Subject: I love Cal's humourlessness.
Author:
Posted on: 2013-06-19 20:46:00 UTC
Every comedic setting needs a few straight men, and he's pretty entertaining in filling the role. Funny, I was just doing an editorial concerning these guys for the new Monitor, so nice to see some light on 'em.
As part of a minor reorganisation of my Agents page, I've finally finished and published a story from one of my favourite small Infrastructure departments: the Department of Dead Author Electricity Generation.
Overspun
(And for the record: we didn't find out for about half a year. That's when I started writing it)
hS
The world lost so much.
I miss the gentleman (gentle-elf?) who showed up at the end like the dickens, so it's always nice to see him pop up. And of course seeing more of DoDAEG is cool.
It was an Elf missing only one hand, with a pet fire-lizard named Ilwion - a Noldo, by my guess, and with a marked affection for McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern works.
And one of hS's agents, too, whereas Ithalond belongs to Tungsten Monk.
Chapter 14
Sorry about the delay; all sorts of things kept me from it.
As always, the Mini-Luggage Adoption Centre is open for business. Ask here or in a comment there to adopt.
hS
It's from the second time in the chapter that Iplis speaks.
she pointed out, gesturing at the footprints they were following. "You can see for yourself they kept stopping – and we haven't.
"Assuming they're from the OFU at all," Phoebe said, scowling.
Every comedic setting needs a few straight men, and he's pretty entertaining in filling the role. Funny, I was just doing an editorial concerning these guys for the new Monitor, so nice to see some light on 'em.
DoDAEG is getting some love. Awesome. I must say I like hearing things about minor characters in general and that extended to the PPC 'verse. Might drop a reference or two to DoDAEG if/when it won't sound forced/contrived.
What a touching story. Well-written as usual, hS.
BTW, who do you mean by "we"?
Looking Back
That story comes from the second (and last so far) Monthly PPC Writing Contest. Which, as it happens, I'm considering reactivating... would anyone be interested?
And! I've also tracked down the Wrecked Music Department, which I'm adding with a note that it's AU. That said... I think they're a really funny idea, and are pretty close to being suitable for the PPC. The scenario in that story is of course just training; the real job of the Reclamation Division is to go into bad parodies and filks, separate the strands of the original music out of the whole, and return everything to 'canon'. They could also potentially have a Songfic Division, which would be exactly what it sounded like; since they would be focussed on the songfic aspect, rather than the Mary-Sue/Bad Slash/Implausible Crossover/whatever, they could apply the same reclamation technique. I foresee a pair of agents who take the mission as normal - exorcisms, assassinations, neuralysations and so forth, all with the usual charge lists - and then they have to enter the fic-influenced song and rescue it.
So. What are anyone's thoughts on the Wrecked Music Department as a potential PPC Department?
hS
Need something to get me actually writing stuff anyhow.
I like the idea of restarting the PPC writing contest. Sounds like fun. I would suggest, though, that we change the name to something less competition-y. Monthly PPC Writing Game or something like that.
I think a songfic department could work, but I'd see if anyone wants to put agents in that department before we make it a thing. We have a lot of these cool departments (Bad Quizzes, Bad Parody, Bad Role-Play, etc.) that have very few missions probably because it's easier to follow the well-established formats of Mary Sues and slash.
It's actually the MPW Challenge, not Contest. My mistake.
And, of course, I technically already have two possibly-AU agents in the WMD - Tracer and Althea. I do understand what you mean, though. ;)
Part of the difficulty with 'wait until someone wants to put agents in it' is that people won't want to put agents in it if they've never heard of it. Should we have a 'Suggested Departments and Divisions' page on the Wiki for things that people think is a generally good idea, but which we don't want to claim exists until someone wants to make use of it?
hS
It'll give people more to work with, maybe encourage folks to do more stuff outside of Sues.