Things we enjoyed:
-the bit about the agents having to get used to their new Hobbit heights.
-the exchange about not taking the bet — “the amount is too low” — is pretty funny.
-“For those who have never experienced tense changes, imagine being on a roller-coaster, feeling like you’re about to throw up, and being dunked in icy cold water and scalding hot water at the same time for good measure.” Fantastic line.
-the bit with the Orc disguises.
-the Sue’s execution is well-written and plays well on the Sue’s tendency to tell, not show. The use of logic to cut her down was also pretty fun.
Things we spotted
(Betas, please take note of this and the next section as well. We don’t mean to embarrass you; we would, however, like you to grow as betas, and so we ask that you please have a look at what we found. It should give you a better idea of what to look for while betaing):
-LotR should be credited to Tolkien in the disclaimer.
-we adapted this straight from the chat:
“How are they cuddling mini-Balrogs without mittens, though?”
“...very painfully, I expect, Des.”
I think that speaks for itself.
-the plural of continuum is continua, although this does appear in dialogue and can be inferred to be the speaker’s mistake.
-Aura of Smoothness should be Aura of Smooth
-Butterbeer is a tasty drink from the Potterverse. Barliman Butterbur is the owner of the Prancing Pony. Frodo should be talking to the latter in the mission narration.
-“Khajiit hate to stop this, but we must continue the mission, yes?” Hate should be hates.
-urple is not a proper noun, and should not be capitalized except at the beginning of a sentence.
-the agents falling through plotholes and time warps is a bit odd — generally, agents are dragged along by the story. The plotholes especially is a little odd. Falling through a time warp sounds fine to at least one of us as a spin-off-specific thing (assuming there was, in fact, a time warp/distortion there).
-speaking of time warps, why is “Time-Warping” capitalized and hyphenated? At the very least, it should be lower-case. Same with time warp, unless you’re talking about the song (which is “Time Warp”, no hyphen), which you don’t seem to be.
-“Soon the two agents found a nearby bedroom in which they could rest. The two agents agreed on night shifts so that they wouldn’t miss the company’s departure, and then bid each other goodnight.” Using ‘the two agents’ twice here is repetitive.
-“...he had met in Skyrim acknowledged the gods there, and hailed at least one from time to time.” Hailed looks pretty odd in that context — to quote DawnFire from the chat: “'hailed at least one from time to time' to me looks like 'occasionally stood at some distance away, waved their arms, and called, "Hallo over there! Well met!”’”
Much like that “ ‘ “ combination at the end of the above sentence, it looks pretty strange. However, unlike the combination, it’s also not quite right — gods are neither taxis nor people one meets at random. The word you probably want is ‘worshipped’, ‘swore by,’ or maybe ‘prayed to’.
-crash dummies generally go into the fic before the agents do, unless the agents want to be Sued (or forgot, cue the comedy!) In this case, since the dummy immediately begins to take on the Sue’s characteristics, the agents should’ve tossed it in first — otherwise, one or both of them should be starting to look like a Sue before they inflate it.
-on the subject of crash dummies: “Natalie inflated the crash dummy, which gained black hair and green eyes (though not elven ears, for some reason)” The ‘for some reason’ looks a little strange to some of us (read: Des and Ix), since it seems to imply that you are sure that Tolkienverse Elves ought to have special ears — accepted canon (read: some other people and our own hS) is generally that they’re leaf-shaped. Movieverse more or less supports this. If this is a comment on the Sue deliberately saying she’s an Elf but either ignoring the ears or stating that she has rounded ones, that should be made clearer (or else just take off ‘for some reason’, which also rather implies that maybe there’s a problem with the dummy.)
-further notes on the subject of crash dummies: “To use a crash dummy, shove the dummy into the fic first, so that the Sue inhabits the dummy instead of an agent. Crash dummies can be assassinated just like normal Sues; upon death, they turn back into crash dummies and can be folded back into a cube” (from the wiki) Unless this is a new breed of crash dummy, it shouldn’t be re-cubing on its own.
-from Iximaz: “I rode a draft horse named Bear when I was ten. Seventeen hands, he was a monster. So why is the unicorn being ‘big as a draft horse’ a charge?”
-Natalie calls Gandalf “the Gray Wizard”, but he’s never called that in-canon; the closest is ‘the Grey Pilgrim’. While this isn’t too much of a stretch, especially considering the Blue Wizards are a Thing, it’s a bit irksome, especially the gray/grey confusion.
-time compression ran rampant on the agents' end. They slept, what, three times in this? We didn't get the sense they were in the fic for very long.
-there was a lot of Talking Heads Syndrome in the mission — we don't really see the agents hiding behind things, or where they are in relation to the scene. We’d advise writing in a bit more of their actions — looking at each other, glaring at the fic, writing down charges, rolling their eyes, eating Bleeproducts, ducking behind trees… that sort of thing.
-why did the Za’kiir take three days to kill the unicorn? If it was because he wanted the chance to hunt something, fine, but we aren’t told why he’d want to waste time killing a CAF when there was work to be done killing the Sue. Conversely, if the CAF was just that good at evading him, perhaps that should be mentioned more clearly.
-“This one is a Mary-Sue!” He punctuated the words with a thrust that she barely managed to block, as his speech fell back into the half-used third person Khajiiti used for those who were not close friends.” Khajiiti is a mini-Cliffracer; the correct plural is Khajiit.
The inconsistency section:
-Plothole and plot hole — each has been used once. Please pick one (plothole is the usual one) and stick to it.
-Your capitalization of remote activator is inconsistent. Generally, people go with lowercase; however, you’ve used ‘Remote Activator’ twice, and ‘remote activator’ twice more. At the very least, please choose one and stick with it.
-‘Hobbits’ is also inconsistent in capitalization. You’ve used both ‘Hobbits’ and ‘hobbits’ in dialogue and narration. It should be ‘hobbits’, say we, after looking in the source material. ‘Generic Hobbits’, however, is probably fine, as Generic anything tends to take a capital IIRC.
-Please be consistent in your use of em-dashes or their equivalents (in this case, the equivalents). Generally, you’ve used a single hyphen with spaces around it, except at the end of a sentence, where you’ve used a single hyphen with no spaces. However, several times you use a double hyphen (generally at the end of a sentence which is being cut off — where you’ve previously used a single hyphen without spaces). We find that em-dashes are easier to read than hyphens with two spaces around them (or even single hyphens without spaces), but with whatever you want to use — consistency is key.
-You’re also inconsistent with Mary-Sue versus Mary Sue. Either one is acceptable — but using both in one story without a good reason isn’t.
-The word ‘Elf’ takes a capital in Tolkienverse, although ‘elven’ and ‘elvish’ do not. Therefore, ‘Elf-wizard hybrid’ should have the capital e. You also have one instance of ‘Elf’ not being capitalized. In addition, you’ve used ‘elvish’ with a capital letter.
-Response center is inconsistently capitalized. Spin-offs use either Response Center or response center— but Response center in the middle of a sentence is definitely incorrect.
Some concluding thoughts:
Overall, we think this is okay for a first mission. The story is mostly solid, and it certainly has its amusing moments, but as it currently is — it needs a major clean-up. The characters themselves seem to be coming along nicely — we expect that they’ll end up being pretty good as they gain screen time and character development. However, the sheer number of errors — enough to fill three and a bit pages in a GDoc — detracted greatly from the story and made it, well, subpar at best.
Betas — please be sure that, when you beta, you’re checking mechanics as well as character and canon references. (You’ll notice that, while we’ve had a lot to say about the mechanics and some things to say about the canons, we’ve said very little about the characters themselves.) Please, if you feel that your knowledge of PPC canon is lacking, or even if you’re just unsure of things — a) try the Wiki or, if it’s a specialised question, the Board, and b) let the author know. There’s no shame in informing someone that they might need a beta with knowledge or skills that you can’t provide. We promise.
—Ix, Des, and DF