Subject: Okay, hat firmly on!
Author:
Posted on: 2022-06-03 20:12:44 UTC

I pretty much agree with Lily, actually, and I had read the sample before I saw her post, so no sniping occurred. I just waited because I wanted to make sure to give my response the focus it needs. {= ) So, without further ado, Permission Granted. Here are my thoughts.

On your activity, I feel that I get who you are, and that you've demonstrated that you get who we are enough that I trust you won't require hand-holding over the Larninkurv Mountains. And also will understand what I just said. {; )

On the choice of badfic, I'm fine with it. I feel that blatant trollfic need not be treated with the same care as badfic that was genuinely trying to be good. Since the author presumably knew they were writing something terrible with the intent of riling people up, it's not exactly bashing them to say so. I'm also on board with the concept of trolls as fanfic entities akin to Sue- and slash-wraiths, distinct and separate from their authors. I agree with Lily that the method of dealing with them should be different from dealing with the other entities, though, and I think the original Troll Division fic sets up an interesting idea with the notion of exposing trolls to the light of day in order to vanquish them.

Tangentially, if there's any doubt that a fic is a trollfic, it should be treated like a normal fic. As the existence of the Troll Division itself implies, we should distinguish trollfics from failed parodies for this purpose, too. But, more on this when you actually get around to developing it.

On the writing sample, seconding Lily: I really like the interaction between Mina and Carlisle. The piece is basically them exchanging bios, which could be dead boring since I already read their bios, but the in-text acknowledgement via Mina that Carlisle interviewing his new partner like this is weird, plus Mina turning it back on him, makes it funny. I straight-up laughed at the bit about the tour, both Carlisle's idea of giving one and Mina calling it boring even though it was, indeed, her idea. Well done!

I would have liked to see an example of Mina being a bad-luck charm to Carlisle, though. She doesn't even make the console go off, which is pretty darned good luck. Subversion of expectations isn't a bad technique, but I'm not sure it worked here.

I'm also a trifle dubious about Mina's backstory, since it involves crossing a Creativity Shield and I'm not sure that doesn't potentially have some dire implications. I wonder if it wouldn't work just as well for her to be a formerly Suvian incarnation of Lady Luck from some other, non-quarantined continuum? There's plenty of precedent for incarnations of deific beings in HQ, and the idea of a cheerful, fifteen-year-old Lady [Bad] Luck seems pretty fun without PPC badfic needing to be involved. I could be swayed about this, though. I tend to leave the ins and outs of multiversal physics to people like hS and Lily anyway, because that stuff hurts my brain. ^_^;

I also caught a few technical errors your betas missed. To be fair, some of these are VERY small details, so don't sweat it too much, but:

> a hated Harry Potter badfic

As a title of a long work, Harry Potter should be set off with italics, as you did with Miraculous Ladybug. (Not all book series names are their official title, but this one is.)

> He was part of DMS
> He has a mysterious enmity with DTE

Since you would write "He was part of the Department of Mary Sues," you should also write "the DMS" and "the DTE" with the definite article. This is especially true when the abbreviation is an initialism and each letter is pronounced (e.g. "the Dee-Em-Ess"), since they are standing in direct place of the words. However, some departments have nicknames (e.g. FicPsych) and others have acronyms that are pronounced as words (e.g. DOGA, "Doh-gah") and thus function as nicknames, so they don't need an article.

> “Name?” he said, staring at a sheet if paper.

"If" should be "of."

> “Now, can we—“

Since you're using smart quotes, you need to be careful that they're facing the correct direction. The second one is backwards, and there are a few more like it following em dashes. (Also be sure that all your apostrophes are apostrophes, not open single-quotes, even at the beginning of a word. For example, ’cause, not ‘cause. There isn't anything like that in this piece, but word processors aren't smart enough to catch this, so it will happen eventually.)

> Carlisle sighed. “Yes. This is your half.”
>
> He gestured to the side of the room that held nothing but Generic Furniture. “And mine.”
>
> Carlisle pointed to the other side, which had a few back-and-white pictures of him hanging on its walls. Most of the room was a dull grey.

Not an error, per se, since actual rules about paragraphing are a bit thin on the ground, but I would say Carlisle's dialogue indicating Mina's half and his gesture to Mina's half constitute one thought and ought to be on the same line, whereas it's less logical to pair his gesture at Mina's half with his dialogue indicating his half. You could either make this two paragraphs, one about Mina's half and one about Carlisle's, or make it one paragraph, since the whole passage comprises Carlisle's actions.

... And that's it! Let me know what you think about possibly adjusting Mina's origin, and if you want to edit or expand this piece a bit with Mina-as-bad-luck-charm in mind, I'll read it. Other than that, though, you're good to go. Congrats!

~Neshomeh

ETA: Line breaks.

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