Fire in the TARDIS

It was actually quite difficult, for two reasons. One is that I find it hard to imagine Morgan actually likes the Notary. She respects her, after 'Gallifrey Bickers' - but I don't think she gets on with her. Of course, that had to be discarded for this, so it's a good thing it's never been said outright.

The other reason is the gimmick. It was an incredibly fun gimmick to work with - but made writing the dialogue quick tricky.

Fun, though, like I said. And the Notary has insecurities.

hS

I like all three of these stories, although if you had to press me for specifics I'd probably say "Rejection" was my favorite. (I'll get into reasons why in just a moment.) The format of the stories -- the little vignettes jumping forward through time -- worked really well. It gives the reader a sense of how these relationships are progressing in a very efficient manner. One of my favorite shipfics, "Maslow", had a similar structure to it. We don't need to see every moment the characters are together and possibly say something flirtatious (something that many writers of bad shipfics and slashfics forget), just the most pertinent ones.

I can't say too much about "Near Misses" canon and character-wise because it's a been quite a while since I've read the Original Series. From what I recall, this seems very faithful and realistic to the characters of Jay and Acacia. I will say that I might have liked it a bit more if it had ended right after the line "I think I might do." That, to me, felt like it would have had more oomph.

"Rejection" was my favorite, as I mentioned. It is so rare to see what is almost an anti-shipping fic. Not in the sense of bashing the concept of shipping (that's very un-rare), but more that it doesn't end how most shipfics end. There is no happy ending. The confession of affection fails. I also like the gradual decline from silly to serious and sad.

"First Sight" felt the weakest of the three to me. It was still pretty darn good, but I wasn't as involved in the story as I was with other two. The wide swathe of characters that appeared made doing so a bit difficult, particularly regarding the agents I wasn't familiar with.

All in all, very nice work.

I think you do have quite a good grip on Dis and the Agent, and the only real nitpick I have is that Christianne's got a mini-Agent.

Loved the flirty banter and... Mostly everything, really.

Mostly because, with so few stories, I could get to grips with them fairly quickly. Also, their shippy story suggested itself to me fairly quickly.

In The Field

A couple of notes:

-It occurred to me as I was writing this that HQ, and the PPC, probably have a bunch of terms for sexual orientation that don't - even couldn't - exist in the Real World. What do you call someone who is normally (say) male, but only experiences sexual attraction when in a disguise-generated female body? Or someone who likes to use disguises to alternate their physical sex on alternate days? Or... well, the two situations that show up in the story. So I invented slang terms (fake-Latigreek is beyond me). In that respect...
-'Mardy', in the real world, is a Northern English dialect word that roughly means 'grumpy'. I've co-opted it (and 'wrought') without regard for its original meaning.

hS

Oopart, for example, has appeared... once. So this style of shipping story certainly wouldn't work. As you say, Tuff and Monath fit the same category.

So, which of your agents have multiple appearances together (and aren't actually together)?

hS

Much like J&A, the Thes have enough friendshippy moments to make actual shipping feasible. Though it does help that you had them actually admit to sleeping together.

Always Together, in which much use is made of Time Lord telepathy.

hS

Morgan/Agent might be difficult - there's the Continuity Council, of course, and I think they met a couple of times during the Blackout? But it would still make for a very truncated story.

Agent/Dis, however, would totally work. They're close enough to have real moments you can go 'hey, what if they--?' about - just like J&A - and there's enough 'footage' (particularly if you include Tawaki's) to make it feasible. I may have to take a look at them.

I have to admit, writing 'Near Misses' has driven me very close to being a Byrdtree shipper. ;) And I'm fairly close to being convinced by 'Rejection', too. Which I guess is the point of a non-AU goodfic - you write something which could actually happen, and if you do it well enough, you (and maybe your readers) start believing maybe it did.

hS