Subject: Trainees
Author:
Posted on: 2014-05-12 16:15:00 UTC
I'm seeing some stories that seem to have trainees follow along with an established agent pair before getting paired up.
I'm assuming that it's rare to just take two people who have never been on a mission before and hope they survive?
I'm still having trouble finding the PPG fics, so I'm not sure how things are done.
Is World One the name of Earth where all of these stories exist? (Our world.)
Do PPG agents have any powers, or is it a case of having to come from a universe where powers aren't special / being a member of another race.
What do minis do? How do they typically behave?
As far as mission preparation. Does at least one of the agents read the fic beforehand, or do they just know or research the canon?
What happens when you come across a replacement Sue and try to exorcise it? What if you mistake an insert as a possessed background character?
I was wanting to use a strange set of CAD. Basically they would be a set of analog equipment that is difficult to read, but has easy-to-fix failure points.
Basically most agents go after the digital devices because the risk of explosive failure is worth not having to do the math.
I'm seeing some stories that seem to have trainees follow along with an established agent pair before getting paired up.
I'm assuming that it's rare to just take two people who have never been on a mission before and hope they survive?
I mean, we'd hope that at least one of them has some form of training - I can't think of any instances off the top of my head of two people wandering into HQ and being sent straight out on a mission - but partnering two agents with no experience happens all the time. From the Flowers' viewpoint, it makes sense: the agents already know they're not all that concerned for them, and training newbies takes more work than just giving them, ah, 'on-the-job' training.
Of course, where circumstances allow, they'll stick a newbie with someone who's actually been out before - but the Flowers really don't like breaking up partnerships, so that relies on an agent dying, going mad, or, technically, retiring. And they don't do that on schedule. The 'intern'-style training is occasional but not, as far as I know, common.
hS
If you go into a fic, are you required to do the fi...il the end, or just build up enough charges?
What if there is a sequel to it? Do you need to do both? Do you even need to start at the first one?
What if another author took up the badfic's continuity and kept going?
My vampire is allergic to water, and I'm not comfortable with saying that pills or chocolate are digestible.
I would like to introduce two new bleep-products based on stop-smoking aids.
One is a dermal patch. Useful because it could also be forced onto a raging agent.
The other is an electronic cigarette and might catch on because it works faster than the pills.
There's a long history of people making up new Bleep-products as it suits them, so there's no reason you can't. As with most things, though, the best way is to do it in a story (for which you need Permission). That way it's more than an idle thought tossing in the breeze.
And, y'know, there's already half a million of them. I think the patch distinguishes itself by having an actual niche for agents who can't ingest solids, but there are already Bleepettes, with and without tobacco. At some point I really have to wonder how much is enough. ^_^;
~Neshomeh
Now I feel much less conflicted about whether or not I should have my former-criminal agent smoke.
Agent Cadmar tended to be...cranky when he (or she depending on the timeline) ran out.
The League of Mary-Sue Factories has waited. It has planned. It has even schemed, plotted, and jived (don't ask). And now, in a single, well-executed assault, it has struck.
The PPC's Bleeprin supply has been destroyed. Every single Bleep product is now out of stock. And while the staff of Medical, FicPsych, and DMSE&R try desperately to synthesise more, all hell breaks lose in HQ.
PPC: Addition. Coming soon never to a console near you.
(Of course I'm joking. Hilarious though it would be)
hS
I was reading about the all-purpose department, and noticing the part about "When a fandom is so underrepresented that it requires anyone who can cover it to cover all of it." http://ppc.wikia.com/wiki/All-Purpose_Department
I was wondering if there was a division for things so obscure that the head is a non-action agent whose sole job is to keep track of the floaters who would know about these barely-represented areas. It looks like Gargoyles and Iron Giant would be too small to have its own division, and I would have stuck Legacy of Kain in there if it didn't already exist. (I'm thinking that my own agent would bounce between the Legacy of Kain and whatever fandoms her floater partner would be covering.)
There's nothing that has an agent in charge of it, no, but there are the following:
- All-Purpose Department: handles any fic type for one fandom.
- Department of Floaters: handles all fic types in all fandoms.
- Department of Mary Sues/Department of Bad Slash, Freelance Division: handle one type of fic in any fandom.
- Department of Mary Sues/Department of Bad Slash, various genre-based divisions: handle one type of fic in any of a set of fandoms (i.e. Anime/Manga, Sci-Fi/Steampunk, Video Games).
- Department of Mary Sues, Sub-department of Rare Fandoms: handles Suefic, agents specialize in obscure fandoms that aren't covered by another DMS division, especially older fandoms.
I'm betting LoK got folded into the DMS Video Games Division. Unfortunately, I don't think Phoenix is likely to ever return to write her spin-off. {= (
By the way, partners are always members of the same department and division. The way you referred your agent's "floater partner" made me wonder if you knew that; sorry if you did.
~Neshomeh
I would have liked my main agent to be officially paired with Phoenix, assuming that's the Razielim that's stuck in the state of change, just working with floaters in the unlikely event that the cocoon-form is not permanent.
I guess I'm having trouble, since I want to tackle stuff in categories that haven't been touched by PPC as well. My agent would be most-suited to LOK, but I want her to bounce between that and floaters. I'm thinking that LOK won't keep her busy enough.
I don't really want to mess with the wiki much, even as I get answers that are not easily found there. I assumed that the LOK division was in the All-purpose-department.
I suppose that I could make my agent officially a floater, since the Legacy of Kain division technically has everyone it needs, and she just gets the things that the cocoon can't handle temporarily.
You can't just take characters that aren't being used by their writer unless they specifically give their permission, either to you personally or by making the character(s) free-to-use. Since Phoenix isn't around to give her say-so, Martin (he's the Razielim) and Mira (his partner) are both off-limits. (You could try to get in touch with her, but I kinda doubt she'd give up her characters to someone she doesn't know.)
The previous LoK Division was part of the DMS. And yeah, I'd recommend putting your agent in Floaters if you want her to cover a variety of semi-obscure fandoms and not just target Sues.
~Neshomeh
I wasn't suggesting taking Martin on missions, since he's stuck in the state of change. I was suggesting a line along...
"Well, the Legacy of Kain division doesn't have the workload to warrant another team. However, we will be giving you a few overflow assignments that they cannot handle in an expedient manner."
Samantha is from a non-canon world and she knows it. She's also a bit on the submissive side so will believe seniority even though he's just "off sick." She'll also believe that the state of change can last for years on end.
It's called the Sub-Department of Rare Fandoms, composed of a loosely-knitted bunch of pseudo-divisions from fandoms too small or too little-known to have dedicated presence in, such as MacGyver and A Series of Unfortunate Events. Nominally, it's attached to the DMS, but in practice, it seems to be more like Floaters in execution, possibly because it would be easier to send what little badfic those obscure fandoms get to them even when there's not strictly any Suvian presence. One of the Agents written for the SDRF had three out of his five recorded missions be non-Suvian.
I don't think Gargoyles would be classified as a rare fandom, though. It was a fairly popular show in its day, and even now is still influential and well-remembered. It's probably got loads of fanfiction, but some of it wasn't bad enough to attract the attention of the Boarders and some of it just either didn't merit missions or never had any missions written about it.
Oh, and by the way, an agent pair is going to be in the same Division of the same Department for as long as they're partnered. That's why they're, you know, partners. It's not unheard of that an agent pair would cooperate with a group of agents from another department so frequently that they are practically a combined team unit(see Miah's and Caddy-shack's agents for an example of this), but it's not an official arrangement. Maybe you didn't mean that, but from what I read, you implied that one of your agents would be a Floater and their partner would work for another department entirely, and the PPC doesn't work like that.
It's not entirely dependent on how popular the show was when it was on, or even how many fanfics it has. When the first missions for Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis came out by Indemaat, the fandom was rare within the PPC, even though it was in the top 10 for the TV show fanfics of FFnet. Then again, some fandoms I have done would easily have fallen in that definition.
Really once you place your agents, you can find some reason to do whatever missions you want to. Probably only half of the fics I targeted with Miah and Cali have a Sue. Maybe it would be better to be more focused or just go ahead and officially move them to Floaters, but it is how it has worked out.
Oh, and by the way, an agent pair is going to be in the same Division of the same Department for as long as they're partnered.
I wasn't entirely sure what you meant here. Did you just mean that they have to be in the same thing to be partners? Or that they can't change departments/divisions while they are partners?
There's nothing against anyone being transferred somewhere else, and not even any criteria for where they'd go aside from fandoms and authorial decision, as far as I'm aware. An agent would just need to work in the same place as their partner at any given time, and if they didn't, they'd be given a new one.
Well, I suppose in the out-of-universe sense, the criteria that gets a fandom classified as part of the SDRF would be entirely up to the mission writers. At this point, DMS Stargate is covered by the Sci-Fi and Steampunk Division, but that's only after a few Boarders decided that it was a big enough deal to move it. All of the less specifically-defined parts of PPC canon are nicely flexible that way.
Sorry about not finishing up your beta-reading yet, by the way. I've been pretty busy the last few weeks, and it sort of slipped my mind until recently. I'll get back to it as soon as I can.
I was reading through two of old shames, and wondering something.
What happens if the story is intended to be stupid, or the author is aware that it is stupid and continues? Mine don't fall under parody; I start with a stupid idea and try to drag it into a well-developed story. (It would be tolerable if I knew how to stop the snowball.)
... can be answered by the first, unspoken one: 'Where do I find PPC fics?' There are two answers:
This is The Original Series. This is where it all started. It's one of the three links at the top of the Board, and it's really a good idea to read them.
More generally, the Killed Badfic list is probably the best place to look. Each mission is sorted by the fandom the fic was from, so you can prioritise. If you find an agent or department you really like, look them up on the Complete List of PPC Fiction to find the rest of their adventures.
And since other people have covered your other questions, I'll leave it there.
hS
This helps a lot, and I wish I had seen it earlier.
For the past ten years we've been a community dedicated to writing stories who didn't link to those stories in the header of our Board. Yes, we linked to TOS, and to the Wiki - but we were blithely sailing along without direct links to either Killed Badfic or the Complete List.
Happily, that is no longer the case. ^-^
hS
I imagine the Powerpuff Girls agents would have all of the powers that come from exposure to Chemical X. That is a very large number of powers for a PPC agent to have, so it wouldn't make it very challenging for them to defeat a Sue. They could just be near-invincible at it until they got close enough to hit it with their ice breath.
Agents of any given species or distinction have all of the powers that that species or distinction would normally possess, with extrapolations for changes that can occur within their home continuum(a member of a magically capable species being raised as a wizard), or something that only occurs once they enter the PPC(an agent from a non-supernatural universe beheads a Gil's All-Fright Diner-verse werewolf and as such is transformed into a werewolf themselves), but there are no powers that are given just for being a PPC agent. They can generate portals through the use of their Remote Activators, but that's not really a power.
You can find all currently available PPC stories linked somewhere on the wiki. Some of the links might not work, because some stories have been deleted or made inaccessible, but most of them are there.
World One is... sooort of the "real world". In simple terms, it's the equivalent of our world as it exists in the PPC multiverse. Self-inserts of Boarders are native to World One, World One experiences all of the same social events and intakes all of the same media that our world does, and it has all of the overall tells of the "real world", but World One contains doors into Headquarters, a few retired PPC agents living in seclusion, and a PPC-colonized city in France run by a Flower version of one of the plants from Myst, among other things. It's not the same place, but it's the "real world" for PPC story purposes.
A mini behaves differently depending on its species. Most of them are somewhere between animal intelligence and full-on sapience, with a few even having the ability to speak. Most minis enjoy causing trouble and eating raw meat, most famously bacon.
The Department of Intelligence goes into the fic beforehand, scouts out potential dangers, and sends a summary of the events to the RC of those who are going to clean it up, with notes on particular canon breaks, potential dangers, and the categories that the badfic falls under. It doesn't tell them everything, of course; that would ruin the fun!
When you try to exorcise a character replacement, nothing happens to it. Well, it gets mad at you, but it isn't depowered or anything. Still, that's better than assuming a canon character was replaced and then killing them when they were only possessed. You would get in the worst sort of trouble for making Medical need to take out their resurrection equipment again.
Does magic exist in the PPC universe? As in, could a person from a non-magical reality begin to study spells after becoming an agent? I realize that possible does not mean easy.
The 'PPC universe' is really a sort of jigsaw of all the other universes - a single corridor in HQ might contain tunnels in Middle-earth, Hogwarts, and the Citadel of the Time Lords. It's all coated in Generic Surface anyway, so it doesn't matter what world you're in. ;)
But by long tradition, magic works anywhere in the multiverse. So a Harry Potter native can (unless I'm mistaken) cast spells in Middle-earth (though they probably shouldn't; they'll get told off). And so on.
Of course, a lot of magic systems require an inborn aptitude for it. So a Real World human couldn't become a Potterverse wizard, say, or a Jedi - the magic/Force aptitudes don't exist in her world, and they can't be learnt.
But a magic system that doesn't rely on aptitude, or where the aptitude can be induced? Yes, those can be learnt. Just like a Middle-earth agent can learn to use a gun, even though they don't exist back home. It's just a tool that isn't normally available to them, basically.
hS
It seems that there is a form of magic in Gargoyles that mortals can use, but the wiki points to it needing to be channeled through an artifact. (I might be able to dig up exceptions.) Is it possible to "steal" a fan-created artifact, or do those get locked up someplace in HQ?
...is that it depends on how powerful the artefact is.
If it's no more powerful than a lightsaber, you'll probably be allowed to keep it with no real problems.
Any more powerful, and your stories will need to show any unexpected (but hopefully hilarious?) consequences of a totally untrained character struggling to master such a powerful item.
High five!
Acronyms are hard.