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Excuse me while I bang my head on the wall for being such an idiot.

Many of the Agents-- last time I checked, the majority, actually-- are based on their authors.

What I see are a bunch of highly exaggerated, apparently "insane" freaks who are using their insanity as an excuse to get away with things that no normal person could get away with.

Max, I've always kinda liked talking to you in chat, but this sentence crossed a bit of a line. Maybe I just need to read more of the current spin-offs (well, actually, that point's not up for debate; I do), but if you really think the PPC is so terrible, I hate to say it, but why are you here? It was always about a bunch of crazy misfits doing crazy things that, yes, no normal person could get away with. But I don't think anyone on this 'Board believes in normality anyway. (Do you? I speak for myself, here. Maybe you guys do. I have to doubt it, though.) The PPC-focused bit aside, that still crossed a line. Maybe I'm just being touchy, but "using insanity as an excuse to get away with things that no normal person could" strikes a nerve for me. There's no "It's okay for ME to do this, because I'M CRAAZYYY!" in the PPC. It's more "Hey, I'll do this because it doesn't bother me!" "...Rooting around in pink, glittery blood, looking for specific organs doesn't bother you? That's a little strange. You might be crazy."

Again, maybe I just need to read more spin-offs. You could be right; I just doubt it rather highly.

Also? The humor is the point. It's satire. It's making something humorous out of something relatively serious (well, not -really-. But kind of). That's why we're here.

So... yes. The unhinged, unstable lunatics that are our agents are realistic. In most ways, if not shapes and forms (I mean, come on. We've got elves, aliens, and anthropomorphic animals-- shapes and forms are Willing Suspension of Disbelief).

This comes as no surprise to me, though. I've noticed that it sometimes "forgets" to display the custom red-themed settings, and when that happens it reverts to the blue default theme. It's always switched back on its own so far.

~Neshomeh

Did you know that legal insanity is partly based on the concept that the person would have committed the same acts even if they were standing right next to a cop?

Insanity in that case actually precludes the ability to react to normal stimuli in normal ways. The really insane agents, in fact should not be capable of be scared (blank)less.

But I really haven't noticed anyone being over the top wildly insane (and most of them have shown that they are capable of fear). I see the reactions to be similar to the gallows humor that allows morticians to joke about dead bodies, or trauma surgeons to joke about blood, or soldiers to joke about war. It is a pretty normal human reaction to make light of situations that have high risks of psychological or physical trauma.

You're also leaving out all those agents who are not World One humans. I actually don't have a single World One human between my four agents. Two of them aren't human, and one of the ones who is, is from a continuum where it is perfectly normal to have mild super powers and to expect Doom From Above in the form of super villains. Anyway, my point is that expecting these characters to react in normal World One ways is wrong for the characters involved.

I think I have a coherent point in there, maybe.

Might as well tell you my opinion on sues being "people", like I have much better to do right now...

From how I understand it, sues aren't dumb or just humanoids with cockroach intelligence, they're just so used to their rather simplistic routine of the words given to them inside their fic that they're just deathly afraid of breaking it, and almost incapable of acting outside of them without seeming awkward.

This is why I try to portray them a little more innocently than most people do in my PPC writings/rough drafts. They have the potential to be so much more (actually good, well designed characters and sentient) but most of them are just fine with wasting their potential and not having to put up with anything in their lives ever as opposed to actually going out there and coming out of their shell of powers and popularity.

...Yeah, it's kind of weird.

I think you mean "Of ALL time."

Are you trying to imply that the unhinged, unstable lunatics that are agents are realistic in any way, shape or form?

That clearly isn't the case from how I see it. Yes, their personalities are fleshed out, but they don't seem very natural to me. Of course, insanity does come into play a bit, but even the most insane lunatic is going to be scared (insert term for fecal matter here)-less when near something that can kill them or worse with as little as a thought or can control them like puppets with little hope of escape.

What I see are a bunch of highly exaggerated, apparently "insane" freaks who are using their insanity as an excuse to get away with things that no normal person could get away with.

I'm not saying that the crazy, over-the-top agents are a bad thing. What I am saying is that the silly has gotten just as out of hand as the serious has, in my opinion, and THAT is truly disgusting.

...And that's my second rant for today.

And yet another reason why the PPC isn't (and wasn't really even during TOS) about "See badfic, see Sue, kill Sue." Sometimes there's no Sue in the first place!

What it is about is simply putting the canon right again, fixing what's horribly wrong, and being a fun thing for those of us who've ever had to search through the badfic looking for the good. The Bad Slash department gets every bit as much horribly-wrong as DMS--probably more, come to think of it.

Anyway, DBS has to fight insanity same as anyone else does; and it's not like exorcists don't occasionally get possessed by the odd escaping slashwraith.

Other departments who may have Sue-free missions: Implausible Crossovers, Despatch, Angst, DAVD, the Troll Division, DOGA, and (obviously) Floaters.

It started with Sues, branched out into implausible crossovers, then added bad slash. From there, we've had plenty of places where the more pacifistic agents can go. There's just so much more to badfic than Mary Sue.

(My personal opinion on the assassination/killing thing: Mary Sues are not "people" unless you insist on putting anything vaguely people-shaped into that category. With such cliched characterization and lack of personality, the average Mary Sue has little more than a basic set of "chase Lust Object" reflexes to serve as a brain.)

"See badfic, see Sue, kill Sue"

I'm not sure anyone's noticed, but dialogues about What We Are and What We're Doing that contain bits like this kind of exclude some of us. There are some of us who never involve this element in our missions at all. There are some of us who don't really have to worry about turning into what we're sporking. There are some of us who don't have to think about whether we're killing people creatively instead of en masse. Not all of us kill people. Can departments outside the DMS maybe be recognised in these discussions about Our Raison D'Etre? Not only would it be nice, but it'd also make us non-assassins a bit less likely to get bored/uncomfortable and so go elsewhere when such discussions come up.

I'm pretty humor impaired too, perhaps even more than you. It's something I've never really understood well...

Yeah.

Or at least, I have a clue. The Star Trek wiki has suddenly been changed to the same blue-theme, too, and it used to be black - part of it still is, which makes me think the wiki server has made some sort of change to all its users.

That, or maybe it's just me, somehow. Tech wizards, tell me - could this be a setting on my computer that I somehow tripped by accident? No other webpages I've visited have been affected, and I know enough about computer software to know I didn't change a setting manually.

(I know exactly why, of course - I was using the markup for a livejournal post in the other window and typed it in the subject header here out of habit. Apologies for that - I didn't mean to make it out like I was shouting.)

I don't mind when someone adds a link or category to my agents' pages, but I get twitchy when anything else is changed - this is the same reason I wasn't all that pleased to find a mention of Agent Iza on the TVTropes page and I still would like it removed.

And if anyone has the time and effort to put in to making a change on the wiki, I see no reason they can't log in first. Certainly, some people will forget from time to time, but that should be the exception, not the rule, in my opinion.

What you're describing is essentially the same issue as came up late last year, when there was a rather tense conflict on the Board and the oldbies collectively put their foot down on the entire Emergencies problem - it's also why I wrote the Guide To The PPC, which has an entire section on exactly this issue.

I really hope this debate doesn't start up again, because frankly, we've heard it before. In short, everyone's keeping an eye out for missions and other writings that are losing the PPC 'spirit' and becoming too powerful, particularly the PGs when they give Permission. We're being vigilant. Within the word world, most agents do not have access to these powerful tools anyway, and those who do and abuse the use of them tend to be singled out by the Flowers for brain-breaking assignments. It's now they keep order in HQ.

Also, I might point out that the Cycle Theory article hasn't been updated for almost a year, which is before all this began, so strictly speaking, it's out of 'date' with regards to this particular discussion. Let me also quote the editing note made when the page was first created:

"Because if there's one thing the PPC needs, it's another insane theory."

To me, that seems to imply that only the insane agents (in fact, only ONE agent - Sambar of Finance) who believe in said theory. I doubt it's therefore something that should be taken very seriously, let alone be the cause of a Board-wide dispute.

- Sedri, wearing her Boarder Hat


Also, I would ask you to kindly tone down your 'rant' next time something upsetting comes up. Calm down before you post and please present it as an argument for discussion rather than throwing around final statements like "it is _!" and "it wouldn't work", which leave no room for opinion and can hurt people's feelings.

- Sedri, wearing her Relative-Oldbie and Hopefully-Respect-Worthy-PG Hat

And while I'm at it, can I reserve Ginerva and/or Finnegan? I don't actually have any official Agents yet (need to get that Permission Request in... >.>) but I'd like my unofficials to have a mini or two.

It's actually a perfectly normal, tasty truffle. This is possibly the strangest thing about my gift.

Anyway, welcome! I see you've already been given The Links, so I'll just nudge you a but closer towards them because they really are Important, and resist the temptation to snitch your gift-truffle back and eat it myself ;p

Nice to meet you :)

You don't have to use giggle-humour to make others laugh - a well-placed dry or sarcastic comment could do the same. Also, if you (or your characters) take everything Utterly Seriously, it could work out to be amusing, too. Of course, it won't always, so I suppose that in itself is not much help.

However, I think that there is also one more basic trait to qualify for Suedom: The desire of an author to gratify himself at the expense of his work or another's. If one writes a story just so he or she can hook up with a hot person just because he/she is hot, get the love interest out of the way by killing or convering his or her love interest, or administer the Worf Effect to the strongest characters in the setting using powers pulled out from his ass, then that character is a Sue.

That said, I like Superman, and while I've only read two of the Drizzt books (Exile and Siege of Darkness, neither of which I bought), I don't really think badly of Drizzt either (though some of the things he writes in his journal are Narm).

Erm... WHY is our wiki blue? Not that it's a bad colour, but I thought we decided to leave it red in order to make it match the Board.

- Sedri, starting dull conversations

...I think your remark about about Discworld is pretty humorous in itself.
As a formerly humour-impaired one myself, the best thing to do in my opinion is resort to sarcasm... It's not the best approach to make new friends, but it's exceptional for entertaining existing friends or, in cases like this one, to make readers laugh (or at least I laugh at sarcastic remarks).

I don't know why, but I tend to be humor-impaired. Not such a good thing when you're trying to write for a humorous group.

Also, I've noticed that how good I am at funny is inversely related to the time it's been since I read a Discworld book. (As time increases, funny decreases).

I realize a sense of humor isn't really something that can be learned, but does anyone have any pointers? Suggestions? Generic helpful comments?

Feel free to sic her on Sues, intruders, and siblings!

See St. Dymphna's Academy, where many of the Mary Sue characters are actually not quite Mary Sues--because they don't force the plot to revolve around them, and can't, because there are other people behind the other characters! Despite having Suvian traits like immortality, magical ability, or extreme genius, many of them have become realistic characters. It's really a fascinating experiment in Suvian psychology.

Have an eyas! (That's a baby hawk. Don't worry, it has parental permission.) Feed it Generic Meat, Sues, and CAFs.