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At the beginning of this fic, Architeuthis’ coworkers share some of the worst fics they’ve seen. One mentions Harry Potter turns to the Lord, a pointless religious fic where a guy named David converts Harry to Christianity after he has nightmares. The description is kinda author-bash-y—and obviously we would not do a religious fic anymore. Just one weird thing—not only is it a real fic, it’s from 2009. The summary matches up, but the author’s name is different.

Did this fic inspire a trollfic?

—Ls

Did anyone see an announcement about this? I didn't. I assume this is for better readability, same with Discord's recent font change, but it would be nice to be told these things.

And I don't like this font. Discord's is much nicer. {= /

ETA: Proof I'm not imagining it. Here's a screencap I took back in June, and here's one I took today.

~Neshomeh

The wiki links there from at least some pages, including her user page. Some have Archive.today links, too.

As for Caddy, I'm pretty sure they took their stuff down deliberately, so I don't know if rehosting is an option there. (I mean, I always want to preserve everything because it's our history, but I guess we have to respect people's wishes or whatever. Sigh.) But the crossovers still exist if the other writer also hosted them, and I think Miah usually did, so there's that.

~Neshomeh

There are definitely spin-offs that stick with me through the years, though!

I'm not quite sure how to put into words the element that makes me like these spin-offs. There's a certain camaraderie between the agents, I think: a casual friendliness that makes me feel that they would all be close, caring buddies, even in a more "normal" setting. I guess I like that found family element? Again, I'm having trouble putting it into words, beyond "I like the way these characters speak to and interact with each other."

Miah made a fairly long spin-off, and it was even better before Caddy-Shack's stuff fell off the internet, since they did a lot of crossover work, but it's still quite a project of long-running character interactions.

Rez's agents are just super fun to read, and I like the structure of the missions, too!

And Makari's series is a bit short, but the characters make it worth it, especially considering the twist at the end of the final mission . . .

—doctorlit was going to bring up Caddy-Shack and Ellipsis Flood as well, but it seems their works are missing from the web. He has backups, but won't have time to rehost anything any time soon . . .

For the last time, one of the founding voices of the PPC speaks:

Intelligence Briefs for the PPC: Possessed, by Architeuthis

Language warning, apparently.

I'm trying to remember if I actually knew Architeuthis... can't remember. But I always loved her stories.

hS

... more or less the same as my pearl analogy? And it's definitely the least troubling option so far. {= D

~Neshomeh

She definitely wasn't evil. Her grandfather ran a group of wealthy wizards called the Unforgiveable, who helped each other acquire more wealth through backroom dealings, and allied with Voldemort while he was active. Constance pulled a Crouch, Jr. on her grandpa, locking him up and using Polyjuice Potion to impersonate him and take control of the group to reduce the harm they were causing. She led them into causing the Calamity to reveal magic to Muggles (and ironically, was placed in charge of the task force to combat the Calamity; the players were working for her all along!). But eventually, Minister Granger was able to convince her that the kidnappings and extortions she had committed along the way weren't worth the end goal, and that Muggles weren't yet ready to deal with knowledge of the Wizarding World. She ended the Calamity spell and turned herself in afterwards.

—doctorlit enjoys a little weird side canon

. . . a process similar to minis, where the story produces a "word construct" to account for an unfamiliar spelling—just filling in a gap in history/logic, instead? That way, her family members are still real, legitimate beings, just no organic ones, like minis!

—doctorlit, constructing words

(You know, like . . .

"RAAAAAGH!"

"Oh good, our other partner is on his way!"

"RAAAAAGH!"

"That sound is our other partner? What are they, some kind of dinosaur?"

"RAAAAAGH!"

"No, of course not! Wouldn't that be so silly and unproductive, if part of our team was a wild, nonsapient dinosaur? Ha ha!"

"RAAAAAGH!" disemboweling noise

"No, Pteranodon is part of Pterosauria, an entirely unrelated order of wild, nonsapient reptile! Anyway, I'd better give you a tour of Medical ahead of schedule, so we can get that cleaned up . . ."

—doctorlit)

Her name was Lillian Potter, she had a heart shaped scar on her head, and she was from -checks notes- Anne of Green Gables!Canada.

~Lily, increasingly unsurprised as to why Purityworld gets her hackles up

You can be entertained by the deconstruction without reading the actual fics, but it's more cathartic if you have read the originals. But I guess that's kinda the same for other deconstruction stories--The Boys is more entertaining if you've been swamped by idealistic superhero movies, for example.

Yep! It's a thing! She's actually had several over her several lives. You can't just exist without having been born in a lot of universes. {= )

I don't have a great explanation for how that works, because everything I think of is a bit troubling if I think about it too hard. Is she inserting herself into a suitable existing family like a cuckoo? Is everyone related to her basically a "sundog" with no independent existence or free will? Maybe the universe just reacts to her presence by forming up this structure around her like a pearl around an irritant? I don't know. Maybe sometimes it's one thing, sometimes another. Like, I've occasionally given her a twin sister, and that's definitely the sundog thing, but the rest of the time? *big shrug*

As Lily says, her Purityworld family is based on her family from a Marauder-era RP I was in ages ago, but it's not identical. Her parents are the same: Argo, a British wizard, and Nora, an American muggle. But in the RP, she had a twin as I mentioned, who is not present here. And there is her great-uncle Aeron, current head of the Robinson family and the Penruddock house, who I made up purely for the deconstruction. There were also some Greek cousins in the RP that also exist in Purityworld, but I don't think they're going to play a part.

... Though, little-known trivia: I've toyed with the idea of Jenni having a couple of actual siblings (sort of) of her own kind. But I have no plans to do anything with them in the PPC, and trust me, HQ is much better off for it. I'm pretty sure the three of them royally effed up at least one world in their universe when they were young, and the other two haven't matured as much as Jenni has since.

~Neshomeh is still a little mad at N.K. Jemisin for having done a very similar concept so goddamn well already.

P.S. Because I can, have some Recolor.me images of Argo, Nora, and Aeron:

I don't know how the technology works, exactly, but my guess is that what it's doing is organizing words and phrases by how frequently they're associated, and then picking from those pools when forming responses. It's also designed to formulate responses that will engage the user, so it takes your input as a starting point and goes for response types in the relevant association pools that are weighted more positively based on its training on the backend and in other user interactions.

Again, I don't actually know this. It's just a vaguely educated guess.

But anyway, you can tell that it still doesn't actually understand what it's doing because it reacted to "Crackers" like that would be so funny, but failed to recognize that "Saltine" is equally funny because a saltine is a type of cracker. Therefore, AIs are still not capable of self-awareness, so we still don't need to panic just yet. {= )

~Neshomeh is unconvinced that AIs are scarier than some of the humans we've had in power, anyway.

Here is Harry Potter’s unknown sister Mina Potter. This Mina is American for some reason, is Harry’s twin sister, and has an identical lightning scar. It’s very bizarre.

—Ls would like to mission this soon

Doesn't even feel like Hermione, getting all weepy like that. And it implies that acceptance of unjust social division is the mature, rational mindset. Ew. I'm even happier to have read one version of Greengrass getting face-meltered now!

—doctorlit on lunch break

. . . the no-longer-playable cell phone game that takes place a year before Cursed Child. The character revealed to be the "villain" was trying to expose the Wizarding World to the Muggle World, and unite both cultures. It wasn't Hermione, if course,but another staff member in the Ministry.

—doctorlit wasted too many hours on that game

You're saying you didn't feed it Saltine as a partner name? It came up with a thematically appropriate one all on its own? That's terrifying.

—doctorlit, terrified

This time, it's images of "wand colored pencils".

--Ls

Reveal the Wizarding World to the Muggles! Actually, why isn’t that a commoner fanfic trope?

—Ls, just reading the reviews

You don't need to read them, honestly; it's more of an easter egg for people who have suffered through Purityworld fics :P

Ahh, yeah, I can see how that'd come about! But for what it's worth, Sirius is in Azkaban for things completely unrelated to James Potter's death--in fact, in this timeline, he was in Azkaban before James died. But you'll have to wait for year 3 for the full story!

Citizen Granger is hitting the barricades! Volumnia Greengrass, first up against the wall!

I don't blame you for buying Narcissa's words! I mean, JKR really did fumble that house-elf plot there by suggesting they ~like~ being enslaved. I am definitely planning to toss that entire thing out the window. Can you tell this rewrite is one part lampooning Pureblood Culture and one part fixing things I found problematic in the canon itself? :P

I see I'm missing some context by not reading some of these actual purityworld fics . . . but I'm not going to! : )

Following from my assumption that Pettigrew was in Azkaban, I figured Scabbers really was just a rat this time. There's no reason they wouldn't have picked out the same pet and the same name . . . Just so you don't think I'm completely dense!

Yes, Hermione will unite the Wizarding World Women and rise up! Instead of a Senator Gaunt, you will have a Minister Granger! One both bookish and terrible! All shall release their house-elves and despair!

Ew. I feel gross for taking Narcissa's assumption about house-elves at face value . . . It's kind of horrifying how Rowling describing a race of people in terms of slavery apologia can taint my reading of them all these years later . . .

—doctorlit, proud member of S.P.E.W