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I was re-reading some of my ElfQuest fanfics with an eye toward re-posting them (no full, proper fics, but I'd put up a few disconnected snippets on the now-defunct "Scroll of Colors" forum back in the day), which got me on one of my semi-regular reflections of ElfQuest.
I realized that I never found out if and how the new official finale to the whole series, "Final Quest" ended, so I dug that up this morning and browsed through some spoilers. A big part of me wants to sit down and give the whole thing a proper read one day, at least as a final tribute to a series that was hugely important to me as a teenager. I honestly think it's worth doing.
But.
Well, for me, the natural end of ElfQuest was Issue #20 of the original run, "Quest's End". Or at most, after "The Secret of Two-Edge".
Not that I didn't still love many of the stories that followed! Ember and Dewshine's arcs, especially. Just that, for me, "Kings of the Broken Wheel" shifted something fundamental to the core of the series and it never came back. That final scene in "Quest's End", with Skywise leaving the dusty, hollowed hulk of the Palace and what remained of its uncovered mysteries to stay beside Cutter and the rest of the Wolfriders... that was it. That was the essence of the story: that the past mattered, but not so much as living in the present.
I mean, to be fair, Rayek's obsession with fixing the past did progressively fuck things over, starting with the Go-Backs and continuing on down the line until everyone's heart was ripped out and bleeding on the ground, including his.
But then there was Cutter and his 500 years of anguish and his entire tribe joining him in refusing to move on, to the point that they stopped having children (like the Gliders, hint hint hint, and somehow UNLIKE the Sun Villagers) and stopped being conscious all together, and yet eventually, it all paid off for them in the end.
It felt... dishonest, I guess? Like if they were really going to be true to that spirit of experiencing and growing in the present, pain and all, then Cutter should've been allowed to find happiness even after losing his soulmates. Those years should've mattered beyond being a tragic memory to haunt his sleep. I get why they didn't take the story that direction, since Leetah was his one-true-forever-love and him moving on would undermined that, but if that's the message you're gonna prioritize, maybe don't do a one-sided 500 year separation in the first place. That's kind of an ass move.
( Cut for additional nitpicking and slight Final Quest spoilers )
I find it interesting that "Final Quest" specifically references fixing the 'broken wheel' they've all been riding for so long and that it ends with, essentially, the natural consequence of time reasserting itself. It makes me wonder how much of FQ's plot was originally intended to be published after KotBW was finished. I'll have to read the whole thing through to decide.
I realized that I never found out if and how the new official finale to the whole series, "Final Quest" ended, so I dug that up this morning and browsed through some spoilers. A big part of me wants to sit down and give the whole thing a proper read one day, at least as a final tribute to a series that was hugely important to me as a teenager. I honestly think it's worth doing.
But.
Well, for me, the natural end of ElfQuest was Issue #20 of the original run, "Quest's End". Or at most, after "The Secret of Two-Edge".
Not that I didn't still love many of the stories that followed! Ember and Dewshine's arcs, especially. Just that, for me, "Kings of the Broken Wheel" shifted something fundamental to the core of the series and it never came back. That final scene in "Quest's End", with Skywise leaving the dusty, hollowed hulk of the Palace and what remained of its uncovered mysteries to stay beside Cutter and the rest of the Wolfriders... that was it. That was the essence of the story: that the past mattered, but not so much as living in the present.
I mean, to be fair, Rayek's obsession with fixing the past did progressively fuck things over, starting with the Go-Backs and continuing on down the line until everyone's heart was ripped out and bleeding on the ground, including his.
But then there was Cutter and his 500 years of anguish and his entire tribe joining him in refusing to move on, to the point that they stopped having children (like the Gliders, hint hint hint, and somehow UNLIKE the Sun Villagers) and stopped being conscious all together, and yet eventually, it all paid off for them in the end.
It felt... dishonest, I guess? Like if they were really going to be true to that spirit of experiencing and growing in the present, pain and all, then Cutter should've been allowed to find happiness even after losing his soulmates. Those years should've mattered beyond being a tragic memory to haunt his sleep. I get why they didn't take the story that direction, since Leetah was his one-true-forever-love and him moving on would undermined that, but if that's the message you're gonna prioritize, maybe don't do a one-sided 500 year separation in the first place. That's kind of an ass move.
( Cut for additional nitpicking and slight Final Quest spoilers )
I find it interesting that "Final Quest" specifically references fixing the 'broken wheel' they've all been riding for so long and that it ends with, essentially, the natural consequence of time reasserting itself. It makes me wonder how much of FQ's plot was originally intended to be published after KotBW was finished. I'll have to read the whole thing through to decide.
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