Re: Funny you should ask.

Subject: Re: Funny you should ask.
Author: Outhra
Posted on: 2013-04-26 05:35:00 UTC

Well, since I know next to nothing about Google Docs, compared to me, practically everyone has magic power over them. I see people making docs that only about a handful of people can look at and just blink in confusion. It's probably super-easy one you know how to do it, though.

For now, I'm just content that somebody's working on the problem. It's better than what I thought might have been going on, which was that the person who had control over the docs was no longer active and thus the people who could view it now were the only ones. Then again, I suppose one of those people could just copy-paste the text into a new site if that happened.

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Yet another Blackout interlude! by Sergio Turbo on 2013-04-22 17:21:00 UTC Reply

In which we discover what happened to Sergio and Nikki before and after meeting the Doctor.

http://rc1587.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/double-birtdays-are-not-cool/

Many thanks to Firemagic and Lily Winterwood for beta-reading it.

Very interesting! by SeaTurtle on 2013-04-23 05:01:00 UTC Reply

Bulletproof Angels. Run for your lives!

Now I'm excited for Blank Sprite. I'm itching to know what happens to Agent Sergio and Nikki...
Oh, something I didn't catch... by Lily Winterwood on 2013-04-23 01:31:00 UTC Reply

...mostly because I hadn't placed down a timeline of events when I was editing your piece but:
the timestamp for the warning and the message for the Doctor should be either 3 April or 4 April 2013, and I'm leaning more towards 4 April. The blackout has already gone through 2013 HST for two days; it may not seem as long to Sergio and Nikki because of time distortions, but it has been long for others.

Oh, I see. by Sergio Turbo on 2013-04-23 13:22:00 UTC Reply

Fixing that up.

Ohhh. by Karen on 2013-04-23 01:22:00 UTC Reply

I'm kinda curious now, how /will/ Sergio and Nikki wind up not being PPC in a year?
Re: Interlude by doctorlit on 2013-04-22 23:48:00 UTC Reply

Wow. You've really set up an interesting scenario here. I'm going to be watching curiously to find out how you cause Sergio and Nikki to disappear. (If they even do. You didn't show them absolutely confirming that they weren't around in 2013; they just didn't see any sign of themselves. *fingers crossed*)

My favorite scene of all was when the blackout first hit, and in the hallway, agents are starting to peek out of their RCs with different light sources. It's a minor moment, but to me, it's a great way of showing how HQ united over this, and how different agents from different backgrounds have their own ways of dealing with problems.
Which Weeping Angel was that? by Outhra on 2013-04-22 22:51:00 UTC Reply

The first one was detained in the part of HQ that intersected with the Harry Potter continuum, the second was captured by the Captain Dandy, and it couldn't have been the third because that one was subsumed by Slorp soon after it was first encountered. I would have asked if this was a fourth angel, and then I saw that bit about Sergio's gun being designed to take out armored vehicles, so I'm pretty sure a Weeping Angel could survive two grenades to the face.

This was a good interlude! Poor Corolla, though. She stays behind to feel safer, and then gets caught in another time-shift and has to sit alone in the dark for three hours.

Could've been the second one? by Lily Winterwood on 2013-04-23 01:16:00 UTC Reply

Maybe, nursing its wounds (if it had any), it absconded to the mirrored hallway and then... yeah.

I catually was thinking the third one. by Sergio Turbo on 2013-04-23 20:13:00 UTC Reply

It barely got any screentime before being absorbed by Slorp, so I thought it could be that it wasn't capable of putting up much of a resistence as it was already wounded.

Both can work, I suppose. by Lily Winterwood on 2013-04-24 00:13:00 UTC Reply

I mean, you're welcome to run with either Angel (though I wouldn't recommend literally doing that).
... And I shouldn't post while multitasking. by Sergio Turbo on 2013-04-23 20:14:00 UTC Reply

It messes up my spelling badly.

Makes sense. by Outhra on 2013-04-23 02:17:00 UTC Reply

That would explain how one Flower was able to bring it down. It was already hurt, and the disruption of its reproductive processes was just the last straw. I'm tempted to put the time-paths of the three individual Weeping Angels on their page, but that seems a little much.

What about... by Neshomeh on 2013-04-23 18:54:00 UTC Reply

Putting an overall timeline on the Blackout page? That would fit.

(I am in no way suggesting this because I'm now thinking about writing an interlude, too. Definitely not one about FicPsych, most of whom remember the last time the power went out and would Not Be Happy. Nope.)

~Neshomeh

We should see how many interludes there are before we do. by Outhra on 2013-04-23 19:24:00 UTC Reply

This is my "internal timeline consistency" bug talking again, but I don't like putting up works-in-progress. Parts of me say that it would help keep future writing fit into the established time scale, but parts of me say it would be a bother putting something up that we've not seen the full extent of yet, because we'd have to rearrange everything if it suddenly went sideways, so to speak.

Oh, yeah, most of your characters were around during the Black Cats' invasion, and the shields went down before that, too, when the Cats sapped DoDAEG's power supply. I hadn't even thought about how veteran agents might be treating the Blackout.
Heh heh. Paranoia is fun.

I'm thinking of writing up a Blackout piece too by the Irish Samurai on 2013-04-25 12:09:00 UTC Reply

Probably along the lines of Skeet and Amelia fortifying their RC against invasion (neither of them were around for the previous invasions, but I figure Skeet would have heard about them), and offering sanctuary to anyone that happens to wander past.

As well as sending out the occasional scouting party to see if they can work out what's going on.

If anyone has any agents that they're not planning on writing anything for, but want them to have been around for the Blackout, let me know, and I can probably include them in this. Otherwise I'll just fill it out with some of the free-to-use characters, and maybe use it as a first appearance for some more of my own characters.
Oh yeah, that too. by Neshomeh on 2013-04-23 20:01:00 UTC Reply

I was thinking of the power outage prior to the macrovirus epidemic and Sue invasion in 2008, but yeah, a fair number were around in 2006, too. Power outages do tend to presage bad things. {= P

Re. timeline, maybe just a rough outline, then? For instance, knowing how long the power was out would be of particular use to me, and that isn't likely to go sideways, as you put it. I don't plan to include any interactions outside of FicPsych, though, so I don't need the details of who all was running around where at what time (unless you or someone else wants to send someone my way).

~Neshomeh

Speaking of the 2008 Invasion... by Outhra on 2013-04-25 15:53:00 UTC Reply

I tried to read its Google Docs pages, but they glitched up or were set to a private view or something, because they wouldn't let me in even when I logged onto my Google Account. It just redirected me to one of those "you do not have access" pages.

It's kind of an important event, so I'm pretty sure people other than me would like to read it in the future as well, but I can't get any text to display, and I don't know Google Docs well enough to work around it. Can you do something to free up the pages for anyone to see?

Funny you should ask. by Neshomeh on 2013-04-26 04:51:00 UTC Reply

I don't have direct control over those documents, but I've already offered to help the one who does to get them back up and running in a new, more stable location. The trouble is, I have about a hundred other things competing for my attention and I am a terrible, terrible procrastinator, so I'm not sure when that will actually happen. Rest assured that it will eventually, though. It's important to me, too.

~Neshomeh, who is really only an admin on the wiki and her own sites and does not have magic powers over all Google Docs. ^_~

Re: Funny you should ask. by Outhra on 2013-04-26 05:35:00 UTC Reply

Well, since I know next to nothing about Google Docs, compared to me, practically everyone has magic power over them. I see people making docs that only about a handful of people can look at and just blink in confusion. It's probably super-easy one you know how to do it, though.

For now, I'm just content that somebody's working on the problem. It's better than what I thought might have been going on, which was that the person who had control over the docs was no longer active and thus the people who could view it now were the only ones. Then again, I suppose one of those people could just copy-paste the text into a new site if that happened.

GDocs by Neshomeh on 2013-04-26 19:31:00 UTC Reply

Basically, a Google Document is just like a Word or Open Office document, except it's on the Internet instead of your hard drive. There are two basic states, published and unpublished, and various privacy settings for viewing and editing, which are set by the owner. Being able to view a document and make changes at the same time as a cowriter anywhere in the world is its greatest asset, not to mention fun to watch while it's happening. {= )

Anyway, what happened to the Invasion stuff is that somehow they all got set to private, so that you'd have to get the owner to expressly allow your account to view them (oh, and you'd need a Google Drive account). Normally, published documents are made public, so that anyone with the link can see them. Stuff like this is why I personally prefer to host my finished stories on a regular website, though.

~Neshomeh
GDocs tips! by SeaTurtle on 2013-04-26 19:18:00 UTC Reply

Once you open up your Google Drive (like Microsoft Office but online and Google-y), just create a document and start writing stuff.

Your docs are all private by default but you can change the settings with the little blue "Share" button on the top right. From there, you can choose to share the doc with very specific people (giving them edit/comment powers), make it semi-public by only allowing those with a link to access the doc (usually just view/comment powers), or make it open to the general public. The original owner also has control over who can comment and edit the doc, no matter what the privacy setting is.

You can even publish your doc, which changes the formatting so that the text occupies the entire page instead of giving you the impression of looking at a Word document.

Ninja'd! by Neshomeh on 2013-04-26 19:32:00 UTC Reply

Your information is a bit more specific than mine. Kudos!

~Neshomeh

Sneaky, sneaky! (nm) by SeaTurtle on 2013-04-26 20:39:00 UTC Reply

I have it down to three or four days. by Lily Winterwood on 2013-04-23 20:42:00 UTC Reply

It starts on 1 April. The power is down for two days before the Doctor shows up, so that's more or less the third day (3 April). The power begins going back on on the 4th of April, but will be pretty shoddy.

The Doctor and Clara show up in FicPsych to be Neuralysed, along with (I presume) the other Canons in the other interludes.

Okay, thanks. by Neshomeh on 2013-04-23 21:06:00 UTC Reply

And, derp, I forgot about the neuralyzations. Depending on what kind of story this ends up being, I may or may not cover that in detail, though. I'm still figuring out where this is going. {= )

~Neshomeh