I'm going to be somewhat blunt with you, so I apologize if my tone seems somewhat harsh at times. It's nothing personal, it's just the way I sometimes approach these things. I apologize in advance if I cause you offense in some way.

First off, I’m not going to bother talking about the length of the piece. Enough people have already brought up that particular point in this thread, so there’s no point in retreading that path. I’ll just say that I agree with JulyFlame and Joe on that point and move on.

A major sticking point for me was the way the Stu was used. For all his abilities and blustering, I never felt like the Stu was any threat to your agents. Even when he was torturing Cindy, I wasn’t really that concerned. Part of that was probably due to the fact that you picked an easy ‘leaves no marks’ kind of torture for him to use. Add that to how easily Cindy seemed to bounce back and the whole thing felt like something of a copout. If you want to show how tough a villain is by having them torture a hero, you’ve got to be willing to take off the hero’s plot armor, at least for a little bit. A few scars build character.

The final climactic battle was even worse in regards to the strength of the Stu. You spent the story touting the Stu up as a huge threat, but in the end he falls to a few well-placed spells/biotic abilities. The agents even have time to interrupt each other during the reading of the charge list in that typically amusing PPC fashion. They should know that the petrifying charm has a time limit, and that when it wears off the Stu will try to kill them, and yet they proceed as normal.

That falls in line with what I saw as a problem with pacing. Any dramatic tension that might be produced by the torture scene or by the Stu or by the C-Sec agent (I'll mention him again later) is undone by the story just plodding along like any other mission. This isn't a typical mission plotline, but you write it like one. What should be gripping becomes boring.

I also never saw this Stu as being more intelligent than any other garden variety example of his ilk, despite what you said in your first post. More powerful, sure. But an intelligent Stu or Sue would know how to torture someone properly (i.e., until they get the information they want) instead of just until the victim passes out. An intelligent Stu/Sue wouldn’t just throw attack after attack at a shield; he/she would try to find some way around it. [PERSONAL OPINIONS/HEAD CANON]A really intelligent Stu/Sue might even know what the PPC is. To have an ‘intelligent’ Stu or Sue who doesn’t know what the PPC is, considering that our own canon includes such things as Mary Sue Factories and the like, doesn’t quite sit well with me. Plus, having an enemy that knows what you are and what you can do makes that enemy a little more threatening, at least in my mind.[END OF PERSONAL OPINIONS/HEAD CANON]

While the romantic subplot with Xanthus and Annie was nice, it felt a bit shoehorned into this mission. Had it been contained within its own interlude, then both it and this mission would have likely been improved. That being said, the sub-subplot with the C-Sec investigator Gaston was wrapped up in a clumsy manner, what with him basically vanishing as soon as Annie shooed him away from the door. He was more plot device than character and it shows.

This mission is a mess. It has its areas of polish, to be sure – your characterization of Thane was fantastic – but those moments were buried under poor pacing and an underwhelming threat.

Chiming in to agree with what Joe said; your missions are way too long. Most people here do not have the time to read them, and that includes me. The entry level for reading your stuff is way too high.

Beyond that, I have to admit, you have another issue that makes me reluctant to read your stuff at all. In the chat, you tend to express an attitude that implies the onus is on everyone else to read your stuff, and comment, and you've been annoyed in there on several occasions because people don't.

When people tried to point out how long your stuff was, you brushed it off, and instead of taking it as constructive criticism, you chose to say you didn't understand how everyone else's were so short, and that your missions needed to be as long as they were.

That's not an attitude that encourages me or others to read your stuff. Entitlement is not the name of the game; we complain about it in writers regardless of whether they write fic or original works, so it's not fair to expect that sort of treatment of ourselves here, eiher.

Beyond that, there is a reason that missions are short; the attention span of the average reader and the fact that as a writer you can only take so much of a badfic aside. It also partially has to do with the goal of missions, as a story format in general.

Missions themselves are formulaic for a reason. They're part analysis, part wish fulfillment (Oh no! I used that dreaded phrase!).

You can't have it really be proper analysis when it's completely full up with plot. Making a mission have a heavy focus on a plot involving the agents results in the analysis either being lost, or the mission stretching out and becoming even longer than it ought be. When there's too much character progression in an individual mission, it removes the wish fulfillment portion. While agents might have their own backgrounds, personalities, and opinions, when character development and the analysis and wish fulfillment involved in a mission go at cross ends, the main purpose they serve in a mission- being our fill-ins, our window, our mouthpieces- fails.

Most people aren't skilled at balancing the two ends evenly in a mission or try to force it into the formula that we usually use. This results in stuff being glossed over or hastily shoved in, and a mission that's ultimately subpar. The average PPC mission is 'set up tone and feel, go into mission, complain about how horrible the badfic elements are, try to kill or otherwise do something about it, and head back'. There is not a lot of room for variety in that formula. If you want it to be plot based, or characterization based, you need to be willing to break away from it. Most people do not. Most people have not. If you want to have more focus on plot and characterization, then break away from that basic formula.

This whole problem, of course, is eliminated with nonmission pieces. It's why I do so many interludes, why VM writes cafeteria stories, why Dann writes DoSAT. The point with interludes isn't badfic or examining it, the point of those is character progression, and plot if you feel the need. Cafeteria stories and DoSAT and any of the departments that are not field based are the same. They are character and plot driven instead.

Huinesoron's Crashing Down and Reorganisation are both excellent- and long- novel length works. They both feel like very short reads, however, because they're legitimate stories, with a beginning, middle, and end, with character progression and plot. There's also the implicit knowledge that what you are reading will be resolved, and will have some sort of 'end'.

Wih novellas and novels, as readers, we have been trained to know that things will happen, and will resolve in some manner. Length- in terms of how a story works- is of little issue here, because plots expand and close, characters develop. It has to be the right size, but that can mean anywhere from ten pages to a thousand.

That does not work with missions. They are not stories in and of themselves. The spinoff is. You have arcs, and portions that can be definitely attributed as having beginnings and ends, but that isn't the same with an individual mssion.

If you read two random missions in the same spinoff, for the most part, you are going to not be able to tell what the order is unless they explicitly reference the others. Any character development? You aren't going to be able to tell. Missions do not have that focus.

The Sue is killed, the bad slash is fixed, the locations are untangled or set fire to, and then the agents head back to unwind just enough to be able to relax to the point where the mission sound off happens at the exact worst possible time. There's no real plot there. Characters are going to remain the same, for the most part.

Missions are, at best, scenes and chapters within a spinoff. They should not have to carry a full story on their own, because they are not a full story.

... I loved every bit of it! While the mission itself was very long, I actually didn't mind it at all: the degree of immersion that was achieved can't really be replicated in shorter missions. I like the idea of having a plot within a mission: it's a refreshing change from agents go in, snark, rage, charge, assassinate. It allows for character development and more interactions with the canon world.

Hats off to you, sir.

PS: There's a typo in your disclaimers, bolded by me for visibility: "The PPC was uoriginally"

while I do think the mission was long, it did give full feeling of why the stu was so bad some missions just skim to the extent that I have to read the fic in order to follow why half the charges are there. I enjoyed it all in all but you may need to try putting your plot lines in intermissions or stretching them over two missions. I also have bad news http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7211420/1/Subject23Cryonics

Ladies and gentlemen the sequel.

One hundred and eight pages?

That is too much mission. This is a chronic problem of yours, Wozz, and as much as I love your writing I feel like it's time for some tough love. I'm not going to read this thing--it is way too long for whatever it could involve.

You need to cut WAY back. I'm willing to help with that. I've worked with you at least once, I'm totally willing to do so again, but not unless the thirteen-page missions you're promising become your average instead of your extra-short outliers.

However, the story, along with the romance subplot, dragged on a little longer than I thought. 108 pages? I understand your reasons, but toning it down a bit would help us a lot.