Subject: I don't think there is such a thing as a "dress" uniform.
Author:
Posted on: 2022-05-13 21:12:27 UTC
Just "black is the uniform". If you think about it, having anything mandated as dress uniform on top of the color (which is already the base one) makes no sense, since agents can be literally any sentient being. Plenty of which are pretty much incompatible with humanoid clothing - how do you get a Dalek in a suit?
I remember being told somewhere that PPC Agents have to wear black all the time. Is this correct or did I misread? It's been a few months, I think it was on my first Permission request.
but I think in recent years agents just wear whatever when they're not on a mission, in whatever colours they want (provided it's not a Sue colour... probably). For example, I used to draw Agent Eledhwen specifically in the jeans and black t-shirt combo, but now she's gone back to wearing hanfu more Elvish clothing.
Some of the whole "everyone must wear black, preferably pants" was done for a visual contrast with the Sues being hunted, who often wear impractical outfits for travelling and fighting. So as long as Winfrey and Noman are dressed in a way that makes sense for their characters and what they need to do, you don't need to stick to any sort of uniform.
(Edited to add: you do need a flash patch, though! Because that may or may not be the source of a Somebody Else's Problem field that lets agents hide in plain sight in a Word World.)
In addition to the visual aesthetic thing, I think it goes along with the idea that being an agent was originally more of a job than one's whole life, and it grew into the latter as time went by. See the uniform fade away as the RC expands and gains extra rooms!
I want to say I still envision my agents as having a particular article of clothing or piece of gear with their flash patch on it, but as I'm thinking about it, I don't think I've ever said so except for Ilraen's bag and maybe Derik's flight jacket? And Nume explicitly wears pinstripes and ties, and I guess Gall wears her Viking gear except I think I put her in more modern clothes in one interlude?
Now I'm confused in myself, because I still firmly believe there must be a flash patch somewhere, but I don't believe agents have a label sewn onto every shirt they own like boarding school kids. {X D Maybe everyone has a flash patch armband or something nowadays?
~Neshomeh
Checking my agent gallery, most of my active agents wear some sort of black top (the exceptions are Elanor - in Nursery - and Tango - who just dun't wanna). My feeling is it's expected that you wear PPC Black, but - Flowers being Flowers - there's not really any consequences if you don't. (If you're going to an official meeting, either Upstairs or with some agency outside the PPC, you probably do need to wear it though.)
I also feel like they do always wear a flash patch. In the case of Dassie or Steve, they have a couple of jackets, each with a patch on; in other cases, they might go down the velcro/armband route, or might just have lots of patches. I reject the very concept of the SEP-flashpatch, so they're cheap and easy to add for me. ^_^
A couple of pictures do hint at alternate possibilities - Terri might be wearing hers on a lanyard, while Mortic has a WhatThe mission pin for his cloak which might be serving the same purpose. (Mission pins were originally a hypothetical 'more elegant flashpatch', so this would fit for me.) But my general rule is "every agent wears a patch while on duty, which is most of the time".
hS
About this specific bit:
(If you're going to an official meeting, either Upstairs or with some agency outside the PPC, you probably do need to wear it though.)
What if an agent didn't wear black to an official meeting? Would the punishment be "temporary reassignment to a new department" or "your next mission will include mind-breaking badfic" or something else?
-kA
The Queen Anne's Lace sighed, insofar as a sentient piece of foliage can 'sigh'. Agent Blemishes, she said, what is... that?
Freckles (who had long since given up trying to correct the Flowers on her name) looked down at herself. "It's a dress, ma'am," she said.
It is... The Lace squirmed, a couple of petals falling to the ground. ... pink.
"Yes, ma'am." Freckles gave her department head an apologetic smile. "I was at a party."
I didn't know we allowed parties. The Lace drummed a frond on her desk. And this party, you were wearing... She squirmed again. ... pink?
"Yes, ma'am." Freckles straightened up. "It's not actually just for Suvians, you know. The idea that pink is a 'bad' colour is actually kind of misogynistic, if you think about it - saying that because something is girly, it must necessarily be worse."
The Queen Anne's Lace gave her a blank look (see previous comments on sighing Flowers). But your uniform is black, she said.
"Er." Freckles looked uncertain. "Yes? It should be. Yes."
So, on being summoned by your Head of Department, you chose to come... out of uniform?
"Um." Freckles took a half step towards the door. "Maybe I should go and get changed?"
The Lace sighed again. No, no, she said, you're here now, we may as well get this over with. She paused. But this will be going on your next evaluation.
"We get evaluations?"
You do now, Blemishes. Pink...
"Excuse me? Dr. Huinesoron?"
The robed man at the cluttered desk glanced up. "Student applications are down the hall," he said. "At least assuming the wizards haven't broken gravity again."
"Huh?" Agent Sandra looked at the clipboard in her hand. "Oh, I see. No, I'm not a student, I'm-"
"Of course you are." The Administrator of OFUDisc put his pen down with a click. "You're obviously not staff - not in that hoodie - and I'm pretty familiar with everyone at Ispace these days. Same goes for the rest of OFUU." He frowned. "I suppose you could be someone else's student, but you don't look terrified enough for that."
"I'm not a student!" Sandra repeated. "I'm from the PPC; we need to-"
"No you're not."
Sandra blinked. "Pretty sure I am."
"No, you're not." Dr. Huinesoron got to his feet. He shook his sleeves back, clearing his hands. "PPC agents wear black. They're famous for it. To have gotten that so badly wrong," he twitched an eye at her hoodie, "you must be one of the really dense Suvians. Ladies' Academy, I'm guessing? We always figured you'd survived the War; I'm surprised it's taken you so long to slink back out of the shadows."
Sandra looked down at herself. In hindsight, perhaps the sparkly Unikitty pullover had been a mistake... "Listen, sir," she said, aiming for 'mollifying' rather than 'fearful', "if you just call up the Queen Anne's Lace, she'd be happy to-"
"I don't care what your plan is," Dr. Huinesoron cut in, and fire began to crackle on his fingertips as he stepped around the desk. "It ends here. You picked the wrong OFU to mess with."
So yeah: Rule of Funny, plus Narrative Convenience. Do what you need to do.
(I don't know what's going on with Dr. hS, but apparently he's feeling paranoid right now.)
hS
Agent Liu, I appreciate your timely arrival to this meeting, but I have concerns about your uniform.
Liu Siyuan, who had been in the bow most appropriate for addressing his new superior (A sapient Flower. He's truly seen it all), raised his head and lowered his arms. "This agent requests clarification," he said, a little stiffly.
The Queen Anne's Lace's tendrils wavered a little, as if unsure whether or not to rub at her blossoms. The uniform is black, Agent Liu, she stated after a moment, before deciding to simply steeple her fronds on the desk in front of her.
"This agent is wearing that colour," replied Liu Siyuan.
You are wearing Bleen, insisted the Queen Anne's Lace. A Sue colour. And here I thought pink was going to be the most undignified colour an agent would wear to a meeting Upstairs...
Liu Siyuan blinked a little. "This agent does not understand."
Bleen is a Sue colour. Black is the PPC uniform. You are supposed to wear the uniform colour Upstairs, not some eye-searing Sue colour.
Liu Siyuan resisted the urge to fidget. "This agent fears there may be some miscommunication at hand," he said, after a moment of parsing the words. "This agent is hearing both colours' names as the same through his translator."
There should be no translator at play, Agent Liu. I am communicating directly with your mind.
"This agent is still perceiving both colours' names as the same," protested Liu Siyuan.
The Queen Anne's Lace made a noise approximating a sigh, and flicked a frond. Two pieces of of paper hovered into the air in front of Liu Siyuan. With another flick of the frond, the hanzi 青布 and 青 appeared on the papers.
This, said the Queen Anne's Lace, waving the paper with 青布 on it, is the colour of the PPC uniform. And this, she waved the paper with 青 on it, is the Sue colour you are currently wearing.
Liu Siyuan reached into his qiankun bag and pulled out a piece of paper and a red pen, and scribbled both 黑 and 青山綠水 on it. "This is the colour that E Shen-buzhang is requesting," he said, pointing to 黑. "And this," he pointed to 青山綠水, "is what is normally understood when one hears the colour that was not requested."
Then there does appear to have been a misunderstanding. My apologies. The Queen Anne's Lace set down the papers. Please remember to wear the appropriate colour to the next meeting.
"With all due respect, E Shen-buzhang, the classification of 青 as a Sue colour presupposes that Western concepts of colour are universal," pitched in Liu Siyuan.
Please don't test me, Agent Liu, grumbled the Queen Anne's Lace.
"This agent apologises." Liu Siyuan bowed again. "What does E Shen-buzhang wish to discuss?"
I discussed it with Nesh and Zing at one point but presumably Bleen would be 青, But Worse, like how Bled is Purple, But Worse. Bleen is probably the colour of Suvian jade, for one. LSY might have some resistance to Bleen's mind-bending appearance, but it'll give him a headache eventually.
E Shen-buzhang (峨参部长) literally translates to Department Leader Queen Anne's Lace.
of travel blogs and videos saying Japanese green traffic signal is blue because it's called 青信号 🤣🤣🤣 I had actual Japanese people call bullcrap on this to my face so there ya go.
But they're also not as green as they are in, like, the US. They're definitely 青!
P.S: "Green" and "blue" are also the same word in Vietnamese, which leads to sometimes having to specify whether it's, say, the "sea" one or the "leaf" one.
Which is weird because I haven't had ideas for them since, well, forever (a year ago?).
My idea being that they don't want to appear as harsh as PPC, so they are like "any uniform except black" instead of requiring a certain color, due to the association of black suits with Men In Black and the CPP agency doesn't want that.
"So, you're wearing black?" O'Ryan Keys asked. "A black... trenchcoat?"
"It's a duster, sir," said James. "It was a gift. I figured you needed me to look professional since this is an official meeting."
"Er, no, we don't," O'Ryan replied. "I mean, I don't. We would rather you be comfortable. But you can't wear black."
"Why not?" James asked. "It's just a color, like blue or orange. What's wrong with black?"
"Well, it's against the official dress code," O'Ryan said, "along with Sue colors and glittery overcoats, for one. And it looks hostile. We don't want to disturb the canons we're-"
"What's so hostile about black that isn't show in suit, like the dumb one you're wearing?" James interrupted.
O'Ryan sat straighter in his chair. "Formal is not hostile. Black fabric is. It mirrors Men in Black, both the movies and the men in the UFOs. It makes several canons uneasy. It makes people in World One uneasy. Uryy, it makes Minecraft characters uneasy due to the similarities with Endermen." O'Ryan crossed his arms. "We can't have our agents wearing black."
"But why?" James asked.
"We're not the enemy," O'Ryan said. "We're not trying to cause panic. We're trying to fix the Sue problem and then leave. We cannot dress in black fabric because a lot of enemies in canons dress in black, or (at least) the more extreme canons characters wear it. We don't want to cause panic."
(I hope this isn't bad, and it's not funny (oops?) but it explains things, I guess?)
-kA, who doesn't know why they wrote a semi-serious segment, but they did
Poor Freckles...
(Completely random side note: We haven’t had a mission in the Unikitty continuum yet, have we? Because that show is one my fandoms.)
Just "black is the uniform". If you think about it, having anything mandated as dress uniform on top of the color (which is already the base one) makes no sense, since agents can be literally any sentient being. Plenty of which are pretty much incompatible with humanoid clothing - how do you get a Dalek in a suit?
Hence "dress" being put into quotes. As for Daleks... black bunting? :'D
And yes, I do know that is technically a canon Dalek rank.
I always envisioned the flash patch as being on an armband if it wasn't practical to have them directly on the clothes, and even in the latter case (such as my own agents) I always imagined it would be attached with velcro like a military patch.
I also had them stick to the "something black" loose rule, with Sergio replacing his signature red jacket from his pre-PPC times with a black one, Nikki wearing a black trenchcoat to hide her figure a bit, and Corolla wearing a black hoodie, but you can chalk that up to me being always a bit too literal with rules...
Kaguya has a montsuki haori (haori with crest) with flash patch in place of the mon on the back [1].
cough David Null's Hawaiian shirt cough cough.
But, in as an actual answer, a) the only ones who wear black that are my agents are O'Ryan and Kittyauthor, b) David Null doesn't even wear black on missions. Like, it's explictly mentioned in one of my missions (published or not is a different question) that David Null had his Hawaiian shirt on. The other agents might be in black during mission time(tm), but David certainly doesn't, and c) all except David Null have (or will have, in K's case) the patch sewn onto every one of their shirts like kids in boarding schools 'cause I thought that was a requirement lol. There's gonna be a mission where K complains about the flash patch ruining the theme (mood? What would one call that?) of his clothes and David's just gonna say, "It's required. It hides us from canons." Probably with more cursing.
-kA, who really needs to rewrite K's intro mission because it went down from "they bicker but aren't enemies" to "they hate each other's guts" and that isn't The PPC Spirit (tm), you know?
(Edit: Grammar)
(Edit 2: Spelling, because I keep spelling "sewn" with an o.)
Like... the flash patch has a safety pin on the back so you can just pin it to whatever you're wearing that day?
But ofc, Liu Siyuan's got embroidered flash patches, so he probably had to stitch his onto everything he wears.
https://ppc.fandom.com/wiki/PPC_Uniform
It's not the best article, since this is one of those things that is (was?) common knowledge generally absorbed by reading stories or just hanging around long enough to pick up on it. Still, the basics haven't changed from what it says, as far as I know.
~Neshomeh
I thought it was all black, all the time. Every character I've introduced either in my introduction or the draft for my intermission followed the rule of all or mostly black, barring one (who is from FicPsych and ergo wears plaid except for a black undershirt, because that's what a stereotypical psychologist wears.)
I just thought it was ALL black all the time, probably misreading either advice or the wiki. That would put a huge damper on character design.
Thanks for the tip.
Would you mind if I took a look at that scene/character at some point? FicPsych is very near and dear to my heart, and I am protective of it. ^_^; You can PM me on Discord if you like: Neshomeh#0990
~Neshomeh
I took only the relevant parts. The gag just beforehand with the terrible receptionist wasn't included, and it's a pretty long scene anyway.