Thanks!

Subject: Thanks!
Author: Neshomeh
Posted on: 2013-10-29 18:39:00 UTC

Some questions do remain, though:

- PPC standard? What's that? O.o Also, that doesn't speak to Legacy's odd eyes and hair—assuming he's human and not terribly old, that is. You didn't specify either of those things. You should do that. Also, I forgot to ask: what is the extent of his abilities, exactly? "Downgraded from godlike" isn't necessarily saying much, y'know?

- I got that the music playing was related to Zarathustra's background. I was more wondering what the exact nature of the relationship is; i.e., why you, the author, decided to include that as part of her character. I don't understand how, in your thought process, her origin as an interpretation of a musical piece necessitates that piece playing from nowhere when she's in a certain emotional state. What's the reasoning behind it? If there isn't any, that concerns me.

- I have similar concerns regarding Tristan. Why does an absentminded, socially bewildered scientist need cleavers (or knives? which is it?) at all, let alone ones that magically appear from hammerspace? What kind of fights do you/he expect him to get into, exactly? How would they come about? Why knives/cleavers and not something else?

- What is this piece of technology you want to introduce? I'm leery of anything that would make the agents' job too easy and therefore boring to read about.

For the record, I don't have any big concerns about your actual writing. In your published pieces, there are a few SPaG hiccups and a tendency to fall into a dry sort of "this happened, then that happened, and then another thing came after it" rhythm, but that'll easily improve with time and some effort toward including more sensory details and strong verbs.

I really want to caution you against randomness for its own sake, though. Random can be funny, but not all by itself, and not if that's all you've got going. The value of it is in its unexpectedness, and it's only going to be unexpected once.

All in all, I'm inclined to go ahead and say Permission granted. I think I'd like you to send your first story from each set of agents to me before you publish, though. My e-mail is neshomeh (dot) soul (at) gmail (dot) com, with the obvious substitutions. Happy sporking!

~Neshomeh

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Permission? by Legacy on 2013-10-26 15:24:00 UTC Reply

So, yeah. I've hung around the PPC for several months now, I've read all the required stuff, and held conversations on the board. I now feel reasonably confident in asking for Permission. (Mwahaha.)

So Permission givers, please take a look and tell me if there's anything I need to work on. Here we go:

Agent A: Legacy
Gender: Male
Department: Department of Floaters
Partner: Zarathustra
Physical Description: Somewhat tall (about 5’ 9”) and skinny, crazy white hair and purple eyes and an impish face. Wears a jacketless white suit and combat boots.
Personality Description: Sometimes calm and observant, but is more often a hyperactive, bouncy annoyance. (This is thought to be a conscious decision, rather than sugar high, meant simply to annoy people.) Intelligent, but rather headstrong and prone to arguing with other peoples ideas if they disagree with him. He’s extremely pro-recruit Sues, given his past. Other than that he’s kind hearted and loves to read.
History: Legacy was formerly a nigh all-powerful shapeshifting Gary Stu from a badfic that was written three years ago, but then forgotten about. When the author came back, he deleted the whole thing, but the idea for the main character stuck around. When the author discovered the PPC, he decided this was a chance to redeem this character, and resurrected him as a former Stu agent. His shapeshifting powers were downgraded from a point where they made him near godlike to a much more limited point.

Agent B: Zarathustra
Gender: Female
Department: Department of Floaters
Partner: Legacy
Physical Description: Tall, (about 6’1”) African, and well muscled. Wears her hair in cornrows, and has dark brown eyes. Wears dark blue hoodie and cargo pants with sneakers. (When she’s angry, or distressed, orchestral music will begin to play.)
Personality Description: Calm and reserved, with an affinity for music, especially orchestral stuff. Is also headstrong, which leads for some rather interesting conversations with Legacy. Is used to getting her own way, and often doesn’t realize that if she and Legacy put their heads together they can come up with much better plans.
History: An author’s misconception of the name Zarathustra. The author, when first listening to the song ‘Thus sprach Zarathustra,’ thought of an African princess, and went with the idea, developing her to the point she is now. When the author learned what Zarathustra really meant (something along the lines of ‘He who drives camels’) he dropped the idea. A nearby plothole decided to be froggy and nabbed the idea, popping her right into the PPC HQ.

The above agents stay in RC number 2012.

Agent C: Tristan MacRory
Gender: Male
Department: Department of Mary Sue Experimentation and Research
Partner: Paige
Physical Description: Somewhat tall (around 5’ 8”) and somewhat chubby. Has mouse brown hair and eyes. Wears large glasses (which he often exchanges for a large pair of goggles) and t-shirt and jeans under his lab coat. (His lab coat, for reference, is sewn full of hammer-space pockets which he carries a large supply of meat cleavers in, for some reason.)
Personality Description: Rather absentminded and a bit of a conspiracy theorist, but is really quite brilliant. Is often confused by external variables, (often angry superiors and agents) who come in and mess up his work. Would be completely nowhere if he didn’t have Paige.
History: He and his partner/creation/daughter are escapees from a particularly insane Phineas & Ferb badfic. Something went wrong with his teleporter escape-rout, however, and he ended up in the PPC HQ.

Agent D: Paige
Gender: Technically female
Department: Department of Mary Sue Experimentation and Research
Partner: Tristan MacRory
Physical Description: An AI inside a floating softball-sized orb of black glass. She can project expressions onto the ball, usually in the form of cartoonish eyes and freckles. She sometimes does troll-faces to irritate Tristan.
Personality Description: Since an accident in her crazy fic of origin, Paige has become rather sarcastic and cynical, (just like most PPC technology) and acts much like a bratty ten-year old. She refers to her current form as an ‘overly expressive bowling ball’ and is currently bugging her ‘dad’ (as she calls him) for a new body.
History: An android invented by Tristan MacRory, her original form was destroyed in a rather strange incident in a crazy Phineas & Ferb fic. She came with her ‘dad’ to PPC HQ.

So there we have it. As for a link to some stories I've already written, here's a link to my Fanfiction profile:
http://www.fanfiction.net/u/3812905/The-Dark-Lord-Duroth
Also, here's a link to a few badfics that I intend to spork:
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8344912/1/The-Fifth-Horseman-of-the-Apocalypse
and:
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9684344/1/the-newest-nerd

There we are. What say you?

A few questions for you. by Neshomeh on 2013-10-28 18:02:00 UTC Reply

Partly because I don't feel I have a good sense of who you are as a PPCer, partly because I think these are good kinds of questions for anyone to think about:

1. Why the Department of Floaters? It it just because you don't have a firm idea of where your sporking interests lie yet, or is there something about it that specifically appeals to you?

2. All of your agents except Paige seem to have a characteristic about them that exists "just because," randomness for the sake of randomness: Legacy's appearance and style of dress, Zarathustra's background music, Tristan's hammerspace meat cleavers. Do you think these traits can be used for more than one joke without getting old? If so, how do you see them playing into your stories and affecting your characters long-term?

3. I'm not familiar with the continua in the badfics you're eyeballing, so tell me, what's so bad about them? They both have some shaky mechanics, definitely, but why do they deserve death by sporking?

4. I like that you're looking at doing something with the DMSE&R, but it seems like people typically do one, maybe two things with it and then drop it. That's not a crime or anything, but I'm curious about what you have in mind and whether it's just a single idea or longer-term plans. Also, are you thinking of using the lab report format, or something else? What's your relationship to science in your real life?

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to put you on the spot or quiz you or anything like that. Mostly what I'm trying to do here is get a sense of what you're all about, since I don't know you very well. I've been in and out for the last few months, and I don't think we've ever talked. I'll commence with the actual feedback and decision-making pending your responses—unless, of course, a better-informed PG gets around to it first. {= )

~Neshomeh

A few answers for you. by Legacy on 2013-10-29 00:04:00 UTC Reply

In answer to your questions:

1. I chose the Department of Floaters mostly out of the desire to spark anything I come across, regardless of the type.

2. Well… this is a bit complex:
-I was thinking Legacy would be ribbed every now and then about how his suit isn't exactly PPC standards, and then have a few things where he tries different styles and fails miserably.
-Zarathustra's background music is a side effect of her being the authors misconception of the name 'Zarathustra' as it's the name of an orchestral piece. I was going to have people question her about its origins occasionally, but other than that it was just going to be some music that played whenever she got frustrated. Good point though; I should probably be careful with it so as to not overplay the joke…
-Tristan's knives weren't going to come up often, probably during the few fights he'd get into… I was going to play it for laughs just once, and then have it as a fact of life.
Phew. I hope that answers all of 2.

3. The first one, 'The Fifth Horseman of The Apocalypse' is a crossover between Percy Jackson and the Outsiders. It completely trashes both stories. (Percy's parents die in the first two paragraphs, ancient god-like beings act like brainless teenagers, and so on.)
The second one, 'the newest nerd' is one for the book series NERDS. It also completely trashes the characters, and the main character is a… horribly written character at best. (The team reduced to… cardboard cutouts, there are random and completely unexplained happenings, and so (#^%) on.)

4. Mwahaha… Just the question I wanted to answer! I have dozens of experiments lined up to test the limits of glitter, and I have a lovely new peice of technology I'd like to introduce to the PPC for immobilizing Sues. And, well, DMSE&R is apparently the best place for all that.

Well, there we are. I hope that answers all your questions!

Thanks! by Neshomeh on 2013-10-29 18:39:00 UTC Reply

Some questions do remain, though:

- PPC standard? What's that? O.o Also, that doesn't speak to Legacy's odd eyes and hair—assuming he's human and not terribly old, that is. You didn't specify either of those things. You should do that. Also, I forgot to ask: what is the extent of his abilities, exactly? "Downgraded from godlike" isn't necessarily saying much, y'know?

- I got that the music playing was related to Zarathustra's background. I was more wondering what the exact nature of the relationship is; i.e., why you, the author, decided to include that as part of her character. I don't understand how, in your thought process, her origin as an interpretation of a musical piece necessitates that piece playing from nowhere when she's in a certain emotional state. What's the reasoning behind it? If there isn't any, that concerns me.

- I have similar concerns regarding Tristan. Why does an absentminded, socially bewildered scientist need cleavers (or knives? which is it?) at all, let alone ones that magically appear from hammerspace? What kind of fights do you/he expect him to get into, exactly? How would they come about? Why knives/cleavers and not something else?

- What is this piece of technology you want to introduce? I'm leery of anything that would make the agents' job too easy and therefore boring to read about.

For the record, I don't have any big concerns about your actual writing. In your published pieces, there are a few SPaG hiccups and a tendency to fall into a dry sort of "this happened, then that happened, and then another thing came after it" rhythm, but that'll easily improve with time and some effort toward including more sensory details and strong verbs.

I really want to caution you against randomness for its own sake, though. Random can be funny, but not all by itself, and not if that's all you've got going. The value of it is in its unexpectedness, and it's only going to be unexpected once.

All in all, I'm inclined to go ahead and say Permission granted. I think I'd like you to send your first story from each set of agents to me before you publish, though. My e-mail is neshomeh (dot) soul (at) gmail (dot) com, with the obvious substitutions. Happy sporking!

~Neshomeh

No, thank you! by Legacy on 2013-10-29 19:57:00 UTC Reply

Woohoo! That's awesome, I'll go ahead and answer your questions now.

1. PPC standard I thought was wearing black. Legacy's outfit sort of goes against that. And as a shapeshifter, he's only technically human. He has the white hair and purple eyes because he wants a base to stick to. By 'Downgraded from godlike' I mean that he used to be able to become whatever he imagined and copy its abilities perfectly. Now he can only become what he's seen, and can only copy it's abilities if they're not technology based (cyborg or robot) or magic based (magician, certain forms of dragon). He also has especial trouble becoming something like a spirit or an animate inanimate object. (Like a golem, for instance.)

2. Zara's music was added because I had a base idea for dramatic music playing when she was upset, and a trusted confidant told me to go with the idea.

3. Tristan is going to need his knives because, as a DMSE&R agent who deals directly with Sues, which are notorious for breaking controls, in a controlled environment… He's going to need some form of protection.

4. Not anything that makes their jobs that much easier. I call it the AGNeS; the Anti-Glitter NanitE System. It's, as the name states, a system of nanites injected into the bloodstream through a control bracelet to monitor levels of Glitter and prevent Sueification. It would be used for keeping Sue agents and Mary Sue experiments under control, though there are a few applications for it in the field. Say, for instance, slipping one onto a God-Modder in order to make her more manageable during charging. (Of course, there's the problem of getting it onto her in the first place…)

But… well… Thanks! I'm going to go into the other room and squee my head off for all it's worth now.