Thanks for the feedback, Doc!

New mission and interlude! by Mirage Fontane on 2020-05-29 11:34:25 UTC Writing Plug Reply

Edith and Ruxanda, my DAVD agents, are back to tackle a nice and terribly-written Fatal Frame badfic. My beta, GeniusGamer, had told me that I might need more than one person to look at this, but after we were done with the beta work and editing, the consensus was that the mission was ready to be posted. So, here it is. For those not familiar with Fatal Frame: the fic doesn't follow the games beyond having some characters from them appear (in name, anyway), so you're not missing much.

https://rc746.dreamwidth.org/3864.html

About the mission: normally I'd do my best to rescue a Stu like this, but I really hate the "weep upon my tortured soul" routine, especially when it's this tasteless. I put specific trigger warnings on the top of the post, but... it's a DAVD mission. It's not pretty. I am, however, happy to report that once my other current squickfic WIP is done and posted, I'll be done with squicky missions (and possibly missions altogether, since I'm focusing on interludes now) for a long time.

Also, I wonder how many people will get that actor reference. ^_^

https://rc746.dreamwidth.org/4340.html

Here is the latest interlude - normally I'd be publishing these in separate posts, but this time the interlude is both a direct continuation of the mission and an introduction to my latest agent character, so I'd suggest reading the two together. Enjoy. (The interlude is SFW, as far as I can tell.)

Also, many thanks to GeniusGamer for betaing these. ^_^

Thoughts by Tomash on 2020-06-07 06:04:06 UTC Reply

Your agents have a pretty good thing of banter going.

For the fic, I got the vague impression that there's just over the top abuse and angst that is both going significantly father than a (rather dark?) canon, which by itself wouldn't be bad, but whet it's combined with writing that's so over the top it's almost funny ... yeah.

My overall thoughts are that I could follow what was going on and it was an overall reasonable mission.

I take it your planned focus on interludes might involve exploring your characters or a wander into the infrastructure departments?

Re: thoughts by Mirage Fontane on 2020-06-07 08:50:35 UTC Edited Reply

I'm glad to hear the banter worked. I was trying my best to differentiate Edith and Ruxanda from my other agent pair who also bicker a lot, but have a much friendlier relationship. And yeah, the fic was quite bad in the badly-written abuse way. Fatal Frame contains plenty of angst and sadness and horrifying things happening to good people, but it doesn't have that flavor of "see how tragic I am? See? See?!" Instead of sad, this fic just made me angry. Or laugh.

As for the interludes, I do plan on experimenting a little with the setting and especially my characters. I don't intend to draw attention away from my two main agent pairs for a while, but I'd like to delve deeper into their relationships with each other and their assorted PPC friends. I have a lot of supporting characters at the moment (Sumie, Yuko, the kids and two others), and I'd like to use them more in my writing. Gotta get all that inspiration out of my system. : D

Thanks for reading!

Re: mission and interlude by doctorlit on 2020-06-01 02:37:40 UTC Reply

“Jar of Hearts”

Aw. I feel bad the Middle-earth kids had such a mixed reaction to Tangled. It makes sense, but I also understand that Ruxanda wouldn’t think of a Disney movie reminding them of trauma. I’m glad the kids at least get to help with the last recruitment at the end; they get a new friend, and get to help another kid adjust to being rescued from a badfic!

Within the mission itself, you did a good job of using the agents’ humor to break apart the more awful content in the fic. It gets a little MST-like, but you still managed to keep the agents’ personalities at the forefront, so it doesn’t dissolve into reactionary talking heads. Also, speaking as someone who doesn’t know much about Fatal Frame, I feel like you gave just enough information about the mansion and the family living there to get me through the mission, without overloading me with extra detail about the canon world that wouldn’t have affected the mission. Well done!

(Did not get the actor reference.)

Epilogue

You really have a knack for these “new characters in HQ” scenes. I like that Sumie is more take-charge than other new recruits tend to be, and yeah, I suspect she’ll be well-suited to Bad Slash. I like that she’ll be adopting Yuko as well, as her adjustment period will be easier with an adult from her own culture around to lean on.

—doctorlit, framed (with glasses)

Thanks for the feedback, Doc! by Mirage Fontane on 2020-06-01 04:00:50 UTC Edited Reply

I'm very glad that this mission worked as intended, with a relatively obscure canon being sporked here. And I was worried myself about not having given the agents enough to do in this, but frankly, the fic hardly had anything happening in it either aside from the aaaangst. It's great that the character dynamics managed to carry it nonetheless. We'll see how well I manage to write Sumie and Yuko from here on.

Also, pity you didn't get that reference, but I figured not many readers would. :"D Michael Biehn is the apple of my eye, but he's of the "underrated actor who has been in three and a half actually good things" variety. (He played Kyle in The Terminator and Hicks in Aliens, if you want to place him.) And Blood Dragon is a Far Cry 3... mod? DLC? I don't even know, but it's basically a parody of 80's action hero stuff and sci-fi action games in the vein of Kung Fury. It's got cybersoldiers, awful one-liners, bulging biceps, and laser dinosaurs. It's not as well-known as the actual Far Cry games, but I love it to bits. ^_^ Mr. Biehn voices the main character.

I like it by Ozzielot on 2020-06-01 01:10:43 UTC Reply

I haven't played the Fatal Frame series, but I still enjoyed the mission! The sentences copied from the badfic were so melodramtic. As for the agents, I found Edith and Ruxanda's banter to be amusing.

Also, the interlude was adorable.

Thank you! ^_^ by Mirage Fontane on 2020-06-01 03:49:27 UTC Reply

I was worried that the mission would be a bit hard to follow with such an obscure continuum to spork in, but I'm happy to hear that wasn't the case.

And trust me... what you see in this mission is only half of Teh Drama. I don't mind some well-written angst, but... "well-written" is the operative word here. This fic was really, really bad. : D