Subject: Mission 5, actually.
Author:
Posted on: 2012-04-13 15:01:00 UTC
As for SAM, don't worry: that's the very next sporking on the list. Though, you'll probably have to wait a while for it, given that I have a lot going on IRL. Expect it sometime in May, once I've taken it through the beta-reading cycle.
Thanks! Yeah, the dynamic is lots of fun with F&E. Makes it crazy sometimes, y'know?
In which Florestan and Eusabius take on three different Sonic Universe crossovers.
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1M9xhfPLeOqvfJDCxI4ePdpdps_i3lPamch8a63FbWTk
Seriously, it may not be Sweet Apple Massacre, but given how busy I am IRL right now, I'm actually holding off on writing the SAM mission. So here's something to hold you over until then.
In the meantime, this mission picked up a few minis. So by continua:
Dead Space:
eishimorra
Banjo-Kazooie:
log
grunty winkelbunion
gruntida
jiggleys
And that's it for this mission. I hope you guys enjoyed it!
From the personal files of Terri Ryan, Department of Personnel
And so it continues. What is this, Implausible Crossovers? That's Narto's old department... oh, Nar.
Okay. Pull myself together. Bad Terri, no reminiscing. Review. If I keep this up, the R&R Division will give me a part-time job.
I am quite terrified at the prospect of agents being given three missions at once, even short ones such as these - think of the filing! But if it has to happen, these three were a good match for each other. I'm surprised Agents Florestan and Eusabius didn't protest more, but I note that their file shows them to have a rather antique origin, so perhaps they were simply too polite.
The presentation of the differing styles of the three fics - script, centred, parenthetical - was masterful; I truly felt the agents' pain as they found themselves in each new situation. Perhaps the least fleshed-out was the centred story - it is mentioned once, and is amusing, but seems to fade into the background. I'm sure they felt the pressure of that centring more than they let on - and perhaps they should have written more about it. For someone like me, stuck in the Archives all day, it would have been an interesting read.
I do wonder at the language the pair use - look, it's even affecting me. I'm inclined to wonder whether they're playing on some reputation they have in HQ (I wouldn't know) and exaggerating their formality somewhat in the retelling. My suspicions on this front are strengthened by the fact that they occasionally slip into colloquial speech - the final 'Let's do this!' is one example. On the other hand, who knows? We've had stranger folk in here.
One point I do take issue with is during the climax of their third mission: one of the agents, Florestan, gives a 'review' to an author-wraith (described as a Sue-wraith, which I believe is department policy - precision is vital in DIC, where Sue-wraiths and slash-wraiths are both common). Unfortunately, this 'review', while appropriate in tone, nevertheless blurs towards being a flame. An insulting term is used towards the writer of the story - which is frowned on in most departments (the proposal for a Department of Author Abuse never got off the ground). My only consolation is that I'm inclined to think this 'review' was never actually given - it reads like a 'brilliant retort I would have made'.
On the whole, though I admit to not having any knowledge of the canons involved, I found this suitably entertaining. A few flaws, but far better than those agents who refuse to release their reports at all. I'd much rather have something to read than nothing.
-Terri Ryan, Dept. of
-- oh yes, and I found a bizarre piece of overprinting in my copy. The 'fourth wall' line in the third mission, for some reason, has folded on top of itself. Strange.
-T. Ryan, Dept. of Personnel, DOGA Archivist
Y'know, this is kinda meta for me, because one of my future Floaters missions might involve an in-universe conversation that's transcribed from actual PM messages I wrote over someone else giving their badfic to me to spork it. So before we know it, we'll be having a lot of things to deal with.
They are simply too polite. It also doesn't help that there's a meta thing involved with them that you don't really need to know to understand them, but that helps with them. Basically, Florestan and Eusebius were imaginary personalities used by Robert Schumann that Schumann used when he criticized stuff. So apart from a slight name change on Eusabius' part, it's basically because they were kinda made to yell at stuff.
Honestly, the centered format of the second story didn't really bother me all that much. What did bother me was the content and how mixed the messages were, such as Sonic and Tails commenting about how horrible the things that were happening to Bowser Jr. were and doing absolutely nothing about it. Things like that irked me more than the formatting, but it also has surprisingly little to do with canon. This is especially so when you consider that Bowser Jr. was already having a hand in kidnapping the Princess in his first appearance in Super Mario Sunshine.
Generally, Eusabius is always relatively formal, and Florestan is much more informal. That's the general rule I tend to follow.
That was intended more as a 'brilliant retort'. Florestan can get rather... angry at things pretty easily. If he's not ranting at least once per mission, it's probably because it's bordering on goodfic. As of now, I haven't left a review on his fic, and I certainly would never use that kind of language if I did leave reviews on something I've PPC'd.
So yeah. Crazy times are had. Thanks for the feedback!
But Terri doesn't know. Yep, meta.
(I assumed you hadn't left a review on the actual story. Nevertheless, that line comes dangerously close to a flame, and we don't do that in any context, whether or not the author will read it. We, the authors, don't do it, and according to Terri, the agents shouldn't either - although there are borderline nuances in there for The Wise Writer)
hS, friendly resident person who overexplains things, like this tagline, for instance, which is pointing out something you already knew
I was hoping to get to read a spork on Sweet Apple Massacre... Although it's nice to Eusabius flustered (or at least anxious about being late) for once. The badfics aren't as bad as that MLPxSaw (Mission #3, I believe?) badfic though, because I lterally couldn't even read the snippets without cringing. D:
Anyway, nice mission! I really like the dynamic between Florestan and Eusabius.
As for SAM, don't worry: that's the very next sporking on the list. Though, you'll probably have to wait a while for it, given that I have a lot going on IRL. Expect it sometime in May, once I've taken it through the beta-reading cycle.
Thanks! Yeah, the dynamic is lots of fun with F&E. Makes it crazy sometimes, y'know?
Ah, I see.
I'm currently slogging through Cheerilee's Garden. That fic is... disturbing, to put it mildly (all the good prose doesn't help when Cheerilee is horribly OOC and happily murdering all the kids on a very flimsy premise). Also, need to finish Chapter 15 and 16 of MV3 (MLP fanfics are hogging all my time! D: ).
Yeah, and that makes a story interesting too. I wish I can write that well eventually. =x
Ahh, I remember Banjo-Kazooie. That game was such a large part of my first steps as a gamer.
Anyways, the mission itself was an enjoyable read. It was interesting to see Eusabius rush around as to avoid missing his rendezvous with Zerenze.
Given Florestan's nature, I wonder how he'll react to the ME3 endings...
Yep, Banjo-Kazooie... That was a crazy series. Too bad it went away with Rare when they left Nintendo. :(
Yeah, it was interesting putting Eusabius in a position where he wouldn't normally be, you know? Fun times were had!
Oh, boy. Knowing Florestan, he'll probably get so pissed off it'll actually destroy the TV. Look out below, peeps!
Thanks for the feedback!
The three mini-fics thing is kind of fun. Each badfic was different enough from the others to make for an interesting sporking in its own right.
One thing didn't seem consistent though. At the end of the first badfic's section, Florestan seems to figure out that Eusabius is planning to go on a date with Zerenze. However, he should already know this, because Eusabius flat-out told him before they left on the mission, "I have a very important date today . . . I was going to take Zerenze to World One and a Half . . ."
Also, since this is the first appearance of the mini-Jinjos, it would have been nice of you to say more about them beyond that they were "colored strangely, and looked quite odd." Some of us never played any Banjo-Kazooies, and hence don't know what a Jinjo is.
Yeah, they were all different enough. They would've made short missions if I had tackled them all individually, though, almost too short for a mission, I think.
Hm... Yeah, that would be a bit more suggestive, wouldn't it? Okay. I changed that dialogue, so thanks for catching that!
I also stretched out the description of the mini-Jinjos, so... yeah.
Thanks for hte feedback!
I really enjoyed it. I think I remembered in one of the Floater's troll-fic missions that I lost track of the location (or maybe it was just my poor attention span),
but it's definitely improved here.
There are some things I want to point out:
It looked like you overdid it when attempting to mock their chatspeak since some of the words in one of the badfics were actually not in chatspeak.
“Eusabius, would you be so kind as to escort Grunty back to L.O.G.’s video game factory?["]
I thought they already were in L.O.G's video game factory, unless the place they were in was a fake.
“Don’t you push me, you fat man; walk through it myself, I certainly can!”
I thought they would still be hedgehogs by the time this was said, since I couldn't find any indication that they're disguises changed back.
There were a few "soon after"s and I think someone mentioned not to use that phrase again.
Other than that, it was fun to read! The imagery of Sonic's head spiking things cracked me up.
Yeah, establishing location has been something I've been trying to do better. It's good to see it's paid off!
For the mocking the chatspeak: do you remember which badfic it was that I overdid it with?
They weren't in L.O.G.'s video game factory, actually. The Words were pretty clear that it wasn't L.O.G.'s factory, IMO.
On my use of man: I had to maintain the thing about Grunty where all of her lines utilize bad rhyme. If this were a mission set in Banjo-Tooie, then it wouldn't be an issue, but since this was set after Grunty's bad rhymes came back, I had to work with a rhyme scheme. And try as I might, I could not figure out how to rhyme 'hedgehog' with something that could approximate "I can do it myself" while maintaining a sense of rhythm within the line. (Well, that, and I have a really hard time getting things to rhyme, so...) Hence, why 'man' is there instead of 'hedgehog'.
*facepalm* Aw, crap. And I was trying so hard not to use that, too! (That was Phobos who said that, BTW.)
Thanks!
When I said one of the badfics, I meant the one of the ones you just sporked. The characters in the Sonic and Dead Space crossover spelled words like "what" and "the" correctly most of the time, but when they're mocked, the words have the more typical chatspeak spelling such as "wat" and "da". Just a nitpick.
About L.O.G's factory, I should have read that more carefully. My mistake.
I don't think Grunty had to use the word 'hedgehog' to describe Eusabius in his disguise. I think Sonic had been called a 'rat' or a 'rodent' a few times, so maybe those kind of words could work. Then again, I'd have the same problem with getting things to rhyme.
Thanks for clearing it up!
*their
whoops