I've seen this kind of writing before.(Also, needing Board consensus on this one)

Random fic on AO3 tagged with the "Protectors of the Plot Continuum" tag. by Linstar on 2023-12-20 20:13:13 UTC Badfic report Serious business Reply

It's... very incoherent.

-Ls

The author's profile is even more incoherent by Kі nо Shirayuki on 2023-12-23 03:10:19 UTC Reply

And I quote:
An idia is a siid for a story and if you ar familiar with how ivolution works you might think of how storis ivolvi throught giniratins of riitirations of mimitic divlopimint.
I don't know what relevance a Twisted Wonderland character has in this, but maybe some deeper philosophy is at play here.

I've just realized they've swapped all the Es for Is. by Neshomeh on 2023-12-23 15:24:06 UTC Edited Reply

I think there's an actual writing challenge to use only words with no Es in them, which will really bake your noodle if you try it.

This ain't it.

ETA: There are no Es in "Tumor," either; they're all either excised or replaced. I tip my hat to the troll: they had me fooled into thinking they were just an average keyboard-smasher for a minute there. (Edited a second time for clarity. Typing in haste on a phone is never a great idea, kids.)

~Neshomeh

E-i-e-i-o by Kі nо Shirayuki on 2023-12-23 23:46:43 UTC Reply

Old PPC had a troll…

I've seen this kind of writing before.(Also, needing Board consensus on this one) by Sergio Turbo on 2023-12-22 20:39:31 UTC Reply

Or, at least, I saw one that resembles it - it has the same kind of incoherent feel.

Now, this person has thirteen more works, most of which are collected in the same series as the one tagged as PPC - and all are extremely short and incoherent. They did post one in a different language - Hungarian - and that one once Google Translated into English is as weird and incoherent as the other ones. The fact that there are a couple words that Google failed to translate suggests that the piece indeed was written in Hungarian first, and the other ones might be Google-Translated from it with a bit of editing on the author's part.

However, it looks like that the story tagged with the PPC is the only one with atrocius spelling (as there's no way Google would output something that bad), and the content does vaguely refer to the PPC's themes - suggesting it was made that way on purpose. While fairly innocuous (it looks like a very badly written attempt at introducing the concept of the PPC mixed with stuff from other media), I still believe it raises a flag:

-It is something tagged as a PPC piece written by someone who is not part of our community, and has no Permission -It is deliberately written with terrible spelling, as the author is clearly capable of getting that right in the other "stories", which goes exactly the opposite way of the standards we give ourselves to not be hipocrites in mission writing.

As such, I believe that some kind of action is needed here. There is a sizable chance this person is a troll, which means I'm not sure if trying to contact them through AO3 would be useful. I do however believe that there are grounds to report this author, as several of the stories don't even fall under AO3's broadest definition of fannish work

Thoughts?

Nah, I don't think it's the Mad Hare. (Also, re. AO3...) by Neshomeh on 2023-12-22 22:35:19 UTC Reply

Mad Hare was at least sort of entertaining, if not so very clever as they wanted us to think. This is uber-typo rambling about nothing, and anyone can do that.

Regarding AO3, I'd say you're welcome to try. It would be cool to at least get the tag removed. They're kinda infamous for being reluctant to take any action about anything short of breaking the site, though, so I have low expectations.

~Neshomeh

There's nothing I see here that we can or should do by Thoth on 2023-12-23 01:35:55 UTC Reply

Permission as a concept is irrelevant to AO3: We can't take down a fanwork (or a "fan" work) because it was written with our setting without our consent any more than Anne Rice can.
I don't think there's much we can do about this. by Linstar on 2023-12-22 23:52:11 UTC Reply

I doubt AO3 will do anything. If a more intelligent troll tries to make an actual PPC story (which is probably unlikely, as it hasn't been a real problem in the past), maybe we should try to make it clear in each story's description that the author had Permission, though I'm guessing most people who post missions on AO3 do that anyway.

I'm guessing that this is my fault since I added a link to the category on our TV Tropes page a while back. I'd bet this author was randomly looking up stuff on there and happened to see it and decide to add it to their latest serving of word salad. Yeah, maybe adding that category link wasn't a good idea. Dunno if I should try to edit it out, though.

-Ls

Do we really need to put that in every story description? by Kі nо Shirayuki on 2023-12-23 02:02:18 UTC Reply

Some people's spin-offs are very long (like mine) and they may not feel up to going back to retroactively edit all of their entries. We've never really had a problem telling approved spin-offs from unapproved ones before anyway.

At least put a note in the series description. by Neshomeh on 2023-12-23 15:31:36 UTC Reply

That's what I've done.

People whose first encounter with the PPC is through your works should be informed about how to do the thing properly.

~Neshomeh

This. This is what I meant, and why I meant it. (nm) by Linstar on 2023-12-23 17:17:11 UTC Reply
I have done the same. (nm) by Linstar on 2023-12-23 17:10:53 UTC Reply

On AO3. This is only in relation to AO3. by Linstar on 2023-12-23 02:30:16 UTC Edited Reply

Simply because of how the tag system works, that's all.

-Ls