Subject: It's a judgment call
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Posted on: 2014-05-05 00:33:00 UTC

I had one mission where I was just certain that that Holmes and Watson had been replaced. I was writing it that way and the agents were speaking that way. Then as I went through the story, I realized that there were times when un-Sue-like things happened to the characters. A lot of Sue type things, too, but some things that Sue would not normally tolerate at all. I changed the way it ended to say that the characters were suffering character rupture instead of being replacements.

The mission could have been legitimately written with them as replacements (I think I ended up saying they were 94 point something and 99.99% OOC). It was purely a judgment call.

Which way makes for a more interesting story? Will your agents have to make a turn around? There was a character in my story who was rather disappointed he didn't get to kill them. It did take a bit longer to have the agents change direction. It sounds like it would take longer for your agents as well, since they'd then have to go find the canon character.

Taking a bit longer can be good or bad. My story ended up being over the post limit on LJ and had to be broken up into two sections. Some people do not like to read long missions. (Personally I enjoy long stories--missions and fanfics--so I tend to find that concept a bit foreign, but I understand that some people read slower than I do or just have more things pressing on their time), so that would be bad. It could give you space to come up with something really interesting or some nice characterization, though, so that would be good.

Maybe look for places that the Harry in the badfic doesn't act like a Stu, and see if those are significant enough to you, to justify in your mind that he is not a replacement. You might have to use alternatives to a CAD though, if they are going to be in the 85%+ OOC range. They tend to explode above that. OK, I'll quit rambling at you now. Good luck on your mission!

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