Subject: You don't need a Deus Ex Machina.
Author:
Posted on: 2015-04-23 01:48:00 UTC
Just a plothole. That's how just about everyone arrives. They're all over the multiverse; even World One isn't safe. Agent Yoshi was probably walking along one day when he fell through one.
So, I'm trying to write out some agents and such and I need a contrived conveniant way for a Yoshi to get to HQ. What? It would be HUBRIS if one of my agents wasn't one!
The Mario worlds are full of ways of moving from one world to another. Using one of them would be thematically appropriate.
-Phobos
Your other agent could have rescued your Yoshi from a badfic offscreen before your first mission.
They've been done a lot. ^^
-Leaflets. <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1EBLBndKzvFSIlsExiETAZj9Bgm9-oY5Uc5uNryP88">Agent Constance was given one by her father (who was an author who heard about the PPC); one assumes he wrote in and asked for a brochure, which must have caused quite the kerfluffle.
-OFU graduate. Can Yoshis read and write? Do they know of any fiction at all? If so, your Yoshi could have been a student at an OFU. <a href="http://plotprotectors.tripod.com/JAAKSONS/ch1laurel.html">Nenya and Rosie seem to have gotten the address for the PPC from OFUM.
-Freelance Intelligence work. Send the PPC a badfic of interest, and they might offer you a job. It happened to Architeuthis, and something similar happened to Techno-Dann. Again, this obviously requires knowledge of fanfic.
-Badfic bit part. Can't even count the number of times that's happened.
-Picked up by Intelligence while they're surveying a continuum. This happened to Dassie Hyrax.
-Found a physical door into HQ, like Imbolc, Tango, and Blue. A Yoshi has loads of excuses to be wandering around abandoned castles and the like.
-Glitch. Sort of a plothole, but from the other side: what if a Yoshi is caught in a game glitch? One theory for the PPC's nature is that it occupies the space between canon dimensions, so if a glitch dropped the Yoshi right out of the game, PPC HQ is a good place for it to end up.
-Teleport gone wrong. You can't seriously tell me that no game ever has featured both Yoshis and teleportation.
-Followed an agent home. This is essentially 'badfic bit part' without the requirement for them to be from a badfic. It's not like portals filter out who goes through them!
-Taken home by an agent as a souvenir, in egg form, and then raised in the Nursery. It'd be nice to see a second-generation agent (assuming it saw its abductor as a parent-figure), and to hear from someone raised in the Nursery.
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. There's not very many limits on what you can do.
hS
Valon, Kala and Gabby were the most straightforward about it; they were just walking around when suddenly big silvery hole (in Kala's case, right above Makes-Things).
I was a little more elaborate with Chakkik's story, though. Basically, someone playing Secret of Mana failed to correctly perform the Ninth Sword Orb glitch, and one of the side-effects of doing this incorrectly is completely and utterly ruining your copy of the game. Chakkik got shunted through a plothole while (from his perspective) his world was torn apart.
I'll call plagiarism if you say that your guy came from a glitched copy of Yoshi's Island, though. :P
My agent was abandoned for an extra jump, fell into a pit with a plothole in it, (contrived coincidences FTW!) and got dumped in HQ.
And an agent, somewhere, was hit in the head by a stray parinthetical.
...something like this? (I was looking for chance to use that video XD)
Just a plothole. That's how just about everyone arrives. They're all over the multiverse; even World One isn't safe. Agent Yoshi was probably walking along one day when he fell through one.
A plothole is a deus ex machina. That is its function in PPC Origin Tales - an otherworldly device with no relevance other than to further the plot. Because origin/intro stories tend to be written without much more of a goal than introducing a new character to the PPC HQ, that's not usually a problem. But personally, I rather dislike them, on account of I'm a curmudgeon who thinks we could stand to be more creative in our recruitment stories. There have been agents who filled out job applications; yours could stumble into an arcane website, a la Miss Cam, or accidentally interrupt a team of assassins on the hunt, or make their way into L-space while working on a last-minute book report, or any number of methods.
You don't need a Deus ex Machina. There's nothing wrong with using one, plotholes included, but you don't absolutely need one.
I guess I never really thought about the actual-hole plotholes as Dei Ex Machina due to their commonality.
Funny enough, Randa's recruitment (which I really ought to consider showing one of these days) involved a newly-recruited Rina (who did arrive via either plothole or L-space; it's not known for sure) falling through a portal and landing on her in bed. She got the old-fashioned word of mouth recruitment. :)
If we're to judge by my and Randa's IRL friendship, Rina and Randa would have been friends for... wait, barely a year and a half? O_o I could have sworn it was longer. Never mind, it probably was awkward. XD Which is, like I said, another reason to write the story of how they got recruited.
The plothole is still in play... but for him, it was either that or get killed by the glitchpocalypse.
Quoting from the definition: The term has evolved to mean a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem* is suddenly and abruptly resolved by the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability or object.
*ie., how to get a not-yet-discovered agent into HQ, or how to avoid killing a character.
That's pretty much how I ended up in HQ as well. Though in my case the plot hole was caused by a logical inconsistency (Skarmory weren't native to Unova, my region of birth, before Black 2 and White 2).
Alternatively, you could also have the character be bit in a badfic who was found by some agents and recruited. A lot of other agents I know of, including my adopted sister and one of my current partners, were introduced to the PPC in this way.
Tkank you!
Wait... So I could fall into a plot hole anytime? That's (somehow) the most awesome and simultaneously terrifying thing I have ever thought of.
Pertaining to this at least.
((This is how you do OOC right?))
Sure why not! What's the worst that can happen? *cough* I really should bother to log in, but my phone dislikes it for some reason.
The Board has a tendency to drop login data quite quickly; if you rely on being logged in to enter your name, you're likely to lose it quite often.
(Since it's been a while since I tried, experiment time! I have just logged in. Let's see if it lasts.)
hS
Closing the browser and immediately reopening it. Seems to be logged in at this end; will my name appear on the Board?
hS
The blasted thing randomly changed your name! ^_~
hS
Resist, Omega! You can break free of YourWebApps' control. Don't let them eat your soul!
hS