Subject: The fic itself is not the crazy part
Author:
Posted on: 2022-03-15 04:26:53 UTC
The comment section, man. The Smauging comment section.
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PPC+20: "The Beginning" [Architeuthis] by
on 2022-03-07 12:25:53 UTC
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Here she is! The very first PPC Agent not to be written by Jay and Acacia (as Black Katana never got that far). She sent in the very first badfic recommendation to TOS, and now she's signed onto the Flowers' payroll!
Intelligence Briefs for the PPC 1 - The Beginning
Interestingly, at this point she was not scouting out the Word Worlds for future missions - she says she does that on her computer. Instead, she was handling cleanup work, checking for fic-related damage and fixing it with careful neuralyzer deployment. We don't really have a department for that any more.
(As far as I can tell, there is no actual badfic in this intelligence brief.)
hS
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PPC+20: "If She Was There" [mulberry] by
on 2022-03-15 16:40:05 UTC
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ANOTHER new spinoff - they're really flying out! This is the Clan of the Cactus, who will go on to be an essential piece of evidence in the history of the Takedown (oh, we'll get there). I'm not sure if mulberry was ever part of the PPC community under another name.
Clan of the Cactus: If She Was There by mulberry
With so little to go on, it's hard to search for the badfic, but I think it's long gone. I'm happy to be proved wrong. :)
hS
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re: If She Was There+20 by
on 2022-03-16 12:57:30 UTC
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Oh, wow! Quite a lot of firsts in this chapter! The department of Bad Parody gets named, along with the species of its head. Newbies being majorly untrained, consoles being explicitly huge, and "offices" being numbered and separate from other DMS "offices" all seem to originate here. Plus, I think this was the first time a manual got mentioned? And of course, the first Hitchhiker's Guide reference!
I think mulberry deserves definite kudos for being so creative with their concept of what the DBP's work looks like. In the modern day, action departments that have actually been written all go into the field for missions, but mulberry decided early on that not every department needs to follow the DMS formula that Jay and Acacia created. It's interesting to think how the PPC might look today if every department had been developed with a wildly different method for interacting with badfics.
Also, aw, Tick is so sweet for sleeping in an uncomfortable position to keep the console from going off until after Jaz finished reading! What a good partner.
Also also, I'm noticing one thing a lot of the early spin-offs seem to have in common is that . . . the characters never get described?! I know this was a very heavy self-insert era, so a lot of the authors probably weren't thinking to describe themselves in the narrative, but it kind of sucks that we don't even know what a lot of these early characters are even supposed to look like!
—doctorlit honors mulberry as a fellow all-lowercase screenname-haver
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I did not know DBP worked like that!! by
on 2022-03-17 22:50:38 UTC
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Zing and I have a DMS/DBP mission from way back when (I recently rewrote a portion of it, which is why it's not been shared yet) and we definitely went the DMS mission route of going into the fic itself -- but then, the fic needed going into, since it was a trite parody of pon farr, and that's hard to take down using just ticker tape!
As for descriptions, I definitely fall into the trap of under-description myself. I think it's because I internalised at a young age that describing a character's appearance down to exact details was ~for Sues~. Nowadays, I have some characters who might take some time out of the narrative to describe other people, but still not necessarily themselves.
Christianne, though, she's been noted as deliberately eschewing describing people. In one forthcoming interlude she said both Dawn and Naergondir had dark hair in braids, despite their hair being different shades and in different styles :P But again, in one mission back in 2014 (?) she and Eledhwen were referred to as "beautifully ethereal by human standards and decidedly human by human standards", or "Pointy-ears and Ribbons", but those were from the Sue's POV.
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I'm much better with describing places and objects than I am with characters and clothing. by
on 2022-03-18 13:03:39 UTC
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I'm pretty face-blind, and don't tend to notice details of people's appearance. Hair and eyes are fairly easy for me, since they're both colored, and hair can have shapes and texture. But like, noses? Mouths? A mouth is just mouth-shaped.
Much easier to describe places and things! Because I am a rampant materialist!
—doctorlit is also maybe kind of intimidated by people and maybe tries to avoid looking people in the eyes because people scary though
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You're right, this feels much "later". by
on 2022-03-17 11:45:30 UTC
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It's settled right into the "classic PPC" mould, at a time when TOS itself was still exploring new concepts. Another first - this is the very first fic to show an agent pair meeting for the first time! Jay and Acy, Lux and Sean, and Kazra and Rich were all established teams when we first met them.
There has definitely been a push towards standardising missions on the DMS model. That said, anything other than "they go into the fic" makes for much less interesting reading, so, y'know...
Descriptions: you say 'spinoffs', but as far as I recall Jay and Acacia didn't get decent descriptions (or surnames!) until the OFUM chapter. I think it's partly backlash at the overdescribed Suvians they were dealing with; the writers saying "actually, it's not relevant to the story - we're defined by our actions, not our hair colour".
(I still try to only describe 'in-line', rather than in block text, which means sometimes "long black hair" only shows up halfway through a story. It helps that I can just stick an image on the Wiki to cover the gap!"
hS
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I have such a strong mental image of J+A, I didn't notice they weren't described yet on this read! (nm) by
on 2022-03-18 12:56:49 UTC
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PPC+20: "Manic Depressive" [Architeuthis] by
on 2022-03-14 21:39:28 UTC
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She's back! We don't actually have a solid date for Archi's second chapter, just that it falls between her first and TOS08. Neshomeh theorised that it might have been posted at the same time as the introduction, but... we don't really know.
Intelligence Briefs for the PPC: Manic Depressive, by Architeuthis
I've not yet reread the mission, but the badfic still exists! As does its sequel, and a revised version (only 5 chapters, rather than 26) from two years after the original. Hmm... I kind of wonder if there's a way to use that fact for a mission.
hS
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The fic itself is not the crazy part by
on 2022-03-15 04:26:53 UTC
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The comment section, man. The Smauging comment section.
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re: Manic Depressive +20 by
on 2022-03-15 04:20:38 UTC
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Okay, hold the hold up. Has Doctor Fitzgerald been an Architeuthis original creation all this time?!!?!?!! The Wiki claims he's first named in the 16th TOS mission (and implied in the 15th), but we aren't remotely near those stories by release date. Holy cow, it's so easy to credit the authors Jay and Acacia with creating so many things, but it looks like Archie was the one who really started the existence of a medical department all along! And Jay and Acacia adopted him into their own canon after the fact! I think this is the biggest surprise I've run into so far!
Also, wow, Architeuthis really is My People. A bio major, who insists she's well even if she isn't, and stays late at work when the job is ostensibly done (when she stays in the fic past the point where further data was unnecessary.) ((Assuming these traits aren't original to the character Architeuthis, of course.)) Also, interesting note about Archie not recognizing "plussed" as a word: Wiktionary gives its earliest example quote as originating in 1970, but all other examples are taken from the twenty-first century. The word must not have been frequently used enough in that time period for even a grad student to be familiar with its usage?
So. Upstairs used to issue laptops to the PPC's spies? No wonder the job shifted more to desk work as time went on; computers aren't cheap, but they won't need replacement as often if they're staying out of the field!
I'm so used to Middle-earth Suvians being elves that I was pronouncing Clefe's name "CLAY-fey" with long "A" sounds. But then I reached the full name at the end and read, "CLAY-fay mec-CRYG . . . wait. That was just an earth name all along, wasn't it?" Not that I could guess at pronouncing "Clefe" in any earth language I'm familiar with . . . The concept of characters being literal cliffhangers as a story role has a lot of potential, and feels downright PPCish . . . shame it just boiled down to having knowledge of the Ring. But maybe there's a payoff to the name in the fic, past the point where Architeuthis's report ends? (I am not going to spend time reading the original fic.) Also, I have to say, Archie recommends terminating all three OCs, but the only one I could see assassinating if I were writing the mission would be Ash, the semi-wraith. They all feel like trans-dimensional hoppers, and while we don't do Despatch any more, I wouldn't be above "returning" Clefe and Shea to the "modern day," as though they were authors within Tolkien's world itself. (I've done it once before, in Sherlock Holmes.) Shea is overtly normal, and there's not enough to the Cliffhanger concept to really make Clefe feel supernatural. And at that point, why not swing by Medical and see if they can cure Ash of the undeads? Neuralyze them all and send them back to middle school, easy peasy. But that's just my take. I know we're a bit more conscious of being assassination-happy these days, compared to the TOS era.
—doctorlit, slowly getting through his reading "assignments"
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We're always learning new things! by
on 2022-03-17 11:38:11 UTC
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I didn't expect Architeuthis to wind up creating virtually the entire early Infrastructure side of the PPC (except for Personnel, of course). That's cool!
I think there's a difference between "Suvian falls into Middle-earth" and "author inserts themselves into Middle-earth". I'm not... entirely sure what that difference is, but the PPC in-universe clearly believes it exists. Perhaps it's about whether they claim to be part of the canon or are just along for the ride? By claiming to be "Cliffhangers", the main two make themselves story objects, not just inserts.
Or perhaps Archi was just very bloodthirsty. ^_~
One interesting point in this story is the implication that all badfics happen in the same world. Architeuthis went into this story on the Witch-King's say-so from the previous one, because she could see "Manic Depressive" from Minas Morgul. This isn't a concept we lean into much, instead treating badfics as separate worlds; but it would go on to be explored at great length in Andy and Saphie's Suedom.
hS
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re: all badfics being present in the same world at once: by
on 2022-03-18 12:51:41 UTC
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On the one hand, that could make for some really cool, complex co-writes with a lot of working parts!
But it gets a little weird for certain big fandoms. Like, even if we said that all the existing Tolkienverse missions are the only ones to ever exist, that still means the Council of Elrond is going to have probably ~25-30 Suvians all crashing the party at once, with roughly twice as many agents eavesdropping on said Council, in addition to Samwise, Merry and Pippin, who need to be left enough space to also eavesdrop on the Council without noticing any of the agents. That's getting to be one crowded terrace!
And over in the Wizarding World, no one can actually get through the wall to Platform 9 and 3/4, because there are just SO many muggles dressed in black loitering around the train station . . . And the house elves of Hogwarts can't understand how the Great Hall ran out of food! There should have been plenty for everyone . . .
—doctorlit, taking things to their illogical conclusions
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Well, that's why we kill them. by
on 2022-03-18 14:29:18 UTC
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Taking the Council as the example, the PPC has to stay on top of things. We have to keep killing the badfics, because if we let them stick around, poor Elrond will indeed be swamped with Suvians. Once they're dead, they never happened, so the problem is solved!
... yeah, it's not an idea that holds together overly well. I seem to recall Suedom takes the route that the canon is looping - that Lord of the Rings runs from the Long-Expected Party (or maybe the departure from Bag-End) to the sailing of the White Ship, then resets and repeats. Or maybe each location loops, so Rivendell is an endless cycle of Councils of Elrond, with nothing actually existing outside that. If a Suvian injects herself into the Council, then she's part of the loop now - she'll repeat until an outside agency (the PPC) comes in and removes her. If we don't do so before another Suvian tries to enter the same scene, they'll meet each other and we'll all be in trouble.
It's a theory. It explains the observed data about as well as the many-universes theory, especially if you add some caveat that a PPC mission extends the loop until the agents leave (somehow? Maybe in a literal, fourth-wall breaking "because the mission is a story too" way). I don't particularly like it, because it makes the canons into puppets just acting out their creators' words endlessly - but it also means the PPC are fighting against a concrete threat wherein a Suvian is literally affecting the main canon, and has to be stopped before she loops and everyone notices. The current 'slight destabilising effect' is a bit less urgent.
Since Suedom was never finished, we could even argue that the unseen, unexplained Bridge in that story is where things changed - before that, the canons were just endlessly repeating loops, but the Bridge made them into something new - worlds of their own.
hS
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I think I've used the loop theory before. by
on 2022-03-18 16:25:09 UTC
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Eledhwen noticed that the canon kept getting repeated over and over when she was a side character, which suggests (at least in my version of events) that the major players have no idea what's happening and just keep repeating their actions, but side characters can have more autonomy. But that metacognition led to her getting captured by Factory Sues, so...
But I think recently I've fallen more on the side of Word Worlds having some degree of separation from the canon, since fics getting deleted doesn't mean the canon itself is deleted, but that specific Word World still ceases to exist. Maybe a superimposition theory?
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I figure it depends. by
on 2022-03-19 21:39:49 UTC
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I sort of imagine each fic as a separate AU connected to canon by an imaginary umbilicus? Sort of. In the sense that one could be attached to a greater or lesser degree, with a more or less parasitic draw on the host canon. Not that it would necessarily look like a bunch of little balloons with string or something.
Jenni, for instance, would see the threads of the infinite AUs as more or less overlaying each other as Lily suggests, occupying the same space without affecting each other. Except sometimes they do. They can connect, and even merge. Sometimes fics use the same fanon; at least once, two fics were so similar that they merged, and it was a bit of a headache for the agents involved (I forget who and am on mobile). The canon would tend to stand out like a line traced over and over. Canon damage might look like the line fraying, or a new thread becoming bold enough to cover the original and mess up the pattern. Sue-threads have to be pruned to stop that from happening.
But really, that's just a metaphor. The reality might be too complex for our human minds. {= )
~Neshomeh made half of that up on the spot, too.
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Another option: by
on 2022-03-20 20:50:02 UTC
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What if (borrowing a slightly adapted concept from DC, especially seen in Legends of Tomorrow, and building a little on your post and I think Lily's as well), each badfic is an attempted change that, given the chance, could set in and stay? And enough of them, built up, destabilize the canon? That's already a thing--agents go in to keep the canon from being damaged by setting things back to normal.
If we consider each fanfic to be kind of like either a split off timeline/neighboring alternate universe, if it's goodfic, or acting like a change to the timeline that needs time before it settles in enough to stay (at which point it has consequences)...or, I suppose, for symmetry: the goodfic splits/AUs often occupy almost the same space, and don't cause damage because they don't break the rules of the canon; meanwhile, the badfic splits/AUs do, so if enough of them build up, they can have a detrimental effect? Just a thought, but it's closest to what I always had vaguely in mind, and I think it makes enough sense of how there can be so many versions of the same events and yet they almost never collide.
~Z
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PPC+20: "Entrapment in Middle-earth" [KazraGirl] by
on 2022-03-12 10:33:23 UTC
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If we're still recording milestones, here's one for you: Kazra and Rich marks the first Action Department spinoff, and they're right there in the DMS with Jay and Acacia.
PPC: The enterprise expands - Entrapment in Middle-earth by KazraGirl
If it weren't so very early, I would call this a generic PPC spinoff. We have Assassins disguised as Uruk-hai, bickering and then tricking the Suvian into walking straight into their arms. But it is early, and Architeuthis and Black Katana have showed that "how do you write a PPC spinoff" was far from a settled question.
It would have been really nice to hunt down the badfic, because it sounds fascinating, but sadly it seems to be long gone from the internet.
hS
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re: Entrapment in Middle-earth+20 by
on 2022-03-12 12:50:59 UTC
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Yeah, KazraGirl doesn't seem as willing to drift away from the original series as Architeuthis was. With that line about Jay and Acacia being "down the hall," is this the spin-off that set the modern concept of an RC in motion? (As opposed to what we saw in "What Might Have Been," where it seemed like J&A received missions in a sort of office (by my interpretation).)
I rather like the agent dynamic here. While Jay is presented as a bit ditzy in tOS, she and Acacia are still very much on equal terms as far as dialogue and planning go. Here, though, Kazra is pretty explicitly the decision-maker of the pair, while Rich is lazy to a cartoonish degree. But while he is lazy, he's also rather supportive of Kazra, complimenting her a few times throughout and ultimately helping her get the assassination done when his arms are needed. I like that kind of low-ego laziness!
—doctorlit, soon to be bleaching the Andes rodent exhibit
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re: Beginning+20 by
on 2022-03-09 04:05:09 UTC
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Hey, she's a fellow bio major?! I didn't remember that! I didn't stay for grad school, though.
I think this is only the second time I've read Architeuthis's spin-off, to be honest. She really delivered a ton of firsts in this short little ficlet, didn't she? While Black Katana started the recurring fourth wall break of PPC staff getting recruited from tHe ReAl WoRlD, Archie not only runs with that concept, but also introduces the idea that weird agent names are privacy measures, using elements of other spin-offs as "free-to-use" (in this case, using Makes-Things to explain the function of modified tech), and, uh. Raising the age rating with swear words, wow. Didn't remember that in here! Also, holy crap, holo-combat? I thought the idea of the HQ holodeck arose from our in-house Hunger Games, but here it is, way back in 2002! Did everyone else think the holodeck was a modern development for the setting, or am I just the pure idiot in the room?!
Also also, it's interesting that both Katana and Architeuthis went with present tense for their main narration, even though it's typically seen as a rather niche tense to use. I wonder if they intentionally changed it up to differ from the original series? Or maybe Archie was following in Katana's footsteps? Either way, I have to hand it to Archie for that extremely smooth tense transition between the infodumpy portion and the ficlet. It's in just the right spot, and so subtle, I had to go back after the fact and look at where it happened.
Some of the introduction's commentary about Suvians is getting uncomfortably outdated at this point, unfortunately, especially the very surface-level characteristics and equating Suvians with idealized author inserts. But at least there's acknowledgement later that "it isn't always immediately obvious that an O.C. might cause damage" later on, so . . . progress?
Interesting that the "invisible to canons" concept was originally attributed to the canon itself, rather than SEP fields. Feels weird that the canon would grant greater protection to some field agents for doing more direct work, even though both roles contribute to restoring canon. I actually like the detail that spies have to take more reasonable disguises in, since they're not serving an antagonist role the way assassins do.
—doctorlit is too tired to come up with a clever signature phrase