Subject: Oh boy! Disjointed pop culture references!
Author:
Posted on: 2013-12-20 00:18:00 UTC
With all seriousness, though, I'm really enjoying the mental image I have now of a demigod Sumerian king driving around in a Megazord. Unless you were referring to the Final Fantasy character Gilgamesh there, in which case it is less entertaining, but still somewhat amusing.
Listen there's this character in my Nuzlocke that will be a magical girl (Tokyo mew mew) but i'm just wondering if that would be allowed.
So there won't be possible confusion, there are three main characters (basically three agents) in this Nuzlocke, two from different continuums then the Pokemon girl(one a male homestuck cherub and the other being the magical girl) just so were clear.
Also if this won't be allowed, again, please tell me so I will know what to change, please and thank you. :)
By "Nuzlocke", I'm assuming you're referring to your agent team, so please feel free to correct me if I interpreted that incorrectly.
Short answer: no, it's totally okay to have that combo. Just be aware that we usually write agent duos, 'cause it's easier to do a two-man routine than juggle three characters around and give them all some equal screen time.
Long answer: you need to be careful with your agents' power levels. We have a Homestuck!Cherub and a turbocharged!DNA!human on the same team, and that has a possibility to be a game breaker. Note that the Pokémon Trainer will be fairly normal on missions, since I highly doubt 'mons can be brought with the agents.
It's no fun for us if all that the agent team does is snark, roll their eyes at the Suvians, and completely wipe their tuchus with them when it comes time to engage.
We want to see quick thinking! Resourcefulness! Narrow scrapes! That's usually where the Disguise Generator comes into play: by changing their morphology to fit their surroundings, powerful agents are usually taken down a notch. Other factors can also serve to bring down an otherwise overpowered agent's power level down and give the Agents a run for their money.
...out of curiosity, what is the alignment of the male cherub? I assume that it is "good", otherwise Internal Affairs would have a Situation on their hands every time that cherub-boy gets his claws on a new weapon.
Thank you for the answer, it's great to know that I can do this with out people getting mad at me :) and to be very honest the magical girl is technically owned by my sis but we both agreed that I can use the character in my Nuzlocke and that well be working on missions together.
Which, I feel, is for the best as she can help me with my spelling, finding fanfics to spork, and handling the three characters with her keeping track of her character while I can keep track of the cherub boy and Pokemon girl.
As for keeping the the agents' power levels at a respectable level, my plan is to have each agent to specialize in a certain area and/or weaponry.
For example my good aligned cherub boy is best with close combat and especially swords (having a cane blade as his main weapon)and though while he can fire a gun, he dislikes too as he hates the kick back and will close his eyes because of this, making his aim very poor, and while he isn't afraid to defend himself/his friends and help protect the continuums from Mary sues he has a problem with with blood and guts type killing, so he tends to have the poke girl handle that, while he works with author wraiths and disentangling. He also doesn't have any powers (as of now), is not god tier, and has to keep a disguise generator with him at all times (as it would be weird to see a green alien skeleton boy running around in most continuums now wouldn't it :P) so i hope that makes sense, if it doesn't please tell me.
Oh, and a Nuzlocke is basically a fanmade hardcore mode for Pokemon games, if you want to know more here's a link that can explain more then I can could: http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Nuzlocke_Challenge
Somebody probably told you about getting Official Permission to write PPC stories in your intro thread, but both you and your sister will need it if you're both going to be writing. We sometimes make allowances for a newbie without Permission to team up with an older member who has it, but the point of that is that the more experienced writer can guide the newer one and provide quality control, and that doesn't really work if the one person with Permission only just got it. {= )
~Neshomeh
I don't actually have permission to actually do any of my ideas right now. my plan is to just wait until me and my sister can get a little bit known on the board and on Thursday write up our ideas (mostly plot and short character bios) and get some critique on them, and when me and my sister feel that the plot and ideas can hold together and most everyone likes it then we will ask permission together.
I haven't really posted any pics or writings of my characters and plot as of now, and if I can't be doing any of that without permission please tell me so I can tell my sis and we will go get permission as soon as we can, thank you. :)
You can discuss your ideas on the Board before you get permission (though be warned, obsessing over them and not talking about anything else gets really annoying), and you can write character bios and stuff for betas to look at, but you do need permission before you can actually publish PPC stories on your journal, website, Google Drive, or whatever you end up using.
I'd also recommend waiting until you and your sister feel like the plot and ideas hold together before you put them up for critique. You'll get better feedback on a coherent outline than you will on vague fragments. Plus, this Thursday really is jumping the gun a bit, especially since you just started this thread to discuss your stuff. Give it time! At least wait until this thread falls off the front page before you start another one on the same topic. We're not going anywhere, and it doesn't look like your plans are, either. {= )
~Neshomeh
Now that I think about (and after you mentioned it) I really should wait for say after Christmas or something, and after I talk to my sis about everything, before I start with posting the plot thanks for the tip.
Also thanks for the idea of making sure this whole thing doesn't take over myself, i'll try and not let that happen and if it dose tell me or I wont notice and will continue to unintentionally annoy people.
Hey,
just want to check what you mean by Nuzlocke. I'm massively into Pokemon, and so the only meaning I know of the word comes as part of a phrase 'A Nuzlocke Challenge' which invariably involves you going through the Pokemon game and if a Pokemon faints, you can't revive it and must release it. I hope this isn't the meaning you're alluding to when using the word, or rather if it is I'm worried :p .
Storme Hawk
X and Y have ruined my Nuzlocke. I got to the third gym(fairly far in Kalos, almost half the region) without losing a single teammate. Giving you a free Kanto starter makes things way too easy.
I miss Hoenn and my veritable army of Zigzagoon with Cut and Pickup.
My time is coming. I command the Alpha, the pale horse.
Now that's not a thing to do! Just because he was making a reference to an internet meme doesn't mean you steal that meme when his back is turned! And you call yourself an ominous conqueror. Resorting to petty horse-thievery. Do you think Lord Vyce would have done something like that? Dormammu? Unicron? If a true Dark Lord wants a mount, they create a personalized steed with otherworldly power and unquenchable force, shaping it into an interminable engine of destruction! They don't just snatch animals from other people. Tsk tsk.
The Alpha is no mere horse. He is the first of creation, who carved Sinnoh from the void and wrought the Three Dragons of Reality from the nothingness.
And from the desolated Halls of the Looking Glass, I reached out into Infinity and drew forth One of Many. He is no mount. He is general, a commander of my legions.
Only at the End of Time, when the Glorious Imperfection of Resplendent Creation breaks free of the ebon chains that bind him before the mighty gates of the Halls of Creation, shall I ride out; the Solitary Horizon of Soundless Reclamation astride the Endless Desolation of Infinitesimal Genesis, the dread Ragnarok, Dragon at the End of All Things.
My time is coming. The end of an era is the dawn of a new age.
Good for him! They aren't easy to find. You need Action Replay codes for them most of the time. Because of that, after the Arceus is done commanding that army of Zangoose you mentioned a few posts back(I feel for you, man. Breeding for perfect IVs is hard. I had a whole box full of imperfect specimens when I was breeding Solosis. They say it's gotten easier in Gen IV, though, with the new Destiny Knot mechanics.), you should give it back to him. He's probably going to want to use it for something else.
By the way, you're probably going to want to revise your dramatic declarations before you go charging out to the fringe of space-time. "The end of an era is the dawn of a new age." is a little redundant when you think about it. I mean, it's a new age by default. The people writing the history books like making names for things, and just saying "the time period that we are now in" will make them look unacademic once the new age ends and they'll need to revise all of the texts in the even-newer age.
The part about desolating a tiny planet with a giant dragon to regain all of the sound you lost at the edge of the universe works a bit better, though. But before you destroy it, keep in mind that you might just not be hearing anything because there isn't any sound in space. There's no air or water for it to travel through, you see. Dragons are powerful and proud creatures, and they'll probably turn on you if they find out that they were ridden out into battle over a silly misunderstanding.
Don't you know who I am? I am the inevitable, I am Chaos, I answer to none but myself, You can never stop me! DEATH IS ONLY THE BEGINNING!
My time is coming. It is inevitable, Mr. Anderson.
What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough expository banter! For Gilgamesh, it is morphing time!
Mu time is coming. I am one who looks out of the abyss.
With all seriousness, though, I'm really enjoying the mental image I have now of a demigod Sumerian king driving around in a Megazord. Unless you were referring to the Final Fantasy character Gilgamesh there, in which case it is less entertaining, but still somewhat amusing.
The line is straight from Final Fantasy V. Here's the full line: "Enough expository banter! Now we fight like men! And ladies! And ladies who dress like men! For Gilgamesh...it is morphing time!"
Of course, that line does refer to Power Rangers.
The Imperium stares back into it.
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Imperium
The Emperor Protects!
You know you keep going on about the Imperium and seem a bit 40k obsessed, so I'm wondering, just who do you play as?
And if you don't play, well
*BLAM*
HERESY!!!
*BLAM*
the second blam was just to make sure you got the message.
Storme Hawk
The T'au and Eldar and Dark Angels and Raven Guard guy.
My favorite race is the Tau because they aren't completely grimdark like the other factions. Second favorite, the Imperium because reasons. And 40k obsessed? Me? The guy who signs off with a prayer to the God-Emperor? The guy who greets newbies as Battle-Bruva and gives out 40k related stuff? Never!
The Emperor Protects!
I do mean 'a Nuzlocke Challenge' when I say Nuzlocke, so if you'er worried about it then can you explain why, please.
I mean, can I not have a side thing with my characters in a Nuzlocke adventure while still being able to go on missions, because if so please tell me so I can scrap the idea and just have the three just as agents with refs to the whole Pokemon thing.
Also I feel I should say that my sis actually owns the magical girl, and she plans to help me with sporking and keeping track of the characters, she just wanted me to ask if she CAN have a magical girl as an agent in the first place, she is also a combo of busy and shy which is why I asked for her :).
Being a Pokemon fan, I get what the Nuzlocke Challenge is. What I don't get is what any of that has to do with writing a PPC story. How does an optional rule-set from a video game affect your potential agents? It is not that we necessarily have concerns about it or rules against it. We just have no idea what you are even talking about.
The question you need to answer is: What, specifically, are you planning to do?
-Phobos
Really my whole idea hinges on the agents actually living in their continuums.
With my poke girl wanting to go on her Pokemon journey with her friends/partners and the Flowers allowing them too (as long as it doesn't interfere with their jobs, and if it dose to stop immediately) and from there, they basically go on a Pokemon journey (with nuzlocke rules) and sometimes get called in for missions, this also needing them to have access to portals a lot.
So, my plan has a few ways of getting itself done so far the best one I have in mind is doing the Nuzlocke in comic form and the missions in writing form, with my sister helping me keep track.
This is basically the shortest and quickest explanation for what I have planed, but I hope this clears any problems that you had with it, also I should mention that I don't really have the permission to do any of this right now.
What I am doing right now is basically just getting acquainted with a few people and getting the idea out there for some pre-critiquing, if you have any tips or problems with this please tell me and I will fix this.
The main problem I can see with your plan is the one thing it hinges on, that being your agents living in their continuums. The problem is that it wouldn't work, there are very few reason why an Agent goes back to their home continuum after joining the PPC, the two I know of are to do a mission or retirement (the latter being rarer than the former). For your agents to live in their continuums would also create a stupidly huge amount of problems, there's a reason why each set of Agents is given an RC, it's their home whilst their at the PPC, and if you want to find someone well all you need to know is their RC number, rather than having to run into a continuum to grab an Agent to come back out of said continuum to do a mission in another continuum. Plus what happens to social interaction, not just with other Agents from the PPC but the trio themselves, they'd each be in a separate place all the time.
Another problem I can see is that Nuzlocke only really works in the games, if you were trying to write a Nuzlock challenge into a story or a RP it'd be effectively you driving your Pokemon to the death, something that is, really, rather grim and not something I'd want to read.
I'd say that it probably wouldn't work as you intend it to now. However if you keep your three agents and have them work within the normal parameters of the PPC, beyond poor characterization and obviously not making them too OP, it should work.
Also you don't need to keep telling us you don't have permission, we know. You generally post a Permission thread, and have to be accepted by the PG's before you have Permission, plus you're still a newbie (no offence) it'd be way too soon for you to have gained permission by now.
Storme Hawk
So if the can't live in their continuums then simple, they can preform the journey during their breaks.
Sure they would very much need to use portals to get back to the PPC and communication devices to know when their needed, but they will be living in the RC and will be close together when on the journey.
Personally, I think this sounds alright but if this still doesn't make sense, please tell me so I can change and try to make it work or just scrap it.
You only have a shift-based schedule if you're working in the Infrastructure Departments. huehuehue not-so-subtle DOI recruitment drive
Otherwise...
[BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE--]
Then if you can help me out here that would be INCREDIBLY helpful, because i'm stumped and don't really want to have the idea die just yet.
To be honest, I'm not sure your idea would work with the PPC at all, or at least I don't think you could do it at the same time as being a PPC Agent. The best feasible way I could see you including it, is to have the Pokemon journey be part of the backstory, maybe being what caused them to appear in the PPC in the first place.
That's the best I can think of.
Storme Hawk
Sorry if i'm bothering you, but I really like bouncing off ideas with you, so please tell me, so I can stop.
My last idea, so I can have the three agents going and doing battles with Pokemon and Mary sues, is basically have it when they have free time (at all) going to the poke girl's continuum and just catching, training, and battling gyms with Pokemon.
So they just live in the RC, go on missions, and if they have the time go and battle with Pokemon.
This is my last idea for this, if this can't work then i'll just have the Pokemon stuff happen in her back story and just stick to missions with the characters.
I mean, it isn't as though vacations don't exist, but they're usually only awarded after something traumatizing(moreso than usual, anyway) happens to the agent team in question, or if the Flowers want the Agents out of their trichomes for whatever reason. Would the three of them just leave HQ during downtime and head to the Pokémon continuum? Because there are rules against trans-continuum travel that restrict legal use of same mostly to PPC business(missions, scouting, collecting stuff for the Cafeteria, etcetera) or disposal of problems, unless returning to a native continuum regularly is necessary for an Agent to not die or something. Or were you talking about a slightly different scenario?
Also, the Homestuck cherub is going to be not only in your agent team, but also within the Pokémon continuum? That... doesn't really fit. I have no idea how the magical girl operates, since I don't know the Mew Mew continuum, so she might be able to suppress her abilities or something of the sort, but the cherub would not only be obviously non-human, since the disguises can only alter physical appearance and do not change attitudes or behavior, but would have no real reason to go on a Pokémon journey. Cherubs are solitary creatures by nature, most of the time, and usually only interact with others when they need to mate or in desperate cases like Calliope's. Interacting with the other agents would probably be just about all one could handle without getting tetchy and withdrawn, and having a horde of animals bursting from small spheres in one's belt and interacting with your cherub agent would probably freak him out. Pokémon trainers go on their journeys to fulfill specific goals, many of them involving growing closer to one's Pokémon and allowing those Pokémon to grow stronger. A cherub would not treat it like that, which would in a decent-case scenario leave him constantly uncomfortable but unwilling to say anything, in a worse-than-that-case scenario increase his apparent non-humanness to the others in the continuum as well as turning the whole Pokémon-training business into an absolute chore, and in a worst-case scenario, lead to him snapping, fleeing from the established dwelling places of sapient beings, and needing to be brought in by the DIA to prevent contamination of the continuum when the Ironic Overpower inevitably cracks its knuckles and short-circuits the cherub's D.O.R.K.S., dispelling the disguise or altering it to something non-native.
So, yeah, all in all, it wouldn't be the best of ideas to involve him in this.
there are rules against trans-continuum travel that restrict legal use of same mostly to PPC business(missions, scouting, collecting stuff for the Cafeteria, etcetera) or disposal of problems, unless returning to a native continuum regularly is necessary for an Agent to not die or something.
I've honestly never heard of such a 'rule'. They don't have the time for it, certainly. They'd probably get told off if they wandered off when they had a mission, definitely. But an actual rule?
As a suggestion for how to make this a viable concept, rather than just saying 'no', how about putting the agents in a department which tends to send in specialists, rather than agent pairs? Something like SIELU (the Special Interdepartmental Elven Linguistics Unit) will usually just send a single agent off on a mission with someone from another department. That means their agents have significantly more downtime, and could conceivably carry some form of communicator with them. They'd be constantly 'on call', but could spend their time doing other things (like pit-fighting with disturbingly intelligent small animals, for instance).
hS
I'm not actually sure if there are many hard-and-fast prewritten rules, per se, other than the basic ones necessary for doing one's job, the ones that keep the Departments running and functional, and whatever system the DIA uses to keep order in HQ, but from what I've seen, it's generally frowned upon by the Flowers when Agents squander PPC resources, which would most likely include the portal technology, on what they would consider personal matters. I imagine this may be due to the proclivity of agents to cause unnecessary complications wherever they go, the PPC tech's proclivity for sudden detonation, malfunction or related issues, and the cost that it takes to replace or repair damaged devices, whether they were broken during PPC business or not, and at least if they were broken in connection to PPC business, those problems can be deemed less connected to one's personal failings and more to acceptable risk for the Duty. And "frowned upon by the Flowers" usually translates into "more or less a rule, and if you consider it to be an optional guideline rather than a rule, you're going to be getting a very stern talking-to from your Department Head within the next few weeks".
As for the later part, where are you getting the information about SIELU being "specialists" who will usually go on missions connected to other departments and have lots of downtime in-between? The only Agent that is linked with SIELU reports is Lambda, and she only has two missions, neither of which imply that. She did team up with someone from the DI in one of them, but in the other, she seemed to just operate like a particularly neurotic DMS Agent who was working solo for whatever reason, and neither said anything about her having lots more downtime than the average Agent.
Just since I've been playing around with them a lot lately, but I don't want to be stepping on toes.
Have you got a source for that? The only thing that springs to mind - other than J&A not being allowed to use portals in-mission, which obviously is no longer the case - is Vemi's Tale, in which she goes home on a vacation. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you - just asking.
SIELU: well, partly it's in the name. ;) The 'Special' implies something is different about them, and the 'Interdepartmental' suggests - to me - that they (mostly) operate as specialists, moving between departments.
Then, there's Lambda's website. Specifically, the Lambda's Office section is described on the homepage with 'When not on a mission, Agent Lambda sorts papers in her office, and sometimes writes'. That's already suggesting the 'more downtime than you'd expect' part.
Then, there's the missions themselves. I realise we have a sample size of two, but her first assignment (and it is her first) is the one which she tackles by herself. Her second recorded mission (it does seem to be her second), she gets sent to the DI, with no suggestion that this is unusual. I like to imagine the Poison Ivy expected her to just know she was supposed to wait for a partner the first time, only to discover that no, she needs outright telling.
(Her second mission tells us there's a Sunflower in the Weeds. Fascinating)
Finally, in one of my in-progress missions, Agent Huinesoron - who's filling the 'specialist' role with DOGA right now - gets to work with someone who has a habit of asking for specialist partners. She mentions DMFF, DTE, DOGA, DOOCH (heh), SIELU, DTO... of course, she also (used to) call for help from DMS, DBS and the like, but they stopped listening. ;) I picture a lot of the smaller, specialised departments having specialists on staff - un-partnered agents who get farmed out when needed. Whether they're specifically employed for that purpose (like Lambda), or just perpetually between partners (Huinesoron) depends on the agent and department.
hS
Wait, what exactly were you asking me to source for there? I had thought you were asking for references for why I don't think the Flowers would look fondly on frivolous use of plotholes and other PPC technology, but the story you linked seems to instead be concerned with Vemi being plucked from World One and temporarily turned into a Mary Sue, which was, judging by her summary on the wiki, due to partially-conscious reality-warping Maia powers and not due to plotholes or the Bridge. Also, it spawned several pop-up ads, which are unrelated to the story but were not pleasant. Did you mean to link something else?
I think the SIELU name may have been a holdover from when they were first introduced, which was back in the early years before the system and of Departments and Divisions to those Departments was fully stabilized. I can't say so for certain, because I wasn't around then, but it seems to imply in the first mission's text that they exist outside the usual Department framework, simply existing to sort out elf-related issues, which possibly means that "Interdepartmental" references their ability to take on missions that would otherwise be covered by any number of other Departments, as long as elven culture is being messed with during the offending badfic. Since, to my knowledge, Floaters was not officially a department yet at the time of SIELU's creation, and only existed in the lowercase form as the subject of occasional references, i.e. Since Upstairs couldn't really assign Alice to any one Department because of her limitations, they made her a "floater" instead. from the third Architeuthis mission, the "Interdepartmental" label existed to cover what "Floaters" would come to mean later. On that note, this explanation also justifies why SIELU would be labelled as part of Floaters in the wiki's List of Departments(though I can't recall any written works explicitly confirming or denying that).
Also, this line: The whole new unit consisted of Unit Head, The Poison Ivy in bright pink dress, and herself. in the first mission seems to indicate that Alec may have been assigned as Lambda's partner in the second mission simply because there were no other SIELU members. Maybe the Poison Ivy wanted to either prepare her for a multiple-agent model for when someone else takes a SIELU job or to keep her from responding to the misplaced flora and fauna of her second mission with a flamethrower, but with exactly one mission with one partner and one mission solo, neither of our deductions have a lot of examples to draw from.
Also, on an unrelated note, that SIELU Mission 1 quote had some shoddy phrasing; unless the Poison Ivy wasn't actually the Head, and the real Plant in charge was never seen, that sentence should have been structured differently. It's things like that and the distracting black-and-red alternating text in the second mission that made me not enjoy reading the SIELU missions. They were entertaining, to some extent, but I just didn't enjoy reading them.
The DOOCH? How long has Agent Huinesoron's new partner been around? The last time I heard of anything involving the DOOCH was a 2006 edition of the Multiverse Monitor, and even then it only involved someone wearing a DOOCH green uniform and not actually showing any agent activity.
Speaking of inactive Departments, in the Vemi story you linked, a character named Bjam appeared, occasionally uncapitalized in a manner consistent enough that it may or may not have been a typo. She was only ever referred to as "a morale officer" and seemed to indicate in dialogue that there was more than one person filling that role, but the wiki has practically no information on her. Since she appears in one of your interludes, you might have more information on what she did. Namely, what is a morale officer? What's the difference between what a morale officer would do and what FicPsych would do? Does the PPC have them any more after FicPsych absorbed all of the subsidiary psychological services back when the Manual was being written?
The part of Vemi's tale I was talking about was her travelling home for no clearly defined reason, not the random teleportation part. The story isn't on my site - it's Nesh's Lost Tales archive, which, yes, has a lot of popups, but is possibly the most valuable site we have.
Yes, in an out-of-universe perspective, SIELU predates the department/division thing (and the existence of the DF); however, internally, that's not the case, although the DF still didn't exist. That means 'Interdepartmental' has to actually mean something; I think my explanation is as good as any.
I'm sure if Hellga were still around, she'd love the criticism you're offering; since she isn't, there's not a lot anyone can do about it. ;) The black-and-red text, I believe, is to separate the two authors; it doesn't bother me much, probably because my colour vision when it comes to red isn't so hot.
The DOOCH has always been around; the Yellow Roses who work there appeared in the 2008 Anniversary Party. The fact that no-one talks about them is that they're ridiculous and exist solely (from an external POV) as a joke.
Morale Officer bjam does... exactly what she does in that story. It wasn't exactly an official position - she just stood around in HQ with cheerful signs, trying to keep people's morale up. Background colour, basically (is she in one of my interludes? I did not know that)
hS
Did you get my emails? I know that I sent three, but I hope that it's clear enough which one I'm waiting on at this point.
I sent a combined reply to two of the three a while ago. I can send it again, if you didn't receive it.
You should have received an e-mail from me. As for a reply to the things you've raised in your e-mail, I'm actually taking some time to adjust my story given what you've brought upm so you should expect a reply either tomorrow night or the day after.
Meant to type a comma after "up," not an "m."