Copy-Pasted Disclaimer: I reserve the right to be totally wrong, and to misquote facts and to make
errors in judgment. I also C&C as I read, so what I said at one point can easily be retracted on
the next, depending on how the story progresses. I don't claim to be the authority on fanfiction
writing... Hell, I see C&Cing as a learning experience. Agree? Disagree? Corrections on my
corrections? I'll thank you for it. Ignore all my comments in applying to your fic? You have the
right to do so. Take it with a grain of salt, use what you can use and ignore the rest. ^_^

Hmmm... an Original type fic. And an introductory one at that. ^^; So I guess I'll leave my canon
nitpicker self at home, since, well, you're practically establishing your own canon here. :P

On 6/26/05, Adrian Tymes <wingcat@pacbell.net> wrote:

[This is missing something, 

There is something missing,

but I can't quite tell what.  Am I spending

too much time trying to develop characters given the length of the fic?
Am I adding too many "new" concepts to the MG genre?  Or am I just
completely missing what I'm missing?

(shrugs) We'll see. But it occurs to me that my lexicon may not be at par with yours, so any
unfamiliar word I ask about isn't necessarily a correction but just general ignorance on my part
(as pointed out by a certain Thomas Michael Edwards). As such, it'd be appreciated if you'd have
the patience to clear up some of my questions on those particular instances. Thanks.

C&C appreciated, as always, whether or not it's on the things I'm
looking for.]

Yosh. Ikuze!
 

*****

That drop of sweat had nearly killed her.

It must have been a super-megaton sweatdrop that instantaneously dehydrated her poor body. 
 

Scarlet Fury, magical girl and unofficial errand girl for the CIA,

Straightforward introduction that skips through the trouble of showing she's a magical girl and
unofficial errand for the CIA... check.

I'm not saying it's necessarily bad or anything (for that's a judgment call that can only be made
at the end of this fic), I'm just taking note.

moment's distraction allowed her to subvocalize 

Suggest: sub-vocalize

It was kind of her calling card.  Good thing it had just rained and
the woods were green: no one would hear the guards' yelling, 

Suggest: replacing 'yelling' with 'screams'

Everyone pitched in to fight when a mutant was spotted, but the best
they could do was to simply to tie

The above phrase has an extra 'to' there in between 'to simply' and 'tie'. Get rid of it.
 
She recognized his

expression from far too many encounters; his habit of thinking with
the wrong head had spared hers.  

Advantageous, that.

allowing the spidersilk 

Suggest: 'spider silk' or 'spider-silk'
 

Breathing fire always left a bad taste in her mouth, over and above
the charred pork stench from her target.  But it was quite effective,
especially when aimed into his open mouth.  

Nitpick: While I'm all for superpowers and stuff, usually magical girls (even newer, grittier
fanfiction ones like yours) tend to stick to a theme. So what is Scarlet Fury's theme? Spider or
Fire or Fire Spider, if there's such an animal?
 

The battle had had nothing to do with the victims.

I know there are times when the repetition of 'had' is called for, but I believe that it's not
called for right now.

Further, 

Suggest: Furthermore,
 

It was hardly a fight.  After all that dialogue, five seconds of the
hottest flames anyone present had ever witnessed reduced the enemy to
cinders.  She never actually got his name, and the only way she knew
he had been working alone was that the attacks stopped.  Her powers
were apparently hers to keep, though.

(blinks) Well, after all that setup, that was rather anticlimactic. Since the prose is practically
breezing through these (admittedly hackneyed) parts of magical girl lore, I guess I can applaud it
somewhat. No reader who's not a MG fic newbie hasn't seen this before, and it'd make sense for the
prose to skip past these tired cliches _granted_ that something more significant or interesting
will come towards the reader's way. We'll see... though the 'I'm tired of being a magical girl and
I never asked for this responsibility in the first place so please let me lead an ordinary life'
thing is fast becoming a cliche in and of itself, perhaps I'm only getting ahead of myself. Let's
continue.

A year later, upon graduating high school, she went straight to the
nearest CIA office and was turned down. 

Yeah. That's real life for you.

The note contained an URL and a login.  The URL lead 

Revise: lead --> led

Also on that page was a login form; logging in

lead her to a board of job offers.  Her heart skipped a beat when she
realized she had essentially been accepted before she even walked in
the door.  

Awwww... and here I was, expecting an out-of-the-job magical girl story. :P 

Ironically, monitoring her had fallen to one of the agency's official
trainees.  When he posted her mistakes in detail on the forum
afterwards, she had to restrain herself from melting down her
computer.

Heh. Well, that's better and funnier than the "I saw that a mile away" trainee-magical girl
relationship that would have developed had this been a script made for Hollywood.

She had seen such jobs show up, from time to time, 

Suggest: show up from time to time (get rid of the comma after 'up'), 'coz methinks it improves
the flow of the prose.
 

She knew she needed something to take her mind off the power.
Friends...no, her job was secret from everyone.  Even her family could
not be told.  She was all alone with her truth - just like most
magical girls, she mused, but in an adult world.

And there you go, ladies and gentlemen. She had just summarized the entire premise of the fic. The
Magical Woman.

Drinking.  Drinking helped people relax, when they could not confide.
But she needed something more.  So, on her way back from another
completed mission, she decided to try some drugs.  That was when she
discovered another superpower: complete immunity to marijuana,
hashish, alcohol, and even caffeine.  

Well, that's a downer. Instant buzz-kill.

While comparing the effects, Scarlet focused on the past ecstasy,
reveled in it, obsessed with it, and came out howling in her mind to
STOP!  ENOUGH!  Her parents had read her tale and verse of what
happened to drug addicts, and she was determined not to become one.

Kind of late for that.

gigantic but finite.  She stopped smiling by her 11th birthday, and
could charitably be described as a pink goth by her 12th.  

(sweatdrop)

Not even a sob escaped Scarlet Fury as her heart stopped.  She fell
backwards, nerveless, without the will to take another breath.

(bigsweat) And here we have the left field twist. The director of the 'I see dead people' movie
would've been proud.
 

"Yes, father," she replied as if discussing the weather.  "There was
only the one this time."

Suggest: only one this time." (get rid of 'the' before 'one')

"She did not have much happiness."

He thought about it, and then shrugged.  "Someone will claim her, even
if she thought she was alone.  In this world, no one is ever truly
alone."

W-ell... Heh. ^^; I have no words, really. 

The way the story was presented is reminiscent of how spamfics are usually done (not that I'm
saying this fic should be auto-deleted as irrelevant spam... I'm only noting their similarities).
This fic is barely over 10kb, and was seemingly written either for humor or shock value (i.e. a
parody or short fic with a punchline), just like a spamfic. I mean, here I was expecting an MG
story, and here I got a drug addict MG protagonist and the drug pusher MG 'antagonist' that does
her in at the end of the fic. Huh.

As a parody piece, it has served its purpose. Though I'm admittedly disappointed by the fic's
eventual resolution... It was something that promised to be an interesting take on MGs but instead
left me cold and let down with its left-field ending... it's done what it has set out to do. Throw
in a hasty punchline and parody MGs.

Still, on the other side of the coin, perhaps your decision to make this a short but droll
spamfic/parody fic is for the best. Though I liked 'Kung Pow', many people still felt that it's
just an overextended, big-budgeted Saturday Night Live segment. Though I would have liked a 'To be
continued' attached to your lampoon on MGs, many people will justify leaving this fic as is as the
better option.

As for the 'missing' rant you have at the beginning, I think... you're right. Considering the
length of the fic and the development of the characters, what's missing in this fic is... well,
more of this fic. ^_^ For a spamfic, the characters are too... well-developed that I _wish_ you
would have spent more time fleshing out the plot. The plot and the development of the characters
are incongruous to each other. So in response to your question, what's missing to Flameout, (I
wish) is Chapter 2. ;)

In any case, ignore my whiny 'Awww, I was expecting more of an MG parody fic with potential, and I
ended up with a cheap spamfic' comments if you'd like. I'm only "keeping it real" and telling you
straight out what I thought about the fic. That's my two cents. 

Keep on writing,
Abdiel




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