Marion has now demonstrated themselves to have allied with zdimensia and is making personal attacks on Neshomeh. We are no longer obligated to show them good faith.

I'll ask nobody else to respond to this thread further in the meantime.

It might sound like we're splitting hairs, but what mockery there is - and there isn't much these days - is directed at the work itself, not the authors. It is explicit in the Constitution that we do not mock or target the authors of a fic, because that (as you rightly assert) is just plain mean-spirited.

I'm confused as to where you got the idea that we mock things for "not being up to professional standards", because we don't do that either. Take one of our most recent entries into PPC canon: Tomash's sporking of a fic in which Hermione's parents are revealed to be "royal phoenixes". The story requires that Hermione acts grossly out of character and makes Fawkes (who is renamed to Itzal Ombra for reasons that even Fawkes himself is confused by in the fic) her father. Does talking about how this story's plot constitute "mocking authors for not being up to professional standards"? I certainly don't think so, but then, I would say that, wouldn't I. =]

As for the stories we write not being "as good as some fanfiction", er, well spotted? There are some excellent fics out there. Some of them are definitely better than the average PPC mission. However, the fact that we don't have David Foster Wallace writing missions does not render any criticisms we make null and void. I can say that a one-legged donkey that's spent the past three decades wheezing its way up and down Blackpool Pleasure Beach underneath a succession of ever-more corpulent tourists isn't going to win the Grand National, and my saying so isn't invalidated by the fact that I'm not friggin' Seabiscuit. We're not the greatest writers who've ever existed, and nobody's claiming that we are, but since we're generally talking about things that are outright terrible (because those make for the most interesting missions) it's kind of beside the point.

Let me answer your question, though. Why do we do this? I can't speak for everyone, but I do it for a couple of reasons. The first is that it's a really enjoyable exercise in writing character interactions and dialogue. The second is that I like the challenge of responding to something bad or morally reprehensible or just plain weird and making something better come out of it. The main one, though? It's fun. I find it fun to read through awful fanfiction and take the mickey out of it. Again, I do not and will not take the mickey out of the author of a badfic, because everyone starts somewhere and I don't know their circumstances, but responding to silly plots or badly-written sex scenes or inept dialogue is just fun to me.

I really do think there's been a miscommunication here. Sorry to sound like a stuck record, but the PPC does not mock authors. We ain't about that. It is my position that saying a piece of work is bad for whatever reason is not the same as saying the person who created it is a bad person, and it's a position that the PPC as a community is built around.

So yeah, we're for real. I hope this wall of text from a slightly drunk British woman has helped you to understand where we're coming from, regardless of whether or not it affects your opinion. =]

That aside, we don't mock based on professional standards, we mock things that are a far cry from even passable, things that are so bad it's hilarious. And even if the stories we write aren't as good as some fanfic, so what? It's not an 'us' and 'them' situation, we write fic too. It's a learning process. We're all learning, it's just some people's steps towards learning produce more cringeworthy initial results than others'. It's not like we can't abide the idea of fanfiction at all, which you seem to be implying. We *are* fanfic authors, at least a good percentage of us. Also, if we're not allowed to criticize fanfic, then why are you allowed to say that stories we write aren't as good as some fanfic? It cuts both ways. Who's to say that *anyone* is above critique and not others? It's all a matter of opinion, isn't it?
And we have a strict policy of leaving the author out of critique. Have you read the "Other People" FAQ on our own Wiki? This might clear up some confusion. I'll link it here.
https://ppc.fandom.com/wiki/FAQ:ForOther_People
Might I ask which wiki sent you here?

One of our biggest rules is that we leave the author out of it. Sometimes we and our agents will wonder, "What was the author thinking?", but we leave it at that.

We aren't the Writing Police, and we aren't judges in the Court of Writing. Who 'can' or 'cannot' write isn't up to us. Especially since fanfiction is such an important part of learning to write sometimes - both because you can make your mistakes without too much consequence and because there's a world with rules and people right there, meaning that you don't have to invent everything from scratch and can focus on the elements of story. Most of the PPC started in fanfiction, actually - I know that I still think a lot about the Hetalia stories I tried to write in middle school, all of which I consider bad now, but at the time, I thought I was doing great, and I was having fun.

But while we leave the authors out of it, we do mock their stories, and some of us are still discussing whether or not even that is okay. Not because we aren't as good as some fanfiction - and some fanfiction could seriously work as published books if you just changed a few names - but because fanfiction is a fun thing to do and a safe place to practice writing, and someone whose work gets missioned can absolutely feel personally targeted and attacked.

So yes, we are for real, and I won't deny that we do have some problems with our group. But we try not to be quite that bad.

Hey! We (the community) make a distinction between good and bad fanfiction, and we have heaps of praise for the good fanfics. In addition, we've taken measures to ensure the authors of the fics we "spork" (critique in a humourous manner) don't find our missions, because publicly mocking someone's creation is rude. I'd also like to ask where you heard of the PPC from, if you don't mind.