Subject: Happy anniversary!
Author:
Posted on: 2022-01-30 15:46:34 UTC
It's wild to think the PPC has been around for twenty years. I hope it's still here when we current Boarders are all old and gray.
Subject: Happy anniversary!
Author:
Posted on: 2022-01-30 15:46:34 UTC
It's wild to think the PPC has been around for twenty years. I hope it's still here when we current Boarders are all old and gray.
As noted in a previous thread by Kittyauthor, TOS was first published 30 January 2002. It’s the 30th here in Japan, so have an attempt at ukiyo-e!Rambling Band to commemorate this milestone:
This illustration is actually coming up in a forthcoming interlude set at Nakamura-zushi in New Caledonia:
The hostess laughed and pushed one of the screens open. “Christianne!” shouted a man’s voice from inside. “I thought I heard your dulcet tones!”
Christianne sighed. “Bonnefoy.”
Next to her, Liu Siyuan snorted as he handed over his sword to be placed in the coat check. “Should I ask?”
“You probably already know,” replied Christianne, kicking off her own shoes and stepping onto the platform. She ducked a little as she entered, taking in the elegant painted screens (of, oddly, scenes from Jay and Acacia’s missions) and the long banquet table comprising basically all the other tables in the room.
I referenced Mizuno Toshikata’s Entrance to the Tea Rooms for Jay and Acacia’s poses.
It's wild to think the PPC has been around for twenty years. I hope it's still here when we current Boarders are all old and gray.
20 years ago today, on 30th January 2002 if you had happened to visit the Lord of the Rings category on Fanfiction.net, you might have seen a new story by HarpWire. Maybe you'd already read her other stuff - she'd been writing since April 2001 - but this "Protectors of the Plot Continuum" looked intriguing. If you clicked - and you must have clicked - you would have seen... this:
Protectors of the Plot Continuum - archived prologue
And - we presume on the same day, though FFn didn't have a rule against full-chapter Author's Notes at the time so it's possible it went up any time between now and the 4th Feb - you could also have read the very first mission: Rambling Band.
And - since 20th anniversaries don't come along every day - I'd like to invite you all to read them again now.
In fact I'm going to be doing a lot more than that. Welcome to PPC+20. Over the past couple of years we've put together a reasonably accurate timeline of the PPC's first few years, and I'm going to (try to) share it in real time. Up until at least the end of TOS (summer 2003), I will post every PPC story we know of, as it came out.
I'd like to invite you all to read along - to experience the earliest days of the PPC the way it actually happened.
hS
giving new meaning to "it's happening again"
what strikes me the near absence of world-building for the PPC itself. We've got basically four pieces of tech, or five if you count the console screen separately from the portal and disguise generation functions. And there's a vague allusion to the power structure Jay and Acacia are operating under, in the line, " I just want to know why sending everyone out of character doesn't count." It's just enough to show that the agents aren't solitary vigilantes, certainly nothing that hints at sapient plant aliens. We don't even see much of the furniture in the RC beyond the console's parts, let alone any explanation of the overall HQ. Rivendell gets much more description!
And why? I feel like the real thematic focus of this first story, the main goal, was to contrast the agents with the fic's OCs. Laurel barely talks to her own bandmates, to the point where they don't even feel much like people; "bit character" indeed! All her focus is on interacting with the popular characters, particularly two attractive ones. In comparison, Jay and Acacia stick together for the majority of the mission, playing games, camping, eating together. Even when bickering, they still stay focused on the mission, and work together to get it done. Where Laurel refuses to dress like the natives, and insists on playing anachronistic music on unsuited instruments, Jay and Acacia are so dedicated to preserving canon they change their physical bodies into monstrous, scary creatures just to make the assassination accurate! (Also, can you imagine being offered free clothing made of Middle-earth textiles, hand-woven by an actual elf, AND NOT WANTING THEMeyfdcegdeeugh??!?!!??) ((Also, the agents "do as the Romans do when in Rome," which becomes hilarious in light of where Acacia retires to!)) Lastly, while Laurel inserts herself directly into one of Middle-earth's most historically important events, the agents arrive in Rivendell and are content to be tourists, snapping pictures and watching their favorite characters from a distance. And I feel like that's one of the most important precedents to have established in our very first entry: that the agents are fully formed people in and of themselves, without needing to rely on The Lord of the Rings or any other setting to prop them up. While Laurel and her cardboard bandmates wouldn't be very interesting to read about without interacting with the Fellowship, Jay and Acacia are interesting characters before setting foot in Middle-earth and after leaving it.
A couple interesting notes:
-The console doesn't [BEEP]; the flashing red light seems to be the indication of a mission. (Though it could have stopped BEEPing just before the narration picks up?) The console does, however, hum while opening the portal, something I don't think many spin-offs have continued? I don't think I have.
-The lines:
Jay looked pained, and drew Acacia away from the window. "Any excuse to be in a pretty dress..." She blinked, as the memories-of-what-could-be flashed in front of her eyes.
seem to allude to something in Jay's backstory, but I think it was ever mentioned again. Might even be a reference to some real life event as an in-joke between the authors?
-Acacia's Canon Analysis Device flashes a light in response to the Fellowship departing Rivendell at dawn instead of dusk. Nowadays, such devices are usually depicted as only scanning characters and making very broad scans like story tense. Looks like Harpwire originally intended for them to detect a broader range of canon? Location and time, perhaps?
—doctorlit, overanalyzing in the way a doctorlit overanalyzes
Man, the movie has been out, what, a couple of months, and already the fandom is crawling with these wretched Sues. As if it weren't bad enough Peter Jackson stole Glorfindel's horse and gave it to Arwen! UGH!
^_~
~_^
^_~
Alas, I have nothing to share today on account of being a New Cat Mom and having no attention span for anything else. But I didn't show up to the PPC until 2003 anyway, so that's historically accurate. {; D
~Neshomeh
At the end of the inaugural PPC mission, Jay warns that "If you haven't read the fic this is derived from, by the way... DON'T!! It HURTS!". And, of course, as wise fan-readers, we all listen to that advice and ahahahaha yeahright.
Most of "Rambling Band", by Leah Pensotti (aka Queen of Rock), is lost to history, but some of it survives - because Acacia MST'd it! The preserved section cuts out right before Jay and Acacia show up, but you can read the reconstructed first two chapters, plus notes on what happens during the mission, here.
hS
Like… the comedy potential of a Led Zeppelin cover band getting sent to M-e is off the charts, especially if all they know of M-e are whatever’s referenced in the songs. I just wish the canon characters behaved in a more IC fashion 😅
Also, Led Zeppelin can be done on the harp! But I dunno if Laurel’s singing would have helped :P
Anyway, Laurel (Lauriel??) knowing jack about the Quest except odd references from rock songs would, in a more thought-out fic, have her kept at Rivendell under watch until Lord Elrond could be sure she’s just clueless (and referencing ballads from the future?). She wouldn’t be going on the Quest itself but could busy her days learning how to play Elvish instruments and flirting with Dunedain 🤣 Maybe by the end of the War she could travel to Gondor for Arwen’s wedding, having befriended her during her time (and gotten over her whole “ew dresses” schtick), and there she could mourn Boromir and be bros with Legolas (she might’ve found out Elves aren’t her type because they go too slow and she’s here for a good time not a long time?) and Gimli. She could play “Stairway to Heaven” at the wedding banquet!
Anyway, too bad she didn’t think things through enough, but we wouldn’t be the same without her, so here’s to that failed potential. /pours out wine/
It says doc not found when I click on it.
That's a beautifully bizarre picture, Lily. My favourite tiny details are the cards on the tree, and the mesmerised eyes on Gandalf and Legolas.
In the run-up to the anniversary, I was taking one of my semi-regular trawls around the early-PPC sections of the internet. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, but I managed to turn up actual photographs of mid-noughts author!Jay. And, a little while later, similarly-aged author!Acacia.
I don't want to share the photos or where I found them, but I did want to do something. And so, I am very pleased to present... an accurate picture of Agents Jay and Acacia!
... which was going to be "the first accurate picture". But then I looked at Bold Font's classic drawing, particularly Jay's hair and Acacia's fringe, and I think she might have been working from photos too. So I guess every drawing ever modelled on that is also accurate. ^_^ (I've borrowed Acy's hair from that image, because in the photos she's got it pinned back rather than shoulder-length.)
And no, so far as I know, there was never a Rammstein polariod to go with the Spice Girls and Barbie editions. As if that would stop her acquiring one anyway.
hS