“Feeling Down”
Your stories often start with Jiwon asleep in the RC, so I like that you acknowledged continuity here by pointing out that Jiwon really doesn’t have much familiarity with HQ, despite how long he’s lived there. You get his discomfort and timidity across very well! I think it was a good choice using an Escher room for this journey; we usually see them as a gag, but for Jiwon, it’s unfamiliar and intimidating. The melting clocks are a nice touch, referencing another famous painting style, and the spider-like clock adds another level of discomfort to the scene. The creepiness of the overall scene makes the gag where Charlie gets absolutely demolished by the gravity, but comes fine due to Dungeons & Dragons physics, stand out as even funnier!
Damn, you made the HQ pool almost unnerving! I couldn’t tell why right away, and had to read the first scene over again before I caught the reason: it’s described. It feels so alien to read a part of HQ with so much description, and no generic surface, and the A/C running! (HQ does have a ventilation system, per the Poison Joke RP, but it’s normally unmentioned.) It makes the scene a little eerie, with Jiwon almost feeling like he’s stranded somehow? It’s also so, so clean, contrasting even more with the ground floor, and adding to the sense of it being a liminal space. The doorway vanishing at the end is the perfect final touch!
Well, Charles is a jerk, so I’d say you made a good choice using Charlie instead! Charles did make for a fun fight scene, though! Charlie’s combat feels so much like a D&D character, with their laid-back attitude still showing through, but not standing in the way of their skill. I love that Charles dissolved into words at the end, showing that he’s not simply an alternate of Charlie, but really not a legitimate character at all. It’s very Thursday Next! By the way, was that Charles’s voice calling Jiwon “dead weight” from the Ashes?
Some other minor things I liked: the cameo by the DIO flashpatch, and the fact that space-case as Charlie seems most of the time, they’re still paying attention to Jiwon, and take steps to get him home once he starts getting overwhelmed. Charlie is good folks!
Some errors I caught:
. . . and one had six legs it used to along the walls like a giant spider.
A vanished verb!
Jiwon gave them the first good look he had at them since he went down to the pool.
Repeated pronouns!
Charlie readied their scimitar, ignoring the tinges of pain that roiled up their arm and through their chest.
I think you were wanting “twinges of pain” here?
“Monster High”
I like that these two stories have an unspoken connection between them, that the Ashes in “Feeling Down” made Jiwon feel guilty about falling out of contact with his family, and so he’s now making a call home. I had assumed Jiwon was from a mythological setting, so I’m a bit surprised his family has a telephone, or maybe he was adopted by a human family? Cramming a telephone service into Postal is a funny idea; it definitely works thematically, since it’ a form of communication, and it makes the space busier and more cramped. Perfect for humor and encouraging more character interaction!
Wow. “Altair Institute of Magic?” Like, literally "A.I.M?" Yes, I’m sure everything is quite above-board at a place like that, no need to look closer. At least Kate Monster finally got that “school for monsters” idea off the ground, only took nineteen years of funding!
Charlie is so dang funny in this mission! I love their reasoning that they needed a “wand” to do magic in the Wizarding World without breaking canon, but the mental image of them storing some random stick for this purpose in their Bag of Holding, and then pulling out said stick in the middle of a forest that was probably filled with sticks anyway, is just amazing. (And the ongoing appearance of the room temperature cheese wheels is hilarious, too!) The background monsters only having enough personality to surround Charlie and Jiwon made for an unnerving scene, but them grabbing the RA and hot-potatoing it away from the agents broke the tension as another funny mental image. Charlie reanimating the blank Death Eaters was a great set-up and payoff, and made for some wonderful chaos to ramp up into the final confrontation. Lastly, I loved Charlie having to interrupt Jiwon’s charges over and over to cast spells on the school staff. It makes sense that such powerful wizards would be doing everything they could to break free, and it avoided the usual problem of the charges being a block of text, with humor to boot. Well done!
Another thing you did well is the different handling of Azalea and her sentient magic. I like that you foisted all the “eldritch Suvian” imagery onto the magic, and let Azalea just be a person in the end, even if she was “in on it.” I hope the reality room gets her nice and stable, so she can return home and just be an ordinary resident of the Wizarding World (although I suppose she’s a squib now, if that really was all her magic? Nothing wrong with that either, of course.) The idea of Jiwon’s pearl absorbing all that glitter was rather frightening, and I’m glad Jiwon was able to get healed up afterwards. Dr. Glocktopus is a major treat! I love everything about him, the notecards, his expressiveness despite lack of expression, and the slightly unnerving (in a nice way) tone behind his movements and the, uh, “fourth-dimensional scalpel.” I really feel for Jiwon’s concern that he doesn’t measure up to Charlie, as I often feel the same about me and my coworkers. But I guess we both have to remember that contributing isn’t a contest, and as long as everything is getting done, the team is still a team, yeah?
Wellllll, a longer story means more opportunities for errors, yeah? So let’s start!
As such, it was tucked into the corner of the already small Postal Division area, making the lines even more cramped.
Postal is actually a whole department!
“. . . I have nothing against humans,” Jiwon said quickly, “It’s just that they’re . . .”
Since the second part of the dialogue is starting a new sentence, I think you can end with a period after “quickly.”
“Power play’s already started.”
And it very much was.
I think “was” should be “had” there, as in, “the power play had started.” Unless I’m misinterpreting what the second sentence is alluding to?
“. . . Stellar characterization, fic.” Jiwon said . . .
A comma rather than a period, there.
Jiwon on the other hand, flinched every time his oversized tail brushed against one of the passerby. Everything was far too cramped for his liking, especially with how he couldn’t most of the monsters he knew surrounded him.
In the first sentence, there should be a comma after “Jiwon,” to separate “on the other hand” from the main line of the sentence. The second sentence appears to be missing a verb?
Sorry for being one of Those Animal Guys, but a manticore would be “venomous,” not “poisonous.” : )
“That doesn’t feel like a good answer,” Charlie said as Draco sputtered but didn’t argue back.
“That’s because it isn’t.” Jiwon wrote down a charge.
These should be separate paragraphs, since they have different speakers.
“I don't think that's a canon-complaint spell.”
Then again, there is a lot to complain about in this canon . . . >.>
“. . . warping canon up create a victim complex . . .”
This is part of the charge list, but it feels like a bit of a run-on. Was “up” supposed to be “to?”
Wisps of glitter flew outward, trying to escape, until they were pulled into a writing mass around Jiwon’s outstretched hand.
Best typo ever! After all, aren’t we all just writing masses, in the end? : )
(I’ll read the other interlude you posted next!)
—doctorlit was going to say “Solaris” is a weird name for a vampire, but he doesn’t seem bothered by sunlight, so I guess it fits after all?