Subject: More pluggery!
Author:
Posted on: 2011-03-30 07:45:00 UTC
And lo, there was an interlude, and it was good!
Or so we hope, anyway. Be sure to let us know.
This interlude follows directly from Agents Derik and Earwig's last mission, so if you haven't read that previously, it might be a good idea to do so before reading the interlude. It's a bit on the long side, so plan accordingly.
~Neshomeh and Dann
do you have any more plans to write together cos I like how this turned out.
Please let me know how useful this is. I want to do a better job critiquing/reviewing.
Overall, this was highly entertaining. Dann is very funny, Earwig is always entertaining, though in a bit different way. More like verbal jokes versus physical comedy (which you translate well in Earwig's interactions).
I felt bad for Derik when Gall made that gaff about his dragon, but he actually seemed to handle it better than I thought he would. Maybe he is coping?
Gall seems to be more typical of the attitudinal agents, but the addition of her total lack of technology understanding should be really interesting. She should meet Unger sometime. He could set something on fire for her, and then be totally shown up by the Monstrous Nightmare. I think he'd be in love...though with the fiery monster or it's master might be debatable. :)
The ending was sweet; even approaching genuinely poignant, which is not so easy to accomplish in a humor story.
Let's see how I do with the questions at the end. "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and Agent Decima.
Okay, specific sentences that I liked or that I thought could use a bit of tweaking.
Perhaps slightly more practically than most, Agent Dann reached for a fire extinguisher. I liked this sentence. It established Dann as practical and funny, which set me up to expect to laugh with him the rest of the story. Very nice scene setting with the dragon popping in the paragraph before this sentence, as well.
a tough-looking young woman in a Viking helmet and armor menaced anyone who looked at her the wrong way with a sizable mace. This read to me like people were using a sizable mace to look at her, as opposed to her menacing people with a sizable mace
"The white emptiness of the hangar really had no clue how to handle a dragon." I think from reading the entire paragraph that the hangar is semi-sentient like most PPC tech, but to me, it seemed that "The white emptiness" is the subject of the sentence and the sentience.
The drama of this was sharply diminished when Snerri smacked snout-first into the opposing wall, but he recovered quickly and bore his rider dizzily away into the complex of Headquarters. I loved this one. Smack!
"Having followed the trail of scattered agents, claw marks, and one very traumatized petunia" Is that a Flower or a flower? (Unrelated note, but petunias are my favorite flowers.)
"It's like magic," Dann agreed, "but with more swearing. And slightly higher risk of burning yourself." BEST LINE EVER!
"...And the flashy-thingy? When do I get a flashy-thingy?"
"Now that's just dangerous," Dann said, picking up the Sharpie. "Wonder who left that lying around?"
Very nice mission. I look forward to your next one.
Yep, got 'em both. {= )
I'm glad you enjoyed the interlude, and I have enjoyed your response. You actually confirmed a couple of things I was worried about, so I'll be able to work on those later on. It's always useful to know what specific kinds of things work and don't work.
Mostly, Derik taking things perhaps better than he should be. He is meant to be unstable and unpredictable, so my goal is to make his reactions surprising and to keep up the tension--will he explode? Won't he? However, if it doesn't read true, then I'll have failed, so I'd like to follow up by asking if it was a genuine surprise in an "oh, thank goodness" kind of way, or if it just didn't make sense.
I'm glad he's garnering sympathy, anyway, and even more glad it's not dragging down the humor. I personally struggle with balancing my desire to explore my agents' psyches against keeping things interesting and entertaining for everyone else.
Gall is a character I need to write. I feel like her unrestrained, freewheeling, female snark is something I've personally been missing out on. I hope that she'll be as fun to read as she is for me to write, and I do intend to take advantage of the fact that, while her home continuum doesn't really trouble itself about anachronisms, she probably doesn't understand half the expressions she uses, not to mention technology. ^_^
Heaven forbid Unger ever have access to a fire-breathing dragon. {X D That said, it would be fun. *eg*
Glad you like the ending. That was Dann's idea. {= )
A couple of the specific sentences:
Dangit. I knew that second one was trouble, but I don't know how to improve it. Any ideas?
The petunia could be either. I guess I imagine it to be something like the potted fern in FicPsych--sentient, but without rank--but it's really up to the reader.
Thanks again!
~Neshomeh
Yes, Derik read fine. I was pretty surprised he took as well as he did, but it didn't come across as OOC. Thanks, mostly to the fact that the subject drifted a bit pretty quickly. If he'd had more time to build up that explosion, then I might have had trouble with it.
Maybe if you pull that prepositional phrase to earlier in the sentence? Something like "a tough-looking young woman in a Viking helmet, armor, and carrying a sizable mace menaced anyone who looked at her the wrong way."
I may have to have Agent Miah come across the petunia.
I think Derek's reaction can come across one of two ways; either it's the 'You just poked a sore spot but you didn't know so I'll let it slide just this once' reaction, or the 'You've just ticked me off so badly that I've gone out the other side' one. If that makes any sense.
Moving the prepositional phrase would work, but since I'm strange I'd go with a different variant than Miahs: 'a tough-looking young woman in a Viking helmet and armor menaced with a sizable mace anyone who looked at her the wrong way."
Alternately, you could try describing what she's doing with the mace before the fact that she's menacing people: 'a tough-looking young woman in a viking helmet and armor held a sizable mace in front of her, menacing anyone who looked at her the wrong way.'
In fact, I'll go and change it. Thanks!
And yeah, that is what I was going for with Derik. Either way works, or possibly the second one followed by the first, once he'd had a moment to recover. So, that's good. ^_^
~Neshomeh
FAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I love it! Earwig's hilarious! And quite a good kender he is.
I would like to note that Sharpies, despite being useful for writing (a dangerous business), are also extremely good for interrogational purposes. Forcing captives to sniff a Mega-Sized Sharpie every three minutes ensures they're too loopy to tell a lie (though the hallucinations make it hard to tell anyways).
And--shrink collar! Epic!
...are the sharpies from Calvin & Hobbes. With one of them and a cardboard box, you can make anything - duplicators, transmogrifiers, time machines, teleporters...
It's always nice for Agent Dann to get some screen time beyond a short cameo. I also liked the scene with a certain desk at the end...
Yeah, Dann is pretty important yet also long-suffering.
He's a pretty cool guy, overall, in pretty big shoes to fill. Dude needs more props and more love. >_>
I always like to see debacles, especially with technology.
This was a nice weaving of the seriousness of Derik and his hangups and the zany antics of HQ and DoSAT. That line about the sharpie being dangerous killed me.
But the last line of the story made me D'aww. Very good handling of readers, you two.
Hm... in terms of constructive criticism... I would have to think about it some more. This is pretty good so I can't just suggest 'pacing' or 'transitions' off the top of my head...
Like I said to Miah, I'm glad Derik is garnering sympathy without being a total drag. It's a hard balance to strike.
I am learning, though, that co-writing allows me to have my fun with the deep stuff while people who are better at funny than I am write the jokes. ^_~
~Neshomeh
And you gave me two different ideas about how my agents can keep the F-22s they steal in my current mission. They can leave it in the hangar or maybe shrink them and conceal them as scale models in a diorama.
Like Dann says, with the right application of technology, just about anything is possible. {= )
Glad you enjoyed!
~Neshomeh