Nume was partnered with Ilraen from the beginning of their spin-off, but the reason he didn't start off partnered with Cameo, as he was in my Fill the Plotholes, is because I discovered, in writing her, that she was a total psycho, aggressively manipulative and not very nice. She would not have made a good agent at all. So, when Twiggy mentioned that she was PPCing an Animorphs fic and needed a good home for an Andalite recruit, I jumped at the chance, and thus we have Ilraen. {= )

As for Derik, Earwig didn't work out as his partner because he was never really my character—Phobos came up with him—and I couldn't quite get a grip on how to write him. Plus, as much as I intended my DMS spin-off to be lighter in tone, Derik insisted on being a serious, down-to-earth person, so pairing him with a happy-go-lucky, zany kender made striking a balance a real struggle.

So, I decided to recruit Gall to replace Earwig. She has excellent qualities to play off Derik's: she's younger and more reckless, and can test his authority; there are plenty of anachronisms in her home canon, so I can make modern-Earth jokes I didn't have access to before; she and her dragon very much aggravate his trauma, so he's forced to deal with it; but she doesn't really care for his angst, and won't indulge him in it very much, so she helps keep the tone in balance. And she's a girl. My action teams were all boys before, and I like writing boys, but it's nice to have a girl.

As I've written her, too, I've discovered that her relative illiteracy gives her a more direct approach to missions, and she's more likely to notice visual or auditory weirdness around her. She was the first to catch on to the plagiarism in "With One Step," for instance, just by listening to the dialogue. She remembers what she sees and hears. It's fun to look at things her way, and she makes me pay more attention to interpreting and describing the effects of the Words.

Oh, and to answer your last question, writing Earwig out was just a matter of him being a kender: they tend to get distracted and wander off, and that's what happened. Phobos and I intended to bring him back, but we haven't found an opportunity yet. He's still out there, though.

~Neshomeh, kind of proud that three of her four agents are badfic recruits, saved with a purpose and not just cuz.

I ditched Gabby because she just wasn't an interesting character, to me or the readers. I shoved her to the ESAS, and brought in the much-more-interesting Stephanie.

Specifically, boredom with Sarah working as a trainee with Falchion and Rashida. I know Sarah and Falc aren't identical in terms of personality but they share similar interests and contrast enough with Rashida that the grumpy kitty can't possibly care less about their differences. Falc and Rashida could work well together, but I realized that Sarah and Rashida probably couldn't because, surprisingly, they have somewhat similar temper issues. Two women who get angry easily probably wouldn't make as interesting a story as an angry woman and a fast-talking knife bird. So I took the temper clash to its logical conclusion and had Sarah and Rashida have a falling out, before sending the former to the DIC which was my plan for her in the first place.

As for Sarah's current partners, while recruiting Cupid was largely a matter of salvaging the origin story described in his homefic and applying it to a Pit clone (which I'd been planning sometime prior to his creation), I'd had the idea to have Sarah ultimately pair up with a Pit clone because when my own original writing project was still a mega-crossover, Sarah would meet and befriend Pit himself. That subplot was out the window once I transitioned the project into an original work, but Sarah being partners with Cupid is a remnant of that old idea.

This of course left me with a problem: Sarah and Cupid have a little more contrast than Sarah and Falchion, but they still share enough personality traits that I had to bring in someone else to balance them out. The answer came to me when I reread my old Pokemon fic and found Lapis, whom I noticed was quite neurotic even as a Sue. So she ultimately became the panicky but somewhat more sensible foil to the other two, which also gave me a good way to practice writing her in general.

Tl;dr, Sarah got sent to the DIC, not because she has anger issues, but because she and Rashida BOTH have anger issues. XD

As far as I remember, around November 2013 I figured that I had no idea what to do with Anebrin (Des' former partner). I had massive problems writing him in a way that wasn't Elf!Des; looking back, he definitely didn't have much substance to him as a character. So I decided to write him out, and since Drama was fun back then, I had him go insane. Wanting to bring in a Time Lord self-ish insert might have figured into the decision as well, though Lump as he is now is both very different from me and very different from his original incarnation.

I hope this helps.

I already detailed my answer to you in an email, but for the sake of discussion I'll say again here.

Randa wasn't actually written by me, but by one of my high school friends. I brought in Zeb when Randa's author and I stopped being able to hang out like we used to, thanks to class and eventual graduation. The last few missions involving Randa were actually her handing the character over to me, but since I didn't want to write a self-insert of my friend, I started thinking about who would eventually replace her, and thus Zeb was born.