Subject: Look,
Author:
Posted on: 2015-08-12 06:23:00 UTC
all I'm saying is, if you're gonna be a serious dragonrider, there's a certain amount of chasing and running and being on fire that goes on. We've all been there. Dragons don't tame themselves, ya know. If you can't take the heat, get off the Nightmare.
(( Who knows how she intercepted the carrier pigeon, but then again, who knows how Wobbles learned the contents of a private e-mail? ))
So this took a lot longer than it should have, but we're finally ready to publish our co-write!
"What's Latin for 'You Suck'?"
In which Nume crushes Rina's dreams and their partners try to make it better.
Continua: Ranger's Apprentice x The Lord of the Rings
Rating: PG/K+ - Unintentional cruelty to animals, intentional cruelty to agents.
Betas: Desdendelle and Phobos.
We hope you enjoy it!
If any agents are interested in acquiring a very nice set of oak doors carved with images of Middle-earth, including one panel of Smaug burning down Dale, please contact Supernumerary and Ilraen at RC 999. They really want to get them out of the RC, so they'll entertain any reasonable offer.
~Neshomeh & Iximaz
More Nume and Ilraen!
Sorry, can't think of too much feedback right now. The RinaNume arguments (and the bit at the very end) helped me get a clearer picture of both of them. Also, it's nice to see Ilraen growing a spine.
That trouble of being unable to be diplomatic towards colleagues you just plain don't want to be working with. Yeah, I know it well...
He tried, though, he really did.
What do you mean, you can't tell? {; P
Thanks for reading!
~Neshomeh
He'd do this to our good surplus-to-requirements woe-is-me-woe-woe-and-thrice-woe friend:
Yeah, he'd pretty much deserve it.
Part of me really wants to defend him, because he DID go through some crap and DOES have a redeeming quality or two, but in light of what's going on up-Board, I suspect the best defense is simply to say that you are supposed to laugh at his misery. It is the price he pays for dealing with his issues poorly.
~Neshomeh, who does not condone bullying for any reason, thank you very much.
Irish Samurai got basically everything I wanted to say, and then some. For my part, only one thing stuck out, and I don't know if this is even an error:
"I suppose we can neuralyze them to get rid of any uncanonical knowledge they might have. I doubt the MID has settings for Wolf or Fox..."
What is a MID?
The wiki is my friend.
HG
To: RC#999 [console10234h23045aa810923.rc999.DIC]
From: Agent Huinesoron [eagleshade.console1325897ng23404402tr.rc7455.DOGA]
Subject: Doors?
Agents Supernumerary and Ilraen,
Rumour has it you've come into possession of some very nice Middle-earth doors? In memory of Nargothrond, I would be very interested in taking them off your hands. If you're interested, I can offer you some 'archery things' (they're covered in bells and whistles and shoot arrows by themselves) and a 'sword,bow' (which rather has to be seen to be believed).
Agent Huinesoron, DOGA
To: Agent Huinesoron [eagleshade.console1325897ng23404402tr.rc7455.DOGA]
From: RC #999 [console349376sn2066720bc102875.rc999.DIC]
Subject: Re. Really? I thought he quit.
Agent Huinesoron,
Thank you very much for your offers. My partner and I do not have much use for weapons, I'm afraid, but we are intrigued by Men in Black technology nonetheless. Could you give us some details about the particular weapons in question?
I am told it is improper to discuss any other bids we may or may not have received. Please be assured that we shall pursue the offer that most interests us without favoritism or bias.
Agent Ilraen
RC 999
Department of Implausible Crossovers
To: Ilraen-Aroline-Fothergill [ilraen.console10234h23045aa810923.rc999.DIC]
From: Agent Huinesoron [eagleshade.console1325897ng23404402tr.rc7455.DOGA]
Subject: Re: Re. Just a thought.
Agent Ilraen,
I have no idea why former-agent Illian would convince the abhorrence to turn you and himself into the same person in her multiverse. Who can possibly understand the machinations of House Feanor? I was simply pointing out that he may not be terribly trustworthy; though as a Kinslayer that may have been obvious...
Needless to say, I don't think you and he are one and the same in this multiverse.
Now, let's put aside that whole unpleasant issue. The technology actually comes from an ill-defined crossover. Not of all it is weaponised, in fact: I have several vials of purified midi-chlorians if those would be of interest? Also a Ghostbusters containment unit modified with Time Lord technology - I believe the correct analogy is 'ghost-trap of infinite holding'.
If these are not of interest, I have the weapons too, as I said.
Agent Huinesoron, DOGA
{{This got easier when I went back and read the mission; I'd forgotten it was a crossover.}}
To: Dafydd Illian [external address not listed]
From: RC #999 [console349376sn2066720bc102875.rc999.DIC]
Subject: Re. Details, sliateD
Ex-Agent Dafydd,
Excellent! We will be very pleased to accept your offer of two fire-lizard eggs and the Magnetonic Pressure Oven. (Nume insists the latter is likely nothing more than a microwave oven with brass bits and steam plus the hazard of a pressure cooker, but nevertheless.)
When would be a convenient time for you to come to HQ and make the exchange? And, do you have some means of transporting the doors yourself, or will we need to arrange something?
Agent Ilraen
RC 999
Department of Implausible Crossovers
Dafydd says he's free any time, and can handle the doors by himself (probably with more steamtech, I dunno). hS says no thanks and goes off in a sulk.
And I think you should definitely do a hatching RP. ^_^ I'm not sure whether it would be better with you(?) RPing each hatchling in turn, or people just RPing their own, but you should definitely do it.
hS
all I'm saying is, if you're gonna be a serious dragonrider, there's a certain amount of chasing and running and being on fire that goes on. We've all been there. Dragons don't tame themselves, ya know. If you can't take the heat, get off the Nightmare.
(( Who knows how she intercepted the carrier pigeon, but then again, who knows how Wobbles learned the contents of a private e-mail? ))
Whatcha get if you trip over and land gut-first onto a console, I suppose.
(So I see Nume already has an ICEP address in the original post about them. You'll have to imagine I've corrected it.)
(hS)
It appears at the beginning of "Blood Raining Night." I have a vague sense that I was retconning an older one, but I dunno; it doesn't appear in the original ICEP thread. I'll fix it in the address book, in any case.
The elf bidding war is very entertaining, and I'll come up with a reply or three when I've got a decent amount of time to work with. ^_^
~Neshomeh
Well, semi-skimmed really, but anyway: it was fun. I thought the repeated charge lists towards the end rather dragged things down, but that's coming from the person who once published a mission that didn't even bother to get that far, so take it with as much salt as you like.
(If I had the energy, I'd do a Terri Review... but I don't at the moment. Swowwy.)
hS
You will be wanting to look in the archive for a post from me (or one of mine) dated around 30 September 2011.
http://starshadowhall.tripod.com/ppc/rc999/08wlys.html
Looks like I didn't get the "http://" in there when I copied the URL before. Sigh. This is what I get for not testing it.
~Neshomeh
But you don’t get away with this:
"This is extremely unpleasant," muttered Ilraen, wiping stands of bedraggled hair out of his eyes.
I assume you meant “strands”.
Irish beat me to the "detangler", and how didn’t I see the mini-Barog? Fallen into the old trap of imagining seeing what should be there?
HG
It was very entertaining, and you guys did a good job of explaining what was going on. I don't know anything about Ranger's Apprentice, but I was still able to easily follow that side of the mission.
The character interactions were brilliant, especially the stuff between Nume and Rina (I guess that went about as well as could be expected), and Ilraen and Zeb trying to do damage control on it. And I thought the way that Rina was showed as being unused to her new strength was a nice touch.
There was a lot of good scenes and nice lines. The bits that stuck in my mind particularly are:
- The bit where Nume refused Rina's help until she could 'string more than three words together' and she arrived saying 'See? That was four words.'. I thought that was a very good line on Rina's part.
- Nume's 'Tell me about it. Not literally' and Ilraen's reaction.
- All four of them having to cram into the wardrobe at one point. I couldn't really tell who was supposed to be saying which line, but that didn't make that scene any less funny.
- The exchange between Nume and Ilraen about carelessness:
"I have never seen such carelessness."
"Yes you have," Nume said.
"Well, not toward horses."
I just found that last line very amusing.
- Silens being dealt with using a weapon that she'd misused earlier was a nice touch (and the way that scene played out with Nume trying to charge her before it was technically too late was nicely done).
- And Nume going all 'drill sergeant' on the random orcs was brilliant. I really like his lines there.
There were a few bits and pieces that I'm not sure about:
- Nume and Ilraen were usually referred to as 'disentanglers', but there was one instance of calling them 'detanglers'. I know both terms can be applied to DIC agents (actually, the wiki page says 'untanglers' rather than 'detanglers', but it still makes sense as a name), but it just looks a bit odd when you use one term half a dozen times, and then a slightly different term just once - it just looks like a mistake to me.
- When Middle Earth shows up he gets referred to on one occasion as a mini-Barog (a mini-mini, one of the rarest creatures encountered by the PPC!).
- I was slightly puzzled by one of the earlier C-CAD readings '[Charlie Treaty. Human female. Uncanon. 48% Sue and rising.]'. Usually the percentages refer to how OOC a canon character is, and characters get classified as either: canon, bit, OC or Sue. It just looks a bit odd to me to see someone being classed as '48% Sue' (might just be that I'm not familiar with the kind of readings you get from a C-CAD).
- I was also puzzled by Rina's explanation of why the mini-Kalkara was so tall. It basically seems to be 'the original thing is tall, so the mini version is tall', but seven foot isn't that tall. If it were seventy feet then I could buy that explanation. As it is, it seems like her explanation should be more along the lines of 'yeah, Ranger's Apprentice has giant minis for some reason'.
- Also, regarding Nume's dialogue, he uses 'Christ' a couple of times, but there's a couple of times where he uses 'god'. If he's using 'Christ', shouldn't he be using 'God'? (There are a few times where he uses it at the beginning of a sentence, where it gets capitalised, but the couple of times he uses it mid-sentence it's uncapitalised). I think I might have asked about that before, but I can't remember what the answer was.
All in all, very enjoyable :)
- Irish
"Barog," "detanglers," and "stands" have been fixed.
Re. "Christ," I don't think you can de-capitalize it like you can "god," otherwise I would—"god" is uncapitalized to reflect Nume's status as a non-believer. I think the difference is that there are gods other than that God, but there aren't any christs other than that Christ. (And my browser flags up lowercase "christ.")
I looked over the original appearances of the C-CAD, and there is an instance of it identifying a character as having a 1 in 3 chance of Suedom. A percentage makes as much sense to me, possibly more.
Iximaz will have to address the mini-Kalkaras, since she's the coordinator for the Ranger's Apprentice OFU.
Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed it! ^_^
~Neshomeh