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

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

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 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

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...

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

. . . 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

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)

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.