Subject: And another Interlude!
Author:
Posted on: 2024-02-02 22:56:22 UTC
Name Pending, a short interlude about trading. Not much to this one, but it was fun to write.
Subject: And another Interlude!
Author:
Posted on: 2024-02-02 22:56:22 UTC
Name Pending, a short interlude about trading. Not much to this one, but it was fun to write.
It's been a while since I've revisited Charlie and Jiwon, but here we are! I've noticed I tend to bundle interludes and missions with each other, and I don't feel like breaking that pattern any time soon, so here's another double for y'all.
Feeling Down, a simple Interlude about dumpster diving. Started this back in 2022 and finally scrounged up the words to finish it.
Monster High, a Potterverse mission that turned out a bit different than my normal fare. Funnily enough, this was another piece started in 2022. This became the new longest work I've ever published, which might explain part of why it took so long.
Maybe I should start popping these writings on AO3 or something for the convenience of readers - I'm starting to lose track of how much I wrote myself, haha. If I ever get that done, and if I manage to finish polishing more writings before this slips off the front page, I'll prolly add it to this thread.
But yeah, hope you enjoy!
That was quite the adventure! I'm not too sure if anyone learned anything or if anything will be different because of it, but it was fun to revisit the Ground Floor and the Pool, and I really enjoyed your take on the Escher Room with the melting (and scurrying) clocks in. For me, I think you described Charlie getting pummeled by the Escher Room a little too well, though. I get that they have D&D physiology and were fine, but the injuries seemed pretty upsetting while they were happening. ^_^;
The surreal contrast between the noisome trash heap and the pristine, empty pool was great, though.
Now I'm wondering if my Nurse Alex wound up in the PPC via the trash heap, since he's a discarded character from one of my unwritten novel ideas. I could understand him not wanting to talk about it if so!
~Neshomeh
“Feeling Down”
Your stories often start with Jiwon asleep in the RC, so I like that you acknowledged continuity here by pointing out that Jiwon really doesn’t have much familiarity with HQ, despite how long he’s lived there. You get his discomfort and timidity across very well! I think it was a good choice using an Escher room for this journey; we usually see them as a gag, but for Jiwon, it’s unfamiliar and intimidating. The melting clocks are a nice touch, referencing another famous painting style, and the spider-like clock adds another level of discomfort to the scene. The creepiness of the overall scene makes the gag where Charlie gets absolutely demolished by the gravity, but comes fine due to Dungeons & Dragons physics, stand out as even funnier!
Damn, you made the HQ pool almost unnerving! I couldn’t tell why right away, and had to read the first scene over again before I caught the reason: it’s described. It feels so alien to read a part of HQ with so much description, and no generic surface, and the A/C running! (HQ does have a ventilation system, per the Poison Joke RP, but it’s normally unmentioned.) It makes the scene a little eerie, with Jiwon almost feeling like he’s stranded somehow? It’s also so, so clean, contrasting even more with the ground floor, and adding to the sense of it being a liminal space. The doorway vanishing at the end is the perfect final touch!
Well, Charles is a jerk, so I’d say you made a good choice using Charlie instead! Charles did make for a fun fight scene, though! Charlie’s combat feels so much like a D&D character, with their laid-back attitude still showing through, but not standing in the way of their skill. I love that Charles dissolved into words at the end, showing that he’s not simply an alternate of Charlie, but really not a legitimate character at all. It’s very Thursday Next! By the way, was that Charles’s voice calling Jiwon “dead weight” from the Ashes?
Some other minor things I liked: the cameo by the DIO flashpatch, and the fact that space-case as Charlie seems most of the time, they’re still paying attention to Jiwon, and take steps to get him home once he starts getting overwhelmed. Charlie is good folks!
Some errors I caught:
. . . and one had six legs it used to along the walls like a giant spider.
A vanished verb!
Jiwon gave them the first good look he had at them since he went down to the pool.
Repeated pronouns!
Charlie readied their scimitar, ignoring the tinges of pain that roiled up their arm and through their chest.
I think you were wanting “twinges of pain” here?
“Monster High”
I like that these two stories have an unspoken connection between them, that the Ashes in “Feeling Down” made Jiwon feel guilty about falling out of contact with his family, and so he’s now making a call home. I had assumed Jiwon was from a mythological setting, so I’m a bit surprised his family has a telephone, or maybe he was adopted by a human family? Cramming a telephone service into Postal is a funny idea; it definitely works thematically, since it’ a form of communication, and it makes the space busier and more cramped. Perfect for humor and encouraging more character interaction!
Wow. “Altair Institute of Magic?” Like, literally "A.I.M?" Yes, I’m sure everything is quite above-board at a place like that, no need to look closer. At least Kate Monster finally got that “school for monsters” idea off the ground, only took nineteen years of funding!
Charlie is so dang funny in this mission! I love their reasoning that they needed a “wand” to do magic in the Wizarding World without breaking canon, but the mental image of them storing some random stick for this purpose in their Bag of Holding, and then pulling out said stick in the middle of a forest that was probably filled with sticks anyway, is just amazing. (And the ongoing appearance of the room temperature cheese wheels is hilarious, too!) The background monsters only having enough personality to surround Charlie and Jiwon made for an unnerving scene, but them grabbing the RA and hot-potatoing it away from the agents broke the tension as another funny mental image. Charlie reanimating the blank Death Eaters was a great set-up and payoff, and made for some wonderful chaos to ramp up into the final confrontation. Lastly, I loved Charlie having to interrupt Jiwon’s charges over and over to cast spells on the school staff. It makes sense that such powerful wizards would be doing everything they could to break free, and it avoided the usual problem of the charges being a block of text, with humor to boot. Well done!
Another thing you did well is the different handling of Azalea and her sentient magic. I like that you foisted all the “eldritch Suvian” imagery onto the magic, and let Azalea just be a person in the end, even if she was “in on it.” I hope the reality room gets her nice and stable, so she can return home and just be an ordinary resident of the Wizarding World (although I suppose she’s a squib now, if that really was all her magic? Nothing wrong with that either, of course.) The idea of Jiwon’s pearl absorbing all that glitter was rather frightening, and I’m glad Jiwon was able to get healed up afterwards. Dr. Glocktopus is a major treat! I love everything about him, the notecards, his expressiveness despite lack of expression, and the slightly unnerving (in a nice way) tone behind his movements and the, uh, “fourth-dimensional scalpel.” I really feel for Jiwon’s concern that he doesn’t measure up to Charlie, as I often feel the same about me and my coworkers. But I guess we both have to remember that contributing isn’t a contest, and as long as everything is getting done, the team is still a team, yeah?
Wellllll, a longer story means more opportunities for errors, yeah? So let’s start!
As such, it was tucked into the corner of the already small Postal Division area, making the lines even more cramped.
Postal is actually a whole department!
“. . . I have nothing against humans,” Jiwon said quickly, “It’s just that they’re . . .”
Since the second part of the dialogue is starting a new sentence, I think you can end with a period after “quickly.”
“Power play’s already started.”
And it very much was.
I think “was” should be “had” there, as in, “the power play had started.” Unless I’m misinterpreting what the second sentence is alluding to?
“. . . Stellar characterization, fic.” Jiwon said . . .
A comma rather than a period, there.
Jiwon on the other hand, flinched every time his oversized tail brushed against one of the passerby. Everything was far too cramped for his liking, especially with how he couldn’t most of the monsters he knew surrounded him.
In the first sentence, there should be a comma after “Jiwon,” to separate “on the other hand” from the main line of the sentence. The second sentence appears to be missing a verb?
Sorry for being one of Those Animal Guys, but a manticore would be “venomous,” not “poisonous.” : )
“That doesn’t feel like a good answer,” Charlie said as Draco sputtered but didn’t argue back.
“That’s because it isn’t.” Jiwon wrote down a charge.
These should be separate paragraphs, since they have different speakers.
“I don't think that's a canon-complaint spell.”
Then again, there is a lot to complain about in this canon . . . >.>
“. . . warping canon up create a victim complex . . .”
This is part of the charge list, but it feels like a bit of a run-on. Was “up” supposed to be “to?”
Wisps of glitter flew outward, trying to escape, until they were pulled into a writing mass around Jiwon’s outstretched hand.
Best typo ever! After all, aren’t we all just writing masses, in the end? : )
(I’ll read the other interlude you posted next!)
—doctorlit was going to say “Solaris” is a weird name for a vampire, but he doesn’t seem bothered by sunlight, so I guess it fits after all?
Thanks for reading! Once again, your ability to see more connections in my writings than I intended to make strikes; I'm glad they work out continuity-wise, despite the publishing order of these pieces mostly being determined by the order they were beta'd in. And I'm glad my humor's still working! After reading my own jokes for so long for over a year, I started to lose the ability to judge their actual humor levels myself, haha. And I'm especially glad that character spot at the end wasn't too obviously ham-fisted or anything. I have less practice with serious emotional beats, so I was somewhat worried there. It's a similar case for eerie, spooky vibes, and it's also nice to see they worked out at least competently.
To answer some questions: Charles's voice wasn't the intent of that one line in the Ashes, moreso the Ashes preying on Jiwon's insecurities and fears, but perhaps that could also be an interpretation - a hateful remnant subsisting by joining a horde of other hateful remnants feels fitting. The Ashes of himself instead of a Flame... hm, maybe I can keep this in mind if I ever revisit the Ashes.
Speaking of, I'm very glad Charles got replaced by Charlie eventually; I checked the Rudi's RP logs where I was first testing the waters, and I unironically had him say "m'lady"... ugh. I wonder though, does this make Charlie comparable to a Suvian, considering they 'replaced' their original iteration? Maybe I can explore that in a later piece...
And I guess I never did give Jiwon's home verse much detail yet, come to think of it; funnily enough, when I first came up with him he was from ancient mythology, up to and including the time period. But as time passed, he ended up shifting in characterization and partner dynamic, and his backstory got updated with it. Currently his home setting's an urban fantasy kitchen sink of a world set in roughly modern times, which would explain the telephone (and his passable knowledge of pop culture).
And, as always, thanks for catching all the typos!
-a writing mass, happy to publish something with Dr. Glocktopus again after almost three years
Name Pending, a short interlude about trading. Not much to this one, but it was fun to write.
I think I just now got the “joke” that Charlie is a D&D character, so he likes to go on “adventures” through HQ. That’s why he wanders around so much, but doesn’t seem to have particular goals in mind when he’s looking through the ground floor, or trading for stuff!
Oh man. I love the Curator, and I love her museum. I love the idea of the PPC’s history getting preserved in-universe, and I would love to have some of my characters explore the museum some day! Are those “BACKROOMS” the actual Backrooms? It does make a lot of sense for HQ to connect there! And is that the Aviator’s TARDIS?
Perfect ending with the rat in the box! It’s nice to acknowledge Luxury’s other hobbies are also part of her personality, and I can see her thinking a cat person would enjoy having a rodent as a decoration. Very funny!
The only possible mistake I saw was that the “mob boss’s” cigarette changes into a cigar after a couple paragraphs, but maybe that’s an intentional gag, that his smoke tool changes when no one is paying attention?
—doctorlit finds the Frontrooms a little too crowded anyway
I liked the interlude and the mission, and the Charlie/Charles fight, and the clouds of angst, and Dr. Glocktopus, and really all the other little bits of worldbuilding that're sprinkled in here ... and I like how the fic getting an improving rewrite was represented in the mission.
Was good, did enjoy, still like reading Charlie and Jiwon!