Subject: Okay, then. Let's see.
Author:
Posted on: 2014-02-28 13:22:00 UTC
As you probably know, we look for a few things in Permission Requests: community activity, writing ability, PPC understanding, and characters.
-You've certainly been active (the magic of Ctrl+F tells me you and Randa between you are posting about 16 times per page, which is several times a day), so that's no concern.
-Writing ability: in a technical sense, you've got it down pat. The only thing I've flagged up from your sample is the 'I'm bored' paragraph - the last sentence, since it's describing Rina, not Randa, should really be attached to the next paragraph. But that's fine.
-Writing ability(2): the actual 'able to write a good story' part is the bit I always have trouble judging, but I'm going to go with yes. You keep your characters physically present (Nesh recently mentioned talking-heads syndrome, which you've managed to avoid), and in what is admittedly a very brief story you manage to draw out the resigned/irritated character of Rina, and contrast it with the 'bubbly' aspects of Randa. Not a lot happens - in a recent review of Elcalion's fic I described this sort of thing as a vignette, not a story - but that's okay, since that was part of the point.
-PPC knowledge: Kind of hard to tell, but the things you have included work. I like the L-space-induced plothole, and the line about the beds. I'm not sure the Ironic Overpower has a physical manifestation, though it does have a sealed temple - but the phrase was comedic, rather than (say) R&R going and talking to the IO. You mention things like bleeprin and mission reports in contexts which imply you know what they are, so I'm going to go with yes on this one too. (Out of interest, did you go through the Permission Self-Check before Requesting? If so, do you feel it helped you in any way?)
-Characters: it's actually quite rare these days for people to write their agents as versions of themselves - most people want to write fantastic aliens instead. But I kind of like seeing it again - it's how Jay and Acacia started the whole thing off, after all. You keep them realistic ('some experience with fencing' comes to mind), and have given a bunch of ways for us to tell them apart. I'll include a note that you'll want to be sure to keep an eye on that 'semi-eidetic memory' - if Rina starts forgetting things, it would be OOC.
One thing I will flag up is that R&R are both new to the PPC. Hopefully that means they've actually been trained (at least a little), but either way, you'll need to make sure they act new, rather than falling into the 'Veteran/Newbie' pattern that's so common.
Overall... I'm going to say Permission Granted. Have fun!
Request for comment from other PGs:
One consequence of this is that I've just granted Permission to RinaAndRanda (Rina), who intends to cowrite with RinaAndRanda (Randa) - but haven't explicitly granted it to RinaAndRanda (Randa). Rina has said (in the footnote) that she'll be doing most of the writing, with Randa helping; that implies that Randa had a hand in at least preparing the character profiles.
So... does this count as joint Permission, or would Randa - in the event that she starts writing separately to Rina - need to apply for herself? This doesn't affect the writing they current have planned (it's established that non-permitted writers can cowrite), so no worries there - but I'm unsure what precedent we're setting here.
hS