Subject: Because some people think there's limits?
Author:
Posted on: 2011-03-09 02:59:00 UTC
It's not so much taking things too seriously as treating it like an actual written setting instead of just a random collection of jokes, some more tired than others. You can have humour while still having some respect for how well things are written and what's just too much, after all.
As some of you may know, a while ago I requested that my Missions be made non-canon a while back after a member of the community voiced a concern that one of my Agents may be more of a risk to the Plot Continuum than a Protector. Now I'm not sure I made the right decision, but I think the problem is a real one and should be dealt with if I want to come back.
Basically the problem is thus: one of my Agents was kindasorta a piece of an evil god a little. The issue was raised that should my Agent be hypothetically killed, said evil god would reabsorb him and thus know how to get to HQ, and invade the Word Worlds from there. I had actually never come across this detail in my research on this Agent's race. But if it is a real problem, modifications need to be made. Gizmo from DoSAT? Mind altered somehow by FicPsych? Or should I come back at all? I'd like to hear your opinion on these issues, because I liked writing for you guys.
This sounds interesting enough that I might give some of these a run. I'd like to know that I'm devil's advocating some decent stuff :P
http://agent-chliever.livejournal.com/ Missions may be NSFW, so be warned.
I think I started beta-reading at mission eight. So, the last three. In all fairness, there were pretty big reasons for my stepping in, but they were unrelated to the issue of Agent Chliever being what he is. That was all covered (to my satisfaction, anyway) in his Permission thread.
~Neshomeh
The risk of any of the massively overpowered Canons (the Borg, the Replicators, Chaos, etc.) becoming aware of the PPC is a mite bit overemphasized, in my opinion. Why? It's quite simple. For such an invasion to be Canonical, it has to be published as Canon. Some author out there has to discover the PPC, decide they don't like us, write an entire invasion... and then convince editors, publishers, etc that it's actually a story worth printing. Not going to happen.
On the other hand, if someone writes it without publishing, it's fanfiction. We happen to be very good at beating down fanfiction.
For that matter, if an author writes something including us, regardless of if they get published or not, we are the ones who decide if it is Canonical or not. If we don't want it to be canon, it's... not. And it's as simple as that.
I mean, unless the community itself gives permission, in which case it's not really an invasion, it's just another spinoff.
I am going to assume that having a Great Unclean One as an Agent accomplishes something for your story-telling and narrative, i.e. there is a purpose for it being a Great Unclean One instead of, say, a talking aardvaark. If you could figure out what that purpose is, it would be easy to think of an Agent who fills that niche without being a piece of an evil god.
Since what we have is a multiverse, could it be that Chliever The Corroder could be reabsorbed only if he is in his original continuum? After all, the evil god is supposed to be present only there. If Chliever isn't in his reach, taking him back would be quite hard. So, keeping him out of Warhammerverse should be enough.
That's my two eurocents (€ 0.02) about it.
You're just trying to get around it, so stop doubling back on the issue. You un-canoned your agents, the die is cast, have the spine to stick to that. Though I doubt anyone'd stop you making some new ones if you wanted.
I feel that you are being antagonistic and overly authoritative. I wasn't comfortable with the fact that people had made Chliever feel so unwelcome as to ask for his agents to be made uncanon in the first place, as that is not the kind of behavior that I like to associate with this group. I didn't say anything at the time, because others covered it, and it seemed that Chliever had made up his mind.
I am sure that with all the multi-verses and mad science at the PPC's disposal that something could be arranged to allow this agent to exist with no more than a hand wave explanation required. I liked the missions he was featured in, and I never saw anything wrong with his existence.
If he wants to come back, then I, at least, say:
Welcome back! Have a seventeen foot long, wool knit, multicolored scarf (curly wig not included) and a bag of jelly babies.
Please use them IRresponsibly!
"I am sure that with all the multi-verses and mad science at the PPC's disposal that something could be arranged to allow this agent to exist with no more than a hand wave explanation required."
I don't know, it would have to be a very, very clever hand wave. Great Unclean Ones are basically like huge Hutts with horns and a very bad attitude. They are composed of nothing but disease and pestilence, and just being on the same planet as one is likely to give you several versions of the bubonic plague. Any sane sentient being would either run away or try to kill it without getting any of it on herself. Great Unclean Ones are, like helpfully already pointed out, physically a separated shard of the chaos god Nurgle himself, and Nurgle himself in turn is a part of Chaos like all the other Chaos gods.
In a more metafictional sense, the Warhammer 40k universe in general tends towards the ridiculously epic, galactic scale. You have tanks the size of small houses, space marines that are hulking towers of metal with a person inside, and entire planets incinerated at the merest hint of Chaos contamination.
In this verse mankind spans thousands of worlds and is ruled by the spirit of an immortal God-Emperor entombed in a massive magical-technological device called the Golden Throne. The aforementioned marines are all genetically his direct descendants, too. If the Imperium of Man found out that the PPC is harboring a Great Unclean One they would stop at nothing to destroy it and everything touched by it - never mind the issue with Chaos contamination...
This pretty much equal to having one of the first tier servants from the Cthulhu mythos as an agent, like a Shoggoth. All I'm saying is that if you are familiar with the 40k 'verse, the concept of a GUO as an Agent is rather absurd. The things are barely a separate sentience from Nurgle, a GUO would probably go insane if severed from it.
OK, to step back: I think that we're mistaking symptoms for the disease here. In a way, I agree with Artell in that having a plague bringing Great Unclean One strains suspension of belief -- how does HQ cause him to not kill other people by just walking past them? Like, giant hairnets?
But on the other hand, nearly ALL of our hive-of-scum bad jokes are caused by the execution of said material rather than the material itself. Face it. We're an inter-dimensional group of wacky squadrons that go into bad fanfiction of all things as if the products of 13 year old fangirls are a curse on all life as we know it.
Without Permission givers, quality checks, and high standards, how quickly would this devolve into a quality-less mess? Just a few crops of newbies that don't have to follow standards. Our CONCEPT is ridiculous, even bad in the hands of people who can't pull it off.
So if a Great Unclean One wants to exist in PPC HQ, I say fine. I say that he has to have explanation why he doesn't drop a whole room of interns when he farts or something. And it had better be a hilarious one. And a well-written and clever one: not just loopholes and convolutions that no one but a religious follower of Warhammer 40K canon would get.
Let's wait for an execution of this before we determine if this is a Bad Idea or not. If it really is Bad, we'll say so-- and then the writer is not allowed to get mad at us, but just do better.
Because we're pretty good at that.
But the whole discussion below this was if a Great Unclean One was too much, Permission or not.
The question now is if it's a good idea to bring that character back/make it canon again.
I say yes. It is too much. But if you can pull it off, then great! Things that are too much can be OK if pulled off well.
If he can pull it off well, not do something over-the-top/Stuish/make it work, then... OK!
Plus, I think he was talking more in general than just about Chliever.
If there was more to refute I would've gone further than just a subject line reply.
Amnesia is terrible like that.
These words you've used, "ridiculous" and "absurd." As I recall, that was the idea. It's so ridiculous and absurd as to be silly. Possibly even funny, if we'd just not take it too seriously. So, I'm wondering why people are insisting on taking it so very, very seriously, like this is SRS BSNS or something.
~Neshomeh
It just seemed to work up my Suspension of Disbelief particularly flagrantly. I'm not trying to be acerbic here, but I would think there is a level at which things are getting too ridiculous and absurd, sliding into nonsense. For me it seems to be at Great Unclean Ones.
The handwavium will need to be industrial-grade in this one.
...is that I need to make a Great Old One agent. :P
My biggest hurdle would of course be getting them to use any of the PPC equipment with the notable lack of any appendage that isn't a paw, claw, tentacle or pseudopod.
My first response was "why would you want to?" since, in theory, some of those appendages could probably be made to work the buttons—but then it occurred to me that an even bigger hurdle would be getting them to use the equipment at all without shorting it out simply by touching it. Whatever's inside the CADs is pretty sensitive, after all.
~Neshomeh
It's not so much taking things too seriously as treating it like an actual written setting instead of just a random collection of jokes, some more tired than others. You can have humour while still having some respect for how well things are written and what's just too much, after all.
Oh, wait, you're serious.
Okay, KG? First and foremost? The PPC is a humorous written setting. And respect? What respect do we have? When it comes to puns, cheap jokes, and some just terribly overused jokes, we are a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Most of us, to some extent, thrive on these jokes that you think are a motley crew, or need to be put to sleep.
While I personally don't agree with Chliever having a Great Unclean One as an agent due to just how massively overpowered with, I heavily, massively, disagree with your view that he intends any disrespect in the least towards the setting of the PPC, which, if anything, your posturing is more prone to such.
We're a group on the internet writing stories for kicks, nothing more and nothing less. Grow up, KG, because this is no place to pick on someone else who is a part of the community and has written decent stuff for it that just doesn't happen to adhere to your prim and proper idea of everything in its place with some form of rhyme and reason.
KG, Miah is right - you're being overly antagonistic and authoritative, and flirting with implied personal attacks, be it through unanticipated wording or otherwise.
July, you're way past the line of personal attacks. This is no place to pick on someone else who is part of the community, through direct response or implication.
Please direct all replies to rule one of the Board Constution. It's not just a good idea, it's the law.
I also felt that KG was being a bit too harsh, and July was reasonably trying to get him to lighten up (and also kept her berating light hearted by sprinkling her lecture with jokes).
Where was I crossing the line of turning my responses into personal attacks?
KG has a habit of trying to pick on newer members, or those that don't firmly adhere to his viewpoint on how things should be done, and backing off the moment someone else calls him on it. This is not insinuation against his personal character or an attack against him. This is fact. We have seen this happen before, and will likely see it again.
If anything my reply in this thread was a response against such behavior. I don't hold with picking on others in the community just because they're newer than I am.
I hold nothing against him. He is a decent guy when he doesn't let his personal opinion and attitudes become a stance against others or a reason to berate them. As far as having a Great Unclean One in the PPC, I noted my agreement with his stance- but only in regards to that.
Don't mistake a call out against repeated behavior for an attack on someone personally.
(And what if I don't like myself, huh? That's a terrible rule, in that regard.)
You are saying that the reason Chliever should not make his work canon again is that it has no respect for how well things are written and what's just too much? I find it hard to believe that this is the case. You see, I am familiar with the work of Chliever's major beta-reader. I know that Neshomeh wouldn't put her name on anything that lacked respect for good writing and I am fairly certain she knows what is just too much.
So, either you are mistaken in your assertion or you are calling Neshomeh's judgment and writing skills into question just as much as Chliever's.
You're misconstruing a general attitude problem as a personal attack. KG never said anything in regards to Neshomeh at all, and I'm sure if he was even aware that Neshomeh was involved in the betaing and permission process, much less aware that his reply would have been taken as a personal affront against her, he'd be far more polite and more selective in his word choice, I am sure.
Try and cool your jets there.
As far as I'm concerned, you're more than welcome to come back to the PPC - of course we love people here with good intentions, and I'm really glad you're trying to fix this particular issue.
However, I don't think the Agent should come back, at least not as an actual piece of a god. You wouldn't be able to get rid of that hypothetical, I think; evil gods and their pieces can't have their inherent natures altered that drastically.
On the other hand, there's nothing stopping you making up new Agents - or, as suggested once when this issue was brought up a while ago, have the Agent be a cultist of some kind who just believes he's a god-piece. Or something along those lines.
*has run out of useful suggestions, so will leave it at that*
I know this Isn't Done, and I'm breaking all kind of laws and whatnot, here. But.
Basically the problem is thus: one of my Agents was kindasorta a piece of an evil god a little. The issue was raised that should my Agent be hypothetically killed, said evil god would reabsorb him and thus know how to get to HQ, and invade the Word Worlds from there. I had actually never come across this detail in my research on this Agent's race. But if it is a real problem, modifications need to be made.
We are a writing community. This problem is exactly as real as we make it. If you don't write the re-absorption, HQ, and take-over, it simply does not happen. Perhaps the evil god has more on his mind? Perhaps he is wise enough to know that the deities of those worlds would fight him tooth and nail, good and evil alike? Who knows? The point is, it's only a problem if you choose to make it one later, and that counts as an Emergency, for which you'd need a consensus of approval, IIRC.
I'm all for internal continuity, but it's also a good idea to keep in mind that accidentally leaving a little plothole that would, if this was real, destroy reality... will not actually destroy reality. If you want to keep writing, nobody's stopping you. If you'd rather have your Agents make a visit to DoSAT and write in that fix first, go ahead. But I don't think it's a big issue at all.
...whether it would happen, but whether the PPC, knowing what COULD happen, would've recruited an Agent like mine in the first place. Basically, I'm asking if my Agent's very existence, as a member of the PPC, is a logical error/continuity problem/whatever.
Surely one of the biggest problems that you need to deal with is the plague that an agent of Nurgle will bring to HQ. Being out of his home continuum would be explaination enough to prevent him being absorbed by Nurgle, but do you really want to bring a plague bearer into the corridors of HQ?
I'd say probably. Hey, we somehow got the Mysterious Somebody, I can see a character like yours slipping through the cracks - or, more likely, there is a DoSAT device, or a canonical reason, or something that guarantees that the worst will not come to past. It's a plothole that allows for a lot of interesting explanations.
I'm by no means an authority on This Sort Of Thing, or anything, but I'd say go ahead-- as I said before, if you want to go back to writing, do so; if you'd feel better with an explanation in place, write that first.
I typed "a while ago" and then "a while back." Sowwy.