Subject: Heh. Now that you mention it...
Author:
Posted on: 2020-06-12 12:34:48 UTC
It's actually almost tempting to pull up one of my Infrastructure agents and write a series of them navigating PPC Bureaucracy. Tagline: No missions - only paperwork.
Except that I don't think I have anyone that would fit with. Also, I would drive myself up the wall.
hS
Whelp, here it is. Hope you all like it.
Okay, let's see:
Do I know you? Not very well, unfortunately, but your screenname is familiar. There's also the minor issue that we've had a whole lot of people with "kitty" as a name element, so I tend to get a few of them confused. I remember you a bit from your posts in May, though, and a quick Board search says you've been around since December 2019 (and you seem to be active in the Discord, at a glance), so I'm going to say that's good enough. If anyone who spends more time on the Discord wants to speak up, they're welcome to.
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The bios and prompts:
Kitty: -"Home universe: The Mii-verse (not to be confused with the thing called Mii-verse)" This means...pretty much nothing to me. I'm going to assume it makes sense? Wouldn't mind a quick explanation or confirmation from someone who is familiar with this.
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O'Ryan: -O'Ryan is kind of an odd first name in my experience, but this is the PPC and his home 'verse could have different naming conventions, for all I know. Not an issue, just a minor curiosity.
-Man. Is baseball a more violent sport where he's from?
-What kind of job did he try to get elsewhere? I'm more curious about that than why he was rejected.
-"mostly because he wanted to be driven crazy of his own accord" - guessing that means he decided that if he was going to be driven crazy, he'd rather it was his choice and nothing to do with students? i.e., he wanted to go into it with his eyes open?
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Control prompt:
-Kitty's traded in her clothes for a uniform. That's fine except for the fact that there isn't really a PPC uniform, as such; people do often wear black, and flashpatches are supposed to be included somewhere, but...well, have a look. There isn't exactly not a uniform, but there also isn't a standardized version available. I'm not completely sure she'd be provided with something just like that. It's not impossible, just seems a little odd (and also like she'd potentially be provided with any black clothing from t-shirt and pants to a cape and peasant shirt). On the other hand, there's both a Supply Depot and a Quartermaster, so you never know. Just...be aware that it mostly isn't standardized, so at the very least other recruits' experiences may not match hers, especially recently.
-Yikes, that's quite an RC number. I pity anyone who winds up trying to look up Kitty or O'Ryan by RC number alone. No actual problem with it that I can spot, though.
-(Oh dear. Uh, Bleeprin does in fact contain aspirin. If she's allergic to it, she shouldn't take any; Suebuprofen is the alternative. --seems you've dealt with it in the random prompt, which is good.)
-"She hoped, for the umpteenth time that day, that he wasn't going to belittle her for being a failure" - poor girl. That doesn't sound like a fun irrational fear to have (irrational in the sense that most people don't immediately find reason to call someone they just met a failure).
-"She pushed open the door, only to find a slightly messy room and a man asleep at the console, at least what she thought was the console anyways." - Could use some fine-tuning (on second look, I'm pretty sure that's a comma splice)--more along the lines of "She pushed open the door, only to find a slightly messy room and a man asleep at the console (or at least what she thought was the console)." You don't need both 'at least' and 'anyways' and there needs to be more/different punctuation. The second comma cannot be there.
-"Sorry. It's the dang IO acting up again," he said. "I was really excited to meet you, as I heard you liked math. Did I hear correctly?" - This made me laugh a bit. It's kind of a great introduction--"I heard you like math!! Excitement! Is that true? Let's be friends!"
-Speaking of that line, you're missing a paragraph break after the next line ("Yeah... But what's the IO?" she said, shifting the Bleeprin into her other arm.) I'm assuming there was originally a page break there and it got missed.
-"He smiled and tried to comb his hair with his hand to a somewhat less embarrassing mess but only succeeded in making it look worse." - I'd put a comma after 'mess', but that may be preference.
-"He shook his head, as if he was trying to shake the memories away, and he made his hair more of a mess." - This seems a little clumsy. I'd probably rephrase it to: "He shook his head, as if he was trying to shake the memories away, making his hair more of a mess [in the process]." or "He shook his head, as if he was trying to shake the memories away, and managed to make his hair more of a mess." or "He shook his head, as if he was trying to shake the memories away, and made his hair more of a mess." if you want to keep it very close to the same wording. Not a huge issue, but something that would benefit from a little fine-tuning.
-It's not completely clear to me why O'Ryan's fallen on the Bleeprin bottles, especially since there was no mention of him moving; on the other hand, it looks a little like he might almost have some slight curse on him? Like, he's particularly susceptible to the Laws of Narrative Comedy and the IO and so on? If that's not the intent, you might want to tweak things a little. (Also, man, those are flimsy bottles!) (Edit: hm, looks like there really might be something going on there, based on the book suddenly falling! Interesting.)
-...okay, so the conversation between them about whether or not Kitty's failed/a failure is really nice. O'Ryan seems like a nice guy, and we've got some Kitty feels...just generally well done.
-"Besides, I think you're not a failure if you managed to pass the ritual." - The...what now? What ritual? What in the world are they talking about? Glancing ahead, I don't see any further reference to this. Please explain.
-"Here," he said, getting a tablet of Suebuprofen. - Not an actual issue, but this is a place where you could expand: where is he getting it from? Is there a bottle near him? In his pocket? Adding in bits of detail like that helps flesh out the scene a bit more, and give us a better mental image of the space around them and how the characters interact with it.
-Overall, a nice meeting scene with some good character moments and a few sentences that could use some polishing. No major errors apart from the (probable) comma splice, though.
--
Random prompt:
-"Kittyauthor reorganized her RC center" - nope. RC stands for Response Center. That can be capitalized, or lower case, or acronym-only (or even spelled as "response centre", if you're using British/Canadian spelling!) but RC center is right out. No need to specify that it's a response center center, unless it's the center of the response center, in which case it should be "the response center's center" :)
-"She had already put all the bottles of Bleeprin (which she learned contained aspirin, something she is allergic to)" - Two things for that parenthetical. First, "which she had learned" would be a bit more correct, since she presumably didn't learn it two seconds ago or in the course of putting it away; second, since you're writing in past tense, it should be "something she was allergic to". Minor, but useful.
-"and the now few bottles of Suebuprofen (due to an agent needing it, since he was allergic, or so Kitty assumed, to aspirin as well) in one place" - This is kind of...honestly, you might want to break the whole sentence up a little bit, or at least condense this second parenthetical; it's a bit confusing otherwise. For example: "(due to an agent needing it since he was allergic to aspirin as well, or so Kitty assumed)". Also, ideally you could expand this a little--is this a common occurrence? Is this agent a friend of O'Ryan's, or did he just show up at their door and Kitty has no idea? Basically, why is an agent coming to O'Ryan to get Suebuprofen? It doesn't need a lot of detail, but it sounds a little odd with none.
-"She had wiped down tables that were used often and was in the process of cleaning large, tube things with metal handles." - They have multiple tables? Nice. Also, "large, tubular things" or "large tubes" or "large tube-like things" or even "large tube-shaped things". "Large tube things" would be fine in dialogue, but since this is narration, it doesn't quite work.
-:D I rather like their conversation. Kitty's basically done a bunch of unnecessary and even unhelpful rearranging and cleaning; O'Ryan, well, we get the sense that he's not exactly happy about it, of course, but it's going the way of sighing and mild protests rather than blowing up at her, which is...kind of refreshing, really. I like O'Ryan. He seems like a fairly balanced individual, who'll be good for Kitty in the long run.
-And then he drops the toy lightsaber. Here's hoping Kitty never does damage by dropping a real one before learning the differences...lightsaber safety training is important!
-"Leaving behind Whitney to—" - This should probably be "Leaving Whitney behind to--" A good paragraph, though. You're doing a nice job of getting across some of Kitty's issues and traumas without it feeling like you're beating us over the head with it; it's just a part of who she is right now, so it's present when it makes sense for it to be. Nicely done.
-"Have you held a sword before?" O'Ryan asked. He put down his water and picked up the other toy saber. He turned it on, causing a red glow to go up the previously white tube. He waved it around a little bit, getting the hang of it. - Again, not a big thing, but you have three short-ish sentences beginning with 'he' here. The paragraph would read smoother with a bit more variation.
-"Well then," he said, "as 'punishment' for making my toy sabers seem less real, let's see how well you can handle it." He smiled playfully and waved his toy lightsaber around before promptly dropping it. - I'm amused. O'Ryan is really likeable; between the personality bits I highlighted earlier, and this general friendliness+clumsiness blended into still being the older and (at least somewhat? How long has he been in HQ?) more experienced agent.
-"She held her lightsaber so that it was perpendicular to the ground, the handle of the saber closest to the ground." - This could be a little clearer--"the handle of the saber closer to the ground than the tip [of the blade]", maybe?
-"O'Ryan staggered, leaving him plenty open for Kitty to "stab" him, which she did." - That got a laugh.
-"Ha ha! Got you!" she shouted. She had a smile that was a mile wide. She returned her toy saber to her original starting position. - Again, some variety in sentence structure could be good. "Smile a mile wide" is also a cliche, which doesn't mean it has no place here, but is something you might want to be aware of.
-"He wondered how he was so bad with a toy sword when he easily beat another teacher in a foam sword battle for charity." - "when he had easily beaten" would be more correct, though I'm not sure the way you have it is actually wrong. The bit of backstory is interesting, too.
-Overall, I like the play fight, and the piece as a whole. You could stand to fine-tune some of the sentences, and a little more detail about emotions and the setting wouldn't be amiss, but that will come with practice and betas. As it is, you have enjoyable characters who interact nicely with each other, and scenes that hold together well. Working in more detail about how the characters are feeling (this can be done by hinting at emotions with quick descriptions of body language or facial expressions) will help bring them even more to life, and help the reader feel closer to them.
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The badfic: I know very little about Transformers, but the summary seems to support your note. A quick glance at the fic does look rather like the general 'story's warping around the Sue in ways that don't necessarily make sense' phenomenon; I'd appreciate it if someone who actually knows the canon would weigh in, but as far as I can tell, it looks like...honestly, kind of like a classic Suefic, really.
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Conclusion:
You could stand to work in a bit more detail to paint a fuller picture of your characters, setting, and action, but...Honestly, I feel like mainly I'm just giving betaing comments of the 'here's how you can fine-tune this piece' type. A lot of automatically doing this on your own will come with practice, and learning from betas. You don't have any major SPaG errors that I noticed, and there are nice bits of humor; I also like your characters, and apart from tiny bits that sound a little off (being given a uniform, "RC center", "the ritual"), I see no reason why they (and your writing) wouldn't fit into the PPC well. They even have bits of intriguing backstory/mysteries (like O'Ryan's bad luck!clumsiness-type-thing), which so far are mostly being handled pretty well!
I think you could stand to do a touch more wiki diving and reading of other people's stories, but you're pretty much there. Keep learning, and preferably try to get some betas who've been PPCers for a while, at least for your first few stories; they'll be able to catch those little things about the setting that you're on your way to knowing but haven't quite internalized yet. The rest, the fine-tuning and polish, will come more naturally with practice and experience.
Also, please don't be intimidated by the great big list I've left you! I tend to go through Permission requests very, very thoroughly, and, as is not uncommon, wound up essentially commenting as I would when thoroughly betaing something. I would appreciate answers to the few questions I asked, though; I've gone back and bolded all or most of them for comfort. :)
All in all, I'm going to say Permission Granted! Happy writing :)
~Z
Thank you so much! I was expecting to get rejected! Woot!
Now to answer some of the questions. The questions that weren't answered, anyways.
"What kind of job did he try to get elsewhere?"
He was trying to get a job as an accountant somewhere. I don't know exactly where.
"Yikes, that's quite an RC number." It's mostly a joke between friends. That RC number is the formula for the amount of half-lives times 2. The times two part is because, from what I've read, an RC number cannot start with a letter.
"This made me laugh a bit. It's kind of a great introduction--"I heard you like math!! Excitement! Is that true? Let's be friends!""
All in O'Ryan's way of greeting people. He tends to be happier than Kitty (mostly to balance the scales a bit to prevent Serious Business from occurring)
"Like, he's particularly susceptible to the Laws of Narrative Comedy and the IO and so on?"
Yep. He's more suspectable to the IO. He's also a bit of a klutz.
"O'Ryan seems like a nice guy, and we've got some Kitty feels...just generally well done."
Thanks! He's kind to those who like math (as per what his profile thing said) and tends to care greatly for those who like math.
"RC stands for Response Center."
Dang it! It's like "AC current" for me. I'll try better.
"They have multiple tables? Nice."
Yes. Multiple tables for O'Ryan to leave all his math stuff on. No idea why though, but multiple tables have their use somewhere.
"O'Ryan, well, we get the sense that he's not exactly happy about it, of course, but it's going the way of sighing and mild protests rather than blowing up at her, which is...kind of refreshing, really. I like O'Ryan. He seems like a fairly balanced individual, who'll be good for Kitty in the long run."
Yep, he's there to balance the scales, so to speak. He's not the type of person to blow up at someone. Instead, he keeps his anger more inside. The only time he'd blow up at someone would be at a Sue or Sue-wraith but not until the charges. Even then, it's highly unlikely.
"How long has he been in HQ?"
About a year or so before Kitty. Not that experienced, but still hasn't quit because of insanity.
"Working in more detail about how the characters are feeling (this can be done by hinting at emotions with quick descriptions of body language or facial expressions) will help bring them even more to life, and help the reader feel closer to them."
That's what I intend to do. Thanks for the good criticism!
"They even have bits of intriguing backstory/mysteries (like O'Ryan's bad luck!clumsiness-type-thing), which so far are mostly being handled pretty well!"
Thanks! He's definitely a clumsy person, something I definitely want to continue working with. Clumsiness is something that comes a bit more natural to me to write about.
"I think you could stand to do a touch more wiki diving and reading of other people's stories, but you're pretty much there. Keep learning, and preferably try to get some betas who've been PPCers for a while, at least for your first few stories; they'll be able to catch those little things about the setting that you're on your way to knowing but haven't quite internalized yet. The rest, the fine-tuning and polish, will come more naturally with practice and experience."
That's what I plan on doing. I like reading other missions, so it's no big deal. I've been wiki diving for a while but am happy to have an excuse to do some more!
Thank you so much!
:D Glad to have made you happy!
Accountant...actually, that makes sense, with the love of math. He'd probably have enjoyed something with statistics, too.
I figured the RC number had a story behind it :) they often do; heck, that's true of most of mine. Thanks for sharing the one behind yours.
I do like how they balance each other--it's done pretty well, to the point where it feels fairly natural.
Multiple tables are good things :)
I'm glad you're planning to keep reading and working on adding detail and so on. I really do think you'll blossom as a writer, with some effort and practice. You mentioned you'd thought you'd get rejected; I read what you wrote pretty darn thoroughly, and what I saw was much more 'young writer with a spark' than anything that you'd need to work on more before getting Permission here. (Not that there's anything bad about the latter! It just means learning and practicing a bit more before getting the okay to write official PPC stories. We're rooting for you.)
At any rate: you already know my recommendations. Glad you plan to take them on board :) I wish you the best of luck, and a lot of fun!
~Z
Woohoo, Kitty, you got permission! Also, to answer those questions...
She's definitely active on the Discord. I can vouch for that.
She means the universe in which Miis (the Nintendo 3DS's digital avatars) exist in the first "Mii-verse". The second Mii-verse (though it should technically be Miiverse) refers to a Nintendo 3DS social network, which does in fact use your Miis.
She's referring to the initiation rites mentioned in Section A of the PPC Handbook, but you clearly didn't recognize them. Is the Handbook not canon? Or is it just not well known or something.
I'm not a Transformers person, so I can't say much about the canon. (Man, I need to get into more canons...)
As I said earlier, I'm so happy for you and congrats on getting permission!
I appreciate your answers. I also appreciate hS' response to your question!
For my part, put it this way: when I joined in 2013 and reread a bunch of stories and read most of the wiki and all the newer stories I could get my hands on (longish story that boils down to having read PPC stories for years without knowing the group was still active and making more), I got the impression that while the Handbook and similar things were still around and still canon, it was more that they were canon somewhere, or else were more of a past thing that wasn't really common anymore, for the most part. I expect I read the Handbook, but it was probably only once or twice and has barely come up since.
Although, given I have...several agents, actually, who were technically active pretty early on, I should probably refresh my memory on the Handbook, etc at some point. Not sure what, if anything, would come up in writing, but it's entirely possible someone like T'Zar would at least be aware of more of this.
~Z
PS: You or Kitty or anyone else are welcome to revive some of this stuff, by the way. Every spinoff is a little different, after all. It could also make for some amusing interactions with other agents who either haven't heard of the thing in question, much less experienced it, or hadn't realized it was still happening! Just food for thought :)
But you can generally read most rules in it as 'if someone feels like it'. There's probably some Agent trainers out there who use the ritual, or administer the oath, but there's a lot more who don't (and how many agents get any training, anyway?). Same goes for uniform, actually - I'm sure there is one, but how many people actually wear it?
In this context, the PPC is like an older, privately-owned company, where which bits of the ostensible rulebook you follow depends on who you hang out with, your personality, and how much Upstairs like you.
(I've worked for one of those. It can be a bit of a mess.)
hS
In this case, a short one: thanks for responding :) Also, that second paragraph fascinates me.
~Z
It's actually almost tempting to pull up one of my Infrastructure agents and write a series of them navigating PPC Bureaucracy. Tagline: No missions - only paperwork.
Except that I don't think I have anyone that would fit with. Also, I would drive myself up the wall.
hS
I'm sorry that I forgot to say this, but I wish, for days that I do not reveal my gender (I'm Genderfluid and, for me, my gender changes on a daily basis) to be referred to as they/them.
However, you got my gender right today (I am female today, as of posting), so you don't need to change it. Just please keep that in mind.
I'm sorry again for not saying it earlier.