Subject: It's a nice interlude!
Author:
Posted on: 2020-01-02 06:14:45 UTC
Having things go wrong like they did is a nice twist, and it was fun reading.
I liked the kill-counting bit.
Subject: It's a nice interlude!
Author:
Posted on: 2020-01-02 06:14:45 UTC
Having things go wrong like they did is a nice twist, and it was fun reading.
I liked the kill-counting bit.
In which a routine mission into Middle-earth goes horribly wrong.
Many, many thanks to Neo Skater for betaing this story. Content warnings are included at the beginning.
Having things go wrong like they did is a nice twist, and it was fun reading.
I liked the kill-counting bit.
It's good seeing some of the infrastructure departments getting some spotlight, and I like the way you framed the story so that it isn't told purely through the field agents' perspectives. I especially love the imagery of DIA agents charging into Middle-earth on horseback, and with Alice and Delroch, no less! Also, that opening line about DoSAT having a quiet, ordinary day, complete with swearing and explosions, was quite funny and definitive of DoSAT.
I think the fight scene was well done. It felt realistic to me for the agents to be able to get in some good blows, while still ultimately getting overwhelmed and suffering some pretty bad injuries. The orcs all felt in character in their actions and strategies. However, I can't really overlook the fact that no battle should have been necessary? Because assuming Melissa and May had a neuralyzer with them, all they would have needed to do was flash the orcs and tell them to move on and forget they saw the agents. Even if the field agents' was broken, the DIA agents almost certainly should have brought one with to minimize canon interference—and wiping out an entire squad of orcs is certainly interfering, "semicanonical" or not.
Some typos:
"Makes-Things gave Tuilinn a grim l."
Part of "look" got cut off.
And this might just be a difference between dialects, but in the following two lines:
"'I’ll better go and have my hide darned . . .'"
"'I’ll better get going, too.'"
The phrase as I know it in U.S. English would be, "I'd better go . . ."
—doctorlit, wanting to emulate greater infrastructure inclusion like this
Doc, you're entirely right about the neuralyzer. I did my best to explain why the agents got stranded in the fic, but that's a nice big plothole I left there. (Feel free to drive a bus through it.) The only explanation I can give for missing that detail is that I usually use neuralyzers during actual missions when the agents interact with canon characters - and since I wasn't writing a mission this time, I forgot to give them one.
I might take down this story and rewrite it, or I might leave it around for the character interactions, I'll need to figure out which. Either way, thanks for the feedback and for noticing what I didn't.
I'll go stand in the corner now.
You could just say that Melissa and May's neuralyzer also got broken from the backpack hitting the rock. That way, it's only the part where Faelwen and Ketevan arrive that would need to be changed.
—doctorlit, helpful?