IÂ’m glad you enjoyed it.

Red Dwarf Mission! by the Irish Samurai on 2015-07-23 23:25:00 UTC Reply

Skeet and Amy finally have a second mission!

This time they're hunting an annoying Sue in the classic British sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf. This is a new continuum for the PPC, so there is no page for it yet on the wiki, but the curious can find out information here.

Out of interest, what's the current advice on when to create continua pages? I can make one if I have to, but I'm not sure if it's worth it when there's only a single mission for this continuum.

Hope you all enjoy the mission, any comments will be greatly appreciated. It feels good to be posting stories again :)

- Irish

I liked the built-in assassination method, by Hieronymus Graubart on 2015-07-25 16:16:00 UTC Reply

... and Amy’s reaction to it.

Some technical errors:

The skutter stopped by the two agents and waggled its head at the mess near their feet, then trundled back back down the corridor, presumably to fetch the necessary cleaning supplies.
Obvious repetition.

She also objected to him calling her a child, despite that fact that she was one ...
Shouldn’t this be "the fact that"?

At that, the Sue let a gasp of fear ...
I suspect that a word may be missing there.

HG

Glad you like it :) by the Irish Samurai on 2015-07-25 21:09:00 UTC Reply

And thanks for pointing out those errors, corrections have now been applied.

- Irish

Yay! by Neshomeh on 2015-07-24 19:17:00 UTC Reply

I don't know much about Red Dwarf—in fact, I think the first episode is all I've actually seen—but it's always seemed like something I SHOULD like, so it's nice to see it in a mission. {= )

Technical notes first, because that's how my brain operates:

Somehow, your four betas appear to have missed a number of incorrect periods in dialogue. Basically, any time you've got dialogue in the formula of "Words words words," verbed Character (or Character verbed), you need a comma at the end of the speech, not a period. The first one of these in the mission is this:

“Looks like you’ve lost a bit of weight recently, like, in the last few seconds.” Amelia said
There are also assorted comma issues throughout, but I don't really want to make a list of them here. I could take a crack at the doc in Suggestion mode if you like, though. I've got some free time coming up this weekend.

Regarding the actual content of the mission, I liked it! I like how you set up the things that happen to Skeet ahead of time, like with the CAD cartridge (interesting idea, btw) and the sleeping bag. I'd think that knowing what's going to happen would make it less funny, but actually the suspense of waiting for it to happen makes it work for me.

I also really like what you did with Amy at the end. It's always interesting to see assassins having moral qualms about what they're doing. I look forward to seeing how this plays out for her in future stories.

The agents' interactions in general are good, too. It's clear they're still getting to know each other and aren't quite sure how to behave, especially Amy when she was all happy that she'd been helpful and then found out otherwise. Ouch.

So, all in all, nice work, and it's good to have you back. {= )

Oh, and about creating a wiki page—I'd say go for it. I want to say I've seen at least one other Red Dwarf mission, though I could be wrong, and I know Agent Milask is either from that continuum or at least heavily based on the Cat. It doesn't have to be a huge page, just enough to give the basic idea.

~Neshomeh

IÂ’m glad you enjoyed it. by the Irish Samurai on 2015-07-25 21:03:00 UTC Reply

Out of interest, how easy did you find the mission to follow? This was partly an experiment to see how well I could write a mission in a continuum that I'm not expecting most people to be that familiar with.

I thoroughly recommend Red Dwarf, it's one of my favourite comedy shows. If you've seen the first episode and enjoyed it then I think you'll like all the rest. Although I think that an American version was made, which did terribly - haven't seen it myself, but that's what I remember hearing. I'm not sure if the episode you saw was from the British or American version, but I'm recommending the British one :)

Yes, I remember being told about full stops at the end of dialogue before. Unfortunately that was so long ago that I'd forgotten it when writing this. I'm a little shaky on the technical side of writing dialogue, because all of my recent writing lessons have been about how to write technical reports - and there's surprising little dialogue in those. I think my brain just has a tendency to default to 'sentences end with full stops'.

I've sent you a link to the doc (you may have seen that already), so yeah I'd appreciate any further comments you have.

I'm glad you like the actual content and character interactions - the bits that you picked out are among my favourite little scenes from this mission.

Skeet and Amy are still getting to know each other (even if their first mission was a few years ago; in universe it's only meant to be a couple of days). I was hoping that would come across, and it sounds like I succeeded.

I'll start putting a Red Dwarf page together for the wiki

Thanks for all your comments.

- Irish

Some thoughts by Pippa's Ghost on 2015-07-24 15:54:00 UTC Reply

That Avani was a real brat. But I loved the way you killed her off. That was simple but fitting.

Thanks. by the Irish Samurai on 2015-07-25 09:43:00 UTC Reply

Yeah, she was kind of a brat. And I always like it when the assassination method can be unique to the canon - this one happened to come with such a method built in, which was nice and serendipitous.

I'm glad you liked it.

- Irish