Subject: Alas...
Author:
Posted on: 2016-01-07 16:13:00 UTC
Truth's presence was not necessary, and in fact a rather Bad thing. The mission has been changed to reflect this.
Subject: Alas...
Author:
Posted on: 2016-01-07 16:13:00 UTC
Truth's presence was not necessary, and in fact a rather Bad thing. The mission has been changed to reflect this.
I am taking advantage of library time to finally post Valon and Kala's thirteenth mission!
Why Would You Quit?
Agents: Valon Vance, Kala Jeng
Continua: Five Nights at Freddy's, Harry Potter
... because I got to read the edited version.
Then I’m even later, because you made me reading the badfic (that’s potentially a bad thing) in an attempt to understand what’s going on.
So, I liked Kala and Valon’s interactions, the switching that made the obvious replacement actually Harry’s uncanonical twin, and the Mythbuster testing. But the mission didn’t really work for me, because some parts seem rushed and not well thought trough.
Technical errors first:
His eyes went wide, before he frantically covered covered his ears.
Repetition.
Where did this mini-Stu come from? Throughout the badfic, Harry’s twin is consistently called Micheal, so this is just an unusual name, not a misspelling of what you may have expected to be the Stu’s name. Actually, you are misspelling the Stu’s name throughout the mission.
Kala had decided that it was past time to stop asking where he got things.
So there was no sense in stopping now, but then she didn’t ask? (Double negation.)
Overthinking things:
What happened to the entity pretending to be God?
"God" promptly vanishing at the end of the first chapter, leaving only "Lucifer" and "Reaper" to be neuralyzed is a bit too convenient for my taste. I don’t see anything in the badfic that justifies this event. (If it was just because his role in the story was finished, why didn’t "Lucifer" and "Reaper" vanish too?)
Actually, it is quite inconvenient. This is not the biblical God (His existence in the Potterverse despite never being mentioned in canon is at least debatable), nor a god specific to the Potterverse. How can canon reassert itself unless this uncanonical entity is thoroughly removed? And your agents just allowed it to escape. It certainly didn’t remove itself when it "vanished", it just went elsewhere.
Potential solution: Since this isn’t a god from any recognizable canon, it doesn’t get omnipotence per its canon of origin’s definition; incidentally being called "God" doesn’t make you invulnerable, and the badfic never implied that this entity is invincible. Actually, it appears to be quite weak, depending on its siblings. (They brought the Stu to "Heaven" and did most of the talking, implying that they would and could do what they talked about intending to do. All "God" did was making the Stu remember the flashback and all it talked about was its plan of passively letting the Stu kill people.) Why not just shoot it and then neuralyze the others and send them home?
What happened to Harry?
Since Springtrap was actually Micheal, the brat he met at Gringott’s was actually Harry. So, Harry is a spoiled brat who grew up with his parents, who should be dead. Shouldn’t something be done about this? Was this all covered by neuralyzing other canons and putting Lily and James back in their graves?
Why was tying up Springtrap so easy? And blowing him up, too?
He got super strength (the strength of ten man), and agility and speed (faster than the fastest human), and he can cause powerful hallucinations to scare humans off. Now, Kala isn’t human, and I don’t remember exactly how strong and fast she is, so I can’t say that it is impossible.
He also was able "to interfere with the workings of technology", apparently in a non-physical way. Why didn’t he simply disarm this Big Red Button? Well, he was six years old when he was killed, and had only one month after waking up. How much could he possibly have learned about technology and the best way of interfering with a remote control that will trigger an explosion when the button is pressed? Again I can’t say that blowing him up is impossible, but I would have liked to see this addressed in the mission.
And although I said that I liked the Mythbuster testing, I would have appreciated if Kala and Valon, after tying the Stu up, had tested whether it’s possible to cut and smash him with hand-held sharp respective blunt objects. Sure, he had asked for immunity to blunt and sharp objects, but then "God" forgot to tell the Stu about the abilities he got without asking, and Plushtrap had to do all this exposition about his and Springtrap’s joined and unique abilities, and when it came to physical impact after all the overpowered magical and elemental stuff, all we heard was "we cannot be harmed by projectiles". There is no implication that this list isn’t conclusive, so "God" or its siblings apparently forgot to give the Stu what he had asked for.
Yeah, exploiting a badfic’s weaknesses is far too much fun. Why did you make me read this thing and spend a whole afternoon on this?
HG
Technical errors: addressed.
"God": I wasn't sure how to handle that. Have him just go poof once his negligible role was completed was the best solution I could think of.
Harry: Yes, cleanup is always covered in summary. I don't usually feel like detailing the time between the execution and the return home.
Tying up Springtrap: Yes, Kala herself is superhumanly strong. I have yet to show the full extent of her strength, but consider this: harpies, the smallest and lightest of liminals in Monster Musume, are strong enough to fly normally while carrying a human-sized load. Kala weighs almost six times more than a harpy.
She's also insanely tough; I've yet to include this detail in a PPC story, but all of her vital organs (aside from her brain) are in her scorpion half, behind her two-inch-thick, bulletproof carapace. Her human body is all bone and muscle.
Also, he's not tied up in rope; he's tied up with det-cord. Det-cord is an explosive material itself, so Valon probably wouldn't want himself or Kala to smack it around.
The Big Red Button: I figure that Springtrap was too far away to mess with it. Valon watches Mythbusters, he knows that there's no such thing as being too far from an explosion.
I usually start with the positives, but in this case, please pardon the departure from the norm, as I believe this error (made twice) needs to be addressed first.
Twice, you mention characters in such a way that we should have already been introduced to them...when said mention is the very first mention of the character. To wit:
Michael… sadly, he can’t live. He enables too much of this fic to occur, and he can’t assimilate into canon.
At this point in the mission, the reader has never seen the name "Michael" yet. It's only in the next scene that we find out that Michael is Harry's uncanonical brother. But the way Valon says this line, it is obvious that Valon and Kala know who Michael is. I'd suggest moving this line further into the mission.
Spring-Harry… sorry, Spring-Michael and Blair Blacking will conveniently be in a place for us to deal with them at the same time.
Same thing. The reader never got introduced to Blair Backing before, so the reader has no idea why she needs to be dealt with.
One more error, a minor one in comparison:
I think we can confirm; the Spring-Bonnie suit was replaced as well.
Delete the semicolon or rewrite as follows: "I think we can confirm it: the Spring-Bonnie suit was replaced as well."
That said, onto the positives: Aside from the major errors (I had to use CTRL-F to make sure that I didn't somehow miss a mention), I was not lost in your mission; I could follow it well. And the double-replacement's death was a stroke of brilliance. Even the most OP of Stus has a weakness.
One question: When you were writing this fic, did you consider charging for the many comma splices throughout the fic?
In addition to the issues you addressed, I also dealt with the talking-heads problem as best as I could.
To my beta-readers, who I'm told were blindsided by the posting of this mission: I sincerely apologize. Since I can only work on my writing at the library, I didn't think I'd have time to go through a whole beta-reading session.
While I liked parts of this, I really don't think this was your best work. The agents did a lot of standing around talking, but I don't remember once getting a sense for what they were doing while talking. It gave me the impression that they were just standing out in the open where anyone could see them.
And then there's the inclusion of Truth. Since he appears to be on a godlike level from what cursory research I've done, I can understand why he'd know about the PPC... but the question I have is why did you include him in this story when there's not so much as a hint of FMA anywhere in the fic? The fact that you dragged a canon cross-continuum for seemingly no reason other than because it seemed cool... well, we have a department for that for a reason.
Everything else was good and I enjoyed the rest, but Truth especially just kind of ruined it for me.
I squee'd when I saw Truth come up, just so you know. :V
And this was a nice mission. Clean execution of fic and Stu. Very nice explosions!
Thank you for writing, as usual! ^^
Truth's presence was not necessary, and in fact a rather Bad thing. The mission has been changed to reflect this.
I apologize for not being able to do more beta work, thanks to Real Life keeping me busy. I hope I can make it up to you should there be another mission from you in the near-distant future.
In the meantime, I hope you get at least some form of Internet access back at your home soon! I've missed your presence on the Board. A lot.
So much glitterbags busted. Never leave again.
P.S.: Be very,very glad it wasn't MegaTen Lucifer. Anyone who ever saw Nocturne would say the same. Truth is already troubles enough. ;)
Holy Goddess, that was weird. I just...why...? (And I loved the "PPC Mythbusters" gag XD)
Perhaps with the restart DMSE&R to do the Myths