Subject: Aaaaand mission plug!
Author:
Posted on: 2015-07-03 16:39:00 UTC
Do I win a prize? ^_^
Agents Sandra and Freckles are back, in possibly the PPC's fastest-written mission ever: Three AM
It has a gimmick (it's Sandra and Freckles, that's what I use them for), and I'd be interested to know a) how long it takes to become obvious, and b) how well it works.
And c) what you lot think of the mission, of course!
hS
They're so hard to find these days! ^^
No, all right, there's more to it than that. I've had an idea I want to try out, and I need a very specific kind of badfic.
-Bad slash/bad het; either will do.
-Safe for work (which is where I'm at!).
-Short. I mean really short, as in a few hundred words. I'd even take a drabble if you offered it (actually, that would be hilarious and you should).
-In a fandom I know. The best way to find this out is to post the fic and see. ^~
So if you remember running across a badfic that fits, or are interested in tracking one down - please do!
hS
By which I mean not 'is this a good piece of fanfiction?', but 'is this suitable for your vaguely defined purposes porpoises?'.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2621508/1/Three-AM
If not, the author has several other Star Wars universe (one of the few fandoms I know for certain you are familiar with) which feature slash in the summary.
- Irish
I was going to say 'no, mpreg will make what I've got in mind much too difficult'.
Then I remembered that a) I'm doing this for the challenge, and b) most sane people would say it was impossible anyway.
So I'll be taking that, thank you. ^_^
hS
Do I win a prize? ^_^
Agents Sandra and Freckles are back, in possibly the PPC's fastest-written mission ever: Three AM
It has a gimmick (it's Sandra and Freckles, that's what I use them for), and I'd be interested to know a) how long it takes to become obvious, and b) how well it works.
And c) what you lot think of the mission, of course!
hS
If you were a Pokemon, you'd be grass-type. Pokémon takes an accent; Grass-type takes a capital.
and tuned into the dialogue on the bed. This ought to be "tuned in to".
Padmé also needs an accent.
The intelligence report says it's Obi-Wan and Anakin.
and pulled the Intelligence report back up.
One of these needs to be changed, for the sake of consistency.
I am just as unperceptive as everyone else seems to be. I'm quite impressed by the speed with which you put this out, too.
I suppose that how well it works is informed by how not-obvious it is for so many people.
And I also liked the reference to OFUM. :-D
Nah, I've put them in, thanks. I'm not sure about 'tuned into' - surely that's how 'into' is meant to be used? Intelligence report has now been capitalised as standard. And thank you!
hS
"Tuned in" is a phrasal verb, rather than a verb and an adverb, so you can't replace the "in" and the preposition "to" that follows it with the single preposition "into".
"Tuned into" would mean that something is being tuned from one state into another (e.g. the musical instrument was tuned into C from B-flat).
Gah, I don't think I'm explaining this well. Do you see how "tuning" is different from "tuning in"? That's basically the root of it. You follow a verb with a preposition - either "into" in the first case, or "to" in the second - and they mean different things.
It's late, and I'm tired, and I just did half an hour's research to confirm this, so I hope I'm not coming across too rudely. Believe me, I'm impressed by how little there was to nitpick, especially given the speed at which you wrote it.
And you're welcome. :-)
Who am I to argue with half an hour's research?
So: thank you. Now I know something new. ^_^
hS
Just to get a coherent reason out there, for the record:
Phrasal verbs are idiomatic, so you can't separate or change the parts of it without losing the meaning of the idiom.
Feel free to do your own research; I've been wrong before. I just don't think I am in this case.
Clearly you have a time machine. That's the only reasonable explanation for how you got this mission done so quickly. And that, sir, is cheating!
Having said that... *squeee* astromechs! :)
Ahem, right, not sure what happened there... Must've been a glitch or something. I am of course far too mature to squee over ridiculously cute robots, and far too honest to lie about it. I'm glad we've got that cleared up.
As for the questions you asked:
a) about as long as it took for me to read through the mission, then the A/N at the end.
b) given that I didn't notice what you had done until you pointed it out, the only way I can describe how it worked is 'seamlessly'.
c) a good mission.
I liked the choice of disguise (I may have hinted at that earlier) - I don't recall seeing that one used before, which is always nice. I do however think it's a shame that you cheated (again! It's becoming a habit) with the droids' dialogue, even though you did have a good reason for it. I've been rereading a lot of the Expanded Universe recently, and there seems to be a trend in the later books to just give astromech speech normally, as you would for all the creatures that can speak Basic. The earlier books tended to describe the beeps that the mechs gave, letting you figure it out from the description, or give you another character's assumptions, or a reply from Threepio, etc., so that you could work out what had just been said. I think it's an interesting way of dealing with the language issues that came up in the films.
Obviously it wouldn't really have worked here, because with both of them communicating via beeps I think it would've been too difficult to get across all the details/subtleties of what was being said, but I must admit that I still found it slightly disappointing to just read their dialogue as if they hadn't donned their disguises.
Having said that, I never forgot that the characters were disguised - you included a several nice touches that worked as reminders. I particularly liked Freckles' response to being told to 'focus'.
All in all, nicely done.
- Irish
Ahem. Yeah, I don't think that would've worked when the only two characters both speak in bleeps. ^^ The first place I remember running across 'Artoo speaks in tongues' was in one of the Aaron Allston NJO books, where it was in a scene with Artoo as the third-person viewpoint character (which led to a lot of thinking about how easily manipulated Threepio is, as I recall); I think in that specific case it was okay, though it was probably italicised too...
Anyway, it still can't be as bad as the reverse: "Grrrr wrrowl raaargh!" said Chewbacca. Courtship of Princess Leia, how I despise that editorial decision. ^^
Anyway: thank you! Sorry for being slightly disappointing. Someday I may try an astromech/protocol droid pair to allow the use of bleeps (in fact, if you have another short SW slash that isn't by the same person, I'll consider doing it right away...).
hS
As far as the mission itself goes, my honest-to-God favorite part was the bit at the end where they discuss whether or not they would have reacted as strongly to it if it had been about different characters. I think that's an interesting issue for PPC agents in general - how objective can you be when you're dealing with badfic about someone you care for? How objective should you be? And what about when it's not just a character you admire, but someone who, from your perspective, is a real person? Definitely an entry for the list of "themes I want to explore at some point."
On the gimmick: I think it only worked because of how short the mission was, and because there weren't really any action scenes (meaning "scenes where the agents take direct actions," not specifically fight scenes). The characters felt a little like talking heads at times, and it bordered on being more of an MST than a mission.
I think part of the reason I didn't catch on, by the way, is that you had a pair of female characters and a pair of male characters. In that situation, you actually need to avoid overusing pronouns when you're describing things, lest you run into the Pronoun Problem. This is also why I cheated and specifically made a mixed-gender agent pair.
As far as wider implications go, I can accept that gender might not be necessary as a grammatical construct, but I think it's still an integral part of a lot of people's identities. We don't need it for our language to make sense, we need it because it's part of expressing who we are. Not saying you're denying that, but it's just my feelings on the issue.
Re: the gimmick - there were always going to be factors that aided it, and I admit I skewed the mission heavily to keep them in place. But even so! It's not so much 'she' I missed as 'her' - Sandra could never turn her head, for instance (though, as I said somewhere, in actual usage you'd just see 'their' all over the place).
As to gender: I accept that, since gender exists, people can, do, and should identify by way of it. But... well, perhaps I lack an understanding of the subject. But I find it difficult to come up with an attribute which needs to be called 'male' (or 'female', for that matter) without it being a) sexist (er, genderist?), b) sexual (which of course isn't gender), or c) a societal negative which would be better done away with (eg, 'men tend to be promoted further than women'). But that maybe reflects a lack of imagination on my part?
hS
I didn't spot a thing. Which probably means that it works very well.
(Sorry, my brain is just melting in the current heat wave. I cannot think of anything more to say.)
HG
Great work on the mission. I will admit, I missed the gimmick entirely until the note at the end - granted, it may have been because I was trying to hard to find said gimmick and Failed A Spot Check, hard. I enjoyed reading this, and I especially liked Elrond's grading methods!
I must admit, I did not even notice the gimmick until the ending author's note. Shows you how perspective I am. ^^; But I liked it; that was certainly interesting.
Also, "Worse: the hobbits got Elrond to grade the quiz." Sandra's lights flickered at the memory. "The only answer deemed acceptable was 'IT ISN'T' in all caps, though I think one of us got extra credit for adding a hundred-word rant in Sindarin about the subject."
This had me rolling.
Overall, excellent work! I enjoyed it immensely :) And now you put me to shame, writing a mission in a few hours like that. I gotta step up my game! ^_~