Subject: I'm still on the Board, just... lurking, mostly.
Author:
Posted on: 2021-02-13 00:04:03 UTC
And I don't particularly trust myself to give an unbiased opinion on this particular Permission request, which is why I haven't touched it. (That, and I moved back to the States on the 9th, so I've been busy getting settled back in.)
After spending many days and weeks intensively studying the PPC, I'm driven to attempt my first permission request. Here is the first fic I want to spork – riddled with technical errors, boring content, a stupid premise, bad characterization, and more image upload abuse than you can shake a stick at, with many of the images being other people's fanarts. It helps that the author themself admitted to being unable to describe and keep up with canon characterization – and much thanks to my beta Midnight.
But only one one thing! By and large this looks pretty good. Let me go through it; the request/question is at the end.
You: you've been here, you've been active, you've not made too many missteps, all good.
The characters: Nothing wrong here; 'the snarky one and the bubbly one' is a classic PPC archetype. You can just write their names surname-first all the time; you don't need to reverse the order solely for their bios. Question: the bio implies that Chizuru was created by Kaguya (hence why she's stuck with wings), but the fic indicates that she was summoned from her reading, and she makes no comments about being randomly stuck with wings. How does that work? And if she already existed, why does Kaguya get to name her?
Also also: I know you've designated them both as coming from World One, but that's generally taken to be 'our' world without supernatural elements. Probably the simplest fix would be to list Chizuru's home as "World One folklore"; it keeps the link without implying that it's actually possible to summon half-bird women with half an hour's googling. (I think we'd have noticed that one by now!)
The badfic: Looks bad. :)
Control prompt: Looks... generally fine. I have a few comments, and I'd like to use your first paragraph as an example.
Your paragraphs are getting out of control. Please break them up a bit more! A paragraph should focus on a single idea or viewpoint. Your second paragraph has two different people speaking in it, which is right out.
Similarly, your sentences have gotten over-long, and jump around a bit in theme.
In places, your word order and -use is technically correct but somewhat unusual. That's probably something to ask a beta to keep an eye on.
He did not know what to make of the lifeform that materialized on the sheet of drawn paper spread out on the floor before him[:] {he had never even taken into consideration the possibility that summoning might work}. Such was the silly whim of one Hazama Kaguya: for reasons unknown, instead of spending the Sunday morning crafting poetry in the most flowing calligraphy he could manage, folding paper, or mulling over whatever piece of classic literature he could get his hands on, he {decided} to try onmyōdō[.]
[It was only] the most rudimentary form of {the art, which} he picked up from the Internet in lieu of proper education of the art. He was already inwardly sneering {inwardly} at himself [-] a "grown man playing Kokkuri-san by his lonesome" [-] {while} he drew the drawings and chanted the spells.
But The sight of the half-human half-bird that {appeared} on the floor before him {froze him} in true panic.
"Where am I[?] and How did I end up here?" groggily asked the young woman {groggily}[.] [She had] short fluffy white hair, large wings for arms [-] and a truly ugly T-shirt, which did not help matters in the slightest bit.
That's a lot of markup, but not actually many changes, and a few of them ('tempted') could stay if you really wanted. This is the sort of conversation you'd have with a beta; I usually use Google Docs comments, so I can back-and-forth on points that need discussion. (I also do this with cowriters!)
Plot-wise, the control prompt is fine, other than something I'll mention in:
Creative prompt: O-kay. In broad strokes, this is fine: you convey the idea of what drove Kayuga nuts pretty well, you use his already-highlighted beauty to emphasise his breakdown, and Chizuru's 'threatening your stuff didn't work, I'll use your hated nickname' approach is pretty apt. But this prompt highlights two questions - one for you, and one for another Permission Giver:
1/ Ki no Shirayuki - you've kept the humour fairly minimal in both these prompts. It's mostly limited to wry comments at your agents' expense ("Such was the silly whim", "Among many blessings she received from him"), or Chizuru's way of speaking. How well do you think this will fit in with the PPC's general style of humour - and while you're here, what would you say that style is? (Not a trick question, and there isn't a single 'right answer' I'm after.)
2/ Permission Giver - you know me, I'm old-fashioned, and the PPC has changed a lot. Two things stand out to me in these prompts:
Kayuga's graphic rant (the 'skewer her full of holes' one). I'm not sure why, but this feels different to J&A-style 'can we kill her?' banter. Am I just being weird? And is it even worth asking, given that the scene is explicitly OOC for him?
The relationship between the two agents. The paragraph where Kayuga pins Chizuru to the floor and yells at her about the Suvian brought this into focus, but woven through the entire doc is an undercurrent which looks like Kayuga is abusive towards Chizuru (mostly non-physically, but there is the floor-pinning) , who gets turned on by it. I... have... no idea whether that's okay or not? Does it even qualify as abuse if she literally told him she wanted it within thirty seconds of meeting him?
(Ki no Shirayuki, feel free to comment too if I've misunderstood something!)
Other than those points, I'd be happy to grant Permission, with a note to ask your beta to keep an eye on paragraphing and word-use; but for now, hopefully someone can show up and offer some advice.
hS
I had a quick read over and I'm with hS on all of his criticisms.
Additionally: I do not like Kaguya. Perhaps I'm not supposed to like him, but I don't not-like him in a way that makes me want to read about him more, you feel? He's unpleasant in a way that is far too real and is not really delivered with much of a sense of irony or humour. This might be a little more palatable if not for the rest of his general dynamic with Chizuri.
The relationship between these two agents makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable. Chizuri has a sort of omnipresent fear/horniness for Kaguya that really makes her read as an abuse victim. That the power dynamic of their relationship is clearly balanced in Kaguya's direction, as the disciplinarian summoner guy, and that Kaguya himself acts--to be blunt--like an unhinged control freak, makes the whole thing just read very uncomfortably to me. I do get that you're going for a sort of bdsm-ey sexual tension kinda dealio here, but this is really not a healthy dynamic. Even if we assume that Chizuri is always 100% totally super into it and consents to all of it permanently all the time and feels safe and emotionally fulfilled (it does not read like that, to be clear), it still just... doesn't feel like it really fits the tone of the PPC?
This is one of the reasons, I think, Kaguya's freakout OOC rant thing feels so weird. While exaggerated rants are somewhat of a trope for PPC agents, Kaguya's rant is real graphic, not particularly funny and, alongside the rest of the context of his relationship with Chizuri, makes him look even more like an unhinged control freak. I know it's meant to be out of character and rare and that, but he really all around just feels like somebody who should like not work here. And not in a like fun way.
Chizuri I have much less to say about; I like her character more, but she seems to exist only in parallel to Kaguya. Both, uh, sorta literally, but also in terms of character. She has far less focus on her, and, like I said earlier, seems to spend all her time thinking of what Kaguya thinks of her. I'm willing to give more leeway with this due to the short nature of the prompts, but it's definitely something to watch out for in the future.
I dunno, sorry if I'm being a little rough; especially for being so late to this, but I really feel like you've gotta work on these two. You're going for a dynamic here that's sort of hard to pull off, so it's certainly worth going at with a real careful touch.
I think I'm comfortable now saying Permission denied for the moment - but only for the moment! Ki no Shirayuki, take a month or two, think about what's been said in this thread, and try to think about what you've enjoyed when reading PPC missions! That's always a good foundation to work from when adding to a shared universe. Try writing a few scenes for the drawer just to get your hand in, see what works and what gets old really fast. Then ask again in a couple of months - we'll still be here, never fear. :)
hS
Not stepping in myself, for the record, because I'm just as old and crotchety as you, and I'm biased in that I still think this request is premature regardless of content.
~Neshomeh
... need more Permission Givers?
[Ducks and covers]
(But seriously it's been 3 years since Larfen and Hieronymus were elected, and purely in Board terms I think you and I are the most active PGs left. That's never a good sign...)
hS
Unfortunately, on the basis of consistent Board activity, I have no idea who we'd nominate. {= (
~Neshomeh
Out of interest I did a rough scour of the last 2 pages of the Board, which takes us back to Christmas. Out of 454 posts, the top posters are:
After which we're into a bunch of 8s, including Sergio, who's officially left.
Not that PGs have to be primarily active on the Board! Makari, DML, and even Doc Filth way back were all primarily chat-denizens. But the fact that Ki no Shirayuki's request sat for four days before anyone responded - and wound up in my hands, Nienna save us all - suggests that the chat-oriented PGs are either no longer checking the Board, or too busy with [gestures at All The Everything] to comment (or that the chat is just as quiet as the Board, which I hope is not true).
Which, again, is fine! People are allowed to have lives that aren't the PPC. But it means people seeking Permission wind up with a bit of a wait, and then wind up with... me. ^_~
hS
I haven't really been feeling very talkative lately, at least not on the Board. No excuse though - this is the PPC, and I'm an oldbie now. Officially. I got my Secret Terrifying Oldbie Agenda in the post this morning. That means, to me at least, I should be posting interesting stuff for people to talk about to spur Board discussion. It's not an opinion I expect anyone to share necessarily, but I still feel kinda bad about that.
Also, while I'm here: hS, I have yet to marshal and organise my thoughts on The Thing You Sent Me, but I'm getting there. If you like, I can ask my mum if she knows any Tudor specialists who could help with the counterfactual history bits to make it more true to life. =]
... but not all the time. My engagement with the PPC Board tends to run in cycles:
1/ This is nice.
2/ This is quieter than it used to be.
3/ PANIC
4/ Come up with some scheme to flood the place with posts.
5/ Get tired.
6/ Loop back to 1 or 2 as necessary.
Currently very much a 5, shading towards 2.
Concerning Tudors: I may well take you up on that offer in the future. For the nonce, someone pointed out that Book One should be an entire book, and someone else (me) realised that the bulk of the story it should be telling was skipped over in the last five chapters. So I'm currently back at the plotting stage, and eventually will take Elizabeth up to 50/60K. That's the point at which I'll need to start weirding out the experts. :)
(And I'm still learning along the way...! Just the other day I ran into the fact that, right in the middle of Elizabeth's latter storyline, Philip the Handsome and his wife - Catalina's sister - were shipwrecked in England. Henry VII wasn't terribly nice to them; Warbeck and Warwick will be much more so.)
hS
Interesting lineup.
…and with that, I should have reached 9 posts
Huh. Guess my honor classes weren't working me that hard until lately.
And I surprisingly don't have any homework, unless it's on a different site, which I'll check.
I'll try and be more active posting-wise. I was planning on replying to the AC thread even though I only have NL.
Kittyauthor
Job hunts and getting really into Factorio can do that to people.
Note to self: Update the Board so that I can get an RSS feed of new posts or something, making it easier to keep track of.
And I don't particularly trust myself to give an unbiased opinion on this particular Permission request, which is why I haven't touched it. (That, and I moved back to the States on the 9th, so I've been busy getting settled back in.)
Yeah, I think you were one of the 8-post set, which is perfectly respectable, but I had to cut off somewhere. :)
hS
And in the top posters, even if just barely? Nice :)
Anyway. I'm around and even checking the Board...relatively frequently, actually! I'm just currently generally lacking that combination of time/energy/focus necessary for frequent/sustained posting, and even more so the version of that which would enable me to read a request and do the write-up and all that. I suppose I could've posted something along the lines of "I'm not currently available to look at this, sorry, and no, I don't think that'll change quickly enough to be relevant to your Permission request", but, uh, that struck me as a little cruel. No need to get a notification that a PG has posted and then have it turn out to be "nope, sorry, can't do it, good luck", right?
(But yeah, I'm afraid it's pretty unlikely I'll weigh in here. Sorry! Best of luck :) )
For what it's worth, I think Thoth knows his stuff pretty well by now? And has been around for a good few years, if memory serves me, which for all I know it may not? Pretty sure it's at least 3+ years, though. So, if we're looking to maybe add a new PG from the current top posters, he could potentially be a good choice?
~Z, surprisingly tired but having Arranged Good Things. Which...have nothing much to do with this but are an Accomplishment and will be Good.
Ha, alternate (and possibly more effective, or at least more to the point) signature:
~Zzzzz
And I totally get it. This is the first time this year that I've had the time/energy for... pretty much anything other than things I have to do, or reading.
hSleepy
Hi!
Yeah, I feel that. And am hopeful that the feeling of a never-ending list of tasks to be done will fade now that I've, well, done a whole bunch of them. That would be nice.
Glad to hear you've reached the point of having some more time and energy for fun things :) May it continue!
~Zzzz, amused at "hSleepy" and slowly wondering if other people's signatures can lend themselves to similar adaptation
Thanks for the feedback, but you misspelled Kaguya's name in the latter half though 😚
Shikigami 式神, similar to familiars in Western folklore, are summons; Otsuru was summoned, the body she has is as the result of her incomplete transformation, and many shikigami in various media get named by their masters.
From my own studying of PPC writing and my own experience with treating badfics in general, I'd call the style of humor expressed in PPC stories boke-tsukkomi comedy (or roughly "wise guy-straight man"), a type of comedy that centers around a duo with one half who says/does stupid things (the boke) and the other half who humorously reacts by snarking, loudly correcting, or straight-up delivering slapstick (the tsukkomi). PPC stories are full of boke-tsukkomi interactions – whether it's the badfics' and/or Sues' being told off by agents, agents' telling off one another, or even the third-person narrator's telling off everything in the story – and this kind of dynamic provides characterization contrast, which is clearly common in PPC stories, so I try to write my agents and stories to reflect that (one with less controlled behavior and speech, and snark in the narration).
I think you're right, as far as it goes, but I would put more emphasis on the two agents acting together as a single tsukkomi. The classic PPC banter is when the agents react together to the badfic's increasingly ridiculous ways - not by directly addressing any Suvians who happen to be about, but by snarking to (not at) each other. There's an "us against the world" mentality which your description doesn't really capture. Most agent teams do not include one 'snarking, loudly correcting, or straight-up delivering slapstick' at the other all the time, because they're supposed to be a team.
You also talk about the narrator snarking at the characters, which does happen, but I think it's fairly rare. More common - and arguably the distinctive PPC humour - is the narration taking the badfic literally at its word. A Suvian who 'walked back' to somewhere they'd not actually been might be seen, by the agents and the reader, to be moonwalking. The narration would just state this as deadpan fact, leaving any reaction up to the agents. That sort of thing is really what sets the PPC apart from MSTs - using your writing to show (not tell) the ways the badfic is messing things up.
I can't really tell from either your samples or your answer whether you're thinking of that kind of humour or not - it's outside the scope of what you've written (this is why I've always wanted to shift to 'write a mission and we'll Permit it if it fits in,' but they tell me no ^_~). Any thoughts?
hS
I will do my best to find time to look over it, but can't promise any sort of in-depth commentary/beta-ing. Email should be up there, probably.
hS
I'm still waiting for Midnight's verdict.
Don’t you mean RC? Agents don’t live in palaces unless they’ve retired.