Subject: I generally agree with Scape here.
Author:
Posted on: 2015-04-28 18:34:00 UTC
The idea, in and of itself, isn't bad - it could be a nice exercise - but people coming up with their own characters to use as agents is pretty important, so just creating agents for other people seems wrong to me.
One of the main draws of the PPC, in my opinion, is the sheer variety that we get with the agents. Some are personal avatars, like Valon Vance is for me. But more often, we have characters that reflect the things we like, like my three other agents.
So what do you think of just a sort of forum game where we get each other to create new agent ideas, even if we won't use them ourselves? We could even put them up for adoption, for newbies that have trouble thinking up agents!
Alright, let's get started, because I've had way too many ideas for these guys.
1: A Jaeger, from Girl Genius, in a non-action department. Because I thought it would be funny to have a tall, angry, green German constantly complaining about wanting to get into fights.
2: One of the plethora of OCs for Sugar Rush that were made after Wreck-It Ralph came out. The sheer volume of characters that were cut from this cloth indicate that at least one of them would end up at the PPC. If possible, I would want to pair him/her up with an Agent from a different videogame, because the Sugar Rush Racers all know beforehand that they're just characters, which I thought could set up an interesting dynamic with a partner who didn't already know that.
3: Generic goblin/henchman/low level baddie, from practically any game ever. There are just so many ways someone could take this, it would be fascinating. Does he stay as some chaotic evil, dumb enough to charge adventurers screwball? Does he end up terrified of anything even remotely resembling a hero? Does he still think attacking things much more powerful than himself is a good idea?
4: A Draken scientist, from Wildstar, preferably in DMSE&R. Yeah, I know I had the Jaeger up at the beginning of this post, but Wildstar lets you make a big, scary, vicious monster that actually wants to analyze and experiment. Plus, with all the lunacy and tech lying around in that canon, there are far more entertaining ways to get to the PPC than by falling through a convenient plothole.
5: A Department of Intelligence Agent. We seem to have very few of them, and I thought it would be entertaining to try writing an Agent that has to put up with all the same idiocy of badfics without being able to kill the 'Sues at the end.
Specifically, a new agent team that I've been planning to do for a while (I know I've got three teams already, but I plan to rotate between them periodically so they don't get too dry. Kinda like crop rotation or something.)
1.) My mom owned a copy of Wii Fit once, but we lost it when we cleaned up the house a few years ago. So what would happen if the female Wii Fit Trainer from that game ended up in the PPC? She'd be a mild-mannered, nurturing figure who looks out for the health and safety of her partner and basically everyone else she cares about. She could've worked for the Nursery, caring for the children there, but she was recruited at the worst possible time, when Mary Sues began overcrowding the multiverse, so she had to go into Sue-slaying to help the PPC keep up. I can see her working in the DMS: Video Games division along with her partner, which leads me to the next concept.
2.) This one was inspired by this. A walking crossover of Xenoblade Chronicles and Pokemon, this guy was once a character replacement of Shulk with characteristics of the Honedge family. He's the eager one of the pair, and to reiterate an over-used joke, he's really feeling the plot continuum, all day, every day. Like Florestan, he'd go off on angry rants about anything and everything wrong with a continuity error stated or caused by a badfic, and if his favorite characters are made OOC, he gets even angrier. He's highly intelligent as far as canon knowledge is concerned, and picks up on new continua surprisingly quickly for a humanized living sword. He also inherits Shulk's mechanical expertise, and he could've gone into the DoSAT if it weren't for the fact that the PPC needed more assassins to keep up with the recent Sue influx.
And just for fun, how 'bout two nonhuman agents?
3.) A Chinese Dragon. Yeah, I know, there are dragon agents, but most if not all of them are of the Western variety. Naturally, he'd have powerful magic abilities, so he'd end up being in the DIA. He could even be Rashida's former partner. In contrast to her, he's really collected and cultured, and he speaks using long words and is almost always mild-mannered. He's also reluctant to use his abilities unless he has to neutralize an attacking Sue, and pursues mundane interests like painting, tea, and stargazing.
4.) A T. rex. Yeah, you heard me right. A Mother. Flocking. T. rex. Specifically, one from one of my favorite anime films, You Are Umasou. This one would be a female, and she'd be a fiercely protective sort, but like Heart (the protagonist of that movie), she's also got a sensitive side. The biggest problem I see with her is that she'd be a bit too big for the halls of HQ, but then again, we have a Triceratops agent and she can use disguises to avoid bonking her head on the ceiling, so maybe the same could go for the 'rex. Her power and bite force would lend really well to the DIA, because Sues relying on beam fights are annoying and I'd rather have someone take them out physically, like how Indiana Jones just shot that swordsman.
The way PPC agents trend so clearly.
Think about it. For a long time, we had only a couple of Time Lord agents - Morgan, plus the Agent and Dis (who existed solely as bit parts in Tawaki's writing). Now there's a new one every time you turn around.
Until, uh, a year or two ago, we had no Pokemon agents. Now we're up to... what, five, six? Plus at least one trainer?
Archosaurs are doing the same thing. Marsha was all by herself for ages; now there's a couple of maniraptors, plus ideas for an azhdarchid and a tyrannosaur.
I wonder why this happens? Is it people unconsciously being inspired by what's already there? Is it a Real World trend working its way into the PPC? What?
hS
I feel like a bunch of MLP agents popped up in the last couple years. At least one was recruited, but I think most were created. That was clearly sparked by MLP:FIM getting really popular, though. Not much of a mystery.
~Neshomeh
Well, Librarian is partly your fault, thanks to those short tales you wrote a while back, though part of it is me deciding to stop writing Anebrin and lacking inspiration.
Seems I can't spell today.
Creating a good agent can be hard, especially if it will be your first. There are examples all over the place of authors using one character or agent as a basis to create a new character from. Jay and Acacia are, of course, the best example to use of this - they were the first, and thus every agent after is going to have some aspects of them present, even if it's not readily apparent.
So why the sudden trend?
I think the answer is because making an agent from a canon never used before is even more difficult. There won't be an example to draw from, because the agent itself will act as the basis for others. In addition, how well the agent is written will influence whether or not people want to base something new off of the concept later. If it does well, you'll start seeing them all over as new authors are inspired. If it flops, people will try to forget that agent was a thing. I believe there are a few main criteria that a new concept must meet in order to be successful:
1. It must be explained well enough that someone who has never seen the source canon material will be able to understand what it is, what it does, and what may influence it.
2. It must be within the realm of possibility within the standards of the PPC. This can be quite broad, but an agent with too many weird things going on probably won't be received very well.
3. The agent must follow the rules established by their source canon; after all, they've spent their whole life within that canon. Why would they suddenly change their natures and way of life just because they fell through a plothole?
I actually have some examples of the process. When Iximaz was thinking of bringing in what eventually became Zeb, we were discussing what a Pokèmon agent might have to deal with. Some of the questions asked were things like "what species would be best?" or "how would typing affect personality or fears?" and "how would a Pokèmon react to being told to attack a human?". After all, Pokèmon live in a world of relative peace. In the games, you don't see many direct examples of a human being seriously hurt or killed by one, and it would likely have an adverse psychological effect on the creature. In terms of typing, something that is weak to, say, Psychic might distrust the Flowers due to their telepathic speak, or something like a Charizard would have a crippling fear of water due to the flame on their tail being tied to life force. In my opinion, she did an absolutely phenomenal job of introducing a Pokèmon agent and fulfilling these criteria, and the recent influx of 'mon agents can attest to that.
My theory is that these trends happen as a direct result of the difficulty required to make a new agent from an unused canon. Once the barrier is broken and an example is made, agents will pop up all over the place. All it takes is a good start to gain inspiration from.
It might be worth noting that my own Falchion predated Zeb by quite a significant margin, so that would make him the first true Pokemon agent to show up in recent years (everyone else was either a trainer or a Pokemon gijinka). Falchion's Steel-type and high defenses make him quite complacent and laid-back, and his Impish nature lends well to wisecracks and snap decisions that his uppity partner may not like. Rashida herself likewise has to live with the prospect of a feline body adapting to a human-tailored PPC environment, though it's her power and quick temper I'm often more worried about.
As for general cases, nonhuman agents do seem to be showing increasing prominence, if the fact that I have at least three of them active is any indicator. Anthropomorphic agents are different because they already have human-like behavior ingrained into their personalities, but agents that are truly animalistic and sapient at the same time would have different morals and patterns of activity which can be harder to work with than human characters. It may be that Falchion unwittingly kickstarted the trend, unless examples of non-anthropomorphic human agents are known from before he first turned up!
Also, what Darkotas was implying goes double for agents whose species is normally hostile to humans in their home continuum. For example, how would Ripper, who is derived from the Velociraptors from Jurassic Park (despite being more scientifically accurate), cope with an environment populated by people, whom the raptors kill on a regular basis? I did take some inspiration from Marsha when considering the possibility of him becoming an agent, but she certainly isn't a meat-eater; I can't find Trask's spinoff to save my life either so I pretty much went in blind in that regard. I think the biggest factor in his favor is that neither of his partners are 100% human, and Falchion is technically the PPC persona of his author and a maniraptor as well, so it would be easier for Ripper to work with him than with a pure human agent.
(Then again, of course, the trailers for Jurassic World do show tamed raptors, so it's not like Ripper can't call a truce with humans at all. That and, well, Rina and Randa obviously didn't get mauled to death during my collab with Iximaz! XD)
There are two major problems with non-human(oid) agents, IMO:
1. They're going to spend most of their on-screen time in disguise, so what's the point to making them look different?
2. Without a certain amount of intelligence and outlook in common with World One humans, it gets difficult to answer the question of why they should give a damn about badfic. You can get around it with badfic recruits, because they've seen the problem firsthand, but the average dinosaur or Pokémon in its natural environment isn't exactly sapient, and even if they were, how do you convince them to care about something they have no way to relate to?
"So there's these fictional beings—"
"What's fiction?"
"Okay, so there's these stories—"
"What's a story?"
"Um. Okay, so Mary Sues are like other Pokémon that you battle, but you have to kill them to—"
"What's killing?"
"You know what, never mind." *FLASH* "You are an average Pokémon of your species. You're not Team Rocket's Meowth, so you don't speak Human and never could. Go about your furry business."
~Neshomeh
There are at least several examples throughout the entire universe of certain mons that just hate humans. That could provide kind of all the motivation needed. Take Mewtwo from the original movie for example. Up until that very second when Ash did his sacrifice turn to stone pseudo-death thing, Mewtwo would have been very content to attack humans. If that wouldn't cause so many problems I think a Mewtwo agent might be kind of cool.
Mewtwo is a unique creation - only one is in existence. A Mewtwo agent would have to be a clone or replacement, since the canon Mewtwo could not be utilized. Seeing how Mewtwo already suffers from Cloning Blues... another clone or replacement might be a bit too off the deep end to function. But hey, the PPC practically runs off of bottled crazy anyway!
You're right about not being able to use that specific Mewtwo (then again, he did fly off into the night after Mewtwo Returns, never to be seen again...), but, from a PPC perspective, Mewtwo is hardly unique. As EvilAI mentioned, the latest games basically state that each game (if not save file) is its own parallel universe, so there are potentially millions of Mewtwo out there.
Meanwhile, according to the journals in Pokémon Mansion, Mewtwo isn't an artificial clone of Mew; Mew gave birth to it. No human intervention was involved. The Pokédex contradicts this, of course, but the Pokédex routinely contradicts the laws of physics, so I tend not to pay much attention to it. (Also, "years of horrific gene splicing and DNA engineering experiments"? Mew was discovered in July, and Mewtwo was born in February. Yeah, that's "years"...)
My personal theory is that, in times of stress, Mew can recombine its own genes to produce a Mewtwo child. It makes sense, since Mew isn't exactly a big fighter. Of course, that's just headcanon, but it explains the Mewtwo in Pokémon Ranger 3 and Pokémon Conquest better than there being only one Mewtwo.
I guess it all boils down to which parts of canon you choose to believe. I don't know whether headcanon is acceptable in Agent backgrounds, but that's how I'd get around the problem. And if that doesn't satisfy you, again, there's plenty of canon that can be used to achieve the same end.
Then again, maybe this is all moot, because the original topic was finding a Pokémon that would attack humans, and any alternative Mewtwo wouldn't necessarily share the animé!Mewtwo's misanthropy.
Though I think the argument can be made that in the anime verse there are at least two Mewtwos. You have the one from the first movie, then you also have Mewtwo from the Genesect film. It appeared to have a female characterization and actor rather the male from the first film. Also there was no indication that that Mewtwo recognized Ash. So you might be able to argue that two separate groups of scientists tried to clone Mew.
Now if you were to go to the game universe, things are a bit different. While there is only one per game, you could theoretically have Red Mewtwo, Blue Mewtwo, Green Mewtwo, Yellow Mewtwo, FireRed Mewtwo, LeafGreen Mewtwo, HeartGold Mewtwo, SoulSilver Mewtwo, X Mewtwo and Y Mewtwo. You could also use the excuse that it arrived via a game glitch that erased all save data. But then again a super off the deep end Mewtwo would basically be your Godzilla Threshold. It could be fun to write.
With Falchion, there really wasn't any other way to go about his character. I literally could NOT be a PPCer without a Skarmory agent to honor my Boarder name, and I've had a Skarmory persona for years without knowing what to do with him anyway. The fact that my very first mission involved the one badfic I actually completed as a Suethor only compounded this further, as I felt that the only way to properly deal with it was with my own PPC persona.
Likewise, I had plans to rescue Ripper since day one, because I always thought his character wasn't as blatantly offensive as the other three Suvian characters of his homefic, which was what made it possible for me to actually feel sorry for him when missioning the fic. Writing him certainly didn't leave as bad of an aftertaste as Terrordactyl (or Arceus forbid, not!Ludlow), and I always wondered what a dinosaur agent would be like, especially one from the JP continuum in which all the meat-eating dinos want to kill you.
One trend I'd like to see in the near-distant future, IMHO, is agents who were formerly Sue-wraiths. As of this writing, there are only two known instances of those, both of my own creation, and one only barely so because she was an OC I had in the works for several years prior. This leaves Cupid as the only known instance of an actual purified/rescued Sue-wraith with salvageable personality traits (just not ones that would be consistent with the character they possessed). I will concede that his case was exceptional, given the circumstances, but I'd honestly like to see more characters based on the concept, because I personally believe that it offers a pretty unique perspective and a fresh avenue for character development compared to all the former character replacements running around HQ already.
...how an ex-Sue-wraith agent is functionally different from an ex-Sue agent, and we have a long history of those.
Unless you kept the ex-wraith in non-corporeal form at all times, perhaps. That could be interesting.
~Neshomeh
I have no idea, to be honest. I'd been planning on bringing in Zeb before SkarmorySilver showed up, and never checked the Pokémon page of the Wiki to see if it had been done before because I wanted to avoid subconscious inspiration.
As for Rina, I wanted to explore how a person would cope with turning into a Time Lord, because— absolutely no offense intended— Agent Tawaki just kind of turned into one and that was that.
I just really enjoy speaking in a crap German accent. =]
The fake German accent FUNETIK AKSENT is a big part of it, methinks.
It's not everyday that you see something like that used properly! Fantastic work, really. Best part of the mission, IMO.
It's . . . probably going to sound dumb, but I've gotten a strong enough impression of her that I'm positive she's at the PPC. I just haven't seen where she appears yet.
Anyway, Agent Ost is an A/V geek in DoSAT. She's a very heavyset woman who is constantly and inexplicably surrounded by a full set of turn tables and speakers. Ost is responsible for providing background music on missions.
What's that? Missions don't have background music? Well, in my mind, they do. I mean, Skarmory's certainly do, and I've been wanting to do something similar with mine for a long time. Maybe Ost operates under orders from Legal, so most agents don't notice it? Maybe she just provides the soundtrack for adaptations of missions on Nutmeg TV? Anyway, if anyone feels like making a joke about her, feel free.
P.S. I also retroactively decided she's the one responsible for this monstrosity.
A lot of these are not fully fleshed out enough to really count as a full agent concept; they're just some ideas that I think would make for cool characters.
1 - A Haunted Oracle from Pathfinder. Oracles are divine spellcaster who have had power "thrust upon them," so to speak, and have to deal with a curse of some kind as a side effect. Haunted Oracles, in particular, are followed around by spirits of some kind that allow them to access specific spells, but have a tendency to mess with their stuff; it takes longer to retrieve an object from your bag, and if you drop something, it flies ten feet away from you. It'd be cool to see an Oracle actually interact with the haunting and could lead to some good jokes.
2 - Kind of similarly, a Summoner/Eidolon team, also from Pathfinder. It'd give the team a very different vibe from the usual one we see, but it could still play off some of the same tropes, especially if they're new to each other. Moreover, I think it would be really interesting to explore the psychology of an eidolon. Most of the time, they're either comic relief figures or walking class features, so it'd be neat to see one get equal development.
3 - And continuing my theme of "TRPG character linked to supernatural being(s)," a Sin-Eater from Geist: the Sin-Eater, one of the nWoD games. More specifically, a non-WoD agent who was fatally wounded in that continuum. As they were dying, a Geist offered to join with them. Now the agent has to deal with sharing their head with a strange, ghostly being, as well as all the other Sin-Eater baggage. A similar option would be a dying agent that Awakens as a Moros, though I don't think becoming a Mage would be quite as much of a paradigm shift for an agent.
The last one is an idea I've been considering using myself, actually. The first two are absolutely free-to-use, but I'd like someone who's thinking of using the third one to ask first.
1/ The mild-mannered azhdarchid from #42 in 'Getting Some Exorcise'. Sandra and Freckles think he might not have been a canon character, and given that there are exactly two talking azhdarchids in fiction that I can see (a Quetzalcoatlus in one of the 'Land Before Time' movies, and a Skybax in one of the 'Dinotopia' books), they're probably right.
I see this character as a sort of reverse Indiana Jones. Where Indy was a professor who'd rather be out adventuring, this azhdarchid is a field agent who'd much rather be researching. He's good at his job, and does it without complaining - but his heart is elsewhere.
2/ An ordinary human being from World One is somehow required to take a job at the PPC. This is a character with a very clear story arc - over the course of, say, six missions, she learns to cope with the frankly bizarre world she's ended up in. She's a realistic viewpoint on what it would be like to fall into the PPC: not the usual 'hey, magic, cool', but how someone would actually respond to having flora for bosses, horrendous working conditions, magic technology, and a job which occasionally involves cold-blooded murder.
3/ A World One human... from a very long time ago. Let's say Ancient Rome. She's someone who not only doesn't understand PPC technology, she literally doesn't have the framework to come to understand. And, significantly, she doesn't care. She has the idol that summons the magic doorway, she knows it must be provided by one of the gods, and those people who witter on about 'remote activators' are to be ignored. For best results, written in first person, and keeping the theme all the way through.
From that, you can tell that she's very confident in her worldview - y'know, sort of like most people are. ^~ I don't picture her as trying to persuade the others, though. It could be that she was a Roman slave, accustomed to holding opinions without showing them; I'm not sure. But I think she'd be fascinating.
She's basically a reaction to all those agents who are from places without tech, and get it instantly. Seriously, how? (Actually, come to think of it: she's Leela, isn't she?)
4/ and 5/ An agent team. Our first agent is one of the Greenwitches from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheDarkIsRising_Sequence#Greenwitch">Greenwitch: basically a magic-powered woman made of sticks. There's a new one made every year, so she's not quite a canon character. Like the Greenwitch from the book, she's selfish, petty, quick to anger: all that good stuff.
But... she lives off the Wild Magic, and that's in short supply at HQ. When she runs low, she literally comes apart - she bursts into a storm of twigs and rage and fear.
That's where her partner comes in: Saranésë. He's a Tolkienian nature spirit in the mold of Bombadil, and he's basically an incarnation of the Wild Magic. Like Tom, he invokes it through singing - which means he spends a lot of time singing to his partner to 'pull herself together' (har har). Being an incarnation of the landscape, he's pretty calm, but also playful - again, see Bombadil.
In the original version of this idea, he was a singing Green Man, but I can't remember... uh, why. He could still be, if someone can come up with a decent rationale.
Well, yeah, it's an okay idea, but putting them up for adoption by new people is just plain daft. What would be the point? Other than for people with lacklustre agent ideas or zero creativity to still write for the PPC, but if that's the case... why would such people be here? Hell, I'm given to understand that part of the Permission-acquisition process is to bodge together your own agents, which is why I have an arguably-disabled clown, a horrible Time Lord, and Henning Wehn's lurid pufferfish fursona. It's part of the fun! =]
Why not create a chassis or framework for people to build on? A few details, with the author filling in the rest.
For instance, I could say "a fairy from Touhou, maybe with plant-based abilities." While obviously this would require a bit of Touhou research, just saying that give people enough to build ideas from, but not enough that they're just using someone else's character.
... okay, full disclosure time.
Mainly, I suggested this because there are lots of continua that I'd love to see agents from, and how they'd interact with badfic. In Touhou, for instance, you could completely shut down a Sue with the Spell Card Rules. Since they're designed to put everyone on a level playing field, and they have to be feasible, a Sue couldn't just make an impossible bullet pattern and have done with it; they just wouldn't be able to attack.
I also don't want to spread myself too thin, though. Two teams with two agents each is probably the limit of my PPC writing abilities. With a forum game like this, I could channel basic frameworks and other writers could pick them up and build their own characters.
That's just... a species. I can rattle of species until the aurochs come home (hey, an aurochs agent!), but that doesn't make them agent ideas. They're just Species I Think Are Cool, which is what people have been trying to persuade newbies not to do.
Actual agent concepts can still be 'open'; in fact, I'll go back to the top of the thread and add a couple of mine. Should be fun.
hS
What Scapegrace is saying is that yeah, this idea could work for newbies coming up with agents, and I'd be excited for it! But you'd have to tailor it such that people create their own agents rather than adopting them, because it gives the creator a lot more flexibility. Besides, adoption is extremely rare, and the only three instances I know of where a Boarder has adopted a character from someone else's mission are TheShyIon's Ginger-Wise, eatpraylove's Violet, and my own Brenda (whom I have plans for in the near future, don't worry c;)
This creative flexibility is why I for one have the somewhat questionable habit of adopting basically everyone I recruit in my own missions. That and, well, I just wanna write certain characters. It's part of the reason for Cupid's existence, for example, and in general, all of my agents are either recruited from actual missions or refugees from my old or WIP story ideas, the one exception being Falchion who was once my self insert and was never involved in any stories at all.
...though I may or may not be planning to introduce a team that could change that status quo, hehehe... *rubs wings evilly*
The idea, in and of itself, isn't bad - it could be a nice exercise - but people coming up with their own characters to use as agents is pretty important, so just creating agents for other people seems wrong to me.
Y'know, blending bits from ideas suggested by other people...
And I'm not sure I'd agree with 'coming up with [your] own character... is pretty important'. Coming up with an interesting character to read and write about, absolutely; but if that character had her origin in someone else's five-line description, what of it? (And that's putting aside entirely the fact that recruiting-to-write is a thing we've done for a long time...)
hS
(Not that they've had many missions yet, but still...)
But yes! It does happen! Sometimes. I need to finish up their second mission, and fix up their pages and such. (The site ate Ginger's a bit ago. Bad site, no donut. Or site-y treat. Hey, don't ask me, I'm not an expert on the inclinations of websites towards various edibles.)
*rim shot*
But yeah, Shy really liked Ginger-Wise and asked if she could adopt her. I think she's done a lovely job so far. :)
A lot of my charcters in OP have been based on different anime. Although what they turned into was a whole 'nother story
Getting inspiration is legit, I guess. Then again, wasn't there something you said about not just recruiting characters and leaving them up for adoption? I seem to remember something like that...
I think I also said something to the effect of 'I don't recruit very often, because I don' wanna, but I don't have a problem with it.'
Besides, and I know this is straying a little from Voyd's idea: what about background characters? If you've got colourful agent ideas, but don't write many missions which could include them as incidentals, why not mention them here and maybe someone else will put them in? Agent McGuffin (DoSAT, ironically never has what you're looking for) doesn't have to be written by the person who invented her (that's me, I guess) for her to be a funny one-scener.
hS
And I don't mean a silly, Edwardian-like one. I mean an agent who used to be an actual vampire. As in a legit bloodrinker who would obviously have to be partnered with someone who isn't human. His strengths would become weaknesses. They could remove a few of his abilities, but not all of them.
Aside from Selene, there are quite a few vampires from various continua, including Twilight (poor guy never lives it down) and Discworld (one of Cadmar's partners).
Rescued from a Teen Titans badfic by Rashida Mafdetiti, Falchion and Sarah in this mission.
HG
Selene says hi.
No, she didn't need any of her abilities removed. No, she doesn't have to be partnered with a non-human (why would she? She does have impulse control, y'know!). And yes, her 'strengths' are often weaknesses.
hS