Subject: Well.
Author:
Posted on: 2011-12-09 01:30:00 UTC
It seems more posts were made while I was typing, which explained the situation in more detail. In particular, thank you Phobos and Neshomeh.
I now feel like a moron. Allow me a moment to reboot my brain.
Hello! Sorry if a lot of the boarders don't recognize me, I'm not the most active on the board itself, although I was a fixture in the IRC for a few months - although I've been absent from that lately as well. Leaving the IRC was catalyzed by some incompatible personalities, but it wasn't solely caused by it. I like the people of the PPC in general, and you guys helped me get into fanfic a bit (I'm even writing one now, although it is sadly neglected in favor of my art usually), but there are a few issues that I've noted with the PPC that made it hard to get enthusiastic about fully participating in.
Please don't just dismiss this as an outsider who didn't fit in trolling, even if it's unavoidable some people see it that way. Nothing I say here is meant to be spiteful, and there is no bitterness intended - this is a post of constructive criticism that I hope at least gives you guys some food for thought.
Here is my parting criticism of the PPC:
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(1) Inflexible Adherence to the 'Way Things Have Always Been'
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I'm I'm not the only one in the community that is bothered at the fact that so many rules are dictated by people who are no longer part of the community. The board continues to use highly dated, difficult to moderate and impossible to categorize technology that shows it's age everyday that the first page is dominated by permission requests and welcome threads, hounded by fears that the community will 'divide' with as simple a move as changing board technologies. Old standbys continue to see the PPC as just a small informal group of friends rather than a large, diverse group that will unavoidably divide. Lacking the ability to facilitate those natural tendencies just mean it stagnates and discourages new blood. The community seems to be fine with that, and some even actively encourage that viewpoint. The IRC channel is one of the most active PPC hubs, and it is barely granted any legitimacy by the 'core' community that exists on the board.
The PPC has also grown to a large number of departments whose missions cover a wide range of genres, canons, story types, characters, etc, but the Original Series is still required reading, even for people who have no interest in killing Mary Sues, and with only passing interest in Lord of the Rings. There is this paradoxical attitude in the PPC that you shouldn't work too hard to follow old continuity but you should definitely follow all this old continuity.
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(2) Ferocious defense of the term 'Mary Sue'
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This section could also just be section 1.1, as it is really just an aspect of that inflexible adherence I talk about above.
Lemme just link you something that actually prompted this post:
http://adventuresofcomicbookgirl.tumblr.com/post/13913540194/mary-sue-what-are-you-or-why-the-concept-of-sue-is
This is a wonderfully worded essay on why Mary Sue is a loaded, sexist term. I am well aware that there will be a big wave of defense to come rushing to using the term Mary Sue, a pattern I've seen with similar posts in the past that have been done with less effective execution, but this essay really sold me on it. All of the regular arguments PPCers use to defend the term Mary Sue - that they perpetuate negative stereotypes, that they are boring characters - these are all soundly defeated in this essay by pointing out that those traits can all be pointed out /individually/ and so there's no reason to use a gendered, ambiguous and loaded term to describe such characters.
The PPC has a huge wiki full of invented terms, gadgets characters... it is a very insular community with a large learning curve to participate in, so it really wouldn't be a big deal to come up with a new term to label the canon-warping monsters that center around PPC missions, save for the point argued above. It doesn't even have to be something fancy, something as generic as 'anomalies' would work.
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and finally (3) Elitism
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People should be familiar with the TvTropes debacle, where Laburnum and Tawaki posted many links on TvTropes with examples of characters or storylines from their missions. Several people in the IRC took it upon themselves to have these links removed because they were attracting the 'wrong' kind of people to the PPC. TvTropes disliked this and reverted all changes, arguing that Laburnum and Tawaki's characters are legitimate parts of the PPC canon and were using valid examples.
The obvious next step would be to put /more/ examples on TvTropes that gave a better general indication of what the PPC was about - an idea that was denied because we apparently don't think the people that browse TvTropes are /worthy/ of being PPCers, or alternatively that we just want to stay small and hidden. Both of these are very indicative of an arrogance in the PPC community, especially one that is supposed to stand for improving the writing community in general. If it turns down opportunities to grow larger and spread it's message to a wider audience, then is it really an organization to help people write, or is it just a small group of people that are maliciously picking on 13-year-olds' wish-fulfillment stories, and then putting their fingers in their ears when any criticism is levied at them for it?
It also highlights this paradoxical attitude of the PPC where it can't decide if it wants to be a unified, rigid canon or just a kind of loose collection of lighthearted writing exercises. Everything about the PPC seems to indicate the latter until somebody does something 'wrong.'
I will make a point to say I don't think anyone in the PPC is being mean on purpose, or willfully trying to exclude people, but that doesn't change the fact that I think unidentified elitism does exist in the PPC, and steps should be taken to recognize and address it.
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Now that that's out of the way, just wanted to say that I did enjoy my time here, so thanks for all the fun times. Even if you just eye-roll my post and go on with what your doing, I hope you have fun with it and good luck.
I bid you adieu.
I could certainly go into a long essay on this (and I might later), but on this point:
All of the regular arguments PPCers use to defend the term Mary Sue - that they perpetuate negative stereotypes, that they are boring characters - these are all soundly defeated in this essay by pointing out that those traits can all be pointed out /individually/ and so there's no reason to use a gendered, ambiguous and loaded term to describe such characters.
Of course all of Mary Sue's traits can be pointed out individually. But that doesn't mean there's not a good reason to use one term. When certain literary components appear in conjunction with each other time and time again in works of fiction (and in real life), it is useful for people to sort them into categories for ease of discussion. Isn't that what TV Tropes is all about?
I can't prove that the term isn't ambiguous and loaded, but I'd be surprised if someone could prove that it was. All points in that essay are well-made, but not that hard to refute. And I'd be very astonished if someone could prove that it was both loaded and ambiguous at the same time. Either "Mary Sue" has a meaning that everyone knows about (loaded), or it has a meaning that no one really knows about (ambiguous).
As for making up a new term only to be used by the PPC...wouldn't that go directly against your suggestion of making the PPC more accessible to new people, especially people who come from places like TV Tropes where the Mary Sue term is widely used? (It would also imply that we are somehow ashamed of having used the term in the past, which would come with a stigma and language-drift barrier attached to older PPC writings. Yay, difficult for newbies and offensive to oldbies at the same time!)
Sorry that you're leaving us, though. Hope you find another fun place online!
~Araeph
I don't really care enough to address any of anybody's points about Mary Sues. It's just jargon, and were there a push to change the term used, I have problem with adapting my vocabulary as long as the newer term had a convenient way to shorten it.
(Warning: tl;dr may follow.)
What I am on about, is that I'd like to point out that hS's poll/survey/whatever earlier this year did indicate that a majority of us do want some kind of change to the layout in some way, and roughly two thirds of us want to leave this board all together. And then nothing happened. Until about two or three months ago this got brought up in the IRC, a big discussion happened, about why a change to basically any kind of board other than this one was a bad idea, and ultimately nothing came of it. Except for the fact that I started to notice a few trends every time the subject comes up (aside from absolutely nothing happening).
As far as I can gather, the major arguments against moving to a newer board, or even better a proper forum system are thus:
-We can't change the links to this board on some older sites/this is the place returning oldbies know to come to. (Easily solved by placing a large, noticeable link on the top saying 'The new home of the PPC is here' or something like that, and having someone come back here occasionally and adding trash responses to old topics to make sure this board doesn't get deleted due to inactivity.)
-Forums and organization will fracture the community. (Proper organization can neatly dodge that problem, but if people are still unsure about that, then there's no problem with just having a single forum with a multitude of threads. Also, this one pretends like there's not already a split between people like me who mainly frequent the IRC and people who avoid it entirely. If anything, a better board would pull some of us back. I know it would for me.)
-Topics dropping off the front page is a good thing. (I actually had to have the logic behind that explained to me, and I still don't agree with it. It indicates a lack of trust in the community to know when to drop a subject, which is troubling. There's also the nice little bit where newbies who make too many threads too soon, or people who make multiple badfic threads when there's already one near the top get yelled at because doing that pushes topics off of the front page.)
-Authority is bad, and we'd have to have moderators and stuff. (Admittedly this is a newer one, but it's possibly the most troubling of all of them, as it indicates either a lack of trust in your fellow PPCer and their likelyhood to not abuse their power, a lack of trust in the community to not not be jealous of those with the modpower, or that there is such little trust in the IRC that having mods (or, well, A mod at the moment) and designated arbitrators is fine for them but heaven forbid we add those to the board. Also? This one is nearly a direct quote. There was a long discussion on why mods are or are not a bad thing, and how one would go about selecting said mods. I made quite a few stupid suggestions, but ultimately I'd think that elections like we do for the PGs or DAs would work fine.)
So yeah. There have been other arguments, but those are the ones that spring to mind, and the last one is really the only one without a real solution. Topics not dropping has a variety of solutions from locking or deleting old topics, to making it so that new posts don't bump topics, to simply getting a new board that does drop the topics after a time. I would like note that even though I may not remember all of the arguments against moving, I do remember that a surprising number of them had me going "Really? Do you have so little faith in the community/your fellow PPCers?" which is something that should probably be addressed. Of course, given my lack of faith in the community's ability to not sart or get involved in drama, maybe I'm just being a bit hypocritical.
This does however lead me into another... well, I'd say point, but at the rate I'm typing, it'll probably be a rant.
There is, as DS pointed out, a certain dismissive attitude about the IRC. I, myself, have been told by boarders to not mention the IRC's problems here, because you lot didn't want drama here. That's all fine and dandy, but if I actually bother to come here, it's usually because I was directed here. And if I actually bother to mention problems? It's because they affect the whole community. Or at least, they should. Just because I mention that something was brought up on the IRC does not make it "an IRC problem". We are not separate communities. Or at least, we shouldn't be. However, the IRC is continuously treated like it's somehow inferior or separate from the board, despite it being the most active hub in the PPC and just as important and legitimate as the board. To provide a reversed example, this would be like if people said that the IRC was the only thing that really mattered, and the board was just a bulletin board for updates and the occasional idle conversation. The each hub for our community is just as important as the other, and people need to start acting like it. I don't avoid the board because I think it's not important. I avoid it because it uses outdated software that became obsolete well before dial-up did, and because the host of problems I see with it (Which I fully recognize some people see as advantages for one reason or another) show its age every time I visit. Which are entirely stupid reasons, I know, but my point is that it's not because of any lack of respect for the board's importance. Similarly, avoiding the IRC because it's unimportant is stupid and wrong. Avoiding it because you have problems with the technology is still stupid, but forgivable as long as you're aware of how important it is.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to avoiding the board like a plague, and praying that I don't recall any of what I've done tonight once I sober up.
Incidentally, SkyyRum, while an amusing pun, is a terrible idea when you're a light-wieght like me.
I was afraid all of these replied would just be various indignant 'I disagrees.' I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees at least some problems (otherwise I might suspect I was going insane). I think you also worded them better than me as well.
Hey, DS. Just want to say we were sorry to hear about you leaving, but if that is your decision then good luck and don't be afraid to stop by every once in a while.
Now, on to the points.
1) Inflexible Adherence to the 'Way Things Have Always Been'
What we do here in the PPC is write fanfic. We right fanfic of the Original Series. As a community, we believe that when we write fanfiction, we need to leave the world in as good a condition as when we got there, as if we were visiting someone's house. This is why the Original Series is required reading. It is our canon. It sets the rules for the universe. I don't see a problem with insisting that everyone read TOS before writing PPC stories. It is like insisting that someone read the Harry Potter series before writing fanfiction of that. It is something that we advocate in the community.
As for the out-dated tech on the Board, it is not a matter of fragmentation of the group. It is the fact that there is a growing number of PPC-related sites that link to the board, that we don't have access to change. There is also the point that it is a good thing that posts can fall off the front page, and don't get resurrected every time someone posts in them. Neshomeh would like it known that she also doesn't like the idea of separate sections for separate topics, as that is a surefire way to fragment the group.
The paradox you mentioned is an oversimplification of the message. It should say, "Know where you are coming from before you venture off the road." We encourage people to explore, but if you are exploring Africa (writing original fic) and calling it Asia (the PPC), then there is a problem.
Phobos would like to note that he agrees that there is a lot of inflexibility in some members of the PPC, but that the community balances that with people who would like to burn everything down and start from scratch. He thinks it comes out to a happy medium most of the time.
2) Ferocious defense of the term 'Mary Sue'
We don't use the TV Tropes definition, so we don't know that the article you linked really applies in this situation. However, we would like to address a few of the things that were mentioned in it.
We hold male and female characters to the same standard in the PPC. Are they too powerful for the canon? Did they gain this power for no reason? Does everyone inexplicably adore them within two seconds of meeting them? Probably a Sue/Stu. One of the most important things in our definition of a Sue/Stu is that it doesn't follow the rules of the world it is in. Batman has many Stuish traits, but he is in a world where that sort of thing happens all the time.
Phobos is fond of saying that Sues/Stus can be written well, unpopular though that position is in the PPC. He says, if it looks like a duck (Sue/Stu), sounds like a duck, and acts like a duck, then it is probably a duck. If the duck is in a pond, do we care that the duck is where it is? No. However, we do care if we see a duck in a dungeon. It is out of place.
Batman is a Stu. We don't care because the rules of the world tell us that his level of Stuishness is acceptable. The villains in his world are usually at or above his level. If Batman were in an episode of NCIS he would be out of place because he has all of these advantages that don't exist in that world.
[We see that, as we were writing this, there was an exchange between you and Alleydodger. We would like to address a couple of points you brought up there as well.]
To say that there are no other literary archetypes that use gender specific names is patently untrue. A clear example is the Wizard/Witch archetype. Additional point about this archetype, there is no standard definition. Sometimes they aren't even related concepts at all. Other examples are Hero/Heroine, Priest/Priestess, the Judas, the Jezebel and the Benedict Arnold (the last three are other examples of people's names being used as an archetype).
As for the assertion that people in circles other than ours use the term Mary Sue as an insult and thus no one should use it, we disagree. People use the term Gay as an insult all the time. However, the Gay community continues to use it and has even run ad campaigns to educate the public as to the correct usage of the word. We believe that this is a more productive way of dealing with this issue than just coming up with a different word that means the same thing. The baggage will travel with the definition and we will be having this same discussion in the future. (So, you think these powerful, beautiful, female characters are anomalies? That is sexist!)
3) Elitism
We're not sure if you were around during the TV Tropes editing spree, but Neshomeh was, and she'd like to clarify what actually went on there as she recalls.
It had nothing to do with tropers being "unworthy" and everything to do with the fact that people actually were showing up with the wrong idea of what the PPC was about, and it was getting kind of ugly around here. Namely, there a series of incidents involving people focusing on finding squickier and squickier fics to spork, and creating more and more tricked out, uber-powerful, Sue/Stuish agents. We determined that people were getting that idea from the high prevalence of links to Tawaki and Laburnum's stories with little else to balance them, so we set about trying to correct the matter. We weren't just deleting things--we went trope by trope and asked ourselves, "Does this relate to the group as a whole? If yes, let's add more examples of the trope." We only deleted things that really had little to do with the PPC as a whole and only appeared in one or two spin-offs.
Also, it was about this time that we started writing the Guide to the PPC and FAQ for Newbies, and all that other educational material. The learning curve you mentioned had been made much steeper thanks to uneven representation on TVT, and we reacted by trying to level it out. We did this not because we wanted to discourage people from joining, but because we wanted the people finding us to have an accurate idea of what they were joining. [/Neshomeh]
We are wondering where you got the idea that PPCers don't like Tropers. It seems to us that a large number of PPCers are Tropers. If Tropers were undesirable, then we would probably tell them to leave when they introduced themselves as such. As it is, they get lavished with the same gifts that non-Tropers do. Can you clarify where the community has been anti-Troper?
As for how we intend to continue to grow and spread our message, we seem to be doing just fine at the moment. We had a boom of newbies in the past week, which was mind-boggling. The message is getting out there and people are continuing to find us. One of the people who found us (a few months back) was the person who edited Cupcakes. They were well received and stuck around a while to talk.
4)... ... ...nope, that's about it.
That is our side of things. Sorry this is so long, but we felt that this stuff needed to be said.
We don't bear you any ill will and we are both sad to see you go. Phobos is actually proud that you came back long enough to post this. We will be having a word with anyone that insults you over this.
We'll talk to you later,
Phobos and Neshomeh
"As for the out-dated tech on the Board, it is not a matter of fragmentation of the group. It is the fact that there is a growing number of PPC-related sites that link to the board, that we don't have access to change. There is also the point that it is a good thing that posts can fall off the front page, and don't get resurrected every time someone posts in them. Neshomeh would like it known that she also doesn't like the idea of separate sections for separate topics, as that is a surefire way to fragment the group."
You realize that the second part of that directly contradicted the first part, right? It even used the same word.
"(So, you think these powerful, beautiful, female characters are anomalies? That is sexist!)"
Fair point, and I have no other ammunition to try to dispute it. I think that other more informed people could argue it better, and I'm not convinced that the term doesn't do more harm than good, but I'll drop that particularly bullet point.
You are right, we did screw up on that one. This post had two authors, and we were thinking of different things. We should have reread that better.
Now, a little clarification on the fragmentation issue.
The reason I don't believe it is a matter of fragmenting the group is that the group is already doing a wonderful job of that, itself. There is already a Boarders vs Chatters mentality, which comes from both sides. I've heard Boarders say that the Chat is a hotbed of drama and that the Board is the main hub of the PPC. I've heard Chatters say the Board is irrelevant and that the Chat is the main hub of the PPC. It is not a problem with technology, it is a problem with people.
Then if the technology is a non issue there should be no reason not to move to a better forum.
How did my talking about fragmentation being a non-issue, in the discussion of moving the Board, turn into technology being a non-issue in that same discussion?
Also, you are forgetting something. There were more arguments for staying than just technology or fragmentation.
Side note directed to people who think the outdated Board is the root of our problems as a community:
There are major problems in the PPC right now. I agree with you on that much. However, the whole technology issue is not one of them. It is cosmetic at best. Thinking that it will fix the problems if we update to a new forum is like thinking a face-lift can cure cancer.
Focus on curing the drama, the lack of respect, and the lack of personal responsibility. When those are taken care of, then we can start thinking about less important things.
-Phobos, who is fed up with the three above mentioned problems.
The idea that the PPC doesn't like tropers probably comes from the reaction on both the Board and the IRC by a couple of members to new people who announce that they're here from TVTropes, and that they consider themselves tropers. It's not always as welcoming as it could be, to the point that one newbie was greeted with something along the lines of "Leave the tropes on TV Tropes, because we're not very fond of Tropers, or tropes." The newbie in question stuck around, but that's beside the point.
That is a good point. A few people are not fans of Tropers. However, one or two peoples' opinions shouldn't dictate the PPC's stance on anything. That's why we had the discussion and vote about the Sue and author pages recently, among other things.
It "shouldn't" but when those one or two are some of the older, more respected and more active members, and when no one else in sight disagrees with them, and they act as leaders to take action, gathering most of the IRC as an example in this case.
If no one else calls out a problem member for their behavior, it's assumed that that behavior is normal, and even encouraged.
True. I just wanted to clarify why someone could think that the PPC itself had a problem with tropers, especially since quite a few of the issues we've had, specifically some of the ones July mentioned in her post below, happened either before a lot of people's time or while they weren't around.
I was actually in the process of starting a wiki article about TV Tropes before this thread started, and wanted to put my head together with some other folks who were around for the editing spree to get the most complete picture of what all went on. It has struck me as kind of odd that we haven't had an article about TV Tropes before, and it definitely deserves one since we get so many people from there now. Plus, as noted, clarifying why some of us (myself included) don't much love the site itself and/or its administration wouldn't hurt.
~Neshomeh
http://ppc.wikia.com/wiki/TV_Tropes
I'm afraid I don't remember things like the year the editing spree happened, or who exactly was involved. Including that information might be a good idea, especially the year. 2009, was it? 2010...?
~Neshomeh, attempting to set things straight.
It had to have been 2010 or more recent. I joined in February of 2010, and I was in on this. I really think Caddy-shack was involved, too, and he joined after I did (pretty sure he was one of those tropers that came over before the edits.)
I'm pretty sure it wasn't this year.
~Neshomeh
When the PPC2 incident came to surface, and you were involved in that, the official line from the PPC2 crowd was that the channel was a "drama-free zone" or something like that, and not totally about July, who had the temerity to try to impose the Rules on the IRC. When July and I and others had collated a trove of evidence and incidents to show that there was an anti-authority group of people out for her, it was deflected as paranoia and that it was really just to have a place to "hang".
Now you admit that it was about July after all? I can't think of any other reading of your post. I appreciate your honesty I guess, but I don't appreciate dredging this thing up again. People have been attacking July for what feels like all of this year, and now as your departing shot you decide to kick that hornet's nest over again, implicitly (if not explicitly) fingering her as one of the reasons for you quitting, further fuelling the ridiculous yet persistent meme that July is Mean and Evil and the only thing wrong with the community.
It's not fair to single July out as 'the only thing wrong with the community,' but she is indeed one of the main reasons I'm leaving - if just because she's taken it upon herself to snipe at me anytime she ever speaks to me. And the large amount of time that she just ignores me, it's a constant ticking timebomb on how long it takes until she can't bear to listen to me before she decides she needs to put me in my place.
I would, and have, tried to figure out what her problem with me is, but she had just decided I'm only worth the time it takes to form as biting and cruel sentences as she can to dismiss me. From what I've seen July rarely sees any kind of discouragement by the community not to do that, so it's pretty obvious they've chosen July over me (which I don't fault them for - she's an older member and far more active). I have heard of and watched many incidents of July just deciding that someone isn't PPC material and taking it upon herself to drive them out, which just makes me more upset that I'm apparently being equated to people like Joe.
I am not informed enough (as July loves to frequently point out) to say with authority to what extent July has negatively impacted the positive attitude of the chat, but it is my personal opinion that she has in fact negatively impacted the atmosphere of the chat. That her behavior has been left unchecked and even encouraged isn't her fault, but it doesn't change the fact that she is one of the primary reasons that I'm leaving.
I have my own response to July, and the whole mess with #PPC that's just come up, which... I'll put eventually, I suppose. And my own response to you, which is rather bitter and uncalled for, I suppose, so I'll just limit myself to a query.
"...Which just makes me more upset that I'm apparently being equated to people like Joe." What, are you not a... person like Joe? What kind of person, exactly, is Joe? Why are you not like him? What are you implying?
See I had it in my head that there was a problem PPC member who was causing a lot of problems in the chat a long time ago who left, and my brain told me it was Joe, but that was apparently terribly wrong and I apologize for being stupid.
Just ignore that and I'm going to go hide very far away now.
Why am I being dragged into this?
This is the reason I no longer enjoy hanging out in the IRC. DS says that he doesn't get along with July and immediately the problems from earlier are flung, not only at him, but at everyone who ever participated in #PPC2.
I have found that I am completely unable to be at ease and enjoy the IRC community at large, regardless of July's presence or absence, knowing that anytime I say anything that it might be trotted out six months or a year from now as evidence of how I hate July and am out to get her.
As far as I can tell, the PPC2 thing happened months ago, and this is happening now. If DS has a personality clash ("incompatible personalities" was the wording in his original post) with July now, he has a right to say so without being accused of dredging up past drama. Not getting along with July isn't a lynching offense. We all have people we don't get along with.
~Neshomeh
To reply to myself; never mind that July was out in self-imposed exile of the PPC IRC channel for over a month, which didn't seem to have any perceptible effect on anyone's enjoyment of the channel! She'd been made to think she really was some kind of problem!
I'm seeing the same thing as Neshomeh here. I'm pretty sure DS and July had trouble getting along and were clashing over issues that had nothing to do with PPC2 and the imposition of rules over the IRC channel. Hell, I'm pretty sure I'm one of those "anit-authoritarians" you're talking about, and I can tell you that there was annoyance, (and maybe outright anger) at more people than July.
You say you have read the logs and "gathered evidence." If you have, you know then that there was a lot of nasty stuff said about VM as well as July. (I have since apologized for saying these kinds of things, but that is not the point of this post.) The entire channel was not an "anti-July conspiracy" and attempting to paint DS' post as admission of such is... strange.
While I disagree with you, I respect your decision and wish you the best of luck.
It's been real. See you on the flipside, bro.
I don't want to counter-argue, mainly because it'd be rehashing the same old topics over and over again. I hope you've enjoyed some of your time here, at least, and hope you'll be happy whereever else you go.
Adieu,
- Sedri
I'm not 100% up to scratch on some of the events you mentioned but I do have something I want to clear up in case of misunderstanding. With your paragraph about the term Mary-Sue It comes across as if you think that that is the only term used to describe such a character when I've seen Gary-stu used just as commonly. Just wanted to know in case I didn't read it right. Thanks.
Maybe Gary Stu is used equally with Mary Sue in the circles you are familiar with, but why do we have gender specific names for character types at all? It's the only literary archetype that does so and we should be moving away from anything that does.
And that doesn't change the fact that in many circles /other/ than the ones you are familiar with, Mary Sue is frequently used much more disparagingly specifically just against female characters (and their authors), and their male counterpart is argued not to even exist.
For a community that prides itself on exactness of language, why is it building itself on a word that has no standard definition?
It's a pair of words. It doesn't /have/ to be gendered, it just is because it happens to be a name. As for the standard definition, I'm assuming that is /exactly why/ the PPC made its own for use in determining whether a character is fit to be 'killed'. The reason it's persisted so long as a 'gendered' term is likely because most of them are, in fact, female, and the male counterpart is much less common in fanfiction. Not nonexistent, just seen less often.
There's also a nice little history of the term and its use on a little site called...*gasp* TV Tropes. Now, what /I/ would like to know is WHY TV Tropes is such a hive of scum and villainy. It's a place where these little commonly used story devices called tropes are logged as they appear in various media. It's not like letting them know about the PPC will bring in a flood of trolls, at least no more than any other place on the internet. Certain people have been rather unreasonable about this, as some who frequent the IRC may know.
I'll be honest, I agree with your points a fair bit, Socrates. If the goal of the PPC is to improve writing on the internet, then why preclude anyone from being involved with it just because they come from a place that some boarders don't like? I may be misunderstanding something somewhere along the line, but it really does seem very silly. By which I mean counterproductive.
If I misunderstood something or, dare I say it, am /wrong/ in any way, feel free to tell me what and/or how. I will gladly listen to what others have to say, and not backtrack or try to cover it up or flat out /ignore/ them.
Forgive me if I sound too harsh at times. This whole situation has me far from amused.
(Incidentally, you don't really have to go 'Certain people' when it's one person being loud and the one person is me. I am really not bothered by being outright named dropped when people think I am in the wrong.)
As Neshomeh and Phobos already noted, one of the main problems with TVTropes is that we were getting a lot of people from there who didn't really have a clue about what the PPC was about. So we had people who thought it was about bashing on fic and fic writers, about upstaging the Sues and Stus with our own, or using supremely bad fics that were bad in terms of content rather than quality.
Beyond that, we also got a couple people who were just entirely unpleasant and creepy, and had to be forcibly ejected from the chatroom after making pedophilic remarks at an underage boarder in the case of one, and the other making multiple hate based comments- not about fictional characters, but about races of people, and women, and so on.
This is the sort of stuff we were seeing from people coming from TvTropes. Not from general newbies, mind you, but people who were explicitly stating they were from TvTropes.
The other thing with Tropers, is that the ones who are really hardcore cases- read every single page, get heavily invested- is that they have a tendency to forget what makes a story a story, and see only the tropes and nothing else.
This makes for mediocre writing at best, and something that's a barely tacked together pile of building blocks at worst.
The PPC is not based on seeing the building blocks and categorizing them. It's based on writing, and how those elements are being used- and if they're being used badly.
Tropes don't make that distinction.
It's a massive difference between qualitative and quantitative. Just because you know what a thing is, it doesn't mean you know how to use it, or how to identify if when it's being used it's bad or not in a qualitative sense.
Writing and analyzing are two different things, and being able to do the second- or at least be under the presumption that knowing the vocabulary means you do- does not translate into writing or stories.
Being a writer involves thinking on your own, to an extent, and being able to turn things into a chain of interlinked events, or an examination of thoughts, or a scene. You can't tap a few tropes and expect it to turn into a story by stacking them together. Elements do not a story make.
As Duo said, that /is/ better than the last time, but still, it kinda irks me that you put all of the tropers into one category and that's it. I mean that:
a) That's kinda hypocritical - you're saying that categorisation is a problem, then you go and categorise a few thousand people (at the very least) into a single, no exceptions category.
b) This is especially irksome since there are tropers who are good writers (I don't say me, because I'm not, but Wozzy is a good example for a good writer that is also a troper).
So, to conclude, what you're saying is both poorly worded and not 100% correct.
(PS: I'm not bashing you, July; I don't have anything personal against you. It's just that what you say bothers me.)
(PPS: No argumentum ad hominem intended. If that is the case, I apologise.)
Disregard the above post. I misread a letter in July's post and it kinda changed the whole post's meaning. My bad. BTW, Data's right, and we need a technological upgrade. Not having an edit button is really irksome.
Much better worded this time around. I understand what you're trying to say now, and while I still disagree somewhat, I can see where you're coming from.
Thank you for actually answering my question. It /was/ asked out of genuine curiosity, after all. And I apologize for implying you in my previous post. It was rather unfair of me.
It seems more posts were made while I was typing, which explained the situation in more detail. In particular, thank you Phobos and Neshomeh.
I now feel like a moron. Allow me a moment to reboot my brain.
Has already been said so instead of going over it I'm just going to say sorry that you feel that way and good luck in wherever you go next. :)
I will be hanging around this thread for a bit if anyone wants to counterpoint, etc, so you won't be speaking to an empty room.