I feel like they play about a bit more with the whole "world made of words" concept than they have previously - the compressed feeling, the stateds, even the contradictory colours. It's fun, and it's definitely carried over to how I write PPC missions.

Also: Jay is "three years on the job" here in April '02, which means she joined sometime between late 1998 and mid '99. Which is a great relief to me, because it means I'm not wrong to have her in The Reorganisation (May-June '99). It does mean she's a lot newer than I was imagining her at that point; apparently she made a quick impression!

hS

The "stated" gag, the Sue colours, the horrible Shakespearean English... it's got it all. I'm still about 85% sure I read the MST once upon a time, but unfortunately Google searches can't corroborate that :P

And as you know, I'm taking full advantage of Jay and Acacia mentioning Random Elves in this mission, because guess whose backstory is Random Elf?

“Meluithel,” stated Eithriel as the brown-haired elleth stitched star-like gems onto a long white dress that was somehow low-cut and yet also modest, “do you not notice anything strange about this dress?”
“I am readying it for Lady Mithril Starlight who is Elrond’s other daughter,” stated Meluithel. “If you wish-eth to help-eth me, you can embroider the wilver shoes for her.”
Eithriel averted her eyes from the aforementioned wilver shoes. “When did Lord Elrond get another daughter?” she stated. How many daughters did Lord Elrond have? Eithriel could have sworn it was just Arwen, and yet every other day it seemed some other lost kin of Elrond’s came traipsing into Rivendell. Was Lord Halfelven truly so prolific?
“She has always been here she was living with her mother in Loth Lorien, she is Lady of the Light.” Meluithel stated slowly, as though she believed Eithriel to have taken leave of her senses.
After Meluithel finished her embroidery on the dress, she started on the shoes. “Deliver these to Lady Mithril when I am done,” she stated.
Eithriel did so, only to run into a pair of ellith on her way out of the lady’s rooms. “Hey, you,” stated the stockier one. “No need to take care of Lady Mithril tonight. We’ve got her.”
Eithriel blinked at her, and then at her partner. “Very well,” she stated. “Please take care of her.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” said the partner, with a smile that was more teeth than anything else. “We intend to.”

The authors gave this badfic a heck lot more focus than any of the others so far, especially in terms of direct quotes, but it's understandable. All that misused archaic English is easier seen than inferred. That weird overuse of "stated" made for a perfect gag that could only have worked in a text medium like this, and it's surprisingly the first time Suvian colors have appeared in the original series, although the agents/authors seem aware of the concept from some outside source. Do we know what this "official" list they're citing is? I'm especially curious about octarine Never mind, found that one! It's not even a Suvian color!

I think this is the second time the narrative laws have been mentioned, though it's a lot more similar to the modern usage this time. We also get the "no leaving until mission completion" rule stated explicitly.

I found that poem Jay and Acacia quote, if anyone is interested!

Yikes on that wrist joke, but culture changes a lot in 20 years! '~'

—doctorlit enjoyed this mission deeple, but now he must go to work and perhaps do a deeple clean on an exhibit or two

the author did die, and whoever wrote the page was requesting that no more negative reviews be posted out of respect, but couldn't find a nicer way to put it.

Aha! Technically, the first interlude, even though it's not set in HQ! Gosh. I feel like I should read through OFUM as part of this +20 adventure, but since I'm barely scraping together the free time to read and review everything that gets posted on the Board lately, I don't think that's realistically going to happen. : ( Anyway, Jay and Acacia spend their vacation sightseeing the canon portions of Middle-earth that are present in OFUM. Which is something they've done before, on multiple missions, but I suppose it feels different when you're not on the job, and needing to return to HQ within a reasonable time? But it's not surprising they eventually start spending more time with the actual canons, something they're a lot more limited on when on missions. Interesting that Boromir seems to remember Acacia; I always assumed OFU staff were something like word-generated copies of the originals, not actually connected to them at all. But then, they wouldn't have any awareness of what happens in badfics, which is their primary motivation to staff OFUs in the first place, so it does make sense. It does, however, seem odd that before Jay started blabbing to the dark lords, the OFUM staff seemed to have no knowledge of their counterpart actors; after all, the actor often has an affect on a character's popularity in audiovisual media. Maybe Miss Cam was an early opponent of RPF, and didn't want to engage with the real world figures in her story?

Oh, much respect for our agents, for I see they too prefer nice, sensible sandals when the occasion allows it. And even further respect for Acacia, as she is a fellow anti-foodie! It's nice to not feel hungry, but ultimately, food is just food.

(Incidentally, if you're reading this, Neshomeh, there's a typo present in this copy: "Whoever he'd been yelling at wasn't talking the hint.")

—doctorlit is glad he would fit in fine at HQ, as cold showers are best showers

And it contains a surprising amount of world-building for HQ despite barely spending any time there!

We learn about the lack of real beds through Jay's excitement about her OFUM student dorm:

> "Pillows, Acacia." Jay beamed. "Pillows and real beds... and sheets..."

Jay and Acacia have been shown to camp out on missions, and of course Lux and Sean tease them about living together in their RC. I'm not sure they have beds at all, and if they do, I reckon they're camp cots at best. (That's all I gave Derik and Gall.)

We learn about the sanitary facilities, again by contrast with OFUM:

> There was a shriek of delight from the next room. "SHOWERS!"

> It wasn't that the Protectors didn't bathe... but the sanitary facilities at Headquarters were rather sterile, metallic places with no hot water and the faint suggestion of an assembly line.

> Acacia grinned. This was going to be more fun than she'd thought.

I wrote out my theory on the evolution of RCs with en-suite bathrooms in my story "Missing Time" and will thus not repeat it here. Yes, this is a shameless plug to get you to go read my story if you haven't. {= )

And we learn about the food:

> The fare of the PPC Agent may occasionally rise to the edibility of mutton, but more often consists of Twinkies, eggrolls, and granola bars.

In other words, whatever one can scrounge during a mission or aquire from what I suspect is the equivalent of a campus convenience store. I recall that TOS mentions a cafe at some point, but I think Architeuthis may be the first to establish a cafeteria/canteen? I guess we'll see!

~Neshomeh

...aren't really a thing in TOS. Jay and Acacia just complain about the misspellings. Wonder if it showed up later (like Bleeprin shows up later), or if some other spin-off started the "minis show up in PPC missions too" trend?

I literally cannot tell the agents apart.

I guess I can't say anything (I've been told multiple times that my characters are identical-sounding; the only difference between David Null and all the rest is that he curses), but the lack of dialogue tags, the simularity between the actions (I, at least, try to make my agents act different, but whether I succeed, well, that's up to the readers?), the identical actions against canon characters... ignoring the past opnion, it isn't the best written spinoff. It also feels a lot like "talking heads" scenes. Show me dialogue tags with action attached, at least.

I just hit the bird scene... ugh, by gods. TW animal abuse, animal killing, goreish, bl3?

It seems that they show at the wrong moments, and tell at the funny moments.

Also, again, TAGS. Dialogue tags! They're important! Who speaks using baka? Who hates Sues dating Gandolf? I don't really know. buries head under arms I'm very confused.

TL;DR: Tags aren't used, can't tell the agents apart, I hate the bird scene

(Not trying to be rude. I'm just confused.)

-kA

Great, now I'm remembering ruddy TV Tropes and their "review page" on us that declared us cyberbullies and claimed Agents were indistinguishable from Mary Sues - stuff like this doesn't help that very much. Like, sure, it's old and all, but going off of what I've seen, TV Tropes (and numerous other internet circles) still think the PPC's stagnated for twenty years and kept this kind of culture. It's, um, sad. And may or may not have been one of the reasons I had a hard time writing PPC-related stuff for a good chunk of a year.

I'm not sure how to review the actual spin-off in ways that haven't been said, to be honest. Um. There's a lot of gratuitous Japanese, I guess? Plus using a katana in Middle-Earth? And I'm not sure if "chibi-baka" is proper use of the language?

...And the bird scene. I really don't like the bird scene.

-OrangeFox, not sure how to feel now.

Ah, yes. The type of old spin-off that people can point to and say, "See? See? The PPC view themselves as the fanfiction police! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!" And with a helping of shaming teen writers for having perfectly normal hormonal reactions to pretty people.

Skip.

—doctorlit, gulping down grape juice, for he woke up mighty thirsty

This intro piece to the spinoff fills me with dread. I haven't read the second chapter itself, but the intro just regurgitates every negative talking point people have about our community. The tone is snobbish and mean-spirited (the "hormonal overdrive" jab in particular is just garbage) despite having multiple grammatical errors of the kind we normally bung on the charge list. It sets up the spinoff as the Fanfic Police people accuse us of being, and I do not vibe with that.

I get that the early days was a bit of a lawless wasteland, but I'm genuinely confused as to how stuff like this passed muster. This feels more like a parody of the PPC mission statement written by someone who didn't really understand what the PPC was doing. You can feel the smugness dripping off every word like a blob of rancid butter left melting on a radiator. It's not just bad, it's wrong, and wrong in a way that tarnishes the good writing in TOS and other spinoffs.

Sorry to be so negative but this is a style that I am so, so glad the community has moved on from. The PPC is not like this, and should never have been like this, and that it ever was makes me amazed that the community has lasted this long.

It IS interesting that the Department of Multiple Offenses was originally conceived as the "floaters" department with the water-lily flash patch and taking on various types of assignments and all, but it's not surprising that this fic was forgotten, allowing Nenya and Rosie's later DMO (dish-and-spoon flash patch) to become the "official" one. There are just too many little things off about NytBloomer's piece. Crisis Response Center; portal key; Offense Detector; Observation Zone? What are those things? I'm not sure if it was part of her effort not to compete with other PPCers or if she simply wasn't paying attention to TOS, but either way, this just doesn't feel much like a PPC story.

And it makes the history of the Department of Floaters and the DMO tricky to document, too. >.>

~Neshomeh

The first person journal-type narration could be pretty cool, actually? But there's, um. Some awkwardness in the writing, to say the least. (And I thought my earlier missions were bad with that. Like, geez.)

Also, I guess this may or may not have been before beta readers were more of a widespread thing. Lots of formatting issues and a few phrases that would draw the attention of the Department of Redundancy Department.

(Also, self-guiding shotgun? I thought automated aim-helpers were more for guns that required, um, precision. Like sniper rifles and stuff? I get shotguns were one of the 'cool' weapons and all back then, but I don't think a laser pointer's really needed for buckshot.)

Weird.

-OrangeFox, now thinking about the passage of time

I know, I probably shouldn't complain about this since I might be guilty of it myself (actually, strike "might," I AM guilty of a bit of this, especially in my first ever mission), but this quote severly irritates me:

I tallied up a few more offenses as we were forced to walk through more scenes of this…parody. NSFW joke, "Sandcrack" ("there's #3 in poor alternate choices for Gandalf" I muttered), insertion of Donald Duck, too many bad "thing" jokes, and the fact that I had to turn off my Offense alarm after about the first five minutes due to its' constant wailing, were but a few of the things on my list by the time we got to the "author."

This is barely described. It could be just, so much funnier if we, as an audience, could actually see these things happening. At the very least, I would describe the Donald Duck interaction, because Donald Duck is a natrually funny character who gets into rages. Let the agents be chased around by a duck threating to throw a flower pot at them and just-so-happen to find the Sue behind the whole thing! Comedy!

-kA, who feels like they need to mission their first mission to explain all the things wrong with it. Hey! Another project!

Yeah, not a lot salvageable here. As hS said, while some of the basic elements would have made for an interesting spin-off, too many of the technical PPC elements just don't mesh with the PPC. The idea of a charged OC pleading parody is hilarious, and I love the term "fanfictiondom," purely because it sounds funny. But most of the rest is trying way too hard. To pick on one thing hS didn't touch on, the idea of Makes-Things having a team of moverbots to help people move objects around, is an example of making up tech that makes things easier, rather than funnier. Any agent with two arms can move things, and we already have portals to minimize travel distance. So I declare that the moverbots all broke after this scene, and they've been in that landfill room getting chomped on by those wind-up teeth ever since. This is canon now.

The one thing I totally want to save from this spin-off is the HQ pharmacy. It makes sense for one to exist, but I'm not sure it's been mentioned before now? It would have to have relationships with both FicPsych and Medical, and feels like it would be especially connected to Medical Research.

—doctorlit is surprised the Marquis ever lived in a plastic pot, but suspects he has something a little sturdier nowadays

I'm Vietnamese by the way.

. . . in not just making up names for a character in a foreign culture without researching that culture's language first!

—doctorlit was not prepared for the mental imagery that name calls up