Subject: About that...
Author:
Posted on: 2012-05-07 02:44:00 UTC
It is not a grammar problem.
What you are describing is an intensifier. They are fun things, and not a grammar problems.
-July, hoping to make people twitch with that sentence
Hey guys, I'd like to offer myself up for consideration for Permission.
The details of my proposed agents are as follows;
Name: Skeet
Age: 25
Appearance: He stands just over 5’ 8” tall, with dark hair that he’s currently growing out long enough to tie back in a proper ponytail. He’s ex-military, and has continued to try and keep himself in good shape; more muscular than athletic, but less so than a full on bodybuilder. Has let himself go around the stomach region, due to the quantity of full English breakfasts he consumes, and his preference for weightlifting rather than aerobic exercise.
Personality: Quite organized and serious for the most part, although he does like to occasionally mess with people’s heads ‘to maintain a healthy balance’. He is a firm believer in the right to a quick and painless end to a Sue, and would never advocate torture or prolonging their suffering. Because of this, he can react badly to characters being inflicted with un-canonical torture, or poorly done hurt/comfort etc. In the past, it has been useful for him to have a partner that is capable of physically restraining him, when dealing with those sorts of situations.
Isn’t exactly vain, but is pleased with how he looks, and tries to use the disguise generator as little as possible, preferring to stay human and use the generator for providing appropriate clothing only.
Believes that it is physically impossible to start the day without tea and a fried breakfast, and has become remarkably skilled at improvised cooking, seeing as the ‘kitchen’ in his RC only consists of a kettle, toaster and microwave.
History: Skeet is an ex-DIO member (although he has no knowledge of this himself, as he was neuralyzed after leaving), and is currently working for the Department of Mary Sues. Hailing from World One, he joined the PPC after filling in an online application form, assuming that it was just a joke. After returning one night from the pub, he found an agent and a portal to HQ waiting for him, his application being successful. He then found himself in front of the Marquis de Sod, slightly drunk, where he managed to land a position in the DMS, most likely due to his prior combat experience with the British Army, although his recollection of that conversation is quite hazy. Upon waking, his first thought was that he’d had a particularly strange dream, although his partner was able to easily convince him otherwise, as they were given a mission almost immediately. Details of his recruitment into the DIO, and his subsequent departure back into the DMS, are currently unknown. He is currently waiting to be assigned a new partner, and is under the neuralyzer-induced belief that this is because he allowed his former one to ‘retire’ into the LotR continuum after finishing an assignment there. There is a note in his personnel file which states that he is prohibited from using a neuralyzer, although he claims to have no memory of the incident that led to this rather unique ban.
Fandoms: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Battlestar Galactica, Department 19, Ghost in the Shell, Harry Potter, Hellsing, Highschool of the Dead, James Bond, Lord of the Rings, the Lost Fleet, NCIS, Neon Genesis Evangelion, the Old Kingdom, Tales of the Ketty Jay, Trigun, Wheel of Time. He is also a newly converted ‘brony’, although he hasn’t even admitted this fully to himself yet.
Department: DMS Freelance Division(currently only authorized to operate in the smaller fandoms).
Lust Objects: Rei Miyamoto (Highschool of the Dead), The Major (Ghost in the Shell), Ziva David (NCIS). Wonders what it says about his psyche that all of his L.O.s could probably take him in a fight.
Also has strange L.O.-like tendencies around particular items of technology, most of which are Sci-Fi vehicles (in that he will want to go and see them regardless of how mission appropriate it is, and will get murderous if people mess with them).
Favorites: Vampires (non-sparkly), Mechs and other cool machines/vehicles/mechanical systems, gothic artwork and architecture.
Weapons: Prefers to use guns, and will take a crossbow over a longbow when in fantasy settings. Likes to keep at least one blade (preferably concealable) on him at all times. Is quite knowledge about a wide range of weapons.
Name: Amelia Renner
Age: 16
Appearance: 5’ 2” tall, with a skinny build (due to a lack of food rather than choice), with brown hair and eyes. Hates the fact that her hair and eyes are the same colour (and above all, brown) because she thinks it makes her look boring. Likes to wear bright colours and striped clothing, particularly leggings and skirts.
Personality: A little scatter-brained, and can be quite fangirly when excited; excitement may lead to her momentarily overcoming her usual shy nature around new people. She is aware that she may need to tone down such behavior (after being told off by the Marquis de Sod for hyperventilating at the thought of actually going inside the continua of her favourite stories), and is trying with a great deal of sincerity, if not much actual success.
She comes from a rather poor family in World One, and has read a lot of fanfic because it is cheaper than books, and more convenient than libraries (which she still regards as one of the world’s greatest things). As such, she has a surprisingly high tolerance for badfic, and had even started reading one or two legendary badfic pieces before joining the PPC. Despite her joy upon discovering the idea of fanfic (stories about her favourite characters, but available for free whenever she wanted to read them), she was appalled at the quality of writing out there. While reading fanfic, she will quite happily ignore any level of OOCness, and does not resent the inclusion of OCs, as long as the stories are interesting, but has serious anger management problems when it comes to SPaG errors (as far as she is concerned people are free to reinterpret characters and add their own if they wish, as long as it makes for a good story, but there are RULES about writing, and there is no excuse for not following them!).
Has a friendly and bubbly personality when around people she is comfortable with, although is very shy around new people, often failing to make a good first impression due to nerves. She is easily spooked, and tends to fall over when startled.
Will treasure any gift given to her, especially if it is a good new book.
History: She has just joined the PPC; after dosing off at her computer in World One while reading a Harry Potter fanfic, she was rudely awakened by hitting the floor. At first assuming that she was in her home, she was greeted by the sight of a giant daisy in a pinstripe suit. An impartial observer (had there been one at the time), would have struggled to say who was more surprised; Amelia, or the Marquis de Sod (although the Marquis certainly recovered quicker). After her panic attack had subsided, and the Marquis was able to explain where she was, and the purpose of the PPC, she volunteered on the spot.
Fandoms: Harry Potter, Bleach, Narnia, Stratanavigte, Discworld.
Department: Just joined the PPC and has been assigned to DMS Freelance Division.
Lust Objects: Legolas, Aragorn (LotR), Vimes (Discworld), Snape, Sirius (Harry Potter), Prince Caspian (Narnia), Renji Abarai, Toshiro Hitsugaya (Bleach). Has a tendency to develop new ones at the drop of a hat, although most of these will short term crushes rather than full blown infatuations.
Favorites: Libraries, books, good writing.
Weapons: No previous weapons experience.
As a sample of my writing ability, I offer my agents meeting each other for the first time:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qJgqJF0p4iazBhkpZERqlt6d5jfx4DDD6dsf21Rt64g/edit
(Hopefully it's there; this is the first time I've used Google Docs)
And the first piece that I intend to spork can be found here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4783265/1/WhenMagicCollides
The writing sample is intended to be the prologue for this mission.
I'll be happy to answer any questions anyone has about my agents etc. Any comments or feedback will be most appreciated (especially any along the lines of 'Permission Granted'!).
Thanks for reading,
-the Irish Samurai
(As a beforehand note, I had this written up before VM posted, I was just working on the extensive 'concrit' stuff.)
Okay....
A few comments, here and there.
For one, line breaks between paragraphs are your friends. On the internet, it is much easier to read when there are line breaks between paragraphs, because indents usually do not work. It made it difficult to read your agent profiles and follow your story at times.
That said, I rather like both of your agents. Skeet seems rather interesting, and in a mysterious-but-not-really way, between his temporary time in DIO, his time in the British Army, and whatever led to him not being allowed to use a Neuralyzer. (Is this a noodle incident, or is it going to be developed further in the future, I wonder?) I also wonder how he's able to successfully make a fried breakfast with the accutrements you described.
Why is he only authorized to work in smaller fandoms, however?
With Amelia, on the other hand, she's quite interesting. What sort of flavor of excitable fangirl is she? Does she deflate easily? Or does she manage to power on through sheerly on fangirl energy alone? What happens after it wears off? How will you manage to work with stories that have severe OOCness when she doesn't pay attention to it? Is this something that is going to change throughout the missions? Why or why not? You don't have to answer that right now, but it is something you need to consider if you have not yet.
The amount of LOs (and the variety) are interesting. I trust, going from what you said, these are going to change with time? That will be neat to watch.
Moving on to the story itself, I have a few comments.
How is it that Skeet is bad at navigating HQ? Does that mean he isn't able to not pay attention to wandering around? Getting lost should mean he just reaches where he's going quicker, if he has no idea where he is.
My comment about line breaks after paragraphs earlier still stands. Also, you have some strange spots where the sentence suddenly cuts and begins again on the next line, such as with the mission beep.
Beyond that:
“Sorry about that, here, let me help”. He said, as he walked over to his new partner and helped her pick everything up. “I'm Skeet by the way.”
Punctuation goes inside the lines. In this case, you shouldn't have a period, but a comma there instead, and 'He' would not be capitalized. 'He said', 'She said', 'It said'? These are not things that warrant capitalization after a line of dialogue.
“We should have time for a quick tour at least; that’s my room, that’ll be yours, you can put all your stuff in there, and through there is the kitchen and bathroom. “ He announced, indicating the appropriate doors.
Instead, it should be:
“We should have time for a quick tour at least; that’s my room, that’ll be yours, you can put all your stuff in there, and through there is the kitchen and bathroom,“ he announced, indicating the appropriate doors.
This sort of error is peppered through your story.
Skeet had been skimming through the DoI report for their mission fic, wincing occasionally, and had just finished when he became aware of the young girl standing behind him.
Is Amelia really a 'young girl' at sixteen? Remember, word choice and pairing is important. You're painting descriptions with your words here. Does 'young girl' put you, personally, in mind of a sixteen year old? Or does it put you in mind of someone younger? At twenty-five, Skeet is a good nine years older than her, but is he really so old that he'd consider a teenager a 'young girl'?
Also, did she truthfully go 'OMG' in a bit of ostensibly spoken dialogue?
Beyond that, 'ok' should be 'okay' when you use it in writing.
Amelia was now wearing the DMS flash patch (a potted cactus against a dark grey background) on an armband that Skeet had found, watching him search through the drawers built into the console desk.
It is black. If you are going based off of the image on the wiki, that is a vaguely shoddy replacement done by someone who showed up and promptly replaced all the flash patch art he could with things that were done to represent being on actual 'cloth'. So, it's not actually dark grey.
‘Yup, definitely a newbie’ Skeet thought to himself as he selected one for her. “Here, this’ll do for now.” He said, handing her a fairly normal looking kitchen knife. You would do well with some form of punctuation at the end of that thought.
That said, I rather enjoyed it.
You write well- aside from a few errors (but a beta can fix those; even a double glance on your part would be able to, with some of these).
The sense of humor was very, very light, but it was present, if subtle. Overall, it was rather enjoyable as an introduction to your agents.
I am not granting you permission because VM beat me to it.
Congratulations, because you certainly earned it. Please keep in mind that now that you have permission you are not allowed to wander away, and we now fully expect you to continue answering the questions of clueless newbies as you have already been doing a good job, and we are lazy and like it when others answer them (and correctly, to boot).
To address your comments:
I will try to keep a better eye on my paragraph breaks.
I'm glad you like both of my agents. As for Skeet not being allowed to use a neuralyzer, I'm currently intending on that being an extremely noodley noodle-incident, simply because Skeet himself genuinely has no recollection of what happened. I am however planning on having Skeet (and others) speculate on what he could have done. I might also use Skeet grabbing someone else's neuralyzer and running amok with it as his version of going flamerthrower crazy (if it ever comes up).
Going slightly off-topic here, should neuralyzer be capitalised? I notice that you did, and I remember a post (written by Neshomeh I think) saying that Bleeprin should always be capitalised, but can't remember the reason given for that and can't find it now to check. On the wiki, the page for the neuralyzer doesn't capitalise it, but I think I've seen it both capitalised and not while reading spin-offs.
The improvised cooking thing comes from my history working in a kitchen and being a uni student with a slightly dodgy cooker one year. You'd be surprised at what works if you're desperate enough to try it. According to a former university lecturer of mine, it is possible to cook bacon in a matter of seconds using hair straighteners, due to the temperatures they can reach. I haven't tried that one, but I am intrigued by it.
By 'smaller fandom' I meant one that would be able to fix itself without the canons needing neuralyzation (i.e. nothing to do with physical size, but more about the quantity of badfic it has managed to attract). In the Original Series, I don't remember neuralyzation occurring, once the Sue was dead the canon reverted to how it should be (effectively erasing any non-canonical memories).
Rather than them not being authorised to act in the more corrupted continua, I now think it makes more sense for it to be a case of, if two missions come up at the same time, and there's only them and one other team that could go on the missions, they'll get sent into the least corrupted continua. Obviously if they do end up in a situation where a canon character needs neuralyzing, they should just be able to send them through to FicPsych.
I plan on keeping to some of the more obscure continua at first (due to Skeet not being allowed a neuralyzer, and I'm imagining that the potential for accidents/misuse means that they aren't issued to newbies). Their first mission will be in the Old Kingdom, and if memory serves, there have only been 3 recorded missions there, all dealt with by DMS, and I don't think any of the agents involved used a neuralyzer.
With regards to Amelia, I see her as being almost perpetually excitable and cheerful (when she isn't being nervous and shy). I'm hoping that I will remember to have her bounce between these two behaviours whenever she meets someone new, as her scatterbrained nature causes her to 'forget' her shyness.
As for what happens when her excitement actually gets worn down, I'm not completely sure about that yet. Currently I'm thinking that the only thing that will stop her is sheer exhaustion, and that she will be irritatingly bouncy and excitable until she literally runs out of energy and just curls up asleep, wherever she happens to be at the time (no doubt expecting Skeet to return her to their RC if she's outside of it at the time).
Regarding the ignoring of OOCness, it's not that she doesn't pay attention to it, as such, but that she doesn't mind it when she's reading (yes, Amelia is the kind of person that will still read fanfic, for pleasure, while working at the PPC). She will then likley end up forwarding some of them onto Intelligence, maybe even having some of those returned to her for missions. She personally isn't bothered by OOCness, but she's aware that the PPC is, or at the very least she will be made aware of that once Skeet catches her letting it slide. As she gets more experienced as an agent, she may still think that OOCness is a silly thing to bother with, but she will actually do so.
Most of the character development that I have planned for Amelia will revolve around her losing some of her fangirlyness and becoming more like a 'typical' agent, as well as generally maturing and looking to the future. In contrast, some of the stuff that I have planned for Skeet is going to involve him finding out about his actual past (and then being made to forget it all again, because the DIO can't really allow that).
The LOs listed for Amelia are the sort of permanent favourites that she will always come back to. I'm planning on her developing new ones of those as she explores more continua, as well as having 'lust-at-first-sight' style crushes during missions. Fortunately Skeet should be capable of restraining her while he tries to find some Anti-Lustin, although I would imagine that after the first few times it becomes necessary, he'll just take the precaution of dosing her with Anti-Lustin before even stepping through the portal.
In the story, with regards to Skeet's navigational skills, I thought that concentrating on trying to reach your destination was detrimental to actually finding it. So if you get lost, but are still trying really hard to find somewhere, you're still unlikely to find it (quickly at least).
I had planned on Skeet being quite good at navigation previously, and being able to walk around on 'auto-pilot' (got to get through that maze if you work for DIO after all), but that this ability was neuralyzed out of him, to prevent him from accidentally walking back to DIO Central (as I believe that the PPC-issue neuralyzers are capable of removing skills as well as memories). So it isn't just that he's been there for a while and never learned the trick of walking around HQ, but that his ability to do so has been deliberately sabotaged. When he's walking with someone, he can rely on their ability while just carrying on a conversation with them.
The punctuation outside of speech marks, the use of full stops instead of commas, and other similar problems, is something that I was prepared to blame Google Docs for, certain that those errors weren't in my original Word document... right up until the point where I checked the original document, and found them there too. So I have no excuse for that, but I'm aware of it now, and I'll try to do better in the future.
Skeet referring to Amelia as a 'young girl'. In this case, it's not just the age difference that I was referring to, but the difference in maturity. Skeet has been to university (I don't think I’ve actually mentioned that before now, but he's sort of an AU version of me, so he has), and served in the military (something which I imagine could cause you to mature very quickly). So, honestly, yes I think that Skeet would consider Amelia to be a 'young girl', particularly before getting to know her better.
With regards to Amelia saying 'OMG', I have heard people use it in speech (mostly fanbratty type characters on TV etc. now that I think about it), and it would probably be more typically rendered as 'Oh Emm Gee'. However, I thought that PPC Agents were capable of pronouncing such things. An example of this, from the Original Series (Lady of the Fellowship):
"......WTF???" Jay managed to pronounce three consonants without vowels.
I think I also recall something about agents being able to pronounce punctuation, so that they can actually say things like 'Evil!Harry' (although I can't find that reference now, so I may be wrong).
But I guess that could look a little badficcy, or possibly even worse hypocritical, so maybe it would be better to write it as 'Oh Emm Gee' (I still think that Amelia would use expressions like this in her speech, occasionally at least).
I thought that 'ok' was acceptable in writing as either 'OK' or 'okay', is that not the case?
I was basing the background colour of the flash patch on the image, so I will change that to be black.
With regards to my lack of a beta, that is sort of a bad habit of mine. Whenever I'm in a situation where I'm going to be judged on something, but I don't have to pass first time, I do like to just do it by myself, to see what my 'natural' ability is like. I wasn't sure whether to do that for this, but decided to in the end, after checking it over myself (where I did pick up some stuff, but clearly not all of it).
I can assure you that I will always use a beta in the future. So are you saying that if I start answering newbie questions incorrectly, I won’t have to...
I will of course continue to answer any and all questions I see to the best of my ability.
Hopefully I've covered everything, but if there is something you feel I've missed, or if one of my explanations is a cause for concern, please let me know.
First, congratulations! Your agents sound like a ton of fun, and your writing sample is entertaining, except for a few mechanical issues. VM says July is going to have some detailed concrit for you, so I don't want to jump the gun by getting into all of it, but I do want to talk about semicolons.
Your writing sample is roughly six pages long. As a rule of thumb, that means you get to use about six semicolons, no more, preferably fewer. You used 23. It's excessive and it's distracting, especially since many of them are not used correctly. A lot of them would do perfectly well as commas, some of them properly ought to be colons, and the rest could probably be taken out in favor of a period and a new sentence. To give some examples:
1) "It’d been about three days since Agent Skeet had been on a mission; an unusual circumstance in the PPC."
- This one should be a comma. It makes just as much sense, and the end bit of the sentence is a fragment that can't stand on its own. A semicolon implies that you're connecting two thoughts that could stand alone but are closely related, but this isn't a separate thought, it's a continuation of the one at the beginning.
2) "The message flickered up on the screen;"
- You're introducing a quote here, so this 100% absolutely needs to be a colon. Never use a semicolon to introduce anything. That is the colon's one and only job.
3) "She clambered to her feet and began re-gathering everything from the floor around the doorway; Skeet recognised many of the typical newbie gifts; shiny things, sweets and assorted Bleep-products."
- The first semicolon there is sitting at what should be the end of a sentence, and I'd say even the end of a paragraph. The first bit is Amelia's action and should be part of her paragraph. The next bit is Skeet's action and should be part of his paragraph. Generally speaking, if you change doers, you should change paragraphs.
- The second semicolon there should be a colon, because you're introducing a list. The colon is a hard-working but highly specialized little guy who just wants to make a decent living introducing stuff so he can feed his family. Don't let that flashy up-jumped jackanapes, the semicolon, take that away from him.
The semicolon is a delicate and tricky little devil, tempting in its versatility, but like most temptations, it should be resisted except on special occasions. I went through a phase of overusing them myself, and have since read a lot about them and learned to feel where they work and where they really aren't necessary (read: most of the time). I'm happy to talk about it more if you have any questions. {= )
See also: http://ppc.wikia.com/wiki/Punctuation#On_Semicolons
~Neshomeh
Firstly, I'm glad you like my agents.
As for the semicolons, I honestly didn't realise I'd used that many. I'll try to keep an eye on them in the future, particularly when it comes to using them wrongly in place of colons.
Out of interest, where does the 'once per page' rule come from? I can't recall ever hearing that before. Is it a PPC thing, a writing for fiction thing, or just a general English language thing?
I always thought that colons and semicolons were used to introduce different kinds of lists, so a horizontal list (one made using commas) would be started with a semicolon, but a vertical list (made using bullet points or numbers) would be started with a colon. Having said that, it's been about 10 years since I last had an actual English lesson, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the stuff I 'know' turns out to be incorrect.
My english teacher told me the same thing. It isn't in any grammar book though, so you can be forgiven for not knowing.
Especially the "ambulatory pile" and repeated "concussing".
There is one grammar problem:
Skeet was so appalling bad at navigating HQ that he would likely starve before finding it unless someone took pity on him.
Should probably be:
Skeet was so appallingly bad at navigating HQ that he would likely starve before finding it unless someone took pity on him.
Just FYI. Appallingly describes bad which describes how adept Skeet is at navigating HQ.
Otherwise--congrats! And have a bag! It's black. Amelia's first black thing in the PPC.
Thanks for pointing that out. I doubt very much that I would have spotted that by myself, because I knew what I'd intended to write and so just read that (to the extent that when I first read your post I thought the two sentences were the same, and only managed to track down the difference after noticing they were different lengths).
It's been a while since I've read about an agent trying to concuss himself (which always amused me in the Original Series). I guess that with the advent of Bleeprin and neuralyzers it isn't really needed anymore, but it seems that Skeet is just a little old-school in that regard.
It is not a grammar problem.
What you are describing is an intensifier. They are fun things, and not a grammar problems.
-July, hoping to make people twitch with that sentence
I didn't have my glasses on, so my eyes switched the two lines.
Your agents are realistic and three-dimensional, and your writing is skillful and humorous. Granted!
I believe JulyFlame has some concrit for you, so I shall leave that end of it to her. Good luck!