Nicely done.

New mission plug! by galenfea on 2010-10-20 04:08:00 UTC Reply

My first mission! OMG no flamezzz!!1!lol!one!

The mission is SFW - I purposefully kept the descriptions vague, since the original fic was pretty violent.
It's one for Cassie's challenge - no Sue and the only sort-of death is what happens to the villain. Given his status as plot device, I thought it fitting, and wasn't really sure how else to deal with this genre of fic.
Hope it's OK!

Nicely done. by Calista on 2010-10-21 18:27:00 UTC Reply

It's been a while since someone's done LotR, too. Which department are your agents in? (We need a wiki article for "Bad Action". I've seen so many botched fight scenes it's just sad...)

Aragorn and his "brothers" ducking each other in a river when Aragorn is thirty doesn't actually seem too odd to me, though. All three of them are generally serious characters; but they are (foster) siblings and I don't see why a few minutes of light-heartedness between them is all that OOC. Guess it depends how you write it.

But the rest, I agree with you: Head injuries do NOT work that way. And this is coming from someone who's had the opportunity to actually examine all the tiny little structures involved--believe you me, the skull can only do so much, especially when the brain is bouncing around inside it like a Superball. Randomly healing concussions... *sigh* Some of these writers SO need a basic anatomy class.

Your agents are generally safe without disguises if there aren't any OCs involved, but if the canons are OOC enough, or verge into Canon Sue territory, the agents are in danger of being detected.

The author in this fic seems to have been distorting Middle-earth geography like one of those rubber sheets you see in gravity demonstrations... only worse. Which makes sense, actually, because the uncanon elements can distort the geography and the timeline, and when you remove them they disappear...

OK, enough rambling. Liked your mission.

Thanks! :) by galenfea on 2010-10-22 04:40:00 UTC Reply

They're in Floaters at the moment. If I keep finding bad action/adventure fics I might see if it's OK for me to make a new department and transfer them to it. The next one I've got my eye on is more in the direction of bad het, though (ignorance of archery, gut wounds, head injuries and how large an army of over two thousand actually is aside), so I'm not sure. I'd definitely be prepared to actively look them out, though, if other people also think it necessary! :D

Hmm... I don't know. I probably should have included more quotes from the actual story there - the whole scene came across to me as really childish. Light-heartedness is one thing and I do have a weakness for lighter fics, but devoid of all other cues, I probably would have guessed the ages of the people involved as under twelve - I probably could have made that clearer in the mission, though.

*laugh* I admit getting all the details of this sort of thing is hard and I salute you for having studied it in detail, but I do feel like 'Being bashed on the head is bad' should be fairly obvious. Sometimes I think kids should be taught about head injuries at a young age at school.

OK. I figured they weren't out of character enough for it to be a problem in this one, especially as Jackson and Felaben weren't going to get too close (while the canons were conscious) and the canons would have other things to worry about. I was planning to use disguises when there are lots of or important OCs and/or when the canons are 50% or more OOC - does that sound about right as a rough rule of thumb?

Heh. Yeah, I spent some time looking between the fic and a map, estimating how far you could walk or ride in a day and thinking 'where the Hell is this part taking place?'. There was no way Elrond in particular should have been able to cover that sort of distance in a few days, partly on foot.

Heh. That was really rambling. :) Thank you for reading the mission, and I'm glad you liked it!

Ha! I am so first! by Sister-to-the-Queen on 2010-10-20 10:14:00 UTC Reply

Congratulations on your first mission!

I really like the interplay between your twin agents. Quarrelsome yet caring, just the way I like it. Also, the story of Felaben's genesis is original, to say the least.

That wraith had some nerve, using so-called 'artistic license' as an excuse to have canon characters as torture dummies. I said it before, and I'll say it again: torture can be a plot device, but not a whole plot. That's just wrong. I'm glad you killed this dead.

And (heh heh) it's fun that your knowledge of first aid is surfacing here, too.

Thanks! by galenfea on 2010-10-21 03:33:00 UTC Reply

:D I'm glad you liked them!

Yeah, it always annoys me when people say in fanfic 'I can do what I want- it's artistic licence!' and then proceed to mangle the canon.

*laughs* Yeah, it's a big thing of mine, though I've not had much practical experience for some months, so I'm getting rusty. Even in original fiction I often write healers - they do not get enough love in fantasy. :)