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Like, at all. And was probably too busy oogling Aragorn to pay attention to which badguy these creepy things served...

"Later that night, we were sleeping, in another building away from the Prancing Pony, when we all of a sudden heard the black riders scream, causing everyone to wake.

“What are they?”Pippin asked.

“They used to be men, Kings of this world. But, the rings given to them changed them. By using their greed for power, the dark lord changed them into his followers, doing his biding.”

“Why are they after us?” Sam asked.

“They are servants for Saruman. They are drawn to the evil that the ring carries.” He replied. “We must leave here.”"


Seriously, what? Most badfic writers at least understand slightly better than that.

The favorite example being the time that Jay and Acacia were Ents, got shot with arrows, and didn't mind (until they dropped the disguises). A similar thing happened when they were dragons and someone ate a Sue and regretted it after the disguises were dropped. However, it's not a complete change, as the agent's mind is mostly untouched by the disguise. Also, as seen above, I don't think you could use a disguise to repair an injury. Cover it up, yes; fix it, no.

I've described the disguise as an overlapping morphic field, but that's just my Discworld-influenced take on it. I'd wait for other input.

Did I start a Reality Room As Plot Device trend? {= p

~Neshomeh

The wiki's rather vague on this, so I thought I'd ask here: do disguise generators simply project the disguise like a hologram over the Agent, or do they actually alter the Agent's physiology?

I ask because, if the latter, I plan to make a plot point of it (about Chliever being unable to enter the Reality Room in human form due to all the diseases; being unable to do so causes him to miss something important).

If it's the former, I need to find a new plot point.

Seconding the importance of writing even if the words coming out are crap. Keep going and keep writing anyway, and come back and fix or delete later as necessary (this is the bit badfic authors tend to fall down on). This is sort of how Trojie and I end up writing non-mission things: she's a lot better than I am at getting words written whatever the quality, and I've got a knack for using what she produces as a basis and adding the pretty sprinkles that were eluding her, and between us it works. But without that initial push to just keep writing and get the words down, we'd have nothing to prettify and things would go at a snail's pace.

We write by dumping the text of the badfic to a googledoc and then one of us starts writing, cutting the bits of fic we want to refer to into the mission with italics and so forth, and deleting the unused bits, until they run out of steam, upon which they gchat the other person saying 'tag' :)

But at least partly it's the experience thing as well - we've been writing together (not PPC) since 2004, and I've been writing PPC missions since 2003. Until Pads joined me here in 2008, though, I'd only completed five missions. Now, we have each other to kickstart us when we're blocked, we have the experience writing *together* (so there's no worrying about if the other one will like what we've done or will get offended if we edit what they've written), and we've had the practice actually doing missions. We know what works and what doesn't. And the only way to get that is to just keep plugging away :)

I think the most important thing is to push yourself past your block. If you get blocked, make yourself write another couple of sentences. Even if they suck. Then quit the doc and go do something else. When you come back, yeah, those two bad sentences will be there, but maybe you'll see a way to fix them and that will spur you on :) And practice, practice, practice!

/end pep-talk :)

And read the whole thing through. All I can say is: Brilliant. Purely Brilliant. I loved it.

That's not all of it, though, because I know my co-writes aren't exactly going quickly, though it's more my fault than my co-authors', heh. I haven't seen either of them in a long while, but I can ask them if I manage to get in touch with them. And yeah, I know looking for the badfic is always one of the hardest parts for me; I tend to try to do the intro and possibly outro first, then work the actual mission in there once I've got a fic.

I should probably start trying to write things by hand, too. It'd balance out how unreliable this computer is until I've got a better one, for one. Another problem might be the sheer volume of projects (and missions) I'm trying to do all at once, but that's a matter of prioritising I guess.

I'll keep what you've said in mind and work on writing more quickly, as well as getting past writers' block more easily. Next time I see Trojie or Pads, assuming I can get a word in, I'll ask their input on it, too. I try to avoid fics that've updated really recently in case they update while I'm writing, or after I've finished the mission (completed badfics are good for that), but I can start looking at those more, too. Thanks, though, I'm hoping it'll help me actually produce stuff (and stuff worth reading; no point being productive if it's worse than the stuff we're sporking, heh).

I guess in part it seems that I write missions quickly because I've just posted two in nine days. This last one took me about a month to write. The one I posted last week was written in a matter of hours (badfic was posted on the fourth, my mission on the sixth). I have a betareader that responds very quickly.

I think the main thing is that I make time to write missions. And experience probably also plays a part in it: I can write missions quickly because I've written a lot of them. Also, I write missions by hand, so when not able to take a laptop with me (too heavy, battery is on life-support) I can still take the mission with me and work on it.

I think it also helps that I put badfic on FFnet on alerts when I first see it. That way I never have to really hunt for badfic, and I can see which of them have been updated since (and which haven't and likely don't have enough charges for an interesting mission).

Other than that, I'm probably just a fast writer.

Trojie and Pads are very productive too. Perhaps they have some additional secrets to share.

3. Heartlessness Destroyed by Dhampire Hunter
Is it possible for Severus Snape to have a heart? Duh! Severitus. Slightly better summery inside Slytherin!Harry Vampire!Harry
Harry Potter - Rated: T - English - Horror/Supernatural - Chapters: 1 - Words: 1,065 - Published: 9-12-09 - Harry P. & Severus S
Ignoring the Slytherin!Harry.

"Ugh! I can't believe he gave you detention for that, Harry!"

Harry grimaced and made an irritated noise in the back of his throat, but the rest of his speech was cut off as Hermione came up behind them.

"Really, you can't, Ron? You can't believe Professor Snape gave Harry a detention for putting slices of frog liver on his seat when he wasn't looking? Because it seems pretty believable to me."

"He was asking for it," muttered Harry. "Sometimes I wish there was something I could do to really get back at him for what he's done. It's all his fault anyway, he practically encouraged Malfoy to throw that vampire blood at me."

The three winced at the recollection, when Snape had turned his back and Harry had gotten a few swallows of vampire blood in his mouth. The incident had left him sparkling in the sunlight forevermore with a pale complexion and a craving for blood, which he now drank a glass of every night before bed, usually the blood of an orangutan. Dumbledore maintained that it hadn't been Snape's fault, and Malfoy had suffered for quite some time, but for Harry and Ron, despite Hermione's halfhearted protests, something was wrong with the whole picture.

Ron held the Great Hall door open as they entered. "Yeah, sometimes I wonder if he's even got a heart at all."

Harry didn't miss the Look from Professor McGonagall in his direction as Snape leaned over to tell her something, the usual sneer on his face. He grimaced again and forced down the rest of his lunch, dreading the detention to come. The rest of the day passed in a blur, and he trudged down to the Potions Dungeon with a heavy heart that night.

"Mr. Potter," came the sneering voice from the dungeon. "Please be so kind as to shut the door behind you."

Harry stepped in, closing the door carefully behind him. "Yes, Professor."

"Due to the nature of your... prank," he said, pronouncing the word as though it was a kind of toad, "You will be removing the livers from enough frogs to get my sixth-year advanced class through next year."

Harry had no idea how the next words made their way to his mouth, without bothering to check with his brain first. "Ron's right, you have no heart."

Snape blinked, so taken aback, for the moment, that he had no response ready to hand. Then he cracked an amused expression, which might've been a smile, had it not also spelled D-O-O-M in neon flashing letters to Harry.

"Potter, you swallowed vampire blood last year." Harry tried to keep from looking blank, but only succeeded in looking blankly terrified. Snape sighed. "You really are your father's son."

Well-chosen words, the usual barb jostled Harry from his mental state and he glared. "My father, sir, was--"

"About as subtle as a brick wall," Snape drawled. "You're a vampire, which means that you can see body heat. Which means you can see that I have a heart, and, furthermore, that it is beating."

Harry blinked, and, curious, allowed his eyes to relax. Very, very faintly, his eyes located thermal images, proving that Snape indeed have a heart. He opened his mouth, but was cut off again.

"But thank you for the compliment, Potter. Which reminds me, why don't you also remove the hearts from those frogs and pickle them? Should keep you out of... trouble, for a few hours." The malicious sneer made it perfectly clear that there would be no Quidditch practice, and furthermore that this was part of the plan. Harry sighed and got to work on the frogs. Life as usual, he supposed.

It's very filtered. It said something like: Not Authorized To View, Categorized As Adult, and Change Security Settings. Lovely school security, allowing me to read adult books online but not see text on a perfectly fine website.

3. Heartlessness Destroyed by Dhampire Hunter
Is it possible for Severus Snape to have a heart? Duh! Severitus. Slightly better summery inside Slytherin!Harry Vampire!Harry

Meir Brin of the Hogwarts Fanfiction Academy shook her head sadly. "There's no doubt about it," she told the assembled staff. "Madam Pomfrey says it's as bad a case of Severitus as she's ever seen."

"So, he's just going to keep doing that?" said Professor McGonagall. "Sort of... splintering like that?"

"Until the disease runs out of non-canon versions of Harry Potter to sever off him. Or until Professor Snape can brew the cure," Brin amended almost as an afterthought.

Harry Potter lay on a medical bed before them, looking pale, but fortunately sedated. Before their eyes, he grew filmy and indistinct, like a snake's skin just before molting. Then, as though someone had taken a knife and pared off an extra layer, a second Harry separated itself from the first and came to stand at the foot of the bed. This new Harry was almost the same as the first except for the Slytherin crest on his robes and the look of deep angst and woe on his face. He opened his mouth as though to bemoan his existence, but he was clouted soundly on the head first. He crumpled to the ground, revealing Madam Pomfrey and a very large case of medical supplies.

Pomfrey shrugged. "It's better for the patient this way."

The staff shook off their surprise and moved the new Harry to a bed of its own. At that time, Severus Snape appeared.

"How is it going, Severus?" Dumbledore asked.

Snape scowled. "The same as before, Headmaster. It won't work unless I can have a heart." He eyed Harry speculatively.

"Yes, it is a shame we had to destroy the last one," Dumbledore said, casting a look of regret toward a bed with a sheet thrown over it. The sheet didn't quite disguise the fact that the body beneath had a rather large stake through its chest. "But perhaps this new one will be of more use."

"We shall see," said Madam Pomfrey. "I'll ask you all to please keep back, this is a very sensitive matter."

The staff gave Pomfrey her space, as none of them really wanted to see what was about to happen. There came a sound awfully like splorch, and a smell of freshly cut grass and warm dust filled the room.

"Summery," Meir Brin commented. "Weird."

The others nodded.

A few minutes later, Madam Pomfrey emerged from behind the screened-off bed and held out a porcelain bowl to Snape. "There you are," she said. "One heart."

"Good," said Snape, though not as enthusiastically as he might have had the organ in question come from the original and not a copy. "The potion should be ready by the end of the day." He took the bowl containing the heart and returned swiftly to the dungeons and his potion.

The mini image at top doesn't show the full of it, the body below is what has it all. Unless your laptop also ate the text for whatever reason.

I wish I could see the pic, but I can't. Stupid filtered school laptops. Maybe the ones at the public library will work.
But I'm assuming this letter will be from the real vampires: the bat shape-shifting, sunlight exposure exploding, human blood drinking kind. Twilight makes me feel really embarrassed of my gender.

I have a big dog named Sam who is a male spaniel mix with white long fur and brown spotches. I also have a female puppy that is a miniature shitzu with golden-brown short fur named Kinzie.

[Sueifying]

LOL!!11! Like OMg Sammmmmiiiieee is teh mst anazing doggie eva! He has sparkly blue eyes dat chang collor ta green and fur lyke wite silk w/ebbony ears (gold on the brown) and he is a karate masster. Kynzieee is so adorable wit pure gold fur an purple eyes. She can sing all teh Hannah Montana songz purfectedly!

[De-Sueifying]

My poor pets...

If I may ask a polite question, how do you write missions so quickly? Especially while doing them so well? I've been trying to figure out how to get more productive with my own missions, especially since I have so many Agents, so I thought I would ask. If it's not a bother that is; I was just thinking that maybe I could pick something up. On the whole, just curious and thought there wasn't harm in asking.

Riftangel tells the story of how a Torchwood experiment came through the Rift, made Owen a bad scientist, made Jack go out of his way to seem non-threatening, and gave Ianto a bad case of low self-esteem, and eventually died at the hands of two annoyed PPC agents.

Awesome! That trailer, I hadn't seen. *huggles Kane* Ooh... glowy...

According to one of the PC's intel things, the Forgotten are all feral now. Which sucks loudly.

Warning: slightly, er, noncon. Although utterly non-explicit, because we realised halfway through writing this that we don't actually know how to write het. We have taken the liberty of assuming the author of the fic summary is a Sue, and inserted her into this fic. Enjoy, or something.

***

'Like, here kitty kitty?'

Hissing softly, Greebo shrank further back into the dark recesses of his latest hidey-hole. The creature, whatever it was, surely wouldn't find him here. He flicked his tail, annoyed, as he heard the soft footsteps getting closer.

'Mister kitty cat, won't you come and play?'

Even the voice was unnatural, smooth and yet tinkly and making all the hairs down Greebo's spine stand on end. And that was to say nothing of how the thing looked...

'Gotcha!'

Suddenly there was light.

Greebo skittered out from his den of discarded wooden crates, and made a break for it through the impossibly slender and slightly sparkly legs in front of him. A perfectly manicured hand shot out, and missed him by a whisker. He skidded round the corner at high speed.

And stopped. Ahead was a blank wall, too high to leap. Behind, and rapidly approaching, was a beast straight from the Dungeon Dimensions. It gave a feral smile as it advanced.

There was only one possible escape, and Greebo took it.

There was a horrible moment where morphic resonance twanged like a piano-string, and then he was lurching to two flat, clawless feet.

The terrible beast was now at least a head shorter than him. Greebo grinned. He liked having the advantage. He wasn't well equipped, in this form, to bite the back of the creature's neck and shake it until bits snapped, but these strong human arms ought to be good for something. He reached out, and seized the thing with one hand.

'Mroooowl?'

'Erk!'

Mrrrroww!'

It struggled in his grasp, but something still wasn't right. Like any self-respecting cat, Greebo was in the habit of playing with his prey before eating it, though he was willing to concede that tossing it into the air and catching it might be a little difficult without paws. He'd been quite willing to give it a try just a moment before, but as his fingers tightened round its throat, he found himself overcome with an urge, or, more accurately, an Urge, to play with it in a slightly different manner.

He sniffed. Ah, there was the reason. The Beast had, it seemed, been party to similar Urges. Had being the operative word here. Now it seemed mostly to be harbouring fear. But Greebo was rather sensitive to smells, and both were lingering.

Well that was fine. Greebo rather liked fear. And Urges too.

He also liked the way this human form wasn't lumbered with clothes when Nanny wasn't about. It made things so much easier, not having to try to handle buttons. This meant that he was rather exposed, of course, but the fiend didn't seem to have any idea at all about not playing fair, and kept its knees resolutely down. And pressed tightly together.

He looked down.

Ah.

Yes, definitely Urges. The sparkling, whimpering creature followed Greebo's gaze, and gulped.

We will draw a delicate veil over the story at this point, and reconvene several months later ...

'Oh, Greebo, you naughty boy!'

'Naughty doesn't really cover it, Gytha,' said Granny Weatherwax, looking down at the sad, mewling heap on Nanny Ogg's doorstep.

'I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it, really,' Nanny said, clucking. Granny sniffed.

'And why are they so glittery, d'you think?'

'Search me,' said Nanny, picking one of the strange kittens up and inspecting it closely. 'But don't you think they've got his eyes?'

'So long as they haven't got his temperament.' Granny sniffed once more, then peered at the dangling scrap of sparkling fluff in Nanny's hand. 'Well,' she added. 'They've definitely got his smell.'

'Oosa widdle sweetie den?' asked Nanny of the kitten. Granny rolled her eyes.

'Widdle sounds about right,' she said.

I am in no way familiar with Frankenstein, but that still induced much laughter.

That said, in regard to potential disguises for Agents, I think I've read a few missions where they went in as themselves. If that doesn't work out, perhaps something could be done to render the Agents invisible so any noncanons don't see them? Having canon-compliant disguises sounds rather difficult, though since I'm not familiar with the canon, I may be wrong.

The sue paired herself with God? Talk about ego. My remaining shreds of sanity have been utterly destroyed simply from hearing about this.

I am on my way to my brother`s place in Galway, Ireland. Thought that I would see a little of England on the way.

Barnabus tried to blink as the message ended. The tasoth had received many strange instructions over the millennium, ranging from a giant jellyfish with poison replaced with weapons it could not use to a T-Rex with a sonic cannon, but an underwater cat was particularly strange. Still, when commands came from T'leth, he obeyed.

Barnabus picked one of the lobstermen on the base at random to help with the design. After a few hours, the design seemed mostly complete, but something seemed off. The half-inch thick aqua plastic armor was somehow un-catlike. When he asked the lobsterman about it, the lobsterman said, "Yes, but it may run into X-com troops."

"Oh. Okay then, the armor is fine. Actually, give it more armor."

Something seemed vaguely off about the cluster of facial tentacles, but Barnabus decided it was good enough and sent the design to the cloning vats.

But we have Tenth Walkers to deal with. Won't belong before somebody comes up with a Tenth Stitchpunk, or some human girl who just happens to be immune to life-decimating poison gas.

Trouble is, I LIKE those two, so I'm a bit protective right now. Might draw a picture, that always helps...