The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

Thanks for the reports.

"Your font's painfully big and there's a grammatical error in the author's note. Um. Ow."

Fixed, seems Google Docs doesn't have size 16 font.

"I disagree. We can be as anonymous as we choose, but the billion people making up the internet all have ages, genders, orientations and shoe sizes. Those circumstances and thus those biases are not nothing. They are of utmost importance to whoever happens to be currently talking, and the fact that each individual is an individual and thus differs in those circumstances must be noted - the net is not made of automatons.


Misplaced comma. And yes, actually, we kind of do. Boosette and her lot are coming across as those horribly cliquey snooty high school girls you see in films, sure. But so are we. We do think we're better than the so-called fanbrats. We do rate our ability to tell a story higher. We do bitch about people with the temerity to write about noncanonical relationships and events. We do take note of female OCs more than male ones. We do predominantly target the works of female and/or prepubescent authors. Look through all the published missions, make a pretty graph of it, and you'll see it's true. We do exactly what we're accused of doing. The difference is in the why - we're being accused of simply being mean, when we're in fact railing at bad writing when the characteristics of bad writing are defined by a culture that automatically views women as lesser."

I may have worded that poorly. What I mean to say is that we don't go after bad writers because they happen to be preeteen and/or female, but because they're bad writers. To me at least, gender, age, and demographic are meaningless against the fact that their writing makes me want to punch babies. And I can buy that we bully, but it is certainly less awful that the bullying they do against us and any other well meaning reviewer by lashing out at any critical opinion and siccing well-meaning but misguided white knights on them.

"But fanfic does. Being at odds with canon continuity is not a crime. Doing so without justification and without suitable storytelling ability to make it believable is."

Maybe its just me, but I figure the original author and anyone s/he has designated as official writers for a canon as the ultimate authority on the canon, thus it irks me to no end, especially when an author claims they know more about the canon than the creator!

"Um. Bullcrap. Try being female."

Listen, I'm all about female empowerment. I believe anything a man can do a woman can do. However, it seems that half the feminists (like Boosette and her ilk) are whiny victims while the other half are the feminazis that believe women should be superior in every way. Please tell me I'm wrong, but not that I'm a mysoginist because I do want gender equality.

Not so much better people anymore as just better writers who want to do something about the decay all around us.

Yes. I want a perfect system, and I want it now, dagnabbit! ;) lol

Seriously, though, at least for the pit, I have found this a pretty valuable indicator of bad slash. And I would much rather they identify themselves, so I can hurry up the winnowing process of finding a good story.

I apologize.

I just have one question about that: Would you say we think we're better PEOPLE, or that we think we're better WRITERS? (Forgive the caps, please; I can't seem to make HTML formatting work.) I know it might be nitpicking, but I think that's really kind of an important distinction.

I mean, you have a point, but I don't like treating the things differently.

I have two Left 4 Dead badfic to report:

"Life Undead" by honored cur. It is located at http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5783946/1/LifeUndead. Rated T.
This is a very rambling piece of fic, with Infected that keep their minds and almost no punctuation. It features a slew of original characters and little coherency.
Sample, including the lack of a period: "wow Rex time has been awful you are small you have gray skin crimson eyes you wear all black but I must admit you look buffer" Dave said as he blew some smoke in Rex's face

"Watching Over Her" by SpontaneousCombustion00. It is located at <a href="http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5413303/1/WatchingOverHer">http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5413303/1/WatchingOver_Her. Rated M.
This is a Zoey/Hunter fic, which features Francis decapitating a zombie with a riot gun while simultaneously pointing a pistol at a Smoker, Zoey not only failing to shoot a Hunter but also allowing it to molest her, and said Hunter being able to talk and remember its name. The Hunter also has eyes which change color.
Sample: "That was a pretty damn good kiss, considering he's an Infected. Zoey thought."

but as a Board, we've successfully had serious discussions on religion, politics, ethics etc in the past without it turning into a flame war. Although, such discussions have been way less frequent in the last couple of years.

When people are treated like nonpersons, be they old or gay or both, I think it's time to forget tact and get *angry*. This news item touches on two important issues: the fact that gay relationships, nay, gay people do not exist in the eyes of the US government, and the fact that the social bureacracy can be all too happy to deprive the elderly of their rights without reason.

My phonology professor went on about this endlessly. In short, what we write as "h" is, in practice, a voiceless version of whatever vowel follows it - try saying the words "house", "hair", "hear" and so on, and notice the way your mouth shapes itself before you start to speak; hold it, and then alternate between voicing and not-voicing (that is, vibrating vocal chords - an easier example of that is to hiss "sssssssss-zzzzzzzzz-sssssssss-zzzzzzz" and feel the difference in your throat).

Sorry, I ramble. I like that subject. Anyway, point is, in practice people often drop whatever half-formed sound there is that tries to be an "h" in the first place, and so we use "an", but that's only verbal. In writing - at least until our writing system changes to reflect spoken language, again (and becomes even MORE complicated, *sigh*) - you always need to use the "a". It'll look wrong on paper otherwise.


...I've gone lecture-y again, haven't I? Sorry. But I hope that helps.

I'm fully in support of posting serious things, but I believe we have to be tactful. The Board has been, apart from last June, relatively flame war-free, and I for one wouldn't like it if that changed.

I participated, although I'm not gay.
That story... I just can't say how much it pissed me off without resorting to maledictions.

*glomps* Hey, for me, that is treating you kindly. I could have nommed you. Newbies make very good noms. So anyhoo, remember how Honu_Wahine recommended that you abandon your sanity? It goes here. *indicates bucket marked "Warg Fodder"* Also, here's a compilation of Alfred Hitchcock cameos.

"Randomness!"
"Crack fic!"
"LOL!"
"Not a mary-sue!"
"You'll just have to read and see!"
Advertising one's story as "randomness" or "crackfic" usually indicates not a weird, silly, funny story but a lot of stupid stuff and inane jokes.

Your font's painfully big and there's a grammatical error in the author's note. Um. Ow.

"In the anonymity of the internet, age, gender, sexual orientation, and/or shoe size mean nothing."

I disagree. We can be as anonymous as we choose, but the billion people making up the internet all have ages, genders, orientations and shoe sizes. Those circumstances and thus those biases are not nothing. They are of utmost importance to whoever happens to be currently talking, and the fact that each individual is an individual and thus differs in those circumstances must be noted - the net is not made of automatons.

Incidentally, the more I stare at that paragraph, the more I want to rip it to shreds. And not necessarily in our favour.

"The PPC and Deleterious do not “bully,” anybody and certainly not because of them being female, pre-pubescent, or writing female characters."

Misplaced comma. And yes, actually, we kind of do. Boosette and her lot are coming across as those horribly cliquey snooty high school girls you see in films, sure. But so are we. We do think we're better than the so-called fanbrats. We do rate our ability to tell a story higher. We do bitch about people with the temerity to write about noncanonical relationships and events. We do take note of female OCs more than male ones. We do predominantly target the works of female and/or prepubescent authors. Look through all the published missions, make a pretty graph of it, and you'll see it's true. We do exactly what we're accused of doing. The difference is in the why - we're being accused of simply being mean, when we're in fact railing at bad writing when the characteristics of bad writing are defined by a culture that automatically views women as lesser.

"Canon does not work like that."

But fanfic does. Being at odds with canon continuity is not a crime. Doing so without justification and without suitable storytelling ability to make it believable is.

"As Eleanor Roosevelt, certainly an empowered female, once put it, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”"

Um. Bullcrap. Try being female.

The petite agent sticks her head out the door and is immediately hit with the fallout of a high-powered attack by someone so soaked as to be unrecognizable. She blinks, grins, and withdraws her head for a moment, wiping dripping lavender strands of hair out of her face.

"Sis!" she yells into the depths of the RC. "C'mon, there's a waterfight!"

"There's a WHAT? Never mind, don't tell me, I don't care, I don't want to know, I want nothing to do with it and DO NOT CALL ME SIS!"

"So touchy," Kimmie muttered, and flung herself out the door, beaming.

"Oy! That's MY ammunition!" an unrecognizable sodden figure protested as she scurried past him.

"Sorry!" she lied, flinging herself around the corner and skidding an impressive distance on her rear, tossing water balloons willy-nilly behind her until she ran out and collided with something simultaneously. "Hello, Lux," she chirped, figuring that was a safe assumption given that the something had already gotten a hand under her first two layers of clothing. "Got any ammo?"

[Sidenote: This is Kimmie's first appearance; as I recall I don't need permission, right? She's a happy-go-lucky purple-haired gothic Lolita and is from an anime continuum. Hence the clothes and hair.)

Seconded that it's not the fact that they're gay creates the problem; that's just a good hook for the media.

As for care homes: the caregivers often try their best, but they've very little to work with. My mother was working night shifts in a care home for years, and I got the distinct impression they constantly did the best they could while understaffed and underpaid. They built relationships with the residents, were gutted when they died (as they always did: this was a nursing home, not a residential home), and were constantly being told they weren't doing their jobs properly, either by management, or by families who turned up once a month for a cursory visit and were incensed that there wasn't a nurse with their relative 24/7. The attitude of upper management was the worst problem. Low wage? Fine. Hard work? Fine. Getting fired because you're dealing with your two daughters going through a court case and also incidentally developing neurological problems? Not so fine.

That way, people who don't want to read it don't have to, and people who do can find it more easily when browsing.

I really doubt it (that 13-year-olds are the only writers). In fact, it's the minimum age on a lot of sites.

Also, I'm fascinated by the way they all assume we're not teenagers.

And I actually saw that mission, I believe. Miah got glitter poisoning?

So, basically, what you want is a bad slash warning, not a slash warning.

Clay had BETTER win that lawsuit, is all I have to say. And I hope he can manage to make sure that things like this don't happen again.

Was directed more at Boosette than anyone else, but I can certainly remove it.

And yes I may have turned up the prose a bit, but if someone is going to take the PPC seriously I feel we should answer seriously, if only increase the lulz when we drop the bomb that this whole thing is decidedly NOT serious.

I honestly don't know what to say apart from that.

But I did end up reading it, and it made me rethink how I write my own characters. Up to now, I've been kind of paranoid about making Mary Sues by accident, stressing over whether there's too much angst, or whether having child abuse in the past is a good idea or not, or whether this explanation is good enough for that certain trait or event. But I guess, reading this, I realize that the important thing is for the character to have meaningful strengths and equally meaningful weaknesses, and for each character to react to certain situations realistically and according to said strengths and weaknesses.

Am I hitting close to the nail here?

In response to your post, Neshomeh, I've been thinking of doing something interesting with my agents; namely, having them tackle one of my own badfics. I dunno, maybe it'll give me better perspective on how to write missions without being unintentionally and needlessly insulting.