Once again, sorry for falling behind on this series.
Yeah, this does indeed blur the line between author and OC quite a bit, though a lot of the other early stories we've seen in this adventure did so as well. I'll admit, though: I've thought of Despatch as "that department that deals with authors" for so long, I forgot they also handled returning "kidnapped" canons, which is certainly something we can still do. Honestly, this mission could easily work in a modern style if it just cut out some of the interaction with the author insert; the Fairy Godfather could easily have stood in as a Suvian scapegoat to blame the mission on, allowing Meg to leave the author character alone entirely. Putting the outdated author stuff aside, I'm really impressed with all the thought that went into the physical parameters of this story. The beginning section is some of the most blatant spy fiction I've seen in a PPC story yet, with having to get in past the mother without being seen, and taking measurements with the equipment before getting to the actual characters. I actually think there's a bit too much examining of instruments in the beginning, but it's somewhat justified by this being the first story to introduce a lot of that technology. That coin trick in particular is clever, and just a little on the hackle-raising side, as even in text, witnessing a coin land on its side just feels so wrong and unnerving, especially considering a human hand isn't particularly smooth or flat. (I also like the gnome gag out in the yard. A reference to Gríma killing Saruman? Gnoma Wormtongue?) I see the necessity behind knocking the author character unconscious without killing them, although tricking someone into drinking anesthesia(?) feels a little overly invasive, especially considering the character is meant to be the original author. I guess if you look at it one way, it's not that different from a neuralyzer, just being applied to mouth rather than eyes . . . except that it's impossible to neuralyze people in real life, while drugging drinks . . . yeah. The arrest at the end is, of course, completely indefensible, and only would really make sense if the author were being enrolled in an OFU, not brought to HQ. Again, I'm amazed that author!Meg really thought of everything when returning the canons: location and time (down to the page!), plus neuralyzing the fic memories and potentially replacing them with the proper ones (more on that machine in a bit), and removing not just objects, but even uncanonical nutrients in suitably gross ways. Love the reminder that living in a first world capitalist nation means most of the food I eat is freakishly processed chemical trash that's maximally profitable to manufacture! I do feel like the whatsit shouldn't be removing canonical toxins, though; if the Hobbits smoke plant stuff, they should have plant tar in their lungs. But that's easy enough to retcon in modern day by saying that the appropriate settings on the whatsit leave whatever is supposed to be there. Oh, and I love the use of an unimportant point in canon, both in place and in time, to sort through the canons outside the influence of the author character. Oh, that's also a clever little story concept about Sauron getting nukes and orcs invading California . . . if only it didn't involve the LA riots. I feel that's way too serious business to set a PPC story near.
It feels like author!Meg was trying to avoid having to commit to dialogue for the canon characters, but then eventually reached a point in the narrative where it was no longer avoidable. It makes for a somewhat awkward period where none of the Tolkien characters are saying anything at all, other than Aragorn's out of character badfic quote. Also, I could swear DoSAT has been named by this point, so I'm not sure where "Department of Technical Support" came from. I suppose we could have divisions in DoSAT, like tech support, design, research, but that's a quite a few historical characters we would need to apply after-the-fact divisions to, which would feel a little weird.
I kept expecting the author character to get name-dropped as "Bob" at some point, but it never happened. Then I went on a link dive and discovered that Meg's personal website is still up! Don't get excited; the missing second half of "Teddy Bear" isn't there, either. But the title style she used for her missions there revealed that A Girl Named Bob is actually the fic author's screen name (as is Celeste from "Teddy Bear"). So uh, should we excise the author names from the mission titles on the Wiki? Since we don't normally do that?
Oh, I also came across a freely available copy of the Philip K. Dick story that got name dropped, "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale". The only content warning is that the culture therein has no taboo against biologically female torsos being bare in public, but it's written from a very male gazey perspective, so it's not quite the liberating thing that ought to be. Anyway, the Rekal, Incorporated tech Despatch has borrowed from there doesn't seem like it would work in handheld form, as it requires heavy chemical sedation to work. Then again, canon helps neuralyzers function without causing cerebral scarring, like they do in their own canon, so maybe it nudges the Rekal tech along without requiring that element? Actually, the story states that there are other, competitor companies in that canon, so maybe Despatch didn't take from Rekal, but from one of the other companies with a different process, that doesn't require any sedation.
—doctorlit is in the market for some artificial memories of having free time