Subject: Have you considered OOC Resistance?
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Posted on: 2013-05-16 01:18:00 UTC

It's far more common than outright Immunity, and it is easier to handle in missions.

The first such character was Elrond, by reason of his wisdom and his ring of power. Gimli is often ignored in badfic.

OOC Resistance comes from several sources:
--The character is not "hott" enough to be focused on by fanbrats and is simply ignored. Gimli the dwarf was one of the first established to be resistant because of this.
--The character is a minor character who is often present, but usually ignored. Gaspode, for example.
--The character is particularly perceptive or mentally resilient. Batman and Sherlock Holmes are both slightly resistant, though for them it may be more that they are capable of taking even the smallest traces left behind by agents and putting together two and two very quickly when they see more evidence of agents being around.
--The character is mildly insane--just nutty enough to entertain the idea that something like badfic could exist, and just sane enough to think straight about it. Murdoc from The A-Team, for example.
--The character is very genre-savvy and regularly breaks, or approaches breaking, the fourth wall. Elan from "Order of the Stick" would probably take agents' presence in stride as yet another feature of the story he knows he lives in.

OOC-resistant characters will usually be aware that something is off, and will struggle against possession or Suefluence, though usually not with much success. The benefits as far as your agents are concerned is that these characters are less likely to see them as enemies, more likely to understand that something is wrong and that the Sue is dangerous.

But you don't *have* to make such characters resistant. Sometimes it's funnier if they're not. Resistance is on the border--if the Sue is bad enough or the crossover is tangled enough, their resistance can get overwhelmed and they can go as badly out of character as you like. That's the beauty of OOC resistance instead of immunity; it gives you more flexibility with what you can do with the characters, rather than just forcing replacements.

If a character can't be neuralyzed, there are other options. Many magical and technological verses have memory-modification tech or spells. Harry Potter-continuum spells are probably the best bet unless the target is immune to magic. If it has a nervous system, some form of technology can probably do it.

And if you can't do any of that, then the agents might run around getting rid of everything else that doesn't fit and hope the canon itself gives them a hand.

I think it's kind of funny when agents get in way over their heads and have to solve a problem they never realized they were going to have to solve, like neuralyzing a creature that doesn't have a physical body.

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