Board of Fiction


 * NEVER to be confused with the Bureau of Fiction.

The Almighty Board of Fourth Wall and Bureau Administration, colloquially The Board or, normally, the Board of Fiction, is a rumored (yet existing) arm of the corporate function of the Bureau of Fiction. Consisting of thirteen immortal, near-Master penguins, or the Boardmen, as some call them, this ancient body maintains, without the use of computers, all levels of fourth wall breaking and sets ceilings for each level.

However, the Boardmen, despite being Level Seven Wall breakers, are in themselves unable to give Fourth Wall powers to others. Rather, this awesome power is curtailed in miles and miles of red tape, and the Board itself can only, with permission from the Masters- namely, the current Director -name one Level Seven bureaucrat to administer powers on their behalf. Said bureaucrat is still shackled by red tape. These miles and miles of red tape prevent Fourth Wall Mary Sues from occurring.

The Board is as old as the CPFW universe itself, and it can be found on the lightly used Level Nine, which is currently used by the modern Department of Plot. However, its location was strategically placed in a part of the floor that no creature dares want to venture to, thereby shrouding the Board- and its existence -in corporate urban legends, stories, and overall speculation.

Background
No one that is still alive today can tell you exactly how the Board of Fiction came to be, but all can tell you that the Board, if it exists, is as old as the universe itself.

Some appointed by the first Masters of the Universe (and possibly created to exist for that sole purpose), others promoted to a higher plane of existence, most of these thirteen ancient penguins somehow manifested and appeared in the BOF long before its current occupants, and even further before the place received modernization. Their names carry no records anywhere in any country in the Antarctic continent, or any continent for that matter, and even in the Bureau's own archives, their names aren't found on the computers, but only inscribed, depending on the age of the Boardman, on a popular data medium of that time. (The name of the first Boardmen is only mentioned on a stone tablet, for instance.)

Purpose
The Board of Fiction's purpose is rather simple. Their job is to maintain the balance of Fourth Wall breaking. They write down the ceilings and limitations of each power, and were also vested with writing the DNA sequence -- a complex set of co-dominating alleles contained within one or more genes -- that allowed for inheritance of Wall-based power at random levels back in the early days of the universe.

Other than programming a special genome for creatures, they are now incapable of bestowing power at will. It was a technique laid down by the second set of Masters of the Universe to prevent the formation of Mary Sues, or to allow the Board to overtake the Masters. These days, only random inheritance, character creation (to a point), and freak accidents can gift Wall Breaking powers.

The Board of Fiction also keeps the company's official book of policies (which includes multiverse policies and Wikia policies), and only they can change them (upon suggestion from the Masters). They are also the High Caretakers of the Fourth Wall, in charge of maintaining its complex networks and debugging it every now and then. Finally, they maintain relations with other universes and, more controversial of all, the mythical Ones.

Relationship with the Masters
Though they have absolutely no intention of evil or arrogance, all thirteen Boardmen seem to view themselves as superior to most other creatures, simply because of their immortality and awesome authorities gone by. It's not like one can blame them, considering their mastery of the Fourth Wall has allowed them to manifest food and anything they desire at will and out of thin air, literally.

However, they are forbidden to interfere directly with the work of the Masters, and can not take away the Fourth Wall powers of them. Since they never leave their room, the Board has never actually written any story or contributed outside of administration.

Not every Master of the Universe is even aware of the Board. Benny is fully aware and has visited them, DJ X shrugs, Keith screams, Mandy nods, and McFlapp follows suit with Mandy. Most bureaucrats follow DJ or McFlapp's path, but they're not hesitant to debate their existence. Some employees believe, others do not, and they all battle about it back and forth. THe BOE, and BOFW are unaware, but the Grey Alliance has heard of them, which they keep secret from the other lesser bureaus since they think this knowledge is an advantage.

Relationship with Director Benny
The Boardmen are one of the few creatures not afraid of Benny. Since they are roughly nine feet taller and dwarf the little fuzzball, they really have no reason to be. They always lean over their desk at Benny too.

Powers
The Boardmen are given many sweeping powers.

They can:


 * Set the ceilings for each wall breaking level.
 * Prevent certain creatures from inheriting wall-breaking genes for literature reasons (e.g. preventing Explorer III from receiving Level Six power like most of his family for plot advancement or stopping a villain from the same).
 * Grant Fourth Wall power to inanimate objects (e.x. Staff of Goofiness).
 * Provide psychic powers to certain penguins that don't involve the wall (e.x. Salina and Psyche).
 * Advise the Department of Plot on super powers (but do not usually give them themselves, e.x. suggesting Judex Maximus' cheesy judge-themed powers).
 * Write tutorials on Fourth Wall Breaking for Noob employees.
 * Distort or prevent voices from any level breaker if need-be (e.g. Dan has all of Level Five except the voices).
 * Also remove any existing Fourth Wall powers at or below the randomly assigned level on a creature (AKA they can prohibit a Level Six from hearing voices, but can't make Level Two do the same).
 * Hold ten votes each in any business poll or procedure.
 * Vote absentee.
 * Talk to employees that believe in them with their minds (telepathy).
 * View any computer in the Bureau (from Benny's laptop to bureaucrat to janitor's PDA).
 * Debug the Fourth Wall (no one else knows how to do this -- it's too complicated and usually takes about half a century)
 * Change company policy (only upon suggestion by the Masters)
 * Crack horrible jokes.
 * Materialize items out of thin air just by thinking.
 * ...-and more...

Floor Nine
The thirteen Boardmen spend all of their time in a special room, but it is actually located at the back of a normal BOF section, with nothing suspicious until one approaches the Board's entrance.

Going up to Floor Nine and entering the Department of Plot's primary section, one could picture a large rectangle. On the perimeter of the rectangle is the walls and a clear hallway (with water coolers and demotivational posters as is normal), all with grey carpet and light, pale greyish-blue walls. In the space between is the huge collaboration of cubicles and the intertwining hallways, water coolers, and employees amongst them. Eight hours a day, six days a week, employees fill these cubicles and work.

The Black Hallways
Back to the rectangle depiction, imagine of the entire area was divided vertically, down the middle, into two halves. Horizontally, these two halves of the rectangle are split into ten sections. When one enters the office space, they enter at the south side in double doors at the mid-point of the vertical divide. Now, all the way to the back, the north of the office, picture the four sections at the farthest back. These, as well one additional section below the top-left sections, are black as night.

All of the lights are out in these black sections. The reasons are still questionable, but the older bureaucrats seem to have a story...

center|250px|frame|Yep, that's right.

Yep; that's why.

Apparently, back in the 1960s, Serious Face Squidward made a debut appearance in the shaft of an elevator in the area of what is now the Black Halls. Though the elevator certainly extends all the way up and all the way down the Bureau, and had for the past ten years, Squidward only appeared in the 1960s on that floor.

The entire Bureau was terrified, from the top down. This was set in the days before memes or the Internet. The Department of Imports was but a one-penguin area led by a bureaucrat that was mocked by most of his peers, because, back then, it was widely believed that real world pop culture would NEVER materialize fast enough to need a whole branch for its parodying. Parodies were handled by a special committee in the DOP (and chaired by Explorer II!).

Gossip and rumors gripped the company as they tried to get rid of Squidward. Employees would dare new rookies to summon the elevator just to get a face full of Squidward.

Cubicles anywhere near that elevator rapidly lost production, as employees were constantly checking their workstations and fellow employees to see if Squidward would pop out of their drawers or cabinets, or if Squidward was a coworker. You can never be too careful.

The Masters of the day, sick of the drop in efficiency, summoned every DOP member of Floor Nine to the very top floor. There, the Masters had them gather around the elevator shaft, as some mechanics opened the door. They were all told to look down the shaft and find Squidward (although they called him the Devil's Octopus in the days before SpongeBob). Not one saw him, but they testified that he was from another dimension and only appeared on Floor Nine. Anyone else passing up or down would be untouched by Squidward.

The Masters sighed, seeing they would go nowhere with this. They immediately ordered the elevator raised to the very top of the floor below, so that the car's roof would be level with the floor they were on. A Master had some huge wire-cutting scissors brought to him, and, before everyone (and after giving everyone near the shaft the day off for safety), they snapped the wires. The car rumbled down the building and made a loud crashing sound in the basements. They were hoping that the elevator car would crush Squidward.

They were told to go down the the Ninth Floor and look at the results. There, they saw that the door was bashed and crooked, barely hanging on, and that the up-down buttons had popped out. They felt better. The employees and Masters gathered around the door to cover it with "DO NOT CROSS" tape, but before they could, the door opened itself and... -well, one can easily what happened next.

The entire staff ran screaming. One Noobish Penguin, trying to fight the Squidward, took off his shoes and threw them at the beast. They ricocheted off of Squidward as if a force field was around him, and broke a fluorescent light.

The Masters ordered everyone within vicinity of the cursed elevator to exit the room at once while they shut the floor down for purging and possible exorcisms.

After several hours and magic later, the Masters had blown out all of the lights with their spells, and had cut the power indefinitely for all the areas around the elevator, and the elevator itself. Still, whenever one was nearby, the elevator opened itself randomly and Squidward appeared. They gave up.

Exiting the room and going to the employees, the ones in the blackened areas were told to move to the right of this office into the partially empty wing. There, they would be sharing their work with the small Department of Animation.

To this day, that is how it has been. The Black Halls remain a time capsule from that fateful 1960s day. Everything in there is left exactly as it was, untouched, unmoved, and covered in cobwebs. Time has rusted the cabinets and hurt the walls, and the darkness made it easy for whoever tried to go back to get their things to stumble and knock over cubicle walls.

Squidward still appears in the elevator to this day; though no one uses it anymore, due to the installation of the lift system.

The Board Entrance
In the 1990s, the Bureau employers voted to upgrade their building. All elevators were to be decommissioned and shut off, and no new elevators were to be built. All elevators in existence were to remain without being cut, but also never used again. They replaced it with their current high-tech system of Lifts.

However, something deep in the basements of the Bureau needed to be accessed all the same. The Board, which had served the company for centuries, had to have its room relocated. Instead of moving them, scared mechanics were ordered simply to build the fanciest door possible on the back of Floor Nine. They were too scared of Squidward to waddle back there, so they had themselves lowered to the construction zone from the tenth floor. They cut into the wall and watched as it floated into metaspace, as they were at the back of the building. Then, they proceeded to raise the threshold and install the ornate doors. When they were done, they had a beautiful work of art... that had nothing on the other side.

They left and the Masters came back in with some sort of Wutt Energy cube. Opening the doors and throwing it out, it exploded and created a sort of parallel dimension, all white, with nothing up or down or left or right. The movers were then ordered, by raising it from the Basement up to the ninth floor, to raise the dismantled and legendary Twenty Foot Desk of the Boardmen up, piece by ancient piece, and carry it into the stretch of white, where they waddled a long distance and set it up. The other needed items and staircases were assembled in there, too, and soon, the items in the original room were back, except the floors, walls, ceilings, etc. etc.

Then, it was the Boardmen's turn. Since they had all-powerful Fourth Wall powers, they simply teleported into the room and set up their work as if they had never left. The movers became believers, and they shut the doors. In the bottom crack of the door, they could see a bit of light, as if the blinding white space gave off some sort of illumination of its own.

The Board Room
Look at a blank sheet of eight and a half by eleven paper. Now, draw a large desk. If one has done this, they have successfully drawn the room the Board convenes in.

There are no visible walls, no ceilings, and no floors (though one can still walk on what appears to be thin air). The doors at one end, the desk at the other, the Board room is like no other. The Department of Research has dorks scientists still trying to learn about the workings of the room, assuming the researchers are believers.

The Boardmen
All thirteen boardmen spend all of their time in the room. Their amazing power allows them to materialize anything they need for any reason at any time. This, plus the infinite space in the "room", ensures that they never get bored.

Each Boardman is a male penguin. All of them are about ten times the height of a normal penguin (making them roughly ten feet tall on average). Some are fairly new, like in their thirties and seventies, others are as old as the universe itself.

Languages used
They all speak differently, and sometimes have trouble communicating. The absolute oldest Boardman (#1) speaks Formal Antican, the secret language of the ancient BOF's high command, and can not communicate in English. The others speak, respectively: fluent Antican (he speaks Formal Antican to the Masters and Colloquial Antican to his colleagues) and broken Penguinian (#2), Penguinian only (#3), Penguinian and broken English (#4), Penguinian and simple English (#5), broken Penguinian and simple English (#6), broken Latin with English scattered about (#7), deformed Early Modern English (#8), extremely formal English, Benny's perfect English (#9), English with a heavy Newjoyzy accent (#10), street slang only (#11), mild Str00del 1337 (#12), and, lastly, whatever English you speak (#13). For convenience, Boardmen 8-13 can also speak in binary code, Boardmen 10-13 can speak Octal, and Boardmen 12-13 knows a lot of 1337. Boardman 12, when not in 1337, can speak Boardman 5's level of English.

The variants in language and the lack of any English in the oldest three Boardmen lead to counterproductive translating, as their words have to be passed through several of the Boardmen that serve as translators to each other.

The Desk of the Boardmen
{Coming someday!!}

The Board today
Today, the Boardmen perform their jobs of yore. Though the possess near-infinite Fourth Wall power, they are, like everyone else but the Masters and a select few, incapable of seeing into the future. They can, of course, see into reality and through the Fourth Wall, and often do this to catch up on CPFW and world events.

The Boardmen are all inseparable friends. They have spent so many years together that the newest one knows the oldest one, and they all know what each other would say or do in most situations, even though they can't read minds. They usually have little trouble, outside of translating each other's languages, to in agreeing or working.

They are currently in the process of choosing the minion to grant Level Seven Fourth Wall Breaking Powers to and plan to choose their lucky penguin soon.

Miles and miles of red tape
In the days of old, the Board, when it had fewer members, were ordered to create as many possible fields as possible on any transfer documents. All other successors were to do the same.

The result of these five hundred years have produced an application sheet over four hundred pages thick.

When a Level Seven bureaucrat wants to transfer power, they have to fill out all of this paperwork. Then, they'll carry it all back to the Board of Fiction, who will pull open a chute and dump the stacks into a bin, where it is transferred to the appropriate apartments for filing. The filing process takes about a week to sort the applications into every bin and item it demands them to go, but filling out the actual paperwork could take anywhere from days to weeks to months, depending on the skill of the Level Seven breaker's ability to call up information on everything, and his or her ability to write neatly, in print, in black ink with a pen.

This policy is really unnecessary, but the Masters that originally created the tradition were extremely terrified of accidentally creating Mary Sues through the Board, or worse, the Board taking their power. It was an anti-coup measure.

Examples of what are on the form include but are most certainly not limited to:


 * First name, middle name, last name, any titles and honors and degrees of receiver.
 * Is it a parody?
 * If so, of what?
 * Detailed description of parody.
 * Parody's first debut.
 * Media the parody was first shown in, if applicable.
 * Largest RL fan club of parody, if applicable.
 * Gender of parody.
 * ...-so on...
 * Receiver's father's middle name.
 * Receiver's great-great-great grandmother's maiden name.
 * Receiver's name in 1337.
 * Receiver's name in Hebrew.
 * Receiver's name spelled backwards.
 * Master that contributed most to receiver, if applicable.
 * Receiver's first car, if applicable.
 * Color of the first puffle receiver ever saw in his/her life.
 * Security clearance.
 * ...-and on and on...

Brief Profile of the Boardmen
{TABLE COMING SOON}

Trivia

 * The Boardmen are 100% original work by Explorer 767 and TurtleShroom and involve little to no outside parodies.
 * Their room appears to be 30 feet high, although it can be as high as they want it to be.
 * They have never actually selected a bureaucrat to assign power. If they do, that bureaucrat would answer to Benny and then to them.
 * They have ties with the Director.
 * Debates at the Bureau frequently arise regarding their existence. Employees tend to be opinionated about it.
 * They are not scared of Benny; Benny, in turn, is not scared of them.
 * Five hundred year old corporate policy forbids any females or non-penguins from being a Boardmen.
 * The most recent (thirteenth) Boardman was created instated on December 21st, 1999. He was added to prepare for Y2K. Even the Masters were caught in the hype that all computers could shut down for up to three months, causing turmoil and chaos, and possibly global changes in governing (like martial law), life, and in general.
 * They are sometimes called the Grandmasters of the Universe.
 * Even they fear Squidward's wrinkly face.
 * They are immune, like Willy the Penguin, to Weegee. The Boardmen and Willy are the only known creatures in the universe immune.
 * Yes, they are indeed immortal.
 * Their motto is Stand as One and You'll Never Fall.