What I think the consensus on missionability is

Subject: What I think the consensus on missionability is
Author: Tomash
Posted on: 2017-03-02 20:17:00 UTC

So, there are good fics (there's obviously a pile of subcategories here, but there's no point in going in to them), which are obviously not missionable. Then, moving a few steps down the quality ladder (which is not a very strict ladder and is sort of fuzzy), you hit the fics that have a few issues (maybe they need a bit of copy editing, or there's some shades of OOCness) but are otherwise decent. These "mehfics" are more or less not mission material either. Like you could in theory do a mission to them if you really wanted to, but you shouldn't because they're not really all that bad.

Past the various shades of meh (which really isn't all that accurately named, since it spans from "just fix this one small thing and your story will be very good" to "this is not-good") you'll find straight badfic, where some combination of (among other possible problems) "that's not at all canon-like!" and "that's not how writing works!" makes the fic bad enough to mission.

The line between meh and bad is really fuzzy in a whole lot of cases. I have the impression that, if you're wandering up to the borders of missionability (for any reason) with a fic, you're expected either to not mission that fic or to be very careful about it so you don't give the impression of crossing a line. (Additionally, there's a political element to this, in that if you're taking that sort of risk, you need the community to trust you to do that.) A clear example of this way of thinking about things is the Despatch thread from a while back, where we decided "we would prefer not to write Despatch because that's straying too close to RPF", but doc's Despatch-style mission was far enough from objectionable and carefully done enough to avoid any complaints.

The above is my attempt at explaining why people (and probably me) tend to be conservative about picking fic to mission.

Ignoring all the general commentary, i think that, given the level of potential uncertainty about the source fic's badness (you and Ix both remarked on it) how you chose to do the mission was reasonable and appropriate. I also think that (and I'm going off of the mission) warping characters so you can fit them into the canon plot is certainly not a good thing, and the plagiarism puts the fic well into missionable.

I liked the non-standard exorcism method (I remember someone writing up a whole series of those ages back, and I've been wondering if anyone would run with them), and that's not just because Young Wizards is good stuff.

I enjoyed the agent interactions, and I think they made the mission fun to read. (That includes the bit where things get serious for a moment with Semele not liking being crowded.)

The only "complaint" (and this is more my fault for not being up to date on Driftwood) is that I couldn't get a good mental picture of the "watch-the-DVD" section of the mission.

- Tomash, who put general potentially-useless rambling about community norms and mission concrit in one post for no reason

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New LotR mission, and Now Taking Requests. by Huinesoron on 2017-03-01 11:05:00 UTC Reply

Yep, it's been a year since last time I did this, but... mission report!

PPC: Driftwood - Three Hobbit Ladies and a Ring (GDocs Link)

In which Kaitlyn and Selene meet a whoooole bunch of hobbits, and Kaitlyn isn't as overjoyed as you'd expect.

Concrit is, as always, welcome.

Secondly: in traditional Driftwood style, I'm taking requests for the next mission. It needs to be 6000 words or less, and at least moderately safe for work (since I'm, y'know, at work...). I will consider all canons, though I may have to turn it down if it's one I can't do justice. (In general, games and anime are going to be non-starters.)

If you've got something you'd like to see missioned that fits the length requirements, go ahead and offer it up! Give me a title, link, and canon (obviously), and a quick summary of why you think it's bad - a paragraph or two will do. The ladies are Floaters, so any style of badfic is fair play.

hS

Does this person have permission? by Bram on 2017-03-03 16:26:00 UTC Reply

https://www.fanfiction.net/u/5612311/Ms-Inquiry

Probably not, but would she need it? by Hieronymus Graubart on 2017-03-05 10:54:00 UTC Reply

We don't have a monopoly on Sue slaying.

I don't have time to read the full story. As far as I read, it feels much like the PPC, but beyond using portals and disguise generators, the "Sue Slayers Incorporated" don't pretend to be the "Protectors of the Plot Continuum", and they do give credit for the general idea. I would like to see other opinions.

HG

Re: New LotR mission, and Now Taking Requests. by Bram on 2017-03-03 16:09:00 UTC Reply

I like how it was an easy mission for the agents. Not everything needs to drive them to the brink of insanity.
*applause* by Iximaz on 2017-03-01 17:58:00 UTC Reply

I always love getting to see Selene and Kaitlyn in action and this time was no different. The banter at the beginning with Kaitlyn waking up her partner was probably my favorite bit, though.

My only real complaint (and it's not so much a complaint as it is a nitpick) is that, well, the fic wasn't bad. You've done a couple of missions into barely-bad and even goodfic, and while I love the idea of just providing concrit to the authors, it does make me wonder if Intel is even doing their job. Otherwise, I like that the fic you chose allowed Kaitlyn and Selene to chat (and Kaitlyn to glomp her cute hobbit-partner, eee), and overall it was entertaining. :)

As for fic recs... haha, I did find one involving a werewolf princess who becomes the Tenth Walker and has Arwen and Boromir both being the Designated Misogynist ("lol wimmins can't fight") and Boromir leering at her and her hitting on Aragorn all the time... But that was something like thirty chapters and way too long. So let me see...

"HOW IN THE WORLD!" (Lord of the Rings—your favorite :P)

So it starts off with a pair of Sues who are performers at a Renaissance fair. Their star act: shooting flaming arrows off volunteer's heads while hula-huping. Yay disregard for any kind of safety! Then they randomly get shot by someone with a gun, no reasons given, and wake up in the Olympus throne room talking to Manwë, who gives them the choice of being reincarnated as a Percy Jackson demigod or being reincarnated into Middle-earth to fight Sauron. There's some rajdom centered formatting , and a couple of POVs, and though the Sues acknowledge they can't speak Elvish they're still somehow able to understand everything else people are saying.

Three chapters, 2,578 words. It's short but obnoxious.

It's delierate, on a lot of levels. by Huinesoron on 2017-03-02 08:55:00 UTC Reply

First off, I've often lamented the mindset that all PPC missions must be into Terrible No Good Very Bad fics. A badfic doesn't have to be squicktastic to make a good mission - at least, I'm trying to prove it doesn't.

Secondly, and in-universe, the barely-badfics are still badfics. They still affect the canon, even if not as much. So they still need dealing with.

Third, Intel are just as overworked as everyone else. I'm sure some of them conscientiously look deeply into every fic they're assigned; I'm also sure they get far less done than the ones who go 'three extra Walkers, it's a badfic', or indeed 'Wormtongue slash, must be bad'.

Fourth, except for this mission and their very first one, everything S+K go into is by request from Board members. Since Architeuthis established way back that 'person sending in badfic' can be an in-universe synonym for 'Intelligence operative', this really is a case of Intel not doing their jobs. ^~

Fifth, S+K are supposed to be fluffy. They're designed to make you feel good when you read them. That means that yeah, they won't go into the 'o woe this fic is so bad I must rage' mode so understandably common among agents, because that's not their thing.

Sixth, this fic was bad. It was massively plagiarised from the movie script, gave the three girls utterly generic personalities - despite the fact that Rose Cotton has a personality, a very distinct one - and showed a general lack of understanding of Middle-earth. It was a bad fic. What it wasn't was cringeworthy or horrifying, on which, see point 1. But take a look at the concrit, where I/Kaitlyn found it nearly impossible to say anything good about the fic.

Seventh, there was absolutely no way I could not send Kaitlyn into this story. C'mon!

7+1th, I do like giving concrit at the end. But make no mistake, despite how gentle it was, this fic still ended up dead, dead, dead.

Bet you didn't think I'd have eight answers to that, huh? ^~

hS

Yeah, definitely wasn't expecting all that. ^^; by Iximaz on 2017-03-02 17:48:00 UTC Reply

I think with point one, the reason why the mindset is that "everything we mission has to be terrible" is because it's mentioned in a few places on the Wiki. In-universe, though, that does make sense, so thanks for clearing it up for me.

Augh, I feel like I need to respond to every single other point you made, but it would just be me nodding in agreement, so... *nods vigorously*

(Also, Kaitlyn needs to become a hobbit, if only so her shrieking can puncture Selene's eardrums.)

Is it now? by Huinesoron on 2017-03-02 18:52:00 UTC Reply

I've not seen that, though I admit I don't browse the wiki much. Can you point me at a couple of examples?

(Oh, she will... eventually. ^_^)

hS

What I think the consensus on missionability is by Tomash on 2017-03-02 20:17:00 UTC Reply

So, there are good fics (there's obviously a pile of subcategories here, but there's no point in going in to them), which are obviously not missionable. Then, moving a few steps down the quality ladder (which is not a very strict ladder and is sort of fuzzy), you hit the fics that have a few issues (maybe they need a bit of copy editing, or there's some shades of OOCness) but are otherwise decent. These "mehfics" are more or less not mission material either. Like you could in theory do a mission to them if you really wanted to, but you shouldn't because they're not really all that bad.

Past the various shades of meh (which really isn't all that accurately named, since it spans from "just fix this one small thing and your story will be very good" to "this is not-good") you'll find straight badfic, where some combination of (among other possible problems) "that's not at all canon-like!" and "that's not how writing works!" makes the fic bad enough to mission.

The line between meh and bad is really fuzzy in a whole lot of cases. I have the impression that, if you're wandering up to the borders of missionability (for any reason) with a fic, you're expected either to not mission that fic or to be very careful about it so you don't give the impression of crossing a line. (Additionally, there's a political element to this, in that if you're taking that sort of risk, you need the community to trust you to do that.) A clear example of this way of thinking about things is the Despatch thread from a while back, where we decided "we would prefer not to write Despatch because that's straying too close to RPF", but doc's Despatch-style mission was far enough from objectionable and carefully done enough to avoid any complaints.

The above is my attempt at explaining why people (and probably me) tend to be conservative about picking fic to mission.

Ignoring all the general commentary, i think that, given the level of potential uncertainty about the source fic's badness (you and Ix both remarked on it) how you chose to do the mission was reasonable and appropriate. I also think that (and I'm going off of the mission) warping characters so you can fit them into the canon plot is certainly not a good thing, and the plagiarism puts the fic well into missionable.

I liked the non-standard exorcism method (I remember someone writing up a whole series of those ages back, and I've been wondering if anyone would run with them), and that's not just because Young Wizards is good stuff.

I enjoyed the agent interactions, and I think they made the mission fun to read. (That includes the bit where things get serious for a moment with Semele not liking being crowded.)

The only "complaint" (and this is more my fault for not being up to date on Driftwood) is that I couldn't get a good mental picture of the "watch-the-DVD" section of the mission.

- Tomash, who put general potentially-useless rambling about community norms and mission concrit in one post for no reason
Just a few: by Iximaz on 2017-03-02 19:25:00 UTC Reply

The Badfic page: "While there are countless examples of poor fanfiction on the internet, only the worst is considered to be badfic."

The FAQ: For Other People: "The stories we make fun of are not the stories that are mostly canonical, but have one or two flaws, or the stories that perhaps might be disrespectful towards the original work. We deal with the most awful, Sueish, worst-written, canon-warping fanfiction there is."

Eep, minor correction: by Iximaz on 2017-03-01 18:02:00 UTC Reply

*shooting flaming arrows to knock apples off volunteers' heads.

This is what I get for posting after I wake up.

Congrats on the mission! by Scapegrace on 2017-03-01 14:16:00 UTC Reply

(Whenever I see "Line Division" being used in badfic - and I have - I can only think of this album cover)

Anyway, this was interesting from a character perspective far more than it was from a "this fic is bad and I shall point at it and laugh" perspective, which is my favourite type of mission both to write and to read. I like how complete they feel, for want of a better term - how they have little tics and nervous gestures that they do without thinking, like Selene's hand brushing against her Key, whatever that is. It speaks volumes that even though I have less than zero idea of what you're talking about when it comes to Selene's original continuum (I assume it isn't quite clockwork undead, but that would be awesome), I can still follow along and understand how her homeverse continues to affect her. I've wanted to do that with my own agents; how successful I've been with that I leave to the interpretation of others, but you pull it off really well and I admire it.

As far as requests/recommendations go, this is a terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad fic from the Skulduggery Pleasant continuum: Dead love [sic], by Pit user pleasantskull. Six chapters and 4k words, none of which make the slightest bit of logical sense. Plus, I don't think it's a continuum which has been missioned all that much, if ever, so that'd be cool. The plot of Dead love, it goeth thusly: Skulduggery Pleasant is an exceptionally old skeleton man, while Valkyrie Cain is a teenage girl. The author ships them. This should tell you everything you need to know. Have fun! >=]

Also means we'd get to see Kaitlyn's reactions to POVs, which I look forward to immensely. =]

A question. by Huinesoron on 2017-03-03 15:52:00 UTC Reply

As someone who knows the canon, what OOC% would you give Skulduggery and Valkyrie in the first couple of chapters? I like my CADs to be reliable. :)

hS

Er, that's a good question. by Scapegrace on 2017-03-03 17:05:00 UTC Reply

The answer is basically "why does the CAD look like it's having Nam flashbacks?"

Canonicity reading: You weren't there, man. You weren't there.

More seriously: Very High % OOC. by Scapegrace on 2017-03-04 01:50:00 UTC Reply

Skull and Val are extremely close, yes, but in the same way that a master and apprentice are close. To give them romantic feelings for each other - and do please remember that Val is underage while Skulduggery is over four hundred and dead - is to drive them so far out of character that it's basically impossible to see it.

The car is canonical, though. That much is in the fic's favour. However, since it's been thoroughly Sued... maybe someone in DoSAT or the A/V Division might want it. =]

Val is apparently 25 in this? (nm) by Huinesoron on 2017-03-04 11:16:00 UTC Reply

... Which means she's been aged up artificially. by Scapegrace on 2017-03-04 18:45:00 UTC Reply

A plot point running through most of the books involves her making an illusion out of her reflection in a mirror that goes to school for her. As in secondary school. If she's 25 in this, then this is all set way after the books, and, well, it therefore doesn't add up since by that point Val would've moved to America as per the ending to Dying Of The Light. By the end of the series, she's 20, but it's still squicky. Not a fan of relationships with that kind of age gap.

Thank you! by Huinesoron on 2017-03-01 14:31:00 UTC Reply

I try to make it so you don't need to have read other stuff with them in to understand them, and it looks like I've succeeded. Actually, Selene is pure Draculaverse vampire - but she is currently Clockwork Undead, because she's using Steampunk tech to keep herself sane. (It's also bugged by the DIA, because for some reason they don't trust her. ^_^)

Now, that recommendation... wow. Uh. Wow. Okay. So I've never read SP, but this looks bad enough that I don't need to have. One question before I start: the fic has Skulduggery tapping on his collarbone to manifest a face (and later identifies this as something to do with a 'facade symbol'). Is this an actual power he has? If so, is it physical or just an image?

hS, wandering down weird paths

PS: It has 'General POV'. I think the courtyard Pack may have a new rival...

The thought of a POV general is very, very amusing. (nm) by Desdendelle on 2017-03-01 16:19:00 UTC Reply

It gets better, in two words: by Huinesoron on 2017-03-01 16:25:00 UTC Reply

"Valkyries P.O.V"

I'll leave that with you.

hS

Hi jo to-ho, hi jo to-ho...

*Ride of the Valkyries intensifies* (nm) by Desdendelle on 2017-03-01 16:44:00 UTC Reply

Nevermind the question, found it on the Wikia. (nm) by Huinesoron on 2017-03-01 14:33:00 UTC Reply