Subject: Re: SURVEY: SEP fields, Canon Cloaking Effect, and Disguises
Author:
Posted on: 2014-07-05 16:25:00 UTC
For the yes/no questions, could you put a note that says "not yet means no"
I just looked at the results page with the pie charts... at my fontsize, I couldn't read the results until I noticed that I needed to scroll to the right.
What happens if your agents go into a world that is populated by things that want to kill you? Do they ignore you like the rest of the canon? Or does something else happen? I was mainly thinking about the Attack On Titan (which I LOVE) where the Titans are driven by their need to feed on human flesh. Or Walkers from the walking dead- which I know nothing about. I feel like keeping theese threats In mind would add to the suspense of the mission.
Typically, agents (or at least assassins) are supposed to disguise themselves as something that would canonically harm whatever the fic's Mary Sue claims to be. I can't see a Titan disguise working very well, but a Walker disguise would be perfect. *g*
As for AoT, the agents should absolutely strive to avoid attracting the attention of any rampaging Titans. The canon's cloaking effect should help there, but Titans seem to have excellent senses, so it may not take as much effort to break the effect.
(Sudden thought: wouldn't it be fun to see an agent actually get swallowed, only narrowly escaping by desperately portaling out, taking half the Titan's stomach contents with them? Could easily be played for drama and laughs.)
~Neshomeh
(Also, if the way disguises work is if you physically are the thing you're disguised as, but mentally unchanged, you don't have to worry about things like most Titans being super unintelligent. Eating a Sue can't be pleasant though...)
Aside from the physical difficulties, I think Titan disguises would break the SEP field. A ten-meter man-eating giant is almost never Someone Else's Problem.
... although apparently it has been done before with few ill effects.
That said, eating a Sue whole probably isn't a good idea, yeah. Plus I imagine once the canons noticed you they'd be all "That Abnormal just ate our friend! Kill it!"
One Agent, I believe the name was Vera, on at least one occasion just swallowed a Stu, impractical armor and all. Of course, the fact that said Agent was a dragon at the time might have had something to do with the lack of side effects...
I'm not sure about this and I don't have any specific examples, but I think there are some canonical entities that can see Agents even when they are "cloaked", usually ones that can detect canonically invisible things or simply ones that are very powerful. I don't think any of those can perceive them through disguises, although there are canons that are simply aware of the PPC outright: http://ppc.wikia.com/wiki/Category:CanonsWhoKnowofthe_PPC
The official page says that non-canons can see through SEP fields...
I've seen agents get within two feet of Sues and stay unnoticed.
And, it says that the Canon protects agents from detection (assumed if they are helping and not hurting.)
Maybe the suspense could be that they would notice someone they bumped into... which might mean agents getting between threats and threatened if they aren't careful.
On the one hand, yes, we have a very fluid definition of 'PPC canon', and anything anyone writes is (usually) accepted, and retconned where necessary.
But on the other hand: the idea that the canons can't see you but the non-canons can goes right back to Rambling Band. It's a staple of writing PPC missions properly. Hide near a Character Replacement, yes. Write a Stu as so oblivious to everything around him that you can look over his shoulder, sure. Disguise yourself as something a Sue will just ignore, absolutely - that's what disguise generators are for (as well as, in theory, keeping the canon from harm by not having uncanonical kinds of murder). But just have them unable to see you? No. That's now how it works.
I'm not promising I've never personally had agents hanging around where they ought to have been noticed. But I will say two things. First, I've never claimed they can't be noticed. And second, if I find or someone points out to me an instance where I've done it, I'll change it. That's now how it works, and I refuse to let it appear in my work, even by omission.
The Canon protects agents from being noticed, in that it stops things under its control from noticing them unless they draw attention to themselves. That's the original explanation for what's now identified as an SEP field; I've been here all along, and I still have no idea why people felt the need to change it.
hS
Does it help to know that it's introduced in the Original Series? In mission 26, "No Way Back":
There was a slight lurch, and they were about an hour ahead and several miles away, left banding in the stushes [sic] of a house. Rhus grabbed her taller partner and dragged her down so that Candie, sitting on the stoop working up the courage to ring the bell, wouldn't see her.
"Careful!" she hissed, and they both rested, watching Candie. "I think she's going into the bank."
"Nope. This is 'Maddie's House'," Jay murmured. "There are two bits inside, so we'll have to hide. Or be really, really careful."
"I'd go for hide," Rhus replied. "Either that or—got an SEP?"
"A what?"
"A Somebody Else's Problem field. I'd guess not, then... they're useful."
"Makes-Things refuses to give me anything more complicated than a Character Analysis Device v. 3.1. And after the Hogwarts Happy Snape incident, not even that. I use the old litmus paper."
What I take from this is:
1. The canon doesn't help agents hide from Suvians.
2. An SEP field would, if the agents had one.
3. The canon's cloaking effect and the SEP field's effect are complementary, but different.
Unfortunately, I didn't know or wasn't thinking of that when I wrote this:
The second function of the flash patch is to generate a weak Somebody Else's Problem field around the wearer. This enables agents to walk through a word world unseen by the canons, yet leaves them susceptible to being spotted by Sues should they draw attention to themselves. The reason for this is simple: the agents are there to help the canon, therefore they are not the canon's problem—the canon ignores them. However, they are there to kill the Sue—they are the Sue's problem, so the SEP field is less effective.
As far as I can recall, everyone thought the SEP field explanation was a good idea at the time. So, that's where it went wrong. Mea culpa.
The good news is, I too can edit things. {= )
~Neshomeh
I was thinking about creating an upgrade to the SEP field that enhances a Sue's self-centered thoughts. Basically it would allow agents to stand in the corner of their bedroom and MAYBE not be noticed if they hold still. But if the SEP field can already do that, then I could just go on without mentioning anything.
Ahem. I think it's clear that the SEP field Rhus is talking about is the full version - we might imagine that her next step if Jay had one would be to paint them both pink. After all, part of the operation of a full SEP is to render something unnoticable if there's something unusual about it. You can't just throw it up around a mountain - you have to make the mountain inherently strange as well. And PPC disguises are designed to make you not inherently strange.
As to why agents don't use these as standard? Well, other than because it's boring, we know agents are prone to breaking things - and that's hardened PPC technology. Maybe it's as simple as, SEP tech can't be hardened and keep it operating correctly. Or, a full SEP field requires a decently-sized bit of kit - and no-one wants to lug that around.
Your description matches (roughly) with what I've been saying, and with what I believe is the situation in most spinoffs - agents aren't the canons' problem, so the SEP is effective; since they emphatically are the 'Sue's problem, it does nothing there. It can be interpreted as imparting minimal shielding - the kind that lets you stand in the corner of a room and the OC will miss you - but doesn't require it.
I also have an unwritten discussion of two possible timelines of use; I'll craft it if anyone's interested.
hS
Perhaps even overweening noobs.
Anyway... do you happen to know offhand where H2G2 says the bit about the shielded thing needing to be inherently unusual for the field to work? The bit I quoted doesn't seem to imply that, but I'd be happy to expand the entry.
On the other hand, I'd argue that the agents are often pretty unusual even with disguises. Elves in a suburban front yard? Orcs in the heart of Rivendell, or Ringwraiths, or dragons that one time? I'd call that remarkable!
The way I've actually used the SEP effect in my own spinoff is to keep it separate from the canon-cloaking effect... I think. Without going through everything, I can at least say with certainty that I've referred to each at different times. In this post it sounds like you're preferring an interpretation that has the SEP effect overlapping with the canon-cloaking effect rather than complementing it, but I thought you were advocating for the two being separate before—so as to not make the canon-cloaking obsolete. How confused am I?
~Neshomeh
The bit I'm thinking of is the introduction to the concept of SEP - it's the long-winded story about a bet to make a mountain invisible, which ends with something along the lines of 'If they'd lived a few thousand years later, they could have painted the mountain pink, erected a simple SEP field over it, and the inspectors would have walked all over it without noticing'. Additionally, the bistromath-powered spaceship is pink, too. I don't think it's outright stated, but it's at least implied.
You're right about the disguises - during the TOS era. But nowadays most LotR-agents go in as elves, choosing blending in over suitability for assassination. (Or am I wrong? My excuse for my agents is that they're DOGA, not DMS... heh)
I don't know how you have used the SEP - do you actually mention it frequently, or leave it as implied? And, well, my preference would be for the SEP to be entirely absent... but I can't have that! (Though I still think it makes sewing flash patches on ridiculously complicated). What I was trying to describe was how I thought it usually worked in stories, which in my mind is basically synonymous with - indeed, often driving out - the canon-cloaking effect. Which is a shame.
But am I wrong? I'm happy to be wrong...
hS
I'll flip through H2G2 and see if I can distill those parts into something short and pithy. Thanks!
I don't know about everybody else, but I think there's a time and a place for blending in with the location vs. blending in as a canonical killer. I think it always struck me as a little more of a strain to buy nobody noticing Orcs in Rivendell than to buy an Elf killing something generally treated as non-human and evil, even if it claims to be an Elf. On the other hand, you don't want to go around killing things in the form of a race specifically noted for not doing so. But most canons don't have a lot of hard and fast rules for who can and can't kill what, so that's not always an issue; but blending in with the location is almost always a viable concern. (I do think it often comes down to a matter of taste, though. Orcs are icky, Elves are pretty, etc.)
Thinking about canon vs. SEP, I recall wondering what makes the agents so special that the canon itself would go out of its way to help them, and I think that might've been the impetus for coming up with an alternative explanation in the form of the SEP field. I love TOS and I'm all for being as loyal to it as possible, and yet, when I think about it, it strikes me as a little high and mighty of us to take it for granted that Canon recognizes us and gives us special treatment. Perhaps, just maybe, it's okay to let that one go?
But either way, there's no reason for the SEP field to become so powerful the agents are effectively invisible until they stab someone. {; P
~Neshomeh, flip-flopping.
As usual, most of the following links are my own stories... most of the stuff written before J&A's period is mine, so yeah.
Anyway: a look at my stories featuring missions prior to J&A reveals a surprising fact.
1989 - http://ppchistory.webs.com/Nyx.htm No disguises (DMS)
1992 - http://ppchistory.webs.com/Dassie.htm No disguises (Intel)
1992 - http://ppchistory.webs.com/Skies1.htm Possible 'blending in' disguises (DBS)
1994 - http://ppchistory.webs.com/Ontic.htm No disguises (DMS) [a Klingon is not appropriate to the setting]
1999 - http://ppchistory.webs.com/Dafydd.htm No disguises (DMS)
1999 - http://ppchistory.webs.com/ReorgPart8.htm Possible disguises, but probably just the Klingon again (DMS)
Yes, apparently agents simply didn't use disguises before the LotR movies came out. Almost all of those agents are described as wearing black. Morgan's Klingon partner, and Anya's partner Suzay (a Twi'lek), could potentially be in disguise - we never see them anywhere else - but there's no reason to assume they are.
By 2002, disguising yourself as something that could plausibly kill a Sue was commonplace in the DMS. The situation in the DIC is less clear - the one mission J&A take where they don't have to kill anything (Mission 20), there's no mention of disguises - and while Sean and Lux appear to be out of disguise in Mission 7 (Sean has blue hair), they're, well, Sean and Lux.
Then by 2004, when Dafydd started getting missions... well, he's technically not in the DMS, but he does a lot of killing, and... huh. I'm having trouble finding mention of disguises, actually; he goes in as an elf in the first mission, but that's to a city that's 'terribly racist against elves', and there's discussion that at least implies he's thinking about the kill.
Even Narto, in '05, has an explanation beyond 'blending in' for wearing an elven disguise - he's going to the Undying Lands, where there pretty much isn't anything but elves. Second mission, orcs. It's only in the third mission that he seems to go directly for 'blending in', though it's still debatable on two grounds - would orcs really be able to kill someone in Lorien, and would elves really not be suitable, given that we're talking about humans in the heavily guarded Golden Wood?
O-kay. I was going to go on to craft a theory about disguises, canon-cloaking, and SEP fields on the basis of Abstract Canonical Entanglement theory, but... I'm no longer sure how disguises are currently used. Do people... no, do agents who are specifically there to make a kill actually go for 'blending in' rather than 'suitable killer'? I was certain they did - but since it's not even the case in my own spinoffs, I'm not so positive any more.
(On canon-cloaking: ACE allows it to be explained as the canon cloaking pretty much anything that comes in through it but is not of it. PPC portals funnel through the canon to access badfics, whereas Sues come in via World One. That would make it a physical law which doesn't specifically benefit the PPC, but would equally apply to Ispace, Jurisfiction, and random travellers.
(Alternately, if you accept that 'canon' has some kind of personality and intelligence... why wouldn't it recognise PPC agents? Their portals are fairly distinctive, after all)
hS
However, in some of my missions disguise are more of a vague "make the character design fit" as they're in continua where... well, modern humans are commonplace.
There was a "suitable attacker" situation just once, actually, and that was taken care of with a DORKS when the Agents were already in the fic.
In the end, I think it's more of a situational decision - is blending in during the "investigation" part more important than being a plausible attacker during the "termination" part in that particular mission? When there's no Sue involved, always. And also when there's no "plausible" killer, or when the Sue is alone and so there are no canon witnesses.
I think it makes a bit more sense to look like you would belong during the gathering of charges. Even if the Sue sees you, it would be harder for her to realize you don't belong if you're part of the scenery. Making use of the "Beneath Notice" trope.
"The common 'ninja uniform' of black pajamas and a face mask comes from exploiting this quality in the audience of Japanese theater. Throughout the play, stage hands dressed in this manner would be visible during the play, but ignored as just part of the scenery. Because of this, they were the perfect place to stick a ninja into the script—to the audience, they would be appearing out of nowhere."
I still haven't started keeping a log of what I've read, but I've seen a few newer LOTR missions where the agents' presence suddenly made the characters more aware that the Sue isn't supposed to be there, or they're simply too shocked/neuralyzed to protect her as she's dragged off.
The presentation is a bit patchworky - I was writing notes and ended up with a full theory - but I think the 'inductive reasoning' style works well for this.
Sample Survey
So I made a survey. If a few people would look through it and see if it needs any changes, I could edit it and then put it in it's own thread.
For the yes/no questions, could you put a note that says "not yet means no"
I just looked at the results page with the pie charts... at my fontsize, I couldn't read the results until I noticed that I needed to scroll to the right.
SEP 1: Fairly basic question, no comments.
SEP 2: This seems fairly comprehensive.
SEP 3: ??? Where's this question? You never asked what I think SEP fields do. Since part of this discussion is over whether they hide agents from OCs, that's a key point. It may actually be two questions, one about canons, one about OCs, with the options as: hide you from them unless you make yourself noticable, hide you from them completely, simply make them less likely to notice you hanging around, no effect at all.
CC 1: Basic, no problem.
CC 2: And here you've merged the idea of SEP 2 with my SEP 3. I think you'd be better separating them, for clarity's sake. Also, this question assumes you know precisely how an SEP field is thought to operate - which is part of what we're trying to find out!
D 1: Basic, no problem.
D 2: I think this needs an option 2.5 - trying to balance 'likely to kill' with 'something at least probable'. Oh, you may also want an extra last option - 'whatever seems coolest'. Ents. ;) I say no more.
D 3: Seems fairly comprehensive.
CA: No problems, good question.
Thank you for doing this!
hS
I added a lot of new options/questions while expanding. Would you mind checking it out again?
-I approve of CC3 (though it still doesn't establish what people think either of them do...)
-Disguises 2 looks good, though it does specify 'kill the Sue', which... well, we've had arguments before about the PPC being More Than Just Killing Stuff. In the same manner as referring to 'PPC community members' rather than 'Boarders', you might want to tweak that. 'Kill any OCs present' might work, or simply 'kill the badfic'. I'd avoid 'spork' because it can be taken to indicate the entire MST section.
... and nothing else flagged up as needing changing. So that's good?
h--
OH BUT WAIT.
I see you have hidden questions. Back to look.
-SEP 3: Seems pretty comprehensive.
-SEP 4&5 are just repeats with different subjects, so no complaints there. In this case Sue is the only relevant word in SEP5, and furthermore doesn't require your agents to actually take on Mary-Sues, so no objection there.
-SEP 6: option 3 is 'the Force'! Yeah, this seems comprehensive.
-With this in mind, I assume CC4 is the box for listing the differences if you think there are any. That could probably do with clarifying.
h--
dear sweet lady Nessa, there's more?
-Departmental exceptions: you might want to at least list Intelligence, since they spend a lot of time in badfics. The rest of Inf we can probably leave unstated. Agent Kaitlyn is pleased to see the DCPS getting a mention. :)
-Multiple answers: fairly simple, no problems.
Is... is that it? Did I finish?
hS for reals this time
I added basically the same thing as SEP 3,4,5 to Canon Cloaking. It may still not really get what we think it does, but gets it closer, I think. I also added a paragraph box to disguises and added the line about (This is where you can explain how you think disguises works or how they relate to SEP fields or Canon Cloaking) to all three sections only changing the appropriate subjects.
Changed kill the Sue to kill the badfic
So if you (or anyone else) think this is a good final version, then I'll erase all answers currently in there (they are all us and/or incomplete since I've been adding items) and post it in its own thread.
My latest set of answers were absolute gibberish, so yes, please delete them... ;)
hS
For some answers, there needs to be a checkbox that says "not yet, but intend to if I find opportunity."
For disguises 1, there needs to be a field for "Yes, but usually only when they aren't already something that can blend."
I changed Disguises 1 to this:
Yes, but only when they don't already blend in or spend the entire mission hiding under a bed (in a closet, behind the walls, etc)
Which ones are you talking about on the not yet thing?
SEP fields 1 and Canon cloaking 1. I guess it's related to the headcanon acknowledgement of Canon aiding agents.
I intended the second of those questions to cover people who think or intend that, but haven't done it yet.
I have never thought of canon-cloaking as “the canon protects the agents because the PPC is so awesome”. It is just the canon’s standard behavior I would expect. Attempting to preserve what the canon’s author wrote, intruders to the word world are ignored whenever possible, and are easily forgotten when they fade into the background after an interaction that wasn’t damaging.
Like you said in a previous post, it is a physical law applying to all kinds of trans-dimensional travelers, not just the PPC. But it would also apply to “touristy” OCs who just enjoy the sightseeing and mind their own business, not trying to interact with canon characters or going from Rivendell to Mirkwood within an hour. Of course, most OC’s purpose is to interact, so canon is forced to notice them. But going meta, minding their own business – Sue hunting, exorcising and disentangling – and occasional sightseeing, never interfering with canon, is what agents do in a PPC x badfic x (insert continuum here) crossover. Thus canon-cloaking doesn’t depend on coming in through special portals or on the PPC being part of every canon.
Concerning the SEP field, my head canon has been that it doesn’t actually exist in the PPC. It’s a metaphor used by some agents when they mean to say “we go unnoticed as long as we don’t foolishly act in a way that makes somebody aware that we might be a problem”. Agents use it to describe canon-cloaking as well as the average Sues’, Stus’ and Wraiths’ inability or unwillingness to notice anything that doesn’t fit the story lines they have in mind for themselves. (Going meta again, this inability may be the badfic’s attempt to preserve what its author wrote, and it may be hard to overcome, even if suethors try to make their Stus more observant.)
Apparently some agents are aware that “something” is built into their flash patches, and some agents believe that this is an SEP field generator. But where is the evidence? May it be something else (not necessarily a contact neuralyzer)? Where do they keep their universal translators? Aren’t these things built into the flash patches? Considering Kelok’s adventure mentioned by Miah below, it is difficult to ignore a bleeding man in your house, especially when you are a medical doctor, so there is still no evidence that there was a SEP field generator built into the damaged flash patch.
But if we need to have SEP field technology in the PPC, then I like your outline of how the NP field came into being.
HG
Oh I like that. Both this and the idea that it is all equally true. Kelok believes there is a SEP field, and that's why he's seen, but it is just as valid to assume he is seen because an injured person would be someone Watson would notice immediately.
This theory also works for the time Cali mentions it, because it is entirely true that people dragging bodies through the halls of a hospital would draw immediate attention no matter how much they otherwise look like they belong.
"It works in X way because you think it does" is quintessentially PPC. Brilliant. ^_^
~Neshomeh
It's perfectly acceptable to simply write missions on the basis of 'canons can't see agents, OCs can, that's just how it is'. The end result of all this theorising is basically fixed - but I personally find it fun to theorise. Multiverse Theory is a similarly pointless exercise in pseudo-scientific analysis of a string of jokes. I just enjoy it. ^-~
(And, for the record, my own head-canon is that the physical laws of the PPC multiverse will rise up to meet any reasonable theory which is put forth about them. All theories are true, for a given value of true - so canon-cloaking is a simple trait of canon-visitor interactions, and it works because of channelled portals, and it's because agents are Just That Awesome, and the canon is intelligent and does it deliberately, and it doesn't exist at all. All at't same time!)
You're right that, basically, agents don't know most of the answers - and all sources are of necessity 'in-universe'. The compiler of Nesh's list of gizmos thinks there's an electronic SEP generator under the flashpatch - but unless she happens to be an SEP engineer, she's no more reliable a source than anyone else. The only person who knows is probably Makes-Things, and maybe Hornbeam - but do you really think M-T is going to sit down over a beer and discuss his job? I can't see it, m'sel.
Ultimately, the best way to handle all this is to list the observed effects, and try to keep them consistent - then describe the theories that have been built up around them. ('Multiverse Theory' is a genuine in-universe scientific theory - with zero statements made about how well it describes the true nature of things. If ACE is complete gibberish, my latest canon-cloaking explanation is simply impossible!)
hS
At the least, it seems like canons can still notice and interact with agents if attention is drawn to them, they're pointed out, whatever. They initially ignore them but it's not like the agents are completely invisible to them; I'm sure I've seen a few missions, recent and otherwise, where a Sue has pointed out agents, or the agents have been seen by the canons when they've done something to attention.
I don't think it's so much physical invisibility as it is a sort of cognitive "unnoticeability", where affected canons can still physically see the Agent, but are rendered incapable of considering them an entity of note. Basically, you would get situations of the form:
"Honey, do you know where I put my keys?"
"They're over there, right next to the Marine."
"The one in the bedroom?"
"No, the one down here, with the rocket launcher."
I think the first few steps are a little shaky: despite the in-universe fact that the PPC is situated within canon worlds, I still find the claim that that makes it part of canon very dubious from both an in-universe and an out-of-universe standpoint. OOU, I cringe at the thought of claiming we're so canon-loving and awesome that we can write ourselves into canon, and the canon thinks we're actually part of it. I know nobody's actually saying that, but it's really easy to get there from "the canon recognizes PPC plotholes as being part of itself." What, just because we claim we've got a tunnel under a mountain? Well, what about authors who claim they've got a whole country in there? Aren't their characters and associated plotholes then part of canon, too? ... It's a touch hypocritical.
IU, first of all, doesn't ACE keep us metaphysically separate despite the apparent physical connection? Also, what about worlds where the PPC doesn't have a bit of HQ stashed? Or are we assuming that there's at least one square meter of hallway in every conceivable universe throughout all of time? That also sounds rather dubious to me.
However, by the end of the logic train, I think we have a nice explanation for how things work that doesn't require us to make any special claims about our relationship to the multiverse. The canon-cloaking effect becomes more a technological illusion than a perk of being an awesome canon-loving PPCer, which I can live with.
Tangentially, feel like making a survey for the Board at large about how they use disguises, SEP fields, canon-cloaking, etc., and how they've seen those things used elsewhere? More data to base your theories on would be good, yes? I'd do it, but I'm working on something else at the moment, and I'm afraid it's very secret and mysterious, so I can't explain it right now. Hopefully I'll have something to show for myself in the next week or so, though. *g*
~Neshomeh
Or rather: instead of 'makes it part of the canon', I was going for 'makes it part of the canonical planet'. It... well, perhaps a diagram is easier. ;) (Note that I've tweaked a few things along the way - this version makes more sense!)
Now canon-cloaking is absolutely a technological illusion. Furthermore, based on Miah's evidence, it simply doesn't operate without the SEP/NP field in place. We can pin that on the canon being so strained that any 'visible' plothole - such as the existence of a PPC agent - is emphatically rejected. Only with an SEP in place does the canon 'accept' the existence of a channelled PPC plothole: the plothole is Nobody's Problem, just like native canonical plotholes, and thus can be ignored.
A survey is possible - but that 'etc' worries me. How many things should be included on this? Just the hiding-from-things stuff?
hS
An informal sort of thing, or a formal sort of thing?
I like the theory of how the the PPC SEP fields function. Nobody's Problem is a cool idea.
On SEP fields in slightly unusual circumstances, In Kelok and Unger's first mission, Kelok is stabbed by the Stu and his flash patch is sliced through, resulting in a malfunction. He is seen immediately by the next canon character he encounters while Unger isn't seen until Unger does something that draws attention to himself.
They were both in disguises at the time, and that hadn't stopped working for Kelok, since the canons still saw him as a human, just a filthy, bleeding one who should not be in their house.
In one Miah and Cali mission that was set on modern Earth, they disguise as janitors and directly mention the whole blending in thing.
"Janitors?” Miah said, disdainfully tugging on the uniform shirt. "Why not nurses?”
"Haven’t you ever paid attention to the movies? No one ever notices the janitors in a hospital setting.”
Miah pointed toward the wisps of bright blue hair that had escaped the confines of Cali’s uniform hat. "They might when the janitor in question has hair like that.” She felt the back of her own hair. "You changed my hair to short, but left yours blue? You are so not setting the disguises next time. I can’t believe I let you set them this time.” She scratched her head.
"For the thousandth time! The lice came and went with the homeless person disguise!” He paused to scratch his own head, realized what he was doing and shrugged.
An informal sort of thing, or a formal sort of thing?
I like the theory of how the the PPC SEP fields function. Nobody's Problem is a cool idea.
On SEP fields in slightly unusual circumstances, In Kelok and Unger's first mission, Kelok is stabbed by the Stu and his flash patch is sliced through, resulting in a malfunction. He is seen immediately by the next canon character he encounters while Unger isn't seen until Unger does something that draws attention to himself.
They were both in disguises at the time, and that hadn't stopped working for Kelok, since the canons still saw him as a human, just a filthy, bleeding one who should not be in their house.
In one Miah and Cali mission that was set on modern Earth, they disguise as janitors and directly mention the whole blending in thing.
"Janitors?” Miah said, disdainfully tugging on the uniform shirt. "Why not nurses?”
"Haven’t you ever paid attention to the movies? No one ever notices the janitors in a hospital setting.”
Miah pointed toward the wisps of bright blue hair that had escaped the confines of Cali’s uniform hat. "They might when the janitor in question has hair like that.” She felt the back of her own hair. "You changed my hair to short, but left yours blue? You are so not setting the disguises next time. I can’t believe I let you set them this time.” She scratched her head.
"For the thousandth time! The lice came and went with the homeless person disguise!” He paused to scratch his own head, realized what he was doing and shrugged.
Some interesting excerpts from the logs of RC 999:
Mission 3 - Explicit mention of canon-cloaking:
Woman and Andalite turned to see the Weyrleader himself cresting the stairs. Ilraen hid himself behind the dragon, sensing that the presence of a blue alien was not going to be helpful at this time. What was left of the canon helpfully cloaked him in obscurity once more.
Mission 4 - A mention of the SEP field where I probably should have used canon-cloaking:
"This does nae seem tae be the right place," he said, a note of panic in his voice. He had just realized that he was standing mere feet behind Arthas Menethil, the Lich King. He motioned for Nume to be quiet and slowly edged toward the door.
Nume followed more casually, poking crossly at the RA. Not being familiar with the Warcraft Universe, he didn't appreciate the gravity of the situation, and he trusted the SEP field to keep them from notice.
And, not strictly related, but here's me making use of something else that I'm pretty sure got made up for the tech glossary:
"Also," Nume added, "there's a bit of technology in the uniform that specifically keeps canonical beings from re-assimilating with their continuum of origin, should they go there on a mission. It wouldn't do to have agents wandering off to take part in canonical events because they suddenly think they're random bit-characters again. Just think of the continuum contamination if they got killed, in uniform, with their PPC gear on."
Mission 5 - On blending in vs. canonical killing:
On the other side [of the portal], the three experienced a moment of confusion as they suddenly changed from their previous forms to elves. Nume, seeming at home in a Noldorin guise, had been waiting for them with his DORKS, which was currently a jar of jam.
"No need to stress the canon more than necessary by having orcs in Rivendell, with the shape it's in," he said in smug explanation.
Sticking out despite attempting to blend in (and getting away with it):
Despite the presence of four random Elves lurking in the hallway, one of whom was smoking a Sobranie, neither of the thoroughly brainwashed canons appeared to even notice them. They wandered past, and since their dialogue and actions weren't defined, the two of them were practically sleepwalking with jaws slack and eyes blank.
Not being noticed when they really should have been but for extenuating circumstances:
"You know, this is weird. We shouldn't be able to do this kind of stuff! We're twenty-five feet away and the Stu didn't even blink!"
Indeed, Archir appeared not to have noticed any of it. Galadriel was still cuddling him and rubbing circles on his back, which was admittedly something that would've distracted anybody, but the thrashing homicidal maniac normally would've attracted some attention.
Suicide glanced up at the Words and shook his head. "He's busy," he said bluntly. "Haven't you noticed? Every time we've made a disruption, he's been busy nestling up against some incredibly powerful canon. He's . . . feeding, or something."
Mission 6.1 - Being noticed appropriately and rolling with it:
After being dismissed, Alex and his two supposed partners stepped into the elevator. Orken jumped in after them, followed by Thomas the agent and Ilraen. The Sue gave him a suspicious look.
Orken straightened his tie and effected a thoroughly awful British accent. "We're security. Don't want anything to happen to you before this very important mission you're going on."
The Sue nodded. "Very good! I'm glad to see that nothing will get in our way of defeating Voldemort."
And an explicit mention of the SEP field at work:
The three agents clambered aboard the Hogwarts Express, eliciting a few puzzled looks from random students who weren't used to seeing adults on the train at all, let alone in Muggle suits. However, the looks slid off them as soon as they landed thanks to the combination of the Sue's presence changing things to accommodate the idea and their own SEP fields.
Mission 7 - Hiding in plain sight with help from the SEP field when there's no canon to rely on:
With Nume in the lead, the agents crossed one by one into the Word World of the story. They found themselves in a Generic Room, featureless except for one window and a bed. They could see through the window that "the sky was blue out." In the bed, there were two people, one of whom was stirring under the covers. There was nowhere to hide and no canon background to blend in with, so the PPCers clustered in a corner and kept still, relying on their Somebody Else's Problem fields to keep them from being noticed.
And one from RC 1110, Mission 3 - The SEP field noted likely to be ineffective:
He crept forward and slipped down into the dell, careful to disturb the ground as little as possible. With the hobbits and Vanyagorn on high alert, his SEP field wouldn't stand up to so much as a hard look in his direction.
Apart from these snippets, there's generally a lot of sneaking around, keeping their distance, finding cover, and/or blending in with the background, the success of which isn't explicitly attributed to either the canon or the SEP field.
I leave it to someone else to analyze this and determine what, if anything, it means.
~Neshomeh
It seems like your explicit mentions of the SEP field barely distinguish it from the canon-cloaking, except in Mission 7 (where, I note, one of the two characters in question is a canon - and did you consider hiding them under the bed? [Ducks]).
My other question/ponderance is: how widely-known are the SEP fields? I mean among agents, not writers. Because the situation - entirely apart from how they actually work - seems to be one of the following:
-The agents mostly don't know about them, which is why Jay and Acy don't mention them. They were invented/adapted by Makes-Things waaay back in the day (they're mentioned in Origins 9), and have been used ever since.
-The agents are generally aware of them, which strongly suggests they didn't exist in J&A's time, and were brought in to compensate for the further weakening of canon. That would necessitate a minor edit to Origins, but that's okay.
Frustratingly not helping either way is Peter's breakdown in Swansong. He claims that:
'Everyone except us has all kinds of wiring under those things. They say it’s an SEP generator, but I don’t believe it. It’s a contact neuralyser, designed to wipe people’s brains the instant they realize what’s going on.'
(Which, duh, is obviously crazy, though I seem to recall people thinking that I was using the person having a psychotic episode to retcon it...)
... but doesn't clarify whether 'they say' refers to the Flowers or the agents.
So is there a clear consensus or conspiracy of silence in the missions? Or should I just edit Origins and leave the question open?
hS
Maybe the agents being largely aware of them is just something that has happened over time? They existed in the time of TOS, but no one much knew about them. PPC tech in general was more restricted and mysterious at that time, I think.
Over time the agents who knew about it told others who told others and it slowly snowballed into a pretty general knowledge.
I always thought of my first agents knowing about it from the beginning, but they don't actually mention it directly until their 7th mission. The same one they are janitors in. (Agent Miah means with a tranquilizer when she says this, btw)
"I’d shoot you, but then I’d have to write the charge list,” Miah replied, patting her holstered tranquilizer dart gun.
Cali smirked at her. "Suuuure you would. People in HQ might not notice someone dragging a body wrapped in a sheet around the halls, but I bet it would break the SEP field here. Uh, how far ahead did you read on this?”
It's mentioned in the first mission for Kelok and Unger, but not explained, just mentioned as if it is assumed to be common knowledge.
But, my real point here is that none of my agents were in the PPC before 2008 (no missions before 2010), and three of them joined in 2010. There is a lot of time for knowledge to spread between TOS and my stuff, and even more between TOS and now.
It does help if it is simply unreliable against Sues. As in don't move, don't speak above a whisper, they might overlook you if the narration doesn't call for them to notice you.
Kinda like this video. http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/gorilla_experiment.html I get frustrated and stop counting, so my perception widens.
I view it as hiding because the Sue might not be distracted with whatever she's thinking about. Being out in the open is a gamble that might work. Shouting or other things that get attention just throw the odds against you... kinda like how acting sneaky will draw attention, but not sneaking might let you sneak by.
Basically I think that it works on Rule of Funny.
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1-GcEQa0-EczvbrIzqCo7gUoZFmzMngbwU85a3KuYzPM
All four of them caught their breath. The scene had abruptly shifted into the Sue’s room, and she was lying on her bed, gazing at a notebook--barely two feet from any of their heads. Silently, like burglars inches from being caught in the act, the group picked itself up and shuffled to the other side of the room.
Silas hissed, as soon as he dared to breathe again. “Charging for unmarked scene shifts and endangering Agents.”
“That was too close,” Fritz agreed. “This bit isn’t half bad, though...”
The Sue is reading a notebook. The reason the agents go unnoticed is that she's so absorbed in it that she doesn't look up. They then move as silently as possible to the far side of the room - presumably into some form of unmentioned cover. 'Silas hissed, as soon as he dared to breathe again'; he didn't dare breathe because doing so might have made the Sue look up - and them being in her bedroom might have been difficult to explain!
Yes, it somewhat strains credibility that they could pop into existence two feet from someone and she'd not notice - that's where Rule of Funny comes in, because having them sneak away in terror, and Mary being so absorbed and/or oblivious that she still doesn't notice them - is funnier than them simply appearing on the far side of the room. But there are few-to-no situations where appealing to the Rule of Funny would justify making agents invisible to a Sue. How would it? If someone can't see you, you don't interact with them - that's less funny, not more.
hS
The first, is - well, yes, the canon should ignore the agents. They don't exist in the Words, and so therefore, unless they draw attention to themselves, it shouldn't matter what species they are.
For the parts where they do need to interact with the canon, as well as simply to make sure they avoid attracting attention by their very existence, there are Disguise Generators. Jay and Acacia basically became orcs (or Uruk Hai, I forget) for one mission.
A Thousand apologies