Subject: Aha.
Author:
Posted on: 2014-10-15 16:10:00 UTC
So Agent!Des, being the Roman history freak he is, will either have to pester the Librarian until he agrees to negotiate with roman, or (assuming that's OK with SeaTurtle) make some deal with the Guardsman.
(Why yes, that is three missions on the front page; thanks for asking)
PPC: Driftwood - Kelly the Roman Warrior (Suvian/troll, crossover mostly featuring Dracula, Twilight, and Ancient Rome)
I have some spoilery comments to make about this mission, so I'll put those in a reply. Also: reviews are, as always, very welcome!
And, yet again, I'm taking requests for Mission 4, on a 'first come, only served' basis. Less than 6000 words, rated T or lower, and with some notes on why you think it's bad, please! The Intelligence Report format below can be used (note that I've trimmed it to make it more useful) but doesn't have to be.
hS
This may be my favorite mission ever now.
Like, this trollfic was almost custom-made to be sporked. There are just so many random parts, and yet, they're different enough that they make this mission unique. (Count Dracula? Ancient Rome? Godzilla? Duuuuuude.)
I love all the creative little things you got to do with the wolf-everything. Wolf disguises, Wolf minis, Wolf attack, Wolf control by Dracula, I don't know why I keep capitalizing Wolf, but I'm not going to stop now, my zoo is supposed to finally get some Wolves around the end of next year. Excellent choices for the minis on both new counts. I had never heard of the Capitoline Wolf before (our world isn't fictional, so I'm not much interested in it), but I like it, as it kind of has links to both actual Roman history and Roman legend. I also like that the mini-Capitolines have a metallic sheen to their fur, as reference to the statue.
I also like mini-Children of the Night for Dracula. I was imagining misspelled rats myself; I think they get mentioned more often than wolves or bats in the novel, but they're also more closely associated with Renfield. Wolves are singularly the Count's deal, and I love that you named them with a phrase Dracula himself used.
The scene at the end was stupendous. I love how you simultaneously treated it seriously and comically, with knocking out Edward to stop the Meyer spirit (Oh Gan, the implications) and Dracula's very dangerous presence in the final stage, vs. the troll's reaction to Selene's presence and hilarious backfiring of holding up a sword in the presence of lightning-wielders.
Out of curiosity, how did Middle-earth even facotr in to this? You said it did at the beginning, but I didn't catch anything from it. Also, Ancient Rome, therefore
The ground shook. The brown-haired woman frowned, stopped chewing and listened.
A roar sounded—terribly nearby, and terribly familiar. "What kind of animal makes that cliché stock roar sound?" Acacia wondered. She put down the chicken leg and moved to a window.
Glancing left and right down the path outside, she saw some of her neighbors running around, screaming. But people were running from all directions, to all directions, so it hardly communicated much in the way of information. Then she looked up.
"Oh," Acacia said. "Not a stock sound—not when he first made it, anyway."
She moved to a trunk, ignoring the somebody else's problem field with practice. She opened it and fished out the camera her old partner had insisted on giving her; Jay would never forgive her if Acacia didn't get a picture of this.
She leaned out her door and took a picture of Godzilla towering over the tiny structures of Ancient Rome. Then she snapped another; if that bulletin board of unlikely pictures was still in the Cafeteria, this could easily compete with any new stuff contemporary agents were posting.
The daikaiju unleashed a blast of weirdly-colored flame at something at ground level. Moments later, Acacia watched humanoid figure covered in slight distortions riding out of town on a . . . Patronus?
"Ugh. I guess this was bound to happen eventually. I suppose I should—Aha!" A massive blue portal had flashed through the sky. When it ended, Godzilla was gone.
"Nice. Someone's already here." Acacia looked again at the deep red flames scorching the trees near town. "Say. I seem to recall something about Godzilla's fire being radioactive . . ." She grimaced, but sat back down and continued eating dinner. "Well, I'm sure the modern PPC agent has the sense to get some of those pills for radiation for the townspeople."
Several hours later, Acacia found herself beginning to itch at her arms. "Or, I can always portal to Medical and do it myself."
This sentence only exists to double-check the closing italics tag.
I'm sure dragging Acy into things must have crossed my mind - but since I can't remember it doing so, the credit goes entirely to you. ^-^
Thanks for the review! I had great fun writing this mission (can you tell?), so it's nice to know it was fun to read, too.
As to Middle-earth - in Chapter 8 they reach Tutankhamen's mines, only to find they're closed because of a talking balrog. Then, after Kelly has been possessed by Athena, they discover Hades has been manipulating them, so Shrek sacrifices himself to save Kelly so the rest of them can get to Mordor. Obviously, on the way they have to fight Thor and 'the inedible Hulks', who have been turned evil by Hades (they win), and then defeat Sauron at Evil Chess, but naturally he sends his army to fight them anyway. Um, then Hercules joins the side of good, and Sauron kills Elkus, but that makes Kelly angry enough to kill Sauron (and rescue Elkus), and that's where it ends.
So yeah, there is some LotR, but I think the categories were chosen simply for what was most popular. Twilight, in particular, is way minor.
hS
And I love the mini-wolf packs. :D
I had a fictional small town called Capitoline in a werewolf story I did for NaNo - the only year so far that I won, actually. okay so I made the entire thing end in a spontaneous song and dance number
It's pretty interesting to read about agents dealing with a non-human, non-sapient disguise choice. That mini wolf pack/army is going to be multiple hand(paw?)fuls, I can tell that much. (By the way, I have to ask; the snow wolves don't look like living snow sculptures of wolves, do they? Cause I can see multiple problems with that.)
Given the large number of canonical things in the fic (seriously, they go after an ogre next, and it turns out to be Shrek), I wasn't sure if 'snow wolf' was an actual creature somewhere. So I guess that decision goes to whoever uses the pack first? They're free-to-use now, after all. (They do have one canon influence from my side - I think they ended up talking like Poledra from the Eddings books. 'One finds this very interesting' and the like)
And yeah, playing with the disguises was heaps of fun. Glad you liked it!
hS
Are you by any chance familiar with The Parent Trap? 'Cause I have quite a doozy to report if you are. Also, did you get see the HP barricade I linked in the last threat?
Are you talking about the original, or the 1998 remake? I think I've seen the latter, and since it's only one film, I reckon I can make a go of it. So fire away.
hS
Fic: Opposite Reaction Same Result
Continuum: The Parent Trap 1998 remake
Description: A Replacement Sue of Hallie viciously insults an OOC version of Annie, who breaks down and thus causing the whole plot from the aftermatch of the fencing match onwards to go off the rails
Type of Badfic: Replacement Sue AU Badfic( because if you are going to change the twins' personalities, dialogue and a huge chunk of the plot of the movie, you might as well tag the thing as AU, which of course the author didn't.)
Plot Holes: Several lines and scenes are misplaced, such as the " I know how to fence and you don't or I have class and you don't, take your pick." Annie line, which she should have given in response to Hallie instead of completely breaking down.
The prank Hallie and her friends pulled on
Annie's cabin gets placed on the morning of the day after
the fencing match, when it only occurs after both the poker night and Annie pranking Hallie's cabin first.
Offenses Against Canon: Hallie gets Replaced and Annie is really OOC. The uncanocical behavior of the two of them causes Nick and Elizabeth come down to the camp, does skipping the whole twin switch which is arguably the whole
GLAURUNGING point of the movie.
Not mention several important scenes during the camp that skipped along with it, such as the poker night, the pranks and of course the time Hallie and Annie spent at the isolation cabin, which is the one thing allowed them to bond and want to join their families again.
Thus, despite what the title and summary claim, there are zero scenarios where I can see the happy ending of the movie happening in this thing.
Excellent! Though I do not think the account will remain active for long... *shudders in fear of admins*
How are you managing to churn them out so quickly, though? Is it just that you're taking on badfics 6000 words or less, or is there some other secret?
~DF
Nah, it's a combination of a few things. The short targets are a big help (though mission #2 was six chapters of a 140k story), but there's also the fact that I'm trying to keep the missions under 6k. That means if there's something that looks like it'd take a long time to deal with, I just skip it (again, see mission #2). I'm also not bothering to nitpick every charge - I don't think it's necessary for the storytelling, honestly.
And then there's... well, the fact that I actually sit down and write. ;) It really works wonders. Plugging out 3k words a day isn't actually all the hard if you just, uh, do it.
hS
First up, the Pack. It'll be revealed in the beginning of the next mission that the entire Pack has been set loose in the Miss Cam Courtyard, under the leadership of roman. Selene says something about her coming to an accommodation with Alice, so we shouldn't see any massive equi/lupicidal events any time soon. (Though we might see some bizarre cross-breeds... can minis breed?)
Secondly, Selene. I've finally read Dracula and taken note of what powers she should and shouldn't have, and weaknesses too. I've then confirmed that Driftwood complies with those, so no problems there. There may be contradictory things in her earlier missions; I intend to edit those out. As far as I'm concerned, she's a straight Stokerverse vampire with a steampunk accessory.
Thirdly... nope, no idea. There was something, though. So let's substitute: Selene's difficulty with keeping her clothes on when transforming back to human comes from this story, which is defined as 'canon-friendly', not strictly canonical.
hS
Are the mini-Capitoline Wolves up for adoption?
In-universe, you'd have to negotiate with roman about that; she might be willing to let one of her pack go independent, but I don't know. Bring a Time Lord who speaks Wolf, because unlike other residents of HQ, she's not telepathic.
Alternately, the Pack is now a free-to-use feature of HQ, so if you want to go and befriend them, have at it. Watch out for the mini-Children, though, they're quite aggressive.
Out-of-universe, yes, sure. ;D I don't need 'em any more.
(Sorry for not getting the very relevant notes up before - I quite simply forgot. See above now)
hS
So Agent!Des, being the Roman history freak he is, will either have to pester the Librarian until he agrees to negotiate with roman, or (assuming that's OK with SeaTurtle) make some deal with the Guardsman.
If you decide you want to write that story (or scene), I should warn you that roman will probably negotiate hard to hand of ceaser rather than one of the others. She's a bit worried that a mini named for the emperors will try to take over the pack... ('course, they're free-to-use, so you can wrangle any you like out of her; I'm just suggesting what she'll probably do)
hS
The entire pack was such an awesome idea, and I particularly liked the mini-Capitoline Wolves. I saw the discussion earlier about ancient Roman minis, but it was neat to finally see them in action. And is it had I was gigglesnorting my way through the entire scene in Dracula's castle?
And poor Selene, having to deal with... well, pretty much everything. *offers her a hug before deciding that's probably a bad idea*
I'd suggest this one absolutely horrible Pippin fic I found once, to give Kaitlyn a chance in the spotlight, but I'm about to board a plane and don't have the time to look it up. Shame. Maybe next time? *wicked grin*