Reading Elfquest: The Final Quest

[type_wild]

For today's lesson in how weirdly sensitive I am to how stories do romance: I'd have forgiven it all the suck and weird storytelling choices if Kimo and Mender had switched places, and I'm perfectly serious about it.

But the general lack of quality has put me in the previously unfamiliar dilemma of pirating things readily available in languages I understand. Had this comic been anything else than Elfquest, I'd have dropped it long since. But it is Elfquest and my appreciation of the Pinis' previous work means that I want to do my share to support them. And so I'll probably buy the last Final Quest collection whenever it comes out, while doing something I wouldn't have dreamed of doing three years ago: Looking up the single issues online to cringe.

I just really want to pretend that Elfquest ended with Wild Hunt.

The thing is, the thing is, that I have an immense respect and admiration for Wendy Pini. I mean, just look at the Original Quest in its contemporary society, to get an idea of how forward ahead of its time it is regarding social equality. Look at how beautiful that comic is. Look at how well it tells its story. And I like what came after; Kings of the Broken Wheel, Shards and Wild Hunt - fuck it, I even like that Kahvi special everyone hates.

Jesus, just look at the Rogue's Curse oneshot and Dreamtime and tell me that's not brilliant.

And then Final Quest comes around and is such a car crash on almost all accounts. I mean, The Searcher and the Sword was definitely mawkish and heavy-handed, and The One With The Wavedancer was just a big yawn, but they're oneshots that amounts ot parenthesis in the larger storyline. Except The One With The Wavedancers shouldn't be, and that's symptomatic of the problems that haunt Final Quest: Huge things happen, and somehow they're all devoid of all the emotion they should've conveyed. They both try to fit so much into their limited scopes that nothing gets enough time to settle with the reader. I mean, at some point during cathing up the story was switching between two major storylines (Cutter and the Heartmakers / the Rayek/Winnowill/Ekuar/Venka/Two-Edge clusterfuck), with at least one major but unrelated subplot (Moonshade and Strongbow) and occasional flashsides to whatever the hell is going on in the Palace/Wolfrider Holt I/Wolfrider Holt II/with the Wavedancer/Shuna & co/the Djunnsmen. The diverting storylines works with the Shards/Wild Hunt/Forevergreen storylines, which are all separate stories happening simultaneously. In Final Quest, the shocking develpments in one storyline ends up beating the previous one to death. Partner that with the fact that quite a few of the plot relevations are explained by reasoning in-universe that I, the reader, refuse to buy. Sprinkle with the fact that neither Wendy Pini nor Sonny Strait (voice of Maes Hughes, colours of Final Quest) have had an easy time going from traditional to digital media. It's a mess, and it's a mess that's honestly spoiling the long and well-loved classic that came before it.

But first: Let's name some of the stuff that truly has made me happy about Final Quest

- Freetouch
- Venka
- Venka laying down the law to Rayek and Two-Edge both
- Moonshade's life choices
- Shenshen's life choices
- Winnowill's innocence
- That entire sequence where Teir discovers his ancestry
- Teir's neediness because I find it such a hilarious development from how he was initially introduced
- Cutter and Skywise's little tussle in the troll caverns
- Cutter and Skywise's farewell
- Windkin being around
- The parallells being drawn between Ember and Bearclaw
- The repeated showing of Dewshine and Tyleet being more touchy-feely with each other than either one is with Scouter. Which is not to say that I don't love both of their relationships with Scouter, but it DOES go in as the same-sex relationships being more explicitly visible.



Disapppointments in Final Quest:

- Sunstream is booooooooring.
- Brill
- The Go-backs are there but also boooooring
- The Wavedancers are booooooring
- Why are we even talking about the Sun Villagers still when the Sun Village was demolished gods how many years ago now and they're all in the palace and boooooooring
- Not nearly enough Kimo
- Teir and Venka's first meeting being très anticlimatique
- Not too fond of any human characters
- All the death scenes just didn't have the impact they should've had. Ruffeel's, Krim's, Moonshade's. What's with the killing off of the ladies?
- How incredibly fucking cheesy the concept of a "heart circle" is
- Nightfall's fringe for the first half or so
- That Sust and Pool never got to be more than plot-convenient pregnancies. To be fair, this also applies to Korofay and Venka's baby and given the timeframe, Leetah's new one too.





And now the parts where words will not suffice, in order of how I remembered my WTF


Skywise's funky crystal headpiece



Mender/Dart happens



how Mender/Dart happens




The entirity of the Ember-Teir recognition episode



Timmain. Just... Timmain.



Cutter is like the weird reincarnation of Timmain



Everything that is the Skywise/Timmain relationship



Skywise recognising Timmain and doing the do while EVERYBODY ELSE IS WATCHING APPARENTLY



...OH AND ALSO HE STILL DOESN'T KNOW THAT THAT'S BECAUSE CUTTER IS LIKE A WEIRD REINCARNATION OF HER



also Ahdri and Two-Edge are an item now????



The Broken One's true form (no, I can't remember his name. Reef?)



Moonshade dies as narrative punishment for daring to chose differently than her tribemates



Cutter recognising Rayek's heroism



The explanation about how Rogue's Curse is still canon (that is: why the fuck Rayek just won't let them heal Winnowill and be done with it, GOD)