Re. the lore questions...

So, um, this is exists. by Linstar on 2024-12-18 02:26:48 UTC Serious business Reply

Hi, hello, everyone and I'm sorry to bring this to your attention. So, this October, on the 9th, the user "owosphere" was banned from the PPC Discord for, and I quote, "terrorist apologia". I was not involved in this, and I do not remember seeing the messages owospehere was banned for.

Five days after this, on the 14th of October, owosphere completed this mission. She did not mention this mission, ever, on the board. She did not have Permission, (which the mission itself mentions) and AFAIK this was never mentioned in any official community space (no hits for the mission name on the Discord). The linked Permission attempt was posted a few days before this mission was initially posted to AO3 (it was initially on Tumblr? I guess?), in October of 2021.

So, uh, in conclusion, a former community member has posted a Permission-less mission. I don't know that we need to take any action, but, um, this exists, and I found it by searching the PPC tag on AO3. I figured this is something we should be aware of.

--Ls

EDIT: Oh, and I missed this piece, too.

EDIT AGAIN: I guess the first, Harry Potter piece was mentioned on the Discord? Very briefly. And never on the Board.

Oh, this by OrangeFox on 2024-12-18 14:40:24 UTC Reply

I think it’s important to note right off the gate that the Ao3 fic is a crosspost from Tumblr, where the original mission was published in October, and I think the Shifter interlude was finished earlier - just to clear up any mistaken takeaway that this was some kind of ‘revenge’ piece for the ban, because I don't think it possibly could be. It's two months of seperation.

Maybe this is just me, but I’m not sure I see too much of an issue with them existing anyways. It’s there, it doesn’t affect the community all that much, and at the end of the day Permission was just a quality and tone check, yeah? At least, it’s not some kind of hard boundary where we’ll go Anne Rice on anyone who writes without it, y’know? It's just 'unofficial.' I actually do remember reading this a while ago and really liking them, they felt like they fit tonally even with their unconventional angles and meta sections. The writing’s nice, the characters are neat, and I think it legitimately uses the setting better than anything i’ve written, so there’s that.

The ‘mission’ itself does kind of draw interesting attention to one of the implications of the in-universe PPC’s vow to protect All Canon, since that would apply to places like Gor as well. It raises questions I’ve tossed around myself every now and then, and i think at some point i might want to take an angle at it in one of my own spinoffs. I kind of like the idea that what the PPC does and what’s considered the morally better choice just isn’t always the same thing. Judgements being subjective and all that. Was never one for the 'we're Heroes fighting against the hordes of fanfic authors' tilt of a few older spinoffs anyway.

Also, the Shifter interlude’s ‘Hogwarts castle gets graffiti’d in trans flag colors’ bit is funny since I remember mentioning it in the Discord (i think possibly because I read the interlude when it first was drafted) and the idea was received positively, including a concept that a lot of agents would refuse to kill it or even consider it goodfic that strengthens the canon. (Something about it going against JKR’s terf-ish tendencies was also mentioned as an upside). Not as relevant as some other bits, but noteworthy enough, I feel.

And iirc the incident that got owosphere banned was an argument with a mod + a half dozen other server members at once around the Israel/Palestine war’s start. It felt heated and fast and the ban was rather sudden (it seemed to start with misunderstandings and end with a kick for not backing down?) so I’m not sure I can confidently say it was resolved perfectly.

(And on a related note, was it ever 100% confirmed in the setting what happens when a malicious Suvian sticks around canon for too long, or the consequences of it, or the exact reasoning the Flowers focus so much on preserving every canon’s purity in the first place? Was thinking about poking a bit at this myself but i never felt like i could find the sources i was looking for - the Original Series doesn’t go into infrastructure all that much)

Sorry for all the words haha, started drafting this way too far past midnight and I had a lot of thoughts about it.

-OrangeFox (trying to get another mission/interlude combo done before the new year because i finally have the time for it)

No, I don't think it's in any way an act of revenge. by Linstar on 2024-12-18 22:02:20 UTC Reply

The fic was marked as complete a few days after the Discord ban; it was definitely written way before then, probably in 2021. If owosphere were still around, I might want to discuss this, but she isn't, so there's not anything we can do. Personally, I would find it kind of disrespectful for a current community member to publish to everyone a piece without Permission; but yeah, there's not anything to do at this point. And yeah, Permission certainly isn't perfect.

I haven't really read over the pieces, so I can't really comment there, I was more interested in bringing this to the attention of others, like me, who I assumed had no idea it existed. That's all.

--Ls

PS: My impression was that Suvians ruined the canon by warping its reality to be like their own, permanently. Could be wrong.
Re. the lore questions... by Neshomeh on 2024-12-18 21:07:36 UTC Reply

Very little is ever 100% confirmed, and we've deliberately tried to keep it that way. {= ) At its core, the PPC is a vehicle for making jokes about bad writing, and possibly doing some character development, analysis, and/or philosophy while we're at it. The more mysterious the Flowers are, the easier it is for individual writers to spork what they want to spork without having to justify themselves.

That said, if you're looking for hypotheses, you probably want to look at the science departments, PPC history stories, people's essays about the nature of Suvians, etc.

And then, if it doesn't work for you, come up with an opposing hypothesis! It'll be just as valid as anyone else's.

~Neshomeh
Agreed, there's not much we can actually do about it. by Neshomeh on 2024-12-18 20:57:59 UTC Reply

Permission works on the honor system. Presumably, people who are interested enough in the PPC to want to write a mission will respect us enough to go through the process or else not post. If someone decides they don't care whether we approve of their spin-off being posted, we have no actual power to stop them, and asking them politely to take it down is probably wasted effort, too.

And it isn't as though having Permission is a foolproof quality or tastefulness guarantee, either. We try, but historical missions exist. So, the best way to handle it is the same way we handle any spin-off we don't like, which is to ignore it. {= )

~Neshomeh