Mar 2015 Archive, part c

While your enthusiasm for the PPC is admirable, I have some qualms about this. Actually, I pretty much have the same concerns Huinesoron did when he posted in your previous thread regarding takedowns.

First off, we have a place to post stories that are in danger of falling through the cracks. The Lost Tales does what it needs to do pretty well. Unless you can think of a major reason why said site isn't up to snuff, I'm not really seeing a reason to replace it at this moment in time.

Secondly, you are very new. As hS said:
"I'd love to think you're going to stick around for decades to come, but there's only a handful of people here who've made it through the last decade. So if one person sets themselves up as the host for all PPC works, what that's likely to mean is that we lose everything when they let the site lapse."
The PPC tends to suffer a relatively high newbie turnover rate. I'm not saying that you won't stick around -- heck, you could outlast all of us -- but as of right now I'm not comfortable letting someone so fresh host PPC stories.

My final concern ties into the previous one. I assume that, as the creator of this site, you would be the admin of it. While I would love nothing more than to have a proper PPC site and bulletin board with mods and admins and what not, I want said mods and admins to be people with experience. People whose judgement can be trusted based on how they interact with the community. I don't have that trust with you.

Again, it's nice that you're super pumped to be here. But I'd hold on on launching that site just yet.

PC

What about a registration system? To add stories you need to register, to register you need to have gotten permission. Though I do not know how you would go about doing it. That does seem like the simplest solution.

Has anyone ever seen a good songfic? I'd like to see tht.

I nominate "SHATTERED" (yes, the title is all in caps) by Prin Pardus for the Warriors Archive. Not only is it entirely comprised of OCs, all of them with depth and believability, but the author skillfully takes many viewpoints to weave them into an awesome story. She's the next Brian Jacques, the way she handles multiple POVs so well. And that's not even half of what "SHATTERED" consists of! A MUST-READ FOR SURE!

Since it's here, might as well use it, eh? {= )

"A Practical Guide for the Courtship of Elves, by Beren Son of Barahir" by Nerdy Nell is an awesome LotR/Silm fic that addresses all the things that annoy us about elf/mortal Suefics with a great sense of humor. I dunno if there are enough Tolkien nuts around here these days to give this the bump it needs, but I thought I'd give it a shot. In my opinion, it could serve as a textbook for OFUM, and it absolutely deserves a spot next to "Don't Panic!" and the like.

All in favor?

~Neshomeh

The decision already got a wave of resounding support in the original thread. What is this one supposed to accomplish? You are merely knocking threads off of the front page.

I just read through the mission today, and I must admit that Lapis' reactions are a lot more believable. Good job.

One comment, though: In the future, please tell your betas before you post so that they don't end up feeling blindsided. For example, I thought that I'd be able to have a more direct hand in Lapis' dialogue.

Speaking of Lapis, something seems out of place.
Upon realizing what she’d just said, Lapis flinched and covered her face.“Sorry, sorry! That was totally uncalled for, I swear!”
“Hey now, it’s totally fine,” Cupid replied, patting her cerulean locks. “I understand that you didn’t know better, though given your age, I’m not surprised at all. Now shhh, Zelda’s waking up!”

Given that Lapis hadn't said anything derogatory, this line seems out of place to me. Could you please explain it?


Also, there is one error that slipped past the radar:

““You said you could travel by plot hole, Lapis? Can you try and get us in there?”
Extra opening quotation mark.

That said, congratulations on a successful first outing for RC 333.

If it is, sorry I haven't gotten back. Its been a very busy weekend. If you still want my input I'll give it. If not, sorry for the delay.

I feel like you did a good job with Cupid's characterization. It's interesting how, on one hand, he's rejected the central elements of his homefic - namely, the wangst - but still clinging to some of its trappings, such as the drinking. I get the sense that he feels a lot of guilt for his actions, but tries to hide it behind a cheerful veneer.

That said, I do agree with a lot of Poor Cynic's criticisms, especially about the presence of big battles and the tendency to interact a lot with the canons.

A couple other points - why didn't the agents use disguises? Sarah says that they won't need them because they're jumping through multiple worlds, but that seems almost inherently contradictory to me. Surely, because they are visiting multiple worlds, they would definitely need disguises? In fact, they would probably need the DORKS, so they can switch to continuum-appropriate disguises. If Sarah had said that she didn't think they needed them because there weren't any Sues, that would make more sense, though I might still question her judgement.

Also, the ending implies that Pit still remembers not only the PPC agents, but the Criminal Minds characters. Doesn't that kind of defeat the entire purpose of the mission? It directly states that Palutena plans on keeping a Milivoj mask as a trophy - that's canon contamination.

Overall, I think your agents could have stood to focus more on the actual Duty, and less on finishing the story.

As always, my reviews contain my honest (and occasionally blunt) opinions. I am not trying to be cruel or mean-spirited, and apologize if I come off that way. It is not my intention.

First off, your characters didn’t quite sit well with me. Their characterization seemed rather flat at times. I did like that Sarah was being tested, but I feel like not enough was done to stress that through the story. As for the other characters, Lapis in particular felt strange to me. Her speech and thoughts sometimes felt more in line with someone much older than she actually is. Slightly relating to that, I’m not a fan of using agents so young. Fifteen feels like a healthy bare minimum for Action Department duties.

I didn’t see the need for the action scene in part one. It seemed to be just an excuse to one, have your characters slightly show off; and two, put in another tickling scene (a phenomenon which I will address below). Nothing seemed to be added by it.

Finally, I really don’t like this tendency for your fics to devolve into massive battles that usually involve canonical characters. I’ve said this multiple times: PPC agents are not soldiers. PPC agents are not James Bourne-esque spies. PPC agents are certainly not James Bond-esque spies. If any sort of canonical comparison is to be made, PPC agents are (at least in my mind) like the original cast of Red vs. Blue: ill-trained, snarky, and stuck in an unenviable position that occasionally involves killing something but mostly involves standing around watching stuff. And we certainly do not get the canonicals involved.

There were also some little details that stuck in my mind:
 You have a tendency to overuse the parenthetical aside in your writing. By that, I mean separate one-line instances (separated in a sentence like so). These feel too much like author’s notes. I feel like a lot of those could be either excised entirely or made into actual sentences/paragraphs.
 Was the canonical Pit being made aware of the PPC something that happened in the previous mission that I just missed? Didn’t they neuralize him? Canonicals with knowledge of the PPC should be reserved for what are essentially gods. Fourth wall breakers should, at best, only be able to see agents when they are alerted to their presence or, as Roger Rabbit put it, “only when it’th funny.” Otherwise, we’ll be flooded with characters that know about the PPC. We’re supposed to be a secret society, remember?
 You have some moments of divergent POV (such as on page 12, when Cupid is getting swarmed by the writhing mass), which can make for some awkwardly phrased moments. Typically with third person, paragraphs follow around one character. When another character acts, speaks, or thinks, you make a new paragraph.
 You have multiple moments of telling rather than showing scattered throughout the mission.
 Is this supposed to be a specific version of Smash Bros.? I ask because you threw in multiple characters (Master Hand, Crazy Hand, Ice Climbers) that are not in the present Wii U version. Did the author of the badfic do that? If that is the case, it should be marked as a charge. Also, I don’t recall Donkey Kong talking in any canon outside of the CGI cartoon show.

Finally, I want to talk about the tickling. This might get a little rant-ish, so heads up.

Back when I betaed one of your older mission, I recommended that you split off the tickling scenes into a separate side story. If I recall my notes correctly, I was concerned that said scenes upset the pacing of the piece and added nothing to the overall characterization of your agents. You have not only ignored that advice, you amplified the scenes. You even made it a plot point in your last mission. And here it is again, multiple scenes buried in the body of the mission.

I have to ask why.

It’s all very well and good to say, “If you don’t like this, skip ahead,” but in the case of your missions it could mean missing important story or character information. Putting the scenes in question into a separate fic would both ensure that nothing is missed and that those who are interested in reading tickling scenes may do so at their leisure.

At the very least, I ask that you remember that the concept of “Your Kink is Not My Kink” can cut both ways. You are free to have fetishes, and you are free to write about them. But keep in mind that everyone else in the PPC may not have such a fetish, and so is less inclined to read about it.

All in all, I wasn’t blown away by this story. There are too many moments that draw me out of the narrative. I would recommend staying away from big epic missions for the future and focusing on small stories, be they in the field or in the PPC. Get to know the characters. Expand on them. Hone your writing skills. Get outside your comfort zone.

However, they eventually had to make their way to back to listen in.
There may be one “to” too much.

We could always just dump somewhere for a critter to find it or something.
Dump what? Is there a word missing?

Rina pulled him to the floor behind one of the sofas as when they spotted Ron there.
I’m not sure about this, but it doesn’t feel right. Maybe one of these words would be enough?

HG

Do you need chocolate, too? I can give you some; my agents got a lifetime supply of Bleepolate...

*gives a bar anyway*

On the one hand, you only have two left. On the other hand, Order of the Phoenix is probably the worst.

I know this fic is incredibly toxic and you want to end it at a point where Rose is legitimately in danger, but it might be nice to have let it run through to the bit where Dumbledore explains everything. I couldn't really tell how far Rose had "read ahead" on this one, if that makes sense. Did she know about the whole "Fake Moody" scheme, or not?

Overall, you're doing a fantastic job, and I really admire your tenacity.

As far as Hogwarts Exposed goes... Doing Rose Potter and Little Miss Mary is bad enough. Doing Rose Potter, Little Miss Mary, AND Hogwarts Exposed is seriously pushing it (and by it, I mean the boundaries of your sanity). You don't have to kill all the Legendary Badfic yourself; save some of it for the rest of us. ;)

"Canin took over again for most of the chapter; Dumbledore introduced the heads of the schools and how the Triwizard champions would be selected, yadda yadda yadda. After the feast, Rose ditched her friends to wait for Cedric in the entrance hall."

I think you mean "canon" not "canin".

THAT WAS MY MOMENT! MINE!!! I WILL MAKE YOU PAY FOR THIS IF IT TAKES MY WHOLE LIFE!!!

XD I kid, I kid. Good job as always! I liked the way you offed Rose this time around - who knew Thunder Wave could still paralyze even outside the Pokemon universe?

Can you imagine? Or better yet, don't...incidentally, and a bit of trivia - Keiran's screen name comes from the Star Wars Expanded universe. It's the name of an ancient Jedi and the ancestor of a prominent character, Corran Horn.

Yes, I am the epitome of geek.

And no, no one that does that to Ronald Weasley deserves to live! Kill her! And then revive her, and kill her again just for kicks!

“Amos, think who you’re talking to!” said Mr Weasley, very angrily. “Is Rosey Potter likely to conjure the Dark Mark?”

“Yes,” both agents muttered in unison.

^I love this so much I cannot even express it. ^_^

McGonagall discreetly gave Rose a Time-Turner, and Rose discreetly put it in her invisible pocket.

^Why's this emphasised? It's not a mistake, and the sentence doesn't seem to add anything to the story.

...Rose and Dumbledore practiced the Imperius Curse on each other...

^Okay, I'm glad I stopped reading this rubbish. How is this acceptable? How do you endure the stupidity?

Rose Potter must die in all the fires... *walks off muttering angrily*

HOW?!

By the way, how do you change the link so that it looks like a sentence, without deleting the link?

Just one comment - it looks like Kieran Halcyon was using an early edition of the book, because JKR initially did give the counterspell for Stunning as Enervate - that's what it is in my copy of the book, which I got back in 2000. It was corrected to Rennervate in later editions though.

I haven't started reading yet, but, uh... It's Rose Potter.

Therefore, Rina's e-mail might contain RA coordinates for a deadly world of my own invention when she gets back.

Yeah, I know it won't be used on Rose, you have those planned. But hey, should you ever need to drop a Sue on a planet populated with arsenic-based life, and where man-sized carnivorous arthropods are the least dangerous thing around, there you go.

So, just to let you know, recommended fandoms for these stories to come from would be Starlight Express, Cats, Phantom of the Opera, Warriors, Harry Potter, LOTR, Star Wars. I think that's it... I'm listing these because I know these fandoms and therefore have a better chance of more interest accurate character potrayal.

I really don't know what of my stuff classifies as good or not to other people. But you could pick any one of my fics (www.fanfiction.net/~thebigcat) and read them aloud if you like.
Thanks.
It's a really great idea.

Here's a link to the relevant story:

Worthless

Fandom: Worm

Rating: ... um, 15-ish? I think? Definitely a bit stronger than Contains Mild Peril (God I love the BBFC Ratings Board)

Specific Triggers (hah): severe bullying. Taylor is most precious bae but not everyone shares that opinion.

I have dome many things, but this is not one of them. I'll have to try this sometime. Could come in handy for travel.
If I find any goodfic (or just hilaribad fic) I'll send it to you.

While I don't have any fanfiction I want read aloud (in fact, I haven't written any fanfiction at all!), that reminds me. The Playscriptes are a thing. Why not do a couple more?

When people read something I wrote out loud. It just bothers me for some reason.

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCXhZVh3PHmF4QHmV0oA-_vw

Back in the good ol' days (about seven years ago now, when I first joined the PPC) there were some occasions where there'd be maybe three, four, five or more missions posted a day. And they all got attention. The more obscure the fandom/badfic, however, the less likely it is there are going to be masses of comments. Please don't ever feel offended just because someone else's mission got more attention than yours, especially if they are known to be taking on a Legendary Badfic in a massive fandom.

Very few of my missions ever got more than a few comments, but I always did them for the satisfaction of taking down a Sue, or occasionally slashwraith, that really cheesed me off rather than being praised for it. I'm not meaning to be preachy or anything here, but it seems like that might be a good way to think about missions. It's why we're here, after all, and our Agents certainly don't do it for the praise from Upstairs. XD

The Wiki should mention somewhere that the KIU canons know about the PPC. Can anybody do that?

We aren't going to ignore you. I saw your story below and would have read it, except i don't know anything about the fandom you were missioning for. But don't repost just because you think we'll ignore you. We won't. Promise. At least I won't.

Dogpiling on someone like this? Not cool, guys. Not cool.

I thought you were just joking with the temptation part! But why would you do this? Not cool man...

I mean, I'm sure it's good and you're right to be as proud of it as you are, but... really? Did the existence of the mouse wheel or down arrow or scrollbar just up and vanish from your brain? It's all very well offering your nonapologies, but this is a pointless post that knocked something else back to the second page, which people really don't look at. You really needed to give this a little more time to air before jumping in.

If you're wondering why people are dogpiling you a bit for this, well, we dogpiled Silenthunder when she committed a similar offence - and arguably it was a lesser one, since at least she was posting something she hadn't said literally three threads down the page. Fair's fair.

Your other thread is three threads below this one. Most people can read more than one thread. I think you've just pushed a thread off the first page for little to no reason. Do notice that Nesh and Iximaz told Silenthunder the same thing a couple days ago.

The first post of this is only three entries down. Do you not think people can scroll down the page at least a little bit? Come on. Be respectful of other people and their posts on the Board.

My comments on the piece will be posted something tonight.

Well, one of the reasons for a lack of diversity in fanfiction is because of the already-present lack of diversity in the fandom being written about. Not everyone makes OCs *gasp* and work instead with what they've been provided. If there isn't any diversity in the original work, what are you going to do, change the characters from their canon selves? It really seems like this was written more for original works instead of fanfiction.

It might be the jargon or it might be me, but I think I lost this guy somewhere in the middle of the article. Can someone please do me a favour and tell me what this guy says...?

Let me begin by saying that there were a number of things about this article that I found worthy of either praise or criticism, but that aren't relevant to its focus on fanfiction and instead address broader and somewhat more incendiary topics. Other than mentioning that I find the very heavy "Tumblrese" in which the article is written both constantly aggravating and a bit difficult to fully comprehend (meaning I might be missing or misunderstanding a little of what was actually said), I won't be addressing them here.

The first thing I noticed is that the article does not really address issues relevant to fanfiction specifically:

For one thing, it doesn't deal with the fact that a lot of fanfiction has a highly nonhuman cast (I don't think I've ever written anything with a more than 50% human character list) or is set in a world completely divorced from our own, opening up a whole host of questions even I can't immediately answer about how our concepts of "diversity" and "representation" would apply. Should authors include black Elves? Transgender turians?

Second, the author doesn't really address one of my big questions when it comes to *isms in fanfiction- to what degree we should be "true" to the demographics of the setting we are working in. That question has a lot of dimensions that, again, I don't have good answers for: What if the setting would just naturally be very homogeneous by many of our standards? What if it's a setting that fully acknowledges some sort of bias exists within it? What if it's a setting like Original Trek, one that tried to be more egalitarian in its day but missed a few things?

Without addressing questions like those above, this reads more like a general writing guide for making your work less *ist, and I think it's a reasonably good one. Most of it is stuff I've seen before, but I do particularly like the addition of "don't make this a PSA", "what am I getting wrong?" and "how to take criticism" sections. I would also like to see less focus on "representation" and more on making the minorities you include actually equal, but then we're getting into the external issues I said I wouldn't talk about.

I will not say more, because I have capital-O Opinions regarding certain portions of this thread and, despite all the evidence to the contrary, I don't like outright confrontation very much. It's scary. Plus I don't trust myself to remain civil on such matters, which is a problem around here.

I 100% agree with this article but I have just one thing to say with regards to the following quote:

"Because the world around us has made every effort to whitewash our brains, we tend to gravitate toward characters who are, you guessed it, straight, white, cisgender, able-bodied men. This is the character at the center centre of the story that we’re supposed to identify with and cheer for, not because we actually have anything in common with him, but because he is the 'Everyman', the default, normal. Oh, and look, all his friends are also straight, white, cisgender, able-bodied men, except for his one non-white buddy, who is there to dispense ethnically humorous wisdom, and the solitary straight, white, cisgender, able-bodied woman who functions as the Sexy Lamp - I mean, Love Interest."

This is an incredibly American-centric worldview. Is it really a big surprise that authors from a majoritarily white country write about straight white people? About 80% of the US population is white-- along with 13-ish% black and 4.43% asian. Furthermore, the Williams Institute reports that 3.5% of the US population is LGBT (with the T component only being 0.3% of the total population). These two factors combined effectively make the straight white person the most statistically average (hence "normal") person in the US: assuming constant LGBT spread across all ethnicities, that's over 246 million straight white people in the US-- 77.2% of the population.

It's not so much whitewashing as just simply Americans writing stories about the biggest demographic. When you start taking into account the authors' social class (because exactly who is given the opportunity to become published writers: the poor or the rich? Remember how wealth is divided in the States...) the statistics start leaning even more heavily towards straight white people. Also considering that the other major source of English media is Europe-- where white people come from-- it's not surprising that we're constantly surrounded by that demographic.


That being said, the article is bang on the money when it comes to the ethnic sidekick character and the cardboard cutout women. Seriously guys: pull yourself together and write some quality characters.

Diversity is awesome-- that's why I decided to write about the PPC's Infrastructure and Security departments. I want to show more non-Commonwealth/US agents from all walks of life working in the PPC; something that is difficult to do if you're only writing about one or two agent teams in particular.

I know at least some agents (Trojie and Pads) have sporked RPF before, but that was their choice. Given mine, I prefer to focus on fictional characters.

Also, hi, sorta-newbie! *high-fives* Have some popcorn, just in case you plan on sticking around!

as for my gift... *riffles around in pockets* ah, here you are! The other half of that solid gold rolling pin!

And as for your question, we can't spork Real Person Badfic. Sorry. Or not sorry, given just how nasty that Lovecraft/Orwell story I read was. It made me who I am today.

... Why did I do that?
Anyway. Welcome aBoard! Please accept this... Wait, I think I'm out of Suvian spectrum flavouring.
So, uh, take these Completely Normal Pancakes. And they're homemade! ... Well, I was trying to make eggnog. But still!

Haven't for a while. Sorry to disappoint.

Hello there, and welcome aBoard! As a newbie gift, take this screeching pocket walrus! If the urple bow around its neck becomes too much, feel free to remove it. ;)

As for real-person fic, there's actually quite a few missions dealing with that, if you're interested in how that's been handled in the past.

The reviews. The sheer number of people who think that insulting, yelling at, and otherwise flaming somebody is a good thing to do is utterly horrifying.

hS

I kinda wanna read this badfic, but I kinda don't want to...

For two reasons.

1/ The previous thread upheld the long-standing view that we shouldn't be PPCing religious fanfic. It's more trouble than it's worth.

2/ Just... go read the last chapter:

Voldemort covered his ears with the discomfort that heathens often find themselves with when they are confronted with the truth; and he shouted loudly to drown out the word of the Lord, "You've been preparing to do this? To scream at me?"

"It is the work of the Lord!" Dumbledore explained accurately.

"Aren't there better ways to spend your time than preaching to a bored idiot who makes fun of people on the internet?" Voldemort questioned hedonistically. "Your Lord seemed to be pretty concerned about helping the people around him. Is that not his work anymore?"

"How can we focus on helping people; when there are people like you trying to destroy us?" Dumbledore countered astutely.

"I told you before, that Reddit account is a joke," Voldemort whined pathetically; but the Reverend shook his head.

"I thought that might be so at first," the Reverend commented fairly. "But it was just too realistic."

"How was it realistic?" Voldemort inquired uninformedly. "It wasn't even subtle! I waxed poetic about the sexiness of neckbeards and said that Christopher Hitchens has superpowers. It was supposed to be funny! How could you take it seriously?"

Dumbledore scoffed; and he replied faithfully, "Like it or not-your little 'joke' is what most atheists today are like."

"So my Reddit account solidified your conception of atheists as a bunch of anti-Christian bigots who are just angry at God?" Voldemort solicited stupidly; and then he sighed. "Okay, you know what, this has gone too far. I'm sure that most people can tell that I'm not being serious, but if I'm contributing to misinformation and stereotypes, I don't feel comfortable continuing this."

Voldemort pulled an iPhone out of his pocket; and he began to type on it. After a few minutes, he showed the screen to Dumbledore. "See this? I just made a post: 'I am a troll.' It is the last post I will make on that account. Are you happy?"

Dumbledore virtuously ignored the heretic; and he turned to the little ones standing behind his protection. "Students of Hogwarts! This fool will not listen to reason. Let's save this heathen's soul!"

Yyyyep. Called it. ^_^ And it was exceptionally well done, too.

hS

The Board agreed a while back that it's so religious in nature it'd be nigh-impossible to mission without offending somebody. Kind of like Bible fanfic missions.

I almost think I remember someone actually trying to publish that properly. I think there was a lawsuit involved, which may be why there is a fanfiction version of it. I may be making up the lawsuit thing though. Though I swear that sounds familiar.

I believe we've already talked about that particular fic before.

Posts like these knock posts at the bottom of the Board off the front page, which is why they are generally frowned upon - and believe me, I would know. I made the same mistake just yesterday, as did Silenthunder a few days ago.

It doesn't seem so bad at first, but then the questions start raising their ugly heads. Why, if Rose's family has a tradition of being Gryffindors and her parents were members of the Order of the Phoenix, are they friends with the Malfoys? Since when was Draco ever "sensitive," and how exactly is it "their time at Hogwarts" that has changed him and not, say, the influence of his Death Eater father and their Death Eater friends? Why the heck is Rose allowed anywhere near Grimmauld Place when Harry, Ron, and Hermione were only barely tolerated? I know what Nargles are, but what's a Nargel? Why must the title remind me of Jaycacia Thornbyrd?

... Yeah, have at it, I say.

~Neshomeh

Anyway, from what I just read, I've defiantly seen worse, but it looks like it would make a good mission.

No it's not like I'm biased

Ugh, that title makes me want to retch.

Just in the first chapter she has her OC house-elves acting OOC; they don't say 'milady', they say 'miss' or 'mistress'.

But who is this chick and why is Harry staying at her house and not the Weasleys'? What is this what is going on aaargh!

As Iximaz pointed out, your main issue is a technical one. It's much harder to change the way you write than it is to proofread a few more times. Good luck working toward your next try.

If you like. My email is iomccoy(at)me(dot)com.

Okay, let's take a looksee.

Activity: Well, you've definitely been active around here, and you've been a pretty enthusiastic participant on the Board, so no problems there.

Fic to Spork: Wow, that's quite... quite the fic. I think that could make for a good mission.

PPC Knowledge: From what I've seen (which isn't much, unfortunately), you seem to know what's what, but... Where did this Danger Room come from? What are these sphere things Solvig is fighting? It seems to take place in HQ since she goes to see the Marquis when she's done, but the location itself I don't recognize. If you want to introduce this later as some sort of training location for agents, that could potentially be doable. I'll go ahead and say... you're good to go here.

Characters: An ex-agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and a Supergirl clone? Based on the rivalry between Marvel/DC, you've already set up for some interesting rivalry between the agents. I like the concept of someone whose base nature is fighting her agent training paired with someone who has no concept of "look before you leap". You set up a nice potential dynamic for them.

I remember the thread from a while ago where you asked the Board to help you with Solvig in terms of how overpowered she was, and it's nice to see you've taken the advice on characterization as well.

Writing Ability (Creative): The prompts were interesting to read and I feel like I got a good feel for your agents, so good stuff.

Writing Ability (Technical): Here's where I'm hesitant, and quite a bit. Your spelling is overall fine, though you have a few typos here and there that could have been caught with some more thorough proof reading.

Your punctuation and grammar, though... Well, let's look at an example.

"That is not all, give me that.” the Swedish psychiatrist said while she signaled Solvig to give her the sphere, who promptly gave it. “See these chipped areas on the top of the sphere?” the blonde continued while pointing at said chipped areas, “these were caused by debris from the robots destroyed by you. You must learn to limit your collateral damage.”

You have a tendency to use improper punctuation and capitalization when it comes to starting and ending dialogue. I've also noticed quite a few run-on sentences. Not only that, but you neglected to capitalize some proper nouns ("japanese-american" comes to mind), and you have some sentences where words seem to have been dropped, or you've used a very odd word choice (Solvig moved herself to Yuna’s side, and neared her face to a few centimeters away from her partner’s face).

I see you had help from SkarmorySilver in terms of beta reading, but from the sheer number of technical errors, I find it a bit hard to believe.

I'm really sorry, but I'm going to have to say no. Everything else looks great, so just really focus on cleaning up the technical aspect of your writing and I think you'll be fine next time you ask.

When I create a character, I look at characters I like. I ask myself the following questions after doing so:

"can this person fit here?"

"how do they react by fitting here?"

Then I look at their past: "what was one major event in their past, and how do they look if it turns out differently?"

And finally: "what can I give this person from my self, without making them a self-insert?"

These steps are not followed properly in the case of a new writer, who often fails to create a character who fits in with the setting, and instead makes a character that does not fit at all. For instance, let's say I write a COD fanfic. If my OC is from the future, is Tony Stark's niece, and is sooo badass that they can floor Soap? Does not fit.

Another thing that is often tossed aside is consideration for a character's place in a story. A character is there to interact with the world. It doesn't matter how good your characters are if you spend so little time on the background and the setting that you can't tell one city from another. If there even are cities, it might just be "generic location" which is very, very bad.

(which I'll get to in a moment), I think one of the biggest mistakes is being too nice or too mean to a character. Either they get all the things in life handed to them on a platter for no reason, or every bad thing to ever happen ever, again for no reason. You gotta strike a happy balance, which can vary depending on the setting— after all, (modern) fairy tale characters tend to get the 'happily ever after' more often than dystopian characters for a reason— and make your characters deserve/earn their punishments and rewards.

As for self-inserts, they can be done well, but the best-done SIs are the ones that are most representative of the author, not an idealized version.

Lemme drag one of my childhood make-believe selves out for a moment. She was shy, quiet, and liked to read, and was a little bit lazy, which is all fine and dandy until you also take into account that she looked human except for her yellow, slit-pupiled eyes, black leathery wings, spiky black tail, and ability to breathe fire. Did I mention she was half-Hungarian Horntail and hatched from an egg, and Charlie Weasley brought her home as a baby where she was raised as Ron's twin sister? ...I had weird fantasies as a kid.

Yeah, no. Don't go the 'ideal you' route. It hardly ever, if at all, ends well.

Anyway, there's my ten cents.

Probably making a character where the starting point and main aspect is the powers, or how cool they are, instead of the personality and suchlike!

I would say first and foremost putting too much of oneself in the character. A character should be a part of you, but not a thinly veiled you. This by its very nature leads itself to characters that if not outright Sues are certainly Sueish. But on a related not, too flawed is another very common one.

Those are the biggest ones in my opinion. Though there are certainly others.

I appreciate what you're trying to do and I'm glad you're getting so much out of the workshops. I'm not going to lie: the lackluster response to 4A had me in sort of a funk. Still kinda does.

That's why I need to ask the community at large: are you all getting anything out of these workshops? Are they helpful? Are they even being read? Because if the answer to those questions is "no," I'd like to be made aware of that.

If nobody cares about these, I'll stop writing them. I can take the time I would have spent on the workshops and put it towards writing new stories or coming up with more entertaining community activities. Being lectured at through the internet probably isn't the most entertaining way to spend a day. I just don't want to make these workshops and have them not be useful.

I've always believed in being honest, so please tell me. Do you not have time to read them? Are the challenges boring? Are the tips unhelpful? Do you find my acting as some kind of expert arrogant? You're not going to hurt my feelings. I would rather have dismissal than apathy.

PoorCynic

And yes, I do have an idea for a pair of agents that I want to use when I eventually get permission. Maybe I'll try this out.

Seriously, I envy your persistence. I probably would've attempted to pull a Division of Multiple Offenses in the first book if I'd tried to tackle that...thing.

Rose Potter: where carving words into your hand is Dark Magic, but carving words into your best friend's forehead is perfectly normal.

Oh, and I love this bit:

“Can we charge for being trigger-happy and a complete nutjob? I think we can,” Rina said, noting it down.

“You realize you just described over half the PPC?”

“Oh, shut up.”

... Who am I kidding? Why would you even want to be fair with that abomination? This just requires high-temperature termination with extreme prejudice.

Anyway, I love those missions... That mission? Whatever. I'm eagerly waiting for the grand finale! :P

I intended to do the workshop exercise today, and there you come and distract me again :-)

Also, how dare Moody for not bowing to her?
Does "for" really belong there?

Rina solved his dilemma by putting down her notebook holding her hand out for the wated to sniff.
"and" missing between "notebook" and "holding"?
PS: I love the wated.

I’m more concerned with the fact that Rose is able to get away with attacking high-ranking Ministry officials like this and get away with it,
This may be intentional, showing how furious Rina is, and nothing seems impossible at this point. But getting away and getting away with it may be a bit much?

HG

Didn't you say somewhere that after this you are doing "Little Miss Mary"? Are you TRYING to die or something?

No proofreading errors that I seem to have noticed this time. I eagerly await the grand finale!

Though, Rose remembering that the agents killed her? That's not what I'd call a good sign...

At this rate I expect that this monstrosity will finally be put to rest within a week.

Just hang in there, must a little longer.

I have not read the mission yet, nor will I, until the final death. I will then read every mission in a row and comment on them all as one giant mission. So, consider this additional motivation.

...that she DOES, in fact, have a life outside of the PPC. She just has a crazy determination to kill this horrible series. Anyway, fantastic work!

DoSAT probably has one, tbh, and it's a canon way to kill kaiju.

Why not solve the size problem before you solve the living-Sue problem?

There are shrink rays available in many continua. I'm thinking of the "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" movie and the Helmacron shrink ray from "Animorphs", specifically, but I am sure there are others.

Seriously, though, I support portalling it to the Marianas Trench, or any other probably-deadly place. The main problem being... Well, making a Kaiju-sized portal.
There's also the "Summon Bigger Fish" option, but neuralizing Godzilla seems pretty hard.

Because it's funnier than watching a Big, Dramatic Battle.

Missions are always the most interesting when the agents are hamstrung for tech. "Oh no, the Stu is using his superpower, I'd better use my nuclear bazooka!" is silly, yes... but it's not challenging. "The only resource I have is a spork" is much more exciting to read, oddly enough.

So. Skyscraper-sized monster. You're an ordinary human. It knows you're there. You need to kill it. Get out of that if you can.

I suggest rigging up a crude electrical transformer (with a false cliffhanger when your agents say "We need a transformer!", and everyone's imagining giant robots), boosting the national grid's current to ridiculous levels, and then electrocuting him. Dread to think what you're gonna do with the body, though...

hS

There's also the DoSAT Hangar, which contains all kinds of vehicles. It could easily have a giant mechsuit.

Any means of disposing of kaiZu in general that I can think of basically amounts to "summon bigger fish."

Roll tape!

Alex Mercer: Nope, totally not plugging my fandoms. Anyway, Alex is damn near unkillable; even a nuke didn't put him down. He can consume and absorb an indefinite amount of biomass and store it for later use. As for mucking about with Prototype canon, well... who's to say it will? Alex was able to create giant monsters in Prototype 2, they had to come from somewhere.

Haloverse superweapons: Maybe the DoSAT has MACs or Covenant flagships lying around? Of course, going that far is usually DoGA's thing.

EVA: I'm not sure if you've seen it, but in Fish Custard's mission to Evangelion, they pull out an EVA unit acquired by the PPC. Precedent!

There is one more thing I thought of... but it's a sci-fi continuum of my own invention. That guy down there talking about poison? Here's your answer: a planet with an atmosphere composed primarily of arsenic, populated by insectoids that hunt kaiju-sized animals for a living. Alas, original fiction, so you couldn't justifiably use it.

Seriously though, you need to use very, very, VERY heavy weaponry to even injure one, probably stuff some other canons. Or you can always let The Big G himself deal with it, then neuralyze him.

As there is of course a looooooong tradition in classic kaiju movies of summoning more of the things to deal with the one you have. Not sure which one would be most appropriate here, or for that matter how many, nor how you would contain your "solution" once it had done its job, but that last one would certainly be a funny question for the Agents to ask after they had done it.

If that fails, the Jaegers from Pacific Rim are of course designed specifically to do your job, and while there are of course canon-contamination issues it seems like when really big things need to be killed the flowers are willing to overlook that point- I remember one mission in particular where a WH40K capital ship was brought in to glass a Mata Nui knockoff island filled to the brim with Sues.

Seriously, poisons might work. Nothing is immune to everything, and DoSAT could easily hook up some kind of delivery system. Start with ricin or botulinum. Both of these should work wonders. A fictional alternative to these would be Nova-6 from Black Ops. That last one might be considered torture, but if not, use it.

There is absolutely no reason anyone should know about Inframan unless they're a serious student of Chinese film or something, and I'm not being entirely serious with this suggestion, but it would really amuse me. He fights ridiculous Godzilla-like monsters all the time and can grow to giant size to match them, too. ^_^

Failing that, a shrink ray of some sort seems like a good solution to me. DoSAT can almost certainly hook you up.

~Neshomeh

Take it from Honey I Shrunk the Kids? It should theoretically work. Or if you want to go the Super Crazy Route what about say the Megazord from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers? I mean a bunch of teenagers were able to figure out how to operate it in cannon. Or a Gundam perhaps?

Water. Basically, figure out some way to lure him to the Marianas Trench and let drowning do the rest.

Open a portal in one of the kaiju's arteries and set the other portal to space or something. Watch as the pressure differential bleeds it bone-dry in a matter of moments.



Actually, that's really gruesome. Why did I even come up with this idea?

First, small side tangent. Why does Sonic have the worst fanfics? I suppose it has to do partially with the flimsy canon it's based off of, but I have never seen any evidence of a good Sonic fic.

Anyway, kaiju. To be honest, I would be tempted to bring in the giant battle robots from Pacific Rim. It would allow for Agents to get closer through the Mind Melds, and provide a lot of humor though them trying to get the darn thing to work, and just not working. Although, I have no idea how you could slip it in to the fic reasonably. A really strong Not My Problem field? Although, that sounds like a bit of a cop-out. The best rule of thumb for PPC tech: very powerful, but can break at any minute. Nothing can make the job too easy. That's why we have disguises, no? However, in the case of a giant robot that rivals the Transformers in size... I don't know. Up to you.

Personally, if I were writing a girl!Harry fic, I would significantly alter her relationship with the Dursleys, and through that her views on the magical world. Let's call this theoretical character Daisy, in order to distinguish her from other female versions of Harry.

Petunia does see more of Lily in Daisy than she does in Harry; however, instead of outright rejecting her, she sees Daisy as a version of Lily that can still be saved. So on one hand, she would be more "loving" towards Daisy, but on the other, Daisy would still be harshly punished for any accidental magic. For Daisy, the punishments would be more traumatic; unlike Harry, she wants to please the Dursleys, and it's the rejection that really hurts. Instead of being thrilled by the magical world, she hates it - she wishes she was normal, so her family would love her. At the same time, she's desperate to please those around her, and the magical world is all she's got.

Overall, she'd be less of a rebel than Harry. I doubt she'd make Gryffindor, though if you wanted to keep the same cast you could make an argument for it. Nor, however, would she be in Slytherin, like in other AU fics; Slytherin is overly proud of its magical lineage, and Daisy would loathe that aspect of them. Instead, I think she'd fit better in Hufflepuff. At first, she just wants to be accepted by anyone and will do anything to fit in, but eventually she learns the meaning of true acceptance and loyalty.

The main issue with such a character, story-wise, is that I think Daisy would basically start out as a less intelligent version of Hermione, almost painfully afraid of breaking the rules. And unlike Hermione, who gets kind of dragged into things by Harry and Ron at first, she'd have no motivation to get involved in the plot. Plus, I think GoF and OotP would leave her traumatized and depressed - not exactly a character arc I'd enjoy writing.

Note that, I don't think this is necessarily specific to a female Harry; a similar AU could be done with a male version. In fact, this goes so significantly beyond making him a girl that gender would be incidental to the plotline. However, as far as using a genderbend to take dramatic liberties with characterization goes, I think this is more reasonable than a naked ninja-druid sociopath.

I think it can be done well, but it seems like the differences here are a bit stereotypical? There doesn't seem to be a reason why a Harriet would necessarily be friendlier or be worse at Quidditch. Though since you are exaggerating I guess it makes sense?

I think she'd probably have a different experience of being bullied, though.

Also, on the Snape thing: I once saw someone say on Tumblr: "If Harry had been a girl Snape would have treated her the way Petyr Baelish treats Sansa Stark."

Sybill Trelawney's prophecy.

"...and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal..."

Meaning this: Voldemort knows that the boy who's going to kill him is just that--a boy.

Which means that Neville Longbottom's parents are killed, Neville takes over Harry's role (and does things very differently, because Neville is a very different person from Harry).

Harriet Potter goes on her own way--no scar, no fragment of Voldemort in her. Maybe her parents still die, because let's face it, Lily and James Potter would've been Voldemort's enemies regardless of whether they had a boy or a girl.

It changes literally everything about her life for her not to be the Girl Who Lived. Not that she wouldn't get herself into trouble anyhow...

The hard part would be making Harriet Potter different enough to not just be a rewrite, but also similar enough that you don't warp canon. If this can be accomplished, than I'd go for it. If it can't be accomplished, than I'd still go for it, just maybe write a few short chapters, as anything else is not really worth your time. I like point number six that you came up with, as that could make for some interesting bits.

Should it be done, now, that's the question. When doing gender bent stories, you often run into one major problem: blatant plagiarism. Oh, yes, there would be some differences, but on the whole, there is not enough difference between Harry and Harriet to warrant a full fic, ala Rose Potter. Now, a one-shot AU? Possibly. Multiverse hijinks? Entirely probable. Tumblr ask blog? YOU BET! Rake in those reblogs. But full, multi-chapter fic by itself? I just don't see it working.

That all said, I do like the analysis you made on the difference between Harry and Harriet. I am a little hesitant on the Parseltongue aspect of her, but on the whole, I can get behind this.

It seems very detailed.

http://mybluerobot.com/create-your-own-avatar/

Then I recommend hero machine. That's what I used last time I needed images of the Cafeteria team - and it's versatile enough to make all three pretty close to their "actual" proportions, not easy given only one of them is human.

... 'official' sites we use for agent images. I was one of the first people to pick up Tektek for the Wiki (not the very first, though), and there's no denying it's become popular, but any dollmaker which shows full-body images, rather than just faces, is perfectly valid to use.

Darned shame, though, and a pain in the neck. Fortunately I don't think I had anything ongoing that used it, but still...

hS

Tektek's been around for years. It seems strange that Gaia would only now issue a cease and desist, instead of back when it came out or when it first got popular.

Perhaps Gaia wants to make its own "Dream Avatar" system? If so, it would be a possible replacement - but I wouldn't be surprised if it required a Gaia account to use.

Other avatar makers I use:
Chibi Maker
Mega Anime Avatar Creator

I was under the impression they were working with Gaia. Oh well.

As for new things, Doll Divine has a few good ones, especially for female agents and CAFs. They have some okay stuff for males too, though. I know I used one of their things to make Ecks and Zee what back when, but I lost those images so I should probably redo them at some point.

I found this thing on an ad from TekTek. Here is the link:

https://recolor.me/

I've only been on since the takedown, so I have no idea what TekTek was able to do, but I hope this thing will work for now.

And I found this:

http://www.dreamself.me/clothes.php?action=view&id=0

Maybe this could be our replacement?

But... I was on it just earlier today...

I knew Arvee's been down for at least a few months, but I can't check on TekTek since I'm using my phone. Plus it's kid of a big thing for Gaia Online, isn't it? Maybe it's just down for maintenance?

*celebrates with seed-cake and music*

Praise them! The ring-bearers, praise them with great praise!

And of course it is the traditional feast day of Professor Saint Tolkien. I hope you've all got your seed-cake and mushrooms ready...?

hS

(I forget the words. I'll look them up tomorrow, I promise!)

For this occasion we will watch the Lord of the Rings movies with Kangaroos. (forgive me)

...the people who have taken on a legendary badfic! Hail the ones who have the courage to face these monsters!

I did not see the Time Lord emergency transformation coming, so good job!

Was the pony Rina saw in Medical Dr Kindheart? Because that'd be pretty funny.

Hm, perhaps Ari and Rina should start a 'got turned nonhuman after badfic' club.

Honestly, I'm still surprised that anyone had the guts to take on Rose Potter in the first place, so the fact that it's all done just feels weird. Absolutely beautiful job, on the whole string of things. Normally, I'd say I can't wait to see what you put out next, but I think you've earned a nice, long break.

I thought I'd brought up "Find" when I had not. Thanks to Undo there's no damage done, but I think you meant to post the read-only version.

However, I do see now how the transformation into a Time Lady could be a source of character development rather than a power-up...

There's the body-horror angle. Her mind doesn't expect her body to be different, especially her sensory system.

She'll have to leave her past behind. No one who knew her before, and doesn't now know about the PPC, would believe that this completely different-looking girl is Rina. That includes family, friends...

The possibility of a TARDIS is interesting, but I'm wondering: Does she have to get one? Would she be able to learn how to use it? A Time Lady without a TARDIS might be more interesting to write simply because it hasn't been done very often.

The reality of presumably having regenerations left could change things too. It might mean that in a dangerous situation where somebody's going to die, Rina'd have to step up. Ouch.

Of course regenerations aren't infallible. Destroy the brain, or kill someone very suddenly, and they're probably not coming back. Even worse is the prospect of dying somewhere in a dangerous environment where you wouldn't be found for, say... an hour or so. Oh, you'd die all right--repeatedly. If you couldn't keep your head enough to decide not to regenerate in those circumstances (and does Rina know enough about her new biology to know how she'd even begin doing that?), you'd be in for an exceedingly nasty end. Even if you were rescued halfway through, you'd probably be in serious trouble, with your biology badly messed up.

And then there's the problem of having to deal with other Time Lords... though you seem to have already covered that. :)

“I’ll be damned,” muttered Owen under his breath. “Rookie Zeb actually survived a Legendary badfic. I knew he had it in him when I met him at Rudi’s-- kid’s got an Aura like a Pyroar.” He paused at the end of the hallway. Let’s see... there’s a staircase in front of us... two RCs with odd numbers facing each other on the left... Right. We need to turn right here. He turned the corner and looked at his partner who was sluggishly plodding alongside him. “How about you, Buck? What d’you think about Zebby-Zeb?”

“I don’t know, really. I can’t remember him that well,” replied Buck, “but maybe I was just... falling... asleep...” The Skiddo yawned out the last few words as his eyes closed in preparation for a catnap. The Pokémon ground to a halt in the middle of the Generic Grey hallway, snoring gently.

“Hey now. No falling asleep when there’s a letter to be delivered,” said Owen, poking Buck’s nose with a folded-up sheet of paper. When the Skiddo started moving forward again the Lucario cleared his throat. “Okay. Final check. How does this sound like to you...” Owen squinted at his letter. “Dear Rookie,” he read.

“Sounds condescending.”

“Well, he is a newbie, right? ‘Congratulations on marathoning that mess of a mission. You’ve got Guts-- note the capital G-- and I like that in a ‘mon. I can tell you’re going to go far.'”

“I’m pretty sure he has Intimidate.”

“Quiet, you.”

“Well, you asked me for opinions...”

“Whatever. ‘I’m not sure if you remember this but I offered you a free training session with me when we met at Rudi’s. I’d like to extend that offer again and see what you’re made of. Signed, Owen, DIA.’ Eh? Is it good?”

“Did we really meet him? Was that even canon?”

“What are you even talking about? Of course it’s ‘canon’! You remember, don’t you? Zeb went for a walk with Maxwell and then we followed him and then Victoria hauled us back to Ben and then we had to respond to that Judoon thing...”

“Iunno, I was feeling sleepy back then...”

The Lucario executed the Double Facepaw Manoeuvre and muttered something to the effect of “Never mind.” He briskly marched towards RC 3-Apple-14’s door, crouched, and slid the letter under the door. Owen made his way back to Buck and gave the snoozing Mount Pokémon a quick tap on the horns. “All right, we’re done here. Let’s move.”

Well, that was... not entirely unexpected.
Also: Hooray! Voldemort Junior, the greatest and most evil witch of all time, is dead for good! I guess the stories kinda acted liked Horcruxes for her: you had to kill each one before finishing her off.
Oh, and SPOILERS FOLLOW:





Rina's death parallels Harry's, in a way. Her death led directly to Rose/Voldemort's demise. And, of course, she survived. Much happiness! ^_^

Just stealing this SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

To be honest, I was a bit worried at the end of the mission. But after reading the interlude - Very well done indeed. (Nesh says it much better than I can.)

I wish my agents were there to help with the cleanup. Alas, they aren't, and I'm not on spring break.

HG

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

... Hopefully that's enough to fill up the preview space. Some of you, uh, didn't quite do that. ^^; Therefore, I was spoiled sufficiently that I got worried and spoiled myself fully by looking at the interlude first, just to see if I had understood correctly.

I had.

I was initially very concerned about Rina's transformation, considering how this particular plot device has been handled in the past. BUT! I am very pleased to say my concerns were unfounded. Iximaz, please accept my heartfelt congratulations for taking an old idea and making it better, faster, stronger than it was before. You really did your homework, and I found myself laughing several times after I'd finished reading and gone about my business as I realized exactly how long you've been planning this. I am very, very impressed.

My only real issue was the lack of closure for the Potterverse, but since Skarmory's setting up an interlude for just that purpose, I think it'll be okay. And heck, it makes sense. Your agents took a good and proper beating. They can't really be expected to handle it themselves. They've done enough, poor things!

I might suggest building up Rose Potter's growing awareness of the agents a bit more in the last few parts, though. She's pretty angry and confrontational with them when she spots them, but apart from one scene that I can recall (when she's telling the story of the graveyard to the Gryffindors), she hasn't really shown much awareness that anything is out of place in her world up until then, so it comes out of the blue a little.

Other than that, you've shown a great ability for planning things out and properly foreshadowing them, so again, my most hearty congratulations on a job well done! ^^

~Neshomeh

The non-spoiler part first: hooray, she's dead! I just read 4-6 in four hours (between other things, don't worry), and the way Rose just kept building and building... yeah, that was quite a ride. Eesh.

Also: and here was me thinking one mission a week on Driftwood was high-speed writing...

And the spoilers. I'm gonna hand over to Morgan for this one.

---

Morgan drummed her fingers on her TARDIS' console, looking between the two messages. The Librarian's note had actually arrived before the Notary's, probably because the Notary had taken the time to add references in triplicate for everything she'd said.

"This is going to be fun for the Reader," Morgan said aloud. "At least I think she's still holding down Topaz Monitor, right? Though she didn't do much with that Ceka woman..."

She trailed off, then glanced around the TARDIS. "Right. No-one here. I need to get myself a companion." She eyed the Librarian's message, then pulled up the ICEP address book. "Dives, Rina... partnered with Zeb. So at least she's got that covered."

Morgan drummed her fingers again, then abruptly closed all three windows and pulled the lever to open the doors. "The D.O.R.K.S.," she muttered as she headed out, "always the D.O.R.K.S. We should've had that thing banned ages back..."

---

Morgan is available for conversations, and promises not to bite. Unless the Guardsman is mentioned.

And now I have to run. ^_^

hS

*insert generic clapping gif here because the one I wanted to post has already been used*
Congratulations on killing this thing! I... Don't think I have any gifts that are good enough for you. But at least, please take this fully realistic hologram of a kitten and a puppy playing together. The best kind of eye bleach I could find.
Also, good luck on the cleanup team. :P


SPOILERS AHEAD!


I was expecting Rose to fight back because of both her ridiculous overpoweredness and the fact that she seemed to remember her death(s), but... That was definitely surprising. I'd say it's handled pretty well, though. A lot of people would just have written it as "Hey, cool, I'm super speshul with awesome powers now!" Hell, I would probably have written it that way. I'm not really good with that kind of stuff. :P

Your poor, poor Agents. *just hugs them forever*

(Also, best Harry Potter GIF ever!)

Congratulations! Even though I probably just got a bunch of spoilers for Half-blood Prince!

Oh yeah, speaking of which...

SPOILERS AHOY! BEWARE! BEWARE!


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I don't quite understand why you decided to make Rina a Time Lady via Zeb and the DORKS. For one thing, I thought the DORKS was basically a portable disguise generator and any changes wore off when you returned to HQ. For another...convenient transformation is oddly convenient. I almost wanna call borderline Sue on Rina, but since she's you and we don't insult authors here, I won't.

Zeb, if you're reading this, I really hope you know what you got yourself into, buddy. *gives basket full of berries and Poffins*

Not only did I not expect you to finish so soon, but the finale and the aftermath were just... wow. I'd comment on the whole lot of it, but I fear for spoilers.

Anyway, congrats on finishing off the whole damn thing! And y'know, maybe I should write an interlude with Rayner and E.V.L. helping to clean up after this whole mess and learning about what happened. Heck, maybe we could write it together (with my agents happening upon Zeb and volunteering), just to round out the whole damn thing and tie off any remaining loose ends!

As a reward for your bravery, I'd like for Rina to have a scimitar forged from a Skarmory feather and for Zeb to have a Razor Fang! Falchion sends his regards for both. ;)

Must go check that out; I only finished Part 4...I think it was today? I've been mostly reading them on the bus (and off the bus, too). Many compliments should come your way :) I've also noticed the occasional typo or the like (quite understandable), but reading on a phone on a bus doesn't really lend itself to noting them down. I'm pretty sure Part 4 had a case of 'ws' instead of 'was'; that's probably the easiest to find.

Seriously, Ix, I've been sitting on this for a while now, and you should know: your PPC writing is really very good, and I enjoy reading it (this is for Rose Potter and also for that Tonks' daughter mission you did just before). I mean, RP does start to drag a little in some places, but I think that's mostly to do with the source material. So. Well done. You are awesome, especially for all the Rose Potter missions.

...which I shall now catch up on. Wow. I am very impressed by the fact you've finished them and the short timeframe is making me both o.O and suspicious, how did you manage that? and basically, yes, Part 5 here I come.

/hands Swiss Bleepolate/ You probably need rather a lot of that...

~DF

Uh...

Can't say I expected this outcome. At all.

I applaud you for your success in this endeavor.

As it was promised, here's the reward for finishing this horrendous voyage:

1) A fully charged Deputy Green Lantern Ring, but that cannot be re-charged, with only one charge and will turn to dust once it's used up.

2) A Kryptonian DNA-based empowering pill from the Injustice: The Regime DCU sub-continuum, increases your physical might by 10,000 times for 24 hours.

May they be of use for all your endeavors, Agents Rina Dives and Zeb... *tips hat and dissappears into the shadows*

I just finished copying all of the mission parts into one document. This mission is, when all compiled together: 201 pages, and 78,291 words long.

Iximaz, I want you to take a good, long look at those numbers. This mission is longer than The Philosopher's Stone. Iximaz, I want you to look at those numbers, and realize what you have done. You have, essentially, wrote a novel. In a little over a month. This is a major accomplishment.

As I said before, I will be reading all of it tonight, and commenting on it tomorrow. I will be sure to be on the final doc tomorrow to congratulate and discuss how it all went. However, no matter what I think, no matter how well received this mission is, I want you to know how proud of you I am. I envy your speed and skill as a writer, and I look forward to whatever else you write.

Congratulations, Iximaz, on your first novel.

Here's a dump truck I "acquired". It is full of Bleeprin. From what I understand you probably need it now.

And by "acquired" I mean borrowed with every intention of returning. But the garage I borrowed it from collapsed when something that was most definitely not the dump truck I was st...borrowing.

Now I will actually go through and read the whole series in the next few days.

It's official, you're free cookie rights have been revoked.

Also, yay! More Rina and Zeb! (I love them