Subject: PPC+20: "Why Am I Here?"
Author:
Posted on: 2022-03-25 14:47:49 UTC
It seems like Jay and Acacia may have used their "long break" to write a whole string of missions, because we get three pretty much back-to-back here. Having just read #7, we launch straight into:
Protectors of the Plot Continuum: Why Am I Here?, by Jay and Acacia
More when I've reread it, but this mission features the best characters I have ever borrowed.
hS
After the first long gap (for a given value of 'long'), the Assassins are back with:
With the date nicely confirmed by Acacia announcing it on Entmoot. Sadly there is no record of the badfic, other than the title and the author (Silver15, but not the current FFn user by that name).
hS
It seems like Jay and Acacia may have used their "long break" to write a whole string of missions, because we get three pretty much back-to-back here. Having just read #7, we launch straight into:
Protectors of the Plot Continuum: Why Am I Here?, by Jay and Acacia
More when I've reread it, but this mission features the best characters I have ever borrowed.
hS
Which I referenced — including as a distraction and everything — in The Quest for Erebor Liveblogs. I hope Millie and Mr Socko enjoyed that :P
Hm. The Marquis doesn't really feel himself here, compared to what I'm used to reading of him. Seems a lot less confident and severe. Of course, we usually see him irritated at recruits being portaled into his office unannounced. This feels a lot more like a formal meeting, so maybe that's why he's a bit more submissive and "on the back root?" Might be nice to explore this more neurotic, professional aspect of his personality; plus, having agents escort the recruit to his office allows for more HQ time and more dialogue interaction, too!
Some minor notes:
1. That book on poisons that Acacia reads is actually real! It appears to be part of a whole series of author resources on writing about crime and investigation.
2. Sorry to be one of those animal people, Acacia, but the man o' war (warning for describing predatory behavior) is very much NOT a jellyfish. Man o' wars are of the siphonophore order, animals whose bodies are composed of units called zooids. Even though the whole organism still hatches and grows up together, its zooids compartmentalize tasks, such that only some parts of its body can capture food, digest, reproduce, etc. Compared to this setup, jellyfish are much more like humans, in that they are a single unit that develops different appendages that it can use in concert to perform different tasks at once. The man o' war's superficial jellyfish shape is just a bit of convergent evolution, shaping two open-water drifting ambush predators into a successful body plan.
3. I love that Leviathan's assassination was a scaled-down reference to Smaug's death! Perfection!
4. Makes-Things turning the volume back down seems to confirm that the switch from [bip] to [BEEP] was either a malfunction, or a deliberate change by Upstairs or Legal to get agents to react more dutifully to missions.
5. I think the horse's name is "Vento"? I don't really know Latin, but there's a Ventus in Kingdom Hearts with a wind theme to some of his attacks. And since Acacia is complaining the name shouldn't end in "o," it seems like "Vento" would be the thing. Does the original fic survive to check?
This, by far, is the most screen time the TOS authors have given the badfic during a mission, up to this point. I still don't think they've directly quoted a lot, but the agent characters seem a lot more aware and attentive to the fic events compared to usual. Hard to say whether this is a shift in their approach to missions until we read a bit further . . . it could simply be a consequence of this story being legitimately creative, for all its weird choices. As the agents point out, it's unusual to see OCs who don't join the Fellowship, and that may have incentivized the TOS authors to give the fic more space to breathe within the narrative. Of course, this mission has one element that is undeniably the funniest thing in the entire PPC. No, I'm NOT talking about the sock puppets, though they're made even funnier by this other element. I'm talking about
"We're being canonical," the somewhat stocky (for an elf) elf said in a musical voice (the music in question being British protest rock. But what did you expect?)
Broke: Elves having lyrical, ethereal voices. Woke: An elf having a speaking voice like the singer from the Sex Pistols. Yes. Perfection. The perfect joke, and it matches Jay's personality perfectly. The fact that Acacia doesn't have some arbitrary accent inherent to her elf disguise means that Jay either customized her own disguise to feature it, or it's a straight-up bit that she sticks to for the entire, long mission. And either way is just more perfection. Perfection squared and cubed.
I think we're missing a line from this one, though!?
"And neither will I, I'm beginning to worry," said Acacia.
"Now, whehe do we need to go?"
"We can hear the top fairly well here. We can listen to the Marty-Sam-orc meet our dear Sue."
"Do we HAVE to?"
"Why don't you want to?"
"She does? I can't say I noticed."
"Lucky bint." Apparently, Jay's British accent was extending to her slang.
There seems to be a Jay line missing between those spots I bolded, both by order of speaking and by the fact that Acacia's question doesn't make sense there. Somebody has that, hopefully? I could have sworn I had TOS backed up, but . . . it seems to be absent from my archive folder. : (
—doctorlit
"Anyway, TV show episodes are more about what makes a good story than anything else." - is this author!Acy having a sly jab at author!Jay for going off on a long tangent about sock puppets (which in context is the thing that doesn't make a good story, as opposed to Acy/Boromir action)? I think it might be.
The theory about lembas being Twinkies comes from the List of Tolkien Crackpot Theories, including Acy's note about the taste.
Acacia gives herself the name "Vananovien", and I'm not sure why. This thread suggests it was taken from a generator, which used "Vananov" as a base and added a feminine ending; but Vananov is not an Elvish word. I can construct it from Vána+nóva+ien, "foremost beautiful maiden" (but the more direct meaning of Vana is 'blonde', so...).
Not sure about the horse's name; Acy tells us it isn't Latin for Wind, while Vento would at least be close. There's people on the internet claiming both "Anima" and "Aura" mean Wind in Latin, so it could equally be Animo/Auro. Any of these are dumb names. ^_^
We get a little bit of background on Acy this mission. She's learning Latin (hence her later Roman retirement), she started out in Bad Slash, and there's a hint that she might have worked in Anime at one point ("Had this been an anime continuum, Acacia would have sweatdropped.") Acacia's timeline is... difficult; did she really run through both DBS-Anime and DIC-Potter in the less-than-a-month between FotR's release and her first mission with Jay (which is not Rambling Band)? In TOS4 she says "I wasn't hired till after there were movies, remember", but she doesn't actually specify LotR movies. Given that she's known to have worked Harry Potter, we can buy an extra month by saying she meant Philosopher's Stone, which came out in November '01... does that fit? Hired in November, works a couple of missions in DBS-Anime, meets Lux, transfers to DIC to deal with some of the Potterverse badfic flood, kills Harry Potter, transferred again to DMS to deal with the newly-released Fellowship. Works with Jay for about a month before Rambling Band crosses their desk.
Speaking of timing... this mission shows that J&A were happy to spend a while on a mission. They walk for five days before portalling ahead. They do agree that six months would be pushing it, though. :)
According to Jay, Millie and Mr. Socko are official PPC agents ("Constables" in this case). I believe this unquestioningly.
I've just checked both the Misssandman.com and Oddlots copies of the mission, and both of them are missing that line. Given that they seem to be independent copies, I suspect it got chopped before it ever reached FFn.
hS
I'm trying to puzzle out what dialogue went missing. The original fic appears to be long gone, so that won't help much. I suspect that whole section is a pretty sarcastic exchange, as Acacia should hardly need to ask jay why the latter doesn't want to listen in on a sappy scene. Assuming there's only one paragraph absent, Jay's answer would have to be something that both responds to Acacia's feigned-ignorant question, and sets up Acacia asking about something Alex does or has, probably also only feigning ignorance. Jay then responds to that by saying Alex is "lucky," probably sarcastically. And we know that the general gist of the scene they're listening in on is Alex meeting Charlie. My first instinct was that Alex hurts Charlie in some way, but I feel like Jay and Acacia would want to listen in on that. And I . . . really thought that by the time I finished typing all this, SOMETHING would have come to me, but I guess I don't have a writer brain at the moment. Maybe something will come to me in my sleep tonight.
Rereading the horse passage again, I see what you mean. I thought the "-o" is what ruined the meaning for Acacia, but now I agree it must be a word that's entirely off-track from a proper translation. We shall just have to refer to the horse as Windo. At least we'll have one letter correct? Just don't smudge him!
I like the idea of agents walking around more in missions, and not relying too heavily on portals. Gives me more time to dump location descriptions all over the page let the canon stand apart a bit from both badfic and mission. And, of course, exploration is fun!
Well, we now know that "constables" come from the TCDA, so Millie and Mr. Socko must be the original visitors from that version of the PPC. No doubt the fibers of their forms were woven by the force of some hulking steam-powered clockwork loom! And surely, they specialize in all canons performed as puppet shows, to the extreme confusion of any children watching. Also, Yoshi games? At least the ones that appear constructed out of cardboard and yarn for whatever reason?
—doctorlit knew better than to even comment on "Vananovien;" that's for hS to worry about!
I wonder if the longer-than-typical posting time since the last update inspired the intro where Acacia is pleased it's been a while since the last mission? That's a cleverly subtle fourth wall break that was probably a lot funnier for the folks actually following along as TOS updated!
You know, we've had a lot of agent team-ups over the years, and they nearly always get announced in HQ, with the agents meeting at one RC before beginning. But this original team-up, where the POV agents just enter the mission and the other agents are just there unannounced, with no warning? This is hilarious. I love it so much! It gets even funnier by the end, when you realize that there really wasn't any exorcisable romance in the fic, and the Slashers just kind of disappear from the narrative with no real resolution. I don't think they were assigned to that mission at all; they were just messing around screwing around playing around having fun they were present in Middle-earth for no particular reason. Also, Sean calling out Jay and Acacia as "the two who live together" is further evidence that live-in response centers weren't standard in this era. Also also . . . when I read the word "micturate," I very much assumed it meant spitting, because that's the absolute most inappropriate thing I would do in the presence of three women. Sadly, I made the tragic decision to look it up, and it. Doesn't mean. Spitting. Damn it, Sean! There are ladies present! And also my mind's eye!
I had misremembered Luxury's "thought reading" here. I had it in my mind that Lux had read the Words, not of the badfic, but of the mission itself, to see Acacia's thoughts in the narration. But she actually read the subtitles? So are there always subtitles? Can any agent do this, as long as they have the proper, unserious mindset? I also find the implication behind the Slashers not knowing OCs can see them interesting. The authors J+A clearly saw slash missions as being fairly non-threatening in terms of danger, to write the Slashers as so blasé about making noise and being seen. And yet, the DBS nowadays has a history of absolute horrors within it, with plenty of overtly dangerous wraiths and abusive situations, especially among Trojanhorse and Laburnum's works. I wonder if this is a result of slash stories getting more intense over the years, or just a consequence of authors!J+A not really reading much of it to begin with, and not realizing what it could be like?
That Council of Elrond scene goes way, way, way off the rails, and I rather feel like at least that section was a bit of play-by-post RP between the authors!J+A and, I guess, their friend who inspired Luxury? It feels like they were competing to do more ridiculous things than the other writers present, because some of the stuff that happens is just way too risky even by the more lax standards of TOS-era missions. Messing with Gandalf's hat, tying one of the Suvians' hair to the chair, sitting on Sam?! (Funny that would happen one mission after my last post brought up the difficulty of agents having space to hide without infringing on the hobbits' hiding spots!) And I have barely any mental image of where the agents are to be able to do all this stuff without one of the Suvians noticing. Kind of a weak scene for me, honestly. Plus, in all the chaos, I think whoever was piloting Sean forgot that J+A were in orc disguises, when they wrote Sean attempting to "cop a feel" . . . do orcs even have—never mind! And hS, don't you DARE answer that!
Had to look up Strom Thurmond. Assumed he was some actor, but he's actually a politician, and was less than two years out from death when this mission got posted. That felt a little gross, but then I read his Wikipedia article more, and realized he opposed civil rights reforms. So now it's funny again! : D
—doctorlit thought he would be asleep by now; this is much longer than J+A's past missions have been! But cowrites will do that, so I'm told.
I think Sean referring to Jay and Acacia as "the two who live together" is a callback to his and Lux's first appearance? *checks* ... Yeah, it is. Jay makes a reference to the wall of her and Acacia's response center, and Lux makes a whole big deal about how it's THEIR wall, in the plural. But then there's Acacia's line:
> "We're partners," Acacia said, wide-eyed. "We share a response center! Mind out of the gutter!"
So I think Lux is just being ridiculous there, and Sean is just being ridiculous here.
I'm pretty sure Lux does read Acacia's thoughts, not something from the badfic. And then Acacia tells her it's rude to read minds. So, I think it's fair to think that she can see the Words of the mission itself, and "subtitles" is her descriptive term for it. Why or how she can do this, I don't know (I don't personally subscribe to the Shipverse origin theory). She's just Lux!
~Neshomeh
Looking at the formatting, I'm pretty confident this is a three-way co-write between Jay, Acy, and Lux. Lux and Sean's actions are separated out a bit too nearly in the intro for it to just be J&A (but equally, they tend to share lines, so I don't think they were two authors).
This is definitely the story that establishes Lux's reputation as an airhead nympho. And, er, what is up with this sequence?
Luxury came strolling out of the woods, riding on Sean's shoulders.
I've always assumed it's a moderately dirty scene, but this readthrough I've noticed two things:
1/ Lux is wearing a skirt later, oh lawks, but,
2/ Lux is strolling? What? Are her feet somehow on the ground?
Still on the subject of Lux: she reads the Words of the mission, which Acacia doesn't know how to do (and describes it as 'reading minds'). If we accept the notion that Lux is from the Shipverse, can she do that because the PPC isn't her world, so she can perceive its Words while its 'natives' can't?
The Department of Bad Slash as a concept is fleshed out slightly in ways that... really didn't stick. The Slashers don't wear disguises, and Acy implies that they might operate by seducing canons away from their uncanonical relationships. Which might be quite funny to read, actually, provided Rule of Funny was solidly in place.
Is this the mission that introduces the torture ban? I don't remember it coming up before.
And we have the mention of the spinoffs! Archi, KazraGirl, and Black Katana get mentioned; it looks like Acacia missed mulberry. It must have been a real thrill to start your spinoff and have the Original Assassins mention you in an A/N. :)
hS
Wiki says he has another mission with Robyn and NytBloomer, and that he was in Crashing Down, but not much past the 00s, I'm guessing. Maybe he works in the Arboretum
... is that his own story is lost. It was called "Agents R and... Another R", and was posted by Robyn on FFn in April. It was presumably taken down during the Takedown a month later, but we really don't know - and nobody is around who remembers anything about it. It's very sad.
I didn't actually remember that I'd pilfered him for Crashing Down, heh. He only gets a mention in dialogue, so not enough for me to call it an adoption.
hS
I think he'd be a good fit for the arboretum, though, if he wants to get back in touch with that Ranger side of his. /ba dum tss