Subject: Yep! But ...
Author:
Posted on: 2010-02-27 05:50:00 UTC
... beware, there aren't actually any rules!
But yes, it has some guidelines on the subject of exorcisms.
When you say 'and at number/severity of charges is a good place to cut it off?', er, what exactly do you mean? If you mean what I think you mean, i.e. how long should the exorcism be? then the answer is 'stop juuust before it gets repetitive and boring' :)
I'm trying to write an article to go with Sedri's Mission Writing Guide specifically for anyone who wants to patrol the slash beat, and I've got a sort of basic outline for it, but I thought hey, why not actually find out what people want to know?
So here's the place to ask any questions, and also, if you are a slasher or have sporked slash, to provide your answers to people's questions or mention things you'd like to see talked about in the article :)
Will this include a general guideline to how to do an exorcism, and at number/severity of charges is a good place to cut it off?
... beware, there aren't actually any rules!
But yes, it has some guidelines on the subject of exorcisms.
When you say 'and at number/severity of charges is a good place to cut it off?', er, what exactly do you mean? If you mean what I think you mean, i.e. how long should the exorcism be? then the answer is 'stop juuust before it gets repetitive and boring' :)
I think I may be looking for more of a thing for the very new regarding charge lists, or maybe it just boils down to advice on choosing the truly spork-worthy (one that has enough charges), from one that doesn't quite make the cut. Or is it all just subjective?
I can do that :)
It's not so much that it's all subjective as there are a few Must Do things, a few Don't Do things, and the rest of it is using your judgement to come up with something entertaining.
*makes notes* Will definitely expand the section on choosing a fic to spork :)
I think this may be more of what I was really asking. Thank you
The PPC Handbook, section D. Several basic charge lists are there. (And I'll get the Buffy one up eventually, I swear.)
Of course, you don't have to follow those exactly when making a charge list, but they might give you an idea of the sorts of things to include. Some, clearly, are going to be worse than others, and often it's a matter of degree. So the Sue messed up the geography--how badly? So someone is OOC--how much? That's a judgement call.
As for the length of the charge list... that's tricky. You don't want to have a wall o' text at the end of every mission, but you do want to get across just how badly the Sue (or other subject) messed up. Repeat offenses can of course be lumped into one charge. The littler things can sometimes be left out of the charge list, too (or lumped into one or several of the subjective charges).
So... does that help? ^_^;
~Neshomeh, often not sure whether or not she makes sense.
I tend to have long charge lists, but I usually don't mention every point on them when charging (all charges have already been mentioned in some way while the agents were collecting charges. So, reading out the full list gives the mission too much redundancy).
Wall of text though can be avoided by breaking the charging up in paragraphs and by having the agents argue with the Sue about charges. I'm actually amazed how some agents manage to charge a Sue of the grrl/defiant/takes no shit from anyone type without her trying to interrupt even once.
I have read the manual, and I am working on reading more of the spin offs. I haven't gone and read the fics that were sporked, so I can tell they were bad, but not the full impact of how bad. It's probably more a matter of experience, of needing to check a couple of the original fics to see how they compare to the sporkings. (Don't worry, I don't plan on reading any of the legendary badfics any time soon.)
Meh. The "legendary" Badfics that I've read so far weren't that bad. Hell, I've read worse comics than some of them.
On the general side:
Are there any particular cut-off points between when a canon is being Possessed, and when a canon is being Replaced? The feel I've gotten so far is that the answer is whatever works best for the mission report, but cases like a dark-eyed and passive Cregga Rose Eyes seem to have so little in common with the character that it demands the Replacement label. I think either Agent Trojie or Pads also said that they'd probably need to kill an alive!Sirius personally rather than simply exorcise since he was supposed to be dead.
What method for dealing with charge lists have you found most effective? Listing stylistic things as they come up, and then describing characterization issues with the neuralized canons seems the most common, but you've also talked about using excerpts of charge lists during the exorcism as well.
Do you have any recommended sources about the more... physics and biology side of things? Even real life men sometimes find out even basic stuff like that moisturizing soap isn't really moisturizing enough the unpleasant way, but some of the kinkier stuff I'd be cautious about trying to Google up answers.
'What method for dealing with charge lists have you found most effective? Listing stylistic things as they come up, and then describing characterization issues with the neuralized canons seems the most common, but you've also talked about using excerpts of charge lists during the exorcism as well.'
It's an interesting question, this one. The charge list, in Bad Slash missions, if we're honest, is mostly a way of keeping the reader informed about why the sporker thinks the fic deserves to be sporked. In-story, the Agents just list whatever crimes (both stylistic and characterisation-based) come up as they come up. And as for incorporating things in exorcisms, well, that's entirely up to you as to how you do it and what you include - we tend to include charges that are easily 'banished', or basically whatever sounds good.
'Do you have any recommended sources about the more... physics and biology side of things? Even real life men sometimes find out even basic stuff like that moisturizing soap isn't really moisturizing enough the unpleasant way, but some of the kinkier stuff I'd be cautious about trying to Google up answers.'
*cough* Uh, actually ... I should probably find some. The physics and biology side of things relies on my and Pads's particular interest and knowledge of those subjects, so ... we tend to just remark upon things that we know are wrong.
I'll keep an eye out for good resources, though, and of course you're always welcome to ask me specific questions :)
Minotaur's sex tips for slash writers site is an excellent resource written by a now sadly deceased gay man. Never really needed it myself as I got all that info via having a gay best friend in high school, but it's pretty informative when it comes to the mechanics, positions, common practices, stuff that really wouldn't work, etc. Should be googleable.
For me, a big indicator is the name. If a character no longer goes by their real name, there's a good chance it's a replacement. In fact, that's why I killed Nadia/Hermione but not Ginny in the HP/DroP mission. (Also I didn't let it get to the parts where Ginny was in the spotlight and thus more Sue-ified.)
Of course, there are plenty of instances in which the character retains the name and that is literally the only thing they have in common with the canon character, especially if their defining characteristics are gone, such as you mentioned with Cregga Rose Eyes.
A character that's just behaving very strangely is probably possessed--they're still themselves to some degree, but being forced to act weird due to outside influence. But if the story takes away the things that define them, that's a replacement. It is a judgement call up to the person writing the mission, but that's how I look at it.
~Neshomeh
If they're being weird, they're probably possessed. Even if by 'weird' you mean 'carrying out actions that they never ever would in canon.' If they're actually going against defined canon characteristics, they're probably replacements.
So, to take Harry Potter as a frequently-possessed-AND-replaced-character;
If Harry is, for reasons of OMG ANGST, running around killing Death Eaters and having violent angsty sex, distasteful as that is, he's probably possessed.
If Harry was born evil, sides with Voldemort and thinks killing anyone he fancies and violent sex is fun, he's probably a replacement.