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Totally seconding this. Might do it myself.

((Couldn't figure out the accent.))

That explanation makes no sense. According to the Copenhagen Interpretation (Honestly, not my favorite interpretation of quantum mechanics) which I think is what you're going for, that only applies to wave-functions, which TOS is not. Besides, it wouldn't not exist, it would half-exist while at the same time half not-existing.

This irrelevant diatribe was brought to you by Linstar, who's wondering why he even bothered.

We're gonna call ourselves teh Multiverse Mornitor 2!

((Sigh. This newspaper is terrible.))

Hear @ the Mary Su Motiner, we know taht we are thw only origina newsapaper 4 Mari sues! Besides, hu like French aniway????

((Wow, the SPaG is atrocious, instead of merely bad. And I like that you used French. ))

Usually people do short reintroductions if they haven't talked to the other person before or if they've changed their username here. Since the Bookworm Formerly Known As ClaireBook did in fact change their name (and hadn't met Ix yet), a reintroduction would be appropriate.

Also, @Bookworm: it's fine to sign off with pronouns! You can do whatever you like with your signature :) As you can see, I don't often use one myself :P

...actually, come to think of it, I kind of wrote something like that myself, as a way to develop the characters, since I found that easiest to do by writing them. I never posted it, largely because it remained unfinished (and unedited/not mildly rewritten) and was kind of chaotic (the concept is that Charlie's kind of...test mission involved going into her own badfic with a temporary partner/supervisor, and then Brenda followed her in to see what was taking her new partner so long, or something like that) - anyway, that's fairly irrelevant except to say that I understand why the trend came to be. I vaguely remember a whole discussion on it, too, some years back (several, actually, I think).

Anyway, the prompts were kind of unofficial interludes anyway, so I don't see a problem with shifting to the Permission piece being a first interlude. A suggestion: the prompts could be an optional part of it - sort of the best of both worlds, so that people who don't feel they need a prompt can just write the interlude they'd like to write, and people who aren't quite sure where to begin or would enjoy a challenge can cycle through some and pick something that looks interesting.

I do wonder if there should be a length range (like, "ideally 5-10 pages" or something, since interludes can get very long), and whether or not it would be good to require it be an interlude that is at least partially set in the PPC - on the one hand, the profiles should be enough to give a sense of understanding of HQ and so on; on the other hand, it's a little different, seeing it in action. I'm really not sure.

Actually, as an alternate to a length range: when I went for Permission, I used a chapter of a fic I'd been writing (and polished that chapter a lot). As it was the...fourth chapter, I believe, I also provided a couple contextual notes. In that kind of vein, if someone writes a very long first interlude, they could potentially choose what they feel is the best ~5 pages (I include ~ because I don't feel it makes sense to quibble over a paragraph that spills over onto page 6 or something like that - this is not, in fact, a school assignment of the sort with a very strict word or page limit) and, if necessary, add a note about skipped parts for context. Theoretically, the full interlude could be available upon request? Or the rest of it quickly summarized so that something glaringly obviously not PPC-appropriate doesn't get missed? But on the other hand, that kind of thing could easily be caught and corrected post-Permission, as occasionally does happen with posted material.

This way, we'd be kind of...blending a few Permission piece concepts. We get a writing sample, the prompts are there for those who want or need them (but are not obligatory, leaving more choice and freedom in the content of the piece), the Permission piece is an actual PPC story that would be written anyway (and this way gets extra polishing and feedback)...odds are this could use a little more fine-tuning, including the question of what people have been writing as their first story and if missions should be included in the options here, but overall, I think this could be a decent new version.

~Z, unexpectedly more active on the Board for the first time in ages

In my view, the ideal Permission process is "oh, you're that fanwriter, I read your stuff, what's your plan for agents?". But that's progressively fallen down:

1) The PPC got too large and diverse for us to have all read each other's fanfic.

2) We had a run of "here's my fanfic, it's a 60K graphic horror poem, you have to read the first 900 stanzas to really get it!".

3) Lots of newbies over the last... uh... decade aren't fanwriters at all.

So there is no going back. :-/

One thought: since everyone seems to be writing PPC stories in advance of Permission these days (see the confusion over who has beta'd what for Sierpinksi), could we just ask them to post their first story? I know you were against it before, but, like... I'm not saying 'mission', we don't have to read the whole thing to form an opinion, and everyone's doing it anyway. I'd rather use that first story as a Permission piece than have them write something else, get feedback, get Permission the second time round, and then post the interlude they'd already written and had beta'd before the first set of feedback.

(Plus profiles, obviously)

hS

Checking my agent gallery, most of my active agents wear some sort of black top (the exceptions are Elanor - in Nursery - and Tango - who just dun't wanna). My feeling is it's expected that you wear PPC Black, but - Flowers being Flowers - there's not really any consequences if you don't. (If you're going to an official meeting, either Upstairs or with some agency outside the PPC, you probably do need to wear it though.)

I also feel like they do always wear a flash patch. In the case of Dassie or Steve, they have a couple of jackets, each with a patch on; in other cases, they might go down the velcro/armband route, or might just have lots of patches. I reject the very concept of the SEP-flashpatch, so they're cheap and easy to add for me. ^_^

A couple of pictures do hint at alternate possibilities - Terri might be wearing hers on a lanyard, while Mortic has a WhatThe mission pin for his cloak which might be serving the same purpose. (Mission pins were originally a hypothetical 'more elegant flashpatch', so this would fit for me.) But my general rule is "every agent wears a patch while on duty, which is most of the time".

hS

I always envisioned the flash patch as being on an armband if it wasn't practical to have them directly on the clothes, and even in the latter case (such as my own agents) I always imagined it would be attached with velcro like a military patch.

I also had them stick to the "something black" loose rule, with Sergio replacing his signature red jacket from his pre-PPC times with a black one, Nikki wearing a black trenchcoat to hide her figure a bit, and Corolla wearing a black hoodie, but you can chalk that up to me being always a bit too literal with rules...

Kaguya has a montsuki haori (haori with crest) with flash patch in place of the mon on the back [1].

they just get locked for no reason. Some missions unfortunately get this too.

Not that Jiwon is from one! Generally speaking, though, imagine someone from an anime continuum (probably a recent one, since English was only made compulsory in Japan in 2011) walking into an EFL class in New Cal and having a bout of deja-vu.

cough David Null's Hawaiian shirt cough cough.

But, in as an actual answer, a) the only ones who wear black that are my agents are O'Ryan and Kittyauthor, b) David Null doesn't even wear black on missions. Like, it's explictly mentioned in one of my missions (published or not is a different question) that David Null had his Hawaiian shirt on. The other agents might be in black during mission time(tm), but David certainly doesn't, and c) all except David Null have (or will have, in K's case) the patch sewn onto every one of their shirts like kids in boarding schools 'cause I thought that was a requirement lol. There's gonna be a mission where K complains about the flash patch ruining the theme (mood? What would one call that?) of his clothes and David's just gonna say, "It's required. It hides us from canons." Probably with more cursing.

-kA, who really needs to rewrite K's intro mission because it went down from "they bicker but aren't enemies" to "they hate each other's guts" and that isn't The PPC Spirit (tm), you know?

(Edit: Grammar)

(Edit 2: Spelling, because I keep spelling "sewn" with an o.)

Honestly, I feel like I learn something new about the actual New Caledonia each time it comes up. It's cool! Also, the EFL sounds like good fun - I might have to reference that somehow if my writing motivation comes back.

...

slides Jiwon back into the closet

I actually called it a couple nights ago in Discord, but I just read this:

This piqued Chiana's interest as she followed orders. "Hey Helie, what is this Divine One?"

Helie's laugh once again erupted. "Oh that, he is supposedly a bright being of light and energy that guides our destiny among the stars. Loves all, and watches over those who die. They believe that one day he will rise up among his people again after his flesh has burned away by the love our Goddess. This will make him immortal again, and restore the balance that was long ago upset."

Frell it to hezmana, I knew it. It's John. John is the Divine One.

Technically I don't know this yet, but look, John has supposedly died after being put through some sort of mystical trial where he had to listen to dead people from his past talk at him, and Jack (the Ancient) was involved, and so was the spirit of Zhaan (representing the Goddess no doubt), and this is 100% a thing that is happening.

I hate it. So much.

~Neshomeh

Apparently the French government runs an English-language teaching assistant job in New Caledonia. Based on the job description, it's literally the same as my current job in Japan. There's also some private schools in Noumea that teach English.

This leads me to the idea of some random World One recent graduate who wants to teach English as a foreign language in a different country signing on to teach English in New Caledonia and ending up, somehow, with a job at Digory Kirke or Paul Atreides teaching EFL to kids and agents from non-English-speaking continua. They probably don't have a UT fitted, so they'll be befuddled at their students understanding them perfectly but still responding in Sindarin or Klingon or Middle Chinese. The EFL course for agents would be aimed at helping them take down grammar-related charges, write cogent chargelists and mission reports, and read the Words (presuming, ofc, that the UT in use doesn't translate text, only speech). For kids, it would probably be closer to the standard EFL classroom experience with grammar points being hidden in games and conversation activities.

So yeah, if anyone's got agents who are not from an English-speaking continuum, this could be an interesting aspect of their backstory or just some ongoing character detail/gag. Imagine some, idk, Wookie agent pulling out their EFL homework in the middle of a mission or practicing reading the Words!

Thanks for confirming Befuddled Beta'd for you, and for adding that to the updated Permission Request, that helps a lot.

So, one thing I want to say is that it's not the length of the 'fic itself that was the problem. The length of the 'fic in some ways doesn't matter, it could be fifty words long or fifty thousand, a missionable badfic is a missionable badfic, but not every badfic is missionable, and that one just didn't feel like it could, or would, work for a mission, especially not as a first one.

As to your current badfic choice, could you please get a link for it, I've had a quick search on AO3 and FF.net and can't see it on either.

While, as I've mentioned, length isn't vital for a mission, if you want to ease into writing in the PPC what I would recommend is that you start off with a fairly simple Sue, nothing too extreme or NSFW/squicky or anything like that, just something nice and simple that lets you work through exactly how a PPC mission works and killing a Sue without too much else going on.

I'm going to be honest, it's late, I've been working on this post on and off for most of the evening when I've had time, I'll come back tomorrow (after work), have another sift through things, just take a peek at the badfic if you could get a link on your Permission Request up, and hopefully by that point I'll have come to a decision with regards to this.

Apologies,

Nova

Like... the flash patch has a safety pin on the back so you can just pin it to whatever you're wearing that day?

But ofc, Liu Siyuan's got embroidered flash patches, so he probably had to stitch his onto everything he wears.