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I'm glad you read it and thank you for the feedback. I'll try and cut back on the italics in the future.

-kA, who is tired at the moment and can't thoroughly think, but will reply better once they can think.

My main note was that I got a bit lost in the "new student" bit, and it seemed like there were excessive italics, but the story was understandable with that confusion. I also needed to give the "on his back trying to get up" line a re-read, since it was something of a garden path sentence for me.

Overall, I don't have particularly strong thoughts on this interlude, but I thought I should at least reply that I've read it.

...And yeah, a movie would be incredibly difficult to do. Animation takes time, so what about, say, a low-budget live action film featuring human characters, maybe make it an interlude set in HQ so the set could be a generic grey building and we could possibly get away with only filming human agents in the background? If you don't need to do any portals, that also saves on special effects.

My final project for my degree was a three minute short film. Twenty-five unique shots. One actor. Easy costumes.

It still took a total of about six hours to shoot, and that was getting takes good enough to use after two or three attempts. Add in another five hours of editing (yes, five hours for a three minute film!) for a total of eleven hours. Eleven hours for a three minute film.

So forget the idea of a feature-length movie for a moment and consider, instead, the possibility of a short film. A PPC short film would probably need to be around five to ten minutes to get a good idea of what our characters are like. Seems doable enough, right?

Let's take a look at what we would need to do this, assuming we have some actors (hopefully good ones!) and a location (hopefully a safe one!) already available to us for free—unless you want to shell out a few hundred dollars for actors and a location rental right off the bat.

The script would be the easy part. A properly formatted script's rule of thumb is one page equals one minute of screentime.

Then you've got to break the script down. That means identifying all the different elements of the script—the cast members, the extras, the props, the special effects, any animals, any greenery, any costumes, makeup, the music, the sound effects, everything. You have to think about every single element needed to produce a scene, a single shot, even, because when the day comes to film and you don't have what you need, shooting gets delayed.

You need to make a storyboard, and a shot list. A storyboard should be self-explanatory, right? Easy enough to draw up a few rough ideas with stick people, but you also have to consider why you want an extreme closeup, a medium shot, a wide shot, a low-angle shot, and for really detailed storyboards, you're going to be drawing each cut back and forth between actors if you're doing the standard over the shoulder shooting for conversations, each brief cut to show someone setting a prop down—it gets detailed. You have to make notes about the camera angles (especially if your storyboard is just done with stick people; it gets hard to tell with that), about any camera movements (dollies, tracking, panning, etc), transitions between shots (cut, crossfade), all that good stuff.

The shot list breaks the storyboard down and tells you what you need to film. You use it to keep track of which take you want the editor(s) to use in the final product, and make notes about which shots need to be done at the same time to maintain camera positioning. Even with all the accurate measurements in the world, it can be difficult to get it exactly back into the same position. You very, very often don't shoot a script in order.

On the set itself, you have to consider blocking—where are the actors going? How are you going to make sure you get the shot you want without catching the equipment in the frame or getting in the way of the actors' movement? What is the lighting? Is there a place to plug in the lights, or are we using battery-powered lights? Do we have enough fully-charged batteries, and how long does a charge last? How hot will the lights make the set? Is the lighting consistent from shot to shot? Does the lighting make sense for the setting itself, or is the audience going to question why the actor's illuminated from a strange angle? Three-point lighting? Two-point? Or are we just using ambient lighting, and will that be bright enough? Is it too bright? Will the actors look washed-out, or will the shot be too dark to see important details? Do we need reflectors, diffusors, flags? Gels? Coloured lights? Any special lighting, like a strobe effect or fire?

What camera(s) are we using? What lenses? Are we using a single-camera setup, or a multiple camera setup? Tripods? Handheld? Do the camera operators also need focus pullers, or can they get the necessary shots on their own? Do we need any track laid out for dolly shots or tracking shots, or do we need a trackless dolly (expensive, unless we do what I did my first year in school and duct tape a camera to a scooter, which is in and of itself a safety hazard)? Do we have enough batteries for the cameras, or a place to plug them in? Are we risking overloading the sockets if we're also plugging in lights?

How are we getting our hands on these cameras? Are they DSLRs that someone might have because of their photography hobby, or are we renting equipment from somewhere? (That goes for the lights, too—I doubt the average person has any redheads sitting in their supply closet at home.) I got lucky and was able to borrow my equipment for my final project for free from my old boss at the studio I worked for, but equipment rentals are expensive and if something breaks, hoo boy. Even if nothing breaks, what about malfunctions? Do we have backups? It's better to have backups, of course, but sometimes it's just not possible.

What about sound? Do we have someone to operate a boom? Can we trust the camera operator(s) to notice if the boom or its shadow dips into frame? Do we have a shotgun mic? Are we clipping mics into the actors' costumes? Are we sure the mics are properly hidden? Is the sound quality we're getting from the mics fairly consistent, or is the sound quality from the boom noticeably better/worse than the mics on our actors?

Let's say we're going to have to rent a DSLR, and we're not going to worry about lights or microphones. Great! That's another $150 to rent a DSLR for a week. Hope your shooting schedule works with that, and you don't mind the sound quality being inconsistent and overall just bad.

What about in post-production? (Disclaimer, I specialised in cinematography, so most of my editing knowledge is either self-taught or learned from my old boss, who is also self-taught. I had a few editing classes in school, but nothing super in-depth.) Do we have someone who knows how to do sound mixing? What music are we using? Do we have the rights to it? (I hope we have the rights to it!) What about colour correction? Do we even have access to a good editing programme? (Slight tangent, whoever designed Final Cut Pro X deserves to be beaten over the head with a clapperboard.) I love Adobe Premiere Pro, but it costs an arm and a leg to use, so I guess we'll use DaVinci Resolve instead. Do we need any greenscreen or special effects done? Hope you know someone with access to Adobe After Effects, because that's $21/month to use, and it'll take longer than a month to learn how to make anything look halfway convincing and not at all greenscreened.

Or maybe a shot doesn't actually work when put with the others. Do we need to do reshoots? Or does the script need to be tweaked a little bit, or shots moved around from the planned order to make it make better sense or just plain look better? What about any voiceovers? Will the lines recorded have consistent quality with the rest of the sound? What about sound effects? Do we need to bring in a Foley artist?

On the shoot itself, do we have a place for the cast and crew to rest? Food, drinks? How much will that cost, and who is preparing the food, or taking orders? Any allergies or dietary restrictions to worry about? How long is filming going to take? Transportation to/from the set for cast, crew, and equipment? Are there any particularly difficult shots (eg long takes) that will require extensive rehearsing from the actors and camera operator(s) beforehand? What is the plan if reshoots do become necessary? What if a shot ends up taking longer to get a good take than expected? What's the shooting schedule look like? What costumes do we need? (Those would have to be planned long before the day of filming, even if it's just street clothes.) Do the actors need makeup, even if it's just a bit of powder on the forehead/nose to reduce sweat sheen? How many actors do we need? What about crew? Do we need a designated clapper loader for handheld shots where the camera operator can't do it themselves? Filming is stressful, what happens if drama breaks out on the set? What hazards are there on the set (yes, cables are a hazard!) that we need to be aware of? What happens if there is an injury on the set?

There's so, so much more that goes into it, but yeah—producing even a short film is a ton of work.

We would need to find actors and crew who wouldn't mind this film not being legally able to become part of their showreels—because the PPC would be a huge copyright issue that nobody would want to risk attaching their professional name to, so this would be a huge amount of time and effort on everyone's parts for what would be a vanity project.

I would absolutely love to do a short PPC film as a fun side project, but it would be exhausting, especially since I would likely end up doing most of the behind-the-scenes work. (And I hate editing with a burning passion. It's dull, and consists of replaying the same handful of seconds over and over to make sure everything looks and sounds right.)

And while I'm sure there are PPCers who wouldn't mind getting in front of a camera, the fact is (distances aside, which is yet another issue here) acting is hard. Anyone can get in front of a camera and recite a few lines, but it becomes painfully obvious when people aren't professionals, and amateurs very often don't respond well to being directed on a set. See the bit about on-set drama above.

So, thanks, but no thanks. The logistics would be a nightmare to deal with—too much work for a result I doubt I would ever be happy with, and wouldn't be able to show off to potential future employers, either.

Got the courage to reread, fiddle with, then post an interlude I've been (figuratively) sitting on for a while. It was written sometime in 2020 (judging by Discord DMs, it was written in December 2020), but I thought it was bad so I didn't publish it after the betaing.

So, uh, here it is. Hope you guys enjoy!

Everyone would love to write a script, heaps of people are delighted to voice act, but nobody can do soundtrack design and absolutely nobody wants to/is able to draw endless pictures for animation. Back when I did the comic (https://ppc.fandom.com/wiki/GenericSurface(comic)), it took an hour or so just to get four pictures lined up right. You don't want to /know/ how long the OFUM trailer (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MuzGMo_FYEA) took. (We actually have a script and most of the art for the first episode done, which I believe is the closest we've ever come to a 'PPC(-adjacent) movie', unless you count my shoddy live-action piece to camera as Dafydd.)

So yeah, radio plays are pretty easy. Visuals are incredibly unlikely.

hS

Sure, Huinesoron has a few PPC-themed short films on his YouTube channel, and the A/V Division has a "movie with trailer" gimmick going for them, but a full-length movie with acting and stuff – which is what you're proposing – is something I don't think has been done.

...for a reason, of course. The PPC is notoriously bad at organizing around stuff. The Undertale AU? Barely anyone spared it a glance. That Ace Attorney style fangame? No dice. (The fact that both of these projects were suggested by me is completely irrelevant to the conversation.) That being said, we could probably get a screenplay out – we are writers, after all. But a full-length movie might be a little out of our reach.

I was thinking, have we ever tried making a movie? I think it would be really fun.

So you want me to do a big rewrite on this, and find a beta in the PPC. Could you be my beta? Also, is there a place in LOTR where it says that Morgul-blades can’t be used more than once if they haven’t been exposed to sunlight and vanished?

When I was younger, I did a lot of fights with plastic lightsabers with some kids I knew. I don’t suppose that counts as knowing about sword fighting? Now I’m thinking about having Rebecca do archery or something. Archery is a thing I have actually done (I’m a little rusty, but I do know how to do it more than sword fighting).

Yes I really do talk pretty much like Rebecca does. It’s partly because I am something of a language geek (I love Latin) and because my parents get really mad if I use actual cuss words, so I mutter things in Latin and Shakespearean insults. As you can probably tell, I love Shakespearean insults. They are funny, and sometimes you can get away with being very rude without everyone catching on.

I was hoping the answer was no, and I could ask you to get it beta'd and then look at it again afterward. Since that's not the case, I'm afraid I have to say Permission Denied for now, and I have some notes for you. I know it's a lot of text, but don't be scared! I ask a lot of questions I want you to think about as practice for asking similar questions and thinking about things on your own, and I try to explain my points clearly, that's all.

I skipped the bios, because I like to see how well the stories, or story, in this case, establishes the characters without them, so I'm just commenting on the writing. There are a couple of fairly large technical errors that a beta should ideally have caught, such as the dialogue formatting issue Nova mentioned. Additionally, the second sentence is incomplete:

> If it wasn’t bad enough that she was being reassigned because of Bragnard grumbling about her cat, Onions, destroying his furniture, her mini-Balrog, Thraindul, digging mini-abysses under his bed and messing with his Exosuit.

Not to get too technical, an "if" phrase must be followed by a "then" phrase, which this sentence doesn't have. I'm left wondering "if all that wasn't bad enough, then... what was?"

And there's a period where there should be a comma at the end of a speech before a dialogue tag in a few places:

> Also, the Sue doesn’t seem to have a name.” she said
> besides my throwing knives.” she said
> “You’re awake.” Rebecca said to her.

More important than that, though, there were several things I felt needed to be thought through a bit more.

For one, you describe Rebecca's bookshelf and the cart it's on together as being too wide to fit through the door. If this is a normal bookshelf, why not just turn it longwise to the door instead of width-wise? Surely the cart can also be aligned longwise, and you'd want as much of the shelf as possible on the cart, parallel not perpendicular? If it's not a normal bookshelf, what sort of bookshelf is it? Also, if it's so heavy and full of books that Rebecca and Deirdre had to unload the books to move it, how did Rebecca get it on the cart with all the books on it in the first place? I didn't get the impression her previous partner was inclined to be helpful. If he was, why wouldn't he come along?

Next: I picked up below that Rebecca is basically you, yes? I wonder, do you know how to use a sword properly? I mean, my brother learned fencing starting in high school, and I know people who did mock-battles with padded PVC "weapons" and/or learned stage combat, but none of those are the same thing as wielding your standard Western medieval longsword (my default assumption when you saw "sword") in actual combat. I have serious doubts about the average fifteen-year-old from World One being able to just pick this up. I glanced at the bio and I saw you have a line there about her practicing sword-fighting, but that still doesn't explain how she learns what to practice. Does she have a teacher? Where do you find one of those in this day and age? Are such niche lessons and equipment within her family's means?

On a related note, Deirdre not only parrying the Sue's sword with a knife but actually making the Sue drop her sword with a knife beggars belief. I'm not an expert myself, but unless Deirdre is very, very strong and probably very lucky, too, I don't think physics allows that; and that's before you add in the nature of Suvians to be the best at everything they do without trying.

And after that, the Sue conveniently hits her head on a rock and passes out, and later she conveniently wakes up when it's time to charge her. That's too much convenience.

Also, I think Nova touched on this, but jumping into a fight where you know there are Nazgûl is just not smart. They didn't even try to get the Sue away by stealth. That is very poor planning—in fact, looking over it again, there was zero planning. They're lucky they got off with a non-fatal stabbing.

Speaking of which: they took the Witch-king's knife. Doesn't he need that? Plus, since Deirdre was stabbed in pretty much the same way as Frodo, and on the same clock toward turning into a wraith, it seems to me the point must have broken off inside her instead of Frodo. That's mucking with the canon as surely as anything.

And anyway, leaving the Sue within the continuum as a wraith is still leaving the Sue active in the continuum. Sues are quite capable of corrupting the forces of evil as well as good.

Finally, re. the fic you've chosen for sporking, I disagree with your assessment. I read the fic, since it's short, and I don't think Aragorn is badly OOC. He could be written better, with more wariness, yes—he could at least have asked exactly where McCoy came from and what he was doing in that place of all places—but remember that he is wary because he is wise. He's a good judge of character, and as a healer himself, he would know Boromir was beyond his own skill to save. Given the choice between letting a stranger try to save him or letting him die without trying, I think Aragorn would give the stranger a chance. The worst that could happen is that Boromir dies anyway. And if the stranger does turn out to be evil, then Aragorn can chop his head off.

I also agree with Nova that there isn't much there to make jokes out of, and I note that the author is aware that Boromir not dying would change the course of the story; they just chose not to explore the AU beyond the one scene they wanted to write. There's nothing wrong with that.

That said, it's not all bad news! There were some moments I really liked, such as Rebecca reacting to seeing Frodo vanish in real life for the first time and being frozen with fear before the Witch-king, Deirdre leaping to her rescue, and the two of them checking in on a future point in the story to see if their intervention worked. They seem like decent people. I'd like to see more in the way of banter between the two of them and see more of their personalities outside of a combat situation (which they shouldn't have been in to start with). They didn't really talk to each other much in this story, just exchanged facts. (And, side note: Do you really talk like Rebecca does? Do you know anyone who talks like that in real life?)

So, for next time: Take more time. Think things through. Research things you're not familiar with, including PPC things. Double-check your canon sources for details. Focus on showing us who your agents are. And consider getting an extra beta who is familiar with the PPC and isn't related to you. {= )

~Neshomeh

I’m glad you liked it! And hopefully I’ll be able to write more like this in the future.

Also, Dr. Glocktopus is definitely one of my favorite characters to write, and I’m pleasantly surprised people seemed to like it too - especially since it was just spawned out of midnight delirium.

But yeah, thanks!

• I liked the sandwich bit at the beginning
• The casual mention of the skeletons was pretty funny
• The polymorph bit was neat - it's nice to see the two different magic systems interacting on a day-to-day level like this
• Interesting thing with the fic not being that bad
• Dr. Glocktopus :). They've definitely got HQ vibes
• I'm liking the callback with the sandwich

Overall, the mission was well-done and did a good job of showing what's bad and good about the fic, while also having its own independent plot. It also fits pretty well into the PPC as a universe. So, ... keep things up, I'm looking forward to more from you.

Honestly, I didn’t know the sandwich bit would be as mentioned as it was, but I’m kinda glad for that; it helps knowing that I’m not actually terrible at more mundane scenarios. And I’m glad you’re enjoying the agents!

Funny’s really the most I can hope for! Entertainment and all that, y’know? It’s a big part of why I write these to begin with. (That, the practice, and the catharsis in the case of the worse ones.)

Heh. Yeah, ashes generally don’t taste very good, but Charlie’s never been one for discrimination. Anyways, glad you like the characters! It’s one of the bigger things I’ve been worrying about recently with my writing.

Glad you liked it, especially since I was worried I had mishandled the story structure and whatnot. And I was considering writing an after-Author’s Note thing with Arneia and Nurse-Doctor Glocktopus, but my brain wouldn’t cooperate with me on that one.

And yeah, I’ve definitely been trying to move away from too much MST-like stuff after my first mission, so nice to get more reason to do so.

Again, thanks!

So today we did a Write-Off. I'm not good at this embellishment, so instead we'll jump straight to the stories.

Write-Off V by OrangeFox

6/15/2021 by yours truly

...yeah, not much turnout on this one. Still fun, though!

Deirdre is probably not powerful enough to start throwing fireballs, more like being able to start a campfire without matches or be able to warm herself and her partner up a bit if it's cold. She's not some sort of crazy sorcerer who can do everything with fire. The humans on Deneb V got their by some sort of spaceship, which crashed on Deneb V. The humans stayed there for a very long time, because Deneb V is very far away from Terra. The magic was discovered by a combination of messing around and the people reading old tales of times on Terra when there was magic. The people on Deneb V had some of Tolkien's books, so that is why Deirdre's lust object is Aragorn.

The reason why Rebecca is so young is because she is pretty much me, but with a different name. I'm 15, and I don't really know how to write a character who is pretty much myself, but older. Its partly because I don't know where I will be in a few years, and because I don't want to try predict the future and guess wrong and end up having Rebecca be really hard to write because she is vastly different from me. For me, it's easier to have a character who is essentially me so that I can know what to do with her without having to spend lots of time thinking about it.

I have done some editing to my Permission Request based on your comments. I reformatted it based on the speech. I hope it's easier to read. I'm glad you're helping me with this, because it will means the Permission Givers see less of my mistakes. Thanks for the criticism. Is this version better?

About the badfic: I was going to choose another one, but it was really long, (about 140,000 words) and I felt like I didn't really want to dedicate that much time for my first mission. I have other things going on this summer, such as travel, and I do not have the patience of an elephant. Also, I'm changing my agents assignment to the Department of Floaters so I can do this as a mission when there isn't a Sue in it. Also, I'm not really sure where I want my agents to be. The only thing I realy know is that I don't want them to be in the Department of Bad Slash.

Sandwich make Charlie strong!

I’m glad I got to see more of Charlie’s quirkiness and smol bean Jiwon.

Genderbent Santa. Ugh, I cringed at that the first time that was mentioned. Still, glad it didn’t last for long.

And yeah, it was better to have the Sue assimilated into the canon instead of squeezing the fic dry for charges. Saved time and was a good chance to practice.

Right, now that I've not got pesky things like work to worry about...

Your Agents:

Deirdre. Ooh a completely Original Character, last person I'm aware of that went for that instead of someone from an existing canon or World One was... well... me actually, so welcome to the club! (warning: there is no actual club). Personally, I'd like to see more information on her, in the history section we have a lot of information on Deneb V and while that information is nice and interesting it doesn't really gives us more of a feel for Deirdre as a person (I also have a few questions about the setting and Deirdre, but rather than make this bit even bigger than it is, they're at the bottom). The other bit that I am wary of is, despite the slight power creep that there has been (or there feels to have been) in PPC Agents over the years just how powerful is she? PPC Agents as a whole generally fall on the more normal side of the spectrum, the idea isn't for them to go in all guns blazing and be able to hold their own against the 'Sue, but to be able defeat the Sue through other means. So where does Deirdre fall on that spectrum? This was one of the things that I had to think about quite a lot when I was making one of my Original Characters an agent, just how powerful is their superpower (my character was from a story that had similairites with the X-men for reference) and how does that fit in with the general tone of missions in the PPC. I'm not saying you've got anything wrong, I'm just saying to think about it.

Rebecca. Not really got a problem with Rebecca, the only thing I might question is her age, which might be a year or two on the low side, but it's nothing massive.

The Prompt(s). So, I'm going to admit, I haven't read the full thing, because its a mission (even if the badfic is made up), and personally I don't know how I feel about a mission being used as a Prompt response in a Permission Request. From what I have read, I'd like to see more of Onions (and Thraindul I guess, seeing as it appears like he only exists to cause the trouble that causes Rebecca to leave her old RC as he's not mentioned after that) and there's a very big chunk of exposition deposited in the first paragraph that I'm not a hundred percent certain is necessary, you could probably get away with ending the sentence "...and messing with his Exosuit." and then picking straight back up with "All of this was only..." (which I think needs an 'in' between 'only' and 'her'). We don't really need to know the rest of it, we can pick up on most of it by what's being inferred. The other thing I would pick up on (because I'm guilty of doing it too) is making sure that you space properly for speech, so speech should be it's own seperate paragraph instead of all being lumped into one.

The Badfic. I'm not going to say it's not bad. But I don't know if it's missionable or not. It's on the short side for one, and for the second, I don't know what the Agents would be doing there. I think it might be something for the DIC but even then I'm not certain there's enough there for the mission to be enjoyable and worth it, so to speak.

I think there's a solid base here, and it's a good first effort for a Permission Request, but there are areas that could be improved.

Nova

P. S. The questions from earlier re: Deirdre and Deneb V. How did the humans that were on Deneb V get there? Why are they considered a separate species? How did they get Magic to learn in the first place? How do they speak English (or if they don't, how does Deirdre)? How is Aragorn Deirdre's lust object (is it from the time that she's been in the PPC, did the inhabitants of Deneb V get certain bits of culture and media from Earth or is it through some other means)?

I don't think bread and cheese that are burned to a crisp taste very good. I like your characters.

Trust me, I can do that sort of thing too. But with things like this, it is better to temper it down a little.

Ah apologies for thinking you were on Discord, I saw someone with a similar name (or start to their name) and thought you were the same people, my mistake.

Nova

I'm not on the PPC Discord. I understand why you think I should wait for Permission, but sometimes I just have a hard time being patient, and I have a tendency to jump into the deep end because I want to get going and do stuff.

The sandwich-toasting was a strong opening, and I like the "next to the skeletons" line and its reaction. I also liked the way you handled the not-quite-Suvian - though I would've liked to see how she ended up! (And possible how Dr. Glocktopus reacted to having an angry, bewildered, charging woman dropped on him with no warning.)

The thing about letting the fic shape the mission is... well, we're not MSTers, so it helps to separate us from that, but also it's more fun to read. ^_^ A mission that doesn't end with 'and then they stabbed her dead the end' is always a nice change, so if you've got good reason to do it, go for it!

hS