Subject: Permission granted!
Author:
Posted on: 2011-05-11 19:42:00 UTC
I agree with DS that the tense shifts and sudden appearances of "I" in the narrative are a little disjointing, but not enough to make reading unfun, so whatever; it's your spin-off, your narrative style is up to you. I appreciate your grasp of how the Laws of Narrative Comedy work, so enjoy!
~Neshomeh
Hello, everyone! Behold my permission request, for it wants nothing more than to be read.
Agents: Kara and Regina. Both agents are in the Department of Mary Sues, and specialize in Yu-Gi-Oh fanfiction.
Kara Lewis:
Kara has blonde hair, usually worn in two braids, and brown eyes. She tends to be hyperactive, excitable, and impulsive, although she usually gets (a bit) calmer when she's actually on a mission. She often thinks of rules more as guidelines at times, which gets her in trouble with the Flowers. She also appears to REALLY dislike her former partner, who was kicked out of the Department of Mary Sues for setting one fire too many.
Regina Carter:
Regina has short brown hair, blue eyes, and quite a few freckles. She was a real person who was inserted as a bit character in a badfic against her will, and was recruited by Kara. She has confidence issues and is a bit paranoid about getting into trouble for breaking rules. Most of the time, she can be a bit of a doormat, but sometimes (usually if someone is messing with her lust object) she gets very vocal and very violent.
I have longer character summaries on my website. I also have my writing sample there (under "Missions"). The website can be found here: http://agents-kara-and-regina.webs.com/. The writing sample can be found by itself here: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1w9fG8sWcpEbEksDAuRRzo3Z6nlA0uwkEtTKjkPWiyqM.
The fanfiction I plan to use for my first mission is here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4561499/1/BeyondtheVoid. This is also the fanfiction that Regina comes from.
If I forgot something, please let me know and I'll add it.
I agree with DS that the tense shifts and sudden appearances of "I" in the narrative are a little disjointing, but not enough to make reading unfun, so whatever; it's your spin-off, your narrative style is up to you. I appreciate your grasp of how the Laws of Narrative Comedy work, so enjoy!
~Neshomeh
Thanks! (Insert happy dance here.) I'll make sure that in the future I pay attention to tense stuff.
Disclaimer: I am not a permission giver. I will now proceed to give you my 2 cents anyway.
The biggest problem with the writing sample is an inconsistent narrator. It waffles between being a neutral omniscient observer (with a snarky personality) and being from Kara's perspective. It should be one or the other. Another thing about an omniscient narrator - they know what's going to happen, so it obviously wouldn't have said 'fortunately Kara was only aiming for Regina' since it already knows everything will go horribly horribly wrong.
Another big violation is that it uses "I said." There should never, ever be a first person pronoun used by a narrator in a third person perspective fic.
I also note:
1)Tense inconsistencies. Her skills shouldn't be described in current tense if the story is described in past tense.
2)Logic fail. Someone getting hit by a water balloon is not a quiet, easily missed event. People tend to scream in surprise, water splashes everywhere. Most likely the whole cafeteria will be aware of what happened after the first one, if not the second one.
3)Logic fail 2: Even if not everyone in the cafeteria noticed right away, how the heck did Regina miss it? While silliness is embraced in the PPC, unless Regina hails from the Looney Toons world this is still a stretch. You didn't even mention anything that might distract her enough to not look around.
4)This is obviously the start of a mission. You shouldn't be writing any part of the mission at all until you have permission.
So the review was harsher than I intended. I like Kara's energy, and I like the kooky enthusiastic narrator, it just needs to be more consistent.
Also the fact that it's a mission intro probably isn't an actual problem, since you never actually entered the fic.
I will look forward to reading your missions if/when you get permission!
So as to avoid double posting.
Well, first of all, many thanks to PoorCynic and DML who betaed the sample piece.
I'm applying two agents for DMS, Freelance division, namely:
Joan Ford, about 40 years old, a Tolkien-elf raised in Earth, probably a Noldor since she has black hair and grey eyes. She was adopted in a Led Zeppelin show, and has two bad habits: a nervous tic, which makes her cover her ears with her hair, and the necessity of talking about her relatives --who have always done something similar to what she's witnessing/talking about, etc.-- Apart from that she's balanced, usually not showing the normal amount of insanity of an average agent's until she gets to kill the Sue. She also has an issue with shiny things.
Bob Nothing, 15 Yshkatk-ian years, more or less 22 Earth years. In fact, Bob has an unreadable/unpronounceable name, which made people call him something easier, and no surname. He's still in his freshman year, in the PPC as well as dealing with the many new races he's meeting everyday, so he usually sticks his foot in his mouth or is close to it; he also finds everything funny and is constantly amused. He thinks even the Laws of Narrative Comedy and the Ironic Overpower are funny and is constantly tempting them; of course, they don't fall for it that easy, but eventually they'll teach him not to tempt them.
This is the sample:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nptwmo6nuv4fn0qkcRn4Yk4ZWZStkox9bKd67V09Q6c/edit?hl=en&authkey=CMeU4J8J#
And this is the fic I intend to spork:
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5343123/1/Beyond_Love
Looks like you have a fun pair planned out. I enjoyed your sample also -- different takes on the Canon Protection Initiative are always fun to see -- and am looking forward to how you write within the PPC.
If that wasn't clear enough, Permission granted. Cheers.
(Do remember to keep an eye on your punctuation, though, some of it was getting away from you. And your betas, apparently, which means you've got some madly talented escape-artist punctuation. :P)
Anyway, have fun. :)
I see no popups for this name on Google. It keeps trying to correct it to Shakatak. I assume you just made the name up, so is he supposed to be some kind of alien? Any particular canon?
I also forgot to say that Bob is a sapient biped Komodo dragon and he comes from an unfinished tale of mine which I could fit to become what I wanted. And, as a side note, he speaks with a weird accent, with stronger k's and t's, likke ttis.
By the way, you suggest that I move the Permission to another thread? Or just leave it like this?
Permission Requests can be lost if you append them to an existing thread; we want to avoid double-posting, but not that badly. Permission Requests are important enough to get their own thread every time.
(That said, if another PG sees it here they'll probably reply anyway - I would, but I'm afraid I just have no time for PG-ing at the moment. Good luck!)