Subject: Not bad.
Author:
Posted on: 2017-05-16 17:04:00 UTC
I'm currently sick and too tired to do a proper review, but I'm going to link this on the wiki – and maybe also review – as soon as I feel better.
HG
Subject: Not bad.
Author:
Posted on: 2017-05-16 17:04:00 UTC
I'm currently sick and too tired to do a proper review, but I'm going to link this on the wiki – and maybe also review – as soon as I feel better.
HG
The story was taken down, but not until after I started working on it.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HkVpSAOG31-RpjxOnXisT82-2yPSXjMN9BhsfanVo/edit?usp=sharing
Cat-on-the-Keyboard was a wonderful beta. She quietly pointed out problems and praise, and there was only one case of disagreement.
Yeah, I'm going to try to get back into reading and reviewing missions again. >_>
Your writing style does a good job of being very succinct, and getting straight to the point without a lot of extra words cluttering up the sentences. This is especially useful in missions for getting across info from the badfic without copy-pasting huge blocks of text, and you make good use of that here. There were a couple of potentially interesting spots that I feel you could have gone into more detail on—namely, the canons initially arriving in the present, and Holmes making deductions about the profession of a woman in the restaurant, which I feel could have been good moments for the agents to look at with a critical eye, as they would especially be indicators of how out-of-character Holmes was. Then again, I don't know if the original fic presented those scenes with enough material for you to really do anything with.
I'm not sure the canons themselves were quite out-of-character enough to be treated as replacements, although I know that's a subjective thing for each PPC author. In particular, the sentence, "Without being told, Holmes easily lied and said that his last name was Jones," seems to indicate that you felt Holmes would need guidance in having to mislead someone, but (at least in the novel canon; I haven't seen the movies) Holmes is a master of disguising his clothing, voice and demeanor to hide his identity. He would certainly have no trouble coming up with a fake name, especially since the plan to fool the mothers had been thought of in advance.
I'm also a bit confused by the final charging scene. I understand Holmes and Watson being killed, since you're treating them as replacements, and I'm glad your agents neuralyze the mothers and return them to their regular lives, but where did the two daughters go? It seems to me that, if the mothers are being treated as "canons" and returned to their lives, their daughters should be, too. And I rather had the impression that the flat the daughters was living in was their actual home, before the fic started, so wouldn't they just get neuralyzed and stay there?
I do like the last line, "'Come on, we have paperwork to fill out.'" I usually think of agents writing up mission reports that resemble our missions when they report said mission, but I like the idea that these agents are just going to file ordinary paperwork when they get home, and that they both need to participate. A tiny little detail, that makes a lot of sense.
—doctorlit, hoping to have a bit more time at home from now on
I think the fic did give me enough detail to work on with the deduction, maybe not with them arriving. I'll work more to flesh those out.
Hmmm, I think perhaps I'll rely on September's unreliableness to question the lie.
I do need to work on the ending some more, maybe work in the deletion. In the original draft, I had the Sues sent to the OFU. I kinda don't want to leave them in the story, but I'm also not recruiting them for my own use. Miguel was TimeJumper's IRL friend, and it seems uncomfortable that he's an agent.
As far as stories go, it's not a bad one. On the one hand, I did not detect any technical errors, but on the other, the story seemed kinda flat to me. Granted, not every mission needs to be an epic adventure, but IMHO, this one seemed pretty cookie-cutter: quote badfic, cite charge, repeat. There did not seem to be any conflict between the Agents and the Sues.
Speaking of the Sues, what did the Agents do to them? If they weren't killed, were they recruited? Why?
I don't want to kill the Sues, but I don't want to recruit them or leave them in the story either. They were going to be sent to the OFU.
I need to rework the ending.
I think also that Kelly needs to snark at them more.
I'm also thinking that Kelly and September need to be split up. They don't have inter-agent conflict either.
Since they appear to have actually been Transdimensional Snatchers, I guess they have been despatched to their real life in World One or wherever they belong. I remember some discussion about whether we still write Despatch missions or what else to do in such cases.
HG
I'm currently sick and too tired to do a proper review, but I'm going to link this on the wiki – and maybe also review – as soon as I feel better.
HG
I'd like to make you aware of the follow-up to your apology down-Board, if you haven't already seen it. This post is the acceptance of your apology, and the conditions for that acceptance. The community decided to make it a bit more clear and we added this amendment.
I'd encourage you to acknowledge that you understand all of this and, of course, feel free to ask any questions you have.
Now, I apologize for derailing your Mission thread, but this is important and I wanted to make sure you see it.
-Phobos