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That's their patented gender-neutral pronoun.

Have fun! :)

You never know when you will need a pineapple. Treat it with absolute seriousness.

Unlike everything else around here ;)

Nice to meet you. Welcome!

That's quite a rant. You've most effectively scared me off ever reading it. Ouch.

Also, interesting shorthand; "S/h/it" - was that intentional? These are the times I long for the number-neutral "they" to be commonplace...

Oh, that would be interesting. Many of us neglect to mention our newbie gifts in our missions - must remedy that...

To answer your question, I have no idea. The wonderful thing about the PPC is that nothing is defined until you say so. I was picturing something like a deformed set of handcuffs, just without any chain parts; something that can be used to smack 'Sues unconcious fairly effectively, but it's up to you. :)

I thought I'd present a "gift" to the PPC to "celebrate" the acquisition of our new category of awfulness, the Bleepfic, and boy is this ever one!

It's The Golden Age, a Harry Potter fic. I will start out by saying that the author is a pretty good writer, at least as far as grammar and spelling are concerned. S/h/it does seem to enjoy J.K. Rowling's prose style (though not her plot) and does a pretty good imitation of it. But good grammar is no excuse for the massive amount of canonfail.

Next to those fics that actually rewrite the entire books, this is the biggest piece of wish-fulfillment crap I've ever seen come out of the Potter fandom. It's hardly Potter at all, it's the characters' names tacked onto a soap opera cast, with lots of rape, idiotic abusive men, paternity scandals, and that sort of thing. It's blatant fanservice for the author and no one else, essentially. Running down the main badficcy points here:

* To start with, there's Dumbledore. In canon, of course, he's kind of a manipulative bastard, but he's a wise, deeply regretful manipulative bastard with a lot of demons he's trying to atone for. This fic tosses out the atoner part. It's heavily implied, for instance, that he did not send Harry to the Durseleys because he had a blood ward spell tying him to Petunia (the canonical explanation), but because he hoped the Dursleys' abuse would drive Harry to suicide, which would also kill Voldemort... or something. Never mind that Dumbledore COULDN'T have known Harry needed to "die" to kill Voldemort prior to the fourth book, and would have no reason to plan it from that early. Adding to that, it's ALSO heavily implied that there was a way around the Prophecy (something never even SUGGESTED in canon), and thus Dumbledore was a dick for no reason at all!
* Of course, where we have Monstrous Dumbledore, Saint Snape can't be far behind. Snape endures a bizarre POSTHUMOUS Woobification; apparently, nobody cared about him enough to go looking for his body before the little animals got to it. Ick. From his headmaster portrait, he's also a whiny mope who throws hissyfits at Harry and harps on Dumbledore's portrait.
* This is another author who just doesn't get that BLOOD PREJUDICE IS RACISM, okay. It turns out, oh no, Muggleborns don't actually exist! Where do they come from, then? Well, that's even more disturbing than the race-fail. It seems most "Muggleborns" are actually the result of Pureblood wizards raping Muggle women! What's more, the Ministry has a secret department whose job it is to catalog these rapes but do nothing to prevent them! Apparently, Hermione is actually the daughter of Mr. Crouch, and Lily was the daughter of a long-dead uncle of Molly's. Oh, and Lucius has a rape-baby, too!
* Speaking of Lucius, despite being a known rapist, the fic paints him as an extremely sympathetic character. Oh, he WASN'T actually a Death Eater in book 2, and didn't know about the Horcruxes; he just thought the curse on the Diary was a harmless prank that would embarrass the Weasleys at school. Poor old Lucius...
* And of course, there's the Weasleys. Arthur's okay, it's very rare you see evil Arthur, but Molly is now an overbearing stage-mother obsessed with getting Ginny awards and the like and domesticizing Hermione to make a good wife to Ron. Has anyone here seen the Willy Wonka remake? Remember Violet's mother in that? That's essentially Molly's new personality. Oh, and she was already pregnant with Bill by sixth year. Ron, of course, is now slovenly, sexist, and borderline sociopathic. He'll do anything as long as it's funny, including ruining Hermione's books with a prank flower than shoots water. The author specifically stated that she changed his personality to this because she personally does not find pranks funny. Oh, and he's a pedophile. Last we see of him, in a chapter set post-epilogue, he's run off with Oliver's teenage daughter. We don't see much of Ginny, but we're told her relationship with Harry is completely fake, to please her mother.
* Hermione is a grade-a witch (with a "b"). Marietta Edgecombe commits suicide because Hermione "accidentally forgot" to remove the pimple hex, and when Marietta's mother comes after her, Hermione mind-rapes her. She also accepts that she's a Crouch, even changing her name and FORGIVING all three Crouches through their portraits. In the end, she becomes pretty much a clone of Umbridge. Except on drugs. That she bought from George. Really.
* Harry is a boor-headed war veteran who is always stuck in his glory days and can't accept that they're gone. He and Hermione have drunk sex sometimes.
* Then there's Jane Rochester, an OC and descendant of "the two fictional characters who have never disappointed me," says the author (and bearing both their names; yes, THAT Jane and THAT Rochester). She basically exists to infodump about how horrible the Marauders were and be a git to the Trio; it's quite apparent, however, that of all the characters in the fic, she is the one we're supposed to side with above all others. And she can revive the dead through some weird time-paradox-y ritual.
* And watch out! Here comes John Wellington Wells from Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Sorcerer" in a random cameo!
* The author seems to have something against the Irish. Irish Wizards are portrayed as bloodthirsty religious fanatics who sacrifice their own children.
* There is a chapter called "Harry Potter and the Midlife Crisis."
* Neville is flamethrowered to death.
* Hermione is randomly gored by a unicorn.
* And in the final chapter, it's implied that a prank from James Sirius (son of Harry and Ginny and therefore the spawn of Satan) will indirectly destroy the Earth in the near future. Yes, really.

But I've talked too much. Here's the link for any prospective claimants:
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3682339/1/TheGoldenAge

Don't say you weren't warned...

Whatever it ends up being classified as, I am very glad that someone is willing to tackle these awful things. I am sure somewhere out there, there is a good songfic...but I haven't found it yet.


(totally irrelevant and off-topic, but I just now finally watched Avatar! Great movie!)

Have a calculator. A sentient calculator. That will sing K-pop whenever you turn it on. :)

*pokes*

It's traditional. {= )

Now, the aforementioned links. The first one, of course, is to the Original Series. If you haven't read it, that is the first thing you should do, since it's what this whole glorious panoply is based on.

Second, if you are so inspired that you want to write your own PPC spin-off, you need to find out how to get Official Permission to do so.

After that, there are several pages on the PPC Wiki and elsewhere that contain useful and important information. In order of sensible reading-ness, as Sedri says, they are:

* The PPC Board Constitution, because it's Da Rules;
* The Board FAQ if you're not quite sure how to use this quaint old thing;
* The Guide to the PPC,
** FAQ for Newbies,
and eventually the
** Mission Writing Guide, written by Sedri with support from the Board.

You may also eventually be interested in Trojie's Slash-Sporking Guide if that's your thing.

If you wish to edit the wiki at any point, you should definitely check out my new Editing Tutorial.

And, of course, you should check out as many PPC spin-offs as possible. The Complete List of PPC Fiction and the List of Killed Badfic are good places to start.

And that is quite enough to be going on with. Welcome!

~Neshomeh

'SPLOSIONS HOORAY! *goes off to 'splode stuff*

I can't commit to anything right now, but I draw stuff, and I have some middling skill with the GIMP. (If you're unfamiliar with it, it's like Photoshop, but open source.)

Of course, this would be significantly down the road anyway, but I'm curious. {= )

~Neshomeh

Now that is scary. Though I did like giving it to the minis. Do we ever learn what happens to her, or is there potentially still a Balrog 'Sue running around?

--anamia

Yes, cookies. I have the actual recipe if you'd like; all you have to do to make it chocolaty is add about two teaspoons (or more, if you like it really chocolaty) to the mix.

They're very 'splody. And they shoot sparks when on fire!

If you're from the US, think Sour Patch Kids, except without the sour coating, IIRC. Here, this'll help: Jelly Babies

Hooray for cookies! Also Frying Pans! I shall treasure them always.

Hello, and welcome to the Board. Here's a Frying Pan of DOOM^tm and a freshly baked batch of quite yummy vegan chocolate-oatmeal cookies. I'm sure someone will be around with the Official List of Links for you sometime soon. In the meantime, enjoy those cookies!

Yeah, it's been merged into DoSAT as a division, and yes, its agents are (or at least were authorized at one point) to kill Sues when necessary.

Adam and Frenchie, the original A/V Geeks, only have two missions. However, one of them is the infamous Balrog Sue and the other takes place during the little-known 2003 Mary Sue Invasion.

I'm not actually sure what order they were originally written in, but it seems to work either way.

~Neshomeh

Perhaps it's like Dwarf Battle Bread in Discworld?

Here, have a Frying Pan of DOOM^tm. It's useful for clocking 'Stus and 'Sues over the head so they don't run away while you're charging them. Plus, it can be used to cook with. Alton Brown, geeky chef and allower of only one unitasker in his kitchen (the fire extinguisher), would approve.

You mean jelly beans, right, not actual babies made of jelly? *shudders*

I think I'm getting into PPC mode already, considering I picked up on that.

I love yo-yo's. Especially yo-yo's with blades.

and welcome to the PPC!

I think similarly about original characters, with the additional explanation that you can have a lot more fun with a character you create yourself, because you don't have to stay within a pre-designed template. Neither do I go out of my way to include romance in anything I write. If it seems to be something that would develop between two characters, great! Otherwise, there's not much reason to include it, and even less of a chance that it would be believable.

I also find bad grammar, spelling, etc. increasingly annoying, and usually story-breaking flaws. For example, in a story I recently read (published, even!), the author used incorrect grammar in two out of two Spanish sentences. I was stuck at that part for over a quarter of an hour, and that's with only a year of Spanish!

I'm afraid I can't help you find the Star Wars OFU, or tell you anything that happened in it—it was way before my time. I will agree with what other people have said about your last question: the PPC deals with bad writing, not Mary Sues.

Oh, and, as you can tell, I also have a tendency to write long posts.