Subject: Wht kind of excuses could one make for just vanishing?
Author:
Posted on: 2016-02-19 22:45:00 UTC
Without warning? Especially for long periods of time - assuming their family cares.
I'm wondering because I'm thinking of having Natalie Carlman visit home and run into this problem.
I was working on my permission, but have problems to think of a logical backstory for a real world agent.I mean, many of the older RW agents seemed to get sucked right into PPC through plotholes, even teenagers.
But won't they be willing to go back? If they signed up willingly after knowing about PPC, how will their disappearance be justified in the real world?
Normally investigations will be held and missing person reports sent, and if the area in question is well-secured and small, with very few missing person cases in decades, such disappearances are going to warrant great attention.
If those agents think about the consequences of their recruitment, won't they be scared, especially when said agent is a teenager? won't they be wishing to go back? And won't their requests be granted?
I'm thinking if the agents from real world can go back to their universe from time to time, just to cease attentions over sudden disappearance, or maybe they are transported to the HQ in a time period that is likely for them to go missing, like a trip to the wild or some busy cities with high crime rate,etc.
But maybe there is just no need to explain such things......Is it okay to skip such procedures with simple explanations if it is not important to the plot?
For example one of my agents got caught in a freak blizzard, which isn't much of a stretch for an Iowan environment.
...Though now that a think about it a Tornado would also be a fun idea.
Though my personal headcanon is that the Dives' parents said Rina went to study abroad and Alex got accepted into college early. After Rina ran away and everyone thought she was dead, there was a funeral for her back home.
I've been wanting to do a thing with Alex and his family sometime in the future, though, so maybe I'll have to get rid of that rug...
Remember The Message? I interpreted it as a copy of the person falls into HQ whenever that person falls through a plothole on World One. Anyhow, with the message, I thought that it addressed that you are not that person, as you have essentially been cut off from the world, that life goes on as normal, with what the agents see as "another them". Either that, or the plothole warps reality so that they never exist.It would make a rather interesting plot point, If I ever get around to writing missions.
The upshot of The Message was this:
The PPC doesn't exist. There are no such thing as plotholes you can fall through. It's all a fictional story we're making up. ;)
The implication is that 'World One' is not actually our world - it's a fictionalised copy where plotholes are possible, and PPC agents can wander around. The same concept worked its way into Multiverse theory - search for the paragraph starting 'Rumours that there exists', it's about halfway down.
Obviously, all of this is blatantly untrue; I mean, they'd notice if that were the case, right?
hS, toying with the idea that things can be true from the outside but false from the inside...
I, for one, think that it may be a Dodecahedron.
Reasons:
It is said to be the classical shape of the universe, rather than the isocahedron, which is water.
A dodecahedron is connected to the first half of the natural numbers which count up to it.
12 is a highly versatile number. It can be divided by one, two, three, four and six.
The faces themselves are pentagons, five sided shapes.
It's also a Platonic Solid.
It would mean that we have even more universes to touch. The article said that we have confirmed that four other continuities exist. I just think that one theoretical space be left, just to fool around with our imaginations.
It also fits the requirements which you summed up.
However, this may only be an approximation of what it may be, just what we can comprehend.
Thank you, hS, for giving me this new knowledge.
What do you think?
That said, HQ itself exists in a sort of meta-reality; it's not really in any single universe, but exists in bits and pieces throughout the multiverse, cutting through all sorts of random places, potentially sight unseen.
So this bit and bob is perhaps somewhere under Moria, and this RC is perhaps under a basement in a Cardiff, and so on.
That is, of course, if you agree with (and therefore decide to use) the interpretation that, for example, hS created, and that I also subscribe to (with my own intepretations layered on top).
-July, suddenly remembering she saw a weird space down a corridor she'd never seen before
*Mad screaming* so you're saying that none of this actually happened? Funky. In a nutshell, World one is not our world. It's a facsimile, identical to ours, but with plotholes. In my headcanon, I think it's actually impossible to access the original word world. It's just floating somewhere, and agents, 'sues and everything in between are on a mere copy of the original idea, but they don't know that. Best not tell them that, it makes you feel real insignificant.
It means that agents' home worlds can ignore what is and continue on with what could be.
Maybe a "real world" agent can return to a world where the Boston bombing never occurred, or ignore that their stated hometown was recently the sight of a random shooter.
I think it'd honestly depend on the person! Some people would of course just not be suited to the PPC- plotholes come, plotholes go, and it's just as easy to go back as it is to wander in in the first place- if not moreso, if someone notices.
As for their disappearance in the real world?
Again, that depends.
Like you said, missing person reports happen. And plenty of people in fact do just go... missing one day. We know the real world causes, of course: They get kidnapped, they ran away, an accident happened and they got seriously injured or died in the process, and so forth. But there are still mysteries in this day and age that we have no explanation for, no clues.
Maybe your agent character from World One (because from our perspective, at least, our world is the real world, and the world intended to be the real world is World One) is one of those people.
Or maybe they go back.
Agents are not held in HQ against their will. There's nothing preventing them from just giving up the job and going home or to any number of canons. A certain someone from TOS retired into ancient Rome, after all. I can't remember where Dafydd and Constance retired to (but hS will no doubt come around to correct me) but I rather supect it was not World One, nor was it Middle-Earth.
And a thing with hieing off is that, not everyone thinks about the potential consequences of running off for an adventure- especially teenagers! They might get scared, but they have the option to leave if they want to, or sometimes don't think they do. This goes for the real world, as well. I'm on an adventure right now, and one I didn't exactly think out all the possibiities and consequences of out before I left for it.
As for what you're saying about agents going home occasionally or disappearing someplace likely, both are very possible! In fact, people have used both before this.
To use my own example, Agent July, when she ran off from HQ after snapping, she eventually ended up back in World One- timed right after she had left, despite a few months in the PPC. She also spilled the beans- both things that pretty much eliminate the worry of becoming a missing person.
That said, you don't really need to explain this sort of thing. You can in fact skip it if you don't want to go into this sort of detail. How a person ends up in the PPC doesn't tend to play into whatever story arc or plot you're doing with your spinoff, generally, though it can also be fun to write if you want.
This is most definitely an excellent thing to bring up, though!
-July
I heard about a pair of agents that retreated to the... anime alchemist universe and had to leave when that badfic was missioned.
...Probably the best for all other settings, outside of that one, of course.
Sorry for the ridiculousness said clan is no doubt wracking on your universe there?
-July, who knows this kind of problem
They've brought modern electronics into a fantasy setting (including an internet-capable computer, somehow!), and in one unpublished story (actually the once-prospective next chapter of Generic Surface) they accidentally almost sparked off an Industrial Revolution... yeah, it's probably best that the setting is mostly abandoned now.
hS
Abandoned to them. Quite the fate. And... probably better for everyone involved. Well, not necessarily better.
(I definitely want to see this story.)
At least it's more straight forward than what's going to happen/is happening with a set of mine? Time and the fiddling of such is involved there.
-July, mysterious, but definitely not a somebody
The Un-Sueing of Vemi
But all that had changed yesterday, when Vemi had gone home to the Real World for a long-awaited vacation. Since time passes differently in the metaverse than in the Earth of normal human experience, she'd re-appeared only a few days after the day she'd originally left to join the PPC. Since her Real World persona had school classes to attend, she'd gone to class, both to stave off suspicion and for the simple novelty value of interacting with people who weren't a) fictional or b) concussed from walking into walls.
I think several agents have claimed the PPC as them going to university, too. And above a certain age, they can just claim to have moved cross-country (unless they're from Sealand or something). Some go with the explicit knowledge of their parents (Constance Sims, for example).
Or, you can just ignore it. How does the Doctor keep making off with young women without anyone launching massive man-hunts? Sure, these days he lets them phone home, but up until Nine...
hS
Honestly, one could make plenty of different excuses- nearly as many as there are jobs. Perception is literally, actually reality in many ways for the PPC.
And you're somewhat wrong about that lack of man-hunts, hS; Torchwood and UNIT, non? Admittedly they aren't entirely interested in the young women so much as the Doctor's doings....
-July, who can't phone home but apparently her dad seems okay with her vanishing for parts unknown.
Without warning? Especially for long periods of time - assuming their family cares.
I'm wondering because I'm thinking of having Natalie Carlman visit home and run into this problem.