Subject: I think Ivy's memory is kinda like Death of the Discworld's
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Posted on: 2012-06-15 18:56:00 UTC
She, or rather the Archive (which is her... it's complicated) is supposed to be the living repository of all human knowledge. She can remember all the lives of all the previous Archives, so yeah.
But, perhaps the agents who are in the mission aren't sure, and it would be funny besides, I think.
A few days ago I was reading through some of the awesome stories and entries they have over at the SCP website, and I wondered, just how are universes that could be dangerous to the PPC handled? Such as the SCP and other Creepypasta? Are they avoided or is there ways the PPC deals with it?
Was just curious. Nothing would be worse than having SCP-173 escape into HQ. Except maybe Slenderman. XD
We call in Danger Mouse .
As well as many things that are hazardous to the health of agents, there are a few fandoms out there which would probably need special procedures to be followed.
For example, in the Dresdenverse there is an entity that was designed to be a repository for all human knowledge, and magically knows anything that is written down. So agents writing down a charge list as normal might actually tip off a canon character to the existence of the PPC (something which I believe is supposed to be avoided). It could be quite amusing for agents to be forced to charge a Sue from memory, because they don't dare write anything down while they're in the fic.
I'm sure there are various other continua out there that will have odd little things to make agents' lives that little bit more challenging interesting.
She can't forget anything, so yeah. Poor dear. I even put it on the Things-I-must-not-do list! Plus, in Dresden Files you have the Outsiders, and the Skinwalker, and Shagnasty...
Actually, now I want to find a DF badfic so I can work around that little thing with Ivy.
That might be why I thought of it actually, I was reading through the List recently (brought on by the latest chapter of it playing out on the Board).
Not sure how the not being able to forget things would work with neuralyzers (depending on if it's a case of she can't voluntarily forget things, or if she simply cannot loose access to the information once it's in her brain), but the best of luck to any Agent that wants to try.
'Why hello there Mr Kincaid. Fancy meeting you here! Um... y'know what? We can come back another time. Sorry for troubling you.'
I haven't actually gone looking for any DF badfic yet, although I'm sure it's there, as just about everything else I've been curious about has had some. I would imagine that there are a fair few Sues out there that turn up as the apprentice of one Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, or his lover/rival, and I can think of a few slash pairings that'll probably turn up quite a bit.
Yeah, Ivy's smart enough to be leave the PPCers alone, or even offer some kind of subtle assistance if she can.
And now I'm gonna go looking through the Pit archives for DF badfic, just to write that mission.
Oh, and if you need a beta for that mission (when you get to that stage), I'd be happy to help.
Bear in mind that anything a canon entity learned about the PPC wouldn't be canon, so unless there's a really compelling reason otherwise (such as the character being a god or it just being extremely funny), then any non-canon knowledge ought to be wiped out once the badfic is killed and canon snaps back. Canon trumps everything in the end.
~Neshomeh
She, or rather the Archive (which is her... it's complicated) is supposed to be the living repository of all human knowledge. She can remember all the lives of all the previous Archives, so yeah.
But, perhaps the agents who are in the mission aren't sure, and it would be funny besides, I think.
Aslan, from the Chronicles of Narnia, has displayed full awareness of the PPC (Being omniscient, etc). It can be completely in-canon for the canon character to have knowledge about the PPC, so long as they don't do anything about it. Aslan has knowledge of the PPC, but he is also aware of their purpose, and supports it. He's even taken down a few Sues himself (See the Robecca incident).
Others have covered doing missions in dangerous universes already, but in the case where the Sue herself is extra dangerous (an overpowered God mode Sue) the general approach is to get backup: either bring in Agents that are trained to deal with dangerous opponents (like the DMS Special Operations division or ESAS) or else swarm the Sue with so many Agents she can't resist (e.g the all-agents exorcism of Alumia by DoGA).
Elcalion
Let's not forget the merits of trickery. I love it when agents take down massively overpowered Sues by outsmarting them, especially if it involves turning their own bad writing or ridiculous powers against them. *g*
~Neshomeh
The moments where a Sue outsmarts itself, and falls to its own doom completely on its own, without help from the agents whatsoever. Makari has an excellent example of that in one of her missions.
I think Spec Ops is actually part of the Department of Floaters, unless DMS has its own one too. But that would seem a little redundant.
My current Agents are in it. Judging by what they have to deal with now, it's a dangerous job.
The Canon itself is on the PPCers' side. Thus how Agents can derp about in Isengard or a Borg Cube without trouble - they're out of the attention, if not straight-up invisible, to Canon characters who are not in full-on Character Rupture. They also can read the Words, at least until they confront the 'Sue, so they can see huge world-breaking events coming and portal away.
I totally forgot about that XD Guess when you're away for a while you forget things. Thanks.
There are quite a few fandoms out there with the potential for risk regarding the safety of the PPC. You've got things like radiation, zombie viruses, brain parasites, doppelgangers, mind control spells, alien races bent on assimilation, and other various sorts of nastiness.
How do we deal with all that? Simple. We don't write about it.
I'm sure we could come up with any number of in-universe reasons for why agents aren't coming down with the Green Flu or getting indoctrinated or what have you. The main reason, I believe, is that writing those stories is something that most people don't want to do.
I wasn't around during the various Emergencies, but from what I've heard they were a pain in the rear to write. After a while, people probably just wanted HQ to remain a safe - if somewhat odd - place. Somewhere stable. Keep the crazy drama to a more manageable (and tolerable) level.
I don't think there are any continuums that are deliberately avoided for being dangerous. Because their authors don't allow fanfiction, yes. But remember: writing missions shouldn't be about going after the most horrendous or most dangerous badfic. It should be about writing the best, most entertaining story YOU can.
PC
That makes sense, though I was looking at it more from an in-universe point of view. Not so much us writing the stories, but as if it was a true existing organisation. Wanted to see peoples different opinions on how they'd think the PPC would deal with it. :p
Is to avoid the dangerous stuff as much as possible. I mean even in SPC-verse the scientist guys still go around testing stuff. It isn't really dangerous unless you're a D-class personnel.
Also, SCP-173 is nothing. I'd like to see what would happen if SCP-682 got loose. All the weapons in all the worlds couldn't kill that thing.
I don't know, I think that SCP 682 would be worse. Speaking of SCPs, I don't think I've seen very many fanfics for that continuum. Maybe I just haven't been looking in the right place?
I don't think there ARE fanfics--since it's an online thingie, most people who know about it will probably be writing the stories for the website, so there's no need for fanfics.
Ohgod, what if someone without a huge knowledge of the site and poor decision-making skills found themselves in a position to save poor 231-7?
The ground rule for the PPC is that none of the stories are canon, only the SCP numbers themselves. So all of the stories on the site are considered fanfics.
Also, ohgod. That would be nine levels of terrible. However, can we not reference the rapey one on the Board? People who don't know it off the top of their head might decide to go look it up, and some of them might have triggers related to the content therein. Especially the age.
Really. Also, pretty much anything can be dangerous. Think about all the canons where someone wants to take over the world. And is shockingly competent at it. It's not just elder gods, eldritch abominations and glitches in reality that are dangerous.
Gurren Lagann: Robots of ridiculous sizes.
Dragon Ball Z: Planets are blown up routinely.
Also, I see your SCP-173 and raise Missingno.
So what's a guy to do but add stuff to the list?
Mass Effect: What about the Reapers? You know, massive eldritch abominations that can dwarf entire fleets of ships and mow down everything in its path with barely a scratch to show for it. The fact that they exterminate all organic life every 50,000 years doesn't help. Oh yeah, and they can also bend your will so that you become their slaves, and you won't even know you're under their thrall until they've already hijacked your mind and you're left to bang on a mental wall while your body does things that you don't want it to do. Oh, yeah, and then there are the husks. Yeah, if one of those things found out about the PPC, it would likely result in an emergency.
The Demented Cartoon Movie: Say the wrong word and you (and possibly everyone around you) are dead.
1984: If you're captured by the Thought Police, it's your life or your soul.
Star Wars: The Yuuzhan Vong.
World One and any 'verse derived therefrom is quite dangerous.
Plus you have looser canons, like the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, where world-destructions happen on an almost regular basis. Also:
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: The corrupted book of darkness. Devours everything it touches, grows, and can only be destroyed by a giant space cannon that also demolishes everything for a couple hundred miles around. Though, my agents once used that cannon as an execution method, but still.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica:...most everything, actually. If a Grief Seed ends up in HQ, or Kyubey starts hanging around the nursery, or heck, any witch at all could be deadly, especially if the Agents don't notice that they're being psychically forced into suicide.
In Nanoha, the power levels are fairly high (think about a Mahou Shoujo version of Dragonball or Gundam), so the replacement of a major character is a fairly serious problem too.
For a direct example, the mission "Legendary Illogic", by Firemagic and me. Basically, a Replacement!Nanoha, after being completely drained of her magic power, still managed to survive being struck by a very powerful lightning-based attack. (And by "very powerful", we mean "we had to basically resort to the most powerful combination technique we had while wondering if it was actually plausible for PPC Agents")
About Madoka, our only hope is that nothing exits from pre-Madokami Madokaverse (exceptions made for recruits, of course).
Especially Kyubey. Although the nursery problem can be easily solved by making Kyubey-hating Agents make surveillance turns. If he just keeps being shredded on sight with extreme prejudice and without being able to get near potential magical girls, he will reach the point where he will think that going after Nursery teenagers isn't cost-efficient, right?
After all, one of the reasons why he didn't give up on Madoka when Homura started going after him is because he had found a golden-egg-laying hen. Enough energy to fulfill the planet's quota and maybe even more in one go? Homura probably would have had to make his entire race extinct to keep Madoka from being pestered by them.
Ah, and Annihilation Lightning is stated to be LETHAL with a direct hit. And it took up most of the magic that Ari grabbed from around Hogwarts, and the magic from draining Harry and Not!Nanoha, plus the extra she got from Unisoning with Corolla (so it was insanely powerful, but a one-time thing until she can find more absurdly powerful Sues and magic-filled environments.)
And really, a Witch or Lost Logia loose in HQ could be disastrous. Even something like a Jewel Seed, which is tame considering things like the BoD, the Saint's Cradle, and the Mariage, could be deadly in the hands of the wrong person. At best, it might end up making a giant cat start wandering the halls, or a water-monster that tears off people's clothes (yes, that happened. In a Sound Stage, yes, but still. Kyouya clearly has some issues left over from his origin game.) And, can you imagine what would happen if the Mariage got loose in Headquarters? Demon cyborg ladies everywhere!
I now know how EVERYONE feels when me and Himosheep start Hetaliaing (can that be a verb?) at everyone.
And... hrm. If we're going with Dangerous Canon Entities, I raise you Ramuthra or Nouda from the Bartimeus-verse. They literally warp reality itself with their presence, they're big, nasty, and want to eat everyone, and the only way to get rid of them is to send them back to the world from whence they came.
Since we have a Canon Kitchen Sink, it's either already happened or going to happen.
Or maybe happening right now, who knows?
(Because quantum! I think.)