Ah, the joys of explaining the PPC to people IRL.

Subject: Ah, the joys of explaining the PPC to people IRL.
Author: Neshomeh
Posted on: 2020-02-29 04:00:45 UTC

People like to ask me what I do for fun or what my hobbies are, which is really awkward when the answer is "the PPC." Obviously nobody knows what the heck that is, and if I say "I like to write," people almost always follow up with "Oh, what kind of stuff do you write?" then I'm stuck. A vague answer like "fantasy" tends to lead to more questions. "Fanfiction" either is confusing and leads to more questions or isn't confusing and leads to more questions. Plus, being evasive makes it look like you're hiding something embarrassing, and at some point, I decided not to be embarrassed. If people don't care for it, fine. I probably don't care for their opinion, either. The PPC is my hobby and my Internet home, I love it, and I'm not giving it up. Therefore, I started to explain to anyone I think has a chance of grasping the concept. Now, I have it pretty much down to a science!

I start by asking "How much do you know about fanfiction?" to see exactly how much explaining I have to do, and slot in whichever bits I need from there. "Say you really love a book or a movie, like [The Lord of the Rings /Star Wars /whatever sufficiently popular example I think will land] and you wish there were more stories about the characters, or cool ideas that weren't explored much in the original, or stuff that happened between chapters... You could write about that! That's fanfiction."

[Do they understand about fanfiction now? If yes, proceed to step 2. If no, return to step 1.]

"So, like with everything, a lot of fanfiction is really good, but a lot of it is really bad."

[Pause for reaction, insert examples such as horrible SPaG, Sues, Just Not Getting It, etc., as seems helpful.]

"Imagine that every book, movie, whatever, is its own world, or plot continuum, and bad fanfiction messes up the continuum it's set in. The online group I'm part of writes stories about a fictional agency called the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, or PPC."

[Enunciate the big words carefully, pause for "the what?"/laughter.]

"When bad fanfic messes up a world like [Middle-earth/Star Wars/whatever], the agents of the PPC enter the world and go fix the bad stuff. Our stories are sort of a cross between parody, critique, and original work, and it's super fun."

And sometimes bits about how it's a shared universe, and we each write stories about our own agent characters, and whatever else, depending on the person's level of engagement with the topic. {= )

It tends to go surprisingly well. Every so often someone will react with "Wait, you make fun of real stories?", and then I go "Yeah, but we don't tell the author, it's not like we're rubbing it in anyone's face, and in fact we try to avoid the author finding out," and then the other person goes "Oh, okay."

Occasionally I'm even told how creative it all sounds, and then I have to say "Well, I can't take credit for the original idea—but yeah, it sure is fun to do! So fun I've been a member for over ten years!"

Explaining non-mission PPC stories is really hard, though. That extra layer of meta is super dense apparently. I've done it, though. "So, just like any agency, there are the field agents who go on missions, and then there's all the support staff... the Department of Fictional Psychology, for example..."

~Neshomeh, PPC ambassador to the public.

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My Favourite Book(s) by Huinesoron on 2020-02-28 13:08:49 UTC Reply

(Crossposted to Dreamwidth and Livejournal. I really need to see if I can fix my mood icons on LJ...)

By any reasonable measure, The Lord of the Rings is my all-time favourite book. I can talk about it for hours, know details about even the most minor characters, have a whole website about trivia from it, and generally love it to bits. I even run around under a name inspired by it!

Except... I haven't actually read the book in quite some time, and actually don't know where my copy is. And a lot of that trivia - including the name - actually comes from the Silmarillion instead. So maybe the Silm is my favourite book? I own three copies of it, after all, plus the entire History of Middle-earth which acts as a 'making of' for the Silm.

But it's actually been even longer since I've read the Silm cover to cover. My most-reread books these days are David Weber's Honorverse, of which my favourite is probably the very first entry, On Basilisk Station. So is that my favourite book?

Certainly not - it's not even my favourite sci-fi book! That honour would probably go to something in the Star Wars: X-Wing series, specifically the ones by Aaron Allston. Those are excellent books, and...

... and yet if asked who my favourite Star Wars author was, I'd probably go for Timothy Zahn instead of Allston. Sorry, Aaron, but Thrawn is more interesting than Zsinj any day.

But if you asked for my favourite author, and ruled out Tolkien, I'd opt for Terry Pratchett. My favourite Discworld book is probably still Thief of Time, though it's been long enough since I read through the series that what I get out of them might have shifted. I've even been reading from Discworld to the kids (The Amazing Maurice is going down very well), and stopped our run through The Hobbit to do so. Is this my favourite book?

I don't think it can be. If you look at my fanfic, it's always been heavily focussed on LotR - and surely the book I engage with most must take the crown.

Except by that measure, the 'book' I've written the most fanfic of is far and away the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, which isn't even a printed book! That surely can't count? And anyway, it's mostly fanfic itself, of... The Lord of the Rings.

Anyway, so that's why I always tremble in fear when my children start asking 'What's your favourite...?'.

There are no favorites. There is only "like" and "dislike." (nm) by Neo Skater on 2020-03-07 13:10:34 UTC Reply
It's got to be His Dark Materials by Snowblaze on 2020-03-06 12:43:50 UTC Reply

I am unashamedly obsessed with HDM and desperately waiting for a release date for the third Book of Dust and/or season two of the TV series...

Harry Potter is... I like the characters, I like writing fanfiction about it, but I don't love it in the same way I do HDM.

~~ohnoitsshipfestI'mgivingpeopleideas~~
Once upon a time, I would have said Fahrenheit 451. by doctorlit on 2020-03-05 12:45:20 UTC Reply

There are still a lot of incredible truths inside it, primarily the consequences of a culture replacing emotional depth and its understanding of the world with superficial trivial knowledge and and a disregard for anything but a basic feeling of entertainment as a substitute for happiness. But in retrospect, there's also an awkward element of "the minorities are taking away our historical literature because the legacy or racist imperialism makes them feel bad, baaaaah" . . . so I'm not quite as worshipful of it as I used to be. I still love reading some passages from it out loud, though.

"'But many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet . . . was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: now at last you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbors. Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there's your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more.'"

My reading habits are pretty much just straight gluttony; I finish one book and immediately want to move on to the next, explore another world. So I haven't really developed a specific favorite; I'm more about the activity than the enjoyment. The only two novels I've ever reread are 1984, which was only because of a school assignment, and To Kill a Mockingbird, because that novel really is that good. I still need to read Go Set a Watchman, come to think of it.

—doctorlit, reading ever onwards
Every one of your book choices is basically also mine by Elcalion on 2020-03-03 11:15:38 UTC Reply

Although I would say that Fifth Elephant or Night Watch are my favourite Discworld books.

I'm currently re-reading the Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne (who has very similar humour to Aaron Allston, so I suspect you may like).

After reading the Honorverse and being introduced to Eric Flint, I'm going down the rabbit hole that is the Ring of Fire (1632) series: what happens when good fanfic/collaboration is given Word Of God mandate and becomes canon. (answer: so many books.)

Other than that I've also got a soft spot for Bernard Cornwall's Saxon Stories (the ones filmed as The Last Kingdom, although as always The Book Is Better Than The Movie) and Julian Stockwin's Kydd series of buckle-swashing Napoleonic naval novels (which have an interesting spin on the whole Hornblower sub-genre in that Kydd starts off as a press-ganged enlisted man, although eventually becomes an officer for reasons of Plot).

Elcalion, binge-reading

Ooh, Iron Druid! by Cicada on 2020-03-04 21:06:29 UTC Reply

I love those books, they're hilarious. Favorite magic system? (counting Atticus's Iron Druidry or not). I haven't made it all the way through yet, but so far I'm really hyped to see what the vampires can do. Although Kabbalistic beard-tentacles are also quite cool.
I have a bookmark... by Huinesoron on 2020-03-03 13:24:09 UTC Reply

... which just says 'The Book Was Better'. I have never had cause to regret it. ^_^

... snort:

In an interview, Cornwell said he did not believe that the success of Game of Thrones led to the decision to produce The Last Kingdom. "I don’t think so, [Game of Thrones] is fantasy, unless the appeal is brutal men in chain mail and leather beating the **** out of each other ... I can’t see anything else we have in common..."

Bernard, I'm pretty sure that is a large part of what the producers think made GoT popular. ^_^

hS

You ask such hard questions by Tomash on 2020-03-03 08:53:37 UTC Reply

It's hard to pick a favorite book. There's just a lot of axes to pick on.

By reread count, I'd probably end up with the Chanur Saga. Is it Great Literature (tm)? No. Is it a fun bit of space operas with interesting aliens and interactions between them that's fun to flick through again? Yep.

Pretty close on the rereads, I suspect, and definitely on fanfic written, is Young Wizards, which is a book series I quite like overall.

Harry Potter has a big nostalgia factor, Anathem is pretty high up there on the nerd factor/cool science (well, math, in this case)/... side of things

... yeah, decisions are hard, especially at 1 AM on a Monday.
Taking a stab! by Cicada on 2020-03-01 05:12:13 UTC Reply

Clariel by Garth Nix is one of my favorites- a great book in a great series. It's got an actual ace/aro character! Which was insane to me, especially because I read it before I knew I was ace/aro. Coming back to it feels like coming back to an old friend, in that way. The villain of that book is one of the most heartbreaking and relatable characters to me, for that reason. It's a book that helps me confront the bitterness inside of me and turn away from it. Artemis by Andy Weir is somewhat on the opposite end of the spectrum. It's not a book I connect to as emotionally- rather, it's more of an inspiration. The way Andy Weir's worldbuilding informs the characters and plot so seamlessly just leaves me staring in awe, and occasionally ranting about how good this book is to other people. (I really should read The Martian, since that's also by him). It's one of the best examples I've seen for how a sci-fi or fantasy economy can drive a plot. As for better known books, Titan's Curse is my favorite Percy Jackson book. It has the Hunters of Artemis, lots of prophecies, some of the best fight scenes I've ever read, and Zoë Nightshade. I... may have had a thing for the Hunters of Artemis as a child. And I definitely have one now! I hope to take a lot of inspiration from Riordan's writing during fight scenes- the way he incorporates the location of the fight is always a great mix of clever and funny.
I'm so glad I have relatively clear answers. by ChampionOrChicken on 2020-02-29 19:03:03 UTC Reply

My favorite book series is definitely Harry Potter. I don't know what my life would be like if HP never existed. Whenever someone asks me which HP book is my favorite, I'd say they're all my favorites. I know it annoys some people, but it's not like I can help it. They are all incredibly good books.

My favorite movies are the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies. This time, I have an answer to which of those movies is my favorite. The Black Pearl, definitely.

Favorite musical is Elisabeth, and favorite show is nothing. I don't like TV shows.

Oof, I just realized how lucky I am to have relatively clear answers, and that I don't have to explain my obsessions to my friends anymore because they've learned not to ask (or waste 15 minutes of their life listening to me explaining).
This CAN be a very tricky question. by Cassie on 2020-02-29 17:01:18 UTC Reply

I'd personally have to say that just for how deeply and enduringly I've engaged with and absorbed the universe, Harry Potter is probably at the very top. My friends generally know me as the person to go to for any fact-checking or trivia with regards to the Potterverse, the majority of my fanfic is Potter-based, and my home has way more Potter-related merch than anything else.

However, Tolkien and Pratchett are joint seconds when it comes to my favourite authors.
I'd say it's one of the Harry Potter books for me by Ozzielot on 2020-02-29 13:58:08 UTC Reply

I don't exactly love the Harry Potter series, but it's the one I've enjoyed the most so far.
Yeah, this question puts me in fear as well by Thoth on 2020-02-29 13:11:59 UTC Reply

I don't... have favorites. I have things I like. How could I pick a favorite book or song or game or whatever? There are far too many incomparables in each area—if two books are too tonally different, they'll scratch different itches, and it doesn't make sense to compare them.
I hate that question. by Neshomeh on 2020-02-29 04:34:15 UTC Edited Reply

I can answer "What's your favorite TV show?" definitively (y'all know the answer to that by now), but anything else? Not so much.

I tell people my favorite book is The Lord of the Rings because people have heard of it and I can easily explain why I love it so much. I really do! It has an enormously special place in my heart, and nothing will ever change that.

But, for that reason, I didn't engage with it as a fan in the same way I have with other works. LotR was (and to a large degree still is) sort of sacred to me, such that I never dared to profane it with anything more permanent than a Neopets RP, certainly not fanfic, and only after...

*checks mission publication dates, does math*

Only after eight years in the PPC did I get up the nerve to write a proper mission set there, and it was a cowrite. ETA: And a crossover! "Ring Child," btw.

By contrast, I RPed a ton in Harry Potter and wrote fic based on the RPs. Phantom of the Opera, too.

My absolute favorite series, though? Judging by my level of engagement with fandom for it, that's Pern, hands down, no contest. Look, I didn't just RP, I ran an RP. Two, actually. I poured hours of research, writing, art, web design, and even attempts at networking into my Pern groups. I still know Pern better than anything.

I have the latest book, too! Haven't read it yet, but it's next on my list, right after I finish The Prydain Chronicles. (Which is super good, by the way. Totally deserves to be up there with the other "children's" fantasy classics. Maybe even at the top of the heap. There's a *heroine* who *does* stuff! Sad I missed it when I was a children, will remedy this for my young relatives.)

Don't ask me my favorite song, food, or movie. I have no idea. ^_^

~Neshomeh wants to write an "Everything I Need To Know I Learned From Farscape" list. 1. You can be more...

You're reading *Prydain*? by Zingenmir on 2020-02-29 17:59:35 UTC Reply

I did grow up with that series (one of those ones that I found around age ten or twelve or so and have been rereading ever since), and while it's not a tiny fandom it's not one I run into a lot either, so that you're both reading it and thinking so highly of it that you want to recommend it to young relatives is fantastic.

Other oft-reread favorites (might as well just continue into a thread reply while I'm at it) have included Gerald Morris' The Squire's Tales (fantastically retold King Arthur, with lots of humor and vivid characters and emotional impact); Tamora Pierce's works (I'm especially fond of the Protector of the Small series and the Circle (of Magic/Opens/Reforged/etc) books); Diana Wynne Jones' Chrestomanci series (...actually, again, most of what she wrote); and, in general, a bunch more of Lloyd Alexander's books. And, of course, then we get into Harry Potter, Tolkien, and just...so many different things.

Of course, before that (where 'that' is something like ages 10-12), I went through a classics phase: Little House, Anne of Green Gables, probably mostly excerpted versions of Dickens, Three Musketeers, older style King Arthur (oh, that reminds me--the Rowan Hood series by...Nancy Springer, I think. Excellent books; probably actually one of the best examples of a sort of published fanfiction done right. Essentially, five short novels about Robin Hood's daughter and the friends she gathers around her. Robin and the Merry Men have plenty of appearances too. Would absolutely recommend for children, and also for interested adults--I've reread them in the past five years, and still thought they were pretty great).

But if I go even further back...

...yeah, my first set of favorite books would be Winnie the Pooh. I was really into them as a kid. Really, really into them. Before I could even read. My first fanfic experience was Tamora Pierce, my first fandom experience was probably Harry Potter, but my first favorite book series was Winnie the Pooh.

And now I'm probably engaging most (outside PPC writing) with Torchwood (which, funnily enough, falls into that 'haven't re(read/watched/etc) in ages' category), and...weirdly enough, I think I might be most into watching Legends of Tomorrow right now. Huh. Would not have predicted that to be my favorite, but it's just so fun. They know it's silly, and they just go with it. (Also, time travel. You can't expect me not to get into a show about time travel shenanigans. I've loved time travel shenanigans for years, and I have many unposted HP fanfics to prove it. Also, my very first fanfic, the premise of which was literally 'canon character's ~ten-year-old-or-so granddaughter travels back in time to when her grandmother was her age and there is confusion and presumably shenanigans were going to occur but who knows by now.')

(Warriors--the cats one--was also a major fandom for a while, around preteen/early teen years. I got very into that one, and wrote a giant crossover fanfic heavily involving it. Another fandom in there was Gregor and the Underlanders by Suzanne Collins; excellent series as well, do recommend for kids and potentially young adults. Which reminds me somehow that I was also very into Artemis Fowl, and just--

Look, I'm going to stop before I wind up with an even longer post, okay?)

~Z

PS: When bringing up the PPC to people, I mostly just describe it as an online writers' group. Details mostly happen for people in fandom, if they ask; apart from that, I might go into 'there's a sort of shared world that we write stories set in for each other; it's fun!' Mostly people don't really ask too much, though, which is perfectly fine. I think I've been asked more frequently about what types of stories I write and what I'm currently working on than the details of that online writers' group I might have had reason to mention I'm active in.

Kaitlyn dropped Prydain on my head a while back. by Huinesoron on 2020-03-03 13:29:14 UTC Reply

Not quite literally, though the all-in-one volume we have is certainly heavy enough to pull it off. It's good stuff, though the early bits hover right on the lower bound of my current reading-age bracket.

(Obviously it's Seriously Bad Form to mention That Movie, but I did include Black Cauldron!Eilonwy in my Neglected Disney Princesses series.)

hS

I think the PPC is at this point its own fandom. by Iximaz on 2020-02-28 16:38:55 UTC Reply

You have the Original Series, and a hell of a lot of expanded universe material, but it's definitely its own canon and continuity at this point. You have some characters that are fan favorites (Luxury, Nume, Dafydd, Paddlebrains, etc spring to mind), you have a small but very active fanbase, there's fanart, fan songs, and of course terrible fanfic courtesy of the badfic games. ;P

It's definitely the fandom I've written for the most at this point, and I'm not ashamed to say it IRL if people ask (though it does take a bit of explaining, haha). The little'uns might not really get it yet, but I would definitely say the PPC counts as a fandom.

Ah, the joys of explaining the PPC to people IRL. by Neshomeh on 2020-02-29 04:00:45 UTC Reply

People like to ask me what I do for fun or what my hobbies are, which is really awkward when the answer is "the PPC." Obviously nobody knows what the heck that is, and if I say "I like to write," people almost always follow up with "Oh, what kind of stuff do you write?" then I'm stuck. A vague answer like "fantasy" tends to lead to more questions. "Fanfiction" either is confusing and leads to more questions or isn't confusing and leads to more questions. Plus, being evasive makes it look like you're hiding something embarrassing, and at some point, I decided not to be embarrassed. If people don't care for it, fine. I probably don't care for their opinion, either. The PPC is my hobby and my Internet home, I love it, and I'm not giving it up. Therefore, I started to explain to anyone I think has a chance of grasping the concept. Now, I have it pretty much down to a science!

I start by asking "How much do you know about fanfiction?" to see exactly how much explaining I have to do, and slot in whichever bits I need from there. "Say you really love a book or a movie, like [The Lord of the Rings /Star Wars /whatever sufficiently popular example I think will land] and you wish there were more stories about the characters, or cool ideas that weren't explored much in the original, or stuff that happened between chapters... You could write about that! That's fanfiction."

[Do they understand about fanfiction now? If yes, proceed to step 2. If no, return to step 1.]

"So, like with everything, a lot of fanfiction is really good, but a lot of it is really bad."

[Pause for reaction, insert examples such as horrible SPaG, Sues, Just Not Getting It, etc., as seems helpful.]

"Imagine that every book, movie, whatever, is its own world, or plot continuum, and bad fanfiction messes up the continuum it's set in. The online group I'm part of writes stories about a fictional agency called the Protectors of the Plot Continuum, or PPC."

[Enunciate the big words carefully, pause for "the what?"/laughter.]

"When bad fanfic messes up a world like [Middle-earth/Star Wars/whatever], the agents of the PPC enter the world and go fix the bad stuff. Our stories are sort of a cross between parody, critique, and original work, and it's super fun."

And sometimes bits about how it's a shared universe, and we each write stories about our own agent characters, and whatever else, depending on the person's level of engagement with the topic. {= )

It tends to go surprisingly well. Every so often someone will react with "Wait, you make fun of real stories?", and then I go "Yeah, but we don't tell the author, it's not like we're rubbing it in anyone's face, and in fact we try to avoid the author finding out," and then the other person goes "Oh, okay."

Occasionally I'm even told how creative it all sounds, and then I have to say "Well, I can't take credit for the original idea—but yeah, it sure is fun to do! So fun I've been a member for over ten years!"

Explaining non-mission PPC stories is really hard, though. That extra layer of meta is super dense apparently. I've done it, though. "So, just like any agency, there are the field agents who go on missions, and then there's all the support staff... the Department of Fictional Psychology, for example..."

~Neshomeh, PPC ambassador to the public.