Subject: Not a PG, but about the profiles
Author:
Posted on: 2021-10-24 04:07:47 UTC
I think it'd be a better idea to organize them into sections (name, age, home continuum, RC, dept, fandoms, descriptions, backstory) to make them easier to read.
Hi! You might not know me if you haven't been around much on the Discord, I've mainly been active there.
Anyway, that's right, I finally got around to writing my Permission Request! Well, really it's been done for a while (thanks to Damian Thorne and Helsinki for betaing it!), I just couldn't find a good "first mission"-type fic (my actual planned first mission is already in the unclaimed badfic section of the wiki).
So, yknow what? Have a "pretty far along the pair's character arc" mission. Friendship is Optimal is a My Little Pony "rational fanfiction" that attempts to explain to the reader the dangers of artificial intelligence (no, not those. They mean Skynet, not Facebook algorithms.) by using a Conversion Bureau knockoff plot. Not only is the general premise questionable, the writing style preachy and somewhat grating, and the author someone who hadn't actually watched much of any MLP (no, really!), but it's of particular concern to the Special Operations Division because. Yknow. AI!Celestia's entire characterization is "smarter than you and wants to turn the entire universe into ponies". That's certainly a bit of a safety concern, and one that requires quite Special Operations. (roll credits!)
Anyway, I won't keep you waiting any longer. Meet the RC 8 pair, from the Department of Floaters, Special Operations Division.
Do I know you? Yep. Do you know the universe? Yep.
Your agent concepts are interesting and I like how they play off each other in your prompts. There's also a lot of potential for character growth from the both of them, which is always great to see. :)
However, there are a few points that I'm not too keen on.
If you'd planned on sporking a mission from the unclaimed badfic section, you should have posted it here; as it is, I had a look at your MLP pick, and while the first few chapters are boring, they're not poorly written enough to warrant a sporking; it's not our job to go after "meh" badfics, it's the godawful, "so bad the bar was on the ground and the fic dug below it" fics that the PPC missions.
Your technical writing also had me raising a few eyebrows. You sprinkle em dashes quite liberally through the prompts, sometimes in places it isn't necessary. For example, with the sentence "What made them hesitant was the conspicuously empty space next to it — it looked as if another number used to be there, but had fallen off.", a semicolon would be more appropriate. You also need to decide how you want to format your paragraph breaks, since there are a few instances where you suddenly switch from single lines to doubles.
I'll also note that linking to a song in the text of the story is often a charge in missions, and should have also been something your beta readers should have caught.
That being said, those are easily fixable moving forward. I'm going to say Permission denied for now, but if you polish what you've got, you have the makings of something good here.
Yeah, I have a run-on sentence problem, and a nasty habit of patching that up with em dashes. I cleaned the prompts up a bit for take 2 - especially focusing on the dashes - it's a bit of an endemic issue in modern writers, isn't it - with the help of a non-PPCer beta.
All dragged-on-to-the-point-of-unfunniness jokes aside, I feel I got it most of the way there, but I'm not posting it just yet. First of all, it's way too late, and there's always the possibility I missed a glaringly obvious error in my sleep-deprived state. Second of all, I'm... Actually still not sure what to do for the fic.
Yeah, FiO isn't bad in technical terms. I'm not gonna lie, that hypothetical mission would really just be an excuse to advance my characters' arcs; it fits in nicely with their personal themes. Obviously, the in-universe PPC would have every reason to stop [sighs] CelestAI before someone writes her discovering metafiction and turning the entire multiverse into friendship and ponies. But yeah, that's not A Terrible Badfic That Defiles Canon in terms of its actual writing. Oh well.
My actual choice for a first mission was Pattycakes (potentially doing something fun with the "multiple endings" thing), but on second thoughts, it's just... Kinda nasty. And I don't think it'd work well with those agents. So I'll get back to you with something more appropriate.
I think it'd be a better idea to organize them into sections (name, age, home continuum, RC, dept, fandoms, descriptions, backstory) to make them easier to read.
Why did I think that said Friendship is Oatmeal? I need sleep, obviously. But I can certainly vouch for you being active on the Discord