Jul 2015 Archive, part a

Sorry it took so long to get to this. 'S been crazy busy here.

I have to admit, I couldn't really get into this mission all that much. Part of the problem for me was the interactions between the various agents. It all felt very lackluster apart from the flirting between Valon and Kala. I thought that was all right, if a bit out of place. I had to roll my eyes at the "overreacting agent" trope again.

Also, there were quite a few gags that just sort of fell flat. The physical jokes in particular (like Valon pulling things out of his pockets) didn't work. I understand that humor is a subjective topic, but I think it can be argued that prop comedy does not necessarily translate all that well to the written medium.

A few last questions/concerns regarding the main mission:
— Was it ever explained why there was no first-person dummy and they didn't get possessed, or did I miss that part?
— Were povs as creatures first introduced in this mission? I can't find any mention of them on the wiki.
— The first mini that showed up (the sparklewolf) was never named in text, that I saw. It's advisable to always state their name in the mission itself.
— Why did they use Retcon and not a neuralyzer? Retcon is more easily undone, if I understand it correctly.

Now, on to the dragon interlude. It was charming enough, but as Tira said, it was confusing given that it wasn't explained who the kids were. Having wiki entries is fine and all, but a good story should give you all the information you need inside itself.

All in all, I'd say these stories need work. They just feel really rough to me. Other people have obviously differed, so make of my thoughts what you will.

PC

Though I (thankfully) never read Twilight, and only have a passing knowledge of Eragon thanks to the movie, the mission wasn't totally incomprehensible. This was pretty well-written.

But, of course, I've spotted a few errors.

First off, a Latin error:
Oh, and ‘carus unus’ is completely the wrong way to say ‘dear one’ or ‘my dear,’ she should probably be calling Bella ‘cara mia’.
You're off by one letter. The word for "my," declined to feminine vocative singular, is mea.
Mia is a Latin word, but it's actually a verb in the imperative singular, and I'm pretty sure that its meaning is not the concept you're looking for.

The remaining issues are in the English:
1) The disguised girtablilu set to shredding Valon’s shirt with a will,
Please explain what you're trying to say here. I don't get it.

2) Since you’re the Disentangler, and all.
This error is minor, but I'd suggest deleting the comma.

The mission was pretty good. I like the advancement of Valon and Kala's relationship, and Kozar is very funny. I didn't think Bella could be even more of a Sue, but obviously I was wrong.

I found the Ten Years Hence story to be overly confusing, personally. I'm not familiar with the majority of the characters, and the wiki isn't helping me figure out who they are.

Oddly enough, I'm actually doing something for it this year: going to see some fireworks with my friends.

My mom and I are also going to plant some seeds. (Though I think we would've been doing that anyway, but shhh.) Should be fun, if it doesn't start raining again.

How about you? Any plans?

~DF

/cautiously steals some of Iximaz's cakefetti and throws it/

Hoom, hoom.
*clears throat*
Right!

Activity: do I know you? You've been here long enough. Though I did spy a certain RL-induced drop in activity recently.

PPC knowledge: I do not see anything blatantly wrong. Or wrong. Or anything. You're good.

Fic to spork: I read one chapter and went 'augh' and I have it from credible sources the rest is just as bad.

Writing ability (creative): Gungan agent, oh yes, how didn't we think about this before? It's hilarious! I also particularly like how Bosh'Guk argues with him... themselves?

The first prompt is okayish, but the second had me clutching my ribs. All good.

Writing ability (technical): I don't see any booboos. I also know get your pieces beta'd, so I'm confident I won't be seeing any "My Immortal" clones growing up from under your pen before dragging themselves to a lake and plopping in, tentacles writhing.

Therefore, unless another PG objects: Permission Granted.

Conga rats, dood.

Man, I only started watching the show a few years ago so I have seriously never seen any of the old episodes. I mean, the look-backs over the last few episodes have been weird just for how much the sets changed over time.

... I don't think the Canon Librarian would tolerate anyone else working in his library.

Also he keeps the lights turned off and the whole place shrouded in unnatural darkness. ^_~

hS

Ix and Darkotas gave me different ideas to work with. Sorry for pushing threads off, eheheh.

With Star Trek, anything that's not from the live-action movies or tv shows isn't canon, end of story. However, a lot of people will declare elements of non-canon works part of their personal canon. So unless something in one of the episodes contradicts it, feel free to use it, though maybe put a comment in the author's notes or something.

(The EU moment that's totally part of my personal canon? The part from Spock's World where Amanda responds to a tabloid headline about her having married a little green man by saying "There's nothing little about my husband.")

The haiku are very impressive. I'm not really familiar with the matter at hand, so they don't make a lot of sense, but I like them on a lyrical level.

I've heard a lot about Brewdening Love, and I'm looking forward to seeing your mission to it! Will we get to see Wobbles and the Notary in action again?

By which I mean not 'is this a good piece of fanfiction?', but 'is this suitable for your vaguely defined purposes porpoises?'.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2621508/1/Three-AM

If not, the author has several other Star Wars universe (one of the few fandoms I know for certain you are familiar with) which feature slash in the summary.

- Irish

I love explosions! Hey, is MISTER TORGUE hiring?

Have an earwormy song!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i574Em3IrI

I totally meant to write a fanfic for Steve's birthday arrgh I mean, please enjoy your fireworks SAFELY. Holidays shouldn't include people losing digits or getting burned, OK? OK.

With that being said. YAY! We're actually somewhat awesome despite what the news implies! (I compare our country to a well-meaning but kind of dumb teenager.)

Americans celebrate Independence Day because it was when they were rid of the British.

Brits celebrate Independence Day because it was when they were rid of the Americans. =]

But I will still down a glass of whisky cream to your health! Have my fireworks, America! :D

But I think we're on good terms with her now that we're grown. :)

Though, as a pedantic historian, I feel I should point out the founders actually signed the thing on the second of July. It frustrated John Adams to no end when people started celebrating on the fourth.

I'm just hoping no one tries to shoot their own fireworks today. A town shortly north of this had a destructive fire in a residential area, and the whole county is so dry it'll go up like tinder for a spark.

It's just a regular day here.
(Israel's independence day is 5 Iyar, which, thanks to the Jewish calender being a lunar one, 'moves around' — this year it was April 23rd.)

I'm assuming you're not just writing the character so you'll have the challenge of a phonetic accent, correct?

Speaking from experience in the POTC fandom...phonetic accents are very, very hard to do well. I see it all the time, even in otherwise well-written fics, where poor Jack Sparrow ends up sounding like anything from street teenager to Southern to Scottish. Yes, Scottish.

On that occasion, Potcsues had some mightily helpful advice for prospective accent-writers:

Hasunoutena: Is dialogue always written like that in PotC fics? Because after I read the snippets of that fic, I can't get the Scottish accent out of my head. I'm sure that wasn't the intention.

Potcsues: Well, not always.

Some people just don't feel like bothering with anyone having an accent at all and get caught up in making everyone speak "proper" English. Unfortunately, to make someone speak proper English one needs to have paid attention in an English class at least a few times in the course of their lifetime, so that never turns out well either.

It's very rare that someone just alludes to an accent, like people who know what the **** they're doing do when writing accents in fiction.

As for me, I wouldn't say that phonetic accents can't ever be written well under any circumstances, but I wouldn't advise anyone to try it without a strong background in linguistics or at least a few years listening to the accent on a regular basis. In addition to alluding to an accent, what will help distinguish your character's speech will be the word choices and colloquial expressions that he uses, which is usually more than enough for the readers to get the idea.

Ќ—Araeph

Take refuge in audacity. Make this character the embodiment of all the positive stereotypes (e.g. always friendly, boisterously happy, likes loud and silly traditional drinking songs) and then make their accent completely ridiculous. If you're going to be stereotypical, and with a phoneticised accent you are whatever you try to do (consider any foreign Bond villain or the Dobermann from Up), the least you can do is be nice. =]

The Cajun Accent is hard to replicate without sounding offensive, especially if you have not heard it properly. Living in Louisiana, I have heard it, but in order to be most helpful I would like to know a little bit more. You say near New Orleans, do you mean like a suburb of New Orleans? Do you mean Baton Rouge? Or do you mean Ascension Parish (Deep Bayou)? Or do you Atchafalaya Basin (Swamp People from History Channel)? There are slight differences in all of those accents, and all can be considered Cajun and near New Orleans.

But for general advice I recommend three things. First Diction should be your first choice, a phonetic Cajun accent runs the risk of becoming in comprehensible. Second, and this is in most cases going to be a must, throw in a smattering of French. Things like 'mon ami' or 'laissez les bon temps rouler' (Let the good times role) (Useful in certain circumstances), 'cher/cheri' is another one. And finally as a good generic guide in my opinion, look at Gambit from X-Men (Comics or Original 1990's Cartoon). He works as a pretty good template.

Usually with Irish English and Cockney accent...

Still, have all my help, dude:

Wikipedia article on Cajun English

General accent writing tips

Why not use a Chameleon Arch to turn back to human? (As in Human Nature/Family of Blood.) Unlike the disguise generator, it seems to be permanent (or for at least as long as a human lifetime anyway) as long as you don't open the watch.

And Terabyte is about thirteen kinds of funny.

However, I'm a little concerned by your reading defences of Biblical history. It seems like you're only doing this so you can write slightly better arguments against divine creation/intelligent design/whatever buzzword creationists come up with to peddle their religious beliefs in science classes. What I'd say you should be doing is coming into this with an open mind wrt evidence-based scientific inquiry, rather than simply to try and shore up the tenets of your faith.

Other than that, yay books! Books are good, for the most part. =]

I was particularly impressed by her castle.

Accidentally left youtube auto-playing, and when I came back to my computer it had moved on to a similar series. I was very surprised to see Maleficent on my screen.

- Irish

Have some German Chocolate and some Bleepka.

Have a guaranteed starter Pokémon!

Iiiiiiiiiit's Noivern!

And a starting item!

Fire Mind from The Binding Of Isaac: Rebirth!

The synergy here is just plain good. Fire Mind is like King's Rock, but arguably better - every attack without a chance to Burn the opponent has a 10% chance to Burn the opponent. This makes its Infiltrator ability shine all the more, as it has the chance to inflict major statuses through Substitutes whatever move it takes. Given how easily it can be walled, it's useful for an OU mon to have. =]

Welcome!

I'm not sure if we've met, but welcome back anyway! :D
Well, have this SACRED COOKIE OF INFINITE KNOWLEDGE (: :)!!!

I don't think we met; I'm Alleb! I'm fairly new-- I arrived back in May, I think. Have a flying carpet, courtesy of the Disney fandom, and welcome back!

I don't know where you're finding dust, since we keep the Board reasonably clean. Regardless, it's lovely to re-meet you, and here's a box of chocolate-chip granola bars!

Have an animate origami frog. Imbued with a charm against laptop failure.

Sorry to hear about your laptop, again. I hope everything's better where you're at! We've all been busy as well with our own things too, don't worry...

Anyway, as a welcome back present, have a scientifically accurate miniaturized Quetzalcoatlus! Warning: Do NOT keep it in the vicinity of your other housepets.

Have a +5 vorpal shovel! It automatically decapitates on a critical hit.

I cried so hard when they ended. I need to watch that trailer, and I can't wait for the series!

I was a big fan of the book series and was super excited when Netflix announced plans to make a TV series.

I read those a while back. The TV series should be interesting.

And oooh, this is exciting! I'll have to reread those books, I liked them quite a bit when I was a kid. :D

I say "yes" to both the "mushroom-shaped Daleks" comment and your questions. The Shroobs are simply too inherently evil (and parasitic) to be reformed in any capacity.

Now, one could conceivably leave a Sue in Toadwood Forest to be transformed/drained of her Vim (or in the Vim Factory itself) if one was feeling particularly evil or the Sue was particularly annoying. I bet Sues make great starship fuel. >:)

Even if it is not, I do not necessarily see that as a barrier, it just might require some work to explain why a Shroob would want to be a PPC agent. And as far as I know there are also Dalek members of the PPC. So I see no reason why they would be categorically barred. As I said, it might take some work for it to make sense, but I see no reason why it would be impossible to do so. Merely improbable.

Fanfic for Black Beauty, The Black Stallion, and/or just about anything by Marguerite Henry, including but not limited to Misty of Chincoteague and King of the Wind. All good horse books that I read in my youth, and quick reads for an adult, if you want to expand your horizons.

There's also the Saddle Club series, I guess, but I think I read all of maybe two of those? I dunno. Point being, I can't vouch for the quality of the series as a whole.

I feel like I'm forgetting something... I know I read books with unicorns in them, for one thing, but I can't recall any titles at the moment. Bah. I'll let you know if my memory jogs itself.

Oh, also, I have a couple good reference books about horse breeds to hand, and I've done some reading about coat-color genetics, should that come up.

I was just one of those kids who loved horses. Never had the money for actual riding lessons, though.

~Neshomeh

But I don't know if that's one of your fandoms. I'm guessing LotR would be a good place to start, in that case. I'll keep my eye out for something.

By the way, I've been riding horses since I was little, so if you want to know something the book might not have made clear/didn't explain, just shoot me a message. (Only as long as it's not about breeds, I'm horrible with breeds. Riding and care is my thing.)

Contain... the calamity... that is your mammaries.

Oh, who am I kidding, MONSTER MUSUME BABY!!!

Now just waiting for my lovely, lovely Zombina-chan~! :D

If you haven't watched it yet, Attack On Titan isn't half bad: zero fanservice, lots of action, clean animation style, and three dimensional maneuver gear. Some say it's overhyped but I don't care.

I'm still around here and there - I'm just not on the Board all the time.

If it's not too late, I'd love to lend a hand with killing this thing. Equally if you've already planned it out, that's cool too!

...I was planning to introduce Agent Alpha, a resurrected canonical from The Evil of the Daleks. Alpha already had the Human Factor in canon, so that's one less step.

I believe I do.

A reliable Doctor Who source (link below) says in the article on the Time Lord species that "all thirteen" incarnations of the Doctor put the other Time Lords in another dimension for…something… I don't know what yet. But, once he was about to die for good, they granted him a new cycle of regenerations, another round of thirteen forms. Thus, a Time Lord can only have thirteen forms. It's most likely that the new forms are the ones the audience sees him in. So, operating on that theory, it makes sense that once the 13th Doctor dies, he dies for good, without regenerating, if canon is to be followed.

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Time_Lord

The most common ones I have seen are either Susan or Jenny.

Here is a whole article on the speculation, for anyone who has not finished Series 8, there are spoilers. It is an interesting set

I personally prefer the idea of here being Jenny. I think they could have utilized her better.

I thought the same thing about the girl at the end, although Juliet Landau should really be Romana... so fingers crossed for Susan!
*bounces*
I spent all of last night freaking out about this!
This is great!
OSGOOD
MISSY
ZYGONS
SUNGLASSES
GUITAR
HEEEELP

I hope I finish LOST before September 19th... or else Doctor Who will obviously occupy my mind until season 9 is over! X3

*waves flags, blows kazoo*

I know a lot of people didn't like Twelve due to his abrasive manner, but I think that's part of why I like him. Maybe it's because I write multiple Won't Put Up With That Nonsense characters myself? Anyway, this paragraph is just for spoiler protection, in case people see it on the preview. Is this enough text? It'd better be.

So: that was definitely Skaro, or at least a Dalek planet. Saw This And Thought Of Exterminate. ^^ Hopefully they'll be better handled than Rusty The Good Dalek.

Zygons are goofy-looking. ;) But shapeshifters do make for good monsters.

I wasn't counting, but there's at least two new monsters (apparently) in the trailer - the ghost-things and the welders. Ghost-things looked like another Moffatt 'here is a common fear MADE REAL' episode (see: Silence in the Library, Blink, Listen, multiple others); I'm not sure what the fear would be, but that was the vibe I got.

And the newcomer. Heh, given who every other Mysterious Character has been, is there any chance she's Missy again? ^^ I'd love her to be Susan (which might make the Dalek planet, um... Earth!), but I'm going to place an off-the-wall bet: Leela. Hey, she stayed on Gallifrey, didn't she? And the tone comes across as fairly classic Leela.

(She won't be Leela.)

September 19th is only two months away. ^_^

hS

Remember, Susan was happily married to David. Besides, we don't even know if she was a Time Lady (not all Gallifreyans are Time Lords, are they?)...

Okay, I'm just saying this, because I want it to be Jenny ;D

LOOK AT THIS!

THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING

GUYS I AM SO EXCITED

I CAN'T USE LOWERCASE

THIS IS HUGE, GUYS

SEJBW;EOJRW0WFLJSDSEK

-Iximaz, who has a keysmash problem

Well, I'll be looking forward to that. :) Which era does it take place in? Do they interact with the Enterprise at all?

She got her own Sexy! :D

And she got her own TARDIS? HOW CAN ANYONE CREATE THIS MADNESS?|>

The interactions of Rina and Valon were particularly enjoyable. And that fic... *shudders* One thing: The author notes dividing the bulk of the story from the TARDIS followup threw me off. I wasn't sure for a moment if the story ended there or somehow went on to another mission. I read this on my phone, though, so it might have just messed up and changed the order somehow. On the whole, fun and enjoyable mission!

My favorite part has to be Valon as a Dalek, and it was nice to see the whole "EX-TER-MIN-ATE" thing being put to good use. :)

Kinda sad that the TARDIS didn't want Rina, though... I'm sure it'll end up in good hands someday. Here's hoping!

Seriously, what the heck was that thing? At least Valon (temporarily) got a TARDIS out of it :)

One question: Is the part where Valon meets that TARDIS supposed to be like an end-credits scene? The way the author's note was placed gave me that impression. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

But I wonder how Valon got the power of knowing when Kala understands him.
The girtablilu took a bit to figure out what he was getting at. When she understood, though, he smiled.
Or it is a typo and you meant "she smiled".

Krautpicking:
1) I’ve never heard a German use "Blut" in swearing; this is probably a bloody Yankees’ habit.
"Scheiße! We forgot the TARDIS!” would work better.
2) We have the weird habit of capitalizing all nouns, not just proper nouns. If Valon has a good reason to swear by shit and blood, "Blut" should be capitalized.
3) I feel that "Blut und Scheiße" sounds better, although still weird. I have no rational explanation for this, it’s either "put the longer word at the end", or "progress from unpleasant to repugnant", maybe both.

HG

I really enjoyed this mission. Valon's choice of disguise was hilarious, and it's cool to see Rina getting into being the Aviator a little more.

First Latin, now Spanish. The missions are becoming multilingual, it seems. Speaking of which: DawnFire, I believe that

First Latin, now Spanish. The missions are becoming multilingual, it seems. Speaking of which: DawnFire, I believe that

Wow. This must be a PPC first: a badfic so short that the mission is able to quote the entire thing! So much fail with so few words…wow.

But there seems to be an error on your end as well.
"And why would she contact Davros, leaving aside the whole ‘complete different flarking universe’ problem? I just… no. No tienes razón."

Is Valon speaking to one of the badfic characters? As written, he said "You're not right."

With my limited Spanish, I would consider correcting it to no tiene razón, but even though it correctly translates "he isn't right" in the sense "he's wrong" I don't know if it is appropriate for "this isn't right" in the sense you want, i.e., "this makes no sense" or "something's screwy here."

If there are any Spanish speakers aBoard, please help.
(Where's Herr Wozzeck when you need him?)

Valon's last choice of disguise was pretty fun, too--I'd been thinking about that for a bit, and it was fun to see on screen. I'm still wondering which of my agents could potentially try it out...

...yeah, I'll keep thinking.

But yeah. Very fun. Good job, both of you!

~DF