Disclaimer: I've read Neshomeh's replies, but not repeatedly, and I'm not opening them while I write this. So there will be repeated comments between mine and hers.

Other Disclaimer: I'm not going to be looking at 'what's changed' - I'm simply going to look at how your agents/writing stand up right now. And yes, I'm probably going to be focussing on the negatives. If something flags up as interesting, I'll mention it, though.

Third Disclaimer: I know it sounds harsh to put a flat 'Permission denied' in the header, and I would normally leave it to the end of the post - but in this case, I figured you'd want to know before you start reading.

Spencer Ellis

Still a control freak (which could be interesting to see). 'he holds views of Mary Sues that border on racism' is actually an improvement over the rest of HQ, since most agents see them as monsters. Perhaps you mean 'former Mary Sues'?

You claim that Spencer was fired from the Department of Finance, and in the next line you claim he 'eventually' got a job there. You also specify 'desk job', when I happen to know I pointed out that every DoF job is a desk job. And you don't explain how someone who's been kicked out of Plagiarism and DTE managed to move from Finance to the DMS.

Bessie

Her 'strict code of honour' seems to be... er... not being a cartoon villain. 'Egads! This girl doesn't ruthlessly attack defenceless people, slaughter the innocent, kick 'em while they're down, or abandon her friends? Get me the phone number for the Vatican, we need to nominate her for sainthood!' No.

No-one has ever called her a Mary Sue, had her object, and then pointed out that no, she actually is? In the PPC, home of nitpicking? I find that hard to believe.

I'm aware that she speaks bad Shakespearean English because you can't write it properly. That's a terrible idea, it really is. Among other things, it means she will never be able to stop - because you can't write the 'fixed' version.

In her Personality you claim 'she is prone to foolhardy moves in combat'. In her Abilities, you claim she's an excellent fighter who learns from her mistakes. Mismatch much?

How can a badfic be 'unnamed'? I assume you mean 'I'm not going to give a name', but that's far from the same thing, and this is the second assumption I've had to make.

Where did these 'classified assignments' come from? PPC missions aren't classified - what would be the point? If you're suggesting something outside missions, fine, but I hope you have a good explanation for them being given to a rookie.

You are still treating the move from DCPS to DMS as a promotion. I've asked twice now why you're doing that, and you haven't answered either time. It's disrespectful to the agents of Character Protective Services to treat them as 'people who aren't good enough to be assassins yet'.

Vivian Wells

(I'll look at your 'changed up' Personality section here)

Still a hyperactive fangirl (which, again, could be interesting). I'm dubious about her being able to sway 'doesn't care about people's emotions' Ellis with her puppy-dog eyes, though. Also, 'She likes to make fun of people when she knows it won't hurt their feelings too much'? That doesn't sound so much like 'make fun of', which is an act that does hurt people's feelings.

Depression after getting stuck in a temporal distortion sounds unlikely. That seems more like it would cause a phobia than depression. Also, since she's fully recovered, why have you even left it in? You know from the last thread that it's sticky ground to walk on.

Why did Wells accept the 'experimental formula'? This is post-depression, so she just... took random drugs from Plank? According to your description, an addictive drug. Er... why hasn't he been fired, if he's handing out physiology-altering addictive drugs to random people? Because that's a really bad idea.

Plank

How does his 'scientific curiosity' in 'Sues go beyond normal boundaries? PPC Assassins kill them. One DMSE&R agent cheerfully chopped a finger off a still-alive 'Sue. What are you claiming he does beyond that?

He did not join the PPC back when it was called the Organisation. No non-Flowers were in the Organisation. The first non-Flower, Makes-Things, joined about ten years after the name change.

The Department of Floaters is relatively new, but you seem to be implying Plank joined them at the beginning. That's flatly impossible - they postdate his joining by a good twenty years.

His relationship with Wells is... seriously messed up. 'He began a father-daughter relationship' with someone he was treating (unauthorised) as a patient. He gave his 'daughter' addictive drugs.

You seem to be implying, sort of, that Plank's decision to capture Bessie led to his transfer to the DMSE&R. I can see that, though again, you've left me no choice but to start making assumptions. You haven't explained why 'spends time around Mary Sue' led to Plank starting to turn into one. Again, I could make assumptions, but I'm tired of doing that.

You claim he's 'going senile' - at 59, which seems unlikely, particularly for a Star Trek character. You don't tie this to the Bleepium that's blocking half his mind off, even though it looks like you were thinking it.

I do like the idea of 'DMSE&R researcher becomes convinced Mary Sues can be cured'. In fact, I like the basic idea of all four of your agents. But it seems like every single one of the details either flags up as wrong, or seriously disturbs me.

Control Prompt

Using *asterisks* to mimic the italics of the Flowers is an acceptable substitution. But don't call it 'bold'.

The SO is... closer to IC, but not quite there. And he also makes several bizarre mistakes: he says 'debrief' when he means 'brief', and 'here is your mission report'; both of those create the impression that it's a previous mission under discussion.

I also can't imagine why he hasn't commented on Wells sitting on his desk.

Ellis' 'accent' wanders a lot. You go from 'Did you just call me fat?' in this to 'Yer not allowed ta use dadgum Neuralizers on agents' in the next piece. If you want a verbal quirk, it has to be consistent. And this is miles away from it.

I can't really see the SO saying something is 'good'.

And... why is the SO passing messages from Medical to the DMSE&R via an assassin? That's... the most complicated way you could possibly do that.

Random Prompt

This highlights the fact that Bessie should really know she's a former 'Sue by now. People keep saying it to her face, you'd think she'd get the hint.

'I never want you two in here again without my permission, by the way.' Not only is this a very bizarre statement - it's their Response Centre, they live there - but it's inserted into the paragraph pretty much at random.

Neuralysers don't work like that. You have presented it as:

-Leaving a hole in his memory
-Allowing Wells to 'persuade' Ellis to give her money, despite the fact that that's the last thing he seems likely to do.

A neuralyser wipes your memory of a specific period of time and fills it in - or lets you fill it in - with false memories. So what you're saying happened is:

-Ellis comes out to clean the RC.
-Wells joins him.
-Wells persuades him to give her money, or outright steals it.
-Wells persuades him to give her his neuralyser, or outright steals it.
-Wells neuralyses him and tells him 'you don't remember the last hour'.
-Wells gets out of the RC fast enough that Ellis doesn't notice her leaving.

That... ain't a likely series of events, is what I'm saying.

And... overall, there's something seriously missing from these writing samples: humour. You just have... people saying things. The closest you seem to come to trying to be funny is 'ha ha fat jokes' and 'ha ha Wells tricked him'. But they don't come across as funny.

Seriously. Go back and read your Control sample. It contains roughly 33 sentences. Count how many you think contain any humour at all. I don't think it will be many.

Conclusion

In addition to all the above statements, your punctuation is erratic - '*Don't you agents ever knock?* The Sunflower Official "demanded",' and '"Be nice, big guy." Wells scolded him.' are both examples of this.

And... I mean, if I was just having to ask questions about background details - even foreground details - I could accept it simply as 'Dark Brother 16 isn't very good at writing bios', which wouldn't be surprising, because it's a useless skill that very few people have. But I've been throwing out factual errors, seriously disturbing ideas, and impossibilities left, right, and centre. So, with regret, I'm going to have to say Permission Denied.

hS

Bessie seems to retain a lot of her Sue-traits and I feel that to do her well, you are going to have to keep asking yourself if the situation compliments her skills too well.

For your other agents, I'm wondering if they are TOO interesting or if I have a warped sense of good characters.

My main advice would probably to be to find a good beta reader or two, plus maybe review your own stuff a little more; I feel like the miscellaneous errors you made could have been caught with a thorough reading. You shouldn't have to edit and repost bits of your permission application in the comments as clarification or to fix things that you missed, basically.
Find a nice honest friend or even someone off the PPC beta directory and just let them rip apart your writing. It'll be rough to start with, but it will generally help you to learn to catch more of your own slip-ups.
You do seem to have a good sense of understanding how your characters will interact with each other, which is good! Keep that up. Just keep seeking constructive criticism (which you are receiving quite a bit of right now, which is good), take that criticism to heart, and keep trucking along. :)

But there are still some bits that don't quite make sense. The big ones have already been pointed out, but as well as those, there are still a few little ones.

If something bad happened on their last mission (as the SO hints), why aren't the agents more anxious about being summoned to the SO? For all they know, they could be there to be disciplined rather than just receive a mission.

(And was that the real reason the SO gave them the mission in person? Was the anxiety they were supposed to feel about being summoned supposed to be the punishment for whatever they did wrong last time? If so, why didn't you show them feeling it?)

Why is the SO acting as a messenger for the Medical Department? Wouldn't it make more sense for Medical to send the message direct to Plank on his console? Or at least to Plank's department head, instead of the head of a different department?

Is Ellis serious when he says he never wants Wells or Bessie in the RC without his permission? How would that even be workable?

Is Bessie's Shakespearean English deliberately wrong because she's from a Suefic where the author got the Jacobean grammar wrong? If so, why didn't Plank's treatment cure it? Or is the fact that it didn't cure it part of the reason why people don't think Bessie is cured?

(And why don't the Universal Translators translate it to our modern English anyway?)

But anyway, on the whole this feels much better. The character interaction in the two prompts feels much more natural, less forced than last time. You've been getting to know your agents better over the past couple of weeks and it shows.

OTOH the backstories still feel awkward and contrived, like you were working from a long checklist of things you want included, and trying to force the characters around that.

If the PGs turn you down again, maybe you could move back to an earlier point in the story arc (e.g. when Wells and Plank first met) and make that the team you apply for permission with? That way, you don't have to explain everything in one big lump, and the early story can develop more fluidly, more naturally over a few missions and interludes.

First, I feel it is too soon for you to be asking again. You recently said yourself that you haven't read many missions aside from emergency-related stuff, and unless you're a speed-reader with lots of time on your hands, I don't think you can have made much of a dent in my recommended reading list (or other material) since then. The fact that you seem to have the impression that it's normal for agents to receive their missions directly from Flowers and that you still don't get that the Flowers speak in italics, not "quotations," not bold—which hS explicitly told you last time—seems to confirm this.

Second, your characters still raise too many serious questions for me. For instance:

* What's "strictly feminine" about cooking, fashion, and appreciating female attractiveness? That reads as rather sexist, don't you think?

* Why has everyone been bounced around through different departments? Ellis and Wells particularly, but Bessie and Plank don't seem to have been content with one assignment to their names, either. Are you playing PPC Department Bingo or something? More importantly, have you considered that that makes them look sort of incompetent?

* Why does Plank require an external trigger to become obsessed with curing Sueism? Why does that trigger have to be Suemonia, since it doesn't even work the way you want it to in the first place? It would make more sense to just have that grow out of his natural scientific passion, IMO, and you wouldn't have to mess with an established PPC concept that way.

* After all that talk about depression in the last thread, how is it that you still figure clinical depression (as opposed to depressed mood) can be caused by a single instance of getting stuck in a temporal distortion and then completely cured... by speed pills...? Or did Plank just randomly decide to give her those after she recovered? I'm not clear on the progression of these events. Or how the character is improved by having superpowers anyway.

* Did you know that the only agent known for using a neuralyzer (note correct spelling) to get her way was a creepy, psychotic nutjob who made her partner miserable?

* Shouldn't Bessie twig onto the fact that there's something weird about her, with her unusual speech pattern, awesome fighting skills, and Ellis calling her a Sue all the time? Has she never stopped to wonder about those things? What does she believe her past to be?

* How did Ellis, with his poor track record in other action departments and inability to play well with others, get himself transferred from Finance to the DMS—on a fairly uncommon team of three rather than the usual two, no less?

Whether the other PGs will find these things to be prohibitive or not, I dunno, but I think you're letting your enthusiasm get the better of you. You seem like a nice guy, and I apologize for being harsh on you in the past (and maybe now), but I really want to see you slow down and think things through more.

~Neshomeh

After a lot of scrolling and checking, I remembered that my two Permission requests were about a month apart, but then just because that's how long it took me, it doesn't mean that's how long it should take you, we're 2 different people after all (unless there's something we're not telling each other, or ourself or however that would work :P).
It should be noted that I am in no way a PG and so my thoughts below don't really count for much.

I like Spencer Ellis, well like may not be the right word for it, but he's one of those characters that I like as a character but would absolutely hate as a person IRL if you get what I mean. Just one thing, how did he get into the DMS from the Department of Finance, did he ask? did he misbehave til he was fired? Just a little thing that I'd like filled in personally. I would also like to find about about Moore at some point, does he appear from time to time to talk to Ellis? How is he doing in DIA? What is he like? etc.

With Bessie, I'm not so sure, I think she works as a character and could be quite fun to interact with, but I'm not so sure on the 'bouncing around' that she's done, Ellis I can understand, Bessie no so much. Personally I'd remove her bit about being in the CPS, instead having her go straight to the DMS after she comes out of medical.

Wells, seems a bit weird to me, you seem to have made her into a somewhat stereotypical young-teenage girl. You've also had her bounce around many different departments that it almost feels to me like you're trying to get some kind of 'achievement' by having had at least one character in each department before you start writing missions for them. You've also missed out how she comes to be in the DMS, the last department you list is Temporal Offences, then you have her thing with Plank, yet Plank is in the Department of Mary Sue Experimentation and Research, which isn't even an action department, so why, if she as partnered with Plank either of them would be out in the field, I don't really get. Finally the last couple of lines are a bit confusing, you say Wells 'then faced a troubling time in her life' but don't say how it was troubling or anything, instead moving on to something about Plank, which should rightfully be in Planks's part not Wells'.

Which leads me onto Plank, I've never seen someone ask for Permission with 4 characters, 3's a rarity. But onto Plank himself. He seems OK, I think. Once again though you seem to have forgotten to tell us how he ends up in the Department of Mary Sue Experimentation and Research, it's not really clear especially when you consider's Wells' backstory. Another thing is that from Plank's backstory he and Wells seem to have worked together for about 5 years in the DMS, now I'm no expert, but that sounds like a very long time without either of them going insane/needing to take a rest.

A quick note as well. It's Inventor not Inventer.

Overall (I'm not going into the prompts in this post, I've already gone on long enough) I think it's better than last time, but I'm not sure if you need as many agents as you've got at the moment. Personally I'd keep Ellis and Bessie and introduce Plank and Wells at a future point, I'd keep mentioning them though, maybe even making Plank and Wells the pair that recruited Ellis, little bits like that that hint to them until you've got to a point where you can write all 4 of them in.

These are my thoughts anyway.

Storme Hawk
(who's currently browsing the archives to find out just how far back they go)

After a lot of scrolling and checking, I remembered that my two Permission requests were about a month apart, but then just because that's how long it took me, it doesn't mean that's how long it should take you, we're 2 different people after all (unless there's something we're not telling each other, or ourself or however that would work :P).
It should be noted that I am in no way a PG and so my thoughts below don't really count for much.

I like Spencer Ellis, well like may not be the right word for it, but he's one of those characters that I like as a character but would absolutely hate as a person IRL if you get what I mean. Just one thing, how did he get into the DMS from the Department of Finance, did he ask? did he misbehave til he was fired? Just a little thing that I'd like filled in personally. I would also like to find about about Moore at some point, does he appear from time to time to talk to Ellis? How is he doing in DIA? What is he like? etc.

With Bessie, I'm not so sure, I think she works as a character and could be quite fun to interact with, but I'm not so sure on the 'bouncing around' that she's done, Ellis I can understand, Bessie no so much. Personally I'd remove her bit about being in the CPS, instead having her go straight to the DMS after she comes out of medical.

Wells, seems a bit weird to me, you seem to have made her into a somewhat stereotypical young-teenage girl. You've also had her bounce around many different departments that it almost feels to me like you're trying to get some kind of 'achievement' by having had at least one character in each department before you start writing missions for them. You've also missed out how she comes to be in the DMS, the last department you list is Temporal Offences, then you have her thing with Plank, yet Plank is in the Department of Mary Sue Experimentation and Research, which isn't even an action department, so why, if she as partnered with Plank either of them would be out in the field, I don't really get. Finally the last couple of lines are a bit confusing, you say Wells 'then faced a troubling time in her life' but don't say how it was troubling or anything, instead moving on to something about Plank, which should rightfully be in Planks's part not Wells'.

Which leads me onto Plank, I've never seen someone ask for Permission with 4 characters, 3's a rarity. But onto Plank himself. He seems OK, I think. Once again though you seem to have forgotten to tell us how he ends up in the Department of Mary Sue Experimentation and Research, it's not really clear especially when you consider's Wells' backstory. Another thing is that from Plank's backstory he and Wells seem to have worked together for about 5 years in the DMS, now I'm no expert, but that sounds like a very long time without either of them going insane/needing to take a rest.

A quick note as well. It's Inventor not Inventer.

Overall (I'm not going into the prompts in this post, I've already gone on long enough) I think it's better than last time, but I'm not sure if you need as many agents as you've got at the moment. Personally I'd keep Ellis and Bessie and introduce Plank and Wells at a future point, I'd keep mentioning them though, maybe even making Plank and Wells the pair that recruited Ellis, little bits like that that hint to them until you've got to a point where you can write all 4 of them in.

These are my thoughts anyway.

Storme Hawk
(who's currently browsing the archives to find out just how far back they go)

I thought that your stories seemed good! But agents don't get their assignments from Flowers... They get them on their console. The SO seemed a little bit out of character. Otherwise you stories seem to be fairly good. :3