Subject: I really, really think we can, though.
Author:
Posted on: 2015-08-20 19:05:00 UTC
OY99 might have more of a point if there were lots of stories coming out that were as dark as LMM. But, see, there aren't. Dawn and Des were being ridiculously cute in their most recent spinoff. Skarm's guys haven't changed their tune as far as I can tell. I think they're making a fuss about nothing.
YMMV.
I'm going to voice a concern that I have, namely that we are slowly veering into SRS BSNS territory. I only really noticed this after what happened Little Miss Mary - and if you have read it, (I think mostly everyone has by now,) then you know exactly what I mean. It was an incredibly well thought out mission, and filled in some plotholes, but my GOD it got dark. I really, really don't want the PPC to be any darker than it already is, (if you think about it, it is already quite dark.) I can't be the only one thinking this, can I?
I haven't read Little Miss Mary, but I want to read it now. Thanks for piquing my interest.
But that is a good point. If the PPC loses sight of it's original intent, the entire point is lost. I'll have to keep this in mind when I write my stuff in the future.
Of course, a bit of dark humor and satire, maybe even downplaying the seriousness of otherwise serious situations is called for.
This is giving me ideas just sitting here writing this. I have to get them down.
~ Dark Brother 16
~ Semper erit insanus
I probably coulda worded my post better. More what I wanted to get across was that if too many people jump on Ixi and Dawn's wagon, which is a perfectly good wagon, as far as I'm concerned, we have the potential to get really dark really fast. So this was mostly an attack of Orange can't word important things properly syndrome. It's an extension of Orange can't spell correctly syndrome. So sorry for causing a fuss, just wanted to get my opinion out there.
So what you're saying is: "Hey, this is cool and all--but let's not wallow in melodrama", right?
Which is... well, it's good advice. The PPC has potential to go sliding down a very boring and uncreative grimdark slope if we don't watch out. People do go nuts, and do die, and that's always been a part of the setting.
Here's how I see it: People in real life also go nuts and die, and we manage to live with it. Whether we die at age 75 after retiring from work at an auto factory, or whether we die at age 18, subjective age 143, after getting the wrong mission, we all die, and we all lose people we love. And yet we're not all walking around being sad all the time. We get on with our lives. We laugh, love, have children, tell stories, create art and learn new things.
My advice: A world with dark elements doesn't have to be a dark world. Just like we can find joy in a world where we know we'll lose our loved ones someday, our agents can laugh their socks off at the Mary Sue's detached emerald eyeballs perching on Jack Sparrow's shoulders even if they know the next mission could end their careers.
Let those dark elements stay, but handle them the way people in general handle the dark and scary parts of our real lives--each person, in his own way, finds a way to live a good life despite it all.
A single pebble rolling down a hill can cause a landslide. Your post happened to be that pebble, this time. Don't sweat it too much, since the heatedness seems to have subsided and the community is no worse for wear. Might even be a bit better in the long run.
Also, I didn't realize you preferred Orange. Here I was calling you Yoshi all day. My mistake.
-Phobos
-you. Ah, subject line character limits. But yeah. It's...
Hm. Hmmmm. I've thought up some more.
Irish could be ishsa (yes, I know, it's pronounceable. Some people have all the luck). Dark brother 18, I believe (read: really hope) it is, could be awesomely termed rkbr (okay, possibly cooler in my head, but look, it's all ks and rs and awesomeness!) --
...you know what, I was going to continue, but I'm starting to think it may really, seriously be time to get more sleep.
~DF
Darn, if only Plort was only starting now...
I think Outhra would have to be Uthr - yes, another vowel, but it's a nice Norsification of Uther Pendragon.
... I wonder how many of these are real words?
Running through them in order, then:
-OrangeYoshi is Ngeyo, which is one half of the Kimanya-Ngeyo Foundation.
-I'm going to be Neso, which is either Asturian 'in that', or a moon of Neptune.
-Neshomeh is Esho, 'his fire' in Hebrew. Who the 'he' is is left unstated.
-JulyFlame can be Yfla, the Young Fraud Lawyers Association.
-Scapegrace is Pegrac, a holder for exercise equipment.
-Outhra is... oh, this is too good. Outhra is Uthr, which is Welsh for either 'terrible' or 'wonderful'.
-Phobos is a Manx oboe.
-You're Nfir, which while sounding Norse, is, uh... I don't even know what it's doing on that page. Is it a character name? I don't understand. :-/
-Iximaz is Xima and is my language twin! She's, um, (cripes, how do you write the subjunctive?) 'that I/she moan(s) about', I think.
-Irish is Ishsa, the Idaho State Horse Show Association.
-Dark Brother is Rkbr, and is a fan club for Ramin Karimloo.
Favourite things to come out of that:
-Two Asturian words! What are the odds of that?
-Outhra is Welsh.
-Hebrew Neshomeh has clearly swapped names with DawnFire.
hS
You can't just look at the top result in a Google search and assume that it's the right answer.
I am nothing whatsoever to do with the Idaho State Horse Show Association. If you'd looked a little bit harder, I'm sure it would have been obvious that I took my name from the International Society of Hot Sauce Aficionados :)
(Which is, of course, the fourth result on a Google search).
- Ishsa
...is the input required to display that hanzi using the "Cāngjié input method"
(In my defense, it's pretty early.)
But really. You could be... ines, or something (eso? ineso? Oddly, this looks even weirder than I was expecting). Nesh could be esho, July might well be... yflam, which has a nice Old English feel to it until you add the m (and realize that it makes no sense), Scape could be egra? No, too easy to pronounce. Pegrac? A bit odd, I'd say the first works better (insomuch as any of this works). Outhra, if any of you remember him, could be... thr, I suppose...suggests Norse to me a little. Phobos could be obo, which is at least a word in English :P I, of course, would be nfir, nfi, or wnfi if I'm feeling vaguely Welsh, and Iximaz might become xima or ima, the last of which becomes 'mother' in Hebrew if you pronounce the i as 'ee' :D /starts running/
Also, I find it amusing that so many of these start with a vowel.
(If you're curious, the only other one of these with a Hebrew meaning seems to be esho, which means 'his fire' if you put the emphasis on the second syllable and if I'm even thinking correctly or in modern Hebrew--it sounds kind of clunky to me for some reason. Aren't languages fun? :D)
/much yawning/ Behold, a bit of sleepy morning musings from DawnFire (or from my Magic Oblong, as Scape so wonderfully terms these things). Hopefully there are no typos this time...
~DF, who may very well go back to sleep nowzzzz
Little Miss Mary was a *legendary*--I don't think it should be handled in a trivial manner! Besides which, it's a truly horrible story that trivializes pedophilia; I wouldn't want to treat it like an afternoon's entertainment.
I like it when missions get serious without being melodramatic, when agents fight real threats, when they get away by the skin of their teeth. I like a good fight scene or a well-planned ambush.
The PPC isn't as small a world as when it got started; it's not really just about laughing at badfic anymore. We're writing in a well-developed world now, and just like real people's lives get serious sometimes, our characters' lives will get serious sometimes.
We've moved from Bilbo chanting rhymes at Mirkwood spiders, to Sam facing down Shelob with a frying pan. That's the way things happen when a world gets bigger.
If you want to write humorous stories, write them. Let others write their more serious stories. PPC writers should be free to write whatever they want, as long as it's good writing, as long as it doesn't infringe on someone else's story or change the way the PPC and HQ work.
We've banned Emergencies partly for precisely that reason: Because we don't want one writer to declare that something they write about must happen to everyone, and pull others into their serious story. So someone else writing a story in which an agent deals with a real threat, by no means keeps you from writing a story in which the worst threat is from snorting Bleepka out your nose while laughing at the badfic.
If you want the PPC to be more light-hearted, you write light-hearted stories. There's no need to dictate what other people do with their own agents, within the bounds of non-melodramatic good writing. With such a huge variety of writers doing their thing, we're going to have a huge variety of tones. Unlike a multi-author published series, we don't have to worry about keeping the tone the same for each installment. Because we don't have to be homogeneous about our writing, we can have a serious, hard-fought battle with a Warrior!Sue in one story, and still have the next one be a light-hearted story about a couple of agents trying to cope with cat disguise in a Warriors fic.
I know that the people who lived through the Emergencies and their accompanying problems might be wary of serious stories, but please, trust me, this isn't the same thing! No one is keeping you from writing what you want, and if they did, all of the Board would call them out on it. Our agents experience the PPC in their own ways. Just like a light-hearted mission can't prevent others from writing serious ones, a serious mission can't prevent others from writing light-hearted ones.
I'm very much torn on this, which is why I haven't responded to this thread before now. Whenever I went to write something, I would see another aspect of the debate that I hadn't considered. What finally sold me was this:
We've moved from Bilbo chanting rhymes at Mirkwood spiders, to Sam facing down Shelob with a frying pan. That's the way things happen when a world gets bigger.
The PPC is a world unto itself. It's no longer just a tool for poking fun at bad fanfiction.
I like serious PPC stories when they're done right. I like seeing these characters deal with heavy issues. Goodness knows I've got a few drafts concerned with those kind of things (although after this, I believe they will be delayed even more than they already were).
That being said, I still have some qualms. Mostly, I'm worried that people are confusing "serious" with "spectacle." Everything's been big and dramatic. Yes, I know that LMM is a Legendary badfic and should be treated as such, but I feel like this phenomenon is not confined to merely that story. I can recall reading only one recent story that I would consider to be quiet and serious (Nesh and Ixi's collab, to be specific). I would very much like to see those kind of stories as opposed to their big and loud compatriots.
Also, the old guard aren't wrong when they say stretches of doing nothing but LMM and its various tie-ins could color how outsiders see the PPC. I will admit to asking myself at least once since it came out whether I really fit with this new tone. Yes, I know it hasn't actually changed, but for one brief moment it felt like it had. I'm not sure how that can be actually addressed, but it is something to keep in mind.
I've also seen a lot more proposed agents that seem only built for one thing: fighting Sues and Stus. I've always held (as many people can attest to) that agents should not be engaging in open combat with Sues. The rules that we've established say that, 99 percent of the time, any agent who does should be horribly killed or maimed. I've got no problem with sneaky ambushes and clever tactics, but I'm not seeing a great deal of those being used in stories.
So those are my thoughts. Sorry if this seems fragmented; I'm writing this right before work.
I like your point about people building agents to actually fight Sues and Stus. I too rather enjoy the sneaky, assassin-style killings, the ones where agents who are smart, tough, or just plain creative win out over the powerful but bland Suvians.
Voluntarily going toe-to-toe with a Sue or Stu is... inadvisable at best, both in terms of narrative and in terms of common sense. Some Sues/Stus are so two-dimensional that they won't even resist when you shoot them through the heart, but not every one of them is like that. Some are warriors who are actually seen using their warrior skillz. If you're smart, you don't want to deal with that.
Here's the trouble: You have to charge the Sue/Stu while they're alive, and charging them takes time. So you can't just use a sniper rifle or a heat-seeking missile or whatever and kill them outright.
I think we need more creativity when it comes to disabling them before charging them, and I think we need to focus on having our well-developed agents fight in creative ways against the blandly overpowered Suvians--we need to demonstrate that a well-written character has the flexibility and wiles to win against a Suvian *in an unfair fight*--which is unfair in the agent's favor because the agent has set up the fight to be unfair, to begin with, and the Suvian simply doesn't anticipate that anyone who isn't at their power level could possibly be a threat.
Not that plans don't go wrong sometimes. Sometimes, agents have to fight a Sue straight up. But most agents--even ESAS dealing with godmoders--should not be actually planning on simply overpowering their targets. That's boring, and it goes against the point of an assassination, which is to show that well-written characters in the hands of a good writer can beat raw power and reality-bending without becoming Sued themselves.
Mostly because I've been puzzling over how to say this myself the past twentyish hours, and couldn't think how to put it.
Because like Neshomeh said, yes, we've seen this happen before, and it is actually very, very hard to steer things off that path when it's happened.
What Neshomeh didn't mention with her response is that around the same time as all these events and emergencies and what not (That eventually led to the creation of Catastrophe Theory- as you can see we successfully entered what should have been the DOOOOOM stage without DOOM actually occurring, well done us, unless we weren't paying attention when it actually happened, which is a distinct possibility) the PPC page on TvTropes was created.
And filled very much with things that were not what we at the time considered to be in the mainline for the PPC, nor do to this day, for that matter.
So the end result was we got a lot of newbies who arrived with the Completely Wrong Idea about the PPC and that we were serious and were in it to dismantle writers and mock them (which is a concern voiced below by Silentthunder in another thread, as can be seen) and that the PPC as a concept was 100% serious, rather than being what it is. Some of said people managed to work their way through it and are in fact still around, but a lot of them were rather displeased at the fact that we weren't here to smack fanauthors into submission to acknowledge How Canon Should Be Done- several, in fact, didn't like fanfiction at all! I'd rather not round two of that, personally.
That said, I'm also more than a bit put out over the fact that it's entirely consumed the board since that mission was published- while I'm impressed that said fic was taken care of and a mission done out of it in a relatively short time period, considering what's happened with most of the other Legendaries- at the same time I'm kinda put out. I can't read this mission for a good week, if at all, because it's definitely not something I can read while at work, or access through the only current internet source I have without a significant chance of getting into trouble.
There's nothing like feeling like you're missing quite a bit when you can't even see what it is that's going on and a chunk of what's following in the flurry is related so is also filled with spoilers.
This was part of my concerns, I guess, but I could never find the right way to say them.
First of all, it was a mission to a Legendary Badfic - making it easy would be anticlimactic at best, and bordering on Suish for the agents in question. Just look at the Celebrian mission.
Secondly, and the main point... that's one mission. There's no rule saying that all missions have to be that level of serious. Even a lot of Rina's previous missions have been much more light-hearted. You're making a generalization about the direction of the entire organization based on one story.
If you really want there to be more funny, light-hearted missions, then you should write them.
Phobos points out that, although it's just Iximaz & Co doing the serious plot stuff, their stuff comprises, like, ninety percent of what's being posted on the Board these days. It's not their fault, but by the same token, who could fault someone for looking at the Board for the past two weeks or so and thinking that sort of stuff is what we're all about? There's not much else going on to contrast with it at the moment.
~Neshomeh
Wow. My apologies for writing so much. But I can't promise I'll slow it down anytime soon. :P
Having done a quick count, you have personally posted nine stories in the last two weeks. Your collected co-writers have added at least a few interludes to go with LMM meaning that stories centered on your characters have come out about once a day for the last two weeks.
That is quite a lot. On another note, many of those could have been grouped into larger posts.
-Phobos
On another note, many of those could have been grouped into larger posts.
Do you mean we should have posted all the stories in one go? Because if so, we had a few reasons for doing so:
1) We didn't want to post a thing with a giant huge mega long list of things people had to read.
2) Generally, don't new stories get individual posts?
5) ...Actually, I think that's it.
1) You still ended up with a huge list, just spread across two weeks.
2) Generally, missions come out months apart, so "generally" doesn't really hold up. There is precedent for multiple missions and interludes being posted in a single post.
5) 3, sir.
-Phobos
I note that none of you who have replied so far were around back in, eh, was it 2006-2008 when hS was writing The Reorganization and Crashing Down, and Tawaki was doing the Assimilation Crisis and the Key to Canon thing and Mirror Multiverse thing and the Macrovirus Epidemic and the Mary Sue Invasion, and Laburnum was busy trying to push the limits of squick in missions?
Yeah, other people tried to do the same stuff. It didn't go well. It started getting out of hand. That's when we started writing the FAQ for Newbies, Guide to the PPC, etc., to stop people doing that stuff and joining because they thought we were ALL ABOUT that stuff.
So, as long as it's just Iximaz we're probably cool, but I'll second OrangeYoshi's wish not to see the whole PPC try to emulate her, even if she is the hS of today what with being madly prolific and wildly popular and an all-around nice person. Because it wasn't fun the last time it happened. If we can make sure it doesn't start this time, so much the better.
~Neshomeh
Though admittedly the first were all handled with humor at the forefront.
-July, penning a larger response to this thread
There was another wotsitname Sue nearer fall 2008? That was handled with a lot of 'OMG THIS IS THE WORST SUE SHE WILL RUIN CANON!!1!'
The Narnia one? That was... what's his name, Articuno-thingy?
~Neshomeh
Artic-something.
I feel rather like I should apologize to hS for getting that one mixed up with his, given the difference (though the level of nicking of concepts was quite high).
I haven't been here nearly as long as you have, but I can understand why you'd want to avoid a similar situation. My point of view is this: do whatever best suits a story or character arc. Whether that is light, dark, or some overwhelming shade of grey, do what will make the story the best it can possibly be.
However... don't do something just for the sake of doing something. If you force a joke, it won't turn out well, will it? Darkness for the sake of darkness or gimmick for the sake of being different is a very bad idea, IMO. Everything you write should have a purpose to it, a reason. If you decide to start or follow a trend... step back, take a look, and ask what the overall purpose of the action will be. Everything has a reason - so make it a good one.
As you've already seen, DawnFire and SeaTurtle have been a part of the arc for a while, as well as one other Boarder who shall remain unnamed because spoilers. However, it is a small number of agents overall in the grand scheme of things, and it's not like we're setting out to incite riots or anything. You can blame Sergio Turbo for that.
But yeah, we're basically keeping it just within our little circle of agents, and anything anyone else does is entirely them. We're doing this as an exploration of what would happen to agents in their circumstances, and it's not going to stay dark forever. It'll all balance out in the end. :)
(Also, the hS of today? Um, I kind of squealed a little bit, ehe... ^^; That means a lot, you know.)
-iX
I let myself become emotional, and my writing suffered. Trust me, I never wanted to incite an actual PPC Civil War, but I set Agent!Sergio's anger a couple notches too high... ok, a couple dozen notches too high, and it sounded like I was trying to propose just that.
I can't promise I'll always write all fluff and fun, but I set myself a bar. Next Blank SPrite chapter will be a gut punch, I admit it, but things will start going for the better afterwards.
We've taken to calling you the Cult of Iximaz in this apartment, FYI. You're all secretive and shadowy and plotting and stuff. {; P
But, as long as everybody is only involved if they want to be and you're not trying to drag everybody else in whether they want to be or not, 's fine by me. And I do rather enjoy the connections that certain agents are finding they have with certain other agents, by the way. My sense of narrative finds it rather delicious.
~Neshomeh
P.S. Speaking of which, we really gotta do the Ilraen-meets-Farilan thing sometime, cuz yes please!
I can promise you that everybody I've seen get involved has done it of their own free will. We've been very happy with the results, too--and we're trying to keep things pretty believable, which...also makes for fun. And I'm all for the connections between agents: they're very, very fun both to write and to see happening.
Honestly, though...watching this grow and develop over the past months has been incredible. There have been cute things and sad things and satisfying things, and overall I'm just really happy with how much we've put into this and how well it seems to be coming out. It's been a great experience.
But yes. Essentially, this is at least intended to be self-contained. It's not an emergency--it's one dead agent, another injured one, and their closest friends and family being affected. We also intend to balance it where we can.
And now that this has ended up being more of a response to several posts at once, I think I'll end it and go back to looking forward to the fire-lizard hatching :)
~DF
Unfortunately, that might not happen today after all. I got put on duty this evening, so I gotta go get food pretty soon, and between one thing and another I don't think I'm gonna get the intro done before I have to leave. Sorry, everyone. {= (
I'll try to get it going tomorrow evening.
~Neshomeh
Uh... I don't want to be intrusive, or something like that, but I left an In-Character bid about two days ago. Sorry, I don't want to bother, I just want to know if my character is gonna make it.
Sorry I haven't replied. I was gonna mention your agent being included with the RP-start announcement here, which then didn't happen. It continues to be a scramble to get things done with the little time I have. >.
~Neshomeh
Eagerly, yes, but also patiently. We want this to be as awesome as possible too, you know. :P
Hey, that just gives everyone something to look forward to tomorrow, right? :P
Is it bad that I just laughed? A genuine evil laugh?
*hides athame and steps away from the bound virgin*
Keep going :)
I mean, what? :D
Anyway, nobody's getting dragged into this without their full consent and cooperation, at least as far as I know. *shifty eyes*
And yes, we'll have to do that sometime! Maybe after the fire-lizard hatching? *nudge nudge wink wink*
I've been gone for a while because new computer and you seem to release about five stories a day so I'm hopelessly, woefully behind and barely have any idea what anyone's talking about, heh.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
Rina Dives, agent of this parish, am ded. Well, that happened in Rose Potter, but she's been backsliding towards an, er... untenable mental state ever since. She got sent into another Legendary and watched her best friend get incinerated by a not!Harry (he got better), so she snapped and absconded with a TARDIS. =]
I don't mind darkness. There are people who may found the PPC being too... childish? There are people who may found it too serious.
It's like Harry Potter - it started as a childrens' book and gradually went darker, as its readers were maturing. I like to think of the PPC in the same way.
As Ixi said, life is not all sunshine and turnips (I think that's what she said ;D) - things are bound to get bad, or have an unexpected turn. The PPC is a pretty good representation of that. Under that mask of Time Lords, Pokemon and fiction, those are some pretty serious human problems which may make you think some things through.
Also, trust me - LMM and Ixi's spin-offs are not the darkest things you'll ever read. Just wait until I get hold of the wheel.
Also, trust me - LMM and Ixi's spin-offs are not the darkest things you'll ever read. Just wait until I get hold of the wheel.
See? This here's what worries me. {= /
~Neshomeh
Until there is a Joke Mode installed somewhere on the Internet, I think I should indicate my... specific... sense of humour somehow.
I personally don't have any problem with things getting dark every now and then, if there is good reason for it to happen. The darkness makes the light that much brighter and it propels characters toward growth.
Even back to the beginning, there has been darkness in PPC stories. Some of the greatest moments in the best spin-offs have come from seriousness and darkness.
What you should have a problem with is darkness for the sake of darkness. I find a lot of grimdark stories fall into this trap. We have to have gore/death/trauma because those things are edgy or cool. If it doesn't serve the story or the characters, then there is no point.
So, ask yourself, does the recent seriousness and darkness serve the stories and characters that they inhabit? I think you'll find that they do. Do you need to like them because of that? Not even remotely.
-Phobos
Yeah, the PPC is mostly a humorous setting, but it's not always. There's a reason why we have frequent references to agents snapping in action, agents dying in action, agents running away from HQ and being declared MIA...
Face it, for all the humor it has, it's not exactly fun to be an agent. They're harried, they're tired, they're overworked and underpaid. And the longer a spin-off goes on, the longer an agent has to buckle under the stress. And considering Rina held a record of 36 recorded missions (which, I think, is the second-highest number overall; someone correct me if I'm wrong), she's had a lot of time to reach snapping point, especially considering what she's already gone through.
The PPC isn't always sunshine and rainbows. Look at the various Sunderings. Look at the Reorganization. Look at the Emergencies that have left hundreds, if not thousands, dead and injured. Look at the other Legendaries, at C*l*br**n; I mean, Dafydd died on that mission, and would have stayed dead if it hadn't been for Constance. Look at Subjugation, where most of the agents never came back.
I can't help but feel a little offended, though, that you're dismissing months of work out of hand like this. This has been in the making since February, and we've put a lot of effort into it. Many hours spent writing, rewriting, planning, discussing, betaing, polishing. Every PPCer gets to decide the overall flavor of their spinoff, and this is what we've gone for. We want to explore the consequences of being an agent, and how it really isn't the greatest job anyone could ever ask for.
But if it makes you feel any better, LMM is about as dark as my spinoff's going to get. Everything will be lighter from here on out.
Well, I won't say 'we're heading'. I'd say 'Ix's spinoff (and parts of the spinoffs of other connected people such as DawnFire) are heading'. That's their choice as writers. Other people write different things.
Also, I'd like to point that while LMM — and its repercussions — is rather serious and dark, it is not WH40K levels of grimdark and it's certainly not grimderp.
It's been done before, too; look at Tawaki's adventures, or read Caddy's writings — there are some serious moments there, too.
What's more, if you look beyond the funsies and at things usually played for laughs here, you'll notice that the PPC is an organisation of overworked misfits with barely functioning tech fighting a battle against Eldritch Abominations; the bosses are negligent aliens; and so on. For the most part, it's played for laughs but it can be played for drama as well.
Last but not least, it feels to me that reading LMM and saying 'oh no we're going SRS BSNS grimderp stahp' is kinda rude to Ix, DF and the rest of the people and the huge amount they put into this arc.
Tawaki at one point wrote something that ended with a number of agents--including T'Zar's husband--actually dead, and a number of others assimilated by the Borg. Caddy--I don't remember the exact details, beyond some things with Cadmar and with Maria Nightingale (mental state in both cases, I think?), but I loved the way it was done, and I still want more of that spin-off. For that matter, we can also add to the list a number of insane or dead agents, a number of serious moments between Nume and Suicide (also handled wonderfully), and, well, basically...this really is nothing new. We may be doing a rather complex arc, we may be involving several groups of our agents...but things can't possibly remain bad forever (that's not the way of the world and would get very boring to write), and, at the end of the day, we're still writing other things--and we three or four writers are also not the entire PPC.
~DF
There is no call to be rude about it.
-Phobos
OY99 might have more of a point if there were lots of stories coming out that were as dark as LMM. But, see, there aren't. Dawn and Des were being ridiculously cute in their most recent spinoff. Skarm's guys haven't changed their tune as far as I can tell. I think they're making a fuss about nothing.
YMMV.
Replied to the wrong post. What I meant was that I think we can totally ignore OY99's complaints of unnecessary darkness, not that we should be rude. Which I was, and for that I apologise.
Considering (as Nesh has said, and me, too, for that matter) we have seen this happen in the future and it's far more preferable to nip it in the bud before we have to deal with people trying to make the PPC dark and serious because they think it's better or cooler.
It's definitely a potential issue.
I agree that it's a concern, and I understand why. However, our intentions in writing this arc are *definitely* not to make the whole of the PPC dark and serious--because we don't think that's better or cooler, we honestly think that that just gets boring and depressing to write and read if it goes on too long. (I think I speak for all of us; we certainly switch between writing fluff and feels often enough, and we try to keep stories balanced for the most part. They can feel free to clarify or contradict, though.)
While we do intend to explore the consequences of what's happened, and to do so realistically for our characters and their situations, angst is not and will not be the only thing going on, and it won't last forever. Everyone, including us, would probably get very bored if it did.
So yes: our corner of the PPC, if it can be called that, is currently going more serious, and will remain that way for a bit while this arc plays out. However, we have no plans to keep it that way forever. And, most importantly, we do *not* want the entire PPC to go serious and dark, especially not for for an indefinite period of time. The PPC is supposed to be fun, to have substance of varying types, to be, in essence, generally comedic even if it's not always light. We'd really like to keep it that way.
Again, I definitely understand the concern. But I can vouch for myself and my co-writers that we are in no way trying to change the PPC for the darker--we think it's plenty cool as it is, and have done for years. We just want to explore something relatively self-contained that could happen within it.
~DF
---Whoops, that was an impressive misuse of word in my previous one, should be 'past' rather than future. I think, nothing like watch to drain the brain outta you.
Anyways, I'm going to be frank: Your reply here does not impress me whatsoever. Let's break it down.
My initial response to Scrape was largely along the lines focused on 'before we have to deal with people trying to make the PPC dark and serious because they think it's better or cooler.'
Your response... while you're insisting you're saying that no, you don't want the PPC to be dark and serious, you're also being rather dismissive of the actual issue because that's kind of what you guys are actually doing right now, with all of this.
"So yes: our corner of the PPC, if it can be called that, is currently going more serious, and will remain that way for a bit while this arc plays out."
"I can vouch for myself and my co-writers that we are in no way trying to change the PPC for the darker..."
For better or worse, you lot are rather dominating the current publishing scene for the PPC, as Phobos noted; the board is swamped just from stuff from you guys and with so much of it recently connected to LMM I can't even read much of it. Just because it's your 'corner' doesn't remove it from the rest of the PPC. By fact of making your rather large and fast moving corner of the PPC more serious, yes, you are making the whole of the PPC go the same direction as well.
That said, I don't hold this particularly against you, any of you, in the singular, but it is something that has to be kept in mind against the whole. I was there for the whole shish-kebab of problems that came about the first time. I'd rather there not be a second.
Okay. I've been writing and rewriting replies to this since you posted it, while slowly calming down, watching everyone else calm down, and just...I don't want to drop replying altogether, because I don't want you to think I'm ignoring what you wrote, but I also think that a summary of the points I wanted to make is the more logical idea at this point.
I wanted to tell you that you make good points--we *are* posting a lot. Some of it is unrelated to LMM (the interludes Des and I did, for instance), but a good chunk of it is. Potential newbies arriving and thinking that the PPC is all about dark themes and only dark themes--well, without knowing what's planned for this arc, without knowing exactly what's been written and when things are set to be released...I'd have gotten concerned as well. It seems likely that the time-span and remaining volume of what we have left of this arc (not to mention us and other people posting lighter things) will prevent that.
Something I wanted to clarify was that I didn't mean to dismiss the issue--just to respond to what looked like an implication that we were writing this arc because we want to change the tone of what everyone else in the PPC was currently writing (and, presumably, to change the tone of all of our own works permanently). That thought horrifies me, and I wanted to refute it, hence why I wrote what I did (which, apparently, was not clear and managed to miss a point).
I do not now, and never will, want every writer in the PPC to go 'yes, let's make everything dark and grim and humorless for ever and always because lighter things are boring and uncool'. I wanted (and still want) to make it perfectly clear that I do *not*, in any way (potential accidental influence aside, which would be, well, accidental), think that the PPC would be improved or made somehow *'cooler'* by all the agents becoming humorless, super-dark James Bonds of some sort. (Although now I want to write that as a badfic for the badfic games, and add a scene of horrified and amused agents responding to it. That could be fun). As I've said, the thought that someone might think that *is* what I wanted...that really, really horrifies me, to the point where this is less a summary than a slightly shorter rewrite of the attempted summary of the fourth rewrite of...ach.
Basically: I missed the point, you may have misunderstood me at some point, and by this point I just want to let you know that I have in no way been ignoring what you said and call it quits (and stop using the word 'point'). I think the main issues that were being discussed have been worked out, everyone is calmer, and this message doesn't need to get any longer.
~DF
I really appreciate the fact that you took the time to calm down and muster your points, as logically as you could.
First item: That was definitely a cause; it's hard to tell what's going on if you aren't in the loop, after all, and most of us weren't! Which isn't a bad thing, because after all, if everyone's involved straight up it's different from seeing their reaction as a reader in the audience.
Second item: The implication wasn't aimed at you or the others. It's more that at this point, I (and the people who've been around way longer than I have) have by now seen an awful lot of people swing through the community and declare they want to write super-serious PPC missions and make everything like that! Or even say it *after* they've been given permission. That's a good part of the reason the Permission process is more stringent these days. It was alarming then, and it's still alarming now! We didn't mean to suggest it all at your feet, not at all, but it's still something that is a worry to everyone who was around when it seriously looked like the PPC was going to blow up into being constant emergencies and serious events.
Third: Again, I appreciate that. (And as for the Bonds comment, well, I highly suggest staying tuned into the Board, I'm going to be posting something you might want to be around for shortly.) Like I said, I've seen it, and so have others. It is exactly as horrifying as you'd think.
In short: It's cool, we're cucumbers, this is a salad bowl.
I recently went out and picked a bowl of lettuce.
And Bonds, huh? I'll stay tuned. I like Bond. And things similar to Bond.
~DF
While I understand your (and Nesh's and Phobos') concern, I am confused. What do you suggest that they do?
We're not doing this arc for teh coolz. We're not doing it because we think it's the direction the PPC needs to go, because that's not at all the case.
We don't want the PPC as a whole to get darker, not by any means.
My spinoff isn't going to stay like this, but because I just haven't yet released certain unpublished materials, everyone seems to be freaking out and acting like LMM is the end-all, be-all of my spinoff.
This is not the case. Things will get lighter, but not immediately. That would be unrealistic and would quite frankly make what's already happened look like, well, like it happened just for the cool factor.
Seriously, I don't want to see the PPC get turned into a grimdark place because keeping that as the status quo is depressing and boring and nobody likes a downer ending, myself included (contrary to what it might seem).
And I'm sorry, but what do you want me to do about that? Stop writing for a while? It's not my fault I'm releasing the most stories; if other people want to release, it's not like I'm stopping them. I just happen to have a lot of free time on my hands, and I use almost all of it for writing.
You're welcome to calm down, to begin with. I apologize that this particular thread is upsetting you and that you feel like you're getting targeted, because it's definitely not the intention on my part or anyone else's.
As for your assertion that your stories stories will be returning to a lighter tone: Okay. I don't have a problem with that. Nor I suspect does anyone else who've expressed concerns in this thread as well.
The concern was the possibility of this indicating a turn overall towards darker material for the whole of the PPC. You and your cohort are currently publishing a great deal, and they're following a lot of your lead. It's not out of order to be concerned about that sort of thing when rather suddenly a rather large group of people who are publishing regularly and quickly are writing darker PPC stories- especially for those of us who saw it happen before and what happened after.
We are not psychic. We cannot tell what is going on in your mind for the most part from sheer text alone, or even if it is actually sarcasm, like in the example of Matt Cipher and Nesh. We can't tell what you were planning or intending to do without being in your head, unfortunately.
And as for the speed of your writing: All I did was comment on it. Nowhere did I even insinuate that you should curb your writing speed or stop whatsoever.
If you want to talk one on one, I'm going to be on AIM for awhile at fairladypsyche and on Gmail with the address that'll be clickable with my name.
So, since you're seeing this as a problem, what exactly do you suggest?
I don't want to see a repeat of what happened last time, because although I wasn't around then, I have heard the stories and it's not something I'm eager to experience for myself.
The way that things stand, on my end, is that there will be a few more stories released, and come September 19, there's going to be one last story (not as much of a Wham Episode as LMM, but still fairly impactful), and things will calm down from there.
You've already explained yourself.
You've already assured me (and others) that you'll be changing the tone of your stories again in the future once this character arc resolves itself.
Thanks for being so reasonable about this, and again, I'm sorry if anything I've said has made you feel displaced or anything. I really do like the fact that you're willing to be as productive as you are when it comes to writing missions and expanding your little corner.
I have never seen Iximaz be anything but good for this community, and I can vouch for how much love she has for being a part of it. She is absolutely dedicated to seeing the PPC be the best it can be and adding quality work to be enjoyed by others in the process. I can understand your concern, and it is very realistic - but she has yet to disappoint, and I know she would never want to set the PPC on a course that would be detrimental. She has a lot yet to come, so just wait and see; I promise you will not be disappointed. Have some faith in her, she's never let us down before!
My concern was only that, a concern. I'm much less concerned now that she's personally stated that things will actually be going up from this point on.
The last story in September is still of a darker tone, but after that it'll start going up.
You accuse Iximaz of "swamping the Board" with "darker material". That rather implies - to me at least - that you take umbrage with the amount of missions she's writing as well as their content and tone. Which, okay, fair enough. But to suggest that, off the back of one mission and a few interludes concerning its effects on the agent in question's close friends, Ix and her "cohorts" are ushering in some kind of new age of grimderp is absurd. Yes, you were around way back when we were diddly ickle fanlets, and your experience of PPC history is to be respected, but you're right - you are not psychic. In any way.
And that includes telling the future.
Is there any particular reason why you've decided to be so rude to me? Or OrangeYoshi99, for that matter?
Nothing I've said has been out of bounds by the constitution, and as I've made clear, I don't want Iximaz to come away from this with bad feelings, so I certainly haven't been throwing around accusations.
I won't lie - I did say what I did to you out of anger, and I meant you to be insulted by it. I apologise for doing so and will attempt to amend my actions in future.
And here's a suggestion: Whenever I'm particularly hot-headed about something, instead of replying immediately, if I can't cool down, I ask a friend- usually someone who's cooler heeled than I am by default- to read what I'm going to respond with first.
That way I can still reply, but I also get some advice on if I'm coming off too strong or anything and then I can change it rather than running right into causing a fight with someone.
It works pretty well for the most part for helping with tone but still being able to say your opinion.
July, frankly: implying that a fellow PPCer, whatever their faults, shouldn't be a part of a public discussion on the Board is rude as well. Scape has apologized to you, which is good; I believe you owe her an apology as well.
At no point was I rude to Scrape, nor was I making the insinuations or accusations she said I was.
My response was due to the fact that she entered the conversation to make said response. The dialogue was public, yes, but not for attacks, which hers was, between that and the initial shutdown she tried to aim at OrangeYoshi99 in the first place.
I called her out on it, per the Constitution because her response was rude and constructed in such a way that it was trying to get a similar response out of me, like she admitted. The PPC does not condone of that sort of behavior, and I had no intention of responding in a similar manner. Bringing attention to rude behavior is not rude. I just wanted to point that behavior out to her. I did not except or want to force an apology out of her, and as I said, I'm thankful she gave one.
I am not going to apologize for that.
That's twice now, by my count. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by it.
Sorry, I'm using mobile, and it keeps autocorrecting and I don't always notice.
Makes sense now that it's a phone.
-Phobos
Ah, I wasn't aware you were part of this dialogue.
This, to me, implies you didn't want Scape participating in the conversation. Yet you didn't say to Darkotas that he wasn't part of the conversation, either.
Calling Scape out was the right thing to do. Her opinion was rudely worded, yes, but it was still her opinion. That's not the issue in question. Implying she wasn't allowed to join in the discussion is what comes off as rude on your end.
Scrape's reply was unwanted because it was rude. Most people don't want people to be rude in a conversation, and would rather they not participate if they are going to be rude.
I also do not appreciate the fact that I am being ganged up on on this matter, between you and Desdendelle. I've been a target of this sort of behavior before. I did not appreciate it then, nor do I appreciate it now.
I've asked Ix to reply in my stead because I don't think I can write a level-headed reply right now — I need to cool off a bit. It certainly wasn't my intent to gang up on you or offend you, and if I did offend you, I do apologise as it wasn't my intention.
I appreciate the fact that you're able to recognize the need to step away to calm down before making further replies, and apologize if I had anything to do with making you hit that point in the first place.
Now that I've got some hours of sleep: Well, the thing is that there were two distinct issues in this line of conversation last night.
#1: Scape was rude. You were right to call her out on it. She apologised, and I think that's it for that; holding her rudeness against her after she apologised has a score of, em, unfortunate implications, let's say.
#2: The title of your post was poorly phrased. It looks to me like there's an "and you shouldn't be, so go away" ending implied. Basically, people have a right to voice their opinion, and being rude doesn't mean they have to shut up; being rude means being called out and, optimally, apologising. The thing is, it looks to me like you've mixed the two, and that's why I think you owe Scape an apology.
Also... frankly, what pissed me off last night is that people were saying "look, there's an issue" and not following up with "and I think a, b, c would be good things to avoid the similar Bad Stuff that happened in the past" or "I don't know how to resolve this, do you have any ideas?". That might be my biases (or issues with people a person I've met, =/) speaking, but it really pissed me off. What's more, it feels uncomfortably similar to "your story has issues a, b, c" (as opposed to "Look, you've got problems a, b, c in the story; try doing d, e, f to make it better" or "there are problems a, b, c with your story; I'm not quite sure how to solve them, but please pay attention") to me.
I really hope I didn't end up rambling here, because I've the sinking feeling this makes a lot more sense to me than it'll to anybody else.
I think you - and Iximaz - and Dawnfire - and Scapegrace - and whoever else - are misunderstanding here.
Neshomeh, July, and whoever else aren't saying 'this story/storyline is unsuited to the PPC', which seems to be the feel you're (all) getting. The analogy Nesh made to the earlier situation is instructive; it went in, mm, four or five stages.
1/ I wrote Reorg, Crashing Down, and Clbr__n. They were very popular.
2/ People (eg, Tawaki and Laburnum) decided that they were popular because they were darker/grittier/more interconnected/had deaths in. They started writing that sort of thing into their own stories - Tawaki did repeated arc plots, Laburnum... did Laburnum stuff.
3/ (Partly because of TVTropes) New people arriving thought that the Tawaki-Laburnum type of mission was how the PPC was all the time. They started trying to best it, with horribly-violent or convoluted prospective agents.
4/ The people who'd been here beforehand spent a couple of years going 'Erk?! That's not what we're about!'. It took a very long time to sort it out.
5ish/ 'Sorting it out' involved trying to increase the profile of more positive writing. I wrote Sandra and Freckles' first mission as an antidote to it; I also (perhaps ironically) killed off the DIO to get rid of the 'there are secret agents who kill others' darkness wandering around.
What various people are trying to say is that this storyline has put us into Stage 1: it's wildly-popular, consuming the Board, and making an impression. And that's fine; popular things are good! Neshomeh certainly wasn't saying 'Crashing Down should never have been written'!
Stage 1 is fine; it's just another way of saying 'sometimes stories are popular'. But... well, look at Matt Cipher's 'joke'. That's a classic Stage 2 response - 'you did it, so now I will too!'. And there's this three-way 'who can write the most missions' thing going on with Iximaz, Voyd, and SkarmorySilver; do you think it impossible that one of them would go 'hey, I could pull a LMM on my agents, too...'?
And then we'd have new people seeing just that sort of mission - the big, everybody-dies-this-changes-everything stories that we saw too many of last time. And we'd be sitting solidly in Stage 3.
What July and Nesh are trying to do (and, I guess, me, at this point) is shortcut to Stage 4: raise awareness of the fact that if people try and imitate this, things will go badly sideways. Hopefully, if that message goes across, we can skip Stages 2 and 3 entirely.
So, what should you do? What should everyone do? Not change. Iximaz has a moderately dark storyline going on right now, but apart from the agents involved in that, no-one else needs to. Keep letting Agent Des be cheerful, even though miserable things are happening elsewhere in HQ. If you're not involved in the LMM fallout, don't try to imitate it - don't give your own agents Dark Arcs because you think that's the way to go. Just... keep on being normal.
[Spoilers], but believe me, Des will keep soldiering on (for the most part. He's allowed to hate his job); he's the kind of person to spring back up again (and get help when he needs it — cf. his stay in FicPsych after ATWNaNS, calling for help in "So Much for Subtlety") — though, I think, not right away. The whole business is going to shake him. Even Librarian [spoilers]. But, yeah, I'm not gonna go LMM on my agents.
Related to that: while the PPC is, at the end of the day, comedic, I know that I want to explore what being an agent does to people. Is it all grimderp? No (and look at the fluff I've been writing recently. Mm, fluffeh). Is it all sunshine and rainbows? Also no, because, frankly, being an agent is a shitty job (albeit with some nice perks).
And, anyway, it might be me, but the 'shortcut to stage 4' bit simply didn't register with me right up until this post and by that time I was already pissed off. Related to that: can I ask you guys to be more forthcoming with that sort of thing? This is the sort of thing people are emotionally invested in and it's a good idea to be extra-clear in that case; I know that I'd have reacted differently if there wasn't such a wait between you guys' posts and that post of July's.
There is also the bit about Scape, but that seems mostly done and the bits that aren't seem to be under control.
(I hope I didn't miss anything in this post.)
And Neshomeh's first post - which I think is the first one actually supporting OrangeYoshi's - said this:
So, as long as it's just Iximaz we're probably cool, but I'll second OrangeYoshi's wish not to see the whole PPC try to emulate her... If we can make sure it doesn't start this time, so much the better..
So how much more forthcoming would you have liked her to be?
hS
As I've said — until July said what she said, I didn't quite register it. It's a classic case of 'something that's obvious to you isn't necessarily obvious to other people'.
Also, by 'you guys' I meant 'generally the older oldbies'. You see what I mean about non-obviousness?
(And yes, full disclosure, I am slightly irked at being informed that I have to do this for someone I consider generally mature, intelligent, and thoughtful.)
Here's what my process was when I first posted:
1. I'm busily working on an intro RP post so we can do a fun thing when I said we would, despite unexpectedly having to go to work after all.
2. I get a text from Phobos alerting me to look at the main Board.
3. I see a guy with a reasonable and reasonably worded concern getting brushed off by the LMM Cohort en masse, making it seem like his opinion isn't allowed.
4. I react with the content of my post, which hS already elucidated. I would like to further elucidate that I was attempting to help Phobos disrupt the "ganging up" effect as much as anything else, because as July points out, that is quite as scary as, in fact moreso than any potential descent of tone into srs bsns. I didn't spell that out because I rather thought y'all would stop and think about the effect you are having or could have on the Board, and it wouldn't be necessary. I certainly didn't want to so much as imply that you guys were deliberately shutting down someone who disagreed with you, because I don't think that's the case at all. I like you guys. You're nice people. I know you're not doing that.
However, I do think y'all need to be more aware of the effect you're having in both areas: 1) Popular things tend to get emulated. Be aware; please help make sure we don't have to go through 2008-2010 again. 2) People who all hang out together and plan together and generally do stuff together apart from the rest of the group all popping up to disagree together is scary. Be aware; try not to all jump on a thread within minutes of each other to support/dismantle X opinion.
I hope that is fair as well as sufficiently clear. Again, I do not intend to accuse anyone of anything, merely to raise awareness of a potential issue and provoke a little more thought going forward.
~Neshomeh, going dark now because work.
I do appreciate that. And, well, even mature, intelligent and thoughtful people have their moments of immaturity, stupidity and thoughtlessness; I should know, I've been blundering around in this thread like an especially clumsy elephant.
Des.
You remember PPC2, right?
You're doing their thing with making it an us vs them thing, between making it newer vs older, using the excuse of appropriate manners to back up people who were being jerks and the super fast tag teaming on people who aren't agreed with.
I'm not saying you guys are being malicious but the behavior is disturbingly similar to me.
Please don't dredge it back up.
I remember there was something going on around the time you left, but I certainly don't remember anything concrete.
I'm not trying to make this an 'us vs them' anything, I really don't want anything of that sort; I just think people, even people who make mistakes and have issues, do deserve certain things (and see my above post, not gonna repeat myself). As to the tag teaming, well, it's not my intention, and again I apologise. On hindsight, I should have just said that I'm going to cool off.
I really don't want to offend anybody, or disturb anybody, or anything of that sort. But the points I raise are important to me and I don't want to drop them before they're settled (just to clarify, I'm not saying that you or anybody else is telling me to do so).
'The older oldbies' are not, actually, a uniform mass. I deliberately stayed out of this entire conversation, so I really don't appreciate being lumped in with the 'un-forthcoming' posts you think you see.
hS
I didn't mean to offend. But I value your input and I was kinda disappointed you didn't say anything, to be honest.
What Nesh & July are trying to say is that the previous incident set a pattern:
1/ I wrote Reorg, Crashing Down, and Clbr_n. They were very popular.
2/ People started to imitate them, working in their own dark/interconnected/death-filled plots.
3/ New people arriving thought that dark-interconnected-death-filled was how the PPC was all the time. We saw a lot of very violent/convoluted agent proposals.
4/ The people who'd been here beforehand spent a couple of years going 'Erk?! That's not what we're about!'. It took a very long time to sort it out.
The LMM fallout is classic Stage 1: it's wildly-popular, consuming the Board, and making an impression. And that's fine; popular things are good! Neshomeh certainly wasn't saying 'Crashing Down should never have been written'!
What July and Nesh (and now me, I guess) are trying to do is shortcut to Stage 4: raise awareness of the fact that if people try and imitate this, things will go badly sideways. Hopefully, if that message goes across, we can skip Stages 2 and 3 entirely.
So, what should people do? Not change. Don't imitate or try to best LMM and its aftermath. Just go on as normal. Simple as that. ^^
hS
As you can see, I already replied to the messier version.
*shrugs*
Also, good on you for cooling off before posting.
I don't think the issue is too serious, but if it is... well, we can just tell writers about it, can't we? Like, "Hey, I understand why you might want to take your agents down this path, but you're getting a little grimdark here. Maybe make it a bit lighter?"
-Alleb
Yeah, looks like I'll sleep on this and continue tomorrow.
I think OY99 is wrong (see my above post) but there's really really no need to dismiss what he says out of hand.