I can verify—those hamsters are worth the google. (nm)

A couple questions about POVS by Winsela on 2022-12-18 05:18:22 UTC Reply

Asking about the mini-adjacent creatures that go snrf, not actual points of view.

The wiki page about Point Of View is somewhat vague on what variations of the phrase "P.O.V." have the possibility of producing POVs in a mission. Could any form of "P.O.V." potentially make a pov, or only the specific spellings "POV" and "pov"?

Additionally, what happens if there's a typo in the point of view change? If a fic has a character named Frisk and makes reference to "Frisk'a P.O.V", would it have any notable effects on the resulting pov, create a mini, or make a pov and a mini at the same time?

snrf snrf by Snrfgrace on 2022-12-20 05:11:45 UTC Reply

snrf snrf snrf, snrf snrf. snrf snrf? snrf!

As the original inventor of the povs, their noise, and their general air of "oh my god i want one", I feel qualified to weigh in. It's very specifically a scene break shown by the words [Character] POV, which is one of my particular pet peeves. It isn't nearly as much of a problem when it's just the name of the new point-of-view character, at least in my view; adding POV on the end just makes you sound like you think your reader is incapable of figuring that out.

Povs, povs and POVs do have different coats. For instance, a P.O.V. will be POV-sized and have a brindled coat in a colour of your choosing. I've always imagined a POV to be about the size of a mid-sized yak. A Pov would be the baby elephant size Sergio mentioned, and a pov is like a sort of scuttly guinea pig thing.Typos and misspellings do make mini-povs, as Sergio rightly asserts. Since a POV is about the size of a yak, a mini-POV is very similar in size to a squirrel, while a mini-pov is ~~Too Small Put It Back~~ about the size of a Roborovski dwarf hamster. I'm being specific there because you should Google images of Roborovski dwarf hamsters. You will not be disappointed.

Hope that was useful! I'm going back to my bunker.

I can verify—those hamsters are worth the google. (nm) by Linstar on 2022-12-20 16:50:08 UTC Reply

I'd say that any way it is used would generate a POV. by Sergio Turbo on 2022-12-18 11:11:27 UTC Edited Reply

As the spawning of the snrfing cute furry creature is meant to bring attention to the wrong practice of of telling which POV is it explicitly with a small note at the beginning of the paragraph, when it should be clear from the story itself.

I don't remember reading any mission in which P.O.V. is used instead of POV, but I dare say it might cause the creature to be spawned with a dotted pattern on its fur? Otherwise, the only hard rule seen so far is that the size of the individual POV is dictated by its capitalization - all caps is roughly the size of an elephant cub, no caps is around rabbit size, and first letter capitalized I think is something in between.

As per the "mini's POV", Iximaz and I ran into this issue in Runs in the Family, which while non-canon being a Ten Years Hence-type mission I believe still adheres to proper PPC mechanics. We settled on indeed having both the mini and the POV spawn, but we also had the POV spawn at a much smaller size - despite being an all-caps POV, Dumbdores POV was spawned roughly the size of a large hamster or a guinea pig (with the implication that a small-caps pov would be roughly the size of a smaller hamster species), and was promptly adopted by Keiko.