Subject: Addendum.
Author:
Posted on: 2013-02-18 21:36:00 UTC
As to why writing about 'artificial' Mary Sues instead of finding them - there have been PPCers who did that, for different reasons. Some people really dislike the idea of pulling apart a story that some writer, somewhere, cared about. There's nothing necessarily wrong with it.
I decided, just to double check, the PPC page again. there was something there that interested me that I had seen, but have never really looked at before. It was a link connecting to the tropes page for The Anti-Cliche and Mary-Sue Elimination Society. So recently I have been reading up on The Society and what they do, and I am pretty impressed.
Actually, I'm really impressed. They have a very comprehensive history, storyline and, well, society. The similarities between it and the PPC are many, yet there are some clear differences. The PPC tends to be more... comedic I suppose is the best word, though we have the ability to be serious if necessary for the story. It just is rarely necessary. The Society is also very comedic, but is often more dramatic than the PPC usually is. Is this good or bad for either side? Absolutely not, but it is different.
After reading some more and drawing connections, I decided to make this post for multiple reasons.
One: I wanted to know the PPC's position on the Society. Have many boarders even heard of them before, and what they think on The Society and their group.
Two: I was thinking about a potential crossover. The two are very different, but have very similar motives: to spork bad fanfiction. If there were some badfic that was so mind-numming, canon breaking, grammatically failing, all around BAD, that the two sides actually come across each other to kill the same fic. This discovery could later be explored as the two share experiences, technology and potential rivalries. I have already thought of a few things that could be done with a crossover, but I wanted to see what the rest of the board thought about the potential, or wether it has been discussed before.
Just some food for thought. This is not saying I have joined the other side or anything, just want to spur discussion. Besides, the PPC has at least one thing that I prefer over The Society. Our board is much nicer than their forum. Just saying.
I don't have Permission, but I think this would work.
If and when this does need an actual encounter-fic to spork, you need a horrific badfic, I'll go stab the Queen of Mary Sues in my own canon and wait for the glitter to resume. Considering I'm the one with the canon, fic, and canonization stamp for my own story, the boundary between real-badfic and fake-badfic will be distorted enough to meet.
The Internet needs a board of Fixing Fiction somewhere. Someone ought to create a forum.
Are you saying you are from the Society, or am I misinterpreting? Because if you are, awsome, this little idea may well work! We would both have to get permission first, but if we have someone willing to talk to and interact between the two sides, it seems even more likely to overturn the previous desision of 'nah.'
Actually, all I said was that I'll provide the fic to spork and that I support you. I've no connection with the Society whatsoever. :P
Incidentally, I already have a draft of the sue in question to kill.
She's a parody of the original Mary Sue actually named that, the starfleet lieutenant who ran her ship so well she recieved awards designed as a parody of Star Trek self-insert fanfics. Except amplified to OH MY GOD KILL IT WITH ALL THE SUE HUNTERS EVER BEFORE IT SPAWNS MORE SUES levels. Other sue qualities include spotaneous sue-generation and a city-sized fortress and army composed entirely of Mary Sues and Gary Sues of varying strength.
Forgot to mention she's anchored in the Or Something Like That (http://s4.zetaboards.com/Shellcore_Command/blog/main/3761234/) border-canon area, which is "The entire rest of the planet that is outside the relatively small zone of immediate control of Elesion Narrator Council".
..Although the nasty, paranoid part of me says it's better that isn't the case, considering some arguments I've seen on other forums where the wrongdoer(s) edited their posts if anyone typed the word 'mod' in response to their very public argument.
Not that I'm accusing anyone here of being the sort to do that. Because I'm honestly not; I'm just pointing out the benefit of not having an edit system. On a lighter note, it's pretty funny to catch yourself making a little mistake two or three days later and have nothing else to do but laugh at it and hope no one else noticed! (At least, I think so...)
I've been looking into their fics recently, and actually find them quite interesting. It's always nice to see different takes on hunting Sues...
We both agreed not to officially affiliate with each other. We do our thing, they do theirs, it's cool.
One of the main differences between them and us (IIRC) is that they don't spork actual badfics, just made-up ones. So writing a crossover involving an actual badfic might be a problem for them (assuming they are still active and want to do it at all). I think some folks on our end had concerns that their characters were a mite overpowered, too, but I don't know about that firsthand.
Of course, you would need Permission before doing this, since it would involve the PPC. You'd also want to get their consent on the matter, too.
~Neshomeh
If it was an official decision then yeah, I'll leave it alone.
After reading some more on them, I must admit, the idea that they use made up badfic is a little strange. Why spend the time to make a Mary Sue when so many just sit there, waiting to be killed? Still, they HAVE done existing badfic before, it's just usualy an old badfic that the author wants to see killed. So, because of that it would theoreticaly be possable, but if it was officialy decided to leave eachother alone then fine.
Oh they are still active, believe me. They have a 4chan-esk forum that is still being used, as well as new stories continuing to be cranked out. And yes, they are a little OP for my taste. Ok, sometimes realy OP, to the point of some missions reading as "Mary Sue kills Mary Sue." Still, not all of them are Sues and Stus, and lets be honest, we have had our share of over powered agents before. Admittedly most of our Sueish agents are reformed and have to struggle to stay just below the line, but still, we have been guilty of being too powerful as well.
Oh, I know I would need permission first before acting on the idea, from both sides. This was more throwing out the idea and seeing if it was any good, so that if it was of any interest to someone with permission, or if I got said permission, it could be furthered. This would change the dynamics of both sides, and without clear consensus and even ability to write for either side, there was no way it could or should be done. However, if nobody thought it was a good idea, it would just wither and die. At the moment it seems to be choking, though not dead yet per-se.
As to why writing about 'artificial' Mary Sues instead of finding them - there have been PPCers who did that, for different reasons. Some people really dislike the idea of pulling apart a story that some writer, somewhere, cared about. There's nothing necessarily wrong with it.
That's why for my more serious works about Sues (think the OFUs and a possible tie-in fic for my Sue Report blog) I tend to find troll!Sues on, say, DeviantArt forums and ask the owners if I can borrow them. That's where I've been getting my antagonists for IAHF, for example.
I never said they were wrong in making their own badfics, I just said it was strange. Than again, I am a sadistic bastard on the internet, so that may have something to do with it. I see the missions we do as half entertainment, and half criticism (OK, more like 80% entertainment, 20% criticism, but whatever) and provides a semi-useful service through the criticism they give. That is why I enjoy the PPC as much as I do; because it backs up the reasons for tearing down in a humorous manner. When you make your own badfic to spork, you are creating a comentary rather than a criticism. While the killings can be entertaining, it does not have the same effect using an actual badfic does, for me at least. So that is why I said it was strange.
Though I should point out that nothing replaces concrit, which should always be one's first response. The mission or sporking being shown to the author as a criticism is not something I would be in favor of - unless what you mean is that other people, by reading it, are less likely to make the same mistakes. That one does make sense.
I am a firm believer in constructive criticism, and do not think ripping a story to shreds and laughing at the remains is the proper way to tell a writer how to correct their stories. However, as an editor, I am infamous for being very direct with my criticism. Not mean or rude, mind you, but direct. I don't sugar coat much of anything, and I make sure the author understands what is wrong and why I think it should be changed. I once got in trouble for editing a foreign exchange student's story in a creative writing class. Her spelling was fine, but her grammar and phrasing left much to be desired. The sentences were understandable, but were phrased and structured incorrectly. When I showed her the edits I made, I told her to make sure she finds a good editor, one who would not be afraid to tell her she is wrong, even though she is from a foreign country and english is her second language. How is she going to learn how to do it right if she never sees when she was wrong? She was thankful, but one of my other classmates chewed me out for being 'inconsiderate.' "If it makes sense," he said, "then just leave it alone!" While in the end we agreed to disagree, it showed me that I thought, occasionally, you need to see the truth about what you wrote, no matter how much others don't want to see it. So occasionally, I think a charge list is helpfull for authors to know what exactly they did wrong, so they can learn how to fix it.
/end rant. Good greif, sometimes I just chatter on and on for no reason. Oh well.
*English
*helpful
*grief
:P
The good and bad thing about our mostly-lack of Official Decisions here is that it's always a food idea to check, because even though things might not necessarily be against The Rules, the community might still be strongly opposed. For example, adding the PPC to TVTropes - and specifically, the way it was originally done - was something that a lot of people had a lot of opinions on, but they were never given a chance to voice those. The last thing you want is to find out after the fact that people are upset about the decision.
So yes. Asking about this stuff - always a good idea.
Yeah, the PPC doesn't tend to have a general consensus on things. It's one of the things I love about this place.
Individual opinions? Tons of them. Group consensus? As a general rule? Nope.
Usually, when a thing comes up for discussion, there is... an overwhelming amount of discussion, by anyone/everyone and their grandmother, and two weeks later, when half of us have forgotten what we were talking about in the first place and the rest of us are -mostly- in agreement, the thread drops off the 'Board, and somebody writes a wiki article with the almost-consensus and the arguments for/against. Or something.
And then two years later, someone asks, the person who remembers tells them about the consensus, and any of the opposing parties who are still around poke up and clarify their personal position on the matter.
...No, we don't do anything the normal way here.
(With regards to the original question... What Neshomeh said.)
I have found many fanfic authors who write Mary-Sue killing parodies, usually called something like "The Mary-Sue Slayer", or something else vicious. But, actual organization is very rare. I've never heard of this "Society". I had this idea, though. It would be interesting if some of our Agents ran into a "Slayer" of some sort, and confusion ensues. It might be even more interesting if this character was a member of a large organized group, resulting in a lot of possibilities. I think since the PPC aren't the only people sporking badfic, we might want to make that part of our canon. Sounds like fun to me!
Also curious. How many of them have heard of us? How active are they? I'm going to go snoop around their wiki...
..is supposed to be set in a separate world connected to, but not a part of, the PPC. There, the canons are more or less Sue Slayers. with Sherlock as a Consulting Sue Slayer (and Moriarty as the Consulting Suethor).
I mean that's somewhat organised, a Scotland Yard with its own Canon Distortion Department headed by Lestrade, right?
*dramatically rolls out of the shadows in a ACME Creaky Wheelchair*
...there were some of their peeps that hung around before disappearing.
They were discussed here, in this thread. You can dig up a lot of interesting threads using the Board's search engine at the top of the page!
Well, I was on the wiki recently when I stumbled across an old talk page about the two. Apparently someone made a wiki page for The Society on our wiki, as well as a PPC page on their wiki. While the two communities were similar, because there was no official crossover made, they bolth decided to delete the pages, the potential crossover never spoken of again. I supose the two groups know of eachother, they just don't interact. Oh well, I was hopeing on exploring a potential extension to bolth of our worlds. Who knows, it may yet happen anyway, but it seems the historical feeling is "meh."
...I realy wanted to see what DoSAT would do with their technology though. Have you seen some of their toys? They're hilarious, and usefull. However, they don't have CAD's, consoles or disguise generators, amoung other PPC spesific creatures and technologies, so they could benefit too. Still, I'll wait and see what the board says before thinking too much on the crossover.
I keep on feeling like the PPC and the Society would be like the parallel universes in the Whoniverse - Pete's World versus the "real" world.
Which means to say, inter-parallel-universe travel is discouraged, but can be done.
As SeaTurtle pointed out, I started a thread a few months ago about ACMSES. Congratulations on not being as paranoid as I was. They have a page on their wiki about us, and we have one about them? In November when I checked that wasn't true. Interesting. I'll go look that up...
They were removed because of irrelevance to either party.
Oh wow, only a few months ago? You know, perhaps the multiverse is trying to tell us something... Something about our two communities...
{Do Thy Schoolwork!}
...Or not.
Considering that people here keep wanting to know about the ACMSES, maybe a page on our wiki wouldn't be so irrelevant. Not a BIG page or anything, but just something to go "So hey, there are these guys, they aren't us, but they do this stuff, and we (more or less) think this about it, and also they have a wiki over there where you can learn more."
With slightly more precise language.
~Neshomeh
It would link to other Sue and badfic killers and have notable ones be explained in greater detail. Give me bit and I can work up a basic page for others to add to/fix.
I went poking around last night. I ended up shuffling things around a bit, because there were some odd arrangements of categories in categories in the original categories, and stuff where it didn't belong, and...
Never mind.
Anyway! If you check out the Websites category, you'll note the presence of pages for GAFF, Deleterious, and Sue Report[s]. There's also the Trans-dimensional Organisations category, which includes the Fanfic Universities. I think something about the ACMSES would fit in the latter category—I mention the various websites to show that we do have pages for other Canon Protection Initiative things that aren't us and may or may not be formally affiliated.
I think other people need to weigh in on this, given the strongly felt opposition to having a page about the ACMSES before, but that's my two cents.
~Neshomeh
Well then, I think you know what my vote goes for. The problem last time was that the wiki was intended as a "guide for the PPC," and because of the lack of official interaction between the two groups, it was removed because of supposed irrelevance. I think connecting to other Mary Sue hunters on either the trans-dimentional organizations page or on the websites page would be helpful, as we serve very similar purposes, and if they like our missions, perhaps they would enjoy others. Besides, I'm still up for a crossover with SOMEBODY in the multiverse of Sue slayers, as the confusion and chaos would be very, very funny. So yeah, I vote add them to the pages, however you all think would be best.