As always, my reviews contain my honest (and occasionally blunt) opinions. I am not trying to be cruel or mean-spirited, and apologize if I come off that way. It is not my intention.
First off, your characters didn’t quite sit well with me. Their characterization seemed rather flat at times. I did like that Sarah was being tested, but I feel like not enough was done to stress that through the story. As for the other characters, Lapis in particular felt strange to me. Her speech and thoughts sometimes felt more in line with someone much older than she actually is. Slightly relating to that, I’m not a fan of using agents so young. Fifteen feels like a healthy bare minimum for Action Department duties.
I didn’t see the need for the action scene in part one. It seemed to be just an excuse to one, have your characters slightly show off; and two, put in another tickling scene (a phenomenon which I will address below). Nothing seemed to be added by it.
Finally, I really don’t like this tendency for your fics to devolve into massive battles that usually involve canonical characters. I’ve said this multiple times: PPC agents are not soldiers. PPC agents are not James Bourne-esque spies. PPC agents are certainly not James Bond-esque spies. If any sort of canonical comparison is to be made, PPC agents are (at least in my mind) like the original cast of Red vs. Blue: ill-trained, snarky, and stuck in an unenviable position that occasionally involves killing something but mostly involves standing around watching stuff. And we certainly do not get the canonicals involved.
There were also some little details that stuck in my mind:
You have a tendency to overuse the parenthetical aside in your writing. By that, I mean separate one-line instances (separated in a sentence like so). These feel too much like author’s notes. I feel like a lot of those could be either excised entirely or made into actual sentences/paragraphs.
Was the canonical Pit being made aware of the PPC something that happened in the previous mission that I just missed? Didn’t they neuralize him? Canonicals with knowledge of the PPC should be reserved for what are essentially gods. Fourth wall breakers should, at best, only be able to see agents when they are alerted to their presence or, as Roger Rabbit put it, “only when it’th funny.” Otherwise, we’ll be flooded with characters that know about the PPC. We’re supposed to be a secret society, remember?
You have some moments of divergent POV (such as on page 12, when Cupid is getting swarmed by the writhing mass), which can make for some awkwardly phrased moments. Typically with third person, paragraphs follow around one character. When another character acts, speaks, or thinks, you make a new paragraph.
You have multiple moments of telling rather than showing scattered throughout the mission.
Is this supposed to be a specific version of Smash Bros.? I ask because you threw in multiple characters (Master Hand, Crazy Hand, Ice Climbers) that are not in the present Wii U version. Did the author of the badfic do that? If that is the case, it should be marked as a charge. Also, I don’t recall Donkey Kong talking in any canon outside of the CGI cartoon show.
Finally, I want to talk about the tickling. This might get a little rant-ish, so heads up.
Back when I betaed one of your older mission, I recommended that you split off the tickling scenes into a separate side story. If I recall my notes correctly, I was concerned that said scenes upset the pacing of the piece and added nothing to the overall characterization of your agents. You have not only ignored that advice, you amplified the scenes. You even made it a plot point in your last mission. And here it is again, multiple scenes buried in the body of the mission.
I have to ask why.
It’s all very well and good to say, “If you don’t like this, skip ahead,” but in the case of your missions it could mean missing important story or character information. Putting the scenes in question into a separate fic would both ensure that nothing is missed and that those who are interested in reading tickling scenes may do so at their leisure.
At the very least, I ask that you remember that the concept of “Your Kink is Not My Kink” can cut both ways. You are free to have fetishes, and you are free to write about them. But keep in mind that everyone else in the PPC may not have such a fetish, and so is less inclined to read about it.
All in all, I wasn’t blown away by this story. There are too many moments that draw me out of the narrative. I would recommend staying away from big epic missions for the future and focusing on small stories, be they in the field or in the PPC. Get to know the characters. Expand on them. Hone your writing skills. Get outside your comfort zone.
