Subject: Gee, thanks, hS.
Author:
Posted on: 2014-05-13 08:15:00 UTC
I'm never going to look at ambulances and hospitals the same way ever again.
Subject: Gee, thanks, hS.
Author:
Posted on: 2014-05-13 08:15:00 UTC
I'm never going to look at ambulances and hospitals the same way ever again.
And from what I can gather, they seem to be a cross between the Land of Toys from Pinocchio (the original novel) and the experiments of Dr. Ewen Cameron. Protip: do not look up the experiments of Dr. Ewen Cameron. The man was vile.
My question is this: is this the right interpretation? I mean, the whole methodology of the DoA is deeply suspect in my opinion, because I'm of the belief that the PPC forcing someone to be happy is no better than badfic Words forcing someone to be sad, but I'll be the first to admit that I'm not as well-versed in PPC departmental arcana as some of the veteran Boarders here.
Answers on the back of a postcard addressed to Mrs. Trellis of North Wales, please.
It's an off-the-cuff attempt to answer the question of 'exactly how nasty can you make the PPC sound - without changing what they actually do?'. It's more inspired by my own comments than wobbles' post, but it seemed better to put it at the top of the thread.
Truly twisted take on things. It was a pleasure to read, except for the whiplash when it didn't go where I was expecting. (I thought the DOA was taking some villains and trying to make them happy.)
I do think that the original point has weight, unless you want to create a division towards using "healing sex." The department of angst might loop into "easy conversion" territory without care.
...I'm sorry, I haven't a clue.
(Well, someone had to do it!)
... we can do the same 'render the department down to its basics and make it sound creepy, horrible, and downright immoral' to any department in the PPC.
The DMS: kill people's girlfriends and then make them forget about it (because it doesn't count if they never know it happened)
The DBS: drive out the gayness! Only straight people are allowed in our fandoms!
DOGA: Firebomb entire countries because we don't like one of their former inhabitants.
&c &c. The fundamental difference in all these cases is that the thing that's being removed is uncanonical. It was never meant to be there, so getting rid of it by what would otherwise be morally suspect (or downright morally hideous) methods is acceptable. Sort of like:
The police: pulling people off the street or out of their houses and putting them in chains.
The fire brigade: spraying high-pressure water over people's belongings.
Ambulances: kidnapping unconscious people and taking them to massive complexes full of others like them in order to inject them with strange substances and cut their skin with knives.
hS
I see your point, but I think it can be hard to draw the line about emotions in certain continua, particularly the one I'm focusing on, Twilight. Wobbles is a recovering bit from a Twilight angstfic, and while I've seen a lot of Pinkie Pie antics being hurled at people by the DoA, there's very little in the way of actual therapy being offered by them as far as I've been able to make out from the material available. No doubt you'll prove me wrong about this, possibly with an example of how the Samaritans are secret mind-rapists or whatever, but I'm genuinely squicked by what they do.
Take Twilight. More specifically, take New Moon, which is the second book in the series for those lucky enough to not know what I'm talking about. It's a story that's absolutely riddled with idiotic, pointless angst between cardboard characters. If a DoA mission was sent to a New Moon badfic, I imagine it'd be fairly tricky to judge what was canonical pointless miserable whinging and what wasn't. Maybe that's all covered by FicPsych, Iunno, but even if it is, dropping someone who's had their brain bombed flat by cuddly toys and Prozac into their tender embrace does not sound like an easy thing to fix.
That's why they pay us such big salaries. ;)
Seriously, it could be equally hard to determine whether a character is OOC - except we have CADs for that. The agent's job is to determine whether something is canonical or not.
Taking New Moon as an example, having Bella angsting over Edward to any degree is probably canonical, since she, y'know, tries to kill herself over him. Having her go suicidal over Jacob wouldn't be canon-friendly, since she only vaguely mopes about him. Equally, Edward trying to kill himself would be canonical (since he does), but, oh, Alice having a breakdown over E&B wouldn't be. Except insofar as she's a walking permanent breakdown.
Yes, it can be tricky to determine whether something is in or out of character - but, uh, that's their job.
And no, the Department of Angst don't provide therapy, and the Department of Mary-Sues doesn't provide well-written OCs. What both departments do is remove the uncanonical influence long enough for canon to snap back into place. Except in severely broken canons, you don't need to try and fix everything - just break the lock. DOGA doesn't have to move mountains around to repair geographical contraction - the canon does that itself, once there's no badfic holding them in place. Angst doesn't have to solve a character's emotional problems - the canon does that itself, once there's no badfic holding them in angst. The situations are directly analogous.
hS
Or all right, if we're going to have that lovely little digression again.
I've obviously misconstrued the mission statement of the DoA entirely, probably because of my own views about and experiences with psychotherapy. I'm seeing things that aren't there and attacking people needlessly for it... which is probably a very bad thing considering what we're talking about. =]
Sorry to have troubled you.
Oh, as an aside, I'm fairly certain that the whole already/all ready thing is actually from the Anglo-Saxon use of "ready" to mean "counselled". Hence why Ethelred the Unready is a tautology - his name means Good-counsel the No-counsel. I would not be too surprised if that's what all ready originally meant. =]
I am hearing you about psychotherapy. Sometimes it can be like "Donkey for a Day" http://pooh.wikia.com/wiki/Donkeyfora_Day Which I think MLP:FiM ripped off.
As long as the DoA can determine what the baseline for that character is, they should be fine.
Actually, I am seeing a problem. They need to be more in-tune with the characters they are de-angsting. I imagine the agents in the hallways aren't the only ones who react negatively to glitter. For the Good Omens fic, I would have liked to see them try classical music and fluffing an old book in their face. (Shop should already have been saturated with the scent.)
It's probably the difference between fixing an extrovert, (you get them into their element by dragging them to a party,) and fixing an introvert, (wrap them in blankets and distract them with a good movie.) You don't fix an introvert by trying to turn them into an extrovert.
I'm going to look at the actual corpus for a minute, rather than just the Wiki (because older Wiki articles tend to be full of unsupported statements). There are only apparently two DOA missions (technically, by the way, Action departments have all-caps acronyms, so it's DOA rather than DoA):
-In the second mission, the only treatment seems to be stomach-pumping a badfic-induced alcoholic and then neuralysing him.
-In the first mission, we have this introduction:
Lasa clawed caked glitter out of her face and continued to rifle through the cupboard. ‘So did I. But that’s not what’s in the cupboard. Instead we have glitter. And balloons. Chocolate. Origami paper.’
‘Well the Aloe Vera told us we had to cheer up canon characters who were angsty. So I guess we-‘
‘What? Put on a circus act? Apparently that’s not going to be enough. Listen to this. We’ve also got an industrial sized jar of Prozac. An industrial sized jar of something called ‘PPC-modified Benzodiazepine - Addictive Properties Completely Removed!’ and something else called ‘Perphenazine; Completely Elf-Safe!’ And a book, mysteriously entitled ‘Psychotherapeutic Drugs for Dummies – A Reference for the Rest of Us.’’
‘We’re supposed to drug them? I thought the Department of Fictional Psychology handled that?’
‘Says here,’ and Lasa waved the synopsis of the Department’s ‘functions’, ‘that if they’re really bad then they do go to the DFP, but if we can deal with it ourselves, then we should. And, if possible, without recourse to drugs.’
Mombi hauled herself across the room and peered short-sightedly at the labels on the jars. ‘We’re going to have to come up with something else to call these. I mean, ‘Benzodiazepine’. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.’ She pushed the huge jars of pills aside to reveal . . . more jars of pills.
‘What are these?’
‘Bleeprin,’ read out Lasa, ‘Can we give Bleeprin to canon characters?’
‘I guess,’ said Mombi uncertainly. ‘Ones that have been squicked really badly, perhaps. And look here;’ she hauled a bag out of the bottom of the cupboard. ‘We’ve got an exorcism kit.’
Then, in the actual mission, we have this:
‘Excuse me? The where?’
‘I think she means Hell. This angst is reaching excessive levels. Glitter rain time, I think,’ said Mombi, checking her wristwatch Angstometer. ‘Will you do the honours?’
Lasa took the glitter jar and the telescopic stepladder that Mombi fished from the Bag (which had been based by Makes-Things on Mary Poppins’ bag and had unfathomable depths. Mombi swore she had a particle accelerator in there, although Lasa doubted this) and, climbing to a height of about four feet, started gently raining glitter on the angsting angel. Mombi, constructing saccharine balloon-animals and origami figures, accidentally let one of her pink poodle balloons go. It bounced softly past Aziraphale, over each of his feet, and off into the opposite corner of the bookshop without him noticing. The atmosphere was starting to get so sweet and sugary that even Lasa started feeling slightly happier, but it appeared to have no effect on the angel. The blonde agent called down to her partner.
‘Mombi, this isn’t working. I think we’re going to need the light.’ Mombi rooted around in the Bag some more, and produced what looked like a torch. She passed it up to Lasa, who turned it on. Immediately the room was suffused in a warm, sunshine-like yellow light.
Still nothing.
‘What are we going to do? This isn’t working.’
Lasa thought hard, then switched off the torch and screwed the lid back on the glitter jar.
‘What are you doing?’
‘We drug him up, leave here, and go follow Crowley. The Words are recording some heinous errors there, and he’s coming to see Aziraphale. We nip back, grab a Bad Slasher and exorcise the pair of them. Two birds, one stone. Bang. Easy as pie. *Pigeon* pie.’
Mombi shivered. She quite liked pigeons. But she handed Lasa the spray hypodermic (blatantly stolen from the Red Dwarf continuum by Makes-Things, like so much of their equipment), packed with benzodiazepine, nevertheless.
And this:
‘Um, guys?’ began Mombi, tugging at Lasa’s sleeve. Lasa half-turned, impatiently, and saw what Mombi was worried about. Aziraphale was bouncing off the walls. Literally; his angelic powers being of great help here.
‘Ooooh, we’re screwed,’ said Trojie very seriously. ‘How much did you give him?’
‘The normal dosage for a human of his height and build,’ said Lasa, beginning to look concerned. ‘Why?’
‘Because supernatural beings have much more sensitive metabolisms than humans. Look, let’s sort out Crowley and then get to Aziraphale. Might have to take him to the Doc.’
‘We can’t leave him like this!’ cried Mombi. She was right to worry. The angel had spread his wings and was hovering around the lightbulb, making ‘pow!’ noises and incinerating things with miniature bolts of lightning. Intermittently he would hum snatches of the 1812 Overture.
This all suggests that the DOA has two methods: the circus act (which doesn't work), and the drug-and-neuralyse technique. Since - as Neshomeh pointed out - taking uncanonical drugs into Word Worlds shouldn't really be done, perhaps the next person to write the DOA should upgrade their techniques (based on the fact that their 'primary' method didn't work anyway): take a slower approach to the circus show that will lighten the mood over several scenes, and break them out gently. If that doesn't work - which it should most of the time - create a hybrid tasp-neuralyser which hits them with a concentrated burst of happy to break the angst-lock, then switches it off and immediately neuralyses them. If you wire them together like that, it would be impossible to misuse it (and leave them remembering the tasp effect, which could lead to addiction).
hS
PS: 'rede' means 'counsel', and is the word in the name of Æthelred Unræd. The OED seems to think that 'ready' derived from an unrelated (though identical) word; they link 'rede' to Middle Dutch 'raet, rait, raedt', but the root of 'ready' to Middle Dutch 'reet, reede, rēde, ree'. That latter suggests that 'ready' might be connected back to 'right' - as in 'upright'. I'unno. Linguij iz hart. ~hS
Rereading the first mission, I think the agents' problem was that they were too impatient. Sunlamps are a common treatment for Seasonal Affective Disorder, and that sounds like what they tried with the flashlight ... but it takes time.
I'm never going to look at ambulances and hospitals the same way ever again.
The two others addressed this a bit, but it seems to me your reservations might be more in how the DoA's purpose is worded than what they actually do. Their job isn't "force unhappy people to be happy" unless you strip it right down to its barest bones minus any context. If my friend is massively, uncharacteristically depressed, am I a bad person if I try to cheer him up?
...Aaaaaaaand Neshomeh basically said what I was going to while I typed this (except the "ignore it if you want" because selective continuity bugs me), so I'll just leave you with that rhetorical until I think of a new thing to contribute.
Dear Mrs. Trellis,
I think "forcing them to be happy" is inaccurate. They're not leaving the characters in a state of uncanonical happiness, merely driving out an uncanonical force of angst long enough for the canon to take over. It's not significantly different from neuralyzing them or exorcizing them to induce a canon snapback; they're just doing it with anti-depressants, balloon animals, and puppies.
That said, I am a little dubious about using something like Prozac in a world where it doesn't belong, like Middle-earth, but presumably that's heavily discouraged, just like non-canonical weapons are discouraged.
Bottom line, though: This is the PPC. It's meant to be played for laughs, so putting a "so vile you shouldn't even look this up" spin on it is way off. If it rubs you the wrong way regardless, the recommended response is to simply carry on with your own spin-off like it doesn't exist. For instance, I will never mention Bleep-Blaps, Bleepnerds, or half the other Bleep-things in my spin-offs, because I personally think Bleeprin derivatives have reached the point of absurdity (and not the good kind). That doesn't mean other people can't have fun with them, though; it's just that I'm old and crotchety and prefer the classics. {= )
~Neshomeh
P.S. I hear North Wales is lovely this time of year.
Well, I'm no expert either, but it seems to me using their methods on stories with lots of angst is like watching a classic cartoon after a rotten day; the act of laughing at the characters gets your mental state/bodily chemicals back to normal, so making the fic's characters laugh will cancel out the angst. Also, they're new according to the Wiki; I'm sure they'll work out a proper way to do things.
You raise a good point about the "don't force people to be happy" thing. It never works and usually looks creepy.
It might be interesting to see what happens if they get an angst alert for someone who is about 20% OOC but just a little over-the-top.
Sofar I'm seeing that they saved someone from alcohol poisoning and exorcised a character.
What would happen if they ran into Batman?