Subject: Thanks both of you! (nm)
Author:
Posted on: 2010-08-19 15:23:00 UTC
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Permission request by
on 2010-08-19 05:59:00 UTC
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My agents:
Name: Surhat Roac sw Caun (Surhat)
Species: human
Home Continuum: my NaNoWriMo novel for the coming november
Department: Department of Floaters
Background: Surhat sw Caun, a minor apprentice wizard, was drawn out of his home continuum during a fight to prevent power-hungry master wizards from breaking the boundaries between worlds, and he was deposited in the middle of headquarters, unable to return to his home continuum. As a result, he has a strong dislike of those who meddle with reality, whether they be Mary Sues or slash-spirits. He is occasionally arrogant, as befits a young member of House Roac, and is prone to daydreaming, but he makes an effort to be personable. He is a stickler for spelling, as he believes it to be one of the things that most erodes the walls between worlds. He does not, however, have a very wide knowledge of World One canons. Somehow, despite being forbidden from re-entering his home continuum, he manages to keep himself supplied with his family's cocoa powder for making hot chocolate.
Skills: minor spellcasting abilities (I've got a list of the D&D 3.5 spells that is roughly equivalent to what he knows, if anyone cares deeply; it's only eighteen spells), was taught to use a knife and fire a bow when he was younger, but had not used those skills in at least five years until his recent recruitment
Weapons: knowledge; also a House Roac knife, an old family heirloom, which he carries but rarely uses if he can avoid it. His magic is not really suitable for combat.
Appearance: Surhat's home is high in the mountains of the north — he and his family are all Scandinavian in appearance, blond-haired and blue-eyed. Their chocolate is grown in greenhouses maintained by magic. Surhat's eyes are a particularly dark blue, and his hair has darkened somewhat since has been spending more time inside headquarters. Despite its apparent impracticality, he does not feel comfortable unless he is wearing a scholar's robe over his PPC uniform. He claims he can hide things in the sleeves, but he has not had the opportunity to demonstrate this as yet.
Name: Roger Walters
Species: werewolf
Home Continuum: Earth, Not World One
Department: Department of Floaters
Background: Roger Walters's world is very much like World One, save that it contains werewolves. And some other things, but they are tales for another time. Since this is Not Your Average Modern Fantasy, Roger's world's particular form of lycanthropy imposes a variety of vulnerabilities on the human forms of those with its curse: being burned by metals; poisoned, balked, or otherwise influenced by various herbs; etc. Roger has always been an avid reader of everything and occasional writer of fanfic. At some point when he was exploring his grandparents' house, he found a door that opened into a response center. He picked up the PPC Manual sitting on the floor therein, read it through, and knew he had found his calling. He somehow made his way to Personnel and got himself hired, with a few days off before he officially went on duty to sort out his Not World One affairs. Quoth his sister, incredulously: "You're going to save fictional worlds from bad fanfiction?" Quoth Roger, sarcastically: "This from the girl who turns into a wolf at the full moon." Quoth his parents, resignedly: "Call us when you get the chance, then."
Skills: plant identification (occasionally vital for his survival), knowledge of a wide range of fandoms (some of which do not exist in World One). In theory, he could learn to voluntarily transform into a hybrid man-wolf state, but without a teacher it is unlikely he will develop this skill, as he is not (currently) aware that it is possible.
Weapons: although he keeps meaning to find someone to teach him some basic combat skills, Roger's current preferred weapon is punching people in the face. It's worked OK so far.
Appearance: brown hair, blue eyes, wears jeans and a t-shirt more or less every day, usually carrying a book. Due to his vulnerability to metal, Roger always wears gloves to avoid burning himself while, for example, opening a door. Interestingly, these vulnerabilities seem to disappear when he is in a disguise generated by PPC machinery. From moonrise to moonset on the night of the full moon, he becomes an ordinary gray wolf, losing all awareness of his human self. Generally he is locked up at these times.
My theory is that Surhat's patience and slight age advantage will balance out Roger's tendency to rush into things (as evidenced by his recruitment by the PPC); by the same token, Roger's knowledge of a wide range of canons will balance out the fact that Surhat had not heard of any of the canons the PPC works in until he arrived in HQ, though he has now read some of the most popular book canons.
The story I intend to kill: I think I'll start with To live, serve a purpose, and die alone
"let's go to meat her"
"No-one knows or cares about how I'm feelings!"
Writing sample option #3 (there are two other samples on the site if anyone's inclined to look at them): Roger Walters's Job Interview
I don't really have any fanfic to show off (unless you read Klingon, as mentioned a few days ago), except insofar as the two PPC stories on the Livejournal count. -
Goody. More missions to read for me! (nm) by
on 2010-08-19 22:15:00 UTC
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Permission granted! by
on 2010-08-19 22:08:00 UTC
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I noticed some misplaced italic tags, and there are a couple of places where you slip into Roger's thoughts without marking them, but that's easily fixed. I noticed it at the following locations:
Paragraph 1: "Anne's up early as usual."
Paragraph 7: "Maybe I'll go back to Tolkien for a bit and finish it later."
And this, toward the end of the interview with the Marquis, is italicized when it shouldn't be: "It rummaged in its desk and withdrew a sheaf of papers."
But, again, that's just HTML stuff--no big deal. The actual writing is really good and I look forward to seeing more of it in the future. {= )
~Neshomeh -
Woo! by
on 2010-08-19 22:25:00 UTC
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Thanks! Yeah, it was probably correct when I typed it up at first, but pasting it into Livejournal messed with the formatting. Thanks for noticing those!
Lleu -
One thing I noticed... by
on 2010-08-19 14:41:00 UTC
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Is that Roger seems to know that being a werewolf is strange. Does that mean they're pretty rare in his world? If they're common, why does he equate being a werewolf with going into fictional stories and killing fanfic characters?
It's picky, but it's the sort of thing I always notice. Sorry. I think your agents are great and I'm pretty sure you'll get permission. -
Hm? by
on 2010-08-19 15:21:00 UTC
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They are rare — he has never met one outside his family. Did I imply somewhere that they're common? If so, I didn't mean to.
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Well, you say they would go to a school by
on 2010-08-19 21:13:00 UTC
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that is considerate of their special needs, that implies it's sort of common. At least more common than that Roger doesn't know any other werewolves. He may have met some visiting the school on an open day.
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Ah. by
on 2010-08-19 21:53:00 UTC
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You are correct that he probably met some others when visiting — I hadn't thought of that. Labrador College of Arts and Science is an accredited university and has primarily non-werewolf students (which makes sense, given the number of werewolves relative to non-werewolves), but it is known to werewolves for being werewolf-friendly (i.e. there are facilities for containing them at the full moon, it's low on metal, food does not come with garlic or mint, etc.), so most werewolves of college age in North America who are aware of it and interested in college end up either going there or seriously considering it. I am not sure (yet) whether the non-werewolf students are told about their fellow students' "special needs", as it were.
I hope that explanation made sense. -
Not a PG, but... by
on 2010-08-19 06:24:00 UTC
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I really like it. There were a couple of minor missing punctuation marks, but other than that I really quite enjoyed it. You've got interesting and developed Agents, and the sample piece was quite engaging. I like your writing style, and I hope you do get Permission.
G'luck! -
I give a hardy second to Cassie's sentiments. (nm) by
on 2010-08-19 07:16:00 UTC
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Thanks both of you! (nm) by
on 2010-08-19 15:23:00 UTC
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