Concerning your writing sample.

Regarding Permission by The Warrior of Many Faces on 2012-01-27 15:09:00 UTC Reply

Some of you may recall the Eliminators of the Enemies of Canon (or EEC) that I broached the idea of in a previous thread. For those of you who don’t, it is an organization that recruits OCs from across the multiverse to kill Sues. The problem is that they bring people from, say, the Metroid canon into something like Lord of the Rings, messing up canon almost as badly as the Sues they kill. As such, they must be disciplined, one way or the other, and my agents, Zoe and the Answer (Department of Mary Sues, Video Game Division, specializing in Pokémon), are the (un)lucky pair the Flowers assigned to do it, having been the first agents to encounter the EEC.
Zoe Whittaker is a bit character minion from a Pokémon badfic, who initially didn’t even have a name. Her only role was to have her Kadabra try to interrogate the Sue telepathically and watch as it died from psychic backlash. Her desire for revenge kept her going, but unfortunately, the PPC got to the Sue before she did. Enraged, she attacked the agents for robbing her of her revenge, but after several minutes of finding out why one never meddles with the affairs of assassins, she eventually lost consciousness. 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. Zoe’s new personality hasn’t changed much about her; instead of being angry all the time, now she’s usually pessimistic, cynical, and angry. She’s also a very solitary person, despite her partner’s best efforts to get her to lighten up. She favors poison as an assassination method, using Pokémon canon poisons, World 1 poisons, or Ye Olde Poisonous Poison, depending on her mood.
The Answer is a far more unusual case. DC-verse Anansi, who owns all tales, is naturally aware of the Sue problem, and tried to create a species that was designed specifically to hunt Sues. The Answer was his first attempt, but a particularly bad DC/Pokémon crossover crackfic that was passing by was absorbed into the Answer, simultaneously weakening his abilities and imbuing him with an extreme aptitude for randomness and eccentricity. Anansi, considering the Answer a failure, jettisoned him into the space between multiverses and left him there, only to find that he could not make anything even remotely as useful as the Answer was. However, by then, the Answer had multiverse-hopped his way to the PPC and joined up, as he still had an instinctual urge to get rid of Sues. However, he found himself physically unable to so much as lift a hand against a Sue, despite being able to sense their presence and predict their moves to an extent. However, due to staffing shortages, the Marquis got around this handicap by simply making sure to keep him partnered with someone who didn’t mind killing all the Sues they encountered. The Answer displays many irrational behaviors, such as creating his own religion which revolves around TV Tropes, irritating heavily-armed Agents, and munching on extra pronunciation when in badfics, but he has shown competence in Sue-hunting and has been in the PPC for at least two years without once going to Medical. He does tend to drive his partners Flamethrower Crazy after a while, however, so the Marquis often ends up having to reassign his partners somewhere less stressful.
The Answer, as mentioned above, has the ability to sense a Sue’s location (which is not overly useful, since the Words perform much the same function) and the ability to anticipate and dodge the attacks of most Sues (which is far more useful).
His Pokémon are low-leveled, since the Sues would just be better than him in battling automatically regardless of how strong they are. His team consists of Ambush Bug the Kricketune, a serial breaker of the fourth wall; Mxyzptlk the Misdreavus, who prefers to torment people by messing with their dreams and perceptions; Batzarro the Crobat, who says the opposite of what he means and lacks a firm grasp on grammar; Glomulus the Munchlax, who is actually rather typical for a Munchlax in that he’s a glutton; Creeper the Aipom, who finds morbid subjects funny; and Plastic Man the Ditto, who tends to crush on any desirable females in the area.
I apologize for the fact that this went on so long, but I’ve thought this out a lot and the information here all seemed relevant.
As their first mission, I intend to have them take on this fic: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7504579/1/AlexsContestChronicles
Very very bad fic.
And so that you know that I’m not secretly working for the Suethors: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zBBKfSvEeWlKYtVXuhVY051pxcvi17VCXravvNKe-zA/edit?hl=en_US#
Thank you for your time.

Concerning your writing sample. by Araeph on 2012-01-27 17:21:00 UTC Reply

Your character is a Mary Sue.

TV Tropes has no set definition of what a Mary Sue is, so here is ours, from the wiki:

"A Mary Sue is a fictional character that achieves its goals in the story with minimal effort, out of proportion to what the audience would expect given the setting(s), culture(s), and other inhabitants of that universe. In order to accomplish this, a Mary Sue will have character traits heavily skewed in favor of outstanding attributes vs. significant flaws. This character type is mostly associated with fanfiction, though it can be found in original fiction as well."

In your story, the main character smirks in the face of danger, mouths off to authority with no repercussions, is constantly pleased with himself, points out where everyone else is wrong and gets away with it, has a Sooper Speshul ability (he is even called "Gifted" with a capital G), is blatantly superior to everyone else in the room, accomplishes his goal of escaping (and even kidnapping the Queen-to-be) with no real effort, and anyone who stands in his way is ripe for pain or humiliation.

Please do not try to tell me that the random thoughts in his head constitute a "flaw," since they do not, in fact, hinder his efforts or goals in any way.

You can't get much more of a Marty Stu than that.

And if you are tempted to reply with, "Well there's a reason for him to be like this [insert explanation here]!" please keep in mind that a) no justification for these absurd and overblown traits was forthcoming from the writing sample itself, b) stories should not have to be explained in order to work, and c) your unwillingness to see the Stu for what he is is a perfect example of why the Mary Sue is such a tenacious pest.

In addition to your writing sample, I noticed further down on the Board that you didn't think Eragon, one of the most spectacular Sues in existence, was in fact a Mary Sue. Put together, these posts illustrate that you do not know how to recognize a Mary Sue, in your own work or in the work of others. Your grammar and spelling are sound, but you are not ready to write for the PPC.

Sorry for the disappointment,

Araeph

Thanks for the concrit! by The Warrior of Many Faces on 2012-01-28 16:00:00 UTC Reply

It *does* look like I need more work recognizing Sues. Not much to say about that.

Sorry about the line breaks. XP

Actually, based on your comments, I might reconsider writing for the PPC at all. One of the things you mentioned was that I had put more plot than humor into the humor-based PPC. I happen to rather like intricate plots, which are not so easily welded into the PPC. Not saying that I'm abandoning the possibility of writing for the PPC altogether; I'm simply reconsidering where I ought to be focusing my writing energy.

In any event, thanks for the insightful and honest review of my stuff!

Concerning your agents. by Araeph on 2012-01-27 17:19:00 UTC Reply

First of all, your paragraphs need lines between them to make for easier reading. Both this page and your writing sample look like one long, unending paragraph. If you do not wish to have lines breaks, then you need to indent your paragraphs, as in a printed book.

Now, onto the characterization of your agents.

The PPC's base is humor. Nothing about your EEC idea or your characters tells me there would be humor in your spin-off. Zoe Whittaker's angst-ridden past is not humor. The Answer's "irrational behavior" isn't humor. ('Lol random' as actual humor is incredibly difficult to pull off.)

Zoe's background and personality is utterly antithetical to the tone of the PPC; the PPC is not based off of rage and malice, and it has no patience for agents who wallow in their own misery. The Answer's background is more interesting, but so focused on making his character bizarre and eccentric that he's bound to put the readers off a little, especially those who are new to your PPC work.

I can tell that you spent a lot of time on the backstory, but nothing you created there seems like it would contribute in a positive way to the Canon Protection Initiative. If agents' backstories are needed, they are there to a) help them fit better into the world of the PPC, or b) to help the readers sympathize with them better. Neither one of those is true in this case.

For an example of a better way to approach this, suppose you created an agent who came from a badfic, and as a result had too much backstory to remember properly. The realistic results of this are that his memory of where he came from is constantly changing and contradicting itself. Sometimes it gets him down, but most of the times it's just a bit embarrassing, and it's also a good ice-breaker for introducing himself in the PPC Cafeteria. These conflicting backstories would not be a random conglomeration of dialogue that could come from a generator, or an excuse to have him infused with multiple personalities. Rather, they would be the result of one brain trying to interpret two or three coherent, yet contradictory sets of information.

I should mention that you have a good grasp of spelling, grammar, and sentence structure. I would recommend reading more spin-offs and MSTs (perhaps in the Sue-mocking communities) before attempting to get Permission. This is even more the case considering your writing sample, which I will get to in the next post.

~Araeph