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They're really pushing them out fast, aren't they? This is Jay and Acacia's fifth mission, and they've been at it less than a month!

What Might Have Been

This mission... wow. Before we even get to the mission, it introduces the DMS flashpatch (and possibly the capitalised department name?), "it's a bit of a maze unless you hadn't noticed", the Sunflower Official, and the whole concept of agents going flamethrower-crazy. And then the mission itself...

... um...

... is actually not all that memorable. Like, apart from the body disposal, I couldn't even have told you this one existed. That's quite funny. XD

Sadly the badfic is lost to history; all we have is the author's name (Jellibeana).

hS

And, yay! It's published!

-kA, happy that they did their first co-written mission

Link text

So, I finally wrote another mission! It’s been... a while. Zara and Dia tackle a Moomin trollfic and end up needing backup.

Warnings for Bl2 in the fic.

... I decided, for no real reason, that Agent Nyx Nightingale came from Ukraine. Back in 2014, when all this began, I wrote a short piece from her perspective, to try and get to grips with my own sense of dread. In a bitter twist, her home village is now a suburb of Donetsk.

Even then, I didn't imagine it would end up like this.

hS

My beta reader, the one who's worked with me on all my PPC writings, is from Ukraine. I know this issue probably isn't allowed for discussion on the board, but since she's an active helper in my PPC writing, I suppose I should announce this here, and I have obtained her permission to make the issue public.

And since they mistakenly disabled my account twice, now I have a crippling fear of being permabanned for real and losing any and all data I have.

In the last stretch of the epic four-part mission, rescues are made, reveals are made and a hateful Sue meets her demise. Both rescued characters are not up for adoption – I plan to write them myself. Be sure to use spoiler tags when discussing certain events in this part, thanks!

She ended up turning into a running gag, leading to the notion that she's from the Shipverse. I like a good running gag as much as the next person, but I prefer to write Lux more like she is in TOS, though I think the idea that she likes kids and is good with them came from later interpretations of her. A mostly happy-go-lucky ditz with moments of perception and seriousness, who is pansexual and flirtatious and loves innuendos but has boundaries and isn't out to jump everything that moves—in short, a character with nuance—is much more interesting to me.

And I couldn't resist throwing in a nod to the invisible scrunchie while I was at it. ^_^

~Neshomeh also thinks it's worth remembering that Lux and Sean were originally based on real life friends of J&A.

...ack, given Jacques, that looks like an innuendo. Whoops. What I actually mean is that I had dance lessons of various types for a good chunk of my life growing up! Mostly not the type of dancing in this story, though, and I'm not used to writing about it, overall. I could probably do more with, say, a ballet scene, but that wouldn't have fit.

Thanks for reading, doc! (And Tomash, and anyone else who has!) Glad you enjoyed the scene. And yeah, New Cal really has expanded a lot. On the plus side, if you want to add something more (and thus only really have to deal with situating it when it comes to consistency), I'm sure there's still room...

~Z

This really is a fun one! They really got into a groove of making a story out of the mission here, and giving much more characterization to Jay and Acacia. Which is even more impressive when realizing the badfic barely appears! Visiting Luxury is much more fun, although wow, is she a lot less ditzy and a lot more manic in this original appearance? Also, while she's somewhat dirty-minded, she's really not overtly omnisexual—she certainly doesn't hit on J+A, and could basically come off as monogamous from this scene on its own. Then again, that line about invisible clothes feels like a sharp spike in age rating compared to everything that's come before . . .

I haven't read any Discworld yet (also on my reading list, although boy, do I not know what to do with that open-ended timeline), so while I know that Teatime is a character, I don't know why imitating them would be embarrassing to Acacia. Anyone care to enlighten me?

Actually, another question, too: Jay says that poison will turn Aislinn's horn black. I know historically, unicorn horn was believed to be an antidote, but I can't find a reference to the color changing element. Does anyone know if that's a reference to any particular canon and why is it Discworld?

—doctorlit is definitely convinced there's an Agent Joan in Intelligence now

And as for Jenni's backstory, I would personally love reading a prose chronicle of it some day . . . though I recognize that might get tricky, with the other RPers' characters being present . . .

—doctorlit will read what he can get!

Not something I would have picked up on my own (like a lot of the shock-value content that came out of Newgrounds), but it gets interesting as it goes on. I approve of the Douglas Adams references. I wonder if the Homestuck vibes are deliberate or maybe a consequence of coming from similar backgrounds and/or sources of inspiration? Anyway, I'm curious to see if there will ever be an explanation for Hank being the way he is, requiring an entire organization and Jesus Himself to oppose his murder spree. I kinda figured he must be the Antichrist (he is literally fighting against Christ, after all)... until the Auditor picked up Jesus' broken halo and got all demon-y. But I dunno. Maybe it's all a video game being played by some Trolls or something. {= P

Anyway, I get what you're saying here, and it sounds good! Different aspects of late 90s/early aughts Internet culture rubbing up against each other has potential, too, I reckon.

~Neshomeh

It's a permissions logging thing. Just make a copy and set it so that anyone with the link can view, and post the link to the copy on the wiki.

I'm toying around with the character in the Discord, and he's a bit hard to explain, and I definitely did a poor job explaining who and what he is. His redeeming traits so far are a strange insightfulness, acting partially as a censor, and he does seem to genuinely care for others - although he has a weird, slappy, roundabout way of doing it (IE, downing someone's drink so they don't get too hungover, slapping cigarettes out of their hands due to the rules of his home canon dictating that smoking means certain death). He also seems unusually loyal to the PPC and surprisingly straightedge, contrasting Winfrey, who gets drunk, tampers with equipment and openly questions what the Plot Continuum even is. The comedy around Noman comes from either him being an idiot or him showing Winfrey as the haughty classist she is.

The two are stooges and rubes who are foils to each other, just by sort of slapping each other into roughly the shape an Agent should take.

Noman isn't an edgelord or serious business. He's not malevolent so much as inured to violence and always twitching for the "conclusion" when he can be a "good soldier" and do "his job". He's not going to be a grim, brooding man with his trusty gunsword or whatever. He comes from a canon that exists as a goofy excuse to have ultraviolence (It features zombie Jesus with a Desert Eagle) - and he's marked by that. He's from Madness Combat and will always be from Madness Combat. He is, in essence, that spirit of irreverent ultraviolence bound by the rules of the PPC, which then results in comedy as Winfrey tries to make him cultured and the two stumble about.

A bit belated because work got busy last week, but here’s a couple more:

L: Zearth’s Cor Caroli, R: OrangeFox’s Jiwon Kim.

I also did some doodles for two more; I don’t know if I will actually get to finished versions of these, but I wanted to share them anyway!

Scapegrace’s Wobbles

Ki no Shirayuki’s Momoka

Happy Valentine’s! Or, to those of us in Tolkien fandom, Happy Gandalfmas 🤣

I didn't like the idea when it first became a thing, because it seemed like too much of a departure from the normal setting, but of course it grew on me once I started working with it. I figured, if we were gonna have it, we should treat it as the real place it is and not just a Generic Anglo/Euro/American Place with a name pulled out of a hat by a game, so I started learning. The IRL New Caledonia is ecologically, culturally, and historically interesting, and beautiful in photos, and I really want to visit someday. ^_^

No need to worry about losing track of the geography! Me being me, I went and made a map of the PPC city based on all the descriptions I could find, and I'm attempting to keep it and the wiki article on New Cal up to date.

Thanks for the comments on the story. Neither Zing or I know much about dancing, either, but I leaned really hard on stuff I picked up from Dancing with the Stars? {X D I'm glad if it works to animate the literal and emotional dialogue.

I'm also glad if other people find Jenni's history interesting! It's nostalgic for me, since most of it comes from actual role-plays and stuff I was involved in, but of course that doesn't necessarily mean anyone else wants to hear it, haha.

And yes. Do read Pern. Dooo iiiit. {= D

~Neshomeh, shamelessly recruiting people into her fandoms.

There's definitely nothing wrong with going for that dynamic. I'd just point out that, when it comes to "being murder-happy," it's one thing when it's two basically normal twenty-somethings who know what they're doing is a) absurd and b) fictional—that is, they fully acknowledge that the canon characters and the OCs are fictional characters. It's another thing when the premise of the PPC is played more straight, as though all the characters involved are real, which is what we tend to do these days. I don't think that's a bad thing at all! It's much easier to make the case that writing well matters when the in-universe stakes are higher. With that in mind, though, it's much harder to play off an agent literally designed to be an "aggressive, malevolent" killer with no morals as funny. He's got to have some redeeming qualities, or the setting has to be treated lightly enough to get away with cartoon violence, or both.

How his foil is written to balance him is important, too, of course; I'm focusing less on Winfrey because I didn't see anything that worried me there. {= )

There were some things in the writing samples I liked, too, and I regret not taking the time to make note of them. Sorry about that. The writing itself seemed good.

~Neshomeh

and their support system continues to do its usual brick wall impression a few days from now, I can try and poke my formar manager there to see if something can be shaken loose internally. Might need some more details but I'm sure you can get my email from somewhere for those.

I mostly plan on playing him for laughs. He gets mad, he gets twitchy, he has stupid plans. It's the good cop/bad cop or smart guy/dumb guy dynamic. He gets into little arguments and fidgets trying not to jump the gun. This is a dynamic about as old as the PPC itself - both Jay and Acacia got murder happy at various points. Agent Agent Noman is supposed to be that sort of twitchy "I want to be ultraviolent and have to hold it in" archetype.

I can absolutely see him looking like he's "serious business" and apologize for that, and I also failed to make the writing sample particularly funny, with only a few minor gags. I'll rework it all.

Thanks for the feedback.

New Caledonia is really starting to get fleshed out! I'm probably going to have to set some action from my spin-off there eventually, though I'm intimidated by the thought of getting the geography consistent with what's come before. Still, I'm excited by what a big playground is being built out there!

I don't know dancing at all, but I enjoyed the choreography of the dance scene, and how they both reacted to each other's words and motions throughout it, each dominating the movement/conversation at different times. The little details from Jenni's life on Pern were cool to hear about, too!

—doctorlit is totally going to read Pern someday, he swears. He might even read it in publication order like Neshomeh suggested, but in-universe chronological order is such a flirtatious dance partner, if you know what he means. (doctorlit himself doesn't know what he means.)

It's actually quite rushed, as missions go - they bump off both Suvian as soon as they meet them, then go play with Lux. We get some back story (Acy was recruited post-movies, for example), and we see the first standard-issue [BEEP]. But also: I think this mission spans two badfics!

Early on, Acy says, "Oh, gods, two of them this time?" I've always assumed she meant 'two Suvians', but then Jay mentions that the second one claims to be a 'watcher'. Um... that's the title of the sister story! And sure enough, the quoted dialogue between Merry and Pippin comes straight from the second chapter ("Chapter One") of The Watcher.

A pair of badfics in one mission? It's happened on occasion, but I never guessed Jay and Acacia started it.

Also: Lux. She's veeery different here than she becomes. She does taxidermy! Also, Sean has punk blue hair and piercings, which I never ever picked up on. O.o

hS