Subject: Mission Two Complete!
Author:
Posted on: 2015-06-25 16:55:00 UTC
In which the agents visit Victorian London. Thanks to SkarmorySilver and Desdendelle for beta reading despite not being familiar with Black Butler.
Questions? Comments? Concerns? All are and will forever be welcome here.
*scuttles off to write more of Mission Three and/or Interlude 1*
Great mission. I've never heard of Black Butler before. But if it's got Inspector Abbeline in it, I'll have to check it out.
One small nitpicking point... When the CAD said "Earl Ciel Phantomhive", that was wrong. The correct name for an Earl would be "Earl of Phantomhive", "Lord of Phantomhive", or just "Lord Phantomhive". That's assuming Phantomhive is the name of his Earldom. If it's his personal surname, you can call him something like "Ciel, Earl Phantomhive of [wherever]" but that's a bit of a mouthful so don't bother!
Anwyay, the important thing is, never get the name of his Earldom mixed up with his personal names.
But apart from that, it was a brilliant story. Loved the cats, and the idea the POVs are minis. And you made the setting clear enough that I could follow everything without knowing anything about the canon.
(Better fix the Wiki page to reflect that, too ^_^;)
... although I don’t know anything about "Black Butler".
Alas, I found one typo:
Seriously, my home fic had better transitions that that!
Should be "better transitions than that".
I liked how you handled the minis.
HG
Some thoughts:
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"Do you know how many non-working-class Black people lived in London back then?"
Yes. Not many. However, there were a LOT of black servants around, generally freed slaves or their descendants. Which means Miguel could quite easily be wearing a suit, if a slightly lower-quality one. Makes him look like the help for Vi and Chris.
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"Also, the royal palace looked off, probably because the Sue had called it a castle."
I assume that's Buck House you're talking about? Because there's quite a lot of royal palaces in London, and none of them look like castles. Indeed, there's a perfectly serviceable fortress in there. It's got a big ol' tower in it and it's in London. Hm. If only I could remember the blasted name... =]
(EDIT: Yes it is.)
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Hayato POV
POVs are about half as big again as their lowercase counterpart, the pov. Instead of going "snrf?" they go "Grnf." Additionally, rather than using the pov's method of scuttling up a character's back to perch on their head, the POV inflates itself with a lighter-than-air gas, presumably helium, and floats onto the character's head. Its frequent squeaky Grnfs are as a result of the gas leaking out, and its scuttly bits flail wildly in order to steer it in mid-air.
I am not a biologist.
I don't care.
Gimme the POV.
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"The cat—Ciel POV—looked Chris in the eye and swished his tail once."
So POVs are just minis?
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"She got her eye replaced! That’s definitely something I’d want to look at right away!"
For one thing, you're not supposed to keep glass eyes in at night.
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"A fourth Continuity Cat, this one with a scar over its right eye and shorter fur, appeared and ran from Ciel’s side to investigate/play with the other cats."
Violet Greenfield: crazy Continuity Cat lady. =]
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"The Words took her literally, and the Sue suddenly looked like a human-shaped blob of opaque reddish jelly in a dress."
Would you like a jelly baby?
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"Did they know about heart attacks in Victorian England?"
Yes. Yes they did.
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On the whole, I rather enjoyed that despite not being at all familiar with the canon.
But no POVs for Scapegrace.
0/1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.
Miguel wearing a less fancy suit than Chris' was my original idea, yeah. But I talked it over with someone I trust and decided it'd be less conspicuous to go with the poor sailor disguise. Maybe next time I'll and specify that my agents pack a DORKS, huh?
Yes, I was talking about Buck House. (Or whatever the Victorian equivalent to it was. Bloody beige-prose fanfiction.)
Sorry I denied you a POV. Would your agents like to adopt Ciel POV as compensation? I have this weird sense that either Wobbles or the Notary is a cat person. (Probably the Notary, and she'll probably punch me for saying such a thing. *braces self*)
...I feel like the glass eye comment was supposed to be in response to another line that got eaten. Is it?
Yeah, my RC's getting a little overrun with minis and/or cats XD
Thank you for the mental image.
Remind me: who are your agents again?
I'm just going for a pre-order :D
Here is the shareable link. Sorry about that!
First off, I'm not familiar with Black Butler, so no commentary on that aspect of the story. You did a good job explaining it to someone who only read a few chapters of it.
Typically mini-Sues are, like mini-Agents, tiny versions of the Sues. I'm not sure if I'm in favor of them being glittery versions of normal minis; while I like the idea of a Sue'd mini-Aragog or mini-Balrog, I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of hurting or killing glittery cats. I am a little oversensitive about violence towards cute animals, especially cats, but that bothered me a bit.
I found this exchange kind of confusing:
“Wait, what? He was in character before!” Violet said in surprise. “Why the sudden spike?”
“For one thing, the plot said so,” Chris replied. “For another, Sues generally know the rules exist, but think they’re stupid-ass rules and elect to ignore them. As you should know.”
I think, after looking it over, that you meant Violet to be asking "Why did the story have him act out of character?" which is the question Chris is answering. However, at first I thought she meant "What did he do that made him suddenly become so OOC?" making Chris's response kind of a non-sequitur.
I don't know the characters, so maybe I'm not in a position to comment, but I think Ciel and Sebastian's responses to the agents killing Hayato seemed a little blasé. I think most people would at least consider the possibility that the people attacking their ally were also a threat to them.
Other than those things, it was a good mission, and lots of fun to read.
Thanks for your opinion! I went with the "pink, glittery mini" route for Hayato POV and Hayato Ansastu because the Sue never really described herself (or anything else, really) anywhere that I saw. (I have a real talent for finding beige-prose fics, don't I?)
Yeah, I guess Ciel and Sebastian would've been a little more suspicious. That was what I was going for with his not-a-question about whether Miguel was fully human. (Honestly, to them, violence is a fact of life. My agents weren't angry with the nobility in general, either.) I'll keep your point in mind the next time something like this comes up on a mission.