Mar 2019 Archive, part c

I've been hanging out here for a month or so and it's been great fun.

Have a basket of assorted berries, useful for pokéblocks and poffins alike.

I do NOT give anyone permission to use my characters for Shipfest. In-universe, this will be explained by my characters having no Lustverse counterparts for some reason.

Have a suit of Tau battle armor. I warn you though, possession of alien tech is punishable by death.

I don’t remember you, even though the dates mean we must have joined about the same time. Anyway, have a balloon which changes colour, but only when you’re not looking at it.

Have a 1/144 scale Gundam kit, specifically a Neo Zeong!

I suppose a good question would be, what media have you consumed since you first showed up here?

Alternatively, do you remember the gifts you got the first time around? If you don't, we can always give them again. ;)

Happy late birthday!

Here, have a triple chocolate cupcake (Chocolate with chocolate chips and chocolate icing)! Don't forget to blow out the candle and make a wish!

Have some Generic cake that tastes like your favorite flavor!

*throws confetti*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE-1RPDqJAY
Aaaand now I have it stuck in my head.

The nonsensical English subtitles for a Chinese Revenge of the Sith bootleg, now dubbed over the original film by a team of dedicated fans. "R2, do you is ...ing?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XziLNeFm1ok

Can't wait to see their Bios.

Edward now has a wiki page. I don't have time to do Kat's today, but hopefully it won't take as long as the first time.

By the way, have any of you left kudos? Just wondering - I have two and would like to know if they're from Boarders or other readers.

"Another set of four asterisks and three full stops hit the ground. Carrine was yelling at Uma, and was told to go to the hospital wing by Professor Slughorn (or “Sluggie”. The agents winced once more.) "

Did you mean to put the closing parenthesis after "Sluggie" instead of at the end of the sentence?

I quite liked this! It's a good, simple mission to start out your spin-off with. I liked Edward and Kat as supportive, non-bickering siblings who use good teamwork. I also liked the symmetry of them coming from an orphanage (I think? I haven't read Miss Peregrine yet) and being faced with a Sue who put herself into an orphanage as part of a tragic backstory for sympathy points. You also made good use of a lot of visual puns and other jokes based on the typos this fic had.

One little detail that struck me as unique and creative is Edward being too slow a writer to keep the charge list updated with the fic. I think we tend to take it for granted, being word-oriented people, that the word-recording aspect of an agent's job is a simple task for everyone. I liked seeing representation of someone who has a more difficult time writing quickly.

I found a few formatting mistakes and a typo. First, the typo:

"She avoided Slytherin in exactly the same was as Harry had canonically done, and was inevitably Sorted into Gryffindor."

A couple of lines have the bolding from the fanfiction quotes bleeding into your narration:

Then the whole hall erupted into applause. Unfortunately, this broad description also affected the agents. “Stupid Words…” Kat muttered, gritting her teeth and clapping in a strangely forced way.

Kat gulped in air, looking like a goldfish. “She can’t become the fifth Marauder. She can’t.” Kat’s voice was carefully kept level and calm, but the bitterness behind it was undisguisable. “Please. Make this stop.” She shuddered and grabbed a whole six-pack of Bleeprin.

And finally, a missing space between sentences:

"The Sue’s body soon returned to the original yellow cube.Kat had to stay where she was, because Edward had the RA."

I'm looking forward to reading more from you. Happy writing!

—Thanks to the Sue's first name, doctorlit has had "Uma Thurman" by Fall Out Boy stuck in his head for most of this reading. So that's one good thing the badfic has done!

I have recently been introduced to a poet named Neruda who wrote really intense (naughty) love poems. I won't link them directly here, but they have certainly changed my opinions on poetry.

I did some kind of silly little fanfic Haiku. Fandom is Lucifer.

Lucifer, my son
Light the sword, cut existence
Time to move forward


Back again aren't they?
An angel wing dumpster fire
Devil once again


Angel, Lord of Hell
Desired, rebelled, punished
God-given afraid


Are you not afraid?
Prove to me I'm a monster
Bleeding to save hope


Lucifer, Chloe
Have fun with mortality
Maze beats everyone


We can take it back
The power we have given
But we trust in love

The longest running mistake I've ever had in my life so far has been not keeping up with poems since highschool or so.

Easily my favourite poem of all time, something that's been a big influence on my own writing and so on would be The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Bloody classic! Coleridge is a good fella and this is of course probably his most famous poem.

I'm also a fan of his Kubla Khan. Also the poem the game Sunless Sea took its name from, thus robbing me of a great name and cute literary reference to use, in the process.
I'm very fond of the Romantics in general, really. Ought to read more of them.

Preludes, by T.S. Eliot, is another one I'm fond of. On a purely descriptive level, alone, the imagery is incredibly vivid. You get a real sense of place.

Not the deepest, hardest pulls for poetry, I'll admit. But they're good fun anyhow.

I mean, it's kind of poetry. It's also a shameless self-plug.

This is what I did this year for my birthday, and also the 25th of March: A solo acapella arrangement of a couple of JRR Tolkien's poems from The Lord of the Rings.

https://soundcloud.com/user-540910811/all-that-is-gold-seek-for-the-sword

It's far from perfect, but, being as it is the first acapella thing I've ever done solo and also my first recording of an original composition, I'm pretty pleased with how it came out.

JRR Tolkien is definitely my favorite poet. I got into an epic grudge match with a college professor about it too, once. (She took offense to the idea of rhyming poetry, claiming it needlessly limited creative potential.) That being said, I can't honestly say my own original poetry emulates his very much. Here's a sonnet I wrote for a school project last year:

An age I’ve stood upon this shaking shore
And waited for the woman of my dreams
As absent as that told-of fair Lenore
But not in absence absent, no, agleam
And glowing on a ship across the flat
Expanse of water glowing at my feet,
Her presence will be, has been, but not that
Which is is her, nor presence does she greet.
For when she is then I am not and when
I am she’s not. Our love is ever doomed
Except for moments stolen before “then”,
When “earlier” is “now” and now’s presumed.

These moments will be, have been, but are not
For I sacrifice myself for what she’s wrought.

As far as other poetry, I recently picked up David Elliot's Voices, which is about Joan of Arc. I haven't finished it yet, but I'm enjoying it so far! I'd highly recommend it.

I actually have a poem to share, but it's part of a larger plug that I hope to have out later this week, so it'll have to wait. {= )

In the meantime, I heard about the "Celebrating Bach" Google Doodle today, and since I had a snippet of melody in my head, I decided to see what the AI would make of it. (Well, two bars with the second modified to resolve, anyway.) Got a pretty nice harmony on the second iteration, too! You should be able to hear it here.

~Neshomeh

P.S. I've plugged this on the Board before, but what the heck, here's "The Summer Wind" again. I'm proud of it, so why not? Be sure to check out the links in the notes for audio. {= )

Okay, so I won't do that. As for writing poetry, this is the most recent thing I've got. I tend to write more prose. ^^; (ALSO: fanfic for the WWW Trilogy, a lovely series of books wherein the internet gains consciousness. I may have mentioned them before.)

And yours is a wonderfully dark poem!

Where they are from would be a spoiler. Also, I don't want to give too much away about their personalities just yet.

They'd be in the department of analytical science. One is a 40-ish year old man, the other is a teenage girl whose mother was a Sue.

The girl has a condition where she has some uncontrollable muscle movements and other symptoms, but there is a medicine to treat it. If I can't find a real-world condition that matches up, she'd have to try to treat it with Logicillin.

So, here are my ideas for agents so far.

Agent Quantum is a vampire from the diary of a neurotic zombie continuum (where vampire abilities are limited to immortality, flight and super strength and though they crave blood they can go without it. They also burn easily in the sun but this can be dealt with using SPF 150 suncream.). They were an unmentioned character who fell through a plot hole and landed in hq. They have short messy dark brown hair and silvery blue eyes. Her preferred outfit is an xkcd 'stand back I'm going to try science' t-shirt, a fleece of some sort, black or navy tracksuit bottoms and some loose trainers. She loves growing plants and collects cuttings of native plants from continuums she visits, meaning that the RC she works in is lined with many plant pots. She also likes chemistry, and by chemistry I mean mixing stuff together with her chemistry set and seeing if it explodes or not. She is currently trying to make something that is like sugar but with an even greater effect. Quantum is often very ditzy, unfocused and excitable, but is dangerously competent when made angry enough. However, that threshold is rather high.

Agent Kit is a half human half yo-kai from the yo-kai watch continuum. She was taken via embryo extraction kit from this fic and grew up in the nursery, just recently becoming an agent. She looks mostly human, apart from fox ears, clawed fingers and nine brown tails. Her brown hair is usually tied up in a neat ponytail. She did inherit some power from her father, but that mostly equates to small, slightly-bigger-than-a-candle-size fireballs. She just moved into a response centre with Quantum and is less than amused with her behaviour. Like her father, she is quite obsessed with looking good and spends most of her free time brushing herself, or trying to make her disguise as beautiful as possible. Before joining, she read through a large portion of the PPC handbook at least twice. She is highly protective of her canon relatives, but despises fics that ship her parents, or one of her parents and someone who they're not canonically related to, especially if they end up with kids.

...So, yeah. These are my agents so far.

We don't have any villains and one of the two agents I have in mind is based on me (therefore, it would be too difficult for me to capture his personality in the confines of a bio), and I really want to do this. Don't worry, this will not turn into an Emergency except in his daydreams and fanfics.

(Warning: Some canon knowledge of Kamen Rider Zi-O may be required, or this bio will be hard to follow. You can read up on the Kamen Rider wiki. I strongly recommend the pages on things like the Ziku Driver, the Ridewatches, the Anotherwatches and Another Riders, and maybe the Time Jackers.)
NAME: Fanon a.k.a. Kamen Rider Fanon
AGE: Adult
HOME CONTINUUM: Unknown
APPEARANCE: Japanese, thin, short white (but surprisingly tame) anime hair, brown eyes, wears something new every time he’s encountered. He has brown eyes.
AFFILIATION: Himself, Another Characters, one of the Mary Sue Factories
HEIGHT and WEIGHT: I don’t give specifics to make my writing more flexible.
BACKSTORY: He’s definitely had some affiliation with the Mary Sue Factories and tried to unite them, but “[they’re] too busy fighting amongst themselves and wasting their time on trying to breach HQ’s defneses to lend [him] an ear.” He resides in a secret lair that exists between the continua and has protections from being located by the PPC. Sometime before his first appearance, he character replaced Shrek using the methods detailed below and acquired the Shrek Ridewatch (details below).
PERSONALITY: Typical polite Kamen Rider villain applied to the PPC. Very polite and places an emphasis on the “rules of Tokusatsu” such as “no interrupting the transformation sequence”, “no interrupting the evil monologue in which I explain in detail exactly what you’re facing in terms of evil plans and just exposit wantonly”… when they’re in his favor. He has aspirations to create an army of character replacements and Suvians that he can control to become king of the multiverse. He has a tendency to ham things up in a similar manner to Kuroto Dan (before he went completely off the rails) and Woz, giving expository, scene-chewing, and mustache-twirling monologues. He really enjoys the sound of his own voice, and has a habit of telling PPC agents all about about his plans and powers, which tends to blow up in his face when that includes how to counter them. He thinks that there is nothing wrong with screwing up canon and will aid and abett Mary Sues whenever possible by interfering with missions. Direct combat is his forte, and he likes to drag Mary Sues on his side to make it nigh-impossible for agents to continue their mission.
ABILITIES AND ARSENAL:
• Suefluence - Has some level of Suefluence, as by making eye contact with canon characters, he can throw them OOC, implant non-canon memories of him being their best friend, or generally do just enough to their minds that they are ready to accept and use his Anotherwatch.
• Hacked Ziku Driver - A modified version of the Ziku Driver from Kamen Rider Zi-O that is painted with some red accents and compatible with his special Ridewatches.
Fanon Ridewatch - His personal Ridewatch. When it is placed in the left slot (his right) of the Hacked Ziku Driver and the Driver is spun 360º, it transforms him into Kamen Rider Fanon and accesses his main form.
Raku-Raku Ridewatch Creator - An orange-and-silver Kamen Rider-style dagger with two slots, one on each side of the hilt, for Ridewatches and Anotherwatches. It has three modes: Blade Mode enlarges the blade to be used for combat, Gun Mode allows him to shoot energy projectiles from the blade (classic Kamen Rider logic), and Watchmaker Mode allows him to create new Ridewatches and Anotherwatches in pairs. (See Ridewatch/Anotherwatch Creation below.) By plugging in one of his Ridewatches, he can execute its Slash Bash (Blade Mode) or SPaG Destruction (Gun Mode).
Ridewatch/Anotherwatch Creation - This is what allows him to interfere with canon. When he stabs or slashes a canon character with the Raku-Raku Ridewatch Creator in Watchmaker Mode, one of two things will happen:
• If the canon has enough commonly-used fanon surrounding them that directly contradicts their canon character (if a distinct, consistent “fanon self” can be identified separate from the “canon self”), the that canon will vanish into a plothole, and an Anotherwatch and Ridewatch based on that character will appear in the Ridewatch Creator’s slots. An Anotherwatch encapsulates its character’s fanon self, and when a compatible character from the same continuum uses that Anotherwatch, they will be transformed into the fanon version of that Anotherwatch’s character. Therefore, an Anotherwatch serves two purposes: Replacing a canon character with their fanon self, and eliminating another canon character from the equation entirely. The Ridewatch can be used by Fanon in the right (his left) slot of the Hacked Ziku Driver to access a Character Armor based on that character. Doing so augments his base Rider form with some of that character’s powers. (e.g. Sans gets stabbed by the Ridewatch Creator and disappears into a plothole. Fanon then gives Papyrus the Sans Anotherwatch and uses some Suefluence to convince Papyrus to use it. When he uses the Anotherwatch, Papyrus becomes the fanon version of Sans; wangsting all the time about how he couldn’t save his brother, always ready to take on the human with GASTER BLASTERS OF DOOM, super determined and still not a puddle despite what canon says should happen to him, can remember resets, and sexually attracted to fangirls. As for Papyrus, his original personality still exists, but lies dormant, and Papyrus has no idea what transpires while he is fanon Sans. Meanwhile, Fanon gains the Sans Ridewatch, which can be used to access Kamen Rider Fanon SansArmor, giving him Gaster Blasters, the ability to summon bone projectiles, and very low defense.)
• The canon will be surprised that that did nothing to them. Don’t question Tokusatsu logic, where getting slashed by a sword doesn’t mean being cut in half and finishing moves can go through the enemy without the damage that would logically cause.
• Adding on to the above: The main purpose of this ability is to generate character replacements without needing to wait for a fangirl to write them. An added bonus is that Fanon gets a new Character Armor to play with in his Suvian outings. The character replacement resulting from Anotherwatch use is called an Another Character, and a C-CAD will register both the character tricked into using the Anotherwatch and the Another Character they became. (Using the above example, a C-CAD pointed at Another Sans would register Papyrus, but would not be able to get a lock on his OOC level because he is dormant and hidden away. It would then register Another Sans as a character replacement.) Another Characters can be defeated in direct combat using a power from their home continuum (so the UNDERTALE player character’s determination would be able to defeat Another Sans), but can also be executed through normal means. When they die, they (or their remains) will crackle with electricity and then explode Kamen Rider-style, dropping the character transformed into them and the Anotherwatch used. The latter will also crackle with electricity and explode due to the damage sustained. For this reason, throwing Another Characters into lava is not advised as you will kill the canon who drops from them as well, but stabbing them through the chest or throwing them off a cliff is fine as the canon is dormant and will not be harmed. As mentioned before, however, Fanon really enjoys pitting agents against Mary Sues in combat, and since Another Characters are basically character replacements, it’s best to bring a counter to their power in case - no, for the inevitable moment that things go south.
• Takes One to Kill One: Defeating him permanently will require the assistance of a Kamen Rider agent.
• The Rules of Tokusatsu: Powers based on common Tokusatsu tropes, including:
• A force field that prevents anyone from interrupting his monologue or transformation sequence.
• Stealth Hi/Bye: The ability to teleport by hiding himself from the screen, or whatever counts as that in textual media. For example, he can run behind some trees or hide himself in an explosion and turn up in his secret lair.
• Plot Armor: He’ll always have his transformation trinkets. If someone throws his Ridewatches or Hacked Ziku Driver into, say, a plothole to a random location, he’ll eventually track them down, and he can rest easy that, by some contrived coincidence, they’ll avoid destruction.
Plothole Manipulation: Can open plotholes between anywhere and his secret lair.
• Common OC Creation: He can use the above method for replacing characters with their fanon selves to replace characters with original character concepts that are common within the fandom like Coldsteel and Herobrine, and he can acquire a Ridewatch from it. He still needs two compatible canon characters: One to be stabbed to get the Ridewatch and Anotherwatch and the other to serve as the host for the Another Character. As an example, he could make Steve disappear to get the Herobrine Ridewatch/Anotherwatch and use Notch or Alex as the host to become Another Herobrine.

For those who, as expected, don’t understand any of this: He’s a guy who uses the power of Kamen Rider Zi-O’s villains and heroes to replace characters with their fanon selves or character concepts used commonly within the fandom, provided the fanon for either is in some way consistent, and demands another canon character to serve as the host for the replacement. He also likes tormenting agents by forcing them to either face a Mary Sue in direct combat or abort the mission and face the Flowers’ wraths.

I will post on this later when I have some more time!

Quincy was kind enough to check over my agents a while ago, but I've been meaning to get critique on my changes since then.


Agent The First:

Chenille is a male rabbit-wearer taguel from Fire Emblem: Awakening; a former bit character tailored to be a canonical taguel's love interest that was recruited due to circumstance. Taguel as a species are shape-shifters that use special items known as Beaststones to transform. He suffers from night terrors of an event in his backstory. He speaks only when he deems it necessary but when he does he's blunt and abrupt, though not out of purposefully trying to be rude. Due to a lack of socialization, he's rather bad at "reading the room". He has trust issues that, in part, cause his to be distant when interacting with others. But for those he trusts -- as well as children -- he's fiercely protective of.

Agent The Second:

Merula Velveteen is a human woman (mostly), also originating from Fire Emblem: Awakening. She was a former Replacement for The Avatar -- a character most commonly known as Robin -- and was recruited by Chenille due to circumstance. Merula mainly uses Wind magic and a rapier from her home fic. Due to being a former Replacement!Robin, Merula has backstory-induced amnesia and only a few months of experiences. As such, she's unsure of not only her place in the world, but of her own personality. She attempts to remedy this by trying to make herself a personality, at least until her partner snaps her out of it by pointing out that she does have a personality: she's decisive in her actions and choices, and is willing and able to take drastic actions if she views them necessary. Her last name is a reference to velveteen rabbits, due to the noodle incident that was Chenille dropping her off in Medical.

The two become partners some time after Merula's recruitment.


These are the only two for now, but I have got an idea for a Kwami agent from Miraculous Ladybug bouncing around the back of my head.

This is a good one! I really like your writing; it's one of the few styles that can still just suck me in and have me sitting there reading pages and pages without stopping. And I love the kinds of unexpected ideas you explore in a lot of your works. Especially with the way this one started, where it seemed at first to be heavy-handed metaphor and then turned out to be completely literal. Brilliant, that.

I really liked this bit, too: Alchemical concoction of memory and prejudice and ambition and the stupid kid-dreams nobody really let go of, not really, no matter how far and how hidden and rotted they were left in the backs of dreary, tired skulls. Glorious, unstable, alchemical Rebis. The stink of personhood–sentience.

It smelled like rotted strawberries and paint.

Like, that's so cool? The way you take this entirely intangible idea which is tangible to the character and then tie it down to a concept that the average real-world reader can pin down.

You did occasionally use themselves when I think you meant to use themself, but other than that I didn't see much wrong with it. I really like the way your writing reads like a modernist short story from the sort of person who wants you to think about inexplicable Jesus statues or something but without the drudging aversion to fun. Wish I could write like that.

I'm guessing if you were to add an undead species to M-e, they'd be malevolent judging by the rest of the undead inhabitants? Or if not malevolent, at the very least cursed? So it wouldn't work too well for a Sue species that wanted to mesh with canon. :P

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, an upcoming... Gollum simulator?

"A prequel that charts the fallen Smeagol’s journey after acquiring—and becoming slowly enthralled by—the One Ring before he encounters either Bilbo or Frodo in Tolkien’s iconic novels, Gollum will, according to Daedalic, incorporate the duality of the character by having a player-choice system that allows them to make decisions that are either Smeagol-centric ones, or Gollum ones. Think 'Mass Effect’s' paragon and renegade system, but, like, you know, with voices inside your head."

I don't... are there people who want this?

hS

I don't compose my own very much, but I am trying to do an original piano/vocal arrangement of the funeral song for Boromir from chapter one of The Two Towers. So far I've only written the vocal part, and I'm pretty happy with where it's at, but I'd like a second opinion. So if anyone knows sheet music I'd be much obliged if you could take a look and tell me:

1. Does it make sense?
2. Does it sound good?
3. Does it seem like a good melody that works with the words instead of just kind of existing alongside them?
4. Anything else you think needs said about it.

Thanks in advance! (And yes, I know my real name is in the PDF. It's okay.)

Here's one piece of advice right here and now, however: Posting the link to your document publicly BEFORE the beta-reading process generally isn't recommended. Public links on the Board generally mean that a work has already been reviewed by several people who have agreed to inspect it beforehand, as opposed to putting up a public link asking for reviews via crowdsourcing. The latter MIGHT be more applicable on a Discord server for example, but as a means of general feedback rather than a full beta-reading.

Since the link is already out there, though, I assume your permissions on the doc were set to "anyone can read, but only you can edit"? This would minimize the risk of people coming across the link and tampering with the document without your consent. Then when certain people agree to check for issues such as SPaG, you can give them permission to edit as well.

That's just my two Pokémon Dollars, and I'm not sure about others' reactions (though I doubt there'd be much disagreement tbh). If it's any compensation, though, I'll still be willing to check out the Permission attempt itself as a beta-reader if only for grammar-checking purposes (though canon familiarity always helps, of course). My Discord is also available on request if you want feedback a bit sooner.

I'm not exactly the most experienced of beta-readers but I should be able to spot anything obviously wrong and pick up on some SPaG errors.

Catch it here: https://play.pokemonshowdown.com/battle-gen7ou-891143470

When would it be convenient for you? So far, i don't have any notable restriction on my own timetable except a preference for having the macth before 6:00 PM East Coast time.

Catch it here: https://play.pokemonshowdown.com/battle-gen7ou-890130205

When are you available? I'm free... pretty much whenever this next week since I'm on break.

Or not...?

No audio from me, sadly, but hop into chat whenever you lot want.

I'll be posting the bracket tonight after I get home from work.

Seriously, last year owed a lot to luck... Still, gotta try to keep it, and prove luck didn't do all the job.

Faithful to my love of Monotype, here is my team, going with a Psychic theme this time:

Alakazam
Hoopa-Unbound
Jirachi
Latias
Necrozma
Tapu Lele
Victini

Alright, the combatants are all set,
It's time for a Death Battleeeeee!

In which we see how the agents are adapting to life in HQ.
https://rc746.dreamwidth.org/691.html#cutid1
Once again, many thanks to Quincy, Badger and S.M.F. for their beta-work.

As for the fic itself... sometimes I wonder what in the name of very deity out there is wrong with some people!? This is the kind of thing that makes me want to scrub my brain out with a wire brush and acid...

It's a fun read!

"“RUN!!!!!!!” Melissa bellowed like a foghorn, spraying her comrades with excess punctuation."
Love the imagery!

--Ozzielot

That ought to get people's attention. ^~

And they ought to pay attention, because this was a good mission! The fic is godawfully disgusting and almost certainly a troll, but the mission handles it adroitly, providing just enough information to show that it's awful without dwelling on it enough to make the audience suffer. Not as much as the agents, anyway.

There were a few good moments that made me snicker, but I think my favorite is the unexpected scene transition. It was a brilliant way to extend the story without it feeling forced, and funny to boot. ^^

I mostly agree with doctorlit about Sean, too. I absolutely buy him being dazed, confused, and of little to no practical help. My one criticism is that, even dazed and confused, he should still be Agent Sean. I find it hard to believe he could have his face in a girl's cleavage after who-knows-how-long in that plothole and not so much as grin about it. There in particular, he reads less as "dazed" and more as "sedated." Remember, he dated Luxury, and he's the one of the pair who actually hit on Jay. He's about as much of a pervert as Lux is. {= )

That said, I did like his interactions with Melissa overall. They could all probably be played up a little more so they're presented as deliberate actions on Sean's part rather than as things that are passively happening to Melissa, but it's just the cleavage thing that really struck me as OOC.

... And oh god, it just hit me again... the poor Medical staff. Heck, poor Logan. (Or "Steve," lol, don't they know his name is Jimmy?) None of them deserved that. I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry. The agents had better help them out! But at least the Flowers won't lack for fertilizer anytime soon...

Good job, and here's hoping Melissa and May's next mission is not this horrible. {= )

~Neshomeh

This mission was some tricky subject matter, but I think you handled it well. You kept direct quotes from the fic down to a bare minimum, which gave me just enough information to know what was going on without forcing clear mental images on me. It's also a good choice in this case to have the agents check ahead and prevent some of the worst stuff from occurring at all—not just the scatological stuff, but also the nuclear explosion. Cleaning up a canon city from that kind of destruction could be an interesting interlude on its own, but would be a bit too much to tag onto the end of a short mission.

It's been a long time since I read any of Sean's previous appearances (I had forgotten he had blue hair and piercings), but I at least feel like you've done his character justice. It would have been a mistake to make him overconfident and domineering just because he's an Original Series character; I think keeping him meek and submissive, even towards the newbies, was the right way to go. Especially considering he's apparently been wandering Middle-earth for decades up until this mission. I do love that even after being gone for decades, the Queen Anne's Lace immediately sends him on a training mission right after he got back!

I like the pair of agents you've introduced, with a rash but active one and a more reserved but overly analytical one. I think they'll make for a good team going forward. I would like a little consistency on Hurley's name, though. In this short story, she's referred to alternatively as "Melissa" and "Hurley" throughout, and then says near the end to call her "Lissa." I would think she's more likely to bring up her preferred nickname when she first introduces herself to her partner or Sean. Keeping each character's name consistent helps the reader keep track of dialogue tags and action when a lot of characters are on-page at once.

I like that you included the moment where Hurley shows sympathy for Sam. I agree with her lack of fondness for the live-action Transformers films, but I also agree that this fic went way too far in its treatment of Sam, and I like that the narration there serves as both an in- and out-of universe acknowledgement of that.

I do want to point out that you sometimes split a single character's action and dialogue into multiple paragraphs. It makes for easier reading when those things are kept together. For example, in the exchange:

“This… that’s… oy,” she spluttered. “They’re giving us that for our first mission?!”

Melissa snarled.

“I’m going to kill someone,” she spat, and was out the door before May could react.

The first paragraph has May speaking. A new paragraph starts, which my brain expects to be about Hurley, and that proves correct. Then another paragraphs starts, which my brain expects to switch back to May, but instead, it continues Hurley-based action, with May only getting mentioned at the end. It would read better as:

“This… that’s… oy,” she spluttered. “They’re giving us that for our first mission?!”

Melissa snarled. “I’m going to kill someone,” she spat, and was out the door before May could react.

Keep an eye out as you write for places like that.

Also, one little typo:
"Scene change, God and the author only knows, and hey, Jean Grey’s arrived!"

That middle fragment has a plural subject ("God and the author"), so the following verb should be "know" instead of "knows."

—doctorlit, eating second breakfast