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The esteemed Dr, Seldon Xaal gives a lecture on Battle Royale and Panem. Also a new Agent shows his face. And Noman talks a bit too.

It's... I dunno, sort of floppy? And pointy? And very battered by this point; we haven't been able to afford new hats for a long time.

hS, just Very Tired these days, and glad of the help

Kaitlyn: "What the [censored swearing] was that? A murderous melon? What in [more swearing] have the Cafeteria been brewing up now? It's like [even more swearing; apparently that list really rubbed off on her] Slorp all over again!

I lost track of Aulhar, I lost track of Kokoro, I think Norman got killed by, to reiterate, a gun-toting melon - there's only about seven of us left!

... at least that means tonight might be quieter?"

((Oh hey, Jiwon! Nice to see being Mary Poppins that one time hasn't affected him too much.))

hS

David: An explosion?! Seriously?! Oh well, whatever.

he walks away, muttering several curses.

Paye, not a competitor: Dang. Crow, you owe me ten bucks for that.

Crow, not a competitor: Hmm?

David, defeated competitor, sitting next to Paye: Kinda sorta glad it's over now, to be completely honest. The contest was [censored] annoying.

Crow: Oh. That.

Crow hands Paye ten bucks.

David: I'm assuming someone already yelled at you, so I'll spare you my version.

Matt: I... didn't mean to kill them. What do you mean the berries were Nightshade? Dangit.

(Ey, Matt! David's dead, dangit. My commentary of outside competitors will cease once Matt is dead, but Hannah and Erik will provide their recap of the whole thing ft. David Null because Reasons. Once the PPC HG are done, of course.)

(-kA)

This one's rather long and somewhat rushed, but it's here now!

Featuring lots of death, an old PPC cryptid, and several typos I probably missed when looking over this thing.

-OrangeFox

Rebecca: Did I actually do that? Oh fuvg, I actually killed someone. I think there's some sort of computer program controlling me! Help! Look, I didn't mean to, it just sort of happened. I'm sorry, damn the RNG!

(She is freaking out because she killed someone and now she thinks she doesn't have free will anymore)

• "Anyway, TV show episodes are more about what makes a good story than anything else." - is this author!Acy having a sly jab at author!Jay for going off on a long tangent about sock puppets (which in context is the thing that doesn't make a good story, as opposed to Acy/Boromir action)? I think it might be.

• The theory about lembas being Twinkies comes from the List of Tolkien Crackpot Theories, including Acy's note about the taste.

• Acacia gives herself the name "Vananovien", and I'm not sure why. This thread suggests it was taken from a generator, which used "Vananov" as a base and added a feminine ending; but Vananov is not an Elvish word. I can construct it from Vána+nóva+ien, "foremost beautiful maiden" (but the more direct meaning of Vana is 'blonde', so...).

• Not sure about the horse's name; Acy tells us it isn't Latin for Wind, while Vento would at least be close. There's people on the internet claiming both "Anima" and "Aura" mean Wind in Latin, so it could equally be Animo/Auro. Any of these are dumb names. ^_^

• We get a little bit of background on Acy this mission. She's learning Latin (hence her later Roman retirement), she started out in Bad Slash, and there's a hint that she might have worked in Anime at one point ("Had this been an anime continuum, Acacia would have sweatdropped.") Acacia's timeline is... difficult; did she really run through both DBS-Anime and DIC-Potter in the less-than-a-month between FotR's release and her first mission with Jay (which is not Rambling Band)? In TOS4 she says "I wasn't hired till after there were movies, remember", but she doesn't actually specify LotR movies. Given that she's known to have worked Harry Potter, we can buy an extra month by saying she meant Philosopher's Stone, which came out in November '01... does that fit? Hired in November, works a couple of missions in DBS-Anime, meets Lux, transfers to DIC to deal with some of the Potterverse badfic flood, kills Harry Potter, transferred again to DMS to deal with the newly-released Fellowship. Works with Jay for about a month before Rambling Band crosses their desk.

• Speaking of timing... this mission shows that J&A were happy to spend a while on a mission. They walk for five days before portalling ahead. They do agree that six months would be pushing it, though. :)

• According to Jay, Millie and Mr. Socko are official PPC agents ("Constables" in this case). I believe this unquestioningly.

• I've just checked both the Misssandman.com and Oddlots copies of the mission, and both of them are missing that line. Given that they seem to be independent copies, I suspect it got chopped before it ever reached FFn.

hS

even if they're not exactly civil about them 🤣 Thanks for commenting as always!

You really do have a talent for sticking characters with conflicting personalities together! I have to say, even though Kaguya is the generically "nicer" of the two, I find myself agreeing with Urato when it comes to eating. People should be allowed to just relax and be casual when eating, not worry about appearances and posture and whatnot. And while Kaguya's disguise was pretty gross, it was only temporary, and didn't stop him from carrying out the mission. I hope he gives Urato a chance to explain what happened with the disguise generator; Urato shouldn't be reprimanded when he didn't do anything wrong!

One grammatical error:
"The fic went into flashback, a scene change crashed over the agents."
Since these are both independent clauses (can each stand as a separate sentence), a comma alone doesn't work to link them. You can either add "and" ("flashback, and a scene"), or switch the comma to a semicolon ("flashback; a scene").

—doctorlit lives alone, so he just eats wherever is convenient to consume the fiction of the moment

Hm. The Marquis doesn't really feel himself here, compared to what I'm used to reading of him. Seems a lot less confident and severe. Of course, we usually see him irritated at recruits being portaled into his office unannounced. This feels a lot more like a formal meeting, so maybe that's why he's a bit more submissive and "on the back root?" Might be nice to explore this more neurotic, professional aspect of his personality; plus, having agents escort the recruit to his office allows for more HQ time and more dialogue interaction, too!

Some minor notes:
1. That book on poisons that Acacia reads is actually real! It appears to be part of a whole series of author resources on writing about crime and investigation.
2. Sorry to be one of those animal people, Acacia, but the man o' war (warning for describing predatory behavior) is very much NOT a jellyfish. Man o' wars are of the siphonophore order, animals whose bodies are composed of units called zooids. Even though the whole organism still hatches and grows up together, its zooids compartmentalize tasks, such that only some parts of its body can capture food, digest, reproduce, etc. Compared to this setup, jellyfish are much more like humans, in that they are a single unit that develops different appendages that it can use in concert to perform different tasks at once. The man o' war's superficial jellyfish shape is just a bit of convergent evolution, shaping two open-water drifting ambush predators into a successful body plan.
3. I love that Leviathan's assassination was a scaled-down reference to Smaug's death! Perfection!
4. Makes-Things turning the volume back down seems to confirm that the switch from [bip] to [BEEP] was either a malfunction, or a deliberate change by Upstairs or Legal to get agents to react more dutifully to missions.
5. I think the horse's name is "Vento"? I don't really know Latin, but there's a Ventus in Kingdom Hearts with a wind theme to some of his attacks. And since Acacia is complaining the name shouldn't end in "o," it seems like "Vento" would be the thing. Does the original fic survive to check?

This, by far, is the most screen time the TOS authors have given the badfic during a mission, up to this point. I still don't think they've directly quoted a lot, but the agent characters seem a lot more aware and attentive to the fic events compared to usual. Hard to say whether this is a shift in their approach to missions until we read a bit further . . . it could simply be a consequence of this story being legitimately creative, for all its weird choices. As the agents point out, it's unusual to see OCs who don't join the Fellowship, and that may have incentivized the TOS authors to give the fic more space to breathe within the narrative. Of course, this mission has one element that is undeniably the funniest thing in the entire PPC. No, I'm NOT talking about the sock puppets, though they're made even funnier by this other element. I'm talking about
"We're being canonical," the somewhat stocky (for an elf) elf said in a musical voice (the music in question being British protest rock. But what did you expect?)
Broke: Elves having lyrical, ethereal voices. Woke: An elf having a speaking voice like the singer from the Sex Pistols. Yes. Perfection. The perfect joke, and it matches Jay's personality perfectly. The fact that Acacia doesn't have some arbitrary accent inherent to her elf disguise means that Jay either customized her own disguise to feature it, or it's a straight-up bit that she sticks to for the entire, long mission. And either way is just more perfection. Perfection squared and cubed.

I think we're missing a line from this one, though!?
"And neither will I, I'm beginning to worry," said Acacia.

"Lucky bint." Apparently, Jay's British accent was extending to her slang.
There seems to be a Jay line missing between those spots I bolded, both by order of speaking and by the fact that Acacia's question doesn't make sense there. Somebody has that, hopefully? I could have sworn I had TOS backed up, but . . . it seems to be absent from my archive folder. : (

—doctorlit

Aulhar: [rather quietly] Don't tell anyone about the hiding spot I've found, OK?

Kkukttak: I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone today...

Farah: Jarrod and Kaitlyn are both nice people! I'll admit there's a surprising lack of stabbing for something that's supposed to be a murderfest, but I'm not complaining. Also, I think Nybble's lis has gotten longer - which I'm not complaining about either: [bleeb], [bleep] and [bleep]face are all new.

Another one, with some funny bits.

Let's check back in with Winfrey, Noman, and Sarkan.

Paye, not a competitor: EY! MATT KILLED A COMPETITOR!

Crow, also not a competitor: How much do I owe you, Paye, for Matt killing someone before David?

Paye: Five bucks!

O'Ryan, defeated competitor: I cannot believe either of you.

Matt: This is gonna sound weird, y'know, but it was almost like... he taps a hatchet on the ground killing a Sue. I have this odd feeling that Doom wasn't the real Doom. He shrugs. I guess it might be from killing too many Sues before this. Probably is nothing.

Matt looks off into the distance, pondering.

Matt: But did I kill someone, like, really kill someone? Again, probably is nothing, except... uh, thanks! Hatchet sponsor! Like the new weapons!

[The rest of the clip was cut for reasons unspecified.]

David: Ey! I saw Matt kill Doom! Great job, Matt! Keep it up! And giving me a [censored] hatchet, will you? I really hate those late night [censored] meetings and didn't have any weapons to [censored] kill someone else, so, you know. Kinda need them. Can't just keep beating people with my bare hands, [censored]!

(While not totally OOC for David to talk to others about worries, it is a bit OOC to talk about worries when the activity is going on. David just isn't the type of person to sit down and talk while battle happens around him, so I gave him justification.)

(-kA)

Thalia, laughing: “Doomed to die? Doom, death, and disaster! Hahaha!”

Doom shrugs: “Figured that would happen sooner or later, although I am mildly annoyed my partner’s left to make bad puns.”

Kaitlyn: "What were the odds that I'd hang out with someone literally named 'Doom', and somehow they were not the one to attack me? I don't think I'd even run into Matt before then! Ah, well, at least Farah seems nice, and I've learnt some exciting new words!"

((I'm really enjoying both the commentary and the adverts. They fit perfectly into the spirit of the Games!))

hS

Once again, we return. I guess.

Anyway, here ya go! Not the most notable of days, but a day nonetheless!

-OrangeFox

hS/Plort

You invented it, right?

hS/heraldry

Also has to do with Plort.

You know what. can I just write shipfic happening in Plort? I like medaeval/fantasyish stuff, and fantasy PPC just sounds awesome. And nerdy. I like that combo.

... and will probably jump out and attack anyone who happens by.)

"Dammit! Of course I get killed on the first day by a single bloody arrow! And it shouldn't have hit me either! That's what you get for trusting luck."

At least theoretically; I have no way of checking that it's screen-readable. There might be a couple of extra jokes hidden in it (including what's going on with Dafydd's 'stamp').

I did actually write out Lux's full postcard before taking a sharpie to it, and let me tell you, it's [censored] [censored] far too [censored]!

The PPC being what it is, I wouldn't be overly surprised if the Postal Union includes every member of the department, including Otik. Either that, or Starwind misheard, and it's actually the Onion's rules.

(Typo fixed, and thank you!)

hS

There's something about making actual physical artefacts that feels much cooler. I could basically have done this all digitally, but it wouldn't have felt as good.

I was actually really pleased by how well the writing worked. I was worried it was all going to look like me putting on a font, and granted there's a couple of those, but there are also some which I wrote that don't feel like me at all. (Though they might seem a bit artificial still; the pen doesn't have a chance to flow naturally when you're taking so much care over the letter-forms.)

I can confirm that I know exactly who T & C are, but also that I will be neither confirming nor denying any speculation. :D I think it can be deduced, but I'm the one living in my head, so...!

hS

All the cards (and the cover) should now have useful alt text. I'm not sure how well it'll screen-read in places, particularly when Lux starts to [censored] her [censored] all over the [censored], but it should be better than [censored] - um, I mean than nothing.

It looks like the mouseover text is just the very plain titles; the full alt text shows up in the source view, but as far as I know there's no browser-innate way to read it other than that. Screen readers are hopefully a different matter, but I'd appreciate if someone could confirm.

hS