The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

Snack bar?! Nomnomnomnom!

...sorry, I just got home and haven't eaten all day.

Thank you! I'm sure she and my guard tribble shall be the best of friends. Or bitter rivals, constantly showing each other up in comedic ways.

Thank you. I imagine these will see much use soon enough...

I was also thinking; I kind of want to do something with the fic which inspired my idea of the Department of Unintentional Comedy, but it's Bad Slash in a fandom that my exorcist characters would A) not know and B) probably actively hate. My assassins would like it, but there's no Sue in it, so ... Maybe I'll save it for MSTing.

Hymenoptera Vespula, for the win.

I think it was...ooooh, look! It's got a little spot that shows the phases of the moon!

A fine gift. Thank you. Happy Hunting to you as well!

So long as it's not a vorpal tribble, I should do all right. Thank you muchly!

*pokes*

I am indeed seconding everything July said, but I will add that the very first thing you should do is to read the Original Series. Yes, all of it. It's, well, the original PPC series. That is what started it all. Everything we do is based on it and merely attempts to do it homage. In essence, it is our canon, and everything else is optional.

I'm glad to see that you found and read the Constitution on your own. Sometimes people miss it. Kudos! *gives snack bars*

And, of course, welcome. {= D

~Neshomeh

One wiki page mentioned a wish to avoid "SuperPowered" Agents because an Agent arms race is no fun for anyone and the point is to have fun, not vie for the dubious honor of having the most powerful Agent. I was mostly wondering what exactly it means by SuperPowered. Can my agent have any form of supernatural ability? Could he be a wizard/sorcerer/mage/magician/insert canon title for spellcaster here? Or does it simply mean to avoid agents so powerful they're a Sue or Stu? It said to dream up two agents, and one I was planning to use was an original character of mine, who I wrote a story about and played in a sadly short-lived D&D campaign. But he's a spellcaster, although not an especially potent one. Does this disqualify him?

I'm not familiar with whether there are codified "fandoms," but I'd say Sandman and to a lesser extent anything Gaiman; Discworld; Thursday Next; Lewis Carrol and most derivative works, although the new Tim Burton Alice failed to impress; Babylon 5; The Nightmare Before Christmas; Star Trek: Original Series, Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine; and of course Lord of the Rings.

Thank you! I shall find a way to put it to good use...

I don't mean to come off like I'm shooting you down. I'm all for random stuff for the lulz. I just didn't understand where you were going with it, and I'm probably oversensitive about anything new these days. {= P

Plus, like I said, I'd much rather see the jokes and stuff come up in the course of a mission as opposed to conjuring them up here, sticking them on the wiki, and then never doing anything with them again. Less talk, more action sort of thing. See also March Madness Challenge (of which there is still a week left--plenty of time, looking at what some people have managed so far). {= )

Does that make sense?

~Neshomeh

Special needs does accord one some extra patience, I'd agree. However, the facts in this case don't argue for much sympathy.

1. She's been at it a long time, apparently--at least three years. Even if we can't expect her to know the rules of spelling and grammar by heart, we CAN expect her to have realized that spell-check is a good thing.

2. The fact that she points out being special needs as an excuse for bad spelling and grammar suggests that she KNOWS it's bad and has done nothing to improve. That's just laziness in anyone; see also first point.

3. Furthermore, I'd conjecture that feeling the need to give excuses suggests that she is aware of negative response she's getting and why she's getting it, and (again) has done nothing to improve the issues. Again, we have a lack of willingness or even outright refusal to improve, even though the fix is so very simple and it seems clear that she's at least smart enough to know what it is.

Given all of the above and the fact that she still puts her stuff out for the world to see, I think the world is entitled to its continued negative response. If it were anything but writing, I would say differently, but it is SO EASY to clean up a piece of writing, at least mechanically, that I find it very hard to sympathize with people who don't even bother with a simple spell-check, whether they're eleven, or special needs, or whatever.

... Of course, I also think that over-reliance on spell-check probably means that people don't learn to spell properly for themselves. But that's a whole other issue.

~Neshomeh, possibly controversial.

Having the Department of Babelfish work like the Department of Redundancy Department too might work. Just as a gag ... Whatever, I thought it would be funny, but if it doesn't work that's okay.

Ahhhh, well thanks for clearing that up. As I think I already said, it's years since I read the books. I think I was still in college at the time.

But that's why we have the Fangirl Fanfiction Translator™, courtesy of Al's Waiter. Not that it always works well... but that's part of the fun. {= )

~Neshomeh

1/ Not explained. I seem to recall Vemi and myself thinking of the fluid in the pods as a superenergetic liquid (which is an absurdity of physics; basically imagine they crammed as much energy as possible in without the pods bursting), but the process is thoroughly undefined. I'd say that 'Suifying someone would be a) impossible and b) pointless. Impossible because superenergetic fluid is likely deadly, and pointless because they've perfected cloning. "Resource-intensive" is fairly unimportant for anyone with plothole access. Also bear in mind that these aren't humans/etc we're talking about -- Mary-Sues have glitter for blood.

2/ In our minds, the Mary-Sue Factory was one of the primary sources of 'Sues. In my particular mind, a Mary-Sue is simply a walking nexus of plotholes. Intentionally or not, they manipulate the world around them in profoundly unnatural ways. The Factory must have worked out how to create nexuses (This is all being invented on the fly, here). However, 'brainwashed into servitude' is right out. These are clones and created beings. You don't brainwash them -- you create their minds from scratch (or templates). They can be controlled directly (the Mysterious Somebody did that) but they're not usually an army. It's best to make them annoying and just turn them loose.

3/ Defectives are what the name suggests -- defective. They're the result of the construction process going wrong at some point. The reason they're usually colourless is that a failure at an earlier stage is usually fatal. They're probably slightly less annoying than normal Sues, if only because they're staff -- they need to be people the Flowers can work with, rather than just be irritated by.

4/ The answer to this is the answer to question 3: either a Defective or a dead 'Sue and a quick recycle. In The Reorganisation, the entire original Factory was set to recycle, resulting in every single 'Sue under construction being dissolved. Also, as someone mentioned, if an Agent found a Factory, she'd either be killed or report it to Upstairs, who'd attack in force. Mary-Sue Factories are very bad things.

5/ Probably a combination. They don't need constant supervision, but at least the initial setup is external. They can also be set to recycle at any point. I guess they could probably change anything which isn't initialised yet.

6/ The Factories are essentially miniature versions of HQ. They have Defectives instead of Agents, but there are still Flowers in each one. They aren't robotic places pumping out 'Sues, unless someone wrote something I've not read. They're also covered by Someone Else's Problem fields (or at least the original was).

7/ Nothing. DoSAT could do everything the Factories do if they wanted to, but why bother? Cloning, personality-creation, mixing genetics... they're all canon technologies. Remember the original Factory was actually set up by members of the PPC.

8. Again, 'learn of' is impossible. Every sentient Flower was a former member of the PPC (since the only way they can be created is through a portal set up in HQ), so they already know about World One. It's one world in an infinite Multiverse -- there's nothing particularly worth invading there. Also, to be honest, 'Sues do not work well together. The DTE once let a pair of them kill each other over which was the most beautiful. There have been two armies of 'Sues that I know of -- one under heavy mind-control (during Crashing Down), and one unleashed during the 2008 invasion. That one didn't work as an army, but as a collection of overpowered individuals bent on wreaking havoc.

Also bear in mind that the Flowers of the Factories are doing all this for pretty much two purposes: to afflict the PPC and to gain power/money/etc. The PPC is far better assailed in the way they're currently doing it (eg, Fanfiction.net), and there's not much to be gained from outright invasion.

As to whether individual 'Sues could make a living for themselves in World One -- some would say they already have. :P

hS

PS: Remember that all of the above is only my opinion. I created one Factory; someone else invented the League. The PPC is community property. ~hS

I kind of feel bad for making fun of that fic all if she actually is/was special needs.

I mean, it doesn't remove from the importance of having and using a beta, but yeah.

The agents are wearing Universal Translators, but the UT only translates the characters speaking a canonical language that the agent doesn't know. It doesn't translate what the badfic writer meant from what they actually said, otherwise, say, "legolas by laura" would have been perfectly coherent to the agents. If the fic's written incoherently, it comes out looking incoherent despite the translator.

The first one could be good for laughs, but I think it's one of those things that needn't officially exist until people actually use it as a joke in the course of actual mission-writing. There's LOTS of stuff it would be fun to have/do, but we don't want a Hogfather situation, with theoretical constructs popping into existence just because someone once suggested it somewhere. ... Well, okay, it kind of does actually work like that at times. But I'd personally rather have it be something suggested in-universe than ex-universe. Probably because I want to see people writing missions. {= )

I don't really understand where you're going with the second one at all. The badfic is badfic no matter the language, and a poor translation is pretty easily spotted by anyone; so, badly-translated fics can be handled by anyone, and badfic in other languages can only be handled by people who speak it anyway. Not to mention that in-universe, the agents are all equipped with Universal Translators. So, what would such a department actually DO that isn't being done already?

~Neshomeh

I like both ideas.

For 2) we need to play it by ear like you said. There needs to be a distinction between someone who is actually trying, and someone who is simply completely out of their depth. I'd bet there's quite bit of people who try to learn English by way of their fandom, or maybe even *because* of their fandom. Learning a language can be a tender process and while publishing your work online exposes you automatically to all kinds of crazies like us, it's not cricket to make fun of them for trying to learn.

Could consider a department for foreign language fics if there isn't one yet. Though the traffic there might be low.

Many a time I've been reading a dramatic part of a fic, to find that bad spelling has caused outright hilarity! I'm reminded of a Star Wars fic I read a few years ago, I forget its name. However, in a particularly tense part of the otherwise good plot, the lead character 'realised that the orgasms in the water were actually fish!' (Should have been organisms, obviously...) I lold and the tension was ruined!