Too much Douglas Adams

Actually, the problem is that I had no idea you were going for Douglas Adams there. It was the first big block of rambling I'd seen in your writing, so it felt out of place. For that reason, it read like either or both of two things: 1) someone had expressed confusion about Kelly's opinion, so you dropped in a block of text to explain it; and/or 2) you didn't want to let Kelly be seen to be wrong, so you felt the need to explain why she was only temporarily mistaken and how she would eventually be right again.

It's fine to emulate the style of writers you admire, but it has to be consistent, or at least smoothly integrated, in order to work.

I just needed someone who would force Kelly to do something

There's forcing and there's forcing. Constructing a believable scenario in-universe that will push a character toward certain actions is one thing. Literally making them do things because the author says so is another. I mean, yes, it's all because the author says so really, but you don't want to advertise that. You could've at least written what's-her-name out naturally instead of literally dropping her in a plothole.

You gotta be able to think of reasons for your characters to do things they might not want to. What really drives them? What greater purpose would make them choose to temporarily put their preferences aside?

Or, to run with the food fight, how could circumstances conspire against them to the point where they're stuck? In the Cafeteria, it's pretty easy for me to imagine. Character goes to the Caf to get a bite to eat. The only empty table is right at the back, furthest away from all the doors. Some fool starts a food fight. Character has to walk through it in order to escape. Maybe she gets angry enough to fling some tater tots (or whatever) herself along the way. Hey presto, Character has joined a food fight.

You really, really need to think outside the box more.

Other than PPC missions, do you have any recommended reading or watching for realistic comedy?

Oh lord yes! I don't have a lot of time right now, but the show Psych springs immediately to mind. It's about a guy with superior powers of observation who pretends to be a psychic to get himself a job as a psychic consultant with the local police department. The acting of the two leads and their main foil is a little (okay, a lot) over-the-top at times, but everyone mostly behaves like real people. I'll try to come up with more when I don't have to run off to work.

Can someone tell me how to remove the Deadpooling from this prompt?

I don't know quite what you mean by Deadpooling, but lemme point out that "in their care" doesn't necessarily mean "they own a mini." Again, think about other interpretations.

~Neshomeh

That's... what the word 'prompt' means. It's prompting you to write something. It's not an exam question, it's an idea to get you started.

For example. Since you brought a specific one up:

The agents play tag with some of the Nursery kids.

(Though given that this was paired with 'The agents are chased by a badfic character', I have no idea why you wouldn't go for that one; we put a lot of effort into making sure at least one of each pair could happen to any agent imaginable.)

Here's some ways you could write that:

-Your agents both love children.

-One of your agents loves children and drags the other along.

-Your agents aren't actually playing tag - it's just that the kids really want them to, and keep grabbing them and yelling 'You're it!'.

-The agents are being punished by being made to work in the Nursery for a day. They have been ordered to play tag.

-The agents have been inexplicably de-aged, and sent to nursery until they age up again. They are not amused by this.

-Or they are amused by it.

-The agents have been seconded by their department head to the Sprout Movement to teach a badge, but the kids won't sit still for even five minutes, sweet mercy.

That's all literally off the top of my head, in about five minues. Only one (the de-aging) is an overly-convoluted scenario. There's just... so many ways you can take a prompt like that.

hS

In the midst of this harrowing thread. . .
First off, I haven't been following this thread too-too closely (I haven't read the story in question), but what you said here has been burning in the back of my brain for a while. Warning: what follows is a little rant-y. Really I should save this and revise it in the morning, but I'm afraid that if I keep putting this off, I'll never write it at all.

"Okay, maybe this is my not understanding normal people and their priorities very well. I have constantly been told off for giving attention to something that other people think is unimportant. Once in class, my lunch exploded in my bag. I was expected to sit there until the end of the period when I was holding back a meltdown about how yogurt was soaking into my stuff."

How do you know you're the weird one? Maybe it's the teacher who has misplaced priorities. Sure, they were in a position to tell you off for having different priorities, but might does not make right (dystopias, anyone?).

Even if the teacher is the "normal" one, there is something fundamentally wrong with trying to make your writing relatable to the most "normal" person you can imagine, and that something is the fact that people who are not strictly "normal" read, too. A lot of them are sick and tired of, say, being expected to hold back a meltdown, and your writing could be a breath of fresh air to them. I know you want to maximize your audience, but gaining the respect of smaller groups should never be discounted, because they can be very passionate. To take an example from the recent Shipfest: Scapegrace wrote a beautiful fluffy story about Iximaz and Kaitlyn in a lesbian, long-term, BDSM relationship. Is being in a lesbian BDSM relationship "normal"? No one would say that; it's a subculture within a minority. But if Scapegrace had written an equally beautiful piece about a straight vanilla couple getting married, would I take every excuse, no matter how flimsy, to wedge it into a conversation still be talking about it a month later? No. Would I be planning to spread it around to my friends? No way. Would I have decided to go back and read through every mission Scapegrace has ever written? Probably not. Would I be considering applying for permission because the Notary gave me a great idea for a character? Again, probably not. What made Scapegrace's story stand out was that she wrote honestly, about what was real to her, and that it was different. Before she wrote that story, I could count the number of beautiful fluffy lesbian BDSM stories I'd read on the fingers of one elbow. That's saying something, since I'd spent time specifically looking for a story that fit that description. But most authors were writing for "normal people," and I was about to give the idea up as futile. Then Scapegrace wrote this story and acquired a passionate fandom of one (I should mention that I am not the only one who thought this story was great, just the only one who vaguely wants to found a fan base around it). So if you were to appeal to a slightly wider group (say, people who wish that cleaning up messes was more of a priority) you could find yourself with a small but very loyal group of readers. Not to mention, I find writing from a perspective I agree with or about something I care about to be much easier, and the final product to be much better. It's the old saw about writing what you know. It's not always true, but it often is. For instance, writing this took me only a couple of hours, while writing a paper for class is taking me several days (possibly because I keep stopping in the middle to write posts like this).

Anyway, isn't this what writing is all about? Entertaining people while you convince them that the ways you see the world make sense, whether they're small ways, like the idea that "insects are super cool if you take the time to look at them," or big things like "it's important not to destroy forests" or middle-sized things like "sloppily-written fanfic is a bad thing." Or "it makes sense for people to pay attention to the fact that their lunch has exploded." Please, write a world where it's acceptable for people to stop whatever they're doing and clean up their yogurt.

I don't see any reason why that world can't be the PPC. I don't think it's been canonically determined that all PPC agents must ignore messes (that would be a pretty bizarre regulation to have in place, especially since the PPC is generally rather loose about that sort of thing). If you wanted to spend an entire interlude getting the ceiling cleaned up, I bet you could pull it off (it would be a actually be good chance to show some of your agent's character, to demonstrate the dynamics between her and other characters, and to develop the structure of the PPC's maintenance department further).

Not-normal people are valid. And interesting. Don't be afraid to write about them. Please.

1/ The maintenance thing was ripped from Brazil.

-Are you implying here that you plagiarised a scene from another source?

2/ It seems like a lot of humor is based on someone being stupid...

-Are you implying here that you personally don't find many/any things humorous?

You've expressed a preference for direct questions before, so please accept my apology if these are overly-blunt. I'll withhold my comments on your answers until, uh, you actually give them. ^_~

hS

Actually, in light of the conversation going on a thread or several above with Data Junkie, I'm second guessing what I was writing--part of it was a walkthrough of the thought process behind choosing and writing a prompt. (I will mention, though, that B'Elanna Torres, while she looks pretty awesome from the Memory Alpha wiki page, is half-Klingon half-human, and mostly not raised in Klingon society. She also seems to have all sorts of very interesting issues caused by her family situation. All of that, however, means that she probably isn't the best example of what a Klingon is, just as Spock isn't the best example of what a Vulcan is--oh, wow, now I really want to watch everything with her in it and compare the two of them, that sounds so interesting.)

But yeah. Like I said, you couldn't have known--I posted on March 25th and then got really busy and disappeared from that thread. I'd also never really intended to do more than light betaing, since I was pretty sure you weren't intending to wait around until late April to be able to post your request. I just wanted to make it clear that I'd both only done light betaing--and not on the full story, either--but that I hadn't exactly said to you that I was accepting the beta job and was going to be in touch again. What I meant--though, looking back at what I wrote, it looks a bit more ambiguous than I'd originally thought--was that I didn't have time to actually beta, but here were some of the main things I noticed while glancing at the piece.

Speaking of betaing: setting aside what an Idiot Ball does and does not do (I'm not a Troper, so that completely slipped by me), that scene is a lot clearer now. I still have no idea what a not-quite-Idiot Ball is doing in HQ to begin with (and, as Nesh pointed out, it isn't doing what an Idiot Ball does), but the piece of the story with people holding it is much better than it was. So kudos on that bit of editing!

And, with that (and a promise to anyone reading that the Purim RP will happen, and I have until the end of this week to make it happen in the right month...) I should really get back to work and schoolwork and hopefully doing it instead of kind of staring at things and reading old fanfics. So. *waves and vanishes, leaving Swiss Bleepolate squares on a random table that was totally here all along, dontcha know...*

~DF