Subject: Permission Slip, Take 4/Noman & Winfrey Interlude 0
Author:
Posted on: 2022-06-01 20:47:13 UTC
Version 4 has had a few minor edits, including:
> Editing RC number to fit with proper numbering
> Changing target for the first mission. (The only point of contention from last time.)
> Expounding slightly on Winfrey and Noman's abilities, attachments and weaknesses.
(Note: can you find the secret text?)
The error I had with the tech was thinking the R.A. was the object that generated portals in every instance, although that technical error never showed up in the permission request. The joke on finding the hidden text may've been poorly received (it's immediately in Winfrey's bio, a throwaway joke about shipping Winfrey and Noman that I included because I was bored, and I was always going to include a note of secret text if there's ever any, and admittedly that was the only time I had it planned) but it feels at this point that there's an unreasonable amount of hoops to jump through.
Asking questions in private and having single erroneous lines in first drafts that are wholly unrelated to the initial request is apparently grounds for denial. I think this is going too far, especially because I immediately corrected the mistake when I recognized it was wrong and have always been amenable to editing. I've thrown out entire drafts and remade things anew without much hassle before.
I'm getting rather busy and wanted to leave a few good missions and interludes to look at while I'm off, that's why I was stockpiling all of this writing. I've been here six months and wanted to give some output, because I'm not going to be available and I wanted to amuse a community I had fun with... six years ago now? That's why I had so much stuff lined up now, while I had time. So that I could polish them up while juggling my personal life and my half-dozen other projects. I really don't have much time anymore.
After the first draft of the slip was rejected on relatively minor errors (IE, an Agent in disguise was wearing green, which was accurate to the canon he was disguised in, but isn't in PPC colors) I wanted to iron out everything. Me asking questions for a more accurate final result so it fits as grounds for disqualification feels off. I uploaded segments of something explicitly to ask if I was getting all the technical details right.
I'll come back in a few months when my schedule clears, but I don't have the time anymore, that's why I was so impatient, I knew I would enter this crunch.
I'm sorry I miss things over here, I don't have the time to comb through every single thing and the layout of this forum leads to topics getting buried and responses being lost. Contact me on the Discord or on my email at Internetstuff3412@gmail.com if you want to have a longer talk on this, I really won't be able to respond here in a reasonable timeframe.
I've thought about it, taking in everything in this thread, and I have to go with my instinct. In light of the information that you've been trying to get through the process in a hurry to meet a self-imposed deadline, it just strikes me as poor decision-making from the off. Your first Permission request was posted in March, so this request makes four in as many months. I get that it sucks to be told no that often, but it also sucks to be nagged. You could have chosen patience instead, and we would probably be having a much happier conversation right now.
When you get back, please just chill. Leave off missions, leave off Permission. You don't need to produce stories in order to be here; you can just be here. Given that the PPC does have a relatively steep learning curve, some folks (myself included) have waited years before even trying to write a mission. With that perspective in mind, I suggest you give it at least another six months, being sure to interact and read other people's works as much as you can to really soak in the nuances.
Heck, if it's a need to contribute driving you, I can relate. The first thing I ever wrote for the PPC was the Useful Technology list, because we didn't have that back in 2004. Maybe you could make a project of improving some of those wiki pages that don't really cover the little details. Something like that would be very welcome!
~Neshomeh
but the general feeling that you might not have read relevant articles on the wiki or other people's spin-offs before asking questions about basic tech. If you plan to write missions for Pokemon or Naruto, we do have existing missions in those continua to refer to for a sense of precedent. The setting is flexible enough that you can go your own way and justify it however you want, but it's recommended, especially for newbies, to have at least some precedent to refer to. Heck, I've been here since 2008, and I still trawl the Wiki to see what's come before if I want to do something that I think might be new.
Precedent is key. That's why one of the new suggestions for gauging whether you're ready to ask for Permission is being able to answer which non-TOS agent pair is your favourite, and why.
As for the feeling of impatience regarding your personal schedule -- I'm sorry to hear that this has been frustrating for you and that the Board seems to move too quickly for you to be able to keep up with things. That being said, Permission once granted doesn't expire with inactivity, and -- let me quote myself from last year -- the Board won't sprout legs and walk away. If you're going to be busy, that's okay! This Board will still be here when you get back.
Off the top of my head, Bookworm was denied twice before their life got busy, came back in January this year, and got Permission. So maybe some time away to clear your head and focus on other things will be good for you, too!
Up front, your writing is pretty good. Your characters are interesting, and you definitely can do humor when you want to. If that were the only criterion for Permission, you would get it.
However, that's not the only criterion. All along, I've seen you struggle to get to grips with how the PPC works, including (per a conversation we had recently in DMs) essential concepts like the console, remote activator, and disguise generator.
You've continued to push for Permission anyway, and this is where I really have an issue at this point. It's been expressed to you more than once that the active Permission Givers are few and strapped for time and energy, yet you've chosen to post your fourth request right on top of Linstar's request. The posts are seven hours apart, so you ought to have seen Linstar's. That's rude both to the PGs and to Linstar.
At best, this shows a lack of situational awareness. At worst, it's a lack of respect for other members of this community. I shared a similar criticism at your last request, namely that your interactions with the community have come off to me as being primarily self-centered. In fairness, I have seen you respond to that criticism and try to do better, with what I'd call partial success. That's good. I appreciate it, and I think you're basically an okay guy, and I want you to continue on this path. With this post, though, it seems to me you still have work to do.
This is important: Writing for the PPC means using concepts created by and shared with other people, and it's expected both that you are aware of that and you respect it. I can't bring myself to trust that you understand this right now.
I want to say "Permission Denied" on that basis, and additionally I want to say "don't try again for a long time," both to give the PGs some space and to allow yourself to make stronger progress on the areas of understanding that need work.
But, I recognize that this is a more subjective call than usual, so I don't feel comfortable making it alone. I would like any other PGs and aspiring PGs watching to weigh in when they can. I am aware this might take time, and I appreciate whatever input you can give.
~Neshomeh
-dons a cardboard knock-off Hat-
Firstly, writing. Novastorme in his last read-through said your writing passes muster, and I agree with that. Your agents have a pretty decent banter going in your samples, and the "Dummy's Guide to Being a PPC Agent" is a pretty funny touch.
That being said, there have been some concerns about your levels of understanding wrt the basic setting. Nesh mentioned the tech, but I'm going to mention:
“Wouldn’t the Narrative Laws work in the PPC Continuum, but not elsewhere?” Winfrey asked. Noman hung up the phone and scratched his head.
“We have a Continuum? What happens if someone writes fanfic of us?”
Winfrey scratched her head, baffled. “Wait, hang on, hang on. If we’re in the PPC Continuum, do we ever enter another Continuum, or is it just a story in a story? Anyway, I think we can kill any Sues who crop up in our own-”
There's been a fair few recent conversations about the Multiverse and how the Prime Multiverse (the "PPC Continuum") plays into it. There's also a well-known reason for why PPC Badfic doesn't affect the agents, too, especially since we actively write PPC Badfic during the Badfic Games in September. I know this conversation is played a bit for laughs, but it also seems to be written without much of the existing knowledge about the PPC in mind. If Noman's the most "agent-y agent there is", he would be aware of these things.
I also side with Nesh on the interactions. I noted in previous requests that people have mentioned you being a very harsh beta. I personally do not think harshness is a good trait for a beta or a PPC writer. Concrit should come from a place of genuinely wanting the person to improve, not just angrily nitpicking the problems in their stories. It's taken me, personally, a long time to realise this myself, and thus my older missions are much angrier and harsher than my new/rewritten ones. Being firm on, say, grammar rules or when characters are doing OOC things is one thing, but being harsh is another.
Finally, the mission target. It doesn't appear to have changed since the last request, and Novastorme specifically denied you because of the mission target having been taken down for rewriting. You said there was a new one, but I don't see it, so I hope that's just you linking the wrong Permission slip and not because you didn't hear Novastorme the last time. I would honestly recommend staying away from NSFW and Bleepfics for your first mission altogether, because PPCing isn't about being able to take on the ~worst of the worst~, and having a NSFW mission first go might alienate potential readers before they can even get to know your characters enough to want to read more missions about them. Not to mention that newbie PPC writers might not know the balance between "showing how awful the fic is" and "forcing the readers to read the worst parts of the fic".
So all in all, if I had a Hat, I'd deny you based on the mission target not having changed, and be very concerned that you've already got a first mission ready to go for what appears to be a fic that was already discouraged for a mission target. I apologise if that's not the response you want to hear. I would strongly recommend you take part in more discussions on the Board in addition to the Discord and get to know the setting well enough that you can pass the Self-Check (hS worked very hard on that! So use it!) before you send another request in, and that would probably mean, as Nesh said, not to apply again for some time in order to better understand what's going on.
But please, don't sweat this. Nesh denied me Permission my first go back in the day because of concerns regarding my agents and having a very weird writing sample. I took some time away from the request, posted a ton on the Board (I think I had like the third-highest number of posts on the Board that year?) in response to other people in addition to talking about my own agents and plans for them, and then I got Permission. I noticed that you tried doing the Multiverse Monitor RP, which led to the World Without Suvians RP, which is really good! I enjoyed interacting with the Gossip Monitor and the cashew running gag was funny! So more interactions like that, and you might have a better chance of people trusting you with the keys to the sandbox. Ganbare!
Before I begin, I must say that comedy is a lot like a frog: it stops living when you dissect it to understand how it functions. However, I'll flash my scalpel and explain this joke.
The joke there is that Winfrey is wrong and her erroneous hypothesis literally blew up in her face. It was intentionally incorrect to set the stage for "it's going to do something stupid." Winfrey was wrong for the sake of setting up a gag and Noman was wrong because he's stupid and it's in character for him to be wrong on multiverse physics. Noman says he's the "most Agent-y there is" because he's a cocksure, zealous moron and his name is Agent, not because he's actually the most competent. He's not competent and having him be competent doesn't comedically work as well as the gag around him: He's an idiot but he's 150% sure he's right. So when he messes up: that is the joke. Winfrey is also gullible so when she believes him and then does something that immediately results in her suffering, that is the joke.
They were wrong and saying half-right things because Winfrey is inexperienced and Noman is stupid. I needed to establish them as incompetent now so it would make sense if I pull up their incompetence later. So I made them wrong. I imagined this scene almost like a spirited argument between two men, one who is saying 2 + 2 = 3 and one who is saying 2 + 2 = 5.
It would be out of character for them to be correct, it would be unfunny for them to be correct, so they are not correct. This is why I have so many gags of them suffering on Missions: because they are operating on wrong ideas and get hurt because of it. Their knowledge isn't my knowledge and their opinions aren't my opinions. They are characters and have license to be wrong, especially when it's setting up for a joke.
I'll look through my notes for something milder to mock if the target is objectionable, it's no big deal. I've discarded another Mission already, it only takes me about a week to make a finished first draft (although that's changing). I wanted some highly extreme scenarios for the sake of making some gags around Winfrey freaking out.
I'd swapped targets before, I think I saw the remark on that first target being unacceptable, but not the second one. I'll fish a bit more, and make a new draft. Honestly? I think I might look for something in the Madness Combat department... that would be very funny.
and I'm pointing out that it fell flat to me. Another aspect of comedy, particularly of the dramatic irony type, requires the writer to have more knowledge about a given situation than the characters themselves do. Winfrey's recruitment gave a better sense of Noman talking a big talk without much knowledge to back it up, but the PPC Continuum joke didn't give as good of a sense of that because HQ existing in a weird cascade of plotholes with bits and pieces scattered through various continua within the Prime Multiverse is... kinda foundational.
Basically, it's one thing for Noman to be like "Wait are we our own continuum? That'd explain [noodle incident here]", it's another for him to be "We have a continuum?"
It might seem like small potatoes to you, but it comes off as having not read other PPC writings other than TOS. That's why people keep saying it feels like you haven't fully gotten the gist of the setting.
ETA re "extreme scenarios": You can have extreme scenarios in perfectly SFW fics stemming from bad description. The PPC is meant to be PG-13 with some NSFW missions peppered here and there and perfectly opt-outable. Not being able to get important introductory information about your agents because of squick regarding an "extreme scenario" would be upsetting to any potential reader who wants to know more about what you plan to do here.
ETA2: For what it’s worth, I would 300% read a spin-off about Agent Vojtek Bearington, an actual bear who is fooling HQ into thinking it’s an actual PPC Agent. That’s the kind of comedy that lands with me :P
I think Carrot is a great example of the type of dramatic irony you're talking about here. For those who are unfamiliar with him, he's a character in Sir Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, which is a comedic fantasy setting with wizards, witches, elfs, dwarfs, etc. Among other things, Carrot is a six-foot-tall dwarf. This is funny.
The humor in Carrot relies on multiple pillars of comedy, the first of which is that a joke must be based on something both the comedian and the audience agree is true. In this case, the thing we know to be true is that dwarfs are short. Anyone who enjoys fantasy fiction and thus would be likely to read a Discworld book knows this. The author also knows this, and we trust that he knows this because he demonstrates his deep knowledge of fantasy writing tropes at every turn. Thus, when Sir Pterry talks about a six-foot-tall dwarf, we know he's deliberately subverting the trope, and it's funny. If he didn't know what he was doing, and just declared that he can have his dwarfs be six feet tall if he wants to, it wouldn't be funny; it would be stupid, and people would reject it for more or less the same reason people reject (and make fun) of Twilight's sparkly vampires.
But it doesn't stop there. Another pillar of comedy is surprise or contrast: a sudden, sharp difference between one state and another. It's not just that Carrot is tall for a dwarf; he's even tall for a human. He's absurdly tall for a dwarf.
And then there's the dramatic irony: a situation where the audience knows something the characters don't. See, Carrot is, in fact, biologically human! But he doesn't know that, because he was raised as a dwarf, by dwarfs, and is therefore (in Sir Pterry's world) so literal-minded that he never questions this until his parents reveal the truth to him.
He still thinks of himself as a dwarf, though, and culturally he still is, so the fact remains that he is a six-foot-tall dwarf. {= )
The point is, it's not funny because he's tall. It's funny because everyone knows dwarfs are short, and he's absurdly tall, and he's actually not biologically a dwarf at all, and he has no idea even though everyone else does (which is consistent with his ongoing characterization as literal to a fault). The humor comes from all these layers of comedy rolled together by a writer who knows exactly what he's doing. And that—the ability of a comedian to create a rapport with the audience—that's a really important ingredient in the mix. (Meanwhile, Sir Pterry is always sure to write characters who are like actual people, if somewhat exaggerated ones, with consistent motivations and personalities that evolve in ways that make sense in response to their experiences, but that's a slightly different discussion.)
I write all this so that it will hopefully make sense when I say "they're stupid and wrong" by itself is not a joke, just like "Carrot is tall" by itself is not a joke. Good comedy takes a lot more than that, starting with a shared understanding of what's true and what's not. Without that, it will never work.
~Neshomeh is not fit to kiss the brim of Sir Pterry's hat, but fancies she has learned a thing or two about writing comedy from his most excellent example. RIP, Sir Pterry.
Okay, while I’m obviously not a PG, I’ve interacted with Sier and would like to say a few things.
He’s been pretty active, starting and participating in a lot of RPs. And (from what I’ve seen) he tries to listen to feedback. He seems to really want to write for the PPC. He responded to my beta request, and has helped me with my Permission Request.
However, from what I’ve gathered, he has a tough time finding anyone who will beta his stuff. Perhaps an oldbie could help him out with that?
—Some thoughts from Ls, who is definitely not a Permission Giver.
-- that not everyone shares the same fandom anymore. A lot of us ancientbies share the LotR fandom, so we're generally eager to jump for things pertaining to Tolkien, but outside of that I'm not entirely sure who'd read what. There is a Canon Advisers page, but it's outdated with people who are no longer active, plus the active people still on there may be very busy.
That, plus it being NSFW and possibly NSFB can also be off-putting. I don't have enough working knowledge of Naruto to be a good adviser on any badfic, much less a NSFW one. The only reason Agent Christianne worked in the Anime/Manga division of the DMS for Naruto is because my friend who created her drew her killing Naruto Sues!
I added another canon to the page and added my name under a canon I happen to know really well. While it's still outdated, it's nice to know it's there!
We also have a Beta Reader Directory, which I want to note so that this post isn't for naught, so to speak.
Betas, I will admit, are hard to find, so I understand Sier not being able to find them.
-kA
(Responding to this subthread generally, not specifically at Kitty.)
Speaking just for myself, whether I offer to be a beta-reader depends on a lot more than whether or not I know the continuum in question. I actually don't mind beta-reading a mission to something I don't know. It puts me in a position to spot when things won't make sense to other readers who are unfamiliar with the continuum, and that's a good thing!
However, I pretty much only beta for people I already know I work well with unless there's something of particular interest to me in a story (e.g., FicPsych being involved). I am busy with my own projects and my Real Life, and I have to choose how I spend my free time and energy with care so I don't burn out. I don't want to invite drama.
Additionally, I avoid beta-reading Permission samples because that takes me out of the line-up of PGs who can judge the request. It's a bit of a conflict of interest to beta a piece and then judge how good it is. If it's not good when I'm done with it, that doesn't reflect too well on me as a beta!
I'm also aware that as a PG and Very Oldbie, my words can weigh more heavily than other people's, and that can be intimidating even though I try not to be. I may not be a good choice of beta for someone who isn't especially confident yet. People who are peers may be better.
On that note, if anyone is interested in being a beta but isn't sure how, I'm happy to offer advice and answer questions as needed. There's a lot of good advice in PoorCynic's workshop on the subject, too.
~Neshomeh
Disclaimer: I am not a PG. I've been here since Decemeber 2019 (almost three years), and I feel rather well-versed in the PPC Multiverse (Omniverse? Universe?), but I'm still not a PG. Please take this lighter than hS or Nesh.
That being said, I have some points to add:
All in all, I think Sier has some work to do when it comes to his interactions with the community and his knowledge on the PPC. Again, I'm not a PG, so please take this lighter than any PG's opinion, but I personally agree with Nesh. Pause on trying for Permission for a little bit, get to know PPC better, and then try again. Try not to stress too much on the writing aspect.
-kA, not angry, just putting the points the best way that they could think of.
I really appreciate the fact that people still - after literally two decades - want to write for the PPC. I don't want the Permission process to be a roadblock to that! I also get how frustrating it can be to want to write but be repeatedly told no. So for all those reasons I lean towards yes.
But... I'm worried about that "struggle[d] to get to grips with [...] the console, remote activator, and disguise generator" (per Nesh). I'm particularly worried because, before even getting Permission, you're looking for a beta for your first mission (and interlude?). And you're doing that when the "only point of contention from last [Permission request]" was the badfic you'd chosen. What is your plan if the badfic choice is an issue again? Would you scrap the mission you're looking to get beta'd?
... hang on, is that still this badfic? The one that Nova told you you shouldn't mission because it has been taken down? Because the title seems to match. Can you check that you've updated the badfic appropriately?
Coming back to the first point: how did you get on with the Permission Self-Check? I seem to remember it has some questions about basic PPC concepts that should help you know how you're doing on the kind of issues Nesh mentioned.
hS
Didn't see the post saying it was off-limits. I'll find another target, I have a big list of things to whack and so it's no big deal to discard another Mission draft.
I did the basic check and passed it well a few months back, my technical error wasn't shown there.
(I just wanna double check, but I also don't wanna dogpile and I don't want to... be putting my opinion in where it's not needed or wanted. Does that make any sense?)
-kA
... this post, I think you fit in the "aspiring PG" category, so I think your opinions would be welcome.
hS
The Permission page has been updated, after discussion. Now you just need one 600-word sample.
The text itself is pretty good, though. Not sure what else to say.
—Ls
Didn't see that. Plus, I tend to stray long for my prompts and missions, so having something closer to my actual style would be more representative, and give a better vision of what I'll be bringing here.