Subject: One event that did work well...
Author:
Posted on: 2014-04-28 10:03:00 UTC
...was the Blackout, which happened - about a year ago now? An RP started up on the Board, then several people also wrote interludes for it. Overall, it was agreed that the format worked very nicely, without causing the major ructions of an 'emergency'.
According to the timeline on the Wiki, there hasn't been one since 2009, and even that one is debated as an actual emergency.
But anyway! What I wanted to know was how exactly such emergencies came to be a part of PPC canon, and if anything like that might happen again in the future (because if the last 'real' emergency was back in 2008, that would give any of the PPC's enemies six whole years to plot and prepare).
What prompted this was the appearance of the SO and the Marquis in one of the below threads; cracks in the fabric of the universe are generally not a good sign...
I don't know how they got started. I think I still count as a Newbie here. But I can guess that the reason was that, as the universe of the PPC became more expansive, community events, known as Emergencies, became part of the canon.
Again, still a Newbie, don't know if I'm right, but that is my educated guess.
Something I never understood, though. Does anyone know how these things were organized? Because it seems like a lot of work, getting a cohesive story out of so many members, who likely had different ideas on where they thought the storyline should go. I am just amazed by how those were organized, and if anyone could fill me in on that, I would appreciate it.
...was the Blackout, which happened - about a year ago now? An RP started up on the Board, then several people also wrote interludes for it. Overall, it was agreed that the format worked very nicely, without causing the major ructions of an 'emergency'.
HQ-wide, minor events, things that aren't going to force everybody into a tidal wave of plot, but things that will happen to everybody.
They don't have to involve danger or even involve all of HQ. For example...
FicPsych needs more space, so they're expanding (don't ask what they're expanding into; the math for it hasn't been invented yet). In the meantime, they've taken over the Cafeteria and Lounge as temporary housing for some of the displaced patients.
As a consequence...
--Agents might portal to World One and go shopping for food supplies.
--People with nursing experience might volunteer to help with the extra workload as displaced patients settle in on cots and couches.
--Someone opens a bar in their RC, seeing as the Lounge is now unavailable for relaxation.
--One or two canons move into the kitchen and decide to become chefs. FicPsych allows it for the therapeutic value; there's been entirely too much Generic Food at Hogwarts and Redwall lately.
--Agents who are too Insane to work but not too Insane to let out on a field trip go to stay with former partners while walls are being knocked down.
Stuff like that might be interesting. (The FicPsych example would, naturally, need to be handled by the people who write FicPsych to begin with.) Participate if you want; if you don't, you don't have to. Anything that doesn't force participation, anything that doesn't permanently change HQ, would be fun to play with.
Maybe should have a rule that we do a bit of brainstorming before we start the actual RP, so that people can warn each other off things that could get too silly or annoying.
Otherwise you get not-at-all-thought-out ideas like mine. Hee hee...
The FicPsych thing is a pretty good idea (and yes, I've thought about this one!) and I think it would make for some funny/interesting interactions between disgruntled agents. And if any canons happen to get out of the Lounge...
I probably shouldn't finish that thought.
So, FicPsych expanding?
FicPsych is chronically understaffed as a rule, and they've always seemed to have plenty of space. More than enough now, I'd say, since most canon characters get neuralyzed in the field these days.
That said, if what's wanted is an excuse to bunk people in the Cafeteria, there are other ways to make the department unlivable for a period of time. Someone could have flooded the place with laughing gas, or that reverse-gravity spell from the Triwizard Tournament; or maybe some desperately psychotic canon summoned a monster/swarm and it's on a rampage; or maybe the Four-S finally failed catastrophically like it's been threatening to do for years, and no one can hear themselves think over the obsessed mental chatter about Justin Bieber (or whoever the top teen idol is now); or any number of other things.
Just try not to imply that things are going wrong because the staff are incompetent. I created most of them and have a lot of respect for the ones I didn't, so that rather annoys me. ^_^;
~Neshomeh
An agent, or pair of agents, portals into FicPsych and accidentally lets something through like your suggested laughing gas or gravity-reversal spell. Or someone was tinkering with their console and somehow managed to screw up the sound system all over HQ. Nothing super-serious, but problematic enough to change things up a little.
And I don't think anyone in their right minds would dare call the staff incompetent. Without them, the PPC would have a lot more trouble getting canon characters back to normal.
Anyway, I should probably stop making suggestions, as all of mine have been pretty dumb in hindsight.
What would happen if the Ironic Overpower found a copy of the 'Things I Must Not Do At The PPC' list?
There is a long tradition (which is sadly uncitable, due to the Board archives not going back nearly that far) of Agents and Flowers showing up on-Board to say things; it happens when someone thinks it's the best/funniest way to make a point (which is what I was doing when I posted as the Marquis). On certain special occasions, it has meant that there's a metafictional breach - but it does not have to mean that all the time.
I know you weren't the (only) one to subscribe to that interpretation - Sergio, Des, and PC did the same thing - but I think it's an interpretation that can be rather damaging to our goal of having fun.
Oh, here's an example - no-one read that as 'the agents of SIELU have infiltrated the Board'. It was just... funny. Sometimes things can just be funny.
(Emergencies have already been adequately covered; but I think this post means I need to finally start The Ispace Wars to look at 'any of the PPC's enemies' some more)
hS
That's why my characters responded in a "oh no not again" kind of fashion instead of like "CODE RED CODE RED THIS IS NOT A DRILL". I was trying to emulate the kind of posts I vaguely remembered Justin Agent and others in the DIO making when agents and boarders collided, albeit in a short story format as opposed to a post.
Apparently "fun" as a collective idea is still a concept that escapes me.
There are maybe three ways to react to that kind of post: silliness, humour, and seriousness. Silliness is to simply assume that that's what it is - someone being silly, nothing to do with canon. Humour is to treat it as a thing that's actually happening, and deal with it humorously. Seriousness is to assume that the multiverse is breaking down and Mary-Sues will soon be occupying the Empire State Building (because it's, liek, the biggest one, so it must be the mostest important!) unless we crush this foolishness immediately.
'Fun' covers both silliness and humour; your response was humour, whereas I was expecting silliness, and it threw me off. I hadn't actually thought about this before, so I leapt to the assumption that you-and-others were dropping into seriousness. I apologise.
hS
(I expect this is a mix of silliness and vague seriousness, though I could be entirely wrong...)
"But why the Empire State building?" Tony Stark let his head fall back. "Seriously, why can't anyone ever take over a club?"
"Speak for yourself," Dean Winchester replied. He checked his gun's magazine as he grumbled. "We never get to deal with stuff like that."
"Uh," said Dean's brother, Sam. "Aren't you forgetting Lucifer?"
"That was different," Dean retorted. "He didn't take over buildings, just the world."
"Well, we've had to deal with things like a giant slug eating the Statue of Liberty," Clint Barton put in. He sighed. "That was a day and a half. We had to call in Daja Kisubo--smith-mages are a big help with slugs."
"What I don't understand," put in PPC Agent Edgar Sullivan, "is why you're all together in the first place. How did you even manage to meet?"
Edgar's partner, Agent Agen_t, glanced over at him from where ze had been watching the holographic display. "The multiverse is breaking down, Sullivan. These canons meeting was only the beginning--"
"I know, I know," Edgar said with a sigh. "Sues in the Empire State building. Sounds like it'd be a regular Tuesday in the DMS."
"Obviously, these are signs of impending doom," said Hermione Granger. She widened her eyes at the looks she got. "Isn't that what you're supposed to say in situations like these?"
"Seems out of character for you," Feanor said. He was sitting cross-legged on a table, absorbed in his task of fitting wires together in a sublimely beautiful pattern. "Of course, worlds colliding tend to have that effect. Aha!" He grinned at his wires, and began to twist the entire design. "This will be good..."
"Speaking of out of character," the Ninth Doctor said mildly, "you're a good example right now. Of course, we should probably save the world from these Sues just now, shouldn't we?"
"Isn't that my line?" Rose Tyler asked.
Edgar and Agent exchanged glances.
"This isn't good," Edgar murmured, and Agent nodded. "We should probably go back to HQ. Or radio for assistance."
Agent frowned at him. "We don't use radios."
Edgar frowned right back. "It's 1945. Of course we use radios."
"No, it's 2014." Agen___t eyed zir partner. "Have you been replaced?"
"What?"
Over on the holographic display, the camera zoomed in on the Empire State building.
"We don't, leik, want to rool teh worldz!" one Sue said, tossing her hair as she stared into the camera. "We just liek whant a peice of cake~that is'nt a lieeeee--"
"Dost not listeneth to yonder wencheth," put in a Shakespeare!Sue. "We eth shallest conquereth the worldseth and liketh unstrideth they like a colossith! Ehteth~!"
"Oh, god, turn it off," Skye moaned. "I can feel my brain dribbling out my ears."
"When did you go British?" Phil Coulson asked. "I thought only Fitzsimmons were British on this plane."
Dean Winchester stared at them. "We're on a plane?" His voice went squeaky. "It's--it won't crash, right?"
"It will now you've gone and said that," Edgar muttered. "Seriously, let's just radio--"
--
And the screen goes black.
But really, you had to put in that line about the multiverse breaking down and Mary-Sues occupying the Empire State building (and I quote: "(because it's, liek, the biggest one, so it must be the mostest important!)"), so of course I couldn't resist :D And, due to that...here's your morning (nearly afternoon, actually) dose of silliness.
Enjoy? :D
~DF
(Completely unbetaed because of reasons).
The Feanor bit was the best. (As in, I laughed the hardest at it.) The Circle of Magic reference had me grinning, though. It's, all things considered, a pretty rare fandom. (And I have got to get around to reading The Circle Opens at some point.)
And I'm rambling. Shutting up now.
(Really, that was hilarious, though.)
-Aila
The OP does raise the decent point that the lack of any real events implies the PPC's enemies have been sitting around doing nothing since '08. I'd actually been thinking about writing some League stories or stuff featuring other organisations, but if you're already taking that I guess I'd just be copying you.
I can see why they were banned. >_
In that case, we'll need to get the PPC characters together in some other manner. The reason why I asked is because it seems like, aside from little holidays (the Easter Ball in particular comes to mind, since it's the most recent), there really isn't much going on to tie the universe together unless people decide to co-write missions.
So... what could we do to get the HQ characters interacting...?
RPs and cowrites are great ways to get characters together! Ain't nothing wrong with more of that.
Another way to tie things together, though, is intertextuality, which is a term I think JulyFlame coined for the challenge at the end of the hyperlink. The challenge is long over, but the idea is still a good one. Basically, it means referring to other people's stuff in your stuff—mentioning other people's agents, or missions, or other recent events in the course of a story. PPC agents likely (over)hear all kinds of things in the Cafeteria, through the rumor mill, just walking through the halls, etc. Have them talk about them. {= )
Also, never fear to ask others if you can include their characters in your story as cameos. Most of us will probably say yes! It's very gratifying if others are that interested in your characters, and it's fun to be included. ^_^
~Neshomeh
You just need to set it up on the Other Board, set a few rules (the usual set: no godmoding, no controlling other people's agents, etc.), give us a subject, and away we go! It doesn't even need to be super-serious or canon.
For example, consider Lily Winterwood's pillow fight or my New Caledonia RP.
If so, I'm more than willing to get one started on the Other Board. *cough I'm really excited cough*
If not... Eh, I'll probably put something up regardless. I'd really like to see the agents interacting for once. ;)
http://ppchq.dreamwidth.org/
It would be really awesome to get that properly up and running. It might be easier for a lot of people (like me) to participate in a slower-moving, long-term sort of thing which that could provide, too.
~Neshomeh
I just got her account set up and am figuring out how to connect with RC 999, because Nume and Ilraen are two of my favorites. ;)
And wow, you have a post up! I enjoyed it. ^_^ It's nice to get some insight into those first crazy moments of falling into HQ. Normally we just sort of take it for granted that it happens and everything somehow works out fine for the character, despite how overwhelmingly weird it must be.
FYI, though, it's pretty much never okay to write what someone else's characters do/say without their permission. Referring to stuff they have done, yes; making up new stuff for them, no. I'll allow it in this case, because Ilraen would absolutely help out a newbie who crash-landed in the Cafeteria, but ask first next time, 'kay? {= )
Oh, also FYI, you can set the date of your posts to whatever you want. I think Rina arrived in HQ quite some time ago, so you can backdate the post if you want, to make it more accurate to her timeline. I did that on Ilraen's second entry. It's a really nice feature for this fictional stuff, and it's also handy if you want to have a master post (a table of contents for your missions/other stuff, perhaps) that's always at the top.
~Neshomeh, who simply must comment on the journal now.
-ing.
Yeah, I derped there. My apologies. -_-
Also, thanks for the tip about changing the date! I'll definitely have to do that.
Except... My email won't come through and Dreamwidth and I'm unable to make any new posts. Apparently they have trouble with AT&T accounts?
(Despite me being a PPCer since 2011 - am I a midbie?)
How do I Dreamwidth? What's Dreamwidth, exactly?
Dreamwidth is a journal service very much like LiveJournal, only less stupid, or so I'm told by people who know. I never used LJ enough to see where it was stupid first-hand.
How to RP on Dreamwidth:
1. Create an account for your character(s).
2. Choose a journal skin that suits your character(s), upload icons for them, etc. There are lots of beautiful skins to choose from.
3. Post in-character stuff in your character journal if you want to.
4. Post in-character stuff in comments on other people's character journals if you want to.
5. Post in the RP community if you want to. RP then takes place in the comments, which are threaded. This is usually in third person.
I've got two character journals for my guys, rc999 and jennirobinson. I keep meaning to use them more, but it's no fun if no one else is doing it.
I guess you're a midbie if you feel like a midbie. Being around for three years has to count for something. {= )
~Neshomeh
Water gun fight or food fight in a while. Those were awesome. Can someone find the intro to the food fight that Phobos did as Barid the Troll? I loved that!
I think the last water gun fight, unless I missed some while I wasn't paying much attention to the Board, was in late spring/early summer of 2010.
I really like the agent-based bad shipfic game, also, but I suspect it may be planned for later.
Originally posted 8/8/2010
OT: Meanwhile in the Cafeteria...
...it is time for a good old-fashioned food fight. Anyone who wishes to join in may do so, no permission is needed.
And now, I give you the instigating event:
----------
Agent Barid sat at a table in the middle of the cafeteria. He was bored. He was tired of being bored. He sat across the table from a balding agent he didn't know. The man looked run down. Barid felt that he could help.
The troll agent looked at his table-mate and said in his Troll accent (read:Jamaican), "Someone should do somet'in about da Flowers. Dey run us ragged and dere ain't no one saying nuttin'. It's time ta take a stand."
The man looked at Barid. He spoke with a slight Scottish accent. "If we stand up tae them, we'll lose."
"Ya," said Barid, gaining strength as he spoke, "Stand an ya may lose. Follow dem and ya'll live. And when ya console's beepin, years from now, would ya be willin' ta trade ALL da days," he climbed onto the table with a bowl in his hand, "from dis day to dat, for one chance, just one chance, ta come back 'ere and tell da Flowers dat dey may take our vacations, but dey'll never take... OUR FOOD FIGHTS!"
With that final yell he scooped a blue, pudding-like mass out of the bowl and hurled it at someone sitting at the next table.
-----------
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the real reason Barid isn't allowed in the Cafeteria anymore.
-Phobos
I think Barid should stage an assault on the Cafeteria to steal their no trolls sign (and, you know, instigate another food fight).
Barid has numerous plans for the Cafeteria. He is trying to organize HQ's Trolls, at the moment. If that doesn't work, which seems likely, then he might try something more drastic.
There might even be some hints about his plans in some kind of future story. Or maybe not. Who knows?
-Phobos, being totally mysterious. Totally.
I missed that before, thanks for the link.
...allowing characters from the Twilightverse, Mortal Instruments 'Verse and the Eragonverse to get access to Headquarters.
Seeing as how most agents can't stand those continuums, it should be interesting to see who has enough restraint to not kill the canons.
Thoughts?
1) Why would there be sudden disruptions in pre-existing stories? True, a large number of plotholes to Headquarters appear when a suddenly-appearing hole engulfs an area or someone topples into it after shenanigans happen, but in order to send massive amounts of notable canon characters flinging outside of their native world into the null space of Headquarters, there would need to be something going on that was more messed up than even the already-enormously-plot-hole-ridden stories of ill repute could handle.
Unless we're assuming that a large number of canon characters just notice as a group the unstable fabric of the universe just tripped on its own proverbial tail in front of them, and they responded with "Ooh, look, a shiny hole hovering in space! Let's walk through it!", but I'm pretty sure that even in very stupidly written continua, the majority of characters would be smart enough not to do that.
2) Would someone have to RP the displaced canon characters? How exactly would they interact with everybody? Would each person taking part in the RP just have to RP a certain character alongside their agent? That wouldn't be very interactive with the other Boarders, but it's the closest idea I can think of that would work, unless we'd ask the Board at large who wants to be the Honorary Galbatorix or the Honorary Jacob.
3) This is probably going to come across as me being a killjoy, but I'll just out and say it: if canon characters got into HQ, what would most likely happen would be that someone from a Security Department would show up, capture them if necessary, and then either restrain them for PPC checks or immediately portal them back home, and wipe the characters' memories once they were back where they belonged. In addition, the natural plotholes dump things into HQ all the time, and that's usually dealt with without large-scale events. It would be sizably scaled for the people who are sent out to contain the breach(and possibly recruit it if it's a sapient being, susceptible to its new environment, and not an established canon character), but it might not even register to more than a handful of other people.
Essentially, what would be making this breach so special compared to all the others, aside from the more-than-usual number of characters it sends through? There would need to be something in particular that keeps the characters from just being rounded up and sent back, especially since the majority of canon characters would express a desire to be returned to their world to complete their story already in progress and thus wouldn't put up all that much of a fight. Maybe this could be tied into the event that brought them there in the first place, but regardless there would need to be some reason why lots of PPC employees get involved here.
4) If the plotholes "finally destabilize" to make this happen... that might just be a phrasing problem or I'm interpreting it poorly(Though there are only so many things "final" can mean, so I'm not sure how else I can interpret it. Maybe the idea was that something integral to HQ's structure has stretched to the brink and just a short time ago snapped entirely, but that isn't much better.), but that sounds nastily irreversible to me. If things start getting "finally destabilized", we might have to deal with parts of HQ vanishing as the plothole-sustained sections start becoming unable to maintain themselves, or things from the outer reaches bypassing the shields entirely, and the last time the shields stopped being able to keep out trouble, we got Weeping Angels in here, and when they failed in 2006, the Black Cats invaded. Shirtless werewolves and prima donna dragons would be the least of our problems.
Yeah... I guess I didn't think that one through.
*sheepish grin*
I do rather like Miah's suggestion of a food fight. >:)
Also, characters from those universe can already access HQ insofar as anybody can - there's at least a couple (?) Twilight vampires among our agents.
...Emergencies were outlawed at least partially because they put too much strain on all the agents' personal timelines, and everyone had to determine where everyone was, and where they had been to not die, and if they did this in the Emergency or that... It generally made a mess. The thing is, you can still have Emergency-type things. Last year's Blackout was sort of a small-scale one, and allowed to happen because it was perfectly plausible to say that your agent was hiding in the RC or out in a mission and so didn't notice, and Sergio Turbo's Blank Sprite saga has all the hallmarks of an Emergency--except that the knowledge of it is deliberately restricted to his agents, so, again, there won't be any personal timeline problem for the rest of everyone 'cause they have no clue it's even happening.
I think that's all. Someone more knowledgeable about PPC history will probably correct me about something, though. I'd welcome it.
-Aila
There are no more emergencies planned because they were HQ-wide events that required everyone present to respond to them. That's not something that everybody wants, so the closest thing would be an event like the Blackout: if you want in, you can. If not, that's totally fine.
you don't seem to have finished that plotline.
The LMSF is more of a feature of the PPC multiverse than a "plotline" as such. It would be like looking ast a map, pointing at a country, and saying "Why don't we go and solve that?" You don't really resolve an organization, unless you disband it completely or reform it into something else, and there's no real reason to do that, since the League has plenty of future story potential that people just haven't been using, which would be more fun to use than blowing it all up would be.
Besides, the point behind a PPC-wide event isn't someone saying "Huh. We've not had anything big in a while, and I think I have an idea for something new we can do based on this, those, and that over there." That's exactly what we don't want. The Blackout worked because it was developed by a number of people for slightly different reasons based on some weird thing that happened to the Board one day, and only formed into one encompassing event because the group as a whole decided that it would be more fun if we decided to make it an actual canonical thing that happened during a certain period of time than if we left it as a series of jokes. One person imposing their plot advancements on everyone else is what got Emergencies their nasty reputation in the first place.