Jun 2017 Archive, part b

Is this (taking some of the RP (or other happenings) from the Discord and posting it to the Board) something people want to see happen more often?

- Tomash

I adopted T'Zar from you a bit ago (while I still went by DawnFire on the Board). I was wondering if I could adopt her dead husband Salok as well? I was looking through things related to the two of them on the wiki and started getting the urge to write historical ficlets about how they met and joined the PPC and so on. It would be great to be able to expand upon their history.

(I'd promise to take good care of him, but, uh, he's already dead. Still, I promise to do my best to only build on what you already wrote for him, not change it all around.)

~Z

Yep, you guys were spot-on this time around. In order to get invited, at least one of your parents has to be dead.

And here I was hoping people would be thrown by the fact that not all invited were orphans. Oh, well. :P

Just to check: can Taylor Hebert come?

-Alleb

Can Rose Lalonde (Homestuck) come?

I think I've got the answer, but I'm just checking.

Here's her character page on TV Tropes

Sorry EvilAI, Mattman, Tomash--I got caught up in IRL stuff today, and I'm leaving early tomorrow, so I can't delay the reveal at all.

And so, without further ado...

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Granz was right! Only characters with named swords are allowed to come. Conga-rats, Granz! You win, er, a sense of fulfillment and personal pride!

-Alleb

Gilgamesh (Fate Series)

Jayne (Firefly)

Agent Phil Coulson (Agents of Shield)

Varric (Dragon Age)

Rukia Kuchki (Bleach)

I said I'd post answers at about this time, but no one has guessed correctly yet. Very close, but not quite right. Should we continue, or shall I post the answer?

-Alleb

The TF2 one, in case you were wondering.
Black Scottish cyclops being such a frequent character archetype, of course.

With that in mind, are the following invited:

Justin (El Goonish Shive)
Marth (Fire Emblem)
Ichigo Kurosaki (Bleach)
Kreyul Arroyal (Nightmare Factory)

Let me give you this self-updating guidebook of all the deathtraps in the multiverse, and my wishes of best luck for your future missions.

SPaG: I noticed a smattering of punctuation errors here and there throughout your prompts, but it's nothing a beta shouldn't be able to catch in the future. (Then again, it's nothing a beta shouldn't have been able to catch here, too...) For the most part, you were fine, but in the future, definitely make sure to do a more thorough check.

Characters: You've certainly got an interesting duo here. Oddly enough, the agent I'm more leery about is Elena; I'm not sure what you plan the nature of her and her Pokémon's glitchiness to be like, and I can't help but look at it as a possible way to circumvent aspects of her home canon in the future. On the other hand, I've seen you RP these characters before, and it seems like the glitches are mostly in the name of humor, so I think I can safely put that worry aside. I, for one, am definitely looking forward to when that egg will hatch and what it'll produce.

I like how self-aware Valka is of her similarities to a Suvian. It's a shame I don't know more of the canon, but from checking the Fire Emblem Wiki it looks like nothing's out of place there. At any rate, it certainly sets the stage for some interesting developments in the future.

I kind of hope to see these two bonding over their origins in video game canons in the future. :)

PPC Knowledge: The only thing I'll really flag is that Luxury, as far as I know, isn't in the business of training new agents, but it's not totally implausible she could have gotten drafted for a day. (Boarders, correct me if I'm wrong, please.) Otherwise it looks fine, and you've demonstrated in RPs and in Board discussions that you know what's what.

Can you be entertaining? I was entertained. Need I say more?

Fic to spork: Oh god, I think you've linked this one in the Discord before. Pardon me while I go find the brain bleach. Yeah, if you can make a funny mission out of this mess, kudos to you.

So it is with great pleasure and pride that, with the powers vested in me by the land of Plort, I dub thee Knight leafeyes! *touches your shoulders with a sword*

I'd like to direct folks's attention to the discussion page for "ROM hacks," and get opinions on whether ROM hacks count as fanfiction.

—doctorlit, wanting to see a talk page get some actual talking done, for once

The Prologue and first chapter of my massive fanfic project, The Continuity Saga, is finally up in Fimfiction.net!

Robert Muller, the special counsel investigating the Trump-Russia collusion scandal, hired a whole bunch of lawyers, including several fraud and money laundering experts (there's an autoplaying video in there). He's also now looking at whether Trump obstructed justice by firing FBI Director James Comey.

This all has resulted in several people connected to the administration getting lawyers, including Pence and, oddly enough Trump's personal lawyer. I wonder how deep the stack of recursive lawyers is going to get before this is over.

Unrelatedly, I didn't really follow E3 much, so I don't quite know what happened there, but apparently people are hyped.

I was terribly disappointed with Bethesda's conference.

I can't remember the name, but there was a pirate game that looks great. Some of the people that worked on Black Flag are involved with it.

Sorry I just got too busy to keep up with this. A couple of you were getting close, but I just can't do this any longer.

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Theme was Super-Powered Evil Side.

I'll just ignore them

(and given that we're asking in batches at this point, how about the rest of the Golden Trio?)

(Bel)Garion, Princess Ce'Nedra, Velvet, Silk, Polgara the Sorceress, Belgarath the Sorceror, Durnik, or Barak (from the Belgariad);

Rose Lalonde, Dave Strider, Jade Harley, or John Egbert (from Homestuck);

Aidin, Aidyn, or Domina (from Snailogy);

Emai, Kreyul, Kissae, or Phirre (from Nightmare Factory)?

So many people. I am very obsessive. Apologies for making you track them all down, and if you can't tell for any of the people in question (because Webtoons don't always have wikis), feel free to just say "too bad so sad I can't verify these people". Which means that one or two of the characters I really want to see won't even be checked, but I promise not to get upset about it. At least not publicly.

Is Gambit invited? What about Annie (League of Legends)?

What of Giorno Giovana (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Vento Aureao), son of the vampire known as DIO?

Hm... Can I invite Grace Sciuridae, from El Goonish Shive?

Is John Constantine invited?

Okay. So.

Do I know you? Oh, yes. It feels like you've been around here for at least some months, if not much longer, and I'm pretty sure I've seen you participating in things. I don't think I personally know you too well, but I recognize your username, so you've either been around for a while or been participating in a lot of things. Either way, that's good. (*Actually, after a brief bit of searching the Board, I've discovered you've been around since at least sometime before May of last year. That's great!)

The agents. I like them! Min Ra (I'm guessing Min is a nickname rather than her first name?) feels pretty believable. She fits in just fine with canon, and I don't see any major contradictions between her bio and your portrayal of her in the prompts. She also seems like someone I'd want to read about regularly, which is great. Going by her lust object, I take it she's seen the A:tLA show since coming to HQ; I'd be fascinated to see her dealing with the whole "But everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked" thing at some point, or at least see it mentioned. I'm also curious about just how far back that RP was set--was the Avatar in her time someone named in the show, or is she from before even Kyoshi? It might be worth exploring the changes between her time and Aang’s time at some point.

In summation: I like her, and think she has potential. She also seems like a good fit for DOGA, and not only because of the fire ability.

Effie Raptor is...odd, but no less odd than a whole lot of other anime or anime style creations. (The countries in Hetalia come to mind!) From what I'm following of the "Mary Sue with wings" bit (I looked up the page--seems the nickname was given on the TVT wiki and probably based on the drawing's appearance?), Min Ra's reaction and the Flowers' subsequent reaction seem to make sense. I'd be interested to know what made Effie decide to join the PPC--as it is, there's no real detail on it--but I do like her, and "You break it (ie, let her in), you bought it (ie, congratulations, she's now your partner for your sins)" makes enough sense to me. I also like her as a foil for Min Ra--feisty, emotional teenage firebender partnered with a subdued, precise anthropomorphic fighter jet? It seems like a good combination with a fair bit of potential. So, unless anyone knows of a reason why she doesn't work, or of a way to fine tune her, I'd say she's good too. Also a good fit for DOGA, and the bit about her indecision over whether or not to use her collection of explosives is nice. I expect I might end up liking her, too.

The badfic. I swear I've seen this title before...ah, it's been around since 2008. Maybe it's been on the unclaimed badfic list for a bit and I saw it there.

Opening up chapter 3, since the author says that's where it gets better...straight away I've got Harry getting along with Snape, Harry having changed his name to Harry Kill? (...!), elemental air magic that...does things I wouldn't expect it to be able to do (unless it carries visions to Harry?) (I'd expect Min Ra to have an interesting reaction to this power, actually, so that's a plus), one of the OCs made Minerva McGonagall blush from embarrassment

...yeah, from skimming through the entire fic I'd say I agree with what you wrote. Also, I've definitely seen this one on the unclaimed badfic list before. Good luck.

The writing.

First sample: Effie and Min Ra really do bounce nicely off each other, don't they? I like this one a lot as a little introduction for them.

I also like the plot of the second, but there's one main thing which appears many times in that sample and once in the first one. This would be your tendency to write a dialogue tag (long or short) followed by a colon and then, in a new paragraph, the dialogue itself.

(See: And yet, there Effie was, nearly tearing the RC apart in search of something. After a few minutes of Effie fruitlessly looking for whatever she'd lost, Min decided to ask her:

“What's lit your hair on fire, Effie?”

and:

Min replied:

“Okay, that's bad, but-”)

I've checked around (read a number of grammar articles online, and then looked it up in the Little, Brown Handbook), and as far as I can tell, that's not a currently (or recently) accepted format for dialogue tags in English fiction. This article gives a good run-down of a variety of different ways people write dialogue; I'd suggest having a look at it.

You have used dialogue tags correctly here (“Wait, you meant this box?” she asked.) and here (“It is our duty as PPC agents to be ready at all times to exorcise the influence of Mary Sues. I rather look forward to it,” Effie Raptor answered.), though in the latter example I'd suggest putting the dialogue tag in the middle (like so: “It is our duty as PPC agents to be ready at all times to exorcise the influence of Mary Sues," Effie Raptor answered. "I rather look forward to it.”). However, you've also occasionally used a comma where a period should go:

Min Ra was confused, “No it wasn't. It's labeled trinitrotoluene, and you were looking for TNT,” she told Effie.

*The first comma should be a period, as in Min Ra was confused. "No it wasn't. [...]"

“I got it!” she exclaimed, “it's reverse psychology! The console always beeps when you don't want it to, so if you want it to beep, it won't and you can get some time to yourself! I'm gonna try that!”

*The comma after "exclaimed" should be a period, and the I of "it's" capitalized, like so: "I got it!" she exclaimed. "It's reverse psychology! [...]"

All in all: I like your plot, your characters, and how your characters interact with each other. Your badfic is a fine choice (especially for a mission with an agent who has a sort of elemental magic herself!) and I see no large contradictions between what you've said about the characters and how you've written them, which is a good sign. I also want to read more about them, particularly Min Ra. She's already endearing. And, dialogue tags aside, I don't really see anything that couldn't be caught by a good native speaker beta (it's mainly smaller phrasing tweaks).

However, I would really like to see you implement some form of standard dialogue tags before declaring you good to go with PPC writing. You've been pretty consistent, which is certainly in your favor; now I'd ask that you read through an article or two on dialogue tags (such as the one I linked), and go over the dialogue tags in your second prompt to make sure they match the style of your choice. I don't care which of the forms you pick (though most PPC writers tend to use quotation marks), so long as it's consistent in the piece and used properly.

So, for now, I'm afraid it's Permission Denied. If you rewrite the second sample to use correct dialogue tags, I'll be quite happy to take another look.

~Z

(note: not a PG)
I'm liking the potential for funny inter-agent stuff here. Min and Effie clearly will (and do) clash about some stuff, but aren't so opposed that they'll be unable to like each other.

It's nice to see more DoGA.

I get the feeling that, due to their rather different methods of burning stuff, there won't be many arguments about who gets to do the Duty.

A few minor SPaG things:
- "Luckily, Min"
- "the freaking obvious"
- "mess when by the time"

Most of those seem like edits that didn't get cleaned up all the way. That happens to the best of us, I've gathered, and the SPaG seems fine otherwise.

Also, from my hazy memories of a class I took on the history of writing, I don't think Chinese characters qualify as pictograms, strictly speaking (IIRC, in most cases, they have a concept part plus a pronunciation part), but I might be wrong about that.

- Tomash