Subject: On the mission
Author:
Posted on: 2014-06-19 21:02:00 UTC
I like this. A lot. Really. (And this is all the praise you will get from me, because I’m really bad at explaining why I love something.) But I have some questions.
They talked for a few more minutes, Enelya’s hair turning bronze for one particularly interesting moment ...
Did I miss where the badfic mentions another hair color, or do you expect that your readers have seen the picture of the main protagonist? How would you describe the color of her hair there? I don’t usually look on the badfic when I read a mission, and your mission should be able to stand alone even when the badfic is deleted.
Silver had no choice but to pull Anna around the corner as Strider carried Enelya into another room.
Is this really what happened? Doesn’t Strider tell in the badfic that he carried Enelya to the bed in the same room where they had talked? This should be the room for which she got the key when she rented it for the night, although she only says that she asked the innkeeper for “a key” and then walked into “a room” which may or may not be associated with said key. Is she not aware how inns work?
When Strider walked back in, ...
Again, is this really what happened? Doesn’t Strider tell that he, after laying Elenya down, “locking the door from the inside, walked out of the room” (how did he manage to do this?) and then into his room?
”Don’t want to wait.”
I get that Silver wants to portal forward in the fic. But why does she carry Anna down the stairs and out into the street after tugging her through the portal? Didn’t they arrive where Silver wanted to go? And then they are suddenly on the market? May I suggest having the heaving and complaining happen on the way from Enalya’s room to Strider’s room, before Strider decides not to open the letter, and then portal to the market? (I’m not sure whether we are allowed to complain that there is a stair involved when the fic didn’t mention a stair, but also didn’t say that Strider’s room and Enalya’s room are on the same floor. Does “rule of funny” take precedence over “the canon tries to help the agents and makes Strider’s room to be close to Enalya’s room if this doesn’t contradict what is said in the badfic"? This may be a question to be asked to more experienced boarders.)
Being used to see quotes from the badfic bolded, I wonder why you put ‘just loud enough for her elf-ears to hear’ into quotation marks and didn’t bold it. Is this because it isn’t a full sentence or paragraph?
Her eyes wide, Anna reached down and
“We’re out of here.”
Is there a word (or more) missing at the end of the first of these lines?
... the author had mixed it up with a feast in the Return of the King ...
Why don’t you tell us the truth: Enelya, who is narrating this part of the fic, had mixed it up with a feast in the Return of the King? (This isn’t a really bad case of author bashing, but to be rather save than sorry it’s preferable to never mention the author at all. It may be ridiculous to hold a Sue or Wraith responsible for everything, including bad spelling and grammar, but this is an established part of the PPC’s general ridiculousness.)
She somehow got a bullseye on one of her first tries ...
Are your agents surprised? Oh well, portaling forward they missed the part in the first chapter where Enelya showed off: One arrow hit the bullseye, the next pierced it through the center and made it shatter into many pieces. Isn’t the real surprise that she becomes clumsy whenever Legolas is in sight, making him believe that he should teach her? “Getting bullseyes on your first practice with bows“, definitely isn’t a charge because Enelya was established to be a good archer long before what your agents call her “first practice”.
– and a dart hit the ‘Sue’s neck.
Is this still the badfic, or did your agents interfere? (I know, but only because I read the badfic, so you may want to make this more clear.)
How did your agents get the charge of having bronze hair? Where they mention Enelya’s hair turning bronze for one particularly interesting moment, Enelya actually narrates that it is bronze coloured, thus causing my confused first question. The joke would work in the second chapter, where Enelya showed that her bronze hair was already braided, but your agents didn’t see this. Charging only based on reading the words is not unheard of; the problem that bothers me here is your agents pretending to have seen something in a place where it didn’t happen.
How did your agents survive this unscathed? In TOS and other early spin-offs, agents may have braved First Person ‘fics without bad consequences (it’s hard to tell, because most of these ‘fics are gone for good and I don’t remember whether there were quotes implying that a ‘fic was written in First Person.) But since Araeph made DoSAT invent the “Me” and “You” crash dummies, it’s no longer feasible to ignore the problem of an agent becoming “I” or “You”. Agent Cadmar can tell you a loooong story about what may happen if your agents enter a First Person fic without a working crash dummy. (Storme Hawk mentioned this already, but he may not have been very clear about it.)
So, this is a good first draft, showing what you can do with this ‘fic and your agents, but some details need more attention before it can be considered to be finished and ready for publishing. You probably knew this when you asked for beta readers.
HG