Subject: Wow.
Author:
Posted on: 2022-08-31 20:45:48 UTC
That’s...quite something. And frankly, I don’t see what any of it has to do with Harry Potter. It could be an (still not good, but unsporkable at least) original work. But instead we get this.
—Ls
(Since it's been some time since I last explained this... PPC+20 is a project to re-plug every PPC story from the first couple of years of our existence, exactly 20 years after it first came out.)
It's been a while, and that means it's actually realistically for me to be a little late: our hypothetical reader in the year 2002 clearly missed these stories when they came out on the 21st, and has only just noticed them. Sure. That's what I'm going with.
Protectors of the Plot Continuum: Two Worlds United by Jay & Acacia
It's been a month and a half since the original Assassins moved to Crossovers, but "Two Worlds" shows that they haven't given up on us. And nor have their spinoff writers, because:
PPC: From the Files of Polaris and Aria - Forward & A Time to Love, a Time to Fly by Cat Meringue
I confess I don't remember this at all; maybe I've never read it! I'll have to take a look when I get a chance. Page 3 of the reviews is a role-call of early PPC writers: we've got Wunderlust (Jay), Meg Thornton (Despatch), Meir Brin (HFA), and I'm delighted to see Jocelyn, LeoD, and Andy and Saphie dropping in too. Lots of memories of those people. :)
And a bonus non-story, from the very same day!
On the Art of Creating Original Characters in Fanfic by Architeuthis
Wayback Machine link, but this is a great essay by Archi about how (not) to do OCs. The PPC has no problem with original characters (just Suvians), and this is Archi's way of helping people do it right.
hS
Like hS, I don't think I've read through this one before, but hey! This is a decent first mission for a spin-off! It definitely feels like it was role-played back and forth before being converted into narrative form, like (most? all?) of Jay and Acacia's are, but I feel like it actually flows a bit better than some spots in the originals series do. It also feels like they kept a pretty solid sense of the temporality within the mission, keeping the days moving at a fairly consistent pace, and making sure the agents attempted a fairly realistic sleep schedule throughout—though I can't help but notice they never ate, despite having opportunities at the Burrow's kitchen and in the Great Hall. The overall vibe of the mission is quite nice; Aria and Polaris feel more rounded out than the standard "quiet squeamish one plus bold bloodthirsty one" agent pair, with Aria still getting aggressive when Lupin is insulted, and Polaris quick to show panic when she gets in trouble in the forest. It does fall short on more minor details: there's a very jarring unmarked scene break, and Trevor is referred to as horned toad, when from what I can tell, he is a quite ordinary real toad species. Also, I don't think brooms are autonomous enough to return to storage on their own, are they? Then again, canon does try to reassert itself, so maybe getting moved by a PPC agent actively restoring canon is a small enough breach that canon itself gave the broom enough of a boost to return where it belonged. Agents shouldn't be able to use wands, but since this is only the second Potterverse mission in PPC publication history, it's not like that had been established yet, and HFA hasn't been published to establish Muggle-use wands. Plus, the disguise description is a bit vague (". . . set their disguise in order to let them blend with the Harry Potter continuum . . ."), so Aria may be a wizard at the time she uses the wand.
At least one of these cowriters has a great knack for quick, funny details, too! I liked:
-that Aria's most recent mission featured, ". . . that dragon, and Voldemort stealing her wand, and Hermione's hair-straightener . . ." Only a PPC agent would see all those as equally heinous! It's also amusing that a few lines later, it reveals Hermione had to fix her hair herself with a curling iron!
-that the record for getting lost in HQ in nine full days. It's so ridiculously long, it's perfect PPC!
-that the lack of description makes Diagon Alley look like lines from a sketch pad: a literal "sketchy alley"
-most hilarious of all, Aria unloading equipment from a backpack to hand to Polaris, ending with . . . a second backpack, which Polaris must then pack herself! Feels like it's straight out of a Leslie Nielsen movie!
And I know it's coincidence, since Rowling wasn't analyzed as heavily back in the early 00s, but:
". . . there are almost as many Mary Sues in the Harry Potter continuum, but they are easier at blending. No one knows exactly why."
Almost as though Suvians feel right at home in a piece of bourgeoisie, classist, fatphobic, gentrified media! Who would have thought?
—doctorlit joined the PPC for a very good reason, and that reason is the backpack humor
since Nesh, Zing, and I recently dove into a subgenre of HP fics that's just aristocracy and abstinence. It seems like in making a wholly black-and-white conflict and textually demonising Slytherin house from the outset, the books have encouraged a lot of people to advocate for the Pureblood supremacists in their attempt to make Slytherin more sympathetic. If there had been better nuance from the beginning (like, idk, one of Harry's friends being in Slytherin) distinguishing the Pureblood supremacists from Slytherin House itself, there might be fewer of these kinds of fics running around where Harry discovers he's secretly some sort of Lord Potter and also Dumbledore is evil because all the poor persecuted Purebloods want is to save their culture.
I missed that post the first time around, and just... wow. Wooooow.
I'm not sure this precise thing was linked before, so here, have a primer on the "Pureblood Culture" AU by its chief perpetrator.
It's scary.
The fics based on its concept are scarier.
~Neshomeh
But given what Marion Zimmer Bradley has been accused of recently, any real desire to double check on my behalf has gone fully out the window.
In light of... the horrendous stuff that MZB has done in her private life, this kind of stuff cropping up in Mists of Avalon without characters pushing back and the narrative treating it as a serious crime is... very telling.
Here's another, not so line-by-line discussion of the Mists of Avalon, including an account of what MZB stands accused of. Honestly, even though the accusations were made public posthumously, the fact that her husband was convicted and was an ongoing supporter of NAMBLA is telling. There's an extent to which one should not be held responsible for the views of one's spouse and I imagine said spouse supporting NAMBLA of all organisations would be a dealbreaker for most decent people. (And yeah, they did eventually divorce, but she married him after he was convicted...)
So yeah. I can see why you're getting those vibes. The appropriation of Avalon mythos in service of someone's id is definitely present in Hairkink Purityworld AU.
Okay, full disclosure, I was speaking from a memory of having read the first part of Mists when I was a teenager. I didn't get any further because it was over my head, and had no idea about any of this. I was thinking maybe I ought to try reading it again. Now I think maybe I won't. >.<
~Neshomeh
(Or at least something similar that also focused on the ladies of Arthurian legend? Not sure. But I had a Camelot obsession at one point!)
I think it was considered feminist for its time given the bold female sexuality depicted in a decade where that was not done. But it’s definitely been tainted since then by what MZB did in her private life. I’d only found out about this because I was trawling Fanlore. MZB was very pro-fanfic and her involvement in fan activities leading to copyright entanglements formed the basis of the idea of not involving the creator in fandom activities in general.
but her novel Amazon speaks highly of a supposedly feminist ancient society that practices female-on-female child-grooming. The heroine also sexually assaults another woman and a man, and according to the narrative, the only reason her victims refuse is that they're just sexually repressed. Sheesh.
That’s...quite something. And frankly, I don’t see what any of it has to do with Harry Potter. It could be an (still not good, but unsporkable at least) original work. But instead we get this.
—Ls
I understand wanting to flesh out Slytherin; it's hard to be angry at the children of Death Eaters, or Dudley Dursley, when they're so heavily influenced by the cultures they grew up in. But while Dudley at least got a redemption arc chapter, every Slytherin student winds up fleeing Hogwarts instead of trying to defend it, not even the one student who had joined Dumbledore's Army. It would have been such a powerful statement, to have them all stand up against the privilege and power they were set to inherit, just because they knew it was the right thing to do . . . But as you said, Rowling has a very black-and-white view of who is good and who is bad.
Anyway, let me open up that other thread you linked, and read that snippet you posted with Bellatrix and Lily, which I'm sure is very normal and not weird at allwjycrgwcuwrgycfugfuiergfuwg
Argh, that's just too much hair, altogether. Despite being willing to hug several different animal species, I'm afraid human hair is quite squicky for me. Like, can't even rest my head against the wall in a public waiting room, there could be HaIr MoLeCuLeS oN tHe WaLl, squicky. So that whole . . . scenario is a big no for me. Although I am amused by:
"She is grateful that Lord Gervaise Ollivander keeps such excellent records. Else she might not have been able to acquire wood from the precise willow tree that birthed Lily’s wand."
"Hey babe, I brutalized a tree with sentimental value for you, ain't I romantic?"
Oh, also: ' . . . the only people allowed to touch a witch's hair are her father, her husband, and her son." Good to see we're honoring the traditional tradition of seeing women's bodies as objects to be locked away like property, cool.
(Also, I'm sure there's some nonsensical magical explanation for how forcing Lily and Bellatrix into marriage is going to result in Pureblood children, since they're both AFAB women, but I'm just amused because I just finished one of the Earth's Children series, where the main characters came across a tribe where the female chief was trying to slowly starve out all the men. Since the early humans of the novel don't understand what causes pregnancy, she assumed that by removing all the men, new children would be created from a mixture of women's spirits, resulting in AFAB babies only, and therefore, an all-woman tribe. That chief gets a pass on her biology fail for being a literal Cro-Magnon (although she actually should have known that some AFAB babies grow up to identify as male; people with spirits of a different gender aren't unknown to their culture), but one would think the Wizarding government would maybe be a little more knowledgeable on how reproduction works . . .)
—doctorlit apologizes for typing way to much on this, but it was a lot to think about
And if I remember correctly, didn’t Slughorn summon some Slytherins to fight the Death Eaters at the Battle of Hogwarts?
—Ls, not diving into everything doctorlit mentioned.
I'm going a bit out of order due to time constraints!
Architeuthis makes a lot of interesting observations, and I have a feeling we have fairly similar writing styles: heavily focused on setting the scene before we commit to letting anyone talk to each other. But it's also a very . . . chore-ish, I guess? way of writing, and while it's what works for me, I think that outlook definitely overlooks the fun of just doing some casual writing for experimentation's sake. The whole point of fanfic is to tell a new story, and while I can see the logic behind Archie's argument that Tenth Walkers fail because they're rehashing the Fellowship's story, there are still plenty of spaces in Middle-earth for unfamiliar faces to do something interesting!
Oh yeah, unfamiliar foods . . . that's one of the sticking points for transdimensional fantasies, for me. I actually don't really enjoy eating; I would rather not do it at all, but unfortunately, it is one of the drawbacks of being an organism that I must continue supplying my cells with nutrients! But one side effect of not enjoying food is that there are very few foods I actually find appetizing/worth tasting, so the thought of getting trapped in a society that doesn't put its food in nice, safe plastic is . . . I might literally starve myself just to avoid it!
The immune system question is one I think about a lot. The topic tends to get avoided, even in the PPC. I figure new recruits must get one absolute monster of a booster shot . . . but then, it feels mean to put kids through that, and they certainly get exposed to an array in the Nursery . . . maybe the Law of Narrative Comedy is the real safeguard there? It certainly wouldn't be very funny for most of HQ to get wiped out because a new recruit from an unnamed continent on the far side from Narnia brought some waterfowl virus in. Archie also didn't cover the reverse problem, of a Tenth Walker exposing Hobbits to the common cold, in a world where that cold isn't common at all . . .
Hm. I might have said something about romance not always coming down to shared interests, and sometimes being about plain chemistry . . . but I'm not qualified to talk about romance.
—doctorlit has a box of copies of Iximaz's book behind him!
Like, I think I've seen some Vambiolaria and Suemonia outbreaks played for laughs. Given the Current Events, though, I highly doubt an All-HQ Virus Outbreak is going to be played for laughs anytime soon, though, unless it's like... a rare Hobbit disease that makes your feet grow hair at 3 inches a minute.
The common cold does exist; Bilbo had one when he landed in Lake Town. Elves and Dwarves are hardier, though -- pretty sure Elves don't get sick at all? Gandalf is a Maia, so not sure why he'd be getting sick. I bet Aragorn has had basically every disease ever in his years of travel; his immune system is pretty jacked even before the Numenorean ~noble blood~ stuff happens. I guess I would worry most about Boromir and the Hobbits getting laid low by a cold........ I'm sure there's a sick fic about this!
... I think they would still be pretty sturdy by modern standards. Boromir is probably in very good shape. I think he would be pretty sturdy, healthy, and muscular because I figure he spends a lot of time outdoors, practicing with his weapons. Warriors of long ago had to be fit.
The Hobbits, though. Hmmm. This reminds me of part of the Fellowship of the Ring where Frodo looks at himself in the mirror and thinks he looks a little flabby. Not that he would be unhealthy, but not really spry, either. He was 50 when he went on the Quest. Merry and Pippin are just teenagers. They spend a lot of time horsing around. I bet that they can run pretty fast. They must have had lots of practice because of filching mushrooms from Farmer Maggot. Sam is older than Merry and Pippin, but younger than Frodo. He's sturdy and used to working.
Not that I really know much about this, I'm just theorizing.
Ah, a crossover! A Hogwarts! It is nice to get a break from Middle-earth after all the time spent there. I can understand the authors wanting to change things up. And minis have appeared in HQ at long last!
Just slapping Hogwarts into Middle-earth certainly does call into question where the rest of Wizard-earth is . . . like, we know France and Bulgaria and the middle east and Asia are there, so . . . where did all of that go? That anecdote about the castle-sized portal in interesting, might be fun to write that someday . . .
Feels like a missed opportunity to establish that PPC tech doesn't work in Hogwarts, just to force more strategy and creativity into writing Potterverse missions. Oh well, I guess that would call into question how a portal could even open there from HQ in the first place . . . Also, not sure if it's intentional, but I love the detail that Jay offering to bring Acacia to the hospital wing is the line they used to make her "sound like a student" to the teachers, maybe as a joke about how often Hogwarts students get injured/attacked?
Since the authors J+A didn't capitalize on some great typos, I'm going to do so now. (I know mini-Aragogs didn't exist yet, but I'm still going to have some fun.)
When she was gone, Ran ran up the stairs to the girls' dorms.
A huge spider skittered up the stairs, overtaking Ron; fortunately, Ron couldn't see it, like the agents. "Yesssss, feel the burn, human! It'sss always leg day in Hogwartsss, Precioussss!" The spider beat Ron to the top by a wide margin, and began to do stretches. "Eight legs means more spaccce for Fitbitsss. Eight fitbits? No, Precious, we has twenty-four Fitbitsssesss. That'sss how you maximize the workoutsss!"
She stopped and looked at them and then ran out the potrait hole.
The Fat Lady cleared her throat and began to sing in operatic style:
♪Gryffindors are fire, so I’m blazing it hard
Poke around to toke around on the Quidditch yard
The dankest scene
The dankest green
Dorm’s got 420 students, if you know what I mean♪
"Legolas" yelled Serenityrunning up to the man
Legolas was joined by a twisting many-legged mini-Suvian, which veered off and made a beeline for the treeline . . . but was soon overtaken.
"On your left!" hissed Ran as he sent the mini-Suvian tumbling and rolling. "You got to rise and grind harder, Precioussss! Never skip leg day!"
—doctorlit was going to say something worth reading here, but he forgot what it was
And honestly, I think they didn’t name the mini because Jay & Miss Cam wanted to let the author of the not-yet-existant HP OFU.
But I love what you’ve done with Ran here.
More Fitbitsssssss!
—Ls
Yes, practically back to back we have another TOS mission - but it's not an Acacia mission. For the first time, Jay went off with another partner: Agent Dead of the Department of Emergencies, written by Miss Cam of OFUM fame.
Protectors of the Plot Continuum: Torment by Jay & Miss Cam
It's interesting that this mission sits here (which it does: this Wayback archive shows the publishing dates for both this and the previous mission), because it really doesn't fit: missions 18 & 20 should run back to back, one ending with 'let's go to lightsaber training', the other starting with 'we're at lightsaber training'. Miss Cam had been heavily involved in the PPC of late - she had just rehosted their missions & the spinoffs, had given the agents their minis, and now she cowrites the first Bad Slash mission with Jay. Given the very long gaps between 17 & 18, and 19 & 20, I wonder whether Acacia was too busy to write over the summer and Jay got bored. ^_~
hS
Ah, the first real look into how a slash mission functions! (I think; this project has gone on so long, it's hard to keep track of all the firsts any more!) Funny that it's actually a mission for the Department of Emergencies, even though it would probably be seen as a pretty straightforward mission nowadays. It must be the threat to Legolas's life after the fact that justified that designation to the authors. And that, of course, connects with Doctor Fitzgerald's shock at having a canon character brought to Medical; since that wasn't a norm back then, any mission where a canon was in active mortal peril would have been seen as a greater emergency, since using Medical wasn't considered a solution. Until, of course, it was! Which may have contributed to argument to dissolve the DE once the concept of the Department of Floaters started to gain ground.
The . . . particular topic of this mission is tricky to work into a PPC mission. Since part of the job is to watch to collect charges . . . yeah. I see Jay and Cam got around that problem by basically starting the mission portion in media res, so that it was already time to intervene. Yeah, not much else to say there.
Oh, hey, the DE had its own cantina? I wonder if it services the SpecOps Division nowadays, or if too much of the DE's staff moved to other areas of HQ, and it's just unaffiliated now?
Aw. Miss Cam said she was working on a Daed-and-Heal mission, but I guess that never got finished . . .
—doctorlit, soon to exorcise tiredness by going to sleep
Funny, and good. I mean, obviously, it’s Jay and Miss Cam, of course it is.
I particularly liked the bit about exorcizing using the wrong creator's name.
By the way, did Miss Cam ever write that mission she mentioned in her author’s note?
—Ls
Miss Cam never wrote a mission with Dead & Heal, but she did write a mission. We'll see it officially when we get to November, but since I happen to have it handy:
Special Sue Unit: Whatever Happens
Starring Cass Orange, Skuld Taipan, and King Kong Comma (who rules all commas). They sit in a weird place in PPC history - Skuld is Miss Cam's sister, Cass shares a surname with my own Alex Orange, and KKC must have some relation to the Uncommon Comma, but what? It also establishes that OFUM grants official, specific degrees ("I majored in Grammar and Temporal Anomalies, and minored in Mary Sues"), which is something Cam can of course do, but I don't remember seeing elsewhere.
And... it's a Suefic. I do wonder whether Skuld and Cass are Dead and Heal reworked, and "Whatever Happens" is the 'possible worst Sue ever' Cam mentioned in her A/N. It looks like the mission was a cowrite with someone named Lotus, but whether she was also responsible for Heal is unknown. Per the original page, the SSU deal with "the worst of Sues", so it's certainly possible.
hS
As in, the wackyness and short life of early divisions. Special Sue Unit, Department of Emergencies, ESAS... its quite the the bunch, now mostly consolidated into the Special Operations Division (though apparently only part of ESAS got merged into it?) since they overlapped a lot.
I guess there was a time in which everyone went "hey, there should be a whole department/division about this!"? I admit I would've been kinda guilty of this myself if I hadn't asked, as I was considering making a separate division for missions set in Ace Combat when it got pointed out that SpecOps would've been a perfect fit anyways. Considering my spinoff ended up not focusing on Ace Combat anyways, I would've created another pointless division with little to no mission records...
This (very incomplete) Manual, from around 2006. That's before the days of the Wiki, so the Manual was the first ever effort to get to grips with what, exactly, was in the PPC.
At that time, the only collected reference material we had was whatever Araeph had put up on the LJ community. The List of RCs was there, along with the Complete List of PPC Fiction and List of Everything PPC. But they were purely archiving - Araeph just wrote down whatever people said on their missions. (Also, huh, apparently I once hosted the List of the Slain, aka the Killed Badfics list. That's fun.)
In 2006, I had just finished The Reorganisation after two years, ending it by creating the Board of Flowers. That story had begun life as a page of notes called "PPC power structures and the Reorganisation", so it seems fitting that it ended by not only creating a PPC power structure, but also helping to formalise what that power structure controlled.
I distinctly remember having long conversations (I think in HTML comments somewhere on the Manual site?) with Neshomeh and whoever else was on the project while working up volume 3, on which tiny departments and divisions were "really" the same as each other. We didn't really consult with the Board - just smashed things together as we pleased. The department closures which I (much) later placed in 2003 were actually just us not wanting to put them on the lists.
In a way, it's almost a shame. The days when anyone could just up and create a new department - Angst, or the Pyros, or Author Correspondence - were fun, while the long discussions which accompanied... is Temporal Offences the latest new Action Department? ... were drab and dull by comparison. But if you want a PPC that can reasonably have agents meeting in the halls (which has been awesome), you need a consensus on what's in it. And, to be fair, most "new Departments" just wound up killing Suvians anyway. (The Pyros certainly did!)
hS
That really explains a lot (and was an interesting dive into how sparse was the PPC before the Board and the Wiki)
About the "every department kills Suvians anyways"... I don't actually see it as so weird. Since Suvians are often what causes the problems of the fic in the first place, I've always seen the choice of department to which the badfic is sorted (in theory, of course!) to as more of a "department best suited to fix the damage" than "department speciaized in the kind of threat" anyways.
I think the flow is something like this:
A "run of the mill" Suvian will get sent primarily to the DMS, with Floaters catching the overflow (and then other departments with free hands when inevitably the overflow fills up also the Floaters' capacity) If the Suvian caused also bad things to the geography of a fic, DOGA it is. If the Suvian is some kind of weird, difficult to deal with or uncanonical species, ESAS. If the Suvian is the connecting point of a nonsensical crossover, then Implausible Crossover will get it. And so on.
In fact, pardon me if I use my own works as an example, but the two collaboration missions I did with Firemagic/Karrin Blue are a good example of that, especially the second one. We had a Suvian that pretty much was the nexus of a big crossover with a lot of powerful magic users and a spaceship with a powerful cannon at hand, so for the Flowers selecting a combined team of Implausible Crossovers (for disentangling the canons) and SpecOps (for damage control) was a no brainer.
...how would you, and the Board in general, feel about me making the Troll Division into the Troll Department? I can make an argument that trolling is distinct from parody.
Or, how would you feel about me just creating a new Flower to be the Department/Division head? I have a concept I’d like to float.
—Ls
My concern is that trolling is a deliberate act of the author, whereas (say) writing bad slash is/could be unintentional while trying to write good slash. Any time you say a story is a troll, you are making a judgement call against the author.
If you say a story is a Suefic, you can point at specific evidence that proves the character meets the PPC's definition of a Suvian. If you say it is bad slash, or an implausible crossover, you can point at proof that it is a) slash/a crossover, and b) bad/implausible. If you say it is a troll, you can (usually) only point at evidence supporting that claim - not proving it.
As a concrete example: I'm positive this fic was a troll. But I, and Agent Kaitlyn, did not treat it as one, because there is no way to know for sure, and to say there is is to claim to know something about the author.
Sometimes - rarely - you do know. Maybe they post an entire chapter bragging about it. Maybe they're known for other trollfics. Maybe it shows up in the reviews, or in the story itself. So a Troll Division is reasonable and supportable. But I don't feel like there's enough out there to support a Department without causing issues.
As for a Division Head, I have no problem with that; there's enough of them around that, if you're actually writing for the division, you should be able to give it a leader.
(Usual disclaimer: hS is not the boss of you. His word has no more weight than anyone else's.)
hS
Though, given that I’m gonna introduce Troll-wraiths, I could simply say that the wraiths are a malevolent force created from too much concentrated badness, regardless of authorial intent...
Though I think I’ll keep it a Division, because precedent.
Look out for the Tulip, newest Flower, coming to a Linstar fic near you!
—Ls
Mostly for the sake of continuity (nothing wrong with introducing a Tulip - seriously, how it is that there isn't one with all those weird plant species already represented?) but I suggest having a look on the Wiki if there is some "unemployed" Flower already around that strikes your fancy. I think there is at least one or two since when I wanted to make a Fighter Squadron Division I had found an already-existing Flower to toss the ordeal to, since it would both explain where said Flower ended up, and avoid adding a new Flower basically out of the blue.
But I'll nose about on the wiki to see if I can find an workable alternative.
--Ls
But none of them really strike my fancy.
--Ls
I really wish there’d been more with Cass, Skuld, and KKC.
—Ls
Read.
It was...kinda generic. Nothing particularly stood out to me.
—Ls
I remember this mission!
Agh, Serenity. I remember her too.
Ooh, mental floss. I want some.
I rather like the bring-a-camera-to-Hogwarts bit, it validates something I’m doing in an upcoming mission.
Taking “pff” up the stairs. I love that.
Huh, I kinda though “Ran” was a mini-Aragog based on the badfic text. Guess not, though...
“Periods! They go at the end of sentences!” Yes. Yes, they do, Jay.
"Aske...?" Jay asked, listening outside the door. I don’t quite get that dialogue.
Ooh, I like the arguing-with-the-teachers scene. Fun.
"Oh, look, the author stuck all the missing periods from everywhere else into that sentence. Charming," said Acacia sourly. Love. Love that so much.
Lightsaber training? No way they get every agent with a lightasber to go through with that.
—Ls, going hoppity skip. He’s not on drugs.