Some reasons for brevity,

Subject: Some reasons for brevity,
Author: Aster Corbett
Posted on: 2012-01-31 12:47:00 UTC

I remember my agent concepts were fairly minimalist, and I got Permission. http://disc.yourwebapps.com/discussion.cgi?disc=199610;article=206001;

However, there are a few reasons I did this:

1) because I am a firm believer that there is a difference between character and backstory, and talking about any long history for more than one sentence really would have made me feel uncomfortable. I'm a big believer in 'the ordinary character against improbable odds' as a way to encourage conflict. I described Lore simply because he was an original creature. If he had been a human or a normal species, I would have described him with one word. Lines an d lines of backstory and detail probably wouldn't convince others they were somehow and magically good characters without a sample about them, so I decided not to even bother.

2) I value simplicity. If I can't describe the concept of my characters (not their history, or their full attitude, the concept) in a few sentences or less, I don't write them. Not in any story. A simple concept I can later develop is more valuable to me than a very detailed one.

3) I frankly was not sure if anybody cared about my characters as characters. I know this sounds cold, but sharing concepts without actually sharing material to me can be a little like being that guy at the party who talks about all of the details of the things he likes regardless of anybody cares or not. I expected to be regarded in a clinical 'ok, these concepts are not horrible' manner, and even when I wrote my missions I really didn't expect anybody to value my agents over anybody else's. I don't expect others to remember my agents in between missions. In my eyes, they came for the badfic and my agents are just a way to guide them through the badfic and give it a satisfying sporking. It's the same principle I use when I write fanfiction: if there is an OC, I don't start with the OC, because that is not who the people who came to the section walked in hoping to read about.

4) I believe writing samples speak for themselves.

I didn't consider my short blurbs as 'unfinished' characters, or that I should never have gotten permission in the first place. I barely even mentioned the personality of my agents at all, but there can be reasons for doing that kind of thing. And it's not always 'he/she didn't care enough.'

Sorry, not really trying to rock the boat. Just trying to edge in with my two cents and suggest alternatives. I know I'm not a PG, but I do believe that thoughtfulness and demonstration is worth a million concepts. I'd really like to see more other writing offered as writing samples for the PPC in requests. I know a lot of new people aren't habitual writers... but still. To me that seems like a better proof than a long description of agents.

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Permission Request by ROTHY on 2012-01-31 00:45:00 UTC Reply

Alrighty, it's been a while since I first requested permission to create an agent and failed because I did it in someone else's thread, but now I've set up my own thread and expanded on my original idea. Behold my agents! http://ffffffffrothy.deviantart.com/art/My-PPC-Agents-282434208

A note about personalities (attn.: everyone). by Neshomeh on 2012-01-31 03:02:00 UTC Reply

Phobos is responding to the overall request as I begin this, but I'd like to say this to everyone, particularly the newbies:

I'm getting pretty tired of seeing prospective agents pitched with half a personality, or an underdeveloped personality, or barely any personality. Granted, my own Ilraen started out that way, but there weren't a dozen other people already doing it at the time, he's from an actual badfic as opposed to a made-up one, and he wasn't in my request for permission. A permission request should show us what you can contribute to the PPC setting and make us want to read your stories. What makes us want to read about a character whose author admits that they haven't put in the work to make him whole? Why should we anticipate that this author is going to put in the effort to write good missions?

~Neshomeh

To clarify what I'm talking about a bit more... by Neshomeh on 2012-01-31 16:58:00 UTC Reply

Responses going off-topic is fine, but I'm a little worried my actual point is being missed, so here are some quotes from the last three permission requests:

ROTHY: "Since he was abandoned halfway in to creation, only half of his personality actually exists, so he is currently making up the other half as he goes."

Warrior of Many Faces: "The agents, seeing Sue-killing potential in her, brought her to FicPsych* where she gained a name, a somewhat more complex personality, and a mission: destroy all Sues."

* FicPsych cannot magically grant anyone a personality. This is a pernicious misunderstanding of the culture implant.

Alleydodger: "However, he was given very little personality beyond being grumpy or easily angered, this means he is constantly one of these two until his personality properly develops, he is slowly improving."

It's not just these three—there have been plenty others before—but the fact that there are three in a row trying to do this same thing is what finally goaded me to say something about it. It's just coming off as unoriginal and lazy.

~Neshomeh

Agreed. by Vixenmage on 2012-01-31 18:10:00 UTC Reply

I haven't been doing much with permission giving lately (seems like every time I check a request, it's already been answered the next day*), but I have been reading the requests as they pop up. It reminds me of a site I used to roleplay on, Steelsings. There was a lengthy sort of application form or so, for your first character to enter the RP. Most of it was standard-- name, age, appearance, occupation, Gifted** Y/N and details, and history. But although the form itself was only two-thirds of a page or so, the characters that got accepted were two pages or more in length. And most of it was personality (and history, and best of all, how the two were related). If your appearance was longer than either afore-mentioned field, the Mentors would give concrit along those lines-- at the end of every week, they'd submit a list of accepted/declined characters.

I'm being a bit long-winded here, but the thing is-- Steelsings was my first internet community, and the site by which I found the 'Board. Some people found it off-putting, how much emphasis they placed on personality, and the argument I heard most was that personalities developed with use and practice of the character-- since it was a roleplay, this was possibly more applicable there than here. But although there is a balance, and there does need to be room for character development, I maintain that the personality is absolutely the most important part of a character, with the history being a very close second place. Don't get me wrong, a lack of history is not an automatic Bad Thing-- it's how you handle it. "She has no background because she is a bit character, so her personality is still forming," that's not okay. "She was a bit character, so her background was never described; she only has a few hazy memories of a generic life to sustain her. This has made her, in some ways, a very defensive person; she takes any slight against her memory, or the way she lives, to be an attack, and reacts as such." That, on the other hand, is dealing with the lack of background, and how it would effect someone's mind.

Sentient beings have personalities. Characters have personalities. Sues/Stus don't. That's why they're so annoying-- they focus on the Speshul bits, the appearance and the unique origin, and the weaponry and the parts of a personality that are easy to show-- anger, sexual attraction, and angst. That's the hallmark of a Stu/Sue. I am really a bit annoyed at how it's becoming the hallmark of a PPC Agent, too.

For the record-- you don't have to have a traumatic fall into the PPC, or a unique experience with a plothole, or be recruited from a 'fic. We have at least one DoSAT agent who simply submitted an application form. You really don't need an Epic Backstory of Awesome to be an excellent and memorable character.

I know I'm probably sounding harsh, here, and rambling quite a bit, but I say all this for a reason. When I started reading the PPC, and spin-offs, it was about the characters. It was about well-written interactions, reactions to canon changes, and an organization that was powered by the single most unlikely*** fuel source I know of. It wasn't about OMG KILL THIS BADFIC NOWWW. It was about humor, and writing, and goodfic.

It would be really, really cool if we could keep it about humor, and writing, and badfic.

*Not that I'm complaining! As long as you guys aren't buckling under the load, it's that this stuff is getting done that matters. Just, do say something, if it begins to get to you.
**It was a Tortall-based site. Sadly, no longer in existence, in case you were wondering.
***No less unlikely for having been used by Dresden Codak.

Completely agree by Phobos on 2012-01-31 19:09:00 UTC Reply

I said much the same in my post a little further down the thread. Glad I'm not alone in that.

By the by, the load isn't too much. There are two or three of us working pretty constantly. We could save a request for you, every once in a while, if you want. :P

-Phobos

Some reasons for brevity, by Aster Corbett on 2012-01-31 12:47:00 UTC Reply

I remember my agent concepts were fairly minimalist, and I got Permission. http://disc.yourwebapps.com/discussion.cgi?disc=199610;article=206001;

However, there are a few reasons I did this:

1) because I am a firm believer that there is a difference between character and backstory, and talking about any long history for more than one sentence really would have made me feel uncomfortable. I'm a big believer in 'the ordinary character against improbable odds' as a way to encourage conflict. I described Lore simply because he was an original creature. If he had been a human or a normal species, I would have described him with one word. Lines an d lines of backstory and detail probably wouldn't convince others they were somehow and magically good characters without a sample about them, so I decided not to even bother.

2) I value simplicity. If I can't describe the concept of my characters (not their history, or their full attitude, the concept) in a few sentences or less, I don't write them. Not in any story. A simple concept I can later develop is more valuable to me than a very detailed one.

3) I frankly was not sure if anybody cared about my characters as characters. I know this sounds cold, but sharing concepts without actually sharing material to me can be a little like being that guy at the party who talks about all of the details of the things he likes regardless of anybody cares or not. I expected to be regarded in a clinical 'ok, these concepts are not horrible' manner, and even when I wrote my missions I really didn't expect anybody to value my agents over anybody else's. I don't expect others to remember my agents in between missions. In my eyes, they came for the badfic and my agents are just a way to guide them through the badfic and give it a satisfying sporking. It's the same principle I use when I write fanfiction: if there is an OC, I don't start with the OC, because that is not who the people who came to the section walked in hoping to read about.

4) I believe writing samples speak for themselves.

I didn't consider my short blurbs as 'unfinished' characters, or that I should never have gotten permission in the first place. I barely even mentioned the personality of my agents at all, but there can be reasons for doing that kind of thing. And it's not always 'he/she didn't care enough.'

Sorry, not really trying to rock the boat. Just trying to edge in with my two cents and suggest alternatives. I know I'm not a PG, but I do believe that thoughtfulness and demonstration is worth a million concepts. I'd really like to see more other writing offered as writing samples for the PPC in requests. I know a lot of new people aren't habitual writers... but still. To me that seems like a better proof than a long description of agents.

Some clarification by Phobos on 2012-01-31 13:31:00 UTC Reply

Neshomeh is not against brevity, simplicity, or minimalism. She is against those characters that have "doesn't really have a personality" as their default personality.

1) As permission givers, we don't want to know everything about your characters. We just want to know enough to get a feel for who they are.

2) Nothing wrong with this. You start out with a concept, that is the important bit.

3) I am sad to say that you are partially right on this one. There are some PPCers that don't care one bit about anyone's missions, except in regards to how terrible the badfic was. You can see that kind of thing around here all the time; in the reviews, in the badfic threads and chat conversations that turn into "that was bad, but mine is worse" contests. Some people around here just don't care what PPCers write. They would be just as happy reading the badfic without reading a sporking, I think.

4) Writing samples are a major part of the request, but there is a reason we want to see agent profiles, as well. If the writing sample is good, but the agents are Jack the Ripper and Cthulu, then we will likely hold off on permission. Until we get a little more explanation of where they are going with the spin-off. That's what the characters tell us; where is this spin-off going.

Like I said earlier, the problem is not with short agent bios. The problem is with people taking the lazy way out by saying "my agent has no personality".

I agree on this last bit, by the way. More non-PPC writing would be great to see in permission requests. For one thing, it makes writing a request easier, since you don't need to go to the trouble of writing a brand new piece, if you have something that already shows your writing skill. For another thing, it gets old reading the same "this is how my agents moved in to their RC" story, over and over again. Of course, some people don't have other writing samples, so writing something PPC related may be their best option.

-Phobos

Yeah, agreed. by Aster Corbett on 2012-01-31 13:58:00 UTC Reply

Was not implying she was against it, she was the one that gave me permission! :D

In regards to 3 in particular, the thing is that while I noticed that unfortunate trend, I also wanted my missions to have a low 'entry level' required for reading. Anybody should be able to pick up any mission of mine and not have to read the others to understand it. Or read much other PPC material in general. Those new readers, as you said probably don't care about my agents yet, so one of my goals to make it friendle for them and then introduce them to the agents in the course of the story.

That's the thing. I really want to see more non PPC writing because I see writing ppc missions as releasing serials. I don't write missions to tell everybody about my characters; I write missions to entertain others. The only practice that helped me with that concept is just to write for other people vs myself. I have not found a shortcut for this yet...

Not to say nonwriters can't rise to the challenge. But some stuff really is experience-based and on whole those nonwriters shouldn't worry so much about if they appease the PPC or not... they should worry about becoming a writer, even if it is just for missions.

Re: Yeah, agreed. by Phobos on 2012-01-31 19:03:00 UTC Reply

I never said that new readers don't care about agents. In fact, the some of the ones I'm talking about have been around a while, and comment on many missions, but don't say anything about the mission itself. They don't care about your agents, or mine. They care about the badfic more than anything else in a mission, as their comments clearly show.

That is the unfortunate trend I was talking about.

You will have to explain the "releasing serials" bit to me. I am not sure how you mean that.

As for the rest, I suppose we look at these things differently. I see my agents as the only thing that immediately sets my missions apart from the rest of them. If I make the entry level low enough that I have to re-introduce my characters with every mission, then how are my characters supposed to grow and evolve? I prefer to work with the idea that people are going to care about the agents and put in the effort to know their stories. If I didn't think people were going to care, I wouldn't even bother to write.

To be honest, I'm not here for the badfic. I couldn't care less how bad a badfic is. I am here to read about the PPC. I am here to read about Jay and Acacia, Suicide, Nume, Trojie and Pads, Justin Agent, Techno Dann, the kitchen crew and building maintenance, Makes-Things, Luxury, and the Flowers. I want to see hijinks, spacial craziness, and wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff. I don't want to see a mountain of badfic with a few lines of dialogue stuck in. If I wanted that, I would read an MST.

In my mind, the badfic is there to serve the mission, and the mission is there to serve the story and the characters. That is reversed in a large number of recent missions: the characters and story allow there to be a mission, and the mission only serves to put the worst badfic that we can dredge up on a pedestal.

It is the difference between saying "look at this story I wrote" and "look at this badfic I sporked." Those are two very different things. One is taking pride in what you have created, the other is you taking pride in destroying what someone else created.

This rambled a little more than I would have liked, and not all of it is directed at you, Aster. Some of this stuff just needed to be said.

-Phobos

Rambling? What's that? by Aster Corbett on 2012-01-31 19:36:00 UTC Reply

I thought that was normal! My turn to ramble!

Yeah, not saying that you said that they don't on whole care about agents. Sorry, that may have gotten brevity'd into existence... I was writing on my phone at the time. But yeah, I am talking about what you are talking about.

Releasing 'serials': I'm publishing these on the PPC for others to read and enjoy, sort of like a serial or a short story is released in a magazine. The enjoyment of others is at the front of my mind when I write something rather than my enjoyment in writing it. Of course, I DO have a lot of fun doing it... but there's a big difference between 'I wrote this for me to write' vs. 'I wrote this for others to read.'

So when I think enjoyment, I think 'stuff that caters to the reader rather than myself' which is why I try and keep my agents (while not generic) but fairly simple so the focus can be on the PPC in general, the badfic itself (because many people do read for the badfic) and on the way the agents handle it rather than their personas in general.
While they do have personal lives and characterizations of their own, the enjoyment of the reader is more important to me: I am fairly sure nobody cares about Aster in particular, really. They care that she's a PPC agent, that she gets into wacky PPC hijinks. (I hope!)

As I said, my OC rule: when people read fanfic, they didn't come there with an OC in mind. They came there with the canon in mind. And so that's how I see the PPC. When I read and write PPC material, I didn't do it for my particular agent, and I didn't do it for the particular badfic. Nobody knows or really cares about the fate of either one. I like to think I write missions because I like writing PPC materials, and that people want to read missions for the same reason.

Re: Rambling? What's that? by Miah on 2012-02-01 06:15:00 UTC Reply

I read PPC stories for the PPC. To me that means the characters, their stories, the craziness of the atmosphere in the PPC and then the mission. This is also the way I write my spin-off. Maybe some people won't read it like this, but my goal is to make these characters people. People with hopes, dreams, thoughts, interactions. People with friends and dates and things that they do on their downtime. There are some spin-offs that are written completely opposite of this. You can almost literally pick up a mission anywhere in their list and read it. Being written like this doesn't mean I think they are not well-written, but they still don't hold as much interest for me as the ones who have more character focus.

Well yeah. by Aster Corbett on 2012-02-01 06:53:00 UTC Reply

I don't mean there's no character focus. In short, what I mean is to avoid the you-picked-up-the-novel-halfway-through feeling. At no time during my writing should anybody feel like they missed something. Not even when it's a canon they don't know.

Of course, I'm not perfect. But I try.

My goal by doctorlit on 2012-02-01 16:36:00 UTC Reply

is to sort of do both with my spinoff. I definitely have plans for my characters that will continue throughout my spinoff. But at the same time, the badfic should still be the focus of the middle part of the mission, because part of the PPC is protecting canon, and the badfic is the antagonist in that equation. The way I see it, has three parts to its setting: the actual PPC HQ, the canon worlds and characters we protect, and the physical badfic characteristics the agents must wade through. For my missions, I want to make sure all four things (characters, HQ, badfic, canon) get some focus.

I'm in it for the characters, myself. by Neshomeh on 2012-02-01 19:16:00 UTC Reply

Frankly, the badfic itself holds next to zero interest for me after all the years I've been here. The thing about badfic is that it's pretty much all the same, so what's interesting to me about missions is how the PPCer spins it. I don't really care that someone distorted the distance between points A and B again. I do care if it squishes the agents, or makes them puke, or gives them a headache, or trips them up, etc. I want to watch these characters struggle through the horrible and hilarious things the bad writing is doing, and feel for them. If I don't click with the agents, I'm not likely to keep reading the spin-off.

'Course, for my own missions, I do normally strive to find badfic that has a little something extra to set it apart—it's one reason I take so long between missions. The likes of "Ring Child" and "The Girl And Her Dragon" don't come along every day, and thank goodness. The latter's grammar actually traumatized me. I cannot see the word "as" in a sentence without cringing. I can barely even use it anymore. >.
... Erm. Anyway. I also strive to pick badfic that will poke my agents in new and different ways, to promote character development. Both of my spin-offs are 100% about the agents and their personal struggles. I try not to dwell too much in their heads, and let their words and actions do most of the talking instead, but that's what I write for. Like Phobos said, the badfic serves the mission, and the mission serves the characters.

~Neshomeh

Interesting thread by EileenAlphabet on 2012-02-02 11:32:00 UTC Reply

I am of course still rather new to the whole PPC-thing, but at this point I look at my missions as a kind of 'Monster of the Week' series, with the badfic being the monster.
I then try to make the mission about my agents and their characters by showing how they react to elements in the badfic and how they react to each other. Just like the best 'Monster of the Week' series are about so much more than just showing of a new creature-concept, I want my missions to be the same. That's my goal, anyway.
But I am planning to incorporate character growth in the form of a small story arch, spanning multiple missions. (Stay tuned!)

And I only spork badfics that I think are absolutely horrific, but that's because I simply wouldn't have the heart to do it otherwise.

Continuing in this vein... by Guvnor of Space on 2012-02-03 08:14:00 UTC Reply

Do I even have to say that I write more for the PPC and my agents than the badfic? Probably yes, actually, considering that many of you don't read my spinoff. :p

Still, I like my numbered missions to be accessible from any point, although they are part of a continuing story. (There's actually supposed to be hints at the backstory revealed in 'Mission ?' in a few places (my third and fourth missions, largely), but I dunno if that comes through. Ah well...) If you care to find out more and get into the continuing story, then you can read the interludes, including a couple that have nothing to do with missions. If you just read every new mission posted on the board, that works, too. Or at least, that's the goal.

Yeah, I probably could have said 'I like Aster's idea' on this one; although I am perfectly willing to write stuff that is a direct sequel to something else I wrote that requires prior reading if the sequel is NOT A MISSION- notably, 'Rule Number Three' follows 'Coffee Rain,' and an Interlude I collabed on with Nesh that's currently in beta is a continuation of that story arch. This ties directly into my next point.

As for writing for yourself versus others- I write missions for others, not that I don't love writing them, but Interludes and other non mission things I write largely because I want to write about these characters. I'm aware that there is a lot more interest in a mission than in a character development interlude about Orken. (Like my last interlude.) Of course, I want them to turn out well and for them to make sense, and I always do want my readers to like them. And hey, if there are people out there who actually care as much as I do, that's awesome.

To elaborate on that a bit... by HerrWozzeck on 2012-01-31 04:24:00 UTC Reply

On the whole 'author who admits they haven't put much work into their stuff', I actually have a bit to say about that.

It's happened quite a bit in some of the badfic I've found laying around in the Pit. Perhaps most notably, this was one of my biggest issues with the fic I sporked in my fifth Floaters mission ("Careful The Tale You Tell", which can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1OyjfWKA-b8wONh7ggdtvqvUbJjY_qG76vYwoDTkZE ), wherein the author admitted this in the fic's very first A/N:

"Please excuse my grammar and spelling, I extremely bad at writing but I just got an idea for a FanFics and I know if I don't do it I will go crazy about it..."

As soon as I read that A/N, I asked the same question Neshomeh is now: Why should we care about something that the author him/herself can't be bothered to care enough about to put some actual effort into it?

I think that this is a common issue in some of the less awful pieces of badfic: the concepts were interesting, but somewhere the execution got bungled, either because they didn't have the experience to make their concept work, or they just don't care. I find it difficult to relate to the people who just don't care.

Would you kindly... by Phobos on 2012-01-31 01:03:00 UTC Reply

...submit a writing sample to go with this permission request? Once that is done, I will read it and make a ruling, if no one beats me to it.

-Phobos

Sample, ho! by ROTHY on 2012-01-31 01:48:00 UTC Reply

http://ffffffffrothy.deviantart.com/art/PPC-Writing-Sample-282445842

Permission Denied by Phobos on 2012-01-31 02:25:00 UTC Reply

To be honest, your writing sample appears rushed. It is flat, humorless, and lacking in description. Your agents show some potential, but they lose all of it in the sample, as well. Add to that the fact that you've posted maybe a dozen times since you joined 4 months ago and no one in the chat knows you, and that you don't seem to know how permission works. I have no choice but to deny.

Hang around some more, participate in the community, read up on how permission works, and when you are ready, try again.

-Phobos

damnit by ROTHY on 2012-01-31 02:47:00 UTC Reply

Yeah this is why I wanted someone else to write for me, I can't write, plain and simple.

What do you mean? by Phobos on 2012-01-31 02:58:00 UTC Reply

I don't understand what you are saying. You wanted someone else to use these agents?

Yes, actually (nm) by ROTHY on 2012-01-31 03:04:00 UTC Reply

Okay, I'm confused here. by JulyFlame on 2012-01-31 07:26:00 UTC Reply

You're asking for permission, but you don't want to write for the PPC? You just want to create agents for others to use, and for them to work out the stories you've worked into their background?

That just doesn't work. We are not a community designed entirely around the pleasing and entertaining of others. We write primarily for ourselves, which means we use our own characters, our own ideas, and our own methods first, because that is what is pleasing to us. It is already difficult enough to encourage people to use characters that already exist for general use that do not belong to them, but already fill a niche! It is not pleasing to anyone to use someone else's characters at their behest with all that that would entail.

You cannot and should not assume that because we are writers we will happily adopt your characters and write out everything you thought up for them, because, in all likelihood, no one will, and if someone did, it would probably not be happily. Saying as you did here that you want other people to use your characters with no personal intents of writing them at all is quite galling and rude.

I don't intend to come off as harsh as this post might read, but there's really no way to couch it politely; expecting others to do the work of writing your characters for you is rude and disrespectful.

I guess I understand... by ROTHY on 2012-01-31 21:12:00 UTC Reply

...But the thing is I can't write very well at all! Sure my spelling is above average, but I can't convey or keep dialogue from being stilted or wooden.

Before I came here, I wrote a story that I put up on fanfiction.net. The problem there was that once I reached a certain point in the story, I couldn't advance past it. I simply couldn't write past it because I realized how stupid and dull the story actually was, so I deleted it.

If it's against what the PPC stands for to have someone ghost write for you (which wasn't what I was shooting for), then is collaborating okay?

A few points. by Neshomeh on 2012-01-31 22:37:00 UTC Reply

1) Collaborating is okay—lots of PPCers have written in teams, including Jay and Acacia—but you'd still need permission. And someone would have to agree to do it, of course.

2) I'm not quite sure how to address trying to get permission to write while self-professing yourself as not being able to, so I'll try two ways:

2.1) If you'd like to learn how to write better, I suggest two things. First, read. Read all the time. Read a lot. Read things that sound like the kind of things you'd like to write, to see how it's done. Then, second, write. Write all the time. Write a lot. Write things that you'd love to read—but there's no need to post these things where everyone can see them unless you're happy with them. It's perfectly fine to write for the drawer/hard drive until you've gained some confidence.

2.2) You don't have to write stuff to hang out here. You're more than welcome to just hang out and talk to us as a reader. Preferably more stuff than just "AUGH THIS BADFIC IS SO BAD," 'cause that gets dull, but heck, if that's what tickles your fancy, whatever.

~Neshomeh