In real life, you go by the requested pronoun, but ...

NEW MISSION! by caddy-shack on 2011-08-13 07:04:00 UTC Reply

Join Mark, Maria, Cadmar, and Miah as they face Heather Draconius, the worst jerk!warrior!Sue any of them have ever faced, and deal with the consequences of poor planning and poorly maintained equipment, in Dragon Lady.

Aha! Look! I didn't forget the minis and OCs this time! ^_^

Mini's Collected:
Sectumsemra
Ginerva Weasley
Alastair
Zambini

Recruitable OCs:
Aurora; May not be the most talkative person.
Cindy; Werewolf.

I am keeping Belle for myself, I plan to have her as an intern in the DBS. If you do want to take either of the recruits, you can change any of the characteristics they already had, Culture Implants and all that.

Me and Miah have an interlude on the way which deals with what happens directly after the mission. It'll be out soon. We decided to post this by itself because the bis post we made seemed to have scared people off. Thoughts? Suggestions? Crazy predictions?

Fantastic! by themann1086 on 2011-08-18 16:05:00 UTC Reply

Poor, poor Cadmar. He's rapidly becoming my favorite Butt Monkey. Plus, I'm a sucker for gender-bending stories. As for thoughts/predictions: I wonder how Luxury is going to react ;)

Mwa-haha! by Caddy-shack on 2011-08-18 22:07:00 UTC Reply

I like the way you think. As I seem to have (somewhat) unintentionally put Luxury into the group of people who my agents regularly interact with. My little island in the PPC has a harbor and ships (both for traveling to other people's islands and for pairings).

Re: Mwa-haha! by themann1086 on 2011-08-19 16:57:00 UTC Reply

Hooray, Agent!Ships :D also, I really like that Luxury is an actual character in your stories and not just a Force of Nature to be feared. Not that she isn't that, but...

Phew, this was a long one... by OpinionedAngel on 2011-08-14 15:19:00 UTC Reply

Good mission, but poor Cadmar! I really wanna give him... her... whatever... a hug after this fic, I felt so bad for... her (Damn pronouns...)

She (?) certainly is the group's "Butt Monkey" isn't she?

(Yes, I spend a lot of time on TVTropes, what of it?)

I really enjoyed the vacation part, sort of a "Europe Trip" PPC style...

Heh by Caddy-Shack on 2011-08-14 21:35:00 UTC Reply

I was thinking of having some of it in Berlin, or possibly have a 'Happy Juice' bit. Maybe next time. :D

Heh, I think I'll stick with calling Cadmar by the physical gender for now. It make it easier, for me at least, to remember that Cadmar is currently female. Yeah, i am forgetful sometimes of my agents, you'd be surprised how many minis I have made for spelling my own name. (It's a lot. >.>)

As for the Butt Monkey, yeah, I am sorta aiming for that. Cadmar is the designated 'Possession Monkey'. Though I'll be holding off for a bit. I am an avid reader of TVTropes myself, it's a fun place to trawl for ideas for interesting things to do.

Well... by HerrWozzeck on 2011-08-14 10:30:00 UTC Reply

...after all that, Florestan will have to make an appearance in your next interlude. You know, provide some holding material for Maria... Unfortunately I won't be available to do a dual writing session until the 21st. Aside from the fact I'm still traipsing around Siena at the moment (and let's not also forget that the Palio is happening in two days, which is when things will get absolutely insane there), the hotel's internet is really not very good, so we can't co-work on a googledoc with any reliability. So unfortunately, we'll have to wait a bit. Though, I could potentially e-mail you a couple lines to get us started with that. That shouldn't be too tough, I think.

Extremely entertaining mission. Especially the whole trip around Europe part that rounded out the mission.

And wow, some of the things that Sue did... Just wow. I can see why you were all so pissed off about that. Yeah, crazy times are had.

Hm... In the recruitable OC's bit... I've been formulating starting another response center with another group of peeps to cover some of the stuff F&E can't cover but that I really want to cover really badly. So yeah... I think I'll take Cindy if she's not taken by anyone else.

Extremely intertaining mission. :D

Thank! :D by Caddy-Shack on 2011-08-14 21:23:00 UTC Reply

Sure, you can have Cindy. I'm glad you are interested. And thank you, I'm glad the mission is so well received. ^_^

Yeah, the traveling bit was my favorite part, shameless fun, chaos, and places of interest.

I'm sure we'll be able to think something up for a co-write, if not right now, a little wait never hurts, seeing as I have Plans with Miah (Mwahahaha!) But getting together again will be fun. Plus, I do have a few things planned for dear Florestan (MWAHAHAHA! *lightning flashes in background*).

AWESOME. (Spoilers). by doctorlit on 2011-08-14 02:01:00 UTC Reply

I started reading this mission at 12:30, and I just finished it at 5:30. But it was worth it! This is the best mission I've read in a long while. I love the way you made use of Kreacher, that you showed the surviving Dragons to be just as victimized by the bad writing as Cadmar and the canons, and that you put the agents in a nasty situation and made them deal with it. The vacation section was awesome; I love it when agents get to experience the world a bit, even if the parts they explored this time weren't Potterverse-specific.

I have to admit, I got pretty mad at the Sunflower Official while he was chewing everyone out at the end. I know he was justified in doing so, and he definitely made some good points about equipment upkeep and leaving Kreacher un-neuralyzed (not that that was intentional), but I still couldn't help but feel bad for Cadmar, especially knowing he's going to be missing a part of his identity for an unknown length of time. I think Miah was right to call him out a bit at the end.

I'm rambling...Anyway, I just wanted to say that this was a great, funny mission, and I'm glad I read it, even if it swallowed up my whole afternoon!

Thank you so much! ^-^ by caddy-shack on 2011-08-14 03:40:00 UTC Reply

Wow, I am glad we were able to make it that good!

The whole Crash Dummy thing was an idea for the original draft of the mission, when it was solo. When Miah joined, it needed some tweaks so it would still make sense that they couldn't just fix everything with tech. It was fun too!

I am really glad the vacation scene was a success, I always wanted t do a travel montage! The idea was suggested to me by DML, instead of using an RA for traveling. So, props to him, and he is right. Not using RAs CAN be fun for everyone.

It was originally going to have the agents travel from Grimmauld Place to Siberia, lugging a sedated Heather in a suit case or something, until they dropped her off. Then they would be back at HQ because that is how travel montages work. But, when Miah discovered a door, I though this was a LOT better. Writing the agents goofing off in fun.

Miah actually plotted a route out using GoogleMaps, and pointed out some neat thing we could have the agents visit, props to her for research!

And finally, the SO. Pretzel, who I am belatedly thanking for betaing (Sorry!) said his original punishment was too much, and a second person (My RL friend) agreed, so me and Miah added some to the end of it. Having Fem!Cadmar around for a few missions will be fun to play with.

Genderbending and pronouns... by Calista on 2011-08-13 21:43:00 UTC Reply

I loved the mission. Long, but totally worth reading. Your agents' vacation had me laughing out loud. Warning to future readers: Swallow your Mountain Dew before you read. You'll thank me.

So I'm thinking about another grammar issue, specifically Cadmar's gender-bending and how you switched pronouns for him/her afterward. I'm not sure about the proper pronouns for situations like that. Do you go by physical gender, mental gender, or what? Do you just use those awkward third-gender pronouns? You can't use "it"; that just sounds like they're not a person anymore. Sure, gender-bending isn't real-life, but there have to be grammatical conventions for this somewhere.

In real life, you go by the requested pronoun, but ... by Laburnum on 2011-08-13 23:40:00 UTC Reply

... in written fiction that involves magic or scifi genderbending instead of realistic-style transitioning or similar, using the mental-gender pronoun makes it kind of hard to keep track of when they're swapping back and forth. If it was me, I might use the physical-sex pronouns in quotation marks when the person is transformed into the opposite gender. (I don't do this for Laburnum and Hemlock, because when she's being him, she does think of herself as a he.)
Thank you! and an interesting question. by caddy-shack on 2011-08-13 23:33:00 UTC Reply

First of all, thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed the mission. Me and Miah tried our hardest to make it entertaining, while still have the drama bit in it.

As for the question, my first idea was to go by physical. It seemed like a good temporary thing. Plus, I got to have the agents having trouble finding out what to address Cadmar as. Though, I may have to take a look at Slacktiverse for what VM said.
Zie is the one used on Slacktiverse. by Vixenmage on 2011-08-13 22:56:00 UTC Reply

And zir for possessive. It's useful.

*flails* by Kaist on 2011-08-13 07:47:00 UTC Reply

More awesomeness from you guys! Whee!