Sep 2014 Archive, part a

Mostly, the only OFUs discussed in detail on the Wiki are the ones with specific ties to the PPC. OFUCI was written by Thalia Weaver, one of the first Permission Givers; IAHF was-and-is written by a current PPC Boarder, etc etc etc. Since there were over a hundred OFUs on Miss Cam's list before she deregulated the field, there's going to be a whole bunch not discussed at length.

That said, though, I don't know of any reason they can't have pages. The OFU multiverse and the PPC multiverse are explicitly identified with each other, and a fair number have made appearances in PPC stories. So if you're bored and want to write useful (ie, non-stub) pages, go ahead. But it's not something I see a need for.

Alternately, I can't seem to find a simple list article, which might be more useful. It might be better to de-redirect 'Fanfiction University' from the category page and make a list and full article there.

hS

Though that brings up the question of whether or not all the OFU's mentioned on that page, but not elsewhere, should also have dedicated pages.

I know there's a Doctor Strange movie in the master list, I'm hoping they do it well, but I can't quite believe they will.

There's no question that modern CG can do a wonderful job of showing mage-battles, but Hollywood has a bad habit of getting so carried away with the effects that they forget about minor details like a coherent plot.

Actually, what I'd love to see them do for the Doctor Strange film is hire a stage magician, and do as much of the effects work as possible with physical effects instead of computer-created.

Seriously, I really want movies centering around the ladies of the MCU. Black Widow, Carol Danvers, maybe Kamala Khan at some point? Basically anything that focuses on the heroines. I w
I'm rather doubtful about a Cloak and Dagger series. It would be pretty neat, but they literally got their powers from having heroin tested on them.,

After spending two days in Kansas City over Labor Day, even if I could take the time off work I've put a good-sized dent in the vacation budget.

How often are Gatherings held?

My brother has an out of state tennis tournament that weekend and my dad will be off on a business trip. So I will be unable to go. Also, apparently the idea of meeting people you met online doesn't go over well with my parents.

A full report will be expected, though! *glances at hS and the lack of report from the London Gathering* :P

I guess this means it's time to start saving money for the next Gathering!

To answer your questions:

1) Yes, I can make it (just in case you'd forgotten from reading the subject line), and for more than just the museum. In fact, I'll be getting to Chicago Thursday evening, and my flight out is Sunday evening. Although I'm not sure how much time that'll actually give me on the Sunday, what with having to be at the airport a few hours before the flight leaves.

2) The current plan sounds good to me, and the Disney exhibit could be very interesting - I'd be up for that so long as everyone else was.

3) Good question, where will I be coming from? Umm... a hotel somewhere? I'll probably be staying near the airport (O'Hare International, in case that needs disambiguating), unless you can suggest somewhere more sensible. I'll be relying on public transport the whole time I'm out there. I'm assuming that there'll be good transport links between the airport and touristy places like the museum.

4) Yes, the game that I was thinking of bringing is Legendary: Villains. It's a cooperative card based game where players take on the role of various bad guys from the Marvel universe, and try to beat the good guys. It's quite a different style of game from most.

5)
Comments? I'm looking forward to it too.
Questions? None that I can think of.
Concerns? Nope. Unless you count the fact that I've just discovered that I can spell 'museum' without the aid of spellcheck.

Because I forgot to mention:

1. We have a cat. He's very friendly (and will probably spend the first hour or so hiding in the closet anyway), but just in case anyone has allergies or a deathly fear of cats, now you know.

2. Chicago is expensive. $10 or more per person for a decent meal out is not unusual. Bear this in mind when planning your visit.

~Neshomeh

There are two basic rules:

1. When the parenthetical aside is part of the sentence (like this), the punctuation goes outside. Punctuate like you would if the parenthetical note weren't there, but after the aside—for instance, in the previous sentence, there would normally be a comma after "sentence," but now it goes after the aside.

2. When the parenthetical aside is its own sentence, the punctuation goes inside. (Like this.)

When deciding whether or not to include a parenthetical aside at all, ask yourself if the information is important. If it IS important, you should probably include it in the text of the piece without making it an aside. If it's NOT important, consider leaving it out entirely. If it's not important, but still serves a purpose such as entertainment value, go ahead and include it.

That's pretty much it. Let me know if there are any specific examples that worry you, and I'll help. {= )

~Neshomeh

But letting other people do all the Permission stuff is one failing I try to hide whenever possible. And so:

-You. As far as I'm concerned, you've involved yourself in the PPC Community, so tick box there.

-Characters. I liked them when I first saw them, and I still like them now. The changes Falchion's character in particular has gone through remind me of Manwe's chapter of 'The Game of the Gods'. He started out with flaws coming out of his, er, whatever Skarmory have instead of ears, and has been continually adapted into a good character - not by simply deleting things whenever people questioned them, but by changing them to fit. That's how it's supposed to work, it really is.

Though I have no idea why you kept the section title 'Sexuality and Kinks', since the latter make virtually no appearance. That would be like titling part of your CV 'Work & Volunteer Experience & Time Spent In Space'; it's technically accurate, but rather random. Oh well.

Control prompt: I liked this. I particularly liked the random Pokemon battle - it seemed a bit strange having Rasheeda know about Pokemon, but she's a trained PPC agent, she should know some canons. That was the high point of the story, for me.

I was a little disappointed that, while putting the first half in the Floating Hyacinth's POV, you didn't make particular use of the peculiarities of the Flowers. They're powerful telepaths with fairly low visual acuity - you missed a great opportunity to give us Rasheeda's description as a Flower sees her. You could've gone overboard with the leaf-metaphors (I'm not sure the Hyacinth even knows what a deinonychosaur is, though come to think of it we do have one running around HQ), and even delved into a mental description to go with the physical one.

But like I say, that's a missed opportunity, not an error as such. It might also have interfered with the purpose of the piece, which is showing us what the agent is like, and you did that very well. Even for Falchion, at least in a combat situation.

Minor errors I caught:
-The SO wouldn't be the sole person responsible for Rasheeda's transfer. Either it would be the Marquis de Sod (Personnel), the Tiger Lily (DIA), or the Board as a whole.
-Rasheeda seems pretty random in terms of which deity she invokes. Why invoke Osiris about DAVD? Why invoke Anubis when attacked? They're both gods of the Dead, which doesn't seem very appropriate. In fact, given that the first place is a request for protection, the second a response to violence, and that Rasheeda's a lion... have you considered giving her a cat theme? 'Bastet forbid' would work in the first instance, since she's a Protector (and it also makes for interesting possibilities with the Temple of Bast), while 'for the love of Sekhmet' would work in the latter. Then you've already got Mafdet, who's a cat or mongoose... it's not like there's a shortage of feline Egyptian gods!
-You've left the Accident unclear - deliberately, I assume - but nothing you've written suggests she was in the DIA, rather than the DMS. I assume the 'Stu had taken down an agent team, and Rasheeda was in there to stop him causing any more trouble? A couple of mentions of the other agents wouldn't have gone amiss.

Random prompt: This was a good choice, letting us see what Falchion is like when on a mission (ie, with hands and stuff). I don't think it came out as well as the control prompt, but I can't really pin a reason on that. Certainly it would work better with more context - a lead-in of him getting more and more worried about the story - which makes me think this is just a scene from an upcoming mission.

But it's technically sound, has some good lines - I like 'flocking' as a swearword, particularly from a solitary species like Skarmory. I also like his head-under-wing instinct, that works well. (Have to ask, though - 'Bird Jesus'? Um, he's a Pokemon, I'd expect him to invoke one of the various deities they have rather than making a strange semi-reference). It shows us Falchion's character, and Rasheeda's - which matches her character in the control, so points there! - and while I'm not sure it technically fits the prompt description (she seems to be correct in her accusation), we're not actually here to make you jump through hoops. Unless it's funny.

The badfic: Um... that's long. Are you sure you want to do that as your first mission? For comparison, my first mission was a fairly short, fairly benign story. It lets you ease into writing the agents, lets us as readers get to know them in a fairly calm environment, leaves you room for escalation later - and means later missions aren't an anticlimax. I would really recommend you take something shorter, milder, and less personal to start with - something that you can dissect as a story, rather than using its authorship as your plot driver.

But ultimately, it's up to you, because unless anyone has a serious objection, I'm going to say Permission Granted. Have fun!

hS

To ring in:

I think it's totally and perfectly fine to have agents that young.

How serious you want to make that be is up to you- they can still have a good time in HQ without encountering harder problems if you want, and you could always make it for a running joke or something about them being thought of as being too young for it or shouldn't they be in the Nursery or whathaveyou instead of doing missions.

But seriously? Go with it if it works for you.

What hS says is, of course, factually correct on all counts. There is no fixed agent age limit (though I doubt any Flower is going to let a ten-year-old be an Action agent again; they're jerks sometimes, but I really don't see them as being willing to throw a young child into the meat grinder) and theoretically (?) no upper limit on RCs; the only actual rule is you can't have just a letter, out of respect to Jay and Acacia (I believe this is the reason at least - like retiring a jersey number in sport). Though of course as he points out, you're subsequently implying/establishing there are at least five billion RCs in HQ, which turns the PPC into a mind bogglingly huge organisation that really shouldn't have any badfic left to kill with those kinds of numbers at their disposal (more on the maths of PPC agents in a future thread!). I am obviously no authority but maybe consider whether or not you can't go with a smaller number as a reference? But then I've never been the fondest of crazy RC numbers so maybe this is me being too serious.

(Seriously, five billion RCs, almost as many people in HQ as on the entire planet Earth!)

Secondly, I must ask - why such young agents? They're barely into their teens and should by all rights still be in the Nursery learning the trade, if they were born in HQ (if they weren't, that's a whole 'nother bag of apples), and would be at all sorts of psychological and physiological disadvantages in the field compared to an adult agent, some of which wouldn't be offset by disguises. You have to remember that a child's brain and psychology aren't actually finished developing - maturity isn't some arbitrary line in the sand, it's an actual stage of development. There's a reason people under a certain age are judged as not capable of giving informed consent or making informed decisions. If someone grew up in HQ this is a slightly different story, as they've likely been brought up being prepared for agent work should they choose to go into it, but if these are kids right off the street they really aren't prepared for the kinds of things Action work would have them do. While a PPC agent's job isn't all combat, the posts this link might be a useful start for you to look at some of the problems involved: http://howtofightwrite.tumblr.com/tagged/children-and-combat

I'm, again, not a figure of authority, and I'm not going "grar, how dare you think about this; to the salt mines with ye!" Maybe part of this is just being uncomfortable with the idea of throwing children into daily mortal peril that tends to leave even functional adults severely psychologically strained, and I'm not sure I see Flowers being super happy about the idea of deploying what are basically (willing, but still) child soldiers, but I think you should consider the question of why these agents need to be children. How does it help the narrative? Is there some kind of purpose behind it? What does it do for your story that would not be served in any other way? Are you confident in your ability to write it in such a way that it is entertaining without doing a huge disservice to the children in the world actually forced into situations where they'll be risking their lives every day (I know the PPC is generally humorous, but I'm of the opinion there are certain things that just shouldn't be treated as a joke)? Why is it they're willing to throw themselves into such dangerous work - work that in fact often results in loss of life, limb or sanity even for adults who made the informed decision to put themselves on the line? This isn't a demand for you to justify yourself, it's just a reminder to put some thought into your characters and figure out why they need to be the way they are - and if you can't find an answer you're happy with, maybe it would do to try a different concept.

This isn't meant aggressively or to browbeat you, and I hope it hasn't come off that way; if it has, I sincerely apologise. All I'm doing in the end is asking you to think over what you're hoping to accomplish with and for your agents, and what the concept implies for them as people. If you've thought out all the implications and pitfalls and where an agent fits in with what you're going for, your spinoff will be much stronger with it, but this specific concept is one that has a lot more pitfalls than benefits, so in the end I'm more suggesting caution than anything; and making sure your characters are thought out is a universal thing when writing, so it's advice that couldn't hurt regardless of your concept. "Why?" is probably one of the most important questions a writer can ask themselves.

I think sending kids into the action departments might be unsafe, but since when have the Flowers cared about that? And to be fair, being a PPC agent is probably a lot safer than being a demigod, and Percy was twelve when he went on his first quest.

As for the RC number... well, my agents use RC 3-Apple-14, so welcome to the fruit club! (And isn't that the date Earth ended? In the episode with 9 and Rose and Cassandra the trampoline?)

She was ten when she became an agent, which is why she was put in Author Correspondence - it was technically Action, but didn't involve going out into the Word Worlds.

Other young agents I'm aware of (due to them being mine) are Elanor Laison - recruited on her 14th birthday, and placed as a Secretary initially due apparently to her age - and Constance Sims, who was 13 and went straight into the DMS.

Basically, agent ages have historically followed Boarder ages, and despite certain people's beliefs to the contrary, there's never been a lower age limit on the PPC Board. There were a lot of 13-14-year-olds around, and a fair few younger than that. So while 12 and 13 is young, it's certainly feasible. The Flowers might make noises about moving the 12-year-old to Infrastructure for a bit, but probably won't force the issue.

Be aware, though, that most agents now are in their late teens and twenties. So your agents will be in an environment where everyone is both taller and older than them, and a workplace where consumption of vast quantities of alcohol and pills are commonplace, not to mention the predilection of some agents for public, uh... 'displays of affection'. And the violence, don't forget the violence. So they may be in for a rough time.

As to your other questions: yes, the control prompts can absolutely be combined, though you do still need to write a random prompt as well. 5.5/apple/26 would (under my theory that all strange RC numbers are just synonyms for integers) simply be a name for RC #5,000,000,000 - which is an exceptionally large number, orders of magnitude above most of them, but is still a number, so yes, it's fine.

hS

From what I remember, there aren't any little children that are agents. The Flowers don't seem to have a problem with teenagers, however.
I don't know about the second question but I assume that, assuming that's not your random prompt, it won't be problematic. You should wait for someone more familiar with the system to give you an answer, though.
The rules for RC numbers are, basically, "It doesn't start with a letter" and "it's a number", so I guess that's kosher. I mean, my agents live in RC log e (0.4342944819)...

Hanako's story is mostly a well-written perspective flip that gives us Hanako's point-of-view of her route from the VN and provides some extra scenes to further develop her character.

However, the deal breaker for most fans is that this version of Hanako has a surprisingly cinic, jaded and vitriolic tone. It is feel almost divorced from her characterization in the Canon, even when one takes her Bad End into consideration.

Hmm...well, the first one I can think of is The Surprising Adventures of a Glaceon in Unova by Captain Spock on fanfiction.net. It's a fun Pokemon adventure story with a suitably memorable cast of human/Pokemon characters. Also, reasonable if not entirely likely explanations for why the human protag has the Pokemon he does, which is nice. (Special mention must go to Octavian the Snivy. You'll see why.)

I...don't quite remember what my issue with the story was. It does kind of drag on near the end, and the chapters are pretty much cut in half so the author can address reader concerns. (This would be fine if it didn't happen so frequently.) *shrug*

I'll have to really hunker down on finishing my mission if I want to participate.

I do have a question, though (which anyone is welcome to answer.) What if we write a PPC story that is not recent in regards to the timeline. Most of the stories I'm working on at the moment occur over the past couple of years. If I were to make reference to events and characters that were relevant at the time, would that count?

We should probably hammer out some concrete rules for this rebooted challenge if it is to become official.

Maybe I can do this with SkarmorySilver?

So when is it going to take place? Now? Later? (Cause if it's now, I must respectfully decline on account of not having Permission yet.)

Though, due to my Permission-less state, I will obviously not be participating.

-Aila

If I could make a suggestion, though:

Three months isn't really long enough, especially when it's holiday season. Some people are already in the middle of things and/or write really slowly, lots of us do NaNoWriMo in November, and lots of us will be visiting family and celebrating various holidays in October, November, and December. What about six months, or even a year?

(And yeah, what counts as a recent event will need updating.)

~Neshomeh

I think that sounds like a really neat idea. I'd like to see these newer Agents bouncing off each other and the older characters who are still around; build up some characterization as well as the world. I imagine the cutoff dates mentioned would have to change?

On that note, are any of the currently occupied RC's next to each other? Because I don't believe I've seen many agents interacting with "neigbors." Then again the geometry of HQ is pretty bizarre...

This was supposed to be a comment on the post below...

how the hell did it get up here???

I can't say I have heard of any stories like that, but this is an interesting concept.

...

Dammit. Now I have a Potter-related plotbunny. A young muggle-born witch is born to muggle "Witches" (practitioners of Wicca) in Salem, and confusion flies on a broomstick when Wiccan witchcraft meets Potter wizardry. Working title, of course, would be "Witchcraft and Wizardry" or summat.

Can anyone point me to that one Potter goodfic that takes place in the United States, so I can have an example of how U.S. wizarding schools work?

Naya glared at him under her visor. "Give people straight answers when they ask questions!"

"We are Special Response Officers from the Department of Internal Affairs," said Terabyte. "We agreed that our combat skills would better serve the PPC if we were to defend Headquarters directly. Our knowledge of canon was fairly limited and covered only our home continuum. External Security had no openings so we chose to serve in the DIA."

The Guardsman swallowed half of his cheeseburger and added: "Since we're not in the Patrol Division we don't get out as much but when we do get a call..."

"Things have gone very, very wrong in someone's mission," finished Naya. "We can be called in as extra muscle for taking down tougher-than-usual Suvians or to rescue Agents who may have been incapacitated."

The Time Lord, having finished his burger in the time it took Naya to finish her sentence, took a large gulp of water. "Speaking of rescue missions, remember that Sphinx officer? The one that went berserk and nearly killed her partner? Yeah, I head she's a Floater now and she's saddled with a metal bird."

"A Skarmory, I believe," said Terabyte. Its hologram looked at Des. "Have you heard of her?"

Asterion follows much of the same rules as the PPC in terms of conduct.

The word worlds in non-fanfiction writing are not as prone to bizarre literal interpretations of the words due to the fact that a published work usually has proper grammar, but unpublished works like those found on Quotev operate like standard fic word worlds.

Agents for the project are referred to as "Operators". Assassins are known as Eliminators and bad slashers are called FVU's(short for fictional victims unit)

Operators have access to most of the same equipment as agents(provided that Asterion does not clash with PPC canon too much), such as disguise generators, but they have their own variant of a CAD that is split into 3 different devices.
the IAD(implausibility analysis device)used for detecting how many natural laws are violated in the setting(only brought along for realistic universes), PAD(power analysis device)used for detecting the power of a character, and R/BAD(realism/believability analysis device)used for detecting the realism or believability of a character's behavior, backstory, or personality traits.

the sues defeated by the operators of Asterion eventually regenerate if they come from a published work(the sporkings of a published work are to provide a literary criticism), but those of unpublished internet stories can only regenerate if fanfics are written about them(which is unlikely).

I am going to think up of an origin story to Asterion if it fits with PPC canon.

any logic gaps? If so, fill me in.

This is actually very closely related to a thread from last month, which featured banishments native to LotR, Pokemon, and, er, Wicca. In that thread, we read the 'proper combination' (ie, PPC standard) as modelled on the Bell-Book-Candle method of traditional Catholic exorcisms, but modified to invoke canon, rather than God. We then assumed that the same would work for other canons - take a canonical banishment method, and adapt it to protect canon.

I think using Expecto Patronum to banish a wraith falls into the same category. It's a canonical wraith-banisher, after all. But if you just use EP, then you have to explain why a character in the story casting it doesn't have the same effect.

I suppose it could be that PPC Agents' patronae (?) act against canon-unfriendliness, while canon characters' don't... but I think it'd be more fun to modify things slightly. So, what does a Patronus Charm look like? According to the HP wiki:

To successfully cast the spell, one must muster the happiest memory they can think of (the happier the memory, the better the charm will work) and begin drawing circles with their wand so as to increase the power of their spell. They must then say the incantation, "Expecto Patronum"; the Patronus will come from the tip of the wand and can be directed towards a target by pointing one's wand at said target.

Assuming we don't want to alter the words of the spell, that gives us two things we can change: the memory, and the 'drawing circles'. The first is easy - rather than a happy memory, require the agent to concentrate hard on remembering the canon. Then, either keep the circles - or require them to draw something related to the canon.

And remember, this isn't something that can only take place in HP-verse; we use neuralysers outside Men In Black, don't we? So let's decontextualise it a little...

---

"Keep him steady!"

"That's not as easy as you make it sound!" Freckles called back, leaping over a fallen tree. Frodo was barely three paces behind her. "Why couldn't we have had a normal mission, huh?" she demanded. "One where Frodo's a wuss, not a psychop-eek!" She dodged around the hobbit's attempted decapitation, curved around a bramble thicket, and headed back towards her partner. "Get a move on!"

Sandra closed her eyes, focussing on the images that were by now burned into her brain: Frodo Baggins sitting under a tree, book in hand, glancing up as he heard Gandalf approaching. After watching the movie so many times, the memory was as vivid as reality: the green of the leaves, the softness of the grass, the incredible blue of Frodo's eyes.

"Expecto Patronum," she murmured, raising her wand - actually a miniature version of Gandalf's staff - and sketching a five-pointed star in the air. "Expecto Patronum..."

Freckles screamed, only a few yards away, and Sandra's eyes snapped open. "Expecto Patronum!"

A burning white shaft of light burst from her wand, lancing past Freckles and striking the ground in front of Psycho!Frodo. Out of that electric glow leapt the blazing form of her Patronus, and Frodo had no time to run.

The wraith was hurled out of Frodo, flying backwards across the clearing, and passed through half a dozen trees before it had time to recover. It swirled back towards its victim, desperate to regain its host - and completely missed Freckles leaping in from the side, jar in hand.

Holding the trapped wraith up, Freckles glared at her partner. "Two things," she said.

"Go on."

"One: never do that to me again. And two: your Patronus is a squirrel?"

---

... I think there might be a 'Sandra and Freckles Experiment With Exorcisms' story in the works, I'm having far too much fun with this.

hS

(Also, the spell is Expecto Patronum. Just for future reference.)

After all, exorcisms in the PPC are pretty much "whatever gets the job done". We have a "proper" combination (light, loud sound, circle and source of canon), but it doesn't get used every time.

A Patronus would be a pretty good source of light, too, so it can even fit into the "proper" exorcism!

Welcome!
Have a plushie PPC agent! They're cuddly and dangerous at the same time! :)

Have a trumpeting fish with urple scales! As long as you don't look at her directly, I don't think the color will drive you insane...

Wow, quite a few fandoms, I see? Is Pokemon perhaps one of them? It's one of mine.

Speaking of which, your newbie gift. As is my custom for new Boarders with many fandoms, have a Ditto! And not just any Ditto; like Ditty from Pokemon Adventures, it can transform into any shape it wishes, not just whatever is in front of it.

... Honestly, I just show up for goodfic posts and presents nowadays, but here you go:

Here is one endless skein of string, so that you can backtrack through plotholes and never get lost in the labyrinth of contradiction! Here also are fresh cornbread muffins! And last but not least, have some wilver paint!

Always nice to see a fresh face! (Metaphorically speaking, of course.) I share most of your fandoms, too! I love it when that happens! ^_^ Your newbie gifts are an iron ring to punch Sue-wraiths with, some packs of instant ramen (because reasons), and a Union Jack T-shirt.

Hello! I just joined a few days ago myself. Once you've read around I'd love to hear which agents and missions are your favorites, and so on.

Still pretty new to gift-giving so I don't have any signature presents, but here's a deerstalker, a sonic screwdriver, a Mockingjay pin and a glider (Mechanist-style, so you don't need airbending to use it).

Hello and welcome!

I give to you now a lined Infinite Notebook, complete with urple colours and wilver binding. Don't look at it straight on!

-Aila

Sorry guys still trying to figure out how the board works. The name is June Blue Night. Not that other thing.

I too lurked quite a bit around the wiki before I joined a few days ago. I take you also The Original Series and the Constitution?

Also, what are your favorite fandoms? do you have any favorite PPC spin-off so far?

Have a Rorschach Book (Changes according to your current reading interests. Think of it as a book your mind writes automatically just for you!)

The last dragon chronicles. The plot is too complicated for the fangirls to follow.

A very little known -wonderful- book... Only has about 30 fanfics on the Pit. It's really awesome, cyborg Cinderella.... But, I think there might be some 'Sueauthors getting on the bandwagon when Winter comes out....

It is up to 731 fics on AO3, most of the ones on FFnet are crossposts by the same authors. It's a small fandom (though I've been seeing a lot of new names on fics lately). There are some 'meh' fics, a few that needed a beta for SPaG, but no really badfics on either FFnet or AO3. The actors are all in their 30's and while not bad looking, are not exactly hawt either, particularly by the standards of the typical fanbrat.

The fun thing about Haven is that the canon itself is so out there that you can justify pretty much anything happening in a story. That also means that defining something as fully badfic is going to be rare.

I just wrote one where the whole town was compelled to take on roles from Greek myths. The town itself was labeled Troy and most of the citizens spent the day building fortifications for the impending attack by the Greeks. The two guys the story was focused on were outside that zone and got caught in the Theseus and the Minotaur story with one being Theseus and the other briefly being King Minos and then being free of the story since Minos wasn't in it anymore.

Which is all completely off the wall and still doesn't even surpass some of the stuff that actually happens in canon.

I have found one badfic for it. On Quotev. My Haven Or My Trouble

...the cosmere fandom is small enough, and frequented enough by the right sort of people, that the only extant badfic was created deliberately by otherwise fantastic writers, for the purpose of laughing at it.

(But really, if you're going to get through The Stormlight Archive, you're gonna probably need some reason beyond the objective hawttness attribute of various characters. It's long. Amazing, but long. And unfinished.)

-Aila

The fandom is relatively small and mostly composed of intelligent people, so fic tends to be of average to very good quality. I've seen one or two stinkers, but they tend to be of the sort that's hard to spork because they're long and the SPaG is decent.

That said, there has been one badfic that was sporked by the PPC, and if anyone happens across any that are truly terrible, I demand to be informed, because I call all kinds of dibs on that. All the dibs.

~Neshomeh

Fanfic for Secret Six seems to be pretty good. I've read very little of it though.

...I've managed to come across a fandom that a) has virtually no badfic whatsoever, and b) is highly welcoming across the board. It's the Zombies, Run! fandom over on Tumblr. It's a wonderful little fandom, and one of the fanwriters has actually worked with the app creators to write a few storylines with them.

Listed on ff.net as "The Chronicles of Prydia." It has like three fanfics, I think? And more than half of them are in Bulgarian or something - been a while since I really looked. I wrote fanfic for it once, but I don't even remember what it was about, let alone have it anymore, so I don't actually know about the quality of any fanfic for it. But given that there are very few fanfics, there can't be too many badfics.

And most of the time when I mention it to people they sort of stare at me and go, "Chronicles of what," so there's that too.

I'm pretty sure I know lots; there are a lot of obscure sci-fi and fantasy continua that are simply too obscure for fanbrats to get their paws on or are aimed at an older audience. Frank Herbert's ConSentiency series is an example of the former while The Culture is an example of the latter.

Knightmare - mostly because it has so few fanfics in general, and similarly a small community. It took an interlude for my agents to get a visit in.

She sounds awesome though. Does she do the art as well or just the writing? I really like comics.

Dude, patience. Your thread didn't even fall of the first page yet. The only things this post accomplished were a) pushing a thread off the first page and b) making me (at least) think you're overeager.

First, is a DMS, LotR spinoff by someone named Aramel. Honestly, it's not too exciting, and a lot of stuff is just flat-out uncanon to the PPC now. (Not that that's very unusual for older spin-offs.) Of greatest interest to me is the Angel's Trumpet, a Flower which serves a Hermes-like messenger role. Which is pretty much redundant, since it does it over consoles, which we use ICEP for now anyway. Still, it's kind of a cute idea; I've listed it as free-to-use on the wiki, by virtue of it being a Flower. Maybe someone can find something fun to do with it.

The other find is a backup for Lothy's missions, which were hosted on a freewebs site that has gone down recently. Fortunately, the backup not only had all the known missions, but two more! (I haven't read these thoroughly, as I am desperately tired, so be aware they may contain swearing or other NSFW things. Don't read them out loud to your parents or children!)

"Love Conquers All" is a Pirates of the Caribbean mission featuring a guest appearance by Agent Jeanlily.

"Iriniel and Legolas" is a mission in the continuum that contains a Legolas okay I need sleep now goodbyezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I don't think I recognise any of these, and I'm pretty sure HonorH's missions very nearly predate me (which would explain it)... well done, the both of you (and Sedri and Tawaki and bears, oh my!).

h--

Actually, having now read "Finding Hope" - wow, mission-writing has really changed in the past decade. That's barely more than an MST in places; except in a few scenes, the agents are pretty much disembodied voices. There's also way more direct quotes than we normally use nowadays.

An interesting project might be to examine, say, five missions for each year since '02, and see if there's a way to quantify that sort of change. Length of quoted material vs total length? Maybe factoring in 'length in HQ' and 'length where the badfic is off-screen'? In fact, let's see...

Finding Hope - HonorH & Kippur, December 2003
Total words: 6,302
Quoted words: 1,765; 28% (!!!)
Pre-mission words: 1,006
The Duty: 716
Post-mission words: 236
Ficless mission words: 567


Put together, that means that the badfic is on-screen for 3,777 words, or 60% of the report; a staggering 47% of those words are directly quoted. There are two scenes when the agents are separated from the story (after the jump to Moria, and while they try to find the way out), which I've excluded from that count.

So, equal word-counts for badfic and agents - you see why I compared it to an MST? By comparison, this is my most recent full mission:

Of Wolves and Fellowship - Huinesoron, 2014
Total words: 8,213
Quoted words: 797; 10%
Pre-mission words: 411
The Duty: 915
Post-mission words: 363
Ficless mission words: 1,105

So in my mission, the badfic is on-screen for 5,419 words - 66% of the report, so roughly the same proportion as "Finding Hope". But in a stark contrast, only 15% is directly quoted. That's quite a difference! Partly that reflects more paraphrasing, and partly more of the agents discussing and reaction - sometimes at length while the badfic runs ignored.

Interestingly, this is something Jay and Acacia noticed in their own missions; in the A/N to 'Why am I Here?' we read 'Is it just me, or do these things get longer and longer...? J & A used to just be... semi-observers that eventually killed the character. Now, they dominate the story. Is that a bad thing...? Is that a BAD THING?'

Jay didn't think so. And neither do I. ^-^

hS

I'm glad to see the Q missions online again. Lord knows when I would've gotten around to it, with the backlog I have. Thank you! The idea of Q becoming a Christian will never not be funny. {X D

For the record, it's not exactly thanks to me those were saved—it's thanks to Sedri and/or Tawaki, who sent me a bunch of stuff from their hard drives back when we found out about GeoCities going down. It's actually my fault they were missing so long, since I didn't go through those files very thoroughly until this summer. >.>

I will take credit for digging up the Buffyverse missions, though. It's amazing what turns up when performing Google searches with PPC + assorted other terms.

One correction: "Mucking the Wanderverse" is a co-write between The Lovely Beta and Aeneas, another poster on the forum, who's responsible for Agent Annie. Or at least, that's the impression I got reading through the posts. I guess it's not explicitly stated anywhere, looking at it again.

~Neshomeh

(It's funny because IRL, I'm the least likely person to smuggle paintball guns into a camping trip. Or go camping at all, really...)

My favorite part was helping male!Miah and his newbie sort-of-army build the best treehouse ever. I've always wanted one of those things! (Well, OK, not always. More like since I first built a treehouse in Minecraft.) The Ring Quest reenactment was cool, too.

So yeah, I had fun even though I spectacularly failed at landing on my target in Sues vs. Agents and have the bruises to show it.

Llamas are cool.

Is no one else going to comment on the bioluminescent fish? 'Cause I'm pretty sure that kind of fish aren't supposed to do that.

Yes, it was quite memorable when I first arrived to see Huinesoron attempting to set up that artificial tree, which didn't work the first time, I might add. Sleeping pinned between Outhra and... I think it was Anonymouse? was... memorable, to say the very least. And I'm just putting out what we're all thinking: Who's the snorer? 'Fess up, we just want to know who to banish to the bathroom floor next time.

Also - who brought the tent from the Harry Potter continuum? I'd commend you on your foresight, but I'm too busy feeling how wonderful it is to sleep in a bed again and being jealous.

Okay, so I missed the pancakes, and I'm a bit mad about that, but the bacon somebody brought was brilliant!

You should have jumped on top of the van before it could drive away! That's such an exhilarating ride.

Though apparently it was the gender-swapped version of me that went, which explains why I was off working at my new job. Man, Male!Pretzel gets to have all the fun...

I couldn't leave him to you lot and your Pointy Sticks.

And thus began the great adventures of the Irish Samurai and Foo Foo Cuddlypoops the Second. It was with a heavy heart that I released him back in to the wild at the end of the trip - sadly, I just couldn't persuade my landlord that keeping a guard bear was a good idea.

And I still don't know why you guys were trembling in fear so much. Foo Foo Cuddlypoops the Second was a gentle soul, and was basically just a big ball of cuteness and fluffiness. If only I'd been able to convince enough people for a quick Arctic expedition, to get some of that panserbjørne armour... then he'd have been tremble-worthy.

It's probably a good thing they didn't hear about the iceberg. Or the bears. Or the part where I got knocked over by one of the moose.

Glad you guys liked the pancakes! Sorry I didn't get started later so everyone could get them, but camping means I wake up early, and I ran out of books to keep me quietly occupied. I really should have packed more, but I didn't have the dimensional manipulation stuff yet and books get heavy fast.

Also, sorry for laughing at the van back when we got it; our 15-passenger green monster vehicle has skewed my perceptions of what constitutes a van.

I repeat, how dare you imply that pretending to be a werewolf was the craziest thing I did in the trip. Have some respect for my PPC-induced insanity dammit!

You clearly forgot to meant the part of the third day where I, as the craziness of the situation began to get to me , mistook the forest in In Middle Of Nowhere for another, located, well, god only knows how many kilometers away from this one. Convinced I had an adequate point of reference, I mislead us all on a trail to what I thought was the Chest Mountain.

As if we were not already doomed to strandle in a completely unknown territory, those of us that lead the group (Me, Thantosiet, Desdendelle, SkarmorySilver, Seychelles, Cyba Zero and firemagic) split off some far way that we could not even hear the rest of you guys anymore.

As part of my trance, I then began to gather various tree branches and insects that I did not have lucidity enough to realize were clearly poisonous.

I cannot impart anymore details, since as a result of this severe intoxication I was out of commission for the rest of the trip. In fact, the veracity of these statements can be seriously doubted.

And again I repeat, how dare you leave me alone in this Glaurung forsaken forest!

Or, more clearly: I protest me and a heretical substance such as coffee being in the same sentence, which, to add insult to injury, insinuates I actually drink it!

As you know, my camera died a "mysterious" death (yes, I'm looking at you, Phobos) while we were trying to drag the Irish Samurai's pet away from the supply tent, so I won't be doing my own full writeup, but I thought I'd throw up my thoughts.

Actually getting to KittyEden's house on such short notice was something of a challenge; our flight was routed through Gaza, Burma Myanmar, and Amundsen-Scott Base, so it was, uh, something of a wild ride. The UK contingent were among the first to arrive, which meant I was the one who had to sort out the increasingly complex sleeping rota during the setup period. Including sofas, sleeping bags, camp beds, and the artificial treehouse (that's 'house in artificial tree'), we had about ten spaces available for a hundred people, and that assumes we could find three people willing to share the waterbed. It was halfway between 'entertaining exercise in logistics' and 'sleepless hell on Earth'. Thanks go to Seychelles for helping with the spreadsheet-wrangling - I couldn't've done it without you.

You've covered our morally-dubious fundraising efforts planning and such, so I won't bother to cover it again. I will say that it was a bit rotten of you lot not to bring me some hot chocolate when you wandered off; I know I drank it, but I can't stand coffee.

I guess you were asleep during the most exciting part of the drive over - the breakdown! Pretzel was snapping away desperately with his camera, but you've already shown how well that worked. Still, the sight of Snowy the Sane Fangirl fending off colossal squid while Sergio Turbo worked on the engine isn't one I'm going to forget soon. The bioluminescent fish really set off the scene well, I thought.

And yes, for the observant among you, that was when I let Nesh take over most of the driving. I'll say yet again that I'm convinced I didn't hit that rock - it fell under after we'd already stopped. Honest.

I know I was quite vocal in my objections to the 'Campsite Beyond The Goblin City', but I'm not afraid to admit, the final result had a certain flair. I could've wished for better neighbours (I will say no more; you know who you are), but overall it captured the spirit of the PPC, and of PPC Gatherings, very well.

I'm quite disgruntled about your pancake-thieving ways - couldn't you have waited until the rest of us were up? Just because you weren't kept awake half the night by the Boarder Snatcher of Wisconsin, doesn't mean you should lord it over the rest of us. You don't know what we saw, out in the mists! (Actually there technically weren't mists, but it works better this way) And frankly, given your shameful attitude towards pancakes, I'm not going to tell you.

The Ring Quest was great fun, of course. Thanks to firemagic for letting me use her sleeping bag as Gandalf's cloak - sorry I made such a mess of it! To be fair, I hadn't really expected Iximaz to be actually on fire as the balrog - though I was impressed! And to my 'Eagles of the Misty Mountains', SkarmorySilver and Storme Hawk - you were great. I loved the sound effects in particular. And, um, sorry for clonking you round the head with my staff; you know how it is.

Hide and Seek! See, I was convinced PoorCynic was It, but then Pretzel was running around finding people, and Phobos was up that tree playing lookout... was it actually just 'everyone whose name begins with P'? Except then what was VixenMage doing in the- well, anyway, it was fun, if inconclusive.

Oh, stars, New New Hogwarts. Kaitlyn and I took over what we decided was the Astronomy Tower - because it didn't have a roof, and was high enough that we could see past the treetops. Lovely view, if a bit cold - I spent about an hour trying to pitch our tent on the wooden floor before giving up and stealing borrowing a bunch of blankets. I've, uh, still got a couple of them, actually, so if you're missing a Fourth Doctor's Scarf blanket, let me know and I'll get it back to you.

It's a shame you skipped over the latter part of the Gathering. I think the highlight was probably Battletent Galactica vs. Startent Enterprise vs. the Imperial Tent Destroyer (and Desdendelle's Captain Kirk was spot on). Or maybe the Great Magical Showdown? Your use of toy rockets as lightning bolts was ingenious, and as for the Cassie's 'burning' pinecones - well, what more need be said?

I have a complaint about Sues Versus Agents, and no, it's not still about the fact that Outhra totally cheated in the pre-post-toss. It's the fact that we never did swap sides. I mean, my Suvian Army was all well and good (thanks to Dann for improvising that pink dye!), but eatpraylove's 'only agents can have guns, because Suvians wouldn't know what to do with them' was a little too convenient. It would've been great fun to stalk around in black for a while. I demand a rematch!

Good shot of the feast - though I notice you didn't get there until Ailavyn had already made off with the sausage rolls. Shame - they were really good, too. Still, I suppose she made up for it in advance with those marshmallows.

Nice word-choice - yes, Nesh took the wheel; she didn't let me drive at all. You weren't there when she managed to run us down a thousand feet of mountainside due to not having slept since I don't know when; it was a wild ride, let me tell you! And then there was Sergio and Dann's 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Button'... sorry, guys, I know we said we're not going to talk about it, but really? I can't believe you thought that would work.

Basically, it was great fun - but not exactly relaxing! I think we need to wait a few years before we do it all again... and next time, let's avoid the ocean routes, okay?

hS

That is really all that needs be said.

-Aila

(With a really dark sunburn? >_> )