Subject: Re: Well, I sort of snuck you in under my coattails
Author:
Posted on: 2010-01-09 04:21:00 UTC
No, it's okay. I officially Asked ages ago, and Laburnum said okay.
Subject: Re: Well, I sort of snuck you in under my coattails
Author:
Posted on: 2010-01-09 04:21:00 UTC
No, it's okay. I officially Asked ages ago, and Laburnum said okay.
Hi. I've got a small question to ask. I started writing my agent profile, for when I ask permission, and was wondering--What type of writing sample do I need to inclued? Can it be a short story about the Agent or the Agent's recruitment story, or anything completely unrelated to the PPC?
Heheh. Just wondering, cause I'm stuck at home with a mega bout of the flu and have nothing else to do.
-Honu_Wahine
Well, you can always cheat, like I did, and not actually seek Permission until you've been writing for a year, and then have fifty missions count as your writing sample. But that's not recommended.
And only after we'd done a fair number of missions did I actually stop and think 'WHOOPS!'
So yes, not recommended! And I very probably should have got a large slap on the wrist for that one. I'm still kind of waiting for it to turn up, actually.
*slaps wrist*
Not that I have any authority to do so, not being a PG, but, eh.
No, it's okay. I officially Asked ages ago, and Laburnum said okay.
Huzzah for retroactive Permission.
But it's okay, cos I got my Permission fair and square and Officially years ago :)
This is my first official request for permission. I intend to only use one agent, until I can get into one 'fic that really, really needs killing, if that's alright.
_ _
I, HonuWahine, also known as IronAmerica, do hereby request official permission to become an agent or two of the Protectors of the Plot Continuum. I do solemnly swear to not kill a Mary-Sue until I have gathered sufficient damning evidence and/or facts as to their insidious nature and have a charge list of crimes against the Continuum and have charged said individual.
I swear that should I lose what sanity I have remaining within my grasp; I shall not pick up the nearest sharp/blunt/very dangerous/potentially lethal object and go running through the corridors screaming “Mr. Rogers!” I will also not wreak havoc upon my immediate superior and/or the Sunflower official and/or his associates. I shall do my best not to succumb to the level of a Mary-Sue when faced with a lust object or a favorite—no matter what memory altering device I may have in my possession. It never helps.
I shall uphold the well-being of canon to the best of my ability with my primary agent, and any secondary agent that I may recruit or adopt at a later point:
Agent S.A.M.S
Species: Self-aware Mary-Sue
Age: Jailbait
Height: 5’8” Weight: N/A
Hair: variable, most often dark brown and 40s military cut
Eyes: Hazel
Department: Department of Floaters
Division: none
Previous Partner: none
Partner: none
Weapon(s) of Choice: Ballast Stone, ice pick, cast iron skillet, and a 30 lb brass bell
Response Center: 1943
Fandom(s): LotR, Hogan’s Heroes, Hetalia, Warcraft, Star Trek, and Avatar
_ _ _
And a sample of my writing. This was written for a writing contest at school, but for some reason, it was never reviewed by my English teacher for admittance to the contest
_ _ _
Excerpt from the memoirs of a Space Marine circa 2017--
Love.
It is one word, four letters, one syllable. It has so many meanings. It can be platonic, it can be passionate, or it can be lustful. Love can move mountains and start wars.
Love is defined as a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person. Love is an emotion, one of the most powerful ones that we, as humans, can experience. So often though, we lock it away, never to be seen or used.
A lot of the time, it is easier not to love. Love can cause you immeasurable pain. Hatred, rage and anger, though? Those are safe emotions.
Those three emotions can be controlled, focused and directed safely.
But love? Love is unpredictable. Love is a wild horse- it can hurt you more than any physical wound ever could. I’ve seen so many broken hearts after the air raid sirens die, or a patrol returns to base. So many of us never come back these days, and we leave our friends and our lovers behind.
Some days, I feel inordinately guilty. I have my lover, a doctor, who stays safe at the base.
I have a lover who isn’t likely to die anytime soon. I love him for it, and at the same time resent him for his safety. He has a permanent post at the base, behind the walls, and I’m almost always on the front lines, buried up to my neck in blood, water, and mud.
Who do you love? Do you hold them close at night, praying that you go first?
Do you love them as much as I love my doctor?
He is a medic, all of twenty one years old. I am a soldier, who has no business being in a relationship with him. Back on Earth, if she had never fallen prey to outside forces and our government’s shortsightedness, we might never have met. Back on Earth, my handsome lover would have a line of men and women falling at his feet, and I would have been miles away in another country. It’s funny what an interstellar war will do to you.
Yet, despite all of this, he chooses to spend his time with me, whenever I can be at the base.
I love him with all of my heart, but does he love me back? Or is our tryst merely a game or a joke to him?
Is it a game to him? Is he in love with me, or am I to be cast aside when someone new catches his fancy?
I am seventeen. My barracks chief says that he will kill my lover the next time that he sneaks into the barracks to spend the night. I worry that someday the Chief will carry through with his threat.
How much do you care for your lover, or spouse? Would you storm the gates of hell itself for them? I would. Would you die for your lover? I love him so much that it sometimes becomes so painful. I would breach the gates of hell to bring him home, and I would die for him. Of that, there is no doubt in my mind on the matter.
Does he love me as I love him?
Love: a feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair; the emotion of sex and romance. I read that definition once. It is that emotion, and others, that I direct towards my older lover.
Would you stay in a relationship, knowing that at any moment, you could die? Will you die next to your lover, watching their life bleed out of their eyes, even as yours leaves you?
I would. I would stay in the relationship, come hell or high water. I would die beside my lover. I would follow my heart, even as I pour my soul into these pages, knowing that he might one day see them- perhaps the day that I die protecting the last sorry dregs of humanity from the aliens.
We humans are slaves to our emotions, that much is true. It doesn’t matter if you are black, white, yellow, or bright green with black spots; we are all controlled by them. They dictate our lives according to their whims, even as we try to fight them.
I will forever be a slave to my passions. I will be a willing slave to them, even as I fight them.
Even as I sit here in the mud, rain pouring down my back, writing these words down, I stop myself from eating my gun. I love my partner too much to commit that kind of treason, to myself and my people.
Someday, I will confess my soul to him, but until that day, I’ll sit here in the mud, writing in this journal.
Perhaps someday, I won’t have to shoulder my gun anymore, or pull on a mask that turns me into a faceless protector of humanity, and settle down.
Love: A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness.
This is all that I fell when I think of Andy, this and more. I keep his picture folded into my breast pocket, and look at it to remind me why I stay on the front lines.
How much do you care for your lover? Will you die protecting them, will you face down the devil’s spawn that I fight ever day to protect them?
I care for him so much. I will die protecting him; I will face down a horde of the devil’s spawn and more to keep him safe.
No one can tell me that I take foolish risks. I am ruled by my emotions, and I cannot lock them away, merely bury them as best I can. I cannot force myself to become a creature of cold unloving stone. Many others have hardened their hearts to the world; others have merely walked out of the base, and never returned.
There is so much heartbreak here on this planet. It’s an unruly pisshole, but at least we can call it ours. The heartbreak can become unbearable at times. I believe that maybe if we had had forewarning, we could have saved our homeland. But we didn’t and now we are dying by the dozens.
We create, we survive, we adapt. We do these things, and we survive to keep on living as human beings. We aren’t animals, although some of the men and women that I fight alongside make me wonder, and we become.
I am in love, and I know that it is love, not lust.
***
That piece was a little existentialist, and probably more than a little bizzare — but it is one of my better pieces of short original fiction. Also archived on fictionpress.com at http://www.fictionpress.com/s/2649246/1/Love
Permission is definitely granted. I appreciate a good bit of existential fiction, and Sam sounds entertaining.
Thank you very much, sir/ma'am/permission-giver-person. I was going to clean up my permission request a bit and repost it, the next time with both of my agents in it and clearer descriptions in place... But since there's been permission given, I'll just go and put the revised version up on my LJ or something.
Thank-you very much, and I will start formatting my charge list into an actual mission right now.
Thanks once more(and sorry for being pathetically grateful),
Honu_Wahine
Nice work :) I particularly like your use of dictionary definitions intercutting with emotive dialogue, and I like how much I was able to feel along with the character without ever knowing a thing about him-or-her.
One thing - you may want to add a little more depth to your agent's profile - not much, just a few comments that make him (her?) more than a statistic. What kind of fic did SAMS come from? What fandom? What are her (I'll go with her, given the use of "Sue" and not "Stu") main characteristics or quirks? What lingering effects of her Sueish past does she struggle with, or what sort of quirks does she have that will make her an interesting character to read and write?
On a different note, if "SAMS" (or, heaven forbid, "S.A.M.S") the "name" you intent to write with, I suggest forming some kind of nickname very soon, because all caps and acronyms are rather tiresome to read (let alone write) throughout a story.
I would also not suggest having only one agent - I've tried it, and writing missions with only one agent is, frankly, boring as well as hard. I think the Flowers have something against it, too - if an agent loses their temper and there's no one around to hold them back, things can get very ugly. We (including you) are here for comedic entertainment, and a one-man show - even if it's a snarky MST of the badfic - is just never as good as a banter between two, especially if they're polar opposites.
That said, don't let me get you down! I like your writing style and I think you will do pretty well, but the PGs will likely give you similar replies, so if I tell you in advance, you can expand your agent profile now, before they see it. Gives a good impression ;)
Okay, thanks Sedri.
My primary agent goes by "hey you," or "Sam," depending on how much trouble she's in, or how urgent the situation is.
Her SuePer powers are everything that a 'sue has in spades, as long as no one points out what she's doing. She runs experiments when she's not doing missions(often on her partner as well), to see if "Major Dad" was right, and you *can* actually get sloshed on soda pop.
Sam spent two years learning to manipulate plotholes(although it hasn't exactly worked out very well), after the 'fic she was in dumped her there for a vacation. She had just returned from a time-travel joyride with nine or ten other authors to 1943, and had just been debriefed by the CIA. Q, or someone pretending to be Q, dumped her in said plothole. What little sanity she had after spending time in close quarters with the cast of Hogan's Heroes quickly dissapeared after her two-year plothole exile.
My secondary agent:
Agent Sidhe
Species: Elf, a la Dragon Age
Age: On a technicality, still Jailbait(17).
Height: 5'5" Weight: 118 lbs
Hair: black, shoulder length braid
Eyes: green w/ gold flecks
Department: Department of Floaters
Division: none
Previous partner: none
Partner: SAMS(aka Sam)[adendum to first post, Sams's partner is Sidhe]
Weapon(s): saxe and a short knife; rapier; Mongolian recurved composite bow
Response Center: 1943
Fandoms: Dragon Age, Hogan's Heroes, Star Trek, X-Men, Warcraft and LOTR
Quirks/Other annoying habits:
Sidhe is a fairly well-balanced and grounded individual(at least when compared to his partner). He has a fondness for orange drinks, particularly orange juice. He lusts after elves, both male and female, and takes particular/personal offense when an author screws with said elves. When he isn't on missions, doing target practice, or assissting Sam with various bits of theft or other illegal activities, he is often found reading an original copy of "Le Morte D'Arthur" or the "Legacy of Aldenata" series by John Ringo. He finds human failures extremely hillarious, and likes to mock authors of badfic at every opportunity. When he's not doing one of the those activities, he's being used in the sodapop-can-get-you-sloshed experiment with Sam.
-Honu_Wahine
Okay, that's helpful, especially the names, but now I'll warn you not to go too far in the other direction - don't make Sam too speshul or powerful, or you will be denied Permission; if I'm reading this right and her Sue powers sputter out of existence the moment anyone notices (perhaps including Sam herself?), then that would be an interesting and potentially hillarious trait to write into your missions. If not, you'll need to change it - the Flowers don't allow any of their agents to have SuperSue powers.
Also, the ability to manipulate plotholes, time travelling, and being noticed by Q-or-a-Q-like-entity are all marks of that same 'speshulness' that tends to be the most common reason to deny Permission. You want her to be an ex-Sue, not a Sue Agent.
Sidhe, on the other hand, sounds like an excellent agent - not too crazy, not too sane, not too unusual. My only comment there would be that "green w/ gold flecks" is faintly Sue-ish description detail that we don't need.
That said, good luck :)
Ah. The SuePer powers. Yes. That was actually spawned from a review on one of my contributions to "The Mary Sue Experiments," which said that I had become the Self-Aware Mary-Sue. Yeah, when I was first thinking up my character, I wondered, "How would her powers work if they dissapeared every time someone noticed them?" And, that led to her noticing them and having them go poof as well.
On the "Q-or-a-Q-like-entity" angle... I was originally planning to do another MSE in the Star Trek continuum, but it never exactly took off, due to other circumstances. I'll try to fix 'er up when I start doing missions.
Oh, and thanks for that comment on Sidhe. Yeah, the eye-color was a bit unnecessary, wasn't it? He is going to be the most well-balanced, most exasperated half of the team...for the moment.
-Honu_Wahine
For my Permission, I linked to a short fanfic I'd written for Stardust, but not all PPCers have written fanfic, so they use what they have - original fics, whatever. I suggest that, if you've written a story of your own (fanfic or original), you should probably use that before writing something specifically for Permission-getting.
Then again, it's also a question of what you consider to be the best example of your abilities. In short, we're not picky. As long as it's not a script or the like - I think that would be a bad idea, since there's no narrative, no flow, no pacing.
my writing sample was the story of my two Agents' recruitment and meeting. Although I did have a fair amount of time to play with, as they joined right before the Macrovirus Invasion of 2008, and therefore spent a month in their RC with no missions and forced interactions.
But a writing sample can usually be anything. Some people have used fics, Agent introductions, or entirely original pieces. It's just so the Permission Givers can get a feel for your usual style of writing.
Hope this helps. :)
Sounds like what I'll be doing when I ask permission. I haven't written any fanfiction in YEARS so what I still have is kind of...yeah, not so good!
I'm not sure, but I think it's generally an example of your fanfiction, or just any story you do, really.