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I really do need to get back on that. If nothing else, Algie and Lola haven't had a mission yet (two of their other collabs are very definitely orf) and it'd be nice to see them in a mission environment. =]

I feel I should apologise for being so slow with my writing. It's just been, y'know... stressful. And I've felt so very tired. I think it'd be productive for us to release something that can be really positive, yeah? =]

There's a bug where if you download a .SCF into your downloads folder then open the folder, it steals your login credentials.

Yeah, I'm going to try to get back into reading and reviewing missions again. >_>

Your writing style does a good job of being very succinct, and getting straight to the point without a lot of extra words cluttering up the sentences. This is especially useful in missions for getting across info from the badfic without copy-pasting huge blocks of text, and you make good use of that here. There were a couple of potentially interesting spots that I feel you could have gone into more detail on—namely, the canons initially arriving in the present, and Holmes making deductions about the profession of a woman in the restaurant, which I feel could have been good moments for the agents to look at with a critical eye, as they would especially be indicators of how out-of-character Holmes was. Then again, I don't know if the original fic presented those scenes with enough material for you to really do anything with.

I'm not sure the canons themselves were quite out-of-character enough to be treated as replacements, although I know that's a subjective thing for each PPC author. In particular, the sentence, "Without being told, Holmes easily lied and said that his last name was Jones," seems to indicate that you felt Holmes would need guidance in having to mislead someone, but (at least in the novel canon; I haven't seen the movies) Holmes is a master of disguising his clothing, voice and demeanor to hide his identity. He would certainly have no trouble coming up with a fake name, especially since the plan to fool the mothers had been thought of in advance.

I'm also a bit confused by the final charging scene. I understand Holmes and Watson being killed, since you're treating them as replacements, and I'm glad your agents neuralyze the mothers and return them to their regular lives, but where did the two daughters go? It seems to me that, if the mothers are being treated as "canons" and returned to their lives, their daughters should be, too. And I rather had the impression that the flat the daughters was living in was their actual home, before the fic started, so wouldn't they just get neuralyzed and stay there?

I do like the last line, "'Come on, we have paperwork to fill out.'" I usually think of agents writing up mission reports that resemble our missions when they report said mission, but I like the idea that these agents are just going to file ordinary paperwork when they get home, and that they both need to participate. A tiny little detail, that makes a lot of sense.

—doctorlit, hoping to have a bit more time at home from now on

Since they appear to have actually been Transdimensional Snatchers, I guess they have been despatched to their real life in World One or wherever they belong. I remember some discussion about whether we still write Despatch missions or what else to do in such cases.

HG

… both the stories and the concrit. I usually don't put this much thought into my beta-reading; I'm more the proofreader type of beta.

Unfortunately, I will probably not participate in the Blind Beta Workshop. Preparations for my surgery are much more time-consuming and tiring than I head expected.

Since I can't ever not notice these things:

It was if all other colors had been bleached out of the world.
Shouldn't this be "It was as if..."?

Someone was behind her, pushing him along.
Who is he? Should this be either "her" (Laura) or "it" (the wheelchair)?

It was pose that might have passed without comment if could you ignore that she was sitting in a pool of blood.
Should be "a pose" (July already told you that)?
Should either be "could you" (apparently you had this initially) or "if you could", just inserting the "if" made it worse.

How is my not being as competent a combatant as you an excuse?
I think "my" should be "me", but given the situation I wouldn’t insist that Danny remembers that.

The woman frowned ever so slightly for just few seconds.
Should be "a few seconds"?

What if I ordered you to to murder someone?
I wouldn’t expect Death to stutter.

When my times comes.
Should be "time" (singular)?

She was further surprised when the receptionist sent her directly to Freedenburg’s office
His name is "Freedenberg".

Thank you coming in on such short notice. and
I summoned you down here because I believe that another agent in trouble.
Does Doc Freedenberg have a habit of leaving out words, or should these be
"Thank you for coming in" and "... that another agent is in trouble"?

HG

I don't know these characters, and they don't get a lot of description, but I am imagining Finch as looking like a Mr. Handy from Fallout 4, particularly the very fussy voice personality of the butler types. I don't know why really, that's just what I pictured.

Have you ever read Hank the Cowdog books? Bingle reminds me a lot of Drover. He's friendly and generally calm in the face of Hank's histrionics. He seems like he's only half there in the conversations. Always going on a sort of tangent that almost makes sense, but not quite. He gets Hank into some of the strangest conversations, and I imagine that Bingle gets Finch into some weird places conversationally and he seems really chill about Finch's situation, as well.

It makes for an interesting pair. The description of the noise they make in the halls is quite entertaining. It's hard to remember to include enough auditory description in stories.

I'm afraid that I don't have a lot of good input for you with this story. I enjoyed reading it. I couldn't find any grammar or general usage comments to make for this story. It reads smoothly, although the bold and dash instead of apostrophe took some getting used to.

I have to start off with saying that I really enjoyed this story. I have no idea who these characters are, though I learned a few things about them during the story. Ruby is a mischievous teenage daughter of very, very wealthy and powerful parents. Hitch is the head butler, possibly head of staff? He seems to have more of a sense of humor and less patience for formal affairs than the stereotype of that position. I never imagined that I would find a story about hiding a lemon so entertaining. It also plays on the other meaning that lemon has in fanfic circles. (Was that intentional?)

On formatting: I prefer to read on screens with a blank line between paragraphs. It's easier on the eyes.

“It’s not too bad,” he said. “I can deal.” Internally, he was hoping desperately that she’d find some way to shake things up without actually causing any sort of damage.

This is something I have been working on in my own writing recently. You have three adverbs in this one sentence, and a lot of them overall. Too many adverbs slow things down and weaken your writing. They are hard to get rid of, but it when you do it does help.

“But she won’t,” Ruby interrupted, “because we’re both excellent at this game.

This is picky, but she is supposing that he is excellent at the game. She just had to explain how it's played, so he must not have played before.

It took him nearly ten minutes and a momentary false alarm with somebody’s brightly-colored yellow handbag to track down the lemon, which was almost smugly resting on a drinks tray carried by a tuxedo-clad waiter.

I particularly liked this line. I know I am hitting you overall for adverbs, but that lemon sitting smugly on the tray is funny.

I think she must have been cheating a bit to know so quickly that he'd put the lemon in the coat pocket, but it's kind of a non-visible hiding spot so it balances out. When this is all de-anoned, I wouldn't mind a link to finish reading this.

"I know that face!"

Joyce's reverie was interrupted by her daughter's voice. She turned her head, unable to keep the smile off it. "Hello, Mom. How was your day, Mom? I'm just off to clean my room, Mom-"

This did get me the first couple of times I read it. I thought it was Buffy sucking up. That maybe she was in trouble again. So the next line was jarring. I would suggest changing said to interrupted. I know said is the most invisible dialogue tag, but in this case it might help make things smoother for your readers.

"Don't think you can get out of it that easily," Buffy said with a wink and a knowing tone to her voice. "I know that face. That right there is a grade-A, accept-no-substitutes, 100% new guy face. So c'mon, spill!"

I don't believe it is absolutely wrong to use a number here, but I would spell it out as one hundred percent.



"Oh, hello. You must be Buffy! Joyce has told me so much about you..."

Buffy looked at the mid-sized, dark-haired British woman. They were really nice eyes, now that she looked, but there was something else there -

this is an extreme nitpick, but it might read smoother as 'They really were nice eyes...'

"Your old mom's got a few surprises in her yet, you know."

"I... yeah. You, uh, you sure do, Mom! Uh... hey."

"Hello! Yes. Sorry. Um." Ah, thought Buffy, the Giles is strong with this one. Wait, why does this feel so, um, normal? "Sorry. It's just... she'd be about your age now."

I am having trouble following this bit. Monica is articulate in her greeting to Buffy. Buffy is taken aback by her mom's quite sudden announcement that she is interested in women, but she's rolling with it. Then Monica says hello for a second time, only now she is stammering. Then a thought from Buffy is inserted in the middle of Monica's dialogue. Then Monica finishes up with what I believe indicates that she remembers having Hermione, but perhaps thinks her daughter is dead. These three things should be separated out into three paragraphs, so you don't have more than one person's input in a paragraph.

Oh. That was it.

I thought the comment about Giles was directed toward his tendency to stammer a bit, but this doesn't go with that thought at all. I never managed to get through the last season and a half of Buffy, did we find out that Giles had a child that he lost? I don't remember him ever mentioning that he did. Buffy understanding that Monica has lost someone is good, but as is seems to relate to the comment about Giles.



Overall, this is a nice little story. I think Buffy's voice is right in line with canon. The story raises more questions than it answers, so if I stumbled across this on a fic site, I would hope that it was the first chapter, or the first section of a longer fic. How did Monica get to the US? Why didn't she just go home? How does she remember Hermione? Why did her husband stay under the spell that compelled them to Australia? Lots of questions, which are never a bad thing

Also should have added that Dirk usually gets where he needs to go by picking a random person who 'looks like they know where they're going' and just kinda... stalking them. Even more weirdly, this also seems to work. He gets where he needs to go quite often, I mean.

Jumping in here for information provision, hope you don't mind! Dirk Gently is a detective character created by the late Douglas Adams (who has recently got a pretty darn good TV show adaptation!) who uses the methods of 'holism' in order to solve his mysteries. Holism basically is the belief that everything is connected to everything else. He solves cases mainly by following fate, and- weirdly enough- it often does work, rather well.

*sidles off*

As far as stories go, it's not a bad one. On the one hand, I did not detect any technical errors, but on the other, the story seemed kinda flat to me. Granted, not every mission needs to be an epic adventure, but IMHO, this one seemed pretty cookie-cutter: quote badfic, cite charge, repeat. There did not seem to be any conflict between the Agents and the Sues.

Speaking of the Sues, what did the Agents do to them? If they weren't killed, were they recruited? Why?

Happy 20th, Ix! I hope you enjoyed it! And since I haven't given one of these in a while...Have a Delibird! Since you're a fellow Trainer, I don't think I need to warn you about its Presents.

That's not Buffy speaking, but Joyce. She's doing the thing that parents do when their kid asks them a question.

Read-through Notes (stream-of-consciousness-style):

- I also love wandering the hallways. Vicariously through characters, anyway.

- Daniel can memorize routes through HQ? That's very impressive, if useless enough to not be overpowered.

- I understand this superpower.

- Lighter shade of grey = clouds?

- Didn't know we had ventilation plotholes. Makes sense, though.

- The trail of sue-blood seems boring to our hero. I kinda want to know why it's there.

- Crumbling concrit? Someone needs to get Building Maintenance on that. Also, is it made of fossilized words? I don't think I've ever heard that before. More research may be necessary.

- I know I've heard of Dirk Gently, but I can't quite place the name. More research definitely necessary.

- I like the feelings that get thrown in. I can see them being very confusing to agents. "Why do I smell fudge?" "I don't even know any showtunes. Why do I want to sing them?"

- They never entered the stairwell, did they?

- "Then they then" You can cut a "then" from that sentence.

- Cafeteria worker, eh? I had wondered.


General Thoughts:

There are some very interesting things going on in this piece. The non-visual descriptions of the surroundings are not something we see often and, in this case, help to "tilt" the world a little. It makes the whole thing a little more surreal, which I liked.

As interesting as the surroundings were, though, the two characters were not. They were kind of bland and featureless. We don't get any description of them, at all. We know little about Daniel, and less about the woman. And the few times we do get any indication of what they are feeling we get "he was tired of staring at walls" and "The woman blinked dispassionately." It might work better if Daniel was openly excited about the details that only he knows about, and is disappointed when the woman is dispassionate and aloof. That, at least, would give you two levels to play off of and break up the monotony.

So, to summarize, the world building that you did was good. The characters need some fleshing out. There is potential here, I think.

I think I've seen Bingle and Finch before, but I forgot what they looked like. I seem to remember that Bingle is dead.

It's an interesting bit of back and forth banter. No plot, just a slice of life.

I really like the part where he says he should remember getting amnesia.

I picked up on the use of "they" and knew that Buffy's mom was dating a woman.

I saw the movie and was aware that there was a show, but didn't watch much.

It's a little jarring that Buffy is saying "I'm just going to clean my room, mom." and then switches to wanting to talk about why her mother is smiling.

Daniel loved wandering the hallways. While most people saw only a maze of nondescript gray corridors, he could pick out subtle details and memorize interesting routes.

Most of his navigational superpower was the ability to not think of a rhinoceros with a teacup after being told not to think about it. Since he only didn't want to go back to his quarters, he kept part of his attention on wanting to go back there.

He noticed a wet patch on the floor and raindrops falling from the ceiling. He squinted upwards and could barely make out a lighter shade of grey. Daniel had never seen a ventilation plothole opening directly into the sky before, and wondered if it was unstable. He made a mental note to check on it again later.

After a half hour of wandering, and seeing nothing more interesting than a trail of sue-blood, Daniel made a left turn into one of his favorite hallways. Though there was nothing to erode the walls, the concrit had begun to crumble. He stared closely, trying to pick phrases out of the fossilized words.

When he was tired of staring at walls, Daniel began walking again. He trailed his hand lightly along the wall, knowing that he could feel the invisible intersections. That's when he had the feeling that he was being followed. He made a quick left turn and then spun around. A woman almost ran into him.

“Sorry.” She stepped to the side and walked down the corridor.

Daniel jogged to catch up with her. “Why were you following me?”

“You seemed to know where you were going.”

He'd heard of this. “Oh, you're using the Dirk Gently method. Follow me.”

Daniel began walking at a brisk pace. He turned left when he smelled fudge and right at the desire to sing showtunes. Soon, they came upon a stairwell and Daniel stopped to point. “That couch got wedged so that no one can move it.”

The woman blinked dispassionately. “I see.”

“I thought you would find it interesting. Now I remember what happens when you assume.” He began walking again and the woman followed.

After exiting the stairwell, they made a two-hundred-and-seventy-degree turn to follow a warm breeze. Then they then walked though the desire to take bleep products, though Daniel couldn't identify it. Most agents would either reach into their pockets or grit their teeth at that point, but he was a simple cafeteria worker and didn't have any missions to block out. The woman was impassive.

After five more left turns, he asked, “By the way, where are you going?”

“I am here.” The woman pointed to the door to RC 51724. “Thank you.”

“Good luck.” Daniel began walking again.

...I should also note that in most cases, it was because of me doing or saying something foolish, and I always immediately apologized and backpedaled the second I was called out on them, a habit which I have picked up from the days just before and since the DeviantArt group fiasco I mentioned downthread. The one or two instances I recall when Scape continued pressing the issues after my apologies resulted in her being called out for doing so as well, after which the matter was dropped. (And AFAIK, only Scape has gone that far, and none of her peers have unless I, in a fit of irrational emotions, gave them a legitimate reason to do so.) The one and only time when Scape attacked me without any justification was when I paged the Board at large for a collab request last year, and once again, she was immediately scolded for it (by Ix, IIRC). However, one thing I also feel is worth pointing out is that Scape apologized to me for this kerfuffle and the previous incidents, both publicly and via PM, shortly after the fact. I believe that is a rational response, and I'm glad to see that she has been consistently working hard to improve her behavior.

The thing that hurt so much after the dA incident was that only a few people called out the people responsible for being insulting, and fewer still for hurting my feelings, because they weren't familiar with my side of the story and were mostly unaware that it was my stereotypical inflated teenage ego and inexperience that led to things blowing up in my face. Lack of action can be taken as a lack of support for the affected party. I have to say therefore that I admire both the Board and Scape herself for their swift response and willingness to make amends and curb the bad behavior almost the moment they realized that something had gone wrong. That's a level of civility most people who get caught up in Internet drama don't have.

So all in all, I do feel that Scape has caused problems with me in the past, but the fact that she's both acknowledged/apologized for them and her substantial efforts to improve are laudable in my book. I sadly cannot condone her actions towards July, though, from what I know, and it's actually quite relieving to know that she feels horrible for those as well. Her apology to July just below is a commendable gesture, but I must also provide the caveat that going forward she has to indeed not handle anyone, EVER, in the same manner that she did during the incident in March. Remember: On the Internet, you never know who you can hurt with just a single sentence, especially in places where you cannot take it back.

Also, a more personal P.S. paging Scape herself: Sorry for not being around to continue our co-write, since I've been scooped up by so many IRL things that I have far too little time to do all the Internet stuff I want to, let alone write PPC stuff. I also understand completely that such circumstances also apply to you as well AFAIK, and I just hope that we can find the time to continue writing together as soon as our horrendously clogged schedules allow it. (I mean, the co-write itself kinda is our way of making up for that last kerfuffle we had, so...)

By "nipping it in the bud" did you mean stopping the discussion, posting links to avoid confusion, or something else entirely?

- Tomash

...but didn't because apparently I can't HTML.

First, a bit of admin. I assume you've been sending emails to harryheath99@hotmail.com; I got locked out of it about six weeks ago and have not gained access to it since, as hS will attest. My new email address is hheath1992@hotmail.com, so if you want to send me anything via email, send it there.

With regards to what happened to July:

It's not about Ix. It was not about Ix at the time. It was about how I felt, well, that I wasn't really her friend. I was just a convenient ear to talk when someone said something she didn't like. After she returned from deployment, we barely spoke; we spoke at New Year's Eve and then nothing for three months until she starts fuming at me about Matt Cipher tangentially mentioning her in a post celebrating the women of the Board, which set her off for reasons she elaborated on the Board.

After that conversation ended, I got to thinking... was this all our friendship was going to be? I accept that I could have been more active in attempting to contact her, but she has an extremely time-consuming job and frankly, I didn't want to bother her with the various trivialities of my life. So, a couple of days later, I decided to cut ties. I sent a long, rambling series of messages over Google Chat, blocked July everywhere, and left it at that.

Then all this started happening.

I didn't talk about what I'd said because, since it was a private conversation with someone I neither wanted to talk to or about, I didn't feel obliged to go into it. More to the point, I didn't want to go into it. During the time when the harassment was going on in the Discord, I was much more concerned with Ix than I was with July; I was not posting in the Discord at the time because I was trying to get hold of them through Google Chat, which is my primary means of communication these days. I'm really bad at checking my email and, as evidenced here, updating people as to any new email addresses.

I don't recall everything that was said in that rant - which is not an invitation for anyone to throw it up on the Board, by the by - but, well, "Scapegrace made cutting, hurtful remarks" is not nearly as unknown a refrain as it should be. I was and remain done with July. I didn't want to talk to her any more, so I sent a message explaining my position.

That all being said.

This obviously hurt July far more deeply than I ever intended, through a combination of evidently ill-chosen words and unfortunate timing. Those are just excuses, though. Someone else contacted me about this whole mess with July and, well, the more I think about it, the more I feel like I was wrong to cut contact in the way that I did.

July, in the event you're reading this: I'm sorry for what I said, and when I said it, and why I said it. I'm sorry for how callous it was, and I'm sorry for the hurt it caused you. I am truly, deeply sorry for it, because you don't deserve it and you never have.

I can't make things right between us; I don't think I ever could. You need better friends than me. Find them, and find some happiness. Because that's what you deserve. Not some dickhead from a decaying seaside town several thousand miles away to whom you could not turn when you needed it, but real friends, upon whom you can rely, and who can commiserate with you and console you when you need them to.

I am not that person any more, and I don't think I can cope with being that person for you again.

And I think that's what I'm sorriest for of all.

Huh, I didn't know that—that the WHO ever officially considered it a disease, or that they stopped. I'm glad I do now.

Now, if we could just get people to stop seeking "cures"... {= P

~Neshomeh

That is definitely the result of 2017 - 2012. I are gud at math. {= P

Bram did mention wanting to know more about it, so that makes three people who were talking about it all at once. It seemed like nipping it in the bud was a good idea.

~Neshomeh