Subject: Love it, and I Iook forward to reading more from you two :D (nm)
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Posted on: 2018-10-06 03:49:00 UTC
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First Mission is Finally Done! by
on 2018-10-03 22:11:00 UTC
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Oh, gods, this has been a Project. But it's worth it.
And so, without further ado... welcome, one and all, to Response Center 369! -
*Blink. Blink.* by
on 2018-10-18 11:38:00 UTC
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"Wait! How did she manage to fall off the tree and off Alex at the same time? Or was that consecutive? She fell off the tree on Alex’s head, and then fell off him?"
"Actually, there is a note in the comments, saying that actually Ce’rana is meant to fall off the tree and Alex is meant to fall in the dirt, both apparently caused by the rocking world."
"Why isn’t this in the text, then? If somebody wants to use their words economically, shouldn’t they try to avoid having to add explanations after the fact?"
Agent Hieronymus, you are daydreaming again. PPCing the PPC is not your job.
Yeah, sorry about that (and for being late). Using some more words, like "... promptly fell off the tree while Alex fell to the dirt ..." might work better there.
Also, I feel like there is a word missing in Ce’rana stared after him for a moment, then the tool in her hands .... ("at the tool"? Certainly not "after the tool", which might be implied by leaving it out.)
Aira pulled back from Herobrine, then punched him in the stomach.
Is that a mini-Sue?
Herobrine Melody, you here hereby charged with being a demigod within a system having no mechanics to facilitate such a thing,
Should be "are".
I don’t know anything about Minecraft, or The Belgariad, or the Fate series (titles should be italicized, BTW, or de-italicized in an italicized disclaimer), so I don’t really have anything to say other than: I could mostly follow the events in this mission, and I may like to see how these agents develop further.
HG -
Re: mission (spoilers) by
on 2018-10-08 20:32:00 UTC
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Minecraft isn't really a property I'm familiar with at all, so while I can't say for sure, I at least feel like you've done a good job of analyzing this story in terms of what is and isn't correct for Minecraft.
I'm having difficulty putting my thoughts about the agents into words. On the one hand, neither one feels like they dominate the narrative or the relationship all the way through, which is good. They both take turns being the leader from scene to scene, and keeping the other's worse impulses in check. On the other hand . . . again, I feel like I'm not phrasing my feelings properly, but it doesn't feel to me like they're quite a team? I get the impression they're working together in order to get the job done, rather than because working together is what they do? But this is all ultimately a first impression, I realize both agents need more appearances to really reveal themselves to us readers. So don't take this is a criticism so much as an observation.
One thing in your analysis I'm not really agreeing with is Herobrine and Aria being related. Unless the fic calls Herobrine and Steve brothers frequently in parts of the story you didn't quote, I really feel like that line from the beginning, when Herobrine calls Steve his "twin" was metaphorical. I think it's pointing out how Steve and Herobrine are sort of two sides of the same coin, with Steve being a creative force and Herobrine a destructive one, and with both overlaying the same character model. That said, our missions do have a long history of interpreting things literally, so I think the mission still stands fine with that detail included.
A couple of small details I really liked were:
1. The book ends of the castle being built and then destroyed in Alex's game.
2. That the removal of Herobrine's mansion is done through means available to regular Minecraft players: a combination of deconstructing parts and using explosives. Very appropriate!
Welcome to doctorlit's list of typos:
"And what is it that you have been working on?" she countered seamlessly as she stepped closer . . .
A minor quibble, but I wouldn't personally use "countered" here, since the agents aren't arguing, just catching either up on their activities.
“Beeper. Stop,” she muttered tiredly, focusing on the immediately-fixable problem.
Since "immediately" ends in "-ly" it doesn't need a hyphen connecting it to the word it's describing. "immediately fixable" is correct here.
Ce’rana, who had somehow managed to get herself a few blocks off the ground, promptly fell off the tree and Alex to the dirt beneath his feet when the world began rocking back and forth . . .
I feel like some words got cut from this sentence, because it's not quite reading clearly to me. Was it meant to be "fell off the tree and bounced off Alex to the dirt beneath his feet"?
. . . when he became loud enough to potentially attract the attention of the nearby potential canon replacements.
Paging the RDR, paging the RDR . . .
He guided her until he was sitting down, then crouched next to her.
I think that's meant to be "she" for Ce'rana?
Ce’nedra turned her face from the thick, green-glowing semi-liquid.
Where did Ce'rana go? (I'm guessing this is the name of a canon Dryad from The Belgariad? The name sounds familiar.)
“I suppose it would depend on your difference of ‘much’,” she conceded.
"Definition."
Ce’rana snorted derisively, closing her eyes and leaned back against a tree of her own . . .
"Leaned" should be "leaning" to match the verb tense of "closing." Another option would be adding a comma after "eyes" which would allow all the verbs to stay as they are now, though I think it reads just a little awkwardly that way.
When he looked down, she flattened her fingers and jabbed them straight into his side.
Aren't they in Minecraft-style disguises right now? Does Ce'rana actually have fingers? Sorry if this one is too silly to have broguht up . . .
The pair listened quietly as Aria recounted her saving of Mille . . .
I think you wanted "Millie" here, since you treated "Mille" as a mini earlier in the story. Especially since it's Aria talking about the character; a Mary Sue wouldn't have been aware of a mini within their narrative.
The Dryad smiled faintly and stuck her arm through, passing though in full when she realized he had done the portal thing right this time, probably.
That should be "through," although I just noticed that also makes "through" appear twice in three words. Maybe the first "through" could be changed to "in"?
—doctorlit apologizes for long it took to write this review; it's been a very sleepy week for him -
Thank you for the review! by
on 2018-10-09 00:56:00 UTC
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To go in order of the points you've made, Alex and Ce'rana don't really feel like a team at this point in time because both of them have the tendency to mentally go "Alright, budge over, if I let you do this it'll take forever and be wrong anyways" - you know, that feeling I'm sure all of us got during every group project ever? If you think of missions like that, both of them are accustomed to being the one who carries the group, and since there's almost always only one carrier in a given group, they're not very used to letting anyone else do anything ever.
I hadn't thought of the possible other meaning of the twin thing, and that could genuinely be interesting if portrayed properly! But here... yeah, it's the Word World, it takes everything literally.
I'm glad you noticed those little details! Both were Mikel's idea, and I stand by my personal writing creed on "details make the dream" when other people do it at least as much as when I do. It was wonderful.
The typos have been fixed, though there are a few that weren't typos at all - specifically, the first three and the fingers thing. And to explain the third, Ce'rana fell from the tree; Alex fell to the dirt beneath his feet.
--Calliope says that no one is obligated to read or review, but it is very much appreciated if people do -
Love it, and I Iook forward to reading more from you two :D (nm) by
on 2018-10-06 03:49:00 UTC
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A solid first mission. by
on 2018-10-05 12:06:00 UTC
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I could tell you guys were having fun with the Words literally interpreting the various typos.
Personally, I’m a fan of the TNT everywhere ending. Imagining that explosion gave me joy.
I do feel like pointing out—Ce’rana and Alex... have me a bit concerned with how their partnership will end, because of their willingness to threaten (and use) violence against each other. Ce’rana especially, with how she “seriously considered stabbing her partner” several times—there’s a certain point where physical violence crosses from being funny to being concerning, and right now I’ve come out of this wondering if Alex is going to wake up one day with a pencil in his heart.
(This is the same issue I had with one Sue who thought beating someone over the head with a frying pan made for good slapstick. In a cartoon, yes, but not so much in Middle-earth.)
Just something to keep in mind going forward, because I’m sure you two are going to have a great number of future missions. -
Believe it or not... by
on 2018-10-05 15:37:00 UTC
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...that was exactly what we were going for. At least in Ce'rana's case.
It's something of a character point. Something that will have to be worked on and, one day, overcome. There are behind-the-scenes reasons why Alex tolerates her stabby ways instead of telling her to knock it off and doesn't she know that hurts people?, but not everyone has those reasons. Someday - probably someday rather soon, in-universe - someone else will be around and see this, and they will have Something To Say about it.
But on the other points:
We were having so much fun with those. I'm honestly especially proud of the catchup; we like to copy badfics into GDocs and annotate them, which usually ends up with us reading it many, many, many times - which is the only reason we found the incest - but I didn't notice that until we got to that scene while writing. And it just sort of hit as an amazing thing to throw in. You'll have to ask Mikel for his favorite, though.
As for the massive explosives - me too, Ix, me too. The only reason Ce'rana seems upset about it is because she's a Dryad and those things may not light fires, but they do still explode her tree. Which hurts. A lot. -
Heh, that's good to know. by
on 2018-10-05 19:00:00 UTC
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Suffice it to say, I'm very excited to see more of Ce'rana and Alex.