So I'll fill in a bit more.

Don't underestimate Fluttershy. She might be extremely timid around most everypony, but she actually ended up shouting at a dragon and making it cry when it hurt her friends. She also stared down a framing cockatrice, managed to befriends Discord (the embodiment of chaos, pretty much), and there was one episode in particular where she took assertiveness lessons from a Minotaur and ended up terrorizing Ponyville when she took things too far.

There's also a dragon as part of the major minor characters (does that make sense? Eh...) named Spike. He's always referred to as a baby dragon, though considering he acts as Twilight's assistant and has a crush on Rarity, I'd say he's more the equivalent of a ten or twelve year-old human kid. He's usually a pretty cheery character, though he always feels like he needs to prove his worth by doing- or trying to do- stuff way outside of his abilities.

Then you have the Cutie Mark Crusaders. They're a trio of young fillies who want to earn their Cutie Marks (the symbol on a pony's flank representing their special talent) so they aren't the targets of bullies at school. The thing is, though, you can't force a Cutie Mark, you have to discover it, but no matter how many times older ponies say so, the CMC don't listen.

The first member is Apple Bloom, who is Applejack's little sister and the founder (if you can pick one specifically) of the CMC. There have been a few indications in the show that her special talent has something to do with building, but she's not really noticed that herself yet. Like her sister, Apple Bloom is stubborn and doesn't like to listen to other ponies, and she usually feels like she has to prove her worth as the kid sibling of Big Macintosh and Applejack.

Sweetie Belle is Rarity's little sister and sees a Rarity as her role model, wanting to get a Cutie Mark in fashion or design or something similar, even though it's pretty obvious her talent is more of a musical nature. Sweetie Belle can be a bit naive, but she usually is the first of the CMC to realize when they've gone too far in a particular stunt and acts as the mediator between Apple Bloom and Scootaloo when they butt heads.

Scootaloo is the last member of the Crusaders and is definitely a tomboy. She sees Rainbow Dash as the coolest pony ever and thinks of her like a big sister, even though they're not related. Scootaloo's favorite thing to do is zip around Ponyville on her scooter, using her wings to get up to great speeds. Her wings are a bit smaller than other ponies her age and she can barely fly, something that's a huge sore spot for her. Still, she's very kind, if a bit blunt.

If you want a good episode to get started watching, I'd suggest 'A Canterlot Wedding' because OMG PLOT BAD GUYS EPIC SONGS ACTION!

*ahem*

But I really do recommend it as a starting episode. It's fantastic.

My Little Pony can't even keep its characterization straight between episodes. Pinky Pie is thoughtful and caring in an overbearing way when the episode is her focus, but she is a full-on bonkers child when she's just there for comic relief.

For other shows that can keep characterization straight, their writers are not experts, and are serving the story more than they are serving realism.

There are six main characters, actually, seven if you count the Dragon you mentioned.

The purple pony is Twilight Sparkle(yes, everyone has already made all of the vampire jokes), the studious and magically powerful unicorn and current prodigy student of the country's ruler. The dragon isn't evil; his name's Spike, and he works as her personal assistant.

Rainbow Dash isn't a hippie. She's actually the sort of pony who would get bored very quickly with the hippie ideology. She spends most of her time breaking speed records and convincing others that she's awesome. She's managed to sway a large portion of the fan community, who have largely elevated her to mostly-uncontested "best pony" status ever since Twilight's... let's call it a "promotion", at he end of Season Three.

Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie you already know, just not in detail.

Rarity is the first of the main characters you missed. She's a unicorn with aspirations of high status, and usually gets involved in the story when there are fancy clothes that need to be made or important ponies that need to be fraternized with. She tends to be overdramatic and a bit full of herself at times, but she's very supportive of her friends and family, especially her sister Sweetie Belle, who is part of a side-character organization referred to as the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

Applejack is the other, an apple-harvesting farm girl who serves as Rarity's occasional dramatic foil. Blunt, honest, and accepting of no nonsense, Applejack is the most straightforward and grounded of the main characters, but she's also the most uncompromising and stubborn. Her sister, Apple Bloom, is moderately less apple-obsessed than her sister, and spends most of her screen time as another member of the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

Sorry, World-Jumper; Marvin and Printworthy's hover-booth wasn't available. I had to deal with this one myself. Sorry if I accidentally misrepresented any details. (jetpacks away)

It's been a while since my training. I really need to take a first aid class again.

I like you. You mind me of a younger me but with less self awareness.

(Yeah, yeah, I know, objectively, that's probably not a very useful thing for you to be, but I like it anyway!)

We both have an overactive imagination that's always coming up with wonderful story ideas that won't go away, but we don't know how to do anything with our ideas to make them work or turn them into really good stories.

The difference is that you haven't given up trying. You still have that enthusiasm. It hasn't been drained out of you yet. Don't let us take that away from you!

(Now I'm picturing you dressed up as Fred Astaire, singing "They can't take that away from me...")

Anyway, let's get back to business.

What do you want to achieve, in story terms, with Vivian's history of mental illness? Is it just an excuse for her sugar/cocaine/Bleepcaine/whatever addiction? Or are you also going somewhere else with it?

If the depression's not important, then just drop it, and go with something else. (e.g. My earlier suggestion that she's a former badfic writer who, after joining the PPC, found herself transformed by an author's note she'd written as a kid, and now has superspeed and this implausible addiction to sugar as a result.)

OTOH how important is it, in story terms, that she comes from the real world? Are you going to do anything important with that?

If neither of these are important, then maybe you could just drop them both and say she comes from a universe where people's bodies react differently to sugar and so superspeed and sugar addiction are normal. Problem solved.

But if there's no other choice and she absolutely has to come from the real world with a real mental illness, you'd better do it realistically.

I've had a few mental health problems in the past, and I'm using that as part of the back story for one of my characters. But I'm trying to keep it realistic, and also making it an important part of his motivation for joining the PPC in the first place.

Anyway, keep on finding ideas. You're good at that. But also try and take time to let them breathe and grow naturally. And feed them with plenty of research. They'll thank you for it. Ideas love research the same way that Minis love bacon!

Okay, well, I am truly sorry you feel that way. Hopefully some day you will grow up and learn to help yourself and to take advice. Maybe one day after that has happened you will even get Permission with the PP...il something in your attitude has changed though, I don't believe I will be offering you any more help.

Good luck with your writing journey.

The defining characteristic of HQ - and the thing I was looking for in Sample 3 - was stated by Jay Thorntree way back when: "It's a bit of a maze, unless you haven't noticed." You do not get anywhere in Headquarters by trying to find it - instead, you distract yourself with music or rambling conversation, try looking for a different room, or in many cases, bang your head into a wall until you're dizzy. There's as many ways to do it as there are writers - but you didn't use any of them. You took my prompt as 'write some people walking', which was exactly what I wanted not to see.

That's the sort of research-and-reading I'm talking about.

hS

Specifically, I agree about Wells. I think I did bring up her depression/hyper dichotomy, though I don't believe I mentioned the speed thing. So yeah, I think that needs explaining.

But Ellis... I don't feel like I'm coming up with an explanation. 'Control freak' is what I read right there on the page. I mean, look at his 'personality' bio again:

He is highly focused on academics, has greater need for dominance, leadership and attention than is usual, and he prefers initiating activity. He is very detail oriented, and can therefore catch things about someone's personality that others wouldn't based on small bits of evidence. He can learn very quickly, and he feels uncomfortable without a detailed plan laid out. He therefore is strongly agitated whenever someone doesn't follow the plan. Likewise, he becomes irritated whenever someone does something without telling him first. He holds the emotional needs of others in very low consequence, and is therefore not generally liked among the other, rather mentally unstable Agents. However, he hates losing someone during a mission and will obssess over their overall safety.

The only thing I've snipped is the 'racism' part at the end. Every other sentence in the bio supports the idea that he is very clever, very good at forming plans, has a burning need to be in charge and have everyone follow his plans - and doesn't care about them as people in any way, but as elements of the plan.

The only place that breaks down is in 'abilities', and I admit I didn't see that on my first read. Let's take a look:

...his ability to analyze a situation, create complex battle plans, improvise when those plans fail, and work cohesively with whatever group he is in. He also has the makings of a fine leader.

Analyse a situation. Create plans. Those fit perfectly with what we've already been told. The last three clauses are a bit more debatable, but the fact that he is good at improvising, doesn't invalidate the fact that he dislikes doing so. I'm not actually sure what the phrase 'work cohesively with' means ;), but Ellis - as described - could certainly work-with-as-in-use any group. Y'know, provided he was allowed to issue orders.

As to 'the makings of a fine leader'... only if he learns to get his ego under control! And that, yes, is jarringly different from what we've been told. But one line doesn't break a character.

Anyway. Hopefully, Dark Brother 16 will be reading everything that's being said about his characters, in an attempt to learn what problems there are and what to do about them. Hopefully, he'll take this hint I'm dropping - this one, right here - and rework his bios so that every portion of the personality and abilities is justified by the history (which is something I'm going to put into the doc right now). If he doesn't read the entirety of his own Permission thread... then that says something else entirely, doesn't it?

hS

For that, I apologise. I may not agree with you, particularly on the subject of scale in comically-oriented universes (read Sluggy Freelance all the way through for my rebuttal), but it was wrong of me to put my reservations in such a diffident way. Reading through your response to hS, which did not exist while I was writing the original comment, I can see what you were driving at. I shouldn't have snapped at you and I'm sorry for it.

You misconstrue my point about spinoffs, though. Not only are PPC fics spinoffs of TOS, they're also fanfiction for the universe we're entering (specifically a weirdly meta breed of Fix Fic), and fanfiction by its very nature is transformative. I've read tender character-driven stories based on grotesquely violent anime series and Cornwell-style war stories based on a Western show about talking animals in various delightful pastel shades. Good is good, regardless of the original intent of the setting. I don't hold with diving headlong into a game of Obscure Trivia Bingo at the expense of telling a good story, much like I can forgive slightly iffy grammar and spelling if the ideas are praiseworthy.

Iunno, I guess I'm just more lenient than a Boarder should be.

Now I'm very confused. This is probably a very silly question, but...

If Vivian Wells is from the real world, why does she have superspeed? Maybe you haven't noticed this, but real people don't have that kind of superpower. (At least, I don't think they do, do they?)

You hint that it might be connected with all the sweets she eats, but that's more likely to just make her fat, unless there's something very weird about the way her body's biochemistry reacts to sugar. Although, since sugar can also apparently cure her clinical depression, maybe that is the case.

(If it really was that easy to cure depression, all the antidepressant manufacturers would've gone bankrupt long ago! I know from sad, personal experience that eating lots of sugar when you're clinically depressed just gives you the energy to convert your depression into random anger and aggression.)

Hmmmm...

There might be one specific type of people in the PPC's version of the real world who respond to sugar the way Vivian does. Badfic writers often leave author's notes saying thing like, "AN: Soz this chapters so craaaazy but id just had sum sugar wren i rote it and i wz rly rly hyper!!!" What if those excuses are true in the PPCverse? And Badfic writers really do react strangely to sugar?

So... Vivian could be a former badfic writer who joined the PPC to make amends for all the bad stories she wrote when she was younger.

This would also the relationship between Vivian and Bessie. Bessie is from a fic that Vivian wrote, so Vivian feels a sort of motherly affection towards Bessie. That's why she's forgiven her for infecting Agent Plank. And, of course, you'll have the humour of someone with the personality of a hyperactive 12-year-old wanting to act like a protective mother to someone who is emotionally more mature than her. (Especially if Bessie doesn't know why she's doing it!)

However, that's only a suggestion and it probably doesn't fit in with any of your other ideas, so just ignore it and go with something better instead.

Ah, now I see why they're so short. I believe the 200-400 words limit was intended to be for the character descriptions, and not the writing samples. Also, perhaps I simply haven't noticed it, but I don't remember any of the 'Sue agents being "re-engineered" before. Honestly, it almost comes off as creepy. The way you've described it, it sounds like we're brainwashing the poor thing, then traumatizing her so she'll accept the brainwashing. I mean, we traumatize everyone here, but the brainwashing thing is a bit off. Hopefully, I just misunderstand what you're trying to convey.