1 September 2017 21:03
Final Quest #21
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nonesensedNumber 21 is here. I will read it. I will write what I think of it as I do. Suffer with me.
Alright, so, we start off from last comic's 'dramatic' reveal that the tree-elves' woods are on fire. Skywise is about to fly Redlance, Nightfall, Newstar and her former-brother-of-lifemate-now-new-mate Ohler to them. Why? Because they all love green things that grow. Literally the reason for them going. Mender offers to go with them, but his dear sister Newstar says Skywise will come pick him up if they need him (only members of the Green-Growing Things Fan Club invited on this trip, apparently).
The Palace pod lands, our elves get out, and they see a fast approaching forest fire. Also fast approaching are some Djunsland humans. They run into Skywise & co + the tree-elves, and shoot one of the tree-elves. Nightfall quickly retaliates with an arrow and the humans flee. To further emphasize the lack of danger the tree-elves are in, the shot tree-elf heals before their very eyes, Wolverine style. Huh.
Redlance gets all dreamy-eyed and thinks how the tree-elves would be home if he weren't a Wolfrider. He then hulks out and makes trees move, making a firebreak. No one asked him to do this. The Rootless Ones (aka the tree-elves) are fine with the forest burning up, and Redlance knows this. He says he's selfish and just can't leave things alone.
We flash quickly to Venka, Two-Edge, Treestump, Clearbrook, Ahdri, Strongbow and a whole lot of Go-Backs, gathered in the workplace underneath the Father Tree Holt. Two-Edge has offered to make guns for the elves, which isn't popular. He surprisingly takes them turning his offer down without argument. Treestump and Clearbrook have together made belts that can hold a lot of throwing knives, which is much more welcomed by the audience. On the side, Venka is worried about all the Go-Backs looking to go out in glorious death against the humans for no reason.
Speaking of dying for no reason, it seems Redlance has basically killed himself. He's starting to look like death warmed over and Nightfall comments (while rushing to catch him as he falls) that he's drawn too much power from the Palace pod, 'tearing his heart'. Redlance's last sending before fainting (maybe dying?) is for his body to be given to the Rootless Ones to consume. Way to go, Redlance! Sacrificing your life for a forest no one was trapped in, with no reference back to your old trauma, and also bringing up that fire does give new life to some trees (e.g. helping seeds to hatch and take life). Way. To. Go.
Back at the Palace, Savah is chilling with the spirit of her long dead lifemate Yurek. Yes, death is meaningless now, we know. They, along with Sunstream, suddenly notice that Door is approaching from underground. They don't seem too alarmed. Door is ranting to Chot on how he's about to re-establish Blue Mountain's culture in the Palace, or something. He's pretty impressed by Aurek's rock-shaping of the remains of Blue Mountain.
Speaking of Aurek, Aroree comes flying with him to Savah and Sunstream. Aurek...does not look good. He's basically naked, only wearing a see-through wrap and a weird hat. The dark shadows under his eyes and Aroree carrying him doesn't exactly signal health. But the Scrolls of Colors are so much better than the Great Egg, right??? Urgh.
A small good thing happens: Brace and female!Door show up, and Aurek actually names them! Brace is Kaitek and female!Door is Innekah :D Apparently male!Door's approach has stirred their spirits enough for the living to see them.
Aroree doesn't know how to feel about male!Door, asking if he's such a big threat. Sunstream replies to this with: "Once, I hated and feared his crazed ambitions. But now...he has no idea what he's up against or that he needn't be against us at all."
...yeah, Final Quest made me re-read Forevergreen. The pain is double now. Also, I remember Dodia, who Recognized male!Door, but I don't recall what happened after she knocked him over the head. Can't find my single issue comics, so I can't get beyond Phoenix right now. Could of course go online to check the Fire-Eye issues and so on, but this summary is getting long enough as is. Anyone with better memory than me, please poke me and let me know what I've forgotten!
However male!Door came to be traveling with the captured Chot, he's now starting some rock-magic on the ceiling aka the Palace's floor. He wants to encapsulate the Palace in rock, making its sheltering illusion a true thing. The Go-Backs outside notice nothing, while the people inside the Palace send to male!Door, welcoming him, as well as battle his shaping.
Sunstream sends an alert to Ember, who tells the rest of the Wolfriders. Ember is torn between the Palace and the Rootless One's troubles (aren't their troubles fixed? eh, moving on), which Cutter agrees is a problem. Yun argues that they can't go back to the old ways of too much distance, meaning that they need to keep the Palace pods around even after the Palace leaves.
Back with the Rootless Ones, one of the wounded humans stumbles upon Nightfall, Redlance & co. Nightfall tells him to go back to the other Djunslanders and tell them of her lifemate's awesome power and that they need to go back to their homeland stat! Then she asks the unconscious Redlance if he wants to be healed.
Male!Door continues his magic thing, yelling about how all elves in the future must worship him or not be allowed in or out of the Palace. One elf. Against all the elves and spirits inside the Palace. Yeah. Tension. Wooh.
Seriously, the Palace is such a plot breaker! Does anyone at this point actually think Door has a chance to succeed? Anyone?
Of course, male!Door is defeated by emotional sendings from spirits and elves in the Palace. Because it's the frikkin' Palace and we've got like a hundred elves versus one. He gets sendings from Timmain, the Glider spirits, Aurek, Aroree, Savah, Sunstream, and, surprisingly, Dodia and their son (huh, they're apparently in the Palace, go figure). Oh, and turns out male!Door's name is Ekolin. The more you know~!
Encountering his son, the talented crystal-shaper Harotim, is clearly the last straw for Door/Ekolin's sanity.
But before going into that further, back to Redlance! He chooses flesh and goes back. He and Nightfall talk about how all living things 'need' death to strike like skyfire sometimes, to keep things...I don't know, growing? Skywise mentions that he misses touching and holding Ruffel, even if he's spirit-danced with her in the Palace. Again, death means nothing anymore.
But! we do get a lovely creepy scene with Door/Ekolin in Aroree's arms, sending to the Glider spirits: **Take me to you! Take me back to how we were before we chose chance...and change! Before...we...chose - form!** To underline his words, he shapechanges into what we thought the High Ones originally looked like, aka Coneheaded Space Aliens, before vanishing, much like Moonshade has done earlier (but I doubt Door/Ekolin has a body to return to).
Seriously, the scene is super good and super creepy, with Aroree and Aurek looking on in (what I interpret as) mute horror and grief. It all reminds me of something out of the horror manga Uzumaki. It would be excellent if 1) death actually meant something, and 2) the comic was trying to show that the High Ones might not be infallible and the Palace might not be all good, plus 3) we had more than three issues left of this series, so they could go in depth into what Door/Ekolin meant with "before we chose form".
Sadly, I don't think we'll get any sort of continuation of that. Instead we get Chot, fleeing to the surface with the Little Palace. Windkin snatches him up and flies him all the way to the Father Tree Holt where Yun punches him in the face (I can't even remember why anymore). Skywise gives the Little Palace to Yun, to show her how to make a pod out of it.
Skywise starts teaching Yun and moons pass off screen. We're literally months into the future and it's winter. The war with the humans? Is that still going on? Eh, who knows. What we get is a scene with Skywise and Cutter. It's very emotional, calling back to them stargazing in the Original Quest, with the human hunter and the wolf constellations mentioned. Cutter urges Skywise to make a choice and go to the stars. Skywise breaks down crying, asking Cutter if it means nothing to him that they'll be separated, and they hug.
Again, this would all be more gripping if there had been a clear plot or consistent character build-up. Focus would also be nice. It's just...oh dear. Well, at least we got some new Glider names. That's nice.
Alright, so, we start off from last comic's 'dramatic' reveal that the tree-elves' woods are on fire. Skywise is about to fly Redlance, Nightfall, Newstar and her former-brother-of-lifemate-now-new-mate Ohler to them. Why? Because they all love green things that grow. Literally the reason for them going. Mender offers to go with them, but his dear sister Newstar says Skywise will come pick him up if they need him (only members of the Green-Growing Things Fan Club invited on this trip, apparently).
The Palace pod lands, our elves get out, and they see a fast approaching forest fire. Also fast approaching are some Djunsland humans. They run into Skywise & co + the tree-elves, and shoot one of the tree-elves. Nightfall quickly retaliates with an arrow and the humans flee. To further emphasize the lack of danger the tree-elves are in, the shot tree-elf heals before their very eyes, Wolverine style. Huh.
Redlance gets all dreamy-eyed and thinks how the tree-elves would be home if he weren't a Wolfrider. He then hulks out and makes trees move, making a firebreak. No one asked him to do this. The Rootless Ones (aka the tree-elves) are fine with the forest burning up, and Redlance knows this. He says he's selfish and just can't leave things alone.
We flash quickly to Venka, Two-Edge, Treestump, Clearbrook, Ahdri, Strongbow and a whole lot of Go-Backs, gathered in the workplace underneath the Father Tree Holt. Two-Edge has offered to make guns for the elves, which isn't popular. He surprisingly takes them turning his offer down without argument. Treestump and Clearbrook have together made belts that can hold a lot of throwing knives, which is much more welcomed by the audience. On the side, Venka is worried about all the Go-Backs looking to go out in glorious death against the humans for no reason.
Speaking of dying for no reason, it seems Redlance has basically killed himself. He's starting to look like death warmed over and Nightfall comments (while rushing to catch him as he falls) that he's drawn too much power from the Palace pod, 'tearing his heart'. Redlance's last sending before fainting (maybe dying?) is for his body to be given to the Rootless Ones to consume. Way to go, Redlance! Sacrificing your life for a forest no one was trapped in, with no reference back to your old trauma, and also bringing up that fire does give new life to some trees (e.g. helping seeds to hatch and take life). Way. To. Go.
Back at the Palace, Savah is chilling with the spirit of her long dead lifemate Yurek. Yes, death is meaningless now, we know. They, along with Sunstream, suddenly notice that Door is approaching from underground. They don't seem too alarmed. Door is ranting to Chot on how he's about to re-establish Blue Mountain's culture in the Palace, or something. He's pretty impressed by Aurek's rock-shaping of the remains of Blue Mountain.
Speaking of Aurek, Aroree comes flying with him to Savah and Sunstream. Aurek...does not look good. He's basically naked, only wearing a see-through wrap and a weird hat. The dark shadows under his eyes and Aroree carrying him doesn't exactly signal health. But the Scrolls of Colors are so much better than the Great Egg, right??? Urgh.
A small good thing happens: Brace and female!Door show up, and Aurek actually names them! Brace is Kaitek and female!Door is Innekah :D Apparently male!Door's approach has stirred their spirits enough for the living to see them.
Aroree doesn't know how to feel about male!Door, asking if he's such a big threat. Sunstream replies to this with: "Once, I hated and feared his crazed ambitions. But now...he has no idea what he's up against or that he needn't be against us at all."
...yeah, Final Quest made me re-read Forevergreen. The pain is double now. Also, I remember Dodia, who Recognized male!Door, but I don't recall what happened after she knocked him over the head. Can't find my single issue comics, so I can't get beyond Phoenix right now. Could of course go online to check the Fire-Eye issues and so on, but this summary is getting long enough as is. Anyone with better memory than me, please poke me and let me know what I've forgotten!
However male!Door came to be traveling with the captured Chot, he's now starting some rock-magic on the ceiling aka the Palace's floor. He wants to encapsulate the Palace in rock, making its sheltering illusion a true thing. The Go-Backs outside notice nothing, while the people inside the Palace send to male!Door, welcoming him, as well as battle his shaping.
Sunstream sends an alert to Ember, who tells the rest of the Wolfriders. Ember is torn between the Palace and the Rootless One's troubles (aren't their troubles fixed? eh, moving on), which Cutter agrees is a problem. Yun argues that they can't go back to the old ways of too much distance, meaning that they need to keep the Palace pods around even after the Palace leaves.
Back with the Rootless Ones, one of the wounded humans stumbles upon Nightfall, Redlance & co. Nightfall tells him to go back to the other Djunslanders and tell them of her lifemate's awesome power and that they need to go back to their homeland stat! Then she asks the unconscious Redlance if he wants to be healed.
Male!Door continues his magic thing, yelling about how all elves in the future must worship him or not be allowed in or out of the Palace. One elf. Against all the elves and spirits inside the Palace. Yeah. Tension. Wooh.
Seriously, the Palace is such a plot breaker! Does anyone at this point actually think Door has a chance to succeed? Anyone?
Of course, male!Door is defeated by emotional sendings from spirits and elves in the Palace. Because it's the frikkin' Palace and we've got like a hundred elves versus one. He gets sendings from Timmain, the Glider spirits, Aurek, Aroree, Savah, Sunstream, and, surprisingly, Dodia and their son (huh, they're apparently in the Palace, go figure). Oh, and turns out male!Door's name is Ekolin. The more you know~!
Encountering his son, the talented crystal-shaper Harotim, is clearly the last straw for Door/Ekolin's sanity.
But before going into that further, back to Redlance! He chooses flesh and goes back. He and Nightfall talk about how all living things 'need' death to strike like skyfire sometimes, to keep things...I don't know, growing? Skywise mentions that he misses touching and holding Ruffel, even if he's spirit-danced with her in the Palace. Again, death means nothing anymore.
But! we do get a lovely creepy scene with Door/Ekolin in Aroree's arms, sending to the Glider spirits: **Take me to you! Take me back to how we were before we chose chance...and change! Before...we...chose - form!** To underline his words, he shapechanges into what we thought the High Ones originally looked like, aka Coneheaded Space Aliens, before vanishing, much like Moonshade has done earlier (but I doubt Door/Ekolin has a body to return to).
Seriously, the scene is super good and super creepy, with Aroree and Aurek looking on in (what I interpret as) mute horror and grief. It all reminds me of something out of the horror manga Uzumaki. It would be excellent if 1) death actually meant something, and 2) the comic was trying to show that the High Ones might not be infallible and the Palace might not be all good, plus 3) we had more than three issues left of this series, so they could go in depth into what Door/Ekolin meant with "before we chose form".
Sadly, I don't think we'll get any sort of continuation of that. Instead we get Chot, fleeing to the surface with the Little Palace. Windkin snatches him up and flies him all the way to the Father Tree Holt where Yun punches him in the face (I can't even remember why anymore). Skywise gives the Little Palace to Yun, to show her how to make a pod out of it.
Skywise starts teaching Yun and moons pass off screen. We're literally months into the future and it's winter. The war with the humans? Is that still going on? Eh, who knows. What we get is a scene with Skywise and Cutter. It's very emotional, calling back to them stargazing in the Original Quest, with the human hunter and the wolf constellations mentioned. Cutter urges Skywise to make a choice and go to the stars. Skywise breaks down crying, asking Cutter if it means nothing to him that they'll be separated, and they hug.
Again, this would all be more gripping if there had been a clear plot or consistent character build-up. Focus would also be nice. It's just...oh dear. Well, at least we got some new Glider names. That's nice.
Tags:
no subject
no subject
The worst part, I feel, is that there are so many hints at things that are interesting and emotional! Like, Door dissolving into thin air while shapeshifting was super creepy in the best of ways. His hints at the High Ones not having been creatures of flesh and blood to begin with was also very intriguing. But since death means nothing anymore in this series and since there's only 3 issues left, the horror and intrigue gets pushed to the side. And Skywise + Cutter's tearful talk at the end would've had much more impact if there'd been any sort of focus in this series.
It's really like they've skimmed their old stories, half-remember what they were about and what had been planned for the future, then tried to cram it all into an all too short story. It's like...I can't even summaries what Final Quest is about anymore, other than "some elves might leave in the Palace and some might stay". There are just to many dropped and rushed plot lines and villains.
Ugh. It's a good thing we still have fandom! And one can always re-read the old comics.
"Before we chose form"
Like I said, it's been a while, but it's definitely been brought up before -- that line, at least, did not come out of the blue.
Incidentally, I've now finished your reviews of this set, and... yeah, you brought out a lot of detail that I'd been annoyed by, and a lot that I hadn't even thought to be annoyed by. (Also some things that make more sense to me than they did to you, but that's to be expected -- no two readers will approach the material in the same way.) Any chance you'll be girding up your loins for a delve into the follow-up "real" finale, wherein Skywise's grief leads to amnesia and we learn that the quest for other groups of elves isn't restricted to a single planet?
P.S. I share your general opinion that a LOT of this tale feels very fanficcy. Not the good kind (I love fanfics and will defend them to the ends of the earth), but like... like the last chapter of the Harry Potter series, or the times Marvel went Super Over-the-Top, or where young teens get around to create a melting pot of all the Cool Ideas they've got that don't actually mesh with the thing they're writing but hey, I'm not gonna mock whatever crackfic they care to craft.
It's just that the canon finale of a forty-year-old epic comic should be a LITTLE more cohesive than the random wandering whims of a group of teenagers.
Re: "Before we chose form"
I do remember a pre-Final Quest explanation of the High Ones having evolved to no longer need physical bodies, though I also recall there being some part of the comic (maybe a Newblood one so this might not be Canon canon) where Timmain & her group left their homeworld due to overpopulation and stagnation due to immortality. Will have to re-read to figure out what's what. I really liked that Door ended up dissolving into nothing, the set-up for that being possible was definitely there! I was mostly irked by how he was framed as some sort of scary villain when he didn't stand the smallest of chances to do anyone any harm inside the Palace. Edited to add: What I meant with the "if we had more time to explain what choosing to change entails"-comment is that it would have been more interesting to have Door's change into spirit form actually be part of a plot or revelation. As things ended up in the comic, he's just gone and the plot (as much as there is one) soldiers on, leaving it more a "Huh, that sure was weird" moment than anything else.
My biggest gripe with Final Quest is how rushed it all feels and how much it ignores previously established character dynamics and events. It's like I'm reading a finale written by someone who only half-remembers the previous comics and who's on a crazy tight deadline with far too few resources. There are some really interesting things in here that could have worked (for example: Mender/Dart, even though I'm a hopeless Kimo/Dart shipper; even Moonshade wanting to become a High One!) if they'd been allowed any sort of set-up or foreshadowing. As things turned out, many major and minor events just sort of happened because the plot demanded it.
Would also have liked the High Ones to be more alien and for death to have more meaning, but I think that's more a personal preference than a true "critique".
I too adore (and write) fanfiction! <3 My comment about this series being a weird-AU-fanfic-ending wasn't meant to neg on fanfic, I just wanted to underline how much this didn't feel like it was written by the same people as the original story :) And in a way I suppose it wasn't. The Pinis are older now, I'm sure a lot about them as people has changed since they began writing Elfquest. Still, as you said, this is the big finish for a 40+ years running comic series that people pay money to read; having it make about as much sense as fics I wrote when I was 15 is rather disheartening.
Regarding the continuation of Elfquest post-Final Quest, I have read two issues of it, and it made me feel like such a sourpuss I had to stop XD I might get back to it one day, I just had to take a long break and read other things.
Also, rereading this entry I've written, I just realized how typo-filled and nonsensical some of the sentences are XD Gonna go back and edit those for my own peace of mind.
Re: "Before we chose form"
This was my reaction to a lot of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, actually, especially in the ways they dealt with Loki. Each new installment felt like the writer hadn't actually watched the previous films (certainly hadn't studied them enough to understand them), and the evolving mess kept doing good characters dirty (hence why a section of fans wound up being salty enough toward canon to coin tags like "Team Iron Man" or "Not Steve Rogers Friendly" or "Odin's A+ Parenting" or "Asgardian Domestic Abuse").
Heck, there's one film (Thor: Ragnarok) where the director not only publicly admitted to not understanding any of the work he was building from, but gloried in the fact that he was tearing down the thing he hadn't bothered to understand.
So I'm quite familiar with that feeling of "hang on, this contradicts a ton of canon and why are they rushing it and what happened to the characters I love?" But I can't grasp how this happened to a franchise crafted by a small personal team headed by the original creators for whom this is their love child.
I'd have to invest time in going back through the tale (or your commentary, or both) to pick up on the things that stood out to me, and sadly I don't have the time. But if that ever changes, I too would relish a chance to discuss things at greater length.
One of my biggest gripes about Final Quest is one I feel a little awkward having, since I suspect that Wendy had it in mind since the start of the comic, and I don't ever want to tell a creator that the concept at the core of their creation is "wrong" or "doesn't fit" or "would be better this other way." Heck, I got told that during college by my writing professor (basically "your vampire story would be better if you got rid of the vampires and made it about child abuse, no good author writes vampire stories"), and it's stuck with me as one of the most "what the hell, man" comments I've ever received. (Amusingly, now that I have a fandom of over 300 readers, the Vampire AU fanfic I've written is actually quite popular and received some of my most treasured comments.)
Anyway, my gripe is the nature of Cutter. See, I could have accepted a tale with that at the center, and it could've been neat, but using that concept for this story in particular feels... like I was reading one story and got handed another, or like the pages got mixed up. Like major portions of the existing story get rendered meaningless or weird simply by being built around that central premise.
And I've encountered a similar effect before, when a character who had seemed awesome gets revealed to be Super Special in some manner that makes them distinctly less awesome and leaves me feeling like I got invested in a character not worth that much investment. There's a character in the webcomic Girl Genius, for example, who gets introduced as a Badass Normal -- a regular human character whose over-the-top stoic heroics made him one of my favorite characters within a single page. And I thought he was going to be a throwaway (a neat one, but still), but then he joined the main cast, which was awesome.
But then... he got revealed to be secretly Jaegerkin, and the moment that happened I felt my stomach sink, 'cuz all of his heroics might've been awesomesauce for a baseline human but were just par for the course for anyone with the power of the Jaegerkin. I mean I love the Jaegerkin to pieces, but there's just such a difference in their respective power levels that it undermined the very qualities that had made me adore the character as originally presented.
Similarly, with Cutter, we have a youngster unexpectedly put in charge of a group after his dad dies, and he's anxious about doing it right but he does his best with what he's given. He's the one who thinks outside the box -- the one willing to take steps no previous elf in his tribe would have thought of, and it's what saves their lives. He's the one who starts the quest to find and unite all the elves, a goal no other elf in his tribe or Savah's would have thought of if he hadn't come up with it; it sounds ludicrous, but he somehow pulls it off. He locates, negotiates with, and finds ways to merge tribe after tribe after tribe.
He has to adapt his thinking to account for there being different elves to begin with, to some elves being as old as high ones, to humans having a purpose and being people just like the elves, to trolls being equals, to various other types of elves with various other ways of thinking. He has to adjust to war, to the concept of the Palace and everything it means, to the concept of coming here from another world, to the various ways that magic has shaped their reality.
He has to adapt to the changing world across not just generations but across millennia, and the way that humans have evolved during that time, even to the point of inventing giant cities and firearms. There are countless details that he, effectively the most important elf on the entire planet, the central figure shaking up all the lives around him, has to figure out how to deal with, and he does, even as it strips away pieces of what he thought he was and what he thought his limits were. He even has to come to terms with the disconnect between his earth-bound nature and his best friend's star-bound nature, and what that means for their future when they cannot be together anymore, but he weathers even that storm.
The Cutter who did all these things is an incredible character who's been put through so much, and yet he proved that it is possible for an elf -- even a wolf-blooded elf, who has some limitations that the purebloods don't have, but also has some benefits for having the wolf blood -- to think outside the box and adapt to changes that no one ever suspected they would need to. And the entire tribe manages to follow his lead, clinging to their loyalty to the lad who emerged from within their tribe yet wound up being so much more than they had ever dreamed.
And all that characterization, all that incredible story, tumbles to pieces when you turn him from "the one elf who managed to think outside the box" to "oh yeah, he's not actually a Wolfrider, he's an Avatar of the Goddess who just happened to have amnesia for the whole thing; small wonder he thinks differently from every other elf." Which is effectively what happened.
And I mean, I've read tales of various Avatars stepping down into humanity for a bit -- say, Death taking her day once a century in Sandman to live as a human and understand how humans feel -- and they can be compelling reading. But they're not set in a story based around how one particular human has somehow managed to rise above his nature to do things no human ever dared to do before.
Heck, this is reminding me of Watership Down, now. The way that the rabbits don't grasp basic concepts like "things can float on water and if you get on top of them you can float too." Blackberry figures it out, and Hazel (the leader) manages to grasp it just enough to use it to help his little tribe escape from a dog, and it becomes a huge plot point later on that they're the only rabbits who can think this way. But imagine if Blackberry only came up with the idea because he was literally an angel? It undermines the entire premise.
And what it means for ElfQuest is that hey, Cutter only did these things and thought this way because he was literally a shard of the divine (or as close as the elves get), and that means that no other elf could possibly do what he did, because their very nature is not as Super Special Awesome as Cutter's, and so they should just stick to their petty little lives and not try to rise above their nature (conceptually).
(Which also clashes with the attempt to claim that being a High One changed by the Palace is the ultimate evolution form that all elves could strive for (a claim made by Skywise, not the authors... I think), but like you said, that concept feels a bit like stripping away character development and individuality and inducting them all into a cult.)
But it also retroactively turns Cutter's key moments into effectively Deus Ex Machina. Cutter's thinking outside the box saved the tribe? Y'know, if Cutter had been just a normal elf then they all would have perished and there wouldn't have been a story, too bad.
Anyway. Yeah. I have strong feelings about elevating (reducing) Cutter to an Avatar instead of letting him continue to be "the little elf who could."
Re: "Before we chose form"
Honestly, the whole situation with Cutter being a part of Timmain is just bananas!! To the point where I'm including it as the main core of the "there was no frikkin' build-up to this plot"-issue I have with Final Quest. I hear you when it comes to not clanking down on what a person has chosen to tell a story about (and wow, that's one shitty teacher you had, I'm glad you kept writing your vampires!), but I'd argue what frustrates me, and possibly you, with the Timmain!Cutter situation is the execution of the plot rather than its existence in itself.
Maybe the Pinis planned for Cutter to be a shard of Timmain's soul from the very beginning, but if that is the case, they really failed to foreshadow it in any clear way. I'm not saying they did anything wrong by aiming for that ending - people can write whatever they like and me not vibing with a particular subject or trope doesn't make it "bad writing" - I am, however, arguing that the Pinis didn't gives us any clues or build-up to this particular ending. The Elfquest worldbuilding has gotten shakier and shakier for each plot line taking place post-Original Quest.
The one thing that's truly "unique" about Cutter from the very start is his soul brother bond with Skywise. And I'm deeply frustrated on many levels that this cool, deep bond between two characters turns out to be "Whoooops, he was just a bad copy of your True Fated Female Mate, Skywise, time to trade up~!"-situation :( Cutter being able to think outside the box more than his ancestors and tribe mates I more read as his personality, not as a sign of Super Special Magic Influences. I liked that he was "ordinary special", to contrast with all the magic users and ancient people he runs into throughout the series! I too was very disappointed by the revelation that he's not an actual whole person, just a sliver of someone else who's super ancient and powerful and whatnot. It rivals the It Was All A Dream ending trope for most frustrating way to end a long series.
That said, my main, number 1 issue with the Cutter-is-Timmain plot is that it came so out of left field!
The Pinis have had 40 years to build to this ending, yet when we got here, no one saw it coming. And not in the good plot twisty surprising way, because plot twists should enable the reader to go back and find the hidden clues in the story now that they have the answers. Here, there are no true clues! There are things, like his soul bond with Skywise, that can be argued to be foreshadowing, but no clues that actually hint at a solution or ending. This is a fantasy world with made-up rules - unless the authors tell us what magic can do and how the fantasy creatures work, we have no way of knowing. So sure, we have the "unique soul brother bond" no elf can explain and Timmain choosing to hang out as Cutter's 'wolf bond' for a long time, but exactly how was I as a reader supposed to extrapolate "Ah, that must mean Cutter is unknowingly a part of Timmain's soul!" from that???
Was soul-splitting ever established as possible in canon before Final Quest? Not as far as I remember. Introducing this new, world-changing magic at the very end of your series, without any pre-establishing of it being possible, is frustrating and confusing to the reader, no matter if the magic itself is "bad" or not. There are so many questions now! Is Cutter even a person? What happened to the soul of the baby Timmain's shard went in to, the "original" Cutter? Did she EAT HIS SOUL???? When do elves get their souls? In utero? Etc etc. All these questions distract from the story, they don't support it.
It is, like you said, a complete Deus Ex Machina, but in a world without gods or machines (so to speak).
If the Pinis truly wanted the Timmain!Cutter ending to work for the audience, they needed to hint at this waaaaay earlier than Final Quest. Establish more how souls and soul sibling-ness works. Hint that Cutter's way of thinking might differ from the rest of the elves in more ways than just him being able to think up new solutions to trouble; show him zoning out and "remembering" things he shouldn't, or have Leetah form some sort of bond with Timmain since she's Recognized Timmain's "mortal half", or what have you! As things stand, to me it feels like the Pinis came up with this Timmain-is-Cutter-is-Timmain plot twist way later than the Original Quest and tried to shoehorn it in last minute. Either that, or they blanked on how worldbuilding and story telling works :I
I'm actually rereading Watership Down right now, what a coincidence XD Yes, having the rabbits who can think out of the box just turn out to be, like, sunbeams of Frith, would have been a story breaker! I don't think I would have enjoyed Timmain turning out to be Cutter if it had been properly built up, just as I wouldn't have enjoyed Watership Down as much if it was the adventures of angel!Hazel, buuuut if it had been established before the final reveal, I would at least not have been frustrated with it. As things stand, it's both a trope I don't enjoy ("competent person turns out to just be fueled by Super Powers") and a failure to actually foreshadow and tell a story that makes sense to the reader.
I could also go on long rants about how Timmain's personality keeps changing as the plot demands it, how the whole situation with Winnowill is giving me a headache, and how utterly baffling the Pini's current implied view of how "nature" supposedly works is, but I'll leave it at this for now or I'll be writing all night XD
And no worries about not remembering exactly where we differed in opinion on Final Quest! If you do remember something eventually I'd love to hear it, but it's definitely not a must :)