*waves* Hey, Andy, can you help us out here? (nm)

Subject: *waves* Hey, Andy, can you help us out here? (nm)
Author: Linstar
Posted on: 2022-11-16 16:49:46 UTC

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PPC+20: "Suedom Chapter 1: Enter the Dragons by [Andy & Saphie] on 2022-11-10 14:35:55 UTC Reply

The prologue last time may have given a false impression of Suedom as a story of short, snappy chapters. NOPE! The actual Chapter 1 comes in at 10K words, and I don't think they're getting shorter, folks...

Suedom Chapter 1: Enter the Dragons by Andy & Saphie

I need to come up with some sensible way to archive this story; 30-odd disparate GDocs isn't a great approach. But given that it was a) consciously abandoned by b) people wot still exist, I'm loath to put it up on AO3 or anything. I think the best option is probably to add the Suedom homepage to my archive of Miss Cam's site, so it can be read in (roughly) its original form. I'll do that. ^_^

EDIT: And lo, I hath did it. Both chapters of Suedom are now hosted on my cargo-cult Misssandman.com. What's that you say? More chapters? Nonsense - it's November 2002, this is all there is. :D

PPC+20: "Suedom Chapter 2: Things Get Weird" by [Andy & Saphie] on 2022-11-23 17:16:46 UTC Reply

Get weird?

Suedom Chapter 2: Things Get Weird

On the archive

As Andy described, this is actually the second (possibly third) version of the chapter, as posted on LotRFanFiction around 2006. The first (possibly second) version is the one posted to Miss Cam's site; I've included a link to it at the bottom. It's not as different as the first version of "Enter the Dragons", but it is different.

(The actual first version would be the version posted on FFn; that version is entirely lost.)

Next PPC+20 should be on the 1st December, and will be something... a little different.

hS

re: Things Get Weird + 20 by doctorlit on 2022-11-25 13:26:28 UTC Reply

We're used to seeing badfic quotes interspersed throughout missions. That's what the agents are there to observe, after all. And while they can lead to all kinds of weird or bad imagery, there's a disconnect in reading them. We know the agents are going to correct the problems by the end, and we're only experiencing the reality warping third-hand, through the agents' perspective, which makes the badfic quotes a neutral element nearly all of the time. In this story though, it's the focal characters getting warped by the inserted-from-another-story quotes, and it gives them a much more chilling and threatening vibe. After all these years of reading PPC missions, that sequence where Kate and Kira's appearances got changed, was quite a slap in the face. And unlike canon characters, who get drawn into the fic's narrative and wouldn't notice such changes, Kate and Kira are fully aware of what happened to them. Horrifying.

Rincewind's backstory is more fascinating than I even anticipated! I like that the authors don't cast her initial writing as villainous, but instead reflect (one of) the real world source of writing Mary Sues: women wanting to see more of themselves in male-dominant published canon. That said, it does feel a little weird to erase the Star Trek fandom's known historical status as the origin of Mary Sues. I know the Canon Protection Initiative started out in Tolkien and had a heavy presence in that fandom for most of its early existence, but it still feels weird to shoehorn a different backstory for the phenomenon of Suvians in the fictional setting, when the setting has always been so dependent on real world fanfiction trends. I'm currently assuming that Rincewind is an Inheritance Cycle dragon, due to the telepathy, and the somewhat aloof and predatory attitude, which reminds me quite a bit of Saphira. Eragon's original self-publishing occurred in 2002, so the timeline checks out. The reference to "Powers That Be" and "Music of the Spheres" is surprisingly uncomfortable to me; I'm used to the canons having their own native gods, but implying that the real world has one within the PPC mythology feels out of place. But then again, I don't know what/who else would have the power to force Rincewind into this Quantum Leapesque plotline, otherwise. Legal? It feels too broad in scope, even for them.

It's interesting that Rincewind assumes the PPC will find a home continuum for Odorf, when we've seen throughout the PPC + 20 project that the general tendency was to kill Cute Animals Friends, even if they could clearly be integrated into canon. I like that Andy and Saphie had a more reformist viewpoint on that than most of the community seemed to!

—doctorlit sees that Legolas has arrived at last

I really appreciate that you're reading along. by Huinesoron on 2022-11-25 14:25:48 UTC Reply

Wanting to respond to your commentary reminds me to read the thing myself. ^_^

The "home continuum" thing sounds like it's probably inspired by the DMFF, and says something about the timeline of... one of the two stories. The first firm date for Suedom is chapter 13, next May; the first firm date for the DMFF is chapter 2, next June. It seems logical that the first DMFF story would cluster with the others (which were all written in about a month), but it's possible that DMFF 1 was much earlier - or, indeed, that Elvea suggested the idea on the Board.

Alternately, this is after J&A started doing Crossovers, right? They're Assassins in the story, but they'd already started writing the sort of missions where they drop the characters off back home.

Rincewind... given how little LotR fanfic there was prior to the movies, I think we have to treat her claim to have written one "a few decades ago" (ie, the 70s or earlier) with a bucket of salt. Most likely, she was in the Trek fandom, but her memory has been affected over the centuries and she only remembers the many lives she's had in the year since the Movies started. Or, she means that she wrote the first LotR Suvian, and the "Powers That Be" are specifically responsible for Middle-earth. There are Maiar who guard the Doors of Night against Morgoth's return; something like that could guard more ethereal boundaries.

(For best entertainment value: maybe her badfic was of the 1977 Rankin-Bass Hobbit or the 1978 Bakshi LotR!)

(Incidentally, the now lost "Ashes to Glory" starred a group of renegade Suvians on a Trek-style starship, so at least some of the early PPC were aware of the term's origin.)

For the sake of the PPC's mission, we also have to assume that "real girls are being pulled in unwillingly" wasn't an ongoing thing, but was specifically the effect of the Bridge in 2002. Otherwise the PPC were and are mass-murderers. Vemi and I deliberately ignored that concept when we created the Suvian Factory, pretty much for that reason.

hS

Oh, "Ashes to Glory" is still hosted! by doctorlit on 2022-11-28 19:36:14 UTC Reply

It is here.

—doctorlit was all ready to get rehosting today, but now it is nap time instead

... well that's embarrassing. XD by Huinesoron on 2022-11-28 20:54:57 UTC Reply

I would swear I've got it marked as currently missing on the archive hub page... glad to be wrong!

hS

Early Tolkien fanfic by Huinesoron on 2022-11-25 14:43:13 UTC Reply

According to Fanlore, the earliest known Tolkien fanfic was published in 1960: Departure in Peace, a Sauron-POV summary of the Legendarium. The same zine included a pair Arwen stories by Marion Zimmer Bradley: The Jewel of Arwen & The Parting of Arwen. Apparently she wrote quite a lot: this was hers too, published in '62.

...

...

... okay, no, Rincewind can't be MZB: chapter 1 establishes that she was a girl in 1970, when MZB was 40. We're okay. ^_^

hS

You know, it’d kinda be fun to try and find one of those older fanzines and mission it. by Linstar on 2022-11-26 16:22:12 UTC Reply

It would definitely make for a unique mission.

—Ls

I came quite close to that. by Huinesoron on 2022-11-28 21:09:39 UTC Reply

Apples & Oranges (about halfway down the page) uses actual fanfic from the very first days of FFn, back in 1999. So I got the "old" part, but not quite the "zine".

My Timelines have the first agent trio starting work in 1984, so there's a decent backlog of fanfic to work through. The difficulty is finding badfic in the limited selection available. There's certainly some terrible "comedy" stuff that foreshadows the "sugar-high" material of the early oughts, but I'm not sure it's even worth a mission.

Still, it should be possible to find something. I'll have to look at my calculations on what the '99 PPC looked like, then work it backwards to Lofty Skies in '92. It might be fun to set a series immediately before that Emergency: early enough to be different, but late enough that most zines we have access to will be appropriate.

(I should also put A&O on AO3, as one of my "modern series".)

hS

I would definitely read that! (nm) by Linstar on 2022-11-28 21:23:03 UTC Reply

Running some numbers. by Huinesoron on 2022-11-28 22:20:08 UTC Reply

A skim of the Fanzine Archive shows there were very roughly the same number of fanzines per month in 1984, 1992, and 1999. Let's take that to mean there were the same number of zine fanfic. My notes for A&O randomly guessed that half of all fanfic was online in '99, which means there must be half as much fanfic being created in '92. (An average of 30 new stories a day, was my figure.)

My '99 notes peg the PPC "breaking even" at ca. 250 Action agents, supported by 20 Spies and 100 other Infrastructure agents. That puts the 1992 figure at 120 Action agents - 40 trios, which is a nice tidy number. Let's say half of that is in the Big Three, giving DMS, DBS, and DIC roughly 6 trios each. The remaining 20-odd are split between a bunch of small departments - DAVD, Despatch, Emergencies, Godplayers, and the like. A lot of them are probably just one trio. Divisions, unless I've said differently in Lofty Skies, probably don't exist - or rather, each trio specialises. There are still Flower agents, some of them as part of trios with humans.

To give the '92 a different feel, perhaps most Infrastructure roles are still held by Flowers. The exception is the Spies, of which there are (relatively) a lot - probably that same 20 figure from '99. The key difference is that they have to acquire the zines themselves to check, so it's a much more out-and-about role.

Various Department Heads will be different, of course. A possible retcon would be to make most of the "agents" who went mad in Lofty Skies into Flowers - the Infrastructure Agents. That would pin Skies as the point where the PPC shifted from Flower to human dominated. That depends on what I wrote back in 2013,of course, and I'm not checking tonight.

So, 1992: a small, busy PPC, where agents and Flowers work side by side under the leadership of the Sunflower Official, First of the Firstborn. It could work.

hS

Wow, I feel dumb. by doctorlit on 2022-11-26 12:57:48 UTC Reply

I had completely forgotten about that prologue scene while I was reading chapter 2, but you're unquestionably right: that scene depicted Rincewind's original kidnapping. Which means even without the "repeated reincarnations" thing in Middle-earth itself, she's actually lost thirty-two years of her life in the real world. Yuck! I like the idea of Maiar being the ones doing this to protect Middle-earth, although it feels a bit weird they could reach the real world to get her in the first place. Then again, Tolkien did intend Middle-earth to be a legendary past for contemporary earth, so maybe LotR canon Earth and World One are similar enough that they were able to reach across somehow?

I'll have to read through those early fics when I get the time, that's fascinating! Thank you!

Also, I don't have time to spend on it now, but I do have "Ashes to Glory" saved here, so that will be up . . . at some point . . .

—doctorlit

Alternate theory: by Linstar on 2022-11-26 16:21:03 UTC Edited Reply

Andy, feel free to correct me here, but: What if Rincewind, Kira, and Kate are not from World One, but just a similar universe, with its own version of the PPC, and with some sort of “Powers that Be”? Perhaps it’s LOTRCanon!Earth?

It would solve a lot of the issues we’re coming up with here. Thoughts?

—Ls

I mean you could say that about any PPC story. by Huinesoron on 2022-11-26 17:37:54 UTC Reply

Maybe DAVD is a separate universe from the DMFF, while DOGA missions are actually spread across both, thus explaining any inconsistencies between them. It makes sense, right?

But it's more fun to treat them as all sharing the same setting, and working to make the inconsistencies go away.

There's a fair number of early stories which include "a fan used magic to transport themselves to the canon" as a thing which really happens. World One =/= our world, and so magical Powers That Be are entirely possible (whether from one canon or outside them). They don't even have to be gods - just the Wizard that Did It.

hS

Fair enough. (nm) by Linstar on 2022-11-26 18:18:39 UTC Reply

Fascinating! by Neshomeh on 2022-11-25 16:05:37 UTC Reply

It always warms my heart, though I'm not sure why, to be reminded that fanworks are not a new invention. People have been making fanworks for as long as we've been making works.

Bit of a tangent, but I'm raising my eyebrow at the authors who compare writing fanfic to theft of physical objects. I'm pretty sure there is a difference between the two. See, if you take someone's car, that prevents the owner from using it. But writing a fanfic does not, in and of itself, prevent an author from continuing to "use" their IP.

There IS a scenario where that could happen: someone writes a fanfic, the author writes their next work using similar ideas, and the fanwriter sues the author for plagiarism. This is why authors avoid reading fanfic even if they don't ban it, so they have plausible deniability if such a case comes up. But, as far as I know, it rarely comes up, and the fear of it assumes the lawyers involved would side with the creator of a derivative work over the creator of the original work. It could happen, I guess, but it seems ridiculous.

I suppose it's also possible that some authors are afraid people will read fanfic instead of buying their books, thus depriving them of revenue. It's even harder to see the logic of that, though. Most people engaging in fanworks have already read the books, and the ones who haven't yet are likely to be inspired to seek them out (unless all the fanworks are total garbage?). Fanworks might be more of a threat to small authors than big franchises, but that assumes, contradictorily, that the small author has a large enough fanbase to pose a threat. With apologies to the authors' egos, that's unlikely.

~Neshomeh

PPC+20: "31 Ways to Kill a Mary Sue", "SSU: Whatever Happens" & "DAVD: Killer in the Dark" by [Shauna], [Miss Cam], & [Katharine the Great] on 2022-11-17 13:52:58 UTC Reply

It's a busy day today! Actually it's a busy day yesterday, since two of the three stories here were announced by Miss Cam on November 16th, 2002. The third was created today though, so I've merged them together.

31 Ways to Kill a Mary Sue, by Shauna

A slightly odd story - well, the story is mostly an excuse to provide the list at the end - which is notable for introducing the Security Dandelions. When Vemi and I created the Weeds for The Reorganisation, this was what we were working from.

PPC: Special Sue Unit, Case: Whatever Happens, by Miss Cam

We've actually talked about the SSU recently, and I wondered whether Skuld and Cass are reworked versions of Dead and Heal (from Miss Cam's cowrite with Jay). Sadly, like a lot of early Big Names, Miss Cam never wrote very much in the PPC - this is the only Skuld & Cass mission.

The DAVD Files: Killer in the Dark, by Katharine the Great

The second half of the DAVD files, chopping off heads and introducing Fizz R the Bizarre ("it's not a nickname!"). It also has what might be the first piece of Multiverse Theory ever written:

"Think of it like this, Dour: a kind of 'nexus' formed at whatever point in which you interrupted the fic's flow. In order to dissolve the fic's universe and restore the canon—as we of the PPC are supposed to do—you not only have to mend or remove the source of the discrepancies, but you also have to repair any damage done within that nexus. After that, the fic's reality will break up, and the canon will snap back into line. Does that make any sense?"

I guess this is the ultimate origin of the "entanglement" concept I tend to use in my theoretical writings, though I can't prove it.

hS

Killer in the Dark + 20 by doctorlit on 2022-11-20 23:22:43 UTC Reply

This mission has an interesting premise: if PPC staff knock a fanfiction off kilter, they first have to correct the fic's path before they can go on to undo it through proper missioning. It makes sense in universe; the fic's influence on the canon is ongoing due to the Words. If those Words get disrupted, they may not be fully present enough to address. But it feels like the execution didn't really carry through . . . reverting Dour K's intrusion onto the murder scene also, apparently, restores canon, despite all the other murder scenes that had previously happened. (Then again, Thranduil's murder was a flashback sequence. Maybe it was the chronological first murder, and stopping it stopped the others by pure accident? It didn't come across like that in the mission, though.) It feels like such a scenario should have required a two-step solution: fix the badfic, then fix the canon. But I suppose I'm overthinking an early iteration of a minor department . . .

See, this is why I don't drink caffeine! You get buzzed off the drug, and then suddenly there's beheaded corpses. Don't do drugs, kids! In seriousness, Katharine did a good job of taking the premise of gory serial killings in Middle-earth, and extracting humor from it without also trivializing what's happening. The legitimately hilarious errors with "Elrond's twin brothers" and "Gimli, son of Glóin's son" help, but mostly it's carried by how Dour K is written. She cracks jokes and carries on with the repetitiveness of her paperwork, because she knows it's ultimately fiction, and not even the "real" fiction. But she also feels uneasy and put off by the descriptions of the murders, and how wanton it is to portray a Tolkienverse elf committing such acts.

Boy, that is one over-powered CAD! It seems to be getting treated as the source of the Words here, and can therefore freeze the flow of the narrative. Not such a bad thing on an Intel mission, but boy, would that be way too strong against Suvians in the DMS! Freeze time, read charges and execute! Boring. The implication that the CAD is what brings the mission to an end by ceasing the feed is weird, too, and feels contradictory to the physical manifestation of fics in canon, generally.

—doctorlit thinks Rile X can go visit Upstairs for upgrades himself, instead of yelling at his traumatized teammate about it repeatedly. Dang.
re: Special Sue Unit + 20 by doctorlit on 2022-11-19 12:51:18 UTC Reply

It's a shame Cam didn't write more PPC fic; this is a little heavy on the "ew Sues dirty" rhetoric, but overall, I enjoyed it quite a bit. The agents start out a little short with each other, but they adjust into a cohesive teamwork mentality once the mission gets rolling. Plus, a gorilla is there! It . . . probably shouldn't be there, because of the whole "no pets or minis" on missions" thing, but I enjoyed King Kong Comma all the same. Actually, considering how genetically similar gorillas are to humans, I wonder if the Bonsai Monkey Puzzle Tree mistook KKC's mental activity for being similar enough to a humanoid's that it doesn't realize he isn't an agent? (Not that the BMPT existed when this was written, but you know what I mean. Flower senses go brrrrr.) I am, however, a little wigged out by that diet, man. Bacon and waffles? I know KKC is technically a manifest typo, like a mini, but he's gorilla enough to to make it feel weird for me to see him eat anything other than vegetation . . . Oh, another good moment for me is the opening, when Miss Cam hand delivered her sister a partner. Miss Cam is this imposing, powerful figure in the Canon Protection Initiative, but here she is hand-selecting a competent student to make sure her sister has a decent partner, and bringing her in person. It's really sweet and humanizing!

Hm. Grammar glasses? Must be a device from OFUM, since PPC agents can normally see the Words on their own. Interesting that this seems to imply agents had to be specially trained to do so, and a far cry from the modern version of telling a new agent to unfocus their eyes and there, training done! That special neuralyzer is interesting as well, since it didn't affect the PPC characters, despite their lack of eyewear. They must be exceedingly difficult to produce, considering they haven't caught on in twenty years! Maybe they can only be coded for a specific canon, which doesn't lend itself well to most agents' workloads. I really, really like interpreting point-of-view shifts as physical relocations being forced on the agents. It's a more elegant interpretation than the little critters we've invented in the modern day, and I will likely be stealing it for my spin-off once I. You know. Have time to write again.

Names! I totally didn't get the "Agent Orange" joke until it was explicitly spelled out during the charging scene. Embarrassing! It's clever, and it also means their surnames make a pair as a manmade chemical poison, and a naturally occurring biological venom. (Taipans are venomous snakes.) The soda-constructed names are also hilarious, very PPC vibe on-the-spot constructions. But most hilarious name here goes to the badfic author for naming a background elf "Pergolas," and then abbreviating that to "Perry" as a nickname. "It is I, Perry, of Middle-earth."

—doctorlit sees the Boarders of two decades past did not want him to have much free time this week!

James Earl Jones removed his headset slowly, a frown creasing his brow. "This was . . . a very strange recording session."

Sir David Attenborough removed his as well. "Yes . . ." he said slowly. "Did they really hire you just to make door knocking sound effects?"

"So it seems." Jones shrugged. "A paycheck is a paycheck, I suppose. At one point, it seemed as though you were supposed to have a line, but you didn't."

"I caught that as well," said Attenborough. "Perhaps they forgot to send me the line?"

Jones sighed. "George still hasn't gotten back to me about whether he needs any voice work for the last film of the prequel trilogy."

"That's a shame. On my end, nature hasn't run out of nature for me to narrate!"

Jones chuckled. "Well, shall we go for some Cool Voice Smoothies at the Cool Voice Smoothie Shack?"

"As always, dear friend, as always."
re: 31 Ways to Kill a Mary Sue + 20 by doctorlit on 2022-11-18 14:43:51 UTC Reply

(so is that 51 ways haha i'm going to keep making this joke whenever there's a number in the title haha)

This is one I avoided ever reading, because the title makes it sound like another example of gratuitous hostility from our earlier days. So I opened it today not expecting much, but uh . . . it's good? The opening confused me, because it made it seem like HQ was a building with an "outside," but further reading shows that the girl is a student from OFUM, which explains how she got covered in dirt and plants before reaching HQ. Oh, and uh, OFUM's library sounds nice. I support her expression of lust object! >_> But as for the gratuitous hostility, I was pleased to find that the actual list is more "here are some interesting details and references about Tolkien's canon" rather than "punch stab main haha die!" So yeah, it's a fun little piece. The censor/sensor joke is great. (Would a censor be a member of Legal? Legal did force WTF to change their name, after all!) Saying the Flowers are "prone to hysteria" might feel a little weird, but at the same time, I can kind of see it; their mental communication has the potential to form a feedback loop, perhaps? Plus, I might characterize the Civil War on Origin as feeling a little hysterical, to my reading, and the Mysterious Somebody manipulated HQ into a panic to justify his presence as a source of order. A lot of that latter may have been triggering panic in the Flowers?

—doctorlit keeps forgetting what actual dandelions look like, and needs to stop picturing them as daisies in his head

That's a typo. The author clearly meant the Flowers are "prone to wisteria." *ba-dum tschhh* by Neshomeh on 2022-11-18 16:20:41 UTC Reply

No, stop, I'll throw myself out—!

~Neshomeh

P.S. Yes, the Arbitrary Censorship Division of Legal is responsible for forcing WTF to become WhatThe. {= )

That joke was Wisterical! :) by Linstar on 2022-11-18 21:39:28 UTC Reply

Quick, avoid the Pun Police!

—Ls

Aah, yes, the SSU. by Linstar on 2022-11-17 23:25:11 UTC Reply

Read that one recently. Easily one of my favorite spinoffs ever, even though it only has one mission. I wish there was more.

And it certainly looks like doc will have plenty of material to review...

—Ls

For once I found time to read the +20. by Huinesoron on 2022-11-16 19:50:13 UTC Reply

So! This chapter is NOT what I remembered it to be. Does that mean I read a pre-revision version (per Andy's comments)? Probably not; I'm pretty sure I only ever saw it on Miss Cam's site, so I've probably just forgotten the details in the past, uh, 18 years or so. :D I do remember the arrow, though.

It's interesting to contrast Kate and Kira against Mary Sue and Sue Mary from "The Broken Plot Continuum" a few months back. Mary and Sue deliberately entered Middle-earth knowing the PPC were gone, and mucked everything up themselves. K&K got there by accident, found the PPC, and at least believe that someone else is mucking things up. The stories are almost mirror images of each other at this point.

Speaking of contrasts... Rincewind and Odorf couldn't be more different, could they? It seems clear that Odorf was created for Kate, but Rincewind already existed in some way (at least, the version after reaching Middle-earth did). I am intrigued.

And to top off a completely backwards post: the pre-ME section adds significant emotional weight to the whole story. I don't recall it explicitly coming up much, but both of these people have folks they want to go home to. (Another related story: Bast's "Taken Far Too Literally", which pushed that same button.)

hS
It's been 84 years ..... by Andy on 2022-11-15 19:13:05 UTC Reply

Lmaooooo I can't believe people are still seeking this out.

This story might not have aged as well as we have, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for it. Hopefully at least one joke still lands.

Andy! How the heck are you? by Huinesoron on 2022-11-15 22:20:59 UTC Reply

It's been a very long time. :D "So long that I almost feel young again, as I have not felt since I journeyed with these children." Lovely to see you again.

I confess I haven't had a chance to actually reread the chapter I posted, but I have fond enough memories of Suedom that I've always wanted to archive it. PPC+20 just gives me an excuse.

hS

🤙 by Andy on 2022-11-15 23:48:18 UTC Edited Reply

Huinesoron! I'm pretty great, how are you? That sounds like a big archival project, kudos to you to take all that work on.

I confess, when Saphie told me people were rereading Suedom on the board I thought "that'll be hard, it's an incoherent mess." I say "incoherent mess" with all the love in my heart, but let's be real. We had never heard of pace and we weren't going to learn soon. I promise we've written better things since then.

But I'm probably gonna reread too now that it's in front of me. I read half this chapter over lunch and got really nostalgic about all the things we'd set up that we never quite made it too. Our pacing really was an issue. We shouldn't have been what, like 30 chapters in and only just starting to get into some of the parts I was most excited to get to.

It's got a real special place in my heart, though. It's such a time capsule of a special experience I had writing my first long story with my (still) best friend and I am always tickled when anybody who doesn't experience it from that angle gets anything from it at all.

OH MY GOSH! by Linstar on 2022-11-15 21:17:19 UTC Edited Reply

Andy! One of Suedom's authors!

stares in slack-jawed amazement

Thanks for stopping by!

—Ls

PS—Yes, your jokes have definitely held up.

👍 by Andy on 2022-11-15 23:52:40 UTC Reply

Lol we totally exist and everything, it's true.

Thank goodness some of the jokes are still landing. I am definitely going to be counting how many are actual original bits, versus how many are just references to early 2000's popular humor. I'm probably not going to need many fingers.

Nah, you’ll need lots of fingers! *holds out hand to help* by Linstar on 2022-11-15 23:58:06 UTC Reply

And as someone who probably misses most of the references, I can say that with certitude!

—Ls

re: Enter the Dragons + 20 by doctorlit on 2022-11-14 04:15:20 UTC Reply

Heh, that title is pretty literal, isn't it? Going in, I assumed it was more a metaphor for Suvian threats, but I see I was getting way ahead of myself! Anyway, my comments here will be fairly stream-of-consciousness, and recorded in the order I came up with them as I was reading.

Miss Cam owns evil? And body slams? Probably just some OFUM jokes I'm not getting . . . Okay, that "prologue" portion set in the 1970s is extremely intriguing. Someone seems to have attacked a fan over something they imagined? I wonder who the bolded-font voice is. (Obviously, no one spoil anything, please, I just organize my thoughts in the form of questions. ~~Some of my questions about Lost never even got answered, lol.~~) Also . . . is that a knock against Jerry Falwell Jr? The name's different, of course, and Jr. would have been only ten in 1972, so maybe it's just a coincidence . . .

Boy, the tone of this really is a lot more serious than I anticipated! I'm so used to the surreal humor of the Original Series and a lot of other early spin-offs, and things just feeling a bit wacky and unhinged. But starting Suedom off in the real world, with lots of unpleasant interactions and a jarring amount of potty language, is a perfect contrast with the "imagination world" that Kate and Kira arrive in later, and the contrast serves to make that sequence even more wonderful. I love everything about that scene, from the teens meeting each other for the first time, to the pure happiness and freedom they find in discovering how unlimited things are, to the hilarious arrival of Odorf and his aloof line delivery. I'm definitely not going to headcanon those different brain regions as being canon to the PPC, as declaring that fan authors have different physiology from other humans is getting way into problematic territory.

Okay, bit of a tangent, but: Kate sings a song from the Avenue Q soundtrack, but that play didn't premiere until 2003, while these first two entries of Suedom are from 2002. Maybe some of the play's songs had been previewed before the official release? Or maybe that song title got edited in after the fact, sometime before Huinesoron made his GDoc backup?

I'm intrigued with what's going on with Rincewind! I was initially thinking that naming the dragon Rincewind had actually forced the real Rincewind to occupy its body (haven't read Discworld, so I don't know how well the dialogue or mannerisms match), but the narration sometimes uses female pronouns for the dragon, and she seems to recognize Middle-earth, so that doesn't quite make sense. And, hm. Jay and Acacia (if that is them) tried to shoot down the dragons without charging first. Not very in character, not in line with HQ guidelines, plus they could have easily read the Words to realize Kira and Kate weren't part of the fanfic they're there to investigate. Not a great representation of the PPC! Though I seem to recall . . . was it a LiveJournal post, or a visit to the Board . . . anyway, somewhere one of the authors mentioned that they were using Suedom to critique the PPC and other Sue hunting stories, so I guess that was intentional, though it doesn't make for a great critique if you're misrepresenting the subject!

The end to this chapter is also intriguing. Is Bilbo acting that way towards them because they have they actually become Suvian? Or is the actual Suvian that was affecting Middle-earth before their arrival just warping his character enough that he can't tell the difference? And what outside influence drew the ladies to this canon in the first place? Was it something Suvian, or Morgtoh whispering from the Void trying to find a way to destabilize canon enough to slip back into reality? And what does any of this have to do with the girl who disappeared in 1972? Yeah, I'm pretty stoked to read more!

—doctorlit will pass on that turkey baster; he doesn't really cook

Oof, there's a question I didn't want to ask. by Huinesoron on 2022-11-16 16:31:27 UTC Reply

The dating for Suedom is... not great. We have a firm date which it can't have started before: 16 October 2002, when Andy and Saphie created a joint FFn profile. And we have a firm date which chapter 13 can't have been written after: 9 May 2003, when it was posted on Miss Cam's site (check the source). The next chapter after that date was published more than a month later, so it seems reasonable to guess that the chapters were spaced out... and there's no evidence of non-Suedom material on the FFn profile, so it seems reasonable to guess that the profile was started to post the story.

But I don't really know. Avenue Q launched in March '03, and it seems unlikely that 13 chapters could have been written in two months... but the evidence is lacking. :(

hS

*waves* Hey, Andy, can you help us out here? (nm) by Linstar on 2022-11-16 16:49:46 UTC Reply

I can try! by Andy on 2022-11-16 19:21:08 UTC Edited Reply

Thank you for asking! You all have such eyes for detail! If I'm ever wrong about anything that can be proven with timestamps, it's because: I have ADHD and it was 20 years ago. My memory is not what I wish it was. Some of my answers are likely to be "lol i forget" but I'll do my best.

We first uploaded to ff.net, got kicked off for being interfic, reuploaded, and did a few updates before sending to Miss Cam for hosting. In that time I'd become a community theater kid so that's where the Avenue Q references came into play.

The first 3 or 4 chapters that we initially posted to ff.net were, iirc, pretty different from what made it to Miss Cam's site. I think the stuff with the bridge and the prologue didn't get written in the original ff.net upload. That was added in after we had about 3 chapters of material and Saphie, who is a plot savant, went "but what if there was more going on actually" and came up with all the foreshadowing.

What you have to understand about the whole 1st and 2nd chapters, not counting the prologue, is that they came from an AIM rp that Saphie and I banged out for fun, starting literally with the "i want a dragon too" scene. We had zero plan. We were just two creative writing nerds who had never met someone else who could pick up the ball and run with it, "Yes And"-ing our way into a story (and a best friendship). The planning came after we realized we could be having even more fun if the story were going somewhere dramatic.

Suedom got a few updates over time as it got reposted in places. For a little while there about 8 years ago I was pushing to revisit it, and I think there's a significantly edited version of a handful of chapters on a lotr fic hosting site somewhere. We both agreed that our energy was better focused on our original work so we didn't get far in, and we no longer have access to the email account we used to put the fic up, but I'll see if I can find it.

EDIT: the briefest of investigations indicates it was on lotrfanfiction.com and that is no longer operating? So I guess the Latest Edit is also gone into the void, unless I backed it up on a hard drive somewhere. Archiving really is a full time job.

I backed it up on Hard drive by Saphie on 2022-11-30 00:05:27 UTC Reply

The lotrfanfiction one was the most edited so I saved a copy right before the site went down so it wouldn't be lost forever.

Any chance we could re-host that somewhere? It would be a shame to lose it! (nm) by doctorlit on 2022-11-30 11:44:47 UTC Reply

Interesting! by Huinesoron on 2022-11-17 10:10:47 UTC Edited Reply

Confession... I considered asking you if you remembered anything, but residual memories of you being one of The Oldbies spooked me. ^_^; (We recently celebrated the Board's 20th anniversary, and you got namedropped.) Thank you Linstar for doing what I couldn't. And thank you Andy for helping out! It's really interesting to hear how it all came to be.

Anyway: interesting! I'm actually pleased that the anachronistic Avenue Q is a later addition - it means my timeline isn't wildly wrong, though it also means that there's an "Original Suedom" which is completely lost. (It might actually not be, but I've never managed to find the FFn story ID, so I can't find out if it was archived.)

For the later version, lotrfanfiction.com is on the Wayback Machine; it's our source for the later Suedom chapters, down to Gondor. It looks like that's actually the version I archived from, and... yes, the version we're all talking about is significantly different from the Misssandman.com version. Cool! That might explain why I didn't really recognise it. I'll have to archive the old version too, for posterity.

... oh my gosh you had a Geocities, and the whole thing is archived. This is amaaaaazing. XD

EDIT: The 'Misssandman Enter the Dragons' is now archived as well. There is no escape. And it does line up better with my memories, so I'm pleased to understand what was going on there.

hS

hS is scared of the oldbie, and I’m not? *blinks* This is new. (nm) by Linstar on 2022-11-17 23:21:17 UTC Reply

Oh yes by Thoth on 2022-11-14 06:21:39 UTC Reply

This is Suedom at its lightest. It gets... very dark. And the OOCness... I think partly is them kind of distorting the PPC to fit the story, but it could also very much be that a lot of things weren't settled quite yet. This is very early PPC, recall.

Regarding Suedom as a critique of the PPC... I know that's been said, but I don't know if that makes sense. Suedom starts in 2002. The PPC barely exists, and the Original Constitution, written in large part by Saphie, hasn't even been written yet (at least, I assume The Board would have a link to the Constitution at this point if it did, and hS's early snapshot of the board from a month after this doesn't, yet).

Suedom was inverting the sue-hunting Thing, and I can totally believe that there was a message, or writing it came out of or evolved into a dissatisfaction or discomfort with the way the PPC works, but the kind of idea of "we were there in their midst criticizing them and they didn't even know it" (which was the implication that post gave off when I read it) just... you can't really be a subversive infiltrator of a community which you yourself are currently instrumental in the process of constructing.

On Tolkien's thees and thous. by Neshomeh on 2022-11-11 18:04:14 UTC Reply

I've wanted to talk about this for a little while. Sued!Bilbo talking in bad pseudo-Shakespearean English has provided an excuse. ^_^ So, under the header of Things You Only Know If You Read the Appendices:

Tolkien was very specific about how he used "thee" and "thou" in LotR. In Appendix F, Part II, he notes that Westron has "familiar" and "deferential" second- and third-person pronouns—like tú (informal) and usted (formal) in Spanish. In the Shire, the "deferential" mode has gone out of everyday use, so what appears as English "you" in LotR typically represents the familiar/normal mode. Tolkien uses thee/thou to show that a speaker is using an older, more formal mode of Westron. But he also uses thee/thou occasionally to show, "there being no other means of doing this, a significant change from the deferential, or between men and women normal, forms to the familiar."

In the conversation between Aragorn and Éowyn when she begs him to take her with him into battle, and he tells her to stay because it's her duty and she has no errand in the South, they both use "you" all the way through it, up until the very end, when Éowyn says:

"Neither have those others that go with thee. They go only because they would not be parted from thee – because they love thee."

And thus we know just how very plain she has made herself there.

Absolute genius.

~Neshomeh
Wow. by Linstar on 2022-11-10 20:05:51 UTC Reply

I read the first chapter, and just, wow.

Spiffy.

—Ls
Ah man... by Thoth on 2022-11-10 19:55:18 UTC Reply

This brings back memories. Going back through this chapter, it's... well, very reference-dense. Which I didn't really remember in full? I mean, I kind of did. But I didn't really associate that with Suedom... my immediate association with Suedom are the chapters that came later and were... much darker.

But it was fun to see this again.