Subject: Humour, humour... humour is hard.
Author:
Posted on: 2021-02-18 11:53:11 UTC

First of all, I really enjoyed the classic flavour of this mission (which I read once people started mentioning LotR characters in their comments... might be worth naming the canon in the plug, so people can see if they know it). It was fun to see the good old 'here is a thing about LotR which is wrong and goofy'; it's been a long time since I've gotten that. (Partly because I so rarely read missions... :O)

So, humour. Humour in PPC missions can come from a range of places. Free-associating here:

  • Comments on the badfic. You have this down nicely. As someone said, the agent's aren't just saying "hey, that's wrong", but also using it as a teachable moment for the audience. You've done a good job of turning ambiguity ('hair the colour of the woods') into outright absurdity. I also liked things such as 'roll you down a hill', where you take a badfic turn of phrase and use it to your own ends.

  • Physical manifestations of badfic logic. You did this to an extent with the minis, but I think you didn't go much further. We never saw green-haired Elrond, for instance, or the fact that Airhead apparently takes her skirt off all the time (nobody mentioned trousers!), or much else (even Aragon doesn't seem to have taken Aragorn's place, just popped up unnoticed next to him). Showing us some of the badness would help break up the agents needing to tell us about it.

  • PPC tech and logic. Lots of this! From Ironic Overpower [BEEP] to the CAD, to the minis again and even "errr... she's not really that bad, maybe we should rethink the murder plan", you do this very well.

  • Agent interactions. This is always the trickiest one; if you let them stray too far from the subject at hand, you wind up with an interlude-as-mission, where the badfic is background to the agents' banter (or drama). You've played it very much on-topic, which is good for badfic snark (and mission length), but limits your opportunities to play around with the agents. It's a balancing act, and one that plays out differently every mission.

From all that, I feel like finding the humour - and having fun at it - is about that balancing act. Do I want to write my next mission as agent- or badfic-centred? Will the badfic work best as a subject for snark, or a bizarre manifestation? There's no right answers, just what feels best to you when writing.

This was a perfectly good mission; it slid quite hard to one end of most of the scales above, but that's fine! Some missions do (I'm writing one starring a mini and a pov, which wipes out the snark and tech possibilities completely), while others are more balanced. Just do what you enjoy. :)

hS

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