"Makes--everyone is gone! I don't know what happened to them! All the Suvians are gone, but where is everyone else?!"
"But it's okay," Alberta said. "We can figure this out, right, um, Wibbs, right?"
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"Makes--everyone is gone! I don't know what happened to them! All the Suvians are gone, but where is everyone else?!"
"But it's okay," Alberta said. "We can figure this out, right, um, Wibbs, right?"
"Bill Fallis, DAS-SWEAR," he said. "And this is my wife."
"Lori Starrett," added Lori, waving her phone. "We're going to pick up our son."
"And trying to figure out what the heck is going on." Bill grimaced at the empty hallway with the odd wet spots. "Seems to be some sort of Suvian deletion thing? Maybe some agents were playing with Infinity Stones?"
((Does Meg have a Wiki page? I'm not sure where to get info on what she looks like.))
A lot of my suggestions are for the text overall and not necessarily for any sort of later planning, except the mini, maybe, but you said things. I'm just a bit confused. It might be because I just woke up.
-kA
Random notes:
-I think it could use a bit more interaction between the agents.
I thought the badfic's quoting of Star Wars was funny, just because of how ridiculous it was.
The sentence "Deirdre tried to yank the apostrophe out of the it’s, to no avail." made me smile. There are many it's's that need their apostrophes yanked out.
Not sure the sentence “What do you mean, she doesn't know who her parents are? Did she just pop out of thin air?” is necessary. It isn't unreasonable to not know who one's parents are, so I don't think you need to make fun of that.
Overall, a nice but short mission bit.
“I… sort of portalled? Technically I’m not supposed to do wot I just did but this looks like an emergency.” She ran her hand through her messy hair. “Who are you two?”
is that it's inviting people to create minis for miniless continua. That's one of our few hard and fast rules.
—doctorlit, a rules guy
But I was specifically thinking about how we were trying to find wording for why PGs are PGs, and this was a good line:
That said, PGs are selected because they know the PPC well and are widely trusted. They tend to know what they're talking about, so if they tell you that something is a bad idea, it usually is.
...since it doesn't really mention "look up to/respected" or "well-known", but rather focuses on how PGs objectively know a lot about the PPC and are trusted to judge whether or not prospies have the ability to work with the setting.
The comments Rebecca and Deirdre are making are pretty amusing, especially paired with them trying to move punctuation into the places where they ought to be! I think you can ease up on quoting the badfic so much -- focus on the very egregious and/or funny parts, and give us more of Rebecca and Deirdre interacting with each other in addition to snarking at the fic. That way you can give us more of their personalities outside of Standard Snarky PPC Agent. For example, Rebecca could talk more about Metallica, and Deirdre... you said she was from a sci-fi world you're working on? Why not have her talk about where she comes from, or run comparisons between her world and World One? Is there an equivalent of Metallica back where she comes from?
All in all, an entertaining start. Looking forward to the continuation!
Let's see...
No need to be terrified! Even if you messed up, we aren't gonna yell at you, I promise. We all make mistakes. glares at my first mission
Usually, we don't link to the badfic in the actual mission. I've seen it done before (Nesh tends to do it), but I don't see it that often.
Ah, Metallica. I like some of their music, just like most bands, but I also like how you describe the band as someone who has never heard rock before.
Typically, the [BEEEP] takes up its own line, but including what the console was interrupting on the same line seems okay.
Hmm. I would say have Rebecca accept the mission then read the report, but the way you did it is okay, too, because I also have done that.
Some of the first bits seem more "tell" than "show," but it's not horrible. Better than the first draft.
Seems you forgot to say "they fell" when you said, "They appeared a few feet above the ground, which knocked the wind out of them." I just imagined the wind squishing their breath out, which is probably not what you meant, but a funny image nonetheless. :)
The pace is fast, not giving the agents a minute to breathe. Reminds me of David's first mission (in a good way, I promise).
Again, I love what you did with the exclaimation points. They are growing in the grounds, sirs!
Also again, love the direct manipulation of the Words! (Or attempt to)
Spelling error? "“Drat,” Sha said." Did you happen to mean she said?
Period floods! A major disaster in any Sue world!
The darkness bit feels too rushed. Maybe it would have been better to expand on that? Like, how do the agents feel when they get surrounded by darkness? Is the goop bad for their skin?
What happened to the mini? Did it get portaled to OFUM? Did it stick with the agents?
I feel like this mission is cut short rather than a proper cliffhanger or a slight tie-up existing. Feels like I'm missing something, you know?
That's all I've noticed. I hope this isn't too daunting, and I hope I'm not being too harsh. But, for a first mission, it was pretty decent. It was a bit fast paced and had creative uses of the Words and puncuation, but it did also have tell more than show in parts where show would be more engaging. I highly recommend looking up Show Vs. Tell articles and practicing describing the hows and whys to your readers. Otherwise, well done! I can't wait for what you do in the future and for the second part of this mission.
-kA, who apologizes in advance for errors in spelling. It is close to 11pm, and they are somewhat tired.
Here is the link: A Sue Who Can't Spell Part I
Please let me know if there is anything that needs to be fixed.
(Self-reply to Riiiing.)
This was the third time David Null paced the room, his thoughts on "The Magic Coin event," as he dubbed it, or "Wish Upon a Coin," as he formally dubbed it. It was his fault; he gets to name it.
That was pretty much what he came up with, aside from "the coin made anti-Sue matter exist," but that didn't make much sense. K told David that O'Ryan had messaged them while David was asleep. O'Ryan noted that canons with Canon Sues were marked and had no associated universe.
Meaning they disappeared, like everything else.
O'Ryan hypothesized that glitter, the very essence of Sues, disappeared, based on his suit jacket sleeve being wet and not glittery, but that wouldn't explain the badfic non-Sues being gone. Perhaps it was Sue influence? Being a puppet of a Sue for long enough causing something irreversible to happen? Who knows.
And why wasn't Paye gone? Was Dream Girlfriend not a Sue canon after all?
David was very confused. He stopped pacing and sat on his bed.
What canons were affected? Could he reverse this? Could he-
Knock knock.
"Who's there?" David called out. "The door is locked."
"Qnza," the stranger cursed. "Well, whatever. I just wanted to let you know that-"
"All the Sues are gone," David replied. "I know!"
"Yeesh, don't be so harsh!" called the stranger. "Anyhow, do you have any glitter? Or Sueification items?"
"No?" David replied. "I don't shpxing carry that sort of stuff. Too much of a personal risk."
"Qnza," the stranger cursed again. "I was gonna see if I could Sue myself and stay alive."
"Why the uryy would you shpxing do that?" David yelled.
"Science!" they said. "But, whatever. I'm gonna wander the halls and see if anyone has anything." David heard footsteps leaving.
"Alright, back to thinking," he muttered. "Back to thinking..."
Official name is "Wish Upon a Coin," but no one (except David Null) knows that :).
Also, the stranger isn't gonna find a ton of glitter. Most, if not all, of it disappeared. I know nothing official has been said yet, but there. O'Ryan is right, in this case. That's why O'Ryan's sleeve became wet.
-kA
(Reply to Zara.)
"Things have gotten pretty quiet," Bill noted as he and Lori wandered through a generic hallway. "You'd think that, with half of the PPC disappearing, people would be running around like chickens with their heads cut off."
Lori looked up from where she was texting Liam. "Wasn't there some sort of announcement for people to stay in their RCs?"
"Probably to avoid a potential repeat of the Macrovirus from 2008," said Bill, even though he and Lori had missed that particular Emergency by several months. Still, cleanup for it and the subsequent invasion hadn't been fun. "I mean, until we know exactly what caused it, is it really a good idea to be wandering around? What if it's some sort of anti-Suvian disease?"
"You still wouldn't be susceptible," Lori pointed out. "You're not Suvian. I, on the other hand--"
"Got caught in your own semi-fic blop," countered Bill.
"Blip," corrected Lori.
"Whatever. Count your blessings that it didn't count, and let's go find a way to get everyone back." Bill smiled bracingly at his wife, who merely sighed and returned to doomscrolling on her phone.
"It sounds like all the HQ forums are stuffed with people asking about other people," she reported. "Social media, too. Apparently it's being called Hashtag-the-Poofening on Glitter."
Bill snorted. "Did someone at the Cafeteria party come up with that one?" he asked, just as a figure popped up in the hallway right in front of them. Bill immediately held up a hand to stop Lori from walking into said figure. "Hey! Where'd you come from?"
((The NPCD has a Social Media Manager, so there's probably some PPC equivalent of Twitter...... which ofc would be called Glitter, since it's just as much of a heckhole as its namesake.))
((Is it updated? Not fully. I need to start adding posts and organizing them into Timeline Order (tm), but we're getting there! Here it is!))
((-kA))
(Reply to Alberta.)
"I've got a theory," Technician Neo Webber was saying as he slid himself underneath a winched-up X-Wing, "that if we taught the agents to treat their tech like their own children, we'd have less damage incidents."
"Sounds more like a hypothesis," replied Dr Flibbertigibbet. He'd been a rescue from a Phineas and Ferb badfic where he'd been constantly pitted against Ferb's wunderkind girlfriend and her pet beaver, hence his tendencies to overengineer weapons of mass chaos in response to trivial daily nonsense. "We should test it! I shall create a Agent Separator, so we can divide all of HQ's denizens into control and experimental groups. You can create a Kindness Initiative for NewfangleD technology, or K.I.N.D for short --"
"We can skip the Agent Separator and go right to the Kindness Initiative," interrupted Neo with a laugh. "Not everything needs to be an experiment, Flibber. Pass me the sonic wrench?"
No response. Neo sighed and rolled himself out from under the X-Wing, only to see the mad scientist nowhere in sight.
"Hey, Flibber, I'm sorry," said Neo loudly, wiping a bit of engine grease off his hands with his kerchief. "If it makes you feel better, you can at least record the effects of the initiative."
Still no response. Neo frowned, and headed into out of the hangar back to one of the various workshops for tinkering with the PPC's enormous cache of multiversal tech. He noted Alberta at one of the workstations, a half-built gadget on the table beside her. She seemed rather worried.
Neo put on a smile to cover his own confusion. "What happened, Einstein?" he asked.