It's not that tricky.

Subject: It's not that tricky.
Author: Huinesoron
Posted on: 2019-07-01 13:20:00 UTC

I'm already 80 entries in. There's only 350-odd items on the Complete List, so yeah, it's quick work.

All right, you can't pin down a precise date for most things, but you can hit pretty close. If something shows up on one version of an archived list but not a previous version, it was probably made in that timeframe.

The biggest boon to this research is the Era of Livejournal, when all stories were helpfully posted with dates on... :)

hS

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PPC Fiction in Chronological order? by NewKryptonite on 2019-06-28 18:14:00 UTC Reply

So I've poked around the wiki, and poked around the board, and I've poked some fella in the eye, but I can't seem to find a mention of a list of PPC Fiction put in real world chronological order by the original publish date.

I'm having a hankering to start reading missions, but i'd like to do it in order so i can keep everything straight between department heads, PPC emergencies / catastrophes, important agents, ect....

Is it a hopeless hope that this exists?

PS. I'm not new, I joined a few years back, but was never very active. With that in mind...Hello Everyone!

Greetings, newbie! (Or returnbie) by Neo Skater on 2019-06-29 18:56:00 UTC Reply

Have some Kryptonite and a Kryptonite Neutralizer!
One thing is certain: start with TOS. by Neshomeh on 2019-06-29 13:38:00 UTC Reply

Because it's, you know, the Original Series. First in publication order by definition. {= )

After that, we DO know which were some of the first spin-offs thanks to Jay linking them in TOS chapter 13. Sadly, only six remain; gladly, they are collected here.

After THAT, I'd move on to anything that was listed on Miss Cam's site. The site is rehosted by hS, and a lot of those works have been rehosted since the list was made, but the links there should work if the spin-off still exists in any form.

After that...

Well, that's where it gets really tricky, because from mid-2005 until about 2008, stories were mainly collected on the original Complete List of PPC Fiction on LiveJournal, and I don't know if there's anyway to look back and see when things were added to it there. From December 2007 on (IIRC), we had the wiki (though Araeph continued to update the list on LJ for some time, too), so yeah: try the Year pages, like Ix said, and good luck! ^_^

~Neshomeh

It's not that tricky. by Huinesoron on 2019-07-01 13:20:00 UTC Reply

I'm already 80 entries in. There's only 350-odd items on the Complete List, so yeah, it's quick work.

All right, you can't pin down a precise date for most things, but you can hit pretty close. If something shows up on one version of an archived list but not a previous version, it was probably made in that timeframe.

The biggest boon to this research is the Era of Livejournal, when all stories were helpfully posted with dates on... :)

hS

Update: this is essentially finished. by Huinesoron on 2019-07-09 14:25:00 UTC Reply

This spreadsheet lists everything from the Complete List of PPC Fiction, plus a few others I found along the way, minus a few duplicates. There's only 10 items without dates on them, 8 of which were created by me. ^_^ Sorry.

There are a number of things which aren't properly filed, because the Wiki links to a collection of documents. The big one is probably Nesh's FicPsych archive - there's a dozen authors spread over ten years in there! So yeah, it's not (and never will be) complete, but if you want to read through the PPC's missions in approximate publication order, this will let you do it.

hS

Thank you! This is great. {= D (nm) by Neshomeh on 2019-07-09 15:06:00 UTC Reply

Oh, sure, go on and one-up me. ^_~ by Neshomeh on 2019-07-01 14:02:00 UTC Reply

I've only gotten through round one of adding what's still on Fanfiction.net to the Year pages up to 2005. After that it looks like a whole lot of IndeMaat with just a few others scattered throughout; less fun.

But, I'll go through this round, which is everything that comes up with the search term Protectors of the Plot Continuum, and then go on to round two, search term PPC.

... Or, well, that WAS the plan. Now I reckon I'll just gank everything with a confirmed date from your awesome spreadsheet! {= D

But, what I was thinking of particularly with trickiness is everything hosted on Google Docs and nowhere else. It's likely possible to find a publish date for most of them by looking through the Board archives and Wiki edit histories, but I still wish more of us were in the habit of including stuff like that in the document itself.

~Neshomeh

So, regarding your last paragraph... by Zingenmir on 2019-07-02 20:33:00 UTC Reply

...well, you have a point. And I just went through updating an agent page with 10+ new stories that I hadn't kept a thorough list of dates for.

So, because of those two factors, I've decided to go through my GDocs stories (including the cowrites with Iximaz, who's said she's fine with it) and add in the publication date and when it's set. That should help with chronology, both for me and for anyone looking at 2013-2019+. It won't all happen at once--there's some hunting down of details involved--but I've started.

(Funnily enough, all the GDocs stuff was supposed to be transfered or crossposted to...well, formerly LJ, now Dreamwidth. I just kind of stopped at some point--I think it was just easier to run with GDocs, especially since a lot of it was cowritten at that point.)

Anyway: I'm pretty happy with this decision, and honestly wish I'd thought to do it earlier.

~Z
And on that note... by Huinesoron on 2019-07-02 16:20:00 UTC Reply

... I've just gone through and datestamped all* of Dafydd's missions and interludes. There's only two DOGA plugs preserved in the archives, but they just happen to fall such that there's only two stories they can link up to. So I've got a surprising number of precise dates in there.

The spreadsheet is about half done, I think.

hS

Yay! Thank you. ^. ^ (nm) by Neshomeh on 2019-07-02 16:54:00 UTC Reply

The most interesting part... by Huinesoron on 2019-07-01 15:11:00 UTC Reply

... is that I seem to be turning up a bunch of things that aren't on the Complete List. Just now I hit upon Agent Jasper (https://web.archive.org/web/20040929022637/http://www.fanfiction.net:80/s/739705/1/), who was on the Wiki at one point but has been removed; she's got a publish date in April 2002, which puts her right in among those who Jay mentioned in TOS13.

I'm tagging anything not on the list with a big ADDED; there's probably at least a couple in need of archiving.

hS

Tangential question: Can we make this out-of-continuity? by Neshomeh on 2019-07-02 02:00:00 UTC Reply

This profile and its two stories (well, only one actual story) being the thing in question. Who's Asking claims they got Permission back in 2007, and I guess it could have happened, but we certainly wouldn't give it to them now, with the attitude they display. The writing's not so good, either. It's basically everything we've worked really hard NOT to be. {= /

~Neshomeh

I agree their attitude is... horrible. by Huinesoron on 2019-07-02 10:13:00 UTC Reply

But I'm veeeeery leery of the idea of retroactively declaring someone an Unsuitable PPCer, 12 years after the fact. (Do you remember Bast leaving over Artemis objecting to her style of RPing elsewhere? It's not the same, but it has resonances.)

The story is... not very good, no, but doesn't actually misrepresent the PPC. Agent Sen pretty much points a CAD at a building, turns on an off-label DORKS, and then tells a bunch of weird OCs to put their hands up. The man in grey isn't represented as a PPCer.

hS

I worry about seeming to condone it. by Neshomeh on 2019-07-02 16:53:00 UTC Reply

There are still people going around insisting we're bullies out to attack anyone who doesn't agree with our elitist fanfiction regime, after all. The attitude explicitly displayed on that account would be a great point in their case with nothing on our side to refute it.

I agree that something feels a little skeevy about up and denouncing a person who isn't even around anymore, but on the other hand, that's who they were twelve years ago. It's not about them as a person now, it's about how they expressed themself twelve years ago, and making it known that we're actually not cool with that sort of thing now and wish it hadn't happened then.

So, that's my case. I don't know if it's a good enough case, though, which is why I didn't unilaterally decide to do it. {= )

~Neshomeh

At times like this, I suggest a compromise! by Neo Skater on 2019-07-03 00:50:00 UTC Reply

We tag their stories as "dubiously canon" and put a message explaining how they don't mesh well with our attitudes and writing style.

Some sort of "death of the author" tag? by Huinesoron on 2019-07-03 10:33:00 UTC Reply

Only, uh, without the 'death' thing... the idea being to say that 'we acknowledge that this person was given Permission and has the right to have their story recognised as canon, however we do not support their general attitude'.

Or... is this overly pearl-clutching on my part? I feel like I'm about half an inch from making a Slippery Slope argument, when really I'm just bothered by the idea of discarding information we don't absolutely have to.

hS

Either way, we're not losing anything. by Neshomeh on 2019-07-03 14:27:00 UTC Reply

A) We never had it to begin with, since it wasn't on any of the lists until (I discovered) doctorlit added it to the Final Fantasy page a few years ago, and B) Out of Continuity is a category for housing stuff that's not canon so we can still keep track of it and it can be found if anyone's specifically looking, because I hate losing information as much as you do. {= )

That said, I agree the story itself isn't thaaat bad (though the "one man gay pride parade" comment as insult raises my eyebrows), so I think a compromise sounds good. I propose that I make a page for the author and give a brief explanation there. There isn't enough information about the main agent for him to get a page of his own (let alone the rest of them), so that can go there, too.

Rest assured, I don't want to slide down the slippery slope, either. {= )

~Neshomeh

Supporting this by Hieronymus Graubart on 2019-07-04 10:05:00 UTC Reply

In the one story we got, Agent Sen is actually just a framing device to watch Ian Valentine (apparently the man in gray) and four characters provided by readers, who just incidentally met, fight some generic Suvians for non-specified reasons. Where would this have gone if it had been continued? Would Sen recruit all five Sue hunters? Who’s Asking should have been warned that starting your spin-off with six(!) agents is a bad idea, and that recruiting from readers works for OFUs, where lots of background students are needed, but doesn’t fit the PPC.

HG
Yeah, that seems fair. :) by Huinesoron on 2019-07-03 16:06:00 UTC Reply

(Only 100 entries left to go on the datestamped list, for the first pass at least. A second pass to pin down everything that should have a Board post associated with it will follow.)

hS

I did not expect this kind of reaction by NewKryptonite on 2019-07-03 17:24:00 UTC Reply

I'm glad i kicked off a conversation to unearth a few more PPC stories and help things get more organized. Thanks everybody.

I also agree that de-canonizing something just because we are ashamed of it would be a bad idea. to much room for subjectivity further down the line. an obvious tag signaling that the management views it as a mistake however, that seems ok to me.

Ah, you've not met a Huinesoron Obsession before. by Huinesoron on 2019-07-05 15:15:00 UTC Reply

Sometimes I get really into bizarre little projects, blaze through them in a burst of energy, and then trail off towards the end.

Other examples include the TOS Badfic Archives, agent hub pages (a second one's in the works, promise!), and... pretty much any series I've ever written. Really, the surprising thing is that so many of them are finished.

hS

Those aren't just you, I think by Tomash on 2019-07-05 20:26:00 UTC Reply

Sudden burst of energy at projects that then just don't get finished because the energy burst is gone is ... most of my writing projects, for one thing.

Thanks for doing it! by Neshomeh on 2019-07-04 05:15:00 UTC Reply

If you're interested in this sort of thing, the PPC Archivists Society* is always recruiting!

* This is not a real society. It's just me, hS, and doctorlit (plus my helpers at The Lost Tales). We all independently host old PPC stuff that would otherwise be lost or only accessible via Wayback Machine or Archive.is, and we obsess about things like this for fun. Insanity comes in many forms. {= )

~Neshomeh

Oh, that is a dream of mine. by doctorlit on 2019-06-29 13:09:00 UTC Reply

I don't know if I'll ever have the time, but I would love a Wiki page that just lists and links every written PPC story ever, in chronological order. It gets tricky, though, because so many stories aren't really given an in-universe date, and the date of publishing doesn't necessarily apply. (For example, The Reorganisation takes place in 1998-1999, a couple years before the first installment of the Original Series was posted in 2001.)

So yeah, such a list might exist some decade, but not this decade. :(

—doctorlit, :(
Check the Year pages on the Wiki. by Iximaz on 2019-06-28 22:08:00 UTC Reply

Here is the first, dating back to 2004. There's probably a few missions that missed the list, but it's likely the most complete archive of missions by publish date. You can find the rest by searching for "year" on the Wiki.

Welcome back!

Well, the pages go back to 1999... by Neshomeh on 2019-06-29 13:55:00 UTC Reply

And honestly we could use a couple earlier ones, since some agent backstories and hS's histories stretch back further.

But you won't find any missions published before 2002, since that's when TOS started.

Oh, and for big stuff, there's also the (woefully incomplete) History of the PPC, Part One. I started it, but never intended it as a one-person project, so if anyone wanted to chip in—flesh out existing entries, add stuff that's missing, or whatever—that would be really really awesome!

~Neshomeh

If anyone here does, it would be DoctorLit by Mattman The Comet on 2019-06-28 19:04:00 UTC Reply

Though it would be rather hard to make that list, as most of the early missions have been eaten up by the internet. Plus, it would be a fairly long read.

If I were you I’d just find what some interesting missions and go from there.

Thanks by NewKryptonite on 2019-06-28 19:21:00 UTC Reply

I forget that reading fan-fiction is mostly just browsing until you find something that interests you, I guess that most of the PPC fiction is no different in that regard.