Subject: I have a very big problem with Hop.
Author:
Posted on: 2016-08-12 01:59:00 UTC

Specifically, with how Hop is a blatant near-carbon copy of the canon Overwatch character Tracer shoehorned into the PPC. The energetic personality, the Cockney accent, certain details about their appearance; heck, even their first names are the same! You went so far as to put an Overwatch quote on her Wiki page!

I really don't like this. It feels like a transparent attempt to try and write a mashup of Overwatch/PPC fanfiction. What's more, it's lazy. Rather than come up with your own character, this feels like you've took someone else's and barely made a token effort to file off the serial numbers.

I might be a bit more accepting if Hop were some sort of AU version of Tracer recruited to the PPC. I would still think it's a lazy choice, but I would understand it better. But apparently, this character is supposed to be from the Doctor Who universe? The actual universe, and not a badfic? I'm sorry, but that stretches my suspension of disbelief too far. The two universes don't have anything to do with each other! It just seems like a very weak attempt to hide the fact that this isn't really your character. It's like if I made a new agent who was a teenage wizard with a scar on his face and an English accent, named him "Harry McAndrews," then said he hailed from Shadowrun.

Another detail about this character that bothered me: her phonetic accent. There are times where it was overused to the point of being nearly unreadable. At other points, it swayed from Cockney to almost Scottish (like anytime you used "aye" for "yes" or "me" for "my"). The trick with using dialects like this is to use an easy hand (unless the joke is that their accent IS so thick as to be hard to understand).

As for the mission itself, it was generally okay. The biggest issue I had was that there was a lot of telling as opposed to showing. It all very well to say that "Hip and Hop cringed on seeing the contradiction" regarding the venom, but it isn't very interesting to read. What were their reactions? What did they say? Or later on, when Cinder Fall and her cronies were taken care of in one sentence. There's nothing that could have been shown about that?

The dialogue was probably the sharpest part of the mission. Each character's personality came off very well through it. The conclusion was also very good, with the agents being clever and taking advantage of the Stu's weakened state. That, for me, will always be better than a knock-down fight between agent and Stu/Sue.

A few minor things:
— I agree with HG in that your portrayal of the Shadow People was very amusing, even if the tilde speech got a little tiring for me after a while.
— Charge list was clean and to the point. Nice. I am not a fan of lists that stretch for over half a page.
— While the matter is often debated, I personally do not think that miscapitalized words like "semblance" should not result in minis. I think of it like this: say "Harry Dresden" out loud. Now say "harry dresden" out loud. Is there a difference? Then again, that's just me.

All in all, I would have liked the mission a lot more had Hop actually been an original character. If I want to read about Tracer, I'll go read Overwatch fanfiction. The PPC should be for the stuff that comes out of our heads, not what comes out of others'.

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