Subject: The Marauders' Map
Author:
Posted on: 2014-03-08 15:34:00 UTC
I disagree on anyone knowing the school better than the Marauders. After all, they had their map. Since the magic used to make the map is never fully explained, we can only guess that it actually does show every passage in the school.
Here's the link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RpBPg72gga-eRxktGMqMhuTabv-fx1_qvS06nbfm0/edit?usp=sharing
Thank Glod that's over. On to the next!
I loved it. Even though I'm not really a Harry Potter fan, the dynamic between your agents was great fun. And the idea of using a Sue's hair for a yo-yo was brilliant.
"I'm curious and wonder, and have to ask - what is that?"
Haar reached down with one long arm and picked up the sheet of paper that had just been shoved under their door. He held it up for Rosalind's inspection. "Note."
"A note?" Rosalind scurried across and took it from him. "Who, that is, which agents would write us a note and send us said note?"
Haar said nothing. Rosalind barely noticed.
"'Hello, hello, hello,'" she read, and snorted. "Who do they think we are? Which Department? Do they believe and suppose that we are the Department called the Repetitive Department of Repetition? I may or might have to call them and tell and explain to them the difference, and our respective roles."
Haar said nothing. Rosalind snorted and looked back at the note.
"'Seven a.m. in the morning'?" she read aloud. "Well, that is, or could certainly be said to be, within our jurisdiction and under our authority. An entry or log needs to be, indeed, is required to be made and written. Haar, my partner, will you undertake to compose and write the log, or will you prepare and deliver the receipt, or the note of acknowledgement and receipt, to the agents who are called and known as Agent Rina and Agent Randa, Assassins of the Department of Mary-Sues?"
Haar considered this, his metal head tilted to one side. Blue lights flickered across his skull. Finally, he said: "Yes."
Rosalind sighed. This was going to take a while.
I think listening to Rosalind read tax returns is how the Notary experiences climax. =]
This is a very solid starting mission. Your agents have a good rapport and play very well off each other. I especially liked the moment where Rina's fangirling sets off the CAD. It's a nice touch.
The biggest thing that bothered me about your story was the ease with which Rina is set off by the badfic. The pounding her head against things, the shouting, the wailing, the general gnashing of teeth: it's a kind of hyperbolic rage that seems to be quite common in the PPC. There's nothing strictly wrong with it, but to me it feels a bit forced, a bit fake. People don't typically react like that in real life. They groan and moan and facepalm, not bash their skull against a window. However, I can sort of excuse it in this case from a in-story perspective. This is their first mission, after all. Rina and Randa (the characters) are fresh-faced rookies. They haven't built up all those psyche scars that most veteran agents (should) have.
The other thing that troubled me was the charge list. It's a big blocky paragraph that dominates the page and messes up the otherwise pretty good pacing you'd established throughout the mission. It also repeats every problem with the badfic that you'd already shown us. Generalize. For example: 'you are charged with three counts of making canon character OOC, one count of creating minis, one count of blah de blah with hur de gur' and so on.
Look forward to seeing what you do next.
Huh, I guess the badfic reactions were kind of overblown, or at least I didn't write them as well as I could have. When I read that fic the first time, I was sitting against a wall and started knocking my head on the wall behind me, but a window that's to the side is different, derp. I'll have to keep that in mind.
Yeah, looking back at the charge list, it is insanely long. Oof. I'll definitely keep it shorter in the next one.
Thank you!
Break it up a little. Have some banter, have some of the charges demonstrate themselves again, have a giant battle erupt in the middle of the list, whatever. If you have interesting things going on, it livens up the boring as all heck charge list.
And yeah, looking back, it definitely feels TOS-y, which is a lovely thing. The badfic you picked was also rather reminiscent of Jay and Acacia. And your writing was funny. Very very funny. Lovely job!
-Aila
Seriously, it's always a compliment to be compared to TOS... but then I wonder how we could possibly measure up! ^_^
And I was right to be, because this was great. I agree with the people who've said it's very reminiscent of TOS-era PPC; it's got the same kind of vibe as those stories and it's laugh-out-loud funny in places. Fantastic first stab, old scream, and long may your PPC-writing career continue! =oD
I did try to read Annie's Forest, but since I'm unfamiliar with the canon material, I didn't understand what was going on. From what I saw, though, it was bad.
Considering how many times I've read TOS, I'm not surprised my story reflected it. But still, it's a huge compliment to hear that. •^_^• Anyway, Randa and I have been working on our next mission, so it should be out sometime this month or the next.
I'd say keep up the good work, but that implies you might not be able to. Since that's patently absurd, I'll just wait patiently for Rina and Randa to return to our screens. =]
Also, if you're ever up for a crossover, I'd love to work with you on something. I promise it's not 120 Days of Blueblood.
After the in-development mission is over, World-Jumper and I have planned to tackle an MLP badfic together, but after that, I would love to work together! The PPC could use more interconnectivity in our stories. ;)
Well done! That was a great read! I loved the bit with the mini-Aragog; you made him (her) kind of cute! =D Your agents play really well off each other, too; it's like they're sisters! (Always a good feeling)
I can't tell you how nervous I was when I got ready to post this. I'm really glad it went well! :D
This was fun! It reminded me a lot of the Original Series, with the agents clearly being friends, and getting along . . . most of the time. And still being willing to chide each other, and keep the other's more problematic traits from causing difficulties. (Sort of like the way the Sorting Hat described Ordellya, but with showing instead of telling!)
You picked a great fanfic for a first mission: short, simple, and with lots and lots of typos that turn hilarious when interpreted literally. (Actually, my absolute favorite line from the original story was when Sirius was described as having the other black hair.)
I like that you had Peter pop back into existence upon the Sue's loss of control over the canon. His absence from most scenes casts a pretty clear light on the story's real purpose: not to explore the Marauders' time at Hogwarts, but Ordellya, Ordellya, always Ordellya, only Ordellya. You helped highlight this as well, by focusing on the canons' OOC reactions to her, and with the scene where they (including the other OC!) stood still and actionless until Ordellya arrived. (Also, it's not fair to punish preteen!Peter for his adult, bad guy self's actions!)
One charge you included that I feel a bit picky about is that she knew Hogwarts better than the Marauders. I agree this would be unrealistic for the average, just-got-to-school OC, but in Ordellya's case, being Dumbledore's daughter, and apparently being raised on the Hogwarts grounds (actually, does Albus even have a home outside Hogwarts? Maybe even that would be canon), the Sue probably would have much more familiarity with passages and such than the Maruaders would have after only two school years of exploration. (I am the son of a high school teacher. By the time I actually attended that school, I knew the details of teacher's lounge, the location of the underground staff cafeteria, many administration offices that most students would never see, the storage layout of the textbook store, etc.)
There are also a couple little typos to fix:
". . . then held up to yo-yo so Rina could smell the string . . ."
"Rina squng around and jabbed a finger . . ."
Aw geez, did I really?
*reads back over the mission*
ACK!
I really don't know what made me angrier- the 'pranking' or the Sue showing up the Marauders. Normally, I would say that she would have an advantage over them because she grew up at Hogwarts, but I'm pretty sure that shortcut she used wasn't canon. She just wanted to show how Speshul she was.
Hee hee, the other black hair was making me and Randa laugh so hard when we were reading over the story. The way Randa interpreted it was Sirius being bald except for one black hair. I still grin whenever I read that.
Peter's absences in Marauder tics makes me so mad, I can't even tell you. Sure, he was a d*** when he was older, but I really doubt the Marauders would have counted him as a friend if he was like that as a kid. At least in my self-insert Marauders fix, I tried to include Peter and actually had him find a girlfriend before the other guys (not because I think everyone should be paired up, but because I wanted him to have at least a little love before I killed her off).
And of course nobody goes after Remus except Tonks. Harumph.
Peter had a bit of a "flunky," go-along-with-the-guys mentality. Which is . . . pretty much how I've made any friends ever, at least at first. So I'm not too much a fan of bashing young!Peter.
...is that, well.
HE WAS THEIR BEST FRIEND. THEY TRUSTED HIM. THEY SUSPECTED REMUS BEFORE HIM--THEY NEVER SUSPECTED PETER AT ALL! AND HE WAS WORKING FOR VOLDEMORT FOR AT LEAST A YEAR BEFORE THE POTTERS WERE KILLED AND SIRIUS WENT AFTER HIM!
Sorry, it's an old fandom for me. And this has become one of my buttons for it.
It's so easy to vilify Peter. Oh, yes, he's going to be evil when he grows up, so he must be evil now! Oh, hey, he's a coward when he's older (never mind the argument I can make against that, it's currently irrelevant), he must be the same way when he's younger! Oh, hey, he's going to betray them--so they never trusted him in the first place!
That's not exactly how betrayal works. That's not how Peter's 'evilness' works. I know it can be easy to use him as a plot device by making him a Death Eater earlier on--I've used it myself--but if you want to stay at all true to what we know of him? That's not how to do it.
In addition, there's this idea that he was stupid. What people tend to forget is that he was hanging around with James, Transfiguration prodigy, Sirius, popular and talented, and Remus, quiet but very smart. If anything, he was average! Not stupid, not talentless--just average! And that's something that people tend not to realize.
I don't at all support what Peter did when he grew up, even if I understand some of it. Young!Peter? I'll defend him forever.
I've got a fic where (don't throw rotten tomatoes at me for this) I've been trying to do the Fifth Marauder thing relatively realistically (albeit with a slight AU, because there obviously wasn't a fifth Marauder in canon). It's undergone a massive reworking--several of them, actually. In the first version, Peter ended up transferring to Beauxbatons at the end of the second year. He just never ended up becoming friends with the others, and decided to leave after getting rather the wrong impression about some of their jokes. (Also, who wants to be the only one of five boys left out of the four-boy friendship?) So he left...and therefore never betrayed Lily and James...and probably lived out his life happily. At some point, I decided to change that, and bring him back in. In the new version (this is such spoilers, actually), he helps them solve a mystery at the end of the first year, whereupon he joins their group. Because it didn't make sense to me that they'd take him on just because he'd follow them around and praise them (yes, I know, but that doesn't really make for trust), I figured he must have had something a bit more useful than that...and made him very good at thinking quickly and putting things and plans together. Where'd I get that from? Well, when Sirius went after him, he formulated and executed the plan to frame him pretty much on the spot. It's possible he thought it out ahead of time, but...he couldn't have been sure. So, logically, that's one of his skills...and, as I said before, he's not stupid. He's just an average kid, who happens to hang out with a group of somewhat exceptionally talented kids. That's all.
But yeah, to sum up: bashing young!Peter is something that people find very easy to do when they haven't thought very hard about him, and I've even done it myself; however, he doesn't deserve that, and it's not accurate. So any fanfic bashing young!Peter is probably going to get me ranting.
~DF
I myself have a fifth Marauder series planned out, all the way up to how that would alter Harry's years at school. My OC is a distant cousin of Professor Trelawney and she has brief visions of the future, but they're always vague and I make sure to keep the visions so that the scene she sees will happen in both her universe and the canon one. Basically, there's a point where (SPOILERS) the OC keeps seeing visions and getting this feeling that she 'chose the wrong path' and eventually goes back in time and takes away her baby self's magic and causes the timeline to snap back to canon. The AU continues in a 'what if' where she doesn't do that, and THAT is when Harry's time gets changed.
*ahem*
Sorry about that, but there is a point to it- even when I was first getting started on that series and was a Suethor, I still don't think I was as bad as I could have been. Yeah, if I were to rewrite it, it would almost certainly be better, but I keep it as it is to remind myself how far I've come. But even back then, I tried to keep Peter as a part of the group. And honestly, though I absolutely hate his older self, if I were to see young!Peter, I'd probably give him a hug and tell him he is a good person. I legitimately cried in Deathly Hallows when he was about to save Harry's life and was then strangled by his own magic hand.
Either way, although Peter was probably very average as a student, I really doubt James and Sirius would let him be a part of their group if he didn't have something good to his name. (Yeah, according to Pottermore, it was Remus who initially was responsible for James and Sirius to include Peter, but that would probably last for only so long.)
I once wrote a fluff fic for Peter in retaliation for all the young!Peter hate I'd seen going around. It was actually very cathartic.
I disagree on anyone knowing the school better than the Marauders. After all, they had their map. Since the magic used to make the map is never fully explained, we can only guess that it actually does show every passage in the school.
I had forgotten all about that map. I agree; being obviously charmed, it probably does show every passage in the school.
Then again, the map is never mentioned in this fic (at least not in the mission), so perhaps the Sue still knew better . . . but this is approaching the realm of unending speculation, so.
*doctorlit fills the Board with swans instead*
...the map was made, but I'm pretty sure that shortcut isn't canon. Either way, though, it made me so angry I threw the printout of the fic across the room. NOBODY KNOWS THE CASTLE BETTER THAN THE MARAUDERS. NOBODY.
*ahem*
In PoA, Chapter 18, Remus tells that James, Sirius and Peter became Animagi in their fifth year, and then: "Soon we were leaving the Shrieking Shack and roaming the school grounds and the village by night. (...) I doubt whether any Hogwarts student ever found out more about the Hogwarts grounds and Hogsmeade than we did ... And thats how we came to write the Marauders’s Map, and sign it with our nicknames."
Also, we know that the Map doesn’t show the Room of Requirement and that Draco vanished from the Map whenever he entered this room in HBP. The Map’s magic, showing everybody who is in a place the Map "knows", is awesome, but the Map doesn’t show every room and passage that exists. The Marauders didn’t know the castle better than everybody else because they had the Map to show them everyhing, they knew the castle better than everybody else because they explored nearly everything and wrote it on their Map (but they never needed and thus never found the Room of Requirement).
Since the Marauder’s Map still didn’t exist during the Marauder’s third year, and much of the exploration happened only later, it is entirely possible that a child who grew up at Hogwarts knew a secret passage they still didn’t know, and since I’m quite sure that we have never seen all secret passages, it doesn’t matter that this specific passage isn’t canon.
Don’t get this wrong. I really like your first mission. I’m only saying that I might like it even more if there were an in-mission discussion of the possibility that the Sue coincidentally got something right when she tried to show off and upstage the Marauders, but then messed it up when she thought she could use a misspelled greek spell to access her secret passage.
HG
I'm not much of a Potter fan, and even I agree that that Sue had to die.
And it's a good thing that you charged her with the use of the Greek, though she should have been charged not just with using it, but with using it wrong! ARGH! It wasn't enough for you to mangle the English language, was it, Sue? No; you had to mangle the Greek language as well! Come on! If you are going to use a foreign language, you had better make bloody sure that you've used it correctly! Even the most basic of Greek students can tell that ανοιγμα is a noun, not a verb! If you are going for Ancient Greek, the correct word is ἄνοιγε. And if you're going for Modern Greek, the word is apparently ανοίξει according to Google Translate. If you want to look smart, MAKE SURE THAT YOU ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT ON EARTH YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!
And by the way, Potterverse spells look like they come from LATIN, so if you REALLY wanted a spell that would make sense in-universe, YOU SHOULD HAVE USED A LATIN WORD, LIKE PATEFACE! BUT MAYBE YOU WERE JUST TO FULL OF YOURSELF AND YOUR "KNOWLEDGE" OF GREEK TO EVEN THINK OF THAT!
*takes deep breaths*
Sorry, but as a polyglot, mangling of languages annoys me--especially if the mangled language is Latin or Greek. I felt like venting the second I saw that noun.
Ahem. Either way, good first mission, Iximaz, and here's to more to come!
I didn't think she used the Greek correctly, but since I wasn't sure, I decided to just charge her with the Greek usage in the first place. The Potterverse spells are mostly derived from LATIN, you STUPID SUE! AAARRRGH!
It's always nice to find someone else as angry about a tiny thing like that.
That was absolutely hilarious. Plus, I already have a feel for the characters, which is probably the most important thing to do in the first chapter of anything. I look forward to more.
We're already working on our next mission! And I think Randa's about ready to rip this Sue's jugular out with her bare hands. It's bad.
I don't see looming threats of bare-handed vein removal very often. Threats of mental breakdowns and rageful eviscerations, yes, but very rarely the extraction of any internal body part. What do we have to look forward to?
I'm such a Harry Potter nut that I can quote passages of the books from memory; Randa is just like that, only about Legend of Zelda.
I'm not super-familiar with the continuum, but Randa was about ready to strangle something when she saw this one. *shudder*
You seemed to do well enough without one last time(or at least I didn't see one credited), but everyone could use an outside set of eyes to check for problems and point out things that hadn't been addressed. I am a huge Legend of Zelda fan myself, and could probably be useful in that regard.
And maaaybe part of my motivation to ask is that your last mission was really good, and I'd love the opportunity to read your next one first and help you out on it.
I didn't have a Beta for my first mission because 1) I'm kind of shy about asking for one and 2) I'm also kind of narcissistic about my writing ability.
*cough*
That being said, a few mistakes were pointed out in the thread, and though I went back and fixed those, I felt rather silly.
Tl;dr I'd love to have you for a Beta! *blush*
Ah, yes. I understand.
Blushing? I'm not sure what I said that would provoke that particular response. Did I embarrass you? If I did, I apologize.
My e-mail addresses are behind this link. I'd prefer you use the Yahoo one for at least the first messages, since I barely ever check the Google one unless I'm expecting Google Docs correspondence.
No Mini-Aragog from Perfects?
I think that Randa could in the future use her yo-yo to choke the sues.
Other than that, I rather liked this mission report.
Oh yeah, Sue-garroting is definitely going to happen sometime.
I didn't come up with the CAD usage on agents idea- I read about it (on the Wiki) happening to Agent Rose/Ross. But I figured a first mission in someone's favorite continuum would do weird things to their personality. ;)
And nah, I didn't think a mini from the Perfects would happen. I can't really explain it, but it's just a gut feeling I have. Sorry.
Also I think Mcgonagoll will be more than enough to freak Randa out. Any more and she'd probably just quit right then and there.
Forgot to mention how I like that you showed what happens when a CAD is used on an Agent.
Wrong link- here's the actual one. Sorry!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RpBPg72gga-eRxktGMqMhuTabv-fx1_qvS06nbfm0/pub