You can borrow Kayleigh, unless she's unsuitable.

Subject: You can borrow Kayleigh, unless she's unsuitable.
Author: Huinesoron
Posted on: 2014-07-17 09:30:00 UTC

This is her. She's... well, actually, this is a good place for me to test out how useful profiles are!

(I'm going to use the 'Lou' template from the Wiki page. It's in the FAQ)

Name: Kayleigh Leonard, though she's universally known just as Kayleigh.
Species: Human female.
Home Continuum: World One.
Age: Mid-twenties.
Department: Bad Slash, with her partner Salamander. He's blind. They semi-specialise in Lord of the Rings.
Appearance: Generally your average Caucasian female. Fairly short ("I'm short for my height!"), brown hair, brown eyes, and, usually, an insane grin.
Personality: Kayleigh is insane. Actually, technically that's not true. Kayleigh has ADHD, and hasn't been treated for it in years (she claimed the pills made her boring). Most people think she's turned herself into an intentional self-parody of hyperactivity - but there's always the worrying thought that she might be for real.
She is incessantly and invariably cheerful, grinning and exclaiming - not to mention spouting non-sequiturs - everywhere she goes. She cheerfully (there's that word again) accepts any situation; she also wears a bikini under her uniform, and has no problem stripping down to sunbathe at every opportunity.
Since Salamander was blinded, Kayleigh has developed a habit of occasionally narrating her actions. "Hi! Wave! I'm Kayleigh! BIIIIIG smile!" This is theoretically so he knows what she's doing, but in practice, she does it everywhere.
Abilities: Kayleigh has a fondness for oversized weapons, which she pulls out of nowhere. When asked about her comically-large mace, she claimed it came from 'Mace-Space'. She has no problem with (cheerfully) murdering Mary-Sues and the like.
History: Kayleigh joined the PPC in 2003, having found a door to HQ in a cave in Switzerland while on holiday there. She quickly established a niche for herself as a crazy (see above) conspiracy theorist - she is behind the DAVD Conspiracy Theory, which states (with no evidence) that DAVD are out to get everyone.
Kayleigh was involved in the 2006 invasion by the Black Cats; she demonstrated a rather disturbing level of intelligence for someone so hyper.
Other: At one point, Kayleigh changed her middle name by deed poll every few days; it's unknown if she still does this. She also has a trio of three-year-old children; whether they are adopted, or naturally hers by one or more fathers, is unknown (and no-one wants to ask).

So, is that enough to go on?

hS

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Permission request by Seychelles on 2014-07-16 00:36:00 UTC Reply

I'm hoping to be able to work on a collab with Iximax and I would like to get permission.

Agent Murder-A survivor of a zombie apocalypses.Is mute and communicates in gestures that not many people get.Does not like to be surprised, and often reacts violently when startled. Has pink hair, and has been seen wearing broken glasses held together with tape, white button-down and black slacks. Has a weakness for all things cute and fuzzy. Was kicked out of the Division of Mary Sues because of an incident involving Rainbow Dash, a bozoka , and cotton candy.

Agent Seyche- a minor Hetalia badfic replacement character who's life was spared, thanks to the kindness of two PPC Agents. However she has no memory of the past, and much prefers it that way. Being a Hetalia character, she cannot die as long as her country exists, always managing to heal herself. However she is physically weak, not being able to push over a pile of books without needing help. She was been described as fairly small, with dyed blond hair and green eyes. She often wears green dresses under over sized lab coats. Has a paralyzing fear of ducks.

As an added note both of my Agents have gone to school to receive the training needed for the Department of Mary Sue Research and Experimentation. They mainly work in labs so they need more training then regular field agents.

Permission request
It was shaping up to be a normal work day, or at least the PPC equivalent. There had been no surprise kitten fights, no parties in the cafeteria, and no invasions of Mary Sues.

It was almost disappointing, Agent Michael Murder mused to himself. When they had visited the PPC the last time there seemed to be weird incidents going on around every corner. Now it seemed almost dull. The hallways were quite, the most of the agents were either out on a mission or asleep, and the cafeteria was calm, populated only by the staff. Murder let out a long breath and stirred his mug of coffee. It was shaping out to be a pretty disappointing first day.

“It’s still a little too early for any excitement, Murder.” Agent Seyche said tiredly. “We’ve been over this before.”

Murder sat up a little in his chair and adjusted his glasses. His partner did have a point, but he was still disappointed. It had taken ages to graduate school and he was anxious to get started on official PPC business. Seyche didn’t seem to share his eagerness. She just nodded once to show that she understood the gestures, and went back to sipping her orange juice.

After a few more quite minutes Seyche got up and threw her (now empty) bottle into the trash. She muttered in a near incomprehensible tone that she was going back to their room, hoping to aim for few more hours of sleep. Murder didn’t move instead choosing to study the clock. It was almost 6:00 o clock in the morning PPC time. Where was everybody?

Suddenly a loud shriek split through headquarters, startling Murder. That scream sounded a lot like Seyche!

He was on his feet in two seconds and made in to his and Seyche’s shared room in about fifteen seconds.

The door had been left shut. Murder would have missed it in his hurry if there hadn’t been for the piles of boxes stacked near the entrance. He fumbled for the knob, relieved to find the door unlocked.

Seyche was standing on one of the room’s lab tables, her eyes wide with terror. Seeing Murder enter she raised a finger to her lips, and pointed towards the far corner where there lurked a…

Duck.

A baby duck.

A pink, baby duck, wondering around in the corner, quacking.

They really need to talk about Seyche’s phobia.

The look on his face must have been rather odd, as Seyche had gotten off the table and pushed him forward.

“Hurry up.” She whipered urgently. “It’s planning something; you can see it on its face.”

Murder hoped she saw what HE thought on his face.

“Shut up and get rid of it!”

Well there’s his answer.

Murder scowled at her, before practilly marching up to the Duckling, scooping it up, it in his palm and petting it. It made little squeaky noises when he ran his finger over his head. Could it get any cuter?

He looked up at his partner with wide eyes. She could see that it was just so precious and wonderful right? She wouldn’t push such a sweet animal into the cold unforgiving world right?

Seyche bit her lip and looked down at her feet. After what felt like a long time she let out a long breath.

“Okay here’s the deal. You can keep it, but you’re taking care of it. Got it?”

He nodded giddily, feeling like a small child on his birthday.

“Also, keep it away from me.” She continued. “And if it turns out to be some sort of Sue-subtype it goes on the table. No questions asked.”

Murder nodded before pulling Seyche into hug. She stiffened at being so close to the duckling, but Murder ignored her. This was going to be the best research job ever!

Reply (no decision; request at end) by Huinesoron on 2014-07-16 16:09:00 UTC Reply

Hi there! Since I have a few minutes, I'll take a look at this. As a PG, I look for five things: activity in the community, understanding of the PPC, interesting characters, writing ability, and spelling-punctuation-grammar. So let's take a look.

Activity: Well, I recognise your name, and don't have an immediate 'hey, she's that annoying one' reaction, so I'll tick that one off straight away. ;)

-SPG: Your spelling looks okay to me - I'm sure there are mistakes (everyone has those), but nothing's popping out. Grammar too, though there are some slightly strange phrases - 'When they had visited the PPC the last time' would feel more natural as 'the last time they [had] visited the PPC'. But in general, I'll pass that.

Punctuation you've got a few problems with. You start off with a load of full stops with no spaces after them - you can follow a full stop with one or two spaces, but not none. You also have a lot of missing commas, such as:

*'However>>>,*'As an added note>>>,*'She could see that it was just so precious and wonderful>>>,
And more, but I'm not going to list every single one. As a rule, if you'd pause there while speaking, it needs a comma. 'Well, there's his answer', because out loud, you'd stop after 'well', if only briefly.

You also have a habit of ending quoted speech with a full-stop-and-capital. When the next words outside the quote are a dialogue tag, that should be a comma-and-lower-case. An example:

*'“Hurry up.” She whipered urgently.' should be '"Hurry up," she whispered urgently.'

Of course, you shouldn't do this where the next words aren't a dialogue tag. You didn't, I'm just making the note.

You have one instance of a missing apostrophe (actually, '6:00 o clock in the morning' is entirely strange - it should read either '6:00 in the morning' or, more naturally, 'six o'clock in the morning'. Or '6 am' if you really want. Oh, and PPC time is HQ Standard Time, or HST), and a couple of split words or lost hyphens ('green dresses under over sized lab coats' can either be 'oversized' or 'over-sized', though the former is probably preferable in that case), but in general, apart from the dialogue endings and the commas, pretty good.

Oh, you also have an exclamation point in narration. I'd normally condemn it outright, but it's a pseudo-thought from Murder, so... dunno. It's generally discouraged, anyway.

Understanding of the PPC: Well, it's... hard to tell, really. Nothing in the story after Seyche's first line is really anything to do with the PPC; if you remove 'PPC time', the whole story could take place in any research lab in the multiverse. You don't say anything that indicates you don't understand the PPC, and the things you do describe fit, but... there's not a lot to go on. (Oh, you said 'Division of Mary Sues' where you meant 'Department')

Character: I have no quarrel with the concept of either of your characters. Zombie survivor with violent reactions is reasonable enough, and the idea of being immortal as long as the Seychelles endure is nice enough (though I wonder what you'll do if they ever break up...?). As to specifics...

I'll take Seyche first: you don't describe her personality in the bio, just her physical characteristics. She comes across as fairly pragmatic in the story... how close is that to what you're planning?

Murder: ... well, I'll push the easy one first - you say he reacts violently to being startled, and doesn't like to be surprised, but what you show is him jumping in a non-violent manner after being startled, and not being at all annoyed by Seyche's random screaming. He seems to be more on the 'must protect Seyche' thing than what you wrote - which is also fine as a zombie survivor, but... yeah, doesn't match the profile.

But, bigger problem: you need to show us his actions. Take a look at this:

'Murder sat up a little in his chair and adjusted his glasses. [...] Seyche didn’t seem to share his eagerness. She just nodded once to show that she understood the gestures'

What gestures? Sitting up and adjusting his glasses? Because that's all you've shown us. If you had a character with a voice and never actually wrote out their lines, you'd notice immediately that there was something wrong; this is the same thing.

I'm not saying you should describe his gestures in great detail, but... well, what are we talking about, here? Sign language? A simple 'Murder's hands moved rapidly in reply, conveying his disappointment. It had taken ages...' would work. But not saying anything comes across very strangely.

(Also, why does he use gestures no-one understands? Why not pick one of the standard sign languages, at least? A language ain't much good if you're the only one who speaks it)

Writing in general: I quite like the style of this story. Murder's pseudo-thoughts make it stand out, you play around with the 'tension' of the duck quite well, and you keep the characters physically in the space, rather than letting them turn into talking heads. So okay, sure. (Can you tell this is the one I have difficulty with? Me not flagging up problems = good)

One final point...

Procedure: you haven't exactly hit all the points we ask for in a Permission Request, here. Now, those points are designed to make things easier, not as an arbitrary barrier, so don't think I'm going to say no on that basis. You haven't linked a badfic, but I get the impression you're not planning on taking them into a solo mission right now? So that can be written out. But you also only have one writing sample, and one that leaves me with questions about your PPC knowledge besides...

Essentially, I have three concerns about your writing.

*First, punctuation, which I've covered in detail above.
*Second, PPC knowledge, whether you have any or not, which isn't particularly clear from this.
*Third, Agent Murder: showing his actions, and deciding whether he's violent or not.

And fortunately, I can make one request to answer all of those:

-Please write a second sample. Your carefully-selected prompt is 'Murder and Seyche receive a scientific sample from an agent'. You can use any Free-to-Use character from the Wiki; alternately, if you need one, I can lend you one of my agents (please ask first, though!). (It would probably be Kayleigh, because she has a very... distinct personality) Find someone to beta the sample - I see Iximaz has offered already - and post it to this thread when you're ready; I'll make the call from that. And remember the three things I'm looking for - punctuation, good characterisation/description of Murder, and PPC knowledge.

(Did I say 'a few minutes'? More like 45... oh well, close enough!)

hS

Got it by Seychelles on 2014-07-17 05:19:00 UTC Reply

Can I please use one of your agents? I'll promise to return them with minimal bruising. Also, may I please get a description?

You can borrow Kayleigh, unless she's unsuitable. by Huinesoron on 2014-07-17 09:30:00 UTC Reply

This is her. She's... well, actually, this is a good place for me to test out how useful profiles are!

(I'm going to use the 'Lou' template from the Wiki page. It's in the FAQ)

Name: Kayleigh Leonard, though she's universally known just as Kayleigh.
Species: Human female.
Home Continuum: World One.
Age: Mid-twenties.
Department: Bad Slash, with her partner Salamander. He's blind. They semi-specialise in Lord of the Rings.
Appearance: Generally your average Caucasian female. Fairly short ("I'm short for my height!"), brown hair, brown eyes, and, usually, an insane grin.
Personality: Kayleigh is insane. Actually, technically that's not true. Kayleigh has ADHD, and hasn't been treated for it in years (she claimed the pills made her boring). Most people think she's turned herself into an intentional self-parody of hyperactivity - but there's always the worrying thought that she might be for real.
She is incessantly and invariably cheerful, grinning and exclaiming - not to mention spouting non-sequiturs - everywhere she goes. She cheerfully (there's that word again) accepts any situation; she also wears a bikini under her uniform, and has no problem stripping down to sunbathe at every opportunity.
Since Salamander was blinded, Kayleigh has developed a habit of occasionally narrating her actions. "Hi! Wave! I'm Kayleigh! BIIIIIG smile!" This is theoretically so he knows what she's doing, but in practice, she does it everywhere.
Abilities: Kayleigh has a fondness for oversized weapons, which she pulls out of nowhere. When asked about her comically-large mace, she claimed it came from 'Mace-Space'. She has no problem with (cheerfully) murdering Mary-Sues and the like.
History: Kayleigh joined the PPC in 2003, having found a door to HQ in a cave in Switzerland while on holiday there. She quickly established a niche for herself as a crazy (see above) conspiracy theorist - she is behind the DAVD Conspiracy Theory, which states (with no evidence) that DAVD are out to get everyone.
Kayleigh was involved in the 2006 invasion by the Black Cats; she demonstrated a rather disturbing level of intelligence for someone so hyper.
Other: At one point, Kayleigh changed her middle name by deed poll every few days; it's unknown if she still does this. She also has a trio of three-year-old children; whether they are adopted, or naturally hers by one or more fathers, is unknown (and no-one wants to ask).

So, is that enough to go on?

hS

Can I have some of her missions to read? by Seychelles on 2014-07-18 01:19:00 UTC Reply

I could use a guide.

This question is a bad move by Hieronymus Graubart on 2014-07-18 09:14:00 UTC Reply

Now Huinesoron will get the impression that you don’t do the research. He gave you a link to Kayleigh’s page on the Wiki, where all here appearances are linked. To read all her "missions", you just need to follow these links.

On first glance it seems that she doesn’t have any real missions, all her appearances are probably in interludes and other stuff. So I may have got you wrong. Did you ask for "real missions" which aren’t linked there?

HG

To clarify three things. by Huinesoron on 2014-07-18 09:16:00 UTC Reply

1/ Doing the research is good, BUT

2/ I only added her latest three appearances this morning, after realising they weren't linked, AND

3/ Also until this morning, her wiki page claimed she had an actual mission. She doesn't (though she someday will).

hS

Re: To clarify three things. by the Irish Samurai on 2014-07-18 14:40:00 UTC Reply

Did Kayleigh really only have 3 listed appearances before now? I could've sworn I'd read more of her than that (then again, I thought I had read actual missions of hers, which is clearly not the case).

I guess she just has a very memorable personality.

Yep. by Huinesoron on 2014-07-18 16:27:00 UTC Reply

Though, in fairness, one of those is Crashing Down, so it's sort of a lot of separate stories.

Also: I may have more scenes with her dotted around. I can't think of any, but it's certainly possible. She has a way of creeping in...

hS

Re: Yep. by the Irish Samurai on 2014-07-20 11:40:00 UTC Reply

Yeah, it must have been Crashing Down that made me think I'd read so much of her.

And I can think of one other place she appears, well, it's not quite her, but she does have a steampunk alternate version floating round too.

My not-Permission Giver opinion by eatpraylove on 2014-07-16 03:27:00 UTC Reply

First of all, I found a Mini-Boarder. *pats Iximax on the head* Don't worry, I'm sure Iximaz (note the z) will adopt her once she (Iximaz) replies to your post. Also, what do you want to do with the "bozoka"?

You're not very specific about Agent Murder's backstory, which confuses me. What zombie canon is he from? What weapons is he good with? How'd he end up in PPC space (and mute) anyway? (The part about reacting violently when startled makes total sense, so props for that.) If I don't know the agent, I can't really decide whether I like him or not. (Seyche sounds all right.)

You could also stand to refine your typing skills slightly, as evidenced by my first paragraph. Have you done the self-check on the Permission page yet? I highly recommend it.

In general, you've got some nice potential here. Clean up the presentation and you'll be golden. Or at least pyrite.

*lets Iximax perch on my shoulder* by Iximaz on 2014-07-16 15:44:00 UTC Reply

Also, Seychelles, if you want a Beta reader, feel free to ask me. Your request would be a lot better if you did a bit of SPaG cleanup.

And yeah, a bit of elaboration on Agent Murder would also be nice. ;)

That would be awesome;) by Seychelles on 2014-07-18 01:17:00 UTC Reply

My punctuation could use some work. I'm writing a new bit for permission, Can you help?

Of course! by Iximaz on 2014-07-18 16:48:00 UTC Reply

You can send it to my email:

artemis.hunt@att.net

Sent you an email (nm) by Seychelles on 2014-07-20 00:31:00 UTC Reply

Thank you by Seychelles on 2014-07-16 05:11:00 UTC Reply

I'm sorry for my mistakes. I'll be sure to be more careful in the future. If I had to choose a canon for Murder I would say High School of the Dead. Problem is I'm not that familiar with that fandom. I based Murder(loosely) of a friend of mine who liked zombies, so there you go?