Subject: PPC+20: "Polaris & Aria: Dancing with Fireflies"
Author:
Posted on: 2022-10-17 14:57:17 UTC
A couple of days late, but the second mission featuring Agents Polaris & Aria went up on the 14th October 2002:
PPC: From the Files of Polaris and Aria - Dancing With Fireflies
Link goes to my archived version, because Cat Meringue slightly broke the formatting on their original upload. Oh well. ^_^
hS
It's been a while! Apparently nobody wrote any PPC stories during the entirety of September 2002 - I guess the start of school was still a drag back then.
We're back in now (well... yesterday) with TOS20, which oddly enough follows directly on from TOS18. There's a tiny bit of text at the end of 18 which diverts into Jay's mission with Agent Dead in TOS19, and then they pick right back up where they left off. I strongly suspect that Jay added the divert so she could post her cowrite with Miss Cam as soon as she had it done, and that the original plan was to go straight from "you need to go to lightsaber training" to "you have just done lightsaber training". But I can't prove it. ^_^ Anyway!
Protectors of the Plot Continuum: The Luggage Runs Off With the One Ring by Jay & Acacia
I love this mission, partly because of the Discworld crossover, but mostly because I watched Your Lightsaber and You many, many times back in the day. It's instantly recognisable, which shows just how good J&A were at descriptive writing.
I'll see you again, twice before the end of the week - and on Sunday we have something really special coming in...
hS
Coming in on the same day (and in fact in the same announcement) as the Board itself, we have:
Kwennyfer & Jane: Disposing of the Rings by lumarele
Since the old homepage gives the badfic author, we can actually find the badfic too: Disposing of the Rings by Archiekins.
hS
Aw, no "Me Kwennyfer, you Jane" joke? disappointing! I do like the agents here, though. Strong personalities that really come across in their dialogue, and better physical description than we often get for agents in these early spin-offs. I think the habit of early writers to overdescribe their OCs led to a stigma against giving hardly any description at all, but it's nice to have some idea of what the characters look like! And oh: it's the first introduction of the semi-fic blip concept! I had the impression that appeared a bit later, closer to before I joined, but here it is in year one! The joke with the sword's names is funny, too.
Oh my gosh. According to the author's note in the original posting, Jay herself was beta for this! Although even Jay didn't catch that Kwennyfer somehow convinced Aragorn that she was Arwen . . . while disguised as a Nazgûl! Woops! Also, I feel like a better solution for Brownlock would have been portaling him to the Wizarding World to work with the Owl Post. It would get him out of Arda and into a world where he would fit in well enough to avoid disrupting canon, and avoid having to kill him altogether.
Autumn Loamsdown . . . I know making too many half-elves dilutes how unique and impactful certain canon relationships are, but I at least have to give Archiekins credit for creating a rather excellent and canonical-sounding Hobbit name!
—doctorlit has successfully dropped his condo into the high 60s Fahrenheit, hopefully enough to keep the air conditioning from clicking on for several months now
Also, re. distinguishing badfic text, further examination reveals that many of the badfic quotes have been modified slightly with dialogue tags added by Lumarele. This actually has the effect of making them less bad. I've adjusted the formatting to reflect this, because I think it's an interesting insight into the mind of a PPCer. {= )
Also, both the index page (where I put the initial author's note) and the story now have a link to a Wayback Machine capture at the bottom.
Re. Brownlock, yeah, I wish they'd done pretty much anything else, too. At least they didn't seem to enjoy it like the last pair did, but the owl could probably have assimilated into canon. It's clear Kai and the CAF Adoption Agency couldn't have come along too soon.
~Neshomeh
This was quite amusing—Kwen is hilarious—but if this is the first time we had someone distinguish badfic quotes, well—it’s quite a milestone. To me, at least.
—Ls
The story doesn't seem to have that formatting in the Wayback Machine capture from Odd Lots. It's possible the story existed on Fanfiction.net and had formatting there that didn't make it to Odd Lots. It's also possible that, since the badfic is still findable, I worked out where the quotes were for Lost Tales.
Anyway, I'm gonna add that author's note doc pointed out now!
~Neshomeh
Playing catchup a bit here, because I didn't manage to post either of these over the last week...
22nd October: PPC: The Enterprise Expands - The Eirren Bow Maiden by KazraGirl
I don't remember anything about this mission. ^_^
27th October: The DAVD Files: If I Die Before I Wake by Katharine the Great
DAVD is a bit of an oddball - they seem to be a small department located in the basement of HQ, and have their own division of Medical to boot. Naturally, I've spent the last 20 years messing their backstory up repeatedly (sorry!).
hS
A rather nice read; just imagine the days where your agents could just deliver stuff to J & A. sigh Rather too bad they didn’t actually write a mission to it...
“Winnie-the-Pooh is a homicidal fruit loop” wins the award for Insanest Story Summary. I mean...wow.
—Ls is catching up on his reads!
From "The Eirren Bow Maiden":
"Have they never heard of gravity? How can an apple stay in the air for a minute? No one could throw something that could do that."
I'm shocked speechless. {X D
~Neshomeh
Yeah, I can see what doc is talking about with regards to being somewhat different. The poor Ironic Overpower is going by the pseudonym “Murphy’s Law”, and that beepy thing...
I’d rather join Lusters Anonymous* than see those No-Drool Videos. It seems like something FicPsych would cover...
*not that I need to
—Ls
Huh. so the DAVD was originally conceived as a secondary Intelligence department, one that just handled the heavier, triggering sort of content? I feel like that could have just been a division of Intel. I know it has action and medical divisions itself, nowdays, so . . . guess I'll have to just look forward to seeing that change happen!
Katharine the Great maybe could have payed better attention to the spin-offs that cam before, though; the "portable portal generator" already has a name, and . . . I can't remember if the DORKS has been introduced yet? There's a surprising amount of content to keep track of in these early days! Shame the Wiki hadn't been created yet, would have made things easier for the early writers . . .
—doctorlit is dressed as a nerdy white prep. Not for Halloween; that's just how he dresses outside of work.
I remember Andy and Saphie inventing it; I didn't like it. ^_^ I have always been a grump.
DAVD Medical (aka Fizz R the Bizarre) appears in the DAVD files proper; the formal division-ing of the department is my doing, and falls out of the fact that the DAVD agents in The Reorganisation are Action types. So yeah, speaking of people not paying attention to older spinoffs...
hS
. . . I'm not planning to give my agents one ever, because forcing them to pick one disguise for the entirety of a mission forces me/them to be more creative . . . Yes, I'm totally going to get back to my spin-off at some point, just as soon as global capitalism gets dismantled
Ah, well. At least you've made DAVD a very distinct entity!
—doctorlit can smell the tamarin food on himself, even after showering . . .
I don't much about archery. Would an iron bow bend well enough to actually fire arrows?
Aha! I see now why I liked Rich so much when I first read him. He finds the "getting in pants" euphemism "graphic." He's confused by Kazra's list of LOs. He's grossed out thinking about Legolas/Caraline. My boy is a fellow ace! Power to my sleepy ace ally!
Can't help but notice that Caraline's name only works in the song's rhyme if it's pronounced in English style, but as an Elvish name, it should end EEN-ay, not EEN. And that gold/red hawk . . . Cayire? kaa-YEE-ray, I guess?
Beepy devices!? I don't remember these at all! Nice to know there's a handheld communication device to use in HQ, despite the lack of cell towers!
—doctorlit fills his only holiday bowl ( a Christmas one) with Oreos and fruit snacks and leaves it on the porch while he spends the evening with friends
On a technical level, there is such a thing called "spring steel" which is, well, what springs are made of. And steel is an alloy mostly made out of iron. On top of that, depending on the heat treatments the metal receives even regular iron might gain the right amount of rigidity, though I'd say it would be hard to make, well, springy enough as spring steel contains carbon and other metals in small quantities.
In fact, leaf springs used for suspension in trucks and old cars are, in fact, literally a set of curved metal sheets acting in the same way a bow does.
While I'm not sure it would be easy or practical, especially in a fantasy setting, to make an iron bow, the concept isn't completely unrealistic.
It's here, it's here, it's finally here! [Confetti, party poppers, fireworks, etc etc]
Suedom: Prologue by Andtauriel Longwood-Baggins and psychicsaphie
Suedom is one of the formative stories of the PPC. For the first time, we get the impression of the PPC as a vast organisation - previous stories feel more like a handful of misfits led by psychic Flowers, but the PPC of Suedom mounts large-scale rescue operations and acts to protect the entire canon. It's by two of the brightest stars of the early PPC, Andy and Saphie, aka The Andy Half and The Saphie Half. Saphie also wrote the PPC Constitution, and they were big names in the community for... well, at the time it felt like a long time.
Suedom is epic. It is world(s)-spanning. It is cosmological in scope. It is, tragically, unfinished...
... and it all starts here, with a fangirl, a computer, and a very bad fanfic indeed.
Suedom has been gone from the internet for some time. Part of the purpose of PPC+20 is to bring it back to life. You'll be seeing it again soon.
hS
Oh god, I loved Suedom. I read it... off of Miss Cam's I think? Or hS's backup of Miss Cam's. Or a Wayback Machine archive. I forget.
Anyways, I think Suedom might be my favorite thing piece of Early PPC work. Or, well, PPC-adjacent. Like OFUM! But it was so so good. And... very very depressing, at times.
Imprinted on my psyche, Suedom. Isekai into weird Sue-overrun Middle-earth? Sign me up. (No don't--)
So, an admission: when I first came across this as a newbie, I skipped straight to the PPC agents appearances at the end, and had no interest in the original portions. >_> But! I shall read it all now! The concept of this "bridge" is very intriguing; who created it? How was it placed in the internet? How does it work? I look forward to finding out!
I'm amused that, in that snippet of fic at the beginning, the author can't spell "Legolas" correctly even once, but keeps her OC's "Fishywishylishiel" consistent every time!
Alas, if I'm searching properly, it seems "A Short," the story that inspired the story that inspired Suedom, is no longer on the Pit.
—doctorlit, bridging the gap between sleep and work, and bringing fiction with him, in his own way
I remember seeing on the wiki that this was lost but is WASN’T! HOORAY!
reads
That’s one heckuva Suefic.
—Ls is not breaking the timeline, Ls is not breaking the timeline...
A couple of days late, but the second mission featuring Agents Polaris & Aria went up on the 14th October 2002:
PPC: From the Files of Polaris and Aria - Dancing With Fireflies
Link goes to my archived version, because Cat Meringue slightly broke the formatting on their original upload. Oh well. ^_^
hS
Honestly, while Harry and Snape were definitely out of character here, I didn't find Drachati herself that out of place. Roller blading on a moving train feels like the sort of thing Luna Lovegood would do, and if you took the osprey form away from Pandemonium, he could easily be a fantastic beast with two similar mustelid forms. Otherwise, she very much feels like an awkward, teenage wizard! (I can't speak towards the plagiarism element, but I'm totally going to get around to His Dark Materials someday you guys, I have them all collected and everything. I just need to bookshelves to tell me when I'm allowed to. I am very normal.)
Anyway, back to the PPC end of things, I'm super amused that word of Jay and Acacia getting a vacation has spread through HQ . . . but is being dismissed as a rumor! Hey, it's logical; all these years later, and it's still not that common of an occurrence, right? I'm curious to learn why Polaris got booted from Intelligence, though with only one story left in the spin-off, I'm not sure it got addressed.
—doctorlit is a very normal sort. He lets his books choose what order they are read in, and he has a history of rollerblading through the neighborhood while reading. Very normal.
Namely, the SO’s dialogue is unitalicized. It’s more readable than the everything-is-italicized version, though. This particular error, I recall, happened in Chapter 12 of Crashing Down, which I sent you an email that I’m not sure you got, for.
—Ls hasn’t read it yet, but he does like that there’s a gdocs repost
Oh, hey, it's the story where I first heard anything to do with Discworld ever. And . . . I will totally get to that series at some point, yes! I've even collected five titles from various Goodwills! Definitely going to do that, definitely not overworking to the point that it's consuming my entire being and existence, haha
Oh, and the Greenman is here! Everyone's favorite character, the Greenman. Yup. The Greenman's first ever appearance. The jolly green Greenman. There he is. In seriousness, I do like that Jay and Acacia branched out (HEH) from basing all the Flowers on real plants, and included some myths and such as well.
The mission's quite a fun one; you can tell they were looking forward to interacting with Discworld elements, but still had fun with the Tolkien stuff, with finagling Boromir on top of Acacia, and Jay starting to feel the pull of the One Ring. (Although honestly, she doesn't seem the type? But I guess that's kind of the point with the One, isn't it? What would that look like, though? A dark queen in a tower filled with polaroids, armies of orcs denuding the planet to produce more photo development solution, sourceless Rammstein music inexplicably playing over all, like background music in a video game?) I admit I . . . didn't remember Rúmil existed in canon. Like, at all. But at least the authors did, and gave him a cameo here! brb, going to make Rúmil his own wiki page now
—doctorlit looks forward to the burst of PPC activity this week, and possibly even keeping up with reviewing it
. . . was simultaneously exactly what I was expecting, and absolute existential horror. But I suppose both the 50s narration and the underlying grimness both work together to accomplish the goal: showing how dangerous actual lightsaber usage would be.
—doctorlit prefers to fantasize about having a keyblade, anyway
I mean, it’s TOS, of course I did. But it was very funny.
Best line in it “IT'S UNDER AUTHORIAL INFLUENCE!”
It just...that all-caps....
Anyway, I didn’t remember the Genderbending Department/Division. Whatever happened to it, I wonder? And d’you think that that goodfic author’s stuff is still up?
—Ls
Gender changes aren't inherently badfic; it's mischaracterisation of genderbent characters that's the issue. If your fem!Harry Potter is a doe-eyed little waif who pulls out of the Triwizard Tournament because Voldemort knocked her up, she could fall under the purview of either Bad Het or Mary Sues.
(I've wondered about the exact fate of this department/division myself to either Nesh or hS and that's what we figured. Someone's free to contradict us, ofc)
Everything got dumped in Floaters, the Flowers really hated departments for a while there. ^_~
(The joke being, a lot of that happened when the PPC Manual was being worked on, and is therefore partly my own fault. Sorry!)
There's not quite a rule that all department names should be the bad thing they deal with. Floaters and All Purpose, obviously, but also Angst and Despatch (because transdimensional hopping/snatching can still make good stories). So a Genderbending Department or Division would still only deal with Bad Genderbending.
Which does amplify your point about it being split up: it's not just characterisation issues. You can also run into plot problems, and the nebulous "but why tho" problem: if you start changing genders but everything else stays the same as in canon... why does it exist? I tagged something similar as "in which feminism could do with better planning".
Which, yes, comes round to what you said: the genderbending isn't the core issue in any of those cases. You might want a specialist around, either to unbend the characters or deal with any psychological effects when they realise what's going on, but you don't need a full department.
(& also, I think we're all hitting the point where "haha it's funny that character is a girl now" is not... all that funny any more.)
hS
(because, imo, it’s not Department-worthy) is like today.
Adds to Official List of Linstar’s Plotbunnies
—Ls
Uh…OK. So, I’ve been gone a while. Why are old stories being posted like they’re new?
It's October 2002. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is coming out this Christmas. The PPC is only nine months old. Jay and Acacia are still writing. Any supposed "next twenty years" you may think you have experienced have been an illusion woven by their mastery of the written word.
hS
To celebrate, stories from TOS and other early spin-offs are posted on the day they were posted 20 years ago.