Subject: Re: A few concerns... (Spoilers, etc)
Author:
Posted on: 2011-11-13 02:37:00 UTC
Reading this, I have to admit that as much as I don't want to face it, you're right. I guess all I can do now is try to rewrite it, taking your advice, and see how that goes. I should have thought more about the mission before I wrote it.
In which Fix and the Carver take on MPreg and Bad Slash. Link's here (http://astra-aurora.livejournal.com/30960.html). Hope it's good. Warning: contains swearing, some violence and adult themes. The fic itself contains some rather explicit sex, just FYI.
The fic needed to die and your agents did a good job with it.
I just read the mission, and well, Fix and the Carver came off as being supremely overpowered, and as a Stu and Sue.
This was their first mission as I understand, and I read their bit in the Halloween cowrite, but nothing more beyond that.
The thing that alarmed me about them possibly being overpowered characters was this portion:
'Fix barely managed to dodge the centaur’s kick. In response, his senses heightened, his reflexes sharpened and most importantly, his nails became lethally sharp claws. Rather than running or dodging, Fix threw himself at Firenze, knocking him off balance. Man and centaur fell to the ground, fighting and struggling until finally, the centaur was dead. Fix managed to shove the body away and climbed to his feet. He fumbled for the miraculously unbroken RA and opened a portal.'
This comes out of essentially nowhere; he becomes suddenly super bad ass and is able to kill a centaur, essentially unarmed, in close combat. A kick from an ordinary horse can cause serious internal injuries that can kill even a full grown man, and those cases aren't even from a horse that thinks its life is in serious trouble. Those are just 'Eek! You are invading my personal privacy!' kicks.
But you have him managing to walk off, mostly in one piece and alive and in good enough health that he's still able to quip and explain what happened before he goes to Medical, where he's still in good enough condition that he walks through on his own power, as far as we can tell.
Reading his page on the wiki fills me with even less confidence that he's not a Stu. His personality section directly contradicts itself in that he's blunt, crude, and direct and cuts to the point in conversations, but he likes having conversations?
He's also described as having adrenal-reactive abilities, regarding the claws, his senses, agility, and balance, but you don't mention anything about strength or superhealing- the first which was implied by his choice of using force to dispatch with the centaur, and the second that you stated outright at the end of the mission. I see no real drawbacks explained on his page- beyond that he can't drink blood for whatever reason because that makes him sleep. This is something that is so incredibly unlikely to happen during a mission- there's no suggestion that he's fighting a bloodlust in the mission, or that he needs to drink on a regular basis- that it's a free power.
I can't comment much on the Carver's sueishness because I have little understanding of the Dresden Files- only read the first book- but this description here doesn't bode well for her:
'The Carver now wore a tight black leather outfit that made her look like the heroine from a spy movie. Her hair was braided down her back, and she had a number of bulges in various places that suggested the secretion of various knives.'
You have her dress in a catsuit- and directly state it makes her look like a spy movie heroine- and threaten to dismember Fix the moment he sees her. If she didn't like the outfit, or felt self conscious in it enough to make her threaten others over how she looks in it, why would she wear it? There's no point to an outfit like that in the PPC unless it's outright required for a disguise within a mission. How would she get she get those various knives out, out of curiosity? Given how tight the outfit is, what is the practicality in concealing weapons under it?
...Beyond that, there's also the disturbing issue of using 'secretion'. Secretion is very rarely used to mean things were hidden away. The more common use and meaning of the word refers to discharge, excretion. I don't think you mean to suggest she's excreting knives out from her skin or other organs.
On that topic, you charged and mocked the writing for a few things that are common and acceptable phrases, like "felt a blush creep up his neck". This is a valid use.
Beyond that, they came off as being viciously unfriendly towards each other, and the mission's tone was more overtly hostile than humorous. These agents seem incapable of an affectionate laugh either at their own foibles or at each other's- vicious comments, mocking, and threats don't count.
Your agents come off as being supremely overpowered, and have a great deal of attributes that cements them as Sues.
I'll be asking other PGs for their own thoughts on all this, because I don't feel comfortable saying anything more than asking you to take a break with writing more PPC works at the moment.
... that July's is the first direct response so far to actually talk about the content of the mission rather than how much the badfic needed to die.
We really need more of this, less of the other. Take note, folks: this is what a good review looks like. This is far more useful to the author than a handful of one-liners that aren't even talking about the story she wrote.
Unfortunately, I don't have time to add one of my own tonight. I promised to work on my NaNovel, which has been sadly neglected.
~Neshomeh
I just hope that we can make sure that everybody knows that the point is to help each other write better--that we wouldn't be doing concrit if we didn't think there was a good deal of potential there.
I'm mostly a grammar fiend--one of those people who instinctively reaches for a red pen at the slightest hint of apostrophe misuse. I find lots of little typos and grammatical glitches that even a beta sometimes misses. Heck, I find them in published works all the time. Would people mind if I started posting those, or e-mailing them to the mission's author?
Still--I'm always a tiny bit scared that the person who is writing won't understand that I'm pointing stuff out because I want to make a great story better, not because I want to make the writer feel bad. That's kind of what attracted me to the PPC in the first place, actually; I liked the concept of going in there and fixing all the bad stories out there. When I was a fourteen-year-old into Animorphs, I used to save other people's fanfiction to a floppy disk at the library, and then go home and edit and re-write it so that it made sense and flowed better. I never told the authors because I was too shy... Ah, the memories!
Being a non-native English speaker, nitpicking is very useful to me in order to improve my English knowledge.
I have no problems with that. You'd probably get an entry in the beta list for finding some.
Yeah, me too. There's no such thing as good enough; you can always get better.
If you want to start posting grammatical concrit then, by all means, do it. I like to believe that, though our first reaction might be to get defensive, PPCers usually come around fairly quickly and acknowledge the things we do wrong. Of course, it can't hurt to start out with an "I'm doing this to help make the story better."
The next time I post something, please take a red pen to it. I need all the help I can get.
The important thing about poking fun at badfic is that fun sometimes pokes you back. And that's a good thing. Think about how much more likable your characters would be if they got off a good-natured jibe at themselves once in a while. (If they are constitutionally incapable of doing so, they are really unsuited for being in the PPC.)
There's nothing inherently wrong with an agent being dangerous, but a "You'd better not mess with me or else!" vibe is good for one thing only in the PPC: laughter.
Now, consider how much more interesting a character would be if the author (you) poked fun at the agents. Not to make them totally incapable, but to make them more human (so to speak). For instance: if you wanted to keep the characters essentially the same, you could have the Carver keep her tight leather costume, but have fellow agents in the cafeteria snicker at it, ending with her shouting, "Hey, what's so funny?" Or, if you wanted to have knives strapped to all sorts of weird places on her body, you could have her try to pull one of them out to finish off a Sue, and realize that she would have to take off the piece of clothing that she's concealing the weapon under in order to reach it in a fight. (Oops.)
If Fix has what seems to be werewolf-like powers, you could have him possess the realistic senses of a canine--to the point where his sense of smell means TMI about his partner's personal grooming/eating habits, and strong, sickly-sweet Sue scents make him nauseous. It's not just about having power or not having it, but how you treat that power in your missions.
Reading this, I have to admit that as much as I don't want to face it, you're right. I guess all I can do now is try to rewrite it, taking your advice, and see how that goes. I should have thought more about the mission before I wrote it.
Skin-tight leather, on a character from a 'verse where even the Knights of the Cross augment their shiny steel armor with multiple layers of kevlar?
You're right. I suppose I could answer that the Knights of the Cross go up against fae with guns and the like, but I didn't think this through, and I'll have to change it.
hmm...
Why did you have her wear leather? I mean, like, is it a style choice--she likes leather, for some reason? Part of a subculture? Is it practical for her, the way bikers wear leather because it offers protection? Does she wear it because she feels sexy in it?
I don't really agree with July that you're actually into Sue/Stu territory here; but there does seem to be some unnecessary glitter that could be trimmed. I think a good rule of thumb is probably: If a trait doesn't add to or support your character's personality, if it's there just to look cool, then dump it. That's excess glitter. It has the effect of cluttering up the character, so you have to spend a lot of time maintaining all those extra little traits you didn't really need in the first place.
Once you get into outright 'Sue territory, you have glitter that's totally unexplained, never even used, flies in the face of logic, etc... I don't think you're in that range yet--just that it'd probably be simpler to trim the extra stuff, so you could focus on your character's personality.
Have you tried spinning that incident a different way?
You know how usually, Assassins are supposed to be efficient, quick, clean--just plain effective at killing Sues. They tend to be pretty pragmatic, quickly sneaking up on a Sue and incapacitating it; or else just killing it straight out because it hasn't got enough of a personality to resist.
So, in this case, your agent got into a fight with a character replacement. What if he accidentally alerted the replacement Firenze of his presence, and had to fight instead of doing a quick, stealthy assassination?
I don't see why you shouldn't have your agents fighting stuff; it can be interesting. Just remember to keep the general PPC vibe going--you know, barely competent, everyday people, stuck into a situation that's completely crazy, and making it out again more because they're creative and persistent than because they're badass. Down the path of badass lies the Stu. :P
Oh, and one more thing. However you re-write it, you absolutely have to keep that "delicate hand". It's deliciously creepy!
I think that agents could be cool and fight Sues/Stus/hazards/threats/etc. in interesting ways, but also there are some things to consider:
1)Is it a particularly meaningful situation for this to happen? Is the agent really hyped up, really angry, or acting in an 'emergency' manner, or is this epic maneuver/feat ho-hum for them? To do something as callous as cite myself, the agent Aster in a deep, personal rage could handle three shambling skeletons, but without that drive she wasn't able to harm even one generic mook in a big battle. To make her, a baseline human with only moderate experience stabbing things, able to take on enemies as if it wasn't a big deal would tread dangerously close to Sue.
2) Does this agent have a 'power factor' that could enable this? An agent with weaponized biology (Ilraen can pierce a Sue-thing with his tail blade, for instance) or some other special power? Is this Agent trained in combat/a former soldier? Are they experienced Agents? If not, they might not want to take on centaurs in single combat. I would trust ESAS or DAVD agents to be able to take on 'direct' threats more often than DMS or Floaters... though I notice most teams have one 'tough' agent that tends to handle nastier things and one agent that hangs back.
2.5) If they have special powers, they also are susceptible to anything those with such powers are susceptible to. Jedi have the weaknesses of Jedi, for example. Soldiers may not know what to do in situations they aren't trained for. Taking fighting prowess, like any trait, provides both benefits and drawbacks.
3) Is it funny? Seeing people try to fight but failing in hilarious ways is often more entertaining than seeing somebody beat people up easily.
Just some thoughts. I sort of am thinking about writing agents that are more powerful than what I think is the norm, and sticking them in ESAS. We criticize a lot of bad portrayals of people with strength and power. Fighting us some Sues isn't a bad thing: It just has to be done well, with the same consideration the PPC gives to everything.
There's nothing wrong (at least, the way I see it) with some rip-snorting agent fights. Written well, such scenes can be interesting and exciting. They can also provide a nice break from the typical "stand there like an idiot as we lecture you before dumping you into a volcano" mission wrap-up.
Aster has made a good list of points to consider. Here are a few additional things that I think should also be taken under review when writing about agents in combat:
BE SNEAKY
The PPC, for the most part, consists of fairly normal folks. Sues and Stus, however, are ultra-powerful abominations of literature. It's not exactly fair fight. So, you should be a little sneaky about this sort of stuff. Have one agent go read the charges while her partner hangs back with a sniper rifle. Set traps - mines or high explosives are always fun.
USE POWERS WELL
Aster kinda already touched on this, but I wanted to expand on it a little bit. Having special powers doesn't make someone a Sue or Stu. Using those powers in a stupid "break the plot" way does.
If you're going to create an agent with powers, set a final "do not cross" limit on them right away. Lets look at Gremlin, if I might use myself as an example. She's a DC universe metahuman with the ability to control electromagnetic forces. However, she can only MOVE electricity, not generate it herself. They only way she would be able to shopt off a bolt of lightning is if someone had fired it at her first. Of course, she'd have to survive not being fried first.
Benefits and drawbacks, folks.
GET YOUR HAIR A LITTLE MUSSED
As I mentioned before, there is a big power imbalance between your typical agent and your typical Sue/Stu. Sometimes, for all their sneakiness and combat pragmatism, agents get injured. That's why we have a Medical Department.
I'm not saying that we start crippling agents left and right. If they do end up in a knock-down fight, however, a few nasty cuts and a black eye (or whatever) would not be amiss.
More food for thought.
... taken as a whole, the questions indirectly stated ‘nothing in the mission was actually ‘Sue or ‘Stuish because of these factors.’ They acknowledged the issues many of us had with the mission—the ‘like a heroine of a spy movie’ with the tight leather transformation, the completely nonsensical fight scene, etc.
However, the phrasing and manner of answering them pretty much said that despite the problems existing, there was no real reason to consider them flaws. Just about any situation can be justified in writing as a reason to take out those powers and abuse them, and asking those questions in the way they were asked implies that so long as you forcibly engineer a situation, you can do whatever you want.
That kind of writing is a huge part of what the PPC has been trying to deal with for years. Why the questions attempted to excuse this was baffling to me, especially given Astral's grace and maturity in the discussion and acceptance of concrit.
My reading of Aster's questions says nothing of the sort - she hits a few of the points that make the difference between a Suvian "Oh, I'm so awesome" fight scene and a real character. She doesn't bother to apply them directly to Astral's story, just leaves them as points to consider.
A Sue is not in what the Sue does, or can do, but in how she's written. Take, for example, character X. She's an elvish princess of considerable power. She flips off her uncle, one of the greatest leaders of elves and/or men ever. When he abandons her, she leads a host of her people across what is effectively Greenland - if Greenland was seismically active. She stands and fights -repeatedly!- against the greatest evil the world ever sees, rules her people wisely for thousands of years, and when she finally gets fed up with things, tears the fortress of the second greatest evil ever to walk the land apart with her own force of will.
Her name? Galadriel. She is not a Sue.
See also the Emo!Sue and the Anti!Sue, for examples of Sues who are not powerful, cannot do anything right, etc. Powers and Sueishness are not intrinsically linked. The only consideration is how well written they are; do they twist the story until it revolves around them, or no? Do they do things without explanation to make themselves look cool/powerful/wise/beautiful/pathetic/etc or no?
In general, Aster's point is that Agents don't have to be normal humans to avoid being Sues. You just have to think and write more carefully.
My points didn't even have to do with this mission or the characters in question, just with the issues the criticism raised: How to handle power in agents, what kind of things to consider, etc. I even titled it as 'unrelated thoughts' to try and be less confusing.
I think PC was just adding to my points, too but I won't speak for PC.
I wasn't trying to excuse anything or even trying to discuss the mission or Astral's characters at all. Just talking about how I see power best handled in agents, because the criticism of Astral's stuff brought the topic up.
Yeah, Astral is handling crit nicely and stuff, and I applaud that. But my post wasn't even about her writing, but what I think would be interesting to consider in the future. Especially because I am soon writing a spin off with 'powerful' characters.
*hides in a dark corner, in case she totally misunderstood the point here, because she was quite baffled by this post on whole*
The points were phrased as 'to consider in the future,' but they were pretty much in response to issues under discussion. You said that yourself. How does that make your thoughts unrelated?
The phrasing of the opening was baffling to me, too. Between that and the questions raised, it read to me as saying, "Writing the Agents as Sues/Stus is just fine and is 'cool' so long as these considerations are dealt with," which are hugely, hugely far from infallible. How many times have Sues and Stus had a scene be emotional for them merely for the sake of melodrama? Same for having a power or use of a power--it's easy to have a Two-Edged Power or Tragic Back Story Bestowing Strength. Those questions are usually answered by an author, and sometimes even technically within world rules.
In fact, Astral's did so, both in the mission and the Wiki.
But because that check isn't infallible in either direction (Sue or non-Sue) it made the post come off strongly as apologetic.
As a side note: if the thoughts were unrelated to the discussion, why post in this thread?
If I'm honest that 'unrelated' list looked to me like a set of excuses and arguments that Astral could use to defend her fic against the concrit, too.
This whole tangent is crazy and should have been unrelated all along. Astral already acknowledged the problems and set out to fix them. They have been exemplary in this. Maybe this should be a new thread, if it's truly unrelated?
Okay, first off: I should apologize for being off-topic and self-agrandizing. This thread is for Astral, not for off-topic discussions. Astral: I'm sorry. My bad. I'll try my best not be a huge spotlight-stealing doorknob in the future.
That being said...
I don't like being accused of being a Sue apologist. I don't like having words I didn't say put into my mouth. NOWHERE did I write that Sue/Stu agents are fine, regardless of considerations. My intention was to merely suggest that powers and scenes of drama/action by themselves do not a Sue or Stu make. Nothing more.
My comment was on the original phrasing, and actually, PC, yours were quite different and addressed the issues concretely. I left me with a complete understanding of what you meant--and, in fact, ways to avoid what came up in Astral's mission.
The reason the original phrasing felt like an apology was because it showed, as ways to make a non-Sue, things that were done in Astral's mission that were leading into Sue territory. Because the comments were made with no knowledge of context? Taken in context it sounded like an excuse.
I would also like to point out that I said the check of dramatic scenes and powers was not infallible in either direction, whether to confirm either a Sue or a non-Sue.
Wow, that's some pretty bad slash all right. Firenze... *shudder* I mean, crack pairings can be fun; but the way they wrote this one was just... euuugh. Pass the freaking brain bleach.
BTW, I disagree with you on Hermione's reaction to Firenze/Harry. She's Muggle-born and grew up without the usual Wizarding-world prejudices, and she's notoriously accepting of non-humans--the episode with the house-elves displays that nicely. So she probably wouldn't freak out at Firenze being a centaur. She'd totally freak out at Harry going to the Forbidden Forest, though--initially because it's against the rules; thereafter because it's dangerous and there wasn't a good reason to go there. And she'd freak if Harry were currently in a relationship and thus cheating on whoever it was. Ginny, at this age, I guess.
What annoyed me about the whole thing, ironically, was the total astronomy fail. Stars don't "align". They're too far away for us to see them moving. And those are not the names of stars, either--those aren't constellation names, and the Roman numerals after the names would mean that in the case of the XXIV, that that's the twenty-fourth brightest star in that constellation. That's probably not even bright enough to see without a telescope. If we're referring to planets here (in the sense of "wandering stars" and "the stars align"), that's still a fail. Wizards use the same planet names that the Muggle world does.
I'll admit I'm a bit of an astronomy buff, but really, the author could've googled it. There are star charts there for the asking, and as easy to read as a map of your hometown, too.
That thing really needed to be killed.
For me, this was a pairing that didn't make me go 'ugh', it made me go 'huh?' Not just the question of how exactly a human and a centaur would... well, you know... but also how they'd get together in the first place. Centaurs just Do Not Like humans, and the author tossing that rather relevant piece of information aside really annoyed me.
You're quite right about Hermione, I kind of forgot that- and I forgot about Ginny, too. Damn. *goes to fix it*
The astronomy fail annoyed me, too. I don't know much about it, but I know what and what isn't a constellation name. I'm guessing the author was either too lazy to look up some constellations or wanted some Cool and Original names.
Thanks for reading. :)
That was one bad 'fic... I'm glad you killed it. Nice mission.
*happy dance*
Loot (all up for grabs)
One (1) delicate hand
One (1) creeping blush
Two (2) mini-Aragogs (Harry potter and Quibler)
Recruits:
Five (5) centaur children, as of now unborn.
I'd like to claim the hand. Agent Saline will like it. :D
Go for it. :) Even if I'd wanted to, neither of my agent pairs could keep it, both of them have animals/minis who probably would love to play with a moving hand.