That badfic was... creepy. I don't know anything about Dollhouse, but there is clearly something wrong with this. And I think Suethors must read some counterfeits versions of the books for always picturing the canons as ducking psychos.

Your mission, however, was entertaining, and I'd like to read more of your work. I also thought the concrit part was a ice touch. My principal nitpick would be about the way you handled the CADs readings. I guess I'll sound as an hypocrite because I only did this once, but for me, half of the fun with these things is finding new ways to describe OOC levels. And seeing them blow up, of course.

Who wants to take care of this little critter?

(Get it? CRITter? Because betas provide conCRIT... I'll shut up now.)

ANYWAY, this mission was fun to read; I enjoyed it. However, it didn't convince me that the fic was as terrible as the agents thought it was. Based on the letter September wrote, it seemed like their main problem with the fic was the breaking of age-of-consent laws, which, yeah, was creepy, but keep in mind that prostitution is illegal in California. So if the LA House is canonical (the agents seemed to act as if it was; I'm not familiar with Dollhouse), then it's established that the pimps don't mind breaking laws, and depicting them doing so wouldn't count as a breach in canon. A better charge to focus on might have been how OOC the characters from both canons were.

Otherwise, this was pretty well-structured as a story, and I feel like I really got to know your agents. The moment when Kelly described the IO as "watching" made me laugh out loud.

--Key

I immediately liked that you started this with a general impression of PPC HQ, especially the orc and elf talking.

But then, the first paragraphs are a bit disjointed. You may want to work on your transitions, like writing "Amidst this, Kelly and September walked back to their RC ...", then what they had for lunch, and then having them hear the console beep when they arrive at the RC.

Kelly appears to be the more experienced agent, mentoring September. It’s good to see this early in the story. Again, execution is a bit sloppy. "She [Kelly] grabbed the mission bag ..." and then "September grabbed the mission bag" is a bit too repetitive for my taste.

I became momentarily afraid of being infected with As Disease, although it’s not a bad case. Just watch for repetitions and remember that "while" may work just as well.

Also, since I actually looked into the badfic (I usually don’t), I noticed a problem that may be more prevalent then I’m aware: thoughtless use of standard mission elements. I’m quite sure that "booming" author notes were originally mocking the habit of setting them in bold type. Since the author notes look more decent here, there is no reason for them to boom. Mocking their length and wording might have been more appropriate.

Although your repeated mocking of the horizontal line is funny, I don’t actually see why you mock it. It’s the standard section divider / scene break marker, and much better than the weird dividers we often see. What else do you think should be there?

September is more knowledgeable about Dollhouse than Kelly, who may not know it at all. Again, it’s good to see this rather than being told.

Getting further into the mission, I ran into a personal problem. Apparently there wasn’t much Harry Potter, I don’t know anything about The Dollhouse, and I didn’t feel like reading the whole badfic to get more of what was going on. As far as I can tell, it’s a solid mission, but not over-exciting.


Technical Errors:

It took me three rereads of the sentence to realize that Topher and Dr. Saunders did live in their House, but he chose to [?] for some reason and made Saunders phobic of everything so she would too doesn’t actually miss a word or more, but refers to what was talked about in the previous paragraph: sleeping at work rather than live in their house. But that may be only me, and it may be justified by people just talking like this.

The neuralizer (two occurrences) and the neurolyzer are actually the "neuralyzer", and the agents "neuralyzed" (not neuralized, two occurrences) the canon characters.

Titles, like Harry Potter or The Dollhouse, should always be italicized, even in dialogue (although one might wonder how the agents pronounce the italics).


Harry Potter canon (I don’t remember whether you might know this and just pretend that your agents don’t):

Hermione had a handbag that is bigger on the inside, containing a tent and lots of books and other stuff. Harry having a similar pouch to wear around the neck may be plausible, but having it look like a trunk, calling it a miniature trunk and wearing that around the neck sounds ridiculous.

A great concentration of magical energy, like at Hogwarts, where many wizards cast many spells every day, and lots of objects are enchanted, may render electric/electronic devices useless, while technology like clockworks or crossbows are not affected. Unlike in some other continua, the presence of a single witch who doesn’t even cast a spell shouldn’t mess with technology, especially when it is sufficiently undefined sci-fi technology that might not even use electricity.


I like that September tries to send concrit to the author. It may be a bit late in this case, but apparently she is still around updating other stories.

HG

OK, yes I didn't beta the completed mission, but some kind of recognition for my comments and help when this was in what you called an 'alpha state' would have been nice.

That being said I was also under the impression that when the mission was finished you wanted me to beta it as well, obviously I was either mistaken in your intent, or something like that. I'm not able to constantly check a google document to see if changes have been made beyond what I've suggested so I'm sorry if it seemed like I wasn't interested in beta-ing it anymore, I was merely waiting for a comment or email to highlight that it was ready to be beta'd further that never arrived.

Storme Hawk

I need a second beta for a Narnian mission written in Deadwood style.