Subject: Agents Phil and Spensor are on standby
Author:
Posted on: 2022-06-03 19:12:28 UTC
Phil is the unshaven human of medium build who wears a dirty hoodie and sweatpants all day. He is moody, lazy and nit-picky.
Spensor is Cybertronian who transforms into a Vending Machine. He has no impulse control.
Phil constantly snarks at Spensor for his antics.
Use them to your heart's delight.
Sooo I am currently working on an interlude (never written one of those before, how exciting!) and I am in the market for some agent cameos. I’m having my crow character Mellon fly around HQ making a general nuisance of himself, and I am letting him pass by a few select spots where characters may congregate. If you want your agents to have a cameo, please throw them at me! Can’t promise that everyone will have lines, but they’ll all be there.
I shall need the following to do your agents justice. Name, Department, pronouns and appearance kind of goes without saying, as well as general personality traits. Feel free to link to missions with them if you want, or their Wiki page if they have 'em. A small special request, if they have a particular small, shiny thing that a thieving crow might conceivably steal, you can add that too! (They’ll get it back, Agent Moira will make sure of it.) Finally, is there a place where they are more likely to hang out? I am planning to visit the PPC Cafeteria, an Escher Room, the Courtyard, some random corridor, and the office of the Marquis de Sod, and maybe a fly-over of New Caledonia, since Mellon will be flying through random portals/plotholes. Some places might be added or removed, depending on pacing. Some places are more likely to get brief mentions, others might have Mellon check them out for a few minutes before returning to what he was doing.
The interlude is still being hammered out with only chunks of writing here and there so it might take a while yet to finish. I was reaching a point where I realised that I can literally go no further without other agents. XD
Promise I’ll give them back when I’m done!
EDIT: Timeline-wise, this interlude would take place in early July 2021 at the very latest. Please fit in your agents accordingly. (With allowances made for wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey HQ stuff, of course.)
/Ekwy
Doc and Vania will certainly still be around!
Doc
DF
He/him
Short brown hair, Caucasian, collared shirts and cargo shorts
Shy, quiet, reads constantly
Books probably aren't shiny by a crow's standards, but you're welcome to have Mellon steal his, if need be. This will make Doc get angry and desperate to get it back, though!
Vania
DF
She/her
Black hair in a ponytail, Japanese, pinstripe suit and pants
Confident, in an easygoing way. Talkative, and excited to try new things.
Nothing shiny but her personality, alas!
Neither leave HQ very frequently, but they can be just about anywhere in HQ's public spaces. Just please, if you're going to set them in a restaurant/bar, don't depict them drinking alcohol.
—doctorlit, about to pack up for the Chicago gathering!
I still check the post in case any more added their agents, but work got busy so I couldn't really respond. =)
Doc can have a book with an inset jewel or something, and Mellon can attempt to steal that? I am planning to have a bunch of agents chase after him, but the things he steals have to be somewhat easy to carry for a crow and a whole book might be pushing his limits.
/Ekwy, not jealous at all, hoping you have fun, plotting to attend a US Gathering in the future maybe
Given that he was good at wandering around lost in thought even before he reached HQ.
I have no idea if I've actually given him a non-trivial wiki page, but to summarize the physical appearance section: stereotypical ancient math professor in black monk's robes.
In terms of small shiny things, he may have a pen that he's using to scribble notes about something that's pretty theftable.
And if you want suggestions, he might be in the Escher room attempting to do science at it, with no success.
...to the list of cameos, but work got intense over the past few days and I got very busy. XD
Escher room is good! Don't have a cameo staged there yet so that gives me ideas.
/Ekwy
ETA: strikethrough doesn't work in subject lines? Aw. {= (
~Neshomeh
Huh, interesting...
I assumed it's either something technical that can't have it enabled or something Tomash has disabled because it caused issues. Either way, it both sucks and is interesting...
But also axe DMS agents... I can't recall their names right now. Is that Nume and his partner, or am I in the wrong department?
-kA, in less of a rush.
For one, they don't get run through Markdown, so you have to use the HTML tags. For another, the set of tags you can put in subject is limited to exactly the highlighted list here
So yeah, having looked, you can strikethrough, but it has to be spelled <del>crossed out text</del>
This is designed to massively limit the amount of nonsense one can put on the front page.
IIRC the DMS agents are Derik and Gall.
Also ETA that HTML works in subject lines! Just not markdown.
I added the Markdown just to show what I was trying to do. The <s> </s> tags are still there, but you can't tell because they aren't working. ^_^;
~Neshomeh
It might just be strikethrough, since I think bold and italics are fine?
I'll have to go add it to the list
Strikethrough with the <s> tag is supported and we have updated some dependencies to slightly less ancient versions
Thank you for vanquishing the demons. ^_^
I didn't know about the <del> tag. That makes three strikethrough tags: <del>, <s>, and <strike> (though the last one isn't supported in HTML5). That's weird! I knew bold and italics font each have two sets of tags—though I didn't know until just now that there was any reason for it beyond one version possibly being preferred with CSS/HTML5. Today I learned that screen readers treat <i> and <em> differently. Not sure about <b> and <strong>, though.
~Neshomeh
Although this post made me curious: Where did em and strong come from?
I learned HTML in the late 2000s, as I recall. Or, like, 2011 at the latest. And at that time, most tutorials would tell you about b, i, etc, but not mention their cousins. "Better" tutorials and books would tell you that b and i and such were deprecated and you shouls be using em and strong instead, or even more specialized tags combined with css text-style because HTML wasn't really about determining how your document looked as expressing semantic intent (in theory, this is true, and it's a noble goal, but it doesn't reflect the way HTML is used in practice...). From this, I assumed that these tags were newer, introduced in HTML5 or XHTML or something, or maybe with the advent of CSS, which allowed for the display semantics of text to actually be customized by authors.
And it turns out that was wrong. Wildly wrong. em and strong both appear in RFC1866, which is the first official HTML spec, predating CSS (another fun sidenote, CSS is often cited as both a Microsoft technology and implicitly an act of aggression in the browser wars. Neither is true: CSS has been on the standards track for years by the time IE implemented it (which it did at or near the time it was fully standardized), was implemented in several experimental browsers prior, came from CERN, not Microsoft, and it was Netscape, not Microsoft, that introduced their own styling proposal with JSSS bare months before CSS was standardized. Netscape was plenty willing to play dirty. That's where JavaScript comes from). Additionally, b and i are not deprecated, or even entirely recommended to avoid, not even in the latest HTML5 spec.
There's no actual point to any of this.
I took a one-semester XHTML elective in college (c. 2006), and yeah, I think I was definitely taught that about using <em> and <strong> over <i> and <b> because of semantics... and then I ignored it, basically out of stubbornness and maybe something about not wanting to use tags with more characters in them as long as the more concise ones still worked. Offends my editorial senses, y'know. ^_^; Good to know the lesson was wrong even though it doesn't make me any more right, haha.
~Neshomeh
One theory I had for why they had both <i> and <em> is to handle the case where emphasis doesn't necessarily mean italics in the format the page is being viewed in. For example, if the webpage were being viewed on something that acts like a typewriter, you as the author may want to make a distinction between "this next is italicized, go get the italic font" and "this is emphasized, and while that means italics if you can and feel bothered, I won't complain much if you underline it instead"
That's not really a relevant usecase today, but it probably was when HTML was being designed, so that's my speculation about where these weird duplicate tags come from.
(And in theory the typewriter-like usecase isn't dead ... Braille displays exist, for example)
Where does <u> come in?
Also <ins>, which I learned is <del>'s partner and also has the effect of underlining text, but the usecase for those is suggesting edits. That, at least, makes sense to me. Reminds me of the pre-Google Docs days when we had to email Word files with Track Changes enabled.
I actually quite like the idea of distinguishing italics for tonal emphasis and italics for offsetting technical terms and such, though, especially if it can improve the reading experience for users with (some) screen readers. I don't know if I'll go back and edit all my old works with that in mind, but I probably will implement it in the future.
And I'm now even more irritated about AO3 automatically converting <i> to <em> for what is definitely no good reason. Alas.
~Neshomeh
...because all I got reading that was a headache. { ;)
That is to say, I tried to test out that bit of info to see how NVDA + Firefox handled the difference between <i> and <em>, and I found I didn't get any reporting of the italics in my test filed on until I went and checked the box that calls for announcing font style changes, after which I got both the <i> and <em> text announced as "italic".
But that's one browser with one screen reader and one particular configuration. Other people's results will probably vary.
What's worse is I've read Derik and Gall missions amd I still didn't know lol.
-kA
Jiwon or Charlie are available, if one fits the needs of the Interlude and whatnot. Charlie tends to hang around busy places like the Cafeteria, while Jiwon's more likely to be in Rudi's or the Courtyard, often in fox shape so he doesn't have to talk to people.
Neither really have anything particularly shiny, though, unless you count Jiwon's yeowoo guseul, but that's not really something he'd carry out in the open much. Hope that's not too much of a problem.
Lack of shinies isn't a problem!
/Ekwy
Phil (he/him) is the unshaven human of medium build who wears a dirty hoodie and sweatpants all day. He is moody, lazy and nit-picky. He is from the Department of Mary Sues.
Spensor (he/him) is Cybertronian who transforms into a Vending Machine. He has no impulse control. He is on probation and is from Eclectic Subdivision of Advanced Species.
Phil constantly snarks at Spensor for his antics.
Use them to your heart's delight.
I'll see what I can do with them!
/Ekwy
Thoth, floaters, he/him, he's a space marine from 40k, so he's about 7 feet tall, bald, and is either wearing power armor or... well, whatever fits. He's been known to wear robes, and sometimes T-shirts. Bald, too, since that's an obvious physical trait. He's stoic, and his mannerisms when speaking tend to be rather formal. There's a wiki page and missions, I need to go track down the wiki page.
He's lacking in shinies, at present. Sorry about that.
I don't suppose a bald head counts as a shiny thing
As long as there is a Wiki page, I have plenty to work with!
/Ekwy
As for "something shiny," he typically has a dagger nowadays with him at all times. He's likely to hang out in front of his RC if he hangs out anywhere, but he could plausibly be seen with his family in New Cal if need be.
And, additionally, from... May First-ish, he's been repartnered with K (mission coming soon! Hopefully), so if he actually talks about his partner (highly unlikely but still), he would be referring to K and not Paye.
-kA
The interlude takes place in early July 2021, so that would mean Paye is still his partner, yes? I mean, if it comes up.
/Ekwy
Then Mina is unpartnered and not an agent. Still in the PPC, though. Thought it might be relevant.
—Ls
I can write her as just sort of hanging out?
/Ekwy
But yes, she wouldn’t be going on any missions yet. And I’d imagine that for this interlude her parents are on a mission, not watching her. So, in a word, yes.
—Ls
Problem is David Null isn't in the PPC yet. So he can't be used.
Apologies on my part! You can still use one of my other agents, though, such as O'Ryan Keys. He would have a scythe. Still shiny. He has a wiki page, but I'm currently editing the Sporkamol page so I can't link to it yet.
-kA
Both our mistakes, I should have clarified right away when it was taking place. =) Good thing we sorted it out quickly.
I suppose David could still be in it (wibbly wobbly, timey wimey) if we want to take that route, otherwise I could use O'Ryan!
/Ekwy
Here.
-kA
I notice Paye's drinking Sporka in your 2nd mission -- should we put Sporkamol on the Wiki? Or has it already got a Wiki page and I just haven't found it yet?
It was intially made as a replacement, if I recall correctly, but the first time it did show up in a mission was Mission 2, I think.
I don't recall Paye drinking it (I could be wrong), but it is mentioned in that mission:
Paye hoped that the mini wasn't at Rudi's; otherwise, she and David would have to pay (out of their already piddling paychecks) for every shattered glass and scuffed bottle of Sporka, the newest beverage to hit the PPC.
So, yeah, it should be added to the Wiki.
-kA, who just read over that mission and realized how much they missed writing and publishing them.
If you don't get to it when I wake up, I'll add it to my Wiki edit spree -- I've got lots of pages to make!
You're welcome to use Christianne Shieh, Eledhwen Elerossiel, and Liu Siyuan. Christianne and Eledhwen are ex-DMS and retired in New Caledonia, and Liu Siyuan is in DBS. Since I think this interlude takes place after StWWX, Liu Siyuan will recognise Moira. If this interlude takes place before... oh, October 2021, Liu Siyuan will still be in RC 1774 in Headquarters. Between October 2021 and January 2022, he'll be in RC 9L0121F4114C3, because his RC got burnt down. Then after January 2022, he'll be in a cottage in the French Quarter of New Caledonia.
Christianne and Eledhwen are primarily in New Caledonia, though in HQ they like to go to Cluedo Night at Rudi's. Not so much now, though, since they have children to care for. Liu Siyuan will mostly be in his RC, but he's also been known to show up to mahjong games in the Lounge, and after his latest interlude his stomping grounds extend into New Caledonia. He likes the beach and the arboretum, but he'll also be seen in places where there are books and tea to be had, and the more Chinese, the better.
Christianne's most stealable shinies are probably her Japanese weaponry (though she wouldn't have it out, so I don't know how Mellon would get to it) and a silver star-like ring Eledhwen gave her. Eledhwen's most stealable shinies are her wedding ring, any circlet she happens to be wearing, and her sonic pen. Liu Siyuan's most stealable shinies are a jade token -- this large jade pendant that he would wear at his waist; it's a mark of being a gentleman -- in the shape of the Bad Slash rubber duck (so it doubles as a flash patch! :P) and a jade hairpin carved in the shape of a crane that he uses to hold up his half-up, half-down hairstyle. He also has a silver xiaoguan in the shape of a crane with its wings spread, but he doesn't wear that normally and would simply have it stored away at his place.
For StWWX-related spoiler reasons, the Disentangler and the Agent are not going to be cameo-able, but they can be mentioned as long as nothing particularly spoilery is said. I trust you, though, since you trusted me with Blank and Moira for StWWX!
Moira was recruited in early May of 2021, StWWX takes place in late May, and her first official mission would be a few weeks after that, so early July at the very latest. RC 1774 for Liu Siyuan it is! Like I said further down the thread, Moira herself won't be present in the interlude as it looks now, since it will focus on what Mellon was up to when she was off on her mission. She might run into Liu Siyuan when she walks around HQ giving people back their things, though!
I love his flash patch jade pendant; that is such a beautifully creative detail! Unfortunately that means Mellon will want to steal it. Eledhwen's sonic pen is another contender for that. Mellon is a filthy little thief. =D
Thank you for your trust! I shall make sure to be deserving of it.
but since those are the outer robes (pifeng), they can be taken off and he'll still have the jade pendant. The ones on his robes are three-eyed mandarin ducks so that they're more period-appropriate :P
I've sketched out what the ensemble looks like; I'll send it to you in DMs!
Mina is given a profile here, which should answer those. And as for shiny object, she has a scaly purple guitar with broken strings named Flurffles.
Bear in mind, my Permission is still pending.
But I think Mina and Moira would be good friends.
—Ls
...not sure if there's like an official rule about it, but as far as I'm concerned they're welcome! =)
Aw, I like Mina. I think she would be great friends with Moira; they seem to have a lot of things in common. Moira herself will not be in this particular interlude, since it focuses on what Mellon was doing when she and Blank was off on their latest mission, but they could definitely meet when Moira goes around HQ giving back things Mellon stole. I think a guitar would be a little too heavy for him to attempt to lift, though he'd probably give it a try! He might try and peck at it and loosen a scale, or a tuning peg or something. A pick! ...I don't know guitar things. XD
/Ekwy
Thanks to Nesh, I now have Permission!
And as for Mina’s object, feel free to break the guitar however you like. I’m sure you know more about guitars than she does, as she...doesn’t know how to take the best care of hers.
—Ls
Doot! (That's me, blowing one of those little celebratory rolled up paper thingies.)
Will send links to the Google doc when the interlude starts to take shape. Nothing will be posted without everyone signing off on it.
Congratulations again on getting Permission! Woo!
/Ekwy
I shall look after them.
/Ekwy
Zara has her earrings but she probably would notice him trying to steal them. And Diamond is a very sparkly vampire so have fun with that ;).