being about Torch and Rose. That one's been moved up to #3. Instead, we have Aspirations, which explores Slick's origins as a Pokemon trainer.
This isn't quite what I had in mind for LotE Bonus. I wanted the Bonus stories to connect directly to LotE, with anything else being its own story (CaR, aRiE, ShadPath, etc). But hey, there's always rewrites, right? teehee "Aspirations" is more or less a retool of a much older story, titled "First Beginnings." The changes are so drastic that it almost doesn't feel like the same story. Now I'm kinda tired of holding onto every single story that I wrote six years ago, so instead, I'll just talk about the changes here. You may wish to read Aspirations before clicking "Read More", as the rest of this post contains spoilers :P As you may or may not know, LotE Bonus #2 focuses on two guest characters: Torch and Rose, heroes of Pokemon to the Rescue, SkyWarrior's legendary roleplay. I've been working on it for a while and I think I can say it will be completed soon. I wish I could produce LotE Bonus a little faster as I can't start Crowning Gates until the Bonus stories are done.
Project Fear Captives is also still a thing, even if it's been years since I touched it and don't keep it on this site anymore. I fixed up Chapter I.3, which still had references to the old LotE continuity. Some of the brooding was shifted over to Torch since it's supposed to be his perspective, and also lets Sparktail retain development from the end of LotE. You can find it here This is a semi-large change to the plot, so I may as well make a note of it here. Due to the magic of rewrites. Shanala's former commanding officer is now Marrow, and Ifrit has been eliminated from continuity altogether. Well, more accurately, Ifrit's characterization has been folded into Marrow's. There are several reasons. While trying to work out an outline for Marrow's bonus story, I simply couldn't consolidate his role in the jailbreak with how he was originally presented during the Battle of Cinnabar. The truth is that Ifrit has no reason to exist. In order to complete Shanala's isolation, she had to leave everyone from Storage behind. So Ifrit was created to replace Firaga. And looking back, Ifrit is as cardboard of a character I've ever made. I've always wanted to develop Marrow a little more anyway. Now, instead of having two half-developed characters, I now have one fully-developed character. Ifrit had virtually no role in Operation Retrieval, only a few cameo appearances.
Marrow is not exactly the same as Ifrit, of course; his characterization is a combination of his old role with Ifrit's. Where Ifrit dissented against Heatran from the beginning, Marrow did suport Heatran initially, but later saw this as a mistake. I'm still working out the details for a Marrow bonus story, but the current idea is that he changed sides after visiting Sinnoh on Heatran's behalf. There's quite a bit to tinker around with on here. Something seems to have happened to the CSS and the formatting looks all weird. Also, I had an option implemented so that I could switch the banner around more easily, but that seems to have broken, leaving me with no banner at all.
Once the style is repapired, I need to figure out which stories I'm actually going to put on this site. Though Weebly is far superior to Webs, Webs did have the ability to make a table of contents, and that was quite nice. I have the feeling that, if I ever bring LotE back here, it'll have to be one page per chapter. :1 I've been considering not keeping my stories on here anymore, actually. Just a fuckload of links to everything. Then this site can focus on the character/timeline/multiverse pages and whatnot. Or maybe even repurposing this site for my original fiction... no, I may be lazy, but even I have limits! //shot This will be a slow process, of course, as various deadlines are coming up; finals are approaching. And then after that comes jury duty. And then comes job hunting. Oh joy. It took me all day, but I worked out how to sort out the mess that is A Retriever in Exile.
It all goes back to that summary chapter. Since aRiE was originally a short story, the second-to-last "chapter" skimmed over lots of events, so I was considering setting part of the new aRiE chapters during that chapter. A summary of the "mess": Since the second-to-last chapter of the first aRiE skimmed through Sparktail's accceptance of the human world, I was considering writing part of the new aRiE as taking place during that chapter. However, I wasn't sure if I should have aRiE posted as multiple stories. Unlike LotE, I don't consider aRiE substantial enough to merit a submission per chapter. That means posting in "parts" instead of "chapters" on Route 50 and dA. However, then I would be obligated to post aRiE as multiple stories on other sites as well. If it was part of the same story, I would either have the chapters ordered chronologically, making the "summary chapter" redundant, or the chapters would be ordered by part, i.e. not in chronological order. It would also holding onto the "summary chapter" for Route 50 and dA. Anyway, I realized the last chapter of aRiE is too crucial to Sparktail's development to just work around. So I looked at what I'd written so far of aRiE and finally realized that there was a relatively small amount of content that actually could be placed during the summary chapter. So I worked that content into the "summary chapter", and not only does it fit, but it even helps with the "show-don't-tell" issue. Slightly. Anyway, the new aRiE will take place after the old chapters. With one exception: "Domestic or Wild? Part 1" causes the aRiE submission to go over the dA size limit. But it makes a nice opening for the new aRiE anyway. So on the writing-based sites, where aRiE is grouped together, I'm placing that chapter with the summary chapter, while on the art-based sites, where the story is divided by "part", the chapter will be placed with aRiE-II. |
SparkleafSparkleaf has been writing fanfiction since 2009. He also enjoys anime, manga, and visual novels. CategoriesArchives
April 2021
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