Subject: Just for the record...
Author:
Posted on: 2014-01-20 14:53:00 UTC
There are plenty of pony agents at this point, and they've all kept their four-legged forms and seem to get along just fine. Not saying you shouldn't go with the pony-in-human-form idea if that's what you really want, but I wanted to assure you there's no reason not to have an actual pony for an agent, in case you were worried about that. {= )
~Neshomeh
(Well, Firefox restarted itself right when I completed this the first time, so that was more than annoying.)
Anyhoo, are there any... guidelines for creating agents? I'm mostly concerned that after I get permission, I'll screw something up and look like a fool. Also curious if someone can have more than one agent team (Say they've got two agents working in Bad Slash, and one in Mary Sues where they co-write the missions with somebody else). Is that acceptable?
I dunno if anyone will see it though. Anyway... Is it possible for agents to find and recruit a character if they are only briefly mentioned? Would said character even come into existence within the badfic? Say it were something like...
"Whos that" fluttershy asked?
"Oh" Twilight replies "Thats my sister. We have the same colors but our manes are a bit different. You could have seen her around and thought she was me"
(And, yes, intentional writing mistakes for that authentic bad fanfic feel.)
In this example, if the mini (lack of capitalisation creates minis, right?) was saying, "Who is that who I am looking at?", that would create the character in question. If, instead, the meaning was, "Who is that you have just mentioned?"... then it sort of becomes a coin toss. In theory, the agents could probably track the character down if they really wanted to, but...
... why would they want to? Bits of backstory will fade away when the story is fixed, so they don't need to hunt her down to fix the canon. And someone with that little a mention, why would they want to recruit her?
I can imagine many situations where you would want to do so - basically, if you've found (or created) a character you really want to write - but why would the agents do so? Imagine that, once the character was recruited, you were never going to have anything to do with them again - would you still want to recruit them?
Ultimately, though, it all comes down to the Rule of Funny. Tracking down every barely-mentioned character isn't funny. Locating the balrog's little sister who is three feet tall and will be constantly mistaken for a mini is.
hS
I doubt the agents would want to hunt down every single character created during the story if they were that minor. I'm just trying to come up with a plausible reason for Penchant coming to be and joining the PPC.
Would it make more sense if she were a side character that the author created for no reason other than to be snarky and antisocial, and the agents found it enough of a redeeming factor not to kill her?
I posted a workshop/rant/thing a while ago with various tips and tricks for making characters (or at least, how I go about the process). The original post has been well and truly buried, but you can still read the information here. There's also a follow-up regarding characters with powers.
If you still have any concerns while creating your character, get someone else to look at what you have. A second set of eyes can be helpful, or at the very least get you to notice something that you might have missed at first glance.
These are sort of OT to the thread as a whole--sorry about that.
But, PC, I'm wondering if you intended all the text styling I'm seeing in the character creation posts. You've got some words in a different font, and other words that are blue with a dotted underline and seem to have something to do with ads, if I'm reading the code right. If you styled it up yourself I'll let it go, but if you didn't, I'll be happy to clean it up for you. My suspicion is that all that code somehow snuck in when you copied and pasted from the Board, especially if you're not using an adblocker or something like that.
Second, this is more of a suggestion, but have you considered using the wiki's Blog feature for posts like that? It seems like a good format for a series of informative discussions, it would allow people to comment on individual topics without intruding on the layout, and it would free up your Talk page for its usual function. Just a thought!
~Neshomeh
Yeah, I guess the text styling thing was an artifact of copy-pasting everything from the board. I'm not sure why I didn't catch it before.
I never thought of using the blog features, I must admit. It never really even crossed my mind to use that section (probably because I've almost never seen it used elsewhere on the wiki). I'll make that change as well as the format adjustment ASAP. Thanks for pointing all that out for me!
PC
Wow, that's the kind of thing I was looking for; thanks!
That means, first and foremost, that in terms of personality, relationships to each other and others, and the way they act in missions, they should be interesting - not necessarily likeable, but interesting. You should also plan for character development of some kind, whether it's a major change in the character, or simply your team growing to work better together. Again, character development needn't be positive - my Agent Dafydd gets more and more power-mad as his series goes on, ending in his death (and resurrection).
Secondarily, or tied into the above, is choosing what you want them to be. There's absolutely nothing wrong with having two normal human teenagers/young adults - it's the classic setup - but you may decide you want something else. Badfic recruits are fairly common, as are characters who just joined up from their home universe, whatever it may be. And the species and background of a character will influence what you do with them.
The reason I say this is secondary is that it's all to easy to make a character you think would be awesome - let's say a Mandalorian bounty hunter who becomes a Jedi, then falls to the Dark Side, gets a cybernetic arm, and then reconverts and runs off to join one of the various Force cults dotted around the Galaxy Far Far away - only to discover that you either a) write them as if they were a human teenager, b) make them little more than a textbook of their own backstory, or c) give them so many powers that they never have to work at anything. If you know beforehand that you want to write, say, a fall-and-redemption story, then you can make a character to fit that (in this case, cut out the re-conversion and have her switch straight to the cult, so she can slowly regress to Sith methods before finally being redeemed and remade as a Jedi - or a dead Jedi).
There are no actual 'guidelines', because everything depends on the writer. What might be an overpowered Mary-Sue in one person's hands could be incredibly well-written in another's. Just remember: agents are supposed to have a difficult job, so don't keep adding on things to make it easier. And be aware that Phobos and Neshomeh will ask you why every single trait exists. ;) (Sorry, guys, but it's true!)
And yes, it's fine to have multiple agent teams. However, given that most people who get Permission end up writing one mission and then vanishing off the face of the Board, it might be better to start with one to avoid overloading yourself. :D
hS
I too should keep this in mind when/if I get Permission.
I feel I should continue to flesh out these characters before I pitch an idea or ask for permission. As of now, though,it's looking like I'll try make a well-rounded Argonian character, and maybe a human partner for him/her. I find it easier to have a couple characters that can make jokes and play off of each other but, like you said, overloading myself may be an issue, and I do not want to have agents I never write or just ignore.
Another question, if I am not bothering you, how does one co-write a mission? Do the authors just type things up and send it back and fourth? Or is it more like a roleplay?
If you're writing by yourself (which is the norm), you kind of need two agents. Otherwise your mission ends up entirely silent. I was talking about the idea of making multiple agent teams right off the bat when I mentioned overdoing it.
As to cowrites... I've had multiple co-authors, and we did them all different ways. With Selene's original author, we took turns writing the missions, then sent them over to the other person to be checked. With Vemi, on The Reorganisation, we took alternate scenes to write. With Kaitlyn, we wrote alternate lines in an instant messaging program. With Neshomeh and kippur, each person wrote a paragraph at a time, usually in rotation, but sometimes jumping out of order. With the people I've got missions ongoing with now, we've got a Google Doc which everyone writes in anywhere and anytime they please - but mostly at the end of the story, to continue it. And the one I've never done: Jay and Acacia seem to have written by roleplaying the mission over AIM, then having one of them turn it into a story.
So, basically - however works best for you. GDocs are quite useful because you can see everything that's already been done, and also leave comments if you have a question - but there are myriad options.
hS
Is it possible to have a character recruited from an unnamed badfic? I mean, one that doesn't actually exist?
Alright. What if, for their home continuum, it's the norm to have multicolored hair? I'm not talking rainbows everywhere, just two or so colors? (I pictured something like my agent disliking it and dying her hair one solid color anyway.)
Out of curiosity, what is the home continuum you're referring to?
And, again to make sure I don't screw up, is it possible for a character that comes from a continuum like that to take on a human form upon joining the PPC? Or maybe through the use of a Disguise Generator?
There are plenty of pony agents at this point, and they've all kept their four-legged forms and seem to get along just fine. Not saying you shouldn't go with the pony-in-human-form idea if that's what you really want, but I wanted to assure you there's no reason not to have an actual pony for an agent, in case you were worried about that. {= )
~Neshomeh
I was unaware of that. Thanks for the link. Though, my reason was a bit more along the lines of it being her preference to be in a human form. I feel like, coming as a bit character from a badfic and looking close to a main character, she would try her best to avoid remembering it, or, at least, to avoid resembling it. Also, due to her personality, I think she'd probably feel like people would respect her more as a human, and almost stops identifying as a pony all together as she tries to learn more about who she is and her likes and dislikes.
Kinda wanting to name her Penchant.
Though a few details should be considered: a Disguise Generator only works in conjunction with the RC console, so the forms created by it would only be in use for missions, and the disguises formed by the Disguise Generator are non-permanent, and fade if they are shorted out, the mission ends, or the form is interrupted by an alteration device like the D.O.R.K.S.
Would the pony agent wish to be in human form permanently, or only for certain kinds of interactions? Because if it's the second, the D.O.R.K.S. is capable of keeping the user in the new form, even outside of a mission, for a sizable period of time, but it can occasionally prove subject to the Narrative Laws of Comedy, so it wouldn't be a permanent solution unless the pony minds the disguise dropping or shifting at inopportune moments because he or she angered the Ironic Overpower.
If the pony wanted to take humanoid form permanently, however, there is an arm-mounted device that allows a non-humanoid being to assume a human appearance indefinitely, with the human shape counting as the wearer's "natural" form for the purposes of the disguise generator. Well, the device is arm-mounted while the wearer is in human form, anyway. Its first known wearer didn't have arms, and probably wore it on a wing-tentacle. A pony would most likely need to wear it on a foreleg. The device doesn't have a name, but you could give it one, if you wanted to use it.
I think I'll go with the use of the D.O.R.K.S. I like the idea of her changing forms at the most inoportune times. Coupled with her no-nonsense attitude, I think it would be funny to have her explaining something, them just switch forms and be taken as a joke after by who she was talking to; "Yes, I realize I'm now a candy-colored equine, but I- Would you please stop laughing!?"
It can be, for the all-important Rule of Funny, but most of the time, when PPC technology starts malfunctioning, there's a reason for it, even if it's something like "I expressed confidence in my ability to use this device indefinitely and the Ironic Overpower took that as a challenge" that would sound completely bonkers out of context. I don't know the setup for the situation you mentioned, though, so I might just be looking too much into it. Maybe it occurs when the pony is new to bipedalism, and she ends up sitting on her concealed D.O.R.K.S. while trying to make herself more comfortable. There's a certain logic to that, as far as logic goes in a situation where a pastel pony is trying to look like a bipedal hominid by using a shapeshifting-assistance device that often masquerades itself as a rubber chicken or other such almost-always-out-of-place implement to avoid suspicious gazes.
Acacia took it in her hand. "Why does it look like a rubber duckie?"
"Well, in actuality it's a little metal cube with lots of buttons, but it has a program built in to disguise itself. Except that, erm, that program doesn't really work very well."
"So, it's a disguise device that can disguise everything but itself?" Jay asked, raising an eyebrow.
Just then, the device whirred.
Prrrrp.
It's disguise changed.
It was now a blancmange. (Suedom, Chapter 6)
Its whole thing is that it fires off at random. At that point it was just its own disguise that changed, of course.
hS
Is that the D.O.R.K.S. is capable of keeping people disguised very well, most of the time, but it was its own disguise field that would shift at random. In fact, the section you posted supports that, and possibly may have inspired it, with Jay's question "So, it's a disguise device that can disguise everything but itself?"
In-universe, it might be because the D.O.R.K.S. is not as good at disguising objects as it is at disguising beings, but metatextually, it's probably because it would be funny seeing an armored Uruk-hai messing with a rubber chicken to change his shape, only to swear under his breath once said rubber chicken turns into a piece of cake and falls between his hands to hit the ground with a splat.
... suggesting that it would change the user's disguise? You said '...but it can occasionally prove subject to the Narrative Laws of Comedy, so it wouldn't be a permanent solution unless the pony minds the disguise dropping or shifting at inopportune moments because he or she angered the Ironic Overpower.'
Anyhow: I always thought the DORKS would keep you disguised, but change its own shape a lot. I also thought that, of late, people have started to write that the other way round: as an unreliable disguise generator. But the early evidence doesn't support that.
So: either it works fine for disguises, and the 'inopportune moments' idea doesn't work, or its flickering has transferred to the disguises it generates, instead of just its own.
hS
I didn't mean to imply that the disguises by the D.O.R.K.S. would drop or shift without warning, the way the D.O.R.K.S.'s own field does. It would just be difficult to handle, especially for someone using it indefinitely, in part since the device wouldn't have been designed to permanently lock the user in one shape. The part about the Narrative Laws of Comedy was because, well, the D.O.R.K.S. is PPC-created technology, and PPC-created technology will work, and work very well, until it would be more humorous or dramatic or awkward for someone to sit on it wrong or overload it accidentally or push the wrong button. I hadn't meant to imply that it would just spontaneously quit working or suddenly turn someone into a moose as they walk down a hallway. Nobody would ever approve something that unpredictable for field use.
Alright. You weren't looking too much into it, as I didn't really have anything aside from "Oh, it messed up!" as a reason. I still have a long way to go before I ask for Permission, I think.
Do you think she's plausible as a character, though? I'll need to work on her more, but just as a basic idea?
So I honestly can't say. All the information I have, from this thread at least, is "she has multicolored hair", "she has a no-nonsense attitude", and "she likes taking human form". It's hard to judge on little information, and out of the three pieces of information there, only one, the latter, can really extrapolate much about her character, and that's only though more questions. Does she take human form because she doesn't self-identify as a pony? Does she think that her fellow PPC Agents will treat her better if she looks human? Is it because she likes to feel taller?
What are some of her other traits?
Also, was she going to be the partner for the Argonian you mentioned earlier? I'm just trying to keep my information straight.
Usually the two authors share a google document with each other and tag each other back and forth to take turns writing the story. Of course, that means if your co-writer vanishes or loses interest in writing you're kind of left in the lurch... co-writes are still fun when they go well though. :P