Subject: That's me, mucking with expectations.
Author:
Posted on: 2015-06-25 11:06:00 UTC
I'm curious - do people think Intelligence reports are worth doing at all? I have three, but the odds of anyone actually writing full missions into those stories seems... low. So they clearly don't fulfil their purported in-universe purpose.
Could we use them as 'missions-lite'? Or, indeed, as concrit (for ourselves or for the authors)?
hS
I know this might sound like whining but I'm curious as to why ye don't do Mission in which ye show how a good fanfic can be done or how a bad fanfic can be turned around into a good one.
After all, bashing a bad stories is fun to read, it doesn't exactly help to know what makes a good fanfic since ye are only demonstrating how to bash bad ones instead of trying to make a demonstration of how to make them good or better. Unless ye've tried that before and I may have missed it.
Kind of seems to be the better idea to me if your goal is to make fanfiction as a whole better since the bashing might discourage any from getting better at all. Just my thoughts, don't have to listen or consider them if ye don't wish to.
I think there's something somewhere that says something to the effect of "by writing missions, we're creating more goodfic and thus increasing the average quality of fanfic," but that's not really why we do it. We do it because it's fun and makes us feel better about the existence of badfic. Those of us who actually want to help a particular fic or author improve give concrit. (And no, it doesn't often work.)
Also, "bash" is a strong word. These days we strictly do not bash the authors or even talk about them at all if we can avoid it, and as DawnFire said, we do try to use our missions as a form of critique to point out what doesn't work in a particular story and explain why, though again, the success of this varies. And you're mistaken if you think it's for the badfic author's education. We actually prefer that the authors never find out we sporked their stories. However, we learn from each other, and other people who read PPC missions can learn things from them, too. So that's another way we indirectly improve the quality of fanfiction, and fiction in general.
Have we mentioned that several PPCers have gone on to be published authors, and one that I know of is a professional editor? I recently did some freelance proofreading work myself, as a matter of fact. Dunno if the book will be published yet, but I'd like to think it stands a better chance now. The PPC helped me learn to see what's actually on the page rather than what I expect to be there.
~Neshomeh
That is our means for providing constructive criticism, and how we show how some fanfics did it right. Well, that and offer up badfic for the killing by another group, but tbe that as it may.
I also think that a mission, when done right, should be a humorous dissection into what made a particular fic not work. It's not just poking fun, it is pulling apart the worst of the worst bit by bit to show exactly what the shortcomings were, and possibly how to fix them. Now, not everybody shares this same goal, and that's fine. But when you see one of my missions (you know, some time next year) know that is what I am trying to do.
I'm pretty sure hS is the only person who's actually written an Intelligence report for the purpose of concrit to the author, and that was done as a special request. We... don't actually use those as a form of critique on a regular basis. Or ever, barring recent events. It's a bit a lot disingenuous to claim we do. {= /
OTOH, if you plan to start, I could get behind that. It IS true that one of Architeuthis' Intelligence reports was on a goodfic, or at least an only-slightly-flawed fic. It'd be cool to see more of that.
~Neshomeh
I'm curious - do people think Intelligence reports are worth doing at all? I have three, but the odds of anyone actually writing full missions into those stories seems... low. So they clearly don't fulfil their purported in-universe purpose.
Could we use them as 'missions-lite'? Or, indeed, as concrit (for ourselves or for the authors)?
hS
Not yours, specifically, as I don't know the canons well enough (though I may work up the courage to try a Tolkien mission someday). But I really want to do a mission for the one Keily Shinra made a report on (just slightly NSFW). Oh . . . but the original story is deleted now . . . :(
Anyway, I like the idea of doing missions after other folks' intelligence reports; there just aren't many extant ones in fandoms I'm comfortable with.
They're a good way to dissect a badfic you've found that you're not sure about doing a mission to.
As for people writing full missions into stories that have Intelligence reports, there's always Thunder Run/Lightning Strikes. And I actually might do a mission to the first badfic you've linked.
hS' Driftwood, which I think you've been linked to before, Rustic, includes a section at the end of each mission called 'Agent Kaitlyn's'...bother. Critique, or Comments, or something. As you might have guessed from the title, that's where one of the agents writes about what was good and what was bad, and how it could have gone better--that sort of thing. And also, yes, generally speaking missions are supposed to also be a form of concrit--though to what degree they succeed depends rather on the writer and on the mission. It's also less clearly laid out, obviously.
~DF