Subject: Well, not exactly.
Author:
Posted on: 2014-10-31 10:35:00 UTC
You say only I can grade your agent idea: not so! You may be the only person who can determine how close to their canon they are, but anyone can judge how good they are as a character. Remember, people who read your missions aren't going to look up the canon first, so they'll be going purely on the character as written.
And... well. Let's take a look:
Errol. The idea of him not being allowed to use a weapon is interesting, but I don't think it works. We have lots of ex-Suvian agents, so even if you offered a justification for 'use sword, become Stu' (which don't make much sense), you'd have to explain why no-one else has the same problem. And even if that happens - agents are supposed to use weapons that fit into the canon they're working in. Using pet demons is fine if you're in, say, His Dark Materials, but it wouldn't work at all in, say, Star Trek.
That's not to say it couldn't work with some tweaks. I see two options:
1/ The demons take on the form of relevant weapons, staying as close to their norm as they can. So in Lord of the Rings, Closet could be a magic staff, Dumat a bow, and Ripely a sword. Since there's at least one talking sword in Middle-earth, he could even talk back (and if you weave a little galvorn into the makeup of the other two, so could they). But they'd still basically be weapons, and unable to act on their own. In something like Star Trek, you could look at intelligent weapons, or even androids.
2/ The demons are placed in normal disguises, and lose (the majority of) their powers. So in LotR, they might all be elves - much to their chagrin, I'm sure. I can see them trying their level best to get Errol to give them the most powerful disguises possible, and him constantly refusing and setting them as, like, rabbits or something - or, equally, trying his best and bending the rules to make them all balrogs.
Either of those notions (which are just off the top of my head) would work. Carting around actual demons into random verses? That's not so good.
Now, personality. You've pretty much given them one sentence each on this, which... isn't very much to go on. It's like describing the protagonist of The Hobbit as 'short, moderately wealthy, and gets multiple magical artefacts over the course of the story'. Yes, okay, that's accurate - but we don't read about Bilbo because of his height and ring. We read about him for his character, and his character growth and conflicts.
So, Closet speaks formally - are we thinking condescending? Mellow? Above it all? Furious formal put-downs? Insults? How does he cope with the fact that there's a wise-cracking Vetala along for the ride? Or is he wise-cracking as well? How does he feel about being basically a prisoner and pet? How does he feel about having a lot more freedom than he's used to? How does he feel about, technically, having a job?
And so on. I don't need answers to all those questions, by the way - but you need to know who these people are, and how they'll interact with each other. If your missions end up looking like this:
"Verily, I see the Sue," said Closet, using his instant death rune, which failed.
"See? You? That's a laugh!" said Ripely, slashing at a bit part with his rusted metal teeth.
"Focus," said Dumat coldly, teleporting Errol away from an attacking Stu.
"Now I'm angry!" bellowed Errol, and started hitting people himself.
... then you're doing it wrong. Readers want interaction, not lists of traits.
And coming back to Errol: you say 'passive-aggressive', but you seem to mean 'passive, or aggressive'. Passive-aggressive is a term for... well, Wikipedia says 'indirect expression of hostility'. Sarcasm, sulking, procrastination and the like. It's not 'normally calm until you get him cross'.
And then... oh, dear, another Blank Slate character. For some reason, people really like coming up with these. So, how long are you planning on showing him 'developing' for? Two missions? Four? Is it going to be shown through him being surprised by his own reactions? Maybe through him not having any reactions, and having to consciously decide 'right, when Ripely insults me, from now on I'll respond with sarcasm', which then becomes part of his personality? Or... are you just going to say that so you don't have to try and describe his personality? Because that's what usually happens. I'd really like to see something like one of the above descriptions - but I'm not at all sure that's where you're going.
hS