Subject: Well...
Author:
Posted on: 2013-05-03 19:35:00 UTC
You are not the first to have these questions. I believe you'll find all three answers here:
- What to Include in a Permission Request
- When should I ask for permission?
- What can I use for my writing sample?
~Neshomeh
I do realize this is a Permission-related topic, so I'm somewhat hesitant to post, but it's a rather important question.
I am preparing to ask permission, since I've been poking around here for a good amount of time now (I think, any feedback?) and I just realized I don't actually know if there's any specific form for asking permission.
Incidentally, I'm also wondering if anyone could give me some tips on what kind of writing sample would be best to show my work.
Thanks, guys!
You are not the first to have these questions. I believe you'll find all three answers here:
- What to Include in a Permission Request
- When should I ask for permission?
- What can I use for my writing sample?
~Neshomeh
Oh, I forgot that there were no PPC interludes allowed for Permission pieces. I suppose I'll need to think of something else to submit, then.
I suppose it's not that bad, because my Blackout interlude is probably too long for the Permission Request anyway at this point.
By the way, I checked a few previous Board pages (largely though messing around with the search function), ranging from recently to about a year ago, to get information on previous Permissions and such, and there appeared to be a stigma against adding new Floaters. Is that still ongoing? I'd been planning on making my first two agents Floaters so that I could go after both Sues and Implausible Crossovers (plus at least one Improbable AU) without making new characters for each set of missions, but I don't want that to hamper my chances of getting Permission.
I'm kind of not sure where 'Basically anything except a PPC story' comes from in that link... as far as I'm aware, people are still allowed to write an interlude (usually their agents' introduction) as their writing sample. You're not allowed to write a mission, for certain.
As to Floaters - I've never been a big fan of the Department of Floaters myself*, mostly because I think saying 'My characters are allowed to do anything without any trouble' annoys me a bit. When Jay and Acacia wanted to do crossovers, they wrote their agents being temporarily transferred to the DIC.
However, that's just my preference. I think it's more interesting to see specialised characters than the generic all-trades variety. But I don't think there's any official stigma against it.
hS
*This kind of shows through in my writing in places.
My "agents' introduction" piece sort of collided with my Blackout interlude, and the latter swallowed the former and incorporated all of its story ideas. Don't worry, though; I'll keep my mission-making strictly to collecting sporkable badfics until I'm officially allowed or I'm working on a co-write.
You mean the story where the Foxglove leads a horde of former Floaters and causes the Sundering after the Twisted Skein's DF outstrips their DMS? Or were you referring to something a little more subtle?
(I've not read all of your stories yet, and regardless, I might have forgotten specific disparaging comments from the characters.)
Sure, the DoE was formed originally by a bunch of Floaters, but they were evil - sorry, 'misguided' - in their own right.
Now the bit where the fifth Paladin school ('Flow') had to be shut down for abusing their right to use all the Paladin techniques, that might be relevant...
hS
Would it be okay if we shared e-mails so I could talk about it?
Linked in m'name above, hopefully.
hS
There's not much on it, but you can read about it here.
The Sundering is part of Huinesoron's works, by the way.
I recall.
From an RP post on the Other Board.
This should do the trick.
Or perhaps "no, but"?
Well, either way, the problem I personally have is that Floaters ostensibly take any kind of mission in any fandom, but in practice most of them seem to end up taking lots of Mary Sues in maybe two or three fandoms. IMO, what Floaters ought to be doing is filling in the gaps between what the other departments are covering, not selectively mirroring them.
So, for you, you want to take bad crossovers and Sues. That's cool, but considering how often Sues are behind bad crossovers (believe me, it's hard to find a bad crossover without at least some kind of possession at the heart of it), you could just as easily pick one of those departments and cover the same stuff without pretending not to specialize in the meantime.
So, that's where I stand on it. I wouldn't deny Permission just for putting your agents in Floaters, though. I will melodramatically groan and roll my eyes if you do, but unless there are worse problems, that'll be the extent of it. {= )
~Neshomeh
I know I can't really speak for anybody else here, but the reason I picked Floaters for my agents is not a matter of the missions I'm doing right now, but a question of the missions I have planned in the future.
What you seem to see as the issue -the flexibility, if I'm reading right- is exactly why I use it. I want to be able to have my agents go on missions in bad slash, Sue elimination, crossovers, and actually have these missions planned out in advance. They're just a matter of finding the right fic to do the missions with. The reason why I tend to do Sues is... well, mostly because Suefics that fit the tone I want to write with are much easier to find then, say, a slash mission that fits what I want to write.
Huge reversal of...I want to say casuality but that's completely wrong. Fault, I guess, would be the closest to what I'm getting at.
It seems like you just said.
"There are people who pick the wrong missions when they are Floaters, so Floaters are bad."
That kind of switch has some obvious problems, but considering the fact that I thought the Floaters were a sort of "Take it easy on what you pick while you're new to the PPC"
department, then it just gets silly.
My Agents are DMS, but they like working with agents from different Departments (as long as it's not Rosalie - shut up, Eledhwen muse).
It's mostly because I get some Suefics with bad slash, or Suefics with bad crossover tossed in, so getting help from specialists would be fantastic. Although for the Suefic with bad slash I think my Agents just winged it by themselves, since by the time they agreed to exorcise Sherlock and John they had already been busy killing the Sue. Or something.
This next mission of mine, for example, is a co-op between my Agents and my newly adopted Time Lord Agents for the DIC, so I basically can have my Suvian cake and eat the Bad Crossover one, too.
That's why I'm collecting badfic from a large amount of fandoms, just to make sure that I don't get in a rut mission-wise.
Now that you mention it, I might just find out which of my two selected badfic types I'm better at writing after a few missions, and then transfer my agent pair to that Department permanently once it's discovered and I find enough missionable badfics in the category I chose. Heck, the way my agents' personalities are, they'd see it as a promotion.
I've been working on more characters for other Departments, but the majority of those seem to be more recurring side characters than anything at this point. I plan to have only a few main characters, at least at first, to help with independent characterization, and I didn't want to write two or three agent pairs for different Departments and then run the risk of abandoning one later once I find what direction my writing style works best in.
Floaters are supposed to handle all types of missions, too—that's including but not limited to implausible crossovers, trans-dimensional hopping/snatching, bad slash, bad het, geographical aberrations, improbable AUs, trolls, bad parodies, technical errors, temporal offenses, and disturbing acts of violence. If you wanted to go old school and extend the floating thing all the way to its logical conclusion, you could make your Floaters circulate with the Infrastructure departments, too, as if the DF were a temp agency.
Actually, that's a good analogy: Floaters are like temps, getting assigned wherever there's a gap in the workforce. Sues are pretty well covered in the DMS, which has a freelance division for people who don't want to be restricted to one fandom, so IMO, the bulk of a Floater's missions ought to be in all those other areas I listed, without a Suvian as the primary problem. Anything else (again, IMO) is just a waste of the department's potential.
~Neshomeh
Looking back at what I found, only one can be classified as a Suefic only, and I've been wanting to kill that one since I found out it existed. Still, it's in a less-than-common fandom, so I don't think it's that implausible that it would be assigned to Floaters. I remember precedent for a mission being sent outside its Department because there weren't many people inside the Department it would be most relevant in who knew the canon well, though the PoorCynic mission "A Night at the Movies" is the only one I can remeber off the top of my head, and it was another Department assigning something to Mary Sue specialists, not the other way around.
There are Suvian entities in several of the other badfics I chose, as you said, a lot of badfics have one at their core anyway. As for the others, I found crossovers, geographical aberrations, a few trolls, and two improbable AUs. I think I will be all right for a while without getting into a rut.
It would actually be pretty funny to have an interlude where their number came up for Infrastructure and they had to spend a few days helping out Building Maintenance, so I might use that idea at some point.
I tried so hard to keep typos out of the message, and there was one in the title! And in a post where I was trying to prove my competence, too!
CAN'T CATCH A BR8K!