Torturing Bella Swan, eh?

Permission Request by Flyndragon on 2011-08-28 07:05:00 UTC Reply

I posted this about a page ago, but no one responded telling me if I passed or failed, and if I did fail, why. So I decided to post it again. Umm, sorry if that's annoying or against the rules. Just tell me , 'k?
Alright, down to business.
Character Bios:

Name:Flynn Lamare
Sex: Female
Age: 16
Home: Earth
Department: Department of Floaters
Appearance: She is a skinny, underdeveloped teenager with short, dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. She normally wears a black sweatshirt with the floater patch, a skort of varying color, and multicolored knee-high socks.
History: Flynn was an ordinary, if very geeky, teen. While riding her bike to school one day, she fell into a plot hole which led to HQ and ended up running into a wall so hard she knocked herself unconscious. A wandering agent found her and, after a quick trip to medical, recruited her.
Personality: She is bubbly and cheerful most of the time, only really getting mad when confronted with a paticularly bad mary sue or something else in a fic that really offends her. However, she is very absentminded and flighty. She also has a horrible weakness for cute things, though the cute things in question normally end up biting her. Often, she doesn't take missions very seriously and has on numerous occasions risked discovery going after a particularly nice bit of loot.
Weapon of Choice: A nice big crowbar. Or umbrella.
Fandoms: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Naruto, Bleach, Doctor Who, Glee, Pokemon, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Stargate Atlantis, Star Trek 2009
Lust Objects: Elrond, Aang, Rodney McKay
Partner: Teknishun

Name: Teknishun (Tek)
Sex: Male
Age: 28
Home: Stargate 'Verse
Department: Department of Floaters
Appearance: He is a very ordinary looking young man, with mousy brown hair and brown eyes. He prefers to wear military issue BDU's and combat boots from his home continuum with all the patches replaced with PPC ones.
History: Tek was born in a bad Stargate SG-1 fanfic. He attempted to attack the Goa'uld sue that had broken into Stargate Command and was promptly killed, both to show off her evulness and to give the human sue inside something to wangst about later on in the fic. Before he died, the agents sent to the fic brought him back to HQ and recruited him. His name comes from the author's misspelling of his former job as a 'gate technician.
He was first put into DoSAT (probably due to his name) but quickly learned that he is absolutely hopeless at operating any kind of technology that runs on nonsenseoleum. So he was transferred into the department of floaters and paired up with Flynn.
Personality: Tek is dry, sarcastic, and fond of pointing out the obvious. He is very military in his attitude, sticking by procedure as much as possible. He is unfortunately a bit of a prude, which causes him to suffer more than most when sent on bad slash or bad het missions. He also has a huge chocolate addiction, choosing to ingest his bleeprin mostly through NMs&NMs. He always carries some type of chocolate around with him and eats it whenever he can.
Weapon of Choice: P-90 or any other long ranged weapon
Fandoms:Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Stargate 'Verse, Doctor Who, Firefly, Halo, Star Trek, Star Wars, Batman (movies)
Lust Objects:Samantha Carter, Kaylee Frye, Jennifer Keller
Partner: Flynn

My writing sample is here:
In Which I Attempt to Make Bella Swan a Likeable Character by Having Jigsaw Play a Game With Her
And the fic I plan to do first is here. But you have to make an account with the website to see it , so you can read my basic rant/summary of it here.

Alright, I think that's it. crosses fingers

Torturing Bella Swan, eh? by Luigifan on 2011-08-30 02:53:00 UTC Reply

From what I've heard, I can't say she doesn't deserve it. :p

Not Exactly. . . by Flyndragon on 2011-09-01 03:10:00 UTC Reply

I'm not trying to 'torture' Bella Swan because I feel she deserves it, for the record. I really want to explore how past trauma, especially violent trauma, could change her from her canon self into someone more likeable and sympathetic, and also show how that would affect her relationships with the rest of the characters.

And it's an interesting exploration by Sedri on 2011-09-02 08:28:00 UTC Reply

I didn't mean to say otherwise, just that your writing was making her more likable and sympathetic without the need for trauma as a catalyst.

Er, about that. by Vixenmage on 2011-08-30 20:58:00 UTC Reply

For the record, just so you don't wind up saying this about Sues or Stus in the future, I should point out that Agents don't torture. ~~I could also go on a rant about torture as a plot device, or breathlessly plug Boz4pm's Don't Panic! series as, among other things, a well-researched study of PTSD, but...~~ Just so you know. Attempting to write a redemption of a character involving past traumas is not in any way the same as having your agents torture an OC or other character. And talking about it, or saying "S/he deserves to be [insert appalling torment here] and someone should!" is generally a bad idea. We do try not to be bullies.

I'm afraid I have to say no. by Sedri on 2011-08-28 09:07:00 UTC Reply

(It's definitely not against the rules to re-post a request if no PG has had a chance to answer it, so don't worry about that.)

To start with, I rather like your agents. They're a bit flat, but a few missions would flesh them out well and there's potential for a lot of amusing clashes.

But your writing sample has several problems, most of which seem to be caused by carelessness. You are missing capitals in several names, such as "Isabella swan" and "forks". You have several punctuation probelms, uch as putting the commas and full stops ending dialogue outside the relevant quotation marks, using a full stop to end dialogue when a tag (starting with a lower-case word) is still to follow, and in some cases punctuation (quotation marks, full stops) is missing entirely. There are similar mistakes in your agent bios.

As for the writing itself, your narrative did keep me interested - any attempt to reform that girl wins in my book! - but the structure of your sentences sometimes felt forced. To be honest, exchanging Bella's angsty-teenager-ness for the trauma of a torture surviour doesn't make her more likeable. On the other hand, the way you were writing her is what kept my interest - she felt like a real person, especially in the first few paragraphs, with the red eye flight and the mental rant about her stepfather - and I feel that you could make a much better reformation story out of this by removing the torture and crossover and just re-writing her story straight. So, points for that.

I think you could write missions quite well and would be glad to give you Permission if not for the sheer number of simple mistakes that you don't seem to have bothered to correct. Please, take some time to review your punctuation in detail before posting, get a beta to double-check, and re-apply when you're confident that you will spot all the tiny errors in a badfic as well as the big issues.

As a side note, your DragonOfLore bio says you're thirteen - am I right to guess, given that you posted your first fic there in 2008, that this is just out of date? (Do forgive me if you've said this elsewhere - I'm a tad rushed and can't find back your introduction post.)

Also, it's poor form to give us a link to the badfic that we can't follow. I realise you didn't make it a registered-access-only, but the summary you gave, while showing how appalling it is, doesn't let me see the actual prose if the badfic, and therefore, what sort of smaller errors it has and at what frequency. This isn't a deciding factor, but it does make life difficult.

So. Permission denied. I'm sorry. Please know that you can re-apply anytime, as soon as the above issues are fixed.
If it's fallen off the first page by IndeMaat on 2011-08-28 07:41:00 UTC Reply

it's okay to repost a permission request. PGs scroll down to see if they've missed anything, but I don't think they click on the next page button.

Good luck.