The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

I have seen! Thank you so much!

For me, it depends on what kind of stories you're hoping to tell with the pair? Ollie and Marie were designed to kick butt and bicker, while a combination like Delkhii and Jesse were meant to be the comedically serious, deadpan types.

Contrasting dynamics work really well, especially if the pair in question deals with a wide range of badfic.

...and now they're best friends! With a little bit of healthy teasing, too, of course.

Eledhwen and Christianne alternate who’s sunshine and who’s grumpy (though most of the time people assume it’s Christianne because she’s the standard veteran snarker kind of agent). It’s incredibly dependent on the context, but it keeps the two balanced, and lets them help each other when the other really needs it — a calming influence when one gets into a homicidal rage, a helpful hand when one of them gets a PTSD flashback, etc.

Liu Siyuan is grumpy. Mostly. He does well with sunshine people, even if most of the time he’s complaining about them.

The Disentangler and the Agent are both varying shades of sunshine, but that’s because they’re Time Lords in the DIC and don’t really do much assassinating; they’re really here to see the Multiverse. Allow your character backstories to inform how they react to HQ and you’ll figure out the dynamic from there.

There should indeed be more than just that, of course. (I'm thinking of making one of the Agents Fourth Wall-aware to the point of blaming everything bad on me, for example) - Ls

No hard feelings at all.

Also, I keep forgetting about the character cap in titles lol.

-kA

But yeah, I suppose you're right. I was including "shuffle the Agents around" in "create more". Since, after all, I was saying that of pairs, not Agents. And yeah, I should have included character growth as well. And yeah, I'd like to have different ways of making it funny. I'd certainly like to have more than just one pair of Agents. And I like your "switch" idea. That'd make a great character arc. (Note to self: write clearer posts!)

Thanks for the concrit.

I'll take those two cents. See if I can buy anything with them.

It gets repetitve, even with new agents every time. Granted, there are ways of shuffling it around (perhaps your sympathetic agent can argue that a Sue isn't affecting canon one mission and the next mission argue that the Sue was forced into this by whatever her circumstances where), but those ways can get boring. Fast. No matter the agent.

Also, it rubs me the wrong way with "I can always make a new pair of agents when this gets old." Probably because I think this way under some circumstances (I acknowledge that, if I mess up too badly with a pair, I can always create a new pair as a "clean slate" of sorts.), but this reason is small and way too small of a reason to abandon a pair of agents, in my thoughts (although this is coming from a person with two agent pairs and is about to shuffle some agents away and make a third pair so that a funny agent dynamic can be introduced). It's too small of a reason to abandon agents for a new pair if one main tatic ia getting boring. Shuffle it up! Make an agent experience character growth. Maybe, just as the unsympathic person sees why Sues could be saved, the sympathic one sees why they shouldn't and they switch. And then acknowledge said switch. That could actually be quite funny!

So, you shouldn't rely on the fact that you can make a new agent pair when one tatic gets old, because it usually stays old and is such a small reason to abandon a pair of agents.

-kA

(Please note that this is an opinion. I am not angry, either. I'm just throwing in my two cents as I see it. You can take it if you'd like.)

I might have the sympathetic Agent (Mina) try to convince the Sue to join them as a recruit, for each fic, after the charge list is read. (And if it only works a few times, then I can always [to a point] create more Agents.) My idea was, as a former Sue herself, she always feels bad for any Sues they kill.

Well, that was interesting. Quite short, there were a few errors (It slipped into the first person with a "me" at one point) and a very unusual recruitment process. I didn't think that was how most Agents joined. No mission, though. Or partner, for that matter.

The obvious way would be an argument over whether to kill, recruit, or integrate a Suvian into the canon. Which is great... once. Maybe twice, if it has a very different outcome. But I'm not sure one* could sustain it every mission.

*Pretty sure I couldn't, but it's your concept and I don't know about you. Hence, 'one'.

hS

Okay, so I don't think I've ever read this one... :D It's one of those old stories that we never archived, so it was 'lost' until I pulled it from the Wayback Machine for the Grand Archive. Sadly, I believe the second chapter is actually lost, but we've got this one back!

A Byrd and a Thorntree: The Saga Continues - Just a Summer Job by o0-Key-0o

Nothing more to say, because... I haven't read it! ^_^

hS

I'm considering having one agent who absolutely HATES Mary Sues and another who'd rather reform them. Thoughts on that concept? (Though that's not all to either's personality)

Because I think you can manage. Also, if you'd like I maybe could beta this mission.

Would be quite the challenge, but I think I can manage.

-kA

I'll just tack on that it also helps for the agents to have somewhat different interests and priorities, too. Having them be familiar with all the same continua denies you the opportunity to have one agent explain things to the other as a way to clue in the reader to an important point of canon. Giving them all the same priorities (e.g., SPaG, favorite character, plot devices) makes their snark indistinguishable and denies opportunities for bickering—and agent bickering is especially useful in situations where there's more than one valid interpretation of something and you, the author, ought not take a side.

Hence, in my teams, Nume (the veteran) is more of a stickler for mechanics and Ilraen (the rookie) is more willing to give the benefit of the doubt to an awkward turn of phrase; Derik (duty-bound) is more broadly forgiving but judges by the book, while Gall (there for fun) doesn't sweat the small stuff but judges by personal opinion. I'm fond of the bicker they have in this mission over whether a Phantom of the Opera Sue's variety of outfit-matching masks are an insult to canon and good taste or not.

I also like it when the agents have more going on in their lives besides snarking at badfic, since that makes them more three-dimensional characters than author mouthpieces. The example that springs most readily to mind for me is Trojie and Pads, with the arc of Pads wooing Trojie woven lightly into their spin-off. Ix and Charlotte (mentioned below) have a similar arc. ... I suppose Derik and Gall do, too, though I'd say theirs is a bit more screwed up. ^_^;

You certainly don't need your agents' arc(s) to be romantic, though; for example, Rina/the Aviator's arc is about dealing with trauma, losing yourself, and finding yourself again. And you don't need to have that much of an arc, either. I think there's a happy medium where the events of earlier missions affect the agents in later missions, and there's character growth, but the episodes generally maintain their focus on providing entertaining commentary about a badfic. See: My spin-off recommendations. {= )

~Neshomeh

Enter the boke-tsukkomi dynamic. It's a kind of comedy in which one side of the duo makes silly statements and actions (boke) and the other constantly acting annoyed and making correcting statements, sometimes resorting to mild violence (tsukkomi). It can play out in a PPC setting; say, an agent's life is hard enough exposed to cringe without having to keep shouting at their common sense-deficient partner as well.