About the Despatch

Subject: About the Despatch
Author: zdimensia
Posted on: 2014-07-22 15:27:00 UTC

I've been combing through what little exists on the Despatch, and there's been problems.

I'm interpreting it as they do make mistakes and end up taking an OC that looks like a real person. (I can't find the story, but it seems that occasionally goodfics get sent to agents, or the fics get sent to wrong departments.)

For Teddy Bear, I can't find the original fic, but it looks like the only reason they had a Despatch team is that the real Tokyo invaded a Sailor Moon / LOTR crossover. There isn't any ending, but it's possible that the Sue-spirit was inhabiting a real person who needed to be sent home alongside the canons.

Before I start looking for anything else that would be a Despatch mission, perhaps some clarifications? There was also someone who was bothered by the entire concept of messing with unkillable self-inserts.

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About the Despatch by zdimensia on 2014-07-22 15:27:00 UTC

About Despatch and DIC by zdimensia on 2014-07-25 13:36:00 UTC Reply

Anyone else have an opinion?

I have a lot of projects that are tied up by not knowing if Despatch should still exist as a department or as a DIC specialty, and if the procedures are still relevant.

Also, does PP...angle all crossovers? I'm talking about stories that lack OCs. Or the OCs are there to support the stories and there are no canons who could play their role. I'm talking about plausible crossovers where the characters remain in-character mostly while interacting.

Supernatural/Doctor Who/Sherlock is somewhat plausible if you take out the big things that the entire world notices. Actually, Doctor Who can crossover with just about anything with barely a stretch.

No. by Huinesoron on 2014-07-25 14:49:00 UTC Reply

Don't remove Despatch as a department. Their purpose is entirely distinct from the DIC:

-Implausible Crossovers deal with crossovers between canons. Everyone they meet is a canon character with a home to go to, and will need neuralysing.

-The DMS deals, in part, with 'crossovers' between a canon and a Mary Sue, such as the girl-who-falls-into-Middle-earth. It doesn't matter to them where the girl in question comes from - she ends up dead.

-Despatch walk the line between the two. They deal with OCs who aren't Suvian, but also can't stay in the canon and integrate. Their 'home' is World One - but because they're fictionalised versions of their authors or other people, they have no life to go back too. They can't be killed, because they aren't Mary Sues. They can't be sent home or integrated, because they have no home to go to. They have to be dealt with by Despatch.

My guess would be that the most common fate for Despatch'd OCs is to have Legal integrate them into World One. They think they're normal people, after all - so send them off to be normal people. Despatch may well have a role to play in that integration. And, of course, some are recruited.

As to your latter question... here's a fistful of facts for you:

-The Department of Implausible Crossovers does not require an OC to be present.
-The Department of Implausible Crossovers deals with implausible crossovers. If it is a plausible crossover, it's not implausible.
-The PPC deals with badfic. I have no idea why you're asking about 'plausible crossovers where the characters remain in-character' - that's not a badfic.

hS

Thanks for clarification by Hieronymus Graubart on 2014-07-26 11:36:00 UTC Reply

I may have set zdimensia on a wrong track with my beta reading in PoorCynics workshop and subsequent comments. Let me see if I get this right now:

When the Sues are slain, the Wraiths are exorcised, and the misplaced canon characters are sent back to their home continua, the badfic’s purpose does no longer exist and it is "destroyed" (it vanishes from the alternate multiverse where the PPC exists, we don’t actually burn books), and the word worlds which had been affected by the badfic resume their canonical shapes. OC’s who were assumed to live in these word worlds can just be left there and integrate.

But if the badfic’s purpose was snatching canon characters into the badfic’s version of "real life", and the badfic crumbles away because the canon characters were returned to their home continua, characters who are assumed to live in the badfic’s version of “real life” have no place where they can stay. If we do not want to recruit them, but also do not want to let them die when their home world vanishes, we have to despatch them to World One, the PPC’s version of "real life". Also, sending trans-dimensional hoppers back to their assumed home – the badfic’s version of "real life" – wouldn’t actually remove them; to "destroy" the badfic, the trans-dimensional hoppers must be despatched to World One.

I still don’t understand Legal’s role in this. Does Legal fake all the documents which are necessary to legalize a person’s existence in real life (intentional pun)?

Considering that Real Person Fic is creepy and we shouldn’t rewrite the real author’s life in our World One, this may intentionally be left mysterious, and this is the reason why you made Legal such a mysterious department? Should we assume that the agents shove self inserts and attached charge lists through a portal to Legal, but never go there themselves and don’t actually know any agents in Legal?

What happens if self inserts representing the same real life author exist in multiple stories? I assume that the author’s representation is abducted from World One into the next story and Despatch has to get them back (and Legal may need to fake a cover- up story, like travel tickets and holiday postcards, to explain their temporary absence in World One).

HG

Perhaps a colony by zdimensia on 2014-07-26 12:37:00 UTC Reply

I think the purpose of Legal was if they needed to be charged with kidnapping in their home fic. I could drop getting Legal involved, (say it was something that happened in the past,) and just have a non-action part of Despatch, especially if the snatcher's world crumbles so they can't go back.

I'd actually like to create someplace that's not World One for them to live. In definition, it would be a penal colony, in practicality, it would be nicer than some real communities. Having "repeat offenders" seems like picking on the same author intentionally, but a world specifically set up to contain them would probably not need an elaborate cover story. It may also solve the problem of hoppers that turn into elves or whatever. (I'm assuming that if PPC could turn someone into something that they're not, we wouldn't have anyone who was irritated at being what they are.)

I don't know where non-canonical communities get sent, and I can't remember which spinoff had to specifically move them, but that spare world could also contain those.

I wouldnÂ’t do this. by Hieronymus Graubart on 2014-07-26 15:36:00 UTC Reply

Although there is only one true Despatch mission and I still think that the wiki page on Despatch is badly worded and the wiki page on Legal lacks information on its connection to Despatch, it appears now that these departments purposes have been discussed and planned out before we joined, and in the PPC’s weird ways it all makes sense. There is no need to invent new stuff when even the existing stuff is not well used.

HG

Getting confused by zdimensia on 2014-07-26 18:41:00 UTC Reply

I'm more thinking about tweaks. I'm under the impression that the PPC has evolved a bit since then, with the change of accusing the story or the Sue with the charges instead of the author. I'd like the wiki page to at least be cleaned up so I'm not working with outdated and unclear stuff. Is anyone still around that remembers what the discussions were? I would like some wording on how non-Sue self-inserts are not to be harmed. I think there is something like that on the self-insert page.

I suppose I could work back to no one knows what happens to them after they are taken in. (The only one that it really interferes with is something weird that may or may not fly anyway.) There really isn't much difference between OCs and SIs from a practical standpoint, is there. (I'm getting a little hung up on recruiting OCs that look like SIs, but it could just be a case of it never goes through.)

IÂ’m confused myself. by Hieronymus Graubart on 2014-07-27 00:10:00 UTC Reply

I’m certainly not a Despatch expert.

Beta reading, last part.

HG

Some clarifications by zdimensia on 2014-07-25 15:57:00 UTC Reply

In the case of snatchings, I would say that their "real" world exists enough for them to get sent back to it. With hoppers, it may vary. And for sending hoppers to World One, how many people can it tolerate being added from nowhere, or are there enough agents from there that never go back to balance?

It has been a while since I've watched "Last Action Hero" but the world that the kid is from is a flanderization of the real world, while the action movie is the same for action movie worlds. The kid's world isn't "real" but he goes back to it and lives.

I can't exactly write this part of story without talking to the author. But for Going Out West, I imagine that once the canon is returned to normal, Camren could choose to have her memories altered and become Kid Cooper's wife in a way that doesn't damage canonical events.

For Yiffing is Magic, the only real charge is that he caused a background pony to... I don't have the euphemisms to describe it. He would have died if the agents hadn't intervened. (Again I'm questioning if that one is missionable, even if the FIMfic community hates it. Not going to rewrite until I get someone who can look at it.) I'm thinking his "talking to" would involve asking him if he knows about the sites where original fiction of that type is actually welcomed.

I intend to do Razzy Plush someday. In that, the SI-snatcher has a family.

For my purposes, the DIC handles them if they are from a world where the media exists as a story. It doesn't matter if it's a real universe that actually inspired the show. It doesn't matter if they haven't actually seen the show.

My questions about the DIC... I suppose in that case, there would be something else about the fic to make it bad, and it would be another department that might call a DIC agent to help with the fiddly bits. I was wondering if the canon gets damaged just by crossing universes. (There is an official Mork and Mindy/ Happy Days crossover, so I guess not.)

I suppose having Robin Williams exist in Mork and Mindy might argue against real world people destabilizing things just because they intrude on fiction. Intel does have a story where the intruder from beyond the fourth wall might be allowed to stay.

Occasionally the PPC handles goodfic. by Hieronymus Graubart on 2014-07-26 15:27:00 UTC Reply

For Intel, like Agent Archetheutis exploring "Time Will Tell", it is part of the job. The point here is that judging a story based on stereotypical interpretations of its summary is a mistake, and thus a badfic’s author’s warning that we just shouldn’t read the story if we don’t like the stereotype doesn’t really help. Not every girl fallen into (insert canon here) is a Mary Sue, although "Time Will Tell" went a bit down when Architheuthis had left somewhere after chapter seven of what were forty three chapters in the end.

Such a mistake was made when Miah and Caddy-shack started to write the mission in Stargate Atlantis you mentioned in a previous post, before they had read the whole story. (I don’t know the chronology, but I assume that they couldn’t read the full story, because it was still a work in progress.) When they realized that MPreg is not always badly written, but the mission helped to develop their characters’ relationship, they decided to acknowledge the mistake and go with it, making agents Cadmar and Cali realize that Intel had not explored this thoroughly.

A similar mistake was justified in-mission, saying that the only Intel agent who could have explored a potential Redwall Revenge!Sue was incapacitated, so that "Vengeance Quest"was directly given to agents Foxglove and Laburnum (DMS). When the story progressed and Laburnum realized that there would never be a reason to kill the protagonist, she told the author about the PPC and got her permission to turn the Sue hunt into a rescue and recruiting mission which doesn’t damage the story, because the goodfic’s characters are not aware that Stormsong and Skyfire escaped certain death and are now PPC agents.

But these are really rare cases.

HG

Re: Occasionally the PPC handles goodfic. by Miah on 2014-07-27 01:32:00 UTC Reply

Actually we were fully aware it was goodfic when we started writing it. We were poking fun at ourselves for assuming based on the summary that it was a badfic. In this case the Intelligence Agents that did a shoddy job were us (primarily me, since I found the story). We clicked on it fully expecting to find the next badfic target, and reacted sort of like the characters. Hey, wait! This is actually good!

Then decided to write the mission just to highlight that even a fic that is a post-canon AU Mpreg can be a most excellent fic. (And that it helped Cadmar and Cali was a nice bonus!)

Oh, there you are again, and so am I by Hieronymus Graubart on 2014-07-23 20:19:00 UTC Reply

This is way too far down the page to be seen by anybody, but it may be relevant here.
Note to wiki workers: "despise" is too strong a word, I "object to" (this comes from being too hasty).
Note to doctorlit, poorCynic, Tira and Irish Samurai to keep you in the loop: I still intend to do the remaining beta exercises , but this may take some more days.

zdimensia, I don't understand what you are talking about in your second paragraph. Is it Elizabeth from "Selfishness" again?

Apparently, "Sleepover!!! - A Girl Called Bob” is the only real Despatch mission ever written.
(I'm sure there are several canon-characters-snatched-to-high-school missions, but they were handled by other departments and are hard to find now.)

Teddy Bear – Celeste is confusing in many ways. I couldn't find the badfic (“Teddy Bear” by Celeste?) either, I don't know much about Sailor Moon, and the mission doesn't show us much of this continuum's representation in the badfic. I suspect that, because Sailor Moon mostly or at least partly takes place in Tokyo, the place where the Sue lives is called "Tokyo", but while Sailor Moon's Tokyo resembles the real Tokyo, all we see of “Tokyo” is one small house, a park with a swamp in it, one street, one car, and some people in the park. Thus, "Tokyo" probably looks more like a small town than a big city, and when the badfic's reality falls apart, the canonical Tokyo (from Sailor Moon, not from Real Life) reoccupies its position.

As far as the mission report exists, it just shows a Sue in an implausible crossover. She somehow snatched Boromir from LotR into Sailor Moon, but Despatch only covers trans-dimensional snatching into the real world. She may or may not be a trans-dimensional hopper from the real world, but she is also a Sue and the plan is to have her killed by assassins who shall be called in later. Thus, she doesn't need to be despatched to World One, and taking Boromir back to LotR is covered by Shelley and Nia from DIC.

I don't see any reason to involve Despatch here, other than: Meg Thornton and her co-writer had decided to have their agents in Despatch, and then just went with it.

HG

Re: Oh, there you are again, and so am I by zdimensia on 2014-07-23 21:22:00 UTC Reply

I'm talking about a lot of inserts. https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2625649/1/They-Wouldn-t-Believe-You , https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9502527/1/going-out-west , https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5029403/1/This-Sucks , https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3429784/1/Trapped-In-Dreamland , https://www.fanfiction.net/s/1408150/1/The-Pygmalion-Syndrome , a lot of Last Airbender stories, Yiffing is Magic, Self-Insert-Authoress-Tripe, and Selfishness.

Trapped in Dreamland is probably not a real insert because it's in the future, it would involve DIC as well, and frankly it kills itself except for convincing the Foxes that it was just a dream. This Sucks is an obvious parody but it will be awesome to do. The Pygmalion Syndrome is a goodfic assigned by accident and the mission will support that by asking if we charge for witchcraft. (BTW, what should the procedure be when the fic kills the SI?)

It might be a good time to re-tool Despatch, or absorb it back into DIC.

I'd like to portray what happens after the fic as sensitively determining whether they're a true self-insert or an OC. If they're a true insert, I'd go kid-gloves and a discussion about their writing. If they're an OC, put them back in their homes or adjust them so that they fit into their new universe. Obviously the only time I could know for sure if they are SI or OC is by asking the authors, but I have two badfics that I own that show both sides.

There is one story I read where an agent gets her own self-insert story and tries to kill her. It's a Harry Potter fic about swimming or a boathouse.

There is a Jay and Acacia story where the snatchers get eaten by Old Man Willow.