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

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.)

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.

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?