Final Quest #24

There were things I liked about FQ. I was happy to see old friends again and new elves too, I had hoped for more expansion of things hinted at before, and there was some. I know I've been on here being all complainy, but I got burned pretty hard before for expressing my opinion and this is the first place I felt safe enough to vent.
I liked the Wolfrider's new outfit changes, it seemed like Moonshade was still in love with the forest when she was making everybody's cool leafy duds. And I saw the shape of the story it seemed like Wendy wanted to tell, but somehow at the last minute chickened out of. I really liked Chitter/Freetouch and I feel after rereading that she was supposed to be the one who died and that was going to be the reason Moonshade wanted to leave.
It felt like things happened in the wrong order somehow. I don't remember which issue it was in but the whole telporting/phasing in and out of being thing I felt should have only happened after the Palace left Abode. If the world itself was draining the Coneheads power, and their offspring born on that world were sort of born with their abilities disabled, it would have made more sense for that to happen only after they left the field of Abode and everyone who went with the Palace suddenly had the dampers lifted and they could do all these magical feats now. They should have had the Palace leave a lot sooner than it did so that the Moonshade/Strongbow drama wasn't so drawn out that I stopped caring, and that it would have made more sense for why Moonshade was so desperate to see him "one last time" (where in FQ she had like seriously just freaking seen him 20 minutes ago).

You ideas about Chitter dying and the phasing trick ... Nod. Nod. ... would have made things more plausible for me, Blue Coyote! (Though I'd hate to see another cub of Strongbow die.)

Speaking of LIKE and "don't like" ... For me Cutter's death was half expected - going full circle seemed in character for Cutter. Not fond of the spider bite part. I like how the death scenes were drawn  ... the picture language reminded me of old days. Not fond of the lots of "think talk" - it had the taste of "villian reveals his evil plan right before he is defeated".
I love the little tender scene when his wolf realizes what's going on.

And I was all "What do YOU want here!?!" when Skywise showed up and more "yapyap talk" happened. Artificial drama. You had written yourself out of the picture, stargazer! For good. And WHY do you still not realize the TimTam part. Geez - you are recognized to both of them - and don't notice they are one?

After some time to think it over an idea formed how this part would have worked so much better for me:
Skywise notices that his soulbrother Tam is dying.
He starts to head for a pod ... wants to see him. Hold him. Help him. Keep him alive ...
Then his glance meets Timmain. And - finally he understands.
He stays in the Palace. He knows Cutter will fly with him as promised. One way or the other.

BlueCoyote wrote:

I know I've been on here being all complainy, but I got burned pretty hard before for expressing my opinion and this is the first place I felt safe enough to vent.

That's the reason why I've discovered once that Fathertreeholt is a good place - a very much needed place. *hugs*

i really don't have an issue with people who liked FQ...i think perhaps i'm just jealous that they can enjoy it when i can't due to the errors i've seen and cannot unsee. there are things i want to enjoy about final quest, but due to the things i've heard and seen pointed out...i guess i don't want to be willfully blind or something like that.

i don't think i explained how i feel very well, but my minds not all here so...yeah.

I understand well enough, Vaeri. *hugs* What works for one person need not necessarily work for all.

Embala, I like your conception of Skywise's response to Cutter's death.

Thanks Embala, this place has been wonderful! I might start posting some comics here soon.

Thinking on it more, it would have made more sense if the phasing thing only happened after they left Abode, and Moonshade had been in the Scroll room watching Strongbow, seen him being threatened and realizing she could teleport to him but that it would be a one-way trip that cost her all of her life-energy. And it would have made for a more dramatic sacrifice, and Timmain could have been all "reassuring" to the elves on the Palace that she would have died anyway from the trip and that being shot was nothing really. But then they wouldn't have had her body carried dramatically back to the Palace for whatever reason (like I'm not sure why her body had to be onboard the Palace if elven spirits go there anyway? And after going on about the body just being a shell that is laid aside why would putting her body in the Palace mean anything?? Wolfriders usually give their body back to the forest and don't bury their dead or mark graves or anything...so um, wut??).
Also the whole "we're leaving forever, good bye... oh wait Skywise came come back and join the howl for aesthetic reasons or something and whisk away again" was a whole lotta 'huh??' to me. If the pod can basically zap to anyplace instantaneously why is leaving a big deal? How is that even leaving? Oh right, he had to take Strongbow with him because of Irony or something... Much confusion and the Palace is very much Not Scottish!

BlueCoyote I love your version of Moonshade's death. It would be way more poetic and it would have made more sense to me.

In general people should just stop attacking each other over minor things, and yes, whether one likes Final Quest or not is a minor thing! And it's probably better for artists to not engage with fans, just post news about your latest work on social media but don't read comments and never ever respond to them

I just re-read the whole Final Quest arc and all I feel is..

disappointment.

There was a HUGE potential, though... I mean mysteries all along, the various hints in Jink and Rebels, fascinating things along the original quest that could have been finally explained in that "final quest", but... no.
Wendy chose some silly all psychological and symbolical way of "ending things", and I did NOT like it AT ALL. But it's HER story, yep.

I'm just GLAD it's OVER, with #24.

PCoquelin wrote:

There was a HUGE potential, though... I mean mysteries all along, the various hints in Jink and Rebels, fascinating things along the original quest that could have been finally explained in that "final quest", but... no.

Even within the FQ itself…the Rootless Ones thing wasn't really explained to my satisfaction. I'm sure Wendy and Richard THINK it was, but like…didn't they say elsewhere (one of the novelisations, maybe) that the Sun Folk were the only 5 survivors of the Rootless Ones? (Savah, her mother Hassbett, Yurek, Dreen, Maalvi) All the rest were killed by humans. So are they retconning that and some survivors selfshaped into fungus? Or are those the spirits of the dead Rootless Ones who decided to possess and shape fungal bodies instead of sticking to the Palace?

What's going to happen to the souls of immortal elves now that the Palace is gone? Are they just gonna hover around Yun's little shard? Hell of a thing to wake up to, seeing that thing rocket around your room at night like a poltergeist with ADD.

And Dre-ahn, FREAKING DRE-AHN, WHAT IS HIS DEAL!?!?!?

Why was the Palace able to reawaken the home planet? How was it able to create an entire global ecosystem? I thought the star in that system had died. Shouldn't the Palace have been used to reignite it or something? Wouldn't the star have gone red dwarf or whatever by now? And if the elves were able to use the Palace to resurrect the planet, why the hell couldn't the Coneheads have done that in the first place? Why did they even need to leave at all? They had an entire planet made up of he crystal substance the Palace is made from, but for some reason one measly Palace and 20, 000 years was required to resurrect the place?

None of this makes any sense. ElfQuest used to make sense. It had a plausible internal logic. There were rules. Things made sense. Now the Pinis just want us to ignore all that as they retcon everything and wave it all off as "it's magic."

Paranthropus wrote:

Why was the Palace able to reawaken the home planet? How was it able to create an entire global ecosystem? I thought the star in that system had died. Shouldn't the Palace have been used to reignite it or something? Wouldn't the star have gone red dwarf or whatever by now? And if the elves were able to use the Palace to resurrect the planet, why the hell couldn't the Coneheads have done that in the first place? Why did they even need to leave at all? They had an entire planet made up of he crystal substance the Palace is made from, but for some reason one measly Palace and 20, 000 years was required to resurrect the place?

None of this makes any sense. ElfQuest used to make sense. It had a plausible internal logic. There were rules. Things made sense. Now the Pinis just want us to ignore all that as they retcon everything and wave it all off as "it's magic."

^^^^ YEP ^^^^

Timmain told in OQ that after the group of high ones left the old home planet, it took them a bit of travel to get to tWoTM, they were so far "out there" in space, they were looking for their kin, they hadn't heard of other like them in ages. Long story short, there is a considerable distance between the two planets, even if you're in a space ship that can time travel.

Time for those on the planet would move faster than for those on the space ship.

There is no way the palace could arrive at the palace and Cutter not already being dead. Either years would have to have passed since the palace left or Skywise & co. would still be on their journey.

Wasn't Richard supposed to be a NASA geek?

Miss Gillespie wrote:

Timmain told in OQ that after the group of high ones left the old home planet, it took them a bit of travel to get to tWoTM, they were so far "out there" in space, they were looking for their kin, they hadn't heard of other like them in ages. Long story short, there is a considerable distance between the two planets, even if you're in a space ship that can time travel.

Time for those on the planet would move faster than for those on the space ship.

There is no way the palace could arrive at the palace and Cutter not already being dead. Either years would have to have passed since the palace left or Skywise & co. would still be on their journey.

Wasn't Richard supposed to be a NASA geek?

If Final Quest (and I guess KoBW) is any indication, apparently the Palace guider(s) CAN teleport the whole thing instantaneously if desired. Presumably the Firstcomers who ended up coming to WoTM just didn't, and figured since they're immortal who cares if it takes 4000 years to get somewhere, and just went at normal speed so they had time to search for others of their race in the solar systems they passed.

If it does travel instantaneously then it's doing time travel, then Skywise has no right to mourn Cutter since he could've just popped up a few minutes earlier.

However, those scenes where we see the palace warp, they kinda do seem to indicate movement and speed, not "insta-pop". Those drawing remind of speed lines, you know


Of course, Wendy is no scientist, she never really thought about -or through- how the palace moves. How fast is it? Elven souls must be very powerful and long-lasting energy sources, we should use them on our world to get off fossil fuels.

I'm no astrophysicist either, to get to the next galaxy from our planet takes about 25.000 years (viewed from this world); for the space traveller it might be much faster (time dilation). Maybe the homestar planet and Abode are in the same galaxy? But then the travel of the high ones was much less impressive, also: they somehow lost contact with their people in the same galaxy. Or maybe the high ones and their kin never had such a good relationship as Skywise and Cutter, they two can feel each other over such a large distance!
The thing is, with space travel, there is not such a thing as a same time line, time is not linear. Heck, time doesn't even run at the same pace on our planet

Well, I think I found the plot hole, that bothers me the most. Might even as bad as TimTam for me

The space travel aspect of the story makes no sense, but nothing is more problematic thanTimTam for me because it ruined 2 fundamental world building elements of EQ for me—recogniztion and soul names. W&R said every rule can be broken once, but in FQ they bent the rules of recognition twice and the concept imploded. I could have accepted the Ember/Teir recognition storyline. Depending on how it was handled, I could have even liked it (I can imagine an alternate arc where the delay feels justified, earned and meaningful.). But then you also have Skywise and Timmain’s recognition. Skywise never figures out who she is, her relationship with Cutter, who he knows on an equally soul-deep level. He’s hung up on gender? Skywise?? It’s not even a fig leaf. The TimTam story also busts soul names as a concept for a similar reason. Why isn’t cutter’s soul name Timmain (or Tim, if we go the anthologies route)? Why wouldn’t anyone who knows cutter’s soul name know or sense his relationship to timmain?

I can hand wave the space/time confusion. That stuff is a little confusing in real life. But TimTam is just shoehorned into FQ and bends the whole EQ world building out of shape. For me it’s the only genuinely bad story decision and probably couldn’t have been made to work under any circumstances.

Yesssss amen, ditto to the spacetravel plot hole annoyances!

"We can't undo what has already been woven" was something Sunstream or someone said in Discovery when another character suggested taking the Palace back in time to before Surge damaged Crest Point. Seems to me that except for the falling back 20K years in time (which wasn't intentional), the Palace is only able to move one way through the timestream.

But the thing is, time is not a stream, it can be warped and bend

Rayek said in "SaBM:"

"Up...down...back...forth...side to side.... Then and now... SHE [Timmain] says they mean no more than death does."

I take that to mean that the Palace can travel any direction in the time stream but that Sunstream's later words mean they've decided they shouldn't.

manga wrote:

Rayek said in "SaBM:"

"Up...down...back...forth...side to side.... Then and now... SHE [Timmain] says they mean no more than death does."

I take that to mean that the Palace can travel any direction in the time stream but that Sunstream's later words mean they've decided they shouldn't.

Well, paradoxes calve off alternate timelines, and there's no guarantee you'd end up in the one you started in. Shit, I basically just set the stage for an Elfquest/Primeval crossover I shouldn't be braining this early in the morning

manga wrote:

Rayek said in "SaBM:"

"Up...down...back...forth...side to side.... Then and now... SHE [Timmain] says they mean no more than death does."

I take that to mean that the Palace can travel any direction in the time stream but that Sunstream's later words mean they've decided they shouldn't.

Hah, I've lost track of the number of things they "can" do nowadays but "shouldn't"-- except when they "do".

Unfortunately, there's no Doc Brown elf to clear things up a bit Not that he didn't mess up here and there himself, but at least he wasn't swanning around naked and barely being present enough to mutter vague New Agey stuff at those seeking solid answers!

I still say it should have ended with like... Shuna or something waking up and realizing it was just a dream... and she overslept and is now late for work, at which her boss remarkably resembles the Djunn and who she wants to throatpunch on a regular. Then everything would make PERFECT sense.

That or someone coming down from a bad trip...

Or... Pull an Owl Creek Bridge. The entire quest was the dying dream of a young Cutter who never survived the Madcoil attack. He lives a full, wild life in his own mind before his spirit rejoins the ether.

The Palace is a Lie.

It is all the dream of a subject of the Russian sleep experiment...?




I'll stop now...

There was absolutely a lot of things I did like about Final Quest. Like a few things: The friction between Moonshade and Strongbow. At the later part of it I felt like it was going on too long without it ever really getting anywhere but I liked it a lot.

I liked the scene between Teir and Kahvi as he was drowning in the river. It was cruel and hard to read but it was like... the way I read that scene was: "you are never going to get the approval you want from me." And as hars as that was to read, I felt that it was carthartic.

Speaking of Teir, the Teir/Ember recognition being broken was really great. Recognition, for what good things it could bring, is also a horror show, so it finally being something you could choose to break was so good.

My biggest thing though? What made me most happy?

Chot not dying by falling rocks.

Ever since Wendy posted on facebook that she wanted both him and Jethel to die by falling rocks (which may have happened to Jethel, as he is gone and has not been mentioned since Forevergreen) I have been terrified of it happening. A sign of what was to come.

I was sorely disappointed to never see any explanation on what happened there, how Chot got captured or anything, but. I'm glad to see that he is still alive. And kicking and screaming at it, I love my pointy disaster boy.

So, is this thread dead? >.> Will its soul go to the Palace?