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It almost wrote itself what with Sonja's implied dark side in the second game and her synergy with Lash in the third.

Most everyone will get a spotlight as the story progresses, but yeah, Yellow Comet is fun.


This morning I also had an idea for a hilariously bad ero fic with Nell, Rachel, Max and Grit. It'll be a parody of XXX fanfic if I get around to doing it.

...along with a few others. This is just the beginning of a series of essays. I hope research could help me support these theories but if some prove me wrong, oh well.

They may be but I have some thoughts about this. Canon Sues don't have to drain the host because they are "canon". They don't need to cause damage but if the story is bad because the author did that, not her even though some could be her fault.

So yeah, it's like that.

And, that's exactly what they did: took the source material, changed some things around, and injected zombies between the lines. I only looked at the first few chapters, but still. I'm not even a fan of the source material, and I hate it with a passion. {= P

~Neshomeh

1. Can I loan you Agents Omicron and Charlie?
   
   2. Once again, where is the best place for me to give you pertinent information r.e. Korora's native continuum?

All of this talk about Sues as parasites reminds me of this fic I'm currently rereading called "A Sue's Story". Ever hear of it?

It's set in the Harry Potter continuum, but based some around some OCS who work with handing Sues. It's a different way of looking at it, so I don't know how some people will handle it...

So check it out, that is, if you want to.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1811995/1/ASuesStory

It's not a matter of being published; it's a matter of the wide exposure of published fiction.

Stories come from World One minds--not just the Author's, but the readers' minds, too.

Three factors affect the strength of canon:
1. The skill of the Author who creates it.
2. The number of people who read it.
3. The fanfiction written in the continuum.

The stronger the canon, the more it attracts Mary Sues, but the more it can resist Mary Sue parasitism. And the strongest canons are the ones that are published and widely read... though even the strongest can fall to Mary Sues if they aren't protected.

Nice thinking. Now the theory is complete, I think.

And they aren't. There's not enough characterization to make them sentient; just a bunch of weird Sueperpowers tacked to a cardboard character. Factory sues are pre-programmed; also no sentience there. Very borderline sues who get recruited have to go to FicPsych just to get themselves a personality; and agents who get fully Sued tend to be executed by their partners very much like someone who got bitten in a zombie move. Too far gone, and there's nothing left of the person you used to know (which means risk of getting wangsty and should not be overused, but it has happened in the past...)

If it's "genocide", then it's more like exterminating a species of (reality-destroying) mosquitoes than it is like destroying a species of humanlike aliens. You might have qualms about disturbing the natural ecology of the multiverse (which is actually something I've been toying with lately--environmentalism, PPC style!); but other than their humanoid shape, there's nothing sentient about them.

FicPsych or DMSE&R should do neuropsych testing on Mary Sues...

The Canon Sue is a Sue who has been smart enough to insert herself into a canon while it was still being formed. The canon grew around the Sue and adapted to her presence.

The Sue can't survive without the canon. And the canon can't survive without the Sue, because it was developed with the Sue already in place, and removing the Sue would cause it to collapse. It's like not removing a knife from a stab wound because it's plugging a hole in an artery.

A canon with a Canon Sue in it is weakened, but not destroyed, because it is in careful balance.

The canon is just powerful enough to support the Sue. And the Sue is just smart enough not to go too far and kill her host. The canon is by no means healthy, but there's no way to remove the Sue without destroying it altogether.

I find this idea pretty good, it completely explains non canon sues. However, Canon Sues are not quite the same problem - they ARE actually canon, so they are only resembling a Sue in behaviour, but do not share the same mechanics of energy stealing. In easy words, Canon Sues do not feed on canon energy, because they are in canon.

That they were originally going to have Anakin be the hero of NJO, but George Lucas thought that people would get confused if there were two Anakins.

Good idea within the PPC, but don't forget that a lot of people consider canon Sues to exist. We're just not allowed to PPC canon.

See, I always thought Mary Sues existed because people like to write fanfiction, and some of them are really bad at it. And that we kill them because we don't like seeing stories about our favorite canons that are really bad. And that we made up the whole thing about them Killing The Canon to have an in-universe reason to do so, and because it makes for a good story...

--VM, being the polar opposite of helpful!

Very short, because I should have long since gone to sleep:

If it's making money, definitely. If not, depends on the context. I don't think a school play is much of a violation (unless they charge door fees), but I've heard of people making a fuss over such things. Newspapers, I'm not sure. If they are 'sold', gamble on the side of caution.

There's a wiki article with more on the subject, but I can't find it back now. I did chatter about the topic further down on the thread, if that helps. (If not, go ahead and start a new thread at the top of the board and ask. We'll probably start a fun little debate.)

To be honest, I don't see the 'need'. I mean, why do 'scientific theories' need a reason? You might as well be asking for the motives behind why the Earth was created - which is a religious question, usually.

It would also create an additional ethical complication in that one could argue that the 'Sues are merely struggling to survive, casting agents in the light of genocidal murderers. I don't think that's quite what Jay and Acacia meant when they started this.

Still, if you want to think of it that way, that's up to you. I don't think I'll adopt it as part of my "headcanon", though.

True, we try to focus on the 'fic, not the author, but if an author has taken their work down - particularly if they did so because they know it's bad - it's best to respect that. Besides, from an in-world point-of-view, the fanfic is no longer around to wreck havoc on canon, so there's no need to PPC it anyway ;)

If there are aspects of it so dreadful that you feel you can't let it go, what about having your agents grumble about it in the past tense, as though it were a mission they once did in the non-narrative time before you started writing them? Or have them moan about it being the first such badfic they read and how it traumatised them? In that case they could outright state that the author later took it down, and even complain that they'd have liked to PPC it themselves - remember, the 'lives' of our avatar agents tend to follow 'real life', if in a bizzare, twisted fashion.

But even if not, I wouldn't PPC it. There's nothing stopping you, if you're determined, but since you asked...

Short as it may be, that is the most useful review I've seen. Thank you :) Maybe I'll go to see it myself now.

Though I like the part where it says Sues are feeding on canon characters, I don't agree that Sues need to feed on canon characters because their authors can't publish their work officially. There's plenty of (officially) published fiction where there are Sues in the story.

Really liked this, and you get extra points for using Yellow Comet rather than any of the others.

When I'm reading PPC missions and looking up multiple bad fics, I'm starting to notice a possible motive to why Mary Sues are twisting canon. The Scientific Theory of Suvian Origins may have established the "what" of Mary Sue but there's a missing vital piece of information, the "why" and their motives.

My guess is that Mary Sues are incomplete beings who can't self-substain themselves unlike canon characters. They lacked a vital part that makes anyone canon, gifted by authors. Canon is like a heart for a body to pump energy to survive. Canon is the essence of life and existence, I called this the "canon factor".

Mary Sues lacked the canon factor because their creators, the Suethors, can't publish their fics officially due to copyrights, thus they are posted as fanfiction. Without the canon factor, they slowly starve and if not fed, they die. This can only be slowed down just by being acknowledged by the Suthor herself but that won't be enough to ensure the sue's survival. Even with powers and/or the perfection, they are weak as characters for canon because canonical works rejects them because their involvement in most continua would harm their figurative structure as established universes.

The main method of surviving is to feed on canon energy. Usually, that energy can't bleed out by normal means but there's multiple methods to do that, interfere and/or twist canon through meddling canon affairs. Their acts of unholy uncanonized crimes usually affects the inhabitants, usually main characters but that also effects locations too. Ergo, canon energy bleeds off from the victims and the sue absorbs the energy, ensuring her survival in a disguise of a canon character. If the sue's powerful, she needs more energy. Should this be left untouched, the results would be catastrophic such as becoming a dry husk or a twisted mockery of itself or worse, cease to exist.

As for slash fics without Mary Sues, they are there alright but comes in a different form. Two sub-species called the author-wraith and the other is a clone called a Replacement Sue. Although they are different, the methods are the same. The victim of these monsters are "popular" characters, usually handsome or cute ones, beings with plenty of canon energy, enough to substain a canon location. Their ways are through pseudo affection and sex. Having sex with a sue is a very bad idea because no matter the gender, it drains the victim's energy quickly than the orgasms. These two are extremely dangerous so it is best is exorcisms for author-wraiths and assassinations for replacements.

To remedy these problems, the PPC has to do their jobs in order keep continua alive and healthy. Once the sue has been killed, the canon energy they stole return to their rightful owners as if they never step foot there in the first place.

This is one of many parts of this theory. I will write more about this in deeper topics such as the bond between Sues and Suethors.

My understanding about the PPC is that it is less author specific (since we don't link the original author the story, and don't ever particularly plan for the original author to find missions) and more about generally sporking particularly bad works. From that position, the only criteria for fics would be ones that would be /fun/ to do missions for.

That said, if the author disliked the work enough to delete it (I actually would have left a bad fic up to just to show how far I've come) they would probably be upset that someone else put it back up, in whatever form.

The missions that were written for deleted stories were being written when it was deleted.

Also, if the author has learned the error of their ways then it is our job to acknowledge that and not drag up their past mistakes. If the author removed it because they realize it was bad, then I think it would be best to let it be.

Those are my thoughts on the matter.

-Barid

I was going through my stash of downloaded 'fics recently, and I came across the first ever H/D slashfic I ever read. For nostalgia's sake, I started skimming it, and realized very quickly that these days it was something I would much rather PPC than read. However, when I went looking for it online, all I found was a note from the author saying that she had taken it down and moved on. I know deleted 'fics have been PPCed before, but I also seem to recall an ethical note stating that it's in bad taste to PPC stories whose authors understood how bad they were.

I had a couple thoughts about how to deal with it, the main one being the author-wraith exorcising herself and knocking sense into the canons on her own. It's been done with assassinations, and I think I could make it work for an exorcism. Alternatively, I could just do a deleted-story drama, much like the one found in the JAAKSONS, among others, and ignore the exorcism altogether. My first inclination is for the first, but I could manage either.

What do the rest of you think about the ethics of this situation? Should I go for it at all, or should I just look around for another H/D badfic? (It's not like there's any lack of them. Heck, I've written several myself...)

(For the record, the mission coming from this probably won't be out for a while. I'm planning a story-arc for Sarah and Elaina at the moment, so we have a couple to go before getting here, but oh well. It's nice to plan ahead.)

--anamia

But they are usually warned, and you can see them coming, so you can avoid them if you like.