Subject: Or, er, maybe that's just Kippur.
Author:
Posted on: 2014-09-10 16:33:00 UTC
I'm reading 'Q is Saved...' and it actually does turn into an MST. From when the aeroplane lands, we get multiple paragraph blocks of the fic with only a single line of commentary in between. I don't even want to try the maths on this one...
hS
doctorlit here, sharing FOUR new (well, old) missions for your perusal! And it's all thanks to Neshomeh, who found two of Kippur's Star Trek missions on her hard drive, and two Buffy the Vampire Slayer missions by exploring old message boards.
First, a co-write between HonorH and Kippur: "Finding Hope", in which Dawn Summers goes off to visit Middle-earth to be special.
The other Buffy mission features an author and agents who hadn't even appeared on the wiki before. The Lovely Beta wrote a Jossverse-based DIC spin-off featuring Agents Annie and the Lovely Beta. They appear in "Mucking the Wanderverse", which comes in three parts. This is a Buffy x X-Files x Highlander crossover. I actually haven't read this one yet, so I don't actually know if it's NSFW at all. >.> Have caution!
The Kippur stories no longer existed online, so I had to host them on my archive site. I found them particularly amusing, despite my never having watched any Next Generation. Coincidentally, they both feature Q. The first one is a continuation of the sorely lacking Marrissa Picard series. It is called, "Q-uesting".
The last one . . . Hee. Hee hee. This one made me giggle for about five minutes straight when I reached the pointlessly thrown-in guest characters. This is a story in which a Mary Sue converts Q to (our) modern-day Earth Christianity. And it is a Star Trek: The Next Generation x Touched by an Angel crossover.
Hah hah! Hah hah hah hah . . .
Ladies and gentlemen and starfishpersons, I present "Q Is Saved by Mary Sue".
(Also, I've learned how to make journal cuts now, so the archive is easier to navigate. Need to fix up my actual PPC site, next . . .)
On the topic of Alec Troven, his page on our wiki is now complete. Or as complete as I can reasonably get it with the vast bulk of information available. I realize some parts are rather messy looking, but there's a lot there, and I wanted to make sure all the fun and interesting stuff was easy to find and read. That said, wikis are community things, and any concrit or other input on the page is welcome.
So, a big, big thanks to Neshomeh for all the work she's put into finding these missions and more!
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
Leaving aside the audacity of referring to older stories as uncanon because we've written newer stuff that doesn't match it... ^-^
Anyway, what's uncanon? I see an Author-wraith in Mission 2, which would a) be a Sue-wraith now, and b) be either a neuralyser or character replacement job. Obviously there's the Angel's Trumpet, which may simply predate ICEP, or may only communicate with agents who live outside HQ. There's the fact that she seems to live at home, which is unusual, certainly, but not impossible. There's, er, an uncapitalised 'flower'? These are all pretty minor.
Okay, it looks like she presents the Words as a physical object, suggesting she's carrying a printout of the story around with her; furthermore, Elian (mission 3) sees this as normal. But that might be that Aramel is one of those people who can't see the Words, and Elian has been informed about this. It still works. Ehm... the Trumpet talks in "quotes", but that's through a speaker. The SO uses *asterisks*, which is acceptable.
Oh, I see we've abducted Miriel Therinde to be our tailor. That's uncanon. I'm going to assume it was an agent who liked to roleplay, and Aramel was fooled by it.
And hey - thanks for finding these! I'm really impressed.
hS
I just meant it had stuff that didn't jive too well with the modern day setting, which makes it come off as odd today. I was quite sleepy last night!
—doctorlit, who has no idea who Miriel is but assumes they are a LotR canon based on the name, which means it could just be the OFUM version helping some agents out?
They definitely read like they come from the age before agents had to be people as well. Actually, it might be worth doing a study of the evolution of PPC missions... a randomised selection would be required, of course.
Miriel Therinde (usually Serinde) is the mother of Feanor; her dying (and deciding to stay dead) was the cause of... well, ultimately, most of the history of Middle-earth. The idea that she's the OFUM version has some merit - she acts like an OFUM 'larger than life' character, for sure. Still means Aramel was wrong about her, though (she claims pretty clearly that she's the original canon). But agents can be wrong!
hS
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
Is there some program? I would be curious to see how my missions add up.
Nah, I just went through them in MSWord and clipped out the relevant pieces. The pre-, post-, and Duty sections are fairly clearly delineated - I classed 'pre' as ending when they step through the portal, 'Duty' as starting when they interrupt and start charging, and 'post' to commence the paragraph after the Duty is done.
Quotes was relatively easy, just tedious - I just copied the italicised sections across to a second document. The real pain, surprisingly, was 'badfic off-screen' - it's okay when it's a whole scene, but what about if the agents hang back while the canons walk off? That one needed a few judgement calls.
Probably the best way to program an approximation would be to simply delete everything in italics, then recount the words. It'll overestimate a bit, but should catch all the quotes. If you manually exclude pre post Duty, and forget about the 'badfic offscreen', it shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes.
hS
I'm comparing my first Nume & Ilraen mission, "Family Ties," with my most recent one, "Blood Raining Night." I'm using the WordCountTool add-on for Firefox and math.
"Family Ties" - June 24, 2007
Total words: 4,852
Quoted words: 228
The Duty: 293
Ficless mission words: 3,303
Total mission words: 3,824
Pre-mission words: 988
Post-mission words: 40
Total non-mission words: 1,028
This one's a bit odd. The pre-mission segment is long, since it's a first mission; the post-mission segment is very short because I only gave a few sentences of the last paragraph to activities taking place in HQ after all the mission's loose ends are tied up.
I didn't count the charging and slaying of the doppelgänger Sithchean Bran as part of the Duty, because that would complicate things.
For fun: the largest chunk of fic quoted in one go was 66 words.
I calculated "ficless mission words" as the total word count minus everything else.
Rounding to the nearest whole number, my percentages are:
Quotes/total words: 5%
Quotes/mission words: 6%
Mission words/total words: 79&
Non-mission words/total words: 21%
"Blood Raining Night" - October 12, 2013
Total words: 21,975
Quoted words: 3,763
The Duty: 1,294
Ficless mission words: 14,468
Total mission words: 19,525
Pre-mission words: 1,884
Post-mission words: 566
Total non-mission words: 2,450
I should note that the "quoted words" count is a bit smaller than it should be, because I hacked some real material from the fic into Reicheru's dialogue with Nume during the charging, but I'm not 100% sure what's what anymore.
There are a few portions of this one where the badfic is off-screen, but I still consider them part of the mission since they're dealing with the direct consequences of things that happen to them in the line of work. Again, ficless mission words = total - everything else.
Largest quote: 133 words.
Quotes/total words: 17%
Quotes/mission words: 19%
Mission words/total words: 89%
Non-mission words/total words: 11%
... So, huh. The mission length has certainly exploded, but the percentages are fairly similar. I'm shocked that "Family Ties" has a greater percentage of non-mission/total words than "Blood Raining Night," though. Maybe I screwed up the math? O.o
~Neshomeh, who hasn't done this much math at once in quite a while.
I'm reading 'Q is Saved...' and it actually does turn into an MST. From when the aeroplane lands, we get multiple paragraph blocks of the fic with only a single line of commentary in between. I don't even want to try the maths on this one...
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
Sorry about the mistake there. Like I said, I hadn't actually read that mission yet. At some point, I need to sit down and actually finish watching Buffy. I'm only on season 2. Angelus is still a bad guy for me!