Subject: Re: mission
Author:
Posted on: 2019-02-25 23:23:00 UTC

I like that each agent had a moment where they showed a bit of emotional depth beyond their "presented" personalities. Phil, despite being serious and responsible, has his internal moment of losing his bearings in the void of unconsciousness, and not wanting his partner to find out.
Meanwhile, Spensor seems utterly careless and unfocused, but starts to get legitimately angry about hos his source canon is being treated.

I also love that, during a Transformers mission, you find an excuse for your two protagonists to form the "transformed car plus human rider" combo that appears so much in canon!

I do need to ask: Did you have a beta reader look over this before posting? I don't see one credited in your opening notes, and there are quite a few basic typos in this mission, of the sort a beta reader would normally catch. We do expect missions to be betad before releasing them publicly; not to do so is hypocritical of us. I'll be going over typos and such below:

"A scruffy looking man in a red hoodie and sweatpants was sitting on his couch, flipping through a large stack of paper. Occasionally he would hastily scribbled some notes down before placing the paper on another stack next to him that was gradually increasing in height."
1. "Scruffy-looking" is a two-word phrase being used here as an adjective, so it gets a short dash in between the words to show it's functioning as one.
2. "Scribbled" should be "scribble" since the whole verb is "would scribble."

"'Oh hey, I should probably take this opportunity to put a dent in my second read through.'"
"Read-through" is being used as a noun here, so it too gets a short dash to show it's a single concept within the sentence.

"'It’s a short one but-wait do I smell spray paint?'"
On the other hand, since this is one sentence interrupting another, it gets a long dash (—), which can be represented by two short dashes in a row. (Some word processors will automatically turn two shorts into a long after entering the space after the second word.)

"'Prime Universe, located in the Uniend cluster. This could be problematic. This one strikes a happy medium between the edginess of the Bayverse and other, more lighthearted continuities.'

While Spensor was speaking, Phil began gathering things for the mission.

"'How’s that concerning?' Spensor finished, the readouts on his visor disappearing as he turned to his partner."

Spensor is talking to himself here.

"'Where are we?' his optics adjusting to the surroundings."
There's an extra quotation mark at the end. Also, "his optics adjusting to his surroundings" doesn't contain any dialogue tag to link it to Spensor's words, so it's an incomplete phrase just kind of floating there at the end of the sentence.

"'Brace yourself, I have feeling we’re about to enter the realm of consciousness. The sue complained about the light . . ."
1. "have a feeling"
2. The quotation mark is missing after the period.

"As the Sue gained consciousness the agents would about to get a massive bomb dropped into their laps."
"were about to"

"Being a place where humans rarely showed up, Phil had to settle for hunkering down behind his partner’s new form. He asked 'Jack is canon, yes?'"
1. This sounds like Phil is "a place." I think you meant to say, "Being in a place . . ."
2. A dialogue tag needs a comma just before the dialogue begins: "He asked, 'Jack is canon, yes?'"

"The sue’s wings had changed to colour to gold, so the pair thought it was 'speshful' enough to write down as a charge."
1. "changed in colour to gold" or even "changed colour to gold"
?. I usually see that spelled as "speshul," but I'm not sure if that's just a personal variant for you or your agents?

"'Cliffjumper-poor Cliffjumper-was brutally murdered by Starscream . . .'"
Another instance of the sentence getting interrupted, so the long dashes are wanted here.

"Since the author doesn’t say her weapons materialise or appear so I’d say we can write this one down as 'unintentional use of hammerspace."
1. One of the bolded words doesn't belong. You can either do, "Since the author doesn't say her weapons materialise or appear, I'd say . . ." or, "The author doesn't say her weapons materialise or appear, so I'd say . . ."
2. You never finished the mid-quote single quotaion marking that started before "unintentional."

"Spensor made panel on his body slide aside, and produced a cold, refreshing Mood Whiplash for his partner."
1. "made a panel"
2. Drink names don't get italicized.

"Phil contemplated counting charges towards canon violations of The Bible but decided against it."
The "the" before "the Bible" isn't part of the title, and doesn't need a capital "t."

"'Y’know, I was really hoping we weren’t going to meet any of her cherished siblings”. Phil suddenly found himself in the driver’'s seat of a miniaturised version of one of the sleak, generic sports vehicle forms that the Vehicons possessed."
1. For dialogue, punctuation always goes inside the quotation marks. ( cherished siblings." )
2. There are two hyphens in "driver's."

"The agent’s made special note that the Sue used the terms ‘dad’ and ‘Father as if they were two different people."
1. "Agents" isn't possessive there, so no apostrophe.
2. Unfinished single quotation after "Father."

"Phil resigned himself to watching the angel family argue a bit more than decide to go to bed and argue over who got top bunk."
"Then" rather than "than." Also, since this sentence is describing something happening in two steps, there should be a comma after "more."

"Switching things up Spensor went for a large, wall-mounted monitor, forcing his Phil to sit on the wall bracket."
No need for "his" there.

"'There was a Hasbro produced Animorphs toyline that had the Transformer branding.” Spensor illuminated.
1. "Hasbro-produced" is another adjective phrase, so it gets a short dash.
2. When the dialogue tag follows the dialogue, the dialogue should end in a comma rather than a period. ( Transformer branding," Spensor illuminated. )

"Spensor crossed his arms and began tapping his foot."
Spensor was in ice cream cart form, last we heard of him. And he seems to transform into robot form two paragraphs after this: "Already back in robot mode, Spensor hauled out his blaster . . ." And both of those sentences make me wonder what happened to Otimus, who was sitting on the top of Spensor's cart form, and is never mentioned again.

"'. . . causing characters to having rather downplayed reactions to knowledge that should fundamentally alter their world view . . .'"
"to have"

Oh, and speaking of minis, you are now the creator of the first official Transformers mini! So let me just ask, for the sake of the wiki: are they all mini-Optimus Primes? Or do they become a tiny copy of whatever character was misspelled? And does that include non-robot characters?

—doctorlit, transforming his afternoon into constructive criticism

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