-pats-

I am, first of all, bloody sorry, Silly, it took us so long to actually get onto this. Good grief. It's not usually this long!
Perhaps it's just a busy time of year, eh? Still, sorry, man.

Covering the easy stuff first, in regards to your community participation: good stuff! I know who you are, you pop up on the Discord, you're a good fella. Good stuff.

Here’s my notes I squiggled up while reading your stuff.

Phil
- He seems like a reasonable enough character throughout. Realistic and all - I like the somewhat contradiction of him being both laid back but really motivated.
- Why does he ‘hate Mary Sues with a burning passion’? I assume it all somehow ties into his fondness for literature? There’s certain areas like this, I think, where you can flesh out your character even more (though what you have already is still pretty fine.)

Spensor
- You know what, this may very well be the third vending machine agent the PPC has had throughout its history, fun fact :P. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Perhaps they should form a club.
- I’m a big fan of the concept of somebody realising they don’t exist and promptly being sucked into the PPC, actually. Hope that gets explored in your spinoff or whatnot!
- Thoroughly solid character, otherwise.

Prompt 1
- RC 6969 hehe nice

- ‘Current lone occupant’ is a bit redundant. We can assume he’s the current occupant! Look out for redundancies like that, they tend to bog stories down all muddy-like.

- In one sentence you spell higher-ups with a hyphen, in the other, without it. Which, while not a massive grammatical story killing error, it’s a bit messy innit?

- ‘Clearly someone had to teach this boy about mp3s and earbuds’ whose thoughts are these? This part of the prompt reads as if it’s from Spensor’s perspective, so that train of thought, which seemingly is not from his perspective, is pretty jarring!

- Otherwise, you capture a lot of exuberance and character in Spensor’s introduction. You can immediately tell the kind of person he is through the whole thing--I’m fond of the touch of him just littering, and I like the contrast, too, with the musical choices of the agents.

- The introduction of the two agents, I must say, is somewhat awkward. The way they speak reads as if they were previously familiar with each other, while it’s meant, rather (I think, anyway) to read as Phil being surprised that his partner is a giant robot, in general. There’s a lot of specific definite pronouns here - ‘going to be you’, ‘if they had told you who it was.’
I’d suggest, rather, using indefinite pronouns, to show that he’s surprised by the fact Spensor’s a robot, and not that he’s surprised to be meeting him again, or any such like that.

- I have absolutely no idea how he managed to fit inside the RC through the usage of a trolley. Did they take him apart and push him in? Eh? You should probably improve clarity there, because it totally lost me.

- I’m not sure what a ‘slightly synthesised voice’ is meant to sound like, either. Bit vague, there.

- I’m a big fan of how thoroughly nineties Spensor is. That is fantastically ridiculous, that, and a wonderful way to play off his canonical origins. Phil’s horror towards it is written in very classic agent fashion, but it’s bloody funny and relateable and so on.

Prompt 2
- ‘“Hrmmm...patchy,” he commented.’ is a hilariously understated and bland thing to say, after all that incredibly depressing build up in this story’s intro. Funny stuff, man.

- Missed a single comma between ‘thick framed glasses’ and ‘hoop earrings’

- Something about Phil’s dialogue, in general, gets very vividly across an incredibly tired agony. Poor fella.

- I’ll admit to not being sure as to what the administrator’s ‘“You can’t be serious. If you do this he’ll-”’ is actually referring to.

- Thoroughly solid prompt! Funny throughout and you captured Phil’s character well. I’d certainly like to see more of Spensor at some point, more depths in him and all, but I guess that’s what the rest of the spinoff is for, eh?

So as far as PPC canon knowledge and suchforth goes, it’s solid. You have a good grasp of tone, too, both PPC-wise and the tone of your stories themselves. I definitely think your second prompt is superior to your first one. You've really gotta work on that first one. Your characters have a pretty solid, if somewhat simple, chemistry together.
I would, were I you, watch out that the two of them don’t become sort of, simplistic cartoons where it’s always Phil=resigned straight man and Spensor=silly wise guy, but this is just their introductory stuff. I got faith in you!

SPaGwise, it’s a bit messy. There’s a few redundancies here, a missed comma, pronoun mixups, et al and so on. Issues with clarity a few times, as well, which do kill off a few gags. Especially in the first prompt. I’d recommend running quickly through those again and keeping more careful of that stuff in advance.

There’s a bit of stuff you've got to work on. That’s fine! I probably do. I need to stop saying 'got', probably. I think you've a good grasp on the important things we're looking for in permission--the spirit and feel of the PPC, your characters, whether or not you can write fun stories with them, so on.

Permission granted! Good stuff. Good on ya!