Final Quest

[arethinn]

So, has anyone out there been reading The Final Quest? I don't really have a specific topic I wanted to discuss, just trying to breathe a little life in here. (I've been enjoying swan_tower's re-read posts that are the most recent thing.)

(I looked at the tags but I don't know if any of them fit. This isn't really "meta", I don't think.)

Comments

[dorinda]

Let me say first that I hope others are enjoying it--I don't want to rain on anyone's parade. But I found most of the parts I've read unfortunately unappealing.

The digital art style Wendy uses now looks so strangely weightless to me a lot of the time, so non-sensory, which I find a terrible contrast with how organic her pencil work used to be. Characters sometimes just seem to float in a thin plane in front of a flat digital background. The characters' expressions, too, often seem vague and unformed--so unlike earlier work where the tiniest changes could make their faces and emotions look so nuanced, and again, organic.

There's a comm somewhere--not on Dreamwidth, I think it's a bbs-type forum someplace? I could poke around--where people have specifically pointed to spots in which pieces of the Final Quest art are literally copy/pasted from earlier FQ issues. That's all just too depressing for me.

So, I've mostly just drifted away, to save myself the grief. But I have been keeping a now-and-then ear out to hear plot developments. None of them grabbed me, except perhaps for a particular lifemating. There's a big recent plot point which apparently the Pinis find to be a super-clever twist-a-roonie that I find actively eyerolling.

...anyway, I am sorry to be negative, and of course opinions vary, but I am personally not a fan of FQ. Sounds like lots of people in the Facebook Elfquest group are really enjoying it, though, including the parts I dislike most.

[caramarie]

I'm basically with you ... I've been buying it as it comes out, except I haven't actually read what I've bought in a while. I feel like the storytelling has been reduced to a plot summary, and I haven't been able to engage with it :-/

[dorinda]

I think "the storytelling has been reduced to a plot summary" is a really accurate way to put it--that must be why, like anke comments below, it feels like there's too much Story crammed in. It just keeps telling us, telling us, telling us, summarizing/describing, instead of slowing down and showing us.

[arethinn]

Hmm. I wouldn't have thought to say this, but I think you're right. It does seem paced awfully fast, with a lot of epic things happening that each should have been expanded some. I mean, there's what, two issues to go? It's going to feel a pretty rushed ending, I fear.

[anke]

I'm following along, more or less.

There are parts I enjoy, but over all there seems to be too much story compressed into too few pages. I'd much rather have had more focus on the elves coming together than another "need to fight" plot.

What I also find noteworthy (and annoying) is that the story and the narration boxes keep pointing out how the Wolfriders are special because unlike other elves, they are mortal, but the last actually mortal Wolfrider who died was One-Eye back in the Original Quest.

I really like the Rootless Ones, particularly the character designs.

[dorinda]

Yeah, too much story/too few pages seems spot-on to me--and like genusshrike says above, like the storytelling has therefore been reduced to a plot summary, telling instead of showing, rushing to get it all in.

I guess Rainsong, Woodlock, and Wing all died after One-Eye did, when every other Wolfrider-blooded elf went into wrapstuff in order to stay alive into the future where Skywise and Leetah were taken.

But then, they were sadly never as foregrounded as someone like One-Eye, so when they aged and died, it was super in the background.

Other than that, I can't remember any other Wolfrider deaths, even from accident or animals or battle or other dangers... It really feels like, how to put it--healer inflation? Life for the Wolfriders seemed so precarious when they only had Rain the Healer, all it took was one Madcoil and they were in a world of hurt. But the instant Leetah came along, no Wolfrider died of anything at all, not counting the four listed above. Go-Backs or Sun Villagers can die in battle or protecting others or what-have-you, but the Wolfriders, no way.

Not that I want them killed, but...it does seem the sense of any realistic stakes or hard life was kind of bled away.

[dorinda]

I forgot to mention the Rootless Ones! Yeah, I think they're really interesting--and something new, which is nice.