Subject: *blinkblink*
Author:
Posted on: 2021-03-19 07:51:29 UTC

Well, that's not worrisome. And completely realistic as a goal. Uh. Maybe I'll just...

Right! Yes! Backing away seems to have been successful for now! We didn't exactly science the thing, and wow, this was so long ago, it's, what, 2021 now? ...how is it 2021 now? Anyway, I'm pretty sure we got that sample back in 2014 or 2015. Probably 2014, actually. So that's seven years ago.

...setting that aside, too: like I said, we didn't really science the thing, but I'm pretty sure we did deliver a sample to someone. Maybe. Probably. Look it up, it's sure to be floating around somewhere in some department. Possibly literally! Unless it's been destroyed by now, or something. I wouldn't know. I never joined either of those departments.

Also, hey, wait, back to the Elf--we have chemists? What chemists? Where? Can I meet them? What do they do? (Apart from trying to trace things, apparently.) Chemists?

HQ, man. Live here for, what is it now--fourteen years? That can't be accurate; my mental math must be off--and you can still learn something new every day if you look hard enough or stumble over the right stone at the right time. Incredible.

-Dawn

--

I didn't go check her page for the exact date, but I think she might really be at fourteen years or so now?? Counting from 2007, since I remember the date being late 2006 and also (headcanon at this point) picture her probably having to go back and finish the school year before she joins properly in 2007, so it's likely (hypothetically, at this stage, but eh) 2007 is more accurate anyway. Unless I'm mistaken and should be thinking of 2008? I'm going to check.

Okay, yeah, her recruitment date is December 2006, and I should probably move the 2007 timeline listings to later in the year, to fit with the potentially-not-just-headcanon backstory details of her first stint in the DMS happening over winter break and the requested transfer being granted after she finishes the school year and joins properly. (And then something, something, she probably has to do homeschooling as a condition of being allowed to do all this?? I'm pretty sure her absence is explained to the people in her hometown as "international boarding school she got too excited about attending to say no to", but even without that I can't imagine her parents just going, oh, sure, your formal education can end here unless you decide you want to pick it up again. It's already stretching disbelief a bit that she gets to go be an agent to begin with, but that's the kind of classic suspension of disbelief we end up using for half the World One agents, isn't it? Quite honestly, it's taken me since early 2013 to slowly work out a version of this piece of her backstory that makes even this much sense, and I'm still not completely sure whether her parents knew from the start what the PPC was or if they actually thought it was a school for a bit (ETA: I think I prefer the former, for honesty and good family communication and also possibly better understanding of why this is so exciting and why she's so firmly set on joining). Maybe they knew, but agreed in part because Dawn was so set on it and in part because it was pitched to them in a way that emphasized that she'd learn a lot about writing? I don't know. Still murky. I absolutely would not let my teenage daughter go do this, but to be fair, people that age do go to boarding schools sometimes, and possibly apprenticeships and so on, so I suppose it's not out of the reason of possibility? Especially when you factor in portals, which could be really great--there's that assurance that a visit, whether pre-planned or emergency, will cost nothing and take seconds to arrive for. So...still a bit murky, but with the bit of suspended disbelief, I think it kind of works for now? It's definitely the most sense I've been able to make of it so far.)

And that's more than enough rambling about trying to make World One agent backstory make sense, especially when you've followed the earlier trend of having agents join as young teenagers and then tried to apply some kind of real world-ish logic to it. Much simpler to have someone just fall through a plothole or get recruited from a badfic, isn't it?

~Z, who did, in fact, intend this post script to be a whole lot shorter. Whoops.

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