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And, frankly, you don't need to shoehorn a relationship in just to have one.

--Ls, agreeing with Nesh and Lily

Female characters honestly get shafted in all sorts of ways, including very often being written solely as romantic lovers or love interests with nothing else going on in their lives. The world loses nothing by having more female characters fulfilled by friendships and activities, without needing to be/do anything else in order to be worthy.

And that goes for real women, too. {= )

~Neshomeh

And honestly older writers, too--we all have these moments of doubt regarding the reception of our work. But I can say for sure that writing for yourself and what you want to see will always make for better writing than writing for the opinions of other people.

Honestly, sometimes I doubt my own writing, which is why I regularly check in with the comm to make sure my writing doesn't violate the general spirit. Do stop me if I come off as repetitive or attention-seeking.

Characters develop relationships organically as you continue writing them into situations. I know I didn't start out intending to put my Agents together; they just kinda fell into it after a while. And amatonormativity--the preference for romantic love uber alles, and how everyone's expected to fall in romantic love and place romantic relationships above all others--is equally worth "protesting", especially in fanfiction spaces. ;)

especially in fanfic, so I impose this rule as a kind of protest.

And why only for female characters?

~Neshomeh

I impose a personal rule that any and every female character that I'm currently writing must, without exception, eventually have a permanent love interest. However, I'm very stuck on who should be coupled up with Helena, and I don't plan on creating an entirely new character as a love interest for her. Boarders who have read the Fairy Godfathers spin-off, who do you think has the most romantic chemistry with her?

Since everything is hard-coded into it, all you have to do is reverse-engineer the choices of background and character customization the author did. However, for comics in general I assume the "describe through narration" trick is the most suited, and to be fair since the Words would likely appear as a comic page we could also have PPC Agents being forced (for SEP field effectiveness or just "The Flowers will nag us if we don't") to constantly move out of frame to not affect the fancomic until the kill time comes, of course it being played for comedy.

Likewise, the Words for a fan animation or fan film would be the video feed - but it would likely be silent, forcing PPC Agents to track down the original video on their own devices and have to rewind and fast forward to take notes. Not good for their sanity, but good for our laughs.

Relatedly, I did the opposite once - I did a mission in comic form, though the fanfiction sporked was a regular text one. It was kind of a special for the 15th anniversary of me publishing stories online, as the mission is basically a remake of one I originally did in regular text format.

One example that comes to mind is Iximaz, who sporked a comic by showing panels where fic excerpts often went for an Avatar: the Last Airbender comic I don't remember the name of.

An alternative route, funnily enough, can be seen in my last mission finished a month back. There, I just described the panels in narration because while the Atla comic was digitally published and could provide high-quality screenshots, the comic I sporked was a terrible one I made when I was ten, drawn on a sheet of paper with art quality so awful that using Ix's method wasn't an option for me. I had to take a photo of the paper and it just didn't come out all that well.

I've never seen one done to a fanfilm, though it definitely sounds like something that could reasonably fall under the PPC style, considering its inspiration from Mystery Science Theater and its movie-sporking tendencies. I know something similar was discussed on the Board with the possibility of sporking a Gacha Life 'fic,' though nothing came out of it.

Hope this helps!

Have there been any instances of agents in the PPC taking on fan works that weren't written? For example, comics (i.e. It's (Not) Your Fault) or fan films (i.e. Spider-Man Lotus).

Nothing good is going to come of Draco grabbing a sample of Draught of Living Death, especially since he hasn’t been tasked with assassinating Dumbledore in this timeline.
Oho.

I just hope the Sectumsempra spell isn’t there in this timeline, or that Harry doesn’t run into it, or never gets put in a position to try it.
Ohoho.

I guess someone’s trying to sabotage Gryffindor this year? Or maybe specifically the Gryffindor Quidditch team?
Ohohoho.

I'm glad you liked the house-elf shenanigans :D And yes, Astoria is such a wet cat right now. Poor pathetic little meow meow with her ill-advised crush... It is like a plot from a badfic, isn't it?

You make a good point about Gaunt Snr. being so obsessed with reclaiming the manor like Sauron reclaiming the Ring! I'd argue he's a bit more Gollumy, but y'know.

Read on to see more maidenly shenanigans ;) (I laughed so hard at that joke tbh)

Harry and Draco deal with the consequences of their kiss in the Forbidden Forest.

MASSIVE BL10/11 warning for Harry's nightmares in this chapter, plus warnings for self-harm, blood, indoctrination, physical (and sexualised) assault, body-shaming and ableism, and allusions to date rape (what Merope did to Tom Riddle Snr) and child marriage. Please check the pre-chapter notes for more details!

I've planned this pottersues tribute project for a while and after discovering that pottersues has started posting again, I finally went through with it. Say hello to Disney Sues, the DW community dedicated to reviewing Suefics in Disney fandoms. Those with DW accounts and knowledge on Disney works can feel free to join up and post.

In a record burst of productivity, I've managed to finish up another dual feature!

The first story in drafts is a 10k word first mission for a new ESAS spinoff into Where the Red Fern Grows, canon knowledge hopefully not that necessary in the grand scheme of things. It's set in early 2024 for timeline reasons, because I'm hoping to tie this into an interesting bit of older PPC worldbuilding I found while binge-reading the backlogs one night. I'm just hoping I managed to make this new dynamic distinguishable from others I've done in the past.

The second is a small, long-delayed DIA piece, standing at 12k words and featuring a bunch of assorted one-off characters brought back just for this. No canon knowledge needed at all, except for the PPC in general and for, like, maybe one reference.

As usual, I can be contacted through the Discord or my email, though I'm more likely to respond to the former.

We don't get too many visitors these days, and even fewer who stick around, so it's nice to see new faces! I'm afraid my stash of symbolic virtual gifts is lacking at the moment, but I do hope you enjoy your time!

I would like to repeat that I got too many cutouts

Wow, what an insufferable little punk! Bold of him to call Kaguya “infuriating,” when he’s the one joining a club for the first time and chewing out the long-standing members. I don’t know if Kaguya will ever meet this club president again, but he can rest assured that his experience as de facto leader of this quartet of agents, and assassin of Suvians, has developed in him the will and leadership to satisfy that stuck-up president’s arbitrary requirements.

—doctorlit is impressed Kaguya had the self control to give such a polite reply to such an unkind speech

We’re just starting straight out with some plotting, aren’t we? Nothing good is going to come of Draco grabbing a sample of Draught of Living Death, especially since he hasn’t been tasked with assassinating Dumbledore in this timeline. Heck, I don’t know what he’s been doing in the Room of Hidden Things, either, unless he really was hatching some Shakespearean scheme to get himself out of the Bonding Contract with Rabastan, like Slughorn brought up? And either way, there it is: Severina definitely gave Harry her old potions text, along with notes in the margins. I just hope the Sectumsempra spell isn’t there in this timeline, or that Harry doesn’t run into it, or never gets put in a position to try it. After all, in canon, he wound up testing it on Draco, but this Harry and Draco are putting each other in rather different positions. I’ll show myself out.

I love seeing that Hermione is so supportive of Dobby, and I especially like the body language she uses towards him, kneeling down to speak to him closer to eye level. It shows in physical space that she doesn’t consider house elves beneath her, just a really sweet gesture. Sweet like fruit pie. Sweet like the fruit pie that plowed into Anita Bryant’s face. But I got really scared when Harry sent Dobby to investigate the mail situation, because I was still assuming Bellatrix was responsible, and I don’t want that meeting to go like it did in canon. You definitely caught me off guard here, because I did not remotely suspect Kreacher to be involved with the situation at all! And honestly, the fact that he did so, not as part of a plot, but actually to work against Gaunt and Bellatrix, and protect Draco, is a level of benevolence I didn’t expect to see in Kreacher. I love that you wrote it like that; it’s really sweet! Sweet like fruit pie. Sweet like the fruit pie that plowed into Anita Bryant’s face.

You’ve said before that Luna’s dialogue often foreshadows things, so I guess someone’s trying to sabotage Gryffindor this year? Or maybe specifically the Gryffindor Quidditch team? (I thought this was related to McLaggen getting hexed, but one of your reader’s comments on AO3 informed me that that happened in canon and I just forgot . . .)

Oh no, Astoria . . . I remember disliking her so much, back in year two, but this many years/chapters later . . . She really is just a pathetic, hurt little girl, isn’t she? Astoria getting rescued by Harry and starting to fall in love with him? Honestly, it’s like the plot of . . . well, of a bad fanfiction! I want her to find a way out of the abusive culture she’s so steeped in, but I guess I also want her to Bond with someone with strong enough magic to cancel out her curse. It’s a weird catch-22. (I would also still like it if she manages to follow up on that whole “Gaunt’s head on a platter” thing, too, that would be sweet. Sweet like fruit pie. Sweet like the fruit pie that plowed into Anita Bryant’s face.)

I appreciate seeing Dumbledore apologize to Hermione. Hermione made bad choices last year, but the buck ultimately has to stop at the desks of the adults who were around her at the time, and I’m glad at least Dumbledore recognizes that, and said so. Hermione deserved that apology. I also appreciate that he’s including the entire trio in the “Gaunt studies,” instead of singling out Harry as the Special Boy. It just feels more appropriate against this heavily political version of Gaunt, with his far-reaching cultural support. Lastly, I loved the conversation about “the world we want to see,” and the students’ answers to that prompt. It takes people working together, and pushing their society forward, to enact change, and Dumbledore is working to assemble the right people to do the pushing. And I also liked Harry’s observation later on, about the adults in his society shrinking away from positive changes, purely because they want to cling to the familiar. The cage is a perfect metaphor, because it doesn’t have a lock on it: we can reach through and open the door any time. But it takes getting enough people to become brave enough to risk the reach, to want to step outside. But right now, too many people have been convinced that they’re safer inside the cage . . . Uh, in your story! Definitely not musing on the state of the world or anything, ha ha!

Man, the tone of that scene set in the Pensieve is just the worst of vibes. I know this will sound like a wild tangent, but Gaunt Sr. made me think of Sauron, in the way the latter became so focused on reclaiming the Ring that he was reduced to a spirit that couldn’t operate without it, purely because he stopped viewing his own power outside the framework of the Ring. And there’s Gaunt Sr., with a house he could be taking care of with magic, and a daughter he could be showing love, and a son he could be modeling into a kind, mature adult . . . But in his mind, the only things that are lacking in his life are money and magical power. He just needs to trick a rich pureblood woman into marrying into the family, and everything will be fixed again. And he can’t see anything else to matter. It’s sad for Merope to have grown up in a family like that, but I’m glad she hasn’t lost kindness because of it: she still stayed with Madam Yue to protect her while she was injured, still wanted to protect a stranger from her own family.

So, is that the Maiden’s Kiss right there? It’s over, we reached the title event for the year, roll credits? Or does some fancy magical ceremony have to happen? I’m no expert on magic or romance, but I think I read, at bare minimum, numerous Maiden’s Kisses, one Maiden’s Holding Their Partner’s Hands Suspended Above Their Head, an uncountable amount of Maiden’s Dry Humping . . . I should probably stop this joke now.

Anyway, it’s a shame I don’t consider fruit pie edible, because this feels like a good week to celebrate with fruit pie. Celebrate Anita Bryant’s death that is, since this is Anita Bryant Death Week, now and forever. Actually, maybe I’ll find myself some cheesecake and celebrate with that? I have it on pretty good authority that cheesecake counts as a type of pie.

—it’s doctorlit; doctorlit is the authority who says cheesecakes are pies

That being said, I really like the way that the characters are written. Jon, the "main" POV character for most of the show, has flaws that are established fairly early on, and though as part of his character development he overcomes them to an extent, they're still there and still lead to him making mistakes that affect the plot in meaningful way. This applies to the other characters as well, but I can't get into that too much because of spoilers. Oh, and as I said in my original post there's really good queer rep: Jon (like me!) is ace, and there are multiple queer relationships in the show as well (which I sadly can't talk about because of the dreaded spoilers).

My main criticism as such is that the main plot takes a little while to get going - you're introduced to most of the main cast by the end of season one, but you don't get to see them interact with each other in scenarios that aren't "someone interrupting Jon while he's recording a statement" until season two starts. Season one is still really good though - though it seems to be very episodic to begin with, most if not all of the weekly stories do tie in to the wider narrative, and it's fun trying to piece together aspects of the show's lore before you're "meant" to find them out.

Also, bonus in case you're from the UK: a lot of the episodes are set in real places, all of which have been really well researched - one of the episodes is set in a place that I've been to before, and it was clear that the writer had actually researched or been to the place rather than just used it as a vague backdrop for the events of the episode. It gives the the stories a more genuine, grounded feel despite the cosmic horrors going on.

Do let me know if you start listening, I love hearing what people think as they're going through it!