Subject: Advice is great.
Author:
Posted on: 2013-03-03 14:52:00 UTC
Also, giving advice yourself tells you if this author is going in the right direction. Also, you can ask for permission to spork it anyways. After all, they do realize the old version is bad.
Basically, I was going to spork this fic:
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8457287/1/The-Irregular-Universe
However, the author recently wrote about wanting to re-do it, with the help of a proofreader for the grammar and explaining better some things (and also removing the most nonsensical ones, I hope)
What should I do now? Continue the mission? Leave this fic be? Or try to give some advice?
The quality of the original fic doesn't lend itself to much hope, but the simple fact that the author recognized that and is willing to improve deserves respect.
Like it says in the subject line, I've finally finished preparing my Permission Request, and would like someone to look it over for me. Anyone is welcome, although if someone who knows LotR/Silm could take a look at the writing sample, that would be great--just to make sure everyone's more or less IC, and so on.
Basically, for anyone wonderful enough to consent to beta, I'd like you to read through the request and let me know if you spot anything that really doesn't work or isn't understandable (or any bad SPaG, which shouldn't be there. If I've missed something, let me know, and it'll go away). For the writing sample, also please let me know if you can follow what's going on--it's one chapter from an ongoing story, and I need to know if the context-providing note works well enough :)
The request can be found here.
And...that's it. Thank you in advance to anyone who chooses to beta :) I'm so excited! It's finally almost done!
~DawnFire
...and I don't know much of Rings either, but I find that the writing sample is pretty clear and flows well. I would suggest splitting up the paragraphs a bit more: I found the spacing a bit cramped at times.
I can only see one issue with one of your character bios: Brenda Loringham was sent to investigate a missing DIC team. I believe that this would fall under the Department of Internal Affairs' jurisdiction, as they have the Special Response branch to deal with situations like this.
Maybe they don't actually go missing. Maybe they just take a very long time, and Brenda gets impatient and decides to portal in and hurry them along, since she's also feeling rather cheated--she feels that her new partner's first mission should have been with her.
Is that believable?
~DF
...it's entirely up to you how you write your piece. It's your spinoff after all!
...I do want it to sounds logical. I didn't know about the DIA (I mean, I vaguely knew they existed, but I didn't really know anything more than that), so I managed to ignore something that other people know about and think should be there. I'm honestly still catching up on the PPC of today; I think I've done a pretty good job so far (read a LOT of wiki articles, and a similar number of spin-offs), but there are still some details that I don't know about. So, if you tell me that it seems strange that the DIA wasn't sent in instead of Brenda, then that's something I feel I should take into account, especially as I doubt you're the only one who's going to catch that.
Also, Brenda getting bored and impatient actually seems rather stronger to me. It suits her character perfectly. It just means I need to slightly adjust what actually happens when she gets inside the badfic, but that's not too hard to do. So thanks :) This is why I like (and use) betas; they tend to catch things that, when fixed or changed, actually make the story better.
And you were completely right about the spacing, by the way. It was squished and made the story harder to follow. I've now changed it.
Thanks!
~DF
I just didn't want to sound too much like The Canon Interpreter Of All Things That Are PPC... What I really want to say is to not be afraid to toss in some new stuff in your spinoff.
Glad to be of service. Good luck on your Permission Request!
Oh, and keep on wiki-bingeing. It's good for the background stuffs.
No worries. I have a lot of ideas planned out, and there is quite a bit of new, weird stuff. Such as...well, I won't spoil it, but if you take a look at some of the conversations I've been having recently (namely with darklordaakmal and hS), you'll be able to figure some of it out. It's crazy. It's downright insane. And it's going to be so. Much. Fun. (...which should probably be the propaganda for my writing, or something. Hm...)
Thanks! Really, you helped a lot. The original plot point was rather weak--or at least, weaker than the new one--and I thought it up very early on, which might explain why. I like the new idea better.
'Tis indeed. And I have no plans to stop. The PPC's expanded so much! It's amazing! And I like the wiki, so it works out quite well.
~DawnFire
Oh, good! Thanks :) I'll take another look at the spacing. (Hm. Just looked. Ouch. Would it help if there was a space between each paragraph? That was my very first lj post, so...I'm used to writing documents single-spaced, and I'm also used to FFN spacing it out automatically).
Hm...Well, it's not actually a missing DIC team, it's a temporary team of a DIC agent and a new DMS recruit, who've been sent into a Suefic with a ton of crossovers in it. And the DMS recruit is Brenda's new partner. Is that still DIA? If not, can I believably blame it on either the Flowers thinking it would be amusing or on understaffing/the DIA teams being busy? (In other words: help!) (But thanks for pointing that out).
Thanks so much :) ...Bleepchips? (Bleepcrisps for the British) (Invented just now, but really, who wouldn't want to be able to eat a bag of potato chips laced with Bleeprin?)
~DawnFire
I think I'll just relate my experience to you, as I had it with a very similar situation that occurred to me.
I was actually going to spork a Mass Effect fanfic that had a Gary Stu and a REALLY bad Mary Sue (they had managed to impress Aria for doing nothing, a batarian took them in because the plot demanded it, and the Sue had a pair of holographic roller skates *shudder*). But she actually expressed interest in rewriting it, and when I went in to review it she actually took my criticisms to heart when she rewrote it. (And trust me, when she did rewrite it, the end result was much improved over the original version.)
So what I'd do is this: I'd review it, and then ask about that in a PM depending on how the author responds to the points you bring up in your review.
Those are my two cents on it, anyway.
In PPC canon, a Sue who's too much of a Sue to recruit can only be saved by their author. The PPC agents can just kill the Sue, which removes her influence on the canon, but also removes any strengthening effect her fic might have had. If on the other hand the Author returns and fixes the problems, the fic can get flipped from bad to good, which is better than just killing the Sue. It's why fangirls get sent to OFUs and why so many PPC agents are OFU graduates. The power of writing new goodfic in a continuum is always more than just sporking the bad. (The missions strengthen the PPC home continuum, of course, but since it's semi-quarantined, that's not really very necessary.)
That got posted too soon....
Anyway, as I was saying. You could get together with the author. You write your mission and the author re-writes the fic. Then somewhere near the end of your mission, you write the author's rewriting into your mission--the horribleness gets erased, the Sues and bits turn into real people, and the CADs stop screeching. Maybe the author appears in the fic itself as an author avatar physically destroying some crucial problem, or maybe s/he is just an unseen force that changes the landscape like you see at the ends of stories where the true king returns and the land becomes beautiful again.
It'd be a unique approach. If the author is good with SPAG despite the Sueish nature of the fic, maybe you could even swap beta services. Goodness knows we can all use a second set of eyes to root out the typos.
Author is TERRIBLE with SPAG. Have a look at the fic.
Anyways, I think I'll try to write a review pointing out the bad stuff politely.
...is that that's the solution I came up with for the planned mission to my one and only Suefic. And here I thought I was being original...
~DF
I remember someone bringing in an Author who assassinated his own Gary Stu, in a mission written maybe a year ago. I can't remember who now. And then there was Rose/Ross, who got rewritten by their Author when they got Sued.
But plenty of unoriginal concepts have been made into very nice, original stories. Just because something's been done before doesn't mean you can't put a new twist on it.
Cool. Well, since I haven't read those (or don't remember), my take on it ought to be different.
Well, my plan is to have the agents finish charging the Sue, and then the CAD beeps and, when they look, it registers her as an OC. And then they check the Words and almost all of the charges are gone. (And then, of course, they have to figure out what's going on, because none of them have ever experienced that. And meanwhile, the former Sue is still being threatened). Hopefully, that's enough of a twist to not be stale...
Also, not sure we've met before. Hi!
~DF
I just kind of drift in and out. I read missions, sometimes I poke my head into chat. I have agents but I've never used 'em.
To ask for help, too. I've this half-finished mission (which sporks a classic Lord of the Rings Sue) that I haven't touched for a month. I'm thinking that I might have wrote copious amounts of nonsense there, so I'd very much like people to go over it and tell me what they think.
Actually, I started doing that yesterday and got sidetracked. Sorry about that.
From what I see, you've got some great lines (such as the line about 'Glorfindel Golden-hair', and bit about the spears). It's a bit unclear what the mini-Balrog mentioned just after the first strike of ellipsis abuse came from, as its name isn't mentioned (unless it's 'elf'?)
WHAT?! Yeah, I'm with Anebrin on that one. Seriously? That's who the baby is? Yeesh. Charge for making him doubly an orphan?
Celery Girl :D I like it. Much better.
One thing--you've written that Arwen 'lied down'. I'm pretty sure that should be 'lay down'.
Lyrics. Argh. This is vaguely starting to remind me of "A Kid in King Arthur's Court"--or at least, the Nostalgia Critic's review of it. Ouch.
The romance. Gah. And the repeated use of eleven, too. Just...wow. Can't say I like the badfic at all, but you're doing a very good job of making fun of it, so well done. Quite enjoyable.
And if there's nonsense there, I don't think I saw it, although the comment about tossing a bucket of water on her is definitely a valid point.
~DawnFire
Also, giving advice yourself tells you if this author is going in the right direction. Also, you can ask for permission to spork it anyways. After all, they do realize the old version is bad.
It just doesn't seem right to me to spork it if the author wants to improve it. There's a quote somewhere on the wiki which goes something like this: "Writing fanfiction as good as canon or better is a bar which fanfiction writers will probably never reach. We don't look for fanfiction to mock near the bar. We look below that bar, and below that one, to the mat under the bar, and peel that back to boggle at the crud underneath it." (I'm paraphrasing here) The point is, if they're trying, it seems heartless to kill it.
Then again, I have a lot of standards for fics I want to spork. I once found a fic where the Sue's eyes were described as "like ice and fire melting together". But I'm not sporking it because the author's grandmother is dying of cancer and writing this Suefic is helping the author get through this difficult time. Not quite the aame, but still. It doesn't feel right, and can't give any more reason than that.
Well, maybe you could make a mention of the author's (hopeful) turn towards goodfic in-mission? Maybe the canon stops being warped as much in places, and the agents can make a note of that?