Subject: I think I remember reading that one.
Author:
Posted on: 2014-07-08 12:39:00 UTC
The badfic-that-turns-out-to-be-a-goodfic mission, that is. I'm not sure who wrote it, but it was definitely in LotR, and the Sue was a very short human who fell into Middle-earth and assimilated pretty well with hobbit society.
-Aila
I have to start this post with an apology, for I am a huge flake. Perhaps the biggest flake. See, the things I'm about to link, they've been sitting on my hard drive for years. Since I first put out the call for The Lost Tales, actually. I just... never went through the giant mess of files I got very thoroughly until a couple weeks ago, when it occurred to me that if I was going to try to save everything, I'd better start by knowing exactly what I already had.
So, yeah. I'm an idiot, and I'm sorry. I'm really hoping the coolness of having this stuff back will outweigh the inanity of me not knowing I had it for so long. >.
On to the actual content!
First, some missing pages of the PPC Handbook:
- Artemis' PPC Departments and Agents list. This is fascinating (at least to me) in part because of the mail-to links in the original document, which can help us identify which characters belonged to who, especially when cross-referenced with the old PPC Directory (which is not part of the Handbook). I HAVE removed the full e-mail addresses, because I don't want the page to be fodder for spambots, but if you mouse over agent names in gray, you'll be able to see the e-mail prefix, which is all we really need for comparison.
I also must note that the appearance of the page is purely a guess, since whoever saved it only saved the text, not the full code. I have no idea what it originally looked like, but since it was hosted on the brdepartment site, same as the Flower Officials page, I've given it the same background and colors. It's... a little hard to read, I know, but I don't know what else to do.
- <a href="http://twistedskein.webs.com/PPCHome/buffyverse/buffyversechargelist.htm">The Jossverse official PPC charge list and Winterfox's LotR Sue Litmus Test. These were actually archived by hS as part of the Oddlots site, but there are links to them in the Handbook that were formerly broken, and now they're not. Yay! (BTW, please let me know if you find broken links, especially if you know how I can fix them!)
- The original Glossary of Edible and Semi-Edible Substances by Claudia Beth King. This doesn't replace the link to the new menu, since that was updated when the Handbook was still actively maintained; I've just added it as a bit of a bonus for the inquiring minds out there.
- The original "Origins" and accompanying Unfinished Tales by Huinesoron. ... Eyup. Not much to say here, because I'm not 100% sure hS wouldn't prefer that these stayed lost. They were part of the Handbook, though, so here they are! Erm, please don't kill me? ^_^;
Next, some content from the BRD site!
- The main page, including an intro with the Daffodil. We have some dialogue from a minor Flower! Yay! ... Sheesh, he's a squirrely little chap, isn't he?
- "Arathorn Did Not Have a Daughter" by Artemis and Bodldops. This actually wasn't lost, since it survived on ff.net, but with the intro we now know that the [BEEP!] at the end of this DMS mission is most likely the agents' summons to go get their transfer orders. Neat! (And now you can read it lightly edited, with all those dialogue punctuation and capitalization issues fixed!)
- "The Misadventures of Talia" by Artemis. This WAS lost, and it's pretty cool because it also involves an original appearance of Agents Black and Irvine of the DIA. Not to mention the story itself being pretty original and fun to read. Go do it!
Sadly, I am not in possession of any actual missions to bad role-plays. It's possible there never were any, but I can't confirm anything. One way or another, that's all I got.
---
There are a lot more good things to come at The Lost Tales. For instance, I've also discovered one of Kippur's lost Marrissa Picard missions, and I have a few missing pages from the DMFF site, too--apparently they wrote handy glossaries of the flora and fauna of Middle-earth and a little lexicon of terms derived from "Sue."
However, more sites keep going down, and it's a lot of work to restore them in their best possible shape. If you're interested in helping, especially if you're familiar with HTML, please let me know! CSS is also helpful, since I want to convert the whole site eventually. Again, though, that's a lot of work, and I'm currently playing catch-up to the last round of deletions--Anamia's Corner, the Department of Cool and Unusual Punishment, Keily's "Duty of a Fangirl," Pieguy's House of Sporking...
Which, I can't help but notice, were all Webs sites. Ahem: If your PPC stuff is hosted by Webs, please back it up! For they are jerks and will wantonly delete it for arbitrary reasons, and there's nothing I can do about it except hope the Wayback Machine or archive.today took thorough snapshots first. {= (
... That's all for now. Enjoy the new-old stuff, and please forgive me for its unduly long absence from our lives.
~Neshomeh
The Playscripte!
Well, not the one hS did, but another Playscrpite, written by Twiggy Papaya (beware of popups):
http://www.angelfire.com/rings/ppcdcup/playscript1.html
Which never seems to have gotten moved from Twiggy's angelfire site to the Webs one, ironically keeping it preserved without the need of an archive. Yay!
--doctorlit kind of wants to voice Samwise
I had Twiggy's Playscripte in my files, but I didn't realize the Angelfire site still existed. There's some other random fun stuff on there that I didn't have, like "Night Sprinkles on a Doomed Fate" (silly PPC badfic) and what happens to the RotK movie script if you put it through a few translations. 'Scuse me, must gank. ^_^
~Neshomeh
Good find with that list! I was super-excited when I found that Directory, but it's super-hard to read, and a lot is ambiguous. It's good to have a potential double-check now.
I'm glad to see I didn't actually imagine Origins and the Unfinished Tales, after all! I think I read them around when I first joined, but could never find them again. I was beginning to think they were a hallucination!
I was super-happy reading through "The Misadventures of Talia" and seeing some of the details I had picked out of her journal being confirmed in an actual published text. And OMG, it's when she first met Dúros! It's great to have such a major event in two agents' lives recorded again! (That Sue is rather intriguing, too. I guess the "class" she took in Mordor *snerk* was taught by a ringwraith.) It is disappointing to learn no BRD missions were ever written, as I've always been curious as to how they would go. But I guess I shouldn't miss something that never existed, so . . .
Can't wait to see some of the other stuff you've got waiting! Speaking of which, I responded to your email, but never heard back from you. Did something get "lost in the mail"?
You didn't get my e-mail with the attached .zip file? I sent it around noon, CST.
~Neshomeh
Didn't mean to jump the gun.
NP, I'm glad it didn't get lost. I could always send it again, but still. {= )
I should mention, "Ashes to Glory" also has Black and Irvine in it for a brief cameo, for those who are interested in them at the moment.
~Neshomeh
Wow. Nesh, you are amazing. That's...wow.
There you go; you've achieved your goal. My brain is officially blown.
Now, time to go through and see what we've got...
-Arti's list. The Big Two trivia from this, for me, are: a) Bast's Agent Mary Sue is in both the DRD and RDR, so I can steal her if Rosalind or Aella need a friend. b) Agent Suzine is in DAVD. Is this the same person as Nurse Suzine?
-No comments on the charge list/Litmus Test, since they were sort of never lost (even though I'm proooobably the only person who could have found it)
-The substances list: it always baffles me that bleeprin is canonically made by mini-Aragogs in HFA. It occurs to me that the Ispace Wars might have interrupted the supply somewhat...
I also wonder where we get our Pink and Purple Stuff since the Great Goddess left... and also whether this means her temple was technically a front for a drug-distribution ring. :D
-Origins and UT: no, you can keep them up. 'Origins' is actually still hosted as a summary version on the Webplex, and... well, the conceit behind the UT and this version of Origins is that Dafydd wrote them. Slight divergences from the later facts are to be expected. ;)
-The BRD: you fiend. ^-^ Well done. As far as I recall, there never were any actual Bad Roleplay missions.
Of course, the existence of these missions means two of our latest Featured Agents are no longer up to date... and one of my goals is to ensure that they all remain so. I guess that means I'm going to be going through these with a fine-toothed comb. Oh no, I have to read PPC missions, how will I ever cope.
There's a story I remember from... somewhere, which has an agent getting thrown into what she thinks is a badfic, but is actually a goodfic (possibly by Thalia Weaver), and she's only barely stopped from killing it. In my head, that was 'The Misadventures of Talia', but since it isn't... any idea what I'm thinking of? Or if we still have it?
Anyway... awesome, and well done!
~~~~~
Webs: sometimes, yes, they delete things arbitrarily. According to their tech support (who always fire off the same boilerplate email in reply to your first attempt to contact them), their shutdowns of me were at the request of some outside authority - I forget what, and they were never very clear.
They also shut down websites which haven't been logged into for a certain amount of time and which haven't been viewed in a shorter amount... but it's all a bit random. Fortunately, archive.today seems to be fairly comprehensive, which is why the Multiverse Monitor is entirely preserved (except for one Page 3 image, but I might actually have that somewhere...), and almost restored. Starwind's high-rated PPC fanfics are probably lost forever, though.
(Which reminds me that I need to think about making a thread on that subject... Are NC-17 PPC Stories Okay And Should They Be Posted?)
Once again: thank you and well done!
hS
The bottom part of this post in Godforsaken's LJ mentions a Boarder named Suzine:
(Upper part contains NSFW language)
http://agentclaudia.livejournal.com/20535.html
That Boarder may be the author of Agent Suzine. Then again, the two characters could still be the same Suzine, as the Wiki doesn't name an author, and Nurse Suzine's earliest appearance in the JAAKSONS spin-off is fairly small, and could just be a cameo of Boarder Suzine's character? So maybe she used to be in DAVD Medical, and later transferred to FicPsych?
Really no way of knowing, now. :s
And as to the Thalia vs. Talia thing . . . um. I'm pretty certain this LJ:
http://tinuviel8994.livejournal.com/profile
is Thalia Weaver. (We are talking about Weaver, right?) And it says the name is "Talia (sometimes Thalia)." So it seems the Boarder Thalia sometimes went by the same name as one of Artemis' PPC agents. (And I think Thalia is also the author of the Agent Thalia on the Glossary page? The Glossary lists the author as "NeedleofDeath," but Needle's author page on the Pit has separate author notes from "Thalia" and "Shada" soooooo I don't know I think I'm overthinking this anyway.)
-doctorlit, who is getting uncomfortable looking at peoples' RL LJs looking for PPC info.
I remember Suzine (vaguely) and I'm well aware of Thalia's real name. ;) Also, I can confirm that Thalia of Thalia-and-Shada is Thalia Weaver. Their profile links to Thalia's. Shada links to Shada, which links to a livejournal for Joraina, which mentions the name antinomies. She doesn't seem to have friended any of the PPC Boarders I know of, and I don't recognise any of her names, so if she was on the Board at all, she left way early. The Board Archive is admittedly spotty for 2003, but she's not in it under any of those.
Coming back to Suzine - actually, and Thalia, since Artemis' list mentions an Agent Thalia (Weaver) in both DAVD and the DCPS, in addition to Shada's partner in the DMS - the problem for we poor archivists is that in the early days, people inserted Boarders, not agents, into their stories. That's why Agent Huinesoron of DOGA exists - I was a cameo in Suedom. So you will find a lot of repeating names, particularly where the DCPS is concerned - and, apparently, DAVD.
The question then becomes: do we, as archivists and historians, treat them as all being the same people? The DCPS is canonically established, in the person of Chelsea Miller, to take agents who already have another job, so I think those should be 'the same person'. But Suzine being both Head Nurse and DAVD? Mm. I think your idea of a transfer might be best - or, again, Medical and FicPsych have historically taken a lot of two-job agents, such as Constance Sims. So maybe Suzine moonlighted from DAVD Medical to FicPsych, and later made the shift permanent?
hS
I was gonna bring this up on the wiki at some point, but since you've given me a perfect excuse here: I'm pretty sure Claudia Beth King actually went by that name on the Board. Godforsaken was her penname on ff.net or something. Like how Ella Darcy is always Ella Darcy, not Lantarmiel. {= )
~Neshomeh
Ta da!
(NSFW language below, but just the first line is important)
http://agentclaudia.livejournal.com/2003/06/22/
In my head, I typically think of authors by a name that isn't shared with one of their characters, just to keep it straighter in my head.
-doctorlit is apparently a creepy stalker of decade-old LJs now. He is not proud.
... but be aware that they aren't their Board names. CBK and Ella Darcy were CBK and Ella Darcy.
More generally, you're going to run into problems with that. Heck, I have an Agent Huinesoron, Nesh has Agent Neshomeh... in fact, don't you have an agent who shares your username? <_ a whooooole lot of agents are named after their creators and back in t most them were straightforward author inserts. trying to separate is an exercise futility.>
hS
hS
Nesh
doc
Shortening the name down is something that I do all the time. Not because it helps me keep it straight, but because I am lazy and some of these names are hard to spell.
-Phobos...who can't think of a way to shorten his own name.
Easy. ;) Though your system doesn't work everywhere - I believe doctorlit's agent is 'Agent Doc'...
hS
There's a huge world of difference between Doc and doc!
And .docs, for that matter.
(Yo, dog, I heard you like docs, so doc wrote about Doc in a .doc so you can read the .doc about Doc by doc.)
I would've been sad if I had dropped hints and played up the drama for nothing. ^_^;
- I have no idea if Agent Suzine is the same person as Nurse Suzine, but I wondered the same thing. I don't see how she could become Head Nurse while also working in an another department, but then again, this is HQ. Stranger things have happened.
- What's weird to me about Bleeprin is that it seems to have been thought up on the Board or elsewhere first, then added to HFA, since its first mention in HFA calls it "the preferred medication of PPC agents" and doesn't really describe it. Sorta like the audience is expected to know what it is already.
- The idea that everything we know about the PPC's early history is based on the wild speculation of one bored Elf amuses me greatly. *g*
- I just noticed something weird about the BRD. I was gonna add the Daffodil to the Glossary, but found that he already had an entry, linking to the version of "Arathorn Did Not Have a Daughter" on ff.net. The Daffodil is, in fact, mentioned there — Talia says, "What, are you trying to kill the computer? While I have thought about it from time to time, the Daffodil won't appreciate having to call in Makes-things for the umpteenth time this week" — but in the version I have, it's the SO named in that sentence. I wonder why they changed it, and what else might be different. O.o
~Neshomeh
hS
The badfic-that-turns-out-to-be-a-goodfic mission, that is. I'm not sure who wrote it, but it was definitely in LotR, and the Sue was a very short human who fell into Middle-earth and assimilated pretty well with hobbit society.
-Aila
Since it's an Intelligence story, she doesn't almost kill it.
http://plotprotectors.tripod.com/architeuthis/
Though it does seem to be Ailavyn's... no, my vague memories include the agent getting off a ship at one point, and possibly that either the story or the agent were Thalia Weaver's. Since it wasn't Rhus Radicans, I'm betting on the story. That connection may be why I associate it with Agent Talia. I'm also pretty certain she wasn't on a mission, but was dropped into the story by some malevolent force.
hS
Awesome!
Like I said to doctorlit, there's nothing bad about having redundant backups, if we happen to save the same things. Though, I think you mentioned being good with people's LiveJournals at some point? I don't think anyone's paying much attention to saving character journals at the moment. It would be cool to have someone focused on that.
Anyone can help by pointing out errors on the Lost Tales site, too.
~Neshomeh
I'll read through the ones I find and e-mail various links and such, copy stuff down too for the ones that look like they'll need it. Relevant info can be useful for making pages, I know Doclit said something about wanting to make one for Irvine.