Subject: One of the reasons Emergencies aren't a Thing anymore...
Author:
Posted on: 2015-06-20 15:01:00 UTC
Is that they affect everything PPC, and this might not be all of the PPC writers' cup of tea. The Blackout is different in that it was voluntary; you could have ignored it entirely and it's perfectly fine.
I'm thinking of becoming an agent with musical powers. To be exact, the ability to summon facsimiles of characters by playing/conducting their themes. I want a weakness to be so that the facsimiles can't affect people who can't hear them. The problem is, would they be able to affect inanimate objects too?
Idea: maybe your character can use a scythe that's shaped like a musical note, with the flag being the blade!
First: You don't become your agents, you write them. You are the author.
Second, I really like the idea of an agent with musical abilities! I recommend checking out the abilities of bards from Dungeons and Dragons, or from Pathfinder.
One: I am not Wobbles The Clown, the Notary (for which we can all be grateful, I'd wager), Field Commander McCandless, the 7th Earl of Wymbourne, his heir, his wife, or a small pink pufferfish playing a sousaphone in a way almost but not quite completely unconnected with conventional musical theory - or, for that matter, conventional depictions of reality. Similarly, you are not your hypothetical agent. If you were, then the message would not apply - or, if you subscribe to determinist views of philosophy, it might apply all the more.
Two: I think the PPC needs a little more music in its life. The power you talk about, used sparingly, would be extremely helpful for finding the victims of canon replacement. The keyword is sparingly. Playing the theme of a boss battle might be useful for having a great big horrible monster jump up and down upon ones adversary until it resembles nothing so much as glitter glue might be good for a laugh, but it's bad practice overall; the more knowledge canons have of the PPC, the more likely a Sue is to rip it out of their heads and plot an invasion. And those things are a pain. =]
Aren't some agents from the real world?
Now I need to figure out whether or not my music can affect inanimate objects...
Actually, the thought of an invasion thrills me. Redwaaallllllll!!!
Heck, some of them are een self-inserts. But that does not make you an agent. You're just the author. If you want to write a self-insert, though, go right ahead!
And as much, um, fun as the Emergencies look now, I heard they weren't fun at the time and there's a very good reason why they don't happen anymore.
Just so many Emergencies one after the other. One every five years or so, that can be fun. Once every other month? The community got sick of them.
Say, Ix, were you around for the Blackout? That was a lot of fun. Didn't really participate (as usual) but I got to watch as it unfolded. Since then, I expect one of the admins to mess with the Board layout every April Fools. Has not happened yet. Anyway, I think that was our last "emergency," if you want to call it that.
There's also the fact that with at least one part of said events- Makes-Things' death- the community as a whole hadn't been asked about it beforehand, it was thrown in, and no one was entirely sure about how to handle it or what to say about it and we ended up going with it for awhile despite the fact that many of us weren't very happy about it once it had settled in.
It's the sort of thing that ends up putting quite a damper upon moods.
Also, as far as the Board being messed with for April Fools, the usual target used to be the Wiki.
I'm super-jealous, too, that looked like a lot of fun.
But that is rather different to what is being discussed. Mass invasions of Headquarters are frankly passé. An interlude detailing a plausibly-deniable attack on a Mary-Sue Factory, on the other hand... less so. And it will give Algie something with which to occupy his day that comes with a lower risk of propelling himself through the wall. =]
So long as you don't force it to happen to the entire PPC, nor change the status quo, you can write whatever you like, really. You can write AUs if you want to write a what-if story, or you could set your story in the past, during one of the established emergencies.
We do like our sporkings of bad fanfic, and that's what we write most of all, but there are interludes fleshing out HQ and its inhabitants, and Ten Years Hence set in the future.
A sneaky raid on a Mary Sue factory, that doesn't change what's happening at HQ too much nor force anyone into the story that doesn't want to be in it, could be a fun thing to write.
Danger is fine; even killing off your agents is fine, if you wanted to do it. Just don't take over anybody else's and don't do anything that dictates how other people get to tell their own stories. I think it was Makes-Things's death that annoyed people the most, because M-T is a community character who's been around since the original series. (He's not actually dead, by the way. He survived--somehow. Mostly because we are Authors and we wanted him to survive, but I think there are plans to write about exactly how.)
And keep it light. After all, this is supposed to be satirical metafiction, even if it gets serious sometimes. We're writing about characters who police fanfiction and occasionally lose it because Legolas has been turned into a wilting violet by a fanbrat who thinks he's "hott". It's commentary on fanfiction, on characterization, on writing in general. Have you ever read the "Thursday Next" series? The author does a very good job with a rather similar organization policing (mostly published) fiction, and despite the danger his characters get into, there's always tongue-in-cheek humor too. Highly recommended.
Anyway, don't create an Emergency, don't force characters to experience what their authors haven't decided they should, and don't mess with HQ, and you'll be fine.
I AM NOT CREATING AN EMERGENCY
I AM SENDING A BROKEN MAN AND THE LOVE OF A TIME LORD'S LIFE INTO SOMETHING FROM WHICH THEY ARE DISTINCTLY UNLIKELY TO RETURN
THE RELEVANT SUES ARE GOD MODE SUES FROM A CONTINUUM WHOSE CANONS WOULD BE GOD MODE SUES IN PRETTY MUCH EVERY OTHER CANON.
THEY ARE ABLE TO TELEPORT ANYWHERE. LITERALLY ANYWHERE. AS LONG AS THEY ARE SHAGGING. DID I MENTION THEY ARE FATHER AND DAUGHTER? I FEEL THAT IS RELEVANT TO THE CURRENT DISCUSSION.
WITH THE SKILLSETS OF THE AGENTS INVOLVED, THE ONLY SOLUTION I CAN THINK OF THAT ENDS IN SAID SUECEST-PAIR'S DEATH IS DIRECTLY TIED TO THEM ENDING UP IN THE HALLS OF HQ, BECAUSE ONE OF THEM IS A COMBAT MUNCHKIN WAY BEYOND ANYTHING IN THE SETTING.
AND SHE'S BANGING HER BLOODY DAD.
DID I MENTION THAT SHE'S DOING THE HORIZONTAL LAMBADA WITH HER DAD?
BECAUSE I CONSIDER THIS IMPORTANT.
---
Anyway, now that I'm nice and sedated, yes, I am familiar with Thursday's escapades and scrapes and stripey car. The tongue-in-cheek style is something I like to think I'm pretty good at (cf. Doktor Trollenfisch and Gabrielle's first mission) and I flatter myself in thinking that certain canons from tiny, tiny fandoms are capable of holding their own against much more important ones. Algie and the Commander are genuinely nice people who have compassion, of a sort, for our Suvian friends. Whether or not this outlasts the mission I'm talking about is another matter entirely. For clarification, it is a fic our resident Legendary Badfic expert was physically unable to read on account of the horrible things that are referenced within. I'd wager this warrants bringing out the big guns, or, failing that, the small guns that can be put in the proper place with the proper preparations. =]
I have absolutely no desire to write an Emergency. Wait, no, that's not entirely the case; I have no desire to write an Emergency on my own. I do have an idea for one, but solving it involves literally everyone, and that's the kind of wide, sweeping event that could have happened ages ago when the Board largely consisted of blank space but now requires the input of about a million different authors.
You're all open to write my agents, BTW. It's the least I can do for inflicting the Notary on you. =]
This is a collab I need to do with someone that introduces Commander McCandless to someone very special, but I have to figure out who'd be a good fit. Hell, if hS could put up with me for periods greater than five seconds (when we're not talking about glyptodons, anyways), I'd ask him if he wanted to have a crack at the relevant fic.
Which is called Danny and Taylor: Finding The Way. It features my most treasured fandom; Worm, a story about superpowers and doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. And it butchers it. The SPaG is generally okay in it, but the story itself is just miserable and disgusting. Daniel Hebert would not have sex with his daughter, and Taylor Hebert would not have sex with her father, and yet this is the driving force of the plot of the fanfic. It gets everything wrong. Tattletale doesn't come out of this well, and she is my precious asexual Jesus.
It makes me hurt, and want to hurt things, and I want to mission it so that something good can come of it.
And it is glorious.
But no, I'm very bad at co-writes, so I don't think I'd be a great fit - at least not for the 'write it a line at a time' variety. If you want to do a 'Scapegrace writes it all and then hS edits his agent'-style cowrite, that might be doable.
Though I have no idea why that story makes you think of me...?
hS
I have my own WhatThe agents, of whom Mortic's opinions are well-known. I just don't think they're up to this without his considerable help. This was originally going to be a collab with Iximaz, Bleepfic specialist of this parish, but she was physically repulsed by certain things wrt Taylor's... character to the point where she was unable to read the fic. They are extremely powerful Sues, and the author has a lot of fics detailing similar themes, like Naked Sex World, which features all the paedophilia, or The Domination Of Taylor, which features things that are almost worse.
Something's pumping out these badfics. This is what I planned to have Algie and the Commander assault; the Mary Sue Factory that's generating this batch of affronts to common decency. It also means I don't have to put myself through ALL this human anus's greasy, disgusting outpourings, and can instead cut out the root in-universe.
Plus, Lola wants an excuse to cuddle Gabrielle. =]
Flaming isn't cool. I don't care what you think of the author, but please don't write it out.
I'll stand by my offer to let you write Mortic and then I'll edit him into character. It worked well enough cowriting with Kaitlyn and Selene's creator.
hS
I'll simply restrict myself to the evidence presented. The author operating under the name Axxor has a sexual interest in young teenage girls, rape, and bestiality. They also have a profound love for incestuous sexual pairings and frequently defend incestuous relationships with "but we can't make babies so it's okay". Not only have they done this to Worm on no less than fourteen occasions, they have also done this to the Dick and Jane books once. This is something, and someone, of which I am very definitely Not A Fan.
Those are the contents of this person's oeuvre on AO3. Forgive me if I don't link to them.
That seems to be something approaching a statement the author would agree with - presumably apart from the bit about not liking themselves. For the record, I'm not a fan either.
So, cowrite yes or cowrite no? It doesn't have to be quite as 'you write everything and I poke it' as I may have sounded like I was implying; things like [Mort says something], or even [They discuss this] are fine (with the latter being filled in by quick pseudo-RP later).
hS
"I've suffered for my art. Now it's your turn."
-- Jackson Pollock.
For the record, I'm not too good at the whole line-swap collab thing either; I tend to go off on rambling asides which, while amusing, are kind of detrimental to the flow. I'm sorry for flaming this person, whoever they may be, but they're doing this to the first thing I found by myself. I just stumbled upon this, this weird little story about superpowers and it had smart people doing smart things and a wonderfully written asexual character (who gets sexually assaulted and graphically tortured, like, ALL the time in Axxor's work), and I fell in love with it. And the fandom's smart too, or at least reasonably competent at faking it. The Worm fandom is a good place, for the most part.
So when I come across someone who does this to my favourites? To people who, because of the way powers work in this setting, have already suffered enough? I get angry. Angrier than perhaps I should.
Just... well, you know what I'm going to say. ^^ Attacking stories is (just about) okay; attacking their authors isn't.
Cowrite: okay, cool. Do you want to go with the method I suggested, then? If you write the mission, I'll come along afterwards and completely rewrite Mortic. ^~ You can drop in [tags] where you don't want to bother writing something specific.
That works. Just be warned: these stories are genuinely vile, which is why I want to mission them; something good and fun needs to come out of them.
*mumblemumbleteleportanendbringertothebloodyMOONmumblemumble*
That's, in fact, exactly what I'm doing with Blank Sprite right now.
It has rather big happenings, and the situation is serious enough that it can be considered an Emergency... but it directly involves only my agents. In fact, one of the key aspects of Blank Sprite is deniability - not only it doesn't affect anyone else, but the Flowers will be able to claim it never actually happened.
Rumors will still persist around HQ, but it's up to each author to decide if for his/her agents it happened, it didn't or it is just rumored to have.
I think there are plans to write about exactly how.
I hope not! I left Makes-Things' return deliberately unexplained when I wrote him back in. That way people can come up with lots of crazy theories and have fun with it. If anyone is actually trying to set an explanation in stone, I shall be most irritated.
~Neshomeh
Is that they affect everything PPC, and this might not be all of the PPC writers' cup of tea. The Blackout is different in that it was voluntary; you could have ignored it entirely and it's perfectly fine.
I haven't forgotten that one of my agents was written into either the Blackout or the Meatloaf Monster (weren't the two tied together somehow?) without my permission, and in a fairly OOC way.
That said, though, localized Emergencies that only effect those who want to get involved are the way to go. Or, if you feel the burning fire of a true Epic in your veins, there's always PPC history - Huinesoron's Crashing Down and related works are absolutely legendary (in the literal sense, not just the figurative).