Subject: Oh, frogspawn.
Author:
Posted on: 2014-04-07 17:09:00 UTC
Looks like I can fix the comments half of it without too much trouble (and have done for 08-09); the expand-to-read is different. I'm a bit wary of allowing people to 'edit' - which is what that requires - so I may have to edit the instructions to just tell you to copy-paste the message. Which is a pain in the neck, honestly.
hS
So I'm finally breaking that "two missions curse!" This is actually the second mission I wrote, way back in 2011, even though it takes place after my previous mission. This mission takes place in Epic Mickey and I would rate it maybe just slightly above G, pretty tame. (As far as I can tell, no one else in the PPC cares about EM, but whatever. This is my spin-off.)
This mission incorporates a few things from back while I was writing it:
A) A general movement to avoid violent killing in missions, which had kind of taken over PPC narratives at the time.
B) A writing challenge--started by JulyFlame, I believe--to show characters having an argument and then resolving it. The argument appears in this mission; the resolution is going to be shown in an interlude that follows this. (At the rate I write, start watching for that in 2016.)
C) The Poison Joke RP started by Laburnum and kitsune106. That can be read here: Unfortunately, I just discovered that RP has fallen off the Board. Um . . . did anyone save that? >_> (The search only goes back to 2012 now. I was just looking at 2008 posts while researching minis! What happened?)
Anyway, the actual mission: http://doctorlit.dreamwidth.org/3603.html
I'm a little more unsure of this mission. It doesn't feel as strong to me as my others, but my betas seemed to enjoy it, so I'm interested to hear how entertaining folks find it.
I have a full list of minis, which will wind up on the wiki sometime in the next few days.
First off, let me take off my cap to you (pretend I'm wearing a cap for the purpose of this figure of speech). It's hard to break out of the formula of "snark at the Sue, rage, kill the Sue" that so prevalent in the PPC. But this mission did it in a way that didn't seem forced or out of place. So kudos to you.
I also liked the emphasis on the cartoon nature of the disguises. The scene where Doc gets clunked by the bombs and gets the little flock of books flying around his head is a good example. Very Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It's also nice to be reminded that the disguises are more than just hard light holograms (or whatever we said they were again).
Not too much I can say in regards to problems. I did think that Doc's Gollumesque reactions at the beginning and the end were a bit unrealistic considering what is happening, but that's just a matter of my own taste.
I look forward to seeing your next updates.
I am trying to follow in July's footsteps and live up to the Floaters name by having a good variety of mission types, with more creativity solution-wise than just assassinations. (My first one was pretty ordinary, I guess, but there wasn't much Fahrenheit 451 badfic to choose from, so.)
One of my favorite parts of writing missions is getting to explore the setting of the canon world, and the disguises are frequently a part of that. I especially like to dwell on the nature of unusual disguises, and what the agents experience while "wearing" them.
Doc's Gollum-speak is . . . just part of Doc. I think I might dedicate part of the next interlude to explaining his relationship with books. It's definitely not based on any real life habits of mine, nosiree. That would be ridiculous.
Various people have already mentioned the things I like most about it—the meta, the agents exploring their Toonish forms, the parallel between the choices offered in the game and Vania's decision at the end, the way Millie redeems herself by giving the Heart back. All very enjoyable. ^_^ I remember thinking Doc should have known better than to go investigate the bomb when it didn't go off, because cartoon bombs always wait to go off until the person who set them comes to see why they haven't, but it still made a good gag.
I was a little sad that they threw away the extra paintbrush, though. Probably a wise decision on the agents' part, but taking Sue artifacts as souvenirs is a fine old PPC tradition! I can't help but feel they missed an opportunity for some fun in HQ, or at least some good bartering.
Also, the Poison Joke problem didn't get resolved. Is that something that'll happen in the next interlude?
I caught a couple technical errors:
* "Once she saw Mickey, the two characters introduced each other" - Did you mean "introduced themselves"? Otherwise, Millie is introducing Mickey and vice versa, which doesn't make much sense. I wouldn't put it past the badfic, but I'd think such an odd thing would warrant full inclusion in the mission rather than glossing over it. {= )
* "[Um. No. We’re technically toons right now, thanks to the disguise generator.] She gave a meek grin. [We would have melted, too.]" - The underline continues between the two bits of speech, and that seems to be anomalous.
BTW, I think the argument challenge was probably one of hS's writing challenges. VM wrote a couple of Cafeteria stories for the same one, as I recall.
~Neshomeh
Can't blame the "introduced each other" on the badfic; that one was wholly mine! And the text box speech . . . I couldn't think of a better way to portray that on paper (as it were), but it sure made for a nightmare of htmfail.
I kind of felt that I had to get rid of the paintbrush for Millie's sake. Even early on in writing this, I had an inkling (no pun intended) that I would be using Millie at least in the interlude that follows. Since she's pretty much stuck with the blot powers (can't chuck those through a portal!), she's going to have a bit of therapy and training to keep her Sue powers from taking over her characterization as she gets older, I think. Having that brush floating around HQ somewhere could potentially be a bad temptation for her later OOOHHH I get it. That could be interesting plot. Maybe I will go back and keep the brush . . . (The fact that there's really no explanation for how the brush works beyond "there's a wizard, and magic happened" was also part of my decision to ditch it; I just don't know how the thing works!)
And yes, an interlude is to follow. There was enough stuff left to wrap up that I thought it could stand alone as an interlude. (I'm also hoping for a couple of guest appearances, but they're all from retired-ish members, so that could be interesting . . .)
Oh, and sorry for misattributing your challenge, hS.
Back last August, I archived the Board (in case we wanted to move to Tomash!Board and keep old posts). The archive goes to somewhere in June 2008. I grabbed the RP in question out of the archive and posted it at this beta instance of Board 1.49...
(If anyone has any other threads they want rescued from doom, let me know.)
I quite enjoyed it, even without knowledge of Epic Mickey. (The only thing I know about it is that there's a brush mechanic that may or may not be similar to Okami's.)
I think my favorite part was the rapid-pace time-skips and the way you handled them. I got very vivid mental images.
-Aila
Ōkami's brush mechanic is way more sophisticated then EM's, which is basically "point the Wiimote at the screen and shoot it." The DS game did have a draw-with-the-stylus mechanic, though.
Those time skips were pretty much the biggest physical threat the badfic presented, so I had fun coming up with all the different ways bruises could be earned during that sequence. Then, of course, I culminated it with a potential dip in the Dip Thinner. (Gee. I actually hadn't made that connection to Roger Rabbit before now.)
I liked the part where Millie apologized to Yen Sid and gave his Heart back. Very classic Disney; if only more Sues redeemed themselves like that. (Also, Doc calling his bookcase "The Precious" XD) Have you played Epic Mickey? I heard it was pretty good.
Are we going to see interludes featuring Millie and Olsen in the Nursery? I think that'd be really adorable ^_^
The plot is great and all, but there are some spots where I just got stuck hardcore. (Vania's complaint about Lonesome Manor being hard is really my complaint; I was disappointed in how difficult that part was for me, because it was based on my favorite ride at Disneyland, and I didn't really get to enjoy it because of how frustrated I got.) But then again, I'm a very casual gamer, so maybe it's a fine game and I just stank at it.
That is a very Disney-esque ending, isn't it? I didn't really notice at the time; I was just writing what had to be written! And I'm definitely going to write more of Millie and Olsen Ollie. (Ohlsen is my maternal grandparents' last name; I just can't associate that with a little kid.) They're going to appear in my next two Doc+Vania interludes, and then I'm thinking of doing some stories of them in the Nursery's school, which hasn't been seen (I think) since Oracle of Delphi wrote in it about ten years ago!
So is Olsen's full name Ollie Olsen now? It does sound very Disney-esque, with the alliteration and the soft vowel sounds. That or 1960s Stan Lee, also because of the alliteration.
Anyway. Aside from the badfic rescues that are already adopted by agents, There are a couple of missions that rescued small children from their badfics, like Ava and Jennifer from these two Indemaat missions(the second even doubles as an ex-Sue), and Will and Elizabeth from Cyba Zero's Mulan missions (mentioned as children here here and recruited in the sequel here. There's also the young Khajiit named M'sein created in the Halloween RP, but I'm not sure whether or not he counts as a character written by World-Jumper or simply created by him. You should probably ask first if you plan to include M'sein.
I can try to track down a few more if you'd like, but it might be easier to just ask some Boarders who have adopted badfic children to loan you a few additional classmates. Personally, I'd like to see Herr Wozzeck's four rescues again. The last time that they appeared was pretty enjoyable.
Mostly because I forgot about that RP. I have a tenancy to do that with Board RPs. They sound great, but when I try to participate, things get complicated, real life gets in the way, and I leave Printworthy standing in the middle of a room without ever telling his story of how he became uncanon. Sorry about that, by the way.
Anyway, M'sein. I have no plans for him, so as far as I see it, he's open for use. Actually, because I like the idea of an expanded pool of free-use characters, I'll say that M'sein is Free To Use. Anybody who wants to use him for any reason can do so. All I really know about him is that he is a Khajiit, and Khajiit like to sneak. However, he is not as stealthy as most of his kin. He is less of a jaguar, more of a lion. Of course, that could be because he's a kitten, and more wild now then he will be later. It is up to the future writers to decide.
It's just on the second page now. SeaTurtle responded to one of my posts after it crossed over, so you should be able to reply without problems if you want to.
While I would love to wrap up the two ponies dialogue, I think I let it go stagnant far too long. Besides, the story he was going to tell will be part of an interlude I have coming up at some point. I would say soon, but I have a lot to do, and not a lot of time for writing. Besides, if I were to continue it, I would have to read up on what has happened in the rest of the RP to make sure it all fits together. No, I dropped the ball on this one. I'll try to do better next time.
The school aspect of Nursery certainly hasn't been seen much - oracle and Ekwy are the instances I can think of, and the Complete List seems to back that up. But the Nursery aspect certainly has been - 'Nursery' is still, uh, only four years in the future, for one. I also suspect there are references in Laburnum's stories - both Marsha the triceratops, and Molly Rath the ferret, fit the profile for students.
For that matter, Marsha is 13 in the 'present' of her stories, so if she shows up, she may well be in the school part. I don't know for sure, though.
You could also ask Tomash if there are any Board Archive references to Marsha, Molly, or Moses Taggson; they may well have come up in RPs.
In fact, over in Ozerbord on the Other Board, there are two possibly-relevant RPs: Henry's Birthday features at least a few children, and the 2013 Trick-or-Treat is partially set in the Nursery. So there you go - possibly-relevant information ahoy!
hS
I know we've seen plenty of the Nursery, but I want to look at the training and teaching aspect a bit. or possibly a lot.
I've only seen bits of Epic Mickey and I haven't gotten around to playing it.
The Poison Jokes effects are amusing.
It's great when you describe the settings and the minis. I've only been recently reading missions on continuum I have very little knowledge of (now that I have read some, I got to read some funny ones), so it's great to not feel lost when reading it.
EM isn't super great gameplay-wise, but if you're fairly Disney-nerdy, there are enough little in-jokes and secret areas to explore that it makes it worth it. (The DS sequel had great, challenging gameplay, but is really short. I haven't played EM2 yet.)
I know you said that you're unsure of this one, but I thought it was a well done little mission. Probably a bit shorter than normal, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Plus, it's nice to see some Epic Mickey stuff.
I actually thought the mission had gone on too long, considering the size of the badfic. (Just over three pages, printed out--yes, I print them, don't judge me.)
But if it didn't feel long when you read it, that's good either way.
Doc and Vania had fun conversations this time around, and it was fun to watch them try to get used to their weirdly-altered states and all that. I also like that you didn't kill the Sue this time: Vania's reasoning is actually pretty correct, and I could see why she thought of recruiting her to the PPC. It's always nice to remind people that killing a Sue isn't the only option, you know?
I do think you're right that this doesn't feel as strong as, say, your Fahrenheit 451 mission. I think the main issue is actually something that's not entirely your fault: I think said issue is that the fic being sporked just doesn't have enough material to sustain a PPC mission like this. Its only real sin is that it seems to read like an especially bad synopsis of a prospective fic, and I think that might've restricted the amount you could do with it. Most notably for me, I think that this could have led to the Ostown part of the mission being a hair too long, though take that with a grain of salt since you do manage to get quite a bit to do there regardless.
Other than that one thing, though, it was a good mission, and it's been too damn long since the last one.
And on a side note... I can't be the only one that was thinking of this every time I read Millie's name: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdyCkZpMBlM
There was a bit more "work" to do in this mission, and I'm sorry the narrative suffered for it. Part of the reason for that extra Ostown scene was to get the agents away from the compressing time, which as you say, was the main problem with the fic, and maybe not enough of a funny thing to support a mission on.
But, I'm still glad I wrote this. It was a fun canon to explore, and I even got some recruits and minis out of it!
I actually didn't think of TMM after seeing Millie's name. That's odd for me. I'm tempted to add a scene of Vania singing that song, now . . .
Almost makes me wish that I hadn't been disheartened by the news of the steampunk tease didn't become part of the game in the end.
*shrug*
Oh well.
(Yeah, though how out of place would that be? Just... Just remember to change the "raise your skirts" line to somethin' else, 'kay?)
I've heard about Epic Mickey and it looks really cool, but sadly I've never gotten around to playing it, since I don't own a Wii.
But from your mission you give a really good impression of the game. I like the part about how in the game, you can chose between a quick "evil" solution or a more difficult "good" one (reminds me a bit of Mass Effect) and how it ends up tying into your agents' decision. And much as I love to hate the truly horrible Stus and Sues, it's nice to see one every once in a while who is not truly, irredeemable bad. So it was a good choice of fic to go with that canon.
That's what I liked about this fic; it gave me a chance to put my agents in the shoes of the player just a bit. Same with the disappearing, reappearing Olsen. The whole thing turned delightfully meta!
This is the first of your missions that I've read, so I can't compare it to the others, and I'm only marginally familiar with Epic Mickey, but I noticed two issues in this section: (Now that they were catching up to the story, they were avoiding portals as much as possible to put off the fast forward syndrome as long as possible.) Doc had been reading the Words as well (with difficulty, considering he wasn’t yet good at doing so with glasses) and had questions of his own. You might consider rephrasing the parenthetical so that there aren't two "as ___ as possible"s in one sentence, and as for the second sentence, hadn't it been established earlier that he didn't have his glasses on?
Also, there's a missing comma after "Millie" in You’re with Millie aren’t you?”
I liked the meta angle, though! We've seen how the Word World reacts when the fic is deleted, but this is the first time I've seen where the agents sent into a badfic get stuck between drafts. I wonder what this would've done to the Intelligence agent sent to scout it out. Would they have only been in the first draft, and unaware of the second, or would they have been trapped between versions the way the Agents sent into it later were?
Notably, the version of the badfic that you linked seems to have gone through yet another draft change, since Millie is now an eleven-year-old named Mileena, and Olsen has been written back in.
Oh, wow. It changed quite a bit! And yet . . . the main problem of plot-hopping is still there. And the weird speshul treatment from Yen Sid.
Gosh. "Mileena." "Millie" was already an old-sounding name for a young protagonist, and now it just sounds . . . well. Not like a name any little kid would want to be called. Ever. At all.
At least the grammar and sentence structure seem much improved. In fact, the author has fixed most of the misspellings that caused the minis I collected. I wonder if I technically have to make them go poof now? Ugh. I need to cut down my mission-writing time so these things don't happen.
You know, I had forgotten about Millie getting the blot's ink powers in the end, like Mickey. Her skin color was never mentioned, so I think I'll make her black. We need more agents of color anyway, and it will match up with Mickey's black fur dripping with ink in the game. And Olsen "looked like Mileena's twin" so we get another black character out of the bargain! Sweet!
Since they're from Millie's version of the story rather than Mileena's, they shouldn't be deleted by alterations made to the Mileena draft. That sounds plausible, right? And not like I just made it up to justify keeping the mini-Spatters around because I want to adopt one?
By the way, do you have the full list of minis? The charge list says that the original fic produced fifteen, but only five were ever named in the mission.
I'm going to make a mini page, obviously, but I've been so busy with work I've been doing bits and pieces here and there, and didn't get to it yet.
Unfortunately, nearly all of these minis come from failures to capitalize, rather than being the more fun mangled-set-of-letters variety, but anyway. Here they are:
bolt
blot
shadow blot
Oswald the lucky rabbit
mad doctor
Dark Beauty castle
sweeper
gremlins
seers
sweepers
Clock tower
thinner disaster
hopper
Thinner disaster
gremlin
sprite
What does his/her/its outfit look like?
Why would "Thinner Disaster" need to be capitalized? Is it a specific event in the game that was promoted to proper noun status due to its importance?
sweepers first showed up in Gremlin Village (aka, the "it's a small world" level), so an actual Spatter would have been wearing one of the doll costumes, like this:
But you don't have to be super-stringent about that. I have an idea that mini-Spatters will wind up dressing in different ways depending on the agents they're adopted by, and what department they're in, just like the real Spatters wearing outfits themed to the area they appear in. So feel free to change the costume over time as you see fit!
Also, the mini-Spatters can have one of two color schemes:
These are both concept pieces that were unused in the final games, because I haven't quite beaten you guys over the heads with the canon's theme of forgotten things being relevant again yet. I think I only mentioned one in the mission, because the red-colored concept art hadn't been discovered by the web at large at the time I wrote that part; I'll probably add it in when I follow Nesh's suggestion to keep the brush.
(And yes, I will get all this on the wiki eventually. Probably on Wednesday. #busy season)
As for Thinner disaster and thinner disaster, the Thinner Disaster is capitalized in-game, as seen in this cut-scene (very basic spoilers, already irrelevant to those who have read the mission):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeV-W4qTsXk
It is a major event in the Cartoon Wasteland's history, and a driving force behind the games' plots. (The nice thing about a game with all-text dialogue is that you never have to wonder how something is spelled.) Technically, "heart," "thinner" and "paint" should also be capitalized in this canon, but I decided they were a little too generic to count as minis when they didn't get capitalized. Even I'm not that anal-retentive! (Although if somebody really wants a mini-Spatter named "heart" with which to make Captain Planet jokes, I won't stop you.)
Wow. I never shut up anymore, do I?
sweepers first showed up in Gremlin Village (aka, the "it's a small world" level), so an actual Spatter would have been wearing one of the doll costumes, like this:
But you don't have to be super-stringent about that. I have an idea that mini-Spatters will wind up dressing in different ways depending on the agents they're adopted by, and what department they're in, just like the real Spatters wearing outfits themed to the area they appear in. So feel free to change the costume over time as you see fit!
Also, the mini-Spatters can have one of two color schemes:
These are both concept pieces that were unused in the final games, because I haven't quite beaten you guys over the heads with the canon's theme of forgotten things being relevant again yet. I think I only mentioned one in the mission, because the red-colored concept art hadn't been discovered by the web at large at the time I wrote that part; I'll probably add it in when I follow Nesh's suggestion to keep the brush.
(And yes, I will get all this on the wiki eventually. Probably on Wednesday. #busy season)
As for Thinner disaster and thinner disaster, the Thinner Disaster is capitalized in-game, as seen in this cut-scene (very basic spoilers, already irrelevant to those who have read the mission):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeV-W4qTsXk
It is a major event in the Cartoon Wasteland's history, and a driving force behind the games' plots. (The nice thing about a game with all-text dialogue is that you never have to wonder how something is spelled.) Technically, "heart," "thinner" and "paint" should also be capitalized in this canon, but I decided they were a little too generic to count as minis when they didn't get capitalized. Even I'm not that anal-retentive! (Although if somebody really wants a mini-Spatter named "heart" with which to make Captain Planet jokes, I won't stop you.)
Wow. I never shut up anymore, do I?
I sent you an e-mail on Wednesday, and you haven't answered yet. I want to avoid pestering you on the Board, but if you don't reply to my emails...
I'll get onto the people at YourWebApps and find out what's going on. Hopefully we can at least get the history restored long enough to take a backup (if we can find a way to do that) - though, actually, didn't Tomash do that once already? I hope so; it would save a good deal of trouble.
hS
2008-06-22 18:39:00 UTC to 2013-08-17 20:17:00 UTC (timestamps of thread roots) available for selective dips until batter hosting is found for the Tomash!Board beta (there's a limit on how many database rows I can put on Heroku.)
Bug me at my email (above) if you need copies of something.
... to put the whole thing up? Not on T-Board, as you say, but could you (for instance) convert it into a spreadsheet and stick it up on Google Drive? It wouldn't look pretty, but at least it'd be there.
For that matter, I'm perfectly happy to use my GDrive as the host - if you can convert it into a readable format. Actually... maybe even if not. At least that way it'd be available for download.
Are at this convenient location. Google Drive won't convert files over 20MB, so you'll have to download the thing. It's a CSV file that has the columns id (from my database copy), the time the post was posted in UTC, the ancestry (post IDs of what came above, separated by '/'es), the author, the subject, and the body.
2012 Archive
2011 Archive
2010 Archive
2008-09 Archive
The archives (excluding 2013, which is still on the Board) are now up in web-searchable form. Unfortunately, GDrive Spreadsheets don't have the bookmarks of GDocs; I think it's possible to link directly to a comment, but I can't find out how. If it is, I'll open the archives up for commenting, on the understanding that people will only use it to 'link' to a specific thread.
hS
The 2009 Badficfest thread
You have to open up the 'Comments Thread' on the right-hand side and use the little drop-down menu to the right of the date. Archives are now open for commenting; anything which needs linking from the Wiki (or anywhere else) can have an informative comment created.
hS
The PPC Board Archives
With an explanatory note on how to use them. It's not as good as having the Board to use - but it's a heck of a lot better than nothing.
I'll try and put a link on the Wiki tonight.
hS
Meaning, I can access the spreadsheets all right, but at least in the 2008-2009 archive (I haven't checked the others), I'm unable to click-expand-comment like the instructions say. The field doesn't expand when I click in the function bar, and I can't leave comments. {= ( You may need to adjust the share settings.
You CAN search the wiki for external URLs, though. At least if you're an admin; not sure about general users. Still, that's a godsend. Even though there are LOTS of links to posts from the Current Events page and I do not relish going through all of them. I don't suppose anyone wants that part of the job...?
~Neshomeh
Looks like I can fix the comments half of it without too much trouble (and have done for 08-09); the expand-to-read is different. I'm a bit wary of allowing people to 'edit' - which is what that requires - so I may have to edit the instructions to just tell you to copy-paste the message. Which is a pain in the neck, honestly.
hS
To both Tomash and Huinesoron, for all the work you guys put into this, thank you.
I'll be sure to run another archive job sometime this summer so that we don't lose the second half of 2013.
I just about died when I popped in and read that everything was gone. I could hardly believe it. I'm so glad you had the backups, Tomash! Please keep making them forever?
And hS, thanks for making them accessible! I'll have to keep an eye open for links to Board posts on the wiki so they can be updated. I think Wikia introduced a tool to search for external links, though, so it might not be too tricky to find them all. I'll see what I can do.
~Neshomeh
I'll try to make it an annual thing if I can. The only thing I have to do is figure out a sensible definition of union for (in psuedo-Haskell)
data Thread = [Post | Thread]
After several hours of beating the internet into submission, I've managed to extract about two thousand links to individual posts (not front pages) from the Wayback Machine. Some of them are duplicates, and some don't work, but I think there's a lot of actual information there.
The earliest posts date to December 2007, and... well, given that we're making around 1500 posts a month, I think most of them are from December '07. There are a scattered few from '08 as well (and a handful from later which can be ignored).
I'll be working to put all this onto the Archives; I've made a very small start with one thread at the top of the '07 Subject Archive.
hS
But I think it's probably a bit rude to crawl the Internet Archive. Could you email the Archive people and ask them for copies of the posts, so you (or I or someone else) can process them locally?
... I've discovered that I can easily plough through a hundred or so posts in an hour and a half, and I'm having fun doing so. ;) So I'll probably do it by hand. It's not like anything actually happened in December '07, so it's not an urgent matter.
Though it did remind me how much fun Fill The Plothole can be. Einstein in Narnia... heh.
hS
And I'm going to go on record here and say that my role in all this has been minimal - just a copy-and-paste job, basically. Your initiative in taking the backups at all is what's made any of it possible. So thank you.
As a way of increasing my own part in the matter, I'm going to be adding the pre-2008 'archives' to my collection. They consist solely of the post titles - nothing from the actual contents - but it's still better than nothing. And since I already have them compiled from my statistics work... [Shrug]
hS