Subject: You asked for thoughts and I will provide!
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Posted on: 2014-09-13 17:01:00 UTC

I just got up and gave these a read-through, so a lot of these might just be initial impressions that I'll either not entirely agree with upon further reflection or find I wish to elaborate on, but hey, I need to get my critic muscles moving again somehow, and people've been saying there needs to be more concrit around here, so here we go. Starting bottom up because a) I feel like it and b) the new stuff is at the end of the plug:

I might be biased against the Bad Slash one because now I have to completely start from scratch on one of my missions. I can't even keep one of the main agents' names or use LOTR. Grrrr. ;) But seriously, I like the use of nonconventional exorcism methods/ones more tied to the actual canon, it's an interesting touch and I'm a little tired of all exorcisms consisting of nothing but hitting things with books and screaming "Avaunt" over and over. It's nice to see other ways of doing things, even if I'm beaten to writing them. :P

Expelling a wraith from Arda through music and dance is an especially nice touch. The QAL pointing out Freckles is an odd nickname is pretty neat too - I'm not sure I like them being established as "among the SO’s most notorious Assassins" right out the gate though. I've certainly never seen these agents before, but I could be wrong (the wiki doesn't say anything about them...), and either way that feels like a title that needs to be earned, not simply slapped on the second somebody shows up - especially with the market so competitive on that ground. It turns out to have nothing to do with the rest of the mission so I'm not sure there's a point to having it - you could do with just going right to the QAL being surprised they want Bad Slash, specifically. Hieronymus went into the whole Patronus thing so I won't bother commenting on that, though I'm curious about why these all seem to be crossovers. I do sort of wish these had been established as a way to do it as opposed to the way, as well, if nothing else because it's kind of constraining to future authors.

I'm of two minds about the Nyx one, though part of that might be me being preoccupied by the fact we're looking at the start of WW3. It's hard to be amused by a story around something that's going to end with us all being blown back to the Bronze Age at best. I like the idea of agents actually reacting to stuff going on back home, though, it's something that doesn't come up a lot and really helps HQ feel more alive - these agents came from somewhere after all. I also think this piece could've been better served as just Nyx on her own - maybe that's personal preference but I didn't really feel like Tango added much except her own commentary, a lot of which felt like repeating things Nyx and the reader already know. If this were Nyx alone with her thoughts it might've been more effective. In spirit of full disclosure, though, I've never particularly liked Nyx and thus my enjoyment of this was a little limited between that and the whole World War Three thing.

Boorman is interesting and I don't have much to pick at. While it feels like a bit of a needless jab at a project that ended up never happening, I do like the idea of accidentally crossing from a fic written around Boorman's script to Boorman's script itself, as well as stuff like the recurring DAVD flashpatch problem (though in places it seems to imply DAVD simply doesn't have one). I also find Rile X getting dragged along to serve as Mortic's partner amusing. Mortic's felt kind of inconsistently written in some past things he's been in, but here he works well enough.

"I need a partner," Mortic said bluntly.
Returning... I'm pretty neutral on, I must admit. Not a lot earth shaking here, but also nothing I'd say is super bad, though I think prequel jokes are a little passé by now - next year even ROTS will have been a decade ago. And just because it's unclear, which lobby is being referred to re: potted plants?

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