Re: Agents

Agents by AdmiralSakai on 2014-07-24 20:55:00 UTC Reply

I'm considering making The Request sometime in the future (although that's still a ways off, I've yet to finish a Project and would like to provide a sample of my writing first). Before that happens, though, I'd like to present a potential Agent pair for constructive criticism:

Agent Clark Smithers
Male Human
52 (Biologically and canonically 52, cotemporal with World 1 for the last 18 years)
HL1 / BMS Continuum

A Black Mesa scientist called "Smithers" (no first name given) briefly appears in canon Half-Life 1 and the Blue Shift expansion pack, escapes the facility by teleporter just before the nukes go off, and promptly drops out of sight. Since it's highly unlikely that he'll ever reappear in any official capacity, and he has effectively zero interaction with more important canon characters, I'm considering him free for the taking, although to my knowledge nobody has ever done something exactly like this.

Smithers appears in, roughly, his original Half-Life 1 incarnation- thin and almost completely bald, with thick, black-plastic-framed glasses. I am unsure how much of his properties as an HL1 NPC remain now that he's out world-hopping: it is entirely possible that he can take multiple rounds of small-arms fire without apparent discomfort, but is unable to climb over a three-foot-high wall.

Smithers wields a personally tweaked SPAS-12 shotgun from his home continuum, and is quite terrible with it. He is consistently unable to hit anything save at point-blank range, so he usually prefers to use a disguise that allows him to get quite close to the Sue or other hazard. Like all Black Mesa scientists, he has earned a Generic PhD. that provides him limited knowledge in a wide array of fields- in practice, that means he can correct incompetent Suethors on anything I can easily look up, but lacks the specialized knowledge of a proper World 1 scientist.

In his personal life, Smithers is fastidious and methodical, if a bit crotchety- woe to the mini that distrubs his neat stacks of canon materials and scientific journals. On missions, however, he tends to play fast and loose with the Rules, and the Flowers know exactly how to make him pay for it. This is the primary reason why he was "saddled" with Agent Wtak as a partner, although the efficacy of that decision remains to be seen. Therefore, the majority of missions he will be given will classify as "punishment" for past and current incidents of unacceptable looting, canon contamination, and "forgotten" charge lists. Nonetheless, his significant feild experience means he can usually get the job done.

Agent Wtak
Male Kig-Yar
16 (canonically timesquiggled between 3 and 108, stabilized at 16, biologically and emotionally ~25, cotemporal with World 1 for the last 14 months)
Halo Continuum

There seem to be a number of human and Sangheili Halo-natives working at the PPC, but none of the other races, so I thought I'd represent.Wtak hails from something called "the Cortana & The Littlest Jackal"... he doesn't like to talk about it.

Wtak looks.... well, he looks like a Jackal, specifically a wiry, shorter-than-average homeworlder (regular "Jackal" pheontype) with abnormally bright yelow plumage. Like most Kig-Yar, he smells faintly of ammonia. Not really all that much else to say here.

Wtak is easily the more competant of the two when it comes to combat, despite his relative inexperience. He has a special fondness for killing things with "writing": magic, software, cheat codes, or anything else available, although if push comes to shove he is also capable of using a wide variety of light and precision firearms.

Wtak is a clean-cut, model Agent, fresh out of training and eager to make a mark. He's a stickler for procedure and a bit of a bore, although in true Kig-Yar fasion he's also greedy, vain, and highly competitive. He tends to "collect" a great deal of junk from around Headquarters, particularly spellbooks, potions, and assorted magical gewgaws, and leaves them strewn about everywhere for Smithers to pick up and complain about.

Adopting a canon character by Hieronymus Graubart on 2014-07-28 15:08:00 UTC Reply

As far as I know, even minor canon characters are needed to play their role in canon and cannot be recruited.

You may try to pretend that this is an ancient game nobody wants to play anymore, so that Smithers‘ absence would never be noticed (I don’t know whether this is true for Half Life I), but I don’t really believe that you might get away with this.

Smithers might have to deal with occasionally being called back into the game to do his duty. This may be quite inconvenient while being on a mission, but fortunately he doesn’t have to stay in the game long. Anyway it only works if you can reasonably expect that worldwide not more than one person per day would try to play Half Life I.

You need to get more opinions from Boarders who know the game before you dare to do this. Or, better, don’t do it.

HG

Temporal Shenanigans by AdmiralSakai on 2014-07-29 18:09:00 UTC Reply

I hadn't really considered Smithers needing to be present whenever Half-Life 1 is played. The way I saw it working involved the Half-Life continuum, Headquarters, and World 1 not being simultaneous with each other: the Black Mesa disaster happens at a specific point in time in the Half-Life continuum, and when someone from World 1 plays Half-Life 1, they are in essence looking back in time to that period and playing through it, even though the two worlds don't run so that one second here equals one second there.

Thus, from his perspective and Half-Life's, Smithers left for the PPC some time between Half-Life: Blueshift and Half-Life 2 and never permanently returned to his home (which is why he does not exist in Half-Life 2). Since people playing Half-Life 1 are experiencing a slice of time in the Half-Life continuum from before he ever left, regardless of when in World 1 they decide to play the game, the old Smithers would still be there. In fact, if he did come back to Half-Life at the time of the Black Mesa disaster, a player might encounter two Smitherses: one who was working at the facility like he should have been, and one who will have escaped Black Mesa, left the continuum entirely in the very near future, spent 10 of his years in a place where time flows at a different rate, then traveled back in time to before he ever left.

Interesting. by eatpraylove on 2014-07-26 21:42:00 UTC Reply

I suppose "adopting" a canon character who only appeared once or twice isn't too much different from recruiting a bit character. You'll have to ask an older member, though; I'm fairly new as well.

The idea of Wtak killing things with writing makes me think he could be able to manipulate the Words. I'm probably wrong, but it'd be cool to see how that power/skill gets used against Sues regardless.

I don't quite understand how Smithers can be "fastidious and methodical" but careless about the Rules at the same time. Wouldn't a methodical personality apply on missions as well? (But on the bright side, that desire for order might make dealing with Wtak easier. Might; I know very little about Halo.)

Re: Interesting. by AdmiralSakai on 2014-07-27 15:13:00 UTC Reply

I'm not sure how powerful in use of the Words I'd want to make Wtak, given that he is already the much more combat-capable of the two. I'm also not sure how one would go about using the Words to kill something without making the stress on Canon worse, but I know that if the fic creates any particularly hostile malapropisms on their own they will play a role in that fic's demise.

Regarding Smithers, the contradiction is intentional, and I doubt Wtak would miss the chance to call him out on his hypocrisy if told to clean up the RC. I'm thinking that deep down, Smithers is set in his ways enough that he has trouble respecting rules other than his own. That seems a dangerous trait for an Agent to have, but to some degree that's what Wtak is there for.

Re: Agents by zdimensia on 2014-07-24 22:08:00 UTC Reply

Hmmm, I don't think there are any canon characters working in the PPC. There are such things as recruit-able character replacements and duplicates that aren't Sues. Either way, I'd make him completely human, though perhaps the trouble with walls has to do with old age.

Be careful with how much he breaks the rules. Perhaps he could want to, but his partner keeps yelling that he doesn't want anymore punishment fics. (Look up Suebuprofen.) Ah, I see that his partner is very by-the-book.

Clean-cut, does that mean Wtak doesn't have the full-length mohawk? Doesn't seem to go with vain unless it isn't mating plumage.

The magic seems interesting. I wonder how many missions he'd actually get to use that.

Re: Agents by AdmiralSakai on 2014-07-25 00:21:00 UTC Reply

1) I mean, it's not as though I'd write a badfic bit differently from a canon bit at all, but that does bring up the question of "if his canon status doesn't affect anything, why is it there?"... the main thing I'm getting out of this, though, is that I'm interested in and want to explore more thoroughly the idea of Agent Smithers being a duplicate of the canon version. It somewhat folds into an idea I've been tossing around about what the Department of Redundancy Department actually does...

2) He definitely doesn't get away with it very often, although since both Wtak and Smithers are very competent Agents it might be in my best interest to have them trying to confront each other as much as they try to deal with the badfic. Also, I sort of wanted to throw Smithers some unusual or funny punishments, most of which involve getting him extremely dirty, being forced to use wildly unsuitable weapons, etc.

3) I meant it more figuratively than literally, i.e. I'd refer to him as a "suit-and-tie sort of Agent" even though he doesn't actually wear anything of the sort. He's actually quite protective of his plumage, although it has been toned down from its original wilver by Medical.

4) Well, the story I've been looking at for Mission 1 has a Cortana replacement who was going to be killed via shell scripting, and the one after that is a TES: Skyrim fic...