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It sounds interesting, though. Would you recommend it?

My comments are on the page itself.

—Ls

Last Part

looks like this in real life, and is more active as a stage/live actor. Prepare to swoon.

I'm glad people are enjoying the visit to Gall's perspective. It was a good exercise for me.

Re. blockquotes, yeah, I hear that. I'd assume you're reading on AO3? I wish they didn't add that left bar to blockquotes. It plus the extra top and bottom padding really draw the eye away from the surrounding text—which sucks extra if you're like me and your eye is already tempted to skip to whatever is indented/bolded/italicized/otherwise offset. >.> Given the distraction, I hope the narrative introducing Derik's song as such still helped, too.

Glad to hear the "taunt waste" bit holds up on a second reading. Thanks for being a sounding board for it. ^_^

~Neshomeh

Glad you liked it even if you don't know the universe! I do recommend it though, still. My opinion of it is near-identical to Blank's. It has its issues, it is by no means perfect, but for the most part it holds up. (I've been watching a lot of Reactors watching it on YouTube lately and having a blast with it.)

Don't feel stressed about the interlude. =) I know what it's like to have a lot of projects going at the same time. No rush!

I went space hunting, an activity that definitely sounds a lot cooler than it is. I think I got them all?

/Ekwy

I loved this so much! You mentioned Mina (I promise, I will work on that interlude. Soon!) and RC 8, and... just... I loved it. The way they tricked the first Sue, Moira and Jackie’s interaction, just... I loved it. Maybe Jackie can interact with some of the Sues Mina’s rescued

You did have a few stray spaces, including one inside of “Slaye r” at one point.

—Ls has not seen Buffy

Been a lot of story links on the Board recently, huh? Well, here's one more! =D

Technically this is a twofer, since it begins in media res in an HP mission. Bonus!

Matchmaker (Ao3)
In which a former bird goes on a mission, a pairing is made extremely prematurely, and someone gets punched in the face.

The main fandom is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which definitely had a decent chunk of Sues back in the day. Despite its popularity it has relatively few missions. But now it has one more! I hope that I've added enough explanations and such so that people not familiar with the universe can still follow along with the mission.

I am kind of curious of how many on the Board are familiar with it... I might want to write more Buffyverse missions. It has so, so many weapons

Anyway, enjoy! Thanks to Neshomeh for beta'ing.

/Ekwy

I've always had it in my head he was at least decently competent; Voldemort instructed Barty Crouch Jr. to actually teach Harry how to fight, so that they could duel together at the end of year. He may have given Quirrell similar instructions during year one. But it does get complicated. As you said, it wasn't Quirrell's main topic of expertise, and since Harry was a first-year at the time, it was probably a lot of basic groundwork and theory, a lot like Umbridge's version of the class. And your version of Quirrell didn't even have Voldemort inside his head to instruct him at all . . . Yeah, it's tricky! : (

—doctorlit has forgotten more of the Potterverse than he realized . . .

Reading Gall's character voice really made this mission enjoyable! And haha, Derik, sorry about the musical number, but it's pretty neat that you got some relevant charges in there! I was a little bit thrown by Derik's song lyrics being in blockquotes like the fic text, but I guess the italics helped differentiate it a little more?

I remember the taunt waste joke when you first workshopped it and it's still hilarious. Great job!

It has been Very Odd to be writing Quirrell into second year, not gonna lie. And given that we don't really have a sense of what he taught in first year, I can't even really figure out whether or not he was a reasonable DADA professor. According to Pottermore he was originally the Muggle Studies professor? And then he went out searching for Voldy and got himself an unwelcome hitchhiker and became the DADA prof (probably because... Charity Burbage was hired to replace him when he went on sabbatical???) and the rest is history. So yeah, difficult to write him as a teacher because we never really got to see him teaching in the books.

Anyway, because he used to teach a milder subject like Muggle Studies, originally I was going to have Lockhart as DADA like in the books with Quirrell replacing Greengrass. But then I realised it would be funnier for Lockhart to replace Greengrass because he's actually half-qualified for C&E by simply being a pompous windbag. So the decision was also partly due to Rule of Funny.

Well, this is a world where the bigotry that has nested for a long time in Slytherin house has spread through a lot of places! So even other Houses aren't exempt. And Cedric Diggory's in for quite a character arc to get from here to the boy we see in 4th year!

You'll have to wait and see about Pansy :P And yeah, the Hallows are going to matter a bit more, actually, because this world doesn't have Voldemort/Marvolo Gaunt making Horcruxes (again, losing your nose is bad for poll numbers!) and the Hallows already being possessed by him, Dumbledore, and Harry in the books will... be very relevant in the latter years in this series.

And yes, Qiu Zhang is Cho Chang in the Chinese translation so I just went with that!

That first chapter is quite intimidating, length-wise, but I'm glad it worked for you! It definitely sets up the panopticon ;)

Looking forward to your reactions about the rest of the year!

"Now, now, would Mother Magic want you to spoil your language with such uncouth words? Of course not! Mother Magic loves all Her creations . . ."

Lockhart . . . is good, actually? Lockhart is just a nice guy? Just a good, reasonable fellow who is nice. Well, okay! I can get behind Lockhart being—

". . . even the ones so deprived and unfortunate not to have learnt of Her until they turned eleven! We cannot be beastly towards these poor Muggleborn creatures; they simply do not know any better!"

—trash, he's trash, straight back to the bin he goes!

Okay, but seriously, I do actually like this version of Lockhart. He's still got the narcissism problem the canon one had, but there's just a teeny, tiny pinch of actual responsible authority figure to him. I'll probably be eating these words by school year's end, since he's clearly a plagiarist of some fashion, but at least at first glance, your version is a step ahead of his canon self! I initially assumed Quirrell would be sacked for his involvement with Greengrass, and that Lockhart was his replacement like in canon. But then Quirrell showed up on page, and I was like, oh. Oh. Lockhart is here to replace Greengrass! Wow. And also, Lockhart is . . . Wizarding Joseph Campbell, apparently? With that line about "archetypes" . . . wild! Also, side note: it feels so utterly bizarre for Quirrell to just be . . . on campus . . . walking around and talking to people? Since he was relegated to only the first year in canon, it doesn't feel like he really belongs to Hogwarts, like he's not a valid member of the staff, or something? It will feel weird going forward, for him to just be. Around. A guy.

That bullying scene was hard to read, seeing students from multiple houses all sounding like Slytherins . . . and then you had to twist the knife even harder by revealing that the Hufflepuff bully is Cedric Diggory!? Why Lily!?!? Poor Colin! It's very telling that Zhang gave Colin permission to photograph her hair, but all these boys freaked out and tried to stop Colin anyway . . . like they see Zhang's hair as more theirs than hers!

Pansy is, again, rather nice, and I'm glad to see she's going to have a role to play in revealing Lockhart's deception (assuming this isn't some magical sleep that's going to leave her unconscious all year like the basilisk was doing in canon.) [I hope she gets to play a whole bunch of Quidditch this year] is what I was planning type until Draco had to go full entitled rich boy all over her plans. Crappy kid.

Huh. I see the Deathly Hallows still exist, but with an entirely new backstory, and probably a different name. I'm curious to see whether they actually matter down the road, or whether they're just curious magical artifacts in this timeline.

—doctorlit does the barest minimum of search bar research, and realizes "Zhang" is probably Cho Chang with a less cringy and lazy surname

But now I am up-to-date, having finished the first one and even left a review of it! =)

The second one is shaping up very interestingly indeed. The detail of which Professor is always different in this universe is an amusing one and obviously very thematically accurate. I was also very impressed by the scope of the first chapter! So many characters, and each one distinct in their voice and point of view! Very well-crafted, and it was fun to read.

Looking forward to the rest of the year!

/Ekwy

It was, as you say, elegant. And I may have forgotten who the equivalents were at first but nevermind I figured it out

Yuki, I sent you that Twisted Wonderland badfic, not sure if you’ve seen it.

—Ls

Which, leafeyes, I promise I’ll get to soon.

Since no one seems to be biting for the mission itself on the Board, perhaps check the Discord? For whatever reason, there’s lots of folks that hang there and not here.

—Ls

This drop-dead elegant Four Demonly Kings interlude is nice and short, but contains major spoilers for the first two Twisted Wonderland missions, so those who haven't read them are advised to do so first.

Dr. Feline is the silliest Mary Sue I've had the pleasure to spork. Naked catgirl at the speed of souuuuund! ^_^

Ultimately, I think Derik realizes the filking thing wasn't so bad. The fact that the musical quality of it is his chief concern is a clue that he's not deeply upset. Plus, he laughs instead of angsting about accidentally mesmerizing Gall again by humming. Like Gall points out, at least he wasn't pseudo-possessed or in a problem-avoiding creative fugue state—he chose this, and that matters. She's perceptive like that, even though she couldn't articulate as much if you paid her. {= )

Thanks for commenting!

~Neshomeh

It seems like my previous beta request has fallen off the front page of the board. I'm still looking for a beta for a mission, which is NSFW, NSFB, containing rape, pedophilia, incest, a lot of objectification and generally would qualify as squicktacular. I am rather bad at noticing typos and missing articles, so expect a lot of those. The mission is for a Fire Emblem badfic (Awakening/Fates in particular), although knowing the canon is by no means needed since it's effectively Fire Emblem in name only. The mission is currently around 9300 words and 20 pages.

I don't have much to say beyond the fact Laurel indeed isn't the worst Sue out there, and I wish you a great journey in your writing endeavors.

My self-improvement goal this year is to not be afraid of my feelings. After some recent soul-searching, I find that a lot of my less useful coping mechanisms involve running away from things I don't want to feel: anger, anxiety, hurt, sadness, and so forth. Intentionally or not, my upbringing and society in general have taught me that those are to be avoided, either by denying them or by not doing whatever triggered them, so I've basically learned to just ignore all feelings until they go away.

I believe that approach is incorrect.

I may want to do things that stress me out due to fear of failure, for instance. Being afraid doesn't mean I shouldn't try things I actually want to do, and that fact that I am afraid isn't a character flaw or some sign of weakness, either. It means I care about doing well. That is a good thing, and I don't need to run and hide from it. It's okay for me to be afraid and do the thing anyway. I don't have to feel perfect all the time in order to do things. That's a completely unreasonable expectation, and it results in doing nothing, which leads to depression.

I've been approaching my mental health from the angle of needing to feel less depression/anxiety, but I think what's actually happened is that I've been feeling less everything—I just shove it all in a box. That's okay for just sort of existing, but I don't call it living. It's not enough.

So... I'm gonna try accepting the feelings. It's going to be difficult for a while, because I'm not used to working with them rather than against them, but ultimately I hope they will be assets. 'Cause they're supposed to be tools, right? Feelings motivate us to behave in certain ways, to make necessary changes to respond to our environment. Like any tool, they have to be used responsibly so as not to harm oneself or others... but they're no good at all sitting on a shelf gathering dust.

~Neshomeh can use anger to motivate herself sometimes (because f*** you dirty dishes go f*** yourselves), but suspects there are better ways.

Thank you! I am blown away by the community here! It’s all in good spirit and very fun here :)