6. The Pontue Legacy "Part Six: The Promise" (Un-Iverse #14)
Rating: Strong PG-13. Strong bloody violence and gore, language, and some scatological references.
Author's Note for The Pontue Legacy #6 "Part Six: The Promise" (Un-Iverse #14)
I've mentioned the first comic version of The Pontue Legacy sucked ass. The last issue was pretty good though. There the last page of Sarah leaving the Kingdom of Zyle after one decree, and setting aside the crown upon fulfilling her promise was perfect. And while storytelling demands dictated she ride Gerald out in this version rather than walk with Gabrielle in her arms alone, the tone and ending are exactly the same. I HATED the old Pontue Legacy. Except for that specific ending. Which was FAR too good for the boring and unlikable characters I showed the reader. There was also a similar Fates section and yes, an appearance by Bob the Wizard doing his Blood Debt shtick, but both elements have been vastly improved here.
"And The Black Guy Lives!" Henry survived the first Pontue Legacy too (and was also made King) but this is me essentially putting a hat on it. It's great. It never fails to make people laugh.
The people of Finn deciding to accept the peace deal despite all they suffered through and the rage in their hearts is an early demonstration of why The Un-Iverse is Lucky Universe, and why it doesn't follow known Chaos Theory Laws. It's because almost everyone in it, good and evil, smart and stupid, sane and crazy, is rational. There is much less of the type of conflict in other genre for that reason. But if you find the idea of the Kingdom simply accepting merging Kingdoms with the Vikings and the dog Kingdom of Ralla unbelievable, well the people in THAT Universe would find the fact that we'd find any excuse to keep the war going and have a bitter centuries-long conflict instead weird themselves. The Un-Iverse works differently because people there are rational. This goes for Augatha, it goes for Eddie Cat, it goes for Vic Puff, it even goes for Donna Demented. It's a very unusual and Lucky Universe for that reason.
Years later in hindsight, I realize something bad about my final version of The Pontue Legacy. My Linear Notes (seen elsewhere) are woefully inadequate in describing how I came up with the story, and the many different versions there used to be. I say there were several versions in those notes, but because I'm embarrassed of them, I don't go into them. That was probably a mistake. I have some interesting stories there. Here are some stories about it that are kind of interesting.
The Pontue Legacy was not originally conceived to be a Gilda And Meek related story or prequel at all. It was initially conceived of as "starring" some of the characters from Gilda And Meek, but its own separate thing. Meek was Krac, an earlier version of Stella Stickyfingers was Winifred, and Gilda had a role similar to what Winifred's wound up being. Like most early Gilda names I will not tell you what it is because I'm embarrassed of it. Even the Piranha had a BRIEF cameo (before the whole Piranhala bit was dreamed up). Augatha was not present. The Valley of the Running Noses and the Invisible Kingdom had larger roles. Pontue was not a person, but a name of a missing treasure (found in perhaps my worst bit of storytelling ever). It was initially a prose story instead of a comic, and conceived and written as a novel (which yes I actually finished for once, and yes it was actually awful). The Princess Bride was an even heavier influence then than it is now. The tagline was "A fairytale with no fairies" which was actually true, and (pointed out to me when I was 14) offensive to gay people (I had never heard that slur before). The Vikings used to be Pirates, and they were the major villains of the piece. Aside from Krac and Winifred, the only major characters present still in this version are Sarah, Zyle, Gerald the Winged Horse, and Pedro. Zyle did not initially die. Henry was not in the original version at all.
Do you know who REALLY dug that story? My dentist. She was wild about it. I think it sucked in hindsight myself, but I DO see what she saw in it.
The second comic book version was bad too (although less bad and also finished) and the place where I connected it to Gilda And Meek, and dreamed up both Piranhala and Sarah renaming the Kingdom of Finn to keep her promise to Zyle to remember him. Because of those two great things, that sucky story seemed a lot less bad and more rewarding when you finished it than it actually was. And those two great things also made the final issue seem great, and were the things I wound up centering the story on. The Whahuma Bears predated that story in my head, but that version was the first one I put to paper, and I was so desperate I wound up making Gerf secretly evil, and it stuck. To be honest, I am not proud of me using my most hated trope, The Surprise Betrayal there, and even putting it in the final version, when I knew better, but I constructed the mystery quite well the second time out, and I think it's okay to let that sucky trope slide just this once because it involved two characters we JUST met this issue, so as far as surprise betrayals go, its devastation is entirely measured for the reader. And as a flashback it doesn't actually ruin anything in the present. I mentioned in the earlier Linear Notes that Krac wound up a partial surprise traitor on the level of Lando Calrissian, and it was totally ineffective, and probably the real thing that gave me the disdain I had for the trope. Sarah and Zyle's sex scene was in the flashback instead of after the reunion, and while I was a teenager at the time, so it was no biggie then, but if I had written two fifteen years olds having sex when I was forty, I'd get disgusted looks. Also the scene in the current version is actually up for debate. Prudish readers could even argue no sex has even taken place, while what happened is clearly laid out in the previous version. Upon being reunited Zyle and Sarah had a cliched and wholly unneeded lover's spat. Like the Lando Partial Betrayal, it was totally unnecessary and merely done because it was a popular trope at the time, and ejected once I realized I am actually a better writer than the people who wrote the stuff I loved back then were. The Blood Debt was present in the second comic version because I planned for it to effect major stuff in Gilda And Meek later on (that I will not spoil here, but it still DOES, Big Time). I will say this about my previous shitty, sophomore comic book effort: I may not have gotten anywhere (and "Skeletons" and the Conduit may not yet have existed) but I ALWAYS had Big Fucking Plans, and almost none of the long-term shit besides Vic Puff's allegiances really changed at all. The previous version of The Un-Iverse was SO bad I quit it for nearly 20 years. And The Pontue Legacy was literally the second to last thing I wrote. But the bones of the FUTURE of the story were always strong, and I never had to change any of my Big Ideas there. All of the horrible problems with the story (and they were Legion) were surprisingly easy fixes with a little time, distance, and built talent.
My problem was that I never allowed myself to write scenes out of order, so I had no idea how to get from Point A to Point B. That's how Stephen King does it too, and I have no idea how he usually pulls it off. Sometimes King doing that makes the ensuing book a total mess (see IT and The Tommyknockers) and that happened to me with things spinning out of control there. Once I had WordPad on my computer, I could write a detailed outline and fill it with more and more details to build the eventual scripts too. And thus, The Un-Iverse was born.
And The Pontue Legacy was a large part of the master plan for that last crappy iteration, even if it was conceived of as an unconnected prose story before that. And that's the long sordid story in detail, as best as I remember it. I should have told you most of this stuff in my earlier Linear Notes. Here is the origin (warts and all).
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