Subject: I like the City Watch books.
Author:
Posted on: 2013-12-16 02:44:00 UTC
Although I hold the Lancre Witches in a special place in my heart. My first Discworld book was Witches Abroad. I found it at a library auction when I was about twelve. It's pretty much in three pieces now, but I can't bring myself to get rid of it.
Since roughly 2004, there has been an unacknowledged and practically unknown agent in the Department of Geographical Aberrations. His only mention was in Andy and Saphie's excellent Suedom:
"All of HQ was in an uproar. Every agent sent to Middle-Earth in the past...well, Headquarters time didn't work like regular time, but suffice to say it had been a long time since any agent who dealt with Lord of the Rings had come back from an assignment. Recruits who hadn't even been put through training yet were being sent, although this was more due to a "we don't want to risk losing anyone who can actually shoot to kill the person they've aimed at" mentality than through actual lack of good agents. However, HQ was running out of recruits, and a few of the veteran agents were still gone. Huinesoron of the Department of Geographical Aberrations hadn't been seen in at least a week, real-time wise, and as Arda was still changing shape about as much as an amoeba, his mission wasn't going well." ~Suedom: Chapter 24
As the fifth agent in DOGA (after Dafydd, Selene, Takua, and Jareth), Agent Huinesoron has had his fair share of adventures, but the thing is, he's never before bothered to write them down.
That changes today.
Help from the past
Agent Huinesoron has no permanent partner, but that's okay - the Flowers are fine with sending him on missions with random people from other departments. He's essentially a geography specialist, farmed out wherever he's needed (by deliberate authorial decision - it lets me use my many other agents who never get missions).
A few ancillary notes:
-The mission badges are these things, and function basically as described. Available from Agent Kayleigh, DBS, free of charge. They're not required, but are available for anyone to use if you want them.
-Findulias the confused mini-Balrog is presumably in FicPsych. Alternately, she may be at OFUM - or wherever the adoption centre is these days. Cassie, if you have an in-universe explanation for your takeover of the adoptions (other than the one I've mentioned in the mission), let me know and I'll edit it in.
-Reviews are very welcome, of course! If I've made any mistakes I need to be told to know about them, and besides that, just saying what you liked or didn't like - or that you did or didn't enjoy the mission - is always appreciated!
hS
(I'm sure there was another note, but I've no idea what it was. Ah, well, maybe it'll come to me)
Same with Sevenswans, it's been quite a while since someone posted a mission with a fandom I'm familiar with. And I did liked how agent!hS tricked fake!Lúthien into battling Sauron single-handedly. Very creative. The jokes and puns were quite funny.
I've read Suedom once upon a time (it was awesome), and I've wondered back then, why Agent Huinesoron never had any had any missions of his own. I thought it would be awesome. And I was right.
~Autumn
I actually feel just a little bit sorry for her. It's not as though she was a particularly bad character - but she wasn't a good one, either. She consisted of the statement that she was Luthien, and... not a lot else until she got the sword.
So I couldn't just have them kill her. She hadn't done anything to deserve killing. Instead, she got a choice (and failed miserably). If she'd succeeded (which would probably have constituted saying 'that's ridiculous, I needed Huan last time, I can't do it by myself, that's not my field'), I imagine they would have recruited her.
Which would have caused endless entertainment, given who she looks like...
hS
I liked her demise anyway. It was creative, not particularly violent...at least the violence wasn't described in-story. *shudders* Now that I think of it, I hate to know what happened to her when she went to face Sauron.
But at least she had a choice, like you've said before. My heart did soften a bit at the end, when she said "thank you", before she met her...fate. She did acted like Lúthien should have, at times, but I guess she was too off to even make that up, and then there's the whole "if-that's-the-real-Lúthien-some-key-characters-couldn't-exist" thing.
Ah well. She was too stupid to have taken the opportunity to live, and we can't change that. Or can we...? (But that's highly unlikely to happen. Actually, scratch that. She seemed too determined to face Sauron.)
~Autumn
Since I've seen a PPC fic in a canon that I thoroughly recognize. And one filled with so many puns... I thought the breadwalls were clever.
Good luck in future partnerships!
Most of what I want to comment on has already been pointed out in previous posts. I'll try to avoid repeating what others have said too much, but it's not going to be a sure thing. Just a heads up.
First off, I really like the fact that Agent Huinesoron actually has a legitimate cause to feel anger at this story. Not to belittle most other agents or anything (and I'm including my own in this), but the anger that a fan feels at seeing their favorite continuum twisted up in knots really shouldn't compare to what emotions someone from said continuum should be experiencing. Where in other stories rage can sometimes feel silly or hyperbolic, coming from him here it feels justified.
This has been mentioned before, but I just want to very quickly say that I enjoyed seeing a first person mission. That being said, I do rather wish we had more of Agent Huinesoron's actual thoughts. Too often this read like a typical mission only with 'he' swapped with 'I.' If you're going to use first person, really use first person.
I got a little tired of the movie-bashing as the story went on. At times it felt less like the characters complaining and more like you the author venting. Might be misinterpreting that, but that is how it seemed to me as a reader.
Speaking as someone who is not a fan of Tolkien's work (yes I know, shock and horror, cue internet rage, and so on) and has neither read nor watched anything Middle Earth-related in years, I found this very difficult to follow. Lots of references to what I assume is the Silmarillion. However, I do acknowledge that I'm not probably not indicative of your intended audience. Plus, this is set from the perspective of a Middle-Earth elf. It wouldn't make much sense to have him exposit things that would naturally know.
Just found myself curious, sorry about that. I'll review the mission a bit later, too.
First, I find the pacing and immersion in his works to be very poor. Every time I felt like I was finally getting into the plot, I was thrown out by a series of songs or poems or Tom Bombadil being quirky or time suddenly slowing to a crawl or what have you. (I may be misremembering this, but wasn't there something like twenty years between the birthday party at Bag End and Frodo actually setting off?) The songs and such were great for building the world, don't get me wrong, but they really dragged the story down for me. It did not help that in places his works felt more like a place to show off all the languages he made as opposed to actually tell a story.
I didn't much like the characters either. I found the vast majority of them to be dull and uninspiring. Maybe that's just because I've been overexposed to the traditional high fantasy types of characters, but I recall thinking that even back when I was reading LOTR for the first time.
That sort of ties into the final point I'll get into here: I'm tired of high fantasy in general. Too many creators nowadays jump into the groove that Tolkien carved without any thought of putting their own spin on things. The mystical and superior elves, the low and ultra-masculine dwarfs, the wizard's tower, and what not. I enjoy fantasy stories that take liberties with that material, like with the Discworld's cheeky satire, the grimy noir-like setting of Eberron, or the urban mingling found in the Dresden Files.
To put it short, Tolkien bores me. It's ponderous and slow. It's not my kind of fantasy.
I don't know about you, but personally, I like the movies because they fix the pacing problems and give the characters more depth. The visual medium, I feel, helps with immersion.
But thank you for putting my opinions into words in a way that is much more respectful than I would be capable of.
Sorry, hit post too early. What I meant to say was it's refreshing to see someone with an intelligent and reasonable reason for disliking something, instead of the unfortunately all too common "I heard it sux on teh interwebz dont juge me". Personally, as a devoted lover of Tolkien's works, I can't really relate to your complaints, but I respect the lack of author-bashing and whatnot.
Speaking of something we apparently both enjoy, What's your favorite Discworld character/book/anything?
Although I hold the Lancre Witches in a special place in my heart. My first Discworld book was Witches Abroad. I found it at a library auction when I was about twelve. It's pretty much in three pieces now, but I can't bring myself to get rid of it.
(which is, of course, Tolkien, but still). I had to buy another copy so I could continue to take it travelling.
-Aila
I own a broken hardcover and an semi-intact paperback.
It's a sign of love.
Personally, I enjoy the LotR films in general - they're pretty, and unlike certain Philosophers At Large, I don't think they did that bad a job. The Two Towers is definitely my least favourite, though.
Agent Huinesoron, though... well, that's his home they're messing up. He doesn't care about them being entertaining to watch - he interacts with them like, oh, a veteran of Insert War Here watching a film set in it. When they mess things up, he gets really affronted.
For example, the Noldor of Nargothrond had a certain amount of contact with the dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost. Agent hS knows what sort of people they are. Seeing Gimli, as the sole representative of their race, made into comic relief - well, even though he's not all that fond of them as a species (he is an elf, after all), he still doesn't take it well.
Mort is closer to the 'reasonable reaction' level of response, due to not being a local. Of course, that also means he doesn't have as strong a reaction to the badfic changes. Swings and roundabouts, or... something.
hS
This was a nice, simple mission, TOS-ish in style. I like that Agent Huinesoron's history in Middle-earth recolors parts of the mission for him beyond what it would for the average agent. (I can't tell; do Agents Huinesoron and Dafydd have the same backstory?)
I loved the little nod to Acacia in ducking behind the partner, as well as the implied assassination of the replacement Luthien. The "Gap of Rohan" joke was pretty genius, too.
My brain was driving me nuts throughout the mission because my inner reading voice kept trying to correct "Findulias" back to "Finduilas."
Also, at one point, you turned Mortic into a Dark Lord:
"'Actually,' I said, stepping away from Morgoth, 'I had a thought about that.'"
Poor Mortic. He's probably thinking to himself, "WT-?"
Out with thee, Dark Lord! Thou shalt not reenter Arda through this fic!
(Which reminds me of Mary Sue, Sue Mary and the Broken Plot Continuum, which is hilarious)
Huinesoron and Dafydd have similar histories - they're both Exilic Noldor - but the details are quite different. Huinesoron isn't Maglor, for instance - that's a pretty big one. This will come up when they run into each other (because of course that was going to happen).
hS
Please, please PLEASE tell me you sent Cafeteria workers after that bread castle! We're starving for some real food in HQ!
Figures I get a cold pile of tater tots that make you go nuts on one of my missions, and these guys get an entire castle of good bread!
I mean, Mortic explained some of it, but that just made me even more confused. The bread was apparently spawned from the not-there-in-canon castle having a "rustic beauty", and... nothing else. I checked the spot in the badfic, just in case I was missing some context, and it said nothing about the "Pain Rustique" that, from the mission's point of view, was all too visible. I know what pain rustique is now(Thanks, Google!), but I just didn't understand why it was there.
I mean, the Word World is impressionable, but it seems to have more of a "grasping at straws" sort of mentality than the "let's look for the most obscure definition that could apply here" mentality. Less work for it when it's already exhausted by badfic, and potential joke material made when it decides to cut corners and start taking things literally. "Rustic" might create a rust-covered castle, or a castle that looked as though it was owned by hillbillies, but again, I have no idea what the link is between "rustic beauty" and "the whole thing is made of bread".
I was going to just have my post contain that commentary, but now that I've spent a while on it, I'll add in some brief review commentary, as well.
I didn't like Agent Huinesoron. Don't get me wrong, I liked his role in the story, his retroactive importance in DOGA's history, and the like, but he seemed like the sort of person I would generally not like spending time with. In a way, though, that's a good thing. If there's enough personality present in his first major appearance for me to make an opinion on him as a person, it's good use of character.
Mortic was more enjoyable, though, particularly in the parts where he intersects with the progression of the story. I was particularly fond of the scene where he convinces the character replacement Luthien all is normal by improvising dramatically and making up Rohirric names for his and his partner's disguises on the spot.
There was a lot of the agents discussing what the story was doing wrong, but not a lot of actual badfic quotes backing that up and providing context for that commentary. For example, during the the bit where Agent Huinesoron mentions how OOC it was for Eomer to not know who Morgoth was, there was no connection to the original badfic at all, and I would've thought that it was a reference to one of his previous missions if he'd had any records of them, since deprived of context it seemed more like a "but I've seen worse mischaracterization on this one, oh yes" than a comment on something that only happened a few seconds ago. This got better in the second half, though, but there are still bits like "Only after the dialogue was over did they comment – to each other, on the fact that Eowyn seemed to be falling in love with Luthien" where I wondered where it was coming from and what in the badfic prompted that assumption, and then said assumption was never mentioned again.
I liked the varied forms of the time skips. At the beginning, it's treated as though they're no big deal, but as the badfic goes on and the time skips get longer and the agents have had to deal with more of them, the story treats them differently. The bit that Irish Samurai mentioned earlier, where the time skip is marked by the "it" having no attached punctuation, and the time skip itself only being represented by a tilde, was actually my favorite of the time skips. It felt fresh, and really got across the suddenness of the temporal alteration in a way that "(Agent's name) almost threw up" tends not to.
And three more miscellaneous bits: 1) Why does Mortic have a CAD on the first page, when he scans the two "princesses" with it, but then mention thrice later that neither he nor Agent Huinesoron has one? It's possible that he might be using one of the TOS-era CADs when there were two or three different devices that measured different parts of the canon, and he only brought one of them, but if that's the case, why wouldn't Agent Huinesoron bring the others? CADs are standard PPC equipment, after all. Or alternatively, Mortic could be using the modern CAD and this could just be a continuity error.
2) The agents at different times say that the author has done none of the research, and almost enough research to make the scene canonical, and don't even seem to notice the dichotomy. That just bugged me. It feels like a continuity slip-up of some sort.
3) It's good that you added in the section where Mortic and Agent Huinesoron realize what sort of a mess the badfic is making of Middle-earth's timeline. In part because it drives home exactly what sort of damage this fic could potentially perform unchecked, and in part because I'd been wondering since the first mention of the fic's defining offenses why WhatThe was involved here when it seems to be much more the DTO's speed. True, possible total collapse of the timeline is also something that the DTO would be interested in, but the rationalization still holds.
Pain Rustique/Rustic I'm afraid appears to be a cultural thing - or maybe just a me-tural thing. For about five years we bought the stuff every single weekend, so it was definitely my first reaction to 'rustic beauty'. It's actually the only context I've really heard the word rustic in here in Britain (I know what it means, it's just never used). (And as a chemist, I would never abuse iron oxide by making your 'rust-covered castle' joke. ;))
I would say I'm sorry you didn't like Agent hS, but I guess it depends why. Could you say a bit more about why you didn't like him, so I can see if it's his intended character or just bad writing on my end?
Badfic quotes... I've never been a fan of the sort of mission where people practically turn it into an MST. My philosophy (insofar as I have one) is to stick in the actual quote where there's something amusing about the words. In the two examples you mention, that doesn't seem to apply. For instance:
Luthien said "I guess we must be really far from our homeland, I have never heard of Rohan before" then she added in a serious tone "as your kingdom have troubles with Morgoth's armies?" Eomer nodded "Morgoth? I don't know who he is, but right now my land is in peril by the work of Saruman"
There's nothing there that seemed worth quoting - having the agents discuss it instead is, as far as I'm aware, standard practice.
The 'falling in love with Luthien' thing is a typo, I'm afraid - it's the princesses discussing Eowyn falling in love with Aragorn. Oops!
The miscellaneous:
1/ CADs! The relevant portion is this:
Mortic fished around in his pack for a moment and produced a metallic object. "I can do Character Analysis – what've you got?"
I grimaced. "The same," I admitted. "We probably ought to have checked that before coming."
"Elanor always- well. We'll have to make do." Mortic pointed his CAD at the two characters in turn.
Per the Original Series, there are two types of CAD - Character and Canon Analysis Device. Due to not checking in advance, both hS and Mort brought the Character version, designed for checking OCs. Neither of them have a Canon Analysis Device, which checks, uh, canons. I'll tweak to put in a mention of the Canon Analysis Device in that first section, but the difference is entirely deliberate.
2/ The research. If I write a story wherein I have my characters speak perfect Elvish, but where I also place Gondor to the north of Lorien, surely I can be said to have both done, and not done, the research? The two discussions were in different places, and one of the repeated themes of this mission was that the story was well-researched, except where it really wasn't.
3/ There were a few things that brought the fic to WhatThe's attention: the timeline distortion is one, but they also discussed the fact that the Princesses don't do anything (literally - the entire story follows the movie plot despite the presence of probably the most powerful sorceress ever to have lived), and the fact that one of the main characters is a mini-Balrog.
And as a general comment: thank you for your review! It's always great to hear what did and didn't work, and to make changes where they need making.
hS
Not sure why I held off making this particular response for so long, when I had already responded to several of the other posts in other topics.
Before I start and veer off-topic from the other points in the last post, I stand by what I said about the Morgoth quote. The words themselves aren't amusing, but their presence provides context for why Agent Huinesoron started talking about Morgoth all of a sudden. Without the presence of those words to serve as a basis, people viewing only the mission and not the original badfic will just see the response to the non-present badfic words as coming out of nowhere.
As for why I didn't like Agent Huinesoron, well, there's not really an individual word for it, but it seemed more to be his personality not matching with what I see as likable rather than a problem in your writing him. I'll just list some traits.
He kept voicing opposition to the smallest problems, for one. I can't remember the exact amount, but there were several points in the story when I found myself inwardly rolling my eyes and saying "Dude, let it go." Most of this was tied into the movie-bashing PoorCynic mentioned, which I suppose can be connected to him being bitter that his home canon was adopted into a series of popular movies or something of the sort, but several more seem to be tied to a set of near-unattainable expectations that he seems to view as unassailable, like the part where he says "Are the Rohirrim Arda's greatest masters of understatement, to call Luthien the Fair 'pretty'?". That was a major "dude, let it go" moment. What, would he rather the badfic have described in purple prose how "her glorious raven hair and divinely sculpted features bewitch both the minds and senses of all around her", or something of the sort? "Pretty" is a perfectly acceptable adjective. Or any one of the parts where he seems openly irritated or confused at the idea that people would write fan fiction of the movies and ignore the contradictory details in the book. Yes, Agent Huinesoron, people are going to do that. The books, classics as they may be, are considered by many people to be nigh-on impenetrable, and the movies are a much more accessible medium and are very popular right now. Movieverse fanfic is going to happen, so you don't have to act as though the very act of writing it is a sin. It can be called that if it's bad, but not simply because it exists. You've got several sizable, actual issues that you've been specifically assigned to clear up; you don't need to go passionately after problems that are really differences in opinion more than anything else.
Also, he just seemed to have weird ideas of how personal respect works. This was more pervasive than the previous paragraph's issues, so I can't really tie it to a specific cause, but there are a few instances where it surfaces more prominently than others. For example, when Mortic quotes a piece of badfic that references a slang term for Galadriel, Agent Huinesoron immediately jumps on him for it, but when he's interacting with the bit characters, he treats them like obstacles and refers to them as "things", despite them being just as sapient as he or the other Agents or Galadriel are. I'm not going to go into detail on the terminology mix-up with Mortic where his apology comes across more as an "I'm sorry that you didn't know what I was saying instinctively based on translation conventions between my language and yours, human" rather than an "I'm sorry for my vocabulary faux pas, and I will do my best not to have it happen again", but that description should basically sum up my feelings on it.
This might possibly be linked to his Elven background, as sympathizing with other Elves and simultaneously seeing himself as being better than everyone else who is not an Elf is the sort of demeanor that created decades of elvish stereotypes despite not being present in a majority of Tolkienverse Elves, and could mesh with him being recruited from a badfic or something of the sort, but it's never explained and it's never even addressed, which adds "and he's getting away with this attitude" to my list of marks against him. Granted, we don't get a chance to see if Mortic's groaning silently and thinking "Elves" or "This guy." to himself, since this is from Agent Huinesoron's point of view, but still, it seems like he'd at least be told off.
Those are some of the main problems, at least. I'm almost certain there was something else I didn't bring up here, but I'm not remembering it even as I'm scrolling through the original Google Doc of the mission, so it may not have been major.
For the most part, yeah, that's his personality - and a lot of it centres on being of the Noldor. You say this:
sympathizing with other Elves and simultaneously seeing himself as being better than everyone else who is not an Elf is the sort of demeanor that created decades of elvish stereotypes despite not being present in a majority of Tolkienverse Elves
And that's true - to a point. But think about the interactions of the Galadhrim and the elves of Mirkwood with dwarves. Even they have a fair amount of the 'well, we're clearly better than you' thing going on, as well as the massive feud thing.
But the Noldor? One of Morgoth's big arguments during the time he was interacting with them in Valinor was that the Valar had brought the Eldar to Valinor in order to make space for those weak, sickly, short-lived, and above all, malleable mortals. And the Noldor like to think that they didn't really listen - but then you have things like Caranthir's interactions with Haleth, not to mention Cel'n'Cur's 'Your king sucks because he wants to die for this mortal' thing - and remember, out of all of Nargothrond, only a handful thought Beren was worth enough for them to follow Finrod.
Heck, the Noldor aren't just arrogant about Men - they get the same way about the Sindar. It was, what, 25 years? 50? Between the Return to Middle-earth and the Noldor actually bothering to tell Thingol that, oh, by the way, his brother's city was attacked by most of the people here. Oh, wait - they didn't tell him. Melian did.
And specifically about Galadriel - she's the only surviving member of House Finarfin in Middle-earth, and sister to Huinesoron's king. He's very sensitive when it comes to her. ;)
(And specifically about Luthien - no, you don't call her pretty. Her canonical description is that she is literally the most beautiful person in the world. And, though this didn't occur to me at the time - this is Eomer. At a later date, he is willing to duel with Gimli if Gimli won't let him say that Arwen - the spitting image of Luthien - is fairer than Galadriel. You don't need urple prose to do her justice)
But yeah - most of the things you've said stem from his heritage, and his... almost possessiveness over things he likes. Distaste for movieverse anything certainly falls into that category.
The one thing that's not intentional is Mortic giving him a free pass. I guess Mort's feeling rather more relaxed than he used to - though, to be honest, he always was fairly laid-back. Comes of being older than most of human civilisation, I imagine. I'll be sure to have A!hS called on his behaviour next time out.
(You talk about the 'terminology mix-up' - is that the betting scene, or something else? I guess it doesn't matter, since the former apology is totally what he'd say, but I'm curious)
hS
PS: I have a strong feeling the 'arc', if there is one, of A!hS's missions, will be him learning to let go of a lot of that pride. Assuming I can write that... it may simply consist of his character softening over time. One thing that doesn't really get mentioned in this mission is that he's never bothered to sit down and learn to read English - he can do it (elves have a natural talent for language), but not very well. He's never seen it as worth his time. "A plague on the stiff necks of elves!"
On the elves-are-jerks matter, I knew that some of the Elves of Middle-earth behaved like the derivative elves that would show up later, but 1) I don't have enough knowledge of Tolkien to determine which ones were most prone to arrogant behavior, so I wouldn't have known whether Huinesoron's actions were more or less abrasive than is standard for his people, and 2) I didn't want to make any accidental negative generalizations, especially since you like the Elves so much.
Related to my lack of Tolkien knowledge, everything from the bit on Caranthir to the bit about Galadriel being the last of her kind just sort of took the shape of "I don't know what any of this means, but Huinesoron sure knows what he's talking about here.", so if I missed the mark on some other details, the dearth of Middle-earth-related information I can easily remember is probably why.
The terminology mix-up was the bit where Agent Huinesoron mentions Mortic's "wife". As for the betting scene, that was one of the few instances where I actually agreed with Agent Huinesoron. If the quantity that the bet was based upon hadn't reached ten when the conditions of the bet were fulfilled, the person who said it would be ten during the initial proposition of the bet was more wrong than the person who said it would be less than ten, and thus Agent Huinesoron had chosen a more accurate number.
(awkward cough) Sorry. I just reread that previous paragraph and realized how excessively formal it was. There wasn't even anything at stake in any case, so I'm not sure why I felt the need to do that.
One other question, though: if this mission is only the first stage in Agent Huinesoron's personal growth, what has he been doing for the last several years, assuming that the Bridge didn't throw him through time and space so that he only ended up back in HQ a few weeks ago? Or did he have an even worse attitude when he arrived, and this mission represents the culmination of years of development?
Then again, it's possible that he might have had some sort of mental block after what the Bridge did to him and his country, has been holding on to the Elven perception of life as perfect to serve as, to use a phrase, a spar in the rough tides, and will only start wearing away at that belief at some point in the near future, possibly due to some sort of personal moment in later missions that brings his nature to his attention, but that's 100% pure distilled speculation.
Yep, that's fairly A!hS typical, I think.
Personal growth! While your Bridge related ideas are interesting, I tend to think that until recently, Agent Huinesoron had a partner who pretty much indulged him, or possibly was another elf and didn't see anything wrong with his attitude. It's only now, with said partner missing for reasons undefined, that he's actually spending significant amounts of time around other people.
Actually, yes, I'm guessing they were definitely an elf. It explains the lack of learning English, and also other personal quirks and blind spots - as a later mission will reveal, he doesn't know what a DVD is. His console apparently uses memory crystals, and he's never seen anyone else use one.
hS
Sorry if I'm sounding ignorant, but are you a "chemist" in the literal sense of the word, i.e., a person who specializes in chemistry, or a "chemist" in the Britspeak sense of the word, i.e., what we Americans would call a "pharmacist"?
The sort who makes things blow up, only that totally wasn't my fault. This, I mean. Absolutely nothing to do with me.
hS
Just wondering, how much overlap would you say there is between 'analytical chemist' and 'mad scientist'?
... mad? Mad? They called me mad? I'll show them mad! I'll show them all!!!!!
hS
'All those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head.'
Pratchett knows best :)
What the heck did you do!?
I don't even work at that particular site. But the equipment in question is part of an electrolyser, which splits salt water into chlorine, hydrogen, and sodium hydroxide (or 'caustic'). Normally it then releases the hydrogen to the air (because it's light and harmless), and reacts the chlorine with the caustic to make bleach.
Thing is, we added a new system, one that would take the hydrogen and chlorine and make hydrochloric acid. To get it to work, we had to skim off a little bit of the chlorine, which left an excess of hydrogen. We then scrubbed the removed chlorine, leaving only the tiny amount of oxygen that's in it... and then piped that oxygen into a confined space with the hydrogen excess.
Yeah - that wasn't too bright. We used to have a 2-storey tank of caustic - now we have bits of said tank. Turns out hydrogen + oxygen = bang.
(The reason we did this? No-one bothered to think about where the excess hydrogen would go. They/we just sort of assumed it would vanish into the ether. Oops)
hS
However, the use of "we" still makes me question your levels of involvement. (I'm kidding, I believe you.)
Well, I'm no chemist, but I can safely say, "Well, duh." Sheesh, I know professionals make mistakes, but that's a rather silly, and dangerous, one. Then again, tell me this story about two years ago, and I would have asked why water was not made instead of an explosion. Though, it is a humorous thought to see a bunch of chemists standing in front of the wreckage, smoking bits of metal everywhere, and one of them says, "At least it's not raining." Then the water made from the Hydrogen/Oxygen mixture pools up on the roof and starts to drip.
I'll ask instead: Why wasn't water made? Last I checked, hyrodgen + oxygen = water!
The problem is, hydrogen + oxygen = water + KABOOM (or 'energy' if you prefer). That's why it's one of the things people are/were looking into for powering cars.
In this case, we were specifically not told what the acid unit put out - just sold it as-is and told it needed excess hydrogen. Apparently no-one in the history of ever has been stupid enough to pipe the output into the cleaned skimmed-off chlorine before...
hS
Because I think I realized it approximately two posts in to talking to you :)
Although, not speaking of which, what's going on with Agent Ariel's backstory? I can't remember who was last meant to do what, and I don't want to see it fall through the cracks of...the...writing verse? Bah, can't think properly. At least I'm not switching languages...
But yes. What's the status of that story? And who has to do what to get it finished? Because I honestly can't remember who's meant to be doing what with it right now, and it would be a shame not to finish it.
(Hurrah! My thoughts made it to the screen coherently! At last!)
~DF
(facepalms) I had completely forgotten it for the last... has it already been a month since I last thought about it? Dang. This has been too long and must be corrected as soon as possible.
But Christmas break starts tomorrow, so I should have plenty of time to find it, finish up whatever needed finishing up, and send it to you for looking over within the next few days. It'll be from my Gmail account, since my Yahoo account has been having "scheduled maintenance" for the last three days now, and I can't get into it. Actually, I think I only ever emailed you from my Gmail account, so that works out, more or less.
Oh, and sonofheaven176, if you're reading this post, that's why I only responded to one of your three e-mails. It was really annoying, too, because I'd finally had time to actually write them continuously instead of in short bursts like I usually end up doing, and then the "scheduled maintenance" happened. You'd think that if it was scheduled, they'd tell the Yahoo users about it beforehand. (grumbles away)
that I stalk you like a ghost! I just lurk the PPC Board, waiting to pounce when I see your username pop up!
Muhuhahahahahahahaha.......
I'd just thought that you might read new posts on the Board when they come up and are still covered in that gray "RECENT POST!" highlighting. Some people do. Well, I do, and I thought it would be something others might do as well. If you saw it, then you would have gotten the message, and if you didn't, I'd have just needed to tell you in another way some time afterward.
I'm not sure how much sarcasm was in that reply, so I don't know whether I should have spun this off into an "oh, no, sonofheaven176 was a ghost the whole time" whimsical spiel, or feel bad for expecting someone to do something that they might not necessarily be doing. In retrospect, the way I chose makes the end response neither of those, so I suppose I'll flip a coin. (flips)
Oh, no! A ghost! We can't do a Christmas Carol parody yet! It's only the 13th!
"I am the Ghost of Beta-Readings Past! Look, here you are two weeks ago, watching episodes of Atop the Fourth Wall when you had e-mails to respond to!"
NOOOO!
"And here you are five days ago, trying to finish your Vivillon collection instead of finishing one of the beta-readings! Little did you know that Yahoo was going to lock you out of your account shortly afterward! Do you feel responsible now? You should answer that question with a 'no', because you are not being responsible!"
Wait, what would the Ghost of Beta-Readings Present be showing me?
"He would be showing you this Board post that you're writing right now instead of finishing yet another e-mail you claimed would be done by last night!"
NOOOOOOO!!!
*laughing out loud at Outhra's ghosts*
A little of everything. Of course, I was trying to be funny, but there is some truth behind it. I do visit the PPC Board about every day, so I do catch up on new replies to threads that I am following. But I also do take notice when you show up, especially when I am expecting an e-mail from you. IIRC, that's when I show up with one of those "What's taking you so long?" posts.
(Especially since your e-mail seems to love to give you problems nowadays, I want to make sure that you know I'm still waiting...)
*sees "Vivillon collection"*
You have the 6th Gen Pokemon games? Which one? Are you EV-training? Can't wait for PokeBank to come out, huh? Can you give me your FC?
...
*ahem*
Oh yeah, I'm still waiting on that e-mail. But I won't pester you longer, since you already have the ghosts to do that for me! Muhuhahahahaha...
As for the other, I'm not entirely sure what I was supposed to be doing with it. I don't have an FF.net account(good thing, too, or I might have unleashed my freshman-year Bionicle fanfics on the world, and the world does not deserve that), so do I just send the commentary on the Yumeí fic to you, and you send it to the Suethor? Should I be looking for her e-mail address, introduce myself as a friend of a friend, and offer to beta? I wasn't entirely clear on that.
I've had Pokémon Y since about two weeks after it launched. It's been fun, though I wish they had put more effort into the story. Three out of four of the "friend" trainers have no personality, and about two-thirds of the lore is dumped on you in five minutes right before you finish Team Flare's last base, which is disappointing. The postgame story's upturn in quality almost redeems that, though. I like how Essentia's arc is practically a superhero origin. It made me step back for a second, think about the world Game Freak's been making for the last fifteen years, and realize that it can tell pretty much any type of story it wants. Now if only they'd capitalize on that. I heard they were planning on releasing some sort of urban fantasy detective spin-off starring Looker at some point, which is a step in the right direction.
I've used the new EV Training methods, but only on a few of my main party. They certainly make it easier to EV train than before, since I don't need to go on Serebii and look up optimal places to train a specific stat, infect whoever I wanted to train with Pokérus, and run around for hours looking for specific wild encounters, but I have no idea how the Super Training reward system works. This isn't as bad during the EV training portion, since you get the same number of EVs so long as you finish the challenge, but it gets really annoying in Secret Super Training, since it's the only way to get more of most of the stones, and they're given out alongside comparatively useless items like Soda Pop and Hard Stones. I thought I was done with an overpopulation of Hard Stones when they cut out the Join Avenue, but nope, all I got from Join Avenue's loss was the loss of the Nursery. I miss the Nursery. It made breeding so much quicker and more efficient.
I finally finished my Vivillon collection yesterday, when some lucky GTS coincidences gave me Hawaiian, Singaporean, and Puerto Rican Scatterbug that evolved into the last three forms I was missing. I am still celebrating! (blows noisemaker)
As for Pokébank... once it comes out, I will finally be able to transfer my unstoppable horde of Milotic to the sixth generation! Which is a special bonus, since you can't get Milotic there, even though plenty of those green garbage cans keep giving me Prism Scales.
Seriously, though, my Ruby Version has something like twenty Milotic, and I've been looking for an excuse to move them up. I don't even know why I made that many. Maybe because Feebas were extremely rare in the third generation games, and I just wanted a lot of their evolved form to offset that? I don't know.
Wow, this was a lot of me going on and on about Pokémon, though I won't say I expected otherwise, knowing myself.
and I should have sent a reply to that one.
As for the Suethor, my only question was if you were willing to help her. I'll introduce you to her if you are.
Regarding 6th Gen, note that I also asked for your FC. What is it? Mine is 4227 1030 6411. My Friend Safari is Ground-type, with Nincada, Diggersby, and Trapinch.
I have a few EV-trained Pokemon and IV-bred Pokemon that I'm waiting to transfer from 5th Gen with Pokebank. As for your Milotic, maybe you might want to surprise someone with it via Wonder Trade?
Not entirely sure how the introduction is going to take place, but I'm assuming that it will just be through you e-mailing us both one another's e-mail addresses or something of the sort.
Yeah, I didn't include my Friend Code because I'm not entirely sure how they work, and I wasn't wanting to be of further inconvenience if the transfer didn't work properly. The one time I tried to add someone through Friend Code alone, it just created a blank gray "provisional friend" card that didn't give me a new Friend Safari. Still not sure what went wrong there.
But, since you're probably better at this than I am and might be able to make it work:
FC: 5000-3090-5782 Fighting Friend Safari: Throh, Mankey, and Breloom
I'll be e-mailing her your information. You'll get a BCC (blind carbon copy).
Until the other person enters your FC on his 3DS, he's only listed as a "provisional friend" on yours.
Wasn't Swan's Egg already over and done with?
I'd better get to the cafeteria before they're all gone . . .
(I realized I forgot to mention something in my review, and decided this was the most amusing and elegant way of bringing it up. Sorry to be confusing.
--doctorlit)
Speaking about Agent Huinesoron, is he supposed to be a Tolkienverse Elf? What's his backstory?
And more importantly (though only Andy and Saphie can really answer this question), how did he get out of Suedom!Arda?
His backstory - insofar as he has one - will be revealed in a later mission (it's not a secret, just that it's already mission). Essentially he's an Exilic Noldo who died in the First Age, was allowed to return to life (probably a long time later), lived in Eressea, and then - somehow and for some reason, which I don't know - joined the PPC.
As for Suedom - I have to assume he got out the same way Jay and Acacia (and Architeuthis, I see) did - by waiting until Kate and Kira found the Bridge and, er, fixed things.
hS
I don't ever recall seeing a mission written in first-person before, so that was an interesting perspective. I chortled at a few bits, and definitely enjoyed the whole mission. it was good to see Mortic again, and I think I rather like Agent Huinesoron. :D
Re: the mini-Balrogs, I didn't have much of an IC explanation because nobody ever really asked for one, but on considering it I would venture that IC, as OOC, Miss Cam had had enough of trying to administrate the adoptions registry and handed the job over to someone willing and eager to do so. I would also venture that the adoptions agency headquarters is based in new Caledonia now to keep that particular pile of admin out of the way of the OFUM staff (and any students who might attempt something silly).
So, is the adoption agenter (that's a word, right?) the same person as Agent Cassie Young? Is she even called Cassie? And, most importantly, is/can she be referred to as Miss Cassie of OFUM - despite being based in New Cal?
hS
The lead admin of the agency is not Agent Cassie Young. I don't actually know what her full name is, I've just generally attached the name "Cassie" to the mysterious figure. Which I think is a decent alias, but can be extended if you like. Cass Zandra maybe, I kinda like the sound of that.
I do not think she can be referred to as a Miss of OFUM; Miss Cam didn't give me any permissions regarding the University itself and I'm reluctant to assume any authority in that setting which wasn't expressly given.
Lily actually went out and got a definitive answer from The Woman Herself about what is and isn't permitted with respect to OFUM; the answer is here. I think that could go either way on whether an Extraneous Miss would be appropriate or not; that being so, you're right that it's best to err on the side of awesome caution.
I'll probably keep things simple and just direct the mini to 'Cass at the Adoption Centre'. Anything else you want to do with the character is entirely your business (and if you end up giving her a different name, I'll just assume Agent hS knows one of her subordinates).
hS
I'd prefer to stay out of the administration of an OFU anyway. XD
And feel free to invent subordinates; they should preferably be capable of managing tha antics of several hundred very lively minis, fire-proof or -resistant, or both. :P
That was a very enjoyable read, and you managed to make it easy enough for me to follow the agents discussing the mistakes in the backstory/family trees despite me knowing nothing about them.
It was interesting to read a mission written in the first person, and I think the direct references to paragraph length and number added to that perspective.
There were some very nice touches in there - the interpretations of the horse and sidecar, and the bread castle, were both very amusing. And Mortic and Huinesoron's discourse on the rules of betting was funny, as well as being a nice bit of interaction between the two. But my personal favourite line has to be Mortic's 'Findulias, didn't you notice you were on fire?' - it just seemed to be a completely deadpan delivery that worked really well.
There was one bit that puzzled me, during the exodus:
'We found ourselves alongside the column of exiles, and had to quickly start walking to keep up. Luthien, apparently having noticed our reappearance out of the corner of her eye, turned to look at her. Thinking quickly, I spoke loudly to Mortic: "Do you think we will be called on to fight, brother?"
"I hope so, Earnescead," Mortic said smoothly. "I long to prove my skill on an enemy's flesh."
Luthien turned away, apparently satisfied,'
Who is the 'her' that Luthien turns to look at? From their reactions, it seems like Luthien has noticed the agents, but they're both male, aren't they?
Also, your smart quotes still seem to be misbehaving a little. It looks like you've used dumb quotes up until the bit about the Glittering Caves, but then switched to smart quotes for rest, which means that there's a few times where someone's speech ends with a dash, and an opening speech mark instead of a closing one. There's also a couple of occasions early on where you've got a single (smart) quote mark next to a double (dumb) one, and the single looks like it's a closing mark when it should be an opening one, such as when Mortic explains why one of the princesses is a mini.
The scene break which causes Huinesoron to invoke Estë looks a little wierd without any punctuation after the 'And then', it sort of looks like you forgot to finish writing the sentence. I'd usually use an ellipsis before and after such a break, but I don't think that would work given that it's supposed to happen abruptly. A dash before and after the break might work. It just looks wrong, to me, to end a line without any punctuation at all.
On a sort of side note, it was nice to see the mission badges again. I like the designs, and having them be for on-loan agents seems like a good way of fitting them in (I also think they'd work well as the TCDA's version of normal flashpatches).
Now, I could say that in his original appearance, Mortic was specifically written to not possess either sex or gender, and that maybe the 'her' was a deliberate callback to that... but no, it was a mistake. As were the smart quotes - whether they're on or not depends on where I'm writing the thing. All should be changed out now. Obligatory cursing of Toey has commenced.
As for the Estë scene - normally I would probably write it with a dash or ellipsis, but in this case I really like it that way. The feeling that the sentence was cut off is exactly what you should be feeling (and the next one starts with a lowercase 'it', to finish it off).
And I'm glad you enjoyed it! As far as I know there's no canonical examples of people in Arda betting on anything (which seems weird, actually...), so it was kind of fun trying to come up with a reason for hS to disagree with the outcome.
hS
PS: If you liked the first person format, Narto and Lou's missions are also written that way. Someday I may even finish their final mission... ~hS
