Jan 2010 Archive, part c

A non-anthro feline Sue? That's... certainly unusual. Given that the side effects of cow milk in felines involves loose stool, I've also got to congratulate you for avoiding a very ugly pun. I've also got to congratulate you for getting a curiosity joke in fairly subtly.

Some nitpicks:

• "A portal opened and through it two agents entered the abandoned warehouse." is probably a compound enough sentence to require a comma between "opened" and "and". There are two separate verbs (opened and entered) and two separate subjects (portal and two agents), so there are two independent clauses without a subordinating conjunction but with a coordinating conjunction. While it's not a perfect rule of thumb, if you can replace the "and" with a period and still have working sentences, the "and" needs a comma. To quote JulyRose : "An independent clause can be a simple sentence by itself; a dependent clause would be a sentence fragment by itself."
• It's not clear what "Well, abandoned." is stating. Could a word like "mostly" be necessary?
• "Its current owners saw no particular use for it so the A-Team were squatting the building." needs a comma between "it" and "so".
• "The van was parked in the middle of the spacious room and in one corner some living/sleeping space had been set up." takes a comma between "room" and "and".
• "ball-point pen" has been largely standardized to "ballpoint pen".
• "If Mrs. Baracus had called the phone in the van BA would have heard it ringing too." needs something separating the adverb clause from the independent clause. The easiest solution would be a comma between "van" and "BA".
• Formatted as "Stupid Sue not even", Stupid Sue is being a noun but doesn't really have a verb to operate with. You can add "is" after it to get the sentence flowing smoother, or a comma after it to set it apart as an interjection or address (in which case you're using a silent but understood subject for the reset of the sentence). If you're intending slightly broken speech, neither of these changes is necessary, though.
• "It was all alone and Face took pity on the little creature." takes a comma after "alone".
• "Perhaps her foreign correspondency ended,"... I'm not quite sure what word you wanted here, "time as a foreign correspondent" perhaps? Correspondency seems non-standard.
• "The big guy is kind to all animals. Except imaginary ones," Tasmin added." may demonstrate a pause better by putting the "Tasmin added" in the middle and/or modifying it to something longer, such as "Tasmin paused for a moment, before adding". If it's an obvious enough addition that any pause in her statements would be very short, this isn't worthwhile, but it can add a bit of variety.
• "In fics where Face has nightmares Hannibal usually treats Face like a little kid." could use a comma between "nightmares" and "Hannibal".
• This is probably a joke or colloquialism I'm just not getting, but "attachment is no place for a fugitive." seems confusing, since attachment isn't a place in the first place. Moving to "a fugitive has no place for attachments." is clearer and moves to active voice.
• "That has too much lactose and kittens are often lactose intolerant." could use a comma between "lactose" and "and".
• "Everyone went to their assigned rooms and the agents joined Murdock and Face." could use a comma between "rooms" and "and".
• "Now Face has something to cuddle and he can let all his childhood suffering and angst go." might want use a comma between "cuddle" and "and". This is spoken word, so you can get away with missing the comma if the phrase needs to feel like it was blurted out, but I don't know if that's the case.
• "When Face was done talking he pulled the covers over his head and Amy and Murdock knew it would be a long time before he would talk about his childhood again.", on the other hand, really needs some punctuation after "his head". Minimum for correctness would be a comma, but it might be worthwhile to switch out the "and" for a period; multiple "and"s tend to grab focus and increase pace at the cost of clarity, and you're getting a bad deal here.
• "The friend, Toby, had had his arm broken by some local crooks running a protection racket. Because of this he could now not work." The "now" is probably superfluous, or at least unclear. That could go to "could not work" or "could no longer work". On the more nitpicky side, "had had" is technically correct, but ugly and passive. "The friend, Toby, explained that some local crooks running a protection racket had broken his arm." seems stronger to me.
• "When Face and the rat got to the car, Face popped the hood and Hannibal jumped up from the engine space (the engine had been taken out) and aimed an assault rifle at the rat." is a hilarious mental image. Could also use a comma between "hood" and "and Hannibal", or even replace the "and" with a period to reduce overall sentence complexity -- although at the cost of slower pacing.
• "The agents were looking at the proceedings of the scene from a safe distance. Relatively safe in an environment that only had a permanent-looking structure because Allison imagined there should be a building." There's no independent clause in the in the second sentence. I'm not sure if that was intentional or not; there are some uses for such things. If not, it'd probably be safer with a comma replacing the period after "distance".
• You probably want to specify who Sammy is before having someone inform him of anything, nevermind put out a cigar on him. The place where Toby gives directions might be a better place to name-drop him.
• "Hannibal loves playing the characters that set up these shops and he loves his cage getting rattled." actually works pretty well as-is, but it's not benefiting much from the lack of a comma between "shops" and "and", even if it doesn't hurt as much as other examples, either.
• "gave the kitten to Amy who he hoped would be more responsible." would use a comma between "Amy" and "who", since it's a nonrestrictive modifier.
• "With the rats disposed off" should be "of".
• "'causing all of them to behave" probably doesn't need the apostrophe, unless it's a shortening of a longer word.

That Sue was ... insidious.

[Tasmin nodded. "Make a note of that."
"I will. As soon as you stop sitting on my pen."]

This made me snort.

Nice mission!

Sim name: Anne (insert last name as appropriate).

Personality:
Slob-Neat - 4
Mean-Nice - 5
Shy-Outgoing - 2
Lazy-Active - 6
Serious-Playful - 5

Turn ons and Turn offs:
Turn ons - Good at creativity, Formal Wear
Turn offs - Good at Body, Stink

Aspiration:
Knowledge, Fortune as a minor one.

Children:
Female - Zion, Zenith, Salem, Sarah-Beth

Picture:
http://s250.photobucket.com/albums/gg271/slashy-snow-eagle/?action=view&current=DSCN0003-1.jpg
Not a great picture, but there it is. Also a couple years old.

--anamia

Like Pads, it's easiest to find a pic on the York Gathering Report. Or if you have any photos of me from San Diego you can use one of them.

Neat: 3
Nice: 7
Outgoing: 6
Active: 3
Playful: 6

Turn ons: glasses, lycanthropy (werewolves need love too!)
Turn off: stink

Aspirations: knowledge and pleasure (secondary).

Boy's names: Ragnar, Yumichika, Neil, Jack
Girls's names: Rangiku, Nel, Lisa, Faye

Easiest to kife a picture of me from a Gathering report, I think. hS's York one has plenty: http://www.freewebs.com/bonsaimallorn/YorkGath08.htm

Neat - 6
Nice - 8
Outgoing - 4
Active - 2
Playful - 5

Turn-ons - facial hair, good at cooking
Turn-off - makeup

Aspirations - family and knowledge

Potential sons - Thor, Rafael, Fergal and Guybrush
Potential daughters - Katie, Lianna, Astrid and Ingrid.

Neat: 6
Nice: 8
Outgoing: 2
Active: 7
Playful: 2

Turn ons: brown hair, Good at mechanical
Turn off: fat

Aspiration: Knowledge

Potential children names:
Girls: Kaylee, Erica, Fiona, and Ellen
Boys: Gabe, Tycho, James, and Eric

And the picture:


It's a bit old, but that's me. If you'd like a more up-to-date one, I can shoot another.

I've been keeping an eye on some of these, and I'd love to sneak into one!

Personality

Slob/Neat: 6
Mean/Nice: 6
Shy/Outgoing: 3
Lazy/Active: 4
Serious/Playful: 6


Turn Ons and Turn Offs

Turn Ons: Black Hair, Good at Charisma
Turn Offs: Stink, Full Face Make-Up


Aspiration/Sproglets

Primary Aspiration: Family
Secondary Aspiration: Popularity

BoySprogs: Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Nikolai
GirlSprogs: Rose, Winter, Rain, Elizabeth

I found them in the bargain bin of my college bookstore, read the backs, and immediately purchased them (this was just before I learned of the PPC as well). I haven't read them, though, because I want to read them in order, but I don't have the first book yet. In retrospect, I should have asked for those for Christmas...Anyway, the series sounds like pure awesome-sauce to me, and I can't wait to start reading them.

all of five fanfictions for the series (and none of them warrant sporking)

I should hope not; I wrote one of them. There are a few more TN fanfics on Jasper Fforde's own site. (Yes, a published author who hosts fanfics of his fandom)

As far as I remember the books, Jurisfiction does not deal with fanfiction. It deals with what goes on in the book world. Fanfiction takes place outside the book world. For fanfiction to have an effect on canon characters in Jasper Fforde's universe, book characters would have to be introduced to fanfiction by someone who can travel into books and tell them about it.

I've always figured that there was an annex to the Well of Lost Plots, accessible by one door on the third floor. I had a little scene in mind where Thursday finds the door one day and asks about it and is told the Bayou of Fanfiction is behind that door, and Jurisfiction doesn't go there. "They have their ... own law enforcement operation."

... is that Jasper Fforde forbids people from writing fanfiction based on his books. So unfortunately the whole thing is a non-starter. It's still a great idea, though.

It's been tangentially looked at before, actually (which is the only way it could be). Agent Quen, from the Department of Personnel, was asked to look into the possibility of cooperation. Her only comment on the matter (she hasn't reported any success - or failure) is here.

hS, encyclopaedia of trivia

... without wishing to dampen your enthusiasm (and it does sound like a fun series) we have a fairly official policy of not recruiting canon characters, no matter how well they'd fit into our little organisation.

THAT SAID, there would be nothing at all against someone inventing an Agent who was from that continuum, provided they weren't a canon character :) And that could be a lot of fun, with the agent talking about differences in procedures and so on and so forth :D

Ah yes, I remember that show, back when Cartoon Network was GOOD.

Ah, good times, good times...

Time Squad was one of the last shows I was following when I finally got over my television addiction. I especially liked the episode with the cheery, pink-obsessed Edgar Allen Poe. I think what made Time Squad so fun was that it DIDN'T take the plots too seriously, sort of like the way PPC missions are written.

It could be a sickly-sweet story about Twu Luv. It could be a story about the Sue using the poor Agent for her own nefarious ends. It could be somewhere in between, with the Sue worrying that he doesn't really love her - that it's her ex-suvian nature doing it to him. There's all kinds of interesting places you could take a story, and I don't think anyone here would object to any of them.

Love is subjective. It's as mysterious and individual an idea in fiction as it is in real life.

Good question.
I would it suspect to be at least something approaching true love, as agents are usually impervious to Suvian influence, and there is always the Reality Room to go and check how real this love thing is, if you have very practical characters...

I think there are a couple recruited semi-fic blip characters that have at least married other Agents. Not sure if you'd count pon farr in the True Love category, though.

Both individuals would probably expect to see some trips to FicPsych, some anti-lustin, and odd looks from other Agents. Concern about reformed Mary Sues going bad again does not seem unreasonable, as would caution to verify True Love over Twu Wuv.

Some of the fanfictions are on the Unclaimed Badfic page on the Wiki. The D.Gray-Man ones will follow as soon as I have refamiliarized myself with the continuum and know how bad it is.

But she's probably a troll.

Anyone notice anything wrong with this sentence? "She had back length blonde hair that was pulled to the side and tied with a black ribbon over her right shoulder, her raven locks framing her pale face." Fun image, that.

That was the 5th sentence of one of them. And she is almost certainly an author self-insert. The fact that they have the same name is worrisome.

On the other hand, I did find this on her profile, which might be useful when charging 'Sues. "62)I am allowed to have a toad, rat, cat, or owl. I am not allowed to have a reticulated python, snow leopard, Tasmanian devil, or pirahna."

All things considered, I don't think I'll waste my time reading past sentence 5. I'd rather not build up a tolerance to drivel. It might lower my standards, and that would be bad for sporking.

--anamia

Ugh. It's worse than I expected...

In every way imaginable! UGH! Everything about it is just wrong and horrible all at once!

...Which to me means nothing. I'm terrible like that.

Very nice work. I certainly did your research here, though I wouldn't know, not knowing anything about horse biology...

The horse portion seems a bit short in the back to me in all three, but otherwise very thoughtful. You might be interested in this: http://sparkyart.deviantart.com/art/Anatomy-of-an-Andalite-2-29701130

There's also one in black and white, but I prefer this.

Also, I have +devWatched you. {= )

~Neshomeh

I was rather mesmerized by the skeleton one... :D

Sad that I missed that discussion. I'm not in chat as often as I might wish, sadly.

Those drawings are positively stunning. Congratulations on doing them, on doing them so quickly, and on doing them so well.

--anamia

The skeletal one particularly is *beautiful*

Those are nice! If we don't have a Centaur page on the Wiki, I suggest making one and sticking those in, as they'd be very helpful for sporkers and ficwriters alike.

Another link, should there be problems:
http://elorieppc.deviantart.com/
That's my profile. The images are in the gallery.

Well, I'm not sure I'd be the best person to do it, since I have no knowledge of the Silmarillion whatsoever, though I can promise to do enough research to get a gist of the characters and the story before I look at yours. On the other hand, I do have a decent amount of experience as a beta, a slash writer, and a romance writer, which is what you said you wanted help with.

I'm on The Pit if you want to take a look at some of my stuff. I'd warn you away from the earlier stories, since they were written years and years ago, and I will warn you that Emerald Fog contains a 'Sue as a (very) minor character, though said story is in the process of being edited and she is slowly dying a gory death.

The best way to contact me is either via pm on The Pit or by AIM, where I'm known as anamia8742. You could email me (thirteenskater(@)gmail(.)com) but I'm not as good at checking that as I should be.

--anamia

I'm not as familiar with the Silmarillion as I'd like to be, but I've got some beta-reading and slash experience (albeit not in any pairing involving the local equivalent of Lucifer) and can offer a hand. If it's easiest, I can be emailed at gattsuru at gmail dot com

I could do it. Though, perhaps I should not be the only one to do it. I have not too much beta-ing experience.

I have to tell you, Sedri: I've lived with a geologist, so I know what it's like to take them places and listen to much description of random (and not-so-random) rocks. In a museum, we always spent the most time in the gems and minerals section.

And I relate all this with the utmost affection.

I must confess, I burst out laughing upon seeing "Shag Point" on the plesiosaur exhibit picture.

Oh god, City of Ashes... I started it, but just could not make it through. I've never really liked the VSDs either.

I didn't know that was the guy from Princess Diaries 2! Not that I've, uh, seen it or anything. <_>

I've got to go somewhere that has Gatherings.

I love the carnivorous tree and the fence with a window hole.

Awesome blog indeed. Very funny!

Oh, how funny. And so understandable - you can see the logic, but it's still so stupid...

There's characters I both lust and wish to hug. No, I shan't tell you! Nyeah!

I may be reading this wrongly, but I assumed that 'Lust Objects' were... well, precisely what they sounded like, whereas 'Favorites' were characters you respected and adored but by no stretch of the imagination lusted over. So, for instance, my (soon to be forthcoming) Agent holds Draco Malfoy as a Favorite and Pierre Gringoire as a Lust Object. (Actually, the only reason she doesn't lust over Draco is that she's a total slash fangirl, and so much prefers him with other men, but that's a different story; there's a reason she transferred to DBS.)

I agree, though, that 'Favorite' is too broad a term. I like the ones you suggested, and would add in a couple of other possibilities:

Anti-Favorites: Characters you love to hate. People like Professor Umbridge would be in here, or possibly Mrs. Bennet.

Favorites of the Intellect: Characters you just want to have a conversation with, possibly over a nice dinner. Hermione, for instance, might qualify, or Aragorn.

Those are all the ones I can think of at the moment. I agree that the agents' profiles probably shouldn't be altered to have them all, but possibly once we organize the list a bit more we could make a new page and just link the 'Favorites' category in the infobox to that.

I'm quite fond of the Paired Objects. I agree that there are many characters you only like when paired with someone else. Fred and George Weasley spring to mind, or Alice and Jasper Hale (yes, I'm a slight Twilight fan. Not a rabid one by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm rather fond of those two.) It's nice to have a shorthand way to express that as opposed to the rather cumbersome, 'Draco. Well, only Draco when he's paired with Harry in plausible goodfic. And only when he's in character.' (Actually a lie; I am quite fond of our Mr. Malfoy in all of his evil, canon glory, but the point remains.)

--anamia

I think that is a great idea. This sorting into either L.O. or Favorite is a little crude to my taste. Of course, it depends on the agent what kind of Objects they would have. All in all I also like the categories you offer and I think they cover about anything there is.

Sorry if I nitpick a bit overmuch.

One character -- I think one of Trojie's, Agent Gypsy -- had his eyes on Serenity, and insisted on the "registered subject of adoration" official term in a mission years ago, rather than a Lust Object. I'm still brainstorming my characters, but I was planning to have one be nonsexed, and have him use that name while his more normal partner stuck with the more common Lust Object. So there are ways to communicate nonsexual interest in a canon, even if not everyone necessarily believes you.

It seems the question would be if you want to have a character with something in each category listed, or want to have a normal sized list of Lust Objects, but be able to further detail what type of adoration is going on. In the former case, trying to come up with a half-dozen broad categories makes a lot of sense.

In the latter, though, I think you'll run into problems trying to get any amount of agreed definitions. The character I was toying with would have a 'thing' for fighters with a strong personality, but while Legolas woobiefication would drive him up the walls, he'd never respect an elf or adore someone for being domestic. Something that's precise for him wouldn't work for most other characters, just as something that's precise for Stormsong wouldn't work for most other agents, or how a description of Discworld kleptomania might not be common. In that sense, something more along the lines of putting the description of how the item is adored within parentheses, perhaps with a few established examples, and using the Object Of Adoration superset might be easier.

That's just the newbie viewpoint on it, though.

Yes, gattsuru, I see them. Too bad we don't have an editing feature. I really must stop making changes and then hitting "post" without doing my third read-through... Ah, well. :)

Interesting formating style, I like it.

Hahaha, following.

FMA stands for "FullMetal Alchemist", but she really should have spelt it out anyway.
...
...she'satrollshe'satrollshe'satroll... *hides in corner*

Anyways, that was very funny. :D

Watching you write it was entertaining as well, for all that that 'Sue was painful.

--anamia

I've never been able to find one, which means 'cite sources' turns into 'list them at the end'.

hS

Most of the ones I wrote down were relatively good, in hindsight. But the ones I didn't write? Hoo-boy. Sheer canon-raping horror. (Especially where certain male canon characters were concerned...) I thank myself for never having written them down.

I wrote a Pern piece, long ago. This was before words like "Mary Sue", "self-insert", and even "fanfiction" were even in my vocabulary. I remember giving it to a teacher to edit. I think she thought it was an original piece.

At least I still knew back then that it wasn't fair to have my main character automatically the best at everything. Still, it was pretty boring.

http://z8.invisionfree.com/Transcendence_Forum/index.php?showtopic=1727

Not really too proud of it.

I remember one piece that I started...featured a Zelda Stu that was a Gerudo male.
If you know anything about Zelda races, that's really ...ed up.

...well, most of my badfic stayed in my heasd, thank [insert deity of choice here]. Mostly Sues, though.

I didn't start out my writing hobby with fanfiction. I went through a stage where I wrote bad original fiction, but luckily I took down the small percentage that I posted. I did write a short, unfinished fanfiction in the sixth grade. I have it in a notebook somewhere and I could probably dig it up. I wrote it because I disliked the fact that A Series of Unfortunate Events ended without all of the mysteries solved (although I like the ending now). It didn't go too far OOC, but I didn't know how to write well, so my grammar and style butchered it. The entire idea was that I would write a sequel to The End starting from the very moment after the canonical ending. I was going to have them go on an adventure and solve the mystery that has been bugging me for ages: the Great Unknown. Meh, I've moved on from that fic, though. I have no desire to go back to it, even though it would be fun to think up answers to all of the mysteries Snicket has out there.

I remember some awful crackfic I wrote with Blayze in seventh grade about the Greek Gods. It's still in The Pit, if you look me up under my full username. We also have a joint account with some Van Helsing and Phantom of the Opera stuff.

I like to pretend those stories don't exist, but I do find it absolutely hilarious when people favorite them or give reviews saying how funny/good they were. -_-

I didn't write down most of my fanficish stuff; I just kept it in my head. Thank Eru. Anakin's twin sister and Fëanor's granddaughter both come to mind.

I do have bits of original fic with blatant Sues. I remember one of them was basically rip-off of Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic series. I don't know where it is, or I'd post bits of it. It was awful.

I've got some ugly skeletons in my writing closet as well. Most of it from before the Pit existed, and the very worst of it before Geocities or I even had internet access worth mentioning, but that didn't stop me from dropping the stuff out.

I've saved my work, since there's often decent Plot Bunnies under the horrible pacing, consistently interrupted tone, and non-existent characterization, but I've rarely posted since someone lifted a pretty non-trivial part of one of my older ones. He's welcome to have it -- horrible, horrible writing -- but I don't like having stuff that's unfinished out there nearly this long. I have no idea how anyone managed to make a politically charged supernatural thriller with an odd take on who is hunting and who is hunted lack conflict, but a younger me did.

Whether that just general pathetic output, or depressingly clinical and artificial, a lot of stuff is painful to look at. It took the better part of a year of practice to get anything where the result wasn't a given and where the pacing worked out. I've gotten to the point where I can look back a good few years and not be horrified, even if there are places for polish and improvement.

I was about twelve, maybe younger. It was for Star Wars, and it was awful. I think I wrote three little stories at once at that point, and they were all just plain BAD attempts to 'fix' what I didn't like about Padme and Anakin's story. I can't remember the titles I gave them anymore, and I most certainly deleted them - along with the author account and the related email address. I wanted to completely wash my hands of it.

I also remember making up an original character, Ciorina, who was a standard Lord of the Rings Mary Sue, at about the same time, and to my own credit, I looked through the hobbit family trees in order to find a plausible great-grandparent for her, but she was half elf and half hobbit, so I grovel in shame nonetheless.


(That said, missions should be FUN! If you're avoiding them, then they're obviously not being fun. Make them fun, or put them aside. You're not on a deadline.)

I think the rule is that published works are the canon, even when not published by the original author or with the permission of the original author, and there's a similar exception for parodies.

The whole "Tonks has to transform into Sirius to be with Remus" has got to be the funniest wank-point ever churned out by HP fandom. Oh, the lols.

I find your agents quite interesting -- they're so different, and yet they still manage to work effectively (or, as much as possible given their profession).

Ow... my eyes. Bright green backgrounds = pain.

Link, please.

The formatting's all wrong. Let me try to just tweak it...

Very much so.

Nooooooo!

I remember being thirteen and watching it land over the Internet (my parents are both space physicists).

Have you seen the latest xkcd about it?

Season 3 episode 3 "Irresistible"

This episode first introduces Lucius, played by Richard Kind. The character is annoying, obnoxious, loud mouthed, rude, and overly intimate (not so much in a sexual way, though he does have something like 5 wives-more in a I know everything about your life and you want me to way.)

Yet everyone loves him almost instantly. Not just loves him, but would die for him, would protect him from any insult or discomfort-however slight, and pines for him whenever he is gone. Everyone except Shepherd who has been shown to have an awful cold since before Lucius shows up.

Lucius turned out to have some kind of formula that sort of intoxicated anyone that smelled it. It was sort of like a love potion that worked on everyone around the person taking it. Shepherd kidnaps Doctor Becket and keeps him long enough for the effect to wear off and Becket to work his magic (medical magic) to negate the effect. People were not particularly happy with Lucius when they sobered up. Especially not the people of his home village.


Also, the 5th season episode 4 of Stargate SG-1 titled "The 5th Man" involved an alien that exuded a chemical that made a person coming in contact with it susceptible to the suggestion that the alien was in fact someone they knew and had good reason to not kill. In the case of this episode that the alien was a relatively new 5th member of the team. I don't think the alien really counted as a Mary Sue (well Marty Stu-it took on a male persona), as the only reason it did this was because the Jaffa were tracking it down and trying to kill it. It eventually fessed up, and tried to lead the Jaffa away so the team could escape. They used the distraction to kill off the Jaffa and save the day. The alien went off to a rendezvous with others of its kind to continue hiding from the Jaffa.

I think Lucius definitely counts as a Marty Stu though. His Stufluence was mighty strong.

I've been cautious to accuse Torchwood fic of OOCness. I'm always keeping an eye out / hoping that in later chapters it is revealed there was an alien mind control thing or something going on.

Is never the case though.

----

Another canon-Sue is the character Jackie Knox from the show Voyagers! She takes over the "saving the day" job from the canon characters and both canon males fall for her. There's no reality altering spell or mind control going on here; it was just bad writing by the canon authors. Luckily, in the next episode they had forgotten all about her.

That was... interesting. Very, very interesting...

I'll take either, or both, of the Minis, if you haven't already found homes for them...

And I think that in this case, just a Mini version of the misspelled party is appropriate...

I'll stop with the ellipses abuse... maybe... sometime... I swear...


;)