Subject: Oh, and while I'm at it... New mission!
Author:
Posted on: 2015-05-28 18:07:00 UTC
I was going to put my other RCs in the spotlight after my previous Floater's mission, but then I found a fic on the Claimed list a while ago and I couldn't resist. Enjoy! :D
"Snake Eyes"
A few comments:
-Do we really need huge blocks of the badfic quoted in there? Parts of this verge on MSTing, which is a wonderful art, but not what PPC missions are about.
-Your agents have a nasty habit of not speaking like people (of any species). A random example:
“Voldemort never once transformed into an animal,” he said angrily. “The whole deal about the snake he has on him is because he has a pet snake. And as for proper Animagi, it takes at least a month to prepare for such a transformation! You can’t just get magical powers and a new form in an instant!”
That's an infodump right there. And your mission is fairly liberally littered with them. You don't have to demonstrate that you know every little thing that's wrong with the story, y'know. And... people don't talk like that.
-Talking heads. No, your agents aren't quite literally talking heads - but they really don't feel like they're in the same room as the characters. Go check out a Jay and Acacia mission or two - they spend all their time hiding behind things, straining to hear, etc etc. Your agents are facing basilisks, but seem to be wandering around in the open.
-And... you know how there are some missions you want to reread, because you love the way the agents interact? This just... doesn't do that. Other than canon knowledge, I didn't see anything to really distinguish the agents from each other, let alone from other agents. They were just... two snarky infodumpers hanging around in plain sight.
That's the criticism, I guess. Here's the constructive:
-Go write out what defines your agents. Pick out the things that make them different from each other. Work out ways to integrate those into your missions.
-Give yourself a tight limit for badfic line-usage. One sentence per page? Ten sentences total? It's up to you, but it would be a serious improvement. I'm here to read your writing, not some which you've acknowledged is bad.
-Assume that everyone will notice your agents if they get in their line of sight or make a loud noise. Figure out where your team needs to hide. Give the canons and badfic characters reactions when your agents inevitable start yelling. Dumbledore isn't going to ignore someone ranting in the corner of his office!
Okay, that's enough of that. I think your agents are excellent in concept (though I do have a weakness for maniraptorans, so y'know); I think there's a lot you could explore with them. I also think it's great that you're actually writing missions, which is more than I can say for most people (eg, me!). But I also think that your missions could be much tighter, cleaner, and more engaging.
hS
"Oh, and by the way, the Basilisk is born from a rooster’s egg hatched by a toad."
I don't think roosters lay eggs.
I don't think basilisks exist, either. Remember, this is fiction that we're talking about.
So good, that I think many badfic authors have and would have taken it into consideration for their work.
My point is not 'since this is fiction, you can do whatever you want and be inconsistent'. It's 'since this is fiction, it's not going to 100% adhere to reality'. Otherwise, you won't have Middle-earth, for example; while internally consistent, it's about as realistic as, well, a rooster laying eggs or a basilisk.
As long as a fictional world adheres to its own rules, you can believe that carpets can fly and dragons are real, for instance. When those internal rules are broken, so is the suspension of disbelief. For example, if it's established magic can't bring the dead back to life, then the characters shouldn't break this rule. If they do, you get canon Sues and Stus as well as plotholes.
Roosters really were executed due to supposedly laying eggs back in the day for precisely this reason. According to Wikipedia, "The Venerable Bede was the first to attest to the legend of the birth of a basilisk from an egg by an old cockerel, and then other authors added the condition of Sirius being ascendant."
The HP wiki says that any chicken's egg can be used to make a Basilisk if it's hatched by a toad, though, so I'll defer to the HP continuum first in that case.
I haven't read the medieval myth so that's one thing I didn't know.
As for the "any chicken", I checked the harrypotterwikia and unless you were talking about any other wiki, the closest thing to "any chicken" was "a chicken".
Did you mean that because the description said "chicken" and not "hen" that it could be a rooster's egg?
Then again, the first version of the basilisk myth I heard (after Harry Potter) stated that the rooster's egg had to be yolkless, which I guess has a certain kind of Fridge Logic about it since, well, would the rooster be able to fertilize its own egg and okay this discussion is getting weird. :P
But generally, people don't specify hens lay eggs when they say 'that chicken laid an egg' because it's assumed the layer was a hen. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say the rooster doesn't come into the Harry Potter myth.
Ripper suddenly felt something on his leg, and looked down to see a spider with a body as big as a man’s fist crawling upon his pants. Startled, the disguised Deinonychus kicked his leg and sent Gryphandor the mini-Acromantula tumbling to the floor.
Only fist-sized? I don’t remember whether Meir Brin told the actual size of mini-Aragogs or left this to the readers imagination, but I do remember that they drag fangirls around at the "Hogwarts Fanfiction Academy" and use them as yoyos. Even if they are surprisingly strong for their size, I cannot imagine fist-sized spiders doing this. (And the mental image of a Hobbit-sized Acromantula trying to scuttle up Ripper’s leg is hilariously creepy.)
The agents exchanged glances. The mini-Acromantula inside Ripper’s bag clicked its sharp pincers. (page 9)
I don’t question whether Gryphandor fits in there and when and how he got in...
The C-CAD started to smolder again. The mini-Acromantula hissed at the scent of smoke, and Ripper hastily shoved the device back into his bag. (page 10)
... but wait, isn’t Gryphandor in there? And when did he get out again?
Ripper nodded in agreement, and followed the disguised Skarmory through the next portal – but not before letting the mini into his bag for safe-keeping. (page 11)
Looks like a continuity error to me.
And there’s a typo:
"For all of these crimes, plus a few more than we cannot care less about, you are sentenced to die, " Ripper finished.
"than" should be "that".
HG
I think one of Voyd's missions had him "covered in giant spiders", so it's possible that the mini-Acromantulas are fairly small, even if they're bigger than fist-sized. I've reworded the sentences to make the scale of the minis more ambiguous, but I guess that was worth bringing up. (The thought of Ripper getting mobbed by a dog-sized spider is indeed humorous, though. It's a shame I couldn't find a place for Falchion to make any comparisons to Ariados or Galvantula! XD)
Or does this change later in the mission?
~DF
Aren't they called mini-Aragogs? I'd include a link to the wiki pages in question, but it's harder to do on mobile.
~DF
... is what the wiki page in question says.
Minis are usually based on a species, not an individual, but Meir Brin wrote "The Hogwarts Fanfiction Academy" when only four books had been published, so nobody except JKR knew that Aragog and his kin are Acromantula.
HG
I can't remember reading any previous missions where mini-Acromantula was used, though. Is it not very common to use it, or do I just not read the HP missions that do?
~DF
In fact, I don't think I've ever read a mission with mini-Acromantula instead of mini-Aragogs.